Yummy Good Fun

My fascination with the abstract, righteous morality in this land of milk and honey simply knows no bounds. We boast of our many freedoms here and yet when we try to enjoy them we are blasted for it. Currently the actors from GLEE are under fire for a “steamy” photo shoot they did in GQ. Let’s get something straight here. These people are (a) ADULTS and (b) ACTORS. They play high school kids on a TV show. TV shows do NOT last forever. I’m guessing that these adults would like to enjoy lucrative careers long after GLEE fades into cable reruns. They are young and attractive, hell I wish I were still young and even half as attractive as they are. Some have said that they are promoting the objectification of women by being photographed in undies others are saying that they are sending a bad message to the kids that watch the show.

PUHLEASE people.

The two women in the photo shoot are both talented actresses and singers…AND they look great in their undies. And here’s another question for all of the silly naysayers out there…the first season of the show focused on Quinn’s (Dianna Agron, the blonde in the photoshoot) teen pregnancy. It swung from her conniving ways of making Finn (Cory Monteith…the man in the photoshoot) believe he was the dad, to considering “selling” the baby to someone else. Do all these howling prudes think that Quinn’s pregnancy was an immaculate conception? What about the episode about virginity…it didn’t PROMOTE virginity, oh no, it showed the possibility of at least three characters losing their virginity (I think only one actually did).

In other very civil countries sex is not treated like a dirty little secret but like a part of life. Newsflash folks; sex IS a part of life…hell, we need to have sex to MAKE life. Go figger.

A journalist friend of mine was interviewed on CNN about this Glee/GQ flak and he solicited comments from friends on Facebook. Why would a supposedly respectable news outlet even CARE about this photo shoot? Are we not still at war? Are people not losing their homes? Does everyone suddenly have good healthcare? This was really something worth the time and energy of CNN? And by the way, who even BUYS GQ? This magazine isn’t marketed to the teen audience, it’s a men’s magazine marketed to adult MEN, of course there are scantily clad women in it and on it.

We are a nation of sensationalism. We make non-stories into major events. We make everything our business. Every celeb divorce, every baby bump, every tabloid hook-up is somehow destined for public scrutiny.

Why can’t we (maybe even me included) shut up and focus on our own lives. If we spent as much time doing good in our life as we seem to spend speculating on which celeb is carrying whose baby imagine how many positive changes could take place.

What if you took the time spent reading tabloids or watching E! and did something positive? For heavens sake make LOVE instead of pandering to yet another tabloid tale of lies and misinformation at least that would keep you busy and keep your mind out of the gutter 

Slippery Slope

I know I keep telling others to just shut up already while I blather on here but here’s the deal, if they shut up maybe I’ll shut up (or at least move on).
Today’s juicy little news tidbit is that the parents of Miley Cyrus are divorcing (that would be Billy “Achy Breaky” Cyrus and the Mrs). Divorce is sad. No matter what it’s always got a tinge of sadness to it for everyone involved. Because they are a fairly public family it’s not surprising that their split made the news but that wasn’t enough for CNN. On my way home this evening I was treated to a CNN “news” story speculating on how this divorce will impact 17-year-old Miley’s future. Will she end up like Lindsay or Brittney? Oh we don’t know but that sounds like a possibility. The fabulous “news” team actually tossed into the mix the “what if her dad dates someone almost as young as Miley?” Huh? Really? To the best of anyone’s current knowledge neither Mommy Miley nor Daddy Miley are currently dating anyone so why would they bring up this line of thought?

It seemed like the objective of this team of reporters was to actually make news where there was none. The only news was that Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus had split. That was it. But without anything else to go on, without any other juicy little nugget, they had to make up some speculative tales to get the juices flowing. It’s repulsive. It really is. I don’t really know much about Miley Cyrus and to be honest I don’t really care much but I do care enough in general to know that speculating wildly about her dad’s future dates is just fucking wrong.

I’d like those “news” folks to put themselves in that place. Imagine themselves in divorce proceedings. Imagine people publicly contemplating the age of their next date. Imagine their kids and their families hearing this. Imagine how shitty they’d feel…

So once again…I beseech you oh great beast known as the media in the US…PLEASE SHUT UP.

Dirty Laundry

I listen to Howard Stern. Not because I think he’s the King of All Media or even because I think he’s especially funny. I have a long commute to and from work and he’s a familiar voice after all these years. Many times he gets things completely wrong. His knowledge of pop culture and music often makes him sound like someone’s crotchety grandpa. The man’s been in radio for most of his life but never heard of Solomon Burke? Really?

But sometimes he does get it right. Or sometimes he just allows “right” to happen. That happened this past week. Living in America I can’t seem to escape the bizarre cult of celebrity that surrounds us. Really it’s shocking. News programs are being replaced by tabloid shows. You can’t escape a store of any variety without encountering shocking cover stories of celeb infidelities and bad hair choices. It makes me yearn for the days of two-headed alien Elvis babies…at least we KNEW those weren’t real (were they?).

Of the many celebs roaming the planet I always kinda had a warm spot in my heart for Courtenay Cox and David Arquette. Now maybe that stems from the fact that Courtenay went on from her Dancin’ in the Dark with Brucie days to being one of everyone’s Friends. And David? Well he’s a member of that cool Arquette family and who can forget his sister outshining Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan (I see my ‘80’s references are a bit pervasive this fine morning). If you don’t live under a rock (and I’m sure even the Chilean miners who WERE living under rock for 70 days heard about this) then you know that Mr. and Mrs. Cox-Arquette are “legally separated”.

As is normally the case the media jumped all over this with hints of cheating and other horrors. David Arquette is a Howard Stern fan. Because of his celeb status he’s been on the show every chance possible. He’s become a bit of a friend of Howard’s I suppose. Earlier last week, a day or two after the split was made public David called in to Howard’s show to set the record straight. He sounded truly sad. He sounded honest. I’m not sure that “honest” has a sound but if it does that’s how David Arquette sounded on the air. He wasn’t his usual joking self. He made it clear more than once that he wanted his wife back. He understood what was wrong. He talked about the woman he slept with while he was separated from Courtenay and stated that it was not a relationship. If you listened to the whole phone call…if you didn’t take anything out of context or even read it as a transcript (it was important to the message to actually HEAR him talk) you couldn’t help but feel like the guy was just looking for one honest outlet for him to tell celeb stalkers what was going on and hope they’d just go the fuck away.

Alas that was not to be. It turned into an interesting exercise in media mash-ups. Some of the most offensive people that I heard were Billy Bush and Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford. They took everything David said out of context and twisted his words and emotions and then added to that by somehow holding Howard Stern responsible for…well for being Howard Stern.

Sadly, had any of these “journalists” gotten this same scoop from David Arquette they would’ve exploited him and the scoop to the Nth degree. There would’ve been promos and teasers and they would’ve cut and edited it into something different entirely, they would’ve edited out the honesty.
Now I admit that I haven’t given much weight to these types of shows but they are mild entertainment. I don’t know any of these people personally. I certainly don’t know David Arquette or Courtenay Cox but after actually HEARING David on Howard Stern and then hearing what these so-called “journalists” think he said it’s rather shocking. They clearly didn’t hear the live piece on Howard. They may not have heard any of it but instead got transcripts of key pieces from their associate producers or “researchers”. What they “reported” and what I heard were about as similar as a banana is to a live chicken.

I would hate to claim to have been the fourth grade teacher of Billy Bush or Kathie Lee because I think it was somewhere around fourth grade where we learned to do book reports where we had to report accurately about a book we read. We learned to do simple expository explanations of facts. We learned how to do that exercise of standing in front of the class and explaining in detail how to make a peanut butter (I know, I know, no more peanuts in schools…don’t get me started) and jelly sandwich. Had I been Billy Bush’s or Kathie Lee’s fourth grade teacher and heard their retelling of what David Arquette said on Howard Stern I’d be saddened to find that my hard work of teaching these morons was in vain.

I’d love to start an anti-celeb movement. Stop buying People, US and OK magazines. When those tabloid shows come on TV, shut it off and play a game with the family. I’m not saying don’t read or don’t watch TV…I’m saying let’s stop pandering to people whose only purpose is to create a false sense of urgency over who someone had dinner with and where they ate.

Howard and David…I’m sure you’re not reading this but if, perchance you do…I appreciate the honesty. David, your effort to put an honest account out there only proved the statement that no good deed goes unpunished.

Billy Bush, Hoda, Kathie Lee and all you other people. I’m sorry you get to make so much money for pushing such shit out there to the public. You’re all a bunch of creeps.

Does anybody remember LAUGHTER?

Didn’t Led Zeppelin scream that out at some point? Good question. Does anyone remember laughter? A friend just asked me to go with her to a comedy class she’s taking. I’d just be there as an observer but it got me thinking. My corporate job is completely humorless. How many times a day do I laugh, smile or giggle at work? On the rare occasion that I do engage in one of those behaviors is it deemed inappropriate by anyone around me? We’ve become mostly humorless in the corporate world. One reason, of course, is that humor can be offensive which then involves those fun folks over in HR. It’s all so SERIOUS.

Funny is so many things to so many people but no matter what you think is funny it feels real good to laugh. I’m pretty comfortable with all sorts of humor. Fourth grade boys (and some girls) can’t seem to resist fart humor and silly titty humor. Teens overall seem to like humor that offends or makes fun of others. Andrew Dice Clay used to say that he didn’t discriminate, he offended everyone equally…but in his heyday he sure was funny. Sam Kinison, oh how I miss Sam Kinison with his screaming tirades. He could be offensive but damn he was funny. There was one routine he did about fighting over land in the middle east and he just kept screaming that it was SAND, SAND, SAND.

Sitcoms aren’t very funny anymore (and maybe they never were, I was just younger and less jaded); I think many of them are victims of political correctness sucking dry the laughter from the airwaves. We need to be a bit less politically correct. Let it all hang out. Laugh it up.

I can’t stand it anymore I want a good laugh. I want to laugh until my sides hurt and my head aches. There’s even a cult of laughter that has been growing for years (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200502/therapy-the-laugh-track).

Is anyone laughing? Can anyone take or MAKE a joke anymore? The world is in serious trouble. There is some truly serious shit goin’ down. Maybe if we open our hearts and minds to the funny again, just a little, we’d be able to climb out of the sad little place we’ve found ourselves in.

C’mon people laugh. Laugh at yourself, laugh at that stupid thing you did or said. Let it all out, if you can’t find the funny then you’ve got some pretty serious issues. Maybe we need a laugh time in our day. Maybe in the most boring of meetings a good silly joke could break things up a bit.

It hurts to see you go

This Summer has been one for the record books where I live. Day after blissful day of heat and humidity. Cooking outdoors every night, sipping cocktails on the deck as the moon rises bright orange into the not-quite-dark sky.

But now it’s coming to an end. Not quite yet but soon, all too soon.

I drive through nice (upper) middle-class neighborhoods on my way to work each day. The homes and lawns are well-kept without being pretentious.

It occurred to me this morning while driving in that we don’t decorate our homes for Summer. Every other season seems to evoke the need to drape something along our awnings or set-up a lawn tableau but not Summer. Summer stands alone. It offers up it’s own ornamentation. The trees are heavy with rich green leaves the sun and shade create a dappled affect on lawns and porches. We don’t put decorations in our windows in Summer because even better than taping up faux leaves or pilgrims and turkeys we get an unobstructed view of the great outdoors. We see our neighborhoods alive with activity that will taper off as the daylight dwindles and the trees become bare. Sure there’s the random “occasional” flag with a beach scene on it or the doormat shaped to look like a random row of flip-flops but these don’t jump out at you, they aren’t staring at you from windows or dancing on the lawn in the breeze.

Is that why we do it? Is that why we voluntarily start to obscure our view as the seasons change to Fall and Winter? We know there’s nothing more to look at when we get home from work in the dark. The lawn dies off, the trees are bare, the decorations manage to lift our spirits until Summer comes around again.

This need for ornamentation starts in September and doesn't end until the days start to become noticeably longer. We decorate through the Winter holidays with lights and wreaths and snowmen. We hang sparkly hearts in our windows as February 14th nears and Spring brings bunnies and pastel eggs in windows and on lawns. Only Summer stands alone.

This morning on my way to work, despite the heat and humidity pressing down around me, I found myself looking at the houses for signs of seasonal change. I wasn’t looking for the leaves on the trees to have changed I was looking for those stupid blow-up lawn ornaments of football players or some kind of silly window decoration of fall leaves or school buses. There were none to be found. Not yet, not today but I know that in the next few weeks they will start to creep up. School starts this week, there will probably be a few decorative school buses taped into windows as some little ones go to school for the first time and the parents want to make it fun, maybe there will be a few fake leaves in gold and magenta framing those cardboard school buses. Front doors will start to sport autumnal wreaths with gold leaves and mini-pumpkins. Mums, already on sale at Home Depot, will line porches and stairs in rich colors like purple and burgundy.

Within weeks those generic seasonal items will be joined by Halloween specific décor, skeletons leaning into door frames and bouncing, blow-up haunted houses on front lawns.

I’m not a huge fan of those “other” seasons. I’d love to have endless Summer, long, hot days and short, warm nights year after year would suit me just fine. I know most people love the change of seasons. Each season brings something else to love but I can’t help but mourn the end of Summer every year. I don’t want the leaves to change color; I don’t want the days to get shorter. I don’t want to bundle up in sweaters and scarves. I hate being bundled up for any reason.

Despite the fact that there were no real outward signs of the change of seasons on my commute to work I could still sense the change. The sunlight is different already, too low in the sky, too slanted for the time of day that I’m on the road. A few short weeks ago it was high in the sky and burning bright at the same time.

Oh Summer, I miss you already and you haven’t even turned the corner yet to go.

Have you nothing better to do?

Really. There is a whirlwind of controversy in the NYC area about the owners of the Empire State Building refusing to light up the building in blue and white in honor of what would be Mother Theresa’s 100^th birthday.

The building owners have said that they don’t honor individual people and they won’t do it. Fine. Guess what. Try to figure this out on your own folks…it’s THEIR FUCKING BUILDING. They don’t need to light it up at all; for any reason; ever. They light it up in red and green at Christmas, blue for Chanukah and a variety of other reasons and color schemes.

Major politicians in the state of New York are being interviewed about this on news shows and actually taking it seriously but no one, not a single one (not that I’ve heard anyway) has been bright enough to do what their supposed to do and point out that it’s a privately owned piece of property and what they do with their damn lights is no one’s business.

This is absolutely ridiculous. This country has gotten ridiculous. Where are our freedoms going? No one even hears themselves anymore in the constant chatter to make their own dopey point and then group think grabs everyone by their respective genitals and squeezes the smarts out of them.

The government of the state of New York is at risk of being shut down for lack of funds but somehow state officials have the time and INTEREST to comment on what the owners of privately held real estate are doing with their lights. WOW. WOW.

People making the facebook pages and spewing ridiculous statements about this should really take a moment to think how they would feel if someone came along and told them what they should do with their porch light. See how indignant they'd be then.

It’s only Words…

Now that I’ve ranted about leaving my fucking words alone. I’d like to sing the praises of words. Well, the BeeGees actually HAVE sung the praises of Words (look it up, I don’t feel like it, I KNOW the damn song).

Words can be rather awesome. With words I can create something else. Novels are made up of words that were strung together with someone who had an idea. J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien created whole other worlds that existed outside or in parallel with this one. Steven King creates worlds of terror with words.

When you read a novel anything can happen. A novel can be about anything at all with any outcome. Not the outcome that might happen in real life but ANY OUTCOME. A homely woman could walk away with the prince. The world could end. Everyone in need could be rescued, bad people punished, good people rewarded. Words can do all that. It’s called fiction.

Didja ever look at a real life situation and giggle secretly at how it would look if you could write it as fiction? Every interaction with your boss would end up in your favor. Every lottery ticket would be a winner. Every dog and cat would get rescued from a shelter. It’s nice.

Mindy Klasky, Alice Hoffman, Shanna Swendson and of course Jo Rowling all make magic with their words. Literally. They ‘ve created places where magic is real in their books because anything can happen with words.

Words are fun. We should read more words…there’s certainly no shortage of written words but who’s reading them? Get with it people. Go somewhere magical.