babblebook

RIP babblebook (2001-2010)

2010-12-05T19:14:00.000-05:00

Much as I love you, it's time to leave you, babblebook, blog whose name I came up with as a freshman in college. My future lies in the all new & pretty spiffy esterbloom.com, where the blog will have its own room (http://esterbloom.com/blog/) but it will no longer have the run of the whole house. It will cohabit and ideally play nice with my essays, poems, & feature pieces, which, for the first time, will be collected in one place.

Thanks for everything.

Things I Loved and Forgot

2010-11-30T16:35:00.004-05:00

It can be such a thrill to rediscover something one lost sight of, for whatever reason. The Film Experience blog, for example, provides an oh-so-useful list of the films of 2010 grouped into categories like "Don't Miss," "Recommended with Reservations," and "Make It Stop."

According to Rogers's list, cross-checked against the Indie Spirit Awards results, the most important films I haven't seen yet are Black Swan, Blue Valentine, and Rabbit Hole. And I don't have to feel bad about missing Alice in Wonderland and Iron Man 2! What a relief.

Still, get set for a tear-soaked holiday season, y'all! Maybe I'll blow off all those movies and just re-watch Babies, which is basically one long YouTube video capturing the cuteness that transpires when small people with big eyes and no motor skills play with things (rocks; cats; goats; their siblings).

Not listed, presumably because Rogers hasn't seen them yet: True Grit and Love and Other Drugs, both of which I'm curious about if only for the glimpses of little Gyllenhaal.

Speaking of films, a site called Jon's Ego printed an argument against the Bechdel test (which I call "the Ms. Test for Movies"). It's simply explained this way:

all credit belongs to A. Bechdel, friends, for this brilliant 3-part movie test:

1) Is there more than one female character? If so,
2) do the female characters talk, and if so,
3) about anything other than men?

You would be amazed at how many movies don't pass this test. Good movies. Great movies, even -- go ahead, count.

I don't think you need to self-flagellate over this, for what it's worth. A movie can flunk the Ms. Test -- I mean, the Liz Wallace via DTWOF and Ms. Test -- and still be quality. But for what it's worth, one of the reasons I've never been crazy about Scorsese is that virtually none of his movies pass the LWVDTWOFAMT Test. It's all-macho-all-the-time with Marty, with the glorious exception of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, which you could say is the only Scorsese movie he's only made once and which almost no one talks about.

Is it so hard to have women be real people in good movies? I mean, even master-of-macho, Russell-Crowe-worshipping Ridley Scott hasThelma and Louise AND Alien on his resume.

But Jon's Ego has a problem:

I hate the Bechdel Test. It seriously annoys me every time I see it brought up and used as proof of sexism in movies (Even when they’re used by esteemed coworkers of mine. Sorry, Rachel!). Hollywood is clearly filled with sexism but the Bechdel Test proves nothing. ...

let’s try something else. Think of a movie that has a female main character. I’m not talking ensemble piece here. This has to be a clearly defined main character who is a woman. Now do an inverse Bechdel Test about the male characters. Does it pass? I’m gonna guess it doesn’t. Does that mean that that movie is sexist against men? Of course not.

Jon seems like a good guy, and I don't mean to get all patriarchy-blaming on his ass, but he's pulling a total Limbaugh here. First of all, his main evidence is that he's "gonna guess" that if flipped on its head the rule will still apply -- i.e., in a movie featuring a clearly-defined female lead, there will not be a substantive conversation between two male characters. I'm gonna guess he didn't spend five minutes thinking that through. There are always prominent men in movies, even female-driven ones. And they always talk.

Check out IMDB's Top 250 list. You may notice that you have to scroll before you find a film that even fits Jon's criteria, which to his credit he acknowledges is a problem. Depending on your point of view, the first entry is either Psycho (#24, which, btw, is bullshit -- that should be in the top 10) or Silence of the Lambs (#27). Either way, both of those films also feature very prominent male characters, characters who have, in fact, arguably juicier roles than the ostensible female leads.

If you want to be more orthodox about his rules, we can keep going til we get to Amelie (#45) which is beyond debate a movie centered around a woman. Even there, the male characters have conversations with each other about things other than women. In French, sure, but that still counts. Or Pan's Labyrinth (#74 -- also bullshit; that movie is amazing), where the only thing dudes are gossiping about is fascism.

He can't be thinking of "Sex and the City," since he specifically says he doesn't mean ensemble pieces. Even if you were to consider "Sex and the City" as a counter-point, though, I'd argue that, as a 25-minute TV show starring four women or a movie based on same, it's a very different kettle of fish. Men are shortchanged in the show and the movies alike, sure, but sitcoms involve time and narrative constraints unimaginable to most filmmakers.

No, Jon's "guess" is plain wrong. The fact that, in the entire top 100 list, there are maybe five films where it's arguable a woman is THE lead character -- and male characters outnumber female characters in just about every film by about four to one -- is all the information you need to call Hollywood sexist. The Bechdel/ Ms. test helps make that clear in a straight-forward, accessible way. It's not an indictment, but it's a fair and a useful tool.

The Men in the Family

2010-11-23T17:08:00.000-05:00

My uncle, who has made the same Thanksgiving dinner since 1987, died last year, suddenly. The word “suddenly” doesn’t even do justice to the speed with which he was there and then wasn’t. No one has planned the menu for the holiday this year. It’s like how if you call my grandmother, my uncle’s voice still greets you from the answering machine—he recorded over my grandfather’s voice when my grandfather died. No one has had the guts to go next.

My grandmother is still in shock. She is almost 98 years old and she never expected to outlive her husband, her son-in-law, and her son. Will she be able to churn out her annual tart apple pie? My father would kill for that pie. He used to elbow me after tasting it and say, “When are you going to ask your grandma to teach you to bake that pie?” I’d retort, “You want pie, ask her to teach you to bake.” Then we’d both settle down comfortably on the couch and read something.

The men in my family were taken down one by one and now, as the smoke clears, I wonder who is going to carve the turkey. My older brother Adam and I led the seder last year for Passover, but we did it from the kids’ table. Will Adam be able to take a stab at the bird? A thirty year old without a wife or children makes a pretty half-assed patriarch. I would be worse: I’m female, and a vegetarian. The turkey would laugh at me. I don’t even like pie.

To make matters worse, the day after Thanksgiving we'll gather at the cemetery for my father's unveiling. Gives a new meaning to "Black Friday," doesn't it?

Brooklyn, you’re bleeding me dry: What $450K would buy me in 7 other cities : Bundle

2010-11-18T14:15:00.000-05:00

An extended, amended version of my recent blog post is now a slideshow on the financial website Bundle (run by the fabulous Chipper McCheerful)! Check it out and think wistfully with me of what you could afford if you were willing to leave New York.

Brooklyn, you’re bleeding me dry: What $450K would buy me in 7 other cities : Bundle

Cheating on the Turkey

2010-11-17T14:29:00.003-05:00

What is the point of Thanksgiving? Is it a stuck-in-there holiday to make November more bearable and give us all a long weekend? Is it to juice the travel industry? To remind us all to feel vaguely guilty about Native Americans (although not so much that it puts us off our food)?

Was it an early attempt by enviro-conscious, earnest, lefty, do-gooding, Farmer's Market types to get us all to eat seasonally and -- perhaps -- locally?

Is it a family dysfunction dress rehearsal, the main event of which is Christmas?

Is it about eating, or cooking AND eating, or cooking AND eating AND being with family?

I ask because the question arose at lunch today: Is it cheating to have Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant?

My instinct is that it is. The point of the holiday isn't to partake of cranberry sauce, which is possibly the best straight-out-of-the-can food there is, but to partake of cranberry sauce across the table from someone you might not ordinarily see or (heaven forbid) even like all that much. And somebody you know and possibly love -- not some line cook paid $5.50 an hour -- has to scrape that cranberry sauce out of the can and into a bowl. Otherwise, so help me, it just doesn't count.

My Thanksgivings, you will perhaps not be surprised to learn, have met these rabbinic requirements. There is traveling involved; there is stress; there is extended family for extended periods of time. Yes, there is turkey, though I haven't eaten it since I was 18, and seasonally-appropriate vegetables, and apple and pumpkin pies, but the point isn't the turkey. The point is the entire celebration, sun-up to sun-down, of America's favorite secular holiday, one for which, yes, we all have to sacrifice a little bit.

Am I wrong? Am I *wrong*? Or, like Walter, am I not wrong, but just an asshole?

THANKSGIVING IN RESTAURANTS: CHEATING OR NOT CHEATING? Make your voice heard.

Dreamworld

2010-11-16T11:34:00.002-05:00

Jonathan Franzen and Lorrie Moore were beyond charming last night at 92Y -- where I had never actually been before. My darling Aunts Marjy & Jane took me to that hallowed ground, which Jon Stewart described as the third holiest site to Judaism, after Jerusalem and Zabar's.

On stage, Moore and Franzen giggled like old friends. They also each had great answers to an audience question: When do you know you've arrived at the right ending?

Lorrie Moore talked about the difference between novels and short stories in this respect. Short stories demand endings that shine light backwards on everything that has come before, she said. Novels, by contrast, shine light outwards on what could come next.

Jonathan Franzen said that you know you've hit on a good ending (if not the "right" one) when the paralyzing anxiety occasioned by all the worse endings you've thought of begins to fall away.

The audience sort of mooed happily, the way groups do when someone says something that makes perfect sense.

Walking out, I told my aunts that Franzen is one of my literary boyfriends. (Adorable Brit David Mitchell, who I saw read at BookCourt, is another, because I am not so monogamous in my literary life: I also go on crazy dates with Jonathan Ames, talk politics with hot grandma Anne Lamott, and have passionate Southern evenings with Ann Patchett.)

Imagine my surprise when I went to sleep that night and dreamed Franzen had become my *actual* boyfriend. Which led to this exchange over GChat:

Logan: um, did you do it?
Me: no!
Logan: just checking
Me: we walked around swarthmore arm in arm
Logan: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: isn't that kind of even better??
Logan: that is even better. amazing, amazing dream.
Me: i also dreamt that i had to pee in a suitcase for some reason. like, everyone else got to use a toilet and i had to pee in a suitcase. but that was a separate dream.

New essay up!

2010-11-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

The good people at PANK have published my horror story, "Not an English Person." It begins,

To lose one job may be regarded as a misfortune but, as Oscar Wilde might say, to lose two looks like carelessness. I am on my fifth in five years.

Go read the whole thing! Then try to sleep tonight. I dare you.

"Missouri," Meet "Cop's Wife"

2010-11-05T14:40:00.003-04:00

"We can have animus and not be enemies," sayeth Jon Stewart. I can't say I'm there yet, but it gives me something to aim for.

Carolyn Hax perfectly expresses the feeling I had at the Rally to Restore Sanity, the one I'm trying to feel again, especially after Tuesday's results:

Missouri: Hi Carolyn,

I guess my husband and I are what the liberal East Coast would call conservative bigots. My question isn't about that, so I won't get into it. We are raising two kids our way, while being constantly told by the liberal media that it's the wrong way. Sorry, but we just don't agree, and neither do most of the people in our community.

The issue is that my husband's job is taking him to a liberal East Coast city, and we're now faced with the question of whether to uproot everyone and follow him there. If we go, I worry my kids will be exposed to a lot of hooey I have worked hard to keep out of their lives. If we don't, we're looking at at least two years' separation during which my husband will miss the last of his daughters' little kid years. It's well-established around here that you can't bubble-wrap kids, so basically I'm looking for suggestions on how to keep our values strong in our kids even if we choose to move them out east.

Carolyn Hax: You're right to worry--we liberal East Coast dwellers have two heads, learn a secret language at Ivy League schools so we can mock real hard-working Americans, make our preschoolers watch gay porn, and scream like pod people when we see someone going to church.

The exposure-to-a-lot-of-hooey ship has already sailed, I'm afraid--you've bought wholesale the whole idea that there's an "Us" and a "Them" in this country.

Here's a little welcome brochure for you in the form of my daily life, in case you decide to tough it out in the Eastern time zone:

I'm married, and we have three little boys.

We love them, work hard to teach them manners, values, civic responsibility, respect for adults, respect for themselves.

We care about the schooling they get, the food they eat, the bedtimes they keep, the community that surrounds them, the families that take them in for play dates. We care about setting an example of strong partnership in our marriage.

We have a hard time containing our frustration when we see even the slightest glimmer of entitlement in them, even though we know intellectually that all small kids see themselves as the center of the earth. We also know that it's up to us to teach them the value of hard work, of delayed gratification, of gratitude, of giving back as much as they take, if not more.

We also give them as much room as we can to be themselves, which means, at various times, letting them explore in stick and rocks and mud, and make play weapons, and fall off their bikes, and they've done target shooting and archery. (I hear a lot about attempts to "feminize" boys, and all I can say is, good luck. If it's in them to be house kids, then they'll gravitate that way whether they're pushed to or not, and if it's not in them, then they won't. Cultural norming works better in theory than in practice.)

We encourage them to play with neighborhood kids; these neighbors include four families with their kids in faith-based schools--one believes firmly in single-sex education--and four others with kids in public schools. (My kids go private because the classes are small, much better for their temperaments.)

Have you read anything yet that makes you tremble in fear for your children?

To be fair, I'll also say that I worship no higher power. However, I am also never in anyone's face about that, not even when someone of faith gets into mine, which does happen. I not only respect people's right to live as they see fit, but I also hope my kids will look to others as an example, compare other parents' choices to ours, and choose a path based on that exploration.

Which brings me to the point I could have opened with and quit (but then I wouldn't have been able to bring in the Pod People): If you are as assured as you suggest in the correctness--and righteousness--of the way you've chosen to raise your children, then there should be no reason it couldn't withstand the challenge of other points of view. Truth likes light, doesn't it?

Trust your choices, and trust your neighbors to be human--really, I swear they will bear an uncanny resemblance to you.

As as for Us vs. Them, may I please humbly ask of you to declare with me that enough is enough is enough?

Staying ovation for Carolyn! Full points.

Then of course there's the adorable five-year-old child whose mother allowed him to dress up as Daphne from "Scooby Doo" and defended everything from his neon wig to his go-go boots to judgmental mommies IRL and on the web in a post called "My Son is Gay."

SPOILER ALERT: The child in question is not actually gay. The writer is employing a rhetorical device to make the point that it wouldn't matter to her if he becomes gay at some point but that letting him dress up as a girl if he wants on a costume-oriented holiday will not affect his sexual preferences later in life. (As she puts it, brilliantly, "I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off.")

In case Mrs. Missouri is wondering, this gender-bending Halloween is brought to you by a Stay At Home Mom who calls herself "Cop's Wife," sends her kids to church pre-school, and lives in the Midwest. Teh gays! Teh cross-dressers! They are EVERYWHERE. If you think you can avoid their pernicious influence by staying where you are, Mrs. Missouri, you've got another think coming.

Missouri, meet Cop's Wife. Bring the kids! I think you will get along smashingly, at least until / unless Mrs. Missouri does have to transplant to some godforsaken eastern urban hellhole. ("Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." --Alvy Singer)

But: breathe deeply, Ester. Abide. ("Calmer than you are." --Walter Sobchak) I don't need to resort to snark just because Mrs. Missouri did in her letter. Perhaps she is an open-minded person waiting to happen! After all, how Jesus Camp-y could Mrs. Missouri really be if she's writing into my favorite (and East Coast based) advice columnist? Perhaps there is hope for her yet.

Remember Two Years Ago?

2010-11-02T11:14:00.002-04:00

I do:

On Nov. 4, 2008, as on every morning during that fall's presidential campaign, I began my workday by reviewing the latest battleground-state polls at Pollster and RealClearPolitics, checking up on the pundits at Politico and Wonkette, and seeing what the establishment had to say at the New York Times and the Washington Post. In contrast to the recent Election Days I had known, the news was more than encouraging. My co-workers planned parties. The experts were hopeful. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight predicted a landslide.

Still, concern spread through me until I was possessed: By the end of the day I resembled something out of The Exorcist: trembling and mumbling, with green-tinged skin. My husband, Ben, showed up at my office, took one look at me, and knew that I would never make it to our results-viewing parties; even if I did, I would scare the revelers. "Let’s go home," he said, worried enough that he suggested taking a cab back to Brooklyn. I was worried enough that I agreed.

We made it only to Union Square before I threw up, splashing my fear on the inside of the car door and my beloved new suede boots. I got out and sat shivering on the curb as the cab driver muttered curses and Ben ran into stores, begging for cleaning supplies. Two Manhattanites walked by me on spiked shoes and laughed, but I barely heard them. I was thinking about Pennsylvania. ...

The entirety of my oh-so-timely piece, entitled "Hope Over Experience," has been on The Morning News for about a week now.

The funny thing is, I'm still thinking about Pennsylvania. And Nevada. And Wisconsin. (Poor Russ Feingold!) The point is, if you need me, I'll be online shopping all day to distract myself, and pondering who I detest more: David "Pink Shirt" Brooks or Maureen "Fires of Mordor" Dowd? In fact, let's make it a poll!

Who Is a More Worthless Human Being / Pundit?

My Family Wins the Internet

2010-11-01T14:17:00.002-04:00

On BNReview, my father-in-law, a Russian doctor, teaches all you Americans how to drink vodka. I don't need teaching because I have plenty of opportunities to watch the pros.

Meanwhile, my cousins of It's the Real do it up OK Go-style with their new music video, "My Girl's a Republican."

My Girl's a Republican from jeff on Vimeo.

Now I have their song competing for floorspace in my head with the Rally to Restore Sanity's mash-up of "the Peace/Love/Crazy Train."

Pictures of my favorite handwritten signs from the rally TK. It was pretty amazing, I have to say, to see hundreds of signs and not one typo. That should go down in history.

The ABCs of Places You Could Buy a House If You Didn't Live in NY

2010-10-25T16:20:00.006-04:00

A is for Asheville!

Asheville, North Carolina, is the San Francisco of the South. It is run by hippies and retirees in equal numbers and offers plenty of NYT-sanctioned activities.

Huge Queen Anne Victorian in the historic neighborhood of Montford, a short walk from downtown Asheville. Built in 1900. Almost 4,500 square feet. Sky blue with gingerbread-house-like trim. Fireplace, wraparound porch, and turrets included.

Property is zoned "RM8," which presumably means something to somebody.

B is for Bisbee!

Bisbee, Arizona, is the San Francisco of the Southwest. It's an artsy town in the mountains near the Mexico-America border, so lots of Weeds-like hijinks ensue! At least in my imagination. A guy there makes killer Killer Bee Honey.

Mmmmmmm ... pool. Also four bedrooms to house all the jealous friends from New York who insist on flying out to use your pool.

Outside features include "Rv Hookup, Rv Parking, Sprinkler/drip," while landscape includes "Fruit Trees, Shrubs, Desert, Grass, Gravel, Trees." Can't argue with that diversity! Plus your kids get to go to school in a district called Tombstone.

C is for Copenhagen!

Copenhagen is in Denmark, which is the San Francisco of southern Scandinavia and has abolished poverty and injustice. Well, almost.

I have no idea how easy it is to buy property over there, but apparently a 3-BR townhouse can be had for the equivalent of $350,000 US. Do you know what $350,000 US will buy you in Brooklyn? A garage in Bay Ridge next to an open sewer. (I'm guessing.)

D through F coming soon!

Two Weddings, One Ass

2010-10-22T14:32:00.003-04:00

There is a terrific Yiddish expression that currently sums up a large part of what Juan Williams did wrong: "You can't dance in two weddings with one ass."

Fox News and National Public Radio are two very different weddings, playing very different music and enjoying very different food. Trying to please the machers at both was bound to be an exercise in futility, if not self-destruction.

Besides, wasn't this so far over-the-top as to be almost passive-aggressive? (After all, he got to be the news story for a change, and he got a hefty raise too.) Telling O'Reilly "you're right"? Using the words "I'm not a bigot" and then NOT STOPPING THERE?

Here's the full quote:

"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country," Williams said Monday. "But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

For those who are saying that Williams was fired in violation of his 1st Amendment rights, an anonymous NPR exec rolls his eyes in the Washington Post: "Williams's comments on Monday were the last straw, the executive said. He dismissed suggestions that NPR was suppressing Williams's freedom of speech, saying, "Juan has a First Amendment right to say whatever he wants. He does not have a First Amendment right to be paid by NPR for saying whatever he wants." And there's the rub. Though we are all free to talk, we are not free to escape the consequences. Not even if a lot of loudmouths agree with us.

Besides, considering that Tea Party senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell just publicly revealed she doesn't know what the 1st Amendment entails, the Republicans probably shouldn't be drawing too much attention to the Bill of Rights.

As TNC points out, what Williams said was a problem. What Williams CONTINUES to say leeches out any potential sympathy I'd have for him. From today's NYT:

Mr. Williams said in an essay published Thursday on FoxNews.com that he was fired "for telling the truth."

He continued in the essay: "Now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one-sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought."

Sent to the gulag! Somewhere, Solzhenitsyn is groaning in his grave and stuffing dirt in his ears. If Williams is really that convinced that he is a victim of severe, historical injustice, then he belong at Fox News. Let me be the first to say, Welcome home.

Because men hunted buffalo ...

2010-10-21T15:21:00.002-04:00

On the way to Los Angeles for a whirlwind business trip, I caught sight of this newsstand at JFK Airport. On one side, a sign says "men's interests," and on the other side, a sign says "women's interests."

What, pray tell, are men's interests as opposed to women's interests?

I'm so glad you asked!

On the male side of the mechitzah, we discover that dudes are into:

Money
Smart Money
The Economist
Time
Newsweek
Men's Fitness
Golf

On the women's side, we discover that ladies like:

O (Oprah)
Brides
Home & Garden
Allure
Self
Health & Fitness
Family Circle

Thank God men and women both care about Fitness! Otherwise, what else would they talk about?

PS: Apparently I missed "Love Your Body Day"! I would have liked to celebrate it because all my parts, euphemistically-noted in previous blog entries and non-, are in good working order once again. Bless you, teeth (and "foot")! I promise I'll never take you for granted again!

"Foot" and Mouth Disease

2010-10-07T16:54:00.003-04:00

I've spent this past week trying to determine which is worse: a mouth full of teeth that can handle food no tougher than avocado, or a disturbance in a region private enough that you don't want to mention it on a blog. (There can only be one Dooce.) I'll call it my "foot."

I played around with the idea of mentioning it anyway, since apparently it's a relatively common, though disgusting, problem, and one you could probably relate to. Then I saw The Social Network & was reminded, via one of those patented Wise Movie Characters often played by Morgan Freeman, "The Internet is written in ink." Note: That girl was so smart I couldn't believe she went to BU!

Ha ha ... ha.

I really enjoyed the Social Network, though I've enjoyed anything recently that distracted me from my mouth and my "foot." The list also includes Seasons 2 and 3 of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," sleep, Ethiopian food, homemade applesauce, word games, lying on the couch for hours at a time, a peanut-butter smoothie from Netcar, getting a Diane von Furstenberg dress from a clothing swap, making muffinloaf, and reading recaps of TV shows.

But that's not to say the film wasn't quality. Well done, Aaron Sorkin & David Fincher -- you made a movie with no surprises in it somehow feel suspenseful and dramatic. Likewise, though almost nothing happens. Here is basically all the action in the film:

a bed almost gets lit on fire
a student runs through the snow in inappropriate footwear
a chimney breaks
Asian women are slandered (Jewish guys come off only slightly better)
Justin Timberlake does coke with some under-dressed, under-aged girls
a more or less unrepentant asshole becomes the youngest billionaire in history.

Still, the momentum of the thing feels inescapable. That's impressive.

Aaron Sorkin is on record saying he's not a fan of Facebook. Even if he weren't, the "Lemon Lyman" episode of "the West Wing" makes his views on Internet social-subcultures pretty clear. The thing is, we don't need an Aaron Sorkin Facebook page to know an awful lot about Aaron Sorkin. More than most auteurs, he expresses himself through his art.

SEX: Definitely male. His clubhouse door still says, "No girls allowed."
BIRTHDAY: Whatever makes him old enough to be cranky about kids these days but not so old that he can't entertain kids these days. Probably early 60s.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Cranky

CURRENT CITY: Los Angeles, CA
HOMETOWN: Somewhere on the East Coast where the Jewish intelligensia reign. Probably New York City suburbs.
POLITICAL VIEWS: Cranky liberal.
RELIGIOUS VIEWS: Culturally & identifiably Jewish, but not observant.

BIO: I like young, smart, arrogant, usually sexist, male outsiders who occasionally get their comeuppance but for the most part get to rise to the top, defeating even super-star bad guys like Jack Nicholson and Republican House sub-committees.

FAVORITE QUOTATIONS:

"Lewis, we've had Presidents who were beloved who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand 'cause they're thirsty. They drink the sand 'cause they don't know the difference." -- President Andrew Shepherd

Joanne Herring: Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?
Charlie Wilson: Well, tradition mostly.

"There is nothing on this earth sexier, believe me, gentlemen, than a woman you have to salute in the morning. Promote 'em all, I say, because this is true - if you haven't gotten a blow-job from a superior officer, well, you're just letting the best in life pass you by. 'Course, my problem is, I'm a colonel, so I guess I'll just have to keep taking cold showers until they elect some gal president." -- Colonel Nathan Jessup

Flight Attendant: Sir, I'm going to have to ask that you turn off your cellular phone.
Toby: We're flying in a Lockheed Eagle Series L-1011. Came off the line twenty months ago. Carries a Sim-5 transponder tracking system. And you're telling me I can still flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?

LIKES AND INTERESTS: Latin, musical theater in general and Gilbert & Sullivan in particular, women named Amy, being the smartest kid in the class, being insolent to authority figures, Yiddish, minutiae, space exploration, using the same clean-cut white actors over and over again, fast talking, big words, grand gestures, speechifying, Maureen Dowd, recreational drug use, and baseball.

Making Love to an Ice Pack

2010-09-30T12:13:00.005-04:00

Here's a lesson I have now learned that I am sharing with you: Before you are scheduled to have surgery at a place, check that place out. Meet the doctor, if possible. And make sure you're not going to be outnumbered by people in Ed Hardy shirts.

I arrived at my oral surgeon's office yesterday at 12:20 for an appointment at 12:30. After two hours of waiting in a crowd that would have been equally comfortable at an OTB parlor, I was finally taken to the back and put in one of a room's two dentist's chairs. The other was occupied.

The guy in the other chair and I waited for another half an hour or so as moans came through the walls from other rooms and hygienists walked in and out changing their gloves. Hip hop blasted from a Panasonic boom box on the floor, circa 1991, so retro that it didn't even have a CD player, only a tape deck and a radio.

At some point I started to shake -- a normal enough response to perpetual anticipation, especially when you're waiting to get all four wisdom teeth out to the soothing sounds of Jay-Z. Hygienists shot me amused looks and talked to each other in Spanish. I tried to calm myself down by silently reciting the Kipling poem "If," which my dad had me memorize ages ago:

If you can keep your head / when all about you are losing theirs / And blaming it on you / If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you / Yet make allowance for their doubting too / If you can wait and not be tired by waiting --

Then the surgeon and a fleet of hygienists came in to start working on my roommate. They wasted no time: within five minutes, he was gasping and twitching; within ten, he had arched his entire back off the table like Cary Elwes in the Princess Bride when his life is being sucked from him by the Machine.

I'm not a brave person. There's a reason I carry small, dissolving tablets of Klonopin around with me in my change purse. I don't like pain, I hide from danger, and I am not even that crazy about excitement. I am CERTAINLY not crazy about watching dental patients reduced to begging for their lives.

Roommate #1 was restored to a sitting position, stuffed with cotton, and released. Then the hygienists ushered in Roommate #2.

If you can dream and not make dreams your master / If you can think and not make thoughts your aim ...

You've got to be joking, I thought to myself. But the same team went to work, and again I had to watch. There wasn't so much as a curtain dividing my side of the room from theirs.

The surgeon approached me and I asked to be knocked out. Retroactively, if possible. Wake me up when it's over.

Sorry, said the surgeon. We don't do that here. We don't have the equipment to monitor if your heart stops.

I don't care if my heart stops, I said, glancing across the room.

He laughed, and then shot me in the mouth from all angles.

If you can meet with triumph and disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same. ...

I was left to grow increasingly numb as they finished with Roommate #2. By the time Roommate #3 had come and gone, I was ready to give up. If this were war, I would have been ready to tell them anything -- name, rank, serial number, state secrets, battle plans, you name it. I didn't sign up to be a soldier. I work in a Jewish non-profit, for God's sake!

But they didn't want secrets. They wanted my teeth.

They switched me from my chair -- where I'd been sitting, by that point, for an hour and a half, feeling much like I had when a film prof put on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in class -- to the other chair. The one that had been wiped down three times already.

New York ... trilled the voice from the boom box. These streets will make you feel brand new, these lights will inspire you ...

Ready? asked the surgeon.

I whimpered, and he went to work.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew / to serve their turn long after they're gone / and so hold on til there is nothing in you / except the will that says to them "Hold on." / If you can fill the unforgiving minute / with 60 seconds worth of distance run ...

Thankfully, compared to the agonies of waiting and watching, the pain of the procedure itself was not too bad. I mean, it didn't feel GOOD -- it felt like someone was tearing my teeth from their sockets, which is more or less what was happening. But the surgeon was done in ten minutes. I was stuffed with cotton and returned to a sitting position, given two prescriptions and a pack full of sterile pads, and proclaimed a champ.

Yours is the earth / and everything that's in it. / And, what is more, you'll be a man, my son.

In my case, a man who eats lots of applesauce and watches episode after episode of Buffy. But Rudyard helped me through it, for which I am grateful. More, I am grateful to Charrow, who spent her whole afternoon in the dentist's office and then helped get me home, ignoring all emissions of bloody drool. That is true friendship.

On 'Franzenfreude,' gender, and genre

2010-09-22T17:25:00.003-04:00

ETA: This has been cross-posted on Salon.com:

Having finally released three different but related books back into the wild of the Brooklyn Public Library system -- Freedom, Catching Fire, and The Passage -- I feel the time is right to weigh in on the literary meme of the moment, Franzenfreude, a term that, loosely defined, indicates that Jonathan Franzen represents all that is wrong with the contemporary high-brow book world.

Is that stupid? Quite! Except there's a caveat. The phenomenon referred to by "Franzenfreude," that the high-brow book world restricts its highest praise and most fawning attention for the works of men, is absolutely true. It just happens that Jonathan Franzen is a terrible poster boy for that problem.

Franzen writes gorgeous women. Fleshed-out, interesting, three-dimensional, vivid women, women with brains. He writes for them, too, and perhaps most importantly of all, he READS THEM. When, at a Brooklyn Book Festival panel, someone asked him what he was reading, he replied, "Edith Wharton." To the follow-up question of what should we, his audience, be reading, he listed several books, all by female authors, including the Ms. Hempel Chronicles, of which, up to that point, I hadn't even heard. (Then I read it. It was good!)

A friend and I cornered him after the panel to ask whether he'd realized he'd been promoting work by ladies. He blinked for a moment, then laughed and said it honestly hadn't occurred to him.

Thus: "Franzenfreude" is the wrong label for this particular can of worms. (As a language nerd points out, it's also stupid for other reasons.)

That said, let's address the can of worms itself. Yes! Fiction by women is customarily and routinely dismissed by the intelligentsia in favor of fiction by men. Because why should fiction be any different than anything else? The most exalted spaces in any pantheon are reserved for men. So it has been, so it will be. This is because women can have babies, whereas men can only have egos, and also testicles, or something.

However! The less important the pantheon, the more likely it is that you can find a woman at the top of it.

The high-brow book world also dismisses almost all genre fiction. Genre fiction is where women reign supreme or, at the very least, hold their own: romance, mystery, young adult, sci fi, fantasy. Having just ingested the Hunger Games trilogy, a sci-fi YA extravaganza that took not just me but America by storm, I feel particularly drawn to this point right now.

Even in most genre fiction, there remains an idea that boys won't read books about girls. Hence the sad-but-true fact that J.K. Rowling couldn't publish under the name "Joanne" for fear of frightening off huge numbers of young male readers. But this to me feels wrong. Step on the NYC subway right now and look around -- I guarantee you that someone on that car is reading, not Freedom, but the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. About, as you've perhaps heard, Lisbeth Salander, one of the most kick-ass female characters in any book of any genre. The Golden Compass books didn't suffer for focusing on Lyra, another quite impressive young woman. Even Dan Brown's idiot bestseller the Da Vinci Code was a FEMINIST conspiracy theory.

Best of all, perhaps, is Suzanne Collins, whose hugely popular Hunger Games books center around Katniss, who doesn't want to get married and doesn't understand why having leg hair is bad. Written by a lady! Starring a lady! Yet everyone's reading them. Hopefully the next J.K. Rowling can be inspired by this and publish under her full name.

This doesn't, of course, solve the problem of the white male taste-makers -- and the sufficient numbers of female taste-makers who concur -- giving all the plaudits that matter to white male authors. As Adam Gopnik, a New Yorker author I admire, put it just this year in his tribute to Salinger: "In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: 'Huckleberry Finn,' 'The Great Gatsby,' and 'The Catcher in the Rye.'"

What Gopnik meant to say, no doubt, was, "Here are three books I really dig!" He's hardly the first intellectual to fall into the tar pit of generalizing from his own experiences. But it's a disturbingly prevalent trend among white male taste-makers: assuming that what they relate to and find meaning in, the rest of us must as well, AND that those books must be "the best."

It's bullshit, and I'm glad people are finally beginning to realize that. But leave Jonathan Franzen out of it, would you? He's one of the good ones.

Recap of recaps, Mad Men edition

2010-09-21T14:39:00.002-04:00

You like Internet black holes, right? Who doesn't? And I take it for granted that you, educated, affluent, and intelligent reader, also like Mad Men, the best television show ever that is on basic cable right now.

Bearing all of that in mind, here is a round-up of every Mad Men recap I read, or have read, or is worth reading. You can thank me in the comments.

Slate's TV Club, for a serious take
Project Rungay -- for a stylish, thoughtful take
Television Without Pity -- for a straightforward take
Culture Vulture -- for an analytical take
Pajiba -- for a cheerfully bitchy take
The Awl -- for historical and cultural context
Best Week Ever for shits, giggles, and Photoshopping.

You're welcome! Let me know if I missed a good one.

Kiss me, I voted!

2010-09-14T16:36:00.000-04:00

Voting in the primaries is so exciting. You know your vote is going to count, since almost no one turns out. You know it matters, since local politicians, unlike state or national ones, often manage to get things done.

So, bright and early this morning, I popped into my polling place, got my fancy new optical scan ballot, and went to a booth to fill it out. Progressives down the line, check, check, check. That much was easy. Then I got to a long list of names I'd never heard of all running for Judicial Convention Delegate. The instructions said, "Pick any eleven."

My pen poised in the air, I decided to do what I always do when I'm faced with a choice of strangers: Start with ladies and Jews and then, when I run out of those, pick the best names. (This is how I landed with my first doctor in New York, the unforgettable Democleia Gottesman.)

However, this morning though I found myself gripped by a crisis of confidence. What if "Benjamin Abelman" couldn't live up to the name? What if "Mercedes Neira" rode more like a Kia? As much as I loved the idea of "John Longo" marrying "Karen Johnson" for the sake of their future hyphenated children, how could I base my vote on a giggle?

In the end I didn't vote for anyone. A step forward for representational democracy? Who knows.

The Other Ester lives!

2010-09-10T18:51:00.001-04:00

Dude, there are plenty of reasons life Does Not Meet Expectations right now, and I don't care about any of them. My essay, "The Other Ester," is above the fold on The Morning News, a website I've been reading since college.

What a perfect way to usher in New Year #5771.

A Dirty but Important Question

2010-08-31T22:00:00.001-04:00

Internets! Help me out. I've sold another essay (yay) to some very nice folks and, in the editing process, a question was raised:

To what does "second base" refer?

In my essay, I reflect on an encounter in summer camp where my boyfriend continually tried and failed to get me excited about him. I should never have dated him; I wasn't attracted to him, and I couldn't make myself pretend. This meant our relationship had an antebellum quality: we held hands, we took walks, he kissed me and I allowed it. It was all very proper and chaste.

Sure, we were 13. But this was a guy whose exploits with his previous girlfriend were legendary. In fact, I think he rather fancied himself a Barney (in the "How I Met Your Mother" sense, not the "Flintstones" sense).

On the last day of camp, he made a desperate move. While his mother waited outside in the minivan, he brought me back into his empty bunk, looked into my eyes, and told me that he loved me.

I knew what he meant. I was a pretty savvy -- and somewhat cynical -- middle-schooler. His "I love you" was a grand gesture, one that was meant to sweep me off my feet and, most importantly, out of my shirt.

Thinking fast, I ran through my options. (What would Scarlet O'Hara do?) I couldn't lie and say I loved him too. All the same, I couldn't be honest and confess I didn't love him, that I didn't even like him. Not on the last day of camp!

His was, indeed, a very clever gambit. As I saw it, I had one course of action, and I followed it: I cried. Thus I was spared from having to give any answer and from having to engage in any hanky-panky.

Ah, the love lives of teenagers. Very well. In the essay, I refer to boob-related hanky-panky as "second base." My editor flagged that. Her husband, she said, recalled a different definition of the term. This stupid t-shirt seems to agree with me. Wikipedia has opinions, of course, but my editor specifically asked me to survey my friends, who are more reliable.

Friends, what say you? 2nd base = boobs? Or something else altogether?

Post 1,500!

2010-08-25T14:36:00.002-04:00

In honor of this momentous occasion, we're having ribs.

We're also having contradictions. Perhaps this is the Walt Whitman problem ("I am large, I contain multitudes"). Perhaps it's just a 4th Cold Rainy Day in a Row problem (I am sulky, I am dissatisfied). Just for example:

I want to buy an apartment
I want to move to Taiwan

I want to lose weight
I want to love myself

I bought these shoes cuz they were cute
I bought these shoes cuz they were on sale
(These shoes give me blisters and I'm still wearing them)

This makes it all better:

{via DailyPuppy}

The More You Know ...

2010-08-16T16:29:00.005-04:00

PSA of the week, courtesy of my having time to kill. You're welcome.

Men more likely to cheat on women with bigger paychecks, study says - CNN.com. Like MUCH more likely: "Men who are completely economically dependent on their female partners are five times more likely to cheat than men in relationships with women who earned similar amounts."

Thanks, CNN! I needed an excuse to hop off the career ladder and focus on my writing which, in the past six months, has netted me a total of $100.00. It does seem to me, though, that a man who is completely economically dependent on his female partner is a unicorn. Could anyone really gather enough unicorns to make a statistically-significant sample?

Mythology aside, I can't resign myself to a happy, faithful, penurious marriage just yet, because, as we know from the Sopranos, Mad Men, and the entire history of EVERYTHING since we got down from the trees, "A man who makes significantly more money than his girlfriend or wife is also more likely to cheat."

Hmmm, it's wet and salty in here. Where are we again, exactly? Oh yes: we're in a pickle. By "we," of course, I mean ladies. We're damned if we support a guy and damned if we are supported by him. Is there any hope in sight, CNN-cited pseudo-scientists?

"Men in relationships with women who made about 75 percent of the men's income were the least likely to cheat."

Well! There it is. Make exactly 3/4 of whatever your resident male rakes in and you'll be set. Or go lez. I know which I think would be less of a hassle.

There are fun facts aplenty in this article about How Not to Die While Walking from the NYT. Don't cross in the crosswalk, for example. Avoid "crosstown thoroughfares like 125th Street or Canal Street," where half of all pedestrian deaths occur. (Yikes!)

You want more? Of course you do:

Do not go anywhere between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., stick to the side streets and skip Manhattan entirely. ... cabs accounted for far fewer pedestrian accidents in Manhattan than privately owned vehicles. Jaywalkers, surely the city’s most numerous scofflaws, were involved in fewer collisions than their law-abiding counterparts who waited for the "walk" sign — although accidents involving jaywalkers are more likely to result in death.

And one discovery could permanently upend one of the uglier stereotypes of the motoring world: in 80 percent of city accidents that resulted in a pedestrian's death or serious injury, a male driver was behind the wheel. (Fifty-seven percent of New York City vehicles are registered to men.)

This edition of "the More You Know" is brought to you by my latent anti-man bias, apparently. Some of my closest friends are guys, I swear!

One last tidbit: "Pedestrians would be well advised to favor sidewalks to the right of moving traffic — left-hand turns were three times as likely to cause a deadly crash as right-hand turns." Left-hand turns: sinister & deadly. Got it.

By the way, feeling good about America these days? You shouldn't be.

Lastly, this just in: Power corrupts! No word yet on "absolute power," but I have a working hypothesis.

How to Offend Midwesterners in 3 Easy Steps

2010-08-13T14:41:00.003-04:00

First, accidentally insult their taste in literature, like so:

SETTING: Airport bookstore.
PERSONAE: Two middle-aged blonde ladies, nicely blow-dried and made-up, browsing the mass-market paperbacks, and me, a compulsive know-it-all.

LADY 1: Is this any good? [holds up Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]
LADY 2: Oh, I don't know! I was wondering that too!
ME: Yes! It's great. I read all of them. They're good! And I don't even usually read that stuff!

[PAUSE]

LADY 1: Oh! ... What do you read?

Next, get really flustered, look blank, and when you finally begin speaking again, use the lord's name in vain.

ME [flailing pathetically]: Oh! ... God, everything ... books ...

Finally, exacerbate the problem by continuing to babble and then running away.

ME: I'm sorry, that sounded so snobby! I didn't mean -- uh -- I mean -- bye!

I am officially almost as bad as Sarah "Um, all of them" Palin.

Otherwise, my first visit to the hot, beating heart of America, St. Louis, MO, went smoothly. Except for the fact that, five minutes into the first big group meeting, I dropped a pretzel down my shirt and couldn't find it. I didn't want to be caught staring into my own cleavage, but come on! A chunk of wheaty goodness covered in salt doesn't just disappear.

Being that it was 100 degrees out there in flyover country, I had to worry what kind of radioactive effect my bosom would have on that pretzel -- would it turn into Spider Man? or the delicious mutant equivalent? Worse, would it decide to stage a re-entrance by falling out of my clothes at an inopportune moment?

Even went I ducked into a bathroom to fiddle around with my bra, I couldn't find the offender, so I had to give up and live in fear. Luckily, the pretzel and I both emerged unscathed from the experience: it showed up later, looking all innocent, on my hotel room floor, and I managed to give away every business card I'd brought with me without being overtaken by a monstrous sweaty monster bursting out of my shirt. Win-win!

The Best American Writing of 2010

2010-08-06T10:33:00.001-04:00

Poetry by people who hate Elena Kagan and, most likely, all recent developments since Fluoridated water:

"The first thing wrong with this appointment; it is wrong according to the bible. Second she is againist the military which would place her in an unamerician position, therefore should have been rejected. Every senator who voted yes should be impeached for lack of mental ability to ascertain right from wrong"

"This is a sad day for God fearing,Jesus loving strate people in the US.As long as obama is in office he knows he has one sure voteon the court hopefully his will be a short stay."

"Jews make up less than 3 percent of the US population. Jews now make up 33.33 percent of the US Supreme Court. Something is WRONG with this picture. Only a handful of Bolshevik Jews took control of Russia in 1917 and eventually slaughtered tens of millions of Orthodox Christians. America, BEWARE."

The Gun on the Wall

2010-08-03T20:00:00.000-04:00

When I picked up an unabridged (though yes, translated) version of the the Canterbury Tales a couple of weeks ago, I'm not sure what I was expecting. Stories, of course. So many novels lately successfully weave together loosely-related stories: A Visit from the Goon Squad, which was so exciting it had me up at 3:00 AM thinking about narrative; The Imperfectionists, which is not quite as good as I hoped it would be, but still worth reading; Olive Kitteridge; and the Ms. Hempel Chronicles, off the top of my head. I wanted to see how the master, and perhaps originator, of the genre pulled it off.

I knew some of the stories would be a little bawdy, others would be religious, and many, if not most, would have morals. But I was not prepared for what I found. In fact I was so unprepared that, reading it on the subway one morning across from an Orthodox mother and daughter, I got so flustered I had to turn the book over on my lap.

Friends, Chaucer likes the word "cunt."

Sure, he's not the only one. Characters on the Sopranos made liberal use of the word, usually as a prelude to or an excuse for murder. Henry Miller sprinkles it on his prose like salt. But everyone knows that Henry Miller is rated R, or NC-17. I had no idea the Canterbury Tales were. They seem so staid simply by virtue of being old.

That's the real shock here. It's not just that Chaucer enjoys an edgy, monosyllabic word that perhaps carried less weight in England 700 years ago than it does in the US today. (Seems possible, according to one etymological history.) It's that these pilgrims, Chaucer's characters, have such gleefully filthy imaginations. Wives cheat on husbands with students, lodgers, cousins, monks, anyone available, really. Virgins are hardly immune from the lust that seems to overtake married women: when they are surprised by amorous fellas, they give as good as they get. And men? Men will leap on anything with two legs and a hole.

That, in short, is the venerable, aged, enduring classic the Canterbury Tales: smut, smut, more smut, some boring moralizing, a dash of out-of-the-blue Jew hate, followed by smut, smut, smut, and smut. Okay! Now the naked Chaucer from A Knight's Tale makes more sense to me.

Also shocking: I discovered this weekend, when I went home to join my family in picking out a headstone, that my father had a gun. True story. The man who, as far as I know, only ever shot off his mouth, bought a Smith & Wesson in New Mexico and brought it to DC shortly after moving there. The same Wild West instincts that were guiding him told him not to bother with a permit, apparently.

My mother bound the gun up in a kerchief inside an Anne Klein shoebox, which she taped shut and kept in her closet. And that's where it stayed. I never heard about, nor saw, the gun. Until now.

Pow.

An Exciting Summer

2010-07-27T15:29:00.001-04:00

Now that he has recovered and once again looks as pretty as Betty Draper, I can show you this. Ready? This is the Before shot. It's a little gruesome but, let's be honest, also a little bit of a turn on, am I right? Mr. Ben, post-trauma:

Now I can look at it without cringing (in fact I keep a copy on my iPhone, the way men used to carry photos of their spouse and kids in their wallets). At the time, I walked in the door, saw him, and burst into tears. I may have said, like Amy in "Little Women" did when Jo cut her hair, "How could you! Your one beauty!" But only for effect.

To add to the drama of this hottest-July-on-record, I went to my very first NYT-sanctioned, gay, Jewish wedding in a Friends Meeting House this past weekend. The lovely Mr. Ben scraped himself off the floor of his office, where he has been spending all of his time since he finished recovering from head trauma, to accompany me. Also lovely: hanging out with lots of Swatties in floral dresses and sneaking downstairs to play ping pong in Tarble with Little Eva.

Less lovely, and more in keeping with the themes of Summer 2010: One of the brides collapsed under the chuppah. It was about 110 degrees outside, where we had all spent a lemonade-infused cocktail hour, and the FMH, where the wedding was held, had no air-conditioning. The Quakers, bless their well-lit, self-abnegating souls, nearly had blood on their hands.

It being a Jewish wedding, about ten doctors immediately rushed forward. Everything about me was paralyzed except my heart, which sounded like a popcorn popper -- I couldn't help but remember what happened the last time I saw someone collapse at a wedding.* In this case, the bride was revived and she and her co-bride finished out the ceremony sitting on the floor hand-in-hand. They rose to stomp on one glass each to a shout of "Mazel tov!" from the very-relieved crowd.

I also chipped my toenail polish. A lesser tragedy, I guess. Could the rest of this summer manage to be a little calmer, please? Or, for your own sakes, would you all promise not to ride bikes or get married until this cloud has passed. Thank you.

*Not to give the story away but it was the priest officiating my babysitter's nuptials and he, um, died. Just like that. (He was old; I was only 10. Those sorts of things leave a mark.)

Angelina Jolie and Lisbeth Salander

2010-07-21T16:42:00.002-04:00

This is like the third article I've seen about Angelina Jolie in Salt, in a role originally written for Tom Cruise: Angelina Jolie embodies today's action heroine, in life and on-screen. Yet again, someone manages to string together 500-or-so breathless words about Women in Action without mentioning Lisbeth Salander or her onscreen representation, Noomi Rapace.

Granted, the Swedish film version of the Milennium movies has not reached the heights of popularity scaled by Stieg Larsson's books, or at least not in America. But it struck me how much of what is true about Jolie is true about Larsson's femme fatale. For example:

Di Bonaventura compares Jolie to Steve McQueen in the way she combines her athleticism and acting ability: "Steve McQueen wasn't a big guy. She's not a big girl. He wasn't pumped up. She's not pumped up. But you believed Steve McQueen was going to kick whoever's ass it was. And you believe she can kick whoever's ass it is. And that's attitude, not physicality."

Exactly. And it's attitude that makes Lisbeth Salander one of the most compelling characters in popular literature. Cooler than Alice, hotter than Dorothy (and with no home to get back to), Salander -- antisocial, bisexual, moody, brainy, and rough around the edges -- represents an important shift of how we think about heroines, and women in general.

The fact that Americans can not only stomach a protagonist who could not be less interested in pleasing men, but, in fact, clamor for more is telling. Her popularity means that we shouldn't be so shocked that Angelina Jolie can play a Russian spy; we should be shocked when people try to give us limited and dated notions of what audiences will and won't accept.

The most-repeated anecdote about the making of Salt is that after the character Edwin became Evelyn, not much changed in the script -- except that where Edwin was supposed to save his wife and children, director Phillip Noyce made Evelyn's husband escape on his own so as not be emasculated. After he caught flak for that, Noyce claimed the original ending was changed because it was too "conventional." I think the idea that no man's pride can survive a woman's helping him is too conventional, not to mention insulting.

One of the things I love about the Millenium trilogy is that various people do the saving: No one person is the hero. Lisbeth Salander is saved, saves herself, and saves her older male lover. His balls do not fall off in shame over his having been rescued by a girl. Perhaps this is because he is Swedish, but I choose to believe it's because he is awesome.

In the same vein, anyone who is strong enough to play Angelina Jolie's husband convincingly is strong enough to withstand being rescued by her.

I'm Not Surprised

2010-07-20T10:52:00.001-04:00

President Obama got front row seats to hear Elaine Stritch perform in his own living room. But his experience, as it turns out, was much like mine:

With Broadway at the White House, Elaine Stritch Is at Liberty (to Forget Her Lyrics) - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

Saturday night, Mr. Ben and I saw A Little Night Music, which is a favorite of mine from way back, starring the ineffable, ageless Bernadette Peters and the ineffable but visibly aged Elaine Stritch. (Reminding me of a classic Sondheim song "I'm Still Here" about women on stage: "First you're another sloe-eyed vamp, then someone's mother, then you're camp ...")

The show was wonderful -- the chorus especially good, the music lovely -- but hilarious Ms. Stritch could not, for the life of her, remember her lines. Most of the time she covered for herself well, and a fellow in the first row prompted her when necessary. Still, at one point, I shrunk back in my seat feeling awful for her. Even if it is true that she has not seen a sunrise sober in longer than I've been alive, she is a professional, and for a professional to lose face in front of a Broadway audience must be devastating.

Worse, though, is losing face in front of a President. Even if he's gracious about it, as apparently the Obamas were. Regardless, I thought the ad placement on the NYT article about the event was unintentionally hilarious and ironic:

As was the choice of song. The words she forgot while singing in the White House? From "I'm Still Here." Though she is, of course, and thank God. I'm thrilled I got to see her live, even in somewhat fumbling form, and I'm sure the Obamas are too.

Today's WTF? moment is brought to you by ...

2010-07-14T16:39:00.001-04:00

Apparently, in at least one paragraph of one story, I Write Like Leo Tolstoy:

I write like
Leo Tolstoy

I Write Like by M�moires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Also like Stephen King (?) and Daniel Defoe (??). Do these guys write at all like each other?

Subsequent paragraphs produced comparisons to Dan Brown (ew!), Charles Dickens (how?), and finally Kurt Vonnegut (okay, that one kind of makes sense). Do I not write like any women, or are there no women in their "famous author" database? Should I make anything of the fact that I apparently I change styles six times over the course of one piece?

Thanks to Tablet for the befuddlement.

Bishops, Bishops Everywhere

2010-07-13T12:25:00.004-04:00

The depression that gets to one after reading this article -- Abuse Took Years to Ignite Belgian Clergy Inquiry -- is at least somewhat relieved by reading this one, Church of England Paves the Way for Women Bishops. So I recommend engaging with them in that order, and then taking deep, restorative breaths.

Or avoid thinking about how religion often makes people's lives worse instead of better altogether by getting away from the computer. Go to PortSide in Red Hook, Brooklyn (near to which, on August 3rd, you can watch Jaws on the water.) Read a strikingly good book, or several.

Play pinochle. Eat something delicious. See Bernadette Peters & Elaine Stritch together on Broadway.

Plan a drunken Popsicle party in Prospect Park. See writer-who'll-change-your-world David Mitchell live at BookCourt. Watch pretty, joyous people kissing or a hot, dangerous woman kick ass.

Jon Hamm is helpful, in Mad Men and in person:

W: Rebecca, in stories earlier this year about the breakup of Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet—
Hall: Oh, you’re going to do that, are you?
W: —your name was mentioned in a way that implicated you in the breakup of their marriage. Is there any accuracy to that perception?
Hall: No.
Hamm: The reality is that I broke them up.
Hall: Jon Hamm was sleeping with Sam Mendes.
W: Wow. Does a sex tape exist?
Hamm: Does it? He directed it. It’s beautiful.

Oh Jon. You can Hamm me anytime.

At any rate, that's how I'm getting by.

Trajectory of a Weekend (and a Face)

2010-07-06T15:53:00.004-04:00

I went down to DC for this:

And returned first thing the next morning to this:

Poor Mr. Ben finally got a break from work at some point over the weekend and he celebrated with a bike ride to Far Rockaway with a couple of friends. He made it all the way to the middle of nowhere, then flew off his bike, landed on his face, and had to be taken to a hospital.

When you have head trauma necessitating reconstructive surgery, you do not want to be in Brooklyn ("Shocking Video Shows Brooklyn Hospital's Neglect as Patient Dies in Emergency Room") in July ("A recent study found that more patients die of medical mistakes in the month of July than any other month"). Especially not on a Federal Holiday.

In many respects, Mr. Ben was very lucky. Our two friends who were with him acted as surrogate parents, amping up their concern to the level of Shirley MacClaine in Terms of Endearment as necessary, while the army surgeon called in by the hospital stitched Mr. Ben's face back together. He didn't lose any teeth or break anything except his nose.

Poor nose! It already had a Bert-ish sort of thing going on. In fact we ARE Bert & Ernie:

EXHIBIT A

EXHIBIT B

I mean, right? Even the initials match up.

Anyway, Mr. Ben / Bert will be recovering at our apartment for the next few days. If, like Mr. Collins, you would like to condole with him, he is there, receiving guests, flowers, and ideas for what his nose should look like once the plastic surgeon is done with it.

The Piano Man Has Been Drinking

2010-07-02T13:20:00.003-04:00

Last night I wrote in my journal, "I'm going home this weekend." Then I stopped and stared at the page, because "home" has never been so abstract. My parents sold the house I grew up in, the house on, yes, for real, Unicorn Lane, and moved to an apartment. This was somewhat tragic for me. However, they managed to squeeze the house into the apartment so that nothing looked *that* different, and to some extent I was satisfied.

Now the house is gone and the apartment is gone. My mother's new apartment is not yet finished, so in the meantime she is shacked up with my grandma. When I go down this weekend, then, I will be stay there with them -- three generations of females under one roof with the piano I get calls about from time to time.

[Phone rings]
ME: Hi Mom!
MOM: Hi sweetie. Grandma's been worrying about the piano again.
ME: Mom, we've talked about this. I can't take the piano.
MOM: I know, I know, but --
ME: No but! We already share a small one-bedroom with two African drums, a bicycle, and a whole arboretum of chairs!*
MOM: I know, I know. ... Are you thinking of maybe buying a bigger place?

Well, regardless, to DC I go, and I guess "home" is wherever my mom is, unless she moves to Mississippi or Brazil. Oh, dear, they must be very sad in Brazil today. I am happy, however, because I am rooting for the Netherlands and Ghana. (The Netherlands because we had Dutch au pairs growing up; because they have the best airport in Europe; & because it's not their fault Anne Frank died / Ghana because a number of my friends have lived there and not all of them contracted malaria; because the players are handsome; & because of white guilt. If Ghana plays Holland I do not know what I will do.)

When I was watching the end of the game today, an African gentleman approached me and asked who won. "The Netherlands!" I said. He looked at me without understanding. "Holland?" I tried. "The Dutch?" Still nothing. Finally, I said, "Europe. Europe won." And at last he said, "Ah! Okay."

That gentleman is almost as good at sports as I am! I really only know enough to root against countries that harbored Nazis or countries I'm temporarily mad at because I've just read the devastating but extremely well-written British novel, Little Bee.

But perhaps this is obvious. Perhaps you know this about me, that I am bad at sports, the same you already know Mel Gibson is an asshole and Shalom Auslander is adorably neurotic.

*I'm not sure how it happened but in our one-bedroom, we have:

- one arm chair
- one black metal desk chair
- two white table chairs
- two blue smaller arm-chairs
- one wooden fold-up chair
and
- one huge wooden rocking chair.

There are so many chairs there almost isn't room for people. Still, my friends cried out for a couch, so now, on top of all that seating, there is also a couch.

Being Ladylike is Overrated

2010-06-28T17:10:00.002-04:00

Women who make shit happen and are imprinted in the Book of Life are generally not the ladylike type. The exemplary Elena Kagan -- currently on track to be our next Supreme Court justice -- is a Jewish New Yorker with bad hair, bland clothes, and possible lesbionic tendencies. (Carpet munching? So not lady-like.) (Though to be fair, appearing or acting sexual in any way is not very ladylike either.) For the next few days as she makes it through her confirmation hearings, however, she will put a good show: she will cross her legs at the ankles, wear skirts, smile pretty, laugh at the jokes of men, and say as little as possible.

When it's over, she may never have to pretend again. I will be very happy for her. I am guessing that Camille Paglia will not. In the NYT this weekend (on Pride Sunday, in fact, because Gray Lady editors have a sense of humor) she laments the fact that white men and white women have fused to become a sort of androgynous, asexual unit:

[A] new pill, despite its unforeseen side effects, is necessary to cure the sexual malaise that appears to have sunk over the country. ...

In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in sanitized office space. Men must neuter themselves, while ambitious women postpone procreation. Androgyny is bewitching in art, but in real life it can lead to stagnation and boredom, which no pill can cure.

Now, whose fault is it that being ladylike/gentlemanly is out and androgynous in? "[E]lite schools, with their ideological view of gender as a social construct." She calls them feeder cells, which is super cute because as you may know that's a label usually used for terrorists.

She goes on to explain that white folks are screwed up because our men and our women both look like boys, whereas the darker-skinned folks have a more "healthy" ideal:

[V]isually, American men remain perpetual boys, as shown by the bulky T-shirts, loose shorts and sneakers they wear from preschool through midlife. The sexes, which used to occupy intriguingly separate worlds, are suffering from over-familiarity, a curse of the mundane. There’s no mystery left. ... American actresses have desexualized themselves, confusing sterile athleticism with female power. Their current Pilates-honed look is taut and tense — a boy’s thin limbs and narrow hips combined with amplified breasts. Contrast that with Latino and African-American taste, which runs toward the healthy silhouette of the bootylicious Beyoncé.

Oh my god, Camille Paglia, have you lost your cotton-picking mind? Where is the proof of any of this? First and foremost: what sexual malaise? Seems to me like Americans are doing it early and often (and outside). The subset of Americans she is pounding on here, the educated bourgeoisie, is actually the most likely to have stable marriages. Wouldn't that probably be less true if men really did just feel like cogs in the domestic machine?

In Paglia's world, there don't seem to be any lesbians (mystifyingly, since she herself identifies as one). There are no folks who find gender-bending or androgyny titillating. There are, in fact, no real people at all, only figments of her imagination.

My friend Veronica put it best in a consolatory email she sent after reading the article:

Please let me express my condolences for your sexually suffocated marriage. You must just be killing Ben with your anxiety and ambition. And, my God, he probably has no idea what to do with your Venusian figure. What a shame. But, then again, I should probably question how I can be a Latina lesbian who prefers my girlfriend's broad shoulders to Beyonce's extra-yeasty double-rise curves.

Extra-yeasty. I myself rather fit that description, being composed almost entirely of cleavage; it is hard for me to be as ladylike as I sometimes feel pulled to be. In those moments, though, I try to relax and think of Elena Kagan, not to mention Margaret Cho, Alison Bechdel, Victoria Woodhull, Michelle Obama, and everyone else who has made the world better by simply being who they are.

Events, Summer 2010

2010-06-21T17:21:00.001-04:00

Last summer, I was rather proud of how many things I did for $20 or less -- mini-golf on Governor's Island, a Magic School Bus Tour through several boroughs, burlesque shows, Moth shows, drag bingo ... And, as I believe in an Onwards and Upwards theory of life management, this summer should be better yet.

So far, I've seen the New York Liberty play at Madison Square Garden ($10) and Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet, the Little Stranger) interviewed by Maud Newton (free). I'm psyched to make it to a Brooklyn Cyclones game ($8-$16) and maybe a Dorothy Parker Society event (just for contrast).

The calendar is shaping up nicely.

+ Monday, June 28: NY Moth StorySLAM. Showing Off at The Bitter End

+ Wednesday, June 30: River to River: Beth Orton in Rockefeller Park

+ Wednesday, July 7: Riverside Park showing of The Never-Ending Story

+ Wednesday, July 14: Riverside Park showing of Pan's Labyrinth

+ Friday, July 16: David Mitchell (of Cloud Atlas, one of the #BooksThatChangedMyWorld) at Book Court.

+ Wednesday, July 21: Central Park Main Stage presents the Daily Show & Friends featuring Rob Riggle & Jamie Oliver

+ Thursday, July 22: The Big Lebowski in Brooklyn Bridge Park

+ Saturday, July 31: Get out the peasant skirts -- it's Lilith Fair!

+ Thursday, August 5: Brokeback Mountain in Brooklyn Bridge Park

+ Monday, August 23: Bryant Park showing of Bonnie and Clyde

+ Wednesday, September 8: Jonathan Franzen at the B&N in Union Square with his new book, Freedom

+ Sunday, September 12: Brooklyn Book Festival

My favorite writers are middle-aged

2010-06-16T17:32:00.001-04:00

I came to a strange but inescapable conclusion when I found myself largely unmoved by the New Yorker's "20 Under 40": the writers that thrill me most tend to be of a different generation than me. Rivka Galchen, off of the New Yorker list, is brilliant both in person and on the page (as I discovered at the Brooklyn Literary Festival and in reading Atmospheric Disturbances, respectively); and, before this, I felt bad that Sarah Shun-lien Bynum hadn't gotten more attention for her rendition of the same song that won Olive Kitteridge the Pulitzer Prize.

TheMillions.com put together a good alternate list which includes Myla Goldberg, whose Bee Season finally taught me, at the age of 20, not to judge books by covers, and which inspired me to aim big in writing my own first novel.

Still, I realize, my favorites -- and the authors of some of the #BooksThatChangedMyWorld, as Susan Orlean put it yesterday -- are not the bright young things, or at least, not anymore. They are, in fact, either Middle-Aged, British, or Dead (though rarely all three at once):

Jonathan Franzen (middle-aged)
David Mitchell (British)
Ann Patchett (buying a Corvette as we speak)
Susanna Clarke (Limey)
Jane Austen (dead)
Dorothy Sayers (as-a-doornail)
Michael Chabon (menopausal)
Anne Lamott (grandmother!)
Marilynne Robinson (virtually a crone)
Dorothy Parker (worm-meat, but hopefully happy at last)

Some books #ChangedMyWorld at the time but have since faded comfortably into the ether:

Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City and Tom Robbins's Still Life with Woodpecker taught me that there was life outside my Jewish Day School. WAY outside.
Bridge to Terebithia -- Wait, you mean people you love can *die*?
The Princess Bride -- And life isn't fair?
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry -- And there's serious, endemic injustice built into the system? (This series affected me even more strongly than To Kill a Mockingbird. Though I loved them both.)
Midnight's Children -- And other countries have stories worth hearing?
Gone With the Wind -- And the South was a victim in the Civil War? (I believed this for about five minutes, until my father sat me down to have a chat. Still, that was a very disorienting five minutes.)
The Mists of Avalon -- And patriarchy has not always been the default operating system of every functioning society in the world?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- And something really funny can still be profound?
Slaughterhouse Five and Vonnegut in general -- ditto. That's a lesson I never stop learning.

NOTE: If you want to complain about the "20 Under 40" list, Gawker has created a handy-dandy How To guide. Have at it!

Immersion

2010-06-15T14:16:00.003-04:00

Mr. Ben has photos up from our tour through Israel on his Flickr page, as well on the Book Face. They show an experience of extremes: tranquil scenes on the Sea of Galilee and refugee camps in Jerusalem; old churches and modern beaches; desert hikes and a Netanya wedding for one of the most beautiful brides I've ever seen, the sick-but-beaming, accommodating*, eminently-deserving Tamar.

Well, that's the holy land for you.

And now for a short tangent:

Who among you hates the subject of Israel/Palestine? Could I get a "whoop, whoop!" please? Certainly I'm not the only one.

The subject has been coming up persistently over the last month or so, mostly in my office but also, of course, in the news. Without getting into the details, I can say that it's been frustrating, and I have had to talk to and/or listen to people who do not meet my stringent standards for conversation on the topic.

What are my stringent standards? I'm so glad you asked:

1) No Bumper Stickers. I am thoroughly uninterested in anyone whose thoughts on the subject can be summed up by two words and an exclamation point, unless those words are "It's complicated!"

2) No Assholes. Do you write emails in Comic Sans bold? Do you roll your eyes and/or sigh heavily a lot anytime anyone else talks? Do you refuse to admit when you don't know enough about a subject to venture an opinion? Then go talk to a message board filled with your compatriots, friend, and stop making my ears bleed.

With that in mind, I was a bit nervous about heading over to Israel. As it turned out, I needn't have been: I'm a lot more comfortable talking Israel/Palestine politics while in the neighborhood, so to speak. Maybe it's because, if my discussion buddies are there too, that testifies to a certain level of understanding and commitment to the issue? I'm not sure. At any rate, Mr. Ben and I talked to each other, international strangers in our Tel Aviv hostel, and folks on our Im Amim tour, and we never had a problem. That was a significant relief.

Politics aside, we had a wonderful time. I'm not quite sure I'm ready to be home, to tell the truth. And seeing Tamar get married to a great guy ten years after we lived in Israel together, and spent most of our time moping to the Indigo Girls, was a nearly-transcendental experience. A whole cluster of us traveled over from the US to celebrate with her -- and that included improvising a mikvah experience** in the Mediterranean Sea at sunset and fetching chairs for the hora and finally cutting the neglected wedding cake and dancing to techno remixes until our legs collapsed beneath us. I am so privileged to have gotten a chance to be there.

*This is not flattery. The huppah started an hour late, after the sun had already set; the rabbi overfilled the ceremonial glass of wine (red, not white), and then splashed it on Tamar's wedding dress; the cake was forgotten about until after the guests had left; and yet despite these, and other provocations, Tamar remained radiantly graceful and happy. What's the opposite of a Bridezilla? A BrideTeresa? The world needs a new word.

**The Hebrew word for immersion in a mikvah, "t'vilah," is the same verb used for immersion in baptismal waters AND for immersion in water that leads to drowning. That sums up a pretty complex and crazy country, doesn't it?

On the beach

2010-05-28T12:22:00.003-04:00

On the beach
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

I was in Santa Cruz on a business trip and this was as close to the sand as I got. Can you tell from my shadow-self that I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, a blazer, and a scarf? Because it was FORTY NINE DEGREES that morning.

Of course, when I finally returned to the proper coast and I was four thousand miles from the Pacific, it hit 90 in NYC.

Experience has taught me that I am sort of an Unexpected Weather Goddess. When I went to Arizona, the wind roared like an angry child the entire time. When I went to LA, it rained. When I went to Florida, it rained. When I went to Seattle, it was 85 degrees and sunny. The only day I spent in San Francisco, it was so beautiful I took a nap on the grass. (Also I had a migraine from seeing the wretched mess & wasted opportunity that was A.I.)

In a week, Mr. Ben and I head to Israel, where I can only hope my streak will break. Perhaps there is so much religion in the air that my powers will be completely drowned out. This trip -- ostensibly to celebrate my darling friend Tamar's wedding -- also serves as a ten-year anniversary: those of us going over now to hold up her huppah on the beach were there a decade ago after our high school graduation.

Surely the country has changed since then. (The intifada started just after we left, and there's probably a totally different frozen yogurt craze.) We'll spend some time in Tel Aviv, and some in Netanya, where the ceremony takes place. But what else should we make sure to see or do? Like a barista, I am thrilled to receive any and all tips.

"Bitchtar": Best Reviews of SATC

2010-05-27T16:03:00.002-04:00

Since I am not planning to watch this gross disfigurement of a series I had real affection for, my only enjoyment out of its existence comes from creating a Bad Review Revue*:

Dodai at Jezebel starts us off right with an augmented montage of stills:

Salon gets its digs in twice-over:
1) "This movie might as well be set in Czarist Russia or on the Ice-Diamond Planet of K'Znorg, for all the realism it provides." -- Andrew O'Hehir
2) "It's like the cinematic progeny of "Not Without My Daughter" and "Arabian Nights" with a makeover by Valentino." -- Wajahat Ali

"The film is an epic eyesore. It’s as if they set out to make a movie that said, 'You’re right! We are hideous!'" -- David Edelstein

"Sex And The City 2 panders to that audience to the point of self-destruction, squandering whatever goodwill the franchise had left after the first so-so movie by plopping its beloved characters into a series of garish vignettes that throw their shallowness into sharp relief. By the point where proud, menopausal jezebel Samantha stands shrieking in the middle of a Middle Eastern marketplace while waving magnum condoms and flipping off hijab-clad Muslims on their way to prayer, it’s inconceivable that anyone would want to even be in the presence of “a Samantha,” much less be one." -- Onion AV Club

"David: What did you think???
Neel: I thought it was perhaps the worst movie I've seen in the past three years.
Neel: Like, I am having a hard time thinking of something I hated more. You were sitting next to me. How many times do you think I checked my BlackBerry?
David: My cellphone battery was dead by the end of the movie.
Neel: The over/under would probably start at 50 times?
Neel: It was epically, cosmically, comically bad.
Neel: Actually not comically bad. There was nothing even remotely funny about its badness."

-- the Awl

And finally:

"Bitchtar" -- NYPost

God, this makes me sad. I have a feeling this one will resist even parody.

*Original credit for which must go to Matthew Baldwin.

Delayed Gratification

2010-05-19T09:21:00.001-04:00

It has been edited in parts, and the name of the byline is not quite mine, but who cares?* My essay, "Delayed Gratification," is up on Nerve.com as one of their featured pieces! Check it out: http://nerve.com/features/true-stories/delayed-gratification.

N.B.: Family members and anyone worried about knowing too much about me, read at your own risk. Nerve is, you know, a sexy site, with sexy stuff in it. Also, they italicize an awful lot of words.

*Okay, I kind of do care. I'm trying not to! I remember this feeling from working at the Swarthmore student paper, the Phoenix. Focusing on the edits is silly. I'm on Nerve! The world can see me! The one comment that's up so far is incredibly sweet!

this is what i get for reading polls

2010-05-13T14:42:00.002-04:00

As some of you know, I'm a bit of a compulsive when it comes to numbers, as long as there is no arithmetic involved. Every day at 1:05, for example, I check my boyfriend Barack Obama's Gallup approval numbers. Not everyone loves him as much as I do (I know! Crazy!), and the fickle public must be monitored.

Then, when I'm done with Gallup, I head over to Pollster.com to get a sense of the bigger picture. Most of the time I scan the list of new polls, investigate three or four, then delve into the comments before recoiling like a dog who smacked into an electric fence.

This time I only got as far as this NBC/WSJ Poll before succumbing to whimpering & whiplash:

US: National Survey (NBC/WSJ 5/6-10)
Harry Enten | May 12, 2010

Topics: National

NBC News / Wall Street Journal
5/6-10/10; 1,000 adults, 3.1% margin of error
Mode: Live telephone interviews
(NBC: story, results; WSJ: story, results)

National

Approval / Disapproval
Obama: 50% Approve, 44% Disapprove (chart)
Obama Economy: 48 / 46 (chart)
Obama Terrorism: 48 / 42
Congress: 21 / 72 (chart)

Positive / Negative
Barack Obama: 49 / 38 (chart)
Democratic Party: 37 / 42
Republican Party: 30 / 42
Tea Party Movement: 31 / 30
British Petroleum: 11 / 45
Charlie Crist: 8 / 16
General Motors: 37 / 27
Citibank: 10 / 43
Toyota: 31 / 34
Goldman Sachs: 4 / 50

Preference for Congress after 2010 elections
Democratic Control: 44%, Republican Control: 44%

Let's break this down. Obama's at 50% approval (fine) with a 2 point advantage on the issue of the economy (!). Everyone hates Charlie "Opportunist" Christ, whose sham marriage, which failed to get him on John McCain's ticket, will also fail to help him stay afloat in Florida. BP, which ruined our water, polls almost as badly as Citibank, which ruined our entire economy. The Democratic Party is exactly as popular as failed, bankrupt automakers General Motors, while probably this asshole who hacked kindergarteners to death in China is still viewed more favorably than Goldman Sucks. All more or less to be expected.

Then we get to the fun stuff.

"The Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally. It requires local and state law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if they have reason to suspect a person is in the country illegally, making it a crime for them to lack registration documents."
64% Support, 34% Oppose

"How likely do you think it is that the decision in Arizona to promote strong enforcement of immigrants who are NOT in the U.S. legally will lead to discrimination of Hispanic or Latino immigrants who ARE in the U.S. legally?"
66% Likely, 31% Unlikely

More Off-Shore Drilling
60% Support, 34% Oppose

So, there's this law, right? It requires that you have your papers on you at all times if you have even a tinge of melanin in your skin or a faint whiff of chile on your breath. As an LA councilman puts it in an LA Times piece on the boycott of the Saguaro State:

"Los Angeles is the second-largest city in this country, an immigrant city, an international city. It needs to have its voice heard," said Councilman Ed Reyes, one of the resolution's sponsors. "As an American, I cannot go to Arizona today without a passport. If I come across an officer who's having a bad day and feels that the picture on my ID is not me, I can be deported, no questions asked. That is not American."

Knowing that, how do the American people feel about this law? 64% of them think it is A-OK!

Well, back up a minute. Maybe they don't realize it's racist. No one likes racists or racism, right? That shit polls worse than Toyota. Let's ask the American people whether they think this new law will be racist.

Well, cock-a-doodle-doo! They don't care. 66% percent of respondents think that HELL YES, despite Jan Brewer's insistence to the contrary, this law will be racist. It doesn't bother them! Heck of a job, whiteys.

Oh, and as an extra kick in the pants, the poll then kindly informs us that 60% of Americans support *more* off-shore drilling, because what has the Gulf of Mexico ever done for us? Damned lazy, welfare-check-cashing, bean-eating, sombrero-wearing, American-job-stealing Gulf of Mexico. When was the last time we saw *its* passport? We say, let the sucker drown.

BONUS: In Portugal recently, the pope overlooked poverty, illiteracy, AIDS, iodine deficiencies, sexism, racism, religious extremism, child-rape, terrorism, environmental catastrophes and sinkholes that eat houses to declare that "same sex marriage and abortion were among the 'most insidious and dangerous challenges that today confront the common good.'" Just, you know, FYI.

Write from Wrong

2010-05-10T11:51:00.001-04:00

I have a bit of history with Gary Shteyngart. First I read Russian Debutante's Handbook and admired him. Then I read this interview in the Forward and despised him. Various people who have come in contact with him told me various unsavory stories that helped solidify my dislike, and I didn't read Absurdistan, which might have complicated it.

Now I read this interview with him and feel all conflicted. On one level, I can relate to an uncomfortable amount of what he says. Like this:

Before the book deal, while you were working those five years on the manuscript, did you identify yourself as a writer?

No, no, no! Are you kidding me? I’m always shocked by Americans and their self-confidence. They haven’t published anything, and you ask them what they do and they say: “I’m a writer.” I say, “Oh, who is your publisher?” And they say, “Oh, well…I’ve been working on this book for the past 87 years and it’s brilliant but…” I do have to say that takes a lot of chutzpah and that’s wonderful. It really means that you think of yourself as a writer. I didn’t think of myself as a writer until the book came out.

On the other hand, we diverge here:

What were you spending your money on at the time?

Beer. Wine. Vodka.

Oh, Russians. I got my hair cut by a Russian this weekend. Or, more succinctly, I got bobbed! The Russian in question, Leila, was excellent at what she did, and yet she still managed to rub me the wrong way.

ME: (looking in the mirror) I don't know. I'd like it to be a little ... more exciting?
RUSSIAN: (disapproving) Well, you are the boss. You tell me what to do and I do it. But how do I know what you think is more exciting? Maybe you think mohawk is exciting.
ME: There are a lot of mohawks about these days.
RUSSIAN: Tell me about it.

Eventually she gave me a great haircut. But how much do you have to pay a Russian to do a good job *and* be nice to you? A question for the ages.

Back to Gary, who is either more ballsy, more arrogant, or simply more determined to be a full-time writer than I am:

I always tell my students to find a non-profit job because non-profit means that there is no bottom line! Or some kind of municipal job. You want to work 9-5, so that when the day is over it’s over and the weekends are yours. And the best thing, which I had at a couple of jobs, is when you can lock yourself in your office and write. People would say, “Oh Shteyngart is not a team player, he is always locked in his office, God knows what he is doing in there!” I used to work at this non-profit that dealt with immigrant resettlement and I would help write directions for new Russian immigrants, like how to not get drunk, how to avoid AIDS, stuff like that. That took max a couple of days a month, really. And the rest of the time I would lock myself in my office and work on the draft of my first novel. Half of it was finished by my senior year in college and the other half was finished working that job. It wasn’t the kind of service job where I would come home exhausted. I would come home ready to write or would have accomplished the writing at the office. It was brilliant.

I didn’t work more than two years at any one given place because there’d be lay-offs or people would realize I wasn’t doing anything.

It is twisted, but I kind of admire that. Here I am trying to please my bosses at whatever 9-5 job I am currently working while also trying to ultimately do the author thing. I would never close my door and work on my novel. For shame! Also, until now I've never had a door. But perhaps Gary's willingness to piss off anyone who is ultimately unimportant *means* something. It can be freeing, I imagine, to stop caring about inessentials. Trouble is, the idea that someone could dislike me -- especially a boss -- has never been something I could shrug off.

I have to admit I've never worked more than a year and a half at any given place either. Not entirely by choice, though. Again, like Gary. Hrm.

On Friday, I met Mark Oppenheimer and we talked briefly about Gary Shteyngart. I mentioned the offensive article in the Forward. Turns out it was his piece -- he was doing the interviewing. I also met the adorable & fantastic Myla Goldberg, who went to Oberlin like Gary Shteyngart, and the adorable & fantastic Irina Reyn, who went out on dates with Gary Shteyngart back in the day. Holy lord, people, can a world with six billion people in it be so small and yet so full of Russians?

ETA: Jesus Christmas, as the children say: The man is everywhere! Here is another interview with him on Tablet.

So Sexual!

2010-05-03T14:41:00.002-04:00

This article about church counselling for women who are addicted to porn goes off the rails so fast you don't even hear the squeal. All of a sudden, the train is lying on its side, smoking, its wheels spinning pitifully in the air.

The piece begins innocently enough:

Ms. Renaud, who is taking a DVD course in sexual addiction counseling from the American Association of Christian Counselors, said she started the group and the Web site based on her own experiences. She became interested in pornography at age 10 after finding a magazine in her brother’s bathroom. After that, she said, “I wasn’t able to get enough of it.”

“At school I wanted to go home and look at it more,” she said. “Then I went online. I’d stay late at the library to look at it. Eventually I got into masturbation, phone sex, cybersex.” She also cracked the code on the family’s satellite television service, she said. “That was my life for eight years.” Then, she said, she met a Christian woman who helped her stop.

Porn can be addictive; addictions can disrupt your life. Problem, meet Solution. Great!

Then the article gets wacky:

The programs at Ms. Renaud’s group and at XXX Church diverge from secular sexual theory by treating masturbation and arousal as sins rather than elements of healthy sexuality. Emphasis is on recovering “sexual purity,” in which thoughts of sex outside marriage are illicit.

There you are, Gentle Reader, meandering through the flowering meadows of NYT prose, and out of nowhere, a great white shark bites you on the leg. That is how strange & abrupt this twist is. "Arousal" is a sin? You know that's biological, right? As for "Thoughts of sex outside marriage," well, yikes. If you don't even think about it, how do you know you want it -- and what "it" even is in the first place, or what kind of "it" you think you may like when the time comes?

This piece purports to be about porn addiction. What it ends up saying is that there are churches out there -- whole faiths, even -- that are making biological truths into religious crimes. Maybe not a significant majority of women has a problem with porn, but surely a significant majority thinks about sex. Especially since we are, you know, wired to.

It goes on:

As an adult she needed pornography to be aroused with her husband, she said. “I’m learning the correct way of intimacy and bonds,” she said of the group. “It’s learning what your spouse wants, his needs.” In her first weeks, she recalled, she struggled to avoid masturbation.

I feel awful for that woman. She was using porn with her husband. Consensually! In the context of matrimony! Why does she need to be shamed for that? Why does "the correct way" to have sex have to eliminate the aids to her desire? If she's already married, why can't she masturbate? Is it okay if she promises to only think of him?

Presumably porn is titillating because it is forbidden, because it seems "wrong." It must seem even more so to people whose community norms are so extreme. Vilifying porn, even in the context of marriage -- and not just porn but, as the article lists, "Masturbation, Lustful Thinking, Cutting, Feeling Useless, Dad’s Bad Choices, Self-Gratification, Self-Mutilation, Unhealthy Thoughts" -- only adds to the cycle and makes those activities more enticing.

Also, part of me wonders whether there is a queer subtext to all of this. Are the women under discussion drawn to porn because they are attracted to women? I mean, of course there are lots of reasons to watch the stuff, but in my experience the men are as gross as the women are fake. Maybe the stigma against admitting an attraction towards the same gender is worse than the stigma of admitting an addiction to smut.

Arizona: the Police State

2010-04-28T13:38:00.003-04:00

For days now I've been mulling over the new AZ immigration law and why it bothered me so much. Possibly it's because I was just recently a judge at a student Holocaust film festival, so I'm more sensitized to fascism than I am on a day-to-day basis. Which, by the way, is pretty effing sensitized. I grew up breathing the air of the Inside Room and learned the Devil's Arithmetic before I managed to Number the Stars. Every season was the Summer of my German Soldier, goddammit, to the point where if I heard German spoken in real life I jumped.

When I needed to cool down from YA Holocaust lit, I picked up on other kinds of injustice through biographies of Harriet Tubman and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Even my very first smutty smut book, Night Over Water, had fascism as a subplot. (Reading the description is fascinating now because all I remember is the sex [vividly] and the politics [hazily], and that only because at 10 or 11 years old, I was surprised to learn there were fascists in England, too. By contrast, my mother, who gave me the book to read, didn't remember the sex at all.)

Back to Arizona, the state that gave us John "Never Said I Was a Maverick" McCain. Bisbee is great! Try the killer bee honey. You can't argue with the Saguaros everywhere, which are evidence of God's prickly sense of humor. But why, WHY, does anyone think it's acceptable to force people to carry identification papers with them at all times because they could be stopped and asked for those papers by the police?

Linda Greenhouse does not think it is acceptable. In fact, Linda Greenhouse is smoldering with rage.

And good on her. Having to wear a badge on your sleeve is only five paces in that direction from having to carry ID papers with you everywhere. Knowing you could be stopped and frisked by cops simply for leaving your house in your darker skin is a kind of low-level terror no one should be exposed to: not illegal immigrants, not legal immigrants, not citizens of this country.

As May Day is almost upon us, it feels appropriate to quote Billy Bragg's excellent translation of the Internationale, which is unfortunately playing in my head to the tune of La Marseilleise, but never mind:

Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don't cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing, if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all. ...

Internets FTW

2010-04-23T10:54:00.006-04:00

The web is *on* today! Here's Dana Stevens at Slate reviewing the latest rom-com black cat to cross her path:

The Back-up Plan (CBS Films), with Jennifer Lopez as a would-be single mother surprised by love, is by any reasonable standard a bad movie: predictably scripted, sentimental, with laughs that rarely rise above a gentle sitcom chuckle. But at least it's not reprehensible, misogynistic, or cynical, and the lead couple isn't made up of a shrill female narcissist and a proudly slovenly male lug. I wouldn't go so far as to recommend this movie, but if you were tied down and forced to watch it, you wouldn't necessarily have to chew off your own leg to get away.

Damning with faint praise has become an internet art form.

And here's the Washington Post on the porn scandal rocking the SEC:

In one instance, a regional office staff account admitted viewing pornography on his office computer and on his SEC-issued laptop while on official government travel. Another staff account received nearly 1,800 access denials for pornography Web sites in a two-week period and had more than 600 images saved on her laptop’s hard drive, the report said.

A senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington admitted he sometimes spent as much as eight hours viewing pornography from his office computer, according to the report. The attorney’s computer ran out of space for the downloaded images, so he started storing them on CDs and DVDs that he stored in his office.

I do not envy the cleaning lady in that office. In fact: For the love of god! Will someone please think of the cleaning ladies?

Leaving aside the fact that these folks were fiddling with themselves while Rome burned, I just don't understand the appeal of porn in an office setting. Isn't the office the least titillating place on earth? I mean, we're talking about federal government buildings, not Sterling Cooper.* And did these lawyers signal to each other not to interrupt their marathon sessions of self-love? Did they put socks on doorknobs, or what?

Lastly, the Internets provide us with this self-glorifying thread at Shapely Prose, where Kate-fucking-Harding encourages everyone to brag about why they're awesome. The comments have been brightening my mood for an hour already like bloggy Windex. Thanks, folks!

*My friend Nomi suggests that offices are unsexy to me because I *don't* watch porn on my computer, which is a cause-and-effect I had not considered.

Feminist Readers Digest

2010-04-21T16:49:00.003-04:00

Have you ever wanted a set of colorful, informative slides to explain the persistent wage gap -- to what extent it exists, when, and why -- between men and women in America? {those "lesbian shitasses" at Jezebel.}
Want to help start a Boobquake on Monday April 26? Wear your most office-unsuitable tops and draw the wrath of God down upon us.

So, start here ...

That's right! Just like that.

Then, progress to Step Two.

After that, take a drink -- you've earned it! -- and sit back and watch the tectonic plates start shifting.
Wanna get self-conscious about what you wear? Check out this list of the 25 most "fattening" clothing items, featuring virtually every kind of pants (mom jeans, grandma pants, cargo pants, capri pants, white pants, hot pants, sweat pants, any pair of pants with an elastic waistband, acid washed jeans, and shorts of any kind), skirts on both extremes (frilly mini skirts and peasant skirts), and comfortable shoes (ballet flats, gladiator sandals, white sneakers).

Also bad: patterned tights, baby doll dresses, and bikinis (!).

By contrast, what is the #1 most universally flattering item of clothing? I'm so glad you asked.

Spanx.

Luckily the commenters have the right attitude:
GIRDLES are on the non-fattening list? Well, yeah, but that doesn't really count as CLOTHES. Also, god, look how much more FUN the fattening list is: binkinis, colors, cute details, trends. The non-fattening list is basically just monotone-black underwear. I'd rather look fat and cute and non-girdled, thanks.
I concur. Reject what my friend Lana calls "the tyranny of the flattering!" Trying on a daily basis to look your most tall, your most thin, your most non-threatening, professional but fun, sexy but not slutty, *and* age-appropriate is exhausting. And what's the point? Somewhere, at some point, the earth will shake, and you'll still get blamed for the rubble.

On marriage, flagging, and snooping

2010-04-19T15:47:00.007-04:00

In responding to a "non-stereotypical-looking lesbian" who wants to know how to signal her availability, Dan Savage stumbles upon an idea I had about a decade ago.

... maybe all lesbians everywhere should start wearing a button. No words, just a solid color, something small and tasteful that could be pinned to the strap of a purse (popular with "not-stereotypical-looking" lesbians), the lapel of a jacket, or the belt loop on a pair of jeans. Thinking outside the lavender/pink/purple box, I think the button should be green—green for "go," green as in "Go ahead and hit on me, ladies. I’m a lesbian."

My version of this idea was not sexuality-specific, or gender-specific, for that matter. I just figured, at the time, that everyone should wear a button -- red, yellow, or green -- signaling their availability. Then I learned about flagging, which has the benefit of being uber-specific and the drawback of dying out, possibly for the same reason.

On the other hand, what's easier to interpret than red / yellow / green? Folks could even take the initiative to further decorate their buttons with the most vital specifics of their Match.com profiles.

Sadly, a flash-forward to a guy in a witness box protesting, "But she was wearing green!" and a lawyer retorting, "A button does not imply consent!" made me realize my idea had any number of flaws.

Still, Dan, if you're interested in sifting through my other youthful fancies, I once thought it would be brilliant to have marriage be a 7-year-long contract that could be extended. Sure, if a couple decided not to renew, they would have to figure out what to do with mutual children and property, but it could be a simpler and less vicious process than divorce.*

To the turn the tables for a second, though, Dan, I got kind of stuck on this, from your column a couple weeks ago:

A confession: I’ve looked through my boyfriend’s e-mail; I assume he’s looked through mine. I’ve scrolled through his text messages; I assume he’s scrolled through mine. Expecting your partner not to snoop is like expecting your partner not to fart or fantasize about other people. It’s a nice thought, JB, but knowing what we know about human nature—and knowing that we ourselves snoop, fart, and fantasize about other people—it’s a little unrealistic.

That's pretty strong language there. I would be upset if I found out Mr. Ben had gone through my email or my text messages. Dude, I don't even open letters that I know are intended for both of us if they're addressed only to him. To me, this is standard practice, because everyone is entitled both to privacy and to vent, whether in journals or by email or whatever. Also, the couple times in my life I have seen someone else's gchat conversation windows or text messages, I've had to deal with unwanted information, the kind I wished afterwards I could un-know.

Snooping is counter-productive: you think your curiosity will be slaked by just a little bit more information, but that's not usually the way curiosity works. If you feel like you're being lied to and can't trust the person you're with, the trust is probably gone and the relationship is probably over, no matter what exists in the other person's inbox. Right?

Or is there something here I'm not seeing? Has anyone ever had a positive snooping outcome?

*Turns out a German politician not only read my mind, she went public with the notion of a time-limited, renewable civil marriage. The only folks who took her seriously were the Catholics, who demanded that she be ejected from the Christian Social Union (CSU) party. Ah well.

True story

2010-04-13T22:55:00.003-04:00

So, the other day, I was like, "Hi, Cynthia Nixon! This adorable person next to you, over whom I am leaning, must be your wife."

And Cynthia Nixon was like, "We're engaged but we haven't gotten married yet. Hi, though!"

(Note: this is all true, except the parts that aren't.)

Me: I remember us working together at the Very Important Talent Agency.

CN: That place must have been terrible for a sensitive, intelligent young woman like yourself.

Me: Thank you for feeling my pain, Cynthia. That means a lot. So what are you doing here at this random activist-y Jewish theater event at the Manhattan JCC, of all places?

CN: I like to do things outside my character profile.

Me: Me too! For example, I now run three miles three times a week. Isn't that crazy? I refuse to invest in running gear, because I don't want anyone to think I'm some kind of poser, but it still feels kind of amazing.

CN: While I starred in one of the most influential TV shows in the world as a straight, fashion-and-shoe-obsessed Manhattan lady, I left my boyfriend of fifteen years and the father of my children to move to Park Slope and become a lesbian.

Me: Okay, okay, you win. As a token of my appreciation, may I offer you this totebag? My best friend Charrow made it and she would be thrilled if I could tell her I gave it to you.

CN: Why, of course! Thank you. Oh my god, it's adorable.

Me: So are you. You were my favorite part of Sex and the City, and the screenwriters for the film were totally punishing you for being the most normal and most happy.

CN: At least they didn't make me shit myself.

Me: True, true. Well, let's watch this play! Which will, incidentally, send the message that caring too much about handbags is deranged. I hope you won't be offended.

CN: I will laugh as hard as anyone. I promise. For years, I've been laughing all the way to the bank.

Me: Oh my god, Cynthia. I heart you so much. And I'm so glad we (sort of) had this talk.

The purity of childhood

2010-04-12T16:57:00.006-04:00

This NYT article showcases -- and, naturally, frets about -- the young, female star of a violent movie. Not because she is violent, but because she uses naughty words.

the filmmakers are bracing for the reception that the movie and Ms. Moretz may receive. In Britain, where the movie was released at the end of March, David Cox of The Guardian assailed its creative team and Ms. Moretz’s mother for allowing that swear word spoken by Chloë to become “acceptable parlance for children in mainstream movies,” adding, “We’ll be the poorer for it.”

Now, I don't know which bit of verbal raunch is being referenced here. Perhaps it's garden variety ("shit," "bitch"). Perhaps it's what Kurt Vonnegut in Mother Night called "the most offensive compound word in the English language."

(Speaking of Vonnegut, let's hear what he has to say on the impact of salty talk:

There is the word "motherfucker" one time in my Slaughterhouse-Five, as in, "Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker." Ever since that word was published, way back in 1969, children have been attempting to have intercourse with their mothers. When it will stop no one knows.)

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. I hope that, when you got to Heaven, they gave you a perch with a good view of all the nonsense that goes on down here.

Regardless, is this really something to get all yelpy about? Me, I love "bad language." The more creatively vulgar, the better. Cursing features prominently in some of my favorite movies. And what makes me particularly disappointed in stuffy old Mr. David Cox of the Guardian is that British profanity is even more gleeful and entertaining than the American kind.

When I was thirteen, the same age as this tender young actress, I could turn the air around me so blue you would think Cookie Monster had exploded. I turned out okay and so did my friends, who were occasionally shocked but usually on board. "A word after a word after a word is power," says Margaret Atwood, who is one savvy lady, and who understands that for young girls especially saying what folks don't expect them to is an excellent way to be not just looked at but seen.

The article goes on:

Mr. Vaughn said this kind of condemnation was hypocritical because it attacked the movie’s language while essentially forgiving its violence. "I was like, ‘Does it not bother you that she killed about 53 people in this film?’" he said. "I’m like, ‘Would you rather your daughter swore, or became a masked vigilante killer?’ They’re going, ‘Yeah, I don’t know.’"

stumping dear abby

2010-04-01T13:05:00.006-04:00

As a know-it-all (in my case, a genetic condition) I love being asked questions. At the second seder, a little boy asked me, "Why does the clock keep going?" I shot back, "Because time keeps going."

BOO YEAH. If you want to catch me without a reply, you're going to have to try harder than that, you three-toothed squirt.

Sometimes, though, even I can't come up with an answer, as in the situation below. See if you can do better.

[ex-coworker]: are you / have you been a dog owner?
also hi, how are you

me: i had a dog when i was a kid

[ex-coworker]: i may as well tell you why i asked: a friend's dog ate some condoms. her mom's visiting. she doesnt want the dog to poop out the condoms while mom's visiting. partly, apprently cause her mom will blame her for leaving condoms out for the dog to eat

me: ... wow.
well, that's definitely not a problem i had as a kid
were they wrapped?

[ex-coworker]: uh no

me: yikes.

++

It is perhaps worth mentioning that I did once use a condom as a bookmark of a book my mother then asked to borrow. I handed it over without any sense of impending doom, having completely forgotten. That's as close as I have ever come to playing Russian Roulette.

The red and the black

2010-03-23T11:22:00.004-04:00

If you haven't ever sat bolt upright in a massage to say "Ow!" then, my friends, you haven't lived. Likewise if the massage doesn't leave you sore for the next couple of days and segue directly into a cold that keeps you from going into the office.

The woman who administered this stern treatment also scolded me, which is kind of fun. I liked her scolding better than that of the Stalinist relic who gave me my first ever massage, after I lost my job during the transit strike. "What did you major in?" barked the Cossack. Upon hearing my answer, she shook her head in disgust. "Oh no, you will never get job with that." She then advised me to find an older man to look out for me in my next office and not to trust other women, who will necessarily be back-stabby.

Anyway, this woman told me I wasn't taking good enough care of myself. My entire right side, she informed me, is screwed up. Her best efforts over 70 minutes hadn't really made a dent. (So she claimed. I felt dented all over.) She gave me a very disapproving look, to which I responded meekly. When I was leaving, I gave an elaborate tip.

It's always nice to be validated, even, or especially, in one's troubles. I didn't have time to explain, nor did she seem to care, *why* my body is dysfunctional. But I have a wild idea: It's because I don't know how to properly manage sadness and anger.

Over the past six months or so, I have been to four funerals / shiva calls and spent significant time at the bedside of dying people in two different hospice facilities. I've taken off work and traveled and helped bury the dead and eaten round things and listened to people cry. Where I should have felt sad, most of the time I was furious.

By contrast, a once-good friend has hurt me more deeply than I have been hurt in years. I should be justly enraged; I try to be. Thinking in strong words helps for a while ("How DARE you?"). Eventually, though, I keep sliding back into mystified whimpering ("how could she?").

Worst of all, there's nothing I can do about anything. I have had almost no agency in any of these situations. The stress of that might be worst of all.

Sadness is a liquid; anger is a solid. My poor body has been melting and freezing and melting again. Is there any wonder it's a mess?

This is not bragging

2010-03-19T13:43:00.004-04:00

I'm just saying, publicly, that I feel I made the right decision in marrying the person I did.

Hey sweetie,

You now have an appointment for [time] tomorrow with Simone at the [place] on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. It's Swedish massage, though she can do "deep work" if necessary. Just tell them that the class was purchased as part of a series under my name.

Does that work for you?

Love,
B

In a time when, apparently, people are spatting about their relationships on the You Face, it's got to be worth it to extend some gratitude on a blog. Right? Right.

Also, I love you and you and you and you and you. You, less so. (You know who you are.) And if any of you buy me an impromptu massage, I will bless you on the Internets too.

Contents are (marginally less) fragile

2010-03-12T22:38:00.006-05:00

I knew Friday was going to be rough when I started off the morning by almost stepping on a cockroach in my bare feet.

Friday *was* rough, as expected. Even by the evening, when I abandoned all attempts to feign normalcy and instead went to the gym for an hour, I was faced with a Very Special Episode of "What Not to Wear" starring a cancer survivor who had lost both her breasts as well as ninety pounds. "Now that she has beaten cancer through sheer determination," said the voiceover, "she faces another challenge: how to dress her new body."

Luckily all my energy was going into propelling my body forward on the treadmill, so I had no strength with which to pummel the screen.

Yeah, Friday sucked, as did Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. There were bright spots! If you were with me on any of those days, you made them bearable, so thank you. Overall, though, I felt like a plucked chicken, and not even a tasty one.

Then, this morning, I woke up to a brilliant, sparkling sky. Suddenly I am sympathetic to all of God's children. I am nodding and smiling. I am identifying with everything I read, like this, via Finslippy:

I've been feeling ever since like I should wear a shirt that reads, "CONTENTS ARE FRAGILE," and actually that we should all wear that shirt, so that we can all remember to be kind to each other, because life can be so hard, and we're only here for a little while.

Yes, Alice, goddammit! Yes. I embrace you! Mwah!

And you, Morning News Tournament of Books! Come over here, you old so-and-so. You are almost making me weep with happiness. (At least so far. I cannot vouch for what will happen if Wolf Hall and other favorites of mine from 09 don't keep advancing.) Quotes like these made my morning:

Let's say that the standards that apply to people-—the basic character-defining requirements—=are that a person be funny, smart, and kind. This is my rubric and possibly yours. If a person is funny, smart, and kind (or two out of the three) any other flaw can be forgiven.

It has never occurred to me to apply the same standard to books, which have an aesthetic dimension not even touched in the funny-smart-kind paradigm. And yet ...

Yes, TOB! That is exactly right! Thank you.

You know what else is sublimely right? This chart matching famous writers with their day jobs. YES. I cheer for you, Lapham Quarterly. Hurrah!

Maybe Mr. Ben sprinkled MDMA on my Oatmeal Flakes this morning. After four days of Fester Gloom walking around (who has, to be honest, been making guest appearances in our apartment all month) I couldn't blame him.

Gen-dar

2010-03-09T13:39:00.005-05:00

I just took an internet test to discover what gender my brain is. This test seemed reliable to me because a) it's British, and b) it's six parts.

Going in, my assumption was that my brain would be roughly 130% female because I'm told my body shape, baby-face, and negligible amounts of body hair correlate strongly with having more estrogen than a soybean field. There are other stereotypical reasons I would think so, too: I am hyper-verbal but scared of numbers; I am equally indifferent to cars and sports, unless there is a narrative to follow (or, failing that, something pretty to admire); and at times I hate myself, as female-type people are wont to do.

Speaking of which, I watched the Oscars Sunday night. The best parts of the ceremony, in order:

3) "George Clooney threw me into a pool."

2) The Horror montage, perfectly described by David Rees: "Kill Everyone with your Chainsaw … the Dolls are Alive … Dreaming of Murder … Blood and Gore Will Cleanse Your Soul … The Baby is Satan … I break your feet … eat a rat for dinner … big-ass freaky ears and eyes … Frankenstein wants a kiss … the Headless Horseman rides again … Alfred Hitchock’s “Too Many Birds” … screaming and yelling … people staring at each other …long hallways with kids in ‘em … I see dead people … bloody monsters that you have to kiss … blood coming out of elevators … rats and mucus … mouths and teeth … AND THAT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IS HORROR."

1) The fact that Bigelow won for Best Director and then got to win again for Best Picture. The audience understood the moment Barbara "Liberal Jewish Feminist" Streisand walked out to present the first of those awards that Bigelow was going down in history, but the second win was still a happy shock. As Dana Stevens put it,

it's unbelievably gratifying to see a woman who does fine, small-scale work triumphing over a man who erects massive monuments to his own vanity. Bigelow's victory makes it seem like hard work is worthwhile, because someday someone will recognize it, no matter how loudly that asshole at the center table is talking about himself.

I quibble with the idea that the Hurt Locker is "small-scale." Um, it's a war movie. It's about men and guns and battle and heat and exhaustion and explosions. Did I mention men? I don't think there is a single speaking woman in the whole thing. We're not exactly talking about a well-mannered Jane Austen adaptation here.

I do love the fact, though, that in two speeches Bigelow got around to thanking "firemen" (!) and still didn't slip in a reference Cameron, her ex-husband and co-front runner. Didn't you expect her to mention him, at least? To say some cursory "thank you" for ... I don't know, something? At least I would assume that would be the gracious, self-effacing, feminine thing to do.

Back to the point: how did I fare at the gender test?

Part I was a look at spatial understanding, something about lines and angles. "If you scored 18 - 20: You have more of a male brain [emphasis added]. On average, men outperform women in this task and those with more mathematical knowledge tend to score quite high as well. In past studies, 60 per cent of the people in this range were men."

Well, that's a shocker! But it may be an outlier. How about Part II, which is more about objects changing position? "If you scored between 0 - 33%: You may have more of a male brain. Scientists say men tend to under perform in this task. The corpus callosum, the part of the brain that links the right and left hemispheres, is a fifth larger in women. This means women can process visual and other signals at the same time more easily than men. There is also a theory that oestrogen levels in women give them an added advantage in spatial memory."

Sorry, test. I scored low because I was afraid to make a mistake (points were deducted for incorrect answers as well as awarded for correct ones). All of the things I guessed, however, were right. I played it safe. What's more female than that?

Still, it was kind of exciting to be seen as male for two questions. Then the test took a turn for the physiognomical: It wanted to me actually gauge my hands, which betrayed me. My empathy & sensitivity to emotion results, which came next, were off the charts. Though I have a better-than-average appreciation for systems (for a girl), I suck at mentally rotating shapes. I must have been asleep the day they covered that in school. Oh wait! Just kidding -- they never taught us how to do that. Is this one of those "innate" IQ things?

I screwed myself by knowing significantly more synonyms for given words than either men or women are supposed to know. Come on! The word for that is not "female," it's "dorky."

To add insult to injury, the test insinuated that I am a lesbian by pointing out I like men with "feminine" faces. (Ha!)

And so I ultimately come in exactly as "female" as the average woman taking the test. Go skew their results, would you, please? Man, it sucks to be average.

PC / JC

2010-03-04T20:44:00.006-05:00

On the way back from finally seeing Avatar, I hear a couple across the car from me discussing the Academy Awards and the meta-narrative of Cameron vs. Bigelow: Who Gets Custody of Oscar.

The conversation is very run-of-the-mill and I zone out, paying attention instead to the Daley article in the New Yorker. Then I hear the boy say something is "political." My antenna goes up.

GIRL: Really?
BOY: Of course it is. You remember that movie, Brokeback Mountain?
GIRL: Yeah.
BOY: That was nominated for Best Picture!
GIRL: Really?
BOY: Yes! And you know what it's about?
GIRL: Yeah.
BOY: And *that* was nominated for Best Picture! Even though it was about ... *that*! It's just 'cause it was politically correct. Now, if it was a good movie, I wouldn't mind ...
GIRL: I never saw it.
BOY: Me neither, but still ...

This reminds me of the time when I was about thirteen and my mother took me to the Algonquin hotel. I was a passionate devotee of Dorothy Parker's, and I sat where she had once held court soaking up the Vitamin D. At least, I did, until my reverie was broken by the sound of a man a couple tables away lecturing his female companion on my favorite author. And he was wrong! More wrong than a cat being thrown out into the snow.

My mother could tell how incensed I was. I glared and shook my head and snorted like a horse but the man kept talking in his pompous, Master of the Literary Universe kind of way. "Please can I go over there and correct him," I asked my mother. "He's pretending he knows all this stuff and he doesn't!"

In this case, I will content myself with saying to you, the Internets: that boy is a fool.

Of course, it is tempting to dismiss anything you find distasteful without feeling like you first have to sit through it. Especially in our digital age when we can easily access the proxy opinions of friends, or "Fox and Friends," why bother exposing yourself to something whose agenda you suspect you don't want to support?

A friend and I were recently discussing this in relation to, as it happens, Avatar: Is it fair to hate it without having seen it? Especially with an international blockbuster that seems to have been covered quite in depth by the media, it feels pretty easy to get a sense of whether you'll like it in advance. (Good questions to ask yourself: How did you feel about Titanic? Fern Gully? Cats? [The animal, not the Broadway show.] How do you feel about white male protagonists with one-syllable "J" names? Great. Lastly, mother-goddess worship. Is that a deal breaker for you?)

Well, I decided to take myself to see it, by myself, to decide in as much of a vacuum as possible how I felt about it. There are my primary reactions. *CAUTION: SPOILERS*

1) James Cameron can sure make movies. I found myself thinking like a film student a lot of the time: "Those two characters are going to kiss at this point. Wait, but will they? They're not human; why would they kiss? American audiences expect it even though it doesn't make sense in this context. I wonder what Cameron will -- oh, there they go! Well done."

Assuming that Titanic and Avatar are about equally long, I would give you excellent odds that the first kiss between the couples in both films happen at roughly the same time. Like, within five minutes of each other. Because there is a kind of science to this and Cameron knows how it works.

I also made mental notes of the characters who seemed marked as Dead Meat and, indeed, most of them bit it. In a couple of cases I was surprised, which is another Well Done for JC.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I was carried by the narrative. I was impressed with the visuals. At times I was moved and at times I laughed, though a couple of those chuckles came at the expense of particularly ham-handed lines of dialogue. The movie was long but I didn't get bored.

But:

2) the story -- specifically the politics of it. Oy. I don't need to get into this; others, more prestigious and better suited to the task than I have done it already (here, there, and everywhere).

It should be noted that right-wingers think "Avatar" is a tree-hugging, socialist fantasy:

Writing in the Weekly Standard, conservative commentator John Podhoretz called the movie's clash between heavily armed humans and an indigenous tribe of aliens as "anti-American, anti-human." In an upcoming piece in Commentary magazine, Stephen Hunter writes that "the movie essentially decodes into a 1960s pseudo-intellectual's power-trip dream." A headline on a piece by John Nolte, editor of Andrew Breitbart's conservative Big Hollywood site, declared the movie wasn't for Heartland America: "'Avatar' Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge ..."

Hee! I love conservative outrage. For more from the left, here's Dan Savage on the film's sexual politics. He's not happy either.

To all of that, I will only add that the film's gender politics do get points from me. Most mainstream movies pass the Ms. Test only on a technicality. JC gives us several interesting, active female characters. Even the warrior princess kicks ass, and not just once, like, when a maternal instinct helps her save a baby rabbit. She hunts and flies and fights; her dad gives her his huge bow and arrow. She doesn't need saving. Well, once, a bit, but then she does some excellent saving of her own.

In short, the women are just as developed as the men (which is to say, not much, but this is not a deep, character-driven flick). For an action movie, that's not nothing.

Here, however, is where JC falls short:

3) the tails. WTF, JC? You give these 10-feet-tall blue-skinned cat-people *tails* and then do nothing with them? Think of the possibilities! Think of the children! (We barely see the children. What are the little Na'vi doing all day? Plugging their braids into everything they can find?) Many people, including one of my favorite high school teachers, would kill to have a tail. That showed a lack of imagination, Mr. Cameron. I am disappointed in you.

Overall? I liked it better than I thought I would. It helped to have expectations set to virtually zero. And now I can feel even more morally superior to that little blond idiot on the subway than I would have felt already.

Water fountain FAIL

2010-02-26T20:27:00.006-05:00

Online here: http://cheezburger.com/View.aspx?aid=3232033792.

In a hospital, no less! The very one where my doctor told me again, "Life is not fair," because I confessed to being angry, still, that my father died and then my uncle immediately thereafter.

I *know* life is not fair, you sweet, well-meaning, occasionally ridiculous Russian! One of my best friends just got back from a work trip to eastern Congo, Somalia, and Rwanda, and other places where people SUFFER and DIE -- or, suffer and have to flash back to the horrors they faced for the rest of their lives. I can accept that life isn't fair rationally and still have emotional reactions. Can't I?

"Well," he said, considering. "How long ago now did your father die?"

October.

"Hmm. Well, two months is the standard mourning period ..."

Out of spite, as I left, I took this picture and submitted it to Failblog.

This evening, I finally geared up to go to the gym. On the way there, I stepped in a melted glacier, soaking one foot all the way up to the ankle. When I limped to the finish line, I discovered the Y had been closed since 4:00 PM.

Yup, still angry.

"But not at a person?" he asked.

No, just in general.

"Okay," he said. "So it is not pathological."

Phew!

I hope the rest of you had a more cheerful snow day.

Food, glorious food

2010-02-24T15:15:00.005-05:00

The best pizza in NYC?
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

It was an extremely food-happy weekend this weekend. No special occasion: Mr. Ben and I did turn nine years old on the 17th, but we weren't celebrating that. (I still want to hit up Good Fork in Red Hook, though, which was our original anni-day plan scrapped in favor of sitting on our new couch and watching old episodes of Mad Men.)

FRIDAY: Dinner at Motorino, the best pizzeria in New York, according to Sam Sifton. Like the intern who talks too much in staff meeting, Mr. Sifton, the new NYT restaurant critic, seems to be trying to make a name for himself right away as a kingmaker & all-around fearless guy. Bold choice, Mr. Sifton.

His gambit worked. Certainly I was enticed, with a small circle of friends, to squeeze into the space that once held another fantastic pizzeria, Una Pizza Napoletano. We split three pies, some less kosher than others. (I picked the sizzling bits of pig off of my slices but those who indulged seemed to enjoy it immensely.)

Even at 5:55 PM, there was a line for a table for four. We were seated almost an hour after we arrived. Still, the pizza really was terrific; the tiny pools of oil on the buffalo mozzarella were so good they would send your eyes flying upwards into your head while the sounds of angels filled your ears. Best pizza in New York, though? I can't say. To me, the best slice of pizza is whichever high-quality one I'm eating at the time. Bonus points if I'm hungry and if I've been waiting for a while in the cold.

Dessert at the cozy Italian bakery situated just close enough to Veneiro's that no one goes in, except skittish-looking loners and family clusters. I did not partake myself, since I can't do sugar, but I do love the smell of cappuccino.

SATURDAY: Undistinguished except by the excellent bittersweet hot chocolate Mr. Ben and I enjoyed during the Accomplice: the Village show that took us around NYU on an ambulatory, interactive theater experience / scavenger hunt.

SUNDAY: This is when we really got into gear. With a different circle of friends, I embarked on a Lower East Side eating tour. Because it was self-curated, we indulged in foods that were not exactly designed to complement each other: pickles straight from a room full of barrels, freshly baked hamentaschen & whole-wheat bread, crystallized-ginger donuts from the Donut Plant in honor of Chinese New Year, banh mi, and finally bubble tea. Everyone was fit to explode, though no one person tried everything.

Next up: Tour Dumpling! This, people, is why we live in NYC.

It's all in how you see it

2010-02-22T10:32:00.003-05:00

I would think that flying a plane into a building is a pretty black-or-white act, especially in our post-9/11 world. What is terrorism if not an attempt to intimidate people into acting in a certain way because of violence or the threat of it? If I demonstrate that I am willing to kill people for what I believe politically, whether I believe in lower taxes or global jihad, I become a terrorist.

Or -- and here where it gets tricky; you might want to sit down -- a hero.

The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were "inappropriate."

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen."

His actions, which included murder, arson, and the destruction of federal property, were "inappropriate." Because they were successful, however, and "now maybe people will listen," he's a hero.

The daughter went on to say, "'But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished,' she told ABC. 'But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government.'"

That government workers deserve to be killed? That our taxes are so high (in Texas, mind you, where there is no state income tax) that we are entitled to resort to extremism and destruction? What exactly does she agree with? Or, in this age of Tea Partying populist anti-government paranoia, does it not even matter? "Injustice," she says. Injustice towards whom? About what? I am trying to stay calm, trying to understand what on earth she is talking about. I am not having an easy time.

I would like to knock on her door and ask to come in and have a nice quiet polite chat where I ask her whether she now identifies with the hypothetical daughter of a 9/11 hijacker who thinks her father is a hero. Because what's the difference? Are Muslims terrorists and white men who act out merely "inappropriate"?

And then I will put down my cup and look her in the eye. Very quietly, I will say, I have been to three funerals and four shiva calls in six months. I have traveled to Connecticut for death and to North Carolina and to DC and to Westchester. I am tired, and I am angry, so angry that I am probably clutching the table right now. Because how dare anyone think that he is entitled to kill people, to fly a plane into a federal building just because he believes something? My mother works in a federal building and my father used to. I don't care what you believe; you can die for your beliefs, if you feel that strongly about them. But how dare you take other people with you to prove a point?

GodHatesFigs.com

2010-02-17T10:08:00.006-05:00

My favorite spam-fax from the Westboro Baptist Church is all about Figs. It's also a clear rip off of Jeff Foxworthy.

"You might be a good fig if you:

confess that Jews killed Jesus, and repent and mourn that grievous sin;
put away your lie that God will bless you for pretending to eat kosher;
recognize that Israel is doomed because of the Jews' proud sin."

More likely you are an evil fig.

"You might be an evil fig if you:

would rather starve than eat the Bread of Life, whom you proudly crucified;
Loudly proclaim that you're entitled to land you stole in your disobedience;
Are proud of the bloody butcher's apron known as the Israeli flag."

Until we got this sheet, I didn't know why the sensitive and intelligent folks at the WBC chose to send the company I work for faxes everyday. (One we get frequently mentions Matthew Shepard, who it says "has been in hell these eleven years.") Now I realize: it's because we're evil figs! Although I'm not sure we loudly proclaim we're entitled to anything, or that we would turn down any free food, even the Bread of Life. Still, we meet the general requirements.

Guess what, Westboro Baptist Church? I may be an evil fig but I've got one up on you. Hear that whooshing sound? That's me turning the other cheek.

Oh yes. That's right. I FORGIVE YOU. I have out-Christianed you, and on Ash Wednesday no less. So stuff that in your fax machine. And have a nice day.

True story!

2010-02-11T15:55:00.003-05:00

My tiny little college roommate gave birth to a giant baby! Well, both my roommates were tiny, and Catholic, and had short straight hair and small breasts and adorable faces, now that I think on it. But here I'm referring to the second roommate of the two, the one who got married, oh, just about NINE MONTHS AGO.

Kaboom!, as the scientists say. Two math-majors meet, mingle, and as a result new life walks the earth. Their union has already produced something more substantive than the US Senate has managed to produce in years. (Using the life of One of God's Children to score political points? Is that below me? Should it be, *Sarah Palin*?)

I am in shock. She squeezed 9 lbs and 4 oz of something live and kicking out of her canoodle today. While I was doing what, browsing Facebook? Thinking about the worst possible first/early date movies? (My picks, aside from Slate's winner "Closer": "Quills," "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover," "the Dreamers," and "Belle du Jour." All movies that seem like they should either be sexy or fun or both and end up being horrifying.)

Oof. Well, regardless, happy life, little newborn baby! And congratulations all around.

100%?

2010-02-10T10:53:00.002-05:00

I am baffled by the idea that there can be a 100% chance of anything. "Taxes," suggested a friend this morning. Okay, fine: death and taxes. But anything else? Even the fact of the sun rising, the earth continuing to spin, the sky being up and the ground being down, gravity, entropy, cereal ...

Surely the scientists at weather.com are rounding up? I would be much more comfortable with a percentage that allowed for the element of sheer randomness and chaos in our lives -- 99.8% even. Am I alone in this?

I Hate the Future

2010-02-04T19:38:00.005-05:00

While browsing through old journals for the mem-wa, I came across this curt poem I wrote four years ago, when I had just been laid off from Job #2:

I Hate the Future

I hate the future

dark car
on a dark street
moving

Something bright may sit
behind the tinted windows

All i see
is the barreling forward
the peaceful air it displaces

Four years later, employed again (Job #5!), housed again (Apartment #4!) and married, I am elated to discover, some things never change.

Laughing like the guy from 'Mary Poppins'

2010-02-01T13:19:00.004-05:00

Mr. Ben and I watched In the Loop (2009) Saturday night, and it was the most gleefully foul-mouthed thing I've come across since the Aristocrats. Also the most hilarious.

Simon Foster: Tobes, I don't want to have to read you the riot act but I am going to have to read you some extracts from the riot act, like section one, paragraph one: don't leave your boss twisting in the wind and then burst in late, smelling like a pissed seaside donkey.

Toby Wright: Look, alright, I was late for the meeting, Simon, I am sorry, but it's not like I threw up in there, is it?

Simon Foster: No, you're right, I'm being unfair. I should be thanking you for not throwing up. Well done, you're a star. You didn't wet yourself, did you? You're in the right city. You didn't say anything overtly racist. You didn't pull your cock out and start plucking it and shouting "Willy Banjo". No, I'm being really unfair. You'd got so much right, without actually being there in the beginning of one of the most important moments of my career. Thanks, you're a legend.

...

Jamie MacDonald: Hi, Toby, Toby. Very pleased to meet you. Please sit down. Now, right, that's enough of all the fucking Oxbridge pleasantries.

Toby Wright: What's Oxbridge about saying hello?

Jamie MacDonald: Shut it, Love Actually! Do you want me to hole punch your face?

Even the deleted scenes were funnier than anything else I've seen this year, with the possible exception of Up in the Air.

Mr. Ben and I had a rather Brit-themed weekend, what with the "Full English" brunch at Chip Shop and reading Harry Potter aloud as we cooked. It reminded me that I really, really want to go to Britain. The lake country! Stonehenge! Oxford! Cranford! (Is that a real place?) I want to go every damn village I've ever read about and, while Mr. Ben is distracted by the Tower of London or something, make out with every cute, tall, deadpan, angular, well-dressed bloke I can find. And I wouldn't say no to Kate Winslet, either.

Ta-Nehisi Coates doesn't need my love

2010-01-29T13:53:00.003-05:00

But he has it anyway:

I think it's most worth noting that "I forgot Obama was black"--in all its iterations--is something that white people should stop saying, if only because it's really dishonest. One way to think about this is to flip the frame. Around these parts, we've been known, from time to time, to chat about the NFL. We've also been known to chat about the intricacies of beer. If you hang around you'll notice that there are no shortage of women in these discussions. Having read a particularly smart take on Brett Favre, or having received a good recommendations on a particular IPA, it would not be a compliment for me to say, "Wow, I forgot you were a woman." Indeed, it would be pretty offensive.

The problems is three-fold. First, it takes my necessarily limited, and necessarily blinkered, experience with the fairer sex and builds it into a shibboleth of invented truth. Then it takes that invented truth as a fair standard by which I can measure one's "woman-ness." So if football and beer don't fit into my standard, I stop seeing the person as a woman. Finally instead of admitting that my invented truth is the problem, I put the onus on the woman. Hence the claim "I forgot you were a woman," as opposed to "I just realized my invented truth was wrong."

Ditto for Chris Matthews. The "I forgot Obama was black" sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance--you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don't know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn't forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white.

(Emphasis mine. The wisdom, however, is all his.)

freakish and disproportional

2010-01-28T15:41:00.005-05:00

I INQUIRED about the price of a ladies’ tuxedo jacket, since I couldn’t find the tag, and learned that the jacket was not sold separately from its matching black satin teddy ($1,700).

“Would you still like to try it on?” one of the tattooed ladies asked.

“I’d rather see it on you, actually,” I replied.

She very sweetly and immediately obliged.

I inspected the peplum and the Balmain-esque shoulder pads. “It’s a very small size, isn’t it?”

“Well, I’m a 32D, so it fits great,” my helper said in response.

It was refreshing to hear a demi-couture jacket’s merits discussed in terms of cup size. I was surprised that a 32D didn’t look at all freakish or disproportional, like a Japanese robot or Pam Anderson during her Kid Rock phase.

Is it my imagination or does this seem like the opening of a mediocre piece of erotica? Maybe handling all those ben-wa balls made this author feisty. Regardless, I'd appreciate it if, in the future, she kept her surprise that ordinary-sized people are not, in fact, hideous monsters to herself.

Pamela Anderson is 36DD, which would translate to a 32G. Not that that makes her freakish, either, but the author may as well get her insulting facts right. Seriously, Meghan McCain is on the right track here, and you, Cintra Wilson, are feeding guppies to the piranhas of women's insecurity and body-hate.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: WTF, NYT.

Body Image

2010-01-25T12:37:00.005-05:00

My friends have seen me naked. NO I'M NOT OVER IT. I wish I could go through their memories with steel wool.

On the plus side, I have now been to Spa Castle.

Over the five or so hours I was under-clothed, I was treated with complete respect; over the next twenty-four hours of my regular life, ironically, I was sexually harassed once and hit on twice. Which is to blame: the lingering glow of relaxation, or the patriarchy?

EDITED TO ADD:

Shots of the coupliest New Years Eve ever are now up on Flickr. Although here it looks like I am being attacked, rest assured that those hands belong to people I love.

New calling

2010-01-14T19:11:00.004-05:00

PHONE: Ring! Ring!

ME: Hello?

T.: Hi, sweetie! I have some bad news.

ME: Okay, shoot.

T.: You can't be a bridesmaid at my wedding ...

ME: Okay, that's okay ...

T.: ... because we want you to officiate!

CONFIRMATION EMAIL: Congratulations! You are now a legally ordained minister for life, though you may relinquish your credentials at any time. AS OF Thursday the 14th of January 2010 YOU HAVE BECOME A MEMBER OF THE PRESTIGIOUS CLERGY. You have earned a title worthy of admiration and respect.

And a new chapter begins.

I wonder whether being the minister will be more or less fun than being the bride. (I also wonder whether I'll ever get to be a bridesmaid, but as I recognize that anxiety is both perverse and premature, I won't dwell on it.)

A quick assignment

2010-01-11T14:15:00.006-05:00

1) Take a look at this picture.

2) Read the accompanying short article.

3) Then read the comments. Yes, I know, there are over 300 of them. Here's a handy trick I learned in college: Pay attention to what comes first and last and skim what's in between. Or, to get straight to the point, relax your eye to see only the word "health/y."

Whoa, right? Who knew it mattered that women who are paid to look a particular way are "healthy" -- and also that we all agree about what that word means? Maybe I'm sensitive to this issue because I've been so recently immersed in the randomness of cancer. My father was far less healthy than my uncle and he died three years older. From farther away, their deaths are indistinguishable, despite one's purported health and the other's neglect.

Another example comes courtesy of Jezebel: Carrie Fisher, who, as she puts it, used to be "pretty" and isn't anymore. Of course, when she was bikini-ready, she was on ten kinds of drugs, and she's now fat because of psychiatric treatments that keep her moderately sane. ("This is my medication overweight. I barely eat anything and I wind up looking like I've been combing the city for donuts.")

All of which is to say: Health is not as easy to read as we assume it is from a person's physique.

Okay, I hear you saying, rolling your eyes. But these people are exceptions! Or, as my friend Jenn put it, "The AMA would disagree with you."

I'm sure it would. But that doesn't make the AMA right. Jenn and I went on to discuss the issue:

me: these things are averages, not destinies. in any event, i don't think a woman's health has any impact on her ability to model clothes. skinny or fat, i think the only question is Does she look good? and Do the clothes appear to advantage on her body?

Jennifer: I agree. Also, i've seen enough runway shows to confidently say that size zero models still have cellulite

me: ... thank you, honey.

My favorite comment, which I think takes the health fixation to its natural extreme, says, without any apparent irony, "Models ideally would be women who ate right, exercised regularly and managed their stress."

ROLE MODELS, ideally, should eat right, exercise regularly, and manage their stress. MODELS should show up, look purty, date Leonardo diCaprio, and be of whatever size works for them professionally. Models are more than billboards. But they are less than superheroes. I don't care if Kate Moss has a coke habit the same way that I don't care if politicians get their kicks from necrophilia (though I draw the line at screwing with socks on).

Diabetes! Heart disease! OBESITY EPIDEMIC! I'm just saying it so you don't have to. But feel free to say anything else.

and now for something completely different

2010-01-07T16:39:00.003-05:00

Help me out, internets! My everyday boots are shredding on the inside, no doubt from my extended bouts with grief, and I need a new pair stat. They must be what I call Good Clomping Boots. Nothing dandy or flimsy, these boots have to take me into Mordor if need be, or into the icebox of North Dakota.

Complicating factors: 1) I like pretty things; 2) My money likes to hibernate year round.

So, what do we think? Buy these now? (Fluevog, on sale for $99)

Or these? (Fluevog, on sale for $99)

Or should I wait for these to be available again (Frye, via Zappos, on sale for $197? These are sort of the ideal.

"Other" is also an acceptable option.

RIP, 2009

2009-12-29T15:48:00.004-05:00

My uncle died less than 24 hours after I returned from the North Carolina hospice. The final episode of his life, which began with the diagnosis and ended with his last breath, unfolded over seven weeks.

In seven weeks, his body unraveled. That's unthinkable. And so I am unthinking. I am in hiding, more or less. My poor family. All the men are gone. First my grandfather, then my father, and now my uncle. We are a collection of widows and children and me, a married child.

Please hurry up, 2010, and bring your friends 2011-2019. Tell them all to be kinder to us than the last year was.

Good Yontif, Santa!

2009-12-24T21:52:00.004-05:00

Baby's First Business Trip (TM) took me across the country to sunny LA. Jewy academics from all over had braved East Coast storms and hauled babies to make it, and some -- including one of my bosses -- were thwarted over and over. I had to walk a couple of fierce, snowy blocks in Brooklyn to the A train to get to the airport; that was the worst of my trouble.

The first morning of the conference, I went to a panel where a fellow argued for the rehabilitation of an author who is minor, unlikeable, and dead. Academia in a nutshell, and it was not a nutshell I wanted to be in. It was over 70 degrees outside among the swaying palm trees, and if anything boring was happening out there I could always walk away from it.

The second speaker was more engaging, but still, I listened to my gut and spent the next several hours either by the pool or on the hotel patio. And I was productive! I had an energetic poolside conversation with the second speaker, whose book-in-progress about irony and the Holocaust could, I felt, benefit from a final chapter about film.

I also ran into and caught up with an old friend from summer camp, now a PhD candidate and an impressive scholar in her own right. She was the first of my run-ins with the past, the roster of which included an old professor from Swarthmore and an old neighbor from Brooklyn.

Everyone seemed familiar, even the folks I didn't know directly. When I was introduced to a young woman named Miriam, it took us only five minutes to determine that we have a good friend in common: her brother's housemate. The world is even smaller when you travel within the confines of a six-pointed star.

I saw my little brother, my cousin, and my May-As-Well-Be Sister-in-Law, a CA native who whisked me away in her silver BMW for an al fresco lunch in Santa Monica. At night, I slept in a pristine king-sized bed big enough to fit me and the population of Trinidad, with room for the seven dwarfs. Though I contemplated finding an actor or two to fill the emptiness, I refrained, because I am a modest East Coast girl at heart.

The flight back was easy but what followed was not. My uncle, who was diagnosed with stage four cancer just after my father died, has been moved to a hospice. He's declining rapidly. So, after what will be a rushed Russian Christmas tomorrow morning in Westchester, I'm getting on another plane, this time with Mr. Ben, and going down to North Carolina for the weekend. My family will circle another deathbed. Then we will greet 2010, for which I am scared to have any hopes, except that enough will finally be enough.

BEST MOVIES OF THE DECADE

2009-12-17T15:33:00.005-05:00

Why waste time with piddling lists like "Best of the Year"? Go big or go home! With film, after all, boldness is key, which goes a distance toward explaining why Charlie Kaufman is all over my lists and why, even if it doesn't quite make it here, I couldn't stop talking about Inglourious Basterds. What I love in a movie is some combination of chemistry, intelligence, creativity, audacity, and truth (in the sense that the film is true to itself and its own internal rules, not to any objective standard).

Some of these I never need to see again because they were searingly intense the first time. Others are here because I have watched them over and over again as the decade progressed and they never lost their sheen. Although my picks don't divide neatly on those lines, I do find it helpful to use the Golden Globe division: Drama Vs. Comedy/Musical. Still, most of my Drama picks are funny, since I enjoy talky-talky stuff more than the fighty-fighty-kablammo!

HERE WE GO, FOLKS:

Best Movies of the 00's - DRAMA

Kill Bill 1&2
Brokeback Mountain
WALL-E
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Dogville
In the Mood for Love
Children of Men
Pan's Labyrinth
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Movies of the Decade - MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Moulin Rouge
Secretary
Gosford Park
Little Miss Sunshine
The Incredibles
Juno
Being John Malkovich
High Fidelity
40 Year Old Virgin
Adaptation

RUNNERS UP: Memento, Once, Talk to Her

I haven't actually done the hard work of ranking, because when movies are this good, does it really matter which one I think is ever-so-slightly better than the next? That said, my favorite movie of the decade, and one of my favorites of all time, is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Here are some other people's lists: Pajiba honors the hilarious Shawn of the Dead and the creeptacular American Psycho; the Onion AV Club hoists up the 25th Hour, and I can't fault anything that pats David Benioff on the back, even if I preferred Inside Man; and Entertainment Weekly gives its love to the LOTR trilogy, because I guess all those Oscars it got weren't enough. And Slate has a handy-dandy guide to everything.

Did I forget something? Did I make you puke? Duke it out with me in the comments.

Why I Won't Leave the House for a While

2009-12-11T13:44:00.002-05:00

(except to go back to the library)

There are so many books out there! So many wonderful, wonderful books, and I can't keep up. I've enjoyed tasty tidbits (The Magicians, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane) and solemn, Midwestern meditations (A Gate at the Stairs). Meanwhile I've also been playing literary catch-up (House of Mirth, Daniel Deronda).

Even if I were to surface from this literary hot tub, there are also so many movies to see! I enjoyed the hell out of Up in the Air -- it almost restored the magic to air-travel and certainly restored the spark and chemistry to on-screen romance; and best of all it made me laugh. Also, it upended some romantic comedy conventions that look way better on their heads. But that's only one down! I still need to see Mr. Fox and Orson Welles and Precious and A Single Man and A Serious Man. Stop me before I hyperventilate.

Thank god I don't care about rugby. That's a couple hours of my life I can spend, you know, eating, or talking to people, probably about whatever else I've just read or seen.

Maybe this all matters in an outsized way because this is the fun I get out of the Xmas Season. Everyone else is decorating fir trees with strands of joy and peace, or whatever it is the goyim do in December while waiting for the fat man to come down the chimney. Jews go to the movies. So it has been and so it will be.

Homicide On Par With Broadway to Tourist

2009-12-10T15:27:00.006-05:00

From an article about a fatal shooting in Times Square today:

Emer Rooney, 33, a visitor from Ireland on the last day of a trip to New York, walked with a friend from a nearby hotel to take pictures of the scene. She said she had never felt unsafe in New York. "I actually feel it's very safe," she said. "Look at all the police officers."

She cited the shooting, in fact, as one of the more exciting moments of her trip, including recovering lost luggage at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and getting tickets to the musical "Wicked."

{NYT}

Choice Quotes for a Choice Season

2009-12-09T10:54:00.007-05:00

Let's get some happiness going! Right? It is, after all, the season of joy and giving and stuffing and family and light and gifts and puns -- the holly-jolly-days! And if I am not full on in the spirit of things, I may as well pretend!

To get us started, here are some amazing quotes from today's internets:

"At one point, Mr. Hatch unbuttons his white dress shirt to expose the golden mezuzah necklace he wears every day. Mezuzahs also adorn the doorways of his homes in Washington and Utah. Mr. Hatch keeps a Torah in his Senate office.

“Not a real Torah, but sort of a mock Torah,” he said. {NYT}

Is a mock Torah anything like a mock turtle, or a mock turtleneck? As we ponder, let us read on:

"It makes me sad sometimes, but I don’t care because I try not to think about it. Sometimes your dreams get crushed but you just keep going." {NYT}

This one is beyond mocking. (Although, ha ha! See what I did there?)

If you can see with those tears in your eyes, check out this Jewish version of Lady Gaga, singing "Bad Shiksa":

Key takeaway, in case you can't watch videos at work:
Ra-ra-ra-na-na!
Ro-ma-yarmulke!
Ga-ga-Haggadah!
I’m your Bad Shiksa

I want your horah
I kvell for your kiss
I want that scrap of skin you lost at your bris
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love)

I’ll dress up jappy, I’ll dress up all frum
I’ll call you Shabbos and pretend I’m your mom
I want your love
Love-love-love
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love)

You know that I want Jews
(’Cause I’m a trayf bitch baby! )
I’m just a bad, I’m a Bad Shiksa

Beat that, Orrin Hatch.

As a Box of Hammers

2009-12-01T11:42:00.007-05:00

When experts come off as idiots in the pages of the Washington Post, I wonder whether the problem is with bad ideas or bad expression. Or both? For example:

"No man is an island," said Nicholas A. Christakis, a professor of medicine and medical sociology at Harvard Medical School

...

"Loneliness is more than just feeling bad," said Chris Segrin, a professor of communication and health at the University of Arizona

...

The researchers said the effect could not be the result of lonely people being more likely to associate with other lonely people because they showed the effect over time. "It's not a birds-of-a-feather-flock-together effect," Christakis said.

I'm going to put together a study showing that even really bright people speak almost entirely in cliches. Although how bright are these guys? First they tell us our fat friends make us fat, but don't abandon them! ("'We are not suggesting that people should sever their ties with overweight friends,' Christakis adds. 'But we are suggesting that people are influenced by the behaviors of those around them, and if they're interested in losing weight, forming ties with people who are the proper weight is likely to be beneficial.'")

Uh huh. Now, they tell us that having lonely friends will make us lonely. In its lukewarm conclusion, the article does not advise against pushing these folks off on ice floes. At least, not per se. The implication, though, is clear.

These studies are heartbreakingly, essentially American. They present us with "experts" who affirm conventional wisdom, and they "prove" that losers have a social contagion. The fat, the lonely, everyone you instinctively avoided in high school (or else WERE in high school) -- all those weirdos -- they are not just repellent. They are bad for you.

As awful as these men should feel for wasting our society's time and resources, the editors of articles such as "Loneliness is transmittable from person to person" should feel worse.

Over in the New York Times, whatever editor was responsible for article juxtaposition shouldn't be feeling too great either. Roger Cohen's elegiac opinion piece (currently #3 on the Most Emailed List) ends extolling color-blindness in America, the Land of Opportunity:

Westminster, like Britain, has changed. Openness has grown. Bigotry’s faint refrain has grown fainter still. But I think my old school should throw more light on this episode. And I still believe the greatest strength of America, its core advantage over the old world, is its lack of interest in where you’re from and consuming interest in what you can do.

Directly below it on the Most Emailed List, however, is the article "In Job Hunt, College Degree Can't Close Racial Gap." In other words, Cohen's words will totally apply to you -- unless you're black. Ouch, NYT.

Twi-hard

2009-11-23T19:03:00.004-05:00

With varying degrees of success, I've been making myself go out lately. At best, I see a sweet, moving play, like the one my friend Lucas is in, I cry a little, and I am actually inspired to start writing (!) when I get home. Or I go with a crowd I don't know to a mind-blowing show by and starring Anna Deavere Smith, which turns out to be about DEATH and CANCER and PEOPLE DYING FROM CANCER, and sob. And then, exiting the theater while still shaken and teary, deal with the following:

GIRL 1: I didn't cry once! Did you?
GIRL 2: No! I almost did, during the orphanage one.
GIRL 3: Yeah, that was really sad. ... But I didn't cry either.
GIRL 2: Huh. [turning to me] Well, it was nice to meet you! Bye!

It's not their faults, of course. They didn't know what was going on with me. But I still felt like an idiot.

Friday night, I went to a birthday party with a bunch of people I know and love, and it was still hard. Trying to be boisterous and upbeat, I ended up overcompensating and saying at least one truly ridiculous, hurtful thing. Luckily everyone else was drinking and I counted, by the end of night, enough ridiculous things to knock my most offensive comment out of the evening's Top Three.

At the party, one of my friends mentioned my blog, my dear, old neglected blog, where, she said, I "write about my feelings." The pained look on my face must have given me away, and she hurried to assure me that she didn't mean it in a bad way. But Jebus Crispy! My feelings? Is that what I have come to? Is that what I've been wasting my time with for eight years?

It took me a moment to regain my equilibrium. Once I did, I realized I was battling my own -- wait for it -- internalized misogyny. That's right! Why do we look down on feelings, and, especially, harping on, writing about, discussing them? Because they are as feminine as cats and babies. As girly as pretty, pretty princesses and snowflakes and romance and pom poms, and just as pointless, because feelings don't make money or amass power, and that's what the patriarchy values.

I rebel against my own internalized misogyny! Or, I am trying to!

Sing it with me: Who cares if a well-done theater production made me cry, or if I keep a personal blog? There is nothing wrong with feelings. There is nothing wrong with memoir, with rom coms, with Titanic or Twi--

I'm sorry, did you cough? What did I say? Oh yes. Twilight. I suppose you heard that it obliterated records this past weekend, propelled to success by a starkly young, female audience. To be clear, I'm no fan of the series. I haven't read the books, and you may recall that I could not have rolled my eyes harder at the first film. (As a viewer I felt like echoing Jeneane Garofolo in Reality Bites after she has suffered through the thousandth Winona Ryder-Ethan Hawke bantering session: "Just do it and get it over with already!")

But who cares? Anything that makes Hollywood pay attention to women and value female viewership is a net positive. New Moon is probably as melodramatic and sappy as its predecessor was, but most movies these days are loud and dumb. There's no reason to be especially disdainful of a phenomenon just because it's oriented towards girls instead of boys. Let us have a share of the stupidity!

Personally, I'd take Jack Dawson over Edward Cullen any day. Good, old-fashioned costume melodrama is more my style than sparkling vampires, and at least Jack and Rose got to get it on before he died helping to save her. But, as the true snobs say, chacun a son gout.

ETA: Pajiba agrees with me.

Status Update (or, What the WHAT?)

2009-11-16T21:01:00.004-05:00

Around here, it's all "Death, death, death, death, death, death, death -- lunch -- death, death, death -- afternoon tea -- death, death, death -- quick shower ...."

The latest, and I am not making this up, is that my uncle has cancer. And it's bad. When is cancer not bad? Sometimes! When it strikes other families, or Lance Armstrong, apparently. When it strikes my family, it is like, Pow! Kablammo! And other noises as well.

It is esophageal cancer, and it has spread.

As one sympathetic co-worker put it when I told them the latest news, "When it rains, it pours." That was better than the *other* co-worker who said, "Bad stuff always comes in threes, doesn't it?" Because JEBUS CRISP, you mean I need to expect more?

I am totally going to write a story about a character named Jebus Crisp, just as soon as I get my groove back.

With that goal in mind, on Thursday, I got a dramatic haircut, and on Friday, I dragged my friends out to a burlesque show emceed by Murray Hill. He even Twittered the show! Sort of. Not the part where he called my friends and me polyamorous lesbians -- in his neologism, "Pollies" -- and assumed that we passed Mr. Ben around for sport. Or, for that matter, the part where one of the dancers cavorted in Mr. Ben's lap while I spontaneously combusted under the table.

So, as you can tell, considering everything, I am functioning. Occasionally, I waste time hating myself, or I cry on the treadmill because I find Terms of Endearment on TV and I can't change the channel; and I haven't yet managed to write anything since my dad died (see, "getting my groove back," above). Still: burlesque; haircut; socializing ... I'd give myself a B+.

More Than My Father

2009-11-07T16:31:00.003-05:00

The Washington Post put up a delayed but touching tribute to my dad today, including an obit and a "post mortem," which is a kind of blog entry. Both appear in full at the official website/scrapbook, PaulLBloom.com, but this snippet really got to me, so I wanted to re-post it here:

No one seems to remember this incident now, but it was a big deal at the time -- especially Mr. Bloom's grand farewell gesture. It's one of the pleasures of obituary writing to discover someone like Paul Bloom and to unearth such fascinating, if forgotten, episodes of history.

Thank you, Mr. Schudel.

On Writing

2009-11-03T15:15:00.003-05:00

Jezebel takes on the prickly subject of women & memoirs in their post about Mary Karr, who says of her latest book: "I didn't [write] it to help anybody. I did it for the money. I did it because I'm greedy and I like living in New York."

Jezebel wavers before deciding to applaud Karr's "narcissism" and "burst of arrogance," but like some of the commenters, I wouldn't leap to either of those judgements. First of all, it seems to me like Karr is laughing at herself, as she is -- I hope? -- when she attributes her success to the fact that God loves her. But secondly, if the market values her stories, as it has her previous two books, why *not* sell them? Why is it considered low-class to be straightforward about the fact that writing can be not merely a craft but a trade?

I wish I could make money writing. I am doing my damnedest. Or, well, I haven't been for the last few months: what with absorbing the blow of my book not getting picked up, and then the much more destabilizing blow of my father's illness & death, I haven't had any creative energy at all.

My body is getting up every day and going to work. It is managing to eat and see people and even go to the gym. But my mind, to some degree, has stalled. It can't comprehend a world in which I can't call my father, or walk into his room to see him rereading Pickwick Papers yet again, or hear him groan, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth ...."

At least I can still hear his voice. Last week, while cooking, I put on a movie in the background which I immediately heard him condemn as "Dreck!" It is very small solace but occasionally that will do.

Overall, though, my emotional immune system is out of whack, so stupid shit affects me much more than it should. Like the most recent Swarthmore Alumni Bulletin, which last time I managed to greet with the eye-rolling it deserved, and which this time led to a melodramatic crisis of confidence. My mother had to remind me that failure can build character, that there is something to be learned from the fact that you can fall and get up again.

A friend of mine recently voiced her fear that if she lost her current amazing job, she wouldn't be able to look people in the face. Well, I've done it, and then I've done it again. As Mary Karr says, quoting Beckett, aspire to "Fail better."

She also has excellent advice for young writers in general:

[O]ften what we’re most talented at we resist, because we think it’s silly, or small, or not good enough. I teach with George Saunders, a brilliant fiction writer, and he’s so funny. He went to Syracuse when Ray Carver and Toby Wolff were there, and he kept trying to write these gritty, minimalist, realistic stories, and then he’d have some bizarre thing in the middle of it, and Ray and Toby would kill themselves, and tell him, “Just do more of this! Just do this all the time!” And he’d be like, “I want to be a man!”

I will try to keep this in mind. I will also try to blog more, if only because it is a start.

Day to Day

2009-10-22T10:36:00.003-04:00

Considering that all I want to do is eat cereal out of the box and read novels, I'm doing pretty well. After some searching, I found two shuls with daily minyans so that I can say Kaddish. Neither's perfect: One is inconvenient and the other is Orthodox. Whatever.

I've been going to work and getting things done. I've continued showering; I even made it to the gym last night where I ran two and a half miles. I've only had one dream where my father was still alive and disappointed in me.

I miss my father. But, anyway.

The whole death thing really knocked me for a loop. Wow, it was fast. As recently as September, my dad was being treated. There was medicine, and where there is medicine there is hope, even if one is poisonous and the other is flimsy. Then, suddenly, he had six months; then merely weeks; then I was in the backyard of the Casey House in Montgomery County, sleep-deprived and tear-glazed, casting a protective shadow over the bed in which my father had managed to open his eyes for the last time. It was a blue-and-yellow afternoon, with hawks circling several layers up from butterflies, and we had decided to roll his bed outside.

Everyone who could come came over his last couple days. We pressed his hand, played his iPod, read to him from Isaiah. The rabbi shook a lulav and an etrog at him, because it was Succot, and then kissed him on the forehead. And that afternoon, twelve hours before his labored breathing faded away, he saw us there. He knew we had gathered, for him, for whatever good it would do. For an hour or so, he managed to stay conscious, my brilliant, generous, lazy, sentimental, anxious-depressive-insomniac, loving, witty father, and then he dipped under again and never woke up.

Then, suddenly, there were things to do. We had to sleep, and write obits, and talk to the funeral home, and plan speeches. We had to break down and get up again. My mother cried; I've never seen her look so lost. We had to deal with that. We had to eat, and dress warmly for the funeral, because the day we interred him was a day borrowed from early March. It had everything but crows in it. I think I cried hardest when my father-in-law lifted the shovel to help bury my father.

But my friends, my friends, my friends did everything that is good in this world, everything good people do. At one point at the cemetery three of them had staked out places around me, bolstering me. Later, they came to the house and sat with me on the floor. They came every night and sometimes during the day, too. The experience was, as I said, a plane crash, but it was also a water landing on par with Sully's, because of my friends and my family's friends and my family. I can't thank you enough.

RIP, Tateh.

Crawling Back Toward the Light

2009-10-18T10:08:00.002-04:00

Step One: Return to New York

Step Two: Return to work

Step Three: Return to normal

RIP Paul L. Bloom (1939-2009)

2009-10-09T17:25:00.003-04:00

After about forty hours in hospice watching my father die, I am thoroughly and otherwise exhausted. Later I will have more to say about the experience, which was basically a plane crash; but one whose impact was softened by the tangible love of family and friends.

For now, I leave you with a letter to the editor from the NYT in 1981, written by a complete stranger, entitled "God Bless Mr. Bloom!":

To the Editor:

Paul Bloom's grand exit from his job as special counsel to the Energy Department in the Carter Administration prods our uncomfortable acceptance of 10-figure oil profits. The mind has almost gotten used to corporate gains in the billions, oil sheiks fresh out of ideas about what to do with their money, petroleum executives living on such a grand scale that it makes the palaces of Pharoah look like the South Bronx.

But not Mr. Bloom's mind. No weak resignation for him. In one glorious parting act, he distributed $4 million (a mere frivolity by measure of fossil-fuel accounts) to four charities with the promise that all would be spent helping the poor warm their bones at oil burners too expensive for them to run.

Mr. Bloom's imagination hasn't failed him or his heart. Yet even more, his wild act of charity reminds us of that line from ''Man of La Mancha,'' which Mr. Bloom seems to have taken to heart: ''Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.''

God bless Mr. Bloom! ROBERT H. POPE, Pastor, Pascack Reformed Church, Park Ridge, N.J., Feb. 14, 1981

Mr. Pope, wherever you are, if you're still there please feel free to come to my father's funeral, Monday, October 12th, at 10:00 AM in DC. We will save you a seat in the front row.

Off (Again)

2009-10-02T16:38:00.003-04:00

My father's condition has deteriorated more quickly than anyone expected. I am furious and anxious and despondent but mostly I'm numb because how could this have all happened so fast? Almost a year ago he was in Botswana dashing out of the way of stampeding elephants, and in South Africa reuniting with long-lost members of the family. Then he fell down some stairs, came back to the States to get x-rayed, and voila.

I told my Dr. Russian this story, and after pushing a box of tissues over to me, he said, "Well, pancreatic cancer is a fatal disease."

True, O king!

Last weekend, he could barely move around the apartment by himself. This weekend, I have no idea what I will find.

Cheer!

2009-09-22T13:29:00.002-04:00

My DVD player / VCR conked out while I was cooking. It gagged on and then tried to spit out a video of the Apartment. One thread of film got stuck in its teeth while the rest lolled out like a great black tongue. I guess I should snip the thread and try to extricate the carcass, but what's the point? For now the movie continues to hang there, suspended from the broken mouth of the VCR, and serve as a fabulous metaphor for life these days.

Over and over again, I pick up a book only to discover it's about death and have to put it down. Finally, in frustration, I decided to reread the first Harry Potter. HEY, GUESS WHAT THAT'S ABOUT?

I can't win. Authors, weren't either of your parents ever seriously ill? Didn't you ever need solace, comfort, humor, diversion? There are only so many Jane Austen books to reread.

Can anyone recommend something cheerful but still intelligent, please? I was hitting myself in my sleep last night; I woke up sore and sad. And this is just the beginning of what looks like a very difficult fall. My friends have been wonderful, as has Mr. Ben. Now I just need some support from art.

Early Christmas card from the Balynker-Glooms

2009-09-14T16:34:00.004-04:00

Perfect form!
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

Hi Everyone! Happy It's-Virtually-Christmas!

Day by day, sunlight recedes, flowers droop, tans fade, and hurricanes gear up to wallop our fair cities. Last year at this time the RNC introduced Sarah Palin and the NYT introduced Unigo! (Now that we all have some perspective, the question to ask is, Which flopped harder?)

I always get down in the dumps in September, but the fact that this summer was disappointingly unsweaty makes me even more morose.

To mark and improve these waning days, some of us decamped to Splish Splash, the water park of kings. The journey was not for the faint of heart: we had to travel into the depths of Long Island via a subway, two trains, and a shuttle bus. Ultimately, though, we arrived at a haven as splish-splashy as promised, and as removed from our daily lives as we could hope.

Even that, as it turned out, was a mere teaser for Mr. Ben's and my more extended vacation in glorious Costa Rica.

We took a puddle-jumper from San Jose to the remote Oso Pennisula, where we stayed in a hacienda owned by a family friend. He visits his mountain-top paradise four or five times a year, usually with as many guests as he can entice to join him.

Together, we explored jungles, beaches, and tropical fruits that required Inglorious Basterds-type methods to get to the insides. He took us out to eat, to hike, to meet his ex-pat friends, to fly through the air with the greatest of ease, and to fish.

BEFORE

AFTER

Once, while relaxing on his shaded porch, with fans whirring overhead and fresh-fruit smoothies in hand, birds quarreling faintly in the trees and the sun dipping into the Pacific on the horizon, I said, "I feel like a colonialist." Turns out that's a Think, Don't Say in the developing world.

Awkward realizations aside, it really was a fantastic experience from beginning to end. Except for the back of my leg.

Ouch!

More pictures TK. Hope you're all well!

Love,
Ben & Ester

Boy Girl Boy Girl

2009-09-11T10:35:00.003-04:00

The results of Gold-medal-winning runner Caster Semenya's "gender test" are in. Reportedly, she is intersex. She was born without a uterus or a womb and with unusually high levels of testosterone to go with internal testes that never descended.

Gawker set the tone with its piece yesterday:

We thought it was super crazy that South African sprinter Caster Semenya had to go through complicated tests to prove she's actually a woman, just because she....whoa, she's not actually a woman!

Breaking, whoa, I did not even know this stuff happened for real, but yes it does!

Blithe ignorance -- how charming. Five seconds of Googling answers the question of how common a condition Semenya's is. 1 out of every 100 people born has some variation in their sex organs. Besides which, I have a friend who was born without a womb or ovaries, and she is one of the most typically feminine (and beautiful) people I know. No one would have any difficulty reading the signs and declaring her a woman.

That, of course, is the problem. We have a strong societal idea of what a Woman is -- i.e., not a Man, the opposite of a Man. Soft, not hard; gentle, not rough; shorter, slighter, weaker, and so on. As more and more female athletes use their bodies the same way men do, and their bodies adapt through use to become more streamlined and muscular, the gender differences become less pronounced. So the Williams sisters wear tiny skirts and pose in bikinis, Dana Torres's baby is mentioned as often as her age, and the press was obsessed with the story of the Olympic volleyball player who lost her wedding ring in the sand.

It is these external markers that Semenya is lacking, as is evident in this Mediaite piece, titled "Pressing Matters: Media Plays ‘Boy or Girl’ with She-male Runner":

But if you have seen pictures of Semenya, let alone seen her torch her competition in a footrace (video below), you can’t help but wonder about her sex; forget how politically incorrect the thought might be, she does look like a man. So it really came as no surprise yesterday when Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported that testing by the International Association of Athletic Federation revealed that Semenya has internal testes, no womb or ovaries and produces three times the normal amount of testosterone as a normal female.

Just when you think we can't do worse than the word "hermaphrodite," which, with its monstrous connotations, is officially out-dated, Mediaite reaches in the grab bag and pulls out "She-male." And then goes on to assure the reader that "you can't help but wonder about her sex." Oh yeah, can't I? Why? Does Semenya really have a more manly face than Dana Torres?

Or than the Williams sisters?

Gender isn't something that can be tested, and sex is more complicated than gonads. Semenya was raised as a woman, trained as a woman, competed as a woman, and succeeded as a woman. Only when she came out on top was she subjected to worldwide humiliation and scorn. Even if she keeps her gold at this point, it will be tarnished, and that is a shame.

To my mind, the situation is very simple. Either the folks in charge come up with some standard for what they find acceptable and test everyone before they let them run, or they test no one. (After all, without testing, how do we know that other runners who didn't win don't have similar conditions?) Ideally the folks in charge, and the media, and the bloggers, would wrap their minds around the fact that human beings are biologically complex. However happy it makes us feel to assume that there are men and women and everyone fits neatly into one category or the other, the truth is deeper than that -- and more interesting.

On the Edge of Things

2009-09-06T13:48:00.006-04:00

Paradise, I've discovered, dwells in the borderlands. It makes sense: being in the center can be pleasant and safe, but it is rarely glorious. The house where Mr. Ben and I are now staying in Costa Rica sits at the top of a mountain, next to the rain forest, and at the edge of a cliff, and it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. A string of bushes beaded with coral-orange flowers separates us from everything below. In the distance and far beneath us, the Pacific Ocean foams at the mouth. Howler monkeys scream at the sun for coming up in the morning and frogs make mellow sounds at twilight.

Otherwise, insects make virtually the only noise. I knew, when I arrived, that I would have to be less jumpy about critters than I usually am. I try and I fail and I continue to try. Our first morning, in a bed-and-breakfast in Alajuela, Mr. Ben and I opened the door to the shower and something large and black flew at us from the darkness. Of course it was only a moth, but *you* try not to scream when something with wings comes at you first thing in the morning.

Our flight over Friday night had been exhausting. Half of Holland had been emptied out onto our plane for some reason. The looming, affable Dutch stood for the most of the ride, leaning over each others' seats, laughing, talking, and even breaking out into song. They ignored us completely and we in turn felt like we were flying 2,000 miles in a bar in the Hague. Of course, the flight was late, and of course there were no movies, and of course by the time the stewardess made it to the very back row with the food cart, where we sat trapped between the Nords and the bathroom, she had given away everything except little hamburgers that get microwaved in plastic bags. The vegetarian meals we had ordered had long since been handed over to someone else.

But who cares? The hunger and the inconvenience were a small price to pay to get here. Our little adventures -- finding the door of the B&B shower broken and ourselves locked in; arriving for our 9:00 AM local flight to Palmar Del Sur on time but at the wrong airport -- seemed funny as soon as they were over.

We have shopped and swum and cooked and marveled at the landscaping here at the top of Mel's mountain. Mel is the family friend whose hospitality we're enjoying. He bought his house five years ago and has transformed it into a private tropical getaway. Last night we played poker until almost midnight on the porch with a crowd of his ex-pat friends. Today we're going to go fishing for our lunch. I am supremely blissful, even while I am on the watch for scorpions. And tomorrow we head into the rain forest! With any luck, we will make it out again.

What's Wrong?

2009-09-03T11:03:00.002-04:00

Conversation with a co-worker:

Me: I have to go to the post office to buy a couple stamps.
Her: Why not use the stamp machine here?
Me: Because that would be stealing.
Her: Nah, everyone does it.
Me: You know, at my last office, we had a long conversation about whether it was okay to ask for a cup of water at Chipotle and then fill the cup with soda. For some reason, everyone thought that was fine!
Her: Sure!
Me: Do you do that?
Her: Of course. Well, I don't go to Chipotle. But I used to shoplift sweaters from H&M all the time. I was kind of a klepto when I was a kid. It was fun! The sweaters were too small for me, even.
Me: I was the kind of kid who never smoked, never cheated, never stole ...
Her: Ugh -- moral.
Me: Except I'm not a "good person."
Her: I know!
Me: Hey!
Her: Well, I knew what you meant.
Me: Yeah. I don't know, I just had an inborn sense, from the time that I was little, that some things were wrong and so I never wanted to do them. You know what I mean?
[Pause]
Her: I really liked stealing penny candy, too.

The Most Serious Comedy I've Ever Seen

2009-08-25T16:06:00.006-04:00

When I saw the Pianist lo these many years ago, I had a peculiar emotional reaction that faded gradually over several days. I felt like if someone had given me a button capable of destroying modern Poland, I would have pressed that button.

That's a crazy impulse, especially for someone who doesn't even support the death penalty. But I wanted to press that button, I really did. I had never felt so bloodthirsty in my life.

The trouble with bloodthirst is you can never be sure what will slake it. One collaborator lynched? One village destroyed? One genocide? In the long run, of course not; I'm a progressive peacenik, for god's sake. I have white-guilt and Jew-guilt and privilege-guilt disturbing my sleep just from living my life day to day. The nice thing about a button is that I could press it from a distance and avoid the immediate implications of what I'd done. Still, eventually I would have to face the repercussions, like America with Hiroshima.

What I could have used was some celluloid catharsis in the form of a darkly-comic historical fantasy as imagined by Quentin Tarantino. (WARNING: SOME SPOILERS AHEAD) God, I wish this movie had come out in 2002 when I also had to digest Shoah and Night of the Shooting Stars in film classes. Not only does Tarantino deliver the active response I was craving back then, he does it in a way that is funny (to relieve the tension), clearly fake (to relieve any revulsion you may feel), and over-the-top (so that you realize you don't actually want what you think you do).

No one does vengeance better than Tarantino. In his hands, vengeance is not a mindless act of good against evil: in Kill Bill, viewers are encouraged to sympathize with the human targets, even Bill himself. Elle Driver is, I think, the exception, the only cartoonishly villainous character, and even she is so great that you don't want to see her die.

This is why Tarantino gently raises the question of whether even Nazis deserved to be gunned down, roasted alive, scalped, mutilated, and otherwise inconvenienced. Of course the Third Reich needed to be brought down (and what a job he does of it, too). But no one, no matter how despicable, should have their head bashed in by Eli Roth. Watching Inglourious Basterds, you simultaneously get to enjoy the fantasy and let the fantasy go.

Provisional hero worship: looking up to folks the responsible way

2009-08-24T15:39:00.005-04:00

Folksinger Jill Sobule once asked, "Why are all our heroes so imperfect? / Why do they always let me down?" Of course, this was before she went nuttier than squirrel poop and let herself be quoted as saying, "Fuck you, Katy Perry," proving once again that even the people who should know better usually don't.

The sentiment behind her song remains true, even as its singer is tarnished. Heroes, man! What gives? Why, on closer inspection, are they so often fuck ups and losers?

In the spirit of good will & optimism, I am celebrating my temporary heroes, the people who haven't lost my trust yet, screwed prostitutes with socks on, or turned out to be health-care-opposing libertarians.

But, to hedge my bets for the long term, I will try to keep my worship in check.

PROVISIONAL HERO #1: DAVID REES ("Get Your War On"). In addition to humorous diversions during the Bush years, he's given us this new Anne-Frank-via-David-Mamet quote:

"Stupid anti-semitic seig-heiling cunt. You know what it takes to live in an attic for two years? It takes BRASS BALLS. ... Send me to whatever camp you want. I'll die of typhus and still wind up on top."

Gotta admire his verve, right? At least until we find out Rees poisoned his funnier twin sister when they were five.

PROVISIONAL HERO #2: MERYL STREEP (most recently, Julie and Julia). So classy, so talented, that she makes me consider getting Mamma Mia! from Netflix. Her rendition of Julia Child had me giggling and beaming at the screen for a full two hours. Sadly, rumor has it that she will be outed as a major internet troll who spends her nights starting flame wars.

PROVISIONAL HERO #3: DAN SAVAGE ("Savage Love"). He's smart and funny and may be getting his own show on HBO:

I'm hoping to bring a new kind of conversation to TV about sex--an honest conversation, one that's informed without being (too) wonky, funny without being (too) cruel, sexy without being (too) cheesy. Basically, my sex-advice column--but on the teevee!

No, he's not always sensitive; he has rightly pissed off numerous folks with flip answers about serious problems. Will he turn out to be a cannibal? Only time will tell!

PROVISIONAL HERO #4: ANNE LAMOTT (Operating Instructions). Would there be mommy blogs, or any kind of blogs for that matter, without brave, frank, wry writers like Lamott who've been letting it all hang out for almost twenty years? Too bad she delights in eating animals while they're still alive, just to watch them squirm, right? Or so we'll discover eventually.

PROVISIONAL HERO #5: MY BROTHER JUDAH. The boy watched the entirety of the Wire, from Season 1, ep 1, through the end of Season 5 in less than a week. I call that dedication of monastic proportions. Of course, it helps that his school year hasn't started yet and he doesn't really, you know, date.

More, more! Nominate your own Provisional Heros to round out the list.

Lovin the Leos

2009-08-20T13:53:00.004-04:00

Apparently I love Leos. I just can't get enough! Roughly sixteen of my closest friends were ejected into this world between late July and late August, along with my mother, my little brother, and of course the one to whom I pledged my troth (in August, natch).

Having been hatched on July 19th, I narrowly missed being a Leo myself, for which I can only thank the vagaries of fate, cuz have you noticed what strong and often clashing personalities you Leos tend to have? I'll take my Cancer oversensitivity any day.

On behalf of Leos and their special days, I have gone bowling, at which I played two games without breaking 50 either time. I did manage to drop the ball twice though while trying to aim! I have gone eating, I have gone drinking (without drinking), I have tried to go to Jon Stewart. Though I reserved the tickets eight months ago, that plan worked about as well as the bowling, thanks to circumstances beyond my control; I missed a banner episode, too. Oh well. I have traveled and I have stayed put. I have exhausted myself trying to think of semi-original things to write on Facebook walls.

But birthdays go round every year. Why does this August seem so intense? Usually there isn't news, at least not beyond Hey Look, Cute Kitten! stories, or anything worth seeing in the theater. This year, we've had to contend with heroics from mayors, idiocy from former mayors (Death Panels!!), Democrats actually having to respond to "Death Panels", the Middle East cracking down on women, pirates, clunkers, and lots of revelations of the obvious: Bernie Madoff was short where it counted; the Bush administration politicized national security.

Julie and Julia, District 9, and Ponyo are all out now, competing for my attention. Coming soon, to make matters worse: Inglourious Basterds! WTF, August? Will you let me breathe and process the fact that my dad is not getting better and my book is not getting published and --

Actually, you know what, maybe I'm okay with not having time to think. More birthday cake for everyone!

So long, America!

2009-08-13T19:54:00.003-04:00

After four long months of trying to sell my first book, my supportive and encouraging literary agent has conceded defeat. Well, partial defeat, I should say: there's still the rest of the English speaking world to be tried. Perhaps I'll be a Canadian cross-over smash, like Alanis Morisette or Wayne Gretzky! How's the economy in Australia these days? How do Kiwis feel about ambitious religious and political satire?

As dandy as it would be to do publicity tours through Stonehenge and Bath, I'm not counting on that happening. Failure is not falling down but staying down, right? Just gotta keep writing -- and try not to tackle something huge this time. I'll put out that pseudo-autobiographical novel everyone expects of twenty-somethings, and if it sells, then maybe it'll be possible to get the real book out there.

For the most part I'm doing well, though I lost it a bit last night when Mr. Ben came home with flowers. It has helped to remember that: a) I'm only 27; b) I loved the challenge of doing something difficult and creative; c) the book got me an agent; d) the agent got my book read by numerous editors I admire, and those editors now know my name.

Going home this weekend to see my dad will help keep my minor life setbacks in perspective. This is not to say that the taboo on asking about my dad is lifted, by the way -- he's still in bad shape, and he's fighting. But I come bearing gifts from Russ and Daughters, which will work their magic on everyone's spirits, if not my ego.

Okay, a new rule: you can ask about my book; you can ask about my dad. But please don't do both at once.

You Killed 'the Time Traveler's Wife'!

2009-08-05T16:02:00.003-04:00

You bastards! The movie version of the story presents a HAPPY ENDING because a focus group's reaction to the actual ending was less than positive. The perpetrators of this horror are castigated by Pajiba, in one of the most on-point rants I've ever read:

Oh blind fury, how I’ve missed you. It’s been a week or two since you last curled my hands into claws to rip furrows from my own flesh.

“Properly”? Really? You’re going to go there? You’ve directed Flightplan and a single episode of “Lie to Me” and you’re going to swap out the gut-wrenching final scene of a beautiful story because 30 people you found at a mall on a Tuesday afternoon didn’t like being sad? It’s a tragic love story you ignorant twat

Hear hear! I've read the Time Traveler's Wife three times and bawled myself into catatonia three times; that is the mark of a truly special piece of art.

Hollywood seems to have forgotten that a certain level of pain can be exquisite. Heather Armstrong makes this point beautifully in her final post about giving birth to Daughter #2. Juliet makes this point beautifully by dying over and over again all over the world. Terms of Endearment -- one of the few movies that can reliably reduce me to tears -- won an Oscar for Best Picture, for god's sake!

Actual Updates from the Alumni Bulletin

2009-07-31T21:55:00.004-04:00

The Swarthmore Alumni Magazine came today, which is always a tasty treat. Here are real, honest-to-god updates for my fellow Swatties:

Jason's third album, The Epic Album, has been released. If you are interested in listening to his experimental rock and medieval epic fantasy, please contact him at [email]."

Julie is still living at an orphanage in Monte Cristi, Dominican Republic. She runs the English Institute in town and leads an environmental education project in the local public schools.

Qian is composing, working at the Asian and Pacific Island Wellness Center, and volunteering at The Walden School. ... He recently served on the 30th Anniversary Coordinating Committee for Community United Against Violence, an LGBTQQ anti-violence organization [I would never have guessed -- ed.]. On a recent Northeast tour, he enjoyed [Swattie's] opera and celebrated enlightenment with [other Swatties]. Qian also recently attended the Queer Contra Dance Camp in Aptos, CA, with [Swatties].

There's not quite enough room here to report everything Hollis has been up to, but selected activities include ice climbing, running the outings for the local Adirondack Mountain Club, running the crisis hotline in upstate New York, traveling as national secretary for the national crisis hotline board, teaching suicide intervention professionally, sitting on New York's state trainer board, and, oh, getting his pilot's license, of course.

It goes on and on. The sad thing is, when I went to school with these people, they were all three-dimensional. Though I try to remember them like that, more and more in my mind they become caricature. Except for all my friends, of course, who don't write in to the damn alumni magazine. That might be because they're not "still in Hawaii working on a doctorate in the neuroendocrinology of reef fish" or "exploring the rat research world," or even "still living in DC and looking forward to the summer after traveling to El Salvador as an electoral observer early in the year and preparing for early summer travel to Italy (for work, not play)."

I shouldn't be disgruntled. I like my life. There is no need to mock / envy other people's achievements, even if my most striking recent accomplishment has been bringing friends and one of their mothers to Drag King Bingo.

In fact, I just heard from a young woman to whom I made a difference five years ago. Via Facebook, she wrote:

This is a strange question, but I was wondering if you're the Ester who was an RA at [summer camp] in 2004. Completely out of the blue, flipping through some things, I found the literary magazine from that summer, remembered poems that Ester (you?) had written and smiled.

Cutest message ever, right? I wrote back in kind, and then she replied:

There was at least one in the lit mag that summer, yeah. It might be embarrassing now - I mean, it was 5 years ago and I already see a younger version of myself in the writing, but I remember it meaning a lot to me then and just generally enjoying chatting with you during the session.

Thanks! I really loved my first year at Smith and am counting down the days till I get back.

Funny how those things are. I'm struggling to remember my own RA's name from that summer, but I guess, probably because of the poetry, that you still stick out among it all.

I still stick out, and not because of the boobs. (Or so she tactfully claims.) Isn't that adorable enough to rival Puppywar? It made my Friday, anyway.

27 again

2009-07-28T16:36:00.004-04:00

Two grand things came out of turning twenty-seven, aside from getting to celebrate for a full weekend. I now own the full set of DVDs of the Wire, and part of my identity moved cross-country to West LA.

Owning the Wire means I can not only open my eyes wide and earnestly preach its virtues to folks, but I can also push boxes of proof into their hands. This brings me great joy. Left up to themselves maybe people would follow my advice to shining towers of pop cultural brilliance, or maybe they would wander unguided into thickets of bad taste, from which they eventually emerge whining about how there's nothing good on television.

And I can re-watch it, either with the folks to whom I'm preaching or by myself just because. Though an exciting prospect, this marathon will have to wait. I've been dosing myself with intense art lately: reading literature about war and its aftermath (City of God, City of Thieves, Away, A Canticle for Leibowitz), watching shows about violence and what happens when you cleave to a morality system of your own making (Sopranos, Weeds). Too often, my dreams have been disturbing, even horrifying. Last night it was all rape and pillage, rape and pillage, with random murder on the side.

It seemed wise to put myself on a diet of family friendly fare, like the Gilmore Girls, until my subconscious adjusts.

Meanwhile, to help with the distraction, I have an iPhone with a super new West LA phone number! If you didn't enjoy Pt 1, below, you definitely won't enjoy the second installment, so I'll skip it. In short, after much haggling and some help from my brother, I have the most exciting new toy I've ever had. I hope 27 makes me worthy of it.

iphone saga: the beginning

2009-07-23T11:39:00.005-04:00

PART ONE: THE OFFER

Adam: Ester, I would like to buy you an iphone for your birthday. ... Hello? Are you there? What's that sound?
Ester: Me jumping for joy while simultaneously descending into neurosis.

PART TWO: THE DITHERING

Ester: Am I cool enough? Am I important enough? Will people laugh at me?
Rebecca #1: I though self-deprecation went out in the 90s.
Ester: Not for me.

PART THREE: THE DECISION

Adam: You're getting an iphone -- just accept it. It's a phone, not an existential crisis. Ok? Good.

PART FOUR: ACQUISITION ATTEMPT #1

Ester: Hi, I'm here to get an iphone.
Genius: Okily dokily! ... Hm. This says you need to give us $500, which we would hold for a year.
Ester: This is like some sort of ransom?
Genius: Yes.
Ester: And at whose chest can I point this Gun of Desperation, which contains a magazine full of Trustworthy Looks and Sensible Explanations?
Genius: That would be AT&T's. Store's right around the corner.

PART FIVE: ACQUISITION ATTEMPT #1.5

Ester: Hi, I'm here to understand why I can't get an iphone.
AT&T Lady: Hm. This says that there are stray cats that have better credit than you do. And felons. And street urchins.
Ester: That's impossible.
AT&T Lady: Sea urchins, even.
Ester: Three months ago, I qualified for a mortgage!
AT&T Lady: Thank you, have a nice day.
Rebecca #2: Come on, honey. Let's go resuscitate you and then get you some food.

PART SIX: A PASSAGE TO INDIA

Ester: Hi, I'm calling to understand why sea urchins have better credit than I do.
Bombay: Thank you. May I have your date of birth?
Ester: July 19th.
Bombay: Oh! And how was your birthday?
Ester: Like sex without coming. The iphone was supposed to be the big present, you see, but I couldn't get one because there's some problem with my credit.
Bombay: I see. To help you, I will need $15 every month for the rest of your life.
Ester: Here you go.
Bombay: Thank you. Here is your actual credit score.

Ester: Oh! But that isn't bad at all. It's lower than it was 3 months ago.
Bombay: That's because AT&T checked it twice: each time knocked it down a bit.
Ester: How thoughtful of them.
Bombay: Be of good cheer! Your score is lower than that of my very efficient and capable twelve year old daughter, but it is higher than that of Bernie Madoff.
Ester: Good enough for me. Thank you.
Bombay: Thank you. And may the lord in his goodness and mercy grant you your orgasm/iphone.
Ester: Amen.

To be continued ...

What is ester?

2009-07-19T00:18:00.008-04:00

On the happiest day of the year, according to Google, "ester is" ...

mainly used in food and cosmetics
$162910
just too sweet!
a beautiful name.
derived from the German Essig-Äther (literally: vinegar)
widely used in leather and daily chemicals
stable
a thirty-three-year-old married woman with four children
tasty!
in your extended network
used in making soap
generally immediately available in most volumes.
much more business like, organized, and efficient. While Tati would amble in around 8:30, 9:00 or 10:00 am, Ester is here at 7:00 sharp.
filled with various moving companies. Before choosing a moving company in Ester, you need to take several precautions.
a giant of a human being, head and shoulders above most others (7'0", 325 lbs.). She usually has a friendly grin on her face.
giving a helping hand to her husband
a fan of: Music. Susan Boyle
true commic Genius.
Ester is a Hedonist: She does as she chooses when she chooses. She is unfettered by notions of sin and shame and is unconcerned with what others may think
neither an anarchist nor a polygamist and that she is in good mental and physical health.
pure joy!
a very nice looking girl that combines femmininity with evenly fairly developed muscles.

This is all true. Also, please note the following:

"The odor of the ester is more easily detected when the ester is mixed in some water. Never try to. directly smell the ester while it is still hot."

How will it all end?

2009-07-13T20:37:00.004-04:00

CRASH
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

Our localized version of Katrina hit around 2:30 AM. I woke up to the sound of rushing water, which was pretty peaceful until I realized what it meant. Mr. Ben, being quicker on the uptake, was already dressed and scurrying around, doing things, while I fumbled for clothes. After a brief debate about whether we should dial 311 or 911, Mr. Ben was on the phone with a dispatcher; soon, three of New York's Bravest were at our door with iron implements and befuddled looks on their faces.

Was this some kind of karmic punishment for our not going in the water at the end of Saturday's "Going Places, Doing Stuff" ride through NYC? I wondered. The tour was led by a brilliant but crazy friend of ours. It smashed together 40 strangers on a vegetable-oil-powered bus built for 30 on a trip from Long Island City, to Woodlawn Cemetary at the end of one subway line in the Bronx, and finally to the beach at the opposite end of another.

Along the way, we broke bread with a Ghanaian king and members of the Federation of Black Cowboys. We tried to avoid poison ivy on a post-apocalyptic elevated train track in Queens. We crawled through holes in fences, did a loop in a Halal slaughterhouse, and deciphered graffiti in an abandoned munitions factory.

All with good cheer! It was a fun day, and it was lovely to end up facing the waves. But by then the temperature had dropped to about 65 degrees, and what with the clouds and the wind and everything it seemed like you'd have to be crazy to strip off your clothes and dive in the water -- especially since you had at least another hour on vinyl seats, cheek-to-jowl with your fellow man, before you'd get to a subway that would take you home.

A sane decision, and yet one for which we were punished: Sunday night, the water came to us.

The firefighters went off the way they came and we spent an hour turning our bayou back into a bathroom as best we could. The effort required two mops, two huge buckets, lots of towels, and a rubber dustpan that functioned as a ladle. It was gross and exhausting, and we were already exhausted; by the time we were done, we could barely stand. We put our filthy selves back in bed (naturally, we had just washed our sheets) and turned off the alarm clock.

Who needs an alarm clock when you have your own personal waterfall starting at 8:00 AM? "We just cleaned that floor!" I moaned as Mr. Ben jumped out of bed to gauge the new damage. At first it didn't seem so bad. Then, as were trying to figure out what to do next, the ceiling collapsed. If I had been using the toilet, I'd have been deader than Elvis. I will never take my safety while on the can for granted again.

the paradox of choice

2009-07-09T12:32:00.003-04:00

OMG, you guys, I could have an iPhone.

Do you know how cool I think iPhones are? They're like puppies. When I see someone else with one, my eyes get wide with excitement and misty with sentiment and I ask if I can play with it.

The trouble is, I do not believe I am cool enough to have an iPhone. I cannot tell whether this is a logical impulse, being that the following things are true: I do not have the money to support an iPhone in the manner to which it is accustomed; my own lifestyle does not call for one; I might worry about it too much to enjoy it.

Or is the impulse plainly silly? Is it reasonable to be intimidated by appliances?

The back-up potential gift is an iPod because, believe it or not, I don't even have one of those. But they've been out long enough that I think I could swing having one, though I'd still know, in the back of my head, that it is more attractive than I am. Any over-thinkers out in Internet-land have an opinion?

the happiest time of the year

2009-07-07T16:31:00.005-04:00

It's been Michael Jackson Week for about nine days now, with short interruptions in which we were instructed to laugh at the ramblings of Sarah Palin. ("If I die, I die," she says now, nonsensically. I wonder if she even knows who she's quoting.)

The AP begins a story on the funeral by describing the somber atmosphere:

Michael Jackson's public memorial started out more spiritual than spectacular Tuesday, opening with a church choir singing as his golden casket was laid in front of the stage and a shaft of light evoking a cross as Lionel Richie gave a gospel-infused performance.

I'm not sure "spiritual" is the word I would use for any of that. Then again, Harry Potter trailers are as close to spiritual as I get.

The Harry Potter movie is only one Michael-Jackson-Week away! It is one of the many reasons I am crazy about summer. Also Twelfth Night in the park and Harold and Maude in the other park and the idea of my birthday on Governor's Island.

Over July 4th, Mr. Ben and I basked in the good weather in Asheville, NC ("the San Francisco of the South!") with his mom and ten thousand other tourists, pasty from the past month or so of rain. To justify its reputation, the town had one gay bar and the local movie theater was playing "Every Little Step," the documentary about the making of A Chorus Line. But it was still the South. For every rainbow, there was a Jesus fish, and in the midst of the tourists in the town square waiting for the fireworks, there was a man dragging a large wooden cross. We don't get a lot of those in Brooklyn.

It was a nice change of pace, as well as a nice transition into my favorite month of the year. July will turn me into a 27 year old, even if it doesn't turn me into a published novelist (the prospect of which dims with every passing minute). Ah well, who's counting? And who's lining up to join the fun and help take my mind off the failure?