160 Pound Tumor

Last night while flipping through the channels on my TV, I came across a program about a woman with a 160 pound tumor. To me, the concept of a 160 pound tumor seems pretty ridiculous. Didn’t this woman see this problem coming well ahead of time? I figure that if I had some sort of unknown mass that was, say, 20 pounds (and I’m being generous here), I might think to myself "Gee, there’s something that must be pretty severely wrong with that thing on my back that keeps getting bigger and bigger. Maybe I should get that checked out." At worst, I'm getting some work done at the 50 pound mark. But I’m definitely not getting to the point where most of my body weight is attributable to a massive tumor. I cut the woman some slack, since from the 3 minutes of the show that I saw, it sort of seemed like she came from an area without lots of access to quality health care. Nonetheless, we don’t have TV shows about people with 160 pound tumors unless someone is severely dropping the ball along the way.

Every time I read a review of a rap concert in the paper, it seems to say exactly the same thing: the marquee rapper was good, but his entourage of 18 people on stage who all had microphones and attempted to assist in the show ruined things. Oh, and the show was disappointing because it was only 45 minutes long. I’m never sure what to make of these type of reviews. On one hand, it’s entirely possible that rappers are truly oblivious to the idea that they don’t need 20 people backing them up, and are further unaware that a decent concert lasts more than 45 minutes. On the other hand, given the vast similarity in most reviews that I see, I’ve also come to suspect that the paper sends inappropriate reviewers to the shows and these are the only things they can think of to say. My guess is it’s somewhere in between.