June Gloom? How is that possible? I don't have to be in a classroom again until July 6th!
And truth be told, I'm a huge fan of cloud cover. We are inundated with sunshine in Los Angeles. Enough already! I see this relief as a well-deserved treat before we get swallowed by the sun and heat of July and August in SoCal.
Did I mention I don't have air conditioning? In fact, never have in LA. Landlords always say, "AC? Oh, you don't need it by the beach." Um, FALSE! I so believe in the healing powers of central air conditioning.
And this my friends, is why my body rejects the word, "valley."
Have a fantastically cloudy Friday!
Well, believe it or not I have little to say today as I am feeling... ick! We'll leave it at that.
However, a huge congrats to Working Bug Productions for being selected as Independent Webisode Finalists by the Producers Guild of America for the Producers Challenge! Woo-hoo! Episode One of Road to the Altar, entitled "The Wedding Planner" (guest starring myself!) will screen tonight at Fox Studios alongside other finalists including Horrible People, True Blood, and Heroes. Yay! So looking forward to it!
Would also like to send huge congratulations out to my wonderful, talented, very good friend Jen Nikolaisen who is shooting a commercial for Aviva Life Insurance today! GO JEN!!
And thank you so much to my wonderful students for a great last day of class, not to mention a generous gift! I will miss you until July 6th!
And I would be remiss not to say good-bye to my second favorite Golden Girl, Rue McClanahan. You were so lovely and loved and will always be fondly remembered for your fearless talent! Indeed, thank you for being a friend.
It occurred to me today... I HAVE NOTHING TO WATCH! Everything I love has either had a series or season finale!
What to do? OK, fine the Real Housewives are still on, but man, New Jersey is super weak... A pack of uneducated, lame women who sometimes get drunk and violent. For the most part, much like watching paint dry.
New York, always good, but about to end. Although, that should be one hell of a season finale. And speaking of the Real Housewives, while browsing on Amazon.com yesterday, I came across "Body by Bethenny
," which just looks like yoga (don't think Bethenny Frankel had much to do with creating yoga), but what I also noticed, was how high the Skinny Girl's
books were rated by Amazoners. I saw at least four books by Bethenny Frankel, all with an average rating of about 4 out of 5 stars.
Then I noticed that even mildly retarded, table flipping, New Jersey Mafia wife, Theresa Giudice has a cookbook out called, Skinny Italian: Eatit and Enjoy it Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too!
Also carries impressive ratings! And hey! She can write! Well, perhaps that's true, but I'm pretty sure the other name on the book, Heather Maclean was responsible for any successful verb-subject agreement that occurs on those pages.
Then! New York Housewife Alex McCord's book she co-wrote with exceedingly metrosexual husband Simon, Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City.
Um, they live in Brooklyn. Hope that's part of an explained joke on the inside cover. Huge ratings! Five stars out of 5!!!
Wait a minute... are amazon reviewers just really partial to Real Housewives and anything, any of them, might write or sling? A tad more research gave me the answer, which is a very clear NO.
Yep, two more New York Housewives have books out, which Amazoners... do not like. First we have the much anticipated and mocked, Class with the Countess
, by Countess LuAnn de Lesseps, which recived an average rating of 2 out of 5 stars. Nah, I wouldn't want to read it either, and she's so damn condescending on the show, I'm sure I'd hate every page of it.
Lastly I glanced at Jill Zarin's ratings for the book she co-wrote with her mother and sister, Secrets of a Jewish Mother: Real Advice, Real Stories, Real Love. Yep, well not much real love from Amazon reviewers who gave the read a 2 out of 5 star rating. Most of the reviewers gave it 1 star and were rather scathing, calling the advice "cold" and "calculating."
There you have it: a show on Bravo does not equal successful book reviews.
However! That is NO reason to start recording music! Step away from the microphone LuAnn!!
Like so many other people with teeth, I often try to find ways of making my smile whiter and brighter. Being a huge fan of coffee and red wine makes regular attention to the choppers necessary.
In the past I've gone to a dentist for that, "brighter smile in an hour" treatment (popular one now is called Zoom), which I found equally effective, expensive and painful! Decided it wasn't for me, my budget, or pain threshold.
I used a 5-minute teeth bleaching gel called, Plus White
, which offered me acceptable results given the time investment, but the improvement lasted little longer than the time investment.
Then of course, I've tried Crest Whitestrips
, which I've managed to swallow in the past when I fell asleep waiting for the magic to happen. Recently I bought the CVS generic version (we're still in a recession kids, don't judge), which is supposed to dissolve in 5-7 minutes. Well, that's true if dissolving means the strip on your teeth turns into a gooey mess that you have to wipe off.
Anyone else have an affordable suggestion? My smile is waiting.
Happy long weekend!
Anyone else still puzzled at how your spam box fills with urgent letters from Nigeria, requesting your help, in God's name?
I don't understand. Email is nothing new. Spam is an expected nuisance, like children selling candy outside grocery stores and post offices. Personally I've seen at least two different "Dateline" episodes exposing the Reverend collecting fees before he can send the moron's inheritance. This "practice" is no secret!
Let's see, here are the scenarios used I can recall the best: a distant relative of yours has passed and left you a large inheritance for which you need to pay fees before you can receive said enormous dollar amount, someone has to transfer money from their country to yours and would be happy to pay you a hefty fee if in God's name,you'll help out, someone is ill and needs your charitable financial help.
People still fall for this. The last Dateline expose' I saw on the topic, featured an educated woman in Connecticut who bought the inheritance bait. She lost $200,000.00 in "fees" even though Chris Hansen confronted the Nigerian ambassador living in Greenville, SC.
Maybe what's more difficult to understand than why people still fall for this, is why from time to time I can't help but respond to these emails with a well-deserved, "Go f*** yourself."
Leave it to me.
I have a newfound love for a show that's not new, but new to me. I love "Weeds"! Thanks to the ingenious Netflix-via-Wii phenomena entering my living room, access to every episode of every season is at my disposal on demand. Love!
Yes, it goes flying into the absurd at times, but that doesn't bother me. In fact, most of the time, I'd rather not see real-life difficult, problematic scenarios played out on my TV. A widowed mother of two from the suburbs, chauffeuring two thugs in a drive-by shooting, that's what my viewing time needs. Over the past few days, I've actually thought, "Sure, this is bad, but nothing near as bad as what Nancy goes through!"
Ridiculous? Yes, but mostly, so am I.
Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone!
After a number of years in this business, which will go undisclosed, I feel comfortable saying it doesn't matter who you go to for headshots, if you don't bring yourself to the picture, you won't get "the shot." But what the hell does that mean?
It means that your headshot should capture your eyes, show something going on behind your eyes, and completely look like you. Not some character you think you should be playing, just you. And with all I know and thought I knew about headshots, I was more than enlightened when I watched this SAG Foundation video, "Your Headshot From Every Angle," taped earlier this month.
Guests included casting directors Stuart Stone, Marci Liroff, and Geralyn Flood and photographers Sara Corwin, Alan Weissman, and Kevin Major Howard. Among many other things, I learned that Sara Corwin is really defensive about her high prices and Kevyn Major Howard might be slightly off-balance and/or an evangelist.
Bottom line, if you're an actor, it's totally worth it to see what they're saying.
