The Demise Of An American Institution — The Soap Opera

April 14, 2011 By 2 Comments
all-my-children-logo

all my children logo 150x150 The Demise Of An American Institution The Soap OperaThrough­out my life­time, there have always been one con­stant – the soap opera. How many times did I race home from school to see what was going on with Erika Kane and her one of many hus­bands, or to see what drama was befalling Luke & Laura and those crazy sto­ry­lines that seemed so far-fetched but appealed to many.

So, when I read that ABC has can­celled All My Chil­dren and One Life To Live to replace them with a show called “THE CHEW“ (and, side­note, another called The Rev­o­lu­tion), I about lost my mind. Seri­ously ABC – are you 14 days late for April Fools? Now, don’t get me wrong, I adore Top Chef’s Carla Hall, Iron Chef Michael Symon, Clin­ton Kelly and even that orange clogged won­der, Mario Batali but there is no way ABC could seri­ously think about putting Batali and Crew in La Lucci’s Louboutins (or her timeslot!)

All My Chil­dren has been one of those iconic shows that has been like a comfy blan­ket. Even though I didn’t always need it – I knew it was there. One Life To Live – eehh – I just couldn’t get into it (Hello – umm.. didn’t they go to the mid­dle of the earth or some­thing?) but All My Chil­dren had GREAT sto­ry­lines, of course our gal Kel got her national act­ing chops on it (we won’t dis­cuss Ms. Ripa’s Party­line Com­mer­cial – and I’m say­ing ACTING chops – not DANCING chops – okay Big Brother?), and the fash­ion – oh my heav­ens, the fash­ion. All My Chil­dren also played host to a num­ber of guest stars (Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor and Carol Bur­nett are two that come to mind imme­di­ately) and how many well known actors got their start in the soaps. So, when I read that ABC is going to basi­cally do a chef/lifestyle cen­tered “VIEW” called “CHEW” in lieu of an Amer­i­can icon? Seri­ously ABC – I’m disappointed…

Now, with these can­cel­la­tions, what’s going to hap­pen to Soap­Net – or will we get another vari­a­tion of Food Net­work or some mess *sigh* Oh – ABC – if you can­cel Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal - well then, I might just have to for­get that ABC ceases to exist, no mat­ter what the show is.  Con­sider your­self warned.

What do you think – was ABC right in can­celling All My Chil­dren & One Life To Live?  Will you be watch­ing CHEW?

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Filed Under: Celebrity Chefs, Guilty of Idiocy, Michael Symon, TV Tagged With: , , , , ,

How Barnes & Noble Broke My Heart For The Last Time

November 20, 2010 By 3 Comments

Ever since I was young, I have been enam­ored by books – I could read day in and day out, even sneak­ing my books and a flash­light to bed in the hopes of find­ing out just what was going to hap­pen to Laura Ingalls or some other book I hap­pened to be obsessed with.  My mother will tell you about the time that one of the nuns at Holy Cross called her con­cerned because I pre­ferred to read on the play­ground at recess.  Look­ing back, I real­ize that it was either read and enjoy MY time or con­tem­plate smack­ing one of the many annoy­ing boys in my class – what was safer, in your opin­ion?  Thought so.  Any way you look at it, read­ing was my win­dow into other worlds – and through recre­ational read­ing, I was able to actu­ally expand my horizons.

Cur­rently, there’s a like­li­hood that you will find not only an e-reader loaded with some of my favorite authors but also the lat­est issue of Fine Cook­ing or some other culi­nary mag­a­zine in my often over­sized and stuffed to the brim purse – just in case I have a sec­ond to steal away. On my com­mute, I lis­ten to e-books when I don’t feel like lis­ten­ing to Danny Bona­duce “life-coach”, the lat­est rants from Chio and don’t even get me started on Philly radio.   In today’s day of com­put­ers and con­stant work, read­ing – at least for me – is an escape and some­thing I don’t do enough of.    

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Filed Under: Guilty of Idiocy, Philly, Random Mess, Rant, Shopping Tagged With: , , ,

Guilty of Idiocy: ShopAtHome.com

August 26, 2010 By 1 Comment

I swear – some of these cash­back com­pa­nies just can’t walk the walk! 

ShopAtH­ome pulled a MoreRebates-esque manuever.  I got a rebate cred­ited to my account for Host­ga­tor, rebate was up there for 2 months and, the month when the check is due to be cut, the rebate is removed and dontcha know, they back­date the removal to the date I’ve ordered it.  Shady deal­ings, in my per­sonal opin­ion.  How­ever, I will say this much, their gal at Twit­ter is quick to DM and try to resolve, how­ever, some­one either above or beneath her pulled some form email b.s. and now, quite frankly, I’m done.

Fact is – I won’t be using them for any­thing – and I will stick with my Mr. Rebates and my EBates for my online shop­ping luv.  Fat Wal­let tried this with me once with form emails with­out full research and I can tell you, EBates and Mr. Rebates did quite well dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son – Fat Wal­let – not­so­much from my wallet.
 
Long and the short of it is, these cash back sites might be spring­ing up left and right, but your gal Fri­day here will check them out and tell you if they suck or not.  More Rebates and ShopAtH­ome both hit the suck col­umn in my book.  Oh – and ShopAtH­ome – ban­ners removed, refer­rals no-go – we’re over, done, finito.
 
And, no, we’re not just tak­ing a break – this was beyond unac­cept­able.  Your gal on Twit­ter tho – she deserves a raise for her attempt to sal­vage an account. The one that sent me the form email, well – let’s just say they need to learn “cus­tomer reten­tion” and how to check the facts before hit­ting send. 
Cus­tomer ser­vice is just not what it used to be.
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Filed Under: Cash Back, Guilty of Idiocy

Guilty of Idiocy: MoreRebates.com

July 15, 2010 By 3 Comments

As you all know, when things are good – I tell you and when things, quite frankly, stink – I’ll tell you. Such is the case with MoreRebates.com.

When our rela­tion­ship started, it was good. We went through our hon­ey­moon phase with me test­ing their pro­gram and actu­ally lov­ing the fact that they give rebates for sites that might not be on the typ­i­cal cash back path. Well, as you know I main­tain more than one blog and I use one spe­cific host­ing pro­gram for them that I ADORE called Host­ga­tor. When I saw that I could get cash back from Mor­eRe­bates for Host­ga­tor, I was thrilled. There was no fine print of a “one time only” deal and I used them for two sep­a­rate blogs that I moved from Blog­ger. Both times I had cash back cred­ited accordingly.

Well, after log­ging in one day to check the cash back per­cent­ages for a store since they aren’t listed on EVRewards.com, I noticed that one of my pur­chases was miss­ing – namely the first Host­ga­tor pur­chase.   Curi­ous as to why the higher priced host­ing pack­age was not listed (which they get a big­ger com­mis­sion on), I imme­di­ately emailed them to find out what the heck was going on and heard NOTHING. I fig­ured it was a com­puter glitch and made a note to cal­en­dar it to check it in a cou­ple weeks and, again, same sit­u­a­tion. The rebate was STILL miss­ing and now I was really heated. I imme­di­ately emailed them AGAIN and still heard nothing.

I waited a week and checked it again, and while I received a check for one of the rebates, the other rebate was nowhere to be found. I not only emailed them but their par­ent com­pany Val­ueClick (which has some seri­ous lit­i­ga­tion prob­lems) and, like before, heard nothing.

So here’s the issue – you have a cash back com­pany that basi­cally, from my obser­va­tion and expe­ri­ence, appears to pick and chooses what “cash back” they will pay and, not only that, they still charge Host­ga­tor for the refer­ral, but my fave host­ing com­pany gets screwed in the process. How fair is that??? It’s not.

So, if any of you have an issue with them and I referred you, I’m so sorry. Fact is, I had no idea that they were shady and I’m remov­ing any ban­ners from them from my site and they will no longer be on my “Cash Back Tuto­r­ial.” Please check your rebates from them with an eagle eye and, if any are miss­ing, def­i­nitely let them know. I can’t promise that they will respond because from my expe­ri­ence, they seem to either ignore or not answer the hard ques­tions but def­i­nitely call them out on any mistakes.

Mor­eRe­bates – quite sim­ply, we’re done!

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Food Poisoning Is Bad For Business

March 21, 2010 By 3 Comments

Sadly, I have been hit by one hell of a case of food poi­son­ing that has me ques­tion­ing EVERYTHING in my fridge.  As a mat­ter of fact, I’m doing a full purge of every­thing this week and start­ing anew because, quite sim­ply, I never want to have to go through that mess again.

I have been sur­viv­ing on all things water, gin­ger ale and apple juice.  One com­fort­ing thing, I do know what the cul­prit was that did make me sick and I’m happy to report it was NOTHING that I cooked.  I often get pre­pared soups from Gen­uardis for those nights when I don’t have an ounce of extra energy to whip up some­thing on the stove.  Gen­uardis pre­pared chili was a main­stay in my fridge.  Top the chili with a grat­ing of ched­dar and a dab of sour cream or crème fraiche and serve with some toasted bread and there you have it – bet­ter than takeout.

So, on St. Patrick’s day, while my friends were out and about, I was home vio­lently ill, pray­ing for what­ever it was to stop!  Not only did I have the usual nor­mal gross symp­toms of food poi­son­ing, but add to that a fever of 102, chills, dizzi­ness, etc.  I haven’t felt that sick in a long time.  You know things are bad when the dog and the cat are hov­er­ing around you to “cud­dle” like they know you are sick.  Now while I’m nowhere near 100% feel­ing bet­ter, I’ve found myself hes­i­tant about cook­ing as well.  What can I cook that won’t react badly I won­der.  Things just don’t taste the same and being told I can not have cof­fee, tea or caf­feine for a few days has me scream­ing inter­nally.  You know how I hate to be sep­a­rated from my cof­fee.  It’s been a tough week in the Lys household.

How­ever, I wanted to point out that you have to be care­ful where you buy your food from.  I have had quite a few inci­dents lately with Gen­uardis in Ply­mouth Meet­ing, PA where I’ve brought their meat home and it’s not fresh, has a ran­cid smell, etc.  You can even smell it in the store by the meat counter – just that “off” smell that has you going “What The ???”  I am extremely con­cerned about this as I used to love shop­ping there but if that is what I have to expect from them, well then I guess I will be tak­ing my busi­ness to Whole Pay­chex, the farm­ers’ mar­kets and other spots. 

Another thing that con­cerns me is that the FDA has released yet another food recall list and I’m start­ing to ques­tion what is going on.  There is sup­posed to be some sys­tem of checks and bal­ances and I’m notic­ing that either the work­ers are quite pos­si­bly get­ting lazy and not pay­ing atten­tion or there are too many lay­offs going on whereby there isn’t enough staff to ensure there ARE no prob­lems.  I am being a bit more proac­tive on read­ing the recall lists, ingre­di­ent lists and not­ing where things are orig­i­nated from.  And, of course, using my LOTUS sys­tem on any fruits & veg­gies.  (If I ever meet the per­son that invented that, he’s get­ting a big hug!  That machine is a life­saver (and well worth the cost!)

One thing is a def­i­nite – I’m NEVER buy­ing pre­pared chili ever again nor am I shop­ping at Genuardis!

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Filed Under: FDA, Guilty of Idiocy, Philly, Random Mess Tagged With: , , ,

We Interrupt Previously Scheduled Programming…

January 15, 2010 By 2 Comments
GlobalVeggieKnife

As this gal has suf­fered a bit of a casu­alty.  While mak­ing my honey gar­lic slow cooker chicken last night, this gal got the bright idea to add onions to the recipe at last minute.  Well, I grabbed the onion and my new Global veg­gie knife which looks like a cleaver of sorts – see

GlobalVeggieKnife 150x150 We Interrupt Previously Scheduled Programming...

and while chop­ping away while using my newly learned knife skills, I for­got one of the most impor­tant com­mand­ments – ALWAYS KNOW WHERE YOUR THUMB IS.  See, while I was steading the onion, the thumb just got in the way and *swoosh*

Damn that knife was sharp!!!  Need­less to say it was a pretty deep cut, no stitches needed but who knew that a gal’s thumb plays a major role in most things.  So now my typ­ing is more of a hunt and peck of sorts, the tex­ting – yeah, so not hap­pen­ing and the cut is pretty gross.  I’m just thank­ful that my thumb is still attached.  I was highly thank­ful that I kept a pack­age of bandaids in the kitchen and applied the Girl Scout First Aid skills. 

That onion didn’t fare so well – it never did make it into the recipe…

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Filed Under: Guilty of Idiocy, Kitchen Oops, Random Mess Tagged With: , ,

Barnes & Noble.com: EPIC FAIL!

November 4, 2009 By 3 Comments

First of all, can I tell you how red in the face I am – seri­ously I’m livid.  It’s my birth­day for cryin’ out loud and I shouldn’t have to wage war AGAIN with Barnes & Noble’s inept cus­tomer ser­vice cen­ter for their idiocy.

Some back­ground.  I’ve been a loyal B&N cus­tomer for YEARS.  I’ve held the mem­ber­ship faith­fully.  I buy a TON of books, DVDs, etc.  I often enjoy the website’s inter­views, etc. and make a point to buy all my mag­a­zines there.  Need­less to say they make a good sum of funds off me.  I’ve noticed that recently my orders have been *ahem* shall we say slow.  Now one of the perks of buy­ing a cer­tain amount online is “Free Super Saver Ship­ping” which you could set your clock by – 3 busi­ness days or so and *boom* it’s in my hands.  Which is great like when I want to review Jaden’s fabu new cook­book “Steamy Kitchen” and I am look­ing for­ward to the UPS guy knock­ing on the door with that gor­geously shot book (yes I leafed through a copy in the store – I couldn’t wait).  I also ordered the Foodie Hand­book by the one and only Pim.  Can we say I’m crazy stoked about both of these books – both of which I put back in antic­i­pa­tion of the order com­ing to my mailbox. 

Well – it’s two weeks later and, guess what – not one but TWO orders are “lost in the mail”.  That’s my orig­i­nal order AND the order that they issued as a replace­ment for the first one that is “M.I.A” from a dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter in NEW JERSEY – the next flip­pin’ state over.

When I called with con­cern at the end of the week last week to find out what the heck is going on because well, you just can’t get track­ing from their inept dis­trib­u­tor ARGIX DIRECT, they informed me that there were a few com­plaints and that the replace­ment would ship out via UPS to me from now on as I’m a mem­ber who has been with them for years.  The B&N oper­a­tor was very under­stand­ing and also told me that she was hav­ing prob­lems per­son­ally with this dumb as rocks (my descrip­tion – NOT hers) ARGIX DIRECT.   She assured me it would ship out post haste and I again waited patiently for the lit­tle present to come to the door.  Now, mind you my Sephora order came and that I ordered SUNDAY NIGHT via UPS.  The UPS here in Philly rocks!  Love them (which, if you know me is quite the event because UPS in Orlando and New Hamp­shire seri­ously sucked!)

Well, I get an email from B&N which tells me that it reshipped my replace­ment order and *wait for it* it went via ARGIX DIRECT via US MAIL.  AGAIN – from New Jer­sey – next state over.  Shipped out and *boom* guess what – it’s lost in the mail again and we can’t find ANY track­ing info for it because B&N and/or ARGIX dropped the flip­pin’ ball.  What hap­pened to “Ms. Lys – we’re going to ship it to you ASAP through UPS so you won’t have this prob­lem again“

Need­less to say, I lost my patience today when I had to talk to this gal “Cecile” or what­ever who not only told me my address was wrong (news­flash – I changed it imme­di­ately when I moved and it’s on all my receipts so check your flip­pin’ screen dummy because the gal prior to you knew the right address) and then told me “ohhh – it’s got to be lost”.  When I told her I just renewed my mem­ber­ship and I wanted it can­celed and refunded – no go.  She begrudg­ingly refunded my order cost for both books and I told her that we’re hav­ing a hell of a breakup.  This is no Ross/Rachael Friends Breakup – this is the real deal as in don’t call me, don’t email me, lose my damn num­ber we are O.V.E.R.  Seri­ously – OVER.  Which is sad and hurts me deeply because I really did love going to B&N and brows­ing the aisles.  Now, it’s all Bor­ders & Borders.com which is 20 min. out of the way for me but to prove my point, I’ll do it. 

So Barnes & Noble – I don’t believe a word of what you say any­more.  Clearly, while I know you are “cut­ting costs” by using this sup­pos­edly cheaper ARGIX DIRECT ser­vice, you just lost a very loyal (and prof­itable) cus­tomer.  I’ve put up with your lack of chang­ing mag­a­zines, lack of stock in the Ply­mouth Meet­ing Store, etc. because to me B&N has been a part of my shop­ping loy­alty since I was in col­lege.  I just can’t sit by and say “Oh it’s okay” because really it’s not.  What you are doing to cus­tomers is dis­ap­point­ing.  So, here’s where I tell you pub­licly (and my read­ers) – do NOT buy the mem­ber­ship – it’s not worth it.  And, that’s money I will never see again but I’m sure you will need that $25 because you will lose more cus­tomers than me by year’s end if you keep this inept ship­ping dis­trib­u­tor.  Clearly, ARGIX has proved itself to be use­less in my eyes not once but TWICE.  Go figure.

So excuse me while I head over to BORDERS to go buy the Foodie Hand­book and Steamy Kitchen at FULL PRICE because, you know what, Bor­ders has NEVER did me wrong like you have Barnes & Noble.  And I’m sure they will wel­come my busi­ness (and wal­let) with open arms.

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Filed Under: Guilty of Idiocy, Rant, Shopping
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