The Princess Interviews: Part I.

Disney's current crisis has nothing to do with money or bad movies. No, Disney is running out of princesses, and we need to help.

Walt started raiding the Brothers Grimm back in 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, his first feature-length film, from the story "Snow White" (or "Little Snowdrop," depending on your translation). Pretty good movie.

Since then the Brothers Grimm have been provided Disney with some Disney princesses ("Briar Rose" was Sleeping Beauty), as has Hans Andersen (considering what Disney did in turning "The Snow Queen" into Frozen, we may as well drop the Christian). Other sources of princessery are less reliable: They've tried to force Mulan into the princess family, although she is not a princess; Pocohontas, although it's outrageous to use a real-life historical figure as a stinking cartoon princess; and the wholly inappropriate barbarian Pixar princess Merida was shoehorned in. They had to promote Rapunzel to princess standing, although she was not a princess in the original Grimm story. I'm almost willing to overlook the breathtaking means by which they made a princess out of an African-American girl in the reworking of The Princess and the Frog, because it was cleverly done. Good thing for Tiana that it is not illegal for U.S. citizens to hold titles of nobility.

I'm surprised they didn't make Jane Porter into a princess by virtue of her marrying Tarzan, King of the Jungle.

Gotta move the merch.

The thing is, there are other princess in the Grimm oeuvre that have not yet been exploited employed as Disney heroines. Today, and moving forward, we examine these remaining princesses to see if any of them can be made to work.

Our first interview is with Goose Girl, star of the Brothers Grimm's "The Goose Girl":

Interviewer: So, Goose Girl, you have a real name, I trust?

Goose Girl: Yes, although not in the story. You can call me Brittany. 

Int.: All right, Brittany. Now, you have a longish story in Grimm. Does it have a big wedding at the end?

GG: Oh, yes, I marry the prince and the villain is punished and everything. 

Int.: Great! And there's magic, right? We need the magic.

GG: Yeah, I have a magical lock of hair for protection, but the evil servant tricks me and I lose it and then she makes me switch places so she's the princess and I'm a yucky maid.

Int.: Good, good. Could be a problem with a servant being the main bad guy, you know, too much sympathy for the oppressed. We don't want to see Occupy Magic Kingdom. But we'll give her some backstory to make her motivations impure. It's fine. And you have a sidekick, right? A talking animal of some sort?

GG: Yeah, a fairy gave me him. Falada. He gets a name and I don't, right?

Int.: Is Falada a goose? 

GG: Nah, I'm called "Goose Girl" because they make me help the goose boy, Curdken. Who also gets a name and I don't. No, Falada is a horse. 

Int.: Better and better! Wait, you really love this Curdken guy, I'll bet. Is he the real prince in disguise, or--

GG: Goose boy? Are you nuts? He's a punk who manages the geese!

Int.: Okay, we'll call in rewrite. Tell me more about the magical horse sidekick. 

GG: Yeah, he gets his head cut off, which is kind of a bummer. But it's all right, because the head still talks.

Int.: Wait, what?

GG: Yeah, they nail up the head and it keeps talking and the old king overhears---you could give the head a song! I bet--- Hey, are you all right? 

Int.: Sorry, I just had lunch.

GG: Well, don't worry, because in the end the fairy reattaches the head and Falada is okay. 

Int.: That's enough about the horse for now. Please tell me the evil servant gets her comeuppance without a lot of bloodshed.

GG: Oh, yes! It's no problem! She gets crammed into a little cask with big nails hammered into it and dragged around by four white horses until she dies. You won't need to see a thing!

Int.: G-great. Thanks so much for coming in.

GG: So, when do we start filming?

Int.: We'll be in touch.

To Be Continued.... 

Blood! BLOOOOOOODDD!!!!

Pardon me for the lateness of the blog post. I was down at the church, bleeding.

Blood drive today, and I'm a big fan of anything good I can do that doesn't cost me money.

A lot of people who are eligible to give blood don't for spurious reasons: They don't think they're eligible and haven't bothered to find out; they don't think it's important ("those science geeks prolly invented some plastic blood or somethin' by now"); they are afraid it will hurt; they think it will take a lot of time; they're scared of needles and the other accouterments connected to collecting bodily life fluids.

Not scary at all! Maybe a little.

Anyway, while it's true that there are a lot of things that will render you ineligible, things like tattoos and piercings will not if it's been more than a year. Yes, some of these things have a statute of limitations. Here's a list from the American Red Cross.* 

There is no plastic blood, pig blood, clone blood, e-blood, or anything else than can replace human blood donations. And you never know how much good will come of a good act. One Australian gentleman, James Harrison, because of his dedication to donating his blood and his rare antibody to Rhesus disease, has personally saved more than two million babies. What, you don't want to save two million babies? Selfish, I say!

As for the pain, yeah, it hurts. It's not just a pinch like they say; it's a big frigging needle. Man the hell up, pansy. And it takes less than an hour, unless there's a backup (usually because they're giving away shirts or something) or unless you volunteer for double red blood cell donation or apheresis donations.

And then you get free cookies and juice. And smiles. 

* Which reminds me of an idiotic moment when I was running a blood drive at an office for which I worked. I was instructed to ask people to donate, but if they said they could not for medical reasons, I was to let it drop and never ask why. I asked a buddy of mine and she said no, she wasn't eligible, and I said, "Oh, what's wrong?" or something like that. Moron! Turned out she had just found out she was pregnant. Still, I'll be dead five years before I stop kicking myself for that.  

Grande venti menti denti schlamenti.

Funny that more than two decades since I first was exposed to a latte*, I’m still confused by all the stuppiato coffee variations available. I was looking at this list of different coffee types---cappuccino, Caffé Americano, espresso, lungo, macchiato, mocha, flat white, tall black---with a friend even more bewildered than I am. I explained to her that a double espresso is called a doppio because it’s twice as dope as a single espresso. I think she only laughed at that because I’m so white myself. Fat white.

In my day, sonny, we were just emerging from the long era of American coffee being one kind, one way, with only varying degrees of lousiness supposedly attached. It was good enough for the America that won two world wars, the cold war, and became the greatest economic powerhouse the world has ever known, but it was not good enough anymore.**

On the whole I prefer better coffee, but people take it way too damn seriously. Look, you tell the guy who barely got through high school (or worse, is majoring in Grievance Studies at the local U) that you want a venti double half-caf vanilla macchiato with extra steamed milk and two Sweet'N Lows and a shot of caramel and a dusting of cinnamon, and you get sore that he screws up that dog's breakfast of a drink?

And it's getting worse. Seems like they’re coming up with new coffee drinks all the time, with many being trademarked drinks like the Frappuccino*** from those green guys. In fact, here’s some new ones that I hear are in development.

Short Gray: Maxwell House boiled in a percolator for five hours, served with clumpy nondairy creamer or milk of questionable freshness in a 1960s-style mug (plastic base with a pop-in disposable plastic cup).

Barista Peli del Pettiato: Named for the barista's chest hair, this is a frothy hot milk drink with smears of espresso.

Bolognaccio: Espresso with meat sauce.

Pantaloni Caffè: Triple espresso served so hot, fireproof pants are required as a precautionary measure.

Caffé Sudamericano: Discontinued, as President Obama plans to make them all into Caffé Americanos.

Mocho Loco: Caffé Americano with an extra shot of espresso, stirred with a Snickers.

Caffè Tonno in Scatola

Iced Tacuccino: Taco Bell's proprietary iced coffee drink, which comes with a shot of pico de gallo.

Einsteinicano: Billed as an atomic-powered coffee drink that will turn your hair white and make it shoot out like the famous scientist's. Get so buzzed you'll get lost on campus!

Coffee: Not sure what this is, but it probably will never catch on.

* I was going out to the coffee truck and asked the one kid younger than me if I could get her anything. She said oh, yes, but could I go around the corner to this new place, I'd love the coffee, and get her a large latte? Did not know what it was. Did not expect to drop four bucks on it. This was at a time in my life when four unexpected bucks could mean the difference between lunch or no lunch.

** The boss of the company I worked for at this same time loved to tell the story of working with Europeans who, when asked their opinion of American coffee, said after a pause, "It is a beverage." Eurosnots.

*** Dunkin Donuts developed the Coolatta, which quickly morphed from a Frappuccino imitator to a watery milk shake. Still tasty, though.

Recycling, AT&T style.

So now we know what happened to them.

Don't die.

I haven't aged into the colonoscopy demo yet, but it'll be here soon enough. As it is, a few years back I reached that age where your annual physical involves the doctor putting things into places from which things usually only come out.

And the time for my physical came again, so I girded my loins and clenched my duodenum and off I went.

At my advanced age and hard-won wisdom I know how to deal with unpleasant things---you lie and say you had a work emergency and promise to reschedule.

But that wasn't what I did, not this time. I've written about my friend who died suddenly late last year, no warning, natural causes. I was thinking of him as the day of my physical approached. I don't think he was good about preventive care. I suspect his death could have been prevented, or at least postponed.

So I went.

The doc was happy enough with my health, at least pending the results of the blood and urine test. I guess I won't die of natural causes right away. Although I've done a lot of work with medical copy and I know all kinds of things can sneak up on you and kill you while you feel perfectly fine. Of course, the problem with working on medical copy is that you come down with everything you study.

No one put it finer than Jerome K. Jerome in his classic Three Men in a Boat, describing the condition my wife and I have come to know as Real Housemaid's Knee:

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.  The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was.  I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally.  I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it. 

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages.  I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too,—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight.  Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years.  Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with.  I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee?  Why this invidious reservation?  After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed.  I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee.  Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood.  There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me. 

I sat and pondered.  I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class!  Students would have no need to “walk the hospitals,” if they had me.  I was a hospital in myself.  All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.

Then I wondered how long I had to live.  I tried to examine myself.  I felt my pulse.  I could not at first feel any pulse at all.  Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off.  I pulled out my watch and timed it.  I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute.  I tried to feel my heart.  I could not feel my heart.  It had stopped beating.  I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it.  I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back.  But I could not feel or hear anything.  I tried to look at my tongue.  I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other.  I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever.

 I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man.  I crawled out a decrepit wreck. 

WebMD has a brilliant niche, convincing the healthy they have tumors.

At least you can get your annual physical, which provides some level of comfort despite its huge level of discomfort while it endures. But so many people would rather follow my own instinct and bail on it.

One of the great myths of modern policy is that preventive care saves everybody money. As one doctor put it in the Wall Street Journal some years ago:

Prevention is a good thing to do, but why equate it with saving money when it won’t? Think about this: discovering high cholesterol in a person who is feeling well, is really just discovering a risk factor and not a disease; it predicts that you have a greater chance of having a heart attack than someone with a normal cholesterol. Now you can reduce the probability of a heart attack by swallowing a statin, and it will make good sense for you personally, especially if you have other risk factors (male sex, smoking etc.). But if you are treating a population, keep in mind that you may have to treat several hundred people to prevent one heart attack. Using a statin costs about $150,000 for every year of life it saves in men, and even more in women (since their heart-attack risk is lower)—I don’t see the savings there.

The problem comes in turning medicine into a policy rather than a personal responsibility. I want you to go get yourself checked out not because I think it will save me tax dollars, but because it will save you money and may save you from an early death.

You are obviously a reader with discerning taste, being on this blog, and we need more of you around. Take care of yourself and enjoy your life. And don't check every little symptom on WebMD; that housemaid's knee is not a malignant knee tumor, trust me.

Little tiny wishbone.

The wishbone on a Cornish game hen is extremely small, so only little tiny wishes can be made on it. With a turkey wishbone you could wish to win the lottery; with a chicken wishbone, maybe a scratch-off; with a Cornish game hen wishbone, maybe that you'll find a sawbuck on the street.

What little tiny wishes are appropriate for a game hen wishbone?

• sick enough for day off, not sick enough to ruin it
• spontaneous resolution of cable box problems 
• tires hold out for another year
• daughter will make Girl Scout Cookie sales quota
• death to crabgrass!
• boss will take an extra week of vacation
• no Spice Girls reunion
• hangnail remedy
• movie you picked for family movie night will not bore you, embarrass children, give grandma coronary
• lustrous hair for prom
• discovery of lost file cabinet key 
• son will stop putting baseball cap on backward
• really cute pair of shoes for prom too (better eat another hen)
• Kardashians shuffle off to well-deserved obscurity (all right, that's chicken-size, but worth a try)
• Jets won't 100% suck this year

Good stuff from a game hen wishbone, but small stuff. Now an ostrich wishbone---now you're talking stuff.

Murder and mayhem -- candy edition.

This is an atrocity for two major reasons.

1. IT IS JULY 26, or it was when I took this picture. COME ON, PEOPLE. If you can't wait until at least Labor Day for your stupid Halloween-themed chocolate, how the hell are you going to teach your children to wait until Christmas to open presents, until 21 to start drinking, until marriage to have babies? It may seem like no big deal, but these are the symptoms of our national return to infancy. Patience is a hallmark of maturity.

2. Not that this looks like it's worth waiting for, anyway. Candy-corn flavored white chocolate M&M's? I'm a seeker of sugar and a knockover for novelty, but this is just stupid. Still, Mrs. Key likes candy corn in small doses (she has unusual taste, as my presence in the home confirms). But then, she doesn't like white chocolate. I like white chocolate, but dislike candy corn. You lose on both counts, Red!

I've actually gotten into it with this supermarket chain for being first out with the Halloween crap in the past. Late July is three months! before Halloween. A quarter of the year! They apologized and continued to do it anyway. They wouldn't if we didn't buy it.

I don't know if manufacturers embargo this stuff until---oh, maybe August 1? But I was in Walmart that same day and I didn't see any Halloween stuff. Halloween is almost a hundred days from now!

The Back-To-School stuff has been out for a week or so, sure, but for some students that is less than a month away.

Well, maybe that's a backdoor way to teach children patience. Rushing to Halloween means no more summer. Happy now, kids?