Briefly Noted…
I don’t care how they refurbish the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland. They ain’t getting me on it.
Recommended Reading
I know very little about the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the work it does. I suppose I just assumed that any group that was raising awareness of breast cancer and promoting the treatment of it was a good thing…and I still assume that. But this whole mess with Planned Parenthood has certainly done the Komen organization a lot of harm and exposed some negative sides of it. One of my pet peeves relating to allegedly selfless fund-raising is how merchants are able to say “a portion of what we collect are going the charity” even though only microscopic fractions are being so directed. Apparently, this is the case with an awful lot of products adorned with those pink ribbons.
Clara Jeffrey has been a critic of the Komen organizaton. She has much to say about what’s wrong with it and what will need correcting.
The Decision
“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.”
Yeah, I think that’s really it. I mean, Proposition 8 was also (like so many movements against Gay Marriage) an attempt to rally conservative voters to the polls so they’d also vote in the best interests of the G.O.P. pro-business agenda. But as a social force, Prop 8 was just some folks wanting their government to decree that gays aren’t people the way straights are people.
Most of my right-wing acquaintances have turned loose of this issue. They’ve realized the argument that Gay Marriages threaten the hetero kind is a hollow position that requires double talk about tradition and procreation, even though procreation isn’t exactly on the menu for same-sex couples. At the very least, most one-time opponents of letting gays marry seem to recognize that it’s a losing position…and sometimes even that neither the world nor “conventional marriage” are ending in states where such unions are recognized.
I still wish this thing could be settled by a vote of the people rather than to reopen silly arguments about “judicial activism.” If they put a repeal of Proposition 8 on the California ballot this November, it would pass.
Conventional Wisdom
If the new issue of Comic-Con Annual isn’t arriving in your mailbox, as mine did yesterday, you can read it or download it here. This is a promotional publication for the Comic-Con International but it’s also a good magazine full of articles, including one by me. It’s so good, I hesitate to point out that the photo on page 24 of the Groo crew misidentifies our first colorist, Gordon Kent, as his successor in the job, Tom Luth. Other than that, it’s perfect.
Verdict Watch
So any minute now, an appeals court in California is expected to issue a ruling on the infamous Proposition 8, the initiative that banned Gay Marriage in this state. Whatever they say, it will not be the final word on this. The matter will probably be settled by an eventual ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, though I don’t see why it couldn’t be settled by a new ballot initiative. I believe that if California voters were today asked how they feel about allowing two folks of the same sex to wed, the outcome would be a solid vote to allow it. Public sentiment on this issue has only ever evolved in one direction.
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number one hundred and forty-four in a series…
Treva
Ken Levine says nice, true things about a nice, true person, Treva Silverman — or as we call her, The Lovely Treva. A few years ago when I was teaching comedy writing down at U.S.C., I prevailed on Treva to come down and speak to my class. They learned a lot more from her in that one session than they did from me in all the others. Above all, she impressed on them the need to take one’s writing seriously…but not so seriously that one lost touch with reality and one’s own humanity. And one female student in particular remarked that after listening to Treva, she was no longer afraid of being the “female writer” in a roomful of males.
My Tweets for 2012-02-07
- Michele Bachmann says "I was the perfect candidate." And apart from the fact that even most Republicans wouldn't vote for her, she was. #
Today’s Video Link
For close to half my life, I’ve had this friend named Jewel Shepard. Some of you may know her for her many appearances in B-Movies. She has always been quite lovely and she’s still managing to be that way while managing some pretty ghastly cancer treatments.
You can see just how lovely she is and even get a signed photo this coming weekend at the Hollywood Show out in Burbank. She’ll be there Saturday and Sunday (2/11-2/12) autographing pics along with celebs the likes of Martin Landau, Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul, Davy Jones, Lainie Kazan, Valerie Harper and many more.
At one point, all of Jewel’s lovely hair fell out but it’s now growing back. In fact, it now just looks like she deliberately cut it a bit too short. But a few months ago when it was absent, she bravely shot a commercial for the Hallmark Cards people. You’ll be able to figure out which one she is in this…
Finger Food for Thought
Hey, why do we call an obscene gesture “giving someone the bird?” Here’s the explanation.
Recommended Reading
Newt Gingrich is always carrying on about a man named Saul Alinsky, likening the guy to the devil and suggesting Barack Obama is his marionette. Who was Saul Alinsky? Bill Moyers and Michael Winship tell us.
Shelf Longevity
As I’ve mentioned here before, I like tuna sandwiches…and I like mine simple. You mix tuna with Miracle Whip or mayo, you slather it on bread and that’s it. No lettuce. No relish. No little chunks of celery to ruin the texture. If just the tuna, dressing and bread aren’t enough for you, you’re doing something wrong.
The tuna I buy is Star Kist Chunk Light Tuna packed in sunflower oil and in those little foil packets. I am informed that tuna in foil packets is better than tuna in cans for the following reason. The packaged tuna we buy at the market is cooked in its packaging. Canned tuna is cooked in its can. Because the foil packets flatten the tuna out to a uniform thickness, the tuna cooked in them cooks evenly, whereas the tuna cooked in cans is more cooked on the outside and less cooked on the inside. At least, this what I’ve been told. I mainly like the foil packets because you don’t have to drain them.
In L.A., it is quite easy to find Star Kist Chunk Light packed in water, not as easy to find it in the oil, which I prefer. I never found out why but there was a period a year or two ago when you couldn’t find it anywhere. Now, you can. Near the end of that drought, when I did find a source for it, I bought about sixty packages. I knew I had plenty of time to use it up because of the expiration date stamped on the package…
Product of Ecuador
Best by 12 10 13.
Now, notice it doesn’t say it’ll go bad on December 11, 2013. It just says it’s best by the day before. I will not be testing this because at the rate I use this stuff up, I’m almost out of 60 packages I bought more than a year ago.
Today, I stopped in a Von’s Market and they had it in stock. I bought a dozen packages, took them home and put them in the cupboard with the last few packages from the old stash. Before I did, I decided to consult the expiration date on these and look what I found there…
Product of Ecuador
Best by 12 10 13.
In other words, this batch is from the same time and place as the batch I bought a year or two ago. I could have bought 72 packages back then and saved myself the purchase today at Von’s. I would have gotten the exact same tuna.
I guess this stuff keeps…which is amazing because it seems to have no real preservatives in it. When something has a shelf life like this, you figure it’s going to be pumped full of Sodium Benzoate or Calcium Propionate or other substances I probably had in my old Gilbert Chemistry Set when I was a lad. But the ingredients on this tuna package are light tuna, sunflower oil, water, vegetable broth and salt.
So my question is: Did the Star Kist people just buy a few year’s supply of fish from Ecuador one day? Naw, that can’t be it. This tuna wasn’t just caught at the same time. If two packages have the same expiration date, they must have been processed on the same date. Maybe it was Von’s Market that bought tons of it…but how could Star Kist have packaged that much at one time?
I dunno. I’m just thinking that when I get to be around 80, I may have myself encased in one of these thin foil pouches. They’re really good at keeping things fresh.
