Why do I love the Valley? This is why!!

Smokehouse Restaurant is the Spot!

I am ashamed of myself for living in the Valley for this long and never visiting this classic restaurant. I felt like I was walking into 1953 and Bing Crosby was going to start dancing around the fireplace. I was lucky enough to have Judy as my waitress, she has been working there for 42 years, so she knows what is up. She also had some fabulous stories to tell. I got to have the BEST Chicken Picatta I have ever had!!!!! Ugh...it was awesomeness!!!! I want to put the sauce on every thing I eat. Also, this establishment is keeping up with the times and offering some amazing specials. Besides happy hour from 4-7, Mondays are 12.95 prime rib all day and Thursdays are 15.95 filets all day. Both days have 50% bottles of wine all day. Yes Burbank you heard me right. So after the bachelorette is over this coming Monday, I'm pretty sure I will be there with a fork in hand.
Smokehouse Restaurant
4420 West Lakeside Drive
Burbank, CA 91505-4016
(818) 845-3731

Vino in Encino

Cameron and I went out for a night at Vino in Encino. A lovely little tapas bar in the west valley. It's a very intimate place with a fabulous wine selection and yummy treats for your mouth (don't leave without ordering the Papas Bravas). Another perk, food is served intil 1:30 AM! They also have a rockin' happy hour which includes, saketinis (flavored sake)!! This spot is beer and wine only. Besos!

18046 Ventura Boulevard
Encino, CA 91316-3516
(818) 343-2525


Our cheese spread with wine, awesome!



Yummy sliders!




Cameron ordered food to go and they didn't have soup containers so our waitress cleaned one of the cooks lunches in the fridge and and gave us his container...talk about service!

5 Reasons Every LA Woman Should Own A Dog

1. Another lil body to buy clothes for
2. A dog will not judge you for eating peanut butter out of the jar or eating whipped cream from the can. In fact, a dog will support it!
3. A dog doesn't know when you don't return e-mails and phone calls
4. All those food bits that fall on the floor while cooking somehow disappear. Voila! No clean up required
5. Your dog will love you more than ever when you come home. And that means a lot when 3 hours of your day have been spent on a freeway. I still have major issues with the 405 man.

Lady Gaga at LA Live

Cameron and I went and saw Miss Gaga in December at LA Live. My first time at this venue. It was amazing. She sang for 2 hours straight, played the piano and the keyboard guitar. She was rockin! Proud to be a lil monster.

LA Times Review

Read the wonderful review from The Los Angeles Times :)

Theater review: 'The Trojan Women' at City Garage*

November 12, 2009 | 6:00 pm

A high level of invention suffuses "The Trojan Women" at City Garage. Deconstructing Euripides' classic tragedy into a multifarious current-day collage, adaptor-designer Charles Duncombe and director Frederíque Michel pull few punches in the wake of burning Illium.

The geopolitical realities in Duncombe's freewheeling text range from harrowing statistics of recent genocides to sardonic swipes at our blog-infested society. Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, overpopulation, climate change and more punctuate the same gender positions that have driven this saga since its Peloponnesian War premiere.

Hecuba (June Carryl, magnificently composed) suggests a traditional African queen, clothed at the outset by title mourners whose burkas are but one of costumer Josephine Poinsot's inspirations. Cassandra (Mariko Oka) devolves from culture vulture to a naked, feral creature of website contours. Andromache (the touching Amelia Rose) turns the society trophy wife into a figure of post-millennial pathos, rending against Troy Dunn's quietly insidious Greek envoy.

And when an assured Alisha Nichols turns up as Helen of Troy, here a Britney Spears clone with nude dancing boys and hip attitude, her face-off with Michael Galvin's intense, Billy Connolly-flavored Menelaus crystallizes the enterprise. Dave Mack's empathetic diplomat, Crystal Sershen's understated Hermione and Cynthia Mance's entertainment reporter are among the other standouts in a marvelous ensemble effort.

Dividing focus between the keening women and the marauding men, Duncombe gets a slew of modern context in (Euripides is understandably absent from the credits). The approach risks overload, some things unnecessarily explained, and director Michel occasionally struggles to keep the tone consistent. Still, if the aim is to yank "Trojan Women" into our consciousness, this company benchmark, though overstuffed, is a triumph.

– David C. Nichols

"The Trojan Women," City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley), Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. Sundays. No shows Dec. 14 through Jan. 8. Ends Feb. 21. Adult audiences. $20. (310) 319-9939. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

*UPDATE: A previous version of this review misspelled the first name of Alisha Nichols as Alicia.

Photo: Marika Oka as Cassandra in "The Trojan Women." Photo credit: Paul Rubenstein.

It's A GO! for LA Weekly Yay Who!

"It's too smart and too passionate to dismiss"

In his adaptation of the ancient Greek tragedy (So freely swiped from the original that Euripides' byline doesn't appear on the program), Charles Duncombe takes a macroscopic, brutal and unrelenting look at the end of the world. Genocide in Rwanda and Sierra Leone, unsustainable population growth and climate change carry the day, and the play, with excursions into a theme that's punctuated Duncombe's earlier adaptations of texts by Sophocles and Heiner Müller: the relationship between gender and power. Scenes depicting physical mutilation and rape in war zones - choreographed by director Frederique Michel - contain an excruciating authenticity, even in the abstract. Michel undercuts this harrowing tone by incorporating elements of farce in other scenes. One scene is a gem of understatement and humor: The reunion of fluttery Helen of Troy (Alisha Nichols, attired like a dancer in a strip club, and employing all those powers of manipulation) with the Greek king Menelaus (stoic, furious Michael Galvin) from whom she fled and started this bloody mess (the Trojan War, that is). This is where the adaptation and direction congeal and captivate. This is still very much a work-in-progress, conceived for all the right reasons. As is, the directorial tones wobble like a top, and the adaptation contains far too much explication. The evening also reveals why theater matters, and how this kind of work wouldn't stand a chance in any other medium. It's too smart and too passionate to dismiss. City Garage, 1340½ Fourth Street (Alley entrance), Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5:30 p.m. ("pay what you can"); thru Feb. 21. (310) 319-9939. (Steven Leigh Morris) See Theater feature on Thursday

It's not me, it's you...you stupid freeway

Dear Mr. 405,
It's really hard for me to talk about this. You've been taking me North and South for so long now. We've had some great times. It's been fun and really convenient. But lately I just feel like I can't trust you. You are always causing me to be late. Sometimes I find myself spending way too much time waiting for you to get going. I have even found myself in park, not moving at all. Look, you see so many cars everyday. I just don't feel special anymore. I need a road who can get me where I want to go and give me some space at the same time.
Maybe someday when you get all your problems worked out we can be together again. Until then, I'll see you sometimes when traffic is gone. I just think it's best we keep our distance. I hope you understand. Sorry we had to end like this.