Monday, August 30, 2010

Any Way You Slice It

Buzzing down the Facial Care/Skin Care/Body Lotion aisle on my way to make a quick prescription pick up for my mom in the local drugstore, I stop, take a couple of steps backward, and confirm that there is a display of egg slicers stuck amongst the inventory of beauty aids.

"Display" may be a bit of an exaggeration. Actually, the egg slicers were hanging by a strip of clips, the way lunch-size bags of chips are near the cash register at a sandwich shop. I didn't and still don't get the connection. Is this an intentional merchandising ploy or the result of "corporate" not understanding the unique market demographic of a California beach community?

I forget what we were scouting down, but one time my sister and I were in a mega-supermarket and in the Feminine Hygiene aisle was a strip of clips holding candy bars. Some of the clips were empty, unlike the egg slicers. That attempt at subliminal marketing I understood.

The egg slicers, I'm still scratching my head over. Maybe it is related to the recent salmonella recall.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Eat, Pray, Be Jealous

I read "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert back when it had a seat on bestseller lists and book clubs everywhere were discussing it. The only thing I didn't like about the book is that I didn't write it first. Oh, I suppose I could nitpick a bit and come up with another item or two that I didn't like, but why bother.

Now the movie is set to debut and I find I'm still really bummed that I wasn't the one who first wrote "Eat, Pray, Love." So forgive me if I sound a little jealous and petty, but you know what kind of bugs me? The fact that the movie, ipso facto the book, is described as "one woman's year-long solo trip around the globe."

Didn't the author go to Italy, India, and Bali? That is three countries, not around the globe. And, yes, I know, Bali is not a country -- Indonesia is the country. In fact, didn't she fly from the east coast of the United States to Italy and return to the U.S. before heading out to India then Bali? That makes it even less so "around the globe."

As they are with math, American schoolchildren are famously bad at geography. I expect more from movie and book reviewers and the marketing people at Sony Pictures. Could be I'm not remembering the book's itinerary so well. Maybe my jealousy is clouding my memory.