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HELLO, I'm KARYN BOSNAK, author of the books SAVE KARYN and 20 TIMES A LADY. I live in BROOKLYN. |
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President Barack Obama bends over so the son of a White House staff member can pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster wanted to see if the President's haircut felt like his own.
PS - Happy Memorial Day everyone!
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Mark's boyfriend David was in the glee club in college. It's something he doesn't talk about often (although I once heard a wonderful story about how they briefly toured with Foreigner—they sang backup on "I want to know what love is! I want you to show me!") Anywho, I asked him if he watched the premiere of the new show "Glee" last night on Fox and he did.
"Was it like the real thing" I asked. I was so excited he was finally talking about it!
"No," he replied. "The people on the show are really attractive."
Now, Mark swears that an epic picture of David exists in a (not) hot pair of glasses and his glee uniform. He's seen it. Like, for reals. So I asked...
"Listen, is there any way I could get a picture of you in college during your glee years for my blog?"
I wanted to do a side-by-side of him and this guy, you know, to show the difference.
"Um, no," he quickly said.
So, sorry, no picture. But here's the promo for Glee. Watch it!
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I love him to pieces, but this picture of my nephew Jack trying to blow bubbles belongs on the FAIL blog.
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Upon completing this workshop you will become a "Certified Tree Ambassador." (Which is a trademarked phrase.)
The course is $295 in case you're interested. www.eomega.org
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
I watched this show yesterday on the Travel Channel and it's so good.
Dhani Tackles the Globe
Dhani Jones is an NFL player (a linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals) and he travels all over the world and learns how to play international sports. I'm totally late on posting this—the show premiered in March and is the last new episode airs tomorrow night—but I'm sure they'll show reruns for a while, so check it out.
Here's a preview of the first episode I watched:
See why I liked it? He's super cute and funny and he's got a body to die for.
Dhani, if you're reading this, I'd like you to tackle Brooklyn next. Just type this into your GPS and give me a call when you get here, baby cakes.
BROOKLYN(11201) - USA
40.69 (40°41') | -73.99 (-73°59')
Me, today:
My neighbor is a grade school teacher. (I think she teaches second grade.) Her class incubated and hatched chicks and she brought them over today so I could see them.
Elvis hid the entire time she was here, but Beverly was all up in her business.
My neighbor was like, "Oh, I'll take one out of the box so Bev can get a better look."
I said, "Um, you might not want to do that... she might try to eat it."
"No, no... she'll be fine," she said.
Could her eyes get any wider? You can see why I was worried.
You know she's thinking, Mmm... chicken.
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Anywho, I read somewhere that instead of making yourself write for a certain amount of time every day, like, Today I'm going to write for four hours, you should give yourself a certain amount of pages to write, like, Today I'm going to write three pages.
Three pages doesn't sound like a lot, but at the end of the week it's 20 pages, and at the end of the month it's 80. The key is to make your goal easily obtainable. Three pages is totally doable. If you can't do that, you should get a new job.
One more great piece of advice is something I actually did while writing Save Karyn. Don't look back at your work and attempt to rewrite it until you're finished writing the entire book. While writing Save Karyn, as soon as I was done with a chapter, I gave it to my editor and moved on to the next. With 20 Times a Lady, on the other hand... Oy, that was a beast to write. I rewrote the first half about a dozen times before I even attempted to write the second. I made myself more miserable than anything doing it that way.
DON'T DO THAT.
Writing is really rewriting (about a thousand times) and the hardest thing to do is to initially get it all down on the page. Once you do, it's a much easier beast to tackle. You can lay it out, see where stories end and pick up again—it's much easier to get a bigger picture of the work and see its strengths and weaknesses.
Anywho, people are always asking me for advice on writing and I'm working on a third book right now so techniques are once again fresh in my mind.
NOTE: The three pages a day are double-spaced. One double-spaced page is the rough equivalent of one page in a book. Always write that way.
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Why Twitter is great:
I'm sitting in my apartment and hear a lot of helicopter activity outside, so I go to NY1's website to see if I can find out what's going on, but they haven't reported anything yet. So then I think, How can I find out what's going on right now shy of getting a police scanner? (That would be very old lady of me, no?) By doing a Twitter search, of course. So, I go to Twitter and search for "helicopter" and find out that a car drove in Gowanus Canal, which is not too far away from my apartment.
Even if you hate Twitter, you should use it for things like this. Real-time search results. No waiting for a blogger to write a story about what's going on then waiting for their RSS feed to pick it up so it shows up in blog search results. Quick, easy answers.
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Veronica: My friend Kat bathes her dog in expensive Kiehl's doggie shampoo. What does Elvis use?
Me: Elvis uses a luxurious product called "spit."
I read about this woman in American Photo. She was chosen as one of the year's emerging photographers. She takes pictures of her two adolescent sons as they lounge around their homes in Greenwich Village and the south of France. (Must be nice.)
www.martinefougeron.com
Her photos are really amazing. I just had this discussion with Mark, about how great photography isn't just about making sure your aperture, shutter speed and lighting are correct, but about connecting with your subject.
I need more subjects. Every weekend Mark goes somewhere with someone to take their picture. I need to start doing that, too.
Back to Martine, the series of her sons is called Tête-à-Tête.
Tête-à-Tête is a series of intimate portraits of the artist's two adolescent sons and their friends, taken in their home in New York City as well as in the South of France.
Naturally observed, this on-going series brings the artist face-to-face with her teenage sons as well as the private world of adolescent boys.
Begun in the fall of 2005, the work explores adolescence as a liminal state, between childhood and adulthood, between the feminine and the masculine and between innocence and a burgeoning self-consciousness.
The Tête-à-Tête series represents an ongoing look at the adolescent boys' heightened journey into self-discovery.
I'm watching last night's Grey's Anatomy and I'm laughing because Katherine Heigl is such a terrible actress. Little Miss "I wasn't given the material this season to warrant an [Emmy] nomination" ruined the episode with her horrendous portrayal of a gravely sick Izzie. I mean, when she didn't have the energy to walk down the aisle? Please... it was baaaaad.
Katie, if you're not nominated this year it won't because of the lack of material. This one's all on you, babe.
And now a note: I don't like to hate on my blog (or hate in general, for that matter), but she was rude during that whole Emmy thing and has said a couple of other things that have totally turned me off. I just don't like her. I'm allowed to not like her, I am.
I titled this picture "Mommy's Little Hillbilly" on Flickr.
Just look at her teeth. Seriously, you must click the picture and get a closer look at them.
They freakin' rock.
Booze is like mustard. No one likes the taste of it at first, but after you've had it a few times you're like, Hell yeah, that shit's good.
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I was just out running (I was! I was!) and found out that a building collapsed two block away from where I live. The fireman said it happened because the building is old and there's been a lot of rain lately. So scary!
PS - No one was hurt.
I'm going to Jen Lancaster's book signing at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square tonight. It's for her new book Pretty in Plaid which I've heard is awesome.
It starts at 7PM, so come one, come all, New Yorkers!
Mark: What are you eating?
Me: A rice cake.
Mark: That's not a rice cake—it's a Pop-Tart.
Me: Oh, look. It is.
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I just talked to my sister on the phone. Her husband woke up this morning and decided that he couldn't go through with Chester's euthanasia so he cancelled the vet appointment.
I totally understand (I'm sure I'll be the same way when it comes to Bev and Elvis) but I told her that they have to go through with it because I wrote about it on the internet.
Oh, I'm kidding. I didn't say that.
Seriously, I don't think they realize how bad he is. Everyone else can see it except them. But they're the ones who need to come to terms with it and they need to do so fully before having it done. I'll never forget after college when we had our Yorkie Holly put to sleep. For years my mom thought she made a mistake, that it was too soon. But Holly was 15 years old, cancer-ridden and delirious... it was time.
So for now, Chester lives.
(This photo was taken in healthier days.)
Here are a couple of pictures of Jack harassing him with Nora's baby doll stroller. (He chases him around the house with it.) I put a stop to it right after I took these, I swear.
My sister is having her cat put to sleep today. Her vet is going to come to house to do it. Her husband will be working so she's going to be home alone with the kids, but she scheduled it during their nap times so hopefully they'll be sleeping like good little boys and girls.
Her cat's name is Chester (she and her husband found him in Chesterfield, Virginia when they started dating fifteen years ago) and he's been sick for a long while now. I took these pictures of him last month:
Here he is sleeping:
And here he is getting a hug from Jack:
How sweet are the last two pictures? Chester has turned into a cranky, cranky cat in his old age, but he's always been so good with the kids.
Please keep my sister and her family in your thoughts today. And Chester, too, as he makes his way to kitty heaven.
Me, today:
I'm changing Beverly's name to Mary Mary. She's twice as nice, twice as pretty as the average Mary.
Mary Mary, that's her new name.
UPDATE: She's not answering to it.
Ever since my grandpa passed away, my mom has been volunteering at Save-A-Pet, a non-profit no-kill shelter in Illinois. To help raise money, they're holding a raffle called "Hogs for Paws" where you could win a brand new Harley Davidson Sportster, $1,000 cash, or a $500 gift certificate to the Harley Davidson shop in McHenry, Illinois.
You can buy tickets on Save-A-Pet's website, www.save-a-pet-il.org -- one costs $10 and six cost $50 (which is like getting one for free!)
The drawing will be held June 14, 2009.
Now, if you're sitting in California thinking, What am I going to do with a gift certificate to a Harley store in Illinois?, or, What am I going to do with a motorcycle in Illinois?, you could make a donation instead of buying a raffle ticket. Just look at the cute pets you'd be helping to save:
More dogs
More cats
So buy a raffle ticket or make a donation today! On behalf of the animals (and my mom), I thank you.
**Save-A-Pet, located in Grayslake, Illinois is an animal rescue 501(3)(c) non-profit group which operates a no-kill shelter.
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