thisnthatwithatwist

Did you know that Miss Piggy was originally named Miss Piggy Lee, in honor of Peggy Lee? Did you know that every Guest on the Muppet Show was originally going to get a replica of themselves in Muppet form, but the tradition only lasted two episodes? More importantly, do you find this useless Trivia useful? If you do, you should rent the Muppet Show on DVD. There are pop-up facts just like these, but more importantly, there are Muppets!

I was raised on the Muppets and still love them with all of my heart. Sure the puppet run variety show isn’t for everyone, but it’s for me and anyone who loves the furry clan.

I cut my ankle shaving. I know it happens all the time to people but my lord in heaven, it hurt. I pride myself in being a rather steady handed person when it comes to using a razor but I’m rethinking that right now. I practically never cut myself but usually I use a Venus razor, today I used a man’s razor. The thing is I actually saw this huge chunk of my skin in between the blades which is just nasty!  

There is no moral to this story, I just thought I’d share and perhaps make readers laugh by saying that while I ran naked dragging blood through the house in search of a big enough bandage I sang “I enjoy Being a Girl,” from Flower Drum Song.  

PS: For all those who are outraged or grossed out that I wrote a blog about cutting my leg in the shower, consider yourselves lucky, I was about three minutes away from writing about my period last week. J

I know right pathetic! But I have my reasons.

My first serious boyfriend, Michael, is about to become a priest. After him I dated Matt for six months, until his neurosis and self deprecation led me to break up with him. I was not yet 16. Since then my love life has been one disastrous hookup after another and includes a guy who broke up with me to spear me from his mental illness, the huge baseball fan who told me that I was the greatest girl he’d ever met then never called me again, and most recently the former Abercrombie model who couldn’t stop talking about how hard it was to be around people who only cared about him because he was a model.  I know that my loved ones meant well but I’m beginning to lose faith in their judgment. I never thought I’d be the girl who looks to find love on a reality show, but I figure at least NBC has a rather solid screening process.

Today I actually heard an educated, otherwise reasonable person say that the American public should vote for Palin because, “she’s just like the rest of us.” Now, I’m going to be honest, Mrs. Palin isn’t just like me. For one thing she is from Alaska and I hate the cold. I also don’t believe in hunting, in fact I played a game of paintball last fall and ended up in tears, therefore even if I did believe in killing for sport I can’t operate a gun.

But I suppose we do have similarities, chief among which is that we do both have vaginas. However, that is hardly a political thing. I, like Palin, have no foreign policy experience (though like Palin, I have neighbors of different nationalities.) I’m sure we have other similarities but I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t think I’d make a good president, at least not yet. If I wanted a President who was like me, I’d run. The point in voting is that we elect leader who can do what we believe is right and have abilities to handle the decisions and problems that we can’t.

I know that people say that you vote for a candidate not their running mate but this year is different. Never before is there such a likelihood that the potential president (God help us if McCain wins) will die in office. He is the oldest person to ever take office if he does indeed do just that. And Palin, as fun as it is o watch Tina Fey return to Saturday Night Live, should not run a country. Watch her interviews, she’s simply not qualified. I understand the appeal. She’s a woman so maybe she can get the Clinton voters, but Clinton actually knows what she’s doing.

ANYONE WHO DOESN’T BELIEVE MY CLAIM ABOUT ESCAPISM IN YESTERDAYS BLOG SHOULD LOOK UP THE CUSTODY CASE FOR GLORIA VANDERBILT DURING THE DEPRESSION.  

The idea that a trial over what would happen to a little girl being such big news is interesting.  Had it not been the Vanderbilt family fighting, nobody would have cared.  Add on top of that, the fact that this trail happened during the Great Depression and still managed to grab headlines, really says something about the American idolization of the famous.

Americans thrive on celebrity scandal.  We live for it.  Even people who claim not to care about celebrity gossip usually do secretly pay attention to it.  If this weren’t true it there wouldn’t be a gossip industry because it wouldn’t be profitable.

I single out the American idolization of celebrity because our country is the most celebrity obsessed.  Other countries have celebrities, but there are far less.  While there may be just as many gossip columns and reportedly more abundant paparazzi, they are focused for the most part on royals.[1]  

“Celebrity worship,” the psychoanalyst Ernest van der Haag says, “is directly traceable to the basic and continuing need for authority figures.”[2]

It is my opinion, because of these two factors, that Americans are so enthralled in the lives of celebrities.  We don’t have royalty here so we look up to the people who are recognizable and those with more money and possessions than the average person will ever conceivably have as people we want to be like.

Another theory of why people idolize the famous and why, therefore, they cared so much about little Gloria Vanderbilt is that, in fact, we ourselves want to be “somebodies.”  That was Wyatt Cooper’s theory.  He said that most people struggle, from the time they are born until their death, to twist themselves into becoming a person other people will want to be like.  People want, he stated, to be unique and distinct in some way.  We all have a right to cherish our specialness, Cooper explains, but it isn’t enough for us to cherish it, we want others to as well.

Some people are allowed momentary glory, the star football player in high school or the girl who is mistaken for a famous starlet at an airport.  Cooper calls this, “a trick of the light, a moment of illusion…and the terrible reality that follows is a blank white, sheet on which northing is written.”  It makes the idolization even worse.[3]

There is a common misconception that since celebrities are rich, they are obviously happy, however, this is not always the case.  You constantly hear stories about the rich and famous, the ones who are thought to have it all, having killed themselves and we can’t understand it. Cooper, however, did understand it. “The celebrity who gets up in the morning and looks in the mirror to brush his teeth, doesn’t see a celebrity staring back at him,” he explained.  “He sees a face with a new broken capillary, a loose filling that needs fixing and skin that is drying and dying.”[4] There are dozens of tabloids that just love to display an un-flattering picture and story of such imperfections.  The primary reason for this is because people buy them mainly because it makes the consumer feel better about him or herself and his or her life.  People of the Depression who had nothing, financially speaking, could look at Gloria Vanderbilt, a 10 year old who had more money than most people could even dream about, and see that money really doesn’t buy happiness.  

            The Trial also acted as a form of escapism for the people of the time.  

                [1] John Connolly, John Cook, “Shooting Stars: Hollywood vs. The Paparazzi It’s War!,” Radar  Summer                       2007

                [2] Barbara Goldsmith, “The Meaning of Celebrity,” New York Times  5 Dec. 1983

                [3] Wyatt Cooper, “Does Everybody Want to be Somebody,” Harper’s Bazaar  May 1971 

                [4] Cooper, “Somebody”

I got a comment today from someone that said that I shouldn’t write about Clay Aiken coming out of the closet because we are in an economical crisis right now. I find this funny because the world relies strongest on escapism in times like these.  However, I realize that it might at times seem like I am a flake who is a bit obsessive about American Idol and other “fluffy” shows.  Unfortunately this isn’t true.

I have accomplished many things in my life. These range from appearing in my first dance recital with my arm in a cast, to hitting the game winning triple in a softball championship, to getting first honor while suffering through a horrible spout with Lime Disease. However, as great as these things were, they are not the accomplishment I am MOST proud.  

My junior year of high school I scored a one hundred on my United States History regents. I was scared that I was going to fail one of my tests. It was stupid because I had been doing well in all of my classes but I just had a bad feeling. I studied like crazy for all of my tests and I figured I was doing okay on all of them, but nothing special. Then one day I was told my history teacher wanted to see me. I wondered what I had done and then he told me, “You got one hundred on your United States History regents”. I was ecstatic and a little in shock. All of my teachers soon followed with their congratulations.

Apparently, this is a very rare accomplishment. It also proves, or can stand as evidence, that I am a rather smart individual who knows a little something about my country. So, to that guy, remember just because someone chooses not to write about hard news, doesn’t mean they aren’t politically minded and bright.

It certainly has been a big year for Clay Aiken. First, he released his third album in May. Then he became a father this summer to son Parker Foster Aiken and this week he comes out of the closet on the cover of People Magazine.  

Aiken credits his son- who appears in his first public photos on the cover with his daddy- as the number one reason for his finally stating what rumors have whispered since he first appeared on American Idol five seasons ago. The Spamalot star explains to People, “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things.”

The thing is I wasn’t going to get caught up in all the hoopla that surrounded moving across a street. I know that Yankee Stadium is a legendary, wondrous place but if the city could knock it down and bulldoze it, like it was nothing more than an old decrepit house, why should I care.

Yankee Stadium does have meaning to me.  I would still consider myself a rather good fan of the team, when they make the playoffs I hang on to every pitch like it is the most important thing in the world, but when I was young I was like that every game. When they were winning in the late 1990s, I never missed a game but then after the loss in 2001 my cable provider didn’t carry the YES network for all of 2002. Team that with a quick exit in that year’s playoffs, and the spell was broken a bit by the time the Yes network premiered in April 2003.

So this year I was ready to be that crazed girl again but they just lost so badly and it seemed like over kill when every time I watched an event it was labeled “the last…” I wasn’t even watching the game last night. After prodding from my father I set the DVR to record but I was watching the Emmys. I didn’t care, they had turned on me and I was going to move on. The problem was after the Emmys ended, the DVR switched to the game and it was the last inning. It looked like all those World Series games that filled up my youth and when it ended, nobody left.

The players remained on the field, and Derek Jeter made a speech. Then there was Tino Martinez, in a suit but looking like he was ready to play. And there were clips of the old days when Girardi caught baseballs instead of flack. I’m not ready for it to be over. Yankees Stadium cannot have its last game (no matter how magical and beautiful it was) in September when all of it’s greatest times were October. I’m willing to get my heart broken by those pinstriped fools one more time and believe that they can actually pull of a World Series win this year, but they’ve got to hold up there end and once again pull of the unthinkable.

I personally wish that summer could last forever: the swimming, the warm weather, the not being cold all the time. Summer is my favorite season by far. The problem is that all of the shows have giant cliff hangers in May and then there’s nothing about them until the fall. This is why I’m excited that come the 22, the full fall schedule will begin to premiere.  This summer was particularly hard because of: 1- because of the writers’ strike last year, summer TV was particularly abysmal and 2- last season of Desperate Housewives ended with a two second glimpse of Gale Harold, whom I love and have missed since his last episode as Brian Kinney on Queer as Folk which ended (I think) in 2005.