Susan's Scribblings the Blog

There is a big difference between a companion animal, a service animal and a live binky. You may call it a pacifier (the proper term), wubbie, lovey or whatever, but some of the things going on with humans and animals in public is getting a bit out of hand. I’m talking abuse of privilege and downright stupidity when it comes to traveling with an animal.

Of course I have friends for whom a companion animal is comfort in stressful times. This includes our armed service members and victims of trauma and abuse. They are paired with animals who can relieve stress and lessen the psychological effects of flashbacks and other by-products of life after incidents too terrible for any human to experience.I nor anybody else should have a complaint about them.

Service animals see for the blind, hear for the deaf and shore up epileptics or other persons prone to falls who can otherwise lead productive lives.

But some imbeciles out there are trying to play the system. For a few bucks, one can buy a fake testimonial letter and service animal vest for a pet and get away with going just about anywhere with them. We’re not talking about just dogs, either; potbellied pigs, ferrets and other small weasels or rodents also qualify, as do snakes, spiders and heaven knows what else might in future make the cut.

The people doing this are trying to get their pets free flights on airlines, since any type of support animal is accepted in the cabin rather than in with the luggage and traveling pets. Folks also want their animals coming into the department stores and restaurants with them. There is a problem with this; people are allergic to animals, and service animals are trained to not be a hazard in places where cleanliness is a must. Would you want to have to summon a waiter and say, “Waiter, there is a service ferret in my soup?”

This must stop now. No soldier should be refused a seat on a plane because some lady with a chihuahua wearing a fake “service animal” vest got preferential treatment. Some people have no self-restraint or sense of decency and need a well-placed heel of the hand upside the head. Leave your pet at home or pay up, so others don’t pay a larger price for your ignorance.

(Below is an article link which may be helpful if you want to read more):

Fur Flies: Too Many ‘Phony’ Service Pets In The Skies?

Recently a customer in a department store managed to get a tee shirt removed from the shelves. It proves that one person can change the world, but sometimes they might not have to.

A retailer called Primark in Great Britain was carrying a shirt featuring an iconic image from the AMC television series “The Walking Dead.” The shirt showed a barbed wire wrapped baseball bat wielded by the antagonistic Negan, played in the series by Jeffrey Dean Morgan; he calls his weapon Lucille. Before he plays Bamm-Bamm with Lucille on the head of a person he doesn’t like, he invokes the old nursery rhyme, “eeny, meeny, miny mo.” It sends shivers down viewers’ (and the good characters’) spines.  A customer at the Primark store found it racist because his recollection of the rhyme has the next line referring to catching black persons by the toe, using the dreaded “n” word.

I never heard that one.

Various friends have said they always heard the second line as, “Catch a tiger by the toe,” or piggy.  Only one person said they had heard the “n” word used for that rhyme growing up.  I’m confused.

Logically, trying to nab somebody on the run by the toe would be a startingly nimble feat (no pun intended), and the rhyme goes on to advise that “If he hollers, let him go,” so no matter what you’d be catching–a tiger, a piggy, or a quick-moving person of any type–it’s strictly catch and release.

Let’s face it: in a crowd of 100, at least one will find something offensive. If the other 99 are not even raising an eyebrow, maybe the problem is with the one. Anyway, the store pulled the shirts, so the next “Walking Dead” shirt will probably undergo a rigorous test of wording and cultural impact before hitting the shelves.

I have never watched the show, and in my life experiences I have seen and come to know discrimination of all kinds (I have been a victim myself), but at least I won’t be one of the customers who has to worry about a message on my tee shirt. I don’t wear them.

But maybe if we all holler, maybe the one with the issue will just let it go.

Some people like to go to a spa to relax and recharge. For some reason I can’t imagine such a thing for me. Instead I pick favorite things I like to do and they have the same effect as any deep tissue massage. For example, I just came from a performance by the Philly Pops, and though it was teeming with rain outside when the concert was over, I feel all warm and fuzzy and can ignore the squeaking of my wet shoes and my sudden attack of Phyllis Diller hair. I felt like I had gone to church and emerged a changed person. Who needs hot rocks on the back or a seaweed wrap when therapy like this is available?

The Kimmel Center reminded me again of why it is such a glorious spa-I mean  music venue–with amazing acoustics and the feeling of a non-denominational house of music worship crossed with a focus on fun performance style and the comforts of soft seats and simple lighting. Compared to my last experience at the good old Academy of Music (I got a seat against a post), I settled right in at the Kimmel and felt at home. Why strip down to a towel and stick my prone face in a donut on a massage table, anyway?

Guest conductor David Charles Abell was fun to watch as he held a friendly conversation with his baton and guided the Pops through some of the best of what they called modern Broadway (all newer productions from the past 37 years). This meant shows like Miss Saigon, Hairspray, Les Miserables and my go-to favorite The Phantom of the Opera. The singers included petite powerhouse Alli Mauzey and TV and film star Rachel York flanking returning guest singer and Broadway-via-Philadelphia local favorite Hugh Panaro. The two men, Abell and Panaro, seem to be brothers by different parents as they both carry grins that span a mile and a bit of pluck in their performance style. They had fun together, and the audience was in on it, not just sitting and being performed for.

Intense musical numbers like Les Miz’ entreaty “Bring Him Home”  were like an emotional release and sometimes tear-inducing. There were a few moist eyes in the house. You may be thinking that only new age music would do if I’m referring to a spa treatment, but listening to somebody like Hugh Panaro who knows how to bring a dramatic song to life can be a much better balm than any zen-labeled canned tune treatment. The quiet in the auditorium was palpable during these numbers until the audience erupted the moment the last note was sung. There was fun, too, as Mauzey flirted her way through “Popular” from Wicked and York did a collection of impressions while singing “I Will Always Love You” from the newest Broadway treatment of a movie from The Bodyguard. She was spot-on, especially letting Eartha Kitt give the song a try.

I left the Kimmel feeling so much better, having relaxed and enjoyed a good afternoon of music, and not a drop of emollient was spilled. So spa gift cards are not on my gift list. Give me a good show instead. And if the weather is a bit damp, access to a blow dryer.

Doesn’t it figure that on one of the most beautiful days we’ve had since last summer I was indoors, and on the worst weather days I’ve had to drive in it to go to work?

The people who drive in bad weather to get to work have it tough, but sometimes I think that driving in good weather is just as tough. Here you are in the beautiful sunshine surrounded by four doors and a loud engine (no matter how quiet they say it is). I guess that is why people ride motorcycles, but to me the ambience is a bit lacking. Try playing classical music with a helmet on your head and bugs squishing on your visor.

I don’t like opening the car windows because I can’t stand the wind making that familiar “whubbita whubbita” noise that grates on the nerves. And trying to drive slower on any major highway to avoid that racket is like being a horse and buggy competing in the Indianapolis 500.

So it was sweater weather, but not to the point of needing air conditioning or of turning down the indoor heat.  But for February, why complain?

Last night I sat sandwiched between rows of like-minded women to see Fifty Shades Darker, the second cinematic attempt to interpret the E.L. James hit erotica book trilogy. I think we in that audience will all agree that the movie reviewers–mostly men–are full of it when it comes to reviewing such a film. They didn’t like it. We seemed to.

The problem with trying to accomplish a good movie with erotica in it, like trying to accomplish anything erotic, is that we try too damn hard to make it what it’s not.

Let’s face it: about ninety percent of us do not have the womanly charms of Dakota Johnson or the hunky mannerisms of Jamie Dornan; we’re lucky if we look decent after an hour in the mirror every morning (after much less than the recommended eight hours of sleep), and they have makeup people and wardrobe people and don’t have an hour commute or a cubicle to work in.

Add to that all the camera angles and the censorship–oh good grief, the censorship–and the crew members hovering overhead and the sets that are lit too hot or cooled down too much, and it’s only romantic when the editing is done. Or in the case of a movie which features BDSM practices toned down for an R rating, it only gets away with not being called pornographic when the editing is done.

Lovemaking can’t be edited. It just happens. It’s awkward and time-consuming and primal and messy. That’s why many movie scenes cut to the future, long after the bumping and grinding is over and forgotten. The reviewers seem to have a problem with lovemaking that’s a tad more spicy. Maybe they’re jealous.

Also, the reviewers appeared to think that the chemistry between the characters wasn’t hot enough. Maybe a mushy relationship would not have made a good movie, or maybe if they were too hot for each other, the filming may have been too pornographic. How tough it must be to be a married couple working on a film together; separating the script from reality takes a true performance from both of them.

The movie is not that bad. It’s not everybody’s idea of a bedroom rendezvous, but it’s what we, as moviegoers in this age, are allowed to have in terms of what the MPAA says. The perfect love movie has yet to be made, but we have enough future Valentine’s Days to work on it. Maybe it will be rated G: after all, love does not require sex, does it?

I predict that we will indeed have more weeks of winter. It may be six, or eight, or ten. We will also have spring, and it won’t necessarily fall in March or April. It may come at the end of this month or hold off until May. We will have some rain, some snow (ugh) and cold and hot and some temperatures in between.

I also predict that every year, folks will trudge to the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on February 2nd for an excuse to stand around in the cold and watch a guy in formal winter gear harass a groundhog.

Heck, it’s winter. We gotta have something constructive to do.

I wasn’t really sure how to react to the first week of the Trump presidency.  I could say a few things jokingly or a lot of things scathingly, or the other way around. It looks like people do have a lot to say, and they’re letting off steam all over the place. Women are marching, anti-abortionists (including men) are marching, protestors are. . .okay, they’re not marching so much as fist fighting and yelling, but you get the picture.

With three years and 51 weeks to go in his stint in the White House, it looks like our new president is trying to cram it all into the first eight days. Slow down, man.

Sometimes when a new person takes over, they go into hyperdrive and do everything at once. People do that when they get an unexpected monetary bonus or an economy sized bargain at the store. The problem is, all the reward, and the joy of it, runs out rather quickly, and you’re back to square one.

What comes to mind is one of the Harry Potter movies in which a new person in a position of power started tacking up new rules, regulations and policies on the walls of Hogwarts to the point of the ridiculous. I think she got abducted by some nasty creatures or something.

The president won’t have to worry about nasty creatures taking him away. We will, however, let him know what we’re thinking. We’d better, whether we voted for him or not. Sometimes it takes a jolt from the joy of the reward to get focused on what matters.

Yup, three years and 51 weeks.

If you had a choice between smoking a cigarette or saving a  life, I’m sure most of you would ditch the smoke, but if I mention that the act of saving that life costs one dollar more than you would pay on an annual bill, would you shrug it off and go smoke? One dollar has a varying amount of significance to people, but it can mean a lot more to those who don’t have one than those who do.

Every year there are great causes which ask for a dollar contribution, fully tax deductible in most cases, but people not only shrug off the request, but they get downright mean about it.  Around the holidays, every charity gets its share, but not everybody eats well, finds a place to live or gets cured and/or disappears until next December when it all comes back again. Sure, I know that a lot of charities ask for ten, twenty or some larger amount, but I want to address the little organizations who work for the public good and ask for just one.

Sometimes in my job I get mail in which a customer has expressed disgust about a dollar contribution, and it usually comes after the fact.  For example, the bill comes over a month in advance and lays out in detail what each amount charged is for, along with mention of the tax-deductible contribution. All one has to do is look at it and, if they have a question, just call. If a customer has authorized a credit card to be charged automatically for each year’s bill, it’s a sure thing that a month after that notice went out, at least one person will contact us and grouse about that dollar.  They didn’t authorize it (they just threw the bill away without reading it), they don’t know a thing about it (because they threw away the leaflet that came with the bill, which also mentions a web page explaining what the dollar does), and dag gum it, they want their dollar back.

These are the same people who go to fancy pants restaurants and spend a day’s pay on food and alcohol which will be flushed into the sewers in a matter of hours. Yes folks, that exquisite stuff you just consumed (with poor table manners to boot) will be poo tomorrow. But that dollar you so indignantly coveted could buy several meals, or help dress a child with no clean dry clothes, or prevent a foreclosure, keep a drug abuser clean for one more day, or teach school children about traffic safety.

Or those folks who complain about the dollar would spend $40 on a case of cigarettes and smoke it away.  I’ve always found smoking a bit strange: one runs from a burning building because the smoke is bad for you, but people who like cigarettes willingly inhale it.

So, Mr. Disgruntled Tightwad, you take back that dollar. I’d give it to you in person if I could. Smoke it away. Eat or drink it and release it into the void with a wad of toilet paper.

See you in December.

I was in one of our small towns this morning and needed to find a parking space. The street has no meters, and the main strip has about two dozen spots into which one can parallel park. The only problem was that the number of spaces was lessened by four; two jerks took up half of two spaces. The only cars that could have squeezed in would be one of those cute little Smart cars.

That’s why they’re called that: people probably buy them knowing they can override a jerk’s lack of spacial acuity and get into a tight parking space. That’s smart.

I remember learning how to parallel park in high school during driver training. I don’t know if schools have them anymore; they may have gone out of style with home economics,  physical education and most aspects of the arts programs, but we did learn it. When I went to take the driving test, the street on which I had to prove my parking skills was wider than I expected, which changed my sight lines for backing in, and it had no marked spaces but cones. I got between the cones just fine, but I was too far from the curb to pass.  Not to worry, though, since for my second attempt I had a fresh instructor and a different street (and the fellow who flunked me had also tested and flunked a half dozen of the remedial testers ahead of me and had to bypass us all).

Of course a lot of driving experience has me parking like a pro, though some people never quite get the knack for it. Still, one should check before leaving a vehicle out of bounds on a street where parking is at a premium but costs are not. Small businesses need all the cars coming in that they can get. This one has a nice bakery, a florist, a deli, a few nice salons and a new restaurant coming in soon. That may make parking even more difficult.

In my fantasy world of perfection, I would’ve had a dozen weightlifters at my beck and call who could lift and move those two jerks’ vehicles into the proper spots so I could have pulled in. Since that didn’t happen, I parked on a side street and mumbled under my breath a lot about people who don’t have Smart cars and aren’t smart behind the wheel.

I am about to speak in defense of Mariah Carey, which is a bit strange because I know little about her and am not what one would call a fan. Her experience at the “ABC’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” broadcast was so widely criticized, that I thought I could throw in my two cents’ worth of opinion as a third-party observer who has no interest either way.

I didn’t stay up to see it live (I’m getting to that age when balls dropping remind me of my future of declining dexterity and skin tone rather than a new year), but I saw enough repeats of what happened to know that everybody involved was somewhat at fault. Performers, and singers in particular, are commodities whose wants, needs and goals are at war with their contract-wielding, money hungry executives. Putting on a performance such as the NYE event costs bundles of cash, all of which the producers intend to get back from their working capital, namely Mariah. The other party is the audience, and let’s admit that we are a demanding and fickle mob.

Let’s take a song like “Emotions,” which is one of her hits. From the moment the song hit our virgin ears back in 1991, we knew we always wanted to hear Mariah sing it just that way every time she sings it, and we want her to sing it all the time. This means producers and managers and agents line her up to sing it just that way, and that means if a performance is going to be on a cold stage at the end of December, some setting up has to be done.

If anybody thinks for one minute that a song recorded in a sterile, acoustically perfect studio can be put on a stage anywhere and sound exactly the same, they need to hire a crew to hoist a rock from on top of them.

Then of course you need the panoply and effects brought by high-tech sets and back-up dancers and singers, who stand in front of immense high-volume speakers with Mariah and try to make the audience excited and thrilled.

Now you add to that all the electronics which can suffer quality loss under cold temperatures, and you have a recipe for a musical failure. But we came to see and hear Mariah sing just that way, so they give her an earpiece and mic her up and the show goes on. Except the earpiece wasn’t working.  Tough, they said.  The show must go on, she said.

The fickle audience had the gall to be surprised.

Sure I’ve been to concerts. In stadiums it works a bit differently. One time back in the day, the producers of a Billy Joel concert moved my seat and those of about 30 or so people so the console used to control the action onstage could be seated there.  I didn’t mind; it wasn’t my first time at the rodeo. This is how these things are done.

It’s all hugely coordinated, because it’s popular music and that’s how the bigwigs want it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they did urge Mariah to go on in spite of the problems, because Dick Clark was not there to give the artist what was needed. Dick Clark knew performers and he would not have stood for that.

Well, that’s not what I normally watch anyway. A bunch of choreographed song and dance pop is not my thing so much anymore. Give me a Broadway show any day. Give me true singing artists like Hugh Panaro and Hugh Jackman (who were both performing on the same block sometime back); men of talent whose voices can tickle the hairs on the backs of the necks of the last guy in the nosebleed seats (and now somebody will grumble that the performers have mics and I’ll challenge them to see if that little dingly thing glued to their foreheads can work outdoors).  Give me Placido Domingo or Marcello Giordani at the Met; now that’s singing.

In our forebears’ days, Frank Sinatra had the stage by himself with a stool, a mic stand and a glass of water. I’d like to see Mariah Carey do that, and even though I’m not a fan, I’d pay for a seat.