Fun video series by JERRY SEINFELD

Jerry Seinfeld takes various cool cars to go get coffee with various comedic friends, and the mood is nice—casual and unhurried. What’s neat is that all these guys are not just funny but, because they’re older, they have interesting thoughts and observations about life and human nature. They’re reflective about where they’re at, and it’s clear they enjoy each other’s company. I like how Jerry is not as cynical as I expected—he’s quick to laugh and seems eager to really talk. I particularly liked this one with Alec Baldwin (please click on the photo above), and the one with Bob Einstein, but they’re all good.

Become a creator with THE TOOLS

The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels

This book gives you 5 tools for addressing the most common problems we all deal with every day. The first tool is so good, I had to put the book aside for a few days, because I didn’t want to continue reading until I’d fully processed it. When I talked to other people whom I’d recommended the book to, they reported the same thing. And the two guys who wrote the book? You’ll immediately love them. And what’s weird is you’ll feel like they love you, too, because their caring and decency come through so strongly. And you’ll enjoy the story of their client, Vinny, the comedian who rises and falls and rises again.

Random lines from the book:

“Most human beings never leave their comfort zone”

“You get trapped in ‘the maze’ when you feel unfairly treated by someone and can’t let go of it. It’s as if the other person has moved into your mind and taken up residence. While you’re obsessing, life passes you by.”

“We feel compelled to acquire thing after thing. Yet we don’t enjoy each new item for long; once we possess it, we shift our focus to the next thing. Consumerism misdirects the natural human desire for a relationship with higher forces by convincing us that higher forces exist inside the magical something. Next time you see a group of shoppers frantically burrowing through the sale items at a department store, tell yourself you’re witnessing a hunt for cosmic magic.”

“Human beings are only happy when they are reaching toward their highest potential.”

“Failure, demoralization and paralysis all become opportunities for us to exercise a godlike creativity. If you can do this, you’ve marked yourself as a creator, independent of outer achievements. You become fearless.”

http://www.amazon.com/Tools-Transform-Problems-Confidence-Creativity/dp/067964444X

http://www.thetoolsbook.com

Everyone is reading the wrong JONATHAN FRANZEN

Jonathan Franzen, The Discomfort Zone review

At a crowded signing of Franzen’s most recent novel, “Freedom,” a woman standing in line behind me said, “Jonathan Franzen is like Justin Beiber to adult intellectuals.” He is popular. But I had to force myself to finish “The Corrections.” And I read a long excerpt of “Freedom,” in the New Yorker, and that was enough for me. You know how there’s the kind of therapist that listens to everything you say and mostly just nods, providing witness? That, to me, is what Franzen’s fiction is like. And you know how there’s the other kind of therapist that tells you their opinions, explains complex things to you, and makes you feel understood? That, to me, is what his nonfiction is like. I’ve read both his collection of essays and his memoir (pictured above) twice and am itching to read them again. The next time you feel nauseated from spending too many hours clicking through b.s. like TMZ pics of celebs’ cellulite at the beach, read “How to Be Alone” and “The Discomfort Zone” to feel grounded and mentally engaged again. These snippets are too short to do him justice, but they’ll give you an idea:

“Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them”

“the prospect of nuclear annihilation (my longtime pet apocalypse)”

“my wife’s sort of intelligence still seemed to me the best sort, her moral and aesthetic judgments still seemed to me the only ones that counted”

“Depression, when it’s clinical, is not a metaphor. It runs in families, and it’s known to respond to medication and to counseling. However truly you believe there’s a sickness to existence that can never be cured, if you’re depressed you will sooner or later surrender and say: I just don’t want to feel so bad anymore”

“Although ‘The Family Circus’ was resolutely unfunny, its panels clearly were based on some actual family’s humid, baby-filled home life”

“Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom”

“After the excitements of (birding in) South Texas, I was hollow and restless, like an addict in withdrawal. It was a chore to make myself comprehensible to friends”

“And there, floating nonchalantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world—which is, after all, the way of magical creatures in enchanted places—was my black-bellied whistling-duck”

http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Alone-Jonathan-Franzen/dp/0312422164/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360288466&sr=8-1&keywords=jonathan+franzen+how+to+be+alone

http://www.amazon.com/The-Discomfort-Zone-Personal-History/dp/0312426402/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1360288493&sr=8-3&keywords=jonathan+franzen+how+to+be+alone

Keep it weird with KELLY WEARSTLER

Kelly Wearstler

Her interior design has always been unique, and cool, but lately, she has gone off the reservation. Her work has become so complex, detailed and often “unpretty” or inaccessible that I can’t help but think she has her eye on the bigger picture: rather than creating more conventionally beautiful (but potentially less memorable) rooms, it’s possible she is purposefully cultivating an aesthetic that is original and distinctive enough to catapult her from classy contemporary designer to design legend. If so, I’m rooting for her. I like that she hears the beat of a different drummer and is not afraid to go where it leads her. Most pretty girls won’t expose themselves to ridicule, but occasionally Wearstler does (see the last link below). Her words to live by: “Take risks. You can’t get anywhere in life unless you do.”

Sample of her early work:

http://files.highfashionhome.com/uploaded_images/kelly-737693.jpg

Samples of her recent work:

http://sukio.com/modern-glamour-blog/glam-it-up-a-peek-inside-kelly-wearstlers-rhapsody.html

On the judging panel of Bravo TV’s “Top Design” series:

http://www.nypost.com/r/nypost/blogs/popwrap/200810/Images/200810_kelly-wearstler2.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kIP_ZxM9aoI/SyJeUmRKQLI/AAAAAAAAA1U/dbwhMtOLDOs/s400/kelly_wearstler.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zbfgsf0uONk/Sa_ukAd9uEI/AAAAAAAAArg/U0J0iQZ_qFY/s400/KellyWearstler2.jpg

(Photo credit: John Huba)

Find the best dog gear at OLIVE

 

dog beds by OliveHave you ever read the book, “Cheaper by the Dozen”? It’s charming and fun, and what’s cool is that the parents are efficiency experts (who want to run their household like one of the factories for which they’re hired to conduct time and motion studies). If my writing career weren’t so lucrative—I am laughing so hard that no sound is coming out—I would think about becoming an efficiency expert. One of the things I particularly strive to pare down is time spent shopping. For example, I used to visit many of the dog boutiques in Los Angeles (surely you don’t think dogs should go without clothing and lie on the floor), but now, I just go straight to the best shop, which happens to be online: Olive. They have the most beautiful beds and blankets and the cutest collars and harnesses I’ve found. And the only thing better than the product offering is their service. Gina and Barbara could not be nicer or more helpful. Which is not surprising when you learn they’re Texans. Their company is located just outside Austin (but they source products from all over, including from Brooklyn, whose notoriously hip hipsters are producing some of the neatest dog beds around).

http://olivegreendog.com

p.s. If you’re open to trying a natural product in place of Frontline or Advantage chemical treatment for fleas, try applying neem spray to your dog’s fur, massage it around a bit, and do it again the next day or two. We used it on our dogs last summer and haven’t seen a flea since!

http://olivegreendog.com/ark-naturals-neem-protect-spray/

Guacamole

photo-137

A few girls I know from Texas live here in L.A. Whenever I get together with them, they always want Mexican food. You could meet them at Spago and the only thing they’d want to know is whether they can get chips and guacamole. I know because it happened.

A lot of people now serve store-bought or packaged guacamole at their parties. I won’t say that it makes me hostile, because I truly am an appreciative guest, but if you go to a party at, say, my friend Jen Kelly’s house, the guacamole doesn’t last an hour, because it’s homemade and it’s fantastic. My friend Nancy Cohen has a hybrid approach—she adds a package of guacamole seasoning to fresh ingredients—and it’s addictive, too.

My family lived in El Paso the first 9 years of my life, and my mother and her best friend from college, Mary Lou, loved the Mexican food there and became obsessive about salsa and guacamole. Following is a variation on my mother’s recipe. Because tortilla chips are salty enough, I don’t add salt. Also, some people add cilantro, but ever since my younger brother, Travis, observed that it tastes like soap, I have not been into it (too bad, because it’s good for you–supposedly, it cleans your blood). It’s best to make it right before guests arrive, so that it doesn’t turn brown while sitting.

Serves ~6

3 avocados
Juice of 1-2 limes (use 2 if they are relatively dry)
Half of one of those tiny (4-ounce) cans of Rotel “mild” diced green chiles
~4-5 cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half (raw) OR sliced in half and roasted with a dash of salt and a drizzle of olive oil in a 375-degree oven for about 15 minutes
Small handful of purple/red onion, cut into thin slices about an inch long (you might want to err to the side of using too little onion rather than too much)
Dash of Tabasco sauce
Optional:
Dash of cumin
Dash of red chile pepper flakes

Mash the avocadoes using the back of a fork. You might want to leave them a little chunky. Or not. Add all the other ingredients and mix. Serve immediately.

The reason you keep hearing about TRACY ANDERSON

Tracy Anderson

You know that period of time in which you intend to start a new workout regimen but you’re not quite ready, so you spend time shopping for just the right clothes or equipment and you wait until inspiration strikes before diving in? I always thought this period of time was called “mentally preparing to begin working out.” But recently, someone told me this period of time is called “avoidance behavior.” If you happen to want to get in shape but are engaging in avoidance behavior, here’s something that might spur you to action:  Yoga, pilates, kickboxing—all of these things may or may not get your body small and tight, but a Tracy Anderson workout is a sure thing. It will transform you. This is why Tracy Anderson is famous, why Gwenyth Paltrow promoted her on Oprah, why Jennifer Aniston, etc. go to her studios in LA and NYC. The key to her workouts’ effectiveness is that each features a sequence of moves that exhaust your larger muscles first (say, your thighs), such that your smaller, accessory muscles are forced to “kick in” for the remaining exercises, which results in a smaller, tighter bundle of muscles. Anderson’s “Metamorphosis” DVD series offers a program tailored to each body type and her site has a quiz to help you determine which you are: Abcentric, Glutecentric, Hipcentric, or Omnicentric. Each DVD set has several workouts so that you never plateau, and I have to say, it’s nice to switch routines every 10 days (and each routine is better than the last—there’s not a disappointing one in the bunch). After just a couple of workouts, you will see a subtle but encouraging improvement. After 10 workouts, you will be able to look at yourself in a bathing suit without cringing. After 20 workouts, you will be shopping for clothes that show your body rather than hide it.

If you know me personally, you know that my a— is so ambitious, it makes Madonna look lazy. Now that I’m doing the Glutecentric workout, I’ve stopped fantasizing about getting lipo. (But I still have issues with the lighting in department store dressing rooms.)

http://tracyandersonmethod.com

This post and the ones that follow are from a great Tumblr site called “ilovecharts,” founded by two guys named Jason and Cody. The site is currently being guest-hosted by Jessica Hagy, who is posting charts (featured here) from her new book, “How to Be More Interesting (in 10 Simple Steps).” Some of the text is blurry, not sure why.

http://ilovecharts.tumblr.com