Lisa Parker

2010 Top Ten Posts


Australia Day Fireworks

Image by Sam Ilić via Flickr

Top tenning is THE new year eve’s week thing to do in the blogosphere.  Mostly because bloggers need vacation time too.

Thanks to the wonderful tech team at WordPress’s need to constantly justify their paychecks, I have a plethora of data aggregating goodies to help keep track of posts by popularity.

So here are the top ten posts by page views at anniegirl1138 for the year we are about to bid adieu:

10) Brad Pitt shaved the scraggly thing off months ago, but it lives on in my post about goatees and dead husbands.

9) Though I’ve successfully steered my daughter away from the cash-grabbing universe of “dance” studios, my contempt remains. Remember the Single Ladies? 9 year olds hoochie dancing for the dirty old men who troll the Internet?

8) Although I wrote this ages ago and it’s true intent has been repeatedly misunderstood, Angelina’s non-weight problems continues to be a big draw.

7) Another oldie but goldie, Lisa Parker still pulls readers and comments.

6) It’s hardly the only Facebook Meme worthy of scorn (I ignored the equally awful Movember Movement), but breast cancer awareness meme’s, and pink ‘s co-option by Susan Komen for that matter, sparked a rant that people read.

5) Jennifer Petkov was another post that missed its mark but certainly got read.

4) I’d originally planned to write this for Care2, or maybe I did and it got rejected, regardless, young and dumb in America was a huge hit.

3) Jillian Michaels is a poor role model and apparently I am not the only one who thinks so.

2) Musing on my life of plenty.

1) And the biggest post of the year? Women with no basic understanding of dressing for body type.

“You know,” my husband observed as he glanced through this list, “not one of these posts is about your family … or me.”

“Can you believe that? ” I said, “No one wants to read about you guys.”

“I am dismayed, disappointed and disgusted, ” he replied, ” but not surprised.”

Nor am I.  My best stuff is usually not the most popular, but that is the bane of all bloggers.

I hope you enjoyed the year’s effort and will continue to read in the new year.

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So What Brings You Here? Lisa Parker, Maybe?


In the month of July I had no fewer than 56 searches for Lisa Parker in one form or another. 

The first time I mentioned Lisa was in reference to the dedication on the movie Eastern Promises. Later I wrote a piece commenting on all the traffic my one mention of her has generated. People were curious about her because of the dedication and the lack of any real information about her on the Internet despite the fact that we view the ‘net as a place of endless information.

Over time I have heard, via comments and emails, from people who knew Lisa and it’s obvious to me that she was much loved and still missed terribly.

Dudley DoRight. Hairless (not bald, sans hair, people) and all things Angelina Jolie lure searchers into my lair as well. 

I couldn’t figure out the DoRight thing until I remembered that Brendan Fraser played him in a movie back in 1999. Does that guy only reprise corny cartoon characters for the amusement of Gen_Xer’s – when he isn’t milking the summer block buster teat being the Mummy’s bitch? Anyway, there is a new Mummy movie and I imagine that is causing the odd landing here.

Once, I think just once, I wrote about shaving. Down there? No, I think it was about my disinterest in shaving my legs these days. And now, all manner of fetishists are stopping by. There are no pictures, ‘k? Go away.

Angelina Jolie. 

Sigh.

She is simply my foil. I could care less about her personally, really. But she makes such a nice metaphor, I find it hard not to single her out for special attention. To me she is the epitome of what happens to a woman who hasn’t a single clue about who she really is or what she wants out of life. Jumping on causes. Falling for the motherhood as a soul filler myth. Trying to stave off age with skeletal thinness. 

The great tourist mecca of Southern Illinois is next up. 

Seriously, who knew? Not me. I just hope the guy who rented us the cabin by the pond hasn’t lost business because we thought his place was aromatic and rustic.

YWBB still comes up. It’s usually a wordpress specific search which means the searcher finds Rob or me. Me mostly. I hope I haven’t discouraged anyone who needs to hang out there from checking it out, but I do hope I have made it clear that it isn’t a place for the long term. It’s a cherry picking place where you might find like minds, maybe make a friend or two but not a substitute for thinking for yourself and doing what’s best for you.

Truthfully, Rob pays more attention to my search terms than I. I am not much interested in how people find me but in whether they bother to read once they have arrived. I would say more arrive than stay, but that’s okay. I don’t read every blog I land on either.

Lisa Parker lived close to the heart


Like most WordPress bloggers (or any blogger really) I am fascinated by the searches that people do that lead them to by blog. Probably the search term that comes up most often here is the name Lisa Parker. I first wrote about her in a piece called Going to the Movies. Rob and I had taken in the Viggio Mortensen film, Eastern Promises. Parker was the production unit manager for the film and it was dedicated to her, which is not uncommon in the movie industry when a member of the cast of crew dies during its production. Being me, I googled her at the first opportunity only to find that while her body of work is well-documented, there was little to no personal information to be found. That was frustrating to me at the time but now I find it quite fascinating. The public has this image of those in the movie world being eager for recognition to the point that any and all things about them are fair game and here comes Lisa Parker. A film is dedicated to her memory. A good film. And there is nothing to be gleaned about her save the work she left behind. How about that? Being remembered for your accomplishments only and not your dress size or tumultuous personal life.

I have searched and searched, in vain mostly, for more information on Ms. Parker. I haven’t uncovered much. She was just 39 when she died on June 4, 2007 at Charing Crossing Hospital after a brief illness. She was well-known in the Irish film industry and had worked on international films as well in many capacities. Her funeral was held shortly after her death in London with another memorial service in Dublin, Ireland the following fall. She was survived by her mother, sister and many friends. Donations were asked to be given to the Battersea Dog Home.

The second tim I wrote about Lisa Parker was in a piece about search terms. I thought it an odd memorial to her that people would find in the original blog piece that often brings them here. One of her obituaries carries the quote “she lives life close to the heart”. What a beautiful thing to have said about a person after he/she has gone. To me it means that she lived out her life doing what she loved and with that people who mattered most. What a lucky woman. And what better way to be remembered than as someone who followed her heart.