Laurie Sandell's Blog, page 352

Fashion Week's Night Out

[image error]Many, many, many moons ago, I worked at The New Yorker magazine with Ariel Foxman; he became one of my closest friends and later ascended to the editor-in-chief-ship of InStyle. That means I sometimes score some really amazing invitations. Last night Ariel invited me to join him at the Alexander Wang after-party, which took place in a parking lot under The High Line on 17th St. The theme of the party was "Carnival," and it wasn't just a theme, it was an actual amusement park, complete with...

A night of private karaoke

[image error]In the mid-90s, when I was living in Tokyo and working as a hostess in a Japanese strip club (Flamingo Bar), I used to spend my off-hours singing karaoke in private rooms. No one else is in the room except for you and your crew (in my case, it usually involved a customer, a stripper, and maybe another hostess or two, lots of sushi and many bottles of Crystal champagne.) Last night, C and I reprised those days with a rousing night of song at Max Karaoke. The only difference was that we drank w...

"That's why you're single!"

[image error]If you ever want to have a real L.A. experience, check out Monday Nights with Dr. Pat Allen. Pat Allen is a Jungian Cognitive-Behavioral therapist who conducts outrageous live seminars about relationships: no one's feelings are spared as she gives you her "politically incorrect but scientifically accurate" assessment of how you've been screwing up your love life. Each week, she asks six people to sit in the "hot seat" and tell them her personal story; this week, yours truly volunteered...

Cuffed and stuffed in the Beverly Hills Courthouse

[image error]Much like Dina Lohan, I am now being forced to make the rounds on television talk shows to discuss the experience my roommate–let's call her "C"–has been having with the LA County court system. This morning, we headed to the Beverly Hills courthouse, where she'd been summoned to deal with a number of alleged traffic violations. In the basement parking garage–the same one Miss Lohan entered for her deposition–C was hounded by paparazzi. We made our way up to the third floor, and found her...

Bicoastal-etarian

[image error]Five months ago, I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I'd been avoiding that book, because after my aunt Linda read it, she became a vegetarian, and this is a woman who is a total gourmand, married to my Uncle Michael, who makes dishes like oxtail stew and braised rabbit. I thought, if that book can turn my aunt Linda into a vegetarian, it can turn anyone into a vegetarian. And I was right. For about two months, I didn't touch meat (though I did, I confess, continue to eat fish. I o...

Bicoastal-urious

[image error]Back in LA after a whirlwind trip to Comic-Con and Nashville, and settling into my temporary Santa Monica home. On Aug. 1, I will move back to Studio City–where I was living in last winter. I've always loved to hop around and try out different cities, and now I am enjoying the best of both worlds: Springtime in New York, winter in L.A. I realize one can't live like this forever, but it's working out very nicely–especially when it comes to my celebrity interviews; so nice not to have to get...

An Audience with Ray Bradbury at Comic-Con

[image error]Now that I've experienced my first ever Comic-Con, I understand the hype. First, there's the sheer scale of the convention: More than 125,000 people flood San Diego to dress up in costume, check out the latest movie releases  and—yes!—buy books. The convention center itself is huge—615,701 square feet of exhibit space in a building that covers 2.6 million gross square feet. But it's really all about people-watching: I saw guys dressed as Storm Troopers, women wearing fem-bot costumes, a...

The 2010 Eisner Award Ceremony

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On the way to the awards

Well, let's first get to the obvious: I didn't win in my category ("Best Reality-Based Work.") But neither did the guy who I was sure was a lock (David Small, author of Stitches.) The award went to Yoshihiro Tatsumi, author of A Drifting Life, a book that took him more than 10 years to complete and looks pretty amazing. Going into the awards I was so convinced I didn't have the slightest chance to win, I was able to kick back and really enjoy myself. But late in the...

Tonight's Eisner Awards

[image error]I'm about to hit the road for Comic-Con, where I plan to walk around the convention center for a few hours, then get ready for the Eisner Awards. It has just been announced that the cast of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, starring Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman and  Anna Kendrick, will be the first presenters of the evening! I did a really stupid thing yesterday and am paying for it today: A workout called P90X. It's an intense 90-day regimen that my friends here in Santa Monica do every...

Harvey Pekar's Final Collaboration

[image error]I may have mentioned a traveling comics show that I will be part of called Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women. It will feature a variety of Jewish, female auto-bio comics creators (though I suppose you could have figured that out by the title), and will make its debut on October 1 at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. This morning, The New York Times released a story in their ArtsBeat blog which will run in tomorrow's paper, about Harvey Pekar's final collaboration, a ...