God has Left Hollywood

JC didn’t know the situation he was getting himself into when he picked up a satellite cable box for my TV a few days before the broadcast of the 69^th Annual Golden Globe Awards. I am a huge fan of movies, Hollywood, celebrities, and the awards season!! I look forward to the Golden Globes, People’s Choice, Screen Actor’s Guild, and the Academy Awards like I look forward to Christmas! Tis the best, most glamorous season of the year!!

Starting at 5 p.m., JC and I settled in to watch first the pre-red carpet segment where three fashionistas commented on who they believed would dress the best, then two hours of red carpet interviews and fashion, then the three-hour award show! I felt sorry for Justin who had to listen to me say “That dress is ugly!,” “Ohmigosh! Why is she wearing that?”, and “OMG! I LOVE HER DRESS!” about thirty times as celebrity after celebrity filed onto the red carpet. He patiently listened… or appeared to listen to me ramble on and on about red carpet fashion, who was who, who was dating who, and why they were nominated. Really, he was just waiting for the chicken thighs I was baking to hurry up and be ready to eat.

Two things I noticed about this year’s red carpet:

1.       1. Only three or four couples made an appearance together. Many celebrities were man-less or chick-less.

2.       2. WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING ON WITH THE DRESSES???!! They were downright ugly this year. Mila and Emma took the win in fashion for sure.

Then it was time for the actual awards ceremony. Out came the rum and Coke. Unable to watch football, Justin kept me entertained as I created a drinking game for him. One must drink when:

1.    A celebrity thanked the “amazing talent” in his or her category that they just smoked them in
2.   A celebrity was cut off by the music because they rambled on too long
3.  A celebrity thanked God

Quite often, Justin had to drink because the music cut off a star, like Kate Winslet who always goes over. One thing we noticed, however, was that no one wanted to thank God this year! We waited two hours and 45 minutes before Meryl Streep, God bless her, got up on the stage for her Best Actress award for The Iron Lady and thanked the good Lord upstairs.. sort of! It was actually a joke, but JC drank anyway! Meryl refers to one of the members of the audience as God, but at least there was some mention of religion somewhere. Ms. Streep also took home the prize of Best Speech and The 3-in-1 Drinking Award, bestowed to her by JC and me, as she thanked a type of god and thanked not only the other females in her category but every woman who was nominated in all the categories, and she ran out of time after stumbling through her speech because she left her glasses at her seat and couldn’t read what she wrote!!!

Congratulations, Meryl Streep!! You not only know how to give an amazing performance on the silver screen, you can also give one heck of a speech!!

“Why don’t you make a film our daughter can see for once?’” — Martin Scorsese, accepting best director for “Hugo,” referring to how his wife, Helen, urged him to make a children’s movie.

13. The Starter Wife

Book 13: The Starter Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer (B+)

I picked up this book because of the popular television mini-series based off the book that Kate and I ate up a few years ago. The show was true to the book being witty, entertaining, and having an air of exaggerated truthfulness. In Hollywood, a wife of an ok studio executive gets a call from her husband saying he wants a divorce. Now, Gracie is an ex-wife, an outcast of the major Hollywood elite society. She loses everything, except the three loyalists of friends - a gay designer, the older cynic married to an even older man for his money, and the paranoid with lots of kids friend. As her ex begins dating Britney Spears, Gracie wonders what will happen to her as her four-year-old daughter starts wearing belly shirt with faux fingernails and herself having no job to speak of. While staying at the older friend's Malibu beach mansion, Gracie finds love in a homeless man, someone so completely not Hollywood that it's the perfect match.

The book reminiscences a bit too much, one of those where the chapters are mostly a collection of Gracie's thoughts instead of actual story. I suppose this is because that most average women, the readers of this book, don't understand what goes into being what is referred to in the book as "A Wife Of" or a Hollywood elite. Still, the constant mental ramblings of Gracie are a bit of an overkill.
I enjoyed that the book, while written in third-person, the perspective changed every so often throughout the book. While we see the world through Gracie's eyes for the majority of the story, there are a few paragraphs and chapters written from the perspective of Sam, Gracie's homeless boyfriend, or Joan, the older cynic. The characters are creative and charismatic with Grazer's insight giving them great depth in the shallow streets of glittery LA. I'd like to read more of her work. 
Definitely a good summer read!