July 21, 2009
Kathy and I met Deena Bean and Frank the Tank down at The Harkins 101 last night to see the second sneak of Julie & Julia, a new film—and the alleged first movie ever about a blog—by Nora Ephron. We missed the first one last week because we got there too late and didn't make the cut. This time Kathy went down at 6:15 to get a good place in line and we still almost didn't make the cut. Unfortunately we were in the front row and I wanted to leave, but Kathy kept bugging the media rep and after the movie started (we had gone out in the lobby) he finally relented and gave us four prime seats in the media section! Actually, the best seats in the house, first row, stadium seating section.

Big City Lesson: small town boys give up too easily and too early and big city girls know how to be persistent and charming and get their way almost every time. Which, ironically, is what the movie is about. A big city girl, Julie, who lived in Queens and started a blog in 2002 about making every recipe in Julia Child's French cookbook. That's pretty much it. When the New York Times did an article on her she got a big city book deal and a movie. Ditto for Julia Childs, although she had to settle for a TV show (and, yes, they played the Dan Aykroyd SNL parody of Julia slicing herself and bleeding like a stuck pig). Julia's book I believe is in it's 49th printing and I imagine this movie will drive it into another half dozen.

Went home for lunch today and worked on the Mickey Free segment where The Apache Kid rescues Beauty. Unfortunately, they have their first spat: she can't keep up with him on the run back to Mexico and she gets kind of whiny (for an Apache):

They exchange unpleasantries. She tells him she has been at school and is out of shape. He asks what she actually learned in the White Man school, which is a dig, of course. You might call this a 10K marathon bitchfest.

Or not.

Our big vaquero issue is going out the door tomorrow. Everyone here is working hard on it. One of the things I'm most proud of is the fact that everyone here cares about every page of the magazine. I went into production this morning and Robert, Meghan and Abby were going around and around about the virtues and lack thereof, of particular photos on the Contents Page. They were passionate about it, each making their case as to which image serves the reader best? (an argument over the Contents Page!). Amazing.

Oh, and Frank the Tank graduates today. Congrats Frankie Boy!

"It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception is composed of others."
—Andrew J. Holmes