Reality TV is Harder Than it Looks!

No kidding...We were picked to be on a new HGTV show called "Renovation Realities"...which means no one helps you do the renovation project--we were all on our own.... We filmed for 60 hours... from Tuesday-Sunday... that gets edited down to 21 minutes and it will air in December on two networks...DIY Network & HGTV! Plus we will be on the HGTV website...as in... see more of "Barbara and Cindy" after the show airs...(that interview was done at the end of the last day - and I'm not sure either one of us made any sense - we were so spent)

The week long shoot was depleting...we were wired with mics (mine kept pulling my pants down so I hope they edit out all the ass shots) and we had a camera man in our faces the whole time...the true challenege was to do all the work and not lose an eye or a limb. We tore out two interior walls and one weight bearing exterior wall!... which had a huge glass window and a front door...here's the crazy part: we know nothing about home improvement!! I've never really used a drill, except once to hang a shade (we thought we could use our friends and our contractor- they fibbed about that)...Soooo, it was a wacked out, free-for-all of Barbara and I problem-solving our way thru it...swinging sledge hammers, a gold miner's pick and anything else I could find in the backyard, weilding power saws, almost getting electrocuted, dangerously firing nail guns that had a bigger kick than Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin on SNL, sawing two-by-fours incorrectly, cutting dry wall the wrong way, slapping mudd on too thick and taping (what a mess), sanding - talk about eating chalk dust, painting the walls and unfortunately the floor got some too--and then setting up the art room to make it all seem pretty.....at one point bricks were falling on us and I went and got the bicycle helmuts!!! And when Barbara was power sawing nails smooth with sparks flying in her hair I made her wear a blue rubber wig (the crew laughed their way thru the shoot) the producer Lori Golden-Styrer said "we were great-just what they'd hoped for."...so I translated that into "crazy people make for good TV watching!" And may I remind y'all - we are nearing 50 yrs. old...so six, 10 hour days, of hard labor was a physical & mental accomplishment. The room actually turned out great...(if you stand back and squint your eyes.)

I still can't feel my fingers, my arms won't raise above my chin, my back is throbbing, my calves are cramping, and I dropped a pant size...

UPSIDE: it was beyond fun!! I am so glad we did it and I'm even happier it's over!

I'll let y'all know when our episode airs in December, the name of the program is "Renovation Realities" and it starts airing on Nov. 13th...we saw the first episode - its nutty.

Do You Know What a Widget Is?

Widgets. Those cute internet search boxes you can download for free from Yahoo, Google, Widgetbox and a bunch of other cool sites. You can pick a weather widget, a travel widget, a clock widget, a countdown to Bush's last day in office widget, or a see my Redbubble.com artwork widget - which is there in the right column of my blog. Whatever you're into, there is probably a widget out there you can post on your blog, Facebook, or website.

I'm involved in redesigning the Travelocity Widget Search Boxes for our World Choice Travel partners. No kidding and it's fun! We have the stand alone widget box for searching Hotel, just air fare, or just car deals...we have the MPSB (Multi Product Search Box) Ha! Don't ya love acronyms! and the list goes on.

When I was first hired I spent days Googling and downloading widgets to my Facebook and this blog. I was testing their functionality and stability as well as how hard were they to post. Some are good, some not so good. But, one thing they all share is the "cool" factor once they are on your page.

Widget designers are like "Gods"...well More like Cardinals next to the IT Gods who can hack the un-hackable. Anyway....everyone needs a widget...so go find one now. Google free widgets, and figure out how to get it up on your Facebook. They are fun and a great way to spread the word...what ever word that may be...God's word, Webster Dictionary words, or Urban slang words...there are widgets for everyone just waiting for you to download!

What’s it mean to be “Creative” in the 21st Century?

Here’s the test. If you pass it - you are 21st century creative.

Goes like this. (1.) Do you find that your brain likes to visualize things? And by things, I mean you like to picture big parties where you’ve decorated the tables with lemons and green apples, except you’ve put them in translucent blue-green pipes that shoot 23 feet in the air… or you day dream what you’d do with a wind fall - right down to what your toilet looks like and how your new cars smell. (2.) Do you ever fill in the blank when people pause for too long? Like in TV ads or regular conversation, example: Bob is telling you about his fishing trip and how the mosquitoes were biting and then he pauses too long…..and you blurt out the first thing that comes into your head and say, “You whipped out a chainsaw and went after them little buggers until you got every last one of them, but accidentally chopped your wife’s ear off”. And he looks at you all strange and says, “No?” (3.) After a day at the office you find that watching TV doesn’t cut it so you go in your garage and break out a blow torch and melt old army men together for the fun of it? (4.) You hear a great sentence or spoken line and you immediately see how it could be turned into a website and you start jabbering all the ways to promote it and make money. (5.) You rewrite people’s emails, billboards, print ads, license plates and such, to make them funnier or better. (6.) You see a great house but can’t help thinking, if they’d only put a little more energy into their windows and landscaping it might actually pass as cool. (7.) Sometimes when you should be focused on a boring task you completely ditch it in favor of a spontaneous trip to the casinos (8.) You find yourself oddly drawn to well-designed department store windows and the way they draped fabric over stone and fake pools of water to create a Dali-esque environment. (9.)You understand post modern and all it’s magic and you’d never get caught with a porcelain rooster or duck in your kitchen, or anywhere in your house for that matter. (10.) You’ve been known to go to Home Depot and buy colorful, shiny lacquer outdoor paint and start changing the finish on anything that looks shabby.

How’d you do? You said yes to a bunch of them? Ha! Great, but here’s the thing, I was just kidding…these things don’t necessarily make you creative, more like weirdly innovative, inspired, original, imaginative, etc. Good for you and go forth, carry on, and continue to shake the world up a bit!

Jamaica Mon!

Hi there. I've just returned from a short biz/vacation trip to Jamaica... all I keep thinking is I don't know why anyone would go back for a second visit, unless they like to smoke weed.

Seriously, Jamaicans are the slowest people on earth, and I have to wonder if it's because they are all stoned.

Take their customs agents...they have ten or so booths, but only 3 people working, with over 200 people trying to get into their country at the same time...to spend lots of money! Why not staff accordingly instead of making your visitors stand in line for 2 plus hours in a hot stuffy room? This is a no brainer. Make the newcomers feel welcomed and comfortable and they will return. And yet, the Jamaican's don't seem to care.

Once you are through customs and have proved you are not smuggling any small birds or rare plants in, you have to wait for another hour or more for a shuttle ride, even if you are going to the Ritz! No one cares if you requested a town car four days in advance for a particular pick up time... they'll get you when they get around to it. Sit and wait in the heat, drink your Red Stripe and be happy Mon!...not so much.

Let's move on to the Grand Bahia Principe...an all inclusive...ooooh..."all inclusive" another term for crappy buffet food and watered down drinks. Even the restaurants on premise sucked. For three days I ate the worst food on this planet and had no other options, cuz it's too dangerous to leave the resort.

I will give the Grand Bahia points for nice architecture and a big pool with lots of activities for the thirty and under crowd...and that's where the kudos end. I arrived at the front desk in an open air room and the heat was

oppressive as I waited for the bellman to go to my room to see if it was ready...I got into my room and they were just finishing cleaning it...which was fine, except the soap had been rewrapped and was damp

...gross. They do not supply cream rinse...in a country where the humidity stays at about 80%...The toilet seat was broken and the AC and lights go out when you close the door to leave, which means your clock resets, your room gets warm and you can't charge your phone or computer unless you are there. If you ask for a 7am wake up call, expect it around 7:45. And the saddest part of all was they dressed their employees in long white shirts, vests and ties and they were sweating like hogs! For the love of God people, throw a nice golf shirt on them and some shorts and call it a day!

When my town car arrived to steal me away from the Grand Bahia to the Ritz - I wanted to cry.

The car was clean, cool and had champagne waiting in it with my girlfriend. We drove to the Ritz and the place was gorgeous, air conditioned through out and the food and booze rocked the party that rocked the party! Go Ritz. Worth every penny. The staff was dressed for the weather, they were efficient, very friendly and went out of their way if we needed something, like help.

The pool was fun and the beach was adequate...our driver took us into Hip St. in Montego Bay and we had drinks at the Bob Sled Cafe, shopped and

gambled. The gambling is coin slots only. No doubt the funniest thing was when my girlfriend dropped a hundred dollar bill down the wall (by accident) and it landed behind the pinball machines on the lower level. I heard her scream my name and reluctantly I went over to see what her issue was...looking thru the crack down the wall I saw the lone hundred dollar bill and promptly tore ass downstairs, bowled over a kid and grabbed the bill out of his small needy hand.

On the way back our very nice driver, Warren, a resident and self proclaimed Jamaican chef, took us to a local joint called Mobay Proper, where we had us some proper Jamaican soup and beans. Very tasty, and sweaty, cuz we sat outside and watched the Olympics on a sheet they hung from a tree. Yeah Mon!

Back from another excellent adventure...

So many funny things happened on this last vacation, it's hard to know where to start. There was the super-duper fat woman behind the fried dough cart in Boston. I think her purpose is that she serves as a warning to others.

There was the creepy hunched over guy in Ptown who followed us one night in the pouring rain and looked like a character out of a Hitchcock film as he ducked in and out of the steet lamps.

There was this really wierd guy in a bar who icked us out so bad we just left full drinks and went on to the next place. Then there were all these people who resembeled their dogs, and, oh yeah, there was this half-girl with no legs or arms that people were pushing in a baby carriage and she was sun burnt to hell. We firgured she couldn't talk and wasn't able to ask for some sun screen. I know it was so wrong, but we laughed anyway. I agree, we're bad people for that. But you know how it is sometimes when reality is a bit too harsh. We were sitting at a bar looking out the window when the half-girl passed by for the second time, and well, one or the other of us had to finally say something funny to take away the desparity. What are you going to do when you know you can't laugh and all you want to do is bust up? You've all experienced it at some point, ya know milk shooting out your nose, or laughing in church when its so quiet. Retard jokes and cripple jokes have been around a long time. That's all I'm saying.

Then there was the pig. But I won't go into that one.

Blah Blah Blog

Okay, so I'm a newbie to blogging. Not sure what kind of brain dumps will happen here, but God knows the voices need a platform!!!

Ha...okay so here goes....la... ti... da..... I posted an iMix today called "That's so Shibby" on iTunes. Tomorrow, if all goes well, I will put a widget on my Facebook page that points to it. I'm into widgets. And I don't know crap about code. I just like the way they look and work. Speeds up life, ya know? Like...I have a widget that counts down how many days Bush has in office...cool huh? I've got a create your own Simpson charactor widget-way fun. And, I've got a bazillion widgets loaded on my desktop. They range from weather widgets to travel, music, finance etc...very shibby!

Nuf' of that...here's a question...why is it when someone says something that hurts our feeling's, we get mad? Shouldn't we get sad first?...nope...sad comes later when we are forced to explain why we got so mad...and in the instant that we get mad we spout off something just as ugly and insulting, or... if we are wordsmiths, we possibly let slip something sharp and even more biting, a good bitch slap, just to make a point that "your rude comment was uncalled for", and so, I have stooped to your level to show you how it feels to be cut down....then... we step back and do some mental masterbation until we un-glue the truth and realize; I'm mad cuz I'm hurt, insulted, disturbed, and saddend by your words!!!...and well, frankly...anger was the first human instinct to arise. I really didn't see it coming...or coming out of my mouth, until it was "out". "Coming" from the mouth, now there's a "proxymoron"...as in it's moronic and I phoned it in.

that's it for my first blog. I hope you enjoyed it.

L8R

cHiGbY