India help, Los Feliz Village Holiday Festival, The Liquid Muse

By Joy A. Kennelly

Well that was sure funny. I just called United Airlines to find out if my free ticket I received after being bumped allows me to fly to Kauai and just spent 10 minutes with a guy in India just trying to get him to spell it properly and learn where it is in Hawaii.

I was very patient, but finally asked him if he was in India to which he didn't answer. Then I asked to speak to someone else and he said, please give me more time I'll get it. I told him I've given him 10 minutes just to learn how to spell the place and I'll call back.

Totally bummed my ticket doesn't allow me to fly to Hawaii or Alaska. When I called back I asked the girl which place I could fly to get closer and she said LA or San Diego. That made me laugh too because I live in LA. Now to check out South Beach or somewhere in the states. I'm so bummed. I was really looking forward to a free trip to Hawaii!

My parents just returned from there and had a great time. Oh well. I've enjoyed the chocolate covered macadamian nuts they brought back... There's always next year. I just have to use this ticket by 1/3/08. Where to go? Where to go?

What I don't want to do is end up like the woman in the skit at Bay Cities this past Sunday who is single and all excited about going out with her friends, but then they flake so she's sitting home alone talking to her mom. Now don't get me wrong. I love my mom very much, but that just ain't my idea of fun you know.

The whole sermon was entitled "Loneliness Is Real & Difficult - How God Wants Us to Deal With Pain." I'll share more of it later, but right now I want to share a funny embarrassing moment that happened while my friends and I were hanging out up at the Los Feliz Village Holiday Festival (which was very hip and cool and fun by the way. More about that too.)

My friend and her family came because she's totally always up for fun stuff even if last minute. My other friend came spur of the moment too and walked around wearing flip flops freezing his feet off all night as a result. At least I had a jacket to spare that looked unisex.

There was a magician performing tricks for the kids out in front of Starbucks which really entertained them. I wanted to make sure we caught a ride on the double-decker bus and asked them all to come over to wait with me a little ahead of time. We were getting bored standing around so Kirsten asked Winston if he'd mind taking her son back across the street and we'd call them when it came.

I then totally put my foot in my mouth and said, "Run across like you're an illegal alien." When I looked around after saying such a stupid thing we were totally surrounded by Mexicans. My bad. I don't know where I come up with some of this stuff. Fortunately, the young teen-agers got the joke and laughed along with me. I don't think the rest of them spoke English.:)

Maybe it was all the trips down to San Diego for Christmas and Thanksgiving where you see all those yellow signs of people running across the border on the freeway that stuck in my subconscious all these years. I don't know. I do know that this came out during a Groundlings sketch too!

Three of my classmates were given a theme and then had to create a movie poster out of the theme. They were asked to freeze and then the announcer, me, had to turn and make up a movie title on the spot based on their pose.

Well, the group I had to describe was two of my dark haired classmates acting menacing towards the blonde girl who was cowering. I turned around saw them and said to the audience, "Ladies and Gentlemen, you're in for a very special treat with this movie- "Two Mexicans attacking the blonde girl."  Everyone erupted into laughter because it was so off-the-wall and the darker haired people weren't even Mexican. Plus, I think it shocked them a little that I would say such a thing. I know it did me.

Where is this fear or humor about Mexicans coming from? I should be careful, Carlos Mencia might try to steal my material. HA HA

I guess growing up near the beach with only blonde, tanned surfers has had its effect. I hope you realize I'm only teasing and mean no harm. It was very funny at the time, but maybe you had to be there. I apologize if anyone was/is offended. It truly was funny...:)

Back to the festival. So we caught the double-decker bus and when we came to the next stop where Mariachi's were playing (I'm telling you, Hollywood is so much more multi-cultural! LOL) we waited until all the hundreds of people (ok, I may be exaggerating just a bit, but it really seemed like it at the time) got off the top deck to allow us to jump upstairs.

It was really fun riding up there in the cold and then when we got off at the next stop we caught some great shopping. Kirsten bought all kinds of cute, one-of-a-kind unique necklaces as gifts while Winston and I hit the Rosetta Stone Gallery where my friend, Denise, was working. I believe she's the gallery/store owner and chair of the Los Feliz group that put on this whole event. She has some gorgeous Asian pieces among other amazing furniture.

Just to tease Winston I made him pose near some of the Asian work because of his heritage. He has such a great sense of humor he totally went along with it. I think someone more uptight might not have enjoyed my sense of humor, but he's just as wacky as me so it works. We were totally taking the funniest pictures all night long. I'll have to upload them to my myspace page soon.

We all posed near a blow-up Santa on a motorcycle. Then we went to a really cool store called White Trash Charms which had the best decorated Christmas tree set against a very cool assemblage of Andy Warholish art with their store name emblazoned across the soup cans like his famous ones.

They were blaring rockin' Christmas dance music and it was a lot of fun. The hair salon, Transcends, where the blow-up Santa was had the cutest little Boston Terrier named Joey outside entertaining us with stupid dog tricks.

Here's a blurb from citysearch about that place: "For more than two decades Academy Award Nominees, Emmy Nominees, pop divas, producers, directors and internationally known celebrities utter the name of Bob Geevar with a sense of awe when it comes to hair." Who knew we were visiting hair royalty? They had great music and snacky poos too.

Los Feliz is mainly singles so I doubt some of them really were expecting children to visit which was fine. It was so obvious when we finally came upon the puppeteer. He TOTALLY cracked me up because he's playing this extremely depressing music, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth half smoked, while he 'raises" a seemingly dead puppet from the dead. NOT kid friendly, but Kirsten's kids were fascinated.

I made the mistake of saying out loud - I must have your picture smoking because I thought the irony was so funny, but he didn't like the joke and threw it away before I got my camera ready. Just imagine a tall, thin 30ish guy with greasy hair (at least I think so, or else I'm just making it up to make the story sound better) smoking a cigarette wearing a long winter coat standing over a small, thin table playing with a marionette to dreadfully depressing non-Christmasy music. Get the picture? This is the funniest part - billed as an activity for kids! Too funny. He was very good at it, but it was totally inappropriate.

Otherwise, everything was great. Kirsten said all the vendors were very trusting, even taking checks, and very nice to work with. Also very creative gifts. Everyone had great snacks and hot drinks throughout to warm you up. The places that were open were busy and the activities were fun. I think the free Santa pictures were a big hit as was the antique trolley dashing through the streets.

I bumped into one of my former filmmakers which was fun too. I didn't realize it had been so long ago, but he said 2001 was when he participated. We may end up working together which I hope because he's extremely talented if I remember correctly. I think all my filmmakers were to be honest.

In any case, we had a good time that night. I came away with lots of fun ideas for next year too. Great job Los Feliz Business Improvement District! I wonder if we have a similar group in Hermosa? If not, we could use one. But that's another blog at another time.

I'm tired. More details on Jim Mackinga's sermon - which was awesome as usual - later. I will say this though. I don't know why, but all of a sudden we are collecting the most attractive male and female singles I've seen in quite awhile. The 9:30am church service is packed! I've never, ever seen it that crowded before and it's awesome!

I'm going to have start blogging about how fun the 8:00am service is to get more people to come to that one next time. That service really is fun because of it being a smaller, more intimate crowd Jim just lets loose and is crazy funny sometimes. He even went a little over time this week because he got so carried away telling so many stories.

I really miss not being able to sing, but I'm still not 100%. I sound like I've been smoking for years.  Everyone thinks I am so much younger than I am when I have my regular voice because it's so much higher. Oh well, it's fun to be different.

On another note, my friend, Natalie aka The Liquid Muse's house party was fun Sunday too. She just sold her book of non-alcoholic cocktails for pregnant women called Pregitini's (sp? Natalie?) and was celebrating.

She has a real fun site with lots of interesting things for those who imbibe. Check it out and tell her I sent you.

Okay, I really must go. Hope you come again real soon.