Lush Bath Bombs

Or, A Good Bath Spoiled

For Christmas a friend of mine gave me a selection of Lush Bath Bombs; she felt bad that her last birthday gift to me bombed and was hoping to make amends, knowing that I loves me some bath.  Well, I used to at my old apartment, which had a huge bathtub that easily swallowed my 6' 2" frame.  The apartment that I have lived in for the last 14 years or so was built in the 50's and has one of those teacup-sized bathtubs that make me look like Rock Hudson in a Doris Day movie.  One of these days, if Lotto winnings ever come across or I write that 8 figure screenplay, I plan on getting a lap pool with endless hot water and hot and cold running Corso Como.  But I still do love my bath, and for New Years I looked forward to a nice hot bath and a glass of champagne.  My inner Joan Crawford would be released.

What I didn't know is that these bath bombs come with stuff in them.  Lots of stuff.  The blue one I chose had bits of dried leaves, small plastic cutouts and glitter.

Yes, glitter.

Since I don't have a personal maid and a 24 hour on-call plumber to snake the bits of Lush detritus from my pipes, I tried to strain out most of the stuff.  I personally don't find attacking ones ablutions with a tea strainer adds to the restful, contemplative portion of our evenings program.  I can't even tell you whether the stuff was decent bath goo- by the time I had managed to skim most of it off my hands and forearms were covered by so much glitter that it took a fair amount of Kiehls grapefruit scrub and a brush to get rid of it.  Needless to say, By that time I didn't want to actually immerse the rest of me in it.  Down the drain went the whole lurid cobalt mess, and I spent another half hour scouring the dregs out of my tub.  Apparently according to the website if one doesn't want the "surprise" of the various bits of fluff, one should enrobe the whole mess in a nylon before you bathe.  Like most gay men and contrary to popular belief, I don't have a pair of panty hose available to rein in the Pamela Anderson portions of the whole affair, and the hose will not contain the hugely over-concentrated coloring, which if you are like me (and Joan) you will be bleaching out of your tub the instant you step out. 

They do smell kind of nice, which led me to a use for them.  I threw one into the toilet.  I get the benefit of the nice scent without having to worry that I'm going to have to pick lavender lint or glitter out of my netherlands for the next day or so.

I sent my friend a thank-you note; I know she meant well and honestly wanted to please (and thanks be, never reads blogs; don't tell her, k?).  Maybe there are other things in their line that work better; with me, the whole trendy Westside stripper-pole Yogalatese esthetic of these bombs bombed.

Photo from Lush.com

Happy New Year!

As I wrote earlier, I am not big on going out to New Years celebrations. Since I have a cold this year I can blame that. That, and the fact that it's going to be about 12 degrees here. Okay, it will be in the 50's but that's still fairly whinge-worthy when you have a cold. So I will be feting out 2007 with John Waters movies and a nice hot bath. Pansy goes geriatric for 2008!

I hope all of my devoted readers (both of you :-) ) one of you have a happy and prosperous 2008!

Photo from Denver's Channel 7 of Sydney harbour's 2008 fireworks. Ain't the internets grand?

H a p p y ....H o l i d a y s !

A friend of mine sent this picture to me and I couldn't resist making it my holiday e-card. Believe it or not it's a real house in the very tony, old-money and WASPy area of Los Angeles called Hancock Park. Only the snow and the Santas are seasonal decorations, the rest is permanent. The ultra-classy manse is owned by a record producer and is one of the major attractions of the neighborhood.

Whining in a Winter Wonderland...

The holidays are coming up like a runaway train. Are you feeling a bit like you're stuck on the tracks?

It's a wet Tuesday here in the City of the Angels, chilly and grey with that patented LA light drizzle of rain that guarantees that SUV's will go merrily sailing sideways through intersections, their terrified drivers clutching the wheel, finally paying attention to the now 360 degree view of the road rather than the cell phone, latte or the crackberry.

I guess I am having a Scrooge moment.

There was a Nor'Easter hitting the East this week, dumping tons of the white stuff and looking disgustingly picturesque. Mind you, after 20 years in the sunny Hills of Beverly, I still have vivid memories of actually having to live with all that snow- not only having to shovel it or walking (and you have to learn how to walk in it) around wearing half your closet to keep, well, alive from your house to the grocery store, which will invariably be about the same temperature inside as your average bread oven, meaning that you will work up a sweat just in time to get back out in that arctic chill. No, I mean the later part of it, the part that they never take pictures of where the snowbanks turn to greyish black slush and you think that spring might just never come.

Our Winters might look like a rather drab version of Autumn in other areas, but I can at least look at the snowcapped peaks of the distant mountains from the comfort and warmth of the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Palm Drive while wearing a light sweater. Although I perhaps can't really work up the appropriate level of Christmas Spirit without the possibility of going sledding, I wouldn't change that cashmere-clad fact for the world...

The future of TV

I know, everyone always says that they know it, blah, blah, blah. But I have seen the future, and it's hulu! hulu is this new service (now in beta, you can sign up and they will invite you when they're ready for more subscribers) that show television shows online, with decent quality that you can watch on your computer whenever you want it. Right now the selection is limited, but there's the first season of "Buffy" and the first seasons of "Night Gallery" (minus the Pilot with Spielberg directing Joan Crawford, more's the pity) and "Lou Grant" among others. You can watch full screen, and while there are commercials, there are only one every 10-15 minutes, with a handy timer to let you know how long they will run.

I'm sure that there will be more content soon, and it's great to savor the first season of "Buffy" as well as rediscovering "Lou Grant", an hour long spin-off of the Mary Tyler Moore show that should not have worked, but was consistently the best hour of dramatic television in the late 70's and early 80's, with about a bazillion Emmys to prove it.

Looking at it with 20-year older eyes, a 40 lb lighter Ed Asner was kind of cute...

This is my computer, an iBook in the iSearing shade of Key Lime. I bought it the first year that I started my present job and I thought it was the absolute bomb. I still think it was one of the better designs out of Apple for a few reasons: the green parts are slightly rubberised, which means that the computer doesn't slip around on the desk, or more accurately on the book that I balance it on when I am using it on my sofa as I watch TV. The screen is fairly well encased (it was designed with kids in mind) and the white keys are easy to see in the low light conditions that are a hallmark of my sofa and the rounded front of the case make a prefect wrist rest. Despite having only about 400 megs of RAM (Max) and a 433 MhZ processor, it has handles everything from web surfing and DVD playing to basic PhotoShop that I've thrown at it. Of course, iTunes long ago went out to an external hard drive (I bought it with a then unheard of 20 gig one, which my co-workers were convinced I would never fill) where I have been backing up my crap. Luckily I have been backing up my crap, since my little citrus companion developed a problem and wouldn't boot up. One of my co- workers is looking at it and might have to wipe the drive at worst and has urged me to get a new computer: he says that I am basically asking the computer equivalent of Helen Hayes to do a marathon every day and it's pretty much time to retire the old girl. I suppose I'll have to, it's been nearly eight years. But I have to write, having lived with a computer with a handle and citrus colored rubber bumpers, I don't know how I'll be able to go to bland, cool whiteness.

UPDATE

Well, after a lot of hazzerie I have a new MacBook.  So far I am thrilled.

The Los Angeles Auto Show

This week was the start of the Los Angeles Auto Show, otherwise known as that thing that I go to every year to look at cars I cannot afford. It's the event where I answer the question, can I still enter and exit a sports car with some measure of grace?

Luckily the answer is still "yes"

Apparently the big news is hybrids- General Motors showed hybrid Escalades, Tahoes and Suburbans. As much as I loathe gigantic SUV's I have to tip the hat to a system that will allow them to get the same mileage as a mid-sized car.

Here's my impressions:

My lotto winnings would go towards a Cadillac XLR-V

















Or perhaps I'd spend half that on a Mercedes SLK and spend the rest on plastic surgery.




















The Honda S2000 is lovely, but the sport version they had on the floor had a rear wing on it that would have been more at home on a bi-plane and was in a color that could only be called "erectile dysfunction yellow"

















Both the Saturn Sky and the Pontiac Solstice are wonderful little cars, but I don't know about the fiddly tops: having to get out of the car to put the top up would be a pain. But they are cheaper than any of the above by about $10k, so...




























The Mazda MX-5 (I think they don't want us to refer to it as a Miata anymore) is still the best: it's small enough but still has decent room inside and enough trunk room with the optional hard-top stowed to have some bags in the trunk. So that putative weekend getaway with the BF could happen. If I had the money for the car. Or the money for a weekend away. Or, fo that matter a boyfriend.
















Of the sedans I looked at I was impressed by the new Malibu, which is really nice and the new CTS which is gorgeous..


























Hands down the cutest thing at the show? The Smart Cabrio. I don't know how many they'll sell of these at $16,000, but they are hella cute and I could easily see myself tootling around in one.

Perfume People

Most all of you (out of the millions that read this blog) know that for the last year and a half, I have been writing once a week about perfumes at Perfume Smelin' Things (linked to the right- I'm too lazy to look up the code). After all this time I have learned that there is some power in this; I've seriously pi$$ed off at least one person and apparently amused a few more. I've forged cyber-friendships that I really want to make face-to-face ones, and in one case happily have, having met Marina who opened up her blog to me and allows my natterings a far wider audience than I perhaps deserve.

The thing that has struck me about these people is that to a (wo)man, they all have the same quality: unstinting generosity. I've been the lucky recipient of scents that I would have never stumbled across, shipped by people I have only had pleasant cyber-chats with. I'm not kidding myself that they await with bated breath a review of these scents, and in one case they have generously sent bottles of things I've mentioned I liked simply out of kindness. Which is, I believe the most noble of instincts. Of course, I try to give back, especially since I live in LA and can bop into our local parfumerie and get samples at whim.

In short, I find it heartening that in this world increasingly painted as a place full of meanness of spirit, coldness of heart and cruelty towards others that there are generous people out there sending out sweet-smelling packages for the sole purpose of cause the recipients delight. You all know who you are so I won't name names; even if you haven't sent me anything and are reading this and have sent to another a scent that you love or even just thought that the recipient might find momentarily interesting, I salute you. Perfume people are the best...

An Open Letter to a Helicopter Pilot

A Hallowe'en Lament

I don't know who you are, or for whom you work, but I do know at this point I pretty much hate you. From the time I got home at about 5 to the time I typed this at about 8, you have been hovering without moving an inch about 100 feet above the intersection of Doheny and Santa Monica. I know you don't work for BHPD, since they don't have helicopters. If you work for the Sherrif's department or the LAPD, I don't know what you are there for since the only crime that I could see were some of the Halloween costumes, and it's difficult to direct traffic from 10 storeys up. If you are from a news channel, I know you have to justify the expense of SkyCamWhatever but I seem to have missed your 30 second shot of stalled traffic. Which, just as an FYI is not news- certainly not news that needs hours of hovering closely over a residential neighborhood.

I hope you read this and at least let us know if this new Halloween trick is going to be an yearly "treat". If you are going to make the naighborhood kids feel like extras in "Apocalypse Now", we'll at least want know to dress for it and to put some Wagner on our iPods, which you will be drowning out.

Real Housewives of Orange County

or, White People Can't Jump, But They Can Bore

Anybody caught any of this? It's one of those shows Bravo has foisted off on us in between seasons of "Project Runway". It's premise, I suppose was originally an answer to "The O.C.", showing that in addition to being vapid, self-serving idiots (as the denizens of Newport Beach are portrayed on the now cancelled Fox series) they are also clueless, unnatractive dolts, living in some gated community called "Cota de Craptastic" or something (which is like a larger version of "Knots Landing"'s Seaview Circle, but without the wit, humor or hotness of early Alec Baldwin). intermarrying, driving expensive cars, drinking like fishes and in general being very, very dull.

I know people in Orange County. They are warm, wise, witty people who have interests rangeing a bit further than which fake-bake is less orange and whether Slade really likes the underage brunette bimbo or the older blonde who looks like a drag queen. One episode was enough. I'd rather watch Rachael Ray. I'd rather watch lint. I'd rather iron, and those of you who know me know exactly how little of a recommendation that is.