Let's Play "Pick That Logline"

Hello peeps.  We need your help. 

We can't write it alone! Please vote!

As some of you know, a couple years ago Poker Chick decided that she should write a screenplay.  Now, take a minute to control your laughter, and keep reading when you've gotten it together.  A year or so later (and no less than 20 drafts), she completed a screenplay.  After reaching this life accomplishment she decided it was good enough that she should actually get it produced.

Now get the rest of the chuckles out and put them aside for a minute because we're asking for serious help.

As we await several rejections in July (gotta love insecurity), it has come to our attention that while the screenplay is quite good, the one or two sentence summary required to sell it could use some work.  To that, Poker Chick says:

Well, DUH!  If we were any good at concisely summarizing an idea in three lines or less would we have written a 118-page document!  So can we write a good summary? We should think not!  If we could, we'd be off getting paid to write :30 commercials.  Or other peeps' loglines.

Apparently the only way to create a decent logline is to get some help.  Cue you peeps.

So please, even if you've never commented on our blog before, if you could vote now, that would be faboo.  If you can forward along to friends for comment, that would be even more faboo.  In fact, the more strangers, the better.

If you're new to this business, we could give you all kinds of links on how to "write a killer logline" and all the rules people get paid a lot of money to print out.  We say use just one rule: does it make you want to read more?  Using that criteria, which of the below sucks least?

Below is a list of potential loglines.  Some of these were seriously considered at some point, some intentionally bad.  So if you see one so bad you can't believe we wrote it, just tell yourself we wanted it that way to throw you.  Uh, yeah,  that's it.

1. An accidental death sends a NY yuppie to Vegas with her freewheeling brother, 65-year old hippie cousin, and a random guy named Kenny. 
2. Meet Danny Katz, a conformist yuppie NY businesswoman.  Meet her estranged family: Goldenboy, her reckless reckless and vain yet strangely charming metrosexual brother.  Meet Hal, an ancient free spirit who lives in a van.  Feel guilty for laughing at Danny's torment as she is forced to travel to Las Vegas with her estranged family in search of some fabled family coins and a random guy named Kenny.                                                             
3. A conformist yuppie businesswoman is forced to go to Las Vegas with her estranged family in search of some fabled family coins and a random guy named Kenny.
4. Meet Danny, a conformist yuppie businesswoman.  Watch in twisted amusement as she is forced to go to Las Vegas in search of some fabled family coins…where she has to eventually decide between saving her estranged family and keeping her job. 
5. A young man is a reformed gambler who must return to playing big stakes poker to help a friend pay off loan sharks. 
6. When her professional poker-playing father suddenly dies and leaves her in charge of his will, a stuck-up businesswoman must risk her career to travel to Las Vegas with her bizarre and embarrassing family to collect his valuable coins before the IRS finds them...and before her boss finds out she's gone.
7. When her father suddenly dies and leaves her in charge of his will, a businesswoman must risk her career to travel to Las Vegas with her bizarre and embarrassing family.  After they gamble away all her money on a seat in the World Series of Poker she has to decide whether to play for the sake of her family – or lose her precious job.
8. Condolence call is a dark comedy that follows a hard working businesswoman as she handles her estranged father's death, reconnects with her family, and places her life on the line to help her brother by playing in the World Series of Poker. 

Oh, and if you picked #5, then pick another.  
That's the logline for Rounders.

 A girl's gotta weed out the spam somehow, is all we're sayin'. 

Don't Kill The Birthday Guest. No, really.

CNN posted a good piece called "Don't kill the birthday guest" talking about how to handle parties if you don't have a kid with food allergies but are inviting a guest with this issue and would like to know how to include them. It's actually quite accurate with good, specific tips if you would like to share.  In a nutshell: it's helpful info for those of you who care.

One line that hit home in particular; not just because it's true, but because it's really sad that it is:

Children are taught to trust their friends' parents, but kids with allergies know that some adults don't understand their allergies. So make sure you understand what to do or tell the parent if you don't.

Sad realities aside, we're really happy this side of food allergies is getting press, and to see recognition of the wonderful people out there who DO care enough to do this stuff.   Peeps like you rock. 

Fruitless Parenting

Those of you with food-allergic kids understand how hard it is to figure out safe foods, especially when eating out.  Those of you with children period will understand how hard it is to get your child to eat healthy foods at all.

Mini will never, not ever, eat fruit.

Just to make life more interesting, mini is one of those picky eaters.  If she could eat pizza for every meal, she would, except for the meals where there may be a tasty mac and cheese or occasional french fry.  Unfortunately, while we try and find her something to eat when going out, in addition to avoiding anything that may have come into contact with egg, nuts or sesame seeds/oil, her pickiness has created yet another class of foods that must be avoided at all costs:

Fruit.

While mini will eat her broccoli, she can never be coaxed into eating fruit.  This weekend, in fact, yours truly was sent away from the kitchen table as she could not stand being in such close contact with a watermelon.  Poker Chick was forced to wash her hands after her snack before being allowed to continue to rousing game of war they were playing.  Then she was sent back again, this time to use soap.

You're probably thinking this is common, right?  Think again.  By "fruit" we mean anything that resembles fruit, is made from fruit, or contains some ingredient or flavoring that once resembled some sort of fruit at some point in its life.  No luck.  We tried the typical parent trick of hiding fruit in yogurt or muffins or pancakes but all that ensued was a subsequent refusal to ever eat yogurt or muffins, thus making her food repertoire even smaller.  Pancakes, peeps!

After trying pretty much every fruit there is out there, her desperate parents moved on to what we call "Phase 2: the "soft" fruits".  Phase 2 involved pureed fruits such as applesauce, all kinds of fruit juice, dried fruit (raisins) and "fruit" cups.

Phase 3 came soon after.  Phase 3 included things like apple butter, jam, jelly, and "it almost counts" type drinks such as lemonade.  Even the processed pink stuff next to the orange juice.  When that failed, we tried to focus our efforts in the dessert category.  Strawberry ice cream.  Key lime pie.  Ice pops.  Apple pie.  None of it worked.

Out of desperation, we moved on to Phase 4, which counted "fruit" flavored items such as "fruit" leather, lemon lollipops, froot loops, and starburst.  Hell at this point, toothpaste and vitamins counted if they were fruit flavored.

After several years of this, and an outstanding $100 reward to any adult, parent, teacher who could get the child to chew and swallow more than one damned piece of fruit, we succeeded in only the following:

1) Prune juice.  Duh.  What kid doesn't like prune juice?
2) Applesauce.  This one was quite useful, as it allowed her parents to crush and sneak in vitamins daily.
3) Ketchup (tomatoes are a fruit, you know).

Pretty sad, huh?  So after all this it came as a surprise even to Poker chick to learn that there was one category of fruit she hadn't tried.  You've been thinking of it all along, haven't you?

Yes, the ever popular, deep fried and salted fruit.

Sunday, mini went to a restaurant and ate fried plantains.  Unbelievably, she kept on eating them, even after we told her that she was really eating a green banana.

Plantains, as mini ate them

Plantains, as obvious fruit

There's only one logical conclusion after all of this.  We must get thee to a casino, pass go, collect our $100 and put it all on black, pronto.

Oh, mini.  Your mama is so proud.

Allergic Reactions from Blood Transfusions?

Doctors in the Netherlands recently reported that a 6-year-old boy with an allergy to peanuts went into anaphylactic shock after receiving a blood transfusion from donors who had been snacking on them. 

Apparently 3 of 5 donors had had peanuts the night before donating blood.  This is not paranoia, it's legit, and just appeared in the NEJM.

Non-nerdy peeps will prefer the quick, layperson's read, found here.

Food Allergy Policies in Schools

Great article about how to manage food allergies in schools.  If you've read anything about the horrible situation in Florida a couple of months back, this is a fantastic example of schools that actually know what they are doing.  Unfortunately, it took the death of a teenager to initiate the advocacy required to get these policies into place.

Wouldn't it be great if we could institute these in our country before tragedy occurs?  Sadly, New York has a long way to go with this issue.

http://blog.onespotallergy.com/2011/03/the-best-school-policy-for-allergy-and-anaphylaxis-management/

Thanks to Elizabeth for writing this piece.