Six Months + Six Dresses #1

Miss Kyla Roma, adorable blogger that she is, started above project in order to kick her ass into dressing in a more feminine fashion. I am nothing if not a clothes whore, and my dress collection takes up half my closet and my purchases show no signs of slowing down, so of course it was natural that I join in and post my own photos each month of a new dress. Seriously, some might say I have a problem, but I'm guessing they're just jealous of my ever-expanding wardrobe:

It's grown since I took this photo a few months ago, of course.

Although I'm not the kind of girl to turn down an adorable frock from Target, and I delight in the cute little dresses I've found at Forever 21 and the like, my heart belongs to the one-of-a-kind vintage pieces I've gathered over the past decade from estate sales and thrift stores.

There is something so wonderful about coming upon a breathtaking pattern or an interesting cut amongst racks and racks of otherwise crap. When I slip a dress on at an estate sale, and look at myself in the closet mirror that the owner of said dress once admired her own reflection in, and it fits perfectly! and look at that cute belt that comes with it! and I have the perfect shoes/purse/brooch to go with it!...well I just get giddy.

My first dress for this series is just such a dress. Bought at an estate sale in the Valley, along with other such treasures as:

• this awesome perfume case with glass tubes full of scents that you break in order to use (WTF??!):

• this darling little jewelry box that plays a lovely song when you wind it in the back with a key, and also the gloves above with cute little pearl buttons.

The dress is pretty simple, really. Just a basic cotton dress with a matching belt, but there's something I love about a simple daytime dress. Sure, the frilly cocktail gown has its perks, but when you have a comfy dress in your closet, you're less likely to thrown on the same old jeans again, and what makes you feel prettier - a cute little cotton dress, or a pair of jeans and some ratty shirt?

So on Saturday, with plans to do some shopping with Alie for our upcoming drink video shoot, I dressed myself up in this - my newest favorite dress, and asked Alie if she wouldn't mind snapping a few photos of me while we shopped at Galco (omg if you haven't been, you MUST go). Well, that's not entirely true. She was four hours late (4!!!), you see, so I sorta demanded that she take said photos and she really had no choice but to comply. Georgia Is Your Friend - forcing people to indulge her in her self obsession since 1980!

Anyway, here's the dress. I can't wait till next month! Let me know if you decide to post your own dress photos!

Smitten by the isles upon isles of randomly awesome beers.

Happiness Is

There's nothing that quite compares to the excitement of finding, out of the blue, amid the stacks and stacks of unreadable , over-dramatic, or just plain boring drivel, a book that makes you giddy with excitement just to hold it in your possession. I've always been a reader, and even more so, a lover of fiction. It's in my bones. It's part of the person I am, and I'm sure I wouldn't be who I am today without the passion for reading that runs through my veins.

The little girl who tucked herself under her covers with a flashlight to read late at night, or hid herself away in the linen closet under the staircase with the naked bulb burning above her head so she could lose herself in a book, either way with a trusty grey and white alley cat named Whiskers close by -- well that has given way to a young woman who still only needs merely a quite place, a little lighting, and preferably a dozing cat nearby to make her happy, so long as there's a good book clutched in her hands.

It's become a bit of a game to me, during the past two years that I've worked in an office across from a grand and voluminous public library. It doesn't work so well in the upstairs fiction department, as the never ending stacks it boasts make it difficult to choose wisely, but downstairs, in the "new fiction" department, it only takes patience and the better part of a lunch hour to find the perfect new book to read.

Starting with the title, or really the font of the title, then the title itself, I'll pluck a book from the shelf, and judge it based solely on the cover art. Yes, I literally judge a book by its cover, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. If there's a drawing of a ethereal girl with a tribal tattoo up her naked back, or something along those lines*, chances are I'm not going to like the book. Back it goes on the shelf, and I move on to another one. Some days I get lucky, other days I'm *this close* to asking a fellow patron, who looks just as lost to me, if he/she would just pick a book out that s/he likes for me, and I'll do the same for her/him.

*I couldn't think of any other illustration that would turn me off, other than it having a picture of someone standing on an escalator instead of walking up it (hate) or kicking a puppy or something like that.

Anyway, once it passes the cover test, I read the inside cover, and can usually tell within the first few sentences whether or not it'll come home with me. I've found many greatly loved books this way, and have only been wrong about my choice two or three times in the couple years I've been doing this. I find it introduces me to a lot of new fiction that I would have otherwise missed.

I found just such a prized work of fiction this way only yesterday. When I got home from work, the sun just beginning to set and the sound of the Hollywood freeway filtering through my apartment, I cracked the book open and lounged on my couch. Within the first few pages I was hooked, and I ventured onto the rooftop of my building to sip a glass of whiskey while I read and watched the city bask in the last few minutes of daylight.



I happily read, the words flirting through my brain in the same warm way the whiskey did in my stomach, while the cool evening air danced through my hair.

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'" - Kurt Vonnegut

Exit Through The Drive Thru

I was lucky enough to attended the "super secret" premier of (graffiti artist) Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop on Monday night as Alie's "plus one", and boy, what a night it was. We arrived early (Alie, as press, was told to do so), and made a b-line past the graffitied red carpet into the foyer of the beautiful Palace Theatre, where a tuxidoed, ski-masked piano player perched over his graffitied piano playing old vaudevillian tunes.

Creepy, right? But the guy turned out to be nice.

We spent the first half hour or so walking, mouths agape, around the theatre, which literally blew our minds with its gilded charm and beauty. Even the bathroom stalls were something to behold, and we of course took photos of ourselves in the mirrors of the vanity area.

Miss Ward

moi

By the time we tucked our cameras back into our purses and made our way back to the foyer, a crowd was gathering. We carried our complimentary vodka sodas (w/ a splash of cranberry) and a bag of popcorn and comfied ourselves on the staircase to people-watch. Adrian Brody and Justin Timberlake? Both WAY hotter in person. Was that Jessie Spano?! D list celebrity or not, there was some great people watching here, and I couldn't help but wonder if one of the ski-masked ushers was the illusive street artist hero, Banksy, himself.

The movie was great, although not at all the light and fluffy piece the trailer alludes to. I laughed a lot, the entire audience did, but it was also a really interesting documentary about how the whole street graffiti thing came about, and what it's become today. I would defiantly recommend you see it, if/when it comes to your city.

After the movie, starving from having only eaten a scant bag of popcorn for dinner, Alie drove me through a drive thru I refuse to name due to embarrassment (okay fine, McDonald's) and dropped me off at the boyfriends house. Was it wrong to scarf unhealthy food from a corporate giant after seeing a movie about a man whose career sort of apposes such places? Probably, but that's a post for another time. Back to the boyfriend...

What's that? I haven't yet told you about my new boyfriend? Yeah well, I guess I kinda see blogging about your new boyfriend and getting your his name tattooed on your person in the same category - it's the quickest way to break-up city. It's been two months as of this evening, though, and I don't believe my blog has magical powers, nor do I plan on getting his name tattooed anywhere on my body, so I think I'm in the clear. It's going great, my friends. I'm stupidly, giddily, slap-happily mad about him.

Doin' the Charleston in the ballroom at the theatre.

Tonight is yet another press-pass-plus-one party that I'm attending with Alie, although this one is at Chateau Marmont which I've never been to and am DYING to check out. There will be wine, there will be hopefully something more substantial than popcorn, there will be boyfriend snuggling after. I'll be sure to tell you all about it.

My life has been extra lovely lately. There has been some exciting goings-on since the whole New York Times business that I can't yet talk about, but promise to spill once I can. In the meantime, this whole "not single anymore" turn of events has surprised even myself.