Sudden Lichen Sightings

Pantone has announced that their new Color of the Year for 2013 is Emerald. 

Which makes my baby heart sing, as that is one of my favorite colors.  It also happens to be my birthstone.  I remember bee-bopping through Wal-Mart at the age of seven, checking out the sweet birthstone jewelry, and experiencing the smug satisfaction all May babies must feel.  Emerald!  Luckiest!  And, though no shaman has confirmed this yet, I'm quite convinced that my aura is emerald and my spirit animal is a snail. 

Don't be jealous.

I didn't realize this yearly color was actually a thing until earlier this year, when I stepped into a Sephora and my eyes were assaulted by Tangerine Tango.  Everywhere.  Orange makeup, orange nail polish, orange feathery fake lashes.  Bright orange is a color that does not make my heart hum.  It's too...vulgar?  Too jumpsuit-on-the-side-of-the-road-Bessie-do-not-give-that-man-a-ride, vulgar.

Ah, but emerald.  The Pantone peeps have this to say:

"Lively. Radiant. Lush… A color of elegance and beauty
that enhances our sense of well-being, balance and harmony."

The Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute mentions that the human eye sees more green than any other color.  Nature, baby.  (Also, how does one get to work at the Pantone Color Institute?  Can one apply for the Plastic Things On The End Of Shoelaces Artisane position and the Namer Of All Nail Polish Colors position at the same time?)

According to their website, in 1963, a man named Lawrence Herbert decided that it was about time to standardize color for those in the graphic arts field, since we all see and interpret color differently.  Now many people use them as the "color authority".  Neato.

Next time you're walking in the woods (or buying me a Christmas present), be sure to enjoy the Color of the Year.

Holiday Best

Tonight I get to attend my first holiday party of the year.  My dress is a grownup version of something I might have dreamt up in 1994.  Which means velvet.  And a little poof of the sleeve. 

This got me thinking about how whenever I envision holiday party fanciness, I think velvet.  My mother sewed adorable velveteen Christmas frocks for my sister and I, which is probably where all of this started. 

 

Still rockin those bangs.

I was also obsessed with Samantha Parkington, American Girl, who sported a similar holiday dress to this one, only in blue velvet.  With lots more lace.  In my mind, lace = romance = can't ever have too much.  

I think that's what it is:  These fabrics still make me feel regal, noble, timeless.  In velvet, I'm Anastasia Romanov, I'm Scarlett O'Hara, I'm Jo March.

Velvet has always been associated with royalty. It was originally a silk pile weave (expensive...royalty...fancy) and now can be made from all sorts of fabrics.  The soft pile gives it the furbaby feel and sumptuous color it is known for. 

Yes, my holiday frocks and fabrics of choice are inspired by nobility, as well as by David Bowie and Stevie Nicks.

Now for that glass of bubbly!

Sickly Languid Sunday

Spending a very quiet night at the hotel, and I am battling a case of the sniffles.  Lori has a sweet friend visiting from Australia, and he gave me some magical "down undah" cold meds. 

In between sips of ginger tea, there's been lots of time to google all sorts of fun things: 

• Cabins in Big Bear
• Perfect Black Suede Oxfords
• A new set of Wheels
• 1940s Hairstyles (complete with bangs)
• New Specs that remind me of Anna Karina (The Waldo!)
• Anna Karina (Perhaps the only lady to give Audrey a run for her money)
• Maria Taylor shares my birthday!
• The song we're learning in ukulele class makes me happy and sad
• Kierkegaard

Have a lovely evening, y'all!

Cornucopia...Corn-o-wha?

Well friends, Thanksgiving is next week and I'm feeling pretty grateful; how about you?

Which got me thinking of all the festive things we learned about in grade school, my favorite being:

Turkey Hands...I'm just gonna wait while y'all click on that.  Impressive huh?  I especially like the turkey hands on chest t-shirt and this little class project:

Some teacher must have been reading Fifty Shades of Grey during recess and felt inspired to create this masterpiece.

I also remember discussing the Cornucopia every November, as if it were a totally natural, commonplace thing:

2nd Grader:

We decorated our cornucopias today.  Have you even heard of them before?

3rd Grader:

Duh, we made like fifty cornucopias in first grade and twenty in second.  We've moved on to bigger and better things this year.

2nd Grader :

Like what?

3rd Grader:

Like Pilgrim hats.  And Indian headdresses.

Yes indeed, we have moved on to bigger and better Thanksgiving things such as eating, drinking, tryptophan, and more eating.

But I can't for the life of me remember what a cornucopia is or what it represents.

Googling "cornucopia thanksgiving" provided several magical 1-800 Flowers arrangement pics, and then what I was hoping to find:

Also known as the horn of plenty, it's from way way way back when, but we really associate it with Thanksgiving.

But that was all I found.

Wasn't it a gift or something from the natives?

Googled "cornucopia thanksgiving gift indians" and found this:

No one knows when the first Thanksgiving truly was, and apparently the cornucopia has just been hanging out as the symbol for that holiday.  All I can discern is that it comes from ancient Greece where it would have been made from a goat's horn, and nowadays is typically a basket, full of squash and other seasonal veggie bounty. 

Perhaps that's why I couldn't remember the significance of the cornucopia.

It's simply a centerpiece.

And just for that, I'm gonna make one this year.  Happy Tofurky day!

Jelly Bean Dinner

Short and sweet:  I ate jelly beans (Trader Joe's "real fruit" brand) for breakfast and dinner.  Rough day.  Which got me to thinkin'...Can one subsist entirely on candy?  And if so, for how long?

The answer, my friends, is blowin' in the internet winds:

My Week of Eating Nothing But Candy (!)

You're welcome.

When you first get to LA

You buy a Thomas Guide.

At least, that was the case up until a couple of years ago.  On the first page of every How to Be an Actor (a.k.a. Waitress) in LA book were two instructions:

1. Get thee to the Sam French
2. Pick up a Thomas Guide

So I popped into a bookstore, purchased a Not For Tourists (NFT, LA 2006 edition; did they stop making those too?) and my spiral-bound, twenty pound Thomas Guide.

It was truly indispensable for apartment-hunting.  I'd slam on the brakes somewhere around Koreatown (Craigslist neighborhoods were Greek to me at that point) and the little grid system would help me find my way to each potential dream home's address.  It also assisted later on when I was driving from audition to audition, flipping that massive book back and forth and putting everyone on the streets in grave danger.  Often I'd arrive only to discover I had not allotted enough travel time and wouldn't make my appointment at all.  This is when I'd begin to cry at the steering wheel, smearing my expensive photo paper headshots.  Ah, those were the days.

So where did the big map book go?  Perhaps the advent of GPS and iPhones have rendered them useless?  Did the company fail to get with the times?

I googled "thomas guides" and discovered that they were created by the Thomas brothers, cartographers who started out making little folding maps and guidebooks for California in the 1940s, which paved the way for the beloved atlas books to follow.  They created a unique page-by-page grid system that was adopted by so many throughout the West.  Yellow Pages would list their page and grid locations in their ads, and many Angelenos still remember their childhood home's coordinates. 

Here's what an older page looks like:

So in the back of the guide would be the listing of the street addresses by name and then broken down by number (say, W. Sunset Blvd. 8000-9000) with the page number and coordinates to see exactly where on the page you were headed.

It appears that a few years back Rand McNally and Co. bought Thomas Bros. Maps and that kind of assisted in their decline.  As did several unfortunate CEOs and a whole lotta outsourcing to India.

Some of the guides are still produced today but apparently the quality has diminished.  Sad.  I wish I'd kept mine around, if anything to see what has changed in the years I was away.  But I chucked that twenty pound paperweight on my cross-country drive to New York City. 

At least I've got an iPhone.

Ukulele

Translates to "jumping flea" in English.

This comes from when the tiny instrument was first introduced in Hawaii. Apparently the performer's fingers hopped about the uke with great speed?

I just started weekly ukulele lessons with Lori and am hoping to be playing mine with bed bug fingers in no time!

'Til then, let's watch something adorable, shall we?

Before Tapping Came Hambone

Today I'm taking myself on an Artist Date.  For those of you normal peeps, there is a little somethin-somethin us creative types love to read called The Artist's Way. It's basically a 12-Step program to proclaim, "My name is Heather and I am an Artist!"

So each day Julia asks that you write three pages of mind vomit immediately upon waking to get those wheels turning.  She also asks that you take your "Artist Child" on a date once a week.  It has to be something that you'll really enjoy, and you must go alone.

Tonight I'm going on what will likely be one of my favorite Artist Dates since 2007.  Tilly and the Wall are playing LA for the first time in years. They are magical for so many reasons, but I love them mostly because they do something truly badass:  their percussion comes from Tap Dancing.  And stomps and other fun things, but, seriously, tap dancing.

I've been a tapper since before I can remember (really, I was dancing at age 4 and don't recall a thing before I turned 5) and today I realized that I didn't know too much about how tap dancing came to be other than from minstrel shows and some Irish stepdancing (remember Riverdance, and Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance?!)

After doing a bit of googling:  "tap dancing beginnings of" I found a little something called Juba Dance which is also known as Hambone.

Y'all, that's me! 

Heather Anne Moody, initials HAM, college nickname Hambone (thank you Chris Chamblee, Professional Actor) and I've never even realized my namesake is a dance?

Juba originated when American slaves weren't allowed to have drums (out of fear they'd create a secret percussive code) so they worked out some percussion action with own their limbs instead.

Hambone paved the way for one of my greatest joys in life, tapping!

And now to give you an idea of just how amazeballs it can be:

And that, my friends, is Hambone. 

Ayurveda

I've recently embarked on a veggie/pescetarian (pescatarian?) diet. Which is magical, except for the headache I've had for a week now.

This morning, head still pounding, I reached for my iPhone to get to the bottom of it.

Well, first I googled "conor oberst girlfriend". Twenty minutes later, still no definitive answer to that one.

On to googling "becoming vegetarian headaches why".

I stumbled upon the Ayurvedic Diet.

From what I understand, Ayurveda is ancient, deals with different energies (water, fire, air, earth, ether), maybe has something to do with Buddhism, and definitely has something to do with Indian medicine. There are three doshas. These little nuggets rule your general constitution, and there are certain things you can eat and do for yourself to keep your dosha happy.

My dosha is Vata. This means I have a small frame, am usually cold, and am often anxious.

Vata is basically the chihuahua of doshas.

Other doshas include Pitta and Kapha. You can find your ruling dosha here at Deepak Chopra's website.

I have enough whoo-whoo sparkle energy crystal magic in my life as it is, but I can get down with something that encourages me to stay warm, eat a bunch of avocado, enjoy my favorite colors and scents (sweet, heavy, and warm, such as vanilla), and be touched often. Boom, done!

And that, my friends, is Ayurveda. Kinda sorta.