Love is a Ponzi Scheme

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.

A Room of My Own

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

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

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

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

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.