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life in new york, literature

Dreamworld

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Jonathan Franzen and Lorrie Moore were beyond charming last night at 92Y — where I had never actually been before. My darling Aunts Marjy & Jane took me to that hallowed ground, which Jon Stewart described as the third holiest site to Judaism, after Jerusalem and Zabar’s.

On stage, Moore and Franzen giggled like old friends. They also each had great answers to an audience question: When do you know you’ve arrived at the right ending?

Lorrie Moore talked about the difference between novels and short stories in this respect. Short stories demand endings that shine light backwards on everything that has come before, she said. Novels, by contrast, shine light outwards on what could come next.

Jonathan Franzen said that you know you’ve hit on a good ending (if not the “right” one) when the paralyzing anxiety occasioned by all the worse endings you’ve thought of begins to fall away.

The audience sort of mooed happily, the way groups do when someone says something that makes perfect sense.

Walking out, I told my aunts that Franzen is one of my literary boyfriends. (Adorable Brit David Mitchell, who I saw read at BookCourt, is another, because I am not so monogamous in my literary life: I also go on crazy dates with Jonathan Ames, talk politics with hot grandma Anne Lamott, and have passionate Southern evenings with Ann Patchett.)

Imagine my surprise when I went to sleep that night and dreamed Franzen had become my *actual* boyfriend. Which led to this exchange over GChat:

Logan: um, did you do it?
Me: no!
Logan: just checking
Me: we walked around swarthmore arm in arm
Logan: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: isn’t that kind of even better??
Logan: that is even better. amazing, amazing dream.
Me: i also dreamt that i had to pee in a suitcase for some reason. like, everyone else got to use a toilet and i had to pee in a suitcase. but that was a separate dream.

faux gender theory, politix

"Missouri," Meet "Cop’s Wife"

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“We can have animus and not be enemies,” sayeth Jon Stewart. I can’t say I’m there yet, but it gives me something to aim for.

Carolyn Hax perfectly expresses the feeling I had at the Rally to Restore Sanity, the one I’m trying to feel again, especially after Tuesday’s results:

Missouri: Hi Carolyn,

I guess my husband and I are what the liberal East Coast would call conservative bigots. My question isn’t about that, so I won’t get into it. We are raising two kids our way, while being constantly told by the liberal media that it’s the wrong way. Sorry, but we just don’t agree, and neither do most of the people in our community.

The issue is that my husband’s job is taking him to a liberal East Coast city, and we’re now faced with the question of whether to uproot everyone and follow him there. If we go, I worry my kids will be exposed to a lot of hooey I have worked hard to keep out of their lives. If we don’t, we’re looking at at least two years’ separation during which my husband will miss the last of his daughters’ little kid years. It’s well-established around here that you can’t bubble-wrap kids, so basically I’m looking for suggestions on how to keep our values strong in our kids even if we choose to move them out east.

Carolyn Hax: You’re right to worry–we liberal East Coast dwellers have two heads, learn a secret language at Ivy League schools so we can mock real hard-working Americans, make our preschoolers watch gay porn, and scream like pod people when we see someone going to church.

The exposure-to-a-lot-of-hooey ship has already sailed, I’m afraid–you’ve bought wholesale the whole idea that there’s an “Us” and a “Them” in this country.

Here’s a little welcome brochure for you in the form of my daily life, in case you decide to tough it out in the Eastern time zone:

I’m married, and we have three little boys.

We love them, work hard to teach them manners, values, civic responsibility, respect for adults, respect for themselves.

We care about the schooling they get, the food they eat, the bedtimes they keep, the community that surrounds them, the families that take them in for play dates. We care about setting an example of strong partnership in our marriage.

We have a hard time containing our frustration when we see even the slightest glimmer of entitlement in them, even though we know intellectually that all small kids see themselves as the center of the earth. We also know that it’s up to us to teach them the value of hard work, of delayed gratification, of gratitude, of giving back as much as they take, if not more.

We also give them as much room as we can to be themselves, which means, at various times, letting them explore in stick and rocks and mud, and make play weapons, and fall off their bikes, and they’ve done target shooting and archery. (I hear a lot about attempts to “feminize” boys, and all I can say is, good luck. If it’s in them to be house kids, then they’ll gravitate that way whether they’re pushed to or not, and if it’s not in them, then they won’t. Cultural norming works better in theory than in practice.)

We encourage them to play with neighborhood kids; these neighbors include four families with their kids in faith-based schools–one believes firmly in single-sex education–and four others with kids in public schools. (My kids go private because the classes are small, much better for their temperaments.)

Have you read anything yet that makes you tremble in fear for your children?

To be fair, I’ll also say that I worship no higher power. However, I am also never in anyone’s face about that, not even when someone of faith gets into mine, which does happen. I not only respect people’s right to live as they see fit, but I also hope my kids will look to others as an example, compare other parents’ choices to ours, and choose a path based on that exploration.

Which brings me to the point I could have opened with and quit (but then I wouldn’t have been able to bring in the Pod People): If you are as assured as you suggest in the correctness–and righteousness–of the way you’ve chosen to raise your children, then there should be no reason it couldn’t withstand the challenge of other points of view. Truth likes light, doesn’t it?

Trust your choices, and trust your neighbors to be human–really, I swear they will bear an uncanny resemblance to you.

As as for Us vs. Them, may I please humbly ask of you to declare with me that enough is enough is enough?

Staying ovation for Carolyn! Full points.

Then of course there’s the adorable five-year-old child whose mother allowed him to dress up as Daphne from “Scooby Doo” and defended everything from his neon wig to his go-go boots to judgmental mommies IRL and on the web in a post called “My Son is Gay.”

SPOILER ALERT: The child in question is not actually gay. The writer is employing a rhetorical device to make the point that it wouldn’t matter to her if he becomes gay at some point but that letting him dress up as a girl if he wants on a costume-oriented holiday will not affect his sexual preferences later in life. (As she puts it, brilliantly, “I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off.”)

In case Mrs. Missouri is wondering, this gender-bending Halloween is brought to you by a Stay At Home Mom who calls herself “Cop’s Wife,” sends her kids to church pre-school, and lives in the Midwest. Teh gays! Teh cross-dressers! They are EVERYWHERE. If you think you can avoid their pernicious influence by staying where you are, Mrs. Missouri, you’ve got another think coming.

Missouri, meet Cop’s Wife. Bring the kids! I think you will get along smashingly, at least until / unless Mrs. Missouri does have to transplant to some godforsaken eastern urban hellhole. (“Don’t you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.” —Alvy Singer)

But: breathe deeply, Ester. Abide. (“Calmer than you are.” —Walter Sobchak) I don’t need to resort to snark just because Mrs. Missouri did in her letter. Perhaps she is an open-minded person waiting to happen! After all, how Jesus Camp-y could Mrs. Missouri really be if she’s writing into my favorite (and East Coast based) advice columnist? Perhaps there is hope for her yet.

politix

Remember Two Years Ago?

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I do:

On Nov. 4, 2008, as on every morning during that fall’s presidential campaign, I began my workday by reviewing the latest battleground-state polls at Pollster and RealClearPolitics, checking up on the pundits at Politico and Wonkette, and seeing what the establishment had to say at the New York Times and the Washington Post. In contrast to the recent Election Days I had known, the news was more than encouraging. My co-workers planned parties. The experts were hopeful. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight predicted a landslide.

Still, concern spread through me until I was possessed: By the end of the day I resembled something out of The Exorcist: trembling and mumbling, with green-tinged skin. My husband, Ben, showed up at my office, took one look at me, and knew that I would never make it to our results-viewing parties; even if I did, I would scare the revelers. “Let’s go home,” he said, worried enough that he suggested taking a cab back to Brooklyn. I was worried enough that I agreed.

We made it only to Union Square before I threw up, splashing my fear on the inside of the car door and my beloved new suede boots. I got out and sat shivering on the curb as the cab driver muttered curses and Ben ran into stores, begging for cleaning supplies. Two Manhattanites walked by me on spiked shoes and laughed, but I barely heard them. I was thinking about Pennsylvania. …

The entirety of my oh-so-timely piece, entitled “Hope Over Experience,” has been on The Morning News for about a week now.

The funny thing is, I’m still thinking about Pennsylvania. And Nevada. And Wisconsin. (Poor Russ Feingold!) The point is, if you need me, I’ll be online shopping all day to distract myself, and pondering who I detest more: David “Pink Shirt” Brooks or Maureen “Fires of Mordor” Dowd? In fact, let’s make it a poll!

Who Is a More Worthless Human Being / Pundit?

family, music, politix

My Family Wins the Internet

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On BNReview, my father-in-law, a Russian doctor, teaches all you Americans how to drink vodka. I don’t need teaching because I have plenty of opportunities to watch the pros.

Meanwhile, my cousins of It’s the Real do it up OK Go-style with their new music video, “My Girl’s a Republican.”


My Girl’s a Republican from jeff on Vimeo.

Now I have their song competing for floorspace in my head with the Rally to Restore Sanity’s mash-up of “the Peace/Love/Crazy Train.”

Pictures of my favorite handwritten signs from the rally TK. It was pretty amazing, I have to say, to see hundreds of signs and not one typo. That should go down in history.

houzin

The ABCs of Places You Could Buy a House If You Didn’t Live in NY

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A is for Asheville!

Asheville, North Carolina, is the San Francisco of the South. It is run by hippies and retirees in equal numbers and offers plenty of NYT-sanctioned activities.


Huge Queen Anne Victorian in the historic neighborhood of Montford, a short walk from downtown Asheville. Built in 1900. Almost 4,500 square feet. Sky blue with gingerbread-house-like trim. Fireplace, wraparound porch, and turrets included. 

Property is zoned “RM8,” which presumably means something to somebody.

B is for Bisbee!

Bisbee, Arizona, is the San Francisco of the Southwest. It’s an artsy town in the mountains near the Mexico-America border, so lots of Weeds-like hijinks ensue! At least in my imagination. A guy there makes killer Killer Bee Honey.

Click Image to View SlideshowMmmmmmm … pool. Also four bedrooms to house all the jealous friends from New York who insist on flying out to use your pool.

Outside features include “Rv Hookup, Rv Parking, Sprinkler/drip,” while landscape includes “Fruit Trees, Shrubs, Desert, Grass, Gravel, Trees.” Can’t argue with that diversity! Plus your kids get to go to school in a district called Tombstone.

C is for Copenhagen!

Copenhagen is in Denmark, which is the San Francisco of southern Scandinavia and has abolished poverty and injustice. Well, almost.

I have no idea how easy it is to buy property over there, but apparently a 3-BR townhouse can be had for the equivalent of $350,000 US. Do you know what $350,000 US will buy you in Brooklyn? A garage in Bay Ridge next to an open sewer. (I’m guessing.)

D through F coming soon!

politix

Two Weddings, One Ass

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There is a terrific Yiddish expression that currently sums up a large part of what Juan Williams did wrong: “You can’t dance in two weddings with one ass.”

Fox News and National Public Radio are two very different weddings, playing very different music and enjoying very different food. Trying to please the machers at both was bound to be an exercise in futility, if not self-destruction.

Besides, wasn’t this so far over-the-top as to be almost passive-aggressive? (After all, he got to be the news story for a change, and he got a hefty raise too.) Telling O’Reilly “you’re right”? Using the words “I’m not a bigot” and then NOT STOPPING THERE?

Here’s the full quote:

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country,” Williams said Monday. “But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

For those who are saying that Williams was fired in violation of his 1st Amendment rights, an anonymous NPR exec rolls his eyes in the Washington Post: “Williams’s comments on Monday were the last straw, the executive said. He dismissed suggestions that NPR was suppressing Williams’s freedom of speech, saying, “Juan has a First Amendment right to say whatever he wants. He does not have a First Amendment right to be paid by NPR for saying whatever he wants.” And there’s the rub. Though we are all free to talk, we are not free to escape the consequences. Not even if a lot of loudmouths agree with us.

Besides, considering that Tea Party senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell just publicly revealed she doesn’t know what the 1st Amendment entails, the Republicans probably shouldn’t be drawing too much attention to the Bill of Rights.

As TNC points out, what Williams said was a problem. What Williams CONTINUES to say leeches out any potential sympathy I’d have for him. From today’s NYT:

Mr. Williams said in an essay published Thursday on FoxNews.com that he was fired “for telling the truth.”

He continued in the essay: “Now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one-sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.”

Sent to the gulag! Somewhere, Solzhenitsyn is groaning in his grave and stuffing dirt in his ears. If Williams is really that convinced that he is a victim of severe, historical injustice, then he belong at Fox News. Let me be the first to say, Welcome home.

faux gender theory

Because men hunted buffalo …

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On the way to Los Angeles for a whirlwind business trip, I caught sight of this newsstand at JFK Airport. On one side, a sign says “men’s interests,” and on the other side, a sign says “women’s interests.”

What, pray tell, are men’s interests as opposed to women’s interests?

I’m so glad you asked!

On the male side of the mechitzah, we discover that dudes are into:

Money
Smart Money
The Economist
Time
Newsweek
Men’s Fitness
Golf

On the women’s side, we discover that ladies like:

O (Oprah)
Brides
Home & Garden
Allure
Self
Health & Fitness
Family Circle

Thank God men and women both care about Fitness! Otherwise, what else would they talk about?

PS: Apparently I missed “Love Your Body Day“! I would have liked to celebrate it because all my parts, euphemistically-noted in previous blog entries and non-, are in good working order once again. Bless you, teeth (and “foot”)! I promise I’ll never take you for granted again!

health, movies

"Foot" and Mouth Disease

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I’ve spent this past week trying to determine which is worse: a mouth full of teeth that can handle food no tougher than avocado, or a disturbance in a region private enough that you don’t want to mention it on a blog. (There can only be one Dooce.) I’ll call it my “foot.”

I played around with the idea of mentioning it anyway, since apparently it’s a relatively common, though disgusting, problem, and one you could probably relate to. Then I saw The Social Network & was reminded, via one of those patented Wise Movie Characters often played by Morgan Freeman, “The Internet is written in ink.” Note: That girl was so smart I couldn’t believe she went to BU!

Ha ha … ha.

I really enjoyed the Social Network, though I’ve enjoyed anything recently that distracted me from my mouth and my “foot.” The list also includes Seasons 2 and 3 of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” sleep, Ethiopian food, homemade applesauce, word games, lying on the couch for hours at a time, a peanut-butter smoothie from Netcar, getting a Diane von Furstenberg dress from a clothing swap, making muffinloaf, and reading recaps of TV shows.

But that’s not to say the film wasn’t quality. Well done, Aaron Sorkin & David Fincher — you made a movie with no surprises in it somehow feel suspenseful and dramatic. Likewise, though almost nothing happens. Here is basically all the action in the film:

  • a bed almost gets lit on fire
  • a student runs through the snow in inappropriate footwear
  • a chimney breaks
  • Asian women are slandered (Jewish guys come off only slightly better)
  • Justin Timberlake does coke with some under-dressed, under-aged girls
  • a more or less unrepentant asshole becomes the youngest billionaire in history.

Still, the momentum of the thing feels inescapable. That’s impressive.

Aaron Sorkin is on record saying he’s not a fan of Facebook. Even if he weren’t, the “Lemon Lyman” episode of “the West Wing” makes his views on Internet social-subcultures pretty clear. The thing is, we don’t need an Aaron Sorkin Facebook page to know an awful lot about Aaron Sorkin. More than most auteurs, he expresses himself through his art.

SEX: Definitely male. His clubhouse door still says, “No girls allowed.”
BIRTHDAY: Whatever makes him old enough to be cranky about kids these days but not so old that he can’t entertain kids these days. Probably early 60s.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Cranky

CURRENT CITY: Los Angeles, CA
HOMETOWN: Somewhere on the East Coast where the Jewish intelligensia reign. Probably New York City suburbs.
POLITICAL VIEWS: Cranky liberal.
RELIGIOUS VIEWS: Culturally & identifiably Jewish, but not observant.

BIO: I like young, smart, arrogant, usually sexist, male outsiders who occasionally get their comeuppance but for the most part get to rise to the top, defeating even super-star bad guys like Jack Nicholson and Republican House sub-committees.

FAVORITE QUOTATIONS:

“Lewis, we’ve had Presidents who were beloved who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand ’cause they’re thirsty. They drink the sand ’cause they don’t know the difference.” — President Andrew Shepherd

Joanne Herring: Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?
Charlie Wilson: Well, tradition mostly.

“There is nothing on this earth sexier, believe me, gentlemen, than a woman you have to salute in the morning. Promote ’em all, I say, because this is true – if you haven’t gotten a blow-job from a superior officer, well, you’re just letting the best in life pass you by. ‘Course, my problem is, I’m a colonel, so I guess I’ll just have to keep taking cold showers until they elect some gal president.” — Colonel Nathan Jessup

Flight Attendant: Sir, I’m going to have to ask that you turn off your cellular phone.
Toby: We’re flying in a Lockheed Eagle Series L-1011. Came off the line twenty months ago. Carries a Sim-5 transponder tracking system. And you’re telling me I can still flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?

LIKES AND INTERESTS: Latin, musical theater in general and Gilbert & Sullivan in particular, women named Amy, being the smartest kid in the class, being insolent to authority figures, Yiddish, minutiae, space exploration, using the same clean-cut white actors over and over again, fast talking, big words, grand gestures, speechifying, Maureen Dowd, recreational drug use, and baseball.

health, life in new york

Making Love to an Ice Pack

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Here’s a lesson I have now learned that I am sharing with you: Before you are scheduled to have surgery at a place, check that place out. Meet the doctor, if possible. And make sure you’re not going to be outnumbered by people in Ed Hardy shirts.

I arrived at my oral surgeon’s office yesterday at 12:20 for an appointment at 12:30. After two hours of waiting in a crowd that would have been equally comfortable at an OTB parlor, I was finally taken to the back and put in one of a room’s two dentist’s chairs. The other was occupied.

The guy in the other chair and I waited for another half an hour or so as moans came through the walls from other rooms and hygienists walked in and out changing their gloves. Hip hop blasted from a Panasonic boom box on the floor, circa 1991, so retro that it didn’t even have a CD player, only a tape deck and a radio.

At some point I started to shake — a normal enough response to perpetual anticipation, especially when you’re waiting to get all four wisdom teeth out to the soothing sounds of Jay-Z. Hygienists shot me amused looks and talked to each other in Spanish. I tried to calm myself down by silently reciting the Kipling poem “If,” which my dad had me memorize ages ago:

If you can keep your head / when all about you are losing theirs / And blaming it on you / If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you / Yet make allowance for their doubting too / If you can wait and not be tired by waiting —

Then the surgeon and a fleet of hygienists came in to start working on my roommate. They wasted no time: within five minutes, he was gasping and twitching; within ten, he had arched his entire back off the table like Cary Elwes in the Princess Bride when his life is being sucked from him by the Machine.


I’m not a brave person. There’s a reason I carry small, dissolving tablets of Klonopin around with me in my change purse. I don’t like pain, I hide from danger, and I am not even that crazy about excitement. I am CERTAINLY not crazy about watching dental patients reduced to begging for their lives.

Roommate #1 was restored to a sitting position, stuffed with cotton, and released. Then the hygienists ushered in Roommate #2.

If you can dream and not make dreams your master / If you can think and not make thoughts your aim …

You’ve got to be joking, I thought to myself. But the same team went to work, and again I had to watch. There wasn’t so much as a curtain dividing my side of the room from theirs.

The surgeon approached me and I asked to be knocked out. Retroactively, if possible. Wake me up when it’s over.

Sorry, said the surgeon. We don’t do that here. We don’t have the equipment to monitor if your heart stops.

I don’t care if my heart stops, I said, glancing across the room.

He laughed, and then shot me in the mouth from all angles.

If you can meet with triumph and disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same. …

I was left to grow increasingly numb as they finished with Roommate #2. By the time Roommate #3 had come and gone, I was ready to give up. If this were war, I would have been ready to tell them anything — name, rank, serial number, state secrets, battle plans, you name it. I didn’t sign up to be a soldier. I work in a Jewish non-profit, for God’s sake!

But they didn’t want secrets. They wanted my teeth.

They switched me from my chair — where I’d been sitting, by that point, for an hour and a half, feeling much like I had when a film prof put on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in class — to the other chair. The one that had been wiped down three times already.

New York … trilled the voice from the boom box. These streets will make you feel brand new, these lights will inspire you …

Ready? asked the surgeon.

I whimpered, and he went to work.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew / to serve their turn long after they’re gone / and so hold on til there is nothing in you / except the will that says to them “Hold on.” / If you can fill the unforgiving minute / with 60 seconds worth of distance run …

Thankfully, compared to the agonies of waiting and watching, the pain of the procedure itself was not too bad. I mean, it didn’t feel GOOD — it felt like someone was tearing my teeth from their sockets, which is more or less what was happening. But the surgeon was done in ten minutes. I was stuffed with cotton and returned to a sitting position, given two prescriptions and a pack full of sterile pads, and proclaimed a champ.

Yours is the earth / and everything that’s in it. / And, what is more, you’ll be a man, my son.

In my case, a man who eats lots of applesauce and watches episode after episode of Buffy. But Rudyard helped me through it, for which I am grateful. More, I am grateful to Charrow, who spent her whole afternoon in the dentist’s office and then helped get me home, ignoring all emissions of bloody drool. That is true friendship.