Category: All Posts

7:32 p.m. Three young female walk-ins asked for rides home, as it was raining hard and they did not have rides. Officer Cody Normandin spoke with them, and they walked home on their own.

I was afraid this would be what I saw.

Are you as annoyed as I am that so many headlines end with “Here’s Why”?

The Beatles released their second UK album, With the Beatles, on November 22, 1963. That same day in New York, actor Patrick O’Neal and his brother Mike opened their first restaurant, The Ginger Man, named after a play Patrick was in. They had a rough start.

On November 24, my family appeared in a Parade magazine article that was ignored along with everything else, because of what happened in Dallas on Friday. Another play that was on stage in New York in November of ’63 was an adaptation of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The production lasted for only 83 performances, even with Kirk Douglas starring as McMurphy. New York’s attention would soon be turned away from JFK’s assassination by the arrival of the four lads from Liverpool.

There were other notable actors in Cuckoo’s Nest, including William Daniels. Ed Ames, who died a few months ago, played Chief. After the play closed, the following year Ames, who was Jewish, was stuck with playing an Indian once again, this time for the Daniel Boone TV series. I was surprised to see Gene Wilder’s name in the cast. Wilder, who was 30 at the time, played Billy. So he had Broadway experience when, four years later, he was Leo Bloom in The Producers. Douglas wasn’t able to get One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest produced for film, but his son Michael managed to pull it off twelve years later.

Wait, here’s another one!

Tripping With Doctor Who

The wordplay in the title is somewhat misleading, because this post is coming from a different direction than I had originally intended, due to an item in today’s New York Times.

Xuxa was once Brazil’s biggest TV star. Now many are wondering whether a thin, blond, white woman was the right idol for such a diverse country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/world/americas/brazil-barbie-xuxa.html

Cultural norms of the past are inevitably reconsidered by contemporary standards. Cigarettes were ubiquitous for most of the 20th century. People would ask if it was all right to smoke in social situations, but saying “of course” was a formality. Of course it was all right. For the purpose of this post, whether it’s cigarettes or a standard of beauty that doesn’t reflect the population at large, it’s a matter of personal health and well-being.

“And like Barbie, she became an idol to her fans, who grew up wanting to be just like Xuxa and her all-white cast of teenage dancers, the Paquitas.”

Xuxa is now questioning her own popularity as having been unhealthy for the girls who were her fans. Are Xuxa’s Portuguese and Spanish-speaking fans, who are much older now, as is Xuxa herself, supposed to think it was wrong for them to admire her?

“But in her interview with The New York Times, she assumed more responsibility and lamented the mark it may have left on young viewers who don’t look like her. “God, what trauma I put in the heads of some children,” she said.”

Honestly, you may as well ask the same question of today’s Swifties. Is the effect of tall, blonde, gorgeous Taylor Swift’s massive popularity different in any essential way than Xuxa’s was 30-35 years ago?

The premise of the NYTimes piece begs the question, shouldn’t we be questioning the success of the Barbie movie? Girls are flocking to see it, which is good for long-suffering movie theaters, but is it good for the self-image of girls who aren’t tall, blonde and beautiful, like Margot Robbie?