Have you noticed the number of Facebook profile pictures that have suddenly changed in the last day or so to a cartoon character? Well, if you haven't heard there is new profile picture trend going on and this one is for a worthy cause- The fight against VIOLENCE TO CHILDREN.
From now until December 6th, facebook pals are encouraging their friends to change their profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood. The objective of this is not to see any human faces on Facebook but an invasion of memories for the fight against Violence to Children. Remember, the good old days when you watched cartoons on early Saturday morning?
When I saw a few of my friends profile pictures change, I was like, "What is going on?" Of course, I later saw message on one of my friend's wall that expalined it all and of course, I was in!! My Facebook profile picture was changed to the Tweety Bird, which brings back memories for me.
What is your favorite cartoon character that brings back fond memeries from your childhood??
On November 13th, my husband and I attended a wedding for one of his co-workers in the LA / Pasadena area.
I must say this was one of the most interesting weddings that I can say that we or I have ever attended. The ceremony was held at the Holy Mary and St. Pishoy Coptic Orthodox Church. The bride, Susan was Korean and the groom, Mark was Egyptian and they decided to hold a traditional ceremony in the Mark's faith, which is Coptic Christianity or more simply Egyptian Christianity.
The ceremony ran about a little over an hour and had everything from homilies and or chants, not sure which term is correct; beautiful crowns and religious robes for the bride and groom; long red ribbons that were placed around the bride and groom; a unique spiritual instrument that emitted smoke during the ceremony and several other elements. At one point in the ceremony, as the bride and groom wore their red ribbons, spiritual robes and crowns they were instructed to lean the heads together to join their crowns together and many of guests in the pews smiled or laughed lightly. They then held the position of leaning together for quite some time as the priest read a passage and I started to think - does this now mean they are joined together as husband and wife?
During the ceremony, the bride and groom never spoke a word and the priest read the scriptures and or messages with their backs turned away from the guests and were side view to the bride and groom, which I was not sure quite why I like many guests, found myself continually confused throughout the ceremony. It was not until I saw the bride and groom knelt down, did I even realize that now they must been officially married. As you see, there were no vows as we all are familiar with and when they exchanged rings they did not say anything, it was a ceremony element between them and the priest - we could see them exchange the rings but nothing was said that we could hear. Lastly, they were never a "final kiss your bride moment", I guess this is not part of this tradition.
Needless to say, this was one interesting wedding ceremony with many unique and beautiful elements - I only wish that I remembered my darn camera and that someone would have either narrated what was taking place in the ceremony or that programs were provided to walk us all through what was taking place so most of us would have felt like a part of the ceremony rather than watching "clueless" and "lost in translation".
On November 4th, my husband and I went to the new Archlight Cinema in El Segundo very close to the Manhattan Beach city line and I was particularly excited to see Tyler Perry's new film "For Colored Girls". I had previously watched the movie trailor on television and read few articles about the film and I also "NEVER" miss any of his films as I always get something out of them.
The original "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf" was an experimental play infused with plays written in 1975 by Ntozake Shange. Recently, Tyler Perry adopted this play and turned it into a motion picture and shortened the title to "For Colored Girls".
This film was about the serious life challenges that a group of African American women endured with their husbands, lovers, friends and or other family members. This movie was pretty deep in the nature of the content covered and throughout the film were original poems recited by the characters that expressed how a particular situation made the character feel. These poems were musical in their flow and were very engaging with the words chosen and the story that flowed from them. Throughout the film, there are various stories portrayed surrounding each individual character with many interesting twists and turns.
The interesting thing about this film is how the lives of all of these different women are eventually interwoven to each other's lives keeping in mind they did not all necessarily know one another at the beginning of the film.
This movie has many ups and downs and does a great job of continually drawing you in. This is a great project by Tyler Perry and portrays many of real life situations that many women not just African American women, have had to endure and rise above.
Go see this film for yourself and hopefully you will enjoy as much as me and my husband did.
Goodbye for now until my next "Life in LA" adventure.
There is nothing like spending a relaxing Sunday afternoon with a great group of girlfriends. This afternoon, four of my friends and I got together to celebrate Carol's birthday. Our destination of choice, The Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills.
We decided to take part in their famous "Afternoon Tea" in the "Living Room" of the hotel. The cute little tea sandwiches, the scones with yummy lemon curd, the delicious desserts and amazing tea was all a girl could wish for. The atmosphere in the lobby was truly relaxing from the true living room feel, with the fireplace lite, the piped in jazz music playing and to top it off, the beautiful sounds of a "live harpist" playing periodically throughout the afternoon. She even played "Happy Birthday" to my friend Carol as she was presented with her piece of delicious birthday cake.
This tea was excellent, tasty and to top if off very reasonably priced considering we were in Beverly Hills. I've been to many teas over the past years and this one ranks right up near the top.
I think it is really funny how excited people get when Halloween approaches each year with the repeated question, "What are you going to be this year?"
Well for me, this year I decided to keep it really simple and do something that was in line with my every day personally and professionally. So what did I do this year? Well, my work team and I decided that we wanted an original idea and we went with creating our version of "The Social Network".
I was my own Facebook page, two others were "Like" buttons from Facebook, another was Tweety the Twitter Bird and last but no least, another coworker was Foursquare. We had a great time with our team effort at work and get this, we actually WON the Lexus' Division's Group Halloween Costume Contest. So, I guess this year, "Originally" and "Simple" were the keys to our win!! Well to close this blog entry, what did you dress up like this year?
Well, it's goodbye until my next LA Life adventure to share.
Yesterday, my husband and I finally went to see the popular new movie, "The Social Network" based on the story behind the founding of the popular social networking site, Facebook. Going into the movie, I had heard all of the mixed reviews from friends and or coworkers, but I had an open mind about what I would actually experience and how I would feel about the movie after it was over.
I was pleasantly surprised in this film and think it was well done despite the fact that the movie was not 100% accurate according to the press and failed to involve the key people that the movie was based on like Mark Zuckerberg and all of the co-founders who I have never heard of until watching this movie: Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and the guy who founder Napster came along early in Facebook stages, Sean Parker who can be credited with helping Zuckerberg obtain Facebook's first venture capital funding, a whopping $500K. From this point on Facebook started its skyrocket to where it is today.
The movie was humorous, interesting and captivated my attention as I watched the story of how three Harvard classmates started out with a simple idea of connecting all the Harvard U campus dorm students together in an online network so they could get communicate more regularly online and keep up with what their friends were doing and how this idea grew enormously from Harvard to other colleges and then to anyone who so desired to join Facebook that resulted in connecting over 500 million people around the world today.
The film did portrait Mark as extremely bright, arrogant to many and someone who basically (or allegedly) stole the ideas that gave birth to today's Facebook from some of his Harvard classmates who were working on another social networking site and brought Mark into their project be a programmer to bring their site to life. Now I know there are three sides to every story and I will personally never know what really happened behind the real life scenes in the launch of Facebook. However, I will say this was a great movie and potentially could give other young people or the young at heart the drive and motivation to come up with an exciting innovative idea that just may make them the next Mark Zuckerberg, 26 years old and the youngest billionaire in world who created one of the most popular websites of today. Wow, is all I have to say.
When I left the movie and entered the restroom, many ladies were at the sinks washing their hands and discussing this film. I overheard one lady say, "Who isn't on Facebook today and I wish it was my idea". I found myself thinking the very same thing!
I loved this film and if you haven't seen it yet, take a look at the trailer and go check it out!
On Saturday afternoon, I joined over 100+ guests for a wonderful sunny afternoon at the home of the well-known director and producer Oz and Lynne Scott in Sherman Oaks, California. I was kindly greeted by the valet staff curbside and checked in and ushered through the red carpet entrance to the wonderful setting in the backyard. Our hosts for the day, Oz and Lynne greeted me as I turned to enter their wonderful backyard.
The setting was sprawling with white tents, white chairs, a perfectly placed stage over the pool area for all the jazz artist to come. I was treated to a delicious array of food selections (the tempura and jerk chicken were favorites of mine) and a variety of cocktails throughout our day. The event featured some of best jazz artist today like Sheila E., Kirk Whalum, Mindi Abair, Brian Bromberg, Patrice Rushen, Marcus Miller, Ndugu Chancler just to name of few. All of the performances were amazing, but my favorites of the day included the all star jam session and the all-women jam session ....AMAZING, AMAZING!
One of the coolest things they did at the event to raise funds was to feature over 100 rare and/or highly desirable auction items, like a Lakers team jersey signed by all the players in a frame with a picture from the NBA championship night, or signed boxing gloves and robe from the one and only Muhammad Ali or the special autographed framed pictures of Denzel Washington's best pictures to date to just mentioned a few items on display. I only wish I had an endless flow of cash to buy a number of items that were auctioned off!!
I also had the opportunity to see many recognizable LA faces like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Avery, Salli Richardson, Dondre Whitfield, Shaun Robinson, Pat Prescott, Take 6 just to name a few sightings of my day.
This was my very first time at this event in its 5th year, which benefits The Jackie Robinson Foundation - a national, non-profit organization founded in 1973 as a vehicle to carry-out the memory of Jackie Robinson through the advancement of education among the underserved populations. I am so honored that I had the opportunity to participate in this event and trust me, I will be there next year!!
