This morning, we make our annual pilgrimage to Park City for an extended weekend to shred the sick pow (Deer Valley) and catch the last weekend of Sundance. It’s a trip I look forward to every year, because after an upbringing in mountainous Kansas, a failed attempt at snowboarding (that shit is for children and derelicts, fyi), and now numerous doll-hairs spent on private instructor lessons later, I am proud to say that I LOVE SKIING. It is by and large my greatest athletic accomplishment to date (which is to say, I roll hard on double blues and a few tree runs), narrowly beating out the time I won an intramural walleyball championship with laura alcoriza and the time I was kicked off the high school cheerleading squad for making out with the co-captain’s boyfriend, aka “being late to practice too many times,” as they phrased it.
Sundance Skication also rocks because it’s a chance for me to fully invest in one of my most favorite passtimes: stalking celebrities. What I like to do is: hunt for them obsessively, find them, and then TOTALLY ACT LIKE I DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE AND THEY HAVE LEPROSY. Do not take pictures, do not say hello, do not treat them like they are normal people that I would just get on a ski lift with, do not take a photo and be like OMG you famous!, GET AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE AND THEN DISENGAGE. Some people would call this bizarre, I call it Things I Do That Both Please Me And Fill Me With A Burning Regret. Except not really, on the regret part-I mean, what if they were mean? That would straight haunt me.
Although last year was a bust, we almost always see famous people in normal everyday situations, and the list to date includes the likes of Ray Liotta (in the bowling alley at the Montage), Oliver Stone, Catherine Keener (who i did my very best to ignore as we chatted waiting for a shuttle for like, 20 minutes), Simon Rex, Rob Lowe (tiniest man I has ever seen), Paul Dano, THE Paris Hilton (locked inside a coffee shop with her while her security team secured the area-this was during the height of PH popularity, btw), Stands With A Fist from Dances With Wolves, the white chick from Hustle and Flow, Justin Timberlake (I will ALWAYS regret not getting on that super abandoned ski lift with him, sorryimnotsorry, YOLOFOMOMOFO's), and my accidental encounter with Matthew Fox.
But the main reason I love the Sundance Skication is that for a few days, I am forced to relax and partially unplug in a serene environment that is truly beautiful. I love pulling over on a run or riding a lift only to hear NOTHING. Being away from everything and being in that sound restores the part of me that is constantly dealing with the creative process, everyone’s sofa emergency, the stress of running a small business, the mess of having moved and adjusting to our weird shanty life, and the animals – not just the ridiculously huge number of pets we have brought into our lives, but also, the animal rescue groups I’ve gotten involved with recently, which I’ve not really blogged about (but follow me on instagram and you shall see).
I say that not to complain, because I love how all of this is turning out, and wouldn’t change a bit. I love my job, love my company, LOOOOVVVVEE our crazy shanty shenanigans and for the most part, really enjoy the animals. I mean, they shit on everything, but it is rewarding, and if I had the opportunity to go back in time and change any of these decisions, I wouldn’t.
Does the stress of all this weigh on me? Absolutely. If you compared photos of KWjanuary2012, KWjanuary2013 and KWjanuary2014, would it look a little bit like a Faces of Meth calendar? Probably. But for the most part, I find the balance and recharge necessary to handle it all, and this trip is one of those occasions that I find most rewarding. Hashtag: Pay It Forward.
BESIDES, in a few of those stress insomnia nights, when I’ve run out of Page Six articles, Instagram feed and Bloglovin post backlogs, I have downloaded the Polyvore app and used it to pre-pack my suitcase (with a few liberties - sidenote: I DO NOT OWN A $1,500 GIVENCHY SHARKTOOTH NECKLACE; DO NOT ROB MY SHANTY. also sidenote: valentine’s present?). And thanks to the magic of the internets and wifi on airplanes (which I have decided is equivalent of dial-up internet circa 1998), I have these fancy boards to share with you now, circa end of day Thursday.
So we are all winners.
PARK CITY CELEB STALKY DAY UNO:
PARK CITY CELEB STALKY DAY DOS:
DAS MOUNTAIN:
APRÈS SKI:
