JennyExiled’s Neighborhood

Quiz: What's Your Lucky Charm?

(click here to take the quiz yourself)

PolishedTurd

The Golden Turd

Good luck, Golden Turd!

Sorry.  We couldn't resist the irony.  Truth is, you have no luck.  When you think things are looking up, you always find the turd beneath the gold.  Face it, GT: you would lose betting on a one-horse race.  Luck? Why even check your luggage? You know it won't even make it to the same continent as you.  You're doing okay just getting your seatbelt hooked correctly, much less catching favorable lights and traffic conditions.  If the cook hocks one goober into Friday's gallon tureen of chowder, guess whose bowl it will find? Your fortune cookies' staleness is matched only by the fortunes they convey.  While you sleep, a gang of ninja black cats march back and forth across your floor.  At the end of your rainbow is the leprechauns' Port-O-Let.  It's a miracle your cells can remember how to oxidize glucose, so don't press your luck hoping for winning lotto numbers.  Please, PLEASE don't ever sit on a plane with us.

1)  Lose pound #11.  If my Daily Plate/weight loss trend holds up, this will happen tomorrow morning.  (Or I guess technically at some point tonight, while I am sleeping.) 

2)  Read the new People, Us Weekly and Entertainment Weekly magazines.  I know People's cover story is Ellen and Portia's wedding.  I'm not a huge fan of Portia but I love Ellen.  (If you're gay, you have to.  It's one of the big gay rules, second only to `Don't sleep with the opposite sex.')

3)  Finish the new Faye Kellerman, The Mercedes Coffin.  It's really good so far.  (Incidentally, I had no idea Marge, one of the more major secondary characters, was a Republican.  I like her anyway, but wow--she blasted us liberals for blaming George Bush for the state of the country and I was a little taken aback because really, who else should we blame?  Regardless, this is a really good book and part of a fantastic series.  I love Peter and Rina.)

4)  Watch the remake of Prom Night, which Netflix sent me.

5)  Sleep.

6)  Do laundry.

7)  Quality time with Sam.

8)  Cook dinner at least one night--as part of my plan to realize that I cannot live on Lean Cuisines and cereal alone when I am at home.

This is a political one.

I read ths really good commentary on cnn.com comparing John McCain to George Bush.  I was talking to Jen about it and I mentioned that I had read somewhere that John McCain would be a fun guy to have a beer with.  I've heard the same said about George Bush, too, and I like fun people to drink with...but I wouldn't vote for one.

I want a smart president, one who won't spend a third of his tenure as president on vacation.  I want a president who can pronounce "nuclear."  (I'm petty that way.)

I want a president I can respect, not someone who just repeats the same speech over and over.  I don't want someone who resorts to dirty politics or name calling.  And I want someone who can speak without a speech writer nearby.

The commentary is really interesting.  I hope you read it.  It's not a love letter to John McCain but it's not a hatchet job, either.  And it raises some really important points, I think.

Formula for failure: trying to please everyone.
--Anonymous

Recently I was struck by the (admittedly rather obvious) realisation that bell hooks was addressing her comments regarding the “Black is Beautiful” credo to a largely American and/or African-American readership. The situation here in Blighty is somewhat different, and after extensive research (i.e., I went to Wikipedia, typed in “England”, and scrolled down to the demography section) I have discovered that “South Asians” are currently the largest “minority” in this country, just edging out the African and Caribbean contingent by a few percent. Whites, however, still dominate by an overwhelming majority. This does rather complicate the whole issue of well-intentioned writers, like myself, who aim for a little “Positive Discrimination” in their fiction. In fact, BBC Director Shamir Shah recently claimed that there were too many black and Asian faces on TV!

To crib from The Guardian:

 

Broadcasters have overcompensated for their lack of executives from ethnic minorities by putting too many black and Asian faces on screen, a leading television industry figure said last night. Shamir Shah, a member of the BBC's board of directors, said this had led to a "world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease". Shah, a former BBC head of current affairs who now runs an independent production company, Juniper, as well as being a non-executive director of the corporation, used a speech to the Royal Television Society to call for current TV industry diversity policies to be ditched because they were not working.

 

"Despite 30 years of trying, the upper reaches of our industry, the positions of real creative power in British broadcasting, are still controlled by a metropolitan, largely liberal, white, middle-class, cultural elite - and, until recently, largely male and largely Oxbridge... The fine intentions of equal opportunities - and they are fine intentions - have produced a forest of initiatives, schemes and action plans. But they have not resulted in real change. The result has been a growing resentment and irritation at the straitjacket on freedom such policies impose and, paradoxically, the occasionally embarrassing over-compensation in an effort to do the right thing."

 

Shah said that instead of dealing with the issues surrounding why greater numbers of people from ethnic minorities had not made it to the executive level of British television, broadcasters had instead put more black and Asian faces on screen, regardless of whether they were cultural fits to the programmes they were in. "I don't think that such over-representation is a brilliant idea. Another thing that's not real is some of the casting of non-whites in fiction," he added. "The plain fact is that this tick-box approach to equal opportunities has led to an inauthentic representation of who we are: a world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease."

 

This, apparently, is an issue of “institutional cloning”, rather than straight-up racism in Shah’s opinion. And there’s nothing I can do about that, since I have little if any power over who TV production companies hire and fire. But it’s true that the characters I create are somewhat “deracinated”, as a direct result of my (largely unavoidable) lack of first-hand familiarity with this country’s minority populations. Still, despite Mr Shah’s arguments, I can’t help feeling bad for all the funny and talented actors who are wasted playing the “best friends” and “house mates” of white leads, simply because of their ethnic background. Ideally there would be greater diversity at an executive and creative level, resulting in better, deeper roles for such actors. But, as I say, there’s nothing I can do about that. So what can I do? Just go back to writing about white folks, and forget all this BiB stuff? “Dig where you stand”, as they say. Maybe. But bell hooks has got me all worked up, and to be honest I don't know much about the reality of white people's lives either! I would also maintain that the rules are slightly different for "genre" fiction, given that a radioactive spider could (theoretically) bite any random kid, regardless of their socio-economic circumstances.

I bet Ann Marie the storm would hit us.  She said it would miss us, but not until after they closed us down in preparation.  Ever see a giant tropical storm curve? (memo to self: do NOT bet against Ann Marie)

Hurricane_track_models_1

More questions, this time from the lovely Anastacia.  I don't know wtf is up with the grid thing, though.

|-----------------------------------------------+-------------------------|
|       1.. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?        | lots of people were named before me |
|-----------------------------------------------+-------------------------|
|     2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?      | the last time I spilled milk|
|-----------------------------------------------+-------------------------|
|       3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?        | It's decidedly better than my footwriting

What T.V. series are you looking forward to starting back up in the fall?

In order:  The Office, Grey's Anatomy, The Amazing Race, One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives, Californication, How I Met Your Mother and Heroes.

I am also excited for 90210 (remake).  (No, Angie, I am 13 years old.)  There are a few other shows I want to try, too.

I'm about to watch the last episode of the real Beverly Hills 90210, which I haven't seen before.  I'm sure I'll cry. :)

But in my defense, I'm off today and I have some sort of hideous cold.  But I'm armed with diet root beer and a personal pizza from Papa John's, and so I am good to go.

Worry is like a rocking chair.  It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.
--Anonymous

• First off, congratulations to Lauri's friend Ellen for placing fifth at the Beijing Olympics.  I'm sure she was disappointed not to win the Gold, but she made it to the medal round and competed hard against the world's best.  Fifth-best in a planet of 6.7 BILLION people? I'll pay you props for that.  YAY @ Ellen and her teammate.
• I've written before of those annoying Pizza Hut ads, where diners at a fine Italian restaurant enjoy their pasta, only to have Chef Luigi, or whatever his name was, come out and announce that he "Didn't cook tonight.  Pizza Hut delivered the pasta!" The diners react with amazement; I'd be pissed.  Anyway, I realized tonight that the only real way for Chef Luigi to atone for his ruse would be to deliver HIS pasta to random Pizza Hut pasta orderers.  Turnabout is fair play.
• As much as I like fine restaurant pasta--and I actually like the Pizza Hut pasta okay, too--there are times when Spaghetti-O's are more satisfying.  I'm not sure if it's the radioactively glowing orange sauce, tasty preservatives, or that certain je ne sais quois the can flavor adds, but Spaghetti-O's are a sensible part of any post-indulgence munchfest.
  
• I miss pre-Ticketmaster concert tickets.  I'm not old enough to have gone to many concerts back then, but I do remember the tickets being different.  Now, with Ticketmaster, et al, a ticket for U2 is indistinguishable from a minor league baseball ticket.  Except for the price, of course.  There was a stack of the latter sitting out at job 2 today.  It made me a bit nostalgic.
• I had another wash of nostalgia today.  One of the movie channels showed "Burnt Offerings," a 1970's
  

  Creepy chauffer
  suspense/horror movie.  I saw this on TV when I was a kid, and it scared the hell out of me.  The whole thing was a little eerie, but there was this creepy-ass chauffer who spent maybe 60 seconds total on screen.  *shivers*  My roommate and I rented it in college, and it was still chilling.  Today, I could appreciate it being an entertaining, interesting minor 1970's horror film.
• What really hit me about "Burnt Offerings" was how great an actor Oliver Reed was.  He was an unapologetic drunk, who actually sobered up to star in "Gladiator."  He went out for one final binge, and his heart gave out, forcing Ridley Scott to use computer trickery to put his face in certain scenes.  You could tell he was slumming in Burnt Offerings--alongside an equally
  

  Olly pub
  slumming Bette Davis (and her eyes)--but I guess he needed the paycheck.  When most celebs fled England's punitive taxes in the 1970's, Oliver Reed stayed.  Bless him for that.  His final binge? From IMDB: He died of a heart attack in a bar after downing three bottles of Captain Morgan's Jamaica rum, eight bottles of German beer, numerous doubles of Famous Grouse whiskey, and beating five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling. His bar bill for that final lunch time totaled 270 Maltese lira, almost £450.
• I used to drink a lot, but DAYUM.  That's a pretty frightening amount of alcohol.  His lunch could fuel most entire sororities for a homecoming hayride. 
  
• R.I.P. Bennigan's.  Okay, I admit, Bennigan's was kind of annoying and cheesy, but it was the closest bar to my radio station, so it became my home bar.  In time, I changed stations, but I kept drinking there because it was the only bar in my zipcode that served liquor till 2.  I was a regular for a couple years, and I had lots of fun there.  Once I quit going to bars, I stopped going to Bennigan's.  I only know a few people who still work/worked for them, and I wish them well.  There were some good people there, on both sides of the bar.  I could write a book about the people there--patrons and employees alike--and the adventures we shared.  Too bad I don't remember more of them.  lol
• As I blather on tonight, I'm doing so under a Hurricane Watch.  I put $50 worth of gas in the truck today, then I came home and read for a few hours.  That's all my preparation so far.  I've really only been scared by one hurricane: Charley in 2004.  Charley was a Category 4, and all the models put it right up the mouth of Tampa Bay.  If that had happened, it would've caused zillions of dollars in damage, and killed a bunch of people.  I was under mandatory evacuation, even the radio station was under evacuation.  My parents wanted me to go to their house to ride out the storm.  Even then, I didn't feel comfortable driving TOWARD a Category 4 hurricane, no matter how sturdy their house.  So I booked a room in a downtown Tampa Marriott.  To stock up, I got a family meal of Sonny's Barbecue, a half-gallon of vodka, and two liters of lime seltzer water.  Hurricane Charley came ashore well south of Tampa Bay, which saved lives and property.  I say that, and yet people still died, and Charley caused $13 Billion in damage to Florida.  Huge, but it could've been worse.  We got a breeze and a sprinkle here;  an hour east of us, it leveled houses.  This storm is no Charley, not by the longest shot.  The latest update shows the track right over my county, but it's not supposed to strengthen much:
  
  

  At200806_5day
  
  

Odds are, this storm won't be that big a deal.  We'll get some wind and a lot of rain.  Flood-prone areas will flood, just like they do after a severe thunderstorm, and kids will surf the rare high waves in the Gulf.  What I'm thinking about tonight are people who don't have what I have.  I have five local TV stations with multi-million dollar weather departments working round the clock.  I have the Interweb, so I can check the latest tracks and forecasts, even the spaghetti models, all at Weather Underground.com.  One local TV station, Fox 13, has set up a special website with more stuff on it than I even know how to read.  myFoxhurricane.com  Pretty catchy name.  We have satellite pictures, infrared water vapor images, doppler radar, giganto computers--all manner of technology to watch and plot and warn.  In 1919, a hurricane hit Key West, killing 900 people on that tiny rock.  They didn't have the gadgets we do today.  Fay is coming.  She probably won't do much damage here, but we'll be watching; we'll be ready.  It's too bad not everyone has the same advantages.

BTW, during one extended happy hour, my friend and I once decided that hurricanes were pesky, tropical wind vaginas, and tornadoes were malevolent cloud penises. 

Well, it was funny after a few double Manhattans. 

• If you were in Boston this past weekend, I hope you had a great time.  And may your Monday not be too harsh a letdown.