Do This New York

Blunderland

2011-05-14T08:30:00.000-04:00

Has it been two weeks? Really? I was on such a roll, there, for a while.

I guess time flies when you are suddenly subjected to the most confusing, frustrating and emotionally disruptive experience of your entire life; one that calls into question things you thought you knew for virtually your entire life.

I am referring, of course, to Frank Wildhorn's "Wonderland," his modernized reimagining of Lewis Carroll's classic tale.

Oy. I'm not sure that even I, the great misanthrope, have a sufficiently sarcastic vocabulary to describe this show.

Apparently, Alice grew up, got married and had a daughter. She moved to Queens and teaches school in the Bronx. I hear this is a pretty common life-plan for girls from the English countryside. I'm sure Kate Middleton was considering a third-floor walk up in Astoria if that whole Princess thing didn't work out.

Anyway, for Alice and her daughter Chloe, it's the Worst Day of their Life (which is actually a song, and exactly the type of writing you'll find in a show with a book that includes rhyming "waiting" with "hesitating" and cliches like, "Long ago and far away.") To summarize: Alice and hubby have separated (the reason is never really clear) but she and Chloe are living with his mother. Chloe's had a bad day at school and hates the new neighborhood (this actually leads to the best line in the show: "There's a Starbucks right across the street." "That would be true anywhere.") Alice hates her job.

While waiting for dinner to be ready, Alice falls asleep, or maybe not, and ends up chasing a rabbit down the service elevator. She ends up in Wonderland.

This is where things go from the ridiculous to the sublime. There are a dozen singing, dancing Alices, an African-American caterpillar who sings hip-hop funk, a Latino Cheshire Cat (El Gato) who sings salsa, and a White Knight singing a bland, weepy white boy ballad. It's stereotyping through showtunes.

There are, however, boy dancers in tight white stretch pants that provide a nice diversion.

It's all very colorful and messy and confusing and, though the music isn't half-bad, the writing is sophomoric and awful and a little too reliant on inside jokes (things like not being able to get the rights from Disney, or ripping off more famous productions, like Gypsy and the Lion King.) The costumes are actually pretty good, other than Alice's big drapy shirt, leggings, and humongous belt (all she needs are hoop earrings and a Rosie Perez accent.) The plot is tissue-thin, turning on an underground movement run by the Mad Hatter (Kate Shindle, barely rising above the material, but looking resplendent in red) to overthrow the Queen of Hearts (Janet Mason, belting out the one show-stopping number.)

Other than those boy dancers.

Anyway, the Mad Hatter is afraid Alice is impressing the Queen, and may stifle the revolution, so she kidnaps Chloe, and takes Alice's compatriots (the Caterpillar, the White Knight, and El Gato) prisoner in Looking Glass Land. It all turns out to hinge on the White Rabbit's magic pocket watch (trust me...it is even lamer than it sounds, and comes totally out of nowhere.) They banish the Hatter and Alice and Chloe return to Queens, which is somehow supposed to be a good thing.

Cue the Boy dancers!

Now, I love good theater (Book of Mormon). And I really love good bad theater (Xanadu). But this was mediocre bad theater. Thankfully, we went out for cheeseburgers afterward.

Otherwise, it was a slow week in Pop Culture. On Glee, reformed bully Dave Karofsky (Max Adler, who keeps adding layers to a role that totally could have been two-dimensional, and who I'm totally crushing on for all the wrong reasons) was crowned Prom King, while Prom Queen was a surprise write-in: Kurt Hummel. I HATED this story line; it just reeked of "plot twist" - there was no warning of it coming, it made completely no sense, and seemed to be included for the sole purpose of Making A Statement. Also, they brought back Jonathan Groff, whom I loathe.

Dear Ryan Murphy: yuck. He looks thirty and is already getting crow's feet, which - last I checked - wasn't likely among High School students. Plus, I wouldn't believe him as a straight boy if you actually filmed him having sex with Lea Michele. Perhaps he should have been voted Prom Queen.

On Survivor we're at that point in the season where even the hot guys have gotten so thin that it's impossible to look at them.

Meanwhile, I've totally skipped American Idol, so I'm apparently missing out on Jennifer Lopez's comeback as a personality and entertainer. I also need to get plugged in to The Voice, where Christina Aguilera is pulling a Britney and climbing out of the reputational hole she dug with some seriously bizarre behavior.

It's going to rain this weekend, so I guess I'll catch up on the DVR and eat ice cream in bed.

It may not be glamorous, but that's my wonderland.

Through the Cooking Glass

2011-05-01T14:02:00.020-04:00

One thing was certain --- it was the chicken’s fault entirely.

To be more specific, it was the fried chicken’s fault – which is where this story begins --- a story of Fried Chicken, Phoenix, and Fraud. (See, I can be alliterative and rip off Lewis Carroll at the same time. If you don’t get it – go here.)

Let me explain: This week, work took me to Phoenix to make a client presentation. I flew JetBlue, since the trip was booked last minute and their rates were the most reasonable. This meant that – once I finished my work and answering email offline - I could spend the rest of my flight eating Animal Crackers and watching DirecTV. And it was in precisely this manner that I, too dumb for CNN and too smart for something Bravo calls “Pregnant in Heels” (“Future Housewives of New York City”? Seriously, Andy Cohen, does your obsession with rich white women know no boundaries?) would up tuning in to the Nate Berkus show.

Oy – OK – we need to pause here (I know, you’re getting whiplash from my tangents.) In case you need background – Nate Berkus was a local interior designer in Chicago who became famous after his partner was killed in the Indonesian Tsunami and he wound up decorating for Oprah. I’m not really clear on the order of events, and I’m too lazy and indifferent to look them up, but the gist is basically: Wave, Drowned, Contemporary Home Décor, Oprah, Famous…his own tv show. He’s got one of those rectangular-shaped heads that James Van Der Beek made popular during Dawson’s Creek, and a moderate amount of talent, but he’s basically just someone who became famous off of the tragic death of a spouse. Think Prince Charles, but gayer…or Jackie Kennedy.

But gayer.

Anyway, from what I can tell, his show basically conforms to the same formula of daytime chit-chat – segments on lifestyle, health and fitness, home and garden, cooking; all integrated with a mix of minor celebrities and “average folks.” From Donahue and Oprah, to Ellen and Rachael Ray, to The Doctors and Nate – all these shows are pretty much the same, and really rise and fall on the talent of the host and the mix of subject matter and star wattage they pull together.

On that score, Nate is pretty much on the bottom (no jokes, please.) His show has been roundly panned and the ratings stink, so I wouldn’t have ordinarily watched it. But my channel surfing was abruptly halted by two things that would have caught my eye on their own and which, in combination, were irresistible: a hot guy and fried chicken.

The guy was Rocco DiSpirito, a once-lauded chef prodigy who, at a very young age, was receiving rave reviews for his work at a Manhattan restaurant called Union Pacific. After the plaudits came the articles, the cookbooks, the girls, (the gay rumors), the tabloid-star status, a failed restaurant, a failed reality show about a failed restaurant, weight gain, weight loss, and the slow, steady rise back to credibility with guest shots (Good Morning, Tampa!), better guest shots (Today), guest judging (Top Chef), more books, and a return to the tabloids. His reputation among his peers, and in the world of fine dining, is pretty mixed – some still consider him a genius for his work at Union Pacific and would best characterize Rocco as great talent and great promise, though not fully realized or sustained; others would call him a sell-out, and a bit of a fraud, who traded on his talent to obtain mass market appeal, both as a chef and as a personality. Sort of a male Rachael Ray, but with actual underlying skill and not just huge man hands and 400 ways to make a hamburger.

Yum-O!

(Did you really think we were getting out of this column without a Rachael Ray joke? More on Rocco’s huge man hands, later. Oh...and the phto of Rachael...too funny not to post.)

Anyway, there was Rocco (who, I say with deep shame, is pretty attractive) looking all fit and towering over Nate Berkus, the box-headed waifish widower, showcasing double chocolate chunk cookies and fried chicken as part of promoting his cookbook, the “Now Eat This! Diet Cookbook” (a follow up to “Now Eat This!”) The basic premise is that eating healthy can be fun and flavorful. This is not innovative – virtually every celebrity cookbook or weight loss book, from Bethenny to Marilu Henner, markets the same idea. What was innovative, however, was the approach – everything from the cookies (which substitute much of the flour and fat with pureed white beans) to the chicken (not oven-“fried” – but poached in chicken stock and flash-fried for 30 seconds) uses a series of substitutions and techniques to obtain maximum flavor with minimal caloric impact.

Shortly after landing, I logged on to Amazon and bought the book.

To its credit, the book is founded on basic principles of nutrition, weight loss and exercise science. Yes, the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume, balancing those calories across a range of healthy carbs, proteins and fats in decent proportions. I will admit it is nice to see a weight loss program acknowledge you can’t realistically – or healthfully – load up your plate with bunless bacon cheeseburgers and gorge your way to long-term fitness.

But it’s also kind of awful.

First, it must have been ghost-written. Rocco may have come up with the recipes; may have dictated much of the content – but the voice is somehow all wrong. It simply doesn’t read like it was written by the same guy you’ve seen on television. The structure, the use of language, the point of view – it’s all askew, like it was written by someone trying to write in the character of Rocco DiSpirito. If you’ve ever seen fan fiction on the internet, you know what I mean. (Fan fiction is when ordinary people write episodes of their favorite television shows, only they make up a fictional plotline – like having the bar in How I Met Your Mother invaded by an intergalactic space tiger and holding Neil Patrick Harris hostage in nothing but a silver Speedo.)

Second, I realize that boosting the confidence of the reader is important, particularly in a cookbook, but is it really honest to say, “If you have slathered peanut butter between two slices of bread, you have cooked.” Okay – No, you haven’t. You have not cooked. You have prepared food – and even that is a stretch. You have not cooked. And if you didn’t cook, why would you buy a COOK BOOK? Even if it were in there to calm the bookstore browser who might be on the fence, I think that person would probably have made up their mind by the time this sentence appears ON PAGE 74!!!

Didn’t Rocco use to be a chef? How would Daniel Boulud or Dan Barber react to that sentence? Also…slathered? Really? (Slathered is the kind of word to take you right back to fan fiction about NPH and that space tiger, but I tigress…I mean, digress.)

But this last part is the best. Really, you can’t write stuff like this…you can write ABOUT it, but you’d never be able to make it up.

The last section I read before our weekend guests arrived was the section about dining out. We live in New York City, where most people use their ovens for extra storage (When I was single, that’s where I kept the good shoes – in boxes of course.)

Actual photo

The dining out section reminds the reader to avoid alcohol (“the epitome of empty calories”) and – if one does indulge, “Resist the urge to order a bottle of wine” because “you’ll probably drink less and there is no pressure to finish the bottle.” It also urges Rocco’s followers that, “Honestly, there’s really no dessert that you can order in a restaurant….And don’t even try a bite or two. No one has that kind of control.”

Marcelene and her boyfriend, Rory, arrived around noon. We showed them our home and then decided to go exploring. After a stop in Southampton, Marcelene wanted lunch – some place where we could sit outside, with a glass of wine (“the epitome of empty calories”) and take in the early spring scene. We went to Pierre’s.

Pierre’s is a French bistro and bakery market in Bridgehampton…it’s the kind of place where they put butter in everything – including the tap water. It was just about 3pm, so the Saturday lunch crowd was waning – particularly this early in the season. We had no trouble getting a table for four right outside.

Right next to Rocco DiSpirito.

There he was, in the Ray-Bans and baseball cap he apparently wears anytime he ventures out of doors without a camera crew and entourage. I’ve seen Julianne Moore walk Bleecker Street with no make up and a denim jacket during the full on Saturday rush, not to mention Steven Spielberg, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and Michael Douglas – all within a block of my home. No sunglasses. Rocco – methinks you’re safe.

Rocco's Actual Dessert Plate

But, for sheer schaedenfreude, nothing could beat the bottle of white he and his lady friend were polishing off as they left behind the last bite of a chocolate soufflé with vanilla ice cream. I couldn’t help myself but lean over and say, “That looks delicious…I wish I could eat dessert. I tell myself it won’t be so fattening if I only have a bite or two, but no one has that kind of control.”

Crunch-a-tize Me Cap'n!

2011-04-24T09:40:00.001-04:00

It is nice to know that, despite a bloody war in Afghanistan, unrest and instability throughout the Middle East, and crushing unemployment and economic uncertainty at home, ABC News can devote more than 15 full minutes to rabbits running rampant at Long Beach City College. I suppose I should be more forgiving, since it is Easter today - the holiest day in the Christian calendar.

Mini-Sunday school for those of you who may not have had religious studies: Easter commemorates the resurrection of Christ, who after being betrayed by one of his disciples, was crucified. Three days later he rose, dressed like a bunny, and hid colored eggs all over the yard. Everyone was so happy, they put on a bonnet, had a parade, and ate marshmallow Peeps - except the Jews, who may or may not have been responsible, depending on who you believe. Anyway, no one blames them anymore because modern science reveals they were all constipated from Passover, and having to eat all that matza (or Matzoh, if you spell it that way.)

This may not be strictly accurate, but you get the gist.

Also, an interesting personal fact that people are surprised to know (and which bears only a tangential relationship to this topic) is that I was in a Jewish fraternity in college. Neil is always shocked when I remind him I was in a fraternity, because he says he can't imagine me being hazed. The truth is that hazing was a lot different in a Jewish fraternity: basically they just make you answer a lot of math questions and make fun of you if your father isn't a doctor or an accountant or a personal injury lawyer. Then they get you drunk - which usually takes about a drink and a half - and, voila! - you're in.

Anyway, I would have written about Passover, but there isn't much to say. The food at Cousin Nancy's was really good this year, and the evening wasn't interrupted by any sort of First Responder, so any chance of a good blog got destroyed (like the ancient temple, though this holiday is pretty much the only one that isn't about the destruction of a temple. Instead, the story of Passover is part of the holiday itself, and is retold every year. To summarize: Slaves. Egypt. Plagues. Wine. Freedom. Israel. Dayanu.)

To continue our mini-Sunday school, for those of you who never studied Judaism, Dayanu means, "It would have been enough." It refers to telling the story of Passover and, involves looking back and saying, "If God had only set us free...it would have been enough; if God had only led us out of Egypt...it would have been enough; etc."

I think the purpose of this is to help us understand irony, as it is often spoken by a table full of people who are more inclined to say things like "She couldn't have made a green vegetable?" Or "You know, you could have been a doctor or an accountant or a personal injury lawyer."

(Also, Passover is known for having the Four Questions, which are:

1. Where did you get your car?
2. How much did you pay for it?
3. What kind of mileage does it get?
4. What do you pay for gas?)
So, without a Passover blog, we will turn to Easter, and the Easter-i-est food of them all:

Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries.

(Seriously: it's like a bowl of Cap'n Crunch that someone has accented with little Easter eggs made out of cereal.)

So here's my dilemma: Yesterday, Neil and I were in the grocery store to pick up a few produce items for dinner. As usual, I wandered the aisles, hal-wondering why a grocery store seems to be the only place that can counter-act my adult ADD. (Truly, I can get distracted in the middle of a sentence, but put me in the cereal aisle and I've got the laser focus of a fighter pilot.) As I was comparing the nutritional value of the cereal I wanted - Crunch Berries - with the cereal I thought I should eat - Kashi GoLean Crunch - I was forced to the following conclusion: Crunch Berries are better for you.

How could this be? I must have been misreading the label, or otherwise missing something. But after buying both boxes and comparing them endlessly (or, for about nine minutes) it does appear that Crunch Berries are the healthier breakfast:

Calories (without milk):

Crunch Berries: 100
GoLean Crunch: 200

Calories from Fat:

Crunch Berries: 15

GoLean Crunch: 40

Sugars:

Crunch Berries: 11g
GoLean Crunch: 12g

Sodium:

Crunch Berries: 190mg
GoLean Crunch 140mg

Iron:

Crunch Berries: 25% of US RDA
GoLean Crunch: 8%

Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6:

Crunch Berries: 25%
GoLean Crunch: 0%

Folic Acid:

Crunch Berries: 100% (stunning, really)
GoLean Crunch: 0%

Total Carbohydrates:

Crunch Berries: 22g
GoLean Crunch: 36g

In summary, GoLean Crunch was slightly better on sodium, and turned out to have more dietary fiber (8g, to 1g for Crunch Berries), but other than that seemed to be a worse bet. True, it also has 9g of protein, to only 1g for Crunch Berries, but if I want protein for brekafast, I'll just eat eggs - not that crappy sugar cereal with no vitamins. (Yeah, I know the Cap'n Crunch people just spray the vitamins on with some sort of chemical spray that's like Miracle-Gro for kids, but who cares? It's still vitamins.)

This seems a worthy victory for kids everywhere who are screaming in the cereal aisle for Apple Jacks and Lucky Charms, and being forced to eat Honey Nut Cheerios instead. Suck it, weird cartoon bee, who's your daddy? That's right, bitches, Lucky the Leprechaun.

Anyway, Happy Easter - I'm off to find some Easter eggs --- at the bottom of my cereal bowl.

Bethenny Never Shuts Up

2011-04-04T17:37:00.002-04:00

We have to take a detour today, and divert from our originally scheduled topics.

I had initially thought I’d write about our weekend in Sag Harbor, which included buying something called “Fat-Ass Fudge” from a chatty Yenta who told us she has previously been a psychic. She kept saying things like, “Want to taste my fat ass?” and “I’m a fudge packer.” I’m always game for sweets with a touch of the supernatural, and Neil is a magnet for the marginally insane – so it could have been quite a post.

Then I thought about reporting on our dinner with Suz, in a post entitled “My Favorite Macedonian.” It would have allowed me to share the story about how I got her to order cuttlefish at the maiden restaurant of Top Chef Season One winner, Harold Dieterle. It also would have given me the opportunity to riff on Macedonia (you’d only know it if you were a dork who played Risk as a kid; it was a Balkan nation-state located in what now comprises parts of Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia. The dialect is similar to Russian and other eastern European languages….See, we can laugh and learn all at the same time.) I love it when people tell you they’re from places that haven’t existed since the early 1900s. I had a paragraph on Persia that would have killed.

But, lo, a request from an old friend in Boston came through during dinner. Could I please write about

Bethenny? Have I not written enough about Bethenny, I asked Neil, and Suzette of Macedonia?

Apparently I have not.

Here goes – but, I swear, this is the last time.

Because writing about Bethenny means giving her more attention and more ink – and that’s all she’s really about. Plus, it means writing about Bravo, and that’s starting to tweak me a little bit, too.

To catch up those of you who might be unfamiliar with the princess of self-promotion, eye-rolling, hysterics and sugar-free pre-mixed margaritas, Bethenny is Bethenny Frankel – old friend of a friend of an old friend of mine (so confusing, right? That needs a map: Eric -> old friend -> her friend -> Bethenny. J.) After years of apparently plotting and scheming to get on television – sort of a modern twist on Lucy Ricardo, without the Cuban bandleader or the actual talent – Bethenny first graced our televisions as a contestant on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. Which turned out to be as welcome as “Law & Order: Trial By Jury” or “CSI: Toledo” and bombed after a single season.

She made it through most of the season based on drive and unadulterated ambition, but it was clear that her motivation for doing the show was now to emulate Martha’s success as a gracious hostess or home economist, but rather to build an empire of product and personage through television.

She returned to the collective consciousness on Bravo, cast – almost in the Sophia Petrillo/Carla Tortelli-like supporting role of comic second banana – in the inaugural season of “The Real Housewives of New York.” Neither married nor non-working, she was clearly not a “housewife” by definition. “Real” is arguable. She reeks, however, of New York City, with the accent and the quips and the incessant eyerolling, made all the more comic by the fact that some might consider her to resemble a resident of Who-Ville.

Yet, despite not having been disqualified from the show on the very terms of its existence, she actually thrived there – creating just enough drama to cause a comfortable level of hostility among the women. As the series progressed, she moved further and further towards the center of the conflict that seems to define the franchise: trumped up arguments between wealthy women of the local ethnicity (OC: blonde; NY: Jewish; NJ: Italian; Miami: Latina; Atlanta: African-American; Beverly Hills: plastic surgerized.)

We all should have seen her own franchise coming. Augmenting her reputation with a series of books and products about food and nutrition, she’s become her own brand: Skinnygirl. A series of books that tell women they can be fun, flirty and thin, basically by eating a little bit less of whatever they want – provided it's “natural” – she then branched out into consumer packaged food with Skinnygirl Margarita. It’s a bottled, “just-open-and-serve” concoction that taste less like a party drink and more like a linty old Jolly Rancher you fished out of your pocket during a three-hour meeting at work.

In season one – Bethenny Getting Married – the cameras followed her as she got, first pregnant, then married (I know at least two women who’ve done this and neither got a show. One, however, got fired. Now she works for a company that cans fish. THAT’S a TV show.) Bethenny’s beloved is a cute – if doltish – guy named Jason who acts like he’s sort of above it all, but you can tell he relishes every moment on camera.

The current season, Bethenny Ever After seems to involve her turning 40 and crying a lot.

Get in line.

Personally, I hope they keep changing the title every season. I can’t wait for “Bethenny Going Through Menopause.” That kid’ll be about 15, and Jason will be over it. I’m looking forward to watching her work her way through two or three bottles of Skinnygirl between some serious door slamming and a hot flash.

The instant fame of Bethenny – indeed all the Bethennys – in fact, all the “Bravo-lebrities” who’ve made getting on television more an act of will than one of talent, can be traced back to one source: Andy Cohen.

You may or may not know Andy – but in New York he has become ubiquitous. This spring, every pay phone and taxicab seems to bear an advertisement for his late night gabfest with the “Bravo-lebrities.” According to the ads, in which he appears to burst through a sheet of paper, he’s “tearing up late night.” I suppose that sounded a lot better than “prancing across your TV screen.”

OK – it’s not that I don’t like Andy. When he did the “Watch What Happens” reunion shows of Top Chef and Project Runway he was a pretty decent moderator. It was sort of nice to have the programming executive who put these shows on the air interacting with the casts. Plus, he clearly watched and enjoyed the shows, so you got to experience it through the eyes of a genuine fan.

Also, I used to see him out in New York and, objectively, he’s an attractive guy.

But when he moved from occasional host into a weekly late night slot, something weird happened. He became all affected and juvenile – with weird facial expressions and catchphrases like “the Mazel of the week” and “Tweet Me.” With the perpetually-hoarse-Brenda-Vaccaro voice and the fawning all over his guests, it’s like watching a show hosted by the girl who sat next to me in eighth grade homeroom.

Tweet this.

I really want to end here – because I think this post is seriously fucking funny – but I think I need to take my medicine and at least do a little self-discovery before I retire the laptop.

This post was the most inspired I’ve been in weeks, and flowed the most easily. Yet it is clearly fueled by jealousy. MY OWN SHOW PEOPLE. Where are the legions of fans lobbying for me to be the new voice of late night? I’m one part Chelsea Handler (a little bawdy), one part Andy Cohen (a little too gay..ugh, I know- but so true) and maybe one part Bethenny (blind ambition.)

Still, if you want to laugh along with someone struggling with work and middle-age while exhibiting the personal judgment and cultural taste of a drunk 16 year old girl…I’m your man.

You Say It's Your Birthday

2011-04-02T09:38:00.000-04:00

I know all my readers think we live some sort of fabulous, glamorous life, like a real life version of Sex and the City, so I hate to burst your champagne bubble and tell you that the only party we went to this weekend was a three year-old’s birthday. Not that there wasn’t alcohol (with a house full of children, clearly that’s a must) – but my days of partying like it’s 1999 ended in, well, 1999.

Besides, if you’ve been reading this blog at all, you know a family event can be fairly amusing – particularly with my family – though I’m sorry to inform you that our story does not end with someone leaving in tears, in an ambulance, or with a lesbian.

There’s a first time for everything.

Anyhow, Neil and I arrived in the burbs shortly after 2pm on Sunday – which always requires readjustment for us. When the company includes – indeed, is dominated by, grandparents and children – the event usually forces me to surrender brunch and dinner to some sort of hybrid Frankenmeal served around 4:30pm. Or – as I like to call it – Happy Hour.

Thus, we generally arrive just as I’m about to pass out from hunger, and eagerly scarf down a glass of wine and some baby carrots. Apparently, having a houseful of children means all your food must be petite, precious, and aptly named.

I found my mother perched on her usual kitchen stool, merrily slurping down a glass of white wine and not helping. This continues a decades long tradition of my mother and sister arriving at each other’s homes and behaving like a guest – much to their mutual chagrin. My stepfather was in his usual position, pacing behind her, and if he weren’t bald when they married six short months ago, he would be by now.

My dad, meanwhile, was the designated photographer, and was skittering around the house snapping photos of the kids. His partner was sitting off to the side looking miserable and thinking about how soon they could leave without being rude.

Moving swiftly from kitchen to table and back again, my sister was putting out food while my brother-in-law served drinks, and together they greeted their guests – many of whom were friends from their neighborhood, or old friends from their respective childhoods. It’s so weird to me – Neil and I each only stay in touch with a handful of people we’ve known since high school or college, and many of them live far from New York. However, my sister and brother-in-law still hang with people they’ve known for years – and I see how that shared history can be comforting – which always strikes as being like a scene out of some Ben Affleck movie set in Boston. Except, instead of everyone working construction in Southie, they all work in finance or do pilates and drive around in SUVs the size of Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, my nieces and nephews are growing up so quickly it’s amazing. The eldest is finally past the shy stage and marched right up to me, gave me a hug, and told me about her new Justin Bieber poster. It’s nice to see that – though not yet seven years old – she already understands our family tradition of women falling in love with gay men. Soon she’ll be drinking Scotch in the Village and looking for her second husband.

She was also wearing a royal blue sleeveless sequined dress, an outfit that was only missing backup singers.

Her sister managed to make it through the afternoon without shedding blood – her own or that of another child – which was reason enough for celebration.

The birthday boy seemed oblivious to the fact that all the attention was for him – which is a personality trait I cannot relate to at all. He was just happy that there was a Thomas the Train cake and a clown.

Oh yes – the clown. Two, actually. One surly guy who looked more like a caricature of a hobo than a clown. He blew up balloons, mostly in the shape of swords with hilts –though that’s not what they looked like. One girl put the tip of a "sword" in her mouth and I nearly lost it. So sweet to see her re-enact the night her parents met.

The other “clown” there was a girl wearing pigtails and a pair of pants with a cowskin print on it. She did magic, but it was all dime-store stuff. If she had any real talent she would have been able to make her cameltoe disappear.

If you’re getting the impression it wasn’t a festive event, you’re totally off-base. It was actually quite amusing – and certainly the high point of a week that also included:

· Flight delays in both directions, including flying through thunderstorms.

· Trying to figure out what those stupid talking twins are saying, and why they’re so popular

· Attempting to get invited to the Royal Wedding, and possibly ending up on Britain’s most wanted list (who knew the Queen was so sensitive about Wall comments on her Facebook page? Besides, her aura of accessibility totally screams that she wants strangers to call her “Liz” and offer to escort her to the nuptials by offering something stiffer than Prince Philip.

· Hallucinations that most of the aforementioned actually happened. Gotta stop hanging out with Charlie Sheen.

Warlock out.

A Visit with Aunt Crazy

2011-03-27T07:09:00.001-04:00

This week began with a special treat – one of those moments where you truly understand the term “blessing in disguise.” In order to address some client needs, I unexpectedly needed to travel to a city where my old pal – let’s call her Aunt Crazy – resides. While my meetings had all the charm of attempting to perform root canal on oneself using an old paper clip, a quick text to Aunt Crazy revealed that she was available to get me suitably sloshed before I returned to the airport to head home.

Aunt Crazy and I worked together years ago at a company who was long-recognized for its superior technology solutions, but is more recently notable for having lost a billion dollar lawsuit which it foolishly permitted to proceed to trial, since everyone knew it was going to lose. We both left the company around the same time, when it became clear that unmarried women and sarcastic gay guys don’t get promoted past a certain level no matter how hard they work, or how well they perform.

A lesson to all you kids singing show tunes and reading People (mostly for Royal Wedding coverage and the photos of hunky moron Brad from the Bachelor) – as well as the girls who hang with them: unless your career plans include creating a media empire, you can take your work seriously and do it well, but you should also make time for important things like soap operas starring people a generation younger than you, spending plenty of time at the gym, and picking up boys.

Yes, those last two activities are the same thing.

Anyway, to return from that tangent, Aunt Crazy (who earns that nickname simply by virtue of hosting an annual Oscar party where the guests wear black tie – from the waist up – and sweatpants) picked me up on a random street corner, after circling the neighborhood for half an hour trying to find me. This point becomes more ironic when she finally arrives and the first thing I notice on her dashboard is a GPS. Perhaps, like me, she programs in the destination, then proceeds to ignore the device, either by talking on the phone, blasting the radio and singing along to Sugarland songs, or yelling at the damn thing, “That’s not the way I want to go!”

When we finally sorted out logistics, Aunt Crazy and I had a blast – we had some snacks at a local tapas bar, caught up on all the people we used to work with, and discussed our mutual desire to start a family. (Not with each other.) Aunt Crazy is looking to adopt, while Neil and I continue to discuss the idea of having children. We commiserated over the challenges – whether it’s the ready availability of two children for a single woman (Aunt Crazy wants a matched set, so they’ll have someone to confide in when she inevitably drives them nuts), or Neil’s concern about being too old, or my irrational concern that my hair-trigger midlife crisis will spin out of control if I have to face my own mortality through the eyes of my child.

Too quickly, though, I had to head out to the airport, saying goodbye to Aunt Crazy for another three or four years. Unfortunately, shortly after arriving, my flight began to post a series of successive delays that kept us on the ground until well after 10pm and limiting my dinner choices to foods that can be purchased at a newsstand. I’d love to tell you that eating a bag of Sour Patch Kids for dinner brought back great memories of college, but it’s just not the same without the drugs.

And, of course I arrived home way too late to watch Pretty Little Liars, so I got up at 6am the next day and turned on the DVR. I’d love to say the season finale clarified things for me, but all it seemed to do was confirm that Ian did, indeed, kill Allison – providing no twist or other compelling narrative – and otherwise create a bunch of confusion on loose threads, but which don’t quite add up to a cliffhanger. Plus, they killed off Ryan Merriman who never really got to show the acting range that one can only truly exhibit with his shirt off.

Thus starved for entertainment, off we trekked to see the very first performance of Broadway’s “Sister Act” – adapted from the movie starring Whoopi Goldberg, by the Whoopi Goldberg production company (see, lesson in paragraph three of this blog, kiddies.) Our expectations were high, as the show is hot off its run on London’s West End (though this is no longer an arbiter of class – and hasn’t been since Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber sent us dreck like Starlight Express. If I want roller skating in my musicals, I’ll skip that for Cheyenne Jackson wearing cutoff denim in Xanadu – for more than the obvious reasons.)

You could feel the anticipation and excitement in audience, teeming with every homo in the tri-state area who could get his hands on a ticket.

Sadly, dear readers, I can’t fully recommend the show – a bloated two-and-a-half hour commitment that has too-few moments of real joy and rapture. The stage is entirely too large for the activity on it, and the staging is – with the exception of tow numbers, a fantasy dream sequence and a solo power ballad – unimpressive. The choreography is hokey and line-dance-y; the jokes are really corny and obvious, and the book is – with the exception to two lines – very weak. The star, Patina Miller, lacks the glory notes in her upper register to pull off the songs, which is sort of OK, since most of the music is unmemorable. Pacing is uneven, particularly in the first act, which takes just over an hour to accomplish a slow set up that needs to be done in half the time, and with more energy. It’s too long a sit to get to what the audience came for: those singing nuns from the movie. Still, the second act moves a bit more briskly and, despite the generic music and some wacky capers that are lifted right out of a Keystone Kops sequence in a 1920 nickelodeon, the energy and uplift at the end gets the crowd applauding and generated a standing ovation.

I imagine there’s a enough good will for the movie – and for Whoopi – as well as enough of a curiosity factor, to goose advance sales for a few months. And even though the show played in London, they made some changes, so there’s no reason to think they won’t further adjust it through previews.

Other than that, it was a relatively quiet week. We went out for Pookie's birthday. We did a little shopping. I've been looking for a pair of jeans since Christmas - which seems crazy since I have almost 20 pairs and half of them I bought through Gilt Group - but I really needed a pair that I bought in real time. Buying online restricts me to designers and brand I already know, and even then I'm taking a guess that the weight and texture of the material, and the actual color, will work for me. Actual shopping permits the assessment of critical questions like: "Does the fit accentuate the musculature of my thighs, or make me look crammed into a sausage casing?" and "How cute is my butt?"

I also needed to find a few shirts, and spend some time in a fitting room praying to the fashion gods for the end of gingham. Yes, I like how it looks on me - but if I buy one more gingham shirt I'm gonna need some red shoes and a Scarecrow.

We decided to spend what was left of Saturday afternoon downtown, and started by going to Chinatown. The weather has gotten a little colder and wetter than it was the past two weekends, but we couldn't sit inside and watch television. So instead of watching frantic crowds of Asian people trying in vain to dodge a nuclear holocaust, we figured we'd watch them fight over oyster mushrooms.

If you've never been to the Hong Kong Supermarket, I can't say I recommend it. It's perceived as being this sort of ethnic food superstore, but it isn't terribly large. I suppose it claims to offer an authentic experience because all the pushing and shoving and jostling seems to re-create the effect of riding the subway in Tokyo. The fish all had cloudy eyes and were piled high atop trays of ice, and the produce all looked a little wilted and forlorn.

I expected a market of largely exotic and relatively fresh, foods - but beyond the stacks of squid and some rather pale pumpkin chunks, the remainder of the store was as a much a paean to consumer packaged foods as any Safeway. I'm not exactly sure how to end communism, but I'm fairly certain it involves using high fructose corn syrup.

Anyhow, I wish I had some sort of profound observation or lesson with which to close. But I don't. The closest I can offer is a cautionary tale picked up at Hong Kong Supermarket: Politics and sarcasm aside, those little cookies with the Panda faces - politically incorrect though they may be - are delicious. If this is China's answer to Teddy Grahams, we're going to be in serious trouble when it gets to the big stuff.

The Groundskeeper's Willie

2011-03-14T22:00:00.001-04:00

I realize my blog has become a near-permanent obsession with my mid-life crisis, but can I just say that you know you've reached middle age when you have this conversation:

Husband: "How do you like the throw pillows?"

Other husband: "They look nice on the bed. Aren't they from the sofa in the living room?"

First husband: "Yeah, I'm all about trying new things."

Trying new things? I can still remember when "trying new things" meant cycling down a volcano or jumping out of a plane or doing body shots off a go-go boy's abs. When "trying new things" means the temporary relocation of home accessories, you are middle-aged.

(By the way, if you want to know when you're gay - it's when you're a man talking about throw pillows. The whole sex part is beside the point.)

However, it's always nice to take a vacation from your own mid-life crisis to watch someone else's, so last night Neil and I went to dinner at the home of some relatively new friends. We don't know them well, so stopped along the way and picked up a nice spring flowering plant. We figured, you can never be sure if people drink (though, if they didn't, we probably wouldn't be going back) - or what they like - and home decor is either too specific ("Oh. Art Deco. How...ummm...lovely.") or too impersonal (think: scented candle or picture frame. To me, the picture frame is the gift card of impersonal gifts. It says, "I refused to put any thought into this, whatsoever.")

If you've never arived at the multi-million dollar home of new acquaintances bearing nothing but a potted plant, and then find out within five minutes of arriving that it is the also host's birthday, I can't really recommend it. I felt like we showed up in boxer shorts, eating Fritos (which is how we would have spent the evening, otherwise.)

It was, however, a thoroughly enjoyable evening - even if the guest list could have been pulled directly from an updated version of an Agatha Christie novel. To wit:

Our hosts: an eyeglass manufacturer (don't chuckle - there's serious dough in that business) and a real estate broker (can we say it? When did everybody become a Real Estate broker? There are now almost as many shows about real estate brokers as there are about chefs - and the vast majority of the people watching them are in a one-bedroom fourth-floor walk up, eating Frito's on the couch.)

A single friend: There's always one, right?

A straight couple on their second marriage: You know the drill, right? He's become a metrosexual at fifty-ish, with the black cashmere sweaters and the closely-cropped hair. (I'm sorry, but if I see one more straight guy in a pair of $300 jeans, a knit pullover and blazer, getting his nails buffed, I'm going to barf. What's hip about a straight man dressing like he's trying to pick up a 19 year old Mexican boy?

She - the wife - is, of course, adorable. I can't help myself around the pretty girls. I am completely drawn to every Heather (80s reference), Betty (90s reference), and Mean Girl (00s reference.) Who wouldn't be? The prettiest girl in the room is always the most fun - and the most powerful. She's got a pile of money to spend and always dresses like she's headed for a red carpet-worthy occasion. You know these girls married for love the first time, got a kid or two before figuring out Husband No. 1 was fucking his secretary, his masseuse or a 19-year old Mexican boy, and got out - still young enough for a healthy dose of pilates, spinning and vodka to tighten and tone the body and land Husband No. 2.

Ladies - life lesson here: he may not be gorgeous, but he's relatively good-looking, and you can forgive a lot when you're wearing Manolos and shuttling between a house in town and two acres in East Hampton.

And trust me when I tell you that you can have sex once a week with a person you're not particularly attracted to. I like to call that "my 20s." And no one ever gave me shoes or real estate.

They also brought their fourteen year-old son.

To the gay dinner party.

Can I say I felt a little Awk. Ward.

I know - I homoeroticize everything or make everyone gay - but this kid is gay, gay, GAY. You can say I'm reading too much into the sibilant "s"s, or that I don't know much about today's teenagers - but I have to believe that a fourteen year-old boy who watches Project Runway and likes clothing design and draping is less interested in getting your dress off, and more interested in putting it on.

The lesbian couple. Not the motorcycle-butch kind, or the lipstick-edgy-sort-of-punk-rock kind - they're the sort of sporty-athletic kind. One is a tennis-playing lawyer who likes to travel; the other works in real estate and was a little more withdrawn - playing with the dogs and helping in the kitchen.

The kitchen.

Wow - ok - so this is where it gets a little weird. (I know - 'cause it wasn't weird enough already.)

The houseboy. I'm not even sure how to start describing this. The first time they mentioned him, Neil and I got the impression a college kid - maybe 19, 20 - someone who spent the summers with them working around the house. I pictured a kid doing landscaping and light housework in exchange for getting to live in the Hamptons for the summer; probably gay.

I did not expect someone closer to thirty than twenty who was going to make me forget I was married. This was a man - not a kid - impossibly good looking in jeans and a henley and a whole Abercrombie thing going on. Taking the semester off from school, he seemed more house manager than "kid you hire for the summer to cut the grass." Neil and I will spend most of our Sunday morning joking about him, but either one of us would secretly and eagerly trade our eastern European cleaning woman in a heartbeat.

Though - truthfully - I wonder how I'd feel about sharing my house with my husband and another man. I remember that relationship mathematics of any number higher than 2 always - ultimately - yields the wrong answer. You might be able to work your way through the equation, but can't get to the QED. At first it sounds kind of hot; then it sounds kind of liberated; then it just seems scary, because the singularity of just having that one other person that you are in love with - and who is in love with you - seems so inviolate. That the issue is less the sexual intimacy than the emotional intimacy of 2 - just you; just one other. A relationship is like a secret; only two people know it; only two people get it, and it loses its potency in numbers; dilutes its strength.

I know - all this is really none of my business.

Besides, I probably need to stop entertaining myself by sitting in the corner with the pretty girl in the expensive shoes, making fun of people.

Yeah. Like that's gonna happen.

This is not an upbeat post

2011-03-06T10:04:00.002-05:00

It’s hard not to wince when he orders a beer twenty minutes before noon on a Tuesday, even though he’s already told me he’s been up since daybreak, struggling with the inconveniences and delays of modern air travel. We haven’t even reached cruising altitude before I know that his connection through Atlanta began in Panama City, where he buried his father. Or that it won’t end until long after we land in Albuquerque, somewhere in rural southwestern Colorado. With a snack box of raisins and canned chicken salad splayed out on his tray, I know, too, that much more probably separates us that the nineteen-inch width of seat 21B.

So I stifle the wince and forgive him his beer.

Travel does funny things to your brain; to your sense of observation and perspective. Ten years ago I was both an inquisitive and acquisitive person, curious and extroverted, eager to collect new friends, and stories and experiences. But a decade of airlines and airports, delays and degradation takes a toll; you begin to shut out and shut off – hidden behind an iPad or a laptop; powered up and shut down. It is simply far too easy to become weary, restive, defensive of every clattering, cumulative intrusion from the outside world that amasses, like email on my Blackberry.

The noise is too noisy, cacophonous and disparate.

Until it isn’t.

Recently, it has become impossible not to notice. My travels take me to places like Idaho, where budget cuts and education reform initiatives have resulted in protests, violent and non, from walk-outs to vandalism of the state superintendent’s car. In Wisconsin, the legislature has fled to prevent a quorum that would force a vote stripping unionized workers from collective bargaining. I’m mixed on unions – their record of achievement and their general merit – but I know this: we are seeing the second unprecedented period of economic growth in a decade; with markets and corporations increasing profit and productivity, while jobs disappear and real wages decline. Even when the economy shrank, jobs and payrolls shrank exponentially more. Taking away the right of workers to bargain collectively will make them isolated and helpless – the easier to abuse.

Much has been written about the decline and disappearance of the middle class, to the point where it’s become political theater – something we talk about like global warming or entitlement spending, but don’t really address – even though most of America is aware of the problem. It’s too easy to preserve the conflict as a political wedge – and too hard to fix it – so instead we argue about it in the papers and polling places while our home values stagnate, while our kids don’t go to college, or don’t finish, and we wonder, waiting – will it be China? When? Surely we can’t continue this way forever without the consequences coming due.

We could be having a different conversation – one that examines the real system issues burdening our economy. It is clear our budget is deeply, deeply red, and our state are broke – but ending critical programs, eliminating jobs and taking away protections long-attributed to creating a middle class say something so dark about our values it is hard to do anything more than glance at it, lest it be too painful to believe. The gains we’d get a so meager, and our other problems so massive, that it seems both petty and mean.

Last week I went to Florida, where I stayed in a hotel on the beach undergoing renovation. Vacationers have returned, even if home values haven’t, and the glimmers of sunshine in the Sunshine State are more than meteorological. In a section of the lobby, one morning as I was answering email, I sat not far from where the catering manager was interviewing job applicants. Person after person sat there, barely-masking the desperation in their voice, hoping for a job delivering trays or washing dishes. Not kids; not college students – adults, grateful for a chance to earn a paycheck. I left feeling profoundly sad.

Every day, every place I go, I watch my clients – public school districts, public colleges and universities, educational programs – struggle and beg for money. I will be the first to cite chapter and verse on the need for reform in our public education process – better teachers, more technology, greater accountability – as well as a need to refocus the dollars we do spend on programs and investments that have been proven to work, rather than protecting legacy interests and structures. But the cuts we’re seeing now are senseless and random. Worse yet, that we are not embarrassed at the demonization of our public education system is shameful. I may see places where it is hard to get rid of bad teachers, or class size requirements that make no sense as they force 22 kids into separate classrooms with separate teachers. One of those teacher may be incapable of handling half that many; and the other – twice as much.

But never in ten years have I worked with a client who didn’t care about education. Who didn’t see it’s role as absolutely critical to economic and social development. Who wasn’t 100% committed to dedicating their life to making countless lives better.

Today I’ll visit a client whose program is in danger of being shut down. She has four kids, and a beautiful grandbaby. She is finishing her dissertation. If her program is eliminated, I can’t imagine where she’d go...hers won’t be the only job eliminated…and I just can’t bear the thought of a great educator winding up in a hotel lobby, begging for a job making coffee.

You Mean Like Laverne & Shirley?

2010-12-31T09:57:00.002-05:00

I’d love to begin this posting with a pastoral scene of New York City blanketed in snow. Silver bells and Christmas lights and all that shit.

Or a country lane in Sag Harbor. Sitting in the window seat watching the flakes fall, while the tree twinkles in the living room. Neil fries up latkes and bakes gingerbread in the kitchen, and through the speakers we are implored to have ourselves a merry little Christmas.

“WHERE ARE YOU???!!! WHERE???!!!” Reverie of a silent night evaporates as Neil shouts down his cell phone. It is two days until Christmas – Christmas Eve eve – outside Bush Intercontinental Airport (named for the father, ironically, since it’s the son who was the true false Texan. Poppy was always more New England than New South.) Neil is trying to locate his parents and just as his frustration reaches a boiling point I spy them gliding down the pick-up lane in their Caprice Classic. It’s as if all at once the entire reason for the GM bailout has come into full view. I don’t need to see the “God Bless America” sticker in the rear window or the old sheet covering the back seat to realize that if the Tea Party were an automobile, it would be pulling up in front of me right now.

We’ve discussed Neil’s parents before (here) but, as a refresher, they left the Bronx almost 40 years ago and they still tawk like dis. His mother cracks me up – she’s disdainful and misanthropic – and basically everything I love about Neil. His father is sort of brilliant, in a mad scientist sort of way – he’s the type of guy who can properly use words like “inveigle” and “ossify” in casual conversation, but uses his son’s name and the dog’s interchangeably.

I’m girding myself for a snowless Christmas that will begin with Mexican food in a strip mall and end with an argument that lasts until New Years.

It’s hard to imagine no one’s ever written a carol about this.

On Christmas Eve, I finally drag myself from bed at 8am (9am Eastern time) – where I’ve been for the past ten hours. I’ve fallen back to sleep half a dozen times over the past four hours, and no longer have the capacity to force myself to stay in bed. It’s apparent I’m not going to get away with sleeping through the next five days unless I come down with malaria or chronic fatigue syndrome. (BTW, Carrie (of Carrie and Steven. From L.A. Keep up!) just got diagnosed with Kronick Fatigue Syndrome. This is sort of an inside joke, but is also funny if you know that every woman in her family is descended from the dervish; literally, they are a blur of activity and emotion and energy and junk food. They subsist on a steady diet of anxiety and Rice Krispie squares.) It’s also funny because not only is she stuck with some trendy yuppie fad disease, but she caught it a decade and a half after the fad was over. The only hope of making this cool is figuring out a way to make it 1993 again.)

The house is abuzz with activity; coffee has been made and drunk and there is talk of a second pot. Bagels and English muffins and an assortment of breads are on the counter. The dog is contemplating Eggs Benedict. (On our last visit, we spent approximately 70% of our time in grocery stores – mostly picking up samples and squirreling them away to feed the dog – an animal that gets more demonstrable affection than my husband or his sister. This is not a judgment. The dog is the grandchild they may never have; scraps from the H.E.B. are the toys and candies they’ll never spoil a toddler with.

I pad into the living room, bracing myself for 4 days of conversations about what our next meal is going to be (This is not a one-note conversation, by the way. You can discuss more than WHAT you are going to eat next. You can discuss WHEN you are going to eat it; WHERE you are going to eat it; WHAT specials the restaurant may be having; WHAT your favorite menu item is; WHY the regular prices are highway robbery; WHICH waitress is slow and lazy and which is nice. Truthfully, if you begin shortly after breakfast, you can keep the conversation going right up until that slovenly, slatternly waitress brings you your overpriced entrée.)

(At 4pm.)

We will also shortly begin discussing when we want to leave for the airport – four days from now. It is hard to ascertain what this conversation is actually about: something simple – such as making conversation, or more complex – such as apprehension about driving to the airport, or downright Freudian – such as implying that we’re always welcome but why the heck are we staying so long.

Which, quite honestly, is the struggle I am having with this trip. I’m going to warn you now – this is the part of the story where I am come off as less than sympathetic and somewhat selfish. Yes, we see my family on average of once a month in some form or fashion – but because they are local, each dosage is a four-hour experience; the filial equivalent of an aspirin. However, because Neil’s family is 1500 miles away, visits are immersion experiences, closer to radiation treatments. When they come to NY, they stay in a hotel (they’re always welcome with us, but the reality is the second bedroom is set up as an office, not a guest room. And the first bedroom is symbolic of a conversation we’ve managed to avoid for 6 years and there’s no point in facing it now.)

In Houston, we stay with them – in a spare room with a trundle bed that, last Thanksgiving, I pushed together while all four of us were setting up the room. If I were looking for a way to stall the chatter and small talk, I’d found it. In any event, trips to Houston are a 24/7 experience. To continue the analogy, it’s the family visit equivalent of chemotherapy.

Anyway, the truth is that no one comes out of this story looking good – least of all me. I knew we were headed to Houston for one of the late year holidays, and was sort of hoping that it would be Thanksgiving. Last year was perfectly fine – and you can sort of manage a Wednesday-to-Sunday between college football, extreme overeating, and mall shopping in a way that the days mostly evaporate. Plus, I’m not that attached to Thanksgiving. As far as holidays go, I love it: four days off of work; everybody takes the same time off so you can’t really fall behind like you do on vacation. But I’m not particularly attached to any Thanksgiving tradition. My mother has hosted it for years – but we no longer go to Connecticut like we did in the 80s and early 90s; she sold the house I grew up in almost 7 years ago. It’s basically just a big meal, an experimental side dish gone wrong, and waiting for someone to spill red wine so I can get blamed for it.

This is NOT my family. I hope it's not yours, either.

Christmas – somehow – is different. My sister has made Christmas Eve for almost ten years and it is tradition. It is also the one day a year I get to see my entire family together in one place behaving relatively nicely to one another. My sister isn’t particularly relaxed, but she’s rarely particularly relaxed, and she generally finds a way to enjoy herself; she love-hates doing it. It’s a total inconvenience, and half the guest list could easily be flushed, but she loves having her whole family – crazy in-laws, lesbian DJs, inappropriate boyfriends, stray loners, new husbands, bad parents, occasional drug addicts and mean gay lovers – in one place.

It is also tradition to visit Neil’s aunt and uncle in Westchester on Christmas Day. There is always a pile of presents and too much food, and his cousin not getting engaged to his girlfriend for the eighth year in a row. There are Catholics and half-Catholics and Jews and Jehovah Witnesses and a belly dancer. And too much wine. And seven-layer dip – of which at least three layers may have come from ingredients that were appropriated from his aunt’s Subway franchise.

And it’s fun.

So, with all the family we have in New York – it just seems wrong for us to go to Houston. Every year I hope – in vain – that we can figure out a way to fly them up to New York; then everyone can be together and no one has to make any hard choices. Negotiators would call this a perfect solution.

Except the travel is inconvenient and the airports are crazy at the holidays and a million other reasons that aren’t reasons – and also are reasons – all at the same time.

So, as autumn wore on, we kept skirted by the issue of the holidays and not making any decisions. “What are we doing about visiting your family?” Became the conversation I started without us ever really finishing. We did it as a drive-by. After the question was out there like an opening ante, I offered, “Well, the problem is that my mother just got married.” This was negotiating by implication. Translation: “We skipped Thanksgiving last year. Also, my sister was with her in-laws last year. My mother will expect that, if she can alternate, then we can alternate. Plus, Mom just got married, so I’m sure she has some Walton’s Mountain vision of a family Thanksgiving where she can show off her constipated graciousness and mediocre cooking skills. She’ll get to show off how much she “enjoys” entertaining by beaming as my step-dad carves the turkey and stifling her frustration or hiding a grimace every time some onion dip hits the floor or a child behaves like, well, a child. We’ll be force-marched through saying what we’re thankful for and in a few short hours we’ll be freed into the frigid night, left with nothing but heartburn and gratitude that the turkey was, in fact, completely cooked, the yams not covered in rainbow covered marshmallows that she didn’t realize were fruit-flavored, and Elliott Gould isn’t dead (all Ghosts of Thanksgivings past.)

To be fair, that opening bid didn’t leave Neil much choice but to raise with, “Well, we’ve never gone to Houston for Christmas.” This is more a statement of fact than a position, but the implication is obvious. On several hands he added, “My sister keeps talking about how much fun that one Christmas was.” One needs to be careful of statements like these. I’m sure – if I tried – I could find a Thanksgiving from that last ten years in which no one got yelled at, the meal was largely edible, and no one left in an ambulance. But statisticians wouldn’t call this a trend.

Through passive-aggression – here we are. For six days. (By the time we booked the tickets, the schedule and prices weren’t terribly accommodating, so we’re in for a Thursday-Tuesday marathon.) And the reality is that this is my fault. My attempt to double-down on a strategy that got me Thanksgiving while betting that he wouldn’t want to give up Christmas has resulted in a visit that is longer than many of the vacations we’ve taken. And, feeling caught between my mother and my spouse (can anyone relate?) I failed to say what I wanted, which was that I could take or leave Thanksgiving, but didn’t want to miss Christmas.

So I will spend Christmas Eve quietly, trying to keep my pouting unnoticeable. We will go to the mall with my father-in-law, where we will appropriately express horror at the price of everything, and Neil will become increasingly frustrated with his inability to figure out a gift for either of his parents, with having waited until Christmas Eve to go shopping, and with the holiday in general. I will try to comfort him be reminding him that his mother has never been abroad, and that for several years I’ve been saying we should send them to Rome so that – before they die, they can see something older than each other.

Driving home from the mall (with gift cards) the radio reports the 2010 census information, highlighting that the population increase in Texas will result in a net increase of four Congressional seats, while New York will lose one, potentially two. Now, I am aware Texas has long surpassed New York as the second-most populous state, but driving through the sameness of the streets that comprise “The Woodlands” – a mobius strip of cul-de-sac upon cul-de-sac, development after development, where the condos and townhomes and ranch houses and McMansions are separated into planned “neighborhoods” – I wonder: Who the hell lives here?

It’s not just Houston and its cookie-cutter suburbs – which struck me as tedious long-before I knew Neil, when I used to travel here on business and figured the only reason the city grew was because there were jobs in the oil and gas business. It’s San Antonio with its cheap tourist attractions and general lack of industry or culture. Even Dallas and Austin – both of which I actually enjoy – still leave me puzzled. I think of Manhattan; the energy of the city and its unlimited options; the ability to do anything and be anyone you want to be; of the beach towns on Long Island, the bedroom suburbs, the mountain cabins of the Catskills – so much culture and nature – and it just confuses me beyond belief. In a world where there are so many choices – about what kind of life to have; what to participate in – it seems like so many Americans would politicize and proselytize about the American spirit than actually exercise it. I guess it’s easier to just sit at home, feel superior, then turn on Two and Half Men and microwave some pizza rolls.

I avoid actually commenting on the news, since politics and current events run the risk of completely derailing détente. We spend most of our visit sitting around the living room television where the only deviation from Fox News will be home improvement shows, anything involving midgets or Hitler, and the occasional classic movie (which is ordinarily a safe bet, but at one point, when I stop at “In the Good Old Summertime,” starring Judy Garland, I wonder if I’ve committed the entertainment equivalent of showing up at dinner in an evening gown.)

Fortunately, the pending snowstorm on the east coast is dominating the coverage, as we are otherwise subjected to year in review reporting that will include the election of Scott Brown, the November election and its “refudiation” of the Obama agenda, and the continuing transformation of Sarah Palin from the ignorant accidental governor of Alaska – who by virtue of John McCain’s cynicism, good messaging, and general good luck – has managed to become a true cultural phenomenon despite any actual knowledge, experience, accomplishment or even any particular affection for American government. I always wonder why people like her want to be part of the political conversation if they disdain it so much?

And no year-end news round-up would be complete without the lame duck session of Congress, particularly the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – sure to cast a pall over the living room. (Besides – what would I say? Other than the fact that I see it as a huge civil rights victory, my only other reaction is to reminisce about being 25, living in Washington, and getting to hook up with military guys suffering from low self-esteem. DADT may have been discriminatory, but it landed me a few dates that were totally out of my league.)

Christmas Eve dinner is a delicious pork tenderloin and Neil’s Brussels sprout dish with cannellini beans and parmesan – and the big excitement of the evening will be when the oven goes out in the middle of a rain and wind storm. (The stove top, interestingly, is gas – but the oven is electric.) The circuit breaker is outside, and at least three of us will venture out into the monsoon and attempt to flip the circuit back – which will prove impossible, though – thankfully – only the oven worked off that circuit so everything else is working. Dinner will be finished on the stove, and the conversation will center around relief that Christmas dinner is Italian food – sauces and pastas and things that can largely be made on the stove top or using electric appliances. If it had been a turkey, we’d be screwed.

I awoke on Christmas morning no more optimistic than I had gone to bed. As I head into the living room, however, there is a pile of presents under the mantle (decorated with garland, but there’s no tree.) After everyone’s awake and Neil’s sister arrives, we begin to open presents – and I’m stunned to find a sizable stack with my name on it. Scarves and shirts and housewares for the homes I share with their son and brother. And the final present was a book from Neil’s father – directly from his personal library. And so my Christmas really brought a miracle; of a touching gift from my father-in-law, of actions – more demonstrative than words – of being welcomed, included, and made a part of this family. And in that moment my dissatisfaction and frustration and selfishness evaporated, replaced by contentment and peace and no small amount of embarrassment at missing my family, when I was already with family.

I will need to remind myself of this later, when a neighbor arrives for dinner and I am introduced as Neil’s roommate. And friend. I know they don’t have the vocabulary for what we are (actually, I’m sure they know words like “boyfriend” and “husband” but lack the ability to use them in this capacity) – but I couldn’t help making mental comparisons to Bert and Ernie (Sesame Street’s subversive same-sex couple) and Laverne and Shirley (I always thought their affinity for “Boo-Boo Kitty” and “Scooter-Pie” was code.)

Oh, and there was one more miracle. As we sat down to dinner – the eggplant parmesan that had been prepped in advance (thank god) and reheated in an electric skillet, the Italian meats that boiled in homemade sauces on the range – my mother-in-law boasted about the great deal she got on the sausage because she found it in the section of meat that’s close to or just past its expiration date. For nearly forty years I’ve been looking for an effective way to curb my appetite on the holidays and I think I just found it. Meanwhile, when my sister-in-law suggested that this might not be critical dinner table conversation – or one that you’d want to share with a table full of guests, the response that followed was, “What? It tastes just as good and no one’s getting’ sick.”

Really, that woman cracks me up.

The Kids Are All Wrong

2010-12-11T10:48:00.001-05:00

Okay, okay, okay. The din of demands from my tens of readers has finally pulled my bloated carcass away from the dish of Christmas Candy (Holiday M&Ms, natch...the first, and still the best, though the Butterfinger Bells are pretty awesome, too.) For the next hour I have turned my back on the seemingly endless stream of email and paused the DVR in the middle of last week's Top Chef All-Stars (oddly, despite the insane talent, I still find myself rooting for the daffy Carla Hall (Hootie? Hoo!) and the misanthropic yet somehow lesbo-chic Jamie Lauren (who, while at Absinthe, was serving some of the best food in San Francisco...the bay area's loss is L.A.'s gain.)

Speaking of L.A., since my last post (Ha! Ha! - yes, that post from, like, two months ago) I was briefly in L.A. (and mostly Anaheim, which is to L.A. what Krab is to Crab: so close, and yet so far away.) I got to catch up with the fabulous Malcolm and Julie (who, when in New York, dine with Mick Jagger, but can't seem to scare up a D-lister when I'm in L.A., so I brought along the fabulous Carrie and Steven. We went to Gjelina, since Steven had been training for a triathlon and was looking pretty smokin', and Carrie couldn't tip the scales at 100 pounds of you gave her a 50 pound barbell to hold on to. I figured too much wine, flatbread pizza, and grilled pizzas would do the trick - which it did, if the trick were having a fabulous evening.

But, really, the fall hasn't left much else to write about. Should I report the domestic drudgery of tweaking the touches on a second home we bought - fully furnished and detailed to the nines - at a price that would have been way below market even if it were empty? I'd write about popular culture, but it seems to have gotten as boring and middle-aged as I have. Seriously: Modern Family; the return of Cher to the big screen; the return of Winona Ryder to the big screen; Jennifer Grey's dancing (with a delicious blond boy; ok - that sort of got my attention).

Anything that hasn't been ripped straight out of 1987 is a trend so overdone, overstuffed, and just plain over that I can't even muster a scintilla of interest. Vampires, "Real" Housewives, Harry Potter, Katy Perry (totally hot and talented but over exposed), Jon Hamm (totally hot and talented but passed overexposed so long ago that the next stop after MadMen is the center square.) I'm even starting to get worn out by Glee; it's so damn earnest that I'm half rooting for Kurt to get bored with his wobbly-Warbler and get into a little rough trade with Karofsky. Anything for a little less sweater-vest and a little more heat.

The problem with the cannibalization that's created in a copycat culture is perfectly encapsulated by one show: Skating with the Stars. Here is a show that makes its genesis (the previously referenced "Dancing with the Stars") look like High Art. At what point do we simply draw the line and say, "No!"? I'll say this, if Serena Williams and Emmanuel Lewis start playing mixed doubles on prime time, I'm taking up reading again.

Seriously...why not just let it all go to hell and air Celebrity Hoarder-Rehab with the Stars. We can watch Lindsay Lohan come down off of smack in a houseful of cats and old lettuce. Throw in a midget or a vampire and you've got a hit.

I was reminded of this last night, when Neil and I went to a holiday party down in the East Village.

Wow, you think - the East Village. It's so New York, it's so downtown. It's so edgy and late-night and alternative.

Nope. Not anymore.

The party was at David Barton Gym - across the street from a Starbucks (the national emblem of overexposed, replicated tedium), and down the block from the worldwide headquarters of J.Crew (nice clothes of good quality, yes; creative and edgy: NO.) Back in the day, David Barton was the impresario of gym/club culture - the place where you spent your days getting the body you needed to live the nights you wanted to live. His wife, Susanne Bartsch (who, the story goes, had all the money) was a fixture in the New York club scene.

You've seen the folks that populated that time and place. The Club Kids. Richie Rich, James St. James, Michael Musto, Amanda LePore. You remember them from the movie Party Monster, from episodes of Sally Jessie Raphael and Donahue from the late eighties when they'd come on tv, dressed like a psychedelic frog or a sequined Big Bird, ears and noses misshapen with stage prosthetics; completely over the top.

If we were reinventing club culture for 2010, you'd get my attention. It was never my thing - and still isn't - but at least it would be something new; or something old re-imagined as something new for this time; this place. But it's not. It's not 24 year old assistants or hair stylists or aspiring artists or aspiring anythings expressing themselves artistically. It's the same old club kids, now club grannies, pushing 50 (or more) made all the more freakish my plastic surgery - wearing the same outfits from 20 years ago.

There's something deeply disturbing about a middle-aged woman made up like an elf and wearing a tablecloth from a pizza place. A 50 year old man in a tight red suit using an oversize candy cane as a walking stick. Three people completely covered in crocheted yarn - like it was a metaphor for the knitting that would be appropriate to their age. My 64 year old mother (sorry, Mom) could have whipped them into a nice sweater vest for those Glee kids.

Speaking of Julie (which I was, like, fifteen paragraphs ago. Pay attention.) she suggested (back when our daily highs were still in the 60s) that I write about the election.

But how? How long will it take to describe your disappointment in a president you voted for haltingly (having far preferred his primary rival, the fabulous Mrs. Clinton - who's looking haggard and hoarse and horrible and is, despite that, the closest America will get to Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir - and we should be ashamed that we let our national narrative of her stand in the way of a job she would have been terrific at.)?

How ironic that we elected the first black president and he's turned out to be so colorless.

You know it's bad when you find yourself in a hotel fitness center at 7:15am, watching George W Bush on the Today show telling Matt Lauer some revisionist history of his presidency, which ranged from juvenile indignance to shocking incompetence, and find yourself sort of missing him.

Because he stood for something. Because you can argue with someone who has an opinion, even if it is misguided or wrong or ill-informed.

But I have no idea what this presidency means. What does it stand for. Even Clinton managed to clothe "stuff I can get passed" in a narrative about restoring the middle class. And even he managed to take tough stands for the things he believed in; even if he paid a price.

Here's the difference - and here's why I think Obama will end up being more like Carter (a smart, well-intentioned man with great capacity for many things, but lacking in the leadership and theater that's required to be President) than like Clinton; why I think that - unless we get an amazing economic rebound in the next 12 months - he's toast.

When Clinton made the calculated decision to do what was right, even if it cost his party their majorities; they did so fighting - passing the budget bill with tax increases, in 1993, by the Vice President breaking a tie in the Senate. He took it done to the thinnest of margins, while Obama, presiding over the opportunity to leverage the economy to justify a massive plan to stimulate spending, rebuild our infrastructure, and provide a safety net for healthcare, instead split the difference and gave us not enough stimulus, not enough jobs, and a plan that could have been politically popular but got so nicked away and neutered, that it lost some key provisions that made it worth doing in the first place.

Not that I found myself so inspired by the choices in the mid-terms. We all knew this was going to be an "eat your peas" presidency - with a lot of things we needed to do now, even though the benefits could take years to materialize, or because they were unpleasant but prevented a more unpleasant alternative. That's part of the reason it's such a shame we've forgotten the importance of electing people who are smart; who are experienced; who understand the issues better than we do and who know both the answer and how to get it through Congress.

Instead, our culture of narcissism (which, of course, spawned blogs like this, so I'm self-aware, if hypocritical) means that the public at large thinks that the best answer to everything is "change!" And not just "throw the bums out" but "let's replace them with people like us." Apparently we're in a phase where the electorate is turning to "relatability" as a key determinative factor, without asking if these people are smart or capable enough to address the daunting slate of problems needing resolution. Do we really want folks willy-nilly tackling unemployment, the economy, defense, the deficit, when their most recent job qualification was being a talk show staple and possibly a teenage witch? Sabrina for President!

(OK, I know she lost, but still - the fact that she - along with a cohort of equally unlikely crackpots - got as far as they did, is a national embarrassment.)

So, where does this all leave us?

Why is change so troubling in one area - politics - where I long for some grown-ups to come along with boring stolidity and competence to get things done; and so stultifying in another - politics - where I long for something new?

Nice Try

2010-11-03T10:25:00.000-04:00

Has anyone seen the new Nutella commercial? Where the mom serves her kids Nutella for breakfast, spreading it on multigrain toast, or, "even a whole wheat waffle."

Nice try. I can wrap Cotton Candy around a carrot and it's still crap.

Middle Ages

2010-10-09T10:36:00.000-04:00

Warning: this post risks becoming sentimental.

I woke up middle-aged this morning.

I don’t mean I feel older (I don’t), or look older (I do.) I don’t even mean I am older (I am. See my last post.) However, I feel like I’m turning a bend in the circle of life.

Yesterday my mother got married. Well, re-married. In the office of a town clerk down the block from my sister’s house, on the rainiest day we’ve had in months (not an omen) with my nieces and nephews screaming in the background (also, not an omen), my mother became someone’s wife – or ex-wife – other than my dad’s.

The truth is, my sister and I couldn’t be happier. As of yesterday morning, my mother had been separated from my father for 24½ years – seven years longer than they were married. Divorced, in the mold of second-wave feminism, not necessarily militaristically, but defiantly, she lived as if there was nothing an unmarried woman couldn’t do.

And she was right. She raised two kids, and sent both to college and grad school. She survived cancer, a brain tumor, and a hip replacement. She taught for more than thirty years, got an advanced degree, and became a principal. So who would have guessed, in her retirement, co-habitating with her boyfriend of three years wouldn’t be enough. That she still wanted the brass ring (ahem, diamond wedding band) – marriage.

Perhaps this is another hallmark of second-wave feminism – that the generation from which it spawned still has a vestigial attachment to marriage as an institution. Or maybe it’s the same as the argument I make about my own right to a same-sex marriage: that there is something just different about marriage. Anyway, this isn’t that kind of column. Moving on.

We really like our new step-dad by the way. It’s weird calling him that, though. It’s not like we’re the Brady Bunch.

It is nice that they share so much in common. Like travelling, sitting around, and listening to my mother talk. Plus, now that she has a new last name, I can always deny we’re related.

After the wedding, we went for lunch at the Jolly Fisherman – an old school seafood restaurant. You know the kind of place: the bread basket is a trough filled with breadsticks, saltines and oyster crackers; everything smells like chowder and Lemon Pledge, and the dinner rush is from 4 to 6pm.

I needn’t describe the food, most of you have been somewhere like this on a three-day summer weekend, with a client, or while visiting your grandparents in Florida. However, I do need to mention that, towards the end of the meal, my uncle went sheet-white (almost blue, actually) and rigid (note: this is not the place to make a joke about the ability of an 82 year-old man to go rigid.)

Did you know it can take 15 rings for 911 to answer the phone? I called from my cell, to near disbelief, while the restaurant had the same experience from a standard land line. Note to self: never require medical attention at the Jolly Fisherman.) When they finally answered, and agreed to send an ambulance, more than five minutes passed before I had to call again (better response time) and within two minutes nearly a dozen fire and EMT workers converged on The Jolly Fisherman.

We directed them to my uncle (which, to be honest was pretty necessary. With the lunch crowd that was present, it really could have been anyone. Not surprisingly, the restaurant staff greeted the EMTs like old friends. I think they left with half a dozen friend shrimp each.)

Anyway, he was conscious, but they gave him oxygen, took his vitals, and whisked him off to the hospital where he spent five hours in a hallway before finally getting a room. It was a horrible way to end a beautiful day, but you never know what the experience will do for him. When he had his heart condition 20 years ago, my uncle – a life-long racist – got a black roommate with whom he got along famously. They got on so well, I think he may have voted for Obama (but, probably not.) Maybe this time he’ll get to know a Latino other than those who’ve married into the family.

By the way, I’m sure I’m totally going to piss off at least half the family by writing this (the other half are seriously cracking up.) I got pretty well shunned after the Bar Mitzvah post. Still, as much as some of my relatives would probably wish I’d stop writing about them, they may not realize we’re wishing they’d stop departing our joyous family events ambulances.

Anyway, when the crisis had passed, we headed out to Sag Harbor to finally occupy the house we bought several months ago, but which had been rented until Sept 30. We unloaded a truck full of Costco supplies, as well as the contents of our storage unit, and worked well into the night. And, this morning, Neil and I woke up to a sunny October day.

We walked in to the village and got coffee, strolling past old whaling houses and churches and beautiful homes. After breakfast, I headed out for a run – passing a neighbor walking her dogs as the sun streamed through the trees.

And in those first few minutes of my run, I finally “got” the suburbs. I finally understood why people moved there. It wasn’t just about kids, or schools, or safety. As I ran, I passed porches and lawns and cyclists and kids. The local high school had its Homecoming Parade. I loved the peace and quiet; I loved the feeling of community – even though we’ve lived here all of eight hours. When I came home my husband was walking around the pool picking up leaves, and when he saw me he looked up and told me how happy he was, and how much he loved me.

For the past five or six years, I’ve felt – sometimes keenly – that I was aging. But it was a restlessness – a feeling of loss or regret – that “never-being-nineteen-again-ness” that makes you realize that you’ll never look a certain way again, or have the luxury of turning your life completely upside down and starting a new direction without significant consequences. But just as the desire and recklessness of my twenties passed into the ambition and restlessness of my thirties, something is coming with the approach of my forties. Some sense of achievement and contentedness – it hasn’t settled in yet, it’s just starting – and there’s still plenty of fight and desire and ambition left in me, but something’s coming.

Something.

Birthday Blog

2010-10-07T12:52:00.000-04:00

OK, we clearly need to talk about my birthday – and Neil’s – but before we do, there’s something I need to get off my chest.

What the fuck is going on in politics?

I’m sorry, I thought we hit a new low when nine Republicans stood on stage in 2008, seeking their party’s nomination for President, and fully two-thirds of them claimed not to believe in evolution. Seriously – serious people vying for the most powerful leadership position in the world, disclaiming something every third-grader knows, simply to pander to an ignorant population of Republican base voters. Rather than use the moment for leadership, to remind people that they can believe in God, and religion, and science (Darwin did), 6 of the 9 decided, instead, chose the low road.

I never realized I’d look back on that day, nostalgically, with the rise of the Tea Party. Rememebr the Boston Tea Party? That quaint event you learned about in American History – way back in elementary school? How the colonists, outraged by the taxes and injustices wrought upon them by Merry Old England – where they had no representation in Parliament – threw tea into Boston Harbor as a form of protest?

Somehow I’m failing to see the parallel between colonial America and the would-be Senator from Kentucky, who’d like to dismantle the Civil Rights Act. Because the best way to celebrate our heritage of going to great lengths to protect against unfairness and injustice is to let private business discriminate against Blacks. Sounds reasonable to me.

Or the Senate candidate from Nevada, who stands shoulder-to-shoulder in the history books with patriots such as Nathan Hale and Patrick Henry, for her courageous stand to eliminate the Department of Education. Nothing says freedom like ignorance, poverty and an utter lack of opportunity.

I think my favorite, though, has to be the Senate candidate from Delaware, though, Christine O’Donnell. Here was a clear pick-up for the Republicans. Mike Castle – experienced, well-respected, accomplished – would have won by at least 5 points. Instead, they ended up with a nutjob, whose outspoken against masturbation (you just lost men, ages 18-80, and any woman whose ever ridden Space Mountain.) And she may be a witch.

You know how I know.

Because she has a commercial where she starts by saying, “I’m not a witch."

In the Nixonian tradition of “I am not a crook,” the Clintonian recitation of “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” we can now add, “I am not a witch” to the political canon of me-thinks-thou-doth-protest-too-much.

If it were just electoral politics, I could chalk it up to the silly season that approaches every other year, to fill the yawning gap between Labor Day and Thanksgiving with something other than Halloween candy and the fall premiere of tv shows, 90 per cent of which won’t exist by Christmas and which all seem to inexplicably include Jenny McCarthy or someone from Friends. But it’s not. It’s also current events – which brings us to: The Mosque At Ground Zero.

Don’t you love the way I wrote that? It sounds like a title for an old Hardy Boys mystery, or maybe a romance novel with some shirtless, swarthy guy on the cover ripping the gown of a lusty, busty maiden. The Mosque At Ground Zero.

Or maybe an attraction or concert venue. The Theater at Madison Square Garden. The Inn at Little Washington. The Mosque At Ground Zero.

But no, The Mosque At Ground Zero, was nothing nearly as fun. It was another ugly, racist, small-minded chapter in our cable-news-driven shout-o-rama.

Let’s set a few things straight.

The Mosque At Ground Zero, was not intended to be a mosque. It was a cultural center, on par with the Jewish Community Center on 76th and Amsterdam. Among the characteristics of this proto-house of worship are a swimming pool, ceramics classes, and a snack bar.

Nothing says God like nachos.

Additionally, the Not-A-Mosque-At-Ground-Zero was NOT AT GROUND ZERO. What is at Ground Zero is a hole in the ground with a future office building and museum under construction. The Not-A-Mosque was located several blocks away, two storefronts over from a “Gentlemen’s Club,” in a former Burlington Coat Factory. Are suddenly finding hallowed ground in places that once hawked 50%-off-underwear? And can we all agree that only in America could people be offended by expressions of free religion, but not the boobs-in-your-face bottle service happening 200 feet west?

I’d like a side order of tits with my self-righteousness.

And so, dear readers, if you’d like to give me a gift this birthday, let’s pledge to end the hyperbole. Can we please end the era of The Mosque At Ground Zero simply because it sounds more inflammatory than The Cultural Center Down the Block from a Strip Joint? Can we stop taking umbrage every time there’s an opportunity to twist the truth into a sound bite, just so poor dumb people in flat state will send a check to Rand Paul or Fox News, or some other entity that needs it a lot less than a steel-worker or nurse with an eighth grade education.

Oh, and whoever got me what I wanted for my last birthday – thank you. I know it came almost a year late, but a Senate candidate who’s an actual witch. Yay. The gift of fodder.

Adios

2010-09-12T19:14:00.001-04:00

I didn't need the twelve year old on the local news to tell me that it's raining - I can see that perfectly well from the window in my soul. (Ha! As if I have one.) And the one in my living room, which is where I'm sitting on the first day since May 17 not to reach 70 degrees (OK, so the local news girl-fetus teached me something.)

But it's the perfect weather to finish the story of our trip - which we left off just as our floating homotel docked in Barcelona.

We departed the ship in a flurry of hugs and kisses and basically whole bunch of middle-aged men totally queening out. Really, getting off that boat must look like the end of the Miss America pageant, which strikes me - in retrospect - as odd because I remember feeling like a Vietnamese boat person grateful for dry land.

Anyway, we dropped our bags at the hotel and went out to explore the city.

Here's a hint: loafers without socks is a poor, poor choice for exploring Barcelona by foot. It may have been a fashion plus, but it was a comfort minus as we tumbled over quaint, narrow cobblestone paths that shredded my soles to ribbons. After exploring La Rambla and the gothic neighborhoods in the Old City and the Raval, we rode the subway to Parc Guell to see the Antoni Gaudi architecture.

Gaudi's signature look was white plaster with colorful ceramic tile chips embedded in it. It's also because of Gaudi that we get the word "gaudy" - and gaudy it was. Imagine Central Park (or your favorite local greenspace.) Now pretend a kaleidoscope exploded all over it. In the shape of the house where the witch held Hansel and Gretel hostage. That's it.

Maybe I was just tired and cranky and tired of hobbling round like I just hung out with Kathy Bates in Misery. It's possible. It was about 450 degrees and I was getting frustrated with the fact that, even though everyone understands Spanish when you speak to them, they insist on responding in Catalan, an unholy blend of Spanish and French that basically sounds like you're talking to a drunk, retarded Charo. So we headed back to the hotel.

Do you really need to hear that the hotel room that was definitely going to be ready by 2pm was still not available at 4? Are you so mew to this blog that you don't know the type of grace with which I handled this situation?

Our complimentarily upgraded room was lovely.

After dinner with our friend Mike (who had been on the cruise with us, working through his Men of All Nations coloring book - tonight's country, Cuba! - which came in handy since the waiter only spoke Catalan) we headed home and crashed, hopeful that tomorrow would help us understand why everyone we know seems to love Barcelona so much.

Why is it that I spend my vacations in churches and museums - two places I never go to at home, and which I don't exactly associate with "leisure time?"

In truth, the cathedral we visited first on Friday was gorgeous - large and impressive with apses and stained glass and biblical scenes. We followed it with a visit to the Picasso museum, where a retrospective of his earlier years was spectacular. Only by looking at his work chronologically can you see the work that shows him learning his craft in the style of the impressionists and neo-impressionist who preceded him. You can see him becoming great - experimenting first with factors such as color, as he begins to explore the boundaries of his art and express himself in a way that began the last important movement in the art world. You see him move to shape and shadow and ultimately the abstract movement he became synonymous with - a precursor to the violence of Miro and the surrealism of Dali.

And then you begin to understand Barcelona, and with it, Spain itself. The most important country in the world in the very late 15th and early 16th century - from the art and music of the Moorish period, to the Ferdinand and Isabella and Columbus period of exploration. But Spain lapses into the shadow of Europe as the later explorers were Dutch and English and French; as the Northern Renaissance highlights the contributions of the Dutch and Flemish painters; as the reformation era spotlights Germany and France, and ultimately - by the late 1500s, the age of Spain and the Spanish Hapsburgs recedes to over two centuries of British and French dominance. Yet, in the early 20th century, Spain re-emerges as the birthplace of the last great movements in art and architecture before the modern era of pop, revival and homage.

So now, we're liking Barcelona. After the museum, a glass of wine ('natch) and a dinner at a tiny restaurant called Pla, on a narrow dead-end street in the old city.

On our last full day in Barcelona we took the train out to Sitges and hit the beach. A combination of Provincetown and Puerta Vallarta, Sitges is a charming beach community with a narrow strip of sand (chairs, 5 Euro) and plenty of places to buy an ice cream cone, fried potatoes, and expensive jewelry. You know, whether it's Rehoboth Beach, Delaware or the other side of the planet, I can't figure out why every gay beach resort pairs speedo clad muscle men with caloric snack treats.

Which pretty much serves as the tagline for this trip. Too much sun, too much skin, too much ice cream.

When we return, it's back to America - whatever's left of it.

Float Your Boat

2010-09-08T11:40:00.000-04:00

Monday, August 23, 2010

I took my last work call in the kitchen, hastily toasting a low-fat English Muffin (bleh) and assembling some low-fat cheese and full-fat Genoa salame. Not exactly what you want to consume mere hours before spending 10 days floating around the Mediterranean amid the harshest critics imaginable. But my body needed food and I couldn’t bear the thought of peanut butter and jam.

I hadn’t really scheduled myself for this call – and the truth was I needed more than the 7 remaining minutes I had for it – but the message got across and the client got everything they needed to get them through Labor Day. Including, God help me, a number to call the cruise line.

Yes, folks, for those of you who’ve been faithful followers since the start – we’re back at the blog that started it all…the Atlantis Mediterranean cruise. From Athens to Barcelona – on a ship the size of a sideways skyscraper, more than 2,500 middle aged homos from around the globe (and 2 lesbians) will stuff themselves into nominal amounts of spandex, pour themselves voluminous amounts of liquor, and desecrate the holy lands of at least three cultures.

And once again, I’m blogging it all – every bad tour guide, tweaked out muscle boy, and repetitive meal – cause as they say in Steel Magnolias: If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.

This year’s adventure starts at Kennedy airport, after two solid days of rain and nine solid months of travel. I’ve been so burnt out at work, actually dream about ways to position our software while I’m sleeping, and come up with financial models when I run.

The fact that I needed a break – and that I spend too much time in airports – couldn’t have been more evident where the fact that Air France gave away our Business Class seats nearly drove me around the twist. Not that we weren’t sitting in in Business Class – just that they moved us from row 4 to row 9.

I don’t know if it’s all the years of using miles, or charm, or luck to get an upgrade – but this year (after last year’s uncomfortable 9 hour journey home. In coach. In a middle seat. On Continental. I sprung for the real deal – paying, for the first time ever, for business class seats. If my mother knew, I’d not only get dis-invited to Rosh Hashanah, but I might be kicked out of Judaism completely. (You need to meet my family to know that we’re experts in getting more than we paid for and still, somehow, feeling wronged. It’s an art.)

Maybe it was that I picked those seats specifically – not a bulkhead – not the last row where you don’t recline all the way or you spend 7 hours smelling other people poop or hearing the flight attendants make coffee. Whatever it was, I wanted row 4 and I was beginning to become as irrational and unhinged as I sound right now.

I’ll spare you the rest of the tale – which doesn’t really make me look worse (as if that were possible) but is repetitive in a way that forces me to see the “crazy” myself – and since we’re just starting this vacation, I think I’ll avoid the self-loathing until at least Naples, where the combination of pizza and 6 days of liquor should have me pretty well worked up into a cheesy froth of insecurity. Suffice it to say, we were seated in row 4 before we boarded that plane.

You don’t spend half your life in airports and not learn a thing or two.

Karma’s a bitch, though, and our flight – which was scheduled to arrive at 6am in Paris, connecting to a 7:20am flight to Athens, sat on the ground with a delay of nearly an hour and a half. As the wheels left earth at 6:02 pm I turned to Neil and said, “I hope they’ve got another flight to Athens.”

I knew they did – I checked it before I booked. Two in fact –but the last thing you want to do is leave your travel to chance when you’re catching a cruise ship. I attempted to relax through 2 episodes of The Simpsons that I’d never seen, a rather entertaining viewing of Shrek Forever After, and enough brie to require a stent. Still, the time passed fairly quickly and at 6:48am as we stepped into Charles De Gaulle I looked at my husband, with all the tenderness I could muster, and said, “Move your ass.”

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

We walked in a way that bordered on running – past the throngs of overnight fliers arriving in Paris. Past the Africans and Americans and Pacific Islanders. We sailed past gate after gate. Through automatic doors and up and down escalators. We passed passport control (thank you Priority Line), down moving walkways and through crowded thoroughfare. We made it through security in less than 2 minutes. Sweating through our clothes and feeling both depleted and rather proud of ourselves, we arrived at the departure gate at 7:11am (and 48 seconds.)

And they wouldn’t let us board the plane.

Oh, it was there. And they hadn’t closed the doors. And they hadn’t cleared it for departure. But they had closed the flight – and nothing I could say (and certainly nothing I could say in English) was going to change their minds. Once again, given an opportunity to make a spectacle of myself in an airport, I chose this time to limit myself to a few grunts and groans, and went to customer service where we received rebooked seats on the 10am flight. We retired to the lounge for whatever meal you eat when it’s 8am in Paris and 2am in New York. I’m not sure what you call it, but comes with a cookie.

2:15pm

We finally slept on the second flight. Arriving at what would have been 1 am for us wasn’t really a stretch – but after nearly three hours cooling our heels at DeGaulle, we were out shortly after we hit our seats on the Athens flight – meaning we nearly missed our brush with royalty.

Apparently, the Queen of Denmark was on our flight – which came as a total surprise, since she was so unassuming. If it weren’t for the security detail who leapt from row 5 to escort her off the plane and into a Volvo (aren’t those Swedish? Does Denmark make a car?) we never would have known.

It’s embarrassing – I have an advanced degree in European History and I can’t remember if I knew Denmark had a Queen. I’m still not even sure if she rules, or is more of a figurehead in a Constitutional Monarchy, like Great Britain. Still, I’m not too troubled by it – I’m about to spend the next week and half with so many queens, that one more is really just a rounding error.

But, can we just say – for a minute – how cool it is that the Queen of an entire country flies commercial – and with a connecting flight. Could you imagine the American president going to Copenhagen through Paris? On Delta?

Even Oprah don’t fly commercial anymore.

Athens. Tuesday, August 24. 4:30pm.

The Athens-Piraeus Cruise Terminal is hot. And crowded. We have to clear passport check, submit health forms, clear Israeli immigration (3 days before we even get to Israel? If the US INS could pull this off we wouldn’t have that whole racist Arizona-immigration law thing where the police can now pull you over simply for looking Mexican – which means with my dark skin and affinity for guacamole, I can’t go to Arizona anymore.) Between the hoards of people crammed into too small a space, and the whole atmosphere of being processed from one station to the next, I begin to wonder if this is what it was like to be gay during the Holocaust. You know, without the Louis Vuitton luggage and the genocide.

Everywhere we turn we’re looking for familiar faces – friends we’re hoping to catch up with, people we might recognize from last year. I see a guy I once went on a date with in Washington and another who looks familiar put whom I can’t quite place (did we…? No. Not possible. Right?) Neil sees his little friend who worked last year’s cruise…then friended him on Facebook. Mmhmm.

When we finally board I head straight for the shower, having barely slept in 29 hours, while Neil changes clothes…then we head off to explore the ship. It’s a different boat than last year, though the same cruise line and the ship looks and feels exactly the same – a minor adjustment here and there, and we find ourselves in a life size version of that puzzle from Highlights magazine for Children – where they show you two pictures side-by-side and you have to spot the difference.

Otherwise, it’s like a big game of Old McDonald: Here a bear, there a bear. A couple. A thruple. A minor porn star.

At the welcome party, once again we’re moving before we even realize it. They’re pouring the drinks heavy and pushing doubles – the reason for which becomes apparent after we comment how much less crowded the party seems compared to last year: on a ship built to accommodate nearly 3,500 – our group is just over 1,700 – about a thousand less than last year. And here’s where I need a soapbox:

Last year, within a month of sailing, we get an email from Atlantis, asking us to refer a friend, and – if they book, they’ll get 50% off. Now that’s a lovely gesture, but the referrer got nothing – other than a vague allusion in the email that, maybe, we could split the discount.

Yeah, that’s not an awkward phone call. “Hey there! You should come with Neil and I on the Atlantis cruise – they’ve cut the price from $4,000 to $2,000 – but you should give us $1,000 for getting you such a great discount! Wanna come!”

Last year, I found Rich Campbell – the President of Atlantis and I called him on it…and he swore it was a one-time thing and that they NEVER give discounts. So, when we decided we wanted to come again this year – different itinerary – and we wanted to see Israel and Barcelona – we signed up nearly a year in advance for the “absolute best discount you’re going to get.”

So – of course – with the economy still in the toilet --- and with Atlantis having booked ten cruises this year, including back-to-back Mediterranean cruises, attendance has suffered. The atmosphere is fine – it’s not like we’re missing a thousand extra people – but it really burns my toast that folks who waited until last month got the same cabin for nearly half the price. Worse yet – Atlantis sent out emails offering the folks who signed up early a shipboard credit and some perks – and we never got the email.

So, you know I’ll be saying something to Rich again this year.

After the cocktail party and some dinner, we totally crashed around 10pm, only to find ourselves awake at 3am – thoroughly jetlagged. Neil went out to explore, but wasn’t really gone long – if there were evening activities, they had mostly died down.

Western Mediterranean. At sea. Wednesday, August 25. 10:30am.

Once again, our first full day is spent at sea, and once again the gym is the business place on the ship. I’d sarcastically comment on the dissonance of going on vacation, only to do everything you do at home – but since my own day began with a trip to the gym, followed by a breakfast of fruit and egg whites, I can’t really find a good place in this glass house from which to throw a stone.

By noon we’ve settled into lounge chairs and are surveying the crowd. In addition to some friends from back home, we see an old housemate from Fire Island – here with his boyfriend, as well as a notorious alcoholic I went to college with and who once hooked up with a friend of ours. Plus, this cruise still draws plenty of guys from Washington, D.C., meaning I’m constantly seeing people I recognize but can’t really place. What I find really disturbing is when they look like they haven’t aged a day. Because there’s nothing more fun than revisiting your 20s as a bald guy approaching 40.

The highlight of the afternoon is the Dog Tag Tea Dance, and I wish I could tell you that the reality of this event is more tasteful than it sounds. The idea is to dress in military garb (why do so many gay gatherings revolve around costuming?) which is generally translated as one of the following:

• One piece of an actual military uniform (as in, just the pants. Or the shirt.)

• A military-themed speedo

• Military-themed underwear.

The outfit gets paired with a dog tag, worn on a chain, and adorned with a sticker colored to correspond to one’s sexual availability. Red means “coupled,” while yellow apparently means “coupled, but we don’t really care about each other enough not to have sex with random people we meet on a cruise. So, we’re willing to engage in behavior that pretty much guarantees we either won’t be a couple by the time we hit Barcelona, or that at least one of us has low enough self-esteem not to care.” See – this is why we need colored stickers – because you can’t fit all that on a dog tag.

So, by now you’ve figured out that green means “Available,” though there is also an option for “Double Green” – two stickers, which apparently means “Don’t even introduce yourself, just stick your hands down my pants. I mean speedo.”

No wonder people think cruises are romantic.

We indulge in a couple of cocktails and some dancing, while we try to scope out some guys for our friend Mike, who has resorted to a pair of green stickers. It really is such a mystery to me how there can be some really great guys out there who can’t seem to find someone – especially when there are so many people going contently coupling off and going through life with a yellow sticker.

10pm. Deck 5. Blu.

OK – I wanted to try this restaurant last year. It’s not the main dining room, but the up-charge is less than the other “specialty” restaurants. It’s a more organic, simpler menu, with lots of grilled dishes and my New York Strip is a little tough, but otherwise quite delicious.

Plus: We made new friends. I love new friends. After the age of 30, you really don’t make too many new friends unless you’re a hooker or a Mormon. Yet, so far we’ve made friends on both cruises.

Mike and Patrick are actually friends of Mark and Todd (whom we’ve written about at least three times and, honestly, if you haven’t caught up by now I’m not going to bother. It doesn’t really hurt the story, so just keep reading.) We met them last October when we went to see Mark and Todd in East Hampton, but are just getting to know them on this cruise.

In a weird way, they’re us. Mike is in a high pressure career where he’s constantly working and he’s already spent a fair portion of their trip on the Blackberry. Patrick leaves his work at work, and is more detailed about the house. When we met them in East Hampton last year, they had thrown a party. Apparently, five hours before the guests were about to arrive, Mike went out for a run while Patrick was up to his elbows in party-prep. Plug in Eric for Mike, Neil for Patrick and New Year’s for last October, and Neil and I could tell the same story.

After dinner, we opt out of “Fanta-Sea” – the evening party (they really should just call the parties: Green Speedo, Blue Speedo, Red Speedo, White Speedo and Oh, Fuck It, Just Come Naked.) We’re tired, still adjusting to the time, and it’s nearly 11:30. We’re going to need to get up at 6:15 to disembark at 7:45 for Jerusalem.

So, I’ll bid you Shalom and see you tomorrow.

Jerusalem. Thursday, August 26. 8am.

We had a little sideshow getting off the boat, since the immigration cards we needed to leave the ship only had a stamp for me – not Neil. Bracing ourselves to try and explain that Neil was neither a terrorist, a Muslim, or even a fairly decent Catholic, we got the situation rectified fairly quickly and joined the private tour we booked. Ten of us boarded a bus for the Holy Land.

“GUYS! Now I am really serious about this…” began virtually every sentence for ten hours. Spiritually, this woman was the sister of last year’s Egyptian guide, leaving me to wonder that if we left peace in the middle east up to the tour guides, we’d probably have a treaty – but in order to achieve it we might all have to spend endless hours on a hot tour bus eating sketchy falafel and getting yelled at.

If Egypt was dirtier and more disappointing than I expected, Israel was far more wondrous. Until you’ve seen it, it is easy to wonder why so much has been made of such a small strip of land. Once you’ve seen it, however, it overwhelms you in a way that’s hard to explain. There is, quite frankly, something inspiring about being in the presence of such intense purity of faith. Quite unlike the fundamentalist Christians of the American south, or the ornate testament of the Vatican, Jerusalem somehow manages to seem less dogmatic and doctrinaire. Perhaps there’s been a resignation of sorts among the people who live there, and those who visit, that despite the rhetoric associated with the geopolitics, ultimately they’ve accepted having to share Jerusalem.

In the span of a few hours we witnessed a bar mitzvah at the Wailing Wall (the last remaining structure from the destruction of the 2nd temple,) a mass at the Church of all Nations (built in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was arrested) and a daily incense ritual at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (where the last 3 of the 14 Stations of the cross are located), including copts (an Egyptian sect that predates Islam), Armenians and Franciscan friars. The doors of the church are guarded by Muslims – handed down through the same two families for generations.

It is difficult not to comes away awed. And also wet. From the sweating. Ten homos who were bemoaning a day without the gym quickly changed their tunes as every stop seemed to require trudging uphill or up staircases in ninety degree heat. And I know at least one person was thinking that if they were dragging a wooden cross with them they might be able to add a little upper body conditioning to their cardio. If I get back to New York and Equinox is offering a group fitness class called Jesus Journey or Crucifixion Cardio, I’m cancelling my membership.

When we arrived back at the boat, we put our feet up for a few hours then rallied to head in to Tel Aviv for dinner and a night out. A friend recommended the restaurant at the Hotel Montefiore, and I can confidently recommend it to you. Decorated with simple modern touches – white walls and ceiling; dark wood finishes, palm fronds, leather arm less chairs and benches – it could have been any trendy restaurant in TriBeCa or South Beach. The clean look was accompanied by a menu of clean flavors, largely inspired by French Vietnamese and Mediterranean tastes.

Neil started with “small ‘noms’” – an array of spring rolls filled with shrimp, pork and vegetables. His entrée, a duck confit with fig and caramel sauce was surprisingly savory – the sweetness bringing out the flavors of the duck without going too far into sweet or gamey. I began with a classic pho, chock full of herbs like cilantro and mint, along with jalapeno pepper, glass noodles and sirloin. I could have made a meal out of a larger bowl of that soup – though I’m glad I didn’t. My whole roasted branzino was simply grilled with capers, lemon and olive oil, and adding a touch of salt gave me a meal that I could devour from head to tail without feeling bloated or guilty.

After dinner it was nearly midnight, and we eschewed the local dance club for the 12:30 bus back to the ship. The ride was nearly an hour and we felt we didn’t need to wait on a line and pay a cover charge just to dance shirtless with the same queers we’ll be dancing with our next two days at sea.

And since we have two full days at sea coming up, I’ll leave you here, since I know there will be plenty of antics to report tomorrow….

Western Mediterranean. Friday, August 27, 2010. 9:15am.

We got a late start on Friday – sleeping off the exhaustion and alcohol of the middle east – though as we compared our visits to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv we wondered whether the whole peace process needed less fundamentalist religiosity and more vodka. Everybody we met in Tel Aviv – Israeli, Arab, American, European – was friendly and open. And drunk. Hillary Clinton, take note. Hey – during her presidential campaign we all saw the B-roll of her doing shots with John McCain on Armed Forces Committee junkets. Girlfriend needs to break out the leftover champagne from Chelsea’s wedding (the bottle the groom’s family didn’t take home for Rosh Hashanah) and get some drunk Hebrews and Palestinians to get down to business.

Where the hell was I?

Oh, yeah. The cruise.

We’re also stalled this morning because we are already weary of the breakfast buffet. Somehow, the staggering sameness will actually make the staggering sameness of our routine at home seem fun by comparison. I simply can’t face another plate of cut up pineapple or half a grapefruit with a big red grape in the center. I can’t navigate the omelet station. I can’t dispense Froot Loops from a bin.

We reserve chairs at the pool, head to the gym, and – finally – go eat. Between the gym and the egg whites, actually, the only sign we’re actually on vacation is the floating skyscraper we’re aboard.

Meanwhile, the afternoon brings a déjà vu of a different sort – a repeat of last year’s entertainment. Wednesday had the rip-off of Project Runway; today had “Are You Smarter than a Straight Girl?” Since there are 1743 gay men on this boat, and only 4 straight girls, I’d say the answer to that question is clearly, “No.”

You know, I realize that not everyone on this boat is a repeat Atlantis customer, but they could really use some innovation and updating on the program. The same ship, the same team, the same use of venues, the same events – even the same questions in the trivia competition. The only thing different is the entertainment. And, seriously – last year we had a nice musical show, Pam Ann, and Patti Lupone. I’m sorry – but Courtney Act, the Austrailian Idol contestant who got kicked off as a man but made it to seventh place as a woman – is not great entertainment. Neither are the comedy stylings of Shawn Pelofsky – a cheap Barbra Streisand look-alike who isn’t funny.

And the ship’s headliner: Andy Bell from Erasure – which would have the potential to be a HUGE draw. If it were 1987.

Still, the liquor flows freely and we slid easily from tea dance (shirtless dancing with drinks at 6pm) to cocktails (shirted cocktails at 8pm) to dinner with Jaime and Tom, ex-boyfriends to each other and new friends to us, from New York and Denmark, respectively. Oddly, though, when we were seated at the main dining room, we ended up with a tagalong – Leo from Boston – who somehow got routed to our table (despite our indication that we were fine being a party of 4.)

Alright – I have been bound and determined on this trip to be charming and smiling and friendly. As a reaction to all those mean, superior, disdainful gays who think they’re too good for everyone else, I feel an obligation to be kind and make sure that my general attitude of superiority doesn’t get in the way of someone else’s joy on an expensive vacation. Besides, that’s what this blog is for.

But it is pretty awkward to be seated as a four, only to find an extra person seated with you. Or sort of with you. They sat Leo at the table next to us – alone, but not – and everything from his meal selection to the service happened about ten minutes ahead of us. And, not only did he refuse an opportunity to excuse himself as soon as the mis-step was noted, but he was difficult to engage our draw out during the meal. So, after trying several times – I just gave up. Sorry – but it’s been hard enough to leave my Blackberry off; I’m not in the mood for that much personal growth this week.

Somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. Saturday, August 28, 2010.

A time change sailing west resulted in Neil and I being up early – and since we resisted the late night party that kept our friends dancing until 6am – we had the gym to ourselves at 9am. We followed our workout with a departure from the breakfast buffet and tried Brunch in the dining room. I’d like to saw it was markedly different from the ordinary breakfast – but it was largely the same omelet station with a different backdrop. Well, that and the totally random assortment of foodstuffs: spinach and meat lasagna, right next to smoked salmon and cream cheese, next to French fries, next to marinated mushrooms next to waffles.

I’d love to say the afternoon included a ceramics class, or an opportunity to learn about marine biology, but it was really just laying around nearly naked – with small strips of spandex covering my naughty bits, while I fried in the sun, splashed in the pool, and started drinking at 5. By 7 we were dancing, and by our 9pm dinner reservation we were tanked.

If you are ever aboard a Celebrity Cruise – please avoid the Silk Harvest asian restaurant. Imagine, if you will, a series of La Choy frozen appetizers, thrown in a deep fryer and covered with packets of sugary duck sauce from the Chinese takeout place. That meal would be better – and more authentic – than what we ate.

But I was tanked and surrounded by cute boys, so who cares?

Messina, Sicily. Sunday, August 29, 2010

Picture it. Sicily. 2010.

I’ve been waiting all week to use that line. We took a bus from the port in Messina to Taormina (which Neil keeps calling, “Tiramisu”,) a medieval village high above the Mediterranean. Wandering ancient streets we visited churches and a Greek theater, then settling in an outdoor café where we dined on homemade pasta with eggplant and tomato, along with pizza topped with spicy salame.

It was a short day, and there isn’t really much to tell – particularly if I want to get to the good ports – so I’ll fast forward a bit. We got back on the ship around 5pm; went to the gym; went to happy hour for cocktails and dancing; then went to dinner with our new friend Ron (who has a home near our place in Sag Harbor), Mark and Todd (remember, I’m not going to remind you who they are. Pay attention.) and Mike and Patrick.

God – my vacation has the same predictable repetition as my life. I’m so fucking boring.

Naples, Italy. Monday, August 30, 2010. 4pm.

This is where it gets fun.

OK – I’ve done the standard sight-seeing of the Amalfi Coast, and last year our cruise stopped here so Neil got to see Capri, Sorrento and Pompeii. I suppose we could have taken a guided tour to Herculaneum. Or gone back to Capri, maybe spent more time shopping or went swimming out to the Blue Grotto.

Instead, however, we took Mark and Todd up an offer to rent a car from the Naples train station and drive up the coast to Ravello, a small Cliffside town set above Amalfi with a spectacular view of the sea. We disembarked around 9:30am, where a hundred cab drivers immediately descended upon us – all wanting our fare. I suppose these cruises are usually a feeding frenzy of fat Americans who only want to come to Naples and eat real pizza. Today, however, they got 2000 homos whose daily carb consumption is the equivalent of half a breadstick – many of whom have arranged tours.

So, I’m trying to be empathetic since the ride to the train station – a distance we’ll cover eight hours later, on foot, in fifteen minutes – cost 30 Euro.

The train station is your basic nightmare. Total chaos, no signage – in a word: Italy. We manage to find a National rental car counter and arrange for a car, and somehow weave our way through the streets of Naples to the autostrade.

The coastal route to Ravello took us almost to Salerno, then along the Amalfi drive where the height of the cliffs, the pitch of the turns and the lack of a shoulder had Neil basically scratching at the windows and chewing on Xanax like they were candy. But it was worth it: when we finally parked outside Amalfi and walked up the hill to Ravello (no cars permitted in the town) we found ourselves in a charming village with a central square, two historic villas with museums and grounds, and narrow cobblestone streets filled with shops. It was like Colonial Williamsburg. But nice.

After wandering through Villa Rufolo and taking photos of the sea, we strolled down a side street where I found some amazing wines that we shipped back to New York. Neil, meanwhile stumbled into a tiny restaurant while I paid for the wine, simply to use the restroom. Next thing I know we’re seated at a table for two, waited on by Netta – whose father originally ran Compo Cosimo (he was the eponymous Cosimo) – which has been covered by the Washington Post, the International News and Observer, among other publications going back at least three decades.

Compo Cosimo serves produce fresh from the garden out back, and a pomodoro salad of room temperature tomatoes, lightly bathed in Olive Oil and salt, and served with a smattering of basil and a hunk of cold Italian farmer cheese, was complimentary and delicious. Neil and I shared a dish of baked ziti and a scallopine of veal in marsala sauce that ranks among the best dishes I’ve ever eaten (I’ll place it in second place for now – wait until tomorrow!) And despite the lack of room in our collective stomachs, we somehow managed espresso and both tiramisu (the best I’ve ever eaten – hands down) and lemon cake (not bad – the lemon was divine, the cake, a little too crumbly and – somehow – too dry and too wet at the same time.)

After lunch we walked through the Villa Cimbrone (which boasts a hotel once occupied by Greta Garbo. Ravello itself has been home to numerous writers, artists and personages – including D.H. Lawrence who wrote parts of Lady Chatterly’s Lover here.) The claim to fame of the villa is its grounds, which include numerous gardens and a wide variety of foliage from Hortensia to a variety of Roses, as well as many masterworks of sculpture. An overlook faces the Mediterranean with busts of several gods, while a hidden grotto offers a famous marble sculpture of Eve. There’s a David here, too, which probably explains why we’ve randomly seen at least three other gay couples – only one of which is from our cruise.

How do we know they’re gay? Well, when you see two middle-aged men who are 40, but look 30 – those are gays. When you see two people spending $200 on lunch and $400 on table linens – those are gays. We two men strolling together down a European street share a serene, smiling expression that says, “I bet my co-workers are spending their summer vacation buying some fat kids a box of taffy at Ocean City or listening to them scream their way through DisneyWorld.”- those are gays.

We returned to the rental car we left at the bottom of the hill to find a parking ticket. We’re betting the Italian police aren’t going to be able to find us.

We bid goodbye to Ravello - with its terraced hillsides and bountiful produce and sweeping views of the Mediterranean, and headed back to Naples (this time through the mountains: more Xanax for Neil.)

I can’t even remember what the afternoon party was – they really should just call them all “Vodka and Speedos!” but I do remember dinner. A dozen people dining at someplace called Silk Harvest.

Imagine Chinese from the mall food court. Now let it sit for half an hour so it’s served at something near room temperature, with the shine that only industrial cooking oil can produce when it congeals. That was our dinner.

Considering that half the group was already experiencing stomach trouble, this was not a positive development (although, I have to say that the one thing I can’t figure out about the gays is that we’ll put our mouths in just about any orifice of the human body, but won’t touch a La Choy Spring Roll. WTF?)

I would tell you more about the evening, but I don’t really remember much. Our friend Mike took a break from filling in his Men of All Nations coloring book, and we were joined by two new faces (Peter and Patrick – a couple whose unfortunately alliterative names makes them sound like characters from a fable, but they’re actually really people). I spent most of my time sitting next to Todd and being snide (why stop doing what you’re good at), or traversing the table to sit between my friends Jaime and Jamie (who, sometime during the course of the evening had their names (which are not spelled alike, but sound alike – making them homophones as well as homosexuals) pre-pended with adjectives so we could tell them apart. I’m not exactly sure who got their name preceded by the word “New” and who got tagged with “Lickable” – but I’m not sure either would be taken as a compliment in the cold sobriety of morning.

Rome. Tuesday, August 31, 2010. 10:30am

Best. Day. Ever.

It did not, however start that way.

Our day began with Neil opting out of the excursion. Having experienced stomach difficulties across three continents and five countries, Neil was no longer willing to venture more than 10 feet from our stateroom. Slogging back to bed, he released me with a quick, “Have Fun.”

Fun is NOT what I was having with Mark, Todd and Mike as we sat outside the McDonald’s in Civitavecchia, the port city that serves as the gateway to Rome. Our ride from Fontana Del Papa had not shown up at the pre-arranged time, and we’d already killed over an hour exploring the village, drinking too much coffee, and wandering into a drug store that offered a cream that promised, if I rubbed it on my stomach, it would shrink.

I’ve been around long enough to know that the only kind of cream that changes the size of your stomach is whipped cream. And it changes it in the other direction.

Finally, a middle-aged woman in Italy’s equivalent of a Ford Pinto comes put-putting up to the McDonald’s and whisks us 20 minutes north to a 16th century farmhouse (Note to self, when filling out the US Customs re-entry forms, I will justify stating I was not on a farm or in the proximity of livestock, by thinking of this place as a charming olive grove. And assume that I hallucinated the horse.)

In all honesty, Fontana Del Papa was gorgeous. Gorgeous. A stone farmhouse set among groves of olive trees. In addition to Assunito and her family, the farm is home to birds, cats, dogs and an old horse. It’s so fucking charming I actually saw the German Shepherd grooming one of the cats. The cook, who was to be our teacher for the day, was right out of central casting. Seriously, everything was so much like a cross between a late 90s Meg Ryan film and a cartoon, that I would have been willing to believe the whole day had been cast by Disney if it weren’t for us four homos and the kid with Downs Syndrome playing guitar.

After a tour of the inn and the grounds, the true purpose of our visit began: a cooking lesson. You’d think it’d be hard to take a cooking lesson from an old Italian lady who speaks about 6 words of English, but it’s surprising what you can accomplish with pointing, grunting, and an unlimited supply of wine.

We chopped herbs and sliced vegetables and rolled dough. We made bruschetta and an apple cake and two veal dishes (involtini and scallopine.) We made homemade pasta with ragu. For two hours we bounded around the kitchen laughing and drinking and making relatively easy dishes that we can impress company with for years.

And then we ate.

Boy did we eat. Bread and pasta and meat and dessert and more wine and coffee. It all made me wonder why Americans place so much stress and pressure and intensity on their lives. Why our days have less pasta and wine, and more anemic salads in plastic bins eaten during conference calls and powerpoint presentations and company reports. It made me so happy to be there – and so very very very sad about my life back home, which feeds my soul in inverse proportion to this meal and the process of creating it.

At the end of the day, fat and tired, we bid farewell to Fonatana Del Papa – though I rescued the remaining apple cake to share with Neil, whom I so desperately wanted to share the day with. I hurried to the room, but he was nowhere to be found, so I headed toward the pool deck where I suspected he might be resting in the sun.

And there I found him – holding court amid a throng of friends old and new. And, to soothe his stomach – a cocktail in hand. Still, you can’t really get mad at Neil – he’s too damn cute. So I offered him some cake and sat down to tell him about our day.

I will say that the upside to his convalescence is that it gave us an excuse to skip the evening’s entertainment – the White Party. Basically the last big hurrah on the ship – a party where everyone is supposed to dress in white, but the costumes are more outlandish – and more revealing – than any of the other evenings. We did do a drive by, which was actually when I noticed that the entire sailing could have been called a White Party. I don’t think we saw more than a dozen African-Americans on the entire cruise, and outside of the occasional gaysian (an asian boy who is more West Hollywood than Far East) – not many Asians either. Further, with a few exceptions, most of the people we met were from New York, DC, San Francisco, LA and Miami. It really would be nice if the Atlantis crowd shook a little of the urbane sophisticate out of their targeting and exposed us to some homos from places where people still eat butter.

Aix-en-Provence. Wednesday, September 1, 2010. 6pm.

The last day of the cruise always seems to be the day with the best shopping. I guess they want you to have one last splurge before your see your stateroom account.

We took a shuttle into Aix – a university town not far from Marseilles – and basically couldn’t keep our credit card in our pocket for four hours. We bought stuff for the new house; stuff for the old house; stuff for the nieces. We bought lunch. We bought pastry. We bought sweets form a French candy store (which is pretty much like my crappy candy store at 78th and Broadway, but the whole language difference made it seem more adventurous.)

I loved spending the day alone with Neil – just talking about our house and our lives and getting a chance to communicate with each other in a way that doesn’t involve cell phones or yelling into other rooms. When we don’t have to yell past his laptop or my preoccupation with work. When we aren’t traversing the day-to-dayness of the cleaning woman, the insurance agent, or the mail.

I love knowing exactly what stores he’s going to want to stop at; which he’s going to wander into. I love knowing the colors and the patterns he’ll pick out for linens, or which knick-knacks will appeal to him. I know, a nanosecond before, when a joke is coming – or when his face is going to burst forth in a grin – or when a snarky comment is about to launch in my direction.

These moments make the rest of life bearable. Those awful days when you can’t get off the phone and the email piles up. The long flights, small planes and bad food. The frustrated clients and disengaged co-workers. I do it all to know that someday, some months later, in the streets of a medieval town or the backyard of our house, he’ll turn his head and smile at me like he’s the happiest guy in the world.

And that’s pretty much it. We left Aix and sailed for Barcelona. We had one final drink and said good bye to the friends we came aboard with, and those we made. We exchanged numbers and email addresses and promised to share photos on Facebook.

We’ve got four days in Barcelona – but that’s another post – another time. After four weeks off, I need to pace myself.

No Sex…and a City

2010-09-06T19:52:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay. I know you’re all wondering where I’ve been. My tens and tens of fans must be disappointed – verging on heartbroken – forced to find equivalent humor in Bazooka Joe comics and Senate Judiciary Committee hearings (Elena Kagan – smart like Yoda, looks like Shrek? And also Yoda. Discuss.) The Facebook updates have dried up and there’s been nary a posting all summer long. Vacationing in the south of France, you ask? Mais non. Summering on the vineyard with the Obamas? No, again. Frolicking on Fire Island with the boys?

Much as I’d love to regale you with stories of long, lazy days filled with leisurely drinks and maybe a little languorous sex, the truth is I’ve spent most of my summer traveling the country in the service of my job. The good news is there’s much to do --- which is also the bad news, which is probably why that queeny flight attendant who trilled goodbye before sliding down the hatch to safety has become something of a folk anti-hero.

That’s right, there’s so much work I had to trade boys for Boise; instead of making ha-ha, I’ve been going to Omaha; I’ve..oh, brother…I’m out of bad puns and out of practice.

Clearly, television is rotting my brain – which is how I spent whatever down time I had this summer. So, for my first foray back, I’ll catch you up approximately 834 hours of mediocre television you may have missed this summer – hereby allowing you to clean out that DVR just in time for fall.

Let’s use a top ten list, folks. It’s more fun that way.

And now, without further ado (since you waited over a month, and all you’re gonna get is warmed over TV recaps) – Summer 2010’s TV Top Ten list:

10. The Emmys

Ok – technically they haven’t happened yet. Well, as I’m writing this they haven’t happened. But I’m on a plane and won’t be able to post this for two weeks because we’re going on a cruise – yes, the same cruise we did last year which started this whole blog – which I managed to keep up with until a month and half ago when it all fell apart – and, yes, I will be blogging the cruise – every bad tour guide and great meal from Greece to Israel to Italy to Spain (we’re taking a cruise of countries that are bankrupt; either financially or morally.) So – Yes – by the time I post this it will be after Labor Day and the Emmys will not only have happened, they’ll be forgotten. But – whatever.

Can we just – for a minute – talk about Glee vs Modern Family? Yes, Modern Family is going to win. It’s a relatively pedestrian family sitcom of the type Hollywood used to churn out by the dozen every fall. Except they stopped churning somewhere around 1994 and the supply dried up – having given way to stern, emotionally barren male law enforcement or military officers or lawyers paired with tough-as-nails women barely concealing scars-from-the-past as they use the latest in cutting edge technology or good-old-fashioned shoe leather or the military industrial complex to deliver justice or avenge a death or find some lost kid in New York-Los-Angeles-Las-Vegas-Miami-wherever. (I should like these shows more – they’re basically some totally fierce chick I’d go shopping with and some totally hot guy I’d hook up with hanging out in a city I’d totally live in and working at the kind of job I spent 20 years training for, rather than selling expensive software to broke schools.

But I digress.

Don’t get me wrong – I like Modern Family. I think it’s clever and funny and the performances are terrific. But the hullabaloo surrounding it strikes me as grading on a curve, a little. It’s just been so long since we had a crop of family comedies that were worth watching that we forgot how much fun they could be. (And I still think the show is giving itself too much credit simply for having a gay couple with an Asian kid.)

Meanwhile, Glee – though occasionally dampened by warmed-over plotlines retread from Soap Opera 101 (Quinn got pregnant at 16; Mr. Schuester’s wife faked her pregnancy) – is truly original; breathing life into musicals, a genre that has been lingering on life support for nearly 50 years in movies, and has never been successful in television. But the fact that’s it made music work on TV isn’t the only reason to root for it. Consider this: Glee manages to have fun while embraces it’s characters – and their flaws – even if it rationalizes them; Modern Family (and virtually every other comedy on television, mines its humor at the expense of its characters.

9. Weeds

She’s back. The doyenne of disaster. The mistress of misfortune. Fresh from having watched her middle child murder her drug-kingpin-gubernatorial-candidate husband’s campaign manager (who was a castrating bitch), Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) is on the run – on the road with her kids and her brother in a tale that’s seen her survive the financial ruin of her first husband’s death, run a drug cartel, marry – and play a role in the murder of – a DEA agent, torch her home, and tangle with the Mexican mafia.

8. Big Brother

I can’t help it…I get sucked in every year. I can’t figure out if it’s the dumb straight muscle boys who spend the whole time working out, the girls with a 38 bustline and a 37 IQ, the bitchy outcasts, or just the backstabbing – I can’t take my eyes of the stupid challenges, the showmances, and the soporific pleasures of Julie Chen (never has live television been less riveting, or – oddly – more).

This year, I’m rooting for Britney. Any bitchy blond chick from Arkansas whose entire personalilty is one big sarcastic eye-roll is my kind of girl

7. Project Runway.

One day, you’re in, and the next…you’re out. Heidi Klum, that dominatrix of design, is back (and so is her figure. Thank God she had that Baby Seal.) Duking it out for $100,000 (and a title that hasn’t produced a single designer anyone’s ever actually bought clothing from) are the usual parade of freaky gays, nelly gays, one cute guy, one straight guy, the token lesbian, the bitchy girl who is probably going to win and the nice girl who probably won’t.

Tune in to watch Michael Kors continue offering a stream of try-hard quips (“She looks like a Jewish transvestite serving pancakes at an Amish funeral. Am I right?”) or the deadpan criticism of Nina Garcia (“She. Looks. Strange.”) And you never know which superstar with flimsy fashion cred (Natalie Portman? Sheryl Crow? LeBron James?) is going to stop by to add nothing to the conversation.

6. The Next Food Network Star

Ok – it’s already over, so there’s no suspense here – but this oft-overlooked step-sibling to Top Chef gets better each season. With challenges that actually challenge the contestants both to cook and remain calm under pressure, the show nails the reality of having to perform an actual task on live television. There wasn’t really much suspense that Aarti and her south Asian Aarti Party was going to take it all – it became pretty obvious about halfway through – but there’s no better way to wind up a weekend than to watch newbies fumbles in front of the camera to the withering glare of Susie Ferguson or the firm adjustments of Giada De Laurentiis (you can skip Bobby Flay and his smug self-righteousness and Bob Tuschmann and his uncle-y kindness. This show is all about the women.)

5. Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List

Yes, the show has clearly lapsed into a little self-parody as Kathy gets a pap smear on camera. But if you can keep your lunch down through an entire episode about her vajayjay, you’ll realize she’s the most fearless comedienne working right now – willing to say anything, do anything and go anywhere for a laugh. It’s brave work – and between her and Chelsea Handler – the spectrum of live comedy is pretty dry and almost entirely dominated by X chromosomes. And don’t say Dane Cook. ‘Cause he’s over.

And he’s a dick.

4. Mad Men

Yeah, I jumped on that bandwagon, too.

3. Top Chef

Can I just say how much I love this show? With each passing season I like it more and more…maybe it’s because Padma keeps sharpening her edge (“Too much salt?” says, Kelly from Colorado. “Uh, yeah,” says Padma, in a tone that read: “Duh.”) No longer with child, but full, fleshy and gorgeous – week after week she’s showing up that joyless Kelly Choi (she of the half-smile). And Gail Morris is back – with the analysis that says, “I liked it, but it was just a little closer to medium than medium rare, so I’m going to stab you with my shrimp fork.” Would it be a surprise to say that I can’t wait for her to host the new “Top Chef: Just Desserts?”

What is it with these food shows – once again it’s all about the lady judges, since Tom Colicchio seems to have lost his edge (perhaps it’s back at his no-stars Colicchio & Sons on Tenth Avenue, occupying the vast cavern of doom that once was craftsteak – a concept that was built for Vegas, if ever there was one, and where it thrives – go figure.) Meanwhile, there’s nothing wrong with Eric Ripert as a judge. But he’s so nice. I want to see my contestants cry when they use marjoram instead of oregano or overcook the sea bass.

2. Pretty Little Liars

If you were waiting for any confirmation that I am a fourteen year-old girl – here it is. My FAVORITE new show of the year – by a mile. Five girlfriends spend the night together in Rosewood, Pa. Ali – who knew everyone’s secrets and was the glue holding them together – disappears. Fast forward a year later and the girls have drifted apart, but they renew their friendships when they start receiving mysterious text messages from “A.”

Who is “A”? And how does he or she know that Em is kissing Mya, when she once kissed Ali? Or that Aria and her family went to Iceland for a year because her dad was hooking up with a student and Aria knew – but her mom didn’t? Or that Spencer steals her sister’s boyfriends? Or that Hanna used to be fat (this is a crappy story line, which is probably why they hit her with a car in the mid-season finale.)

This show answers the important questions, like:

Whatever happened to Holly Marie Combs after Charmed? (She got fat – and less funny. And isn’t a witch.)

Why does Chad Lowe not work nearly as often as his brother? (He only has one facial expression. Wide-eyed melancholy)

Can you show lesbian kissing on ABC Family – at the 8pm hour? (Yes, indeed.)

AND

Will Eric fall in love with any show featuring Laura Leighton? (Yes, indeed.)

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this show, to our time and to our culture. The economy may be in tatters, the environment falling apart, and our political culture poisoned and paralyzed by partisanship and paranoia – but you can see four hot teenagers in cute outfits try and figure out if they girl they blinded is sending them threatening texts every Tuesday at 8. (Pretty Little Liars returns in January. I’m serving popcorn.)

1. The Real Housewives.

This show is not first because it is good. This show is bad. Very bad. It says the most awful things about our culture, and I’m actually ready to begin a campaign to get it off the air.

If early summer brought the Real Housewives of New York, mid-summer brought us New Jersey. And late summer is bringing us the all-new Real Housewives of D.C. – complete with the anorexic chick who crashed the White House state dinner.

This show is horrible. It’s mean to women and insulting to the intelligence of adults. And children. And domesticated animals.

Once a cotton candy confection of a show about sort of ditsy women who spent too much money and occasionally argued across southern California or Manhattan, the show now actively seeks out women who hate each other and goads them into prolonged catfights. Every “scene” is either an argument, or a conversation about the argument, or a rehashing of the argument. There is no longer anything authentic – or even authentically artificial – about the show. Find four or five women, figure out how to make two of them hate each other, then spend every moment of air time picking at the scab.

Most of these women aren’t even housewives anymore. The husbands of the few who are still married no longer want anything to do with the show, and many of the women are now separated or divorced. Which doesn’t make them housewives. What it makes them, apparently, is singers. Kim from Atlanta, the Countess from New York, now Danielle Staub from New Jersey.

When did cutting a demo replace making purses as the back-up plan for single middle aged women?

It’s become a perfect formula – find a bunch of women who aren’t getting laid, and throw in a bunch of cameras, some liquor, and a fight. Insert name of location. That’s why I call it…

No Sex. And a city.

Fast Rude

2010-07-02T10:30:00.000-04:00

OK...I know this is a topic that's been written about to death. In the business pages, in the culture pages, blah, blah, blah. But I need to add my voice to the ever-growing chorus singing about how much Starbuck's sucks. (Heh heh...Starsucks. I'm gonna use that.)

Remember when the person who made your coffee drink wore a clean green apron, freshly ground the beans, andtook their time making your drink? You spent $4 on coffee, and felt a little ripped off, but - mmm - that first sip of warm foamy milk and dark coffee with a light char. Delicious.

Now your drink is made on the 21st century equivalent of a manufacturing assembly line. Some 4th grade drop out presses a button on a contrpation that seems to have sprung right out of the Jetson's kitchen and voila! your drink has been mass-produced. The milk is burnt and thin, or lukewarm because it's been on the counter for a while. The coffee is charred and unpleasant. And it's slapped down on the counter while your name is bellowed. An experience similar to the DMV. Service with a snarl.

I wish Peet's (the best location is on Sunset, in West Hollywood) would come to New York.

Anyway, I let the "barista" (what fancy words we're giving the button-pushers) try a second time (let her earn that health insurance!) and took my coffee. Strolling home, I passed the building on our corner - which spent about 3 years redoing the lobby. It's the home of Real Estate agent to the stars, Brian Lewis. You may have seen him proseletyzing on LXNY or Open House NYC, with his smug grinning pieface. (You can't miss him - he looks like that cartoon piano-playing moon, Mac Tonight, from a late 1980s McDonald's campaign.)

Ugh. Brian's specialty is pricing homes well below market value simply to move them fast. It hurts the owners, but he gets a reputation for pushing a lot of volume, so what does he care. The economics of real estate brokerage is pretty simple. The average commission is 6%, split between the exclusive listing broker (seller's initial broker) and the broker who brings the buyer to the property. The seller pays that commission, and it is often negotiated down to 5%. The brokers split it; then each splits the commission with their agency.

So, let's do the math. If you list and sell a home for $1,250,000, the total commission is $62,500 (5% of $1.25mm). Each broker takes $31,250, then splits it with their brokerage, and brings home $15,625. If you reduce that price to $1,000,000, the total commission is $50,000. It's split between the brokers, then split with their brokerages, and each broker takes home $12,500.

That deal just cost you $250,000. It cost your broker $3,125. And it may be the difference between selling your house in a week or two and selling your house in 3 months. Assuming the difference is 10 weeks, the broker only earns $312.50 per week (about $60 per day) if he lists it at the higher price. His incentives and yours are not aligned.

Anyway - math lesson aside - the point is that pieface makes his coin underselling your home. Meanwhile, he's on the co-op board of his, and to improve it's value, they undertook a very lengthy and expensive renovation which appears to have done nothing more than refurbish the lobby.

Oh, and they renamed the building.

The Del Monte.

Why would you name a building after canned vegetables? I guess it's ok if your main occupant is a canned ham. (Or canned fruit.)

Taste the Rainbow

2010-06-30T10:51:00.004-04:00

My cousin texted me last week, asking me to blog about a practice he’d recently heard about: vajazzling. Now, if you think I’m going to devote a section of my blog to an exceedingly odd process of body decoration…

OK, this is too twisted not to comment on. Vajazzling is, um, how to describe this? Vajazzling is when a woman covers her Ho-Ho in a sparkling array of colorful sprinkles.

OK, seriously – how can this be fun for anyone? Are the lady parts really so uninteresting to look at that they require being painfully adorned with sequin or glass crystals? I know I’ve never shown much interest in that particular anatomical feature, but it’s not because it needed to be decorated like a cheap Mexican restaurant.

And I can’t believe this is painless. I don’t know if they get implanted with some sort of stapling device like a Bedazzler, or an adhesive like a hot glue gun – but it can’t be comfortable. And what about for guys? Does any man want to trade a soft landing for a shot at road rash? Ladies – if this is what turns your guy on, let him suck on a Christmas ornament and rub his dick with sandpaper – but don’t turn your hoo-hoo into a kaleidoscope.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m perfectly satisfied with plain old sodomy.

Anyway – I have lots to tell you all from the weekend, but first – a quick review. I was out in California last week and got to visit the Viceroy Hotel, at the edge of Santa Monica, just barely out of Venice. The lobby is done in that very retro-70s-updated thing that a lot of the Morgans properties (the Mondrian) have done. All very baroque and patterned with the white leather and the very lounge-y, lounge-y thing going on. It works – but only in Florida or southern California . It helps if everyone around you is pretty, under 30, and gorgeous.

The hotel is right across the street from the beach (and a restaurant called Capo, which I ate at about 2 years ago, and has the honor of being one of the most expensive places I ever ate. It was good, but not good enough for the prices they charged. Skip it, and go up the block to Chez Jay – a true “dive” – still around from the 50s. It’s an Italian seafood restaurant – you can smell the garlic from the street and practically envision Sinatra and Dean-o sitting in a booth holding court and drinking scotch.)

Anyway, we ate at Whist, in the Viceroy. A limited menu, but superb, with a focus on fresh fish. My sea bass was excellent - well-cooked and flavorful - and one of my dinner companions had the halibut, which he said was equally good. He was a little fart-y the next day, but he blames that on the beet salad, so maybe skip that and get the burrata, which is served with a bread salad and cherries. Not cherry tomatoes, but actual cherries. Yum.

We sat outside, in a pool area filled with little nooks and private seating areas. It’s a total L.A. experience.

I arrived home to a busy weekend: Saturday we had a graduation party for Neil’s cousin’s son up in Westchester, and Sunday was Gay Pride.

We took the Metro-North up to Katonah for the graduation party. I thought it was a little weird that they threw the party on a Saturday night – wouldn’t the kids want to be with their friends, rather than family? I associate Sundays with family celebrations – but, what do I know? This particular cousin is a Jehovah Witness, so maybe they don’t go out on Saturday nights? Or they get up early on Sundays so they can go knock on doors? Whatever – I just hoped there was alcohol, otherwise it was going to be a long night spent nibbling on cheese and sneaking off to send text messages to my girlfriends.

Fortunately, when we got there, the place was awash in liquor. Unfortunately, the hors' d'euvres consisted off one vegetables tray with some ranch dressing and a small bowl of Tostitos Scoops. For 25 people. For 2 and a half hours. By the time dinner made it to the table, Neil and I were plastered.

He spent most of the night talking to his late uncle’s first wife, as well as her sister who was wearing what appeared to be a one-piece bathing suit with a pair of shorts. Oh – and high-heeled sandals with rhinestones. Really, the only accessory she was missing was a bowl of fruit on her head.

I spent the night talking to his cousin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s parents. They were very nice, and are clearly close in age, despite the fact that, in appearance, he seems to be 20 years older than she. She meanwhile, kept talking about several guy friends that she spends time with, leading me to wonder if there are a lot of gays up in Columbia County (she could totally hang with the ‘mos) or if she’s getting a bit on the side. This idea amused me as I continued to get drunker and drunker.

Oh – and have you ever heard of people barbecuing with aluminum foil on the grill? I’m not talking about wrapping fish or corn or something that might be too delicate for the grill, but hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken. The result was that the fat didn’t burn off onto the coals, but pooled right there under the food, resulting in an effect similar to boiling. Or poaching. Barbe-poaching. Everything grilled in its own fat.

And before we ate, a group prayer was conducted. I don’t really mind brief, overt displays of religiosity like this. I really respect people who have that kind of faith – they seem to have a sense of peace about them (those who haven’t let it slide all the way from peace into self-righteousness, indignation or smugness.) I just wish they had prayed for a better meal. (This isn’t entirely fair: the pasta salad – which was basically penne, basil, tomatoes, mozzarella, garlic, salt and olive oil – was outstanding.)

Fortunately I had a bag of licorice in my bag for the ride home.

On Sunday, we celebrated Gay Pride – or, as I like to call it, Gay Shame. I’m sorry – but this thing just feels like a relic to me at this point. I don’t really like parades to begin with, and don’t really need to stand on a hot, humid street corner watching Dikes on Bikes and four hours of clubs and organizations like the Gay Dominicans from Yonkers. Plus, the city gets overrun with a bridge and tunnel crowd, you can’t get around easily, and a bunch of sweaty, tweaked-out freaks is not my idea of a good time.

Still, the boys wanted to get together for brunch, which seemed harmless enough. Neil and I both had such a hangover that a Bellini or two was just what the doctor ordered (seriously, it’s only a matter of time before I’m forced to re-name this column: Mean Gay Drunk.) Another friend of ours stopped by briefly – long enough to tell us about the party he went to on Governor’s Island the night before – a new event for Pride week.

Apparently, “everybody” was there. “It was like they took all the gay boys from Fire Island and combined it with all the gay boys from the Hamptons!” This sounds like a riddle. What do you get?

Ummm, I don’t know? In island full of the same obnoxious drugged out middle aged homos I ignore on non-holiday weekends?

Oh no! I’ve missed the gay social event of the season. (Ack. Ugh. Wretch.)

But, after brunch, a trip to the parade was, dispiritingly, inevitable. We managed to hang out for half an hour or so, then head over to some party the guys had gone to the previous year.

This was the strangest party I ever attended. It was in a very nice apartment in the West Village, and, in the midst of cocktails, crudite, and a very nice cheese plate, some boy was getting tied up and stripped.

Ok, look. Now that I’m married and almost 40, a sex party isn’t my thing – but I’m not shocked by them. And it’s not like I might not find it an appealing novelty if I were younger and single – but this wasn’t even a sex party. It wasn’t like some Colt or Mustang video – all dark and porn-y. It was someone’s apartment living room, with a naked boy in rope being groped desultorily while the rest of us sort of ignored it, except when we were debating the relative wisdom of eating the grapes.

So, another weekend down. I hope you enjoyed the stories, because experiencing it – let’s just say I wasn’t Vajazzled.

Family: Old and New

2010-06-25T14:05:00.002-04:00

Can we all agree that Florida is the weirdest state?

I know - West Virginia is shaped like a bunny rabbit and California has that whole $19 billion budget gap and Louisiana has the weird French form of government and can't seem to escape disasters headed towards it from the Gulf. But Florida - hanging-chad recounting, orange-growing, DisneyWorld family vacationing, weird Republican-turned-Independent-and possibly-closted-gay Governor Florida pretty much takes the prize.

(One plus for Florida: Coconut Patties. Sweet, chocolatey, airport-gift-in-a-yellow box Coconut Patties.)

So, it's appropriate that I had a weird week in Florida.

I should have expected it when my flight landed on time, only to pull within 20 feet of the gate and stop. Apparently, if there are thunderstorms, they can't tow you in or extend the jetway. So you get an extra hour of recycled air on a plane that was so old I think I saw Amelia Earhart in the cockpit.

But I'm not here to slam Florida, with humidity so intense I was sweating simply sitting still. Or the models sunbathing nude at our hotel (take that, Marriott Courtyard.) Or the number of Indian casinos popping up along I-95.

I'm here to tell you about going to dinner with someone who was my best friend in college. Someone I haven't seen in almost 16 years.

After I graduated, I moved far away to go to Law School, after which I moved again. I also didn't come out of the closet until after college. As a result, I lost touch with a lot of my high school and college friends, and sort of felt awkward re-connecting with them; your like changes a lot after coming out.

But Facebook has put me right back in touch with a lot of people from a time in my life that was pretty much lost to me. It's not that I don't remember that time in my life, but I have very few people I can reminisce with. So Facebook has been a total gift from that perspective- and, while many of the re-connections have been superficial, a handful have been really meaningful. This was one of those.

Chad and I spent most of my junior and senior year hanging out. In addition, I spent two consecutive summers in his hometown - Miami - and countless days with his family. Dinners, barbecues, afternoons at the pool - I can't even fathom how much time I spent with them; it was a surrogate family.

It was weird to walk in to a restaurant and come face to face with my past. Other than his sister - who obviously looks different at 24 than she did at 8 years old - I would have thought it was 1994 again. And they welcomed me as if no time had passed at all - which initially made me feel ungrateful and uncomfortable; guilty for letting relationships lapse.

That was quickly replaced by feeling totally at ease; that's the thing about family --- time may pass chronologically, but not emotionally. I was reminded, again, how kindness is such an incredibly important and largely undervalued attribute. I was really moved.

Meanwhile ... did you know that I am related to Batman?

Also, Spider-Man, Supergirl, and a Disney princess - all of them alter egos of my neice who turns four on Saturday. She managed to cycle through each of these personas in less than hour last Sunday afternoon, experiencing a fluency with multiple personalities that only a true psychopath could appreciate.

Can I just say? My sister - who is no stranger to self-martyrdom, really does deserve more appreciation. Pretty much every family holiday falls to her. Neither of her sisters-in-law have kids; Neil and I live in Manhattan, which everyone on Long Island finds inconvenient (I don't know why - the trains come here dozens of times a day, we live near 8 different parking garages, and we're in a nice neighborhood. I know the argument is that, since everyone lives on Long Island, it's less of a schlep, but -it's not like we haven't offered.)

Anyway - between Mother's Day (which her mother in law covered this year), Father's Day (which she pretty much always gets) and Christmas (written in stone - my brother-in-law invites more people every year, to my sister's growing chagrin (she sort of loves it.))

Still, it can't be easy when it's always your house, your expense, your mess.

We try to help out however we can - entertaining the kids (which we love doing anyway), cleaning up after ourselves; bringing loads of gifts. But it's really all a gift to us. I know everyone thinks their kids/grandkids/nieces/nephews are the cutest/smartest/whateverest - but we feel a pretty special pride in being uncles. I love seeing how smart and articulate the eldest is becoming. She's so sharp and intuitive, you almost can't wait for her to get older because she's going to do really special things. And her sister is so brazen - brave and funny and demanding of attention - there's a stage in that kids future. And the baby (told you - he'll be "the baby" til he's 40) - can a 2 year old be possessed of charm? Meanwhile, he's so attached to his sister he just randomly says her name if she ventures more than 5 feet away from him.

Wow - sentimental post. I need to go to a diner and send some soup back...I'm losing my edge.

Do You Know Who I Am?

2010-06-21T14:40:00.002-04:00

Clearly, the end of times is coming.

I was in a Duane Reade on Saturday and the guy behind the counter was polite and actually hurried to provide assistance. In Manhattan, this is the equivalent of finding a Leprechaun riding a Unicorn. Something's up with Duane Reade lately...the stores are cleaner, their new line of branded products is pretty good (beware the brownie bites at the checkout stand - pure evil in a delicious chocolatey square.)

But we can't dwell on the DR - we've got too much to cover today.

First, I need to tell you about the funniest job interview ever. No not me - I love my job (which will remain my official position as long as my boss and co-workers read this blog, but has the advantage of actually being true.)

My friend, ummm, (this nickname thing sucks.) Let's call her, Croquette.

You see, Croquette is one of the thousands of New Yorkers whose youth evaporates as the enthusiasm of their 20s rapidly slides into the bitterness and alcoholism of their 40s with a single bitter career move known as working for a large law firms. You know these places: operating under a string of surnames that could only possibly belong to long-dead white protestants who once owned a completely different kind of slave (or, more recently, possibly-still-alive but totally fossilized old Jews who are descended from slaves and we should know better - shame, shame!) These law factories are responsible for the fact that virtually everything you do these days is front-ended by a process that requires you to give up your legal rights (that little pop up window that you simply click "Agree" to everytime you purchase a new Apple product? Congratulations, paragraph 384(b)(7)(ii) requires you to name your child Harold. Even if it's a girl.)

Anyway, Croquette has had enough, and she's getting out.

So, finally, she dedicated at least 15 minutes (which was billable to a client because she was sort of thinking about them while she was pursuing a career change) to updating her resume, her linked in profile, and reminding herself that she didn't go to Princeton and Georgetown to work a pole, or a corner, even metaphorically. The result was an interview with a storied New York firm of Surname Surname (not their real name).

Be not confused, dear reader. Despite bearing the names of rich white people, this is not a law firm, rather a financial services firm - though the difference in life or lifestyle is negligible. This would not be a trade up.

Still, an interview is an interview and it's always good practice. So Croquette took the day off, put on a clean black conservative suit (of which New Yorkers own several dozen apeice) and headed over to their offices.

You'd imagine a firm this sophisticated would have a crack HR process for recruitment, especially since their turnover is so high. Yet, Croquette had to talk to three people before she found someone who had any clue why she was there, or what she was interviewing for. I suppose this wouldn't have been so trying, if the people who kept coming by to figure out who the hell she was didn't keep leaving her in a small HR office. In the dark.

By the way - her name isn't Croquette, but it's not exactly Jane Smith - the fact that they didn't even know who she was is inexcusable.

Finally, someone figured out who she was and took her through a labyrinthine venture to a conference room where she was told to wait and, if anyone asked why she was here, to just say she was there for "a meeting." Apparently, these oblique instructions would be enough, as a company which attracts some of the most talented financial minds in New York probably doesn't employ people who would have the slightest curiosity as to who the "meeting" was with, what the "meeting" might be about, or why this girl no one's ever seen before was attending it (not to mention, where she came from.)

So, clearly, at this point Croquette has figured out she's interviewing for a job not yet vacated by its-soon-to-be-previous occupant. And the story could reasonably end here. But, it would be incomplete to omit that, despite accepting these circumstances (and the knowledge that should would NOT accept a job here under any circumstances,) Croquette inquired about using the restroom. To which the HR lady asked, "Can you hold it?"

This is the point in the story where, if it had happened to me, I would have peed on the conference table. And left. After getting them to validate my parking.

I guess it really is a rough job market folks.

What I'm Learning at the Airport Newsstand

2010-06-21T14:08:00.000-04:00

1. Fergie slept with rich men for cash (The Globe) - Who doesn't?

2. Cher's new life-threatening condition (National Enquirer) - what happened to the old one? Did it stop threatening her life and move on to collecting Hummel figurines?

3. Cops shoot two-headed bigfoot (Weekly World News) - Great. Another story about Cher.

4. Los Mas Sexy (Mira!) - I can't understand this magazine, but the shirtless soccer players are cute.

5. Glee Secrets (Us Weekly) - Yeah. Here's a secret: one of the guys is straight. Shhh!

6. Drugs! Lies! Secret Lovers! (Star) - Oops. Cher, again.

7. Who's Gay and Who's Not (National Enquirer) - Ummm, me.

And - on the cover of Architectural Digest: Cher's New Hollywood Home. Guess those drugs, lies and life-threatening illesses are paying off.

New information

2010-06-04T11:40:00.000-04:00

An avid and engaged reader has pointed out that Jennifer Hudson has a Grammy and several other music awards. In the spirit of open dialogue, we at Do This New York welcome such feedback, and - as always - invite our readers to start their own damn blog :)

2010-06-04T09:29:00.001-04:00

Now I've seen everything...diapers that are designed to look like denim cutoff shorts

2010-06-04T09:19:00.001-04:00

Watching Regis and Kelly at the gym; Is it a good idea to have a regular sequence about firefighters grilling out when most people shouldn't play with matches? And how did Katherine Heigl go from being a 27 year old blond to a middle aged brunette? Lose the short sweaters.

Long Weekend

2010-06-04T07:30:00.000-04:00

For those of you not native to New York, you may be harboring an impression of us fostered by the narcissistic navel-gazers of Seinfeld, the chatty, pretty Friends, and the cosmo-swilling (and near-menopausal) gals of Sex and the City (skip the movie, by the way, I don’t even need to see it to tell you it’s awful. I work blue, and even I want to vomit at the line, “Lawrence of my labia.” It’s an insult to those of us who can work the word “cocksucker” into a business lunch and get away with it.)

Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering that New York is equal parts queens (as in, $400 designer shoes and weekends in South Beach) as it is Queens (as in $4 plastic shoes and the end of your life in Miami – which is in “Flah-ridda.”) If you’d like a real-time illustration of this dichotomy, you’re more than welcome to ride the Long Island Railroad with me and Neil out to Hampton Bays.

Our weekend was actually fantastic – we spent most of Saturday doing our own thing – gym, errands, etc., then met up at 3pm to see a movie. While I tend to be a pretty big fan of Nicole Holofcener (Friends with Money), I didn’t really love her latest film, Please Give – which opened to generally strong reviews. Catherine Keener, whom I ordinarily like, turns in a performance that is striking in how cold and remote it is for an actress who is usually very relatable. I found her character whiny and her story lacking any real conflict or drama. Oliver Platt and Amanda Peet do a good job playing people you don’t really like or care about, leaving the audience the choice of relating to Amanda Peet’s boring sister, a sullen teenage girl, or a mean old woman.

I chose the old bag.

Saturday night Neil whipped up a tender braised veal shank with crispy polenta and Brussels sprouts while I got silly on red wine and the season finale of House (no one in television turned in a stronger performance this season than Hugh Laurie. No one. From the premiere, where he struggles with both his drug addiction and his isolation, to the final episode where he faces the degree to which his injury and addiction have crippled his ability to form any real human connection, his work was funny, vulnerable and brave. An actor playing a character full of tics and tricks could easily rely on those to create an illusion of character. This season, Laurie threw them all away, and turned in a bravura season as a result.)

While Saturday, with a mix of sun and clouds, was conducive to indoor activities – Sunday and Monday promised to be sunny and hot, so Neil and I threw a few things in a bag, picked up some colorful sugary treats for the kiddies (and Neil) and jumped on the train to see my sister, my brother-in-law, and the kids.

The 9:40 train hits the stops for Jones Beach, the Fire Island Ferries, and the Hamptons – so it was packed with daytrippers toting their beach detritus, fussy children, and various intoxicants. In a testament to it always being five o’clock somewhere, several young ladies on our train were brown bagging it well before 10am. Really, is there anything more attractive than an overweight bottle blonde huffing a 40 in her acid washed denim skirt and a black wifebeater. And speaking of wife beaters, I must have wrong when I said that Dep and those creepy tattoos that go all the way around your bicep were on their way out. Apparently good taste never goes out of style.

The upside is that it was easy for my brother-in-law to spot us when our train pulled in – Neil and I being the only people who didn’t look like we’d appeared in a movie whose title ended in “…Gone Wild.”

The kids were all in great spirits when we arrived. My eldest niece is really smart and articulate and she’s outgrowing a period of shyness – it used to take her a while to warm up when we visited. Her little sister is a total ham – a little less wild than she used be – but with a lot of charm and feistiness. And the baby (who, I am afraid, may wind up being called, “the Baby” until he’s 40) is clearly in his terrible twos – fussy and difficult to please – but when he’s well-behaved he’s an angel.

We had a quick lunch, then trooped off to the beach where we joined my brother-in-law’s family.

Can I just say, here, that I have a hard time when I set out to write about family. It’s easy with my own family – they know me, and realize that sarcasm and snark is just my way. Also, they know they’re crazy and damaged and easy marks. And Neil expects that my treatment of him is fair payback for his endlessly reminding me of my terrible crimes which include an inability to wash a fork the second it leaves my mouth and wanting to take him on vacation.

But with in-laws, it’s harder. It’s not your family and you’re only privy to the crazy by association; it’s someone else’s to own. Thus, if those posts come off as a bit subdued, understand that I’m not holding back, I’m trying to be respectful – since I never apologize for jokes. (OK, I did once, which is where I learned this lesson.)

Suffice it to say that every family has its own crazy..

Well, almost suffice it to say…I can skip over my sister’s mother-in-law without commenting that if you’ve ever lost anything in your life it’s probably somewhere in her living room, because she’s also the most generous hostess you’ll ever meet. You could show up on her lawn with 27 friends, and she’d invite you all in and feed you. And I can skip his sister who got divorced from the gay guy because that’s my mom’s story, too – and when a woman gets married thinking it’s forever, only to find out that her husband’s a cocksucker – it does some pretty fucked up things to you.

(BTW – I told you I could get that word in.)

(Also BTW – I know most of my audience is, at this point, wondering if gays are really randomly 10% of the population, or if it’s just my family spitting them out like logs out of a flume ride.)

But there comes a point where you can’t just gloss over someone because they’re someone else’s family, and you just have to take the gloves off. I found that line this weekend.

This is what we will call The Cousin Barbara Rule.

Cousin Barbara is one of those random relatives that somehow shows up in the middle of your life almost without explanation. She’s the daughter of the grandmother’s brother (making him a parent’s first cousin) – relatively close by blood, but remote in the experience of your life.

Everyone has one of these – I was nearly a teenager when my father came home one night ready to introduce us to a whole slew of cousins we had never heard about . It appears my grandfather, who I always thought had one sister, apparently had another. They hadn’t spoken in years, so when her daughter – my father’s first cousin – reached out “wanting to connect with family” (a phrase that generally follows a divorce or precedes a request for money), we got new cousins.

So, much as Cousin Diane got drop shipped into our lives in 1983, so did Cousin Barbara arrive. (Cousin Diane was her own packet of crazy. Recently divorced (told ya), with a live in boyfriend who she finally married, like 23 years later, and three kids. One was an aimless administrative assistant with dreams of becoming a country singer (because all great country singers come from Long Island), one was an aimless student who’s now married and – wait for it – might be gay, and the third was just aimless and I’m too tired to try and find words to describe her. All I remember is hair and teeth. Whatever. They were crazy, but they had a boat. That was fun.)

Return to actual topic: Cousin Barbara. Cousin Barbara – recently divorced (natch, but her ex probably wasn’t a homo, so she’s not winning Queen for a Day with this crowd unless he’s in prison), she’s just moved back to New York after many years in Miami (Flahridda) and Charleston, South Carolina. I can imagine her in Charleston about as easily as you can imagine Barack Obama wearing a full length evening gown and belting out the State of the Union address to the tune of “Cabaret.” She sports that weird hair style where the top layer of her hair is blonde and the bottom layer is brown, so it’s all very half-and-half – like a vanilla/chocolate Dixie cup that you used to get from the ice cream truck. She might do something in photography, and she might have kids – it’s hard to tell; not because she doesn’t talk about herself – she does that incessantly – but because the thickness of the accent and the thickness of the cigarette smoke creates a distancing effect. I find it easier to simply let myself be soothed by the scratchy scratchy scratchy quality of her voice.

Anyhow, we came to get some sun and play with the kids – which provided a convenient excuse for escaping further conversation with Cousin Barbara, who had begun to remind me of Faye Dunaway in Barfly, without the bar. We dug a big hole, then fed the kids chips, then dug another big hole, then fed the kids Goldfish, then took a nice long walk. For a popsicle. I don’t eat sugar and bread for weeks at a time so I can visit these kids who never met a carb they didn’t like.

Anyhow, all that snacking made us hungry, so we hurried back to the house to shower and change and get drunk enough to endure dinner. As mentioned, my brother-in-law’s mother is always prepared for an extra guest or 12, and a cookout at her house is an endless parade of food. Corn, beans, cole slaw, pasta salad, potato salad, macaroni salad, regular salad. Virtually everything’s the same temperature because it’s all been on the kitchen counter for somewhere between 20 minutes and three weeks. Except the food off the grill – rapidly defrosted steaks (in case there weren’t enough burgers), 30 burgers, turkey burgers, lamb chops, sausage, hot dogs – piping hot and served in such voluminous quantity you can barely stand by the time the cupcakes, cake, pie and fruit land for dessert.

It should have come as no surprise, 6 hours later, when my niece woke up unable to sleep and making heaving sounds, which woke my brother-in-law, who then spent a good bit of time throwing up his guts.

You know, between the Thanksgivings that manage to include a screaming match before the turkey’s even out of the oven, the Christmas Eve’s where my sister runs around taking care of everyone else while my parents snack on cheese and shrimp like they’re actual guests, and the number of family events that have included vomiting (Cooper’s birthday, this Memorial Day, and virtually every Christmas since my sister got married) – I wonder why we even show up at family events anymore. Though, I will say I’m pretty lucky…I really love these people and if they weren’t so absolutely batshit crazy I wouldn’t have anything to write about. Who the hell wants to read a blog about normal people who marry heterosexuals, dress appropriately in their 40s and don’t leave early to cruise the bars.

We took the train back early Monday morning, having avoided Sunday’s daytrippers who were sure to have been sunburnt, drunk, and in the mood for a hate crime. The train was relatively quiet, and after we got home we had a quick breakfast and headed over to the park to rent canoes and row on the lake. Then we checked out the renovation of the old Limelight (a church which was turned into a nightclub and was the heart of the Club Kids scene 20 years ago.) I miss the Limelight – I miss all those clubs from back in the day – Tunnel, Bedrocks, Club USA, Twilo, even Roxy – all gone and replaced by Boobs-in-your-face bottle service by almost-hookers and a bunch of rich stupid finance guys who played high school lacrosse, barely managed a C average through college and made a mint torpedoing the American economy with derivatives and other financial weapons of mass destruction.

The renovation is neat – they’ve got some interesting food stalls and boutique shops (or outposts of boutique shops around the city) – but the navigation is pretty weird (if you’ve ever been in the Limelight, it’s a maze.) Plus, it messes with your head to see someone serving gelato in the corner where you used to do blow.

And that’s all for now folks. Lincoln (as in, Nebraska) awaits … I’ll talk with you all from the prairie.

Grand Finale

2010-06-04T07:14:00.000-04:00

OK, I went so long without posting that now I have, like, 14 posts running around in my head. So bear with me, this could be a prolific week.

With so many potential topics, I am going to focus this week on the recent end of the 2009-2010 television series - particularly the finale episodes - before the topic gets stale. While I could go on forever covering Survivor (Parvati should have won,) The Big Bang Theory (Hi, Blossom!), 24 (which over the course of seven seasons in real time went from having so much energy that each episode felt like it passed in 30 minutes, and ended its run so sluggish and labored that each hour felt like, well, 24.)

But we're going to focus on three particular finales, which are a good microcosm of the state of television - indeed, the state of America - today: Lost, American Idol, and House.

I'll start by telling you that I stuck with Lost all the way through six seasons. I have seen every episode. I was drawn in during season one - compelled by the mystery of who these people were, where they landed, why they were there, and what was happening to them. Season two sort of Lost me a bit - the narrative seemed uneven and I wasn't sure where the story was ambling - but when Michael shot Ana Lucia and Libby, and then got Jack, Sawyer and Kate kidnapped in order to get off the Island, I got sucked back in. Finally, the third season was a total mess - it was sort of clear they couldn't continue writing a series that hinged on so many mysteries without resolving them, but they couldn't resolve them without ending the show. So when the producers announced they had struck a deal to end the show in season six, I figured they had a clear narrative arc for where they wanted to go.

It started promisingly enough. The third season finale "Through the Looking Glass" were two of the best hours of scripted television I've watched, and provided a structure to the series, propelling the narrative forward clearly. The emergence of the Others as villains and the shadowy Charles Widmore as their nemesis anchored the series - both groups wanted the Island our survivors were so desperate to leave. The backdrop of both faith (the "Jacob" subplot) and reason (the scientific wonders of the Island; the Dharma initiative) seemed to indicate that the battle had real meaning; that the stakes were high. You got the feeling that the Island was worth something, and this battle was centuries old. Getting some of the castaways off the Island only made the story more urgent - their journey back was just as urgent as their journey to leave.

Personally, I loved the season five finale. Part of me wonders how I would have felt if they had simply ended the series there, or with the season six premiere. Something very Lady or the Tiger, where we see the choices, but don't get to know how it plays out. I almost could have lived with that. Instead, though, I wound up slightly disappointed.

It's not that the sixth season, with its "Sideways" storylines, wasn't compelling. And I didn't feel cheated by the revelation that those stories took place in a kind of purgatory after the characters had died (and I'm not the least bit curious about the age they all appeared to be, or the vast differences in when each of them must have died.) Actually, I sort of liked that that choice - or rather - it was one of only a handful of choices the writers could have made and allowed both the "original" timeline and the "sideways" timeline to be "real."

No, what ticked me off is that I feel the central story itself was essentially unresolved. Charles Widmore got shot, but we never really found out why he wanted the Island so badly. We never really found out why - or how - Ben managed to "lead" the others for so long. How, if Jacob was essentially the embodiment of good, he tolerated Ben's leadership when it was executed with so much malice? We never really understood why Walt was special? Why the Others went after kids, and what happened to them? We heard about how "evil" the smoke monster was, and what awful things would happen if "it" escaped the island, but all we got were vague allusions and no real understanding of those stakes.

So, in the end, I enjoyed the show and I'm glad I watched it. And I liked the finale - mostly because I'm a sucker for reunions. Shannon and Sawyer got me misty, but Sawyer and Juliet totally had me in tears (and I TOTALLY knew, when she made that remark about going dutch in the season premiere, that it was going to wind up in the finale when they met in Sideways world – I just didn’t know what that world would be.) That’s not saying much, though, since I also still cry every time Fantine shows up at the end of Les Miserables, and I've seen that five times.

However, looking back over the complete series as a dramatic work - I'd give it a B. It was engrossing and intelligent and literate and, often, inspired. I just don’t feel like it hangs together completely, tightly, as a single narrative. The six season arc tries to tell too many stories, and the central plot throughline feels incomplete. Basically, the series posed the central questions of: (1) who are these people? (2) why have they been chosen to come to this place? (3) why is it important? In the end, in order to be great, the series must specifically, explicitly, and completely answer those questions with actions and answers that are as elaborate and specific as the questions themselves.

That said, I will say that there’s very little happening in serialized television today that even attempts to achieve the level of narrative storytelling achieved in literature or film, or which challenges its audience with topics of faith, spirituality, economics, sociology, history, or science the way Lost did. It easily surpasses, in intelligence and storytelling, most of what we’ve seen on television.

American Idol and Survivor offer a far different lesson; a cautionary tale if you will, about laziness, boredom and stupidity. About why you shouldn’t let America vote, except when you should. I’ll explain.

I was engrossed by both shows right from the outset, mesmerized by the slow elimination that resulted in a “last man standing.” It’s a compelling device – dating all the way back to the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme (and, later, a novel and play of the same name by Agatha Christie.) The inevitable winnowing of the field, coupled with the survival mechanisms of the players, makes for compelling television. The difference has been in the deployment. Survivor exists, ostensibly, to create good television. On that level it succeeds; it may not be intelligent television, though there are plenty of lessons about using social skills and managing group psychology that can be observed.

American Idol, however, exists, ostensibly, to find a great musician or musical performer. It’s track record hasn’t been bad, but it hasn’t been great. Two of nine winners are verifiable stars, though only one has shown real staying power (Carrie Underwood). Two other finalists (Daughtry and Jennifer Hudson) have gone on to achieve stardom, though, I’d wager to only call Daughtry a musician, while Jennifer Hudson (complete with Oscar and film career) is an actress who sings. Other than that, we’ve gotten lot of folks with recording contracts but no real commercial success, and a bunch of musical theater singers who probably would have found their way to Broadway somehow.

This season was BOOOOOORING. The show’s been on too long and the casting formula (the rocker, the sensitive ballad guy, the rebel chick, the kooky girl, the theater queen (male or female), the quirky re-mixer/beat-boxer/accordion player) has grown predictable – and predictably limiting. And letting America vote has resulted in three seasons in a row where the unexciting lite-rock contestant has beaten a more interesting musician (and this is from someone who preferred Cook to Archuleta and Lee to Crystal.) So next year, when your office has a pool to pick the winner, figure out which contestant is strong enough to make the top 6 and boring enough to be heard in your dentist’s office or your mother’s car, and you’ve got your winner.

It’s hard to find a great pop star on the television – kind of like going fishing in a tree: the medium is all wrong. Yes, great musicians need to be great performers, but they need to be great musicians, first. They need to bring to the table a voice that comes from self-awareness and life experience and creative expression. Many of those people aren’t under 26 (I know, now the age limit is 29), and aren’t necessarily going to get cast on a tv show where America votes for the winner. Listen to the early albums of Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, Joni Mitchell, and think about how they’d fare on the show. Would Kara have told Carole King that she’s got a lovely voice but she should really try something younger and more modern, and enough with the introspection and the yearning already? Would Randy have told Billy Joel that the piano stuff is a’ight, but maybe get out from behind the piano and show some range?

Which brings me to the judges. Does anyone care anymore? Randy hasn’t offered a single bit of constructive criticism in nine seasons. He’s supposed to be an industry executive, for crying out loud! Kara is a songwriter who works in A&R. Does these people have nothing to offer? How about saying – “Folks – this show is basically the biggest rotating cover band in the world. When you remake a song that someone else, somewhere, has already done – ask yourself, ‘Why am I singing this song? How does it showcase my voice and my voice? What am I adding to it?’ Think about songs that have been successfully remade and ask yourself why. “I Will Always Love You” became a power ballad; “Total Eclipse of the Heart” became a dance track. Think about how current musicians sample existing works into their music. Why are specific songs chosen? What does the sampling achieve?”

I won’t even comment on Ellen, because I had such high hopes for her humor and the ability to see armchair opinion played out on the show. Instead we got tired, retread commentary. Which, of course, qualifies her to start her open record label. You know, I once judged a Miss America state pageant (Miss New Hampshire, 1995), but spending four hours judging women in bathing suits doesn’t make me heterosexual. (Actually, I’ve spent 37 years judging women in bathing suits, it’s just that I’ve only gotten paid for 4 hours of it.)

But if American Idol is an example of weak judging, and why America shouldn’t vote, Survivor is an example of why it should. Coming off of two progressively more interesting seasons in Tocantins and Samoa, the most recent chapter, Heroes vs. Villains was appointment television. 20 of Survivor’s best contestants battling it out for a second (and, in some cases, third) chance at the big prize.

I won’t recap the whole season, since I’ve commented on it plenty – but the folks America responded most strongly two were back in what was easily the best season of Survivor since its inaugural run 10 years ago. Some folks left their personalities at home (Candace, Amanda); others their prowess (Colby). But plenty of folks came to play, earning a respect (Jerri) and redemption (Coach) or the humility (JT) that eluded them the first time around. And, fittingly, Russell – who should have won last season, proving that sometimes America makes a better decision than the jury (but that’s not the game – the game is convincing a jury of your peers) – made the show compelling, week after week after week. He may not be able to convince the jury, but he’s earned his back-to-back fan favorite prizes.

So, what’s the lesson in all this. Sometimes, when America votes you get stuff like George Bush – which we regretted too late; others you get stuff like Obama (which it seems to be regretting too prematurely.) And sometimes America gets a great story with a crappy third act (Mike Bloomberg, anyone?)

Still, we keep tuning in…

Grand Pooblog

2010-05-29T07:27:00.000-04:00

I know.

It's been so long since I've written, half of you are probably wondering if I shut the blog down, lost my fingers in a bizarre Froot Loops accident, or ran off with Josh Holloway from Lost. (OK, Lost series finale. Tonight. Are you dying? I'm dying. The final episode, which will apparently last something like four days, will either finally reveal the island's secrets and provide a satisfying ending, or mockingly inform me that I've wasted six years of my life. I'm betting on the latter.)

In truth, I have been a little low on passion recently. It's not as if nothing's happened - but I certainly haven't wanted this blog to become some sort of third-grade level "What I Did This Weekend" - but it has taken a while for the events and circumstances of life to crystallize with my thoughts in a way that would be worthy of mention. Now that it's happened, I have something to say.

But first - just to catch you up - I spent some time in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Denver and Des Moines. Then Phoenix and Albuquerque. At one point I was in four of those places on the same day. And despite this frenetic activity occurring within a two week span of time, precious little has happened, so we're doing bullet points again:

1. The Chateau Marmont may be a great place for celebrities to stay, or give an interview, but the restaurant sucks. I went with the friends I call "Carrie" and "Steven." I was glad to see them, but the meal was a bust. And our waitress looked like Pebbles Flintstone and wore a halter dress that was so loose on top that her breasts would have fallen out if they weren't some sort of weird, miniaturized micro-breasts.

2. There's a Marriott in Albuquerque that is architected and painted to look like a tepee. Or maybe it's a wigwam. Whatever it is, it offends me. Not just because it's racist, but because it's ugly.

3. Is there any point in seeing the new Sex and the City movie? I loved the TV show as much as anyone, but I don't know that they have left any story un-told at this point. Plus - the show wasn't just about the evolution of these four characters, but an allegorical expression of single life in New York in your 30s. Now the "girls" are nearing - or over - 50. And most of the movie is set in Dubai. Tha's not Sex and the City, that's Menopause in the Desert. (Show I would watch: spin off Jennifer Hudson's assistant from the first film - make her an assistant for her day job, and an aspiring singer/musical theater actress - and give her a roommate who works on Wall Street, a best friend who works at the Met, and a gay pal with relationship drama.

And now, on to our point...

Have you ever been to an Elks Lodge?

Probably not, I'm guessing, since Elks Lodges are relics of a roadside Americana that's long gone the way of lemonade stands (which can still, oddly, be found - even on the sidewalks of Manhattan - on warm weekends in late spring. I find it odd that the children of Wall St financiers and power-attorneys are sitting on a corner selling lemonade, until I see that they're charging $4.50 a cup and boasting of freshly squeezed organic lemons. These are the kids who are going to grow up to own things like Wine Bars, Hotel Chains, and Greece.)

Well, Neil's parents came to town this weekend. They visit from Houston once a year, and we enjoy spending time with them. Thursday night we took them to Grano Trattoria in the West Village (I had the teak, for the first time, and can HIGHLY recommend it.) Friday, Neil took them to see the Highline (they are both native New Yorkers, and remember when the Highline was actually in service as a train line, rather than an urban park that repurposed history into retail, offering stunning views of the northern New Jersey shore, a mix of sun-worshipping twenty-somethings and German tourists, and over-priced baked goods (nothing tops off a hot day like a $12 chocolate chip cookie.)) And, on Saturday, we went with them to visit Neil's aunt and uncle (his father's brother) in Westchester.

We spent most of the day sitting out on their deck, grilling out and chit-chatting. Neil's cousin was there, with her two young children, and entertaining the kids (who have the best disposition of any two children I've ever met) filled most of the day.

Neil's aunt is a gracious hostess who can't sit still for more than 10 seconds and is constantly adding something to the table or feeding the kids. By 3pm they'd had so much sugar I thought they were going to take flight. By 6pm, when their dad arrived, Neil's cousin had been nearly driven to distraction, and looked grateful for reinforcements.

Anyway, after spending most of the day eating and drinking, Neil's parents wanted to take us all over to the Elks Lodge in Peekskill. His father has been an Elk for decades, and likes to visit the local lodge whenever he travels.

I don't think he was prepared to arrive and find a bunch of African-American teenagers sitting on the stoop, spillover from the sweet sixteen going on inside.

There's a fine line here - and I'm trying to figure out how to tread it. I wouldn't call his parents - or mine for that matter - racist. Yet, in both cases it's a generation of middle-class white people, the first white-collar generation from blue-collar upbringings. If their parents went from "Nigger" to "Negro" (at least publicly), their generation went from Negro" to "colored" to - now - "they." It's a word that, in and of itself is innocuous, but is used in a way that clearly delineates a separation. "They." "They" as separate from "Us." They are not Us. They are Different.

(I'm working to a point here, but I do need to pause to point out how hard it was to stifle a chuckle as this unfolded. It's as if we showed up for a reunion of the Lawrence Welk show and, instead, wound up on Arsenio.)

Anyway, the Lodge Hall was booked for Shaquan's Sweet 16 (yes, that was her actual name) but the social room downstairs was open. After figuring out how to enter, showing a membership card, and giving the secret handshake replete with virgin sacrifice (I'm kidding about the last part. Please. When was the last time you saw a virgin?) we entered Elks Lodge 744.

I found it difficult to resist Flintstones jokes (remember, Fred and Barney were loyal members of the Royal Order of Water Buffalo? With those stupid hats?) - but the parallels were too easy. There's a membership structure, including officers with titles like Exalted Ruler. I don't mean to be alarmist, but that really does conjure up images of white sheets and burning crosses. I made a mental note not to so much as stand next to Neil for fear that we'd wind up beaten or thrown into a volcano.

The Lodge itself wasn't much. There was a bar, with a bartender, and only about three guests. The rest of the hall was empty. The Elks are, to an extent, really relics of a time gone by - so membership can't be too robust, and I imagine it's aging rapidly, with fewer younger members replacing the ranks of the departed. Thus, I imagine they're not terribly flush. The building is aging, and the social hall could best be described as a basement, with a smell of mold, and that fake wood paneling affixed to the walls. It reminded me of the many basements in which I spent the early years of high school, drinking beer and wine coolers (don't judge; it was 1988) while my peers experimented with sex and I was awkwardly off to the side trying to figure out if I liked Cheez Doodles better than pretzels.

But, as I looked around, something struck me. On top of that fake paneling were photos of members, dated back more than a century. Many were in uniform. Other photos and memorabilia honored members and their families who served, or were currently serving, in the US Armed Forces (interestingly - the military may wind up accepting gays before the Elks, but that's another column.)

Sign up sheets abounded for pancake breakfasts and pig roasts. The names of members who were homebound or hospitalized were published, with directions for how to visit or provide support to their families. A code of honor was posted.

I looked around and Neil's dad was talking to one of the guys at the bar. His mom was talking to another. They were all chatting as if they'd known each other for ten years.

I realized that there is something comforting about the concept of fraternity. About the values of friendship and the ability to embrace strangers from 1500 miles away, simply because you both belong to the same organization. This organization may not share my values - and may be repulsed by mine, and by my life - but they support each other.

I also realized the impact of perspective. I can't imagine my initial impression of the Elks lodge was any more disorienting for me than the places we frequent would be for Neil's parents. I can't exactly imagine they'd immediately adapt to a happy hour cocktail at g or a Sunday afternoon tea dance. Neil's dad may enjoy hanging around the bar with a bunch of guys in the spirit of fraternity, but I imagine he draws the line when none of them are wearing shirts.

However, as much as I could easily understand the need for any organization to form and provide a safe community and gathering place for their members, I do struggle with the question of whether certain groups institutionalize intolerance. I'm not talking about the groups who place intolerance at their focal point - I can assure you I have no mixed feelings about such obvious radical groups as the KKK or Focus on the Family. But the Elks or the Rotary Club or the folks who gather at the VFW present more of a grey area. They don't exist for the purpose of discrimination, but it's a function of something generational - a conservatism that cultural, often regional.

Is that OK?

Neil's parents do not know that we are married. They know that we are "together" and have been "together" for a pretty long time.

Maybe that's the most they can handle, since they never really talk about or ask about our relationship - a silence that communicates some awkward compromise of acceptance and avoidance. Or maybe that's just me projecting onto them Neil's interpretation of them, and imputing intent.

He never wears his engagement ring or wedding band when we're with them. It bothers me, but it's no more my business than my relationship with my parents is his. My parents may accept me, but it doesn't mean I don't have a whole series of issues with how I relate to or communicate with them.

But there is a bigger picture. Last week, two men were tried and sentenced in Malawi (that's in Africa; you may remember it as the country Madonna adopted a baby from. Doesn't pop culture make understanding geography easier? Angelina Jolie alone has done more to help a whole generation of Americans find southeast Asia on a map.) The men were given 14 years hard labor for the crime of being gay.

They will be lucky to survive their sentence.

They will be lucky to survive one year.

The government and prison system will do nothing to protect them.

That this could happen - even as remote and backward a place as sub-Saharan Africa - is terrifying. We like to believe that such a thing could not happen in 2010. That the world we live in is a better place.

Yet outside the cosmopolitan urban areas and bedroom suburbs of the northeast, midwest and west coast; beyond the world of progressive middle class society populating our popular culture - even in America freedom and equality remain elusive. (And, Yes, freedom and equality are, ultimately, the same thing.)

We are just now approaching a point where integrating the military is a realistic possibility, long after countries with much stronger theocratic and cultural aversions to homosexuality - places like Israel and Great Britain - have done so. We still do not have a federal policy of non-discrimination in employment. And marriage - which is a civil rights issue - is limited to 6 states, while countries like Denmark and Spain (SPAIN! Could there be a more Catholic country?!) have nationally permitted it.

I'm not equating the right to marry with the situation in Malawi, but it's worth remembering that the crime of sodomy for which the two men were tried and convicted was also a crime here in the US until the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas - less than ten years ago. And, as long as we continue to permit institutional discrimination in any way - employment, marriage, any right fundamental to freedom - we are allowing, indeed fostering, an impression that some of us are less than others. And when we send that message, it's just a slippery slope, a matter of degree, separating us from Malawi.

And that's not OK.

37 Hours in Manhattan

2010-05-07T14:37:00.000-04:00

An appointment in the city forced me to rearrange my travel and managed, miraculously, to get me home last Monday night (despite rain in DC and New York – which can usually be counted upon to delay the Delta Shuttle by a matter of hours, but only cost me 15 minutes.) As a result, I sped from LaGuardia to lower Manhattan where I was able to meet Neil and some friends at Do Hwa, a Korean Barbecue joint that we’d been eager to twy, I mean, try.

I’ll dispense with the review in short order – I enjoyed my meal and would definitely go back – but make no mistake that the black lacquered tables and red accents create an ambience reminiscent of the Chinese restaurant in “Oh God! Book Two” (if that reference is too early-80s for you, imagine the one in the remake of Freaky Friday starring Jamie Lee Curtis and a pre-cocaine and lesbianism Lindsay Lohan.)

The conceit of the place is that, though you can order several Korean dishes right off the menu, the specialty is a Korean barbecue where they bring you a plate of raw meat and turn on a burner embedded into your table. You then get to spear, cook, and season/sauce your meat appropriately. It’s very “Melting Pot” (that tragic fondue place attached to shopping malls nationwide) – only New York-ified (which means “expensive.” ) Still, we enjoyed ourselves and would go back – though I’m still a little angry with myself for tipping twenty per cent when I had to prepare my meal myself. It’s kind of like going to the supermarket (except, here, 60 bucks buys you 10 ounces of meat instead of 10 pounds) and tipping the cashier on the way out.

Still, I was in New York. NEW YORK! On a weekday. It was like Christmas and my birthday all rolled into one!

I’m starting to reach critical mass with my job. If I don’t start saying no to all this travel, I’m going to end up right where I was when I began freelancing – too exhausted from the travel to prevent the enjoyment of my work from getting overshadowed by resentment. It’s gotten to the point where even the weekends are ruined by the awareness that my first act on Monday morning will be boarding an airplane.

I realized how much I missed New York on Tuesday, when Neil had spontaneously been offered tickets to a new musical on Broadway and I was actually able to go. On a weeknight. In NEW YORK!!!

“Everyday Rapture” is an almost-one-woman show, written and starring Sherie Rene Scott who has become almost famous as a musical theater actress. I say almost because the geographical limitations of Broadway have prevented most successful legit performers from attaining fame and those that have (Bernadette Peters, Kristen Chenoweth to name a few) often did so by supplementing a largely theatrical career with television and film.

I also say almost because, even among avid theatergoers, Sherie Rene Scott is largely known for either opening shows that don’t last terribly long, or replacing the actress who created a role in the original Broadway production.

That almost should be almost over, though, since her show is fantastic, is receiving a great deal of critical attention, and – in a season with limited new successful musicals, and even more limited roles for leading actresses, I’m betting she’s got three Tony noms coming her way (Leading Actress, Writing, Musical) and at least one win (Actress.) (EDITOR'S NOTE: This was written before Tony nominations were announced this week - two for three ain't bad.)

In a book co-written by Sherie, she tells a modified story of her life growing up half-Mennenite in Kansas and making her way to New York, to (semi-)stardom and to (semi- and then full) motherhood. (If you want to know what that means, see it. The music is largely an appropriation of standards, and the recurring leitmotif of religion (Judy Garland or Jesus Christ being the warring messiahs) set in a cabaret show writ large enough to play to a bigger house.

The arrangement of standards like “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” is winning, while Sherie mines humor from “You Made Me Love You” and pathos from a medley of songs from “Mister Rogers Neighborhood.” Her voice modulates to convey character from early childhood through the first blush of puberty; from late adolescence through adulthood. And what a voice it is – in fine form for 90 minutes, without intermission – the show is briskly paced yet, by the end, you realize she’s been singing flawlessly for an hour and a half.

Go now.

I’ve got no review on the restaurant we went to afterwards, unless you’d like me to comment on mini-bagels we toasted in our kitchen and washed down with Ben & Jerry’s (Milk & Cookies flavor – delish.)

Then it was on the road again: Lincoln, Omaha (you know, despite my restlessness with travelling, I actually enjoy Nebraska) then home again on Friday. We met a group of friends at Cabrito (right down the block from Do Hwa) for Mexican food. This is the second time we’ve been – we like it. It’s not too pricey, it’s always young and crowded and energetic, and the drinks are good.

By Saturday the temperature had risen to almost 90 degrees, so after our errands we packed some magazines, a blanket, and some towels and headed for Central Park, where we baked in the sun. The park is always a great place to people watch in early spring; the long winter has brought out the urge to emerge from hibernation and the masses come out in full force. Couples with children park strollers under the trees and let their kids run amok while cheap white wine makes them blissfully unaware. The men will talk about baseball or their jobs in law firms or Wall Street while peeling off shirts to reveal milky white chests and a layer of flab that doesn’t yet entirely obscure the bodies they had in college (but will by 38.) The ones that don’t are watching the 20 year old guys playing Frisbee a little too intently.

Their wives compare yoga classes and kindergartens, clad almost entirely in apparel from Lululemon. Nearly all of them are in better shape than they were ten years ago, in some sort of inverse proportionality to their husbands. From a distance, they are all candidates for Bravo’s next reality show, smacking of an irony borne from the unreality of it all.

Towards the center of the park are those Frisbee players. Along with baseball players, volleyball players, and football players. Or just players. Men in their 20s are surrounded by women of the same age – all engaged in routine rituals of relationships among people who slept together, are sleeping together or will soon sleep together – like some sort of active verb, a sexually active verb – being conjugated in real-time.

Everyone over the age of 30 is jealous. And is, in some way, watching them. And it is New York, so there is some regret, some wistfulness, some thing, in their eyes – even if they are perfectly happy – because they are not any longer young. And in New York (like LA, where I am headed yet again) to be young is to have promise, to have a future, to have freedom and fearlessness and adventure.

To be young is everything.

Wow – that was a little depressing right?

All right, let’s lighten it up, here. This ain’t meant to be Sartre.

Marcelene (speaking of young) met us in the park to regale us with stories from her job hunt, her man hunt, whatever hunts she’s been on lately. Joining her was a friend from high school and, initially I thought it was a friend she went to high school with – but I think she must have meant a friend who is still in high school. This girl was positively fetal. Asian, with long hair cavalierly contained under an oversize ball cap, she wore a denim skirt that wouldn’t have fit me as a wrist cuff and a t-shirt with an artist’s print, casually informing us she used to model for him. Seriously, she was so perfect a harbinger of a certain kind of New York sensibility that her name might has well have been Target Demo.

Needing a drink, Neil and I headed off to meet friends from our own century, only to arrive at the Frying Pan (26th and the West Side Highway) to find the entire complex of boats and piers completely overrun by an assortment of Manhattanites engaged in an everlasting frat party. Opting for our own kind, we made our way to Boxers, on 20th between Fifth and Sixth Avenues – ironically newly opened on the site of a sports bar that looked almost exactly the same 15 years ago. When you’ve been around long enough to see the same spaces recycled as the places they were, before they became everything else, you’ve been around too long.

And then, just as I got tired of all things young, I found something both young and old simultaneously. On the personal DVR player aboard my flight, I finished watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory and got up to go to the restroom. When I returned, I found I must have accidentally hit one of the keys, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s was just finishing the opening credits. Having never seen it, I allowed myself to get absorbed in the glamour and the style and the Mean Reds and all of it – with the impossibly beautiful Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. It’s a shame so many romantic comedies today are so poorly written, because the film makes you long for a great love story that doesn’t end tragically; that reminds you that art illuminates and inspires. I loved it, from that first croissant all the way to a three-way hug involving a wet, nameless cat.

Hello, Dolly!

2010-04-29T10:09:00.001-04:00

Our return from Hawai’i began with a red-eye to LA, where Neil and I parted ways (not permanently) so he could return to New York and I could embark on three days of meetings as I slowly worked my way back east.

Fortunately, though the continuation of my trip once again kept me far from home, at least I was starting out in L.A. Fabulous, wonderful, empty, soulless, looks-obsessed Los Angeles. I love L.A. It’s city-as-high-school-lunch-table and I get to feel like an attractive, bitchy insider rather than the class nerd in size 38 jeans or the theatre freak who sings TV theme songs on his way to lunch. (Best TV theme song ever: My Sister Sam or Who’s The Boss? Discuss. My Sister Sam is slightly more obscure, but gets props for having a dead actress. WTB? had an under-40 Tony Danza shirtless. It’s a toss-up. Those of you wondering about Growing Pains have clearly forgotten the Alan Thicke Exclusionary Rule.)

Where the hell was I?

Oh yeah, L.A. Ok, nothing funny happened related to work (other than the continuing suspicion I have that our CEO must have slipped a tracking device into my Diet Coke at some point, because he keeps showing up wherever I am. Five minutes after I walked into our LA office, he sauntered by, non-chalantly, and said hello. If he shaves his head or starts singing showtunes (or TV theme songs) and goes totally Single White Female on me, I’m seriously outta here.

But I can report on the new Standard Hollywood. Remember when the Downtown Standard opened? In 2002, every major design, travel and lifestyle publication covered the opening. There was a pool on the roof, with a bar and great views and landscaping. And topiaries! The Topiaries!

It was hot, hot, HOT and everyone was going to go there and it was going to ignite a renaissance in downtown LA, making it a destination for condos and hotels and great dining.

Or not.

And there’s no such thing as great dining in L.A. Every decent restaurant charges upwards of $40 for totally flavorless entrees, which is ironic because the best food comes from Taco stands along I-10, where you can stuff yourself for less than $5.

Anyway, the Standard Hollywood is actually in West Hollywood (and West Hollywood is to Hollywood what West Virginia is to Virginia; everyone seems to be unemployed, there are bitter rivalries, and it’s considered an achievement if you get out.) The Standard really branded itself right with its name. Rooms are a plain white box, the furnishings are sparse – no duvet, just a thin blanket that looks like it came off the set of M*A*S*H (and it might have) – and everything is very minimalist-chic. It is the hotel equivalent of a pair of white Keds.

Bleh.

You know – this is the second disappointing Standard-related experience I’ve had. Remember my review of the Standard Grill in NY – and the challenges Neil and I and our friends had there? That’s it – new rule: no more Standard.

Wednesday night, after work, I got to go out with my best pal “Carrie” (you remember her? From, like, three columns ago. ) She met me at Cecconi’s, at Melrose and Robertson, with the demented Swiss Miss, now totally decked out GORGEOUSLY, but still wearing black – including some totally rockin’ high leather boots. This is the kind of girl I’d make out with if I didn’t have that pesky extra chromosome and a husband.

So, were not there even ten minutes and only on our third drink when who should walk on in but the fabulous, legendary, reconstructed within an inch of her life, looks 45 in dim lighting, face might melt in full sunlight, Joan Rivers plastic surgery challenging, country-pop-crossover- bluegrass singing, theme-park-owning, film-starring, Grammy-winning, Academy Award nominated DOLLY PARTON. (I think I just had a wordgasm.)

Seriously, how do you eat a $26 flatbread pizza five feet away from the star of 9 to 5, Rhinestone Cowboy and Straight Talk (with James Woods…see it. It’s horrible. I love it.) Answer: You can’t. You can’t enjoy a single $14 meatball until you stand up, walk over, and say, “Hmfphlfl!"

Thank God for Swiss Miss, who got right up there and said, “Miss Parton, will you take a picture with us?”

Now, these people live in L.A., and I’m from New York. I have, at various times, seen or met Mark Burnett, Kurt Russell, Michael Douglas, Robin Roberts (you know she is SO glad to be in this sentence), that guy from the TV show “Ed,” and Paul Rudd (post-Clueless, pre-Apatow.) But other than the time I was on Oprah (in the audience, not a guest) and the time Spielberg was on Columbus Ave with Kate Capshaw – I’ve the closest I’ve come to anyone this big is 8 Cher concerts, the time my friend from middle-school, Jason Abelson’s dad married Barbara Streisand’s niece, and when my friend Matthew called me from Bloomingdale’s because Meryl Streep was buying make-up.

The moral: when you’re in the presence of royalty – you bow (and snap a photo.) Meanwhile, my friend Stephanie is dying to know if I went up to Dolly and did the impression of her I used to do in Law School, when I won the Halloween Costume Contest in my first and only drag appearance. Sadly, no, but check my Facebook page if you want the full Dolly.

Really, everything else is going to be a let-down after this story – so I’ll save my reviews of Do Hwa (Korean Barbecue!), Po (like the river in Italy), and the fabulous Sherie Rene Scott’s one woman show, Everyday Rapture, for yet another column (I’m so prolific right now; I feel like Proust. Without the talent or intellect.) Meanwhile, as for Cecconi’s. Like anyplace on the west side, it’s ridiculously expensive and the food is great by LA standards, but mediocre if you ever eaten anywhere else. Go – but do what we did: get drunk, nibble on appetizers and salads (the beet salad is pretty damn good) and starfuck.

P.S. - Why is it when I showed these pictures to my co-workers and said, "Can you guess who that is?" they all said, "Cher." ??? Why is it, with the gay guy, they always jump to Cher? Now - it is ocmpletely true that I might come unglued if I were ever 5 feet away from Cher (we're talking total meltdown) - but CHER LOOKS NOTHING LIKE DOLLY PARTON (other than the fact that they are both made out of plastic and might, technically, be Transformers. Oooh - that would be cool. A Transformer that turns from Dolly Parton into Cher. I'm on it....)

Aloha-ha-ha

2010-04-27T23:17:00.002-04:00

OK – if the last trip got bogged down with introspection, this trip is all about fun, fun, FUN!!!

Hawai’i!!!

Can you stand it?

Our trip begins with a lesson. A lesson in love.

Love is not a trip to Hawaii. Love is not a luxury hotel (although, yes, we stayed in a luxury hotel). Love is not presents. Although, much of love is presence – to be alive and aware in the moment.

But mostly

Love is a middle seat.

Truly, when all is said and done, love is travelling around the world for five years, never looking out the window or being able to get up without disturbing someone else. Fortunately, travel for work has given me fabulous aerial views of the Hollywood sign, the Eiffel Tower, the Rockies, the Italian coast, among others. Because traveling with Neil, all I’ve seen is the flame-retardant fabric on the seat back in front of me and all of the Harry Potter movies.

Our trip begins with two flights, totaling more than 12 hours, not including nearly three hours at LAX which involved me answering email, Neil playing with his iPhone, and a Mexican lunch that repeated on me across half the Pacific.

Still, Hawaii is one of those places that are worth the schlep. Unlike, say, Montana, which can take almost as long and, even if you threw in palm trees and great weather, wouldn’t come close.

I am pleased to report that Neil was almost immediately enamored with Hawaii; it’s hard not to be, but still, after dragging him halfway around the world – he doesn’t love to fly – I faced the possibility of seeing the Purse of Disapproval for a week. (For the newcomers, the Purse of Disapproval is a face Neil makes that involves narrowing the eyes and pursing the lips. It can be used to express skepticism and frustration, but is commonly used to convey displeasure. I see it often.)

If anyone had an expression of disapproval, actually, it was me, since the hotel failed to clearly advertise itself as a “Vacation Ownership” resort, which means time shares. As a result, all the good rooms are owned – the ones left over for hotel usage can face the parking lot, an air compressor, or a community barbecue pit.

Never one to contain my displeasure, I informed the management that none of these rooms were going to be acceptable for an Anniversary Vacation – particularly in a place that billed itself as a luxury resort.

We were down the road at the St. Regis in ten minutes.

Yeah, I paid more – and since they’re sister properties I could have pushed back a little. But hey, it’s Hawaii – you gotta chill out sometime.

Speaking of chilling out, the first morning we were there was rather cold - at least by Hawaii standards. We'd later learn that the day would set a record for the lowest high temperature. Still, "cold" in a Hawaii is a relative term, and the day allowed us to explore without feeling pressured to make it to the beach or adhere to any sort of schedule.

We began by leaving the resort and heading into Hanalei for breakfast at the Wake-Up Cafe, a local favorite, where Neil demolished a macadamia nut cinnamon roll in microseconds. I still can't figure out how my husband has visible abdominal muscles well past the age of 40 and manages to eat like he's 16 and his parents are away for the weekend. (Meanwhile, I'll know exactly when he's read this post by the Purse of Disapproval I get for revealing his age.)

Meanwhile - if you want a mental visual of our waitress - picture that really slutty girl in college; the one everyone in your fraternity slept with (except the gay kid, who hung out with her and smoked Marlboro Reds - not that I know, or anything...) or the girl down the hall freshman year who - on the rare occasion she made it back to the dorm, often slept (passed out) in the lobby, the hall, or the men's bathroom.

Now picture her at 40.

Serving pancakes.

You get the picture.

After spending the morning loading up on fat and cholesterol and salt, then dragging our bloated tourist bodies through souvenir shop after souvenir shop, we got in the car and drove to the south side of the island. Kauai has multiple microclimates, and the weather on one part of the island is seldom the same as the weather on another part - from a tropical rainforest in the center, to a desert-like canyon in the west, to the cliffsides and beaches of the north and south shores.

According to the television, the radio and our concierge, the weather was warmer and sunnier in Poipu, in the south. Which meant, of course, when we got there, that it was cloudy and cool. Undaunted, we stripped to bathing suits and headed for the beach, turning into those same people we make fun of in New York - the ones who throw on shorts and flip-flops and march through the city on the first day in April that hits 65 degrees. However, since no one we knew was actually going to be able to see our hypocrisy, we figured we were safe (until, of course, I wrote about it publicly.)

Other than the fact that the sun kept going in and out behind clouds - and a brief drizzle - it was generally pretty nice, though our hopes of a playful afternoon at the beach were dashed, first by a shark that had chased a pair of surfers - and everyone else in the water - right out of the ocean. Vacationers gathered on the shoreline like a scene from Jaws and, after finally dispersing, a Hawaiian monk seal came ambling out of the water and onto the beach for a nap.

Hawaiian monk seals are an endangered species, and there are only 35 known to be left in the world. They're native, largely to Kauai, and when they come ashore to rest, a barrier is immediately erected to keep humans away. Most of my friends have this talent, too - and don't require the police tape.

Anyway - once a huge monk seal washes ashore (they look like a cross between a manatee and a penguin and they smell like a sewage treatment plant) - your day at the beach is pretty much over. Neil and I packed it in and headed out to dinner.

I can skip the parts of the trip where I answer email, or obsess about a deal, or try and make a work-related call from a mountain or a waterfall or a canyon (OK - not a canyon. I got vertigo halfway up and panicked and turned around. True story.) Which leaves a bike ride, a long run, and the hippie coffee shop where we ate eggs on a bagel. (Word to the wise, when you ordinarily eat actual eggs cooked on a flat-top and served on real bagels (made by real sweaty eastern European women in Brooklyn, don't try to consume microwaved "eggs" on supermarket "bagels" in a place 2,500 miles from the nearest Jew (I love Hawaii, but if my people spent 40 years wandering around Kauai, we'd never have made it to Jersey.)

Saturday night we dined at Kauai Grill, a Jean-Georges restaurant in the St. Regis Hotel, overlooking Hanalei Bay. With contemporary decor a Hawaiian fusion cuisine, the restaurant is an absolute must if you're in Kauai. We started with a Kabocha squash soup that was fantastic - creamy and spicy with a hint of sweetness. For dinner, Neil had a pink snapper that was outrageously good, and my duck was tender and flavorful.

The highlight of our trip was a trip to the center of the island, tubing down an irrigation ditch that is nearly 150 years old. Let me tell you, kids, if you think rubbers can't save your life, get inside an inner tube and float down an irrigation ditch. Through tunnels, bouncing off of walls - head, hands and feet inches from jagged rock - it'll make a believer out of you.

What you won't believe are the reviews of Postcards Cafe - which was supposedly good, but which actually served the worst pasta I ever ate, tossed with some weird orange sauce that actually managed to separate sometime between the kitchen and our table. And the shrimp looked like they came out of a can. Middle of the Pacific and they served canned shrimp.

And that's Hawaii - skipping the sign by the pool that warned against swimming while suffering from a communicable disease (and the one promising the pool would be closed in the event of "unexpected vomitous or fecal activity") - there's not much else to tell.

Neil loved it, which makes me happy. It's nice to know we can not only make it to five years, but that we can still surprise each other; share something new; bring a little bit of wonder to each other's world. That's really what love is; the middle seat's just how you get there.

And tune in next time, when we hit three restaurants - from LA to New York - and catch up with two real live divas, including: DOLLY!

Do This New York:

Go to Hawaii

Stay at the St. Regis Princeville

Eat at the Kauai Grill

Economy Minus

2010-04-24T22:27:00.000-04:00

Fasten your seat belts, folks – we’ve got two posts this week. I’m just back from a little vacation, but before I launch into a tale of island romance on sun-splashed Kauai, we’ve got to cover my business trip to Chicago. Since both trips have a different point, I’m breaking them up into two entries.

I know – a story with a point! Two, no less. Shocking. Like Scheherazade with better taste in shoes.

Our first tale begins in the airport (actually, both tales begin in an airport. My entire fucking life seems to take place in an airport these days. It’s actually amazing this column hasn’t yet printed a review of Sbarro or Dunkin’ Donuts.)

And as long as we’re talking about airports, here’s a question I have after ten years of world travel:

Who the hell buys Penthouse at an airport?

Are there people so horny they can’t last the entire flight, and don’t have the skills to land a stewardess (excuse me: Air Waitress) or pick up a fellow passenger? I can’t even imagine what I’d do if the guy next to me started leafing through a copy of Penthouse? (Well, I can, but I’m married now, so I don’t do that anymore.)

One of these days, when I get bored, I’m going to pick up a copy of Hustler and leaf through it on the Delta Shuttle. “What?” I’d say to the Air Waitress. “I bought it at the airport.”)

Anyway, if you’ve travelled in the U.S., then you’ve probably been to O’Hare Airport, and know that there’s no place more depressing than O’Hare airport (unless it’s Hartsfield. Bleh.) Want to double your disdain – try it on a Sunday. I don’t know anyone in IT – particularly IT sales or consulting – who hasn’t had the Sunday fly-out. There’s no surer way to kill you entire weekend than to fly on a Sunday. You spend your whole Saturday trying to cram in your weekend stuff – the errands and the sleep and the opportunity to do something other than answer email or deliver dazzling and creative ideas through the totally limited medium of powerpoint – all while simmering a barely controllable resentment that you are losing your Sunday. If you’re leaving later in the day on Sunday, your day is dramatically cut short by airport travel, security, and the whole thing is a waste anyway. If you leave in the morning, you lose your Saturday night and add an extra workday to your week.

Also, you have to devote precious brain space – on a weekend – to trying to figure out why they call it “Economy Plus.” Economy Plus What? It’s not plus a meal. It’s not plus a movie. OK – it’s plus, like, an inch and a half of leg room which, at 6’-1” is a rounding error.

My Sunday travel fell into the latter category, and 8am found me in a cab on the way to LaGuardia. I was in Chicago by noon, ready to meet my co-worker and head out to a conference (at which we were both scheduled to give a presentation.)

I went to college in Chicago, so I can’t seem to go to Chicago without thinking about that time in my life. Occasionally I will have to visit my alma mater – which I love, but which always reminds me of being 19. Which always makes me wonder if I’ve become the person I was supposed to become, or had the potential to become, or wanted to become.

Going back to the place you went to college has the potential to really mess with your head – because it makes you think about a teenage version of yourself. The version that was brimming with energy and hope and dreams and possibility – which is a daunting thing to come face to face with when you’re middle-aged and married and, well, a little tired. When you routinely find yourself in the place you went to school, it’s a bit like visiting you parents at Thanksgiving: you have to face the specter of your 19-year old self – only on a regular basis.

What was so weird about this trip was that – while I was in Chicago – I kept getting Facebook friend requests from a bunch of my old fraternity brothers. People I hadn’t thought about in years (and one or two I had, because we had been pretty good friends, but lost contact), kept surfacing all week. It was strange – almost as if time were looping in on itself like some missing scene from Lost (are we not DYING that Daniel Faraday showed up last week? DYING! And am I the only one who will admit to having a major crush on Desmond?)

All of it made me wonder: is there a point in the middle of our lives where we look to who we were for clues about who we are? I have this theory that all men, as they encounter middle age, begin to feel a little lost. They become inured to the realization that the trajectory they’re on is the one they’re likely to stay on for the rest of their lives – in their careers, their marriages – which is why so many men up and do stupid things in middle age what really aren’t about their jobs or their wives or anything external. It’s a rebellion against that feeling of being lost – of feeling that who you were, who you are, and who you wanted to be are all dramatically different things. It is about wanting to feel “free” – because when you were young enough to actually BE free, you didn’t feel it, know it realize it. And all of a sudden you remember being young enough that every decision wasn’t fraught with so many considerations and consequences; you didn’t need to weigh what you’d have to give up against what you’d gain. You didn’t need to worry that a decision was irreversible – if something didn’t work out, there was enough time to pick again.

It’s hard to feel that way as you approach 40. Sure, you could decide tomorrow that you really do want to try being a rock star or a talk show host or an astronaut – but you’re probably going to have to give up your job (and, likely, a great deal of financial freedom, along with the self-worth that are intrinsically tied to career and money among men). Plus, you’re competing with guys 10-20 years younger, with more training or more recent training. Reinvention and starting over is the great American promise, but it’s largely an illusion for a lot of people.

Some would call this a luxury problem, but the adjective doesn’t diminish the noun.

2010-04-10T15:53:00.001-04:00

I know the name Lola means "laughing," but if you make it your kid's name, don't be surprise if she winds up a cocktail waitress.

Here's A Story

2010-04-08T19:48:00.000-04:00

Where can you find a Nerf dart gun, an acoustic guitar, and half a dozen people who find primarily find their dates on Craigslist, at Star Trek conventions and in the recesses of their imagination.

My company's San Francisco office.

To be fair, that division must be doing pretty well given the huge quantities of Hostess products in the kitchen. Though, I must admit, the econo-size bottle of Germ-X anti-bacterial solution may have been lemon-scented but it carried the faint whiff of irony.

Yes, folks, I was in California this week. My favorite, favorite, favorite place - and I started my trip by seeing my favorite, favorite, favorite people. My oldest friend lives in LA and - since we're not using real names, I'll call her "Carrie" - since she reminds me of Sarah Jessica Parker's character from Sex and the City; the leonine mane of hair, incredible fashion sense, and a ridiculously flat stomach well into her thirties despite a penchant for junk food and liquor (how the hell did Carrie drink those sugary cosmos and eat her way from the pretzels of Union Square to the pizzas she brought to Big's apartment?)

Every time I come to LA and visit "Carrie" I feel like she and husband throw me a party. "Let's just hang out and have dinner" turns into a dozen or so people. Included in the festivities were a friend of theirs I knew from when she lived in New York (and got fired and re-hired from her job as head charcuterie buyer for Dean & Deluca while on a cross-country flight. She only let the first part stick, choosing not to let the emotional roller coaster of a psychotic boss continue any longer. Though, to this day, we joke that she got fired for buying the wrong cheese.)

Also included was one of "Steven's" co-workers and his wife, who used to be besties with Bethenny Frankel, one of the Real Housewives of New York. She's the Fake not-actually-a-Housewife-because-she-works-and-just-got-married-last-week one. Her website calls her a Celebrity Natural Food Chef - but most of the photos make her look like a hooker. That would be cool - a celebrity natural food hooker. Anyway, she and I hit it off (not Bethenny, her former friend, who wore a totally awesome outfit that made her look like the girl from Swiss Miss box dressed up as a dominatrix.) We spent half the night drinking and judging everyone else - it was like being in a gay bar without the faint smell of vodka, Armani cologne, and leftover sweat from the pre-party-workout.

After a while Carrie's sister showed up, and someone brought their friend Charlie, and later, I think, the cast of West Side Story dropped by. Or I could have been loaded. Also, everybody with children brought their children, though I can't recall anybody actually paying any attention to them. I think there was a sitter or a nanny - or maybe the nanny was a guest, and she was the one who invited the Sharks and the Jets. Whatever - between the internet and television, kids practically raise themselves at this point. You can pretty much give them money, food and condoms and everything else is drag-and-drop.

Visiting with "Carrie" and "Steven" and their kids was pretty much the highlight of my trip. My meetings weren't the most productive of my career, and every day felt like it was one step forward, two steps back (as opposed to the two steps froward, one step back I've gotten used to.) However, my last meetings were in the Bay area - which I enjoyed - and I got to visit the offices of our Mobile division, which I always enjoy. I think it's awesome that our company, which is staked on the premise that educational technology should engage students and draw out creativity, actually bought a company created by students. And there's something about working in a professional context with people in their 20s, that draws out the mentor in me (I know - shocking, right?)

But the funny thing is...I got some mentoring, too. A fter spending the bulk of dinner encouraging someone to follow the passion in his life, I was asked about my blog. "You write like you love it."

I do love it. I love trying to make people laugh, I love trying to entertain people. And I really love it when I succeed. There are days when it's hard to drag myself out of bed at 5:30 to go to the gym; there are days when that 7am flight or that 8am meeting or that 9am conference call is emotionally exhausting. Ys, I get a great deal of satisfaction from my career - and I think I'm pretty good at it (Yeah, sometimes I fuck up - we all do - at least I can admit it which is more than I can say for some people I've worked with over the years.)

But entertaining people is my passion. I love telling you about the guy with the table on the corner of 66th and Broadway who only sells pecans/ Why pecans? Is there such a market for pecans that a merchant needn't carry anything else? If so - why are there no stores solely devoted to pecans? No Pecan Palace or Purveyors of Pecans. Even a politically-themed shop called "Yes, Pe-Can!"

I love telling you that we went to Taboon last Friday night, despite the fact that I was dog-ass-tired from a week on the road, and had the most delicious Red Lentil Soup, but my fish tasted like nothing - with a faint hint of lemon. And was the consistency of soap.

I love positing that the Governor of North Carolina looks like Florence Henderson and I spent most of the recent meetings with the Democratic Governors Association wondering how to get her to say Wessonality (when I wasn't figuring out how to hit on the Governor of Maryland.)

Yes, folks, there are days when I want to stay in bed until 7 (or 9; or noon) and spend my mornings at the gym and my afternoons writing. Yes, I'd love for someone to read this and offer me a book contract or option a screenplay or simply let me write dirty jokes for Chelsea Handler. And there are times I'd like to experiment with becoming addicted to Vicodin as a strategy for getting through the week - or the day - or a meeting.

But then - what would I write about? How would we relate? Where would my humor, my pathos, my common touch come from? I'd lose all my...Wessonality.

2010-04-07T21:33:00.002-04:00

Can we agree that Facebook is not for reporting the progress your kids are making with potty training?

Face-to-facebook

2010-03-30T22:26:00.000-04:00

If I weren’t going to California, I would resent getting up at 6:30am for a 9am flight out of Kennedy. But it’s L.A. – my favorite place in the U.S. that isn’t New York. I can hardly wait.
So, I’m at JetBlue terminal 5 at JFK, buying my $9 turkey sandwich with one slice of actual turkey, which will be so warm by the time I want to eat it, that I’ll probably just shove it in the seat back and eat gummi bears instead. And just as I get in line to board the flight, I hear, “Eric? Eric Stine?”
It was fun to run into Jenni – whom I haven’t seen in twenty years (yes, twenty. Argh.) We went to high school together – actually, we went to junior high school together. She was at my Bar Mitzvah. We co-starred in Our Town senior year.
Now she had three kids and a husband and is trekking across the country for Spring Break (a trip that will take them to LA, San Diego and Vegas – my idea of a good trip, actually, though I imagine our itineraries are vastly different.)

We chatted for a bit while boarding the plane. “You look great,” she marveled. (It’s true. I do. Given, however, that I weighed over 250 pounds in high school and had a bushy head of wiry Jew-hair, an improvement was unlikely.) “I never would have recognized you if it weren’t for your Facebook pictures.”
Ah, the Facebook photo. The universal identifier stored in the “cloud.” An identifying avatar that tells your “friends” what you look like today (and please use your own damn photo; photos of your kids, photos of you as a baby, cartoons and icons are gay. Yes, I am gay and I just used “gay” as a pejorative. Suck it.) Click on them and your profile becomes a portal to a birthday party, a beach weekend, a family vacation or an embarrassing evening out – all of which provide a window into your life for people who haven’t seen you since the Reagan administration but might wind up five feet away from you in the airport one early Saturday morning.
At which point you might gossip about a classmate whose recent status update was "Free At Last!" speculating if it were a new job or a divorce. (It was a divorce.)

I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school, and I’m not connected to many of those people via Facebook (and, with the exception of some friends of my sister’s, I’m connected to only one – loosely – in my real life.) Likewise, college. And law school.

But I’m connected to enough people via Facebook to have had an experience that makes me think about the ease with which I accept those friend requests, the occasions when I’ll meander through lists looking for people I seldom think about, the scrutiny with which I scour their profiles and their photos.

Why do we do this? Our lives certainly aren’t emptier without these people, and aren’t fuller when we find them. Few, if any, of us actually reconnect with these folks for anything more than wall posts, and the occasional drink which includes easily-made and rarely-executed promises of getting together again. (This excludes the subculture of men who look for former girlfriends and sexual partners for the exclusive purpose of having sex with them again, then ignoring them as cruelly as they did the first time around. Those guys get a special hell all their own.)

We look at their lives to see what we can surmise. We look at their spouses and boyfriends and girlfriends. We look at their kids, their houses, their vacations. It’s like going to your reunion without having to show up in person; where no one can watch you scrutinize your classmates for signs of happiness or misery, success or failure. We can find out who got fat, who got divorced, and who got lost from the safety of our couches. We can applaud ourselves when the good-looking guy who always acted like dick lost his job, his wife or his hair (shut up – I shave my head; there’s a difference. OK, there isn’t.) We don’t have to publicly cover our surprise if a burnout winds up with a decent life.

My guess: we’re not looking to make a connection; we’re keeping score. (Which is why - in all my Facebook photos - I either look adorable or my arms look huge.)

Interestingly, the best friend I have isn’t my friend on Facebook at all: my husband. He started using the site about a year before I did, and wouldn’t accept my friend request when I finally came online. He argued that he saw me everyday anyway, and didn’t need an update to tell him that I liked cereal, hated broccoli or saw a squirrel. He hears my stories and my jokes anyway, usually multiple times, since I repeat them. We share the same photos, the same vacations and the same house – he wasn’t going to learn anything from being my friend in a virtual world given how much of the real world we occupied jointly.

Smart man.

2010-03-26T19:01:00.001-04:00

My niece is playing the Cinderella video game; the objective is to collect jewels and shoes. How is this good for little girls?

2010-03-26T07:48:00.001-04:00

The father of Padma Lakshmi's baby girl, Krishna, has been revealed ... and it's some dork venture capitalist dude. Was anyone other than me hoping it was Sam Talbot, the cute cheftestant from Season 2?

Boiling Points

2010-03-24T07:04:00.001-04:00

Shortly after I got to Washington, DC last Wednesday, a friend of mine texted me (I swear I must have a homing device implanted somewhere on my person) to invite me for St. Patrick’s Day drinks.
Now, I’m about as far from Irish as they come – plus, my people don’t get to march in the parade (you want to burn a bridge with the gays, leave them out of a parade – we love a parade; any forum where people line up on street corners to watch us prance by is going to appeal to a group of people largely identified by body image issues, fashion sense, and vanity.) Yet, I love to drink, so off to Paddy O’Tam’O’Shanter’s Faux Irish Pub (not its real name. It was some fake-O Irish pub between the Verizon Center and a Chipotle. But they had liquor.)
Oh, and contributing to the feeling that I’m being watched or tracked, half an hour after getting there, our CEO called me wanting to know where “everyone’s going.” Seriously, the best thing about this job is that I’ve attained a level of popularity that’s eluded me all my life. I truly have no idea what I’m going to do if I have to replace my feelings of inadequacy with actual self-esteem.
Anyway (I swear this story has a point), while we’re at Leprechaun Liquor Bar, there’s this guy who looks familiar in that way we’re you’re not sure if it’s someone from your past, or someone mildly famous – that weird Recognition Purgatory where you have to actively try and parse all the places you’ve ever lived, the people you went to high school and college with, and the TV shows you watch until you figure it out.

Then you realize how sad your life is because the person you’re staring at (who is now realizes you’re staring and may drag you outside and beat you up) is the guy who finished in sixth place during the most recent season of Top Chef (which has been off the air for a really long time. When is it coming back? Padma, why have you forsaken me? And who is your baby’s daddy? Am I the only one dying to find out who the little samosa’s pappadum is?)
If you’re a fan of Top Chef – and, really, how could you not be – you’ll remember the rather outspoken and arrogant Mike Isabella, he of the Mediterranean cooking and superterranean ego. So you can imagine my amusement – shortly after loudly and publicly identifying him, complete with pointing (I was drinking scotch – not a safe choice) – when he started hitting on one of our co-workers - who was not welcoming the attention. (This is the point in the story where I feebly attempt to avoid telling you (and fail) that he also spent half the night in the bathroom blowing coke up his nose.)
So, of course we had to go to his restaurant the next night – just for laughs (and whatever free food and liquor unrequited lust gets you.) Mike – I don’t know that you’ve got much game, but you make a mean hummus.
Still, it was the highlight of a week that included a trip to Denver – just for lunch (The Yard House is a chain, but it’s a pretty good chain. My turkey burger was the best I’ve had outside of Cafeteria at 17th and Seventh Ave.) Denver was followed by Lincoln where I consumed the largest steak I’ve ever eaten (Misty’s) and a bowl of Tortilla Soup at the Lincoln airport which was both misguided and a misnomer (Garbage Stew would have been more accurate – it appeared to contain every leftover scrap of meat and canned vegetable they had. Note to self: avoid menu items that are likely excuses for consolidating the week’s leftovers.)

You can imagine my relief in finally returning home after five days, and one hangover, on the road – and New York didn’t disappoint. 75 and sunny on Saturday, it was the nicest weather we’d seen since October – and a great way for my sister to celebrate her birthday on Sunday.
Did you know she has the same birthday as Rosie O’Donnell? When Rosie used to have her daytime talk show, her March 21 show was always made up of an audience who also had that birthday. My sister got to go once and got a pile of cool takeaways. I bet she’s jazzed that Rosie’s returning to daytime.
That’s right – did you hear that Rosie’s getting a daytime talk show after Oprah leaves the airwaves in 2011? Rosie, Ellen – is there a new rule that you have to be a lesbian to get a daytime talk show? (Though, if some of those Oprah rumors are true, maybe it’s not a “new” rule.) Is that why I can’t get my own show? What’s next? The Suze Orman Show? “Motorcycle Road Trip” with Meredith Baxter?
Maybe if I take up field hockey and bring in The Indigo Girls as my house band I can get a show?
I should stop stereotyping. I mean, it would be like someone saying that the only kind of show I could host would be about trendy places to go, celebrity gossip, and bitchy comments about physical appearances.
Which is – of course – exactly what I do. (This is where I remember to advise my readers that the tradition of wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day is something they should reconsider on a case-by-case basis. Half the people who attempt this don’t have the skin tone for it, and generally wind up looking like they’ve eaten questionable shellfish. The remainder run the risk of looking like they travel by broomstick with a flock of flying monkeys behind them.)
But what really boiled this week wasn’t the kitchen at Zaytinya, wasn’t the soup in Lincoln, and wasn’t an overflow of bad lesser-holiday fashion. It wasn’t even jealousy over not having my own show (well, maybe a little.) It was boiling tempers over the final leg of the health insurance reform bill (now LAW. Suck it, Republicans!)
OK. I’ve written so much about this that we don’t need to get into the substance of the bill. We don’t need to argue its merits. We don’t need to chew over the parliamentary tactics.
But we do need to discuss appropriate behavior.

I was raised to believe that you respect public officials. That the President occupies an office worthy of deference and respect – and regardless of what you think of the man, you respect the office. Members of Congress may be (and often are) preening, self-absorbed boobs. But you respect the office.
So it was horrifying – truly unbelievable – to turn on my television to see Americans denigrate the tradition of peaceful protest and devolve from people exercising their first Amendment rights and into a mob befitting a Disney cartoon (where were the torches and pitchforks?) Calling members of Congress “Nigger” and “Faggot” and “Baby-killer”?
Are you kidding me?
I’ve got to believe there’s a clause somewhere in the unwritten social contract that talks about not spitting on each other.
The sad thing is – it was bound to happen. There was no way we could elect an African-American (or a woman, or whomever the first “minority” President was going to be) without ultimately generating a backlash. The good feelings over what we’d done were always bound to be followed by a late-breaking re-ignition of the Culture Wars; they never really went away. And so we claim to argue over the merits of Health Insurance Reform or Consumer Protection or (and get ready for this one, folks) Immigration. But the subtext is always about race, or gender, or class.
Because in a world where blacks and gays and women can achieve equality on the merits of their work (which often has to far exceed that of a white male peer group in order to deemed “equivalent”) there will always be people who feel marginalized and threatened by it.

Which is a shame. After all, if you can embrace it you’ll realize that this law helps you too; that now no insurance company can take away your insurance if you get sick.

And you can recuperate watching those amusing lesbian talk shows.

Of Course We Remember You!

2010-03-13T14:28:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of places I could start this week. The pending (maybe? finally?) health insurance reform legislation. The new state standards for Social Studies in Texas (oh, don't worry, we are SO going there.) The near-elimination of Big Brother's Jordan and Jeff on The Amazing Race (this woman can't tell time, figure out which direction a subway is going, or eat sauerkraut - yet she still got the best looking boyfriend on reality TV.)

But we must begin with this week's premiere of Remember Me, the new Robert Pattinson film produced by...wait for it...

Cousin Trevor.

You should remember Cousin Trevor from January's Bar Mitzvah post, where he exhibited a tremendous capacity for offending people up close. This week, Cousin Trevor, who brought the world such important contributions to film as All About Steve (the film that Sandra Bullock did NOT win an Oscar for) and License to Wed (boasting the only known on-screen appearance of Robin Williams and Mandy Moore) continues showcasing a talent for large-scale offense.

The offensive product is Remember Me, a tearjerker for teens that, according to Rotten Tomatoes, has received 79% poor reviews. The reviews range from calling it "ambitious but overwrought" to a "poorly conceived melodrama." My favorites, however, come from Rolling Stone's Peter Travers - who's often cited as giving good reviews to anything on a screen - who called it "weepy drool until the twist ending which turns it shockingly offensive," and The Boston Globe, which dubbed it "Some Kind of Terrible."

So, it's pretty much Schaedenfreude Saturday around here.

Next on my list to share with you is the state social studies standards in Texas, which has been revised by a 10-5 party line vote of the Texas Board of Education to put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, while voting down proposed revisions regarding the role of Latinos or the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom.

Neil, who is a product of Texas public education, remarked on a trip to Rome that he never learned anything about the Roman Empire because he never had to take any world history. However, he clearly recalls the 12 years of Texas history he was forced to endure. (Seriously, I know it's a big state that flew under the flags of six nations - but twelve years of Texas history? How many times can you study Sam Houston, the Alamo and the state fair? This is a state whose contribution to America includes failed insurgencies (the Confederacy, the Alamo), George Bush (not the good one, the crappy one) and fried Oreos.)

Shall we take a look at some of the new standards? (Additions in bold.)

Middle School Economics

The student understands the origin and development of the free enterprise system in the United States. The student is expected to:
(A) explain why a free enterprise system of economics developed in the new nation, including minimal government intrusion and taxation, and property rights.

This is for 7th graders? Seriously? Who wrote these standards, Grover Norquist?

I wish I were a seventh grade social studies teacher. Here would be my final exam:

"Given the strong historical importance of minimal government intrusion, please explain why there is no justification for denying same-sex couples the right to marry."

Something tells me I wouldn't last long in an Amarillo Junior High School.

My favorite new standard, however, is this one:

High School History. (Unit covers 1970s-1990)

...(E) describe the causes, key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.

While I'm tickled to offer an essay that highlights the penchant for members of the Moral Majority to demagogue against homosexuality right up until they get caught sleeping with teenage boys, I'm not touching the NRA. Dude, they've got guns.

And speaking of tickled...

Can we please talk about the post-resignation meltdown of New York Congressman Eric Massa? Do we really live in a time where a former member of the House can go on television and actually try to defend charges by saying he was simply having "Tickle Parties?" "Tickle Parties???" Did this phrase just enter our national lexicon, introduced by a Congressman who should be disgraced and, instead, is indignant?

Are you kidding me?

How is it that Eliot Spitzer all of a sudden doesn't look like the nadir of American politics?

And Nancy Pelosi better start cracking the whip and opening up some ethics investigations. The Democrats won back Congress on charges of Republican corruption (Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Mark Foley) only to foist upon us Charlie Rangel, Eric Massa and that Jefferson person who had $100,000 in bribes in his freezer. (That's some cold hard cash! I've been looking for an opening for that joke for months.)

Other than that - there's not much to tell you. I can't tell you about my dinner in Vegas, cause I've been sworn to secrecy, but I've got photos in case I need to save my job someday. The rest of the trip was uneventful - other than a trip to the best airport candy store ever (Concourse D, The Candy Shoppe) - and a flight home during which the pilot requested medical assistance for a passenger.

Seriously, this is the second time in less than a month that this has happened. Who the hell is getting on airplanes these days? There's something disconcerting about a flight attendant carrying an oxygen tank to mid-cabin less than an hour into a four and half hour flight.

But I'm home - at long last at home. A rainy Saturday - perfect for Atchafalaya Roast Chicken. Neil is making it tonight for our friend Robert's birthday. It's a Paul Prudhomme recipe, and it's the best chicken ever!

Oh - one last thing - can we please start proofreading the texts and emails sent from mobile devices? Half the emails I get these days look like they're written in Polish. Oh...and putting "Please excuse typos" (or, even worse, Plwasr excude tyoos) does not make it better.

I'd Like to (Blank) the Academy

2010-03-09T20:43:00.000-05:00

Ugh. Torture.

Seriously, if they're looking to close Guantanamo, just show the prisoners the first 20 minutes of this year's Oscars. If they know where Bin Laden is, we'll have him by sundown.

Now, I love me some Neil Patrick Harris. And I really love me some singing Neil Patrick Harris in shiny tuxedo pants. (And...how do you know that the Neil I keep referring to in my blog isn't Neil Patrick Harris? Ok, it's not - though the idea of Neil Patrick Harris cooking me a pork roast is too funny.)

What wasn't funny was his opening number. Brilliant at the Tonys. Hilarious at the Emmys. Painfully embarassing at the Oscars. Plus, Neil Patrick Harris dancing with a showgirl is like handing my Mom your Blackberry. It's fun to watch, but she has no idea what to do with it.

Also, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin - yeah, they got funnier as the night went on, but that opening sketch dragged. Not funny (though the Damn Helen Mirren/Dame Helen Mirren joke tickled me.) Oh, and scowling at Goerge Clooney isn't any funnier now than it was in 1983 and they did it with Jack Nicholson.

Plus - were there any surprises? Mo'Nique. Christoph Waltz. Blah blah blah. When the biggest surprise is the adapted screenplay award, you're in for a dull evening. I wanted me some Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White. I wanted Whoopi in whiteface. I wanted a surprise victory for Morgan Freeman and a speech dedicated to the teacher who inspired him when he was just a poor girl from Harlem with two kids and an abusive mother.

The most entertaining thing that aired all night was the McDonald's Filet-O-Fish commercial (seen it a hundred times, could watch it for hours. Gimme back my Filet-O-Fish. Gimme my fish.) That, and the fact that they've cut the discussion the Scientific and Technical Awards to a four-second group photo introduced by poor Elizabeth Banks, who should have just come out and said, "Apparently I'm not big enough to present an actual award, so here's a group photo from last night's Dork Dinner. Hope you get a real Oscar someday!"

So, now I'm in Vegas. Why are the flights to Vegas always full? The economy's in such deep decline I routinely get upgraded on the way to LA and San Francisco, but Vegas is packed. With an average passenger weight of 265 pounds, not counting hairspray and velour, these flights are nightmares in the skies. It's really disoreinting - on other flights, the passengers drinking at 8 am are either alcoholics or fearful fliers; on the Vegas flights - who knows. People get on board and they're on vacation. Manners go out the window. The ladies next to me had four drinks a piece - before 10am (and NOT Bloodys or Mimosas) - and sang the Gilligan's Island theme song.

By the way - I do finally have a new recipe for you this week. Neil made a delicious Mexican Pulled Pork to accompany the Oscars, and it was delicious. He based it on a Food Network recipe, but he changed it up a little. I'll reprint it below.

The big event of the weekend was my sister's surprise birthday party. She'd kill me if I posted the pictures of her dancing on the table.

But I like to live on the edge.

Yes, it's a blurry mess, but...if the shoe fits. (In all seriousness, Happy Birthday, Rach ---I'm glad you had a good time.)

Speaking of having a good time, Neil and I are celebrating our anniversary on Thursday - five years ago we met, struck dumb with nascent love (and way too much alcohol), and managed to exchange phone numbers and spell our respective names correctly. It's true, folks, love really can find you anywhere. (Hey, it found me, totally trashed, in a bar on 19th street.)

So we're heading to Hawaii to celebrate. Neil's never been (and he hates to fly, so it's sort of a gift and sort of torture - like our relationship.) If you've got any suggestions for dining on Kauai, let me know. We're headed out in April, but you can expect a post to rival the Mediterranean Cruise when we return.

The Last Word:

Do This, New York:

Make Neil's Pulled Pork (by the way - they go a little crazy with the lime juice, here - I don't think it needs that much. Oh - and add a little more salt.

3 medium or 2 large russet potatoes to equal about a pound, peeled and diced

1 (2 to 3-pound) pork loin

1/2 yellow onion, whole, plus 1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, smashed

2 bay leaves

12 ounces raw chorizo, casing removed and crumbled

1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes

2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo, finely chopped (seeded and ribbed for less heat)

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram

Salt

For serving:

16 corn or flour tortillas

Lime wedges

1 avocado, halved, pitted, peeled and sliced

1 cup fresh cilantro leaves

Directions

Place the potatoes in a large pot of cold water. Add the salt, bring to a boil and cook until tender, 20 minutes. Drain the potatoes and set aside.

Place the pork in a large pot of cold water. Add the onion half, the garlic, and the bay leaves. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat to low. Simmer gently until the pork is cooked through and is no longer pink in the center, about 45 minutes. Remove the pork from the water and set it aside until it is cool enough to handle (discard the cooking liquid). Using your fingers or 2 forks, shred the meat into small pieces and set aside.
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, saute crumbled chorizo until completely cooked through, 8 to 10 minutes, stirring often. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chorizo to a paper towel lined plate. Add the chopped onions to the chorizo skillet and cook until soft, about 3 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the shredded pork, the tomatoes, and the chipotle chiles. Cook until the tomatoes break down and release their juices, about 5 minutes. Return the potatoes and cooked chorizo to the pan. Stir in the vinegar, thyme, marjoram and salt, to taste. Continue to cook over medium heat until some of the liquid has evaporated, about 5 minutes.

While the pork cooks, heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add a tortilla and warm for 10 to 15 seconds. Flip the tortilla over and continue to warm until the tortilla is pliable and heated through, another 10 to 20 seconds. Place warm tortillas in a tortilla warmer or on a plate, cover with a kitchen towel, and set aside; repeat with the remaining tortillas (or warm the tortillas in the microwave: stack them on a plate and cover with a damp cloth; microwave for 30 seconds and keep them covered until you're ready to serve).
To Serve:

Place the pulled pork in a serving bowl or bring to the table in the cooking pot. Arrange the limes, avocado, and cilantro on a platter. Pass warm tortillas so each diner can fill a tortilla with some of the meat and accompaniments. Squeeze lime juice over each serving.

2010-03-01T08:40:00.001-05:00

Here's a question? I'm reading the paper and wondering why, if the Republicans are so sure that the Democratic Health Insurance Reform bill is "political suicide," why not let it come to a vote? The Republicans can vote against it, the Democrats can vote for it, and it can pass with the Republicans on record for opposing it. Then, they can get those Congressional majorities they are so sure will follow; the "price [the Democrats] will pay.". But of course that won't happen. Because the Republicans know - if it passes - the public will begin to see the innumerable ways this bill, though imperfect, does benefit them. And they'll extract a price from Republicans for opposing it.

It's the Fur

2010-02-27T09:27:00.002-05:00

So...I was at the Rite-Aid shopping for Easter Candy with my friend Ka...(oops, no names, we'll call her, "Bunny." And, actually, Bunny was shopping for mascara, it was I who ventured over into the Easter Candy aisle.) After pointing out a chocolate bunny filled with coconut, Bunny told me she's not a fan of coconut and told me about an Easter cake her grandmother used to make.

Apparently, the cake was bunny-shaped (thus the too-cute nickname) and covered in white frosting and coconut. Bunny and her sister didn't really groove on the coconut, and would protest to grandma, "We don't like coconut."

So, Grandma, calling upon years of child-rearing, offered, "There's no coconut!"

Now, you've seen these cakes in magazines and such over the years - shockingly white, reeking of sugar even through the glossy pages of Southern Living or Good Housekeeping, and obviously totally covered in coconut. "No, Grandma, that's coconut." But Grandma couldn't be deterred.

"That's not coconut. It's the fur."

This is where we pause to consider the relative wisdom of papering over a child's finicky palate by trying to convince her that the offending food item is actually animal fur. How is this more comforting?

You've got to admire her spunk, though. And I love the metaphor. "It's the fur." I think I'm making that my new phrase; a way to identify when someone is trying to make something unpalatable more desirable and instead, makes it worse.

Which brings me to several events of the past week. Let's do it old school Q&A-style this week, folks? What do you say? (Like you can argue. I'm totally driving here.)

1. Will it ever stop snowing?

Clearly, not. When I woke up Thursday morning at 6:00 to large romantic flakes falling outside our living room picture window, I was thrilled. This storm was largely unaccompanied by the usual 11 days of hype about some approaching "Storm of the Century" (why does TV news have to accompany every event with rhetoric that sounds like it was scripted by the people who write the coming attractions for nighttime soap operas?) Instead, you got to feel like you were discovering the event for yourself - and it was gorgeous as the snow continued to fall throughout the day.

It was a lot less amusing when it was still snowing a day and a half later.

Friday morning, as I headed out to the gym, my travails through a landscape covered with more than 24 hours of snowfall felt like a scene from Fargo. The storm began with those big wet flakes that mixed to slush for the first few hours of the storm. As result, when the snow became "snowier" it built on top of two or three thick inches of wet icy slush. Cars and pedestrians slid everywhere; snow-shovelers heaved small scoopfuls weighted down by that heavy mush. And - with February 2010 becoming the snowiest single month ever on record in New York, the mood rapidly veered from the ordinary frustration of a heavy snowfall to something darker and more suited to the fact that its been snowing almost non-stop for three months and there's no end in sight.

It's the fur.

2. Will there ever be a comprehensive health insurance reform bill?

OK. First, can we please start calling this health insurance reform and not health care reform? When the media calls it health care reform, I feel like we're going to eschew antibiotics and clinical medicine for leeches and chanting.

What we're really trying to do is prevent individuals with insurance from going bankrupt if they get sick, because the current business model is designed to incent companies for figuring out ways to avoid paying your claim. And prevent people from not having coverage because then getting sick means potentially dying for lack of care - especially preventive care. And prevent companies from spending so much of their revenue on insurance that they can't give you a raise or hire more workers so you don't have to work 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, with no extra pay.

Anyway, there was another summit at the White House this week (remember when these summits were quaint homey affairs focused on beer and race relations? Aah, the good old days.)

There's a split opinion on this; most will agree it was a stalemate, but some will tell you the Republicans won because they didn't look completely like rabid obstructionists bent on destroying the President (though John Boehner and John McCain couldn't resist coming across as more concerned with blocking comprehensive legislation while Lamar Alexander somehow managed to be the most reasonable person in the room. This is sort of surprising since Alexander's last brush with notoriety included multiple Presidential campaigns where his main strategy was wearing a red plaid flannel shirt and driving a tractor.)

Others will tell you that the President won because a stalemate gives him moral authority to say, "I won the election; people voted for change; and in the absence of compromise I'm doing it through reconciliation - forcing an up or down majority vote rather than being forced into an unconstitutional super-majority to get any business done."

But the tactical "who-won?" analysis ignores the larger issue which has been the undercurrent of the President's problem for nearly a year.

Setting aside the lack of articulating a coherent narrative for his presidency (how about: "In this time of huge challenges facing our nation, we must all come together with an understanding that shared sacrifice and systemic reforms are necessary to bring this nation into the 21st Century with a strong middle class, a growing economy, and the innovations in science and technology necessary to achieve both.") The bigger issue is that the President broke his gut values connection with the American people.

In the fantastic book, "Applebee's America" by Matthew Dowd, Doug Sosnik and Ron Fournier, the authors - political operatives and pollsters from both parties - talk about the importance of making, and not breaking, a gut values connection with the citizenry as a key factor in winning elections, growing businesses, or attracting audiences. For Obama, his entire gut values connection was built around his message about a "new kind of politics." The entire rhetoric of "Hope" and "Change" wasn't just inspired by the substance of his policies, but how he was going to achieve them.

Now, every four years, one - if not both - of the presidential candidates make "changing the tone in Washington" a theme of their campaign. But Obama, especially in his primary battle against Hillary Clinton, made process more of an issue. He wasn't just running against Bush or the Republican candidate or the tone in Washington. He was running against his own party, in a way. Against the triangulation and compromise and bad feelings of the Clinton years. He gathered up the frustration and the energy and the disappointment of all those people who saw their expectations of the last Democratic administration wind up on a blue Gap dress in an evidence bag.

Personally, I never believed there was any such thing as a "new kind of politics." The Clinton years proved that the nature of politics with adversarial parties is opposition, and breaking through obstruction takes a leader who realizes that politics is more about warfare than it is about compromise. Or rather, it's about getting to a compromise by forcing your opponent to blink. (Bush understood this, which is how he got re-elected: he pushed forward with his agenda in the absence of a mandate - or even a popular vote majority - and dared democrats to vote against it. He, however, broke his gut values connection - which was based on "Trust" in the shadow of the Clinton years - by lying to the public about WMD in Iraq.) This is why I supported Hillary in the primaries; I felt we needed a warrior, not a conciliator.

Anyway, for Obama, when you tell people you're going to change the process, you have to change the process. Instead, what the public saw was bailouts for bankers, escalating unemployment, foreclosures, expensive federal programs that don't seem to be changing the game for the middle class, and business as usual in Congress with lobbyists controlling the policy and members feasting at the trough of federal pork.

It's the fur.

3. What happened to that kid from Growing Pains?

I really wanted to make some sort of dirty joke about the fact that he played a character named "Boner" and some line about the irony of a Boner disappearing in middle age. But I'm not in the Catskills, it's not 1973, and now that guy's dead. That's not funny.

That's the fur.

4. Did anything funny happen this week?

Yes. First, I was on the phone with Bunny yesterday (she is SO going to kill me when she reads this) who was cracking up that I resorted to voice mail, email and IM to track her down. "Do you have cabin fever because of the snow? You're like my kids." To which I inquired whether I was going to be sent outside to burn off the expend the excess energy?

"Yes. Go find a stranger to play with."

That could have been the title of a book about my 20s.

Also, another friend/co-worker - who will totally be the first person to read this, and I'm out of nicknames, but I'll call her Sunshine - inspired me to remember my favorite awful dessert. I've been making it for 10 years - it requires no baking - and it's AWESOME. And awful. You'll love it.

White Trash Chocolate Pie:

1 pre-made pie shell, preferably the Oreo kind.
1 layer of Jell-O chocolate instant pudding
1 layer of chocolate chips
1 layer of Jell-O white chocolate or vanilla instant pudding
1 layer of mashed up cookies (animal crackers work well)
1 layer of Jell-O chocolate instant pudding
1 layer of cool whip or other chemically enhanced whipped topping
Sprinkle with chocolate shavings, mashed up Oreos, sprinkles, M&Ms or anything you happen to have lying around.

Do not serve this to children. Ever.

5. Are you almost done, Eric?

Yeah, yeah. Besides, it's Saturday and Neil is making those romantic noises I hear on Saturdays. Like, "Do the laundry." and "Clean the bathroom."

That's love, folks. It's like a snowfall. Sometimes it's romantic, and sometimes...

it's the fur.

2010-02-21T15:52:00.001-05:00

Ok, I need a straight guy to explain to me why - although there are plenty of kinds of toys for little girls - why the only toys for boys are superheroes or trucks. While there's nothing wrong with an active imagination, or with manual labor (and, indeed, everyone should have a job at some point in their life that requires working with their hands) - I don't quite get the point. Are we hoping the next generation of men grows up to work construction or wear lycra?

Not A Peep Out of You

2010-02-21T10:11:00.001-05:00

Exactly how empathetic do I need to be to the woman traveling with three children? And a nanny? And her Kindle, which she's paying more attention to than the three extremely loud children that the nanny obviously can't quiet down, and who have now been screaming, "Mommymommymommymommymommymommymommymommymommy" for nearly an hour.

I've tried drowning it out with my iPod, to no avail.

Someone should steal this idea for Survivor. Trying to answer 100 emails on a Friday night before the plane lands has to be harder than rolling an oversize crate through the jungle.

I love February. Sweeps month means the season-long series are building to a climax (nothing like building to a climax...) and the reality shows are in full froth. Jordan and Jeff, who met on Big Brother, are competing on the Amazing Race. He's the nicest guy ever to be on a reality show and she rode his coattails to a win. And she can't tell time. That may not be a problem when you're occupying the same 1500 square feet for 90 days, but when you're racing around the world, through timed challenges and airports I imagine not knowing what "a quarter to three" means is a problem.

On American Idol, the addition of Ellen DeGeneres appears to be a ratings hit, though am I the only whose noticed that something about her hair color and style, her eyes, and the make up they have her wearing makes her look like a kewpie doll? Seriously, she looks like a comic book character or a marionette. Meanwhile, Kara DioGuardi has apparently turned into a cougar. I had to rewind one episode to confirm that she actually made a 19 year old boy take his shirt off (it was SO not worth it.) When the kid ultimately made it to the Top 24, the way she hugged him was like something from the 80s movie My Tutor. (Note: the clip from the auditions episode is apparently so risque, that it's been taken down by Yahoo!Video and by YouTube for "terms of use" violations. Considering both of these websites currently have videos of busty women performing some bikini mud wrestling and a bodybuilder grinding the gym floor in a jock strap, I'm guessing that Fox played a role in getting these videos removed. It kills me that Fox thinks the American Idol brand has to be kept squeaky clean. Past seasons have including a variety of strippers, sex workers, and other persons of questionable judgment. In fact, the contestant in question here, Casey James, has a criminal record.)

But the Reality Show I am most interested in watching premieres on Thursday... the televised White House negotiations over Health Care reform. President Obama has invited congressional Democrats and Republicans to complete the historic reform of health care that might actually provide equitable access to health insurance for all Americans, lower the deficit, prevent people from going bankrupt just because they get sick, and enable companies to actually hire workers and give raises rather than spending all their money on subsidizing ever-growing health insurance costs. It might actually stop corporations that make tremendous profits, which do not get passed along to their employees, but get swallowed up by grotesque executive pay packages - profits that are driven by taking premiums from their plan participants but not actually paying any claims.

Or not.

Why do I have a feeling we're in for another round of the "I'm-right-and-you're-wrong-song?"

And as frustrated as I am with the President for having turned over the process to Congress, thus ceding the message, wasting a year, and obscuring the benefits of the bill with the process by which it was created; and as annoying as it is that Congressional Democrats still haven't learned how to play hardball, or take a strong progressive stand rather than always trying to split the difference, while Congressional Republicans - when in power - push through the most divisive reactionary agenda and get Democrats to vote for it by creating a fear that they'll look weak rather than principled; and as stupid as it seems that the Republicans claim to hate government but always want to run it and act like spoiled children when they're not in charge while the Democrats always just want to prove government can work so they vote for stuff even when they're out of power, making the Republicans look competent - the real frustration is all of this is a cheat. The Democrats want to govern so badly, simply to prove government works, but can't. Meanwhile, the Republicans undo Democrats (when Democrats are in power) by claiming that government doesn't work, and is the problem, then block everything, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Is America so stupid that people don't realize that, when Republicans foment public concern about government's competence it is because the Republicans themselves are intentionally blocking accomplishments simply to create that impression for the sole craven purpose of winning elections, so they can run the government.

So, I'm not expecting much from this televised event - though, if it pre-empts Survivor, it better at least be as entertaining.

Meanwhile, at Walgreen's (I was in Chicago this week, and is there any drug store more fun than Walgreen's?) the passage of Valentine's Day means the arrival of Easter Candy. With a purchasing window nearly as long as the post-Halloween Christmas candy run, Easter provides just as much time - but much better candy.

I had the first Peep of the season, and it was the freshest yellowest tastiest Peep I've ever eaten.

(Peep Guide: Yellow - or "classic" Peeps are the gold standard of candy. Chewy, squishy, unapologetically created in a lab, and coated with a color not found in nature and a sugar that is so fine and granular, it's like the beaches of Maui. Blue and purple Peeps are more of an evening Peep - appropriate for the longer sunsets that accompany March, while sea green and orange Peeps should be avoided at all costs. Peeps associated with other holidays - ghosts and cats for Halloween, hearts for Valentine's Day, snowmen for Christmas, etc - are a nice transition Peep; the Peep that holds you over to Easter - but the Easter Peeps are the real deal. For the truly adventurous, you can now select chocolate-covered Peeps (in milk or dark chocolate.) Diabetics may indulge in the sugar-free Peeps, though it's sort of like Decaffeinated coffee - it simulates the experience but not the true feeling.)

Incidentally, if you were beginning to wonder whether this entire column was going to be about Easter Candy - it's not - but it easily could be. We haven't even gotten to the magic that is a bag of Brach's Candy Chicks and Rabbits. Another time....

I'm not going to do a full recap of my week - though I do have a few quick tales to tell.

First, if you're in Chicago, check out the 33 Club. It's new American in a classic men's club setting - the high ceiling, the baroque decor, the big mahogany bar. The places just has the feel of scotch and musk and hooking up with the guy from Mad Men (not that I've thought about that.) The amish chicken was moist and flavorful, prepared with lots of fresh herbs and served with crispy Brussels Sprouts. The pan-fried whitefish was flaky and light and tangy and salty in a lemon-butter sauce with lots of capers.

In Lincoln (yes, Nebraska. Shut up. I really like Nebraska - I've been going there for eight years. Yet - though I can navigate the complexities of New York, Boston, and Los Angeles - I get lost driving from the Lincoln airport to downtown. This is a distance of less than 5 miles, requiring only two roads.) Anyway - in Lincoln we met with a pair of lobbyists that totally cracked me up. She's a Democrat who worked for the former governor, a presidential candidate and the University; he's a Republican who covers K12 education. Together they're like a comedy team. She's chatty and direct, he's reticent and reserved. They're like the James Carville and Mary Matalin of Nebraska.

And - shockingly - there's a delicious Indian restaurant right in downtown Lincoln. If you're there, check out The Oven and get the Chicken Tikka. And - if you're with a group like I was, order the mixed appetizer, which is basically a large tray of batter-fried goodies. One had potatoes, one had chicken...there could have been an old sneaker underneath that crispy crust, I still would have eaten it.

(A prize to any reader who can come up with a way to deep-fry a Peep.)

And that's it for this week folks. From the heartland to heartlessland (Manhattan) where we went to a cocktail party where either I got very drunk or someone actually tried to say Vera Farmiga (of Up in the Air) and called her Mia Formaggi (which I think is awesome.) I couldn't have been that drunk - before we headed over there Neil made Backcountry Bolognese from this month's Bon Appetit (I probably needn't state that he replaced the Antelope sausage with regular sausage, and ground venison with ground beef. Antelope being hard to find - or shoot - here in the West 70s.)

We're heading out to my sister's for dinner tonight, which I imagine will bring me full circle to the sounds of, "Mommymommymommymommymommymommy."