-- 'It came together from watching a lot of The O.C. and Laguna Beach,' Messe says with a laugh. 'My wife is a fan of those shows, and I would watch them with her. Every time I would watch those shows, I felt like after the show was over, I would feel a little less satisfied with my life. I would feel my world was more black and white, and I would feel poor and fat. I wanted to reject that,' he continues. 'I feel we're incredibly lucky both as a band and as people, and yet we're still able to fall prey to the way the media romanticizes certain wealth and privilege. For me, it had a way of making me feel bad about my life. The line 'And I'm the one who wants to be with you tonight...,' I'm talking about my wife and my life. That soft-focused consumerism shown on those shows maybe isn't the most healthy thing to aspire to when real life can be pretty sweet and magical.'"
So, I just came across an Op-Ed piece by Joel Stein in today's Los Angeles Times:
Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention
span">Some kids really do have food allergies. But most just have bad reactions to their parents' mass hysteria.
Oh, really ???
Well, below is my full response to Mr. Stein's Op-Ed piece, which I tried (unsuccessfully) posting on the LA Times website.
Unfortunately, at the time I kept getting an error message stating that it was "too long." Of course, I did have to fight the image of Mr. Stein sitting on the other side of the computer screen shooting down angry responses like rubber ducks at the county fair.
I even began "testing" the Los Angeles Times Comment Page by posting far shorter "messages" like:
"Dear Mr. Stein, You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch."
But even that came back with an error message.
However, since none of these visualizations helped my blood pressure, I decided to...
While stuck in bed earlier this month recovering from the flu, my husband surprised me by coming in and handing me a copy of The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. "This is a perfect time to read this" he said. Now, don't ask me why anyone would hand someone they love a story about the end of the world. Especially someone coughing up a lung from H1N1, but, what can I say? That's just one of the bizarre little quirks which passes for true love around here. Quite reluctantly I began reading this, quite sure that given the bleak nature of the story combined with our entire family getting Swine Flu, was simply going to ensure this book ended up in the literary graveyard that is my side of my bed until a sunnier day. However, much to my surprise, I immediately fell under the spell of The Road. It was quite simply, impossible to put down, whether or not I was feverish and coughing. My husband knows me so well. So, now that I'm almost done with the novel, I find I'm p...
