More About Change

It's always interesting to ponder all the ways technology has changed our lives. Not just the equipment, like personal computers, flat screen televisions and ATMs, but the way we all communicate and interact with each other.

I was just reading one of those "relationship" articles, written for a female audience, and I was struck by one of the dating tips. It said that at the beginning of a dating relationship, the woman shouldn't be the first one to change her status on Facebook to "in a relationship." Let him change his status first. That's just not one of the things we had to worry about when I was in high school.

In those days, boys had control of the asking out, because "nice" girls didn't call boys, but on the other hand, boys were pretty much always expected to pay for the date too. Susie might see Janie's boyfriend out with another girl and run home to call Janie and tell her about it, but there was no real-time texting or cell phone video evidence. If Boyfriend wanted to break up with Janie, he had to have the guts to tell her personally. Break-up by Facebook status just hadn't been invented yet. And we didn't have to worry about those incriminating cell phone pictures being posted on the internet for all the world to see.

So is the whole dating/relationship dance easier now that we have all these new ways to communicate? I'm still thinking about that, but there's no question at all that it's different.

Growing Tomatoes - It Runs In The Family

Those of you who read this blog and/or my tweets know how much I'm enjoying my little balcony garden. Well, just so you're up to date with all the green thumbs in my family, check out this picture my dad just sent me. He's decided to try the newest new way for people who don't actually live on farms to grow their own tomatoes. It's called the "Topsy Turvy" upside down hanging tomato planter - perfect if you don't have your own dirt.

My tomatoes have been in the dirt for a couple of weeks, so they've got a bit of a head start - I'm even seeing a couple of yellow flowers, which will eventually turn into fruit. Still, I'm interested to see how the whole upside down concept works. Watch this space - as we go through the summer I'll provide periodic updates in the saga of the dueling tomato plants.

How Things Change

It's always interesting to me to think about how things change. I've been working on my Rosetta Stone french language lessons, and it occurred to me that I'm learning words for everyday things that didn't even exist when I first learned French in high school. These days I'm learning the French words for computer, cell phone, internet, e-mail and ATMs, none of which were part of our lives 30 years ago. Another thing that has changed is French money. Back in the day it was francs; now, of course, it's Euros.

Thinking about all of this reminds me of my trip to France last April, when I sat in the guest bedroom in the basement of my friend's house in Paris, using my cell phone (mon portable) to send a text message to a friend back in Chicago. It's not just about learning new words - it's about how we use the things those words represent, that's what has really changed.

I'm A Celebrity....

A few weeks ago, the judge in charge of former Governor Blago's corruption trial refused to allow him to travel to Costa Rica to participate in a reality TV show called I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. Well Mr. and Mrs. Blago obviously had a Plan B, because now it's been announced that Mrs. B is going to be on the show. And guess who she'll be competing against? Speidi!!!!

Who says American pop culture isn't profound and enlightening! Don't go away because it all starts June 1 on NBC.

The Business of Reality

There were 2 big upsets in Reality TVLand this week. Shawn beat Gilles on Dancing With The Stars and Kris beat Adam on American Idol. How about that? I always like it when there's an upset - it's just more interesting when things don't turn out the way everyone thinks they will. I also like the fact that even though they are monumentally overproduced, both of these shows are broadcast live, which means that there's always at least the possibility that something unplanned will happen.

This is in stark contrast to other reality shows such as The Bachelor, in which everything is so elaborately edited that there's almost no connection to the actual reality that took place during filming. The other problem with shows that are filmed in May and broadcast in July is that it's almost impossible to keep the outcome secret. Trust me on this - there are a couple of "sleuther" forums that will have sussed out the results of Jillian's Bachelorette adventure way before the finale hits the airwaves.

Anyway, check out this story in the New York Times for an interesting look at the commercial side of American Idol.

Reading Between The Lines

When I saw the headline on Huffington Post, "A Recipe For Longevity: 33 of The Healthiest Foods on Earth", I clicked on it right away. I'm always interested in good nutrition, at least theoretically, and who knows, I might discover something new and delicious. As it turns out, the list consisted pretty much of the usual suspects - pineapple, red peppers, spinach, strawberries, mushrooms, carrots, etc., all of which were ordinary fruits and vegetables. Well, okay. Nothing radical here, just another five-servings-a-day article trying to convince me that vegetables are better for me than pasta and ice cream. No harm, no foul.

Then I noticed the small print at the bottom, giving the biographical information about the article's author. David H. Murdock, who wrote it, is the CEO and owner of the Dole Food Company, described as the world's largest producer and marketer of fresh fruits and vegetables, packaged and frozen foods.

So. Is this article a factual and objective list of credible nutrition information that will benefit my life? Or is it advertising for the Dole company? I think it's advertising masquerading as objective information. What do you think?

Marital Woes

For me, Jon and Kate Gosselin are in the same category as Speidi - so-called ordinary people who star in a reality show that I don't watch. (No, the lady doth not protest too much. I've really never watched it.) For anyone who doesn't live in a cave however, it's impossible not to know that they're having marital problems of one kind or another. They're both having affairs, or not. They're getting a divorce, or not. It's all a publicity stunt to juice ratings for season 5 of their show, or not????

Is this really the most important thing that's going on in the world this week? If you go by the covers of celebrity magazines it is:

Star: Inside Jon & Kate's Twisted Marriage
US: Her Own Secrets - Kate and the Bodyguard
People: We Might Split Up

They're on the cover of the National Enquirer this week too, or at least half of it (She'll Lose All 8 Kids). Who's the other half of the cover story? John and Elizabeth Edwards (She Kicks Him Out.)

The Jon and Kate story can be looked at and thought about a bunch of different ways, but for now I'm sticking with one of my favorite themes - the ups and downs of fame in America. Based on what I've read, having their own little reality show started out as a pretty good deal for the Gosselins. They get paid somewhere north of $50,000 an episode, along with all kinds of goodies like trips to Hawaii and fancy furniture for their cool new house. They profit from DVDs, Kate's books and endorsement deals. They were well known, and presumably well liked, by the 4 million or so people who watch their show, but they weren't notorious. What could possibly go wrong?

Maybe the question is, Has anything gone wrong? I'm making the assumption that having your personal life splashed all over the tabloids, not to mention the blogosphere, the morning news shows and Entertainment Tonight, is not enjoyable. I'm assuming that they are now experiencing the downside of fame, when it gets out of your control and not everything that's being written is positive. I'm assuming that at this point for Jon and Kate, fame isn't fun any more, but maybe I'm wrong. After all, controversy and scandal make for good ratings and when you turn your life into a t.v. show, maybe in the end that's all that matters.

Warning: The Bachelorette Is Coming

Back in February I confessed that I had been watching the latest edition of the Bachelor, calling it a "guilty pleasure," and starting this Monday I'll probably be watching (and possibly blogging about) The Bachelorette too. It's a silly show, on so many levels, but I admit, I did get sucked into the drama of Jason Mesnick's search for love, however artificially created it may have been, and I kept tuning in on Monday nights. The new Bachelorette is Jillian Harris, who made it to girlfriend number three before being released by Jason on the show's second-to-last episode, and I admit that I'm curious to see how things work out for her this time around.

So, for better or worse, I'm allowing myself to get caught up in all things Bachelor, and from where I sit, here are the three issues-du-jour in Bachelor World:

Will Jillian find true love? Possibly
Will Jason and Molly stay together? Almost certainly not
Will Melissa win Dancing with the Stars? Hope so, but not counting on it.

Let the games begin and I'll be watching.

Watching Charlie's Angels

If you've never watched an episode of Charlie's Angels and want to see what all the fuss was about, check out the show's page at hulu.com.

Thoughts About Farrah Fawcett

There's been a lot of news about Farrah Fawcett in the last few days, because of her failing health, and it's got me thinking back to the days when she first burst onto the scene. Farrah was a big, big deal in the late 70s, in a way that now seems almost quaint. These days, a never-ending parade of famous blonde girls floats into and out of pop culture relevance, with varying degrees of substance and actual talent. It was different back in the 70s.

Think back to September, 1976, which is when Charlie's Angels debuted. There was almost no cable TV, no US weekly, no VCRs or netflix, no twitter or iphones. It all sounds so primitive - how did people actually become famous in those days, back when there were no cell phones to take videos with and no internet for those videos to go viral on? Strange as it sounds, Farrah became a phenom because of a poster. And remember - in 1976, "poster" did not mean "snarky writer saying mean things in a blog." I'm talking about an actual piece of paper that teen-age boys taped to their bedroom walls. It was a picture of Farrah, with big hair and a big smile, wearing a tame-by-today's-standards red bathing suit. What was it about the poster that caused such a fuss? Think wet T-shirt contest:



The merits of Charlie's Angels were debated endlessly at the time. In some ways the show was sexist and degrading, with paper-thin plots, sexual innuendo and lots of gratuitous shots of the stars in bikinis. Masterpiece Theatre it wasn't. On the other hand, the three girl detectives did work as a team. They always supported each other and didn't compete for the attention of potential dates. They solved cases together, and every now and then they got to shoot some bad guys and kick some butt. They always looked great doing it but still. They weren't wimps.

Farrah wasn't the world's greatest actress, but she had an impact on pop culture far beyond that of the current crop of here today/gone tomorrow It Girls. I can't imagine that we'll be talking about Heidi Montag in 30 years. At least I hope not.

Truth and Consequences

John and Elizabeth Edwards are back in the news this week and it isn't pretty. I've been watching the whole thing play out, just as I did last summer when the scandal first broke, and now there are two primary thoughts on my mind.

First, what did Elizabeth think would happen when her new book was published? I've wondered what her motives for writing it were - personal catharsis, trash the mistress, humiliate the straying husband, make money? Probably all of the above, to one degree or another, but did she understand that the reaction wouldn't be completely positive and supportive of her? By portraying John as completely without agency in the whole sorry mess, just an innocent old-fashioned man seduced by a wicked modern temptress, she has generated more ridicule than sympathy, not only for John, but for herself as well. Refusing to identify the mistress by name (and making Oprah promise not to either) doesn't seem to have made Rielle Hunter any less famous. If anything, Rielle has now jumped back into the spotlight too and is saying that she would like to do some DNA testing on her daughter, after all.

Second, and most important, it's the situation with the baby that bothers me the most. My gut feeling is that John probably is the little girl's father. There's no doubt in my mind that if John (and Elizabeth) were certain--absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt certain--that he's not the father, they would have said so by now, and that hasn't happened. In his Nightline interview last summer, John said he wasn't the father and offered to have his DNA tested to prove it, but the next day Rielle said she would never invade her daughter's privacy by having her tested. That sounded a little too convenient to me - in fact, it smelled like a deal. John can have his DNA tested until hell freezes over, but if there's no test from the baby to compare it to, nothing can ever be proven.

I've been reading a lot about this story this week, and one facet of it in particular strikes me as being nothing less than unconscionable. One of John Edwards' signature issues is poverty in America, and I believe it's a genuine concern on his part. He has to know that one of the primary reasons children grow up in poverty is absent fathers - in other words, men who choose not to live up to their responsibilities as fathers. Of all the disappointing things we've learned about John Edwards in the past year, the possibility that he would make that choice is what saddens me the most.

More Thoughts About Being Famous

Do you know who "Speidi" is? I do, kind of, and I admit it's a weird feeling. It would feel so much more grown-up to be able to say that I've never heard of them. For the record, Speidi is the two-names-joined-into-one moniker of Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, who are reality stars from some show or other, and they just got married. I'm proud to report that I've never watched the show that made them famous (no false modesty here - I really haven't watched it.) Most of what I know about them is what I read on the cover of tabloid magazines as I'm doing my grocery shopping.

The reason they're on my radar screen today is that Spencer gave an interview about the joys of being famous, the high point of which is when he states that they "pray every day to stay famous." Isn't that just precious? I've come to believe that when two famous people are being referred to by one name, like TomKat or Brangelina, it's a pretty good indication that they're over-exposed, but at least in both of those examples, one or both members of the partnership is an actual star. Spencer and Heidi - not so much, and as I've blogged about before, fame in America is a very fickle lover. I'll be keeping an eye on Speidi, for there's no doubt at all that one of these days this poppiest of pop culture phenomenons will fall from the pinnacle and being famous won't be so much fun anymore. I know I can count on US Weekly and Life & Style (both of which have Speidi's latest wedding on their cover this week) to keep me informed.

Check out the interview here.