sleeping well

Need help getting a good night's rest? Here is what I found and compiled. Maybe we can sleep better together. 

Courtesy of Acme Mind Clinic

Anxiety rises and sleep becomes elusive. Need help? I'm pretty sure everyone does. We could all do with a better sleep schedule when life kicks us in the back end. Today we dive into what you can do to sleep well. 

Sleep Schedule

What? A consistent sleep schedule is needed? Gasp! Most of us don't really have it. It is easy to forget your body works better on a consistent timer. Ideally, it should be no more than 8 hours of sleep, but at least 7 hours are necessary. Get up and go to bed at the same time if possible. Consistent timing reinforces your sleep-wake cycle. This includes weekends, you night owls. 

What if you don't fall asleep within 20 minutes? Easy, go do something relaxing, like reading or listening to music (relaxing music, look on youtube for ASMR or music compilations). Once tired go back to bed. Don't just stare at a clock or it'll stress you more. 

 Courtesy of Britaniablog.blogspot.com

Irregular sleep patterns can lead to odd dreams, too. In my case, it causes sleep paralysis dreams to happen more often. It can develop a good mental alarm to keep your sleep schedule on a consistent basis. Your alarm could be obsolete after you get your natural rhythm going. 

Creating a ritual for sleep makes a difference in all ages. I will turn off any laptop activity a half hour before bed. During college, I'd quit doing homework at 10:30 pm and hit the sack no matter what was done or wasn't. Lowering lights may put your brain in sleep mode, too. 

Food Choices Matter

Don't go to bed overly full or hungry. Don't have a heavy meal within a couple hours of bedtime. Nicotine, coffee, and alcohol should be cautioned, as those take hours to wear off. 

Late in the day is not the time for caffeine. Even 6 hours before bed it keeps you up. At 3 or 4 pm you might want to not drink it. Decaf is okay in the evening, obviously, but save the regular coffee for your wake-up call. 

While we're talking about drinks, alcohol isn't a good thing to drink before bed. It disrupts circadian rhythm. Late-night snacks, however, may help depending on the snack it is. Drinking anything before bed doesn't help. At 1 to 2 hours before bed stop drinking. Go to the bathroom before going to bed, so you'll not have to get up at night. 

Chocolate is one thing you shouldn't have right before bed. I know that sounds weird, but caffeine is in chocolate. I didn't know that until I researched this blog. Now you know too. Acidic and spicy foods may want to be avoided, as well. 

Atmosphere Of Sleep

The idea is to keep it cool, dark, and quiet. Light exposure wakes your body up.  If needed masks are made for sleeping and ear plugs for sleep exist. Turn a fan on if it gets too hot (if you have one). Temperature does impact your sleep. Too cold and you freeze, then too hot and you can't sleep at all. 

Calming activities return for the win! Do yourself a huge favor and do something rather calming before bed. A nice bath, a book, anything that isn't device related, and even some sleep apps will help you transition to sleep mode mentally. Try to have as few devices lit in the room as possible. Cover bright lights. You can add peaceful aromas to your bedroom if it helps you. 

Courtesy of Blogspot.com

That reminds me, get off your screens and avoid blue light before bed. I like to stop gaming or using my computer an hour or half an hour before bed. Blue light can be blocked by glasses made to block blue light. You can also download an app to shut off the blue light on your device. TV being shut off two hours before bed may be a good idea. 

Make sure you have a good mattress and pillow to sleep on. It matters what level of comfort you have. Lower back pain can happen if you don't. It is recommended you replace the bedding after 5 to 8 years. The bed should also be reserved for only sleep (and if married, sex) so that your brain only associates it with those two things. 

Don't Nap For Long

Yes, you are exhausted, but if you nap late in the day or for more than one hour it will hit your sleep cycle. It will throw it off. This is only if you don't work nights. It may actually be necessary to nap a bit before work to make up for lack of sleep if you do work nights. 

This is also based on the individual case, as some don't have disrupted sleep when used to long naps. It all depends on you.

Daily Routine

Do you take walks, dance Zumba, play sports, or do any type of exercise daily? You might want to add it to your routine, even if it means you merely take a walk on your lunch break. Why? It helps you sleep better, provided you don't do it right before bed. Outdoors also promote good sleep. I know I sleep better while camping. 

Expose yourself to sunlight and bright lights during your day, which promotes your circadian rhythm. It can give you more energy, too, which means you should go walk in the park. 

Also, don't smoke. It is bad for you in general and does have a habit of causing sleep issues. Nicotine is bad. Sleep is good. 

Deal With Your Stress

Before bedtime deal with your stresses. Put a journal by your bed and jot down anything that needs brain dumped (or the tasks that need doing that come to mind). A full mind will stay awake and keep you from falling asleep. A bath or shower before bed works, too. A foot bath alone ups the probability you can sleep well. 

Stress management can be organizing your thoughts to prioritizing what is really worth your time. Taking a moment to deal with your emotions is worth its weight in gold. Prayer before bed is one way that works for me and my husband. 

Courtesy of letsliveandlearn.com

Get Help

If none of this aids your sleep you may need a professional. No shame. Go talk to someone and get medical help. Some people actually need melatonin and other sleep medication. Sleep apnea or other disorders can disrupt sleep cycles all the time. Nightmares may require counseling. Maybe they can indicate anxiety disorders, too, but that may be a myth. 

Some supplements that can help you include Melatonin, ginkgo biloba (250 mg half hour to an hour before bed), glycine (3 grams), valerian root (500 mg before bed), magnesium, L-theanine (100-200 mg before bed), lavender (80-160 mg).  Only one at a time! Get a professional's advice, too, and don't just trust I've got the right sources! Doctors can advise you better. 

Sources:

 Sleep tips: 6 steps to better sleep - Mayo Clinic

17 Proven Tips to Sleep Better at Night (healthline.com)

8 secrets to a good night's sleep - Harvard Health

How to Sleep Better - Sleep Foundation

Twelve Simple Tips to Improve Your Sleep | Healthy Sleep (harvard.edu)

Buster keaton

 Do not try Buster Keaton stunts at home, ladies and gents, or you might die. Buster Keaton was a skilled stunt man that took many risks and those types of stunts can kill you, so much so that insurance companies won't let you do those stunts anymore. He is what you call a skilled expert and insanely lucky. He is also made of rubber.

Courtesy of Pinterest

Today we talk about one of the most hilarious comedians and stunt men I've ever seen. He started in silent movies with physical comedy. I'll go into three parts of his life; his acting, his stunts, and his life outside acting. 

His Acting

Not only was he an actor, but also a director, which is usually where seasoned actors who stick with Hollywood end up going if I've caught onto the pattern. He could also edit and write. He also did stunts that insurance companies will no longer sign off on. He was known for a straight face during comedy scenes, which earned him the nickname "the great stone face". Keaton transitioned from silent films to the talkies (movies with sound). For a while, he dealt with alcoholism, but he came back strong guest-staring in many movies and TV shows. Some have put him above Charlie Chaplin in their ranking of silent film stars. He did 19 short films and 10 silent films over 8 years.

His Stunts

Okay, here's where we really talk about his fame. Keaton's stunts, if done wrong, could have killed him. He's famous for these gutsy stuntwork films that are comedy gold. If he'd done one thing wrong he'd have never seen old age. This is why insurance companies won't allow actors to imitate his stunts at this point. Stunt men end up in hospitals often. We know this. What we don't want to see is dead actors. Keaton was one of a kind. 

Outside Acting

He started as a child vaudeville actor at age 5. At a few months old he nearly suffocated because he was accidentally shut in a trunk while his parents were busy performing, which led to him being left at the boarding house ever since that incident. Legend has it his family escaped from fires and trainwrecks. At nearly 3 years old he caught his finger in a clothing wringer and lost a joint, threw a brick at a tree and hit himself with it on accident, and was sucked out a window by a cyclone only to be gently put down a few streets back. This was when his stage career began and this was also when his parents came to the conclusion he'd be safer onstage. 

Courtesy of Pinterest

Joseph Frank (later Francis) Keaton was born to parents Joseph and Myra Keaton, Medicine show performers, on October 4, 1895. He allegedly used to crawl right on stage from the wings at 9 months old. The easiest way to care for him without interrupting the show was to bring him with them to their shows. The actresses and women in the show loved him. He at one point stood behind his father and mouthed the words of his father's monologue in the exact same costume - unrehearsed! He had talent and everyone could see it, so they included him in shows all the time. He'd rough house with his father, sing, dance, write comedy, play piano and ukelele, juggle, and do magic. As a kid, he didn't really have much public schooling, mostly tutors and his mother teaching him to fill in gaps. He turned out to be too entertaining to teachers and students, funnily enough. Less than one day of school proved that. 

The laws on child labor actually thought all the throwing around comedy onstage was abusive, though not a single bruise could be found on the child, and his parents often did get arrested. They tried to pass him off as a midget a few times to avoid that. Close friends and family have insisted he had a happy childhood and he was not abused at all. With the child labor people watching their every move it is unlikely that they could have gotten away with it. No bruises meant he was clearly not abused. The only thing Keaton said was that his father did drink, therefore he had to fend for himself often as he got older. His only real injury came from a train wreck. Joseph Keaton loved his son and was proud of him.

When Keaton was 21 his father became a violent alcoholic. The act wasn't quite the same and Keaton had to look out for himself a little more. He knew how to land, apparently, so he didn't get as much damage. According to Busterkeaton.org:

The article, curious in light of Joe's increasing on-stage violence, goes on to interview 19-year-old Buster:

“The funny thing about our act,” declared Buster after his final toss Tuesday, “is that dad gets the worst of it, although I’m the one who apparently receives the bruises . . . the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It’s a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I’d have been killed if I hadn’t been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don’t last long, because they can’t stand the treatment.”

— Detroit News, December 4, 1914

Courtesy of Pinterest

He quit in January 1917 and Keaton and his mother stranded Joseph Keaton in California temporarily. He immediately was signed to another act, given his stardom. He did some work with his mentor Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, standing by him despite scandal, until Arbuckle died. He had a brief time as a cryptographer and entertainer during WWI (in France). 

Another thing about Keaton was his pain tolerance. His shoe got stuck in an elevator and he crushed his foot. Under strict orders to do nothing strenuous he filmed a dance number. Cue the Captain Picard face palm. The man was impervious to pain. 

On Our Hospitality (1923), he almost drowned in a river sequence. On The General (1926), he was knocked unconscious by a cannon. On the Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1927) set, he broke his nose (playing baseball), and the most remarkable of all, he broke his neck shooting a scene for Sherlock Jr. (1924). In the scene, he runs along the top of a train and then grabs a waterspout. Water gushes down on the track and Buster is obscured for a moment. During that moment, he was forced by the pressure of the water down onto the tracks, where he hit his neck. But if you watch the film closely, you see Buster get up and run off—still in the same take. It was years before he discovered what had given him those awful headaches. (courtesy of busterkeaton.org)

He married Natalie Talmadge in 1920, had two sons, and divorced in 1932. He had literally been kicked out of the bedroom after the second son was born. It was not a great marriage, but he loved her.

When he signed over to MGM he admitted that he'd made a mistake and given up his creativity. Chaplin and Lloyd had also advised him against it. 1932-34 were the worse years of his life. His friend Arbuckle died, his wife divorced him claiming he drank, two other friends died, he was sued for taxes and declared bankruptcy, he struggled with drinking, and he illegally married his second wife while drunk (which got plastered in headlines). And he was fired for refusal to work on inferior pictures. He was forced into a sanitarium in 1934, where he allegedly got out thanks to Houdini's secrets and got his life on track again. 

MGM did break him of some of his brilliance in film, though. He did keep doing acting after that, but it wasn't the same because he lost creative freedom. He did do theatre again. That brought him life. His best work was mostly when he had creative freedom to do what he wanted and didn't have to fight with studios that he wasn't running. 

He often laughed and smiled offscreen, though he'd go stonefaced when a camera pointed at him. He married again in 1940 to Eleanor Norris, who was 21 to his 44. They were happily married until he died of lung cancer in 1966 at age 70. His last film appearance was A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. 

“I think I have had the happiest and luckiest of lives. Maybe this is because I never expected as much as I got . . . And when the knocks came I felt it was no surprise. I had always known life was like that, full of uppercuts for the deserving and the undeserving alike.”
— Buster Keaton

https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/99741%7C25179/Buster-Keaton/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Buster-Keaton

https://www.busterkeaton.org/

Common Places People Disappear

It occurred to me the other day that people disappear from lots of places, but some locations are consistent. Let's discuss where people disappear from and why. 

The Great Smoky Mountains courtesy of wallpaper cave

First I'm going to talk about where people tend to go missing and possibly why. Then, I'm going to highlight a few cases that are unexplained.

You'll notice that my research tended to find the most mysterious disappearances and I'm rolling with it. I'm also making a note of the fact that extensive parklands are often places where lone hikers do go missing. This is because it is easy to pick off a few hikers if they are in the middle of nowhere, as opposed to standing in the middle of a town full of people. Also, suicidal individuals may choose this setting to end their lives alone, as well as perhaps just getting lost in miles of park land. 

Extensive Parkland 

The Great Smoky Mountains are part of park land, which means you know what I'm going to tell you next. Tourists have gone missing over the years. I'm sure it is a great place to visit, though. In 1969 the largest manhunt ever could not find a 6 year old boy that went missing. The last one happened in 1981 and it was an elderly woman.

Yosemite National Park is a tourist hotspot, but again, this one has a history of missing persons reports. 45 reports have never been solved. This place has bear problems, though, so maybe the bears can answer us on what happened. This goes so far back it dates into the 1800s.

The Alaska Triangle is a large amount of wilderness space. They have hundreds of search and rescue missions every year. State troopers often find no trace of anything. From 1988 on, 1600 people have vanished. A famous political leader disappeared around this area and they couldn't even find the wreckage of his plane or a body. 

Let me explain why this situation specifically is a problem. Usually, victims disappear in late afternoon or before severe weather. Often bodies are found missing shoes or clothes (as hypothermia's last phase is getting too hot) and at previously searched areas. Children are found a good distance from where they actually disappeared from. Parks also don't ask other agencies for help as often and handle it in-house. The weird fact of the matter is that feet alone show up on some shores (Washington State and British Colombia), sometimes still in shoes. Victims have wandered home, been found in a jail, or joined a cult (as they do operate in remote areas). Records are also not the greatest in parks disappearances. Bigfoot researchers discovered about 1600 people had gone missing in the wild. The larger the park the more possible it is to actually cover up a murder, get mauled by a bear, do suicide uninterrupted, or just take a bad fall leading to injury or death. Common sense says to GPS yourself if you hike alone. 

The Desert

Obviously, the desert is not the place to find yourself stranded. You might actually die. Superstition Mountains in Arizona has a history of missing people. This time they found the bodies and they were beheaded! Again, deserts cause death if you don't know how to survive, but that's a bit extreme to lose one's head. They found a body and a campground with a bloody blanket and letters missing addresses and names, too. This is a treasure-hunting spot, as well as what some native Americans believe to be the entrance to the underworld. I think we've got a serial killer on our hands, if you want my opinion. 

Superstition Mountains courtesy of Pinterest

Survival in the desert is not what we are all taught at home, especially if you are from a city or an area that isn't close to a desert. People can be incredibly evil, too, and leave you in the desert to die. This is a place no one is going to stroll for fun. Some mentally ill individuals choose to stroll to their death in the desert. Others have drug issues or a crime is related. According to News Channel 3, a detective who investigated cases in the desert said "the real serial killer is the desert itself". Not many are hydrated enough to stand it or trained in survival. 

Aircraft Graveyard

The Nevada Triangle is not where you should be flying. When a famous pilot went missing they looked for him and found his remains and plane in the area. Unfortunately, he's not the only one to crash and die here. Hundreds of pilots - not five, hundreds! - have gone missing in this zone. 

You know what comes next, the Bermuda Triangle! This one has a history of messing with navigation tools. It not only traps planes, but also ships. Thousands of people have died in this area. Some blame the paranormal (aliens), others say Atlantis was located here and the crystals are destroying aircraft and boats, and others claim to have found a crystal pyramid underwater that causes crashes. Oh, and I'm not done with conspiracy. The idea that the slaves who died in these waters haunt the waters is a theory, as well as government testing of secret projects. The truth may fall rather flat in comparison. Weather and human error are likely the cause of this situation. Cyclones and methane hydrates (gas explosions in the water) could sink a ship or destroy a plane quick. Electronic fog can make navigation impossible, which is how tools don't work. It may just be that people are stupid or the weather is to blame. 

On The Water

Lake Superior is a missing person zone? Yep, it is. Shipwrecks litter the bottom of the lake. A wreck from a hundred or more years can be found in the water. 70 ships have gone down and 17 have not been discovered yet. Lake Michigan is also known for some missing people. 

A Shipwreck at Lake Superior Courtesy of Reddit

It can be said that many ships go down in the ocean. Hundreds, in fact. Piracy is also a situation we have to face, only now they hold machine guns instead of swords. Currents are not helpful. They carry evidence farther from the shipwreck site. As satellite images get better we can find ships faster. 

Out Hunting

Pecos, New Mexico is a hunting destination and a zone where several have gone missing. In 2009 a 61 year old man stayed back at the cabin during a hunting trip and never was seen again. He's not the only one to go missing, which leads to lots of alien and supernatural theories that probably are false. 

Hunting expeditions are somewhat like hiking expeditions. I'll say the same thing about treasure hunters in the jungle. They have gone missing because they got lost or attacked. The jungle is one place they may not waste too much time combing. The woods are hard to navigate and the idea that people go missing one place and move north or south afterward makes searching hard. This goes right up in the park land category, if I'm honest. 

No Explanation and No Answers

This is the heartbreaking part for those who have lost loved ones in this manner. After seven years they are declared legally dead unless proven otherwise. While this would be the perfect way to fake one's death, I don't recommend doing that. Some families never got closure. One man searched for his son for years just to get closure and find the body (he did). My heart goes out to those that have to live with that reality, that they'll never know what happened.

Hoer Verde Courtesy of TheRichest

In the case of mysterious unsolved cases, I have a real treat for you. Whole towns have disappeared and left everything behind. A whole town in Iowa is now just land after the ruins were left alone in the 1920s. The newspapers no longer cared after the stock market crashed, so it just reverted back to land after the ruins broke down. This was called Urkhammer, Iowa. In 1928 the residents just vanished without a trace. The dust bowl was far more important to the news and no one bothered to investigate after 1929 hit everyone like a mac truck. 

In Brazil, there was a village that was abandoned entirely. 600 people left everything there - food and all their belongings! The only clue they have is a blackboard that read "There is no salvation". This has been blamed on aliens or political upheaval. It is called Hoer Verde. 

If you want more of this information, you can look up "towns that disappeared overnight" and make yourself turn on every house light in the process. I'm stopping here. I need to go watch something light and absurdly comedic. Many urban explorers will find these towns and houses with all the possessions in them, especially in Europe where they don't vandalize as much. I'll let you research at your leisure.

Sources:

 https://www.thetravel.com/25-mysterious-places-people-keep-disappearing-from/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNShqCIKSqw

https://nypost.com/2020/07/04/why-hundreds-of-people-vanish-into-the-american-wilderness/

https://adventure.howstuffworks.com/survival/wilderness/10-mysterious-disappearances-in-national-parks.htm

https://www.rd.com/list/mysterious-disappearances-no-one-can-explain/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_disappeared_mysteriously:_1990%E2%80%93present

https://www.missingpersons.gov.au/about/why-people-go-missing

Where is the Bermuda Triangle, what is it, why do planes go missing there and what are the conspiracy theories? | The Sun

Hundreds of ships go missing each year, but we have the technology to find them (theconversation.com)

Going in-depth on disappearances in the desert - KESQ

Movies and Abused Actors

I know that movies feeding off of real emotion look good and authentic, but can you force distressing emotions to come out of an actor by abusing them? Yes, you can. Ask Shelley Duvall about her film experience. Even putting donald and goofy voices to the steps scene in the shining won't make the scene less unsettling. Today we talk about her and many other cases of abusing actors. 

Courtesy of looper.com
Tippi Hedren in The Birds

Today I am focusing on The Shining, The Birds, Singing in the Rain, and the alleged Dan Schneider situation that arose at Nickelodeon. You'll never see these movies and shows the same way again. 

The Shining

The book alone is, I'm told, unsettling by itself. It is about a family living in a hotel during winter. During this temporary stay to watch someone's hotel alone, the father gets haunted by a spirit making him violent toward his family and the son sees horrible psychic visions. Unsettling? You bet. The movie shows the mother of the family as submissive, but readers will know that isn't like the original (and movies almost never are, anyway). 

Shelley Duvall spent hours crying during filming, to the point of dehydration. She was criticized and the cast wasn't allowed to speak or be nice to her. The stairs scene was filmed 127 times. I'll leave a clip of the stairs scene here, if you dare to watch it. It isn't gory.

She almost quit acting after this. She was diagnosed with acute anxiety and I think you can guess why. If the scene above is her mental state, she needs serious therapy. Stanley Kubrick was a perfectionist when it came to films, which is why this all happened to her. Yes, he got the effect he wanted, but at what price? Duvall started losing her hair. It didn't help that Stephen King himself and others criticized her performance because it conflicted with the book character. 

Singing In the Rain

What? Yes, I love this movie, too, but Gene Kelly was not pleasant to Debbie Reynolds. He was negative and worked her tirelessly. She had 3 months to learn the dances that Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor had already mastered. You can't tell on the screen how much work she went through to make it look good. Fred Astaire encouraged her when he found her crying at a rehearsal piano, stating that he works himself to frustration and anger, as well, which helped pull her through. 

Hard work, however, is not abuse. What I am talking about is dancing until your feet bleed. Good Morning filming took 14 hours to film. Her feet bled and she was ordered by a doctor to stay in bed 2 days afterward due to exhaustion. While Gene Kelly admitted how badly he treated her, he also did something unthinkable. 

According to Nickiswift.com,  Debbie Reynolds said "Gene took me tightly in his arms ... and shoved his tongue down my throat. ...It felt like an assault. I was stunned that this thirty-nine-year-old man would do this to me." You can't see the movie in the same way after this. Again, nobody said it was easy to break into the dance world, but situations like this don't help. She wrote about this in her biography if you want to know more. 

The Birds

Alfred Hitchcock, for whatever reason, was not known for being nice to Tippi Hedren. Allegations of sexual assault and inhumane conditions during filming are two things that put Alfred Hitchcock on the list of obsessed directors who mistreated actors. He claimed for one scene he'd use mechanical birds, then used real ones when the mechanical ones didn't work. This means she got birds hurled at her for five days. She had birds tied directly to her and got birds hurled at her for the last day, as well. The birds attached would peck her. She was so focused on survival and learned later that the crew found all this to be heartbreaking - and Hitchcock was the only one who could stop it and wouldn't. 

According to People.com, this is what happened. 

"Hedren’s only reprieve came late in the day when a bird tied to her shoulder pecked her too close to her eye and she snapped, told her director “I’m done,” and began sobbing from exhaustion. “Minutes passed before I looked up to discover that everyone had just left me there in the middle of that vast, silent soundstage, completely spent, empty and alone,” she writes.

A doctor ordered Hedren to take a week’s rest and had to force Hitchcock to let her take it. “She can’t,” Hedren writes of Hitchcock’s response. “We have nothing else to shoot but her.”

“What are you doing? Are you trying to kill her?” Hedren’s doctor replied and finally convinced Hitchcock his star needed actual rest, which she took and returned a week later to finish the film."

During Marnie, Hitchcock sexually harassed Hedren and when she told him no he refused to loan her out while she was under contract with him. Hitchcock would obsess over leading ladies.

According to New York Post, this is the story. 

It was during the making of “Marnie” that Hitchcock’s demands for Hedren to have lunch with him in the studio commissary escalated to lunches in his office, and finally to intimate Champagne toasts after each day’s shooting was completed. She became increasingly uncomfortable with his suggestive behavior.

“I was stunned and alarmed by his actions,” she recalled. “In the end, he made unqualified demands of me that I could not assent to. He said things like, ‘I want you to be available to me at any time, whenever I choose.’

“I don’t care about being an actress if this is what it involves,” Hedren says. Hitchcock never used her in another film, and refused all requests to loan her out for other movies while she was under contract, derailing her then-promising career.

Nikelodeon Situation

So, Dan Schneider's name has definitely been run through the mud. Jeanette McCurdy (Sam from Icarly) has written a biography and in the proccess exposed some of her run-ins with "The creator". It turns out she's not the only one to be made uncomfortable. Again, the female harassment theme continues. Schneider claims to be smear campaigned. I'll let you be the judge and do your own research on that. I am going to be as objective as possible and only use the facts I have found. 

Jeanette McCurdy stated in her biography that someone called "the creator" massaged her shoulders, made her wear a bikini, and encouraged her to drink alcohol while underaged. Investigators have found Schneider's sets to be toxic and hostile in environment. In 2018 he was booted after proof of verbal abuse came out. No proof of other types of abuse has been found, but plenty is alleged. 

Alexa Nikolas (Nicole in Zoey 101) has some experiences that she has shared. Daniella Monet (Trina in Victorious) claims he and all his male-only writers created sexual jokes unnecessarily for teenage actors to do. Schneider also advocated for a skimpier female wardrobe and Monet commented that it wasn't age-appropriate. Nikolas said it was common on set for female actors to sit on Schneider's lap. He also had an anger problem and screamed at the actors. He also (though this is contradicted by some sources) didn't like female writers in the room and didn't think women were funny. This was contradicted when he said Ariana Grande was hilarious and he likes Lucille Ball and Tina Fey. Jenny Kilgen accused him of gender discrimination and creating hostile work environments. Other writers tell stories of him asking for massages and asking them to do embarrassing acts for money.

Schneiders disputes all this and says he couldn't have done some much if he had abused his actors. Investigations echo McCurdy's story from her biography. He used to tweet foot pictures of the female stars he worked with. He was already in the doghouse before this and it is just more public now. They did not find proof of sexual misconduct in both investigations toward him. It is a messy issue. 

According to looper.com:

Gradstein told the newspaper, "[Schneider] could be generous and validating, and it was exciting to be around his talent and passion for creating entertainment. But he was also unreasonably demanding, controlling, belittling, and vindictive with a willful disregard for boundaries or workplace appropriateness."

If you want to know more about Jeanette's story, go get her book. She is amazing. As she says, her time with Nickelodeon was only a short part of her biography story. 

Amazon.com: I'm Glad My Mom Died eBook : Mccurdy, Jennette : Kindle Store

Sources:

Tippi Hedren Recalls Hitchcock Abuse During Filming of The Birds (people.com)

Tippi Hedren: I was sexually harassed by Alfred Hitchcock (nypost.com)

Shelley Duvall's abuse experience on The Shining because of Stanley Kubrick - Confessions of a Horror Freak

Shelley Duvall's Traumatic Experience Making 'The Shining' Scarred her for Life (thevintagenews.com)

Actors Who Claim They Were Abused On Set (nickiswift.com)

Debbie Reynolds’ real story behind “Singing in the Rain” shows how fierce she was (yahoo.com)

Actors And Crew Have Alleged On-Set Abuse By Nickelodeon TV Show Creator Dan Schneider (yahoo.com)

Dan Schneider, ‘iCarly’ Creator, Accused of Misconduct (vulture.com)

The Dan Schneider Controversy Explained (looper.com)