When I was 23 I broke up with my college boyfriend and moved to LA where I lived in a tiny studio apartment at 426 S. New Hampshire Ave, two blocks north of Wilshire, and one west of Vermont. I didn't have a car, so I got a red grandma-cart to get groceries at the Ralphs at Third and Vermont, I took the Red Line to work, and I rode the bus to Larchmont to play with pottery at Color Me Mine. This was an enormously happy time for me, mostly because I was living on my own for the first time.
My apartment was in an old building from the 20's, and it looked out on a courtyard with palm trees. I had wrought iron bars on the window, but the windowsill was wide enough to sit in, so I hung lots of plants from the bars, and would sit on the windowsill and write in my journal. I hung fairy lights up everywhere. There was a fold-in-the-wall bed, and it took me three months in my temp job to save up enough for a cheap mattress for it. On the day the mattress arrived, I took the bus to K-Mart on Third street and bought a nice sheet set, and then I stopped for Chinese food, and I sat in my bed with my new sheets and ate dinner and watched college football on tv. It was a Good Day. I still have the comforter from that sheet set, which goes to show the quality of the sheet sets they sell at K-mart.
(Side note - in the summer of 2005 I went out on a blind date with a guy who, it turned out, lived in that old building. Of all the hundreds of thousands of buildings in Los Angeles, I wind up on a date with a guy who lived in my building from when I was 23. What are the odds? He was a nice guy, and had a cute cat, but I just couldn't have a future with a guy who lived where I lived when I was 23. They say you can't go home again, and it's true. I had moved on, past 426 S. New Hampshire.)
I also listened to a lot of music that my boyfriend hadn't liked. Tori Amos (like nails going down a chalkboard, he said), Cher (it was during the "Do You Believe in Life after Love" phase), Peter Cetera (because he's my go-to-guy) and Jewel (she's just so cute and sweet; how can you not love Jewel?). Oh, and I splurged on the Brazil Nut body butter from the Body Shop even though it was like $10 (which was about 1% of my take home pay for the month) and smelled all nutty.
The point of saying all this is that Jewel is pregnant. She's 36. Gives me hope.
In other news, I remembered how much I love Tori Amos when I spent two hours listening to Little Earthquakes on Monday in the car to San Diego. I blasted it so it nearly blew out the speakers, and I let out all my righteous feminist anger.
Tori Amos writes the best lyrics including:
So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts?
Boy, you best pray that I bleed real soon
How's that thought for ya...
Busted! Take that male sexist establishment!
And in the best kind of reverse-sexism, in Ashton Kutcher's new movie No Strings Attached, there are supposedly lots of close ups on his butt.
Finally, a video that ties together butts, as well as the title of this post: Hugh Grant channeling his inner-George Michael from Music and Lyrics, which is, I'm ashamed to say, one of my favorite movies of all time.
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