Holy crap, ya’ll. This weekend I went to the grocery store and a gallon of milk was ALMOST FOUR DOLLARS!! I’m shocked and appalled by how high the cost of food is climbing, and then I find out that the price on the sticker isn’t even the end of the problem.

The Consumerist blog talks about the “grocery store shrink ray” - that evil force that is shrinking the SIZE of the products we buy, while the COST remains the same! Excited that your box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes didn’t go up in price? Yeah, don’t be - it’s now 2.4 ounces smaller. That 20-lb bag of Purina dog food? It’s been “upgraded” to 18 pounds. Read the rest of this entry »

If you watch the news, then you know that the following is imminent:

• Eating tomatoes will kill you.
• Global warming will kill us all.
• If Iran doesn’t do it first.
• If you live in the Midwest, you’re going to be washed away.
• If you live in California, you’re going to be burnt up in wildfires.
• If you live in New England, your heating bill this winter will send you into bankruptcy.
• You’re going to lose your job.
• You’re going to lose your house.
• You’re going to lose your health insurance.
• You’re not going to be able to afford food.
• You’ll have to eat poisoned tomatoes.
• The terrorists can’t be stopped.
• Obama is too inexperienced to run the country.
• And he can’t save us from the terrorists.
• McCain is too old to run the country.
• And he can’t stop the war.
• Paul Newman has cancer.
• The athletes are on steroids.
• Memphis is one giant crime-infested slum.
• Led by corrupt city and county officials.
• With failing schools.
• And a losing NBA team.
• And YOU’RE NOT SAFE ANYWHERE!!!

Did that cover everything? No? There’s more? Of course. There’s always more. Because the news makes a business of scaring us to death. The more frightened we are, the more we’ll tune in. So we’ll know what we need to be frightened about. Up go the ratings, up go our insecurities.

But I don’t need the news to tell me what to be afraid of. I have plenty of my own worries.

• I worry about my kid riding with teenage drivers.
• I worry about drugs, and smoking, and drinking, and unprotected sex.
• I worry about crazy drunk drivers hitting us on the streets of Memphis where no one really knows how to drive all that well sober.
• I worry about fraternity hazing, and my son’s only a sophomore in high school (I like to plan ahead).
• I worry about my aging in-laws.
• I worry if our retirement account is growing fast enough.
• I worry that I waited too late in life to start exercising.

What worries you?

This is a photo of a group of people that I met on the Internet.

Now there’s a sentence I wouldn’t have typed five years ago.

There was a time that meeting someone from the Internet insinuated, at best, a desperate personal ad and at worst, a possible interaction with a serial killer. I still firmly contend that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT SAFE FOR MINORS and if you are a teenager then listen to me and take me very very seriously: YOU BETTER NOT EVEN BE TALKING TO PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET THAT YOU DON’T KNOW. But for the rest of us, for consenting adults, especially those of us that spend a helluva lot of time communicating over the Internet, it’s really not so weird. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been quite a bit of media coverage of the South Pacific Broadway revival. And rightly so. This is the first revival in 60 years of a show that was phenomenally successful in its time, running for five years and winning a Pulitzer and eight Tonys. The original cast album was also a big hit, with all those great songs: Bali Hai, Some Enchanted Evening, Nothin’ Like a Dame, Wonderful Guy, Younger than Springtime, Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair…  

I never knew that the play is based on two short stories by James A. Michener. (I didn’t know he wrote anything less than 900 pages long.) I also didn’t realize that South Pacific boldly questioned core American values about race and class. In 1949, no explanation was necessary for Nellie Forbush’s shock at discovering the man she loves is the father of biracial children. The audience totally got why that kind of news would be grounds to call off an engagement. In the revival, they’ve had to “over-explain” it. I suppose that’s a good thing.

Early audiences didn’t care for the song You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught, and recommended it be taken out of the show. Apparently, audiences were familiar with  racial prejudices, they just didn’t like being reminded of them. Michener, Rogers and Hammerstein all agreed that to remove the song would remove the guts of the show.

Bartlett Sher, the director of the revival, says that part of what makes South Pacific  a classic is that “it can return to us from our past to give us lessons about our future. And it can give us a sense of both who we were and who we can become.”

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

 The Hannah Montana concert ticket sellout was the talk of the soccer fields Saturday.

Soccer moms, and some dads, were bummed about not being able to get tickets for their girls. Some had people deployed on the phone, on the Internet and in person. They said they were told they were sold out after only 3 minutes. Sweet niblets!

 So now all the Hannah tickets are showing up on eBay and the like, for way more than the ticket price.

They really need to figure out a way to prevent ticket scalpers from using computer programs to speed dial or connect with the ticket venues.

 But what really gets me is that some parents are actually going to pay $1,000 or more to take their  8- to 14-year-old daughter and her friends to a bubblegum pop concert. What are we teaching our kids?  I guess some people have more money than sense…