An Open Letter to Zac Efron: “Get’cha Head in the Game” and Be a Safer Sex Advocate

So here’s the thing: I might have a very slight, teeny tiny, not at all age-inappropriate fondness for the High School Musical (HSM) franchise. And by “might” I mean “definitely” and by “teeny tiny” I mean “Yes, that picture is of my workspace here at TheBody.com, and yes, that is a High School Musical 2 poster hanging above my monitor.” I choose to think of this as one of my adorable quirks. I suspect my coworkers might describe it differently, but they can keep their opinions to themselves, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, I swear there is a reason I’m writing this for TheBody.com, and it starts with Zac Efron’s recent red carpet moment. At the Feb. 19 premiere of his most recent film, The Lorax, a condom fell out of his pocket as he was walking the red carpet. Whoops. Matt Lauer asked him about it on The Today Show, he admitted it, and laughed awkwardly when Lauer noted, “Better to be safe than sorry.”

Read the rest.

Hey, it’s the semi-annual hit-you-up-for-money-for-kids plea, although this one is slightly different. At my school for the last few years the very top of the top of the kids have gotten to go on an amazing organized two-week trip to China. Most of it is paid for by local politicians and the kids work for a full year to do fund raising; they have to be willing to host a Chinese exchange student, they have to have flawless grades, recommendations from teachers, amazing community service, and put in hours and hours of work. The last couple of years we’ve also had to ask for kids to pay for their own plane tickets, which meant a lot of my best kids couldn’t even apply. And today we lost some of our funding and the principal has just asked each kid for an additional five hundred dollars, which they definitely don’t have.

I wanted to go to Donors Choose but they don’t do international field trips, and they require us to post through a travel agent. So I asked people if they’d be willing to donate a few dollars to keep some of the best kids in the Bronx from getting their poor little hearts and dreams crushed and people seemed amenable.

This is the blog the kids are keeping, by the way. You can see all the fundraisers they’ve put together and some articles written by the kids who got to travel last year.

I’m not sure what the best way to do this is — honestly I’m not sure if this will work at all — so I created a paypal button just in case. (I know there are weird things about how PayPal operates and handles money — let me know if there’s a better way, PLEASE.)

If you have a spare few dollars it would help them out TREMENDOUSLY. And as always if you want to pass the link on to other people we’d appreciate it. Thanks!

(ETA of several weeks later: Thank you all for donating! I’ve removed the button as the project has been completed. ♥)

This is not a post to say I’m never, ever going to blog again! Actually, the opposite. I’ve been fiddling with other projects and moving things around and cleaning things up at the other various blogs I contribute to, and in the process, I decided what I really needed was some downsizing. By which I mean, having my fully name as the domain name — a name I almost never use, for that matter — seems like a bit much if I’m only going to update twice a year, so I decided the blog part of this site should depart for cozier quarters. So: Becky Allen’s Sporadic Blog is now a thing.

As for this domain, hey, it is my name. So rather than letting it expire and grow dust (or be snapped by one of the 1,140 other Rebecca Allens in the country), I’ve decided to leave my professional type stuff here. I’ll update it when I’ve got, you know, new stuff, and leave it be the rest of the time.

Oh! Also: the lovely image in the header is a nearby above-ground subway station, taken by my sister.