Tanned Mom and Wile E Coyote

Patricia Krentcil and daughter

Every time I see that over-baked mother on the news, I cringe, rolling my eyes in disbelief.   Have you ever seen anyone uglier?   Does Patricia Krentcil ever look in the mirror and jump back in complete disgust?   I’m sure she’s otherwise decent, working full time and supporting five kids, but maybe this once--while lying in oblivion under the cancerous lamps--she stepped over the line.    I say maybe.   Who actually knows?  She took her six year old daughter to the salon but swears the fair-skinned child never entered the booth and got sunburned playing outside.  Still, the little girl attended school the next day and must've said something about her tanning adventure because the nurse called the cops, and the rest, as they say, is history. 
Or a media nightmare.

 
And the story won't go away.  CNN regurgitates every creepy detail and comedians are having a ball.

  Jimmy Kimmel said she looks like Wile E Coyote--after he gets blasted with dynamite, and Kristen Wiil, who impersonated Krentcil, joined Seth Meyers at the SNL news desk looking dark and dumb.  Wiil displayed a piece of white bread, then placed it between her thighs.  When she pulled it out, it was brown.  “Toast,” she announced, and the audience lost it.  Every news show played the clip. 

Kristen Wiig

Even Kim Kardashian and the Octomom are joking about her.   They're making jokes?  That’s about as low as a story can go.

But I don’t hold anything against this leathery skinned mother.   Even if she made a stupid mistake, I hope they don’t prosecute.  The woman's got five kids, and I doubt she’d do it again.  Her older children are offended by the attention and want the media to disappear.  I bet their friends are laughing at them while busy texting pictures and notable punch lines to the rest of the class.

There's only one solution.   The woman’s ripe and ready for her own reality show.  Think that’s far fetched?  Her children will get over the embarrassment once they hear the money they’ll make.   All they need is one wacky mother.   

Stay tuned.

Chatting About Ourselves

A new study released by Harvard University last week shows that people love to talk about themselves.   In fact 40% of our everyday speech is devoted to this alone.   The results also showed that the brain lights up when we practice self-disclosure, the same as it does for money or food.

Which means that a fat bank account and a bag of Doritos gives us the same pleasure as yakking.  Is this crazy or what?

I wondered about this as I was about to devote my entire blog to my infant grandson, when I realized that that would give me tons of pleasure, but nothing for you.   You’d rather converse about your own family first.

Well, isn’t that why we have Facebook?  We post pictures of our vacations, parties, kids, and if we like it, we click thumbs up.   Mark Zuckerberg sized us up correctly, and today he's a billionaire because of it.

Mark Zuckerberg

 This got me thinking about the state of our obesity, a national disaster already in the works.  If conversing about ourselves affords the same pleasure as food, why hasn’t someone come up with an unbeatable diet where a person’s offered low fat meals while sitting with a stranger who listens to our life’s story and everyday complaints.

In a few short months everyone will look like runway models, and Dr. Oz won't have to worry about our fat thighs or cardiac arrests.   Diabetes 2 will melt away like a snowman in Florida.

And that's when I realized the small but simple problem.   If everyone’s talking, who’s gonna sit back and listen?    

  

This is the perfect time to order coma induced patients back on the job.  All they have to do is lie there and absorb the chatter.   You can tell them anything, and they won't say a word.  It's amazing that talking about ourselves is so addictive.   I know for a fact that's why people write blogs.   They pretend they're discussing worldly topics when in fact they're hiding their own opinions and bragging about themselves.  The nerve of those imposters!

  

By the way, did I tell you my grandson’s a genius?  Let me explain…  

Makeovers Make My Day

Don’t you just love makeovers?   I mean all kinds—scraggily men and women suddenly looking like Fortune 500 CEOs to dull rundown houses that are quickly converted to cozy, colorful, cheerful places to live.

When Oprah had her makeover day for men a couple years ago, it was an instant hit.   Straight men don’t have a clue, I thought.   Most don’t think they need to do a thing.  I remembered to tune in.

Miles hadn't seen his lips in 30 yrs.

                                                                                   

Peter, 42, need I say more?

Brandi, before

And when other talk shows drag women off the street to enhance their image, I excitedly wait for the results.   But you got to wonder.   

Don’t these people ever look in a mirror and get the hint that maybe it's time to push through the door of a beauty salon or fashionable store?  Are millions that blind?  They are, and I can prove it.  Have you ever sat in a mall or airport watching people hurry by and hold back from yelling, "How can you let yourselves out of the house?"

Brandi, after

         

I’m not talking Madonna or Lady Gaga, who package themselves like flavors of the month, strutting out like a whore on Tuesday and a slab of meat by Saturday night.  But does it take a class reunion to realize you’ve been wearing the same flip since you saw those people last?  Does it take your daughter’s wedding to shed those twenty-five pounds?

And the before pictures all look the same. 

Linda, before

The women stand with shaggy manes, granny glasses, wearing oversized black shapeless outfits, flipflops, and a I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing expression. 

 But that just adds to the drama. 

By the end of the hour, the confident woman marches out from the curtains with a glossy layered coif, shining makeup, and a fitted outfit that displays her newly discovered body.  

Linda, after

And the audience goes wild! 

So do millions watching from home, who might wonder for a moment what bouncy hair and a breezy dress would feel like, before flipping the channel to pawn shops and the New Jersey Shore.

Americans spend billions on clothes, but I’ve never seen people look worse.   

Ahmses, in and out of scrubs

 It’s not about unemployment.  It’s lack of imagination.  It’s laziness.  One man on the Oprah show, Ahmses, a doctor who lived in his scrubs—at the hospital, home, even on a trip to Egypt—told his wife that he’d never change unless Oprah waved her wand.  

She did, and he was thrilled.

I guess many of us are also waiting to be plucked from the curb and instantly reinvented, bursting from our shells into this out-of-this-world human being, reeking of style, status, and the sheer strength of success.
So we wait and we wish.  Maybe forever.