Manic Monday

Steven Spielberg has taken on a lot lately and I’m kind of excited. He always makes amazing things. First, is Super 8, which I am soooo excited to see, then 2 TV shows; Falling Skies, which premiered last night and Smash, which premieres in the Fall. Unfortunately, Spielberg isn’t directing any of these, just producing them, but the fact that he’s involved with the creation makes them automatically good.

Super 8 has gotten amazing reviews even though it’s been advertised everywhere. I know why they did it, but usually when movies get over advertised, they suck, but the kids in the movies are new to Hollywood so they had to over advertise to get people to notice it. Although, I feel like the names JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg were enough.

Smash looks incredibly entertaining with singing and all that fun stuff. Katherine McPhee is auditioning to become Marilyn Monroe on Broadway. Falling Skies looks really good as well. I hadn’t heard of it until KROQ was talking about it last week in preparation for the premiere and I decided to watch a preview and it looks good. Aliens come to Earth and the people must survive. Sounds similar to The Walking Dead, but with aliens. The series starts after the invasion has already taken place and we see their adventures from there. I haven't had the chance to watch the pilot episode yet, but I have no doubt it's going to be good. So Steven, keep up the good work. I wish I were your friend.

Hef The Great

You learn something new everyday. My favorite thing to look at in all of Los Angeles is the Hollywood sign. I don’t know what it is about that sign, but when I see it, I get kind of gaga and I just want to stare at it. Not too long ago, one of my friends and I found a route to get pretty close to the sign. It was kind of amazing to be sitting below this larger than life sign. It just means so many things to so many people. What a lot of people don’t know is that the sign used to read Hollywoodland and “land” slid off a while back and Hollywood stayed. This isn’t what I learned. The thing that I learned about this is that the Hollywoodland sign was put on the hillside as an ad for a real estate development called Hollywoodland created in 1923. I had no freaking idea. I never really asked why or how the sign got there I was just fascinated by its presence. Well, it looks like the real estate companies never stopped wanting that land on the hillside.

In February the sign was covered with new letters to read Save the Peak because real estate companies wanted to demolish the sign and build super expensive homes. Can you imagine Hollywood if that sign went away after being there since 1923? Luckily, Hugh Hefner stepped in and donated $900,000 to keep the sign after Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks donated quite a bit of money themselves. It cost about $2 million to keep the sign in tact. Out of all the people, I guess Hef is the best candidate to finalize this deal. I mean who has that kind of money just lying around? Either way, I could buy Playboy for the rest of my life just to support him for saving that damn sign. The hillside and sign now belong to Griffith Park. Yay for Hollywood!