Last year I made a wish list of stuff I wanted for Christmas, this year I am making a list of stuff I already have but highly recommend for those of you looking for gift ideas this holiday season.  Yay for the spirit of giving!! (See, I’m growing as a person! Also, mom, if you’re reading this, I want cash and Starbucks gift cards but mostly cash.) If I was Oprah, these would be included in my favorite things. (For the record? If I was Oprah, I’d also give you a boat, a trip to Wilmington NC in the autumn, and a twenty-minute conversation with Matt Davis about sex, energy, and aliens.)

Voluspa ceramic candles. Here is how I know I’m not a real grown up: Sometimes I can’t afford food, and also sometimes I spend $30 on a candle. I can hear my mother lecturing me about my spending habits now, but whatever. These ceramic candles smell amazing, last ages, and just look really pretty on a shelf or a dresser. My favorites are the Macaron and Suede Blanco scents. Macaron fills the room with the smell of pastries, but it’s not sickly sweet or too strongly vanilla-scented, which can sometimes be stifling. Suede Blanco has a masculine cologne scent. Basically, it makes your room smell like a really hot sophisticated guy just left, probably on his way to go buy you something fancy. The ceramic candles are really pretty, and once they’re burned down the jars still look nice and are multi-functional. (This is how I justify the expense.) You can use them for pens or makeup brushes or whatever. Plus, when I am trying to make the last twelve dollars in my bank account last until payday, I can still feel fancy burning one of these. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, I fly to NYC for the TV network Upfronts. Upfronts week is when the four major broadcast networks (and their underappreciated adopted misunderstood step-sister who was raised by wolves, The CW) present their upcoming fall programming to the advertisers. It’s about selling their product to the people who buy it, so the networks put on quite a show — they throw big parties, they host red carpets, they make Joshua Jackson take like a zillion pictures with strangers, it’s a whole thing. And it’s a lot of work, a lot of early mornings and late nights and ruining your favorite shoes in the inevitable rain.

It’s simultaneously the best and worst part of my job. Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s super fun, but this year it all made me so tired that when I left NYC, I paid $35 extra to check my carry-on because the thought of actually carrying it on was too exhausting to even imagine.

Anyway, the point of all of those words is this: Upfronts make me tired. But when I get home to LA, TV networks reward my hard work by sending me pilots. I’ve now watched pretty much all the pilots from all the major networks. (I skipped ones I knew I wouldn’t like, like ABC’s “The Neighbors,” a sitcom about extraterrestrials in New Jersey, and CBS’s “Made in Jersey,” a drama about a girl from Jersey who decides to be a big fancy Manhattan lawyer which is just a WILD concept because nobody ever comes to Manhattan from New Jersey because Manhattan is just so glamorous and edgy and blah blah blah not interested. This makes me sound like I hate New Jersey, but I don’t. I totally watch “Jersey Shore.”)

We’re not allowed to actually review the shows yet because some of them may undergo changes by the time they air in the fall, and also because posting reviews now does the networks very little good, promotion-wise. If you run in certain social media circles, you’ve probably seen TV reporters tweeting about the shows, but not saying much of anything substantial. We’re not trying to torture you guys by keeping the goods to ourselves, we’re just not allowed to review right now. It’s sort of an unspoken deal with the networks — if they give us screeners, we’ll adhere to their embargo.

Having seen most of the screeners, I’ve decided which ones I’ll be watching next season, and I figured I’d put together a little schedule — not only for my own peace of mind, but because a lot of you guys share my TV tastes or, for some bizarre reason, trust my TV tastes. Read the rest of this entry »