Green Holiday Gift Ideas

If you like the idea of giving gifts that help the planet and those you care about, there's a very cool green gift ideas article at Raw Foods News Magazine. It features gifts that are hard to find (unless you know where to find them) and nifty, and most are very economical too, which comes in handy in this economy.
The categories include books, DVDs, foods and ingredients, really pure cosmetics, plus crafts and planetary healing.  There are even holiday greeting cards as witty and pretty as a New Yorker cartoon.

Raw and Green T-Shirts, Bumper Stickers and More

Check out the cool slide show (at the upper left of RawFoodGrrl.blogspot.com) of many of our raw and green T-shirts and other items.  You can buy them and many others at the links below the slide show!

On TV's Fictional Characters Twittering

Following is a slight rewrite of my comment appearing below a blog post about twittering TV's Emmy-winning drama, Mad Men, an hour-long drama about a NY ad agency in the early 1960s. I rewrote my comment only so that it makes sense as a stand-alone essay, rather than as a comment that addresses other people's comments to the same post.

In case you're not familiar with twitter, it's a site that makes it easy for people to send short (one sentence) messages (dubbed "tweets") to anyone who chooses to "follow" them. You can send direct messages to people you're following if they're following you, and they have the ability to message you back.

I didn't even know that Mad Men's characters were ON twitter until I got an e-mail tonight announcing that Peggy Olson (the only female copywriter among Mad Men's characters) was following me. I immediately went and signed up to follow her. But why stop there? I am also now following [the show's characters] Don Draper, his wife, Betty Draper, and Paul Kinsey (the agency's senior copywriter, if I remember his title correctly). I wouldn't have signed up to follow Paul Kinsey, but he started following me, and I find his tweets most interesting as a behind the scenes glimpse into his character. It tells me things I don't know about the dynamics between the characters just from watching the show.

The fact that the characters are on twitter is a real bonus for Mad-Men-starved fans like me, who don't want to have to wait an entire week to see a new episode (or two weeks, in the case of tonight's rerun because of the Emmy's).

I loved that detail in a recent Mad Men episode in which the Drapers shake off their picnic blanket and leave their litter on the park lawn. It spoke volumes.

How I wish that Boston Legal's Alan Shore were a twitterer, especially since BL is entering its final season. (Could it be that he is and I don't know?)

It's indeed a great match that Mad Men, a show about an ad agency that does product placement would use twitter as product placement.

I sent a twitter message to Peggy Olson that as an idea person, I probably should have become an advertising copywriter, except that as an idealist, I have to do work I believe in. (And she twittered me back with a response that was very true to her character.) How totally cool to be able to interact with the characters of a show you love!  When in history has this ever happened before?  I mean, before the days of the internet and TV, did people have the ability to write to characters in novels and have them respond?  And what about our ability as fans, to thus perhaps influence the direction a storyline goes in?  [Of course, as a writer myself who has struggled to get my projects out into the world to make me a living, I would prefer to be paid for such ideas, but that is another story.]

I mention this only to say that alas, although I'm too idealistic to work in advertising, I love that TV shows are using twitter to promote themselves. It's a type of advertising that finally makes great sense, because it honors the viewers in ways that ads never can.

It's Time to Replace SNL With a Sketch Comedy Show That's Actually Funny

Saturday Night Live is just not funny anymore, and hasn't been for years, except for the very occasional Hillary political sketch, the coruscatingly brilliant Darrell Hammond, and Andy Samberg's Dick in a Box video. I can't believe SNL is still on the air. The quiz-show bits and Wiig's twitchy weird characters and the variety show bits just do not work for me, nor do Armisen's characters, except for his Obama.


If you've ever seen or heard (Mike) Nichols and (Elaine) May you know what intelligent, perfectly performed sketch comedy is about.

There was a syndicated sketch comedy show that aired in the 1990s called "The News" that was really funny. It had a broad variety of tightly written sketches with beginnings, middles and ends. The cast were infinitely varied in their performances, and cast members were fresh in each new sketch, meshing perfectly with whatever role they were playing, with no "character" mannerisms seeping through. The Newz aired a half hour of new material five nights a week! NBC should bring that show back to TV and retire SNL already. Damn, they should hire me as one of their writers!  Want to audition me?  Here's some of my comedy writing.

Where Vegetables and Movies Intersect

A friend on LinkedIn answered a question about his favorite movie quote. I don't have one, so I went to imdb.com to look at the page for my favorite movie, Pierrot le Fou, to see what quotes were listed, in hopes I might find one that I love. I didn't find one I could call my fave movie quote, but I did find an adorable one.

And now, here it is on a whole assortment of T-shirts, totes and other items!

Whoops--It Was Twins! Fraternal Ones!

BABYMAKER.MAURYSHOW.COM...because making babies is fun.


I think this baby looks like comedian Norm MacDonald:

Busy Day--I Just Had a Baby with Owen Wilson

BABYMAKER.MAURYSHOW.COM...because making babies is fun.

Angelina Jolie's Scrabble Names for her Kids

Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh Nouvel, Knox and Vivienne.

In naming her six children, Angelina Jolie seems to like names containing the letters that have high scores in Scrabble! All those "x"es, and also the "v"s in Vivienne and Nouvelle! And "Z" in Zahara! I wonder if she played Scrabble as a kid and this has some subconscious meaning!

Shayne Dahl Lamas and the Lure of Fame

I hadn't been watching the TV reality show The Bachelor since an earlier season of it, but two seasons ago, my mother suggested I watch it again, and now, like my mother, I'm really into it. It's fascinating because it's very revealing of personalities and meanness/deception/lying/underlying motives.

My mother and I adored the contestant Shayne Lamas (the daughter of Lorenzo and the grand-daughter of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl), the one who the bachelor, Matt Grant, from England chose out of 25 American women. The way the show edited what was presented as documentary (rather than scripted) footage, Shayne seemed genuine, warm, kind and compassionate, mature far beyond her 22 years.

We were surprised by the announcement yesterday, the day after the show's finale, that Shayne is appearing on the cover--and inside, in a six-page (non-nude) spread--of the second issue of Girls Gone Wild magazine, whose first cover featured NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's whore.

I guess having grown up in Hollywood, Shayne felt she had to jump at the offer to further her 15 minutes of fame. Sort of sad, because--despite the hair that she's been dying platinum since she was 12, which gives some people the impression that she's just another shallow Hollywood starlet--Shayne seems to have a depth that would make for real acting talent. I hope she hasn't derailed what could even be an Oscar-worthy career by typecasting herself in this way.

Totally Cool Conceptual House--Built!

Artists Arakawa, age 71, and Madeline Gins, 66, his wife, have come up with a house that reminds me of a surreal dream I once had. The East Hampton, NY house, with bumpy floors of no consistent level and other assorted strange features, is totally cool. The couple designed the structure to be uncomfortable, so that the people who wind up living in it can experience life the way young children do, always confronting the new. Arakawa and Gins believe such an environment will keep residents from ever getting sick.

Don't miss the slide show of this house, with an audio commentary by the architect couple!

In Defense of Cavemen!

With Geico's commercials showing those poor cavemen being attacked, we thought it was cool that at least someone is coming to their defense, with a line of fun T-shirts, tote bags, thongs, boxers, and household items. This online store has items with five different catch phrases, each with its own appropriate font. (Warning to any cavemen reading this: Although four of the phrases are very pro-cavemen, one of the phrases will still offend you!)

CRUSH, my new video about a guy with a crush on Hillary

Great rhythmic dance music, free podcast

Click here to get your own player.