OMG What a Week! Postcard Friendship Friday Too!

Okay, this is definitely not a postcard, but you can download it yourself from the website and have your own Don Draper staring at you from your desktop like I do now. I'm considering it a postcard, because he's definitely saying hello with his eyes. :) This is one picture I could keep looking at every day.:) The only problem is since it's vintage there is a cigarette in his right hand. But that is a mere period detail. As I remember from my childhood and teenage years everyone smoked including myself. I wonder how anyone could breathe.

Speaking of smoking, there was such a cachet about it. Anyway, the first episode of the third season of Mad Men comes on next Sunday and I am so excited. If you haven't seen any of the first two seasons I would definitely buy the DVD and cram it all in before Sunday. This is such a great show that manages to convey the feelings and environment of the early '60s. It is like an Xray into the lives of the people I always thought had a great life.

I'll never forget when I was looking for a summer job after my freshman year in college I went to some of these ad agencies to get a job. The carpet was plush and the walls were wood paneled. The furniture was comfortable. The waiting room was better looking than any living room I'd ever seen.:) If only I could have lied better I might have gotten the job, but I could never say with a straight face that I wasn't going back to school in the fall. I spent a lot of hot days walking the Manhattan pavement in three inch heels and then I had to go home to Queens on a hot subway train filled with sweaty miserable workers. They didn't have air conditioned trains yet and let me tell you it was like being in a moving gym. Yuck. I gave up and took a job in a camp where there was fresh air and I could be out of the city.:)

Anyway, getting back to Mad Men, the guy in the picture, Don Draper, is my idea of a perfect postcard. So I present that to you.:) Sorry to the guys out there who would rather I had put the female character up there. I think you can find the curvy one, Joan, at the website too.:) Enjoy and don't forget to grab your own screen saver at the Mad Men website. Also while you're there you can make an avatar of yourself as you might look as a Mad Men character. Here is mine. Notice that I have a coffee mug instead of a cocktail glass in my hand. That is because I thought the background was going to be an office. It's hard to see what the background is when you're doing it. But I like that, because it makes me look so innocent and that's just what I was around that time. I was a pretty late bloomer.:)

I never had a dress like that and my hair wasn't blonde, but other than that not a bad look don't you think? I really like the pointy eyeglasses and the neat red handbag too.:)

Wasn't this quite a week? I mean So You Think You Can Dance finally had a winner and I did like Jeanine. I voted for Evan, because he's so adorable and he can't help his short legs and arms. Actually my own father had the same kind of body, but he wasn't a dancer.LOL So I'm very happy with the results and thrilled that we are going to be able to see the live show when it comes to our area. My daughter got us tickets and we were so lucky to get them early. By the time she was finished checking out, the tickets had gone up to twice the price. Who knows what they are now.:) We saw the live show last year and it was amazing, but our seats were far away. We're a little closer this year. We saw the show again tonight, because my other daughter had missed it. When we looked at Kayla dancing we all realized she wasn't dancing with the same crispness and we think that ( and this is purely our opinion so don't go spreading it around, PLEASE!!!!) she might have hurt herself. Just our opinion because she seemed to be having problems with her right leg. As I mentioned before, though, it's our opinion. But if it turns out to be true then you can say you read it here first.:)

The other thing that happened this week is John Hughes, filmmaker, died. I just went back to check on which movie came first and I saw that he did "National Lampoon's Vacation" first, which I saw in the movies and loved. He not only wrote the screenplay, but he did the soundtrack for it too! After this he wrote and directed "Sixteen Candles" and then "Mr. Mom" which he wrote but didn't direct. Then he followed this with probably the quintessential movie of the '80s, "Breakfast Club", another Lampoon movie, "Weird Science", "Pretty in Pink", which he wrote and produced but didn't direct, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" he wrote directed and produced, "Some Kind of Wonderful" he wrote and produced, "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" which he wrote, produced, directed and wrote the soundtrack for. I could go on and on with the films John Hughes wrote and produced or wrote and directed or pretty much did the whole film, but he made too many films.:)

I always loved John Hughes films because he made his characters so human. They had such problems and they were usually regular people. Also he used actors who were relatively unknown at the time in many of his films. He used Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, Matthew Broderick, Jon Cryer (then a complete unknown) and the list goes on and on. Yet he also used well known actors such as Steve Martin and John Candy and comedians like Chevy Chase. Hughes always treated women with the utmost respect even if they were in uncomfortable situations. He also provided a romantic element in almost every film. Who can forget when Judd Nelson put the diamond earring into his ear. Now that's romance.:) Okay, I could probably watch all of these films over and over and not get tired of them. Oh wait, I have.:)

John Hughes has been a part of our lives and we haven't realized it. Many of the expressions that have crept into our vernacular come from John Hughes films. Even the expectations that kids have today were forged from watching John Hughes films. Who wouldn't want a boyfriend like Molly Ringwald's in "Sixteen Candles"? The kiss across the birthday cake is what everyone woman dreams of having with her significant other. Why aren't all men like John Hughes characters? Hughes celebrated the small town and the teens who seemed to disappear into the woodwork. Probably the most isolated character he ever wrote was Ally Sheedy's character in "The Breakfast Club". Yet he treated her with an elegance and understanding that allowed her true personality to come out. I haven't seen any blog posts on John Hughes yet, but I am calling him an American film genius.

This is also the week I am getting feedback on my latest chapter for my WIP from my critique group. So far I've only gotten one person's comments and I'm hoping by the end of the weekend that everyone will have commented. It took me such a long time to write this chapter so I'm really waiting for the comments. I don't usually feel that anxious about my chapters, but when you've been working on a chapter for over a month and then finally you get it written and you sub it you expect to see your critique. Our group usually gets around to posting our comments, but I wish everyone would be a little faster about it. :) We've discussed this problem and have no solution. We have a reminder for the group and it goes out in the middle of the week and at the end. Sometimes we have to wait for over two weeks to get comments and then it overlaps. But I love my group so I can wait to see all of their reactions. It's just such a let down when you were hoping for their thoughts.

Speaking of writing, how many of you have dropped by the blog post about Jennifer Banash? If you leave a comment or a question you can win a free book. I know some of you come and read and don't comment. This time you can win a great book just by commenting. What are you waiting for? It doesn't have to be long to be in the drawing. Just jot down something and your name will be in the hat when I do the drawing for Jennifer Banash's new book, Simply Irresistible. I will be reviewing it on Monday for anyone who couldn't get a copy. Thank you to the three people so far who are in the drawing because they wrote a comment. You are the lucky ones so far.

New things you should know about me are that I have an interview by RD Larson on her blog. Also, I am now discussing being a host on a Blog Talk Radio show with another author. More about this when we are ready to go on the air.:) I'm excited, because I love to talk as well as write and I'll be talking with authors of all kinds. I'm looking for people who have short stories and poetry published as well as authors who have published books. I am also going to be interviewing writers who are looking to be published. I might be letting people give their three sentence pitch on the air. This is all in the planning stage so stay tuned to see what's happening. This is all due to April Robins and Red River Writers without which I would not have been on the radio twice.