Julie and Julia Premiere in LA

Hello wonderful people of Britain!
I have had an extremely eventful week which I will now outline for those of you who have yet to hear of my latest adventures!
Firstly, I went to the dress rehearsal of So You Think You Can Dance, the show dick clark productions is shooting at the moment. The show was fantastic and the finale is in two weeks which I will definately be watching, though unfortunately on TV due to the demand for tickets!
After sleeping through most of Saturday, I spent Sunday at the Grove, exploring the famous Farmers Market and reading my book in Barnes and Noble with a Starbucks (delightful)!
After my coffee fix I met my friend Melea and headed to CBS Studios where we were in the audience for a Comedy Central 'Roast' of Joan Rivers. The show was very funny and pretty simply involved a number of comedians making fun of Joan Rivers for 2 hours! My favourite comedienne, Kathy Griffin was hosting the event, so I got to see 2 of my favourite's in one night which was very exciting!
As if my week wasn't good enough, last night I went to the Premiere of Julie and Julia, the new Meryl Streep movie, as my boss got tickets for me and Melea!
We saw Meryl Streep, who took a pen out of my hand to sign Melea's book (though sadly not mine), but she said hello and consequently my life is now complete! I mean...we practically hugged and went out for coffee!
Possibly even more exciting was my photo with Jane Lynch, a great and extremely funny actress who has starred in some of the best comedies of late. She was lovely and we told her we watched and loved the pilot of her new TV show Glee and she was thrilled! SO EXCITING!

So there is an update of my ridiculously exciting past week!
Sorry if anyone is jealous that I met The Streep, but I ignored her in Tiffanys once to respect her privacy, so it was only fair that I finally got a real, albeit shortlived interaction!

Love you all!
See you in less than 3 weeks! Enjoy the pictures! More on facebook!

Hannah xxx

The Golden Tickets!

From left: Melea (my fellow intern), Jane Lynch (Actress from The 40 Year Old Virgin/Role Models/Best In Show) LOVE HER! and Hannah

Nora Ephron - Writer and Director in the white jacket - she also directed Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally!

THE STREEP!

More Meryl!

Amy Adams - two time Academy Award nominee and star of Julie and Julia!

Outside the Movie Theater

Proper greeting from LA!

Hi Everyone,
So before I go to bed today I thought I'd give ya'll a proper update on what I've been up to in the last 4 weeks in LA! I can't believe I'm already half way through the programme, the time has flown by!
As you known I'm working at Dick Clark Productions in the PR dept and I'm absolutely loving it and learning so much! My boss Lynda is incredible and is introducing us to loads of people and making sure we get as much out of our time here as possible. When I say we by the way, I'm referring to myself and Melea the other PR intern who I get on with really well. In a couple of weeks we're going to the premiere of Julie and Julia, Meryl Streeps new movie which I'm mega excited for!
The University of Dreams program is great and we have weekly seminars with people from the industry who come in an talk about their careers and gift us tips on making contacts and getting jobs etc. which is really interesting and hopefully will prove useful.
On the weekends we have planned activities and so far we've been to Universal Studios, Catalina Island and a comedy show. This weekend we're going to see the LA Dodgers baseball game which should be fun. There's an all you can eat buffet so being as I won't exactly be following the game, I should be pretty much occupied with the munchies!
LA thankfully is much easier to get around than I had anticipated, the journey to work is about an hour and the bus system is pretty easy and reliable.
Last night I went to a recording of Jimmy Kimmel Live, a late night talk show which was really fun. The guests were Larry King, a reporter for CNN who was awesome and Marissa Miller, some dumb blonde model with no particularly fascinating insights into anything! Still it was a really fun night and having watched the show on Youtube for the last few years it was nice to see how it is filmed.
Tomorrow night I am going to friends for Friday night dinner which I'm very much looking forward to. Amy's mum goes to Northwood shul and I met Amy at Brownies when I was little!She has been living in LA with her fiancee Sam for the last few years and they're a ton of fun so it's nice to go there for dinner on Fridays.
That is pretty much everything I have to tell about the last four weeks, I'm having a great time and work is great which is the main thing. Looking forward to a relaxing weekend as I'm really tired after being up until 3am with my roommate in hospital on Monday night! 7 hours in UCLA Medical Centre was just thrilling!

Hope everyone is well, I'm glad I've finally brought you up to speed on Tinseltown!
Love to all!

Hannah xxx

Pictures from MJ Day

Katie Couric with Earth, Wind and Fire for CNN

Paris Jackson speaking

Heal The World

Shaheen Jafargholi from Britains Got Talent

Brooke Shields

Jennifer Hudson

Mariah Carey

The programme

View from the balcony of the Staples Center

God Hates America protesters outside

Collecting my ticket at the Dodgers Stadium

Michael Jackson's Memorial Concert

Sorry I've taken my sweet time setting a blog up for my new adventures in America, but I've had much less free time than when I was in Wisconsin! However, I'm aware that everyone is eager to know about one rather major event I jammily managed to score tickets for last week, so I thought it was about time I got my act together on the Blogging front! So here it is LA Blog Part One:

July 7th 2009, Michael Jackson’s Memorial in Los Angeles: a historical event in celebration of a truly exceptional talent. Before today I never really had much of an opinion on Michael Jackson as a person, I’ve never met him or had the privilege of seeing him in concert. Consequently all my ideas about the King of Pop were things I read in magazines or had seen on TV; in particular a certain Martin Bashir documentary heavily influenced my views. Having been one of the lucky few people who managed to win tickets for the event, I was very excited, though in all honesty, I was more excited to see the likes of Stevie Wonder than because of Michael Jackson.
I’m not going to detail everything that happened at the concert because I’m pretty sure it received some airtime on various channels and you will probably have seen some of it! In a nutshell, performances came from Mariah Carey, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson, John Mayer, Jermaine Jackson, Usher and Shaheen Jafargholi. In addition there were speeches from Smokey Robinson, Queen Latifah, Berry Gordy Jr., Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant, Rev Al Sharpton, Brooke Shields, Martin Luther King Jr. III and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.
The concert got off to a slow start and the arena was only half full, probably as a result of overseas winners not being able to get to the event. The atmosphere was exceedingly difficult to describe as it changed many times through the course of the event, from sombre to joyful to just plain awkward. Initially the audience seemed unsure of how to behave resulting in a very formal beginning; however after the first montage of Jacksons songs were played the atmosphere switched to electric almost instantly. The tone lightened up with words coming from Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant and though Brooke Shields speech had its funny moments it was extremely moving and portrayed Jackson in a very real way.
There were a few moments in which you had to laugh due to some unfortunate wording, such as when Brooke Shields said His heart would burst out of him when he was laughing! Or when Stevie Wonder said he wished he hadn’t lived to see this day! I also got the giggles every time someone addressed Blanket and said his name seriously as if it wasn’t weird!
Joking aside, by the end of the service you recognised the fact that no matter what your opinion was of MJ, he was still a brother, son and father to three children, making his death tragic irrelevant of the circumstances. It was great to have seen the service first hand and experienced the atmosphere at the event; it was definitely something I will not forget. If in 20 years time I’m strapped for cash I may consider selling my programme on eBay!!!