Plus a whole bunch of New Yorkers

The summer do take a bite, don't she?

Some Books I Have Read Lately, and Brief Thoughts Thereupon

Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood: Short stories, some of which are loosely connected, all of which are goddamn ridiculously good and stick in the brain like oatmeal in a toddler's hair.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast: Cartoon memoir, I guess? Powerful, occasionally funny, occasionally bleak, had the side effect of making me see the silver lining of my parents both dying relatively young and suddenly.

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel: Hoooooo boy. Apocalyptic/dystopian, aka right up my alley; Atwoodian, even further up my alley. Absolutely fucking compelling (I mean I for real COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN), and in parts extremely unsettling.

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel: Still not finished, but really liking this -- I'm not generally the graphic novel type (the Chast notwithstanding), but it's the perfect way of expression for this story.

Microserfs, Douglas Coupland: A re-read, at an interval of about 10 years. Still love it (although I skimmed a whole lot of the Deep Thoughts About Man and Machine). Fun to see what has and has not changed in Silicon Valley (Apple, for instance, is circling the toilet at the time of the novel -- people hoping for a buyout package so they can leave, Steve Jobs ousted, etc.). Made me ugly-cry at the end.

Upon reflection, I'd have to give this one a pass.

23/40

One of the fun things about being my age and having small kids is getting to revisit a lot of the stuff you knew about three or three and a half decades ago. There's a lot of WTF involved.

The Revisit: Peter Pan (Disney, 1953)

We watched this over the xmas break on family movie night, figuring it'd be OK for both kids (ages 6 and 2) and the grandparents. Well ... yes and no. There was no cursing, sex or violence, but yikes, that thing was NOT what I remembered from the once or twice I saw it as a kid.

The story itself is pretty thin -- it'd be about 30 minutes if they told it straight. But then they go and add all this crap about the whole family tiptoeing around this blustery clumsterfoot of a domineering dad, which makes me not like the Darling family much. And then and THEN they have this really long (like 15 minute) super crazy racist scene at a "powwow" with what Kid Gleemonex, bless 'er, called "Native Americans" -- big old red hook-nosed Injun "braves" and nasty "squaws" and one suspiciously pale young princess (because only light-skinned people can be pretty), all this "How!" and "Big Chief smoke-um pipe" business that just went on for god.damned.EVER. Plus there is this longer-than-necessary scene with the deliberately pre-pubescent/latent Peter Pan and these clearly adult and super, SUPER-cunty mermaids who get their mer-vajays all stretched sideways over the amount of attention he pays to young miss Wendy -- it's pretty fucked up, honestly. Not Judy-Garland-as-Dorothy-Gale fucked-up, but close.

White History

10/40 

A little filler item I am 90 percent sure I wrote, from the February 8, 1983 edition of What's Up Elementary?, produced by me and my posse in Miss B.'s 3rd grade class,* a class-time-eating project I'm certain we badgered the kindly Miss B. into:

George WashingtonGeorge Washington is the Father of our country. From the time he was 20 to the time of his death, Washington was a great man. If Washington had not had the courage he showed, we would not be here today.

Now, it's not the writing I'm annoyed with -- I've seen worse by college-degree-holding adults who are paid to produce content for a living, right? (Although it does kind of make you wonder, hilariously, what kind of lesser-man shenanigans GW was up to before the age of 20.) No, it's the one-sided, whitewashed version of history it presents. Kids, then and now, are/were taught such white-hero-worshipping bullshit, completely lacking in nuance and perspective. And I don't know how to resolve this, even as it's becoming an issue with my own kids. 

For instance: The other day, Kid Gleemonex asks me on the way to swim practice, "How do you get to be Native American?"** I say it's not something you do; it's a matter of being a descendant of the peoples who lived on this continent before European "discovery" (yes I used air quotes) and colonization. "So they're still around today?" Yes, but in much smaller numbers than they would have been otherwise. "Because the Europeans killed them?" Yes ... "On purpose?" Well, yeah -- "But WHYYY?" [Ten-minute monologue on how the Europeans decided they liked this land and wanted it for themselves, and it didn't matter that there were already people living on it, and they said to get out and if the native people refused, they would fight and kill the native people, and they won most of the battles because they had guns and the natives didn't. Also smallpox, which may or may not have been on purpose.] Kid Gleemonex ruminates on this in silence. 

Then she has to go join her class in the pool, and I think I've just had a brilliant idea: A series of Real History books for kids. We don't have to go deep on the genocides, it doesn't have to be gory, but I'm deeply uncomfortable now with e.g. the "story of Thanksgiving" that they are taught, as if that's the whole story and everything was jake forever afterward between the colonists and the native peoples, la la la. I hate the lauding of Christopher Columbus (eeesh), the uncritical presentation of Manifest Destiny, the entirety of the way that the Civil War is taught. Gaah. These are the kinds of things I felt like such a fool, such a dupe, such a naive chucklehead about when I got to college, and lots of people never are forced to confront other ideas and narratives, so they keep going through life all "Christopher Columbus was a brave explorer! Wheee!"

Annnnnd ... I'm done writing but have made no point. Go fetch Gramma some more bourbon. 

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*Incidentally, in several ways revealing a lifelong tendency to put me and my posse front and center in whatever journalistic enterprise I undertook, from this slim news volume to the high school yearbook to this very blog.

**At least now they're teaching them the term Native American, instead of Indians like back in my day.

I mean, it's no LAMBORGHINI DIABLO, but it's pretty fucking quirky.

I am using context clues to determine that this was made (by me, alas) in about 1990. One lesson you could take from this is that it might be a good idea to get your own goddamned ideas and stop romanticizing a time that was over before you were born and which you have no real clue about. Another is, you have a lot of time on your hands and some very vague, uninformed thoughts on "freedom" and "revolution."

Also: is that Edie Brickell, hugging her knees like this is a tampon commercial? WTF?

"Your stepmom's cute." "Shut up, Ted." "Remember when she was a senior and we were freshmen?" "Shut UP, Ted."

Apropos of this post by my homegirl Francine:

Further Instances of Harassment to Which I Have Been Subjected

--The driver's ed teacher who none of the three of us girls wanted to be the last person in the car with. He went ON AND ON about how it was time to trade his wife (the mother of his three young children) in for a younger model, haw haw haw; he wore very short, tight white shorts during all our driving sessions (and mentioned, not infrequently, how "underwear just gets in the way" in his coachly athletic pursuits); he always wanted to stop in at DQ, get a booth, and buy us shakes instead of logging the required road-hours.

--The 6th-grade science teacher who'd run a filmstrip every week or so, during which he'd sit in the back of the room on the corner of his desk, hand jinglin' the change in his pocket. If you know what I mean. And back then I didn't but now I do.

--The boss who insinuated at least twice weekly that if only he weren't married, HOOOOOOO BOY would he and any of several of us younger female employees have a real good time together.

--The bra-strap snapping epidemic of fifth grade, in which for several weeks a group of boys -- the mean, popular ones -- spent literally all of their available time trying to snap our bra straps from the back and from the front. When we complained, the teachers -- all female -- were like, " ... now boys, cool it, mkay."

Good times!

Mustn't keep Princess waiting!

So, yesterday I got a pedicure, my first ever.

I am officially on maternity leave now, I was mostly done with the high-priority to-do list items like setting up for the baby, and cooking and freezing a boatload of meals for us. I like it when I have cute painted toenails but I can't reach my feet to do it myself at this point. Also, it just seemed like the thing to do. There are people who do this, like, weekly, and most adult women in the First World have had their first pedicure by this point in their lives, so! Off to the mini-mall.*

This place is new and clean and doesn't reek of birth-defecty chemicals. I'm reassured by their attention to single-use items and hygiene in general. The lady who takes care of me is a very sweet, very professional Asian woman named Yvonne. We talk briefly, I choose the deluxe service package that includes calf & foot massage (my dogs are tired, y'all), and pick out a nice pink enamel for my color. The whole thing takes about 45 minutes, during which I cannot shake the One-Percent, Privileged Rich White Suburban Lady A-Hole feeling that has kept me from doing this before age 37-and-three-quarters. It's WEIRD.

I have a sort of half conversation with the One-Percent, Privileged Rich White Suburban Lady next to me as we watch Family Feud (Christ that show is awful) on the flat-screen TV next to us, I read a bunch of stuff on my iPhone, I do whatever Yvonne is telling me to do, and I field the numerous questions from staff and guests about my scary-big midsection -- you can tell it makes the staff a little nervous that I'm so close to my due date. The massage was marvelous, my feet look great (they scrub off the calluses! whaaat!), I gave Yvonne a huge tip for her gentle treatment of the Pedicure Noob (and also because of Privilege Guilt -- just like the times I've gotten a shoeshine -- it's a strange feeling for a person of my low-rent background to be sitting literally higher than a service person, getting worked on, for what you know is low pay and less respect ... ugh).

Anyway. My point is: I liked the results, I am glad I tried it, but I feel oddly uncomfortable about the whole experience and it is extremely unlikely to become a habitual thing for me. I am not the Idle Rich -- I'm as 99 percent as they come -- and it's hard to imagine ever getting used to this kind of treatment on the reg.

And in conclusion: WOW, do I have to scrape to find a problem. This has been your Privileged A-Hole Report for today.

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*I could make a whole post out of this, but we have noticed that the outdoor strip mall is the dominant form of commerce in the place where we live now. Each one is apparently required by local ordinance to contain the following: a taqueria, a martial-arts center, a nail salon, a tutoring place (e.g. Kumon), a fro-yo joint, and either a dry-cleaner's, a chain coffee shop, or a dental office, plus one wild card slot, which can take any form from Armed Forces recruiting center to pottery studio.

Our girlfriends are most chaste.

In honor of Women's History Month, a brief selection of:

Harassments To Which I Have Been Subjected

--That one coach/"teacher" of science in seventh grade, who assigned seating at the lab tables (which had those tall chairs), and put all the girls up front, basically so he could look up our skirts when he "dropped the chalk."

--This carny who, when I won a roach clip (...WTF?) at some stupid carny game at the Reunion the summer I was eleven, took my prize and pinched it to my shirt right between my 11-year-old boobs.

--Some asshole who tried to take an upskirt photo of me on the BART escalator about 5 years ago.

--A NYC taxi driver -- not a native speaker of English -- who spent the entire ride talking about pretty filthy sex stuff as he drove me on the errand my internship sent me on, junior year of college.

--An elderly, extremely nattily-dressed gentleman in the Willie Brown mold, who upon goggling at my St. Patrick's Day green plaid miniskirt as I crossed Civic Center Plaza on the way to work in 2000, stopped, leaned on his cane, made a curving/hourglass motion with his free hand and said, "Unnh-UHHH! Well-MADE!"

--A homeless guy who, just a few weeks ago, turned as I was passing him on the sidewalk and said directly into my face with forceful but flat animosity, "Hey BITCH."

--These two boys, who must have been about thirteen, who spent most of a day at the public pool trying to grab my friend C. and I in the crotch (we were eight).

"They're O.R. scrubs." "O, R they?"

Things That Happened At Dinner, A Dinner Which I Bought With My Heathen Atheist Liberal California Money For My Sister And Two Girls (Ages 17 and 18) Whom She Knows From Some Churchy Thing Or Other

--I gave a discourse on how work-study works (it is funded by The Government [ooooooh]; you are allotted a set amount of dollars as part of your financial aid package; you find and perform a work-study job at your college; if you don't get a work-study job, you don't get that money at all because it is hypothetical till you earn it; once you have earned your allotment, you are dunzo till the next financial aid year; how you spend it is up to you but it is counted as part of your "contribution" to your own education).

--My sister and I attempted to explain why we thought that a Chili's or an Olive Garden was everything our town lacked back when we were in high school -- you know, a place to get a decent afterschool/summer job, a place to go on dates, a place to hang out with your friends that wasn't a decrepit brown/yellow McDonald's -- and the girls did not get it at all. They also didn't get why we don't think that the Chili's we now have is so crazy fucking awesome like we thought it would be when we were sixteen. GOD.

--The teen I hadn't met before tonight, Teen #2 (I have in fact struck up a friendship with Teen #1, disagree politically though we almost certainly do; she is good people), texted through fully four-fifths of the meal.

--Also Teen #2 did not thank me for picking up the check. I didn't do this to BE thanked, but listen, kiddo: That shit is just rude. I bet Jesus always said thanks to the people who fed him and his fucking entourage.

--I made a mental note of where one of these homeschooled teens is going to kollege, and now, having looked it up (its slogan is: "Answering God's Call: Every workplace. Every nation."), I am suffering little shivers of fear.

--I tried to explain why Karate Kid is sofa king awesome. Without using curse words. (See above re: homeschooled xtian teens).

--I heartily commended Teen #1 for unequivocally cutting off a nascent relationship with a guy who, after three days of fun flirty infatuation, let it drop that he had a girlfriend already. Who needs to be forever in the role of Auditioning Next Girlfriend, even if he ditches her for you? Ugh.

--I admitted that I, too, couldn't make it past about fifteen pages of Brave New World. Tried to qualify it with "maybe I was just too young when I tried it" and "but I read like a mothafucka!! honest!!", but still felt like Elaine offering Kramer's insane summary of a manuscript she was supposed to read and discuss -- "It's a story about love, deception, greed, lust, and ... unbridled enthusiasm."

--I drank two Shiner Bocks because YAY, BEING (way the fuck) OVER 21! BOO-YAAAAAA!! Would've had three if the waiter had been on his game. My money, my drinks, my beloved baby sister drivin' me home.

And all the criminals in their coats and their ties / are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise

Thanks to this post from the delightful and delovely Blabbermouse, I realized that to get even sixty percent of the things on my to-do list done, I’m going to have to sacrifice something. Specifically, sleep. So.

Who Else Was At The Goddamned Gym At Five Fucking Thirty This Morning?

--Senior citizens. Those fuckers go to bed at 4:45 p.m., right after dinner. Of course they’re up already. They’ve been up for HOURS by this point. It’s their lunchtime workout.
--Guys who have nothing else in their lives but the gym and their own rippedness. They’ll still be here three hours from now.
--That sort of creepy guy who’s kind of always there no matter what time of the day or day of the week you go. Naturally, he has a van.
--A couple of beautiful early-twenties girls whose bodies are, like: daaaaaaaaaaaaamn.
--A whole bunch of 30- to 45-year-old moms, blazing through a workout in time to get home before the kids and partner wake up. Ahh yes, I have found my people.

Now thank we all our god

It is the 79th anniversary of the earthly corporeal presence of the One True Deity, the Almighty and Most Holy, He Whose Hand Is Upon The Wheel of Destiny: SHATNER!

Look ye all, look ye all and be lifted in His righteousness!

Next stop: rocket science.

Speaking of the Olde Hometowne:

Facts About My Salutatorian Speech at High School Graduation, May 1992:


--As I gave it, my hair was hot-rolled, my face was on, I was wearing earrings (pretty much the last hurrah for all three of those things, come to think of it), and I knew my legs looked good even though I was wearing white hose, and white heels from Payless. (The white was mandatory; the heels were from Payless because [see the first half of this sentence].)

--I quoted Paula Poundstone.

--Also the Rolling Stones.

--And maybe David Letterman?

--I made what seemed funny at the time but is in retrospect sort of a racist joke at my friend Laurie’s expense.

--I called out several of my teachers for a job well done: Mrs. B. (1st grade), Miss B., her daughter (3rd grade), Mrs. L. (4th grade), Mrs. J. (8th grade), Mrs. E. (geometry, trig/pre-calc), Mrs. A. (Honors Sr. English).

--I hoped that certain teachers whom I did not call out, realized it and burned with chagrin over how they had wronged me.

--I did not turn over a written draft of the speech in advance for vetting by Mrs. E., and that drove her NUTS NUTS NUTS.

--I think she thought I was fucking with her, and maybe I was a little because WHOA REBEL, but mostly it was because I didn’t finish it till the car ride to the school.

--I believed it was quite original. Who knows whether it actually was or not. Probably not.

--I was asked for copies of it, by several people unrelated to me, after the fact.

--I have no copy myself – thanks be to the most high Shatner.

Also, three out of four train engines are total assholes.

Things I’ve Learned, Thanks to Board Books and Other Very Young Children’s Lit

--The Little Red Hen is kind of a twat. I mean, I’m not saying she should’ve shared the damn bread with those lazy a-holes she hangs out with – they totally blew her off when she asked for help, repeatedly – but she didn’t have to be such a bitch about it.

--Hippos are the major sad sacks of the animal kingdom. They’re always moping around whining like a bunch of whiny bastards. Unless they’re going apeshit totally trashing some other hippo’s house.

--Llama Llama and his Llama Mama are doing JUST FINE without Papa Llama, thankyouverymuch. Even if Little Llama is kind of a scaredy-cat and a whiny brat who throws fits in stores, which, were he MY Little Llama, would get his llama block knocked off.

--If you’ve ever wondered where your dog is, probably he took your car, drove to a tree, climbed a ladder, and is up there partying his doggy ass off in the treetops with all the other dogs in town.

--Dr. Seuss invented crunk.

--The monster at the end of the book is Grover. Probably shoulda put a spoiler warning on that one.

The more you know

So watching House the other night, I had one of them there Realizations: If I were watching this show back when I was fifteen, I’d’ve been ALL ABOUT blond prettyboy Chase, the Aussie who seems to feel that shampoo is frankly just not his bag. I might – MIGHT – have spared a thought for Wilson, because fifteen-year-old me has a lovely fireplace in her heart stoked with undying lurve for Dead Poets Society and everything in it except for Meeks and that douche that says “Let Keating fry!” right before he gets his clock righteously cleaned by … oh hell, was it Josh Charles, or Douchebag of the Future Ethan Hawke? Help me out here.

ANYWAY. Point is, Chase looks like a poor man’s Cary Elwes, and that was my type way back then. Blonde, fine-featured, foreign accent, harmless postadolescent prettiness. But now that I know what use those guys are (specifically: none. They are of none use.), 35-year-old me, faced with the buffet of hotness that is House, M.D., would prefer to cut herself a nice big old slab of House himself.

With, ok, a side of Wilson. Eternal flame, doncha know.