Babs Bendix profile picture

Babs Bendix

I am here for Friends and Networking

About Me



Prone to laughing and irreverence. Animal lover. Champion of beauty, oddball ideas, and honest expression, especially where they're dangerous.

My Interests

FOOD! SILLINESS! TEA! AND THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS!Conceptual art, sound art, Modern and industrial and weird architecture, quantum physics, human potential, great choreography and dance companies, animals and their cultures.

I'd like to meet:

Dolphins and human dolphins. Happy, funny, silly, eccentric, creative people, especially if they're in L.A. and I might actually meet them.

Music:

DJ Cheb i Sabbah. Karsh Kale. Runa Laila. The Knife. Pre -1960s jazz. Fred Astaire (yes- recordings of his singing in movies are great!) Chopin, Debussy, Dvorak, Ravel, Prokofiev, sometimes Mahler. Muslimgauze, C Cat Trance, Sartre's Lobster, Loop Guru, Bollywood music and Indian pop I don't even understand. Morricone. Rota. Talking Heads. Severed Heads. Brian Eno. Soviet France. Swell Maps. Inflatable Boy Clams. Early Cabaret Voltaire. Thom Willems. Crystal Method, Underworld, Massive Attack, Zero 7, Morcheeba, Asian Dub Foundation, Ann Magnuson, Paik, This Heat, Fred Lane, Fibonaccis, Tom Waits, early Negativland.

Movies:

Carnival of Souls; Monsoon Wedding; Henry and June; Ghost World; Amelie; Gas, Food, Lodging; Orlando; The Piano; The Red Violin; La Strada; Amarcord; Donnie Darko; Blue Velvet; Rear Window; Diva; Lost in Translation; The Tingler, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living; The Black and White Ballets; Etoiles; Black Narcissus; The Haunting (original); Stop Making Sense; Brothers Quay animation; Defending Your Life

Television:

CURRENT MOON about the moon

Books:

Paint it Black by Janet Fitch, because I know these characters. Joan Didion non-fiction, especially Where I Was From. Anais Nin. Isabel Allende. Bukowski. Dorothy Allison. Good short stories: Flannery O'Connor, Roald Dahl, Mona Simpson, Dorothy Parker. David Sedaris. Ruth Reichl. Edith Wharton. John Berendt. Donald Barthelme. Dr. Seuss

Heroes:

Francis of Assisi, immigrants

My Blog

Candidates’ Coffees

Sometimes news topics converge in my dreams. I had been reading about Starbucks cutting back, and about the presidential candidates, and I got a good hybrid. Someone had come up with a way to blend an...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:58:00 PST

Mr. Boots

Mr. Boots may have diabetes. Boots is a Shih-Tzu I adopted out of a bad situation in 2000, and I think he's about 11 now. He saw me through the most ghastly phase of my life (divorce and the collapse ...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:49:00 PST

A Plot Twist for the Sitcom

This morning at the thrift store, one of our semi-regular customers was visibly upset by the presence of The Electronics Guy, who's there several times every day looking for, you guessed it, elec...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:35:00 PST

Detecting Fabulosity

Where does aesthetic sophistication come from? "Education" is the stock answer, yet I don't think it's that simple. Maybe education paired with curiosity and privilege is closer to the truth. I'v...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:23:00 PST

Top Ten Special Donations for the Week

The thrift store I manage gets donations of all sorts of stuff. This is what stood out as unusual this week: 10. A virtually new Elie Tahari brown suede coat (retail price of about $600) 9. A collecti...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:32:00 PST

Concentric Circles of Time

I’ve noticed that when I don’t master a particular challenge, it comes back in a different form, maybe years and years later. My last department store job was like that, an updated versio...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:19:00 PST

Dos Dollares Mas Tax

I don’t entirely understand how it can take the better part of two hours to drive about 15 or 20 miles, but, then, I live in Los Angeles. I open with that statement by way of explainin...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:40:00 PST

Net is Gross and The Stench of the Bourgeoisie

As of last week, I work for a non-profit organization that earns funds for its programs by operating about 10 thrift stores. They've had me going from store to store to kind of jump in wherever I...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:26:00 PST

The Dress Code

Setting Our Standard in Style Hell's Sales, Support, and Management teams present themselves in a polished, well-groomed, and professional manner, understanding that they are personally representing t...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:34:00 PST

Asceticism n Fun

So I had my job interview yesterday, and I basically have a new job if I show up on Tuesday morning at 9:00. It doesn't pay well, in money, in the present. I'd be managing one of eight&...
Posted by Babs Bendix on Fri, 15 Feb 2008 08:18:00 PST