I recently completed the final walk through of my home of twenty-two years. "The Manor," as it was affectionately christened by my daughter Tori, truly had a life of its own. Over the years, it garnered a lion's share of press attention ranging from architectural magazines to influential financial blogs....
5 Comments | Posted June 1, 2011 | 07:22 PM (EST)
Before the last guests had left Prince William and Kate Middleton's evening reception, rumors were already swirling about their first official tour. St. James Palace definitely caused a buzz in Southern California when it announced that the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would head due south to
Posted February 16, 2011 | 10:25 PM (EST)
Just a year after Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to take the stage and accept the Oscar for best director for The Hurt Locker, I was surprised to read recently published findings by SDSU's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. It was sobering to say...
Posted September 13, 2010 | 08:21 PM (EST)
It is said there are no coincidences or irony in Hollywood, so I'll just say it's interesting that today's Hollywood trades are making news themselves, rather than reporting other show business news.
And, the two stories couldn't be more different.
The Hollywood Reporter announced it will become a weekly, glossy-large...
Posted July 28, 2010 | 09:15 PM (EST)
I've never been sure how to conjugate the verb, but do know that I tweet, I can twit, I do twitter, I have twitted, sometimes I twittled while signing in to Twitter and I will twitomorrow. On second thought, I think I've twitched while twitting, too. Wait, that brings up...
Posted July 21, 2010 | 08:53 PM (EST)
I'm not a big fan of quotas, so I was surprised that I initially liked the idea that France wanted to increase the number of women on corporate boards.
Statistics showed that only nine-and-a-half percent of members of corporate boards were women. So, someone came up with the idea...
Posted June 18, 2010 | 03:29 PM (EST)
In between producing television shows and movies, writing and re-writing scripts, casting, running a giant company and fulfilling the mantle of "TV's most-prolific television producer," my husband always tracked the research into how teens and younger audiences were watching their television.
If there are any doubts, remember that his career...
Posted May 14, 2010 | 04:22 PM (EST)
Many people think famous people all know each other. They don't. I'm a fan like most people, and there are a lot of people I'd love to meet. There are some - like Bette Midler - for whom I drove across the Mojave Desert to see perform in Las...
Posted May 10, 2010 | 06:47 PM (EST)
One of the smartest, funniest and most fascinating characters I ever met was Gracie Allen. Although from 1950 to 1958, she was among television's biggest stars -- with an earlier list of movie credits, too -- she was just Gracie, wife, mother and mentor.
When the Alliance for Women in...
Posted April 14, 2010 | 03:08 AM (EST)
"From the start, Internet users have taken for granted that the territory was both a free-for-all and a digital disguise...," began the article in the New York Times to announce that "New Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments."
Yeah.
Since I started blogging, social networking and emailing, I have corresponded with,...
Posted March 18, 2010 | 07:19 PM (EST)
Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write or say:
I just participated in my first drum line.
Here's another one:
I also took my first hip-hop lesson.
I wasn't very good at either, but I had a couple dozen elementary school children enthusiastically...
Posted March 11, 2010 | 07:48 PM (EST)
I'm with everyone else who couldn't figure out Lindsay Lohan's $100 million lawsuit against E-Trade because one of the babies in a TV spot had her name.... You know, whatever she said.
But, once again, Advertising Age came to my rescue. I opened my mailbox on March 9 to find...
Posted February 27, 2010 | 02:49 PM (EST)
It's no secret that our parks in Los Angeles are in financial trouble; so, as a member of the Los Angeles Parks Foundation, a 501(c)(3) established to get private money to fund projects at our parks, I attended a meeting this week with our staff and a potential donor...
Posted February 16, 2010 | 01:57 PM (EST)
When I was younger, I never liked people who would say, "Well, things were certainly better when I was younger. People just didn't blah, blah, blah then."
I always thought that was a swipe at my Baby Boomers generation, and I didn't like it.
Lately, though, every Boomer I know...
Posted January 12, 2010 | 12:03 AM (EST)
As a California native, one of the first nuggets of information I learned in school -- and remember because it was repeated every year -- was our state motto:
The motto and its meaning were always presented as one phrase:
"Eureka! I have found it!"
I heard...
Posted November 27, 2009 | 09:57 PM (EST)
The day after Thanksgiving is always a day of reflection. Yesterday, we thought about all the reasons we have to be thankful. Today, once we separated into the "I'm not going to fight the Black Friday crowds" or "I'm going shopping" factions, it was back to real life.
I was...
Posted October 16, 2009 | 08:30 PM (EST)
Can it be true? Is there a Hollywood break-up with international repercussions happening behind the scenes? It's not that I like to gossip about relationships, but I couldn't miss this one.
On Monday morning, my Los Angeles Times greeted me with a story headlined, "Angry Stars All a Twitter." The...
Posted August 31, 2009 | 10:27 PM (EST)
I had to go back to re-read the latest Nielsen figures. Did it really report that the number of total television households in the United States is up?
It couldn't be. I thought I was one of the few people in the whole country who still watched TV.
Hadn't Nielsen...
Posted August 14, 2009 | 02:34 PM (EST)
Part of "Life Lessons101" -- right up there with the most-basic rules for survival -- is to tell the truth.
We lived in fear of developing a nose like Pinocchio, our pants catching on fire or being confined to our rooms like poor Beaver Cleaver or Bud Anderson, followed by...
Posted July 25, 2009 | 04:26 PM (EST)
As a celebrity by marriage (to Aaron Spelling, the most-prolific producer in television history), then by motherhood, then by house (yes, my house is the largest in Los Angeles, and it is for sale for $150,000,000), and, finally, because I had my own best-selling book, I've long been a student...
7 Comments | Posted August 3, 2011 | 01:53 PM (EST)