…Jessica Simpson, brush your teeth….MORE!

Jessica Simpson said in an interview recently that she ‘only brushes her teeth 3 times a week, because I don’t want the whiteness to go away.’

That’s ok Jess, leave your teeth alone and they’ll leave you.

Ok, so is this girl stUPid or what?

She also said “she’s ready to give love another try.”

Well, maybe she should brush more.

Poor Tony Romo, and I never thought I’d feel sorry for John Mayer, but alas…I do!

I understand Nick Lachey a little bit more now too.

She’s also admitted her addiction problem as well.

Nicorette gum.

She’s never smoked.

Wah?

Since I never got over the “is Chicken of The Sea Chicken or Fish” question, it got me to a wonderin’.

And alas, Google has not let me down.

So, I looked some things UP.

Here are some more jewels from Jessica.

“At school my boobs were bigger than all my friends’ and I was afraid to show them. Now, I feel they make my outfits look better. They’re like an accessory.”

“Twenty-three is old. It’s almost 25, which is like almost mid-20s.”

Yeah, almost!

“I respect knowledge of the psyche. I would be a therapist if I weren’t an entertainer.”

I’m sure  therapists worldwide are clearing out office space for her!

“My next album is probably going to be with Willie Nelson. I’ve been wanting to do a country record, because its just my roots.I aspire to be Patsy Cline.”

Oh, no, she did-ent!

And when introducing herself to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton in December 2004 she said, ”You’ve done a nice job decorating the White House.”

It is pretty, ya know.

and my favorite…

“I don’t want people walking out of a movie thinking I was trying to act.”

Seriously, honey, there’s no worry there.

We all look forward to it, and it should be a time of relaxation and fun.

But, it’s dangerous.

Matt James, one of the nation’s top high school football players who was headed to Notre Dame this fall, died instantly Friday night after falling from a fifth-floor balcony during a spring break trip in Panama City, Fla.

And he’s not the first, and probably won’t be the last.

“Witnesses and friends indicate he had become drunk and belligerent,” Humphreys said. “He had leaned over the balcony rail, was shaking his finger at the people in the next room over. He fell over.”

He was 17.

There were about 40 students from St. Xavier and a half-dozen parents were on the trip to Florida, police said.

Where were the parents?

Spring Break started by some reports as early as 1935 when the Colgate Univeristy men’s swimming team went to practice in Ft.Lauderdale during the break from classes.  Ft. Lauderdale became the Mecca for college students then, and was the be all and end all for them from the end of WWII until the 1980s.  The film Where The Boys Are, a cult classic filmed in Ft. Lauderdale depicts Spring Break as fun and carefree. 

It’s not.

There’s pressure to party, pressure to out do, and pressure to ‘play’.

When Ft. Lauderdale (some called it Ft. Liquordale) got more angry about the trouble Spring Break brought than happy about the money it brought in, Spring Breakers moved UP the coast to Daytona. 

Daytona Beach, a nortorious party town, the home of NASCAR, Bike Week, and more, got tired of it too.

So, there’s Panama City, Cabo, Cancun, and a thousand other places to go.

Places for underage kids to go and get wasted. 

And year after year, we hear of at least one high school or college kid getting so drunk they don’t realize they are 15 stories UP and jumping from balcony to balcony or hanging over the rail is unwise.

And they die.

Many make life changing moral mistakes.  Some resulting in critical decisions that have serious emotional impact.  And that Joe Francis dude has his crew everywhere just waiting for some drunk girl to lift her shirt and make Mom and Dad “proud”.

I’m all for having fun, and I think Spring Break is a great thing.  BUT…shouldn’t the parents of these kids be with them? 

Assuredly, many are not, and sadly, many parents live their lives vicarously through their children.

It’s just wrong. 

UP is totally opposed to underage drinking, and totally opposed to the use of illegal and recreational drugs.

And totally opposed to unsupervised teens hundreds of miles away from home…no restriction, no guidance, no control.

And too much cash.

There are things out there many parents of today’s high school and college kids didn’t know about or have to worry about. 

Look at Natalie Holloway.

I”m not so naive to think that teenagers aren’t going to try things.

Spring Break should be fun, not dangerous, and should be supervised.

Mom and Dad, where are you?

Back a hundred years ago when I started with TPC, I was advised not to screw UP, and I’d have a “job for life”.  (That’s not exactly the way it was phrased, and all you Bell Heads out there will know EXACTLY how it was, but you get the point.)

Essentially, I did.  Have a job for life that is, not screw UP.

I’m sure I screwed UP many times, but not in a big enough way to cost me my job or my career.

I was lucky for 30 years, escaped layoffs, down-sizings, survived divestiture (the break UP of the Real AT&T for those who were born after 1984), several economic downturns, technology advances, and on and on and on…I was lucky.  I had a job for 30 years, or life.

I never understood career hoppers, I was much more interested in ’security’

I escaped in 2001 with a pension intact, a part  little bit trace  smidge of my 401k left, and benefits – for life.

It’s a good thing.

Things just aren’t that way anymore.

Unless you’re in education – and that’s looking iffy,  law-enforcement, or medicine, you will probably have to change careers once or more in your life time.

Some jobs we thought would be around forever just won’t be.

So, we have to say good bye.

Bank tellers come to mind.  With direct deposit, which is required by many employers, ATM cards, Check Cards, and Credit Cards, who needs to go to the bank?

It’s kinda sad, I remember going to the bank with Dad when I was a boy.  Mr. Oblinger, the bank President, treated us both like we were his largest depositors.  We weren’t.  Seriously, we weren’t!  They had candy on the counter for the taking.  The Bank Tellers always offered me some.  It was an adventure.  And it’s going away.

No one has the title ‘file clerk’ any longer.  Imaging and faxes and email have seen to that.  Everything is scanned.  Our copier not only copies, it scans, and sends to corporate.  Pretty amazing really.  Image over light.  (Thank you Alexander Graham Bell, he didn’t invent it, but he talked about it over 100 years ago.)

Very Jetsons and all.

And wouldn’t you just love to hear a voice when you call a company?  “Press 1 for English” instantly makes me want to shop elsewhere. 

Answer the phone, say “thanks for calling” and ask me how I’d like my call directed.  Don’t put me into Voice Mail Hell.

So we are saying goodbye to telephone operators.  Voice mail and call routing are taking jobs away. 

Data entry clerks are no longer necessary.  Every teenager can type, even if they can’t spell.   Back at Ohio Bell, we had a room full of people who were “order entry clerks”.  Or data clerks.  We wrote the order with codes in the business office and sent it to order entry, via the mail boy.  Well, no longer.  5th or 6th generation software has allowed us to nuke that job and enter the order ourselves.

And speaking of the mail boy.  Most mail is electronic now, remember the old days when the mail boy came by, and people said,  ”I got my start in the mail room”.  Well no more, say ta ta to him too.  He’s going away, or already gone.  The guy on “Drop Dead Diva” who drops stuff off to the fancy schmancy lawyers; he doesn’t exist anymore.  Scanners, email, and photo processors make him obsolete.

Ever use a travel agent anymore?  Well, not for long.  Travel agents are being replaced by the internet, Priceline, Expedia, and the like.  These days only large corporations planning huge trips with hundred of employees use them.  And with the economy in the toilet, and it is, that’s not happening much. 

Unless you get bailout money from Washington.

What about a watch repairman, or watch sales man.  My first job was at B&L Jewelers in Germantown, Ohio.  John Brower was a true watchmaker, and a darn good one.

He hated Timex watches because they were “disposable”.  Now watches are fashion.  If you need to know the time, you can look on your I-pod, I-phone, I-computer, and soon, your eye-ball!   Unless it’s a Piaget or Rolex you can buy just about any watch  at Wal-Mart.  Nowadays, watch repair consists of replacing the battery!  Or shopping for a new one.

And video store clerks, well, bye-bye.  Netflix and On Demand have nuked those as well.

What I’m sayin’, things ain’t what they used to be.  That Summer job or part-time job may not be there.

And things are probably always gonna’ be changin!

So, be flexible, go to school, get an education.

You want to have a lot on your horizons.

Maybe not.

I know we expect too much of our ‘heroes’, but really…win a bronze medal and simulate sex in public?  No.

Scotty Logo’s street behavior after his Bronze Medal winning half-pipe run was an embarrassment to him, the stuffed shirts at the IOC, and the the American public, to say nothing of the girl, who’s gonna’ have a hard time explaining that picture to the grandchildren in 20 years.

Joe Francis made millions with GGW videos, but BGW – I don’t think we’re ready.  Ok, so it’s a double standard.  But the trampelettes on Joe’s videos aren’t Olympic Medalists.  They’re drunken college coeds with too much money, too much time, and not enough inhibitions.

I don’t mean to be all moral and pontificatious, but we all know what was implied. 

Half-pipe and most snowboarding events are little more than skate ratting on snow.  I love the sport, I’m not impressed with the mentallity and the attitude.

It’s bad enough that Shaun White and his coach can’t say two sentences without the “F” word and can’t remember that every word they say is being recoreded, and it’s bad enough that Shaun White and Scotty acted like fools during the National Anthem while on the medal platform – (just a reminder to anyone else winning a medal for the US:   hand over heart, learn the words, I know it’s hard to sing and musically bad, but it’s OUR national anthem, SING IT!), but really, Scotty and the girl…is that necessary?

And  Scotty, millions of kids are watching you, and you do have a responsibility to behave decently in public.  You may want to Text Tiger for details.

So behave.

Oh, yes, good job on the ABS, BTW!