I’m hooked

Yesterday was 1 million degrees in St. Louis and I had a bad allergy headache which kept me on the couch most of the day. I did rally and go to the gym, get my nails done and pick up dinner, but that was about it. So everyone keeps talking about Mad Men...if I don’t watch something right away I get sick of hearing about it and just don’t watch it on principle. Like when I was in high school and worked at the video store...it was called Charlie Brown Video – for real – oh wait – it was called Cinema Video but my boss’s name was Charlie Brown – for real. Anyway that year Ghost came out and I was soooooooo sick of hearing about it that I probably didn’t watch it until years later. With Mad Men I was just tired of hearing about it, even though the ad men of Madison Avenue should have been right up my alley. When I was in LA on our TV shoot this spring everyone was all gaga about some party the stars of Mad Men were attending that this guy could have gotten us in to....which just added to my annoyance level. If I only knew!

I had a teacher at Mizzou named Henry Haggar who had a dent in the top of his old bald head – not from playing football at Yale when they wore those ridiculous worthless leather “helmets” he loved to show at dinner parties, but from when he was on Madison Avenue working on the Corvair account. Hit a pole and flipped the car. Now that’s research. He was from the era of the 3 martini lunches and the dark suit. He worked on baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet and many other campaigns that probably were stuck in your head and your parents’ heads when you were growing up. He was old school. He taught the copywriting and campaign classes. If he didn’t like your work he crumpled it up and stomped on it....literally. He’d say you throw away 3 good ideas before you get to a great idea. Love that. Little did I know that in the real world you barely have time to formulate one complete passable idea before the deadline has come and gone...more less 3...but I always keep that mantra in the back of my mind.

Anyway, so I watched an entire season of Mad Men. That’s 13 episode! And it didn’t even stress me out like sometimes it does...apparently this is how I operate – I catch up on entire seasons in a day or two...Weeds, the Tudors...That damn Charter on demand...just 6 more....just 5 more. It’s only 1 a.m...why not the last one? I just have to know what happens...it’s not even that the story lines are that dramatic, it’s just that the people are so cool you just want to see what they’re up to next. And it’s on AMC so it’s not like it’s pseudo porn where you’re just waiting for the king to strip down again like the Tudors, but this is incredibly sexy. It’s like the old movies where they don’t kiss until the very end. The strong leading man soys...I’m going to kiss you...now...on the lips...and then plants one on her as she melts into him. That’s sexy. And the men all wear suits, all the time, which you know how I feel about that...yaza.

One client on the show is lucky strike cigarettes, which my dad smoked for an eternity....Lucky Strikes means fine tobacco....or cancer. Even in the 1960s they knew it would kill you, but everyone is smoking, I mean everyone – I’m waiting for the family dog to light up! In the office, in bed, next to the pregnant woman...oh wait, she’s smoking too.

Go watch it – season 2 starts late July.



Family – you can’t give them back

I think I mentioned I’m planning the first annual first cousin’s reunion (that’s a lot of firsts). Every time I talk to my mom (who finally sounds back to her normal self thankfully) she brings it up. How come I’m one of 4 people who don’t live in Washington, yet I’m planning this? I sent a save the date email today because she said everyone was getting antsy....fine. But my favorite so far is that my cousin apparently said she cannot understand why when you rent a bus to take you to the winery you have to pay the bus driver to sit there. Seriously? I had to explain this is how they make money – and on top of what you pay them to sit there and pen their next great novel or whatever they do, you also have to give them a big tip because somebody is probably going to hurl at some point. My bday bus driver’s name was Bob – which we think is just the name he gives everyone – like when you call ATT customer service in India. Trisha says – what does she think...you pay him to drive you over, he drinks all day and then brings us back? Good point. So, we haven’t even had our first planning meeting – which I was really looking forward to because we’re having it a new wine bar/tapas place in Webster called Robust, which I want to check out – and these people are on my last familial nerve. I’ve already weeded out the instigators, which my oldest sister is one of, but Trisha nailed it when she said they’re just the cheap ones and she’s right. Dear God please don’t let my family ever find this blog. It’s fine to be frugal – but for the love, we’ve never ever done this before. Pipe down and get in the flipping family spirit already!


Forest Park inferno

Today there is a 103 heat index. I went to Kaldi’s to write a TV script for work which was a lot of fun, but then was tired of sitting around so went to the Art Museum. You could have rolled one of those gianormous earth balls down art hill – not a soul...no kite flyer, no picnicker, no reader, no layer-outer. Nothing. I love to just wander through the museum until I find something new. And I always have to visit the impressionists, George Caleb Bingham (because it reminds me of growing up in a little river town – and his self portrait is dashing), Buddha (the one in KC is better) and the mummies...usually Max Beckman too, but I got really lost and never found him. There was a portrait I believe Cezane did of his sister – he must really not have liked her. He did it all with a palette knife...yikes. She looked incredibly spooky immortalized in those rough slash-like motions. I did stumble upon a photography exhibit of the south during segregation – amazing and captivating shots. You saw all of this sorrow, poverty, starvation and strife and then you turned the corner and there was a portrait of Ingrid Bergman I think it was –strikingly glamorous and beautiful - very talented photographer. I saw a little boy getting his picture taken posing like he was holding an ancient two-handed knife in this big glass case, which made me laugh out loud. I wandered into the silver dishes and knick knacky things which I had never paid to much attention to before. Last year I met the guy who was the curator of the big silver installation the museum had so it caught my interest. He didn’t have a cell phone...a computer...and he said his TV barely worked. I thought of him and then remembered how much I wanted the iPhone. My stupid phone keeps dropping calls and I think it’s just the Apple gods taunting me. ATT may have France and Japan covered but if they could work on Clayton and Washington, that would rock.

Of all the diverse art forms housed in the museum, the style most prominently on display today was the waifish girl. I realized the porcelain skin waifish girl must always be holding her boyfriend’s hand because if they were to get caught up in even the sudden breeze from the air conditioning unit she would surely blow away. I thought at first I was imagining it, but truly almost every room had one. Boney little shoulders everywhere...they made the mummies look chunky. Maybe it was a cross promotion with the contemporary art museum’s exhibit called Feed Me.


I've had coffee :)