My mother took this personally.  She would hit the store three times a week.  She would come home with 112 rolls of toilet paper, 75 tubes of toothpaste, 87 rolls of paper towels, and 44 bags of potato chips, each time.  All in which she paid only $26.99 for.

I think she missed the point of Hillary Clinton’s book, ‘It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.’ Because we’ve never had 500 people stay with us, or however many people constitute as a village.  But my mother was prepared.  This is her belief of why the towels always seemed to disappear.  Like the villagers thought that our house was some sort of Holiday Inn, and they were stealing them as they checked out.  I now blame Jose for my missing Debbie Gibson poster.

My mother still has toilet paper she bought during the Carter administration.  That’s how much she purchased.  That’s something new we should see, commemorative toilet paper.  Have the faces of world leaders and politicians on the rolls.  The majority, whether democratic or republican, are full of crap anyway.

Another outlet my mother was attuned to was second hand stores, especially toy stores.  My father wanted the entire family to go on vacation to Atlantic City, to visit the Trump Casino and Hotel.  That’s what he said.  Come to find out that New Jersey is the home of strip and outlet malls.  I have a son, a nephew, and niece, and apparently he wanted to buy toys for the kids, which is okay.

But some of the toys, being at a second hand store just weren’t believable enough for me.  They were always marked down a huge discount, because of some sort of defect.  Like this cool railroad kit.  This was called the Underground Railroad kit.  Evidently, you couldn’t see anything, but if you listened closely to the floor, you could hear some mumbling and footsteps.

He also bought this slinky for my son.  I later found out that it wasn’t an official slinky, but a spring removed from an old mattress.

I knew it was bad when I found a baseball card of Jackie Robinson.  Instead of number 42 himself, it was a picture of a white woman named Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier by finally throwing away her old black and white unit for a 27-inch color.  It was a piece of cardboard paper with a photograph of her at a Zeglin’s, and the purchase price and extended warranty information on the back, that constituted as stats.  What a rip-off.  I ended up selling the card to an Iranian kid who loved baseball, but due to his home condition, couldn’t get access of a television to discover who the real Jackie Robinson was.  He was amazed to see that this white woman caused so much controversy.  If I’m not mistaken, I think this kid is serving some time in a mental ward. I take no blame for this.

What eventually forced me to abandon the idea of second hand stores was when I spotted a Magic 8 Ball.  This did it.  I picked it up and on the box it clearly read, ‘The Magic 8 Ball,’ slightly imperfect.  I asked it a question and shook it up.  I asked, “Am I going to win the lottery?”  The 8 ball replied, ‘I’m not sure, what do you think?’  Talk about defective.

Another thing I noticed in department stores is the vast selection of Barbie dolls.  There are a million of these things.  Second hand stores feed off the popularity of Barbie and Ken dolls.  Unfortunately, the only ones carried in these places are the deficient ones.  So some of the names aren’t familiar to the average person.  Like the ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Barbie, Barbie.’  If you look at this doll hard enough, some key features are altered.  I’ve never seen a Barbie doll with one eyebrow that stretches across her face.

But I guess this is what people go through when they reach the scary, yet fulfilling world of adulthood, where you must save money.

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For several months now I have followed your advice column with interest, and never thought that I’d be drunk enough to write, but here I go!  Er, could you edit out the drunk part? [Elizabeth: No.]  Thanks!

Anyway, I kinda fell for this woman and after worshiping from afar asked her to go with me on a picnic (in a public, safe spot).  She said she’d check her schedule and get back to me.  A few days later she called and said that she was seeing someone else, and that she didn’t feel comfortable going with me at the same time.  After sobbing a bit and consoling myself with assorted beverages, I realized that there may have been something else going on.

One possibility was that she had a moral code and was willing to stick to it.  Another was that fact that I drive a used minivan and he has a more expensive vehicle.  We won’t discuss jobs or incomes right now, thanks.

So, here’s my question.  Do I just forget her and move on with my pitiful life, or should I hire a detective and scope this guy out with the option of having him disappear after a little accident?

Your sincerely,

A Devoted Reader

Savannah Says:

I see so many issues here, I don’t even know where to begin.

Should you hire a private investigator?  Definitely.  But not to investigate the alleged boyfriend. Instead, you need to turn your sights on this girl you admire.  What is she hiding?  Does she really have a boyfriend?  Does she have an embarrassing sexual attraction to squirrels that would make a picnic in the park an uncomfortable experience?

Could it be that she has children?  And a husband?  Or two?  Or more?

Is it possible she’s involved in an affair with her boss, who’s secretly blackmailing her into keeping quiet by threatening to reveal the sordid details (and Polaroids) of that unfortunate night in Cancun involving an alpaca, a bottle of Jose Cuervo, and a transvestite trapeze artist named
JoJo?

But I digress.

If you’re serious about getting this girl, you need to find out where she lives – and I mean that in the metaphorical as well as literal sense.  Learn her habits: where she works, when she comes and goes, routine appointments (like time at the gym) she keeps on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Once armed with this ammunition, you can confidently begin your courtship.  Leave little “love gifts” leaning against her front door.  Include notes that say things like, “I know you’ll be home around 4:30, like you always are,” and “When I saw you this morning at 8:37, striding confidently into the law offices of Bluenose and Twitch, where you’ve worked for the past 4 years, 8 months, I knew you were the woman I had to have.”

After several weeks of establishing this romantic bond between you, create an aura of intrigue and mystery around yourself by phoning the girl’s home at times you know she’s away and leaving messages on her machine.  You might say something like, “That blue scarf you wore this morning really lit up your eyes.  I wonder if a candlelight bath at my place would do the same.”
Love poetry also can be very effective at wooing the girl of your dreams.  How about, “Roses are red, violets are blue, nothing could keep me, away from you”?

Eventually, of course, you’ll want to reveal yourself and establish a physical relationship.  Nothing could be more romantic than prying your way into her car, hiding in the backseat, and popping up suddenly while she’s driving.  Be sure to have a gift in hand.  Perhaps a bottle of her favorite perfume (you DO know what perfume she wears, right?) or a bobble-head doll in her likeness that says “I Love You.”

Trust me, she’ll be thrilled the man of her dreams has finally arrived in her life.  If you both survive the car crash.

Good luck, dear!

© 2000-2002 Elizabeth Hanes

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You see, I live in Northern Michigan (current weather conditions: sucky, increasing to total crap by nightfall). Normally it’s a great place to be – there’s virtually no crime, the scenery is absolutely beautiful and the majority of the people are pretty easy to get along with, but don’t get your hopes up just yet. Sure, I’ve even got the legendary Alpenfest right in my back yard every single year, but there’s one tiny catch that bitters even this icing on the cake…

The other night I woke up at about three in the morning to get a late-night snack. After making my selection from the fridge, I turned around and mistakenly got a glimpse out the window. There was snow on the ground – white, cold, evil snow. I stood there for ten minutes trying to figure it out myself, after which I had finished my sandwich and decided that it was time to stumble back to bed.

If you’re confused by this point, let me explain: this is spring – the end of April even! Two days prior, the temperatures got up to eighty-five degrees during the day and barely below sixty at night, and now we’re back to decking the halls and preparing ourselves for the jolly, old, fat man. Hell, I haven’t even finished taking my Christmas lights down yet, and now there’s reason enough to start putting them back up again! I had even impressed myself (along with half of the neighborhood!) by getting a head-start on raking the yard before the city had to send the threatening letters, and now it’s all buried underneath that fluffy, white crap…where’s the love here?!?!?!

I don’t even know why we even have “weathermen” up here because out of all the reports I’ve heard over my years, exactly three of them have been accurate and two of them were while I was on vacation in a different state! It’s like the equivalent of me practicing antique furniture restoration or professional football and actually being serious about it. Of course, there was that stint back in high school…yep, they used to call me “Shotgun-Arm Scotty,” but that’s another story altogether…

Where was I, anyways? Oh yeah, that’s right – the weather up here is completely unpredictable and generally sucky. (as if our board of tourism doesn’t hate me enough already!) It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if only Mother Nature would make up her mind once in a while and just pick a season…preferably one of the ones that doesn’t have much snow in it. I say much because as any Northern Michigan resident knows, winter is always right around the corner…and it’s usually packing heat, or cold in this case…

So you still want to make the trip up north this year, eh? Well, as much as I rant on and on about my anti-tourism ideals, deep in my heart I realize that the economy of this little community depends on the exchange of your hard-earned dollars for our trinkets and do-dads to survive (that, and I’ll be reading about it in the paper for the next year and a half if tourism is down…), so here’s my contribution to the cause. Below I’ve compiled a packing list to prepare you for your journey into the Great White North. It’s good for just about any time of the year and I personally guarantee that everything you could possibly need for such an adventure is included in my list. (not really) Feel free to print it out and give it to all of your friends – maybe as a going away present because chances are they’re never going to see you again…

Aren’t there bears “outside”???

• Warm-weather clothing (shorts, t-shirts, bug spray, etc…)
• Cold-weather clothing (long pants, sweat shirts, bug spray)
• Really cold-weather clothing (thermal underwear, sweaters, fuzzy hat)
• Full range of jackets (wind-breaker, spring, rain, winter, ski, arctic exploration)
• Footwear (hiking boots, galoshes, waders, walking shoes, running shoes, snow shoes, bowling shoes, ski boots, mukluks)
• Socks
• Umbrella (like it’ll matter…)
• Sunglasses
• Big, floppy “tourist” hat
• Over-sized fanny pack (if you’re ultra cool, go for the leather one…)
• A map of a neighboring state (it’ll be just as confusing – trust me!)
• A gigantic cooler, filled with more food than your entire family could eat in a month
• Camera (because you’ll definitely want to capture the whole thing on tape)
• Video camera (it picks up the crying and arguing much better than ordinary film)
• Ear plugs (“Are we there yet?!?!?!”)
• Cyanide capsules (just in case…)

• All of your credit cards

Just remember – Michigan is the one shaped like a hand…reaching out to take all of your money. Hope to see you all real soon!!!

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When I discovered the female orgasm, it was like tasting chocolate candy for the first time in my life.  I wanted to save all my money and head down to the five and dime to get a piece every weekend.  I never knew a woman could feel THAT.  It was so great I wondered if it was illegal.  However, except for the occasional public celebrity display arrests we’ve read about, I hadn’t heard of anyone going to jail for enjoying an orgasm.  Apparently the law is on our side concerning this issue.

As time went on I had fantasies, which were probably brought on by the big ‘Tantra’ movement, of really becoming ONE with my guy.  He would feel everything I was feeling, I would feel everything he was feeling and somewhere in the middle we would inhabit each other’s very soul.

These days, if I have an orgasm – fine, if I don’t – fine.  I still enjoy sex but it’s kind of like my favorite candy bar.  I have to actually hand pick the candy bar and then there’s the whole business of unwrapping it and then chewing.  With so much physical labor involved, it doesn’t bother me if I go without chocolate for a day or ten.  And then, even if it’s only bite size, that’s OK.  Sometimes a quick nibble is all you need.  It satisfies the craving and no one is over-exerted.

As a woman who is supposed to be in the peak of her sexuality, sometimes I just feel peaked-out.  It would be nice if, like a face-lift, we could have an inner-lift.  But somehow I don’t think a nip and tuck will do the trick.  And as for the female version of Viagra, I’m too lazy to get up and go get some.

So, at least these days, with work running out my ears, housework building up underneath my toes and scurrying from east to west while my body seems to be heading south, I feel like the little old lady from the medical alert commercial.

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

This is how I am feeling lately due to exhaustion.  In a couple of weeks, who knows?  I may spring forward and have a Madonna moment.  However, if this happens, I’ll be keeping that Hershey’s Kiss all to myself and write about something like…dog food.  How much is too much?

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But after watching one-and-a-half episodes of The American Embassy on Fox (official motto: “If animals can attack it or celebrities can box with it, we’ll air it”), I can’t keep quiet. I have to speak my mind and rant about how bad this show is.

First of all, the good news. Even though it was April 1st, the Fox Network was not pulling an April Fool’s prank when they announced the cancellation of The American Embassy after four episodes.  Of course, this is not a great loss, since there were only six episodes “in the can.”

While some Embassy viewers may think “in the can” actually means “in the toilet” — and they wouldn’t be far off — that’s actually hot-shot TV exec talk for “filmed, edited, and ready to be spoon-fed to a bunch of mouth-breathers who are still PO’d that ‘The Hank Azaria Show’ got the axe.”

So why did Fox boot the show originally titled “Emma Brody?”  That’s easy:  It stank.  It reeked.  It smelled.  It was rank.  And it had the lingering odor that comes from driving past a hog farm with your windows rolled down.  In other words, it was awful.

The American Embassy is — or was — about a bunch of beautiful 20-somethings and young 30-somethings living their dramatic, profound, and life-shaping adventures as bureaucrats in the American Embassy in London.  Their jobs are — or were — to issue visas, deny visas, talk
about visas, and hobnob with English royalty when they’re not messing around with visas.  The result is something nearly as tedious and painful as a chess match between Cameron Diaz and Gary Busey.

Cameron: I take your prawn with my horsey guy .

Gary: That’s pawn.  And I think he symbolizes the dark-pawn shadow in all of us.

Cameron: Um, whatever.  Do you think I look pretty?

Think of Ally McBeal, Thirtysomething, and a really crappy version of The West Wing all wound up into a politically correct diversity rainbow at the Foreign Service Office dealing with glamorous and exciting paperwork.  And despite the attempts to make their boring and mostly-pointless bureaucracy seem life-or-death important, it only served as a backdrop to the 20-something angst, soul searching, and navel gazing.

Angst?  ANGST?!  Why do we need yet another show about beautiful people with all the emotional depth of a high school prom spending all their time exploring their angst, dealing with their angst, and having deep ruminations about their angst?

I don’t want my country’s bureaucrats to have angst, I want them to be content with their lot in life.  When these people are deciding whether to grant visas to potential terrorists, I don’t want angst to play a part in their decision making!  I want them to be bored, complacent, and generally nasty.

I don’t want our country’s safety to hinge on how improbably-blonde Emma Brody torments herself about whether she should go to the Prime Minister’s Barbecue and Hoe-Down with Doug Roach, the arrogant, yet beautiful 20-something CIA agent, or Jack Wellington the selfish, yet beautiful 20-something English Lord who’s engaged to a loveless, yet beautiful 20-something English snot.

I don’t want terrorist threats to be decided while — as I read in the episode guide — Emma “ponders the question: ‘does romance exist in the world’?”

Yes it does, now go stamp some visas!

One could argue that since I’m not a critic, I don’t know what I’m talking about, but there are other critics who agree with me, which means I’m right.

One critic is Ron Martinez of the-buzz.com, who called the show “. . . pure dread.  [It] appears to be a blatant, highbrow attempt at milking the current patriotism craze for all its worth, with a little Ally McBeal thrown in for the needed demographic punch.”

But E! Online’s critic, identified only as Wanda, loved the show.  “Although it has gotten the ‘Ally Goes to London’ rap,” she wrote on E!’s website, “American Embassy is hardly a McRipoff.”  Wanda, who seems to be more of a puppet for the entertainment industry, also said “Embassy has a fantastic script. . . (b)y the end of the first episode, you’ll be so head-over-heels for Emma Brody, you’ll be asking, ‘Ally who’?”

I think Wanda needs a demographic punch administered to her computer screen.  While The American Embassy DID have a script, “fantastic” is not the word I would use for it.  The word I would use starts with an S, and ends with the termination of my columnist career if I ever put it in print.

So, thanks to Fox for having some sympathy on its viewers for getting rid of a show that could only result in serious brain damage to anyone foolish enough to watch all four episodes.  The only way I can watch anything associated with that show again is if Fox’s Celebrity Boxing II
features a grudge match between The West Wing’s CJ Craig and American Embassy’s Emma Brody.

Emma: So Jules, there you have it.  The feelings I share between Doug Roach and Jack Wellington only reaffirm my belief that —

CJ: Whap!  Pow!

Now THAT’S Must See TV.

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