FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan

Saturday, August 28, 2010

USA Today commercial from mid-1980's reminds me of the girl who got away: How I (Almost) Met Your Mother -and she was a newspaper industry executive


La Bilson is very definitely the Gold standard with me... Rachel Bilson



USA Today commercial from mid-1980's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3LiURnoFzk


I was living in Evanston Illinois, just a few blocks from Northwestern University and Lake Michigan when this USA Today commercial was heavily promoted on TV.


A few years later, after I moved to the Washington, D.C. area and was living in Arlington County, VA, where I remained for 15 years, I constantly lived within three miles -and often eyesight of- the twin towers in Rosslyn at
1100 Wilson Boulevard, formerly called the Gannett/USA Today building, with its great views of D.C. and the Potomac River.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosslyn,_Arlington,_Virginia

That is, until they foolishly moved away from being only one block SE of an underground D.C. Metro train station, which was incredibly convenient for employees and people needing to go over there, and headed west to auto-centric Tyson's Corner in Fairfax County.


http://www.gannett.com/
http://www.usatoday.com/

http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/
After doing some research projects for the paper starting with a 1988 election project, I eventually fell in love with a
Gannett middle-manager whom I constantly kept running into in the morning and at lunch at one of the many little stores and restaurants located in the lobbies adjoining the huge escalators.
These stores made the building feel more like a small city, unlike so many of the bland office buildings with atriums I've seen in South Florida that are SO uninviting and have a bad retail mix.


The object of my affection bore a striking resemblance to an actress I particularly liked, and had a very friendly and endearing voice on the few occasions I'd heard it, so my radar was finely tuned whenever she was nearby.

I was absolutely convinced I could recognize her laugh from across a crowded room!
Plus, she loved college basketball!

Like the way an IU or UK fan loves college basketball, but she didn't go to a big sports school, which made it all the more endearing.
One fall morning I swung by one of the small stores in the building I frequented on my way to the area I worked out of when I was there and the owner noticed me subtly looking around while I had some newspapers under my arm, and was trying to decide what sort of drink to buy -cold or hot.

Yes, Mr. Obvious!


He looked at me and said, "I think I know who you are looking for."

Then, like he'd been rehearsing it for hours, he handed me a business card with her contact info on it, with a note in an envelope attached by a small black metal binder clip, like the millions of them I had in my desk drawer and would toy with while talking on the phone.


On the note she had written that she'd been doing some detective work on me and heard some very good things about me from people she trusted, would be going out-of-town for about a week for some newspaper industry-related shindig, then would be visiting her family...
and, oh by the way, would I be interested in going with her to the big Eagles-Redskins game at RFK in two weeks time?

You could have knocked me over with a feather!

And the rest is history... well, at least for a few years anyway.
Yes kids, that's how many great romance stories start in Washington -with an educated and calculated move- he said, sounding like Ted Mosby doing the voice-over narration from an episode of "How I Met Your Mother."

That doesn't seem to be the style down here, which is a pity for all concerned.
Fickle fate is nobody's friend.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/how_i_met_your_mother/






The "How I Met Your Mother" season premiere is Monday, September 20th at 8 p.m. Eastern. (The ESPN Monday Night Football game that night is Saints at 49ers.)
I genuinely hope there's much more Rachel Bilson in the show's future other than a few minutes here-and-there, as Hallandale Beach Blog loves, loves, loves La Bilson!

First Look: Rachel Bilson Heads Back to HIMYM For Season 6
http://www.buzzsugar.com/Rachel-Bilson-Pictures-From-How-I-Met-Your-Mother-Season-6-Premiere-10528284

New York Post's Page Six Magazine
The Fashion Issue starring Rachel Bilson

By Amy Spencer
Rachel
Bilson's Divine Inspiration
On The O.C. and in real life, Rachel Bilson launched a million fashion crushes with her unique but subtle sex-bomb style. Now the actress—who talks to Page Six Magazine about everything from Coco Chanel to Hayden Christensen—is making it easy for copycats to steal her look, in her new role as a designer.
Read the rest of the story at:
The photos are great, oui?
ooh la la la Bislson