This is my Writer’s Block. I received it as a gift, when I was just starting out in TV. I was a Writers’ Assistant on Saved by the Bell: The New Class, which meant my job was to sit in the room with all the Writers, type up their thoughts and ideas, input their changes into the scripts as they gang-rewrote them, then make sure everything was formatted properly so…
Okay, first piece out of the gate for the new 2011 Debs… no pressure… just following five of the most incredibly talented and all-around menschy women on the web, all of whom just signed off with beautifully bittersweet farewells… I might need a cut man for this one. Oh, Hi! So I’m Elise, a.k.a. Monday Deb, and my debut Young Adult novel, Populazzi, comes out August 1, 2011 from Harcourt…
This week’s topic, it turns out, really is the perfect subject for this week. We have a new president, a new spirit in our country, and we’re reassessing ourselves and how people see us in the world. I, for one, am chomping at the bit. Am I the only one who’s sick of Paris Hilton and celebrity culture? Tired of TV shows that proselytize overpriced stilettos and couture handbags? Completely…
One thing I don’t understand is what makes famous people so darn fascinating. Why do we care how many kids Angelina Jolie has, or whether or not Lindsay Lohan is back in rehab for the upteenth time? I go for months without seeing magazines like US Weekly or People, and then I suddenly pick one up at the doctor’s office or the gym and scrutinize the pages. I wonder why…
My first true love was Shaun Cassidy. I was ten, he was twenty, and I plotted endlessly in my head about how when he was thirty I would be twenty and we could get married. I was certain he would wait for me. I planned my whole week around the Hardy Boys, and anxiously awaited the show. (And occasionally might have been brought to tears when it was a Nancy…
This week I wrote an Ode on Candy Confessions in the spirit of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” that’s meant to be sung (very loosely) to the tune of Missy Elliot’s “Lose Control” (which my teen-aged daughter recently loaded on my iPod running playlist). Go with it, okay?* Candy Make U Lose Control Candy make u lose control Candy make u lose control Let’s go Yeah yeah yeah Here we…
I don’t watch much TV. For most of my adult life, I’ve lived beyond the reach of cable or broadcast, in the sticks of Vermont, in a time when your only option if you had to watch Beverly Hills 90210 was a satellite dish that could easily hold a Volkswagen bug. Also… I didn’t care. I was contentedly clueless about whatever sitcom or sexy drama everyone was talking about. Now,…
Raise your hand if you remember a few years back when every person in America with a TV set was wandering around pointing at objects and exclaiming, “That’s hot!” Yes, folks, thanks to the great wordsmith Paris Hilton, America had a new catchphrase. Today, I was sitting in one of those spectacular vibrating chairs, getting a pedicure, and flipping through US WEEKLY, noticing a significant lack of Paris Hilton. Not…
I have a confession to make. I am slightly addicted to People Magazine. Well, that and US Magazine. I am inclined to slink away in shame at this admission, because I know that by actually enjoying reading these periodicals, I’m only feeding into the national Zeitgeist (or is it Volksgeist?!) into which we are currently plunged–the need for dish, gossip and mindless tidbits of information about people who we really…
As the final new Deb to post this week, I feel a little like the last kid in gym class to be tested on the rope climb. Everyone else is relaxing below, watching, while I pray I don’t fall and give myself a rope burn in a sensitive area. Oh well…on with the show! Movies make me nostalgic. The first movie I ever saw in a theater was Pete’s Dragon….
