Adventures in Candyland

Sorry to be geographically exclusive, but we do live in LA! If you’re in LA too, then you should check out the dineLA Restaurant Week event happening this week and next.

Here’s a rundown from the site:

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is dineLA Restaurant Week?
dineLA Restaurant Week is a two-week dining event established to introduce diners to the vast array of restaurants in neighborhoods throughout LA County. Local foodies and visitors to LA will have the opportunity to enjoy a selection of specially priced three-course meals from some of LA’s best restaurants during this dining event.
When is dineLA Restaurant Week?
January 27 – February 1, 2008
February 3 – February 8, 2008
What are restaurants offering during dineLA Restaurant Week?
Participating restaurants will opt into one of two dining categories and present a selection of specially priced three-course meals for lunch and dinner. Diners will be able to choose from three choices for each course. Prices are per person and exclude beverages, tax and gratuity.
LunchDinner
Deluxe Dining:$15$25
Premier Dining:$22$34

What restaurants are involved in dineLA Restaurant Week?
A wide variety of restaurants throughout Los Angeles County are participating in dineLA Restaurant Week. A complete list of participating restaurants is available here or you may contact your favorite restaurants to see if they are participating.
How do I experience a restaurant participating in dineLA Restaurant Week?
Contact the restaurant directly. Due to the popularity of this event, advance reservations are strongly encouraged, but walk-ins are appreciated. There is no guarantee that walk-in guests will be accommodated.
If you have more questions regarding the event
Contact participating restaurants here or call 877.dineLA1 (877.346.3521).

A few of our favorite places are on the list. Bon appetit!

Today I worked with Soul’s Calling at the Los Angeles Gift Show. And here’ s my observation — very few companies think anything or even understand what a brand is and how portraying it with thought is meaningful to buyers, writers and consumers. When you are thoughtful about creating a pleasing poignant environment that aligns with the messages and products you are pushing out - the result is something so strong that people react and respond to it even if they’re not conscious of it. But, it should be very consciously developed by the company. Some brands do, and for me, I am automatically attracted to those brands. But, overwhelmingly and shockingly (though maybe it shouldn’t be), only about 10 percent of the company’s exhibiting made their brand a focus. For the rest, they just throw a bunch of stuff together in a booth. Here’s a shot of the Soul’s Calling booth - it’s an example of how someone puts a lot of effort into creating a booth that spreads her message and makes you feel a certain way when you step across the boundry into the brand’s world. She even had a booth scent….It’s time for every company to be thoughtful and take it up a whole bunch of notches.

Yesterday we toured a very cool house in Brentwood. Wired Home by Living Homes (obviously, Chris Anderson didn’t completely turn me off). The house used state-of-the-art technology and environmentally conscious steel, glass and reclaimed redwood-encased Prefab for Living Homes by celebrated architect, Ray Kappe. The home is completely wrapped in windows - allowing the outside to be brought it - a concept that is throughly appealing to me. It was 4,000 sq. feet of design and technology exquisitness and absolutely the kind of house I see in my future. There was so much coolness in this house (forget the house keys, how about an iris reader instead) and we’re real suckers for it. Here are a few shots(sorry about the crappy camera phone) that really don’t do it justice.

The interior was also pretty spot on - modern yet not cold. The art was interesting, particularly from this artist -Andy Diaz Hope. Here’s something kinda trippy that I took - reminded Danielle of the show, “Flight of the Concords”. This was the mirror in the upstair bathroom.

But, there was only one issue - the price tag. The house is on the market for 4.3 mill. I don’t know if I will be able to afford this in the near future. And that begs the question, how many people really can? I understand that this home was for touring and sets the standard, but when will the masses, or even the upper middle class, be able to afford a sustainable PREFAB home. The definition of Prefab has definitely changed and so has the price. I don’t know the exact price of putting one of these homes up, but I’m assuming it’s quite costly even when they aren’t customized.

For me, the home symbolizes the green movement. Lots of new ways to be environmentally conscious, yet ironically, the majority of products are typically more expensive than their non-green counterparts. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule so you don’t need to list off all the ways or products I’m wrong about, but if we are to move in this direction, I hope that this kind of lifestyle can become more cost-effective and easily accessible for more people in the near future. I, for one, am waiting for the day.

Sadly, a large portion of Southern California is up in flames today. What’s even worse? This is nothing new. As a native, I have seen fire after fire ravage the hillsides where I grew up. For me, driving through Malibu canyon and smelling Eucalyptus trees is akin to eating a bowl of mac and cheese - I’m home.

So, it’s painful to repeatedly drive through canyons, once covered by California’s distinct green vegetation when it’s been blackened and burnt to a crisp. Tree after tree reduced to charred stick figures. And the cycle continues. Years pass - the greenery rejuvenates and then like clockwork, it happens all over again. Yesterday the clock struck extraordinarily loud and all at once over Southern California.

Here’s an image I took from Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica yesterday. It’s actually beautifully tragic, right. Guess you put ocean in anything and it has the tendency to be so.

And today, as I sit in my office watching the trees wave back and forth with alarming intensity due to the hot, dry and unrelenting Santa Ana winds, I have to tell you I feel sad. According to this piece on Mega Fires, Global Warming is the fuel for these fires and only promises to get worse as the years progress and we ultimately lose half the forests in the West.

This definitely ties into my last entry… and even though I’m not really a political person, I hope that our next President makes the earth’s survival a priority. Because it’s becoming more an more apparent how we’ve slipped up.

People who aren’t from LA always wonder why anyone would want to live here. The earthquakes, the fires, the traffic the smog, the expense. It might seem daunting to some, but I’ve lived other places and when I was away, all I ever wanted was to come home. Boy, am I a dork!

Innovation never stops and never ceases to amaze. Last Sunday, Danielle and I ventured downtown to the LA Convention Center to experience Wired Nextfest, one of the coolest “tradeshows” I’ve ever attended. As we browsed the booths, we were continously awed by the creativity and cool factor of the products and technologies shaping the future of our world. We were reminded that we’re living during an amazing period of time, where interactivity is the sign of the times as well as the proliferation of communities continually being by reshaped by the technology and inspiration featured at this show. The shape of things to come is about customization, collaboration and innovation tied into entertainment and culture tied into creating a more sustainable and empathetic world.

Honestly, I could write chapters on the innovations we saw Sunday, but instead, I’ll just hightlight a few of of my favorites.

Light Harp
This is the first interactive art you experience upon entering the show. The sound coming from this thing was really beautiful.

Brainball
Are you calm enough to win a game of brain ball. I know I’m not, but it might be a good challenge for me. Brainball is a game where you compete by relaxing your brain and move a little ball across a table into a little circle using your brainwaves. The person who is calmer will get the ball in first. Seriously, who needs mediation when you can just play this game. Everyone was circled around these two players sitting their with their eyes closed while their brain waves were being charted on screen behing them. It was fascinating!

Desktop Factory 3D Printer
This is so cool and so inexpensive when you compare it to the past cost of creating some kind of prototype. The machine looks like a microwave oven and basically layers what sort of looks like sand to create a 3D model of the digital data you feed it and only for $4995.

Jukebots
People DJs may soon be extinct with the introduction of Jukebots, industrial robots who scratch, spin and mix records. They kind of dance as the decise which record they’re going to pick. Ridiculously cool!

LifeStraw
It’s difficult to imagine living somewhere without access to a clean water source. It’s painful to realize children still die from contaminated water — soooo these LifeStraws, which are shockingly inexpensive and simple( $3 )will save many, many lives.

Obviously I could chronicle every experience that seemed significant or fabulous, but I don’t want to bore you. So I’m going end this entry by illustrating the use of technology and art.

Today, text messaging is taking the place of calling, emailing and yes, talking. So I think we can all expect to see many iterations of this technology in the future. Here are two we learned about and took advantage of many times that day. So many times in fact, the guy from Nanikawa who was running the Wind and Swimming Messagesystem was either thinking we were really crazy or really annoying. The other is TXTual Healing, SMS Enabled Interactive Street Performance. Both very cool and the wave of the future. Below are a few samples of what I’m talking about, but please don’t judge me for my camera work, which is absolutely painful and pretty much unbearable - I truly apologize, but I want to illustrate what I’m talking about. Today, we actually bought a really cool handheld video camera by PURE DIGITAL, that we learned about at a PSFK conference. We’ll blog on how that benefits my awful filming ability later.

Both of the below technologies allow you to call a number they provide, enter your message which is immediately rendered into these two artistic forms.

TXTual Healing - Text Message Customizable Graffiti Art

Wind and Swimming MessageSystem - The wind blows your text from screen to screen in front of a beautiful background

Which unique technologies and products do you think will make an impact in the future?

In May, I read a profile about the Development Events Director at the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA, Vanessa Gonzalez.  I was impressed by the sheer number of events she produces on an annual basis, and her creativity in planning those events.  So I was glad to see her as a panelist in one of the sessions at an events industry conference we attended last month.  Her passion about the events she plans was pretty inspiring, and I hadn’t been to MOCA in quite some time, so I thought I would check out one of their events.

Last Saturday night Limor and I headed downtown with our husbands to MOCA Nightvision, the seventh in a series of ten Saturday night summer events at the museum.  We got there on the early side and were disappointed by what we thought was a small turnout.  But by the time we left around 10:30 the place was packed with probably 500-600 people.

We started the night with dinner from the cafe (nothing special) while we listened to the live DJ.  Then we walked around the galleries (I loved the MOCA Focus exhibit of Alexandra Grant) and stumbled upon an interesting spoken word performance by Ruben Martinez in one gallery.  Then we went back outside for drinks and to listen to the live musical performance by Busdriver, who we loved.  Finally, we all collaborated on an art project at the workshop area, which we found very therapeutic.

There are three Nightvision events left, and if you are in LA and haven’t been, you should check it out.  In a city where you often have to scratch the surface to find some culture beyond Posh & Becks, it was refreshing to experience it on an average Saturday night, in jeans, for about $8 and with hundreds of other, mostly young folk.  Kudos to Vanessa!

And we still had time for Pinkberry!  (but that’s a whole nuther post…)

Is anyone else sick of celebrities?  Of course, I used to check out perezhilton.com everyday, that was until I started my own business.  Now, I barely have time to read my email let alone pay attention to what some rude, blobby gossiper has to say about self-obsessed people who believe what they have to say is more intellectual and insightful than Pulitzer Prize winners.  Umm…hello, Tom Cruise. But, even if I did have the time, I wouldn’t spend it reading about someone leaving the Ivy.  

I only bring this up because I opened the LA Times online one night last week, and the first thing I see is Posh and Becks.  You know, the two platinum Brits who are being fawned over by the entire city of LA. Boy, is this a superficial city (not like that’s a shock or anything).  But, can these two really love each other?  Is it possible?  Or are they just two marketing entities that work together to produce this odd pop star/athlete money-making combo.  I mean how can he love her really – she always looks pissed off.  Ironically, she probably thinks she looks chic.  

I don’t know…I guess I just feel like celebrity culture is so oversaturated and its overrun people’s individuality.  That’s why it frustrates me when clients are so interested in getting their products to and on celebrities.  They think it’s the only way to get their product noticed and purchased.  I know it helps, but there are other ways that don’t have you begging some high school dropout to say they like your product. 

I know and hope it’s only a matter of time before people will flip again and they’ll decide they like something because they like it, not because some drug-addled, pregnant, anorexic girl does.

I live in Santa Monica and almost every day (well, that might be stretching it) I try to get up and go running.  Personally, I don’t think there is any better place to live and be active in LA.  There’s always a lot going on and interesting people everywhere - never boring.  A lot of times I’ll run down to beach and take the path down Ocean Ave, which of course is amazing. But even more than that, I like to venture through the neighborhoods to check out the diverse home styles.

See, I’ve become obsessed with architecture, particularly modern architecture.  It’s not that I don’t like other styles, because I do have a true fondness for Mediterranean and Spanish style homes (meaning I would be ok living in one – haha), and each style certainly has it’s own beauty,  but really, I adore the clean, open and austere sensibility that only can be conveyed through a modern home.  So as I run through the eclectic streets of Santa Monica, I peruse each street, anxious to find that one home that will be mine some day soon (oh yes I’ve already found it). 

I only really recognized my discerning eye during the last three years while handling publicity for a modern architect and modern furniture store.  I think the combination of the two was like a double whammy on my brain and now I am completely obsessed on educating myself on Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius – the original masters of modern architecture- I’ll be spending lots of time at Hennessey + Ingalls. But I think my real point here is that this perspective gives me an advantage anytime we help our clients design their materials. I abhor messy, overly colorful and pointless design – it makes no impact.  I think design that reflects and communicates a clean, modern, tasteful and functional aesthetic creates such a stronger impression in the eyes of the people seeing it.  See – I am in this business for a reason

Now someone tell me how I can make this place mine! And it’s green! More on that later…..    

When I was a kid, my dad worked in Culver City.  Where the heck was that?   It was definitely not a high-rise in Century City or Downtown.  In fact there were about two restaurants – the Sagebrush Cantina and the kind of no-name Thai place.  Dad leased and sold industrial and warehouse space.  But that was a long time ago. 

If you haven’t yet experienced the renaissance of Culver City, you should.  There are the more than 30 art galleries that have popped up on South La Cienega, the Kirk Douglas Theater and several good restaurants and wine bars.  And those industrial spaces – they’re now creative office space. 

In the months since we began Sweet Talk, it seems like everywhere we go, someone is talking about the CC: the handbag designer we did our first new biz pitch for has her office there; how ‘bout that new wine bar with the cool prepaid cards and the tiny teardrop-sized tastes; the amazing daycare for children of Sony employees; “we’re looking to buy a condo…in the Valley OR Culver City;” date-nights at Ford’s Filling Station for dinner and then the Jazz Bakery.  So my dad took us for a tour: we were shocked by the sheer number of cars parked everywhere; we had one of the best lunches we’d had in weeks at Beacon; we browsed HD Buttercup and stopped into a postage-stamp sized boutique/gallery.  We were intrigued by the eclectic, artistic, edgy vibe. There’s a sense that a lot’s going on there.  “I told you to buy a house in Culver City,” my dad says as he wraps up his tour.

Check out the CC on June 2, 2007 during the Culver City Art Walk.