Lady Gaga & Greyson Chance

What's everyone up to this weekend? Anyone getting in the Christmas spirit or totally over it? I walked down an avenue block last night after picking up food and so many gorgeous lights and displays were up. I'm like a little kid--they make me SO happy. I live in a very diverse neighborhood and it's interesting to see how each culture decorates for Christmas. There was a Puerto Rican parade today that went down my street, though, I don't think it had anything to do with Xmas. ;)

I'm totally bumming around this weekend. Recovering from post-finishing a book hangover. Next book--COMEBACK--isn't due until March, so I've got some time to chill. I intended to start working on a project today, but chose to read (Ruthless--Pretty Little Liars #10), Teen Vogue, Glamour and some other fun mags lying around.

(CHECK those shoes! I'd *never* be able to stand in them!)

Did anyone catch yesterday's Ellen? Lady Gaga and Greyson Chance we on. First, I adore Greyson! Kate and I saw him the very first time he appeared on Ellen singing "Paparazzi." She discovered him singing that on YouTube, brought him on, signed him to her record label and well, you probably know more than I do about him now. ;) He's such a cutie!

It came full circle for him because he got to meet the artist whose song he played that got HIM a record deal. :)

I loved Lady G's "Marry the Night" performance. She also had some of the best one liners I've heard from her. I've always been insanely inspired by her work ethic. The song, too, is about making the choice to commit to your work or give up. She's barely a year older than me and the girl works hard. She said, "People ask me when I'm gonna take a vacation. I'm like, 'I didn't get into signing to sit under a palm tree.'" That's kind of how I feel about writing. I'm "married" to my work because I love it so much. I'm happy to work long hours (except when my wrist or arm hurt! Bleh!) and I want to put everything I have into what I'm doing. That's for you guys--the readers--Team Canterwood.  

Here's her performance if you want to watch. :) Fill me in on what you're all up to this weekend!

xoxo

Pretty Little Liars premier and Switched at Birth

Before I forget, I wanted to let you know that there are signed copies of the Canterwood books at the Park Slope, Brooklyn, Barnes & Noble. A nice guy named Rob helped me sticker all of the books. Even more exciting, there were copies on the "Local Favorites" shelf. Yay!

This is a quick post because I'm breaking from writing, BUT has anyone been watching Pretty Little Liars or Switched at Birth? SaB is my new addiction! I looove the show! There's so much drama and I think it's such smart writing to show how the hospital mix up affected both families and their daughters. I'm happy that's it's now a "Oh! We found our real kids, let's switch and we'll all be happy!" type of show. Plus, it's fun to see Luke Danes (from Gilmore Girls) daughter as one of the main girls, Bay.

The Pretty Little Liars premiere, I'm superbummed to say, felt like any other episode to me. It wasn't a cling to the edge of your seat show. It needed to be to kick off the summer return. That said, I'm SURE future episodes will return to the PLL the fans love and I'm without a doubt going to keep watching.

What's on your DVR, TiVo or something you've been watching this summer?

Back to writing!

xoxo

My visit to Roberts Elementary School

Today, I visited Roberts Elementary School. I did my Power Point presentation for grades 3, 4 and 5. We had so much fun and it was great despite the threatening weather.

At my last presentation, the WCTV news crew showed up. They filmed my talk and interviewed me after it was over. Thanks to WCTV for stopping by! The funniest line of the day came when they showed up with a camera.

When a girl in the front row saw the news crew, her eyes got wide and she looked at me. She said, "Oh my gosh. You even have paparazzi following you!" I explained who they were and that didn't make her any less excited, LOL.

The kids asked a zillion smart questions and I enjoyed visiting the school. Thanks again to Bill and Erma for all of their hard work.

As I was getting ready to leave, Erma (the media center specialist) handed me an envelope. Inside, were letters that some of the kids had written to me after the presentation. So. Cute. Some of the letters encouraged me to keep buying cotton candy Lip Smackers, which I'd told them was my fave. Others had phone numbers and email addresses for me to say hi. One told me to only eat cereal from now on after I told the "I set my microwave on fire before" story. :)

Thank you ALL for the amazing letters and drawings. You guys rock!

WCTV video! :)

I have video! :) I watched it this morning with one eye covered...I hate watching myself on TV, LOL. It's weird.



I'm off to my school visit at Roberts in a little while. We're under a tornado watch because there's a tornado on the ground not far from here. So, I might be doing the tornado drill in the hallway with the kids. Eek! :) The sky's that gross yellowish gray. And that's why I'll be leaving early.

Hope you all enjoy the video! I'll have pics to share when I get back from today's visit.

WCTV 6 taping--so fun!

(This is the dress I wore to my WCTV taping. BC, you like? It was early and I was just like, "Take the picture, already!")

I wanted a pic of the dress since I think the cameras were aimed at the waist up.

Anyway, the taping for The Good Morning Show was so much fun! Three minutes goes by super fast especially considering how long my last TV appearance lasted. The segment will air on channel 6.2 on Friday morning at 7am. It was also be online. I'll get a link posted on Friday. Yay!

Thank you, Shonda Knight! :)

Going to tape WCTV's (CBS 6) The Good Morning Show

The sign! Obvi...

The Tallahassee studio for WCTV CBS channel 6.

70 copies of TTR that I signed for Roberts Elementary School.

First, those are the books I was given to sign for my next school visit on Friday. Thanks so much to Erma for helping me set this up. I had a blast signing the books and I will bring them to school on Friday, even though I'm tempted to fill up my bookcase with those copies. Hee.

Tomorrow, I'm going to my local CBS station to tape The Good Morning Show. It will air Friday morning at 7am. I'm a little nervous, but I looove doing TV stuff. I've been watching the DVD back of my appearance on Perspectives and I picked out my favorite words ("absolutely" and "so") and made notes of gestures, expressions, etc that were weird and/or distracting. It's pretty cool, actually, to have that 30 min appearance on DVD 'cause it's like a demo reel.


She (Shonda Knight) is supposed to conduct the interview. Kind of exciting to meet someone you see on TV almost every day. :)

I already chose my outfit. I'll take a pic of it tomorrow. It was easy to choose because of the no red, green, white or pattern rule. My taping is at 9am. Fingers crossed!

Soggy!!

We're drying out today. We had...drumroll...20 (that's 2-0) inches of rain and just when you thought it was over--nope! We had another thunderstorm this morning and it knocked out power from 6:30-10am. Bleh. I'm sooo over hurricane season!! C'mon fall!

I just read that the "Dancing With the Stars" cast was announced on GMA this morning. According to Yahoo!, we've got:

Susan Lucci (When did Erica get out of jail?!)
Toni Braxton
Lance Bass (Bet he'll learn the choreography easily with his NSYNC past!)
Cloris Leachman
Kim Kardashian
Ted McGinley (Was I the ONLY one who watched "Hope and Faith"??)
Brooke Burke
Warren Sapp (??)
Misty May-Treanor (YAY!! I loved her in the Olympics!)
Maurice Green
Rocco DiSpirito (The producers won't need a food cart anymore...)
Cody Linley

Interesting cast. I'll definitely be watching. Anyone else with me?

Gators and Emmy nominations

Last week, I blogged that there's an alligator in my tiny neighborhood lake. Well, on Friday evening, I saw him/her!! That's not my pic, but I am planning to go back to the lake this week and try to snap a pic of the gator. She (it just looks like a girl...I don't know why) is less than four feet long and has the coolest way of hovering in the water. A little girl and her dad were feeding bread to the non-existent geese and the gator appeared in the water and eyed us. I kept having Lake Placid flashbacks. Yet, I'll be going back to the lake to capture gator pics. Hopefully. And now...onto other things.

Primetime Emmy nominations!

Yay for Tina Fey's 30 Rock. Seriously. We need to reward more women in comedy. I started watching the show after it had been on air for a while and I love it. Go, Tina!


Ryan Seacrest also got a nod for best reality TV host. I <3 style="font-style: italic;">Idol takes 3 hours to tell us who won. He fills the time well, I think.


But no nod for So You Think You Can Dance?'s Cat Deeley? C'mon! She's funny and she has visible sympathy for contestants when they're in the bottom. Maybe next year...


And what about my Desperate Housewives? The show was back on track last season and Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman were particularly outstanding. I mean, really, Felicity was going to shave her head (Eva Longoria-Parker stopped her) to better portray Lynette's cancer scenes. Talk about dedication.


Ah, my fav for last. Mr. Spader. How I love thee. I hope he wins again for Boston Legal. He's the dirtiest, funniest guy on the show and I'd love to see him nab another trophy.

What's your take on the Emmy nominations?

2008 Kentucky Derby!

As I predicted yesterday (see Sat's blog post) Big Brown did win the Kentucky Derby! It was a gorgeous day for the races and Billy Bush did a pre-race hour of "Access at the Derby" that was so much fun. Big Brown started in the WORST post position at 20 waaay on the outside and he was one of the few horses ever to win from that position. He didn't dominate the field from the beginning, but took his time getting to the front and won by 5 lengths.

The other favorites, Pryo and Colonel John, just didn't fire yesterday. Pyro got blocked within seconds of being out of the gate and never overcame it.

But the race did end in tragedy. The only filly, Eight Belles, came in second and I was screaming that she did so well. She was galloping out after the race when she fell to the ground and never got up. She broke both ankles and was euthanized on the spot. That's an incredibly painful break and there was no chance she'd ever have a pain-free or normal life after that sort of injury. I couldn't imagine how her owners, trainers and the rest of the Fox Hill Farms family felt. She rallied to second and then had that happen. Sigh.

Aside from that, though, the stories of Derby owners and trainers were especially inspiring this year. The two co-owners for Gayego were Cuban immigrants who had been jailed under Castro and fought their way to the US. Another trainer was 70 years old and it was his first shot at a Derby win. One Derby contender was bought for only $4500.

Today, is my other favorite horse event--the Rolex Kentucky. It starts at 5pm EST on NBC and I tape it every year to watch the dressage, cross-country and stadium jumping when I need inspiration.

It's definitely a weekend filled with horses!

Books and TV Randomness

Book Bit

Last weekend, I started reading The Other Boleyn Girl since I thought the movie trailers looked so good. The film hasn't done incredibly well at the box office, but I like the actors. I haven't seen the film yet, but the book... W-O-W.

For the past year, I've been reading mostly YA with some MG thrown in. I haven't read many adult novels and if I did, I read that and a YA at the same time. I hadn't read an adult novel that gripped me recently. Until TOBG.

I also haven't read many historicals. But I should. Especially if there are other historicals as sizzling as this.

TV Time

Anyone else watching Dancing with the Stars? If so, you probably correctly predicted, as did I, that Penn and Monica would leave. No big shocker there! Penn's attitude bugged me. A lot. But Monica really tried hard! I thought Adam Corolla had a shot at leaving last night, but he's sticking around.

On the guys, I love Steve G. for purely sentimental reasons. I watched him a lot as a kid.

Marissa Jaret Winokur makes me smile for the girls as does Kristy Y. If the winner was solely declared on dance talent, Kristy could win right now.

What are you watching and/or reading?

* Thanks to everyone who commented on my new movie! I appreciate it! :)

A Raisin in the Sun with Sean Combs

Okay, so I'd heard lots of buzz for A Raisin in the Sun on ABC and I watched it last night. Sean Combs took the role of Walter Younger, Audra McDonald was Ruth and Phylicia Rashad played Lena. Sean talked up the film on Oprah a few days ago and it sounded like a good film.

I'd read the play a couple of times before and was excited to see the movie, even though three hours sounded like a looong running time.

That said, I loved it. Phylicia and Audra were brilliant although that seemed to be a bit of trouble for Sean. I kept watching and thinking, okay, Sean can't act well enough to make me feel the sympathy I had for Walter when I read the play. But in the movie, I didn't feel sorry for Sean's version of Walter until almost the end. It had to be daunting to be opposite Phylicia and Audra, but Sean's acting got in the way of me fully enjoying every aspect of the movie. (Sorry, Diddy!)

Anyone else see it? Or, if you've read the book, does it make you want to see the movie?

RIP Heath Ledger and the strike goes on

What a rollercoaster for Hollywood this week. Yesterday, I was shocked and saddened to hear about the death of Heath Ledger. He was only 28 and died in his NYC apartment. So sad. My younger brother liked him in A Knight's Tale and I loved him in Brokeback Mountain. I've heard he was fantastic in I'm Not There, but I haven't seen it yet.

Then, it was announced that Hollywood writers and producers are meeting for "informal" talks to hopefully bring an end to the strike. Producers MUST be getting nervous. If this isn't resolved, they'll soon have to give back money to advertisers and TV viewers will probably turn against them when we get nothing but reality TV on every channel. I've got my fingers crossed for a resolution before the Oscars. Can you imagine being nominated for the first time (hello, Ellen Page!) and then not being able to go because of a strike? Awful, but there's no way even if the show went on that many stars would cross the picket line. I wouldn't. Ever.

Do you think the strike will end soon?

Articles, Interviews and Sick

Thanks so much to everyone who e-mailed me about my mag article. I've got the quotes I need and really appreciate it! :)

Yesterday, I did a fantastic interview with a teen champion barrel racer. It was the perfect interview for a horse crazy writer and since I usually ride English, it was fun to talk to someone who only rides Western.

I've got to write up the above article today and keep working on edits. Oh, and I'm sick. Yeah. :( Apparently, the sore throat/headache/other cold symptoms are floating around. Can't remember the last time I was sick!

How's everyone's week so far? Anyone watch Idol and laugh hysterically last night?

Strike

Soon, one of my favorite sources of procrastination, the TV, will end sweeps month and resume summer reruns. That is going to free up lots of writing time! I feel as if I'll be watching season finales on every network for the next two weeks and then boom--back into reruns for the summer. I am, however, looking forward to a couple of shows such as Big Brother 8, So You Think You Can Dance? and Kyle XY.

I'm blogging about TV today because a writers' strike is looming in Hollywood. Writers are complaining that they are not being paid enough and that Hollywood is treating them unfairly. What does that mean for TV viewers? It means a lot, actually. Fewer scripted shows may pop up on fall and spring schedules. NBC has already announced that it will add no new comedies to its fall line up and if the strike happens, reality TV may dominate.

It's an interesting situation and as a writer, I am of course pulling for the TV writers of Hollywood.

What's your take on this?