More Grand

One of our neighbors (again with the neighbors) just had plastic surgery. To save money, she went for a package deal in Costa Rica(!) where you get the surgery and a two-week recovery period at a resort-type place. She had the bags sucked out from under her eyes, some fat sucked out from her jawline, the tip of her nose lopped off, and she had a chin put in. She thought that it would be easy and practically painless, and she thought that it wound change her life and she'd be beautiful and find a man. Well it changed her life, all right. Her face is still swollen more than a month later, she's in constant pain and takes a lot of Vicodin, she can't open her mouth all the way and has to clench her teeth while talking, and she has a bacterial infection in her mouth. Her eyes, jawline, and nose actually look okay, but her new chin makes her look like a transvestite. So far she hasn't found a new man. In fact she kinda looks like a new man.

As an addendum to my last post, there's also a Pontiac Grand Am in addition to the aforementioned Pontiac Grand Prix. To me, the Grand Am is even more puzzling than the Grand Prix. I remember the Pontiac Trans Am. Yeah, okay, Trans Am - Trans (across) Am (America) - I get it. But Grand Am? What the hell's a Grand Am?

For those of you contemplating a lucrative career in show business, I just got a long-awaited, long-anticipated royalty check from ASCAP, which tracks and pays you for your works that are broadcast on radio or television or in movies. I wrote and produced and recorded the music for a six-part television series on PBS about 8 years ago that continues to run regularly on various PBS stations all over the country. Over Thanksgiving and Christmas and in February, I happened to catch some of the episodes running on all three of the PBS stations available here in the LA area. My ASCAP check for that time period totaled $7.17. Oh boy. Now I can get that Costa Rican cosmetic surgery I've been wanting.