Celebrity Weekly Round-up: Roc & Roe, let's go!

People, we did it! We made it to Friday! Time to kick off the weekend (and yes,I do consider Fridays at work part of the weekend because, let's be honest here, you're not working today) with some celebrity stories.

I'm starting it off today with the biggest celebrity news of the week: Mariah Carey finally popped out dem babies. They were 100 lbs, 60 inches long, and were born at 3560 days gestation. Mother is resting comfortably, the daughter is off getting her hair did and the father is shooting hoops in the family's indoor basketball court.

They were born Saturday and kept the names a mysterious mystery for several days. Picture this: I was out running errands at lunch one day and when I walked in, my friend says to me, "AMANDA. Moroccan and Monroe." And I'm all, "excuse me? I didn't have a liquid lunch, did you?" And she's all, "That's what Mariah Carey named her kids."

I've been around celebrity crazies for a long time and I've heard plethora of bizarro names: Apple, Kal-El, Pilot Inspektor. And I have to say, Mariah Carey's baby names aren't as bad some, until you find out her reasoning for them:

- Moroccan Scott's middle name comes from Nick Cannon's own middle name, which is also his grandmother's middle name (sweet and normal)
- Moroccan Scott's first name comes from the top tier of Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon's apartment, which has a Moroccan inspired decor and was the site of Nick Cannon's proposal (also, can we talk about the fact that they have a top tier of their NYC apartment?)  I'm not for certain, but this may also be where they took their nasty nudie pics while she was preggers. Yeeks.

As for the little girl:

- Monroe is named after  Marilyn Monroe, Mariah's idol and inspiration.
- Monroe 's middle name is nothing. She has no middle name because her mother has no middle name. Basically she's named after her mother.

Nick Cannon already has nicknames for them: Roc and Roe. Stellar.

I wonder if cray cray is hereditary.

Speaking of things you are born with and things you are not, what happened to Bristol Palin's face?

(That transition was painful. My apologies.)

Yeah, looks like "teen activist" and "dancer" and woman-about-town had her face done.

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Oh sweetie. Oh. Sweetie. That's clearly a chin implant. Wait. Sorry. That's clearly "a good night's sleep" and makeup. If a pseudo-celebrity has plastic surgery in the forest and nobody is around to take pictures of her on a red carpet she has no business walking down, does she make a sound? Yes. It's the sound of her 15 minutes tick, tick, ticking away.

A couple hooligans whose 15 minutes are just starting are up next. I vaguely  remember something happening last week that had It's Blogworthy all abuzz, but couldn't quite remember the details. Thank the Lord, then, for US Weekly, who reminded me gently that THE ROYAL WEDDING JUST HAPPENED AND THINGS RELATED KEEP HAPPENING.

Reporters keep relating the royal wedding to a fairytale, and what fairytale is complete without some buffoons who hang around the princess to give us all a good laugh.

Enter Kate Middleton Princess Catherine's younger brother and sister, James Middleton and Pippa Middleton.

James likes football, travel and taking semi-naked pictures with his hands in his pants.

Pippa likes shopping, champagne and dancing in her bra at parties.

I'm sure Queen Elizabeth is so proud those genes are entering into the pool. Honestly, though, aren't those two links more entertaining than anything the royals have done in the past 30 years?

Cray cray is hereditary; class is not.

Enjoy the weekend!

What were your favorite stories of the week? Do you want to see less of Bristol Palin and more of the Middletons?

Celebrity Weekly Round-up: Royally Distracted

Happy Friday, y'all!

I'm really sorry to disappoint you, but I have nothing whatsoever to write about for the celebrity weekly round-up. I haven't heard any good celebrity news this week and nothing appears to be going on, so I'm just gonna call it a day. Have a good weekend folks...

SIKE!!!!

Unless you live under a hollow log, you know that today is the WEDDING OF THE DECADE. Prince William and Kate are going to the "chapel" and getting married. I can almost guarantee their wedding makes yours look like a shotgun wedding held at the barn. Sorry for your crappy wedding. Hope their fabulousness didn't make you feel too inferior.

Hubby can't figure out why I was so excited for this, and to be honest, I wasn't sure why I was so excited either. Maybe it's because my Mom watched the wedding with me when I was just a wee tyke and now I can watch this one with my son. Or maybe it's because deep down inside, a lot of little girls and grown women alike wonder what it would be like to be a real, honest to God princess.

Although the Royal Wedding ceremony is over, the coverage will live on for weeks and weeks on the internet, as all the best stories do. Lots of others have written about the royal wedding much better than I (like, for instance, Chalupa's Mom , who wrote the funniest Royal Wedding post of the week). So I'm here to just throw together my favorite links I've been collecting all week.

First, you have to go to the E! Online Royal Name Generator and get yourself a Royal name post haste. You can refer to me as the Duchess Amanda Arabella Austinton of Gainesvilleham for now on. Or just The Duchess for short, because I'm not stuffy.

Then after that, go on and Princess Yourself.

Ignore that excessively long neck, but other than that, I look pretty legit, huh? Or more like prom queen. Nowhere near as sophisticated as Kate looked.

Also related: How glad are we, collectively, that this technology exists? (Super glad!)

Let's talk about hats. Facinators, is what they are called. And I'm fascinated har har har. First time that joke's been made, I'm sure! Give me a second while I pat myself on the back for cleverness. Here, why don't you check out the best hats at the Royal Wedding while I give myself the "GURL UR SO FUNNY!" blog award.

Anyway, fascinators are big business here in the US since Kate Princess Catherine rocks them on the regular. The article says they sell from $35 to $100, but I betcha you could search Etsy and get one for a song. Or, you could always fashion one from a headband and feather like my friend at work.

All this Royal Wedding hoopla makes me realize how very little I know about English royalty. I mean, more or less everything I've learned about it is from The Tudors, and I hardly think they are still chopping off people's heads for sport anymore. So, will Kate really be queen someday? Here's the scoop from E! Online, in which they go into detail about the royal succession. For some more royal fun, check out People's gallery of royal family look-alikes through history. And then there is the A-Z of Royalty from People.

You're welcome for giving you all these links to waste time this Friday.

On to the actual wedding. She looked gorgeous and her dress was both modern and traditional (is what I learned this morning from Guiliana Rancic) and Grace Kelly-esque. If you weren't one of the 1000 some odd people invited, US Weekly gives you a glimpse inside the ceremony. Then after she said her "I DO"s, Kate automatically became Princess Catherine and a few hours before was bequeathed some other fancy pants titles. Not bad for a regular Jane.

Then they made history by kissing TWO TIMES while e'rybody and their brother got drunk in the streets below them. BEFORE NOON. They ain't playin'. I missed the kiss by 5 minutes, but you don't have to because E! wrote all about it.

Click on any of those links and it will lead you down the rabbit hole of thousands upon thousands of articles, galleries and fun facts. Enjoy.

Have a happy weekend!

Did you do your royal name? Leave it in the comments!

Celebrity Week Round-up: The one where I give the Internet a stern talking to

Another Friday is upon us! It's a good Friday for two reasons:

1. It's actually Good Friday.
2. I'm took a Paid Time Off day slash mental health day slash if I have to fix another broken link on the website at work, someone will have to lock me up day.

In fact, while you're reading this, I might either be still sleeping (not likely if you're reading this after about 8 am), lounging on the couch or dipping my baby's toes in the Atlantic Ocean for the VERY FIRST TIME. How's that for a Friday?

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Speaking of Friday, remember Rebecca Black? Of course you do. If you could hear that atrocious song and get away with it NOT burnt permanently into your brain, you're a stronger person than I. She's only been trending on Twitter for, like, 14 years. Although her only achievement thus far are being famous for singing a crappy song that went viral, she's not under police protection after recieving death threats.

Ok. What? I don't condone death threats. At all. I'm what you'd call anti-death threat. So, what special kind of cray-cray (I'm going to keep using this phrase until it's a thing) wastes their time threatening a girl who probably has nothing and has done nothing. I threw together this handy-dandy death-threat flow chart to demonstrate my point:

Try to get that song out of your head now. And.....Tangent time! 

I had a conversation not long ago with Jenn on Twitter about viral videos and other Internet fueled ridiculousness. Using Friday as an example: you have the early adopters who originally found this video and sent it to their other early adopter friends. Then a few other people pick it up. Then you have the early majority (like your best friend who didn't check her email all week) and the late majority (like when your Mom says, "say, have you seen this funny video? ahahahaha, so cute!") 

It's the diffusion of innovation theory, sort of.

Except on the internet, it goes to another level. Suddenly something that was a huge joke, (Friday, Charlie Sheen, as two examples) is now mainstream. I saw somewhere that Rebecca Black's song was sampled in a real artists' song? I mean ridiculous.

That's when I get simultaneously embarrassed to be a part of the Internet and mad at every single person who mashed the "Share link" button on YouTube. I'm mad at Yahoo for picking it up, or Good Morning America for doing an interview with her. I just want to hit the Internet on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and say "BAD INTERNET!" I want to rub it's nose in the crap it produced and tell the Internet sternly, "Don't you dare do that again!" 

But it always does.

Wait, there's more!

LeeAnn "homewrecker" Rimes decided the double standard in country music is to blame with her breaking up two marriages (hers and Cibian's).

 "[Country music] has such a double standard. You know, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash and all these guys. God knows what they did back in the day? And if a woman did it, you never were accepted or forgiven. But if it was a guy, it was just their life… It's quite interesting to have to navigate those waters as a woman in this business."

Yeah. I'm sure that's it.

via

Finally, are reality stars ever going to stop getting rich just by being awful people on TV? Bethenny Frankel used reality TV to spawn a $120 million media empire, so until that stops happening? The answer is no.

Enjoy your weekends, folks!

Celebrity Weekly Round-up: Shut up about MTV shows already

Finally Friday, people! Although my weekend will be spent knee deep in a torn up house, as we discovered a water leak last night and will have to have our wall or floor torn up (yay, homeownership!), I'm still excited for the weekend for lots of reasons.

Extra baby cuddles.

"Sleeping in".

Messing around on the Internet without IS breathing down my back.

Watching MTV shows I've recorded.

That's why I can't shut up about Teen Mom 2. I know, I know. We've talked about it before. But I'm starting off this Weekend Round-Up with my first little bit of gossip from Teen Mom 2. I have a mild fascination with Leah and Corey, parents of twins and newlyweds from my home state of West Virginia. Their outdoor, cammo themed wedding was filmed for the season finale.

Is there trouble in paradise!? OK Magazine reported the couple filed for divorced this week. They seemed relatively normal and well-adjusted throughout the series and even at the "reunion" show, but they are 19-years-old.

Speaking of MTV shows, I'm sort of addicted, you guys. I started watching My Life as Liz and am inexplicably obsessed. Is it a reality show? Is it a scripted drama? No, it's a bizarre, hybrid love child of the two. It doesn't even PRETEND to be a scripted drama, a la The Hills, but clearly it is. The cast is comprised of either really bad actors or actors who are really good at reality TV. Like happening upon a really bad car wreck, I can't look away.

The show stars this girl who is trying to be all hipster and alternative. Are people still called "alternative"? She is rebelling against the typical blonde Barbie girls of her small Texas town, so she wears funny t-shirts and skinny jeans and dyed her hair red and hangs out with nerdy guys.

I got hooked during maternity leave when my Mom and Dad were visiting. I watched a marathon and at one point I realized Dad was watching too when he asked who one of the characters was. "He's Bryson. I think she is dating him? Or wants to? And I think he's dating somebody else? And I thinks he's shy?" You know you've got a doozy on your hands when questions are answered with more questions.

The other night we were watching Fantasty Factory and after it was over some other random show called RJ Burger or some nonsense came on. Hubby said, "Oh, I'll record this, looks like something that you would like." And I was all, "Pshaw! NO! I'm not 17, thankyouverymuch."  Fifeteen minutes later I was hooked.

Wait, I'm off track. More celebrity news y'all don't care about.

Taylor Swift bought her Mom and Dad a $1.4 million home.

Dear my Mom and Dad: Sorry I'm not T-Swift.

Dear Baby Blogworthy: Please remember this when you're older.

Dear Hutch: Please skip over this one because we all know how you feel about T-Swift.

via

Who watches Dancing with the Stars, raise your hands? I personally watch it for Maks, that sweet hunk of Eastern European man meat. This year he's dancing with Kirstie Alley and they have had some little spills, like a few weeks ago when he just fell down, then this week when she lost her shoe.

It makes little sense that Kirstie Alley is still in the competition after so many flubs, until you realize she's a phoenix and will continuously raise from the ashes of her destroyed career until it's just her and Betty White. Believe me, it'll happen. 

But Betty White will always win.

Have a happy weekend, all!

Anything I missed? Comment it!

Celebrity Weekend Round-up: Mariah Carey is still pregnant.

It's Friday, people, GET EXCITED.

People sure were excited for Friday all week at work. Remember the dry erase board artists? They struck again (sort of):

The "art" if you will accumulated slowly throughout the week. Today? GONE. All of it. I was sure I'd come in and some other clever individual would have some beautiful Friday artwork. Maybe they'd pull out the purple and yellow markers and design a Friday message so mind-blowing that we could all pack it up and immediately go home.

Instead some sourpuss erase the whole thing. Boo to you, sourpuss.

Let's celebrate this weekend with a few celebrity stories, shall we? Think of it as some virtual dry erase board art all up in your business.

First, Mariah Carey is still pregnant, and celebrated by taking some nudie pics with her husband.

Ok, so, why does it feel like Mariah Carey has been pregnant for 18 years? I expect, any day now, for US Weekly to run an article about how Mariah Carey gave birth in a bathtub full of Dom Pérignon and celebrated her twins' graduation in the same day. Cigars, birthday cake and placenta for everyone!

The pregnant body is beautiful and blah blah blah, but really? you're going to describe them as NASTY? I bet  Mariah Carey has a whole room in her mansion dedicated to hiding her embarrassing photography, including the picture where she painted her pregnant belly with a picture of a butterfly.

Mariah Carey has the cray-cray.

In reality TV news, MTV has ordered Jersey Shore spin-offs for three of the cast members. There goes the neighborhood. And by neighborhood, I mean a whole generation of teenagers.

Please join me in a rousing chorus of NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

What else, what else...Oh, Kevin Federline needs to be fixed. Seriously, whoever is telling him that continuing to procreate needs to stop. I'm thinking about putting a little donation button over on the sidebar for "Kevin Federline Vasectomy Awareness".

Some math!!

Kevin Federline + model/prettylady/popsinger = babies X 5 / 3 mommies

Now that's math I can get behind.

If Kevin Federline can have that many children with that many pretty girls, there's hope for everyone out there.

Your thoughts on any of these stories? What did I miss (besides a lot)(actually, pretty slow news week this week). Sound off!

Is your blog droopy?

One upon a time, I blogged on a blog called It's Blogworthy.

Wait, I still do.

Maybe I should say, once upon a time my blog was super lame. I started it on a whim in August 2008. I wrote a singular post, nobody read it and I stopped blogging until almost a year later. In August 2009, I wrote about my new stove being delivered, posted the link on Facebook, and got my first follower, Jennifer, my sorority sister from college.

I kept blogging about everything, and by everything I mean I didn't have any specific topic. It was just a hodgepodge of drivel that I found mildly entertaining. A few more people did, too, and kept coming back.

I made approximately $0.00 monies on my blog. That means I wasn't willing to put any more than that amount into it. I run a blog on a free platform and found a free template and the only cost was my time to install it. I cant' tell you why I choose that template. I guess it just worked OK and had what I needed and didn't look like 10000 other blogger blogs out there, so I went with it. I didn't put any time into branding or promoting it, even though that's what I do for a living -- branding and promoting.

So it just sat there, my little slice of the World Wide Web, being all sad and pathetic and....droopy. It's just the best way to describe it. Like our landscaping right around August, when all living things have just about enough of the Florida heat.

Then I had a baby. Then I had an epiphany (much easier to push out than a baby). I wanted to work on my blog.

I mentioned it to Liz and she told me about a new project she and Kristin were working on, consulting services to help bloggers get on their A game. She wanted to help me undroop my blog.

Image via elirose.com

The girls put on their Eli Rose Social Media hats, talked about my blog goals, evaluated my site and sent me a checklist of about 20 quick wins to improve my blog, blogging and blog audience. These included a redesign, branding efforts, behaviors to promote my blog on Twitter and in the blogging community and tips to build a more consistent blogging schedule.

(I used some form of the word 'blog' in the above paragraph 7 times. Some kind of record? Probably.)

They knew I didn't have the monetary resources for a full blown blog redesign and move to self-hosting, so they gave me solutions working within my current (free) blogging platform, including focusing my brand, developing a new tagline (which they helped me brainstorm) and improving my Twitter page.

I asked my friend, a designer, to throw together a header based on what I wanted my blog to convey: I blog about things that are newsworthy to me. Combine the two words? Blogworthy. This blog is like the Access Hollywood of my life.

And I love pink.

And if you haven't clickyed on over here from your Google Reader, go ahead and do so...........NOW!

Anyway, I redesigned the blog myself using a lot of code/cheats for blogger and a simple Blogger template. They suggested a template that could go mobile, so I went with it. They suggested I start posting on a schedule, so I went with Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They suggested a lot of other fantastic things, but you'll have to contact them for your own evaluation. I'm not in the business of giving away trade secrets thankyouverymuch.

One of my goals, down the road, was to monetize the blog (isn't that everyone's goal?) and they were able to suggest some things for that, too. I mean, I won't even be able to make enough to pay for my domain registration, but 1 cent a day is better than 0 cents per day, am I right or am I right? (I'm right.)

Although I knew these two women already, what I appreciated most was that they evaluated my blog as professionals, not as friends. Does it hurt to hear your blog design sort of sucks a little? YES. But they virtually held my hand as we improved the blog together. They didn't just give me ideas and then leave me high and dry -- they checked-in once per week, if not more, to see how things were going.

A month or so later, Kristin emailed to see how things were going, and I told her the numbers could speak for themselves: 40% increase in pageviews; over 50 new subscribers in two months; 3 new email subscribers (which says a lot -- if someone likes you so much they want to get your post via email), Twitter follow increase of 20%! And that's putting maybe 5 hours per week total into my blog (that's all the time I have).

I owe a lot to these two women. They are extremely savvy, in-tune with what's going on in the social media world and successful bloggers on their own blogs. I know this new venture is going to be great for them.

Eli Rose Social Media can help bloggers, small business owners and Etsy shop owners and I highly recommend them for anyone who wants to perk up their droopy blog. Go! Now! What are you waiting for?

*I was not compensated at all for this review.It's just my honest opinion of how much their services have helped me. Contact them on Twitter @eliroseSocial, or email them Info[at]EliRose.com. *

Celebrity Round Up: Thank God I'm not a Teen Mom

Welcome to Friday, friends! And not a moment too soon, either. Who's ready for some already stale celebrity news and my commentary?

We'll start out with Teen Mom. Chelsea, who has daughter Aubree (that's two Es, make note) with ex-boyfriend Adam, has decided that he can't see his daughter until he pays $2000 back child support. And presumably, gets a job and a place to live. And more presumptions here: stops working on his car 24/7.

I want to talk about Teen Mom for a minute. Pull up a chair and let's chat.

I started getting into 16 and Pregnant right around the same time as I was, myself, pregnant. Actually, I was almost twice as old as these girls and pregnant, but they don't have shows like that (wait, yes they do, A Baby Story -- how soon I forget the approximately 40 hours of that show I watched during maternity leave). I was fascinated with three things:

1. How uneducated these girls were about basic reproductive biology
2. The actual giving birth part of it, because in my mind, if a 16 year old girl could push out a baby, I could consider it NBD for me to push one out, too.
3. The blatant disrespect a lot of these young fathers had for the mothers of their children, because I don't care how old or young you are, carrying a child is no joke.

The very first one I watched featured Chelsea, a slightly spoiled teenager who lived with her doting father and thought she and her "prince charming" (in the loosest sense of the word) would raise their child and live happily ever after. Those dreams were shattered when he TEXED her a break up. And he called her a "stretch mark bitch" while he was at it.

Saying I was appalled only scratched the surface.

I watched all these girls: Leah (a West Virginia girl pregnant with twins after dating her boyfriend for only a month); Kailyn (who lived with her babydaddy in his family's McMansion); and Janelle (whose boyfriend was a "model" and whose mother is a crazy). They were tied together by the common bond of naivety -- not irresponsibility, because most of the girls on this show aren't BAD kids.

Save for Janelle. She is a piece of work. Gave up custody of her son so she could get her life back together, and by get her life back together she means stealing her Mom's credit cards to go on an impromptu road trip to NJ with her boyfriend and smoking pot literally less than 100 feet from where her son lives.

Clearly, most of these girls (except for Janelle) are doing the best they can with the situation they are in. Chelsea doesn't work or go to school and can't manage to finish a handful of classes to get a high school degree, but has a supportive, loving family and adores her daughter. Leah and her babydaddy showed more maturity handling their relationship than most college students (with the added burden of a mysterious medical problem with one of their beautiful twin girls)(and they seem to really love each other despite all these challenges). Kailyn realizes being with her son's father and fighting constantly would be worse for her child than if they stayed together, and works two jobs (while going to school).

I like watching this season because they aren't girls who pawn their children off on parents and party every night. MTV cast a relatively level headed bunch (again, except for Janelle). I have to say, they *appear* to be holding it together better than I do most days, and these girls are half my age. Anyway, I'm a fan and that's my little guilty pleasure.

But that doesn't mean I can't make fun of Leah and her redneck boyfriend -- after all, the are my West Virginia kinfolk.

In other big and marginally sad celebrity news, Liz Taylor died this week and was laid to rest yesterday at Forest Lawn Memorial Garden. I don't know about y'all, but my Facebook feed lit. UP. Liz Taylor fans came out of the woodwork. Apparently, we were all big fans and didn't know it. I hope she's found peace because she did a lot of good on this earth. Although someone who shall remain nameless (but is also my son's grandmother) will never forgive her for breaking up Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.

Happy Friday, Everybody! Enjoy the weekend!

Baby's first basketball bracket

Baby blogworthy's first tournament is in full swing and his Daddy couldn't be more psyched. In fact, yesterday during the games, Hub set the baby  in the bumbo (which we call the bimbo because its infinitely funny to say "baby blogworthy, wanna go sit on the bimbo?") (Oh, there's CPS right now!) in front of the three tvs and let him "watch" until the baby sort of tipped over a little like somebody's drunk uncle.

I can only imagine the shenanigans that will happen when they are home together all summer.

Anydrunkbaby, the genius and epic octopi bracket pickem was just as successful as I had imagined, except we came woefully close to a pre bedtime meltdown. Hub took it very seriously. He kept saying "that hit didn't count. His arms were already up. Pull his arms down and do it again." And I'm all, dude, he doesn't even know his own name yet. I hardly think he realizes he's choosing the winner of basketball games. He just wants to hear Squidbert make those bubbly sounds.

I know in my last post about this I said he likes them both, but I sort of lied. I mean, he likes both, but definitely likes Squidbert a little more, probably because of all the sounds and jaunty seafaring medleys he plays.

Here's how it went down:

Squidbert was the higher seed always because we wanted to give Luke a little handicap. We figured he would usually go for his favorite and choose the high seed. It worked until the last region, when he decided Captain Calamari was more fun.

Then when it was all said and done, Baby Blogworthy picked Memphis to win the national championship.

We posed him with his bracket and took some pictures as I prayed that the sleep window wouldn't slam shut in the middle of our photo shoot.

At first he excited to see what his bracket looked like:

He's so advanced. Not only can he read, he can read upside down.

When Daddy told him that there was no way a 12 seed would win the NCAA National Championship, he got a little bit pissed. Then Daddy explained to him that it's OK, we all make bad NCAA choices, but at the end we just wad up our brackets and throw them angrily in the trashcan. Baby Blogworthy was one step ahead:

Nomming is more fun than wadding & throwing.

But as time went on, he became at peace with his choices.

After all, there's always next year.

By the way, did you catch that we only have three TVs this year? Downgrade.

How are your brackets looking? How many TVs did your significant others decide to put up?

Tearin' up my heart

5)  A song with significance.

I have a confession to make.

Back in the day, and that day was 1998, my family and I were at Disney on a family vacation. It was my high school graduation present. During what I believe was our EPCOT day, Mom pointed out there was boy band concert that was being filmed for The Disney Channel. If you'll travel back in your memory some 13 odd years, you'll remember the late 90s being the Years of the Boyband. More spiky hair and funky harmonies than you could shake a stick at.

So, this group was NSYNC, and my sister and I turned up our noeses BIG TIME. We were all, pshaw, boybands? Are for teenyboppers. Thanks, but no thanks. Let's get a funnel cake and ride Spaceship Earth again.

Mom was like, "Not even for free?"

We were all, "Um, ten-year-old girls screaming over some lame made up group isn't' our idea of a good time, Mom."

And Sister Fate, she heard every single word of that conversation and wanted us to pay for our flippant attitude toward boy bands. The NSYNC concert aired two months later and NSYNC became the hottest boyband in the country. We were kicking ourselves for missing the concert.

 A few months later, inexplicably, we were hooked. We had a fever, and the only cure was clearly over produced songs sung by pretty boys. We still say that making the decision not to watch that free concert cursed us to have bad seats to everything for the rest of our lives.

Although at 19 years old I was almost a decade older than their target demographic, I was a sucker for anything and everything NSYNC related. We attended several concerts. We bought every CD -- even the import singles with exclusive German tracks (this was before iTunes, i.e. the stone ages). We even bought those stupid teen magazines and hung posters up on our walls. I'll never forget the winter we took off in the snow to get handi-tac from Walmart.

Why would a college aged girl become obsessed with a boyband? It was probably the fear of changes that were happening all around me. My grandmother had a stroke the next summer and then passed away the next fall. I'd started college, and it was new and weird and sometimes hard. My Dad's company transfered him to Cincinnati, where he lived 5 days out of the week. I was ending one romantic relationship and starting another one. 

Change is awkward and unsettling. Boybands are the complete opposite of that.

I'm a big fan of the 90s station on XM Radio. Everyone once and awhile, the familiar opening notes of Tearing Up My Heart will start blaring on my way home from work and I can't help by smiling about a simpler time when a group of singers brought so much joy to my life.

Celebrity week round up: Charlie Sheen has tiger blood

I'm starting a new thing where I will tell you guys about all my favorite pop culture and celebrity moments of the week. We're going to kick off this guilty-pleasure fest with the guy who makes guilty-pleasures a lifestyle choice: Mr. Charlie Sheen.

image via

What a week he's had! He starts this week going off the deep end with an interview on Good Morning America. My friend at work sent it to me and I sat at my desk laughing because he was just so ridiculous. Since then, he's become an internet phenomenon, spawning Twitter hashtags with his off the wall quotes. Seriously, he's done gone lost it.

My friend Brooke from Building a Kingston Castle was on Sheenwatch 2011 all this week. Brooke, what can you tell us?

I’m Brooke and I’ve been camped outside of Sober Valley Lodge (aka Charlie Sheen’s house) waiting desperately for the most recent news of Sheen Watch 2011. Fans have been shocked and entertained by the antics of Sheen as of late. Sheen, who claims to be not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but instead high on himself, has a tough road of recovery ahead of him. There is currently no treatment for addiction to Charlie Sheen, as suffered by the non-drug’s most notableonly addict, Charlie Sheen.  Sales of baby tigers have sky rocketed among the uber chic since Charlie Sheen declared himself a warlock and  cited their blood as the source of his delusions of grandeur amazingness. The bi-winning (as opposed to bi-polar) actor has been holed up with his Goddesses (read: possible hostages) since taking a left turn for Crazy Town late last week. Holed up, that is, aside from stops on his tour of self-loving media appearances sprinkled with such notable quotes as:

- "It's perfect. It's awesome. Every day is just filled with just wins. All we do is put wins in the record books … We win so radically in our underwear before our first cup of coffee, it's scary." - JMJE, Making Stuff is Fun

--  "[the script] was written for normal people, people who aren't special, people who don't have tiger blood and Adonis DNA." - The Random Blogette

--  I'm on a drug.. a drug called Charlie Sheen It's not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off, and your children will weep over your exploded body. - Natalie, My Crazy Busy Life

There’s no telling what this loose canon will do next. There’s only one thing we can be sure of: it must be fun to be high on Charlie Sheen.

Back to you, Amanda.

Thanks Brooke!

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In other news of celebrities whose lives are a glittery spectacle of one liners and rehab, Lindsey Lohan was recently interviewed by Extra and said she was "focusing on her recovery.....and stuff."

I personally wonder what that "stuff" could be. I came up with a list:

• stealing more things
• snorting coke
• working on her career
• coloring her hair red, then blonde, then red again
• being a burden on society

Which of these things is least likely?

Oh, I think we're getting a message from Brooke out at Sober Valley Lodge. What's up, Brooke?

This just in. VH1 has announced another season of The Surreal Life with notable crazies Charlie Sheen, Britney Spears, Gary Busey, Winona Ryder, Michael and Lindsay Lohan, an Olsen Twin, Macaulay Culkin, Janice DIckinson, Buffalo Bill, and Dakota Fanning. There are still many questions as Sheen Watch 2011 rolls into its second week:  such as “who are these Goddesses he’s snorting Charlie Sheen off of?” and “how can any of us ever be winners if we’re not total freaking rockstars from Mars?” Again, I’m Brooke reporting live from Sheen Watch 2011 outside Sober Valley Lodge.

Wow, it's been awhile since we witnessed a trainwreck quite as spectacular as the one we're seeing unfold during Sheenwatch 2011.

Finally, in reality TV news, Reality Steve finally got it wrong. This blogger, who has, for years, accurately predicted the outcomes of Bachelor and Bachelorette seasons with the help of an "ABC Insider", determined one girl to win, but it's actually the other. Sorry to be so vague, but maybe not everybody reads spoilers like me.

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Reality Steve has always been super smug about it. He also likes to point out how fake the show is, and this is news to approximately nobody. Zero people are surprised by the bombshell that contestants aren't living real life on the Bachelor. Oh, tell me more, Reality Steve. You mean flying in a helicopter to a private island FOR DINNER doesn't happen in real life? Why, I thought I was just missing out.

Collective eye roll *here*.

Enjoy your weekends, everyone!

This blog baby crew rolls deep

Last spring, there were some pretty busy and fertile myrtle bloggers.

I read regularly and love a handful of bloggers who were, like me, pregnant and due between November and April. I remember fondly the Twitter conversations in eager anticipation of one blog baby, then a couple more. And also one who came early. And a few who haven't joined us yet.

I like to think of these sweet babies as Luke's blog baby crew, little ones bound by their mother's addiction with the internet. Allow me to introduce them:

Luke (Baby Blogworthy)
Born November 29, 2010
8 lbs 11 oz (ouch)(I can verify this because I was the one pushing him out)
23.5 inches

Now in order of appearance:

Olivia Jane
September 25, 2010
3 lbs. 9 oz.
17 inches
32 weeks & 1 day gestation
Early due to PPROM

I remember the day that Lisa (from Seriously.) Tweeted that her water broke. I believe that she was due right around the same time as Luke, so that really hit me like a ton of bricks. I anxiously awaited her updates and she let the social media world know she'd delivered a healthy, but tiny, baby girl.

 
Now, four months or so later, Olivia is  a healthy, thriving 5 month old in the 50th percentile for both weight and height!

Then there are the "Doscope" Twins, aptly named by Brooke. These girls belong to Kallay who writes at Kallaydoscope (see? Brooke is funny haha).

Kallay's twin girls were due a few weeks after Luke, but arrived two and a half weeks early after their Mama experienced some blood pressure and edema issues.

Marilyn (Baby B)
5 lbs. 15 oz.

Lillian (Baby A)
6 lbs. 4 oz.

They were born December 7th at 12:38 and 12:39 pm. They were both 19 inches. And sassy. Today they are healthy, sweet, smiley big girls and clearly adored by their Mama.

And we also have some babies set to join the crew soon:

Foxy, from the fox den, is due in April. Her little man, who will be named Lyle, is ready for his close-up (blog close-up, that is.)

Last but not least, the next baby, also due in April, belongs to Chicken from Tales from the Chicken Coop: A day in the life of Mrs. Chicken. Now Chicken and I are 99.9% sure that Luke and her little lady, Ava, are destined to be married someday because Luke and Ava sounds like a couple from a romance novel, eh?

Although clearly the girls outnumber the boys in this blog baby crew, so I hope it doesn't turn into an "Amanda and her friends in a sorority circa 2002" situation where all the girls fight over two boys. Let's keep it friendly here, babies, there are plenty of fish in the sea.

There are tons of other babies out there and if I forgot to include yours, it's nothing personal, I just have extended preg brain.

The point of this, besides showing off super cute baby pictures and talking nonsense about baby gangs, is to reinforce how fortunate I feel (and presumably, all the above Moms of healthy babies also feel) that my baby was full term, healthy and thriving. And continuing to thrive. And I pray every night that he continues to stay in good health. I know the other Mamas do too. For those two Mamas who have 6 more weeks until their worlds WILL BE ROCKED TO THE CORE (trust), I'm sure they pray for the same things -- healthy, thriving babies.

That's what we all want when it comes down to it.

This is why I'm walking for the March of Dimes March for Babies on 3/26. I want every baby to pop out healthy and full term. Hell, I even want some of them to be 4 days late like my little lazy baby, just so those Moms will have something to hold over their child's head when he gets older. I'm walking for all these babies and the hundreds of thousands of babies starring in their own blogs.

If you are so inclined, here's where you can donate to my walk or donate to Lisa's walk.

Great, like I need another addiction

Like cherry icees, Twitter and Bejeweled, I've become obsessed with Words with Friends.

I have a Droid phone, so I never had access to the game before it was released on this platform earlier this week. I was hooked instantly.

This didn't mean I wasn't scared. Oh, Lawd, was I scared, or more appropriately, I was intimidated.

I love words - the way they sound, fit together, evoke emotion. 

But y'all, I'm about to make a confession that will blow you away: I'm not a speller. I mean, I'm college educated, so I can spell, but I don't like it nor am I that concerned with it. Isn't that why spellcheck was invented? Because some geek was so filled with nerd rage over not being able to spell that he came up with that magical cure all?

I'm not the type of person who can look at a group of letters and see long, complex words. No, give me an O and a T and ill come up with a plethora of three letter words like NOT and DOT and POT. Throw an S into that mix and now I'll throw down DOTS and POTS. I might even try NOTS, hell maybe it'll accept it? Stranger things.

I like playing this game on our ipad called Chicktionary. Its Boggleish. You are given seven letters and have to get as many words as you can in three minutes. And awesomely, it takes place in a henhouse, which - let's be honest with each other for a second - is really why I play.

But make no mistake, I'm terrible.

So Words with Friends. I was nervous big time. I'm currently in 19 games and being solidly trounced in approximately 17 of them.  Surferwife is beating me by 80 points. But then I'm playing three letter word bonanza with Natalie and Hutch, so those are barn burners. And KLZ played my least favorite word EVAR, which is "wad". I dare you to say that word and not cringe a little.

Then I tricked my husband into it, and we're in an epic battle of wits and wills. Neither one of us likes losing. In fact, once we were playing a card game and he was winning, so I threw the cards at him and told him I was done. And when I say "once", I mean "every single time we play". We don't play cards anymore.

At any rate, your takeaways from this blog are 1. I have an addictive personality. 2. I make a living as a writer but can't spell and 3. You should play me on WWF because you will win.