The Gurly Life

Oh, Jesus!

This morning, Dee and I went on a walking tour of the Downtown LA Historic Broadway Theater District. The walk is a tour by the Los Angeles Conservancy (do support them!). Downtown LA is actually gorgeous, though it did kinda go to hell for a long time. Some parts have been re-gentrified and now there are lots of luxury lofts, but most of it is still a little on the crappy side. All the cheap electronics stores don't help, as well as the tacky dress shops. Well, there is a lot more tackiness than just the dresses.

This post, therefore, celebrates the tackiness. I'll do a separate post with a few photos about the theaters, too, and the link to the Flickr stream, but unfortunately I do not have the time, and neither do you, to write a detailed post about all of the theaters.

I unfortunately did not get a shot of the creepy, life-like dolls wearing mini wedding dresses, but think Chucky, without the stitches. At least, during the day.

Now, this look I found particularly appealing. In light of the other clothes at this store, I am not entirely sure that this was a Halloween thing. In fact, I bet the only thing that transformed this look to a Halloween look is the masks on the dummies. I think if we go back Monday morning, the clothes on the dummies will be the same.

  

Classy.

We took a little break to shop at the Chanelli outlet. You know, Chanel-ish.

  

Again, classy. I especially like that you can get anything here from formal wear to night gowns.

There were a lot of stores with religious tchotckes that were out of control. We had Jesuses, madonnas, and this, which presumably has something to do with dia de los muertos. Man, the Catholic obsession with the dead borders on necrophilia.

  

Speaking of Jesus, this was my favorite. It is a diamond-encrusted Jesus head pendant, about 2" high.

  

I know that you can SEE that it's a diamond-encrusted etc. etc., but if you're at all like me, you will be staring at it for a full minute, incredulous, asking yourself if you're seeing what you think you're seeing. I know, I thought I was dreaming, too.

After the tour, we stopped off in a totally fake restaurant alley to have a little lunch, and were treated to this little Halloween jewel.

  

What (I think) I discovered about internet dating

This is a short one, and I mean that not just about this post. Girls, keep you profile short and vanilla. I'm serious. I tried writing an honest profile, no dice. I deleted almost all of it and left a couple of pretty straight-forward paragraphs, and I get 10 times the attention.

My theories: (1) individuality occurs as crazy without context, and (2) men like to get a little info and then discover the rest over time. Too much info too soon is boring. No fun of the chase, no adventure of discovery.

Oh boy

I was going to make this the "funny because crazy" This Week In Maliboo Kitty segment, but then I thought I'd just leave it at "if I ever make a video like this, you have permission to shoot me."

What's your favorite part? I'm undecided between the instructions for the right-handed people and the left-handed people or the Whisker Watch Alert. So much absurdity...

A curious phenomemononoemon

I can't say that word. Not the point.

Facebook came up with a new upgrade, which allows you to name your FB page so you don't just get facebook.com/andabunchofnumbers. So, for example, my FB pages is now facebook.com/elena.gerli. I think lots of people, many of whom I know, rushed to get "their" name registered, or claimed, or whatever. And those of us who did that, especially if we knew there were lots of other us's, were feeling pretty victorious that we got there first.

The point of this completely escapes me, and so far, has escaped everyone else. No one, so far, has been able to explain why it was so necessary to claim our name on FB.

This got me thinking about names and our human tendency to claim things and to bolster our identity. I have to admit that I jumped on the name bandwagon too, all the while thinking how pointless it was, but that by god I was not going to let anyone else have my name. Of course, my name is their name if they also have the same name.

I still have no clue what the point is about having the name on the FB link, other than it'll be easier for people to Google me. But so what? They can't see my page unless they're FB friends already. I suppose if it's someone out there in the world who is trying to find me and they don't know where to look, this will make it easier. If they're not on FB, though, they'll have to sign up before they can contact me.

But in reality, this is pretty pointless. The age of the internet has made it so that just about anyone who wants to find me, has. And as for privacy issues: who the hell cares? Every government agency in the country has my prints and all my information already.

It's not set in stone, it's more like a guideline

I have a jar of fabulous Herbes de Provence. It seems like I've had them forever, but I use them fairly regularly. I'm pretty sure I bought the jar in France. If I remember correctly, the last time I was in France was on my way to LA back in 1992.

I looked at that jar today, after using the herbs in my omelet, and it says "utiliser avant 10 97." Mmmh. Well, if you don't know this, "utilser avant" means "use before." "10 97" means "10/97." Mmmh, again. If my calculations are correct, this means that my herbs are 12 years past their expiration date. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Hang on, I think I have something lurking in the back of my fridge that's about that old. I'll keep you posted.

Wha--?

This was on the back of a truck for a meat company.