Movies
Would you believe that G and I not only went to one movie, but we went to see TWO MOVIES???!!! Yes, folks, we went to the movies yesterday and today and they weren't rated G animated films. Sit down, I'm telling you. Get your affairs in order. The apocalypse might be coming.
Yesterday, we went to see
"The Simpsons Movie". I've pretty much always been a fan of the show. Was even lucky enough to go to the table read of the 200th episode (one of the good memories from a past relationship). Yes, the movie is sort of like an extended episode but that's actually a good thing. The story stays true to all the characters that the world has come to love over the pat 18 years. And it's been a long time since I've laughed out loud as much as I did in that hour and a half. I loved it and I'm glad we made the effort to go see it right away. Of course, it did continue the streak of only seeing animated films but this was at least, more adult oriented animated humor.
Now, just when you thought my cup had runneth over, we hired a babysitter (thanks M! - you rock!) and went to see
"Hairspray". Of course, I had seen the original
John Waters version back in the late 80's. And I saw the
Broadway show about 5 years ago which was really terrific but man, I LOVED the movie. I definitely enjoyed the movie more than the show. The music is terrific. The performances are absolutely fantastic. And I feel a strange sense of "pride" because I grew up with the director
Adam Shankman. I grew up with Adam. Went to elementary school through high school and summer camp with him. Back then, he had more talent in his left pinky than pretty much any person I've ever known. He was a dancer back then and did gymnastics across the school yard better than any of the girls. He could sing, dance, act etc. He was a dancer for a number of years and worked with my cousin who's a choreographer. Adam then was a choreographer before he became a director. He's done a bunch of known films but this is definitely the biggest. So of course I wanted to see this film to see how he did and I was so pleased at how fantastic the film is on every level. Anyway, I loved the film and highly recommend. You'll enjoy.
This might be it for my movie reviews for 2007 so take 'em while you can.
Labels: Adam Shankman, Hairspray, The Simpsons
Day 3 and all's dry!
Yup, three nights of no diapers. Three mornings of dry tush. Gotta love that. In fact, at around 6AM this morning, we were woken up to the dulcet tones of the flushing of the potty. Someone had gotten up all by herself and did what she had to do. How awesome is that? I'm sure my bubble will burst at some point, but we're riding the sans diaper wave for as long as possible. I promise this won't be a daily update.
On to other news. My gorgeous, adorable niece turned 1 today. Can you believe it? We had a little birthday celebration with just the family yesterday. That was fun. C is always so excited to see her cousin. E is almost walking. Definitely crawling everywhere, pulling herself up and can balance for a few seconds before falling on her padded tush. It's only a matter of time before she's taking her first steps.
Alli is always up to date with the adventures of E but I had to add a few photos of my own from the soiree yesterday.
The girls playing together...
I like how this picture of C came out.
Hi! I'm 1 years old!!!
Oooh, what's this thing? Looks interesting, squishy, pink...
Mmmmm... cake...
It's not a 1 year old birthday without cake from head to toe.
Post cake family photo.
Labels: birthday cake, no diapers
It's about time
C's been potty trained since before she was 3 but for nighttime, we've still been using diapers. She's always woken up with a wet diaper and after much questioning, has never been interested in even trying to wear underwear at night. And I will admit, that I wasn't all that interested in a potentially wet mattress and changing sheets in the event of an accident. Well, after, yet again, much more discussion C was ready to try. She wanted to get those "washable sheets" in case she "leaked". We went to Babies R Us, got some of those baby absorbing liquid pads and decided that Friday was the day she wanted to try. So last night, we put the pads under the sheets and crossed our fingers. We woke her up before we went to sleep and put her on the potty and G again did that at 5AM when he happened to wake up and she didn't have to do anything. And when she woke up this morning, lo and behold, she was dry! Our first completely DRY NIGHT! Woo-Hoo! Hopefully, it's not a fluke and we're not quite ready to declare ourselves 100% diaper-free, but for now, we're celebrating!
Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav
Oh, it's a big day here in Hollywood. We're shooting the "Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav". Last year's Roast to William Shatner was actually nominated for an Emmy Award so the producer/director has been in a good mood. And that's truly a good thing. The roasters "honoring" Flav include Carrot Top, Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Kimmel, Ice-T, Brigitte Nielson, Jeff Ross, Patton Oswalt and a few other Comedy Central regulars. While this show takes raunchy to a whole new level (and then some) the rehearsals have been pretty freaking funny. There will be lots of bleeps on the air but definitely some good laughs.
So far, I think the funniest joke is... (WARNING - POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE WORDS)
(regarding Flav's relationship with Brigitte Nielson)
Brigitte, how could have have sex with Flav? You went from F*%king Rocky to f*%king Bullwinkle.
I don't know, I thought it was funny.
Oh Boyeeeeee!
Some Kind Of Wonderful
So C is a big fan of
Hi-5. We discovered them about 6 months ago and have been watching and taping the show ever since. We went to see them at the
LA Times Festival of Books and we're going to see them in concert next month. We're all very excited. So they performed on
"Regis and Kelly" this morning and of course, I Tivo'd it. We crawl into bed tonight and I pop it on.
They first sang "Some Kind of Wonderful" and it was perhaps the worst directed performance I've ever seen on TV, but I digress. Anyway, C sits there and sings all the lyrics. She's telling me who is who in the group. There's a commercial break and they sing "Superhero" which, again, she sings every word. C also tells me that this is one of the songs that Hi-5 sang when we went to see them at the book fair. You could've knocked me over not that she remembered seeing them but that the saw them at the book fair. Impressive.
So she wants to watch it again. I rewind the
Tivo and she says she wants to dance. So C proceeds to stand up on the bed, sing the songs and do all the dance moves. She was having a great time. It was so darn cute and so darn special. She's truly growing up and it's so much fun to see her really understand and enjoy things in life.
This version of "Some Kind of Wonderful" is on
youtube. Someone posted it from some concert and honestly, it's better camera work than I saw this morning. I hoping Hi-5 can be booked for the Telethon. I know a 4 year old that would implode on the spot. Hope you enjoy this video. C certainly did when she saw it.
Labels: Festival of Books, Hi-5, Regis and Kelly, Tivo, youtube
Nothing much going on
I'm a bad blogger. I wish I were better, had more things to say so I could post nearly daily like
Wendy or
Sonia, but I'm just not that good. I've got nothing fun or interesting to say.
I'm working this week on Big Brother, of course. It's gotten good early this season. The moron Jen has stirred up the house and she's such a loose cannon that who knows what she'll do or say at any given moment. Tomorrow is the first live vote eviction and hopefully Joe will be the one heading home. It's all just a place holder in anticipation of Jen's demise next week. I'm also working on the Celebrity Roast honoring
Flavor Flav for
Comedy Central which tapes on Sunday. So far, I've done nothing. I did more stuff for BB at the Roast office today than I did for that show. But it'll get busy on Friday. It's going to take raunchy to a whole new level. I watched last year's show roasting William Shatner and it was really over the top. I can only imagine what will be said for Flav. BTW, he's not a tall man.
Since I'm leading a semi-boring life, here are some of the LO's I completed when I was in Carlsbad 10 days ago. I'm happy with how they came out.
This is the second LO I've done with this photo. Thanks to Araxi. Didn't even remember using it the first time. LOL. Still, I love how this one came out too.
I love this photo of G. It was nice to scrap DH and I used my
Scrapologie kit.
This LO made me cry, and not in a good way. I was so upset that the ink on the stamp smeared. I tried to come up with another way to fix it but I couldn't get it to look right. So I left it alone. I still love it and I love that this paper is perfect for the photo.
Passover Seder from 2006 at school.
I've been wanting to scrap these photos from the BB7 wrap party. Finally got the inspiration to make it work. I like how it came out. My token BB LO for the year. Got to figure out photos for my BB8 LO. There's still time for this year.
I'm really happy how this one came out too. It's simple but it worked. This is from an article in the LA Times before Superbowl XL (2006) on Don Mischer who directs the Halftime show. G works with him and he's quoted, indicated by the arrow on the left side. And he's in the photo indicated by the bling and arrow on the right side. I'm happy that I could preserve the entire article and I love those newspaper flowers.
Labels: Big Brother 8, Flavor Flav, Superbowl XL, William Shatner
A little me time
I went down to Carlsbad over the weekend for a girls scrapping weekend with
Lisa. She was going down to her BF's house and they do a scrapping weekend 2 or 3 times a year and was kind enough to include me. There were 5 of us there for the whole weekend and they had all started before I even got there. Lisa went down on Thursday but I couldn't so I took the train on Friday. I hadn't been on a train like that in about 12 years. After the last 7 weeks of work, G being out of town, etc. I was most excited to have 3 whole hours of quiet time. I listened to my ipod, caught up on my
Heidi Swapp (who just gave birth to her 5th kid, 2nd within a year)
BPS reading (I'm only about 3 months behind) and started the latest book for my book club. It was nice, quiet time. And riding the train was fun. Very comfortable, smooth, perfectly on time. Can't get that with the any airline I know.
Anyway, got to the house around 10PM. Unloaded my considerable amount of crap from Lisa's car and got right to scrapping. It had been more than 2 months since I had scrapped anything more than a card so I did two kits that I had bought at
Paper Source. I needed something mindless and something that chewed my food for me. One was an
accordian album and the other was a
paper flower wreath. They both turned out nice. Need to put photos in the accordian album but that shouldn't be hard. Saturday and Sunday I ended up doing 15 pages. I would've liked to have done more but when I got home and looked at them again, I was pleased with how they all turned out. I have to scan a few of them and I'll post them in the next day or two. I now have a HUGE pile of LO's to put away in albums. I should be doing that while I watch TV but that would be too easy. I'm still a little behind on my LO goal totals so I've got to figure out how to catch up a little bit. I've also finished up all but two of my pre-planned pages so I need to start working on pulling more. I've got some scrap time coming up in the next few months so hopefully I'll catch up a little bit.
I'm doing a moonlighter on Friday and I'll start to work on an album for a friend. I would like to make a dent in creating that and it would also keep the schlepping of supplies somewhat under control.
Oh good grief. On the Big Brother internet feeds, Carol is teaching Kail a cheer from the University of Kansas. Boy, they're bored already.
Labels: Big Brother 8, BPS, Heidi Swapp, ipod, Paper Source
More Fireworks
While we're talking about fireworks and how much I love them, I remembered something that I wanted to share. Back in 1999 going into 2000, I worked on one of the many Millennium specials that were on TV that year. Specifically, I worked on the CBS version that was broadcast with
President Clinton from the
Lincoln Memorial. I was in Washington DC (one of my favorite cities) for two weeks for this show. I was the Tape Associate Director and spent most of my time in editing getting all the tape playbacks together.
One of the highlights was a 26 minute film produced by Steven Spielberg. It was called "The Unfinished Journey" and it was about America's life, cultural and historical. If I recall, it was in 5 sections narrated by
Maya Angelou, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Edward James Olmos, Sam Waterston and President Clinton himself.
John Williams scored it, of course, and it was quite amazing. I have it on DVD for those that feel the need to see a copy. I remember having to ask a music question and called John Williams office and the person on the phone said "Hi, this is John." Yup, the man was answering his own phone and he couldn't have been nicer. G (this was before we were together) was in several meetings with Mr. Spielberg and he said that was really cool too.
Anyway, as you can imagine, the big climax after this movie and after the President gave his "Happy New Millennium" speech was fireworks. The fireworks were timed *EXACTLY* to go off exactly on certain beats of music. Think big bursts during the "1812 Overture" and the tympani hits. Anyway, the only way to time it all out so that the fireworks went off perfectly to the correspond with the last 20 seconds counting down to midnight was for them to have an actual countdown. On the videotape, we have 4 channels of audio. 1 and 2 are the usual music mix that you year. Unless it's mixed in, you never hear channels 3 & 4. The fireworks company had ME do their countdown for them. They gave me the exact words they needed to hear "T minus 1 minute". "T minus 45 seconds", etc. They wanted their countdown to be 1/2 a second ahead of the actual count to allow for the delay. So when the tape was playing back, we had channel 3's audio sent just to the fireworks operators and they would set off the fireworks at the exact time. It went off without a hitch and the fireworks were spectacular! So, in my own little way, I was cueing the fireworks for the Millennium. The rest of the show was completely hellish but that part was really cool at the time, if I say so myself. And it's still pretty cool to think about all these years later.
Labels: Fireworks, Lincoln Memorial, Millennium, President Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Washington DC
Update
Okay, I'm still scratching my head at this fireworks medley. Not only did John Mellencamp perform on this show, he sang his latest song "This is My Country". Yes, that's the tune you've heard on the Ford commercials. Anyway, he performed this song LIVE at the top of the show. Okay, he wasn't in great voice but he sang it. Why am I hearing the recorded version during the fireworks "spectacular'?? Things that make you go hmmm... I just don't get it.
Happy 231st Birthday
Happy Independence Day to one and all! I don't consider myself overly patriotic in any way but I do really like July 4th. One of my very favorite things in the world is fireworks, which, admittedly, I'm only watching on TV tonight. I'm watching the
Boston Pops July 4th show that I know people who worked on it. They just played
"Stars and Stripes Forever" which is such a great masterpiece and of course, has perhaps, the greatest piccolo solo ever written. It's quite difficult to play and in certain cases, it's a piccolo audition piece. If you can play the picc solo from "Stars and Stripes" you pretty much can play anything on the picc. I played it in college in Symphonic Band where we had 5 piccolos and we all stood up to play it. I got through it but certainly was nowhere close to mastering it. But I do get excited every time I hear the song, especially when it's the underscore to fireworks like at the
Hollywood Bowl. And according to
Wikipedia, who knew that there were lyrics?
I won't even discuss right now that the Boston Pops show is showing fireworks (which I understand last about 25 minutes) to needle drop music. It just went from Kenny Chesney to the Sesame Street theme. HUH? I've never watching this before and I think I now know why. Fireworks on TV is somewhat boring, and the music snipets are beyond comprehension. I'm not getting it. I guess I shouldn't question to those higher on the production food chain who produce this. Wow, this is not good.
How was your day? Did you do anything special? Did you see fireworks? Were they spectacular? We had C's class from school over for the 2nd annual BBQ Swim July 4th soiree. 8 families which translated to about 35 people here at the house. Most of the time. the kids were in the pool plus a few of the Dad's. I really wanted to go in and cool off (it was over 100 here today) but I was too busy on chip patrol making sure all the bowls were filled. I think everyone had a great time and of course, there was more food than we knew what to do with. We did well on the hot dog and burger count although lots of extra buns. But lots of salads, potato salad, pesto pasta salad, beans, and left over desserts. Okay, that's not the worst thing the world but G's out of town
again for the
Live Earth concert in New Jersey on Saturday. (He flew out tonight) Anyway, that leaves me to eat the cookies, pie and cupcakes. I've got a horrible sweet tooth but no one could eat all that's left. Anyway, we had a great time. I'm exhausted from being on my feet for the past 10 hours. I need to get some stuff ready for scrapping this weekend and I just don't have the energy.
May God bless our men and women who serve this country here and around the world. They're the ones who are continuing the fight for independence. May they be watched over and kept safe so that they can return home SOON. God Bless America!
Labels: Fireworks, Hollywood Bowl, piccolo, Stars and Stripes Forever
Move in Day
The houseguests are in the Big Brother 8 house. All moved in and getting to know each other, enemies and all. Interesting group this year. Many of them cast based on their looks. Hopefully one or two of them will have a brain in their head to make it fun and interesting. The rivalries could be fun although I think initially it'll be the 11 houseguests versus the 3 who were watching up in the HOH until they were revealed. I've placed my bets on who I think will win in one office pool and I need to get my vote into another one. These are the silly things that keep us entertained for the summer.
We wrapped our studio taping around 10:45P tonight and that was good. There was still a big reveal that needed to happen and I waned to see the houseguests reactions. I went up to Master Control (MCR) to see what was going on. This is my third season on Big Brother and this was the first time I went into the MCR while the show was going on. They're working and I didn't want to bother them. I did get the grand tour when I first started but never went up again, like I said, because they're all working in there. MCR is the absolute hub of the BB industrial complex. That's where ALL the cameras can be seen, where the two teams of switchers/audio/story editors/loggers etc live, breathe and direct what gets recorded in the Big Brother house. It's a ginormous monitor wall, two complete teams of people working on the two feeds, plus 7 camera operators. I'll go back again and take a picture. It's amazing in there.
I also went into the "Big Brother" booth where one of the producers was interviewing the houseguests for their first Diary Room interviews. Funny to see them, hear them talking to the producer, learning who makes for good sound bites and who sounds like an idiot when they speak.
Tony, one of the house directors, also took me into the camera cross. This is the outer ring around the perimeter of the entire house. This is where the cameras roam around, look through those one way windows and shoot the goings on in the house. It's completely black, anyone in there must wear black and except for some neon tape with arrows, it's like a maze. I know they all know their way around in there but I'm not quite as familiar. I've been in the cross before but never when the houseguests were in the house. It's so weird to see them just doing their thing and I'm about 10 feet away looking at them through a window and they have no idea I'm in there.
Anyway, it was a fun night. VERY crazy to get all those elements correct getting the houseguests into the house, having them play their first HOH game and we had never really had a fully operational rehearsal of that game and them spending 2 hours watching in the MCR. I definitely won't be so shy. There are SO many people that work on this show that I have no idea who they are. Remember, it's a 24/7 show. When G directed some of the jury house stuff two years ago and then went to the wrap party with me, he knew people that I had never met and he was only working for 3 days but they're part of the house camera crew and I do the live show. It's just a fun place to work and technically, the most amazing set up I've ever seen so to see it up and running, perfectly, is just beyond words.
It's going to be another fun summer in the BB house!
Labels: Big Brother 8
Now, just when you thought my cup had runneth over, we hired a babysitter (thanks M! - you rock!) and went to see "Hairspray". Of course, I had seen the original John Waters version back in the late 80's. And I saw the Broadway show about 5 years ago which was really terrific but man, I LOVED the movie. I definitely enjoyed the movie more than the show. The music is terrific. The performances are absolutely fantastic. And I feel a strange sense of "pride" because I grew up with the director Adam Shankman. I grew up with Adam. Went to elementary school through high school and summer camp with him. Back then, he had more talent in his left pinky than pretty much any person I've ever known. He was a dancer back then and did gymnastics across the school yard better than any of the girls. He could sing, dance, act etc. He was a dancer for a number of years and worked with my cousin who's a choreographer. Adam then was a choreographer before he became a director. He's done a bunch of known films but this is definitely the biggest. So of course I wanted to see this film to see how he did and I was so pleased at how fantastic the film is on every level. Anyway, I loved the film and highly recommend. You'll enjoy.
