And then I'll buy a house there like Diane Lane did

So this is a picture of me and some of the members of my scooter gang cruising through Napa Valley last weekend. Too bad you weren’t there—it was a madcap good time, especially that one part where Squiggy bet Fat Max that he couldn’t pop a wheelie while balancing a plate of baked brie and apples on the, uh...

Okay, so it’s not. The scooter gang remains a mere pipedream, although I think the “homeless” woman working the corner of Sepulveda and Wilshire this afternoon was ready to join. When I got stopped at her intersection today, she was really chatting me up about the scooter. She knew her stuff, too; the way she was talking, I’m pretty sure she has a couple of dirt bikes and some ATVs back at her 5-acre ranch in San Bernadino. You should have seen her shudder when an actual homeless man (i.e., no teeth, talking to himself, dragging two baby strollers full of crap around) crossed her path. By the way, the light at Sepulveda and Wilshire takes forever to change if you’re headed north on Sepulveda.

Back to the picture, I'm not in it and I don’t even know any of these people. And they aren’t in Napa Valley, they’re in TUSCANY. As in Italy. As in, they took the Scooter Bella Tuscany by Vespa tour. That’s right—we can take a tour of the Italian countryside by Vespa, and knowing that, why wouldn’t we?! Has anyone out there in the whole world wide web actually been on this? Some of us would appreciate your input before we carelessly quit our jobs and dump our life’s savings into this trip.

In addition to their gracing us with the greatest idea on earth, I am also grateful to the Scooter Bella folks for boosting my fragile ego with their fine print. You see, after a lot of advertising razzle-dazzle about how fun and easy the Vespas are to ride, their website cautions that you should only sign up “if you are a good driver, athletic and coordinated, and you are used to riding a bicycle.” Some other favorite lines:

• You must be able to control the Vespa and drive it competently. If we feel your driving skills put you and others at risk we reserve the right to take the Vespa away from you.

• [W]e are amazed that some people sign up for a trip of this type with no experience and poor coordination or athletic ability, and then expect to drive a motorized vehicle on public roads in a foreign country. Please do not be one of these people.

I really appreciate their constant comparison of scootering ability to athleticism. More specifically, I really appreciate it today, where for some reason I have been completely worn out by a little furniture refinishing and Christmas shopping. Furniture refinishing and shopping are two of my favorite activities and I have been doing both my entire life (much to Dave and Mary’s chagrin)—so the fact that I am so unexpectedly exhausted thereby has made me worry that I am either getting (a) old, (b) out of shape, or (c) both of the above, each of which is exacerbating the other. Yet I did ride the Vespa for about 30 minutes today without even breaking a sweat, so the answer MUST be (d) none of the above, right?

Who’s up for the Tuscany tour?

It would be easier to summarize the topics NOT covered in this post

Aaah, Christmastime. That's what I think every time I go to the mall these days. Personally, I've never put up a Christmas tree and I don't even own a single ornament. Such is the life of an apartment dweller who can't bear the thought of giving up at least four square feet of precious storage space eleven months of the year for something to be enjoyed only during the remaining month. (Unless, of course, the person reading this is a former VT-er or friend who has given me an ornament in the past, in which case, I have boxes of ornaments, and oh, how I treasure each one.)

But today I was reading Mary's blog, and Mary (my mom) is a big fan of Christmastime. Lately, almost all of her posts have been about it. I'm a little sad that she hasn't yet mentioned my personal favorite Christmas tradition--one that involves just the two of us and, occassionally, lil' bro. Pboy as an accomplice. At Mary's house they have an "attic." Okay, as all of their ceilings are vaulted, they don't have an actual attic; however, they do have a very small, enclosed space on the second floor that the home's architect didn't know what to do with. This space is only accessible through one of those fold-down, attic stairwell hatches in a closet on the first floor, so the Ess fam has always called it "the attic."

Mary keeps her ample supply of Christmas decorations in the attic. I have absolutely no idea how she gets them down each year, but without fail, she will decide to pack them up when I'm still around and I will be enlisted to assist her. As soon as she asks me, she will run into her closet, up the attic stairs, and claim her position as "box arranger" in the attic--which means I'm stuck with the job of climbing that ladderish set of stairs 500 times with an array of heavy yet fragile boxes. Sometimes I will huff my way to the top of the stairs with a box only to have Mary tell me, "No, I don't want that one yet," and so I'll have to take it back down. (And I think I just figured out the childhood trauma that has caused me to shun ownership of Christmas decorations as an adult. Blogging is good for the soul, I tell you.)

But here's where the tradition kicks in--every year, when I've only got one or two boxes left, I hand Mary a box, wait until I see her legs disappear from the hatch (which means she's off "arranging"), fold up the stairs, close the door to the attic, and turn off the attic light--the switch for which is conveniently located in the closet as opposed to the attic itself. Then I go off and do something for three to five minutes, giving the entrapped Mary time to contemplate the true meaning of Christmas in the dark while she carelessly yells her way through her limited air supply. Then I let her out and we go get lunch or something--her treat.

Lately, Mary has been featuring some of the contents of those many boxes on her blog. Her recent post about her Santa collection included a Santa figurine she got at the dollar store. This got me thinking about dollar stores. In the 2.5 years I've been back in LA, I haven't been to a single regular dollar store (although I am always inspired driving by the Warholian window displays of the 99 cents store). Why would anyone go to a regular dollar store when, instead, they could go to a Japanese dollar store? I frequent two Japanese dollar stores in the Los Angeles area; both of them are Marukai 98 stores and are related to the Marukai asian groceries. There is a tiny one downtown in Little Tokyo and a huge one in Gardena. I prefer the one in Gardena because it's bigger, the parking is free, and they play some lovely gangster rap over the PA system.

If you've never been to a Japanese dollar store, then you'll just have to trust me: everything, I mean ziploc bags and post-its and cheap batteries full of everything, looks way cooler in Japanese packaging. But the best part of the store, hands-down, is the kitchen section, where I bought all of this:

These are bento-making supplies. There are the bento boxes themselves, chopsticks and skewers, colorful cupcake-liner things to separate your food with, little bottles shaped like pigs and fishies for holding soy sauce, and rice molds. My friend Wingonwing, purveyor of evil obsessions, first told me about the bento-making craze sweeping American hipsters a few years ago. With the tools above, and about two hours of free time every morning before work, you can make yourself a colorful and healthy lunch that looks something like this:

Or, if drama's your thing:

There are a million bento blogs out there, but these pictures are from the BEST one ever: e-obento.com. It is proof that even blogs look better in Japanese. And no, I have no idea what she's saying.

Unfortunately for me, my bento obsession was short-lived as I don't have two hours every morning to make my lunch and I don't really like fish cakes, and you really need to implement fish cakes to make a good bento. Also, I am sad to report that you need about four bento box lunches to equal the caloric satisfaction of one American fast food meal. So for now, my Japanese dollar store souvenirs are simply consuming closet space that could be used for Christmas decorations. If I ever get a Christmas tree, maybe I'll just hang my little soy sauce bottles all over it.

(Oh, and if you're monitor's resolution is good enough to enable you to read the price tags, you will see that most things at the Japanese dollar store actually cost $1.50. I researched this, and it turns out that the phrase "Japanese dollar store" is the English translation of the 100-yen store that has become so popular in Japan. The exchange rate, however, will not be bound by such semantics.)

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

The time of year when they reveal the new HGTV DreamHome, that is. In case you haven't heard, this year it's in the Florida Keys.

So do we like it or not?

And the winner is...

Me. And everyone else who typed 50,000 words this past month. But what use is a blog if you can't have a "Hooray Me!" moment every now and again?

Game on, Gap. Game. On.

So it turns out that in addition to (1) putting that crazy striped sweater print on everything, (2) taking all sorts of cutesy couple photos of Amy Poehler and G.O.B. (can't you just hear him saying "I've made a terrible mistake" after putting on that pom-pom scarf?), and (3) hawking their overpriced yet adorable Vespa, Gap is also celebrating the holiday shopping season with GapTidings – i.e., 60-second video greeting cards you make and send to those who love you (and advertise Gap and Yahoo! in the process). But wait—if yours is one of the three best GapTidings uploaded by Dec. 12th, you will win your very own Gap Vespa!

For about five minutes this morning, I thought this was my big chance to redeem my now useless film degree—but then I remembered how I don't have anywhere to park the striped Vespa, and how I'm not financially eager to license and insure a third vehicle. Plus, sometimes ignorance really is bliss. I'm sure the winning entries will all be very simple and comical, whereas the noirish GapTiding I had in mind will take no less than three weeks to produce and a budget of about $2000. So I stopped storyboarding and decided to forget the whole GapTidings thing and go with Plan B: dropping by a Gap outlet around President's Day in hopes of locating a Vespa tucked away in the clearance rack. If I find one, it was meant to be…

That said, I know there are future scooter gang members out there with a good GapTiding in them. Let me know if you enter one, and I will vote for you.

One final thing—when did "the Gap" become just "Gap"? Does that mean Yahoo! will one day be Yahoo. (?) Just curious.

Stripes!

So, my month in NaNoWriMo exile is nearing a close, and despite the fact that I lost much time in the early part of November in Vegas and the later part of November in Scottsdale, I think I am going to make it! Hopefully once I submit my 50,000 word crapsterpiece on Friday they will provide me with a cool widget or the like that I can post on my dear neglected blog.

Speaking of the dear neglected blog, I’ve got a new game plan: shorter, sweeter, yet more frequent posts. And with that, I will shut down my natural tendency to make a wordy and tangent-filled intro and just say…

Breaking Vespa news in from the Roommate. Gap is pairing with Vespa for the holidays and you can get this:


Which just so happens to match this:

But if you wear the latter while riding the former, I might just have to kill you. That is, if you don't die first by suffocating on your own shame.

Incidentally, that lil’ Gap number is only an LX 50 and costs $6,000. Needless to say, a regular LX 50 costs about half that amount and my LX 150 was also significantly cheaper. In addition, when your ride is based on a sweater, you risk driving around next Christmas and having everyone look at you and snark, “That’s so last season.”

Still, the Gap Vespa is pretty dang cute and makes a great stocking stuffer. I certainly wouldn’t trade it for movie tickets at a White Elephant party. Who had my name in the family gift exchange again?

Good Intentions

Well, I have been back in Los Angeles for a week now and am only barely getting around to things like cleaning out my refrigerator and/or blogging. As promised, my heavily-backordered new helmet finally arrived in the mail while I was gone. I keep meaning to take pictures of it but, alas, have resorted to stealing the same from the Internet.
The one on the left is an approximation of what my old black helmet looks like; the one on the right is the very new and improved new helmet, courtesy of my sister-in-law as a thank-you for sewing her wedding dress.

I know it seems unbelievable, but I actually think the new helmet is bigger than my old Spaceballs-sized one. This matter was made painfully clear to me last Saturday morning, which began innocently enough when I went down to the parking garage in my apartment and proceeded to painstakingly dust away all the California wildfire ash that had settled on the Vespa during my prolonged absence. Since the Vespa had sat for over a month, I figured I would have to kick-start the thing for the first time and, like most new things in life, I viewed this with simultaneous excitement and trepidation. Alas, it started the normal way—pretty amazing since the thing is running off what appears to be a laptop battery. I was on the Vespa and headed out the garage door for a much-anticipated reunion ride when I remembered the complexities of something that only Angeleno apartment-dwellers can relate to:

Tandem parking.

That’s right—in order to conserve space, our apartment complex has given the Roommate and I one very long parking space to share and we have to park one behind the other. As a result, we are constantly doing the car-switching dance, which sounds similar to the “Neutron Dance,” I know, but is far less energizing. Bless her heart, the Roommate bears the tandem brunt far more than I do—although she either works from home or works late, she still manages a groggy smile at 7:15 every morning when I wake her up to move her car so I can go to work. Yet despite her unending car-switching charity, I was about to thoughtlessly drive off on the Vespa and leave her car parked in by the Jeep on a Saturday morning.

Did I mention how early it was for a Saturday? Sadly, I was still on “trial hours,” and therefore had undertaken the whole Vespa-dusting exercise at around 6:30 a.m., having run out of things to do in my apartment. Rather than wake the Roommate up to switch spots with me just in case she needed to go somewhere very early on a Saturday morning, I decided to just move the Jeep into a spot on the street.

And that’s right about the time when I tried to get into the Jeep while still wearing my new helmet. It didn’t fit.

The good news—the new helmet took a huge hit against the Jeep’s black door frame and walked away without a mark. The even better news—the new helmet apparently prevented the concussion I surely would have experienced had I hit my bare head against the car that hard; I think this bodes well for similar protection in the event that my head ever makes contact with another vehicle and/or asphalt. The best news of all—it was so crazy early on a Saturday morning that nobody was around to witness the sheer “America’s Funniest Home Videos” idiocy of it all.

So, despite the fact that my Vegas trial has put me behind, I am participating in NaNoWriMo 2007 through the end of November. I always intended to do a late-October post encouraging any interested writers out there to join me, but said post never came to fruition. Still, check it out and consider doing it next year. Once it’s over, I’ll rejoin the living and kindly post on all your blogs again, which I have been reading.