Thank you Oprah!

I cannot believe what just happened to me a week ago. Let me begin by telling you how it all started.

About a month ago I nominated my roommate Gina's Pin-Up For Vets calendar project on the Oprah Winfrey website. There was a link on her website to nominate someone who inspires you and who is a hero in your community. I thought that this perfectly described Ms. Gina Elise so I went ahead and submitted her name. We didn't think too much about it and went on with our lives.

Then, two weeks ago, we got an email asking if we would like to be in the audience on the show! Crazy, right? We had no clue this was coming or that really bigger things lay in store for us. After much debate as to whether or not we should go ahead and buy those expensive plane tickets from LA to Chicago on such short notice, we finally caved and purchased them. When was this sort of opportunity ever going to happen again? Several of our friends told us that we would be stupid not to go. This is her final season after all. We didn't even know what the show was going to be about!! This led to some serious investigation....

Now if you've been following my blog for awhile, then you'll know that Gina and I travel quite a bit for her Pin-Ups For Vets project to hand-deliver calendars and other merchandise to VA Hospitals. So of course we thought that we should also go to a hospital while we were in Chicago. Let's kill two birds with one stone. We would attend the Oprah show in all its magicalness and also go cheer up some amazing VETS. Logical, eh? I had never been to the Windy City before so I was ecstatic about the trip. What was there not to be thrilled about: Being at the Oprah show, visiting a VA Hospital and venturing to a new fun city! Well, this trip turned out be the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me! Are you ready for it? The show that we went to happened to be OPRAH'S PART 2 of her FAVORITE THINGS EPISODE!!!!!! Can you believe that?! If you follow Oprah even a little bit, then you know what this episode is all about and how much it means to be in that illustrious audience on the taping of that particular episode! If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, all you need to know is that Oprah generously gives away to her audience members 10-15 of her all-time favorite things. That's right, this show is all about receiving gifts!!! It was insane! I don't really even know how to describe how incredible it was being in that audience and discovering that it was her Favorite Things episode. Let me just tell you that the audience absolutely freaked out!! Tears, hugs, giddy laughter, screams, uncontrollable shaking, outbursts of singing and that was just me! Hahaha! Ok, not really, we were all going crazy!!! I kept hugging and shaking Gina's hands and asking over and over, "Are we really here?! Is this really happening to us right now?!" I had to pinched throughout the show to see if I was awake! Fake snow was falling from the ceiling and the words "Oprah's Ultimate Favorite Things" kept bouncing on the screens everywhere. It was madness in that studio for awhile. Wonder how much of this commotion they got on camera?
Honestly, I still think I'm in shock that this all happened to me. Out of all the people in the world that tried getting on this show, Gina was chosen and she picked me to go with her. I mean, what are the chances of all this?! Mathematicians, help me out....

If you haven't watched this episode yet, then go check it out asap! It aired yesterday so perhaps you die-hard Oprah fans have it recorded or maybe you know of someone that recorded it. I'm in the reddish-peach dress in the second row-front center. I know-they were amazing seats!! I had an stellar view of the entire stage and of course of the lovely Oprah! Sadly, they didn't let us take our phones or cameras into the studio with us so there aren't any pictures from the inside. I was definitely taking mental pictures though the entire time! : )

This Thanksgiving, I am truly grateful for experiences like this!

Genital Origami!?!

Yes, I do mean exactly what the title of this post says! Last night, my roommate Gina and I ventured into the unknown art of genital origami. She heard about this show through a colleague of hers and I was just as intrigued by it as she was so we got tickets to it last week. The show is called Puppetry of the Penis and the name pretty much says it all.

Puppetry of the Penis is a Tony-Award winning performance show. The show was initially conceived by Australian Simon Morley as the title of an art calendar, showcasing 12 of his favourite penis installations (known as Dick Tricks). On New Years Eve in 1997 he had a garage full of calendars to sell, and with requests for live demonstrations mounting he finally decided to create an act with fellow Aussie David "Friendy" Friend. The show involves two nude men who bend, twist, and fold their penises and scrotum's into various shapes. Crazy, right? This theatrical contortion of the male genitalia (penis, scrotum and testicles) into various positions along with comedic narration has since spread internationally. It is humorously called "Dick Tricks" or "genital origami," referring to the flexibility of the human penis, testicles and scrotum. The show has appeared in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Europe, Canada, the U.S., South Africa and Argentina.

It was absolutely hilarious and shocking all at the same time. Gina and I couldn't stop laughing through the entire show and we kept saying to each other, "I can't believe we are watching this right now!" My eyes have certainly seen a lot of wild things these past few weekends here in LA! : )

Check out this list of their tricks..... Use your imagination..

Wind Up
Atomic Mushroom
Wristwatch
Snail
Parachute
Eiffel-Tower
Hamburger
Hot dog
Pelican
Windsurfer
G-String
Brain
Weed-Snipper
Loch Ness Monster
The woman
Mollusk
Baby Bird

A Lingerie Party?!

Ok here goes...I really wasn’t sure how to begin explaining our Saturday night's activity, but the beginning is the best place I guess....

First, you gotta know the back story- After picking up Atalaya up from the airport on Thursday night and going back to my place to change clothes, we head out to a bar called The Saint. We have a couple of drinks there and then we move on to the next place called “Happy Endings”, which I've talked about before on here. While waiting at the valet, a guy runs out of the bar and approaches Atalaya to introduce himself. For the sake of this story we shall call him Charlie. Charlie is an actor, but aren’t they all in LA, but he really is an actor and Atalaya has actually seen some of his work so whatever. He gives her his card and tells her to call him this weekend so he can convince her to move to LA. Yeah, that's exactly what she needs-a random guy telling her what's so great about living here.

So Saturday comes around and we are sightseeing on Hollywood Blvd. Atalaya gets a text from Charlie inviting us to a lingerie party that night. At first, we think of course not but as the day goes on, we start considering it as a possible option for later on in the night. It's the last night we can party and Atalaya wants to live it up! So we head over to Victoria Secret to pick up a couple of things just in case.

Ok, 7:30pm rolls around and we are getting ready to hit up our first stop and Atalaya's phone rings and it's Charlie asking if we have masks (why in the hell would we have masks?). We tell him no and he says he will find us some. He told us we needed to be ready to go by 9:30 because the limos will be leaving by 10pm. Side note: We are just thinking we are going to the Playboy mansion or something like it just…just to celeb watch.

So, we get to the rendezvous point and Charlie is an hour late! He shows up with these awful tissue paper cut-out masks. They were just horrible. Then he goes into the CVS and buys these headbands and cuts eye holes in them…which looked worse than the arts and crafts tissue paper Zorro masks. Any who, the limo appears and we get in. It is myself, Atalaya, Charlie and Steve (Charlie’s friend). We decide to take our chances without the masks. We pull up to this fantastic mansion in the Hollywood Hills. It was absolutely gorgeous! The security guard asks us for the password: We all look at each other like “password?” Anyway, the security guard goes ahead and tells us…it's ”fellatio”.... wow......

We proceed up the driveway and as we enter the house we were glad to see that some people were not wearing masks and everyone had on lingerie so we calmed down. We make our way to the outside pool area and the house over looks LA, I mean the view was amazing. I can’t put into words how nice the house was. We make our way over to the table for a couple of drinks and we begin to mingle. Then I hear “Ron Jeremy just arrived”. I wasn't familiar with who that was so Atalaya quickly informed me and we knew we were in trouble then.... I mean, what kind of a party does a porn star attend?!
We then look over to our right and see a lady dancing in the corner…with no underwear on. OMG. Atalaya's very first LA trip and we are at a SWINGERS party in the Hollywood hills, WTF???!!!!!

So, needless to say, I am instantly scared! What do we do? Are we going to be expected to do anything? Am I safe here? What the hell is going on?! Atalaya and I immediately find Charlie and ask him what in the hell was he thinking bringing us to a swingers party. He told us he had no idea but we knew that he was lying... How could you not know what you were going to if you knew the host?

Unfortunately, we couldn’t exactly leave because the limo ran in shifts, one every hour. The entire time we were at this party, we spent it ducking and dodging all sorts of advances. Other than the bathroom, there was no place we could hide. So we decided we were “with” each other. We weren’t physically with each other but for the purposes of that night, Atalaya was my girlfriend. Which turns out at a swingers party means NOTHING!

We saw so many more things that are just not appropriate for my blog but I think that you get the picture. What a night, right?! I'm still kind of in shock that it all happened in the first place. When I first woke up on Sunday morning, I really thought it was all just a dream. I couldn't seem to get clean enough either on Sunday. Despite feeling completely out of place, awkward, uncomfortable and just plain weirded out by that scene, I totally can respect what these 'swingers' are doing. They are all about free love and enjoying each other bodies very openly. I'm just not interested in that lifestyle myself. This was an experience and I guess it's more thing I can cross off my bucket list.... ; )

Thanks to Atalaya for helping me compose this post! Whew!