Tallulah Willis Is Hollywood Royalty and Now She's Finally OK With Calling Herself an Artist

On a recent Friday night at Eric Buterbaugh’s EB Florals Gallery, 23-year-old Tallulah Willis, aka “Buuski,” opened her first art show, “Please Be Gentle.” Prior to the debut, the emerging artist had participated only in group showings and quiet collaborations, but with some coaxing from Buterbaugh and persistent encouragement from her tight-knit clan (dad Bruce, mom Demi Moore, et al.), Willis overcame the anxiety that accompanies not only being a newcomer to the L.A. art scene but a newcomer with a famous last name.

Amid the sounds of Toro y Moi and clinking Champagne flutes, the invite-only soiree featured 50 original drawings by Willis. Her anthropomorphic creatures, which act as visual reminders of the highs and lows of feeling feelings, draw inspiration from Shel Silverstein and Tim Burton. They reflect the fanciful, imperfect and unconventional world Willis has engendered throughout the past 2½ years working on her craft. From “Modern Femme,” which shows a limp arm with pointy boobs and prickly underarm hair, to “13th Birthday,” with a headless character dragging along her misplaced, balloon-sized head, Willis takes her multidimensional readings on self-worth, femininity and identity, and displays them gently but unapologetically in her work.

In January Willis launched her website, where she sells her drawings and merchandise. “Please Be Gentle” is on display at EB Florals Gallery through March 11.

What led up to your first gallery showing?

Throughout childhood and beyond, I never had a real passion or drive for anything in particular. It was half self-deprecation and half laziness, and I was so jealous of other people who seemed like they just happened to find something they were good at. I’m sure for them it was hard work, but when you’re young, it really doesn’t seem that way. What began as minor jealousy became a really pivotal issue for me of self-worth. I wouldn’t even try new things because I thought I wouldn’t be good at them anyway. The one thing I felt good at was drinking and doing drugs. That became where I found my place, which was really just massively dulling down everything I felt. So, when I got sober, it was like someone turned the lights on and all my senses were heightened, which resulted in minor agoraphobia and high anxiety. I didn’t like leaving my house, I didn’t like crowds; I became very aware of the physicality of people around me.

I stayed home for a year and I just started drawing these funny little cartoons. I started posting them on social media, and it was mostly images with a phrase I was feeling. It was really just therapy for me, and when I started to see people have a really positive response, I thought it was cool, but still thought it’s just something I do the way people at the office doodle when they’re on a conference call.

When did you realize, "Hey, maybe this is actually good, I want to really do this?"

I’ve been drawing for about 2½ years, but the whole time it’s been a battle. Something really big will happen, or I’ll do a cool collaboration and people will want to buy my work, and then I’ll get hit with another wave of "This isn’t real, this is stupid." I didn’t want to accept that my work was more than just a side project, because at this point it’s become so important to me. If I kept it in its tiny bubble, there was no risk of being judged for it on a real scale. And yet I’m getting encouraged by everyone in my family that not only is it something I clearly like to do, but it’s something that other people also really enjoy. So when Eric Buterbaugh asked me to show my work at his gallery, I was scared and pushed back, but then it came to the point where he didn’t really give me a choice. I met with Eric and a colleague of his at the gallery and they set the goal at 45 pieces. I was nodding my head and thinking to myself, there’s absolutely no way I can make that many. I’m the world’s biggest procrastinator. The fear of knowing how I inherently operate fueled me to do actually work week by week and do five at a time. I set a goal to be finished with all the drawings two weeks before, and I ended up with seven more drawings than I needed. At the end, I realized how much they all tell a story and how proud I am of it.

Permalink: LA WEEKLY

Fall Arts: Bridget Everett Bares All at Joe’s Pub

SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO MS. EVERETT CAME to New York from Arizona, where she’d attended the state university on a choral scholarship. She spent a decade waitressing at Ruby Foo’s in Times Square and still serves tables from time-to-time, though not a soul knows where. She also takes work entertaining private parties.

“Murray Hill and I did a Christmas party for corporate people,” she says. “I said, ‘Are you sure they want me? Can you double-check, because that sounds like an HR nightmare.’ I did some party in some very wealthy person’s home, and you know I like to move around—I almost knocked over what I think was a Ming vase, and I remember the blood draining out of everyone’s faces. I was like, ‘O.K., I’m just going to keep singing.’ It was only funny because it didn’t break.”

Mr. Medlyn became acquainted with Ms. Everett when both were regulars in Automatic Vaudeville at Ars Nova, a musical comedy venue. He says he knew he had encountered a rare force.

“Bridget does things that should make people feel uneasy,” he says, “yet they are thrilled, elated and empowered. That is something I’ve never seen. Instead of just shocking people, [she] makes the audience feel like they are in on it—that she and the audience are on this fucked-up road trip together, drinking in the car, singing along with dirty songs, and feeling free and alive.”

That inclusiveness owes much to Ms. Everett’s casualness about being naked onstage, which she attributes to “reverse body dysmorphia,” a condition of total self-acceptance she had to reach in order to carve a place for herself in showbiz. If she didn’t learn to celebrate her body, she says, she never would have succeeded.

“I wasn’t a Broadway chorus girl, I wasn’t an actress, and physically I can’t think of anybody successful who looks like me,” she says. “There wasn’t anyone to emulate. I had to write for myself to give myself a job, because there were no jobs available. I created my own destiny, as corny as that sounds.”

“Bridget puts herself out there, sometimes in a painfully vulnerable way,” says Murray Hill, summing it up, “but [she] always comes out the victor of her own battle.” 

Permalink: NY Observer

An Echo Park Family's Decades-Long Acid Trip Lives on Through Instagram

There are few people in the world who can say they’ve done acid with a group of hippie clergymen from Milwaukee, but Roger Steffens is one of them.

At the 75-year-old’s home in Echo Park on a Sunday afternoon, surrounded by Jamaican ephemera, a plate of freshly ground weed and a Pan-African room color scheme, the reggae archivist, actor and counterculture icon began to re-enact what it was like to watch “Brother Lawrence” on his first acid trip in 1966. Roger slumped in the dining room chair, rolled his eyes back into his head and began moaning in ecstasy while his daughter Kate and I sat in suspense. This moment-by-moment recollection of a holy man tripping balls bore a certain resemblance to the When Harry Met Sally diner scene. Finally he let out a huge laugh, remembering that Brother Lawrence said, “I’m rolling balls of air! And in each one of them is the Madonna.”

Steffens' fondness for theatrics goes way back to his teen years as a Shakespearean-trained actor and Goldwater conservative, who attended Catholic school for 14 years. A Brooklyn-born kid with a squeaky-clean image, his life changed drastically when he was drafted to Vietnam in 1968 and subsequently became radicalized. This counterculture-infused radicalization was buttressed by a multitude of vivid acid trips in places from Saigon to Marrakesh to Big Sur. Throughout the span of his colorful, idiosyncratic life, the multihyphenate has amassed more than 40,000 photographs, which have been digitized by Kate and her brother, Devon, and displayed on Instagram. Add their sweet, spirit-guide mother, Mary, into the mix and you have: @TheFamilyAcid.

After two years working in psychological operations, aka propaganda warfare, in Vietnam and a short stint in Marrakesh (following his vehement desire to dissociate with all things American), Roger settled into life with his wife, Mary, whom he met while tripping on acid in a pygmy forest in Mendocino, and a crew of beatnik writers, poets and counterculture war veterans, from photographer Tim Page to writer Ron Kovic.

Kate was used to seeing her father’s trippy double-exposure pictures during family slideshow hour as a kid but never thought of showing them publicly until 2013, when Devon spent an entire year digitizing approximately 40,000 Kodachrome slides. As for why it’s taken so many years to share these incredible photographs in any medium at all is more a testament to Roger’s zeal for emphatically living life than anything else. Kate says, “I think he’s so in the moment that he files the pictures away and goes on to the next moment. It’s more like record keeping.” Roger’s fastidious “record keeping” and Kate’s eye for curating has led to a 50-year-plus Instagram account of slide photography with 42,600 followers along with two photography books, The Family Acid and The Family Acid: Jamaica, which was released in March. And that's not to mention the exhibits at New York City’s Benrubi Gallery, Art Basel and Paris Photo L.A.

Courtesy Roger Steffens

By the early ’70s, the hippie generation was going through some growing pains — and music was one of the earliest indicators of that shift. “By the early ’70s, rock had been co-opted by the major corporations who bought all the independent labels. And it became disco and glam-rock. I was looking for something that would have the great harmonies, like the doo-wop groups I grew up with,” Steffens says. His defining reggae zealot moment crystallized in 1973 when Roger read a Rolling Stone article with a line by gonzo journalist Michael Thomas. “[It said], 'Reggae music crawls into your bloodstream like some vast vampire amoeba from the psychic rapids of upper Niger consciousness.’ And I thought, I don’t know what that means, but boy I have to find that out,” he tells me. Roger ran down to a bookstore on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley and found a used copy of Catch a Fire, Marley’s first release on Island Records. “It was $2.25, I figured I could take a chance, and from the first notes I was captured. The poetic concision of what he was writing about and the moral value was astounding. And then that irresistible beat. The beat of reggae is the beat of the healthy human heart at rest. From then on, I wanted the whole world to know about him.”

The Family Acid: Jamaica chronicles Steffens' more than 40 trips to the island. On his first jaunt to Kingston in 1976, Roger and Mary went specifically to buy records — unknowingly during a national state of emergency — and ended up taking refuge at Jimmy Cliff’s house. Three years later, Steffens co-launched KCRW's The Reggae Beat, L.A.’s first weekly reggae program. Bob Marley was the first guest (Steffens spent two weeks on the road with Marley in 1979 on the original Survival tour). That friendship extended to other close relationships with guests including Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Freddy McGregor. That show led him to start the bimonthly magazine Reggae Beat and an internationally traveling multimedia presentation featured at the Grammy Museum, "The Life of Bob Marley." Even with Steffens' steadfast dedication to Jamaica and Rastafarian culture, it took decades for islanders to accept some white dude seemingly appropriating Reggae music. But, as Steffens explains, “When Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh call you a close friend, things start to shift.”

Courtesy Roger Steffens

There's a reason the Jamaica Observer designated Steffens as one of "the Top 10 Most Influential People in Reggae."

During my visit, he walked me down the stairs of his home into a labyrinthian basement that leads to secret rooms — built by the house's former residents to house refugee family members in the 1980s — crammed with reggae memorabilia. The infamous archives have been visited by rock royalty, from Keith Richards (who owns a home in Jamaica) to Carlos Santana and the whole Marley clan. Photos of Kate and Timothy Leary, Steffens and Pete Tosh, and other remarkable memories preserved for the ages line the walls. Stacks of hundred-dollar Marley T-shirts are folded neatly in a pile. Reggae pins, which initially seem meretricious, are suddenly given meaning when Steffens explains their significance. He led me through each room with such enthusiasm, you'd think it were his first time giving the tour.

Kate visited Jamaica six times before third grade and now finds herself her dad’s “tech support.” She is also putting her millennial's digital prowess to good use and has become something of an Instagram patron saint for her parents’ counterculture friends. As for her hopes for the Family Acid brand? “An openness toward alternative living," she says. "I hope that it opens up people's eyes to my family and the way that they’ve chosen to live. We've welcomed many different cultures and unconventional ways of living with different types of personalities.” She continues, “Your feed can be full of Kardashians and selfies and girls showing off their new clothes, or you can have it be full of 1970s tree planters and my dad and his weirdo friends.”

Courtesy Roger Steffens

Permalink: LA WEEKLY

I Went to the L.A. Kabbalah Centre So You Don’t Have to

I went to the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles seeking spiritual guidance, and all I left with was a lingering fixation with the perfect Jewish couple in front of me. But more on that later.

From microdosing and burning sage to praying on red candles gifted by gypsy psychics, I’ve always been open to various healing modalities. And yes, I’ve tried antidepressants, too—I don’t discriminate. A year ago, I moved across the country, feeling on top of my game, ready to take on an adventure in Los Angeles and leave New York behind, where I was feeling stifled by the daily shuffle and my cramped studio apartment—AKA the prevailing yet reasonable cliché for a mid-20s Manhattan exodus.

L.A. is a complex enough city to constantly contradict itself. Some days all I feel is its preternatural atmosphere of opportunity—and that’s thrilling. Other times all I see is the sad manifestation of phonies who only seem to have made it because they were cultivated by other phonies.

About five months fresh to L.A., I still felt fairly unrooted in my new home, so I decided to check out the Kabbalah Centre. There was nothing to lose: If it was helpful, great. If there was a cool Jewish community there, major plus. If it was a sham, at least I’d be amused.

Through the lens of pop culture, I’m fairly late to the game. It was 2005 when I first heard about Kabbalah through my teenage bible: Us Weekly. During the anachronistic age of MySpace when all I really cared about was my Top 8, Splendid thermals from Nordstrom, and sparkly purple eyeliner a la The Warped Tour, sitting in my room in the Catskills thumbing through celebrities’ far more interesting lives felt right. Demi Moore, Madonna—and we can’t forget Britney—made Kabbalah seem cool. If these three gentile superstars who’d certainly hosted elaborate Easter egg hunts were interested in an obscure mystical tenet of Judaism, there had to be something to it!

At 26 years old, embarking on my third existential life crisis, I was determined to find out.

***

If you’ve never been to the free introductory Kabbalah class at the Centre, let me paint a picture of holy decadence for you. It involves a full buffet of kosher sushi (well stocked with seaweed salad and both eel sauce and spicy mayo on the side) in an outdoor garden room, a bevy of single women who have driven all the way from Calabasas to find potential suitors, and a Persian finance guy named David who wears one of those headset microphones that mimics a performer in a convention center—which is essentially what he is.

Kabbalah is a strain of Jewish mysticism that reveals how “the universe and life work” by imparting practical tools. Something about the word “tools” in a non-Home Depot way has always sounded lame to me. Like, “Help, I lack proper coping mechanisms and need tangible instructions on how to exist as a functioning human being.” Which of course, I do. I’ve been to a handful of therapists, and only Dr. Jen Silberstein, the Cognitive Behavioral Therapist with bellbottoms, chunky combat boots, and stacked silver rings, really insisted on me using “tools.” And I wanted her to like me (can’t lie, I sort of thought we were friends), so I frequently asked about the mysterious tools in my sessions with her. “Dr. Jen, what are these tools you speak of?” Mindfulness, forgiveness, meditation—all things that require hard work and consistency, both of which are foreign to the cultural ethos of an entitled millennial.

But of all the therapists I’ve had the forlorn pleasure of interacting with (Dr. Goodman, Dr. Fishman, Dr. Levine—are you noticing a trend? Mishegas recognizes mishegas), none have yet to present themselves quite like David the Kabbalist Oracle. And if you consent to follow him into an overcrowded, stark white walled room with fellow plagued people seeking the magic antidote to depression and anxiety, you too can ascend from the darkness to the light. Or something.

The head-pounding club music that summons guests upon entering the Centre is alarming. (By the way, do you think they spell it centrebecause it seems more European and classy? I do.) The turgid techno beats shadow you until you’ve found your very own cold metal folding chair. To my left was a Spanish man who told me his friend invited him because he knew his business was plateauing. To my right were two balding men loudly smacking their gum. I considered telling the sound guys to cut the Diplo and turn on something a little more appropriate (Spa Radio on Sirius XM?) but then I spotted my distraction, the holy grail of Jewish couples: Andrew and Esther.

Andrew, in his navy Polo half-zip and freshly ironed slacks, caught my eye immediately because of the aristocratic way he carried himself. He seemed like the kind of guy who eats salmon for dinner three times a week and recently had a bidet installed in his bathroom so that his ass would never have a speck of male manure glued somewhere in his Calvin undies. He sauntered down the aisles with intention, flashing his dazzling baking soda-white teeth to the regulars and stopping every so often to gaze around and make sure everything was running like a smooth machine. Even in all of his asshole-ish glory, he was still pretty hot.

I was still waiting for the lecture to begin, AKA refreshing Instagram and contemplating jetting out of the place, when Esther showed up—late, with wet auburn hair, a gracious smile, and a runner’s body to match Andrew’s, who she had clearly come to meet.

Finally, the music came to an abrupt pause along with the much-welcomed diminuendo of my fellow seekers. “The minute you learn some of these tools and plug in, the universe will start to send you the blessings that are meant for you. That’s the simplicity and power of this,” David the Kabbalist Oracle said as he addressed the crowd in his all-white get up, like he just waltzed out of what conventional wisdom describes as heaven or perhaps Diddy’s annual Hamptons white party (one in the same to me). I kept my eyes on Andrew and Esther, obsessing over this seemingly perfect couple who looked like they’d get menstrual cramps on the same day, if only that were humanly possible.

David continued, “Our soul chooses the types of people it wants to receive in its life. Our soul came to the world with certain negative character traits and we chose the characters in our own movies that would be perfect for showing us these traits.” What a joy, I thought. Andrew, Esther, the gum smackers, King David, all here to act as mirrors reflecting back the jealousy, skepticism, and impatience I projected throughout my time sitting there. And that’s when I realized that the consummate yet nauseating couple I took such delight in observing were probably in a predicament of their own, fighting a unique set of demons that must have brought them to the Centre in the first place, just like me.

***

Exiting the building, I forgot where I parked my car for a moment, and I remembered another thing David the Kabbalist Oracle said: “When something annoying or bad happens to you, instead of getting angry, simply say, ‘What a pleasure.’” As if there is a lesson in the tiniest of vexations, from momentarily losing your vehicle to a person cracking their knuckles in absolute silence. There has to be something to it, on some level, I thought, but only more so in situations where you can actually glean something from your aggravation—and if I was supposed to have learned patience from this experience, then alas, that’s a struggle for life. But being aware is half the battle.

As for my future in the Kabbalah community—I think I’ll take a pass. Although, to be fair, they do offer recorded podcasts, which I have turned on once or twice while driving stop-and-go on the 101. In any event, there’s always Scientology.

Permalink: Hey Alma

A Night Out with Bubbe in Boca

One thing I learned at the Boca Resto Club is that there are few things more uncomfortable than watching men and women upwards of 65 swivel their hips, shimmy, and engage in what I can only call dirty dancing — or flat out floor-fucking. Amidst a sea of leopard-print purses, Tommy Bahama camp shirts, and freshly painted red nails cradling vodka martinis, I sat next to my grandmother and father, clutching my JUUL vape pen and praying that I never age.

Of all my years visiting Grandma Hattie at her senior community in Delray, we’ve never ventured to Boca. The Florida nights of my adolescence were spent people-watching on Ocean Avenue in Miami with my sisters or donning heels with camp and college friends to take pictures on my digital camera at various Lindsay Lohan-frequented clubs.

Now, at age 27, with an increasingly refined palette and tamer nightlife expectations, I had no issue surveying the scene at the senior nightlife hot spot. Every opportunity to exist mindfully in a dysfunctional family outing has become prime opportunity for material. Plus, I wanted to please Hattie. It’s painful in the numbest of ways to watch your favorite family members labor through the melancholy of senescence.

So after spending too much of my day anticipating a dopamine-inducing text from a particular male human, I now focused on my grandmother, Hattie. Ninety-two years old and happy-as-a-clam with a sports bar chicken parmesan and zero alcoholic beverages, she leads a close comparison to Lucille Ball. Handing out tootsie rolls and lazing on lawn chairs gabbing at her bungalow colony, she befriended the parents of Nicholas years ago, who now sings in a band called Nicky and the Paradons. The “band,” if you want to call four men who warble along to hits of the ‘50s and ‘60s in matching red sports coats and black undershirts, brand themselves as “street corner harmonizers.” They are local celebrities who run the Boca nightlife circuit with an act that is akin to karaoke for a mixture of leather jacket-wearing baby boomers and their parents.

I knew I had to see it for myself.

The live music scene in Boca brings out a slice of Semitic life that I’ve never seen before: aspiring capos who’ve all had a bar mitzvah and their female counterparts. There are also those who are less Jew-mobster and more “Deadhead,” in addition to straight up local revelers. But the band members and patrons who lionize Tony Soprano, they were the ones who really caught my eye. I imagine, as young kids playing on the street in Brooklyn, they fantasized about possessing the biggest baseball bat on the block and some day bedding as many women as Frank Sinatra — the quintessence of New York masculinity. A totally fair childhood aspiration, albeit one that has unfortunately persisted over time.

Overwhelmed by new stimuli, I headed straight to the bar for a Hendricks and club soda with two limes to take it all in. There, I began my night of meeting multiple men named Tony. This is not a drill. Tony the First wore a black button up with gold speckled Fred Flintstone-like spots and ordered two whiskey sours to bring back to his table that was serendipitously seated next to my table of 12. His date, who I learned he had been engaged to for 25 years, was a tiny blonde woman in her early 70s, wearing the tightest black spandex American Apparel-esque pleather dress I’ve ever seen outside of college bars.

Soon I made eye contact with another man named Tony the Second, who has actually had small roles in shows like The Sopranos and Board Walk Empire and once threatened to break my dad’s neck for driving a tick above speed limit at a community we rented in when I was a kid. He sat swirling his red wine in a gold pinky ring as Nicky came over and kissed his hand. Okay, he didn’t actually kiss his hand, but let’s just say the TV credits had definitely gone to this man’s head.

A notification had still not arrived to confirm that the person I thought I was interested in was interested in me, so I continued to half-way immerse myself in this experience and learned something else. It’s impossible to say no to a Carmela Soprano-Fran Dresher-hybrid peddling makeup. “I haven’t proven it yet but I’ve been studying it since college. Left handed people prefer vanilla ice cream,” said a really nice platinum-haired lady sitting at my table. Somewhere in between gagging on my inedible hamburger and waiting for a good song to take my grandmother up to dance, I ended up buying a lip-stain from her. It was something like a Kylie Jenner gloss stick and she was something like a bubbly Avon saleswoman. Let’s just say I didn’t hate it.

I looked up to see Tony the First and the tiny blonde dancing groin-to-groin (and also cheek to cheek) to “I Only Have Eyes For You” by The Flamingos. One of my favorite songs, this jolted me with mixed emotions. Here were two senior citizens simply trying to keep the romance alive. Why did that cause the muscles in my face to contort like I just ate something expired (or another hamburger from the Boca Resto Club)? Was I being ageist?

After recuperating from my first bout of nausea, I began to settle into a more tender place — one where swaying elder people dressed as cast members of Grease were not so much discomforting as pure. Something in their parallel rhythms, their youthful excitement of bodily enmeshment, became almost wholesome in the throes of my digital dating escapades.

Do people my age ever slow dance anywhere besides the occasional wedding? Have we become too awkward a society to engage in public acts of vulnerability now that we exist more-so in the alternate universe of our phones? I was struck by a pining for traditionalism, even if that longing was sort of complicated by vistas of pleather. Instead of root beer floats and drive-in movies, my generation is Netflixing and wondering whether a direct message on Instagram is a legitimate form of communication. I don’t wish to live through the social vicissitudes of the ‘50s and ‘60s, but our modern age is one dampened by civic consequences that can feel half-baked, nebulous, and at times, devoid of effort.

Sitting in the club finishing off my drink, I tried to stop myself from feeling like a stereotypical millennial for expecting a text I would like receive the next morning. I tried not to think of my Grandma Hattie and how many more years of these visits I’ll have. Instead, I focused on one burning question: if, after 25 years, tonight would be the night that Tony’s fiancé finally gives him an ultimatum.

Permalink: Hey Alma

Comedian and Artist Mo Welch Has Created a Character Who Is All of Us

Few people have the opportunity to hide behind a character that translates their deepest fears, social media–induced jealousies and slothful tendencies — but Mo Welch does.

The comedian and cartoonist utilized her own 20-something existential rut as time well spent, and the product of that despair is Blair, Welch’s misanthropic Instagram comic alter ego, who may as well be a contemporary of Daria and Cathy. She is the reigning poster girl for anti-FOMO; as if she ever really wanted to be a poster girl at all. As Welch describes her, “Blair is a cynical millennial who's honest in a world littered with gratingly positive YouTube personalities.” She's a welcome respite from the “my life is better than yours” ethos that pumps incessantly throughout our cultural bloodstream.

Welch envisaged Blair after a stint home at her mom’s house in Lombard, Illinois. She was stewing over a break-up and having one of those periodic life crises where she questioned what she was really doing out here in La La Land.

“I was hanging out in my mom’s cul-de-sac and I was really depressed. I had the idea to put something visual alongside a joke and my sister had all this art paper downstairs. So I began drawing what would become Blair. I just started out with Sharpies and within six months of posting on Instagram I realized, wow, people really like this." Within the past two years, Welch has built her following of nearly 37,000 followers — and Blair has only just begun. The comedian hopes to compile her Instagram comics into a Blair comic book and also create an animated series.

Mo Welch

Blair spews witty one-liners such as: “I wish you could order motivation on Amazon Prime” and “I need to take a shot before going on Facebook these days.” The character's straight-faced expression is not so much sad as apathetic, as if she is already primed for — and maybe a bit numb to — whatever disappointment awaits her next. Infused with Welch’s dark humor, which she admits is “even darker onstage,” each Blair comic is rendered predominantly in gray and black.

Although Welch has been etching out a name in the stand-up universe for 10 years, people have only recently taken note. “Some people don’t even know that I do stand-up, they think I just make Blair comics,” she says. Attracting attention at a time when everyone — not just stand-ups — requires attention 24/7 is increasingly uncertain, and that’s why Welch encourages comedians to get a gimmick, or harness some sort of latent talent lurking in the shadows. “I never took an art class, but I was the editorial cartoonist at my college and I drew cartoons my entire life. I’m really bad at human figure and color theory or any normal thing any artists would know,” she says. “But with comedy, you do have to have this clickbait sort of commodity, so that someone can associate you with something.” Keep that in mind, comics.

Permalink: LA Weekly

Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Lab in Brentwood Is Equal Parts Ridic and Chic as Fuck

What kind of plant is this?” I asked the saleswoman at the new Goop Labin Brentwood while fiddling with a spindly, graceful plant that I can only describe as a miniature tree with long branches adorned with pom-poms of pine needles. “I’m not sure, but I can give you our florist’s number if you’d like,” the chill lady with dainty Echo Park–stamped tattoos, a breathy voice and big smile responded. Needless to say, I didn’t call the florist, but it all felt like a fitting welcome to Gwyneth Paltrow’s first IRL lifestyle store, Goop Lab, nestled in the Brentwood Country Mart because, really, where else would it be nestled?

Gwyneth’s Goop launched in 2008 as a weekly newsletter replete with the actress’s informal suggestions from places she’d traveled, eaten and shopped. That newsletter quickly evolved into a booming aspirational lifestyle website and brand boasting Goop’s very own line of vitamins, clothing and organic skincare products, in addition to interviews with health experts and articles like “11 Statement Turtlenecks We're Wearing Now.” Just this month, Goop launched its first issue of a quarterly print magazine (in partnership with Condé Nast) featuring Gwyneth herself, wearing nothing but bikini bottoms, slathered in what looks like nutrient-dense mud.

Jessica Sample for Goop

To enter the Goop Lab — referred to as a “bungalow” — is to stroll into an idyll of aspirational leisure; it's as if the various sides of the ideal woman (i.e., Gwyneth Paltrow) have been turned into individual rooms in a well-appointed, 1,300-square-foot apartment. In an entryway built as a sparkling clean mudroom/airy greenhouse, white-tiled floors are beautified with lush greenery, woven baskets and garden supplies. Take a few steps further and you’re in the apothecary, where you can — as I did — spray yourself with every facial mist and dab on every primrose-based face oil you can get your hands on. Products span from Moon Juice’s Beauty Dust to French Girl Sea Spray, and the shelves are accented with beakers filled with beady-eyed green plants, because mason jars are so 2016. Leave it to Paltrow's interior design team, Roman and Williams, to pinpoint a burgeoning trend that's sure to grace every Brentwood mom’s home in no time flat.

The fully functioning kitchen feels as if it could've been ripped out of Paltrow's Hamptons home (or, let's be real, its guest quarters) and transported to L.A. Items for sale included matcha powder, $80 linen hand towels displayed in weathered wooden bowls, and a line of Goop cooking spices ranging from turmeric powder to coriander seeds and tandoori seasoning. The kitchen’s étagère (fancy new French word I learned that means open shelf) was painted a pale pink and lined with magenta dahlias and various kitchen-esque accoutrements. To complete the vision of the kitchen, there's an ivory range with brass fixtures and quartzite countertops. The setup allegedly will be used for cooking demonstrations, although it's hard to imagine anyone doing something as ghastly as cooking food in the immaculate space (Gwynny is raw, you know).

Jessica Sample for Goop

The living room feels like an environmental shuffle from Los Angeles to New York. The moody midnight blue wallpaper has been painted by hand and a walnut day bed is embellished with a sheepskin throw. I spot a bar cart and totally envision Paltrow holding an organic tequila–infused margarita during a girlfriends-only taco night (morning meditation to follow). The Goop Label is where things get exceedingly trickier, because even as someone who appreciates a level of refined taste, I can’t wrap my head around people — even people of means — spending $375 on a black, ribbed, long-sleeve shirt so basic you could easily buy it at Zara. I suppose she’s going for the Theory price point, which makes sense, but the approach still feels like just the right amount of the out-of-touch-Gwyneth we all love to condemn. Throw in a $895 Marni top and distressed jeans that probably fit so well it hurts, and there you have it: living room/closet à la Goop.

Like it or not, Goop’s store cements the 44-year-old entrepreneur’s lifestyle creed in living a chic-as-fuck, nontoxic, health-centered existence. She recently told Architectural Digest that the Brentwood Country Mart “has been a part of my life since I was a child,” so this all just makes so much sense. What you get with Gwyneth is balls-to-the-wall Gwyneth, and she just happens to be rich and famous and healthy and eager to share. As a friend texted me after seeing a Goop Lab mirror selfie I uploaded on my Instagram story, “If Gwyneth told me to rub dog shit on my face, I probably would.”

And honestly … I’d probably at least consider it, too.

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