They got me after all. Imagine my surprise and utter horror when I received a ‘Failure to Appear’ notice from the jury service in the mail. Lousy bureaucracy. Like it was my fault that their automated voicemail system informed me I didn’t have to report for jury duty the week of December 28th, but failed to tell me the whole week was null and void because I didn’t call in until that Monday? Or that by New Year’s Eve the system had become stuck in some sort of time loop that I suspected a certain Doctor might have had a hand in? My fault that it was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and therefore impossible to get ahold of an actual human being? (Well, yes, that last one was sort of my fault since I’d purposely scheduled my jury duty for that very reason.)
The Hollywood Courthouse telephone operators were entirely unsympathetic to my plight, and so I am forced to show up at 8:45 on February 8th, 2010, or Pay. The. Price. I can only assume this means they would have slapped me in handcuffs and started selecting the jury for my trial.
While I sit around waiting in the jury pool, mocha latte in hand, Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey in my bag, iPhone out, I glance around the room, and realize this is an excellent opportunity to hone my people-watching skills.
Along the wall closest to the door is a bank of three computers. A long, detailed letter sits open on the desktop in front of one man in a striped red shirt and white socks with black sneakers. He has sunglasses perched on top of dark hair, and sips from a traveler’s mug of coffee – black, probably, with maybe a hint of cream.
He has Mail, and by the look of it, I say it’s from a loved one, perhaps some relative or lover in a foreign land – like Canada, or Mexico – who writes once a week with a full account of his or her days, and a paragraph or two about how much that person misses the man in the red striped shirt. This epistle is so important that the man can’t wait until he gets home to read it.
He rests his chin on his fist, as he scrolls down the very long message, oblivious to the room full of strangers reading over his shoulder. I imagine that the two words at the bottom of the note are ‘Take care,’ or ‘Love always.’
Or maybe it’s just a memo from his boss about the company’s new policy on sexual harassment.
On his left, a woman in a coral t-shirt tucked into her black jeans, with eighties hair pushed high away from her forehead, touch-types her way around Yahoo. She doesn’t seem to know what she’s looking for, one finger at a time, but has a look of permanent bewilderment. She forgets to sign in, holding up the proceedings for everyone.
The impassivity of the jury clerk is impressive. Maybe he’s on some sort of medication that turns a man into the walking dead. Instead of brains, the word that groans from his lips is, “Forms…”
Mr. Shiny-Shoes (which don’t match his charcoal grey hoodie) is impervious to any sob story, heart hardened against even the most ardent tears. He has his routine and upon completion of his paperwork, pops a DVD into the television with a ‘Do Not Touch’ label, though the contraption is so large and boxy, its not as if a person would get very far.
According to the informative video, which is populated by actors pretending to be jurors, California is the greatest state in the Union. I had no idea. Nor was I aware that being a juror is often a “deep and moving experience,” so much so that jurors keep in touch, writing one another long, detailed letters about the illegal activities of their neighbors, no doubt.
The video wants to make it clear that if you (and it means you, Juror #6) are peremptorily dismissed from the courtroom, it’s not personal. Except when it is. And don’t feel too bad, because it doesn’t mean you don’t get to be a juror – there are other courts that might take you, even if you mouth off about gun control.
Also important to remember: no personal investigation of the crime. Don’t leave the courthouse and travel to the crime scene to get your CSI on. Nancy Drew, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and other amateur detectives would be quickly excused from jury service, but Edward James Olmos, Camryn Manheim, Harrison Ford, and Jamie Lee Curtis were not.
One of my flashdrive necklaces is featured in this article on Geek Valentine’s Gifts from Etsy:
A small flash drive is easy to misplace, but less so if it is hanging around your neck. Several storage manufacturers have attempted to sell drives on lanyards, but they always end up looking, well, ugly. This one (made from a 4GB PNY Micro Swivel Attache–good stuff) looks like legitimate jewelry. The drive connects to the chain via a clasp, and glass beads that match the color of the drive decorate the chain. Is it too corny to suggest using this “love letter” drive to pass secret notes back and forth to each other? You decide.
There are a lot of really fantastic geeky things on Etsy – and if the person who makes the Gmail pillow ever does a Twitter or Fail Whale one, I am all over that!
1. The power of Twitter. One year ago I said, quote:
I fail to understand the power of Twitter. I have a hard enough time keeping my Facebook status updated.
Then I discovered that you can sync your Twitter account to update your Facebook status for you. Two birds, one stone! Why am I now such a devoted Tweeter? In addition to my ability to share my thoughts with the Interwebs and find like-minded individuals in 140 characters or fewer, it allows me to stalk my favorite writers and actors and feel as if we’re actually friends – and that’ s not creepy, at all.
2. Why Southern California girls wear Uggs. I still think it’s idiotic to wear these lambswool boots with a tank top and miniskirt, and don’t get me started on the Ed Hardy bedazzled brand, but I have to admit – they’re cozy. Originally purchased for my mid-February trip to Chicago, I’ve gotten plenty of wear out of them in L.A. – always with pants.
3. Why anyone would purchase a Snuggie. Now, granted, I didn’t pay for mine, and it’s not the best material to own if you have a dog who sheds a lot, but it’s quite snuggly, and nice for curling up on the couch with the remote control and a box of Lucky Charms.
4. The genius that is Mac. In high school, some alumnus donated a number of brand new iMacs (the turquoise kind) to my Media Academy classroom. I hated working on a Mac; the mouse was stupid and everything was backwards. I was at least two years behind the rest of the world in getting an iPod. I told myself I didn’t need an iPhone, but now I can’t live without it. When I got tired of my laptops catching viruses, I decided Mac was the way to go, with its sleek shininess and superior graphics capability. Now I’m one of those people who go into a Mac store just to stare at the pretty things I can’t afford.
(Though I really have no interest in the poorly-named iPad – for now.)
5. The splendor of graphic novels. I was never really “against” them, and I’m still a novice, but I certainly never saw myself burning through a series (figuratively, not literally), eager to get to the next. There’s a lot of great storytelling in graphic novels these days, not just the superhero stuff I had expected. With the exception of the cost, the graphic novel has been a great way of letting me continue to explore the worlds of some of my favorite shows like Buffy and Farscape - and find new ones.
I’m being haunted by the Marlboro Man.
No sooner do I post about my inability to understand why anyone takes up smoking in this day and age than I get not one, but two emails from the British Tobacco Award informing me that I’ve won 1,000,000.00 pounds sterling. (I know it’s official because they spelled ‘Authorised’ with an ’s.’) My prize comes to $1,587,905.51 American by today’s exchange rates, and would easily cover my student loans, but sadly, I can’t in good conscience accept money from a product that causes cancer.
This ‘amazing opportunity’ reminds me that I’ve received at least two flyers in the mail in the last three months from Philip Morris offering me free cigarettes. Do you know how hard it is to pass up free swag? I may loathe cigarettes with white hot intensity of a thousand suns, may associate them with my grandmother’s emphysema and the oxygen tank she toted around for the last several years of her life, may find the concept of smoking disgusting on a multitude of levels, but my generation was born with its hand out, and given the current state of the economy, it seems almost criminal to let all that product go to waste.
It’s no surprise that Big Tobacco is desperate. They’re no longer allowed to advertise on TV or in film, are severely limited in print ads, and can’t use cartoons to lure children into a lifetime addiction. (Unlike General Mills.) No wonder they’re reduced to mailing circulars to random names regurgitated by Google. Thirty-eight states have already made it illegal to smoke indoors in various combinations of workplace, restaurant, or bar bans. And what did Los Angeles just do? My city enacted a law prohibiting smokers from lighting up within 20 feet of a restaurant.
Well, hallelujah. Sorry, Altria. Some may see this as the demise of democracy and cry, ‘Fascism,’ but I’m just thrilled that in a year’s time I’ll be able to sit on the patio of a Coffee Bean without holding my breath. To those who think the L.A. City Council is discriminating against Smoker-Americans, I say think of it like the Second Amendment: yes, you have the right to bear arms, but if you shoot me with those arms, then it becomes my problem. You’re puffing on a loaded gun, tobacco fiends, and I, for one, think it’s my right to walk down the street without taking a bullet.
Just add it to the list of reasons I can never leave Southern California.
1. People who feel the need to dump their bass-heavy tunes out of their car windows as they drive. If you absolutely must listen to music like that, you could at least have the decency to a) turn the volume down to something within the range of human hearing, and b) roll up your goddamned windows. I do not want to listen to your crap. More importantly, I do not want to feel your crap. Yesterday I had one such asshole on my tailpipe; my teeth were actually vibrating from his ‘music.’
2. William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, James Joyce, and other ‘literary’ authors who turned their backs on punctuation. I’ve read The Sound and the Fury, Blood Meridian, and Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and I don’t get it. But what’s more – I don’t understand why saying, ‘I didn’t like Blood Meridian, with its lack of quotation marks and nameless protagonist,’ makes me the Enemy of Literature, as if one cannot be an educated person of taste if one does not comprehend the raw emotion of, say, Faulkner’s Vardaman whose mother is a fish. Why is it a crime to like a comprehensible narrative?
3. The frozen yogurt fad. There are almost as many fro-yo shops on Melrose as there are medical marijuana care collectives (which, at last count, numbered 12 between Fairfax and La Brea).
4. People who have started smoking in the last twenty years. With everything we know about smoking and cancer, this one baffles me. There are no benefits to cigarettes as far as I know, not even a high or buzz. (I have no personal experience, but I’m given to understand people enjoy these things – while they last.) Those who have been smoking since the fifties – okay, not so easy to quit, but people who’ve picked it up in the last decade?
5. “Reality” television. I will occasionally tune into Ace of Cakes, or HGTV, and had brief affairs with The Dog Whisperer and The Amazing Race, but ultimately I got bored with it. As for the really trashy stuff, I don’t personally find it entertaining to watch obnoxious people be cruel to one another. I get enough reality in reality, so when I watch TV, I’m looking for an escape.
To each her own.
It wasn’t long after I started making with jewelry (in particular, embossing copper), that I decided to combine this new hobby with my geek life, and opened uGeek by Hollywood Jane on Etsy.
Clicking on any of the photos below will take you to that page on my shop.
I started with what I’m calling my ‘Geek Pride’ series: copper pendants embossed with symbols from the dork side. Once I’d done the embossing, though, they didn’t feel complete, and that’s when I realized that making plain copper pendants was fine, but making actual jewelry out of them was better.
A little bit of paint, a little bit of wire, a few beads – these pendants are only recognizable as geeky to fellow geeks. Stealth geek, if you will, which is how I prefer to show my geek pride.
Around the time I started the jewelry crafting process, I was searching in vain for a flash drive necklace. After two flash drives that were kept on my keychain died (one got bent by the weight of my keys, the plastic part that held the other to the keychain broke), I tried taking the flash drive off my keys when it was in use, but inevitably left it behind in the computer. Sticking it in my pocket didn’t work since I didn’t wear the same pair of pants every day, and was afraid of sending it through the wash.
The few flash drive necklaces I found on the web had 1 and 2G capacities, were either dull, plastic, covered in hideous Swarovski crystals, or decorated with skulls.
So I decided to make my own.
All are for sale on Etsy, and I’m planning to offer customizations if there’s any interest.
The Umbrella Conundrum ™: the physical impossibility of getting into your car, parked outside while it’s raining, without getting wet. I despise the Umbrella Conundrum.
1. I hated the rain when I was in elementary school. Blinded by foggy glasses, my hair expanded into a giant cloud, and I lost not one, but two duck’s head umbrellas, which were all the rage (the umbrellas, not losing them.) After school, in the dark, kids were crowded into a single room to wait for their parents, and then crossed great lakes, soaking feet through socks, just to reach the parking lot.
2. When it rained in the fourth grade, recess was spent indoors, and all my classmates fought over the computers that had Jetpack and Oregon Trail. I raced to the games closet for Electronic Talking Mall Madness. Playing the game that encouraged my already rampant commercialism is one of the few memories I have of my friend Alanna, whose last name I can’t recall.
3. If it rained in middle school, I ate in the orchestra room, where I listened to my crush play the piano instead of listening to the falling rain, telling me what a fool I was. We never spoke, and he broke my heart. He probably didn’t even know my name.
4. I have never owned a really good pair of rain boots. I hate shoe shopping and will frequently purchase merely acceptable boots so that I don’t have to go to another store. These boots are usually not meant to be worn in puddles, but are good enough to survive the infrequent storms of L.A. I’m considering galoshes.
5. I fell in love with the rain in Oakland. From my dorm room at Mills College I could watch the lightning charge the sky and listen to the thunder burst, and I walked across campus without an umbrella, because there were no men around to impress, and I didn’t care how I looked.
6. I fell out of love with the rain a year later when I worked as a camp counselor on a campus in the canyon. All alone with half-a-dozen rambunctious and frightened children during an intense storm – and the blacktop turned into a raging rapid. I plotted a horror screenplay based on the experience.
Today rain is just something that affects my commute, something escorted by high winds which make my ears ache and my nose run, something that turns the streets of Los Angeles into rivers because the city wasn’t built for actual weather.
When it rains I shake my head at the number of people running from building to building in booty shorts and flip flops, wondering why half of them managed to put on their Uggs, but forgot to put on pants.
And sometimes, if I’m lucky, the rain means rainbows.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a foodie.
Unfortunately I’m surrounded by them, which is how I wound up at not one, but two dens of haute cuisine last weekend. On Saturday I tweeted that I was coming down with a cold, and got direct message from V over at Staying In:
You’re still going to Irina’s birthday tonight though, right?
Crap, I replied. That’s tonight? It had completely slipped my mind.
Even though V offered to drive, I was tempted to beg off due to sinus pressure, but when I told my mother the birthday girl had made dinner reservations at The Bazaar, she told me I had to go. It was “an experience not to be missed.” Her description could not do it justice, she said, and if I was really feeling lousy, I could call my dad to pick me up. All this fuss for a restaurant?
Irina watches a lot of Top Chef on Bravo, and despite appearing to be a mild-mannered Russian accountant, she’s got an adventurous streak and, like the rest of the dinner party, is willing to try just about anything – or let herself get talked into it by a friend. This wasn’t the first time she’d invited me to a restaurant that was more famous for being famous than it was for the menu.
To be fair, the Bazaar, part of the SLS Hotel on La Cienega, is known for its food, as well as a few other things:
- Having a chemist on staff whose primary function is to handle the liquid nitrogen.
- A “gift shop”/museum/gallery of modern “art” that ranges from jugs shaped like breasts (jug jugs, get it?), a collection of dominatrix bling, 80$ nylon teddy bears, and candles shaped like tea cakes.
- A separate room for the ‘patisserie’ where a waitress will escort you for dessert, if you feel like a change of scenery.
- A giraffe.
(Just kidding about the giraffe.)
They’re also really big on air, cotton candy, and turning solids into liquids. Take, for example, the Magic Martini ™, which is a martini strained through cotton candy. It’s quite a sight – the candy floss just disappears when it’s hit by the vodka. Cotton candy on sticks (resembling cotton swabs) passed by our table several times during the evening – they were reportedly surrounding the foie gras appetizer.
One of the Bazaar’s ’specialities’ is liquid olives – I don’t like green olives when they’re in their natural state, so I declined, but the general consensus at our table was, ‘Um, okay.’ While the others were sucking the green gelatinous blobs off spoons and popping them with their tongues, I was snickering at the number of items on the menu that claimed to be finished with air. Salt air, lemon air, olive brine air – there must be a sous-chef whose prime directive is to blow on things. The restaurant is basically a giant circus – designed by Tim Burton.
What I did eat was very good – particularly the chicken and bechamel croquettes. I stuck to the easily identifiable; friends and family alike despair over my eating habits – not that I blame them. My tastes are terrible. And predictable. Show me to a tray of processed sugars and deep-fried dough and I’m happy. I live for carbs.
To the trendy gourmet, “carbs” are crass. Which is not to say that every plate that passed under my nose last weekend was low-cal – it just means that pasta isn’t ‘in’ unless it’s harboring some kind of seafood. Rice? Forget it unless it’s whole-grain and pilafed. They’ll fry anything but potatoes. No bread basket.
I like my food to be as simple as possible – knowing before I put it on my tongue that I’ll be able to swallow it saves a lot of time and the Heimlich Maneuver. I don’t eat anything that comes from the water (it tastes fishy), and I have a personal rule about consuming anything that I’ve personally hand-fed, which rules out rabbits, ducks, and kangaroos.
Among the items my adventurous friends tried Saturday night were the “Philly cheesesteaks” (tasty, but not particularly reminiscent of its namesake), tuna ceviche and avocado roll (a last minute addition; I abstained), sea scallops (ditto), catalan pork sausage, and the staple of the trendy restaurant: beef cheeks. I have yet to discover exactly which cheeks the meat comes from, and I probably don’t want to know.
Dessert brought more liquid nitrogen (without the table display), some excellent lava cake, and chocolate-covered pop rocks, which I was completely in favor of.
As V drove me home, I told her that I was planning to curl up in bed and watch Night Court, which was probably the first time a twenty-something ever uttered those words on a Saturday night.
Sunday, feeling slightly worse, I went to Animal, an austere hole-in-the-wall on Fairfax that wouldn’t open its doors until 6 p.m. precisely despite the pouring rain. As you might be able to tell from the name, they like meat. I’m surprised that they didn’t have beef cheeks on the menu, and didn’t offer to slaughter something at our table, but that wouldn’t have gone with the (lack of) decor.
If I’d worried about what I was going to eat at The Bazaar, it was nothing compared to my meal options at Animal, whose menu changes daily. As I scanned over the plates, all of which included at least one deal breaker, my stomach sank. The best part was the disclaimer:
changes and modifications politely declined
My mom likes to try new restaurants, and she’s certainly no chicken when it comes to trying new things, so this wasn’t the first time I’d arrived at a restaurant only to go home hungry, but I really hate food dictatorships. And yes, I’ve seen Last Holiday. Asking for substitutions is rude, sure, but is it so hard to leave something off the dish? It’s not as if it’s coming pre-assembled. Just let your hand skip over the dates and pecans, or ‘forget’ to bring out the truffle-parmesan fondue. I don’t like mushrooms or parmesan cheese, okay? Out of the twenty-something items on the menu, only one appealed to me: balsamic pork ribs (which were really good, but impossible to eat in a polite way. I felt like an…well, animal.)
Despite what some might think, I don’t actually take pride in my finicky tastes. I wish I could enjoy food the way most people I know do, but it’s not simply a matter of trying things. I try plenty of dishes outside my comfort zone – and spit them back out. I’m texture sensitive, and once I get it into my head that I shouldn’t like something, that’s it – I can’t look at it without gagging. My head says ‘Gag,’ and my throat muscles say, ‘How much?’
I don’t really like food. Obviously I eat it, and chocolate is my best friend, but I could survive on bread and water. Vegetables are a waste of molecules (if you have to cook something in something just to make it taste like something, then that’s a fail in my book.) Fruit – there’s that pesky texture problem again. I like crisp fruits, but don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I try not to take home leftovers because they inevitably go uneaten and have to be tossed. Food just isn’t something I think about all that much, and when I do go for a snack or what have you, I like to reach for whatever’s closest, because I am incredibly lazy. Convenience over content, baby.
Actually, it’s probably a good thing I know so many foodies. If I didn’t, I might never see the inside of an actual restaurant.
This episode is one of my favorites, and it was a lot of fun to film, even though the apartment we filmed in was sweltering. There are some good bloopers for this episode too that’ll show up on our blooper reel – I had a very hard time keeping a straight face when Ed says, “You will play a game.”
And for the interested:
THE BOX
The game is comprised of:
- The green Apples to Apples adjective cards
- A Twister mat + spinner
- A laser pointer
- Anime character cards
- Alcohol
Rules -
Each player is given a mix of character cards and adjective cards, eight total. The rest are put into two piles. One player spins the Twister dial, and plays as follows depending where the dial lands:
- Red – Pick up a character card and choose the best adjective in your hand to match it. If the ‘ref’ of the game approves of your choice, you get a Pair. If not, the character card goes back in the pile.
- Green – Pick up an adjective card and choose the best character in your hand to match it. If the ‘ref’ approves your choice, keep both cards. If not, you lose your character card, but keep the new adjective.
- Blue and Yellow follow regular Twister rules in that you have to place whatever hand or foot the dial points to on the mat – however, you also lose your turn and have to take a shot.
The ref, or just another spectator, holds the laser pointer above the heads of the players on the mat – if you break the beam, you’re automatically disqualified. The goal is to match five character cards and get untangled!
“Are you going to take the birthright trip?” a family friend asks me over dinner on my birthday. “You only have two more years.”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” I say, though the first thing that comes to mind is, ‘Israel. Isn’t there a lot of killing over there?’ It seems like something’s always blowing up.
“Oh, you should do it,” she says, fixing me with that intense blue-eyed stare which suggests she really, really means it. “Mitchell loved it.”
She’s referring to her son, who loved it so much that he went and never came back. At one point he wanted to join the Israeli army despite a serious medical condition. The only reason I know he’s still alive is the occasional Facebook status update; now he toils for an Israeli corporation, doing vague work.
“Well, I’ll think about it,” I say, glancing over at my mother who has made it abundantly clear that she has no desire to step anywhere near the Middle East, and thinks that those who do so must have a death wish.
‘Free trip to Israel!’ the Taglit-Birthright website exclaims. (Minus shopping and gratuities.) Spend ten days with a group of your peers on a tour of one of the most historic regions of the world. See the sights from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, gain insight into the country and its people, immerse yourself in the culture – and it won’t cost a single shekel!
I’d be crazy not to take advantage of this great offer, right?
I have a lot of Jewish friends, and have heard the term ‘Birthright’ tossed around in conversations involving Seder, mitzvah, and challah, but have never given much thought to the fact that because my mother is Jewish, I can go to Israel for free.
Imagine, due to some accident of birth, I get a holiday gratis. It’s all thanks to a Zionist billionaire in New York who formed the foundation which hands out these all-expenses-paid excursions “to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people.”1 (Is Jewry even a word?)
Airfare, hotel, and transportation are covered, and the trip includes a genuine Israeli tour guide who will introduce me to the land of my ancestors. All I need to accept my ticket to the past is one Judaic parent, at least eighteen years on Earth – but no more than twenty-six – a functional passport, and a security deposit.
At twenty-four years old, I’ve got a well-traveled passport and a Jewish mother; her mother was Jewish, as was her mother, etc. ad infinitem. If Judaism were measured in blood, I’d be pretty damn Jewish, but all too often I don’t feel Jewish enough. I’ve never been bat mitzvahed, and there’s a Christmas tree in my living room every December. Yes, we have a mezzuzah; it hangs next to the wreath on our front door. The only Hebrew I know is the prayer for lighting the menorah at Hanukkah; I memorized it phonetically off the box of candles.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that I don’t believe in God.
The various groups that organize these trips to the Homeland insist that they welcome all levels of faith, that you don’t have to be a practicing Jew so long as there’s some Jew in there somewhere. It feels like cheating to take the trip as an atheist. Will accepting the 10-day tour be a sign of surrender? If I take that ticket, am I offering myself up for conversion?
That is the point of this, after all. “[T]o strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people.” My Jewish mother and I have had conversations about my quest for a cultural identity, and how our shared atheism impacts our ability to enjoy and embrace even the secular aspects of our birthright. In recent years, with family members passing on or simply slipping away, it would be nice to have a community to embrace when my parents are gone, but I’m not in the market for religion. It’s not as if Taglit-Birthright will make me more Jewish. I’m not going to come back from ten days in the desert and say, ‘Oh, so that’s where God’s been hiding.’
Or will I?
Take Him out of the equation, and it sounds perfect – a chance to explore my heritage, and learn about an important part of the world, an opportunity to see life from a different point of view. As a writer, it’ll give me some much-needed worldly experience. It can fuel my passion. It’ll be a one-of-a-kind experience.
And that frightens me. This trip is going to change me; I’m afraid of having a religious experience, of coming home a different person. It’s only ten days, but a lot can happen in a week and a half (just ask the castaways on Lost.) I like my life, and my belief system, the way it is.
Can I truly get the full Israel birthright experience if I don’t believe in God?
There’s only one way to find out.
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