Sad L.A. pumpkin patches 🎃 & Club 33 madness

Hi darlings!

How are you?? I hope you’ve been enjoying October! Here in Los Angeles, we don’t get to do too many crisp fall activities, like apple picking. Our “pumpkin patches” are just sad pumpkins piled up in parking lots. It’s a far cry from the rural area where I grew up in New Jersey, where we had our pick of farms to go hay riding and apple cider doughnutting and pumpkin picking. When I’ve been going out to bars, I’ve been opting for hard apple cider, which feels slightly seasonal, even if the 84 degree weather doesn’t.

This weekend happens to be my birthday! It’s not a milestone birthday or anything, but it is the second to last birthday before I turn 40. Edging ever closer to middle age, babes!!! I’m going to get together for a casual bar hang with some friends, my husband Ross and I are going to a buzzy new-ish restaurant downtown for dinner, and then, next week, I’m getting spectacular Chinese food with a new mom bestie who lives on the other side of town, so we don’t see each other nearly enough. I’m so excited. I wasn’t going to really do anything for this birthday, but then I was telling some friends that, and they looked at me like I was being a complete fucking idiot, so I changed my mind.

You would think at almost 40 years old I would be on top of things like “remembering when to re-order my meds so I don’t run out,” but alas, I completely screwed up recently and was in Wellbutrin withdrawal for like a week while I waited for my refill to come in the mail, which I do NOT recommend. On Wednesday night, I started feeling really nauseous and migraine-y, so I do what I usually do when I have a migraine, and took an edible. Instead of making me feel less sick, I just felt sick and high on top of it, which is not the winning combo you might imagine. I wasn’t quite hallucinating, but it was pretty bad. I made a whole pot of buttered noodles that I ended up just leaving on the stove to rot while I curled up in bed, moaning, “I don’t feel good” to no one. (Ross was at a friend’s place and offered to come home, but I just wanted to try to go to sleep. My cat was completely indifferent to my pain and just snoozed on the couch in the living room, for which I still have not forgiven her.)

I know some people get gloomy around their birthdays, but I like my birthday. I like getting messages from all my loved ones throughout the day. I like getting cards with checks in them from my family, even though I’m way, WAY too old. I like picking out a special birthday outfit and makeup that can be as attention-seeking as I want because it’s MY day. Also, Ross is picking up a cake from Porto’s for me. My one request was that it be creamy, either a cheesecake or their tiramisu cake. I will be very, very happy either way.

Let’s get into some things:

- Cooking and baking! I’m not much of a baker to be honest, but I had some fancy Dutch process cocoa powder I snagged at the Ghirardelli store when I was up in San Francisco and have been dying to use it ever since. Enter this incredibly timely Bon Appetit list of recipes that use cocoa powder, including this “blackout” double chocolate banana bread, which I ultimately ended up making. It is SO moist and delicious, although definitely on the more cake-like side of banana bread, so be warned. You will not feel especially virtuous eating it for breakfast. But then, fuck virtuosity in food, right?

I also made this one-pot coconut lime chicken which was almost like a lazy Thai curry, with way fewer ingredients than an “authentic” Thai curry. I threw in some sauteed red and green bell peppers to add a veg, and served it over white rice with a sesame ginger bagged salad. It was a really nice weeknight dinner option!

And then finally, in honor of soup season, I made an old standby, broccoli cheddar soup, which I like to serve with chicken and apple sausages and brown bread from the Cheesecake Factory. Aaaand now I kind of want to go to the Cheesecake Factory! Ah well, too late for this birthday (I’m joking, I’m joking, I’m excited to go to actual nice restaurants).

- Nobody Wants This (Netflix). Look, Kristen Bell + Adam Brody as a hot rabbi falling in love all over the east side of L.A.? It’s a given I’d be watching. However, I was somewhat hesitant to dive right into this show after reading an article on the Jewish feminist blog Hey Alma that the show’s depiction of Jewish women was uh… less than glowing. And then I watched the show, and WOW, okay, yeah, a lot of these women are straight-up shrews and harpies ranting about “shiksas” and grinding their husbands’ balls to a pulp. (Sorry, ew, that got visceral.)

Of course, I understand that from a narrative perspective, SOMETHING has to be pulling Kristen Bell and Adam Brody apart, but this is just so far outside my own experiences as a non-Jewish woman now married to a Jewish man. Jewish women have been nothing but completely welcoming to me throughout my whole life. I can fondly recall dressing up for Purim at my childhood best friend’s temple, eating kugel for the first time when my college roommate made it for a Passover seder, having one of my mother-in-law’s friends tell me she made a special vegetarian dish for me when they hosted us over the holidays and I wasn’t eating meat. Just so many moments of kindness and inclusion, particularly around food.

Now, my husband isn’t a rabbi (I’m pretty sure I have a better grasp on when the Jewish holidays are than he does most years), and I do have friends who’ve had different experiences than I have integrating into Jewish families, I’m not invalidating that. But I tend to think that’s more of an individual family issue than a broad cultural one. Lots of different kinds of people are unwelcoming to new partners for lots of different reasons. I also just don’t love the idea of women being pit against each other over a man, even a man as cute and charming as Adam Brody.

There is a lot that I like about this show! I like the two main characters a lot. I like Kristen Bell’s relationship with her sister, and her wacky family. I like that Adam Brody is a religious leader but still a flawed human being. Then, there are some things I don’t like. The show was created by Erin Foster, a nepo baby whose father is David Foster, music producer, former Househusband of Beverly Hills and piece of shit. She converted to Judaism before marrying her husband, so Nobody Wants This is loosely based on her experiences. I do kind of wonder if she should have teamed up with a Jewish showrunner so it wouldn’t feel so one-sided. It’s like Kristen Bell’s family gets to be this hilarious modern family while Adam Brody’s is straight out of Fiddler On the Roof. I don’t know. If you’ve seen the show, what did you think of it?

- Have you heard the story about the Arizona couple who got kicked out of Disneyland’s exclusive members-only restaurant Club 33 and have spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawsuits trying to get back in? (Here’s the L.A. Times article.) I mean, you kind of have to read this quote:

“My wife and I are both dead set that this is an absolute wrong, and we will fight this to the death,” Scott, who owns a golf course in Gilbert, Ariz., told The Times. “There is no way we’re letting this go.”

He said the lawsuit has cost him about $400,000.

“My retirement is set back five years,” he said. “I’m paying through the nose. Every day, I’m seeing another bill, and I’m about to keel over.” He said he will appeal.

His wife said she wants to keep fighting.

“I’ll sell a kidney,” Diana said. “I don’t care.”

It goes without saying that these people are both absolutely insane. That was clear to me right from the start of the article, when it stated that the Andersons visit Disneyland “60 to 80 times a year.” That would be crazy enough if they lived in Southern California (Disney is NOT cheap!), but THEY LIVE OUT STATE!! That’s a rate of more than once per week! I’m not sure what these people do for work (own a golf course…?), but they might as well set their direct deposit to go straight to the Walt Disney corporation, because that’s where their money’s going anyway.

Another reason I think they are insane is because I have actually been to Club 33, and it is certainly not worth suing the Disney corporation to get into. It’s actually a pretty funny story. Several years ago, my husband and I went to Disneyland with some friends, one of whose family had annual passes to the parks because their parent was the CEO of a major national grocery chain that has roots in Southern California. Yes, the one with the good snacks and Hawaiian shirts. Anyway, that annual membership also included admittance to Club 33, so after a long day of traipsing around the parks, we decided to drop by the famed restaurant for dinner.

The first snag we hit was that Club 33 has a strict dress code that requires men to wear long pants and jackets. I know: who the fuck brings a formal jacket to Disneyland? Not us. Well, the men in our group both had to borrow Club 33 jackets, and the one who was wearing shorts also borrowed a pair of pants, which was pretty hilarious. While the guys were getting changed, I popped into the bathroom and did an impromptu photo shoot:

After everyone was finally dress code-appropriate, we were seated in their very stuffy, gilded dining room, which was 90% filled with people middle aged or older. I don’t know if I was expecting some kind of chic, hip club scene or what, but the vibes were definitely skewing elder… and musty. 

And then we got a look at the menu. Holy shit, were those prices high! I don’t remember if it was a prix fixe or not, but I do remember it was going to cost us at least $100 per person to eat there. We thought we were going to be able to stop by for cocktails and maybe some apps, but that was not happening. And I don’t mean to be rude, but it wasn’t like the food options were incredibly innovative haute cuisine–they were things like filet mignon, you know, meat ‘n potatoes, banquet type food. We decided to bail, and the guys had to give their borrowed clothing back. All in all, a pretty humbling experience!! I will NOT be suing my way back in anytime soon, I can tell you that much!

Aaand that’s it from me this week! Just a lil’ shorty.

If you have a second, I’d love it if you’d like or comment on this post–just click this link to go to the post page. This post is public, so feel free to share it on social media, or forward it to a friend.

Until next time—don’t bother with Club 33.

Love,

Liz

XOXO