Meet Emily David, aka Queen Emily. She’s a 40-year-old single mom, a snappy dresser, and the only talented person on Tuesday night’s episode of America’s Got Talent.

I haven’t heard such a great rendition of Chain of Fools since Turkey Sub from School of Rock. It was proud, soulful, sassy, and confident. It was the voice of a woman who’d worked hard, walked through hell and lived to tell about it.

In her interview, Emily said, “So many times I think it will never happen for me…but then I go and look in the mirror and say ‘Why not me?’”

Why not you Emily? Why shouldn’t you take this show (and this country) by the shoulders and shake us out of a crappy music slump?

We’ve put up with pop starlets too long. Even those with good voices haven’t had the life experience to make their songs really sing. We’ve confused drunk driving, pantie dropping and stage parents with celebrity and even worse…with talent. And what do we have to show for it? Why should we wait for Disney to tell us who the next pop idol/future pariah is when hard-working, truly gifted people people like Emily are right in front of us? Read More »

Happiness is on the rise! At least, those are the findings of a super-scientific research study released this week. The World Values Survey has been tracking happiness for 17 years in 52 countries and involving 350,000 people. The positive results are attributed to “societal shifts in recent decades: Low-income countries such as India and China have experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth; dozens of medium-income countries have democratized; and there has been a sharp rise of gender equality and tolerance of ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in developed societies.”

The results surprised scientists, who had previously believed that happiness was stable when looking at societies over time. Bucking the conventional knowledge, happiness levels in forty countries “rose substantially.”

Denmark is the happiest nation, Zimbabwe the least, and the US was rated as the 16th happiest country. A similar survey released last week determined one reason America isn’t ranking higher on the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations. Read More »