Fram! Fram!

I was remarking to myself the other day and realized that I get to do incredible things almost daily. Whether it's an Awards Banquet, Oceanside Picnic or Dinner party at my lovely home - I am truly thankful for all that happens in my life. I should really MUST document these experiences for I may not be so lucky in the future and I want to balance myself by marveling in the opportunities handed to me and not take them for granted. Jaded-bitterness is a common disease in Hollywood and I refuse to succumb to that sickness.

Let's catch-up from where we left off...in Kauai (wow). That was 7 months ago! I'll keep it simple and sum up by the month per post. A lot happens in one month!

October

(Kalalau Trail Sunset)
Kauai was absolutely marvelous. Our biggest stress was decided which beach to go to. We swam, surfed (or attempted to), hiked, kayaked and ate the best fish tacos ever. Paradise is an understatement.

Shortly after we returned from Kauai I had to fly immediately to New York City for work. Business travel is the best travel. Everything is covered and you get the have the greatest adventures! I was flown and housed in Times Square to do behind-the-scenes interviews with Kelsey Grammer and Patrick Stewart. I saw 'La Cage aux Folles' (w/ Kelsey), saw some much-loved college friends and made new contacts and friends as well!


(K. Rolnik, me and A. McNulty at La Cage)

While in New York I had the random coincidence to see my father who happened to be in town playing a gig that same weekend. We organized our flights so we could at least have dinner before I had to take off back to LA. I didn't get to see his show, but we did eat at THE LION which is an incredible place. Seriously top-notch and inconspicuous and non-pretentious.


(My dad and I in front of The Lion)

On the plane ride home I sat near Taylor Momsen (Jenny Humphry from GOSSIP GIRL!). I was a Gossip Girl myself, snapped a cell photo and texted all my friends to instill extreme jealousy.

To finish off the month, we celebrated T's 40th birthday! He took it upon himself to organize a city-wide scavenger hunt and sent 4 teams of his friends on an "amazing-race-esque" sprint all over Hollywood. I was kept in the dark on his plans so I was able to participate and it was SO MUCH FUN! My team won but not by much! It was such a great birthday party. I promised Thomas a cake and I baked a cake FROM SCRATCH for the very first time in my life. It was a raspberry/lemon cream cake flavored by lemons from our very own lemon tree in the back yard. I was proud of myself!



NEXT...November!

In my ever expanding travel quest, I've found myself in stunningly beautiful Kauai. I can't believe just one year ago (mid-Sept 2009) I made a promise to myself. A promise to travel as often as I physically can and see all the beauty and wonder of the planet. Since then I've been to Thailand, Austria, (a little of) Italy and now Kauai, Hawaii. In ONE year! I'm so proud of my achievements and blessed by my current work schedule to allow the funds and freedom to live out my dreams of travel.

I'm sitting on the second floor of a beautiful 2-story beach house in Anahola Bay. I'm literally staring out into the vast ocean and listening to its pounding, methodic waves. It's incredible.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm a huge Gleek. When the series premiered, I was hooked and although I find the show extremely weak every since it skyrocketed to success, I still watch religiously and always when it airs (rarely a tivo'd performance). I actually plan my Tuesday nights around it. Remember when you HAD to plan your nights around TV? Or set up your VCR, which was so clumsy and not always 100% accurate?

Doing PR for "Dorothy of Oz" is a dream come true. Animation. Fairytale story. AND an amazing cast lead by Lea Michele. Seriously a goldmine of geeky joy. Today was our day to film EPK of Lea Michele during her voice-over recording session. I was a tad nervous about how she would be as a person. "Never meet your idols" is a mantra of mine cause usually you are sorely disappointed. Well, Ms. Michele is not around to disappoint anyone. She is a show-woman inside and out and she was extremely prepared. It was actually refreshing to work with someone so prepped and ready to shoot. She studied all the press bullets and EPK questions and rapid-fired through the shout outs. It was great!

She's a very sure and gentle person but amazing talent. Even in her speaking voice, you can hear the confidence and poise. I cannot wait to see her career soar. I hope anyone who admires her talent gets a chance to meet such a warm and darling person.

Back in May, T and I went on a 3 week trip to Europe to see his family, explore Austria and visit Venice, Italy. The trip was easy to say amazing. I had a lot of difficulty not knowing the language, but the sights, sounds and FOOD created a stunning and delicious experience. I came back to America weight 10 lbs heavier, but stress load much much lighter. I've pulled some select images to share. Hope you enjoy!

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Also, here's a video slideshow with more pics and music!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9US1QQMGXw

Thomas and I had a nice weekend. Saturday night I took him out to dinner at a nice/cozy Italian restaurant. The food was really good! We ordered Calamari, Procuitto, and an Italian sausage-pasta dish ending the evening with tiramisu. Lots of wine too of course.
Then on Sunday morning I made him breakfast (eggs with guac and queso sauce ontop of an english muffin) and gave him a present: a cook book on different breads he's been talking about. He was super happy.
Then I took him to a local massage place for one hour foot massage. It was only $25! and they massaged your feet, back, head, shoulders, legs, arms AND hands. What a deal.
Thomas then took me to his meditation class where we reflected on the Chinese New Year (Tiger) and I got to meet some of his friends from class and ran into a really important woman from my past. Her name is Barbara and she was the very first person to ever hire me on my first feature film in LA that seriously kick-started my entire career in LA. I hadn't seen her in 5 years and I was so thankful to see her. Later that night we went to a friend's apartment and ate heart-shaped cookies and played games.
Yesterday Thomas treated me to breakfast at an Austrian bakery near the ocean, then I had my first ever manicure/pedicure. It wasn't my favorite experience. I don't like having all these ladies cutting my nails and scrubbing my feet, it felt weird.
Last night Thomas baked an amazing Austrian meal and had all his Austrian friends over. We had pork roast with dumplings, sauerkraut, pumpkin soup and a really delicious chocolate cake dessert.

It was a great weekend!

Day 2:
Jet lag didn't allow us to sleep in too late, so we woke up early to start our day of sight-seeing. Thomas and Rainer had already been to Bangkok a number of times, so they weren't as thrilled with visiting the major tourist traps as I was. We started at the Buddhist temple, Wat Pho, with an enormous gold reclining Buddha statue.

It's so large you can't get it in one entire picture.


When I entered the temple, I heard this strange tinkling noise the entire time I was walking around the Buddha. Turns out on the other side of this behemoth, there was a row of 100 iron kettles that people were dropping coins into. It ended up being a very meditative experience for me, so I'm really glad I did it and donated some money to the temple.


(Thomas dropping coins)

The grounds of Wat Pho were quite large. Besides the large Buddha, there were several other smaller temples, a massage school and a children's school along with monks quarters and colorful spires and statues all around the area.



Afterwards, we got scammed into this bunk tour to see the "Lucky Buddha". We were on our way to visit the King's palace and this extremely nice and helpful Thai man instructed us that the Palace was closed for a few hours due to a monk's ceremony, so we should instead go on this tour to see some other places. He said it would only cost 40 bht which equals like $1.50, so we were like whatevs, but once we got in the tuk tuk we al felt uneasy and made the driver drop us off. We didn't know where we were, but we found some street food, explored this electronics district and took a cab to the King's Palace. The Palace was unbelievably gorgeous. They were charging 350 baht to enter and you absolutely had to wear pants. Luckily Thomas knew that and we packed pants to change into before we entered. Attached to the palace is a really exquisite temple that hosts the Emerald Buddha. Here are some photos of the Palance and Temple. I had to take pics of the details in the walls to show how intricate they were.



After that we headed to Kao San Road which is famous for it's fake IDs, cheap shopping and back-packer atmosphere. I had to admit, once I arrived I was terribly disappointed. It looked like Disneyland and was filled with tourists. The vendors all sold the same stuff and everything was marked up super expensive.



We walked around, found some dinner on the street and got a great foot massage. That ends Day 2!

This entry will recount my first 4 days in Thailand which all took place in Bangkok.

Day 0.5: We arrived around midnight via China Airlines at Bangkok's newest airport. The flight was the most uncomfortable experience of my life. 14 hours from LA to Taiwan, 2-hour layover, then another 3 hours to Bangkok. However, arriving in Bangkok was wonderful. The airport is like a space station. I really appreciated the design. We went through customs, picked up our luggage and hired a "taxi" who was really some guy and his car. We paid him 500 baht (Thai currency) and he took us to our hotel-Salil Hotel on Thonglor 1 near Sukhumvit Soi 55.




Day 1: After sleeping in and eating the delicious complimentary breakfast,


we took the sky train to visit the Weekend Market.

This place is absolutely crazy and they sell EVERYTHING. You can buy clothes, plants, jewelry, shoes, dogs, cats, snakes, rabbits, turtles, squirrels, furniture, food - you name it. All these shops are crammed into a city-like outdoor arena with the best bargains I found the entire trip. I bought two t-shirts, earrings for my sister, a pair of shorts, jeans and a coconut to drink.

After 4 hours of shopping we had lunch with a street vendor ($1 = lunch...crazy) and hopped on the sky train to return to our hotel room. That night we took the sky train to Patpong Road for MORE shopping (all fake designer stuff, watches, DVDs, etc) and the famous alley with all the sex shows.



Ping Pong show anyone? Unfortunately we didn't catch a show, but I did find a great scarf for $1.50 - we ended the evening at a gay bar called DJ Station and watch their crazy drag show. They had back-up dancers, costume changes and everything, however after 2 drinks we were going to pass out from all the activity from running around. We headed back to the hotel and crashed - jetleg laying heavily upon our eyelids.

I'm back from Thailand. The trip was absolutely amazing and looking back at all the pictures, I have fond fond memories of the beautiful country. I'll post a series of blogs about the places I visited to help any potential travelers.

Stay tuned for Bangkok.

Things seem to be getting much better. After some talks comes more understanding. My job is extremely busy and gratifying. We keep signing new clients and taking meetings every week. I attended the Emmys yesterday for my client, Michael Wylie, who was the production designer for Pushing Daisies. He WON his Emmy!! It was such an amazing experience to be a part of something like that. Michael was so grateful and so happy with my services and I can take at least 99% of that credit as I was the only publicist on his campaign.

Just got back from another client event, Nathan Barr's True Blood Score signing at Dark Delicacies in Burbank. It's a working weekend!

Wow, one month later. Let's see...

August was an...interesting month to say the least. It was jam-packed with activity, visitors, concerts, work, woes and more. I'll see if I can hit some highlights.

In the beginning of the month Thomas's family was visiting from Austria until the 9th. So the early section of the month was packed with tourist activity. We went to Six Flags Magic Mountain, Santa Barbara, Solvang, Outlet Centers, Hollywood tours and cooked a lot of delicious food.

*On Thursday Aug 6th, I attended the GI JOE film premiere at the Mann's Chinese Theater. The movie was m'eh and the crowd was even more m'eh. I was really ho-hum about the cast, but I LOVE Ray Park. Turns out he was sitting right next to us and on our way out of the theater I was able to snatch a photo and chit chat about his super fun career (X-Men, Star Wars, Sleepy Hollow, just to name a few!!). He's a super nice, non-pretentious guy.

*Friday Aug 7th, the Austrians and I went to their very first baseball game and my first time seeing The Dodgers. Beforehand we had incredible margaritas and Mexican food at a nearby restaurant. The event was fun but went overtime for 12 innings! We stayed the entire time so we could see the fireworks which were beautiful.

*After they left, it was time to relax a little and get back to business. We went to the Hollywood Bowl 4 times this month: Mozart, DEPECHE MODE, Diana Krall, and Liza Minelli! Depeche Mode was the best but Liza put on an amazing performance. I always have a great time at the bowl.

*August is a month of many birthdays as I seem to attract Leo's into my life. Good thing most came with a swimming pool.

*I started weight training with a personal trainer and got my first ever gym membership. Trying to bulk up as my weight loss program went OT and I got way skinny. Time to build back. Nothing better than hearing your trainer say eat MORE EAT MORE!

*I also started seeing a holistic nutritionist named Wencke von Mulhenberg who runs Vinca Wellness. She is delightful and a good friend/PR client. She's fantastic, highly recommended!

*I played poker, met with a producer about The Scream Awards, disbanded Lucky Legendary and prepared for my mother's arrival. She visit Labor Day Weekend.

*Best news of all! I got a cheap flight to THAILAND and I'll be there late November for three weeks!!!

*Last night I attended yet another pool party but this time in Topanga Canyon at Nathan Barr's house (client - composer of "True Blood"). His house is gorgeous and he just installed his new infinite pool overlooking all the Santa Monica forest hills. It was breath-taking.

Among all this insane social activity, my work life increased incredibly. I picked up FOUR new clients total and will be making a bank ton of money next month. I'm attending the Emmys with my client in September and throwing a fun nude mini-mag launch party with a different client. I love the vast difference all my clients offer. Keeps my life very diverse.

All this said and done, I'm preparing a "negative" posting (friends-only, sorry!) to explain the downside to all this happiness.

I have a strange newfound love for Miley Cyrus's song "Party in the USA". Don't hate!

OMG THAILAND!

(follow me on twitter: @taurenlegend)