that girl allison

What I’m Reading Right Now: The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau and HTML & CSS: Design and Build Websites by Jon Duckett. Chris Guillebeau gave away a bunch of copies of his newest book, The $100 Startup, and I was lucky enough to be one of the chosen few. It’s been incredibly inspiring thus far.

HTML & CSS is an awesomely written book that I was given yesterday for my birthday because I’d mentioned that I’d wanted to re-familiarize myself with HTML and finally learn CSS. I got through the first 250 pages last night and became reacquainted with HTML and now I have to dive head-first into learning CSS, which I have absolutely no experience with. I’m a bit scared, but this book is fantastic so I have no doubts that I’ll learn how to use it easily.

I highly recommend both of these books.

True story: When I was out of work briefly in 2009, I sent out an email to all the industry types I knew and asked if they needed any freelance help. A producer I’d met in college wrote back and said yes. She also lived quite close to me on the UWS. It was kismet! What was she so busy working on? Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin’s upcoming concert tour.  I ran minor errands (like returning Lupone’s shoes, etc) but then one day the producer called and asked if I could pick something up from her apartment and hop on a train out to Stony Brook, on Long Island, to the Staller Center and help with tech rehearsal for their first concert.  Well, yes, of course. I grew up in Stony Brook so it was easy to get out there.  I was picked up at the train station and driven to the Staller Center where I ran minor errands again and then stood in for Ms. Lupone when they tech’ed songs like “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.”  I even got to throw my arms up.

This, of course, isn’t in Lupone’s memoir but it’s my first memory when I think of her.  I never did get to meet her unfortunately though because I stupidly didn’t stay for the concert (I had a date, or something stupid that night).  I saw her performances in both the 2009 revival of Gypsy and Sweeney Todd (though I hated that revival), though I never really garnered an appreciation for her until reading her memoir (pictured above).

It took me several chapters to get in to but after her work with The Acting Company, I started to become more interested in what she had to say. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that she was part of the first drama class at Juilliard is great, but it wasn’t incredibly fascinating to read about.  I had no idea she was such a “working actor,” as it’s often called, and I also had no idea she’d been  screwed over so many times by Andrew Lloyd Webber, among others.  If ALW hadn’t been conniving, I would have seen Lupone as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard in 1994 instead of Glenn Close.  I loved reading about her method when she got into it, and her immense appreciation for the theatre as an artist.  

I’d recommend this book for any theatre person.  Click here to watch a video of Lupone reading a passage from the book at Borders in Columbus Circle last year when she began her book tour.  Next time I have the opportunity to see Lupone perform, I’m pretty sure I’ll be paying better attention when she’s onstage.

(photo via)

I’ve read a lot of books this year.  Let’s recap.  

1. The Kid (Dan Savage)
2. The Art of Nonconformity (Chris Guillebeau)
3. I Got the Show Right Here (Cy Feurer)
4. The Year of Yes (Maria Dahvana Headley)
5. Send Yourself Roses (Kathleen Turner)
6. The Accidental Billionaires (Ben Mezrich)
7. I Don’t Care About Your Band (Julie Klausner)
8. I Love Everybody and Other Atrocious Lies (Laurie Notaro)
9. Heart of the Matter (Emily Giffin)
10. The Heart Says Whatever (Emily Gould)
11. Bringing Down the House (Ben Mezrich)
12. The Lost Continent (Bill Bryson)
13. A Little Bit Married (Hannah Seligson)
14. Committed (Elizabeth Gilbert)
15. Wishful Drinking (Carrie Fisher)
16. The Joy Diet (Martha Beck)
17. Nobody Likes You (Mark Spitz)

Looking over those titles, it reveals that I read the same books over and over again.  It’s all chick-lit and memoirs, except for one.  What can I say, I favor non-fiction over fiction.  My favorites would probably be Nobody Likes You (obviously), A Little Bit Married (it was really interesting), The Accidental Billionaires (even though I’ve been told that it’s all made up), Send Yourself Roses (if you’re a theatre person, read this book), and I Got the Show Right Here (see previous).  

I’m working on “Not Since Carrie” right now (it’s really interesting, but written really dryly) and I already have a stack of new books to read this year including This is Where I leave You, The Hunger Games, Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea, Good in Bed, And The Band Played On, Eating Animals, Naked Lunch, Patti Lupone, Kingdom Coming, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and a few other Bill Bryson books too.  

Let’s see if I can get through all of these books before I head down to the Strand again.  

About New York - In Bookstore’s Demise, No Joy for a Sidewalk Seller - NYTimes.com

(via peterwknox)

So it took me two or three weeks to finish Bringing Down the House, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I went to read more about it on Wikipedia after and I was saddened to read that most of it was fabricated though.  Does anyone know who or what is true?  I really enjoyed The Accidental Billionaires as well as the movie 21, and this sounded interesting enough, so I thought why not.  I picked up a used copy at The Strand ($4.95) and dove in. 

Wow, did 21 leave a lot out.  Loads, actually.  The “real” story took place over the course of four years, but the movie made it seem as though it took place over six months, if that long. The entire team was around 15-20 people, rather than 6 or 7.  And “Kevin Lewis” (“Ben Campbell” in the movie, and Jeff Ma in real life) didn’t want to be a doctor at all - it was his father who wanted him to go to Med school.  He just wanted to add some excitement to his life.  They didn’t just go to Vegas either, they went to Atlantic City, a riverboat casino outside of Chicago, and Foxwoods as well. 

It’s definitely worth a read, even though I’m now contemplating trying to learn how to count cards - not really, but it’s incredibly mind boggling how they do it. Next on my reading list: The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson.

More information here on Wikipedia.

I read And the Heart Says Whatever right before I read A Little Bit Married and I enjoyed this one much more (even though it took me longer to read).  I didn’t know anything about Emily Gould aside from the fact that she once worked at Gawker, but the titled seemed interesting and I thought I could stomach one more coming-of-age-in-New-York-City type of books.

Well, I did enjoy it but I’m not sure how many more of these books I can take (the same goes for the books about when-so-and-so-screwed-their-way-through-their-20’s).  Gould writes about college at the New School (where I went for my freshmen year as well), where she grew up, her live-in boyfriends, her tattos, the assortment of dead-beats she dates, as well as working her way up in her field (writing? journalism?). 

It’s a real version of living in New York City in your twenties, which not something you’ll see on TV or in movies very often.  Definitely worth a read.

I saw the author, Hannah Seligson, speak on some VH1 special once and it sparked an interest in reading her book, A Little Bit Married. 

I found it horrifically offensive at first, almost to the point where I was angry while turning the pages on the C train.  Most of the book was hard to swallow (insert sexual inuendo here) but the first 50 or so pages were especially difficult.  It’s so ridiculous that Generation Y is still seen as kids (regardless if we’re living on our own, have a job, support ourselves, etc) simply because we haven’t paid the government for a marriage certificate yet.  The book essentially says that we, Generation Y, will not reach adulthood until we’re married. Well, as Lily Allen once sang, fuck you very much, Hannah.   

The book goes on to talk about ways to approach your significant other about setting a marriage timeline (I guess these people only have one goal in life to reach then?), the benefits of marriage workshops, the fact that the younger you get married the more likely you are to get divorced (duh), and whether or not living together before marriage is a positive thing (the book leans towards no).  It also talks about how women still do most of the house work before they marry their significant other  (if they’re living together) and basically have two jobs (because they have to come home to cook and clean after their 9-5). It also states that men LOVE the “a little bit married” situation because they have basically another mother (that they can also sleep with) - someone who will cook and clean for them, but no legal obligations and they can move out whenever they want. 

This was an extremely interesting read (I got through it very quickly), but it’s made me more skeptical of marriage.  I think it’s also time for Gen Y to re-define what “adulthood” means.  “Adulthood” doesn’t mean marriage anymore (thank god) and can someone let Generation X know this? 

So I just finished Julie Klausner’s I Don’t Care About Your Band.  I fully enjoyed it though it took me about 80 pages to get into it (is this becoming a recurring theme in my reading selections lately?).  Though her overall intentions for writing the book were awesome, the end was a little too somber and serious, what a downer!   But I did relate to a lot of her stories and I’ve made a lot of the realizations already that she made in her mid-and-late-twenties.

She is full of hilarious one-liners and obvious life lessons that are obvious to women everywhere that we never really admit before we hear it from a fellow-woman.  I loved the chapter around page 100 when she talked about being fired from the theatrical PR firm who handled publicity for The Producers (aka Barlow-Hartman) and how she had an email fling with the star of Sweeney Todd (aka Michael Ceveris).  Of course she doesn’t name either of those things, but if you know your theatre, you know who she’s talking about. 

If you’re looking to laugh, definitely pick up a copy at your nearest book store.  

Confession: I read the title as I Don’t Care About Your Brand about seven hundred times before I realized it was actually I Don’t Care About Your Band.  Oops.

(via woodlandcreature)