. . . who need to realize that . . . It's A TV Show! . . .
and that happy endings and perfect people are few and far between in real life, and very formulaic in entertainment . . . but hey, that's only my opinion . . .
(http://uasblognet.blogspot.com/2014/04/5-things-wrong-with-ally-mcbeal.html)
". . . Ally McBeal is one of the most irritating and offensive female characters to have her own series.
Here are five reasons why:
1 She is unprofessional. . . She continuously wears short skirts, saying she wants people to see her lovely legs, and in one episode it puts her jail. . .
2 Her emotional insecurity gets the better of her in a grotesque fashion. When she finds her boyfriend (Robert Downey Jr) casually having ice cream with his ex wife, she hilariously tips the vanilla cream, chocolate sauce and whipped cream all over him. . .
3 She is slightly homophobic. . . when she begins to to date a man who later reveals that he is openly bisexual. Unable to get rid of the flashes of him naked with other men and she promptly breaks up with him. . .
4 The thin epidemic, which happened sometime in the 90s, required all of the leading ladies in the series to be super thin. . . resulted in emotional, psychological and physical damage for the women in the cast. . .
5 The Times Magazine cover. On June 29, 1998, Time Magazine issued its cover with pictures of Gloria Stienem, Betty Frieden and Susan B. Anthony in black and white and Ally McBeal in color with the sideline "Is Feminism Dead?" Funnily enough, in the second season, Ally has a dream in which she is chosen to be on the cover of Time Magazine as the "face of feminism". . ."
My latest solo offering, No Frills, is now available at - No Frills
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
(from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-reich-free-market-20130924,0,4661170.story Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. His new film, "Inequality for All," will be out September 27. He blogs at http://www.robertreich.org)
". . . One of the most deceptive ideas continuously sounded by the right (and its fathomless think tanks and media outlets) is that the "free market" is natural and inevitable, existing outside and beyond government.
So whatever inequality or insecurity it generates is beyond our control. And whatever ways we might seek to reduce inequality or insecurity — to make the economy work for us — are unwarranted constraints on the market's freedom and will inevitably go wrong.
By this view, if some people aren't paid enough to live on, the market has determined they aren't worth enough. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of Americans remain unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they work two or three part-time jobs with no idea what they'll earn next month or next week, that's too bad; it's just the outcome of the market.
According to this logic, government shouldn't intrude through minimum wages, high taxes on top earners, public spending to get people back to work, regulations on business, or anything else, because the "free market" knows best.
In reality, the "free market" is a bunch of rules about (1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); (2) on what terms (equal access to the Internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections?); (3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?); (4) what's private and what's public (police? roads? clean air and water? health care? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); (5) how to pay for what (taxes? user fees? individual pricing?). And so on.
These rules don't exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don't "intrude" on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren't "free" of rules; the rules define them. Without such rules, we're back to social Darwinism, where only the toughest and biggest survive.
The interesting question is what the rules should aim to achieve. They can be designed to maximize efficiency (given the current distribution of resources), or growth (depending on what we're willing to sacrifice to obtain that growth), or fairness (depending on our ideas about a decent society). Or some combination of all three — which aren't necessarily in competition with one another. Evidence suggests, for example, that if prosperity were more widely shared, we'd have faster growth.
The rules might even be designed to entrench and enhance the wealth of a few at the top, and keep almost everyone else comparatively poor and economically insecure.
Which brings us to the central political question: Who should decide on the rules and their major purpose? If our democracy were working as it should, presumably our elected representatives, agency heads and courts would be making the rules roughly according to what most of us want the rules to be. The economy would be working for us.
Instead, the rules are now made mostly by those with the power and resources to buy the politicians, regulatory heads and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth have concentrated at the top, so has political clout. And the most important clout is determining the rules of the game.
Not incidentally, these are the same people who want you and most others to believe in the fiction of an immutable "free market."
As I emphasize in "Inequality for All" — a new film out this week in which I explain the savage inequalities and insecurities now undermining our economy and democracy — we can make the economy work for us rather than for only a few at the top. But in order to change the rules, we must exert the power that is supposed to be ours. . . "
. . . from Bertrand Russell confronted me today. . .
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.”
. . . which really struck me. In the past twenty-some years that I have been writing and attempting to market (in some form or fashion) original material, it occurred to me that this is exactly what stopped me from starting this process much, much earlier. So after reading this Russell gem, I believe that it was actually not insecurity that prevented me from jumping head first into a musical pursuit, it was actually wisdom.
But to take this another step, I always felt that wisdom comes with age, simply because the longer one lives, the more experience he attains by virtue of mere longevity. But if what Russell says is true, my late-found self-confident could be nothing more than foolishness.
. . . or could there be a happy middle-ground in there somewhere?
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AMBIENCE & WINE
The current infatuation with wine and food pairings is headed down the same wrong road as wine scores. Why? Because people are genetically unique and so are their taste buds. No two people experience the same smell, the same taste — or the same wine/food pairing exactly the same way.
Because of that, it’s unreasonable to expect an individual
wine-tasting/food-pairing experience to coincide with those of a set of
expert high priests/priestesses who pronounce what is “good” and what
is not.
Struggling to find the “right” food/wine combo adds a whole ‘nother'
level of insecurity to the wine experience. And that first level of
insecurity remains as the primary obstacle to broader consumer
acceptance of wine. We’ve seen that wine has recently reached parity with beer as a preferred alcoholic beverage. There are a lot of factors associated with that as are well-studied by the Wine Market Council.
A lot has to do with rising income among America’s growing Latino
population. That follows the trend that wine consumption increases with
income and socioeconomic status.
Some of that growth also comes from Millennials who scorn experts,
tasting notes and snobbism. And more support comes from rising set of
voices such as Tim Hanni, Gary Vaynerchuk
and others who have emphasized and recognized the importance of
individual palate variations and spoken out against the elitism that
still endures as wine’s most prominent paradigm.
This elitism, this dogmatic insistence on perfect pairing has
dominated articles and posts that emphasize education, learn, education,
learn … and thus carry the unspoken message that the average wine
drinker must study, study, study. Hell, if I faced that level of strenuous effort at the market, I’d go
for a Jagged Edge IPA or a Racer 5 any day rather than turn my imbibing
experience into sweaty- palm quantum chromodynamics final exam that I
arrived for stark naked. In fact, we frequently go for a brew at our meals — especially when
we’ve gone through several days in a row when we’ve opened a highly
rated bottle of wine and found it unworthy of either the calories or
alcohol intake. Some nights we open two or three of these before heading for beer or a
reliable wine in the cellar. The average wine consumer does not have a
cellar, nor are they likely to persist in one bottle of wine after
another.
This whole emphasis on correct coupling discourages individual
experimentation and raises the perceived risk quotient … and decreases
overall enjoyment of the wine and the food.
And least we forget: constrains wine sales.
Just remember: people do not flock to musicians with perfect pitch.
If that were the case, The Fray, Green Day, Gaslight Anthem and
Matchbox 20 would be non-starters. On the other hand, they WERE
non-starters to the elite music critics. But experimenting with what
band you listen to lacks the financial penalty inherent in wine. Attacks on scores and perfect pairings are heresy. They also endanger the raison d’être
of experts. For, if scores and perfect pairings are not relevant to
average consumers, then what value do vino-gurus bring to the table? Make no mistake, there is a powerful and long-established set of
vested interests who will defend the status quo as brutally as
wholesalers attack the direct shipment of wine. But in the end, we must honor pleasure. Remember enjoyment? That’s what food and wine are about. Just drink it. Just eat it. Just enjoy it.
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