AM Drive Time Open Thread

Wake up! It’s time to face the day and deal with whatever nonsense modern existence throws at us today. At least we have each other. We have had a lot of new folks join us over the last couple days, so please make them feel welcome and help them out if they have questions. Here’s some drive time music to get you going today.

Have a great day!

-= Message from Ben =-
Good Morning. I’m sharing a really simple, easy to use Firefox plug-in this morning with you guys. Its called BrowserCheck and checks your web browser to make sure it is secure and all of your software is up-to-date. You can find it here: https://browsercheck.qualys.com/ You install the plug-in, it runs a scan, then if anything is out of date just click the “fix” button and it will automagically download new updates for you. (You’ll still have to run the updates once they’re downloaded.) If you’re using the interwebz to do anything related to commerce, definitely check it out. Its a really good step in the right direction for protecting your computer. (This plugin works for Mac OSX too. You guys also need to be protected!) Have a nice day!

Life, Death and Violence: A Study of March 1

There’s been a debate in the art community for quite some time now regarding a work by Duccio, known as the Stroganoff Madonna and features a baby Jesus Christ playfully tugging at his mother’s hood, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a small piece, about 8.5 by 11 inches, in egg tempera and with a gold leaf background. The Museum asserts its authenticity, but others, notably the late art historian James Beck, disagree. It is highly unlikely that the work, which has been analyzed over and over again by the Met’s crack team of forensic artists, will be declared illegitimate, but if it had, it would be devastating to the Met’s credibility, especially since they paid an undisclosed sum that has been rumored to be as high as 45 million USD, the highest sum they have ever paid for a work of art. For now, since Professor Beck is dead, the matter is certain to now be a moot point, but it does give us the opportunity to debate about pigment qualities and, more importantly, the importance of the artist in regards to the work. Would it have sold for 45 million USD had the work not been a Duccio, but had been attributed to a lesser artist of the proto-renaissance, even if it had been identical to the piece currently housed in the museum and preserved to the exact same condition?

From WCRS Detroit and Public Snark International this is This American Life, Death and Violence. Each day on our program, we choose a theme and incorporate a series of people and stories that fit that into theme. Today: Idolatry. Why does name matter and what happens when we go too far in our idolatry? Our program today, in four acts. Act One: Life (Never Say Never), Act Two: Death (Model for Success), Act Three: Violence (Bombs in the Men’s Room) and Act Four: Other Neat Things That Happened (Yahoo? Yahoo. Yahoo! You?), but before we begin, we must pay our respects to Life, Death and Violence Crush Object™ Sufjan Stevens:

LIFE!

(Never Say Never)
  • 1449: Lorenzo de’Medici: Lorenzo, whom Wikipedia says was born January 1, but is technically born on March 1 as he was born before the advent of the Gregorian Calendar (the Julian Calendar started its year in the month of March), was not only worthy of idolatry, he essentially created the idols that we know and love today, notably Life, Death and Violence Obsession™ Michelangelo Buonarotti, who sculpted the visage of the intellectual Italian statesman to your right.
  • The peasants referred to him as Lorenzo the Magnificent, which is just majorly cool and total idolatry, and many scholars mark his death as the end of the Golden Age of Firenze (that’s Florence) and with Lorenzo the Magnificent no longer around, the fractured Italian states began fighting with each other, once again. The loss of an idol can be a tragic event, indeed.
  • 1886: Oskar Kokoschka: When I was in art school, we had a thing wherein we’d go behind someone, push them lightly on the shoulders, not enough to make them fall down, but enough to scare them, and scream Oskar Kokoschka’s name. It was an act of absurdism in the name of the master of German Expressionism and the idol of myself and several of my friends. The painter, poet and playwright was originally told that he was mentally unstable after being injured in World War One, but aren’t all the greats? I know that I’m pretty mentally unstable. Who wants to be stable? Perhaps its my idolatry of Kokoschka that has led to my allowing myself this instability. Anyways, the Nazis deemed him and his work degenerative, so he escaped to Prague, until the Czech began to mobilize for an invasion from Germany and he escaped to the United Kingom. His style was very nervous, but filled with great motion and intrigue and his play is considered the first Expressionist drama. The individualism displayed by himself and Max Beckmann created one of the greatest offshoots of the Modern Art movement, though Kokoschka saw himself as a footnote in the annals of art history towards the end of his life which made him bitter. Here’s an example of his work: The Red Egg, 1941, currently in Prague’s Narodni Gallery:

  • 1987: Ke¢ha: That girl who always looks really dirty and sings about brushing her teeth in the morning with a bottle of Jack Daniels because she’s a complete alcoholic turns 24 today! Ke¢ha is a terrible idol, mainly because while she’s had great success, she’s not particularly talented. I like Ke¢ha when I’m driving and not wanting to listen to WRCJ or WOMC, but that’s about it. There’s no substance. Still, she has more money than we could dream of, but hey, I like her better than Gaga so there’s that.
  • Seriously though, girl, take a shower and go to AA. I don’t know if you actually have a problem, but from your lyrics and from your hair, it definitely seems to me like you need to just take a chill pill before the tabloids start turning you into the next Lindsay Lohan and we wouldn’t want that because then who else would we dance and sing to in our car, besides Katy Perry whom I totally do a solo performance for an audience of myself of Fireworks in the style of Ann Liv Young every time that stupid song comes on. You guys are catchy!

[slideshow id=3]

  • 1994: Justin Bieber; Are you a belieber? This teen idol wants you to know that its his world (2.0) and to never say never. With his luscious locks and girlish face, this little lesbian (can you spot which is the real Bieber in the slideshow to your left? Can you?!) took the world by storm last year after being discovered in 2009 on that site that all the young people love called “The YouTubular Video Sharing Website” or something like that. Anyways, the Biebs, the ultimate in idolatry, turns 17 today which makes him legal in New York. Get on that Beliebers! But, remember, you may have to fight off Selena Gomez. He never said never, and now he’s an international Canadian pop star.

 

DEATH!

(Model for Success)
  • 1244: Gryffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr: Ashlee Simpson’s baby naming idol was kidnapped as a kid by the King of England as a pledge for the continued good faith of  Gryffydd’s father Llywelyn the Great. Griffid. Gryefehd. Gryffindor.
  • Gryffydd’s brother Daffyd imprisoned Gryffydd until King Henry III invaded Wales and made Daffyd give him Gryffydd and so Gryffydd became imprisoned in the Tower of London where he remained until he died trying to escape in 1244. He was fat and the rope he was using to escape snapped. Looks like he shouldn’t have used Blondin’s rope supplier! What I’m saying here is that the Welsh have weird names.
  • 1980: Wilhelmina Cooper: An icon amongst models and the idol of every aspiring girl, Wilhelmina Cooper, founder of Wilhelmina Models, and the woman with the most Vogue covers: 28. She appeared on 255 covers during her career, launched Naomi Sims, the first black supermodel and was portrayed by Faye Dunaway in the movie Gia about another model Wilhelmina’s agency launched to stardom, Gia Carangi who later died of AIDS.
  • She died of lung cancer at the age of 40, which, for the second day in a row, marks yet another death from cigarettes. I’m glad I quit when they were fourteen bucks a pack because now that I can get them for about seven, I don’t really care to because it’s just not something I need anymore. Wilhelmina Cooper is great and all, but here’s a photo of my favorite model:

Photo: Tamara Staples

 

  • 1984: Jackie Coogan: A comedic idol! Jackie Coogan was a stah! A child stah! With all the child stah problems like having his parents steal his earnings. Naturally, he sued them, got very little of the money he earned and got a bill named after him that requires 15% of child star earnings to be placed into a trust. He’s best known as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family, but he was also Oliver Twist.
  • Storytime! Here’s what happens when you mess with your idols: In 1933, just after Coogan turned 18, one of his friends was kidnapped and the kidnappers demanded 40k. The police got involved, arrested the two men who admitted to killing Coogan’s friend Brooke Hart the night of the kidnapping and threw them in the clink. Shortly after, a mob, rumored to have been organized by Coogan, broke into the prison, snagged the kidnappers and lynched them in the park across the street. Don’t mess with Uncle Fester.

 

VIOLENCE!

(Bombs in the Men’s Room)
  • 1847: Michigan bans capital punishment. Go Blue!
  • 1910: AVALANCHE! Train buried in Washington State, killing 96 people. Sufjan! You get your butt in here right now, mister. This is your fault, isn’t it!?



  • 1971: BOOM! BANG! POW! Weather Underground explodes a bomb in the men’s room at the US Capitol Building. Bad weather, indeed!
  • 2008: POP! POP! SHOOT EM UP! 10 people peacefully protesting the allegedly fraudulent elections in Armenia are killed by Armenian police.

OTHER NEAT THINGS THAT HAPPENED

(Yahoo? Yahoo. Yahoo! You.)
  • 1565: Rio de Janeiro is founded, paving the way for the ultimate in beach watching for years to come.
  • 1803: Ohio becomes the 17th state, paving the way for the ultimate in corn fed Midwestern guys and roller coasters for years to come.
  • 1867: Nebraska becomes a state, paving the way for the ultimate in farmer’s tans for years to come.
  • 1936: The Hoover Dam is finished, paving the way for the ultimate in ‘kids getting away with saying damn’ situations for years to come.
  • 1962: American Airlines 1 crashes upon takeoff, paving the way for the ultimate in last minute plane crash avoidance for years to come.
  • 1995: Yahoo! is founded, paving the way for the ultimate in search engines for years to come. Oh wait: Google. Sorry, Yahoo!

 

That’s it for today’s program my little birds. This American Life, Death and Violence will be back tomorrow, for yet another look into the past through this Vaseline coated lens of ours. Remember, idolatry is all fun and games until someone’s lynched in a park. Have a great day.

Photo: Tamara Staples

 

Monday Late Night Open Thread

Hello there! Hope you all had a wonderful day. I noticed a lot of new faces today and I want to welcome all of you. It’s great to see you here. Please take a moment to meet Honey Badger our beloved mascot.

 

Please help us spread the word about Crasstalk by using the social networking do-hickies on the site and telling your friends we are here.

Glad all of you are here. It is an honor to serve with you.

Victory!

Monday Evening Open Thread

Good evening. Hope you had a great day. Here is your nightly newscast.

 

 

Caution: clip contains crazy old man profanity.

Have a great night.

Doing the Right Thing by Quitting Sheen Cold Turkey

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Charlie Sheen. The holy detestable scourge of humanity that is Charlie Sheen makes me want to punch him in his throat-box and then shake him until the crazy man living inside slides out onto the floor of the insane condom-wrapper filled hotel room he parties in.

Why?


Well because he’s taken all the goodwill sent his way by a gracious, but health-hobbled Michael J. Fox, and literally shot it up his nose and used it to slap the asses of various hookers just because he can, and mostly because CBS has paid him to do so. Nice. Sheen would be just another out of work, has-been actor, holed up under a bridge in Dogtown if Fox hadn’t had to leave Spin City. And now, yes now, that the network has finally realized this — what will they do about Charlie Sheen?

Don’t Pay Him Another Single Dime

Yeah, have you heard? He wants a raise. Yes, currently stuffing his pockets full of $1.8 million an episode is not sufficient. He now says that in order to return to his beloved-by-idiots show he wants $3 million an episode. $3 million?! That’s like an entire boat full of coke! A small island off the coast of the Maldives of low-class prostitutes! The entire salary brought home by his brother Emilio since The Breakfast Club!

I’d like to go on record by saying that no person, who on his television show spins a yarn of tired misogynistic tropes and sits on a couch in a bowling shirt while wearing loafers, should make anywhere near $3 million for anything. This is acting? Or is this what your loser uncle Irwin-the-Pharmacist does in his sad life living down by the docks? CBS should be laughing so hard the entire building should levitate 50 feet off the ground, spin, and then shoot into space and crash on the moon so they can attach a picture of Charlie Sheen to a flagpole as evidence of an alien life form, and then, and only then, return to ask if the coke-monster from Platoon is serious. There’s no way anyone should pay him one more dime to continue making this horrible show about a horrible person who basically holds the rest of the cast hostage every time he goes on a binge.

Don’t Feel Sorry For Him


You know how this country has a weak spot for beleaguered celebrities? How we decide that it’s not their fault that their parents/lives/celebrity/famousness made them the way they are and that they should get another chance? Yeah, this stupid thing we do. After all, look what’s happened to Robert Downey Jr. and Drew Barrymore — they’re fine now, and successful, and a testament to good old fashioned faith, talent, and an enviable stick-to-it attitude. Yes, well, that is nice. Well, no, it’s not! These people are all addicts. Yes. Okay, some have been able to overcome a large portion of their demons, mostly those who actually want to get better, and realized that they have a career to salvage. But others…well, they just don’t. (LiLo, I’m also looking at you, and Busey, well, I’m terrified of this season’s Celebrity Apprentice.) They just want to remain crazed, coke-addicted maniacs, because well, they enjoy it. They love, love, love it! It is all they have, and they don’t give a damn who knows it…because it’s really not about you.

This is what Sheen thinks about his drug use:

The Associated Press reports that during his various, “Fuck the world, I’m fabulous!” television tour this morning, he said that he “exposed people to magic” when they partied with him and that he loved doing drugs.

“What’s not to love?” he said on ABC. “Especially when you see how I party. It was epic. The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards just look like droopy-eyed armless children.”

Does he want to change? Nah. Will he change? Nope. Reportedly, he’s been clean for 72 hours because he finds coke boring. Yes, boring. I’m thinking if he could find a way to snort the skin-flakes of various porn stars for a high…he would do it until he finds that boring. Nonetheless, these are not the sentiments of a reformed drug abuser.

Realize That He Doesn’t Care About You Or The People Who Watch His Show

He isn’t an actor. He isn’t about the craft of acting. He doesn’t have aspirations of being the best artist or performer he can possibly be. He wants your money. And he’d rather get it with the satisfaction of having every person in authority prostrate themselves in front of him, because he’s a narcissistic drug addict. He believes that CBS owes him an apology, “publicly, while licking my feet” he says, for not recognizing his awesomeness, and because he’s “tired of pretending I’m not a total, bitchin’ rock star from Mars.” Absolutely. Yup, the more you keep sweeping his crap under the rug, and backing him and all his lunacy, is one more step you take into the darkside, CBS. The darkside that is letting the lunatics run the asylum and dictate to you how much their crazy is worth, because it’s easier to have a megalomaniac, shriveled wizard dictate how much money you will pay him to continue to keep your network afloat, instead of shipping this loon off into obscurity and replacing him with any number of talented actors.

“I am on a drug,” Sheen said. “It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

Exactly. He is Charlie Sheen, and he is a drug. CBS, think you can stop chasing this dragon?

Update: Apparently someone gets it. This afternoon Sheen’s longtime publicist, Stan Rosenfield, quit after an interview with TMZ where Sheen made a remark implying that Rosenfield lied on his behalf about that Plaza Hotel incident in October.

“I have worked with Charlie Sheen for a long time and I care about him very much. However, at this time, I’m unable to work effectively as his publicist and have respectfully resigned,” states Rosenfeld.

I was kinda hoping he resigned because Sheen is a huge self-destructive prick who’s destined to take anyone down with him that attempts to latch themselves to his burning, sinking ship. But a bailout is a bailout, I suppose.

The Crasstalk Buzz Maintenance Program

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Thursday was interesting wasn’t it? I think we all realize how much this place means to us and that we want to keep the Crasstalk buzz going. Frankly, maintaining this place is going to take money. The question is this: how should Crasstalk generate this money?

The site that shall not be named, who also helped create Thursday’s pickle (with some help from Arken), apparently thinks that orange finger-staining Frito-lay snacks is the ideal way to feed Nibbles. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a Cheeto War here — and I don’t think Honey Badger will stand for it either.

Booze seems to be a unifying force here and that is why I created The Crasstalk Buzz Maintenance Program. Purchase fabulous wine through www.winedreamer.com using coupon code: FEEDTHEBADGER and Crasstalkers will get 10% off their wine purchases and 10% will go to our Crasstalk Overlords to offset the costs of upgrading and maintaining this site.  Turn your vice into something nice, for a change.

But wait there is more!

During the evening of Thursday, March 24th, I will host live-blog winetasting and walk Crasstalker’s through six wines from www.winedreamer.com. So invite some friends over, unless you plan to plow through six bottles of wine yourself!

The wines that we will be tasting are as follows — pricing includes 10% discount:

Whites:

  • Secret 2007 White Wine ($12.59)
  • Piro Piro Piccolo 2009 Pinot Grigio ($15.29)
  • Martellotto Chardonnay 2009 Santa Barbara ($17.99)

Reds:

  • Martellotto 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Paso Robles ($17.99)
  • M by Martellotto 2008 Pinot Noir Willamette Valley ($21.59)
  • Either Conservative Red or Progressive Red — same Meritage wine, different labels to reflect your political persuasion ($22.49)

You do not have to purchase all of these wines to participate, obviously. If you end up purchasing some of the other wines from www.winedreamer.com, let us know how they taste during our live-blog. I will probably bring out Pura Vida as that is a favorite.  Any wine you purchase at www.winedreamer.com that uses code FEEDTHEBADGER will get the 10% discount and will get the 10% to support the site.

FYI….1. Shipping is not included in these prices and the cost to ship 1 bottle or 6 is about the same; 2. Discount will not show up until the FEEDTHEBADGER code is entered and until the final screen at checkout.

Remember no code = no money for Crasstalk and no discount for you. Any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

Cheers!

Are You Smarter Than a Football Player?

I have spent much of the past two days in front of the television watching sturdy and well-formed young men run around an empty stadium in Indianapolis dressed in nothing but skin-tight biker shorts and muscle shirts. I haven”t seen so many bulges since that morning at the Provincetown Pride Parade. But that’s a story for another day. No, I’m not watching Spring Break on the Logo Channel, it’s the NFL Network. That can only mean one thing, America. It’s Combine Week in the NFL.

The NFL Combine is basically an audition for hundreds of prospective NFL football players. These are incoming players, eligible for the draft for the first time. They run, throw, block, hop, skip, jump and do everything but sing show tunes in front of scouts and coaches from all 32 NFL teams and a national television audience. Off the field, players are examined by doctors, interviewed by general managers and taken apart mentally by staff psychologists. Last year in a notorious Combine moment, wide receiver Dez Bryant of Oklahoma State was asked by Miami Dolphins General Manager Jeff Ireland if it was, in fact, true that his mother was a prostitute. Ireland, who later apologized, was either looking for a quick lay after the session ended or just wanted to see how Bryant reacted to sudden stress.

For the average football fan who is not actually going to make any selections in the upcoming draft , the Combine is at once as dull as watching articial turf grow and as fascinating as brain surgery. Hour after hour, day after day, 300-lb linemen defy several laws of physics and run 40 in 5 seconds, 200-lb running backs lift twice their weight 18 consecutive times and quarterbacks throw perfect spirals all the way to Chicago.

But the most intriguing part of the Combine is, sadly, not on television. The good stuff takes place behind the scenes in closely guarded classrooms, where players are given a raw intelligence test called the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test, written, scored and evaluated by the Wonderlic Corporation of Vernon Hills, IL.

In today’s ultra-competitive business environment, thousands of employees in a variety of professions have at some point taken a Wonderlic-type test as a condition of employment. It makes sense if the applicant is a CPA or a HVAC repair-person. A business wants to know it’s not hiring Paris Hilton. But what does an IQ-style test have to do with the physical ability and the commensurate willingness to remove a quarterback’s head from his shoulders in the hopes of gaining a Wild Card berth or gain one extra yard only to have James Harrison drive his rocket-fuel-propelled body into your chest, sending you hurtling into the club seats. The heart and motivation to sacrifice self for team cannot be measured on a 50 item multiple-choice test.

Indeed, a major academic study completed at the University of North Carolina in 2007 concluded there was no correlation between high Wonderlic scores and success in the NFL. So why take this test at all? Who knows–why take the SAT? Perhaps the problem is that football is just asking the wrong types of intelligence questions. The Wonderlic’s questions are fairly straightforward, by-the-book IQ type questions, such as:

  • A train travels 20 feet in 1/5 second. At this same speed, how many feet will it travel in three seconds?
  • When rope is selling at $.10 a foot, how many feet can you buy for sixty cents?
  • The ninth month of the year is…

You can take an entire sample test here.

Despite its reputation as a Neanderthal ThugFest, football at its highest levels is by far our brainiest and most intellectual game. It’s true that baseball players are frequently required to both scratch their balls and spit tobacco at the same time. And then guess curveball. But that’s pure hand-eye coordination–as is having the innate ability to consistently miss your shoe with your spit.

Basketball and hockey are mostly athleticism, grit and instinct. And yes, the very best players see the game as it will be three seconds from now not as it is in our reality. That is more than raw intelligence for a sport–it is a gift of timing, intuition and physical creativity. Kinisthetic and athletic geniuses like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Kobe Bryant literally play a different game than we do.

But football is on a whole other level when it comes to complexity.  A typical play call on offfense might be:

  • “Scatter-Two Bunch Right-Zip-Fire Right-273-Pivot-F Flat.”
  • “Duece Right 19 Slot on 1 and Dice Right Ice Cream Alert 654 Jose”
  • “Trips Right 255 X Block Slant H Disco Alert 12 Trap”

If you are a quarterback, a position which only a kind of football savant can play, not only do you have to know your play and know where all your backs, linemen and wideouts will be and when they will be there, but you also must determine what the defense is doing. And this despite the defense doing everything it can to disguise its intentions.

And the incoming and data must be processed and communicated to ten co-workers in less than 30 seconds, again and again, under extreme physical and mental pressure in a setting where the decibel level is often as high as at a Clash concert. All this and it suddenly seems a 50 question IQ test is not enough. If you’re going to be my quarterback, I’m going to want transcripts, letters of recommendation from your sophomore English professor and that research paper you did on the Civil War. Oh, and I’ll need your Calc final.

Most of all, I’m gonna want to see how you react when I ask if it’s true you’re sister’s a whore while we’re both standing on train tracks at high noon with the Acela bearing down from the east, Ray Lewis coming from the west, and Larry Fitzgerald open down the road for six easy points. And right now you’re down to four seconds to figure out how long ago the Acela left Detroit. Do all that correctly and a hundred million dollar, seven-year deal is yours. And I’ll tell you I was just kidding about your sister.

Photo here.

Rainy Days and Monday Open Thread

It’s raining, and Monday. The Grand Inquisitor is tired and cranky. She apologizes. Let’s see if we can’t find some nice things to make the world seem sunnier.

Caution: contains one instance of the F word

There, that helped. Have a great afternoon.

In Praise Of Older Men

2 comments

 

While human and cinematic history is filled with May-December romances, in contemporary society they are relatively rare. In movies, there is rarely any mention of a large age gap between romantic leads, but I can say from experience that it can, in fact, be a significant issue on many levels. In a relationship involving an older man and a much younger woman, there is often an assumed implication: that she is bartering her youth and fertility for his wealth and security. That may be the case in some unions involving a difference in age of several decades, but in my case, it was love at first sight from the start.

 

Since I was a child, I’ve always sought out older people of both genders to befriend and advise me. My first real crush – aside from my passion for Underdog when I was 5 – was on my sixth grade social studies/PE teacher, who was 47 at the time. We shared a phenomenal intellectual connection and an effortless affinity. He inspired me to achieve my personal best in my studies and in my athletic pursuits, and we developed a mutually appreciative, very close yet utterly innocent extra-curricular relationship that would be impossible to maintain in today’s Law & Order: SVU-influenced society.

 

At age 14, I met a 29-year-old Christopher Atkins lookalike at a family wedding, and I came thisclose to dating him in secret. When I was 17, my I was smitten by a hunky, hip, obscure rock musician my parents’ age, who lived in our apartment building. He confessed to me once that if not for my mother’s watchful eye, he would have invited me up to his apartment eagerly.

 

At a spiritual retreat near Woodstock, I met my first lover, a tantric adept, when I was 19 and he was 40. (We are still close friends, 24 years later.) Between the ages of 19 and 26, I had lovers ranging in age from 18  to 60.  I met my boyfriend and companion for the last 17 years when I was 26 and he was 57. Like other much older men I’ve been attracted to, one of the things which intrigued me most about him was that he was uncomfortable with our large age difference. It’s proven much easier for me to bridge the gap in life experiences with someone who is not seeking a token or trophy to reminisce his own lost youth.

 

My present relationship calls to mind the enduring marriage of (early 20th century film icon) Charlie Chaplin and Oona O’Neill, pictured above. They met when she was 17 and he was 54, and their union lasted until his death, more than three decades later. Chaplin caught a lot of flak for the woman he chose to be his wife. But if he had ever listened to any of the prurient gossip and made a different choice based on it, he would have missed out on sharing the truest love of his life.

 

When love finds you, age, sexual orientation, racial/ethnic, or religious backgrounds really don’t matter. As the world becomes more diverse, there is more acceptance of individual choices which seem to be outside the norms of society. In being true to yourself, you are never alone.

Test.