Happy Jew Year

I’m so going to Hell.

This, actually, isn’t news.  I’ve been fairly certain – for some time now – that I’m holding a boarding pass for a ride in a hand-basket across the river Styx. But – if my mother has a vote – then I’ve just been upgraded to a first-class seat.

I blew off Rosh Hashanah.

For my non-Jewish readers (who’ve never met a Jew, know nothing about them, and haven’t seen a single episode of Seinfeld), Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year.  If you’re familiar with the Chinese New Year it’s sort of the same, except instead of fun parties and parades led by gorgeous red silk dragons, you usually end up seated around a beige dining room set from Levitz, eating an entirely beige meal that will give you constipation and heartburn, in the company of entirely beige people to whom you happen to be related.  Oh, and instead of having years named after animals, we just give them ridiculously high numbers that no one keeps track of, so it could be 5770, but it could also be, like, 24735 and no one would know.

Say what you want about Jesus, but because of him at least I know what year it is.  No one ever actually uses the numbers of the Jewish year, except during Rosh Hashanah and when they want to prove that the religious right is crazy when they say the Earth is only six thousand years old, when scientists have found things much older than that.  Like Betty White.

To return to my point (I do this often, don’t I?), this weekend was the last weekend we had our rented house at the beach. Since we can no longer afford to spend thousands of dollars with the same nonchalance that some people reserve for dropping a penny down a sewer grate, and since we missed two weekends while we were cavorting across the Mediterranean with 2,500 homos, we decide we should probably go out to the beach house. 

Besides, we have to pick up all our stuff.

My mother did not react well to this news. 

In her defense (which really should be insanity, since that’s the one any jury would believe) we’ve already disappointed her this year when we told her we’d be going to Neil’s parents’ home in Houston for Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is something of a holy day to my mother – she spends weeks getting ready, often cooking and freezing several items more than a week in advance (giving them a reheated quality that really isn’t worth being thankful for, though surviving the digestive process often is.)  She loves Thanksgiving – it’s the only time she can manage to get the entire family to show up at her house where she can gaze upon them lovingly and tell them not to touch anything.

So she was already in a delicate condition when we bowed out of Rosh Hashanah.

Inevitably, this news was met with an all-expenses paid guilt trip, though I could tell she was mulling over the destination.  I could literally hear the wheels turning as chose among “Obligations and Priorities” and “The Importance of Family,” finally resting on “What It Means to be A Jew.” 

Game over.

She gave it a good try, but she might have had better luck with another line of argument.  I can’t recall seeing the inside of a temple since puberty (and spent a two-year stint in college going to an Episcopal Church, so it’s not like I was working off a rock solid foundation to begin with.)  Besides, while Rosh Hashanah is one of the holiest days of the year, it’s also a festive one and – at the moment – my idea of festive includes cocktails and barbecue.

Like they did in Bible times.

I have a troubled relationship with religion.  I believe in God, but I think spirituality is a deeply personal pursuit.  I think organized religions have done more to separate people from each other than to bring them together, routinely identifying outside groups as oppressors or immoral and condemning them therefore.  If you were to ask me my religion, I’d say Jewish, but the response feels driven more from looking Jewish and sounding Jewish and growing up Jewish than anything else.  I don’t know that I feel too much of an attachment to it, otherwise.  I married a Catholic, I celebrate Christmas, and I enjoy a spectrum of pork products.  I’m kind of Jewish in the same way Monica was, on Friends.

So that’s how I found myself celebrating the Jew Year on Fire Island.

Friday night we grilled cheeseburgers (I’ve already posted this recipe) and grilled corn (Recipe: put corn on the grill.  Add butter and salt.  Or be creative and coat with olive oil and dill before you grill.) Things got a little ugly after dinner, when all of sudden a friend decided to interrogate me about what I was doing with my life and what I was looking for and what do I expect to happen and what insecurities I’m addressing.  Under the only circumstance where I don’t like being the center of attention, I make a mental note to poison his breakfast. 

I’m being glib, but my feelings actually were hurt – I felt attacked for pursuing a career in television hosting and program development, and I’m pretty protective of that right now.  I know I’m just at the beginning of this journey, but I waited fifteen years to start it, working countless hours in furtherance of other people’s happiness.  For someone who has a tendency to behave entitled under many circumstances, this is actually something I can justify feeling entitled to try.  The bonus to enjoying it is that I’m finding I have something of a talent for it.

Saturday dawned much brighter; literally and figuratively, and provided some of the nicest weather of the summer.  The reports may only have been in the low to mid 70s, but it was plenty hot in the sun and we laid around the pool deck most of the day.  No better start to a sweet year than a stack of entertainment and fashion magazines, the New York Times editorial pages, and a late summer tan.  I’m convinced there’s a reason the Jewish high holidays occur around mid-September: everyone can show off a new fall outfit and a summer tan.  If the holidays were in March, we’d have to completely re-configure the fashion calendar and everyone would have to fake bake or hope for decent winter weather in Boca.  When you look at it this way, you begin to wonder if the fasting is less about repentance and more about fitting into Dolce.  Those Italian cuts can be unforgiving on wide eastern European hips.

Saturday evening brought us to a house party on the east end of the island.  This was hard; we went to the home of new acquaintances, friends of our friend Brian, who redid their beach house in the style of 1960s contemporaries (very horizontal; flat roof, low ceiling, front wall of vertical windows) appointed with luxurious finishes in brushed nickel, espresso wood, and gray slate.  Outside they had that simulated wicker (is it plastic?) furniture with the white cushions that always reminds me of pool decks and outdoor restaurants in Los Angeles. 

Immediate jealousy.  I knew the second we walked in that Neil loved it – the style, the décor, the proportions – and I could see, just momentarily, a look of longing in his eyes; a reminder of all the things we wanted, still want, all the dreams and desires we discussed that – right now – I can’t provide.

My friend Mike always said, “They call them golden handcuffs for a reason.”

After the party we head over to Low Tea for a cocktail, then home for dinner: baby arugula with grilled balsamic nectarines and red onion, baby back ribs in a peach barbecue glaze, ratatouille and biscuits. (Recipes below.)

And that’s pretty much it.  We woke this morning to another bright, warm day.  We took a walk over to the house we rented for next summer to store our beach chairs under the house.  As we approached the house, a buck blocked the entrance (Deer are native to Fire Island, and have long grown acclimated to the humans – and humanoids.)  Neil, Robert, Alec and I all hesitated to approach when the buck bowed his head and angled a full rack of antlers at us.  After staying frozen for several minutes, trapped like Dee Wallace Stone in Cujo, we finally shoed the deer away with our beach chairs.  If they ever do a gay circus, we’ve got four potential lion tamers, provided they swap out the lion for a skittish deer.

I have to go now.  A bird flew into our house and couldn’t find it’s way out.  It just flew into the window and dropped to the floor dead.  I need to go dispose of it.

God, I hope this isn’t a metaphor.

THE LAST WORD:

DO THIS, New York:

Listen to your mother. (Do as I say, not as I do.)

Go to Fire Island – it’s a lot of fun.  I love it in September.

Watch Cujo.  I like that movie.  Dee Wallace grows a pair about 90 minutes in, and it’s awesome.  Keep an eye open for fey pre-Jonathan Bower (Who’s The Boss?) future gay Danny Pintauro as the asthmatic kid.

Make my BABY BACK RIBS:

           

            Two large racks of ribs cut into three pieces, each.

            One jar of “Bone Suckin’ Sauce” (Interactive fun: insert your own bone sucking joke here.)  Yes, I used a jarred sauce – so what?  Sandr Lee does it on the Food Network and she’s got her own show.

            Four peaches, chopped and pureed.

            (Alternative sauce: 1 cup ketchup, ¼ cup apple cider vinegar, 1 Tbsp Horseradish, ½ medium onion (diced), 2 cloves garlic (pressed), 3 peaches.  Put everything in a blender.)

Put it all in a bowl. Leave it there for at least four hours.  Grill until cooked.

RATATOUILLE:

1 medium eggplant

1 zucchini

1 yellow squash

1 yellow pepper

1 orange pepper

1 large onion

4 plum tomatoes

shallot

garlic

olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a large stock pot or Dutch oven.  Chop the shallot and garlic and sauté.  Slice all the vegetables.  Add the eggplant to the pot.  Wait.   Add the zucchini and squash.  Wait.  Add the peppers.  Wait.  Add the onion.  Wait.  Add the tomatoes.  Wait.  Season with salt, pepper, some chopped parsley and a little cayenne. Wait.

HINT:  Ratatouille is a blending and building of flavors.  The order you add the vegetables is important.  Let them cook through before adding the next round. 

HINT:  Salt the eggplant and pat it down with paper towels before you add it to the pot.  Eggplant tends to have a lot of water and the salt will draw it out.  While ratatouille is supposed to be soft, too much water will make it bland and overly mushy.

HINT:  You can treat this like a Sunday gravy.  At the right temperature, without the right amount of patience, you can let this cook for hours and really develop the flavors.  Don’t overly salt the dish, but use it regularly – it will help blend the flavors.

SALAD OF BABY ARUGULA WITH BALSAMIC RED ONION AND NECTARINES:

Pour some balsamic vinegar into a pot.  Heat over medium-high flame and rapidly bring to a boil.  Reduce.  The better quality vinegar, the better the results. (You can also add a little sugar to this process, though I don’t.)

Chop one medium red onion – trim the ends, cut in half by length and width.  Cut the four chunks in half.  Don’t cut the onion any smaller than that.

Quarter four nectarines.

Add the nectarines and onion to the boiling vinegar.  Stir.  After 2-3 minutes, remove from heat.

Remove the nectarines and onion to aluminum foil.  Add some remaining balsamic if you like. Fold the aluminum into a packet.

Put it on the grill for 5-10 minutes.  Remove.  Cool to about room temperature.  Toss with the arugula.

DON’T DO THIS, New York:

Don’t guilt someone into religion.  Using guilt for sex or presents, however, is fine.

Don’t serve Planter’s Punch at a party – no one really likes Rum unless they’re an 18^th century Caribbean pirate.

Don’t make biscuits the way I did – a box of Jiffy biscuit mix.  They tasted like paste.  Next time I’m using that weird Pillsbury cylinder that pops open the second you touch it.

Cheeseburger and Lies: The Happiness Deficit

It would have been great if the weekend were all pancakes and pasta.  Actually, it would be great if life were, too, but that’s too much to hope for – especially when it can barely cover the weekend.

I’ll keep it as upbeat as possible – and surely there’s a recipe and restaurant review farther down – but it’s been a rough few days.

It really started on Saturday, with that stupid Teabagger’s march on Washington.  Nothing makes me angier than the wealthy and soulless exploiting the poor, using fear to manipulate people and trick them into taking positions that are actually hurting them.  Plus, I hate that name - teabagging.  If you want a more appropriate use of the term, see the explanation offered by Samantha during Season Six (Part One) of Sex and the City.  

The first problem I have with this march is that many of the people attending are in desperate need of systemic reform.  14,000 people lose their insurance every month; over 46 million people, roughly one-sixth of the population, is without insurance.  When you account for the under-insured, that number pushes past 70 million and represents approximately a quarter of all Americans.  Worse yet, while the economy grew during the Bush years, that growth was experienced largely by the top 1 percent of households, which claimed two-thirds of the nation's total income gains.  The period from 2002 to 2007 did little to create new jobs or deliver wage growth to the middle class; in fact, by 2008 the poverty rate had grown to 13.2 percent (it's highest level in over a decade) and median household income fell by four percent from $52,200 to $50,300.  Adjusted for inflation, median income was lower in 2008 than in 1998 and every year since.

Here's how health insurance is connected:  if you're lucky enough to have a job, ask yourself when your last raise was? And how much was it?  Now ask yourself when the last time your employer increased your contribution to your health insurance or changed plans resulting in a decrease in benefits.  The rising tide of health care costs is not only a moral issue - who are we as a society that middle class people die for want of preventive care? - t is a political and economic issue.  Keep your coverage if you like it, but don't think it's not important for the government to play a role in restructuring and regulating the system to control costs while guaranteeing coverage - odds are these rising costs combined with stagnating wages are already reducing your take home pay.

So, you can understand why I find it inexcusable that politicians would use fear of change and an underlying racism to manipulate their constitutents.

Yes - I said racism.  are we really surprised?  Am I wrong?  Or can we agree that there are probably plenty of people who wanted change so badly at the end of the Bush years (understandably so) that they could hold their nose for a minute in the voting booth and take a chance, but can't really come to grips with an African-American President on an day-to-day basis?  Can we agree there is probably a cohort of middle class whites who have seen so much change for women, foreigners, gays and people of color, that any excuse is a good one to stand against a Democratic President, a defender of civil rights, and a black man, to boot?

(As long as we're on stereotypes, can I just say that I recently stumbled across a show called "Jewish Doctors."  Are we ok with this?  I'm conflicted.  I kind if think that, if it were ok, it would also have to be ok to do a show called "Korean Grocery" or "Puerto Rican Cleaning Woman"?  Can you imagine?  Yeah - I didn't think so.  It's not ok.)

Not that there aren't plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with the President, but let's adhere to the facts.  First, he hasn't exactly delivered on a lot of the social change he promised - the federal government will still recognize any marriage performed in any of the 50 states and most western countries, except those between members of the same sex from six states, Spain, Canada, or Holland.

There's also plenty of anger about bailouts.  Since the rich got richer under the last President, you'd think it were time to focus on the middle class, but the piles of money that have been bestowed upon the wealthiest people and most reckless corporations that created this economic nightmare is easily worthy of some righteous indignation.  It's about as insane as offering Adolf Hitler the Nobel Peace Prize.  

"Dear Financial Services Industry,

"You greedily exploited the dreams of middle class and the poor, gambled with the nation's economy, and created a global recession unlike nothing seen since the Great Depression.  As a result, asset values are in the toilet and unemployment is cruising toward ten per cent.  

"Here's billions of dollars!  Please pay yourselves bonuses and take a company sponsored trip to Vegas.  Stay at the Wynn - it's awesome!  

"Love, 

President Obama."

Further, the President hasn't done much to differentiate between the stimulus package (which was a little on the wimpy side - particularly for state and local governments, which would spend the money quickly and are in crisis - but it managed to stabilize the economy, so we'll take it) and the bailouts which may have been necessary to prevent total collapse, but look like a handout to the plutocracy when those of us who played by the rules continue to get screwed.

The exacerbating issue has been a failure of leadership on the part of the President.  Interestingly, it's one of only two things I admire Bush for exhibiting (the other one is the extensive, and undersung, contributions he made to funding AIDS research and medical care around the world.)

But when it came to leadership, Bush had it in spades - I didn't agree on where he was leading, but the guy took a point of view - cleanly and clearly - and argued for it.  While he failed when it came to immigration reform (where I happened to agree with him) and Social Security (where we still need some sort of middle ground, because that bill's going to come due soon, too, as the Baby Boomers retire) - it's worth remembering that he got most of his first-term agenda through fairly easily, including the two years of a Democratic Senate from 2001 - 2003.  No Child Left Behind, a trillion dollar tax cut, two wars.  He used the bully pulpit and the threat of veto - not to mention a clear articulation of his agenda - and defied Congress to reject it.  And this was someone who won without a mandate or a popular vote majority.

Obama doesn't seem to have that stuff, and it's a shame.  Why is it Democratic Presidents always seem to split the difference, rather than articulating why they're point of view is right?  As a result, we end up with leaders who are more triangulators and political calculators than leaders.  It's as if they move to the safest place the polls tell them they can go, rather than Republicans, who take the stage with a voice intended to move the polls.  

I'm tired of watered-down leadership.

So - clearly - there are plenty of reasons to be disappointed in Barry O.  But none of them is that he's a socialist.  (And, as long as we're here for a second - can I just ask - is socialized health care really so terrible?  Spare me your stories of that Canadian friend or your co-worker's aunt in London who waited, like, two weeks to see a dentist.  Anecdotal evidence nothwithstanding, every single non-partisan analysis has shown that the quality of care, and access to it, is far superior to the American system, at a much lower cost.  Of the major western nations we spend a great deal more and get a great deal less.  If you had a choice between flying in a plane that landed safely 95% of the time and one that crashed 50% of the time, which would you fly on?  And how long would you wait for a ticket?  Enough said.)

I need to move off this topic, as I've said much more than I intended to - but there was a second thing that disappointed me about the march.  And the speech.  And the nature of our discourse in general.

Can we please try and obey the unwritten rules of public behavior?

When did it become acceptable to carry a gun to the place the President was speaking?  Is it dignified for a sitting Congressman to call the President a liar on the floor of the House, while it's in session?  Did I really see a sign that said "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy"? 

I say a lot of things, and I even say some mean things, and many of them I simply say for a laugh.  But my momma raised me better than to behave like a barn animal or a piece of white trash in public.  You can disagree and still be a fucking human being.

While we're here, it's worth mentioning that the sidebar ads that come up on the FreedomWorks website (proudly promoting pictures like the one to your left.  No, I'm not supplying a link.) include one for "Angry Mob T-Shirts."  Classy.

So going into Monday you can see that I was actually a little torqued up.

Megan left for California on Monday.  We took an acting class together two years ago and became friends - she's a perky former dancer with amazing acting talent who got into the MFA program at the University of California - San Diego, the hottest acting school in the country right now.  Since I've known her, she's gone from being a near-agoraphobic to a subway and elevator-riding powerhouse.  She did, however, skip air travel (and the medically-supervised dose of Valium it would have taken to get her on a plane,) in favor of riding the bus all the way to southern California.  This is my own personal vision of hell.


She's going to be a huge star one day, but she'll always be my messy friend who pushed me to express my own creativity, and I will miss her.

And two of my girlfriends were struggling through break-ups, while a colleague dealt with ending his marriage after 11 years. 

There's something in the air right now - a happiness deficit (sadness surplus?) - that's somehow appropriate for the times we live in, but no less easier to deal with.


I pray we all all find enough within ourselves to be able to offer something to support those around us who need it.  I feel like community is so critical right now, and as a society we don't seem to be getting that message.

In moods like this, I like hamburgers, so that's what we ate Monday night.  My friend Todd came over and we ate burgers and talked about his summer working at Sant Ambroeus in Southampton.  If you're not out east, go to the one on W4th St.  You can't go wrong with their eggplant parmigiana, the linguine cacio e pepe, the orecchiette, the filet mignon or the branzino. 

The Last Word:

DO THIS, New York:

Add your voice to the efforts to reform health care.  Constructive ideas are always welcome.  Write or call your Member of Congress and your Senators.

Be nice, even to the ignorant.

Watch Sex and the City

Eat at Sant Ambroeus

Make my burgers and Brussels Sprouts:

For the burgers:

Throw some ground beef in a stainless steel bowl.  Use a little more than 1/3 pound per person.

Add salt, pepper, onion powder, and chili powder.

Mix it up, but don't over work the meat.  Form a ball, flatten slightly, make a thumbprint in the center.

Cook them.

Before they're done, add a slice of Kraft 2% Milk singles.

Top with chopped tomato, sliced onion, and sliced avocado.

Serve with:

1 pound Brussels Sprouts, stemmed and cut in half.

A bunch of chopped shallots.

Mix sprouts and shallots with 2 Tbsp Olive Oil.

Season with Salt.  

Toss it in a Pyrex casserole dish and bake at 400 degrees - about 30 minutes.

Be nice to each other.  I'll be funny in the next post - it'll be about my birthday.  YAY!!!

DON'T DO THIS, New York:

Don't teabag.  Either kind.

Don't skip the cheese - I used to do that and the burger is less fun that way.

Don't be a racist.