summer just slapped me in the face

I just got ding dong ditched. Someone must have mistook me for Lady Gaga and put our house on the Map of Stars' Homes. I was really worried that would happen and now it has.

Emily, my oldest friend, came to visit for the weekend and we did pretty much everything there is to do in this town. I'm sorry, when I say did I realistically mean ate. Em, for example, can be spotted in the picture above licking mustard off a stick. We also snuck into Disneyland last night and it was fantastic, even though the whole time I was getting progressively more pissed about how I don't know any real princesses.

xoxo

gossip mantis

10,000

I hit 10,000 views today and have decided to let everyone in on the celebration via a contest a la real blogs.

CONTEST PARAMETERS

At some point in the next 25 minutes, I will change the name of my blog to FEDORA WORLD for exactly 10 minutes. If you bear witness to this chunk of herstory (I am extremely feminist because it's in), post a comment containing your email address along with a quick description of a funny story from when you had braces. Don't worry, comments are private so only I will see them. If you never had braces you can't win. You also can't win if you're within 3 degrees of Kevin Bacon because in my personal opinion, he looks like a killer. The first 350 people who qualify will receive an email from me with a link to an online coupon I found that lets you get into Soak City for $17.95. It expired in 2007 but just do some clever things with a ballpoint pen and thank me later.

Anyway, I've been drowning in good times up here. It's been a never-ending ball since the day I moved in. Shows and after parties and new friends, oh my. Also a lot of windows optimistically rolled down in gridlocked traffic and food that consequently tastes the way Jiffy Lube smells. But anyway, we had a party the other night and I gave my number to TWO DIFFERENT GIRLS!!!!! Lord knows that's a tough trick to pull in this selfish reproduction-centric society of bitches. But I've got to spread myself like butter over this city's social dance floor because every once in awhile (like now) the friends that I live with clear out like peeps at my 8th grade birthday party. I live with a handful of guys who are in the band Local Natives (watch their Blogotheque takeaway show, it's sooo cool) and they've been home on a break from the road since I moved in... but they just left to tour in Europe for a few weeks. Another roommate is in Voxhaul Broadcast... and they just left for San Francisco. Carly is down in SD working, Adam is usually waterskiing, and Shane just got a questionable part in Vampire Assassins, which might be a movie, but is more likely a trap. So at present I am home alone, and the spirit realm has sassily chosen today to reveal that our house is haunted. Shit keeps falling off of other shit. I'm also afraid of the dark, old carpeting, kitchens, and heights (our room is on the second floor), so these next couple of nights could get pretty grim.

All things considered though, I've never felt so on-the-edge-of-something-great in my whole life. So here's to that! Talk soon.

-Lil Miss Preying M

it's the right night for the wrong company

Last night I crammed all my belongings, a fistful of 20’s, and a plastic camping mattress into my sassy little Cutlass Supreme (I wish. My Mazda is uninspired.) and bottomed out of my San Diego driveway. I winked at my dad in the rearview mirror, scowled a bit to keep up my punk rock image, and peeled out into the night blasting Violent Femmes and holding the wheel at exactly 12 o’clock with exactly 1 hand. The sunglasses felt really relevent at the time, but retrospective reflection has since shed some light on the danger there. I left at 11:13 and didn’t look back until I rolled up to my new house in LA at 1:00 in the morning. Carly and I stayed up until 4 listening to records, moving our sleeping bags around on the floor, and peering through the blinds as our new roommates stumbled out of cars, onto the front porch, and into our hearts. I love it here. More on them and this and that to come.

Alright, I previously mentioned that we are fast approaching Extreme Blog Makeover. Since I’m no longer doing a loop of the world, the title Kristen vs. Earth feels a bit rich. More like Kristen vs. The Pile of Clothes In The Backseat of Her Car: Because She Knows She Left A Snickers Back There. Yet each challenge is noble in its own right, and so I persevere. Anyway, here is the short list of candidates for the updated blog’s title:

• Kristen’s Blog
• Blog by Kristen
• Kristen: A Blog
• Kristen: The Blog
• “ “ (the blog formerly known as Prince)
• Sorry for Partying
• Blogging Molly
• My blog ate my homework
• Oh I have a bachelor’s degree
• My blog ate my resume, job apps, work ethic, and drive to succeed
• Cyndi Lauper is literally perfect
• Bro ho 4 Jesus
• I h8 the Holocaust
• BLOG STRONG
• The Fartorialist (I am so sorry)
• F33L1NG5
• Virgin Mary II: The Prologue
• The Official Team LC Blog
• Live, Laugh, Club
• Why does my hair look like a bee hive every day
• This laptop is burning my stomach
• All I want to do is eat and go to waterparks
• I have a surfboard and a Blackberry, why can't I get a boyfriend
• We’re looking at the same moon
• hAiR n mAkEuP tIpZ
• Silverlake: The Real Jersey Shore
• Wait, are we groupies?
• Oh my gosh you got an 8.6 on Pitchfork, congratulations. What are you guys doing after this?
• Id rather be making my own venison jerky!
• Deutsche Bags R Us: Your Source for German Handbags

Still brainstorming and openly accepting suggestions.

Well I've got to fly because we're going to see some bands on Sunset with the guys in our house in a few minutes, and at the moment I'm wearing combat boots and a nightgown while Carly looks like Jon-Benet Ramsey. Gotta compete. Until we meet again!

-Marilyn Mantis

blahblahblahblah

I just got back from running and let me just say this: I am sick and tired of people going “Oh, did you forget something?” when I walk back into the house after my run(someday this will be an S). I already ran you sedentary twit, sorry if I can’t run for as long as you can sit on the love seat watching Regis and Kelly. Plus it’s not raining so why the hell else would my bangs be wet.

Anyway, I had a great day at Vagrant yesterday. I had to go pick up 10,000 Ed Sharpe stickers from a suspicious apartment complex in Van Nuys, count out 1,000 by hand, and drop them off at Universal. That place is nuts… I had to get security clearance, hand over my passport, and get an ID badge (PISSED because it completely nixed any chance that people would think I was Ke$ha). Anyway my point here is that I’m a music industry suit. Without me, what would counterculture 8^th graders put on their binders to make themselves individuals…...? That Sharpie checkerboard pattern would feel so alone it would probably kill itself.

When I got back to the warehouse we went up in the attic… and it’s a treasure paradise. Dashboard Confessional’s gold record plaques, stacks of rare vinyls that will soon be popping up in my ebay store, a flowery teacup (belonging to HORSE The Band’s Erik), a shrink wrapped bottle of Pepto Bismol, old guitars, and a 10 foot square piece of wood with 3D skulls on it. I’ll take pictures next time I go up there...with the new CAMERA that I got for graduation. I took it to Vegas and it never left the car (above) or hotel room (below) because it's really fancy and I know that I'm going to momentarily destroy it.

One more thing about my internship. I take home all the demos that unsigned bands send us. I cut out the faces from their promo photos and put them on my ceiling as a recession-conscious substitute for the glow in the dark stars that have always been my pipe dream. Coming along nicely so far:

I started getting really scared at night of the guy in the upper left, so I made him into a finger puppet to be brought out only when I haven't just finished watching a crime drama or George Lopez Tonight.

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Zzyzx Road

I impulsively quit my job today. Now I'm rolling down the road to Las Vegas trying to emulate the look Sun wears on Lost when pretty much anything happens. It's pretty hard to look dramatically pensive, but its a whole other ballgame trying to look Korean. I'm also listening to Miley songs to reassure myself that it's the climb. She seems pretty positive that it is. So the money hunt starts Monday.

My dad is driving and we just had a flat tire scare. Luckily the sound of air escaping was actually coming from the can of hair spray that he was storing in his back pocket. (He accidentally got the same haircut as Hitler so easy access to the antidote is a must.) It has been solemnly dispensing a steady stream of Extra Hold down his "bermuda shorts" ever since he sat on it an hour ago. We're all quite pleased with our good fortune.

So as for my post-grad plan...
1. I have an internship at Vagrant Records in LA.

2. I'm moving into a house in Silverlake for the summer with seven guys and a fabulous girl named Carly.

3. I use the term "moving" lightly because I'm underratedly in summer school 2 days a week back at Loma. Plus I can't remember the last time my mom didn't wake me up with the phrase "I made french toast.". So I'll be back and forth all summer.

I'm livin la vida broke-a, yet broke is the new black. I'm going to do Extreme Blog Makeover soon so tune in with reckless abandon.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

out with old news

>

School ended and I didn’t even die. I am now an independent blogger. I am presently neither funded nor endorsed by The Man and have the option of acting accordingly. I’m too embarrassed to use the F word on here in case my grandma googles me, though, and that’s the only form of rebellion I can actually think of.

EXCEPT STEALING.

I’ve been waiting a long time to get this off my chest...

THE INCIDENT:

A few weeks before the end of school I was in the campus store. I was hungry and I had five dollars. I wanted chili. That’s all I ever want. It was only 2.99 but I was so overcome by embarrassment that I couldn’t bring myself to be spotted at the checkout with it. This was partially because I was carrying a fake Chanel bag at the time and I knew proximity to a Hormel can would cut its believability by at least half. So I stole it. I crammed it into my Chanel and bought an apple to throw Mariela off my tracks. This is how I envisioned that going:

Mariela’s Inner Voice: “That girl probably just stole a can of chili.”

Mariela’s More Rational Yet Sassy Inner Voice : “Real talk girl, that’s impossible because now she is buying an apple. A) the kinds of girls who eat apples for aFtErNoOn sNaCk don’t eat chili B) the kinds of girls who eat chili don’t even go to this school.”

It worked. I walked home, shoulders slumped and head hung low, and when I got there I popped it in the mircrowave and ate it in front of chat roulette. I had gotten over the majority of the guilt after a few days… and then something happened that can only be described as Retribution. Three days after The Incident I stumbled upon a mysterious screen shot saved on my desktop… and I don’t even know how to do screen shots. I really shouldn’t be showing you this:

I had to blur my face for the same reason you can’t look into the eyes of the snake on Indiana Jones. Anyway, the whole ordeal left me with a similar feeling to that which a girl gets when she’s using a toilet seat cover to smudge surplus Neosporin off her beard burn in the TJ Maxx bathroom. (You know what you did.) (I’m talking to myself.)

I’m lying alone in a hostel bed in LA Fashion District eating an abandoned microwave burrito that I found in the freezer. I’m listening peacefully to someone throw up in the communal bathroom. I’m sorry for his loss. I’ll tell you how I got here later, but now that I’ve sufficiently Tiger Woods-ed myself, I think I’ll gracefully bow out. I’ll return shortly with the previously scheduled sparkles and sunshine. I’m looking forward to these infinite tomorrows... because I think my future might actually be bright.

xx

The End of the Beginning

There are approximately four days left to burn before graduation darkens my doorway. I don’t like the imagery of all my dearest friends dressed up as dementors wearing high heels. Oh well, I'll just Live Strong. I heard Aretha Franklin’s “I Will Survive” on the radio this morning and for the first time since 9^th grade band camp, it brought about a strong emotional response. “BUT WILL I, ARETHA?!?” Blah blah, I’m not even technically graduating… sUmMeR sChOoL rOx! Anyway, peep this:

So I’m at Panera studying for finals and I don’t have enough money to buy anything, so I took an empty soup bowl off of someone else’s table and put it on my own. Worked like a charm. I feel like I belong.

Actually that brings me to a point… I am not an adult. A true adult takes any opportunity to "grab a latte." There is not enough evidence to convict.

1. 30 - 45% of the time I walk to the passenger door of my car even if I’m by myself. And holding my personal car keys. And wearing a power suit. Who died and gave me a driver's license.
2. I bi-monthly pop in a VHS of one of the Mary-Kate and Ashley Go To Europe and Meet Boys 'films,' and as the credits roll I feel optimistic that someday soon the son of the British Prime Minister will fall in love with me and then I, too, will have a fake sword fight with baguettes. Their glamorous excesses are perpetually on my horizon. They were thirteen. I am twenty two. How did I get here.
3. I sleep with a stuffed bull dog named Whiskey. (See above: A "prank" I didn't find funny)

I keep waiting for a “you’re adopted” style sit down with my parents where they yell “SURPRISE! You were born in 1997.” Yet despite all of this, I have decided to carry my half-assed stabs at blogging into my adult life with a Whole New Blog once my tenure as Loma Blogger ends. It will feature essays on such mature topics as “What it feels like to know a stockbroker” and “Me and my equity” and “What the blitzen a 401K is.” (No though seriously what is it) Once I dream up an adequately pretentious name for said endeavor, I will link it here. Watch this space.

Please excuse me while I go listen to either Smithsonian Folkways' "Anthology of American Folk Music" or Green Day's "Time of Your Life." I'm confused. I have to go.

P.S. Here's a video I made from when we snuck into Coachella. It's incredibly brief because the trip was incredibly ill-documented:

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