please judge me

Lady Carpaccio vs. The Queen of Mackie

2010-09-20T20:07:00.005-04:00

What's truly shocking about this picture is not Lady Gaga going carpaccio, but that Cher, 20 years later is still working the "If I Could Turn Back Time" outfit.

I disconnect from technology for a week and this is what happens.

Me and Menachem Begin

2010-08-05T18:26:00.007-04:00

Three days later and three thousand miles away, I'm still thinking about this damn dream I had about Menachem Begin. Unless you know your Israel Prime Ministers of yore, this name means nothing. That's fine. I hadn't a clue or care until I visited the Begin museum in Jerusalem.

Actually when I think about it, my first introduction to him was in the Amos Oz book, "In the Land of Israel." When I asked who Begin was, my question was met with a semi eye roll and a correction, "It's BAY-GIN."

Enough back story. If you really want to hear about Begin, and he is really an interesting and complex figure, do it here.

I came to in the dream and I was sitting across from Begin. We were on low benches on opposing walls. My hands were on my knees and he was in the same position. We were in a bunker of some sort, which was small, a little too warm and completely silent. The air felt thick and the fact that we weren't talking made it really uncomfortable. There wasn't a war outside, I don't think, and I didn't feel as if we were in danger.

I was trying to read Begin's face. I wasn't sure, since I entered the dream mid-conversation, if it was my turn to speak. The inscrutable expression on his face wasn't helping. He was wearing those big clunky black rimmed glasses and it was impossible to see his eyes.

And then somehow I realized that in fact, he was dead. I was sitting in a bunker with a ghost. For whatever reason this didn't scare me. I didn't ask myself if I too was a ghost. I was just trying to think of the right thing to say to the former Prime Minister. He'd had a hard life and complex political legacy. He'd screwed up the war in Lebanon. He never really recovered from the loss of his beloved wife.

And that's when I saw that tears were streaming down his face. He didn't make a sound, his face completely still. He was just so incredibly, deeply sad. That was it. I tried to absorb some of his grief. I had no idea what to say.

It was then that it occurred to me in this silent exchange that he'd come to me because I too was lost in my own sadness. Just me and Begin.

How weird is that?

Double Rainbow

2010-07-12T12:21:00.006-04:00

I find the strangest things touching these days.

The latest is this youtube video titled, "Yosemitebear Giant Double Rainbow." I came across it first while perusing my number one news source, Facebook (a friend had posted it via a friend who had posted via a friend etc) and despite it's length, a whopping 3 minutes and 30 seconds, I watched the whole thing, somewhat in awe. Then I watched it again. And yet a third time.

I won't rob you the experience of seeing it. Just watch. Please.

My ten second google research reveals I'm not the only one who has been moved. Not only does it have upwards of 2 million hits, but it has even inspired a couple musical remixes. Then Jimmy Kimmel featured it. I guess it has "gone viral" as it were.

It is a funny video, this guy having a borderline orgasmic/euphoric/manic reaction to witnessing a double rainbow. But it's more than youtube dumbness. This guy, Yosemitebear, covers the entire gamut of human emotion, from the thrill of discovery, to radical amazement found in natural beauty, to almost disbelief of his reality followed by a kind of existential grief. In short, he laughs, he cries, he records it all.

What's so touching to me is that I, too, go through these mini emotional revolutions/epic psychic journeys every day. That's an inner life, I guess. And to see Yosemitebear's makes me feel somehow less lonely. It's always good to remember looniness is relative.

One F*#ked Up Baby: Toy Story 3

2010-07-09T10:26:00.004-04:00

I thought the 1980's had the monopoly on terrifying children, but after seeing Toy Story 3 in 3D and then spending a night dramatically tossing and turning, my dreams riddled with haunted giant possessed baby nightmares, I will stand corrected.

Perhaps you think it's my own fault for throwing money at the Pixar machine and a just punishment for doing so. You're right actually. But since I did, now I'm going to talk about it.

A number of things, in no particular order.

This movie, completely drenched in irony and proudly flexing its immense powers of self referentiality, reads like one long animated pop culture footnote. It made me wonder what kind of children this produces. Eye rolling toddlers, who knew Tickle Me Elmo before he got big? Or will these kids rebel by being earnest?

And then, who is this movie for? It's too dumb to be for adults really. It's too scary and sardonic to be for kids. Maybe these movies are grooming all of us for perpetual tweendom. Convinced of our intelligence like only a seventh grader could be.

The sitcoms of the 80's scared the shit out of me, to be sure. But at least they were trying to scare me into saying NO! to drugs, to not getting in cars with candy offering, child molesting strangers and to not make fun of those who were disabled because they were just like us.

Toy Story seems to relish being terrifying. A possessed giant baby doll, with one permanently lazy eye isn't horrible enough, so let's put it swinging in moonlight and make it's head spin exorcist style. What's the lesson in that? Don't trust your favorite toy, lest it turn on you Pet Semetary style?

I understand the story of Toy Story is supposed to teach us that at some point we must grow up. That a cartoon illuminates that lesson? Irony unavoidable.

Punky Brewster, The Challenger Space Shuttle and 1980's child scare tactics

2010-05-04T09:16:00.007-04:00

It all began innocently. An overheated friend, who will go by her B-Girl name Tastic, mid-schvitz and still acclimating to New York City summer, commented offhandedly, " I want to climb into my freezer."

And for whatever reason, it flashed me back to an episode of the short lived and hugely important '80's sitcom, "Punky Brewster." The premise of the show- and by the way every 7 year old girl's fantasy- was that Punky was abandoned in a shopping mall by her mother, had no father in the picture to save her and so she is orphaned. I can't explain why the desertion fantasy is so attractive but there's enough examples- Annie, the girls from Facts of Life, the boys from Different Strokes and if you really want to get obscure about it, remember, "Rags to Riches"? to prove it. Developmentally, maybe that's when kids just want to be their own people and think that's only possible with dead parents.

But anyway, Punky gets adopted by a carmudgeonly old guy, with a soft spot for Punky and her equally orphaned dog, Brandon. She makes friends with the kids in her building- a sweet, slightly derelict bunch of neighborhood 8 years olds. Her best friend is Cherie, a gal who's all sass and if I remember correctly had a tough talking city judge for a mother upstairs. Enough back story, I know, but as I recall it, all these stupid details that have been locked in a fault in my brain since 1985 come rushing back.

The story of the episode that sent me back to a panicked, cold sweat kind of flashback was when Cherie got stuck and locked into a refrigerator put out in the trash. No one knew she was trapped. Her air supply was running short. WOULD THEY FIND CHERIE IN TIME?

Of course, they did. A cute little girl with corn rose suffocating in a kitchen appliance surely would have ended the Punky craze.

But this whole memory got me thinking about all a whole series of these cautionary/scare tactic episodes of sitcoms and experiences from my youth.

Remember when on, "Webster" Ma'am was pregnant and fairly graphically lost the baby ? I'll never forget it, the image of her crawling across the floor in agony, in her signature silky pink robe, calling out for George and Webster.

How about when Arnold was molested on, "Different Strokes"?

Or when Tootie almost got sold into prostitution on that very special trip to NYC episode of, "Facts of Life"?

I'm pretty sure somebody got molested on, "Silver Spoons" too, but don't quote me on that.

I really could go on and on here.

The point is the 1980's was Code Orange for kids.

And let's not forget the ultimate scare your children senseless moment, when we all were rounded up by our elementary school teachers to watch the Challenger Space Shuttle take off on TV.

I remember the excitement, "Look kids, this teacher is from New Hampshire! She's the first elementary teacher to go to space!" said Mrs. Simpson, my third grade teacher. I can see still her perfectly feathered, frosted and sprayed bangs, moving in one monolithic piece.

"Let's count down together!"

And all of us, the Punky Brewsters, The Annie's, The Arnolds counted down.

"Three, Two, One. Blast off!" We cheered! So exciting! New England teachers in space!

And then of course, not even after 10 seconds, the whole shuttle blew into a million little bits in front of our 8 year old eyes. No one cried, I think, except the teachers and we were shuffled quickly out of the classroom.

I think, in a way, that was the JFK moment of my childhood.

Anyway, I wonder if other folks went through this. Perhaps I'll start a support group or a book club. More to follow.

Three Rabbis and an Adult Jewish Baby

2010-05-02T15:19:00.008-04:00

It's been awhile since I've had a convert nightmare. I had a series of these germares, or Jewish night terrors, in the lead up to my date with the mikveh.

Conversion was stressful. First, there were the "J-SATS", a series of mostly unanswerable essay questions given to me by my rabbi given beforehand about taking on the yoke of the mitvoth, my relationship to Israel and why I wanted to be Jewish in the first place. I say unanswerable because the only truthful answers led to more questions. Luckily, my questions-with-questions approach passed.

It's not that you can fail really, short of professing Jesus Christ is your saviour, while simultaneously eating bacon wrapped shrimp and denying the Holocaust.

The talk had with my Beit Din (a court of rabbis assembled), the day of my big dip was, much to my relief, fine. No one was there to grill me on whether Kangaroo was kosher or whether I recite the Pirkei Avot while jumping rope.

The actual dip, supervised by a mikveh lady named Gita, was, if nothing else, surreal. If you had told me in the year 2000 I would someday be speaking Hebrew naked whilst dunking in a ritual bath with three rabbis on the other side of the door listening to make sure it's kosher, I would have, well, I don't know what I would have done.

But back to the germare I had two nights ago. The first one since I took the name Elisheva and began my life as a Jewish lady.

The dream began quite innocently, as many horrible dreams do. It was Shabbat. My husband I were hosting 3 very important and pious rabbis and their sheitled wives. Everyone was gathered around the table and I was busy in the kitchen, nervously preparing to bring out the meal. In the other room, I could hear the rabbis deliberating, handing down religious rulings of some kind.

"That can't be right," I thought. "You can't do that on Shabbat." Then my heart began to race. "Can you?"

At this point it's important to mention that I, for some reason, had made a Mexican themed meal, which as I brought it out to the table seemed even to me a weird choice. As I approached with a gigantic steaming bowl of beans, rice and corn, I realized, "Omigod, these rabbis are so pious, they don't eat Kitniyot, even when it's not Passover."

For those, who just got lost on that last paragraph, Kitniyot is a special group of foods (including beans and rice and yes, corn) that are deemed not-kosher-for-Passover for Ashkenzi Jews.

At this point in the dream, I was so horrified, I just shook myself awake. It was just too unbearable, my Kitniyot humiliation.

I have theories on this one but I'll save it for later.

no sleep til midwood

2010-02-17T21:21:00.001-05:00

Highly influential

2009-11-10T14:05:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday Sesame Street

2009-11-10T13:50:00.000-05:00

Ger-mare

2009-11-06T17:37:00.011-05:00

A brand new series of nightmares have been added to my fall psychic prime time schedule. And to be honest, since bad dreams are par for the course, having some fresh things to prevent restful sleep, is better than syndication.

Last night in a dream, I found myself in the kitchen on Shabbat morning. I hadn't made challah bread, which in waking life, is not my habit so who cares. But in the dream, making the braided eggy double manna was my weekly routine. Somehow I had forgotten. The horror.

I was that amazing combination of panicked and paralyzed. Again, awake, I think, who cares? That's what the Zomick's fairy is for.

For what felt like hours and hours, I sat looking at the stove, pondering if I should make it. Weighing the decision. No one was home to witness me break the prohibition and use the oven. Only I would know. But everyone coming to lunch would surely notice if we were sans challah. You can't do shabbat with challah and you can't do challah without heat.

Was it more important, I obsessed, to make the challah or keep the Sabbath.

I don't know if this a specially convertcentric dream or not, but I will file it under ger-mare. Undoubtedly more to follow.

The Way Life Should Be?

2009-11-04T08:19:00.008-05:00

Upon entering the state of Maine, there is a sign on the side of the turnpike, which has befuddled me pretty much all my life.

WELCOME TO MAINE

The way life should be

Huh?

I challenge you to find a more loaded sign. It implies some sort of utopian blueberry picking cross country skiing ideal. A world of tanned Thoreauish utilitarian pragmatists, L.L. Bean boot wearing types, who can preserves for the winter and dine on lobster in the brief summer.

Or you can play the Method actor game with it:

The WAY life should be

The way LIFE should be

The way life SHOULD be

The reality of course is quite different. Not that there aren't truly charming parts of Maine. Eventually, I will write about a childhood that can be best described as growing up inside a Norman Rockwell painting, but not today.

This morning I'm embarrassed. My home state had a chance to make history for marriage equality, but will go down as just another example of what happens when the majority votes on the minority.

I understand that change, the real, lasting kind takes time. But this country didn't desegregate because we voted it so. So this morning, I understand the sign with sadness.

Civil rights is the way life should be, but even in the 21st century, not the way it is.

Sexy Anna Rexia

2009-10-31T14:28:00.007-04:00

No, you're not hallucinating.

Introducing this year's most offensive Halloween costume, "Sexy Anna Rexia."

Certainly no explanation is needed on this one. It's obnoxious. It makes light (pun unavoidable) of a disease that kills people. It's not even clever word play. This costume is akin in tastelessness to sporting a "Mental Lee Retarded" get up.

I was reminded, as I stood slack jawed in the disposable Halloween costume section of my local drug store perusing the sexy pirate/cop/wench/nurse collection, how very little people really get this disorder. Anorexia, while a very different kind of illness, is what schizophrenia was in the 1950's.

Even on this, the High Holiday of inappropriate, Anna Rexia is too much. And this coming from a girl who has gone as a topless Gyro girl.

Moammar Khadafy and David A Paterson: Same Man?

2009-09-15T19:20:00.003-04:00

You decide.

My smartest thought of 2009

2009-09-11T17:16:00.005-04:00

About a week ago, maybe two, I woke up and had my smartest thought of 2009. So smart, in fact, I'm still somewhat trying to decode it.

Usually I rise with a jolt, prompted by my own personal psychic starter pistol and I'm off to the races mentally. A sped up scroll of the things to be done, what's left to do from yesterday's scroll, the things I'm dreading, maybe something good is on the roster, something embarrassing I did or fear I'll do, all the while digesting the series of bizarro dreams I just had. It would be a panic attack except I'm too tired. Waking up has always been traumatic.

Back to my smartest thought. I was waking, but there was no starting pistol. It was calm; a sedate swimming through honey, surfacing from sleep feeling, my beau's unbelievable snoring in the distance was even soothing. And eyes still closed, a massive mental supertitle appeared:

WITHOUT MEMORY, THERE CAN BE NO CONSCIENCE.

Weird, right? Who thinks that at 6am?

I rolled over and pretended to wake my beau with a kick by accident.

"I just had my smartest thought of 2009."

I repeated the phrase slowly to him like some kind of loony tune soothsayer.

His response, that kind of half snore/choke men do.

"Who said that?" Surely I was regurgitating.

"Jonathan Sacks?" He offered, probably praying I'd shut up.

"No, me I think."

The true irony is, of course, I meant to get up straight up and I write about it, but forgot. Or I fell back asleep. Or I got lost in the more mundane less super supertitles. I honestly can't recall.

Anyway, I remembered about an hour ago and it still seemed smart. If nothing else, an esoterically perfect sentiment for High Holidays.

Now that I'm Jewish

2009-08-19T10:19:00.010-04:00

Now that I'm Jewish (at least as far as the Conservative movement is concerned) I feel the same kind of disorientation I had when I first returned from studying in Prague at the turn of the century(Yikes, but I had to say it. You understand.). I had fallen out of the regular lock step hipster rhythm of New York City, after striking dramatic poses and giving serious cheekbone across snowy Central Europe.

In Praha, I was mostly cut off from pop culture, unless you count the steady and relentless thump of that one fucking Cher song popular in 1999. I was attempting to learn Czech, not that this Americhanka ever got beyond the absolute survival basics like, Beer please, Another please. Marlboros Please. (Marlboros in Czech is still Marlboros, though drastically cheaper) I actually spoke more French than anything, since the African Hash dealers tended to be comfortable en francais. Et moi aussi.

I was more concerned with the plays of Havel and golems than Stella Adler and Patricia Fields. I didn't watch t.v. really. I went to the opera instead, mostly alone, because it was cheap, made me feel European and tragic, dressed up in my single box at the Statni Opera House, watching Nabucco.

I've spent most of the last year and half in another kind of single box; reading Jewish books, studying Jewish thought, beginning to observe Shabbat and holidays and learning Hebrew(which rivals Czech in bitchiness). I've been basically immersing myself in all things Judaica until the final immersion in the Mikveh. I've done less reality television watching, I've spent less time searching out obscure music that is about to be hip, hell, I can't remember the last time I broke out my leg warmers.

It's not that these things are no longer me or that they aren't important (The Wendy Williams Show, is a perfect example of new important ironic likes) but they had taken a temporary back burner.

But now that the JSATS are behind me and my dunk done, I'm recollecting myself, if that makes sense. I wonder how I integrate the Liz of before with the Liz of now. I'm thinking about how I marry the somewhat observant me with the historically iconclastic me. Constantly trying to catch up with myself seems to be an ongoing project.

I'll keep you posted.

Are you there GdashD, it's me Elisheva

2009-07-28T20:31:00.015-04:00

Two weeks ago today, I became Jewish.

At approximately 10:25 am on the 22nd of Tammuz in the year 5769 on west 72nd street between Broadway and West End Avenue, I dipped three times in the Upper West side mikveh (my local Jewish ritual bath) and entered into the covenant. Naked, chin deep in warm, slightly chemically, totally religious water, my friend Dvora at the mikveh's tiled edge cheering me on as I wept through prayers in Hebrew, a mikveh lady named Gita proclaimed after a final successful immersion,

"KOSHER!"

Ritual dipping, by the way, is harder than it looks. One must submerge completely whilst not allowing feet or hands to touch the side of the small pool. Never mind that the impossible Hebrew language must be recited between dips and somewhere in the back of one's mind, one knows that a block away people are shopping at Fairway.

As I emerged from the sacred waters newly Elisheva, blubbering, "Baruch atta...." New Yorkers outside were boarding city buses, hailing cabs, chewing gum, pushing baby strollers. being normalish, having an ordinary day.

Pulling me back into semi reality, Gita took my newly Jewish baby cheeks in her hands, peered into my face as if I were a crystal ball and she was reading me:

"YOU ARE NOW A BEAUTIFUL JEWISH GIRL!"

And then of course, "BE GOOD!"

I've done some fairly radical things in my life, but this is definitely in the top three. Much more on this to follow.

My worst fantasy

2009-06-19T12:39:00.013-04:00

I would like to share some of my worst fantasies. Daydreams really, except they're disturbing. Daymares, if you will.

I do this somewhat hesitantly, offer a ringside seat to my psyche that is, because though I know they are telling of something about me, I'm not exactly sure what. I offer a window in anyway because at worst, no one cares about my reoccuring terror montages and at best, you have some too.

Everyone has a certain sort set of morbid disaster scenarios, I'm convinced. And by everyone, I mean New Yorkers. And by New Yorkers I mean those on the west side. There are the sprawlingly cinematic big budget global apocalyptic kind, usually experienced on the subway, going over a suspension bridge or on a transatlantic flight. These often involve fireballs whipping through tunnels, odorless poison gases and wildly infectious flesh eating diseases. And then there are more loca-horrors, small scale home grown nightmares, the insidious little imagined machinations that can happen anywhere.

Let me explain. Or better yet, let me just tell you one.

Like all other fledgling starry eyed, painfully earnest and perpetually stoned actors in New York City who study The Method, I've spent a great deal of time in acting studios. You know the kind, floor to ceiling mirrors, nondescript splintery black wooden boxes, ballet bars. The landscape speckled with borderline suicidal thespians, usually found in some sort of a stretch and waxing socialist about The Group Theater.

Actors are constantly stretching. Actors adore being relevant. I don't why this is.

Anyone who has ever gone to a Method acting school also knows that 98% of the student body teeters perpetually on the verge of suicide. Not that any of them will or do in a straightforward way. Drugs, drink and keeping your weight just this side of organ failure are the scenic route to self destruction. But anyway.

It's the resigned state of a future without stability, I guess, and with a krabillionth of a fraction chance at The Big Time.

I was one these types- a stretching socialist lunatic. Deep down I still am I suppose in some ways, with my energies redirected more to page than stage. But back in the day, I had this one recurring worst fantasy.

Usually it would happen just after yoga warmup and before a long day spent in the studio. It was not uncommon in those days (I say this like the late nineties were ancient times) to spend ten hours a day rehearsing in dance pants, memorizing Shakespeare and decoding Chekhov, perfecting my breathing and sneaking out to the fire escape for cigs. It was in some ways ideal, going to acting school. I was like an adult baby; learning to walk and talk all over again. Being told that Ibsen mattered, that the work mattered.

In other respects it was heinous. Having to witness fellow students regurgitate their most painful childhood molestation memories in the form of an acting exercise, being graded on pretending to be a tree, wincing through acting teachers berating ingenues on questionable talent and small tits, these are things I miss less.

Okay. The worst fantasy. I would walk into the bathroom post-yoga warm up and for a flash of a second I would expect to see a fellow actor hung from the ceiling. Not like by invisible Peter Pan Sandy Duncan hanging wires, but by a rope. A noose. Two leg warmed legs swinging as I would open the door. My heart would skip every time, expecting to discover the scene.

This obviously never happened in reality, praise Adler. And I still don't know why I had this daymare. It's much funnier when I tell it aloud, I swear.

derekh shiksa: part one

2009-04-19T09:13:00.011-04:00

To kvetch or not to kvetch

That will never be my option

I admit to being one of those ethnically Christian gals who professed a love of matza. And while I'm being honest here, I'll also confess to being so excited for Pesach that I couldn't even wait until Passover to open the Kosher for Passover Cheerios. I've since learned the dread, not exuberance, is a more common sentiment among those observant.

The night before the holiday began, a time when you're supposed to be rooting out those last morsels of chametz with a feather and a candle, I was watching the Daily Show and happily chomping on my first bowl of kosher cereal. So what if it had the texture of corrugated cardboard and flavor of a manilla folder, my kitchen was already sterile enough for surgery, let holidays begin!

But after 8 days of chametzlessness, I realize I should have been more specific.

I love matza when it's 3am, I've 2 or 3 too many scotches and only after I've eating everything else not nailed down in my beau's kitchen.

But before you pleasejudge yourself away, remember it was my first attempt to go unleavened. This was my first Passover. I may be, at least physically and legally an adult, but in all things Jewish, I am like an adult kindegartener. There is a joy in starting from scratch, make no mistake. Reading, writing, and speaking a new language, especially such a bitchy one like Hebrew, is full of small triumphs. A holiday is still exciting for me.

One last goyish admission, I tried to make a matza bread house, or tenement I called it. I learned, something everyone else figured out pre- bat mitzvah, matza is not a structurally sound building material.

In the end, I was successful in my matzaness, but now slightly bloated and not quite as psyched for the next 15th of Nissan, a few miscellaneous thoughts.

1. I understand the symbolism of eating matza. It's a very tactile way of connecting with history. It's the tradition, so who I am to argue with 2,000 plus years of it. However, and I know this from many many years of expensive Upper East therapy, a traumatic event in childhood is often repeated throughout the course of one's life. As a gentleman pointed out at my first night seder, one who has an especially strong disdain for the holiday, "We made the bread correctly. We were waiting for it to rise!!!" Again, I understand Passover won't change but aren't we retraumatizing ourselves?

2. I will never be able to genuinely kvetch. This is the derekh shiksa, or way of the ethnic Christian, one who chooses a Jewish life. Choosing is a powerful and empowering thing, but it doesn't leave much room for complaining. But I think I've found a loophole: to kvetch about not being able to kvetch.

3. The most important realization: The seder I attended this year was hosted by an obviously brilliant, genuinely funny and hugely gracious gay couple in New Haven. It may be the first positive thing that has ever happened to me in Connecticut. I was nervous, mostly because of my ineptitude even after 1 1/2 of study, but also because the feast was to be vegan. What would we eat? With no meat, dairy, eggs or fish, I imagined noshing on tinfoil, parsley and charoset.

The meal turned out to be excellent- the traditional lamb shank bone on the seder plate replaced by a flower, a special kiddie Haggadah for me and showtunes that marvelously accommodated the word, Halachic. It was like no other seder I had ever attended. I was thrilled to be included at the "big kids" table.

But more, as I sat, laughing, reclining, retelling the story of Exodus with all these folks; one, a molecular biologist, atheist and Sondheim lover, his polyglot gourmet chef partner, who let me light the special holiday candlesticks, the Rav Tastic, a writer, bgirl, my Hebrew teacher and friend, who stood up on her chair to deliver part of the four questions and the very drunk woman sat across from me, who confided with a wink in her voice, "I just don't get on with non-Jewish women, do you know what I mean?"

that there are a lot of ways to be Jewish.

And that I will find my own way.

PEEP SHOW

2009-04-12T18:18:00.002-04:00

Because I know you love a little interfaith humor

2009-04-11T13:13:00.008-04:00

Shkhin

Plague 6: boils

Ever wondered what happens when you type in PEEPS and PESACH into google? Well, I did.

The search results exceeded all expectations. For the many manifestations of marshmallow stricken with the 10 plagues of Egypt, click here.

Chag Pesach Sameach!

Two Easters and Pesach

2009-04-10T12:06:00.027-04:00

Growing up my family celebrated Easter twice a year. One was a WASPy amalgam of ham, Cadbury eggs, and the Easter bunny. It didn't occur to me the absolute lunacy of a human sized rabbit breaking into my house at night and eating half a carrot and sugar cookies. Or maybe it did, but I suspended my disbelief for the day-glo Peeps and plastic woven drugstore baskets teeming with equally not-biodegradable synthetic grass left in it's wake. In retrospect, breaking and entering is a common theme of Christian holidays.

The second, usually the following week, was a Byzantine blend of lamb stew, eggs dyed a uniform deep crimson and sweet loaves of braided bread with a lucky coin inside. This always struck me as dangerous. We pulled out the big dining room table for these affairs to accommodate the massive meal. And of course, all the Greeks and an equally colossal set of personalities; two Yia Yias (grandmothers), a Thea (aunt), uncles and cousins. Competing conversations, which inevitably devolved into screaming matches, were held in Greek and English over spanokopita, lamb, pilafi, and of course Greek salad. I marvel at my mother's ability to cook such an "ethnic" feast- one not native to her New Hampshire Episcopalian upbringing. My job was to arrange the fruit bowl, which I made a painstaking task, naturally.

Neither had anything to do with Jesus.

I knew that essentially the holiday had to do with a dead guy rising from the dead and, after repeated questioning of what the hell that meant, let the subject drop.

"It's a metaphor, Elizabeth."

20 years later, I celebrate another metaphor, Pesach. It makes sense for me. No questioning is dropped. My brother, the father, Adam, who is studying to be priest in Peru, is in his busy season. And as different as he and I are, we do share a love of Jewish men (albeit from different millenniums).

My journey was inspired by a man, without question, but it is the tradition itself that has sustained it. It takes something more powerful than affection to attempt to learn Hebrew. As for my brother, I admit, I don't get it. I'd blame it on my parents, but at 30 years old the statute of limitations on bad parenting is decidedly up.

But we do share the experience, nonetheless, of those dual Easters of childhood. And admittedly, where I do not miss the esoteric metaphor of Ressurection, I feel sad that he and I have so little now in common.

Sure, the G20 is important but

2009-04-03T10:56:00.006-04:00

As I mentioned in a prior post, Michelle Obama: Fashion Fantasia, following the victory over the dark lords/kings of comedy of the Bush Administration last November, one of the things I most looked forward to was Lady M. catwalking us back into glory. I anticipated and hoped she would restore dignity to the post of First Accessory, I mean, Lady.

Another thing I hoped for was that she would give France's First Femme Fatale/Nico-in-training, a run for her Euro.

Well, here it is, as reported (and I use that word loosely) on the Huffington Post. Or HuffPo, for those too hip to waste the breath on all those syllables. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a slideshow.

Bon Appetit!

Josef Fritz and Bernie Madoff: A Solution

2009-03-20T11:42:00.009-04:00

Undoubtedly, you've heard of Josef Fritz, the Austrian uber-sadist, recently convicted of crimes so beyond heinous against his daughter, no punishment will ever fit the scope of the crime.

And without question, you've caught wind of Bernie Madoff, who was also recently convicted of crimes of very very different nature, but again with a prison sentence that will never be adequate for the damage he caused and the lives he ruined.

The question becomes: what would be/is a proper way to punish them? And even then, if we tarred, feathered, and whatever else horrible things we could think to do, would it ever be enough?

Elie Wiesel suggested Madoff should be forced to watch a constant scroll of victims images for the rest of his life. I like this idea, except that for the punishment to be successful, you must first have a conscious.

I don't know what the Austrian people believe should be done with Fritz, but I imagine they have no shortage of ideas and ways to torture him. Culturally speaking, if you'll excuse the generalization, they seem to be good at that.

My solution:

I propose that Mr. Fritz and Mr. Madoff should be confined together. However different their crimes may be, they share acts so beyond the pale (and wives who most certainly knew what they were doing) that they deserve each other. Let them share an 8x10 cell and spend the rest of their days out together.

My cellphone (Z"L) or How I almost died from Hebrew

2009-02-24T19:56:00.011-05:00

Last night, I almost died from Hebrew. Learning it, that is.

There have been moments over the past couple months, as I struggled to learn a whole new alphabet and read it backwards, that I believed I might die of it. But never did I think my tendency towards ancient Greek hyperbole would almost become an Upper West Side modern Jewish reality.

As I mentioned before, dying an ironic death is among my worst fears and surely this would qualify. And to make it doubly ironic, I have many times mused out loud, publicly, brazenly, smugly and without knocking on wood, that I could not conceive how someone could fall onto subway tracks (barring drunkenness). "Ridiculous!" said I.

Well, I very nearly became a NY Post Police Blotter snippet for tempting the fates so.

The setting: A crowded subway platform on west 103rd street.

The players: Me, Various Disinterested Commuters and One Good Samaritan

The action: Waiting for the 1 train.

Me, a flurry of multitasking; busily texting, reading a book called, "Hebrew Talk: 101 Hebrew Roots and the Stories They Tell" and pulling two pieces of my favorite sugar-free gum Cool Colada out of my bag. I could hear the train coming down the pike. I could feel that hot subterranean breeze of an impending train. I was savoring that synthetic Miami-in-your-Mouth taste that is Cool Colada. I was learning about the power of the Hebrew word, elef.

Then it gets a little hazy. I know I dropped my phone. I know I could now see the fuzzy halo of a headlight in the tunnel. I remember watching the phone bounce across the yellow do-not-cross-idiot line painted on the tiled floor.

Then like an urban lunatic possessed, one who cannot conceive of getting a new phone, let alone lose all those phone numbers, I inched towards the yellow line. My bag, which was heavy with a day's worth of city living, shifted forward as I bent down and I lost my balance. Not like, "Oopsy- should've worn more sensible shoes", but like, " Oh fuck. I'm the girl who dies under the IRT."

But then a man, an angel really, grabbed me firmly around the waist from behind as I teetered. If it had been any other circumstance, I would classify his grasp as borderline erotic. But he was saving me. Being saved is kind of erotic, actually.

Anyway, now slightly shaken but alive, I thanked the man and the subway doors slid open. He and the Various Disinterested Commuters boarded the train unfazed. There was a kind of New York crisis averted and now get on with your life feeling, almost like this big dramatic thing hadn't happened.

And there I was, alone on the platform, and had a very eerie feeling. As strange as it may seem, I started to panic that I had actually died. "Omigod," I thought, "I've died and this is what happens. The afterlife is going to be roaming the 7th avenue subway platform for eternity."

It's not logical, I know, but see how you feel after almost dying by subway car. My only solution was to run up the stairs to street level and have my existence verified by someone. Anyone.

And there stood my perpetual port in the storm, the frozen dessert Oasis, Tasti D Lite. I went in, my existence was acknowledged, praise Allah and I ordered. I was alive and had 12 ounces of Peanut Butter Tasti to prove it.

My Hebrew teacher, the Rav Tastic Dvora, thinks I shouldn't take it as Greek omen to stop learning the Alef Beis, as I interpreted it, but perhaps I should now study only sitting down.

Love is a Ponzi Scheme

2009-02-14T14:13:00.006-05:00

Due to the technical ineptitude of PleaseJudgeMe, "Love is A Battlefield," does not automatically play while you read this post. The video can be found below.

Ever since it was uncovered Bernie Madoff made off with however many krabillions of dollars it was, I admit I've been a little Ponzi obsessed. In fact, it has completely replaced my most recent overused non-word, "bloggable".

Every article of speech has been Ponzified. For example:

"Omigod, he so Ponzied you."
"I don't know, it just felt kind of Ponzi-ish."
"What a Ponzi!"

It gets worse. Two mornings ago, I woke with the First Lesbian of Rock, Pat Benetar, and the classic 80's anthem, "Love is a Battlefield," in my head. The problem is, as the song played on repeat in my head, Battlefield was replaced by, you guessed it, Ponzi Scheme.

It was funny for the first five minutes. Then it became annoying. I listened to equally, if not more addictive songs, that couldn't be Ponzified, with the hope of skipping my internal record. I turned to Sir Elton, knowing that ,"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" is like the symphonic version of SARS. No luck. Desperate, I actually bought the 4 Non Blondes song, you know the one, figuring however toxic, would keep me humming, "What's Going On" until spring. Again, "Love is a Ponzi Scheme" kept on returning.

But then last night around 4am, I untangled myself from my beau's arms to write, still Ponzi-ing my Ponzi off, and realized maybe there's a reason I can't stop.

Maybe love is a Ponzi Scheme. Big Bernie M. not only succeeded in robbing people blind, but maybe more astonishingly, he was able to trick presumably smart and savvy folks into trusting him. Trust is how he did it.

So, in the name of optimism on Valentine's Day, perhaps it's better to say: love has the potential to be the ultimate Ponzi scheme, but that's a lot harder to set to a tune.

2009-02-14T14:11:00.000-05:00

A Room of My Own

2009-02-06T10:01:00.004-05:00

It has been nearly five years since I've had my own four walls and a door to close. Longer still, if you count the year prior spent bouncing in and out of Camp Cupcake, hiding my mandatory butter pats and outsmarting beefy night nurses, whom I lovingly referred to as the Gestapo.

But now a half of a decade later, back to fighting weight and all the wiser, nestled in my cozy little room and listening to the rattling radiator, I sit half typing, half staring out my lovely big window. Even the grimy alley and small, sad urban garden below fills me with optimism.

I am less lonely in my solitude here than I ever was camping out on my Auntie Maim's utopian rent control floor. Or certainly confined to bunk-rest at the Camp Whack-a-jobba.

I remain slightly hesitant to discuss my battle with an eating disorder and don't expect anyone to understand, since I hardly did myself. I am still unpeeling that onion, as it were. I can only report what it felt like; a perpetual 3rd person existential nightmare, a martial Murphy's law, where I was as unrecognizable mentally as I was physically to myself. But I digress anorexically,

My virtual pen continues to creep back to that time, as I sort through the rubble of my 20's, but for now I am focused forward- on both my lovely, grated window and the future. I am soothed by the hissing heat and blessed for another day and chance to be miserable.

Operation Nicorette Cut Back

2009-01-16T14:48:00.007-05:00

372 days ago, I quit smoking. I remember quite clearly all those 8928 hours ago, standing on the corner of 57th and 9th, wind whipping up in a mighty crosstown gust from the Hudson, as I attempted to hail a cab, talk on my cell, have a panic attack, and chew Nicorette simultaneously.

I remember how beyond badly I wanted to quit quitting cigarettes. I remember being paralyzed on the corner, a frantic mass of multitasking, unable to decide whether to go home, to the Village(my spiritual home), or swan dive into the Hudson. I was unable to decide anything. Smoking allowed me the space to deliberate and without it, I was lost.

In my usual extreme and highly romantic way, I had decided I would only quit once. I would be encouraged by a perfect record, by my toughness at going cold turkey, but mostly by the story I would tell later about how I succeeded. I do this with a lot of things- I write the story first and then attempt to live it. Sometimes it works.

I told myself that if I could keep a perfect record, I was allowed to chew as much Nicorette for as long as I wanted and up until I read a thing in the Times saying nicotine straight up was still bad for you, I thought I would just pull an Imus and chew myself into my twilight years.

But now, a year later having gained equally useless habits, it's time I say goodbye to the chew. Wish me luck.

Chanukah smackdown

2008-12-28T20:42:00.020-05:00

Perhaps in the truest spirit of Chanukah, a fellow Upper West Side Bloggette has called my partially Spartan Greek self (genetically residing in my eyebrows and temper mostly ) out.

"Tastic", as she called up here in the Pussy Precinct (so named by neighborhood cops), is aside from being a writer and antagonizer of innocent semi-Hellenes, a b-girl, an ex-pat Orthodox woman of the Jewish persuasion, and occasionally a very nice person. For the purposes of this post, I rename myself Feta and will strike a warlike Athena pose.

Let the smackdown commence.

Apparently, Tastic and friends were discussing over a lovely shabbat meal, the Jewish laws of Harchakot, which state a man must keep a healthy distance from a woman if she is bleeding. Not exactly challah talk, but anyway. Basically, and I'm still very much a student, this rule means no sex for once a month for 7 days or so. However. It also can mean for the wildly observant, the prevention of a husband/soon-to-be-dad to be in a delivery room of his wife/soon to-be-mother of his child. The question arose: if it's a no- sex rule, why in GdashD's name would a couple be screwing in the Delivery Room?

Good question. It was decided by the shabbatniks that, if that were to happen, it would be the ultimate Oedipal triangle. Dad on Mom on Newborn. Remember, I had no part in this discourse.

The challenge is this: To find something more Oedipal. You're Greek, said she.

Here's the deal, I've racked my proudly depraved brain for all eight days of the festival of Light. A holiday, which essentially celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple, but not before kicking some serious Greek ass for making Jews get their Zeus on. Enter irony stage right.

But while I'm getting historic about it, there was a time when ancient Jews and Greeks coexisted fairly sanely, before the crazy King Antiochus had to go and pull the idol worship stuff. But I digress, hellenically.

In short, I cede to my Jewish counterpart, my little Miss Maccabee, on the last night of Chanukah, just as it was done some 2,ooo plus years ago or so. You definitely have the sicker mind. My people never thought to make it a menage-a-trois. We've progressed, I promise.

So to all of you, from Feta, a partial Spartan who has lit her very first menorah this year, Happy Chanukah, all 18 ways you spell it. Exit irony stage left.

Code Tasti

2008-12-10T15:20:00.010-05:00

We live in an age of alerts.

There's the color coded terror kind. There's the Amber Alert child abduction variety. Then there's that weird, jarring, old school t.v. broadcasting alert which makes one wonder: What would/will happen if for once it said, "THIS IS NOT A TEST".

In short, there aren't many warnings that do anything but inspire hording a water supply, grabbing a flashlight, and hiding the children.

But then came Tasti D-Lite.

Just when you thought frozen dessert couldn't get any easier, Tasti has announced Flavor Alerts. Got a favorite flave- no problem- let them know and you'll be notified via text when it's featured. Want to know what's on tap at your local frozen paradise? Just check your email.

Forget that these alerts are like the crack dealer who knows where you live and buzzes you to see if you need more rock, I love it. Tasti is my rock and I look forward to the text that reads:

CHOCOLATE NY CHEESECAKE & PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE. XO TDL

Malachy's Blues

2008-12-04T23:47:00.006-05:00

I got an incredible case of the Malachy's Blues tonight.

It was less of the classic mournful rainy day sing into your Guiness kind that the joint is famous for. The place is a gem, albeit in need of a polish, and is one of the last great Irish with a capitol I, Erin Go Braugh, dives on the Upper West Side, There's a bartender named Fenton with a bonafide brogue, if you know what I mean.

It's like Cheers only dirtier, and if Sam Malone was a mean, barking brogue speaker who teaches Catholic school during the day, and I played both the parts of Carla and Diane.

Back to my blues, since this is my narcissistic blog.

I was pouring two thick pints of Guiness somewhere around 8- an activity I generally find really Zen- and waves of something kept rising in me. Nothing was wrong. I felt okay, but the tears were beginning to brim. So much so in fact, that I did that dumb thing you do when you're about to cry- open your eyes bigger and bigger with the hope that if the eye socket is big enough it will somehow stop the sob.

Maybe I'm becoming Irish.

I am prone to ethnic osmosis. In the dark days of Williamsburg, I assumed a very cracked out Puerto Rican persona. In the East Village I was especially bitchy in that Ukranian way. And the Upper West Side, my current locale, has provided the neurotic/natural fit of the Jewishish writer/actor, who scribbles notes about her misery in dark dank pubs called Malachy's.

Maybe it was the jukebox barrage of classic NYC suicide songs that had me down. There's only so many times one can hear, "New York State of Mind." Or perhaps it was the same old sweet, slightly pathetic crowd of career alcoholics that line the bar. Everyone has their unofficial assigned seat and if someone is missing, it goes noticed, This bar is their living room, life, and their family.

But probably it was just the sometimes overwhelming feeling that life is relentless and I too am relentless and tired and I wish to never serve another pint of anything for the rest of my life.

Then again, it could just be hormones.

Whate'er it be, I've got the Malachy's blues. Oh yah.

An Example of Aggressive Merriment

2008-11-30T13:10:00.002-05:00

To experience SGAD, please listen here:

08 Carol of the Bells.m4a

Seasonal Greetings Affective Disorder

2008-11-29T10:13:00.013-05:00

Q: What is SGAD?

A: Seasonal Greetings Affective Disorder is a very real, often misdiagnosed psycho-seasonal condition, prompted by the consumer crazed red, green and sometimes blue nightmare known as the Holidays.

Symptoms include manic merriment, Macy's induced rapid heart rate, cold sweats and dizziness in Banana Republic dressing rooms, and disassociation triggered by most commonly, any version of "Carol of the Bells". The scent of evergreen, Yankee candles, and various other festive Christian potpourris are also common panic inducers.

No, SGAD is not actors union.

Q: Who gets SGAD?

A: Everyone. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics. Even Wiccans. Especially Wiccans. Those living closest to departments stores or other consumer hubs with insidious holiday jingle soundtracks are most affected.

Q: How is SGAD treated?

A: PleaseJudgme recommends picking the perfect Tonya Harding get up- from leg warmers to earmuffs to peppermint flavored lipgloss- and ice skating, followed by binge hot toddy drinking, and then a visit to the Bergdorfs window display after midnight.

SOMALI PIRATES ARE SO RETRO

2008-11-18T08:45:00.007-05:00

A return to piracy- not the cyber type but the good old fashion high seas kind- is weirdly refreshing.

We've become so 9/12 code orange about things on dry land, it's nice to remember that terror is waterproof. I'm not condoning it, but I welcome the change of pace.

But since these days, barring Somali bandits, pirates are generally reserved for Halloween or hung from the perfectly chiseled cheekbones of Johnny Depp, what will the next acceptable symbol of terror to dress up as or make a kid's movie about?

Is hope the death of comedy?

2008-11-13T13:22:00.004-05:00

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Saks once wrote, "Humour is the first cousin of hope."

And if the last eight years has taught America anything, it's that misery is also a close relative- maybe the pervy Uncle.

But I wonder, and I wonder if other like minded Bruce Valanches-in-training wonder, now that we begin a new era of hope- is this the death of comedy?

I think probably not. But I admit to slightly missing the easy targets like Palin.

And so I will take solace in the words of a great Israeli psychiatrist,

"Don't worry, Leez, you'll always be miserable."

Michelle Obama: Fashion Fantasia

2008-11-11T09:53:00.006-05:00

There are a multitude of ways in which America has to redeem it's image, we know it. The election proved how desperately we want a 50 state facelift. America has spoken, we need a major fashion makeover.

There's our pesky blatant disregard for the Geneva convention that must somehow be atoned for, our negligence in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and that war in Iraq, you might have heard about it. Oh, and that guy, who did lines in the 80's, couldn't even run a baseball team, and proved even an idiot can go to Yale.

Hopefully, the next four years will take us back from tarnished to burnished. And I think Michelle Obama is going to be just the fashion forward first lady to catwalk us back into glory.

I welcome a first lady that knows how to work it. I need a Jackie O part two. But secretly, I just really want someone to give Carla Bruni-Sarkozy a run for her Euro.

geek critique: correction appended

2008-11-06T14:03:00.009-05:00

You've got to love feedback.
A gentle reader has alerted me to the fact that, in my CNN hologram posting, I used the wrong joke. The proper one would have been, "Help me Wolf Blitzer, You're my Only Hope." This is line from Stars Wars, I guess.

The Star Trek allusion, while Baby Boomerish, I believe still works.

In any case, I've asked for it.

Please Judge Away.

Beam me up Wolf Blitzer!

2008-11-05T12:42:00.002-05:00

VOTING and VICTORY and VIBRATORS, Oh My!

2008-11-05T07:26:00.012-05:00

Forget that free Starbucks coffee or Ben and Jerry's ice cream cone you got for voting, Babes in Toyland is handing out free vibrators through November 11th, to all those patriotic and randy urban ladies (and their prostrate-centric brothers) who cast a ballot.

Here's to a sexy four years!

Me and Paul Rudd

2008-11-01T08:49:00.009-04:00

Last night I dreamt that I met and then promptly married Paul Rudd in Las Vegas.

This is a fantasy because:

1. He's Paul Rudd. Famous Hollywood actor. Husband. Father.

2. I never date actors.

The reasons for my no-actor policy are aplenty.

A. There aren't enough mirrors in the world for both us.

B. When said actor and I inevitably break-up, having to watch him on primetime television and then again and again in syndication, doesn't exactly promote the healing process. I'm speaking hypothetically, of course,

C. Actors are bonkers. I know because I am one.

But somehow in the REM state of Nevada, I overlooked his thesbian-ness. Please judge away, but can you blame me?

That chest, my Lord.

"SNEAKERNIGHT": A Dirty Secret Pleasure

2008-10-30T10:31:00.006-04:00

to chillax or not to chillax

2008-10-26T09:42:00.011-04:00

To chillax or not to chillax

Who the hell came up with this word?

This is age of language amalgams.

Languamalgams.

Brangie Frenemy TomKat Staycation Edutainment Recessionista.

I feel like the poor hipster's William Sapphire here, but someone has to do it.

Chillaxing, for those who don't know or couldn't figure it out, is the clever combination of the words, chilling and relaxing. As in, "We rolled a splif and are now chillaxing." It can also be a directive, as in, "Chillax! You're making me nervous."

My thorough 10 second google research reveals the first usage was in 2003, in the film, "Final Destination 2". According to the three people I polled (including myself), one person claims to have heard it first in Maine, another in the Georgia, and the third discovered it in the vast virtual chasm known as Facebook.

My next etymological quest: HOT MESS.

Stay tuned.

Move Over Judy Blume

2008-10-14T22:07:00.005-04:00

Ever wonder who actually writes Young Adult novels? I mean, what does Christopher Pike really look like? And Judy Blume, you don't know, could be that tranny sat next to you on the 1 train. Carolyn Keene, forget it, she had to be a freak.

Well, get ready to be jealous. I know one. Yes, a tranny, but also a YA novelist. His name is David Van Etten, and his book, All that Glitters, "drops" as the kids say, today. And besides from being a totally delightful yum of a read, it's also by far the most homoerotic teen book jacket I've ever seen.

Go out and get two.

THE WINK EFFECT

2008-10-11T08:47:00.010-04:00

I promised myself this week I wouldn't make another Palin joke.

Call it a Rosh Hash resolution.

The reasons for this pledge are aplenty, Highlights include:

1.My brain has turned into a 24 hour Palin pun generator, leaving my other obsessions to suffer.

2.Making fun of her ever rising bouffant, her sexy librarian style glasses, her rumored tattooed on lip liner- no matter how much I disagree with her politics- is no better than using Hillary's pantsuit as a punchline.

HOWEVER.

I've rationalized that this isn't a comedy bit. It's an observation. It's a cautionary tale.

It happened last night. I was, once again, reprising the thankless role of sultry benchwench at Malachy's on 72nd street. My interpretation of the part is an amalgam of Carla and Diane from Cheers, with a dash of Mae West, if you don't like dirty Irish bars or get uptown much. Thank God I went to acting school.

I noticed, as I delivered teeming pints of Bud, sloppy oozing pitchers of Stella, cleared decimated baskets of cheese fries, and most importantly, dropped checks, that I was winking.

A lot.

It appears that I've subconsciously incorporated this bit of visual punctuation into my cocktailer schtick. This is, no doubt, Sarah Palin's influence/fault.

"Here ya go boys. These ones are on me." WINK

"Two shots of Jaeger. Did ya know my middle name is Yeager?" WINK

"Corned beef on rye? You betcha." WINK.

I look forward to November 5th, when hopefully I can have my brain back. Or at least part of it.

WINK.

HI DEF DREAMING

2008-10-10T14:01:00.006-04:00

I always dream big in October. It's not the ambitious and aspiration waking kind, but more the REM technicolor nightmarish sort. The kind of sleep where you wake more tired than you went to bed.

October is transitions. It's sleeping weather finally, when you open up the windows and pull out the flannel pj's. It's the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, my birthday, and Halloween.

So, it's no surprise that I'm dreaming in high def.

Last night, I found myself smack dab in the middle of pregnancy panic dream. You know the kind(or maybe you don't)- Omigod, I'm pregnant. When did this happen? I don't want to be pregnant and now it's way too late, since I'm 7 1/2 months along, to do anything about it. I cannot possibly give birth. I'm too much of a wimp. I don't even have my ears pierced, for Christ's sake.

There are many variations of this nightmare, which I've had throughout my life. There is the who is the father? theme for instance. Or how will I tell my parents? motif is another. The I'm-not-prepared kind is most frequent. Occasionally, I do indeed give birth in the dream, only to find it's not a baby, but instead a full grown adult or an inanimate object. But I perpetually digress.

Last night, a new version emerged. I was pregnant, very pregnant, I knew the father, that wasn't the problem. My parents would be thrilled since my brother is a priest and I am the only hope for progeny, And though I was horrified by how fat I had become and that, inevitably I would have to deal with the exit strategy for the monolith in my belly, it wasn't pain I feared. My twenties taught me I have an unnatural threshold for discomfort.

It was that I wasn't Jewish. I'm a pretty quick study, I reasoned in the dream, but there was no way I could do a legit Orthodox conversion in a month and a half. The father was Jewish with a capitol J and this was going to be a big with a capitol B problem.

I awoke from the dream, my flannel jammies soaked with sweat and twisted around my body. It made me miss my Yia Yia, the ultimate dream interpreter, who could decode any dream- no matter how strange- with equally esoteric solutions.

For instance:

Me: Yia Yia, I dreamt all my teeth were loose and falling out.

Yia Yia: O-poh-poh. You better walk to school then.

Me: Yia Yia, I dreamt I gave birth to a fully formed grey man.

Yia Yia: What good luck!

I think last night's dream isn't really that much of mystery for a number of reasons, but still I could use some ancient Greek village wisdom.

2008-10-07T17:11:00.003-04:00

the stages of ;-)

2008-10-01T18:04:00.014-04:00

I've been trying to pinpoint the exact moment I started reflexively emoticon-ning.

A year ago, I sneered at ;-) sign offs. Grow up, thought I.

Two years ago, I had no idea what an emoticon was. I was too busy figuring out Facebook.

Three years ago, I'm not sure it was even a word.

This is a pattern in terms of my relationship with technology. CD's, cell phones, email, Ipods, Facebook- it's all the same.

Here are the stages of ;-)

disorientation: what is an emoticon?

annoyance: why can't you just express emotion through words?

generational disdain: why is my generation so lazy and immature?

rebellion: I will never use emoticons.

psychological analysis: why is it easier to write a a smiley or frowney? what are you really avoiding?

anthropological critique: is this an emotional disconnect specific to our post industrial pre-apocalypse world?

bargaining: ;-) is kind of easier. I'll just ;-) sometimes.

acceptance/exhaustion: I love emoticons. I'm too busy to feel. How did I ever live without ;->

LIVNI VS. PALIN

2008-09-25T15:29:00.005-04:00

This is a street fight I'd love to see.

PALINDROME

2008-09-23T16:01:00.012-04:00

Palindrome [palin drom] noun: a chronic, debilitating psychopolitological condition currently plaguing Liberals and Comedy Writers on both the East and West Coasts of the United States. Symptoms include media induced mood swings, obsessive racing thoughts centered around Palin puns, joining pointless Facebook hate groups i.e. Sara Palin should stick to being a Lenscrafters model, and snowmobile-centric auditory hallucinations (see snow machines).

I've got the fever. Majorly.

Of the 3,000 thoughts I've had today about SP, one seems worth mentioning. In light of the public skinning of Mr. and Mrs. McCain on The View, wouldn't Palin be a brilliant permanent addition to the panel? Picture it. She'd be Hasselback's BFF. She'd give Joy Behar enough material to sell out Ha Ha's Comedy Club in Seacaucus for years. She'd make Sherri look learned. Whoopi would eat her for breakfast. Barbara could retire, finally. The show would implode.

Does anyone have the Viewmaster's phone number?

smell the crazy

2008-09-19T00:55:00.016-04:00

Sometimes you can just smell the crazy. And last night the Upper West Side reeked. More specifically, Malachy's Bar on 72nd street, where I have recently taken on the role of sultry bar wench two nights a week.

A lucky few are born with an innate loony meter. Others cultivate the skill of "crazy sniffing" from years spent hanging out with Method actors or working in restaurants. And then, there are the ill fated handful, who seem to attract the deranged, as if by magnetic pull.

I'm a triple threat.

I knew something was rotten as soon as my crackpot sat down and ordered her pastrami on rye. There was an edge to her, a shiftiness beyond that of the typical New Yorker. I couldn't put my finger on it, but my crazy-dar level was instantly on Amber Alert.

Then came the rapid fire q&a:

How long does it take to make pastrami? It should be done by now.

How much do I owe? $8. I need to pay now.

Where is the closest drugstore? I need a bandaid now.

Can't you see I'm bleeding? I am bleeding.

I disappeared into the kitchen, alerting the cook I needed the pastrami stat and on wheels (that's restaurantese for to go). She was working up towards her show stopping number, it was clear, and better it happened on Broadway than at table four.

It was too late. She was ready to shine.

"WITCH! YOU'RE A WITCH! I KNOW YOU'RE A WITCH," she hissed at a poor Irish girl I was training and then promptly spit in her face. A gal who was enjoying her second day ever in NYC. A wee lass I had assured New Yorkers get a bad rap.

I rushed down the stairs from the second floor kitchen, avec pastrami, to carry out OPERATION YOU ARE 86'ED.

And there she was, God love her, waiting for me, practically foaming at the mouth.

I've experienced a few things as cocktailer- being spanked for instance- but never have I been jabbed in the solar plexus. It was a attack move that, I imagine, Marines are taught in bootcamp or empowered single women learn in self defense class.

It didn't hurt, but it was shocking. My Spartan warrior instinct was to lay her out, but since it was my third shift ever, I wasn't sure where Mr. Malachy stood on hitting customers. But before I could catch my breath, my pastrami loving bandaidless patron was lifted off the ground by two burly bartenders, feet kicking in midair, and escorted back out into the night from whence she came.

So when you smell the crazy, trust it. Or wear a bullet proof apron.

TASTI D-WHO?

2008-09-17T13:20:00.018-04:00

While all eyes have shifted and locked on the financial implosion on Wall Street, back uptown Tasti D-Lite is having a crisis of its own. And aside from a few other disoriented Tastiholics I've seen- staring blankly at where my local outpost used to stand- the problem has gone largely unnoticed. Sure, I'm sorry the second Great Depression is around the bend, but the collapse of my frozen dessert obsession deserves attention too.

I should have seen this coming- I saw the signs.

At first, the changes were nearly imperceptible. So slight, in fact, I thought maybe it was just me. First, the color of the trademark cup morphed from royal to a less majestic baby blue. The logo went from the now retro original to a cuter pastel design. Then, the cup size seemed different- was it deeper? was it narrower? My friendly Tasti counter gal assured me it was not.

I saw the toppings selection was changing- more fresh fruit and other naturalish things like apple chips. I wrote it off as the inevitable result of living in an ever increasingly Pinkberry/Yolato world. Denial's a funny thing.

But yesterday afternoon, there was no more lying. Upon landing on West 80th street after a long car trip- a carsick journey, by the way, spent chomping on Nicorette, visualizing TDL, concocting the utopian flavor combination of Peanut Butter Fudge/NY Cheesecake- I went directly bag still in hand, to my closest, and therefore favorite, branch.

It was magically replaced by The Lite Choice, which so far I can tell is the Designer Imposter version. I admit it, I had a sample. It tasted like a manilla folder. The same counter gal was there, now in a new uniform. She acted like she didn't even know me.

Frantic, I sprinted up Broadway to my next closet branch. It was still there, but with a "new look" and "new attitude" and a cheery pink grand REopening sign. The flavors remained, but a new quote/mantra is painted on the wall:

DESSERT YOUR GUILT: A CELEBRATION OF HEALTH AND LIFE

Not even I, perhaps the most d-voted d-lite fan, am buying that.

Healthy? Well, it is mostly air. A celebration of life? While I don't recommend it, I have, in fact, lived on it. Just give me the 12 ounces of heaven and save me the Oprah affirmation.

At least it's still kosher.

POLL DANCING

2008-09-10T13:02:00.008-04:00

America loves a poll.

I devour them- Gallop to Glamour, Pew Research to Teen People. Bring it on.

But this latest Washington Post/ABC News Palin poll, which indicates her popularity with petulant PTA moms has propelled the Republican ticket into the lead has me absolutely sick.

Come on ladies.

Thanks RNC!

2008-09-04T10:51:00.008-04:00

And to think I'd almost fully repressed the memory of former Hizzonerette, Rudy Giullani.

Thanks RNC, the grand old party could use a few more big bad queens from Brooklyn.

PBCSSD

2008-09-03T08:25:00.010-04:00

Maybe it's the fancy schmancy Fashion Week invite that just arrived in the mail. Perhaps it's a simple case of PBCSSD (Post Barney's Co-op Sale Stress Disorder). Quite possibly, it's the obsessive week long hunt I've been on for the mythological, perfect-in-every-way dress that, like so many things, exists only in my mind.

Whate'er it be, I woke this morning mentally scrolling through the list of clothes items I would outlaw if I had the power and there were legal fashion mandates.

So before I set out for another mind numbing day of pushy sales types born in the mid 1980's, iron maiden style dressing rooms, looking at my body from every blessed angle under every sort of sacred light, a small list of garments to be eliminated forever:

gaucho pants
empire waist t-shirts aka baby bump tees
stiletto ankles boots
prairie dresses
arm warmers
bubble skirts
kimono sleeves on things other than kimonos
high waisted shorts
bandeau bikini tops
anything ruched

This is in no way exhaustive. but list making is just so soothing.

MISS ALMOST

2008-08-30T11:51:00.012-04:00

First runner up Miss Alaska 1984 and now McCain's concessional token female VP choice.

Sara Palin, a truly second class lady.

I love her hair though.

AN IRONIC DEATH

2008-08-28T08:47:00.011-04:00

The news that "100 Things To Do Before you Die," author Dave Freeman has, well, died, confirms my absolute worst fear:

DYING AN IRONIC DEATH.

My adult onset terror surrounding all things chronic and ironic started in the days leading up to age 30.

Here's the pre-birthday posthumous script I wrote in my head:

FRIEND #1: Hey, did you hear about Liz?

FRIEND #2: Yah, I'm sorry I missed her birthday party. The big 3-0! I can't believe she survived her 20's!

FRIEND #1: No, dude. She didn't. She was hit by the crosstown M79 bus the night before turning 30. Pretty sad.

FRIEND #2: Wow, That's terrible. But hey, she would have appreciated the irony, right?

There are darker scenes suited for even more joyous occasions, but I'm afraid to write them. And yes, gentle ironist, I realize the irony of, I Ironia, fearing irony.

I'm almost afraid to mention this phobia, lest I add another layer of irony to the ironic death that could be lurking around the next corner. But compulsion trumps superstition and so I begrudgingly press PUBLISH POST.

THE PANTSUIT STRIKES BACK

2008-08-27T17:37:00.009-04:00

There are just some lines that are so brilliant, so obvious, so completely on the nose that a writer can spend the better part of a day trying to figure how she didn't think to write it first. This she has done just that.

How could I not have thought to marry two popical (that's topical and popular culture, better late than never) references? It's like that category on Jeopardy:

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants + Pantsuit = Genius.

I'm Greek. I had a Yia Yia. How did I miss it? I hate myself.

Make no mistake: I've never had a single ounce of affection for Hillary Clinton. Not one cc. But during the non-stop pantsuit comedy roast primary season, I jumped to HRC's fashion defense(see this blog, July 6th, until I can figure out how to link), not because I liked her, but because:

1. I like pantsuits a lot

2. Yves Saint Laurent had just gone to the big garment district in the sky

3. It was the feminist thing to do

But with that one line- HOW DID I NOT THINK OF IT?- justice was served.

Today, August 27, 2008 marks the day I became a fan of Hillary. Or at least her speech writer.

UNSOLICITED AND MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS ON THE BODY POLITIC

2008-08-26T06:43:00.010-04:00

Theme songs. Politicians should do without a soundtrack. "You're Still the One," was a decidedly inappropriate song for Ted Kennedy, following his speech at the Democratic convention. Last night left me longing for the good old days of the Clinton dynasty and Fleetwood Mac.
Get the Obama kids out of the picture. Sure, they're cute. Yah, they remind us of the future. Definitely, they add an element of spontaneity to a highly staged event. But it's creepy. Let's learn from the Mary Kates, the Jon Benets, the Patti Davis' nee Reagans.
The high price of "Gasolina". Let us all pray to a Gdashd that we don't believe in that music super star, Daddy Yankee's endorsement of John Mccain will respectively cripple Reggaeton record sales and the Republican bid for the presidency.

Rediscovered on the NYSC music channel:

2008-08-23T13:20:00.005-04:00

OBAMA + ME = ;->

2008-08-22T08:12:00.005-04:00

Okay. We can all agree Obama's dreamy. Sure. We have a major crush. Yes, we collectively want to wear his Varsity Letter jacket. Indeed, we've had visions of making breakfast for us both, clad in nothing but his boxer briefs and an apron.

HOWEVER.

This Vice Presidential nomination notification by text message thing is a little too Junior High even for me, the perpetual 13 year old.

L'CHAIM CUPCAKES

2008-08-16T22:01:00.004-04:00

Kosher Chocolate Cupcakes with a Cheesecake surprise center.

CHILD, JULIA CHILD

2008-08-14T10:12:00.006-04:00

The report released today that Julia Child was somehow involved in a WWII international spy ring is by far the most refreshing, most inspired news item since the I don't know what. A secret agent who made her own mayonnaisse? Feminists, take notice: this stands as the definition of the modern woman.

It seems so obvious now. Of course, the ultimate domestic had a dark foreign side. Are there secret codes embedded in her recipe for the perfect flaky pie crust? Let the confectionary conspiracy theories commence!

A LUNESTA MIRACLE

2008-08-12T07:47:00.011-04:00

I'll do anything for a good night's sleep.

I've taken so many pills, I probably shouldn't donate blood. Mosquitos would be better off steering clear, unless of course they're insomniacs too.

Xanax. I still toss and turn, I just don't worry about it. Ambien. Works like a 3 hour charm. Trazadone has a cinderblock-on-my-face effect and I run into walls like I'm Karen Black the next morning. Melatonin makes me dream in a nightmarish technicolor.

Now I'm on Lunesta. So far so good. Apparently, there is a side effect of male breast enlargement, so I'm hoping for the miracle of miracles:

to be well rested and stacked by the month's end.

FRANCE vs. USA

2008-08-01T22:43:00.006-04:00

2008-07-30T14:11:00.009-04:00

My father is on Facebook and it's making me really uncomfortable.

I live in fear of the notification:

YOUR FATHER HAS SENT YOU A FRIEND REQUEST.

You have 0 friends in common.

Exactly.

It's not that there's anything on my page that's especially racy. It's not that in real life we don't have a workable relationship.

This is a very specific sort of Baby Boomer/Gen X kind of dilemma/collision. Can't we just share Bob Dylan?

2008-07-22T23:57:00.003-04:00

Thank you for being a genius.

1923-2008

2008-07-17T20:24:00.009-04:00

I found out recently that I'm actually a man. Not only that, I was once a boy too. According to the Social Security Administration I have been an red blooded American male since 1985. Before that I guess, the government didn't consider me period.

These days a kid is tagged immediately- that is to say, given a social security number right at birth- but back in the freewheeling 1970's in Maine, there wasn't a rush. Parents were too busy composting, starting food coops, and reading Thoreau. You got a card when you needed one. I mean, for now, let's just weed the garden, shuck some corn, and can preserves.

For me, the necessity came when I spent my first seven minutes of fame in a Stephen King movie and thusly began my life as a taxpayer.

Social Security hasn't been easy to convince, by the way, that I'm a Ms. A phone call, with my most sultry female voice didn't do it. The operator laughed actually. On the first trip to the main office in Brooklyn, where a young lady(ostensibly) ahead of me had a scalpel confiscated, I also failed. Despite my utterly convincing breasts practically falling out of my most feminine summer dress, I didn't have proper documentation. And though hoisting my tits onto the counter and pressing them against the bullet proof glass made the agent laugh, she won the Mark Twain Award:

"Honey, this is New York. I've seen some really good work."

I'll be honest, in that moment, facing an in-person rejection of my sex, I started to panic slightly. My mom is fairly famous for leaving out big details. For instance, "Oh pumpkin, I'm sure I told you I was married before your father!" I was too busy hyperventilating then to answer or to laugh now.

Could she have overlooked telling me? Was there an accident during the circumcision? Had I been born a true blue tranny and my parents had to make a sexual Sophie's choice? My dad is Greek, was I the real life version of, MIDDLESEX? My mom always had said she really wanted a girl first. Had she been trying, albeit WASPily, to tell me something? Omigod. This explains everything about me. No wonder I only have gay male friends. I am a gay male. No wonder I like wigs and to show my boobs in public. I am a tranny.

So instead of trusting my mother's insistence of my gender as female, I contacted the state of Maine directly for my birth certificate. The good friendly folks at bureau of vital records thought my story was totally shelarious. Who knew bureaucracy had such a sense of humor?

Social Security has since accepted the document as genuine (and my vagina valid), but my sex is still pending with the state of New York. Stay tuned.

HOKEY POKEY: WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?

2008-07-17T10:00:00.006-04:00

What does it mean exactly when you're poked on Facebook? I have enough trouble decoding people in real life and now this? I phoned a wise friend in Los Angeles hoping he could help. He only said he wouldn't touch "the Facebook" with a virtual 10 foot pole, after the therapy bills he accrued from being a victim of Friendster.

So, I got a little Nancy Drew/Lois Lane on it and went to the faceless Facebook information page to get an automated quote on the ambiguous virtual gesture. Amazingly, there is a section dedicated to POKES and their meaning. I guess I'm not the only one.

Their explanation is equally esoteric:

A poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings.

Cool? Sure, if by cool you mean, horrible. What is so awesome about things without specific purpose? That is so my anti-narrative loving irony obsessed generation. I spend every waking moment interpreting. The last thing I need is to come up with more of my own meanings.

To me the poke is inherently pervy and I welcome any and all definitions from you gentle reader, just pretty please, be specific.

IF A TREE FALLS IN THE MAINE WOODS

2008-07-14T05:54:00.016-04:00

Maine is a strange place to be from. Imagine growing up inside a Norman Rockwell painting, but styled by LL Bean. It's monogrammed canvas tote bags and cross country skis, wild blueberries and bug spray. It's sailboats, it's Christmas trees, it's softball games. It's a wood burning stove, penny candy village store kind of existence.

To live year round in Vacationland, to be a full time native in a seasonal state breeds a very specific sort. There is a pride that comes with sticking out the brutal 9 month winter and a singular pleasure in rolling your eyes at the prissy out-of-towners come summer. Now I am one of the prisses.

The unofficial motto, found just over the Kittery Bridge upon entering the state says it all:

MAINE: THEY WAY LIFE SHOULD BE.

Not that is or was, just that it should. As a neurotic, allergic kid without an ounce of innate rusticness, comforted only by the thought of Greenwich Village, that notion threw me into a pint size existential crisis. WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?

The way life SHOULD be? The way LIFE should be? The way life should BE? The question becomes a horrible method actor exercise.

And sitting here at sunrise, on a perfectly New England dock, overlooking an equally ideal little lake, pondering the trip back to New York City, I'm still asking.

2008-07-10T11:22:00.008-04:00

Why is it that New York City is so excruciatingly beautiful whenever I'm packing to leave?

The sky today is that 9/11 terrorist blue, perhaps the most specific color of my lifetime.

And why does that last Tasti-D-Lite before the schlep to Penn Station, taste so much better than any of the other thousands I've had before? This morning I had a large custom Peanut Butter with a Milky Weigh(yes, weigh not way) floater and devoured it as though it was my last meal on earth.

It's true that the only way to live in NYC is to go away often, but I wish I could do it without leaving the Upper West Side.

2008-07-09T09:29:00.004-04:00

Where are you now John Mark Karr?

ALL YOU NEED IS LARRY KING LIVE

2008-07-08T15:39:00.013-04:00

Ringo Starr was on Larry King Live last night. I admit it, I'm huge into LK. And while I'm being honest, I like Donny Deutch too. And since we're now judging, I've been known to watch Tavis Smiley as well.

It was the single most depressing hour of television viewing since Girls Next Door (which I had just finished gagging through). You know Girls I hope- the "reality" show shadowing the octogenarian nympho, Hugh Hefner, and his three live-in girlfriends, who's ages put together make them collectively still younger than him. The episode followed the ladies trials and travails of making a workout video at the manse. Quality stuff.

Back to Lare. Ringo was on celebrating his 68th birthday. It's not like he was ever the most understandable of Beatles, but he has gone from out-there-groovy to first-stage-dementia-loony. It was funny and sad, sort of in the same way my great Uncle Yianni is prone to exclaiming(loudly and publicly), "Mamma Mia!" or to tell people, albeit politely, they are boring. Ringo kept repeating, "Peace and Love". He claimed the Fab Four inspired Cirque du Soleil show was amazing. He even said he was happy that Yoko Ono called in to sing Happy Berf-day De-ah Rin-go. Crazy time. Even Larry was rolling his eyes.

It's just plain sad to see a Beatle get old.

2008-07-07T16:27:00.003-04:00

Bea is for Blogging!

THE PAN(GS)T SUIT

2008-07-06T10:19:00.008-04:00

I'm having a really strong reaction to pantsuits. It's when I see one, when someone mentions them, even when I think of the two-piecer, unprovoked.

It began after the Patti Lupone dream. Something about that nightmare- being beat down by a stage legend with rabies- left me feeling demoralized. And when I feel hopeless, I go to the utterly more active emotion of anger. And with no place to put my newly recycled rage, my brain made a non sequitur-ial jump to pantsuits. I don't why this is, but it is.

Perhaps I'm still mourning the loss of Yves Saint Laurent. Maybe I'm reflecting on Hillary Clinton, or more precisely, having been battered all this past primary season with the same old dumb chauvinistic jibes at her fashion choices.

Either way, it's time to get back into therapy.

2008-07-03T18:43:00.005-04:00

The definition of insanity is going to Herald Square over and over and expecting a different result.

-Albert Einstein

THE PATTI LUPONE PROPHECY

2008-07-03T07:51:00.012-04:00

I had a dream, a dream about you baby.

It's gonna come true, baby.

They think that we're through...

GYPSY! The Musical

I had this horrible dream a couple nights ago, starring the Tony winning toast of New York, Patti Lupone. It was the classic actor's nightmare- I had to go on last minute for Gypsy Rose Lee and didn't know the lines, couldn't remember if I knew how to sing, or how I had somehow ended up as an understudy for a Broadway musical in the first place. To complicate things, instead of fessing up to the pitbullish stage manager demanding I go get fit for my costume, I decided I would fake it instead. How hard could it be?

And as is true with all my anxiety theatre dreams, I searched for a script backstage to learn the lines before curtain but it was too dark. I'm too blind to find anything by the red lights that all actors nocturnal eyes have adapted to navigate "the wings".

I never have actor dreams when I'm actually doing a show in real life. I dream of waitressing. And likewise, if I'm waiting tables in real life, I toss and turn all night with visions of choking on stage. It's classic transference. There's probably some actor having it right now as I type.

But there's one way in which this dream was different. After realizing there was no way I could pull off learning a play, numerous musical numbers, and various dance routines in 30 minutes, Patti Lupone appeared. She was warming up- doing scales and stretching- saw that I was frantic, and asked, "What's up kid?", in that salty old NY stage actor way.

Omigod, I thought Mama Rose is talking to me. Evita just asked me a direct fucking question. She looked more Italian up close somehow, older. This is one of those weird disappointments, seeing a face up close that's meant to seen from the back of the house.

And maybe it was because I was starstruck, perhaps it was sheer admiration, or maybe I didn't want to ruin the show, I blurted out, half crying,

"Patti," the P utterly popping in my ears, "Patti, I don't think I should be here. To be honest, I have no idea how I got here. I'm not prepared. I don't know how this could have happened. If you knew me at all, you'd know I'm the consummate profession-"

But before I could finish groveling, Ms. Lupone forcefully slammed me up against the wall. Knocked the wind straight out of me. I was more shocked by her superhuman strength, than being assaulted by Broadway star.

I don't remember her exact words, only that her verbal assault was even more powerful than her body check.

I closed my eyes, prepared to take it. She was right after all. How dare I? Who did I think I was? Yes, Ms. Lupone, there were indeed thousands of girls ready to take my place.....

And here's the truly terrifying part, as I timidly opened my eyes with the snarling Patti berating me, she was foaming at the mouth. Completely rabid.

And that's where I decided to wake up. It was one of those swimming through honey, trying to reach the surface for air kind of waking up panics. And two days later, I'm still thinking about it.

CELEBRATING 100 DAYS IN OFFICE

2008-06-30T14:25:00.004-04:00

MY HERO

THE BLOOMBERG NICKEL

2008-06-30T09:59:00.013-04:00

Let me preface this small criticism by saying first, I have a major thing for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. You're hot for Hizzoner too? Well, take a number sister. He's mine. It's a doodle-our-initials-in-my-notebook kind of, read-both-of-our-horoscopes-every-day sort of crush. He's perfect for me- a Jewish bazillionaire in favor of posting calorie counts and public art? I'll take two.

And believe me, our imagined relationship wasn't always easy. First, he fined restaurants for even the most minor of infractions at a time when I was running a restaurant with the most major infractions. He banned smoking. I was smoking, often in the restaurant. I knew he was doing these things because he cared and so I forgave. But this latest Metrocard thing is testing my love and I'm having trouble seeing how it's for my own good. Let me explain.

If you live here in our fine city and take public transport, you are aware of the latest Metrocard debacle. I realize this isn't directly Bloomberg's fault and more the doing of the infinitely corrupt MTA, but since I see M.B. as omnipotent, it falls to him. In the good old days of two months ago, it was simple for the non-committal straphanger like myself; those too agoraphobic to require a monthly unlimited pass and yet too poor not to get some kind of frequent flyer card which rewards you with free rides for buying in bulk. My standard was the $10 card which bought 5 rides @ $2 and extra ride just for investing. Clear as mud?

The incentive card rates have changed. Now, just as brown is the new black or Queens is the new Brooklyn, $7 is the new $10 card. It buys you 4 rides, 1 freebie fare and a puzzling and measly 5 cents left on the card. The city is robbing me one Bloomberg nickel at a time.

As a result, I have no less than six of these orphan 5 cents in my wallet. I'm on my way to a deck.

This means- and keep in mind I never passed math after the ninth grade- that if I continue to refill one of the orphan cards, it will take 40 refills to equal one fare. A more adaptable friend of mine deals with the nickel dilemma by using spare change to buy the ride. But come on- who has the time to coin feed 95 cents when the train is quickly approaching? And who even carries around 95 cents period?

I am reticent to post this because I fear I'm now that person i.e. the homebound crazy woman who blogs about the MTA and imagined affairs she's having with the Mayor, but in the name of strengthening my bond with M.B. will press PUBLISH now.

THE MARLBORO WOMAN

2008-06-25T06:15:00.013-04:00

i quit cigarettes six months ago. pretty unbelievable.

i smoked a pack plus of marlboros reds a day. for half my life. it scares me even to write that. but like so many of my fate tempting feats, fear emerges only in hindsight.

it was a huge part of my identity. i held the flammable banner of tough talking sex drugs and rock n roll suicide liz high.

oh, and i fucking adored it.

25 years old was originally the smoking cut off (since that's around the time the body starts the slow biological descent cell-wise) but a fairly profound existential crisis and return trips to camp wackajobba kept me puffing away. in a way, after surviving my 20's, quitting smoking is kind of a cinch.

but i refuse to be the fanatical non smoker, for two reasons. first, it seems like an extension of my now, hopefully extinguished, smokers identity. second and most importantly, lifewise, instead of bouncing between familiar extremes, i'm trying to find a midpoint, dare i say, balance.

in short, i'm trying to grow up. taking care of my health is the most adult (and most difficult) first step towards being a big girl.

smoke 'em if you got 'em, by all means, but here are a few things that helped me:

pure vainIty

restorative yoga(assisted napping )

falling in love

that horrible allen carr book

nicorette

really really really wanting it

the sage advice: get off more on not smoking

channeling OCD i.e. using the powers of compulsion for good instead of evil

remembering there was a me who existed before smoking and hopefully will live much longer now as a result of getting back to her.

2008-06-24T23:36:00.009-04:00

I love New York City Delis. The deli or the bodega or the market- whatever you call it. What it offers, how it displays it, tells you so much about any given neighborhood. Does it carry just The Post, only the The Times, or the NYC trifecta The Post, The Times, and the retarded step cousin, The Daily News?

I have fine tuned my own rating system based on a number of indicators. Here's a few:

SODA: Bottles only? Or the rarer and slightly nostalgic tin can as well? The diet selection is of utmost importance to my ranking. Just the standards- Diet Coke, Pepsi, Sprite won't do. I have been spoiled. I expect Diet Orange Creme, Celray, Black Cherry, and the oh so retro TAB of my childhood.

GUM/CANDY: This figures highly into my final score. Again, major points for the sugar free gum choices, preferably with new, exotic, and limited edition flavors. Candy is less important, though a Charleston Chew, Skor Bar, or Hostess Snowballs is impressive.

It's gotten to the point where I just may visit a deli to see the selection. It's like a free museum with the option to eat the art.

You learn everything about the block your on, the character of the community, from what's stocked on the shelves and even how it's stocked. The East Village is so vastly different from the Upper West Side. Williamsburg, which has seen a major overhaul, from sticky bags of plantain chips and foreign cakes under cloudy plastic pastry covers to organic veggie chips and power bars, is another world deli-wise from the Upper East Side.

I think there's an article in this.

2008-06-17T11:49:00.002-04:00

AND SPEAKING OF COMMENTARY

sphinx

2008-06-16T23:54:00.005-04:00

a scarily accurate photoshop commentary

artwork by rufus tureen

2008-06-15T12:31:00.009-04:00

as a general blog rule, 3 things i want to avoid are:

1. too earnestly reflecting on city life

2. weather metaphors

3. a combination of the two, otherwise known as "the reverse chekhov"

With that said, a bit of earnest urban self reflection as it relates to the weather.

I just got caught in one of those tropical nyc summer downpours. you know the kind- drops down out of no where, stranding otherwise ballsy nyers under drooling awnings, clinging together as if they'll die of rainy-ness. The occasional kamakazee garbage bag clad delivery boy running madly down the abandoned sidewalk - he has the Bandaid approach to rain. Do it quickly.

I take the slow cinematic approach. Rain is sexy. Walking slowly in it, borderline erotic. A clingy dress is just that much more Faye Wray when wet. Hair slicked back feels so Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue somehow. Besides, mascara smudges just perfectly with raindrops. But I perpetually sexually digress...

But more than playing the role of enigmatic vixen in a downpour, what I truly love is watching the city grind to an almost halt. Like a mini adult snow day. When the weather forces me to see a city that I'm usually too busy trying to conquer.

Thank you for indulging me. I promise to return to my native tongue of Sardonia.

R.I.P. child actors

2008-06-14T08:53:00.013-04:00

there's so much to love about this picture.

the hair. the vest. the one shoe, askew. the Blossom-esque hat on the floor.

and the sawhorse she is straddling.

there's a little piece of heaven reserved just for child actors. I hope.

STRAIGHT MEN AND FLIP FLOPS

2008-06-09T09:21:00.020-04:00

Summer has descended like a wet electric blanket here in Gotham. And with the humidity comes the equally tacky fashions- only to be explained by heat induced cataracts or advanced heatstroke.

The unofficial kick-off is Puerto Rican Day Parade, which salsa-ed it's way down 5th Avenue this past Sunday. The signature one starred flag is magically transformed into a halter top! Poof! Jean shorts worn so short, it gives me a yeast infection just looking at them. Itch!

To borrow a line from the Noel Coward's play, Hayfever (made long before the advent of the hyperextended tube top, though certainly still applicable), a lot of NYC summer looks "strain freedom to it's limits."

But worse than all these, the summer trend that seems here to stay, is STRAIGHT MEN IN FLIP FLOPS. I have no good explanation for my aversion, except to say they are to be filed in the same category as Co-Ed Naked Lacrosse t-shirts and the fragrance, Drakkar Noir. It just smacks of keg stands, date rape, and other time honored American college campus past times.

Flip flops are okay, gay men in flip flops- no problem, women in flip flops- fine with a pedicure, but heterosexual males should just not be allowed..... This ain't Greece.

I'm going to write Bloomberg. He'll fix it.

2008-05-31T09:18:00.000-04:00

CODE ALPHA

2008-05-31T08:57:00.010-04:00

The brand new pandemic cruise ship comedy, CODE ALPHA, makes its world debut tonight at the Brick Theatre in Wllliamsburg, Brooklyn. I try to avoid the hipster oasis/mirage known as the Burg-unless I'm looking to buy a pair of fashionable high waisted shorts- but it appears to be downtown theatre's latest refuge. And so I begrudgingly join the throngs rive droite....

So update your tetanus shots and pull out that prairie dress.....

http://www.codealphacodealpha.blogspot.com

skorts!

2008-05-28T15:41:00.005-04:00

skort [skort] noun: shorts with full legs and a central flap in the front ORIGIN a blend of skirt and short

The spork of ladies active wear. Garment purgatory personified. Fashion multitasking at its finest. I could go on and on. And I have for a week now.
I've had so much trouble tracking a pair down- here in NYC! the international capitol of the strange, the rare, and discontinued!- I've begun to think I've made them up. And certainly, the befuddled look on every salesgirl's face from Kmart to Modell's has only confirmed that I am indeed a mad woman, inventing new fashion fusions.

But they're real. I swear. And I need a pair.