You are so beautiful!!!! Tales from LA

I've been so busy!

I have a couple more stories from LA to share.

I wanted to post a photo of the rocket cone that was at the facility we shot at in Downey. A real Apollo rocket cap. I can't imagine being in space in that thing. It is not very big!


More photos from the facility. It was painted in a space theme.


Rocket-building gauges


Most mornings while in LA I ran or walked on the beach from Santa Monica to Venice, which was the best part of each day we were there since the time there was so stressful. There were lots of people out at 6 in the morning. Fully dressed people who looked like they'd been partying all night, some high school grads, lots of bums, runners and surfers, and a lot of eclectic bohemians who were hula hooping, or dancing their asses off in the water. It was a great way to start the day. People in LA are so happy!

One morning I was walking close to the waves and I walked past a middle-aged man doing crunches in the sand. He ran past me about five minutes later and said to me, with a heavy accent and a big grin: "You are SO beautiful!!!" and ran past. I think I teeheed. A little bit ahead of me he ran past a couple of middle-aged ladies and judging by their physical reaction, it looked like he said the same thing to them, too. And then to a young woman jogging a little later. What a nice thing! You can give a smile to people and make them happy, or tell them they're beautiful like this guy and start their day off nicely. So LA.

After we shot in Downey we shot some photography at a studio in Long Beach. I've shot there before, but didn't realize it is also the headquarters of that tequila whose bottles look extremely phallic.


We got to have a couple of calls in their conference room, which has a huge conference table made of plates of shattered glass, next to a bar with lots of custom-blown phallic tequila bottles. It was one of the cheesiest scenarios of my life. They also had pics and magazine spreads featuring the tequila on their walls. Like this one.


While in LA we stayed at a nice hotel where they left a little teddy bear on your pillow every night.


I was at a loss as to what to do with the bears as the night stand was overly crowded and it didn't seem right to throw the little bear on the floor because we are ingrained with the notion in childhood that stuffed animals have souls and feelings and would be upset by bad treatment. So I put them in the drawer.

By the end of my time staying there the drawer looked like a little bear graveyard or maybe an orgy. Or like a brazilian beach -- just a bunch of them laying there crowded together.


We went to a nice dinner at the end of the trip and it turned out it was truffle season. We shared fresh truffle shavings, which I've never had before and was AMAZING. I am a big lover of truffle oil thanks to my introduction from recipes by Marlena Spieler, and fresh truffles had a much more complex flavor and interesting texture. The next day we were sitting at the shoot quietly waiting around, focused in our own computers, and one of my creatives suddenly busted out with, "This morning, I took a poop, and it smelled like truffles." I think I died laughing. I couldn't stop repeating it the rest of the trip, and it would pop into my head while I was running or working or driving and I would burst out laughing. Here's a photo from the dinner. The stranger I handed my camera to cut me out of the photo!