A toothsome life update
Art is everywhere, even at Universal CityWalk
Do you miss me!! Here’s a fun life update!
I have a show coming up on SEPTEMBER 29 at 7pm at THE GLENDALE ROOM. You can get cheap tickets here or at the door. We have some really fun teams coming, we’re gonna have a great time, and I’d love to see you there because despite all of that I’m still a little NERVOUS! I used to perform every week, but since the pandemic opportunities have been few and far between in LA. So come support local artists doing weird goofy shit!
I’ve also been writing some videos with my friend Adam Conover! We’ve covered how America Hates College Students, Nootropics are bullshitand my personal fave How Streaming Destroyed TV!
What else am I doing? I’m pitching a movie, I’m writing a movie, I’m developing a couple of other pitches, I’m cleaning out my fridge after it decided to give up on life and spending hours fighting the insurance company for lifesaving medication … CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD!
Yesterday was the Emmys and I spent Hollywood’s most glamorous night at Hollywood’s most glamorous location: Universal Citywalk. As a lover of all things kitsch, I love walking around CityWalk screaming “THIS IS AMERICAN CULTURE!” I love how the neon signs are too big and the food is bad and the tourists are sure this is the big city and the parking lot is called Jurassic Parking.
We started the night at the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium and Savory Feast Kitchen. Yes, this is *technically* a real restaurant, and yes, it’s insane. FIRST OF ALL, the name! Toothsome! What?? I LOVE. The whole place is a monument to great ideas executed in a lukewarm way, and it’s incredible. The “restaurant” is theoretically steampunk themed, and they definitely spent all that budget on the costumes and forgot to put any art on the walls. My husband swears the last time he was there they had a dirigible in the center, but sadly there was none when we went.
The restaurant seems ENORMOUS from the outside and begs you to step inside and say “… that’s it??” In the one teeny tiny dining room (monumental since next door at Bucca de Beppo there are so many rooms you could host a polygamist reunion and keep the sister wives who hate each other apart), there are plain tables and chairs that are somehow too tall for an adult woman but too short to be a barstool. There is a wall of TV screens with pictures of turning gears and flying machines. The whole thing seems like they stopped about 40% of the way through designing it and said “good enough!” There are two costumed characters, Penelope Toothsome (I assume that’s her last name), and Jaques, her robot companion. It’s unclear whether Penelope and Jaques are fucking or she’s his beard, protecting him from his robo-homo-phobic family, but there’s definitely *something* going on between these two.
The food is, and this is the most loving way I can put it, ABYSMAL. Okay, the chocolate bread with salted caramel butter was fine, and the $19 cockatils are also fine. But the fries seemed microwaved, the “creme brulee” was a dish of chocolate pudding with a full centimeter of un-bruleed powdered sugar on top. It was insane and I loved every minute of it. We followed it with a stroll through the neon walkways and a screening of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a movie which follows no apparent cinematic rules whatsoever and is nonetheless a bizarre delight.
The whole evening was a joyful reminder that art is everywhere. It doesn’t have to be “good”, and honestly, slapdash chaos can provide its own kind of charm. Human beings came together and built this bizarre monument to our toothsome human condition against all odds. To me, that makes the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium/ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice date night equivalent to seeing the pyramids of Giza. Oh, what a wonder to behold the human spirit in all of its ridiculousness. 10/10.
Hysterical
This made me laugh many MANY times!