Sure, the G20 is important but

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

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

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

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.