I don’t get starstruck. If I spot someone famous, I will make a note of it (tweet it) and move on. However it is surreal when my regular everyday life collides into Hollywood. I stopped by my friend Lilit Marcus’ book party for Save The Assistants last night after 9PM. After being there only about ten minutes, I see another friend (M.P.) with a guy I immediately recognized from TV. It was Danny Strong, the actor playing the new character Danny on my favorite TV show, “Mad Men”. [Sidenote: I watch Mad Men religiously every Sunday with my friends Kap and Cat. We drink Pimm's Cups. We eat Smokra. We watch it twice.] I asked Danny if he will be like Harry Crane and give me the scoop in any upcoming episodes, but his lips are sealed. Actually I don’t want to know anyway. I like seeing how the show evolves.

Amy Blogs Chow, fellow food blogger and all around fun person wrote a post on how to blog. Here’s a few of tips, but read the rest on her blog.

Be consistent.
Talk about things you genuinely care about.
Check spelling and grammar.
Do it for love (not the pennies).
Be optimistic.

After watching several of these hashtags from start to finish and talking to a few researchers who’ve studied trends on Twitter, I’ve got some potential answers to these questions. Black people—specifically, young black people—do seem to use Twitter differently from everyone else on the service. They form tighter clusters on the network—they follow one another more readily, they retweet each other more often, and more of their posts are @-replies—posts directed at other users. It’s this behavior, intentional or not, that gives black people—and in particular, black teenagers—the means to dominate the conversation on Twitter.-Farhad Manjoo

Slate’s article on the subject.  The hubbub surrounding #howblackpeopleusetwitter goes from–to use a term from the Bush era—shock and awe.  It appears that “Calvin” and his friends are using Twitter.   I just wish Chappelle Show was around to make fun of the whole thing.

Yesterday I attended Media Bistro’s Career Circus.  Career Circus is a conference where  HR professionals,  career specialists and job coaches gave advice on how to have the career you want.  I really enjoyed the event and I learned a lot. Here are some of the nuggets of advice from the panelists.

• Job search is not career strategy.
• Personal branding is necessary.
• Bad careers happen when people don’t make decisions.
• Don’t ask to be validated.
• Regarding passion: “nothing beats giving a damn”
• done is better than perfect

Estee Lauder was one of the sponsors of Career Circus and they provided makeup artists to give makeovers and a photographer to take your picture. They even supplied a thumb drive of your pictures, and now I have new pictures of myself.

Michelle Madhok of She Finds recommends reading Seth Godin’s The Dip.  To learn software, she also recommended taking online classes available on Lynda.

Saturday was lovely day to grill hot dogs in Brooklyn. This was my third competing in the Great Hot Dog Cookoff. Julian was my sous chef again this year and our hot dog was the English Breakfast Dog. We didn’t place but we had a wonderful time eating hot dogs, drinking beer and dancing in the street. It was truly a block party held outside Kelso Brewery in Fort Greene. Thanks to Kara Masi who puts on a wonderful and fun event with proceeds going to City Harvest.

See photos on MetroMix
Read Epicurious‘ recap

It’s hot. I’m melting. Eating ice cream helps. I will be attending these events below.

July 13: Blogging While Brown Meetup I am organizing this event, and it will be at Houndstooth Pub in Midtown.

July 31: The Great Hot Dog Cookoff

August 4: Media Bistro Career Circus

August 6-7: BlogHer

I’m bringing podcasting back using Audioboo. Listen and enjoy!

Hot off the heels of TECHmunch (very hot temps!), I worked with the Cake Group to do an event for the Sears Chef Challenge.  It was a video clinic/cocktail party/potluck held at Shooting Kitchen which is located in Tribeca.  I invited a small group of food bloggers and foodies to come with prepared dish.  Then the videography crew shot video of each person explaining their dish and talking about why they love to cook. After each video, the attendees swarmed over the delicious food which included deviled eggs, tuna steak on brioche, quesadilla, quiche, watermelon panna cotta, spicy shrimp salad and my thai cole slaw hot dogs.

It was fun to see Cathy Erway, Mary Connolly, Hagan Blount, Emily Cavalier, Catherine Oddenino, Siobhan Wallace, Mark Tofoya, Sarah McSimmons and Yvo Sin. It was nice to meet Pierre Lion who is a friend of Sabrina Bailly who I met at Internet Week. It was also a pleasure to meet Crystal Ingorvaia who is the new member of Nonsociety.

Thanks to everyone who came. It was a lovely evening!

I have been watching the World Cup with fervor these past two weeks. Although the #USA is out and #ENG lost, I will still be watching for Ghana’s Black Stars. I took the picture last week at The Paley Center which is showing the World Cup matches for free and they have a wonderful African exhibit as well. They have AC and wifi, too. BTW, what kind of soccer fan are you?

In the past two weeks, I have attended two blogger conferences. Both had a panel discussion or talk about FTC disclosure.  This is a serious topic that all bloggers need to know about.  Unfortunately, I have no free gadget to disclose by going to the Microsoft Preview event on Tuesday. It was fun watching people play with Kinect which is like a Wii but more Minority Report-ish. Vinny from Naughty By Nature was there, as well as Peter Rojas.

What I fell in love with is this hot pink ASUS netbook designed by Karim Rashid that looks like a picnic backet. Isn’t it the most fun?!  It just screams picnic in the park with free wifi.