All Time Best Uses of a Musical Cue on Film

I don't mean the best uses of music, because if I did then the top three would be the Siren scene from Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, the tour bus rendition of Tiny Dancer from Almost Famous, and John Cusack holding his boom box aloft to Ione Skye in Say Anything.  I'd probably throw in a good shower sing-along, too, maybe Ferris Bueller or Family Man...  


But not any old song use will do.  I mean those moments when traditional scoring could be used to increase the emotional impact of the action, but the creators decided to go with actual songs instead.


And before we begin, HERE THAR BE SPOILERS.  If you haven't seen these movies, then proceed at your own risk.  Most of them don't affect plot that much, so I'll start with the one to really skip.



4 - Gary Jule's version of Tears for Fears' Mad World, as used in Donnie Darko

I loved this movie so much that I made the mistake of buying the director's cut.  I enjoyed the director's cut, but it was so detailed I couldn't help but wonder - if I was seeing the movie for the first time, would I enjoy this particular version?  Further viewings will be required to see if the director's cut self-indulgent or just added layers of awesome.


I'm not going to put my head up my ass and interpret Donnie Darko's ending.  Alternate universes and times, what happens in Donnie's head and what happens with the rest of the world, none of that matters.  At this moment, Donnie is dead.  Gary Jules's plaintive, haunting voice, the lyrics, people we've met over the past two hours reacting to their brush with... something.  The result is one of the most moving music cues in the history of film.

But what always kills me is Donnie's father, played by Holmes Osborne.  The paramedics wheel Donnie's body past his family and we see them react (starting with Jake Gyllenhaal's real-life sister, Maggie).  Donnie's father is blubbering, devastated, but he still rocks his youngest to comfort her.

There's little point in watching this if you haven't seen the movie, but here t'is.

Speaking of Maggie Gyllenhaal...



3 - Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World, as used in Stranger Than Fiction

This is one of my favorite movies.  In real life, who knows why Maggie Gyllenhaal would want anything more than the time of day from Will Ferrell.  In movie life, these two characters need each-other.


After a nice dinner, the taxman and the righteous baker he's auditing are both wondering what the evening might hold.  He spots her guitar.  She asks him to play.  He's shy, reserved, and just beginning to learn guitar, so he begs off.

While she's in the kitchen washing the dishes, he begins to play in the living room.  His tremulous voice fills the quiet apartment.   You might wonder if Maggie Gyllenhaal's Ana Pascal is unfamiliar with Whole Wide World (as I was when I first saw this movie), if she's touched by his ability to be vulnerable and nothing more.  But Gyllenhaal is a professional; she mouths a few of the lyrics while she's watching him play and even manages to make it look natural.

I can't believe he picked this song, her face says, the one song he knows on guitar and it's this.  In her sad eyes, there's the realization that if she opens herself to his desire, then he might have something to offer, too.  Her silent appreciation mirrors the audience's support of Howard Crick's blossoming during the course of the movie.

Then there's the great moment when she moves to the couch, watching Will Ferrell's Howard Crick play.   You're about to get kissed, her grin says, and you don't even know it.

When Ana climbs over her guitar to kiss Howard and Wreckless Eric takes the song over, it's perfect.  Watch the whole scene for the build.

2 - Van Halen's rendition of Ice Cream Man, as used in episode #4 of Freaks and Geeks (Kim Kelly is My Friend)

Whatever feelings you struggle with now when Van Halen comes up, in 1978 they could do no wrong.  Van Halen was running with the devil while Jamie cried, and they got us so we didn't even know what we were doing.

Bless Paul Fieg for taking so damned long to release the Freaks and Geeks boxed set.  Unlike, say, the Beavis and Butthead boxed sets, which did not get the rights to a whole bunch of music that aired in the original series, FnG waited until they could do it right.  The look back on this tragically under-watched series is the better for it.


It starts off quietly, David Lee Roth murmuring over Eddie Van Halen's acoustic guitar as Busy Philipps's Kim Kelly stops her Gremlin at the park in hopes of meeting up with her boyfriend, James Franco's Daniel Desario.

She spots him obviously flirting with her sometime best friend, Karen Scarfolli (a pre-US Office Rashida Jones).

"Thefuckisthis?" Kim's face says, "My boyfriend-?  My best friend?"  At this point it's still flirting.  Not innocent flirting - this is Daniel Desario, after all - but she's waiting to see what develops.

Pictured: what develops.

As David Lee Roth says, "All right boys," Kim's best friend breaks out the move which says, "let's go somewhere private so I can suck something else."  Acoustic gives way to electric with a crash of drums and a trademark Roth howl just as Kim Killy goes ballistic.

Pictured: Hell Hath No Fury

Skip the first 8 seconds and enjoy.

1 - Faith Hill's This Kiss, as used in Practical Magic

Mark Feuerstein, who is not Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead, was once in a movie with Helen Hunt.  Hunt wanted to play a game where they named their guilty pleasure movies, movies which are "so bad that they're good."  To illustrate, she started off with her favorite bad-good movie, Practical Magic.

"Really..." Feuerstein said.  "I was in Practical Magic."

I'm going to focus on the good part of the bad/good equation and forge on like those groans of protest are all in my head.


One day, Sandra Bullock's Sally Owens is tending her garden.  She stops, looks up, and realizes she's supposed to be somewhere.

"Did I leave the oven on?"

Meanwhile, Feuerstein's Michael pauses at his fruit stand, realizing he's expecting someone.

"Is that guy from Smucker's ever going to come?  I'm sick of this nickel-and-dime shit."

But no, it's not imminent fire and the hope of a corporate buyout that has these two distracted, it's love, motherfucker.  L-O-V-E.  Sure, it took a little push from the Owens' aunts (in the form of a spell) to get Sally to run to her destiny, but when two genetically gifted individuals smile at each-other, do we really care why?

Watching as their secretive grins widen into blissful smiles, while Faith Hill's optimism bubbles in the background, it's impossible not to smile with them.

Okay, that's not true.  It's possible, but why make the effort?  Do you want to be miserable your whole life?  C'mon, let the director manipulate you a little.  You'll be glad you did.

Sally and Michael reach each-other and she closes the distance by leaping into his arms.  Where, guess what?  They kiss.  Hard.

At this point in the movie, they haven't exchanged one word.  But they know- it's magic.

It's also the point where you either give up and go with the movie, or decide you hate fun.

Open your heart to schmaltz and enjoy.

Five People I Hate (and How They Make a Living in Today's Economy)

5: People who say "I like the one where Ross and Rachel argue" when Friends comes up.

Or "I like when he meets that one girl" when someone mentions How I Met Your Mother, or "I like the episode when they sing" if someone says they love Glee.  I get it, har-har, every episode is interchangeable and they're pablum.  You only watch Breaking Bad and The Wire, or The Office when you're in the mood for a chuckle (the British version, of course).   

These phrases are so self-consciously witty and glib, so wanna-be sophisticated.  This is a person who wishes they could get more enjoyment out of life, a person bitter that they can't escape the prison of their harsh judgements and who must therefore piss on the things others enjoy.  They either become critics or waiters at TGI Friday's.

Fuck these people.  And while we're at it, fuck...

4: People Who Think Out Loud

Because I usually don't know how I feel about something until I write about it, I'm automatically prejudiced against folks whose minds work this way.  Even if you don't process the world by writing about it, I think we can all agree that being used as someone's sounding board is... exactly as fun as that phrase sounds.  I talk to myself but I'm not cruel enough to expect people to listen (unless you count Sweet).

Professionally, there is nothing more annoying than co-workers who have no idea what kind of help they want but who somehow have all morning to slather you with blather about it.  They say things like, "I got this paperwork with your clearly detailed notes on what I need to do with it but I just wanted to be sure..." or "I just sent you an email but I thought I should call..."  Needing help is one thing; keeping me trapped while I get a terrifying window into your thought process is something else.

Outside the workplace, there are few things as beneficial as a friend who's willing to listen to your problems.  But to people whose every thought and emotion needs to be verbalized before they can make sense of it, and who think nothing of spewing forty-minute monologues over coffee or beer, there's a word for the kind of friend you're looking for: a psychiatrist.  

Unfortunately, if you work with these people, you probably work for these people.  Parcelling out when their outer-inner monologue suddenly requires a response from you is the unwritten part of your job.

If they aren't your boss, chances are they work part-time, freeing more hours in their day for jabber.

3: People Who Don't Know How to Act in Parking Lots

When I lived in Syracuse and Virginia, this niggling annoyance centered around shopping carts - when you're finished with your shopping cart, you bring it back to the store.  It's just good manners; you took it out so you put it back.  But living in Miami, poor parking lot etiquette has become a full-blown pet peeve.

Miami is series of neighborhoods joined by population growth rather than urban planning, so cute little lots which should accommodate the attached buildings have become slices of hell where drivers are doomed to circle forever.  To compound the problem, every lot here seems to have been designed by the same dude: Stuffspace McCrammer.

McCrammer saw the hairs on his chin and thought, "I can do this with cars!"

McCrammer's mission is to fit as many spaces as possible into every lot he designs, making spaces so narrow and corners so close that matchbox cars couldn't fit in them.  Keep him in mind while I list these problem people.

Lazy fuckers leaving carts wherever they please?  We got em in droves.  Fucktards who don't pull in all the way and turn the aisles into obstacle courses?  Got those, too.  Dumbasses who miss the space and accidentally take up more than one?  We could fill a stadium.  These are clueless assholes barely paying attention to life.  We forgive them, for the most part, because they know not what's going on while they're on their cell phones.  We don't forgive the domino effect one person parking like this creates.

Also, some winners dump trash in parking lots.  What better place to dispose of that old diaper, or the packages on the toys you just purchased, or the doggie bag you thought better of taking home?  Go ahead and drop it right outside your door and drive away fast, because once one person sees trash in the middle of the concrete, another one thinks, "Oh, so that's where this empty soda bottle / cigarette pack / fast food container goes."  Then the fast food container fucks the dirty diaper to make trash babies, and you can't pull into the space without 1) overlapping the space on the other side, or 2) double-parking, getting out, and removing the offending pile.

We don't forgive litterbugs.

Ever.

Then there's people who say "fuck it" and double park their car where it lies.  What the hell is up with that, anyway?  "I've looked long enough.  I'm stopping the car right here, right now, and the world can deal with it."  That's a kind of psychosis, isn't it?

And luxury car drivers.  You're really something, aren't you?  Your car is too nice to risk the narrow confines of the parking lot, so you deliberately park your Jaguar / Lexus / Mercedes at an angle?  Not only are you so much better than me with your money wheels, I'm not even good enough to park alongside you.  Fuck right off.

The deliberate angle parker is a successful business person or the housewife / househusband of a successful business person.  Their bank accounts are full but they are living at the very edge of their means.  The only difference between them and the working poor is that the business person stands to lose more stuff if their job gets downsized.  Hence, the angle park.  It says, "Check out the lovely vehicle I can afford, but don't cause any damage because I can't afford to get it fixed.  You see, Johnson is gunning hard for my job and if I took a half day to bring the BMW to the garage, I know he'd make jokes with the boss behind my back while I was gone.  He'd be all, 'Where's Bob hiding out these days? Heh-heh' and the boss would laugh, but inside he'd be wondering."  Or words to that effect.  The house husband / housewife is so overwhelmed with keeping this stressful endeavor of a marriage afloat that they need to stop the car before they burst into tears.

If you are one of the "fuck it I'll stop the car anywhere I want and call it parking" service people bringing the angle-parker his lunch, please keep their sad lives in mind before you make it a sneezer.  Sure, they're assholes, but they're people too.  And who are you to judge with your issues, throwing the car into park at the last second so your head doesn't explode from anger?  Get a grip.

In addition to servers, business people, and housewives, "fuck-its" can also be Post Office workers, lawyers, or athletes.

Dumbasses and litterbugs come from all walks of life.

2: People Who Text While Driving

Having a death wish is one thing.  Take up sky diving, mountain climbing, or any other activity where the gun is pointed at your head and no one else's.  The text-driver thinks he's just living his life, but subconsciously he's no different than the pyscho who brings a gun to a public place and shoots a bunch of people before killing himself (or committing suicide by cop).  The text-driver isn't happy putting his own life in danger, he's got to go out in a miraculous blaze that takes as many with him as possible.  

While waiting to cross the street, I used to count how many passing drivers were on cell phones for fun.  Now, I look for people with their phones in the text position.  It's amazing how many people think they can get away with this.  Take your eyes off the road for one second in the city and you've travelled 44 feet.  More likely you're only doing fractions of second, but a lot can happen in a few feet.  And people do it all the time and think nothing will go wrong.

Why aren't cops and legislators working on this?  Because they're too busy busting people for photography?  If waving loaded guns around in crowded places suddenly became a thing, I think cops would react.  Is texting while driving not equally dangerous and irresponsible?  I guess they get a pass on the rarely invoked "everyone does it" rule.

By that rationale, it's okay to listen to this.

Some driving texters are over-scheduled moms.  They have a job teaching or instructing aerobics but they're also shouldering an unfair portion of the child rearing.  They started out trying to be hip by communicating via text to the young people in their lives and it all just kind of snowballed.  We pity their  struggle, but it will be tough for her to bond with her children when she's dead.  Ditto whoever she mows over.

The other texting drivers are high school and college students.  As we all know, God is making an exception for them and they'll live forever.  

1: Jeff Bezos

Jeff... fucking... Bezos

Are Zombies Real or Pretend?

Dylan loves Michael Jackson.  He’s particularly fond of Thriller, both the song and the video.   He asked to watch it the other day and I said no because it has zombies.  He described the video in some detail, even imitating the dances.  Obviously he’d seen it before.  I knew he wasn’t afraid of anything, except zombies, vampires, the dark, monsters, Moo Cat (sometimes), windows without blinds in them, banshees, being alone, needles, nightmares (that’s fear of having one, not an actual nightmare), loud noises, his large stuffed animals if they’re left on the bed at night, and having splinters removed.  We decided to watch it together.  

“Are werewolves real?” Dylan asked.

“No,” I told him.

“That’s Michael Jackson,” he told me.  

“Uh huh,” I said.  Translation: You were negative twenty-one when this came out, kid, shut up.

“He turns into a werewolf, but not really.”

        "Yeah."

Adults see special effects in their infancy; a 6-year-old sees terror.

When Michael Jackson and Ola Ray leave the theater, a voice comes from the background.  Someone in the movie they're leaving reads a phrase written in blood: “See You Next Wednesday.”  Not wanting to be outdone in my knowledge of the Thriller video, I told Dylan that director John Landis puts that phrase in all of his movies.  Dylan was not impressed.

[Side note: I didn’t need to Google the name of the actress who played Michael Jackson’s girlfriend.  At eleven years old I didn’t know why I thought so highly of her, but I knew it had to be something special.  Special enough for her name to stick all this time.]

“Are zombies real, or fake?” Dylan asked later.

“What do you think?” I non-answered.

He watched the screen for a moment.

“Fake,” he said.

“That’s right.”  

“Those are zombies.”  He pointed.

“No, those are dancers wearing zombie makeup,” I said.    

“Oh, yeah.  Michael Jackson is wearing makeup.  The rest of them are zombies.”  

“No, they’re all wearing makeup,” I said, “because there’s no such thing as zombies, remember?”

“Oh.”  The way he said oh, I knew he didn’t understand.  Zombies are fake, but this one time Michael Jackson danced with some for a video.  Or zombies are real, but the Thriller zombies are pretend.  Or Zombies are fake, but there are real zombies in movies.  

“Those are all dancers,” I said.  “They all got put in makeup, just like Michael Jackson.”  

“Then how did that one’s arm fall off?”

“It’s a fake arm.”

“Oh,” he said.  Translation: Aaron doesn’t know what he’s talking about.   

At that point in the video, director John Landis made his cameo as the zombie emerging from a mausoleum.  

“Look,” Dylan said, “That’s the Captain.  He was a Captain.”

With the navy blue suit, hat, and the beard, Dylan certainly had a point.

“Actually, that’s the director,” I said.

“Huh?”

“He directed this video,” I explained, “and he put himself in it as a joke.”

“And he died?”

Sigh. 

This is why daddy drinks.

“No, he’s wearing makeup.  Zombies are fake, remember?”

The big dance sequence in the street started.  Dylan pointed to the screen.

“That’s Michael Jackson in zombie makeup.  Those are zombies in zombie makeup.”

“Those are dancers in zombie makeup,” I said.  “Right?  There are no zombies.”

He considered the screen for a while.  The dancers went through their head spins, which are basically showing off the various make-up jobs, when this guy happened:  

sup?

Dylan turned away.

“Can we watch Dino-Squad?” 

Absolutely. 

For a song which will really haunt your dreams, click here.

Dylan is scared that the living dead will feast on his flesh. I'm afraid my IQ points are being drained by that song the Dino Squad plays every time a member "goes Dino."

I hope we're both wrong.

I Quit the Gym

The One with the Ballroom Dancing

Examining my monthly spending to see how my income can better suit our family’s needs. . . was how I originally began this post.  Truthfully, I don’t think about money all that much.  Well, that’s not accurate either.  I think about money indirectly all the time, as in I’d love to go out / visit your aunt in California / see an opthamologist / update my wardrobe, but after rent and groceries there’s not much left.  I didn’t “examine” anything, though.  There were no pie charts or graphs involved, I just got rid of things I didn’t need.  This fiscal spring cleaning led me to cancel my membership to Bally Total Fitness.

My relationship with Bally goes back to 1996, when I saw pictures of myself on Virginia Beach and realized over-eating every meal wasn’t the giggle it used to be when I was seventeen.  I joined Bally when I got back to Syracuse, and it only cost me $50 down and $35 a month.  

I stayed long enough to lose the jelly roll and stop feeling like my limbs were filled with lemon juice instead of blood after every weightlifting session.  Three months at Bally cost me $120.

Then I moved to Miami and saw pictures of myself papering cars for Starbucks short-lived Tiazzi frozen tea beverage.  True, the big green apron wasn’t doing me any favors, but I’d skipped Billy and Stephen and gone right to Daniel Baldwinsville.  I spent $250 on a Premier Membership, with access to a trainer, a supply of some kind of legal speed pep pill, and the promise that my monthly membership fee would only be $15.  

Bally had gotten smarter.  They locked me into a one-year contract, so I paid them $430 for my second go around.

On the plus side, you’d be amazed what those pep pills will do for your motivation.  I dropped back into the 190lb area in no time.  Unfortunately, the motivation only lasted as long as the free pep pills.  I didn’t want to spend money to buy more legal speed, so I stopped going regularly after two months, and completely after three.  Through the magic of automated debit, my payments continued.  When this contract expired in 1999, I’d paid Bally’s a total of $550.

1999 was also the year I got digital cable.  Apparently, sitting around watching TV and eating potato chips doesn’t burn calories like you’d hope; it was the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life.  

This time I wanted to do it right.  I was tired of putting down huge sums every time I got fat.  I wanted a low monthly payment I could live with the rest of my life, so if I ever caught the workout bug again, the cure would be as close as the nearest Ballys.  I became a Premier Fitness Plus Member because the monthly payment dropped to a mere $5 after a year of $15 payments.  It also came with a trainer for six weeks, plus free training consultation whenever I wanted it, for as long as my membership lasted.  It also came with a humiliating body measurement session, eight weeks of legal speed, protein supplements, and the promise that I could go anywhere in the world and always have a Ballys nearby to keep me in shape.  

The big pimpin' package cost me $499, bringing my total Bally payments (as of August 2000) to $1,229 dollars.  

I’ve been a Premier Fitness Plus Member since 1999.  Unlike some of the horror stories I’ve heard, my monthly payment did indeed drop to $5 after a year.  This lasted until 2004, when it went up to $8.  Since 2006, my monthly payment has fluctuated from $11.41 to $10.15, every other month.  I’ve no idea why.  

After the millennium, I read Critser's Fat Land and Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.  I eliminated high-fructose corn syrup from my diet, and ate every couple of hours.  I started doing yoga.  Gradually, over the course of a few years, I became comfortable with my eating habits and my weight.  Before the car accident I was very into yoga.  Post-accident, as soon as I was able, I was back in the gym at my apartment complex, and biking to and from work.  

What I did not do was set foot inside any Bally Total Fitness, anywhere.  

But I kept paying that $10.15 to $11.41 every month.  If I ever decided to blast my body into shape again, I didn’t want to lose a huge down payment.  Trouble was, that didn’t work for me.  I need exercise that fits with my schedule, and biking to and from work and is it.  Finding time to travel to a gym is not.  

I’ve paid Ballys $2,178.44 for very little of my time.  I could have travelled.  I could have bought clothes.  I could have bought a used car.

Anything but exercise.  

I Wish I Had Your Life

Re-watching Sex and the City on DVD had made me realize why I loved the series in the first place - it’s funny.  I laughed out loud more than I remembered doing the first or second time around.  Yes, it’s stuffed with hokey puns, but those are some of my favorite parts.  Of course, for every stellar “paper beats rock,” there’s a cringe-inducing “You take a nap-a, you don’t move to Napa,” but when you love something, you forgive its flaws. 

If you don’t get those references, feel free never to pop in a single SATC DVD.  In fact, why not hate fun the rest of your life?

Sex and the City is artificial, and a lifestyle I would still judge harshly even if I could afford it (and I’m talking about “help” and $500 shoes, not fucking and drinking), but whoosh it’s a good time.  To criticize Charlotte, Miranda, Samantha, and Carrie as being gay men in disguise is to miss the frolicking point of the series.  It’s a comedy, a comedy with occasional pathos that celebrates friendship above all else.  Besides, creator Michael Patrick King is a gay man, but of the 20+ writers, only 5 are men (that 5 includes King and someone named “Ollie,” which I’m assuming is short for Oliver rather than Olivia).   

No one would ever accuse the series of being a feminist beacon, but let’s not confuse the financial power and considerable draw these four women (five, if you include Patricia Field) enjoy in life with the characters they portray.  You might not like the choices and behavior of Charlotte, Miranda, Samantha, and Carrie, but you have to respect the clout of Kristen Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Speaking of clout, here’s the news which inspired this post: Kristen Davis read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project and liked it so much she decided she wanted to play Gretchen Rubin in a TV series.  So yeah, that’s happening.  I’d love to be able to plot the course of my life with a phone call, wouldn’t you?

So I can continue to love this series, I’m pretending the second movie didn’t happen.  Something needs to be horrifically bad to cancel out the brilliance of its inception, and Sex and the City 2 is exactly that bad.  I laughed once (thanks, Samantha) but only because, as The Editing Room put it, “we had to set the movie in the Middle East because it’s the only place left where we can pretend that being sexually liberated in 2010 is groundbreaking.”

I’d like to see them grow old gracefully.  Enough with the Botox, for fuck’s sake.  If Michael Patrick King really does go ahead with a third movie - and #2 is over $300 million world-wide so they just might - it needs to be clever as hell to end the story of these four characters in a way that honors rather than exploits what has come before, and at the same time erases the shit storm of the second movie from our minds.  It’s impossible, really.  But here’s hoping.

Remember when Sex and the City was a book?  I finally read it last year and mentioned it briefly.  While I still bristle at the “Bicycle Boys” chapter, the book is sexier and darker than the series (another thing re-watching showed me was how many of the sex scenes were played for laughs), and while it’s not as funny, it has a lot more substance.  It’s straightforward and straight up, a shot of vodka to the series Cosmo cocktail.  If you’ve been finding other things to read first, like me, it’s definitely worth your time.

So fair warning, Mrs. Davis.  Have fun with your series, but the book is always better.    

You're Better Looking Than They Give You Credit For

The voiceover playing during the “before” shot of a woman with a nice butt in an ill-fitting bathing suit says that with Hydroxy-cut, women can have the hips of a ten-year-old boy in just four to six weeks (the “after” shot is hot, if you like young boys).  A guy and a girl wearing the bare minimum of black spandex with abs I could bounce quarters off tell me that with Bowflex just ten minutes a day, I’ll see results in only six weeks.  A fairy-tale princess with Tori Amos hair and freckles tells me that if I want my nasty, yellow teeth to glow like hers, it’ll take whitening strips.  A stunningly gorgeous young brunette in a business suit says if I have a painful yeast infection slowing me down, I should do what she did and get Monostat-7.  A tall, thin, impossibly gorgeous black girl tells me that if I want skin like hers, all I need to do is scrub my face twice a day with some foamy stuff that looks like cottage cheese.  

Then there’s the celebrity group assault.  Brook Shields, Jessica Simpson, Vanessa Williams, and P. Diddy all let me know that they used to have faces like a DiGiorno frozen pizza before they started the exclusive three-step system of Buy This Product Now Before You Turn Into A Leper.  Now, people come up to them all the time and accuse them of drinking baby blood to stay young.  

Even if your problem (which is always physical, and therefore easily fixable with the right purchase) has nothing to do with age or weight, the person trying to sell it to you is young, thin, or young and thin.  Whatever’s wrong with you that three easy payments of $29.95 will fix, there’s two underlying messages throughout; you’re too old, and you’re too fat.

Nacho Man is history, and don’t tell me about the satellite TV guy- the Michelin Man is a pile of tires and it somehow went on a diet.  The Pillsbury Dough Boy lost weight and he’s a dough boy.  Not only did the Kool-Aid pitcher lose weight, its arms got thicker.  How does a pitcher get buff?  IT’S A FUCKING PITCHER.  

Maybe I am too old.  The Brook Shields telling me my acne problem makes me John Merrick?  She’s not the nothing comes between me and my Calvins hot girl I grew up with, she's a thing with no baby fat or eyebrows, a latex mask stretched over good bone structure.  Who knows what a beautiful woman she might have been, if she wasn't so obsessed with looking young.  Vanessa Williams?  Same thing.  She may still be hot, but there’s a desperation to her, a need to look not just younger than she is, which she already does, but to really look science fiction younger than she is, which she doesn’t.  What she looks like is inhuman.  That's what they all look like, and we're so used looking at these flesh masks that we barely notice.  

Who's next?  What will Jessica Simpson look like when she’s forty-something, being tortured by pictures of herself in Daisy Dukes for longer than she’s currently been on the planet?  Will she grow old gracefully, or become another plastic person? 


The joy is the meltdown.  Buy so many copies of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album that the sales record will probably never be equaled despite the increasing population, then sit back and watch him carve himself up.

  

What do I want?  Health, which includes a positive self-image.  It doesn’t include a nineteen-year-old kid I work with who walks around with one of those little wrist-flexers to build up his forearms.  From the waist up he has the body of a Greek God.  Meanwhile, his calves are boney and he smokes a pack a day to keep food intake from covering his ten-pack stomach.  That’s not health.  

Me wishing I had his body is not healthy, either, but that's another story.   

I’d also like the media to stop portraying eating as an activity, because it isn’t.  “Don’t just sit there and watch TV,” these commercials scream, “EAT SOMETHING!”  That’s why you never see people just sitting in a McDonald’s in their commercials any more.  Sedentary is bad because it leads to fat; the food has nothing to do with it.  People are dancing and leaping while stuffing their faces with Big Macs and french fries.  “See?" these commercials scream, "McDonald’s isn’t something that barely qualifies as food, it’s ROCKING YOUR BODY, BABY!”  

Finally, it would be nice for plastic surgery (including Botox and whatever other crazy nanobytes or microbiotics they come up with in the future [because We're Science]) to stop.  A bomb blew your face off?  Fine, get a new face.  You've got a new movie coming out and you need to look like you did twenty years ago?  You don't, you won't, and my daughter's self-esteem matters more than how your face looks in Hi-Def, so deal.  The way advertising plays on our insecurities sucks, but these body modifications are a plague.  I've seen where it leads, and it's not pretty.  

There's a lot more we could do, but let's start with these three and see what happens.