Bossypants Book Report

In February I read Bossypants, Tina Fey’s humorous autobiography. I took me  probably a week. Her stories were amusing, extremely self-deprecating and introspective.

Fey is a feminist in my view and a woman who shows you that you can’t have it all and you have to make sacrifices. I believe that she has broken ground for women on television. She is out there running a show and supporting other funny women. But her humor isn’t related to her body and she isn’t extremely glamorous.

To me this book could have used more about her developing her sense of humor. How she knew she could perform. What kind of struggles she had to go through to get to the top. I’d also like to here how celebrity has affected her.

That is all.

Sharing is Caring

Here is a poignant anecdote that may prove to you how lame my life is.

My mother bought a couple of packages of Oreos last week, so Tuesday night I decided to have some with my almond milk.  But my brother had confiscated them, which is typical. That meant I had to beg him for a few cookies and he would not give any up, even though he had two full packages.

We quarreled like the children we are until my father got involved. But my brother still wouldn’t cede his cookies. If this was actually 1990 I would have cried and cried and my brother probably would have punched me in the face.

But seeing as how we are adults now, I gave up. Some battles aren’t worth fighting. Low and behold my little brother came to offer me the cookies not 10 minutes later.

And that is a story of growth my friends, albeit ridiculously slow growth.

BotW: The Audacity of Despair

Blog of the Week… The Audacity of Despair

What it’s about: The musings and thoughts of David Simon, creator of “The Wire.”

How I found it: My friend Jazzmen forwarded the site on to me. It seems Simon started writing a while back and abandoned his blog (it  happens). He has started to write again about all manner of topics.

What I think of it: I’m in love with it. Simon is someone I look up to and I think others should too. You should not look up to him because of his views, but because he chooses to be so bold and brave in expressing them. He doesn’t conform to industry standards. He writes and says what he feels. He encourages arguments and seeks to grow from his experiences. I was fortunate enough to see him speak live and this is another great opportunity to study his thought process and get tips on expressing my views. If you enjoyed any of his books or TV shows you should take pleasure in this blog.

Au Revoir Picnik

If you don’t know already Picnik, the most wonderful free photo editing site, was closed last month. Before it shut down I tried to get the most out of the site as possible. Here are some of the collages I made from my trip to San Francisco and Israel. The last one is my favorite.

Blogging Behaviour

For a while there I was doing really well with the whole blogging thing, and then I kind of stopped.

I don’t know why but I just feel an apprehension when I open up this WordPress site.

Hopefully by putting that out there it will break my blogging block.

What do you do to get back in the swing of things?

The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao

I’ve been wanting to read this book for the longest time, and to tell you the truth I don’t know why. Nothing about the premise really appeals to me. The story of a fat, ugly Dominican boy who loves comic books who grew up in New York in the ’80s, nah not really my cup of tea.

But something must have called out to me, because this book was more about family, about immigration about leaving an oppressive homeland all things I can relate too. It was a history lesson in the style of 1980s MTV. Raise your hand if you feel you got a good overview of world events from your history class. You probably shouldn’t have your hands up because you probably never learned about the Trujillo regime, or most South and Central American political history for that matter.

Author Junot Diaz makes it a point to use the Spanish language to tell this story and does not include translations. But the understanding comes with context. You may not get it all, but I guarantee you’ll get a good 85%.

I got through this book in half the time it usually takes me. It was hard to put down, so I do hope you pick it up and give it a read.

BotW: Listverse

Blog of the Week… Listverse

What it’s about: Lists upon lists upon lists.

How I found it: You’ve probably come across listverse it pops up every now and then on a google search or when you are using an app like flipboard or zite.

What I think of it: I’m a list person. I make lists everyday at work. It helps me remember everything I need to do and it helps me visualize my day and how to spend my time. Lists make me happy so you can tell that this blog makes me happy. There are just so many different lists that it’s not hard to find one that satisfies a curiosity or gives you some interesting lunch break reading. There are lists about conspiracy theories, there are lists about celebrities in comas and there are lists about the Top 10 books that changed the world.

Happy Endings

Tomorrow you have a chance to catch the season finale of “Happy Endings” a show you probably have never watched. If you haven’t heard of it, I thoroughly recommend it. In fact, it maybe my favorite comedy on TV, sorry “30 Rock” and “Parks and Rec” but “Happy Endings” is hilarious.

The premise is that they are goofy set of friends (one pair of sisters, a husband and wife, two former fianced people, a non-stereotype gay man and a crazy single lady) that really is all you need to know. Oh and they all act like fools. The quality of the laughs fluctuate, but there is at least one joke or scene that has me emit a verbal sound similar to laughing. I do not lol.

The show is a modern-day Friends, just like How I Meet Your Mother, but it’s irreverent and it gets “it.” They even did a send up this season where they called each other Monica, Rachel, Ross, Phoebe, etc…I love it. Damon Wayans Jr. is  my personal fave, but they really are a great ensemble.

Watch this show you will not regret it.

TV Morning Shows = Blargh!

Erica Hill is my favorite. She is a shining example of what my name stands for.

I have a morning routine. I have to get out of my house by 7:20 a.m. at the earliest and I try my hardest to make sure that at 6:59 I’m sitting on my sofa with some form of breakfast watching a morning show.

These day’s that morning show happens to be the revamped CBS This Morning, but over my “working” life I have gone through each of the major morning shows and I tell you they all fall short in a way.

I began my morning show quest with the Today Show, which is like the gateway morning show.

I also find Matt Lauer extremely annoying. I like Al the best.

Many people like their gateway and they stay with it. The Today Show seemed to have gravitas, but now it’s too jokey, jokey, laughy, laughy. I’m tired of it I want my news and I want it delivered professionally.

I think the Today Show’s biggest culprit is that it doesn’t give enough time to really go into issues, instead it prays upon the short attention span of Americans. Also I hate Natalie Morales. She’s too perfect. She makes me want to ralph.

I also was a fan of Charlie Gibson.

I moved onto Good Morning America after that, because I’ve always been a fan of Diane Sawyer. I wasn’t a fan of Robin Roberts, but actually she has won me over. Now George Stephanopoulos has taken over for Diane and he does have gravitas, but ABC as a whole gets too gimicky and too celebrity focused. I’m tired of it. And it seems to me there is just too much turnover in the news anchor portion of the team. It went from Robin,  to my personal fave Chris Cuomo then JuJu Cheng, then there was Bianna Goladryga, however you spell her name, and now some weirdo sports guy. Too many.

Now I’m onto CBS Sunday Morning. As mentioned above, I haven’t had time to sit back and watch the full show. I just get the first 20 minutes. I love the first five minutes, where they do a video clip overview of the news and then they get right into it. But they care far too much about politics. I know it’s an election year but do we really need to do a 10-minute talk about either Romney or Santorum every morning. I’m over that.

If I was a morning show TV producer, I would model my morning show after NPR’s “All Things Considered” this show is not too celebrity focused, but it has a levity. It gets straight into the news, much like CBS. But it takes time to hit on a variety of stories from politics to health to sports to economics.

So what are you watching and why?

Masterpiece Mystery: Part 3

To catch you up on my novel progress. This is my third excerpt (here is the first and second) and I haven’t skipped sections at all. Perhaps, I will being to switch it up next week. I’d like to get to the meat of my story and get some feedback on the Young Adult aspect of this from your readers out there.

I think I have a lot of backstory and I wonder if it is at all necessary…

As always I would love to get any constructive criticism on my writing from anyone reading this.

The third installment of my novel:

Her talents were recognized by her art teachers through the years, but none of her art teachers took as much interest as Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed didn’t encourage Sally to use brighter colors or try drawing something “happy” like her other art teachers had suggested. Mrs. Reed taught the class that art was in the eye of the beholder.

She didn’t want her students to think art was one thing, and not another. She was a hippy during the ‘70s, at least that’s what everyone said about her. They said she was at Woodstock and she wasn’t all there.

Sally was chosen by Mrs. Reed to go to Paris with 14 other students in her eight-grade class. The students were the top students in the class academically who had shown an interest in art and could afford the trip. This was something that Mrs. Reed did every year. She would take a small group of students over seas, usually to Europe to see some great art. Mrs. Reed said she wanted her students to get an experience of what art can be and what creativity there was in the world.

Sally new she would be going on this trip even though she really didn’t want to. She had a special connection with Mrs. Reed, which was another thing Sally didn’t want.

Sally had become quite familiar with Mrs. Reed from sixth grade on having spent at least an hour every weekday in her department. Mrs. Reed had seen her sketches and had put her work in the schools spring art show every spring since Sally went to Truman Middle School. Sally’s art even was displayed at the St. Louis Art Museum in an exhibit of Missouri’s most promising art students. That was all Mrs. Reed’s doing. Sally would have never submitted her art for any contest or recognition.

Sally took art every semester it was an option for her. Art was a break in the monotony of the day. Even teachers who would make Sally draw or paint in certain styles didn’t phase Sally or diminish her love of art. When Sally drew she zoned out, she went to a “happy place.”

Mrs. Reed felt that of all the students in Sally’s class her art had the deepest connections, even though Sally would tell you her paintings and sketches had no meaning whatsoever,

As a student Sally was far from being elected valedictorian, but she did have an appreciation for an education. She didn’t want to be like her mother. She saw an education as a way out of Independence and so she studied and she read. She read a lot. She liked stuff that had an edge to it, like Through the Looking Glass and the classic Grimm fairy tales. She liked how dark and twisted those stories really were and thought it was ridiculous how everyone thought they were these innocent little children’s stories.

Adding more to Sally’s standing with Mrs. Reed was Mrs. Reed friendship with Cathy. Last year, Mrs. Reed had reached out to Sally’s mom during Parent night at school letting Cathy know her high opinion of her daughter’s artwork. The two hit it off immediately and Cathy would take any advice on fostering Sally’s talent from Mrs. Reed that she could.

Sally didn’t care about seeing Europe or going to museums to see other people’s art, to see the art that people agreed was worthy. Sally didn’t think that was how art should be. Who would decide oh your art is worthy of being hung in a gallery. It was bogus. Especially, Sally thought because the art in museums was not like the art she created. It didn’t mean anything to her.

And going to France, that was just another place in the world that had streets and grass and trees just like anywhere else. There wasn’t anything special about it. She thought this was a huge waste of money. But it would get her away from Cathy for a week. She didn’t get the chance to be away from her mother all that often, so this would be chance to be moderately independent for the first time in her life.

For Sally, there were no relatives out of town to visit. Their were no friends who invited Sally to sleepovers. The closest she would get to detaching from Cathy was when she visited Roy. This was a chance for Sally to have some space from her ever-cheerful mother.

Though Cathy wasn’t raking in the dough she knew this was on the horizon and she knew that she wanted Sally to have this experience. Cathy herself hadn’t been off the continent. She was going to travel as much as she could after Sally had established herself, that she knew, but right now she worked extra shifts to make sure Sally could go and that she would have extra spending money.

Roy who always gave Cathy money for her and Sally every month wasn’t so sure this would be the best move for Sally. He was worried it would be awkward for her, like Roy Sally was a loner. And he was a little frightened of Sally being so far away. But Roy had no say in the matter. He actively chose to be distant, so he couldn’t expect to impose his beliefs on his daughter. He trusted Cathy. She knew what was best.