7 Things I Learned: From Sleepless in Seattle

By Nancy Scrofano

Sleepless in Seattleis one of the best romantic comedies of all time. The official meet cute happens at the very end of the movie, which is unconventional but still classic. The two main characters who are meant to be together hardly interact at all until the last few minutes. Nevertheless, this movie is fantastic. Some people may not like romantic comedies (chick flicks) or even understand their appeal, but there are all kinds of lessons to be learned from them. Here’s what Sleepless in Seattle taught me:

If your significant other has a laugh you can’t stand the sound of, then the relationship isn’t going to last. Sam (Tom Hanks) knew that Victoria was not right for him. Her annoying laugh had to get on his nerves. Sam’s son, Jonah, really disliked her, too. “She laughs like a hyena.”

If you hide in a closet to listen to the radio to hear a man you’ve never met but might be falling in love with, your live-in fiancé will find you, and you’ll have some explaining to do. Annie (Meg Ryan) is desperate to hear Sam on the radio, but doesn’t want to wake her fiancé, Walter. Sam is called “sleepless in Seattle” by the radio psychologist, but Annie is actually “sleepless in Baltimore,” too. She knows that she doesn’t belong with Walter, but she also thinks finding “the one” through a radio program is unrealistic. (Note: Obviously, this was before online dating, otherwise Annie might have been more open to what was happening, but then the movie wouldn’t have been as good.) “It was Miss Scarlet, in the closet, with a radio.”

Everyone needs a friend like Becky. Not only does she send Annie’s letter to Sam because Annie doesn’t have the courage to do it herself, but she also sends Annie to Seattle, telling her that maybe she could do a story about radio talk shows (Annie is a reporter for the Baltimore Sun and Becky is an editor there). Becky encourages Annie to take risks and go after what she really wants.

When An Affair to Remember is compared to The Dirty Dozen, An Affair to Remember always wins, despite what men think. Sam’s sister, Suzy, bursts into tears while describing An Affair to Remember, which is one of the best scenes in the movie. In response, Sam simply says, “That’s a chick’s movie.” Then, to top it off, Sam pretends to cry while describing The Dirty Dozen. Hilarious!

If you travel all the way from Baltimore to Seattle to meet a guy, then you should say more than “hello” to him before running away. When Annie sees Sam in Seattle and they exchange “hello” and then she leaves quickly, I always yell at the screen, “Cross the street!” If only she had just crossed the street and approached him instead of turning around. Yes, she thinks his sister is his girlfriend, but she’s just assuming that. She made all that effort to get there, and then she flees without giving anything a chance. “All I could say was hello.” Really? Come on!

If your young son hops a plane across the country without your permission, then he should probably be grounded (pun intended), unless it forced you to follow him there where you then meet the love of your life. Sam was furious with Jonah, but once Sam reached the Empire State Building, found Jonah, and saw Annie, all the worry he had over Jonah’s brief disappearance seemed to melt away.

There’s always a happy ending—or happy beginning, depending how you look at it. The movie ends happily, Sam and Annie holding hands as they head down the elevator with Jonah. The beginning of a happy family.

Nancy Scrofano is the editor of Good Humor Girl and the author of True Love Way. She is also the editor of The Chick Lit Bee, a book blog that promotes and celebrates women’s fiction, and she writes book reviews for a prestigious book review magazine Nancy is at work on her next novel. For more information, please visit www.nancyscrofano.com.   

The Mommy Files: File Under Exhausted

By Lori Verni-Fogarsi

I’m exhausted. Truly I am, and I don’t see a reprieve anywhere in sight!

Today alone, I’ve officiated a goldfish funeral, compiled paperwork for a tax audit, cleaned up cat puke, breastfed the baby six times, wrote three articles for work, hosted my (tongue-clucking) mother-in-law for lunch, and played Little People for two hours. And it’s only three o’clock!

Looks like much more fun.
Yesterday was even worse! I took both kids to the pediatrician for checkups, where the nurse and I spent twenty minutes trying to find two-year-old Rose because she ran and hid once she heard that she was getting a vaccine. This was followed by having to hold her down, with her screaming as if her arm were being amputated. At Mommy and Me, where I was paying $25 because I have two kids in the class, both girls sat in the corner refusing to participate—Rose because she was “so injured,” and eleven-month-old Grace because her sister was doing it.

The tub is filthy from their baths yesterday because while painting at the easel in the back yard, they mixed all the colors together, then had a fit because everything was brown. I will have to clean the tub before bathing them tonight, and I myself haven’t had a shower in three days!

My hair is disgusting, not only because it’s unwashed, but also because I haven’t had it colored in over a year due to pregnancy and breastfeeding. It now consists of three colors: My natural colors of dark brown and grey, with the faded out lighter brown on the ends from when I used to color it. My clothes don’t fit, and I refuse to buy new ones because I absolutely plan to lose all this baby weight, which you would think I’d have lost by now, being that there is barely any food in the house because it’s so much work to food shop with a baby and a toddler.

My husband is working long hours in order to support this family of ours, and while he does help in the evening, I need that time to return my phone calls and get some work done for what’s left of my formerly-successful career.

As I said, I’m exhausted. Every bone in my body aches, and I am so tired, I could literally lie down in the middle of the aisle at Wal-Mart and take a nap, if only I wasn’t worried that they’d cart me off to the funny farm. Then again, maybe that would be a good idea! Maybe not the funny farm, but a hospital would be great! I could lie in bed watching TV and eating nonfat ice chips. If I needed something, I could press a button and a nurse would come and plump my pillows! People would bring me flowers and magazines, and I could laze around, recuperating and indulging in the occasional Jell-O!
 
Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be covered under our insurance. Which would then cause more paperwork for me, not to mention expense, resulting in my husband having to work even more, which would make me have to work even more, which would not be helpful at all.

Don’t worry, I’m not hysterical. Okay, I am hysterical. But it’s fine, really it is. Somehow each day goes into the next, and I manage to get through it all. Sometimes there are even good days! They’re just hard to think of at a time like this.

Lori Verni-Fogarsi is the author of the hot new novel, Momnesia. She has been a freelance writer, columnist, journalist, and seminar speaker for 15+ years, and has authored one nonfiction book. Lori is a happily married mom of two, step mom of two more, and has two cats, both rotten. A regular contributor at Good Humor Girl, you can learn more about her here.

Image Influence: A History of Celebrity Inspired Hair Horrors

By Tracie Banister

Have you ever walked into a salon, clutching a photo of some gorgeous, trend-setting celebrity, handed it to your stylist and said, "Make my hair look like that?" I'm sorry to say that I have, on numerous occasions, and the end result was always the same . . . DISASTER!

It all started back in the '80s. Big hair was in, but no matter how many hot rollers and cans of ozone layer-destroying hairspray I employed, I could not achieve the desired volume with my stick-straight hair. My dreams of looking like Constance Weldon Semple Carlyle were dashed. For those of you who did not watch the deliciously campy primetime soap Flamingo Road, Constance was the show's resident diva who had a propensity for wearing fabulous negligees and slapping people. As played by '80s icon Morgan Fairchild, Constance was all that was glamorous and stylish in my young, impressionable mind, and I would not rest until my locks looked like hers (I was already blonde, so I was halfway there!). I took my hairstyling woes, and a picture of Ms. Fairchild, ripped from the pages of a magazine, to my local salon, and a perm was suggested. I envisioned my hair expanding to new heights, with glorious, sexy waves cascading to my shoulders. Instead, after spending 4+ hours in the chair, I looked like I'd stuck my finger in a light socket! I spent months trying to tame that perm (I think I bought every conditioner, straightener, and smoothing oil treatment the beauty supply store had to offer), but nothing worked, and I was left with nothing but crazy-looking frizz for most of my freshman year of high school. Decades later, and I still twitch involuntarily every time the smell of a perm assails my nostrils. Post-Traumatic Hair Horrors Syndrome, it's not just an urban legend, people.

So, I gave up on ever having curly, or even slightly wavy, tresses. Cut to the '90s, when I became enamored of a little show called Lois & Clark. I didn't just love that program because Dean Cain was the hottest Clark Kent to ever don a pair of dorky glasses, but because I was obsessed with Teri Hatcher's look as Lois Lane. Lois had this whole retro '40s vibe going on with her tailored pantsuits and wide-collared dresses, and I adored her sleek, mid-neck-length bob. I just knew that with my straight hair I could pull off that style with aplomb! So, off to the salon I went, and I had a good six inches of my hair chopped off - SIX INCHES! I didn't care, thinking that it would be worth the sacrifice if my makeover resulted in me looking like Teri Hatcher's younger, fair-haired sister. What I failed to realize was that Teri and I do not have the same shape face. Hers is long and narrow with nice, high cheekbones, which looked great when it was framed by a bob. Mine is oval and full-cheeked and when it's framed by a bob, well let's just say it ain't pretty (moon pie would probably be an apt description). And to make matters worse, my hair, which had always been so flat and straight when it was long, suddenly became unmanageably poofy when it was above my shoulders. I looked more like Buster Brown than I did Teri Hatcher. It took well over a year to grow out that unflattering bob!

At this point, you would think that I would have learned my lesson about trying to copy the hairstyles of actresses, right? Wrong.The first time I saw that cute, layered cut sported by Rachel on Friends, my eyes lit up like a child's on Christmas morning. This was the one! The sassy, easy-to-care-for hairstyle that would suit me perfectly and make me the envy of women everywhere. Jennifer Aniston had a face shape similar to mine, didn't she? She, also, had a team of hairdressers who spent countless hours blowdrying and styling that famous 'do of hers so that it looked effortlesslytousled. I didn't have that kind of time, patience, or skill, and as a result, my hair just looked like a chopped-up wreck. It took forever to grow those layers out, and in the midst of that process, I had to be maid of honor in a friend's wedding. Needless to say, I cringe every time I see those pictures, and layers is now a dirty word in my household. 

After three failed attempts at hair mimicry, I finally gave up, and I'm proud to report that I haven't sought to emulate any celebrity styles in the last 15 years. The new millennium has actually been good to me as far as hair trends go. Straight hair is now all the rage, with women paying $500+ for Keratin treatments to get their tresses to look as smooth as mine do naturally, and the ombre hair color fad means not having to get my blonde highlights touched up very often! I've got a signature look that doesn't require too much maintenance, and I'm happy with it, although I have been covetously eying the coppery color of Amy Adams hair for a while. Wonder what I'd look like as a redhead?
 
I'd love to hear your celebrity-inspired hair horror stories, so leave a comment below and we can share each other's pain.


An avid reader and writer, Tracie Banister has been scribbling stories since she was a child, most of them featuring feisty heroines with complicated love lives like her favorite fictional protagonist Scarlett O'Hara. Her Hollywood-themed Chick Lit novel, Blame It on the Fame, was released in January, 2012. She blogs about books and other fun stuff at http://traciebanister.blogspot.com/ and her Twitter handle is @traciebanister.

iHeart: Disney Channel

By Nancy Scrofano


Remember when you had to pay extra for the Disney Channel? It wasn’t always included in the regular cable line-up. I begged my parents to get the Disney Channel for me, but was unsuccessful. They weren’t hearing my pleas and my promises that I would clean my room, wash the dishes, etc. if they would just pay for Disney. When I thought all hope was lost and I would never experience that Disney magic, the day finally came when it was added to our cable package. I was overjoyed! Now I would get to see what other kids at school were talking about. It was myturn.  

The first Disney Channel show I fell in love with was Flash Forward. Oh, Tucker and Rebecca, or Tuck and Becca as they were nicknamed. This might have been my first introduction to a best friendship between a guy and a girl who are clearly meant for each other, and everyone can see it but them. They finally kissed in the last episode, and then Becca says, “What are the odds?” Well, the odds were pretty good since the series was over, and obviously, Tucker and Becca belonged together.

After saying a tearful goodbye to Flash Forward, I was ready to move on. The Famous Jett Jackson, Even Stevens (a young Shia LaBeouf!) and Lizzie McGuire captured my heart next. Lizzie McGuire premiered when I was about to graduate high school, but I didn’t care that I was a bit older than the target demographic. I just couldn’t turn my back on the Disney Channel, even though I was getting older. After all, I had wanted it so badly, right? And there is always something so comforting about their programming. It’s family friendly, and yes, totally cheesy and usually unrealistic, but it always makes me laugh. I loved Lizzie McGuire so much, that it was really hard to let go of it when it finally went off the air, despite the fact that I was in college by that time. I rushed out to see the movie the day it hit theaters, and I’ve seen it way too many times since. The Lizzie and Gordo kiss?! We were all waiting for that. The after-kiss dialogue: “Thanks.” “You’re welcome.” So cute and yet so awkward. And I still consider the episode “Misadventures in Babysitting” one of the funniest episodes of TV that I’ve ever seen. 

No matter what it is, if it’s on the Disney Channel, there’s a very good chance I’m going to watch it. Still. Even now. I’ve watched it all: That’s So Raven, the High School Musical movies, Hannah Montana, Cory in the House, Wizards of Waverly Place, countless Disney Channel original movies, and the list goes on. My favorite show that’s currently airing is Good Luck Charlie. I don't want to grow up. I'm a Disney Channel kid. And I’m so glad I don’t have to beg for it anymore.
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Nancy Scrofano is the editor of Good Humor Girl and the author of True Love Way. She is also the editor of The Chick Lit Bee, a book blog that promotes and celebrates women’s fiction, and she writes book reviews for a prestigious book review magazine Nancy is at work on her next novel. For more information, please visit http://www.nancyscrofano.com.  

Welcome to Good Humor Girl!

Welcome to Good Humor Girl! As you may or may not know, I’m an author and a blogger. True Love Way is my debut novel, and I run the popular book blog The Chick Lit Bee. Good Humor Girl is a new entertainment blog for women. The goal of the site is to provide humorous, uplifting, entertaining content targeted at a female audience. There will be new articles posted often, so be sure to check back regularly. The official launch is May 1st, but content will be posted before that date, leading up to the launch. Good Humor Girl has a retro feel to it that I’m calling mod retro, and it will definitely be full of girly fun. Thanks for stopping by! We're looking forward to entertaining you! 


Nancy