nothing says venice beach dinner party quite like a loungy jumpsuit

oh yeah, summer is also this

maux and rachel, a year ago today in idaho.

happy birthday rachel!

just another swashbuckling nurse pirate.

maux: "will, look at this nurse pirate. doesn't she look like me?
will: "is that a richard prince?"
maux: "i don't know who richard prince is. i just googled nurse pirate."
(why? because i was thinking about dream jobs.)
i have schooled myself. now i know who he is. this is richard prince:

Richard Prince is obviously a Cherry Ames fan too!

cherry ames is a book series like nancy drew, but about nurses. my mom collects them for me. my favorite is cherry ames, private duty nurse.

related note: richard prince seems to have inspired masked nurses on the runway at louis vuitton:

this is exactly what i wear to work, down to the sheer hose, white pumps, and hand cocked on hip attitude.

here is our dead bug. it's just printed on regular good quality printer paper, taped together on the backside, and tacked to the wall in the four corners. it would be better mounted on foam board or cardstock, but, ya know. will printed it with black and white ink on cream/yellowish paper so it would look old and sepia toned.

20th Century Props Auction

20th Century Props Auction, 11651 Hart St., North Hollywood; Thursday July 29 through Saturday August 1. Inventory inspection: 8 a.m.; bidding: 9:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. I am thinking about going here. The rattan couch from Golden Girls is one of the things you can bid on, for example. Stay Golden.

babies are funny

will's nephew looks very suspicious about his first shopping cart ride.

jackie's baby has a tv boat.

Summer is

open road, convertibles.

kayak rolling. not in a pool.

rope swings, mountain lakes.

waterskiing ladies. and one pieces.
favorite swimming spots. this is my seattle favorite.

swim platforms

party boats

running off the dock

driving down country roads

bunk rooms

mermaids. this mermaid is at the bottom of pearl lake on a sunken ship. you can dive down and see her. bait your mermaid traps wisely.

nighttime skinny dipping

and again, because once is never enough: rope swings, mountain lakes

moments from last night

1. text message from Will: "Balls are like the throw pillows of the penis." turns out, he was texting me a quote from Texts From Last Night, but that didn't make it any less funny. is it just me, or are TFLN people in cahoots with the Some E-Cards people? Example: "I'm outdoorsy in that i like getting drunk on patios."
2. dinner with Will & Rob at Nickel Diner, downtown LA.

Three words: bacon covered donut. Three more words: you want one.
3. Maux, driving home, sees some guy riding his bike through the middle of an intersection doing a wheelie and spinning his handlebars around while doing so. Speaks outloud to herself in the car: "Look at this freaking jackass in the middle of the street. Cool handlebar tricks you hipster." It was not a hipster. It was Rob.
4. Rob & Maux recline on couch drinking beers while Will is dispatched to put on some music. Moments later the apartment is filled with strange, hypnotic sounds.

Maux: "Will, what is this? It sounds like baby whales singing."
Will, scoffing: "well, I doubt these are the babies."

all of the above, including downloaded singing whales, PLUS flight of the conchords reruns ("we came, we saw, we conchorded"), AND proving to the boys that i do in fact have a collection of newspaper clippings about men who died immediately after bowling a 300 = just another tuesday.

keep calm and carry on, or...

"off the blog"

my mom, after telling me about how funny it was when my dad fell off the boat and into the lake this weekend: "i'm a little worried about being misrepresented on your blog. i think i'm going to start saying some things are Off The Blog, like off the record."
Maux: "well, the problem is that as soon as you said that it made me want to write a blog post about it."

for tori, wherever work may find her

Stay Classy San Diego / Happy Anniversary Elaine & Ryan

three years ago today i was the maid of honor in elaine's wedding to ryan. if honorable equals securing a monster truck limo for the bachelorette party, then yes i am honorable. if honorable equals striping from your bridesmaid dress down to your skivies and diving from a wedding altar platform into a lake and swim racing several groomsmen to the fountain in the middle of it, then yes i am honorable. if honorable equals wearing short shorts and a hot pink tshirt with "Single and Fabulous" emblazoned on it to the wedding after-party, then yes i am honorable. there is little to nothing that i will not do to honor elaine and ryan. and that includes crashing their romantic anniversary vacation, which i did yesterday. that's just the kind of maid of honor i am.

elaine: "i forgot to tell you. we're going to san diego."
maux: "well, then so am i."

Thus, I found myself on the 7:20am Amtrak from LA to San Diego yesterday. And, by the way, thank you Will Ferrell for completely ruining San Diego. Everytime i say the words outloud, the phrase "whale's vagina" echoes unspoken in my mind.

As usual, i cannot give train travel any higher marks. I was dropped off moments before departure, depuffing eye cream still moist on my face, latte and muffin in hand, and breezily boarded the train with a day bag of goodies, including liquids of a multitude of sizes in whatever size baggie i felt like putting them in. The porter actually tipped his hat to me as i boarded the train, with a gentlemanly "good morning pretty lady." Quite a step up from standing barefoot and spread eagled while being wanded by disgruntled airport personnel as they remove all metallic accesories from my person and repeatedly inquire if i have had hip replacement surgery: "Huh, must be a lot of underwire in your bra then."

I spent the 3 hour trip alternately reading, writing, and watching early morning surfers out the window. oh, did i forget to mention this glamorous train runs straight down the coast for most of the route? it does! All for the low cost of $34.00. airports and traffic on the 405, kiss my ass.

Elaine had mentioned it cost her and ryan an inexplicable $50.oo for their airport cab to the resort. i don't cotton well to that kind of nonsense. Determined to avoid the same fate, i asked the kindly san diego train station information desk grandma if there was a cheaper way to get to Coronado Island.

"Well, there's always the water taxi." Aha! Where there's gumption, there's a way. Two blocks, twenty minutes, and $3.25 later I sat on the ferry holding two iced latte's in my lap. I next did what anyone would do. I called Tori to make her jealous.

Maux, singsong voice: "Guess what I'mmmm doing! You're going to be jeeaaalllooouussss!..."

Tori, quietly: "I am jealous. And now you've depressed me."

There's just something about an adventure on a monday morning that really makes me appreciate my alternative work week. On the ferry i also realized the true size of the driving bridge to coronado, the one i had looked at on a map and thought, heck, why don't i just take my bike and ride from the train station? that would have taken a little more than gumption, as it is a highway.

But my adventure was not over yet. No, sir.

Two bus rides ($2.25) later I was deposited a half mile from the resort, on the opposite side of the coastal highway. no problem, these jack rogers sandals were (not) made for walking. the So-Cal chic outfit i was trying to impress elaine with had begun to look a little wilted, yet i was still clutching one of the sweating iced latte's, determined to present it to her as a token of my love.

the bus window tour through town had been highlighted with the delicious eye candy of navy officers in a wide variety of uniform. 'i'm sure Will won't mind,' i thought as i shamelessly stuck my thumb out while i walked the rest of way; half of me wanting to hitch hike the final distance so i could add to the train-boat-bus travel trilogy, and the other half of me living in a deranged fantasy land trilogy of "top gun," "an officer and a gentleman," and channing tatum. I was not picked up.

elaine and i spent the day laying on beach chairs complimenting each other on how good we look, critiquing the bathing suit and tattoo choices of everyone who dared to cross our path ("stay classy san diego"), and covering an astounding number of gossipy topics in rapid speed dialogue. note to people with fairy tattoos: we hate you. note to jon & kate plus 8: we hate you too. note to miley cyrus: why are you on the cover of elle magazine? are you fashionable? we also had time for some light reading on heavy topics. elaine: "the reader." maux: "six months in sudan." beautiful AND smart? lowbrow AND highbrow? we really have it all! i will out myself that i was caught reading "Cookie" magazine. a magazine for chic yuppie mommies, of which i am not. i admit, it is like an unpopular freshman in highschool reading the prom issue of seventeen. what can i say? i like the pictures? when we called tori back to let her know how much we were enjoying the mango smoothies, fish tacos, and salt water pool, she was not pleased ("what do you bitches want now?"). we felt bad for a minute before we remembered, oh yeah, you live in vail.

My final report is that the first three years of marriage have treated elaine and ryan very well. i have never seen them happier, funnier, more in love, or in better shape. after a dine and dash on pizza and chardonnay at the ferry dock watching the sun set, i reversed my journey and headed home, elaine and ryan waving to me as the ferry retreated. or maybe they were waving the check, since i bailed out of dinner without paying. traveling 7 hours roundtrip in one day to toast your best friend and her husband in san diego is not only the honorable thing to do, it's classy.

view from the train to san diego!

Union Station, seven am

woah this is cool

To make a picture mural like this one:

Go to www.homokaasu.org/rasterbator. Upload your image or use a file from the web. Choose enlarged size you want. FOR FREE they will send you the enlarged version in a PDF file, then you can print the pages and assemble the mural on your wall. I haven't used their site yet, because William knows how to do this on his own computer (we have a giant pixelated dead bug. in the bedroom. no, not creepy at all). But not everyone gets to have a William! It looks so cool!

Jukari Fit to Fly

Is Reebok going to do for aerial circus arts what they did for Step Aerobics? I hope so.

Jukari Fit to Fly is a collaboration between Cirque de Soleil and Reebok. They've created a workout ("gym experience") that will be franchised and incorpated into gyms, like Spinning. Anyone taking a cursory look through my blog will realize that I need to become a Jukari teacher immediately. I have been spazzing for the last 10 minutes since I found out about this because there is a new Jukari studio in LA (only other location, New York. Sorry all you people in the middle). Of course, I am moving away from the west coast and down to the dirty coast of louisiana in, literally, days! Disaster! Add this to the list of reasons to move back. I am going to try and take some classes this week: 23 South La Brea. 323-449-9885.


I am so jealous of these people right now.

oh look, it's kim kardashian my booty buddy doing Jukari. thanks google images. I'm secretly hating right now that all these celebs in LA are going to make aerial circus arts trendy (holly madison, messy barton, audrina partidge, molly sims, i am glaring AT YOU) when it's my little freaky hobby. sidenote: only recently did i realize that kim kardashian was famous for something other than her great ass and her dad being OJ simpson's lawyer. i had No Idea about the sex tape.

the only people for me are the mad ones

anatomy of a jack kerouac binge (on books, not speed and asphalt)

First, this came out in winter 2008. The long lost collaboration between Kerouac and Burroughs.


After reading it, I was inspired to read:

Interesting to note: in the original scroll, the aliases (aliai?) are not in place. Ginsberg is Ginsberg. And Then i wanted to see how it compared, so I re-read the original. And Then listened to it on cd while driving/moving from seattle to los angeles.

And Then (this is getting nerdy), I read Carolyn Cassady's book (Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarity's wife), aptly titled Off The Road, about what was going on at home with the kids while the men were out zooming across the country with other women.

p.s. carolyn cassady is a fellow university of denver alum.

so is sinbad. so is condeleeza rice. hmmm.

Sadly, she is not featured so glamorously in a group sex scene with the Hell's Angels and Merry Pranksters in Hunter S. Thompson's "Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga."