Sh$% Apple Fanatics Say
I saw this video from a Mashable tweet and had to repost it. As an Apple fangirl this rings true. Oh the ways we just justify the shortcomings of those we love!
Book Review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and Other Concerns)
Note: I originally posted this on the pop culture blog I share with my friend Chris. I thought I would post it here too since I'm still trying to figure out what I'll post here vs. there. :)
I’ve been a fan of Mindy Kaling since I started watching The Office at the beginning of the second season. I thought it was impressive that she was not only an actor on the show, but also a writer. Then I found out she had a shopping blog and, for the posts she wrote, used the pseudonym Mindy Ephron. Every time my RSS feed showed a new post on ‘Things I Bought That I Love’ I happily hurried to find what semi-luxury item (at least according to my budget at the time) I might want to buy. It’s because of Mindy Kaling that I bought a <a href="http://shop.theslanket.com/" target="_blank">Slanket</a>, months before the Snuggie took over the world. Based on this, it’s no surprise that when I found out she had a book coming out I preordered it for my Kindle and just waited for the release date.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and Other Concerns) is part autobiography, part observational, part style/shopping guide. She starts off taking us through her childhood, college years, and post college years. The struggles of adolescent friendship, wanting to be popular and have a group of friends, but also a friend who you share interests with. I always enjoy hearing writers and actor’s stories of the struggling time between college and getting that first real entertainment job. People have ended up doing the oddest jobs. Mindy’s included babysitting for wealthy New Yorkers and being a Page for a network. (So not really that odd for her.)
She also talks about The Office, of course. I started watched The Office just after the second season started. I think it’s always been a good show, but, to me, the first 3 seasons are AMAZING. It was interesting to find out how she became a staff writer from creating and performing in “Matt and Ben”, and fictional play about the lives of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. (I’ve heard so many great things about that show. I really should try to track down a place to see a recording if one exists.) It was also fun to learn a little bit about the inner-workings of the show. I love this quote about putting the show together: “Our cheapness was the recurring source of our creative decisions.” In this section she also lists the differences and similarities of Kelly Kapoor and Mindy Kaling.
The rest of the book is more observational and covers topics like the once great romantic comedy and what went wrong with the genre, dating, the best friend code of conduct, men vs. boys, the random and fun pictures she keeps in her BlackBerry, and marriage. Based on what I read, I know Mindy and would be good friends. (I know I say that about quite a few people, this I know this one would be true!) While we (ok, I) anxiously await the first romcom written by Mindy to be created and theatrically released pick up a copy of this book and enjoy the life and observations of a talented and funny 32 year old who, like me, loves pop culture.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book that I related to:
“I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.”
“In psychology (okay, Twilight) they teach you about the notion of imprinting, and I think it applies here. I reverse-imprinted with athleticism. Ours is the great non-love story of my life.”
“The job I most wanted in the world was to be a writer on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I can’t believe that was two Conan shows ago. It seems like yesterday.”
“It’s so simple. It’s not a witty, perfectly phrased, Ephron-y declaration by our charming, neurotic hero. It’s so … plain. But the idea is the most beautiful thing in the world.” - This is in reference to Mark Darcy, played by the ever charming Colin Firth, declaring to Bridget Jones that he likes her “just you are”. swoon
Grade: A
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Mindy Kaling's website
Mindy Kaling Twitter
I’ve been a fan of Mindy Kaling since I started watching The Office at the beginning of the second season. I thought it was impressive that she was not only an actor on the show, but also a writer. Then I found out she had a shopping blog and, for the posts she wrote, used the pseudonym Mindy Ephron. Every time my RSS feed showed a new post on ‘Things I Bought That I Love’ I happily hurried to find what semi-luxury item (at least according to my budget at the time) I might want to buy. It’s because of Mindy Kaling that I bought a <a href="http://shop.theslanket.com/" target="_blank">Slanket</a>, months before the Snuggie took over the world. Based on this, it’s no surprise that when I found out she had a book coming out I preordered it for my Kindle and just waited for the release date.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and Other Concerns) is part autobiography, part observational, part style/shopping guide. She starts off taking us through her childhood, college years, and post college years. The struggles of adolescent friendship, wanting to be popular and have a group of friends, but also a friend who you share interests with. I always enjoy hearing writers and actor’s stories of the struggling time between college and getting that first real entertainment job. People have ended up doing the oddest jobs. Mindy’s included babysitting for wealthy New Yorkers and being a Page for a network. (So not really that odd for her.)
She also talks about The Office, of course. I started watched The Office just after the second season started. I think it’s always been a good show, but, to me, the first 3 seasons are AMAZING. It was interesting to find out how she became a staff writer from creating and performing in “Matt and Ben”, and fictional play about the lives of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. (I’ve heard so many great things about that show. I really should try to track down a place to see a recording if one exists.) It was also fun to learn a little bit about the inner-workings of the show. I love this quote about putting the show together: “Our cheapness was the recurring source of our creative decisions.” In this section she also lists the differences and similarities of Kelly Kapoor and Mindy Kaling.
The rest of the book is more observational and covers topics like the once great romantic comedy and what went wrong with the genre, dating, the best friend code of conduct, men vs. boys, the random and fun pictures she keeps in her BlackBerry, and marriage. Based on what I read, I know Mindy and would be good friends. (I know I say that about quite a few people, this I know this one would be true!) While we (ok, I) anxiously await the first romcom written by Mindy to be created and theatrically released pick up a copy of this book and enjoy the life and observations of a talented and funny 32 year old who, like me, loves pop culture.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book that I related to:
“I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.”
“In psychology (okay, Twilight) they teach you about the notion of imprinting, and I think it applies here. I reverse-imprinted with athleticism. Ours is the great non-love story of my life.”
“The job I most wanted in the world was to be a writer on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I can’t believe that was two Conan shows ago. It seems like yesterday.”
“It’s so simple. It’s not a witty, perfectly phrased, Ephron-y declaration by our charming, neurotic hero. It’s so … plain. But the idea is the most beautiful thing in the world.” - This is in reference to Mark Darcy, played by the ever charming Colin Firth, declaring to Bridget Jones that he likes her “just you are”. swoon
Grade: A
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Mindy Kaling's website
Mindy Kaling Twitter
Cross Post - Comic-Con 2011: TV Comes Out the Winner
A friend and I have a blog on all things we consider geekery (which is pretty much everything). Here is a post on Comic-Con and TV this year: http://schoolforgeeks.blogspot.com/2011/07/comic-con-2011-tv-comes-out-winner.html
Third day of Comic-Con photo recap
I'm going to do a proper Comic-Con recap post later, but here are some photos of highlights of the day:
I went to South Park and "had myself a time".
Jason got a Flaming C cape (Chris, there is one coming to your house... and an oven mitt).
I meet a Smurf.
Well I am off to bed. I'm going to see The Doctor tomorrow and need my beauty sleep!
Me and Mrs. Garrison
I got embarrassed at the awesome Community panel. You can read out that panel on this post
I saw Xander (Nicholas Brendan)
A swarm of Doctors were around the BBC booth.
I went to South Park and "had myself a time".
Well I am off to bed. I'm going to see The Doctor tomorrow and need my beauty sleep!
Last night I Monkee'd around
Growing up my Dad's musical taste was the main influence to mine. I endlessly listened to his records and cassette tapes. This collection mostly included music he grew up with from the 60s and 70s (his teen and early adult years). I would say it wasn't really until high school when I ventured out to find newer music and develop and expand my library of music. (Don't worry, I didn't miss out on 80s music, but that's really not relevant to this post. Maybe one day I'll tell you about my endless Madonna dance parties with her records the neighbors across the street owned.)
In addition to scouring my Dad's music collection I was lucky enough to be born in the age of the "invention of cable". This is what fueled my love of tv. While I watched all of the current programming, I loved reruns of shows from the 60s and 70s. In my early teen years, tween as they are referred to now, Nick at Nite gave me access to such great shows like The Musters, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Donna Reed Show, Mary Tyler Moore, and so many other ones (raise your hand if you actually have heard of Dobie Gillis. Yeah, I didn't think so. sad for you). One show I remember watching over and over was The Monkees. This show combined my two passions, music and television.
In the 80s The Monkees toured and I wanted to go to the concert, but my Dad wouldn't take me (looking at the dates I see why, I was only 7 or 8). Since then it's always been a regret of his. Last night we made up for it and saw that same portion of the group perform at The Greek. As is widely known, Mike Nesmith doesn't perform with the band anymore. Now when the Monkees tour it's a variation of Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork. This tour it's all three. The show was so great and really held to the roots of the tv show. They had comedic bits they did between songs that held to the comedy of the show. They looked like they were having a blast up on the stage (based on all of the stories you heard about the band in the early days, and later days too, who really knows if they were enjoying their time together, but since I'd like to think they were let's just say they were).
There was a big screen behind them the band that showed a non-stop stream of old videos and pictures. It was really neat. I got this on picture of the guys "then and now" (a Monkees lyrical reference for you fans).
I got a chance to see Micky and Davy when they were part of a summer concert series at DCA (Disney California Adventure) like 10 years ago, but last night was even more awesome because Peter was there and I remember him being my favorite when I would watch the show.
Hearing all of their songs again reminded me of how much I love them. During the show they gave shout outs to all of the fantastic songwriters they worked with. Did you know Carole King wrote "Sometime in the Morning"? I had no idea, but once Davy said that I could completely hear it in the song while he sang it. Some other fun stories or bits from the evening:
I feel so fortunate that over the past couple of years I've gotten a chance to see so many performers I've loved for a long time (who are all a bit on the older side). I always say I was born a decade or two late. I love so much about the 60s and the 70s (heck, let's even throw in the late 50s). Seeing Peter, Micky, and Davy last night performing together was kind of making up for that. Their music will now be back in full rotation on my iPod and I'll be revisiting other old favorites.
Once I figure out how to post videos from my camera somewhere on the web I'll post some of those. I recorded A LOT so I could relive it over and over! Until then you can head over to the album to see some pictures. (I took over 158 photos/videos so I got some that came out pretty good!) Photos from An Evening with The Monkees
In addition to scouring my Dad's music collection I was lucky enough to be born in the age of the "invention of cable". This is what fueled my love of tv. While I watched all of the current programming, I loved reruns of shows from the 60s and 70s. In my early teen years, tween as they are referred to now, Nick at Nite gave me access to such great shows like The Musters, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Donna Reed Show, Mary Tyler Moore, and so many other ones (raise your hand if you actually have heard of Dobie Gillis. Yeah, I didn't think so. sad for you). One show I remember watching over and over was The Monkees. This show combined my two passions, music and television.
In the 80s The Monkees toured and I wanted to go to the concert, but my Dad wouldn't take me (looking at the dates I see why, I was only 7 or 8). Since then it's always been a regret of his. Last night we made up for it and saw that same portion of the group perform at The Greek. As is widely known, Mike Nesmith doesn't perform with the band anymore. Now when the Monkees tour it's a variation of Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork. This tour it's all three. The show was so great and really held to the roots of the tv show. They had comedic bits they did between songs that held to the comedy of the show. They looked like they were having a blast up on the stage (based on all of the stories you heard about the band in the early days, and later days too, who really knows if they were enjoying their time together, but since I'd like to think they were let's just say they were).
There was a big screen behind them the band that showed a non-stop stream of old videos and pictures. It was really neat. I got this on picture of the guys "then and now" (a Monkees lyrical reference for you fans).
I got a chance to see Micky and Davy when they were part of a summer concert series at DCA (Disney California Adventure) like 10 years ago, but last night was even more awesome because Peter was there and I remember him being my favorite when I would watch the show.
Hearing all of their songs again reminded me of how much I love them. During the show they gave shout outs to all of the fantastic songwriters they worked with. Did you know Carole King wrote "Sometime in the Morning"? I had no idea, but once Davy said that I could completely hear it in the song while he sang it. Some other fun stories or bits from the evening:
- Micky talked about when they went to England and meet royalty, no not the crowned royalty, The Beatles. Apparently, after a crazy night of partying he couldn't recall anything from he wrote "Randy Scouse Git". Love that song!
- Davy said that over the years he's stayed current music by listening to it with his kids and grandkids. He came to the conclusion that "Justin Beiber stole my haircut and Axel Rose stole my dance moves".
- Peter talked about how they got so much flack for not being "real musicians" and "real band". The band fought for the right to play at their own shows so ironically they were a cover band for their own albums. It was pretty funny the way he explained it. He then brought up the irony how in conjunction with them fighting to be a real band when they recorded the song they were about to play he actually played the harpsichord part on a harpsichord, but tonight he was on an electric keyboard so it would be a synthesized version of a harpsichord.
- Davy "pulled an Elvis Costello" and stopped the show to pay a quick tribute to Sherwood Schwartz, the legendary tv producer who recently passed, by singing "Girl". He sang that on the episode of The Brady Bunch that he appeared on. (Oh the blog I could write on my love for The Brady Bunch! I guess last night I finally got my chance to be like Marsha Brady since he sang it live to me like he did at her prom. Let's just keep those footballs away from my nose!) The tribute was very sweet. He also dedicated the song to his granddaughter who was in the audience.
- Ending the show with The Monkees walk... you know the one I'm talking about.
I feel so fortunate that over the past couple of years I've gotten a chance to see so many performers I've loved for a long time (who are all a bit on the older side). I always say I was born a decade or two late. I love so much about the 60s and the 70s (heck, let's even throw in the late 50s). Seeing Peter, Micky, and Davy last night performing together was kind of making up for that. Their music will now be back in full rotation on my iPod and I'll be revisiting other old favorites.
Once I figure out how to post videos from my camera somewhere on the web I'll post some of those. I recorded A LOT so I could relive it over and over! Until then you can head over to the album to see some pictures. (I took over 158 photos/videos so I got some that came out pretty good!) Photos from An Evening with The Monkees
Top Five of the Week: 5/2-5/8/11
1. Community - I still haven't seen last year's epic paintball episode, but I'm throwing part one of this year's episode on here because it brought my Sawyer back on tv. *swoon* Josh Holloway. Now I'm missing Doc and Freckles.
2. Happy Endings - I know I already posted about this, but I'm really liking this show (when I thought I wouldn't). They are kind of burning off the episodes (hopefully that doesn't mean anything) so we get two a week. Zombie Dave and Hipster Penny made me laugh so hard!
Click here for the Happy Endings post
3. Food and Drinks - I tried out a gourmet Waffle place and had good wine this week. (These things are also previously posted about)
4. Parks and Recreation - This show has totally hit it's stride this season. How could they make me praise it more? Parker Posey! Parker played Lindsay Carlisle Shay, Leslie's (Amy Poehler) former best friend now professional nemesis. Parker and Amy were great together. It was a great way to have guest star fit into the show.
5. Jack Sparrow - I'm a Lonely Island fan who really likes about 50% of the videos. I really liked this week's digital short. Here it is in all its Michael Boltoness:
2. Happy Endings - I know I already posted about this, but I'm really liking this show (when I thought I wouldn't). They are kind of burning off the episodes (hopefully that doesn't mean anything) so we get two a week. Zombie Dave and Hipster Penny made me laugh so hard!
Click here for the Happy Endings post
3. Food and Drinks - I tried out a gourmet Waffle place and had good wine this week. (These things are also previously posted about)
4. Parks and Recreation - This show has totally hit it's stride this season. How could they make me praise it more? Parker Posey! Parker played Lindsay Carlisle Shay, Leslie's (Amy Poehler) former best friend now professional nemesis. Parker and Amy were great together. It was a great way to have guest star fit into the show.
5. Jack Sparrow - I'm a Lonely Island fan who really likes about 50% of the videos. I really liked this week's digital short. Here it is in all its Michael Boltoness:
Free Comic Book Day
When I was a kid I read Archie comics... that is the extent of my comic book background. Having gone to Comic Con the last few years and being into the "nerd" culture, I've heard about Free Comic Book Day, but I never investigated. This year I thought why not go and see what it's about. From the website I found out that Realm Comics in Brea was participating. I headed over there and picked up a few free issues and also bought a Buffy season 8. I haven't read any of the Buffy comics, but I had been interested and wanted to support the shop. I'm excited to dig into the books I got. If you are observant you'll notice I did pick up a Betty and Veronica... Call it throw back to my youth.
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