I'm happy to report that L.A. is not, in fact, full of surgically altered plastic people. Though there are those, I have been fortunate enough to make new friendships and renew old ones every week since Sacred Fools! First there was Beth from the show, then Melissa from yoga who's a voice over agent, then Bob who's a friend of a friend from DC and a director/actor, Jack who I did "Photograph 51" with in DC, J.T. and his wife Lauren who I know from "Curveball" in DC but they live in LA, and Ben, Brigetta, Jeff, Kathryn, and Mairi all from UPS. UPS is the University of Puget Sound for those of you who don't know. It's been pretty awesome. The week of Oct. 6-12 was just chock full of good people! I've realized that you can go off and do whatever you want on your own, but it immediately gets more fun and more meaningful when you have people to share it with. Our friends are what tie us down, in a good way. They don't hinder; they anchor, and in a time of transition you really need some ballast.
Towards the end of the week, I got to head back to DC for the long weekend to see Theo and go to a great wedding! My friend Bekah from middle school in Riyadh AND from college married her boyfriend from college in VA last Tuesday. They're now honeymooning in Greece and, hopefully, trying all the good Greek dishes Theo and I told them about. With some luck, they'll fit in some ruins between meals. I think Pete, who majored in history major, is going to take care of that.
It was great to catch up with folks from college, especially at the henna party! Bekah wanted to honor her roots, so she got all the ladies together at her mom's house and we snacked and listened to middle eastern music, caught up on each other's lives and had henna designs painted on our hands. That was Saturday. Sunday was a day off to hang out and Monday was the gorgeous wedding - small and outside in a botanical garden in VA with lots of family and friends. So many of our friends are musicians, including Bekah's brother Pete, that we were treated to a great band made up of friends and many songs to honor the bride and groom. I was enlisted at the last minute to sing back up for Kirsten's, the Maiden of Honor, toast, but the biggest surprise was the Chinese Dragon! As Bekah and Pete, now Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, were announced, a drum beat started from somewhere in the distance, then some sort of cymbal and suddenly a Chinese Dragon danced out of the hallway from whence the bride and groom had come! The three person band followed behind and the bride and groom were honored with an extremely gymnastic dragon dance. Pete and Bekah kept the whole thing a secret from the entire wedding party and it was great fun.
Despite all the fun, Theo and I did learn a good lesson this weekend: It is possible to schedule in too much fun. We've realised that when we get to see each other, we need to have two days just for us. It was so great to be home and be involved with the wedding and meet friends for drinks and go pick our pumpkin and go the Fall Farm Fair and go the wedding and go to the henna party and go the Jack&Jill party that we got so busy, we started to feel like we ran out of "us time". No more of that, we've decided. If you feel left out when I'm home, at least you'll know I'm in good company.
Speaking of home, I start driving Nov. 5, so I should be back in DC sometime on Nob. 10. See you soon!
- Jewel
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Serial Killers
My first show in LA was a success! At least as far as the experience. We got "voted off", unfortunately, but that didn't make it any less awesome. So what exactly is Serial Killers? Serial Killers is an ongoing short play contest produced by the LA theatre company Sacred Fools. Writers submit Episode 1 of their play and, if it gets into the contest, it gets performed at Sacred Fools on a Saturday night at 11pm with 4 other short plays. At the end of the night, the audience chooses the plays the want to see continued. The writers of those plays then write Episode 2 which gets performed the next Saturday. If you don't get chosen, ie. you get "voted off", you go back to your dull life away from the theatre, but you do have more time for hiking! So, despite having an excellent script created by Shawn Northrip, a great director and an awesome cast, we didn't make it into the next week. It was, however, unanimously decided by those outside of our play that we were up agains a very very difficult night of other plays. Within our night, there was
- a Children of the Corn-esque horror/thriller in which the children take over and begin killing all the adults
- a sci-fi suspense in which all the parents have been replaced by aliens but only one child has realized it
- a hilarious spoof of a day time soap both on screen and behind the scenes (my favorite)
- a toker movie about the first 2 Latino astronauts in space (close second favorite)
and finally...
- Ours! The Story of My First Baby, a coming of age story about a group of girls in Massachusetts considered to be a coven by their principal.
The best news about Serial Killers is that it's a group of great people. I made another great friend in Beth who played one of the girls in the play to my school nurse. And, of course, I got to work with Shawn again, and go to Scoops! I'm telling you, Scoops has the, or at least some of the, best ice cream in LA. I had the Dark Chocolate Guinness after we teched, but the Brown Bread and the Mascarpone were also excellent, though my favorite is still the very first one I tried - Lavender Berry Honey. Angel breath frozen in a cup. Yum.
xox Jewel
- a Children of the Corn-esque horror/thriller in which the children take over and begin killing all the adults
- a sci-fi suspense in which all the parents have been replaced by aliens but only one child has realized it
- a hilarious spoof of a day time soap both on screen and behind the scenes (my favorite)
- a toker movie about the first 2 Latino astronauts in space (close second favorite)
and finally...
- Ours! The Story of My First Baby, a coming of age story about a group of girls in Massachusetts considered to be a coven by their principal.
The best news about Serial Killers is that it's a group of great people. I made another great friend in Beth who played one of the girls in the play to my school nurse. And, of course, I got to work with Shawn again, and go to Scoops! I'm telling you, Scoops has the, or at least some of the, best ice cream in LA. I had the Dark Chocolate Guinness after we teched, but the Brown Bread and the Mascarpone were also excellent, though my favorite is still the very first one I tried - Lavender Berry Honey. Angel breath frozen in a cup. Yum.
xox Jewel
Thursday, October 9, 2008
O, my, I can't believe it's been three weeks since I wrote! Things have been busy. First of all, Theo came to visit - you can see pix of him below. We had such a great weekend. He flew into LAX on Thursday night and we went straight to Bar Pinxo in Santa Monica - that's the tapas place I found with my friends Kathryn and Giampaolo when they visited. We had an amazing tapas with quail eggs - those little baby quails are so tasty! A much richer flavor than their larger counterparts, the chickens, as well as a creamier texture. On Friday, it was off to The Huntington Gardens for the day and then on to Shawn's house to pick figs! He has three treese where he's staying and he let us have the last big pick of the season. Then we headed to The Grove to walk around and show Theo the LA scene, and we met up again with Shawn for dinner at The Farmer's Market to celebrate his new job! He's now an assistant at a Literary Agency. Saturday we got an early start and headed to Griffith for a run/hike and then to the Silverlake Farmer's Market where we bought some great fish and were given a free jalapeno. Then, I spent the day at the Yoga Health Conference in LA while Theo had lunch with his sister Thaphne, who lives in LA, and explored the city on foot.
My favorite speaker was Dr.Timothy McCall who I first heard speak at NIH's Yoga Week a few months ago. He's an internist and a yoga teacher who studies yoga's effects on the body and teaches how to treat ailments such as osteoporosis, depression, carpal tunnel using yoga. There are some amazing studies out there, both about yoga and meditation. I remember one that shows a brain scan of someone with Ahlzeimer's before and after meditation and their brain had actually filled out a little bit - the empty spaces had gotten a little smaller after the mediation. So, Dr. McCall studies why that happens and how we can benefit from it. That talk, my time at the NIH conference, and completing my application for my 500 Hr Yoga Teacher Training (basically my Master's in teaching yoga) have helped me realize that I'd like to focus some of my study on yoga as a healing treatment. I think in Western medicine we often think we have to depend on doctors to tell us how to get better through prescriptions, but we may find we don't need as much of the prescription if we're self-treating with other forms of healing. verrry verrry interesting. I think we came home and took a nap and then made delicious Jalapeno Fish with Lime - see recipe below. Saturday night we may have done something, but I think we just made delicious dinner and hung out. It was a loooong day. Sunday we drove along Sunset Blvd aaaaaaall the way West as we headed to the beach, but first we stopped in Topanga Canyon for a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains. We were told by fellow hikers to beware - they'd seen two rattlesnakes, but we were S.O.L. on the snake sighting. We finally made it to the ocean and popped into the cold cold Pacific to cool off. Then it was back home for showers and out to dinner for fish tacos on Vermont ave. at "The Best Fish Tacos in Encinitas". They were delish, and a great dinner for only $4 per person. We sat outside on the patio and got the local's shortcut to LAX which is where we headed next. After a tearful good-bye, Theo was headed back to the East Coast and I was headed back to Semi-Home.
Though I'd been liking LA, I didn't truly feel like I was part of it until after the weekend Theo came. I felt afraid and lonely and not very strong, but to show Theo what I'd found so far made me realize that I had learned a lot in month and it was time to stop being scared and start conquering! Which is what started to happen the week after he left. I got my first audition which I booked - it was an unpaid Public Service Announcement for a production company affiliated with the Scientologists, but it was a job none the less, and it felt great to be on set. Then I got a slew of auditions off of Actor's Access AND a short play that my friend Shawn wrote for the Serial Killers competition at Sacred Fools Theatre. I met some great peeps on the show and made my very first girl friend! Beth has been out here for a year focusing on theatre and getting to know LA and she hails originally from Maryland. I guess the East Coasters stick together out here.
More on Serial Killers soon, this time I mean it.
xox Jewel
My favorite speaker was Dr.Timothy McCall who I first heard speak at NIH's Yoga Week a few months ago. He's an internist and a yoga teacher who studies yoga's effects on the body and teaches how to treat ailments such as osteoporosis, depression, carpal tunnel using yoga. There are some amazing studies out there, both about yoga and meditation. I remember one that shows a brain scan of someone with Ahlzeimer's before and after meditation and their brain had actually filled out a little bit - the empty spaces had gotten a little smaller after the mediation. So, Dr. McCall studies why that happens and how we can benefit from it. That talk, my time at the NIH conference, and completing my application for my 500 Hr Yoga Teacher Training (basically my Master's in teaching yoga) have helped me realize that I'd like to focus some of my study on yoga as a healing treatment. I think in Western medicine we often think we have to depend on doctors to tell us how to get better through prescriptions, but we may find we don't need as much of the prescription if we're self-treating with other forms of healing. verrry verrry interesting. I think we came home and took a nap and then made delicious Jalapeno Fish with Lime - see recipe below. Saturday night we may have done something, but I think we just made delicious dinner and hung out. It was a loooong day. Sunday we drove along Sunset Blvd aaaaaaall the way West as we headed to the beach, but first we stopped in Topanga Canyon for a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains. We were told by fellow hikers to beware - they'd seen two rattlesnakes, but we were S.O.L. on the snake sighting. We finally made it to the ocean and popped into the cold cold Pacific to cool off. Then it was back home for showers and out to dinner for fish tacos on Vermont ave. at "The Best Fish Tacos in Encinitas". They were delish, and a great dinner for only $4 per person. We sat outside on the patio and got the local's shortcut to LAX which is where we headed next. After a tearful good-bye, Theo was headed back to the East Coast and I was headed back to Semi-Home.
Though I'd been liking LA, I didn't truly feel like I was part of it until after the weekend Theo came. I felt afraid and lonely and not very strong, but to show Theo what I'd found so far made me realize that I had learned a lot in month and it was time to stop being scared and start conquering! Which is what started to happen the week after he left. I got my first audition which I booked - it was an unpaid Public Service Announcement for a production company affiliated with the Scientologists, but it was a job none the less, and it felt great to be on set. Then I got a slew of auditions off of Actor's Access AND a short play that my friend Shawn wrote for the Serial Killers competition at Sacred Fools Theatre. I met some great peeps on the show and made my very first girl friend! Beth has been out here for a year focusing on theatre and getting to know LA and she hails originally from Maryland. I guess the East Coasters stick together out here.
More on Serial Killers soon, this time I mean it.
xox Jewel
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