stop the madness

I don't know what it is, but lately I have noticed something about a good number of famous people. There is some really bad plastic surgery out there. What would make an attractive person subject themselves to multiple surgeries? It never works. Yes, maybe one procedure might help, but anymore than one is a guaranteed trip to grossville. Joan Rivers looks like a ghoul. Bruce Jenner is really freaky. Need I say a word about Michael Jackson? I think Pamela Anderson looks like she is made of plastic. The really scary part is what some of these people are going to look like in a couple of years. The human body is not designed to go through what these people are putting themselves through. Eventually, the payment will come due for their faustian pact.

If you are contemplating ANY kind of plastic surgery, look first at a website called awfulplasticsurgery.com, THEN decide. Hopefully, you will decide the smart way.

joy

I went to a concert Thursday night. It was The Blasters. If you don't know them, they are a great classic roots rock band. It was terrifc concert, but what I noticed really got to me. For the ENTIRE 90 minute plus show, the lead singer Phil Alvin was the focal point. He did all the talking to the audience, he was the obvious music leader calling time and songs, and he sang every song. That must have been a pretty exhausting situation, but you know what I noticed? Not one time did Alvin fail to smile. He was beaming form start to finish. No matter how much he sweated and worked, he was obviously having the time of his life. Now, it was a good crowd, but nothing extraordinary. The band must be performing all the time, yet from watching Phil Alvin, you would think this was one of the greatest moments of his life. And his sheer joy in performing infected the crowd. EVERYBODY was rocking, and everybody left talking about what a great show it was. The other weird thing was there was no physical problems or arguements the entire night. The bouncers basically sat around rocking out with us. I think a lot of that had to do with Alvin projecting such sheer joy. I think it is hard to be in a foul mood when you are watching someone just enjoying themselves. So, I thought while driving home, what would happen if we all just tried to be a little joyful in our everyday lives? Maybe it would act like a contagious disease and spread. I am going to be doing my part in at least a little attempt to find out.

resolution update

Here is a quick update on the status of my NY's resolution to give up soda. Basically, I am still on track. I am down to two sodas a day. Next week I will drop that to one per day. It might be slow, but I think this is the only way I will get it to stick. The problem is, I realized that not only do I have a chemical addiction, I have an immensely hard to break habit of drinking diet soda, so I need to not only break the dependency, but the habituation as well. So that requires time.

As an aside, my wife is doing even better for her resolution to stop smoking. February is looking good!

truth is not pliable

So, there is this guy, James Frey, who wrote a memoir of his life. The book is about his drug and alcohol addictions and the criminal trouble they led to. Oprah has had him on her showed and praised the book for it's honesty. The trouble is, it isn't honest. SmokingGun.com has done an expose where most of his criminal stuff is made up. Instead of apologizing for lying, Frey went on Larry King and defended himself. Now, I don't really care about him, except for this asinine quote where he said that "only" 18 pages out of 432 pages were wrong, and that is "an appropriate ratio for a memoir". What??!??! It is okay to make crap up because it is your story? That is complete idiocy. A quick memeo to Frey. Dude, it is either fiction OR non-fiction, not both. Don't try to tell a truthful story that we should pay attention to, and then pack it with lies. It shoots ALL your credibility right in the foot. Either tell the truth, or tell a made up story. Trying to do both makes you a liar. Period.