I'm a Yelper and a Blogger

I recently got turned on to Yelp while looking for a door-to-door cargo shipper to take the balikbayan box I packed for my cousin in the Philippines. The site intrigued me and and signed up as a member yelper. I am so glad that I found this site, better than Angie's list---IT'S FREE! I always thought it was so ridiculous to pay the monthly fee for Angie's list.

This yelping is so addicting! As an opinionated, stay-at-home mommy, it just seems too much fun to pass up. I was just telling hubby (who's out of town again) on the phone about it and as he looked it up, I was a featured Yelper. Now, how cool is that? I said it was meant to be that he saw the featured page (I didn't see it, the featured people flash pretty fast and I was outside when I was talking to him). The Los Angeles Times wrote about Yelp:
"Yelp.com enables ordinary customers to tout or trash. For owners of restaurants and shops, it's no longer business as usual." (By Chris Gaither, Times Staff WriterAugust 25, 2006) Follow the above link for the full story. Very interesting. I feel so empowered! So from now on, whenever I get a good service or a lousy one, those businesses will hear from me. No more taking my licks from some snotty, wet-behind-the-ears sales clerk or waitress. Customer service has been on the death bed for some time but I think Yelp.com can resuscitate it to where it should be.

I haven't finished updating my profile at Yelp yet and don't have my favorite lists up but I will soon. Go check it out.

(this is not a paid advertisement for Yelp.com, just a very happy camper Yelping about Yelp!)

Forgive The Unforgivable? Thoughts on Mel Gibson

I wasn't going to write about the topic of Mel Gibson's recent DUI arrest and his scandalous tirade about the Jews. After all, everyone is talking about it, especially those who already find him suspect of being a closeted anti-Semite. They point to Mel's dad who is publicly known to dispute the Holocaust, then there's the portrayal of Jews in his movie, "The Passion of the Christ" (I never saw the movie, so I wouldn't know), so the latest gaffe is just the "I told you he was a bigot" moment they've all been waiting for.

I gotta tell you, I don't buy it. I don't think he is the big Hitler reincarnated as some would like to believe. I like the guy. I like his movies. I like the characters he's portrayed. I think he is an alcoholic with a mighty big problem...and I don't mean the people that run the movie business. It's Hollywood, if you can make money for the studios, hey, they'll play with ya! He's made enough money to finance his own films, retire, whatever.

No, he's in deep doodoo with the all powerful, the mightier.....the wife. I'd like to be a fly in the wall in the Gibson house when he tries to explain what he was doing partying it up with those babes. I think converting to Judaism would be less painful, ouch! Then there's the talk with the seven kids he has with the wifey. The "Just say No" approach would definitely not work here. Finally, he'll have himself to deal with. As any recovering alcoholic/addict knows, the devil that lives within one's brain is the hardest to deal with.

There are so many triggers that could make one slip back into the abyss. It's easy for the "mightier than thou", politically correct (but themselves closeted bigots of one sort or the other) to condemn Mel's overly publicized slip. And yes, people, I think it was a mere slip. I've tried some pretty potent blue agave tequilas in my younger days and I can truly say it can make an angel into a devil in no time flat! I think recovering alcoholics who've stayed sober for some time and start to drink again will see that the tolerance level they think they have is not the same. I speak from experience...it's not like riding a bike! The effect then is the out-of-control drunks as we've seen in Mel Gibson, Robert Downey, Jr., Cristian Slater, (these are just some of the names that come to mind when I think of people in Lalaland behaving very badly) etc. I do not think that he is a bigot hiding behind his drunkeness, I think he is a drunk who said a bigoted comment. Period.

So, as I said before, I wasn't going to say anything about this whole incident but I did need a break from all the "real" important current events like the war in Israel/Lebanon, Iraq, global warming, lousy public education, etc. So this issue is a non-issue that wasn't going to give me a headache to write about. There.