A Great Photo Op...or a Photo Oops?

Just how much does it cost for a night on the town?

Well, not just any night on the town...a hypothetical night on the town as seen through the eyes of someone (me) who doesn't typically see things the way others do...but perhaps a few of you out there have been wondering the same as me. It IS, after all, inevitable.

A little set-up of sorts first:

1. I am old.

2. I love Monty Python.

3. I tend to think outside the box, i.e., not "normally".

4. I'm cynical and sarcastic and sometimes, with the right combination of legal substances, I also am given to flights of fancy that (at least to myself) I am somewhat witty.

Now the gist of what this is about:

Take anyone who reads the online version of their local community paper and give them...oh...a half hour or so...just perusing the site and reading things and looking around. You know -- the normal things.

Normally, this "normal" person will read a few articles, perhaps comment on a few things, perhaps agree with some content and disagree with one thing or another.

But not me.

I've been waiting and waiting for the inevitable. Some might say "Waiting for the other shoe to drop." Others might prefer "Waiting for the $#!^a to hit the fan." Me? Eh...I'm an observer. I'm just waiting around for the lawsuits.

Included in the Gannett online sites are photos of people taken around town...usually at night, and usually these people are in direct proximity to alcoholic beverages.

It has been my experience that alcohol, in small quantities, gives one a slight euphoric feeling; pleasant and a tad giddy. Alcohol in moderate quantities gives you a "devil may care" type of attitude. It's not quite cockiness but it's past the part where some innocent inhibitions start rearing their ugly heads. This is usually where ideas of "singing Karaoke" and shouting "I love you, man!" to everyone at the bar become a really good idea.

Then there is alcohol in more than moderate quantities...but before you get to the spinning, vomiting, and passing out part. Therein lies the "I am immortal" stage. Nothing can hurt you - you are immune. You don't care what you do and what others do and what others see you do.

Enter someone with a camera or cell phone.

And enter you...or more importantly, you with someone who just might not be who you've been routinely photographed with at family gatherings. Someone who you just might not want to bring over to meet Mom. And certainly not someone you'd like to introduce to your Mother-in-law.

Get what I'm saying yet?

For those of you out there who like to be forewarned...there's a naked butt in this video. Twice, I think.

The Monty Python "Blackmail" skit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDAFrW_vNNQ

"Aha! Right?" Now you see what my little brain thinks when given things to think about...like how expensive a night on the town might actually be for some people.

Again, for those of you out there who like to be forewarned...ANYONE with a Gannett account can post those photos of you at the local hotspot...possibly getting all hot and heavy with someone you just might not want...in the picture...at all.

Suddenly your local community has gotten a whole lot smaller and much more intimate.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Oh...and smile! You'll look good in the online paper...and in that stack of papers your spouse's attorney has in court.

Time Travel and the Grandfather Paradox aka My Theory of Non-Relativity

I do not claim to be the greatest thinker of all time. I also do not profess to be in the top one million. When I think lately it's more or less about how my headache is never "just a headache"...it has to be brain cancer...and that not finding the mouth ulcer thingy on my tongue this time (even with a lighted magnifying mirror and a long-handed teaspoon in one hand and a Q-tip in the other) is highly indicative of me having tongue/mouth/throat cancer (thank you - neurotic tendencies). The fact that I've been abstaining from all alcohol for absolutely no reason whatsoever this past week...is again, in my clinical opinion...probably directly related to my tongue/mouth/throat cancer.

So when I thought the other day of a thought I've frequently thought, as I talked to someone whose name I can't even remember...on the phone - for hours and hours (Jimmy Stewart's filibuster scene in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" is nothing compared to my ability to talk endlessly)...I decided I would type this out to get it out of my system.

Time travel as we know it has been the thing many movies have been built on. And I always find fault with them all - basically because I'm anal like that and I like to compare notes after the film is over with other anal people who, likewise, feel compelled to share their insight via the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

We all know "Back to the Future", "The Time Machine" (don't bother watching the remake I didn't even know was remade until I watched it the other day), "Terminator" (and the four or seven sequels), "The Time Traveler's Wife" (horrid, simply horrid), and so on and so on...with "Twelve Monkeys" probably being the best in my opinion along with "12:01 PM.", a short film which is absolutely brilliant...but not true "time traveling of your own free will"...but I thought I'd mention it as it really is great. And then there's "Doctor Who"...who could forget him?

But I'm rambling...kinda like I do on the telephone...

Basically, when I'm not talking on the telephone, I sit and I watch television - mainly old films, very old films...or documentaries.

Some of these documentaries are about time travel...and I tend to uber-analyze them as much as I do the films of the same "genre".

Typically, if you've seen any of these shows...they are way over the average person's head, yet they get the guy with the PhD in Astro-Biological-Time-Quantum Physics to explain to us "little people" about theories we've gullibly bought in above said movies. To do this they resort to convoluted things like bending pieces of paper (marked "A" and "B") over and there's usually a ball and a trampoline employed somehow (think MacGyver as the prop man) and always a flashlight.

Well, one of these theories in time travel is the "Grandfather Paradox". In a nutshell, if you aren't familiar, it's where you theoretically can't go back in time and kill your own grandfather as you wouldn't be able to go back in time as you weren't born if you killed him. It's loads of fun to think about...especially if you've drank enough alcohol to get loaded or taken an Ambien...but never at the same time.

So, people with IQs in the tens of the power of 2 or 20 (or some other such mathematical rot) have concluded their own conclusions and summarily tossed time traveling back to commit such an act -- as impossible. Some have further theorized you can't go back in time prior to the invention of the time machine...as you'd have to wait X years after the invention and then can only go back in time as far as the invention was invented.

Eh...whatever. If I'm going to invent a time machine...it darn well better go back to point one and go in the future and sideways and longways and all the ways that Willy Wonka glass elevator can go.

Now, I've paid as much attention to these programs as one can (given the circumstances)...and they never bring up MY theory:

(clears throat) This theory, which belongs to me, is as follows... (more throat clearing) This is how it goes... (clears throat) The next thing that I am about to say is my theory. (clears throat) Ready? (Oh, lookie there...I time traveled back to Monty Python days.)

Seriously, here it is:

Okay, but first...you know that question which anyone with a child answers the same? The "If you could go back in time and change one thing in your life...would you?" And they get all "George Bailey" on you and say, "Well, I wouldn't because that would mean my child/children wouldn't have been born."

Well, I claim bull crap on that generic answer...which happens to be my theory.

IF you could go back in time...how do you know you wouldn't have the same children? Sure, you can speculate they'd be different...but you wouldn't really know it as you wouldn't know any differently as you don't have a time machine. Perhaps they were destined to be born anyway...and they aren't so much a strand of DNA as they are some cosmic entity that is yours alone...and no matter how many years or dimensions you could possibly travel through...they'd still end up getting here.

So, in principle, you could go back and kill your own grandfather as he wouldn't necessarily have to be related to you.

Or...something like that.

Hey, I'm still working on it...sheesh!

It's a theory in the making...and if Hollywood can get away with a few liberties, well, so can I, right?

(A side note: I am neurotic and always think the worst...I can't tell you how many times over the years it was brain cancer or throat cancer...so I meant absolutely no offense to Michael Douglas...and would never ever joke about something like that. Michael Douglas is doing the brave and right thing to tell people about his throat and mouth cancer...and because of his celebrity...many people will listen...and be saved by early intervention due to what he's been sharing. I applaud him and I hope he wins his battle.)

What Made Me Cry Today

It's been 13 years to the day and I still can't do it.

I can't watch any show about Princess Diana without crying. And I've watched a ton of them...and another one just now (some 2007 rerun on The Biography Channel). If you weren't aware, she died 13 years ago, today, in Paris...after what is still considered by many people, very suspicious circumstances. But I don't think I'll go into that here...instead I'll try to tell you why I cry.

I don't really know how, living in New Jersey, and way before 200 channels on my television set...I somehow was mesmerized by a lithe shy creature all the way over in England by the name of Diana Spencer. Now I never bought People magazine or tabloids or watched "Entertainment Tonight" all that often, but somehow the whole fairytale princess thing captured me and held me fast.

I've always had a thing for England...I don't know why but I do. All the rock groups I loved were British groups, all the accents I could do were English (okay, I could do only one and probably not the greatest...but that didn't stop me), all the shows I loved..."Monty Python's Flying Circus", "To the Manor Born", "'Allo 'Allo!", "Doctor in the House", and countless others, were English. So, to love a real-live royal romance...in England...by a girl who was only a half a year younger than me -- well, was pretty much a given.

And it wasn't only me who found this whole dream-come-true fantasy fascinating...the whole world was transfixed and caught up in it, too. One can only speculate that Diana, with her cocked head and down-glancing ways, was just a glimmer of something magical yet to come. Hollywood way back when had a name for it: "It". Clara Bow was coined "The It Girl" back in the 1920s. And after that - you either had "It"...or you didn't.

I think Diana had "It" right from the start...and everyone knew it.

In the very wee hours of Wednesday morning on the 29th of July 1981, me...and a "few friends" - estimated at over 750,000,000 of us, sat enthralled, anxiously awaiting a ceremony the likes of which most of us had never bore witness to before. The only thing remotely in that realm was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953...and I wasn't around back then. This was, by far, the grandest spectacle I had ever seen in my life: a mere girl was going to be wed...a mere girl who would be Queen one day. Wow! All right before my eyes.

Now, I don't know about you...times have changed...but when I was little I wanted to grow up to be a princess one day. Princess and ballerina came first...writer came later. I would dream of having my Prince Charming sweeping me off my feet and then living happily in the lap of luxury forever after. We didn't have a lot of money growing up...so becoming a princess seemed one way to strike it rich (this was way before the lottery, too). But it wasn't just about the money...it was about the dresses and the balls, the kissing and the "grown-up" stuff grown-ups didn't talk about back then...and knowing which fork out a seemingly endless array of forks...was which. This was what being a princess meant to me when I was very, very young.

Then I grew up and realized I could never be a princess...but here was Diana...MY Diana...stepping up to bat for me...and millions of other long disillusioned "once upon a time" little girls...who were now, like me, expected to have grown up and out of all that fairy-tale nonsense.

But as we are all too aware, her dreams of being a ruling figurehead monarch of the British Empire never came to be...but the unimposing princess, like that ugly duckling in that other fairytale, transformed into a glorious swan instead. And she was adored by millions along the way. Her journey could have ended with just being content to be waited upon hand and foot and rolling her eyes at every daily function she had to partake in to appease the "little people" she would someday rule so she could keep taking those month-long vacations at Balmoral. But...she didn't. She made friends with all the "little people" instead, graciously shaking their hands in the endless lines they queued up in -- and made each of them think they were just as important as she was. Her humanitarian causes were legendary. Who could forget her walking through the minefield in Angola or touching AIDS victims who, at the time, were still shunned and ridiculed by a great deal of the population? Those images ended up being much more synonymous with Diana than that 25-foot train of her bridal gown ever could.

And, on that tragic night in that fateful Paris tunnel...it all came to a screeching halt.

Literally.

The "People's Princess" was no more.

Tears are welling up in my eyes as I'm typing this. Tears shed for a person I've never met. Tears shed for a person who was chose to step out from the self-indulgent, grand facade opulence of her world...and step into the real world and lives of those less fortunate...and into the hearts of people...just like me.