louise on the left (coast)

So, here it is:  Summer Vacation. Everyone on their way overseas to Europe?  To Capri, perhaps? Well, not if your bank account looks like ours, you're not.    We're lucky if we can afford gas to get to Pasadena.  And we live in Orange County, CA (about 40 miles away, okay?) If you are one of the "lucky Americans" this summer, who can afford to drive to a different zipcode, then I thought I might offer you one or ideas about traveling long distances with girls.  I have two.  Now, age 13 and 9.     But, they were once 2 and 6.  And even 4 and 8.  They have always been two girls, about 4.5 years apart.   Which means, as far as mutual entertainment goes, they are in two different camps of female child preoccupation.  This means:  Car trips required lots of crap for each of them.  (Or, so I thought.)  One pile of crap will not entertain the other child and visa versa. Back in time both girls were endlessly engrossed in all things American Girl Dolls.  That was a grea

A brief clip from a documentary about Herge , the creator of "Tin Tin," to enjoy prior to the upcoming release of how Spielberg would like us to know Herge. For more, read this blog post... When Herge Met Spielberg /tintinology.poosk.com/2009/10/30/when-herge-met-spielberg/

Wish I could take credit for this funny montage, but, alas, it's from NY Mag. The Mad, Mad Parenting Skills Of Betty Draper By Pandora Young on Jul 27, 2010 06:23 AM New York Magazine  put together this delightful little  montage  of  Mad Men Courtesy of Fishbowl LA, thank you very much.

I heard this song for the first time at my daughter's dance performance earlier this summer.  And, truthfully, I have not quite been able to get it out of my head since then. Blue Would Still Be Blue ( The Guillemots )

This is LA.   And that means, if you are like me, that when not listening one's own cds, you are probably tuned into 89.9, KCRW.    And so, it was today, at 1:37 P.M. that I flipped on the radio and was spellbound by one particular song courtesy of Tom  Schnabel on KCRW. It's a song called " Tapatam," from a documentary called The Laya Project ,  about the lives and music culture of coastal and surrounding communities in the 2004 tsunami-affected regions of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar and India. But, back to the sounds I heard today.    It wasn't just the sounds, it was the rhythm.    It was about moving forward. It spilled over me and through me and drove home my lesson for the day, a particular lesson I am so very desperately trying to accept and ride on, like a surfer, or a fighter pilot, or a child learning to ride a bike for the very first time:  The lesson is;  we are always in motion.  And all motion has a rhythm,

Happy Fourth of July! Here are some examples of fireworks as imagined by Hitchcock, Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola To Catch a Thief Manhattan For fireworks go to minute 3:03 Apocalypse Now Minute 1:00 Okay, the last one isn't the same kind of fireworks. Or, are they?

Starz  declared yesterday it is dropping its two scripted comedy series,  Party Down  and  Gravity . In its second season per Nielsen, Party Down averaged 133,000 viewers for its initial episodes while Gravity averaged 97,000 viewers for its opening episodes of its freshman season.

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”  – T E Lawrence Last week I began a writing class in The Art of Nonfiction.   When I signed up for this class, I have to admit I wasn't even sure what it even meant.  I can't say that I fully do even now.  But, after the first class I realized how exciting it will be to write among other writers.  Bloggers, I think, have a very easy road of it -- just putting out whatever suits them in this invisible, solitary bubble where we write our blogs.   We are not held accountable.  If people don't relate to our writing, so what?   They don't read it.  Big deal. But, this will be new.  This will be real people engaging in real writing.  And it's face to face and that is scary and pretty much precisely what I nee