I just spent half the day playing with these - they're free for the basic goodies, cute and really fun to do for kids of all ages. Nice way to share some Christmas fun with your children or surprise them with a letter from Santa or a free Christmas story about them!
NORAD SANTA - You can now keep track of Santa's location from anywhere in the world! There's also a tab where you can Track Santa in Google Earth on Christmas Eve Day!
CBS announced yesterday that it was cancelling the long running daytime soap opera "As The World Turns" after a 54 year run. In September of 2010 the town of Oakdale, Illinois will disappear from TV Land forever.
Just this last September "The Guiding Light" ceased to light up the TV screen. GL had been broadcast for 72 years, starting with 15 minute radio shows in 1937. It moved to the small screen in 1952.
I remember my Mom watching "The Guiding Light" when I was a kid. I can still see that Lighthouse on our black and white screen and I can still hear that theme song in my head to this day. Though my mom worked most of my life she still managed to keep up with her soap operas. I don't know how she kept up on the doings in those fictional towns in the days before VCRs, DVRs and the Soap Channel but she did.
Somewhere between my childhood years and my twenties my Mom switched soaps and The Guiding Light got cancelled in our house way before CBS did it in completely. I know Mom watched a few other shows over the years but she was most faithful to The Guilding Light and Days of Our Lives. She was also a big Perry Mason fan but that was a prime time show.
AS THE WORLD TURNS
THE GUIDING LIGHT
I am not a soap opera fan. The only time I ever got hooked was in the early eighties when my Mom would not leave the house until her "story" (Days of Our Lives) aired. Any plans we had to go shopping, have lunch or see a movie waited until she got the latest dope on Marlena and the gang. I ended up watching with her and got caught in the net for a while. Mom loved her "stories" and I ended up with a soap monkey on my back for a few years. Fortunately my business was booming and the pressures of a growing client list broke my addiction.
THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES OPENING THEME
Oh, okay, I did watch "Dark Shadows" when I was in high school because all my friends did and, yup, I couldn't go anywhere with them until their "story" was over!
No matter what your opinion of daytime soaps, the one thing they were good for is providing work for aging actors and giving young actors a break into the business. Here's a list of just a few of the well known actors who appeared on just these two soap operas:
AS THE WORLD TURNS: Courtney Cox, Dana Delany, Thomas Gibson, James Earl Jones, Julianne Moore, Parker Posey, Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen, Richard Thomas, Marisa Tomei, Steven Weber
THE GUIDING LIGHT: Kevin Bacon, Joan Collins, Taye Diggs, Calista Flockhart, Allison Janney, James Earl Jones (again!), Melina Kanakaredes, Harley Jane Kozak, James Lipton, Hayden Panettiere, Jimmy Smits, Mira Sorvino, Billy Dee Williams
With the cancellation of so many of these long running daytime soap operas I begin to wonder if the end is near for this form of entertainment. Daytime soap operas were aimed at the housewife of the 1940s and 1950s. They were called "soaps" because they were sponsored by laundry detergent and hand soap companies. The ads were aimed at stay-at-home moms, the shows timed to air during school hours and the story lines were written like neighborhood gossip.
Lifestyles have changed, most women work outside the home these days, talk shows seem to have overtaken the daytime landscape and soap operas have drifted into primetime in the guise of "drama". The world has turned and the days of our lives have changed the viewing habits of that earlier target audience. Women have moved on and the daytime soap seems to have outlived its value. It's just another part of television that is slowly becoming history.
I found this video this morning and had to share it with you - it's a tiny little kitten who's getting it's stomach tickled. Not such a big deal until you watch the kitten's actions each time the tickling stops!
Having just gotten my first cat pet in decades it reminds me of how adorable Tink (@StinkyTinkyCat on Twitter!) was just a few months ago and has seriously lessened my desire to strangle him when he goes all Jedi Psycho Cat on me.
Honestly, if this doesn't make you laugh and feel wonderful you need a heart transplant:
The theme for this week on Old School Friday is Gone But Not Forgotten and the one person I can think of, especially at this time of year, is Old Blue Eyes, Mr. Frank Sinatra. Maybe it was because my folks would always play 78s on the HiFi of Sinatra's Christmas Songs during the holidays.
BTW, to you younger readers a 78 is the original size that records came out on! Later Albums were called 33s and single song discs 45s. Do you know why they used those numbers? Because that was the RPM or revolutions per minute the disc would spin on the turntable!
What will be playing on your turntable, CD player, iPod, Blue Ray or Blackberry this year?
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
The Christmas Waltz
The Christmas Song - Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire
Christmas is a holiday for children. The season is wrapped in dreams of jolly fat men who magically slide down chimneys, flying reindeer with flashing red noses, singing snowmen and believing. Belief is the sparkle of Christmas but family is the foundation. What I loved the very most about Christmas is doing these 13 things with my family.
The smell of a real Christmas Tree - for our family that smell of pine in the house was the harbinger of the Christmas season. Ours was always placed in front of the living room window, blinds left open at night so it could be viewed from the street. One year my Mom went "modern" and put up an aluminum tree, it was almost like the Grinch had stolen our Christmas. The next year that aluminum tree was relegated to the family room and our beloved Traditional Tree returned in all it's glory.
Getting out the tree ornaments and seeing favorites again. I managed to save a few of my favorites from those days - some are actually older than I am, real hand blown glass.
The Christmas "Bling" - All the lights and sparkle of Christmas decorations. I'm a sucker for bling and sparkle and Christmas has that in abundance.
Seeing the Christmas presents pile up under the tree. I really was a greedy little bugger, lol.
Trying to figure out what was in those presents. Butthead (that's my older brother in case you're new to this blog) was notorious for shaking and rattling packages but I did my share too. Patty, my older sister, was a teenager who disdained this practice which she called "childish".
Buying presents. I saved up my money all year to buy my family presents. I think I enjoyed watching them open these more than I enjoyed opening my own pile of loot.
Wrapping presents. I loved this creative part of Christmas. I would color my own paper, make little decorations, make my own gift cards and spend days cutting, wrapping, gluing and glittering the few presents I had bought to give to family and friends.
Watching Christmas spring up all over the neighborhood and town. The day after Thanksgiving the city lights and banners would go up, the stores started getting their windows painted with snowmen and Santas, and the town turned red and green overnight.
Christmas Carols - My favorite? White Christmas.
The Santa Claus TV show that was on every afternoon from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. I wish I could remember the actual name - I think it was North Pole something - but I ran home from school every day to watch the show.
Seeing all the Christmas Lights on peoples houses - in those days everyone decorated their house with at least one string of lights. The energy crunch of the 70s almost killed that custom but lately I see it coming back and it's nice.
When it actually snowed on Christmas Day - there is something magical about waking up and seeing snowflakes falling on Christmas morning.
I truly hate malls and at Christmas I will not step foot in one for any reason whatsoever, and you will NEVER catch me getting up at 4 a.m. to stand in line outside some store's doors.
I do ALL of my holiday shopping online these days - most of it at my own Gift Stores (links below!) . Let's face it, why should I waste gas driving to a mall, deal with finding a parking place, shove through crowds of rude and/or slightly insane bargain hunters to grab some so-called "deal" of a piece of imported, mass produced crap? Then after I shell out my hard earned cash for that crap I still have to box it up and schlep it to the Post Office, wasting even more gas, and stand in a line to mail it out!
Holiday Shopping in this day and age has become an unpleasant, stress filled miserable experience, not at all like the Christmas shopping I remember from my youth. Once upon a time the shopping experience was almost as much fun as the exchange of the actual gifts! My family looked forward to the Holiday shopping almost as much as Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It was a family outing, much like getting the Christmas tree. Our whole Thanksgiving weekend was like what they call a "staycation" these days.
Thursday, of course, was the big food day where we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on television as the wondrous smells of turkey, baking pies and home made rolls wafted through the house. We ate our dinner early in the afternoons so poor Mom was always up before dawn in the kitchen cooking away most of the day. She would come out to enjoy a bit of the parade during moments of cooking hiatus. Later the sounds of football games filled the air as we helped Mom clean up. The rest of Thanksgiving Day was pretty much spent in a Turkey coma - pumpkin and minced pies were served during the Holiday specials on TV. Charlie Brown and Burl Ives will always make me think of pumpkin pie.
Friday was NOT our shopping day, it was the day we went out as a family, bought our tree then came home to decorate it. (There were no deals on that Friday. In those days the stores weren't living in fear of bankruptcy, there were no sales until after Christmas and the Friday after Thanksgiving was the start of retail profitability!) I think this was my Mom's favorite day of the weekend, she truly loved our Christmas Trees. She insisted on the same kind of tree each year, a Douglas Fir. She wanted that smell that only a real live tree brought to the holiday season. We would play Christmas music during the trimming of the tree and every year Mom would yell at Butthead and me for throwing big clumps of the aluminum tinsel at the tree! Mom wanted that tinsel draped strand by strand, lol. We had turkey sandwiches, home made cookies and enjoyed the experience of unpacking the traditional ornaments we hadn't seen in a year. Then when it got dark we all piled in the car and drove around looking at the Christmas lights on all the houses in town.
SATURDAY was the big shopping day in our family. The whole family would get dressed up and off we would drive Uptown to the Shopping District. All the department stores had wonderful window displays with animated Santas, Elves, Model trains running in and around Christmas trees, tons of beautifully wrapped boxes or maybe a Nativity scene or a tableau of a family opening presents. Does anyone else remember those wonderful window displays? This was my favorite part of the holiday and I looked forward to those every year.
Mom and Dad did another little shopping trip later in the week to procure the toys and gifts we had excitedly pointed out or asked Santa for, but this Saturday was our traditional "shopping day" complete with lunch out at a fancy restaurant! We split off in groups in order to buy presents for each other in appropriate secrecy then meet back up for a cup of cocoa or some treat. This was also the day we got to sit on Santa's lap and whisper in his ear what we wanted for Christmas. It was a happy day of family, laughter and love.
Yes, Virginia, once upon a time Christmas Shopping was a Wonderland filled with sugar plum fairies and ho-ho-hos and not a Black Friday of Scroogism and corporate avarice. It was a time of giving to friends and family, sharing and magic that somehow got lost in the stampede of greed. In today's world Santa's naughty list is larger than his nice, Rudolph is now a celebrity spokesman for brand of sports clothing, the Elves are doing movies in Hollywood and the North Pole is in foreclosure.
So maybe you'll all forgive me if the idea of getting up before the crack of dawn, dealing with mall parking, getting pushed, shoved and maybe even trampled to death by the hoard crazed humanity for the sake of 80% off an item that was marked up 200% just doesn't quite seem like Christmas to me. I have opted out of the insanity. I would rather sit home, stay warm and cozy, click my mouse a few times and be done with it because Christmas shopping has become a chore and not a joy anymore. Ho Ho Ho even has a new meaning now.
Where did the term BLACK FRIDAY come from?
In shopping lingo the term Black Friday is the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red to being in the black financially. It originated somewhere in the early 1960s, during a time when stores kept normal business hours. Some say the name Black Friday was coined by the Philly Police Department in 1966 as a negative term for the traffic jams and mobs of people crowding the sidewalks.
Black Friday (aka the Fisk/Gould scandal) was also the name given to September 24, 1869 when two gold speculators tried to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange and caused a financial panic in the United States.
SAVE YOURSELF THE HASSLE OF MALL MADNESS & WASTED GAS! SHOP THE POP!
13 reasons why I started to paint the old fashioned way again:
Fifty years ago I knew I wanted to be an artist and my parents knew it too. If I didn't get my box of 64 Crayola Crayons for Christmas they were greeted with a crestfallen little artist in the making. No matter what else they might have given me or whatever Santa might have dragged down the chimney to stuff into my stocking if I didn't get my crayons it just wasn't Christmas!
I've spent all of my life with some form of art utensil in my hand, from crayons to pencils to brushes, and I have lived my life creating things with my imagination and my hands. In 1996 I got my first graphics software and became enamored of what could be done on a computer IF (and that's a big IF) you were an artist.
After I had to retire from the art shows because of back and hip problems I stopped painting "real world" art and concentrated on digital art. I love creating on the computer - don't get me wrong - I still love it and it's now my main creative outlet but I found myself missing the feel of a brush loaded with paint. The vibration of a pencil across paper and the sheer sensuality of mixing colors and pushing those lush hues across some form of canvas are a very elemental form of creativity - getting your hands covered in a rainbow of dabs and smears of paint somehow keeps you connected to the great Muse in a way that a Wacom tablet can't. So, I picked up my sable brushes and my number two pencils and got my hands dirty again after a long hiatus.
Here are my 13 reasons for painting without pixels again:
There's nothing as gratifying as getting your hands dirty - especially with any kind of artist's paint or material.
There is an almost cosmic connection to something out there that rules the lives of artists and this connection is strongest when you are closest to the actual materials that come from the Earth - graphite, oil, paper.
I wanted to keep my skills before they faded away - that can happen if you don't stay tuned in and stay working.
I love how I get physically connected to a real piece of art, how I transcend the physical world and become part of the art work. That is harder to do with a monitor and keyboard.
I wanted a physical original - not something that existed only as dots of computer code.
I love the experience of sitting in a studio with only the art and some music in the background.
There's nothing like the ache you get from getting so involved with what you're doing you forget time and work too long - and you sleep like a damn baby those days.
I love the smell of art materials - the smell of the wood in your pencil as you sharpen it, the smell of linseed oil.
There's nothing as exciting as a big ass empty canvas or sheet of watercolor paper.
There's a certain danger to doing art that doesn't have an "undo" feature. There's often no going back in "real world" art - especially watercolors.
There's also a certain enjoyment of the emotionalism that comes from making a mistake you cannot correct with a keystroke - sometimes it's fun to rant and throw jars of paint!
It's fun to mix paint and see the colors as they change and evolve.
I now have Christmas presents that are one-of-a-kind originals.
I found I could say things with colors and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - Georgia O-Keefe
are now available for purchase - just in time for Christmas!
I am really happy with every one of my new Hand Painted, Original MARTINI GLASSES - I'm so excited about them I'm posting them on every one of my blogs, lol.
Check out what else you can do with them besides drink martinis in them:
To read all about them and get more information on how you can order a set check out my new blog dedicated just to my original paintings and creations - The Original Art of Pop Art Diva.
or you can go right to my New Etsy store where I sell the glasses as well as my one-of-a-kind pop art paintings: CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL THE SETS of my HAND PAINTED MARTINI GLASSES and get ready to give yourself or a friend the gift of One-of-a-kind Happy Hours for years to come!
Harold peaked as a political protester in college. He never quite understood the Sixties had come and gone. You know him, you've seen Harold or someone like him while you were out and about. If you notice him at all your first thought is probably, "wow, still stoned after all these years" or "OMG! Look at that hippie - I thought they were all dead!"
Harold is one of those poor, time challenged people who pine for "the good old days". He still smells like stale Maui Wowie smoke and patchouli, his closet consists mainly of tie dye from five decades of street vendor shopping, his home decor is reminiscent of Haight -Ashbury head shops and, yes, he still drives a VW and it's not one of the new, cute ones.
If people feel anything for Harold and his kind, it's probably pity. Maybe a bit of disdain is mixed in with the pity, maybe not, and they certainly don't envy him. But I wonder if maybe Harold might have the right idea. Is it possible he's found a way to be happy in an increasingly chaotic and unexpected life?
To Harold the world is still a place of peace, love and trail mix, not a landscape of tumbling economies, increasing stress and fear of the future. Harold ignored the future and stayed in a time and place where he felt safe, comfortable and at home. Harold's maybe not so pitiful after all.
I wonder what I did with my tie dye tees and hemp sandals?
