dont try to sell me that!

this is why you don't answer the door to strangers because on the other side will stand an out-of-breath highschool girl trying to sell you a subscription to USA Today and even though you explain to her that USA Today isn't a real newspaper she tells you that it will help her go to a school like UCLA one day so she asks if you would like to make a donation instead and because your parents made you go to church when you were younger this out-of-breath girl is making you feel guilty so you say hold on one minute and look for your purse but you don't feel that guilty anymore and you're not sure that you trust this out-of-breath girl, so you apologize and say you're going to close the door for a minute and you wonder if she'll think that you just found a way to get rid of her even though you are actually looking for your purse and you find your purse but you only have one dollar and you lost you checkbook 6 months ago anyways and you wonder if giving one dollar is worse than just keeping the door shut and hoping she walks away and this thought takes up the span of oh about 27 seconds and you say fuck it and go back out to the front door and the girl is still standing there beaming and she's not out of breath anymore and you say here you go and hand her the dollar and start to shut the door because the interaction is making you feel guilty again and the girl calls you "Miss" and that makes you feel old and then as you shut the door and head back to your room to continue reading the elitist memoir bullshit that you like to read so much you hear the doorbell of your neighbors house ring and a familiar voice chime out "Sorry to bother you but…"

-something that happened to me just now. the boring life of madi v.

"June is busting out all over"

I'd like to start this post off with a "Hello there. How have you been? It's been awhile hasn't it?" I've been reading up on a few different bouquins...mostly old plays that I once performed aka "The Heiress", "Steel Magnolias", "The Dining Room", and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", and more specifically, I've been reading them aloud.

That is to say, if one were to happen upon my room en route to the "main" bathroom, they would hear me speaking in different accents, voices, and characters. I'd seem a bit schizo to the passerby, but it's good to get into a groove and read the words of the playwright in the way they were supposed to be read.

I am also reading Tina Fey's "Bossy Pants" (which finally got to me, as Madison originally made the purchase and the book made the usual "roomate rounds" and I was last out of the four of us to receive it)--you can tell how poor our apartment is when we start to ration our book time. I'm also slowly getting through Marlon Brando's autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me", Marcel Proust's biography "Monsieur Proust" en francais, and lastly, a book that I absolutely love yet have been trudging through due to various external activities that have taken up most of my time, "What's Mine is Yours: Collaborative Consumption". You can guess what that one's about.

In regards to the telly, it is all "internet" and "my usual British shows" (aka The Inbetweeners, Misfits, Skins, Shameless, AbFab, Posh Nosh, Doctor Who) or the ever so classy "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" ...the latter being influenced by my girly roomates.

I've also started (now featured on Hulu.com) "The Book Group", an English comedy about a small book group that gets together and discusses whatever book they've chosen for the week--aka their messed up personal lives. So far it seems decent, though i've only watched the pilot episode and you-know-how-that-sort-of-thing-can-go.

Job-wise, Madison is now working at a gossip blog. She's finally putting the pen to the paper and though it may not be the wga-winning script she'll one-day write, it's a great start. And she's good at that "pop-culture, gossipy stuff". I would never have known about Blake Lively and whatshisface from the Titanic if it weren't for her. Oh. Leonardo DiCaprio. That's right.

On my end, I am about to travel to France for the third time in my life. I've quit my part-time serving job to pursue my full-time acting job, but i've kept my other part-time job at the Academy so that I can make some money while traveling this seemingly suicidal yet only worthy career path I have chosen for myself. Call it insanity, what you will, my plan is to finish up the play I'm in (oh yes, I'm also in a play which ends early July), go to Paris and truly live for a month, and then come back to L.A. and commit myself fully to get what needs to be done, done.

June gloom has been exiled from our apartment. It's all about the June buchachi, referring to the title of this post as this song lyric is not so subtly perverse. Yes, Rogers and Hammerstein, i'm talking to you! This was a real nice clam bake until you riddled your entire musical with sexual connotation...Polliwogs never turning into frogs?... My Boy BILL?--please tell June, from me, to stop busting out all over the meadow and the hills! It's disgusting and frankly my darlings, I could do without it.

Come see my play this weekend and the next, as posted via our joint twitter account that I secretly set up a few years back against Maddie's wishes, but which she now secretly enjoys because she gets the perks of tweeting without all of the responsibility . If not...I'll see you when I get back from France, if I do not end up staying there for the rest of my life.

A+++
Kimberley

The main differences between college and not college

Earlier in 2011, Kimberley wrote a humbling post about the trials and tribulations of doing this whole "following-your-dreamz-being-an-adult-thing." So now, it's my turn. In true to Maddie fashion (i.e. avoiding having emotions, turning something serious into something silly) here's my attempt at the "meow-here's-my-feelings-on-post-grad-euphoria" blog.

I give you, The Main Differences between College and NOT College.

In college you might hear this conversation on a Thursday night.

Person A: "It's Thursday. Wanna go to Bruco?"

Person B: "omigod I haven't been drunk since Tuesday. Yessssss. Hold on, I need to buy an American Apparel slut dress first."

In NOT college, you might hear this phrase on a Thursday night.

Person A: "It's Thursday, what are we doing?"

Person B: "Well, I have to be at my fake job (i.e. waitressing) tomorrow at like noon, so I kinda need my sleep..."

Person A: "It's ok. I know a bar where we can wear pants and not have to talk to anyone. We can also not even drink and go home at like 11.30pm"

Person B: "omigod. That sounds sooo goood. I'll not drink and drive all of us!"

In college, a normal diet consists of:

-LA Waters

-Those loaded steak fries from buck fiddies.

-Animal crackers from vending machines.

-soy milk.

In NOT college, a normal diet consists of:

-nothing

-popsicles

-waiting for popsicles to melt and pretending to eat.

-expired soy milk.
kim: it should be noted that on more than one occasion, we took midnight runs to the local Ralph's to buy boxes of various-flavoured popsi's.

In college, every friday morning at 10am I made this phone call

me: "Hi, manager of Bubba Gumps? I'm sick (i.e. hungover) again and cant come in to work today. Thanks"

In NOT college, every friday morning at 10am I made this phone call

me: "Hi, this is Madison from Tower Energy group (i.e. the oil company). Your 401K investment portfolio has changed and I wanted to make sure your pay period deductions were correct. Thanks"

Things that are important to you in College:

-Running into one of the cast members from Entourage while you ate at Urth cafe on your lunch break from your internship at that production company.

-Having lots of campus "activities" and internships on your resume so that you'll have a job lined up right when you graduate. hah.

-Telling family friends about your "plans for the future."

-Not worrying.

Things that are important to you in NOT College:

-Listening to your mom's friends talk about "the older Vanderberg girl. She's living in LA? trying to be a writer? Comedy? What does she do again? I thought she went to college? What a shame."

-Working less than 25 hours a week and making the same amount of money as people who work 40 hours.

-wishing your parents never let you go to art high school or ever uttered the phrase "follow your dreams."

-NOT having to ever write a paper ever again that includes the words "socialization" "adolescents" and/or "early traumatic experiences" F*$# you UCLA sociology department.

Happy birthday 'Merica. Your welcome. <3Maddie

Much like Fondation Cartier's "Né dans la rue" exhibit in France, MOCA's "Art in the Streets" is all abuzz in the greater Los Angeles bourge. Graffiti in the museum, graffiti on the museum, tags, street art, pochoir, the whole 9 yards (though personally, i'm hoping for more). If I could study graffiti for the rest of my life, I would. If anyone would like to read my 50-page thesis on the globalization of graffiti, well, let me get it published first. We'll be punching about later this week, 'round thursday (cuz it's free after 5)!!! Stalkers welcome. Catch ya on da flip side!

-Kayberlay

p.s. anyone wanna cop some spray for me?

judging you

If you watch "American Idol"...

...You are someones mother. You also refer to Steven Tyler as "Steven Tyler

from American Idol." Your facebook profile pic is of a dog wearing
sunglasses.

If you watch "The Voice"...

...You are a dog wearing sunglasses.

<3 M

2011

it is the start of yet another year and we, at da punch, feel as though the life has been drained out of us.

life is a constant attempt at finding our true interests and desires in the simplest actions and experiences... so we run. we run toward whatever we can and searching for peace and self-happiness, if not freedom from the unhealthy bits and the unfortunate events and interactions we might come across.

some of us run every day while others sleep in and dream... we do both.

it's a kind of a sort of a silly attempt to find "joie de vivre" and balance.

yet we cry, laugh, and smile about it taking in and letting out little breaths of it all, the incomprehension and the excellence. and if we can't do it alone, we get help from friends and fam, or we let edith -who never got a break- take care of us. No, we regret nothing:

a sadder post for november

moche adieu a boot new thing.Mumbai, India

-Kimberley