Our web team has been doing a great job of web site genesis. I've been lax in contributing to it. They've even given me my own category and that comes with certain obligation. So I'm blogging now.

A lot's happening, including ~

It is always phenomenal meeting entertainment industry legends, not only because there are so few left from the old emergent days of TV & film, but because they set a standard of excellence for subsequent generations to follow. They were groundbreaking and adventurous in a time when film and TV were new.

Kirk Douglas came to our stage recently and it was indeed an honor to have him here. What a pleasure to see this movie legend. You may remember him from some of his more well known films: Lust for Life (1956), Spartacus (1960), or The List of Adrian Messenger (1963).

What you may not know is that Mr. Douglas has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the US State Department since 1963. He was awarded by President Jimmy Carter in 1981 the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest US award a civilian can receive.

Kimora Lee Simmons was on our stage last month with the latest from her Baby Phat line of clothing and new couture line KLS. We had a brief fashion show and an interview. Maria also did some standups with her.

The clothing speaks for itself. Baby Phat is an offshoot of estranged husband Russell Simmons’ line of clothing called Phat Farm. When he founded the Baby Phat brand, he named Kimora as the creative director. They split in 2006, but still work together, according the their respective websites.

Unrelated uplifting photo, as balloons only can be – see end of blog for description

My 5-year old Siamese cat, Sascha, was in the animal hospital for the past few days getting kitty bladder stones removed. I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with the situation this week and haven’t written much as a result. When my husband and I went to visit her the other night, after her initial delight at seeing us, she actually growled when she realized we weren’t taking her home. When we finally took her home two nights ago, with post-op instructions to keep her quiet, she and her protective 12.5 inch collar fled from the cat carrier and bulleted all over the place, so excited was this feral kitty to be home. She’s generally very frisky by nature and the only symptoms of her bladder condition were a certain lethargy that set in, and frequent, overly strained visits to the litter box. She’s recovering nicely now in the comfort of her own surroundings.

It’s harder to know when an animal is in need of help than a human. Cats, for instance, don’t shave their heads bald in front of the world. Nor do they check in and out and in and out and in to rehab once the buzzing is done, or flail a car with an umbrella. They also don’t paint their faces like a clown and behave on camera as if they were on drugs. Generally, they don’t have bottles of methadone in the fridge next to the Slimfast & Trimspa, either.

My blogs aren’t linear; so much is going on in the world, I hope you’ll indulge the occasional juxtaposition of unrelated topics.

Yesterday the very funny assistants from “Ugly Betty” were on our stage doing a shoot for their show. Michael Urie (Marc) and Becki Newton (Amanda) acted as Nancy and Billy’s assistants at various times throughout the morning. They were hilarious.

The photos were taken on our stage while we were taping the daily show.

As the above Chinese proverb suggests, Monday was interesting. The lighting grid was down on our stage owing to a faulty breaker, the consequence of working with aging equipment. We didn’t discover this until shortly before we were to shoot the daily show, so it was a bit of a scramble making air, especially since this was our Grammy show. We have a terrific lighting crew, and they were able to light a couple of areas for us, despite the fact that we didn’t have our full lighting complement. Stand lights were a big help. And, preparing for every eventuality, we dug into our handbags for extra flashlights and cyalume sticks in the event that extra illumination was required. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

In production there are often technical glitches which interfere with making air – a piece of equipment goes down, a tape machine doesn’t roll or record properly, an aprisa doesn’t fire. I remember one of my first TV jobs in Nashville, Tennessee, a live shoot where 7 out of 10 cameras were down owing mostly to bad weather. There was a lot of hollering in the control room at the time as I recall, but everything turned out fine. It was a country music show and simpler coverage was ideal, actually, more homey.

On Monday, Shaun Robinson interviewed Christina Aguilera on our Stage. She was great! I remember her as a child from her Mickey Mouse Club days and it is still difficult to see her as anything other than that funny, sweet, slightly mischievous teen. It is such a pleasure to see what she’s become today: a poised and accomplished artist and a very personable human being.

On our Access Hollywood stage we’re a little short on camera operators, owing to budget constraints. Currently we have two. So, we compensate by using all the cameras we have, locking off several of them on specific shots and roaming with the handhelds. We “float” a wide shot with the jib, which in TV terms is not a staysail (although there are some days when high winds aloft on stage warrant one!) but a mechanical arm with a camera attached to the end. The jib moves about getting our wide shot cover.