Being on The Rachael Ray Show

So this was a proper indoor studio shoot. Recorded, not live, like my outing to Good Morning America's studio last week. Apparently they had 110,000 audience applications for the first 3 weeks of shooting the new season, so a big Thank You to my friend N who got tickets and passed them on to me.

First, Rachael Ray rocks. The warm-up guy, comedian R.C Smith (they actually have a guy whose job it is to entertain the audience in between shots), did say that if we hadn't been on any other show before then we wouldn't want to after being on Rachael Ray, and he wasn't lying. It was super fun. I got there huffing and puffing like a crazy maniac (I always have stories, don't I), pushed as I was to run for close to twenty minutes non-stop amid the busy New York streets, to make sure I got to the studio on time. And I just made it, because they started admitting people soon after I joined the queue. Mandatory security check complete, we went up to the waiting room where we were provided free food and coffee. Then we were herded inside the studio, which was colorful and swanky. It was divided into three parts - the kitchen, a garden area and a sort of lounge area. The best part was definitely the rotating lazy susan on which the audience chairs were fixed, so we were turned around to face whichever part of the studio the shot was being taken in, without having to move a muscle.

They were shooting segments of two separate episodes yesterday. Both had celebrity guests, and we were kept in the dark as to who they were. The first was Valerie Bertinelli (the lady who comes in the Jenny Craig ads), and of course she was on the cooking segment. Rachael and her look a lot alike - seriously, they could be cousins, as she said, and they spoke about her weight loss with Jenny Craig and her son Wolfgang's impending tour with Van Halen (she is married to guitarist Eddie from the band). They did unexpected things like burning a pair of Valerie's old size 14 jeans in a barbeque grill so that she wouldn't go back to her old weight ever again (if that works, I should try burning my old clothes too - ha ha ha!!!), and Rachael made a yummy-looking turkey bacon burger with onion rings in the Barbie-type kitchen. (When I say Barbie-type, I mean an orange stove and an electric blue fridge, for starters!).

The second celebrity guest (and this was definitely the most memorable part of my trip to the studio) was....was.....WAS....DANIEL RADCLIFFE!!!! No kidding. Harry Potter in all his sixteen-year-old glory. He was rather cute, very British and I couldn't believe I was seeing him!!! Rachael is a lovely conversationalist, and got him to speak about his take on a lot of interesting things:

on the fame, post-Harry Potter:
Rachael: How is it being so famous?
Daniel: It's just great, really.
Rachael: Thank God he's not like other stars who pretend to hate the fact that they're famous!

...his experience working on the upcoming 'December Boys', shot in Australia:
Daniel: I'd been to Australia a few times and just love the country, so shooting there was fun. Except it was in this rural part of Australia, an island called Kangaroo Island, and after living in London all my life it was such a change. I think Australia is my favourite country apart from England, sorry!! (this to the audience, referring to America of course!)

...his experience acting in a nude scene for his London stage debut in 'Equus':
Rachael: What was it like shooting that? Did you enjoy the whole thing or was it weird to have so many people watch you?
Daniel: I couldn't have done it if I was in America because you aren't allowed to shoot nude scenes if you are under sixteen, but of course London doesn't care about all that! It was weird, being watched by so many people.

Rachael: What is the weirdest thing a fan has ever done?
Daniel: Well when I was doing the nude scene, there was this one person who picked up my boxers from the corner of the stage where I'd taken them off, and just legged it!
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Yeah. It was quite cool. Rachael Ray herself is cute as a button and seems to be quite a nice person. No attitude or anything. I guess if you have a talk show, you have to be personable! We got free boxes of sweet potato cookies, which weird as they sound, actually tasted quite nice. And then of course there were the games where R.C.Smith picked on random members of the audience and asked them questions and gave them goodie-bags. He was good, a really funny guy.

I'm glad THAT's been crossed off my to-do list. Being part of audience on American TV show - indoor and outdoor - done. :-)

She Rocks!

Loley enda moley....I can't believe I know this girl from college!!!

For the Malloos out there, plees check out the video effects and other Melayalee idiosyncrasies!!!

Carrie Bradshaw on Life

'You cannot let who you are mess up who you will be'
- Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City

Sometimes these telly chicks are quite smart, I tell you.

The Beautiful Hospital vs. The Ugly Hospital vs. The Real Hospital

Sallie Tisdale in Salon on the medical realities portrayed in television shows : House vs. ER vs. Grey's Anatomy vs. Scrubs. She's a real-life nurse in a real hospital, by the way.

An excerpt:

Like a lot of people who work in healthcare -- I'm a nurse -- I started watching "House" because of the mysterious diseases involved. Everyone loves a rare disease. And I was perversely charmed by the title character's nastiness. House says the kind of things I sometimes want to say -- mostly, to doctors. (Dr. Weber: "I know I know you." House: "Sure you do, Dick." Weber: "The name's Phillip." House: "Oh, my bad. Something to do with your face. I always think your name is Dick.") I kept watching in spite of his flamingly litigious behavior: He calls one patient "Mrs. Nympho" and says of a Chinese woman, "Not the sharpest chopstick in the drawer, is she?" I watched for a whole season, in spite of knowing that the crude passes, Internet porn and Vicodin addiction meant that any doctor like him would be both bankrupt and imprisoned.

The Wonderful Years

I watched the Wonder Years last night and was transported back to the age when everything was simple and innocent and yet so different and full of angst. Growing up was a hard thing to do. The Wonder Years is one of my favorite TV shows, and I haven’t watched a re-run in years and years. I couldn’t help but smile longingly as I watched Kevin, Winnie and Paul at the start of their teenage years. I remember the confusion I felt when you know those people from the other planet – BOYS – started talking to me a bit more than usual. I remember trying to be haughty and avoid listening to their taunts as I rushed along the corridors to get to class. I remember getting into a fight with that girl who talked to boys all the time and who threatened to ‘report’ me because she thought I was the one spreading rumors about her. (Star TV had just about made its advent into the country and my hometown was more of a homevillage back then – girls talking to boys all the time – how SCANDALOUS!!!!)..and no, it really wasn’t me. I remember playing Hide and Seek in my grandmother’s huge house, and Dark Room and other such fun games with my classmates when they came over one day. Even Name Place Animal Thing! India was still so new to me then, I’d just moved from Saudi Arabia where society was even more closeted and at that age, I felt like it was a new world. With my pigtails and big spectacles, I was certainly not part of the cool gang on my first day. But then, India back then – or at least my school, didn’t have those group labels yet. I misheard a proper South Indian name like ‘Sugalesini’ as ‘Subbulakshmi’ (probably one of the few names I was familiar with), who was the girl sitting next to me on my first day at school. I remember asking K to be my ‘best friend’ because you know, everyone had a best friend back then and she was new too. I probably figured it would be my best shot – but you know what? Fourteen years later, she’s one of the few people I can still really talk to, and she still lives down the road from me. Just as she used to in India. In another country. How’s that for Providence?!!!

I hated a lot of what I went through back then, but they probably were a large contribution to who I am today. I’m glad I went through my Wonder Years, even if I was not as enlightened then as my Big City Sisters. Those are the kind of girls who later became my college classmates, but that’s a different story altogether!

Shi(f)t Happens!

Take a look at this video. It talks about what the future’s going to look like for us, with some pretty interesting facts. I’ll name just a few, most of which we know but I think it’s just that it never really hits us (well it didn’t hit me anyway) till we see it all put together like this.-

- The top 28% of people with highest IQ in India is greater than the total population of America

- If all the jobs that exist in the US were currently shifted to China, China would still have a labor surplus

- Job-hopping is on the rise – 1 in 4 people today work for a company which has employed them for less than a year

- We perform 2.7 billion searches on Google each month – where did we go (and I like this abbreviation) B.G (before Google)?

- A week’s worth of NYT contains more information than a person was likely to come across in his entire lifetime in the 18^th century.

- The amount of technical information is doubling every 2 years – this means that for college students, what they study in Year 1 will be obsolete by Year 3. (The computer language I studied when I was in school – BASIC, is not even spoken of, anymore!)

***

I also watched a TV show last night called ‘Spotlight 25’ where the host of the show spoke to a group of 25-year-old women about their values, beliefs and aspirations - thoughts on life, love and sex. Some of what was said actually just confirmed what the video above said – most of the women on the show had already switched jobs at least 5 times, for example – they didn’t want to stay in a job which didn’t give them as much satisfaction as they were looking for. But more importantly, the show revealed us for who we are: things like moving up the career ladder being important, but getting married and having a family being as important – there was one 25 –year-old on the show who was married with 2 kids, and had a hectic but well-managed schedule getting the kids ready for day-care in the morning, getting to work and being a top performer, picking up the kids on her way back home, and then going for a run in the evening before her day ended. Another one gave up her six-figure salaried job to set up a firm of her own, yet another went to Africa to build homes for underprivileged kids there while putting her own full-time job at risk.

It IS true that a lot of the time I think about where my peers are and try to assess whether I have been ‘left behind’, as one girl said on the show, but at the end of the day every person is unique, and comparisons are odious. What makes you happy may not make another person happy, and you have to go for what YOU want, because that’s the only way you’ll be happy yourself.

We are, after all, a generation that should be known as trailblazers to our future generations. There is so much we have that our mothers didn’t – like the Internet, for example!

Koffee with Karan, anyone?

I watched the second installment of the newly-on-air 'Koffee with Karan' on Friday. I don't know yet whether Mr. Johar has got an Ekta Kapoor fixation or whether it is just a coincidence that his name happens to start with a 'K' and he changed the name of the caffeine concoction to synchronise with it. Anyway, I think the show is quite amusing to watch. The first episode with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol was hilarious. Obviously the two guests thought so too because they were in splits themselves for a good length of time. The second episode with Rani Mukherjee and Kareena Kapoor was a bit watered down but interesting nevertheless - I think Karan Johar needs to be careful lest he falls into the boring celebrity talk show mould though. What makes this show different is simply the humour (where Karan spares no expense - apart from asking questions that are designed to provoke the stars, he takes the 'insults' thrown at him by his guests very well) and the genuine vibe that exists between most of his guests. Having grown up on a steady dose of Stardust and Filmfare when I was younger (people do go through their phases, you know!!), this show is particularly entertaining for me because it deconstructs the actors beautifully. I mean, lots of the stuff written in spreads is fiction or at the very least, written with a generous dose of masala - I suppose the paparazzi do have to find some way of selling their magazines. And though the possibility of the actors on the show, well, acting, is not entirely absent, the chance of them doing that with a friend (Karan Johar knows most of the people on his show quite well) is much less. Think of Kareena Kapoor and her repeated 'What is this, yaar?!!' to Karan, especially when he beeped what he called a 'lie-o-meter'!! Anyway, I laugh through a good part of the show and in a day and age where a rerun of 'Friends' is the only other show that make me laugh a decent amount, that makes 'Koffee with Karan' a success in my eyes!!