5.10.12

Thing of the Week: The Holiday Where Ghosts Make Candy, Laura Jane's New Couch (Which Is A Metaphor), A Tie from Jen

LIZ'S THING OF THE WEEK: The Holiday Where Ghosts Make Candy

I'm really Halloween-candy-obsessed this year, probably the most Halloween-candy-obsessed I've been since six Halloweens ago, aka the Halloween I got assigned a story about rich-people candy for a big-deal magazine. The magazine paid me to go over all town and try all different candy and talk to people about candy and then write about the candy -- they even paid for the candy itself. What a dream that was. The best was a place on La Cienega that doesn't exist anymore; they had giant candy corn made of marzipan, and blood orange/lime pate de fruit gummy worms, and this thing called Bag Of Dirt which was just crushed chocolate cookies but soooo yum. I haven't found anything that exciting this year and yesterday I went to Dylan's Candy Bar in search of creme brulee candy corn, but apparently we don't get to have that here in Los Angeles. And no Candy Corn Oreos either! And I also still haven't found any goddamn pumpkin iced coffee, so after Dylan's I went to Farmers Market and bought pumpkin iced cream and iced coffee, and dunked a spoonful of ice cream into the iced coffee and swirled it all together, and it was so cinnamon-y and pumpkin-y and creamy and perfect. I make do with what I got.


LJ'S THING OF THE WEEK: My New Couch & Nook



(At left: Out with the old! At right: In with the new!)

The week I quit smoking, I couldn't sleep. I lay up all night every night switching my pillow from the head to the foot of my bed downloading free relaxation-hypnosis apps off my phone and crying while trying to count backward from a million and boiling water to pour down my ear canals because if you google-search "how to get rid of tinnitus" that's the ONLY practical suggestion it gives you.

It was dark but not really that dark. People were like "What's up?" and I was like "I'm having this really chill existential crisis right now," and then time passed and I could sleep again. Point is, on one of those nuts gross insomnia nights, insomnia that lasted so long I'd have to watch the sun come up which is such a depressing thing to have to do if you weren't just doing drugs or having sex for tons of hours, I had this totally NOT chill emotional breakdown about my COUCH, the monstrosity with so much foam and stuffing barfing itself out of itself seen above. I hate that couch and, on that one horrific night, it became a metaphor for everything I hated about my life. It made me so sad about myself, my not owning anything high-quality or nice, my being too poor to afford nice things. (In addition to my couch sucking, my bed sucks.)

Two days later, my dad impulse-bought himself a new leather easy chair and asked me if I wanted to take his old couch because karma is real and I'm a good person and I was all "YESSSSS PLEASE DAD" and then helped my dad move in his new chair to amp up my karma even more. I looked extremely forward to New Couch Day for the entire month of September and talked about it SO MUCH- "I just want to have, like, nice things. You know? Like, I really want to not have Venetian blinds anymore. How much do curtains cost? I think I'm going to buy myself curtains for Christmas," etc. The day before Couch Day, I bought myself 2 Kobo scented candles because I was so stoked for my room to start being $$$HEAVEN$$$, and smelling good is part of heavenliness ($$$). On Couch Day I drank an Iced Venti Soy Latte and ate an avocado out of its shell. I tipped my couch onto its side and sat inside the bare-bones frame of it like it was a prison cell made of a ribcage. Later on I took the streetcar to my Dad's and had a cool convo with my dad's doorman- he told me I'm a superstar!- and then my Dad and I carried various couches up and down various flights of stairs for several hours until finally the story ended and I became the proud owner of my new beautiful little nook (seen above)! It's a metaphor for everything I love about my life. I saved the old pillows from barf couch because NEVER FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM.

The next morning, I woke up and drank my coffee while watching the second episode of season 3 of Downton Abbey on my CHIC new couch with no soul being sucked out of me or FOAM rubbing against my leg, everything about it was perfect except for how INSANELY FUCKING BORING Season 3 of Downton Abbey is so far. I digress but like basically the ONLY reason I've stuck it out for the past 2.2 seasons is because of my DESPERATE OBSESSION with hoping for a storyline about Thomas' gayness!!!!! Even in the preview for Season 3 there was a Thomas' gayness teaser but NOPE it's just like "Oh, they had a picnic-themed party at Downton and a character named Alfred no one cares about burned a hole in Cousin Matthew's dinner jacket and then some other people expressed opinions about dinner jackets!" Like honestly Julian Fellowes, GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT: at least five minutes per EVERY SINGLE EPISODE OF DOWNTON ABBEY FOREVER to be about Thomas' gayness BEGINNING NOW. But seriously though oh my God, remember how sad it was when Thomas bought all that sugar and kept it in a shed and then realized it wasn't really sugar and destroyed all the sugar and it was all because he's so fucked up about how he wants to have sex with men but it's 1920??? That was so sad. 




 JEN'S THING OF THE WEEK: Too Many Things, It's A Tie



#1. I had heard about this dance party in the dark at a church in Greenpoint a while ago. I was kind of like, “oh, cool..maybe?” and immediately forgot about it. My friend Matt went and told me about it and then on Tuesday I went. Matt had told me it was truly weird and really fun. It is! I love it! It’s called No Lights No Lycra and I want to go all the time. It’s in a huge rec room type deal in a church and it is dark. The lights are off and there are green star lazers everywhere and everyone is there to just dance and have fun and no one cares what you do and no one will touch you or perv out on you. They played Get Into the Groove! And Mariah! And Green Day! And Robyn! At some point I was dancing/spinning around to this song that was hard to dance to in a challenging good way and I felt like I was in the dance scene in the Virgin Suicides. Happy Haps.

#2. My 8 course meal at Kajitsu that was so beautiful and delicious.  Kajitsu serves the Buddhist shojin cuisine. It’s based on the principle of not taking life and reading those words on the website made me cry once. I discovered that I really love ginkgo nuts and the hand etched sake glasses were devastatingly beautiful.

#3.  SARA was in town from San Francisco for a day. Sara is the best. I took a break at work and we had a mid day hang/Upper East Side thrift store session. She was a surprise guest  at Goldblum Night and we ate an incredible amount of snacks for dinner.

#4. Tonight I’m hanging out with Rachel & Mimi & I like them a lot so I’m really excited about that.

#5. Tomorrow I’m going to Salem to have a Witch Weekend which is I guess technically next week’s thing maybe but I’m feeling good about it right now so whatever.

2 comments:

  1. What kind of Kobo candles did you get, LJ?

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    Replies
    1. one is called SMOKED OAK & smells like a hot man, the other is vetiver & shaved vanilla and smells like... a hot woman, i guess?

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