Academy Awards, Part I: Get Ready, Get Set, Go

This is just the first of my posts on going to the Academy Awards. Yes, there will be many, because how could I fit the events of that amazing day into just one post? If you know me, it takes at least 1500 words to tell you about picking out a frozen pizza at the supermarket. Oh, make that 2500 if I give you the details on how I took ten minutes giving the cashier exact change.

I have to say the preparation for going to the Oscars was the most stressful part. First of all, what was I going to wear? I had commentors on my blog daring me to wear my bathrobe and one person on Twitter suggesting that I wear a flowerpot on my head, so you can see the level of sophistication people expect from me. Add to that the fact that putting on pants constitutes a dress-up day around here and you see what I was up against. Luckily I had some help getting myself Red Carpet-worthy and all I had to do was put on pants.

But that was only half the battle. What about my mug? How was I going to go from mom blogger to someone who was Oscar-bleacher-worthy? After all, if Bradley Cooper happened to glance over my way I wanted to make sure I looked my best and I hear unibrows don't go over too big with foxy movie stars.

So to the rescue came my friend, Marygene, who showed up at my house at 6:45am on Sunday morning to do my makeup. She came over to help me and my fellow blogger Donna get ready for our close ups. Notice the huge stash of makeup she brought with her -- obviously word of my large pores and undereye circles preceded me.



And to top it off, Marygene lives in Hollywood and was nice enough to offer to drop us off close to the Kodak Theater so we didn't have to take a cab like we had planned. I have to admit I was a little nervous about taking one, since I'm from L.A. and don't even know how to take a taxi; Do you ask them up front about the price? Do you chat with the driver? Does the car have seatbelts? Can you tell them how to drive like you do when your husband is at the wheel?

Thank goodness we didn't have to deal with any of that, and Marygene dropped us off close enough so that we only had a few blocks to walk (since walking is yet another thing we don't do in L.A.) All the streets in the area were blocked off, so here's the bizarre view of a completely deserted Hollywood Boulevard at 10 o'clock in the morning (Even more bizarre: No hookers!):



We had to show our official papers from the Academy to get through the police barricade, and then it was on to a checkpoint to get our badges and gain admittance to the bleacher area. I have to say that everyone was extremely friendly and there was none of the attitude or airs that you would expect from such a high-profile event. I think I had more problems with the staff at our middle-school theater night -- I'm telling you, give a 12-year-old some power and they turn into Mussolini.

Once inside I was seated with the awesome crew from Kodak. Here is our view of the Red Carpet from our special section of the bleacher seats:



Luckily I was able to zoom in and get shots like this:



Yes, that's right - Jason Bateman is looking right at me! I think he was saying something like, "Check out the amazing blogger in row 4."

Next Up: Academy Awards Part II: Celebrities, Beautiful People, and Donuts

Disclaimer Small Print! I was invited by Kodak to be their guest in the bleacher seats at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. The bleacher tickets have no monetary value and I was not paid for my attendance or compensated for writing this post. Vendor(s) mentioned in this post have no affiliation with Kodak. I do not actually think my kids' middle-school classmates are like Mussolini, more like really bossy midgets.

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tags: kodak | 82nd annual academy awards | oscars | kodak red carpet bleachers

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Quick, lend me a gown - I'm going to the Academy Awards

Every year as I settle in with my bathrobe, my trough of popcorn and liter bottle of Mountain Dew to watch the Academy Awards on TV I think to myself, "Why aren't I there?" What do those beautiful, rich, thin celebrities have that I don't have?" I mean besides good looks, money and a small ass? Well, I'm about to find out, since the nice people at Kodak, who are sponsoring the Oscars, have invited me to be their guest in the Red Carpet bleachers and to attend the viewing at the El Capitan theater afterward.

That's right, people -- apparently you don't need a Judith Leiber bag or a size-0 gown to hobnob with the stars. Well, technically I won't be anywhere near the stars, I'll just be frantically screaming their names from up above in the bleachers. But I did have to pass a security check to be approved for admittance, and I'm just grateful they didn't see those overdue library books or that shrine to Bradley Cooper in my office, the one with the burning candles and the statue made out of my tears and clumps of hair.

So look for me in the crowd on Sunday, March 7. I may or may not be the one wearing the bathrobe.

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tags: kodak | 82nd annual academy awards | oscars | kodak red carpet bleachers

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I quit my job so there

I quit this job on Monday, and today is my last day. So maybe it wasn't the smartest thing considering the economy and I don't have anything solid lined up except for a couple of freelance gigs and the fact that Rigel just signed on for a full-time job, and Kira needs braces and the dishwasher's making a funny noise and we promised Kiyomi tennis lessons and the kids' college fund consists of sixteen-dollars. Oh wait, make that fourteen -- I had to borrow a couple of bucks for coffee the other day.

But the company is going through some changes, at least the part I worked for, and I felt like it was the perfect time for me to make a change, too. Also, this June would have marked three years with the company, which barring the twelve years I had my own design studio would have been the longest time I spent at one job. The shortest? Forty-five minutes. It's never a good sign when halfway through orientation you're composing your resignation letter.

The upside is that I'll have time to do more things, like actually visit friends and call people on the phone instead of the usual annual email. But I guess the biggest reason for quitting is so that I have more time to do things like this:

That's Kira and Kiyomi's lunches today, bento boxes consisting of Japanese croquettes, sliced vegetables and rice with a seaweed Pokémon tattoo.

I can't wait till they get home from school so they can see the matching outfits I crocheted for them out of shredded bath towels.

That's right -- goodbye workforce, hellllooo obsessive, hovering, overbearing, too-much-time-on-her-hands mom. Why do I get the feeling they'll be begging me to get a job.

The rest of you should just lock your doors and try not to answer the phone.

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P/S - I used these for the tattoos. I didn't cut them out myself -- I'm not that crazy. Yet.

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This day just keeps getting weirder: The Knack's Doug Fieger has died

This has been a really strange day for reasons I won't go into here, but now I just read that the lead singer of The Knack, Doug Fieger, has died of cancer. He was only 57. For all of you infants out there who don't know who The Knack is, they had one of the biggest hits of the '70s, a song called My Sharona. I suppose next you're going to tell me you've never heard of leisure suits or mood rings, either.

I remember this cover of the single -- it made me want to toss my bra and run out and buy a white tank top (okay, and a couple of other accessories too.) Once again, for all you kids out there, a 'single' is a 45rpm record, which is what us old people used to buy when we didn't want to buy the entire album. We would take it home and play the music on our wind-up gramophone when we weren't watching the 'talkies.'

I remember listening to My Sharona over and over again -- it had one of those catchy beats that just got you up and moving and also had the added benefit of driving old people completely insane. And isn't that what great music was (and is) about?

RIP Doug Fieger. Thanks for a great song, and some great memories.

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The Book of Mila Kunis

My interview with actress Mila Kunis is in the current issue of Genlux magazine. When I told people I was going to interview her the question I got most often was, "Who is Mila Kunis?" and "Does this mean you'll be able to pay me back the $20 you owe me?" To answer the first question, Mila currently stars in The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington but you might know her from That 70's Show and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The answer to the second question is, "No, and as your mother I'm deeply offended."

I've never had an interview subject get upset by any questions I've asked -- I thought for sure Kim Kardashian would bolt when I brought up O.J. Simpson but she was open and candid about the whole thing -- but Mila got pretty agitated when I brought up something about her I had found online. It involved her audition for "That '70s Show," and was a story about how she had lied about her age. All audition participants were required to be 18 years old, but Mila was only 14 and told producers she was going to be 18 "on her birthday," not specifying which birthday. She got the part despite having misled them, and her creativity in gaining the audition was said to have factored in to her being cast.

Personally, I thought it was a pretty awesome story and was thinking to myself how I was going to start telling people that I turned 30 "on my birthday."

Well, when I brought this up let's just say Mila wasn't congratulating me on my fine internet research skills. She said, "Alright, look -- I'm putting an end to this story right now!" and proceeded to tell me how sick she was of hearing it, what an old story it was and how she's been asked it for years and how she wished I was dead.

Okay, I made up that last part, but she was pretty hoppin' mad and my habit of beating a dead horse didn't help any when I then asked her, "So, is it true?" She kind of breathed a is-this-freaking-interview-over-yet sigh and then she said, "I didn't say it wasn't true." I finally left it at that because who needs Mila Kunis pissed at you? Not me.

I did find out she shops at Target and likes to sleep in, though, which makes her alright in my book.


You can read the interview and see all the awesome photos here.

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tags: mila kunis | genlux magazine | the book of eli

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I See Dead People

I got to drive a badass Linoln MKT for a week and I've written a review about it. Also, I'm giving away a $500 gift card and there is a contest to win a night on the town. You won't want to enter if you don't like money or fun.

I know you're thinking that asking me my opinion about a car is like asking a cat to write a book review, but you'll see that I have some keen observations about the vehicle. Things like the quality of the ride, the seating capacity and its ability to help you see zombies.

Read my review and enter to win here!

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tags: 2010 lincoln mkt review | blogher reviews | lincoln night on the town sweepstakes | lincoln navigator

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'Got Milk' Party at the W Hotel: If living like a rich person is wrong I don't want to be right

I spent Monday afternoon like I do most weekdays - hanging out in a cabana at my favorite posh Westside hotel while my children skated on the custom ice rink. Occasionally a waiter would venture by and I'd flutter my eyelashes and ask delicately, "Got any more of those sliders coming off the grill?" and then my friends and I would throw back our heads and laugh uproariously not because it was funny but only to attract the attention of the cabana boy that was folding towels just within earshot. You know how those cabana boys can't resist women eating sliders and laughing really loudly.

Okay, I really did go to a party at the W Hotel on Monday afternoon and I really did ask a waiter for sliders. Only, instead of laughing uproariously I just sort of sheepishly grinned because by the look on the waiter's face I knew he was trying to figure out what happened to the entire platter of mini-pizzas he had just left on the table a few minutes before.

Well, in reality my life may not be as glamorous as I'd like and my cabana boy is terrible at folding towels, but thanks to the Got Milk people I got to spend an afternoon with my girls at my favorite spot, at a party with at least two celebrities in attendance; the event was to introduce Rebecca Romijn as the new Milk Mustache model, and her husband Jerry O'Connell was there, too. Here's my shot of Rebecca. I didn't want to appear too obvious, so I snapped it with my iPhone while I was walking by. That may or may not be Jerry's attractive, manly arm in the left side of the frame:



(Kira had no idea who Rebecca Romjin was until I told her she used to be married to John Stamos. At which point she squealed, "OMIGOD, SHE WAS MARRIED TO JESSE?" You have to be a Full House fan to appreciate that one.)

The event was also to kickoff the 'Great Gallon Give,' a campaign to help families in need by passing a virtual gallon of milk to friends on Facebook (Facebook.com/MilkMustache.) For every virtual gallon passed, $1 (up to $100,000) will go to Feeding America. That's right - instead of making a ham sandwich in CafeWorld or cultivating your potato field on Farmville (you know who you are) you could be helping a family in need.

Getting back to the food (I always do) I had the most amazing, exquisite hors d'oeuvre there: a shooter of homemade tomato soup topped off with a tiny, perfect grilled cheese sandwich. I want all my lunches to be like this from now on. Only I'd need like forty of these to make a meal.



The girls had a great time ice skating, except at one point Kira motioned me over frantically to the rink and by the look on her face I thought she had just found out she'd missed a Forever 21 sale. Apparently every time she skated by one particular boy, who appeared to be around 6, he put his hand to his ear to mimic a phone and whispered to her, "Call me." I promised her I wouldn't Twitter it, although when she deadpanned, "I finally get hit on, and it's by a toddler," I told her that kind of comic genius deserved to be shared with the world.

(Also, that ice rink? Not real ice. It's a series of interlocking white panels with some sort of surface that mimics ice. And they do parties! I'm going to see if I can get a tiny one set up in my living room so that I can practice along with the skaters during the Winter Olympics.)

In addition to the ice skating they had some crafts to keep the little ones busy -- Lego tables and an area for helping kids plant herbs. Kiyomi came home with a nice little gardening kit that she's going to use for starting her own garden. The girls are older and jaded now, though, so they preferred to just kick back with me in the cabana and wait for hors d'oeuvres to come by. I'm so proud!

It was a great afternoon, and I know I've said it before but those Got Milk people know how to throw a party. It was hard to get back in my car, fight the traffic and get back to reality. At least my cabana boy was waiting at home for me.

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tags: got milk | rebecca romijn milk mustache | great gallon give | w hotel

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I'd like to have an original thought in 2010

Wow - could it be the last time I posted was just after Halloween? Some of you might think I had nothing to say, others may figure I was too busy working and then there are those who will deduce that I was too busy stuffing my face with holiday candy. Well, you would all be right, except for those that thought I had nothing to say, and that other group of you who thought I was working.

I have many wishes for the New Year (Brad Pitt, will you shave off that beard already) and among them is the yearning to be more creative and productive, including where this blog is concerned. I'm not sure where this creativity and productivity is going to come from, although I hear I might be able to find some at Abercrombie on the sale rack in the back next to the hoodies and patchouli body spray. Also, one of my Facebook friends swears I could find it on Farmville.

I'd like to leave you with some videos of my kids, because their creativity astounds me. I asked them to make their presents for Rigel this year, instead of what we usually do for every occasion that requires gifts - buy him a shirt and an iTunes card and let him take us all out to a nice, expensive dinner. Kira decided to write a song (based on Taylor Swift's SNL 'Monologue Song') that she performed for him on Christmas morning, and Kiyomi chose to make a video about the forming of his band, Nine2Midnight.

(To those that have already seen these, I apologize - I promise to get over to Abercrombie asap.)





Happy New Year to all of you!

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Now this is scary

Here it is, a mere ten days before Thanksgiving and I'm doing a post about Halloween. That means I'll get around to writing about Thanksgiving sometime around Christmas Eve, and then my Christmas post will go up sometime in June, 2010. Luckily you all come here for my excellent stock market tips and not for my punctuality.

As you know, I hate Halloween. I announced it on Facebook, Twittered it and yelled it at passing cars and then it found a way to come back and punish me for my curmudgeonly ways. Not only did I have to spend an eternity (and around five paychecks) getting all the pieces together for Kira's Fran Drescher costume (Kiyomi's was easy, an off-the-shelf McDonald's cup - score!), I somehow found myself hosting a Halloween party for the girls and their friends. It was torture, I tell you, kind of like a vegetarian having to host a steak cook-off or an atheist having to help throw a Christmas party. Oh wait - Rigel does that for me every year! No wonder he's so cranky around the holidays.

As usual, everything was saved for the very last minute. Those pumpkins up there were all carved the afternoon of the 31st and I was buying candy and party food at around 4pm. That meant only the really expensive candy was left - I really hate paying $65 for a bag of mini Prada chocolates. Also, that kind of frenzy leads to impulse buys, which is the reason I came home with goodie bags shaped like skulls, packs of tissue printed with candy corn, small bottles of bubbles with Frankenstein on them and cupcakes decorated with eyeballs. Here, in case you don't believe me:



Take a look at the food spread - I think I did pretty good for someone who hates Halloween. This photo was taken about an hour into the party, after four of the six pizzas we ordered were gone. Shocking, but those teenagers didn't like the strips of red pepper and sliced cucumbers I labored over! Those cupcakes were baked by Kira's friend, Sarah - after she brought hers over I was too embarrassed to put out my store-bought monstrosities with the eyeballs.



Just because I'm such a stick-in-the-mud, though, doesn't mean the rest of the family is. Here's some decorations that Rigel and the girls put up. Also note the 'Spells' table that Kiyomi worked so hard on - those are bottles of 'Invigoration Draught' and 'Love Potion.' In case you're wondering, that skull belonged to a kid from last Halloween who took TWO Laffy Taffies instead of ONE like I told him to.



Okay, I hate to admit - I actually had fun, and if it weren't for the exhausting costume prep I would probably have a much more cheery view of Halloween. So I told the girls that next year they have to come up with something that requires absolutely no buying, or ordering, or alterations, or hovering over wig displays. In other words, they'll be going as the half-Asian, teen and tween daughters of a mom who used to hate Halloween. Happy Thanksgiving!

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tags: halloween | thanksgiving | costumes | fran drescher

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Geek Alert: My Five Favorite Gadgets

Disclaimer: Just to be upfront and abide by FTC guidelines for bloggers and all the free merchandise we're hoarding, I want to state that none of the products mentioned below were gifts, but were purchased by either me or Rigel with money originally earmarked for our children's college fund. Well, in the interest of full disclosure I should divulge that I bought the alarm clock with a few dollars I 'borrowed' from Kiyomi's piggy bank, because when you think about it how much cash does an 11-year-old need to keep on hand? Also, none of the companies mentioned have contacted me or exerted any influence over the content of this post, although if Apple wants to send me a new laptop I would gladly give the iPhone a couple more paragraphs, or tattoo their logo on my neck or rename my kids iPod and Mac.

1) iPhone - Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think they'd invent something that could make phone calls, retrieve my email, help me find my way around Disneyland and pick out a restaurant for lunch. Now Rigel is free to do other things, like help me look for my keys.

My favorites apps are Shazam, Tweetie, Flashlight, Recorder and Facebook. Like most iPhone users, I like to bore everyone to tears by showing them all the great features on my phone. Trust me - nothing brings a dinner party to a screeching halt like whipping out your iPhone and telling everyone you're going to use it to guess everyone's weight.

2) Garmin GPS - I never leave home without this. I've been known to get lost backing out of my driveway, so having a little box on my dashboard telling me to, "Exit right, then turn left," in a British accent is a dream come true. Actually, the dream come true would be if I was sitting in the back seat and someone with a British accent was driving me around, but that was an extra $49.95 a month.

But my favorite part about Garmin is how I can punch in 'STARBUCKS' and it leads me straight to my double-tall-nonfat-semi-dry-cappuccino. Before, Rigel and I would pull off the freeway in some unfamiliar town and then spend hours searching everywhere for our caffeine fix. Now when we go on road trips, instead of looking for coffee we can spend our time bickering like most normal couples do.

3) Canon Rebel - This is the first digital SLR I've owned, and not only does it take great pictures it makes me look like I know what I'm doing when I'm clicking that shutter. You may have even mistaken me for a real journalist at events, pushing my way to the front of the crowd yelling things like, "Media!" and "Over here, Octomom!" I really hate it when some know-it-all gets off by pointing out that I still have my lens cap on, though.

But with so many dials and buttons it's definitely trickier to use than my old point n' shoot. Someone suggested to me the other day that I should read the manual, and I was about to give them a piece of my mind but then they told me they were just joking.

4) Keurig Single-Cup Coffee Maker - I have to admit that part of my motivation for buying this was that it was one of the only coffee-making devices I didn't already own. With a drip coffee maker, an espresso machine, a French press and a couple of stove-top espresso pots to my name I guess I unwittingly became one of those crazy collecting people! Next thing you know I'll be wearing a big sweatshirt with 'I ♥ Java' appliqued on it and getting together with other coffee-maker-collectors over at the rec center on Friday nights.

We've stopped buying the individual pods, though, in favor of filling up the optional filter basket with coffee - not only were the pods expensive, but the thought of several landfills being overrun with millions of small, plastic cups with our names on it gave us pause. Now I can sleep at night knowing that my carbon footprint will consist of only several hundred thousand metric tons of used coffee grounds.

5) $6 Target Alarm Clock - I don't have an alarm clock so this unassuming appliance actually sits on Rigel's nightstand, but it's truly the most vital device in our home. Without it, no one would ever get anywhere on time because we all depend on Rigel to wake us all up in the morning, and it's this trusty alarm clock that wakes him up. Sure we could all stop being so lazy, get our own alarm clocks and get ourselves out of bed, but what fun would there be in that?

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tags: favorite gadgets | iphone | garmin gps | keurig coffee maker | canon rebel

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