I realized I needed a real headshot (Not just selfies and outfit photos, hehe). At first I had planned to take it myself but since I took Davids headshot I thought it would be fun if he took mine. I like it very much.
I also like this one with my Peekaboo Tooth:
There was A LOT of photos that featured Peekaboo Tooth- making the prettiest photo look super silly.
One of the reasons for the headshot was that I wanted a photo on my imdb page! And here it is!
A dinner:
Since we have a full kitchen now it’s so fun to cook again! I’m not very fond of the gas oven though. Yesterday we got an oven thermometer and found out that when the oven should be 350 f it was really only 275 f. So now I know why everything I’ve made this far has been undercooked. Anyways, we celebrated by cooking this lovely dinner. Pan fried sun chokes in sage butter and Baked Parmesan Cod. Very very tasty! And super fancy on a monday. I made a cold sauce to go with it all, with sourcream, garlic, parmesan, salt and pepper. By the way: Sun chokes!!! OMG! SO tasty! We had fried sun chokes (omg omg omg!) at a restaurant a few days ago and now I’m HOOKED!
An apartment update:
We have a table and chairs now. Our place feel like home.
A hint of what’s coming:
My book. Looking pretty as all hell. I’m working on the shop details, so stay tuned.
A Hollywood update: I realized I hadn't showed you this yet! David made a little video about Lights Out and what’s been going on. He’s planning on doing a series of behind the scenes videos showing you the work that went into turning Lights Out into a feature film. It feels so good to finally be able to talk about this. Hopefully we’ll have a trailer to show you soon too.
Other than that: I have been fighting my chronic urticaria lately. Something I’m not going to show a picture of, because YUCK. Think boiling lizard skin and you’re close. We’ve been talking about how to use it in one of our horror shorts but we haven't figured out how to solve the problem with me mostly crying from itchiness. So here's a selfie from when I was bored from itching all day, and I put on a velvet cape and a leaf hat just to have something to do.
Oh, and here's me and a cactus. Yesterday was COLD. And windy.
Well, that was all for now. Talk to you again soon!
First: Lights Out was featured at a film festival at the island Gotland in Sweden. In an old ruin at night. This feels like the perfect way to see our shorts! I so wish I could have been there to see it, but I was really happy that they sent us this photo that gives a good idea of the atmosphere there.
Photo: Sandra Fröberg, Film på Gotland.
In other Lights Out news: we counted the views on all the different uploads of Lights Out. It's up to a total of 104 million views. That is just completely bananas. A few weeks ago we found this facebook upload that has an insane amount of views, and there's a bunch of uploads on youtube as well (this is our official upload though). I still can't grasp the enormity of this thing. I probably never will.
And the other thing I wanted to show you is this photo I took of David yesterday. He needed a photo for professional reasons and we had maybe four minutes to take it before he needed to get to work and I had to get ready for my Accent Reduction lesson. I am so happy with the result because take a look at that handsome man! My husband who hates getting his picture taken, looking all happy and relaxed. And beautiful.
Okay, that was all for today. Hope you'll have a great weekend, and talk to you soon!
Hej! A while back I was using my Google-fu to try to find some interesting and weird places to explore in the Los Angeles area. One of the places I happened upon was the Murphy Ranch Nazi Camp, described as a World War II-era enigma hidden in a forest outside of Santa Monica. The pictures and text I could find about the place made me itch to go there as soon as possible. Yesterday I convinced David we needed a sunday adventure at the Murhy Ranch.
On the site Atlas Obscura they describe it like this Now property of Los Angeles City parks, Murphy Ranch was originally developed to be a self-sustaining compound in the 1930s. It was originally purchased in 1933 by Jessie Murphy -- a person never seen nor documented elsewhere. Despite the phantom owner, the property was developed by Winona and Norman Stephens and a German national by the name of Herr Schmidt. The design implemented was an installation of several buildings, fuel tanks, and multiple massive cisterns. The entire complex, according the plans of Herr Schmidt, was to be self-sustaining even if it suffered years of isolation from the outside society. Schmidt's motivations, however, remain the focus of the lore.
Apparently Herr Schmidt wanted to create a Nazi holdout in America, but in 1941 the ranch is said to have been raided by United States Federal Agents that had kept an eye on Herr Schmidt and his work. The place has been abandoned ever since, with the exception of a few years in the 60's and 70's when artists took over the ranch.
The backstory piqued my interest, but what really made me want to go there was the fact that the only way to reach the ranch was by descending a 500 steps concrete staircase straight down the mountainside. The pictures I found showed a hidden and secret place, and I was so excited to see it for myself! We arrived at the start of the hike around 5.30 in the afternoon. It's been so hot in Los Angeles lately so we had to wait until it was starting to cool off a bit, but not too late because we didn't want to get stuck out in the wilderness in the dark.
The light was just perfect and I was already happy that we had came there, even if we weren't to find the stairs. We met a few people going back down the trail who told us to keep going and the stairs would appear quite clearly maybe a mile ahead.
And there it was. In front of the most beautiful mountain view.
After walking down the stairs for a while David asked "Are we going to be doing this forever, Lotta?" The stairs just kept on going.
It felt like we were explorers in a forgotten world!
I even decided it was worth it to go up and down the stairs a little bit extra for some self timer photos. I didn't know what I was in for later, apparently...
Like a fairytale! Or an adventure movie!
And then we reached the end of the stairs and found the goal of our hike!
I like that among all the usual graffitied penises and swear words someone had written Fuck Hitler (can't be seen in the photo though, if you were trying to find it). To keep the vandalism topical, I guess. We didn't have time to look around any more than this house, because the light was rapidly getting weaker and we needed to head back to the car before dark. I plan to return soon though, and bring my real camera! The weather will just have to cool off a bit before though, because I want time to explore this amazing location!
After just a few steps we realized just how exhausting the way up would be. I was breathing so heavy and tried to find a good breathing rhythm to keep me going. Sweat was pouring and we kept chanting about the ice-cream we had decided to buy when we finished the hike.
We had to stop and breathe a couple of times.
LOOK AT ALL THOSE STAIRS BEHIND ME! So sweaty and shaky. Our legs started to feel like spaghetti after a while.
When we finally reached the top the sky looked this wonderful! Like a painting!
Speaking of paintings, isn't this mountain side so beautiful?! I love the texture and colours.
And another one (I have at least ten more photos like these in my phone).
And over there is Santa Monica in evening light.
Such an awesome adventure! I absolutely love to find places like this and I have already started to search for the next location to explore. Also, I'm sure that the muscle soreness I'm feeling today is going to remind me of this excursion for at least a couple of days.
That was all for today, I hope you liked to tag along on our hike. Talk to you soon!
We're in Palm Springs over the weekend and one thing I really wanted to do was to see the desert and take some fun photos. So today we did just that! Sweaty as all hell, but WOW, what a place! I took a gazillion photos with the self timer, so let's take a look at the best ones:
And then we started to imagine what it would be like to get lost out in the desert, and the self portraits took a turn for the dramatic...
Aaaaaaaah!!!!
The nature out here is like nothing I've ever seen before. David and I talked about how crazy it is that when people in movies go to another planet the entire planet has only ONE kind of nature. Earth has so many different kinds of environments and the logical way to think is that other planets would be the same. Everything from snow and ice to heat and sandy deserts.
Also: I wonder how they survived out here without AC in their cars...
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