TheMommyBlog

Thursday, February 15, 2007 Me, Me, Me, Other people who write, Travel

Heh. As if there could be ANY quiet with a load of funny people and humongous personalities crowded into roughly 100 square feet on folding chairs.

So, I’m finally going to tell you where I was on Monday. I thought it was all hush-hush until I saw that all the other bloggers covered it already and there’s like two stories left that haven’t been told yet. But I will tell those stories if it’s the last thing I do because… because… I can’t NOT tell stories. It’s a burden. For everyone.

I and ten other Mom Bloggers were invited to the set of Kari Lizer’s The New Adventures of Old Christine, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. I had never seen the show (they finally make a show about MY LIFE and I’m too busy putting everyone to bed at eight-thirty to even know it’s on TV), but the description had me interested, and the four episodes they sent us had me hooked. It’s “a comedy about a single mother and owner of a 30-minute workout gym who is the portrait of the new American mom, albeit with some unflinchingly candid points of view.” Sound familiar? It is. Waaaaay too familiar in some aspects. Julia plays a divorced mother (Christine, referred to as “Old Christine) who is friendly with her ex and his new girlfriend (also named Christine, referred to as “New Christine”), lives with her brother—this kind of brother should be standard issue to all women in Christine’s situation and I would maim kittens to get one—and shares custody of her son with her ex. Phil was snickering and elbowing me through all four episodes. We were howling.

Oh, and you’ll never believe this, but the dad’s house is the “fun” house, and the mom’s house is the “homework” house. Also, there are Mean Mommies at school who constantly remind Christine that she’s not living up to her potential as a Lunch Mom or Volunteer for the Fund Raiser to launch the upcoming Fund Raiser Season. I know, I was shocked, too.

So I thought it would be a quick meet-n-greet and a little Q&A between the cast and the bloggers, but it was ever so much more than that! Ten minutes into it they were calling us one by one over to the set to film an “opener” describing who we were, what we did, and why we were there. All I remember was yammering and walking around the kitchen pretending to do a diorama and then babbling some more and once I was finished, walked off camera without waiting for the go-ahead. DORK.

Then we had a great conversation with the cast, about how their own parenting experiences feed into the show (one of the Mean Mommies admitted to missing her own daughter’s Back to School Night in order to file the Back to School night episode of the show. Her face was priceless.) and about the way they portray blended families like no other show has done.

It’s not always the woman who avoids sex. They dad is actually competent, smart, and funny. The new girlfriend is extremely likable. Everyone pulls together. And—bizarre it may seem—the parents, while divorced, have a healthy friendship and actually help each other out. No way! Can it be true? Can there be cooperative divorced relationships? Way! I’ve been doing it for years. And people think I’m nuts, because it just “isn’t done.”

Well, now it is.

Ooh, favorite moment? Giving my last two copies of Mommy Confidential to Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Kari Lizer and saying, “There are about seventeen episodes in here for you.” God, I hope they look at it. I’m all sold out of my own copies!

We also went for coffee (all eleventeen of us) and the Mean Mommies joined us to hang out before we got back on the bus to the studio. I’m sorry, but I am going to have trouble believing their characters now because they were incredibly nice and down to earth, comparing stories about child care and manic lives and blended families. And, in real life, they are best friends. I love that.

Anyway, I could go on forever (and have) but I’ll just list the others who were with me so you can read all about it on their sites as well. Oh! And stay tuned for the tape! CBS is going to produce individual segments for us to post on our blogs! Eeeee! You’ll get to see me go from caffeinated, coiffed, and articulate in the beginning to flu-ridden, makeup-smeared and incoherent at the end. I could. not. say. the. name. of. the. show. And I kept talking to people off camera, while on camera. DORK.

People who are NOT dorks:

Tim - L.A. Daddy
Romi Lasally - Features Editor, The Huffington Post
Amy Keroes & Dawn Dobras - Founders of Mommy Track’d
Erin & Kristin - Manic Mommies Podcast
Sara Fisher - The Self-Made Mom
Liz Gumbinner - Cool Mom Picks
Liz Rizzo, BlogHer Contributing Editor for Sex and Relationships
Blogs: Everyday Goddess, The SexySmart Blog and On The Lot.
Y - Joy Unexpected
Elaine - Wannabehippie
The Fabulous Beth Feldman, who made it all happen - RoleMommy and Moms of Reinvention