Hide your women, frogs

There's an island in the Boston Harbor where I used to go as a business consultant to do team building retreats and other such money building exercises. Local lore had it that it used to be where they housed delinquent boy children back in the nineteenth century and so it was called informally Bad Boys Island. I don't know where we got that idea: housing Bad Boys away from civilization. I suppose it solved the problem by isolating it and tamping down the offending testosterone until it learned to behave in polite society. Now the only place we can send all that testosterone is France, where we sent Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and now Tiger Woods. The funny thing is, that most Americans think going to France is some kind of punishment, a myth that Tiger would probably like to perpetuate while he "rehabilitates." Bon voyage, Tiger.

Pass the pixie dust...please

A couple of years ago I was with a friend and her five year old daughter to whom I was reading the story of Cinderella. She was a serious little girl and when the story was over I said to her, "You know, I think you're a princess that nobody knows about." I expected a giggle, but she said, "Yes, I think so too." Over the past 9 years I've been questioning and reexamining everything I've ever thought politically, so I guess it's overdue that I start to question my cultural assumptions. And what better place to start than Disneyworld? There is a beauty salon for little girls in Disneyworld and for one hundred and seventy-five dollars a little girl can be transformed into a princess complete with sparkly make-up, princess gown and Princess Aurora shoes and tiara, naturally. We saw these newly transformed princesses all over Disneyworld and when Paul would bow solemnly to them and say, "Your highness!" they accepted his homage royally. Nary a giggle. It was all part of the charm of a weekend in Disneyworld complete with the Osborne Family Dancing Light show in Fantasyland--5 (count em) million Christmas lights decorating Main Street that were dancing to computerized music. It was only after we left, that I thought to be cynical about Main Street which are all just facades after all and the achingly friendly help which was the result of thorough training of the staff--"cast" they call them because the whole place is show biz. But then again, so what? Maybe we should all be re-trained to be achingly friendly and where did I put my tiara?

I'm Mad as Hell and I''m Not Going to Take it Anymore

"What's in the water?" is the question. Americans are mad at EVERYTHING! Obama Rage Bush Rage Charter School Rage Health Care Rage residual Clinton Rage. I hate to say it, but all this rage is really bad for your cholesterol--which reminds me, pharmaceutical company rage, conflicting reports on what-is-really-good-for-you rage... I asked my Ma, in her position as eminence gris and wise Slav, what she thought of the state of things, politics, right to live, right to die, and she said, "You want to know what I think? You really want to know what I think?" We were driving on Rt. 309 and I said, "Yes, yes, godamnit, tell me! I need to know what to think I'm so confused!" And she leaned back in her seat and smiled her Buddha smile and said, "You really can't stomach confrontation can you? It's a failing of your generation." And I told her I would open the door of the moving vehicle when she said, "I'll tell you what I think: I d o n ' t c a r e." Me too. I'm dropping out of the discussion. Go elsewhere for your bile.

The Persistence of Religion

My friend, Mort Miller, who is a lot smarter about these things than other people, claims that ninety percent of Americans believe in the after-life. I can't imagine a worse statistic than that, because what that means to me is that ninety percent of everyone walking around, drinking coffee on the stool next to you in the diner, in the next car at the stop light, VOTING in the next election, buying a firearm at the Army Navy store, think that this life, this here life with trees and birds and animals and good conversation and good books and movies and the occasional perfect meal--a paradise!--is only a proving ground for a vague REAL life after you die. So this life doesn't count? That would certainly explain a lot of weird behavior and bizarre thinking of my fellow citizens. To those people who think that this life doesn't count, I would say this: so stay out of it! If you think this life doesn't count, you shouldn't be allowed to vote, hold office, have any say at all in the goings-on of the perfectly beautiful life that the other ten percent of us are currently trying to enjoy. So, butt out! And why, since they have so much secular influence, aren't churches taxed? If they're butting into our business, they should be taxed like any other lobbying group or business, which they are. Here's a link to an article in the NYT today about three clergymen getting all cozy as if that were a good thing.

Gimme Shelter

My husband, Paul, is always talking about the "end state of materialism" and how people with too many toys and too much time on their hands find it hard to amuse themselves. I buy (whoops--guess it even snuck into the language) that. If you have everything--and even in these current times of troubles what with the recession and the realization finally-what-took-you-so-long-people-that cadres of corporate CEOs run our lives and that the little democracy we got going doesn't mean diddly-squat--what do you do for excitement? I used to get excited looking at the Sears catalogue and dreaming of owning a "Huffy" bike--and was that brand well-named! But now I can own a dozen Huffy bikes if I want (for the record, I don't want-don't send me your old one) so what next? Well, the end of the world hysteria is always a winner. Omigod, we're going to die! I get tingly just saying that, don't you? I finally ate up all the tuna fish and drank all that bottled water from the last end of the world hysteria in 2000, but I can buy more if it means another couple of nights in the old fall-out shelter that was built in the 60s for nuclear end times. It's always a horrible party theme; forced gaiety and people saying what was always on their minds--who wants to know that, especially the morning after nothing happened? I am perplexed about why people are taking seriously the fact that the Mayans ran out of calendar. Didn't the Mayans already run out of time? Why are we listening to a bunch of people who--there's no polite way to put this--died out? For my end time excitement, I'm putting my money on Iran.

Mr. Sandman, send me a Literary Fix

I do my best thinking while asleep. There's so much noise during the day--people blowing their leaves, mowing their lawns, UPS guy, Fedex guy, feline demands--that the only time I actually get to think a thought through from beginning to end is during lights out. So, I wasn't surprised that last night I figured out the ending for my novel in what many may consider an unorthodox way: Jonathan Franzen appeared to me in a dream--no kidding--and he said, "remember how I did it in The Corrections? It was about a bunch of dysfunctional people and yet you kept reading even though you despise stories about dysfunctional people?" And I said, "yes, yes, tell me how you did it or I will die!" and he leaned in and whispered in my ear and well, that's all I'm going to say here. You got to buy my book and tell Oprah and Glenn Beck you love it, how it changed your life for the better how you stopped being a victim after you read it etc. The best part of the dream was when, right before he left, Jonathan Franzen said "by the way, I love your work!" Well, maybe that was my own psyche intruding, but I will warm myself on that during the home stretch.

Thumbs up

Pretty much anything George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey do is okay with me, including their latest: Men Who Stare At Goats. My prediction is that it will be a box office flop, however, because it tries to do something that is really hard to pull off: make a political statement entertaining. It's a success in that it almost achieves liftoff so the next person who tries to say something--about how our overseas adventures have been taken over by private marketers and contractors and that might actually be the (gulp) reason we started the war in Iraq in the first place--might succeed. But remember you saw it here first and actually Paul has been saying it for years. Just to give credit where it's due. But it's very funny--if the four of us in the theatre were any indication we couldn't stop guffawing--and really worth it just to see these three guys act.