Mystery Bottles Taking Over Shower Stall

This week my wife Leslie and I will be celebrating our first anniversary. We were wed in California last year, and even though we are both in our forties, it was the first marriage for either of us.

We had our first date twenty years ago in Durham, North Carolina, but that’s another story.

One of the good things about us waiting until our forties before getting married is that we start our lives together pretty much knowing who we are and what we want to achieve as people. Any midlife crisis either one of us will experience should have reared its head by now, so we know what to expect down the road. It’s also a good thing to get married after you’ve become more financially secure than most couples are in their twenties. I’ve heard horror stories about youngsters getting married and starting off their lives in a world of debt because of their expensive weddings and honeymoons.

Of course, the downside to getting married late in life is that single people can get kind of set in their ways after a few decades of flying solo. But I have to say that it has been a wonderful adventure with Leslie, even if some aspects of living with another person have come as complete surprises.

For instance, for most of my adult life my shower stall has included three items: a washcloth, a bar of soap, and a bottle of shampoo. Now, because I am sharing said shower stall with a modern woman, there are dozens of plastic bottles in there along with razors, specialized scrubby apparatuses (apparati?), the occasional loofah and a few things that I had only seen previously on episodes of ER. Some of the hair care bottles are for re-volumizing (whatever that is...I assume it is to make your hair thicker or louder) while others are to battle the harsh effects of re-volumizing.

Because there are so many bottles in the shower, Leslie and I have had to install many of those plastic shelves that are supported on the wall by suction cups. At least once a week while one of us is showering, the weight of the items on the shelves causes those suction cups to give up their mission and the whole thing comes crashing down. Let me tell you, the force generated by a full bottle of hair re-volumizer falling four feet down is not what you want to feel on your little toe first thing in the morning.

Another thing I have discovered by being married is that I had no idea about America’s incredible obsession with celebrities. I’ve been the entertainment editor at The Mountain Times for several years so I’ve written hundreds of articles about movies, albums, plays, books, and dance recitals. But I always thought that people were more interested in the artworks than in the personal lives of the artists involved with the works. Boy, was I wrong.

Leslie has a subscription to People magazine and the thing I’ve learned from this publication is that Americans want to talk about celebrities in the same way that they talk about people they actually know. They don’t really care about their movies or music, they just want to know enough about their personal lives that they can feel on par with them.

That’s why People and all those other celebrity-filled publications piled around the checkout counter at your local grocery store don’t even bother to mention the stars’ last names. American stargazers feel that they’re already intimately involved in celebrities’ lives, so last names are totally unnecessary. When they print headlines about Jessica and Nick, Tom and Katie, Paris and Nicole, Jennifer and Vince, or Brad and Angelina, you know exactly who they are talking about. And you also know that the article is not going to give you any pertinent information on their new artistic endeavors. Instead it will include a lot of tawdry information about their failures in relationships, their body weight debacles, and their troubles with alcohol and drugs. It’s the publication’s way of telling the reader that stars are just like you and people you know…only prettier, slimmer and richer.

This form of journalistic voyeurism has now spread to other publications and many otherwise reputable newspapers spend valuable space and ink on celebrity foibles. Yes, it was news when a drunken Mel Gibson launched into an anti-Semitic rant when he was arrested for a D.U.I. in California a few months ago. But the amount of press given to his lame apologies and to fringe celebrities willing or unwilling to accept them is just stupefying.

Hopefully, we here at The Mountain Times give you just the right amount of news about entertainers and their new works. We will make it our goal to give you enough information for you to decide whether or not you want to go to that movie, see that band, or read that book, without spoiling the end of it for you.

If you want to know more personal stuff about the entertainers involved, you’ll just have to subscribe to People.

Happy anniversary Leslie!