The 7x7 Link Award

It looks like it's award season in the blogosphere again! Laura of the wonderful Who Can Turn the World Off With her Smile?  and Natalie of the amazing In The Mood have tagged me with the 7x7 Link Award. Thanks so much, Laura and Natalie! I've been following Laura's blog for a few months and I can assure you her posts are always witty, insightful, and original. So definitely go and follow her blog if you don't already! :) As for Natalie, she and I go way back ;) Well, at least a few months back, and she's totally incredible and wonderful and lovely, not to mention a blogger bestie, so go follow her now!

The rules are as follows:

Tell everyone something that no one else knows about

Link to one of my posts that I personally think best fits the following categories: Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, and Most Pride-worthy Piece

Pass this award on to seven other bloggers 

I really enjoy doing these tagging things, so let's get on with it!:)

Tell everyone something that no one else knows about 

Hmm... I think my readers know a lot about me because I basically live a Classic Hollywood appreciation life, and I'm really obvious about the Classic Hollywood things I love. Okay, let's see: I love to bake. I haven't had much time for it lately but I love making cookies, cupcakes, cakes, whatever out of scratch. My baked goods are usually chocolate because I'm a total chocoholic, so there you have it, two irrelevant facts about me -;)

Okay, next I have to link to the posts that I best fit the particular categories given to me. Haha, okay, I'll do my best. :)

Most Beautiful Piece

Beautiful??? Okay, I'm going to go with a post I felt had a beautiful topic, and when thinking of this, the first one that came to my mind was the 71 Years of Desilu blog I wrote on Lucy & Desi's wedding anniversary last year. I always enjoy the opportunity to write about their relationship, and that was a prime one. Plus I got to put in lots of pretty pictures of them (which made it visually appealing) and quotes that people had said about the two of them. 

Most Helpful Piece

I hope that most of my movie reviews are helpful... but considering that I consider myself a terrible film reviewer, I don't think I'll go with one of those; instead I choose "Now Playing": Buyer Beware! It's an article I wrote way back in like, August of last year. It's basically about my disappointment in TCM's magazine, "Now Playing", which really turned out to be more of a phamplet then anything. That magazine, if you can call it that, has since grown on me a bit because I always know what's coming up on TCM because of it. Still, the crossword puzzle is awful (36 Across, Olivia __ Havilland) and that's pretty much all the magazine brochure offers. It's okay, TCM, I'll always love you anyway. <3

Most Popular Piece

According to my statistics, it's Old Hollywood Celebrities and Their Children: A Lookalike Contest. When this post started getting popular, it surprised me to no end. It was a really weak post, I feel, that I did way back when I had like no followers. It doesn't have any comments, either, so the only explanation I can feel is that maybe the title really interested readers so they kept clicking on it out of curiosity? Besides, the first place winners out of my like, four pairs of contestants, aren't really going to knock your socks off...

Most Controversial Piece

Haha, probably Being an icon: remembered fondly or simply becoming overrated?. This is also a old post, in which I pretty much bashed Marilyn Monroe to no end and tried, in rambling paragraphs, to explain why I think being a icon is bad. I don't think being iconic is bad, exactly, but I still don't gel with the fact that MM is the poster child for all Classic Hollywood - to my defense, however, I also brought up Audrey Hepburn & Humphrey Bogart in that piece, both of whom I happen to like very much. It was just a rambling post honestly, and I'm probably stupid for bringing it up again; don't mind me. (And no offense to MM fans; truthfully, some of my very favorite bloggers love her, she's just not my cup of tea!) Well yeah, it's either this or my Summertime (1955) review... ;)

Most Surprisingly Successful Piece

Ditto my answer for my most popular piece; honestly don't get how that turned out to be successful. I'll also go with another quite old post, Grace's Glasses, which was a really short post about Grace Kelly and her "nerdy chic" glasses. I don't have any comments on that either, but I have a lot of hits. And as for a more recent post, probably Hollywood and The Day that Lived in Infamy, which I wrote for the 70th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor last December. It got a lot of comments which surprised me because I remember being really frustrated trying to get accounts of what movie stars were doing on December 7th, 1941 and how they heard of the bombing. I also remember not being satisfied with my end result and thinking it wouldn't get many hits; but it did get comments and views, so thank you? :)

Most Underrated Piece

I'll go with I Love Lucy's Dream Team || The Backstage Brains, which I wrote for the 60th anniversary of I Love Lucy last October. I wrote about the people that worked to make I Love Lucy a success that didn't appear on screen, such as the writers, cameraman, director, etc. I researched quite a bit for it to get a proper understanding of some of the technical terms. Over all I think the post turned out pretty well, but it didn't get any comments. 

Most Pride-worthy Piece

I think the A Classic Hollywood Thanksgiving [In Emails], which I wrote last Thanksgiving. Though it was really fun to write I worked hard on those emails and it took me a while, so I was really happy with the way everything turned out and all the nice comments I received on it. :)

Okay, thats it for the categories. Next, I must tag seven other bloggers for this award. Ahh, so many awesome bloggers and only seven that I can pick??? It's always hard, but this time I'll go with:

• Clara at Via Margutta 51: If you don't know about Clara's lovely blog, you must be living under a rock ;) Honestly, though, Clara always has such intriguing posts & a really professional blog interface. 
• Sally at Flying Down to Hollywood: Sally's posts are always interesting and interactive with her readers, like the posts in which she chooses a line from an old film and the readers guess where it's frrm. 
• Bette at Bette's Classic Movie Blog: Bette's another one of my best blogging friends. She has a gorgeous blog design & always writes enthusiastic, fun posts about old Hollywood & entertaining movie reviews. 
• Meredith at Forever Classics: Meredith's blog is always filled with really interesting posts and she also arranged a wonderful Bogie blogathon last December! 
• Craig at Blame Mame: Craig has a wonderful blog with lots of gorgeous visual graphics that he designs himself. I'm never bored when reading his posts & am always looking forward to them!
• Irene at And then they start to sparkle: Irene is one of the sweetest bloggers & is always updating her blog frequently with posts filled with interesting pictures and trivia!
• Jennifer at Films of Yesterday: Jennifer is one of the great, reliable film reviewers that I know. Her reviews are short & sweet & to the point and I can always count on them.

These blog awards get around fast. I tried to tag people I knew hadn't already been tagged, but you've already been tagged with this I apologize; and this award is kind of a meme  too so if you're not in the mood for doing this right now, or you can't squeeze it into your blogging schedule, or whatever way the cookie seems to crumble for you, don't worry I understand. Just know that I love your blog! :)

Thanks again, Laura and Natalie, for tagging me! :)