Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty Comfort Lounge was a Chill Oasis for Celebraties while Treat for Fans & Public.

 By Laura Medina

Covering, reporting, reviewing, and being treated to the ultra-exclusive world of pampering and prepping suites that morph into gifting suites during Awards Season, only in Hollywood, I enjoyed them and have always cherish these rare, insider events.

Now, Selena Gomez is revealing the curtain and giving back to her fans and the general public, by treating them, the red carpet treatment by throwing a weekend only Comfort Club pop-up chill lounge retreat.

Yes, Selena is striking when the iron is hot. She’s promoting her just released Rare Beauty skincare and aromatherapy line.

Just in time for stressed out nominees, anxiously worrying and wishing they win, a Golden Globe, an Emmy, and/or Oscar.  

Those anxious stars have been neglecting their complexions for years and months. Now, it’s close-up, spotlight, and limelight time.

Selena has absolutely been in those shoes.

For nominees and stars, Rare Beauty’s Comfort Club where folks do yoga and meditation studios to center themselves while calming their complexions and nerves, it is a godsend. The calm before the storm.

Selena did this during this past, recent Golden Globes then they’ll do it again, for the Grammys.

For mere mortals and Selena’s fans, it was a thrilling treat.

They got all excited over the same free yoga and meditation sessions.

They were tickled pink, sampling Rare Beauty’s latest skincare line.

Like the nominees, the lucky guests walked away with full-sized spray bottles of Rare Beauty Biotin Mist and little goody pouches of skincare samples, to try at home.

Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty gives back.

HBO’s “100 Ft Wave” Doc Party

 By Laura Medina 

Awards Season is in full swing now.

Thanks to the writers’ and actors’ strikes, the Emmys is now lumped with all the other major and minor award shows.

HBO threw a chic yet family-friendly cocktail to celebrate being nominated as Best Documentary for their surfing documentary, “100 Ft. Wave.”

The best oceanic photographers and their surfer subjects were there, chitchatting with guests and media, enjoying being noticed and honored.

Parties are still getting started.

Breaking Ice Breaks Thru Modern China’s Millennials.

“Breaking Ice” is modern China’s Millennial existential movie.

It shows you not all Chinese are monolithic stereotypes and different regions represents different Chinese, thru job opportunities and fashion.

It also proves not all Asians are monolithic.

The Chinese border on North Korea, is China’s Wyoming, Communist Industrial zone that’s still remote frontier for other Chinese, gawking at North Koreans in North Korean theme amusement park towns.

A Singapore, China’s Manhattan, stockbroker hides out from the urban grind and his disappointed mom, while the rustic, rural folks admire and wish to steal his classic, cashmere navy blue overcoat.

This is where a failed figure skater turned local tour guide and her high school drop-out, clad in plaid flannel, team up with this burnt out stockbroker.

Letting loose in China’s idea of a country frontier is what “Breaking Ice” is all about.

 

Heather Anne Lomax, an Quiet Americana Set.

 By Laura Medina 

If you want to chill during the holidays, this scribe did at Heather Lomax’s Americana Country Rock set.

It was all love and kindness among this select subcategory of 

Country-Western fans.

Rhinestone replaced tinsels.

Heart fest songs frown the holiday noise.

What a chill way to enjoy the holidays.

Griity in Pink Holiday Party at Peppermint Club

 By Laura Medina

It was a Girl Power Holiday party.

Thrown by Gritty In Pink, their holiday party shone the spotlight on background singers rising and outgrowing their spot.

A Mariah Carey background singer sang her boss’ “All I Want for Christmas.”

She received what she wished. She’s the star.

Erin Fetherson & Friends Give an Healthy Holiday with Chop & Drop Butternut Soup.

 By Laura Medina

During West Edge’s Interior Design Fair, former model and now, fashion and decor designer and mom, Erin Fetherson and friends demonstrated the latest in stove tops by whipping up healthy holiday, easy soup, Butternut Soup.

The secret ingredient? An immersion stick blender that whips everything in the pot.

Chop and drop diced butternut squash, onions, garlic, and simmer in vegetable broth, then blend with blender, to dump into mugs and bowls for the whole family or yourself.

Healthy Holiday.

Billy Porter Explains the Difference Between Seriousness and Being Fabulous at LA’s Vulture Culture Festival.

                               By Laura Medina

Before accepting his Honorary Award by New York Magazine’s Vulture Culture Festival, in Hollywood, Tony, Grammy, and Emmy winner and Broadway veteran and former R n B singer…and survivor, Billy Porter sat to lecture the fans, the wannabes, and the jealous, the difference between seriousness and being fabulous.

Him being awarded, such as receiving Vulture Culture’s Honorary Award, that’s what he calls being fabulous.

The long, torturous, and twisting road, that still wind, after winning Emmys, Tony, and Grammy, Billy calls this being serious.

He also describes what is drive and ambition. As Carnegie Mellon junior, he used his Spring Break to get on Star Search in 1992.

That’s part of seriousness.

Let’s face it, he loves Broadway and New York.

Seriousness, according to Billy, was putting up playing degrading, humiliated comedic song and dance “coon” roles on Broadway.

He even lied to himself in then straight R n B industry, just to make it as a singer, even though he hated the toxic masculinity and the vixens attracted to it. 

He back to stage.

Billy calls that torturous journey, “seriousness.”

Winning a Tony for Kinky Boots, as an openly gay man, that’s fabulous, according to him.

Having Ryan Murphy especially writing a role, based and tailored on me, when Billy auditioned for another role, that’s fabulous.

Him playing Pray Tell on FX’s Pose, won him numerous Emmys, again fabulous.

After being awarded Vulture Culture’s Honorary Award, Billy is still serious, waiting for an Oscar, in order to be a fabulous EGOT: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony winner.

That’s fabulous.