RawStyle

Rachael Ray Clone

2010-06-12T12:57:00.000-04:00

As a raw foodie and chef/author, I love to watch cooking (as opposed to uncooking) shows to get ideas for recipes I can adapt. (Besides, there aren't any uncooking TV shows that I know of.) I just discovered a Rachael Ray clone on TV named Claire Robinson. She's got the same hoarse voice as Rachael Ray, the same upbeat personality--peppered with expressive, colorful phrases--and a similar appearance--the two women have dark hair.

When I first happened upon Robinson's Food Network Show, "Five Ingredient Fix," (without seeing the titles) I heard her voice before I saw any shots of her. When a few fleeting shots of her appeared (I bet they have brief shots on purpose to open the show, so people will think they're watching Rachael Ray), I thought that Rachael Ray had had some work done on her face, as her eyes looked different. That's how much of a clone Robinson is of Ray.

I wonder to what extent Robinson's Ray-like voice and personality helped her to get her own show.

A comedy video with characters named Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer

2010-05-24T13:18:00.000-04:00

I'm excited to announce that my comedy video, Anomalies, is now online! I made it in NYC in the 1990s as a demo of my writing and directing and it features characters named Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer.

To see it, click on the above link and use the login: Judy'sFriend and the password: secret77. If you would like to comment on it, please visit my Facebook page (Judy Pokras), where there is a thread.

Saw VI actress Jon Mack loves raw food

2009-10-29T04:42:00.000-04:00

The multi-talented Jon Mack is very different from the drug addict she plays in the popular horror movie Saw VI. In real life, she's spiritual, an animal rights activist and loves raw vegan food! I spoke with her recently and found her to be charming and smart.

Photo courtesy Jon Mack, seen here performing with her band

3 Questions for AMC re: Mad Men

2009-09-21T08:21:00.000-04:00

We love that Mad Men won the best TV drama Emmy--congrats to Matthew Weiner and the cast and crew!--and we have three questions:

1. Will AMC re-air the episode they ran last night during and just after the Emmys? We sure hope so, as many people (including me) missed it due to the Emmys, and can't bear the thought that we did.

2. Will AMC create an e-mail list by which it can easily notify fans of announcements related to the show? We don't know why it hasn't done this by now!

3. And finally, why hasn't AMC made a copy of Joan's pen necklace for fans to buy? We women (especially those of us who are writers) would love one.

Become part of this blog's community with Google Friend Connect

2009-08-14T02:41:00.000-04:00

We've added Google Friend Connect to make it easy to follow this blog and become part of it. See the link at the top left!

Free Marvin Gaye Song Download for Valentine's Day

2009-02-13T03:37:00.000-05:00

Singer with a Voice Just Like Christina Hendricks's

2009-01-15T18:49:00.002-05:00

I've never heard the actress Christina Hendricks (Joan on Mad Men) sing, but in some of the ballads ("Secret Love" "Accustomed to his Face") this singer named Jamie sounds just like what I would imagine Christina would sound like if she sang as her character Joan!

Rally to Get Mad Men Back for a Third Season!

2009-01-13T11:18:00.001-05:00

If you've never watched the coruscatingly brilliant TV drama Mad Men, you're in for a treat when you get a hold of their DVDs.

Mad Men is a period piece about a Madison Avenue (NYC) ad agency in the early 1960s--the office politics, the jockeying for position, the personal lives of the assorted employees--and is set in the context of what's going on politically and culturally at the time. The show, which also delves into the machinations of the ad business at that time, is picture perfect in every way: writing, directing, casting, acting, production design, costumes, hair styles--and anything else I might be forgetting!

Mad Men, which airs on AMC, won the Golden Globe award for best TV drama for both of its two seasons. Its gifted and devastatingly handsome lead actor, Jon Hamm, who plays the agency's creative director, the complex and mysterious Don Draper, won the Globe in 2008 as the best actor in a TV drama. He and the gorgeous and talented actress January Jones, who plays his on-screen wife, were nominated in the recent Globes as best TV actors in a drama.

Media are now reporting that the series's creator and executive producer, Matthew Weiner, says he doesn't even know if the show is coming back for a third season.

How can this be? Is there no justice in this world at all?

Green Holiday Gift Ideas

2008-12-07T14:29:00.000-05:00

If you like the idea of giving gifts that help the planet and those you care about, there's a very cool green gift ideas article at Raw Foods News Magazine. It features gifts that are hard to find (unless you know where to find them) and nifty, and most are very economical too, which comes in handy in this economy.
The categories include books, DVDs, foods and ingredients, really pure cosmetics, plus crafts and planetary healing. There are even holiday greeting cards as witty and pretty as a New Yorker cartoon.

Raw and Green T-Shirts, Bumper Stickers and More

2008-09-25T01:37:00.001-04:00

Check out the cool slide show (at the upper left of RawFoodGrrl.blogspot.com) of many of our raw and green T-shirts and other items. You can buy them and many others at the links below the slide show!

On TV's Fictional Characters Twittering

2008-09-22T01:59:00.000-04:00

Following is a slight rewrite of my comment appearing below a blog post about twittering TV's Emmy-winning drama, Mad Men, an hour-long drama about a NY ad agency in the early 1960s. I rewrote my comment only so that it makes sense as a stand-alone essay, rather than as a comment that addresses other people's comments to the same post.

In case you're not familiar with twitter, it's a site that makes it easy for people to send short (one sentence) messages (dubbed "tweets") to anyone who chooses to "follow" them. You can send direct messages to people you're following if they're following you, and they have the ability to message you back.

I didn't even know that Mad Men's characters were ON twitter until I got an e-mail tonight announcing that Peggy Olson (the only female copywriter among Mad Men's characters) was following me. I immediately went and signed up to follow her. But why stop there? I am also now following [the show's characters] Don Draper, his wife, Betty Draper, and Paul Kinsey (the agency's senior copywriter, if I remember his title correctly). I wouldn't have signed up to follow Paul Kinsey, but he started following me, and I find his tweets most interesting as a behind the scenes glimpse into his character. It tells me things I don't know about the dynamics between the characters just from watching the show.

The fact that the characters are on twitter is a real bonus for Mad-Men-starved fans like me, who don't want to have to wait an entire week to see a new episode (or two weeks, in the case of tonight's rerun because of the Emmy's).

I loved that detail in a recent Mad Men episode in which the Drapers shake off their picnic blanket and leave their litter on the park lawn. It spoke volumes.

How I wish that Boston Legal's Alan Shore were a twitterer, especially since BL is entering its final season. (Could it be that he is and I don't know?)

It's indeed a great match that Mad Men, a show about an ad agency that does product placement would use twitter as product placement.

I sent a twitter message to Peggy Olson that as an idea person, I probably should have become an advertising copywriter, except that as an idealist, I have to do work I believe in. (And she twittered me back with a response that was very true to her character.) How totally cool to be able to interact with the characters of a show you love! When in history has this ever happened before? I mean, before the days of the internet and TV, did people have the ability to write to characters in novels and have them respond? And what about our ability as fans, to thus perhaps influence the direction a storyline goes in? [Of course, as a writer myself who has struggled to get my projects out into the world to make me a living, I would prefer to be paid for such ideas, but that is another story.]

I mention this only to say that alas, although I'm too idealistic to work in advertising, I love that TV shows are using twitter to promote themselves. It's a type of advertising that finally makes great sense, because it honors the viewers in ways that ads never can.

It's Time to Replace SNL With a Sketch Comedy Show That's Actually Funny

2008-09-16T16:55:00.000-04:00

Saturday Night Live is just not funny anymore, and hasn't been for years, except for the very occasional Hillary political sketch, the coruscatingly brilliant Darrell Hammond, and Andy Samberg's Dick in a Box video. I can't believe SNL is still on the air. The quiz-show bits and Wiig's twitchy weird characters and the variety show bits just do not work for me, nor do Armisen's characters, except for his Obama.

If you've ever seen or heard (Mike) Nichols and (Elaine) May you know what intelligent, perfectly performed sketch comedy is about.

There was a syndicated sketch comedy show that aired in the 1990s called "The News" that was really funny. It had a broad variety of tightly written sketches with beginnings, middles and ends. The cast were infinitely varied in their performances, and cast members were fresh in each new sketch, meshing perfectly with whatever role they were playing, with no "character" mannerisms seeping through. The Newz aired a half hour of new material five nights a week! NBC should bring that show back to TV and retire SNL already. Damn, they should hire me as one of their writers! Want to audition me? Here's some of my comedy writing.

Where Vegetables and Movies Intersect

2008-07-28T14:42:00.000-04:00

A friend on LinkedIn answered a question about his favorite movie quote. I don't have one, so I went to imdb.com to look at the page for my favorite movie, Pierrot le Fou, to see what quotes were listed, in hopes I might find one that I love. I didn't find one I could call my fave movie quote, but I did find an adorable one.

And now, here it is on a whole assortment of T-shirts, totes and other items!

Whoops--It Was Twins! Fraternal Ones!

2008-07-19T21:54:00.002-04:00

BABYMAKER.MAURYSHOW.COM...because making babies is fun.

I think this baby looks like comedian Norm MacDonald:

Busy Day--I Just Had a Baby with Owen Wilson

2008-07-19T21:22:00.001-04:00

BABYMAKER.MAURYSHOW.COM...because making babies is fun.

Angelina Jolie's Scrabble Names for her Kids

2008-07-13T15:29:00.003-04:00

Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh Nouvel, Knox and Vivienne.

In naming her six children, Angelina Jolie seems to like names containing the letters that have high scores in Scrabble! All those "x"es, and also the "v"s in Vivienne and Nouvelle! And "Z" in Zahara! I wonder if she played Scrabble as a kid and this has some subconscious meaning!

Shayne Dahl Lamas and the Lure of Fame

2008-05-14T13:43:00.003-04:00

I hadn't been watching the TV reality show The Bachelor since an earlier season of it, but two seasons ago, my mother suggested I watch it again, and now, like my mother, I'm really into it. It's fascinating because it's very revealing of personalities and meanness/deception/lying/underlying motives.

My mother and I adored the contestant Shayne Lamas (the daughter of Lorenzo and the grand-daughter of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl), the one who the bachelor, Matt Grant, from England chose out of 25 American women. The way the show edited what was presented as documentary (rather than scripted) footage, Shayne seemed genuine, warm, kind and compassionate, mature far beyond her 22 years.

We were surprised by the announcement yesterday, the day after the show's finale, that Shayne is appearing on the cover--and inside, in a six-page (non-nude) spread--of the second issue of Girls Gone Wild magazine, whose first cover featured NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's whore.

I guess having grown up in Hollywood, Shayne felt she had to jump at the offer to further her 15 minutes of fame. Sort of sad, because--despite the hair that she's been dying platinum since she was 12, which gives some people the impression that she's just another shallow Hollywood starlet--Shayne seems to have a depth that would make for real acting talent. I hope she hasn't derailed what could even be an Oscar-worthy career by typecasting herself in this way.

Totally Cool Conceptual House--Built!

2008-04-04T23:02:00.004-04:00

Artists Arakawa, age 71, and Madeline Gins, 66, his wife, have come up with a house that reminds me of a surreal dream I once had. The East Hampton, NY house, with bumpy floors of no consistent level and other assorted strange features, is totally cool. The couple designed the structure to be uncomfortable, so that the people who wind up living in it can experience life the way young children do, always confronting the new. Arakawa and Gins believe such an environment will keep residents from ever getting sick.

Don't miss the slide show of this house, with an audio commentary by the architect couple!

In Defense of Cavemen!

2008-03-30T15:31:00.004-04:00

With Geico's commercials showing those poor cavemen being attacked, we thought it was cool that at least someone is coming to their defense, with a line of fun T-shirts, tote bags, thongs, boxers, and household items. This online store has items with five different catch phrases, each with its own appropriate font. (Warning to any cavemen reading this: Although four of the phrases are very pro-cavemen, one of the phrases will still offend you!)

CRUSH, my new video about a guy with a crush on Hillary

2008-01-29T03:52:00.000-05:00

Great rhythmic dance music, free podcast

2008-01-18T03:47:00.000-05:00

Click here to get your own player.

Dancing With the TV Journalists

2007-12-20T19:01:00.000-05:00

NBC news correspondent David Gregory broke into dance on the Today show today while Mary J. Blige was singing. The guy's got rhythm. Gee, with his talent, he needs to be a contestant on Dancing With the Stars. You heard it here first!

James Spader Sings Love Songs (part 2)

2007-09-23T03:25:00.000-04:00

This is a strip I created. Click on it to see it larger.

Bravo to James Spader; We Want More of Him!

2007-09-17T01:53:00.000-04:00

Bravo to James Spader for winning the Emmy last night for best lead performance by an actor in a dramatic series. He's sensational as lawyer Alan Shore in David E. Kelley's brilliantly original and quirky Boston Legal. As Shore, Spader exhibits a fierce intellect, dry humor, and some of the authority and mystery of the sadistic boss he played in the movie Secretary, all while being an advocate for progressive views.

Hollywood success is dicey, because along with wealth, it often brings a lack of privacy. Spader is known for preferring to fly under the radar to hold onto his privacy, and who can blame him? But nor can I blame the media for asking him personal questions, like these that E!'s Guiliana Rancic asked him live on the air, following last night's Emmy's:

"Who are you here with?"

"My girlfriend."

"What's her name?"

"Leslie."

"How long have you been together?"

Spader either really couldn't remember (which I doubted) or he pretended not to remember in order to skip the question. He hemmed and hawed. Rancic moved on to another question.

"What do you like best about your girlfriend?"

Spader refused to answer, saying it was personal.

It will be interesting to see how Spader's newest Emmy (his third) will affect his career. It ought to get him a nice raise. But according to press accounts, he's also been hoping Boston Legal will add lots of new actors so he can have more time off. With this latest win, will David E. Kelley really let him have less show time? We viewers want to see more of him, not less!

An Arts Site That Rocks

2007-09-07T10:47:00.000-04:00

I love the fun music and the playful animations here. Check out both of the audio tracks!