what's with today today?

I got my massage! It was pretty exciting -- only the second time in my life it's ever happened, and the first time was not terribly successful. Right after I'd been let go from my (admittedly crappy) job before Christmas 15 months ago, I decided to treat myself. Sadly, the masseuse who was to treat me was a Stalinist relic, a hardened Back-to-the-USSR type, a human tattoo who had no sympathy for my damaged emotional state.

This was our conversation.

BttU: How are you?
Me: I'm a little bummed. I just lost my job.
BttU: That's no good. What was your major in college?
Me: Film & American History.
BttU: Oh, no, that's no good -- you'll never get a job with that.

She told me her daughter majored in something practical.

[after a pause in which I tried to feel soothed]

BttU: The office where you lost your job. Was there a man there?
Me: Uh ...
BttU: I tell my daughter, when you go into an office, make friends with a man. An older man, to look out for you. Not woman. You can never trust women -- they are always jealous of young pretty girls. You need a man to look out for you.

$50 worth of free advice. Thanks, Eastern Europe.

The only other time I had something like a massage was when I visited the secret lair of the free acupressurist at Swarthmore. They had to keep her existence tightly under wraps, and by "they" of course I mean the Quaker CIA, because had it gotten out that there was a woman on campus who could do such wonders for a tense body, there would have been riots. It would have been like 1789, with Worth, the health building, as the Bastille.

The mystery woman was indeed fantastic. What was really exciting though was that in addition to blissing me out, she told me things about myself that she could tell from my shoulders. Like, I'd had a serious loss recently and the pain was keeping me from being able to fully love, and that I should get a pet to help open my heart again. And she was right! I totally need a pet. And cable TV.

Anyway, this massage -- at Lather Spa -- was wonderful. The young woman who handled me was so skillful I was half in love with her in the during, and bless her heart, she talked very little. She laughed at one point after I started laughing (because she pulled my leg! I dare you not to giggle when your leg is pulled).

And then she asked me to flip over and put my face on the griddle.
"On the griddle?" I asked.
"On the CRADLE," she said, laughing again. "Did you think we were going to bake you?"

Before I get married I'm going to go back and do it again.

femme guilt

A friend of mine is racked with insecurities that pop up every now and again about whether or not she's femme. Most recently, when she brought it up, I scolded her. Bad intellectual!, I said. Who cares if you're femme? Why must our communities -- and hers more than mine, since she's queer -- spend so much time obsessively navel-gazing over our Identities when (a) they're constantly in flux anyway; (b) half the time they're ironically put on; and (c) we can't really help what we are. Some of us have baby-faces and apple-checks and big breasts and hips and we will look femme virtually no matter what. Why feel guilty for going with it?

Later I apologized for scolding her because scolding is bad. There's no point making someone feel bad about feeling bad about something. I mean, my god, it's like entering an Escher drawing, stairway upon stairway of guilt.

Also, though, I realize I myself have a pretty complicated attitude toward femininity. I don't like to be looked at, and being looked at is sort of Girly Tenet #1. I've had two anxiety dreams about the wedding where I had to wear a big red or pink ballgown down the aisle. At first I interpreted this to be some submerged worry about chastity, but a wiser friend pointed out it actually speaks more to my fear of attention.

You can't escape attention if you're the bride. The big dress may as well be clown makeup and floppy shoes: you are the show. The three ring circus is just backdrop. No wonder I spent my first few engaged months freaking out.

Of course, as we all know:



In that spirit, I'm going to try to come to terms with the femme stuff before it explodes all over me the weekend of August 5. & what better time than during Spa Week? I soldiered bravely into the perfume-scented unknown and scheduled a discounted massage. It'll be good preparation for the subsequent weekend my mother has prepared for me, which includes makeup and hair auditions as well as dress and shoe shopping. Perhaps I will reemerge, on Monday, as Lindsay Lohan. One never knows.

Luckily, as long as there's an internet, there will be gender-neutral spaces where I can be totally comfortable, like Goodreads.

Non-phenomenon

I've been meaning to write this for a long time. You know all the fuss about Joshua Bell's unheralded rush hour performance in the DC subway system, and how everyone was gasping for days about how they couldn't believe such a travesty could take place and how it was a sign of the apocalypse, the deadening of the senses of the modern age?

Joni Mitchell wrote a song about it THIRTY YEARS AGO. It's call "For Free," it's on Ladies of the Canyon, and the most salient verse goes:

Nobody stopped to hear him
Though he played so sweet and high
They knew he had never been on their TV
So they passed his music by

Next, Gene Weingartner is going to do a sociological experiment involving Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts and is going to be clucking for hours when someone gets shot.

slow times at ridgemont high

Infrequency of posting can be blamed on Time Warner. The internet at my apartment is still out -- it's been about two weeks now -- and will be out until maybe Thursday. I think the bastards are trying to win. They won't.

Meanwhile, I have an elusive sense of how slow things are in general. A friend I hadn't talked to in a little while called me, breathless, from a subway platform for a quick update. She gave me her exciting news and then asked for mine. I had nuthin. Nothing that could be reported in a chirpy tone of voice, anyway, before the train arrived.

That's the trouble, isn't it? Not telling your friends about the bad stuff feels dishonest, but telling the bad stuff requires their time, their attention, their energy and their sympathy, even when conversations happen away from the forced constraints of commuting -- and by the way, if you haven't read that New Yorker piece on commuting, you must. Basically, it's more presumptuous to share bad news, and I am somewhat shy of it.

By the end of today, I should be able to feel better about one serious thing. Until then I need distraction, and so I loved this and recommend it, even for people who aren't crazy about R. Traister &/or Salon. It rings very true for me: Harry Potter and the Sopranos are my modern epics, serialized entertainment I could get passionate about. There is something about the time span over which both have unfurled that adds to the sentiment. I started watching The Sopranos in my old house on Unicorn Lane with my father several episodes into the First Season. I remember acutely those early Bada Bing scenes, wondering whether to avert my eyes.

Harry Potter introduced himself to me soon after, while I was in Israel with my high school class. The boy I liked, at that point, handed me his paperback copy and though I had wrinkled my nose at the phenomenon up to that point, there was something about this boy's puppydog eyes and his scruffy hair. For him, okay, I guessed I would read this sure-to-be-overrated kids book.

Now when the new volumes come out, Mr. Ben and I are first in line at little NYC bookstores to get a shared copy and stay up all night devouring it. This last volume will be my 25th birthday present and I'll probably get it to myself, since Mr. Ben will be only days from taking the bar. And then ten days later, we'll get married. Considering the presumed fragility of that future emotional state, for my sake, NOTHING better happen to Harry.

I-minus

You know what drives me crazy about this Don Imus craziness? The way everyone who in any way defends him makes sure to call him "an equal opportunity offender" (one example here).

They mean he has insulted:
Gays
Women
Jews
Blacks
Asians
(as Timothy Noah has aptly demonstrated)

Who's missing? The people in power.

How is "Don't worry, he hates EVERYONE (except people his own size)" a defense? How is it better to be an *indiscriminate* demeaning thoughtless loudmouth?

While I don't have much love for that ambulance chaser, Al Sharpton, and I don't necessarily think Imus should be removed from the air, I'd like us all to stop and agree for a moment that spreading ones hate around does not making hating better.

Sigh.

Any day on which Kurt Vonnegut dies is guaranteed to be sad, but the cold driving rain outside and the other bad news that keeps piling up isn't helping. Here, in Vonnegut's honor, a poem of his that appeared in the New Yorker:

JOE HELLER

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!

- Kurt Vonnegut

Still kicking

Barely.

A nasty virus toppled me and I lay toppled about a week. One of my days off from work coincided with the first seder so at Mr. Ben's urging, I dragged myself up and made it to Washington Heights, where we did the traditional Passover thing with his family. Mr. Ben and I were called upon to lead; I did my part, hoarsely.

It was the first time I've celebrated the Endless, Breadless Holiday (TM) stateside but not with the Blooms. My family goes all out -- china, crystal, 25 people each night, a grand multi-hour event, complete with dinner. This year, they went all out without me. Luckily both my brothers were there to help ease my parents through this painful process that we call Ester Beginning to Spend Some Holidays & Important Times With the Future In-Laws.

And who is there to ease me through that process?

Nevertheless, I made it through seder, and Mr. Ben's father sent us home in a car with not too much harm done. Passover always makes me think about odd things. For example, isn't it funny that Easter -- which, of course, coincides with Passover -- is about Jesus ascending to Heaven, whereas Passover is the holiday of nothing leavened? Which is to say, for the goyim, "He is risen!" so they get to eat chocolate eggs; for the Jews, everything is by mandate flat and dry.

In addition to (clearly) lots of deep thinking, a fantastic production of Company on Broadway and the Sopranos helped me get through the week. And some generous NY hospitality afforded me access to the season premiere yesterday. Bless this city.

the shoals of the NYT

This NYT article about how Jane Austen looked is both dumb and a complete misreading of her texts. The author -- a, you guessed it, MAN -- bumbles around for a bit at the beginning, talking about Austen must not have been pretty and how that's a problem. He goes off the cliff at the end:

We’ve watched them so often that we think we really do know what Austen’s people looked like, and the men — the good ones, anyway — are all hunks and the women are all adorable, with just a hint of gingham-gowned sexiness. That their creator might not be part of this club seems unfair. We can accept that Austen might have been a Cinderella — underappreciated, with an elusive beauty of character and intellect that maybe took a little getting used to — but the dreary spinster of the Cassandra sketch isn’t anyone we recognize.

That's WRONG. I don't need to have taken an Austen seminar to know that. Pride and Prejudice makes a big deal out of the fact that Elizabeth Bennett isn't beautiful, "not half so handsome as Jane," the family stunner. Her sister Mary is not considered worth describing; Lydia is merely cute, mostly a flirt; and Kitty is a follower.

As for the men! Bingley, to be sure, is described as "wonderfully handsome" and Darcy as having "handsome features" and "noble" bearing. But it could be argued that the whole damn point of the book is that appearances aren't objective. As soon as the crowd discovers Darcy has more money than Bingley, they declare him far better looking. Yet he's still an ass.

Here's the famous passage dear Mr. McGrath should have consulted before blithely going on his Week in Review way:

``Come, Darcy,'' said he, ``I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.''

``I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this, it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with.''

``I would not be so fastidious as you are,'' cried Bingley, ``for a kingdom! Upon my honour I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life, as I have this evening; and there are several of them, you see, uncommonly pretty.''

``You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room,'' said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.

``Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.''

``Which do you mean?'' and turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, ``She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.''

Very pretty, very agreeable, says the nice guy; tolerable, retorts the more fastidious. By the end of the book, of course, Darcy has remarked that that "tolerable" woman has grown on him. Voici:

``I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed we all were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, "She a beauty! -- I should as soon call her mother a wit." But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time.''

``Yes,'' replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, ``but that was only when I first knew her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.''

Ooh, snap! (I love that scene.)

In Sense and Sensibility, all three Dashwood daughters are at least relatively good looking, it is assumed, but in Austen's descriptions of them at the beginning, their appearances aren't even mentioned. Marianne, the more romantic daughter, of course falls for a dashing and ultimately worthless Willoughby. Later, following more sober counsel, she ends up with the good-hearted but old, plain Colonel Brandon. Elinor, by contrast, wiser to begin with, falls for the good-hearted and not sparkling Edward Ferrars. Here is how he is described:

Edward Ferrars was not recommended to their good opinion by any peculiar graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart. His understanding was good, and his education had given it solid improvement.

Now, does that say hunk to you? No. Willoughby is the hunk and he turns out to be a paper doll of a man.

On the basis of this evidence, I suggest to you, Jane Austen did not like hunks, nor did she entirely trust beauty. She understood, as many of us have come to (and as my brother will, eventually,) that the hottest girls are very often the bat-shit crazy ones and that the hunks are often arrogant fools. To judge a woman, an author, by such shallow measures -- calling her "plain," "homely," even "dreary" (!) -- and saying that that must disappoint her readers -- is insulting in its shallowness to her AND us.

Maybe if Austen had been a beauty queen, she would have been married at 15 and never written a word. Would that be better for anyone? Maybe if Fran Lebowitz, Roseanne Barr, Margaret Cho, Eddie Izzard, and Woody Allen had been captains of sports teams instead of social outsiders who were no doubt made fun of as children, they wouldn't have needed to cultivate the talent that has made them such priceless entertainers. If I do believe in a God, it's one who has consciously given us, fair or not, people who range from hideous to Lohan, and all for a reason: nerdy types (to disappear into labs and invent things), malcontents (who forge revolutions), the weird (who write poems) and the wacky (who paint). And the Simpsons and Spears for the schadenfreude.

In P&P, what recommends Bingley ultimately isn't his face, it's his character, and what recommends Darcy ultimately is that he's willing to admit he was wrong, that a person can learn to see a kind of beauty -- whether entirely inner or merely subtle -- they originally overlooked. I would like to hear that Mr. McGrath has learned a similar lesson. But since he seems to be very much a product of our Good = Beauty, Bad = Ugly society with its starkly mistaken and unsubtle ideas of what makes women worthwhile, I'm not holding my breath.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

It's time for an important news bulletin, from my mother:

"Lest history be denied this extraordinary news, please be informed that Paul L. B___ [pictured, left, with two of his three children, including the blogger -- ed.] won the DC Metropolitan Award for dancing in the newcomer category this past weekend at the Sheraton Premiere Hotel at Tyson's Corner, Virginia.

The event was attended by about 450 people and for the first time since birth, Mr. B____ was struck dumb when his name was announced. His instructor, the lovely young Daniela Garau, graciously escorted Mr. B____ from his seat to the judge's stand where he accepted his award with obvious pleasure. Unfortunately, Mr. B____, usually a man of many words, was not afforded the opportunity to make a speech and therefore he was unable to thank his instructor, his wife and his mother-in-law publicly as no doubt he would have done.

When interviewed casually on Sunday morning about his achievements from the night before, Mr. B____ proclaimed himself "triumphant." If he cannot wear the plaque comfortably around his neck, Mr. B____ may have it mounted on the front door of his luxury apartment in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Mr. B____ was confident that the Washington Post would announce the award today in the Style section. Mr. B____ will be accepting congratulations by telephone at [redacted]."

Three cheers for B____!

Society

For a while there, I had a dearth of things to read, especially novels. No one could recommend something -- or better yet, plunk something into my hands -- that I got really excited about, and that left a hole in my heart.

So I overcompensated.

Scattered on my bed currently are:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Midnight in the Dragon Cafe
Devil in the White City
and two by Colson Whitehead:
Apex Hides the Hurt
and John Henry Days.

The glut is the library's fault, really. I requested a number of things that all arrived together. I have three weeks to finish four of them (the fifth, Apex, was leant to me by workfriend Stephanie).

After a Scrabble game this morning in which I put SQUIRE on a triple-word score for 83 points and got IODINES for another 60-something, I started Midnight in the Garden and went all googly-eyed for it. Yes, I know I'm years behind everyone else in the country in this respect. It's just so charming! It's all stories! I love stories. I love Americana. I love Magnolia trees and piano bars and gay-seeming, rakish gentlemen. Clearly this book and I were made for each other.

I hope the rest of the list lives up.

Meanwhile, I had a lunch at Morimoto that did indeed fulfill expectations. Sumptuous sushi arranged like architecture; really good service. The guests of honor, the author and his wife, regaled my two workfriends and me with stories from their life in Utah. They've lived in Vegas, Phoenix, and Tuscon, so they were braced for Mormon country, if not entirely prepared. At their first dinner party, when the wife poured herself a glass of wine, the neighbors they'd invited said, "Oh! We've never met an alcoholic before."

Crucially, they seemed to have a sense of humor about it. I told them, for extra hilarity and solidarity, they should read Dooce.

After the wife visited the bathroom, she whispered to the rest of us that we had to try it. Obediently workfriend Laura and I trooped downstairs. The toilet, as reported, was studded with buttons, and while sitting but without thinking, I pressed one of them.

"Jesus!" I shouted, jumping to my feet.

"Are you okay?" asked Laura from the next stall.

I would have answered but I was too busy trying to dodge the forceful stream of water shooting out of the toilet bowl right at me. Damn thing was a bidet. If I'd been prepared I might have enjoyed it; as it was, I just got wet.

oh so quiet

It's oh so still in here today, empty enough that I could take off my headphones and listen to Brian Lehrer out of computer speakers the way god and WNYC intended, if I were so inclined. Everyone from my department is at CCCC (aka, 4C's). Although I don't get to enjoy those specific festivities, there's a company-sponsored bash at Tavern on the Green this evening, and before that, the small team I've been working with on a project gets to take our author & his wife--in town for the conference--to lunch, Iron Chef style. Yes, that's right: we're going to Morimoto!

I am too excited. I keep hearing the Chairman's voice in my head. Funny, I didn't have this problem before I had lunch at Bobby Flay's restaurant, Mesa. There's something about the idea of top-notch sushi that sings to my stomach like nothing else. That must be why Japan is on tap for the honeymoon.

Labyrinthine

I celebrated a snowy St. Paddy's Day here in New York the only logical way: I enjoyed Burmese food in the company of Mr. Ben and a couple of his friends, and then (finally) saw Pan's Labyrinth. To kill time before the show, the group of us wandered around the upper-LES a bit, eventually venturing into Katz's Deli to see what there was to see. Although, like 3/4 of those assembled, I'd never been there before, I felt an odd sense of deja vu scanning the huge crowded cafeteria, attributable either to my connection to a Jewish oversoul or to my having seen When Harry Met Sally too many times.

I think I mentioned, I'd been afraid to see Pan's Labyrinth -- it turns out I had good reason. It's a beautiful film, really well-crafted from the sound effects on up, and, like Children of Men, it's a serious punch to the gut. In fact there are a number of similarities between the two movies, and um, *SPOILERS AHEAD*:

- violence, of course, the random senseless kind;
- the grim realities of life under fascism;
- the necessity of underground resistance movements, although that's dealt with with more complexity in COM;
- both have main characters who die at the end of the film while
- a baby lives on.
- COM is sent in the near future while PL was set in the recent past. Both arguably are about risks of today.

PL upset me more. It was harder to watch. A grown man giving his life for something, even one as lovely as Clive Owen, can't be as harrowing as a little girl giving her life for nothing. It took me a few minutes to get past my original emotional reaction to that and be able to appreciate the artistry and the creativity, the way that the same themes emerged in the real life storyline as did in the fantasy one. Not to mention the wonderful actress from Y Tu Mama Tambien for whom, at least, the movie ended well. That's some comfort.

New mantra

New mantra
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

A couple days ago, I had to use my lunchbreak to have a follow up doctor's appointment. I didn't have terribly high hopes: I expected to tell the doctor, yes, the pills work -- I was beginning to have an anxiety attack and they forestalled it, just as they should. (Well done, pills!)

Being a doctor, however, he couldn't help asking me more questions. At first I was somewhat embarrassed, being unused to this "therapy" thing. But he kept asking "Why?" to whatever I said and before I knew it I was telling him about my monster ex-roommate and how she made me FEEL.

It turned out that what stressed me out about her is not so dissimilar from what's stressed me out about the wedding: both relate to the very cliched sense I have that I'm not quite ready to be an adult yet. (I know! So rare among my age group.) While chiding me gently on this point, the doctor reached over and started scribbling something on a pad; then he handed the note to me.

I burst out laughing. "It must be true, 'cause it's on letterhead," I said.

We'll see how well my magic feather works the first time I really have to fly. But for now, suffice it to say that the idea of it -- and its presence in my bag -- makes me absurdly happy.

Like-Minded Companions

B: Oh no! The bathroom's locked.
Es: That's okay. I guess I'll just pee in my stockings.
Em: That's much worse than peeing in your pants. The stockings will trap the urine.
B: Although stockings will be easier to clean than pants would be.
Es: But what about my suede boots?

I've been gloriously spoiled lately in terms of society. Friends abounding! Friends everywhere! Look, there's one hiding the bushes, waiting to play breakfast Scrabble. And look, over there, a cluster of them -- they have the table all set for a dinner that will last until the restaurant closes. Behind you! Watch out! That one's going to make you spend the entire afternoon walking in the sunlight, down the spine of Boerum Hill and back and then over through Cobble Hill to Carrol Gardens for pizza and back to Brooklyn Heights so she can pass out in your bed. (Here, map.)

And on top of that, Mr. Ben, on his way back from a party in Williamsburg Saturday night, bought a hardcopy of the New York Times. I woke up like Sara Crewe, astonished to discover that, overnight, someone had effected such an important change in the room: there it sat, waiting for me, the huge darling paper bundle! I could pick sections, and spread out across my bed, and lounge in the warm light, turning pages, and for one all-too-brief moment not be looking at a computer screen.

It was a bliss in a blue plastic bag.

... Looking over that link to the story "Sarah Crewe" -- which FHB expanded into his fantastic children's novel, A Little Princess & which I read way too many times growing up -- I realize it was even more formative than I thought. Consider the following exchange between Sara and her somewhat dim friend Ermengarde:

"It sounds nicer than it seems in the book," [Ermengarde] would say. "I never cared about Mary, Queen of Scots, before, and I always hated the French Revolution, but you make it seem like a story."

"It is a story," Sara would answer. "They are all stories. Everything is a story--everything in this world. You are a story--I am a story--Miss Minchin is a story. You can make a story out of anything."

That's, like, my motto! It came from FHB and I didn't even consciously realize. Amazing.

I also realize, in retrospect, that Sara was a bit of a snot, and I'm completely in love with her over again.

baby's first wedding!

I didn't mean to write about Ann Coulter the last time I sat down to blog; I meant to say Congratulations HeidiRob! Mr. Ben and I spent two packed days in Delray Beach, Florida counting BMWs, enjoying the sunshine, and celebrating with our Very First friends to tie the knot. As you can tell from Mr. Ben's pictures, they did so in old world style.

Our friend K. Ross, much improved since getting knocked around by that renegade car several months ago, joined us, as did several other college folk I hadn't seen since graduation. We had an all-around lovely time, except for that moment when I let my guard down and was shanghaied by a drunk pot-smoking, menopausal relative who proceded to regale me for what felt like hours with stories of her pot smoking and menopause.

Still, overall, it was a vast improvement over the last wedding I attended as a nine year old, when I saw the priest keel over and die in the middle of the ceremony. The imposing Catholic Church had already been spooking me a little, what with those Stations of the Cross murals on the walls; seeing a man go down, and then a whole congregation fall to its knees while my family remained awkwardly seated in our pew as if we were somehow to blame, was nearly traumatizing. The HeidiRob wedding had no body count at all. Way to go, guys!

Obviously their wedding made me think about mine, but I won't bore you with those details. I just hope I remain as graceful under pressure as they did.

a modest proposal

Instead of banning a word that no one is allowed to use anyway except black people and Quentin Tarantino, why doesn't New York do something useful and necessary like banning Ann Coulter? True, she probably wouldn't set foot in our slanderous, treasonous, godless city, but in case she were tempted to have a meeting with her publisher or a wax and yet another micro-mini, I would love to have it on record that should she cross city limits, should the sun set on her presence in this sane corner of America, we will boil her in oil and feed her to the homeless.

What's that you say? My rhetoric makes me almost as bad as she is? Oh, my friends, if only that were true. Ann Coulter drinks of the fire of Mordor the way you or I might enjoy a lemonade. Her skin is synthetic, pieced together by sweatshop third-world labor, and her soul is made of the ash of Rome on which Nero fiddled. Nothing I could do could put me on the level of Ann Coulter. Seriously? She called John Edwards a "faggot." Seriously.

It's time for action. Big Apple! I call to you. AC is at least as harmful to my heart as trans fats, at least as toxic to my lungs as cigarette smoke. Let's start a nationwide trend, making it clear we have no room for such horror in our city.

"only Gay screen call"

Best news item not picked up by the press: before Anna Nicole Smith was Anna Nicole Smith, she had a lady lover! A serious one too. Observe:

Powledge recalls their first year together as one filled with happiness. The two exchanged vows of commitment on the diving board at Smith's home in Spring, and Smith gave Powledge a diamond ring. Smith avoided wearing a ring herself because of the questions it might raise, Powledge said.

They shared some wild times, frequently going out on drinking binges and not knowing how to get home. Smith once stopped her car and asked a passing jogger to drive them home after a particularly lively spell of inebriation.

The pair also got tattoos to declare their love for one another. Smith paid for a tattoo of her face and name to be inked across Powledge's shoulder blade, strategically placed to cover another woman's name there. Smith later received a tattoo of Powledge's initials below her bikini line, unable to display such art anywhere else on her body because of her career as a model.

Powledge blushes, giggles and covers her face with her hands when asked if Smith reciprocated her affections in the bedroom.

"She was very considerate. Very sweet. Very," she said bashfully.

Yikes! And: awesome!

Of course, the article's spin on ANS's lesbian liason is pretty dippy. It has to go out of its way to call Powledge "the plainer looking and less feminine of the pair" -- because God forbid we wander off the Butch Meets Femme page. And "affections in the bedroom"? Is there a less kinky way of refering to sex? Can you think of one? I'm really asking.

I'm impressed Powledge toughed out the relationship as long as she did, what with ANS making her wear "wigs and dresses to give herself a softer look in New York" once they moved to the Big Apple, not to mention ANS's "Real World"-type behavior: cheating, drinking, drugs. Eventually of course the women split and the article notes, wistfully, "No matter what the cause of Smith's death is ultimately determined to be, Powledge shares others' assessment that she likely died of a broken heart."

One of the things I find most fascinating about this story is that it adds complexity to ANS's performance of hetero desirability. In the same way that in M Butterfly, Song, the male lover disguised as the ideal woman, explains, "A man knows best how a woman is supposed to act," it makes sense that a queer woman would know how best to play the epitome of a straight woman.

But is this story threatening to her image somehow? Embarrassing? Overkill? Why hasn't it been picked up more broadly?

Will win, should win

The Oscars are tonight! I wish I cared, but friends, there's history here. The Oscars of 06 were an acid wash. And anyone else remember being run over by the LOTR: ROTK "choo-choo-choose me!" train in 04?

Still, I'll watch. Of course I'll watch. I'm the sort of viewer on whom Oscar depends: skeptical, vaguely irritated in advance, sure that redemption and understanding aren't going to be found at the bottom of this three-hour bottle but ready to drink to the last gulp anyhow. I'll find solace in forming opinions on the dresses and hoping Ellen says something witty, and I'll wish I'd had the stomach to see either of frontrunners Babel or the Departed.

But! One can always prognosticate:

WILL WIN BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Little Miss Sunshine (as a "thanks for playing!")
SHOULD WIN: Little Miss Sunshine (in sincere appreciation for how poignant and hilarious this take on the American family is)

WILL WIN BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Departed
SHOULD WIN: Borat. I am all about the funny and I don't care how much of it was scripted.

WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Eddie Murphy
SHOULD WIN: Jackie Earle Haley, who has never appeared in a fat suit.

WILL WIN BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jennifer Hudson. She has the best story and the most momentum. Still, I don't believe in giving Oscars for a person's first good performance. God knows it has done less than nothing for the careers of Kim Basinger, Halle Berry, Gwyneth Paltrow, Helen Hunt, Cuba Gooding Jr., Mira Sorvino ... In retrospect, aren't all of those choices ridiculous? What the Academy was actually doing there was rewarding someone pretty for trying, like giving a standing ovation when a dog rears up on its hind legs.

SHOULD WIN: Abigail Breslin, because I've never seen such an impressive, dare-i-say-inspiring? little kid performance; or Cate Blanchett for going toe-to-toe with Dame Judi Dench in a movie where the ferocious DJD sucked all of the oxygen out of the room.

WILL WIN BEST ACTOR: Forest Whitaker
SHOULD WIN: Clive Owen for Children of Men. Ryan Gosling was also good in his quiet, quiet way.

WILL WIN BEST ACTRESS: Helen Mirren

SHOULD WIN: This one's really hard. Kate Winslet put her all into Little Children, and WInslet's all is really something to see. Similarly Meryl Streep made Prada the delightful, shiver-inducing snarkfest that it was. But it really comes down to a contest between the British heavyweights, Dame Judi and Helen Mirren.

Sorry, DJD, but like everyone else, I have to go with Helen Mirren on this one too. Although as I mentioned, you were spellbinding in Notes on a Scandal, the best monster in a monster movie I'd seen in years, and I couldn't take my eyes off you, Mirren made me feel like I understood the Queen of England. That I even sympathized with her as she struggled to realize how she had become disconnected from her time and place, or rather how time and place surged forward without her. It was a strong, silent, bravura performance, full of inner conflict and grace and self-respect without vanity; and DJD, this just isn't your year. I don't blame you for staying home.

WILL WIN BEST DIRECTOR: Scorcese because blah blah legacy-cakes. Give the man an Oscar already so we can stop having this conversation every other year.
SHOULD WIN: Alfonso Cuaron for the harrowing, soulful Children of Men, especially the battle scenes of the last hour.

WILL WIN BEST PICTURE: Babel, in a repeat of the "See? We're Serious" phenomenon that brought us last year's utterly undeserving winner Crash. Unless voters really just wanted to be entertained and distracted this year, in which case The Departed

SHOULD WIN: I don't really know. Nothing completely thrilled me this year the way Hotel Rwanda, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Adaptation, recently, did. My top five for this year ended up being: Little Miss Sunshine, the Queen, Notes on a Scandal, Children of Men, and Inside Man. Oh Clive, when will the world love you like I do?

Note: How cute are these skirts? I wish I could buy every last one of them, except they're each so cute, I'd be as upstaged wearing one as I would be walking an adorable golden retriever puppy. Should I really pay $60 for that privilege? Or should I just get a puppy?

Look!

Someone else ranks and rates the Vows section too!

I'm don't 100% agree with the ratings system -- why do you couples get bonus points if the man is Jewish and the woman Asian? Also if David Denkins officiates, why does that not confer bonus points? Can you enlighten me?

Edited to clarify: I think the Vows section also requires two different ratings systems, one to measure how well each couple matches up to Antebellum Standards and one to measure Pure Eccentricity, because the Times, being a silver fox of a Grey Lady, appreciates the importance of both. When Hearsts marry Astors, when the girl is younger than the guy, when she's a teacher and he's in finance, the AS meter rises; and when bohemians/ethnics/gays/old people come together, the PE meter swoons and the NYT gets to feel virtuous for being so open-minded.

In both categories, however, some of the same rules apply: Ivy League diplomas are a must; famous ancestors help; Jews OK; send a face pic, and no fatties.

Queens for a day

You might not think it possible, but I assure you, it is a real -- if enjoyable -- condition: an overdose of honey. It can afflict you when you throw together pancakes for breakfast but forget the syrup, and are forced to resort to what other sweet things you have on hand, and then at the opposite end of the day, you dine at a Cretan restaurant whose name, S'agapo, translates to "I love you" and whose appetizers and desserts alike come preserved in delicious, delicious amber.

In between doses of honey, how did Mr. Ben and I celebrate turning six? By going to PS 1, of course! and then to the Museum of the Moving Image, where after playing around with the interactive exhibits we saw a 35mm print of the last film Orson Wells made, a Godard-ish essay/documentary called F for Fake.

The best part about the day though was that we were blessed with Good Subway Luck. If ever you have need to burrow into Queens, make sure you first appease the right spirits, because if the G comes speedily, and then the R does too, and then again, and THEN, to top it off, the 3, you will have a completely different day than if you're stuck waiting 20 frozen minutes for the privilege of riding on each.

On another note, I now have an rx. I haven't filled it yet, but I will, and then I will be SuperEster, or so I'm told. If I only become Ester-Who-Can-Make-It-Thru-the-Wedding-Planning, that'll be good too.

the kind of love

me: i want streamers, pink streamers that go all the way across the ceiling and all the way down to the floor. i want pink bears, four huge pink bears, one in each corner of the room, and a pink disco ball sprinkling pink light all over the room, and a stereo playing Carrie Underwood. ... what do you want for valentines day?

him: not to have to do any of that.

me: done.


little did i realize when i was a moony thirteen year old, upset that all my friends were "falling in love" while i wasn't -- while, in fact, the only boy who had professed love for me was a tall drink of water at summer camp who didn't know how else to say "please take your shirt off," the dumb punk -- that the ideal valentines day is when you feel no pressure to do anything. in fact i'm going drinking with a couple girls from The Nation after work (sugar-free cranberry juice for me, please!). maybe i'll learn something!

technically, i guess, i'm also cheating. i don't have to care about v-day because several days thereafter, mr. ben and i will turn six years old. that seems much more significant to me. six years old, ready for first grade and, apparently, marriage. and if, on a valentines day six years ago, some girl hadn't coldly turned down a rose offered by mr. ben, none of this would have happened. imagine.