Tag: MGM

Can You Reach This Please?

“They got little baby legs And they stand so low You got to pick ’em up Just to say hello…” Randy Newman song Short People

There seems to be a problem in grocery and big-box stores and I’m not talking about the fact that a cantaloupe is more expensive than a Ferrari.

In a world where people are obsessed with inclusion and every other feeling known to humans and nonhumans, it seems rather impossible that a certain portion of the population is overlooked. They are under helped and as unseen as a woman over fifty in Los Angeles. I’m talking of course about the enormous amount of vertically challenged people.

Yes, those who are short and getting shorter every year. The ones who have a problem with height issues that preclude them from reaching shelves in grocery and big box stores.

The short and constantly reaching can’t access food or merchandise they seek without waiting for a tall person to walk down their aisle. Even finding a sales or stock person to help you is a feat of gigantic proportion today.

Why does the food that I always want have to be on a shelf only the Jolly Green Giant could reach?

Would it be so awful to put the organic cream cheese on a lower shelf? Try reaching for a bottle on a shelf so high it makes Mars seem close.

Oddly, many of these foods are not inconsequential. Some I have found difficult to obtain have been necessary products. The other day, I searched in vain for a container of whipping cream and it was on a top shelf. Cream, honestly? And the dairy shelves are not easy to manuever. They are slanted and covered so you can’t really get close enough to stretch and reach. Could the stores make it any harder for us short people to shop?

Walking around Costco I always think of Chicken Little’s warning, the sky is falling…

In Costco you are in fear of sofas, rugs, canned goods and caramel corn falling from those top shelves. Those boxes loom large overhead. Carefully you stroll through the aisles hoping to be able to get out of there without mortgaging your house to pay. But that’s another blog.

What can a short person do when shopping to reach those items so far out of reach?

It’s almost embarrassing having to stand around waiting for a tall person to get down a brick of gouda.

Should we carry a step stool in our tote? Or perhaps the grocery stores could occasionally shift the order of how high the food is. Like putting things nobody eats on the top shelves. That might be a novel idea. Try spelt, whatever that is.

Getting older is fraught with issues no one wants to admit or deal with. We walk into rooms and forget why. Suddenly foods turn against us that have been friends our entire lives. Our metabolism retires and moves to Boca Raton while we are still craving a piece of carrot cake. We need to keep turning the heat up in the house because it’s so damn cold.

And to have to be reminded every time one goes shopping that we are shrinking even more, well that’s just cruel.

Maybe someone could invent a pair of shoes that has a button on the side, It cranks up a ladder on your soles that adds five inches to your height. Or maybe special shopping lifts you insert when you need them. Like MGM used to do with Paul Newman and all the leading men who were five five or shorter.

Many short women wear platform shoes or high heels and this helps a bit. I wouldn’t know since my feet banned me from wearing any heels or platforms in 1999.

It’s also very obvious the candy, baked goods, chips and junk food is located on only the middle and lowest shelves. Easy to see, easy to grab.

I find it particularly annoying that some of the things I need, like spices, are on shelves too high to read the small print on these products.

Hello, do I also need a telescope to shop now?

I know everyone who is normal or tall height out there is saying, “I have no idea what she’s talking about. It all seems pretty reachable to me.”

You’re wondering why I make an issue about such a minor thing as reaching groceries on high shelves.

It’s not a gigantic deal. But to someone who is shrinking yearly and was short to begin with, it’s another reminder that time is doing weird stuff to my body. I’m not happy about this state of events. I didn’t vote on this whole ouch-this-hurts-thing. Waking up in the morning is a bigger adventure than Indiana Jones when you find out there’s another mystery pain somewhere.

Yes, yes, I’m very lucky to be getting older and complaining about it isn’t going to change anything. But the whole shorter shelf thing has nothing to do with old. It’s a problem many stores face, but take no time to remedy. I’m sure many young vertically challenged people agree.

I’m sure if they organized the merchandise so there is more variety on the lower shelves it would help. Do you really need fifteen bags of miniature Milky Ways on the same shelf at all times?

I probably have too much time on my hands. I’m finding silly things like waiting for tall people in grocery stores to reach my merch to write about.

Just another tall person perk. They reach stuff, eat stuff and don’t gain weight. At least tall people fat has somewhere to go and spread out. I admit I have height envy, is there a group for that?

Hello, my name is Norma Zager and I’m short. You can’t see me? Well get me a chair to stand on for heaven’s sake.

Okay, so there is an upside to this tirade. I admit reaching a few less food items would probably be a good thing anyway.

Just trying to see the sunny side of life here. I’d drink some orange juice for my vitamin C and extra sunshine, but I couldn’t reach it…

If Only Life Was a Hallmark Movie

Unless you live on Mars, you or someone you know is watching Hallmark Christmas movies right now.

Men, women it doesn’t seem to matter, Hallmark has cornered the market on mushy and sentimental movies. By adding some fake snow, they cornered the Christmas market as well.

No wonder Hallmark starts its Christmas season in July.

Talk about the commercialization of Christmas!

Yet no one seems to mind.

There are of course other channels that run those schmaltzy two-hour tear jerkers, but Hallmark leads in finding the formula viewers will buy.

And formula is the operative word here.

It doesn’t matter to viewers that they are watching the same movie dressed in a new costume every time. They simply rehash the script, add some new Hallmark players as leads and viola. A new movie yeah, but not really.

We are all if nothing else creatures of habit. Hallmark, after selling us those syrupy cards our whole lives, knows what schmaltz we will embrace. And, of course in every Hallmark movie the embrace or Hallmark kiss as I call it, happens, wait for it, only at the end. There is usually an interrupted kiss somewhere along the line.

There is a definite formula that is followed to the letter in each movie. You can set your watch by it. Boy meets girl or now boy meets boy or girl meets girl, they dislike one another, or they click, both versions are available and lead to the same place. They fall in love, they solve a problem which depending on the season could be a pumpkin patch, strawberry field or school play problem. At Christmas there is a Santa Claus with nothing to do in December but help out one of the Hallmark players. So he makes Lacey Chabert or Jen Lilly fall in love with another player like Andrew Walker or Paul Campbell until it all falls apart. There is always a snippet of a conversation overheard and misunderstood, or a secret that should have been disclosed earlier that leads to a break up.

But rest assured all ends happy and the lovers reunite. The world is bright and then the Hallmark kiss at the end seals the deal.

It ain’t Shakespeare, but it sure seems to work.

Perhaps that’s why it does after all. The very fact we can count on every movie to end happy, have a Santa Claus to interfere, (because after all Santa has nowhere else to be at Christmas time), is actually a comfort of sorts. And there’s always holiday baking, tree trimming and a snowball fight to keep things real.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Royal movies where a prince or princess from some country ending in “ovia” falls in love despite his or her mother being dead set against a commoner in her palace. But of course in the end all is forgiven and crowns are placed on Hallmark stars’ heads.

There is no tension, no nail biting, no fear something is going to jump out and kill someone. Even the mysteries are charming and innocent. A woman, it’s always a woman, takes time out from catering, baking or running her flower shop to track down a killer. There is always a handsome cop to help her so no worries.

Oh sure they have become more inclusive, there is even a Chanukah movie or two with unlimited Yiddish words thrown in for good measure to ensure every base is covered.

So if we’ve seen every movie a thousand times, why do we keep watching? I’d have to vote on the fact it is so predictable that makes it so watchable.

Hallmark has not reinvented the wheel here. The Hallmark players, as I call them, are exactly the same as the contract actors Hollywood collected in the forties and fifties.

Stars were always attached to a major studio until later when they went rogue and became independent agents. Until then they cranked out movies every month or so. Actors like Bogart, June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracey and even Gable worked under contract to a major studio. An audience that attended an MGM musical could be certain Ann Miller would be tappy tapping alongside Bobby Van or Bob Fosse and Howard Keel would be belting out songs to leading ladies like Jane Powell or Katherine Grayson.

The familiarity and knowledge there would be no surprises brought audiences back again and again.

So is life like a Hallmark movie? No way and that’s why people watch them.

There is a kind of comfort in knowing that all will end well.

There are even humorous moments that seem to show up in certain Hallmark movies where actors kid one another and act like a family. It’s like the viewer is on the joke so we can laugh along.

Hallmark has latched onto a most seductive formula, certainty, escapism and optimism in an uncertain world.

And let’s not forget the pets. Dogs and cats are big in Hallmark world. Kittens and puppies populate the scene and nothing can lure you in faster than those adorable faces staring at you from a big screen. Lassie has come home on Hallmark.

Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt after all. It breeds viewers, sponsors and big bucks. I’d have to say no way is life like a Hallmark movie. That’s why we must rely on them to deliver us to a place where all is neatly wrapped up in a bow. Then deliver it all to us with a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine of reality go down easier.

Happy New Year everyone. I’m sure if you look you’ll find a Hallmark movie covering that holiday too.