Pennermag.com

I’ll admit it, I go through food phases — times where I eat one thing to the exclusion of many others.

Right now, my favorite is kimchi fried rice. I buy it at the mall, I make it at home. For some reason, right now, it’s the perfect food.

Other food phases have inclulded hot dogs: I ate them for an entire summer and will never enjoy them again. Pancakes: I can whip up perfect pancakes in about five minutes. They’re just divine. Waffles: Those were great, but required whipped egg whites so it didn’t last long. Bagels with honey roasted turkey breast and reduced sodium munster cheese. I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

I have no idea what spawns these phases, or why they burn themselves out — but given the vast diversity of food in L.A., the next one should be interesting.

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Well, what can I say — it was underwhelming.

My jury duty began with a summons to be available the week of November 3, 2003. Ok, I can be available. Los Angeles County has adopted a one day jury service system. Eligible citizens serve one day (and if impaneled, one trial) once per year.

After four days of checking in with the court, today was my day. Now, I have to tell you I was underwhelmed with my assignment to the Compton court. I really wasn’t interested in driving twenty miles for jury service. When I called to change my court assignment, however, I got a long spiel on jurors being selected from all over the county to assure a more fair and impartial panel. Ok, they guilted me — last thing I want to be is a hypocrite.

So I got up early this morning for my service — they expected us there at 7:45 A.M. I still can’t figure this one out — I’ve never been in a courtroom where the judge arrived to work before ten o’clock, but I digress.

I was late for my service. It took me an hour and a half to drive to Compton. Why didn’t anyone tell me the traffic in L.A. was bad? I mean really bad. I don’t think I exceeded thirty miles an hour the entire time I was on the freeway.

Even though I arrived late, we still had to wait until ten o’clock to get any real information. The court was impaneling for a ’special circumstances’ case. The clerks read the defendant’s name and everyone gasped. I never heard of him. I’m thinking I should read the paper more often. They needed five hundred jurors for next week — then the clerk started calling names. But first, most people were excluded from this potentially sixty day trial if: they were self-employed, had limited jury days from work, or were enrolled as students. That left, according to them, homemakers and retired folk. I imagine that’s not a jury of the defendant’s peers.

So, we waited to see if any other trials were coming down the pike. About half of the people were chosen, the rest of us when home. That s it. The upside? They have a huge projection TV and DVD player in the room — the audience preference this morning — Eddie Murphy’s Daddy Day Care.

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What do you do with pictures of other people’s children?

This is a dilemma I’m fighting almost monthly. You know what happens, distant friends and relatives send you birth announcements with pictures, holiday cards with children’s pictures (in furry red caps, no less), and those ubiquitous school pictures — often with fake mountains in the background.

Recently I looked in my photo albums and they are mostly pictures of my yuppie friends and me in trendy restaurants, at the beach, at parties . . . . Some are pictures from college, graduate schools, graduation ceremonies. Otherwise they are pictures of home renovation progress, this house or the last one, or they’re pictures of our pets, Jake, Foley, Fluff, Siame, or Merlin.

Nowhere in there have I found a space for people’s kids. They’re sitting in a pile under the TV waiting for something to happen . . . .

Should I keep them? I’ll surely need help labeling them. One newborn baby looks like the next. Should I toss them — I don’t quite know when I’ll be looking back at these baby photos. Do I keep them in their own album? I just can’t see the time I’m pulling those out, “Look! It’s little _______! Remember when she/he was born? In first grade? Getting adult teeth? On the soccer team?”

The truth is I’ll probably get one of those cute Martha Stewart type boxes, put them in that, then forget it.

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I know everyone complains that Christmas advertising gets earlier every year . . . but the day after Halloween? I think Thanksgiving is being squeezed out!

On Saturday morning, I went about my regular errands, only to be confronted with dancing Santas and Christmas music in the mall . . . on November 1st?

I thought maybe it’s just Macy’s here at the Beverly Center. There wasn’t much else going on there.

But then that evening, I was flipping channels and all I saw were Toys R Us and Target commercials — extolling the virtues of early holiday shopping.

Even the local “news” has gotten in on the act. “Reporters” were actually suggesting that if we have ‘must have’ items on our list — get them early. They’ve suggested that I’m likely to spend at least $1700 dollars this season because the economy’s so good — not bloody likely.

Over the last few years I’ve found that the holiday season ends up being one of broken hopes. The gifts you give to people are never personalized enough, expensive enough, or good enough to fulfill their ideal of the ‘right’ holiday gift. Shopping on November 1st as opposed to December 24th isn’t going to make that any better.

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As you can probably tell from my previous blog entries — I didn’t quite find Disney World the happiest place on earth.

It was, however, likely the fattest place on earth.

Recently Dr. Phil (McGraw) started something on his show called his weight loss challenge. In additional to shameless self promotion and merchandising, Dr. Phil has proposed to help thirteen Americans lose tons of excess weight.

Now I watched one of those shows and was quite convinced that he had gotten people who were excessively fat and did not in any way represent your average Americans.

I mean, most of these folks were three and four hundred pounds. I’ve never seen many people that large and figured there were only a few people like that in the U.S.

Boy, was I wrong. When I went to Disney, I was shocked to see hundreds of people pushing maximum density. For the first day, I wondered how they got to Disney, because those Song seats and tons of seats on other airlines are tiny, at best. Then someone kindly reminded me that Americans have gotten tons of big vans, big SUVs and drive to vacations, rather than drive.

Living in L.A., you see statistics about Americans getting fatter, that sixty-five percent of American adults are overweight, that eleven percent of American children are overweight. But I didn’t really see it, until I saw it.

Often, I think Hollywood, or the media, or whatever put to much emphasis on being thin. If you watch I Love Lucy re-runs, the ideal dancer is a size twelve. If you watch Friends, the ideal ‘friend’ is somewhere between a zero and a six. While Twiggy and Jennifer Aniston may not be the ideal — three hundred pounds can’t be it, either.

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