Tomorrow Afternoon at 3:30

Tomorrow afternoon at 3:30, I'll be doing one of the following:

A) Going to see the Dark Knight
B) Flopping around on a "Slip and Slide".
C) Cutting my hair off
D) Going home to Los Angeles

Which one do you think I'm doing?

As much as I'd like to do all four of those things tomorrow afternoon, and buy a winning lottery ticket on top of it all, alas, only ONE of those fabulous choices will actually be going down.

If you guessed "D" -- One more week, folks. One more week and I'll be back in my beloved El-Ay.

If you guessed "A" -- Nope, because I haven't stooped to going by myself yet. I'm waiting for my sister to stop saying, "It looks too "dark" and scary." Um, yeah, because it's called the "Dark Knight", m'dear.

If you guessed "B" -- Nope, that was yesterday. Or rather, I was trying to flop onto the Slip and Slide, but I found I just could not throw my body to the ground like you're supposed to. I'm sorry, but a bit of plastic with some water running on it doesn't scream to me, "Flop onto me, please!"

So that leaves, cough, option "C" on the table.

I still can't believe it myself, but I do indeed have an appointment to get my hair cut off tomorrow. Courage is needed because as I type, I'm sort of I'm in the midst of a freak out over it. I need to relax and try to convince myself that it's just hair. It'll grow back.

How much hair am I getting cut off?

I'm not really sure. But after a year of growing out my relaxed-to-within-an-inch-of-it's-life hair, all the scraggly, bone-straight ends have got to go. My natural hair is like four times thicker and healthier. I also keep getting these really bad tangles where my kinky/curly natural hair meets the straight hair, and I can't stand it anymore.

My hair when it's not curly comes halfway down my back. But my natural hair is maybe only six inches long. Maybe longer. I'm not sure. But who knows what I'll be left with at 4:30 tomorrow.

Wow, this time tomorrow night, for the first time in my entire adult life, I'm going to have short hair.

Short
NAPPY
hair.

Short + Nappy.
Nappy + Short.

It's a combo that our culture teaches black women to hate and despise from the time that we're small. We're taught to run from Short + Nappy, not towards it. What I'm undertaking tomorrow is the beauty equivalent of me trying to throw my body onto a Slip and Slide.

I have no idea what I'm going to look like when I come out of the salon. EEK!

Wondering what brought this decision on?. Well, I've been thinking about cutting the relaxed ends for several months now, and I never summoned up the courage. Plus there is always someone there to say, "Don't cut your hair. You won't look good with short hair." Or folks wanna know what I'm going to do with it after I cut it off. "You're not going to just wear it out in public like that, are you?"

Sigh.

This morning when I decided to get it cut, there was so much going on, so much reminding me that I really have to seize the day. I have to be fearless and just take the plunge. And besides, my sister tells me that if it looks totally crazy, she'll get someone she knows to hook me up with a weave.

Gosh, me plus a weave? Then I'd really be ready for my return to LA!

Wish me luck!

The Long and Short of My Hair

It's almost midnight on a rainy night in LA. Twenty minutes ago I had a pair of scissors in my hand. I was thisclose to snipping off all my hair.

But I chickened out.

I have a lot of fear about cutting all my hair off and as the days continue to fly by, I've been reflecting a lot about what's behind this fear. I know folks will say that it's just hair and it'll grow back, but when you're a black woman in America, such a laissez faire attitude toward hair is not so easy to have.

I've found that getting to a place of comfortability with my hair is a little like unpeeling the layers of an onion. Like dealing with an onion, peeling back the layers of hair can also cause a few tears. It makes me think about the insidiously racist messages about beauty that black women, including yours truly, receive.

One of the most recent layers I unpeeled was chemical straightening (also called "relaxers" in case you didn't know.) Over the years I've gone back and forth with relaxers. In high school and college I used them, but didn't have the money for the upkeep so my hair didn't always look so hot. Post graduation/post life in China, I stopped straightening. --I need to learn how to use the scan function on my printer so you all can see some photos of how big my hair was after a couple of years of growing out all the straightened ends. I think it stood a good six inches horizontally off my head. I'm sure it would've been bigger, but since my hair was also pretty long, the weight of it pulled all the bigness down a bit. I'm not kidding. It was seriously the biggest, awesomest hair ever.

About four years ago I started straightening it again, mostly because I felt pressure to seem more "professional". It's hard to sit in a meeting with a principal or district official when you feel like you have the biggest, most unprofessional hair ever. Whether the pressure was real or a result of my own psychosis is certainly a fair game question, but let me just point out that we do live in a world where last fall, a Glamour Magazine editor told a group of lawyers the following:

"First slide up: an African American woman sporting an Afro. A real no-no, announced the 'Glamour' editor to the 40 or so lawyers in the room. As for dreadlocks: How truly dreadful! The style maven said it was 'shocking' that some people still think it 'appropriate' to wear those hairstyles at the office. 'No offense,' she sniffed, but those 'political' hairstyles really have to go."

Of course, Glamour did whatever damage control they needed to do at the time. But, I'm still waiting to see the pages of their magazine really reflect the diversity of black hairstyles. Actually, to take it a step further, I'm still waiting to see the models in the magazine reflect some true diversity, period. But maybe I'm somehow skipping over all the pages with black, Latina and Asian models.

Anyway, I was increasingly dissatisfied with straightening my hair. Every time I went to get my hair done, it took like five hours. It was also expensive, both in terms of the salon cost as well as styling products/conditioners. I needed all the conditioners and styling products because the more straightening and flat ironing you do, the more damaged your hair becomes. It's like a vicious cycle because it takes more and more effort to make it look decent.

I'd been considering going back to natural for about a year because I was sick of the straight hair and how flat and boring it was. The final straw was last July when I transitioned out of my job. About a week after I left, I went to get the roots of my relaxed hair touched up. My stylist was super busy chatting about her daughter. I was exhausted and not paying attention to any of it. Before I knew it, she ran the chemicals through not just my roots but through my whole head of hair. This is SUCH a no-no, not to mention it's never taken too much to straighten my hair in the first place. This second application of chemicals was a total disaster. My hair felt rough, it would not hold any kind of curl and it looked like straw.

I vowed to never go back to her again and then spent the summer dousing my hair in all sorts of deep conditioning treatments and avoiding my flat iron unless absolutely necessary. I figured the long term solution was to find a new stylist, but the thought of doing such a thing was really overwhelming. Most black women have the nightmare stories about the stylist everybody else swore was awesome and then they walk outta there half bald! AAGH! It's really hard to find someone you can trust.

I also didn't want anybody I needed to drive an hour through traffic to go see. I didn't want anybody's cousin Re-Re who did hair in her garage. And as much as I loved Dominican stylists in NYC, I didn't want to pay the Dominican stylist who'd opened not too far from me the extortion-type rates they were charging. So, I wore a lot of hats.

It wasn't till after school started last September and some issues with my eldest son feeling confident about his blackness emerged that I started really reflecting on how straightening my hair was sending my boys the wrong message. How could I tell them to be proud of their skin and hair when I was constantly chemically altering mine? And again, it's not like changing from flats to heels. Whether we like it or not, black hair is politicized. Because there's so much baggage tied to our hair, I felt like I was going along with the societal message that a woman of African descent is not as attractive if her hair is not long and straight.

I thought about how my son would see billboards of Beyonce up in Hollywood and he'd always comment that he liked her hair. I started explaining how it wasn't really her hair, that it was a lace-front wig. He'd look at me like I was crazy, and to tell you the truth, it made me feel a little crazy to be explaining it all to him. I thought about how I didn't want him to turn into one of those guys that only likes long, straight hair, or, even worse, one of those brothers that proudly proclaims that he only dates girls with light skin and long hair. I think if I ever heard my son say that, I'd throw up. So, I realized he needed to see a role model of natural hair in the woman he most closely identifies with. And that would be me.

In the past, growing out my hair from a relaxer wasn't such a big deal because I'd had stylists that didn't leave chemicals on too long or run them through my hair twice. So the difference between my natural hair and the straightened hair wasn't as noticeable. I'd rinse it with water in the morning, throw some leave-in conditioner and hair gel in it and run out the door. It would all curl up nicely. But this time though, it's really noticeable because my hair is so straight.

Since the end of October, my solution has been to straw set my hair. I wrote about all of that here so I won't rehash it. But once every week, I roll all my hair on straws and then dry it. The whole process takes about two and a half hours to do, but compared to the five hours I was spending dying in a salon plus daily styling, it's totally worth it.

However, I've been thinking for awhile now that I need to peel another layer off the hair onion. I need to just cut off all the over-processed, straightened ends and only have my own natural hair. I don't like being tied to a straw set but without it, the straightened part of my hair looks horrible. If my hair is shorter, I can just rinse it and go. But, I've never had short hair in my entire life. The shortest my hair has ever been is chin-length and I hated it.

I'm so afraid to cut it because I'm worried I'm going to look awful with a six-inch 'fro on my head. I do have a measure of vanity in my bones and, in case you didn't notice, I live in Los Angeles, the vanity capital of the world. I'm not trying to look like a buster.

Then I think about all those messages we women get about long hair and how all that feels like it's doubled for black women. I question everything, so I wonder, am I still perpetuating this racist insanity of aspects of a black woman's worth being tied to long, straight hair? Should I just take the plunge and chop it off? I know some of you have taken that step, so I'd especially love to hear you weigh in on this.

I know that with each layer of societal brainwashing that's removed, I get closer to my true self. I'm just not sure if I'm ready to give it a go with the scissors.

Love and Hate in Los Angeles

Sometimes it's easy to hate Los Angeles.

There are too many idiots driving SUVs with off-road capability. This is all well and good except that these people consider driving next to a bus on Wilshire Blvd a major car maneuvering event.

When it rains everyone decides to crash into everybody else. I mean, the last rainstorm, we had about 280 car crashes in TWELVE hours. As I listen to rain falling outside on this stormy night, I know that somebody is crazily tail-gaiting some slow but safe driver. And then crazy'll rear-end the safe driver and send both their insurance rates through the roof.

Traffic and cars. So cliche, right? Well here's another one for you: We're the porn capital of the world.

If you find yourself wondering why Blu-ray won over HD-DVD, well wonder no more! The porn industry decided a year ago that they were only doing Blu-ray, the same way they chose VHS over higher-quality BETA years ago. Mmm hmm.

And you thought VHS got chosen because it had less letters than BETA. Sorry to disillusion you.

It goes without saying that we have bad schools. Of course, if you live in any city in this country, chances are the public schools aren't that great. But did you know that the Los Angeles Unified School District spent millions for a new payroll system that's SO messed up that in October my son's teacher got a paycheck in the amount of...drum roll please...$10 whole dollars!

Our mayor? Well, last fall it came out that Mr. Villaraigosa cheated on his wife with a Telemundo reporter. Needless to say, the wife left him and people aren't so sure he should run for governor anymore. Now he's not even with the reporter, leaving yours truly to wonder if a few nights of hot sex were worth it?

Ugh. Let's just list it out, a few other dreaded LA things:

-Gangs.
-Homeless Capital of America.
-Annoying Westsiders slumming on the Eastside, which isn't really all that far east but they're too scared of Latinos to head into Boyle Heights or East LA.
-Housing prices through the roof.
-Overpriced valet parking.
-Slimy Hollywood types that firmly believe in the casting couch.
-Breast implants, extreme tooth whitening and orangish tans.
-Celebrities terrorizing the streets of Hollywood, WeHo, the Sunset Strip, general Beverly Hills area...basically all the places TMZ puts live webcams.

Yes, if I think about all that too much, I'm not too fond of this city.

But today, I'm not thinking about that. In fact, after today, I find myself more in love with Los Angeles than ever.

Why? Well, we had a break in our torrential downpours this afternoon so I went for a long walk through the hills around my house. I walked for at least an hour. Maybe two. I don't know since I don't wear a watch on these expeditions.

The time flies because I love my neighborhood. And I love to walk in my neighborhood.

This isn't a neighborhood thrown up overnight, Las Vegas style. Nope, there's no urban subdivision cookie cutter tract housing over here.

Instead, every house, every building is unique. A Spanish style apartment building next to a a Craftsman home, next to a very modern glass and concrete structure.

And it all works. It works because as developed as this city is, every once in awhile there's a section that looks like a wilderness. Who would have thought that nature would even begin to reclaim the cars left parked too long?

I live in a very hilly section of Los Angeles, so hilly that many of the streets in my neighborhood have 15% grades, which are challenging to walk up.

As butt blasting as climbing these hills can be, if I go a bit east to Echo Park, I can try to walk up the steepest street in all of California, Fargo Street with it's 33% grade. I haven't tried climbing Fargo Street yet, but one day soon I will.

But I don't walk just for the exercise.

I walk because it's beautiful and I want to drink that beauty in. I want to create a lifetime of memories, visions that will forever resonate in my head and my heart in case, by some strange twist of fate, I go blind in the future.

I can go outside any day of the year and see bushes blooming with flowers, hummingbirds sucking nectar from vibrant blossoms.

I see flowers like these every day, but so rarely do I stop and pick some. Today though, I just couldn't resist.

To any observer I must have looked bizarre, holding a bunch of flowers, leaning against a light pole, watching the world. But I was captivated by a thin river of rainwater running down the hill. It was the sort of thing I would have noticed as a small child, the sort of thing I've forgotten to "see" as an adult.

Hours later, I'm still thinking about where the flowing water was coming from since it was no longer raining.

I walked a bit more and saw an old man sitting out on a plant-covered balcony of a Spanish style duplex. A young woman was cutting his completely white hair. The distant traffic noises faded away as I listened to him complaining that she was cutting it too short. She only smiled affectionately down at his head and answered, "Yes, Papa."

I walked some more and eventually went to my neighborhood park. As I sat and read my copy of LA Weekly, I listened to one mother scold her children in French. Another in Spanish.

I looked around me and I thought about the racial diversity in this city. More Persians than any other place except Iran. More Koreans than anywhere outside Korea. More Armenians than any place besides Armenia. The most Thai people outside of Thailand.

And believe me, I don't think this diversity's a good thing only because of all the deliciously amazing food that those culture bring to the table.

No, it gets me excited because if we can achieve racial unity in this city, what a model we'd be for the rest of this crazy world.

Pull back the veil and there's a humanity to Los Angeles. That humanity has nothing to do with Hollywood or the vain imaginings the entertainment industry throws our way.

Yes, these are the things that make me fall in love with Los Angeles all over again. What about you? What makes you love or hate the city you call home?

A Sunset For Resolutions

I don't usually make new year's resolutions.

No, I've never been one to officially decide on January 1st that, for example, I'm going to try to eat less sugar, learn how to be a better cook, learn how to swim, and write every day. Instead, these are the things I think about year-round.

I've figured it's better to keep generating things I want to accomplish as the year goes on instead of just waiting for New Year's Day. I try to bring myself to account and think about what I need to do differently in my life every day.

Sometimes I am successful at this endeavor of bringing myself to account. Often, I am not.

Yesterday, something happened that made me change my mind about New Year's Resolutions.

I took this photo in Griffith Park, home of the Hollywood Sign. I'd been in the park with my sons and my husband for most of the afternoon, first at the pony rides, then at the zoo where, thankfully, we didn't see any animals trying to escape and kill someone.

We left the park around 5 PM and were driving west on Los Feliz Boulevard when suddenly we rounded a curve and the most beautiful sunset was blazing through the sky.

On impulse, I immediately made a right turn on Vermont Avenue and followed the twisting road to the top of the mountain at the Griffith Park Observatory. It was too crowded to park at the Observatory and watch the sun dip below the horizon, so I kept driving west along the winding Mount Lee road, finally stopping when I saw the view in the picture.

The image doesn't fully capture what I saw, but was the kind of sunset that makes lovers kiss, makes even the hardest hearted among us momentarily thaw. And I decided right then, on New Year's Day, that I resolve to see more sunsets like this. This year, I resolve to take the time to stop what I'm doing and notice the beauty that's all around me and thank God for it. I don't want to take it for granted anymore.

So I don't know how your first day of 2008 was but I am sharing this wish, this resolution, whatever you want to call it, with you. This year, I hope we all see and give thanks for the beauty around us.

The Photoshop Experiment

I'm a mere three weeks away from being ejected from the desirable 18-34 marketing group.

Yes, I'm approaching the age where any magazine will suggest that I slather myself with $60 face creams, have some laser resurfacing done and consider using some "preventative" botox. Or I could just use my very amateur Photoshop skills and tweak a few things here and there.

According to our beauty standards, what needs tweaking?

To be quite frank, unlike Jennifer Love Hewitt, I am not a size two. Or a four. Or a six...unless I'm shopping at Old Navy. But you can't see that in this picture.

So, what can you see?

Well, I have lines under my eyes. Sure, you have some lines as well. But when's the last time you saw lines like yours and mine on a magazine cover? How about the dark circles? And while I'm on the eye area, my eyebrows are in dire need of waxing.

I have freckles under my eyes. Or are those really age spots? The results of sun damage?

Okay, let's move on to the forehead. See those two grooves on my forehead maybe an inch down from my hairline? Those are two scars from a severe childhood bout of chicken pox. For some reason, they seem deeper than ever these days.

Come to think of it, the skin on my forehead is overall pretty rough. It must be the effect of the LA sun. Plus, I can see the little scar left from when my then three year-old threw a Batman at me in a fit of rage earlier this fall.

Hmm. Those laugh lines are starting to look a little deeper than they did before.

My hair is graying, dulling. Losing it's lustre. And someone should have told me to touch up the lipstick.

Have you looked at yourself lately and done this similar self-analysis? It's dangerous, because really, where does it stop?

I've only used Photoshop once before and with my very limited skill level, I can barely erase the wrinkles, color my hair, and get rid of my chicken pox scars and freckles. And I "softened" one of the laugh lines on the right side of my face. I should have done the left as well just to balance it out, but by then I was feeling a little nauseous from all the self-inflicted tweaking.

Imagine what a professional, someone who regularly tweaks the likes of a Julia Roberts or a Halle Berry could do with me?

Just to twist the knife a bit deeper though, I asked my oblivious son and husband what they thought about these two pictures.

"Which one do you like better?"

Guess which one they all chose? My eldest even pointed to the second one and said, "You look ALOT prettier in this one, Mommy."

I don't know why I got irritated when all three of them chose the second picture. Really, isn't that what we all do? Sure, Pam Anderson sans makeup and photo editing is a scary thing. But if I didn't know otherwise, would I feel so horrified when I see it? How must it feel for celebrities to see professionally Photoshopped pictures of themselves plastered all over magazines and know that they really don't look like that?

They are not that thin. Their skin and hair is not that perfect. And they're getting Photoshopped after having had laser skin resurfacing, botox, and professionally applied makeup. No wonder they become drug addicts and alcoholics. They wake up every morning having to change who they really are, knowing what they are presenting is a lie.

They wake up knowing that if we don't see them in all their "perfection", they will get ripped apart for looking...human.

At the end of it all, I'll take the version of me with the two chicken pox craters in my forehead. That's who I've known all my life. I think I like her better.

Straw Hair

It's Saturday night again. Wasn't I just here a week ago? Funny how it came back around so quickly.

I spent my day at a Los Angeles Unified School District parent leadership training. I'm now president of the School Site Council at my kids' school. I got myself elected to pretty much every other school committee as well.

That means that today I was supposed to be learning about how to be a member of all these committees. That happened somewhat, but what I really came away knowing for sure is that there are some VERY angry parents in this school district. Every time the facilitators presented some information, they'd ask if we had any questions. Without fail, a parent would stand up and launch into a tirade about all the illegal (or legal and wack) stuff some principal is trying to pull.

I get their issues. I truly do. But after two hours of this, I was mentally exhausted. After four hours, my goodie-goodie self was texting my sister and socializing with the lady sitting next to me. After six hours, I felt like bumming a cigarette off of someone and taking up smoking just so I'd have a reason to go outside.

This marvelous day was capped off with me winning a door prize that came wrapped in Star of David wrapping paper. It was a pair of 99 Cent Store candlesticks. Uh huh.

And now I'm home and determined that this will not, I repeat, NOT be another Saturday night of laughing at my email spam. Seriously, it can't be. Especially after I spent Friday night curling my hair up with straws.

Yes, I said straws.

This was yours truly at around 1 am last night.

Yeah, for the uninformed, that's called a "straw set". And I hope it's obvious it's called this because those are drinking straws up in my hair. 72 drinking straws to be exact.

It took me about an hour to put them all in. Then I sat around for eons waiting for my hair to dry. I watched two movies, wrote a friend and by 1:30 in the morning, it still wasn't all dry. The gifted-child in me figured I'd just prop a whole bunch of pillows up and sleep sitting up, like if I was on an airplane.

That worked for awhile. But by 3:30, I finally gave in and laid down on those straws. Ouch! The uncomfortable things we women do for beauty! Believe me, I was so grateful my hair was dry when I got up two hours later.

I'll confess, this straw thing was an impulsive, spur of the moment experiment but I really like it. It was interesting though how today while I was busy socializing during a session, the lady next to me was all, "Girl, your hair is too cute! Where'd you get it done?"

"Um, I did it myself," I replied.

"You did it yourself?" she asked in disbelief.

Her mouth fell open while I nodded proudly and replied, "Yeah, I learned from a YouTube video.

"What! You learned how to sew in some weave from a YouTube video?"

We had about 30 seconds of back and forth, with me saying, "No, really, it's not a weave! It's my hair!" and her saying, "Stop frontin'! That has got to be a weave!"

I thought I was gonna have to let her pull my hair to prove to her that it wasn't a weave, but she finally believed me.

This led to a discussion about hair and black women in general. I told her about my recent decision to not chemically straighten my hair anymore. You can read all about it in an article I wrote about a month ago for Anti-Racist Parent. But in a nutshell, it's because I no longer feel I can teach my kids to be proud of their blackness if I'm changing an inherent part of my black identity, my hair.

She shared how brave she thought I was for this and confessed, "'I can't stand when those naps start growing out of my head! They're so..." She paused and sighed, searching for the right word. And then it finally came.

"Ugly."

She's not alone in feeling this way. Black women are trained to do battle with and hate their hair. Most black women in this country have no idea what the natural texture of their hair feels like. At least that's not the case for me because I've gone back and forth between straightening and not straightening for years.

If you're not black, no one cares if you decide you don't want to straighten your hair to within an inch of it's life, till it feels like straw. But if you are black, wearing your natural hair can become an ideological and political statement. And it's a fashion "don't" according to a (now former) Glamour magazine editor.

But, I'm really feeling my "don't" hair so I'm going to keep rolling with it. In fact, I think I'll sit here and pull on my springy curls while I watch the movie classic, "Network" on PBS. It's a very appropriate Saturday night choice since as far as the haterade on black women's hair, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

Beauty Is Skin Deep

Dove has a new marketing campaign to try to get you to buy their products bring awareness about the beauty industry. It's a short film called "Onslaught" and it's about body image and self esteem for girls. I guess I shouldn't knock it because they don't have to do it at all and it does make you think.

But, it's making me think about things that I'm sure they didn't intend.




First, 95% of the images in it are of white women. So essentially, self-esteem is not for me. Yes, I think this movie is telling me that the self-esteem of black, Latino and Asian women pales in importance next to the self-esteem of our Caucasian sisters. Because you know, culturally, we are okay being a bigger size and we don't get eating disorders. Our little girls might pick the blond haired, blue-eyed baby doll as the most beautiful, but really, it's the little red-headed white girl with the cute freckles that we have to be worried about. That little red-headed girl 's gonna die under the onslaught of images that tell her that she's not dark enough, her hair isn't nappy enough, and her booty isn't round enough. Poor thang!

Gosh, it's gotta be hard for the little red-head girl to see women who look like her on the covers of every major fashion magazine every single month, especially when they're all telling her she's not good enough. And, oh no! She might find out that Lindsay Lohan has red hair and freckles in real life and have a panic attack over it. Horrors!

I guess black, Latino and Asian women shouldn't care about whether most of the media images of us are primarily of lighter skinned women. Last time I checked, I haven't seen any ads featuring really short, dark descendants of Aztecs...or of those really dark Cantonese folks...or those really dark sista's from the deep South. Hmm...I wonder why that could be.

Maybe it's because Unilever, the parent company of Dove, is too busy promoting SKIN LIGHTENERS around the world to women who aren't white. At the end of the Dove film, there's a slow-mo shot of a bunch of girls, and that's where they throw the diversity in, along with the tag line, "Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does." Just make sure to skip the talk about how skin lighteners are racist, right?

Feel like throwing up this morning? Well watch this:


Yes, make sure to tell your daughters that if they're lighter-skinned, their career is going to be made! And they're gonna get the hot guy too!

Yes, lighter skin. That's all we need for higher self-esteem.

Hanging Out With Well-Read, Beautiful People

Since I'm out in Indiana, maybe I should be putting up the picture of me hanging out in a cornfield, but instead, here's me and my more lovely accomplice, my mom.

My mom is one of the most avid readers I know and has one of the best collections of books I've ever had the privilege of seeing. So, it's natural that we'd go and hang out in a bookstore, especially one where I can simultaneously acquire crack a soy chai with a shot of sugar free vanilla. She's also very beautiful so, I'm telling you, I had to beat the guys off of her!

Today we're taking a day-trip to a place called Amish Acres. It's a 125 year old Amish homestead. I can't think of anyplace more different than Los Angeles, so I'm really excited. We even get to go on a covered wagon ride! Clearly, it doesn't take much to get me excited, huh?

Anyway, I hope you are also spending your last day of August with well-read, beautiful people.

Dear Miss USA: Getting Up IS Hard To Do

Dear Miss USA,

Aren't you glad the Miss Universe pageant is over? After your ordeal of falling on stage on Monday night, in front of a TV audience of a billion people, how are you doing?

Tell me what happened. Were your heels too high? Did you step on your dress? Was it the music? Personally, I love that Sean Paul/Keyshia Cole song, don't you? I thought it was great that you all got to strut your stuff to it during the evening gown competition. But, I wouldn't blame you if you suddenly started thinking of Sean Paul and just lost your balance, because, well, he's pretty fly.

I'm sorry, don't cry. I know, I'm bringing up painful memories. And folks are definitely making some mean and unnecessary comments about you. Who knew that the footage of your falling would be such a hit on YouTube? But, don't worry. In case it feels like the end, I am proof that you can fall on stage and still be a success in life.

In fourth grade, I was in a play called "A Keg of Gunpowder". I wasn't the leading lady or even in a supporting role of that amazing, revolutionary war tale. In fact, I might have only had two or three lines. But, I had to dance on stage. While I was dancing, I stepped on my floor-length costume and BAM! Down I went.

I know, a billion people weren't watching me do it. And I wasn't getting stared at by Nina Garcia and the other "judges". But I did have a very stern nun named Sister Paula hissing at me from the side of the stage, "Get up! Get up! NOW!"

What she meant was, "Get up before I kill you because you're ruining the play!" Yes, Sister Paula was a fierce woman, one of those old-school teachers who believed that humiliation helps the soul grow character. I think she liked to make kids cry just so she could spit out her famously stinging setdown, "Stop crying those baby alligator tears."

The third day of school in her class, we had a written assignment due. She held mine up in front of the class. "Do you know how to write?"

From her tone, I knew something was wrong. I was scared to death, but I answered, "Yes,". Not a pop-my-neck-with-sass kind of yes. Not a bored sighing kind of yes. It was definitely a meek mouse yes.

She pounced immediately. "No, you do not. This," she shook my paper in my face, "is not cursive. This is printing. Printing is not writing." She then proceeded to rip my paper up and throw it in the trash, promising that if I didn't learn how to properly write in cursive, I wouldn't make it out of the fourth grade.

So you can imagine how well my tripping on the long skirt of my costume went over with Sister Paula. You can imagine how, when I tumbled forward into the props, knocking them all over the place, I was convinced she was going to emerge from the eaves to box my ears.

At least you had the presence of mind to get right back up, strut your stuff and smile, despite the boos from that rude crowd. I don't even think there was a Sister Paula type there to yell at you and tell you to get up! Given your backbone, I'm sure you'll go on to be a success in the world and no one will even remember this little incident after the next pop-culture "news" story hits the Internet.

In fact, since your little mishap seems to have brought out quite a few antagonistic comments (see the comments on the YouTube footage) between Mexicans and Americans, maybe you can add some Mexican/American unity efforts to your Miss USA platform. See, some good could come out of this after all.

If you need a shoulder to cry on, just let me know.

Warmly,

Los Angelista

I Know I Look Good...But Not THAT Good!

From the title of this post, you can clearly discern that my ego is slightly out of control. It's just that I can finally add the following to my future obituary:

"So beautiful, she once caused a fender bender on the corner of 89th and Hoover"

Yes, that's right.

I was standing on the corner, waiting to cross Hoover Street so I could get in my car and head back to my office. I'm looking both ways as any good jaywalking pedestrian should. A couple of cars drive by, and then I see a very nice white car with tricked out rims crossing through the Manchester/Hoover intersection a dozen or so yards north of me. The driver's side window's down. R.Kelly's "I'm A Flirt" is blasting. Brotherman is bobbing his head to the beat...till he sees me and starts hanging out the window, hollering at me.

"Hey! Hey, girl!"

Do men really think women are going to respond to this? I know I've posed this question before, but I just don't get it! Do men seriously think a sista's going to just leap off the curb in response?

"Oh baby! I've been waiting my whole life for you to drive by and holler at me!" Yeah, right.

To be fair to our driving friend, I probably did seem to be some sort of ethereal vision of loveliness. I might have hollered at me too! After all, we each have those days where we think we look absolutely amazing.

In fact, I felt so fly, I was having one of those, "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" kinds of days. It must have been the dress...

Ok, I'll stop trippin'. Let's face it, even if I had three hairy warts on the middle of my forehead and was missing my front teeth, some man somewhere would take it upon himself to holler out his car window.

I'm not interested. At all. Ever. So, I ignored him. No smile. No nod of acknowledgement. Nothing.

He did not give up.

Instead, this fool started leaning out the window a little more. And as his car moved forward, in order to maintain eye contact, he had to turn his head and body in order to look back at me. He started to yell, "Hey Now! Shaaa--"

I'll never know what gems of wisdom were going to be shouted my way because the next thing I heard and saw was...

CRASH!

Oops. Someone forgot the importance of keeping your eyes on the road at all times in case traffic slows or stops.

I have no idea why the car in front of Mr. Crashtastic slowed down. Believe me, I didn't stick around to witness the fender bender fall-out. I made a beeline across the street, jumped into my car, did a u-turn and zoomed away.

Just think, if this man had just chosen to be respectful and keep his eyes on the road, his front bumper might have been spared. And the back of the car he hit? Even though he wasn't going that fast, it was pretty smashed.

Clearly, the moral of this story is, even if the most beautiful girl in the world is waiting to cross the street, just remember that car insurance is expensive in California and people like to sue out here.

The other driver is probably already consulting a lawyer. "Ow! My neck! I think I have whiplash!"

Fellas, keep your eyes on the road! Please, no more hollering out your car windows for the rest of 2007!