For A Change
I spent last weekend with a group of friends. On the first day the cold, wind-swept rain all but forced us to hunker down in our hotel room, where we talked and drank wine and ate crackers and trail mix. I am generally tied to routine, so having no agenda made me feel like a boat without an anchor. But once I got over the weirdness of it, it felt wonderful.
It made me realize how important it is to pull yourself out of the familiar. If you don’t, the flexibility to alter and appreciate a different perspective vanishes. The most enviable thing about youth isn’t unwrinkled skin, or the ability to run a mile in under seven minutes. It’s the ability to say what the hell, yes. It’s the ability to sidestep, rather than embrace, routine. It’s the ability to wake up on someone else’s sofa in a place you’ve never been and find yourself slightly off-balance but perfectly at home in the world.
Back in 1980, guys and girls got together using a now-obsolete mix of land line telephones and floating speech balloons, shown here.
For the record, not only was our date not even remotely super, Randy was gay.
The Name Certainly Fits
I never liked soap operas. Not only is the acting terrible, I find myself in a state of constant anxiety, waiting for the actors to mess up. Also, since I don’t know any of the plot lines or characters and the stories are years (sometimes decades) old, I figure that even if I wanted to start watching one, that ship has long since sailed.
I was looking for The Weather Channel earlier today when I stumbled upon a soap opera. I don’t know which one it was but I can tell you it had an actress with long red hair. She was talking to an actor who looked like Alec Baldwin and sounded like Joe Pesci. His character’s name was Angelo.
Redhead: What have you heard, Angelo? My father wouldn’t hurt Patch, would he?Angelo: (Looking nervous) Not as far as I know.
Redhead: Are you sure? I know he thinks it’s all Patch’s fault. You would tell me if you knew anything, right?
Angelo: (Pause) Sure.(Longer pause, as he looks furtively about) Sure I would.
Redhead: I knew I could count on you. Want to grab something to eat?
Whoa! This was something a child raised by wolves could follow. I had only been watching for forty-five seconds, but I could tell you for certain that Angelo is lying, Patch is in big trouble, and the redhead suffers from both an inability to read people and a pathetically limited attention span. Cut to the next scene, in a dark alley. A shadowy figure hides behind a barrel, aiming a rifle. The music builds ominously as a man saunters in. Slowly, the man turns to face the camera.
He wears a patch over his left eye.
Off-camera, we hear the redhead scream: “Patch!”
In this moment, I realized I was not giving feral children nearly enough credit.
Cellulite
There’s a disturbing new trend in supermarket tabloid journalism: cellulite stalking. In an industry based on slack-jawed nosiness, the current fascination with celebrity flab manages to lower a bar that already scrapes bottom. Do tabloid editors assign a phalanx of sleazeballs with cameras to skulk around Malibu, waiting for direct sunlight to showcase a dimpled patch of famous-person pudge? It seem tabloid readers are amazed that celebrities are not exempt from the inevitable physiological aspects of the human condition, which include sagging skin, love handles, and yes, cellulite.
After seeing these photos of body parts with names on I.D. banners next to them- the saggy knee flesh of Ellen DeGeneres, the jiggly thigh of Cindy Crawford, and Janice Dickinson’s dimpled derriere ( which I’m sure is guaranteed to send her shrieking into the plastic surgeon’s office for liposuction and a Brazilian butt lift) not only was I incredibly relieved that I’m just an obscure individual and hence, free from public scrutiny, I was also incensed. There are two sets of morons here- the paparazzi for shooting the photos, and the tabloid-reading public, who has apparently created a market for them.
Fact: The vast majority of adult females have some cellulite. I know I do. So what? It is not shocking or shameful. Actually, it is supremely uninteresting and certainly not something people should be lurking in the bushes trying to photograph. What’s next, a hidden toilet cam? I have a sinking feeling it’s only a matter of time.
Relax, Mom
On the ferry ride home yesterday, I recalled one of my all-time favorite Nantucket stories. One afternoon when Micah was around seven, we were at the beach when we noticed the two lifeguards stationed near us had stopped their routine activities, which consisted of chatting up bikinied bimbettes and re-applying zinc oxide to their noses. One was pointing frantically while the other looked through his binoculars. After a whispered conference, they blasted the whistle three times, signaling everyone to get out of the water, pronto.
Swimmers hightailed it back and the rest of us left our towels to stand along the beach and gawk. We quickly saw the reason the swimmers had been called in: an ominous dorsal fin shimmying through the water, not twenty-five yards from shore.
People overheard the guards debating what to do next. Apparently, both doubted it was a shark. It was probably just a sunfish. One of the guards volunteered to go out on his board into the water to take a closer look. After Hasselhoffing it down to the water, he launched his board and paddled out toward the fin. He had almost reached it when we saw him suddenly jerk both legs out of the water and assume a kneeling position atop the board.
“I guess it really is a shark,” said a man standing next to us.
The lifeguard stayed there for a minute or two, looking awkward and more than a little terrified, but finally summoned up the courage to hang his head over the edge of the board and look into the water. He shook his head as the fin changed course and headed out to sea.
Swiftly regaining his bravado, he paddled back to shore, where everyone clustered around him.
“It was just a nurse shark,” he announced. “Perfectly harmless.”
The all clear signal was given, but people seemed to be reluctant to re-enter the water- except for Micah, who was already charging into the surf.
“Looks like the sighting didn’t faze your son,” said the guy next to us.
It had definitely freaked me out, though. “Mikey, I want you to stay close to shore,” I called after him.
Micah groaned in exasperation. “Mom, were you even listening? The lifeguard said it was only a Nerf shark.”
Bee Story
I was working at my computer when I heard the angry buzzing of a bee. He had managed to find his way into the house and now wanted out in the worst possible way. I don’t kill insects, unless you count mosquitoes and horse flies, and then only if they are biting/have bitten me, so they deserve it. Anyway, I went running into the kitchen to get a spatula and a drinking glass. I pull off this rescue maneuver frequently, so I’m kind of an expert at it. First, I wait patiently for the bee to land on a window pane, then I trap it under the drinking glass, and finally, slide the spatula under the inverted glass to contain the bee before releasing it back outside.
So, I trapped the bee, who seemed more agitated than most bees in this situation, and then I swiftly slid the spatula between the glass and the window pane but then something went terribly wrong. At first I was confused because I thought I saw the bee drop from the glass onto the windowsill below. But that was crazy, because when I looked, the bee was still in the glass! Were there two bees? I was horrified to see that what fell to the windowsill was only the bottom half of the bee. The bee’s top half was under the spatula, still in the glass.
It actually took a several seconds for the bee’s top half to stop its angry buzzing.
At first I was pretty freaked out. Clearly, even though it wasn’t my intention, my actions caused the bee’s gruesome demise. Initially, I felt sad, and terribly guilty, but then, I remembered the way the incident unfolded.
The bee was out of control from the start. I employed a time-honored method to help him help himself. If he hadn’t been so freaking impatient, he’d be zooming around my backyard right now, pollinating crap or making honey or doing whatever it is that bees do in their spare time. But not him. By working himself into a frenzy, he effectively transformed the spatula from a doorway to freedom into his own personal guillotine. Then, even in death, he insisted on holding onto his anger even longer than he held onto his bottom half.
The world is short one massively pissed-off bee. Somehow, I’m having a hard time feeling too bad about it.
Tyra(nny)
Last summer, my daughter Eliza got four tickets to a taping of The Tyra Banks Show. My only exposure to Tyra was from America’s Next Top Model, and she seemed like an okay sort, especially when compared to the silicone-packed coke-ravaged wigged-out nightmare known as Janice Dickinson.
Anyway, I’d never been to a talk show taping before. It sounded like it might be fun, or at least different.
The day before the taping they had e-mailed a list of acceptable attire. No jeans or sneakers. No bright white or bold patterns. “Think business casual.” When we arrived at the studio, we stood in a long line as production assistants trolled up and down, inspecting us. Finally, those who passed muster were let in and herded to a holding room where we sat in uncomfortable plastic chairs and listened to an extremely entertaining flagrantly gay guy bring us up to speed on Tyra Show dos and don’ts. We were to clap like trick seals when Tyra made her entrance. Under no circumstances were we to touch Tyra. “If she walks down the aisle near you, you can look, but don’t touch. You know why?”
We shook our heads.
“She’s wired for sound,” he told us. “All over. Even her booty. You touch her, she could short out. And let’s talk about her weave. If you venture anywhere near her hair, she will kill you. I am 100% sincere about that.”
We were finally taken by elevator up to the studio, where the crew began the task of seating us. The young and attractive were placed toward the front and on the aisles for maximum exposure. The old, the obese, the less expensively dressed, and the homely were herded into the back rows and out of sight. The production assistants were ruthless. They separated a bewildered gray-haired mother from her college-aged daughter. Two friends who’d come together were split up, the chunky one shoved to the back, and the skinny one escorted to the front. They started amassing a sidebar group, which included several very elderly Asian couples, a woman with a severe facial deformity and two physically challenged people in wheelchairs, who were then told to wait. I held my breath, wondering whether they might be taken out and shot, when, to my surprise, they were directed to the front. I was beginning to think the show wasn’t as overtly insidious as it seemed. However, when they began taping, I realized that this group of people had been seated up front behind the cameras, ensuring not only could they not be seen, they could not see.
I’m sad to say that despite the sinking, soul-killing feeling, we played along. We sat where they placed us. We smiled and clapped on cue. Afterwards, the girls and I talked about how we felt as if we’d stumbled into, and participated in, a very dark hoax. We never even watched the broadcast of the show.
