Media Surprises

We picked up a copy of the weekly ‘Entertainment’ magazine for greater Seattle yesterday – one of those newsprint formatted things that you find ‘for free’ next to the real newspaper vending machines – and I spent the evening reading it. Very, um… enlightening. I think.

Seattle is a big place. But the variety of shows, movies, dance, comedy, ‘open mic’ and other entertainment was amazing. Big acts and unknown acts – all are included. Shakespeare is happening, as is opera, orchestra, and ballet. Country music, jazz, combo groups, comedy dinner theater, raves… you name it, it is happening in Seattle, every night. In literally hundreds of places.

And further into the magazine were restaurant reviews. Pages and pages and pages of restaurant reviews. Every possible type of food and atmosphere and price.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised at the ‘variety’ I found in the back pages I guess. But…

There were ‘Personals’ ads, of course. They are there in all such publications. “Back in the day” they were sweet requests for a life partner – usually some widow looking for someone to share her coffee with in the morning or someone new to town looking for a new social group. Now, of course, they are perverts looking for action – and their ads are pretty amazing. We had quite a time just trying to figure out the abbreviations... (I know. We don’t really have enough to do in the evening. Why can’t they have good TV programming on so we don’t have to resort to this sort of thing to keep us amused?) But really, do people actually respond to these things?

And then I turned the page and got to the REAL ads – photos of what could only be hookers with phone numbers and prices listed ($150 seemed to be the going rate.) How can this be? Is this stuff not actually illegal? This is a mainline publication!

So, I’ve officially joined the ranks of my parents – what is this world coming to?