Calling all pretty young things. Today at LAXART.

Are you one of LA's few residents who is not here to act, model or get discovered walking your dog at Runyon Canyon? Perhaps you've been curious about the casting process--the styling, the anxiety, the deep breathing, the stage mothers. Oh, the stage mothers!

This is amazing. Today, artist Charlie White is executing a one-day performance in the form of an open casting call at LAXART to find one very special 'California Girl.' Girls between 13 and 16 are being sought for an LA billboard as part of LAXART's Billboard Project. Guests can attend the call and peep the whole day of shenanigans through a windowed wall.

I have no idea how White put the word out about the call. And I wouldn't want to taint the integrity of the artistic experiment by guessing what you might see there. But...did I say stage mothers?!

TODAY, September 11
9 a - 5 p

LAXART
2640 S. La Cienega
Los Angeles, CA 90034

Amusement parks: where style & class go to die.

Because no birthday should ever last less than a solid week, last Wednesday meant a birthday celebration Part Deux with some of my nearest and dearest girlfriends...at Cali's largest and most famed amusement park. Not having been to the theme park since I was a child, I was excited for the mid-week adventure to Anaheim. What I found, beside roller coasters and a hint of nausea, is documented below. Beware, residents of major metropolitan areas, theme parks should be considered foreign, if not alien, lands. The residents there--a different breed. The style--questionable if not non-existent.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Palm Springs: The Ace Hotel + Mods + Snow in the Desert

You like pools? You like drinking? You like desert air? You like gay men and gray haired, antique shopping retirees? Well, aren't you glad that Palm Springs is just a hop, skip and a drive East along the 10 away from Los Angeles.

As an Ace Hotel aficionado (I love the NY location and you remember my recent Seattle stay), there was no other place we would have lodged when we headed to the desert a few weekends ago for the dual birthday celebrations of the BFFs than the Ace Hotel Palm Springs.

It happened to be Modernism Week in PS which meant airstreams and retro-styled hotel guests. But save a few funny folks, the hotel was it's usual Ace style awesomeness. Except with two pools and a hot tub. Score.

Planning a trip to Palm Springs soon (Coachella, perhaps)? Don't miss out on the Palm Springs Tramway. A five minute ride in the tram and you're 8,000 + feet up a mountain and in SNOW. Yes, SNOW. Granted, we stayed inside and enjoyed the concessions area and gift shop for longer than we did the freezing temperatures outside. But still, snow in Palm Springs?! Well worth the trip up.

 

Wisdom from the great Madeleine Albright + other memories from the Women's Conference.

Earlier this week I had the great pleasure of attending the Women's Conference. Now these things can go a few ways. You get 25,000 women together and you can have a large trade show floor full of knitting circles and estrogen pills and female finance tools (because, of course, we need our own finance tools--we are simply so inept, are we not?). Or you can get 2 days of intelligent conversations between thoughtful, smart people [who happen to be women].

The 2009 Women's Conference was a little bit of both. But I will skip talk about the expo hall--where I passed more booths selling scarves and handbags than I care to wax on about and sampled more energy bars than one should consume in a 24 hour period--and jump straight to the heart of the Conference, founded and hosted by Cali's First Lady, Maria Shriver: Madeleine Albright at the Luncheon Panel.

Madame Secretary--as the panel moderator, David Gregory, kept calling her--or Madeleine, as she insisted on being called--is perhaps the sharpest tool in the proverbial shed of females living today. And I was honored to hear the 72 year-old firecracker speak.

A couple of memorable quips from her lunchtime banter with co-panelists Valerie B. Jarrett (Senior Advisor to President Obama), Amy Holmes and Claire Shipman...

'I think every woman's middle name is guilt.'


'I think there's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.'


'Women don't have to hate men to get ahead.'

And it is the last quote that stood out as especially poignant at a conference like this one. It is so unfortunately commonplace for women, when they get together to 'empower' themselves, to form coups against the so-called 'majority' of men. Well, ladies, the 'majority' is not such a majority--they're half the population. We're half the population. What our fate becomes, and the burden we may carry from prior years of oppression, is no longer the sole fault of the opposite [and less gentle] sex. Our fate is ours to define and it is not healthy nor helpful to define it in juxtaposition to those with differing genetalia.

I hope that soon we won't find it necessary to hold conferences dedicated to women's issues. Issues are issues and they're shared amongst all of us--those who happen to be pretty and thoughtful and sensitive and those who happen to be, well, men. [Insert smiley face here. I promise kid.]