Synthetic Culture

The Naughty Aughts

2009-12-08T08:21:00.003-05:00

Here we are once again at the end of a decade, or at least everyone thinks it's the end of another decade. I'm of a mind that when you count out 10 of anything the tenth thing is part of the whole, which means that the decade would be 2001 through 2010, but I lost that battle at the turn of the millennium. So, the end of another decade. Naturally everyone's wondering what to call the decade about to be past. We had the swinging 60s, the go-go 80s, and so on. What were the past 10 years?

Some people are calling them the Aughts, but I find that awkward and not at all catchy. It's also not descriptive, and when naming a decade one wants at least to be descriptive. In that sense, there's really only one word that encapsulates our collective experience, only one word that will do to remind everyone what we have to show for the early years of this century. What we have to show for these years is nothing, and it's therefore only appropriate that this decade be known as the Naughts.

Let's look at our economy. We began the Naughts at the end of the tech bubble, then saw growth, then a small recession, then a huge bubble based on bad paper, then a crash. We end the decade with the stock market right about where it was in 2000, with nothing in terms of wealth accumulation to show for it all. Naught. Real estate values soared, then crashed, leaving property values either maybe where they were in 2003. Naught to show for everything, except perhaps for way too much debt. Unemployment? The job market is worse than it's been all century, so nothing doing there.

We were attacked and launched a war on terror, and for that we have gained absolutely nothing while losing thousands of lives. Billions spent in Iraq, nothing to show for it, treading water in Afghanistan, nothing to show for it. Our status abroad is no better than it was a decade ago, so we also have nothing to show for what has passed for diplomacy until recently. We've got the exact opposite of peace in the Middle East, no resolution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict that Clinton tried so hard to resolve before leaving office ten years ago.

Every year fewer and fewer things are manufactured in this country, but the glorious information age where everyone works at home creating ideas and even more information has morphed into everyone sitting at home looking for work while they take quizzes on Facebook. Technology has given more of us broadband and large screens on which to watch HDTV, but not much else. The delivery of information has morphed from the page to the screen, but the quality of that information hasn't increased. We've got naught to show for all our technological advances.

All in all, we have one thing and one thing only to show for the past decade of our lives, and that is the fact that we're all 10 years older. Sure, we've got silicon and Botox and collagen in abundance, for those of us with the inclination and financial resources to attempt to erase the recent past, but again that would just be making physical what is intellectually and emotionally true. At the end, we're left with nothing.

Telling, and Telling, and Telling

2009-12-04T08:38:00.004-05:00

When Augustine of Hippo was beatified he was not yet known as the father of the memoir. His contributions to the modern Church led to his sainthood, while his decision to title his book about his early life Confessions has led to our present-day glut of tell-all non-fiction. Because of St. Augustine, the generic requirements of the memoir are a descent into chaos or dissolution followed by an epiphany that leads to life being turned around and righted. Sometimes the protagonist triumphs over adversity, sometimes over his or her own self-created demons. Either way, the progression is time and again toward a happy ending.

What to do, though, if one is a serial memoirist? How many conversions can one have in one's life, after all? Augusten Burroughs solves this problem by going over the same material over and over again, hacking away at it from slightly different angles. So does Mary Knarr. Elizabeth Wurtzel solves the dilemma by developing various addictions and psychological problems. Another option is to come up with a gimmick and then write about the ways that gimmick changed one's life: have zero environmental impact for a year and write about it, live strictly according to the Bible for a year and write about it, etc.

Once upon a time, a woman droned in a cubicle in lower Manhattan feeling bored and adrift. She like to cook, though, and had heard of this new thing called blogging, so she decided to spend a year cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and writing about it, and about her life. The end result was first a popular blog, then an entertaining book, then a movie starring Merryl Streep, and finally a book contract for more memoirs. Cleaving, Julia Powell's new work, is the result of the new career engendered by the success of her blogging experiment.

It's a book about butchering, both literally and metaphorically. Having completely butchered her marriage by entering into an obsessive affair, Powell decides to hide from the complications of her life, and perhaps work out some aggression, by apprenticing as a butcher in a Catskills meat shop. The book describes her years of butchery with intense honesty, not only about the feel and smell of meat and the techniques involved in preparing it for the grill or oven or pan, but also about her sexual proclivities and indiscretions. Confessions, indeed.

Julie and Julia was an entertaining read because of its breezy insouciance, because of Powell's ability to at once take her task seriously and with a grain (or pinch) of salt. Cleaving, on the other hand, is full of high seriousness. Meat cleaves to bone as we sometimes cleave to one another, and the only solution is to become expert at wielding a cleaver, breaking down carcasses and breaking our own and each others hearts. Relationships, marriages, are hard, no matter how much we love and are committed to each other. This is old news. Infidelity makes things harder, and can be something we learn from that brings us closer or can be something that tears us apart.

Powell is great at describing her obsession with her lover, her need for him, and at the same time her love for her husband. She is great at describing the pain this causes everyone involved. She is great at chroniciling the fevered time of chaos and loss. She's not so great at resolution, perhaps because her career as a serial memoirist requires a sequel, maybe a year spent at a processing plant to help her, you know, process. We end this installment with her still with her husband, but with her still pining for her lover, and with her husband still seeing the woman he began seeing while she was cheating on him. She claims a certain amount of happiness, but maybe it's just resignation.

In other words, Cleaving feels incomplete. It captures the descent, but not the phoenix-like rise from the ashes. It reads like a confession told not because the events led to a new understanding, but simply from a desire to confess. Although the experience of writing the book was undoubtedly cathartic for Powell, there isn't much in it for anyone else. Except, of course, some recipes, and a new understanding of why tenderloin is overpriced.

How to Feel Good About Yourself in One Easy Step

2009-12-02T08:48:00.003-05:00

There are many reasons to watch TV: to be numbed, to be entertained, to simply avoid boredom. Occasionally, television can even make us feel good about ourselves, particularly reality TV. The main benefit of watching addicts in need of an intervention, or bartender/models in need of a good slap, is to be able to lie on the couch thinking, "At least I'm not that person." For those of you in need of a good dose of superiority, I highly recommend A&E's houses of horrors, Hoarders. It's on Mondays; the second season just began this week.

If you even spend even a minute thinking that you really shouldn't be such a slob, or a moment wondering why you can't bring yourself to get rid of those jeans that don't really fit anymore, this is the show for you. At the end of the hour, you'll first maniacally clean your kitchen and bathroom, and will then lie in bed feeling good about the fact that you live in a house where you can at least find the bed. You will know that, no matter how much of a pig you think you are, you can feel good about the fact that your city codes office isn't about to condemn your property.

Monday night's show centered on Augustine, a 68 year-old living in Gretna, LA. When I think of hoarders I think of people accumulating piles of possessions, or scores of cats or dogs, but Augustine had clearly spent decades accumulating tons of trash. Her house was so full of trash the cleaning crew needed to shovel it out. She had electricity but no heat or hot water; her bathroom looked like it hadn't functioned in at least a decade. Augustine collected not only garbage and sewage but also mold, mildew, and general filth, three or four feet of it in every disgusting room of the house. By the end of the episode, 4,000 pounds had been hauled away.

Augustine had lost her dentures in the filth, so she spent the episode gumming fast food, uncooked hot dogs, and I don't know what else. She clearly suffers from at least depression and probably also some sort of antisocial disorder, and sat in a chair eating while her children and a crew cleaned things out. The upper set of her dentures were found amid the debris. Also found were the carcasses of two cats, which had apparently either been flattened by the garbage or which had expired and then been crushed. Either way, two cats died and decomposed in her "living room" and Augustine didn't notice.

Are you disgusted yet? But wait, there's more. The bathroom was a Haz Mat zone, filled with dried excrement, mold, crud. I could smell it through the TV. Since her toilet didn't work, Augustine had one of those portable toilets for the elderly in her, what, dining room? I guess the notion of "rooms" doesn't really apply, but at any rate there the toilet sat, with what appeared to be bags of feces piled up around it and tied to the arms.

Yes, this woman is clearly in need of physical and psychiatric help and yes, this is an incredibly sad story. Yes, it is perhaps wrong to film this family's plight, to televise it, and then to lie on the couch, rapt, watching it. But in the end, I will never again worry about the fact that I could definitely clean my cat's litter box a little more often. In the end, at least I'm not that person.

Cornucopia

2009-11-30T09:17:00.004-05:00

Whatever you made for Thanksgiving, you probably spent the rest of the weekend finishing. Even though the last thing anyone wants to think of today is holiday food, the Times published an article last Wednesday that deserves another look. After interviewing the keepers of various recipe sites, the author provided a snapshot of the most searched-for holiday recipes by region, and the results are interesting.

Growing up, our Thanksgiving menu never varied, and because it never varied I assumed that the entire country ate what we ate: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green been casserole, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. My mother always started things off with fruit salad, which I figured was her idiosyncrasy, since she believed fruit salad to be a "fancy" start to a meal. I therefore had no idea that, had I grown up in the Midwest, Thanksgiving would have been incomplete without a cheese ball.

Most of the recipe searches in the article are for items one would expect, although it's interesting to note that most of the searches for green bean casserole came from the West coast, as if San Francisco liberals have never heard of such a thing, and that most of the candied sweet potato searches came from the South, as if sweet potatoes and marshmallows are somehow ingredients foreign to the Southern diet. I had no idea, however, that deviled eggs were part of anyone's holiday menu, but they are in the top 25 most searched-for list, and would appear to be a staple of the mid-Western holiday diet.

What do Tennessee and Idaho have in common? Residents of both states apparently enjoy cheesecake as their holiday dessert. If you live in the South, you are apt to serve macaroni and cheese alongside the sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving day. If you happen to live smack dab in the middle of the country, your turkey was accompanied by corn casserole, based on this data. Those who live in the northern plains and the Northwest appear much more likely to brine their turkeys. In the South, green bean casserole was not searched for, while this was the only region of the country where cooks clamored for recipes for broccoli casserole, whatever that may be.

Looking for stuffed mushrooms on your holiday plate? Get invited to dinner in New England or Alaska. It turns out fruit salad is a Thanksgiving staple, just not on either coast, and that in this one instance my mother was a red-stater. Butternut squash is something I can imagine as a holiday regular, but either only New Englanders needed a recipe for this dish, or it's only served in New England.

I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this data, but I did learn that we are a large and diverse country. I mean, deviled eggs? Cheese balls?

The Impersonators

2009-11-24T08:30:00.002-05:00

The tickets were free. Why else would I go to see a Bruce Springsteen tribute band? But let's start with the more important question: why does a Springsteen tribute band exist? The man is not only alive, he's still touring. He just played a bunch of shows in Jersey a couple of months ago. If you're a huge fan, wouldn't you just go see the man himself? Or just stay home listening to his records? Why on earth would you pay good money to see an impersonator when the real thing is available to you?

The tickets were free because the show was only half full. As it turns out, the answer to the above questions is that people who are eligible for Medicare are the ones who would pay good money to see a Bruce impersonator. The last time I the youngest person at a concert was when I saw the Rolling Stones when I was 15. I know that I'm getting older, and that this is music that people 15 or 20 years older than me grew up with, but there was something completely disconcerting about sitting in the middle of a sea of baldness, paunch, and bifocals at what was, at heart, a rock concert. Then again, the Stones themselves must be closing in on 70, if they aren't there already.

We only stayed for about half of the show, not because it wasn't a good approximation of Springsteen, complete with a fake Clarence Clemmons and a fake Stevie, because it was a good approximation, but because the whole experience was just too weird. It was like being in an alternate universe where the entire E Street canon existed, but all of the songs were written and performed by a guy named Lloyd Springstein.

I couldn't help, though, feeling somewhat sorry for "Bruce" and the rest of the band. I imagined them all growing up, dreaming of becoming professional musicians, dreaming of rock stardom. They all practiced and practiced, spent years sacrificing, just to spend every night of their lives pretending to be someone else. I don't know if it's a step up or down from being a professional Elvis impersonator, but either way it made me both sad and thankful that the show took place in a theater equipped with a bar.

The Seeds of Dissention

2009-11-18T08:43:00.002-05:00

You might assume that, when it comes to local government, the most burning, most pressing, most divisive issue would be taxation and the municipal budget. You might assume that residents have the strongest feelings about their pocketbooks. You would be wrong. If you want to start a local civil war you only have to say one little word, and that word is "parking."

I have been listening to arguments about parking for five years. Local merchants complain that the meter fees in the central business district are too high. Everyone complains when the meters are enforced and tickets are written. When the meters aren't enforced, everyone complains that compliance is spotty. When tickets are written because people are parking too close to intersections everyone complains, and when enforcement of intersection sightlines are ignored everyone complains about that.

Those who live in higher density residential neighborhoods who don't have off-street parking complain when they can't park directly in front of their own homes. People who have driveways and garages complain when neighbors or visitors park in front of their homes just because they don't like the view of parked cars from their front windows. People who live near schools or local businesses located within residential neighborhoods complain when customers or staff park near their homes. People who live on streets with plenty of parking for all complain if anyone parks on their street, even for a minute.

Propose a new business or redevelopment project in my city and everyone will immediately start complaining about parking. Propose a new parking deck and everyone will complain about the wisdom of parking decks. Propose a parking lot and everyone will complain about impervious surfaces. If you want neighbor to turn against neighbor, friend against friend, simply lean into a group of peaceful-seeming people and whisper, "Parking." Within 30 seconds fisticuffs will commence.

If there's a solution I don't know it. When you live in a place with medium or high density, in old neighborhoods built before every home contained a two-car garage, you're going to have a lot of cars competing for on-street parking. Distraction is probably the best method to combat the divisiveness of the parking issue. Lean into that same group and whisper the second-most controversial topic and parking will become a distant memory. That topic? Street trees.

Tax Dollars at Work

2009-11-16T08:18:00.005-05:00

I discovered the most magical place several months ago. It's a large building filled with books. Once you find the book you want to read you can borrow it for free, and when you're done you return it so that the next person can read it. You can also borrow DVDs, audio books, music CDs. It's so sustainable it's almost a collective, more socialistic than health care reform. It's the public library.

Back in college and grad school I went to various libraries all the time, but I'd somehow forgotten that they existed. I got into the habit of buying the books I wanted to read and then giving them away, because my house is full of books and I just don't have room to keep too many more of them. For some reason I just assumed that I'd have a long wait for any newly-published book, and that it wasn't worth it. The new penuriousness led me to the library last month, and I have to say that I've been pretty stupid all these years.

My taste in literature is clearly not shared by the other residents of my small city, because I've never yet had to reserve a new book and wait for it. And I'd completely forgotten how libraries subscribe to each and every periodical, and how they provide comfortable chairs for you to slouch into while reading all the magazines and newspapers you can handle in one sitting. There's even pencils and paper lying around in case you want to write something down. There's free WiFi, but there's also every reference book imaginable, so you don't need to rely on the vagaries of Wikipedia for information.

The bast thing about the library, though, is that it's free because my school taxes pay for it. I don't have children and have previously gotten incredibly annoyed each fall when my ridiculously high school tax bill arrived. At least now I can feel as if I'm getting a benefit for all that money. In fact, this is perhaps the only instance where I can hold in my hands a physical manifestation of my tax dollars at work.

Also, don't buy into the myths. If you see someone you know at the library and want to have a short conversation, go for it. I've never once been shushed.

Turkey Sucks

2009-11-13T09:02:00.003-05:00

Yeah, it's been a while. After 20 months I just needed a break, but now I'm back, refreshed, renewed, reborn, rejuvenated, re...you get the picture. I got my hair cut again yesterday, which I do every six weeks, and realized that my last post was after my last haircut, which meant that six weeks had gone by. So, my break is over, and it's time to get back to it.

So much happens and yet nothing happens. The seasons change, daylight disappears in the evening, when you want light, and appears way too early in the morning, when you want dark. Leaves are raked and blown and are migrated from tree to sidewalk. A season of Mad Men comes to a satisfying end, while yet another season of Real Housewives comes to a satisfying start. Books are read, trips are taken. I will get to all of it, eventually, but on this morning, as I begin preparations for another Thanksgiving, I want to talk about turkey.

I'll start by admitting that I hate turkey. Yes, it smells good while it's roasting, but at the end of all that effort you're left with exactly two pieces of OK-tasting poultry - the meat from the inner thigh - and about 10 pounds of dessicated tastelessness. Stuff it or don't, brine it or don't, the end result is still a lot of meat that you then spend a week disguising in mayonnaise-laden sandwiches or cheese-ridden casseroles. In the end, there's absolutely no reason that we make turkey for Thanksgiving other than the fact that we think it's traditional.

Did the Indians and Pilgrims eat turkey at that originary meal? Perhaps, we don't really know. Oysters were plentiful in the Bay, and the natives would have brought corn, root vegetables, that kind of thing. Venison was just as likely as turkey on that 17th-century groaning board. No, we eat turkey at the holidays because our parents served it, and our parents served it because they like to think they grew up in a Normal Rockwell painting but really probably were served turkey by our grandparents simply because it was a cheap way to feed a lot of people.

No matter the origins, turkey is a bad idea. If turkey was actually so delicious, wouldn't it be served in fine restaurants everywhere? Have you ever once said, "I want to go out for a really good piece of turkey?" When planning a nice dinner party for your friends or loved ones other than Thanksgiving or Christmas, do you buy a huge frozen bird? If turkey were so good, wouldn't there be a McTurkey sandwich? Wouldn't Julie and Julia have featured Julia Child in her French kitchen mastering the art of brining?

Thanksgiving is, at heart, a dinner party. It took me years to realize this, but it is the truth. I've let go of all the holiday cliches, and treat it as what it is. If I want to serve roast beef or rack of lamb, that's what I serve. If I want creamed corn instead of sweet potatoes that's what I make. This year I'm considering fondue. You don't need turkey. You probably don't even want it, if you think about it.

Free yourselves this holiday season. Make whatever you want!

The Weather Outside is Frightful

2009-10-02T08:30:00.003-04:00

First we didn't really have a spring. After two hot weeks back in April we had two dreary, cool months. It rained nearly every day in June. July and August were spring-like but not summery. I think I turned on my air conditioning exactly once, which was great on the pocketbook but felt unseasonable. Then a few weeks ago the leaves began dying on the trees without turning, and last night was so cold I considered putting on my heat. In other words, we didn't have a spring or a summer, and now it looks like we might not have much of a fall.

Weather is the most ridiculous thing to talk about yet we can't stop talking about it, probably because it's the only thing besides taxes and death that effects all of us and yet is completely beyond our control. I hate talking about weather but after four straight days of not wanting to get out of bed because it's the warmest place in the house, four straight days of cloud cover, four straight days of wearing a sweater when I don't want to be wearing a sweater, it feels like the only conversational game in town.

I got my hair cut yesterday. My stylist is one of those people who always sees apocalypse around the corner. For a year now I've spent 45 minutes every six weeks hearing about bread lines and how utility companies and banks are the undoing of civilization as we know it, and about how before too long we're all going to be bartering for scraps of meat. I once offered him some meat rather than a check as payment for my haircut but he somehow was not amused. At any rate, the conversation yesterday did not once touch on banks or economic calamity. It was all about the weather. He claims we're going to have the worst winter ever in the history of humankind, featuring such historic cold that it won't even be able to snow. We're going to spend five months huddled under Snuggies, breaking apart furniture in order to feed the fire because the utility companies will be in possession of all our money by December at the latest. Apocalypse will be the fault not of capitalism but of Willard Scott.

I understand the feeling. It's a cruel enough world out there, but at least we can ordinarily count on some warmth and sunlight and the maple trees turning orange and crimson. There is one distinct advantage to all this gloomy weather, though: going back to bed feels like an offensive rather than a defensive measure.

Homecoming

2009-09-29T08:55:00.002-04:00

I just spent a weekend at my alma mater. This has been happening once a year lately, when a bunch of alums from my, let's say, vintage converge on the campus and behave as badly as possible. I manage to go through most of life as a responsible and mature woman, meeting my obligations, safe to invite to events. Why is it that I drive five and a half hours, go through the campus gates, get out of my car, and am suddenly an 18 year-old again?

This phenomenon is not unique to my campus or age group. I watch this same thing every June in my hometown, when middle-aged graduates of the local college take over my neighborhood for their alumni weekend. They tailgate, take over the neighborhood bars, march hungover down the street in a parade; they leave the campus as much of a mess as we must have left our campus on Sunday. Homecoming weekend here is even more of a boozefest each fall, when the Lafayette/Lehigh football game leads hundreds of people who should know better to get day drunk.

In my real life I spend my weekends participating in activities that don't feature quantities of alcohol. In my real life, I don't go to a dining hall for a "breakfast" that consists of half a pound of bacon, steam table eggs, grits, and, in order to pretend I'm healthy, one piece of fruit. In my real life I don't follow that up with a lunch that consists of grilled cheese, corn pudding, and dessert, then begin happy hour at 3 PM. In my real life, when I go listen to a band, I don't join the people rushing the stage to dance behind the band, only to repeatedly be chased off said stage by campus security.

I did learn an important lesson this weekend, though: no matter how stupid I may act, there's always someone else about whom I can say, "At least I'm not that girl." At least I'm not that girl who tore apart her banquet centerpiece and threw the boxwoods at the band, soaking the guitarist. At least I'm not that girl who put pieces of her centerpiece in her hair, leaving her looking much like Pocahontas. At least I wasn't having sex with my date and calling it dancing. Yes, true, I didn't have a date, but still, I wasn't that girl. I was not the girl wearing a gown more fit for a beauty pageant and spilling out of it. I was not the girl who attempted to run a lap around the indoor track suspended above the dance floor and who was chased down by security, although that girl was from my group.

I was plenty of things. I was a grown-up behaving like a child. I was having fun. The only thing I wasn't, was that girl.

Away from the Fray

2009-09-28T08:16:00.002-04:00

I'm back, after a little over a week spent nearly entirely off-line. I just felt like a break from my computer, and I have to say that staying away wasn't really all that hard. I did answer email because ignoring that would have felt like not picking up the phone, and also because I have to email for work, but for 10 days I didn't blog or read blogs, didn't check on Facebook or Twitter, didn't go to any websites for news or reviews or for anything. I was completely status update free.

I've spent most of my life without the internet; I'm old enough that I didn't even own a computer until well after college. This habit of getting up in the morning and immediately sitting down in front of the keyboard to find out what happened overnight is relatively recent, even if it feels as if I've been reading Slate and Salon forever. I have to say, though, that old media also does the trick. It's still possible to read the newspaper and be caught up. Being informed does not have to equal immediacy. Roman Polanski was just as arrested 12 hours after the fact as he was the second the story broke.

The truly freeing part of the past 10 days, though, has been my freedom from posting anything, anywhere. I write this blog mainly for myself, because I like to write and because writing this helps force me to engage with various topics and helps me to think about things. However, after 20 months, I do go through periods where thinking about new things and then writing about them is a chore. It can be hard to have something to say several days a week, and to remove that pressure for a week felt great. This is precisely why I don't Twitter: I'd drive myself crazy with the pressure to be interesting a day long, and no one is interesting all day long. I'm barely interesting two or three times a week. Taking some time to recharge offline helped me to see that, yes, I do like the time I spend here or on Facebook or wherever, but that I have to see it as leisure and not as work. I have to treat it as leisure and not as work.

The ability to keep up with everything and everyone is an opportunity, but going away once in a while is also an opportunity. Away from the computer I got more book-reading done, spent more time outside my house, spent more time with the living and breathing. I'm back now, recharged, but an offline respite is definitely something I highly recommend.

What to Watch

2009-09-18T08:18:00.003-04:00

I'm a huge fan of The Wire, still mourning the fact that the series ended. If, like me, you need a fix of gritty reality, tune in to the Sundance Channel next week for the documentary mini-series Brick City (it airs M-F at 10 PM). It's probably unfair to compare the two, as The Wire was realistic fiction while Brick City is reality without fiction, but the focus on lives large and small and on the ways various people struggle to find meaning in the middle of crushing poverty, racism, and crime, and the ways these same people must function within and against institutions while they carry on this struggle, is the thematic center of both series. If you loved one, you'll love the other.

Brick City presents approximately six months in the life of Newark, NJ. We watch first-term mayor Cory Booker cheerlead, exhort, and politically manipulate. We watch Booker's new Director of Police attempt to reform the department, focus on Comstat in attempting to reduce the murder rate, and battle against the old school Chief of Police for control of the men. We watch Jayda, an ex-Blood, and her boyfriend Creep, an ex-Crip, attempt to make a life together and raise a family despite the odds. We watch the residents of Newark's Central Ward fight to get a new high school opened, and we watch the principal and vice-principal of that school fight to keep their students in the classroom and off the streets.

Because this is reality rather than fiction, small plot arcs structure the individual episodes, while the series begins and ends in medias res. Solutions to the failure of the American city are in short supply, and wouldn't be found in six months at any rate. If the series has a failing, however, it's the fact that it feels truncated; five hours is just enough to make you want to see more. All in all, it's worth watching, and undoubtedly better than whatever else is on weeknights at 10 PM. I recommend it.

Goodbye, Taste Buds

2009-09-16T08:17:00.003-04:00

I understand that I'm getting older every day, but so far aging hasn't really been anything I've noticed. Sure, I've got some more gray in my hair and my metabolism has definitely changed, but my health has been good and I don't generally feel differently than I did, say, 20 years ago. With one small exception.

It started with sour mix. One day I was enjoying margaritas with impunity and the next two sips gave me heartburn. There's plenty of other alcoholic beverages in the world, though, so I simply stopped ordering margaritas. Then one day the heartburn after two sips started to apply to those "malt beverages" as well. Goodbye, Smirnoff Ice, farewell, Mike's Hard Lemonade. Not the biggest loss, but a loss nonetheless.

And now, suddenly, I can't eat garlic without being kept up all night chugging water, tasting it on my lips, feeling generally uncomfortable. Garlic powder is still fine, but I just can no longer do fresh garlic. This is a loss, but more important this is an event that makes me fear that I've taken the first step in a descent down the slippery slope that leads to an entirely bland diet. I'm now afraid that I'll wake up one day and will have turned into my grandmother, subsisting on a diet of boiled chicken and dessicated hard candy. Or that I'll wake up one day and after eating boiled chicken and dessicated hard candy will look through my pockets and discover them filled with emery boards, rain bonnets, and travel packs of tissues.

I don't like having to admit that I'm slowly aging, but who does? Yes, I'm still a long way from being restricted to soft food, but still. Garlic-free pesto? Tragic.

September 11

2009-09-11T08:23:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure there's anything more to say about it. It shocked us, it saddened us, it happened. For months after we were all freaked out and scared and so we plastered flags all over the country. Where did all the flags go, I often wonder? I guess the basements of America are now filled with flags. In my basement, I have the commemorative 9/11 box of tissues I purchased at a mini-mart a couple of weeks later. Part of me couldn't believe that the event was being milked to sell tissues, and part of me knew that only in this country could an act of terrorism be turned into a marketing strategy.

How could we know, in the middle of shock and grief, the ways that event would change our world? At the time we couldn't see the wars to follow, one necessary and one useless. We couldn't see the ways a Presidency would be transformed, our government hardened. We couldn't see thousands of our servicepeople killed, thousands more returning home with PTSD, couldn't see that our relationship with a distant part of the world was damaged in ways armed might can't combat and probably still can't see that, even eight years later when war feels perpetual.

We said we'd never forget - the tissue box proclaims that in large type - but then except for this one day a year we did forget. Our President told us to go shopping, so we all took out subprime mortgages and bought houses in exurbs. We all went on with our lives, as survivors do. The world has changed not only because years have passed but because the events of that day helped to change it. It's important to take a minute to remember what happened and those who perished not only to honor them but to see clearly, even if just for a moment, where we are and how we got here.

The 21st century began eight years ago today.

As Always, It's All About Protein

2009-09-10T08:11:00.003-04:00

When I look at my dog sleeping happily at my feet I don't wonder why he chooses to live with me rather than in the wild. He wouldn't survive a day in the wild, to be honest. He has absolutely no prey instinct, he refuses to be rained on, he hates cold, and he won't lie even on the floor without a pillow. He was born thoroughly domesticated, as dogs are these days.

The question of how wolves came be dogs has been pondered by researchers over and over again. Where were they domesticated, how, why? I've always figured that a couple of brave and friendly wolves were attracted by a fire and started spending nights sleeping by some of our ancestors, who started feeding them scraps. Then they started hunting together and hanging out 24/7, and before you know it the wolves were sleeping next to rather than near the humans, protecting the humans, helping out by pulling and carrying things for the humans, and a relationship that has lasted thousands of years was born. This is a happy story of codependency, but according to a story in yesterday's NY Times, it's bunk.

Using genetics, dogs have been traced back to one place of origin, a remote province of China. The disturbing thing is that this is one of those Chinese provinces where historically dogs are food, not pets. Thousands of years ago, once man had the ability to build cages and trap, wolves were caught and kept in pens, fattening up for the slaughter. Wolves came to live in proximity to humans not because wolves saw anything fortuitous in the relationship - what's good about being meat, after all - but because humans looked at wolves and saw lunch. Thus wolves began to be raised in captivity.

Travelers passing through this province then saw the wolves in cages, and instead of seeing lunch saw an animal that could be of some use for warmth, protection, hunting, hauling. They traded for these domesticated wolves and carried them off, dispersing them eventually throughout the known world. 10,000 or so years later you have Brody, shedding all over my pillow while he watches me type.

It's somewhat disturbing to rethink the whole human/canine relationship this way, but it also explains why, if wolves wanted to be domesticated, you never hear stories of humans camping and meeting some friendly wolves out in the wild. It also explains why dogs are so willing to be housebroken. It's not because they love us and want to please us, but because they don't want to be fileted.

Working on My Resume

2009-09-08T08:30:00.003-04:00

I really should get a job. For a year I've been living on air, freelance work, and savings, and I'm tired of the schedule of no schedule. Of course, in order to get a job one has to look for a job, and in order to look for a job one has to update one's resume. I don't think there's any task more boring, more horrid, than writing a resume. In my last job I had to read plenty of resumes, so I can say with some authority that reading them is no more fun than writing them. Resumes suck.

I've always changed things on the resume around depending on the job to which I am applying, so that whatever aspects of my experience seems most relevant are brought to the foreground. What this means, practically, is hours spent reliving all the ridiculous and often boring tasks I've mastered at one point or another. Budgeting, for example. I was good with my budget in that I spent all of it every year. If you don't spend it all, it gets cut the next year. So every September I ordered office supplies, computer bags, crap I didn't need just to protect that particular budget line. Budget management means I'm good at spending money I don't have to.

"Managing support staff." That one means that I spent a year trying to get my assistant to show up for work one hour late rather than her preferred two hours late. This would work for about a week at a time. She'd arrive promptly at 10, then it would become 10:25, then 10:47, then we'd be back to two hours late, have a talk that would leave her mad at me, and begin the cycle all over again. I wonder if her resume features her experience "Managing Managers."

I was in charge of our company's crisis communications plan and in making sure that all of our offices had crisis communications plans of their own. This was mainly about PR crises, and was mainly about ensuring that only certain staff would talk to the press and controlling what would be said to the press, but the plan also had to include our potential response to various disasters. What would nuclear annihilation mean to our company? What statement do we make in the event of invasion by space aliens? If California drops into the Pacific, who is our spokesperson? I left the company before Katrina and was saddened to see that we somehow didn't make it into any of the press coverage since my planning had included responses to government indifference and incompetence (although I called that situation "acts of God").

Depending on the position my resume could also include planning and leading conference calls. Some days all I did was go from one conference call to another. Usually this was small groups, but sometimes I had to lead calls with 30 or so participants. Being on the phone with 30 people is a skill, believe me, particularly when you consider that 80% of those people were eating their lunch. At least it sounded that way. How do you compete with lunch? You can't, although on your resume you list your experience in "staff motivation."

Of course all work is cyclical. Some days and weeks I'd be incredibly busy, and then there would be days when I really didn't have that much to do. No one can know about any of this down time, however, or else you'll be given more work that you then have to delegate and oversee to completion. "Time management" becomes an essential skill. How do you make surfing the Web look like a work-related task? How many hours of solitaire can you play while pretending to write press releases? Without effective time management, you might end up actually busy all day, every day, and that's just not the desired measurable outcome.

The process of writing this post and thinking about my resume makes me see why I'd rather continue working for myself. If it weren't for paychecks and health insurance, would any of us go to an office five days a week? But the time has come, and I need to manage it. My resume awaits.

Holiday, Celebrate

2009-09-04T06:57:00.002-04:00

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Labor Day was originally intended to celebrate the social and economic contributions of the labor movement to American society. So thank you, labor movement, for getting everyone a day off of work. Thank you, labor movement, for a long weekend of back-to-school sales at which underpaid workers with no benefits must labor while the rest of us grill hot dogs. Thanks, labor movement, for either lengthening or shortening summer, depending when the first Monday in September falls. I'm celebrating American labor the best way I know how this weekend: by doing absolutely nothing at all. I'm watching some tennis, I'm reading a book, and I'm bidding summer adieu with the sloth I didn't have time, this summer, to enjoy.

Have a great holiday weekend, and I'll be back Tuesday.

Let's Hear It for 1987

2009-09-02T08:33:00.003-04:00

The time has arrived to break out the shoulder pads and high-waisted jeans, pour some Chardonnay, give your dog a pretentious literary name, and settle in to an evening of thirtysomething. perhaps i should compose this post entirely in the lower-case? I won't do that, but I will express my happiness that at long last the series is being released on DVD. In the late 80s I religiously sat before the TV every Tuesday night at 10 to witness the trials and tribulations of this group of Philly yuppies.

I'm really not sure why this show spoke to me. At the time I was a decade younger than the protagonists, and an important decade at that. I had no youthful 60s idealism to lose, unless that idealism can take the form of a love of the Jackson 5. I was a poor graduate student who couldn't afford even an old Volvo and was years away from even the thought of undertaking a nightmare renovation of an Arts and Crafts home. I wasn't married, trying to be married, or fretting over the choice between raising children and having a career. In short, I had nothing in common with these characters, yet still I loved them. Perhaps there just really wasn't anything else good on TV, or perhaps it's something about Marshall Herskovitz, who 10 years earlier worked on Family, and who would go on, with Ed Zwick, to produce two of my favorite shows of the 90s, My So-Called Life and Once and Again.

What became clear after watching an assortment of the Season One episodes is that the thirtysomething I loved was later season thirtysomething. I loved it when Nancy had cancer, and Michael and Elliot worked for and battled Miles Drentell, and everyone hated Susannah. I loved it when Melissa became a character in her own right and not comic relief. I loved it when the show became more of a high-concept soap and less of a meditation on the horror of turning into one's mother or father. All of the things I loved happened later, so I will patiently await the release of the next three seasons and in the meantime contemplate Michael's obsession with suspenders and the fact that Ellyn is continually attracted to men much less good-looking than herself. Seriously, Woodman? The fug married guy she met at the pool? The comic book guy who was about one day from being fat? Oh, Ellyn.

Last week's release of this set led to all kinds of rumination on the importance of the show, how it ushered in a new era of naval-gazing and a new kind of serialized drama. But did it, really? When it went off the air in 1991, did anything of quality replace it? Those were the years of 90210 and Melrose Place. I'd venture that its greatest impact was on situation comedy rather than drama. By focusing on a group of friends who don't share a home or a workplace, by focusing in many ways on the commonplace and everyday as the stuff of plot, it paved the way for Friends and Seinfeld. The situations were played for laughs rather than bathos, but the concept of a group of urban professionals creating their own family as a shield against the alienation of urban striving, well, that was pure thirtysomething.

Tyson on Tyson

2009-08-31T09:04:00.003-04:00

Mike Tyson is one of those people I never think about. I'm aware that he's still alive but really don't wonder what he's up to. When I think about him, I remember the time back in the mid-80s when he was knocking out opponents one after the other, each more quickly than the other, and when he was everywhere in our culture. I remember the whole Robin Givens thing, and watching their interview with Barbara Walters. I remember marveling at the disconnect between his physique and ferocity and his little baby voice, and how the Givens mess was the beginning of a steep decline, the instance where he began the journey from kind of sexy in his own way to monstrous in every way. The rape conviction was big news so of course I remember that, and the biting of Holyfield's ear, but in general he's just not someone I've thought about for at least 15 years.

I wouldn't be thinking of him today were it not for James Toback's Tyson, a documentary shot entirely from Tyson's point of view. There he is, looking somewhat ruined, telling his side of the sordid tale: his early life on the mean streets, being rescued by Cus D'Amato and turned into a boxer, how he never recovered from D'Amato's death, how he's never trusted anyone else, how he's been the victim time and time again.

There's no doubt that our culture is quick to vilify black men, particularly physically powerful black men. Could it really be that he never touched Robin Givens, never raped anyone, only bit Holyfield's ear as a reaction to a rash of illegal head butts? I guess, although common sense implies that someone repeatedly accused of brutality must be guilty of something. What's more interesting is to put aside questions of innocence and guilt and instead to take the film for what it is: a glimpse into the mind of someone very different than you or me.

In a matter of a few years he went from being a punk sent upstate to juvie to being a contender for the heavyweight title, from being no one to being famous. He became the youngest heavyweight champion, and just a few years after that lost the title and went to prison. Everything that happened to him happened in a 10-year period, and when it was all over and he found himself sitting in a prison cell in Indiana he was 25 years old. It's a bizarre enough life that any of us would have problems making sense of it all, let alone a kid raised on the streets with no education whose only adult role model had died and left him alone to navigate the world of fame and fortune.

The film is fascinating not because he is able to rehabilitate himself in anyone's eyes but because he narrates the events of his life from inside those events. It's a private record that stands beside the pubic record. If it makes us re-evaluate anything it makes us think about the ways our culture provided only one path for Tyson, violence, and the ways the same impulses and behaviors are rewarded in the ring that are condemned outside it. It's the fates, Greek tragedy writ large on the streets of Brooklyn, the mats of Las Vegas, and the sheets of the tabloids.

Another Reason to Change Careers

2009-08-27T07:53:00.004-04:00

If my cat ever decided to post an online profile, his "hobbies and interests" would be, in order of importance, eating, sleeping, and grooming. I'm glad cleanliness is important to him, although I wish he'd understand that it's a rare human who cares to have his anus thrust into the face, no matter how clean that anus might be. At any rate, his propensity for grooming leads to hairballs. No amount of brushing and no "hairball control" treats can stem the nighttime tide of hairballs thrown up onto my carpet.

I suppose I should be thankful that he throws up on the carpet rather than on the bed or the couch. His process is to jump down and wander around retching until he finds a perfect, unspoiled section of the carpet to spoil. He never vomits in the same place twice, and no matter what I've tried nothing will get up the stain that's left. Things sometimes creep up on you, so that I woke up last week and noticed stains all around me, in the bedroom, in the office, down the entire length of the hallway. It was time to call in the professionals.

Carpets obviously get gross and it's better not to ever think about it. Better not to think about the dander, sweat, dead skin, germs, crumbs, and god knows what else that lodges there. Better, in other words, not to look at what comes up the steam cleaner. Let me put it this way: I thought the base color of my carpeting was much more tan than it turns out to be.

The point of this post isn't to be disgusting, however, but instead to marvel at what a racket carpet cleaning can be. Before I called the guys in the truck, I tried both Resolve and a consumer steamer, neither of which did anything but leave their own bleach stains all over the place. I rented one of those larger steamers from the grocery store, which succeeded only in leaving the carpets soggy and smelling like a wet dog. Unless you want to own some unwieldy and ridiculously expensive machine you have no choice but to pay someone with the proper equipment.

Once the carpet cleaners realized pet stains were involved, I was instructed that simple steam cleaning wouldn't be enough, because moisture would only release germs and odor. My experience with the grocery store machine bore that out. The result was that I had to spend an extra $60 for an antibacterial/antimicrobial pretreatment, on top of the hundred bucks for the cleaning of the two rooms and hallway. So, OK, it's not as if I had any other options, save ripping out the carpets or tearing down the house. I had to pay whatever it was I had to pay.

But here's the thing: the whole process, pretreatment and steam cleaning, took exactly 10 minutes. I paid $160 for 10 minutes of work. Yes, they had to drive here in the truck, but my appointment was scheduled for a day when they were already in my neighborhood, and yes, the two guys were in the house more like 20 minutes and their labor was part of the cost. But come on, $960 an hour? To clean carpets? I am so in the wrong line of work.

Would You Like Some Meth with Your Canned Ham?

2009-08-25T07:51:00.004-04:00

You live in a small town in rural Iowa, or Missouri, or Kansas, somewhere in the Midwest where the sun rises and sets over the corn and your father and grandfather somehow made a living from the land, either farming it or working at a processing or meatpacking place. Year after year nothing changes, until you wake up one day and realize that half of your town is addicted to meth. All around you friends and neighbors are either using or making it, or both. How did this happen?

For an intimate look at meth in one small rural town, read Nick Reding's Methland. Reding spent three years living among the residents of Olwein, Iowa, and his ground-floor account of the ways meth spread through and ravaged one community, and the ways that community is trying to rebuild itself, is both engrossing and eye-opening. I won't give away the entire plot, because the book really is worth a read, but I will say that the culprit is both expected and unexpected. The culprit is agribusiness.

The consolidation of smaller family farms into conglomerates displaced people from their traditional livelihoods. This isn't news. Those who didn't farm went to work in plants; while the unionized meatpacking plant operated in Olwein, people could make a living. The shifts were long and the work was repetitive, and many meatpackers relied on speed to get through the day or the week, but the wages could support a lower middle-class life. Union plants were closed, though, and what processing work remained was non-unionized, the wages less than half what they used to be. Using meth became an antidote to despair; dealing meth became an antidote to economic hopelessness.

Food still needed to be processed by cheap labor. For various reasons, Mexican cartels cornered the meth market. Illegal immigrant labor became their distribution network. Illegals can move about undetected, transporting the drug with them. In this way the labor practices of agribusiness both created and sustain the rural meth market. As Reding shows, 20 years ago meth could be a homegrown operation, with a local dealer in control of both manufacturing and distribution. These days the local dealer is just a middleman. Meth manufacture is as consolidated as the production of ground beef, utilizing the same labor force.

Do solutions exist? Read the book to see what Olwein's civic leadership has done to stem the tide. Obviously, the real solutions are economic; only the creation of decent legal jobs can effectively combat an underground economy. Can that happen in Missouri, in Iowa, when more and more of our labor needs are exported each year? I guess that remains to be seen. In the meantime, Olwein awaits.

I Won!

2009-08-20T07:10:00.000-04:00

$7.

Winner Takes It All

2009-08-19T08:29:00.003-04:00

Because jobs in my field are hard to find these days, I've decided my financial plan is simply to win PowerBall. It's a nice jackpot this week: $122 million if you take the cash rather than the annuity. Even after taxes, that's, well, it's enough money for the rest of my life. I bought 10 tickets, so clearly I'm going to win this thing. In spare moments, I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do with some of that money. If a check for $122 million won't burn a hole in your pocket, then nothing will.

Of course I'll buy a new car, and book a trip first-class on Emirates Air so I can experience the private sleeping compartment. That's maybe $200K, though, leaving me with an awful lot of change. I really like my current house even though it lacks a pool, so I'll re-landscape and have one put in. That still leaves me with way too much money. One advantage of spectacular wealth would be my ability to avoid winter altogether should I so choose, so I decided that I'd buy a winter house someplace warm.

Because I love mid-century modern architecture, Palm Springs seems like the most logical winter destination. Plus, I could attend the Indian Wells tennis tournament every year. So, yesterday I went onto the Palm Springs MLS to see about dropping a couple of million and helping to revive the California economy.

Can you imagine my joy when I discovered that for $3.25 million I can purchase Twin Palms, Frank Sinatra's actual house? This feels like an incredible bargain; it even comes furnished. I can't wait to have sex in Frank Sinatra's bed, or for my cat to shed in Frank Sinatra's ugly chair. My dog has a weird propensity to crap on concrete rather than grass, and Frank Sinatra's house has an amazing patio for him to defile. Twin Palm means family fun for everyone.

The drawing is tonight, so I can go pick up my check tomorrow and buy the place over the weekend. If you don't have any Labor Day plans, come fly away to Palm Springs.

How Can I Not Write about Mad Men?

2009-08-17T09:11:00.002-04:00

...what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
- W.B Yeats, "The Second Coming"

By 1967 Joan Didion would use Yeats' evocation of the apocalypse to anchor her reporting on the Haight during the Summer of Love, but these lines strongly came to mind when thinking about the Season 3 premier of Mad Men. Yes, the episode is literally about births, and the anxiety surrounding births: we begin with a flashback to Dick Whitman's birth, Betty and Don are awaiting the birth of their third child, the episode takes place on Dick's birthday, and the episode ends with Don and Betty telling Sally the story of her birth. Beyond the literal, though, the themes of the season hinted at in the episode are all about changes that are being born, the anxieties attendant to those changes, and how one reacts to change when one is in the middle of it.

From the first scene of the pilot episode the audience has known what the characters can't know: that the complacency and seeming hegemony of the immediate postwar years is about to explode into chaos. Everything that happens to these characters takes place on the cusp of a great cultural shift that they can't predict because they are living through it. In 2007, would any of us have predicted the events of 2008, the extent of the financial meltdown, the depth of our national anxiety, the result of the Presidential election? Although those living through a period of cultural shift might have glimmers that a change is gonna come, the nature of that change and its repercussions are fully understood only in hindsight, which is precisely what Mad Men's characters lack. They are simply adults living their lives.

It's sometime around April, 1963; the Beatles recorded their first album in March, but the British have already invaded Sterling Cooper, thanks to Duck's ambition and Roger's libido. The anxiety of the characters has a very literal cause, as we know that about a third of the staff has been let go. Beyond British control, advertising itself is changing. Harry's position as head of the TV department has clearly given him more power within the agency, since he himself points out that TV brings in 42% of their revenue. Pete and Ken are pitted against one another for a promotion; the arrival of a male British secretary who sees his role as something much more grandiose than Joan has ever imagined challenges her supremacy over the support staff; Roger and Bert seem to have a symbolic "advisory" role at the agency with no real authority.

Much of the episode focuses on Don and Sal's jaunt to Baltimore to placate London Fog. "Out of Town," as the episode title suggests, is the episode's theme. To be out of town is to have the ability to rebirth yourself, to pretend to be anything and anyone you want to be because no one knows you. Don Draper is an expert at rebirthing, at changing identities, and is quick to make up a backstory for himself and Sal for their night carousing with the stewardesses. The real birthing that takes place though is of Sal's true identity; being out of town allows him to let the bellboy kiss him and to acknowledge his true desires. It's Dick's birthday, but in this sense it's also the day Sal is birthed into a new way of conceiving of his life.

The new doesn't fully replace the old because the new is born from it. Dick Whitman lies just under the surface of Don Draper just as the Beatles lie just under the surface of Perry Como. Change isn't coming so much as it's slowly and inexorably happening all around, every minute. In the next few months of 1963 the Draper's baby will be born, TaB and ZIP codes will be introduced, JFK will call for passage of a Civil Rights Act, the SCLC's Birmingham campaign will grip the nation, MLK will be jailed and pen his famous Letter and a few months later deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech while James Meredith enrolls at Ole Miss, Kenya and Uganda will free themselves from British domination, and in a little country called Vietnam Diem will be assassinated by US-backed military coup. Joan will deal with the repercussions of her marriage, Don will try to remain committed to his family, Pete or Ken will be promoted, Peggy will try to force her secretary to respect her, all the adults living in this world will continue to live in it even as the ground underneath them keeps shifting.

How we deal with the change we live inside of is the theme of all our lives.

Cooking Project Update

2009-08-14T07:44:00.003-04:00

A brief update on my "eat only what you cook" project:

If you're going to attempt this kind of thing, this is the time of year to do it. It's easy to stop at a farm stand, make a bunch of corn or buy some cucumbers, turn it into a salad and eat it for a few days. Plus, I prefer most vegetables raw, which means there's no work involved preparing part of my meals, so it's just been a matter of, say, grilling some chicken, eating some of it that night, and then using the rest in salads or sandwiches. I've learned there are a few things I won't be able to eat as long as I do this, though.

Pizza, for example. I can make something that resembles a pizza. I can make a flatbread dough, put toppings on it and grill it, and it tastes fine. It's not real pizza, though, not like the pizza from my favorite place. You clearly need a pizza oven to make real pizza, so I'm just going to stop experimenting and put that in the column of things I can only eat if I'm eating out.

I think I'm going to have to say that beverages are not part of this experiment. I love Diet Pepsi too much. I've been making mint tea, but really there's no replacing the chemical fizziness of Diet Pepsi. So I bought some yesterday, and I also bought some pretzels. I was having some friends over for drinks, and pretzels are time-consuming to make, and I didn't want to offer them green beans with their beer (which I also didn't make).

In fact, the healthiest thing about this is going to be the absence of snack food. I didn't think I ate a lot of such food, but I was fooling myself. The hardest thing has been wanting just a few bites of something and finding only fruit and vegetables in my kitchen - no Sun Chips, no wasabi peas, no Twizzlers. And no, I am not going to attempt to make Sun Chips. I'm certain that I lack the requisite chemicals.

In short, it hasn't been a particularly hard week and a half, but it's only been a week and a half. I'll keep going, and update as things progress.

A Fern in Every Pot

2009-08-13T07:53:00.004-04:00

Remember the Lawrences, our old friends from Pasadena? Kate is a housewife; Doug is a bushy-eyebrowed lawyer and Matthew Broderick's real-life father. They live in a nice suburban house with lots of ferns and outdoor seating and their three children. Nancy is a divorcee who is trying to finish law school while every man in California tries to sleep with her; Willie is so sensitive and artistic he dropped out of high school and is both a photographer and a writer, and even though (or perhaps because) he really should be gay he has one tragic girlfriend after another - one who is pregnant, one who dies, etc. Then there's Letticia, the baby. She's a tomboy who insists on being called "Buddy" and who, despite her penchant for wearing overalls and mesh football jerseys, manages to attract the affections of every 70s tween idol who happens by Pasadena. Willie Ames is her boyfriend until he moves down the street to his own TV show, then Leif Garrett tries to pressure her to have sex with him. She wears the football jersey through it all.

Yes, I'm talking about family, my favorite hour of television circa 1976. How I wished my family could be like this! I wished my parents would let me drop out of school and live in an apartment in our backyard decorated with faux antiques and macrame. I wished my parents would be completely understanding if I brought Willie Ames up to my room. I wished I had an older brother who would let me drive even though I was 12 years old. I wished we had a hammock in our yard and that my father drove a Maverick rather than a Buick Skylark.

family is out on DVD and, laid low with yet more poison ivy, I spent last night watching highlights from the first two seasons. I can't believe I once loved this dreck, and I also can't believe how slowly the show is paced. We had a lot more patience back in the days when we only got a handful of channels; the title credits alone last about a minute and a half. What makes this show unique is that each and every episode is a very special episode. Not a week goes by where one social problem or another is not the focus. It's a good thing Buddy didn't have sex with Leif Garrett or she undoubtedly would have gotten herpes in the next episode and pregnant in the one after that. This poor family was absolutely besieged, I tell you.

Which makes sense, because despite its liberal trappings, this is one of the most reactionary shows of the period. Yes, the elder Lawrences take a liberal approach to their single-mother eldest, their drop-out aimless artist son, and their independent tomboy daughter. But it's important to note that all three of these children live at home, even those in their early 20s. The real lesson of the show is that beyond the confines of the family lurks danger. If an old flame comes to visit, he's a speed freak. If an old neighbor visits, she's an alcoholic. If you serve on a jury and the criminal is acquitted he will seek out and attack your child. The family is surrounded by perversion, drug addicts, thieves, dissolution of every stripe. Family is the only defense.

So really, I should be glad that I lived in a home without ferns and macrame, a home where one graduated high school and got the hell out of there for good. America in the mid-70s probably did seem scary. The economy was a mess, Watergate had eroded all faith in government and authority, cities were dying, suburban kids were all smoking pot, polyester was ubiquitous. To say that the nuclear family is an anecdote to social ills in 1976 is to say pretty much the same thing Reagan had been saying all along, and in that sense was an early pop culture manifestation of the conservative revolution that had been coming for years and would be completed in 1980. In many ways family is about precisely that moment when the liberal dreams of the 1960s are transformed, when the garden of Woodstock becomes the manicured lawn of suburbia, and when the focus becomes the family.

Feeding

2009-08-11T07:37:00.002-04:00

We have the story of two women, both adrift. One arrives in postwar Paris the wife of a mid-level embassy official, unable to bear children, with nothing to do. One works as a mid-level bureaucrat in post-9/11 Manhattan and has awakened to find her life somehow less than she had imagined, back in college, it would be. Both women aspire to control events, but both feel instead that events are controlling them. How does such a woman save her soul, save herself?

On the surface, the answer Julie and Julia serves up would appear to be cooking. Julia Child studies at Le Cordon Bleu and reinvents herself by learning to cook; Julie Powell decides to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking and invents a life for herself far away from the cubicle she inhabits eight hours each day. Ephron's film is in many ways a celebration of the preparation and consumption of food, of excess. Julie and Julia are both perpetually hungry, and both set about sating that hunger. Be sure to eat before you see the movie, because it's filled with food porn. Julie and Julia's hunger is also carnal, and both enjoy sex as much as lobster thermidor. It's easy to leave the theater believing that satisfaction of one's primal, physical needs leads to spiritual fulfillment.

It wasn't cooking or eating or even sex that gave definition and direction to either life, though. Julia Child became Julia Child not because she learned how to cook but because she learned how to write about it, and Julie Powell became the subject of a movie not because she spent a year cooking her way through Child but because she wrote about it. Neither of these women became chefs; both became writers.

The act of writing is a very literal way to control events. To author something is to be its god, its originator. Think of the etymology of "author" and this becomes evident: authority, authoritarian, authoritative. Child didn't write just any text but a book of recipes, of instructions. A cookbook is, very simply, a way of controlling and shaping experience; a recipe is a set of specific instructions that tames the chaos of the kitchen, that turns alchemy into procedure. A cookbook is a structure. Deciding to cook every recipe in a book in 365 days is also a structure, and by taking on that project and writing about it Powell was, powerfully, authoring her own life. This was Child's penultimate recipe: words will set you free, wield words and you can invent yourself.

Writing is a large part of the movie, but of course it's much less visual than food, and because it's not a communal activity but is instead solitary it's not the stuff of either comedy or drama. But if you see the film look carefully and you'll see the way writing is central. Child is continually at her typewriter, composing letters and then her book; Powell is continually either at her computer or reading from Child's letters. In the end, words are more powerful than even aspic, and in the end this is not a story about some people who like to eat but instead a story of two women who hunger for so much more than a properly prepared meal.

Political Nostrodamus

2009-08-06T08:09:00.003-04:00

I've never given much thought to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I know that he was a US Senator from New York, and that before that he served in some capacity in four Presidential administrations. I know that Richard Nixon loved him even though he was a Democrat, and that he had some controversial things to say about race and welfare. That's where my knowledge ends.

Because I'm a presidential campaign geek, I've been reading The Making of the President 1964, not because 1964 is a compelling race, although it is a compelling race despite the landslide outcome, but because nearly all of White's books are out of print, and this is one I found in a used bookstore. So far the most interesting reading is this statement by Moynihan, made in the summer of 1964:

"What are the issues in this campaign? 'Issues' are talk about what's already happened or happening...But these aren't issues, really. Only a handful of people can see the advance issues. Can you explain that the greatest issue twenty years from now may be what's beginning in our knowledge of the human cell, and biology, and reproduction? Can you explain that we're beginning to be able to control our environment, maybe even change the weather - and discuss what we should do about it? Or can you talk about what we have to do to keep old people from growing lonely? Or can you ask them whether they think the purpose of industry should be changed from making things to making jobs?

Maybe we're entering a new phase of government. Maybe the old legislative phase is coming to an end, the time when you passed a new law which set up a new bureau with a new appropriation to run new machinery. What lies ahead may not be problems answerable by law, or by government at all. But that's nothing you can discuss now in 1964 - that's years and years ahead."

Has anybody ever gotten the future so right? Too bad Lyndon Johnson couldn't abide by him (Moynihan was a big Bobby Kennedy supporter); too bad we can't all see the future, standing there right in front of us.

Eat What You Make

2009-08-04T08:21:00.004-04:00

Well, it's not Friday, but I'm back. I can't really be blamed for pretending my vacation lasted a bit longer than three days, can I? The most thought-provoking event of the past week was reading Michael Pollen's article in Sunday's Times Magazine on the way that, as we cook less and less, we watch cooking shows more and more. What interested me the most was not this phenomenon per se, but instead the history of how cooking turned into "cooking," to the point where microwaving something or pouring dressing on top of lettuce counts as having "made" a meal.

During WWII food scientists invented MREs and all sorts of ways to preserve food for soldiers overseas. The trick was finding ways to sell prepared and packaged food to consumers during peacetime. It took a while: a sexual revolution, the need for a two-person income, and women staying in the workforce rather than staying home with children needed to be factored into the mix, but food scientists ultimately prevailed. Pollen notes that as early as the 1940s manufacturers had the ability to produce just-add-water cake mixes, but women wouldn't buy them. They would, however, buy mixes where one needed to break and mix in an egg, the addition of that egg being some kind of line in the sand that defined what could be classified as "home-made." Today, the baking aisle is filled with just-add-water mixes; "home-made" now means anything one moves from package to bowl to pan. Actually, anything that gets heated up passes for home-made these days.

Naturally, a discussion of the lack of cooking leads to a discussion of obesity. The less we cook the fatter we get, and not just because we're sitting on the sofa watching cooking shows but because we're eating more calories, larger portions, less healthy food. Which leads to the "ah ha" moment of the piece, when Pollen gets a food scientist to admit what we all suspect: want to lose weight and be healthy? Just eat only what you cook yourself.

It makes sense. Honestly, if you could only eat potato chips if you sliced potatoes and deep fried them, how many would you eat? If you had to make mayonnaise before slathering it onto a sandwich, wouldn't you just as often skip it? So I've spent the past few days thinking about trying this as an experiment. Is it possible to eat only what one can cook? Can I do it? And what would the rules be? What would I do about, say, teryiaki, or vodka, or beer? Could I eat in a restaruant, ever?

I decided the following. For as long as I can take it, I will not purchase manufactured food, with the exception of condiments and alcohol. I know I can make my own ketchup and beer, but that feels insane. The point here is to try to be healthy, not insane. I don't tend to eat out a lot anyway, so if I find myself wanting or needing to eat in a restaurant I will, but only socially, not as an alternative to grilling my own burger or frying my own eggs. How hard can this be? I have no idea. I'll post an update once enough time has gone by for me to have an idea, and in the meantime I'll be thankful that it's August, when so much is in season it will be easy to fill up on fruit and vegetables and throw things on the grill. If anyone else wants to give it a try, let me know and we can commiserate. And if anyone knows how to make their own Doritos, let me know that as well. I do love Doritos.

Down the Shore

2009-07-28T07:49:00.002-04:00

I'm at the beach and happily off-line. I'll be back Friday with a new post. See you then!

Our New Target

2009-07-27T08:22:00.002-04:00

The resurgent Dow, the Gosselin divorce, corruption in New Jersey (yes, I know "corruption in New Jersey" is redundant), health care reform, none of the news of the day is as big, as meaningful, as life-altering, as the news that our new Target opened over the weekend. People young and old, big and small, poor and not-so-poor crammed the parking lot, jammed the aisles, and packed the check-outs. A new Target! Manna from heaven!

Oh, it's not just a run of the mill Target that I'm talking about. You see, our new Target is a Super Target, where you can purchase groceries along with your Michael Graves corkscrews and Ed Hardy knock-off T-shirts. It occupies what was recently a cornfield, just across the now traffic-congested street from the Super Wal-Mart, next door to the Super Wegman's. As you can see, we needed this Target. Seriously, it's the American way to be able to purchase prepackaged salad in a bag without ever having to make a left turn.

I'm a sucker for Grand Opening loss leaders so of course I went to check out our new mecca. And so I braved the parking lot and the crowds and strolled through the automatic doors to find myself standing inside...a Target. A Target just like all the other Targets within easy driving distance except that, if one is feeling exceptionally brave and doesn't care about the provinance of the food that one puts into one's body, one can purchase some cheap steak. All that hope, all that desire, all that anticipation, and all that results is a Target.

Life goes on, unchanged. The sun still rises and sets, my cat still vomits hairballs on a nightly basis, it still rains or doesn't rain, I still wish I could bring myself to lower my cable bill. The Super Target has accomplished nothing, save the destruction of a perfectly useful field. Six months ago a Sonic opened just up the street from this new Target, and for days cars clogged the street as hungry hoardes descended. The hoardes were rewarded at the end of their hour-long wait with a fast food burger.

Well, this is, after all, the oldest trick in marketing. Same old tired product? Change the packaging.

Meet Me at the Fair

2009-07-22T08:47:00.004-04:00

I had never gone to a farmers' fair until my mid-20s, and even then I only attended the first time out of sheer boredom. I was writing my dissertation and would do nearly anything to avoid all those blank pages that I needed to fill with Gertrude Stein's reception history. I'd polish my shoes, rearrange my records in alphabetical order, reorder my bookshelves by subject, clean the house, wash my car, anything to avoid sitting in front of my word processor and do the work at hand. That ultimately involved deciding to go to the Albermarle County Farmers' Fair one night, and I've never looked back.

I'm just glad that we still have enough farms to fill a farmers' fair, that 4-H Clubs still exist. This wasn't surprising in Central Virginia in the late '80s, but in suburban Pennsylvania in 2009 it feels like the simple existence of cucumber-growing must be celebrated. What makes a farmers' fair is not the carnival rides, nor the funnel cake, nor the rigged games of chance. What makes such a fair is the agricultural tents, the rows and rows of testimony to our agricultural heritage and the proof that we may yet have an agricultural future.

What can top the sight of a blue-ribbon zucchini, looking just like any other zucchini but for some reason crowned for some sort of waxy excellence? That can only be topped by a tent full of baby goats, goats of every variety running up to be petted, or a tent full of piglets squealing. Is anything more interesting than a display of winning ears of corn, each looking just like an ear of corn, its excellence a secret knowledge, or at least secret to someone who has always just grabbed corn, paid for it, and eaten it? Farmers' fairs are full of such secrets: what makes a great carrot, why one chicken is better than another. And they celebrate kids who grow these carrots well, kids who know how to raise a chicken. Our schools don't do that. Our culture doesn't do that. Our economy doesn't do that. Thank god for 4-H.

It's also not every day that you can watch a tractor pull. Or a 16 year-old from the middle of nowhere crowned Corn Queen. It's not every day that you can wander into a place where people still enter tractor pulls or fair queen contests. It's not every day that you can find a place where pie baking is a death match. Or where men in suspenders recline against picnic tables, listening to a weird but pleasant hybrid of country and polka. It's not every day that you are offered a glimpse of our vanishing rural culture, so for that one week a year when that glimpse is offered it's best to take it before it's too late.

The arrival of the cicadas signifies the slowing down of summer, the beginnings of the harvest, and the opening of county fairs everywhere. Locally, the Plainfield Farmer's Fair runs this week; the Warren County Fair begins next week. Even if you don't live in eastern PA, there's surely some sort of farmers' fair near you; support them while you can.

Regularly Scheduled Programming

2009-07-20T07:35:00.004-04:00

I must have been as excited about it as everyone else. After all, a cardboard model of the lunar module, some give-away from the gas station, hung from the light over my bed so that I could fall asleep gazing up at it. I remember helping my father put it together, by which I mean watching my father put it together while I jumped up and down. My favorite toys were space toys: Matt Mason figures, the Colorforms outer space men, one from each planet. I must have been excited the week of the moon shot, but 40 years later that's not what I remember.

What I remember is being sick of it before it happened. This was the first event of my life that featured nonstop television coverage, and the first event of my life that I experienced entirely through television, and although I wanted to watch the landing and walk on the moon, I was completely confused by the pre-emption of all my cherished programs for four straight days. They left Earth on Thursday, July 16. I didn't realize beforehand that going to the moon would mean missing two days of Dark Shadows and almost an entire Saturday of cartoons. By Sunday I just wanted them to get there already and get it over with so that my 5 year-old life could get back to normal.

I must have been alseep by the time the Eagle landed Sunday night. My father got me up to watch Neil Armstrong descend from the module. I know I saw the whole thing live, but what I remember is not Armstrong's famous words but Walter Cronkite, so excited I thought he was maybe about to cry. Walter Cronkite, taking off his glasses and saying, "Oh boy!" Forty years later the lesson I remember is not about technology and aspiration and innovation and greatness but instead that the way we know what is important is because not only our fathers but the TV tells us so. Even half-asleep I knew that if Walter Cronkite was moved, I should be moved.

Events with far-reaching implications swirled around that moon weekend. I have no memory of any of them. No memory of Vietnam, probably because my extended family contained no draft-age men. Woodstock several weeks later meant nothing. My mother was 39, my father 46. They listened to show tunes. There was no counterculture in my household. While the astronauts frolicked and planted a flag my mother was realizing that she was pregnant with my sister, another thing I knew nothing about at the time. All I knew, as my father lifted me in his arms to carry me back to bed, was that this particular event had finally transpired, and that the next day Dark Shadows would resume its regularly scheduled programming.

A Bit of a Break

2009-07-15T08:57:00.003-04:00

Obviously, I'm taking a bit of a break here. It's not that I have nothing to say, but more that the weather has been gorgeous and I've been in more of a mood to sit on my porch and read than to sit at my desk and write. I'll be back, probably next week, so don't abandon me. It's just summer.

Add Another Casualty to the List

2009-07-08T08:52:00.004-04:00

Farewell, birch tree. You are older than me, and your time has come. When you were planted, Eisenhower was President, my house was brand new, and you were just a pretty thing, standing amid a sea of oak and hemlock. Now you're 50 feet tall, barely clinging to life. I'm sorry to euthanize you, but although you shade my porch you also threaten it. You look like you want to fall. I don't want you to fall. I'm felling you.

It's all good, birch tree, I promise. The tree people will chip you up and haul you off someplace, where you will be chemically treated and turned into mulch. By next spring, you'll be spread all over the shrubs of some suburbia, helping to keep the weeds at bay. And look on the bright side: no one will pee on you once you're mulch, or at least Brody won't pee on you anymore.

None of this is your fault. You didn't ask to be planted too close to the house, and you didn't ask for that twister to come through last summer, damaging you beyond repair. All you ever did was grow and shed leaves, year after year, and get taller and taller, as trees are wont to do. You were a good tree, maybe even a great tree, and I'll miss you and your white bark.

I know you've overheard me talking about the Japanese maple I'll be planting in September. It's no offense to you or to white birches in general; I just need to have a shorter tree so close to the house. You're not being replaced, exactly. Think of the maple as a reminder of the post-war feeling of optimism and expansion from whence you sprang, and a reminder of how our ambitions are now just a little bit smaller.

It's been a tough month for all of us, birch tree. First Farrah, then Michael, then Karl, then McNamara, and now you. There will be no memorial service at a civic center, no special issue of Time or People, no tributes from Quincy Jones, but still you will be missed, perhaps more than all of those others. RIP, overgrown birch.

Home Electronics Blues

2009-07-07T07:45:00.002-04:00

Why is everything made of crap these days? It used to be that you could purchase, say, a cassette player, and that cassette player would last you a good 20 years. The player would hold up so long it would become technologically obsolete. True, electronics and appliances once cost about 500% more than they now do, but if you have to constantly replace your cheap electronics, it probably comes out even at the end. And isn't it easier to spend more in the first place and not have to constantly shop for and hook up DVD players?

Yes, my two-year old DVD player died the other night. Yes, it was a cheap piece of crap; I bought the entire 2.1 home theater system at Sam's Club for something like $150. I didn't think it would hold up forever, but two years? When exactly did home theater systems become disposable?

When I replaced my 30 year-old garage door opener several months ago I didn't feel badly about it. Thirty years seems like a good run. The refrigerator that died two months ago was at least 25 years old, and again I figured that was a good long life for a kitchen appliance. What's annoying is that I doubt the new opener will last ten, let alone 30, years, and the new refrigerator is about 1/4 as well made as was its predecessor. It's a lot prettier, goldenrod having been retired from the kitchen appliance palette, but it's very plastic-y. I will certainly have to replace it during my lifetime.

Browse an old Sears catelogue and you'll learn more synonyms for "polyester" than you ever knew existed and you'll also be amazed at how much certain things once cost. In 1974, a 25" color TV ran around $750 (yes, they were still selling black and whites in 1974); a clock radio $50; $1,700 for a side-by-side refrigerator/freezer. In 2008 dollars, that TV would set you back $3,239.47. Or look at it this way: in 2008 I bought a 40" LCD HDTV for less than $750, and that new fridge cost me $1,200 back in May. Things cost a whole lot less these days.

Too bad what we're buying is crap.

The Real Independence Day

2009-07-02T09:41:00.003-04:00

Independence Day is July 4 because that's when the Declaration of Independence was signed and the colonies broke off from Great Britain, right? Wrong. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been introduced in June. "The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival," John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail. "It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more." As usual, Adams was mostly correct, but a little off.

The Declaration had been written as a way of explaining the vote for independence to colonists and British alike. Congress spent the next two days debating and revising the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4. But they didn't sign it then. Most delegates didn't sign the document until August 2. More importantly, the Declaration is an explanation and an explanation only. The radical thing was the approval of the initial resolution.

In short, today is the real Independence Day. Go ahead, be pedantic about it: start eating and drinking two days early. It's the patriotic thing to do.

Goodbye, Farewell

2009-06-29T08:48:00.003-04:00

They bookended my childhood. One came near the beginning, at the crucial point where I was first making choices on my own about what I would wear and listen to, about what I liked and who I was, and the other came at the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence, at the crucial point where I was discovering how I fit into the world of sexual desire. When they both died on Thursday I thought about them for the first time in years, their passing signifying my march into middle age, their loss the loss of that childhood.

In 1971, in my elementary school, the lines were drawn, and you were one type of person or another. You were Jacksons or Osmonds. Sure, the odd girl had a weird preference for David Cassidy, but the Partridge Family was fake and even the eight year-olds knew it. Jackson or Osmond was the way you defined yourself. I was firmly Jackson, not because of Michael, because neither Michael nor Donny appealed to me, but because I somehow knew that Jackson was danger while Osmond was safe. Everything about the Jackson 5 was just cool. The Osmonds were a band populated by guys with names like Alan and Wayne; the Jacksons had Jermaine and Tito. Osmonds made you want to tap your foot, Jacksons made you want to twirl and shriek. The magazines of the day included pinups that I was supposed to kiss and invited me to compete to win a date with the flavor of the week, and I dutifully kissed my picture of Tito, having decided that he was my favorite because I liked his name. But at that age none of this was sexual, or pre-sexual. It was about deciding who my friends were, what we had in common, who we were and who we were not. It was Coke versus Pepsi, writ large. By 1973 none of my friends would be caught dead listening to an Osmonds 45, but we all owned all of the Jackson 5 albums.

Three years later we were listening to David Bowie and discovering pot when a show about three female detectives premiered on ABC. It was a show I rarely watched, and then suddenly all the guys were wearing t-shirts onto which that pin-up had been screened. The boys' interest in Farrah precisely coincided with my interest in boys, and if Farrah taught me anything it was what boys liked. From 1976 to 1978 they liked girls with small breasts and a lot of feathered hair. She was blonde, lithe, toothy, corn-fed, exactly everything I was not and would never be. She was the head cheerleader; I was the newspaper editor. My teeth would never gleam from a million posters. My sex appeal would not be broadcastable from t-shirts. Whatever kind of woman I would eventually be was still uncertain, but what was certain is what kind of woman I would not be. In the sexual economy, Farrah and I were using very different currencies, and even at that young age I knew it.

Although I really didn't care too much for MJ in his solo career, and paid no attention to Farrah once all the t-shirts and posters were thrown away or shipped off to Goodwill, I still listen to "I Want You Back" and think, "Damn if that isn't perhaps the best bass line ever." I still look at whoever is the sex symbol of the day and think, "This woman and I share a gender and absolutely nothing else." I still am that eight year-old, and that 13 year-old. And now, without them, I will continue to grow old, their place in time solidified and retreating further and further into my past.

8 Minus Jon Stuck with Kate

2009-06-23T09:29:00.005-04:00

Of course I watched it. There was nothing else on last night anyway and, if someone insists on parading the train wreck that is their marriage in front of the nation, I take that as an invitation to bear witness. Watching people who hate each other hate each other will quickly get old, but for now here are the lessons I learned:

1. If you're going to recline casually on a couch with your shoes off in order to announce your separation and impending divorce, do everyone a favor: wash your feet first. I'm talking to you, Kate.

2. Marketing folks need to understand that product placement in "reality" shows can sometimes be a little too serendipitous. Here we had an episode entitled "Crooked Houses" in which the house of Gosselin finally teetered over, and an episode that was at once about the building of separate play houses for the kids and the movement into separate houses by the parents. There's also the creepy specter of a product-sponsored separation announcement. Crooked, indeed.

3. If you have eight children and ask, "Who wants a granola bar?" expect that all eight will want a granola bar. Do not ask this if you in fact only have five granola bars. And, once you have posed this question only to find that you only have five granola bars, try breaking them in half so that everyone gets some, rather than saying, "Oh well I only have five so no one gets a granola bar." In other words, learn how to count, biyatch.

4. The main fault for the demise of a marriage lies with those in the marriage. The paparazzi didn't do it.

5. "Agreeance" is in fact a word but its usage is considered obsolete, having been replaced by "agreement." If you want to appear erudite, spend some time perusing a usage dictionary.

6. Times of great stress, for example taping your reality show while simultaneously ending your marriage, call for one thing: a picnic with the kids in the middle of the yard, which your soon-to-be-ex husband must watch because he hasn't been invited.

Lessons learned. Time to move on.

A Brief History of Summer Jobs

2009-06-19T08:02:00.002-04:00

The best thing about being an "adult" is the fact that you no longer have to look for and hold a summer job. Real jobs are bad enough; summer jobs can be awful, if you can even find one. My parents didn't care about me working during high school, probably because they didn't want to give me a car and wanted to ensure that I couldn't afford a car, but beginning the summer before college they were insistent that I at least try to work. I spent the summer after high school graduation at Dunn and Bradstreet looking up companies on microfiche, transcribing some assigned number next to each company's name, for eight hours a day, five days a week. Look up number, write it down, look up number, write it down. Soul-killing stuff, indeed.

The following summer I managed to find a six-week job helping out at a camp for kids with ADD. A friends' mother was on the board of the group that sponsored the camp, which explains why they hired someone with no experience working with such children, no interest in going into health or social services, and no real interest in children in general. I don't remember much from this experience except that it rained a lot, my main duty was handing out Ritalin, and I was miserable.

I spent the next summer in Kenya, much to my parents' chagrin, not because I was going off to Africa at a young age, but because it meant that I couldn't have a summer job. This was, of course, the best summer of my college years. Finally, the summer before my senior year, I got a job with the PA/NJ Bridge Commission. Every summer the Commission hired a certain number of college students to "help out." Really the whole thing was some sort of political kickback; I got the job because my mother spent months pestering our State Senator, who was some sort of family acquaintance.

I suppose EZ Pass has been the demise of this program; my job was to fill in for the regular toll-takers who were out on vacation. Whenever possible I worked the graveyard shift because traffic was light overnight and I could sit in the booth smoking and reading and listening to the radio for hours on end. It was the summer of 1984; if I never hear the song "Sunglasses at Night" again I'll die a happy woman. That summer the bridge was being painted, so traffic was down to one lane in each direction. During the morning rush, there could be quite a wait to get through the booth and across the bridge. Annoying thing number one: if I was the only female toll-taker, the truck drivers would line up at my booth, damn the long wait, just because they felt like seeing a woman. Annoying thing number two: every other car driver would ask, "When are you going to finish painting the bridge already?" During my next break, I'd respond, but traffic jams don't engender much of a sense of humor.

If there were no open toll-taking shifts, I'd be assigned to "help" with the office janitorial staff. Said staff was one woman named Toots. The office was a break room, conference room, storage room, bathrooms, and one large office occupied by the Commissioner. Cleaning the entire building only took Toots a couple of hours, and she didn't want any smart aleck college kid getting in her way, but she also didn't want the Commissioner to know how little work there was to be done. So, days when I was assigned to Toots, she would insist that I hide in the women's room. For the entire shift. 7 AM to 3 PM. Toots somehow managed to spend her entire shift hanging around the hall outside the women's room, and any and all attempts at escape were immediately foiled. She also insisted that I take my breaks with her, since she was "supervising" me (yes, I had scheduled breaks from my toil in the lavatory). I don't remember much about Toots, except that she did not like Gerladine Ferraro, did not like her at all.

Since college I've held jobs that I've loved and jobs that I've hated, but no jobs as random, no jobs as stupid, no jobs as memorable, as summer jobs.

Really, Really, Swear to God, Original Famous Ray's

2009-06-17T12:45:00.005-04:00

Perhaps the most important thing I learned while living in NYC was that, if you wanted good, authentic New York pizza, you pretty much had to go to Brooklyn. With the exception of a couple of places in Little Italy, Manhattan pizza was more serviceable than memorable. I also learned that if you wanted to open a pizza place on the island of Manhattan you appeared to be contractually bound to name it "Ray's."

The city was full of Ray's variants: Original Ray's; Famous Ray's; Original Famous Ray's; Famous Original Ray's; Ray's Original Famous; Ray's Famous Original; The Only Original Famous Ray's; and, my favorite, near Chinatown, No. 1 Original Ray's Best Pizza on the Bloock (sic). Rumor has it that there once was a guy named Ray who made good pizza. A family squabble led to one branch of the family running one Ray's while another branch of the family tried to capitalize on the name. Soon everyone wanted a piece of the Ray's action, so that now the name means nothing. When I moved back to PA I breathed a sigh of relief that pizza joints all had singular and authentically Italian names like Pino's, Morrici's, Rocco's. Not a Ray's in sight.

I was slightly concerned last summer when a place named Ray's Pizza opened in one of our surrounding suburbs, but I was told that it was in fact owned by someone named Ray, so I figured this had nothing to do with NY Ray's and the whole Ray's mess. But when I went through today's mail, there it was, a flyer for Ray's Famous II. The floodgates have officially opened. Reader, beware: blink, and you'll find a Ray's on every bloock.

Life Eternal

2009-06-15T08:11:00.003-04:00

I was glad for the return of True Blood last night, not because I think it's necessarily a television show of the highest quality, but because I'm there for pretty much anything that's about vampires. From the days of Barnabas Collins right up to the present, if it's got vampires in it, I'm reading it or watching it. There are two types of people in this world: those of us who, if given the opportunity, would become vampires, and those of us who would not. I am firmly in the former camp.

I know this would mean that I would be undead and would have to give up my human life for a different kind of lifestyle, but in exchange I'd get to live forever. I'd never grow old, and I wouldn't fear death. Although the absence of the aging process is definitely a benefit, the main plus is that I'd get to find out what happens, and watch it all happen, and I'm nosy. Living forever would be fascinating, particularly because I'd have vampire friends to discuss it all with.

Spending eternity with others probably does get problematic, and I'd probably have some vampire enemies as well as friends, but I figure that the fact that vampires are a self-selecting bunch would guarantee me some sort of peer group. Because vampires are self-selecting, it makes sense that the only humans made vampire are the best looking, most engaging, most intelligent among us. An ugly boring person just wouldn't be chosen to be around for eternity. I have no doubt my vampire friends and I would need to take the occasional break from one another, say every hundred years or so, but in general I'd be in good company.

Blood drinking doesn't need to be a barrier to vampirehood. Right now we humans are dealing with deer overpopulation, so if I was made vampire tonight I'd start right in on the herd that lives next door to me, eating my plants and freaking my dog. There are plenty of deer where those came from, as well as rats, pigeons, and other pests. Human blood probably tastes the best and is the most nutritious, but for that I could target rapists, murderers. I know this would make me a vigilante and deny the rapists and murderers due process, but look at all the taxpayer dollars I'd be saving. I'd actually be a benefit to humanity.

Money would never again be a worry if I were a vampire. I wouldn't need money per se, just clothes and a place to sleep. The internet is probably the vampire's best friend. Before anyone knew I was undead I could convert everything I've got into a cash account, feed on and rob drug dealers to keep the balance up, and order everything I need from Amazon. I'd buy a house someplace where no one knows me, some bedroom community where no one will miss me during the day. See, vampirism is easy, once you think about it.

The only difficult decision would be what to do with my dog. On the one hand, he'd be a great companion for eternity, but on the other hand it's hard enough to find dogsitters as things are. How would I keep a vampire dog fed for eternity? What would I do with him while I'm off looking for rapists to kill? There must be a reason none of Ann Rice's vampires have pets. All in all, the dog is a complication I can work my way through. Listen up, vampires: I'll be home tonight, ready and willing.

The Proliferation

2009-06-10T09:54:00.003-04:00

I vividly remember the day I bought my first VCR. I remember how expensive it was, or at least how expensive it felt at the time, how ridiculously hard it was to program, how incredibly excited I was at the thought that I could rent movies and record shows. I also vividly remember when I purchased my first computer. Email! At home! Chatting! Again, my first cell phone engendered the joy of the new. I walked down the street and called everyone I could think of, just because I could.

These days new gadgets mean very little. I take technology for granted, adding more and more of it to my life not because I'm excited by it so much as because it's come to be expected. A home isn't complete without a computer, which isn't complete without WiFi and remote printing. It's not enough to have a cell phone, one must have an iPhone or other PDA so that one can answer email and post crap on Facebook while standing in the checkout line to purchase an HDMI cable for the home theater system.

I drive a car that has a Bluetooth connection, so I can talk on my phone through the car stereo. While I'm on the subject, my car also has a refrigerated glove compartment, so I can keep I don't know what cold. My service manual is always a perfect 62 degrees; I suppose I could stick water or food in there, but I've never bothered. It's just another technological innovation that I didn't ask for.

Upgrades and gadgets creep up on you, until one day you're paying your monthly bills and you realize that you are paying $125 a month for television, which was once free, and was recently 500% cheaper. The PDA adds $45 a month to the cell phone bill. The additional home internet connection adds another charge. Once you watch things in HD there's no going back, but you pay more for HD than for other channels. Blu-Ray is superior to regular DVD, but you have to replace your entire movie collection. I've already replaced all my albums with CDs, and although so far I've refused to replace the CDs with MP3s I'm sure the day will come when I have no choice and am forced to purchase my favorite music for the third time in my life.

You can't go back. The social pressure to have a cell phone, to answer email immediately, to have the ability to chill chardonnay in your glove compartment, is immense. On occasion I leave my house without my cellphone simply because I don't feel like carrying it and no one can believe it, they called all my numbers and no one answered, how is this possible?

Nothing makes me feel older than the fact that I fondly recall the world of fewer than 50 cable channels, and of being perfectly contented with that.

The Lost World of Beaten Biscuits

2009-06-08T10:04:00.002-04:00

Our recent cultural obsession with fresh, local foods might naturally lead to an interest in the ways Americans used to cook and eat, before the supremacy of frozen and fast foods, before the reign of agribusiness was complete. Mark Kurlansky's recently published Food of a Younger Land, a collection of food writings produced by the WPA Writer's Project, provides some insight into the simpler days, when neighbors would gather to let maple sap run into the snow and then eat it, when clam bakes involved digging a fire pit on the beach, when squirrel was a viable ingredient in the dinner menu.

Because I have a tendency to buy old cookbooks at thrift stores and flea markets I found this collection more interesting for what it said about American culture during the 1930s than for what it said about our foodways. I already knew, for example, that any recipes to be found aren't standardized in terms of measurements, or even ingredients; before WWII, recipes were comprised more of guides and suggestions than instructions. I also knew that most recipes would begin with something along the lines of "Kill a chicken and bleed it good, then cut it up." Like vintage cookbooks, Kurlansky's tome is more useful as a glimpse into a mindset and way of life than as a tool for the modern kitchen.

Here's one example. Most pre-war cookbooks contain a section on "invalid cooking," to help produce not inedible meals or food that is not valid but to produce meals for the sick or elderly. This was needed for a culture before vaccines and antibiotics and over-the-counter medicines, where children were often sick, and for a culture before geriatric medicine and assisted living and nursing homes, where the generations lived together. I've also found several cookbooks that contain sections on "trailer cooking," with hints about how to prepare meals in the field, on the road, in the outdoors. This wasn't aimed at jolly seniors crossing the Sun Belt in RVs, but instead at those who lived itinerantly. A mass produced cookbook indicates a good number of Americans living this way.

The WPA food project was written by hundreds of writers in every state. Some participants were published professional authors, some were just people who needed a job, and the resulting prose is uneven. Kurlansky reproduces selections exactly as written, giving the text an authentic feel, and giving us a glimpse regional idiom and vernacular. The most notable thing about this book, though, the thing that ties together all the selections and resonates most in the contemporary world, is the nostalgia, the mourning for a world already lost. Again and again the anonymous WPA authors describe the way gatherings "used to be," the food mothers "once made," lament the customs that are "all but lost."

In the late 30s the interstate highway system had not been built. Packaged food was available, but not ubiquitous. Most people lived without a refrigerator, although a good number had an ice box. Frozen food was virtually unheard of. But already, the golden past was but a dream. Already lost were the meals of childhood. Begun in 1939, abandoned the week after Pearl Harbor, the WPA food project unltimately depicts a culture on the cusp of rapid change, and a culture that felt the tremblings of that change. Kurlansky's book is in a sense the last document of a world about to disappear. Read it: it's fascinating.

While I Slept

2009-06-03T11:09:00.002-04:00

I'm usually a relatively light sleeper, prone to bouts of insomnia. For several reasons, including a couple of cocktails before bed and two hours spent clearing away unwanted prickly bushes from my yard, I slept soundly last night. So soundly, in fact, that I've spent most of the morning dealing with the ramifications of all that I slept through. To wit:

1. A thunderstorm severe enough to knock out my electricity and throw branches all over my property.

2. My cat throwing up hairballs the entire length of my (carpeted) hallway.

3. The ice maker in my new refrigerator deciding of its own volition to spew ice cubes all over my kitchen floor. Said refrigerator is either defective or possessed. I'm looking forward to watching the repairman either replace it or perform an exorcism.

4. Both of my neighbor's cars being broken into in the middle of the thunderstorm, violent weather being the perfect cover for non-violent crime. Rumor has it that every dog on the block was barking like crazy first at the miscreant and then at the cops who rushed to the scene; I missed this because while I slept I also missed

5. My dog sleeping through a robber prowling the streets while my refrigerator spewed ice cubes and a thunderstorm raged.

No more bedtime cocktails for me.

Cookbooks Without Cooks

2009-06-01T07:01:00.002-04:00

In these tough times the nation turns its lonely eyes to cooking shows. Anyone who has ever wielded a chef's knife publishes a cookbook and gets at least a half hour on the Food Network, and suburbanites drive miles to wander through farmers' markets in order to purchase some artisan bread and call themselves locavores. The interest in local food and local growers is wonderful, as is the interest in cooking and eating well. The problem is, even as interest in these things proliferates, the number of people who actually cook continues to shrink.

While showing off the White House garden, Michelle Obama admits that she's happy to have someone cook for her, that she doesn't like to cook. The press reflects on the refreshing honesty of this statement, but what about the mixed message being sent? Access to fresh, healthy, local ingredients means nothing if you're incapable or unwilling to, you know, prepare those ingredients. You can buy all the produce in the world at farm stands, but if you don't then cook, or at least wash and dress the produce, all you've done is waste money and resources.

My local chain grocery stores have added "grown local" sections for those wanting to purchase the bounty of local farms rather than the bounty of South America. In every case, that section of the store is a mere speck compared to the prepared food aisles. In some ways, the grocery stores are really take-out joints. Sure, one can still purchase cheese and eggs and vegetables, but more popular is the salad bar, the pizza counter, the sandwich counter, the seafood counter where the fish has already been seasoned and comes with heating directions. Why buy a pound of pasta when there's a pasta bar two feet away? When did it become too difficult to make our own salad, to cut cheese into cubes ourselves? Why are we buying premade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? When did a sandwich become too difficult for us to make ourselves?

Cooking food yourself saves money and is always better for you. Food you prepare yourself isn't full of preservatives, fat, sodium. But we are lazy. We watch cooking shows but don't know how to turn on our stoves. We go to the farmers' market and buy cookies. It's time to get off the couch and prepare our own food.

Help Me Find the Cure

2009-05-28T07:56:00.002-04:00

Until last year I'd never once gotten any kind of poison - ivy, oak, sumac, I was immune to all of it. I didn't even know what the stuff looked like. I've probably peed in the woods and used sumac as toilet paper without repercussion. I discovered last summer that I'd purchased a house with a yard filled with poison ivy, lost my immunity, and spent two months battling the rash and the itch, until I gave up weeding and hired someone to deal with my hedges.

This year I'm committed to doing all the yardwork myself. I now know what poison looks like, and I've been gardening in long sleeves, long pants, gloves. I've been as careful as I can be, yet I'm still getting small outbreaks. It could be that I'm picking it up from the dog, or maybe from the air. At any rate, because I do want to spend time in my yard and because I don't want to garden while wearing a HazMat suit, I'm wondering if anyone knows of anything to do to try to contain, if not avoid, poison ivy.

Here's what hasn't worked:

Technu: This stuff appears to do absolutely nothing except smell bad.

Rubbing alcohol: Applying this everywhere before showering immediately after coming inside might or might not contain the amount of poison I get, but it certainly hasn't prevented it entirely.

Bleach: Lightens the hair on my arms, dries out my skin, does not effect the poison.

OTC hydrocortisone: This does not seem to hasten the drying of the rash one bit, nor does it help with the itch.

Calamine/Caladryl: Relieves the itch, but doesn't seem to hasten healing or prevent spreading.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I really don't want to spend the entire summer walking around with the pink stuff caked all over my extremities.

Of Heisenberg and the Gosselins

2009-05-26T12:59:00.005-04:00

A year ago, I'd never heard of the Gosselins. Although I watch plenty of crappy television, shows about weird, large, or Christian families, or any combination thereof, don't appeal to me. Even though it turns out Jon and Kate and their eight live only about 50 miles from me, I knew nothing about them or their reality fame. Then, suddenly, in March, their names jumped from the cover of every tabloid that stood guarding the supermarket checkout line. Bored one rainy Sunday, I noticed a marathon of their show running on TLC, and watched a few epsiodes throughout the day and evening.

There was Kate during what must have been the first season, struggling to change and dress and feed six babies, showing off her disgusting stretched-out stomach, working long weekend shifts as a nurse to keep them all in diapers and baby food. There was prematurely balding Jon, getting up at the crack of dawn to trudge off to work, helping out evenings with the kids. Everyone looked exhausted, but the babies were certainly cute.

Several hours later, there was a Jon who had clearly gotten hair plugs, quitting his job to "work from home" and help out more. Kate, meanwhile, was suddenly dressed with much less frump, and the family had acquired all kinds of expensive kid stuff, stuff it was hard to imagine a family of 10 with no working parents could afford. Finally, at the end of the night, there was the family getting ready to move into a new million-dollar house, taking a week-long vacation at the Outer Banks, everyone looking even better dressed and better coiffed.

Then the deluge. Jon is cheating on Kate! Kate is cheating on Jon! The kids are being exploited! Kate charges people $20 for an autographed photo! And last night, the premier of the new season, filmed approximately two weeks ago, where Kate, currently sporting some kind of weird Soccer Mom's Mullet (business in front, spikey in back) and Jon, driving a Nissan Nismo, celebrate the sextuplets' 5th birthday while avoiding any kind of contact whatsoever with each other. In confessionals, Jon admits he behaved stupidly, Kate cries and ponders the divorce rates of parents of multiples. The episode was undoubtedly viewed by millions.

Why do we watch this? By watching this we are ensuring an outcome for those children that will almost definitely include drug and alcohol abuse followed by eight memoirs detailing the nightmare that was growing up Gosselin. I have no doubt some are fans of the show because the kids are adorable, and because watching the struggle to get out of the house with eight children, let alone to raise them responsibly, must appeal to parents of one or two or three kids. Some people watch because they see themselves in Jon and Kate, just parents doing the best they can.

Most people probably watch instead because no one can turn away from a train wreck. No matter what the producer's intentions may have been, the show is not documenting the everyday struggles of raising two sets of multiples, it's documenting the way fame and fortune is destroying a marriage, changing the spouses before our eyes. We're watching people become "famous," and not dealing with that very well. We're watching two people go from cute spats to barely tolerating each other. We're watching what looked like decent, normal folks turn into entitled assholes.

In 1973, PBS broadcast An American Family and inadvertently invented reality television. The series was to document the lives of a typical American family, but then during filming one son came out and ran off to the Chelsea Hotel, and then by the end the marriage fell apart. It was a huge hit not because it depicted "real" life but because it depicted real life falling apart. The act of observation changes the nature of that which is being observed. There's no better demonstration of this principle than reality TV.

Notes from the Electoral Preschool

2009-05-20T08:11:00.004-04:00

Another election day has ended, and with it my month of popularity. I will miss the hourly phone calls from my new friends. How will I get through the day without hearing their tinny voices droning, "This is Doobie Frankenwaller reminding you to vote for me for County District Circuit Court Constable"? I will also miss my new friends' mothers, who checked in with me regularly to intone, "Please vote for my gorgeous little boy for Township Sewer Checker, he's such a good little boy." But like everyone I shall soldier on, taking with me the political lessons learned from this political season.

For example, I've realized that there really are only two possible platforms, no matter what office is being sought. The upstart, the candidate seeking office for the first time, will say, "Change. Change. Change. New leadership. Throw out the bums, we can do better!" Once the upstart has been in office, his or her relection platform will be, "Experience! What we need now is experience! I have experience and my opponent is just an upstart."

No one ever seems to notice the falseness of this dichotomy. If the main qualification for being elected to office is having previously held office then we could just cancel elections and allow incumbents to stay in place for life. On the other hand, changing the person holding office does not change the nature of the office itself, nor does it change the political system nor the power structure. "Change" is just shorthand for "Me, not the other guy." We can vote out each and every incumbent member of the US Congress and would still wake up the next day with the US Congress. Only the nameplates would change.

I also learned that there really is no convincing people of the importance of municipal primaries. Without Congressional, Senatorial, or Presidential candidates on the ballot, very few will take two minutes out of their day in order to vote. Although this says something sad about the state of participatory democracy, it does turn a visit to the polls into a party. I'm guessing that about 250 people voted in my entire ward. I probably know 245 of them, and got to catch up with many of my neighbors after casting my ballot. A low turnout also turns district races into nail biters, where a 10-vote lead with one precinct reporting can be insurrmountable.

When it's all said and done, it's all said and done. My irises are about to bloom, which means it's time for everyone to pack up their yard signs and stick them in the basement until November, and, most importantly, it's safe to answer my phone.

More Hours of My Life Wasted

2009-05-18T09:40:00.004-04:00

Dear Survivor Contestants,

Why are you always so dumb? I've been watching you for years, and your pattern of stupidity continues unabated. When you arrive in your exotic location, the other players are strangers, but then you live together in close quarters for more than a month. You have plenty of time to look around you and see who is liked, who is disliked. You have plenty of time to figure out who among you is motivated by what. You have plenty of time to see who will beat you in the final vote, and who will not beat you.

And yet, every season, or what feels like every season, some person who will clearly be rewarded by his or her peers ends up in the finals against someone who clearly can do no right. Usually this eventual winner could have been voted off earlier, but wasn't. Usually this eventual winner has won several immunities, but has been spared when he or she was not immune and could have been eliminated. And yet you don't do it. And then it's too late, and the entire finale becomes a snoozefest with a predictable end.

And why do you always carp about "intergrity"? You're playing a game, people, the point of which is to get rid of others before they get rid of you. Integrity has nothing to do with it. Honesty has nothing to do with it. You will have to lie. Just do it, and then own it. Don't scheme, plot, and lie and then pretend you have done so with "integrity." And jurors, just stop with the bitterness and recriminations. Someone is eliminated every few days. You are mad because it was you and not the finalists. But if it hadn't been you, and you were sitting in the finals, you would have done the same to someone else, and would be bragging about your "integrity." So shut up.

And everyone, all of you, please stop talking about how the million dollar prize is so, so much money. After taxes it's more like $600K, which is a nice amount of dough but not enough to last a 24 year-old bartender/actor/model the rest of his or her life. Lottery winners make more, and blow through it just the same. It might be the biggest check any of you will receive in your lifetime, but it's not generational wealth. Each and every one of you will disappear from our TV screens, from our collective memories, and will go back to the lives you lived before you were cast in this aging reality television franchise. It's a game, with rules and set rewards. Stop pretending there's anything momentous about it.

The show is over, and I won't miss any of you because I won't even think of you, not for a minute. In September a new bunch of people will appear on my screen, all of them making the same mistakes you made, all of their heads filled with notions of "intergity" and the "life-changing" nature of a game show. So farewell, Survivor contestants. It's time to sit down and shut up.

Notes from the Far Right

2009-05-14T07:54:00.004-04:00

Did you know that Eisenhower was a communist? Neither did I, but when he wasn't busy leading the troops in WWII or leading the country as Commander in Chief we was apparently busy doing all he could for the cause of Red China. You can read all about it on the John Birch Society website.

The John Birch Society doesn't get much press these days, and I thought the whole thing was defunct, swallowed up by Glenn Beck and the Ron Paul Libertarians, but there they are, a bunch of really old men floating around cyberspace. John Birch was a soldier and Christian missionary who was killed by those dreaded Red Chinese in the last days of WWII, and so was in a sense the first casualty of the Cold War. Robert Welch founded the Society bearing his name to encourage Americans to fight for freedom from, well, from America, because America is one vast liberal conspiracy that wants to suspend the constitution, expand big government, invade the private lives of patriots, and harbor Commie subversives. I wrongly thought that the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union would have made the Society superfluous, but I guess vast liberal conspiracies never go away.

Birchers had their moment. The Society was founded and based in Orange County; from the mid-1950s through the 1970s Birchers had some degree of political heft in California and in Arizona, another stronghold. Barry Goldwater was their hero. They also loved Reagan, although he was careful to distance himself from the far right during his political rise. You'd think they'd have been pretty happy with the W. years, but you'd be wrong; Bush was way too liberal for this crowd.

The fact that the average age of Birch leadership appears to be 75 makes the presence of a website surprising. There's even an online store, where you can order a Birch polo shirt or a DVD explaining how the European Union wants to take over the United States. If that's not interactive enough for you, head to Riverdale, NJ on Tuesday, where a Birch board member will address the Riverdale Senior Community Center.

The real lesson here? Seniors are a captive audience who will listen to anyone who comes bearing pastry.

Last Call for the Delusional

2009-05-12T08:13:00.003-04:00

The end of the "regular" TV season means the beginning of the "summer" season, which is in many ways good news. Mad Men returns in August, for example, and True Blood will be back this summer as well. The bitter always comes along with the sweet, though, and this week will be the last time to watch, possibly ever, two of reality television's most ridiculous and despicable participants. Of couse I'm talking about Ben "Coach" Wade on Survivor and Kelly Bensimon on The Real Housewives of New York City. Who else could it be?

If you haven't been watching, let me catch you up. I have no idea what Coach's real biography would include, but he claims to have been a trumpet prodigy, to hold the record for longest solo kayaking trip down the Amazon, to have been captured by pygmies on said trip and to have escaped from them just as they were about to slice apart his ass and eat it, to hold the world's highest honors in a martial art so secret no one knows about it and he can't even say its name, to be a world-class symphony conductor, and to be the most successful women's soccer coach in the world, ever.

In confessionals he calls himself "Dragonslayer" and then claims that the tribe has nicknamed him "dragonslayer." He believes he can control minds with his eyes and that he is in control of the game, even as each of his "allies" has been voted off, one by one. His body is covered with fake tribal tatoos, he wears his hair in a Steven Segal style adorned with feathers, and his delusions seem to know no bounds. Despite his claims to physical strength and mental acumen, he is completely ineffectual in challenges, and has been carried along late into the game precisely because he is nonthreatening and expendable. It's worth watching to see the clash between his self-regard and the disdain of all around him. You can watch the last regular episode of the season Thursday at 8 on CBS; the season finale airs Sunday at 8.

The facts of Ms. Bensimon's biography are better known. She was a model, and she did in fact serve as "editor" of the short-lived Elle Accessories magazine. She was in fact married to a famous fashion photographer. She was also recently arrested for assaulting her boyfriend, although I doubt she includes that on her resume. Also withheld from the bio is the fact that she appears to either be stupid or drug-addled, that she has trouble putting a simple sentence together, and that, like Coach, her self-regard has no limits. She is clearly a person that everyone, everyone, ends up hating. On a show built around cat fights and strangers hating strangers, Kelly has managed the singular feat of making each and every other participant cringe at her presence.

I don't know and will never know Kelly, but I hate her as well, for two simple reasons:

1. She is always seen flitting from place to place in completely inappropriate outfits, like short skirts with flourescent green Wellies, which is bad enough, but what's incomprehensible is the fact that she appears to never have a purse, bag, wallet, or keys. As if she expects her bill will be paid by someone else, as if she expects someone will appear to unlock her door, as if she expects whatever needs arise during an outing will be met by those around her. Hate.

2. In one memorable clip, a Kelly VO intones, "I love running in NYC. You just throw on some shoes and you go." We then pan to a shot of Kelly, sans purse, keys, bag, etc., jogging down the middle of 5th Avenue in midtown, surrounded by traffic. Plenty of people go running in Manhattan; no one runs in the middle of traffic. Of all the unrealistic things about this scene, the most unrealistic thing of all was the fact that a cabbie didn't just run her over.

The title of this series is ironic. It is not about the "reality" of "housewives" in the OC, Atlanta, NY, or, beginning tonight, New Jersey. It is instead about the fake, the pursuit of youth through chemicals and surgery, the replacement of class with lifestyle, the substitution of shopping for intimacy. In a world of fakery, Kelly stands out as fake, and that's really saying something. The season ended last Tuesday, but Bravo runs marathons pretty much endlessly. You don't need to have seen a second of the show to enjoy the reunion show airing at 10 tonight (with part two airing Thursday at 9). Housewives reunion shows are always filled with acrimony, accusations, tears, and cocktails, and this one promises all of the above.

In a fair and sane world, this will be your last chance to see these two in action. In a fair and sane world, Coach will be banished from screens both large and small after Sunday, and Kelly will not be asked back for the next NYC season. Let's hope that the world is in fact fair and sane, and tune in this week to catch them while you can.

Another Unforseen Consequence of Obama's Election

2009-05-07T08:02:00.004-04:00

Follow the link to find a commercial for a North Carolina furniture store. Watch it and you will be as speechless as I. Welcome to the "post-racial" society. There's nothing more to say.

On Writing

2009-05-05T08:28:00.003-04:00

The blank page is always before me. Some mornings it's white with hope and opportunity and I rush to fill it. More often its whiteness is a reprimand, a symbol of thoughts that I don't have, ideas that never occur to me, sentences I haven't constructed. This is one such morning.

Tomorrow the sun will shine, and I will leap from bed flush with the desire to narrate. Today my main desire is to crawl back into bed with a book and spend the hours caught up in someone else's narration. Tomorrow the excitement of my own words will spill from the keyboard and emanate from the screen. Tomorrow the laundry will be done, the groceries purchased, the paperwork filed, the distractions shoved aside. Tomorrow I will command the letters of the alphabet into paragraphs, each perfectly constructed.

Writing is always for, and about, tomorrow.

Three Cheers for the Little Guy

2009-04-30T07:51:00.003-04:00

Because my refrigerator is surrounded by 1950s cabinets, I got out my tape measure, took down the dimensions, and hit the road. Although I try to lessen my carbon footprint as much as possible, I have no desire to live without refrigerated food. How hard can it be to get a refrigerator, I thought. The whole thing should take an hour or two. After all, I knew what I wanted; it was just a matter of finding a good price.

I really am naive. I started out at Lowe's for no other reason than the fact that they carry some nice-looking appliances and open at the crack of dawn. I wandered through the appliance section comparing dimensions. Something was off. Not a single refrigerator had dimensions even close to what I needed. I wandered around some more. Several Lowe's employees gazed lazily at me as they drank their coffee. No one approached me. No one offered to help. Could it be that I don't know how to use a tape measure? Am I really that home improvement-impaired? Since no one seemed inclined to sell me anything I decided to just move on and not only get some answers but also spend my money elsewhere.

So I went to Sears. After all, the holy grail was a Kenmore Elite with french doors and a bottom freezer. Once again I wandered the aisles, my dimensions ridiculously different than the dimensions of each and every model on the floor. Once again no one noticed me. Desperate, I found a stockperson and asked if someone could help me, and five minutes later the appliance guy emerged from the depths. "I need a refrigerator that's 66 1/2" tall and 35" wide," I said. "Everything on the floor is at least 69" tall and too narrow. Did they stop making the size I need?" He replied, "Let me see your dimensions," as if I was somehow misstating what I had written. "I guess refrigerators have gotten taller," he finally admitted. "Well, are there any models in the size I need, anywhere?" I asked. He suggested that I just buy the wrong size and see if the delivery people can "cram it in."

"The space is surrounded by cabinets original to the kitchen, and I don't want to remodel. I just want to chill my beer," I said. His response was to go to the desk, turn on the computer, and go to Sears.com. The Sears salesperson then proceeded to troll the Sears website while I stood in the Sears store. Having nothing better to do, I surreptitiously read the printed emails that littered the desk. "It's been a terrible month and commissions come out next week," one stated. "Let's really push some appliances this weekend!" I wondered if my salesperson had bothered to read his email.

"Aha!" he finally exclaimed. "There is one model that will pretty much fit." I asked if there was a sample on the floor. "No," he replied. "But I can order it from the website for you." I thanked him and explained that I do have my own computer and could just do that from home, if I wanted to order an appliance sight-unseen. At this point I despaired of ever finding a new fridge, and decided to see if the one I have could just be repaired.

Back at my house, I began calling repairmen. The first two calls yielded no answer, and no answering machine. My third call, to Ralph's Appliances, was answered on the first ring. I explained the situation. "Sounds like a freon problem," the man who introduced himself as Craig explained. "Unfortunately, there's no way of fixing that. Most people don't make the size fridge you need anymore, but there is one GE model that has the right height and width. It's a little too deep, but it beats hiring a carpenter and dealing with all that. I have one model on the floor in stainless, but can order other colors, if you want. We can have it to you by Friday." Craig! I love you! I hopped in the car and sped off to Ralph's.

At Ralph's Appliances in Nazareth, PA delivery, installation, and the hauling away of the old appliance is included in the sale price. There is no need for a service contract or extended warranty because they service what they sell. My fridge cost less than it would have if ordered online, and came with a special rebate for people who buy from small, local dealers. Again: Ralph's Appliances in Nazareth, PA. They pick up the phone. They help you. If you need an appliance, please help them. And say hi to Craig for me.

The Joys of Home Ownership

2009-04-29T07:33:00.003-04:00

I'm supposed to be happy that I own a home. Building equity and all that. But it often feels as if home ownership actively works against you. Let's say, for example, that a year and a half ago you bought a home with a really old refrigerator, so old that it's a lovely harvest gold model. You think, "I'd like to replace that one day," but you don't, because the old refrigerator still works, and you have other ways to spend your money. On occasion you look at the fridge and think, "One of these days, when I can afford it, you will be carted off and a stainless steel Kenmore Elite with french doors will occupy your spot," but then you finish your coffee and get on with your life.

Your old fridge will soldier on until, two days before you are expecting guests for the weekend, two days before a weekend when you will have no time to sit around waiting for a delivery truck, two days before you need things like ice and cold drinks, it will silently die. It will die at exactly the time when carpenter bees have decided to invade your wood deck, necessitating an expensive visit from the exterminator. It will die at precisely the time when you can least afford the Kenmore Elite of your dreams. It will die on the day you are paying your monthly bills and feeling poor. It will die at the worst, the absolute worst, possible time.

A year ago, your washing machine conducted a similar assault on your morale, leaving this world right in the middle of a spin cycle that included all of your underwear. Although you've never done anything but clean and gently use them, your appliances appear to hate you. The carpenter bees clearly hate you. The US economy definitively hates you, although the chances are that the refrigerator that you must now rush out to purchase will probably be on sale, which is the one bright spot in this saga.

Aren't you glad you're not a renter?

A Change Is Gonna Come

2009-04-27T08:09:00.006-04:00

It's been hard to spend time in front of the computer when summer has arrived inexplicably early and I can sit on my porch for hours reading, particularly when I'm reading an engrossing book. Here's a little rhetorical game: name the most important change that happened in America in the 1960s. Student protests? Civil rights? Sexual revolution? A movement from the "conformity" of the 1950s to various "freedoms"? That's what I would have thought, but I would have been wrong. What's true is, in a sense, the reverse: the most important, most lasting, change to emerge from the 1960s was the conservative movement, the rise of the right. The lasting effect of 1960s liberalism was almost 30 years of conservative Republican rule. Without the upheavals of the 1960s, Nixon would in fact have become a political footnote. Reagan might never have seemed so darn sensible.

Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus, finally out in paperback, provides not only a lively history of the 1964 Presidential race, but demonstrates how wrong have been assumptions about the results of that race. Johnson won in a landslide. Goldwater was a raving fanatic. How was it, then, that within a year of his historic victory Johnson was beleaguered, how was it that ultimately his Presidency is remembered as "failed"? Perlstein charts the grassroots growth of the conservative movement, demonstrating that Goldwater lost as much because of an ineffective campaign as because of any love for Johnson, and showing how, as early as 1962, the seeds of conservatism had begun to germinate.

Many accounts of the early 60s discuss passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Bills as culminations, victories in a long-fought struggle. I've read many an account of Mario Savio on top of the paddy wagon in Berkeley birthing the Free Speech Movement, and of the mop-topped Beatles revolutionizing pop music. Hidden underneath these accounts, though, is the fact that for many Americans these events were not triumphs but confusing tragedies. The Great Society? The War on Poverty? Government, overreaching. The British Invasion? Long-hairs, their guitars blaring noise. Free Speech? Ingrates, coddled by state-provided education. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act became law. Shortly thereafter, our first summer of riots ensued. Americans watched Harlem erupt in flames live on TV. The fact that government could not legislate consensus was demonstrated even as Johnson intensified his attempts to do just that. Most Americans abhorred upheaval, preferring perhaps not conformity so much as stability.

Goldwater turned out to be a terrible campaigner, articulating his ideas with statistics and boring recitations of the logistics of military hardware. By the end of the 1964 campaign, though, a politician emerged who was able to couch conservative notions in an emotional pitch, who was able to talk about "us" and "them" without sounding like he wanted to blow up the world or blow apart America society. His name was Ronald Reagan. His role campaigning for Goldwater was his springboard to the California Governor's mansion, and the rest, as they say, is history. Hopefully it is a history Perlstein will undertake. Now that he has shown how a movement was born and grew, perhaps he'll next describe its apotheosis.

Earth Day Afternoon

2009-04-22T12:11:00.003-04:00

Got any big Earth Day plans? Probably not. The first Earth Day, in 1970, was more of a nationwide protest than holiday, with 20 million participants nationwide. In New York, Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic and people picnicked on the sidewalks. Dead fish were dragged through midtown. Demonstrators in DC poured oil in front of the Interior Department to protest oil spills. College students in every state skipped classes to plant trees.

The first Earth Day didn't pass unnoticed by American's conservatives. April 22, 1970 was the centennial of Lenin's birth, a fact made much of by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who claimed the day was some kind of communist plot against America. J. Edgar Hoover also had an interest in Earth Day, placing its organizers on his watch list and sending undercover agents to infiltrate campus activities. Richard Nixon had no comment on the day itself, but three months later he created the EPA and five months after that signed the Clean Air Act. It's been pretty much downhill since then in terms of concrete results, although Earth Day 1990 did spike interest in recycling.

At age 39, Earth Day is in that awkward stage between simple adulthood and early middle age. Today, no oil will be spilled, no dead fish thrown, no classrooms emptied of students. Instead, solitary bloggers will post truncated histories serving as a reminder that the earth still needs tending, perhaps more than ever.

The Beale Inside Me

2009-04-20T08:32:00.004-04:00

Who can really say how it all begins. There's a lack of money, to be sure, but also a lack of overall warewithal. Back turned to family, friends, neighbors, you seek out the company of cats and racoons. You can't afford to have the trash hauled away, but a 28-room mansion affords plenty of space to simply fill up a closet, then a hallway, then parlor, dining room, and finally the bedrooms, one by one. Because you don't leave the house the only way you feel time's passage is in your joints and in the way one litter of kittens leads inevitably to another. Eventually you become an American Miss Havisham. You are a Beale of Grey Gardens.

Every town has its own notorious recluse, its own crazy cat ladies. Few of them become the subjects of Maysles documentaries, Broadway musicals, HBO docudramas. Few of them become cult heroines, but then few of them are the aunt and cousin of Jackie O. Staunch personalities aside, Big and Little Edie occupy a permanent space in my psyche not because of the weird circumstances in which they came to live but because of the ever-hidden reasons why. How does a debutante become a crazy cat lady? How does wealth become squalor?

All they wanted to do was sing and dance. In an upper-class culture that remained essentially Victorian well into the 20th century, in which women were to marry, raise proper children, marry off those children in turn, in which women were definitively not to be heard, all they wanted was a voice. They wanted to perform, to take the male gaze that would enshrine them in domesticity and instead profit from it, flaunt it, overspill its boundaries. Today we would find nothing transgressive about this, but in their day this was transgressive enough for husband and father, sons and brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins all to abandon them. They were poor because their rich family outcast them.

Who wouldn't in turn reject the world that first rejected you? That they ultimately had only each other was no doubt both a curse and a saving grace, a curse because with one another to rely upon there was no reason to leave the house, and a saving grace because neither was alone. It didn't have to be that way. Big Edie's husband abandoned the family because she refused to behave the way he expected her to behave, and Little Edie didn't marry after her debut because she didn't want to, because she wanted a different sort of life. They provided may things for one another, without a doubt, but what each provided the other was primarily an audience. Each allowed the other to perform, to enact, to transgress.

They are pre-feminist heroines who suffered the fate of their ilk. Fifty or 100 years earlier they would have been thrown into an asylum as hysterics; Big Edie's ownership of Grey Gardens instead provided asylum of a different sort. They fascinate me because they could have been me, were I born in a different time and of a different class. Instead, I've been free to transcribe my own life, free not to marry, free to live performatively through the written word in a way they were never free. Because I live in a culture where a woman is free to be an artist, I'm richer than they ever could have been.

Another Reason to Garage Your Car

2009-04-17T07:37:00.005-04:00

Every once in a while something comes along to prove the cliche that no matter how much one has seen one hasn't seen it all. Last night, that thing was a documentary on BBC America entitled My Car is My Lover. The producers set out to document instances of mechaphilia, a desire to have sex with machines, undoubtedly hoping to find a thriving subculture in which lawn mowers, computers, crock pots, and ipods are violated on a regular basis. Instead, they found Ed Smith from Washington state, a loner who has sex with Vanilla, his white VW Beetle.

How does someone end up transferring their sexual feelings from human to machine? According to Smith, an encounter with a photograph of a classic Corvette when he was 13 changed him this way forever. Through Smith the producers meet Justin, a 20 year-old from Missouri who is just accepting his feelings for cars. Justin believes his romantic leanings stem from his days as a child playing in the yard, with only a rusting car for a companion. When he reached the age of sexual exploration, naturally he'd masturbate in the car.

If I were a hot-blooded American man trying to tryst with an automobile I'd head right for the tailpipe, but Smith seems to enjoy raping every crevice of his vehicle. In keeping with the tenet that the act of observation changes the observed, participation in the documentary seems to embolden Smith. The producers decide it would be a great idea to have these two mechaphiles meet face to face (they are message board acquaintances) at a large automobile swap meet outside LA. When they stop for the night during the drive down, Smith fondles a Chevy Suburban parked in the motel's lot. In the middle of the night, he ravages the producers' rental car.

Justin's first love is his Beetle, but an oil leak forces him to drive to CA in Todd, a Grand Prix he has recently acquired. Justin is more the romantic than Smith; during the journey he slowly falls in love with Todd, admitting at the end that he can't wait to get home to %#*& the $#@* out of it. Alas, on the night Justin and Todd meet, while Todd reclines in a peaceful slumber, Smith has sex with Todd, caught in the act by the documentarians. Both Todd and Justin seem sanguine about this turn of events, but I'm sad that Justin won't get to be Todd's first.

The auto swap meet appears to send Smith over the bend. He's caught on camera wandering the site, randomly fondling, licking, and kissing cars, his erection barely concealed by his baggy chinos. For the record, this section of the program contained some of the best reaction shots imaginable. It was also sad, and creepy, and very American in the way that this kind of thing can only be American, in that only this culture could produce a man who sexualizes machines, acts on those urges, is happy to tell the world, and encourages the 15 minutes of fame that might ensue.

I probably still haven't seen everything. Perhaps this show will enbolden other mechaphiles to come forward. Surely somewhere in this vast land of ours a man is right now, even as I write these words, creeping into the kitchen, lovingly and quietly opening a cabinet door, and ever so gently yet with great anticipation lifting to his breast a stainless steel Cuisinart 4-slice toaster.

Childhood A Go-Go

2009-04-15T11:01:00.004-04:00

My ruminations on department stores and alcohol conjured a somewhat related childhood memory. At some point the Falk's Food Basket chain, of the cocktail lounge that would grill your steak fame, closed. I seem to recall this was caused by a tax problem of the sort where failing to pay your taxes leads to a problem. At any rate, the stores were sold off, but Falk's somehow retained the restaurants, which were naturally named Falk's Cocktail Lounge.

I recall driving by one or the other of the two remaining locations as a child and my mother sighing loudly and exhaling, "Go-go girls." I had no idea what go-go girls were, but they sure sounded like fun, maybe even like something I'd like to be one day. My mother's approbation only made these girls seem all the more glamorous. Even at that early age, I innately understood that anything that made my mother sigh was something really, really cool.

At around the same time much sighing would ensure whenever we visited her good friend Judy Kaplan. I loved Judy Kaplan. She always had candy, let me watch whatever I wanted on TV, and cooked crazy exotic food, the likes of which were never seen in our house, such as squash. Over the din of Laugh-In and sighs I could often make out the words "Marjorie" and "go-go girl." As I eventually came to understand, Judy's daughter Marjorie had dropped out of college and was shimmying her way to financial independence at some local watering hole (probably not Falk's, but who really knows). Marjorie Kaplan was undoubtedly the only Jewish go-go girl in the history of go-go girls, but there you have it. I only recall meeting Marjorie once, when she stopped by to visit her mother at the same time that we were visiting, and I indeed recall her wearing tall, white, patent leather boots. Go-go boots!

I had no idea what it all meant, but I was into those boots. I asked once if I could get a pair of boots like Marjorie's, and was disappointed when my request was met with only another a sigh and a definitive "NO." My parents often simply took me out to dinner with them rather than paying a babysitter (and as a consequence, although this is another story altogether, I have attempted to order a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at every upscale restaurant between PA and NYC). Although I spent some months hoping that one day we would patronize Falk's Cocktail Lounge that day never came to pass.

Go-go dancing originated at the Peppermint Lounge in the early 60s, when enthusiastic patrons did the twist on top of the tables. The term is derived from the French expression a go go, meaning in abundance, galore. Although scantily clad, go-go dancers are not necessarily strippers, no matter what my mother thought. By the time I was old enough to go to a bar, Falk's Cocktail Lounge was long gone. I have no idea what happened to Marjorie Kaplan and her white boots. All that remains is this abundance of memories of the sighs galore caused by the simple act of dancing on tabletops.

Remembrance of Patty Melts Past

2009-04-13T07:40:00.003-04:00

When I was a kid one of my biggest thrills was accompanying my father on his weekly trip to Two Guys. I'm not sure what exactly killed Two Guys - over-expansion? Wal-mart? changing consumer tastes? - but to a child it was a wonderland indeed. It was the source of all toys, a mecca filled with bikes and cap guns and board games and records and record players and pretty much anything a young heart could desire. Two Guys was so vast, so overflowing with manna, that it had its own restaurant and cocktail lounge right by the entrance, providing succor to tired pilgrims. In fact, the lost world I'm mourning this morning isn't Two Guys per se, but the world of stores so comprehensive, so important, that shoppers would linger so long that they would work up an appetite and need to stop for a meal.

When I think about it, nearly every large retailer I can recall had at least a lunch counter and at most a restaurant/bar. Woolworth's, Grant's, Hess's, Falk's, Macy's, Bloomingdale's. I vividly remember my local Woolworth's, where one could purchase a bird or a cat or candy or K-Tel records and then stop for a patty melt before moving on. I don't remember this, but apparently Falk's, a local chain, sold groceries as well as department store items, and one could purchase a steak from the butcher and then take it into the cocktail lounge, order a martini, and have the cook prepare it for you. Why did this all go away?

Unless I'm in a particular mood I don't tend to enjoy shopping. A couple of drinks might help things along. My local Wal-Mart features an Auntie Annie's pretzel stand, but a greasy soft pretzel doesn't come close sufficing in terms of making Wal-Mart tolerable. Several gimlets, on the other hand, might help me to see the beauty of Jacqueline Smith's fashion collection.

The truly cavernous department stores that remain, in large cities, still have restaurants within them, usually on an upper floor, so that even those who are only stopping in to meet someone for lunch are forced to walk though merchandise. I understand that the world now goes to work each day; ladies who lunch are harder and harder to find. The after-work shopping crowd might be hungry, though, and certainly would be in need of happy hour. Putting restaurants back into stores might entice people to linger, to stop rushing around before hurrying home.

People clearly still have an interest in dining in the middle of a shopping expedition. Every big-box shopping center includes fast food outlets, and often includes some mid-price bar/restaurant chain like Applebee's. Every mall has an awful "food court." The difference now is that one must leave the store in order to get to the food and drink. In fact, one probably leaves the store, gets into the car, and drives across the parking lot to get to it, wasting fossil fuel and contributing to obesity by discouraging the simple act of walking. Put the alcohol back into the stores, people, it's just healthier!

What's lost is the sense of wonder and excitement, the notion that a store is a place people want to be, a place people enjoy so much they want to make a day of it. What's lost is the sense that our cornucopia of consumerist plenty is something to be celebrated with steaks, martinis, and patty melts, that the act of purchasing can be, in and of itself, an event.

Long Weekend

2009-04-10T07:41:00.002-04:00

It feels as if the entire country is off this weekend. So I'm taking off, too. Enjoy your ham or your matzo, as the case may be, and I'll be back Monday. Happy Eggs!

Tweet Off

2009-04-08T08:48:00.004-04:00

What is the fascination with Twitter? I ask this question seriously. It's obviously extremely popular with millions of people and is perhaps the most written-about social networking service. I just don't get it. I understand that actual blogging, thinking up topics, putting thoughts into sentences and paragraphs, can be a time-consuming task. Micro-blogging, with a limit of 140 characters, can be an easy way to throw your thoughts out into the winds. What are you doing right now? it asks, and I guess my answer is, ultimately, "Nothing anyone cares about."

I understand Twitter's usefulness in real-time reporting. Live blogging in more than 140 characters can distract the reporter from the unfolding event, and Twitter is a great way to convey events as they unfold. Following reporters at last summer's party conventions, for example, was interesting, and I always enjoy checking out the Twitter feed one of our local reporters posts for City Council meetings even though, as a participant in the meetings, I'm reading them hours later. My life, however, holds little journalistic interest. Events here in my house unfold at a glacial pace. "Thinking about lunch," I might say around noon, and then an hour or so later I might be able to report, "Eating cheese." If I have one meaningful thought a day, or if one meaningful thing happens a day, it's been an eventful day indeed. Most days feature much more chaff than wheat.

Some people use Twitter as a form of chat. Rather than IM, they correspond in a series of Tweets. I see that this is easier than email in that one can hold simultaneous conversations with a number of people, all from one feed. But who really has that much to say? I sure don't. It's all I can do to think of a Facebook status update that anyone but my cat might be interested in reading, and I only post those at most once a day.

There's also something about the language of Twitter that annoys me. On Twitter, one "follows" and has people "following," as if the site is comprised of millions of prophets or philosopher-kings. I'm not a follower, and I don't want to be followed. It's annoying that Facebook has turned the word "friend" into a verb, but all in all I'd rather friend someone than follow her.

I don't want to give in and Tweet, I really don't. So please, let's all agree not to. If enough of us ignore Twitter, maybe it will go away.

A Ham in Every Pot

2009-04-06T08:58:00.003-04:00

For the past week, one of my local grocery chains has been running advertisements claiming that they are THE source for Easter ham because they stock no less than 16 types of the stuff. My main response to their barrage of ads was to think, "Are there really 16 types of ham? And if so, why?" I shopped yesterday at that particular chain and am compelled to report that yes, the entire meat department was filled with ham and, although I didn't count, it certainly felt like 16 varieties filled the aisle. I've never seen so much ham in one place in my life.

I never knew ham had varieties. My mother never made baked ham so I'm new to it. How could I have imagined that ham can be purchased whole, half, bone-in, bone-out, shoulder, shoulder butt, picnic, smoked, honey glazed, spiral sliced, country style, or made out of turkey? How could I have imagined that some ham could be had for $0.49 a pound, while some would set one back $3.49/lb.?

Although the Easter bunny filled our baskets, this was not a holiday that we celebrated. What does one eat for Easter if one doesn't like ham? Or is there simply no other choice? And what is the grocery store going to do with all of its unsold ham? What, if anything, does ham have to do with Easter, anyway? The Last Supper was the Passover meal, a feast that was resolutely ham-free. I'm at a loss. I did buy a ham, though, a nice shoulder butt (whatever that is) for the ridiculously low price of $3.34 for almost six pounds. That's a lot of ham sandwiches.

I Pay a Cable Bill for This?

2009-04-02T08:39:00.005-04:00

One thing Richard Nixon had right was his statement that only Americans can humiliate the United States. Several years ago, the writers of a popular BBC program were faced with a dilemma. Although they had planned out a long-running series centered around a mystery, their star was leaving the show after two seasons. The star was so central to the mystery that he appeared in every shot, every scene. They would have to wrap things up prematurely.

The series was Life on Mars, in which a cop from contemporary Manchester is hit by a car and wakes up a cop in Manchester in 1973. Was he dead? In a coma? A time traveler? Insane? Whatever direction the show's creators initially envisioned, they found themselves bound to quickly wrap things up. So here's what they came up with: the hero, Sam Tyler, was in fact in a coma, 1973 some netherworld between life and death but a world that felt quite real. The coma was caused by a brain tumor that the car accident shook loose, or something. Contemporary Sam Tyler undergoes surgery and awakens, restored to his real life. But he finds himself alienated, unable to feel, unable to fit in. He realizes that he was happier in the dream world of 1973. So he jumps off a roof in order to return to that world. The seconds before the real Sam's death become years lived in his ideal world of the past.

Someone had the great idea to remake the series in America. American Sam is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973 New York. Same situation, same characters. But American Life on Mars never caught on, and the show was canceled. However, the writers were allowed to finish the series, bring everything to a close. Like their UK counterparts they had to do this quickly, and had to find some way of ending things despite whatever long-term plotting they had envisioned.

What do they do? They decide to take the title of the show literally. Sam Tyler is in fact an astronaut, lying in suspended animation on his way to Mars in the year 2035. For whatever reason he asked that the dream he be given for his two-year sleep be that he is a cop in 2009. The spaceship hit a meteor shower, it turns out, causing a computer glitch that made him dream that his 2009 dream self had been sent back to 1973. He awakens, we discover that all the 1973 characters are his coworkers on the voyage, and they land on Mars. There was no mystery. End of story.

WTF? Our teeth may be better, our most disgusting food may be much less disgusting than their most disgusting food, but clearly the British are much better at providing sensible narrative closure. The BBC ordered a sequel to LoM, and the only good that comes out of the American ending to the series is the fact that it renders the possibility of a US sequel moot.

Career Opportunities

2009-04-01T08:43:00.002-04:00

As my loyal readers know, I've been on a fruitless search for a new occupation. Yesterday, that search ended. At long last, I have found a vocation. It all started with a trip to my local Aldi.

I'd never before set foot in an Aldi. I knew it was some kind of grocery store but it always seemed, well, scary. Extremely late model cars populate its parking lot. It lacks windows, looking like a repository for weird, sad, experimental foods. Its shopping carts sit chained together, mocking their potential users. I knew it was some sort of European chain, and I've been to grocery stores in Europe. Scary.

It turns out that Aldi is a medium-sized box filled with strange brands of cheap food. Munkin Dimes brand brownie mix, for example. BunKiss raisins. You get the drift. But they had actual Pringle's, in the largest can I've ever seen. Industrial-sized Pringle's, for about two bucks. It's a warehouse-type store, so once the boxes are stacked the employees have nothing to do but to sit at the cash registers eating Pringle's while they await customers. As I wandered the aisles looking for recognizable food stuff, the cashiers sat on stools sharing a can, gossiping in their bright yellow smocks.

Finally, I thought. A job for which I am qualified. My PhD provides few real-world marketable skills, but I can wear a yellow smock and eat chips made from dehydrated potato flakes just about as well as anyone. As luck would have it, Aldi was hiring. After a brief interview with Toot, the Assistant Manager and Cashier in Chief, I was hired and fitted for my smock. I'll even be making the minimum wage in addition to the Pringle's!

Sadly, my new schedule won't afford me time for frivolities like blog posts. It's an entire career change, and it's arrived none too soon. So, it's been nice sharing my thoughts this past year, but the time for thoughts is at an end. I'm a working girl now, with no time for the internets. If you're in the neighhborhood, though, stop by for some chips with me (and Toot). We'd love to sit with you and catch up.

Not even Wikipedia can state with certainty the origin of April Fool's Day or of the prank. The best guess is that some folks were a little slow to adopt the Julian calendar and continued to insist that April 1 was New Year's Day. These people were called fools. I've been called a fool for a lot less, so despite the cliche some things do change. Whether or not you've got a New Year's hangover, happy April Fools.

Plastics

2009-03-30T08:04:00.003-04:00

The last time I watched The Graduate I was around the same age that Dustin Hoffman was during filming (29, for those of you interested in trivia). I watched it again last night at around the same age as Mrs. Robinson (mid-40s, although Anne Bancroft was only 35 during filming, and that's it for trivia). All those years ago I experienced the film as the comedy/satire it's marketed to be, but age tempered my reaction. Yes, it is, in places, a very funny film, but it's ultimately an extremely sad, if not bitter, statement about post-war American bourgeois culture.

The film was released, and set, in 1967. Benjamin Braddock has just graduated from college and returned to his ancestral Pasadena home. From the establishing shots through the first half of the film he is portrayed as isolated, alone, and adrift. He walks zombie-like through LAX, attempts to disengage from the graduation party filled with his parents' friends, in fact appears to have no friends or social circle of his own. He is cut off from his parents' generation, the scuba suit in the suburban swimming pool just a literalization of his ennui. With the exception of Elaine, no one in his life even has a first name; not even a summer of sex with Mrs. Robinson personalizes her to the point where she can be named.

The affair itself does nothing to ground Benjamin, offering as it does only sex without real human contact. When he and Mrs. Robinson finally, at Ben's insistence, spend a few minutes talking, it only serves to show how cut off all human beings are from one another in this particular plastic-worshiping culture, rather than how they might engage. Benjamin's elders have nothing to offer him, and he can't imagine finding a home in their world.

On the other hand, although critics have interpreted the film as a statement on the "generation gap," Benjamin is equally estranged from his peer group. This is evidenced not only by the fact that he appears to have no peer group, but also in his character itself. He is clean-cut, polite, obedient. His disaffections are never turned outward. Unlike his contemporaries, he does not protest, demonstrate, grow out his hair, experiment with drugs. Before Mrs. Robinson he's even a virgin. His generation's preoccuations - free speech, free love, civil rights, Vietnam - are neither mentioned nor alluded to. His generation provides him no more succor than that of his parents.

His one act of rebellion, one moment of engagement, is his single-minded pursuit of Elaine, a pursuit that borders on the monomaniacal. He and Elaine in fact hardly know each other, and the fact that he feels so connected to her speaks more about the lack of connections in his life than it does about their relationship. The film appears to end in truimph, as Elaine flees the church with Benjamin to get on that bus and escape the marriage her parents have forced her into.

Look again at that final shot, though, and you see that this is as much a moment of confusion as it is of triumph. We see them looking out the back window, laughing as they are driven away. We then cut to the other passengers, turning in their seats to stare at the couple. They are isolated, cut off from the family at the church behind them and from the adults on the bus in front of them. This echoes the opening shot of the film, where a close-up of Benjamin's face pulls away to reveal the other passengers on the plane taking him home to LA, each in separate seats, each in separate worlds. The film dissolves to black with a shot of the couple sitting, staring ahead, blank looks on their faces. They don't know what to say, they don't know what to do, they don't know where the bus is heading. They may be "free," but they are also lost.

We end exactly where we began. Benjamin has achieved his quest only to find not the holy grail but instead a long road to nowhere on a bus filled with strangers. The greatness of this film lies not in the moments of pure comedy for which it is remembered but instead in the fact that pure comedy can be found even in this vast, desolate, uniquely American wasteland.

Magnificent Obsession

2009-03-26T08:39:00.004-04:00

Like all obsessions, it began innocently enough. Join Facebook, my friend said, so you can play this game called Mafia Wars. It's really fun, it's a strategy game. I thought I might as well give it a try. After all, the whole thing was free.

I started slowly, not exactly sure what I was doing, but within a week I'd progressed to a level of play where I'd begun to acquire things: tommy guns, grenades, hideouts, body armor, members of my crew. Strangers began attacking me, which pissed me off. I acquired more defense and more attack, more weapons and more energy and more crew members. I began randomly attacking strangers in kind. I needed to do more jobs to pay for all the stuff I was acquiring, and then I needed more stuff in order to do more jobs. Suddenly it became necessary for me to log on to play the game three or four times a day in order to protect my assets, launder my money, ensure the survival of my character.

And so here we are, three weeks later. Because I work on my computer most of the day it's possible for me to check in on the game every few hours, and I find myself doing just that. I'm always running short of energy, but I can fill out ridiculous consumer surveys that lead nowhere but provide me with enough points to refill my energy and play the game even more. It's a downward spiral, solitaire on crack. I need help.

It would help if more people joined my mafia, but then again a larger crew would just enable me to fight and win more often, and to purchase more safe houses. What I really need is a different online activity, one that's less addictive. Or a real life. I need for spring to finally really arrive, so I can leave my house and turn my back on the soft glowing call of my monitor, sucking me in. Maybe what I need is to finally and irreversibly be whacked. Someone, please kill me, so I can live again.

Another Haiku

2009-03-25T10:57:00.001-04:00

8 AM meetings
are something less than humane.
I envy my dog.

Haiku

2009-03-23T09:57:00.002-04:00

Kleenex in pocket,
I turn into my mother.
Emery boards are next.

Waiting On My Bonus

2009-03-19T09:03:00.003-04:00

Our tax dollars are hard at work, paying performance bonuses to AIG executives. The debate over whether or not the bonuses should have been paid is now three days old and makes me sleepy, so I'm not going to join in. Instead, I would like to formally request that the federal government pay me a bonus for my stellar 2008 fiscal and executive performance. The highlights:

1. Having bought a new house in September 2007, I attempted to sell my old house at precisely the wrong time, and listed said house for too much money. In 2008, I continued to be unable to sell the old house and watched its value plummet. However, I did find tenants for the house, turning what was a street of homeowners into a street with a rental property and thereby further eroding the value of that particular asset. Bonus time!

2. I sold my business in August, 2008 and began looking for work in the fall, at precisely the time when the financial crisis hit hard. In other words, I have been looking for work in the middle of nationwide hiring freezes. However, because I was self-employed I do not qualify for unemployment benefits. My lack of employment is in this sense actually bringing added value to the American taxpayer by not costing him a cent. For this lack of planning and foresight I should be rewarded.

3. When my investments lost 35% of their value through the end of last October, I decided that the bottom had clearly arrived and let everything be, single-handedly averting a complete panic. Those assets have since lost even more value, demonstrating the sheer idiocy of a laissez-faire attitude toward the markets. This is precisely the kind of performance that cries out for a bonus.

4. Although I am careful to pay as little in taxes as possible, I believe I am entitled to receive much more in return than I could possibly put in over my lifetime. Isn't that how markets work? Where's my payout?

Surely these arguments are as persuasive as any given by the AIG Corporate Communications office. I shall assume that my check is in the mail.

St. Pat's Trivia

2009-03-17T08:35:00.003-04:00

I don't have a drop of Irish in my blood, but as it turns out my ancestors made an important contribution to the way St. Patrick's Day is celebrated in the United States. Back in Ireland, for centuries March 17 was a holy feast day. People would attend Mass in the morning, then go home and celebrate. Until the 1970s pubs were even closed, hard as that is for Americans to believe. Because March 17 always falls during Lent, Bishops would waive the stricture against meat, and celebrants would consume the traditional feast of Irish bacon and cabbage.

Early Irish immigrants to the US were either upper middle-class or in fact wealthy, but the potato famine brought wave after wave of poor Irish to our shores. Many of them congregated on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where they lived in a ghetto neighboring the Jewish and Italian ghettos. Discrimination kept them poor, and their poverty meant that they couldn't afford the luxury of bacon. The immigrants took a cue from their Jewish neighbors and discovered corned beef, a cheap alternative to bacon. And so we have my great-grandparents, living in poverty somewhere around Hester Street, to thank for today's preponderance of corned beef and cabbage. Sometimes cliches are true: we are all a little bit Irish today.

While I'm on the topic I have one final bit of St. Paddy's trivia. The color normally associated with Saint Patrick is blue. The wearing of green began a couple hundred years ago in the US, and was a show of solidarity with the Irish struggle for independence from England. OK, one last note of trivia and then I'm really done: Saint Patrick was undoubtedly an important guy, but he couldn't have driven all the snakes from Ireland, because Ireland never had any snakes to begin with. The terrain doesn't support them. Happy green drinking to all!

Free the Weeds

2009-03-16T09:23:00.002-04:00

I've spent a decent number of hours and a decent number of dollars over the past two weeks to do a spring clean-up in my yard. The fact that I dedicated days to leaf blowing and raking just four months ago seems to have mattered little. I have a partially wooded lot, full of older and not necessarily healthy trees, and winter's after-effects include a yard full of downed branches, sticks, pine needles, and leaves blown over from the neighbor's.

I know some people either like or take satisfaction from yard work, but I'm not one of those people. It feels to me that I'm fighting repeated battles with nature, and nature always wins. Pull a weed and two replace it, cut the grass and it just grows back, trim the hedges and they climb twice as high. Why do we bother?

Until around a hundred years ago, Americans didn't have lawns. Their yards were comprised of dirt and utilitarian vegetable gardens. Until the invention of the lawn mower the only way to trim a lawn was either by scythe or by letting sheep or cattle graze, so it really wasn't worth the bother to plant grass. Our native grasses aren't lawn grass, so until the invention of hybrid grass that could withstand our climate without too much watering, lawns were pretty much the province of the wealthy who could afford the paid labor needed to trim and water grass.

What made people bother? Why replace carefree dirt and healthful gardens with high-maintenance grass? To some degree we have the American Garden Club to thank. During the 1920s these grass enthusiasts waged an aggressive PR campaign promoting the beauty and benefits of the lawn. By then, the middle-class could afford a rotary lawn mower and to buy produce rather than grow it, so the notion of a lawn for every house took hold. To a large degree we also have the American hatred of the weed to thank. One thing manicured grass can do is take up all the space, light, and nutrients available and starve away weeds.

In order to make life easier, or at least to make my life easier, all that would need to happen is that every invasive plant species currently categorized as a weed be recategorized as a thing of beauteous splendor. A cultural appreciation of dandelion, crabgrass, goldenrod, sumac, and every other thing that wants to take over my property would allow me to give my property back to the forces of nature. Nature doesn't want me to have a yard. It wants me to have a clearing filled with sticks and leaves and "weeds." I'm tired of fighting it.

I Want Candy

2009-03-12T08:27:00.002-04:00

When I was a kid jelly beans were my least favorite part of the Easter basket, probably because my mother would buy the cheap crappy grocery store brand. They'd sink to the bottom, to be eaten only once the malted milk eggs, peanut butter eggs, hollow foil-covered bunnies, and even the slowly-hardening Peeps were consumed. But what do kids know? Now that I'm grown and exceedingly saavy, the weeks before Easter are my favorite time of the year simply because that's when the jelly beans come out.

Putting politics aside, we all have Ronald Reagan to thank for the proliferation of Jelly Belly. Unfortunately, I don't think these are particularly good candy; for me, they are too sweet. Around here they also come in packages filled with either 30 or 40 flavors, half of which are gross. Cotton candy? Say what you will about me, but I'm not a two year-old.

No, the best, the supreme, jelly bean is produced by Just Born. They're the good folks who also bring you Peeps and Mike and Ikes, and as gross as those two candies are, the jelly beans are as great. They are medium sized, of medium firmness, slightly but not too sweet, and well enough flavored that you can actually taste the difference between them. The yellow actually has a taste reminiscent of lemon, the orange of oranges, the green of...something green. Better yet are the spice variety, particularly the clove, which actually tastes like clove, and the wintergreen, which can double as a breath mint.

Just as you're thinking I'm ridiculous and obsessive for writing an entire post about jelly beans, let me lead you to this site, or this one. I am not alone. Just Born is located near me in Bethlehem, and I happen to know someone who works there manufacturing Peeps (in particular, she puts the eyes on them, which is a job deserving of a blog post all its own). I have inside information that the jelly beans aren't made year-round, so if you see them in a store near you, pick some up while they're available. It's what Reagan would have done.

A Rant About General Motors

2009-03-11T10:57:00.003-04:00

I read once that we experience time inverse to our metabolic rate. When you're a kid, with a high metabolism, time seems to stretch forever: Santa will never arrive, summers seem without end. When we're middle-aged, on the other hand, with a slowed metabolism, we can blink and a week has passed. I realized this morning though that time seems to pass so quickly once we become adults simply because more and more of it gets sucked into the vacuum of frustrating stupidity. But two hours dealing with General Motors will do that to a person.

The driver's window on my Saab has a recurring problem. When you close it using the "one touch" button it taps the top, then goes a quarter of the way down. In order to get it to close you have to simultaneously press the child lock button while you hold the window button, an operation that takes two hands. I first experienced this problem a year after purchasing the car. While it was under warranty the dealer "fixed" the sensor with a "software patch" five times. This was last "fixed" last March, and is broken again.

Now that the car is no longer under warranty, Saab has put out a "service bulletin" noting that software patches probably don't work and that what's needed is a new window motor. Duh. So I called demanding that I get a new motor for that window, since this is a recurring problem that has existed since the day I purchased the car. After an hour with the customer care rep, it was decided that I "probably" have a case, but that a dealer needs to provide an official diagnosis to Saab USA (since I'm not under warranty I've been dealing with a mechanic, not the dealer). OK, except I have to pay for the diagnosis.

Another hour of my life was wasted with my arguing that if the diagnosis is in fact that this is the recurring problem that my service records indicate it is I should not have to pay for said diagnosis. If it turns out to be a different problem, fine, I'll pay, but I should not have to pay up front and then hope for some kind of refund. No dice. If I want to have a $35,000 car with a functioning window I also have to fork over $67/hour for a diagnosis to prove that the window has a well-recorded recurring problem.

I have just lost another half hour of my life composing this rant. Sure, my metabolic rate's gradual decline might be hastening the passing of days, but mornings spent like this also play a part. Also, note to Detroit: it's things like this that lead Americans to buy Japanese cars.

Compound Life

2009-03-09T09:57:00.003-04:00

What is it about those zany fundamentalist Mormons? They just fascinate me. Big Love got me started; before that show, I'd never given LDS or the FLDS a thought. At heart, all religious stories are fantastic and unreal. To have faith is to suspend disbelief. So, while some people believe in trans-substantiation, others believe Joseph Smith found some golden plates in upstate New York, translated them, and became a prophet. People believe what they believe, no sense going there.

It's when the Little House on the Prairie garb comes out that I become fascinated. Who are these people who believe in sacred underwear? Why do they wear prairie dresses and sweep their hair up into beehive wings? Why do they listen when the Prophet tells them to marry off their barely post-pubescent girls and leave their sons on the side of the road? Why do they obey when music is banned?

Escape and Stolen Innocence, two women's accounts of their life in the FLDS and their escape from it, help to provide some answers. With no contact with the outside world, and having been told from birth that outsiders are evil and the Prophet's way is the only way to the celestial kingdom, it's easy to see how an unquestioning mindset evolves. It's easy to see how and why people live as the FLDS lives, when no other option, no other life, ever presents itself.

To a heathen like me, life on an FLDS compound feels like fiction, so perhaps it makes sense that the most enlightening book on FLDS I've come across is David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife, a novel. Ebershoff entwines two stories: the fictional account of Ann Eliza Young, 19th wife to Brigham Young who leaves the church to prosyletize against polygymy; and the story of Jordan Scott, a contemporary "lost boy" who was banished from a fundementalist compound when he was 14, whose mother, herself a 19th wife, has been accused of murdering his father. The murder mystery and the historical fiction unfold together, and through both well-researched narratives I've learned more about the FLDS mindset than I did from any factual account.

Can I ever really understand why people who live lives so different than mind do what they do, believe what they believe? Probably not, no matter how much I read. However, if I can devour a good murder mystery during my attempt at understanding, so much the better.

Blog Posts, 75% Off

2009-03-05T10:07:00.003-05:00

If you have any disposable money, go buy something. I actually bought something yesterday, and then stocks went up, because I'm just that powerful. They probably crashed again by the end of the day, I don't know and am afraid to look. But in the short run, buying things is good. If you haven't been shopping lately, here's a secret: the entire world is on sale. Seriously, nearly every item in every store was on sale. The one advantage to being worth 60% less is that things in turn cost 60% less. Go shopping, people. There must be something you need, and there's surely something you want. That is all.

In the Hood

2009-03-04T08:07:00.003-05:00

Once or twice a day Brody goes on a walkabout around our little neighborhood. I know I'm not supposed to let him do that, but he confines himself to the immediate area and mainly goes from house to house looking to visit with one or another of his dog friends on the block. Often, he'll come home carrying some delectable treat found in a neighbor's yard. The Bichon down the street buries his soup bones, for example, and Brody likes to dig them up, bring them home, and try to hide them in my bed.

In the past year, Brody has also found three antlers, part of a deer hoof, and rawhide chews in various states of decomposition. None of this is weird. Here is what is weird: at least once a week he returns home with an entire piece of fried chicken in his mouth. It's always a thigh, and it's always whole. This never happens on trash day, so wherever he's finding the chicken it's not by rooting through someone's trash. It appears that someone on my block is simply buying large amounts of fried chicken and leaving it out somewhere.

In the summer, the chicken was putrid from the heat. These days it's frozen, and today's piece was coated in snow. I like fried chicken as much as the next person, but I have yet to buy a bunch of it and leave the leftovers in my yard. Why is Brody finding friend chicken in someone's yard? Why is it always thighs? Thighs are the best part. Neighbor, whoever you are, eat the thighs! If you must leave chicken in your yard, leave the wings.

Also, neighbor, fried chicken isn't good for you. Chicken also tastes good roasted, broiled, or grilled. I'm just saying. Also, Brody likes mashed potatoes with his chicken, and maybe a biscuit or two. If you're going to leave a meal in your yard, at least try to make it well-balanced. Finally, neighbor, if this is leftover chicken that you're saving for lunch, well, I'm sorry. Try storing it in the refrigerator next time.

Culture High and Low

2009-03-02T08:58:00.005-05:00

There's so much television and so little time it's hard for me to even know where to begin. I'll start by noting that, if you're a fan of Life on Mars, either US or UK version, you'll want to know that BBC America will be running Ashes to Ashes, the UK sequel, beginning Saturday night. Sam's story is done; in the sequel, another cop finds himself in the past, this time the past of 1981. I've never seen it so I can't comment on its quality, but I do look forward to finally seeing it.

I felt iffy about Big Love in its first season, liked it a lot more in its second, and am finding the third season frankly incredible. The long hiatus caused by the writers' strike appears to have allowed the writers time to intricately plot this season, and the way various threads hinted at in the past have been brought to the fore and woven together is something to behold. If you haven't been watching there's still time to catch up via On Demand, but you better start now; only three new episodes remain. Prepare yourself emotionally before playing catch-up, though. One of my complaints about the first two seasons has been that the toll of the Hendricksons' chosen life - not just polygamy but the fact that they have chosen a life of secrets, lies, and isolation, and the way their choices effect and affect not only the adults but also the children - had not been dealt with sufficiently. The toll of all choices is dealt with again and again in this season. It's tragic in many ways, and sad, and affecting. Don't miss it.

I have no idea how or why I became addicted to Bravo's Real Housewives shows, but here we are. The OC girls have been put out to pasture for the year not a moment too soon, because the level of downright nastiness between and among them had become as hard as it was fascinating to watch, but now we're back in NYC for a second season, which is reason to rejoice. Like most of America, I spent last season laughing at Alex and Simon's quixotic quest to be something other than the pretentious wannabe poseurs that they so clearly are, but this year they have been supplanted in my affections by the Countess.

The Countess is Luann Somethingorother from Connecticut, who parlayed a minor modeling career into marriage to some minor Eurotrash Count whose family bought a title a couple of generations ago. The Countess hangs onto her title in the way only a chick from working-class Connecticut can. She insists on being called Countess Luann and presents absolutely no indication of any knowledge that the words "Countess" and "Luann" should probably never be placed next to one another. She often referes to herself in the third person, as befitting a royal. "The Countess does not drink from a bottle," she chastised the wait staff at a benefit during the season premier, and I thank her for providing me with a new catchphrase.

Countess Luann is working on a book of etiquette, because people named Luann are naturally savants in this area. In last week's episode she became angry that those attending a funraiser were talking amongst themselves as she was being introduced as a contributor to the charity in question, so she strode onto the stage and shushed the crowd. She then strode back to her seat and proceeded to talk to her tablemates while the M.C. continued with the program. She's an expert, that one.

Catch it on Bravo, Tuesdays at 10, with marathons running pretty much anytime during the week that a Top Chef marathon isn't. You will not be sorry.

You Can't Fight the Water Authority

2009-02-26T08:40:00.003-05:00

Our water authority is about to increase its rates. There's nothing surprising there; just another utility charging us more. The average increase is something like $0.72 a month for residential service. What's galling is the letter my hairdresser received yesterday, as he was giving me a cut. He clearly uses a bit more water than the average person, what with all the shampooing and rinsing and washing of towels, and this fact was not lost on the water authority.

"Congratulations!" his letter exclaimed. "Our records indicate that you are a Special Care Customer. Because water is essential to your business, we want to ensure that you will never suffer a loss of service." His letter goes on to explain that his bill will increase a bit more than mine so that infrastructure can be improved. "We care about you," says the water authority, "and because we care about you, we're going to make you pay us more."

OK, but I actually do know something about water delivery in my fair city. All of us, Special Care or not, are hooked up to one main or another. If a main fails, everyone - hair salons included - hooked up to that main loses service until the main is fixed or service is rerouted through another main. Besides, who wouldn't suffer without water? I may use less, but I need water to drink, cook, bathe, just as much as he needs it to wash hair. Marketing-speak cannot change that simple fact.

Here's another simple fact. Around a month ago a filter at the water treatment plant went down for about two minutes. As a result, "all" customers received a phone call telling them to temporarily boil their water before drinking, just in case. I never received this call. I did receive my water bill the other day, so they certainly do know where to find me when they really need to. Of course, I don't use enough water to qualify for Special Care. I suppose you really do get what you pay for.

Try Walking

2009-02-24T08:25:00.002-05:00

Robert Frost claimed that good fences make good neighbors, but he was wrong. This might have been the case a century ago, but these days off-street parking makes good neighbors. To get even more specific, having off-street parking and using it makes good neighbors. Last night I endured yet another meeting, probably my tenth in five years, about the "parking situation" in my small city. 1960s radicals had it all wrong. If you want to start a revolution, forget the pamphlets, demonstrations, and bombs. Just mention parking.

Our central business district has been struggling for decades. The reasons for this are easy to see: urban renewal emptied the center of town of residents, businesses have also slowly decamped for strip malls, what retail remains are small, underfunded niche businesses that suffer from a lack of foot traffic. The real problem, according to merchants, isn't cultural and demographic trends. It's parking. The meters cost a quarter, the police ticket people who don't feed their meters, when it snows the parking spaces aren't plowed out, sometimes people have to park a block away from the destination, there isn't enough parking, there's too much parking, it costs too much to park, we should have Muni-meters, we need more lots, we need another garage. Who cares about the economy, the culprit is parking.

Emotions run equally high in our residential neighborhoods. Because we are an old city, many of our neighborhoods were built at a time before cars. What off-street parking exists tends to be a pad for one car, but because many units were subdivided into several rentals, and because these days each household has multiple vehicles, parking can be competitive. People think they have a divine right to park directly in front of their door despite the fact that they live on a public street. People blame the municipality, the public transportation system, the police, street cleaning, absentee landlords, and yuppies when they are forced to park around the block from their homes. If you live in a high-density neighborhood but don't talk to your neighbors, it's probably because of parking.

Suburban living does nothing to ease the tensions. Every home on my parents' cul-de-sac came with a driveway and two-car garage, but even so occasionally cars were parked on the street. When I parked on the street the neighbors across the street would get mad. When the neighbors' son would park on the street my parents would get mad. The last time I visited the old block all anyone could talk about were the new neighbors who didn't use their garage and always had two or three cars parked on the street. The only issue that even came close to the angst engendered by on-street parking was one neighbor's floodlit Christmas tableau featuring Santa, his sleigh, and all eight reindeer.

People have cars. People need to park their cars. Everyone needs to get over it, so that I never have to attend another parking meeting in my life. Thank you.

And the Winner is...Whatever

2009-02-20T08:53:00.002-05:00

It's Oscar time again. How do you make a fluffy extravagance relevant in the face of hardening times? Make it about triumphs over adversity. I have no doubt that will be the theme of these awards, and I also have no doubt that for some reason I really don't care about who is honored this year and who goes home empty-handed. For the first time I've actually seen all five best-picture nominees, as well as most of the other nominated films/performances, and I have to say that 2008 was a mediocre year for movies indeed. Any of the nominees for best documentary are better films than the best picture nominees, which is saying something about the state of fictional storytelling in this culture. Having said that, here are my guesses:

Best Picture and Best Director: Slumdog Millionaire and Danny Boyle. This is only fine with me in that it prevents both The Reader and Benjamin Button from winning. I thought BB was Forest Gump with makeup (and that it will win for makeup), and a gross mismanagement of a terrific short story, and that The Reader just wasn't very good. If the decision were up to me the award would go to Frost/Nixon. It's hard to adapt a play for the screen, and this was a terrific adaptation. Slumdog, though, has the momentum, is a little film that had to fight to get distributed, and is in fact about the triumph of love and intelligence over horrifying odds. Feel good, folks, feel good.

Best Actor: No one has overcome more than Mickey Rourke, so he gets the Oscar. His performance was the one interesting thing about a mediocre film, so there is that. Frank Langella should win this, but he won't.

Best Actress: Kate Winslett for her body (of work). Not for The Reader, although her performance was predictably good, but because she's overdue. Melissa Leo should take this, but she won't. Feel good, Kate's finally getting her due.

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger overcomes death. The Dark Night should get cinematography, editing, and a host of other technical awards. It should have been nominated for best picture. Oh well.

Best Supporting Actress: Nate Silver thinks this will go to that woman from Benjamin Button, and he's usually right about things. However, since overcoming adversity is the theme, I'm going to predict Penelope Cruz overcoming the fact that she was nominated for a Woody Allen film. Plus, she was better.

Screenplays: I'm too lazy to double-check who's nominated. In an ideal world, Frost/Nixon for adapted, Frozen River for original. And maybe this will be the case. Frozen River is, after all, a little film that could, and screenplay is the category where little films that could get recognized. It would also be a feel good award.

Best Documentary: Man on Wire has momentum and was one of the best pictures of the year. This is a competetive category, though, and Herzog will probably get the Kate Winslet treatment. He's overdue, and it would be an award we can all feel good about.

A bunch of other awards will also be handed out, but I can't bring myself to care. My final prediction, and the one that will absolutely be true: someone will be wearing a dress so awful, so cringe-worthy, that the hours of my life spent watching the telecast will have been hours well-spent.

How to Solve Everything

2009-02-19T08:46:00.004-05:00

Accusing someone of keeping "banker's hours" is to insult his or her work ethic, since the phrase intimates a short work day. Bankers never actually worked less than other people, though; before banking became computerized, a certain number of hours needed to be spent counting money out to get ready for the public, and then reconciling accounts manually at the end of the day. Banks were only open to the public from 10 to 2 or 3 because it took the rest of the day to keep track of things.

I just drove 11 hours in two days, and during long drives random thoughts tend to crop up. For some reason I began contemplating banker's hours, not why banks were once open only at the most inconvenient times, but what the net result of those hours might have been. For example, when banks were only open to the public five hours a day, a run on a bank could only last five hours. Today, a panic can go on 24/7, as people electronically attempt to withdraw their funds whether or not the branches are open. In a way, the short hours probably helped keep the system stable.

[And here, I present as an aside my main pet peeve about It's A Wonderful Life: As George and Mary are leaving for their honeymoon, they drive past a run on Bailey Brothers Building and Loan. A realistic scenario during the Depression, yes. However, the scene takes place in the late afternoon, and much is made about staying open until 6 PM. A bank open until 6 PM during the 30s? I don't think so.]

If not for banker's hours, we probably would never have witnessed the cliched free toaster for opening an account. Toasters and other small kitchen appliances must have been chosen as premiums because women did the banking, and women must have done the banking of necessity in the post-WWII period because the men were off at work during the hours when the bank was open. Men may have taken the mortgages and paid the bills, but it was women who deposited their checks in the bank. Banker's hours in effect helped keep American toaster makers in business.

Banker's hours perhaps also contributed to a higher rate of savings. The lack of easy credit and the absence of credit cards undoubtedly had more to do with this, but the fact remains that, in the past, if you spent all your cash Friday night, you had no more cash until Monday morning. If you had five bucks to spend for dinner, that's all you could spend. Restricted access to your funds would keep more of your funds in the bank.

Perhaps one way of stemming our current economic crisis would be a return to banker's hours, not only for banks but for monetary transactions of any kind. The market would only have five hours in which to fall. People would only have five hours in which to rack up debt. Bankers would only have part of the day in which to package worthless debt into worthless securities. Toasters would be free again, and Americans would be put to work manufacturing them. Hey, this is as good an idea as any I've heard coming from Washington.

Which One Were You?

2009-02-16T09:42:00.002-05:00

Happy Day, Presidents! I'm going out of town for a couple of days, and will be back Thursday. Oh, I was definitely Viola.

Sex Ed, The Final Frontier

2009-02-13T08:42:00.003-05:00

This primer was written a mere 40 years ago. Oy vey.

What is male homosexuality?
Male homosexuality is a condition in which men have a driving emotional and sexual interest in other men. Because of the anatomical and physiological limitations involved, there are some formidable obstacles to overcome. Most homosexuals look upon this as a challenge and approach it with ingenuity and boundless energy. In the process they transform themselves into part-time women. They don women's clothes, wear makeup, adopt feminine mannerisms, and occasionally even try to rearrange their bodies along feminine lines.

Aren't some people just naturally that way?
Being naturally that way is one of the many explanations homosexuals grope for in an attempt to understand their problem...They prefer to consider their problem the equivalent of a club foot or birthmark; just something to struggle through life with.
This explanation is a little tragic. It implies that all homosexuals are condemned without appeal to a life some of them say they enjoy so much. Actually for those who want to change there is a chance.

How?
If a homosexual who wants to renounce his homosexuality finds a psychiatrist who knows how to cure homosexuality, he has every chance of becoming a happy, well-adjusted heterosexual.

What do homosexuals really do with each other?
The usual homosexual experience is mutual masturbation. It is fast, easy, and requires a minimum amount of equipment. The chaps simply undress, get into bed, and manipulate each others' penises to the point of orgasm. Three to five minutes should be enough for the entire operation.

Surely there must be more to homosexuality?
There are dozens of variations but they all have this in common: the primary interest is in the penis, not the person. A homosexual may have as many as five sexual experiences in one evening - all with different partners. He rarely knows their names - he is unlikely to see any of them again. Besides, few homosexuals use real names. They generally go by aliases, choosing first names with a sexual connotation. Harry, Dick, Peter, are the most favored.
Some gay guys write their telephone numbers on walls...They go home and wait for the phone to ring. It never takes long. Another gay guy calls, they quickly exchange qualifications, and make a date. A few minutes later there is a knock on the door, penises are produced, and another homosexual affair is concluded. Elapsed time from portal to portal, about six minutes.

Isn't that kind of dangerous?
Homosexuals thrive on danger...

But all homosexuals aren't like that, are they?
Unfortunately, they are just like that. One of the main features of homosexuality is promiscuity. It stands to reason. Homosexuals are trying the impossible: solving the problem with only half the pieces...The homosexual must constantly search for the one man, the one penis, the one experience, that will satisfy him. Tragically there is no possibility of satisfaction because the formula is wrong. One penis plus one penis equals nothing. There is no substitute for heterosex - penis and vagina. Disappointed, stubborn, discouraged, defiant, the homosexual keeps trying. He is the sexual Diogenes, always looking for the penis that pleases.
That is the reason he must change partners constantly. He tries each phallus in succession, then turns away remorsefully...

What about all the homosexuals who live together happily for years?
What about them? They are mighty rare birds among the homosexual flock. Moreover, the "happy" part remains to be seen. The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet by comparison with a dialogue between a butch and his queen. Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly.
The other part of these "marriages" that doesn't fit in with happiness is that the principles never stop cruising. They may set up housekeeping together, but the parade of penises usually continue unabated. Only this time, jealousy, threats, tantrums, and mutual betrayal are thrown in for good measure. Mercifully for both of them, the life expectancy of their relationship together is brief.

Are there any other parts of the body that appeal to the homosexual?
One more and possibly the most intriguing of all - the male vagina. To possess this organ, the essence of femininity, is the consuming wish of some homosexuals. To overcome the obstacles of genetics, anatomy, physiology, to finally become a woman, is worth anything. Precious few succeed.

You're perhaps wondering about female homosexuality. While the men have their own chapter, the women receive only a brief mention in the chapter on prostitution. That's right, lesbians are prostitutes. Again, oy vey.

Cabin Fever

2009-02-11T11:48:00.003-05:00

It's spring for a day. I sat on my porch and read the paper. I'm not wearing a sweater for the first time in months. I'm about to take Brody on a long walk by the creek. The sun is out. The ice has pretty much all melted. This won't last, so I'm going to enjoy the day. There's nothing else to say, is there? We can contemplate the state of the world tomorrow; today, it's spring.

Two Burning Questions

2009-02-10T08:51:00.003-05:00

We will finish our course in sex education tomorrow, but in the meantime two issues of great importance have come to light.

Number One: I was recently introduced to cave-aged Gouda, a cheese both incredibly delicious and ridiculously expensive. It comes in two types, one aged three years, and one aged five years. It's the same cheese, just aged longer and priced even higher in the latter case. Why is it that a cheese that can survive all those years in a cave, and then survive for God knows how long in the grocery store, begins to rot the second I place it in the climate-controlled cave-like environment that is my refrigerator's cheese drawer? If I buy the three-year version, shouldn't I have at least two years before it begins to spoil?

Number Two: What is the show dog world's love of poodles all about? I've been watching Westminster for about 20 years, and pretty much each year at least one poodle is deemed "Best in Group." Because poodles compete in both the non-sporting and toy groups, not one but two poodles can end up fighting it out for Best in Show. Every year, more of the same: the standard poodle wins group, or the miniature poodle takes it. If that doesn't happen Monday night, then the toy poodle takes its group Tuesday. Winning Westminster always comes down to vanquishing the poodle.

What's so great about these poodles? I know, take away the haircut and you have intelligent, gentle, obedient, loyal companions, blah blah blah. What well-trained dog isn't all of the above? Brody has all of those qualities, without the haircut. Brody is a self-respecting Brittany who would not be caught dead with that ridiculous haircut. I know, the poofs are to protect the joints while hunting, or whatever. Most dogs were bred to hunt or herd, yet only poodles are groomed to look like Marie Antoinette. Why do judges keep rewarding this? The show world's embrace of the poodle represents the triumph of grooming, of style over substance. Everyone loved Uno last year because a beagle beat not one but two poodles.

Naturally, a standard poodle won the non-sporting group last night. Brody and I will be watching tonight, cheering on each and every other breed.

Sex Ed, Continued

2009-02-06T09:52:00.003-05:00

Today we consider a local favorite, prostitution. David Reuben, M.D. has much to say on the topic; this is the longest chapter in the book, perhaps because the prostitution chapter also contains information on lesbians, while gay men have an entire chapter of their own. Why? you ask. Obviously because prostitutes hate men and so do lesbians. Prostitutes are therefore lesbians. It's all very logical. We'll leave the lesbianism for our next lesson and get right to the trickin' and the whorin'.

How does a girl become a prostitute?
Most girls become prostitutes because they like it. The transition from a "straight" girl to a straight "girl" is usually a gradual one. It starts with run-of-the-mill promiscuity, maybe a divorce or two, then a job at a night club as a waitress or bar maid. Freelance sex with customers for gifts plus association with full-time hustlers who hang around the club often prompt a girl to put the pieces together and get in the life...

What causes the "demand"?
Let one of the girls tell her theory. Bonnie is twenty-seven; she has been playing for pay since she was nineteen.
"The only thing that keeps us in business is the American wife, God bless her. Those overfed, overdressed smug little bitches help me buy a new mink coat every other year. If all the wives woke up at once and gave their husbands what they wanted, I'd have to go back to waiting on tables at a beer joint. But I'm not too worried - business gets better every month. As long as the average woman thinks she has a golden vagina I'll be in good shape."

We next get a dissertation on the economics of the high-class hooker, how much she takes in versus how much she spends on hair, make-up, bedsheets, etc. According to our expert, after expenses she doesn't make very much.

If prostitutes don't wind up with much money, then why do they do it?
Virtually every prostitute is in the life because she wants to be. Obviously any woman who chooses to rent her vagina to a dozen men a day has a serious emotional problem...All prostitutes have one thing in common - they hate men.

Why is that?
The full answer is a complicated one related to the deep underlying emotional problems that drove them into the game. Basically, prostitution is an ironic form of revenge against all men, acted out on the johns...

What's a street whore?
Usually an overage hustler, an alcoholic hooker, or one that's on narcotics. They have become so dilapidated that they are willing to go for the price of a drink, a fix, or a cheap hotel room. They don't last long and are swept up by the police, usually within the hour.
Another class of prostitute works the bars; these hustlers are carefully segregated by the class of bar they frequent. The neighborhood girls hang around cheap corner bars; the club girls make themselves available at selected night spots. The more expensive hookers choose the more expensive cocktail lounges in fashionable hotels and motels.

What happens to prostitutes when they get old?
That's when things get tough for the girls. Some of the lucky ones have managed to save enough out of their earnings to go into a small business. One of the favorite lines is a ladies' ready-to-wear shop supplying fashionable clothes and fancy underwear to other hookers...

I'll never think of Victoria's Secret the same again.

Sex Ed, Part One

2009-02-05T08:12:00.002-05:00

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask was written in 1969 by a psychiatrist, and shows it. It's not a book anyone would turn to in our more enlightened times for any real advice or edification, but it is a book everyone can turn to for some comic relief. I picked up a copy of the first edition for a buck yesterday, and have been happily educating myself ever since. I thought I'd share some highlights.

My copy fell open to the chapter entitled "Sexual Perversion." Here's all you need to know about it:

What are perverts?
Anyone who isn't interested in the penis-vagina version of sex is often considered a pervert and shunned by normal people.
This often includes such types as exhibitionists, Peeping Toms, sadists, masochists, and those with similar tastes. They are thought of as wild-eyed drooling maniacs, lusting for an innocent victim. It just isn't that way.

Why not?
First of all, pervert is an unkind and loaded word. It is derogatory rather than purely descriptive. A better word is sexual variant...

What follows is a lengthy discussion of Peeping Toms and how harmless they are because everyone likes to watch. Peeping Toms often "graduate" to become exhibitionists, who "need psychiatric treatment" but are also "harmless." However:

What about female exhibitionists?
Most of them are professionals. Strippers and topless dancers are good examples. No matter what they say, most strippers enjoy their work. They derive sexual satisfaction from displaying their breasts to large groups of men. They don't need much encouragement to display everything else...
Predictably, strippers don't get much other sexual satisfaction. They usually have trouble attaining orgasm and never find much real pleasure in genital sex.
The same holds true in general for beauty queens. Their activities have more social approval, but the game is the same. They show off their breasts, hips, buttocks and a discreet outline of the vulva (through a bathing suit) to admiring men. Miss Artichoke of 1966 has a lot in common with Bubbles LaTour and her Magic Balloons...

What are transvestites?
Transvestites are individuals who wear the clothes of the other sex. There is no prohibition against women wearing trousers, neckties, men's shirts, men's shoes, or any other item of masculine apparel. Let a man appear on the street in a skirt and blouse with high heels and he is in the hoosegow before the polish is dry on his nails. The women are just following fashion, the men are "sex perverts."

After a discussion of fetishists (who really just like to collect things and so are somewhat misunderstood) we get to the heart of the matter:

What is pornography really like?
Most pornography can be divided into two categories, visual and literary. These days most visual pornography consists of photos, all basically the same. The beginner's collection shows naked women with emphasis on the breasts and genitalia. Since all females have identical equipment, if you see one, you've seen them all. Once the dramatic revelation that women have a clitoris, vagina, labia, and breasts sinks in, there are no more surprises.
The next category of visual pornography is men and women having sexual intercourse. These pictures bring home emphatically the fact that penis and vagina somehow go together. The complete collection of this group of "dirty pictures" constitutes ninety-six separate positions, most of which are unfeasible except for circus acrobats.
When the customer tires of peering at shots of naked gymnasts, views of heterosexual fellatio and cunnilingus may provide further diversion. That's about it. Since human anatomy is well-standardized, pornography quickly becomes boring and monotonous...

What about literary pornography?
It suffers from the same fatal disease as photographs - dullness...

David Reuben, M.D. concludes the chapter by stating that because porn is boring it really doesn't harm anyone. Children shouldn't see it and should be educated by parents rather than photographs. And so concludes the tour of Sexual Perversion, 1960s-style. Tomorrow: prostitution.

The Big Read

2009-02-03T09:11:00.003-05:00

As the snow falls yet again I'm ready to hunker down and spend the day finishing The Big Rich, Bryan Burrough's account of the rise and fall of Texas oilmen and Texas oil money. In less than a decade, various "independents" or wildcatters amassed incredible fortunes, and in less than a generation most of those men squandered those fortunes. Burrough focuses on four oilmen: Cullen, Murchison, Richardson, and Hunt. It's a fascinating story, and a fun read. In a time when if not fortunes then at least savings have been disappearing, it's a book that can provide solace. No matter how much you've lost in the past year, it wasn't billions, after all.

For a time, these men had enough money to do whatever in the world they wanted. Hunt became a bigamist, with three families. Richardson helped Eisenhower achieve the White House and came close to convincing him to dump Nixon in 1956. A related story is that of Glenn McCarthy, who in five years blew through over $50 million (mid-century dollars - probably a billion today), much of it spent on Houston's Shamrock Hotel, and attempt to make Texas the center of the universe.

Richardson and Murchison enjoyed going to the races at Del Mar in La Jolla, so Richardson built his own hotel nearby where they could stay for the season, having whatever food they liked flown in - BBQ from Tulsa, steak and duck and pheasant from Texas, whatever. These were the first businessmen to own private planes and private islands. These were the men who invented Texas ultraconservatism. For a while, Hunt owned his own mini-media empire, the Liberty radio network, a kind of proto-Fox News. His rabid support of McCarthy led to Liberty's demise, but for a few years he controlled a certain portion of the airwaves.

With the exception of Richardson, whose heirs (the Bass family) expanded the family fortune, the riches disappeared. The post-WW II opening of Saudi Arabian oil fields led to an influx of cheap imported oil, and the federal regulation of natural gas did away with profiteering. The fortunes were lost in part due to economic change, in part to the ineptitude later generations of Hunts, Cullens, Murchinsons. I don't want to give away the plot, but suffice it to say that the undoing is probably more interesting than the building of wealth.

So yeah, I'm quite tired of snow, but as long as I have a big book to read, I'll make do.

Just Be Glad Your Pets Don't Dress You

2009-01-30T10:17:00.002-05:00

One of my neighbors has a Bichon. A male Bichon. This poor dog is bathed nightly, and taken once a week for hair trimming and poofing. The poor guy spends his life looking more like topiary than like a dog. It could be worse; he could be made up like one of the Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves. I did make Brody wear antlers for approximately five minutes Christmas Day, but after perusing this site, I'm rethinking my plans for next year. Enjoy!

Stop Calling Me Names

2009-01-28T09:47:00.004-05:00

Sunday's Times Styles section contained yet another article about Baby Boomers, and once again I got thrown into that mix because I was born in 1963. Boomers are defined as being born between 1946 and 1964. I don't know why 1964 or how that started, but I can say this: it's wrong. I'm not a Boomer, I have little in common with Boomers. Someone born in 1946 could well have been my parent. Stop categorizing me that way.

Baby Boomers grew up on Howdy Doody and the Mickey Mouse Club. I didn't. I watched Match Game. Baby Boomers were inspired by JFK. He died a month after I was born. Remember that famous picture of Bill Clinton shaking Kennedy's hand? I wasn't alive when that was taken. How does that have anything to do with me? Boomers grew up on the Beatles. When the Beatles broke up, I was listening to Disney soundtracks. My childhood lacked Beatles. Jackson 5 yes, Beatles no.

Boomers remember Vietnam, Woodstock, Kent State. These were defining events for Boomers. I remember none of that. I do remember Watergate, but that was only because of my father's obsession. I was too young to understand it or really care about it in any personal way. The defining political event of my younger years was probably the hostage crisis and then Iran Contra. Whatever that makes me, it's not a Boomer.

I was too young to be a hippie, or even a post-hippie. People my age became yuppies, if they became anything at all. More people my age grew up into political conservatism than grew up into dissent or liberalism. The civil rights and anti-war movements were things we studied. The 1960s was a thing we studied - I'm young enough to have taken a course on the 60s in college - not something we participated in. I am neither culturally nor politically a Boomer.

Later "generations" - X, Y, Millennials, whatever you want to call them - have tended to be thrown together in 10-year chunks. Why does the Boomer "generation" span nearly 20 years? It shouldn't. It's wrong. I'm tired of it. I simply am not of the same generation as someone born in the late 40s. We grew up in different cultures, different societies. Some commentators try to acknowlege this by calling my and my peers "late Boomers." If you have to separate us from the pack like that, maybe we don't belong in the pack to begin with.

When did the baby boom end, then? Maybe it was 1964 when the number of births per year decreased, but in terms of generational groupings, I think 1961 is the cut-off for Boomers. Anyone born after Kennedy's inaugural is something else. I don't know what we are, but we're. not. Baby. Boomers.

Life Imitating Student Council

2009-01-27T09:16:00.003-05:00

If the one thing you miss about 2008 is the whole election cycle, you should go out immediately and rent Frontrunners, a shockingly engaging documentary about a student council election at NYC's Stuyvesant High School. Yes, you read that correctly: the focus is on a competitive race for Student Union President at one of the country's premier public high schools. Where Alexander Payne's beloved Election plays the high school political process for satire, Frontrunners applies standard verite treatment to the process, in the end using this microcosm to shine a light on the American political process in general.

The film follows the race through both a primary and general election. We begin with four candidates; two will be eliminated in the primary, and the other two will face off in the general. The candidates grapple with the choices that face all politicians: the sexual and racial considerations in choosing a running mate; the selection of talking points and campaign materials; how and where to campaign. Along the way we are presented with interviews with not only the candidates but with a pundit and with members of the local press. The candidates compete for the endorsement of the high school paper, seek the approval of their peers, and prepare for and compete in a televised debate.

At my high school student council elections involved nothing more than hanging up some home-made signs and hoping that popularity or name recognition would carry you through. At my high school only dweebs were on student council anyway. Of course, I didn't attend one of the most competetive high schools in the country; the stakes are higher for these adolescents, and they know it.

Even the candidates themselves fall into recognizable political types. In the primary, we have a race among a self-annointed favorite, an outlier with perhaps more student government experience than the favorite, a hard-working and well-liked theater chick, and a popular jock who figures what the hell, popularity often carries the day. I won't spoil anything for anyone, but I will say watching their various campaign strategies and styles is interesting in part because of the way they parellel what we witnessed in 2008.

It really is true, I guess, that politics is just politics.

Retail Theory

2009-01-23T09:10:00.004-05:00

I'm used to seeing stores erect their Christmas sections right after Labor Day. I don't like it, but I'm used to it. I'm the kind of person who takes one holiday at a time, in order, and the rush to Christmas seems to me to give, say, Columbus Day the short end of the stick. However, I didn't realize until yesterday that spring actually begins in mid-January.

My local big-box bulk discount store has already set up its spring garden section. Who cares if the yard is full of ice? It's time to buy Miracle Grow and plastic "Grecian" pots! Is there a better way to celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday than by buying some patio furniture? All of you with flower boxes better rush out this weekend and stock up on marigold seeds; they might be gone by the time you need them in mid-May.

Also, and I learned this the hard way, be very careful with your winter coats. Should a tragedy befall your winter coat in the middle of winter, you will be screwed. Winter is the time to buy shorts, not warm coats. OK, I'm off to shop for some mulch.

Endurance

2009-01-22T08:16:00.003-05:00

What if money was worthless? What would our lives be without money?

I assume none of us would work, or at least not work as we currently understand it. Why slave away in an office if the return is useless paper? We'd only do a job that resulted in tangible returns: food, clothing, fuel. The only jobs that would result in such returns would be jobs that produced something that could in turn be bartered. In other words, we'd work only to produce commodities that could be exchanged for other commodities. Press releases and brochures are not such commodities, so if I wanted to work, I'd need to change careers fast.

Very few of us have any experience producing commodities these days, though. Those of us who now hold production or manufacturing jobs, those of us who now do the manual labor and are not the best compensated, would become those who are best equipped to survive. White collar workers, on the other hand, will be relegated to the bottom of the food chain. Us white collar workers won't have jobs to go to, anyway. If money is worthless, we won't need bankers, investment advisors, insurance agents, analysts. We won't need people to sit in chairs all day emailing and taking meetings.

I assume we'll be allowed to stay in our houses since the "banks," which won't be around anymore, won't have any use for a nation full of empty structures. All of us white collar workers will have to learn to grow our own food if we want to have something to eat, and if we want to possess a commodity that we can barter. The only way to have fuel in the winter will be to produce food in the summer. Maybe more of us will take up hunting, assuming we have something to trade for the bullets and the guns. Now that I think about it, a thinning of the deer population around my house would be one positive outcome of the total unraveling of our economy.

If we have nothing to barter with, we won't have any gas for our cars. We'll walk everywhere, or use what public transportation is available (I assume the government will try to put people to work by trading surplus grain and cheese for labor). The end of our economy would be good for the environment not only because we would of necessity produce as much of our own food as possible, thereby ending agribusiness, but also because we'd stop burning so much fossil fuel. With nothing to trade for heating oil or gas or for electricity, those of us with fireplaces would gather wood and brush to burn, ending the production of yard waste. Waste in general would be a thing of the past. Cans and bottles would also once again become commodities, things to be reused rather than discarded.

Without money, we'd end up knowing each other better, more intimately. Electricity is a commodity that will be available only to those who can generate it themselves or trade something for it. Until the day that each of us has our own solar panel and/or windmill, or some sort of hydroelectric system, we'll live with periods of darkness when we can't afford to power our computers and televisions. We'll turn to each other for entertainment and information, we'll rely on personal interactions. We'll live closer together in order to have access to information and resources, thereby ending sprawl.

Sure, life would be harder, much as it was harder hundreds or thousands of years ago. Access to medicine and education would be limited. The rule of law would be harder to enforce. In many ways, it would suck. But if money was worthless, I would never have to spend another day like this one, thinking about the fact that I need to find a job.

My First Inaugural

2009-01-20T08:27:00.006-05:00

No, I'm not in DC today braving the cold and the crowds. I'm here at home, where I can DVR the processions, skip ahead to the actual swearing-in and speech at my leisure, and stay warm all day. That's fine with me. I've actually attended an inauguration before, and while it was interesting, once was enough for this lifetime.

A friend in college had a father who was some sort of lawyer who did something or other for the Republican party. I don't know if he donated, fundraised, or defended them, but at any rate he had some sort of pull. She had tickets to Reagan's second inaugural, it was Winter Term and I was sitting around working on my honors project, so with nothing better to do I went up to DC to attend with her and another college friend.

Whatever her father did left us with pretty good "seats" for the swearing-in, but because it was freezing the outdoor events were moved indoors and the ceremony took place in the Capitol rotunda. Our good "seats" were in a rented space with free food and drinks and monitors to watch the proceedings. That was fine with me. It really was freezing. After about 15 minutes milling about with the others gathered in the banquet hall, it became clear that I was surrounded by....people who had voted for Reagan. In November, 1984 I cast the first ballot of my life, for Mondale/Ferraro. Yes, I was one of the five Pennsylvanians who voted Democratic that year. "If not us, who? If not now, when?" blah, blah, blah. The neatly dressed crowed went wild. I had another drink. He kept talking about freezing government spending so that everyone becomes more responsible or some other such nonsense. I kept drinking and kept my mouth shut.

After the open bar closed it was time to go back to Alexandria, take a long nap, and get ready for the ball. That's right, I even got to attend an inaugural ball. My friend's parents were attending one of the big balls, where Reagan himself would appear for a few minutes, but we had tickets to one of the lesser state balls, probably Virginia's since that's where her father lived. The ball had some name, but I don't remember it. Here's what you do at an inaugural ball when you're 21 years old and have nothing at stake: you dance to Motown and get incredibly drunk. Andrew Jackson's celebration featured a mob of his "common" supporters storming the White House for free punch. The Republican equivalent of this is young women in pearls and young men who look like they should be in the military, but are not, drinking up everything at the open bar. When the ball is over you and your friends and some random young legislative aides head down to Georgetown and drink some more. When the bars close you take a cab home and pass out in your dress.

I'll be just fine on my couch today, and attending a meeting rather than a ball tonight. I won't miss the pearls or the legislative aides. Feeling part of history is so much easier when you're sober.

Over and Done With

2009-01-16T09:19:00.003-05:00

Of course I couldn't help myself last night and I gave another 14 minutes of my life to the Bush presidency, watching his weird smirky face say farewell to the nation. His speech was exactly as I expected. What I find off is the number of pundits and commentators who are annoyed if not downright angry that the guy has spent that last couple of weeks spinning his time in office as a success when we all know it was an abject failure. What on earth did anyone expect?

Should Bush have said, "I tricked the nation into a war it didn't need, at tremendous human and monetary cost. I was wrong"? Should he have said, "My policies let the rich prosper and wrecked the economy. Oh well"? And should he have concluded with, "I have successfully destroyed the environment as well as scientific research, or at least have removed the role of the government in the promotion of scientific and rational thought"? No way he was going to say any of that.

We got the guy we elected, and he behaved the way we should have expected him to behave. More than that, we elect presidents to lead, to be certain, to be calm, to give us direction. Bush may have led in the wrong direction, but it was his direction, and he did lead us there. When he says that he's proudest of "making the tough decisions" I think this is exactly what he means. At this point very few agree with him, but he remained who he was. He did what he set out to do, no matter how disastrous the outcome. Good riddance to him, but I don't see why we should expect an apology. He's only ever been himself.

History will judge the past eight years. I have little doubt history will not vindicate him, but the one way he's right is in leaving the judgement to the future. In the meantime, we're thankfully moving on, and it's time to get ready for Tuesday. Time to break out the Obama yo-yos, commemorative thongs, onesies, Franklin Mint coins, and plates decorated with the Electoral College vote. If nothing else, at least the kitsch-fueled sector of our economy is working again.

Scary Women

2009-01-14T08:31:00.002-05:00

It's not hard to find disturbing content on TV. The nightly news, Bush speaking about anything, Gray's Anatomy, disturbing, all. Perhaps the most disturbing thing on TV right now, though, is a show that previously had been a guilty pleasure, a show that I used to watch because it made me laugh, a show that was once seemingly innocuous. That show is The Real Housewives of Orange County, and if you want to see how vapid, how cruel, how stupid a bunch of adult women can be, you must tune in Tuesdays at 10 on Bravo (although you can catch "marathons" of the show almost any day of the week, so don't worry if you have other plans Tuesday nights).

The five featured women are supposed to be rich, and it's supposed to be a glimpse into the Botoxed and carefree lives of people who live in a gated community in the Republican capitol of the West. Naturally they're all slaves to plastic surgery, shopping, and chardonnay. Nothing disturbing there. What's become clear this season, though, is that they're slaves to their own basest instincts. These women hate each other, and enact their hatred in front of the camera week after week. Watch this show to learn how not to be.

Last night Tamra, who believes she is the "hottest" housewife, held a formal dinner party in her backyard. Said party involved many courses, but also a lot, a lot, of alcohol. There's a new "housewife" this season, Gretchen. Gretchen is 30, well-groomed, and has a millionaire fiancee who happens to be dying of cancer. Tamra hates Gretchen. She's jealous. So, she spends the whole dinner party plying Gretchen with shots of tequila. After all, what's a formal dinner without shots of tequila? Tamra's husband and 22 year-old son help in the plot to get Gretchen drunk. Tamra tells the camera it's her intent to get Gretchen "naked drunk" so that everyone can see her "dark side."

Gretchen, meanwhile, has just spent the day in the hospital with her dying fiancee. I know what it's like to watch someone die. Sometimes getting drunk is the only way to help yourself forget that particular painful reality. Gretchen gets drunk. Tamra's son sits next to Gretchen, leers, eggs her on. Tamra makes sexual innuendo about Gretchen to the other guests. The other guests try to take alcohol away from Gretchen, but Tamra's husband and son keep slipping her more. Finally, Gretchen is so drunk she's slurring and out of control. Tamra won't let anyone give her a ride home, insisting she stay the night. The episode ends with Tamra's son following Gretchen into the bathroom, asking for a hug. Gretchen rebuffs him, saying she's engaged. Her persists nonetheless. It's all "to be continued."

Last week, the group all went to the racetrack, where Tamra and her co-conspirator Vicky shunned the other housewives, acting like eighth graders in the junior high cafeteria. Two weeks ago, the "gang" all went to Havasu, got drunk while their young children watched, and spent the episode talking trash about one another. I know I'm not making the show sound fun. It's no longer fun; it's simply the most disturbing thing on TV.

It's a trainwreck. You want to turn away, but you can't.

For Every Winner, a Loser

2009-01-12T10:11:00.003-05:00

Well, a week and a half of sleep and more sleep has left me healthy, wealthy, and wise. OK, OK, but one out of three ain't bad, right? I finally saw Milk yesterday, a film that features some terrific performances and that is very well-made, and a film that I recommend, although I didn't learn anything new about Milk's life or his times. I did leave the theater thinking the same thing I thought after reading The Mayor of Castro Street and watching The Times of Harvey Milk, which was what the story would look like told from Dan White's point of view.

Something clearly happened that left White deeply disturbed. Although the notion that Twinkies made him do it remains laughable, whether the murders were premeditated or not they would seem to have resulted from some sort of derangement that one would think wasn't apparent during the election. White (and Milk) had been elected just a little over a year before the murders, and White was popular during the campaign. He came into office with a bright political future ahead of him. How did he go from that to depressed and homicidaly angry? Milk hints that White may have been gay himself but repressed and closeted; other treatments of the story paint him as simply homophobic and racist. I don't think either simplification explains things.

It's interesting to note that White represented a district that was mainly white and working-class, but that also included San Francisco's largest and most notorious housing project. White was the only candidate in his district who campaigned in the project, befriending many of the residents and garnering the support of the local gang. Yes, he was the candidate of the police and firemen's unions, but he was also the candidate of a large black underclass.

When he first took office, White befriended Milk. Milk was one of only three city hall colleagues invited to the christening of White's child. Before White's resignation, the San Francisco supervisers were split ideologically, with six conservative and five liberal members. White often voted with the liberals his first months in office, thereby shifting the balance of power. White was willing to vote with Milk and other liberals in exchange for getting their votes for his legislation, and the undoing of this loose coalition was a large part of White's undoing.

The city wanted to open a youth treatment center in White's neighborhood, and one of his campaign promises was to block this, claiming that the treatment center would make the streets of his district less safe. Natrually collecting the necessary votes was difficult in part because no one wants to vote against "youth" and in part because if the center wasn't in White's neighborhood, well, where would it be located? No one wanted in in their district, of course. White did find four votes besides his own. After a conversation with Milk, he believed that Milk would vote with him. On the day of the vote, he invited a number of constituents and neighborhood leaders to witness the defeat of the center. Instead, Milk voted against White, claiming that White had misunderstood him. White was humiliated before the supervisors, the press, and his constituents. He never got over this, and at this point began opposing anything Milk proposed, speaking out in the press against the gay community and liberals in general.

In the meantime, Milk's profile and legislative influence was growing, in part because of his visibility in the fight against Proposition 6, which would have barred gays not only from teaching but from holding any job in the California public school system. This story got national attention, as did Milk. While White felt more and more ineffectual, Milk seemed to be more and more powerful. Milk's defining piece of legislation was a civil rights ordinance stating that the city would not discriminate based on sexual preference. It passed with only one dissenting vote: White's. Not only did White feel betrayed by Milk, he felt betrayed by what he thought was his conservative coalition.

In the meantime, White had been required by city law to quit his position as a firefighter once elected. At that time supervisors were considered part-time employees, and White found that he could no longer support his family on the part-time salary. He opened a fast-food restaurant on the newly-constructed Pier 39, but that venture proved backbreaking and was failing. He tried to garner support for a pay raise for supervisors, but no one would introduce or second such legislation.

Feelings of failure as a husband, father, and legislator led White to resign his post at supervisor. We all know what happened next: he reconsidered, asked Moscone to appoint him to the seat he'd just resigned, was rebuffed in part because Milk and other liberals saw the opportunity to get another liberal vote out of the seat, snuck into city hall, killed Moscone and Milk.

To me, his story isn't just of latent homosexuality or of intolerance but also of failure and frustration, and of being on the wrong side of history. It's a tragedy as much as Milk's life ended in tragedy. Milk's story, and Milk the biopic, is history as told from the other, brighter end, where principles we all now believe in have triumphed (or mainly triumphed, considering the success of Proposition 8). White's story, on the other hand, is history as seen by a confused but well-meaning person trying but unable to live through change successfully. I don't defend him, but do try to understand him.