Well Look Who Made The New York Post

People care about what Beverly thinks! Her opinion matters. She's the Ebert of dog video world.


"Don't you know it."


From "Pup up Video" by Julia Szabo...

Karyn Bosnak, author of “20 Times a Lady” and owner of a Yorkie named Beverly, praised “PETelenovela” on her “Pretty in the City” blog: “Beverly can’t stop watching! (And neither can I . . . it’s hilarious.)”

Of course, unlike human film critics, dogs can’t really say what they think of the show. They can, however, express their delight in other ways...

Listen Julia, she was pawing at the computer, barking at the screen... she was delighted, alright.

Man, Beverly's a superstar. I mean, first she was on Regis & Kelly and now she's in The New York Post... If only she were thinner she could go so far.

Btw, this is what we were raving about... "PETelanovela."

PETelenovela--The Tutorial Trailer

Theodore Fitzgerald of PETelenovela | MySpace Video

Get your copy today!

PS - Beverly and I have not been paid for our endorsement of PETelanovela. (Unless, of course, someone's been slipping Bev treats on the side, which wouldn't surprise me because she'd pretty much say anything for food.)

Save Karyn on Kindle & Jersey Shore (Because somehow those things go together)

Save Karyn is finally available on Kindle! Yippie! It seems like I've been waiting forever for it to happen. (eBooks were never put into my original contract so it took some working out to get it done.)

Anywho, I'm really chatty right now and have a million things I want to tell you about, and while chatty is good for blog writing it's even better for book writing so I have to go. But before I do, I know I'm late to the conversation on this, but I've finally started watching Jersey Shore. I didn't get the fascination with the show and now that I'm six episodes in, I GET IT. I mean, honestly, I've been howling with laughter in my apartment alone over it for the last two days. It's amazing.

So here's my question to you: You're stranded on a deserted island and MUST have sex with one of the guys on the show in order to get off. (Excuse the pun.) You MUST. Who do you choose?

• Pauly D.
• The Situation
• Vinny
• Ronnie

COMMENT!

Sunday at the Movies

My friend Sarah Grace and I are going to see either An Education or A Single Man tomorrow. Has anyone seen either one? Thoughts? (The whole sixties style of A Single Man makes me swoon. Could Julianne Moore look more amazing?)

Trailers:





PS - My friend Sarah Grace is the author of two books: Grosse Pointe Girl: Tales from a Suburban Adolescence and The Girl I Wanted to Be. She just started a new blog called the Fortunate Cookie Blog.

The mission: every Friday, I track down a new cookie, break it open, and use the words inside as my life compass. I'm committing myself to act on them, whether they impart wisdom, warnings, or just a bunch of crap about someone being trapped inside of a cookie factory (road trip, anyone?).

At the very least, I'll go from hamster to guinea pig. What do I have to lose?

Or more importantly, what do I have to find?

Only time will tell.

Let's get cracking.

Isn't that fun? Please visit her and say hello!

The Belted Maxi Pad

"You know what you should get? One of those belted maxi pad things.
Have you ever worn one of those?"

"Uh, no, they were a little before my time."

"Well, I think you should bring 'em back."



Oh, okay, Mark, I'll get right on that. (On second thought... nah.)

A**hole at the Laundry Mat

So I'm doing my laundry. I'm putting quarters in the dryer and trying to keep track. "Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes..."

And then I hear, "Excuse me, miss? Miss?"

I turn around and see some dude holding up a pair of biker shorts. "Are these yours?"



Are they mine? Seriously? Do I look like I'd try to squeeze my ass into a pair of biker shorts, mother f*cker? You made me lose count.

"No."

"Oh, okay..."

Now I have no idea when my dryer will be done. Dick.


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Miracle on the Hudson

NEWSCASTER: Survivors of US Airways Flight 1549 are celebrating the one year anniversary of the Miracle on the Hudson. After having breakfast with Captain Chelsey Sullenberger, they plan to mark the moment of impact on the river... this time, though, on a boat.



Well, it's a good thing there won't be a reenactment.

For My Fellow Honeycrispers

I went to the grocery store tonight for no other thing except these.

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Honeycrisp Apples

There's a new grocery store in my neighborhood called Union Market. They have a couple stores in Park Slope—this is their third. I visited it for the first time the other day and bought some apples called Honeycrisps. I'd never heard of them before, but I usually always go for the Granny Smiths so that's not saying much. Anyway, I bought some and had one and OMG they are best apples ever.

I did some research and found out that they're a cross between a Macoun and a Honeygold and then I Tweeted about it. The Tweet updated my Facebook status and a whole bunch of people started commenting about how good they are. Among them was a comment from my friend Ron who said:

Holy shit, I seriously had one of those today and actually commented on it to a person I was sending a message to. The exact line was:

cold=bad (He's in Chicago)
honeycrisp apple=good as f%ck.

A student at the University of Minnesota bred that apple (in case that ever comes up in Trivial Pursuit Fruit Edition.) Those and Braeburns (German engineered, I think) are no doubt the best. Red Delicious my ass. And the yellowish pasty ones??? Who are they kidding?

I love Ron.

Back to the apples, shortly after this I called my mom to tell her about them but she wasn't home so I left her a message that said, "Call me back because I have to tell you about the best apples in the world." When she called back she said, "You're going to tell me about Honeycrisps, aren't you?" I said, "Yes!" She said she was at the grocery store the other day when they announced over the loud-speaker that they had some and there was a mad rush to get them. When she got home, my step-dad had one and actually stopped to comment about how good it was.

That's the thing about this apple: It's not just good—it's so juicy, sweet and delicious that it makes you stop and say, "Damn, this apple is awesome."

Here's what the bad boy looks like:




And now the bad news... Apparently Honeycrisps are seasonal and only available from October to March. I've already lost some time here so I'm gonna eat the crap out of them for the next three months. I suggest you do the same.

Haiti

The devastation in Haiti is so terrible.

I never really talked about this before, but I volunteered last summer as a tutor at an international high school in Brooklyn. There are about seven or eight international high schools in the country and they're set up to accept students that have recently immigrated to the United States.

It was really challenging to be a tutor (I can't imagine being a teacher) because not only are the students from different countries, but they're all at different levels when it comes to speaking English. In one class there was a student from Mexico who had been here a month, another from Yemen who had been here six months, and another from Sierra Leone who had been here for a couple of years. All in all, the class I tutored was made up from students from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mali, Tibet, China, Philippines, Yemen, and Pakistan—and I know I left some out. What's frustrating is that you can't stop the lesson to teach them English nor simplify it, because at the end of the day they're going to get the same high school diploma as everyone else in this country. So despite their level, they had to read Shakespeare, because that's what you read in a Junior-level English class.

Anyway, the stories about how and why most of them came to the US are really tragic. The boy from Sierra Leone was a refugee with a really violent childhood (think Blood Diamond.) Another boy from Senegal watched his mother die in a fire and flew to the US the very next day. He had been here for about a year when I met him and had never had any therapy to help deal with what happened. I'd get tears in my eyes whenever I saw him because, even though he was 16, I could still see the little boy inside of him. It made me think of my nephew, and then my sister.

Although their lives are better now that they're here, they're not amazing by any means. A lot of them live in one bedroom apartments with their entire family. There was a group of girls who, even thought they didn't need summer school, asked if they could come anyway because being at school was better than being at home. One of these girls was a refugee from Tibet. She always had her nose in chick-lit books, so I brought her a big stack of YA books that I had lying around my apartment. You should have seen her face when she got them... she was dumbfounded. "For me?" It was like no one had ever given her that many things before. There was another boy who was late every day and would fall asleep in class because he had to work through the night at the bodega that his family owned. He couldn't make it to school on time because he didn't get off until 9am and he still had to go home and change. I'm not sure when he was supposed to sleep. (In class, apparently.)

I have dozens of stories like this.

I was so profoundly impacted by the kids I met that summer. Meeting them put faces on the tragedies we hear about around the world. With that said, please donate to a reputable organization and help the people of Haiti. Do it for Donald, my favorite student from Port-au-Prince who worked at Macy's and wanted to be a movie star. He was such a wonderful kid... flamboyantly gay and truly hilarious. To think of him still living there right now breaks my heart. I'm so happy he's safe.

I'm donating to the UNICEF fund to help Haiti. Click here to see a list of legitimate organizations put together by MSNBC.

Town Criers

Great article in The New York Observer... The Town Criers.

I've cried many times while walking down a New York City street.

One time I got into a big fight with a guy I was seeing and cried on my subway ride home. The train made a stop in Chinatown, where an older Chinese man got on. When he sat down he saw me crying so he reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of Dunkin' Donuts napkins, walked over to where I was sitting and gave them to me. It was kind of gross (they were really wadded up) but sweet, so I thanked him and pretended to use them.

State of the Blog Address

I'm thinking about moving this blog. I have a karynbosnak.com website and I want to combine this with that.

I'm going to set it up using Squarespace. I've been playing with the platform and I really like it. It's a thousand times better than Blogger and, yet, still easy to use. Two cute examples of square space website/blogs:

• CakeSpy
• Inspired Goodness

I might even hire a real website designer to design it.

Here's my dilemma:

Do I move everything to karynbosnak.com? Or should I have prettyinthecity.com be my main website?

I can't decide so I thought I'd ask you.

The reason I started Pretty in the City was because I didn't want to always be known as the Save Karyn girl. I'm not and have never been embarrassed by what I did, but I wanted to position myself as a writer and not just the girl who begged her way out of debt. (Listen, all I'm saying is that I know what it's like to be a Brady.) Save Karyn is just one thing I did. 20 Times a Lady is another. And my next book will be something different, too.

So anyway, here are the choices:

karynbosnak.com

or

prettyinthecity.com, official website of author Karyn Bosnak

At the top of both there will be links to books, about, blog, press, tour information (for book #3, which is still being written), etc.

I'm adding a poll to the right so you can vote. I'm leaning toward karynbosnak.com but I really can't decide.

And PS - I will be blogging more this year!

Michael Cera

Is this kid old enough yet for me to admit I have a crush on him without going to jail?



(What? It's not like he's Justin Bieber.)


I want to see Youth in Revolt:

OK Go

Am I the only one who sees a penis in the OK Go logo?



It curves to the right.

Do you see it?

Crafting Therapy

For people with ADD issues (like me) crafting can be therapeutic. I know I'm not the only person who thinks this (see Figure 1, a magnet I stumbled upon a month or so ago)...


Figure 1

...but I couldn't explain why until I read an article in O magazine last month called "A Stitch in Time." The writer, Meribeh Knight, talks about how sewing helped her out a depressive slump:

I may not have been able to figure out how to get from point A to point B in my professional and personal life, but I knew if I could take three yards of fabric, cut it, pin it, and sew it into a dress, then that day would be better than the one before."

This so exactly describes the way feel about knitting. Whenever I feel overwhelmed in my personal and/or professional life, I reach for a pair of knitting needles. I know that if I knit and purl over and over again, I can make a pair of mittens (or a hat or slippers or scarf, etc.) The ritual of doing it and the knowledge that I now have one thing in my life that I can control, quiets my mind.

Does that make sense?

Anyway, you can read the entire "Stitch in Time" article by clicking here. (Meribah links to it at the top of the page.) It's really wonderful, I encourage you to do so.

And PS - This might sound totally dorky, but I can't stress enough how much I love O magazine. I read every issue cover-to-cover each month and have for the past three years. I'm always enlightened by something I read inside. If you don't subscribe, you should!

UPDATE: Jackie in his Later 'Gator Mitts.







I made them for him for Christmas. You can find the pattern in the Stitch 'n Bitch Nation book.

A Lucky Little Girl

Every time I refill Beverly's water bowl I tell her how lucky she is, that a lot of dogs don't get fresh, clean water.

I know she doesn't have the capacity to understand this, but I think it's my duty to try and make her aware.



PS - Does anyone else see her sweet little heart-shaped face in this picture?

My New Home

I just got an email from Mark that said:

David said we could get this and you could move in the backyard!"

The "Blob" via Apartment Therapy...










As many of you know, I have dreams of moving into a winnebago or shed of some kind in their backyard. (See The Venturo Prefab from 1971.)

So, now, which one do I pick? The blob or the prefab?

Deep Thoughts

I don't want to die. Mostly because there are so many things in life that I haven't done yet.

Like, I'm watching this movie right now with Al Pacino and he's a really good detective in it. Like, Hilary Swank studied his detective work when she was at the academy. (She just told him that.)

I've never explored becoming a detective—what if I'm good at it? What if I'm better than all the other detectives out there but I don't know it because I've never tried it?

I'm going to become an actress when I'm 50. I'm going to play supporting roles in off-Broadway plays. I feel as if it's my eleventh calling. (I've had ten other callings already, in this order: teacher, veterinarian, interior designer, graphic artist, psychologist, marketing executive, television producer, writer, yarn store owner/operator, pet photographer.)

I know, I know. It's 2 AM, go to sleep already.

Subway Love

I took this last week at the West Fourth subway station.

I kind of want to email the guy and find out if he and Sylvia from Poland reconnected. I sure hope they did.

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He Loves Me Wallhanging

By Suzanne Sharp for the Rug Company.


I love this one, too...



"Love Too" by Paul Smith for The Rug Company

Goonies Never Say Die

Cute tee, Ms. Hathaway.



I found it here.

Shoplifting from American Apparel

Has anyone read Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin?



It's a novella (which I tend to like reading because by the time I get bored they're over) and it received great reviews but I found it to be boring, boring, boring. It's very dry.

Just wondering if I missed something.

The Babette Blanket

Thank You Karyn!!, originally uploaded by Mark Koberg.

I made this blanket for Mark and David for Christmas! It's crocheted and it's called the Babette Blanket. You can read more about how to make it at The Purl Bee, the blog for a great yarn store in SoHo called Purl. And you can buy the pattern as a download from Interweave's website.

The pattern suggests you use Cascade 220 yarn, but I used Lorna's Laces Shepherd's Worsted instead because it's softer and it's hand-dyed so the colors are prettier.

If you know how to crochet, this blanket is really easy to make. The most difficult thing about it is not cursing when you're weaving in the ends when you're finishing it. I've been working on it on and off since June, but it's easy to pick up and put down (as well as take with you on the subway) because it's just made up of a bunch of separate squares.

Anyway, the best thing about me making this blanket is that I ACTUALLY FINISHED A PROJECT! (Further reading on this: The Laura's Slippers debacle of 2008-2009—she got them a year after I started making them and still hasn't gotten the hat.) I've really been working on trying to complete things and this finished blanket is a great way to start my year!