Just In Case My Girl Crush Wasn't Enough...

Love her or hate her, Gwyneth Paltrow has some serious style.

And she loves Nashville.

And she was on Glee last night.



I die.

Vintage Sesame Street

I was feeling a little nostalgic a few nights ago and started looking up some old spots from 70's and 80's Sesame Street on YouTube. I was pretty much only allowed to watch PBS (hence my nerdiness) and was an aficionada of all things Sesame Street and Electric Company and Square One. Here are a couple of my favorites from my childhood.



Love the diversity that Sesame Street had even back then!



Do you guys have any favorite shows from your childhood? Any Sesame Street favorites?

More Mad Men Inspiration

I want this dress so bad...

Once again, smoking bad. Yada yada....

You know it is a good dress when I am pretty sure that you require a soundtrack when you walk out of the room. I don't even know what the bottom of the dress looks like, but I am sure it is three hundred and forty-eight types of awesome. Sigh... I love Mad Men...

Are you a Mad Men watcher? Who is your favorite character?

Mad Men / J.Crew & Jewelry Giveaway Ending Soon...

Smoking bad. Don Draper good. Very, very good.

Mad Men season 4 starts tonight! More sixties mayhem and thinly suppressed rebellion and misconduct in store. Most importantly, more fab clothes to see from January Jones' and Christina Hendricks' characters!

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Don't forget to enter the J.Crew and Jewelry giveaway here! 

Entries close tonight!

The best of Mashups: #Glee meets the Crew

As you know, I am a huge fan of Glee and also a big fan (duh) of J.Crew. Imagine my delight when I ran across a website called What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear?  It sources out the quirky, cute clothes that Emma's Glee character wears in each episode as well as Polyvores of potential outfits.

As I suspected, several of the outfits (especially the cardigans and pencil skirts) are J.Crew with pieces from Anthropologie, Forever 21 and thrifted/vintage finds. She looks like a quirky throwback to the early 60's, which I love.

Love.

As a result of #NashvilleFlood2010 and #OtherSituation2010...

I may or may not have had my flight to BNA canceled and may or may not be sitting in a Midwest airport hotel in my last clean t-shirt and underwear and may or may not be watching Cartoon Network with my daughter (who may or may not be only wearing tights and tennis shoes) while eating junk food from room service.

Maybe.

GleeK

I am a self-professed GleeK and I almost peed my pants when I saw their version of Madonna's "Vogue" video. Seriously, does it get any better? It's like they are channeling the "Best of" soundtrack of my adolescent years.  Loved seeing some people from SYTYCD as the dancers.  I would love to have seen them spoof a little more though, you know?



Sue Sylvester is my HERO.

Belated Valentine's Day Post

What better person to get you in the mood for love than Jane Austen?  I didn't  realize until the day after the miniseries ended that one of my favorites, Emma, had just been remade for PBS. 

I remember the pre-DVR and pre-Internet days when you missed a PBS special and you would never get to see it again.  (I was only allowed to watch PBS when I was little and I was obsessed with the Wonderworks' presentation of Anne of Green Gables. I may have stolen the VHS copy from my parents house and I may be holding it for ransom in my house.)  Before I forget to post this, I wanted to remind people that it is available to watch online here. They stop playing it on March 9th, so get cracking!

Guilty Pleasure: The Sing-Off

I am totally digging this show.  It is taking me back to my acappella days in college and med school (holla at your girl, Victory and palPITTations!).  I miss the dorkified afternoons of arranging music and trying to figure out the best percussion for a song.  I am personally rooting for the Beelzebubs from Tufts.  I heard them in concert over a decade ago, way back in college when they came to my undergrad campus on a college tour and officially introduced me to the world of collegiate acappella.  I am always a sucker for a guy who can sing (hence my obsession with Coldplay and U2).

I also like that it is a short series, lasting only a week, so I don't have to get all time-invested in it.  As described on the show, it sort of Glee meets American Idol.  Any fans out there?

Per DJ Lance..."Break It Down"

I was watching Nick Jr. with the Kid and was thinking that I had had far too much sun when I saw "Nacho Libre" on Yo Gabba Gabba. That show is trippy enough without having the guy from Tenacious D on it.

Seriously, I think that the makers of Yo Gabba Gabba, Teletubbies and possibly Dora the Explorer may have been a little under the influence of mood-altering chemicals when they wrote these shows.

Glee!

Seriously. How much do I love this show right now?!! It makes me almost want to go back to college and redo some of the songs we sang in our acapella group. It makes me want to (not really) go back to high school and join the choir. I love any show that makes the underdog the hero and any show that brings back Bell Biv Devoe. Come on! You must watch it!

J'adore

I know that there are some who do not like the Barefoot Contessa, aka Ina Garten. I will once again excuse you to go and castigate yourselves in the corner with a cat o' nine tails. I adore that she is a strange mix between a WASP-y Hamptons dweller and a wonderful older Jewish aunt who gives you her best rugelach recipe. And her house ain't bad, either. Seriously, I die.

I think that Ina Garten and Nigella Lawson are the two TV cooks (I won't call them chefs, but shoot, who cares?) who inspired me the most to cook with good ingredients and have fun in the kitchen. I remember watching episodes of "Nigella Bites" back in college when the whole Food Network thing was barely a twinkle in a television exec's eye. I would make these elaborate meals in the dorm's communal kitchen, feeding my hallmates. Also, the way that the shows were shot is the equivalent of soft-core food... well, you know. Food was something not just to eat, but something to savor and linger over with friends.

Unfortunately, I think that they also started my obsession with food gadgets, so that is not such a good thing.

The whole point of this post? Not sure. Just wanted to pass along those people who were my food inspirations. I have never made a bad recipe from either one of these women. Also, included in that no-fail recipe category is Martha Stewart, but she also has an army of elves dressed in L.L. Bean creating her empire, so she doesn't count.

SYTYCD

If you have no idea what that stands for, I will pardon you for a few minutes while you go flagellate yourself in the corner with a cat o' nine tails...for shame! Okay, come back now.


This is won of my new (old) favorite shows. I watched the first few seasons pretty faithfully and just recently rediscovered it again. I think the reason I love this show so much is because it reminds me of one of my first loves in high school...dance. Let's take it back to the spring of 1992.

This story starts off with a skinny kid in the Pittsburgh suburbs in junior high who had absolutely NO athletic ability whatsoever (still not sure how my athletic husband is going to reconcile that, but whatever). I absolutely detested gym class, detested the picking of teams, basketball, tennis, "scooter softball" - all of it. Then I started getting really excited because the word in the 8th grade girls' gossip was that we were going to be going to the high school to visit their dance classes to see if we could sign up for Dance 1 instead of gym. *cue angels singing, cue heavenly lights breaking through the clouds*

That set off the next four years of high school where I took Dance 1, 2, 3 and 4 and then moved on to the more select Dance Company (DC, as we called ourselves -we were so cool) after I won a much coveted spot by auditioning to Bizet's Carmen my junior year. We choreographed, blocked, designed lighting and costumes for our end of semester performance each year, which was also our final exam. I learned what a potty-mouthed group of people dancers really are and danced with girls who went on to perform at Julliard and on Broadway.

So much for a trip down Memory Lane: On this season's SYTYCD, one of my favorite dancers is Ade. I have three reasons for this: 1) He reminds me of my little brother, 2) he is Nigerian, like me (and contrary to popular belief, most of us are not recently deposed heads of state looking to give you $5,000,000 if you send us only $1,000 as a "finders fee" - which if you fall for, you deserve it) and 3) the kid can dance. Look at the layout in the video below. It is SICK. His solo starts at 1:14.

Really? Because there ain't no TLC in this relationship anymore...

One of my favorite current comedians is Seth Meyers from Saturday Night Live.

In addition to having a wicked sense of humor, he also writes a lot of the SNL sketches and hosts "Weekend Update". My favorite bit he does is the "Really?" sketch. So as an homage to Mr. Meyers, I am taking on last night's episode of Jon and Kate Plus Eight, because I have nothing better to do than to dissect that trainwreck of a show.Okay, guys, really? WTF is wrong with you people? You can't talk to each other about your problems but you can talk to the camera crew and 12 million of your closest fellow Americans about getting separated. Really?

And really, what is up with the $3000+ "Crooked Houses" that you "bought" (or rather did shameless product placements for) as presents from your kids. Really? I think that they would benefit more from the two of you getting in your own very crooked house to cowboy up and have an actual adult discussion face to face. Really. And the guy who was setting up the houses paid more attention to your kids on the show than their own parents did. Really.

Oh, yoohoo, Jon. You are not Puff Daddy (or P. Diddy or whatever) or Jay-Z. Really. You are not "gangsta" just because you have 1-carat diamond studs in your ears. You live in suburban/rural Pennsylvania in a middle class community. You are not a baller, pimp or whatever you have imagined yourself to be. Really. And by the way, the expression on your face = years of emasculation and defeat. Really.

And, really Kate. America is tired of the reverse mullet. And really, either you had on a really rockin' bra yesterday or that free tummy tuck included a little bit of work upstairs as well. I was so distracted by their buoyancy that I almost forgot that you guys are "getting separated" = divorced. I feel bad for you. Divorce sucks but I am not certain that anyone believes you want your marriage to work more than you want to stay on this show.

News flash for anyone considering a reality show when you have been married less than 10 years. The statistics aren't that good. Exhibit A: Nick and Jessica; Exhibit B: Britney an K-Fed (granted, no one thought that would work); Exhibit C: Speidi (it will happen). Just saying. Really.

TLC. Have you no shame? Really? Those poor children who will have to endure their parents' divorce on national television? The thing that is really sad is that there probably was some schmuck in an office ecstatic that all this drama was bumping their ratings. I know they signed on for this, but come on. Really. Your douchebaggery knows no bounds. Really.

(And shame on me for being part of the public who was fascinated with this. Really.)

Where is Zac Efron when you need him?

THIS is why I love Sesame Street so much. Seriously, I love that show.

Elmo: Friend or Foe? The Psychology of Sesame Street

EHHHHHMOOOOOOOOO! No, this is not the cry of a BBC announcer indicating that Arsenal Football Club just scored a GOOOOAAAAAAAAAL! Nor is it the sound that mating cows use to call each other when the mood strikes. It is something even louder and perhaps more dangerous: It is the sound that a toddler makes when certain furry puppet appears at the end of Sesame Street.

Elmo: The Red Headed Stepchild of Sesame Street

Now, I consider myself to be a bit of a Sesame Street purist. I grew up in a household where we weren't allowed to watch much TV at all, so SS was my escapist TV before reality TV came into existence. I remember a time before Maria and Luis got together, before Mr. Hooper died and before anyone besides Big Bird knew that Snuffy really existed. So I was one of those kids (who had probably outgrown SS by this point) that was a little annoyed when this little furry red giggly character came onto the scene 20 years ago (boy am I old).

It is a formulaic rescue device used by TV writers since the beginning of time. Introduce a cute little kid to inject life into a series. They did it on Family Ties, The Cosby Show and Growing Pains. Heck, they even tried pulling the cute new baby thing on Friends when Rachel had her baby. It usually signals the decline of the show and that things will soon come to a screeching halt. But in this case, the Muppet initially called "Baby Monster" soon became the breakout star of SS. He has his own dolls, his own segment on SS called "Elmo's World" and is the go-to Muppet for guest spots. He has approached Beatles status amongst those under 4 years of age and you see babies stop in their tracks when the theme song for "Elmo's World"comes on the TV. See what happens next time you are around a toddler watching Elmo and tell me if it doesn't look like the crazy guy from the Hale Bopp comet video.

Is it his high pitched voice? Is it his tendency to break into song? Is it his annoying predilection for referring to himself in 3rd person? Maybe it is the bright color and those great big googly eyes. I talked to one of friends from college with a degree in child development about it and she said that it is most likely the fact that he is a friendly looking version of some of the scarier looking creatures on SS and the fact that he talks like a 3 year old hopped up on caffeine and sugar. Babies and toddlers love order and routine. It is reassuring to them and makes them feel secure.

Elmo, for all his craziness, is predictable. He represents the high-energy, almost manic shift that has happened to the classic show I used to love. The Red Menace (as some call him) will carry on. I will end this post with a quote from film critic Joel Stein from the LA Times: "I know that children love Elmo. But children are idiots." Except mine who, of course, is a genius.

WHICH SESAME STREET CHARACTER ARE YOU???

Grrrr, stupid WGA!

No, I don't have a problem with the Western Growers' Association or Whole Genome Amplification. I am talking about the Writer's Guild of America. You know them. They have been picketing since last fall and have sent the television viewing of millions of Americans into a tailspin. I am now reduced to watching reruns of Project Runway and reruns of CSI. It has to end doesn't it. What will my InStyle magazine have to report on if there are no red carpet fashions from the Golden Globes or the Oscars? Put us out of our misery, please!

TV Guide has a good link for all the shows that are on the brink of going to black. It also has a survival guide for those of us who are about to OD on reality shows. It looks like the Brits and even more reality TV to the rescue! Really, how much Deal or No Deal can you watch?