Lost

OK, I broke down and watched Lost on ABC. It really wasn't a bad show, although I'm not bonding with any of the characters yet. Some of it is a little too predictable. The oriental guy catching sea food and making sushi? Come on. And the pregnant woman suddenly feeling her baby kick for the first time? In the midst of tragedy, Life Goes On....

The young boy, who lost his dog in the plane crash, confesses that his mother died 2 weeks ago, and another character says "You're having a bad month". That was pretty tasteless.

Then the spoiled little rich girl turns out to speak French, and that's suddenly important. Something tells me they are each going to have some survival skill that everyone else needs.

And, of course, there are the numerous flashbacks to the plane crash. Every time we learn a little more about a character we have to relive the plane scenario.

But - I watched it through to the end, so it must have something going for it. I just hope it's not going to be Survivor with people getting eaten, instead of voted off the island.

Then there are all the commercials for coming attractions, like Trading Wives (reality show) and Housewives Out of Control (I think it's fiction). I don't think those are the real names, but you know which shows I mean. It's bad when you can't tell the reality shows from the fiction. Maybe those commercials are just there to make the show you're watching look good.

I wonder what kind of survival skill I would bring to an island? I wouldn't be hiking up the mountainside, that's for sure. But I would have my nail clippers and tweezers with me. (Oh wait, maybe not, they were probably confiscated at the metal detector.)

More Food For Thought

After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries
a New Recipe for Hamburger Hot Dish

“How did you like it?” she asked.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“This is the third time I cooked
it this way. Why can’t you
ever say if you like something?”

“Well if I didn’t like it. I
wouldn’t eat it,” he said.

“You never can say anything
I cook tastes good.”

“I don’t know why all the time
you think I have to say it’s good.
I eat it, don’t I?”

“I don’t think you have to say
all the time it’s good, but once
in a while you could say
you like it.”

“It’s all right,” he said.

Leo Dangel

Never Knew Barbie Had Problems

Barbie Joins a Twelve Step Program

Barbie is bottoming out,
she’s sitting on the pity pot. She hasn’t the now-how to express any
of her emotions. Before she even gets
to her first meeting, she takes the first step and admits
her life has become unmanageable.
She’s been kidnapped by boys
and tortured with pins. She’s been left
for months at a time between scratchy couch cushions
with cracker crumbs, pens and loose change.
She can’t help herself from being a fashion doll.
She is the ultimate victim.

She humbly sits on a folding chair
in a damp church basement. The cigarette smoke
clouds the faces around her, the smell of bad coffee
permeates the air. The group booms the serenity prayer:
God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom
to know the difference. Poor Barbie is lost
in a philosophical quandary. Her God must be Mattel.
How can she turn her life and will over to a toy company?
Must she accept her primary form of locomotion
being the fists of your careless humans?

And what can she change? The only reason Barbie
is at the meeting at all is because she wound up in the tote bag
of a busy mother. She toppled out when the woman,
putting on lipstick at the bathroom mirror, spilled the contents
of her bag onto the floor. The mother didn’t see Barbie skid under a stall door
where a confused drunk, at the meeting for warmth,
was peeing. Never thought Barbie had problems,
she said, picking up the doll. She thought it would be funny
to prop Barbie in the last row. No one else noticed the doll
as she fidgeted in her seat. The hungry drunk
went on to spoon a cupful of sugar into her coffee.

Barbie sat through the meeting, wondering:
What is wisdom? What is letting go?
She wished she could clap like the others
when there was a good story about recovery. She accepted
she couldn’t, hoping that if she stopped struggling,
her higher power, Mattel, would finally let her move.
Miracles don’t happen overnight, said a speaker.
Take the action and leave the rest to God, said another.
Barbie’s prayer that she would be at the next meeting was answered.
A member of the clean-up committee squished her between the seat
and back of the folding chair and stacked her, with the others, against the wall.

Denise Duhamel

I Went to a Janis Joplin Concert Once

Hippie Barbie

Barbie couldn't grasp the concept
of free love. After all, she was born
into the world of capitalism
where nothing is free. And all she had
to choose from was a blond or dark-haired Ken
who looked exactly like Midge's boyfriend Alan.
Ken wouldn't even get bell-bottoms
or his first psychedelic pantsuit
until it was way too late, sometime in the mid-seventies.
And then, whenever Barbie tried to kiss him
his peel-off lamb-chop sideburns loosened
and stuck to her cheeks. There were no black male dolls yet
so she guessed a mixed-race love-child
was out of the question. Barbie walked her poodle
past the groovy chicks who showed their bellybuttons
and demonstrated against the war. She couldn't
make a peace sign with her stuck-together fingers.
She felt a little like Sandra Dee at a Janis Joplin concert.

Denise Duhamel

This poem is absolutely unrelated to any past topic, but I loved it, so I am sharing.

Lost

"Lost" premieres on ABC tonight at 8:00. (That's channel 7, Mom.) This year, I am completely underwhelmed by most of the new shows, but I'm really looking forward to this one. I am not, however, taking responsibility if it gives Mom a panic attack.
 
Passengers

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash
into a bank of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair…
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below…

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.

Billy Collins