Goodbye, Blogspot

I made a decision! I did! I did! I moved my blog!

Click here to see the winner!

Congratulations David!

My David (or perhaps I should say "Mark's David") is now in now the big cheese of Guitar Hero!

Via PR Newswire...

Game Industry Veteran David Haddad to Lead Guitar Hero Business Unit

Activision Publishing, Inc. announced today that David Haddad, Chief Operating Officer of Guitar Hero, will assume operational responsibilities for the business unit following the departure of President and CEO, Dan Rosensweig, who has left the company to pursue other career opportunities. Mr. Haddad will report to Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing, who will continue to oversee the Guitar Hero business unit.

We would like to thank Dan for his contributions to the Guitar Hero business," stated Mike Griffith. "We widened our leadership in the music gaming genre in 2009. And now, as we enter 2010, David Haddad, with his broad consumer product and digital/online experience, is the right leader to drive our agenda to improve profitability."

If you're a fan of Guitar Hero, Band Hero, or DJ Hero, David thanks you. Also, if you have any suggestions on how to improve the games, please let me know as I have David's ear and will let him know pronto. And in case you are wondering, yes, this is how corporate America works: you tell a chick-lit author with questionable moral values and a penchant for designer goods what you think of a certain product and she lets the COO of the company that makes said product know.

PS - Also, David, if you're reading this, I'm assuming that when I move into your backyard, my blob will be equipped with a TV and all the games, right? Otherwise I'll have to come into the house to play...

Well Look Who Made The New York Post

People care about what Beverly thinks! Her opinion matters. She's the Ebert of dog video world.


"Don't you know it."


From "Pup up Video" by Julia Szabo...

Karyn Bosnak, author of “20 Times a Lady” and owner of a Yorkie named Beverly, praised “PETelenovela” on her “Pretty in the City” blog: “Beverly can’t stop watching! (And neither can I . . . it’s hilarious.)”

Of course, unlike human film critics, dogs can’t really say what they think of the show. They can, however, express their delight in other ways...

Listen Julia, she was pawing at the computer, barking at the screen... she was delighted, alright.

Man, Beverly's a superstar. I mean, first she was on Regis & Kelly and now she's in The New York Post... If only she were thinner she could go so far.

Btw, this is what we were raving about... "PETelanovela."

PETelenovela--The Tutorial Trailer

Theodore Fitzgerald of PETelenovela | MySpace Video

Get your copy today!

PS - Beverly and I have not been paid for our endorsement of PETelanovela. (Unless, of course, someone's been slipping Bev treats on the side, which wouldn't surprise me because she'd pretty much say anything for food.)

Save Karyn on Kindle & Jersey Shore (Because somehow those things go together)

Save Karyn is finally available on Kindle! Yippie! It seems like I've been waiting forever for it to happen. (eBooks were never put into my original contract so it took some working out to get it done.)

Anywho, I'm really chatty right now and have a million things I want to tell you about, and while chatty is good for blog writing it's even better for book writing so I have to go. But before I do, I know I'm late to the conversation on this, but I've finally started watching Jersey Shore. I didn't get the fascination with the show and now that I'm six episodes in, I GET IT. I mean, honestly, I've been howling with laughter in my apartment alone over it for the last two days. It's amazing.

So here's my question to you: You're stranded on a deserted island and MUST have sex with one of the guys on the show in order to get off. (Excuse the pun.) You MUST. Who do you choose?

• Pauly D.
• The Situation
• Vinny
• Ronnie

COMMENT!

Sunday at the Movies

My friend Sarah Grace and I are going to see either An Education or A Single Man tomorrow. Has anyone seen either one? Thoughts? (The whole sixties style of A Single Man makes me swoon. Could Julianne Moore look more amazing?)

Trailers:





PS - My friend Sarah Grace is the author of two books: Grosse Pointe Girl: Tales from a Suburban Adolescence and The Girl I Wanted to Be. She just started a new blog called the Fortunate Cookie Blog.

The mission: every Friday, I track down a new cookie, break it open, and use the words inside as my life compass. I'm committing myself to act on them, whether they impart wisdom, warnings, or just a bunch of crap about someone being trapped inside of a cookie factory (road trip, anyone?).

At the very least, I'll go from hamster to guinea pig. What do I have to lose?

Or more importantly, what do I have to find?

Only time will tell.

Let's get cracking.

Isn't that fun? Please visit her and say hello!

The Belted Maxi Pad

"You know what you should get? One of those belted maxi pad things.
Have you ever worn one of those?"

"Uh, no, they were a little before my time."

"Well, I think you should bring 'em back."



Oh, okay, Mark, I'll get right on that. (On second thought... nah.)

A**hole at the Laundry Mat

So I'm doing my laundry. I'm putting quarters in the dryer and trying to keep track. "Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes..."

And then I hear, "Excuse me, miss? Miss?"

I turn around and see some dude holding up a pair of biker shorts. "Are these yours?"



Are they mine? Seriously? Do I look like I'd try to squeeze my ass into a pair of biker shorts, mother f*cker? You made me lose count.

"No."

"Oh, okay..."

Now I have no idea when my dryer will be done. Dick.


Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Miracle on the Hudson

NEWSCASTER: Survivors of US Airways Flight 1549 are celebrating the one year anniversary of the Miracle on the Hudson. After having breakfast with Captain Chelsey Sullenberger, they plan to mark the moment of impact on the river... this time, though, on a boat.



Well, it's a good thing there won't be a reenactment.

For My Fellow Honeycrispers

I went to the grocery store tonight for no other thing except these.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Honeycrisp Apples

There's a new grocery store in my neighborhood called Union Market. They have a couple stores in Park Slope—this is their third. I visited it for the first time the other day and bought some apples called Honeycrisps. I'd never heard of them before, but I usually always go for the Granny Smiths so that's not saying much. Anyway, I bought some and had one and OMG they are best apples ever.

I did some research and found out that they're a cross between a Macoun and a Honeygold and then I Tweeted about it. The Tweet updated my Facebook status and a whole bunch of people started commenting about how good they are. Among them was a comment from my friend Ron who said:

Holy shit, I seriously had one of those today and actually commented on it to a person I was sending a message to. The exact line was:

cold=bad (He's in Chicago)
honeycrisp apple=good as f%ck.

A student at the University of Minnesota bred that apple (in case that ever comes up in Trivial Pursuit Fruit Edition.) Those and Braeburns (German engineered, I think) are no doubt the best. Red Delicious my ass. And the yellowish pasty ones??? Who are they kidding?

I love Ron.

Back to the apples, shortly after this I called my mom to tell her about them but she wasn't home so I left her a message that said, "Call me back because I have to tell you about the best apples in the world." When she called back she said, "You're going to tell me about Honeycrisps, aren't you?" I said, "Yes!" She said she was at the grocery store the other day when they announced over the loud-speaker that they had some and there was a mad rush to get them. When she got home, my step-dad had one and actually stopped to comment about how good it was.

That's the thing about this apple: It's not just good—it's so juicy, sweet and delicious that it makes you stop and say, "Damn, this apple is awesome."

Here's what the bad boy looks like:




And now the bad news... Apparently Honeycrisps are seasonal and only available from October to March. I've already lost some time here so I'm gonna eat the crap out of them for the next three months. I suggest you do the same.

Haiti

The devastation in Haiti is so terrible.

I never really talked about this before, but I volunteered last summer as a tutor at an international high school in Brooklyn. There are about seven or eight international high schools in the country and they're set up to accept students that have recently immigrated to the United States.

It was really challenging to be a tutor (I can't imagine being a teacher) because not only are the students from different countries, but they're all at different levels when it comes to speaking English. In one class there was a student from Mexico who had been here a month, another from Yemen who had been here six months, and another from Sierra Leone who had been here for a couple of years. All in all, the class I tutored was made up from students from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mali, Tibet, China, Philippines, Yemen, and Pakistan—and I know I left some out. What's frustrating is that you can't stop the lesson to teach them English nor simplify it, because at the end of the day they're going to get the same high school diploma as everyone else in this country. So despite their level, they had to read Shakespeare, because that's what you read in a Junior-level English class.

Anyway, the stories about how and why most of them came to the US are really tragic. The boy from Sierra Leone was a refugee with a really violent childhood (think Blood Diamond.) Another boy from Senegal watched his mother die in a fire and flew to the US the very next day. He had been here for about a year when I met him and had never had any therapy to help deal with what happened. I'd get tears in my eyes whenever I saw him because, even though he was 16, I could still see the little boy inside of him. It made me think of my nephew, and then my sister.

Although their lives are better now that they're here, they're not amazing by any means. A lot of them live in one bedroom apartments with their entire family. There was a group of girls who, even thought they didn't need summer school, asked if they could come anyway because being at school was better than being at home. One of these girls was a refugee from Tibet. She always had her nose in chick-lit books, so I brought her a big stack of YA books that I had lying around my apartment. You should have seen her face when she got them... she was dumbfounded. "For me?" It was like no one had ever given her that many things before. There was another boy who was late every day and would fall asleep in class because he had to work through the night at the bodega that his family owned. He couldn't make it to school on time because he didn't get off until 9am and he still had to go home and change. I'm not sure when he was supposed to sleep. (In class, apparently.)

I have dozens of stories like this.

I was so profoundly impacted by the kids I met that summer. Meeting them put faces on the tragedies we hear about around the world. With that said, please donate to a reputable organization and help the people of Haiti. Do it for Donald, my favorite student from Port-au-Prince who worked at Macy's and wanted to be a movie star. He was such a wonderful kid... flamboyantly gay and truly hilarious. To think of him still living there right now breaks my heart. I'm so happy he's safe.

I'm donating to the UNICEF fund to help Haiti. Click here to see a list of legitimate organizations put together by MSNBC.

Town Criers

Great article in The New York Observer... The Town Criers.

I've cried many times while walking down a New York City street.

One time I got into a big fight with a guy I was seeing and cried on my subway ride home. The train made a stop in Chinatown, where an older Chinese man got on. When he sat down he saw me crying so he reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of Dunkin' Donuts napkins, walked over to where I was sitting and gave them to me. It was kind of gross (they were really wadded up) but sweet, so I thanked him and pretended to use them.

State of the Blog Address

I'm thinking about moving this blog. I have a karynbosnak.com website and I want to combine this with that.

I'm going to set it up using Squarespace. I've been playing with the platform and I really like it. It's a thousand times better than Blogger and, yet, still easy to use. Two cute examples of square space website/blogs:

• CakeSpy
• Inspired Goodness

I might even hire a real website designer to design it.

Here's my dilemma:

Do I move everything to karynbosnak.com? Or should I have prettyinthecity.com be my main website?

I can't decide so I thought I'd ask you.

The reason I started Pretty in the City was because I didn't want to always be known as the Save Karyn girl. I'm not and have never been embarrassed by what I did, but I wanted to position myself as a writer and not just the girl who begged her way out of debt. (Listen, all I'm saying is that I know what it's like to be a Brady.) Save Karyn is just one thing I did. 20 Times a Lady is another. And my next book will be something different, too.

So anyway, here are the choices:

karynbosnak.com

or

prettyinthecity.com, official website of author Karyn Bosnak

At the top of both there will be links to books, about, blog, press, tour information (for book #3, which is still being written), etc.

I'm adding a poll to the right so you can vote. I'm leaning toward karynbosnak.com but I really can't decide.

And PS - I will be blogging more this year!

Michael Cera

Is this kid old enough yet for me to admit I have a crush on him without going to jail?



(What? It's not like he's Justin Bieber.)


I want to see Youth in Revolt:

OK Go

Am I the only one who sees a penis in the OK Go logo?



It curves to the right.

Do you see it?