Well well well, here I am again!
First of all, no, I did not watch the SAG Awards (Stephan likes to call these the “Saggies,” which I think is super funny). I know, it would have been fun if we had live-blogged it like we did the Golden Globes and like we’re going to do for the Oscars, but I was a nerd and mostly worked all weekend, then watched 10 minutes of that new pilot “Luck,” and fell asleep (no offense to Dustin Hoffman, I was just really tired from all that working). I have several big announcements coming soon!
Here are a few highlights of stuff that happened last week:
–I spoke at Digital Book World on Monday and Tuesday. If I met you there, hi! Yes, please email me! One of the presentations (the one I did with Iris Blasi from HMI, who is awesome) was live-Tweeted, which you can see by going over to my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/loriculwell
–I answered “Five Questions” for my hometown newspaper, The Desert Sun. Have I mentioned lately that I love my hometown, and that my hometown newspaper is so awesome and has been a great supporter of my writing career, and that my new YA novel is set in the desert? Well I do, and they are, and it is. So there!
–My novel was reviewed by Books with Bite, and they liked it (I know you don’t think I would tell you about a reviewer who didn’t like my books, right?).
–Stephan and I went skiing for the very first time. My cousin Ian went with us to make sure we didn't die. Since skiing was on Stephan's "Shit That Scares Me" list and I was just tagging along for the ride, I will direct you over to his write-up of the day, which is very detailed and funny.
(Totally unrelated to books or my career in general)
— Last week I became increasingly baffled and bothered by this weird Geico commercial I keep seeing. Stephan asks the good question—why, with one of the biggest advertising budgets out there, does Geico keep making ads like this?
My main objection to this ad is that I can’t tell that the guinea pig is saying “Row.” It just sounds like he’s grunting in a suggestive way, until the guy says “It took me six months to train the little chubby one to say ‘Row’.” You’d think that since “Row” is such an integral part of the joke, they would make it a little more clear, because up until the moment when he explains it, this commercial (to me, anyway) is just a hot mess of a grunting guinea pig and a container of water being placed too close to all those electronics for comfort. This commercial goes into “Funny Strange” territory because it actually made me stop what I was doing and go “WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?” the first time I saw it. Also, he is making the guinea pig boat power his computer and internet access, but he can't even buy them some pants? Seems unfair, and like we need to call some kind of guinea pig labor union.
Also, and also totally unrelated to the other above topics, is anyone else bummed about Seal and Heidi Klum breaking up? I would like for them to please tell us that this was all some kind of weird publicity stunt for his new album, because I want to believe in them as the ultimate “Beauty and the Beast / Hollywood Happily Ever After,” don’t you? To this end, I did purchase and obsessively consume both People Magazine and US Weekly on Friday so I could see what they dug up as far as relationship scoop, and then was sorry I did. Seal is moody and dark, and yells at Heidi? Nooooo! He’s the “Kiss from a Rose” guy! Come ON!