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MMC’s Got It Going On…Funky Style! (Long, Multimedia)

/ disney, geekalicious, pictures, reflection, videos

I know I have blogged about this before, but watching YouTube today brought it back to the forefront of my mind.

When I was in high school, I LOVED LOVED LOVED the all new Mickey Mouse Club. This is the show that spawned Britney Spears, Keri Russell, and Justin Timberlake. I was a fan from the beginning–well, once we got The Disney Channel installed in my house. Back then, I had to beg and plead for us to get cable in the first place, and The Disney Channel was a premium channel, like HBO or Showtime! My parents knew how important Disney was to me, so they sprang for the premium. Back then, my cable life revolved around The Disney Channel, MTV, BET, and VH1. I loved music videos and there was no shortage of them in the early 90s.

I started watching MMC when I saw the video for Summer Vacation by The Party on MTV. I thought Damon Pampolina was the hottest thing on TV. I was ready for a new crush–I was over my New Kids on the Block phase, Joey Lawrence and Kirk Cameron did nothing for me, and Dino and Glenn Medeiros were just too old. I am not sure how I figured out that The Party had to do with The Disney Channel, but once I realized that The Party was made up of Mouseketeers from MMC, I was hooked. My crush on Damon was short-lived, though. I started watching MMC in its third season, and that’s the season that Ricky Luna started. More on that later.

The show, to me, was so different from any other show. It wasn’t a typical multi-camera sitcom filmed in beta. It was a variety show, with skits, singing, and dancing. My favorite was the musical numbers. I liked learning the dance steps and I liked singing along. The cast members used their own names, and at the end of a taping, they let the audience come down and dance with them, which made them seem more approachable than say, the kids on Blossom. I really wanted to be friends with all of them.

My life back then mostly consisted of school (ugh), an after school job at the deli, marathon phone conversations with my best friends (our record: 13 hours), writing (mostly fanfic), and music. I wasn’t getting out much nor was I participating in a lot of school activities. My life was MMC and those kids. I wrote fan fiction about them before it was cool. If I wasn’t planted in front of the TV at 5:30pm Monday through Friday, then the VCR was recording the show. That show was the reason I got up some mornings, the reason I got dressed and did my hair. Maybe I was just going to be in front of the TV all day, frantically rewinding the VCR so I could learn yet another dance step, but I was up and moving. And that was a good thing.

There were two Mousketeers who inspired me the most. One was Mylin Brooks. I thought she was absolutely beautiful. She had this gorgeous dark hair, this beautiful face, and she was on a TV show that was filmed at Disney World. She was smart and talented and I desperately wanted to be her.

It was this video here that started my fascination with Mylin:

Please refresh if the videos aren’t showing up. YouTube is being a pain in the rear.

Ah yes, Disney Channel’s watered-down pop lyrics. I didn’t care. I watched the video all the time. I even learned the steps. I can still do most of the steps. I NEVER in a million years would have imagined that one day, this would happen:

Me and Mylin

Through the wonders of the Internet, I reached out and asked Mylin to be my friend on MySpace back when MySpace was cool. She accepted, and we began talking back and forth. When everyone moved to Facebook, she and I kept in touch on there. I was part of her “American Girl” street team back in 2006. It was amazing to get to work with her.

In July of 2010, I finally got to meet and spend the day with this woman, and let me tell you, she is just as sweet as she is beautiful. My mom is tickled pink because she knew how important MMC was to me, and she knew how important those kids were to me.

The other Mouseketeer that changed my life was Ricky Luna. I had an obscene crush on him when I was a teenager, and I didn’t care. Every single day from 5:20-6:00pm, I would sit in front of my TV, VCR remote in hand, ready to tape anything with Ricky in it.

When the MMC came on, the Mouseketeers would pop into a circle and say their names. He popped into his circle, yelled “Ricky!” and I was instantly head over heels. Well, as much as a girl can be with a guy whose first name is the only thing she knew about him. But we don’t need to worry about that. Look at this video:

He’s the one in the red shirt and the suspenders. I dare you to say you don’t understand how teenage me could have fallen for that total Mr. Hottyness.

I got to meet him for the first time in 1993, when MMC came to Cleveland to do a tour. Boy did I make a fool out of myself. I grabbed him and yelled “I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU.” Mortifying. Forgive me. I had no social skills and I was face-to-face with the object of my teenage fantasies OMG what was my life??? Don’t judge me.

Here are a couple of pix from that weekend:

MMC in Cleveland 1993 MMC in Cleveland 1993

Forgive the blurriness. I scanned these back in 1997 when I had no idea how to really work a scanner.

In late 1997, Geocities came out. I could make my own web page, what! So I did. I made a Ricky Luna fan site. If you google “Ronni’s Ricky Luna Fan Page” some old, old, old mirrors of that site will come up. Good times. I made that site in hopes that Ricky would do a search of his name and find it. He did. That site was the top hit in all the search engines. He contacted me and we kept in touch on and off over the next several years. MySpace and Facebook kept us even more in touch. Back in 2009, this happened:

Ricky Luna & Me

Yeah, it was pretty awesome. I got to hang out with him and his manager’s family. It was a really fun day. He lived up to the crush that 17-year old me had on him and then some because he’s just an awesome, kind, and warm human being. We laugh about my declaration of love for him at Tower City mall back in 1993. I still can’t believe I did that. Anyway, now he’s a super talented producer and he makes really good music, which you can download for free from his site. I recommend the Electro Bomba mini mix. You can get it here. 🙂

I’m proud to call him my friend.

I leave you with this video. I just watched it again and it gave me chills because I loved it so much back then. And as I belted along with it, remembering all the words, I realized that I still love it today.

If only The Disney Channel was still this awesome. Oh well. At least they have Phineas & Ferb.

This post is cross posted at my Disney blog. Feel free to visit and follow!

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The Test Audience Experience (Multimedia)

/ !, chicago, geekalicious, living in chicago, pictures, videos

The Rosie Show Test Show

Today, Adam and I attended a test taping of The Rosie Show. As you may know, The Rosie Show has moved into Harpo Studios, and the show will begin airing next month on OWN.

I’d never attended any sort of big scale show like this, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I freaked out about my outfit. They asked for bright colors and warned us that the studio would be cold, so to wear long sleeves. Well, guess what? All of my bright colors are summer clothes, thus short-sleeved or sleeveless. All of my long-sleeved clothes were pretty dark. I wore a boring grey tee-shirt and skinny jeans.

When we got to the studio, we stood in a big line. Someone came down the line asking people for funny stories about meeting celebrities. I told them about how I met Mario Lopez when I was 17 and wanted to stick my finger in his dimple.

When we got inside, Adam gave them our name, and we had to show them our IDs. Once we were checked in, they handed us a blue card and a green card to fill out. We were then moved into a room where they searched my purse and had us walk through medal detectors. Then it was time for a potty break. Harpo Studios has one men’s room and two women’s rooms. Smart. There were still lines.

We headed upstairs to the holding area, where they passed out bottled waters, pens to fill out the cards, and cupcakes from Sugar Bliss. They were cute and yummy.

The Rosie Show Test Show

The green card had information that could probably be used in a show as filler. The blue cards had a number on them and asked for some basic contact information. After we snacked and turned in our green card, it was time to head into the studio. They called a bunch of people by name, and then the rest of us by the number on the blue cards, which they collected as we filed into the studio. They were NOT kidding when they said the studio would be cold. IT WAS FREEZING. And naturally, my bladder began sending signals as soon as I got settled. Typical.

Someone came out to warm up the audience, and I was really amazed at how warm and responsive the crew seemed to be. We were introduced to the house band. The leader is the person who wrote “Dick In A Box” for Saturday night live. How cool is that? Then, Rosie ran across the stage and yelled “You can’t see me!” and everyone screamed. She looks fantastic. She opened the show with a monologue that was very funny. Then she introduced the guests: Randy Jackson, Noland Gould (who plays Luke on Modern Family), and Crystal Bowersox.

It was fun watching the guests. It was really cool when Randy Jackson talked about his new eyeglasses line, and then announced that all of the audience members were going to get a free pair! Wooo! Crystal sounded amazing, and Nolan was hilarious and super cute.

At the end of the taping, Rosie stood on stage and allowed people to take photos of her. If there were children in the audience (she allows kids–how cool is that?), she let them actually come on stage. She was really great with the audience, making personal connections and letting people ask her questions in between segments.

The Rosie Show Test Show

I snuck and took this tiny video of her thanking us for being there:

We got to watch them tape a short segment for Access Hollywood, then we were led out. We were then given gift bags (which consisted of a The Rosie Show tee-shirt, a small bag of Garrett’s popcorn, a bag of PopChips, and a Vosges peppermint candy cane bar). We were given a coupon for a free frosting shot from Sugar Bliss, and a postcard to mail in for the free Randy Jackson sunglasses. We’re also going to get tickets for a real taping that’ll take place in October or November!

I’m looking forward to it. I also know not to drink a thing and to layer like a mofo. It’s really, truly freezing in those studios. And I apologize for camera quality–I didn’t want to take any chances of having my Canon T3 confiscated.

Thanks for reading! 🙂

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Well, Hello There September (Multimedia)

/ happy, life, pictures, ronni, videos, yoga

And August is out the door. I think I’m still kind of in denial about that; I know I haven’t changed all the calendars yet. I don’t know. It’s so weird, how quickly summer goes by. It’ll be time to seriously think about the holidays before long. I’ve already started my holiday shopping. A little bit, anyway.

So, check this. You all know how much I love yoga, right? So, a few weeks ago, I was talking to one of the managers at Moksha. We got to talking about my editing skills and I mentioned that if they needed anyone, I’d certainly be interested working with their promo materials. She gave me the name of the marketing manager. I contacted her, she contacted me back. We met, hit it off, and well, yesterday was my first day as a work study student at Moksha. Basically, I do six hours of editing a week for them in exchange for unlimited yoga. You guys, I get to do what I love for an organization I love, and in exchange, I get unlimited amounts of WHAT I LOVE. How amazing is that?

And as always, the question of yoga teacher training came up. See, it’s been in the back of my mind since last summer. I daydream about teaching classes, and I wish I had some official training so I could teach classes, or even teach Aidan. But I thought I needed to be way more experienced. Turns out that I don’t have to be at all. All the things I thought I needed to know as a prerequisite? Nope. They teach me everything I need to know. The fall session starts next week, so I don’t think I’ll be ready for that. But I am looking into the spring session that starts in March. Everyone who’s gone through it says it’s one of the best things they’ve done in their life. And more than one person has come up to me and asked if I was in training, and seemed surprised that I wasn’t. And then they told me that I should do the training.

So. It’s a possibility. Not sure if I could teach yoga full time, but it would be an awesome part time/side gig. And who knows where it might take me?

In the meantime, I’ve been taking much better care of myself and let me tell ya. It feels good. I’ve been doing yoga and I’ve been on the bike again. For a while, it felt like my legs weren’t stretching out enough on the bike, so I adjusted the seat just a bit. Now it feels great. I guess it was just a little bit too short before. I did have it at the lowest level. I’ve been halfway considering doing a “Couch to 5K” program, but I’m not very comfortable with the idea of running outside. Also, I need really good shoes and I know the investment for that won’t be tiny. Still, it’s worth considering. Running a 5K would be super neat. I just really want to vary my workouts. Not that I consider yoga to be just a workout, but that’s another post.

Now, if I could just get my diet in check. I know what I need. I need Kanani, the 2011 American Girl doll of the year, but seriously, I need more fruit that I manage to actually eat. Peaches. I’m craving peaches. Sweet, juicy peaches. Maybe I’ll go to Stanley’s tomorrow and get some. Mmm, peaches. WAIT, I have some fruit cup peaches. Those can tide me over til I get fresh ones. YAY!

I’ve managed to read more than 50 books this year. It was hard. I’m usually nearing 100 by now, if I haven’t passed that already. But I was way too busy for a while there. Things are much better now.

Other random things:
– I have eight unopened Monster High dolls, an unopened Professor Snape action figure, and I still haven’t opened my She Ra toys yet. I really need to get on that.
– But before I can play, I have a lot of projects going on and many deadlines to meet before I can take a breather. They’re projects I enjoy, though, which makes doing them seem less like work and more like fun.
– I need to seriously QUIT the Facebook games (again) and focus more on my work. The games are so demanding with their quests and begging that one could easily spend hours and hours “playing” them. That’s not good for me or my eyes or my brain, so it’s time to step away. I only play three of them regularly, but even that’s too much.
– I have more self-control with The Sims, which I am so happy I can play again. When my Mac’s OS was updated to Lion, something wonky happened with the video cards and the game, rendering the game unplayable. A patch was just released the other day making the game playable again. But I can only play The Sims for a few hours before it starts lagging and they need to sleep too darn much so I get bored. That’s a good thing. Else, I’d play it for 10+ hours straight. No bueno.
– Adam and I’ve been going through Arrested Development again. That show never gets old.
– Tumblr is my newest addition. Holy awesome. Another time suck I have to be aware of.
– Aidan’s in third grade now. He has his own phone, so he sends me random texts and he also showed me how to attach audio files to text messages. I miss him. Look at this picture of him and Fi:

Aidan & Fi

Poor Fi has conjuctivitis. It’s not contagious or anything, but his right eye was red and swollen and teary when he first came to live with us. Now, his eye isn’t red and swollen anymore, although he is very teary. I’m pretty sure he has allergies. He sneezes all the time. Still, he’s my baby.

Fi

When I lived with him in Columbus, he stopped being very cuddly when he turned about… three or four, I’d say. But now, he’s always near me or next to me. He and Helena’s relationship is still pretty tumultuous. Just last night, they bumped noses while they were waiting for me to pass out the treats. (Come to think about it, they get along fine when there is food involved.) Today, he was next to me, she was right across from me. She leaned over, maybe to bump his nose again, and he swatted at her and hissed. She made this face like “But but but…” I mean, she looked so devastated. I chastised Fi gently and pet Helena, but she seemed mad at ME. 🙁 Oh dear. I wonder if they’ll ever LIKE each other or even tolerate each other. I don’t know. Fi’s kinda old and set in his ways. We’ll see. He’s sleeping right beside me right now. Let me tell you. A warm summer evening. Friday. Kitty beside me who I can pet constantly. Glass of juice behind me and lots of pillows. Pizza burgers and tater tots for dinner. All of that after a day of being productive. That’s a good day.

Ooh, ooh, ooh!!

I made a video demonstrating how to make a simple hair fall! 🙂 Wanna see? Fi’s in it, too! Please watch it. I had too much fighting with iMovie to do for this to go unappreciated.

I have a headache and need to get to bed. But first, maybe some chocolate. Or peaches.

Byeeee!

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Today is 90% Fired (Multimedia)

/ pictures, shopping, videos, work

Today started off OK. I always fight waking up in the morning; that’s just how I am. But I got up and got dressed and my hair looked all right. I showered Aidan with a billion-ton of kisses, and then I left. It was cold, but whatever. I don’t even expect the weather to approach anything near warmth until June.

Then I got to work. I saw all the work we had to do and immediately went into high-stress mode (and stayed there all day). There was SO MUCH WORK. I was in the office until after 8pm, and I’d been in there that late Friday as well. Knowing that I have to go in this coming Saturday for probably a full day makes me an unhappy camper. Thank the Lord I get time-and-a-half. My check will look nice next week, at least. My body aches with the stress and brain-meltingness of it all, though. I was so busy that I didn’t even think to go to the bathroom until after 3pm. Today was overwhelmingly crazy. Still coming down, actually.

The amount of the day that wasn’t fired was having Aidan an extra night. See, I got his flight departure time WRONG, and got to the airport five minutes before his plane was to take off instead of an hour and five minutes before. Thank goodness Southwest is a reasonable airline. They booked him on a flight tonight and only charged me $15 for the difference in the cost. So, that was a happy accident. He and Adam came for lunch before heading to the airport. I got a bunch of extra kisses and hugs in, and he smelled like brownie batter for some reason.

I miss my little booba. *sigh* It’s too quiet here without him.

Another part of the day that didn’t fail was that I was able to get a shirt from Old Navy that I’d had my eye on ever since I saw someone at work wearing one. It’s so cute, you guys. And the Old Navy I went to had very few left. Check it out:

YAY.

And here is something that can cheer anyone up:

I am so ready for summer. I am ready to wear all the cute new tops I’ve bought. I’m ready for warm weather and sunshine. I’m ready to stop wearing a billion layers, gloves, hats, scarves. I am ready for light breezes and blue skies. I’m ready to pull out the light clothes and put the heavy stuff away. It’s a shame that it stays cold here for so long. *sigh*

Anyway, that’s all for now. Time for Twilight with RiffTracks. LOLarity will ensure. And I’m pretty sure tomorrow will be much better.

Good night.

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