Month: June 2007

I don’t know what brought about this, but I was thinking today. My favorite Frank Oz movie has to be “Return to Oz”. It’s so underrated and so well done. I actually prefer it over “Wizard of Oz”. I wonder what happened to the little girl who played Dorothy? I guess time to IMDB.

Also, I’m watching TV Land, and there’s Kenny [from the Cosby Show]! I had NO CLUE that Kenny was the same dude on The West Wing who played Charlie. Damn he was good in that! And now he’s in a USA comedy called Psych. I ran into that show while watching one of my favorite shows, Monk [I LOVE TONY Shaloub]. I was also watching Men In Black II last night, and didn’t realize Tony Shaloub was an alien with buckteeth in that movie [go figure].

Lastly, I watched “Sicko”, the new Michael Moore movie the other night. One of the advantages of living in New York — seeing movies before the rest of the world. I had to take a train to Springfield, MA [the hotel room I am in now], so I watched the earliest movie I have ever seen in a theater — a 10am showing. But it was also only 6 bucks. And interestingly enough, my friend Angela and I were the youngest people in that theater.

I have to say, it is my favorite Michael Moore movie to date. I don’t find it as politically polarized as his other flicks but it did make me want to move to another country. But further more, it kind of made me felt helpless….like, what the hell can I do??

Of course I wept. Just knowing that Insurance Companies denied people known TREATMENT to save their companies millions of dollars…what the hell has the world come to?

What can I do? What can we all do??

EDIT: So I lied, Frank Oz didn’t do Return to Oz. I wonder why I thought that! Crazy. And the little girl who played Dorothy? None other than Fairuza Balk! Like Woah!

So I fly about 3 out of the 4 weeks in the month. Sometimes half. Regardless, I’ve noticed at an unnamed airline that when they call for First class and Premiere fliers or whatever, they ask them to stand on the red carpet.

This red carpet is actually a big red rug. Not even shag. It’s like a red welcome mat that is blocked off with line partitions. Once the red-carpet first classters boarded the plane, the rug was empty. So people started lining up on it. The attendant said “no no, the red carpet is for first class, you need to line up here” and gestured to the non-carpeted side.

My questions to red-carpters are these:

–Do you feel special that you paid extra to stand on a red rug?
–Do the stewardesses and stewards feel that us regular customers are taininting the red rug if we stand on the other side?
–Why have a red rug? For first class, it seems kind of cheap. Why not a red rug and a blue rug? A red fish and a blue fish?

Anyway, this is what happens when you are spending half of your time waiting at airports…staring at red rugs and wondering if the cost is worth it.

So Paris Hilton is going back to jail. I’ve been reading several articles about it — and i must make this abundantly clear — I do not care about Paris Hilton or her shenanigans and the reason I write about this is because it deals with punishing drunk drivers.

How many times have I heard people being killed by drunk drivers? How many “stars” are released after a dui without serving time? How many stories have I heard of my very own friends, which i will admit, I have laughed about — about barely making it home? It’s an everyday occurrence and people take it way too lightly. There are many options and advertisements — get a cab, spend the night at a friend’s house, sober up for a bit, have a DD and yet people still drive drunk and because they think IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN TO THEM.

I was 10 years old when my mother’s old college friend came to visit with her daughter, Georjean. Georjean and I were instant friends and wrote to each other for years..up until we were in college. Georjean is a few years behind me, so I was already working when I heard she had been killed.

A month before her mother had called my mother and asked if Georjean could stay with my family. I was no longer living at home and neither was my sister, so she could take oen of our rooms. Georjean was going to finish her degree at San Diego State University. About 2 weeks before she was going to live with my family, she was killed INSTANTLY by a drunk driver in Maryland. Oh yaeh, what happened to the drunk driver? He’s perfectly healthy and in jail. I’m sure he has a family and I’m sure there are people who think he’s a great guy but he KILLED ANOTHER LIFE. I will now never get to go to Georjean’s wedding or meet her kids or have our late night laughfests when we’re gray [or grey]. Her family is trying to put themselves back together. Her little brother no longer has an older sister. There’s something about knowing when a friend is dying of cancer [which has also happened to me, multiple times] versus waking up and your friend is dead. No goodbye, just gone. I spent months feeling guilty that I didn’t see or talk to her enough. For godsakes, I was in Massachusetts!! She was only a few states away! WTF

So while I have friends who are trying to be better about not driving drunk, I try not to preach and be all crazy about alcohol at parties and people who drive after them. But now I have all this pent up anger and this Paris Hilton case just essentially made me explode.

So…she drives drunk, gets her license suspended, drives drunk again, gets a warning….how many times do you have to drive drunk before you get some sort of punishment? She goes to jail for 45 days, goes down to 23. Leaves after 3 days [even though it’s counted as 5 days] for some mystery illness. Now she is being sent back again.

Mystery illness — perhaps detox? perhaps not having her mansion or her puppy? I read these things were people feel sorry for her, especially after seeing her tear-stained face in the car. Or people who say the punishment is too harsh and it’s all the judge and attorneys trying to get their name in the paper. Obviously Paris’s lawyers and publicists have gotten to you if you feel any sort of sympathy. She did this MULTIPLE times people. Remember Nicole Richie driving the wrong way on the highway? Do you know I had a friend in 2nd grade whose father was killed by somebody driving the wrong way on the highway?

So go ahead, make an example of Paris. This mystery illness, which the Sheriff said “needed medical attention” hence why he put her on house release, you know how many f’in people need medical attention? Do you know how many people need medical attention with the same f’in symptoms who aren’t EVEN IN JAIL?! Deal with it.

Say with me everyone…no sympathy. I like how the Hiltons are throwing all this money at this case because you know, they think they can buy their way out of anything.

Anyway, I needed to get that off my chest. Back to your regular scheduled program.