LA / Another Ming Shoot

I am so behind on the blog. I still have 1 1/2 weeks of Europe to write about which I will probably never get around to.

Just got back from a quick trip to LA/Palm Springs for Walter and Kate's wedding, which was beautiful.

The day I landed, this time last week, I picked up my rental car and drove up to Calabasas since Ming had texted me saying she wanted to do a sexy shoot with her badass bod (she is in super good shape right now since starring in Agents of SHIELD.)

She greeted me with a delicious lunch of homemade fried porkchops. They were SO good. Garlic marinated and panko-crusted. We each had like three servings.

(If you want to know her secret to looking this good at 50, it's basically just eat everything you want except desserts and refined sugar. She carries her own tin of Coconut sugar that she uses in everything. Also she works out a lot and does lots of crunches and side crunches. And she is Asian. And she drinks baby's blood.)

We watched the latest episode of SHIELD together where she fights her own clone, she was SO excited about it.

Then we did an awesome photoshoot. (I will post pics once she picks out which ones she wants to use.)

I even photobombed my own photo.

LOVES my Ming-Na!!!

The Giver: World Premiere

Whoever said "Mondays Suck" obviously did not have a movie premiere to go to that night!

A handful of superstars were on hand last night to introduce their new film THE GIVER.

Jeff Bridges, Taylor Swift, Katie Holmes, and MERYL STREEP all showed up to the NYC world premiere.

I was lucky enough to have had drinks with Ms Naia (who is a producer on the movie) last week while in LA and got invited as an afterthought.
 Yayyyyy!

The lady in purple there is the author of "The Giver" Ms. Lois Lowry.

And the young not-yet-household-name stars of the movie arrived first to cheers from the crowd.

Across the street all the fans waited and cheered.

Those of us attending the premiere were dressed real purty-like.

Meryl showed up and I was immediately starstruck from several hundred feet away.

Here's Miss Naia being all Oprah-like (without the fatness) passing out tickets to the premiere.

Taylor Swift arrived and the energy of the entire block changed. There was a roar of cheers from the crowd and every single person - young, old, famous, and not-famous - turned to gawk or sprinted over to snap photos.

It was so crazy she didn't even go to sign autographs, but instead hurried into the red carpet/interview area...it probbbbably would have been a security hazard.

The streets were packed with onlookers.

And paparazzi lined the red carpet.

Those of us NIPs had to walk behind the red carpet and into the theater. No interviews or paparazzi-walls for us! #feelingfabulous #not

Once inside the massive theater, we watched a live stream of the red carpet arrivals.

It was also in here that we got the news the Robin Williams had just died.

Jeff Bridges was literally on-camera being interviewed when it happened and broke down in tears talking about his friend.

OMG Meryl!!!!

Katie Holmes looked FIERCE.

AND THEN (no and then!) the A-listers entered the building...

"MERYL!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"KATIE!!!!!!!"

Harvey Weinstein took the stage to introduce Jeff Bridges.

And then Jeff Bridges introduced the rest of the cast.

Miss Taylor...

Meryl...

There was a lot of star power on that one little stage!

And then we were treated to a surprise performance by OneRepublic, who had a song that was featured on the movie soundtrack.

It was a very entertaining movie. There were some lines and situations that were hilariously and unintentionally gay and molest-y though.

Like when the kid goes, "If I'm The Receiver...what are you?" 

And Jeff Bridges goes, "I guess that would make me the Giver."

(If Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers still did that SNL skit "REALLY?!?!?!" their appearance right now would be very fitting.)

So excited to see Miss Naia's name featured prominently in the credits!

Remember this time 10 years ago when we were just starting out as lowly Hollywood assistants?

Makes me want to revisit my IMDB page!

Thank you Naia for the Hollywood hookup, as usual!

Ming-Na's 50th Birthday

So a couple months back I flew to LA for MingNa's 50th birthday celebration.

At first, Eric, her husband, had said she didn't want to do a big party. But then at the last minute, after her show Agents of SHIELD got a full-season pickup and everything, they decided they had every reason to celebrate! 

So Eric called me and I cancelled everything and hopped on a flight.

...............................

The venue for the party was the beautiful Odyssey restaurant in Granada Hills (it's up in the Valley).

High up on a hill, it had a breathtaking view over the lights of LA...

Ming is a huge geek. And being the star of a superhero show, decided she wanted her party to be ComiCon themed. Or Ming-Na Con as they were calling it...

They filled the room with all kinds of geek goodies. Light sabers... etc...

Birthday girl herself came as Princess Leia with a small army of Jedis...

People went all out with their costumes. Some really amazing stuff!

This is a fun family photo...

I invited Naia to be my wingman, since in college we had watched The Joy Luck Club together like 50 times and basically worshipped it. (Ming was the star of The Joy Luck Club, in case you've never seen the movie and are visiting this blog for the first time.) (She was also on ER forever, was the voice of Mulan, played Chun-Li in the Street Fighter movie and is basically one of Hollywood's go-to Asian people for the few Asian roles that are out there.)

Anyway. The most famous line in The Joy Luck Club is uttered by the mom character (played by the Meryl Streep of Asia) and explains how Waverly, Ming's character's nemesis, is a greedy little bitch and always takes the best quality crab from the communal dinner plate. But June (Ming's character), June takes the worst quality crab..."because you have best quality heart!"

And she says "I SEE YOU. I SEEEEE YOUUUU."

And everyone cries. And everyone in the audience cries. And it's basically the best movie ever if you've ever had a mom or a daughter or you just love pretty Asian people.

So our costumes were Worst Quality Crab / Best Quality Heart.

You probably don't get it. Whatever. Everyone there got it and thought it was genius.

........

OK I lie.
 
A lot of people didn't get it. But those that did thought it was genius. Truly!

There were a lot of really cool costumes!

Ming's hot little castmates were there dressed as each other's characters on the show. (Did anyone out there watch Nashville? Beautiful Chloe on the left there was on Nashville and we looooves Nashville.)

There was a delicious buffet dinner and we mingled and mixed and drank and danced.

There was also an awesome green screen photobooth. (The company that provided it is called PhotoBoothMoment.)

The dancefloor was enormous for the number of peeps we had. But it was fun...

Ming's other castmates arrived a little late...

But just in time to see Ming dragged out in her second costume of the evening: The Princess Leia Golden Bikini.

It was amazing. She looked INNNNNCREDIBLE.

And she's FIFTY YEARS OLD.

It defies the laws of human nature!

The whole scene was hilarious. Especially Eric in his Jabba costume which he kept on for the next couple hours.

Since Leia was Jabba the Hut's slave...he treated her as such...and made her twerk. I'm going to censor this one guys, sorry.

It was SO funny though.

Especially funny because Ming's character in Joy Luck Club was a timid little woman...in reality Ming has a huge warm personality with a hilariously crazy laugh.

What followed next was an hour-long Roast, modeled after those Comedy Central roasts.

It was so entertaining.

Eric had prepared video clips. And people skyped in or had recorded birthday greetings. (Lots of her fellow actor friends are off on movie sets etc. Huge bummer because I had secretly hoped Chris Evans would be there - having starred with her in Push. )

They showed some amazing old-school pictures...

And then everyone took turns roasting.

Seth Green said hi...

Agent Coulson gave an awesome speech...

OMG, see this computer sitting on this music stand?

It was such a hot mess. People were so hilariously drunk that they kept knocking over this flimsy little stand and the computer and anything on the stand went crashing to the floor three or four times. I was surprised it didn't break.

The glasses sure did though...

Hi! Meet Leilani, Eric's beautiful niece. We became friends at the Joy Luck Club 20th Anniversary Party.

The speeches went on and on, but it was fine, because every person who spoke was hilarious and knew how to deliver a perfect speech/punchline. Entertainers, y'all!

Finally Ming gave a little speech and Jabba passed out.

She might've been a teeny bit tipsy...as one should be on their fabulous 50th...

But I mean look at her...she looks like a 20 year old!

Waverly said hi...

Blair Underwood said hi...

And then we danced.

And the rest is not suitable for public consumption.

The End. Happy Birthday Ming!

With no exaggeration, the most fabulous 50 year old I know!