Golden Globes….And the Winner Is…..

As the More is More Mom®, I’m all about……more awards shows! I suppose it’s my obsession with pop-culture, but I am absolutely smitten with Hollywood. Emmy’s (Daytime or regular), Screen Actors Guild and of course the ULTIMATE: the Academy Awards. I’ve been sooooo looking forward to Sunday night, which is the kick-off to the awards season. While I may not watch The Office, I am a Ricky Gervais fan. I totally love a guy that bucks the system. How brave is the Hollywood Foreign Press for inviting him back to host the Golden Globes!?!

Normally I like to watch these shows alone, in complete silence (so I don’t miss a thing), but my mom (my Hollywood obsessed partner in crime) was available to zip on out to watch it with me. Yay! Someone who understands that there is no talking during the show, but knows that the commercial break is the time for gossiping and comparing notes.

Ricky Gervais did not disappoint, “The Golden Globes are just like the Oscar’s except for all of the esteem.” It’s the perfect combination of the familiarity and nostalgia of television and the fantasy of the movies.

It’s so much fun to see all of the beautiful people, but we were off to a poor start. Clearly the Hollywood Foreign Press did not include my vote. While Christopher Plummer has turned in fine performances dating back to that of Captain Von Trapp, why didn’t Albert Brooks win Best Supporting Actor in a Movie for Drive (and I didn’t even see Drive….but I am waiting, with baited breathe, for it to appear On Demand)? I hate Laura Dern as Best Actress in a TV series; what about Zooey Deschanel, Tina Fey or even Amy Poehler? Puh-leeze!

You’ve got Kate Winslet sitting in the rafters as Best Actress in a Mini-Series (and she’s won the crème de la crème: an Oscar), and one of my least favorite actors ever, Kelsey Grammar (and it’s not that I like Camille Grammar, of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fame: I don’t), in Boss. Seriously, what about Steve Buscemi? I only watch Boardwalk Empire a little bit and he’s awesome! How disappointing!

The best thing about the Golden Globes is the crisscross-applesauce of television, music and movie stars. How else do you get Jimmy Fallon, Adam Levine, Elton John and Madonna in the same breath? Or where else do you see Seth Rogen rubbing elbows with the lovely Kate Beckinsale, or Notebook heartthrob, Channing Tatum, handing off a Golden Globe to the Steven Spielberg? The inequities beg further questions, such as, “Why wasn’t Clive Owen cast as James Bond?” He’s charming, rugged and full of good humor, unlike the eternally boring Daniel Craig.

The conflicts of the night are staggering. How does, say, a Matt Le Blanc beat an Alec Baldwin of Words with Friends and 30 Rock fame?  Or Madonna beat out the music and lyrical duo Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin? I hate Bradley Cooper with a passion (because he was horrible to Vince Vaughn in The Wedding Crashers, and I really like Vince Vaughn), so I can’t help but wonder how he is even allowed to give an award to the amazing Octavia Spencer of The Help.

Because I am the queen of nostalgia, I love that the Cecil B. De Mille award was bestowed upon Morgan Freeman. While he has turned in solid performances in such films as Lean on Me, The Shawshank Redemption, Driving Miss Daisy, Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby and March of the Penguins, to me, Morgan Freeman will always be from The Electric Company!

It’s a rapid fire good time here to the end. The other-wordly Angelina Jolie bestows the Best Picture of a Comedy or Musical to Martin Scorsese. Hot and spicy Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas award Modern Family the very best show on television (…ever, including such greats as Cheers and M*A*S*H).

The final big awards of the night go to:

• Michelle Williams as Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical, My Week with Marilyn
• John Dujardin as Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical, The Artist
• Meryl Streep as Best Actress in a Drama, The Iron Lady
• The Best Comedy of Musical, The Artist
• Gorgeous George Clooney in a Drama, The Descendants
• Best Motion Picture Drama, The Descendants

 

All told, it makes me realize I need to see The Artist.

 

More Ricky Gervais, more Golden Globes, more kick-offs to the awards season……

 

 

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Emmy’s Schmemmy’s!

As the More is More Mom®, I’m all about…..more Emmy Award’s! I am absolutely in love with the fantasy of going to the movies, which is why my favorite show of the entire year is the Oscar’s. However, what sustains me throughout our ordinary daily lives is…..television.

 

The Emmy’s is like a gigantic kick-off to the fall season. However, before we celebrate this past year of entertainment (and look forward to the coming weeks. Yay!), we must acknowledge those who have been here for us, supporting us, for the past 90 days; our friends at Bravo! A great big hat’s off to Bravo for making our summer bearable. While ABC, NBC and CBS have been showing ho-hum, boring reruns, Bravo has had the decency to entertain us with new programming. Housewives after Housewives, Millionaire Matchmaker, Top Chef, reunion shows with cutie pie Andy Cohen (Mazel!) and my all time favorite human being on television; Jeff Lewis of Flipping Out. I love him because he is a total ball buster who happens to have a big heart and exquisite taste.

 

This year, the Emmy’s were hosted by the fabulous Jane Lynch, otherwise known as both Sue Sylvester on Glee and Charlie Sheen’s therapist on 2 ½ Men. She’s amazing, and while I love, love, love, her, she just wasn’t as funny as Jimmy Fallon last year (whom I also love, love, love and isn’t as funny as Craig Ferguson. Maybe Craig Ferguson should host the Emmy’s!).

 

We are such total Modern Family maniacs at our house that I refuse to allow anyone to erase the second season we have recorded on our DVR until someone buys me the DVD compilation for Christmas. With all the awesome new TV coming in the next 24 hours, it’s a good thing we have 2 DVR’s. Julie Bowen, Claire on Modern Family is very, very good, but I wonder how she edged out Jane Lynch? I really thought that she and Gloria (Sofia Vergara) would have cancelled each other out. Ty Burrell was fabulous this season as the fumbling Phil Dunphy. Thankfully the Emmy voters got that one right.

 

Unfortunately, this Emmy show was a complete dud! It was about as boring as the Academy Awards with Anne Hathaway and James Franco. The first funny moment happened 45 minutes into the telecast when Rob Lowe and Sofia Vergara introduced the nominees for Lead Actress in a Comedy. Amy Poehler was a riot! When her name was announced as a nominee, she sauntered up to the stage as if she were the winner. The other nominees; Melissa McCarthy, Martha Plimpton, Eddie Falco (who was rockin a hard body like she was Madonna), Tina Fey and Laura Linney, all followed suit. They held hands on stage like they were contestants in a beauty pageant, just waiting for Miss America to be announced. Melissa McCarthy won for Mike & Molly and she was crowned with a tiara and awarded with a beautiful spray of roses. She’s from Plainfield, you know.

 

As insane as Charlie Sheen had been when he fell off the deep end in the spring, I was kind of hoping for a little tiger blood fighting warrior, but he must have been on his meds, darn it. He wasn’t humorous in the least as he announced Jim Parsons, from the Big Bang Theory, as Lead Actor in a Comedy. Clearly I am not smart enough to get it; how did he beat both Steve Carell and the amazing Alec Baldwin?

 

After another 30 interminably boring minutes, was the second amusing moment of the evening; the “epic” musical event starring Andy Samberg and Michael Bolton. Apparently Michael Bolton hadn’t been embarrassed enough with his dismal performance on Dancing with the Stars, because now he agreed to dress up as a singing Captain Jack Sparrow. I must admit, we did get a little chuckle when Ed Helms, John Stamos and Maya Rudolph dressed up as Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg and Lady Gaga, singing, “It’s not gay if it’s in a three way,” (the SNL rerun episode aired last night).

 

Margo Martindale won for Supporting Actress in a Drama in Justified (I’d never even heard of that show). Peter Dinklage was your Supporting Actor Drama for Game of Thrones (clearly too high brow for me). Julianna Margulies (who will always be Nurse Hathaway on ER ) was Best Actress in a Drama for The Good Wife. Since she is married to Mr. Big, I might consider checking that one out. Kyle Chandler was the Best Actor for Friday Night Lights. I haven’t seen the TV show, but the movie was excellent! Apparently, we don’t do dramas.

 

While they looked amazing, the boys from Entourage were as boring as their final season, though they kicked off the awards for the best in mini series; Supporting Actress, Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall of Harry Potter fame), Supporting Actor, Guy Pearce (?), Lead Actor, Barry Pepper (he was awesome as Roger Maris in *61 and Saving Private Ryan), and of course, Lead Actress, the beautiful Kate Winslet.

 

The show was so uneventful that it couldn’t end soon enough, but not before awarding Modern Family and Mad Men as tops in Comedy and Drama.

 

With all that celebrating behind us, we have an entire season of our favorite television to look forward to. Hip, hip, hooray for the idiot box!

 

 More beloved television shows, more favorite characters, more time laughing together as a family……

 

To schedule and Interior Design appointment, a Life Style consultation or a speaking engagement, please email me at moreismoremom@aol.com

We Have Got to Get a Hobby…..

We have got to get a hobby…….. Over the past thirteen years we have experienced a flurry of activity with our children, but now we have hit a lull. Not too long ago our days and evenings were consumed with cross country, basketball, track, baseball, golf and of course, hockey. My Nick has been skating since he was 4 ½ years old, and we have spent the better part of his childhood racing him from rink to rink at all hours of the day and night. These were truly some of the best moments in our family life. Now that he has his driver’s license, we only accompany Nicky to his hockey games, which leaves us with a heck of a lot of free time. Before Nick got his driver’s license we were at his beck and call; picking up friends, dropping them off, waiting around, picking them up. Now however, he pretty much just goes. Long gone are the days that he would ask, while I was making dinner mind you, “Can you run me over to the links so I can hit a bucket of balls?” The answer of course was nearly always “yes,” even though it was inconvenient, because I knew it would someday all come to a screeching halt. Since Nick has had his driver’s license for the past year and a half, all we really have to do is know his whereabouts, and manage to stay awake until he gets home by curfew, which is 11 o’clock. I can stay awake forever if I am vertical, but if I sit, I sleep. Thankfully Chuck possesses the gift of staying awake even if he’s sitting. It’s sad really.

While Amanda doesn’t flit from activity to activity, she is on a very strict schedule. She trains for gymnastics 20 hours per week, 52 weeks a year. She heads to the gym five days a week, four hours at a time, and thankfully for us we only live three stoplights away from our gym, so we can be there in a flash! During the school year, when she has practice on the weeknights, Amanda is chomping at the bit for us to leave at 4:10 (even though gym doesn’t start until 4:30. She doesn’t have her mothers “gift” for never arriving anyplace on time. She always says, “Gym starts at 4:30. It doesn’t say get there at 4:30.” You’ve gotta love her tenacity and dedication! When I was her age the only thing I was dedicated to was….nonsense. Funny how the more things change the more they stay the same….). We live so close that we don’t even have to leave to pick her up until 8:28pm. So, now what do we do?

Well, the answer to that apparently is a great, big, whole lot of nothing! By the time I make dinner, serve dinner, place dinner for Amanda in the warming drawer (best invention ever!), and clean up the mess that was dinner, there isn’t a terrible amount of time to do much of anything….other than watch the idiot box, and I think you know why they call it that.

Why isn’t there ever anything to watch on TV? Seriously, we flippity flip through our cable channels only to find features from the ‘70’s and ‘80’s flashing before our eyes. What!?! Why don’t the smart executives at the major networks figure out a way to feature clever, smart, entertaining programming? It’s pretty sad when we are glued to our set to weigh in on what’s happening with Dancing with the Stars……especially without Donny Osmond as a contestant.
Sunday Nights:
When does Entourage return to HBO? There is nothing to watch, thankfully we frequently have hockey games to attend and we are traveling during Amanda’s meet season.
Monday Nights:
Monday night programming has been enormously improved with Rules of Engagement as a mid-season replacement on CBS, though that only accounts for 30 minutes of the night (22 if you DVR….the only way to watch TV). However, Jeff, played by Patrick Warburton, is not featured nearly enough, as he is the very best part of the show. Though to me, he will forever be Putty from Seinfeld.
Chuck loves Two and a Half Men. If he has his way we turn it on at 6pm and 10:30pm on WGN, so Monday is Charlie Harper bonus day. All I have to say is: thank God they finally ditched that Chelsea because she was sooooo boring. We are thrilled to see the egomaniacal, alcoholic, aging lothario back in business!
Tuesday Nights:
I really dislike Jay Leno, as I am David Letterman kind of gal. Cancelling his awful show has opened up the door for the Tuesday night replacement Parenthood on NBC. I was an enormous fan of the movie and the new series certainly does not disappoint. I give it an “A”.
American Idol is really boring this year. We have given up.
Wednesday Nights:
Best show of TV…..ABC’s Modern Family. Why is it only on for half an hour? One character is funnier than the next, but what I love about this show is that while it’s hysterical each episode concludes with a tender moment that brings the family together and re-enforces their connection and commitment to each other. The More is More Mom® gives Modern Family an A++++++
Thursday Nights:
I want to get it, but I just don’t understand the appeal of The Office. On the other hand I can’t get enough of the hip, fast talking 30 Rock on NBC. Tina Fey has amazing vision, Tracy Morgan is a scream, and Alec Baldwin, well, he’s a comedic genius.
What’s not genius…..Bravo’s The Housewives of……fill in the blank. We always look forward to the New York girls, but they’ve become so boring and one dimensional. When we first met the girls from the Big Apple they were interesting, they had careers and they were charitable. Now they are self obsessed mean girls, one cat fight away from being on Jerry Springer.
Friday and Saturday Nights:
The weekend always brings a potpourri of activity between sports and friends. Thank God for the diversion.
I suppose for now a hobby will have to wait until our little chicks leave the nest. Until then it looks like we’re stuck with the idiot box………..

72 Hours of Estrogen Fueled Fun Leads to Crazy Mama Drama

I am still reverberating from 72 hours of out of town gymnastics fun! All gymnastics, all the time, perfectly befitting the More is More Mom®. Amanda and I were really looking forward to our road trip. We packed a basket full of our favorite snacks, borrowed the audio book Shopaholic Takes Manhattan from the library (on last year’s road trip we listened to Confessions of a Shopaholic……..a book which I ironically own two copies of, and could never quite bring myself to actually read because it hit too close to home (especially the excerpts where you find poor Becky Bloomwood opening her Visa statements in horror), then proceeded to buy both the audio book and the film. I could write my own version……. Shopaholic takes Winsome, IL.), and of course two Venti hot chocolate’s from Starbucks. My gal is the loveliest, dearest and most charming girl I have ever known. I adore her and enjoy her company immeasurably.

After four hours on the road, we pulled in to the parking lot of the hotel, with the rear of our car scraping against the asphalt. In addition to; two suitcases, a vanity case, a garment bag (so cute….pink with brown polka dots, to protect the bejeweled and bedazzled $180.00 competitive team leotard and lest we forget the matching team warm up suit), my laptop, Amanda’s tote bag full of fun things to do, and 5 bottles of wine (I am willing to share with my friends. I hope I don’t appear to be a total booze hag, but I always do bring more wine than I alone will consume to safely ensure that I will have enough…..72 hours is a lot of gymnastics); I also brought provisions for the team pizza party…..for 100 people. There were 70 bottles of water, 72 cans of pop, two cases of candy, napkins and plates, and my friend and I still had to run out to pick up 70 mini cupcakes once we got there! 100 people consume an enormous amount of food and beverages, hence the 20 extra large pizzas.

Most of the moms I know are great; encouraging and supportive of the girls, coupled with a healthy dose of reality and sense of good fun. Then there are the other kinds of moms. It doesn’t matter what activity your child participates in……. you’ve seen them, you fear them and you try like heck to avoid them. Some sports, like gymnastics, or I imagine cheerleading, figure skating and dance, have not only that competitive edge, but also a sense of pageantry, which can bring out the worst in people, ala the crazies on TLC’s Toddler’s and Tiara’s.
Let’s just say 3 days, 40 girls, their mothers and close quarters does not necessarily bring out the best in all people. If you have seen the brilliant Tina Fey’s film Baby Mama, or have been a voyeur of the traffic accident that is reality television, then you are familiar with the term: Baby Mama Drama. Well, this weekend we witnessed what I will forever refer to as: Crazy Mama Drama.

Oh, good Lord. The whispering, the gossiping, the crying…………. and a few of the mothers were worse! Here’s the deal:
1. If you pay an expert for advice, take it, meaning: if you pay for coaching, let the coach make the decisions
2. Stop the irritating e-mailing and texting
3. Stop stalking the coach at the bar. In most instances, it all comes down to your child’s effort and performance…… and that, my friend, is up to them
4. If your daughter has a problem, help her develop skills to solve it herself
5. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS A MOTHER EVER TO CONFRONT ANOTHER CHILD
6. If your child is feeling left out, help her to determine what role her own behavior is playing in the scenario, and how she can find a satisfying resolution
7. Keep your opinions to yourself
8. Don’t blame other people for your children’s problems
9. As I advise my pal’s: worry about yourself
10. Let’s all remember that athletics are supposed to be fun!
Crazy Mama Drama is one of the many reasons that I self medicate. To quote the prolific Amy Winehouse, “They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said; No, No, No.” I hope my daughter survives the perils of being a teenage girl, and I hope my liver survives it too…..