"Audience Participation Cues for the My Dinner with Andre Midnight Screening."

When those "Rocky Horror" events leave you feeling empty and questioning your very existence, it's time to move on to the Andre scene...

When André tells the story of his attempt to workshop a production of The Little Prince, and how he found himself eating sand in the Sahara desert with a Buddhist monk, eat some sand.

Throw a banana at the screen every time André mentions his wife Chiquita....

When André and Wally discuss the lamentable state of the theater and wonder if it’s possible to create a theatrical experience that would shake people out of their complacency, ask yourself: Is attending this screening/performance of My Dinner With André making you less complacent, or does it allow you to wrap yourself in yet another protective layer of ironic detachment? Is endlessly reenacting My Dinner With André a way for members of The MDWA Midnight Madness Troupe to hide behind a mask of performance and avoid exposing who we really are? Are we really saying anything with this show, or is it just an excuse for people to get drunk and dress up on a Friday night?

Treat yourself to a nice amaretto when Wally orders an after-dinner drink....

"Can I give it to my monkey?"

This is the essence of what Andrew Sullivan presents under the heading "Hathos Alert."

"A few days after reviews began appearing, [Naomi] Wolf set sliced bananas and strawberries upon a coffee table (cut fruit had never before looked so vulval)..."

"... and took a seat on the deep, plush couch in the yellow-painted living room of her sunny West Village apartment. She was wearing a flowing black wrap over a loose knit tank, tan strappy heels and a tight smile."

Catty observations on the food, the decorating, and the fashion of the famous feminist who opened her home — if not her vagina — to the NYT reporter.

Flowing black wrap and a loose knit tank... you know what that means! Naomi is striving to put her vagina in the newspaper, and mean old Lauren Sandler is calling her fat in so many words.

This dog whistle whistles both ways.

"New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd set the Jewish political community on fire [Sunday] with a column about the Republican ticket's foreign policy proposals that, according to her critics, peddled anti-Semitic imagery," reports Politico.

You know all the racist things Republicans are always saying, as seen by Democrats? It's like that.

"Maureen may not know this, but she is peddling an old stereotype, that gentile leaders are dolts unable to resist the machinations and manipulations of clever and snake-like Jews," Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic columnist and leading journalist on Israeli issues, wrote.

Snake-like... because the title of the article is "Neocons Slither Back." Dowd may not write the headline, and though she does use the word "slither" in her text, she's quoting Paul Wolfowitz, and he was saying that Obama shouldn't be allowed to "slither through" without having to take — Dowd's words here — "a clear position on liberals."

Dowd proceeds to say "Republicans are bananas on this one." Of course, if a Republican said Obama was bananas, that Republican would probably be accused of racism, because bananas remind us of monkeys, and the monkey is an animal that is associated with some racist iconography, and it's assumed that anything you say about the President is said while thinking about his race — which makes it conveniently/absurdly dangerous to criticize the President.



You can see why those who support Romney are tempted to scare his critics the same way. I'd recommend resisting this temptation. At some point, there really is anti-Semitism even where the text never says "Jewish." (I still think the Michael Moore movie "Capitalism: A Love Story" was trading in anti-Semitism.) Call it when you really see it, but be careful. You want to preserve your credibility — if not for its own sake — at least for the purpose of calling out your opponents when they cry racism (or some other unaccepted ism) and you think it's not there. The other option is to say "racism," "anti-Semism," etc. so often that no one cares about any analysis in that category anymore.

And by the way, if we're going to look at Dowd's imagery, we should look at all of it. She says "[Dan] Senor got out over his skis before Romney’s speech in Jerusalem..." I had to check Wikipedia to be sure that Senor is Jewish. He is. But skiing? Isn't the stereotype about Jews that they don't ski? I did my Google research on this. (Google is a wonderful way to check for the existence of a stereotype. Go ahead and try it to see what's been said about Jews and snakes or black people and monkeys.) Weeding out the articles about Jewish names ending in -ski, I found many references to the stereotype that Jews don't ski. The Ski Channel has an item titled "Yes, Jews Do Ski, Thank You":

I’m continuing my desire to rid the world of skiing stereotypes. Growing up, I always asked my parents why we didn’t take more ski trips. My mother always had a few excuses, but there’s one that stuck with me. “Well, honey, skiing isn’t a very Jewish sport.”.Hmm? I’m sorry? What is a Jewish sport? Bobbing for Matzoh balls?

And here's a Buddy Hackett routine on the Jews-don't-ski theme. ("I told her, 'Jews don't ski. Jews play pinochle and say, 'Helen, bring fruit.'") You know a stereotype is in place, when it's used as a basis for jokes like that.

Some things aren't funny at all, and some comedy is used to mask pain and anger, but let's calm down, be discerning, and keep some humor as we try to slither through the complicated problems strewn in our path by some obvious enemies who can't even think of laughing off that inept "Innocence of the Muslims" YouTube video.

"And if the elevator tries to bring you down/Go crazy (Punch a higher floor!)."

Prince lyric, which just occurred to me in the context of the feminist-in-the-elevator-at-the-atheist-convention incident. Prince was telling us to live now, because we're all going to die, which he sometimes said clearly — "You better live now/Before the grim reaper come knocking on your door" — and sometimes said absurdly — "Let's look for the purple banana/Until they put us in the truck." He also expressed a clear belief in the afterlife. ("In this life/Things are much harder than in the afterworld/In this life/You're on your own.") He's no atheist. How he behaves in an actual in-this-life elevator, as opposed to a metaphorical elevator, I have no idea. I bet he silently occupies his corner and avoids eye contact, in classic elevator etiquette, and waits for his floor.

Sorry I can't link to a Prince "Let's Go Crazy" video. Prince is super-possessive about his songs and doesn't appreciate the value of letting people like Althouse win him new fans. So here's 1. Beck, "Elevator Music" and 2. Eminem, "Elevator." Beck says:

All the dudes with banjos
Chicks with wicks
Animals with bananas...

Eminem says:

That’s a no no who even she knows dada’s f-cking crazy
Fucking animal, cookoo, bananas, fucking AP

Whether those are purple bananas, I don't know.

ADDED: Actually, for now, at least, here's Prince, "Let's Go Crazy."

AND: For the sake of completeness, there is at least one more elevator/banana song.

"How Bad Are Bananas?"

"The Carbon Footprint of Everything."

Oh, the carbon footprint... What a diverse range of possibilities ran through my head when I saw the question "How Bad Are Bananas?" And how dreary the reality: The carbon footprint. Of everything.

The scary fruit salad.

Look what Meade made!



(For full enjoyment, enlarge.)

A Meadhouse counterscape.

(Enlarge.)

"Socialized medicine redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in all the wrong ways..."

"... and, if you cross that bridge, it's all but impossible to go back. So, if ever there were a season for GOP philanderers not to unpeel their bananas, this summer is it."

Mark Steyn opines on Gov. Sanford's unfortunate foray into Argentina and more.

"I believe in God and Senator Dodd."

I read the opening lines of Calvin Trillin's op-ed -- written in June 2006, but featured on the NYT website this morning as an op-ed "classic":

MY excitement at the news that Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, is considering a bid for president in 2008 is easy to explain: his name has enormous rhyming potential. We all have our own issues.

And it took me back to the 60s, when Dodd's dad was a Senator and Phil Ochs used the line I've put in my title in "Draft Dodger Rag," which you can listen to here or buy the album "I Ain't Marching Anymore." Lyrics here:

Oh, I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd and a-keepin' old Castro down
And when it came my time to serve I knew "better dead than red"
But when I got to my old draft board, buddy, this is what I said....

The original "chicken hawk" song (I think).

But the subject is poetry and names. Trillin has made his career in part out of writing light verse with a high proportion of famous names:

Someone in my position tends to see Ross Perot and John McCain as two peas in a pod — blessedly iambic candidates with nearly unlimited rhyming possibilities. During my 16 years in the deadline poetry game, though, we've had nobody with a name like Ross Perot or John McCain in the White House. I've had to deal with presidents whose names are an affront to rhyme and meter. Given the rhyming difficulties of Bill Clinton's name, in fact, I believe future historians will think of him as the "orange" of American presidents.

I think of him as the banana of Presidents, but it's all a matter of how you look at things.

Just the other day, in this comments thread to that post about whether lawprofs should call students by their first names, we got to talking about the poetic limitations of some names. I said: "[T]here are no pop songs about 'Ann.' Actually, there are few pop songs with one-syllable names."

With this, Pogo proved me wrong and exposed my inadequate knowledge of the 1960s, to which I'll plead guilty, eschewing the defense that if you can remember, you weren't there.

I looked into your cool cool eyes
I felt so fine, I felt so fine
I floated in your swimming pools
I felt so weak, I felt so blue

If you want to rhyme, rhyme. If you don't, don't. ← inferred Stooge theory of poetry.

Back to Trillin, who despite his name, didn't sing his lyrics (as far as I know). Trillin's had trouble with the current administration:

At times George W. Bush has seemed interested in making my life easier. He must have known before the appointments were made, for instance, that Condoleezza Rice's name fits exactly into the meter of "The March of the Siamese Children" from "The King and I" ("Condoleezza Rice, who is cold as ice, is precise with her advice") and that Alberto Gonzales rhymes with "loyal über alles."

And he fretted over the names coming up in 2008:

In my more pessimistic contemplations of the 2008 campaign, I see myself telling some political operative that I've made my peace with the possibility that the Democrats, desperate for some charisma, could turn to Barack Obama — a man whose rhymes I long ago used up in trying to deal with Osama bin Laden.

"But Obama's not the only Illinois contender," the operative says. "There's also the governor."

"The governor?"

"The governor," he repeats. "Rod Blagojevich."

Okay, then. Let's see the poems. Roll out your "-itch" words, you bitch.

IN THE COMMENTS: JohnJEnright composes this:

He desired the joy
of being rich.

He devised a ploy,
but it hit a hitch.

Weep, Illinois,
for Blagojevich.

AND: More commenters are itching for frontpaging. First, bearbee:

Blagojevich
Chicago jock itch
Who tried to get rich
By auditioning off a niche
And ended in an FBI hitch
Now when will he turn and snitch

And Palladian (presumably sung to the tune of "The Munchkin Song"):

Blagojevich, you bitch,
Will scratch you where you itch
and name you to the Senate seat that Barry O did ditch.

But wait! Hold on!
There's just a little hitch!
A Senate seat is valuable! He's trying to get rich.

So here's the pitch!
Pay up you fucking bitch!
And just forget Pat Fitz and Lisa Madigan, that witch!

Blago-jevich!
Payola is his niche!
A suitcase full of unmarked bills, nobody's gonna snitch!

But who will stop
this monumental kitsch?
Corruption that would cause even Jack Abramoff to twitch!

Fitch? No, Fitz!
in a prosecutor blitz
will smash the Illinois machine to tiny little bits!

Talk about Thanksgiving... or anything...

... at the Paper Bird Café.

Deflated Canadian art-prank on Texas.

Canadian artist Cesar Saez proposed to build at 300-meter banana that would float in the air... in Texas. He needed over a million dollars to do this and the Canada Council for the Arts granted him $55,000. Since he was never able to raise the rest of the money — duh! — he never has to build the banana, and he gets to keep the $55,000.

When asked about this failed banana investment, Carole Breton, of the Canada Council, explained, "We understand that sometimes, for all sorts of reasons, there is no creation at the end . . . this is money for research, not for results."

ADDED: Bonus, only slightly related video:

"Brave New World" or "1984" — "Which template would win"?

We used to wonder, Margaret Atwood writes.

During the cold war, Nineteen Eighty-Four seemed to have the edge. But when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, pundits proclaimed the end of history, shopping reigned triumphant, and there was already lots of quasi-soma percolating through society. True, promiscuity had taken a hit from Aids, but on balance we seemed to be in for a trivial, giggly, drug-enhanced spend-o-rama: Brave New World was winning the race.

That picture changed, too, with the attack on New York's twin towers in 2001. Thoughtcrime and the boot grinding into the human face could not be got rid of so easily, after all. The Ministry of Love is back with us, it appears, though it's no longer limited to the lands behind the former iron curtain: the west has its own versions now.

On the other hand, Brave New World hasn't gone away. Shopping malls stretch as far as the bulldozer can see. On the wilder fringes of the genetic engineering community, there are true believers prattling of the gene-rich and the gene-poor - Huxley's alphas and epsilons - and busily engaging in schemes for genetic enhancement and - to go one better than Brave New World - for immortality.

Atwood's fear: We get both.

Read the whole thing.

I especially like the part about how she, as a 14 year old girl, struggled to understand Huxley, who wrote things like:

"Zip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the right foot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as though deflated on the floor."

(Here's the line in it's chapter, which includes this sex talk: "'Hug me till you drug me, honey.'...'Kiss me till I'm in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly …'")

She asks:

[H]ow close have we come, in real life, to the society of vapid consumers, idle pleasure-seekers, inner-space trippers and programmed conformists that it presents?...

We wish to be as the careless gods, lying around on Olympus, eternally beautiful, having sex and being entertained by the anguish of others. And at the same time we want to be those anguished others, because we believe... that life has meaning beyond the play of the senses, and that immediate gratification will never be enough.

"I don't want an egg at this hour."

ADDED: It's always a Fellini film chez Althouse. We're watching this one.

MORE: Martin Scorsese has this in today's NYT:

[Michelangelo Antonioni's] “L’Avventura” gave me one of the most profound shocks I’ve ever had at the movies, greater even than ... “La Dolce Vita.” At the time there were two camps, the people who liked the Fellini film and the ones who liked “L’Avventura.” I knew I was firmly on Antonioni’s side of the line, but if you’d asked me at the time, I’m not sure I would have been able to explain why. I loved Fellini’s pictures and I admired “La Dolce Vita,” but I was challenged by “L’Avventura.” Fellini’s film moved me and entertained me, but Antonioni’s film changed my perception of cinema, and the world around me, and made both seem limitless. (It was two years later when I caught up with Fellini again, and had the same kind of epiphany with “8 ½.”)...

I crossed paths with Antonioni a number of times over the years....

But it was his images that I knew, much better than the man himself. Images that continue to haunt me, inspire me. To expand my sense of what it is to be alive in the world.

I'm in the Fellini camp -- can we go to a place called Fellini Camp? -- where the images continue to haunt me and inspire me and expand my sense of what it is to eat an egg or a banana.

AND: Right under Scorsese's piece, Woody Allen writes about Antonioni's death partner, Ingmar Bergman:

To meet him was not to suddenly enter the creative temple of a formidable, intimidating, dark and brooding genius who intoned complex insights with a Swedish accent about man’s dreadful fate in a bleak universe. It was more like this: “Woody, I have this silly dream where I show up on the set to make a film and I can’t figure out where to put the camera; the point is, I know I am pretty good at it and I have been doing it for years. You ever have those nervous dreams?” or “You think it will be interesting to make a movie where the camera never moves an inch and the actors just enter and exit frame? Or would people just laugh at me?”...

I learned from his example to try to turn out the best work I’m capable of at that given moment, never giving in to the foolish world of hits and flops or succumbing to playing the glitzy role of the film director, but making a movie and moving on to the next one. Bergman made about 60 films in his lifetime, I have made 38. At least if I can’t rise to his quality maybe I can approach his quantity.

Because, among other things, size matters:






That's from "Sleeper," and note that Woody Allen also made a film called "Bananas."

Now, let's compare two men -- Woody Allen and Marcello Mastroianni -- as they encounter the banana:





It's true that Woody has the bigger banana, but I'm going with Marcello!

AND: The weirdest part of it is that Woody Allen has a movie that is entirely about a recipe for egg salad!

Purple or banana-like.

Two orchids. Which one do you prefer?





That says so much about you.

Me, I have a strong preference. I suppose it's easy to tell.

"If I do discriminate, it's that I only want healthy, intelligent people."

If you accept a woman choosing her sperm donor, and if you accept a woman choosing which embryo left over from someone else's fertility treatment to have implanted, will you draw the line at the deliberate creation of an embryo from an egg and sperm donor of the woman's choice?

Before contracting for the embryos, clients can evaluate the egg and sperm donors, and can even see pictures of them as babies, children and sometimes adults....

"People have long warned we were moving toward a 'Brave New World,' " said Robert P. George of Princeton University, who serves on the President's Council on Bioethics. "This is just more evidence that we haven't been able to restrain this move towards treating human life like a commodity. This buying and selling of eggs and sperm and now embryos based on IQ points and PhDs and other traits really moves us in the direction of eugenics."...

"People can say, 'Oh, this is the new Hitler.' That's not the case," [said Jennalee Ryan of the Abraham Center of Life.] "I don't take orders. I say 'This is what I have' and send them the background. If they don't think it's right for them, they don't have to take them."...

"If I do discriminate, it's that I only want healthy, intelligent people," Ryan said. "People will say, 'You're trying to create the perfect human race.' But we've always done gene selection just by who women choose as their husbands and men choose as their wives. This is no different."

When you choose a husband or wife, you're picking the person you want to live with, not just the genetic material. If you've married, how much did you think about the quality of the genetic material you could procure for your offspring? But then, what genetic qualities would you select for your children that you wouldn't care about having in your adult companion? And are there some things you want in your spouse that you'd reject if you knew it was in that embryo you're about to have implanted?

I suppose the fact that I wrote those questions first reveals that I'm not especially concerned about this new step in reproductive technology. The cry of "eugenics" always goes up, but what are the people who raise it really worrying about? Not the return of the Nazis. It's all-too-convenient the way the Nazis pop up to assist in making the argument you already wanted to make. The real objection is to reproductive choice. Once you have disaggregated reproduction from the full human relationship between the parents, what makes you want to draw the line here? Perhaps your objection is nothing more than resentment that only rich people get to fulfill this preference. If so, who are you to intrude on their private life?

One argument against this new practice is that there are so many embryos left over from infertility treatments and that these embryos should be implanted instead. But, as noted in the article, those leftover embryos are made from the eggs of woman who: 1. is older, and 2. has a fertility problem. It still seems more charitable and unselfish to choose them, but does that make it wrong to want better? We have a sense -- don't we? -- that parenthood means an open acceptance of whatever child happens to arrive and that the desire to be selective reveals that one has not met the parenthood ideal.

The contrast between “Brave New World” and “1984,” the nature of Ophelia’s madness in “Hamlet,” and the theme of colonialism in "Lord Jim."

I love the hilarious obviousness of the paper topics chosen to test those on-line paper-writing services. Guess what? The papers they write for you are incredibly crappy.

Stephen Greenblatt, a Shakespeare scholar at Harvard and a confessed “soft touch,” said the grade he would give [the Ophelia] paper “would depend, at least to some extent, on whether I thought I was reading the work of a green freshman — in which case I would probably give it a D+ and refer the student to the writing lab for counseling — or an English major, in which case I would simply fail it.”

He added: “If I had paid for this, I would demand my money back.”

Hmmm... yeah, but you're thinking, I don't go to Harvard. Maybe I can still get by with it.

I hope teachers have a lot of ways to deal with the problem. Students who aren't cheating also write bad papers. It's not enough for students to know the web-bought papers will be fairly bad. They may be rather sure the paper they'd have to write would also be bad.

It's also not enough to use plagiarism detection search engines:

Thanks to search engines like Google, college instructors have become adept at spotting those shop-worn, downloadable papers that circulate freely on the Web, and can even finger passages that have been ripped off from standard texts and reference works.

A grade-conscious student these days seems to need a custom job, and to judge from the number of services on the Internet, there must be virtual mills somewhere employing armies of diligent scholars who grind away so that credit-card-equipped undergrads can enjoy more carefree time together.

At least these search engines are causing the papers to get worse. If students know that -- and I'm trying to help here -- that's a disincentive.

One thing I would recommend to teachers is having paper topics that are very closely tied to the idiosyncratic way the material was presented in class, so that a researcher outside of the class (including a student who skipped class) would not be able to handle it properly.

Another alternative is to base the grade on a proctored exam, which is what I do. Even where the exam is open book, you can ask a question that is not generic, that is tied to the way the material was discussed in class, and that presents a specific question that cannot be anticipated beforehand. And then you have to have the nerve to grade so that only writing that answers the question can receive credit. That's my technique.

Heavenly blue, crimson rambler and pearly gates...

The retro-hippies of today are hitting the morning glory seeds. Electrical banana is bound to be the very next phase.

"Taking a shower, washing your hair, drinking cold water, opening the window, watching television and even reading a book."

Things not to do after having a baby.

For my part, I refused to be a prisoner to tradition and blithely ignored these taboos. And Dong Ayi did not exactly complain when I took a shower or opened the window or drank iced water.

She would just fix me with a baleful glare... a silent warning of the error of my ways....

Food was another small battleground over which we skirmished.

The Chinese firmly believe that certain foods are beneficial after childbirth, particularly purple rice porridge with dates, pig trotter soup and black chicken broth.

On one memorable occasion, my in-laws even produced deep-fried pork-fat soup, which was surprisingly good.

The problem was that Dong Ayi firmly opposed my favourite foods: namely coffee, chocolate and bananas.

"Not for breastfeeding mothers," she said, banning them from my diet, "they're bad for Daniel's health."

I took the route of least resistance and meekly agreed, though I would visit friends' houses for clandestine coffee and secret bananas.

Even if the rules seem absurd, they do serve many purposes. Look at how these rules intricately connected the new mother to her traditional culture, enforced elaborate special care for the mother, and guaranteed an extended celebration of the arrival of the baby. Of course, the modern new mother can resist and make fun, but at the same time, she appreciates the beauty and function of the traditional ways.

"'I'm sorry, I was hungry' has become a culturally acceptable way to apologize for brusque behavior."

Oh, yeah? Or is this just another topic the NYT editors discovered by reading blogs and whipped into an article that could seem to be about a new topic and then just happen to have a hip blogging angle?

In an age of electronic navel gazing, when people blog about their every emotion, the hunger-mood connection has been able to be fully expressed and, one might say, feed on itself. Thousands have told their cranky hunger stories online, from a famished driver who admitted to cursing at other motorists, to a woman who wrote that her honeymoon might have been an affair to forget had she not packed snacks.

I mean, I can't complain if this is their methodology. My main methodology is to read the NYT and find things to talk about. And then I can weave in some bloggish critique of the dreaded MSM.

But about this new social trend of adults excusing themselves for the babyish weakness of losing control when hungry:

A new vocabulary has evolved around victual despair, with the afflicted referring to their nasty moods as "food swings." Those who say their hunger frequently morphs into anger describe themselves as "hangry." And the word "hunger" itself seems to have taken on new meaning. No longer merely a physiological state, it is now also thought of as a mood....

Some people use their hunger as a verbal Get Out of Jail Free card. "Maybe I kind of enjoy the excuse to be cranky," said Fernanda Gilligan, a 28-year-old photo editor from Manhattan.

Yet many mercurial eaters do not stop at words. They try to control hunger-provoked dramas by scheduling their lives around their next meal. They stock drawers, purses and briefcases as if they were kitchen cupboards to ensure that sustenance is always within reach. For some, a granola bar has become as essential as a cellphone.

Anna Yarbrough, 26, a teacher in Boston, squirrels away nibble-friendly fare like string cheese, pretzels, apples and trail mix in her purse and desk drawer. If she and her husband have late dinner reservations, she snacks beforehand. A recent trip to a Celtics game required eating before tipoff and again when she got home. On her wedding day in October she was relieved to learn that there would be food at the hair salon.

Oh, lord, these people sound annoying. Do you have a cute slang term for getting cranky when people impose too much information about their private physical needs on you? (And do you have a cute slang term for getting cranky at the gratuitous mention of squirrels?)

Finally, there's the male-female angle:

In general men do not seem to suffer hunger-related moods as frequently as women do, or at least they are not as likely to admit it....

But why would more women than men be afflicted? "Offhand I can't think of any good, sound biological reason," Dr. Saltzman said. He speculated that the people who say they have food swings are eating smaller meals and therefore need to eat more frequently or that "psychologically they may have a lower threshold" for hunger.

Lisa Sasson, a clinical assistant professor in New York University's department of nutrition, food studies and public health, said weight consciousness might explain why more women report hunger-related moodiness.....

Dr. Saltzman said food swings may be harder to conquer if they are based not on physical hunger but on "emotional hunger," which is triggered by stress, sadness, depression or even boredom. Emotional hunger is harder to satisfy, he said, because "you can eat and overeat and still not feel sated."

[Blogger] Cherie Millns [writes] "My mother told my husband before we got married to make sure he always carried a banana with him, in case of a sudden cranky-pants emergency," Ms. Millns wrote. "It might just save his life."

"Cranky-pants"? Banana? I find that imagery distracting. But anyway, what's wrong with these people? It's one thing to get hungry and to deal with it by eating something, but it's quite another to make a conspicuous production out of it or, worse, to let it become a major issue in your love relationships. And to have your mother tell your husband how to care for you in the very way you'd care for a toddler? Is this really what's going on around America in 2005?