A Review A Day: The Penthouse Bar at the Huntley Hotel, Santa Monica

Bad things can happen at the Huntley. You can get put in a room where the only place your suitcase can fit is the bathroom. You can have a dudes-from-the-Valley bachelor party take place in the room next to yours the night before a shoot (seriously, who does coke on a Tuesday??) You can personally witness a foursome of Chico’s-clad 50-year-old women have a sorority-style sexy photo sesh. All of that shit can happen, and since it’s the Huntley, it probably will. But here’s the thing, muchachas: does any of that REALLY MATTER when you can get this...

Muddled kiwis, Plymouth Gin, St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur, Lemon Juice and a Dry Burst of Henriot Brut Champagne.

...upstairs in a room with a panoramic Venice-ocean-Malibu-mountains-all that eastside shit-view?

I thought not. Have another.

 

A Review A Day, Independence Day edition: America

This speech is brilliantly conceived and brilliantly delivered.

However, having a cheeseburger from R+D kitchen on the fourth of July with three of my favorite people makes America pretty goddamn The Beautiful. Then we had like eleven drinks and screamed and I think got 86’ed from R+D (no hard feelings, guys, we were total loud assholes!) and I woke up a star-spangled shitshow Thursday morning. America has its moments, but the government should probably look into cheaper hotel minibar water. 

 

A Review A Day: My job.

The unique thing about work as an advertising creative is that you work within a close group, usually with a partner. It’s one of the most important relationships in your life, this partnership, and you probably spend weeks, if not months, of each year together.

My partners have been from such exotic locales as India, Bulgaria, San Diego and Virginia. Men and women, of different ages, they all work, or don’t work, in far corners of the earth now. They all have one thing in common: they’ve seen me say “I’m so over this industry” a few dozen times apiece.

Evidenced by the fact that I haven’t yet quit, being ‘over it’ is an overstatement and a tired part of my personal roster of theatric statements. But it’s useful when a great idea I’ve loved and toiled on dies in testing, when a colleague needlessly intimidates someone junior to them, or when someone arranges for a meeting at 9:30 AM. It’s me again, crying ‘wolf’.

However disgruntled, jaded or ready to sign up for Monster.com I’ve ever been, today was one of those days where being over it was simply impossible. Watching five giant characters in foam-and-fur suits dance to silly songs on a soundstage because of an idea my partner and I had, hatched, believed in and fought for is pretty goddamn amazing. 

I can’t wait to see it all come true.

 

Overall: 99 meeting makers + 1 amazing shoot day.

 

A Review A Day: The Oceana Hotel, Santa Monica

In the often-super-irritating category of hotels that are meant to inspire some sort of restful transformation in those who frequent them, the Oceana Santa Monica stands alone for its total lack of pretense. It’s just a friendly little hotel that manages a vibe that’s both homey and beachy-luxe.

Santa Monica is an emotionally tricky place for me. When I lived here, it became the locus of some of my most regrettable performances as an adult (among them, Coming Home From The Company Party Wearing A Single Flip Flop, A Mens' Track Jacket And A Bikini, the $1200 Sandwich from 7-11) but it’s also where I have to spend a week for work several times a year. Many of my favorite people in the world still live on L.A.’s Westside and I find myself openly thrilled to check in at the Oceana every time I’m there. I’m always treated like a welcome and successful businesslady, not the girl who crashed her bike into a cop car just a block away. And I’m usually upgraded to a suite that’s bigger than my first apartment in Manhattan was, by a factor of six. They call me Miss Mulloy, and they call Andrew Mr. Mulloy, to which he readily, delightfully answers. One confused young desk attendant, bless her Pepperdine-educated soul, got confused on the topic of our actual names and called us Mr. and Mrs. Nice, which we still get monogrammed on our towels.

So the transformation happens after all—I find myself staying here and feeling more comfortable, relaxed and at peace with the world than I ever can be in New York without a handful of Xanax. The transformation here isn’t brought about solely by ocean air, Frette sheets and basil gimlets-- it’s a particular vantage point on my own former life. And while I can’t expect everyone to have the same reaction to what is simply 70-ish rooms arranged around a swimming pool and perfectly maintained compositions of succulent plants, it seems to give everyone a sweet-smiled, heady calm. For me, it’s the awareness that, while I was content in my 2008 life to be a somewhat lovable clown, there comes a time when everyone needs to be a businesslady.

Overall: 100 starfish, all perfectly arranged on the nightstand.

 

A Review A Day: Sale at Anthropologie

The modern-day retail experience leaves plenty to be desired for certain. In order to go home with a cardigan or espadrilles or whatever, one must navigate a minefield of obstacles both animate and inanimate. Salespeople are of two types: supercilious and inept, and in some smaller boutiques, for what is surely a cost savings to the small businessperson who employs them, I've found some who cannily manage both skill sets. But even in bigger stores, throngs of corn-fed Americans moving purposelessly and improbably through racks of $300 sailor stripes make the experience of purchasing said stripes quite testing.

So I went into the Anthropologie at Rockefeller Center yesterday hardly expecting a spa day. I know better. But still, I fell for it. The upstairs was pleasant enough; it was unchallengingly filled with Anthro's signature floaty femininity. The Generationals played on the speakers, even. I nodded along, a colorblocked maxi dress tucked over my arm. 

I descended the double stairway to an ominous sign: a long stylists' rack with "$49.99" stamped tweely in red on a fake vintage pictureframe. Lured in by the treacle, I reached the Anthropologie sale floor. 

Anyone who's ever been in an Anthropologie knows that each garment has at least one and usually three or four embellishments attached by a surely underpaid hand in a windowless factory. Depending on the season, it may be eyelet, yarn, beads, straw, a patchwork quilted bird, a velvet bird, or a bird made of silk and antique lace. And at the rough hands of Anthro shoppers (imagine a receiving line of disapproving Russian grandmothers) each layer of beige eyelet and each cat made of buttons gets looser. So by the time it's on sale, the garment on question is most assuredly defective, and likely covered in a light layer of someone else's foundation and shop grime. Former ruffles and cast-off whimsy litter the floor in little piles, presided over by a wide-eyed and mostly helpless NYU junior and her lazy gay bestie. 

It's a disastrous scene, but to call it Beirut would insult the Lebanese.

So I was down there, in this ninth circle of retail, sweatily turning in circles to try and make sense of the scene that greeted me. Down there, one encounters a human subspecies made entirely of ass and shopping bag, and it bumped me from every direction, with no suggestion of an excuse me. I persevered blindly and somewhat madly, because I love pantsuits and I was aware of a certain silky pantsuit adorned (natch) with coral. It's shit like that that makes you deal with the Anthro Sale. Like traffic on the way to the beach, you endure what you must because OMG PANTSUIT IT'S RIGHT THERE AND IT'S ONLY A HUNDRED BUCKS.

I grabbed the pantsuit in my size and headed towards the fitting rooms. But here, I went afoul: I looked at the other racks. I even went into the permanent sale room, where a family of at least six women and as many generations discussed the merits of a gray pullover sweater. They must not be aware, I thought, that it's 95 degrees outside. I wonder how long they've been down here. Weeks? Months?

I made my way to the fitting room, and the coral pantsuit was just okay. It might have been upgraded to Cute with an iron and a better bra situation, but my patience had been used up trying to get past the Joy Luck Sweater Club without incident.

Cursing myself for abandoning a personal standard once again in the name of a discount pantsuit, I stormed upstairs and bought a full-price dress straight off the rack without trying it on. It's a risk I'm willing to take in order to never deal with that shit again. 

 

Rating: -1. 2 sequin flower appliqués for an effective merchandising strategy, minus 3 for using cheap labor. 

 

 

The road to hell is paved with blogs I have started.

Let's begin at the beginning: the word homage, if you speak English, is pronounced Ahm-udge. Not Oh-maaaahge. That pronunciation is a waste of time, and a clear precursor to buying a $600 vacuum. 

But let's also begin with an homage to the blogs I've thought were a good idea at one time or another. The first was about consumerism; a look at the curious duality that I work in advertising, spending my days devising ways to get people to buy shit they don't need, and then spend my night and weekend minutes buying shit that I myself don't need. I should know better, and yet I don't! This was ultimately too serious and too depressing, and it no longer exists.

The next was actually successful, mostly because other people contributed to it: a blog of lunch recipes from a little lunch group I was in at work. None of us work there anymore, so the club and the blog disbanded. 

The third was perhaps the riskiest, undertaken during a period of tenuous sobriety and continued emotional distress. It was called "creepy snacks" and was a catalogue of the weird shit I came home drunk and ate. Carrots wrapped in salami, slivered almonds dipped in truffle honey, spoonfuls of sprinkles and the odd 7-11 sandwich were featured posts. The only reason I stopped this blog was because I stopped the creepy eating. Too bad, really.

A couple of other ill-advised stops on the solipsistic journey have landed me here. I'm not going to give this one a specific focus, because sometimes that's just too limiting. I'll just Doogie Howser up a quippy two-liner about what I learned each day, sharing my wisdom with a nation of grateful tweens.