Lovely thing is, it's your choice in the audience. Someone may tell you they are perfectly fine-- how many times have you heard that? But you get to vote with your feet and your seat.

Reminds me of the time Hardi and I watched Emeril tank up during a cooking show. We loved that show, watched it every night, laughed our asses off. And we loved Emeril. Until the night he did a show on "cooking with spirits" and sampled quite a bit of each item as it went into the recipes. You could see it all go past the point of acceptable fun right before your eyes.

We don't like it anymore-- it wasn't that he got loaded, heck-- we have a time or two. But it's not OK with me that he had that show aired, after seeing it all edited, sober. It's not OK with me that the producers expected viewers and the children in the live audience to laugh along with the funny, funny man. It's not OK with me that a kind, funny, talented man was marketed and then a mean, stupid-sounding man was put up in his place as though nothing was different. It was the craziness factor, not that he was having a few.

It was that we were expected to endorse what should have been regretted. Because we had not signed up to get loaded together at a party. We had signed up to learn some recipes, and maybe let our mouths water a bit with anticipated good tastes.

Whatever someone tells you about the shape they are in-- it's your OWN gut you need to hear loudest, even if you or someone else thinks you are being completely silly.

Women in particular are conditioned by our society (by mom's and other women's expectations as much as dad's and other men's), to ignore that uh-oh feeling, to stay in a situation to figure it out, go along until you can HELP of FIX what seems off. Don't ignore it. It's what your body was designed to be guided by. It's what keeps you as safe as you can be in dark city streets, what keeps you from getting into a drunk-driven car, what keeps you from hooking up with the worst nightmare of your life.

It's what keeps you from letting someone enter your heart through the powerful force of music and then leave you with a bad taste all through your soul.

Do you want that bad taste associated in your mind with, of all things, music? I don't.

~S~