Top Shop (Not)

I went into Top Shop yesterday. I was so excited when I saw the store have it's grand opening a few weeks ago. I'm not sure how virulent the Green empire's spread into the states has been but judging by the queue, Top Shop was keenly anticipated.

It's taken me a month to get round to patronising the store even though it's a few minutes walk from my gaff. Anyway, I thought I'd treat myself and get some new tops... (and where better to go). The vast difference in climate between LA and London has meant that a lot of my clothes have gone unworn (such as my Jessica Simpson faux fur coat.... what was I thinking!).

So, out of necessity I had to make some additions to the wardrobe.

There's no doubt Top Shop, located in the Grove in West Hollywood, has maintained its young, chic, hip branding, but my God, talk about over-priced! I hate to sound like a 2nd World War granny but $40 for a T-shirt? For the love of GOD!

Seriously? Weirdly, their shoes are pretty reasonably priced but the clothes, they need to have a frigging word with themselves.

I overheard a very camp sales assistant exclaim, while mid-conversation with a shopper, "Oh My God. Everyone's shopping for Rihanna today!" Evidently, RiRi had sent out her minions to purchase her bootlace wardrobe. Obviously, writing her eight lyric songs is taking up all of her energy. What with that and self-defence classes, she probably doesn't have much spare time to for shopping.

Hurry up and weight

Seems like every commercial break contains at least one weight loss ad. Doesn't matter what the show is, in the break you get bombarded with ways to fight the flab, pound the pounds and other pleasing weight related alliterations  At the moment, the most intriguing product is Sensa. A powder you shake onto any dish and it magically suppresses your appetite. Perhaps it should be called fairy dust... or fairy cake dust even?

So it seems the makers have found a way for you to put no effort into managing your well being. Yay, you!

There's also the usual smattering of weight watchers type ads where they assure you their type of 'lean' cuisine is the most effective and yummy.

The most recent development is 'green coffee beans'. Yup, apparently that's the latest secret in dieting. I'm not sure if you're meant to eat then,drink them or smear them on you but Dr.Oz says they're cool so that's all that matters.

One commercial that is impressive is one where a guy has a conversation between his thin self and his fat self. Assuming  aren't usinf twins, this is a clever idea and with some nifty editing, works very well.
For all these weight loss commercials tho, I never see ads for the gym. Too much hassle I guess...

Hello Dave

I went to visit a friend in a very nice apartment block over in Burbank yesterday. My only knowledge of Burbank was from my days working for Disney. Our head quarters were there and so Burbank, to me, became synonimous with television and film empires. I'd picture Ron Disney, our CEO at the time, being fed grapes by dwarves whilst black men zippedy doo da-ed down the hall followed by singing lions and VW Beetles.

Now I'm actually here I see that the place does have its fair share of studios (put it like this, if a bomb dropped on this area you can kiss goodbye to all your favourite shows and every studio film). But it also has a nice community feel. Its comparatively less congested than Hollywood, newer and has that rare and wonderful thing in LA, a high street.

In the elevator leaving my friends apartment an old couple got in. He was about 80, tall, doddery but still several marbles up there, she was short probably about 70. We all smiled pleasantly then she asked, "are you new?" My brain froze for a moment. Not because of the question but because her voice was exactly like Papa Lazarou from League of Gentlemen. Even though our mouths were having a perfectly civil conversation about the area and the building with its "vaulted ceilings" in my mind she was saying "hello Dave. You're my wife now" I even basktracked to the moment I got in the lift. In my head, as the doors opened she'd simply said "hello. Is Dave there?"

I chuckled to myself once I was a safe distance from the minstrel sound-a-like. League of Gentlemen wss one of my favourite shows so it actually made me like Burbank more.

On the sowsh

My Social Security card arrived today. This was an exciting bit of progress and given that I thought I was going to be murdered in the Social Security office by the 7ft bloke in the dirty jeans who kept asking me if I had a boyfriend, it felt like a double score.

It was relatively straight forward (apart from fearing for my life). I went to the West Hollywood office, took my ticket and waited for my number to be called. Because you're in Hollywood, it's very easy to forget that this city has a huge population of Have Nots and many of them were in the office that day.

The staff barked a never-ending stream of foreign sounding names, calling people up to the window. I knew I was showing too much boob for a social security office when Kwasi lumbered over to inquire about my relationship status. I hate lying and don't think it's ever OK. "Do you have a boyfriend?", he droned. "Yeeeees" I said with an apologetic smile. Everything was crossed.

Luckily, a few moments later, anice lady called out my foreign sounding name, saving me from having my head crushed, Of Mice and Men style by my own Ghanian Lenny.

I was surprised when the card arrived as it was literally that. A flimsy bit of card. I need plastic, America! You can't feel official with a bit of paper validating you. It's like James Bond settling his bar bill with coupons. Not cool. Apart from the poor stationery choices of the Los Angeles Social Security department, I was delighted to receive the card. Now all I have to is get a job and a bank account to put the cash in and I am away. No problem....

Zumba time

I took my first Zumba class today. Nothing I do here ever seems to be as straight forward as it looks. The time of the class should have been a give away. 9.30am. An innocent enough time. But this is the time when the olds take over the asylum. Those who have their own teeth and hips are at work and the only people left to take classes are over 90s. This wasn't Zumba, this was Zimmer.

God only knows the collective age of all the sweaty hoo hoo's in that dance studio. As a relatively young person, taking a class designed for the old, you feel like you're working out in slow motion. I barely broke a sweat and that was probably due to embarrassment rather than exertion.

But don't think just because this class was targetting the Jurassic, it didn't have it's fair share of whooping and a-hollering. And it wasn't a one off thing either. Just when you thought it'd all stopped, an old Latina behind me would chirp up. "Yeah!. Whoooo!"

I tried to make the work out a little bit more high impact but because I don't know the moves, I just ended up flailing around like I was being attached by a vindictive bee so I decided to just do the Zimmer as the instructor intended.

At the end, during the barely distinguishable "cool down" I decided that I needed to run or something. When the objective of your class is not to accelerate your brittle bone decay, I knew it wasn't the right class for me.

I went back to the gym and did a bit of spinning next to a man in fluorescent orange and yellow Lycra, dark glasses who was "dancing" on his bike.

I genuinely don't know why I ever feel self conscious and that people are staring at me in the gym when there's characters like this around.

Sure as eggs is eggs

The morning of my first day here, I went to Toast on 3rd Street for brunch. Yeah, I know. How LaLa is that? From their extensive menu, I went for an omlette. These guys do love their eggs and who knew that the perfect accompaniment is fruit. Obviously, as the years rolled by melon balls must have stopped being standard issue in the full English breakfast but the fruit thing continues here.

Toast offers two egg options, their omlettes but also their scramblettes. I asked what a "scramblette" was. I thought it sounded like an omlette that the chef had fucked up. The waitress didn't really get on board with that description. She said with a stern face, "it's scrambled eggs but with the same ingredients as the omlette". I thought better of saying, "What, eggs? Ha ha ha ha!" That would have killed in the UK.

Anyway, it was a really great omlette and I'm fighting the temptation to go back there because I want to keep experiencing new stuff rather than defaulting to the know.  For example, the other day I had my first enchilada at Fred's in Los Feliz, but that, my friends is an egg-citing story for another day. (Yes, I just did that).

Driving break

Eric is a much better driver than me and he's got a really awesome car. I would tell you the make but I'd have to kill you (and I know nothing about car makes - unless 'bluish' is a type of car). This could go some way to explain why we both look so happy. I'm not taking my life in my hands by driving and he's behind the wheel of a proper LA wicked-mobile.

I haven't encountered the infamous LA traffic yet but I'm sure it's just a matter of time. I have, however, found my favourite road to drive - Laurel Canyon Boulevard. It's the windiest, meandering road that goes through the Hollywood Hills, crosses Mullholland Drive and dumps you in The Valleys. The road is huge fun to drive but terrifying at the same time. Who needs roller coasters when you've got Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Scream if you wanna go faster!!!!!

Food Glorious Food

Can we talk about the food here? Yesterday I went to the 24 Hour Kitchen with Eric Lampaert. After we’d driven around for about half an hour, working up quite an appetite, let me say, we finally found the place. I’d been there once before and Jennifer Love Hewitt had been dining out with a couple of friends. Although this time she weirdly decided not to meet me there, there were two very cool looking black guys, one of which was nodding off after his hearty burger. Talk about make yourself comfortable. I was half expecting the waiter to bring him his slippers. If these guys were famous this was where my my lack of knowledge of LA rap scene could prove to be a problem.

Anyway, it was a nice place to hang out and once my incredulity at the lack of parking in the area  had subsided, we ordered some food. Eric decided that because he’d eaten so many burgers. When in Rome and all that.

When Eric's salad arrived it looked like an entire forest had been felled and served up and there was enough meat to feed a leopard cub. The meatloaf was served in a pie pastry with a mushroom sauce, veggies and fries. It was – deee-lish but repeated more than the episode of Friends where Rachel makes triffle with okra.

Having (kind of) put myself on my own made up lo-carb LA diet, I decided that I wasn’t allowed to have an evening meal to make up for the 10,000 calories I’d just consumed. 

Instead I went to the Laugh Factory and had three beers – coz beer's low in calories, right?

The next day, on LA today, there was a feature on how there are some restaurant meals that have excessively high calorie counts, sometimes in the thousands. I’m pretty sure the meatloaf meal, which did defeat me in the end, was one of them.

Prepare for landing

About an hour before landing I suddenly had an overwhelming thought, 'what the HELL am I doing?' We were mere miles from LAX and the city I'll be calling home for the next few months and I suddenly though, this is crazy.

Rewind nine hours and I was secretly grinning as I clocked British actress and professional skinny bitch, Thandie Newton in the flatbed seat behind me. I'd decided to treat myself to a bit of business class travel. My mate couldn't understand it, unable to reconcile the cost. One evening he argued, "ok, what if you bought a seat in coach and a stewardess came and said, you can upgrade to business for $1000, would you do it?'. I was distracted by the fact that he said '$1000' like a sarcastic Dr Evil and secondly, whatever. I've worked non-stop since I was 16, Mac jobs seeing me through college, never signing on, always grafting and this was my treat for all of that. A rather modest prize if you ask me and besides, you can put a price on having a celeb like Thandie Newton sat behind you, probably pouring Oil of Olay on her salad while picking at her no-egg omelette, right guys??

Anyway, I made sure I got my money's worth by pushing all the buttons I could lay my fingers on, watched heaps of movies AND I had three glasses of champagne. I'm sure that let the staff know they were dealing with a real starlet (and not someone who'd only travelled business once before).

The plane landed, I endured a painfully long immigration process. Nothing says welcome to America more than moving from one hour long queue to another making declarations, having finger prints taken and stating your intentions. At one point I wanted to just ask for my orange jumpsuit and which way to the blacked out sedan but thought better of it. The lack of humour at customs has been well documented. The night was warm, the taxi queue long. Home Jeeves. To my new apartment.

Driving Miss Crazy

Driving in this city has gradually stopped being my living nightmare. Everyone I spoke to before I came out said driving in LA was "a piece of piss". Well if it's a "piece of piss" I definitely have cystitis.

I guess the fact that I haven't driven on either side of the road for about five years hasn't helped.
Firstly, I don't know which way to look for impending peril so I kind of freeze, waiting for the road to clear - entirely. I'm waiting on Marathon type conditions. This nervousness and hesitancy is proving particularly popular amongst my fellow drivers who expressive their annoyance at me through the international language of Swerving Past You and Staring.

Yesterday, after an early meeting where I'd successfully navigated the mid-morning traffic, I awarded myself a car-free afternoon. I wanted to guarantee having at least one day where I hadn't hit anything.

For the first three days on the road I must have yelled "sorry!" over my shoulder at other drivers about thirty or forty times. And every time I heard a car horn I screamed "What did I do now??", even if the sound was clearly coming from miles away.

I know I'm driving way too slow for the native Los Angelenos but even with their fairly well marked roads and good signage, I still struggle to make an entire journey without, at some point, descending into a screaming flap.

After a week of negotiating the auto-hell I got a piece of advice that made me laugh. My manager said, 'don't make left turns. It'll be so much easier. Left turns are hard'.

In London or any British town or city for that matter, no left turns would make no sense what with our avent garde road layout. Just trying to get to your local supermarket would probably leave you stranded North of the Watford Gap but here, with it's elementary grid system, it is absolutely possible.

When I'm feeling more comfortable, I'll definitely challenge myself to take on more left turns, along with multistorey carparks, drive-thrus and perhaps, when I'm really confident, a high speed car chase near the 405.

One week in

Hmmm, I've been here a whole week now. The Golden Globes were last night, the weather has been awesome while I know, God is shacking his freezing dandruff all over the country back home but yet none of thing things I'd expect to happen here in Lala land have occurred. I haven't seen a single celebrity, I haven't been randomly selected for movie stardom in a grocery line. I haven't even been caught on tape getting beaten up by the po-leeece (aka Feds, po-po and 5-oh).

There was however, an incredibly tedious 'high speed' car chase on the news the other night. The newscasters could barely contain their delight as the story unfolded. They were practically willing the guy to go on the freeway so things could get 'interesting'. What actually happened was the guy ended up going round and round the same block while the newscasters tried to make each turn sound like a new development. 'Well he almost went on the 405 there but he's heading north on La Cienega... Again... Which is of course, very close to the 405... Should he choose to take it again... If you're just joining us, there's a high speed chase on near the 405, I believe on La Cienega'