Things that blew my mind this week

1. By now, you have probably already seen this piece about a NJ mother who brought her daughter tanning. It's trending on Facebook and a lead story on Yahoo. Of course the obvious main theme is that taking your kid tanning equals bad parenting but why aren't more people talking about the mom's face? Holy tanorexic!

2. One of the gems of being off of work to recover from my minor surgery is a plethora of free time to watch lots of tv. How has no one told me about the channel "Hub Tv" yet? It's an 80's baby's dream come true. Today, alone, I watched The Facts of Life, Fraggle Rock, My Little Pony, Pound Puppies and Strawberry Shortcake. Ok, the last three are remakes and didn't totally do it for me because I wanted the real thing. But Facts of Life was enlightening. It was like an experiment in tv evolution. They spelled the message they wanted me to learn out and then shouted it at me. No subtlety at all. But did I still almost shed a tear? But of course. Yet to come? Wonder Years is being DVRd in the very near future. Oh, and they are showing Gremlins 2 as their Saturday night movie.

3. Another treasure I stumbled upon is Total Black Out on the SyFy. While I discovered that I completely detest host Jaleel White and he annoyed me pretty much every time he spoke, this was a wonderful combination of hilarious and scary. It's like fear factor to the nth degree. Four contestants begin and the first challenge is to individually go into a pitch black room and stick your hand into four containers and identify what you are touching. Rats and snakes are not out of the question. They learn who is eliminated by all jumping on a platform, one of which gives way and dumps the person down a black hole. Awesome.
The next round is smells. The three remaining players have to go up to holes in glass, sniff things and identify them. What would be the worst thing you could imagine sniffing? Now imagine you are doing that in the dark, through a hole, while being filmed to air to the world. Yup, that happened. A man bent over on the other side of the glass with a hole cut out of his spandex and the contestants walked up to the hole and inhaled. Interestingly, everyone got that one. Other smells to identify included hard boiled eggs off someones breath, dirty socks, and shoe polish.

4. Commercials. Those smoking commercials about stomas are clearly effective as they really disgust me each and every time I see them. More amusing are the Michael Jordan commercials on Sports Center with which my husband is obsessed.(Yes, I just changed that line to be grammatically correct even though a normal human would never say it that way. Unless that person was a professor in England because I think they have different rules).  It follows a plain, boring man named Michael Jordan as he interacts with people who know his name and, thus, expect the celebrity.

5. Did you know on Conan's show when they show a website on the bottom of the screen they actually show a picture of Guns and Roses' Slash's face instead of putting in the "/" slash? He is just so cool. His cousin taught me a government class in high school, btw.

6. Which reminds me...I got the most noteworthy text of my life this week. A friend sent me a text to let me know she was at a party with Meryl Streep!! Really?? Her hubby is in an Off Broadway play in NYC and the post opening night party. But really, who goes to party where Meryl Streep shows up? My friend, evidently.