I Got More Rolls Than a Bakery...

The Scarlett C

Apparently I struck a real chord with last week’s theme about society’s tacit approval of TV shows that humiliate overweight people; shows like How to Look Good Naked and Biggest Loser, that are sold to the public as “entertainment”. But, we fatties can’t hog the spotlight. Television goes after anyone with a problem and calls it ‘entertainment’.

For a society that allegedly values privacy, we have completely sold out. The new thinking seems to be, I’m entitled to privacy, but you’re not. And the more problems you have the less privacy you’re entitled to (Brittany Spears, case in point). It wasn’t so bad when we just invaded the privacy of celebs, because the money we pay to see their movies and listen to their music entitles us to have them hounded, harassed and hunted for our additional entertainment. But now, with shows like Intervention, we are going after anyone whose humiliation we can watch. The Networks say they broadcast this crap ‘to inspire others to get help’, oh please, like the Networks care about you. I think these shows encourage the exact discriminatory and judgmental attitudes they portend to discourage.

“Sally, what are you doing sitting here? When the hell did Shelter Island get punishment stocks and start locking people in them? And why are you in your red mink?”
“Hi Joyce. New orders from Suffolk County. I’m the first person to be put into the Town’s new Mea Culpa, Youa Laugha program. You know last week when I walked through town in my underwear and the Town bought me this mink for a cover up?”
“You made the front cover of the local paper.”
“Well, the PETA people found out that I like to wear fur so I have to do public penance because a group with media coverage says so. And of course, because I let it all hang out, the Town says I have to put it all back in, so I have to hold out this cup while I sit here and beg for money to go on Jenny Craig.”
“That’s outrageous! Nobody can tell somebody else what to do, this is still a free country!”
“Apparently not. SlimFast, TrimSpa, Weight Watchers, and other diet companies are coming by to take picture of me. I won the “Before” Picture of the Year award and they all get to use me in their ads. But Dr. Phil will be by around 3 to do a show on why the diet people shouldn’t exploit me. After him, around 4, Barbara Walters is coming by to ask me if I feel exploited by Dr Phil.”
“This is nuts, Sally! How long does this go on?”
“Just 9 am to 6 pm daily until the Town stops getting offers on me. They’ve almost made enough to put a new roof on the school. The Town has me signed up for the show Intervention, they get me last.”
“But that’s a show for drug addicts.”
“Right, Dateline NBC was here this morning filming me for their new expose, Carbohydrates are the New Crack. They’ll establish the addictive properties of carbohydrates and by the end of the week, 98% of the country will be classified as addicts, they call us Carbies.”
“Now I feel terrible. I brought you coffee and a buttered roll from Fedi’s.”
“Oh, thanks! I haven’t had a thing to eat since they locked me in these stocks at 7 am this morning.”
“I thought you said this punishment started at 9 am?”
“Yes, the appointments do, but the driveby humiliation starts early so people can point and laugh on their way to work.”
“You don’t seem upset.”
“Nope. I caught a glimpse of whom the Town is locking up in the coming weeks. Do you how many druggies, drunks, carbies, smokers, tokers, cheaters, liars, chocoholics, caffiends, and nail biters this town has?”
“Sally, I fit two of those categories!”
“I know, you’re scheduled for a week in May. The weather should be nice. I’ll come sit with you. I’ll bring my Yatzee game.”
“NO! Not fair! Everybody in town fits into one of those categories!”
“Don’t panic, the Town is building more stocks. The new ones will have cup holders and little canopies, very chic, the latest in public humiliation.”
“What this hacksaw on the ground?”
“Oh, that’s if you can’t stand it anymore. You can pick up the hacksaw, a sensor in the handle triggers a camera somewhere and it records you sawing off your legs for freedom. They put the footage in a movie and you get residuals.”
“Oh my gawd, I need a drink.”
“Join the club, babe.”

How to Look Good Naked - NOT!!!

That Touch of Mink

Let me start off with a disclaimer that I have lots of gay friends, so I don’t want anyone writing any letters that I'm gaybashing. However, I reject the assumption that being gay means you automatically have better taste than a straight person. Style, taste and decorum are not linked to sexual preference.

With that said, I’m going to kill Carson Kressley. He’s so far over on the ego dial, the next click starts over with Mother Theresa. He’s so far over on the gay dial, the next click starts over again at Russell Crowe. I know he has periods, because he obviously has PMS as we see from all his hissy fits. "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" was bad enough for embarassing straight people, now he’s gone too far with his new show, "How to Look Good Naked".

Somehow he has convinced otherwise intelligent and socially appropriate women to appear on camera in their underwear. I think he does it to gross out straight men and increase the gay population, and I bet it’s working.

You see, there’s a reason for clothes. People weren’t naked in Prehistoric times for very long. Our ancestors were content as gatherers until the first scarry hairy female cromagnon girls sat naked across the camp fire from the boy cromagnons. They took one look at things they never wanted to see and promptly decided to find something for the girls to wear, even if they had to steal the skins off of animals! In the process of separating the skin from the meat, some meat fell into the fire and that’s where they got the inspiration for Barbeque. If those first female cromagnon girls hadn’t shown up, we’d all still be vegetarians today and none of us would have any nice furs.

Ever since then, it’s been a fact that people look better with their clothes on. The only exception is the very young, or the very nipped and much tucked. The rest of us know better and we also know it’s only a matter of time before those perfect people end up in sweats with the rest of us.

Now Carson is swimming upstream. Under the guise of “freeing themselves” he’s getting women who are far from perfection to face full length mirror’s in their underwear which is A} cruel to the woman B} brutal on the film crew C} unthinkable as entertainment. He even got a group of them to march in the street in bras and panties. They should have surrounded and eaten him.

This would never have happened on Shelter Island.
“Stop where you are Ms. Flynn, we’ve got you surrounded!”
“You’ll never make me put on my clothes again, Officer! I’m free of shame, I’m proud of who I am, I love my body!”
“You are alone in this pursuit, Ms. Flynn. Don’t move. We have weapons drawn. Now, Officer Smith is going to hand you a tarp.”
“NO! No tarp! As a matter of fact, I’m taking off the bra and panties! Carson is right! I want to feel the air touch my skin!”
"Who the hell is Carson?"
"Carson Kressley, the gay man who is devoted to setting straight fat girls free!"
"We don't give a damn what the takin' it up the butt boy says! Don’t take anything else off, Ms. Flynn! Officer Johnson went blind and two of my other officers are throwing up in the bushes. You have to stop! Okay, Ms. Flynn....Sally.... I just got a note from the Town Board, they’ve got a real mink coat being helicoptered in now. The note says it’s dyed red, your favorite color. Now won’t you be a nice lady, Ms. Sally, and take the mink so we can all go home?”
“You think I’d sell out my authentic existential awakening for a fur?”
“Okay, we’ll send it back.”
“Well, you’ve already gone to trouble of getting it..... what size?”
“Tall girl, half acre, just like your shirt tag said.”
“I am feeling cold. Oh it’s here! It’s gorgeous!”
“Okay, I’m handing it to you on a stick. That’s a good girl, you just put on that mink and go home.”
“Do I have to pay the Town back?”
“No, Ms Flynn, it fit the criteria for the Emergency Disaster Relief Fund.”

Check Memo, I mean check memo!

Take a Memo

AP PA. Man Apologizes for Vulgar Check Sun Jan 13, 2008: A man who wrote a vulgar message on the memo line of a check he used to pay a $5 parking ticket has apologized in writing, leading police to drop a disorderly conduct charge against him....The lawyer for David Binner, 45, said his client would have prevailed if he went through a trial. "The F-word isn't what it used to be," attorney Keith Williams said. It doesn't have a sexual connotation anymore and so can't be considered obscene, he said.

I completely relate to this man. I have written obscene messages in the memo lines of checks myself. I don’t worry because I notice that the checks get cashed just the same. No one ever sent a check back to me with a request to remove my note in the Memo line since that is arguably protected by my First Amendment Right to express myself as long as whatever you write in the memo line doesn’t impede the recipients ability to negotiate the check.

I had a lovely woman in my shop this past summer who was being outrageously held up by some renters in her city apartment. They got an attorney and went after their security deposit, which did not begin to cover the damage they did to the apartment. Rather than face a costly battle, my friend bit the bullet and wrote a big check returning their security deposit to them. She has a good heart and anguished over whether or not to write ‘extortion’ in the memo line. I encouraged her to write something in the memo line, but it wasn’t ‘extortion’. I was thinking more along the lines of “I wish you a long and painful death” or “May you live long enough to see your children die”, neither thought is obscene, but does convey one’s displeasure.

I received a check one time from a friend of mine with a dangerous sense of humor. He wrote me a check and put “pipe bomb instructions” in the memo. I laughed and deposited it, completely forgetting the limited humor capacity of people who work in banks. I had to come into the bank and explain the check. It was the first time I ever got to speak to a Bank Manager.
“You think this is funny?” he asked without any expression.
“Yeah, it is funny since it was actually for computer tutoring. He asked me - as a joke - if he could look up building a pipe bomb on the internet.”
“Well, we don’t think it’s funny. We’ll let you deposit the check this time, but make sure this doesn’t happen again.” He wore a wedding ring, but he looked like one of those men who pays women to chain him up and whip him. I confess, I’ve always wanted to meet and date that kind of man. It’s so much easier to get the wallet of a man who is chained up versus the ones who are loose and can hide their money from you.

Then there was the time I ran into a crazy eBay customer. She bought a pair of earrings from me. She then crushed them with a hammer and returned them to me because she insisted I had installed government listening devices in them. I tried to explain to her how ludicrous that accusation was, listening devices are too big for earrings, I only put them in pins. Anyway, In order to prevent a negative feedback report from her, I had to send her a refund check. I probably shouldn’t have written, “FBI Case on (her last name) in the memo. Strangely, she never cashed the check. I guess it’s the thought - or memo - that counts.

The Minivan from Hell!

Whoop-whoop

My minvan broke down on Dec 19th. I had to have my kids at Dulles Airport in D.C. on Dec 20th. I called all the local car rental places and Steve Lobosco at Corrigans/Hertz in Water Mill came through for me big time with a brand new minivan at a fantastic price. I had a few other concerns though.
“Steve, I’ll need instructions on how to operate the van. My knowledge stops with my 1990 minivan.”
“Don’t worry. These new cars are a cinch to drive.”
“Steve, I’m a big gal, I’m worried about fitting into a Japanese minivan.”
“Don’t worry, I got plenty of WD-40 and a crowbar, I’ll get you in.”
“Geez, what a guy,” I thought to myself.

Arriving at Corrigans, Steve gave me a fifteen minute review of all the controls. There seems to be many changes in minivan technology since 1990 and the control console has apparently been modeled after the one in the space shuttle. I was terribly distracted by time pressure while Steve spoke, and I hesitated to let him out of the van because I missed everything between, “Let me show you how this works” and “you’re all set.” For some reason, the van didn’t have an instruction manual which was greatly missed as the trip progressed.

Pulling into my driveway at 5 pm, I hurled bodies and luggage into the van and we were on the road by 6.

The first problem was the heater. There was no way to turn it off or control it. My son stripped to his pants in the back seat and I had made some kind of adjustment that now blew hot air on my head and freezing air on my feet. In desperation, I turned on the air conditioning for my son and I struggled to put my window down. But apparently the driver’s window zooms completely down or up in a flash, but you can’t have anything in between. So I spent eight hours using the radio like a timer, after each song, zoom down to cool during the commercials, then zoom up for the songs.

We arrived at my mothers in Pennsylvania and she was so excited to drive in a brand new car the next morning, I didn’t have the heart to tell her the car was possessed by Satan.

We all left the next morning for the airport. On the way, we picked up my 20 year old daughter. She was full of divine wisdom. Within seconds of being in the heat, she said, “Mom, the back has separate controls for the heater, up here above the door.” She was able to turn off the heat in the back which enabled my son to put his shirt back on. I asked her if she could help with the heater in the front, but she was laughing at me, an evil laugh that told me the car had possessed her too.

Mother and I dropped off the kids at the airport. It was tricky because I couldn’t get any of the doors to open for about two minutes. The traffic monitor came by, because you can’t be in the drop off lane unless you are dropping people off, and I was trying to explain to him through the window that I couldn’t get the doors open. He made a ‘turn the key’ gesture, so I turned the car on, zoomed the window down and he reached inside my van and tapped one button, a magic button, somewhere on the door console that opened all the doors and hatch at once. But he got away before I could ask him where that button was.

Once the kids we gone, Mother and I headed back to her house, she sat in the back for comfort. She wanted me to redirect the music through the front speakers, which I was convinced were just for show because I’d already tried to redirect the radio and like the heater, it was controlled by satanic forces.

I hit a button somewhere and the sliding door next to Mother opened. That was a nice feature to discover, but not while driving 65 mph on an interstate. The McDonald’s garbage was sailing past her face as she screamed. I was pressing all the buttons I could find around me. Finally the sliding door closed. However all the windows were down, there was a police chopper above us, and from somewhere in the car, a woman’s voice said, “State your destination, please.” I didn’t know who she was, or where she came from, but I shouted, “Home, take me to my mother’s house!” I figured she was an angel sent to combat the devil in this car.

“What state, please?” asked the woman’s voice. I answered her and she kept asking more questions that progressively ended up with her knowing the way to my mother’s house from where ever we were in West Virginia. Now, for those of you who are thinking, ‘how did she get from Dulles to West Virginia if she’s heading for Pennsylvania?’ you’re only asking that question because you’ve never driven with me before.

The disembodied voice guided us home. I thanked the angel and left a cookie on the dashboard as an offering and in the hope she might reappear the next time I got in the car.

Over the week that followed, I had many adventures in that minivan. I returned it to Steve Lobosco unscathed but for my trauma. I told him all about the devil car and the angel that comes to help the poor unsuspecting driver. He kept a straight face until I told him about the whoop-whoop being broken. I know that new cars make a whoop-whoop sound when you use the remote to lock or unlock them. The remote that Steve gave me didn’t make the whoop-whoop sound, so it was necessary for me to make the sound myself so the car would hear it at a distance and be able to unlock. I did a demo for him because I was very proud of how precisely I could imitate the pitch of the car remote whoop-whoop. As I left, I could hear Steve crying, or was he laughing? And saying something like, “Mother of God, make her stop!”