3 Days in LA / SoHo Obsession

So I landed back in NYC after three awesome days in LA.

Got home and was EXHAUSTED and slept from 10am until 6pm.

Now I'm up all night working on photos and decided to take a break to blog.

You may or may not have noticed, I've started updating my blog again. I've also made an addition to the sidebar. Where I used to have a Cast of Characters, I now have Choose Your Adventure, so you can choose a tag/hashtag, and revisit those blog posts from the past. It's a really cool feature I've been slowly working on for the past year, and when it's complete it will be epic. If you have any tag suggestions, feel free to email me. I've been having to go back through the blog in my limited spare time and retroactively tag posts with labels and it's somewhat tedious but worth it in the end.

ANYWAY...

LA!

I'm in love with the 7am flight to LA because the airport is empty when I check in. And the upgrade likelihood is high (I got it, obvi) and then you land at 10am with a full day ahead of you and just in time to grab a fabulous lunch.

My first stop was SoHo House West Hollywood with Matt and Kelli.

SoHo House WeHo is arguably the most fabulous place in all of LA.

It sits high above West Hollywood at the beginning of the sunset strip and overlooks EVERYTHING. You can see the Hollywood Hills, Santa Monica, Century City, Downtown, and on a clear day even Long Beach. It is beauuuuutiful. And no picture taking is allowed, which kind of just adds to the mystique. (There are a lot of celebs there and it is probably nice for them to have a refuge where people can't snap photos of them for fear of having their memberships revoked.)

I found this photo on the the internet though. There are probably others if you google or search instagram.



It's just one of the terraces overlooking the LA skyline. As a member, you can just sit here all day and work on your computer, which I did, and plan to often.

The other thing that's awesome about SoHo House is that people are so excited to check it out that they offer to buy you lunch just for taking them. Thank you Matt and Kelli!



Celebs spotted at lunch: Omar Epps, Gerard Butler, Trudie Styler (Sting's wife).

After lunch, I headed over to Westwood where I was crashing with Matt and Adrian and took a nice long nappy nap.

Then it was back to SoHo for drinks and dinner with Danny and Steven. (Thank you D+S!)

While they don't allow picture taking at SoHo, they DO have an awesome photobooth and the hallway between the lounge and the restaurant is covered with black and white photos from the photobooth.



Celeb spotted: Ed Sheeran, Jason Lewis AKA Smith Jerrod from Sex and the City

After dinner we headed into West Hollywood where I had invited some of my friendsies out for pre-birthday drinkies. Thank you everyone who came out!



The next morning I went downtown to see KristyKwan who brought me to a hidden gem, Cook's Tortas.

And had the most delicious Steak Milanese Torta EVERRR...



Then we went back to Kristy and Mike's and she helped me hand-stitch my Worst Quality Crab costume for Ming-Na's big 50th birthday party (which I'm going to give its own post, for obvious reasons.)



Sunday morning after Ming's party, I brought my lovely hosts Matt and Adrian to SoHo for brunch. And after brunch I basically just held court there all afternoon because a bunch of people had texted saying they wanted to come by and check it out too. (You're allowed 3 guests at a time, so when one person left, I'd text the next person that they could now come over and would sign the next person in.) Gotta love social media. Such fun!

Celeb spotted: Rachel Zoe

Around 5 pm I headed to the airport for my redeye home.

And now here I am. Shivering under my blankets.

Oh...p.s...my friends convinced me to go to Vegas again this week to actually celebrate my real bday post Thanksgiving and...well...I just couldn't resist.

YOLO

Ming's 50th: Teaser

Ming-Na's 50th birthday party was last night. And it was SO MUCH FUN.

Everyone dressed up in costume.

Naia and I had an epic one. Ming roared with laughter when she saw it.

For those of you who haven't seen The Joy Luck Club, the most famous line from it is when her mom tells her, "Waverly take best quality crab. You take worst. Because you have best quality heart!" And then everyone cries.

So our costumes are Worst Quality Crab / Best Quality Heart.



If you've never seen The Joy Luck Club, you should be ashamed. You are a bad asian.

I've uploaded it though and you can download it here:
https://www.transferbigfiles.com/e2581f7f-4c04-4a4b-988e-eb1b26583e6c?rid=lbMT0AA-4b43uTbe9XvjqA2

It will change your life.

Special shoutout to KristyKwan who spent an hour yesterday sewing little plastic crabs onto my tshirt for me.

Will post more pics later maybe. There was a costume change right before we roasted the birthday girl, and she came out in a golden bikini.

New York effing City

I left my apartment this morning to someone yelling, "ROLLING!!!...wait...Cut! CUTTT!!!!" Because I had literally walked right onto a movie set - in between Adam Sandler and a camera crew filming his upcoming movie "The Cobbler" outside my front door.



And that was the LEAST exciting thing that happened today.

From there I was on my way to SoHo House to pick up my brand new membership card and get my orientation.



Literally I was handed my card and I thought, "The rest of my life begins today."

For those of you who keep asking what SoHo House is and why it's such a big deal, watch the Sex and the City clip where it's featured...



After my orientation I ended up staying there all morning doing work on my computer and having breakfast and coffee and being generally fabulous.

It was amazing. I love it. My new home.

At 1pm I went uptown to do a corporate headshot shoot for this fabulous tech marketing company that I've been doing lots of shoots for.

This is my 3rd time shooting their people, so now we have our routine down and it's a breeze and I just basically hang out with my awesome contact person there, Samantha, and we chat and giggle and gossip.

Today I taught them Asian Poses. My job is the best job. I know it.



After shooting 9 people over the course of 2 hours (9 corporate shots x $250 = $2250 woo!) I ran home to drop off my cameras.

I was also informed the company will be flying me to SF in two weeks to shoot their SF and European teams. (30 people or something, triple-woo!)

I got home, dropped of my cameras, and then headed up to Lincoln Square IMAX where Megoon had invited me to an advance screening of Hunger Games 2: Catching Fire.

(Goon's friend's step-daddy is the prez of IMAX, what.ever.)



The movie was AMAZING. Stressful, but amazing.

Also, Liam Hemsworth is too beautiful for words.



After THAT we went downtown to Olive's by Todd English at the W Hotel Union Square where my dear friend and headshot client (and Penelope Cruz clone) Merly was bartending.



She hooked us up with drinks and delicious food.

Including rabbit pasta...



(SOFA. KING. DELICIOUS.)



Crab toast...



And the MOST DELICIOUS SOUFFLE I've ever had in my life.



After wayyyy to many beers and vodka sodas I shouted across the bar, "MERLY! Does Todd English ever come in here?"

She gestured over to the corner and was like, "Dude! He's right over there!"

It was such a only-in-New-York(or LA) moment.

Turns out Merly and Todd are besties and so she brought him over and we got to chat him up and take a photo.



No big deal. Just Todd English. One big-time-iest chefs in America.

You may recall our very first outing to Olive's Las Vegas during our epic Celine Dion Adventure.

Not only an amazing chef/restauranteur but a total hunk as well.

I love this frickin' city.

Hawaii -> JFK

On my way home from a weeklong cruise around the Hawaiian Islands!

It was absolutely amazing.

Over the course of the week we ate our faces off, hiked and drove and explored sites all around Oahu, Kona, Hilo, Kauai, and Maui.

We saw a bunch of waterfalls...

Snorkeled and swam. (I got a sweet new underwater digital camera.)

Saw amazing mountain ranges and valleys and sunsets

Made some wonderful new friends.

And met some beautiful Hawaiian people!

On our last day today we hiked Diamond Head in Honolulu.



I will try to post more. But I am so backlogged on editing work right now. It may have to wait.

Arrived in Hawaii!

Just in time to catch the beautiful sunset over Waikiki.

What a magical place!

I WAS JUST ACCEPTED TO SOHO HOUSE!!!!!!!

This is literally the best f*cking day ever. And off to Hawaii in the morning. I am actually kind of terrified my plane is going to crash because life cannot be this good.

ALEC BALDWIN

Fine. Maybe I will start blogging again. MAYBE.

Something exciting happened today. Very exciting. Like epicly exciting. So exciting that I have to return from my monthlong blogging hiatus to brag about it post it here so I will remember it forever.

I had two photoshoots.

The first shoot was for my dear friend Ms. Carolyn.

Carolyn is a fabulous high-powered lawyer who loves having DKHeadshots of herself taken. She comes to me for photo shoots like once every three months. Today I went to her law firm to take a group shot of her and her partners for an advertisement they are putting in some magazine.

It was an easy gig. Whatever. I was in and out in 20 minutes. (Parking uptown is NOT cheap. I paid $23 for 18 minutes of parking. crazy city)

Then I hurried back to my home to meet up with my 1 o' clock client. A young actor named Daniel.

As Daniel was getting his clothes prepped and fixing his hair in my bathroom etc I made my typical boring getting-to-know-you conversation. "How long have you been acting? Who is your agent? Etc. Etc.?"

Then I asked him, "soo....how did you hear about me?"

Usually people respond saying Backstage (I was voted "Favorite Photog" brag brag) or their agent sends them or they find me on Google or Yelp.

So his answer really caught me off guard.

"Alec Baldwin referred you."

I laughed. Haha very funny.

He didn't laugh back. So I paused. I was like, "Wait...Alec Baldwin ALEC BALDWIN?"

And he was like, "yeah". LIKE IT'S A TOTALLY NORMAL THING TO SAY.

I tried to play it cool, like Sir Alec Baldwin sends me peeps all the time, whatever.

This is the information I got out of him over the next half hour or so:

Apparently Alec Baldwin, out of the goodness of his big beautiful heart, gives back once a year or so by teaching young actors in an intensive 2 or 3-day acting class at some school or acting camp or something somewhere.

So this kid was one of the lucky few to take his class and Alec actually sat him down and SHOWED HIM MY WEBSITE. And told him to come to me for headshots.

"...because he thought you were the best."

WHAT. THE. F*CK!?!?!??!?!??!?!?

I have no idea how I came onto Alec Baldwin's radar. But however it happened. This made my day. This made my YEAR. Several years.

I literally had to stop my shoot and say, "I'm so sorry. I have to take a second to update my Facebook status to tell people what you just told me."

He laughed.

Alec Baldwin. If you're out there and somehow reading this. I love you. I love you so much. I loved you since Prelude to a Kiss. And The Juror. And I'm sure there's stuff older than that but you are a little older than me. And I don't watch 30 Rock but I hear you are amazing in it. And I hear you are good at Words With Friends and I haven't played in a while but if you want to challenge me I would totally start playing again. Anyway. THANK YOU for taking time out of your busy important A-List celebrity schedule creating entertainment for BILLIONS of people to recommend someone to my stupid little headshot business. (insert squeal)

If you ever need a photograph of yourself, I will hook you up.
Obviously.

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OK I'm off to Hawaii tomorrow, maybe I will blog again soon! MAYBE