the fiancee proposes

After a great, if hectic, weekend, Mr. Ben finds it in himself to get up at 6:00 this gray monday morning and is gone to get more work done by 6:30. I leave for work at the more human time of 8:30 but stop right outside the door to the building. Mr. Ben is there. Why is he there? And why is he carrying those flowers?

At first I'm confused, thinking it's some Day of Importance that I've forgotten. Meanwhile Mr. Ben is grinning that boyish grin. He hands me the armful of blue-purple flowers and before I understand what's going on he gets down on one knee right there in front of our apartment building and pulls a small black box out of his bag.

Instead of going to school this morning, he had gone to Fassbinder's and gotten me a ring.

"Will you marry me?" and "It's a sapphire," he says helpfully because I'm laughing and crying. I don't know what I'm reacting to: the pageantry, the ring, the surprise. He takes the flowers & the ring to bring inside and we finally stop kissing so I can go to the subway. I'm completely happy.

Christmas for the Jews

I'm so happy that I almost can't take stock of how happy I am. It's almost unfathomable. For sure I've never been this happy on a rainy Wednesday in November.

Let's list the top five, shall we. In order of Exactly How Exuberant This Result Makes Ester:

#5) A moderate Muslim man in Minnesota makes it into Congress. First ever, and, oddly, not even in Michigan. (Bonus points for alliteration.) Lots of firsts, actually:

First woman to serve as speaker of the house: Nancy Pelosi

First Muslim elected to U.S. Congress: Keith Ellison

First Democratic Socialist elected to U.S. Congress: Bernie Sanders

First Jewish governor of New York: Eliot Spitzer

First African-American governor of Massachusetts: Deval Patrick

And, according to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, 67 openly gay candidates were elected to state and local offices (more than ever before)

{full list here}

#4) We won the House decisively AND a majority of the governorships! We are Master of the House, master of our domain, kings of the castle. Even our Dear Leader had to admit it. I would have loved to listen in on his call as he made nice to Pelosi, the woman who, previously, he could only refer to as "that liberal lesbian who's gonna steal your children, bus them to the nearest ghetto for abortions, and then sell them to illegal aliens."

In the process of taking the House, we #3) wiped Santorum off the floor of the Senate. His son cried; that was sad. Otherwise, wha-hoo! Take THAT, you brown-shirt in a suit.

#2) The ballot initiatives country-wide didn't do badly at all. It looks like stem cell research got approved in Missouri, the gay marriage ban failed in Arizona, and, most excitingly, the anti-abortion bill imported to South Dakota straight from Nicaragua was voted down. Three cheers for choice, and for the voters in South Dakota!

#1) We're within spitting distance of the Senate. In fact we may as well start acting as though we have it. Allen doesn't seem to be fighting hard for his seat, which is the deciding one -- he hasn't insisted on a recount, for example, if the initial poring over the votes doesn't discover an extra 7,001 for him in a box somewhere.

Webb seems to have gotten this memo: he's acting confident. We should follow his lead. Although, honestly, even a 50/50 split in the Senate feels like a huge victory to me, especially when coupled with the other huge gains of today. God bless Rahm Emanuel. God bless Chuck Shumer. And god bless America: thanks to you, now I can see Borat!

... On that note, I should add that I'm also deliriously happy about my office. Finally, I'm in a place where people are politically engaged, friendly, funny, eager to talk about what's going on while they congregate in the kitchen over free, company-supplied snacks & the free, company-suppled copy of the New York Times. Finally, I'm home.

ETA: Rummy. Yes. The first head to fall.

I am in an abusive relationship with the month november

Every couple years, I let myself hope. I let myself be soothed and thrilled by the prospect of the independents, the young, the disatisfied making their voices heard at last. Every two years I look a grinning Karl Rove in the face and say, "Get thee behind me, Satan! I trust in THE LORD."

And every two years, I wake up to a sour morning in November with a hangover that only the truly pious could understand.

Why? Why do I let myself get yanked around this way? Why can I not merely accept the continued supremacy of the Republican machine, the 110% effectiveness of its fear- and hate-mongering? Why am I like the hero of the movie, three-quarters of the way through, when everything seems so dark, when he's struggling against everything and being taunted by the bad guy with the upper hand? "Join me," hisses the bad guy. "It's your only chance to win." "Death first!" the hero hisses back heroically, even as he's suspended over the shark tank full of apathetic voters.

I just don't want to be crushed again, is all I'm trying to say. In fact, I won't let myself see Borat: Cultural Learnings of Something Something to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazachstan UNLESS the dems manage to pull this one out. Only then will I be able to laugh freely at the foibles of red state America without stopping periodically to sob in my sleeves.

On a completely different note, I realized while talking to my oh-so-literate buddy Johnny that I'm a friend to books from virtually every period in recent history except 1850-1900. In a glaring omission, something about the writing of that era does nothing for me. Shelley is silly. Stowe is sentimental. The sermonizing of Wharton, Trollope, James, and ick! Dreiser all leave me cold. I can't immediately think of an exception or an explanation. If you can help, please! do.

what is, M?

Part of living in New York is going to your friends' concerts. Amazingly you have lots of friends who perform music, and they perform it near-constantly. This is Mr. Ben and me looking fierce at the Knitting Factory, enjoying two opportunities in one evening to indulge a friend's performative tendencies. When you actually miss a concert -- as I just did, recently, to my chagrin -- it's a very sad thing. You get so used to being there, you know? Of course you do.

I missed a friend's concert and book release party because I was at home, in bed, shivering. Much less fun. I blame the wedding. I had just spent a couple whirlwind days in DC learning from the florist that I'm too short to carry certain flowers. Lilacs, luckily, are okay. Incidentally, the extremely gay florist was named David; his partner is named Jonathan. No one else found this funny, because very few people appreciate subtle bible humor.

Over the weekend, we also came within striking distance of picking an invitation, if only we can agree what color celadon is, and we learned that at many rehearsal dinners, the wedding couple (gloried and sanctified be It) will show slides, listen to speeches, eat all night with the guests to a three-piece band, and have a fancy cake. What distinguishes this from the actual wedding party? I'm still trying to figure that out.

Ah well. Meanwhile at least I have the election to wholly consume me. The con, obviously, is the frikkin horrible attack ads wedged into all the available commercial space for America's Next Top Model and 30 Rock; but I'm more or less willing to put up with it for the general distraction. (My concentration pays off: I got an A+ on that test. An A+. No kidding: I am the next Carville. Who, by the way, I could probably also identify.)

hilarity, by brittany

Check out this user review from Amazon.com:

The book that I have chosen is not only one book but it is a series of thirteen books. I will only be writing about eight of the books. The reason that this book has influenced my life is that there are three children named the Baudlaires. These children where one day out at the beach and the had received a terrible message saying that there parents had just been killed in a terrible fire in the Baudlaire residence. after the fire sunny, klause and violet baudlaire where now known as the "baudlaire orphans." they were being moved around from crazy family member to the next. Every single one of the family members had died because of a terrible man name "count Olaf." the only thing that he wanted was the baudlaire orphans huge fortune that there parents left them. the reason that this book had influenced my life is because a lot of times I can take my parents for granted and in this story these children have no family, friends or parents. I did not realize that I have a good life until I was finished reading these eight books about three children getting pushed from family member to family member.

Written by: Brittany McDermott

Priceless! Now, some of you might take issue with my making fun of what is clearly -- or should I say, hopefully? -- a child. To you, I say, PISH TOSH. In fifteen years, this "Brittany from California" will have a better career, hotter husband, even hotter lover, and way more money than I. What will I have? Only the ability to mock grammar.

The last Snicket book, The End, outsold every other book in America last week, according to my office's copy of Publisher's Weekly. No mean feat. I contributed, I am not-quite-ashamed to admit. It's the only book that's really caught my attention lately, succeeding where Water for Elephants, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and Fortress of Solitude have mysteriously failed.

In grown-up book news, I have finally picked up another that's met my standards: Arthur and George by some stuck up British postmodernist. Yes! I wish I had an audio version. The only thing better than reading British writing is having it read to you, complete with sexy sexy accent.

friday afternoon politics

A sample from a conversation Bush had with O'Reilly:

"O'REILLY: The secular progressives don't like you because you're a man of faith.

"BUSH: Yes.

"O'REILLY: You know that.

"BUSH: Yes. That causes me to be sad for people who don't like somebody because he happens to believe in the Almighty.

"O'REILLY: But you know that's in play.

"BUSH: Absolutely."

"O'REILLY: They think you are some kind of evangelical. God tells you what to do and you go out and do it. And they hate that."

"BUSH: I guess that I have pity for people who believe that. They don't understand the relationship between man and the Almighty, then."

Just so we all know what country we're living in.

I say, Draft Obama. Who's with me?

five year plan

A friend of mine was just on Jeopardy!. He did fine -- didn't win but seemed calm and smart, and he seemed to have a good time. I'm scared that, in that position, I'd get all star-struck, forget Alex's name, doodle on the monitor ... Still! I want to be on Jeopardy!.

Okay, with that in mind, here's my new plan for life.

STEP ONE: Find someone to publish my novel. It shouldn't be too hard; it's not like there are very many writers in NYC competing for attention.

STEP TWO: Get a lot of attention as a result of the publishing company's masterful marketing of the book. Watch book rake in huge amounts of money. Oh, wait! Get to enjoy huge amounts of money!

STEP THREE: Who are we kidding? Me, enjoy money? More like just add it to my Orange savings account. First maybe buy another pair of Fleuvogs and see a movie at the Angelika.

STEP FOUR: Get married. It'll probably be time for that, right?

STEP FIVE: Become exhausted trying to juggle media interviews with full-time work. Explain to my office that I need to take some time off for the book tour.

STEP SIX: Book tour! Gotta buy clothes! Gotta remember not to mention Franzen while on Oprah!

STEP SEVEN: Backlash. Escape to New Zealand. Accept advance for second novel, perhaps about monkeys. Plot plot. Try not to cry about what they're saying about me back home.

STEP EIGHT: Decide to take a little time off from the monkeys and study to be on Jeopardy!

STEP NINE: Take test to be on Jeopardy! Pass test!

STEP TEN: Deny being romantically involved with either of the Olsons. Cling to Mr. Ben, call him "my support."

STEP ELEVEN: Discard monkey idea. Monkey idea crap. Start thinking about all the second novels of wonderkinds. Panic.

STEP TWELVE: Long for the kind of uncomplicated, happy life I had as an early twenty-something before fame got in the way. Autograph another copy of the book for a starry-eyed little girl. Watch some TiVo. Consider a record deal.

Politics, at all levels: baffling

I don't know what to make of either of these two stories. First, my alma mater REFUSES TO ACCOMODATE PRESIDENT CLINTON. That's Bill, you understand. Everyone's hero. The last democrat to get anything done on a national level, the fundraiser, the kingmaker, the bloody wanderer, at least according to that Remnick guy. Who turns down Bill?

And for what?

LPAC Managing Director Jim Murphy said “What they were requesting was a space that held 1,000, which we don’t really have, at 3:15 on Wednesday. The closest we could come indoors was LPAC, where we had a long-standing endowed lecture scheduled for [4:30].” The lecture was the Annual Lee Frank Lecture in Art History. This year’s lecture was “A Japanese Potter’s Study Trip to Edo: Ceramic Research and Development in the 17th Century,” presented by Louise Allison Cort, who is Curator for Ceramics at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.

Swarthmore is not merely a Quirky Little Skool of Quirkiness and the Wearing of Outmoded Shoes (scroll down to the very end). It should be taken seriously. Yet I can't imagine any other comparable college treating an American icon so shabbily and hiding behind such a flimsy excuse.

Also today, in the forehead-smacking section of the internet, this gem: Mark Warner, the Dem's frontrunner and my horse in the 08 race, is bowing out to spend time with his family.

Not only is the event itself perplexing, the reasoning is laughable. May as well pretend he had a lecture to attend on Japanese pottery in 2009 and he didn't want to be distracted. Family -- please. No one's family is that interesting unless you've been hit, and I mean mob-style, by some serious scandal. He must have been hiding a diddled page or two in his closet. Maybe Hilary knew about it. Maybe Bayh did. In any event, I'm disconsolate.

fashion victim? or ensembly challenged?



Oh my god! Jessica Simpson is wearing my junior prom dress from 1999! Where did she find it? And why does she look so angry about it?

At least SHE wasn't asked to prom in the middle of French class, with everybody listening. At least the Clinique counter makeup lady didn't pancake her face as white as a mime. At least HER mother's Greek hairdresser didn't iron her 40 pounds of hair straight, Elvira-style!

Okay, calming down now.

the jimmy buffet band!

In town for the weekend, my parents had very important questions for me:

1) Why did you cut off all your hair?
and
2) Where do you want to register?

The second, I guess, assumes that either my hair will grow sufficiently or that somehow I can still scrape enough femininty together to be a bride even with what my father called a "garcon-ish" do.

Best I can tell, I want to register on Amazon.com where adults invested in my future happiness can feel free to buy me Criterion collection DVDs. And maybe one of those portable DVD players -- those always seemed cool. It's such a funny custom, registering, at this point. Do I need silver? A china pattern? Mr. Ben and I live in a SQUARE. No kidding. There is no room for extra pillows, let alone single use kitchen appliances.

Taking this into account, my family also wants to know when Mr. Ben and I are going to inquire about maybe moving into a bigger apartment in the building. Just to have a place to fit all the stuff.

Can I register for restaurant coupons? Not to Denny's; to one of Morimoto's places or Bobby Flay's. Or maybe that amazing sushi place in the Time Warner Center, where you sit at the counter and eat out of the hands of -- and at the whim of -- the chef. That would be the best wedding present ever. Are you taking notes?

My family wasn't in town merely to twist my head about the wedding. They know that I'm headed down to DC the last weekend in October and they will have about 48 hours to keep me tied to a chair, force feeding me samples from the caterer while parading potential corsages past me. What they were actually here to do was take a really interesting car tour of Old Brooklyn, one that could have been subtitled, "Maybe we should roll up the windows and lock the doors."

The idea was to take my 93.5 year old grandma back to her old stomping grounds, the neighborhoods she grew up in. The primary hood, where she was born and lived until she was twelve, is now more commonly known as Bed-Stuy. Needless to say, it's a pretty different place than she remembered. For me, it was fascinating to drive around Brooklyn, since I haven't, really -- and I got to ask lots of history questions of our well-informed, hard-boiled, hardcore-New-York guide.

Also this weekend, Mr. Ben and I went with a couple friends to see 49 Up, the latest installment in a British documentary phenomenon. In 1964, a director chose, virtually at random, a cross-section of seven year olds kids. Apted was then the director's intern, but he quickly took over the franchise: every seven years since, Apted checked up on them, interviewing them about their mundane lives. Some subjects are embarrassed, some proud, some understandably resentful but unwilling to extricate their lives from Apted's project. It's fascinating viewing.

picture time!

Check it out:





photog by benj

more like a blog, less like a banana

Exciting things have happened lately. For example, yesterday, the Day when We Take Our Souls to be Dry Cleaned And Have to Stand around and Wait til They're Done, Mr. Ben and I atoned and then went for a long, lovely walk by the water on the Upper East Side. In case you're not down on your Manhattan geography, that's where the beautiful go to procreate. After some sunbathing on a bench watching the stroller parade, we took a brief tour of the Gracie Mansion area and the neighborhood in general before Ben stopped short and said, "My coat!"

His beautiful black leather coat that he found in a thrift store in Carreboro, NC! The one that makes him look just a little like James Dean. (Or Jason Priestly. Carpe Diem - he looked hot in it!) Apparently it had gone the way of so many items of clothing he's had over the years that I admired, that he can't remember not to lose.

But maybe not. I remembered that he had last been wearing it on the bench 15 blocks and an hour back. "This is the Upper East Side!" I reasoned. "These people wouldn't be caught dead stealing your second-hand coat. Unless it was Prada." We wound our way back, found the exact bench we'd been warming, and sure enough, slumped over the banister, there it lay, as though drunk! Best ever.

That could have been enough suspense and drama for one weekend. But no! I also bought my very first pair of Fluevogs, the shoe brand I've been eyeing for a YEAR, because getting all my hair cut off made me giddy. That's right: I have only an inch or two left, and the resulting bobbish cut has been called Cute, Dykey, and Sporty (which is just another way of saying dykey, except when referring to the _____ Spice). I, when taken together with the hair cut, have been called an Ingenue, told that i Sparkle and seem to have Grown Wings.

My favorite exchange so far goes like this.
Me: "I kind of look like Sigourney Weaver!"
My friend: "Yeah! Except she was really tall. And really thin."

safety first

My mother sent me a safety-tips laden email yesterday, even though the only dangerous thing I do on a daily basis is read two newspapers and occasionally walk by Cranes of Doom. Being a dutiful daughter, I did the email's instructions one better: instead of merely forwarding them on to some chicks I knew, I decided to post them here for the edification of all. My personal favorite is #7, but feel free to pick your own.

>>>

After reading these 9 crucial tips, forward them to someone you care about. It never hurts to be careful in this crazy world we live in.


1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!

2. Learned this from a tourist guide in New Orleans . If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you....chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse.RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!

3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won't see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.

4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc. DON'T DO THIS!) The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR, LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE.

a. If someone is in the car with a gun to your head DO NOT DRIVE OFF, repeat: DO NOT DRIVE OFF! Instead gun the engine and speed into anything, wrecking the car. Your Air Bag will save you. If the person is in the back seat they will get the worst of it. As soon as the car crashes bail out and run. It is better than having them find your body in a remote location.

5. A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage:
A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat.
B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.
C.) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out.
IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)
6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot. This is especially true at NIGHT!)

7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control,ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN, Preferably ! in a zig -zag pattern!

8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP. It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked "for help" into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.

9.Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her "Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door."

The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, "We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby. He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night.

Please pass this on and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby ----This e-mail should probably be taken seriously because the Crying Baby theory was mentioned on America's Most Wanted this past Saturday when they profiled the serial killer in Louisiana.

... and so on

Does anyone else see these headlines for articles about the Pope meeting Muslims to work out their differences like this one, "Pope says 2 faiths must overcome enmity," and imagine that they continue "... in order to be united against the Jews"? Or is that just me?

Happy Rosh Hashanah! Especially you, George Allen, you racist lying liar. Things are going so badly for Allen that I almost feel bad for him -- the news cycles about him lately have gone revealed that he is a Racist, a Jew, and a Racist again -- but mostly I spend my taking shaking my head over the fact that my ancestors and his may have at one point swapped garlic-scented spit or hid from the Cossacks together. Ugh. Allen is definitely from what I like to call the Abramoff branch of the family: those of which we are ashamed.

it took exactly one year

I have finished the first draft of my nahvel. I have just under 350 pages and no title. Please feel free to offer suggestions or just tell me your favorite title. I'm trying to tap into how they work.

Meanwhile, whee! One year ago I sat in Rosh Hashanah services, reading the story of Hannah and her son Eli, the priest who becomes the kingmaker. And I thought, "Gee! Wouldn't it be great to break the monotony of my shallow, dead-end job with a project? Set in Brooklyn Heights? About a family who could be sitting here with me right now? Wouldn't it be great to write a book?"

I didn't have Lindsey Lohan threatening legal action to entertain me while I was in my old office, you see, and after three months as a receptionist I could feel my brain leaking out of ears. Although I hadn't written any fiction since a sour experience in a class my freshman year of college, I figured what the hell, give it a shot. While I was at it, I could try to immortalize my first out-of-college professional experience at the Very Important Talent Agency.

If I hadn't, three months later, lost that shallow, dead-end job, I would never have had the time to devote to writing that enabled me to put together the bulk of the book. So thank you, employers, by the way, for cutting me loose right before Christmas, during the transit strike, after I had trekked all the way in from Brooklyn and gotten in EARLY. Thank you for reminding me that there are things I am better at than loading and unloading the dishwasher, cleaning up after models' children and dogs, answering the phone, mopping piss off the bathroom floor, and taking out the garbage.

Although, in the spirit of this season of atonement, I should add, also, I forgive you.

And, again, whee! First draft done! Now I can entertain dizzy fantasies of the book getting sold and made into a movie, wherein all the Jewish characters will be played by totally goyish types like Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson. One thing for sure: the sexy angel? Definitely Jude Law.

ETA: I finally pasted all parts of the first draft into one document and got the word count. 110,591. Yowza.

You, too, can be treated like Katie Couric!

This is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. Granted, I've never been in a Bombay slum, or public school in Boston. But still: a camera that SLIMS DOWN its subjects. Isn't that great? You will notice, of course, that in the ad, the people worthy of slimming are white women. Why not just call the camera "the Male Gaze C3000"?

politicks

Primary day! Considering that I had little knowledge of and no personal investment in any of my local candidates, and that I wasn't sure I was even going to vote, I hit quite a high after pulling that level. Self-gratulation maybe. I fairly glowed with it.

Of course, I couldn't help but wonder how awesome I'd feel if I'd voted in a race that mattered. One race! Any race! Casey v. Santorum, DeWine v. Brown, Allen v. Webb! I mean, most of the time, I love living in a lefty area. If I needed the morning after pill, for example, I could be confident that I'd have access in a safe, well-lit pharmacy, probably for free, and to the soothing accompaniment of a string trio. But when it comes to casting a vote, MAN do I wish I could cast it in Missouri or Arizona, where it might conceivably make a difference.

My book group this evening discussed, at my suggestion, Baker's the Fermata, which is about a guy who uses his ability to stop time to fulfill certain fantasies. Not an uncontroversial book, and I was, to be honest with you, a little nervous as to how it would be received. I shouldn't have been: my book group rocks the Brooklyn casbah. One of the things we ended up discussing was what we'd do if we had the same power -- would we, for example, stuff ballot boxes?

One of the women, who has in her own words been increasingly radicalized lately, said why not. Especially if the other side is doing it. Couldn't it just be seen as keeping up with traffic?

I argued that by subverting democracy, ultimately, you'd lose even more faith in the system. And while going back to stuff ballot boxes in Germany 1933 would avert disaster, we're not facing a facism certain enough that immoral measures would feel worth it. At least not yet.

Basically the only legal (and physics-permitting) thing I can do is give money. I'm happy to do it, but I make under $30K a year; I have to be judicious. So where do I go? The TN race, where Ford looks ascendant, maybe? But could still easily lose? The PA race, just for the thrill of contributing to the ignominious defeat of that dumbquatty asswipe Santorum? Except I buckle internally, a little, at the idea of giving money to Casey (you know, THAT Casey). Somewhere else entirely? I'm open to suggestion.

Six degrees of separation + one bad idea

Considering that I've been officially diagnosed now with a Crazy (I mean, everyone has one, sure, but this one's mine and it's my first so I'm naturally a little defensive / protective / ashamed of it) and I've realized that this is going to be a hard year for my Crazy since thinking about the future is what tends to trigger it, and one's engagement year often entails thinking about just that -- with all of that in mind, what I really shouldn't be doing is reading Heartburn from start to finish.

Who knew I did so much of my living on the edge?

Part of the appeal of the book is that Ephron is a straightforward, drama queen type writer, not afraid to let herself look bad. That she's telling an engaging story, the break-up of her marriage to Carl Bernstein, doesn't hurt. Part of the appeal is that it's a roman a clef set in Washington, which means, for those of us who grew up in Washington, that it's fun to ponder who's who and what's what and I wonder which bench at Dupont Circle they were making out on.

But part of the appeal is also the funny coincidences. This book, which was made into a movie, started Ephron's film career (and gave Meg Ryan a reason to exist, for better or for worse). Meryl Streep plays Ephron and Jack Nicholson of all people plays "Mark," or Carl Bernstein, or, as I like to think of him, Dustin Hoffman. Coincidentally, Streep and Hoffman share the screen as a divorcing couple in Kramer Vs. Kramer, a movie that you really should see if you haven't. None of the issues it brings up are passe today. None! That's incredible!

To proceed: Ephron's writing (and, to a degree, her life) reminds me a lot of Carrie Fisher, who also grew up with literate, witty, alcoholic Hollywood types and eventually wrote romans a clef about the experience. Fisher herself co-starred in Ephron's brilliant When Harry Met Sally AND paralleled Ephron's trajectory when her most famous memoir-type book, Postcards from the Edge, was made into a movie. And who played the Fisher character? Who else? Meryl Streep.

I guess when they say she can do "accents," what they really mean is she can play all KINDS of real-life privileged LA women who get cheated on. Just kidding, Meryl! I love you!

To add redunancy to redundancy, both movies were directed by Mike Nichols. And I'm pretty sure the handsome, randy actor the Fisher character meets at the funeral is supposed to be based on Jack Nicholson. And I'm going to stop now, because I imagine you get the point.

late to the party

I am not nor will ever be a You Tube junkie. That means that other people have to separate the wheat from the chaff for me. Here, friends, is some serious wheat: the can-you-believe-they're-American indie boys of OK Go dancing on treadmills. Wow.

Homesickness

Nothing makes me miss college more than attending the kind of entertainment that was rampant on campus. You know the radical cheerleaders? We had some of those. And though the choreography of cute, earnest, androgynous adolescents never convinced anyone of anything, it was totally great to watch.

Circus Amok, the subversive clowning show which Mr. Ben and I trekked out to Coney Island to see today, reminded me a lot of them. In fact one of the performers looked SO MUCH like a thicker, butcher version of my friend and former radical cheerleader S. Kelly that I felt a pang go all the way out to Seattle, where S. Kelly is currently buttering cupcakes for the ACLU. Or something. S. Kelly, and all those other fugitive '04ers on the west coast, come home!

More to the point: Circus Amok gathered a huge crowd, and when I say it was diverse I don't mean that it was, like, black. I saw black families, Hispanic families, Orthodox Jewish families, Muslim families, and lots of assorted vagabond types like Mr. Ben and me. The parents in general didn't seem to be turned off by the cheerfully political bent to the show (one of the acts is a gymnastic tribute to the lefty governments of South America) and the gender playfulness of the performers.

While the performers managed to weave a statement on immigration or health care or race relations into every one of the acts I can remember except the one wear a guy takes a wire coat hanger and works it all the way up his body and eventually over his head, none of it would have worked if the clowning and acrobatics weren't so much fun to watch. All of the details, from the colorful ragtag costumes and the klezmer-style band, worked to the troupe's advantage and made sure that, first and foremost, their show was entertaining.

The rest of the weekend was notable principally because I began eating adult food again. Three cheers for feta, scallion and tomato omelettes! They taste especially good when you've been eating nothing but noodles for DAYS. And while I participated in two social situations where I felt like I had to play hostess (ick), I also got to spend a lot of quality time with my nahvel. I will have a first draft done by Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. So help me, I will.