Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Oscar Season is Starting Up on The Kelly Clarkson Show with Brendan Fraser & Jenny Slate.

 By Laura Medina


The day this scribe was a Kelly Clarkson Show audience member was when Oscar-nominated "Whale" actor, Brendan Fraser said he realized he was nominated when his two sons surprised him in bed, with a Carvel Fudgie the Whale Ice Cream Cake, with balloons, as a celebratory breakfast in bed, for being nominated as Best Lead Actor for the Oscars.


Another cool tidbit being an audience member is when a guest tells cool insider trivia, as in performing your own stunts.

Brendan almost accidentally hang himself on "The Mummy" set.

Another cool tidbit is that he does photography documenting behind the scenes of whatever movie set he's on, as a hobby to fill in the between times between takes.


Before any guest appears on set, Kelly warms up the audience with her "Kellyoke," belting out  "1979" by Smashing Pumpkins.

If you want to see and learn more about Brendan Fraser and Jenny Slate, who talked about her Cuban-Jewish grandmother moving to Paris, right into World War II, catch "The Kelly Clarkson Show" around 2pm.




Monday, February 20, 2023

The Kelly Clarkson Show’s new “Song and Stories” This Time with Babyface.

                                 By Laura Medina 


In an all-new edition of "Songs & Stories," Babyface and Kelly perform a duet of his hit single "When Can I See You," and Babyface reveals that the song led him to collaborate with Eric Clapton and Madonna. Babyface recalls being nervous singing "Take A Bow" with Madonna at the American Music Awards, and he performs the ballad on piano with Kelly. Babyface also shares the story behind writing his first songs about love and heartbreak while in middle school. 

"Don't apologize”...you launched the kid that wrote a thousand songs." Babyface shares the story about writing his first songs about love and heartbreak for his 6th-grade crush. He dishes on tapping into that feeling of young love  Don't apologize”, throughout his career, and he reveals that he even tracked down his crush years later. Tune in today , February 20, 2023, for more Songs & Stories with Babyface.

Babyface dishes on working with Whitney Houston and Forest Whitaker to create the music and score for Forest's film "Waiting to Exhale," and reveals that Forest originally asked Quincy Jones to do it, but Quincy thought Babyface was the right person for the job. Babyface and Kelly perform the hit songs "Not Gon' Cry" and "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" from the soundtrack. Babyface also humbly reacts to recently earning his 80th GRAMMY nomination. Babyface dishes on working with the next generation of female R&B artists on his latest album "Girls Night Out," and reveals that each song on the record was written and recorded in one day. He also reflects on working with Boyz II Men, and performs with Kelly two of the classic songs he wrote and produced for them, "Water Runs Dry" and "I'll Make Love To You." Babyface also dishes on going back to his roots with his new single "As A Matter of Fact," and how he approaches writing songs for himself as opposed to writing for others. Babyface shares how Boyz II Men's classic song "I'll Make Love To You" was almost taken off the album, and he and Kelly perform a duet of the hit single




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Friday, February 10, 2023

Practice Self-Love on Valentine's Day at Burke Williams.

 By Laura Medina


California’s leading luxury day spa, Burke Williams, is pleased to introduce three special Valentine’s Day gift card packages perfect to celebrate the ones you care for. The ideal destination for health, wellness and luxurious relaxation, Burke Williams will launch Valentine’s Day packages on Thursday, January 19, welcoming guests to pamper themselves and those closest to them with an experience guaranteed to rejuvenate.  


Nothing says “I love you” quite like the healing touch of a day at the spa and Burke Williams’ expertly curated packages offer a range of recommended services at an incredible value. Packages include a variety of signature Burke Williams treatments including massage therapy, facials and spa baths. The “Hopelessly Devoted” package includes Burke Williams’ all-new Tranquility Massage treatment which integrates massage therapy with the healing effects of sound to create a calming experience unlike any other. 


Burke Williams Valentine’s Day Gift Cards (Available Starting January 19)


Healing Touch — $185 (gift card value: $240) 

  • 80-min. Pure Relaxation Massage or Spa Style Facial

  • Enhancement of Choice


Pure Embrace — $275 (gift card value: $390)

  • 80-min. Pure Relaxation Massage

  • 50-min. Spa Style Facial

  • Enhancement of Choice


Hopelessly Devoted — $405 (gift card value: $575)

  • 80-min. Tranquility Massage

  • 80-min. Nourishing or Radiance Facial

  • 20-min. Spa Bath


Prices and services for gift card packages may vary at the San Francisco and San Jose locations. For more information on all of Burke Williams’ Valentine’s Day gift card packages, please visit burkewilliams.com. 


Need Real "Sex & the City" Advice? Get Horizontal with Lila, @horizontalwithlila

 By Laura Medina

Thank god for millenials and their precessors, the alternative Gen-Xers.

They all know that one size does not fit all.  In fact, it leads to a lot of divorces and disappointments.

If it's guidance you seek, dive deep with Lila, @horizontalwithlila

With Valentine's Day looming large and the pressure is on, but your libido is not, come to Lila then let her assure you, that you're okay. Valentine's Day doesn't dedicate nor control the ebbs and flows of romance and relationships.

 


Before Saint Valentine, V Was and Still is for the Vagina & Vulva, From Colloquialism to Marion Davies' Nickname to ProWoman Care, Rosebud Woman Intimate Skincare.

 By Laura Medina

https://rosewoman.com/

Way before Saint Valentine took over mating and reproduction, "V" stood and still stands for vagina or/and vulva.

Before you embark on today's romance on Valentine's Day, you need to take care of your physical health before you take care of your emotional and mental health.

Taking Willam Randolph Hearst's nickname for Marion Davies' vulva and clitoris, Rosebud is a direct hygiene skincare for the vulva suffering from dryness and irritation.

It's one of the pioneers in female intimate skincare.  Women's reproductive external organs need skincare as much as the face and body.

Rosebud tackles this delicate issue with efficient but vulva-friendly all-natural ingredients, nothing weird.

If you're tight on budget and space, Rosebud is really great as facial skincare.




Rihanna Fenty Got Her Game Day On with Her Fenty Beauty Game Day Football Makeup & Her Savage x Fenty Game Day Footfall Fashion for Both Men & Females.

 By Laura Medina


Rihanna Fenty is banking right now.

She's using her opportunity as Super Bowl LVII Half-Time Star to launch, a first of its kind, Super Bowl Football fashion for female football fans with an accompanying, again first of its kind, makeup collection for female sports fans.  Rihanna is banking as we speak.

She and any other female sports nuts know they're a much ignored and neglected market segment much ignored by gender stereotypes and assumed gender roles of wants and needs.

As this long-time scribes knows, there had been much misaligned attempts catering to female football fans, especially around Super Bowl coinciding with Valentine's Day, that is so feminized that it's renamed, Galentine's Day, ignored men, who need love too.

With Valentine's Day being such a forced and fake marketing holiday, in reality, female, single, moms, sisters, daughters, girlfriends, and wives are authentically way more excited about the Super Bowl and the partying, and yes, the hunky football athletes, and wide array of fulfilling and satisfying protein-heavy buffet than over-dosing on Valentine's sugar rush then sugar crush, with disappointed, heartbreaking result.

Women and of course, Rihanna fans are ecstatic that their idol is aware of what they need and want, cool, stylish sports apparel...and makeup!

Through her Savage x Fenty loungewear and lingerie, Rihanna is busting gender, sexual orientation, ethnic, and body size assumptions and stereotypes through inclusion and diversity.  Rihanna's Savage x Fenty fashion is such a game changer that stereotypical Victoria's Secret is copying her game book.


What's ever rarer, thinking about makeup touch-ups at and during the game.
Here's RiRi to the rescue.  She thought of what the female sports nut need, whether it's football, basketball, baseball, or/and soccer.  You got your game on with her Fenty Beauty Game Day collection.

She even has a makeup kit that doubles as a stadium approved clear purse to zip you effortlessly with your basic keychain lip gloss, a matte liquid lipstick that doubles as a quick lipstick and blush and neutral liquid eyeshadow with a football makeup sponge for on the go blending.  This also makes for a great travel-TSA approved airport makeup.


Fenty Beauty and Savage x Fenty were nice enough to include invites for their die-hard fans to personally and directly RSVP to their traveling tail gate picnic parties with makeup touches and rare, collectible swag souvenirs.  Game Day for female football fans.


If y'all are lucky to be at Phoenix's Super Bowl LVII, never skip the affordable Super Bowl Fans Experience, a Disney Land for football fans.

Last year's Los Angeles Super Bowl Fan Experience was rich in Super Bowl haute couture jackets and fashion,..for women.

But now, they game up with a Fenty Beauty and Savage x Fenty Pop-Up Shop at the Super Bowl Experience at the Phoenix Convention Center (100 N 3rd St. Phoenix, AZ 85004) from 2/4 - 2/11.

Y'all better game up because each and everything in Fenty Beauty and Savage x Fenty are meant to be rare collectibles, to be treasured then passed onto the next generation, females included.




















Monday, February 6, 2023

Hi! It's Grammy Week! A Weezer's Rivers Cuomo's True Fans Intimate Concert While Stella McCartney X Adidas Launch New Collection During Grammy Week.

 By Laura Medina


Every major awards show has a dedicated week leading up to it.

The Grammys are no exception.

Every music freak's wet dream comes alive during Grammy Week, galore.

Sometimes, it roars louder when it's really small and intimate to attract the real fans, such as Weezer's Rivers Cuomo's very intimate, absolutely, last-minute concerts over two nights in a speakeasy.

Modest but no less cool, Rivers Cuomo opened his set by covering the Beach Boys' "California Girls."

Of course, he did Weezer's biggest hits.

Remember, this is the Grammys.  Scott Murphy jaunted up on stage to join him.

They ended the concert with both of them returning to "California Girls."


At the opposite end of the same spectrum, Stella McCartney x Adidas went full-throttle blast, launching their Spring Collection, based on movement, during Grammy Week.

Like any other awards week leading up to the awards show itself, as the finale, it went from styling to shopping then getting dressed for the shop, to pre-COVID 19 quarantine shopping to revamp launching with fresh, new collections.

That's what Stella McCartney x Adidas did.  It helps that your dad is Sir Paul McCartney and his daughter, is health and ecologically conscious fashion designer, aka, lifestyle designer.

They hired LA Roller Girls troupe to put the collection in action, modeling the collection while skating.


This why Stella works with Adidas in promoting and sustaining a healthy lifestyle for a healthy planet...

"They’re the leaders in sportswear on sustainability, without a doubt. It’s something they care very much about. When we started out, I learned about PVC through my collaboration with them. We have only recycled nylons, so we use no virgin plastics. I would say we are definitely the icing on the cake of sustainability within the brand. There’s such a void between what I’m doing in my ready-to-wear brand and what they’re doing in their sports brand, and so the sweet spot is really interesting of what we can do together. We work really hard to make it extremely technical. The actual performance and technology is something we’re very proud of."

"One of my big challenges, a long time ago now, was working on the 2012 Olympics. I was the first designer with a sportswear brand to ever do a female podium look. Those women got all their gold medals and they were wearing the men’s suits! It is really just keeping the focus on sustainability, which is a challenge when you get to that kind of scale. Obviously, you have to be really vigilant on where your supply chain is coming from. Also, just to keep pushing for women’s rights, almost, in the sports industry."

"Yes, we did a double mastectomy sports bra in 2015, which is something I’m super proud of. I don’t think anyone’s done that before. And then the maternity. I worked out throughout all of my pregnancies. A lot of it is being a champion of women, as a female designer. There’s not enough of us. We’ve gone a lot more into unisex just because, I mean, I’m wearing all men’s clothes today. [Points at her blazer]. We’ve been doing that forever, really. "

"We’ve done a pilot in Turkey and got the regenerative cotton on the runway this season — I think we’re the only people to have it on the runway so far. We have the AlgiKnit, yarn made from algae, which is an amazing project, so we’re trying to R&D that at Stella. A lot of people investing in sustainability don’t have a product they need to source in a better way. But I’m in a very unique place, where I’m able to really test and design using different materials, like the mycelium [fungi]. It took such a long time to get the Mylo leather into a position where it could fold and not crack. When I can incubate a material and get it to a quality where I can use it as a luxury fashion house, then I can take it to my business partner, Mr. [Bernard] Arnault, and truly put it into production to swap out an existing old-fashioned business with, hopefully, the future of fashion. It’s about creating awareness and also actually changing a supply chain."

"The reason I wanted to start the fund with my colleagues was to have a meaningful impact on the industry. The SOS fund is sustainable solutions, and I feel that’s more and more my job than actually creating a fabulous jumpsuit. I’ve been doing this my entire career, and we’ve kind of been the pilot program for the industry, and there are no real incentives, financially. In fact, we’re kind of penalized for what we do. We have a vegan leather that basically takes the waste of the wine industry and uses the skins from the grapes and we make all of these incredible faux leathers. But when we bring them into America, we get hit with a 30 percent taxation! It’s shocking. I’ve been telling people that for 20 years and it’s still the case. I said to my team the other day, “Let me know how much money we’ve lost as a business.”  Because how do you incentivize young businesses or smaller businesses to actually work in this way? You’re just completely demoralized in doing the right thing. My big hopeful impact before I leave Planet Earth is to try and bring young, exciting, new business models that use technology or a cleaner way of working into many industries."

"One hundred is not impossible. For me, it’s the only way. It’s the thing that I’m trying to get to. I don’t think any other brand in the world would even publish the numbers, because they wouldn’t even think to measure. It costs us not only money, but also time, to figure out that number. That’s not a small feat. You’ve got to go back to every single transparent supply chain and do the math. That’s not easy. And then you’ve got to look at what gets into the show, what was on the runway, and look at that number.  I’m so proud of my company. It’s not me; it’s my team’s united desire to truly make a meaningful change in the industry."

"Some fabrics just don’t exist right now. Some things you can’t source. You’re very limited creatively. Sequins, for example, are all PVC so they have petroleum in them. Every sequin that you see in the world is plastic. We have a non-PVC rule, so we cut off our nose to spite our face. And so then I’ve got ten sequins I can use in five colors. But I’m a plant-based brand. We don’t have any leather or any glue. Even my bag here has aluminum chains, so they can be recycled, because metals aren’t so friendly. This is a faux leather, so I have two colorways, because they just don’t have the scale, the methods. If you want to do natural dyes and use vegetable oil coating, it is super complex. At the end of the day, at Stella McCartney, we are like the first people going to the moon in fashion."

"We had lead-free crystals on that and the viscose is forest-friendly. Two hundred million trees are cut down in a year just for rayon. And they’re not replanted, which is crazy. When I ask people in my industry, “Do you know what rayon is made of?” They’re like, “Plastic?” Nobody knows, which is nobody’s fault. At Stella we ask the questions and we find the solutions. We took three years of our time, and didn’t get any funding, to go and find a sustainable forest in Sweden, which cut down but replanted the trees, to create the viscose used on Adele’s dress."


Friday, February 3, 2023

Nikki Eason Gets Sharpe Suiting During Grammy Week.

 By Laura Medina


From this interview, two weeks ago, Sharpe Suiting's Nikki Eason can only hint what to expect on Grammy Awards' red carpet on Sunday night, on CBS...

She said expect a lot of outlandish textiles and embroidery and patterns cut out in traditional tailoring panels, lapels, and silhouettes then stitched and sewn together in cool threads.

This is the only thing she can say, leading up to the Grammys.

Other than that, Nikki Eason offers up personalize measurements and plenty of textile selections for a customized suit that you can break apart with your dress denims and jeans then put it all together again to add some more elements.

Sharpe Suiting is the American version of England's Savile Row.

With American's open-mindedness and out-going POV, Sharpe Suiting takes the traditional idea of "Tomboy Chic" and androgyny then giving it in better fitting, more customized personalized fit and tailoring for LGBT executives rising up in the world.

No more tolerating baggy, ill-fitting suits or blazers making the wearer feeling awkward and unconfident, unless you personally like that fit and style, then you're more than welcomed to ask for that at Sharpe Suiting.

Nikki Eason wants to whomever the confidence of a well-fitted suit that gives confidence in your existing and rising lifestyle.

If it's just one piece you discover, say the wardrobe foundation of a jacket, a blazer, then you can customize it or them thru paneling, trimmings, and textiles.  For the LA market, all you need is one good denim blazer that you can pick from their five denim swatches.

Since vegan leather is all the rage, Sharpe Suiting will go to one of their vendor sources then try to find the best and right vegan leather for you.

Out of safety concerns, you need to make an appointment with Sharpe Suiting, where the styling and tailoring will be done at NeueHouse Hollywood.


Nikki Eason with Sharpe Suiting is a mere extension of what she's been doing close to ten years, promoting the more fluid idea of identity, orientation, and preference while being a professional for greater, more realistic representation in greater world, through her YouTube reality series, "The Androgynous Model," her take on "America's Top Model" and more wide-ranging, more down to earth take on RuPaul's "Drag Race."

Once the Grammys are over, it's time to get suited for tuxedos for anyone for the Oscars.  Sharpe Suiting is all about taking personal style then making the best out of it.

Suiting is for everyone and anyone.