Sex Talks

I am fine at many things, good at a handful more and great at just a few but there is one category in which I am second to none (but R, but I now consider us one for the sake of me being the best at this thing) and that is touring people around Los Angeles. Over the past 31 days I have had not one or three but eight people visit me here in La La Land. Two of them came for work and one of them was my mother, but that doesn't diminish the fact that I have been doing some serious showing of this city. As a result I've developed what I believe to be a damn-near perfect list of things for people to do and see - a Chinese menu of the Southland, if you will (and I have in several e-mails, complete with links). Here - exclusively for you (unless you'd like to share it with, say, BuzzFeed, which would be totally fine) is my list: The Hiking Options East Side - Early AM uphill walk to the Griffith Observatory via the Fern Dell Trail (just beyond The Trails Cafe) followed by brunch...

via NY Times You're in luck because this Monday post was supposed to be about my very deep thoughts on choosing to get married (in light of a busy weekend with Mom attending to things like ceremony valance fabric), but then I read an article that got me all revved up, so I'll shelve that heavy hitter for a hump day post. Yesterday's The New York Times Sunday Review section featured a piece titled Slaves of the Internet, Unite! written by the talented and hysterical Tim Kreider .  The thesis statement: it's not OK that online publications both major and minor commonly do not compensate writers for content. To be clear: online sites (that make money) ask writers to submit stories (that take time to write) and then do not pay them anything for those stories (zero dinero). Did you know that was the case? If you're a writer you absolutely know, but for you doers of other things out there, did you know that articles you read on places like The Huffington Post - one of...

I like to think that I'm very good at being an adult. I make my bed and with the perfect amount of accent pillows. I know just what to get everyone on my holiday gifting list. I use an under eye cream at night, take a vitamin C pill every morning, and never drink before noon on the weekdays. And yet there are area of adult life at which I am, apparently, not so skilled. I say apparently because before getting into a relationship with a man who was born the world's greatest dad, I didn't know I had a problem. I just thought everyone absolutely hated going to the grocery store, freaked out most of the time they were inside and left with a dozen items they didn't need, all for prices only an idiot would pay. Turns out I'm really bad at the grocery store - going, being there, leaving - you name it. I'd like to blame this disability on my five years in Manhattan - a time when I had to carry any and all groceries up four flights up stairs and had a questionably functi...

Oh man are you going to be excited slash weirded out when you see how those two topics come together! PART ONE: Last Thursday I joined my friend Ben at the co-working space where he spends his days. Ben runs his own company and, like many entrepreneurial 2.0 types, realized that he needed a place to focus on his to-dos and and bring his new clients that's outside his home (albeit that a lovely house in Echo Park). And so Ben joined Hub LA , a intimidatingly cool co-working space that sits across the street from an unpronounceable gourmet sausage restaurant and this coffee place that doesn't offer sugar in the arts district of downtown LA. Naturally I am love with this entire situation despite the fact that I use 1/2 a cup of CoffeeMate vanilla creamer in my coffee and hate saying things I don't know how to say. See, I too have been trying to find a place to work where I can't eat an entire bag of pita chips slash container of hummus or re-try on all my clothes to make...

As you now know from the last time I recapped the show , I run a monthly storytelling show called SUNDAY NIGHT SEX TALKS at Bar Lubitsch in West Hollywood.  Think of it like The Moth , except all the topics have to do with sex, love and relationships. This month's edition of the series recaps lessons learned during our 2nd Birthday Bash! I'm proud to say that #SNSTalks has survived two full years incredible performances, raucous crowds, and zero men (except for that one time, but that's a longer story). I'm even more proud to announce that we're finally taking the show on the road! First stop is NYC for a January 5th performance (details to come), and we'll see how things roll out after that. For now, another LA show reflection post. Like last time, names are concealed and stories are paraphrased to protect the brave performers who tell all at each show. We're really not kidding about this privacy policy thing, which is why you hear some pretty incredible...

via Jezebel I planned to write a whole post today about how disappointed, disillusioned and confused I am by our government. I was going to explain how infuriating it is to seek out honest answers about what's going in Washington from multiple sources and still have no sense of the truth. I try to keep politics off this blog, but I am so sad and disgusted that I thought I should write something , if only for my own piece of mind. Then I stumbled on Jezebel's piece on Aja Brown, the 31-year-old major of Compton, CA - a place they tell you not to go the day you move to L.A. The Jezebel piece lead me to the Vogue interview , where I learned that, "Her own mother, Brenda Jackson, fled [Compton] in her twenties. Jackson�s mother, Aja�s maternal grandmother, Lena Young...was brutally murdered in a violent home invasion rape and robbery in Compton in the 1970s. The case is still unsolved." So obviously I had to read on to learn about Brown's vision for the city of Co...

I heard a fascinating bit of information yesterday, third handedly, but still. R was talking to an actress friend (hi Myra!) who was referencing her daughter (hi daughter!) who has this amazing theory about dating. Her claim: that at the 45 minute mark of any given date, you'll know if it's a pass or a fail. Now there's two degrees of Kevin Bacon between this story and me, but here is the way R explained what Myra explained about what her daughter shared. The first few minutes of any date are simple introductions and small-talk  pleasantries. Good to meet you , did you have trouble getting here? Can you believe it's raining? Sure it's possible that some dealbreaker is shared within those first, say, 10, but unless it's I got here on my bike because I don't have a license because I have 27 DUI's , you're probably safe. But even if that does happen, the theory would still stand because the datee failed within the 45 minutes. So presuming he/she is sti...

This post was born out of the 45 minutes I recently spent trying to get my newly straight hair (it literally just went straight after 29.5 years of being curly!!!) to curl properly using one of those curling rods every 12-year-old on YouTube seems to have mastered. Enjoy! The Top 10 Things I (Apparently) Still Need To Remind Myself ...at 30 Years of Age   10. Your hair looks fine. Not perfect , not amazing , not Rachel Bilson- esque, but fine. Likely better than fine, but fine is better than awful, which is still better than bald. Now either leave it like it is or put it in a pony tail and step away from the mirror.  9. No one gives a poop what your hair looks like anyway. They're too busy thinking about their own hair, unless they are well-adjusted humans, in which case they're thinking about more important things like what they're going to eat for their next meal.  8. Chances are there is not a man hiding into the storage closet in your apartment, and even if there is,...

First, I want to thank all of you who reached out to say, "hell yes! buy that church!" and next, I want to ask you for between one and fifty thousand dollars. Unless one of you has a spare million, in which case I'll take that, and the rest of you can stand down until phase two of the project. It has been one week since R and I decided to buy ( this ) abandoned church and turn it into a movie theater (St. Catherine's Cinema). Our goal for the week was to find out three things of the twenty million we need to find out before actually, maybe, possibly going through with this insane idea. I am proud to say that we crossed two out of the three off our list - proud because they're my two things. R, "didn't get to his." He claims to have a legitimate excuse but then he doesn't have a blog to share it on now does he? (j/k he's shooting a pilot for an actual television network). R's task was to call the town judge - Judge Brian - to find out a ...

Three years ago on October 2nd R convinced me that he should be my boyfriend. You can read more about how that all went down , but just know that I didn't say okay because he was right (which, of course he was). I said okay because he knew what he wanted and didn't have time for games (which is still his MO when it comes to everything from which couch to buy - the brown one - to what to order at any given breakfast spot - the breakfast burrito ). Last year on this day I wrote about my #1 secret to a successful relationship . I'm proud to say it's still my #1, though obviously far less secret. Today I thought I'd continue the tradition by sharing another secret to "success." This one is way weirder and oddly personal than we're-both-nice-to-each-other-all-the-time. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Sometimes I like it when we fight. In this really strange way that I'm going to attempt to explain, I think I sort of need it.  To be clear, R and...