Autumn the LA way

It’s November, and last weekend my hometown (Minneapolis) already recieved 8 inches of snow.  No thank you.  Here in Los Angeles, we are enjoying beautiful weather.  The trees that are going to turn, have just now turned.  And it takes them forever to lose their leaves so I get to admire the color for weeks.

At the same time, my garden is still coming up roses.  I do love LA’s version of fall.

Knock Knock

I think I’ve heard this one before.  An Asian, an African American, a Caucasian and a Hispanic walk in to a bar lobby.

As I sat in the lobby waiting to audition yesterday with three other women, I noticed that we were each a different ethnicity.  Casting usually has a good idea of what they are looking for in any particular role and often I will go to an audition and see other variations of myself. But the only thing we four had in common, was that we were all brunettes.

So what does this mean?  Was casting waiting to hear back from the network on which ethnicity quota their show hadn’t reached yet?  A social experiment?  A coincidence?  I don’t know.  And perhaps neither do they. But it was just something I noticed.

A home full of veterans

This past weekend we had a get together in our home.  I love this time of year and think it’s the best for cozy gatherings.  We had about 50 RSVP and I knew for sure that our core group of friends would be there. They are a special group of friends because most of them are veterans.

When some people hear the word veteran, they think: Old.  And when they hear VFW, they think: Bar.  And if you walk in to a VFW bar, who’s there?  Exactly my point.

So, if you are a vet, you must be an old guy, right?  But that is far from the truth.  Veteran just means served in the past.  And the word applies to men AND women, old AND young.  Both my Grandfathers AND my Joe are all veterans.

Words cannot express enough, all the thanks I give to my dear friends and acquaintances for their past service.

And, these dear friends, all of them living here in Los Angeles, now continue to ACT as service men and women for television, films and commercials.  Their most recent, fun project: Call of Duty Black Ops which I wrote about yesterday.

I was happy and honored to have them all in my home to break bread with for an evening.  It was simple and humble as I just cooked up a huge pot of my mom’s chili recipe, had plenty of snacks and drinks and Joe grilled sausages.  But most importantly we were all together.  I would include photos of them all, but then I’d have to kill you.  Just kidding.  Or am I?

Sitting Bull

Remember when I talked about how Joe is the cover of the new Call of Duty Black Ops?  That ad campaign is crazy, out of control, everywhere. Seriously, I guess it’s the biggest ad campaign, for a single product, ever.  If you haven’t seen his picture, you must live under a rock.  Or way up in the mountains.  With a long beard.  And no running water.

Millions of dollars have been spent on promotion, including a launch party at the Santa Monica Airport where you could hear Metallica play live, drink from the open bar and play the game.  All at the same time. Sensory overload, dude.  And awesome.

I didn’t get to go.  Whaaaat?  I know!  I wanted to, but attendees had to of worked on the project, or be military personnel, or from the band Metallica or…  I will however be attending the wrap party which I’m hoping will be just as cool.

The game was released yesterday and with Joe also in the game, so you can choose him to be your guy to shoot up your opponents in the virtual world.

And have you seen their commercial “There’s A Soldier In All of Us”?  Not only is this commercial cool, with added fun appearances by Kobe Bryant and Jimy Kimmel, but I’m friends with a lot of the people who worked on it so it’s extra fun for me.

Pumpkin imposter

Are you sick of me talking about pumpkins yet?  Well, too bad because I’m not done yet.  What?  It’s not like I talk about them ALL year long. And I’ve only mentioned them here, here, here and here.  Ok, I guess that’s a lot.  Here’s a few of my fake pumpkins I keep around for that one time a year when they come out of storage, and grace us with their presence.