Monthly Archives: December 2011

I’m a huge fan of the tv show American Horror Story, especially that gorgeous house. A friend on Facebook posted a link mentioning the house is for sale, I wasn’t going to bother clicking the link at first but the preview said it’s located in Los Angeles and that caught my attention. I looked up the address and it turns out the house is so closeby, it would’ve been a crime for me not to go see it.

The story my friend linked to is this one, which has some amazing pictures of the interior. The actual house was used to film the first episode of AHS, but the rooms have since been recreated on a backlot, which will be good news for whoever buys/bought the house since they won’t have constant film crews.

The house was built in 1902 by Alfred Rosenheim, a Los Angeles architect who also built the Doheny mansion which is equally as beautiful as this house, his private residence. It is now considered a Historical Property and, lucky for me, is located barely four miles from my own home. I didn’t go inside since there wasn’t an Open House, the sale sign’s gone so perhaps it’s already been purchased. But I wanted to take a couple photos for my friends who also love the show but don’t live where they can come see it. I couldn’t take a proper photo of the front of the house since a rather large tree is hiding half of it, but you still get a general idea of just how big this 10,440-square-foot home is.

You can read a little more about the house at its official website located here, and you can read more about the architect at Wikipedia.

And by the way, the actual mansion is definitely not haunted. The name “Murder House” is the nickname for the house based on this one used in the tv show, I mean no disrespect toward Mr. Rosenheim’s family or the current owners of the house.

If you live in Los Angeles and you’d like to visit the house, the address is 1120 Westchester Place. It’s near Pico & Arlington, just west of Arlington and south of Olympic. It’s not in a gated community, but since it’s an actual home and located in a residential neighborhood, please respect the people who live there and don’t do anything crazy.

I used the word “tchotchkes” in my last entry, and a handful of people found that amusing. I honestly tend to forget not everybody knows Yiddish, it just sorta flies out of my mouth — or in this case, my fingers — and of course not everybody knows what I’m saying. I explained it to a friend on Twitter, but I figured I might as well explain it here too.

I’ve also seen it spelled as chochka/chochke or chachka/chachke. I figure this is for the same reason you’ll see both Hanukkah or Chanukah (the way I spell it), the original word comes from a language that can’t be perfectly translated into English so there’s no “correct” way to spell it.

According to Wikipedia, it came from a Slavic word meaning “toy,” but a tchotchke isn’t necessarily a toy. I describe a tchotchke as a dust collector, it’s the random junk we all keep on shelves.

Tchotchkes in my bedroom.

Tchotchkes on my desk.

In my case, my tchotchkes are a perfect blend of “Aww how cute” and “What the hell is wrong with you.” In the first photo you can see Nightmare Before Christmas figurines, Hamtaro toys, Bunnicula, a matryoshka doll (Russian nesting doll), a clown doll, and a rainbow candle. In the second photo there’s a large stuffed elephant and giraffe, an elephant-shaped bank, a Captain Spaulding bobblehead, Tokidoki dolls, a potted cactus candle, a chanchito (three-legged pig statue for good luck), and a few other random things.

Show me your tchotchkes! Or just tell me your favorite(s), I’ll settle for that.

My mother and I recently went to The Gold Guys with a handful of old jewelry to see how much it was worth, and to see how much of it was actually real. Mom was pleasantly surprised, especially with a particular piece I’d actually wanted to keep until I found out it was worth something. I wasn’t actually going to wear it, I just thought it was cool, but I have enough tchotchkes so I told Mom it’s okay to sell it. It was this tiny pendant shaped like a box, the idea was you fold up a dollar bill inside to keep on you in case of an emergency.

The one in the photo above is exactly what Mom had, but isn’t a photo of hers. I hadn’t actually taken a photo of the one she owned, I got this photo from an ebay auction. Not that it really matters, but I figure I should at least link to where I got the photo since I’m using it without permission.

The term isn’t used anymore, but it was called mad money. Mad money is essentially cab fare you always have just in case, something people don’t really worry about anymore thanks to credit cards, and the fact that a $1 bill absolutely will not pay for a cab these days but you sure don’t want to keep a $20 in a necklace because your “mad money” will magically turn into a pizza out of sheer laziness. Anyway, one reason why I’d wanted to keep this pendant was just the fact that there was a dollar stuffed into this tiny little thing. I don’t have the patience to sit down with a pair of tweezers and fold a dollar that tiny, I just found it incredible. The lady at Gold Guys managed to get the dollar out, which stayed in its shape due to the fact that it’d been in that pendant since the 70s. I have no idea what to do with it, ideally I’d like to put it with the rest of my tchotchkes, but we might end up unfolding it (or attempting to) to just spend. Because hey, it’s a dollar.