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The LOST Party at our very own Long Beach Hatch

We hosted a birthday party for our dear friend Danna last night. She wanted to have a LOST themed party, and for those of you who know about the show on ABC, all of these pictures will make sense!

The party was a huge success. We all tried to come dressed as characters from the show (as best as we could, atleast!) and Danna & Jarod went the extra mile by making tons of labels for all of the food and drink, just like the Dharma Initiative packaging on the show. We did improvise on a few by placing the Queen Mary in the symbol, to signify a Long Beach “hatch”. Jarod even found a screen saver that we hooked up that would beep every 108 minutes and wouldn’t stop until you punched in the numbers. Very over the top, but very fun.

Here are a few highlights (again, our apologies if you aren’t familiar with the show!):

This is the stocked fridge, after we finished labeling everything.

More food and drink.

These chocolates were probably the most impressive.
Notice the barcode even has “the numbers”!

We decided to dress up as Charlie & Claire for the party. Claire was EXTREMELY pregnant on the show, and Carrie was going for the ridiculous factor. Charlie was a blonde british rock star on the show, which was also pretty ridiculous for Ed to pull off. We think we were a hit atleast.

A sight you never see – Carrie & Ed are both sans glasses and wearing contacts!

The fake pregnancy and the tape Charlie always wore on this fingers in the show.

Danna and Jarod were Danielle & Desmond. Danielle is a mysterious French woman who has been on the island for 16 years. Desmond crashed on the island and got stuck in the hatch pushing the button every 108 minutes.

Even Mike came as Sayid, the very resourceful ex-Iraqi military brain.

Hopefully all of you out there don’t think we’re completely insane. But if you haven’t seen the show – you can catch up. All 3 seasons are now available on DVD! Even our parents watch this show – it’s brilliant!

We love a great restaurant…

We made plans to finally have a long overdue dinner with Carrie’s best friend, Carrie and her husband, John. She suggested Ketchup, and as soon as we saw the pics, we were IN! Besides the fact that Carrie is a complete ketchup addict, this place was all white and red – and very modern! We couldn’t wait to check this place out. Here are a few pics from their website:

(We sat right about where this picture was taken from)

The restaurant didn’t disappoint, although it was quite a scene. Ketchup is located right on the Sunset Strip. Ed kept sayin’ that he half expected the paparazzi to show up because it seemed like some celebrity was bound to appear. No celeb sightings for us though…

The place wasn’t just pretty, either. The food was pretty good. We ordered some fun stuff – the Ketchup Fries, which were basically 3 different types of French Fries with 5 different ketchups. The Fire Fries were Ed’s fave, the Sweet Potato fries were surprisingly Carrie’s fave, and the Parmesan Fries weren’t bad either. We can’t quite remember all 5 ketchup types, but they were pretty delicious. We know there was a classic, a chipotle, a mango and one with ranch. We also ordered mini Kobe beef chili dogs to share between the four of us. The two dogs came out and they were the funniest little miniature dogs we’d ever seen. They were literally “bite-size”. That was fine by us though, as we needed to save room for the main course…seafood plates served with lobster mashed potatoes. The meal was some serious over-indulgence, but it was worth it!

Next, we were off to the L.A. County Museum of Art for a Muse event. Carrie used to work at the museum, so lucky for us, she was able to hook us up with free tickets. (Thanks, Carrie!)

The event was featuring some 60s & 70s SoCal art from their permanent collection, along with some colonial Latin American art. It was okay – we all agreed we’d seen better there, but Ed was excited because one of his favorite bands, Los Abandoned played. They also had art projects that you could make on site. We love those LACMA events!

All in all, we thought it was an excellent night!!!

Weekend Success

Back to reality now that the Palm Springs weekend has come to a close, and it couldn’t have been better. On Saturday, we went to a fantastic restaurant called The Falls. They’re known for great steaks and greater martinis, so it was an apropos place to have dinner on Carrie’s birthday. We were given a great tip the night before to request the table on the balcony with it’s very own firepit, and our wishes were granted! It was a very special dinner.

The dinner crew (you can just barely see the edge of the firepit in front of us):

The view from the table:

The next day we were off to take our very own Modern Architecture tour. We saw so many great houses that were absolutely drool-worthy. We decided that we wanted to move here:

Or here:

Amongst many of the houses we drove by, we saw Neutra’s iconic Kaufman House. This is as beautiful as architecture gets!

The last of the bunch was driving by one of Mr. Frank Sinatra’s homes. We were shocked at how accessible this place was! Right off the street, no palatial gates or enormous barricades to protect it. You just gotta figure Frank wanted to stay close to the action.

It was pretty modest from the outside, but you know it has to be slammin’ indoors. The only slight clue that it was something out of the ordinary was the fact that it had a small door to the left of the driveway saying “Service Entry Only”.

But of course, we also had to fit in a ride on the infamous Sky Peoplemover, aka the Aerial Tramway. We’d always wanted to do it, but never got a chance. It was super cool! We wish the tram cars still looked like this one:

Now the cars are all fancy and the floor rotates so you can get a view from all angles. We were not so prepared though – there was snow at the top! It was hard to imagine because it was sunny and warm down below! Guess we shoulda known better, but it didn’t stop us from going up anyway! The pics don’t do it justice, but it’s a magnificent view – and VERY high!!! This shows part of our path to the top.

Now it’s back to the good ol’ LBC.

Viceroy Madness

What happens when you go to one of the swankiest hotels in Palm Springs and you tell people it’s someone’s birthday in a few hours? You get many many martinis and a gaggle of gay men ready to ring in your newest year with you. We were supposed to meet up with some friends of Mary & Lewis’ last night for a few drinks & dinner – before we knew it, we had at least 20 gay men PARTYING with us and we took over then entire back end of the hotel. It was the complete Palm Springs experience! Topics of conversation: The word fabulous, Palm Springs Real Estate, Bravo’s newest TV show – Top Design, Jonathan Adler and the mayor of Signal Hill.

The Viceroy is great. Very Old Hollywood glamorous. All whites and blacks, with yellow accents. Pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield all over. We had a hard time holding the camera and the martinis in our hands, but here’s a few pics:

Today, we are off to the Modern Convention!