R Blog

Nanny Diaries

Here’s an interesting story at many different levels. A young Oregonian goes to California and ends up as a nanny for Michael Ovits (the guy who got a $100,000,000 bonus from Disney after being there one year) then Debra Winger and Danny DiVito. Her book is in the “tell almost all vein.” Dishing dirt on celebrities seems like a sure winner but this story got off to a slow start.
Suzanne Hansen and her sister partner decided to self-publish. They sold 4500 books but somehow managed to spend $100,000 doing it. As a last gasp measure they spent a few more bucks on a company that spams publishers. Who knew about this service? I sure didn’t. Surprisingly, they got lots of responses, an agent, a $100,000 advance and a booking on the Today Show. There’s already a movie coming out based on a different book called the  Nanny Diaries starring Scarlett Johansson (we pause for just a moment to contemplate Scarlett as our nanny) so there’s probably not a movie deal in the works. But the book ought to sell pretty well. The last few years having a nanny has been a pain in the ass for lots of people. I'm thinking of Bernie Kerik and Zoe Baird to name a couple. Typically the problem comes from hiring illegals. Might be a bigger problem hiring someone who likes to write.

My Wife and Elvis

I have finally managed to grab my wife’s movie career and capture it on the computer. It Happened at the World’s Fair (Seattle World’s Fair) when Linda, then Miss Seattle and a Space Needle elevator operator was asked to be in Elvis’s new film. Not a great movie, though we recently bought a copy on EBay for history’s sake. Heavily girdled, due to a sort of secret pregnancy, fighting morning sickness during the three day shoot, Linda (in a yellow dress) glides onto the Monorail and into movie history in a one minute scene with the King who, gentleman that he was, offers her his seat. She declines while bouncing up and down to make the extra smooth Monorail appear bumpy, the director hollering, “Bounce more.” Filmed on location the sound was bad and had to be looped so the odd voice declining the proffered seat is not Linda’s. At the end, she exits the monorail followed by Elvis and a child actress named Vicky Tiu and walks into the future. Nice shots of Seattle in 1962 and a unique Elvis keepsake. In this very dramatic scene Elvis offers a very nice endorsement of Linda's butt.
Click here to view the clip of Linda and Elvis on the Monorail.

Top Ten Favorite Bush Moments (Video)

From Dave Letterman (Top 10 Bush Moments). Letterman is getting a bit more aggressive in his old age. He had an interesting session with Mr. O'Reilly the other night.
Courtesy of Devilducky.

Convert Your Blog to Cash

I guess a blogger has hit the big time when he or she turns blog fame into hard copy and gets a book published.  Such is the case with Overheard in New York a very amusing web site that purports to print actual snippets of conversation overheard in New York City. For example:

Guy #1: “I'm not a very social person.”
Guy #2: “Join the club.”

Now that’s pretty funny.

Snarky blogger Wonkette aka Ana Marie Cox  has written a novel about life inside the Beltway that is knocking down some good reviews. She has left her blog for a book tour.

Uber liberal bloggers Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong of Daily Kos have issued Crashing the Gate touted as a “call to re-democratize politics in America."

It’s a whole new world; yet only a small percentage of the population actually reads blogs or even knows what they are. In fact, my spell checker doesn’t even recognize the words “blog” or “blogger.”

Computer TV

The computer is quickly becoming the new TV with changes coming at a rate which makes it difficult to keep up. http://www.lostremote.com, an excellent web site reviewing developments in television reports on ABC’s recently launched  news web site “The inaugural edition of ABC's web-only version of "World News Tonight" took to the web with plenty of confidence in itself. Calling the online 'cast "World News Now," ABC News is taking a bet that putting a substantial amount of its news online as it will appear on the broadcast later in the day will pay off with a larger overall audience. So far, the webcast looks like a strong entry into the news wars, showing it is a serious contender in the online battlefield.”
I watched yesterday’s report on the mine disaster this morning and it was very well done with only a short commercial to view as payment. Bill Gates has recently said  that new software will blow away today’s TV allowing for customized viewing. He insinuates that we will be able to select content the way we select web pages to view.
Somehow related to these developments is the report that movie theater sales and album sales are down last year around 9%. Digital Video Recorders and iTunes are probably the answer to why this happened. But as the computer becomes more and more the center of our electronic, wired universe one wonders what will happen to movie theaters and record stores or conventional television programming. It’s hard to keep up with the changes.

Asana-nana

I have seen some fat yogis and they seem pretty flexible but I discovered in this morning’s yoga class that the beginnings of a gut can affect certain asanas (for the un-yogic an “asana” is a posture). Oh I did just fine through the forward bends, the sun salutations and the warrior poses. The cobra was still doable as were the dogs, both up and down. But when we got to The Plow (hala-asana) it was a clear cut case of asana-nana. As one can see from the photo (not me) The Plow requires that the toes touch the floor behind one’s head. I did that but then discovered that I could no longer breath as my stomach was encroaching on my windpipe and mashing my lips. One of the many  yoga websites declares that with hala-asana,  “Since the abdominal area is contracted, blood compressed out of this area releases toxins and when the contraction is released the area is flooded with richly oxygenated blood.” I presume this means that if you are sporting a six-pack those muscles will contract. However, my recent experience reveals that if your six-pack is covered with a layer of fat and contraction takes place it doesn’t contract the fat which has to go somewhere. Fat doesn’t contract. It just tries to get out of the way. Typically, it will follow the laws of gravity and end up pressing against your throat and mouth creating a risk of suffocation. If there was any doubt as to whether I had gained weight or not, hala-asana provided the answer. I attempted to cry for help but my cries were stifled by my sweatshirt which was stuffed into my mouth like an apple in a suckling pig. Fighting panic I lifted my legs and hips into a shoulder stand. This allowed breathing but was also disconcerting because my stomach was still trying to drop and was pooching out pregnantly. This wasn’t something I really wanted to see and needing to keep class as a positive experience, I gave up and glided into my favorite pose—savasana, the corpse pose, which is what we all end up as whether we do the yoga or not. While in corpse pose I reflected on what is probably the  culprit leading to my current state of asananana.

2006 Predictions You Don’t Want to Hear

This is the time of the year for predictions and I have been anxiously dreading those of  James Kunstler who closely follows our national perversions and has a dark view for our future, a future based on our desire to drive as far as we want to drive whenever we want to do it.

His guesses about 2006 don’t paint a pretty picture but he backs them up with sound arguments.

Reading him one wishes a number of things:

1. That instead of  invading Iraq we had designated $200,000,000,000 on developing alternative energy sources.

2. That we had forced improved mileage standards long ago.

3. That we had managed to live closer to where we work.

4. That all major cities had developed efficient public transportation.

5. That we collectively hadn’t become so enamored with big houses far from town.

6. That we had elected a wiser, more thoughtful President.

If you read Mr. Kunstler you won’t be happy with his conclusions. It is difficult to see a bright solution based on the predicament he says we are in.

Your can read the entire essay here.
 
Some highlights:

Background—
... From 2001 through 2005, consumer spending and residential construction had together accounted for 90 percent of the total growth in GDP, while over two-fifths of all private sector jobs created since 2001 were in housing-related sectors, such as construction, real estate and mortgage brokering. Much of the money spent did not really exist except as credit -- incomes as yet unearned, hallucinated liquidity, wished-for wealth, all based on the expectation that house values would continue to rise at 10 to 20 percent a year forever. It became a reckless racket, all predicated on sustaining an economy that had lost its other means for generating wealth -- foremost its infrastructure for making things besides suburban houses...

The Psychology
... The suburban housing bubble and its related activities were predicated on the idea that we could continue building out a living arrangement dependent on cheap oil and methane gas, and that all the subdivisions and strip malls would retain value for decades to come...

The Problem
... The world oil allocation system is now so fragile that any disturbance in one producing region can send damaging shock waves around the planet...