Mass_Distractions

There's nothing like getting an intervention from the President of the United States. Two-hundred-80 million Americans getting the tough truth that we're Jones-ing for oil and we just have to stop. That's a pretty good ole kick in the pants. I'm just wondering if the President really thinks that his suggestion of filling up your tank with switchgrass is the answer. Is switchgrass the methadone of our 21st century gas dependence?

I am not here to bury James Frey, but to praise the author of the much maligned "A Million Little Pieces." Here's a pretty average white guy who turned a rather unexceptional middle class mid-western upbringing into a franchise of fakedom. Mr. Frey is my hero.

All this time I thought you had to suffer to sing the blues. I used to rue my happy and unremarkable childhood. Drat my parents who afforded me a standard public school education, a university degree and the ability to accept my first job as a low paid television station receptionist. I've always lamented how my Dad didn't beat me, that my Mom wouldn't force feed me beets and brussel sprouts or how she never neglected to buy me the appropriately supportive footwear (although forcing me to wear Zelnick's orthopedic shoes in 2nd grade was its own private hell.) Woe, how bland my life! I knew I hadn't lived the stuff of great writing. Now, I only damn James Frey for taking away my greatest reason for creative procrastination. My commonplace youth is apparently no longer an impediment to writing a "horribly honest" memoir.

It's like product placement on steroids. Just this month two of the tiniest hamlets in America traded in their names for cash and prizes. With populations smaller than your average off-peak subway car, both voted to surrender the hometown moniker for the name of a commercial enterprise. The signs of the times? Dish, Texas and SecretSanta.com, Idaho -- once Clark, Texas and Santa, Idaho.

It is the ultimate in cell phone multi-tasking. A woman in Virginia, identified by police as 19 year old Candice Rose Martinez, has been robbing neighborhood banks, all while talking on her cell phone. I'm pretty certain this is not what the financial institutions had in mind when they urged us to abandon the bank lines for bank by phone-lines. Perhaps that is what drove her to her life of felonious withdrawals. Who can't empathize with the transition from mild manner bank customer to phone fem fatale? I know when I "Press one to hold, press two to hold longer, press three just so you have something to do" I will, no doubt, end up listening to 34 encores of a sappy pan flute and strings version of 'Yesterday.' What it should really be is a few renditions of "Tomorrow, Tomorrow."

I've got a proposition for California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. No more special elections. Days before Tuesday's special statewide election, facing almost certain defeat, the Governor said he would be back, with more initiatives, no matter what. If it keeps going this way, special is going to lose its special-ness if every time the Governor wants to change a posse of signature-for-hire collectors ends up descending on the Golden State. A "special" election needs to be extraordinary, like filling the vacancy of a dead legislator or one who gets indicted for cocaine possession or a recall.

I'm no special prosecutor, but I am getting a tad bit suspicious of the people in my neighborhood. I blame it on Valerie Plame. Fall-out from her "outing" as a CIA agent doesn't just include a couple of federal indictments for Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby - by the way, you can tell the when someone's in a legal jam by the vast expansion of the person's name in the press. The minute we find out Karl Rove's middle name, you'll know he's toast.

I'm feeling just a tiny bit sad for the super-model set. So sorry Cindy Crawford, aw shucks Heidi Klum, too bad Elle McPherson. Your years of living on a diet of lettuce leaves and food aromas could be losing their luster. Girls, it looks like your size zero jeans may not be adding up for advertisers. Blame it on the latest trend in marketing: reality advertising.

I am taking the latest good and bad news about food with a grain of salt. First, what Italian researchers say is the bitter truth is that the sugar substitute aspartame causes cancer. Now the sweet news, compliments of 20 other Italians: dark chocolate lowers blood pressure. What's making all this hard to swallow is a recent Greek study. A researcher there found that one-third of all scientific studies touted in the big medical journals turn out to be wrong or blown out of proportion. Imagine if you had that kind of success rate at work. Unless you're a weather forecaster or a studio executive a 33% success rate would have you pounding the pavement in no time. Read more

They're killing time up on Capitol Hill. Congress has a bright idea that's going to leave lots of us in the dark. As part of the new energy bill lawmakers plan to extend daylight saving time for an extra month. So, we'll be springing ahead in the dead of winter and falling back sometime after Halloween. For those of us who have to wake up before the crack of dawn, it means there's going to be a lot more darkness before the dawn. Maybe people with sunny dispositions find this is good news but as one of millions who live in a fog in the morning I'm sounding the alarm.

So Terry lost her groove guy and now she's waiting to be an ex-wife. In case your not up to speed, Terry McMillan the 53-year-old author of chick lit classics 'Waiting to Exhale' and 'How Stella Got her Grove Back' is divorcing her 30-something Jamaican husband, Jonathan Plummer. After more than six years of marriage he says he's gay. And he wants money. Terry says he used her to become a U.S. citizen and doesn't deserve the cash.