Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead - It's on Netflix!

Right now most Netflix subscribers are buzzing with rage over Netflix's recent price hike.   My personal solution-- swap your Stream + 1 DVD package for Streaming Only and you'll actually save yourself $2/month.

If you move to streaming only, your viewing options will decrease especially when it comes to newer content.  But as an avid streamer, who's streaming past includes the entire seasons of Skins (UK Version), Teen Mom, Roseanne, The Cosby Show, Weeds and other random British tv, I say live with it.  Streaming is the future of television.

I've explored my fair share of indi docs through streaming -- most recently, one about juicing to boost health and weight loss.  If you subscribe to Netflix go home right now and check it out --- Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.  It will make you want to juice, lose weight...or at least think, "Wow, another non-American telling Americans how we can fight obesity".  

P.S. My main question after watching this was "What recipes are being used".  Google to the rescue.  Find juicing recipes here.  If you're a novice to streaming via your tv, Wii or whatever, click here.

"Fat people will take anything if you tell them it's gonna make them lose weight." -Roseanne

Roseanne Barr on the diet industry...and such.


I'm a true Roseanne fan.  I love her housewife and diet jokes.  I like her take on the diet industry and weight loss.   I couldn't get enough of the working class Illinois family she created in the 80s/90s.  I loved watching her show on Nick at Night and now stream it on Netflix.

This month Roseanne returns to tv via a new Lifetime show titled, Roseanne's Nuts.  This reality show will follow Roseanne as she runs a nut farm in Hawaii.

Here's the preview

It's July! Time to Watch Teen Mom

It's July and I'm feeling better about fitness.  I joined my local Y and am LOVING it.  Sometimes a change of scenery just helps.  My old gym just wasn't working for me anymore --- mostly because it was only open M-F, was a 45-min commute from my home, I had to pack a huge gym bag with shower stuff and the gym has no windows.

I upgraded to the Y where they have windows and an indoor pool.  Although I don't consider myself a "swimmer", it's nice to know I have a pool.  My commute to the gym is only 5 mins.  I can get changed at home and show up with only the clothes on my back.  Also, my Y's ellipticals have tvs!  Last Thursday I hopped on the elliptical.  Someone left CNN on and I stared at Eliot Spitzer as he interviewed a familiar face about US immigration reform.  I knew why Mr. Spitzer looked familiar but I couldn't figure out why the guy he was interviewing looked so familiar.  Within minutes I figured it out:  Jose Antonio Vargas is an award-winning journalist who interviewed me back in 2004, when he had just begun his career with the Washington Post.  I was in D.C. for a journalism conference --- UNITY 2004.   My quotes didn't make it in the final story, but it's still cool to say that such a stellar writer wanted my input and gave me his business card, which I held onto up until last year when I figured if 6 years had gone by and I hadn't yet contacted him for career support, it was about time to get rid of it.   Back in '04, Vargas asked me how I felt about the representation of minority journalists. Did lighter-skinned black journalists get hired over darker skinned?  Did Latinos who sounded like native speakers get preference over those who did not?  And here he was in 2011, right before my elliptical, being interviewed by Eliot Spitzer about his undocumented immigrant status.    It's a funny thing to realize you met someone before they became BIG.

Tonight's Agenda:  Watch the premiere of Teen Mom whilst I elliptical.   I need to workout and I don't have cable.  It's a win-win situation.

It's gonna be me

I got to watching N Sync music videos today on YouTube/Vevo and couldn't believe it's been 10 years since they were da bomb. Not sure if people even use that term anymore but I vividly remember my sisters learning the It's Gonna Be Me dance  from a VHS tape my younger sister taped off the Disney Channel.  The video was sandwiched between a Destiny's Child video, Aaron Carter video and Britney Live in Hawaii concert.   Because I wasn't as coordinated I didn't participate in the dance re-enactment. I'm still trying to figure out what "Dirty Pop" is.

It's funny how time flies.

It's also funny how time flies whenever I take a "break" from working out.  A day turns into days, then weeks.

Two weeks ago Blizzilla hit Chicago and I was stuck inside for three days straight.  Talk about cabin fever.   I was super inactive and went completely insane with my diet and exercise.  My three days of solitude consisted of checking e-mail from my couch (when I had electricity), sleeping, looking out the window at people digging cars out of snow, finding items to sell on eBay and salvaging whatever junk food was around my crib.  Walgreens was closed.  The grocery store was closed.  My gym was closed.  My work was closed. The only thing open was Dunkin Donuts.

I did squeeze in one Slim in Six workout and hula hooped with my weighted hula hoop.  But mostly I watched countless hours of early 2000 Fox/WB teen dramas online (holla at the O.C.).

Working towards my beach body with Slim in 6.

My personal fitness DVD collection 

To make matters worse, the following week was bitterly cold outside which for me equaled more ridiculous amounts of inactivity.   Really I had no excuse for not getting a Biggest Loser-style full-day work out on...except for when I had no electricity.  I own an assortment of fitness DVDS, a yoga mat and have online access to a gazillion workouts via YouTube and Netflix.    Why not get hardcore?

I was lazy and more concerned with Ryan and Marissa's rocky relationship. I swear that girl lacks common sense.  First she falls for crazy Oliver, then unstable Johnny.  Girl needs to get it together, as do I.

It was super snowy outside.

Getting back on track little by little, day by day.   It's gonna be me.

:)

TV News vs. Law School

Since childhood, I've been passionate about all things media, particularly tv and radio.  I made my own radio show at age 10 - CNE: The Best Music Radio (available now on cassette tapes), and I've had my fair share of internships and reporting gigs at both radio and tv stations. At one point I even created a tv resume reel of my best reporting and anchoring clips - which I would not dare show to any news director, ever.

Around the time I graduated from college, I decided the tv news reporter route was not right for me, since, at the time, I didn't want to fight for an entry-level $18,000/year tv reporting gig in some middle-of-nowhere town.  The whole 'Pay your dues' in tv news mantra wasn't clicking.  So with my broadcast journalism degree in hand, my solution was law school. I knew legal training would give me the necessary tools to become a successful leader in the entertainment/media industry.  Ironically, after I finished law school, my first gig was working at a talent agency which specialized in news anchor and reporter clients - where I made way less than that $18k/yr at which I once snubbed my nose. Hooray for the economy!

During law school, I also inherited my fair share of debt owed to Sallie Mae or the Department of Education -- I'm really not sure at this point who I owe, as both Sallie Mae and the Dept. of Ed keep playing hot potato with my student loan repayments.  One minute Sallie Mae says they'll collect.  Then they say they've sold a portion of my debt owed to the Dept of Ed.  Then the Dept of Ed gives it back to Sallie Mae.  I pray it gets lost in the shuffle or that my Upromise  account rises exponentially.

Sometimes I wonder where I would be today if I pursued tv news reporting.  Who knows?  Besides, I'm pretty content where I am now in my career (I work in site licensing/publishing) and I live vicariously through my former classmates who are successful tv reporters/producers/writers.   Plus, after viewing the following news report featuring former Good Day NY Anchor Jim Ryan, I feel like my resume reel was pretty golden, even with the clip of me as a weather girl incorrectly pointing westward to California and saying "...And yesterday, on the east coast, New York set a record high for snowfall ".

 I had the green screen to blame (sorta) -- what excuse did these guys have?