The Return of the Poll

The poll is back. That's all. Happy voting!

Awards Time!

Ridiculous stuff keeps popping up everywhere in the celeb gossip world so it's time to dish out some awards. I think my awards are slowly becoming a news and notes section though...

The Nobody Cares Award
And the winner is: Carrie Underwood and her fiancee
Did the three media outlets who ran this story on the front page of their websites this morning not get the memo that she is kissing her FIANCEE? There is no scandal here. There is nothing to report on here. She won a bunch of awards at the CMT Awards or whatever they're called, ere go she celebrates by smooching on the man she is going to marry. So I don't get why this is newsworthy. Thanks.

The You're So Scandalous. Not. Award
And the winner is: Miley Cyrus
Accepting this award is my friend Carey:
OMG Miley. I am so sick of her. I get she needs to do the grown up thing and it's hard being a teen and then moving towards womanhood. But never is it okay to wear a see through dress. Not even at the beach.

The Crazy Award
And the winner is: Danielle from the Real Housewives of New Jersey
Most of you who read the blog probably don't know who this is but suffice it to say that she is nuts. Luckily for us her antics have all been broadcast on Bravo for the past few weeks, including when she showed up to a charity dinner with a full entourage of bodyguards, including leaders from the Hell's Angels. Cool. Most recently (and what the link above refers to) is a leaked sex tape that she seems way too comfortable with. It's true that as a "celebrity", there are going to be people who will cash in on your fame by whatever means necessary. But I thought sex tapes were a bad thing? Kendra didn't seem too pleased about hers. So for her to straight up say that she hopes it sells more than Kendra's is a little weird. Furthermore, the fact that there is a set release date is also strange. I feel like things like this just kind of happen... unless someone is behind the whole thing... someone like Danielle herself? Scandal. Can't wait to see all of this unfold on a future episode of RHONJ.

The Lady Gaga Award
And the winner is: Lady Gaga (who did you think would get it?)
She's so weird she deserves her own award. I just don't get it with her, namely with all of these outfits and gimmicks. I've heard she's a very talented musician and while I don't personally care for her music or performances, I can respect that other people say she's legit. So why are these get ups necessary? Why not just grab everyone's attention with the awesome music you make? But I guess then that wouldn't put you in the headlines every day would it?

The I Have Way Too Much Money Award
And the winner is: Celine Dion
I briefly mentioned this a few award posts ago but now that new information has come out, I have to touch on it again. I will tell you, this is an awesome way to spend the bazillions of dollars that Celine Dion has in her checking account. A water park never goes out of style.

The best part of this story is the fact that she used so much water to construct Raging Canadian Waters (terrible play on words attempt) that there ended up being a drought on the super-exclusive island where her house and water wonderland are. She tried to fix the problem by building her own personal wells on her property but people are still angry about that too I guess. One angry neighbor said they didn't know how she could have been approved for the wells since the government is usually pretty strict about stuff like that. Here's how: because she's Celine freakin' Dion and her water park WILL go on...

Sidenote: A "Celebs Have Way Too Much Money" weekly or maybe daily post could become a new feature on Livin' the Dream even though I'm terrible at features. However, I'm trying to post shorter entries more often so this might be a good way to do that. Stay tuned.

Video of the Day 6/9/10 - Celeb Freak Out Edition

Always awesome to see a celeb absolutely freak out. Shoutout to Carey for this video.

One's Enough for Me

The other night I was at dinner with some friends and we started talking about the new version of The Karate Kid that is coming out and how terrible we think it's going to be. The original Karate Kid was just so good, and even though it had a couple of sequels, this new "modern" version just is so unnecessary.

So that got us onto the topic of classic, awesome movies that should never be remade and I thought to myself this is a great blog topic.

So I present to you my top five movies that should never be remade. Keep in mind that my list is movies that I've actually seen so that I can adequately describe their awesomeness. I, however, have terrible movie knowledge. I'm working on it. In addition, these are movies where a sequel and/or remake could very easily be conceived, but really shouldn't ever be made a reality as far as I'm concerned.

Ok, enjoy.

5. Ghost -How can you ever recreate that pottery scene? The obvious way they would try to remake this or give it a sequel is to reverse all the genders right? So we'd have a married couple where the woman dies tragically and the husband is left without her while some fabulous ghost whisperer speaks to him as the dead wife. Oooh but to give it a twist, you could have a hot young ghost whispering woman and she and the husband end up falling in love but the dead wife is cool with it. I'm thinking Derek Shepherd from Grey's Anatomy as the husband and Sandra Bullock as the ghost whisperer. Suggestions are welcome on who should play the dead wife.

4. The Princess Bride - If you haven't seen this movie, please do so immediately. I didn't see it until I was in college and I love this movie. An 8-year-old Fred Savage is sick in bed and his grandfather reads him a story which at first he hates, but then ends up loving. The best part of the movie is that it was made in 1987 so the entire fairy tale and effects had to be recreated without the use of computers and all the fancy equipment that is used today. Good classic family entertainment that is fun to watch even today.

3. The Goonies - Nothing can ever top, or even equal, this classic from back in the day. Buried treasure, hilarious kids, bad guys... The Goonies is pretty much th

e quintessential awesome kids movie. I'm so glad this one hasn't been touched and I hope it never is.

2. Ferris Bueller's Day Off - There is nobody today that could ever match Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller. He was perfect in that role and there's no way that anyone else could do it justice. They'd try to cast Zac Efron as the new and improved Ferris Bueller and he'd be way too pretty. Ferris Bueller was the man. Who would play Cameron? And the bitter sister? How about the principal? What would a remake even look like? I wanted to verify that Ferris Bueller's Day Off did not in fact have a sequel and when the Google results had a few articles about a sequel where it's Ferris Bueller's kid now ditching school just like dear old dad. Terrible.

1. The Breakfast Club - Can you imagine them trying to make a newer version of this movie? We actually discussed just how awful it would be based on who they would probably cast in the role of each character. Miley Cyrus as Molly Ringwald, a Jo Bro as Brian the nerd. The Twilight guy would be the "bad boy" sitting in the corner all brooding and mysterious. He'd even have the hair thing down. The other Twilight guy could be the jock since he is way too ripped for an 18-year old. Lindsay Lohan as the weird girl. It would be awful. This movie is what it is because of the characters and there aren't too many 20-somethings out there right now that could pull off roles like these.

Honorable mentions: E.T., Top Gun, Pretty Woman

Dumb. D-U-M-B. Dumb.

This weekend was the Scripps National Spelling Bee and, as a former seventh-grade spelling bee champ myself, I know the pressure that these kids are under.

So what the heck protesters? Leave these spellers alone!

(Also did the spelling bee somehow end up in Davis this year? People actually protest in other cities? Madness.)

I don't really have much to say about this article except for the fact that it's the dumbest thing I've heard in a really long time. But when one of your protesters is an 81-year-old dressed in a bee costume, what can you expect?

Basically these people are saying that the alphabet and the different combinations of letters that comprise words in the English language makes it too hard for people to learn how to read, write and spell. So "enough" should be changed to "enuf", "fruit" to "froot", and so on.

First off, I feel like there's a lot more than just the spelling of words that goes into someone's ability to learn how to read, write and spell. Don't demographics and the availability of resources play some sort of role? I just think that oversized classrooms, lack of materials, or, in some cases, outside circumstances that might prevent a child from even attending school play just as big of a role in the success, or failure, of a student trying to learn to read, write and spell.

In the age of texting, Facebook and now Twitter, do we really need to dumb things down for our kids even more? I've had conversations on IM with teenagers that I can't even understand sometimes. Where they said "shud" instead of "should" and substitute numbers for letters whenever possible. I can barely follow along.

Here comes my go America! speech now. This country is a melting pot and all that, right? Our language is no different. My coworker made what I thought was a great point when he said it's a combination of all the different cultures and countries that created this country in the first place. We just don't have a "formulaic" language like many others do.

Final thoughts? This is dumb. Thanks for listening.

Review: One Fifth Avenue

One Fifth Avenue
Author: Candace Bushnell
Number of Pages: 464
Genre: Fiction, Chick-Lit
Where I Got It: Library

My summary:
A bunch of people live in this super swanky apartment building on Fifth Ave. in NYC and are jerks to each other.

If you couldn't tell by my glowing summary, I pretty much hated this book.  This is the second book I've read by Candace Bushnell and I just don't like her style.  And I know most of you are thinking "Well Amanda... it is chick lit after all"  But the thing is I've read chick lit that wasn't terrible.  There was a plotline, there was character development, there was a conclusion that resolved something, there was a little bit of humor mixed in.  Jane Green, Sophie Kinsella, and Marian Keyes are a few of the authors I've read that have made me want to keep reading this type of fiction.

I couldn't connect to any characters in the book and then just when it seemed like something substantial was about to happen, it just sort of fizzled out.  The "big" moments in the book ended up being pretty anticlimactic and the ending left much to be desired.

The characters in the book were pretty annoying all the way throughout.  When the rich occupants of One Fifth weren't catfighting with each other, they were trying to one up each other. Then you had a few characters who were completely unhappy with their lives and were constantly either complaining about it or figuring out how to get rich quick.

Then again, it made me think that maybe this was Candace Bushnell's whole point.  That at some point, people who live this kind of lifestyle can think about only two things: what they have and what they have not.  Even though I thought there was so much lacking, it also made me realize that that was exactly the point that the author was trying to make.

I get what she was trying to do, but the story could have been a lot better and still made that point.

The last thing I'll complain about is this.  Usually women's fiction or chick lit or whatever you want to call it has a couple of sex scenes scattered throughout.  That doesn't bother me so much.  But the scenes in this book were so graphic and some of the language that was used was so specific that it just became kind of crass and tasteless after a while.  This time I didn't get it.

Overall Rating: 1/5 (it gets a 1 because there was exactly one character that I could tolerate)


Coming Up Next: "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer
In 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered the wife and infant daughter of their younger brother Allen. The crimes were noteworthy not merely for their brutality but for the brothers' claim that they were acting on direct orders from God. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer tells the story of the killers and their crime but also explores the shadowy world of Mormon fundamentalism from which the two emerged. The Mormon Church was founded, in part, on the idea that true believers could speak directly with God. But while the mainstream church attempted to be more palatable to the general public by rejecting the controversial tenet of polygamy, fundamentalist splinter groups saw this as apostasy and took to the hills to live what they believed to be a righteous life. When their beliefs are challenged or their patriarchal, cult-like order defied, these still-active groups, according to Krakauer, are capable of fighting back with tremendous violence. While Krakauer's research into the history of the church is admirably extensive, the real power of the book comes from present-day information, notably jailhouse interviews with Dan Lafferty. Far from being the brooding maniac one might expect, Lafferty is chillingly coherent, still insisting that his motive was merely to obey God's command. Krakauer's accounts of the actual murders are graphic and disturbing, but such detail makes the brothers' claim of divine instruction all the more horrifying. In an age where Westerners have trouble comprehending what drives Islamic fundamentalists to kill, Jon Krakauer advises us to look within America's own borders. (from Amazon)

OMG I'm Famous... Sorta

Friends, I had a very very fun weekend and part of my very fun weekend was getting to see one of my best friends here in Sacramento and her man, who has also become one of my close friends up here, get married on Saturday. It was a beautiful wedding - perfect weather, gorgeous venue, great food, great DJ, delicious cake, awesome dance partner... I could go on and on. Great time.

But the best part of the whole wedding was the surprise flash mob dance that all the bridesmaids, groomsmen, friend and family of the bride and groom performed to Hanson's "Thinking Bout Something".

First, what is a flash mob? I think a subway/train station in London was the first time anybody saw something like this. Music starts to play and a few people start dancing a choreographed number together, then more people join in, then suddenly you have dozens of people all dancing together. Observe.

So about two weeks before the wedding, one of the bridesmaids emailed a few of us with the idea to put together our very own flash mob dance. The bride is a huge Hanson fan and the new Hanson music video has choreography that the fans loved so much, the choreographer decided to make a tutorial of the dance and put it on Youtube. (That video is like 10 minutes by the way.) So Lizzie, the bridesmaid, forwarded it to people who forwarded it to other people, we held a dance lesson at her house a few days before the wedding and voila... the finished product:



Hanson fans can't get enough. Someone found it on Youtube and posted it to their Twitter and now all the Hanson fans are reposting it on all of their Twitters (I don't really know how Twitter works so I assume this is what is happening). Plus, there is a fan forum page on Hanson's official website and someone posted it there.

So yes I am very excited about my fifteen minutes of "fame".

Next stop... Oprah.