Author Archives: Jenae Cohn

“What is this?” the woman asked, arm linked with her boyfriend’s, leaning over the planter boxes.
“It’s an orchid. You know, tropical plant?” the flower seller said.
The woman turned to her boyfriend and spoke in Spanish. The seller simply smiled.

“I’m a Writer But Then Nobody’s Perfect,” reads Billy Wilder’s epitaph at the Westwood Memorial Park and Cemetery. It may be the closing line of Wilder’s film, “Some Like It Hot,” but it also seems a poignant reminder of the imperfection of our own human existence, the inability of writers to truly capture a particular person, place, feeling or experience. Reading it among the other tombstones this weekend at the Westwood Cemetery, I felt strangely at peace and even uplifted.

Buying organic groceries, recycled paper and locally sewn clothing always seems like a good idea, and I swear I try to do it as much as I can, but I can’t deny reality: I’m a cheap college student.

I didn’t really know what the snack I bought at Nijiya Market on Sawtelle Boulevard was going to taste like.

Believe it or not, Santa Monica offers more cultural opportunity than the Boardwalk and Promenade.

Hunting down the stars outside their Beverly Hills homes may prove one way to catch a glimpse of a famous face, but only at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art “Vanity Fair Portraits” exhibit can one really look an idol in the eye.

It’s the shuffle and hop after the “booty bounce” that keeps tripping me up.