Season 4 Premiere: Witches, Vamps, and Fairies…?

True Blood Season 4, Episode 1 Recap

Finally! True Blood is here. And I know I’m late but I just got back from New York, and I’m not wasting any time digging into the first episode.

I love this show. It’s my dirty little secret that I’m way too uncomfortably to watch in the presence of polite society. But, damn it, I’m here, I’m addicted to vampire-fare, and I’m not going anywhere!  

Blogging while I watch, of course.

Season 4, Ep. 1:

Lakeridge Winery & Vineyards Harvest Festival

Here, in sunny Florida, we grow oranges—that’s about it. Trust me, if anyone could call themselves an expert on Florida agriculture it should me moi, who has traversed the entire length of the state about a billion times. How, by the billionth and 1 commute from FSU to south Florida, I never noticed vineyards among those endless rows of orange trees, is beyond me.

Wine drinkers of the world, my feet were in your grapes! on Twitpic

Wine drinkers of the world, my feet were in your grapes! on Twitpic

French Riviera Street Style

Dolled up for a night at one cool European nightclub in the French Riviera and feeling like a superstar

How to dress for touring the streets of Europe, you ask?

 

Day n’ Night in Nice, France and Monte Carlo

Night: BodyCon Dress from Arden B

Day: Pant: Express

The French Riviera: Nice and Monte Carlo (The day I didn’t meet Robert Pattinson)

The last trailer I saw before I left the states was for Monte Carlo, starring Selena Gomez and Blair from Gossip Girl. Fortunately, it didn’t come out yet, so I didn’t have an American movie to completely over hype my expectations of the Cote d’azure.

We stayed in Nice, an hour away from Cannes during the Cannes film festival. It was a pretty stunning beach city. The terra cotta roofed building are stacked high into the cliffs, overlooking the pebbled beaches and clear blue water. The buildings are colorful coral and white stone, and the streets are lined with palm trees. The best thing to do was to sit outside, enjoying white wine and eating seafood.

Living in a Hipster’s Paradise (Miami Art Walk and a brief interview with Rocky Grimes)

Since returning to the US, my new mission has been to appreciate all the art and culture available to me, here in South Florida. So, yesterday, a couple of girlfriends and I decided to check out the art scene in the Wynwood Art District, down in Miami.

The Wynwood Art Walk consists of several blocks of galleries, exhibiting various artists’ collections, all the while ladling out mixed drinks and electro beats. Yeah, it’s basically a hipster’s paradise. If the free drinks and music inside the galleries aren’t enough, there are dozens of food and liquor trucks outside, serving treats that should certainly be illegal. Against my better judgment, I had 3 deep fried cupcakes and 1 buttered hamburger. I’m not sure why anyone would slather butter on a hamburger or charge 8 dollars for it, but may I tell you, it was worth every cent and calorie. So were the cupcakes. They sell them in 3’s with a choice of vanilla, chocolate, and red velvet, and for investigative purposes, I was forced to sample all three. How I suffer for my blog!

The art exhibits were a mixed bag depending on what you like: photography, pop-art, and classic oil on canvas. Some galleries were exhibiting “art” I like to call, “pretentious, self indulgent, Banksy-wannabe, hipster, crap”. You know what I mean; we all saw “Exit through the Gift Shop”. Mr. Brainwash --remember him? Picture walking through galleries of that recycled, uninspired, pop-art, nonsense –And it wasn’t glorious nonsense either! Sorry, Warhol enthusiasts.

BUT, if that’s your thing, I found that one of these exhibits was a cut above the rest. Rocky Grimes’ exhibit, I absolutely loved. I’m not an art critic, but I’d like to think I know art from crap when I see it. His art was definitely pop-art without the pop. His prints are colorful combinations of different photo cutouts, combined with splashes of neon, and assembled together to convey meaning.

So, of course, I whipped out my notebook and went to tell Mr. Grimes exactly what I thought, and he was so kind as to let me quiz him for a sec. It went a little like this:

Wynwood Art Walk | miami.com

Wynwood Art Walk miami.com

Very excited for the Art Walk in Miami tonight. Will blog later, of course.

Switzerland is like the Garden of Eden with Chocolate… and Psychos.

I’m not a nature girl; I don’t like dirt, grass, creatures, or water that’s not in a bottle. So when we arrived in the little region of Lauterbrunnen, tucked away in the picturesque Swiss Alps, my response was, “Yeah whatever. Can we go back to Paris?”

But I got over that fast. With it’s pointy roofed, Hansel and Gretel, houses, colorful tulips, and cows grazing around with bells around their necks like happy cows in California don’t know what they’re talking about, all set against a backdrop of massive snow capped alps, Switzerland was like stepping into a fairytale. I wanted to put on a white gown and go running through the fields of flowers singing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” Context be damned!

Date Rape and Stolen Parts

Today I accompanied my friend to the mechanic to get her car tuned up and somehow ended up on a strange adventure that culminated with our mechanic revealing to us that he was a victim of date rape.