Ms. Cheevious in Hollywood

My Zany Years Spent Working in Tinsel Town

Daily Mischief

A little midnight rendezvous

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How about a little midnight rendezvous, people? You know things are getting wild and crazy when the first chance I get to write something is at 12:01 AM. The NEXT day.

Nuggie and I treated ourselves to a day (and evening) off today, and though I tried to send up a smoke signal earlier from my phone it simply didn’t work. It wouldn’t cooperate. But now, on the way home after midnight, all is well with the universe and I can get a dispatch out.

You know? I LIKE our little midnight rendezvous. It feels like we are all alone after hours, having a night cap.

Alas, my darlings, I am spent and ready to crawl into bed fully clothed and still holding my purse.

So much for an exciting midnight escapade. Have a good night, though, and I will be ready for you with a fresh burst of energy tomorrow. Sweet dreams.
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This is no secret muthahhh fuhgahhhs

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The fact that I’ve been fighting off a bout of some muthahhh fuhgahhhn dizziness is no secret. The cat is out of the bag.

Fighting is a good word for it. I’m about ready to unleash the flying monkeys on that badass muhthaaah fuhggahhn dizziness. Why? Because dammit, I will not stop doing what I love or need to do because parts of my body do not want to cooperate from time to time. I’m over that shit.

So today, wobbly as I was, I went and kicked some ass at my regular workout (a video of what I do is here). I am also a certified trainer in this hell-but-love-the-results workout.

Kick Ass Lagree Fitness Workout

 

I did it despite the vertigo for two reasons: 1) because this is what we must do, if we do not want to become FAT, wobbly Jabba-the-Huts; and 2) This weekend is my high school reunion, and I want to ROCK IT.

But while I was working my ass off (no pun intended, but it’s relevant), I was telling the instructor (who knows about all of my surgeries from the last couple of years) how not only have I been struggling with this damned vertigo, but I was in two car accidents within a span of a week, which caused some severe whiplash.  She responded with an appropriately astonished “Oh my GOD!” So, I replied, “Yeah! It’s as if something out there wants to “get” me! I tell ya!”

Then she did it.  The thing I hate to hear from people who think they know why you got sick, or you had to have surgery, or take out a loan, or go bankrupt, or whatever… She said that “law-of-attraction” speak… something like “Not if you “Secret” that thing away…”

I quickly laid it out for her and said, “Oh… don’t you worry. I’ve got that thing down. I’m all for it.”

But really?

That just annoys me, because I could whoop her ass in the law of attraction department, like I invented it.  Seriously. I was telling myself and my thoughts what was what way the f*ck before the book or movie “The Secret” was even a spark in someone’s mind. I have lept and SEEN the friggin net appear before my eyes, so when she tried to “correct” my line of thinking… oooh… she was just lucky I was otherwise detained and trying to maintain balance on the machine of pain and death.

I hadn’t even told her about the horrendous fall I took during the Ms. Cheevious in Hollywood book cover photo shoot (I spared her the shock and awe), which only compounds my theory that there are forces we know not of at work sometimes, and we have to be on top of our game. Perhaps that would have shut her up.

Suffice it to say – I’ve got this shit people.  And when you’ve got it (the Secret plan… the Law of Attraction… the Visualizing and Creating stuff), and all your bills are paid, and you have actually manifested the shit out of every detail in your life, and never had a cold or gotten sick – well then, maybe you are in a place to “correct” my thinking.

I’d better go take some hormones before someone besides me gets hurt.

 

Sunshine and libations at sea

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“Beware the combination of libations and sunshine at sea.” ~

 

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That’s what my tombstone would have read, if I’d died while stumbling and rolling my tuckus over to the bow to pose for the following spider girl photo (and oh yes, there were more…) on a recent sailing trip with friends. We were like every drunk girl that ever hit the dance floor!  You know, the ones who think they are the sexiest, divalicious babe in the club after a few cocktails?  This was us on the boat. We couldn’t get enough photos of ourselves.

It was fun, I must admit. And it could even be considered arrogant to complain in anyway about sailing with our friends. But I daresay I will most definitely lean more toward drinking WATER while on the high seas next time.

It can’t be safe to crawl around the bow in a condition that would probably get me a DUI if I were stupid enough to drive.

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Let’s just leave it at this: I woke up from a “nap” on the boat and was foggy about whether I’d eaten my sandwich and how long I’d been out. When the photos surfaced, I was foggy still.  But then again, this is what sunshine and libations at sea will get you.

 

It’s probably not a good idea to exercise

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It’s probably not a good idea to exercise when you’re staying at a friend’s home and you’ve been drinking copious amounts of wine… in Sonoma County.

WINE country, people.

M.C. Nugget and I took a trip up the coast to Sonoma this past spring. We made a pact to do three sets of thirty abdominal exercises every night before bed, because of the horribly fattening foods that awaited us at every stop, and because we knew we wouldn’t get any exercise otherwise.

We actually stuck to this plan pretty religiously. And then our good pal who owns a winery in Healdsburg (whose home we were staying in), followed us up to our room one night, as we laughed and stumbled upstairs to do our ab “exercises.”

We proceeded to roll around the floor like drunk roly-polies. She apparently captured this on her iPhone, which will NEVER appear here. I have my limits.

Apparently we were “on a roll” and I was saying, “Come on honey! Let’s do Happy Baby! Now let’s do Plow!”  I had M.C. trying to do upside down Yoga postures (also called inverted postures) after drinking for hours on end.  He’s such a good sport.

Suffice it to say, we did NOT look like this:

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But we did keep our promise to each other. That’s all I care about, I swear.

 

 

The day we succumbed to television peer pressure

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When our friends Bogey and Bacall raved about the new television drama “House of Cards” only viewable on Netflix’s streaming service, our eyes were opened. We’d held out for so long on principle. That Netflix would charge more money to view things via streaming, and we could get a larger selection of films cheaper if they sent us a disc, infuriated us (M.C.). The new original content they were producing and streaming hadn’t deterred us (M.C.) until now.

I looked my money crunching honey in the eye from across the courtyard of the Bogey/Bacall’s bohemian courtyard (from whence we created our own episode of “LOST – the Mar Vista Experience” in our heads) and said, “We’re in this business. I think it may be time to pay the few extra dollars a month to see some of these shows.”

It’s been downhill since then.

We binge-watched the entire first seasons of Homeland and House of Cards within the first month and a half. I have many thoughts about the incredible writing and acting on each of these shows (not to mention every other art form represented in the making of television shows, which actually deserve mentions in these two cases).  I’ll save those for another time.

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Once we’d finished these shows, we were left with the … well, nothing.  It’s that void that sets in to remind us of how lame we are, that we have nothing better to do then to plop our butts down on a sofa in front of a fifty-inch box of moving light and color every night…

But once there was a void, we searched for our next fix (hmmm… Net Flix / Next Fix). That’s when we landed on Mad Men. We chose it because people had been raving about the show for years. I can’t really say which “people,” except one or two friends in the flesh. The more I think about it, the more I realize how much my newsfeed on Facebook (chock full of posts from over a thousand friends, most of whom I do not know in person), and my Twitter Feed (even more of whom I have never met) probably influenced this decision.

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So, since, oh about April we’ve gone through almost five seasons.

It’s not necessarily because every show is incredibly compelling, no; far from it. Our (my) newly formed habit required a fix, and this for now (since we also plowed through and finished the first season of Game of Thrones on loan from a friend), is it.

I turned to M.C. Nugget after watching an episode from season 5 last night and said, “You know? If you think about it, it’s not really that great of a show. It reminds me of bad daytime drama sometimes (notice I said “bad” daytime drama, because not all daytime drama is bad).  If I had watched the show from the beginning, a few episodes like this one, and they would have lost me. But I think because of the mania surrounding the show I have held on.” We deliberated this point for a few moments, before shrugging and heading to the kitchen for peach cobbler. But we decided it must be the craze that keeps us (me) going. Maybe from here on out it gets more incredible?

We had to face it. We succumbed to television peer pressure… over Mad Men, the craze.

Me. I am just mad. But then again, I always finish what I start. Where will you be tonight?

 

 

 

 

A work-at-home situation that needs resolution

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One of the great things about being able to work at home is that I get to wake up and walk straight to my desk, sans makeup, hair-brushing, teeth brushing, and regular clothes. If I’m lucky I have left-over coffee (oh yes, it gets better) that I can heat up so I don’t have to wait my turn for the coffee pot (M.C. drinks fully leaded, and generally remembers every night to program his coffee in, so I simply defer to whatever happened or was left-over from the night before). After I’ve started up the Big Screen, answered any pressing emails, checked in with my networking groups and pages on Facebook, and answered all of the droves of questions on all ten or so of my Twitterverse accounts via Tweetdeck, I generally shuffle away from the Big Screen to make fresh coffee, brush the teeth and get back to my desk. I get that this is pure paradise rolled up into one big huge ball of privilege, I really do. I am incredibly lucky to do what I do from my home “office.”

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That isn’t to say that working at home doesn’t have it’s drawbacks.  I could name any number of them, and I would take odds on how many of you would say that all of the above paragraph are drawbacks. But there are plenty, one of which is the fact that on days without appointments or meetings, unless I have a workout class, I sit in my big PJ tee shirt and underwear most of the day. If I do have a workout to go to, I end up in my yoga pants and tank top all day. Let’s just say Nuggie prefers when I have a workout to go to. (Although he might have warmed up to the whole pajama idea if said pajamas were at least (ehem– insert shameless ad-link) sexy).

Granted, when I stopped working full-time in a job where I wore a suit or some combination of professional attire on a daily basis, I was over the moon at the fact I could roll out of bed and be at work in no time, with little or no effort.

But this? This is definitely a work-at-home situation in need of resolution.