juste milieu

Next Up: Terrycloth Headband and Perm

2007-04-11T06:54:00.000-04:00

Herr Guitar and I were in American Apparel the other day, looking for a sweatshirt. He wasn't buying the unisex concept: "You can't have men's clothes this near a rack of unitards." I pointed out a cool-looking velour sweatshirt I thought would look good on him. "Right," he said. "Who am I'm supposed to be, John McEnroe now?"

Et tu, Slate?

2007-03-30T15:25:00.000-04:00

A new study on the long-term effects of child care was released this week and, of course, the media was all over it. Apparently, kids who attend daycare tend to be more disruptive in the fifth and sixth grades. Finally, the Today Show has some proof that daycare is damaging to kids. Lauer could barely hide his glee beneath the solemnity of his "But what about single and lower-income parents who hear this news but may not have an option?" question to the idiot child psychologist next to him who stressed the importance of finding a quality daycare center. I’m sure the Today Show producers were high-fiving each other for this nugget of advice. "Find quality daycare. Who would have thought? It’s so brilliant it just might work." Never mind that most single and lower-income parents are lucky if they can find affordable daycare, regardless of quality.

When I first heard about this study, I laughed it off. First, the study didn't just look at daycare centers, but all types of "early childcare" - including nannies and relatives. Second, I can think of plenty of parents (including one of my own) whose daily presence would do a lot more to damage a child than being in daycare. Sure, there may be some crazies in the daycare system, but kids there have the benefit of spreading out their risk, as opposed to having to sit home with one wacko you can't get away from. I know, I know, you’re going to remind me that all stay-at-home mommies are saints. They are also brilliant and ethereally beautiful and clever enough to manage to make due with one income or, at the very least, to earn an excellent living from their blog (but their main income is not dollars and cents, but their babies’ hugs and kisses). That's a given. But I'm willing to bet there are a few you wouldn't want to hang out with all day, even if you did get to watch endless loops of Judging Amy... I mean, Blue's Clues. Surely there are one or two SAHMs who should not be. There must be at least a handful to be avoided, regardless of their child's potentially bad attitude in sixth grade.

That was my attitude yesterday. Today, I read this Slate article on the subject. It was meant to clear up the confusion, show how the media overreacted in its reporting, help working mommies breathe a sigh of relief.

It made me cry.

Then I took a walk downstairs, and saw a cracked bird's egg with bits of goo and feather sticking out. Thanks, life, for offering such a poetic image to illustrate my failure as a mommy. I half expected to turn around and see the stroller-on-the-stairs scene from Battleship Potemkin. But I only saw a well-dressed woman in her late 30s happily pushing a Bugaboo, at 11:30 on a Friday morning.

Then I cried some more.

By digging deeper into the study the writer, Emily Bazelon, made it more specific to my situation. The effect was more pronounced in kids who had spent more than two years in daycare. Those who had spent less time there did not demonstrate the same bad behavior (great, I’m not planning to make changes anytime soon, so my kid will be one of the unlucky ones). The upside is that these same kids often had better vocabulary skills (unlikely in my situation – I can barely understand what the women who care for my son are saying). Quality is a big factor, so if you have quality daycare, your odds for a normal sixth-grader improve dramatically (not sure what this means to me, as quality is subjective. Put it this way: I don’t send my son to the posh River School downtown, where tuition is double what I currently pay and the wait list is two years long). Lucky Emily, whose kids attended schools with a two-to-one kid/teacher ratio for less than two years, ends the article by describing the withering look a stranger in the supermarket gave her upon hearing that her son attends daycare. I hear you Emily – people are disapproving and cruel to working mothers. Even those who know enough to choose quality daycare.

Conde Last

2007-02-14T18:32:00.000-05:00

I am starting to resent Gawker. Primarily because they keep writing about how everyone in journalism is now working at Portfolio (the new Conde Nast money magazine, coming out in April). I'm an ideal staff choice, having worked at Portfolio before, when it was called Worth. And yet, despite sending my resume twice, I'm nowhere close to working there. I even used a friend of a friend's name to personalize the introduction. No bite, no nibble. So if getting hired by Portfolio is so easy anyone can do it. What does not even piquing Portfolio's interest say about me?

Then again, Gawker has gone out on a few snark limbs of late. They criticized MCA for skateboarding at age 42. Then the next day, they made fun of the rash of trapper hats in the city. OK, so one of the Beastie Boys is uncool for continuing to do what he's always done, and the rest of us are uncool for wearing warm hats on one of the coldest days of the year. Exasperated sigh. Are there no real miserable assholes left in New York to make fun of?

Plus, I'm a little disappointed with what I have seen of Portfolio so far. I signed up for a free subscription and got a look at the demo cover. Two prepped-out 11-year-old boys sneering in that Paris Hiltonesque, "look what your dirty money has accomplished" way. We haven't seen enough of this? The last issue of Worth was all snotty offspring and the fiduciaries who love them. Which is why, if anyone knew anything, I'd be running Portfolio by now.

Fine, Portfolio, I don't want you either. I have a new job, and not in a dead medium like print. Sure, I'll probably work for you eventually. But by then you won't be on the rise but on the wane, and you'll give me a title promotion instead of a raise before you miss payroll altogether. I've seen your type before.

The New Old Me

2007-02-12T18:37:00.000-05:00

I’m back. Somewhat changed but still the same sunny me.

I did not mean to be away this long, but things have been muy loca. Over the holidays I changed jobs while simultaneously attempting to finish two freelance gigs with the worst pain-in-the-ass-grunt-work to pay ratio in all of mediadom. Herr Guitar was this close to packing up the baby and leaving me for a wife who doesn’t sell her sanity for $1 a word, a wife who understands work/life balance and doesn’t scream at her g-mail and can fit into her pre-pregnancy jeans. But then I met my deadlines and auld acquaintance was forgot and lang-syned, and things calmed down again.

Then I started a new job. I gave up on my plan to be a work at home mom after reasoning that neither Swaddlini nor I could handle watching that much Judging Amy. He enjoys running around someplace other than the living room once in awhile and, honestly, so do I. So I compromised, and left my career- and mind-deadening West Side butter tub and leapt back into the “real world.”

Turns out, the real world got a lot younger while I was away. I guess I should have expected it – my new job involves the Internet, and you know how the kids love that crazy thing – but I feel like a dinosaur. A mommy dinosaur, who doesn’t own an iPod*, who has never sent nor received a text message, who has never owned a Dave Matthews album, and so on.

Oh well. The good thing about being older than everyone in the room is that I’m better. I sucked in my twenties, as much or more than every 20-something sucks, and I would not go back if you paid me. I saw an old acquaintance at a party a few weeks ago and he remarked that I looked and seemed better than ever. I haven’t really hung out with him in about 10 years, and he recalled that an evening spent with me usually ended in my being upset or crying. It's a dead-on description, sure, but it left me feeling so nostalgic for crazy me. Not that I want her back, I just want to know her friends again.

This is similar to the semi-paralyzing nostalgia that gripped me recently upon viewing an After-School Special called, "That's What Friends Are For." I bought these After-School Special DVDs a year or so ago and never found time to watch them. They are pretty stupid, for the most part, but this one episode hit all the right notes. The premise: mother and daughter move to Santa Monica, post-divorce, in 1979. They move into an apartment building, where the young girl befriends the building's weirdo, also a divorce kid. Trouble ensues (involving ritualistic doll destruction in the name of parent reconciliation - sort of like Chucky Meets the Parent Trap, only deadly boring), etc. It was awesome. The apartment building, the weird kid, the look of the film stock - it all worked on me like madelines worked on Proust. I still haven't recovered - I see everything in mellow, slightly grainy light, as if backlit by a sunset or powerful scented candle. All music has become a Bread medley. All fashion a pair of pastel SWAT overalls and a t-shirt with a rainbow across it. All food lick-em-aid and spam sandwiches with mustard. And I have an overwhelming need to go back!

* I now have an iPod. Thanks to my Valentine, HG. xo

Outing Outcry (and, Move Over, James Bond)

2006-11-20T11:31:00.000-05:00

Recovering from a terrible bout of bronchitis, I've spent most of my recent waking hours 1.) coughing and 2.) staring at the TV. I've seen a lot of movies, among them the intense recent Bergman, Saraband; the implausible and irritating Derailed, with Jennifer Aniston; and old favorites Living Out Loud and Mr. Jealousy. I've also seen many TV shows, most of which I am too embarrassed to disclose publicly, but one worth mentioning: Frontline's A Hidden Life (I'm not sure if it will be rerun soon, but you can watch it online). The show is about the outing of Jim West, the Republican mayor of Spokane, Washington. He was caught trolling for 18-year-old boys on a site called gay.com in 2005. The Daily Show et al had a good laugh about the hypocrisy, and I probably laughed along. But the Frontline episode examines the story much more deeply.

West was essentially set up by the editors of the main Spokane paper, the Spokesman-Review. Apparently, Spokane is the last place you'd want to be if you are gay (or maybe just the last place in the northern region of the US - I'm sure plenty of places are a lot worse) and in the 1970s, it was also a hotbed of molestation charges and sex scandals in the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts. One case involved a well-known sheriff and scout leader who was accused of regularly molesting young boys, and who committed suicide as a result. The paper never really covered the scandal until 20-plus years after, when a new editor decided it was time to "heal old wounds" (I'm sure the sordid sex angle had nothing to do with this decision).

Reporters reinvestigating the story realized that the accused dead sheriff, David Hahn, was the best friend of fellow sheriff and scout leader, Jim West, who later went on to become the state's senator, and then the mayor of Spokane. West was also known for being an all-around Republican homophobe, sponsoring legislation in the 1980s that would make it illegal for gays to teach school. So had West known what his buddy Hahn had been up to, and was he involved? No one had ever accused him of anything untoward, but the paper pursued it until they and received a tip that West was a regular on gay.com under the name Cobra82 and/or rightbiguy, and that he had engaged in consensual sex with another man.

In an attempt to connect West to pedophilia, the paper set up a sting. They created a 17-year-old persona, MotoBrock, and eventually West did begin chatting with him. But while MotoBrock dropped many hints about arranging a meeting, West generally didn't bite. So they gave MotoBrock a birthday: letting him turn 18. The two continued to chat (West's chat comments - at least many shown on the program - were slightly heart wrenching. They show that he was struggling with his sexuality - he would ask if others were out, and lament that he never could be) and eventually, they had online sex. Then MotoBrock started hinting that he needed a job, and West suggested that he might be able to find him an unpaid internship. That was all the paper needed - well, that and proof that Cobra82 was actually West. They set up a meeting. West showed, MotoBrock didn't. Then they called West to the paper and told them what they were about to print (they have the entire meeting on audio tape, and it's played on the show - talk about dramatic).

In the meantime, one of the writers at the paper gets another scoop: a man who had previously charged Hahn with molestation (and whose parents had several related lawsuits in the 1980s) was now also charging West. This seemed like a perfect lede to the closeted gay/internship-peddling story they already had, so they just ignored the question of why this man had never named nor mentioned West in the past. They ran with all of it. West was destroyed, or at least seemed that way. He cried to the editor that he had struggled with the secret of his sexuality for so long that he was glad it was out, but firmly denied any claims of pedophilia. The town went up in arms, demanding West step down. But he didn't. Weeks later, he held a press conference saying that he was personally humiliated and ashamed, but professionally undeterred. His personal life should have no effect on his job as mayor. Continued public outcry (Frontline even got footage of members of a committee to recall West, and they are as outrageous as any gay basher - e.g. claiming they know West is evil becuase they see it in his eyes) and 189 stories about it in the Spokesman-Review led to a landslide recall. West was destroyed, despite later being found innocent of charges of abuse of office in an FBI investigation. Then he died of cancer within a year.

Frontline interviews West as well as the paper's reporters and editors. The story is absolutely fascinating, as are the questions it invariably asks: Can reporting cross a line in a story like this? Aside from obvious questions of hypocrisy, do public figures have a right to privacy? Politically, I love seeing more and more righteously straight Republicans are being outed - mostly because Americans need to get used to the idea that homosexuality doesn't come in just one flamboyant, theatre producing, here-queer-and-used-to-it variety. But after seeing this program, the notion of such an unwanted public outing also kind of scares me. I also think it's dangerous to so readily link homosexuality to pedophilia. It certainly sells papers and makes Jon Stewart seem even more clever, but it can't be helping the gay community. Anyway, if you can't see the show, take a look at the Web site for more on the story. It's a case that every journalist should study.

Speaking of sexuality...

After thoroughly annoying Herr Guitar (along with many, many strangers at the Daily Show's 10th Anniversary concert at Irving Plaza, don't ask) with my intense and obsessive attraction to the new James Bond, Daniel Craig, I think it's finally spent. I'm OK with this. It was fun while it lasted. Besides, the likelihood of my getting a chance to see the movie before it hits HBO is nil, and by that time I'll be like "Double 0 who?" I'm fickle that way. I just liked having a celebrity crush that my female contemporaries could relate to - whenever I get involved with girl talk regarding hot actors I inevitably make the other girl/s uncomfortable by not seeing the appeal of Brad Pitt (yuck) while espousing my passion for someone like Tim Roth or Bill Clinton or Warren Beatty (oh yeah).

So I was happy to see Salon publish a list of the real Sexiest Men Alive. It's the kind of group that, with a couple of exceptions (Neil Patrick Harris?), a freak like myself can wholeheartedly agree with. I mean, what other list would include atheist Richard Dawkins, actor Alan Rickman and director Noah Baumbach? Note to the women who made the selections: If you're out there, call me for some girl talk.

Move Over, Ursula Andress

2006-11-16T15:52:00.000-05:00

Question: How hot is the new James Bond?

Answer: So friggin hot I may just have to watch a James Bond movie.

Hate Debate: JSF vs JF jr.

2006-11-10T16:42:00.000-05:00

Who do I hate most?

Is it Jonathan Safran Foer, the lilliputian prince of Park Slope who writes like my evil, talentless identical-twin cousin might write on acid? Oh, I do hate him. I have written before of my hatred of JSF and his lofty book deals and his record-breakingly priced townhouse and his book-throwing prose. (Can't remember if I mentioned that I liked his wife's book - though she also generally annoys me, she can write.)

But there may be someone I hate even more. That someone is Safran Foer's little brother, Joshua Foer. An even smaller human with an even larger advance - $1.2 million! For HIS MEMOIR! He's like 23! And it hasn't been written yet!!! And even the premise supposedly SUX!!!!

But wait... he just sold the rights... the rights to this 23-YEAR-OLD'S-MEMOIR!!!! we're just OPTIONED for a MOVIE!!!

But wait... the movie is tentatively titled MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN!!!

And, he's also in love with CONNOR OBERST!!!!

I'm sorry for all the yelling. But can you blame me? I must declare that I truly hate Joshua (now known as JFjr). But do I hate him more than JSF? For if it were not for JSF, the original Foer, then JFjr be just another weenus from Yale trying to get a job at the Staten Island Advance. But at least JSF had to kiss a lot of ass - and apparently did, writing to other writers from the age of six or something - to get where he is. JFjr only had to say his last name, apparently. Why else... how else could a 23-year-old get $1.2 mil for a memoir that isn't written and that is called Moonwalking with Einstein. It seems ridiculous. Impossible! Implausible! If I made this story up I would be accused of imitating my evil identical twin cousin on acid, only with less believability.

(I also hate Connor Oberst, another minor talent with major hype. But not with the same passion and fire that I hate the Foers. And what's up - are these three all the same guy but sometimes with glasses and sometimes not? I love Seth Cohen as much or more than anyone, but I don't need the persona to extend into my reading and listening materials. I get enough of the character from the show and Teen People.)

Oh... I guess I hate JFjr the most. He wins. For that movie title alone. But things can change. And I'm sure they will get worse. For me. Better for my hate. And for anyone named Foer.

Which reminds me, I changed Swaddlini's name. To Ford Maddox Foer. And he's brilliant! We're shopping around his baby book.

Also Willing to Consider Adoption by Oprah, Tom and Katie, Bill Gates, Angelina and Brad, Nick and Jessica, Rupert Murdoch, etc.

2006-10-25T11:43:00.000-04:00

I can't stop thinking about Madonna's adoption. I've been reading up on the subject and now have a better understanding of why people don't approve of international adoptions. Why bother with all the travel, passports, Visas, language barriers, etc., when you can get your hands on a red-blooded American kid? I'd like to carry the argument further: Why even adopt a child, when you can adopt a full-grown adult instead? You have no idea how a kid's going to turn out: could be a genius, could be a drug addict, could get fat, or lose those natural curls, etc. But with an adult, the cards are on the table. You get what you pay for. Take it or leave it.

That's why I'd like to formally present myself as a candidate for adoption. Below is my most up-to-date CV.

Objective: To be adopted by a loving family headed by at least one extremely wealthy celebrity magnate.

Experience: Background includes more than 35 years of experience as daughter/member of family.

Further qualifications include:

- Fully grown - there are few surprises left regarding my development.

- Mother - when you adopt me you get a two-for-one deal: a daughter and an infant grandson. I can attest that he is cuter than any other baby on the market, both domestic and international.

- Natural blonde - granted, it's an ashy, dirty, dark blonde that's lost the golden luster it had in its first 20 years, but its lightness makes it easier to color according to your genetic heritage/preferences. Pale-yet-ruddy complexion and light eyes complete malleable WASP package. I'm also tall, have strong and even teeth, and have a fairly disease-free family history (not counting depression and alcoholism).

- Career professional - have written for many national consumer publications, and could take on various public relations tasks as needed. My career has also provided me some understanding of various tax shelter strategies.

- High School and College graduate - both were public schools, which provides me with a street cred befitting my orphan status. Additionally, I achieved brag-worthy grade point average, held down a part-time job, and managed to get through my education years with minimal exposure to beer bongs and fraternity-affiliated gentlemen.

- American - my blood is red, white and blue (but mostly red - my health is not a concern), and these colors do not run (though I should clarify that I do run - a ten-minute mile - and am also willing to "run" errands if that is included in my responsibilities). I am so ridiculously American, I have no idea where my family descends from. But I'm pretty sure it's somewhere exotic, such as East Timor, Uruguay, Namibia, England, Germany or Ireland.

- Excellent communicator - great at conveying to others that they are looking fabulous and/or soooo thin today. Am willing to assure those around me that they are far too talented to put up with so much bullshit.

- Amateur playwright, chef, musician, 401(k) investor.

- Available to begin immediately.

If you are interested in this exciting opportunity, I look forward to meeting you to discuss my excellent qualifications for being a member of your family. I can be reached discreetly here during the day. Recommendations from current family members available upon request.

Memo to Madonna: Take Me Instead!

2006-10-23T15:49:00.000-04:00

Does Madonna's adoption backlash seem ridiculous to everyone, or is it just me?

Maybe I haven't been keeping up, but as far as I can tell, an underfunded orphanage with no waiting list is getting some attention from one of the world's richest people, who wants to adopt and take responsibility for one of the world's poorest people. This is, by all accounts, pure evil.

I'm confused. Why can't Madonna adopt a baby?

OK, so she may have been set on adopting a child from the U.S. before a dinner with Brad and Angelina convinced her to think globally. But is that so bad? There are plenty of children around the world in need of being adopted, and Madonna and her husband are a transcontinental couple, which essentially frees them from any ridiculous nationalistic allegiances.

Now the kid's dad is saying he didn't understand what adoption meant when he agreed to it. But is this Madonna's fault? I mean, this man took his son and placed him in an orphanage, which in any language says, "You raise him. I can't." Then, when the rich white woman and camera crews came around, he starts raving about how happy he is that his son is going to be cared for by this famous woman, and how wonderful his son's life will be in America. So what's he complaining about now? That when the baby grows up he won't be sent back to Africa? Come on - the kid'll be a Ciccone-Ritchie. It's not like you won't be able to find him one day. And if anyone can afford to travel back to Africa (as well as East Berlin, Tokyo, Bilbao - wherever there's a party) Madonna's son can. And, by the way, if this were a traditional American adoption and the birth parent backed out at this stage, it would seem cruel to the adoptive parents. This is the stuff of countless Lifetime movies, but because Madonna is involved, we're stone cold.

Could it be that this father has made the quickest media-savvy turnaround on record? Maybe whoever helped him realize he didn't really understand adoption also clued him in on the way things work in celebrity culture. Rule No. One: Make them want you more than you want them. Rule No. Two: Nothing truly fabulous comes easy (or cheap). Rule No. Three: If Page Six says so, it must be so. Rule No. Four: If it takes their minds off the war, it leads. And so on.

Granted, we don't know Madonna's true motives - she may be after a third-world accessory to carry around in her purse; she may be growing her own little troupe of back-up dancers; she may be staffing a sweatshop to fuel a new line of yoga wear. The possibilities are endless! Or maybe - just maybe - she, like most parents who decide to adopt, has love and support to offer and wants to share it with a child who has little of either. Regardless, I don't even like Madonna and I'd let her adopt me, no questions asked. And I'm a well-fed adult with my own clothes, bed and home.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who wants to care for and support a child should be able to hook up with an orphaned child. That goes for Madonna and all of her friends. And George W. Bush and all of his friends (except for Mark Foley, of course). And everyone I know, and everyone reading this, and all of your friends.

But I'm obviously confused.

Book Learnin'

2006-10-19T14:49:00.000-04:00

I am introducing a new feature to this site: Book Learnin'. This is where I read books, and you learn what I think of them. Yee-haw!

Since I've been devouring books lately, let's jump right in:

I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe.
Two words: Excruciating fun. I haven’t read much Wolfe, but his Bonfire of the Vanities was, in my teens, one of my very favorite books. That book was about New York’s race/class struggles seen from all sorts of different viewpoints; Charlotte is about modern-day life at an Ivy League college (one that is inexplicably filled with idiots). It’s been a long time since I last read Bonfire, but I loved its mean-spiritedness and its peek inside a world that I’d known nothing about. Charlotte Simmons is more heavy-handed, by comparison, but definitely gets a lot of things right. Disquietingly so, when you remember that it’s written by a 1000-year-old fop—the man wears spats! Just thinking of him writing the hyper-expository descriptions of teenage body parts (which is not as hot as you’d think—he used the term mons pubis so often I was ready to find his and kick it) in various states of work-out, dance, and general thrusting felt much more perverse than anything described in the book.

The overall old-foggyish tone to the writing undermines much of the book’s would-be brilliance. Objectively, I am Charlotte Simmons could be picked up 100 years from now, and it would be a pretty accurate historical document of college life in the early part of the 21st Century. Unfortunately, anyone who is currently young enough to relate to its accuracy might be left cold by the tone. It’s sort of like getting a play-by-play of the Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan feud from your reverend’s 80-year-old wife. For example, early on, the basketball star, Jojo, is described as speaking in Fuck Patois (other characters later speak in Shit Patois). It’s a dead-on observation—people today use fuck and shit in most sentences, as verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc.—but it’s dripping with tsk, tsk, tsk. The author’s own sensibilities seem to be channeled through Charlotte, the ridiculously pure virgin/genius hillbilly—a tabula rosa when it comes to all things pop culture (or, for that matter, all things current). What 18-year-old today is deeply affronted by the fact that no one introduces themselves using last names anymore? I hated her—pages and pages of angst over using a co-ed bathroom; endless inner monologues about her righteousness and purity (always ending in the resolute personal mantra, “I am Charlotte Simmons”); and her parents, with their ridiculously written mountain accents (unlike us, dey ain't tew keen on book learnin') and utter obliviousness. And when Charlotte screws up and falls into a deep depression, I wanted to slap the fucking shit out of her. The I realized that these intense sections, while laborious to read, were as close to perfect in describing an 18-year-old’s depression—and how it makes something relatively incidental seem life-endingly important—as anything I had ever read.

Basically, the book is cheesy and long, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Granted, I was ashamed to be seen reading it on the train—and not just because it was spotted on Bush's bedside table—but I read the 700 pages in under a week and when I was done I kind of wanted more.

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, by Chuck Klosterman
Why didn’t I know about Chuck Klosterman? I had heard of him but hadn’t bothered to investigate. I had the idea he was Gen-X’s answer to humorist Dave Barry—writing home spun tales about Volkswagens and Macs. I guess I wasn’t that far off, but I love him. Klosterman is my age, and has pretty much my exact sensibilities (although he is far more into 80s hair metal than I have ever been). Any pop culture weirdo worth their salt should read this book – if only to add one additional reference to their lexicon.

The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud
This thing was praised to the heavens by... well, everyone. I thought it was really good. I liked the characters, the premise was right on, the writing was beautiful (even the overwrought sentences). But I saw this review on Amazon.com, and thought it was better than anything I could possibly say:

This is a great book if you live in NY, write books for a living, and think esoteric thoughts about issues with little merit.

Exactly why I loved it!

Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis
I started reading this book years ago, after randomly picking it up in the bookstore. Back then, I couldn’t get into it—I read about 15 pages before realizing I had no idea what I was reading. I don’t know if I’m alone in doing this, but sometimes I rush headlong into a book but only really begin comprehending what I’m reading three or four pages in. That didn’t happen with Lucky Jim. My eyes were working, my hands were turning pages, my mind was doing its best, but nothing stuck.

I recently decided to try again. It worked. The book is a hilarious send-up of British college life in the early part of the last century—Charlotte Simmons for the Cambridge set, only far funnier and more appealing, and with less pubis. I loved the main character, Jim Dixon, a college professor teaching who must have just stumbled into the job. He drinks too much, plays ridiculous practical jokes, and is always about to be found out for doing something ridiculous. He has a sort-of girlfriend who he doesn’t really like but feels obligated to help, as she has just recovered from a suicide attempt over another guy. She’s brilliantly written. The girl of his dreams is dating Dixon’s boss’s son, Bertrand, a beret-wearing art snob who speaks Preppy Patois: that’s when you end sentences simultaneously drawing out and nasally eating words, and end up pronouncing phrases like “you see” as “you sam.” So funnam! And when Dixon give his speech on Merrie England... well, read it and you'll see.

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
I picked this up after seeing it listed as one of the NY Times' Best Works of American Fiction Over the Past 25 years. (It was actually written 46 years ago, in 1960, but it's included because it was published as a set with the four other "Rabbit Novels" in 1995.) I haven't read much by the GREAT AMERICAN MALE NOVELISTS (TM) that include Updike, Roth, Bellow and Mailer. I've read about one book by each - Bellow's perfect Humbolt's Gift and Mailer's excellent The Executioner's Song in their entireties, and half of Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. I didn't finish the Roth because I bought it used and halfway through I found some funky (literally and figuratively) scrap of 1920s-era pornography with a typewritten message on the back shoved in between the pages. Those of you who have read Portnoy's Complaint or have the generally queasy distrust of used paperbacks that I have will understand the potential hideousness of this finding. I hastily deposited the book and its bookmark in the nearest trash container and have not read a word of Roth since.

I had read nothing of Updike but a review of his entire career by David Foster Wallace in Consider the Lobster. Wallace concedes that Updike is one asshole of a beautiful writer, but when he asks some of his female friends for their take, one sums Updike up as: “Penis with a thesaurus." So I had to get my hand’s on Rabbit, Run.

I'm now sorry I did, because I hated it but am compelled to continue on to the next Rabbit nightmare. I really hated this book - I hated the character Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom with a passion. He is a selfish misogynist who leaves his wife and child, yet everyone in town (as well as in neighboring towns) still can't help but love him. Why? Why can't they help it? I managed to resist his charm through 300-plus pages. And the book left me so depressed. I think I took it out on my husband and son - I was tired and grouchy all the time, and felt that everything was meaningless. And, near the end, when Rabbit's idiot wife who I had initially felt pity for does something unreasonably stupid and horrifying, I wanted to drop the book and say a prayer for humanity. (I was on an airplane and felt compelled to hug and then slap all of my flying companions.)

I was so grateful when the whole thing was over, and now I want to read Rabbit Redux, the next piece of the saga. I just have to know, what happens to Rabbit's son Nelson. And idiot Janice, his wife. And the strumpet, Ruth, from the other town, etc. I'm sucked in.

Anyway, that wraps up the inaugural edition of Book Learnin'. Ya'll come backa nyow -yaheah?

Tall Drip Gives Grande Red-Eye Rant with Lots of Foam

2006-10-13T11:29:00.000-04:00

So I'm at the milk and sugar station at Starbucks, and I notice an ad staring at my through my iced quad in a venti cup. It is encouraging me to buy/read the new Mitch Albom book For One More Day.

Excuse me? I don’t yet know how to type a double take, but if I did, I would insert it here.

For the fortunately unfamiliar, Mitch Albom authored the insanely best-selling, Tuesdays With Morrie, and the brilliant follow up, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. He's also a sportswriter who, a couple of years back, wrote an article describing a game that ended up not taking place, and it ran in the paper as if the game actually happened. (Sort of like what Jayson Blair did at the Times, only minus the humiliating fallout.) He's a hack, but big deal. My problem with him is his yucky books that sell like hot porn. No, I haven't read them, but I do know a grizzled-yet-wistful looking Jack Lemmon played Morrie in the TV movie right before he died - that and the premise of each book* are all I need to convince me that not even my grandmother could stomach this level of precious, syrup-laden dreck. And my grandmother is a Rush Limbaugh fan.

(*Here is my best guess at the premise of each book: Morrie is nonfiction, about Albom's regular visits to his dying former college professor and the learning that ensues; Five People seems self-explanatory, a novel about a person or people who go to heaven and meet five people who changed/had an effect on their lives; One More Day is a novel about a baseball player who dies and then comes back for one more day and truly lives, or his mom dies then comes back and truly lives, or some such. Again, I'm guessing. I don't know for sure what these books are about. But I think it’s safe to assume they’re yucky.)

So why is Starbucks, my corporate friend, trying to sell me this book? On the little chalk board by the espresso machine there is a review by one of the “friendly baristas” about how “I” really enjoyed the book and how it's important and inspiring and spiritual. I first saw it at the Starbucks in Sheridan Square, and I thought it seemed strange (as would anyone who has been to Sheridan Square). "Which of these drag queen/tranny/lesbians is responsible for this review?" I wondered to myself. "Was he/she/etc. forced to give it a rave, or just forced to read it? Do employees get a bonus for finishing? Is there a test?" So many questions and, really, who could I ask?

But then I saw the same review on another chalkboard at another Starbucks, this time on the Upper West Side. I saw it again in Columbus Circle, and then again on 14th Street. (That's right, I get around. Herr Guitar says I should work for Blackberry, because wherever I am I can locate the nearest Starbucks.) So basically, this corporate behemoth is trying to sell me this stupid book using folksy, corner coffee shop tactics. "Your friendly coffee jerk likes it, and she has a nose ring and several celtic tatoos so..."

I hate to rail against Starbucks, because as huge corporations go, it is my favorite. I know at least two people who read this blog who would sniff at that remark, but to them I ask: why is it OK to like Apple or Whole Foods but not Starbucks? I mean, I understand why Wal-Mart is evil – it gives consumers a false impression that inflation is not occurring by keeping prices artificially low, meanwhile it's bankrupting its suppliers. Plus, it locks employees in at night. But Starbucks raises prices regularly, and no one cares. Because Starbucks is the best kind of drug dealer… uh, I mean, retailer: familiar, consistent, bearing a quality product, easily found, friendly, and cozy, with a relatively clean bathroom. (Aside from the bathroom, the consistency and quality are truly important. Before Starbucks came to LA in the early 90s, you could not get a decent latte in that town. Period. And it’s a big town. Even during the post-"Friends" coffeehouse boom, I ordered a mocha from a very hip and popular cafe in North Hollywood and was given a cup of brewed coffee with spoonfuls of Nestle’s Quick.)

Granted, Starbucks frowns upon unionizing, but it pays employees pretty well (including decent tips), offers health benefits even for part-timers, and has a profit-sharing plan (full disclosure: I worked there briefly after college. I make a mean sugar-free vanilla mocha). It may hurt small South American farmers, but don’t believe your local Java Joe's is doing anything to help South American farmers. And it seems pretty committed to sustainability. Starbucks isn't perfect, but for a wildly successful corporation, it’s kind of admirable.

Until now. Globalism is one thing but Mitch Albom I cannot abide. I mean, this is a brand that I am associating myself with (and not just through this blog - as I type this, there are three Starbucks cups on my desk, several more are scattered about my home and car, and there may be one or two in my purse), and now the company is telling me that, as far as it is concerned, I am the kind of person who read Tuesdays With Morrie, and wants more. Or maybe I didn't read Tuesdays With Morrie. Maybe I'm just the kind of person who thinks the idea of a baseball player or his mom going to heaven but then getting to live one more day would make a nice book. "Just think of the possibilities!," the Starbucks-imagined me would say. "What would I do if I had just one more day? Hmmm. I guess if today were that day we'd have the answer to that one, huh? I'd be reading a book about what another, make believe person and/or his mother did on his or her last day. And having a latte, of course," Starbucks-me would chuckle. "What a satisfying way to go."

No! That’s not me, Starbucks. I thought you understood! It’s been like 14 years and still you act like we've just met. It was OK when you started selling music, because some of it was pretty good and people just aren’t buying CDs like they used to (damn Internet pirates!). And when you produced that Akeelah and the Bee movie, I thought it was weird but then it got two thumbs up and Greta Van Susteren called it the best movie ever made or something like that. And then when I saw the movie on a plane and thought it was fairly terrible, I forgave you because at least you were taking a stand in the war against spelling (who knew inner-city parents were so against their children participating in spelling bees?).

But now, I don’t know, Starbucks. I don't think I can defend you anymore. I may be an iced-venti douchebag, but I don’t to be a part of the iced-venti douchebag demographic.

Fascism's New Face

2006-09-27T14:26:00.000-04:00

I just read this on Salon's "The Fix" gossip section:

Blacklisting the Scissor Sisters: The New York disco-rock band the Scissor Sisters released a new album on Tuesday, "Ta-Dah," but it may not necessarily be coming to a store near you. The group -- whose single off the album, "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'," is No. 1 in the U.K. charts -- won't be appearing in any of the 1,100 stores owned by Trans World Entertainment, including FYE, Sam Goody, Strawberries, Wherehouse, Specs and Coconuts. The reason? Frontman Jake Shears complained at a record retailers convention last month that Trans World's prices are too high: "I went to go buy the new Raconteurs album, and it was like $18.99." Trans World president and CEO Jim Litwak said Shears was exaggerating the price but never apologized, "so we made the decision not to carry the band's new release." (VH1)

I'm no fan of the Scissor Sisters, simply because I haven't listened to much of their music, but this report disturbed me. A petulant CEO waiting for an apology is going to dictate what his customers have access to? This may seem minor, or even reasonable, unless you consider that most towns only have a Coconuts or Wherehouse or Sam Goody from which to purchase their $19 cds. (Quick aside: I worked at a Wherehouse, in the video section, for one month when I was 17. It was there I learned that the vast majority of video renters in this country are renting porn - and I mean vast! The most benign looking guys would come up to check out with like 15 porn titles, and then they'd throw "When Harry Met Sally" on the top of the stack.) To be sure, anyone with the Internet can access "Tah-Da" elsewhere, but what about the Jake Shears of tomorrow - the standalone queers in tiny red towns who have never even heard of the Scissor Sisters? Will they instead have to make due with the latest Dixie Chicks record? Oh wait, that's a bad example, because the Chicks are also known for ticking off corporate honchos. No, instead they'll have to settle for something by the repulsive Black Eyed Peas, or some other band that only Matt Lauer and his ilk can stomach. And if tomorrow's gays start listening to Matt Lauer music, the reverberations will be felt throughout the culture at large. I shudder to even continue this line of thinking.

But my point is, in an age where mega corporations have their hands in everything and have the ability to buy up any competitors, we don't need a Hitler or a Stalin to take away our freedoms. An idiot like Jim Litwak can simply limit our choices to fit his own preferences.

By the way, I believe a Trans World company was selling a cd for $18.99. Virgin and Tower charge as much, and Herr Guitar impulsively paid about that much for a copy of the Smiths' "Meat is Murder" three weeks ago at Other Music. Even the cashier was aghast, commenting that the 20-year-old album should definitely be sold at some sort of "Nice Price." The worst part was that HG went home, listened to two songs, and hasn't played the cd since, but that's a complaint for another post...

I know what you're thinking: By writing this, I am completely distroying my chances for worldwide distribution of my own album, which I have yet to make or even consider making. (Note to self: learn instrument and song writing and consider making album, and then reconsider due to possible blacklisting.) But hey, that's the kind of in-your-face social critic I am.

I'll Tell You One Thing, My Ghost Ain't Gonna Be Haunting That Fucking Pool

2006-08-14T16:13:00.000-04:00

Herr Guitar and I went to see Sonic Youth and Yeah Yeah Yeahs last Friday, at the McCarren Pool in Williamsburg. The bands were both amazing - Mark Ibold* from Pavement played bass for Sonic Youth. Kim looked great, though she seems to be taking dance lessons from her teenage daughter. Into her third song-and-twirl number, HG wondered aloud whether there is a Wisteria Lane where Kim and Thurston live. Still, there's no one cooler - except maybe Karen O, who is like a cross between Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger and Chrissy Hynde, and yet truly unique. She's an incredible singer and an amazing show-woman, using her lanky body to full effect while running around the stage in a ridiculous 80s-style shimmering poof dress. Awesome!

[HG will kill me if I don't mention that Mark Ibold once served us breakfast at Great Jones. At the show, he actually shouted: "That guy served me breakfast!" And when Thurston mentioned that Mark just moved to Brooklyn and Mark corrected him and said, "Queens" and Thurston said, "Somebody had to do it," HG yelled out "Jersey City!" I was appalled.]

Back to the 80s... That's not just a segue, it's a description of the crowd. Who knew that 1980s fashion was just back, plain and simple? Everyone in that pool but us, I guess, because I felt like I was not informed that the evening would involve costumes. At first, I thought the place was just filled with some of the local Polish girls, who always seemed to have a particularly 80s-yet-timeless style. One girl had a Jean Seburg-meets-Phoebe Cates haircut, black and red striped shirt, jeans that tapered at the ankle (into zippers? could that be possible?), ending in black Converse All Stars. I thought she either had the most calculated 1984 look I'd ever seen, or she was one of the teenagers who work at grocery store. (We always joked that The Donnas worked there - young Polish beauties with lots of unironic blue eye shadow.) But then I saw another big belt. Another tapered jean. Air Jordans! Brightly colored clutch purses. All stars all around. It was like an Ashlee Simpson video but with better music. And is it possible to be cool wearing a "Snakes on a Plane" t-shirt? I spied at least three different gentlemen that evening who must have though so.

It wasn't just the bad fashion that bothered me, it was the mass alterative sameness. Granted, Williamsburg is hipster Disneyland. It has been moving toward that for awhile, and this recent visit confirmed it. Even corporate America is paying attention. When HG stopped at a favorite cafe he was solicited by the makers of the Yaris car. On the way into the show, we got free Boost Mobile bags (I have no idea what Boost Mobile even does - but apparently a bag is necessary) from one cool-looking kid (when he said to HG, "Do you want a bag?," we thought we were being courted by a dealer, as is custom at a normal concert. Then he actually handed us a backpack. HG panicked, sure he was being set up or sold something he didn't want), and scratch off tickets for Best Buy from another. I never felt so commoditized. Can't you just hear the pitch? "They are hungry for a look that defines them, and they have lots of disposable income!" But when we entered and saw the vast convergence of alternatypes, I kind of lost it. I felt like I was at Urban Outfitters: The Concert.

Now to the subject of the pool. I lived in the neighborhood for almost 10 years and never realized the pool was there - I just assumed the structure housed a former napalm factory or some such - but I'd read a bit about it in preparation for this event. It's a giant pool that was built as a WPA project during the depression, it was closed down in the early 1970s, and was supposed to be reopened around 2000-01 before losing funding because of a priority shift after 9/11. I read an article by a guy who chatted up an old local at the Charleston who boasted that he helped keep the pool closed in the 70s (I can't find this article now, of course). The man and his neighbors motives were racist in nature, and therefore seemed not sensible. Then I read a seemingly newer local's complaint on Gothamist that Clear Channel was taking advantage - charging overpriced tickets to put on shows there that the residents would never benefit from, and blocking efforts to reopen it as a pool. Corporate bastards, I thought.

After spending time in the pool, I feel qualified to chime in. The pool is great - for seeing a show. As a swimming pool, it's a terrible, terrible idea. Anyone who thinks the city is going to bring that thing back is out of her mind. It's the size of four olympic-size pools! It can hold 6,000 people! I mean, at it's narrowest point, it's like 60 feet wide. If someone tried to swim from one side to the other - not a lap, but cutting across the pool, they'd have to be a great swimmer. If they're not, they'd drown about half way through and no one would even notice. This is a big pool, folks. You'd have to have 4000 lifeguards. I'd like to meet the real estate genius who decided that filling that thing with water would add value to the neighborhood. And as for the old-local racist? What liberal multi-culti in their right mind would take the opposing side? I've read that they plan to open a cafe and skate park to add interest. Read that last sentence again, and for the word "interest," substitute the word "urine." Did anyone consider the urine? Bleeeeeeeeeechk, hack, cough, wince, gurgle, gag! I can smell it already. I know New York has gotten too clean and healthy, but do we really need to promote a major health crisis? Plus, Brooklyn Vegan says a girl who drowned there haunts the place crying for help. I totally believe this, and by reopening the pool city officials would be all but asking for legions of additional drowned ghosts. (Yes, Legions of Additional Drowned Ghosts would be a great band name, but you can't have it.)

If you don't have their new albums, Rather Ripped (Sonic Youth) and Show Your Bones (YYYs), run and get them. Now. I'll wait.

Mommy War Bootcamp

2006-07-28T12:24:00.000-04:00

It used to be that if I wanted to make myself truly depressed, I needed to look no further than side two of "Ritual de lo Habitual" by Jane's Addiction (I call it side two because in my day we had something called a cassette tape, which was a wonderful little plastic music delivery system that would melt in a hot car... but that's an anthropology lesson for another post. On the CD it's track 6 and beyond). About three minutes in and you start to feel nice and mope-y. By the third song, you've let yourself have a good cry. By the end, you're talking yourself off the ledge, but in a therapeutic way.

These days, music doesn't have the same effect on me, but reading can swing my mood faster than a quad-shot red-eye extra whip mocha (i.e. very fast). One particularly greed-fueled New York magazine story or depressing post-war novel and I'm a wreck. And lately I've been reading a lot of blogosphere commentary on working vs. stay-at-home moms.

Remember when I said the Mommy Wars (TM) are bullshit? I admire the innocence of that righteous indignation, because now I'm not so sure. I feel as if I'm on the Mommy Wars' front line. But it's not me against other moms - although they can be plenty brutal and bitchy - it's me, half-heartedly working mom, against me, wannabe stay-at-homer. And the more I read, the more I beat myself up for being at work instead of home with Swaddlini.

Part of it is this stupid month. Our daycare inexplicably shuts down for the month of July. Fortunately or unfortunately, one of the women who works at the center has created a side business picking up the slack, watching some of the kids from her home, which is conveniently located on my block. This sounded like an ideal solution until I saw her apartment. It's small and cramped and it smells faintly of bug spray - a major change from the antiseptic and orderly school I'm used to. As soon as I walked in, I didn't want to leave him there. But I did. I decided I would figure out an alternative and have him out of there by the end of the day. But I didn't. He came home and seemed fine, happy even. So I let my concerns slide. And 28 days later, he's still there.

And I'm here at work, doing very little besides punching a virtual time clock. Oh, and self-flagellating, of course. Media is my weapon of choice. Because no matter which side you are on in the Mommy Wars, everything written about the argument begins with something like this:

Of course, you are ultimately the best person to take care of your child.

or

To be sure, no one can care for your child like his mother.

or

Come on, only an idiot would hand her child over to a stranger, no matter how clean the smock that stranger is wearing.

This must be what non-nursing moms feel like whenever they read: "Breast milk is best, but..." OK, we got it. Mommy and her boobs are paramount. They and a great SAT coach are all the child will ever really need. Gotcha. But is it always the case that the mom is best? What if she's is a confused and/or neglectful pill-popper? What if she's a malcontent bully hell-bent on being a bad influence? (But enough about my mother in law... Snap! Seriously folks, don't forget to tip your waitress.)

If you let other moms get into your head, you're a goner. I got an email from Baby Center, which is basically a shopping site that sends helpful weekly emails tracking your child's progress according to age, then tries to sell you everything you need that week. One of that week's features was a question from the community boards: I feel guilty about having someone else care for my child. Is that wrong? I clicked out of curiosity, and have been nauseated since. You would think that the only people responding to this question would be either a) moms who feel the same way or b) moms who have been through it and want to offer advice. But to think this way is to underestimate the level of asshole who spends her time proselytizing on the Baby Center message boards. In this case, the assholes in question were stay-at-home moms so appalled at the idea of a woman using a nanny or daycare in her stead that they could not remain silent. Sure, there were plenty of assholes ready to debate the other side of the argument, but in my fragile state those comments don't resonate as much the comments that tell me I'm a failure. Still, some of these women make no sense. For example:

No one could love your baby as much as you, not even your own mother.

OK. This is reasonable. I agree. But does my husband count? He really loves our baby. And my mom is pretty crazy for him too. But, yes. I generally agree.

No one can care for your baby like you can, not even your own mother.

Hmmm. I'm not so sure about this. My mom really seems to have the hang of the mothering thing. She may not beat me in a baby-caring competition, but she'd at least come in a close second. And she's an amateur. A professional child rearer could very well kick my ass - especially when you consider that I've managed to let Swaddlini fall off the bed three times in his short life. I'm not saying that makes me a bad mom (although I'm sure someone out there is ready to), I'm just saying that it took me three times to learn an important lesson about about why we don't leave babies alone on the bed, even for a second. An old pro doesn't need to relearn these things.

Allowing someone else to care for your baby is equivalent to allowing someone else to care for your husband, and no one wants that.

This threw me. Particularly because the mom who posted it claimed to have two advanced degrees (she did so to prove a point - unlike us money-grubbing mommy whores with just one bachelor's degree, she is supremely over-educated and still won't get a job!), and because several others posted to say that this argument swayed them to rethink the issue. Not me. I don't take care of my husband in the same way I take care of my child. OK, sometimes I do, but I'd hire someone to take those duties off my hands in a second. And if I couldn't do them and couldn't afford to hire someone, my husband is capable of taking care of himself. If Dr. Idiot's definition of "caring for" implies other "wifely duties" ... please. As unbelievable as it may sound, I can manage to handle that and still hold down a job. I know, you'll say this is impossible. I must be a superwoman. But I have faith that other mothers are just as capable.

Furthermore, shouldn't my husband feel just as guilty about having to go off to work? Why is the woman's decision a moral imperative while the man's is hardly a minor consideration?

And, by the way, how do such spectacular moms have so much time to scream at the Internets?

Reeling from my run in with Baby Center, I picked up a recent copy of New York with the cover story about UrbanBaby.com. Don't do this. I've never been to UrbanBaby, and now I really don't want to visit. But according to the article, the NYC comment boards are alive with competitive mommies, and it's not for the tame. Complain there that you feel guilty about having to go back to work, and you'll get reamed not for sacrificing your baby's well-being, but for doing so for a mere $150k salary. Apparently these mommies won't get out of bed for less than $5 million in trust, and even that is a shameful admission (the interest just doesn't cut it when you are living on a tight $35k monthly budget, not including school costs). On the bright side, these same mommies seem to be living empty, miserable lives with gay and/or cheating husbands, catty friends and ugly children (the article didn't mention the ugly kids, but I'm sure it's true). Still, it's small consolation for this money-grubbing bachelorette of the arts, who is whoring decisions hinge on far less than $150k.

So I have come up with a few solutions. One is to go off the grid and move to Michigan (which is not necessarily grid-less, I know, but it and Vermont are as close as I'm going to get in a blue state, plus I family there). Another is to avoid all media, but that may prove difficult considering my profession. For now, my plan is to become a work-from-home-mom within the next couple of months. Sure, it will be tough giving up the security of a full-time job and regular paychecks. But just think of the strategic advantage: A working mom who doesn't let anyone else near her child. I'll be like the Switzerland of the Mommy Wars. Or maybe the General Patton? I'm not sure. I'm still pretty new at this. But I can't wait to hit the comment boards!

You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

2006-07-13T10:11:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned in previous posts, when you talk to my father, there are certain obligatory subjects that are bound to come up. Loggins and Messina is one, and another is Al Kooper, who is, among other things, a musician from one of my dad's favorite bands, Blood, Sweat and Tears. My dad likes to talk relentlessly about Al Kooper because he and old Al once shared a joint at Venice Beach - and this was before my dad even liked pot! (That's always part of the story.)

Although I like to fancy myself a grade-B rock-snob, I had never heard of Al Kooper from any source except my father (insert grade-A rock-snob snickers here) until watching a rerun of No Direction Home, the Scorcese-directed Dylan special on PBS (which is excellent). Turns out, Kooper played the amazing sounding Hammond organ on the song Like a Rolling Stone, and he was interviewed for the show (the story of how he got himself on the track is pretty funny, but rather that detailing it here I'll refer you to the actual show or the Wikipedia link included above). As soon as I saw him, it all made sense. Kooper has the same aging weird dude vibe - almost to the point of recklessness (at least in terms of fashion) - as my father.

Anyway, I seized the opportunity to make my dad proud, and triumphantly emailed him that I now know who he's talking about when he talks about Al Kooper. The reply was a reiteration of the Venice-joint-before-he-even-liked-pot-story, then some rambling about Steely Dan, and then this:

"Someday I'll tell you the infamous story of my 1st joint, bought in Tijuana on my 18th birthday."

Within an hour, I received another email detailing that story, and it is too wonderful not to share. Here, without edits or explication (which, admittedly, would be impossible), it is:

I've got 17 more minutes to kill so I'll tell you the story now. We didn't have but a couple Mexicans @ Poway HS, no african-americans, an Apache and a sissy French exchange student. Paul & Danny were actually Spanish Mexicans, Tall & slim, not Indians. Paul was maybe Dan's age, smooth, well groomed, athletic & studious. Danny was my age & a real Pachuco. We didn't hang out much together. Maybe Danny was set back a grade because I was old for my class & he was already 18 on 2/9/65, which you had to be to cross the border alone. It may have even been a school night, but I was pretty daring, having just lost my virginity with the only New Year's resolution I ever made (thank you, 7th fleet for being out to sea, & you cynthia white for staying in New Year's Eve @ 9 months pregnant). So we drank some Zombies, then Danny bought a joint from a cab driver. Can't remember where we smoked it, but I was sure I was doomed (turned out I was right). Anyway, we were East of Ave Revolucion & Danny wanted to visit a whorehouse. I had no interest, & was suffering from the whirlies badly. We entered, Danny grabbed a girl & I tried to find the bathroom. "Bano," I moaned, "?Donde esta?" I was pointed to the door at the right. When I stumbled in there were 2 girls there. "Agua, necesito Aqua". They pointed behind me & I saw a bucket filled with scummy liquid. Not wanting to offend my hosts by refusing the water, I splashed my hands in the slick then & plunged my head in. That brought hilarious squeals from the girls, who called evryone one in, including Danny's girl, to join in the laughter. Turns out there was a sink with faucets just to my left, & I'd just soaked my head in the douche bucket. It did cure the whirlies.

The Sound of One Penny Stock Clapping

2006-06-30T15:08:00.000-04:00

I just want to add a note about comments.

I'm generally not a reader of comments on other people's blogs, but I have noticed that people love to comment. I've seen some blog entries post in the morning and get 137 comments by midday. And they'll be about someone's dog or kitchen remodel or something (which I am not above, believe me).

But me, I get either nothing or I get some ad about how you can work from home and earn a newly enhanced penis just by investing in penny stocks. Oh yeah, there was that time anonymous sent me a message with a racial epithet. So what gives?

Now, there are those who say comments are stupid, and I generally agree. Most comments - such as, "Exactly" or "You are so right" - are unnecessary. But my readers (that's right, I'm boldly using pluralization because I have faith that there is more than one of you) are intelligent people (also, going on faith) who must have something to say. Someone must at least want to call me an asshole or something, anything. Am I right?

Well too bad, because now it's personal. Don't comment. I don't want to hear it. I'm perfectly comfortable with my spam and my silence.

Warning: May Cause Seasickness

2006-06-30T14:00:00.000-04:00

No plans this "holiday weekend"? (Note: it's not really a holiday weekend if you don't get Monday off, which I don't. What kind of shit is that?) Spend an hour watching Yacht Rock, a brilliant web-based series that will tell you all you ever needed to know and more about a forgotten American art form: smooth (pronounced "smeeeuuuwth") music from the late 70s and early 80s.

Yacht Rock the show has been around and getting attention for awhile, in fact about six months lapsed between Herr Guitar forwarding me the link and saying, "We HAVE TO watch this," and our getting around to actually watching it. I'm glad we didn't miss the boat (hehe... get it? Boat. Like, yacht? Ehem).

I happen to be something of an expert on this subject. I was nursed at the teat of Yacht Rock, having been raised in the 1970s by a father who exemplifies the genre. I think he still has the first Doobie Brothers cassette he ever bought - and still plays it incessantly. To this day, I can't get through a phone conversation with him without having to endure a list of the merits of Loggins and Messina, his very favorite band*. At 60, my father still looks and acts as if he's been drinking in the sun all day (and he likely has been). I mean, the man has a Hawaiian suit, for god's sake. Case closed!

But even if you know nothing about YR (which is impossible - believe me, you do know something about it), you will love it. I'm upset that the series has not yet plumbed the depths to include unknown YRers such as Sanford and Townsend (another of Papa Milieu's favorites). Rupert Holmes is another obvious contender. And, hello, Jimmy Buffett - the man made YR a lifestyle choice. But the series shows how YR weaves through stories of other music legends, including Van Halen, Jethro Tull, Hall and Oates, Nate Dogg and Warren G and, in my favorite episode, Michael Jackson. There's even a plot (in another brilliant episode) involving Rosanna Arquette, specifically how Toto came to write the hit "Rosanna."

So don't sit around doing nothing this July 4th weekend. Instead, sit around doing almost nothing, but with a computer involved. Get out your weenies and buns and breasts and thighs, pour yourself a glass of Riuniti on ice, log on and sail away.

*Things about Loggins and Messina that I have heard way too many times:

- They are the best live act my dad has ever seen. He took my mom, who really doesn't remember it all that well.
- Loggins was a musical prodigy, and wrote the song "House at Pooh Corner" while still in high school (this blows my father away, but everyone else who has ever heard that song invariably asks, "What, was this written by a kid or something?").
- Messina, originally a member of Buffalo Springfield and Poco, discovered Loggins. The two of them recorded their first album together in Messina's living room.
- My cousin, who is in his early twenties, went to school in Santa Barbara with Loggins' kids, but has no idea who Loggins is (this fact, however, is being debated by my brother, who points out that Loggins sang "Danger Zone" from Top Gun, and he knows for a fact that my cousin loved that movie).

Parenthood: Pay it Forward

2006-06-26T10:28:00.000-04:00

The universal question that all new parents ask themselves is not, "How do I do this?" or "How can I, for the love of God, make this stop?" or even, "What in the hell is that thing?" No, you know you are a parent when you can sincerely ask the question, "How is it possible that I am alive today?"

To be sure, phrasing of this eternal question may vary to include: "How did my parents stand it?" "Why would anyone have a second child?" "Why didn't my mother or father abandon me and/or smother me with a pillow?" And so on.

The reason we parents are acutely aware of our own miraculous survival is that we fully understand how fragile and vulnerable are infant human beings - and how prone to danger. Truly, they do not raise themselves.

All of this is obvious, and yet you don't really understand until you've witnessed it first hand. After Swaddlini was born, Herr Guitar's right-wing proselytizing co-workers pursued him. Since becoming a father, could he finally grasp the insanity of the pro-choice movement? HG replied that fatherhood had made him more keenly aware of the issue, but it strengthened his resolve that anyone who doesn't want a baby shouldn't have one. Because regardless of when life begins, survival requires the aid of another. It's a constant, unwavering aid. And in return? Let's put it this way: you're lucky if you get nothing as long as you avoid having your hair pulled.

Parents are not aided by the fact that there is danger around every corner. Forget Bird flu, strangers with candy and Oprah, even the smallest threat will seem huge in the context of your child's well being.

Case in point, the mosquito.

As I set off this morning in my ritual of getting Swaddlini in the stroller and Angus on the leash for our pre-commute walk, I noticed something on the side of Swad's head.

A mosquito!

I freaked and swatted it. Not even thinking that I was also swatting the baby's head. That's right - I smacked my baby's head with at least three fingers. He started crying, and then so did I.

I looked at my hand. Dead bug, splattered with my son's blood.

The next line should read: Inevitable suicide. Or, Left baby with neighbor and then called 911 on self, am now safely locked away for life. But no, instead I managed to get the child to daycare and get myself to the office, all the while replaying the horror in my mind with The Shining-like intensity (not the movie, but the book - which is truly horrifying). And there goes my day. How can I accomplish anything after such a run-in? How can I live with myself?

Let's review:

How could I have allowed a mosquito to land on my child? I was in the process of putting a hat on him, and he was otherwise fully covered - even though it was one of the hottest mornings so far this year. Am I supposed to spray him with DEET daily? If so, I will. Alternatively, is it possible to seal him away in some sort of chamber where no bugs can enter? Again, I will pursue this if available. Because to see a bloodsucker on your child's sweaty little head is like having a fingernail pulled out - i.e. physically painful.

OK, so I had to destroy the thing immediately. But how could I have acted so rashly and smashed the bug while still on my child's head? Swad had no idea there was a bug on him, he doesn't even know what a bug is (although, ironically, he was dressed in an ensemble featuring all sorts of bugs - damn you, The Children's Place!), all he knows is mommy struck him. Why?

And how could that little motherf@#$%ing mosquito have the gall to land on my precious baby's head? As sick as it sounds, if I could kill that thing several more times, in prolonged, sadistic ways, I would.

Lastly, how do parents do it? I really don't know. Even as I try to be a great mother, I can’t help but make mistakes. A perfectly innocent annoyance like a mosquito can open up all new avenues of potential neglect. So the question is, how does a mother who isn’t trying all that hard ever manage to do anything remotely well? Particularly those baby boomers who spent the 70s ignoring their children (you know who you are) – how is it possible that they now have grandchildren? My supremely self-involved mother-in-law may have been a nightmare to her kids, but shouldn't she get points for having made it this far with her offspring still alive (and somewhat well, at least physically if not emtionally)? And my mom? How did she raise my brother and me, on her own, with the added burdens of night school and a drinking problem?

I don't even know how they made time to be screwed up and selfish. I certainly haven't found the extra moments to dwell on my own ego or psyche. I envy single people with their made-up problems like "commitment phobia" and "manic depression." When you have kids, you realize that life is difficult enough without any added bullshit, and it's just easier to go to bed at 9 pm and hope you have the strength to get through another day with a healthy child and an in-tact scalp.

So, thank you mom and Dad. You weren't perfect, but you put up with me and fed me and kept me out of harm's way as best you could. I hope one day my son can say the same about me.

A Jejune Look at Politics and Strange Bedfellows

2006-06-23T10:35:00.000-04:00

I am now well into my thirties (so much so that if my life we're the brilliant TV show Thirtysomething, I'd be living in the second season; you know, where everyone is still kind of cute and shiny but starting to get cynical about and even bored with their own dreams? But, I digress...), and I am only just learning how extremely naive I am.

For instance, I have never thought of my childhood as particularly halcyon or sunny, but I had no idea the sexual politics at play within my own family. Eww, right? Over the years, as my father has lost more and more of his mind, and my brother has become more nostalgic about his "crazy childhood," and my mother has slightly released the valve on all her swallowed repression, I'm learning that things may have been going on that I had no idea were going on. I should clarify - I'm not talking about incest or anything, I just never thought of my family members as having thoughts or feelings beyond those I attributed to them. As someone who has often hubristically considered herself the smartest person in the room, let alone the most perceptive and cynical, you can understand how shocking it is to learn I'm the most clueless person in my tiny, ridiculous clan. But there it is.

I'm also only just learning that sexual politics in general get past me. I'm completely oblivious to most innuendo and ulterior motives regarding penis size, sadomasochism, swinging, sugar-daddyism, etc. On more than one occasion, a stranger has asked to take pictures of my sandaled feet "for research" or "to get a sense of the toenail polish the kids are wearing these days," and it was not until about the third time - after it had happened at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and then on the lawn at the Washington Monument - that I even considered I might be attracting foot fetishists. And I still don't really believe that such a thing exists - not really.

What's worse, politics in general get past me. I once asked my first boyfriend who his favorite American president was, and he laughed in my face. They were all crooks and liars, he said. Even Kennedy? I thought (but dare not speak it). That was 16 years ago, and I only just realized (after reading the excellent book Nemesis, about how Ari Onassis was behind RFK's murder) what an idiot/puppet JFK was, and that even Bobby was hideous (not to mention Jackie). I've now decided that everyone in politics and/or with a certain amount of money/influence is probably a bastard (even so, I still love you Billy C.). And still, I'm probably being extremely naive.

Which brings me to Jersey City. We found our house in Jersey City after looking at numerous places in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. As soon as we saw it, we said, "Wow, we can get all this, a couple of blocks from the train, for this price?" That's all we thought about. We've had various friends who lived in Jersey City, we knew it was cute and getting cuter - not as much as Williamsburg, but certainly in line with other places in Brooklyn we had seen (and definitely more than some, like Bushwick!), and closer in proximity to Manhattan than all of them (except for those in Manhattan, of course).

What we didn't know about (or at least I didn't) were the politics. Turns out, JC is known for corruption - mob-related and otherwise. Anyone who knows anything about JC or corruption - mob-related or otherwise - will know that to have missed this is to be pitifully, pathetically, ridiculously naive. We're talking hayseed from the Mayberry era. Again, there it is.

I consider myself a proud Democrat (more proof of my guilelessness), but not when it comes to local Jersey City politics. Calling yourself a JC Democrat is like saying you are a bloated, ineffectual idiot who misses the political charms of Jimmy Hoffa or Boss Tweed.

And it's an extremely political city. Even the most minor district races inspire sign posting the likes of which I have never seen. If you don't have a candidate's poster hanging in your window or yard, you eventually will. Stumping is not voluntary, and there are no undecided front lawns - you are either against us (read: you take the time to find your pliers and tear the sign off your fence) or for us (read: you can't be bothered to take it down even years after the race is lost).

We bought our house from a member of a political JC Irish Democrat family whose brother, a local sheriff, was living in the home before we moved in. Truly a man of the people, this sheriff really took the time to go out and shake hands with the everyman, specifically those among the city's crack-addled population. He was even kind enough to invite a few into his home (I won't go into the specifics of how we know this, but you can imagine). So, after we moved in, when we found out he was actively stumping for a particular candidate in the mayoral race, we decided to go another way.

And that's why we voted for Jeremiah Healy. Even after Herr Guitar met Healy outside the PATH train and he didn't seem particularly compelling. Even after it was reported that Healy was seen sitting naked on his front stoop one evening - during the campaign! As long as he wasn't the sheriff's choice, Healy was our guy. And then he won. And even when, at a recent community meeting regarding what to build on a former Superfund site, he came bellowing in like an asshole, asking questions merely for the sake of asking and then saying he didn't have any time to stick around for the answers, I had faith that he might not be a complete embarrassment.

Until last weekend, when Healy was arrested - not calmly taken in for questioning, but thrown to the ground and MACED - at Bradley Beach for getting involved in someone else's fight. The reported details are sketchy. But what about this naked stoop-sitting mayor isn't?

All of this makes me either want to run for the hills (preferably, the Sierra Nevadas) or run for office. Should I, an outsider with major gentrification hang-ups, try to fix the system from within? Or is that just extremely naive?

And does everyone have a creepy family, or is it just me?

No One Can Eat 50 Organic Dog Treats

2006-06-21T15:42:00.000-04:00

Cutest Hillbilly Puppy Ever!

One of the best things about working on the Upper West Side is the parade of freaks you encounter every day. I mean that in the most loving sense possible.

Up here, a preponderance of middle-aged Jamaican ladies window shop while strollering their surprisingly white offspring. Centuries-old rich widowes attend Weight Watchers meetings and confess that the most effective dieting trick is standing in the nude and looking in a mirror, and admonish anyone who admits to having a menstrual cycle as "showing off". Reality TV castoffs confab at one of the 3,000 local Starbucks outlets. Hyper-polished teenagers evaluate the few calories they have allowed themselves to consume that day while in line at Cold Stone Creamery. Doormen at the Dakota building suffer an endless stream of tourists trying to get a picture of the ghost of John Lennon and Rosemary's baby (HR calls this "Dakota fanning"). And the likes of Frances McDormand and Calvin Klein casually browse through Urban Outfitters.

Most importantly, first wives and trophy wives alike take their precious pups to Canine Ranch, the new "doggie spa" on 72nd Street. Apparently there is another Canine Ranch about 10 blocks away, and one in the Hamptons. I think this is a brilliant location strategy - ensuring that there is always a Canine Ranch where you need one.

Canine Ranch offers boarding and grooming and a "dog barkery" (a play on dog bakery, it's the cleverest pun I've heard since Canine Ranch!), but it also sells lots and lots of adorable stuff for the most fashionable UWS doggie. There are elaborately bedazzled t-shirts and designer fleece hoodies, there are faux fur leashes, there are chew toys shaped like cell phones and sock monkeys, there are even clocks made of books featuring famous fidos such as Lassie and Benji.

And there are treats. The aforementioned dog barkery notwithstanding, there is an ice-cream freezer full of stuff, and there are Newman's Own organic dog treats.

Now, we all know that I love my dog, Angus. He is a sweet, adorable little friend and I am very proud of him. But, let's face it, he's eats cat shit. He eats baby shit. He'd probably eat his own shit if familiarity didn't breed contempt. And this is not a starving dog. No, cat shit and diapers are treats that he must sneak to get. Soiled napkins and used tissues are secret indulgences when HG and I aren't looking. He spends most of his waking hours hanging out near the trash can - at one point in the hopes that someone would pop the lid, until he went and learned to pop the lid on his own. A walk is not just a walk but a hunt for discarded chicken bones. In short, this dog eats shit. And I defy anyone - in any tax bracket - to show me a dog who doesn't.

Mr. Newman, I sympathize with your cause, I enjoy your salad dressing and salsa, but I must object to your organic dog treats. My dog gets enough organic, and it isn't pretty.

Sure, Paul Newman will likely counter with the argument that Angus is not an uptown dog, that he is, in fact, something of a hillbilly.

It's true, I'd admit to Paul (at this point, I think, we'd be on a first name basis), Angus literally comes from country trash. He was rescued from some dumpster in Kentucky, where (animal cruelty alert), according to the boarder, people throw a bunch of dogs in and then gas them using a hose from some rusty old El Camino's tailpipe (I don't know that it's always a rusty El Camino, but I think it's safe to assume as much).

Egad! Paul would cry out (those famous blue eyes beginning to tear up), what kind of monster could do that to a trashcan full of dogs?

I can't even imagine, I'd say. And if you've ever seen Angus as a puppy, you'd be even more horrified. I didn't think it possible for something to be this cute... uh, other than you in Hud, of course.

Thank you, he'd say with a smile. I did have a certain way with denim, didn't I?

Yes, but we are getting off the subject, I'd counter.

Oh, right, he'd recall. Right! Where do we find these murderers?

Calm down, I'd say, patting the sweet old man on the shoulder. That's not the subject either. The subject is your ridiculous, overpriced gourmet dog biscuits. I know the proceeds go to charity - in this case, animal-related causes - but by selling them, aren't you encouraging the kind of crass consumerism that is antithetical to everything your work is about? Have we as a culture become so celebrity obsessed that our dogs must eat like Paris Hilton (not her dog, Tinkerbell, but Paris Hilton herself, who famously created the Four Dog Biscuit a Day Miracle Diet [TM])? True, Angus's obsession with trash and feces may have something to do with his bad childhood, but I don't think so. I think dogs are there to eat what we drop on the floor and don't want to sweep up. They are meant to lick our babies' hands clean so we don't have to sully another washcloth. It is their nature to rid our streets of unsightly stray Chinese food leftovers. Should we deny that nature by shoving an expensive, tasteless biscuit in their mouths so that our neighbors might see that we have a little money saved?

ZZZZZZZZ, Paul would respond, having obviously nodded off during my tirade.

Just another day on the Upper West Side.

The 49 Most Conservative Madonna Songs

2006-05-23T14:30:00.000-04:00

A friend recently made me aware of an article by John J. Miller of the National Review, listing the 50 greatest conservative rock songs. Miller's point was that although rock songs do not typically seem right-wing, Christian or conservative, many truly are. In fact, the list (found here via Left of the Dial, scroll down to see the full list) includes such surprises as Sympathy for the Devil, Revolution, I Fought the Law, and Janie's Got a Gun.

This got me thinking about the right-wing messages hidden in other popular music, and I was shocked at what I discovered. Herewith, I present

The 49 Most Conservative Madonna Songs

1. Like a Virgin. A chastity promise set to music, this hit glorifies virginity and reminds us that born-again virgins can be just as chaste—and sexy—as any other kind. In this song, Madonna teaches us that a saving oneself can be a struggle, but it is worth it when you find that one true love: “I made it through the wilderness/Somehow I made it through/Didn't know how lost I was/Until I found you”

2. Papa Don’t Preach. In this battle cry against big government, she’s not going to let those nanny liberals talk her into an abortion: “I’ve made up my mind/ I’m keeping my baby. Ooh. I’m gonna keep my baby. Ooh, yeah.”

3. Music. The bourgeoisie and the rebel come together to dance. Take that Karl Marx.

4. Material Girl. Talk about having your priorities in order. Here’s a woman who knows her value, and the value of a dollar (I also like the catchy play on the word interest—were you listening, Alan Greenspan?): “ Some boys romance/some boys slow dance/That's all right with me/If they can't raise my interest then I have to let them be/’Cuz we are living in a material world/And I am a material girl.”

5. Borderline. This catchy pop tune is also an anti-immigration anthem: “Borderline/ Feels like I’m going to lose my mind”

6. Like a Prayer. One of the most important ballads in all of Christian rock, it also speaks to the American individualist. “Everyone must stand alone/I hear you call my name/And it feels like home.”

7. Holiday. A battle cry in the war on Christmas. This song proves that the word “Holiday” is unspecific and inane.

8. Over and Over. A Horatio Alger tale of American determination. “It doesn't matter who you are/It's what you do that takes you far/And if at first you don't succeed/Here's some advice that you should heed/ I get up again, over and over/
I get up again, over and over”

9. Don’t Tell Me. This country rocker is not only a salute to fierce individualism, it also impugns global-warming doomsayers who are egocentric enough to believe what we do affects the planet: “Don't tell me to stop/Tell the rain not to drop/Tell the wind not to blow/'Cause you said so, mmm/Tell the sun not to shine/Not to get up this time, no, no…/Tell the leaves not to turn/But don't ever tell me I'll learn, no, no/Take the black off a crow/But don't tell me I have to go.”

10. White Heat. This little-known early number is a salute to our heroes on the police force.

11. Where’s the Party. It seems like an innocent dance tune, but listen closer and you discover a classic tale of a liberal growing up and becoming an adult conservative: “Couldn't wait to get older/Thought I'd have so much fun/I guess I'm one of the grown-ups/Now I have to get the job done.”

12. Love Makes the World Go Round. The touchy feely title may put some people off, but the lyrics say it all: “Make love not war we say/It's easy to recite/But it don't mean a damn/Unless we're gonna fight”

13. Why’s It So Hard. The cry of the persecuted Christian in Godless America: ”Who should get to say what I believe in/Who should have the right/What am I going to do with all this anger/Why do I have to fight.”

14. Angel. The title says it all. Amen.

15. The Look of Love. A perfect attack on liberal intellectual sentiment: “And all the books I've read, and the things I know/Never taught me to laugh, never taught to let go.”

16. Erotic. This allegory explains the importance of America’s dominance in foreign countries such as Iraq: “If I take you from behind/Push myself into your mind/When you least expect it/Will you try and reject it/If I'm in charge and I treat you like a child…If you're afraid, well rise above/ I only hurt the ones I love.”

17. Where Life Begins. I need not explain or include lyrics here. We all know where life begins.

18. Love song. Although this song is co-written by Prince and is peppered with fruity French lyrics, it also contains two of the best conservative mottos around: “Say what you mean, mean what you say” and “God strike me dead if I did you wrong”

19. Impressive Instant. Praising the wisdom of intelligent design: “Cosmic systems intertwine/Astral bodies drip like wine/All of nature ebbs and flows/Comets shoot across the sky/Can't explain the reasons why/This is how creation goes.”

20. Cherish. A tale of a young woman who turns her life around and discovers commitment. “I was never satisfied with casual encounters … I want more than just romance/You are my destiny, I can't let go baby can't you see … Perish the thought/Of ever leaving, I never would”

21. Causing a Commotion. This rocker has moves and motion, but it’s also a thoughtful explanation of right-wing political perspective: “Someday you'll see my point of view/You can't keep wishing on the stars baby/What works for me can work for you/You've got to make a compromise and maybe.”

22. Acts of Contrition. This is everything a God-fearing Christian could want in a rock song: “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee/ And I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishment/But most of all, because I have offended Thee, oh my God/Who art all good and deserving of all my love/I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace/To confess my sins, to do penance, to amend my life/And to avoid the temptations of evil.”

23. Justify my Love. Sending out a message to big-government liberals: “Poor is the man/Whose pleasures depend/On the permission of another.”

24. Deeper and Deeper. Sings the praises of discovering God’s love: “Kisses sent from heaven above/They get sweeter and sweeter the more that I know.”

25. Bad Girl. A cautionary tale of a loose woman who is in despair: “Bad girl drunk by six/Kissing someone else's lips/Smoked too many cigarettes today/I'm not happy when I act this way.”

26. Words. This song perfectly censures Democratic talking heads: “I've grown tired of your words/Words, words/A linguistic form that can meaningfully be spoken in isolation/Conversation, expression, a promise, a sigh/In short, a lie.”

27. Did you Do It? This brilliant rap song sends an important NRA message: “Clean up me rifle, clean up me rifle, you clean up me rifle”

28. Sanctuary. A response to tree-hugging environmentalists: “Who needs the sun, when the rain's so full of life/Who needs the sky, when the ground's open wide/It's here in your arms I want to be buried/You are my sanctuary.”

29. Bedtime Story. “Words are useless, especially sentences/They don't stand for anything…Let’s get unconscious” George W. couldn’t have said it better. Literally.

30. I want you. Here Madonna takes a strong stance against sins such as masturbation, and praises marital love: “One way love is just a fantasy/To share is precious, pure and fair/Don't play with something you should cherish for life/Oh baby, don't you wanna care?/Ain't it lonely out there?”

31. This Used to be My Playground. A paean to an America lost: “This used to be my playground/This used to be our pride and joy/This used to be the place we ran to/That no one in the world could dare destroy.”

32. Swim. This song doesn’t make much sense, but I agree with the sentiment: “Children killing children/While the students rape their teachers/Comets fly across the sky/While the churches burn their preachers…We can't carry these sins on our back/Don't wanna carry any more/We're gonna carry this train off the track/We're gonna swim to the ocean floor.”

33. Ray of Light. A salute to the saved in the coming Apocalypse: “She's got herself a little piece of heaven/Waiting for the time when Earth shall be as one…Quicker than a ray of light.”

34. Sky Fits Heaven. Another pro-life groove: “Sky fits heaven so fly it/That's what the prophet said to me/Child fits mother so hold your baby tight/That's what my future could see.”

35. The Power of Good-Bye. A plea to Darwinist fools: “Freedom comes when you learn to let go/Creation comes when you learn to say no.”

36. American Pie. OK, this is a cover, but anytime someone mentions that the three men they admire most are the father, son and holy ghost, pious Americans can breathe a little sigh of relief.

37. I Deserve It. Here, Madonna and her mate find joy in praying together on a first date: “This guy has prayed for me/And I have prayed for him/This guy was made for me/And I was made for him.”

38. Nobody’s Perfect. The Cheney 2008 campaign slogan: “Nobody's perfect/Nobody's perfect/I was dishonest/I will do my best/Yeah.”

39. What it Feels Like for a Girl. A thoughtful explanation on why men should be men and women should be girls: “But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading/'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading/ Strong inside but you don't know it/Good little girls they never show it/When you open up your mouth to speak/Could you be a little weak.”

40. Gone. George W.’s next Iraq speech set to music: “Letting go/Is not my thing/Walk away/Won't let it happen again/I'm not/I'm not very smart.”

41. American Life. This song is a salute to everything the terrorists want to destroy: I live the American dream/You are the best thing I've seen/I'm drinkin' a soy latte/I get a double shoté/It goes right through my body/And you know I'm satisfied/I drive my Mini Cooper/And I'm feeling super-duper/Yo they tell me I'm a trooper/And you know I'm satisfied/I do yoga and pilates/And the room is full of hotties/So I'm checking out their bodies/And you know I'm satisfied…/I got a lawyer and a manager/An agent and a chef/Three nannies, an assistant/And a driver and a jet/A trainer and a butler/And a bodyguard or five/A gardener and a stylist/Do you think I'm satisfied?”

42. Nobody Knows Me. The chorus of this undiscovered hit strikes at the heart of left-wing media: “I don't want no lies/I don't watch TV/I don't waste my time/Won't read a magazine… Won't let a stranger give me a social disease/I, I sleep much better at night/I feel closer to the light/Now I'm gonna try/To improve my life.”

43. Intervention. Many of my friends play this one while tailgating pro-life rallies: “I got to save my baby/Because he makes me cry/I got to make him happy/I got to teach him how to fly/I want to take him higher/Way up like a bird in the sky/I got to calm him down now/I want to save his life.”

44. X-Static Process. Like all of us, Madonna has struggled with her faith. But when she does it, it’s funky. “Jesus Christ will you look at me/Don't know who I'm supposed to be/Don't really know if I should give a damn/When you're around, I don't know who I am/I'm not myself when you go quiet/I'm not myself all alone at night/I'm not myself, don't know who to call/I'm not myself at all.”

45. Die Another Day. When sung from the point of view of the unborn child, this song is a clarion call against Godless abortionists. “I guess I'll die another day/It's not my time to go/For every sin, I'll have to pay/I've come to work, I've come to play/I think I'll find another way/It's not my time to go.”

46. How High. Halliburton was actually considering this as their corporate anthem: “How high are the stakes/How much fortune can you make/Does this get any better/Should I carry on/Will it matter when I'm gone/Will any of this matter.”

47. More. This song has helped to rehabilitate thousands of young would-be Hillary Clintons: “Got my diamonds, got my yacht, got a guy I adore/I'm so happy with what I got, I want more!/Count your blessings, one, two, three/I just hate keeping score/Any number is fine with me/As long as it's more/As long as it's more!”

48. Vogue. Hearkens back to a sweeter time, with Grace Kelly, Harlow, Jean, Dietrich and DiMaggio dancing along.

49. Dress You Up. Dresses down communist hippies who tout the business casual asthetic. Americans wear suits custom made in London, not a pair of $2 flip-flops made in China. And dirty jeans, while appropriate for clearing brush on your ranch, should stay out of the office.

I'm Mad As Hell And I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

2006-04-26T16:08:00.000-04:00

It's almost May, which means one thing: sweeps. That's when the TV networks throw out their best stuff to see what sticks with audiences. Sweeps occur a few times a year, in February, May and November. And networks usually build up to sweeps a couple of weeks prior, to get audiences hooked. How do I know about sweeps? I'm an avid TV watcher. You can always tell when they are on the way, because the advertising starts getting a little more tense ("The MOST SHOCKING EPISODE EVER!," "Our MOST SUR-PRIS-ING ROSE CEREMONY YET," "And ONE PERSON WILL NOT COME OUT ALIVE," etc.), characters start having pregnancy scares or break-ups or deaths, and Deal or No Deal starts playing in heavy rotation.

But the surest way to tell that sweeps are coming: Dateline NBC ambushes Internet predators in some house in the suburbs. Have you seen this? The unassuming, mild-mannered schlub arrives at a tract home with a case of Mike's Hard Lemonade to meet the hot new 13-year-old he just met on the Internet, only to find a camera crew and the stiff, styled and baritoned reporter Curtis Hansen asking (in perfect cadence) "What were you thinking?"

Tonight Hansen sets his sights on rural small-town America, the kind of place where he grew up. Here's how he describes it on his blog: "There’s farmland and a quaint downtown. Four people can still have dinner out for less than 50 bucks and you don’t have to look hard for the Wal-Mart and the feed store." Sounds lovely, right? No way you'd find some sex freak trolling for tweens there.

Don't be so sure, says Hansen.

I saw a teaser for tonight's episode on the Today show this morning, and they snare a sixth grade teacher who has seen this type of thing on Dateline before. He even admits to thinking, "What are these guys thinking?" while watching. And now look where he is. What gives? Is becoming an Internet predator that slippery a slope? How could this once decent, Dateline watching citizen fall so far, so fast?

Dateline does this about twice a year, so people must love it. But it makes me sick to my stomach. Sure, these guys are total creeps, but on the spectrum of good and evil, this type of exploitative sting operation seems almost as wrong as the crime. It's certainly as distasteful. I agree that something should be done about Internet predators, Oprah has scared me straight on that front (no Swaddlini, you cannot have a Web cam. Because I said so, that's why!). And I'm glad that the authorities are there to book these guys after Hansen's cameras have had their way with them, but there's something pornographic about the whole display. And not in a good way.

That is why my evening will be spent watching America's Next Top Model.

Tick Tacky

2006-04-25T15:33:00.000-04:00

My husband and I have been trying in vain to start a fake rumor. Here goes:

Did you hear that when Britney Spears' baby was brought in for the skull fracture, they also found a tick on him?

You might ask why we are doing this or where it came from, but I really have no idea. The more important question is why didn't it spread? Wouldn't you think a rumor like this would take hold? And it's not like we didn't try. Everywhere we've been for the last couple of weeks, we've discussed it. Loudly.

"I mean, a fractured skull is one thing, but a tick?"

"I know! That's just gross. There was a tick on her baby?"

"How bad a parent do you have to be to have a tick on your baby?"

"Do they even have ticks in California? How'd they even find a tick there?"

"With all that money, they still can't keep a tick off the baby. Unbelievable."

And on and on.

I'm fessing up to this now because A.) The skull fracture story is old news, so no one is likely to care about the tick addendum, and B.) It's such a perfect rumor I just wish it were true, and C.) The universe is trying to punish me with a plot straight out of Edgar Allen Poe.

This weekend I'm casually cleaning the house when I spy a mashed blueberry on the floor. "What's a blueberry doing here?" I ask aloud as I pick it up, immediately assuming that there is a wild bramble of blueberries growing in the abandoned yard next door to us, even though that yard usually only produces garbage and strange smells.

"Let me see." Herr Guitar, former boy scout and blueberry aficionado that he is, takes one look at my hand and declares, "That's a tick."

A tick. A TICK! ATICKINMYHOUSE! ON MY FLOOR! NEAR MY BABY! And I touched it! Eeeeek!

Angus found himself a tick, probably in the yard next door but more likely in the woods by a friend's parents' house visited the weekend before. (The place is a five minute drive from where we live but you might as well be on another planet in terms of the landscape, as well as the average income.) HG did a tick check on Angus (and Swaddlini) after we'd been there - all the while laughing at the faux tick negligence of Sean Preston Federline Spears' inattentive and trashy parents - and he didn't find anything. And then a bloated, exploded tick falls from the dog's disgusting body. Looking all blueberryesque. What if I'd decided to eat it? (Because that's what I do, eat squashed blueberries off the floor.) What if?

So that is my punishment for attempting to spread a false rumor. I'm coming clean in the hopes that my family will be spared. I probably deserve my tick, just as Angus probably deserves his impending lyme disease, HG probably deserves all those merit badges and Britney probably deserves her millions.

And yet, with all her millions, she can't keep that baby tick-free? It's a shame.

A Little Something to Nosh

2006-04-24T16:26:00.000-04:00

This post should be read in your most obnoxiously Yiddish-accented head voice. Come on, just try it.

Now that I am a housewife, I have a need to feed you people. So from time to time, I will throw a nice recipe up on this site. The first is Shiksa Matzo Brie.

If you've never had Matzo Brie, you'll love it. It combines all that's delicious about eggs with potato pancakes, and even mushrooms - although there are no potatoes and mushrooms involved. It's just eggs and those Matzo crackers you see at the market around Passover (they are unleavened-ly delicious).

I have always considered myself an honorary Jew. Growing up, my best friend was Jewish, and her family sort of adopted me and loved me, and they always told me that I was more Jewish than they. I know now that Los Angeles Jews aren't really all that Jewish. Nothing in LA is authentic - cultures are sort of bleached out and tanned just like your skin and hair. So, I'm an honorary California Jew. And that's why my Matzo Brie recipe contains bacon.

Before you freak out, understand that this dish is perfectly delicious without the bacon. It's just that I am a bacon freak and, truly, cannot go without. It's the one meat standing between me and vegetarianism. And it will continue standing there forever. If you can do without, God bless!

Shiksa Matzo Brie
(serves 2 hearty eaters, or 8 mothers-in-law*)
6 eggs
5 sheets of matzo
1 cup onion (1 medium onion), chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons oil
milk
tabasco (optional)
2-3 slices cooked bacon, chopped (optional)

Chop the onion and mince the garlic. Saute both until softened in about three tablespoons of oil (I like safflower/olive oil mix, but vegetable oil is fine) and 1 tablespoon of butter.

Break matzo into little pieces, but not crumbs. The pieces should vary in size - from the size of a quarter to the size of a normal craker. Place pieces in a bowl. And pour boiling water over them until just covered. Let the matzo soak for 2 to 3 minutes (it will soak up the water and expand a bit), then add the mixture into the frying pan with the onions and garlic. Fry for couple of minutes. Add salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, prepare the eggs as you would scrambled eggs (meaning: add a little milk and stir them up). When matzo is ready, pour the eggs over the mixture. Keep stirring and frying, as you would with scrambled eggs, until the eggs are no longer wet.

Chopped prepared bacon into bite sized bits and stir into the mix. If you are a flavor junky, add a dash of hot sauce. Serve with sour cream (or applesauce).

Sit! Eat!

*Explanation for the mother-in-law comment coming soon.

Grupset

2006-04-20T10:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Herr Guitar was in the front yard with Angus, shooting some hoopz with a baby soccer ball and the garbage can that holds our recycling, when a little boy who lives down the street pulled up on his bike and asked, "Are you a dad or a kid?"

Isn't that the cutest thing you've ever heard? "Are you a dad or a kid?"

It's also very deep, man, because for me, the worst part of being a mom is the fact that I'll never again be a kid. More importantly, I'll never again be the baby - which is what I am best at. Now I'm a mom, so I have to suck it up and deal with the walking pneumonia. I'm a mom, so I can't jet off to East Berlin with a hangover. I'm a mom, so I can't have an emotional breakdown in the middle of the street. And I can't be an asshole to my mom anymore because she is a Grandma, which is the most revered and special type of human you can be. Grandmas are slower and more brittle than the rest of us. They need TLC and chocolate chip cookies and air kisses, and they don't need shit from some punk adult with a runny nose or a dirty diaper.

But "Are you a dad or a kid?" is a strange question to ask someone who is 37. True, he looks about 25, except when he just gets back from the barber and looks about 19. But the kid who was asking looked about 6. And HG is 6'4". I mean, how young can he possibly look? HG was relieved that he could answer "I'm a dad" - a single, childless 37-year-old would have had to launch into a complicated explanation.

It reminded me of something that happened a few weeks ago, when I got an upset phone call at work. It was HG: "Have you seen the cover of New York this week?" I hadn't, my copy had only just arrived in the mail, and it was in his hands. When I got home, he held up the magazine, featuring this article about "Grups". The cover line: Forever Youngish. Then something about how these days, no one wants to be a grown up. The cover was a page of photos of different late 20- to late 30- and early 40-something guys in the same outfit. Hoodie, messenger bag, jeans, ipod. On the inside, the same types of photos, but with guys wearing their babies in Baby Bjorns and Snuglis. If Herr Guitar was included in one of the photos, he would have fit right in. (There was also a page of women, who were dressed kind of like me but with designer trench coats - I am either a fashion-backward or a transvestite grup, I guess, because I tend to dress more like the men in the hoodies.) The article refers to today's maturing hipsters as grups, which is a Star Trek reference having something to do with a planet of children - "grup" is a conjunction of grown-up. On planet New York, we are both the grown ups and the children.

(Full disclosure: I have never seen an episode of Star Trek. I don't get it, I don't like it, I don't want to know about it. I recently had someone say to me, "you must be a Trekkie" and I was horrified. How could I be so misunderstood? And while it will probably cost me readers, I should admit here that I also don't like Lord of the Rings [best naps I've ever taken were while seeing those films with HG - what's with all the walking?] or even, I have to say, Star Wars. In fact, although I have seen all of the Star Wars movies - minus the fifth [or is it the second?] one, Attack of the Clones, which nobody saw - I have no idea what happened. I have this writing software that uses the plot of Star Wars as an example, and I'm completely lost. My mind turns off when sci fi is around. Also when medieval is around. And elfin magic. I just don't get it.)

Anyway, I understood HG's frustration, because there are few things more embarrassing than to be called on your shit by a New York Magazine article. But the more we read, the less gruppie we felt. A grup is like a hipster yuppie that has money and kids and is pushing 40 but acts 22. That's me and HG, sort of - I mean it's more us than it is our same-age in-laws in other states. Grups still dress slacker/grunge except now they pay $600 for the perfect pair of ripped jeans. We authentically ripped our jeans in the grunge era and still wear them because you can't buy normal, non-ripped or non faded jeans any more. They put their kids in ironic t-shirts and make them listen to Death Cab, along with many other bands even I have never heard of. Swaddlini does have Led Zeppelin, Johnny Rotten and Blondie t-shirts, but for the most part he dresses business-casual infant, and he prefers Glen Campbell's Greatest Hits and With the Beatles to Yeah Yeah Yeahs (though he does like Cornelius). And our ghetto ipod, which is actually an Archos Jukebox, sits unused in my desk drawer. I was horrified to learn that Level 2 or intermediate grups are currently reading "Indecision" by Benjamin Kunkel, because I just finished that, but grups in that level also listen to the Killers and aspire to be Natalie Portman's character in Garden State - which are both repellent to this particular grup. Level 3 or advanced grups aspire to be Sarah Silverman and Steve Malkmus, which I can get behind, but they also wear L.A.M.B. sneakers, and I'm just not there yet...

Honestly, the worst part about finding out that you are a grup is finding out that you are an out-of-it grup. I've heard of some of the music and book references, but hadn't heard of any of the bars. I didn't even know that Dora the Explorer was cooler than Thomas the Tank Engine (seriously, some grup in the story admonishes his kid for liking Thomas - actually telling the kid "Thomas sucks!").

It's funny because a few months ago we were having brunch (oh yeah, grups have brunch a lot) at Enid's in Williamsburg, and noticed that Enid's is stuck somewhere around 1993 - in terms of the music, what people wear and look like, etc. - but everyone there is too young to be stuck in 1993, except for us. We wondered what other people our age look like. (I'm always shocked when I watch Dr. Phil or Judge Judy and hear woman who looks 47 say she's 23 - guess it's a red state thing?) But I guess that is what people our age do look like - like 27-year-olds stuck in 1993, with a smattering of crow's feet. And toddlers with their chubby fingers on the zeitgeist of counterculture New York. And fabulously ripped jeans.

Did I Say I Missed the Office? I Must've Been on Peyote

2006-04-17T15:47:00.000-04:00

It's Day 50 of my being back in the office. True, that's counting weekends and all of the many days I have been out due to snow or illness or laziness or errand running, but I am counting those as work days because while they contain free hours, they are not free. They are only breaks in the soulless tedium that is my working-slash-breast milk-pumping life. Other breaks include frequent trips to Starbucks, and book reading on the subway.

One fortunate side effect of my return to the workforce is my newfound place on the battlefield of the Mommy Wars which, according to Katie Couric and other distinguished journalists, are raging across America. However, I am torn as to which side to fight for, as I have been self-loathing as both a working mother and a homemaker. So I have decided to remain a pacifying mediator. Why must we argue, when we are every one of us covered in baby puke? Can we not find some middle ground in the fact that our children do not let us sleep? When our babies yank our hair and bite our nipples, do we not cry out, do we not bleed?

When I was at home with Swaddlini, we giggled and cooed and rolled around on floor mats listening to Beethoven muzak. We also ate raw cookie dough and watched Starting Over and Judging Amy and sometimes took a nip from the cooking wine. Ok, that was just me. I was super efficient - making my own applesauce, doing a load of laundry every day, feeding the family on $150 a week. But I rarely showered or went outside. Swad and I kept student hours - never missing the Colbert Report or Conan, sleeping in well past morning rush hour, and napping in the gloaming.

Now I can't keep my eyes open past 10, I'm up with the sun dressing and feeding and walking and lugging - so much lugging - in an attempt to get out the door. I go nowhere without my trusty breast pump. And the bottles. And the icepack. And my big bag of miscellany that holds more than Mary Poppins' did. And did I mention that my work is pointless and boring yet lucrative? But bored as I am, I can't bring myself to write something pointed and exciting yet not lucrative. So I sit and listen to my "Left of the Dial: Dispatches from the 80s Underground" box set (which is excellent, BTW) and count the hours until Donald Rumsfeld leaves the White House or I get to go home, whichever comes first.

Why would anyone want to fight for or against either existence? Answer: No one does. The Mommy Wars are bullshit. We all would like to be fulfilled and make money and watch Judging Amy reruns in the middle of the day while playing with Swaddlini all at the same time, but it is not possible. Especially when the stupid dog decides to eat a bottle of Motrin and completely screw up your schedule while you force spoonfuls of hydrogen peroxide down his stupid throat and wait for him to puke but not on the rug and then he doesn't puke and the baby is in the crib crying but you can't do anything about it. Especially not then.

It's like Judge Amy Gray's stay-at-home friend said to her when Amy was conflicted about her status as a working mother: "Whatever you do, your kids end up hating you anyway. At least if you work, when they come to you asking for money, you have some to give."

I miss my baby. But I'm back.

So You Are Home All Day...

2006-01-30T12:01:00.000-05:00

... And this stupid show is on in the background because it comes on after Martha. And then some of it sort of soaks into your peripheral consciousness. And you laugh about how terrible it is but don't change the channel. Nobody changes the channel. Then you pick up on one moment, or get to sort of know one character. And you laugh about how stupid she is, but nobody changes the channel.

And then you are roped. You are watching "Starting Over" every day.

Day laborers may not know the power of "Starting Over." If, on the occasional sick day, you happen to pass the show on NBC, you quickly change it because upon first glance it is obvious that the show sucks. It's a reality show done by the creators of MTV's "The Real World," featuring middle-aged women in a new-agey Southern California house receiving 99-cent-store psychology while being forced to perform humiliating emotional and physical exercises. Like when one of them was put in a box and had to write on the walls of the box about her inner child. Or when the group had to decide which of the others should be thrown out of a lifeboat. The women are trying to relearn their authentic selves through argument or something. Each one has a descriptive tagline that comes up whenever they are on screen. Christina, for example, is "Learning to Drop the Hustle" (she was an escort); and Lisa is "Growing Up at 40." Sometimes, they have to wear costumes that exemplify their inner children and/or psychobabble.

Yes, it is inane. But stay-at-homers understand that the show's power is in its persistent mediocrity. It is background conversation for those of us home by ourselves. And there is something so California about the show's values, it reminds me of my mom's search for the answer in everything from "Who Moved My Cheese" to Ram Dass. And it's the realest reality show I've ever seen in terms of average looking people, which is at once refreshing and revolting.

Still, I'm so embarrassed. But I have to write about it here because misery yearns for company. I want to know that my compulsions are, if not the norm, at least not unheard of. I know there are others watching this crap. I feel like I need to go to a house for women like me, trying to overcome their addictions to boredom. And of course it must be filmed, so that our house may be watched by other stay-at-homers, who will then require their own house, and so on. Whenever I would come on screen, my descriptive tag line would be "Learning to Pick Up the Remote," or "Restoring Her Sense of Good Taste and judgment." And I would be made to wear sweatclothes stained with baby spit up and then left in a sensory deprivation tank to cry myself to sleep after destroying television characters made out of play-doh.

It's enough to make me miss the office.

Shot Through the Heart, and I'm To Blame

2006-01-06T13:18:00.000-05:00

I feel like a terrible, untrustworthy mother. I was doing so well, and then I had my first Jedi mommy challenge: taking baby to get shots.

My boy turned two months old on Tuesday, so I took him to the doctor yesterday for his first vaccinations. Four shots I was dreading for weeks, for many reasons. First, I'm allowing my unsuspecting baby to be hurt by a stranger with a sharp object. How is he to know it's not going to be a regular occurrence, and that it's for his own good? Second, is it for his own good? Not to get all Lisa Bonet on you*, but my son is pure and perfect and I'm letting big pharma "protect" him with its crazy snake oil. And it's not even snake oil - it's mercury-laced snake oil! Ok, granted, they got rid of the mercury, but the fact they even put mercury in there to begin with makes me sort of skeptical about the purity of the stuff. How far down on the list do you have to go before you hit mercury as a viable preservative option? Is it before or after lead? Seriously, I don't even want to imagine what else is in there.

I should have done some research to find out, but unlike the Alpha Mom, it's all I can do in a day to make a pot of coffee, yell at the dog, and breastfeed while still managing to focus on the specifics on the latest Judge Judy case. The Internet is a long lost friend who calls once in awhile to check in, but we really don't have anything to say to each other anymore. I tried reading Slate's latest Movie Club, and found it not only impossible to follow but a complete waste of time. I can't believe I used to have that much to waste and more. But I digress...

So there we are at the doctor's office and my boy is doing fine. A healthy milkfed 15 lbs, 7 oz and 25 inches at 8 weeks. Kicking and cooing at the doctor, completely at ease. Enter the she-devil nurse. Honestly, I know she's just doing her job but what kind of person decides to make a living stabbing babies? She explains that the torture will consist of two shots in each leg, the last of which stings and burns.

STINGS AND BURNS! I am good at getting shots and blood drawn, and I generally find needlephobes annoying, but I have never had a shot that stung and burned. And I don't want him to have one either. She went on to say that his leg may be irritated for a few days and I should massage it with warm compresses, it may cause him to have a fever, and it may leave a knot under the skin for anywhere from two weeks to two months. The news just kept getting worse. I'm too afraid to ask what I'm thinking: What the hell is in this shot? Maybe we could just take our chances without it. How bad could polio or malaria be, right?

But I remain silent and permissive. So she gives him the first two and he's caught completely unaware. He screams, his face turns bright red. She calms him by rubbing his leg and for a minute he is quiet. He turns to look at me with his beautiful big eyes and silently asks, "Why?" And at that very moment, when this innocent angel is looking at his mommy and questioning all that is painful and evil and cruel, the nurse sticks him with two more shots - this time with stinging and burning. That's when I realized that regardless of what's in the vials, my son will be forever changed. I can't protect him from pain. And that terrifies me. And even though getting shots is the right thing to do (I guess, though the jury may still be out), I feel like an asshole for putting him through it.

On the other hand, he's not protecting me from pain either. I'm still not sure what to call him in these posts, but around our house he's often referred to as the Soccer Hooligan. Who knew a two-month-old baby could head butt you so hard that the bones in your cheekbone (or jaw, nose, temple, or around the eardrum) ring with pain? He also scratches, hits, pulls hair and pokes eyes. Nursing him plays out like an episode of Jerry Springer. I have to put my hair up and take my jewelry off.

Motherhood is hard. Thank goodness the kid is brilliant, gorgeous, sweet, strong, multi-talented and altogether awesome. He puts a song in my heart - and my ringing cheekbone.

* I once saw Lisa Bonet on an episode of Donahue, denouncing immunizations and saying breastmilk was sufficient. She seemed very wise, either despite or because of her massive cornrows - I can't remember which. Is it horrible of me to now hope that little nursing
Lenny Kravitz Jr. pulled those braids while headbutting lovely Lisa square in the jaw?

While Visions of Home Equity Dance in Her Head

2005-12-16T15:15:00.000-05:00

So I was watching the finale of Donald Trump's "Apprentice" - don't judge, I'm a breastfeeding zombie who hasn't left the house in six weeks, and even if I weren't, I'd still be watching. Anyway, I was watching the finale of "The Apprentice," when I heard the four most beautiful words:

Trump Plaza Jersey City.

Sing along with me, won't you. Money money money money... Money.

What do we need? A little Christmas. When do we need it? Right this very minute.

2005-12-15T23:18:00.000-05:00

I'm back. And, fear not, I'm ready to type my little fingers raw regarding the rigors of mommyhood, that is if the little one will let me put him down long enough to finish a thought let alone type it. Even as I type this, I'm careful not to clack the keys too loudly and wake the little monst... er, darling. No, seriously, he's the best - a bit clingy and a light sleeper, but beautiful and strong and smart and awesome at a mere six weeks. I almost couldn't tear myself away, but I had to. It was crucial that I share a tale. A little holiday tale about a lady who fought the good fight in America's latest war. I call it : The Story of The Exhausted New Mommy in Starbucks who Saved Christmas.

As you may have guessed, I am the exhausted new mommy. And although I'm completely out of most loops, I am well aware of how American consumers are under siege in the War On Christmas (TM). Fox News is the stalwart informing the masses, O'Reilly has made himself the general, another Fox News idiot, John Gibson, is a foot soldier who wrote a book about it, etc. They are really getting the word out. A couple of weeks ago, my husband, Herr Guitar, proposed his own solution to the problem: that each of us should use our own holiday when greeting someone or responding to a greeting. So if I say, "Merry Christmas" to someone who celebrates Kwanzaa, she should respond, "And Happy Kwanzaa." Problem solved.

It's just that I don't think there is a problem. A little exposition: I had been completely naive about this issue. I always thought Happy Holidays meant Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Season's Greetings is, granted, much more inclusive - meant to be inoffensive to all religions - but who says "Season's Greetings"? I never have. But I've written more than a few "Happy Holidays" into my annual Christmas cards. I had no idea I was raping the whole thing of its meaning. On the other hand, I've also sent Christmas cards on which Jesus and Elvis battle for title of king, so I'm not too concerned about offending the people on my list. But when sending cards to Jewish friends, I don't send a Christmas card and then write and apologetic "Happy Holidays" inside. I actually make an effort to purchase a handful of Hanukkah cards. OK, whatever, that's just me. Not to mention the fact that although I'm a WASPy type who has occasionally stepped inside a Christian church, I'm not religious at all. So my celebrating Christmas is technically a huge sham, and I don't think I'm alone on that front. Maybe it is embarrassment leading others like me to apologetically whisper, "Happy Holidays" because we are noncommittal urban heathens who won't just grow up already and drive our SUVs to church with Support Our Troops ribbons on the back! Have you ever thought of that?

The thing that really pisses me off is there are Merry Christmases all over the place. Every commercial, every show, every song. Granted, my child doesn't go to school yet so I don't know what those Godless demon hippy educators have in store, but as far as mass media in America is concerned, Christmas has little to fear. Neither does Jesus or Christianity in general. This war is the Christian right trying to create a wedge issue to lull red staters into hate - and maybe even convert some blue ones. Lattes and gays are fine, but when you attack Christmas, Ms. Clinton, you've gone too far.

OK, I'm saying nothing new here, I realize. It's just that this is where my Christmas tale comes in (speaking of gays and lattes)...

So there I am in Starbucks, all tired and harried from excessive infant care, dreaming of a creamy beverage and, as I am wont to do, eavesdropping on my fellow customers. Two guys are standing in front of me. One seems laid back, affable, handsome. The other an aging frat boy (closet red stater) who is just finishing the sentence, "... I mean, sometimes it's just better to do nothing but surf the Web all day rather than write that Fuck You email to my boss." We all know this guy, right?

So there is a pause in the conversation and frat boy looks at the pastry case and reads the name of one of the items: "Holiday Gingerbread." It's then that he sees his moment - his chance to say something he may be able to pretend he isn't quoting straight from O'Reilly. So he says, "Why does it have to be 'Holiday Gingerbread'? Why can't they say 'Christmas' any more?" Handsome friend quietly nods as frat boy starts to launch into his tirade. What an interesting observation, handsome friend patronizes silently. How clever of you to notice and make others aware of this trend.

Exhausted new mommy laughs to herself. There is nothing funnier or more terrifying than hearing someone spew random Fox News bullshit on the street, she thinks. It means it's working. She wants to say something to this guy, to sigh heavily in distaste. Anything to tell this guy he's wrong, or at least annoying. Then she sees it. A sign hanging above all of their heads. She quietly raises her hand and puts her finger on it. "Starbucks Christmas Blend." It takes a second, but frat boy takes notice and shuts up. Handsome friend turns and looks. "Crisis averted," he laughs.

Yes, blogsphere, sometimes there is a Santa Claus.

What to Really Expect if You're Expecting to Expect

2005-10-06T11:07:00.000-04:00

As of tomorrow, I am 37 weeks pregnant, so I feel sufficiently wise to lend words of wisdom and advice to others.

And, let me tell you, at about 34 weeks, pregnancy really begins to suck.

I'm exhausted. My back is killing me to the point that I can't walk. I get dizzy when standing, sleepy when sitting. I'm hungry. I'm huge. I'm emotional. There are weird stabbing pains happening everywhere. I need assistance lifting myself from a sitting position. I wake several times during the night to go to the bathroom, and my eyes seem to mysteriously pop open each morning at 4 so that I can obsess over nothing until my alarm goes off at 7.

All this in preparation for an arrival that will leave me spent, sleepless and, more than likely, depressed, for about three to six months. As excited as I am to meet the little guy (and get him out of there), I don't know whether to be impatient or apprehensive.

HG has taken to getting up early and driving me all the way to work. It's wonderful, although I feel quite guilty - about his missing sleep as well as our paying a daily $6 tunnel fee. But the steps leading in and out of the subway have become ruthless! Now I know how my out of shape mother feels when she visits the city (Mommy, never again will I chastise you for having to stop and catch your breath repeatedly during the trip from the subway to our place, as annoying as it can sometimes be.)

These symptoms may only apply to me. I haven't had nausea or stretch marks or hemorrhoids, or countless other horrifying ailments that pregnant women can be subjected to. So you may not have an apple-sized knot in your lower back that throbs when you are standing up, or hammy feet that would cause even Fred Flintstone to take offense. But I can guarantee this: You will be surprised by how infrequently people offer to give up their seat on the train to a woman who plainly looks as if she is smuggling a medicine ball. I do feel bad when people have to give their seat up, especially women who are being kind while the lazy men sitting next to them won't even make eye contact with me. I have rerouted my commute so that I can get on an empty train, even if I have to wait for a few to go by, so that I don't have to bear the guilt of making someone else stand for a stop or two. Because when the train is packed and no one offers a seat to me, I get a little nuts. Ok, I panic. My eyes start to tear up, my knees get weaker and my legs slacken, as if my body were forcing me to crumble at the very injustice. It's not just because it's rude and cruel to let a clearly disabled person bob back and forth as the train jerks around, bumping into other passengers and risking a probable fainting spell, it's that standing hurts more than walking when you are pregnant - it hurts more than anything you can imagine, resting all of your bulk on these poor little swollen feet. I vow to never again selfishly stay in my seat if I see anyone worse off than me who could use it.

(It should be noted that people on the NJ PATH trains are much more considerate than people on the NYC subway. I hardly ever get a seat offered to me on the subway, but on the PATH it's pretty much a given. Who said only the strong survive in NJ?)

While pregnant, you will also learn that people are rude. You have no idea how rude until you have carried a child in your belly. I am shocked at the number and variety of men who make comments to me on the street. "That's a big baby." "Any day now." Or, the ever popular, "Twins!" About seven different strange men have told me I'm having twins during the past four months or so. Are these the same types of men who cat-call women? Or some different breed of chubby chaser? Not that I think they are hitting on me (although I'm sure there are men out there who believe that telling a women she looks like she's having twins is an appealing conversation starter), but what are they doing? Is it some form of Tourette Syndrome?

Also, you know when someone on the street bumps into you really hard because they can't bother to shift their body a mere two inches to the side to avoid it, and then they just casually keep walking? This happens even when you are pregnant. To New Yorkers, you will be just another fat lady in the way.

Worse are the people you know. For example, a friend's mother-in-law will not let me forget how huge I look. I would say she makes an average of eight comments on the size of my baby or belly each time I see her, give or take a few made exclusively to my husband. My friend carried differently than I am, didn't gain much, and had a 9 pound baby. So, by comparison, mother-in-law actually predicted my baby is going to be 24 pounds (though, to be fair, the next day she amended it to 16 pounds). Herr Guitar is astonished by this woman's behavior, because unlike her, he knows that a woman's size, shape and weight are sensitive subjects not to be cackled about in such a cavalier way. Sure, if something slipped out once, I could handle it. I can even handle the constant barrage, because there is little I can do about it and my only concern right now is having a healthy baby. In a few months, I may be fat and miserable and cursing the world. Right now I can only do what feels right. (Not that a 40E bra size feels right, but you get my point.)

On the positive side, a Starbucks worker gave me my venti iced decaf no-water americano for free last week. And one of those weird bicycle cab guys offered me a free ride. I took the drink, but not the ride - god forbid he has a coronary or something trying to peddle me a couple of blocks to the nearest subway stop. But it's nice to know you can sometimes rely on the kindness of strangers.

Speaking as an Unbiased Journalist, I Hate Judith Miller!

2005-10-05T12:49:00.000-04:00

Dear Career Gods: Please, please, please give me the opportunity to unnecessarily martyr myself in the name of a free press just as my developing reputation as a Bush administration hack and Chalabi mouthpiece threatens to ruin my career (though, since I'm a financial writer, I'd more likely be a hack for, say, GE or a mouthpiece for hedge fund manager, Eddie Lampert... but whatever. No one will ever know because a "Real Journalist"[TM] never reveals her sources). Grant me the opportunity to spend two to three summer months in jail, where, although things are bleak, I can comfort myself with the pity and admiration of peers and underlings alike. Give me the strength to eventually decide to reveal my already widely suspected source (because a "Real Journalist"[TM] never says never), who was technically already revealed months ago by another journalist (some non-martyr whose name no one remembers). And if you could throw in a seven-figure book deal? I promise to demure that I did it all "for the people" when real journalists such as Lou Dobbs embarrass themselves by fawning over me. And no one will ever question my legitimacy again. Amen.

The Traditional Gift for a First Anniversary? Cat Gut and Burgers, But Classy-Like

2005-10-05T11:16:00.000-04:00

October 2, 2005 marked my first full year as Mrs. Herr Guitar (or Ms. Juste Milieu-Guitar). To celebrate a year that was full of strum, strum, strum but lacking in strum und drang (with only a couple minor exceptions), we paid homage to the guitar gods by going to see Les Paul play at the Iridium Jazz Club. He and his trio play two shows there every Monday night, and it's the kind of "New York thing" that you always think about doing and never get around to. Since Les Paul (who, for people who don't know or haven't the inclination to care about such things, is known as the father of the electric guitar, reverb and multi-track recording) is going on 91 years old, time may be running out.

I have to admit, seeing Les Paul was lower on my "New York thing" list than it was ono HG's, but I'm glad he wanted to do it because the show is great. The old guy still really knows how to play a guitar, and the backing trio is also excellent. His stand-up bass player is a really hot young blonde chick who sings and partakes in the requisite but uncomfortable sexual banter with him, his rhythm guitarist is an unassuming, old-school New York guitar-playing mobster type with a beautiful singing voice, and the pianist is very... I don't know... piano-y? Paul had this cool way of tuning while he played, making it sound beautiful. At one point he had to switch to another guitar and had trouble tuning it, and he joked he "should've bought a Fender." (Again, for those of you who are disinterested or not married to my husband, the Gibson Les Paul guitar is one of the most famous and popular around. According to HG, the two he played that night are his famous originals.) They played a version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," a song I'm generally not crazy about, that brought tears to my eyes.

You buy tickets for the music, and can either have dinner or drinks while you watch (I think there's a minimum). And although the club is on 51st and Broadway and just screams tourist food, the dinner was really delicious and reasonably priced. I had what is unquestionably the best burger in New York.

Anyway, if you are a guitar fan, are looking for a jazzy night out, or have parents or grandparents in town and want to show them a good time, I highly recommend the show.

And if you are a fan of sweet, brilliant, talented, loving husbands, I highly recommend a year of marriage to my guitar god. Unfortunately for you, I'm not sharing.

Doing Feminism Justice!

2005-10-03T15:51:00.000-04:00

Oh Harriet Miers, you are my new favorite female trailblazer! Finally, a working woman I can relate to. With your top-notch writing skills and sharp intellect, who could not have guessed you'd be destined for the highest court in the land as soon as you began your stint as the go-to source for dishing daily pop-aganda as Dear Ms. Ask the White House. (I had no idea that Barney the White House dog liked to push horseshoes around with his nose. Can't you just picture how adorable that must be?).

So what if the rumor mill says you can't delegate or make a decision. I can relate. Like so many of us gals, you are a people pleaser, an approval junkie. And hey, you never forget a birthday. Isn't that what really counts?

Besides, the Supreme Court is about judgment, and no one can fault yours. Case in point: David Frum confesses that you are so in awe of George W., you once admitted to him that the Prez was the most brilliant man you had ever met. That is a keen observation, lady. But tell us truthfully, isn't some small part of you keeping your sexy sexagenarian self single in hopes that the Commander in Chief will someday swoon similarly in your direction? He certainly does his fair share of flirting: Granted, he has referred to you as a "pit bull in size 6 shoes," but at least he's paying attention to your dainty feet (BTW, I'll trade you my humongous 8 1/2s, any day!). And how about that time you two were together on 9/11 and he said you had "Good hustle." That compliment's way hotter than, say, "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie."

Oh come on, don't be coy - everyone knows you can't wait for W. to bench you! You know what they say, to get a sense of a woman's true inner thoughts, judge not by her eyes but by her eye makeup.

Miscellany

2005-09-15T12:12:00.000-04:00

1. I've been getting off the subway a couple of stops early these days, in an effort to get in some extra waddling before work. Each morning, I pass Lincoln Center and the ABC Studios. On Monday, a very sweaty man wearing a headset came up to me and asked:

"Excuse me, Miss, would you be at all interested in attending a taping of the Tony Danza show?" (Well, he didn't so much ask as plea, but unfortunately there is no existing punctuation to indicate pleading.)

I hated to have to tell this desperate man that I was on my way to work and therefore could not afford the time to watch Mr. Danza's TV magic. But I did, and he said he completely understood, but his body language told me he was crestfallen.

Is there anything not utterly desperate about the Tony Danza Show? I've seen exactly three minutes of it, and he pulled out all of the stops - singing, dancing, bad jokes, audience repartee. On Saturday Night Live, Fred Armisen does a brilliant imitation of TD, in which he actually puts his hands together and almost begs for applause between jokes. It's dead on. But the little production guy running around the streets of New York at the last minute, accosting random single pregnant walking women in search of a potential audience - that's a new level of desperation. I almost wish I had taken the day off to help this guy out.

Walking past the ABC Studios provides a good deal of morning entertainment, actually. Whether it's some teenage weirdo watching television in the window in an effort to beat a world record, or a black-clad cowboy with a picket sign mourning Peter Jennings, there is always something to look at in wonder.

2. This morning I was walking along 14th Street and saw Uma Thurman. I think she's now officially the celebrity I've run into most often. She was on a cell phone and mock-window shopping in front of a 99 cent store. I am writing this here because I am too chicken to contribute to Gawker Stalker, one of my favorite features on Gawker.com, in which New Yorkers post their random run-ins with the famous. Mine always seem insignificant to me, until I read that someone spotted one of the Queer Eye guys or a cast member from the first season of America's Next Top Model or something. Still, I can't bring myself to do it.

3. Britney Spears gave birth yesterday. That bitch was three days early, while my best friend is one week late and counting. Maybe smoking during pregnancy really is a good idea? My mom smoked and I was eight weeks premature - no fuss, no muss, all little and cute. But I won't jump on the bandwagon that criticizes Brit for eating Cheetos. I myself have had more than my fair share of Cheetos cravings lately. But I favor the Baked Cheetos - which are heart healthy! It says so on the label!

September 14 Also Marks the Day Francis Scott Key Wrote the Star Spangled Banner

2005-09-14T10:46:00.000-04:00

Today I am 34 years old. I don't feel any different. OK, fatter, but not wiser. I still can't believe I'm in the same age group as any of the characters on Thirtysomething. I guess that's because that show was set in the 80s, when 30 was 30. Today, 40 is the new 20, so 30 must be the new 10. I guess that makes me 14. That sounds about right: no self confidence, rapidly changing body, sober, bad hair, worse attitude, fear of boys (if only the one in my belly), inexplicable love of Ashlee Simpson... yeah, 34 is definitely the new 14.

Except this morning, when my husband asked if I wanted to ditch work and go to Seaside today to gorge on cheesesteaks and play air hockey and Ms. Pac Man, I made the 34-year-old choice. That's why my birthday fun has so far consisted of eating an ordered-in diner breakfast at my desk while typing this. Tonight I'll get a haircut and go to a nice restaurant - maybe I'll even splurge and have a sip or two of wine. Woo hoo!

My mother left a message on my voicemail at work this morning. She said my horoscope predicts it will be a very good year, one that will leave me "twinkling with money, or something like that." Does that mean I'll be inheriting some gold bullion, or just hauling HG's change bucket to Commerce Bank in desperate need of grocery cash? Horoscopes have a way of working every angle.

Happy Birthday to me.

Blog Jones

2005-09-13T15:58:00.000-04:00

My new online addiction is this screenwriter's blog from a guy named Josh Friedman, who apparently wrote the first few drafts of the screenplay for the most recent War of the Worlds, as well as the upcoming Black Dahlia movie and some piece of crap Keanu Vehicle called Chain Reaction (no, I haven't seen this particular piece of crap Keanu vehicle, but all of his films must carry that obligatory moniker). Reading this blog is, for me, like seeing Real Genius for the first time when I was a wee teen and realizing that I was not alone. Not that I was one of the geniuses but that if I strove to be one there would be other people who understood what the hell I was talking about (understand that my best friend at the time constantly would constantly remind me that I should try to play down my intelligence because guys don't like smart girls). And maybe one of those people would look like Val Kilmer and have a great sense of humor. The genius of Real Genius is it had that effect on everybody. Kilmer's character was this ideal guy in whom guys saw themselves and girls saw their soulmate - if only somebody understood.

I don't know why, but this reminds me of a story a coworker once told me about, which I call the Legend of the Rockabilly Rocket Scientist. This coworker claimed RRS was a best friend's boyfriend, but I think he's an urban myth. First: He's a rocket scientist. And: he's rockabilly (not my preferred choice in a man's personal style, but pretty adorable in rocket scientist). But wait: He and said girlfriend backpacked through Europe (awesome!) and in a charming little rustic town in Italy or Spain or Belgium or some other sufficiently charming little rustic European country, he proposed. But wait: Turns out he wanted to marry her then and there, and he was so sure she would say yes, he had been trekking with a wedding dress in his backpack!! But wait: They married in the little town with all of the residents as onlookers, and then there was some sort of fireworks display or something. And, just in case you forgot, the man behind this unbelievably lovely, thoughtful gesture happens to be a rockabilly rocket scientist.

Sickening, right? As much as I love that story, I don't think I could bear it if it happened to me. Remember that Sex in the City episode about how women these days cringe when exposed to romance? I know I do. I like the idea of romance, but one time a guy recited a poem on a date and I honestly felt like I was imploding. And it was a poem I really liked that I can never hear - or think of - again without instinctively wanting to plug my ears and start humming to myself. HG is good at non cringe-inducing romance, but when we were at the Steve Malkmus concert in Battery Park and I had to sit down, he sat down with me and rubbed my pregnancy swollen feet. It was the sweetest and most selfless gesture, but I couldn't handle it. This is why more rockabilly types aren't romantic - they figured out that girls like distant, weird assholes with greasy hair, chain wallets and bad taste in music - latter-day Fonzies who will mumble and treat them badly. Rocket scientists have also probably figured this out but are smart enough to keep to themselves and watch Star Trek or Star Wars or Nova... I have no idea what I'm talking about anymore.

Oh, the screenwriter. I don't know or care what he looks like and I don't think he's my soulmate but I like his writing. It makes me want to be a better writer - or it makes me want to be a screenwriter, I'm not really sure. But the point is, he completes me. He had me at hello. Wait, wrong Tom Cruise movie. Whatever. I don't know any lines from War of the Worlds. My only complaint is that he hasn't updated in a week and I'm starting to get really antsy about it. I guess this is how my readers would feel, if I had them. I've gone back and read his archive, but the site is pretty new so there wasn't much there (what is there is great - I recommend reading from the beginning).

Am I the only one who can't find enough to read on the Internet? I have about six sites that I check every day and it's just not enough. I try to find new blogs that will entice me but they seem few and far between. I know that there is good stuff out there if I could only find it - I landed on the screenwriter's site randomly and I can't remember life before he was there. Are there more like this? Please advise.

I still don't want to see War of the Worlds.

Escape to a Much Happier Coastal City

2005-09-09T16:17:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting in front of my computer screen as if the life has been drained out of me; delving deeper into depression with each newswire or blog post that I read. To help turn things around, I thought I would try and change the subject to something light. Something like, say, The O.C.

Let's just get it out in the open right now: The O.C. is my favorite show on television. I love it! And it's not a so-bad-it's-good kind of love. It's more like a so-good-that-I'm-telling-you-it's-my-favorite-show-on-tv-when-technically-I-should-be-embarrased-that-I-watch-it kind of love. The O.C. is just plain GOOD. If you don't agree, you haven't seen it. That's right, I said it. There are few audience members that The O.C. cannot woo, few cold hearts it cannot penetrate. Here's how:

Bitchy teenage girl (even at heart)? The outfits, the hair, the boys, the beach... I don't need to tell you why you'll love this show. But Marissa Cooper's attempts to piss off her mother are some of the most effective you'll ever see.
Indie-rock comic book-loving 35 year old? Watch Seth Cohen relive your past but with more money, better writing and a girlfriend.
Drunken frat boy/Aging drunken frat type? Ryan, the kid from the wrong side of the tracks, gets into lots of fights. Marissa, his hot girlfriend, gets into a lot of drinks... and pills... and trouble.
Desperate housewife? Choose between evil Julie Cooper, who sleeps with her daughter's boyfriend while simultaneously marring the richest man in Newport, or good-girl Kirsten Cohen, who drowns her lustful sorrows in Pinot Grigio when the principled magazine editor with whom she wants to become an adulterer gets away.
Capitalist pig? These people are Filthy Rich - the richest family in Newport Beach.
Tree-hugging liberal? Sandy Cohen is a Jew who fought for civil rights at Berkeley before becoming a public defender/surfer and adopting a tough kid from the wrong side of the tracks.

I could go on and on... have a gay dad? lost money in the stock market? considering a lesbian affair? like Death Cab for Cutie? been to a Scorpions concert? been visited by an unwelcome family member? love Star Wars or Wonder Woman? ...there is something in this show for you.

I started watching the show by accident. About two years ago I was putting off a writing assignment (read: lying face down on the carpet, wailing about how I'm stupid and worthless and don't know how to do this job), when I decided to take a "tv break." It was a Saturday afternoon and the FX network was trying to promote the then new show by running an all-day marathon of recent episodes. I came in on episode one and didn't stop until it was over about six hours later. OK, that's an exaggeration. I did stop to take a "writing break" during the episode where they went to Vegas. I still regret it. I have no idea what the hell I was writing - whether I finished it, whether it was published, whether it was good - but to this day I think about how I haven't seen that Vegas episode, pondering all I might have missed.

I know, I know, I could just Netflix Season One, but it's not the same. I'll never have another chance to see the first episodes, in order, for the first time. But you still have the chance. Just watch it. Although Season Three began last night, I recommend starting with Season One and moving on from there. No one has to know, and you don't have to thank me. When I run into you on the street one day and you are humming the unabashedly cheesy but catchy "California" theme song, it will be thanks enough.

And if you could maybe tell me what happened while they were in Vegas? That would be great.

I don't think anyone could have predicted that this baby would make my belly swell...

2005-09-08T16:34:00.000-04:00

By now everyone is aware of the brilliant W. quote, "I don't think anyone could have anticipated the breech of the levees." But please allow me to dwell for a moment because, of all the grammar-busting idiocies that have emenated from that sneer, this statement takes the prize for Most Retarded.

Why? Smarter bloggers than I have pointed out that a breech of the levees has been anticipated for at least 100 years, if not hundreds more. But that can be chalked up to region-specific obsessive paranoia. What makes me sure that this event was widely anticipated is the fact that I was anticipating it. I, the mirror-obsessed, latte-swilling, blue-hearted blue stater, who has never been to the Big Easy and could not care less, knew all about this thing three years ago. I read and viewed stories, in Harper's and on NOW, about how New Orleans was going to get washed away. At the time, I really didn't care. I chalked the coverage up to liberal media bitching about problems for the sake of bitching. Who knew that stories in Harper's could be so relevant? So prescient? (Whereas the August/September 05 issue of poor Budget Living, a magazine where I still semi regret turning down a job, had a story about a burgeoning hip neighborhood in Nawlins where you can still snatch up a little bungalow for a mere $300k.) The point is, many, many people did anticipate the breech of the levees, and have been working for years if not decades to do something about it. His simplistic, aw-shucks view of everything is just embarrassing.

If you are feeling exhausted by Katrina and ready to bash (or just get really depressed about) the Administration on some other fronts, take a look at The San Francisco Bay Guardian's 10 Biggest Stories the Mainstream Media Ignored Over the Past Year (lest you decry the liberal media again, the list was actually composed by Project Censored, a media watchdog org from Sonoma - that's liberal intelligentsia - ahem, get it straight). Some of the items freak me out more than others. But I have to admit that the one I'm currently buying into is the stolen 2004 election. In the past 10 months or so, whenever Herr Guitar started spouting stolen election paranoia (and it has been often), I've sort of yawned it off and politely changed the subject back to me. But in catching up on some Harper's reading on my vacation last week, I read None Dare Call it Stolen , and I'm an election-conspiracy convert. If you think, like I did, that the whole argument is rooted is sore-loserdom, just read the first few paragraphs - I dare you - and see if you aren't swayed.

One last Katrina tidbit... I've found the news coverage about animals being saved from the flood waters just the slightest bit distasteful. I love my dog just as much as Oprah and Matthew McConaughey, but to me it seems like the news media's way of putting an adorable face on victims they otherwise don't want to look at. Plus, watching dogs get saved in style while there are still people that need to get out of there is just wrong. My Vegas friend said to me this morning (in her pricelessly callous style), "I care more about the dogs than I do the people. That's why I haven't been watching the news, because if I see one dog in danger I will freak out." Is she the typical American? Maybe that's why those 10 stories are being ignored.

Pet Sounds

2005-08-29T13:26:00.000-04:00

Two people in two weeks have commented to me that my husband seems to be one of the happiest people they've ever met. Why? Because he sings to his dog. And they are right, he does sing, unabashedly, to the dog. Not the classic rock or top 40 hits or television theme songs that most of us might be caught mindlessly humming to our pets ("You and I, face to face, a couple of Silver Spoons...") - he sings standards of his own creation that are for and about the dog. Some are made up on the spot. Some follow a semi-familiar yet still improvisational pattern. Some are set in stone and being added to as I write this, like the rap that has about five verses so far, each delivered with perfect Beastie Boy vocal embellishments. And it's not just Angus that moves him to song. We once cat-sat for about four weeks and he wrote and a song about one of our foster kitties, Space Dog (not his given name but we liked it), that he also recorded.

I think, technically, this behavior falls under the category of "slap happy," but I'll take it.

No News is Not Always Good News

2005-08-10T11:57:00.000-04:00

OK, I admit it, I watch The Today Show. I need something on while I prepare to face the day, and it is simply better than the alternatives. Unfortunately, in morning television, being better than the alternatives doesn't preclude you from UTTERLY SUCKING.

And the show has sucked more and more since 2004, otherwise known as "The Year White-Trash Christian Family Values Broke." I mean, it was always insipid, but now it's insipid and pandering. Plus, I guess the show is in a ratings war with Good Morning America, and so it seems like they are trying a little too hard. I can't watch GMA, because I have respect for Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson. While they are slightly less insipid and pandering, they are slightly more awkward in their delivery. As an approval junkie, nothing makes me more uncomfortable than watching another approval junkie who isn't quite cutting it.

Anyway, back to Today. Here are two examples - not the worst offenses, mind you, just two examples that have occurred in the past three days - of what I'm talking about. On Monday, they did a segment about how, despite the terrible reviews, "Dukes of Hazzard" was number one at the box office. This was an actual news piece, and the correspondent kept saying things like, "Viewers seemed to be thumbing their noses at the taste of critics, preferring to just sit back and enjoy the ride..." or some bullshit like that. This is news? Aren't most blockbusters pieces of shit that get bad reviews? Plus, Dukes didn't make all that much - $30 million in its opening weekend for a pretty hyped summer movie that cost $50 million to make is not that great. "Wedding Crashers" made more than that in its first weekend, and it opened at number 2. The true test is this weekend, because I think that the people who were going to see the Dukes have seen it. How wide could the audience for this movie be? But that's not the point. Anything that reeks of RED STATE gets extra special news treatment these days. It's ridiculous.

Worse: Today they had a segment about the controversy surrounding the film version of "The Da Vinci Code". I'm probably the only one who has not read this book, so I don't really know if they are blowing it out of proportion... but according to the report, Hollywood is concerned about angering Christians with the movie because they are such and important part of the audience. Why, just look at "Passion of the Christ"! They filmmakers wouldn't mind picking up a few of those Passion dollars, but then what about the book's 25+ million fan base? No one wants to alienate them either. What to do? They had a taped sound bite with some sort of backwoods southern minister who said, "What the filmmakers need to do is include a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie that says, 'This is only a work of fiction.' That would satisfy me." Excellent idea. Because otherwise we idiots in the audience may panic and start jumping out of windows, just like we did when we heard the War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938. (But what to do about those of us who are illiterate or otherwise not paying attention? We may not realize that the expensive Tom Hanks/Ron Howard vehicle we are watching, which apparently spans hundreds of years and involves the Mona Lisa and Templars and Masons and other various underground European sects, is not a documentary or newsreel but a fictional motion picture.)

So they bring on Michael Medved, who is like the Sean Hannity of film critics (his catch phrase is "It's cool to be conservative."), to discuss what the filmmakers should do. (My favorite part was when the host, Lester Holt, suggested that maybe they should create a character, say a priest, who is pro Catholic, just to balance the story - again, I don't know the story but I'm sure this is one of the stupidest suggestions ever conceived on a Today host's hastily scribbled 3 x 5 card.) Holt actually asked the question, "Is Hollywood anti Christian or anti Catholic?" Is there an answer to this question? Can you imagine something more ridiculous? Medved proceeded to list some anti movies of the past few years (And I quote: "'The Order,' which I referred to as 'The Odor'..."; "'Stigmata,' better known as 'Stinkmata'..." The puns were hilarious and profound) and how they have all been bombs. See kids, if Jesus doesn't like your movie he will damn it to the bowels of box office hell. I don't recall hearing of either of these movies, and I know a good bit about movies, so the good Lord must have done quite a number on them. (That or they were small independent films that didn't get good distribution because of concerns about their anti-Xian plots. But why quibble?) I would bring up "The Devil's Rejects," which has grossed $15 million on a budget of $7 (this seems remarkably high because the film looks pretty hard to watch) or "The Exorcist," one of the most popular films of all time (though pro-religion. HG likes to remind me that it was that film that brought on the Born Again phenomenon of the 1970s), but I know that an argument with Jesus is one I am sure to lose.

Still, I do have to point out one thing I couldn't resist discovering, thanks to the help of handy Mr. Internet: "Stigmata" made $18 million its opening weekend (and grossed $50 million total, on a budget of $30 million). Not exactly a bomb. "The Order," however, was a huge flop. I'm sure that, as we speak, theological studies groups all over the country are debating this strange but important discrepancy. (Quien es mas Christian, Senor Ledger o Senora Arguette?)

Sweet Victory and Relief

2005-08-08T13:28:00.000-04:00

Your last-minute votes may have made the difference. In the Gawker Gossip Hotties poll Ben pulled into the lead on Friday afternoon (around the same time I posted my last update... Coincidence?) and easily beat out his less sizzling competition. Hurray!

Toward an Efficient Democracy - Hot Gossip Poll Edition

2005-08-05T14:15:00.000-04:00

My guiltiest Internet pleasure, Gawker.com, is conducting a poll to name the hottest gossip columnists. Astonishingly, Daily News Gatecrasher Ben Widdicombe, who is a friend of mine but who is also one of the most handsome men in the city, is not in the lead! Go now and vote for him. I assure you, it's the right choice.

My Favorite Things (And I Promise Not to Mention Starbucks Cookies)

2005-08-03T14:43:00.000-04:00

I thought I would share some of the things that have my affection and constant attention this summer: KROQ Classics Internet Radio is rocking my working hours. I grew up in LA in the 1980s, where and when KROQ was the cool New Wave Mecca. It played X and the Red Hot Chili Peppers when no one else did, as well as weird old-school rap when it was still very young-school. In the past 20 minutes, I've heard W.O.R.K. by Bow Wow Wow, Girls on Film by Duran Duran, I Will Follow by U2, Stand and Deliver by Adam and the Ants and Mental Hopscotch by Missing Persons. But KROQ also throws in lots of obscure stuff that brings me right back to my 13 year old self, like I Love Paul by Nina Hagen or World Destruction by Zone Time. (KROQ is also the home of D.J. Rodney Bingenheimer, an excellent LA character who figured prominently in my youth - as well as Davy Jones' and Susanna Hoffs'. If you haven't seen Mayor of Sunset Strip, the documentary about Rodney, you should.)

Other Music Newsletter is, for my money, better than the Rock Snob Dictionary. It's one thing to know your stuff about Captain Beefheart or The Wrecking Crew, but the weirdoes at Other Music will definitely help you to one-up even the most savvy music geeks. For instance, have you ever heard of Mickey Newbury? I hadn't, but now I'm dying to hear his album. Did you know that there is a compilation of funky 60s-era female singers from Bangkok, called Thai Beat a Go-Go? There are three, actually. Do you know anything about The Watt's 103rd Street Rhythm Band? Last Christmas, I got HG an album called 94 Baker Street, a compilation of songs recorded for Apple Records. You just don't find this stuff anywhere else. Plus, if you are sick of all things commercial, their new releases are often refreshingly unknown. Sometimes they hype things a little too much - I got the silly Blue Van album on their recommendation, but I also got an EP by Tuesday Weld, so that makes us even. I still don't get why the entire staff is in love with Animal Collective's Sung Tongs. I've only heard a few samples but they were definitely a turn off.

Newsletter honorable mention goes to Film Forum Newsletter, which comes to me every Wednesday with its maddening challenge question about one of the films it's currently playing. Remember in Ghost World, when the guy in the wheel chair at the coffee house finds answers to the trivia questions on his laptop and gets a free coffee every day? I am that guy. I'm obsessed with finding answers to these questions and sending them in right away. The prize is a measly pair of free tickets on a weeknight, when as a member I get tickets for $5 anyway. Still, it must be my little researcher brain or my need for approval that has me scrambling for obscure information each week. I've known the answer without researching it exactly once out of the 50 or so times I've sent in a response. I've gotten the answer correct every time, though. But they put the correct responses together and draw the name of the winner at random. I've never won.

Finally, I plan to do a post about summer reading, but the book I'm currently reading, Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, deserves its own special place on this list. Because I love all things hipster-1960s, I've had a copy of Southern's novel, Candy, since I was a kid. But I've never read any of his other stuff until now. Southern is a wacko/perverse comic writer who helped write the screenplays of Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider, among other great things. He also wrote for Saturday Night Live during the first years, and National Lampoon's (all Harvard grads who go on to write satire for Hollywood or magazines worship Southern, it's a prerequisite). This strange collection of his work includes interviews with him, letters he sent to magazines and friends, stories and scenes he has written. Some of it is truly sick, but much of it is brilliantly funny, and even the sick stuff stays with you for days. And I love his swinging attitude. He's a likeable Peter Sellers, or a smart Austin Powers.

So Long Sallie Mae, You Bloodsucking Whore

2005-08-02T12:23:00.000-04:00

That's right, as of yesterday, my student loans are finally paid off!

Thank you, thank you. I am so honored. Thanks to my loan administrator, Sallie Mae Corp., for always being there. And I mean always. We've had our ups and downs, but I can honestly say I'm leaving this relationship with far fewer hard feelings than I had expected. Never mind that it was a 10 year loan and I graduated 11 years ago and I technically still had a year's worth of payments to make before I was done. I don't understand the math, but I trust that everything was on the up and up.

I also want to thank my parents, for having saved nothing for my college education. Trust fund babies are so overrated, as are kids whose parents pay for their schooling. What do these people know about struggle, sacrifice, and furnishing your apartment with items found on the street? Particularly, I'd like to thank Dad, who once seriously implied that tuition could not amount to much more than a couple of hundred dollars a semester. Even though I chose a public school, you missed the mark by a thousand or two, not including the little things like food, board and books. Oh the blissful ignorance of the divorced, long-distance father. Adorable! Remember that time, during freshman year, when I called desperate for some money to get food? You suggested I go to 7-11, cook a burrito in the microwave, and eat it right there without paying for it. "What are they going to do to you?" You asked. I demurred, and lived another day on butter and brown sugar sneaked from my roommate's refrigerator. And I'm stronger for it.

Next, I'd like to thank the University of California at Berkeley. You took pity on a pauper like me, gave me the best education money can buy at a very affordable price, and taught me that Stanford is for Dan Quayle fans. So what if you did nothing to help me find a job, or prepare me for the fact that I would have to toil as a secretary before I got anywhere anyway? So what if, on several occasions, I was tempted to ask you for my money back? Now that our debt sheet is cleared, I think of you fondly.

Thanks, too, to the editor who assigned me that article about a new charitable thingymajig. Yes, at times it felt the piece was truly a labor of disinterest, and the rewrites were hair-pullingly, computer screen-hittingly frustrating. But with the paycheck it provided I was able to do something, if not truly altruistic, at least beneficial to me: give a big fuck you to Ms. Mae.

And of course, I can't forget to mention my starter magazine jobs. You know who you are. Thank you for keeping me out of journalism school, and away from additional outrageous debt. Particularly FP - I had no idea that two years working under a bitchy tyrant at an understaffed publication would be equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars blown on a J-degree at Columbia or Northwestern, but it was.

Finally, I would like to share this honor with my husband, the wonderful Herr Guitar. When we wed, I gained much more than a partner, much more than a few All Clad pans and a Pyrex set... I gained another student loan payment. Thanks to you, darling, I can look forward to the triumph of having helped to pay off another student loan - in about 18 years or so. I can't wait.

Pity the US Housefrau

2005-08-02T11:47:00.000-04:00

I am so looking forward to maternity leave. It's like this brass ring: 12 weeks of paid leave to spend with my baby. After that, who knows? I can't imagine anything beyond those blissful (or hellacious, depending on my spawn) three months.

When I first asked my HR rep about my company's benefits, I was told that under the Family Medical Leave Act they were not required to provide me with anything. Because the company has less than 50 employees. However, they generously do offer 12 weeks paid leave. I was thrilled. That is generous.

But then I hear that in Canada, everyone is entitled to 14 months of paid maternity leave! In Sweden, the father and mother decide who gets the family's 16 months of leave at 80 percent pay. In the industrialized world of over 160 countries, the U.S. is only preferable to three - Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland - in terms of what we offer expectant mothers. Isn't that sick?

The Family Medical Leave Act entitles women to 12 weeks of job-protected leave. Employers can decide if they want to provide workers with pay during that time, but they don't have to. Furthermore, companies with less than 50 employees don't have to comply with FMLA. When my mom had me, she just got laid off, but at least she was covered by unemployment. Clinton wanted to extend unemployment benefits to women on maternity leave, but it was overruled when W took office.

Once I heard this, I no longer felt so blessed. I mean, I'm lucky that I'm getting paid for that time, some people have to take disability leave. But 12 weeks is nothing in the life of a baby. How can I effectively plan my next move, given such a short period of time and distractions like diaper changes and episodes of Judge Judy? Is it too late to move to Canada?

Fun with Bertolucci

2005-08-01T13:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Herr Guitar and I went through our typical Sunday routine of brunch and a movie. Brunch was at Great Jones. Supposedly, Basquiat used to eat there when not starving. They have good biscuits, good coffee, and a great jukebox. Yesterday's music included a song called, "New York's a Lonely Town (When You're the Only Surfer Boy Around)," by the Trade Winds. I know this song because when I was a 60s surf-music obsessed teen, I got my hands on a surf music compilation tape and it was one of the gems. (I lived in California, but loved the idea of getting the hell out of there and missing it. How poignant was the lyric, "I feel so bad each time, I look out there and find, My Woody's outside, covered in snow.") I still have the tape, but I've never heard that song anywhere else.

Oh, and another Great Jones selling point: We once took my brother there and Mark Ibold, the bassist from Pavement, served us our breakfast. How's that for hip?

We weren't sold on seeing a movie. I am willing to see "The Wedding Crashers," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and even "Bad News Bears" or "Hustle and Flow." HG is decidedly not. So I checked the old standby, the Film Forum, to see what's up there. They had the 1970 Bernardo Bertolucci film, "The Conformist." Pauline Kael once called the film, "A triumph of feeling and style," and our membership to FF gets us in for $5 a pop, so why not?

When we got to the theater, there was already a small line. I told HG to get in line while I got tickets. Then as I walked back to meet him, I noticed him pointing wildly at the line in front of him. I thought he was trying to help me locate him, but then I noticed, standing on line about three people ahead of him, was Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth. HG's hero. He got out of line to get another ticket, but the people he was in front of wouldn't save his spot. So as he proceeded to the back of the line, HG called out, "Hi Thurston."

A little backstory: The members of Sonic Youth are very approachable celebrities. Any New York indie rock fan worth her salt has seen either Thurston, his wife/bassist Kim Gordon, or guitarist Lee Renaldo out and about at one point (I've seen all three, multiple times). Anyone with the desire or nerve to have spoken to them knows that they're extremely cool.

Thurston may be the most approachable. And when HG said "Hi," he stopped and talked to us. We offered him a spot in line (it was only fair). We chatted about music, the Dinosaur Jr. show at SummerStage, Vincent Gallo, wealth in America, the line at the Film Forum, and the new Gus Van Sant movie Thurston just did music on, "Last Days." In fact, the friend he was meeting was Michael Pitt, the star of, among other films, "Last Days" and another Bertolucci film, "The Dreamers." Pitt arrived looking cute in his ripped t-shirt, and was really friendly as well.

Oh, the movie was great. It was creepy and beautifully filmed, and I think that "The Godfather" Parts 1 and 2 borrowed a lot of its look and style directly from it. The place was packed with old folks - more so than usual - and I was lucky to be sitting behind a 300+ pound man who moved his head from side to side every five seconds. Why is it that whenever I go to see a subtitled movie at the Film Forum I end up sitting behind this guy? It hurts to move your head back and forth like that - I know because I end up having to follow him just to read the dialogue.

Despite the ensuing neck ache, it was a great New York afternoon. Where else can you make a spur of the moment decision to see a restored masterpiece and end up casually meeting a hot young actor and a guitar god?

Finally, a Diagnosis!

2005-07-28T16:36:00.000-04:00

Cookies from Starbucks Do Not Cure this Type of Depression. Believe Me.

Try as I might, I haven't been able to publish a post in weeks. I start. I write a few sentences. My mind wanders. I realize I have nothing to say about the given topic. I quit. I was going to write about all the bloggers who have been losing their jobs recently despite the fact that their blogs are completely innocuous and uninteresting. I was going to write about Rovegate and the new Supreme Court nominee and all of the really bad TV shows I've been watching this summer. I was going to write about how I am in the doldrums and everything seems like a hamster wheel of a routine. But I didn't. I just couldn't.

Now I know why. It's Blog Depression according to a pamphlet found on thenonist.com. Symptoms include loss of pleasure in the Internet, feelings of self loathing and dementia, and passive agressive moaning. That's so me!

I don't know if I can be cured, but now that I know what the problem is, maybe I can manage to eke out a rant about how my doctor is forcing me to consume mass quantities of vile, fattening Gatorade. It's a long story. Let's hope I can tell it one day.

Yes, I am a hater

2005-07-08T16:16:00.000-04:00

Turns out I may be wrong about the marketability of a heartburn-curative social cocktail that my brilliant friend invented. If Lindsay Lohan and Ashley Simpson (whom I love) are any indication, heartburn - aka "acid reflux" - is the new IT disease.

(Thanks to Blue Sage for letting me know.)

2005-07-06T15:35:00.000-04:00

You liked the neighborhood, you'll love the t-shirt!

If Henry Miller grew up in Williamsburg, why is it named after Willam S. Burroughs?

2005-07-06T14:07:00.000-04:00

I never thought that the street I used to live on would achieve a level of fame that eclipsed my own, but it has happened. South 3rd Street in Williamsburg is big news on Curbed.com because of the ugly condos that are springing up all over it. Two buildings are going up at South 3rd and Bedford Ave. I actually lived on a nice block, South 3rd between Berry and Wythe. But everything between Berry and Bedford and points west was disgusting. In fact, it took my drug addicted father just one Thanksgiving afternoon to identify the corner of Bedford and South 3rd as "the place where they sell crack." Now it's the place where they sell $500k+ one-bedroom condos. Click on the link to see how ugly these things are. Seriously, if the developers can't invest in a decent design plan and/or attractive brick, do you think they are giving you a quality condo for your money? I can sum up what I think in two words: mold litigation.

In other Williamsburg news, Old Navy has immortalized the 'hood's greatness with a t-shirt that claims to celebrate "Brooklyn's hippest locale." Even the Wall Street Journal is snarky about this piece of information. They ran a picture of the shirt with a caption: "Time to Move, Hipsters." With the following story:

Keeping It Real Estate

We now have proof that the real-estate bubble -- at least in New York City -- is about to burst: The Gap Inc. chain Old Navy is selling women's T-shirts celebrating, according to OldNavy.com, "Brooklyn's hippest locale!" That's right: Fashionable fems (and probably the skinny guys who populate the hood) can now splash "Williamsburg" across their chests. Note to real-estate brokers and investors: This is what we call a sell signal. Ah, it seems just like yesterday that we were getting mugged and tossed off the subway in that corner of the city. (OK, it was next door in Greenpoint, and it was 14 years ago. But still.)

Of course, this is old news. Hipsters in the know (aka my husband and I) left a year ago.

And speaking of hipsters, I am starting to really hate them. At least some of them who live and congregate in and around New York. In the past two weeks, HG and I have been to two hipster festivals: the New Pornographers concert in Prospect Park, and the Steve Malkmus/Yo La Tengo 4th of July concert in Battery Park.

Before I skewer the Prospect Park crowd, I must admit that I as a pregnant woman at a rock concert, I have no right to complain about what I am about to complain about. That being said, how many fucking Brooklyn babies love the New Pornographers? Answer: a lot, if this show was any indication. I felt like I had the date confused and ended up at a performance of The Wiggles. There were toddlers and post toddlers and infants - some seriously young infants. As impossible as it may sound, I swear I counted more strollers than people. We got there late and set up a blanket on a rough patch of lawn - it would have been a decent spot were it not for the strollers blocking our view from every side. Other than that, the show was fine. It was hardly even a show, more like sitting on a lawn with friends and background music and about three thousand uninvited babies. Seriously, I have nothing against babies rocking out. My parents took me to a Santana concert as a child. It's just a little unsettling being surrounded by your own obvious demographic group.

But at least babies get into the music. The other reason I hate hipsters is they are so blasé about everything. The Steve Malkmus show in Battery Park was great. He opened for Yo La Tengo, but we left before they went on. I have seen Yo La Tengo perform so many times that, when given the choice between seeing them and beating traffic so we can get home to watch "The Aviator" on Netflix, I pick the latter. Anyway, while Malkmus was rocking, many members of the audience sat knitting or playing cards. A lot of people did stand up, but many of them just watched stoically, with arms folded across their chests. What were they expecting? Were they enjoying themselves? I mean, the line to this show wrapped around the entire park and it didn't get any shorter as the day went on. If they were just waiting out the performance to see Yo La Tengo, they were probably in for a disappointment - that band was not going to give a better show than what they were seeing. No, the truth is, indie audiences are too cool to rock. It's really annoying. Sometimes I wish that an indie rock concert was more like a Grateful Dead show, with people just letting themselves get into it. Take off your shoes, twirl around, loosen up your ironic t-shirt and enjoy yourself.

Malkmus's music came close to the Grateful Dead vibe - his new album celebrates a 70s sound in all of its glorious cheesiness - but the audience did not have the stuff to take advantage of it. Well, with one exception. Every single member of the audience must have stepped on our blanket at least once, creating a sort of blanket mud pit that only a hippie could fathom. I almost got into a fist fight with one bitch who just stood there, grinding her nasty girth into my blanket with her stupid Converse All Stars. HG calmed me down, explaining that we didn't buy real estate, we just put a blanket down at a rock concert. Still, everyone else's blanket was relatively unscathed. Why did ours serve as a path to and from the stage? I have a baby growing in me, I can't have untold shoe debris and foot concerns festering near me, following me home, finding shelter in my washing machine.

That was probably my last pregnant concert-going experience. I have been banished from next week's Dinosaur Jr. concert at Central Park's Summerstage because my husband would prefer our baby be born with hearing (spoil sport). I'm almost relieved. If I can get this roiled over stroller-wielding alphahipsters and disaffected indie ho-hums with dirty feet, I don't want to imagine what a Dinosaur Jr. audience would do to me.

Affairs of the Heartburn

2005-06-28T14:31:00.000-04:00

I have to take a minute to make fun of one of my best friends who, fortunately, doesn't know enough about the Internet to read this blog. (My conscience is a relatively easygoing one. If the subject isn't aware I'm making fun of her, who really gets hurt?)

This friend and I have been close since our early teens. She lives in Las Vegas and I rarely see her, but she calls me every day to detail the minutae of her bizarre yet tedious life (gambling former crack-addict husband and his white trash crack-addicted family; ins and outs of Vegas real estate boom; difficulty of training hairdresser to achieve the perfect Victoria's Secret model haircut; drunk guy who professed love for her; etc.) in between my "uh-huh"s and "right"s. That's about all I can fit into the conversation. I don't know when this one-way conversation began. I used to have a lot to say to her and I think she knows me pretty well despite not hearing much about the last fight I had with HG or how I hate the crone editor I'm working with.

Anyway, today she called to tell me how she is going to get rich. After several minutes of telling me this ("No really, you don't understand, I'm getting rich. Don't worry, I'll take care of you." etc.) she started to explain with the sentence, "First I need to find a chemist." Then explained the backstory...

I should explain that her backstories are often quite detailed, involving all manner of Vegas characters - some wacky, some dull. But no aspect of the story is left out. For the purposes of sparing me the carpal tunnel syndrome, however, I'll edit some of it.

So here it is: She has been taking TrimSpa (you know, the Anna Nicole-sponsored diet pill? "TriiiimSpa baaaay-beee.") which has brought on bouts of heartburn. She's never had heartburn before, but as she gets older she finds it more difficult to drink margaritas because the citrus burns. Anyway, she was at "the bar" (her local hangout where she and her husband casually gamble hundreds of dollars they can't afford to lose each night - sometimes taking cash advances from a credit card to do so. But hey, they plan to make $100k profit on their new house eventually, so what's the big deal?) and one of her friends - a firefighter who they see for days at a time at the bar and then don't see for weeks, because you know firefighters' schedules - starts talking to her about her heartburn. He's one of those "gross Vegas guys" who isn't ashamed to admit that he only wants to date young supermodel girls, even though he thinks they are total idiots. He also has heartburn, and personally takes prescription brand Nexium before a night out. But the young girls he dates always want stop at the corner store to pick up Mylanta and Red Bull. "It's like a thing that these girls do." As fireman describes this concoction, my friend begins craving it and then, even more importantly, has a brainstorm. Why not sell a drink that incorporates both?

OK, this is where I start to feel bad. I'm not even supposed to be telling anyone this, because this is her ticket to millionairedom. If I had more than two or three readers, or knew anyone who I suspected had the time to care about this, then I would be guilty. I don't know, maybe I'm a cynic, but I have to ask: Why? I know Red Bull is a popular mixer. I'm sure there are plenty of heartburn sufferers out there. But I still don't get the connection. All she could say was, "As soon as he said it to me, it was exactly what I wanted." But she doesn't like Red Bull because it makes her sick. (It makes a lot of people sick, which is why it is not recommended to have more than two a day. And there must be the same type of limits set on Mylanta. Her response: Yes, but technically if you have more than two beers a day you are an alcoholic, and that doesn't stop anyone. And plenty of people already drink tons more Red Bull than they should.) Has she gone out and tried this special elixir for herself?, I ask. No. Her faith in the girlfriends of this firefighter as having their finger on the pulse of culture is unshakable. She's calling me to ask about idea patenting and finding chemists and getting in touch with Pepsi Corp. When I suggested it might be tough to mix two brands together and label it her own invention, she replied she's sure she can find the ingredients of both in bulk at Whole Foods.

I want to know why all of these young supermodel types have heartburn. Is it only them? Is heartburn an epidemic? Is it only in cases of TrimSpa users? Please send your thoughts.

And please, please, please do not steal this idea. I so need a millionaire friend who is willing to take care of me.

CDC on Thimerosal

2005-06-21T16:57:00.000-04:00

Sorry to be such an alpha mom about this, but I was just reading the Center for Disease Control's FAQs about Thimerosal. As I suspected, there are still trace amounts of this poison in much of the flu vaccine supply. There were only 6 million to 8 million thimerosal-free flu vaccine doses available last fall.

I understand that the CDC doesn't want parents to panic, but they are still standing by the notion that there is no link between this ingredient (said to be almost 50% mercury) and neurological disorders, while they quietly take it out of our vaccines. They're tearing apart scientific studies as if they are nonsense. Read about the Geiers, who conducted a 2003 study that found a link. (It's a great story from Seed Magazine, but I think it's missing some pages.) Then read what the CDC says about their study. Is it really so illegitimate?

Parents should definitely ask to see a list of ingredients for all of the vaccines doctors plan to give to their children. I'm thankful that I didn't have a kid five years ago and find out now that he may or may not have been poisoned by the government, but who knows what the official word will be five years from now? We really should've stopped it sooner, we apologize?

Best of Breeders

2005-06-17T15:02:00.000-04:00

I'm a little behind in my bitching, but I can't let the week pass without mentioning this week's New York magazine cover story on the Alpha Mom.

I urge you to read the story, but to sum up: Alpha Mom is this television network dreamed up by a tightly wound New York woman who, essentially, wants to throw herself into something that will get her the hell away from her toddler. Before conception, she was a VP of Marketing at Solomon - those who know anyone in financial marketing, or marketing period, know the type. (Her husband is co-chairman of Atlantic Records.) After having precious Ryland (note to self: add this name to bad baby names list) she realized she was a shitty mom or didn't love her kid or something, and did so much self-help research that she now feels qualified to start a bullshit cable channel - nay, a media empire (she and her partner call it "AlphaMomnimedia") - that helps other freaks justify their crying over their kids not getting into the right preschool.

Listen, I may be one of those freaks. I probably will be. But if I want 12-step parenting advice, I want it to come from some wise old granola granny with 10 kids, all of whom have become well-adjusted, wonderful adults, finding their own way in life - be it on an art commune or in a corporate boardroom. Like a maternal, Birkenstock wearing Martha Stewart; or a modern day Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. I don't want some 20-something fame whore with a gaggle of nannies harping at me about "learning how to mother 21st century children" and "intellectualizing the process" of talking to your child. In the article, when she discusses her business, she sounds fake PR-ish and very alpha, but when she talks to little Ry Ry, she sounds like a fool. Not a I'm-talking-in-a-baby-voice kind of fool. She's the kind of fool that even kids can see right through. Total beta. No wonder Ryland is a needy spastic who enjoys spending most of his time with his real mom, the nanny. In fact, I want the nanny to give me parenting tips.

True, this woman isn't planning to be the channel, just create and run it (with her partner, who mothers only cats). Still, it's a sad world when you don't need any talent of any kind to start a momnimedia company.

Another disturbing article this week is Robert Kennedy Jr.'s look at the link between vaccination and Mercury poisoning. Apparently, kids born after 1991 have a greater chance of having autism than those born before - today it's a 1 in 166 chance, once it was 1 in 2500. The rise in the disease, and other neural disorders, coincides with a mercury based toxin, thimerosal, being added to a number of the umpteen vaccines kids today have to suffer through. But the CDC claims that we are just better at diagnosing autism than we were 15 years ago. This is the kind of thing I want to see on my mommy channel. And I want it to be avoiding thimerosal for dummies - just spell it out for me. Is it still in vaccines in this country? The article reads that vaccine manufacturers have phased out their use of it for American infants, but that they were still trying to sell stores of the old stuff last year. They're still sending it to developing countries. Then I read somewhere else that thimerosal is banned in California and Iowa, but that's it. 32 other states are considering a similar ban.

The weird thing is, parents are just forced to immunize their children without even being allowed to consider any risks. I read somewhere that one woman tried to make the staff at her hospital put it in writing that they would accept responsibility for any problems, and they left her alone. I'm not an anti-vaccination freak or anything. I live in the big city - my kid needs a suit of armor to stay healthy in the first years. But how do you get anyone to tell you the truth?

I'm not taking RFK Jr.'s word for it - there has been some backlash email in response to the story - but I believe the CDC would try to cover something up. (HG, the king of our conspiracy-theory castle, believes they are covering up the fact that the symptoms of AIDS are caused by the cure - and he's not the only one.)

I want a show that outlines all of the vaccines my kids get and why, and which are necessary and which are optional, and which have dangerous - if only rumored - side effects. And, following that, I want a show about how to slim down your thighs after pregnancy. And then I want to see how to jar your own baby food... the best tips for home schooling... money-saving ways to perform junior's first hair cut at home.

But start talking about what a child needs in a mom and you've lost me. Conventional wisdom would dictate that I needed a mom that didn't smoke while I was in the womb, and drink while I was in my adolescence. That I needed a mom that stayed married to a dad and lived in a big clean house in the suburbs and fed me healthful meals and encouraged my development and cared about whether I did my homework. I didn't have that mom. Mine was beta to the point of being nearly comatose. But I would not trade her - not for any other mom I know, or have heard of... or can dream up.

My dad, on the other hand, is an asshole. Happy father's day everyone.

2005-06-16T17:08:00.000-04:00

Yes, even she finished Ulysses.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan...

2005-06-16T16:01:00.000-04:00

At around 2 pm today I'm at the bank, filling out a deposit slip. I go to fill in the date, and something seems oddly familiar. June 16. What is that? Why is that sigificant?

Then I remembered... It's Bloomsday.

Bloomsday is a holiday celebrating James Joyce's novel, Ulysses. The story is about a day in Dublin: June 16, 1904. Well, it's about a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, one of Dublin's few Jews, on June 16, 1904. It's also about a day in the life of a lot of other characters, and how the entirety of what we can know about in life can go on in one day in Dublin. That's what I get from it, anyway.

I'm a Ulysses nerd. A serious one. I wrote my college honors thesis on two chapters in the book. I even took a vacation to Dublin - alone - and followed the footsteps of Leo Bloom and Stephen Daedalus. I had lunch at Davy Byrne's Pub, just like Bloom, and hiked out to a watchtower on the beach where Stephen lived with Buck Mulligan.

Normally I have something planned for Bloomsday at least a week in advance. One year I saw stars reading the book at Symphony Space, another year I took the day off and wandered around. Last year was the 100th anniversary, and I foolishly assumed that something cool would be taking place at a bar called Ulysses in the Wall Street district. Well, they advertised that something cool would be taking place, but I foolishly assumed that the two million drunken traders looking to cheat on their wives would clear out so the Joyce nerds could discuss usurpers and organ meats. I asked HG to meet me in the midst of this madhouse - so he could see what the whole thing was about. When I showed up, I could see his head peaking out of the crowd, looking at me like: "Is this what you wanted to show me? A sea of sleazy Long Islanders in rumpled Dockers high-fiving each other's ass-pinching technique?" He said on his way there he crossed paths with an older gentleman in a Joyce t-shirt leaving the bar, shaking his head with a puzzled look on his face.

This year I completely forgot about it.

Baby brain, countless deadlines, lack of Internet exposure until just a few days ago... all are worthy excuses, right? And this city is a crappy place to attempt to celebrate. I can't get no Bloomsday satisfaction in the NYC.

But the real problem is: I am old. This is not self-pity, it's acceptance. I am too old to celebrate my birthday with my former gusto, I hardly ever get dressed up for Halloween anymore, I stay in most New Year's Eves - so why should I be bothered to get bothered about Bloomsday? My passenger will prevent me for simply going out to have a pint, so what is left?

I figure a blog entry is effort enough. That, and I may tackle this article I printed last year and never got to. It's the original review of Ulysses from the New York Times.

Oh, if you want a little taste of the book, they're broadcasting readings on WBAI in New York, 99.5 FM, tonight from 7 pm to midnight.

Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson

2005-06-07T20:35:00.000-04:00

One of my personal heroes, Anne Bancroft, has died.

When I was 15, I wanted to be a middle-aged swinging housewife from the 1960s. Specifically, I wanted to be Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate." It sounds strange, but it's true. I loved her style - leopard-print mini skirts, hoop earrings, two-tone streaked hair and a killer tan. She was awesome. I combed the racks of Aardvarks and bought every single pelt - mini skirt, coat, vest, go-go boots - I could get my hands on. I paired them with bright colored tights and hoops earrings, and made tails on my eyes with black liquid eyeliner. On a tall 15 year old from the San Fernando Valley, the look was decidedly retro-hooker (a couple of my friends' fathers commented on it), but in the best possible way. She was the original desperate housewife. And I'm not alone in wanting to emulate her fashion sense: look at Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan or Jessica Simpson. Though they may be doing it badly, and though not one of them would know what the hell I am talking about, they're all channeling a little bit of Mrs. R.

I read on the AP wire that Bancroft hated the fact that everyone associated her with that movie. I guess I understand, but few actresses reach such iconic status. She was tough and sad and sexy and far more appealing than her daughter Elaine, played by Katherine Ross. Although, a part of me wanted to be Elaine too. (A part of me wanted to be Benjamin, the Dustin Hoffman character, but that's another story.) At a young age, I knew that Bancroft was married to Mel Brooks, that she played Anne Sullivan in the "Miracle Worker" on Broadway (alongside Patty Duke Astin, whose memorable autobiography, "Call Me Anna," I devoured around the same time. Poor Patty!), that she and Shirley MacLaine slapped each other in that ridiculous fight scene in "The Turning Point." All that was great, but Mrs. Robinson kept me coming back. I've probably seen "The Graduate" more times than I have seen any other movie, and each time it's better than the last. My family lore has it that my mom married my dad after she saw it, which wasn't the smartest move on her part but still kind of romantic.

Baby Brain Blues

2005-06-06T18:20:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry that so much time that has passed since my last post. I have been stranded on an seemingly deserted island, completely cut off from the rest of the world. Actually, the island is Manhattan. But my office changed locations a couple of weeks ago, and we've been without Internet service. It's funny, you don't realize how deserted an office can seem, how boring the workaday life, until you are without an Internet connection for a full day. After a full week, I was calling in sick. Before you judge, let me assure you that the illness is authentic - I'm allergic to that early-90s state of sitting in front of a computer that does nothing but word process. (Yes, I do have a home computer and a DSL connection, but I can't blog with my dog watching. Besides, my fucking iBook SUCKS. It either wants a divorce or a trial separation. I don't know, and I don't want to pay Tekserve another $200 to find out. I'd rather throw the piece of crap down a dumbwaiter and then challenge Steve Jobs to a bout of mudwrestling but, I digress...)

We still don't have a connection, and it's all my fault. I was in charge of the transition. In my defense, I got almost everything right. This was the one little thing I forgot until about two days before we moved. Still, I innocently thought I could call up MCI and ask them to simply move our T1 connection one block over to the new office. Apparently, it takes at least 3 weeks. Then, I shrewdly decided to call Verizon and get a DSL connection in the meantime. That, too, takes at least 3 weeks (mind you, if you order Verizon DSL at home, they foist it on you by the next day, just in case you change your mind. But where a business is involved, they're stymied). Now I have the two companies at war over my business. The one that can get me my Gawker.com first wins the heart and mind of a timely bill payer.

How could I have let this happen? I chalk it up to pregnant idiocy, or, as a friend of mine put it, baby brain. I've got big-time baby brain. Just take me to dinner and watch as I am unable to divide the check in half. I've gotten to the point where I'll just pay for the other person's dinner to get out of doing the math. Or eavesdrop on my conversation with one of the many vendors that provide my office with basic services. Granted, they are the real idiots - I'm convinced Verizon has institutionalized the concept of baby brain and it's part of the company training program - but I can hardly form a complete sentence. My husband, Herr Guitar, is worried because my once nearly infallible memory is getting swiss cheesy. For example, for five days I've been trying to remember what classic rock hit Bo Bice sang on the CBS Early Show (it was "Drift Away," I just looked it up). And heaven forbid something should go wrong. I can panic/cry/despair on a dime.

My friends at "What to Expect..." chalk baby brain up to distraction. I am distracted thinking about nursery colors and diaper prices and epidurals, and therefore cannot devote the brain cells necessary to remember or do math. But I'm not thinking about that stuff. I'm not really thinking about anything. That's part of baby brain - my old creative... well, obsessive neurotic... self has gone Cheech and Chong. I'm like way mellow man.

Even when I received the news that one of my many blood tests, the alpha fetoprotein test, had results that indicated a higher than average chance that my baby would have down syndrome, I was pretty cool. I had to have an amniocentesis, which is the test where they stick a big needle into your abdomen and womb, and suck out the baby's stray skin particles for dissection so they can count the chromosomes. Down syndrome is a genetic disease, but it is more common in children whose mothers are 35 and older. As you near 35, your risk increases. How does that happen? We lucky gals are born with all of our eggs, meaning they age with us. And like us, they start to show little signs of aging - an extra chromosome here or there - after 30.

Another digression: This reminds me of something I heard when I was in western Ireland a few years ago, an old man was describing his town's matchmaking festival. He said it was for girls they called "Christmas candy" - no good after the 25th.

The whole thing is such propaganda. I'm 33, and I think that the odds just based on my age are like 1 in 200. It sounds bad but that means the chances of my having a baby with down syndrome are half of one percent. After this test they increased to 1 in 23, which sounds awful! I can think of 22 women who have had healthy kids, and you know I'm going to be the unlucky sucker who proves the statistic. But, really, the odds are about 4 percent. Not great, but not cause for baby panic.

It also helped that a friend of mine had similar results on the alpha fetoprotein test and everything turned out to be ok. She herself heard many other tales of the false positive AFP. Plus, according to my doctor, it used to be the only game in town until they found a more reliable test, the nuchal translucency. Now they use both but in five years AFP will probably be forgotten. I could've avoided the amnio, but I didn't want to worry. Another friend went straight for it, just to be sure no genetic stone was left unturned. So I marched bravely to the amnio, hardly winced when they jabbed my belly, and went home and ordered pizza. Everything turned out fine.

Oh, and I found out that I'm having a boy. Maybe that's why I'm distracted. I have a little boy inside of me. God knows what those things think about.

How Are the Schools? Who Knew?

2005-05-13T13:37:00.000-04:00

I don't know why I clicked on this Newsweek article about The 100 Best High Schools in America, but imagine my surprise when I read the photo caption:

Jersey girls: Sophomores at McNair Academic High School in Jersey City, N.J., No. 15 on the list

Awesome! Not that I would necessarily want my daughter hanging around the pictured girls. I'm sure their smart but they look a little like what my mom would call "hard girls." And any daughter of mine would be schooled in fashion as well as the three Rs.

This Just In: Dogs Smell

2005-05-13T13:25:00.000-04:00

Angus: Just imagine the wavy lines. They're there.

Seriously man, dogs stink. Why did no one ever tell me about this?

The whole dog thing is new for me. I grew up with house cats, and a hamster, mouse, bird, and guinea pig or two. After I left home, my mom adopted a cocker spaniel from the pound. I named him Paco and then moved 3000 miles away. I was like a divorced weekend mom to Paco - the parent who you could look forward to seeing once in awhile, the one who would take you on walks and throw the tennis ball for you in a way your full-time parent never did. But he was my mom's dog until the end: trailing her every move, creating an imaginary boundary around her in the park to keep intruders away, spending all of his weekdays sitting by the door waiting for her to come home from work. Because he was my mom's dog, he unwittingly took on my mom's traits, including laziness and lack of desire to exercise or even spend much time outside (as well as a good nature and an extremely loving attitude). I don't know if it's because Paco never really went outside or because he and I never got close enough to know the other's smells, but I don't recall Paco being particularly foul smelling.

Herr Guitar also had a cocker spaniel, Henry. Henry definitely trumps me as being the true love of HG’s life - and I think he would admit as much. He carries a picture of Henry in his wallet, has a Henry story for every occasion, and gets misty eyed just thinking about him. I never had the chance to meet Henry, but I know him as a con dog, a fast talker, a liar and a dashing charmer who had a healthy appetite and a devil-may-care attitude about potty training. But I've never heard anything about Henry's stench.

Have dog owners been keeping something from me? Are those design magazines featuring cute dogs adding that special something to exquisite decors cruelly bullshitting me? Or is it just my dog that is putrid?

Angus, the puppy that HG and I adopted last fall, is part cocker spaniel, part Border collie and 100% adorable. I love him unconditionally but have to admit that he smells. Part of it is nature. I've read about "puppy smell" and hope that's what it is while I patiently wait for him to age. Plus, he gets B.O. when sleeping in a sunny room. Sort of endearing, if that's where it ended.

I admit part of it is nurture. The house next door to ours is empty and the fence connecting our yards allows Angus access into the neighboring space. He prefers it to his own yard, probably because whatever is in the soil over there is so rank that if he rolls and digs and frolics over there he can come out smelling like a mercury-poisoned fish foot. I sometimes worry that he will dig up a body over there - what else could it be? Whatever is in the soil is good fertilizer. Last summer, the yard was covered in a variety of plants that grew up to 7 feet tall.

But the real problem is that Angus is, quite simply, an idiot. We took him to a state park a few weeks ago and every few minutes he would drop and roll in the grass. We thought it was his way of communing with nature. Turns out he was communing with deer shit - and the grass was full of it. Last weekend we discovered that he'll even roll in another dog's shit if so inclined.

Listen, Angus, if you want to smell like a dirty hippie, it's your prerogative. But if you want to sit on my couch, let alone put your head in my lap, you're going to have to clean up your act. We've had to wash our couch's upholstery several times since Angus's arrival. It now wears a protective shield. (Angus also likes to boost the smell factor by digging through the garbage, carrying it to the couch, and chewing on it there.) My pregnancy-sensitive nose is being tortured by this. I'm developing an OCD. I smell him everywhere - on the subway, in the park, at the office, on my clothes. I smell him when I look in the mirror, when I eat my lunch, when I hear a favorite song...

On the bright side, he's nuts and loves to take pills. Maybe I can find some sort of chemical internal deodorant for him? Send suggestions if you have them.

By the way, sweet-smelling Paco died about a month ago. Tonight, let's all spill part of our 40 in his memory.

Homesickness

2005-05-11T13:11:00.000-04:00

Did I mention that real estate sucks? It does. It totally sucks.

It sucks when you are renting and not ready to buy something - feeling as if you are missing out on ownership and appreciation and tax breaks. Plus, if you had your own place you could finally get a dog and put up some shelves.

It sucks when you are looking and getting ready to buy - because you realize how discouraging the whole thing actually is. How little you have and how much you need. How much things cost and how little they seem worth. You try little tricks, like the oft-hyped "scanning the for sale by owner section of the New York Times to find an honest deal," but you can't even find that section. And no one is going to be honest or give you a deal. You travel to the far reaches of each burrough, except Staten Island of course, hoping to find that hidden gem, that undiscovered nirvana where the gays are starting to move in and plant gardens. Everything you see borders on the projects and is still unaffordable. You learn the difference between a co-op and a condo, and learn that both suck. You learn about real estate taxes and maintenance fees and closing costs, all of which suck. You search in vain for decent closet space, for an in-house washer dryer, for something that doesn't reek of dog pee. You make offers on everything you see, just to see what they'll say. Most go for it, and you feel awkward but relieved as you quickly back out. (You wonder why New York magazine keeps reporting bidding wars when everything you've seen is going for at least 20% below the asking price, and people seem desperate. Is it you?) You finally find something that seems perfect: a house, a quiet neighborhood, great location/proximity to the city, not too near to the projects, a washer dryer, a driveway, a yard. For sale by owner, decent price.

It sucks when you buy something - for so many reasons. You are always second guessing your decision. Should you have waited? Should you have been more aggressive in asking for repairs? Should you sell now and try to make money? Should you wait and try to make more money? If you wait, will the neighborhood slowly decline and cost you money? What's that smell? Is that a leak? You get a dog and shelves, but they are not enough. You troll Home Depot and Lowe's on the weekends, miserably looking for inexpensive ways to keep your property from falling apart. You clean and clean and clean and still you need to clean. You worry about the hardwood floors getting scratched, and actually consider putting carpet over it just for your peace of mind. You get excited when you see a seemingly gay type walking by window - or a hipster, or a student, or a band - but the sightings are few and far between. You don't really like what your neighbors are doing with their yard. You want to join the militant neighborhood association to encourage others to pick up their garbage. And even though you've found an ideal Manhattan-close undiscovered neighborhood, you soon realize that your decision has put you in some club that you had not anticipated: Jersey. Your new home is not in New York, and therefore has a stigma. None of your old friends share your enthusiasm. You are asked if you ever make it into the city, and told that others don't want to keep you out late because you live so far away, but you live closer than they do. You are treated as if you moved to the suburbs, but you have no suburban benefits. You realize that New York is not the scrappy mecca of your teenage fantasies, it has become a parody of a bad Sex in the City episode, filled with wanna be Bigs and Carrie Bradshaws. You should have stayed in California. You should have just moved to Staten Island.

The Wrongest Kind of Pierced Nipple

2005-05-03T15:10:00.000-04:00

Settling into the waiting room at the doctor's office last week, Herr Guitar quickly grabbed the first magazine he saw and hid it behind his back.

"You are going to freak out. Just be prepared," he said before handing me the magazine.

It was then I saw the cover of last week's issue of Time Out New York. And I had my first brush with the morning sickness that everyone talks about. The headline: Greetings from Babyburg. Williamsburg's baby boom is in full swing. Bad, but the graphic was even worse: A bottle with a piercing at the tip of the nipple. (I'd link to it if I could, but don't have a subscription.)

So foul. On so many levels. Anyone would find the cover obnoxious, but it was particularly loathsome to us because we moved out of Babyburg one year ago. I am so fucking glad I got out.

I lived in Williamsburg for almost nine years. Back then I only wanted to live in the East Village, but WB was an affordable extension. The East Village was still semi-affordable but I wanted to live alone or, if I had to have a roommate, at least live without mice. One lazy Sunday, my friend and I decided to go check in out. We got on the L train at First Ave., got off at Bedford Ave. about five minutes later, and just stood there. It was empty, sort of like a ghost town. Well, almost a ghost town. There was a cafe by the subway, the sign read L. We stopped in for some coffee. They were playing Pavement's Wowee Zowee - the entire CD. I was home.

We walked around trying to get a sense of the neighborhood, but mostly it was Polish stores, abandoned buildings, the occasional 99 cent place. I'd heard that many artists lived there, and there was an art supply store on Bedford, but I didn't see anyone consciously arting out or arting it up or whatever. I didn't see many people at all. A couple of months later, we found a two bedroom in new construction housing. It was so new and prefab and sterile, it was a cocoon for us Californians - something to keep us sealed away from the harsh New York elements. But the walk from the L train to the house was desolate. The dining options were limited to a cold sandwich or bagel at the L or fancier fare at Oznot's Dish or PlanEat Thailand (this was when it was a hole in the wall, before it supersized and got all disco fabulous).

The only thing I liked about the Babyburg article (which I did read, through gritted teeth) is the author lived in WB at the same time. She mentioned how the only things to do for fun were go to the L Cafe or to Tops Supermarket's meat room to cool off. It's completely true.

Fast forward through the Vanity Fair article and map detailing New York's hottest new neighborhood, the opening of the Mini Mini Mall on Bedford (with it's coveted Ms. PacMan machine), the first Matt Dillon sighting at one of the trendy new bars, Busta Rhymes buying a penthouse in the Gretsch Building, The L Cafe closing, the death of Frank - our longtime neighborhood hobo... and today Williamsburg is a cheesy shadow of its former self. It all happened so quickly. Well, quickly if you consider 9 years a short period of time. While I could see the small changes from week to week, I never really experienced any of the cool hipness that was supposedly oozing from the place. I loved that neighborhood, but from the very beginning I thought it was overrated and overhyped. In fact, I always felt like I was defending it. It's as if the people writing articles about it had never really spent any time there. Sure, there were great affordable restaurants popping up all over the place, but we never really had a bank. Or a shoe store, or a decent bookstore. (Spoonbill and Sugartown and Downer's Pharmacy are great browsing bookstores that came along in later years, if you want to buy some obscure book about Andy Warhol's lost paint brushes or James Joyce's masochistic cousin or the career of Psychic TV, but try to find something you are looking for.) Tops supermarket got more expensive and embraced the new vibe, but it was still a pretty crappy place to have to buy your groceries.

When it came time to let go of our cheap apartment (it was either that or have the carpet professionally cleaned - it was awful), we looked around for something to buy in Williamsburg. There was a new condo building going up on Bedford, which Herr Guitar affectionately referred to as Gaza Strip Housing, because it looked a like cookie cutter, third-world project. I called and found out that 2 bedrooms were starting at $450k (back then this seemed ridiculous, today I'd probably jump at the chance - if our real estate lawyer hadn't had another client buy one and sue the building two months later because the place is covered in toxic mold, as all other new construction in the area probably will be). We soon realized the place was not in our spending league if we wanted to continue to eat at adorable restaurants, go to see shows at North 6 and Warsaw, and afford the occasional taxi from the Village.

So we left Babyburg, ironically, just when we needed it most. Who knew that shithole would turn into a parenting Mecca? The last I knew, only NYU students with trust accounts and yoga mats walked those quaint streets. Now I guess there are stroller traffic jams. I remember there being no open space to walk a dog let alone let a baby play or swing or sandbox, except for the depressing McCarren Park surrounded by smokestacks. Have these wonderparents found the answer? If I recall correctly, the area had one of the highest asthma rates among kids in the city and no decent schools. I guess your child's education is secondary to being thought of a superhipster.

But although I'm out of the loop on the changes in the neighborhood, I caution readers not to believe the hype. Since I left, it seems the buzz has grown louder and louder. To hear the media tell it, Williamsburg is THE HIPPEST SPOT ON THE PLANET. When I went for a haircut at my old salon a few weeks ago, I expected to see a changed neighborhood - the Upper East Side meets Carnaby Street meets Los Feliz meets Austin. Guess what? It's the same shithole. There are some new eurotrashy condo buildings going up, some new storefronts, and many more rich Long Island types who want to be in the happening spot walking around, but everything else is exactly the same. I don't even recall seeing a stroller, but I will give Time Out the benefit of the doubt.

Don't get me wrong - if I owned an apartment in Williamsburg I would be a self satisfied, self righteous asshole right now. I'd still be annoyed by my neighbors and the Long Island- and eurotrash, but I'd laugh at them while adding up my real estate equity.

And when a pierced bottle nipple heralds the posh transformation of my new neighborhood in Jersey City, I will be so thrilled you'll have to change my diaper. (Oh, and it's gonna happen. Just watch. It'll happen.)

The Thinking Gal's "Sin City"

2005-04-29T15:14:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, Herr Guitar and I decided to lock up the dog and embark upon an all-day movie fest. We started with a Harold Lloyd double-feature at the Film Forum: "Get Out and Get Under" and "Safety Last." Lloyd is considered one of the three great silent film comedians, next to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I had never seen any of his movies, but knew of the famous hanging-from-the-clock-tower scene from "Safety Last."

"Get Out and Get Under" was the first showing, and it was great. Lloyd did all of his own stunts - in the 20s - which amounted to lots of stepping out of moving cars, then chasing them down and jumping back in the driver's seat. The first time he did this, HG let out a "holy shit," because it was probably the most authentic stunt we modern moviegoers have ever seen. Can you imagine an actor today doing that, without the benefit of Avid editing or CGI?

There was a family sitting nearby and the kids were being pretty vocal from the very beginning of the movie. It was annoying at first, but as the films went on, the entire audience began to participate vocally. Not talking to the screen or anything, but yelping and gasping and really laughing. I think the silent-film aspect allows people to participate more. It was a unique experience.

But it was during "Safety Last" when the experience began to affect us physically. The actual clock tower scene is absolutely grueling to watch, in the most entertaining way imaginable. There were no special effects involved in these movies (other than little camera tricks, like when he combs his hair while looking at his reflection in a coworker's bald head), so he actually climbs this very tall building in Los Angeles, and actually hangs off the clock face (and a flag pole, and a few window sills). With each flight, watching it becomes more and more unbearable, you are totally engrossed but just hoping it will end. HG was sweating, I was cringing in a movie-chair fetal position. Just writing about it is making my heart race and my palms sweat. Since then, I can no longer look up when walking by a tall building without thinking about it, and getting a major case of nausea/vertigo. This may sound strange, but I can't imagine a more entertaining piece of film.

Especially considering that our next stop was seeing "Sin City" at the gynormous megaplex. I coaxed HG into seeing this movie because I was fooled by those wily critics who gushed over what a masterpiece it is. I guess critics are a bunch of horny, sociopathic boys (who am I kidding, I know that's who critics are), because for me this movie lost its charm quickly and, after that, turned extremely dull. And why does no one mention the extreme violence? Maybe I'm "nesting" but I wanted to shield all of my senses from this movie so that my little friend in utero wouldn't have to be exposed to such ugliness. And speaking of ugliness, why is this city populated by the world's foulest looking men and like a bazillion fembots? And why are all the women naked except for Jessica Alba, who is supposed to be an exotic dancer but just stands there in a leather bra and chaps, twirling a lasso? Is this city so perverse that only lassoing holds any sexual novelty? I can't answer these questions, and I don't recommend you try. I thought the acting was pretty good, though. I especially liked Mickey Rourke, who was in the first third of the movie - the most entertaining segment. My review upon walking out was: That movie is very boy. HG concurred that its way boy - like this is all that boys think about all day. Poor creatures.

But when you see a masterpiece like "Safety Last," you realize that "Sin City" is the polar opposite of a masterpiece. It may be great looking and stylish, but all generated through a computer so who really cares? It's all empty calories, and they don't go down too easy. Thinking about it will never make my heart race or palms sweat, in fact I'll probably never think about it again after this (I know, I'm not the right audience - I realize you boys may be all sweaty and tumescent and palmy and thinking about it right now, but I don't want to think about that again after this either). It seems extremely unnecessary.

Anyway, there's still a chance to catch more Harold Lloyd at the Film Forum in New York through May 17. Ignore the goofy pictures and go. I highly recommend it.

Fun with Google

2005-04-29T15:06:00.000-04:00

If you have a couple of minutes to kill (and I know you do or why else would you be reading this now), take a look at this Google game. You may be surprised, as I was, by the images brought up by a search of the word "hate." I didn't have much time to analyze them - had to beat the clock and move on - but it seemed that several were doodles of bunny rabbits. Hateful indeed.

I Know Why the Caged Fat Lady Sings

2005-04-27T16:18:00.000-04:00

All my life, I dreamed of the day I would become pregnant - for no other reason than it would give me an excuse to lay around eating whole pies. Even before I was aware of what a calorie was or what it does to you, I fantasized about this magical time in a woman's life when she is allowed to be unabashedly fat and lazy. Sure, maybe I would have to learn knitting between the bon bon eating and soap opera watching. But I'd only have to go so far as making half a bootie, women in the movies never finished a complete pair.

It turns out that this is a vicious lie, and I am finding out far too late. When I first learned I was pregnant, we were about to fly to London for a long weekend. While there I indulged in big English breakfasts, bisquits and cakes and toffees, weird meat and beer pies, fish and chips and mushy peas and etc. I was utterly free: on vacation and with child. That's like a ticket to a dreamy all-you-can-eat buffett. It was bliss - well, near bliss, considering it was British food.

We arrived home to a package from my mom. In it were books on babies, including "What to Expect When You're Expecting." Has anyone read this evil thing? The first page of this book should read: "If you were expecting to get fat and lazy, you were sorely mistaken."

This book assumes you are either a.) a freaky health nut who just needs to step it up by 300 calories a day or b.) someone who can suddenly become a freaky health nut, incorporating like 7 servings of grains, 5 servings of milk, 6-8 fruits and vegetables and tons of proteins into your diet while still limiting your intake to what your average health nut would eat, plus a measly 300 calories a day. In other words, no craving pickle and pudding sandwiches. The book actually points out that 300 calories a day amounts to "an apple, a banana and a cup of whole milk." How depressing is that? Have we all become these weight-obsessed, "perfect little bump" weirdos who diet while pregnant?

And there are so many restrictions. I'm fine with cutting out booze and coffee, even though I miss them once in awhile. But on top of that, you can't have cold cuts, or cured meats or fish, or sushi, or blue/goat/feta cheese, or cookie dough, and you really shouldn't have fish, or aspertame, or SUGAR.

I don't want McDonalds or Pizza Hut or whole banana cream pies but, please, sir, may I have a chocolate chip cookie now and then? Can I eat healthy but fattening Soy Delicious Peanut Butter Zigzag once in awhile with impunity? "No!" says WTEWYE. I'm sorry, but I consider that strict dieting. I prefer my doctor's advice: You only live once, so if it's macaroni and cheese that does it for you, go for it.

I'm sort of sticking between the two extremes. I try to eat as well as I can, but also indulge in snacks and cravings. Mostly I crave protein: I'm eating lots of beef, which I never really ate before, and always have a taste for sauteed spinach and raisin bran with milk. I was daydreaming of Girl Scout cookies, but when Herr Guitar brought some home for me, they were too sugary. I actually did the unthinkable: threw away nearly full boxes of Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs.

Still, I can quickly demolish a stack of pancakes from the Brownstone Diner in Jersey City, or a giant M&M cookie from Starbucks on Christopher Street, or a chocolate peanut butter cookie mound from Levain Bakery on West 74th. Maybe that's why I'm only three months along and already showing? (Note to the reed-thin, no-belly girl at Roosevelt Hospital with the same due date: Fuck you.)

Oh well, what am I going to do? I can't diet, can hardly move to exercise. And it's only going to get worse. There will be hell to pay after the birth, and I'll worry about it then. My mom has never taken off the weight she had after giving birth to my brother, in fact she's added to it quite a bit. But she was 24, I'm almost 10 years older than that. I think the body shape I have, which is politely described as far from Nicole Kidman-esque, will be easily revived. Until then, I'll say it once, and say it loud: I'm fat... ahem, pregnant... and I'm proud.

Becoming Babymama

2005-04-26T11:41:00.000-04:00

Even though I'm a career gal, I am proud to say I know my way around a baby. I was the first born child in my family, including extended family, which means that I've diapered many a brother and cousin. I have also served time in the babysitter's club (I like to think of myself as the one in the red beret). These are pretty typical experiences for a girl - although, surprisingly, some of my female friends have no baby background. But, for someone who has not yet given birth, I have a disproportionate amount of experience being a single mom. I've lived with three (if you include my own - and I do, because I think I raised her more often than she raised me).

When I first went away to college, I avoided dorm life in favor of off-campus housing. I used a roommate referral service and found Tiffani, a "hard working" "student" and teenage single mom who had an awesome bungalow house two blocks from the beach in Santa Barbara. She had just broken with her boyfriend but wanted to stay in the house. She wanted a responsible roommate and a quiet environment because she had a child to raise. Tiffani seemed nice, but her biggest asset aside from the house was her son, Shad. At age 1, he was nearly the smartest guy I'd ever met - and by far the best looking. He had Tiffani's dark Puerto Rican skin and full lips, and his anglo father's white blond hair and royal blue eyes. People would stop to gawk on the street - and this was not just general baby gawking, it was more like a mixture of envy and lust and hunger to just eat him up so his beauty and wonder could be all yours. Seeing Shad was like being touched by an angel or Brad Pitt or something. Plus, he could air guitar, instantly locate your picture in a yearbook, and open a car door with a key and mock drive. In fact, he could actually drive, if you let him sit on your lap and steer, which my typically very careful and conscientious mother did. That's just the kind of trust Shad instilled in you. He was a wunderkind.

As soon as I moved in, I learned the truth about Tiffani. Unlike me, she was not a college student, she was a cosmatology student. She was not serious and hard-working, she was a lazy, scatterbrained, sometime coke whore (and a sometime meal whore, which is far lower on the whore scale). She was not a dedicated mother, she was a party girl with a gorgeous-but-bothersome living accessory. My first weekend in the house was during Fiesta - an annual weeklong drunken town party. Tiffani showed me the sights. Long story short, I ended up stranded with her as she partied at the apartment of two rich and debauched brothers. There we met Bridget, who was the first girl I'd ever seen in real life who walked around naked in front of strangers. I was 17 and cowering in a corner, but I remember thinking that was the moment I had officially lost my innocence. My second weekend there, I woke up to Shad's crying at dawn, only to find that Tiffani's bed hadn't been slept in. She stayed across the street with our bartender neighbor, and later claimed she thought she would have heard Shad if he cried 50 feet and several closed doors away.

I won't go into how Bridget eventually moved in and punched me at a party in my own house. Or how I begged one of Tiffani's friends (who also happened to be Gene Hackman's nephew - seriously, a young, hesher dead-ringer) for a ride back home to LA at 3 am, causing him to subsequently fall in love with me and send me flowers on a regular basis. There are a lot of Tiffani-related stories that I won't go into, I'll just say they should have no part in a young girl's freshman-year nostalgia.

It was during those early months that I got a part-time job at a hip maternity clothes store. Not coincidentally, my biological clock started ticking overtime. It was kind of like a G-rated version of that movie Angel (one of my very favorites). By day, I was a shy scholar. By night, I was undercover mommy. I would imagine myself catwalking through trimesters in all sorts of different outfits, each tailored to my own indivdiual style. I searched every stroller that rolled through the place, looking for something to goo and gaa at. While I pretended to be straightening the racks, I thought up perfect baby-name combinations. And when I was not working or learning, I walked around town with Shad, not correcting people when they told me what a beautiful son I had and how he looked just like me. I considered myself a sort of second (and far superior) mother to Shad, and he played along brilliantly. I moved out before his second birthday and haven't seen him since. It's scary to think about but today he is 17 and probably long past losing his innocence.

When I graduated college and moved to New York, I found another "sweet" "serious" and "hardworking" single-mother roommate who had a dream apartment in the East Village. She turned out to be a lot like Tiffani, only 10 years older, graduate-school educated and "artsy". In other words, a total nightmare. Her 3-year-old son, who I will call Anti-Shad (his actual name sort of rhymed with Damien - as in, "It's all for you, Damien.")did not exude beauty, sensitivity and light despite the difficult circumstances of his upbringing. His mom fought with and ignored him as if he were an adult, and he fought back in pretty much the same way. Sure, he was cute, if you consider Malcolm MacDowell's character in Clockwork Orange cute (seriously, he's that guy's doppleganger). He was also smart, but not in a "Hey let me give you the keys to my car you little genius" way. He was smart like those assholes guys that you meet in bars in San Francisco, who act superior but still try to get inside your head to find something they can eventually use against you. Once, when I was having a homesick and self-indulgent pity party, Anti-Shad crept into my room, looked up at me with his big blue eyes and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I answered. "I'm just feeling sad."

"Why?," he queried. "Is it because no one likes you." (And they say modern-day New Yorkers aren't all that brutal.)

"I guess so," I said, after recovering from the emotional sucker-punch.

Cute little Anti-Shad then padded out of the room and closed the door behind him. Then opened it just a crack and whispered - in the most evil Damien or Carol Ann voice imaginable - "They're right."

I think that's the exact moment my biological clock stopped ticking.

It's been a few years, so I've been able to coax the scared little thing back. Not to full-60 Minutes stop watch speed, not immediately. For awhile it was like a clock in a Harold Pinter play - tick (beat, beat, beat, beat, pause, wait a sec...) tick. That was during my late twenties. But recently it was running normally enough to make me want to attempt conception.

So here I am, entering the second trimester. Still trying to squeeze into my nonmaterity clothes while I can. No runway mommy outfits in sight. And while I'm not afraid of holding or feeding a baby, or cleaning baby poop (I actually think it's cute), or playing horsey, horsey go to town and peek-a-boo, I do kind of fear my baby's personality. That sounds bad. Let me rephrase: I fear the bad baby. Because, contrary to what they say in Hallmark Stores and Republican Conventions, not all babies are good. Like adults, they are a mixed bag - some are angels, others droogs. I won't argue nature vs. nurture, because I have no idea when or how babies decide to go one way and not another, I just know it happens.

So let's all hope junior gets daddy's looks and mommy's charming personality. (Cue Anti-Shad: "Yeah right!")

That's it. I'm totally getting rich.

2005-04-22T10:48:00.000-04:00

I was just at Starbucks on the Upper West Side where I overheard an adorable mother-daughter team speaking to a friend they'd just run into.

"We're having a beauty day," said mom. "Tomorrow is Madison's bat mitzvah."

"In case you hadn't heard," said the sweet-faced Madison.

Madison, self-consciously, looked my way. I smiled. Inside, however, I was cringing, weeping, having internal nervous breakdown. Sure, when I am back home in Los Angeles, my mother and I have been known to troll more than our share of Starbucks and Coffee Bean/Tea Leafs (we buy iced venti drinks like they're going out of style - all on mommy's dime because I'm "on vacation"), and we have also been to spas together. But there was something about the combination of the Starbucks, the beauty day, the bat mitzvah, little Madison and the Upper West Side - all while I was stealing five minutes to grab a mocha that will hopefully distract me from the drudgery that will inevitably fill my day - that was too much. I admit it, I was very, very jealous.

Maybe it's my mood lately. There is just too much rich surrounding me. I have had it with stories of stratospherically rich hedge fund managers that currently rule New York (with the exception of the one who is indirectly responsible for my paycheck - him I like). They're getting richer by making the rich richer. And I guess, technically, I am too because I write about them in magazines dedicated to making the rich richer. But while I may be getting technically "richer", I'm not getting rich. I'm just struggling to pay off a tiny amount of credit card debt and pay my tax bill. Is this a Democrat thing?

No. The problem is, I chose to be a journalist. Well, I chose to be a writer, I became a journalist because that's how writers make money. Not a lot of money, but more than your average full-time poet. In almost any other field, someone with my drive, determination, work ethic and skill would be really successful - this sounds immodest, but I've known people with very little of the above who are wildly successful. In fact, many of my friends or acquaintances have been markedly lazy or unmotivated or dumb, have taken easy way out or not tried to become successful, and today they're doing just about as well as I am, maybe even better. (Don't worry, they're proud of it.) I don't really know when or how it happened, but it did. To back up my point, I cite research from the inimitable Dr. Phil, who posits that children may develop at different rates, but at a certain point they all get to the same place. Damn straight, Dr. Phil. You know your shit.

Another problem: I don't want to be a hedge fund manager. (I hardly want to be a capitalist any more, and would try the alternative if it were available.) I do want to be a writer, but can't seem to get past my inner critic and start writing. That's why I'm nauseated when reading about the 20-something novelist/scamp Jonathan Safran Foer, his increasing paychecks, and his $6 million mansion in Park Slope. I read like 45 pages of his piece of crap first book, Everything is Illuminated, before if flew out of my hands at my brain's insistence. The second one sounds even more insipid, and yet he gets so much attention. I can't escape his press.

It has me so worked up that I've decided I should do anything and everything I can to copy him. I mean, even though I get a stomach ache when I hear about the success of Paris Hilton, it doesn't move me to action because her fame is wrapped in something inexplicable that involves being a spoiled, idiotic heiress. I have no chance of being that. (I'm spoiled, but in more of a lower-middle-class kind of way, where my mom runs up massive amounts of credit card debt to have my prom dress tailor made, and has to declare bankruptcy years later.) But I at least have some chance of being a novelist, be it a hacky faux literary type like JSF or an actual talented writer. Either way, if there is a chance that a $1 million advance could come my way, why am I not taking it? Self pity? Laziness? Desire to give up the capitalist way of life? Please. Those are luxuries for people in their 20s, not for Jesus-peak-age soon-to-be moms.

This is why the next time you see me there will be greed in my eyes. Or why you may find yourself the inspiration for a character in my soon-to-be-published mediocre masterwork. Either way, just smile and accept it. It's just business, and the new me means business. Say it with me, in the blandest drone you can muster, "That's hot" (tm).

Am I the Only One Who Notices that Robert Rauschenberg owns a Jasper Johns?

2005-04-20T13:51:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday Herr Guitar and I went to see the Jean-Michel Basquiat show at BAM. I'm a big fan and knew this was probably my only chance to see so many of his works in one place. I won't go into the boring details of color and composition and Blondie and Madonna, I'll just say the show is great. It moves on to LA MOCA in July.

I visit museums often, and whenever I go to temporary exhibitions, I always like to check the description card to find out who owns the art. Am I the only one who does this? I think it started when I saw a Jasper Johns retrospective at the MoMA almost 10 years ago. It caught my eye that David Geffen owned one piece and was lending it to the show. I started looking at all of the cards, and sure enough saw other famous owners. Stephen Spielberg owned one, and I think Michael Ovitz. I kept thinking that all of these Hollywood types were keeping up with each other by getting bigger and bigger Jasper Johns to hang in their living rooms. Robert Rauschenberg, a Johns contemporary, also owned a painting.

The thing I noticed at this show is that tons of these Basquiats have the same owner: The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation. Stephanie Brant is supermodel Stephanie Seymour, and the only other time I have seen more than one Basquiat in one place is in the offices of Brant Publishing, owned by her husband, Peter (after seeing all of the pieces they own, HG said, "It's a good thing she dumped Axel Rose."). About eight years ago, when I was slinging administrative hash in the sales department at Newsweek and desperate to get into an editing position, any editing position, I went on a job search that led to two serious prospects. One was an editorial assistant gig at Financial Planning magazine, for which I thought I was completely unqualified. The other was second assistant to the publisher of Art in America. I love Art in America, but was not jumping at the idea of continuing to be an assistant. And one of the reasons they liked me is that I had worked for monsters in the past, which for some reason qualified me to work with this publisher, Sandra Brant. The bright spot of the postition is it involved editing a monthly art book review section, that included 25-35 different books, which I would describe in 100-word blurbs.

The other bright spot was the environs. The office is at 575 Broadway, in the Guggenheim Soho building. You walk in and are struck by an overwhelming number of original Warhols and Basquiats lining the walls. The office is quiet and library-like, but utterly beautiful, filled with bookish yet perfectly bone-structured types, the kind you usually only see in movies.

Financial Planning magazine had none of the charm or cachet, but I didn't have to answer anyone else's phone. That was my big career goal at the time, so I took a job there. Now I'm a professional financial journalist, and only an amateur art fag.

Here's a picture of Stephanie and Peter and another amateur art fag, Dennis Hopper. He is my unrequited actor love (well, he's one of them). Did I tell you about how I asked him to my high school prom (this was in 1989, you do the math)? That's a story for another entry.

A Pregnant Pause

2005-03-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

My dim-but-lovable star has hitched itself to the latest celebrity trend: reproduction. That's right, I'm pregnant, and not just "cute fat," as the female stranger loudly and inexplicably described me to her posse as I was walking down Christopher Street the other day. Well, maybe I am just cute fat, because I'm only about 2 months along and shouldn't be showing for another three. But I'm also pregnant, so there is more of the cute stuff to come (along with a good deal of not-so-cute fat, I'm sure). Come late October I will be have my own little "it" accessory, a mini-me.

Pardon me, I just had to take a shudder pause after the last sentence. I'm so afraid of a little me or little him, and more afraid of a little combo package. Mostly because we are both such babies. I was a world-class fit thrower, and although he claims to have been the perfect baby, he is more than making up for fits past in his 30s. Our baby could have bad-behavior super powers.

The other part of my fear is that he and I have spent our lives hating ourselves and now we will be bound to love our offspring. I suddenly sympathize with my hypercritical father, though I can't forgive him and vow never to be like him. He looked at my brother and me and saw reflections of himself - his looks, his abilities, his shortcomings, his failed marriage - all things he couldn't stand. He could never really see us, our talents, accomplishments or unique traits. We were "ghouls" in his eyes, and he told us so, repeatedly. He is probably more vocal than most parents, but I think it's a common problem. My goal is to ensure that my child knows s/he is beautiful and miraculous and brilliant and adored, but do I have to convince myself of those things about me first? Will the part of me where my evil father lives surface and criticize those things in my child that he hated about me, that I grew to hate about me?

Oh it's all so tiring. That's why these days I'm in bed by 9 pm. Eyes shut by 9:30. I haven't even had the chance to think up baby names, so send in those suggestions. I prefer something exotic and trendy, like Pina or Merlot (can you tell I haven't had a drink in over two months?), while my husband wants a timeless classic, like Elvis or Django or Johnny Rotten.

Truthfully, I hate today's trendy baby names, and not just the obvious inanimate-object or pet-type names like Apple or Jet. I know the following could alienate readers if I had any besides my best friend (hubby doesn't even read, sigh), but it must be said. Here are my official rules for baby names:

No girls named Taylor, Tyler, Riley, Clark or Keaton. Some boyish girl names are cute, like Charly or Freddy, but Madison is the third most popular name in the country according to the Social Security Administration. That seems wrong.

No fey-yet-supermacho boys named Austin or Trenton (or another other state capitals for that matter) or Finn or Ryder. I just learned that Brooklyn is among the top 200 most popular baby names. No!

No super-cute names spelled super cutely, like Cayleigh or Shaylah.

By the time my kid is in fifth grade, these names will be the standards - just as Jennifer and Michelle and Kelly were in my generation, and Nancy and Linda and Patricia were in my mom's. I'm already sick of trendy names, but can you imagine how grotesque they'll seem at that point? It makes me want to call the baby Sam or Mary and call it a day (make that Samson and Marriette, because my kid might need something overly stuffy and pseudo-intellectual to fall back on).

My grandmother wanted to name my aunt Gay Holliday before settling on Joni. My mom wanted to call my blond-haired, blue-eyed brother Hector. He was named Thaddeus instead, which I personally like better. And there was serious talk of my brother and I being named Pebbles and Bam Bam (it was the 70s, my parents were drugged). I have a Taylor in my family (and a little Riley on the way) and a Shasta, so I know of which I write. But we have yet to decide on a name for our little fetus. Fetus! Feedus... Feitas... Phoetus... could work, but for a boy or girl?

Faye Dunaway Should Be Ashamed

2005-03-09T13:46:00.000-05:00

The other night, watching TV with my husband, Herr Guitar, we saw an ad for a new WB reality show, The Starlet. As soon as I saw the ad I said, "I WILL NOT watch The Starlet." His response was too skeptical and disinterested to be printed here. He knows as well as you and I that, not only will I watch the worst TV imaginable, I will often shush him if he's talking over some embarrassingly bad program. Like the time when he was gushing about how beautiful I am and how much he loves me and I yelled at him because I couldn't hear what Ashlee was saying about her parent's reaction to her new hair color. I've explained it before but when it comes to the tube, I'm tasteless and devoted.

Still, I can't watch everything. I can't give my eyes and heart to every ridiculous concept dreamed up by the Yale class of 1998. The problem is, once I watch an episode, I'm invariably hooked. (On our trip to London last week we watched two episodes of the British "Apprentice," and I still can't stop thinking about the possible outcomes - write in if you know who wins!) So I have certain rules: if it's a reality show in it's second or third season, stay away. By that time, everyone involved is performing according to some script that's burned into our collective psyche (with some exceptions, this was long-ago true of The Real World, but I've only just recently begun skipping episodes). That means no Survivor, Bachelor/Bachelorette, or Apprentice (except the exotic variety when on vacation!). And while I haven't let go yet, I'm even bored with favorites America's Next Top Model and The Ashlee Simpson show.

My next rule is to ignore certain shows that fall somewhere between "It Looks So Good, I Have to Watch" and "It Looks So Bad, I Have To Watch." The blah middle is not worth my semi-precious time. Supernanny, High School Reunion, The Fox crap all fit into this category. As does The Starlet. Fine, who needs it.

But last night, while watching the Gilmore Girls (which, despite appearances is no more highbrow than any of the above, and has come to be a chore rather than a guilty pleasure), I see a commercial for The Starlet. It's the perfect reality show! Wildly Entertaining! Four Stars. Whatever, I can't remember because it all went by so fast, but I think I saw the New York Times cited under one of these glowing reviews. I thought to myself: Really? Could this be so bad it's actually good? Nah. But then I was dealt the death blow: "Coming up next on the WB."

And so I betrayed my dear HG's trust and watched The Starlet. And I'm pissed.

From the moment it started, I knew I was duped. First of all, one of the prospective starlets is a reality has-been. Neva, the dissaffected drone from Puerto Rico was among the first to leave one of my all-time favorite shows, MTV's Surf Girls. To see a familiar face on a reality show that isn't the Surreal Life is like a punch in the stomach. A stark realization that this is in fact TV, and these people are not jane schmos but wannabe actresses working every angle. As a former wannabe actress, I am appalled. What happened to doing shitty John Patrick Shanley plays in 20-seat theaters? What happened to doing a porn reel here and there to pay the rent while auditioning for agents? There was dignity, there was craft in the profession then. But schlepping from reality show to reality show masquerading as a small-town athlete or drama queen - that's tacky.

But it gets far tackier. So these girls are taken to a "world famous" acting coach whose claim to fame is he coached Cameron Diaz (thespian to the core) on her first movie (that was before I graduated college, right? I won't go into details but it was long ago). And the first task the girls are asked to do is "seduce" their partner, which is a big teddy bear. Well-deserved snickering aside, this could have been an interesting exercise. In my day a seduction scene would involve some talking, some interplay with the other actor, eye contact, physicality. Each one of these girls went straight to humping the bear. Oh it was painful to watch. I don't know whether the producers were trying to work the boner factor, and I'm not a man, but it was having the opposite effect on me - big time. A few of them even took off their tops and macked the bear in just a bra. Oh shudder shudder.

Then the bear was replaced by a bevy of so-called hunks, and the girls were asked to do their sexiest dance for them. I know this is Hollywood, but what does it have to do with acting again? At this point, even the shy girls went nuts, stripping down to bra and pantaloons and gyrating madly. Not one thought to go another way (or if they did it was probably discouraged).

But the kicker was the next "acting challenge," in which the girls are to recreate a scene from the popular hit (wha?) series, Fastlane. The challenging scene originally pitted the venerable Tiffany Amber Thiessen against the esteemed Jaime Pressly, and took place in the familiar hot tub. It also involved lines like, "If I can't be a better me, I might as well date her," followed by a lesbian kiss.

This is when I started clicking around, but damn it if I couldn't find anything else to watch. I even contemplated taking the dog for a walk, just to get some fresh air. But my laziness and curiosity won out, and I'm sorry for it. Because the girls' filmed performances (in bathing suits, hot tub and all) were sent before a panel of judges that includes the dreaded and talentless Vivica A. Fox, the talented by far fallen Faye Dunaway, and some chubby gay mensch who I guess is a casting director. Before I tell you what made me throw the remote at the screen, I should point out that two losers are sent away each week as Dunaway Trump's the phrase: "Don't call us, we'll call you." Stomach churning. Cheeks blushing. Hands instinctively covering face.

These three idiots talk to the girls about their acting. ("I wanted to see more from you." etc.) But the girls are, for the most part, so talentless. And in the worst scene, one girl, who happens to have short red hair and "not what it takes to be The Starlet," was trying to act sexy and lezzie and into it while her partner sat there stiff and constipated looking. When the judges praised Ms. Stone Face rather than recommending Ex-Lax, I was shocked. But when they commended her for playing like she wasn't into it because inside she was a spy or something, I threw the remote. And poor Short-Hair was chastized for being "A Monkey on Crack," because she was trying to do as told and kiss this idiot who wouldn't even turn her face toward her. Crack Monkey, as they continued to refer to her, was out. As was Neva, the has been (and good riddance!).

And so I can now honestly vow to the love of my life that I will never, ever, EVA, watch The Starlet again.

By the way, I found a good bad review of the show on Hollywood Reporter. Apparently the brain-child of the guy who created the Bachelor and improv idiot, Jamie Kennedy. Maybe viewers are being Punk'd? (I know, it's Ashton Kutcher who Punk'ds, but Kennedy does something similar, right?)

Also, note to Ashlee: I love the new hair color.

A Little Cultcha

2005-02-24T16:52:00.000-05:00

My three-day weekend ran extra long, right into Thursday, before I realized that I should post something. I have a four-day weekend planned starting tomorrow, so I guess now is the time.

I've been sampling some of NYC's highest art lately, in between watching the Project Runway marathon. Actually, I was rewatching episodes I've seen many times. I was a fan early on, from the first supermarket show. I almost stopped watching because I couldn't stand Heidi Klum's ridiculous drone, but I think the model Melissa is excellent in every way, so I stayed and got hooked. I watch them when they air, tape them for my husband and watch them again. And yet I still can't find the time to write here. As my mother would say, "Maybe you should reevaluate your priorities."

Anyway, back to the art. I should clarify: by art I mean Broadway theater, which really is just glorified television only really expensive and sometimes not as good but other times you see stars in the audience. Last night a friend and I went to see "Brooklyn Boy" and I swear Tom Hulce was there looking very scary and botoxed, and with a terrible haircut. It was difficult convincing my friend but I'm pretty sure. Another actor (whose name I can't remember, or what he has been in, but he's the type that you see in everything without really bothering to take interest in his name or what you are watching - you know the type, right?) went up and shook Hulce's hand randomly, which strengthened my thesis because only actors feel entitled to shake other actors' hands like that. Last Saturday I volunteered as an usher at Hurlyburly because I couldn't get tickets any other way, and some weird, short man in a Sundancey shearling coat with a white turtleneck sweater underneath asked the house manager, "How can I let the cast know I'm here?" I tried to figure out who he could be and I came up with nothing. He looked like a Martin Short character (actually he looked more like this, but I love Short's Jackie Rodgers, Jr.), with a tall flat top and a stretched-to-the-limit facelift. He was so weird, I would have guessed Phil Spector if I didn't know what Phil Spector looks like (or that he's otherwise occupied with legal problems, and therefore not able to catch Ethan Hawke's daring performance).

I love Hurlyburly. As a recovering actress, I am tied to the play because there was a time when I could put my head down for a moment and when it came back up, I'd be Bonnie, the coke-addled topless dancer who was known for her talent for dancing with balloons. (Oh yeah, I was THAT GOOD.) I don't particularly love Ethan Hawke, but I have to say I was impressed with his performance as Eddie, the play's main sleazebag cokehead casting director. He achieved perfection in that he reminded me of my father, who is not a casting director or a cokehead, but for the past two years he has been addicted to something that is totally bringing down his life. He used to work in insurance, but was fired for being a junkie, or something like that. When I speak to my dad these days it truly is like speaking to another person. His voice is different, he's confused and unclear. He slurs and it's hard to hear him. And he punctuates his speech with little bursts of voice. That's what Ethan Hawke did.

Parker Posey and Josh Hamilton and Bobby Cannavale and Wallace Shawn were also in it, and all were great. Parker Posey was seemingly miscast but her performance made me understand the character in a new way. Catherine Kellner played Bonnie. I tip my invisible hat to her but still think I could do a better job. Wallace Shawn's performance is so odd that I sometimes thought the cast was trying to hide the fact that they couldn't bear him, but it really works. I love Josh Hamilton like an estranged college friend I think of fondly but never speak to, because he was in one of my favorite movies, Kicking and Screaming. It's probably cliche to say that the movie so reminds me of my college days that after watching it I frequently curl up into a fetal position of nostalgia and weep, but it's true. (Why is this treasure not out on DVD?! I've complained officially, but I'll gripe here.) Josh's mustachioed 80s look was terribly effective, and he seemed very tall and very lithe.

After the show, while I was picking up the garbage left by paying audience members (pigs!), the cast filed out through the theater. I heard that they would be hanging out at a bar across the street, and if I had a friend with me I would have followed. But, alas, it was past my bedtime so I headed home. Maybe I really should reevaluate my priorities.

El L Palabra

2005-02-18T19:16:00.000-05:00

The second season of The L Word begins on Sunday night, and I have decided to watch it.

I make it seem as if there was any question, but the truth is, I will watch just about anything they put on TV, with the exception of most things on ABC and many things of Fox. Desperate Housewives? No way. But the latest Real World/Road Rules Challenge? I'm there. Ugh. The things I must be doing to my brain, my eyes, my vocabulary. I could conduct my own reality TV wrap up (and I probably will, just wait), and I don't even like most of it. I had Tivo for a week until it insulted me. You know what that fucking thing auto-taped for me, judging by my tastes? A Wedding Story on TLC!!! Anyone who knows this show will understand my horror. No you did not, Tivo!

I should blame my husband, because for the past eight months or so he has been working nights, so I have little else to do. But I have to admit that I was addicted to crap TV long before I met him. Proof? My brother and I still remember theme songs to a variety of C-level TBS sitcoms that we used to watch after school (after school in California is prime time in Atlanta, where the station was based): Safe at Home, Rocky Road, and one about a flapper from the '20s who is reincarnated as a maid in the '80s. I can't remember the title, but I remember every last word of the song... Wait, I just remembered the title: Down to Earth (it's a good thing, because this link actually includes some good information, as well as the lyrics to the theme song). Priceless! Does anyone else remember these terrible shows? Rocky Road was my personal favorite because it was set at the beach and I loved everything about the sun and tanning and bathing suits (thank goodness I escaped California). I see some of the cast members scattered throughout real TV from time to time, doing their best to fill bit parts, and I have to smile. They may not have made the big leagues, but at least they are finally in some sort of league. (Note: I just Googled these shows to come up with a link, and discovered that the father on Rocky Road was Lewis Arquette, father of my favorite female star, Rosanna Arquette, who was also a guest star on The L Word!)

Back to the L Word. My initial impression after the first episode of the first season was that it was trite and base and semi-boring. People complained that the cast was selected for the purposes of turning men on, but anyone who watches the show would likely agree that the show is not interested in fulfilling any male fantasies of lesbianism. Yes, the women are gorgeous and, for the most part, lipsticky, but they clearly are not into men. They don't want to be watched or threesomed, just left alone together. I think that's hard for men to take. After a few episodes, I was hooked. Granted, I still think much of the show is silly, but I can't stop watching.

I have friends in LA who are obsessed - one is even throwing a party on the night of the premiere. We brainstormed about what to serve that screamed "lesbian." I chimed in with tuna, cherry pie, maybe some of those coconut-covered snowballs served in suggestive pairs? I just met a gourmet New Yorker who ran with the lez-themed food idea, thinking crabcakes topped with hijiki pubic hair. Sounds yummy and distasteful at once. (She also poo-pooed the snowball idea, pointing out that lesbians don't like breasts, but I'm not sure I believe that one.)

The obsessed LA women are lesbians (or have lesbian tendencies - I don't want to out anyone), but I know of quite a few straight women who watch the show. I think it's a hit, so there must be many straight viewers tuning in. Why? Maybe we all miss Sex in the City, which was a much better show but had similar fabulously decorated living quarters and awesome outfits and cute hairstyles and dating conundrums and... yes... sex. SITC's ladies may have been man-hungry, but viewers saw a lot of breasts. Not much different from what L Word exposes (though, there have been some scenes where I was like, whoa). Plus, the women are generally gorgeous, and women like looking at gorgeous women.

I don't think I'm speaking for myself here. Women are the ones who buy fashion magazines and fetishize over models. Women made stars out of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly and Julia Roberts (men made stars out of John Wayne and Vin Diesel and Jenna Jameson). Do you know one man who watches America's Next Top Model? I started buying the SI Swimsuit Edition when I was 14, and many of my friends still do. As a kid, I idealized Marilyn Monroe (had posters ALL OVER the wall), then Gypsy Rose Lee, then Bridget Bardot (and all of the lovely ladies in Rodger Vadim's Bardot Denueve Fonda, my favorite book at age 15), then Rosanna Arquette, and so on. Rachel Weisz sunbathing nude in Stealing Beauty is still a breathtaking sight, but it's not like I want to do anything about it. Women are creatures of envy. We want beauty. We want to look at it, to face it, to know it. Men may drool over Britney Spears, but women - or, in this case, girls - buy the crap that she peddles. (Ok, gay men do too. But for the purposes of this argument, I'm lumping them in. And you know gay men do not want to go anywhere near sex with Britney.) This is also the reason that women are heinous bitches to each other. We are so critical of what we expect of beauty. To this day, I will take the slightest compliment from a woman over gushing praise from a man. Men like anything. Women are a tough audience to crack.

Just to clarify. I'm not a lesbian. I haven't had a lesbian experience. I don't even think I've come close, despite the fact that I went to a liberal arts college in the '90s. If I have come close I was not aware of it. I'm generally clueless about reading any signal that does not fit into my delusional, comfort-zoney status quo.

I tried to find something on WJC's faux daily diary regarding lesbians, but the best I could come up with was a passage about Hillary. Sorry Hillary, I don't want to insinuate anything. I don't know if you are a lesbian but you would make an excellent guest star on The L Word. (Just don't bring your husband - we all know he is definitely not a lesbian, because he LOVES breasts.)

WWWJCD:

I don’t understand her. Well I do understand her, but I don’t like it. My wife wants her own legacy, apart from me. That’s ok with me. It’s just sometimes the politician takes over from the human being.

I remember very well what kind of role health played in my first presidential election. George Bush Sr, not long before the election had gone to Japan. He became ill and vomited and passed out during an official dinner. This was caught on film. Bush never managed to shake off this moment of vulnerability. I know Hillary feared something like that might happen to her if she allowed herself to be overpowered by her illness. A politician can’t look weak. People know Washington is a vipers’ den, they will never vote for a person, who seems weak. So even when I pleaded with Hillary to go to the hospital, she said no.

She almost seemed like a tiger protecting her territory, in this case in Washington. She worked hard for her seat in the Senate. That’s for sure. She isn’t a natural politician. She doesn’t connect with people like some politicians do. Like some people say I do, or this president Bush does. Hillary is all about issues. To her being in the Senate isn’t a job. It’s a way to affect policy on issues she holds dear.

I think she is afraid of not being reelected. I understand the fear. After I was elected governor of Arkansas for the first time, I lost the reelection. It was one of the most depressing times in my life. I have never forgotten that. I was full of ideas how to change things. But I walked too far ahead of the people in Arkansas. I made one big mistake. I never took the time to educate them on why policies had to change or couldn’t stay the same. This is a mistake a lot of left leaning liberals still make. They assume everybody understands that the changes in policies they want are good for Americans. So changing laws using the courts seems the right thing to do to them. And when the majority of Americans don’t want their policy changes, they get angry. They must learn the lesson I learned. Educate people, take the time to educate people about the reasons why policy changes are good for them. I learned this lesson and got reelected a few years after my defeat. I stayed governor till I ran for president.

Coming back to Hillary and her reelection. It’s going to be tough. The Republicans are aiming their big gun at her Senate seat. It’s not official, but I don’t think you need to doubt the information. Rudolph Giuliani will be running against her in two years time. He is very popular in New York City and upstate New York. This Senate race will probably, no certainly be the most difficult and most talked about race in two years time.

I understand Hillary, but I’d rather see her home or in hospital, so she could recover. I worry about her, but that’s my right.

Oh, person-who-has-stolen-WJC's-fragile-identity, your words are more delicious than crab cakes with hijiki pubic hair. Why have you forsaken me?

Moonies, Taxes and the Amoral Media Majority

2005-02-17T16:56:00.000-05:00

I am saddened to report that Bill Clinton's Daily Diary is a sham. Worse, it is no longer going to be published. I am a little late in finding this out. After praising the site in my first post, I decided to do some due diligence. So I tappity tapped a quick Google search and the first article I found, from August of last year, exposed it as fraud. Even if it was some evil Republican operative writing in WJC's voice, that person was doing a damn good job. Herr Guitar and I were convinced that it had to be Clinton, because:

1. He's clearly insane

and

2. No one is as brilliant.

The daily diary reflected both aspects of the man's unique personality. Now it's fake and gone. Oh well.

I'm late on a lot of things these days. I'm regularly late to work. I'm always at least one day late meeting deadlines. I was late in getting my roof patched up before the next monsoon came along. And, as you can tell, I'm late in hopping on the blog bandwagon. I have yet to expose a scandal or bring down a top-level exec. I didn't even bring down the Bill Clinton diary guy - in fact, I propped him up for a few days before finding out that he had been brought down eons ago.

Don't get me wrong, I have it in me to expose something. I'm a total paranoid. No theory is too off-the-wall, no soul too dark. I do not believe in the inherent goodness of man - especially not of greedy, power-hungry men who prey on people's notions of their own inherent goodness. I read Harper's and buzzflash.com and Daily Kos. I know about the Reverend Sun Yung Moon's moneyed grip on the Republican party. I know how American business interests are destroying Iraqi corporations in order to buy them on the cheap. I know how Anna Wintour's assistant broke up the hot design team behind Proenza and Schouler. Ok, it's true that I know none of these things for a fact, but I believe them. They make sense.

I do not believe in a liberal media bias. Granted, I live in New York, work in the media, and am about as liberal as they come. But when I write about the filthy rich, I get inside the mind of a rich person and really try to tell them a story, to give them some tips. I get to know them, become one of them, and tell them what to do. I don't think about how their evasion (or "avoidance") of taxes is hurting me or the rest of the country, I help them find the best trust to in which to stash their zillions. That's my job. I write for a magazine that talks to those people, so I adopt the magazine's voice and I start chatting. I don't report on politics, but I believe other journalists are very similar. We may be liberal, conservative, independent or libertarian, but most of us know how to do our jobs. Even if most of us are liberal (though I do know quite a few libertarians in the media) I think that we overcompensate for our own views by writing too much in the other direction. That's why The New York Times and CBS both seem really pandering and conservative lately. Sure, they are extreme examples because both are scandal-bruised, but if similar scandals happened at the New York Post or on Fox News, would their reporters overcompensate in the other direction?

The problem with the media is it is afraid. Not of missing out on a hot story, but of losing readers and viewers. Magazines suck because a few years ago, some genius with a focus group discovered that people have shorter attention spans - we need "bitsy" "servicable" "takeaway" items rather than in-depth stories. Articles that used to run 2,000 words now run at 400. With the cute opener and the even cuter kicker, that leaves about 100 words to explain what the hell we are talking about. And don't forget to include plenty of statistics! You know those have to be accurate and relevant because they can be found swimming in the cesspool that is the Internet. This all started before W. took office. Now it's even worse. Television news programs are so afraid that their audience includes the "moral majority" that Katie Couric can't even say the word feminist without apologizing for it (or prefacing it with the term "bra burning" and making it very clear she is not one, which is the same thing). But don't get me started on Katie Couric.

The thing is, the media and the public are being fooled by the idea that people are felling more moral these days. It's bullshit. Frank Rich pointed out that while 22 percent of voters did cite moral or ethical values as a prime concern, the number of voters who did so in 2000 was 35 percent. In 1996 it was 40 percent. That means our country is less concerned about moral values than it was nine years ago - by almost half!

As for magazines, the great hoax there is we made everything shorter and bitsy-er, and now everyone is glued to the Web, reading long, overwritten blogs. Again, I say Oh Well.

Let's end things with a quote from the archives of our dear if insincere WJC, in our still-going-strong feature, WWWJCD:

The interview with Larry King, Mr. Live! was lousy. I don't like critisizing people, but the level of the chat was sub par. What kind of questions were those? Those are questions you ask some teenage pop tart. “What was your lowest moment in office, what was your highest moment in office, what's your favorite color.” I used to be president. I wrote a 957 page book. What do I get? Obligatory questions. I don't think he prepares his interviews. What did he ask me that viewers didn't know already? It just went from bad to worse and at the end, during the commercial breaks we weren't even talking anymore. Hey if somebody is too lazy to prepare himself and do a REAL interview, there is nothing much I can do. So if you saw the interview and decided not to buy the book, because I was boring, I ask you to give the book a chance. It wasn't my fault.

My Defensive Hot List

2005-02-11T17:41:00.000-05:00

Is every woman on the Upper West Side pushing a stroller? And why are you all trying to cram into the same Starbucks?

I like the O.C. Don't get me started on the crap that you watch.

Don't tell me I need new furniture, I just bought this shit six months ago!

When I am pregnant, I'll tell you.

No, I won't keep reminding you to wipe your own ass.

Just because someone is wealthy does not mean they live in a castle completely divorced from reality. They are not going to melt if they have to read a story about an old woman who dies with only $200,000.

Yes, I live in New Jersey. Yes, I still "make it into the city once in awhile." I work in the city, I take a subway, and my commute is probably shorter than yours. And I have a big, affordable house while you live in one overpriced room.

Jesus may love you, I'll give you that because, from what I've heard, "he" tried to love everyone. But that does not mean you deserve it. Now let go of my country!

Down, dog!

And So the Rant Begins

2005-02-10T16:03:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, starting a blog is very 2002. But do I always have to be on the cutting edge? Can't I just join in with the masses once in a while? Besides, the little blogger in me has been dying to get out for years, long before the Internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye*.

It all started in a small town in Southern California. As a toddler unable to speak, I chose to express myself through hysterical crying fits and a variety of hats. With few resources (just a strong set of lungs, a "hat face" and no sense of shame), I was able to take a position, fight for it, and get the message across to a pretty wide audience. Although I did not understand it at the time, my inner blogger was born. In high school, my blog took the form of letters to friends, scribbled on lined notebook paper and invariably beginning with the words "Fifth period is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boring." In college, I blogged incessantly over the phone to friends and anyone else who would listen, bemoaning my fate as neoJob, a quasi-biblical character who received unjust punishment daily from bitter grad-student directors and teaching assistants who could not see past their own bad outfits and poet hair. My audience grew substantially during this period, but the subject matter was admittedly tiresome.

These days, as those who read this are likely to attest, I favor overwrought emails that detail every last aspect of my day to day life. Sound familiar, fellow bloggers? Instead of going through the trouble to cut and paste and send a message to each of you, I've decided to give myself fully to this page from here on out. And even if I am unable to intrigue or delight, I will do my best to spell and punctuate correctly. How many blogs promise that?

I have been told that I need a theme, a concept, a niche for this page. My response is (in defiant surfer/hippie accent): "Hey, man, don't try to tie me down like that. You can't stymie my creativity by trying to name or categorize it. This is just me, man." My hubby, Herr Guitar, aptly named this project Blah Blah Blog. My point is, I have much to say on a variety of topics. Just prepare to do some serious reading. My fingers have lots of typing left in them.

First, I must introduce a regular segment, WWWJCD? or What Would William Jefferson Clinton Do? This is where I excerpt my favorite words of wisdom from my own favorite blog, Bill Clinton's Daily Diary. WJC is very candid here, sharing personal stories, political views and relevant parables. Bobbi is his assistant, and I suspect they might be a little too close. I have no idea whether the site is real but, as my coworker put it, I want to live in a world where it is. Here's one favorite (but by no means unique) example:

I met my good friend Bono and Tony Blair yesterday during a media event. We wanted to spend some time together, so we agreed to meet each other in Tonys hotel suite. When I told my assistant, Bobbi I was off to visit Bono, she begged me to take her along. I know the kind of attraction Bono has on young women, so I let her tag along.

It was about 10:30 when we got to Tonys suite. Bono was there already. Bobbi was so star struck, she was speechless, the three of us just laughed. Tony had a bottle of French wine, we opened it and had a great time. That is until Bono gave me a large package. He and Tony could hardly suppress their laughter. I opened the package and to my surprise, inside was a sax made of china.

Bono urged me to play something. To my big surprise, the sax actually worked. Tony asked me to play a song, but I declined to play alone. Tony and Bono got up, walked to the other room and came back with their guitars.

We jammed for a few minutes. Tony is a great guitar player. He told me he used to be in a band. He also told me once that during a short period, when he was homeless, he played guitar for tips on the streets and in the parks of London.

People always think guys like Tony and me were born with a silver spoon in our mouths. That is not true. We had to work very hard to get where we eventually got.

After opening up a few more bottles of wine, we stopped jamming and began playing old rock and roll hits. Bono sang and Bobbi clapped her hands. At one time Bobbi started singing along. It mustve been the wine. All of us had to laugh. Bobbi has a distinct Southern accent. Bono asked her to choose the next song. She said she wanted to hear Angel of Harlem.

We were all silent for a moment and looked at Bono. Bono has a special relationship with that song. He rarely plays it. I dont know why, but I know its so. It mustve been silent for 5 minutes. Bono looked at Bobbi. Bobbi looked at me. Helplessly.

Then he said: All right. He began playing the opening chords of Angel of Harlem. I absolutely love that song. Its a classic. He sang: It was a cold and wet December day, When we touched down at JFK.

Tony and I played along. I will never forget this moment as long as I live. We had such a good time.

Yes, we all did have a good time, didn't we? Until tomorrow...

*This is only a joke. I know that Al Gore did not invent the Internet, nor did he claim to. Such rumors fall under what WJC taught me to recognize as "black ops": that means covert operations. All politicians know or should know everything about this issue. The Republicans did it to me for the entire eight years I was in office. Black ops is not just about smearing your competitor. It is more about making sure your opponent cant give the public his views without being challenged. What black ops does is confuse, change and detract from the other persons message.