new blog address

So I love Blogger. I cut my lil' blogging baby teeth on this site, so I feel a little sentimental about moving, but I think from now on, Life is a Wagon will be tugging along over on Wordpress. Please come and say hello!

Life is a Wagon
lifeisawagon.wordpress.com

getting excited for LA: new beverly cinema

After months of deliberation, I have decided to quit my job, sublet my apartment, and head to Los Angeles for a while. I'm going to give acting a west coast try. I'm terrified and nervous and doubtful and scared, but I'm also kinda sorta thinking that it could be so much fun to try something and some place incredibly new. I went to LA once about 15 years ago and all I can really remember is driving down Sepulveda and eating In-n-Out burgers.

To gear up for my trip (and to assuage the waves of fear that wash over me when I try to picture myself in LA), I've started making a list of things I want to see and do once I'm there. First stop? New Beverly Cinema. It's an old revival theater that shows double features in 35mm.

Yippe!

anna karenina

 I love it so much. I first tried to tackle it when I was 18. I got a few pages in and decided to stick to Stephen King. But after seeing Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina," I was inspired to try it again (it is with a sheepish hand that I type that bit of info. I don't love admitting that movie adaptations inspire me to read the books, but there you have it).
And I'm just loving it. The writing just sticks with me and some of his sentences are just so beautifully crafted, I go back and reread again and again. And thank god for those it's-slow-at-work-because-of-the-holidays shifts at the restaurant. I could read my book with my feet up and a Bailey's on the rocks.

new new york #3: babycakes bakery

Photos found here and here

It's been over a month since I've had a bagel. I haven't tasted a brownie in three weeks. Excepting that one Patron Silver soggy night, no pasta has passed my lips in twenty days. I decided to give up gluten after realizing that it might be aggravating my skin and after noticing that my diet was entirely comprised of baked goods, bread covered in butter, and pasta. I was a vegetarian who ate maybe one vegetable a week and I had the acne of a teenager to prove it.
Giving up wheat hasn't been too difficult (I kind of feel like I did when I stopped eating meat-- a little sad, a little worried, but mostly resolved), but my heart does ache for sweets. I really love baked goods and I don't like to imagine my life without a cookie. So I made my way over to Babycake's-- a gluten-free, vegan bakery on the lower east side.
It's a winner. I got a slice of chocolate chip pumpkin bread and it wasn't cardboard-dry as I imagined most fake flour, fake eggs, fake milk pastries to be. I'm happy.

Babycakes
248 Broome Street
www.babycakesnyc.com