Life During Wartime

What was so immediate, so tremendous, is now, seven years later, just another thing I remember. What was momentous is now a just series of images. It's easy to recall them; it's harder to access all that I felt. How can I describe watching the first tower fall from my mid-town office? Or the way, for 20 minutes, we discussed with disbelief how odd it would look now, with only one tower, only to watch the second turn to dust? How can I describe the walk home, downtown, going against the flow of powder-coated refugees streaming toward the bridges, blank with shock? The emptiness of my neighborhood, the utter quiet that descended, the line of ambulances on First Avenue, the staging ground for triage that turned out to be unnecessary?

Can I describe my friend who perished there, her laugh, her solicitude, her youth? Can I ever communicate the feeling of my neighborhood stripped of traffic but for the fighter planes circling overhead? Even my cat knew things were off-kilter; he took, that week, to peeing in the sink.

The missing posters, the vigils, the slow sense that what could be found had been found and that everything that had fallen apart would someday be put back together. It slips away until it's something we commemorate annually and then pack away for the rest of the year, stored with our American flags, our sense of unity, our common feelings of loss mingled with pride and strength.

Today is the day we make ourselves remember what we promised, all those years ago, to never forget.

Just Put Me in Charge Already

It's Wednesday, which means that readers across the country are turning to the food section of their local paper for recipes and restaurant reviews. Everywhere I've lived, the local paper, from the NY Times to the Washington Post, from the Easton Express to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, would run weekly sections as follows: none on Monday, health/science on Tuesday, food/dining Wednesday, house and garden Thursday, entertainment Friday, none on Saturday, and all of the above Sunday. Why?

I understand publishing these sections one per day in order to get people to buy the paper during the week, so I have no trouble with the underlying theory. Publishing an entertainment section on Friday makes perfect sense: that's the day movies open, so it's the day you'd want to run reviews, and it's the day when people are planning their weekends. It's the day entertainment advertising can be sold to pay for the section. But what makes Thursday home and garden day, Tuesday health day? I can't think of any reason, and my internet search was fruitless.

Grocery circulars and coupons used to be published on Wednesdays, so there was a time when a dining/food section on that day made sense. Circulars and coupons have migrated to Sunday, though, yet the Wednesday dining section persists. Because restaurants are running their ads Friday in the entertainment section and grocery stores on Sunday, the Wednesday dining section suffers from a lack of food-related advertising. Why does the tradition persist?

As far as I can tell no one knows the answer to this. I see it as one more reason the newspaper industry is suffering, another way publishers are clinging to an outdated approach to their business. I suspect the food and gardening sections were once aimed at "ladies," who cooked the meals and tended the rose bushes, and who had nothing better to do on a weekday morning than read the paper. The home sections really belong on Saturday, when people are thinking about home improvement and gardening projects. That's when food sections should also be run, when people are thinking about doing their grocery shopping for the week. Want to sell some papers on Wednesday? Run a gossip/tabloid section featuring Brittney's latest weight gain and breakdown. Want to sell some more on Thursday? Run a section reporting on and reviewing technology, electronics, games.

It's not rocket science.

Palin-polooza

I thought I'd be experiencing withdrawal today, since the conventions are over and the US Open is finished. Thank god for this internet-thingy, where all things Sarah Palin are alive and well. For a good chuckle, I highly recommend that you follow this link to the PalinDrome, a fake Palin blog written by a dedicated impersonator. Really, it's good for at least an hour of amusement.

If you're not in the mood for humor and instead desire a dose of outrage, link over to Women Against Sarah Palin to see some of the reasons women won't vote for just anyone with a pair of breasts.

Finally, I'd like to state for the record that I will not miss Matthews and Olbermann as anchors on MSNBC. I will not miss their annoying voices, I will not miss their pontificating, I will not miss the fact that they are both so in love with their own opinions that they barely allowed the actual commentators air time. It was painful, not wanting to listen to people I tend to agree with. Thank you, MSNBC, for making the election season easier on my ears.

Thank God That's Over

My friends, that was the most boring acceptance speech that I can recall. Unbelievably, I don't even have anything to say. Well, one thing: it's interesting that the Republican candidates are running not only against the Democrats, but also against the Republican party. The only way to "change" Washington, according to McCain and Palin, is to elect another Republican administration. Right. At any rate, the conventions are over, and I get my life back.

Edited to Add...

8. I can use a teleprompter, too.

Palin did a good job delivering a good speech that some good speechwriter produced for her. Then again, I'm not surprised that an ex-sportscaster read her lines correctly. Expectations for her were so low she was bound to end up impressing, and she definitely succeeded in energizing the faithful gathered in the Twin Cities. She didn't win me over, even though she was wearing separates. I spent most of the speech marveling at how much she looked like Tina Fey, and then feeling sorry for Tina Fey, and then wishing that Tina Fey were still on SNL so I could see Tina Fey impersonating Palin.

I spent just as much time thinking about the set dressing and how it must have been planned as a stark contrast to last week's gathering in Denver. Most noticable was the preponderance of "hand-made" signs, giving a down home, grassroots feel to the orchestrated propoganda. Everything about the set was anti-slick, and meant to stand in contrast to the well–oiled image machine that was the DNC. While Palin spoke a slide show of national monuments played behind her in a continuous loop, the symbolic Greek columns that backed Obama replaced with specific images that signify nothing other than "America". "We're the party of just folks," it all intimated, "Those other guys are all high falutin. We're just a bunch of hockey moms who stayed up all night making signs with Travis Jr.'s finger paints."

One final thought: the child with Down's syndrome felt like a prop, handed off from Cindy McCain to First Dude to youngest daughter. I really hope this stops.

The Campaign that Could Have Been

The more I think about McCain's Vice-Presidential pick, the more I'm convinced that a golden opportunity has been wasted. If he had been aware of my utter lack of qualifications I feel certain that he would have made me his running mate. Palin's no heavyweight, but I've got her underweighted. Here, a small synopsis of what I could have brought to the ticket:

1. Never having served as a mayor or governor, I have even less experience than Palin, and in that sense am even more of a Washington outsider. Who better to lead the Senate, or to take over the reigns once Paw-Paw kicks the bucket, than someone whose entire knowledge of foreign policy and national affairs comes from the New York Times?

2. I'm unmarried and childless, and my pets have both been neutered. No tricky pregnancies in my closets! Plus, my dog loves shaking and kissing babies, which is much better on the campaign trail than a surly, knocked-up teenager.

3. I'm not a Republican and I don't even like McCain. What a bold choice I would have made! Who but a bipartisan maverick would choose a random woman from Pennsylvania (a swing state, mind you) who has never voted for a Republican for President as his running mate? Who needs the Republican base? I can bring in a better base because

4. My breasts are bigger than Palin's.

5. I'm currently "between jobs." As such, I understand the economic pain of the American people. Palin already has a job. I also need the generous health insurance Congress provides to itself and to the administration. If elected, one more American will be insured. Adding me to the ticket would therefore demonstrate McCain's dedication to reducing unemployment and expanding healthcare. These items can then be removed from the platform.

6. I'm Jewish, and taller than Joe Lieberman. I also don't have a wife named "Hadassah." I can pass.

7. As a strong, independent woman, the words "pants suit" have never crossed my lips. I'm the post-Hillary woman, not afraid to campaign in separates.

Maybe it's not too late. Read my blog, John McCain, and pick me. I really am the better choice.

High and Low

In today's movies one finds two approaches to comedy. On the one hand we have literate and witty characters whose banter surrounds dramatic events; the comedy is a product of character, not of plot. On the other hand we have comedy entirely driven by plot, either in the form of a genre spoof or through a series of untenable, wacky situations. This second approach features type rather than character; the comedy is produced through action or sight gag. One form is "high," descended from Woody Allen, the other is "low," descended from American Pie. Whether you prefer one or the other approach goes simply to taste. One doesn't work better than the other, in theory. Last night, I saw how drastically different the results could be in practice.

I started my comedy double-feature with Smart People, a film that had somehow garnered some decent reviews last spring. It stars Dennis Quaid as a widowed, depressed, misanthropic professor of Victorian literature; Sarah Jessica Parker as a wounded and neurotic doctor, Quaid's ex-student and love interest; Ellen Paige as Quaid's depressive, caustic, Republican daughter; and Thomas Haden Church as Quaid's "zany" brother. I wish someone had given me a call before this script was green-lighted. I could have easily explained that dumpy, overweight, arrogant, pompous, and depressed English professors are not the stuff of comedy but are instead the stuff of nightmare. A complete lack of social skills and of empathy is very hard to make funny. A love story about two people who can't communicate is not engaging. A daughter who reacts to her mother's death by withdrawing from life and becoming a perfectionist right-winger is not "zany." The film didn't succeed as a comedy, and didn't fare much better as drama, since the sum of Quaid's growth as a human was depicted as his ability to sit in the passenger seat of a car. I'm guessing that this was a big thing because his wife perished in an accident where she was a passenger, but this was one of several mysteries that were never explained.

I followed this with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Here we had no pretense to smartness, no pondering of any of life's questions. It was simply a spoof of the rock bio-pick, and it was, in parts, hysterically funny. It would be worth watching for the Dylan impersonation alone, but when you add in an animated riff on Yellow Submarine and scenes from Dewey's 70s television variety show you end up with a complete triumph of the lowbrow. If there's a lesson in all this it's that sometimes it's better to not try so hard, sometimes it's better to aim low. Sometimes, the stupid is all the more pleasurable simply on account of being stupid.

Another high/low contrast awaits me tonight, this time centered on drama: the premier of the new 90120 followed by the premier episode of the last season of The Shield. Whether 90210 will benefit from a lack of ambitions will be the question of the night.