Not easy.

So this week it was a marathon of Bridezillas for me. Now I know that this show is completely mindless, but hey, even I have standards for the crap I watch on TV.

In one of the first episodes I noticed that they were spending a lot of time narrating about the weight of the bride. The next thing I know, there is a close up of the NV bottle and the bride is doing somewhat of a commercial for the product. How she feels, that she looks better, that she’s lost 9 pounds in a short period of time….um….where is my ranting raving bridezilla? Why is she not freaking out that her flowers are the wrong shade of pink or whatever. That’s what I came to see people. What the heck is this? Why am I watching her all happy working out with a trainer decked out in NV gear and asking her how much she likes the product? We go to commercial, and we are back to our mad and crying bride. Only now I am thinking maybe she’s so cranky because she is on some diet pill.

Go ahead a couple of episodes, and we meet a new bride. Out of nowhere she and her fiance decide to go to the beach. She goes into the bathroom, puts on her bathing suit, freaks out, comes out in a towel and says she’s not going anymore, she hates her body, etc. Then with her wrapped in the same towel she’s giving her interview about how unhappy she is with her weight, and we get the closeup of the NV bottle again, and she’s off to the same gym, and there’s that guy again in all of the NV gear. Later we see her at her cake tasting refusing to actually swallow a piece of cake and spitting everything out into a napkin.

Something is off. I do a search and learn that:

“The network’s ad sales team also sold a first-time package to diet supplement brand NV across all 18 episodes of Bridezillas this season. The deal, which also includes custom vignettes, tagged tune-in spots, on-air billboards, online banners and placement in WE TV on demand, features product integration in four installments of the show.”

Listen. I get it. I fast forward through the commercials (love you DVR - one of the best inventions EVER), I wouldn’t know about NV if it weren’t for this product placement, but it’s just so awkward and contributes nothing to the storyline of the show whatsoever. Look at Project Runway or ANTM and how they do it. We’ve got the wall of accessories that is sponsored, we’ve got sponsored contests, but it makes sense within the damn storyline already.

I was a bride. I stepped up the workouts and had more willpower to watch what I ate leading up to that day, perfect target audience for this show. But the implementation is not good. It just sticks out like a sore thumb.

What about a few befores and afters on the brides? Maybe do full disclosure and have the brides say that part of the reason they are doing the show is to have a chance to try the product. At the very least, having someone taking the product and then flipping out on their loved ones and making everybody around them miserable doesn’t really shine that great a light on NV. I know that product placement is here to stay, but just like bad social promotion, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

Any other examples of some bad product placement you guys can think of?

I lucked out and was able to keep my wits about me and not swerve into the next lane to avoid it. That would have definitely resulted in an accident. I was sure that my windsheld was going to shatter, but it didn’t, and the luckiest part about everything is that I was able to keep my cool and not catch up to the woman in front of me and run her off the road.

Grr.

My current method is to open several FireFox browsers by site, and then create a new tab for everything I am considering. As I roll through and rule something out I close the tab, continue on with the process, and will hopefully wind up with a winner. Annoying. Time consuming. And no possible way for me to ask a friends opinion without emailing them a list of 20-30 links.

So if you are looking for a project, please do that one. All I ask is that you let me know about it when it’s done, and maybe write an ode to me somewhere on the site. If it is out there already, please, someone send it to me.

K. Thanks. Bye.

We got married in March and just got our wedding video last week. I was getting pretty frustrated at the time it was taking, but I have to say. It was well worth the wait. I think videos are one of those items that a lot of brides wind up on the fence about especially as the reality of how expensive weddings can be hits home.

I am so glad that my mom was adamant about us getting one.

I am posting the highlight reel of the wedding here. It’s 4 minutes long. Check it out if you have some time. And if you are in the NY area and looking for a videographer, I can’t recommend Adam Forgione from Penny Lane Productions highly enough.

Edit: I am going to send you right to you tube for now, because embedding the video is breaking my layout and I don’t have time to fix it right now. So, if you would like to see it, here is the link. 

Thanks for your patience!

I want to wear it and then eat a snack on one of these plates,

and later drink some tea from this cup.

Although now my hair is light, and I think I need to redo all of my colors.

What a time. I’m just feeling a little sentimental about it, maybe because I am coming up on a big change in my life and moving on to a new town, New Paltz, leaving Queens, my hometown, again. Maybe because I have never been a big picture taker and I feel a need to record these memories as they pop up for fear I will lose them as time goes on. Maybe because I feel under the weather today and just want to remember those days.

The fashion department there was one room. All classes were held in it other than our liberal studies (of which there was one per semester). I guess it looks exactly the same because the picture on the current website looks exactly like how it did when I was there (10 years ago!!) We would be like little hermits up there hearing the fine art students playing hackey sack through the window in the courtyard below. I found this accounting of a students year of fashion study at Parsons Paris and it’s more accurate and eloquent than I will ever write. If you really want a feel for what it was like, check it out.

I remember my roommate and I living in a great sublet. It was the apartment of some VP at Mercedes and was quite modern for Paris having an elevator, balcony, wall to wall carpeting, etc. Except there was no furniture. And us being on shoestring student budgets, we never bothered to buy any. We had mattresses on the floor, and found a spindle that cable comes wrapped on and rolled that home to make a table. We painted it all funky colors. It was pretty cool. At one point my roommate got sick of sitting on the floor all the time and she bought a chair. Just one kitchen chair that she would sit on sometimes for 10 minutes here and there. I wish I had a camera for that. I know what you’re thinking…Why a fancy apartment if you are on a shoestring budget??? My parents picked up the tab on education, a roof over my head while I was in school, and I had a modest allowance for food and recreation - although they did encourage me to travel and make the most out of my time there. Anything else I was on my own. The apartment was in a safe neighborhood and walking distance from the school, which was also walking distance from the Eiffel Tower. Knowing that there could be a transportation strike at any time (and there was for a whole month!), my mom insisted on the walking distance thing.

I remember that neither of us knew what a circuit breaker was and we blew a fuse one day while doing homework. I called the electric company, garbled my way through making an appointment in French that was about 5 days in the future, and we went about our daily business without electricity. We had tons of candles and would do our homework either at school or in the hallway of our apartment building. Homework would usually consist of paintings and illustrations so we had painting supplies, and mini easels spread out all over the place. I remember after a few nights of this one of our neighbors came out to ask us what was going on. We tried to describe that there was a blackout and he marched into our apartment and flipped the switch. It was like the place exploded! Every light went on, 2 radios went at the same time too! We had been living in the dark for 3 days! We were both 18 and knew zip about being on our own! We were totally clueless! By the way, I never cancelled the electricity appointment and they never came. Gotta love Paris.

I learned to smoke in Paris. It’s not something that I am proud of, but it’s quite a feat to go anywhere without someone impossibly cool looking even cooler smoking a cigarette. I started out with Fin 120’s menthol. A 120 is basically as long as a pen. Put it in a cigarette holder and you’ve got yourself a look going! It created the perfect pause when I would be searching for the right word in French in conversation, or waiting for the metro, or simply breathing in and out got too boring. (kidding)

Because our apartment was one of the more roomier ones, my roommate and I invited our whole class over (mostly homesick Americans) for a Thanksgiving picnic in our living room. (If you know me at all, you know that me and the kitchen are NOT best friends. As a matter of fact, I managed to set the back of my favorite sweater on fire trying to make tea the second day I was in my apartment. While I was wearing it. That’s the last time I ever leaned against a burning stove! Luckily my roommate put me out before I got hurt.) I think I spent the majority of my bills allowance calling my grandmother for cooking advice that day and then running back and forth to the supermarket! Dinner was a great success.

As I think of more things I will post them on my blog. I would love to have a section filled with stories from Paris. 

We’ve got a big bouquet in a vase in front of the office today. People keep stopping in front to look at them. We’ve got a mini bet on whether the day will finish without someone a) stopping in and asking why they are there, or b) just taking them. I think I’ll stop by my mom’s tonight to let her have them.

If anyone out there knows of something as quick and easy to get delivered as flowers, please help a guy out.