I need a dolla, dolla

Ohhh the joys of having a government job. I have national holidays off, a very consistent schedule and...I'm completely broke. So broke in fact, that I brought in all the coins from my (adorable) piggy bank this weekend and literally rejoiced when I got back $13. I clapped and did a little dance and almost hugged the couple in line behind me. Note for New Yorkers: FYI- TD Bank no longer counts change for free, they now charge 6% and to that I say:

Dear TD Bank,

I NEED THAT DOLLAR.

Love,

Broke in the East Village

So I did a couple of major grocery shopping excursions, didn't go out this weekend and have officially declared that I won't spend a penny this week.

Not.a.single.penny.

Ok, full disclosure: in typical New Yorker fashion that does not include the $1.25 I spend on coffee every morning because that coffee doesn't count and I need it to breath. But besides that...

Not.a.single.penny.

Raise your hand if you think I can do it!

(This came up when I googled "monopoly money" aaaand I want them)

I heart NY

I often fantasize about the blog post I will write describing my love for New York. Yes, from time to time, I tease you with silly iphone photos that hastily show the little things I love about this city. But, no no…I’m talking a mother of all posts…a pièce de résistance of Glitter Me This, a pillar of my writing career. This will be a full-blown love letter to NYC that I will then obviously submit to New York Magazine. They’d take one read of the literary work of genius and declare that I must work for them. Tomorrow. Not a day to be wasted. Obviously.

Seriously, this is what I fantasize about…that’s normal.

But unfortunately for you (and the entire roster of New York magazine subscribers?) today is not that day. Instead please enjoy this story I produced back in December as a video love letter to the city during the holidays. I think it’s rather adorable if I do say so myself and I figured I should show it to you...ohhhh before February. As always- if the embedded video’s quality sucks (which it usually does) go to this link to watch it from our video on demand player.

"In a city so quick and so anonymous- there’s a sense we’re in it together. It’s as if we’re all in on the secret…that this is the greatest place on earth."

Award winning post coming soon? Ya ok.

Warm, healthy lunch options #1

Because I know you care...I've been on a quest for winter lunch at the office options. This yummy in my tummy lunch comes courtesy of Trader Joe's. The butternut squash soup is warm and creamy and totally hits the spot. Definite bonus points for the re-sealable container that makes this the perfect keep-at-the-office option. I heat the soup up and put a couple of croutons in the bowl (I say bowl but in reality I use the cups that come attached to the water cooler- super ghetto) Delish! Combine this with a side of sauteed veggies (made at home and brought into work) or a piece of fruit and this is a definitely a warm, crunchy, filling lunch! My only problem is that I had to give Adele, my officemate, the bag of croutons to hide from me because I started eating them like chips. Mmmm.

Butternut Squash soup: 90 cal, 2g fat- per 1 cup

Croutons: 25 cal, 1.5g fat- per 2-3 croutons

Lovely!

"As opposed to planet Look At Me, Look At Me"

Please read that title above in the sassy voice of a one, Juila Stiles, for it to be fully effective.

That quote kept popping up into my head when thinking of a title for this post. I know this post is very much "look at me, look at me." But I guess that's kind of what this whole blog is about? Ugh, whatever, you like it.

Without further ado, look what I made this week! PS- our embedded video kind of sucks. If you want to watch it bigger (cause I know you do!) watch Weekly Dose here and NYC4Free here.

Weekly Dose:

NYC4Free:

Not trying to toot my own horn but....toot toot.

Cold and hungry brr

I had my summer lunch routine down pat. For those warm summer months, I kept spinach, shredded carrots, turkey slices and spray dressing in the fridge at work. Throw some almonds on and mmmmm. Weirdly that little salad was completely satisfying each day.

Sidebar: This is totally unlike the eating habits of my father. Not only will he not repeat the same meal, he will not even repeat parts of the meal. If he ate chicken for lunch he can't have chicken for like 2 days after, even if it is prepared totally differently. This drives my mom crazy. She'll want to cook a delicious dinner of..say.. barbecued chicken and my Dad will come home and nicely tell her that he had sesame chicken for lunch. Blink blink. Um, yes? What's the problem? Cue (loving) eye rolling and reconfiguring of menus. I've been told he's gotten much better. Dad, can you please leave a comment and defend yourself?

With the recent change in weather, my food mood has started to shift and I can't get a good lunch routine figured out. Sure, I can bring canned soup or even heat up a nice, warm Lean Cuisine... but both are lacking a certain je ne sais quoi. Let's be honest, I'm starting to crave a diet consisting only of pizza and hot apple cider. Clearly that's a problem (or is it?)...I desperately need to come up with some good, filling, healthy solutions.

$9.99 Dave (his new official name) has the lunch situation totally figured out. Please feast your eyes (pun?) on the most awesome purchase ever.

It's like a sandwich trapper keeper and I think I need one.

Candy corn? Well done, my friend.

"From the minds of paranoid crackheads"

It's time for a little story.

Often times in the TV industry, online databases are used for the music you hear throughout your favorite shows. Production companies pay a fee to get access (and publishing rights) to the thousands of songs ranging from hundreds of different genres. Music is everything to a story so learning how to successfully navigate through the huge databases to find what you need is incredibly important. And to pick the right music, you have to worry about things like tone and pacing and timing. At times the possibilities seem endless, other times you can't find one thing that works. (It's taken some time but I've totally become a master of picking out the music)

But picking out the right music is just half of the battle. GETTING to that song is the really hard part. The search options are ridiculous- genre, tempo, instrument, era, country and mood (just to name a few). On top of that, the databases are really finicky and often times I find myself getting in yelling matches with them.

This leads me to my point. After all of the searching, you get to a list of songs. Each song has a name with a description aimed to help you get a better idea of what the track sounds like. Now, my dear Glitt'o Babes, this right here is the point of this post. The names and descriptions for these songs are the dumbest, most hilarious, most ridiculous bits of unhelpful information I have ever seen. I like to picture a guy sitting in his office whose sole job it is is to take lots of drugs and write these descriptions.

"Duuude this song sounds totally spacy and out there."

"Dude, let's call it galaxy quest and say it has a seductive slow, mysterious tempo"

"Duuuude"

In short ladies and gentleman, I have discovered my dream job. For your enjoyment, I have gathered screen shots of some of my favorites I have come across in recent months. Song name is on the left, description is on the right.

...Because who really wouldn't want a song called Butt Munch?

Then slide into a glorious pool of dark chocolate pudding? What does that feel like exactly? TAKE ME THERE.
Break out the sequins and shaking yo money maker? Whoa, how did you know what my weekend goals are?
I repeat: Wanna get wit dat dimepiece tonight.

I grouped this screen grab into one big chunk because I'm sorry...excuse me...what? "Dangerous shouty rap from the grim reaper's mean muthas. You gonna die..." Ya...totally.

Duuuuude.
Tubulaaaar.
Take me there?

For the record this song sounded like it was pulled straight out of an old Barney re-run. Devil's work? I don't think so.

Shit...how did they know?

Ummm...

Like I'm sorry but how in anyway is this considered an actual description for music? What does this even mean!

Read the two of these back to back. It's like reading a novel.

The name says it all...

My film instructor at KU first described the importance of music to the storytelling process with these awesome examples: Enjoy!

Flavorpill's Weekly Dose YIPPEE

Oh, why hello there. I've been drowning slowly at work lately and this weekend I seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet and slept for the majority of each day. Ahh it felt so good. Did you miss me? I missed you.

SO I can't believe I haven't shared this with you yet BUT...I produced a very very cool thing that I am very very proud of. Did I mention very very very? It's called Flavorpill's Weekly Dose and it airs weekly on NYC Life (Wednesdays! 10:30! Tune in!). Flavorpill is this lovely, wonderful website that acts as a culture guide for New Yorkers (they also have sites for other major cities). Flavorpill created a 30-minute (awesome) music show for NYC Life called Flavorpill Fix and I was asked to create a companion 1-minute series that highlights upcoming events to air right before the Fix each week. Ta-daaaaaa. Weekly Dose was born. Each week we go behind the scenes at the Flavorpill headquarters to tell you events you just CAN'T MISS in the New York area.

I'm very proud of how it turned out and I can't wait to keep making more! Big thanks to Leah Taylor and the whole Flavorpill team for their overall awesomeness! And also a big thanks to Miss Susan Schwarz for her beautiful handwriting.

Enjoy!!

PS- It's looking like the embedded video kind of sucks, so click this link to watch it!

b-a-c-o-n

The weird food tasting marathon at NYCMedia continues...

This time it was amazing mini-cupcakes brought in by Liza from our great Food Curated show. So I obviously went directly for the bacon cupcake. Sweet sweet lord of all things bacony sweet. It was unreal. No joke. I now am officially jumping on the bandwagon of bacon desserts. (See amazing recipe below holy moly). I didn't even try any of the other little baby cupcakes because I didn't want the bacon taste out of my mouth. You say gross, I say mmmmmmmm.

My BFF at Noble Pig has officially lost her marbles, please just look at what she made.

Pumpkin caramel bars with bacon.

Um what? After my recent transcending bacon-as-dessert experience I am now officially deeming Noble Pig a messiah. I'm going to make these. Don't judge me.

BACON.

Robust with a hint of peanut butter

So. I heard about this glorious thing called the Create Dunkin's Next Donut contest. In celebration of the donut majesty's 60th birthday, DD's put in a call for people to submit their ideas for a new donut. I didn't know about this amazing contest until it was too late but now my head is spinning with ideas of how I could possibly incorporate pop rocks into some donut dough.

The winner of this year's contest was Rachel Davis from Sharon, Mass (Jake and Claire do you know her??). Straight from the streets of Boston, Rachel created the Monkey See, Monkey Donut. It is: A cake donut with bananas foster filling, chocolate icing and topped with Reese's peanut butter shavings. Ya...

I obviously had to try it. But something this disgusting sounding definitely cannot be eaten alone so I brought it to today's pitch meeting and boy, was it the hit. Actually, that's a complete exaggeration..I was the only person that liked it.

Results of the taste test:

Kinda.

I originally took a picture of Dave Evans giving a thumbs up but he made me take another one because he didn't want people to think he liked it.

The filling tastes like banana creme pie and the peanuts on top give it a nice crunch! I was, however, violently nauseous for like 20 minutes after eating just one bite. But that's neither here nor there.

Hurray!

Omg I just looked at this again...is this chick wearing a donut necklace? Amazing.

Aaaaand because Donut Donuts is so hip and with it, they have an interactive build your own donut game on their website! Yay!

Make it work work

While at NYCMedia, I've had the opportunity to produce some really cool content. I’ve been promising to post some of my stories so that the 95% of people in my life who don’t live in New York can see my work. Da-da-da-daaaa. Here is a little sampler. An NYCTV poo poo platter if you will. Enjoy!

Hello, world. This is my baby. It’s a weekly community event calendar called NYC4Free and it airs daily on NYCLife and NYCGov. I’ve gathered a huge collection of shots incorporating a white canvas in different spots around the 5 boroughs. Each week, the calendar looks a little different as I mix up the different shots that I use. I pick the events, the graphics department then puts the words on the canvas’, we voice it over. Boom, boom, boom. If you’re in the NY area, catch new episodes Thursday nights at 9:30pm on Channel 25. It’s pretty adorable if I do say so myself!

The FIT Closet is a super, awesome series I produced for Fashion Week as part of the interstitial series, That’s So New York. The quick, cute one-minute stories went behind the scenes at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). We were granted a rare look at “The Closet,” an archive of over 50,000 articles of clothing and accessories dating back to the 18^th century.

Um , you guys, this place is amazing. It’s basically an entire floor of the school filled up of racks and racks and drawers and drawers of some of the most historically important pieces of fashion in the world. It’s climate controlled, light controlled and only specialized conservators can touch the items (and they must be wearing white gloves). Often times, designers donate items themselves for preservation. For these stories, the (genius) director of FIT, Valerie Steele, explained the cultural and historical importance of different genres of clothing and accessories.

The shoes episode was definitely the most fun to produce. My absolute favorite in the bunch is a pair of black boots that made me drool. Not kidding- I drooled in front of Valerie Steele. They are Alexander McQueen, he custom made them for his friend Daphne Guinness. She donated them to the collection for preservation. To say they are breathtaking is an understatement.

For the rest of the FIT Closet series and to watch any of the other great programming we have to offer, check out our VOD player (search FIT Closet to see the other 4 shows in the series) or log onto: nyc.gov/media.

1 centre st.

The new Eminem video is out and I'm posting it because the building I work in was used for it!! They were filming on our roof here a couple months ago and taking up a good chunk of their floor with their equipment. I work in the municipal building, 6 floors from the top and I often try to describe how amazing my view is outside my window. I think this video does it justice! You can catch shots of NYC as seen from our roof at the beginning and end of the video.

That's right make it work, eat your salad, no dessert.

Lately the light blogging has been due to a crazy, heavy work schedule. I absolutely HATE not blogging. When I finally do get to post an entry it's like a bulimic who finally purges after a huge binge. Ahhh it feels so great and I feel so light! (No? Insensitive?) While my blog has been suffering, I have been getting to do some pretaaay cool things for my job. Ch-ch-ch-check it out:

That's so New York shoot with host Kela Walker (She has google alerts! Hi Kela!) We had a marathon day of shooting last Friday on Coney Island. Here we're touring Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs- home of the annual hot dog eating contest!

Hosty host.

We went to Barnum's Circus. Here I am looking oh so beautiful and not creepy at all.

Alright, so I'm working on an amazing project going behind the scenes of the clothing archives at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) to air during Fashion Week. (The picture above is the Director of FIT). I'll post links in a few months and won't really talk about the project until then but in the meantime- look at the beautiful things I've had the opportunity to play with. And when I say play with I mean I can't actually touch anything and the people that are allowed to touch have to where special gloves. Try telling me that I can't touch something- god I was going ballistic.

1954 Dior

I was creeping in the racks- look at this vintage Westwood sparkle.

Shoes set up for the shoot.

Rodarte for Louboutin. Literally...no words.

Prada.

A paper dress from the sixties, these were popular for about 2 years and were meant to wear for only 1 day. This was considered an expensive one at about $3.50.

My favorite thing I saw throughout the day: Alexander McQueen boots donated by his best friend Daphine Guinness.

I can't say it enough but I love this little blog.

Drum roll please!

Please let me introduce to you my baby. She is quiet and nice and barely cries.

Ok just kidding. But here is my project that I've been working on for months. Let me explain how it works. What you're seeing is a weekly events calendar. I pick 2 events from each of the 5 boroughs and combine them in one cute little 2minute piece called NYC 4 Free. Everyone here loved what I did so much that it is going to be broadcast 3 times a day AND IN CABS!!

So basically I went all over NYC and the boroughs and filmed a million different shots of this white canvas. Then I had the graphics department add the events to that canvas. I will mix and match the shots I use each week so it will always look different. The shots from this week are pretty cool but just WAIT until you see what I filmed in Times Square. Two words for you: Naked Cowboy.

Note: this is in the baby stages- there are still some major tweaks to be done (especially to the opening) but I just couldn't wait any longer to show you!

Check it out on the NYCTV website as well for a complete list of this week's event.

omg omg omg omg

My story aired!!!! My story aired!!!!! I've done several stories with NYC-TV but this one is by far my favorite. I'm not allowed to embed so check it out HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE HERE.

The black hole that I've been living in to get this done was definitely worth it!

Oops, my bad

I should probably warn you next time I'm approaching a deadline week. My life turns into a black hole of working, eating and sleeping- leaving no room for the truly important things in life like Breaking Bad, Glee, and Modern Family...and Glitter Me This. Maybe tonight I'll eat something other than the Trader Joe's microwavable classic: Just...grilled chicken. (Seriously, look this shit up.) Good news: my show airs tonight!!!!! So I'm out from my black hole....just in time for 86 degrees and sunny.

Omg I just found a video review of Just...Grilled Chicken. Best line: "And I've even found myself even like, you know, just heating it up and having it with some ketchup for dinner, a little plain, I know.

CRAZY ASS NEW YORK DAY

BLIZZARD crazy 3-inch flake, sideways wind, non-stop for 15 hours kind of blizzard

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SHOWTIME my third and final Oscar Week story aired tonight. I'm so proud.

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EMMYS! Nominations were announced today, NYCTV picked up 15, including one for best host to the lovely Kela Walker. She added an amazing energy to each of my stories this week, definitely someone to look up to.

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INNER CHILD- Bad decisions made while babysitting an 11-year old.