Best Vietnamese Restaurant in L.A. is Now Plural

I just got this notice in my inbox, and since I'm running off to class to hand in a final project (on the oh-so-scintillating topic of "Departmental Analysis, Demographic & Psychographic Profile, Sales Plan, Assortment and Purchasing Plan for Lauren Jeans Co. in Macy's at the Westside Pavilion"), I don't have time to rephrase--but I'm so excited about this news I'll just post it up verbatim. Viet Soy Cafe is one of the best places to eat, period, and this new one is the perfect excuse to go, er, taste-test. I.e., eat everything on the menu.

"Sometimes it feels like you have to travel to the Far East to get a good bowl of bun chay.

Or at least trek to Atwater. That’s where the new Viet Noodle Bar is now open for lunch and dinner.

An offshoot of Viet Soy Cafe in Silver Lake, the decor is simple: white walls, two long, communal tables, and books piled high along a shelf that runs the length of the room.

The menu’s simple, too. Beverages like homemade soy milk and cleansing tonics C-shot (sugarcane, lemon, cayenne) and pennywort and apple juice have been carried over, while new Central and Northern flavors are introduced with dishes like banh nam (thin rice flour pancake with shrimp steamed in a banana leaf) and rice noodle bowls like bun ca thi la (turmeric white fish). Pho debuts next month.

That should give you enough time to find a map."

Viet Noodle Bar, 3133 Glendale Boulevard, between Glenfeliz Boulevard and Edenhurst Avenue, Atwater Village (323-906-1575).

[Psst--the brown rice with lotus seed is INSANELY good. > r r < ]

Ain't No Celery at the 5%C Thanksgiving Table

So, inspired by fabulous blogs like LAist, I'm making a list of things I'm thankful for at this very moment. I don't know why anyone cares about this type of thing, since what I'm thankful for very likely has nothing to do with you, but everyone else is doing it (even Perez, in his way), so it must be cool (right?). I will even try to make it relevant to 5%C by including fabulous foods and fashions. Not difficult. OKAY.

RR is all like "THANKS" about some stuff including these things:

• Schizophrenic fall weather that lets you wear little skirts or big sweaters
• The advent of holiday baking season!
• Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown L.A. with all the old people and the weird forest dioramas
• Beautiful old postcards
• LOLcats
• These Prada shoes
• My new job
• Our cat learning to use his scratching post
• Mezzanine Owls' upcoming record
• Project Runway
• Persimmons
• Gloves with fur trim
• Animals with fur trim
• Babies dressed like animals
• Not having any babies
• Wooly tights (Hue and DKNY make great ones for stingy girls like me)
• Establishments that let me stay stingy: The 99 Cents Only store, taco stands, Thank You Mart
• All the new movies I actually want to see
• The fabulous Louise Brooks
• The fact that I didn't succumb to the iPhone craze, since now there's a Google phone in development
• And...I am thankful for today's being notably full of food, as I am currently starrrrving.

On that note, I'm audi (oh, & of course I am thankful, as always, for Clueless).

> r r <

Food + Fashion--For Reals?

One question I get a lot is, "So, is everyone at that fashion school of yours, like, totally anorexic?" And honestly, when I first started there, I was shocked at the offerings at the café--chips, donuts, cup o' noodles, etc.--because I was picturing the girls of The Devil Wears Prada and assuming that no way in hell were fashion-school girls eating this stuff.

Well, for y'all's info, I was wrong. Sure, many of my peers at school are toothpicks in skinny jeans...but it's only the very rarest of them that brings Ziploc bags full of carrots from home to eat between classes. Quite the contrary: apparently, most of the people I see every day subsist on exactly the kind of food that Nicole Richie would die before letting pass her lips:

Yep, the real meal secret of fashionistas is salt + sugar, shaken together in a bag and served in massive quantities. Washed down, of course, with multiple Diet Cokes (the fashion girl's bottled water). Oh, and let's not be prejudiced in our reporting here; what about fashion students of the male persuasion? Those very fabulous boys prefer Subway (handily located across the street, at a Shell station. So very chic.).

We all know how models give that annoying line about eating whatever they want and never exercising and jsut having magical metabolisms...well, judging by my peers, maybe it's true after all. Fashion and logic never go together, after all. Just a little--dare I say--food for thought!

> r r <

When Fashion School & Gossip Girl Collide

How convenient that two main occupations of mine of late—digital sketching and Gossip Girl—would convene in such a, well, material fashion. (Ha! Fashion! I am hilarious.)

Interruption: the most ridiculous Sandals Jamaica ad is on TV right now. Sandals, like Michael Scott on The Office took Jan to. So this ad actually has “Time of My Life” as the background song. Who on EARTH is this targeting? Amazing.

Anyway, first, I’ll explain that a key part of fashion design is digital illustration and graphic design. You may think it’s all Project-Runway-style freakouts (speaking of which, how excited am I that P.R. is finally back? SO VERY.) and madly inspired moments but actually, design now involves a lot of painstaking work in various programs written by Adobe. For my Applied Technology class, I have to draw dresses, shoes, what have you, and then lay out pages with backgrounds and color swatches and titles and stuff…all of which has to correspond with the concept of the design. I like designing everything, but jesus it takes forever. Here’s what a finished page looks like, using a photo inspiration and then adapting it:


Second, I’ve started watching the new show Gossip Girl recently. Along with being the next O.C. (in a good way—oh, the adolescent drama! The love triangles and pentagons! The endless catty comments that we wish we’d thought of in high school!), Gossip Girl also takes The O.C.’s place as fantastic fashion spectacle. There’s Blair, preptastic princess extraordinaire, who manages to pull off headbands and ringlets, and then our heroine, Serena, who’s kind of designer bohemian and has hair that is always unbrushed yet totally perfect somehow. I’m sure her wardrobe is calculated by teams of statisticians to make us fall uncontrollably in girl-love with her, and I can’t deny it’s worked. In fact, I KNOW that the wardrobe is at least as calculated as most…because Gossip Girl, after making you covet every $400 Tory Burch striped sequin shift that Serena wears to an ill-fated party, gives you a hyperlink to its ONLINE STORE. Yep, Gossip Girl has its own boutique with links to all the stuff to let you buy our way to Upper-East-Side soap-opera stardom yourself. You can even "browse by brand, character, episode or product"! And THEN you can link to Victoria's Secret looks "inspired by" the characters.

So while I could rattle on about how interesting it is to see how the entertainment and retail industries are coming together via the all-powerful internet, instead I’ll cut to the coincidence: when I visited the Gossip Girl style file deal online (in the name of research, natch), what did I see but the very purse I’d just finished using for my class! I picked it solely because it was easy to draw, but I guess it must be chic, too. At least according to The CW’s statisticians.

> r r <

J.Con--What The Fug?

I just have a quick question.

What the HECK is going on with Jennifer Connelly's face? Look at it for a minute.

Don't get me wrong, I've loved her ever since Labyrinth, but homegirl seems to be having some serious symmetry issues.

> r r <