Advent

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's official, we're now in the Christmas season. Not only did Black Friday come in a scary, man killing way, but today is the first Sunday of Advent. I was thinking about getting an advent calendar this year (which is a Lutheran tradition -- who knew?), but I had a sneaky suspicion that I would pop open all the doors and eat all the candies in one sitting like I did when I was kid. Greed is a deadly sin, you know, and there's no use imperiling my mortal soul over some second rate candy so I decided against it. Anyway, when I was looking for an Advent calendar, I stumbled upon the Advent wreaths. And I was reminded of my Catholic school days when we used to make these out of fir tree detritus, green construction paper, birthday candles, and goopy glue, which -- in hindsight -- sounds like a fire hazard. Also, can I make the comment that the Advent wreath reminds me of a Menorah? Do you ever get the feeling that the Catholics smuggled out more than just the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments when they snuck out the back door of the synagogue?

Happy Thoughts

In honor of my friends Meg and Rachel, I'm going to list a couple of things that are making me extremely happy today:

1) The biggie: IT'S RAINING IN L.A.! Yey! I love rain. I miss rain. Rain is our friend and the friend of the whole planet. And it's the friend of my very dirty car. Very happy.
(a) Gmail has a new theme icon. I choose bus stop. And while Google is Big Brother, I actually don't mind when they put a cute rainy backdrop on my screen to let me know that they know that I live in L.A. and it's raining here.

2) We get out of work at noon today! Yey! At which point, I will pop over to Gelson's to pick up my Thanksgiving-feast-for-two. Yey, Thanksgiving!

3) Christmas is starting to come together. My flights are set, and I have pretty much picked out all my gifts. All I have to do is purchase them which I will do over the internet as most of the gifts will have to be shipped to Connecticut. But whatever. And Kate and I have decided to spend a day in the city and see August: Osage County probably Sunday after the holiday. I love it when a plan comes together. I love it even more when I have the cold cash to actually complete the plans. And I do. Happy!

4) My books from the inter-Library loan arrived yesterday and one of the P.A.s picked them up for me today. I love library books, don't you? They remind me of all sorts of good things, like when my mother used to bring me to the children's library once a week and we would spend hours there, or my Catholic school's library where I used to thumb through the card catalogue thinking that some dead kid left a clue in there for me to find his/her murderer, or the four years in high school when every one else hung out in the cafeteria and my clique used to meet up in the school's library right across from my locker, or my romance novel phase where the public library was the only place that could feed my addiction. I love the worn covers, soft thumbed through pages, and the fact that some of these books still have a card in the pocket. Thank you Ben Franklin.

I think this is a very good start to the holiday weekend. I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving, and -- just so you know -- I'm happy and thankful for having all of you in my life.
XO!

Anxiety Reality

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you're late to work but you have no way to get there? Or mid-way through a dream, you realize that you're supposed to be in class, but you're nowhere near your school? I will admit to having more of these anxiety dreams than I should. I always seem to feel behind the game somewhere deep in my subconscious. But this morning, I had what can only be called an Anxiety Reality.

The alarm went off as it normally does around 6:30AM at which point, I turned it off and rolled over. At 8:10Am I re-awoke. That gave me about half hour to get ready and get out the door which, considering my low-maintenance style, isn't a problem. However, as I rounded the corner to the bathroom, my roommate opened her bedroom in wild-eyed confusion. Her alarm clock did not go off at all. Considering I live ten minutes from work and she lives twenty minutes from work (on good traffic days), I let her take the bathroom first. About midway through her shower, our doorbell rang. It was our downstairs neighbor. It seems our bathtub was draining into her bathtub and she was bailing out our used water, shampoo bubbles and all. She had a call into the landlord, but in the meantime, could we keep our showers short? Iew. OK. At this point it was 8:25 and I decided to be kind and instead of showering at home, I would go and shower at my gym, but that would mean being late to work. I called my boss on his cell to let him know the issue and that I was going to be about thirty minutes late. He said, "fine;" I packed a bag and was out the door within ten minutes.

I get to the gym and...there's no where to park. What the hell? By now it's 8:40 and why aren't these people at work?! Literally, there was a line of three cars trying to get IN to the parking lot. Stupid out-of-work actors. I drove around the block a couple of times and finally found a parallel spot to squeeze into. I dash into the gym and into the locker room. The first stall is swampy. Iew. The second stall is out of order. Humph. The third stall is taken, and the last stall is the handicap stall, and -- screw it! It's clean -- I took it regardless that I always leave the handicap stall open out of moral imperative and lawful obedience. Ahh, but God would punish me for such an infraction because there's no soap in the dispenser! Bloody 'ell. So, I use my $15 pore and facial cleanser as bath soap. Whatever. During the course of the shower the water pressure keeps changing so that half the shower is a hot, harsh spray and other half is a cold trickle. Grumble, grumble. I get out of the shower, powder, spray, and slather, then bustle out to the sink area to do my hair. But, AGH, they've taken out the blow dryers! This will teach me not to get my expanding jell-o bottom to the gym more often. So, for the first time since I've moved out of the state of Connecticut more than eight years ago now, back in my low, low maintenance days, I went to work with wet hair. Thankfully, I had an elastic to at least wrangle the wet mess into a ponytail.

I got to work at 9:25Am. Not too bad. But seriously, it was surreal. I couldn't have dreamed a more weird sequence of events. Oh, wait. No. No, that's not true. There was that one dream when I realized that it was my wedding day, but my mother wouldn't help me get dressed, and my sister refused to lend me her curling iron. I have a feeling, however, plumbing will start to feature heavily in to future anxiety dreams.

Doppelganger

I received a book back from one of my freelance readers yesterday with a sticky attached that said, "She looks like you!" Referring to the cover model. I thought she looked more like Amanda Seyfried, but who am I to quibble. It was a nice thought. She's a pretty girl.

I always think its funny when someone says that someone else looks like me, because I never see the resemblance. Tina Fey said this about Sarah Palin. She just didn't see it. It wasn't until her husband said that he thought she kinda looked like her, too, that she had to take it into serious consideration. I wonder if this is because you see yourself in a certain way and don't realize how you really look. Kinda like when you hear your voice on a recording and you recoil. However, if more people thought I looked like Geri Ryan (who my cousin thinks I look like), then maybe I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the idea. On the flip side, I once took an internet "test" that asked you to scan a picture of yourself into the program, and it would take measurements of your face and tell you what celebrity you looked like. Me? Roseanne Barr. Followed by Femke Jansen. I'll take Jansen and leave the Barr, thank you.

Usually, however, most people think I look like some girl they knew in school. Doesn't matter the grade. Or say I remind them of someone, but they can't remember who. Back in my Dunkin Donuts days, my boss's four-year old son, thought I looked like a popular commercial actress who was in national campaigns for McDonalds and Mr. Clean. His mother said that he would stop whatever he was doing, point to the screen, and say, "Mom, it's Jessica!" He really thought it was me. The funny thing was, I knew exactly which girl it was because she kinda did look like me. She occasionally pops up in commercials now. We're not aging at the same speed. (Ahem.) Around the same time, I had a regular customer come in and tell me that he just saw me argue a case on Court TV the day before. I

did a bang up job for the defense. I told him that being a lawyer was my day job, but pouring coffee was where my true passion resided.

The funny thing is, when I look at all these pictures, I see the commonality in their visage. The shape of their faces, the shape of their eyes. And since they're all attractive (yes, even Roaseanne can be pretty), I'll take it as a compliment -- especially that Geri Ryan. Seriously, she's hot -- even if I don't see it myself.

So, here's a question for you, dear reader, who have you been told you

look like? Or, if you prefer, you can tell me who you think I look like.

There Be Pirates Here

This morning, I was listening to a brand new news story about the Somali pirates who have been overtaking cargo ships off the coast of Africa. Today, they took a supertanker. The tanker is from Saudi Arabia and is holding about $100,000,000 worth of oil that was heading to the U.S. The pirates are holding it for ransom.

I'm kinda having a hard time getting my head around the idea that there are pirates about these days. One can't help but to think about Pirates of the Caribbean and how Johnny Depp has changed the image from a pegged-leg, parrot toting, hedonist into a fey drunk with some kind of personal honor code. Both are ludicrous myths, but leave it to Disney to make pirates laughable and sweet. These pirates, of course, are real. And very much like the pirates of ye olden days, it's political and profitable. And I'm finding it amazingly interesting. While they are not hoisting the jolly roger over their rubber dinghies or attacking ships with canons ablaze, they are no less dangerous, racing after cargo ships with a minimum number of unarmed sailors carrying nothing but hand guns. According to the story, these pirates are desperate and have no real idea of what is on-board the ships when they overtake them. All they know is that some rich country owns them, and that rich country is willing to pay. Coming from war torn Somalia, they have no agricultural business, no oil of their own, and no GDP. Therefore, they've been ignored by the greater world at large. Well, we're not ignoring them now. Not when they're asking for $30,000,000 for the return of the tanker. Screw with our commerce and you've got our attention.

The Australian says that this is the largest the ship the pirates have seized so far. And I don't think it's going to stop any time soon. According to an New York Times, the men only want money and for the illegal dumping to stop so that they can fish again. (Most of these pirates were fisherman. On a PBS show I watched, the fishing industry -- mostly first world countries -- illegally harvests fish off the coast of Africa, making it difficult for these men to make a working wage or even provide enough protein for their own families to eat. That special was how we're raping the ocean, but it all ties together. It always does. The world is like one big jigsaw puzzle, and you have to have enough distance to see the picture.)

On this morning's NPR story, the Somali men were saying that their women are not interested in them unless they've got cash, and all the young boys stated that they wanted to grow up to be pirates. I don't think they're talking about the Johnny Depp kind. The problem is, of course, now that they've had a taste of the glamorous life, will these people ever be able to go back to fishing for a living even if we do pull Japan out of their waters and assist them in their genocides? I leave that up to you to decide.

In a related aside, I'd fill up at the gas pump today. Someone's going to have to pay that $30,000,000 ransom...

Crazy Lost

Alright all you Lost fans, and I know you're legion, I just heard the funniest thing: One of our favorite editors here also edits Lost. Due to the Disney gag order, he can't talk about the show so I have no new information about the upcoming episodes (except to say that he just finished editing the finale. GAH!). Sorry. But what he did say had me laughing and slightly horrified. I guess as a lark, the writers decided to use his name in the show. Something about an email or something. And the real Lost fans, I mean the crazy ones, noticed that the character's name was very similar to the editor's name and went nuts researching him. The editor's wife said that there were over 100,000 hits on his name on Google, and that the fans researched his bio and geneology so throughly -- and posted it on web sites parsing it for clues to upcoming story arcs -- he now knows things about his ancestors that, well, he never knew. I love Lost as much as the next guy, but seriously people. It's a TV show.

Blog on the Brain

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been so busy that I haven't been able to get my head on straight. And while I keep wanting to blog about something, I can't concentrate on anything long enough to actually expand on any one thought or idea. So, here are some of the things I've heard, seen, or experienced, and have wanted to comment upon, but just can't seem to get my words or thoughts into order.


*Heard on NPR: NASA isn't just for space. It's also to figure out what's going on here on Earth. Recently, they decided to count up all the trees (seriously, they can do that -- crazy). It seems there are 61 trees for every human being on earth. Huzzah! However, we use a ton of trees for...well, just about everything. Think about all that pre-fab furniture, FedEx boxes, disposable chopsticks, and paper we use. Arbor Day is in April. Something to keep in mind if you like oxygen.



*I had a truly bizarre dream on Thursday night that included my friend Meg. We were in high school together taking a history class being taught by Anderson Cooper. (This might have something to do with the fact that Meg supported Obama, and I watched the election coverage on CNN. But who really cares, Anderson Cooper was in MY dream!) But then I didn't know what class I was supposed to go to next, and Meg took me to the office. I know Meg. Meg would do this in real life. She held the metaphorical hand of a perfect stranger on a subway platform after the poor girl had been assaulted. Meg totally would bring me to the office to help me get my class schedule.


*I don't like to exercise. But I don't like to meet my book deadlines even more. Instead of working on the rewrite this weekend, I went out for long walks. Right after the news told us not to due to poor air quality. It seems I would rather inhale ash particles and line my lungs with dangerous residue than meet my responsibilities.


*Thanksgiving isn't even here yet, and I'm getting a lot of Christmas catalogues. I understand that the economy sucks right now and Big Business is hoping the holiday season will do...something. But let's face it, it's going to be a Cookies-in-a-Jar kind of Christmas. Which A-OK by me. I won't buy you something if you don't buy me something, deal? Good.

*They announced this morning that they are going to put a cop onto the bailout package. What's that you say? What I mean is, the Fed was giving out billions of dollars to these companies on the honor system (without anyone getting fired or any kind of restructuring, because, yeah, it makes a lot of sense to give an addict more of his drug of choice). Anyway, come to find out these irresponsible CEOs are still being irresponsible with the tax payers cash (quel surprise!), so Congress has now appointed a finance czar -- or whatever they're going to call him -- to monitor how the money is being spent. Isn't that a lot like putting in security monitors after Ocean's 11 has taken the cash? Anyway, I guess the embarrassment of having the President-Elect call AIG on their spa trip (for $440,000) back during the debates didn't embarrass them enough not to fund an English hunting trip to the tune of $86,000. Not as much as the spa trip, but then again, no animals were harmed on Monarch Beach.

On NPR

Since moving to L.A., I've become an NPR addict. I'm officially a clog-wearing, NPR-listening, Trader Joe-buying liberal. Oh, cliches. Why must you be so true? Anyway, every once in awhile I hear something on NPR that just must be shared with someone. And today, dear blog reader, it's you. I actually heard this back on November 1st, but since my life has been about work, work, and more work, I haven't been able to blog about it.

In honor of Halloween, This American Life decided to air creepy stories. And, boy, did they do a good job. In the first entry, a woman gave a scary rendition of her encounter with a rabid raccoon. As I grew up across the street from a woods, raccoons were a common night time visitor to our yard, and I -- confident in my top-of-the-food-chain position -- never paid them much attention as "they are more afraid of you than you are of them" (as my mother used to say). But this story? This story freaked me the hell out! This woman was attacked in her driveway, and after fending it off for fifteen minutes while screaming bloody murder for help and fumbling with her cell phone to call her family (who were a mere five feet away in the house), had to watch as her husband and son took turns bludgeoning the thing to death. AND THEN! She got the run around about a rabies shot. The first hospital told her that she had X number of days before rabies would take root and to wait until Monday to speak to her doctor. Then, on Monday, her doctor told her she had 72 HOURS in which to get the shot, and now she might die if she didn't get a shot ASAP so she needed to get to a hospital stat. And then the second hospital wouldn't give her the shot because she lived outside their jurisdiction and told her that she needed to just go back to the first hospital. But her hours were, like, ticking away, and she needed the shot NOW. But, oh-by-the-way, the cost of the shot is $350 and we're not giving it out to just anyone who walks into waiting room. The woman could have died in their waiting room and they were worried about a $350 shot! So the woman had to break down and cry and beg for her life until finally, FINALLY, they gave it to her. But the worst part of the story was the part where the producer tells you that a rabid bat can bite your child in the night time and there won't be a mark on him/her. CHRIST! As he said, "I was freaked out when I heard that, and I just had to share with everyone." Yeah, thanks! And right after that story, Bill Eville recounts a night gone horrible wrong on the Vineyard where he and his brother come thisclose to getting kidnapped. On the Vineyard! I can't even imagine... If you want to listen to it yourself, feel free. I hate Halloween.

The Long Journey Home

I moved to the west coast three years ago now. And every year, I've gone home for Christmas. In 2006, I found that the best time to buy tickets was in August. Plenty of flights at cheap costs with my pick of seats. The first year, I flew JetBlue. The second year, I flew Virgin America. Both, times I had a direct flight into JFK and spent a day or two with my sister before traversing to Bristol. Very good experiences overall (though prior blogs might reveal this to be a falsehood. I don't know. I try not to read my prior blogs. And neither should you. Live in the moment, people!) This year, however, I reserved my passage on US Airways. It is also the first year that I will be flying directly into Connecticut (with a connector in Philly), and the first year that there is an economic crisis afoot. I mean, there is always an economic crisis afoot in the airline industry, but now it's for real. (Seriously, as being part of the generation that has been told from the get-go that there's not enough money for holiday parties, Christmas bonuses, or 3% raises, I bet a lot of CEOs are feeling silly now.) And I'm beginning to think that my normal doom and gloom about air travel is about to get a whole lot doomier and gloomier. Case in point, my fourth phone call from US Airways.

Over the weekend, I received a voicemail from US Airways requesting that I call them back in regards to my reservation. The first time I got this call, it was about two weeks after I booked the flight. It seemed they wanted to change my connector from Chicago to Philly. Same time though, so no problem. The second phone call came about four weeks after that one saying that they wanted to bump me to a later flight. Since the AM flight out of LAX was at 6AM and now they wanted to put me on a 7:50AM flight, I took it. About three weeks after that call, my third call came to tell me that they were bumping my 3:30PM flight out of Philadelphia to 6PM. That meant a four hour layover. OOF! But I took it, because -- well, you know -- I couldn't exactly say no, could I? And now the fourth call saying that they needed to move my AM flight out of LAX again. This time to 9AM. Which, fine, right? I mean, that's one less hour in Pennsylvania. But I'm now I'm sorta freaking out that there might be all kinds of drama come flying time five days before Christmas. I was complaining about this over dinner with some friends on Monday night. To which the gentleman at the table replied, "Just hope that there's still an airline around come December." Hmm. Good point. I guess some cranky baby shenanigans on the 20th is better than cry-baby whining on the 25th. Fingers crossed.

Mad about Mad Libs

I need to get in a blog while the gettin's good. We're flat out busy here. So, without any more poking around...

Two weekends ago, I was sitting in my hair stylist's swingy black chair and while she painted my brassy brown locks back to gold, we somehow got onto the topic of Mad Libs. At which point, she stopped wrapping my wet hair in tin foil and bent down to grab out two copies of Mad Libs from her purse. But these weren't just any Mad Libs. No. These were my Mad Libs. Let me explain.

About three years ago -- I can't quite believe that myself -- I worked for a nifty little Penguin imprint we'll call CBs. While at this nifty little imprint, we launched a series of books based on the Mad Libs brand which we entitled Adult Mad Libs (because we were oh so clever that way). The idea was to take the known kid-friendly quantity and skew it for a mature audience. Basically, we make up quirky titles that women would find intriguing then fill the pad with fill-in-the-blank games with stories that sounded an awful lot like they might have come from a woman's magazine or a cheeky episode of Sex and the City. And this is exactly how they were written. When the manuscripts first started showing up, we had a hand-shake deal to show them to the originators of the series who are still around. While they no longer write the games, they still are the gate keepers, and when the gate keepers took one look at our manuscripts, they slammed the gate in my face and swallowed the key. However, they were willing to have to talks with me without pre-conditions, and eventually they took me under their wings. I drank the Kool Aid...and I liked it! Oh yeah! Anyway, what that meant was, I was under the gun to turn around the existing games with my new found knowledge in a very short time. I called up a comedian/writer friend of mine and negotiated a tough contract with her: She helps me re-write the games and I'll buy her a pizza dinner with my Penguin AmEx. What can I say? I exploited a starving artist. Shoot me. That night, we worked on four titles, probably wrote about 40 games a piece, and turned around the books enough to get them by the gate keepers and into the publishing process. Yeah me! (And her...but mostly me because this is my blog.)

So, you see, the two titles that my hairstylist pulled out of her bag were two of the four titles that I helped ghost write and eventually edited and got out the door all without chipping a nail or taking hallucinogenic drugs. I asked where she got them. "Urban Outfitters. I saw them and I thought they were cute. And cheap!" I nodded my head and said, "Yes, they are." And at $3.99 a piece, they are. But what I was thinking was URBAN OUTFITTERS! AGH!

CBs's main business objective was -- first and foremost -- get a book into Urban Outfitters. "It's perfect for Urban Outfitters" we'd say in our editorial meetings while trying to get something past our boss. In hindsight, I don't know why were so high on the idea. It might have to do with the fact that, for the most part, book people aren't hipsters. And we certainly don't know what the kids are up to -- not even when we were kids ourselves considering most of us were reading Austen or the Bronte sisters wishing that somehow we could be transported back in time, corsets and TB included. But it never happened. Our Sales team never could seem to get anywhere with the Urban Outfitter buyer (or any other buyer that wasn't owned by Mr. Walton -- which is why our nifty little imprint collapsed). The excuse seemed to be that UO was not a bookstore ergo their selection of titles is quite small and therefore they were very discriminating about which books they did accept. And we weren't accepted. (Nothing has changed much since 7th grade.) So an arranged marriage -- or perhaps I should say a common law marriage since we're talking about UO -- between Adult Mad Libs and Urban Outfitters was not meant to be. Until...

About four months ago, possibly longer, I got an email from a former CBs co-worker of mine who is still employed by Penguin. She forwarded me an inquiry from the kids Mad Libs editor. It seems that the juvenile division of Penguin was interested in picking up the now defunct CBs Adult Mad Libs brand. Not only were they now controlling my four titles (plus four others my not-as-starving-as-I-once-was artist friend wrote), but they were looking into expanding the brand with more titles. Marketing questions were asked, and that was the last I heard of it. However! It occurred to me while sitting in my hair stylist's swingy black chair that somehow the juvenile department's Sales team was able to sell into Urban Outfitters (she thought in a snotty, "how is that, huh?" kind of way). My product was good enough for them. I wasn't rejected by the cool kids. I was just ahead of my time...and hanging out the wrong crowd! Which, might I say, is the story of my life. And for some reason, due to probably the late hour and the copious amounts of Halloween candy I ingested, I was pissed about this last night. I got out of bed at 2AM and logged onto Amazon.com to check out what the juvenile department has in store for Urban Outfitters 2009. Bastards.

First, may I say, the covers for the new Adult Mad Libs including the font is waaay cooler than what I had. They should have no problem selling into those funky retailers (No. No, I'm not bitter! Not AT ALL). Second, the titles are just as lame as mine were except more derivative (hmph, she smirked, mollified some.) Third, there is now a "Mammoth" Adult Mad Lib game book out which probably took all eight of my titles and put them into one book. HEY! But, after grumbling about how unfair it all is, and how they could do so much more with them if only I was still in charge, goddammit, I clicked over to my titles to see where they were rated. And then...what's this? REVIEWS! Customer reviews. HAPPY CUSTOMER REVIEWS! Reviewers have given me 5 stars. On almost all of them. Oh, happy day! (Since it was 3AM by this point, "day" would be correct.) The Who Moved My Cubicle AML on working got three reviews (the most). One guy used them for a job building strategy. Party Girl got two reviews that said they were funny and people must buy it. Test Your Relationship I.Q. got two, too. The baby shower one got 4 stars from a post-childbirth teacher of some sort! Hey, I'll take it! People loved my little Mad Libs -- bad non-corresponding covers, cheap font, and all. And like when Bridget Jones found out that Mark Darcy liked her just the way she was, I felt validated..and vindicated. I felt hip and cool and teary eyed, and it had nothing to do with my PMS or the fact I was suddenly exhausted. Not at all. So, I logged off and I went to bed...happy and no longer mad. For now. I'm sure something else will arise tomorrow.