ihateselfpromotion.com

But what does that mean, really, when you live in Los Angeles whose seasons are Flood, Drought, Fire, and Earthquake?

It means a couple things:

#1. Instead of being hot during the day and cool at night, it’s hot during the day and warm at night.

This will soon be followed by hot during the day and hot still at night.

#1#2. Everyone is dumping everyone.

Spring Fever, the second stage of this process, will hit next. But before everyone starts throwing the Eff to everyone, in public too no less, the veil of winter depression and darkness and Seasonal Affective Disorder lifts and is replaced with Toxic Self Interest*. Suddenly people think they should trade up. “You deserve better” and “But I still want to be friends” and “We’ve grown apart” are very much in bloom right now.
Rest assured tho, that before the summer dust settles, everyone will be right back in relationship jail (new and hopefully improved!). Because once you’ve seen someone at their personal sweatiest, Sunday brunch’d three times with your shared puppy (who is ugly and therefore cute, lookin’ at you chihuahua, pug and boston terrier) and agreed to see that shitty summer blockbuster, now with extra CGI, just so you can bask in someone else’s cold air, your shared cell has been slammed shut…until next spring.

*term coined by Quinn Heraty, genius.

So you (who exactly, I’m not sure) may have noticed that this site has undergone a make-under. SB has decided to take her funny elsewhere, and with it went half the words, all the pretty and most of the heart of this site. But not to worry…you…I hate self promotion enough for ten women! nay, all women! no, all non-actors! So while I half-try to learn HTML or whatever nerd language is required to wrangle my english onto “your” contuter screens please add The Sunapee Manatee to your blog roll or whatever you call it and leave her nice comments n things.

It actually broke down to like, .003 cents per word, but still! I got to go to the Battlestar Galactica offices and have lunch with one of my heroes and interview the president of the Writer’s Guild! My first article as the new TV Writer Writer for www.mediabistro.com hit computer screens today.
Breaking in to TV Writing

TV writers dish on how they got their start writing for the small screen

By Andrea Wachner - October 22, 2007

Most people who’ve ever watched television think they can write for it. Most
people who’ve never watched television think they can write for it. The guy
who just sold me my television thinks he has a screenplay. From their
overstuffed couches, viewers assume that being able to predict the next line
of dialogue before it’s spoken entitles them to be in the My Name is Earl
writers’ room, when what it actually signals is just how hard the task
really is — so hard that experienced writers often fail. “A lot of people
think TV is a thing you do from your home in your spare time,” says Jane
Espenson, a writer on Battlestar Galactica. “It seems like a career you can
get into if you’ve already got a job. But it’s not.”

How can you get in? According to my research, there are four ways, no ways,
and also an infinite number of ever-changing ways to get work writing for
television, and being a good writer is only half the battle. Maybe less.
Getting a job writing for television can be harder than dating, and just as
serendipitous. So whenever I meet someone who’s been successful in
TV-writing, I get them to tell me how. While there is no equivalent to JDate
for hungry writers, stories I’ve heard of how people got their start run the
gamut from infuriating to inspiring.

you can read the rest of the article here.

California is OCD over Chicken.** The Food Pyramid, which you might remember as the Four Food Groups, of Los Angeles are: Chicken, Tacos, Thai food, and Sushi.

My exciting new blog-hobby is to keep a list of the names of all the chicken-centric food serving establishments I see, most of which are in the Literalz! style of naming, and many of which include the word California. How fun!

Yes, I am vegan.

1. Koo-Koo-Roo

2. El Pollo Loco

3. KFC

4. Star Chicken

5. California Chicken Cafe

6. Zankou Chicken

7. The Chicken Lady

8. Musical Chicken Grill

9. Popeye’s

10. Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles

11. Honey’s Kettle Fried Chicken

12. Roro’s Chicken

13. Kyochon Chicken

14. Birds Rotisserie Chicken Cafe & Bar

15. Pioneer Chicken

16. Pollo A La Brasa Western

17. El Pollo Inka

18. Bill’s Chicken

19. Alwazir Chicken

20. Dinah’s Fried Chicken

21. Louisiana Fried Chicken

22. Amber’s Chicken & Donuts

23. Cal Roasters

24. Charo Chicken

25. Chick’n Chow

26. Chicken Dijon

27. Chicken On Fire (PERSONAL FAVE!)

28. Flame Chicken

29. Juan Pollo

30. Los Pollos

31. Pollo Campero

32. Pollo Grill

33. Pollo Land

34. Reddi Chick

35. Chick Fil A

36. Rotisserie Chicken

37. Rotisserie Chicken Cafe

38. California Rotisserie Chicken Cafe.

39. Spin Rotisserie Chicken

40. Big Chicken

Ok I made up #38, but I’m sure it exists somewhere and I just haven’t seen it yet.

more TK, I’m guessing.

**There’s your one (1!) good thing about LA, SB. You loooove bird boob.

crack open another browser and ask it nicely to take you to supervegan.com
m’words are up there for the first time and they feel awkward and uncomfortable without lots of eyes on them. They are the exact opposite of me.

Here, so easy for you:
http://supervegan.com/blog/entry.php?id=725

Read on as I take on Dunkin Donuts, Dodger Stadium, and fine vegan footwear.

In addition, have invented a new word– disgulicious. It is an adjective to describe a food item’s being simultaneously disgusting and delicious. Or disgustingly delicious. It’s possible, I swear! Here is an example.

(please note: this post is 5 posts consolidated by sb into one supervegan superpost. no animals were harmed in the condensing of these posts.)

If i had a digital camera I would pepper in some photo-documentation but my shitty cell phone from 2003 and it’s -3 megapixels don’t quite cut it so you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.

Women (and men also) in Los Angeles have too broad a definition of ‘pants’ and wear pants that are not pants.

things that are totally acceptable to wear, outside, in broad daylight include:

STRETCH PANTS/aka leggings aka spandex pants
now this is the biggest offender. Whether covered up or not, and surpisingly they are often NOT, this is just not okay. Many times they are so worn that they’re threadbare and see-through, ripped, and worn not in association with excercise but as general attire in combination with UGG boots. Please god make it stop it burns.

PAJAMA PANTS
granted right now I am in the squalor squat which is conveniently located near UCLA, but I don’t care if you are 12, 25, or 62 it’s not acceptable to wear bed clothes outside, Bruin or not. If you can haul your ass out to Ralph’s (apostrophe please!) for Kettle Chips and Kettle One, than you can haul your ass into some jeans, some dockers, or I’d even prefer some cargo pants.

SWEAT PANTS
sweat pants are just bad. bad bad bad.
ladies, i just don’t understand the whole velour “Juicy” thing either. I’m not sure about this, but I think they might be even worse than regular old fleece. They don’t do right by you down there or by your underwear. do 3-way mirrors not exist in Los Angeles or do women just not care?
speaking of fleece– dudes, please put it away. It doesn’t matter the proximity your D shares to excitement, if you’re wearing sweatpants everyone will know as much about your ween as the last lady to hit the naked wall cause of you. Thinking augmenting your underwear selection is an easy fix is a common misconception, the only fix is to not wear sweatpants and it is oh so easy.

SHORTS
having grown up on the west coast I never understood how in NYC in August’s 103 degree 100% humidity everyone was still walking around in poly poly blend trousers (i’m talking to you Levi’s action slacks). It is hard to look good in warm weather clothes. There aren’t a lot of fashionable options, so in the fashion capital people chose to suffer the sweat. But, there is also leg shame on the East Coast. There is no leg shame here. It doesn’t matter if it’s untolerably hot or not, people here wear short pants. all the time. and it’s not because they are 19th century school boys. I’ll just say this– when Bart hits puberty even he will don trousers like Homer.

PHOTODOCUMENTATION UPDATE: today (keep in mind it was an unseasonable fifty degrees), while working at a nearby cafe (i am a giant cliche) on my new contuter that just happens to have spy like capabilities i was lucky enough to be sitting next to this guy:

MISC.
Ankle length, capri, dress short nightmares.
Unfortunately, these trends are not limited to los angeles, which is why they are going in the miscellaneous section but if you have full length legs then you deserve full length pants. do not accept less.

next up: supermarkets!

there are so many uses:
-to wear whilst driving so that I can easily give the fucktards out here that slam on their breaks when there is a curve in the road or a droplet of rain or a merge sign, feedback
-to cut the awkwardness of all my non-dates when i want them to be over.
-any time i decide it’s a good idea to go to another Sofia Coppola movie.
i’m sure you, dear reader (read: SB) have a few thousand brilliant ideas of your own. Please feel to share them in the comments section (SB, do we have a comments section on up in here?).

and also i own a car.

i’m sure sb will agree that seeing this movie was the only good thing about today. i even hated where we saw the movie (oh my god i was laughing so hard i worked up a sweat) which was at a place called The Grove. The Grove is a field where shopping grows. It is also the out-of-doors ShoppingLand they’ve built Farmer’s Market adjacent (farmer’s market is not an actual farmer’s market in the sense that farmers sell their crops but in the sense that you can buy a bowl of gumbo, raw meat, or a croissandwich). There is a commuter trolley that goes 200 feet (for people who live at The Grove and work at the Farmer’s Market or vice versa). There is a fountain with dancing water and all the stores look like Disneyland’s Main Street USA meets Universal Studio’s (it’s the movies!) lot tour meets Mall of the Americas (farmer’s market [circa 1897] is now its glorified food court). To get to the grove (at 2:30 in the afternoon), 13 miles away, it took three freeways, an hour, and three phone calls from sb wondering what happened.

a possible reason for our crabithaness is that yesterday we had to get back into sb’s car and drive ALL DAY to Visalia, California to pick up my car. Visalia is a horrid place with four taco bell’s located halfway between purgatory and hell. We wanted to go on another road trip about as bad as a woman in labor wants to bone, but now i am the proud owner of THE EXACT SAME CAR AS SB and yes, that is gay but no, we are not.

Borat is a very funny movie.

the whole way without fighting.
but, WE MADE IT!
first things first, my face, vegan or otherwise, may smell like a lot of things: coffee breath, check. onion/garlic, check. neutrogena face cream, check. but swampfoot is not one of them. if sb had said it was my vegan pitts i wouldn’t argue, cause man, they do smell and that is with deodorant! but not m’face.
that said, we have smelled some awful awful things on this trip: the diapers in NC, the ghost diarrhea diaper in NM, the sulfer of Bad Smell Factories by the side of many a highway, the freezer in the apartment in CA, but sb’s feet in a prius was pretty fucking bad. so bad in fact, that it led me to create a sister group to the NWO (New World Order) called the NWS or New World Smell. (Our goal is to put an end to bad smells everywhere. If you have any ideas on how to make this a reality, please drop me a line. also, if you have any evidence that rankness is part of the greater conspiracy shut the fuck up) At first, she openly admitted that it was her feet that the stink waves were emanating from, but now she denies it. But, she washed her feet, put the sherpa shoes in a sealed sack, and stopped wearing the same pair of socks on day 7 and MYSTERIOUSLY the smell has dissipated. hm.
also also, of note is the interesting fact that after 17,000 hours of driving yesterday, when we finally got to the Park Plaza Phoenix North, hadn’t eaten, were changing the lyrics of said mj tunes to reflect how sore our asses were, and had terrible terrible foot ODOUR that needed immediate attention, and were accosted by a chubbs punk teen who wanted us to write him a check so that he could win that day’s National Career Award competition miss sarah bennett was flirtron 3000 the likes of which i have never seen. I literally had to pull her away. she’ll tell you she was delirious and had no idea what she was doing and can’t remember, so remember that when you’re trying to decide who’s right about the stank.
secondly, Jacqueline was the best/worst drag queen northern phoenix suburbs have ever known. there is no doubt about it– her privats are safely tucked, but they are indeed on the outside.
third, did i mention the trip is over and we’re here and holy fuck what have i done cause i actually LIVE HERE NOW?? I kinda had grown accustomed to our on-the-road lifestyle and had begun to believe it was the new permanent norm. You know, that routine of taco bell, two star extended stay hotels, and driving all day? ahhh, those were the days.

i’m officially up to speed on a 2002 lifestyle!
also, i had one Maria’s Special Margarita and it has made me a wee bit “special.”
Here are some brief thoughts about the trip thus far:
1. trucks should not be allowed in the left lane. not now. not ever.
2. driving is only fun when you are going over 73 mph. (today was my first 75 zone, weeee!)
3. after 3 hours sitting in a car my ass starts to hurt.
4. Jesus saves!
5. in the middle/south there is surcharge for leaving the meat out of things
6. Dollywood really is the most amazing place on earth. I have never felt more able-bodied/thin/interested in laser tag.
7.you know how sometimes on airplanes you get the emergency exit row and the luxurious amount of leg space is mind blowingly awesome? Handicapped hotel rooms dude. we had a seat for our shower last night.
8. any amount of celebrity can secure you either a billboard shout out at city limits (carrie underwood’s home town!), a theme restaurant (toby keith’s!), or no wait, that’s it. restaurant or signage.
9. morning’s aren’t THAT bad.
10. There is a large chain of stores called Outdoor World that is Indoors. i will never go inside one, but i love them with all my heart.
xo
-a