This year, around the beginning of October I started really giving my costume some thought. I had 2 major guidelines: comfortable and cheap. I have a bunch of odd flea market articles of clothing that I figured I could put together into something, but who would I be? I thought, “If anyone asks who I am, I’ll just say I’m a woman who dresses like this” (“this” being a polyester halter dress with pearls and fur in the fabric pattern plus an enormous faux fur jacket). Sounded ok, but I wanted a backup plan. So the day before Halloween (and the night of my first of two parties to attend) I headed to a strip of thrift shops in Burbank, including “That’s a Wrap,” which features used clothes from TV and movie sets. There I purchased a $3 windbreaker that said “Event Staff” on the back and figured I could roll with that.

And then at home that evening getting ready for the party, I became unsatisfied with my options. The flea-market clothes were funny but uncomfortable and the Event Staff person was androgynous and boring. So I looked in the closet in the back bedroom where I keep fancy dresses and things I never wear, and what did I see but a comfortable, warm, soft bathrobe. I put that on, happily noticing the ample pockets that would allow me to leave the purse at home, added some slippers, messed up my hair, and carried a large coffee mug. And there I was, this year’s costume, “Your Neighbor In The Morning.”

I wore this costume to parties on Friday and Saturday night, greeting people by saying “Morning, neighbor” and occasionally talking about the neighborhood watch program and how some young punk was stealing my newspaper every morning. My friends, dressed in various combinations of corsets, wigs, face paint, furry paws, and high heels looked at me enviously and, I have to think, were taking a mental picture and saying to themselves, “Next year. Next year.”

Someday in the future, I will be the old woman who lives in your apartment building and listens to her TV very, very loudly.

Sincerely,
Waiting For Revenge

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but LA’s local news is laughably terrible. Cheap looking studios, horrible banter even by local-news-banter-standards, and absolutely no focus on national or international events. And how better to demonstrate this point than by recounting the following news-watching incident from earlier this year.

Top Story: A bear is sighted in the foothills of LA. We see interviews with residents of the bear area, each one with their name appearing on the screen below them and the caption “Saw Bear.” Each one told us amazing tales like, “Well, the bear came into our yard, took a drink from our pool, and then wandered away.” After 4 or 5 such harrowing eyewitness accounts, we are informed that “Bear sightings are a common occurrence in this area.”

Second Story: A house fire in some far outstretch of the city. No one was injured.

Third Story: General Motors declares bankruptcy.

Ta-da!

For my birthday, my wonderful friend Heidi came to visit from Albany, and we took an overnight trip to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is part swanky resort town, part college town, and party crazy-person town. I’m working on a pie chart with the exact percentages, but suffice it to say the crazy-person proportion is high. We took a wine tasting tour to Santa Ynez (about an hour away), and visited four difference wineries. I’ve never been to a winery or done a wine-tasting before, and I have to say it’s a lot of fun. For around $10 you get to sample 6 or 7 wines (each pour is about 3-4 sips), and you get a wine glass to take home with you. You can also buy wine at a good discount, and a lot of wineries also have other items for sale, which is dangerous when combined with, shall we say, “aggressive” wine sampling. Fortunately though, other than a large bag of malted milk balls, I didn’t come home with much that I regretted purchasing. But at the time, we really needed those malted milk balls.

But now I’m back to reality and working on several projects. One is a pilot presentation, that is, a live stage version of a TV pilot, that a couple of friends from Second City wrote. I’m performing in that tomorrow night (Weds 10/14) at the Comedy Central stage in LA. The show is like Ghosthunters meets Reno 911. It’s a great cast and has been fun to work on. In addition to that, my improv group Catnip has written a musical, and we’ve been furiously rehearsing for our opening in a couple of weeks. It’s been a long time since I’ve rehearsed shows and memorized lines, but it’s been good to get back into it.

So if you’re in LA, come check out a show, won’t you?

That’s right. On September 26th, my boyfriend Joe and my friends Matt & Rebecca joined me to see, in person, one of my favorite guilty-pleasure shows of all time. Now, when I mention America’s Funniest Videos, many people respond with “Is Bob Saget still hosting that” or “Is that still on the air?”. No. And yes. America’s Funniest Videos (or AFV to those of us in the know) is alive and well and hosted by the man I call America’s Host, Tom Bergeron (aka “The Berge”).

The first thing to know about going to see an AFV taping is that you may very well end up on camera, so you have to dress nicely. I’m proud to say that my party was among the best dressed there, with the ladies in dresses and the gentlemen in ties. Due to our fashion sense, we were asked to sit in the “cafe tables” area of the audience, but to do so we would have to be split up. Not wanting to divide our happy party of four, we declined and were seated in the “overflow” section, meaning we wouldn’t be on camera. But just as we were settling in to our off-camera seats, Joe and I were summoned back to the cafe section. Matt and Rebecca sent us off with their blessing. So watch the November 1st episode of AFV and you will very likely see my enthusiastically-laughing and applauding self.

You can vote once every 24 hours if you’re so inclined.

In other news, I have enrolled in the most LA activity I can imagine. A week from Sunday, my yoga studio is offering a yoga & surfing excursion. We’re heading to Malibu, doing an hour of yoga on the beach, and then we get a 2-hour surfing lesson. Oh dear.

I am lucky enough on the holiday to be heading to a party at a friend’s place…or rather, Party Part II, The Partying. She had people over yesterday and had so much food left over that she has called everyone back today to finish what they started.

As you are likely well aware, LA has been on fire for the past couple of weeks. It’s about 20 miles away from me, so while I’ve had a few days of living in a smoke plume, I’m far from any real danger. Last week I was listening to NPR (I mean, I’m always either reading literature or listening to NPR) and a guy called in bemoaning the fact that LA never gets any hurricanes or their residual effects. Yes, what a shame. I mean, I know we could use more rain, but let’s be grateful that there’s one natural disaster we don’t experience, please? Aren’t the fires, earthquakes, and mudslides enough?

Speaking of mudslides, it’s time to go mix some cocktails for the party. Enjoy your day!

Those things make me sound busy, but rest assured I’m not. I watch a lot of HGTV these days, and I drink a lot of Crystal Light pink lemonade. But I figure I can keep up this pace until after Labor Day, right?

Just got back from a weekend in California’s capital, which apparently is Sacramento. It’s the Albany of California. Or is it that Olympia is the Sacramento of Washington? Frankfort is the Jefferson City of Kentucky? I guess what I’m saying is that capitals are rarely the biggest or most exciting city in a state. I suppose that’s for the best – let’s spread out the interesting things among the cities. And by interesting I mean traffic-producing.

Just got new headshots done last week. Stay tuned…

So what have I been doing instead? Almost nothing! It’s slow times out here in LA. But these slow times have allowed me to take stock of what’s important (sort of), and since all the magazines I have plenty of time to read do this, I present to you Molly’s Fun Must Have Awesome List For Summer 2009 Oh Yeah!!!

1. Trader Joe’s sparkling mineral water in mixed berry. I have cut my soda consumption by 75% thanks to this. And the big liter bottles are only 89 cents.

2. Coppertone sport sunblock. Neutrogena can suck it! While I like Neutrogena’s “Sport Face” for the name (I assume it gives me Sport Face), it burns my eyes like paprika. Coppertone doesn’t and it smells all sunblocky like a good sunblock should.

3. Nurse Jackie on Showtime. The print ads for this turned me off, but I happened to catch part of an episode and then went back to watch from the beginning. Edie Falco is great and her character is complex and un-cliched: not all good and not all bad.

4. Pinkberry frozen yogurt coconut/passionfruit swirl. I’m a little obsessed with tropical fruit right now for some reason. This is kinda pina-colada-y and great, aside from today when I went to get some and they couldn’t serve the coconut because it was “too frozen.”

5. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. Just finished reading this, in hardcover no less which is a rare feat for me, and I highly recommend it. It’s a murder mystery so it has that “summer read” quality, but it also takes place in communist Russia so you feel like you’re getting a little history lesson too. It’s out in paperback now.

I think 5 is enough for now. I could probably throw in a couple more but then we’d end with a weird number. If I push it to 10 I’d have to throw in some things like “those paper towels where you can tear off a half-piece,” and let’s face it, that’s not Fun, Must Have, or Awesome.