macaronimaniac

Relaxatives

2011-09-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

Overheard frequently in our household:

Cheez: Calm it down, Macaroni.

Me: Not my strong suit, Cheez.

I do not relax well. I can hike four miles each way to get to a beach, but I can't spend more than four minutes just lying down on the beach. Consider me the Prius of personality types. I'm not so much about the idling, more about the recharging.

Now that is what I call a hybrid

So while some people think weekends are for reposing, I think they are for imposing.

Imposing as many activities as I can onto the Mac and Cheez schedule (pronounce it shed-ule, it helps persuade the Canadian).

Yes, I can pack more into 24 hours than Kiefer Sutherland. And I do it without the use of split-screen.

Submitted for your consideration: Friday, September 23rd-Saturday, September 24th:

First, Mac and Cheez bike up a volcano.

Not for any of the usual reasons one bikes up a volcano.

We bike up to attend what is billed as

A Quebecois House Dance and Party--Come and dance French-Canadian
quadrilles, squares, the Lancers, and other participatory dances at a
traditional Quebecois house party called by Seattle's Suzanne Girardot. These dances are similar to American square dances, but they have their own unique Quebecois style and interesting twist to the dance. Please bring potluck snacks and drinks to share. The dance is free, but tips are happily accepted.

We do not know a damn thing about Quebecois music, nor do we know the host of the house party. But I do know that dragging Cheez onto a dance floor to dance dances neither of know is exactly my idea of a good time.

Plus also we do sorta know the fiddler player, a nice Jewish girl from nowhere near Quebec who is so amazing at Quebecois fiddling that (according to my friend Mr. Internet) she played in Quebec's internationally renowned traditional supergroup La Bottine Souriante.

So we dance. We bike home (without peddling--a distinct advantage of living at the bottom of a volcano). We sleep. Mostly Cheez sleeps. I'm a macaroninsomniac, so I get up early, write for a while, and then waylay Cheez as he is about to start shaving so we can try playing Jolene as an accordion-banjo duet.

Why, you may be wondering, would I waylay Cheez as he is about to start shaving so we can try playing Jolene as an accordion-banjo duet?

Because Jolene has only three chords. Whereas Here You Come Again has damn near to a dozen. Which makes Jolene a much better place for us to start, in our quest to form Parton Me, the world's greatest banjo-accodion Dolly Parton cover band (as I hope my friend Mr. Internet will one day proclaim us to be).

Then we go to a house party to hear a band.

This time, there is no fiddler. But we do know the lead singer. She works with our backyard neighbor, who is hosting the party. So instead of biking up a volcano, we stroll through the gate between our yards. Which is about as arduous as volcano biking, given that it involves walking through enough spider webs to take down Peter Parker, Miss Muffet, and Wilbur the Pig.

The neighbor and the singer and most of the guests all work "in social justice." So it's the kind of house party that starts at 11 am and involves a potluck wherein items have labels such as Gluten Free Waffles (contains eggs--s☹rry vegans).

We eat. We groove to the band. We're back home by 2 pm.

Just in time for a craft project.

Because after a summer of staring at the bare-bulb-and-ceiling-fan in our bedroom, wondering if there is anyway to make a ceiling fan not the most aesthetically awful thing imaginable, we come up with . . .

Furry lamp shade! We happen to have all the ingredients (wire, thread, fake fur) on hand, so we get Project Runwacko is wrapped up by 5 pm.

Which leaves me just 7 more hours of Saturday to cram with activity.

How about we, you know, RELAX? Cheez pleads.

Luckily, before I can even answer--and by answer I mean defeat any possible hope he has of getting me to sit still--Little Lord Portleroy phones to ask if we want to go see a band. Because his friend Paige's friend Nick is in town with his band, and Paige has a couple extra tickets if we want to go.

Paige's friend Nick, it is worth mentioning, is Nick Rhodes.

We barely have time to pick out our best 80s outfits (me: purple rose-patterned Betsey Johnson dress, houndstooth jacket and houndstooth stockings, purple cowboy boots; Cheez: basic black with white leather tie, and two-tone black and white Doc Martens), go to a dinner party, and then head to the Rose Garden for our sixth-row seats to the ultimate 80s flashback.

Not that we can sit. Who can sit when Simon Le Bon is convincing me that despite having eaten my way through three parties in the past 20 hours, I am in fact hungry like the wolf?

Paige doles out VIP passes, which means after the show we get to hangout backstage.

Like Quebecois quadrilles, hanging out backstage with the prettiest band ever

(sorry, The Go-Gos . . . maybe if you'd worn as much makeup as Duran Duran, you could have been just as pretty)

is a new one for Mac and Cheez, but we rise to the occasion in true M&C form:

Nick tells me and Cheez and Sarah Dougher that we have cool glasses.
Cheez tells Nick Rhodes he's covered Rio on the banjo.
Nick and Cheez discuss how Roxy Music's More Than This rips off a riff from Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline, while I scour the catering spread looking for chocolate (futilely, as it turns out; I begin to wonder if maybe The Go-Gos would have more girlcentric snacks).

Yes, we party like it's only 12 years after 1999.

Meaning, everyone who was cool in the 80s is now in their 40s, if not their 50s. By midnight, we've cleared the coliseum and are headed home.

The highlight of the whole circadian cycle? Probably the point during Wild Boys at which Nick, Simon, etal. segued into a cover of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Turns out, I *can* RELAX.

If RELAX involves a throbbing beat, a full synth-pop band, and dancing in the aisles.

It Takes Two (Wheels) to Tango

2011-06-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

Portland is a lot like Camp Granada: They say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.

And this weekend, it/we did.

We *could* have had our fun at Portland's Pride Festival. But that seemed a little mainstream.

Bear in mind, the Cheez and I did live in West Hollywood for six years.

(and when I say "bear" I do mean this guy:

No, wait, I mean *this* guy:

)

(note to self, where do you place the ")" to close a parenthetical statement that ends with a photo of a topless hairy gay dude? That's an issue they didn't cover in my high school copy of Funk & Wagnalls)

So anyhow, instead Cheez and I did something utterly Portland: Pedalpalooza. Which, if you are too lazy/cautious/immobilized-by-your-mobile-device to click the link, is a two-week festival of biking events in and around Portland. This being Portland, "bike events" can mean things you never dreamed. Mostly soggy things.

But not this:

Yes, bike tango.

The ride met up in Jamison Park, then we biked with tango music blaring (okay, maybe that's not such a big deal) and with portable ballroom dance floor (okay, definitely that is a big deal, albeit one disassembled and folded into neat stacks, then loaded onto a damn sturdy bike trailer) to the waterfront, assembled the floor, and Cheez and Macaroni got their first ever tango lesson.

If you are looking for my usual bike in that film, note that for Sunday at least the leopard had changed her spots, and Cheez and I were riding the tandem.

Because when we left the house, he misheard and thought I'd said we were going on the tandem ride, not the tango ride.

Of course, it takes two to tandem. And to tango. And in fact it took two tandems to tango ride, because another couple showed up on tandem for the same ride.

This is, after all Portland. In any group of forty people, you will find at least 4 (aka two sets of) tandem riders.

Reminds me of the Kinsey report statistic that 10% of the population is gay.

Of course, that was only a general estimate.

In West Hollywood, it was slightly higher, maybe 110%.

In Portland, the lesbian moms also throw the statistic off in terms of 10% homo. But at 4 out of 40 we are certainly 10% bi squared, as in bi-seated bi-cycles.

In other news, I also had a piece in the New York Times this weekend. Because, as usual, war profiteering is breaking news.

Even if it's Civil War profiteering.

But the real news that's fit to upload is in this tango video:

Yes, catch the woman wearing red lacy peds.

Sexy peds, people. Who knew?

I can just imagine Allan Sherman commemorating it in song:
You remember
little Stacey
She's sporting peds that
are red n lacy
on the dance floor
quite a sight
but now the dance floor's
loaded on her bike.

Fun when it stops raining indeed.

True Facts About Making Stuff Up

2011-06-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

What, you may be wondering, is it like to be a published novelist?

Damn good question. Answer: I don't know.

My novel is due out in February, 2012. Which, though it seems like a long ways off for my adoring fans, in the world of publishing is actually quick turnaround. And means I hit the shelves just in time for all your Black History Month book buying needs.

So I am not actually a published novelist. Yet.

I am, however, a professional novelist. As in, I got a royalty check!

From Sweden.

Because, for reasons I don't quite understand, in addition to selling in North America and the UK, my novel has sold in Norway and Brazil.

Yes, I am being translated. Or rather, my narrator/protagonist is being translated:
In the US: free woman of color
In the UK: free woman of colour
In the Denmark: free wøman øf cølør
In the Portuguese-speaking Brazil: free wõman õf cõlõr

(c'mon, if you celebrate the first two sales with a low-flo dual flush toilet, you might as well celebrate the next two with some recycling. Of your jokes)

In the ridiculously long time since I last blogged, I have learned a few things about being a novelist. And because I am such a gifted teacher, I will share them with you now.

Thing #1: Stalking has its upside. About the most important thing you can do as a new novelist is to get a known novelist to read your book and possibly blurb it. This I have done. By happening upon a book signing by a known novelist and asking her, ever so casually, to read my manuscript. Which she agreed to do. Wasn't that easy? Yes! And I only had to travel 3,000 miles to happen upon the signing!

Because you know Portland doesn't have any bookstores of its own.

Hmmmmm is recycling pictures somehow less lazy than recycling jokes?

Thing #2: Stalking, sure, that's okay. But let's not be insensitive.
So when a famous author, or two, or as many as you can land, agree to read your book, it's nice to send a handwritten note thanking them. The only problem with that is my egregious handwriting. Not much point sending a deep token of appreciation in a completely illegible scrawl.

Thus I carefully, painstakingly (as in pain of hand cramps), wrote out my notes. Had the Cheez read them over. Was about to pop note two in the envelope when I *happened* to glance at the back of the card, which had the credit for the image on the front of the card. A lovely abstract quilt. Called There goes the neighborhood.

Maybe not the best way to say, "hello, famous black writer, I am a nice white woman who I swear is celebrating African American culture!"

Thing #3: Maybe it's not Maybelline.
Famous writer the third advised me Make sure you look really good in your author photo. Which I thought I'd done, by asking a friend with advanced photoshop skills to take said photo. And then doctor it.

Which he did quite well. But the doctor can only do so much given the patient. And this patient is impatient with make-up and product and the like.

Do I have to wear a lot of make-up and product when I do public appearances? I asked Famous writer numero quatro (really it is amazing anyone has time to be a best-selling author, given how much time just answering macaronimaniacal queries can take). Are you kidding? she answered. If you do TV, first of all they deal with all that and second of all WHO CARES because you are doing TV! Otherwise, three words: Joyce Carol Oates.

And it's true! Sure, I may not have over fifty published novels and an endowed professorship at Princeton, but damn if I don't have better eyewear and slightly less frizzy hair!

Thing #4: What's in a name? Everything. Starting with name recognition.
So Emily Let-Me-Just-Fold-That-Up-And-Hide-It-Where-No-One-Will-Find-It-Until-I-Am-Dead Dickinson not withstanding, most writers want to be read. And most readers want to read.

Seems like a match made in marketing heaven.

So I keep telling everyone I talk to about my book. Seriously, when I was standing on the admissions line at the Boston Museum of Fine Art behind a sweet college student who left her ID at home, causing me to bring her into the museum as the Plus-One on my museum pass, I told her and all her ID-remembering friends about my book. Which they seemed very excited to read. Except that it's harder to remember than an ID, on account of it doesn't yet have a name.

Or rather, not only one name.

I wrote it with a title in mind. My agent didn't like that title. So she sold it under another title. That I don't like.

No biggie. Everyone told me publishers always change the title. So I figured I'd wait to see what the publisher thought.

And they agreed! That is, they agreed that the title my agent gave it wasn't the right one. Which launched me into session upon session of generating possible titles.

In case you are wondering, titles follow no rhyme or reason. Don't believe me? Check the bestseller lists of late.

There are the one word (or one wordish titles): Room. Doc. The Help.
Then there are the egregiously long titles: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (at least four autumns of which is spent just writing the damn name).
There are the titles that need in a feminist consciousness raising: The Paris Wife. The Tiger's Wife.

And dear hearts, I tried my hand at ripping of each and every one of them. Sort of.

At some point, as I was shouting out title after title, I screamed The Cask of Amontillado.
I believe that one's been taken the ever helpful Cheez noted.
Freaking Canadians, with their penchant for facts.
The OTHER Cask of Amontillado I shouted back.

So to recap: Please tell all your friends/mates/venn/amigos in North America/the UK/Denmark/Brazil toput The OTHER Cask of Amontillado by a certain Not As Prolific But Neither as Frizzy author at the top of their Black History Month gift lists.

Because if I can make it to the bestseller list, you know what all the other authors will be saying:
There goes the neighborhood.

Aflush With Pride With News of Pending Publication

2011-02-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

Q: What do Picasso and MacaroniManiac have in common?

HINT:
It is not a penchant for leopard fashion.

No, it is that our artistic creations have both been sold at auction.

His for $106 million, aka the most money ever paid for a piece of art in an auction.

Mine, for a very nice advance for a first-time novelist, aka somewhat less than $106 million.

Q: What do Queen Elizabeth II, Her Royal Highness, and MacaroniManciac have in common?

DOUBLE HINT:

Once again, not about the leopard.

No, it is that Lizzie Deuce and I are both worthy of a pre-empt in the U.K.

She, pre-empting whatever happens to be scheduled-pronounced-sheduled on British telly, with coverage of anything newsworthy the palace does, such as going to war over the Falkland Islands or bidding farewell to her ex-daughter-in-law or bidding a fonder farewell to her corgies.

And I, for my novel, which yes dears, not only sold North American rights at auction this week but also UK rights in a pre-empt.

Which means that while some readers will be devouring the story of Mary Bowser's journey from slavery to being a free woman of color, others will get Mary Bowser's journey from slavery to being a free woman of colour.

This is VERY VERY VERY VERY exciting news.

Needless to say, the Cheez and I are celebrating.

By installing a new dual-flush, low-flo toilet!!!!

Only kidding.

Really our neighbor Don installed it.

Of course, going greener (regardless of whether you are going number 1 or number 2) is only one of the Portlandish ways we celebrated.

We began by paying a visit to Mecca.
NOTE: that is a Union kepi, not a Confederate kepi.

My slogan being not the South will rise again but rather the Mac will read again.

We dressed up from the kepi down, and had friends over for an impromptu cocktail party.

But mostly, we've run around the house screaming.

Still, just in case we hadn't screamed it loud enough for you to hear wherever you may be:

MY NOVEL GOT SOLD THIS WEEK AND I AM GOING TO BE PUBLISHED ON TWO CONTINENTS AND MORE MAYBE WHEN THE REST OF THE FOREIGN RIGHTS GET HASHED OUT (PLEASE MENTION TO ANY CIVIL WAR-OBSESSED JAPANESE PUBLISHERS YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW) AND YAY YAY YAY, etc.

The novel will be out in early 2012. Between now and then, I need to do final edits based on my editor's comments.

And, according to my friend Sue, practice saying things like, Thanks, Terry, it's great to be here.

And figure out what leopard print goes best with blue kepi.

And of course start writing my next book.

I'm not 100% sure what it will be. The footnote from history angle was clearly the big hook for the first novel. But for the next one, I'm thinking maybe something Cubist. And trading in that kepi for a beret.

My State of the Disunion Address

2011-01-24T19:46:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. I have been pathetically inept at blogging. I apologize. It's not that I don't love you and miss you and want to blog to you. It's just that I've been away.

Far away.

In the nineteenth century.
Wait a minute, that's not my Civil War uniform.

It's my Pie Liberation Army apron. Worn whenever I must defend the Union of Crust and Filling.

Suffice it to say, I am not one to dessert my post.

Not unless the infantry band is playing a rousing chorus of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lard.

But let's get back--way back--to the Civil War.

Which as it turns out is late-breaking news. As in, the New York Times is sesquicentennially blogging the Civil War in real time.

Inasmuch as they had blogs, or computers, or even electrons back in 1861.

Well, I guess they had electrons. They just didn't know it. Like some sort of subatomic halitosis that their friend were just too polite to mention.

Let me be clear: I am a normal, red-blooded American.

Which means the Civil War bored the hell out of me when we had to study it in school, just like it did you and every one else.

So how did I become so obsessed with the conflict that I now receive form letters addressed to Dear Civil War Enthusiast?*

*NOTE: I don't actually receive those letters. They are mailed to me. But if the Cheez gets to them first, he grabs them and runs around the house mocking me.

Let me tell you, when you are being mocked by a Canadian, you know you have fallen low.

Anyway, I became obsessed by the Civil War while accidentally writing a novel. About the Civil War. Which I've been working on, on and off, for, well let's just say I could have fought the Civil War in less time.

So Ulysses S. Grant me a few more minutes of your what-the-heck-you're-already-screwing-around-on-the-internet-time and surf on over to the New York Times to see just how groovy and interesting the Civil War can be, when served up with a healthy portion of MacaroniManiac.

Who You Calling a Pussy--or a Faggot or Dyke? Gather Round for CUTE KITTENS AGAINST QUEER-BASHING!!!!

2010-10-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

I know Barack Obama. I worked with Barack Obama. And my kitten is no Barack Obama.

She is a lot cuter. Even if she does look like Edward G. Robinson.

But one thing my kitten and Barack Obama have in common: both star in videos about the rather un-cute but unfortunately timely issue of the harassment and bullying of queer teens.

So far, Obama's video has gotten a few more viewers.

Okay, I know. He's THE PRESIDENT. It's a big deal when he speaks out like this.

But how hard can it be? He's got writers, videographers, press people--and an opposable thumb. My cat doesn't have any of that. She doesn't even have her sparkle ball toy. It got knocked under the fridge days ago, and with my bad back, I ain't going in after it.

I am guessing you have already heard about the It Gets Better Project -- organized by sex columnist Dan Savage to give teens who need it some insight into how their future might look. I respect that the President, Nancy Pelosi, Gloria Estefan and a lot of other famous people have made videos. But you know, most of those videos seem kind of like a grown-up talking AT a kid, not someone talking to a kid in the way a kid (and teens ARE kids despite what they want to believe) needs.

So even though I have ten thousand other things to do, I spent all yesterday making this:

I hope you'll take 2 minutes, 54 seconds to watch it. And then a few more to post a comment on youtube about it, Facebook it, Twitter it, forward it to anyone you can. Because some place in WhoKnowsWhereville there is someone who needs to hear what it has to say. Someone whose life it might even save. And since my cat is an indoor cat, there is no way she can go out and find that someone to say it in person. Please help the cat and the kid and the world, by passing it on.

Just for the record, though: the kids out there aren't being bullied because their queer. Or "suspected" of being queer. They're being bullied because we live in a bigoted, cruel culture that likes to pick on anyone who's different.

But sometimes being different can make you want to make a difference. Like that scrawny, biracial guy with the funny name. Or that cat with a face only a gangster movie could love. Or the chick wearing way too much leopard who really should be doing her laundry before she heads out of town on a business trip. So please do your part to pass it on.

Greek Bearing G.I.F.T.

2010-09-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

My friend Stella Unpronounceableadopolous and her husband Dr. Mensch came to visit a while back. Far enough back that I was flat on my back, still in the depths of ruptured disk-induce pain.

You should really see a surgeon Dr. Mensch said.

You should really meet my friend Silke Stella Unpronounceableadopolous said.

Since the surgeon had a four-week wait for an appointment but Silke was available that Tuesday, she got me first. She even made a house call.

Hello, I am Silke Silke said, arriving at our house exactly on time. Because Silke is German. A German-Immersed-in-Fitness-Training, aka G.I.F.T. May I take your picture?

At this point, I'd been MRIed, ultrasounded, and electro-stimulated. I wasn't about to be phased by something that can be done at any Kmart with a bad floral backdrop and a shag-carpeted hand rest.

So I let Silke the G.I.F.T take my picture. Actually, she took a bunch of them. Then she whipped out a clipboard and started taking notes on every aspect of my posture.

Which it turns out sucked.

My posture, I mean. Her notetaking didn't suck. It was immaculate. She is, after all, German.

And her Duetsche-ishly detailed and diligent denoting clearly revealed that somewhere along the way, I had become as crook-limbed as a contortionist flying coach class.

Luckily, Silke the G.I.F.T could offer more than a packet of peanuts and a complimentary beverage.

Because Silke the G.I.F.T gave me the gift of Egoscue.

(Pronunciation guide: Egoscue sorta rhymes with He toss shoe, appropriate enough given that my inability to tie my shoes had been leading me to toss everything from footwear to hissy fits for quite some time).

Egoscue is not some Eastern European method of torture smuggled out across the Alps.

It was actually smuggled out of San Diego. By Arnold Palmer.

And it's not torture. It's just postural alignment. Which you attain by doing a bunch of exercises with charming monikers such as Hooklying Gluteal Contractions and Frog Pull-overs.

Really, frog pull-over. The closest I'll ever come to my childhood dream of dressing in Garanimals.

(Not to be confused with my adult dream of decorating in animal print, which I am achieving quite admirably).

Silke the G.I.F.T. spent a couple hours teaching me my exercises, which she told me I had to do every morning.

Which I did.

And which--unlike the prescription painkillers, the steroid tapers, the over-the-counter NSAID, and the $1000+ worth of physical therapy--actually worked.

Four days later, I rode my bike twenty miles. Two weeks later, Silke the G.I.F.T came back to take more notes and give me new exercises. Then another week later, she moved back to Germany. But by that point, I'd been to see the surgeon but realized I was improved enough not to need to go under the knife.

Besides, Silke the G.I.F.T. left me in the hands of another Egoscue practioner. Who has been slowly but surely getting me back to a fully functioning back.

Moral of the story: if you didn't believe the American healthcare system is completely screwed up, ponder this: the warmth and sympathy of a German was the best thing that happened to me during this entire medical odyssey. This is not a concept that comes easily to members of my tribe.

But I suppose it's better to have one's simplistic associating of all things German with the Nazis ruptured than to have one's L5-s1 disk ruptured. Henceforth, I swear, I'll stop being so catty when it comes to Krauts.

Okay, maybe not. But at least I'm parodying with impeccable posture.

Descent from My iPhone

2010-09-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

How in the hell can Apple sink so low?

No, I'm not talking about the kind of shit product releases that can be summed up in three words and one numeric symbol:

iPad=my bad

I am talking about the kind of shit morals that requires two freaking hours of masterful condemnation by a man who comports himself much like a Revivalist preacher with a cult following.

Except sweatier.

Of course the cult in question is ... well, let's just say I bit the fruit and now I've been cast out of Eden.

Not that sweat is inherently antithetical to Apple. I happened to require some customer dis-service at our local crApple store this week, and the pimply-faced staff were so sweaty the place smelled like a college dorm during Finals Week.

And people, I used to teach at Reed College, so I know from smelly students.

I suppose I shouldn't have been so judgmental of the mouth-breather behind the counter who was taking so damn long to help me. He was probably only mouth-breathing to avoid smelling his shiny, happy coworkers.

Although, given their perspiratory tendencies, maybe that should be sheeny, happy coworkers.

But still the sweaty man rang out his righteous indignation.

Except, actually, he's not a cult leader. He's a cult follower. And he knows you are too. And even though he spent those two hours telling you how freakin' evil the freakin' cult is, he doesn't actually ask you to leave it.

Just to email it.

Which, if you are like me, you will be doing from a burnished-silver keyboard annotated in VAG Rounded font.

Welcome to that very special case of self-hating ethnics, the morally outraged Apple user.

iWouldn't actually buy an iPad, because it is a stupid, purposeless product.

Not like my iPhone, which I bought because I needed to make and receive calls.

Which I can do on my iPhone.

On rare occasions.

If I'm not trying to call someone who also has an iPhone.

Case in point: my best friend's mother died, and I called to offer my condolences. But we both have iPhones. To make a long cancer-ridden death short, after we were cut off fifteen freakin' times, my friend finally Skyped to Chuck's cell phone--which, unlike my SmartPhone only has middling intelligence but which with the regularity of any idiot savant is able to make or receive calls any time the owner wants. All that, just so I could say the usual You may not be able to realize it now, but I promise, life goes on tripe of condolence, by which point it was moot since your iPhone not working is actually life going on. And on and on.

Oh, wait, I'm the one who's going on and on here. But not about what I meant to go on about.

Let's get back to the sweaty man.

He comes to Portland to tell us what's wrong with the world. Which was one thing when he was telling us how evil the President is when the President was George W.

But quite another one he is telling us how evil the President is when the President is Steve Jobs. As in president, or rather CEO, of Apple.

Which, as well all know, makes personal electronics that are to die for. We just didn't know how literally.

At least not until the sweaty man told us.

Now, I'm the sort of shmethically-driven consumer who won't eat a Hershey's Kiss for fear it's been produced using child labor.

But the thing about a Hershey's Kiss is, at least it works. What should I think knowing my iPhone, and all my other damn electronics, functional or not, have been produced with child labor?

Luckily, the sweaty man was there to tell me. In no Arid-Extra-Dry terms.

One thing you can say about Mike Daisey is that he is nobody's bitch.

Which makes him different than me.

Because once upon a time, I wrote a piece for Bitch magazine about the evils of worker abuse in Chinese factories.

And since Bitch has feminist response to pop culture right in the title, I figured it was a pretty safe bet to talk about how multinational corporation Viacom exploits factory workers in China, exposing them to lead and other chemicals, to produce cheap Dora the Explorer toys to sell to Americans.

Which promptly led to a helluva lot of hate mail to Bitch about me, from people saying I was racist for criticizing a Latina cartoon character.

Racist? Nope. Naive? Maybe. Because see, I expected people to give up their cheap slave-labor made toys.

Not like Mike Daisey. He says you can keep your iPhone. Hell, you can even watch Dora the Explorer on it. Just so long as you email Steve Jobs first, typing with however many thumbs you happen to have (hint: if you've been working at the Shenzhen factory that makes Apple products, it may be fewer thumbs than you started with), to tell him that you think anyone who's as big a genius as he is can probably figure out a way to get products manufactured that doesn't involve child labor.

Or even adult labor, if those adults happen to be laboring 80+ hours per week, and/or sleeping 14 to a ten foot by ten foot room in the company dorm.

Because really, Apple should leave the evil to those who do it best: Microsoft.

Suffering From Everything But Irony Deficiency

2010-07-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, I know. Perhaps you are wondering how my ruptured disk is doing.

Much better. So much better that yesterday I ended up in Portland's favorite Level I trauma center (or as kdz 2day w thr txt spllgs mt pt it, ER@OHSU).

Quick recap: after months of suffering with nerve pain from my fabulous L5-S1 rupture, I've been feeling better. So much better that in the battle of desk v. disk, desk is winning. I can now sit for much longer at my new ultrarock hard desk chair (picture Aeron means Flintstone).

But still, I know I should get up and stretch periodically, and walk around for at least half an hour in the middle of the day. So midday yesterday, I left work for a short walk.

But first I sealed my own fate. By calling my sister and then another friend and telling both how I was feeling much better. Which anyone who has ever taken 11th grade English class (or just read the cliffnotes on the internet) can tell you means you have tempted the gods, who will strike you down just as soon as they get done reading some very compelling article or other on the Huffington Post.

Fate sealed, I head for the nefarious route known as Portland's riverfront walk.

Although in my case, the operative verb turned out to be fly.

I am walking along, listening to a fascinating audio file of a program about what education philanthropists can do to ensure schools better serve English Language Learners. So fascinating I stop to jot down a note on some bit o' brilliance shared by Eugene Garcia.

Which is when I suddenly notice that I am staring straight up at the sky.

No, wait, I'm lying smack down on the concrete.

Wait, piecing it together here . . . I have flown up and fallen smack down on the concrete. That thwacking noise was not in fact Eugene Garcia adding emphasis to his point. It was my skull, hitting the ground.

Although I am sure that if I were from Eugene Garcia's home state of Arizona, I could somehow blame this all on him. Or on any Mexican, really.

Are you okay? some looming head above me asks.

I think we should call 9-1-1 I answer, holding up my iPhone.

Which of course the looming head above me cannot figure out how to work.

Luckily, I am (as I learn much, much later) not the only lady from New York on the scene.

Enter Cara. Or Keira. Or Kayira. I should know this, after all she did introduce herself, somewhere between saying she knew first aid and saying her phone was out and she was already dialing 9-1-1 and where exactly were we anyway because she wasn't from Portland.

Which thank god she isn't, because then she wouldn't be from New York. And then I'd still be laying there waiting for some nice Portlander to have the chutzpah to figure out how to call 9-1-1 in response to my fabulous aerial show.

Once I determine that I:

remember my name (even if I may not have exactly caught hers)
have not lost consciousness at any point, and
am freakin' terrified that I've got a spinal chord injury (a new one, I mean; the ruptured disk no longer being front page news)

I figure that I shoul at least assist Cara/Keira/Kayira by serving as associate director of the scene.

Could everyone who doesn't have to be here please move on? I ask, noticing now there are many looming heads.

So now we pare down to:

Cara/Keira/Kayira and her two adorable very young daughters, who are interrupting the 9-1-1 call to ask Mommy some pertinent questions. Why is the lady lying there? Why is it important that the lady knows her name? Does everyone in Portland know how to fly?
Brian, the bicyclist to whom I owe my entire aerial career
Some guy who says I think I should stay here. I'm trying to block the sun. Meaning, he is trying to keep me from enjoying too much of a post-flight fry while we wait for the EMTs.

Mr. Homo Sapien Sunblock really is concerned for my well-being. You should be wearing a helmet he lectures.

I was just walking I say. Although I now notice that the bottom half of me is lying on top of the bicycle, which may help explain the confusion.

You should be wearing a helmet I tell Brian. 90 percent of all cyclists who are killed are not wearing helmets I add. Which is true. Although technically Brian doesn't have a scratch on him, helmet or no.

Still, we all seize the teachable moment. See girls, Cara/Keira/Kayira intones to her adorable offspring, it is so important to wear helmets. Doesn't Mommy always wear a helmet on her Scoot?

Our little course in bicycle safety is alas interrupted by the arrival of the EMTs.

What happened? they ask. Which sets everyone talking at once.

Let me tell them I say They need to assess my cognitives.

This is the one advantage I bring to this scene, garnered from the year of living brainjurously. That is, the exciting year in which my sister had a brain aneurysm and then my brother, not to be left out, had a brain bleed from a cavernous hemangioma. Which means I know just what medical professionals want to know about my brain.

And I kind of want to know it too, just as soon as they tell me that my spine is fine.

Fine spine
brain pain
pretty much is the four-word poem that is my condition.

But wait, there's more. Spinning. Which is what the whole world--EMTs, unhelmeted cyclist, Cara/Keira/Kayira and kids, human sunblock, etc.--does, if I try to sit up.

Which leads Morgan the EMT to ask the single most critical question a healthcare provider can ask: What's your insurance?

Healthnet I answer. Then I have to explain that my arm didn't lash out due to a spasm from my injury, that was just the automatic impulse of any Healthnet subscriber: call for pre-authorization.

The EMTs don't bother with preauthorization, happily. They just load me onto the gurney, delighted that I weigh only about a third of their average patient. And off we go, with Cara/Keira/Kayira calling after me, make sure you put arnica gel on anything that feels sore, as soon as you get home. Girls, doesn't Mommy always put arnica on your bruises?

Speaking of Cara/Keira/Kayira, at some point during my riparian layabout, I've had the good sense to ask her to call my office and let them know that maybe I am not headed back there today. And to have the office manager call Cheez. Who then calls Cara/Keira/Kayira before taking a quick run through the streets of downtown Portland to find a cab.

I got a Middle Eastern cabbie he reports later thank Allah. Because man, could he drive fast.

So fast that Cheez arrives at the hospital before my ambulance. Which apparently didn't bother putting on its flashers and sirens for the ride. Causing Cheez, who actually had thought I was hit by car, to reason as he watched the ambulance backing up to the ER that either my injuries weren't bad and I would be fine, or that I was already dead.

As you can guess, it was not the latter.

In fact, by the time they wheel me in, I'm cracking jokes with the EMTs, and lecturing the intake nurse about how she could improve her approach when asking the standard intake questions. You shouldn't say, "No illegal drugs?" because it assumes what the patient's answer will be I scold. And You should make an excuse to send the partner out of the room before you ask about domestic violence.

This is the point at which Cheez whips out his phone and starts calling everyone who knows about the accident and is worrying over me, to tell them that I seem to be back to my usual self.

Except that I still can't sit up, lest the room start spinning.

A nice young resident comes in to do my exam. This is the joy about being at the best hospital in Portland. It's a teaching hospital. Which means my brain is once again a teachable moment.

Now, if you think there is even the tinsiest possibility that you have the tinsiest hemorrhage in the tinsiest area of your brain, knowing your fate is in the hands of a twenty-seven-year-old who hasn't had a full night's sleep since 2008 can be slightly unsettling.

Luckily, I'd already had the foresight to have Cheez call our neighbor Justin. And not because I wanted to hear some 80s tunes or ride in some 80s car. It's because although Kevin, the boy-face resident examining my brain, may been born the same year that Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall and Emilio Estevez were Wang Chunging it through detention, as Justin's fondness for that year suggests, he was a tad older by then.

Which makes him old enough to be a many years of experience full on ER doc. The very one as it turns out Kevin will be training with on next month's rotation.

And luckily, Kevin, Justin and Dr. Macaronimanaic all agree that CAT scans are for people who don't have a healthy fear of brain cancer.

Makes you wonder that they can ever do them on Jews.

So I'm just sitting around with an IV-drip of sodium, wondering whether I'll ever sit up again, when some guy who pulls back the curtain on my ER cubby and begins scrubbing up.

A guy, I should mention, who looks like he's just stepped out of an aftershave ad and (this being Oregon's premier hospital after all) who's dressed like said ad appeared in Sports Fishing Monthly.

Er, who might you be on today's medical odyssey? I ask.

He claims to be the supervising physician. I'm a little leery because I've seen Kevin talking to his supervising physician, and she doesn't look a thing like the braced-chin-and-civvy-wearing fellow before us.

Check his i.d. I tell Cheez. Who does. Actually they both do. We all agree it isn't the most up to date shot, but yes, it tells us this guy, whose last name could be Jewish but let's face it, we all know what ads they put Jews in, and manly is not the term for them.

After establishing that the previous supervising physician has gone off duty, Dr. Not-Jewish offers me the juice of my choice and asks Cheez are you a reliable person?

To which my reliable mate answers I am Canadian.

He wants you to make sure I don't fall over I say.

And I don't, as I ease up to a sit, well juiced.
Things are more teeter-tottering than spinning. I can't close my jaw. But the team determines that's about muscle, not bone, and I think we all know there's arnica gel in my future anyway.

Before you know it, I'm taking my second flight of the day.

On the aerial tram down from the hospital (note safety-conscious Portlanders wearing helmets--apparently during my time on Pill Hill the earlier riverside chanting has had time to truly take hold among the masses).

This is way cooler than the ambulance I tell Cheez. Maybe they out to have a trambulance.

It's a weak joke, I know. But hey, I am concussed! Plus, some guy standing next to us laughed anyway.

Cheez and I then walk about three miles home, during which time we recite all the things we're happy about. Happy it was a bike, not a car. Happy my skull did its work. Happy that, amazingly enough, my ruptured disk actually seems a little BETTER after the flight-to-full-on-concrete-fall.

Think of it as the ultimate chiropractic adjustment says Cheez.

And I do. I just hope Healthnet covers chiropracty without pre-approval. At least when it's administered by a moving vehicle.

England Swings Like a Pendulum Do. If By Pendulum You Mean 50,000 Square Miles Inhabited by 51 Million People Ruled by Constitutional Monarchy.

2010-05-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

I have been to London!

I have met the Queen!

Actually, two queens.

Co-owners of 69theGrope.

I mean, 69theGrove, the charming B&B where we stayed in Vauxhall, a quiet residential neighborhood where visitors can enjoy some good clean fun.

We met in church David said, squeezing Kanley's hand.

Normally, I'm not that comfortable staying in the sort of place where you have to stare at a notecard proclaiming Christ is Risen while you eat breakfast. But in this instance, Christ seemed to be risen from his disco nap, just before slipping on some tight pants and heading out to the local.

Because London is all about a good time.

I know what you're thinking, dear reader. Wasn't traveling difficult with my current injury? Well, though the flight was no picnic (despite the presence of plastic cutlery), the week itself was great, since like certain other international travelers, I realized the value of having a strong young man to tote my luggage.

Of course, when you've been with someone as long as I've been with the Cheez, you know he isn't merely a rent boy. More a long-term lease boy.

Remind me to use my stomach muscles to support my spine I said before we departed. Which he took as license to spend the entire week shouting Suck in that gut, soldier.

England was very educational. Even the flight over, on which we watched The Young Victoria like we were cramming for the history exam.

Here's what I learned: circa 1830, sending a chick sheet-music was the equivalent of making her a mixed tape in 1987.

If my knowledge of Brit history was shoddy, my knowledge of Brit geography was even worse. Riding the tube from Heathrow to the B&B, I realized that everything I knew about London came from Clash songs.

White Mac at Hammersmith Tube Stop

As we wandered around the city that first day, I did manage to recognize Buckingham Palace. Even without the usual assortment of flowers and teddy bears they festoon it with every time something so crap happens in Britain they put it on the American tellie.

Oh my, I hope they aren't going to pre-empt my Wheel of Fortune for this one

Tellie, btw, is British for T.V. This is one of the confusing things about Britain: they barely speak English over there.

Fancy a fag? is British for Want a cigarette? whereas Fancy a bloke? is British for Fancy a fag? It's an amazing place, really.

Speaking of fancy fags, at the Tate Britain we learned about the early-17th-century roots of Glam Rock, as in this stunning work, Portrait of James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, Later 3rd Marquis and 1st Duke of Hamilton, Aged 17.

Nothing I enjoy more than a little glitter dust and an interregnum.

Much of the art in England seems to be portraiture. This is not exactly a good thing, given how unattractive the British are.

That is not me being narrow-minded, btw. It is a proven fact. It was in the Telegraph. The Telegraph is British for slightly less sleazy newspaper than most of the rags we've got over here, but what are you complaining about, at least when we're reading them on the Tube you don't have to see our faces.

It was actually the ugliness that sold Cheez on the trip in the first place. Let's go to England, he said, we will be like Supermodels compared to everyone there.

We were mostly supermodels of rudeness, since we spent the entire trip talking in a wide array of fake British accents. Upon viewing this JMW Turner painting, Cheez felt the need to proclamate upon its subject matter:

Religious cows is queued up for church. More godless ones is in the foreground, grazin. Whereas I would find myself rummaging through my luggage as I struggled to get dressed each morning, intoning Where's all me knickers at?

The thing about the British is, they really talk that way. All the damn time. We saw a family in the park playing with their dog, a fluffy white terrier named Snowy. At some point, the adorable daughter of the family threw the ball and Snowy caught it just before it landed in the lake in the park. A mustachioed sixty-something man passing by happened to observe the scene and said to the dog, Well done, Snowy. As if the pup had just rescued his entire regiment from the Germans.

I swear, the whole country is like a freakin Monty Python sketch. Right down to the physical comedy.

Turns out, John Cleese etal. weren't writing comedy. They were merely transcribing it.

I took that video at the Tower of London, another educational stop. We learned that if you are locked up in the Tower awaiting execution, you might as well graffiti the hell out of the place, because what are they going to do if they catch you?

Also we learned that you can trace just how fat Henry VIII was at any given time by checking out his suits of armor, which escalate in size from Normal to Husky to What Else Can We Melt Down to Get Enough Metal to Cover this Fat Fuck?

It is a true fact that there is nothing I enjoy more on vacation than a

ranger-led tour.

In England, due to not having had the good sense of inventing Smokey the Bear, they do not have rangers in Smokey the Bear hats.

So their version of a ranger-led tour involves a guy dressed up like the bloke on the gin. Who spends an hour or thereabouts traipsing around the Tower of London telling you tidbits like For five centuries, we had a moat here that was the largest open toilet in London. Quite a line of defense. Or Pardon me, that was the marmite and cheese panini repeating on me.

Apparently, they should actually call this attraction The Body Functions of London.

We had a great empire not so long ago Smokey the Beefeater noted. We should be proud of that. But we're not. Because we're British.

It's true, they were British. I love it here said Cheez the Canuck I've never been any place where people embarrass even more easily than me. And he was right. At an event at the Victoria and Albert Museum, when a young hipster approached a craft table out of turn, I jokingly muttered Orderly queue under my breath--causing said hipster to apologize profusely and flee the room in mortification.

They were such easy pickings, it was hardly worth mocking them.

And yet, we did.

More of which to be detailed in my next blog post, which at the rate I'm going, should be made sometime in July. July 2011.

Fooken Ayslund

2010-04-17T18:39:00.001-07:00

Maybe you should rethink that vacation my doctor said.

Maybe you should rethink that vacation physical therapists 1-4 said.

No! I said.

I mean, just because I'd been having shooting pain down my leg for months, was no reason not to go on vacation.

Because my squeeze the Cheez and I really need a vacation. A nice, romantic, just-the-two-of-us-and-the-millions-of-strangers-in-a-crowded-metropolis good time, the kind we haven't had in ages.

It'd been hard enough to find nine glorious days when my work schedule and his work schedule lined up. Hard enough to get past the panicky arguments in the travel section of Powells over where we should go. Hard enough not to drop dead at the cost of booking airline tickets, let alone the B&B, with the dollar sucking as it does on the world market.

Now that we'd done all that, nothing was going to keep me from going. Not searing pain. Not doctor plus physical therapist admonition.

When are you leaving? the doctor asked Wednesday morning, eying me in that M.D. means real doctor way they have.

The day after tomorrow I said, eying her in that Macaronimaniac means real maniac way I have.

She scribbled something doctorishly illegible on a piece of paper, and told me I was about to meet Pearl. Magical Pearl.

Pearl is so magical, not only could she read what the doctor wrote--but, upon reading it, she could get my deadbeat health insurance to approve a same-day MRI, and then magically schedule self-same MRI for within one hundred and twenty minutes of the time I stood before her.

Which is how it came to pass that by the end of that very day, the neurosurgeon had joined the chorus urging me not to go on vacation.

Something about a ruptured disc and a long flight and really who would want to go on vacation with Cheez when instead she could be having back surgery?

But surely, back surgery wasn't going out of style. I mean, I could go on a wouldn't-it-be-loverly vacation, THEN come back to back surgery. Or so I figured, when I went to bed Wednesday night.

Only to wake up Thursday morning to hear the nice man on the NPR saying something about a volcano in Iceland grounding all air traffic to Heathrow.

Granted, all the pain killers I'm on are making me kind of groggy, but volcano in Iceland?

People, it's got ICE right in the title. How much hot lava can there be, way up there?

Enough, we now know, to screw me, the Cheez, and millions of others out of the pleasure of defying medical authority.

Well, maybe not everyone affected was flying, or trying to fly, against doctor's orders. But still, it made me wonder when Pele the Volcano Goddess joined HealthNet's list of Preferred Providers.

Icelandic volcano. What are the chances? I wondered to my college roommate Little Orphan Annie, who'd spent eight hours the previous night flying halfway to Copenhagen and back again, thanks to Mount Nbdycnfrkinprounsit.

Slim she answered matter of factly, sucking down what was clearly not her first martini of the day.

Slim enough that when I told a co-worker, he responded Don't you mean, Greece's economy has failed, causing riots across Europe and that's why you can't go, because that at least is somewhat plausible.

Of course, Greece's economy--and the rest of Europe's--is screwed in no small because of the gross fiscal negligence of a certain other pseudo-European nation that shall go unnamed. Unnamed because none of us can pronounce any of its proper, or for that matter its improper, nouns.

It's been a hundred and eight-nine years since the damn thing last erupted Cheez noted you'd think that would give them enough time to send out a press release.

By Friday morning, we had both cell phones and an assortment of laptops fired up, trying to figure out if there was any chance of us going anywhere. Would all those hours spent poring over travel guides and boning up on Brit history by watching Anne of a Thousand Days and Mary Queen of Scots be for naught?

Well, at least the latter gave us enough appreciation for hard-drinking, hot-blooded Scotsmen to appreciate this guy in a Hooter's hoodie.

So that's what we're reduced to. Quoting a guy in a Hooter's hoodie. Which is what we do every day when we check the NATS update to see if there's any chance our rescheduled flight (for later this week) will actually take off.

I suppose it could be worse. The volcano could have trapped us once we were abroad. Like a certain someone who's probably done pining for the fjords after the flight ban left him to take a taxi home from Norway.

And I suppose it could still happen. The volcano could calm down enough for us to get to England, then kick up again, keeping us from leaving.

Note to our cat sitter: we just laid in 140 pounds of litter. Have a great time while we're gone!

Or all that Icelandic ash could just keep pluming its way across Europe like an Abba cover band. In which case, it's back to back surgery after all.

So Much for Sit-Down Comedy

2010-04-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

Want a challenge? Trying saying Socks suck ten times fast.

Not enough of a challenge? Try doing it while putting on your socks--without sitting down or bending forward.

Forget the heartbreak of psoriasis. Welcome to the suffering of sciatica. Or, as my college roommate so helpfully put it, isn't that something our grandmothers used to get?

That would explain all that time her grandmother spent on the kneelers at Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering. Because sitting pretty much is perpetual suffering, as in the most painful experience I can have, these days.

The more comfortable the chair, the more it hurts. If Torquemada had access to Lazy Boys, he could have stamped out Judaism and Islam in about ten minutes, provided all the Semites were also Sciatic.
I have actually stood my way across America, on any number of commercial flights in the past several months. The worst was the one from New Orleans to Denver, because to quite literally add insult to injury, the New Orleans airport was bedecked with banners for the AAOS conference. You know, the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.

If only any of them had been able to get so much as a Swiss Army knife through airport security, I would have been happy to have them cut me open right there on the Cinnabon counter.

Then there was the hotel room in San Francisco. I mean, I'm sure it was just random coincidence that the staff put me in the disabled suite. Unfortunately, the disabled suite is for someone who can't stand up. Not little ol' Macaronimaniac, who can't sit down. Try crawling onto that low-riding commode without bending, I dare you.

They make all sorts of accommodations for people who need to be seated. But nothing for someone who needs to stand, my friend Rachel commiserated. You should protest!

Which maybe I would, except that this is definitely not the week for me to hold a sit-in.

Or even a lie-down. Sleeping hurts. Unless I take Vicodin and Flexeril, in which case sleeping is only mildly uncomfortable. And something I want to do twenty hours a day.

Of course, everybody is being very nice. They are giving me all kinds of advice. Because being told what to do when anything you do causes deep physical pain, is apparently meant to at least relieve you of the need to decide which self-inflicted agony to pursue.

Although some people swear by chiropractors, I have avoided them, believing they are generally considered to be quacks. Of course, I think the folks most likely to promulgate this belief are physical therapists.

Physical therapists, I am learning, are quacks who assign homework. Basically, the PTs I have seen (a mere four, though I'm sure you've also got one to recommend) have banned me from yoga and bicycling and anything else I might want to do. And then they give me exercises that are suspiciously like yoga. Except prescribed by someone you pay a helluva lot more to than your yoga teacher.

Then they ask whether I am better yet, and when I am not, they tell me I need to come for more physical therapy.

We have you try something, and if it helps the pain, you keep doing it. If not, we try something else, explained physical therapist number two, who I'm pretty sure was wearing a Wehrmacht uniform under her Adidas track suit.

I can't imagine how I would manage without this level of professional support. I couldn't possibly figure that much out on my own. Not as long as I'm holding onto this wet fork I've stuck into an electric socket.

Which reminds me, someone did just recommend an acupuncturist she swears will do the trick.

The most disturbing part of all of this is that nobody really knows what causes the pain. Supposedly, it has something to do with some part of my spine which can only be described through an analogy to a jelly donut.

So basically, the puff has gone out of my pastry. Leaving big gobs of raspberry filling all over my nerves.

Not to mention gobs of toothpaste on my shirt front.

I'm serious about the toothpaste. You try expectorating a mouthful of dentrifice without bending forward. Makes the socks seem like a walk in the park.

And it's not like I can put anything in the washing machine, cursed low-water Euro-eco front loader that I have.

So if you notice someone standing up on public transit, or lying down in the middle of a meeting, wincing so badly you can hardly make out her soiled shirt front, please come over and say hello.

Articles, Shmarticles. I Read It for the Pictures.

2010-02-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

Prepare yourself, gent(i)le reader, for what may be your first exposure to Jewish porn:

What is hotter than Glatt-Kosher Premium Angus Beef, fresh out of the oven, with a bissel kosher wine in soft focus at the edge of the frame?

Welcome to my second-favorite magazine: Hadassah, named not for the wife of everyone's least favorite sell-out Demo senator, but rather for the Jewish women's organization that finances hospitals in Israel by holding fashion shows and mah jongg tournaments in every Hebraic enclave from Brooklyn to Boca.

Because we Jews are all about values that matter. Like tzedekah. And tradition. And ease-of-use.

Who doesn't love homemade gefilte fish and saving fifty cents (maybe even a buck if you go on double-coupon day)? Whenever I long for the sweet meatloaf of fish just like my beloved Bubbe used to make, what greater comfort than ad copy that mimics her broken English:

Yes, the latest issue of Hadassah Magazine reminds me that it's time to start thinking about the Passover Seder, that special holiday meal we look forward to all year . . .

and then try to rush through as quickly as possible.

Now, I realize it's wrong to stereotype an entire group of people, to act as though millions of Jews are all the same, when in fact there is a rich diversity among us, as a casual skim of the magazine's ads reveals.

For example, some Jews prefer this sort of Romantic/ceramic hideous style of Judaica . . .

while other Jews prefer the more lucid hideous of Lucite . . .

Because it may be okay to break tradition, but g-d forbid you should break that glass cube commemorating Sarah and Jonathan's joyous union.

Speaking of break, what if, again g-d forbid, your elderly parent should break a hip? Fear not, as the fine advertisers of Hadassah offer any number of services for outsourcing the guilt, um, I mean the caregiving:

Although if your no-good offspring aren't willing to shlep down to South Florida to care for you themselves, even after all you've done for them, maybe you should take matters into your own hands. Because if they don't seem to care whether you're alive or dead, they certainly won't care once you actually are dead. But don't worry, because for a small fee, I mean generous donation, somebody will:

Yes, this single issue of the magazine seems to offer everything a Jew could ever want. Where else can you shop for discount prescription drugs and support Eretz Yisrael?

You'll be feeling so good and saving so much when you're downing that fabulous cocktail of prune juice and discounted Plavix and Flomax, you may even make it to the Holy Land yourself.

After all, who would mind wandering the desert for forty years, with this handy fold-up scooter, delivered right to your hotel.

Just imagine how excited the Cheez was about all the ads for trips to Israel I was leafing through.

How unfortunate that we already have plans for the week of what promises to be a very memorable See Israel with Hadassah and Song tour. Because the question is not how many times can one tour group sing Hatikvah? The question is in how many different keys--at the same time?

Difficult as it is to choose among the Israel travel packages advertised, the real challenge is choosing among the ads for Jewish-themed retirement homes. They offer golf, tennis, beauty parlors, entertainment, and a reminder that for thousands of years, across every continent, there have always been certain constants of Jewish life:

Namely, Torah, and male pattern baldness.

Of course, if you're going to enjoy your Golden Years, you need the peace of mind that comes from knowing your children and grandchildren are flourishing. And great news, because once again the products available in the ads in this month's mag come through for you:

Your daughter ...

may she marry a Jewish doctor!

Your granddaughter ...

may she be a Jewish doctor (and believe me, the athletics is good for getting into a competitive college, and at least with the swim team there's no chance of a ball hitting her in the face and ruining that brand new nose).

Your son . . .

may that zhlub at least stop chasing the shiksas long enough to read Hadassah Magazine.

You never know, there might be something in there that interests him.

Yes, blond Jewish triplets, born in Hadassah hospital to a Hadassah Magazine writer, now all grown-up and sporting their Israeli Air Force uniforms.

I told you it was Jewish porn.

Schmaltz Across Texas, Part Two

2010-02-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

It's so nice 'n' romantic to keep a little mystery in the relationship.

Our first morning in Houston, Cheez was indeed mystified by me.

Specifically by my comprehensive knowledge of the lyrics of every song played on 97.1 FM Country Legends, the radio station I found on our rental car radio.

Okay, maybe hearing your girlfriend belt out the Oak Ridge Boys' Tryin' To Love Two Women isn't exactly romantic. But when your full up on the Hyatt's continental breakfast, it puts you in the mood for something.

First stop of the day: the Rothko Chapel.

Which I have to admit, had me kind of confused.

Mostly because:

1) I could figure out where all the Rothkos were;

and

2) I didn't understand why they need so many acoustic panels in such a small room.

So yes, I wasn't much of a fan of the Rothkos.

Although I'll grant you that it's better than what they usually mean when they say We have a Jew hanging in our Catholic church.

Being a wandering, rather than a hanging, Jew, I was ready to ramble over to the Menil Collection, one of those lovely museums where rich people put all their stuff on public display for the edification of the masses.

It was indeed very edifying.

There was a three-foot-tall wood carving of a humanoid figure with long red hair.

It looks like one of those Hawaiian totems I said.

Or like a leprechaun Cheez said.

I squinted at the curatorial tag. Turns out, we were both right. Memorial figure from New Ireland, Melanesia it said.

How edifying is that? If it weren't for the Menils of Houston, I would never have learned there was any place to get a pint of Guinness and a plate of boiled cabbage is all of Oceania.

The Menil also had a large exhibit of Surrealist works on display. But we hurried through that gallery. Surrealism doesn't really melt my butter I noted to Cheez although I guess it does melt my clock.

Next stop: the Museum of Fine Arts. Which was a focal point for our Texas trip, actually. Because they were having an exhibit of Moon Art.

Again, edifying. Such as footage of Mission Control during the moon launch. That is so amazing said Cheez, who has loved lunar landings ever since those long childhood days he spent reading old National Geographic magazines at his grandparents' house (note: Labrador is not a vacation paradise for nine-year-old boys. Or anyone).

You mean, that we really sent people to the moon and back? I asked.

No, that the guys who worked at Mission Control could smoke RIGHT AT THEIR DESKS! he answered.

Other learnings: eighteenth-century telescopes were made of cardboard. We had just bought a kaleidoscope for Cheez's nephew, on which we squandered an extra eight bucks to get a metal rather than a cardboard specimen. Turns out, we were robbed. We could have had a more authentic ocular device if we'd started with the core from a tube of toilet paper.

We also watched this lovely 1902 French film, La Voyage Dans La Lune

It was no Panic in Year Zero, but still it was the second best film of the trip so far.

Doougie Rocker, PhD and Little Lord Portleroy had to wander off and leave us, because we were spending way too much time in the moon exhibit. Indeed, it soon became clear that though they are dear friends, we were not entirely perfectly matched traveling buddies, being as they are the sort of people that believe vacation should be leisurely and relaxing. Whereas I believe it should be crammed full of as much nuttiness as possible.

Thus, after the museum closed, we agreed to all return to the Hyatt and freshen up before dinner. At which point Cheez and I doubled back to the Menil compound to see the separately housed Dan Flavin exhibit.

Can we take pictures in here? I asked the guard.

You're not supposed to he answered but I can't be following people all through the building watching what they're doing.

Given that it was 6 pm on a Sunday night and we were the only people in the entire facility, I realized he was not going to be taxing himself on our account.

So here, without further ado, is the Flavin exhibit:
Unless of course you who are reading this happen to be a lawyer employed on behalf of the Menil Collection, in which case those brightly colored lights you're seeing are just part of the fabulous decor of Tan Tan, the Vietnamese restaurant where we had dinner.

After a long day of fine art, who doesn't want to unwind with a refreshing Salt Plum Soda?

Which, in case you're wondering, is a small bottle of soda water, which is brought to the table and then poured by the patron into a glass that contains a salted plum.

Be sure to stir vigorously to distribute the salty plum flavor evenly!

After eating a ginormous amount of delicious, deep-fried delights, we wandered around the neighborhood, taking in the neon-lit sights.

The adjacent strip malls offered everything you could possibly ever want or need, from fashion to housewares to groceries to law enforcement.

We couldn't quite figure out why Johnny Law needed quite so much wattage, until we wandered into the Asian grocery store and spotted this sign:
In one form or another, this sign is ubiquitous throughout Texas.

What a helpful reminder to bring only your LICENSED weapons with you when you run out to the store for that oh-so-adorably packaged squid or anchovy snack.
And so ended day two in Texas, with Oak Ridge Boys tunes in my head, art of all sorts amazing our eyes, and visions of salt plums dancing in my belly.

By "Holiday Show" I Did Not Intend to Mean Groundhog Day

2010-01-24T11:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, it has been a while since I posted. Not for lack of thrilling content, I assure you. My life is just as filled with comedy-fodder as ever, I assure you. One thing you can count on is that I am laughable.

It's just that laughable ol' macaronimanic has been having so many adventures, she's been hard pressed for time to blog about them. But in the spirit of no time like the present, no used crying over spilt blogs, no business like show business, etc.. let's get back on the hobby horse, starting with my holiday show, performed at Scratch PDX in December 2009.

Note that the goniff who claimed to be a pro videographer apparently lacked certain skills such as focusing, sound editing, and correctly transcribing my name or the title of the act.

So I'm sorry the video sucks, but the performance rocks. Please book me for your next performing arts festival, office holiday party,* or family simcha.**

*I did actually perform this show at our office holiday party, and they didn't even fire me. I suspect out of fear I'd sue for religious discrimination. Careful when you hire a Jew, we all know a LOT of lawyers.

**Yes, I can play Hava Negila and Sunrise, Sunset on the accordion. If I can just master Kool and the Gang's Celebrate Good Times, Come On I will have mastered the trifecta of bar/bat mitzvah musical entertainment.

Shmaltz Across Texas, Part 1

2010-01-17T17:27:00.000-08:00

My squeeze the Cheez and I always say we have so much fun together, we could go on vacation in a paper bag and still have a great time.

This winter, we didn't go for some little lunch sack. We headed for a full on shopping bag, the shmancy kind with those little ropey built-in handles.

It's was a big bag we vacationed in. A big bag called TEXAS.

So big, we couldn't take it on all by ourselves, so we invited some pals to join us. No, not Miss Ellie and JR, I meant a couple of real live actual friends:

1. Doougie Rocker, PhD, everyone's favorite Riot Grrrl/Classics Professor

2. Doougie's honey, Little Lord Portleroy

As Little Lord P noted, we were ideally suited for this journey, representing North, South, East, and West. To wit: Cheez as the Northerly Canuck; me as that exemplum of east coast, a New Yorker; Doougie as a native of the westward Oregon Territories; and Little Lord P heading up the South, having been raised in the Ozarks in a Doomsday cult that supported itself by BeDazzling the concert costumes of Elvis Presley.

And to think, people believe the South is more f*ed up than other regions.

Anyhow, we set off not to mess with Texas but to mesmerized by it. Cheez and I spent eight years in LA. We thought we'd seen all there was to see of the delicate intersection between big wads of cash and really tacky taste. But Rodeo Drive has got nothing on rodeo gaudy.

I just asked Cheez for an illustrative example. He answered I think that $170 leopard and rhinestone belt we saw in the store in San Antonio certainly counts as Texas Tacky.

Actually, I disagree. I think it just counts as proof that Texas has so few Jews, people actually pay retail.

So here is a recap of some highlights of the trip. I'm sorry if the recap is long(horn). Texas is big. There is an awful lot for me to mock.

Day 1: Complimentary breakfast at the hotel:

A Texas-sized vat of deep fried pig.

And to think I said this was a goyim-heavy state.

With that much bacon, it's more a heavy goyim state.

Much to Doougie's despair, Little Lord P immediately embraced the Texan belief that everything is better with bacon. Even yogurt.

Once we had filled up, we headed out to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. It's a gorgeous building filled with memorable pieces.

Such as this room-sized sculpture . . .

made out of mint-green candies.

We're big fans of found-object art. But this was our first exposure to found-in-the-bottom-of-some-grandma's-pocketbook art. If the sculptor had thrown in a tissue with a blotch of coral-pink lipstick on it and a bus transfer from 1962, it would have been perfect.

After leaving the museum, we happened

upon a once beautiful but now somewhat rundown art deco building.

We snuck inside to investigate.

We made our way through ornate halls, poking into side rooms

littered with old box fans and duct tape-mended couches, until

at last we passed through giant doors labeled "coliseum," and discovered that we were inside the rodeo dome.

And that, although there was no one else around, the soundsystem was playing full blast. And that the song it was blasting was Barracuda.

Because nothing says rodeo like decaying art deco and false rumors of lesbian love.

And speaking of girls who like horses, our next stop was the Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Highlights included the following quotes from Hall of Famers:

Who'd want a husband when you could have this wonderful horse? Mitzi Riley

Of course, when you do as many things as I do, it takes a lot of outfits. Fern Sawyer

Basically, anyplace you can be down on marriage and up on outfits, is my paradise. I celebrated by galloping over to the gift-shop and purchasing myself a sweet little filly of a cowgirl hat, which to Doougie's mortification I insisted on wearing just about every place else we went in Texas.

Full up on Fort Worth, we headed to Houston, checked into the Hyatt, and spent the evening watching Panic in Year Zero, which I can say without a doubt is the finest film about nuclear holocaust directed by and starring Ray Milland and co-starring Frankie Avalon that I have ever seen.

And that was just day 1.

More Texas-sized tales of terrific travel to come, I promise. Until then, settle back with some yogurt-coated bacon, and dream of all the open prairie has to offer . . . even if they are selling it at retail.

If You Make It Out of Ironic Materials, They Will Come. And Buy It. Maybe Buy Two, If You Will Cut a Deal.

2009-12-14T20:43:00.000-08:00

Get out your glue guns, hipsters. It's the most Portlandish time of the year.

Gray and rainy and Craftywonderland!

For all my out of town readers, Craftywonderland is, well, it's a wonderland of craft. Or more precisely, a Convention Center hall of hand-crafted wonders you can purchase to support some local artiste's PBR habit.

One of the hottest items was the Portland Bingo set.

Actually so popular that it sold out at Craftywonderland, (though it will soon be available for purchase at Powells).

Still, I was inspired enough I figured I'd play my own game of Portland Bingo as I made my way among the crafty wares.

What to wear to the next kale sale down at the vegan co-op?

Organic cotton and hemp stretch denim!

(Warning, could lead to one of those embarrassing Honey, I smoked my stretch pants incidents.)

Speaking of functional objects out of favorite substances:

Duct tape wallets.

So Portland. So Portland 2004, actually. Been there, stored my PBR money in that, as the hipsters say.

But wait, here's something new:

Duct tape flasks.

For when you're a little too suave to swill down a can of PBR, yet still feel the need to keep your booze in a metal container.

Notice that both the duct tape wallets and the duct tape flasks come in the ever popular mustache style.

Because the FREE SQUARE on Portland Crafty Bingo must surely be the facial hair frenzy.

Keep Portland Beard cards.

Fabric Mustache flags

Mustache ring

(note macaroni ring included only as scale indicator, not for sale)

Mustache shotglass

(for when you need to pour something out of your mustache duct tape flask to toast the bride and groom as they exchange their mustache rings)

Here's a nice enviro-friendly art form:

Recycled skateboard jewelry

Sort of a hair-of-the-dog potential here, what with slipping a skateboard bangle on that arm you've just broken doing a Wallplant that came out looking like one of my dying houseplants.

Christmas is coming up, so no surprise that the crafters are ready for Old Saint Nick.

Or perhaps that's more Old Milwaukee, given its hipster cred.

Others hadn't forgotten that Jesus is the Reason for the Season.

Our friend Rachel B. picked up some hedgehog notecards for her stepmother, who apparently loves all things hedgehog. Alas, it's a pity Rachel didn't see this in time.

Because nothing says, Happy Birthday Prince of Peace like the hedgehog brass knuckles.

If only her stepmother were actually a man, she might have picked up this lovely set of gay man's fantasy potholders.

Potholders were in surprising profusion at Craftywonderland. Though as Cheez observed, they did not seem to hold the kind of pot the majority of the crowd seemed most familiar with.

Among my favorite items were the beautiful old suit jackets that had been remade into what I like to think of as Portland's sartorial take on the mullet.

Business up front

Hoodie in the back

There was a lot of working with recycled materials. Old Sony Walkmans made into bookends. Old books made into journals. Old beer caps made into

well, I actually have no idea what that is they were made into. But dude has figured out how to deduct his beer purchases as business supplies, that's pretty artful right there.

And for those of you who are ready to ditch your old-fangled duct tape wallet, may I recommend the latest in nostalgic materials recycled into a moneymaker, er I mean money holder:

The lawnchair webbing wallets. Note that the display stand included actual photos of lawn chairs

presumably because the twenty-somethings cramming the sale had no firsthand knowledge of such things.

It does make you think. What 70s decor item can't be recrafted as 2010 fashion, when you get right down to it. Those plastic covers my parents still have on their sofa? Peekaboo robe to go with the shag bikini cut out of the living floor treatment. Stick a fondue pot on your head and call it macaronimaniac, as the old song says.

They really had decked the convention hall with boughs of 70s nostalgia. This lovely velvet painting of an AMC Pacer, for example, was going for $100.

Which is probably more than the Kelly Blue Book value of the Pacer itself.

The ultimate Portland moment, though, was when I spied this vendor on the crafty kids aisle:

Yes, at nine years old, he's already sporting the airbrushed trucker's cap, churning out ironic artwork, and exuding aloofness at the presence of shoppers.

Best of all, just moments after I snapped this shot, he began unconsciously playing air guitar to the song blasting out of the nearest speaker. Which, in the true spirit of the holiday season, was Don't Fear the Reaper.

A lovely sentiment, though perhaps not as apt as the one of which I had to remind our pal Cynthia and her daughter Jackson, who were fleeing the Convention Center after being traumatized by the Craftywonderland crowd: Don't Fear the Hipster.

"Holy Moses" Does Not Refer to an Episcopalian

2009-12-10T20:26:00.000-08:00

Tis the season.

The season to assume everyone is Christian.

Including, apparently, farm animals.

I can kind of understand certain right-wing news outlets gloating like a Fox in the cowhouse over this weird story, but when NPR and the Jew, er I mean New, York Times cover it too, what is up with that?

Cows are not Christian.

Particularly not cows named Moses Holstein.

Trust me, Moses Holstein you can pretty much count on being a member of my herd. Er,I mean tribe.

Pardon me if I'm a bissel oversensitive. This is a tough time of year for the Jews. On the one hand, sales. We love those. On the other hand, everyone saying "Happy Holidays," for a good week past the end of Hanukkah. Like maybe we Jews aren't going to figure out that "Holidays" is code for "birth of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Who by the way, as a Jew, would have loved all these sales.

Though maybe not so much the ham dinner you're planning on serving on his birthday.

Actually, I'm not sure what's more horrifying to me as a Hebe:

That most Americans believe everyone--including some randomly birthmarked bovine--is a Christian.

Or that the one goy sticking up for us Jews is . . . Orrin Hatch.

Yes, that Orrin Hatch. Orrin G. Hatch, the Mormon senator from the state of Utah. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Mormons per se. Frankly, I think we crazy desert religions ought to stick up for each other.

But this is just plain weird, this Hatchnukkah song. Dude has got a thing for Jews like that pasty white guy in your dorm had a thing for Asian chicks.

We all know goyim don't write Hanukkah songs. It's unprecedented. Unnerving. Unnatural.

So please, let's give up this sick, twisted, immoral lifestyle, Mr. Mormon Senator from Utah, and go back to the way it was meant to be.

With Jews writing Christmas songs.

Not to mention Jews singing them.

Neil Diamond, double platinum, your mother must be so proud!

Bette Middler, Grammy-nominated, mazel tov to you!

And me!

Yes, dear readers, Macaronimaniac will be belting out the Christmas songs and the Hanukkah spiel this Saturday night. I hope you can come see me.

Just please leave your half-breed, Hebe-named Holsteins at home.

Thanksgiving Myself Agita Worrying For No Good Reason

2009-12-02T20:52:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

So of course I start worrying about it well in advance.

By last Tuesday, when the Cheez and I had actually started on our road trip to San Francisco, where we have spent every Thanksgiving since 1992, I was in full on panic.

Carol is coming this year I pointed out to Cheez, meaning our friend Katie's mother. This is shocking because though she is invited every year, she always declines. Something about not wanting to see her adult offspring in lingerie.

Oh, yes, I guess I should mention that in addition to spending every Thanksgiving since 1992 in San Francisco, we have spent every Thanksgiving since 1995 in lingerie.

Trust me, it cuts down on the unwanted relatives at the dinner table.

At least it did until this year.

This is just like when the AAA magazine ran the article on Burning Man I moaned, my complaint shrilling out like an RV tailpipe dragging along the hipster-encrusted desert. It means it's all over.

Then, as we were holed in the Motel 6 in Redding, we realized Cheez had forgotten to pack his Farrah Fawcett wig. How can you have Thanksgiving in your regular hair? I wailed. You might as well be sitting home with a Tofurkey sandwich.

But by the next morning, things dawned brighter. Or so it seemed when I discovered that the gas station across the street from the Motel 6 sold souvenir spoons. $6.99 later, I knew I was really on vacation.

By Wednesday night, we were firmly ensconced in Little Orphan Annie's flat in the Lower Haight, with all eight of our Tgiving pies baked.

What the hell are we going to do with ourselves tomorrow morning? Little Orphan Annie wondered.

She panics about Thanksgiving even more than I do.

I reassured her that we could use the time to pay fitting tribute to the Native Americans to whom we Haole Americans owe our earliest Thanksgiving. AKA the ones from whom we stole this great land.

Which we did by riding down to the bison paddock in Golden Gate Park.

Herd of bison in the park.

Herd of bicycles in the park.

Things were definitely looking up. Little Orphan Annie lent the Cheez a replacement wig that not only clashed admirably with his made-by-Victoria's Secret-but-actually-purchased-at-Goodwill holiday outfit . . .

. . . it also made him bear a striking resemblance to everyone's favorite Greek singing sensation.

Now our only worry was how to get us, eight pies, a guitar, an accordion, a salad, half a case of wine, and enough cheese to stink up the entire state of North Dakota from Little Orphan Annie's flat in the Lower Haight to Katie's house in Bernal Heights.

The trunk of the Prius being suPIESingly roomy, everything seemed on the level as we left the Haight.

But I was INCLINED to believe things might be compromised, or really compropiesed, when we popped the trunk after parking the car up on the Heights.

Or at least, half the car was parked up on the Heights. The other half was rather far down.

We were greeted by our co-hostess with the mostest, who seemed oddly ready to play some Live Action Role Playing game.

Very oddly.

Ever since the breeders among us have started reproducing, I've been keeping close tabs on the queers to kids ratio for Thanksgiving. But according to Katie, this year it was going to be a shut out.

I couldn't quite imagine a what a No HoMo Lingerie Thanksgiving might mean.

But of course, I'd forgotten that drag queens and five year-old girls are virtually interchangeable.

Here is Katie's daughter, unwittingly proving that preK can also be pretty queer.

Speaking of odd couplings, Thanksgiving is the day when I most realize that in addition to being an interfaith couple and an international couple, the Cheez and I are also an inter-animal print couple.

Of course, as John Lennon so beautifully sang, You may say I'm a leopard going out with a bovine, but I'm not the only one . . .

Okay, maybe his panties are a little more equine than bovine, but it's a holiday, people, don't be so uptight.

Or rather, up tights.

After all, the holiday is about joy and thankfulness and gathering with your loved ones.

Indeed, this pink-crowned and red boa-ed guest is the exemplum of family values, surrounded as he is by his daughter, son, niece, and two nephews.

I guess I don't know why I was so worried that things were changing.

After all, Thanksgiving will always be my favorite holiday. My pies will always be delicious. Faux leopard will always be the outfit of choice. My team will always lose the post-prandial football game.

But we will always have the better team photo.

And Carol did do a great job of keeping her five grandchildren occupied, while we in the middle generation had the Accordion-Christmas Carol-and-Endless Eighties-Singalong that are a long-documented Thanksgiving tradition.

Farrah may be dead, but Nana lives on.

Oh the Humanities!

2009-11-17T22:03:00.000-08:00

Trust me. I'm a doctor.

Albeit not the kind Jewish mothers kvell about.

More the kind lavender ladies croon about.

Which is just (closer to) fine with me.

The best thing about getting a Ph.D.? The tiara I bought myself to celebrate finishing the damn degree. After spending a year writing a fascinating and insightful dissertation that I'm pretty sure nobody has ever read (and yes, I am including my advisor in that assessment), I figured I ought to have something to show for it.

So why not something sparkly and glamorous and likely to be coveted by drag queens?

Who says a girl has to be biologically a boy just to wear herself a crown?

Are you a princess or a queen? the neighborhood crazy lady queried, as I marched into the post office, tiara-clad, to mail something off on my way to school to file my dissertation, that fateful long ago day.

Neither I answered, only slightly put off that the person calling me out on weird wardrobe was the neighborhood crazy lady I am a doctor.

These days, seldom having any occasion to dissert, profess, or

serve as a beauty pageant runner-up, I only find cause to don the tiara once a year.

My birthday.

Because everything, even chocolate cake, is better with rhinestones.

And, apparently, a bra strap hanging out.

Ah well, it was mostly a glamorous birthday bash we had here at Dutchboy this past Saturday.

Even if it was a little lacking in the sexpertise of yore.

And my actual birthday, which was Monday, was pretty rocking too.

My boss brought me a cupcake. And she didn't even pretend to have baked it herself.

Then I Delved into some Shakespeare.

Specifically, into the final class of the Shakespeare seminar I've been teaching.

Because, you know, having a new full time job plus my usual twelve thousand hobbies just didn't seem like enough to fill my days, without a good dozen hours of reading Elizabethan English every week.

The seminarians were really great. One of them said she took the class because she liked my article in Bitch magazine critiquing the global politics of Viacom's Dora the Explorer franchise. Si, se puede, as Caesar Chavespeare might have put it.

Another seminarian told me I was the first good teacher she ever had. The fact that she has a graduate degree is perhaps more a statement about the lows of higher education than the heights of my Delving. But I do not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Or, in this case, a Greek bearing gifts. Which she was, both in terms of Hellenic heritage and in terms of giving me a handcrafted, locally grown, chocolate vodka.

If that wasn't enough of a Jewish girl's dream day, I came home to discover the postal carrier had delivered the latest issue of Bridges, which in case you never heard of it is like Bitch mit a bissel Yiddish thrown in. And there, right on pages 75-77, was a poem by little old me.

About a course I had to take to get my Ph.D.

So now, in addition to being a doctor, a tiara-donner, a righteous 9 to 5-er, a Dora-critiquer and an intrepid Delver, I am also a published poet.

Next thing you know, we'll be seeing Robert Pinsky traipsing around in a rhinestone crown with his bra strap hanging out.

From the Mouths of Bards. Well, Only One Bard. And Thus One Mouth.

2009-11-12T21:16:00.000-08:00

I meant to do a Happy Hallotween post.

It involved an Erev Halloween voicemail from our favorite tween, in which she shrieks in terror.

Terror because her father walks into the room while she is leaving us a message about how she can't hang out with us on Halloween because she is going on a six hour trick or treat binge with her peers, and tells her in that cruel way parents do that she totally not going trick or treating for six hours. She is only allowed to go trick or treating for like four hours. Five max.

Then Halloween actually happened. And the Walloon of Walgreens and his Wuvely Wife surprised the whole block by dressing up as me and the Cheez.

That Is Not My Beautiful Walloon

So I kind of lost the thread of the Hallotween post. And apparently of the All Saint's Day, Election Day, and Veteran's Day posts as well.

But now I've got a surefire idea for a post topic.

Plagiarism.

Only, that's an ugly word. Let's go with Literary Tribute instead.

That's much nicer. And appropriate, as I am plagiarizing a literary treasure.

So here, without further ado (i.e., more crap photoshop) are the quotable quotes from the eight-week-minus-that-one-I-was-with-my-Schwinstress-in-San-Francisco poetry workshop I took this fall with Peter Sears.

My Own Personal Sears Catalogue:

We do depend on narrative to some degree, especially here in Oregon.

Read the cummings poem and have a glass of wine.

Hot language beats everything. Deep meaning--leave that to John Donne. Or whoever.

We have a right wing in poetry that is kind of formal But they're just stodgy. They don't really write.

That's what poets do. They don't want characters chapters, plot. Screw it. They want language.

Where can I get a pink tshirt?

You have a real strength in things. The thingness of the poem. [said in response to a poem we were critiquing, not, alas, one of mine. Apparently I'm a little thing-lite when it comes to poesy]

We call that in the business POETICIZING. Poeticizing, a nasty way of saying what she just said.

There he is throwing up in the john, or having angst, or looking out the window. Whatever it is.

Are we talking your talk, honey?

Sounds like a Ronald Reagan speech.

All the poems work that way Peter declares. Dubious, workshop student responds, All?. Peter considers. A lot of poems he concedes.

Wallace Stevens wrote a few good poems, you know. And he did philosophy up and down.

On lyric: That's a place, especially with males, where things strut.

Also, the soul is only one syllable, so I like it much better than spirituality.

By young, I mean under fifty.

On William Stafford: That's why a lot of people hate his poetry. They can't figure out how the hell he does it.

Sex, war, and some good meals. There's a title for your first book.

As you can imagine, it was a deeply edifying experience.

Maybe because I have so much to learn about writing poetry.

But at least I know where you can get a pink shirt.

Right over at the Walgreens. Which is just the place to go when you're celebrating having your second ever poem accepted for publication anyplace that isn't your high school literary magazine.

Mishpucha at the Movies

2009-10-26T20:28:00.001-07:00

I have some news.

It has taken me quite a while to blog it.

Now the news is so old it's almost retro.

I have a job.

A full-time, go to the office five days a week job.

I had heard about these things, but I never thought it could happen to me.

Farewell FurryCon, and Winkel in my eye, and all the other strange adventures of being self-employed.

The new job is very nice. Everyone there is very nice. Welcome to the family, people keep saying.

Because apparently family is an indication of a warm workplace. So long as you don't happen to be a Soprano, a Corleone, or have a family like mine.

Most people, upon landing a new job, might take a week off and go on an exotic tropical vacation, perhaps indulge themselves with a major purchase like a fancy new car.

The Macaronimaniac version of this Bermuda and a Beemer indulgence, alas, turned out to be spending the weekend in San Francisco hanging out with my college roommates, and treating myself to a new used Schwinn off Craigslist.

Yes, I am now such a bike geek, I am keeping a spare bike in another city.

It is a little like having a mistress.

A maroon, ten-speed mistress whose tires could use a little air.

Okay, so maybe it's nothing like having a mistress.

It is a lot like having a method of transit to whisk yourself around the city, which is what college roommate Little Orphan Annie and I did, that one glorious Friday of her playing hookie from work and me not having started my new job yet.

We were so wild and out of control, we decided to go see a film right in the middle of the day.

Specifically, the new Coen brothers film.

Only problem, when you go to see a Jewish movie during the day, i.e. when they are not charging full price for the tickets, you are pretty much asking for it.

It being, having two AKs sitting behind you.

(Note to my goyishe readers: If you don't know what the AK in the previous sentence means, suffice it to say, 47 is about 20 too short. If you still have no idea what in the name of Yiddishkeit I'm talking about, read up on it here).

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of amusing lines in the new Coen brothers film. I just didn't need to hear them in surround sound--first from the screen, then repeated by Siskel and Eberg in the row behind us.

Welcome to the Mishpucha.

Air Show of Force

2009-10-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

All work and no play makes Mac a dull blogger.

Most of the time.

But every now and again, work takes me to some fascinating new place, where I have exotic new experiences.

Like accidentally attending a FurryCon.

College friend Nick and I were back on the road this week, this time in San Francisco.
And since our biz travels always seem to coincide with something kinky, perhaps it's no surprise we turned up here to find it's Fleet Week.

It seems a little redundant to have shore leave in a city where everyone is already covered in tattoos, but I guess that's military intelligence for you.

For us, Fleet Week turned out to be more of flyover week:

The thing about the Blue Angels is that they're not as impressive as they used to be, back before movie special effects got so interesting.

Turns out, the actual planes are sort of mediocre by comparison to whatever is playing at the local multiplex. If you look closely enough at the clip above, you can practically see Shatner being tossed sideways in his Naugahyde captain's chair.

Still, it is loud and proud and does attract attention.

Kind of like a Jewish mother at her son's medical school graduation. Since the day he was born, I am telling you, the nurses in the delivery room all looked at him like he was already the one in charge.
Sort of amazing to see the cultured peeps of the City by the eBay getting their Blue Angels on.

Here are my fellow museum goers, in the sculpture garden, anxiously awaiting the next swoop of the jets.

Funny, most places in the world, when the U.S. military is about to fly over, the people beneath them are anxious in a whole other way.

Hebe on the Range

2009-09-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

Dateline, 5770

Shanah Tovah I said to my friend Elon.

Not exactly big news (though perhaps big nose), one Jew wishing another a Happy New Year.

Except that it was happening in the VIP room at the Pendleton Round-Up.

Elon expressed some concern that I was going to get us killed, revealing our shared tribal identity.

I tried to reassure him that with any luck, our furrin jibberish would be mistaken for another tribal language entirely.

Not the kind of Princess who attended High Holiday Services at the Dix Hills Jewish Center, back on Long Island

Apparently, in Eastern Oregon, tribal dancing does not refer to the Hora.

Still and all, if you want a reason to say the Shehecheyanu (i.e., the blessing for new experiences) you really can't do better than Jew at a rodeo.

The entire weekend was very educational.

This is not a slick lick banker from the city, come to talk simple farm folk out of their land

This is the Cheez, in his homemade string tie (Recipe: buy string. tie string. good to go.), sitting with Young Joey Smallwood and not-s0-Millie Vannelli, in the lobby of the Balch Hotel in scenic Dufur, Oregon, where our party spent Erev RoundUp.

Half our party had rooms with a Mount Hood view. The other half had rooms with a private bath. Suffice it to say, Mount Hood is breathtaking, but a bit far to hike when you need to take a leak at 2 am.

Nevertheless, I do recommend the Balch Hotel. Especially over the alternative.

Alleyway "Suite," The Dalles, Oregon
No Mount Hood view, but you can pee just about anywhere,
including on the mattress. You probably wouldn't be the first.

I realize rodeo is not without controversy. I mean, just because I'm pro-seal hunt, doesn't mean I can condone a "sport" that involves animals being prodded and herded through a chute.

Oh, wait, those are the patrons.

So if you're wondering how a nice bleeding heart Jewish pescetarian like Macaronimaniac ended up Rounding Up: it was really an act of international diplomacy. Because Little Joey Smallwood had arranged for us to share the event with Hannu Penttila.

Hannu Penttila being not a pineapple-glazed Hawaiian pork dish (so not Rosh Hashana), but rather the Deputy Mayor of Helsinki.

Of course, the Finns being known for their wild and crazy ways, Hannu really taught the otherwise dour and sedate Pendletonians how to cut loose.

When Ken Isley, aka the Rodeo Clown, announced to the thousands of gathered fans that the crowd included a couple who had come all the way from Finland, someone in the stands greeted them with the welcoming shout, "At least they're not from France!"

I am not making that up.

The Finns were not the only ones having trouble crossing the cultural divide. When Cheez went off to the Little Cowpokes room, I asked him to pick me up a vegetarian snack on the way back. Alas, he spent twenty minutes waiting in the Beer Chips line.

Still, plastic beer tokens might have had more culinary appeal than some of the weekend's other offerings.
Of course, any event whose tagline is Let 'Er Buck offers fascinating gender politics as well.

I hadn't seen anything quite so manly since . . .
hmm, well . . . I guess that would have to be, since I lived in West Hollywood.

Seriously, I had no idea that when they announced which bareback rider had won the purse, they would mean it so literally.
Yes, men compete in grueling physical activity, and then the winner rides around the arena with his new handbag and new blanket. How butch is that?

Okay, not very. But I wouldn't mention that in Pendleton, any more than I'd wish them a great big L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu, and a rousing Vive La France.

Spotted at the Performing Arts Festival

2009-09-18T18:38:00.002-07:00

Quiz:
What is the most striking element of this picture?

Answer: It's that in the three weeks since I leopardize my bicycle, no one has noticed it.

Well, no one except several homeless people, various of whom have commented positively as I rode by them.

This kind of hurt my pride.

And here I mean the vanity kind of pride, and not the pack of wildcat kind of pride. I'm pretty sure there is not yet a pride of leopard-bike riders in town. But it's Portland, you never know.

I even put in extra miles on the bike, shlepping all over to see TBA events. And by TBA events, I do not mean Traditional Birth Attendant. It's not that I don't know nothin about birthin babies. It's that I know this much about birthin babies: I have no damn desire to be doing it.

I mean Time Based Art, Portland's performing arts festival. Where you can see such inspired creativity as this:

Those are not hip artists doing performance art. It is a bunch of art lovers trying not to drop dead from the heat while sitting in Pioneer Courthouse Square on a ninety degree day, waiting for the performance art to start.

Here are the hip artists:
Or are they here?No, wait, right here! Here is art happening:Not the dude with the Free Hugs sign. He's just a random freak. Not unlike Bovine of Arabia in the picture above.

The artists are the two short guys, who are part of a theater troupe called Back to Back Theatre (wily buggers, since they are actually pretty much belly to belly in this shot). Back to Back features actors with disabilities, who perform plays in public spaces.

Spaces that happen to be filled with other people. And, in this case, with tents, balloons, and free huggers (which now that I think of it are perhaps an inevitable product of cross-pollination between Portland institution of free box and Portland infestation of tree huggers).

The point is, none of this stuff was put there by the troupe. They're just a handful of actors, performing without stage sets or extras. Or performing with whatever stage sets and extras happen to turn up.

Part of the audience experience for me was watching everyone else in Pioneer Courthouse Square, to see whether they noticed the show. Which most of them didn't. Which is a great comment on how much human drama is going on around us all the time, and how oblivious we often are to the emotional struggles and triumphs of our fellow human beings.

Not everyone, of course. You could see that too: every so often, someone in the crowd would happen upon the actors and totally notice them. Go up to them. Maybe even try to talk to them.

There's a word for these kind of people.

Homeless.

That was my biggest epiphany while watching the play: we middle class people spend a lot of the time that we are in public space trying to keep our focus as narrow as possible. Trying not to notice anything that seems a little weird. Definitely not stopping to soak it up or communicate with the person involved. Anything too weird might sully us. Or sully our sense of safety. Or our sense of entitlement.

Homeless people, by contrast, keep their eyes open for anything that might be going down. Might be a boon to them. Might be a threat to them. Might just be an animal print-decorated amusement to them. That's why they're voted Mostly Likely to Notice My Bike.

My second biggest epiphany while watching the play is that their is a reason paper hats have not caught on as a long-term millinery medium. And it's not just that it's hard to adorn them with cat ears.

The Dog Ate My Cre8ivity. Well, Actually It Was a Cartoon Cat.

2009-09-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

According to the snOregonian, my friend Bill is a heavy hitter.

And by that, I do not mean that he is drinking the same juice as Jose Canseco.

Bill is a comedy writer. Just like me!

Except Bill actually gets paid to write comedy.

(I did once try to convince Bill that I, too, could be a paid writer of the television comedies, by pitching him my idea for a new series. And by new, I mean blatantly ripped off from an extant series, which is the way of the Hollywood. My show was just like Early Edition, except that—and here is the comic genius of me at work—instead of getting the whole paper in advance, the protagonist just got the Comics section. Look out, Jon! Garfield is going to steal your sandwich! Why Mr. Heavy Hitter didn't swing at that pitch, I cannot imagine.)

Perhaps the whole selling-the-loaf-instead-of-giving-away-the-slice-for-free thing is why Bill, and not MacaroniManiac, was the one asked to speak at the Portland Cre8ive Conference. A conference so cre8ive, letters alone cannot convey its cr8tivity.

Okay, I am going to stop doing that numbers for letters thing now. It is too annoying for words. Or for numerals, for that matter.

Anyway, Bill has spent the past few weeks procrastinating on the TV scripts he should be writing, to instead write his Cre8— er, I mean Creative Conference presentation, which he gave yesterday.

And then (here is the irony, which, as comedy vocationalists and avocationalists alike all know, is one of the great comic devices) this appeared in today's paper (click on the image and it will appear large enough to read):
If only there had been an Early Edition: Comics Section, Bill could have just used the Get Fuzzy strip for his presentation. And used the squirrels for all his other writing projects.

Then he would have had time to hang with me at the TBA festival, about which I will blog anon (as the Shakespeare-typing monkeys would put it, were they writing this blog).

Walgreen with Envy at Canadian Healthcare

2009-08-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a helpful tip for our fair neighbor to the North (and by that, I mean Canada, and not just the Walgreen's):

Fire the police.

No, I'm not misquoting rap lyrics again. The four-letter F word I meant was indeed Fire.

Why would I suggest such a moronic thing? Not because I have anything against those charming Canuck gendarmes, I assure you.

I'd hate to see them all tossed out on their jodhpur-clad behinds.

I'm just extending the logic of the Republican's anti-health care rhetoric.

See, here in the U.S., we have public policing. And sure, it's good for emergencies. And for off-loading donuts.
But still, some wealthy people feel they have to wait too long or can't get the service they deserve if they rely solely on the "public option." So they choose to pay out-of-pocket for private security guards to keep their personal parking lot, gated community, or shopping mall of choice secure.

And, according to the Republicans,
if anyone anywhere in your country chooses to squander their hard-earned loonies (yes, I know, it's a little, well, luney, that that's what the Canucks call their money, but they do. I guess it's for the picture on the $1 coin. And I do mean the one of the Queen) for private care, then you can bet your maple glazed that no one can possibly benefit from having any public care.

I am quite proud of my rather charming Fire the Police analogy. Indeed, I'm hoping this blog entry will get picked up by all the major news outlets. Because of course I'm ready to weigh in as a leading voice in the whole health care debate. Since I am not a health care provider. Nor am I an economist who specializes in analyzing delivery of care. Not a medical ethicist. Not a . . .

Well, we could go on all day. The point is, I am not especially qualified. And lately it seems like I'm the only person who's not especially qualified who HASN'T weighed in.

For the record, I'm also not especially qualified to care for my squeeze the Cheez's aging parents, who suffer from every disease from diabetes to osteoporosis to cardiopathy to multiple sclerosis.

I am qualified to write a poem, maybe something with a charming ABCB that rhymes osteoporosis to multiple sclerosis, with, if the mood strikes and the meter holds, a possible forced rhyme of diabetes and cardiopathy. But actually caring for the ill, no dice.

Luckily, I don't have to do that. Nor does the Cheez. Nor do we have to go broke to pay those who do. Nor do his parents.

Let me say it, loud and proud. Cheez's parents are not dead thanks to Canada's healthcare system.

They're not even bankrupt over not being dead.

Which, given their lifelong relationship to matters fiduciary, is a freaking miracle.

So really, I don't think the public option is so bad.

Not for health care, and not for cops.

Truth is, I'd hate to see the Mounties go. Because they are so charming and so rich for metaphoric allusion.

As Cheez likes to note, the difference between his native land and mine is that in Canada, the national symbol is the Mountie. Order. Discipline. Abiding by the law.

In the good old U.S. of A, it's the cowboy. Rugged individualist. Romantic. Freedom-loving. All very well and good, but is that really who'd you trust with your long-term healthcare?

But for now, the closest I'm coming to healthcare of the quality enjoyed by our neighbors to the North is a little self-diagnosis and out-of-pocket over-the-countering over at the Walgreen's.

If a Jew Shmears in the Woods, You Know You Will Hear About It

2009-08-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

Overheard on the McKenzie River last weekend:

You know how when you're scaling fish . . . began Nate.

I'm a Jewish woman I interrupted, so unless what you mean by scaling fish is "weighing the lox from the deli case to see if you have a quarter pound or maybe closer to a half pound," I have absolutely no idea what you could be talking about.

Yes, it's true. When I go to the country (as I noted to our hosts before departure, in my tribe "the country" is defined as any place a hot pastrami sandwich cannot readily be purchased, a definition that I hold to even though as a confirmed pescetarian, I last ate pastrami during the Carter presidency), I should be packing a Nature-to-Yiddish dictionary.

Where I'm from, "going for a float" involves root beer, and not a trailer hitch.

Nevertheless, I do have certain skills I bring to the great outdoors. After all, anyone who was raised at Loehmann's can hunt-and-gather with the best of them.

That's why I hunted up some habanero pepper at the grocery store, then gathered some vodka with which to infuse it, all before leaving Portland.

Because although this is an inspiring vista, complete with unbelievably rich and beautiful hues:

So is this:

Not to mention this:

Just be glad you weren't on hand for the raising and lowering of the flag out at Camp Kiltowski.

Anyway, we did have a lovely time, even if I felt very inadequate as hostess-with-the-utmostest Pat was pointing out flora and fauna and all that other nature crap that I can never remember.

At least anyone who's spent as much time weighing a shmear (aka scaling fish) as I have can tell a bagel . . .

. . . from A (Flock of) Seagull(s)

(hostess with the utmostest Pat

demonstrating just what damage

one too many habanero vodkas can do to a lady)

Southern Culture. A Term I Use Loosely.

2009-07-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

This week's episode of How Weird is the Life of Macaronimaniac features someone named Sister.

Who is not my sibling.

Nor is she a nun.

She's from that kind of Southern family a mutual friend explained to me in which the eldest daughter is called "Sister" and the eldest son is called "Brother."

Is that the same kind of Southern family I asked in which Sister and Brother end up marrying each other?

I know that's a tasteless joke. Nothing but a narrow-minded, carpet-bagging, Northern aggressioning stereotype of fine Southern culture.

Except that Sister did marry a brother.

Although not her own.

Nor a monk.

She married the brother of my friends Little Joey Smallwood and Susie Sustainability. In other words, Sister is their sister-in-law.

In addition to not being from the type of Southern family in which siblings marry, Sister is apparently not from the kind of Southern family in which every knows how to line dance. And lucky for me she isn't, because that's how I met Sister . . . when Sister and her sister-in-law Susan decided to invite several dozen of their closest lady friends, including Sister's mother-in-law, over to learn line dancing.

Among other things.

Where can we go line dancing? one of the ladies excitedly asked, as we threw back some lemonade mojitos in between Boot Scootin' Boogies.

Michelle, our fearless teacher of all things line danceable, quickly gave us a rundown of local venues, clueing us in on which had the best dance floor, and which is better known for a certain mating ritual called . . . well, let's just say it shares the second two initials of certain Southern president, although it references an activity more recently associated with a different Southern president.

And here I do not mean Jimmy Carter and the WB.

Suffice it to say, it is the sort of alcohol-fueled activity you don't want to have to hear described in mixed company.

And by mixed I mean, in the presence of Sister's seventy-something mother-in-law.

This is not one of my usual photoshop mash-ups.

It happens that the only picture of have of Sister's mother-in-law is one in which she is wearing a clown nose.

Needless to say, given the clown nose, this picture was not taken while we were line dancing.

It was taken while we were at a Korean banquet in Elmhurst, New York. But surely you could have guess that, right?

Anyway, we did learn some line dancing. I can now Electric Slide. And Cotton-Eyed Joe. Not to mention Watermelon Slide. And of course, as aforementioned, Boot Scootin' Boogie.

Or at least I could, as of last Tuesday. I think I might have forgotten entirely by now. Good thing I have this footage. Or bootage, I guess it is.

Tthat was so much fun, let's see another!

Who gets to make up the moves for each song-dance combination? I wondered.

It's done by a committee of Southern ladies my friend Rachel surmised when they aren't otherwise occupied planning toddler pageants.

It's a weird way to spend your time. But I guess it beats marrying your own brother.

I Yam What I Yam

2009-07-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, back before the Republicans had important things to do, like prevent Americans from getting health care, they had to while away their days with more frivolous matters like preventing Americans from seeing art.

I, for one, was grateful to the Republicans for banning controversial art. After all, I was raised in a suburban shopping mall. How would I have known what culture was if it weren't for some crusty old senator railing on about how I better not lay eyes on it?

Of course, it's easy to be nostalgic for those good old days when the government still funded art and thus could censor it.

Back then, we young irate feminists would rant about how empowering it was that Karen Finley advocated peeing in art museums that didn't display enough work by women artists or artist of color, or peeing in polling booths when only white males are on the ticket.

Now, alas, I live in mail-only ballot Oregon, so if I pee in my polling place, it also means I'm mopping my floor and trying to blame it on my cat.

And most of my sisterhood-was-powerful feminista comrades have turned breeder. They still talk about peeing all over the place, of course.

It's just that now they're talking about it because they're swapping stories about pregnancy-related loss of bladder control.

(Note to Republicans: if you really don't want teens to have sex, don't bother telling them about the merits of abstinence. Tell them that sex leads to peeing in your pants. And your car. And in at least a few cases I've heard of, the grocery store. Trust me, that will be more persuasive.

Or you could just teach them to use condoms. That way we won't need nearly as many clean-ups on Aisle Seven).

All of this might explain why I never became a Karen Finley-level performance artist. It's not that I don't admire her for shoving a yam you-know-where. It's just that when given a yam myself, my inclination is to shove it into a nice sweet potato pecan pie.

Because that is my level of subversive behavior, really: substituting yams for sweet potatoes.

It sounds a little more rad if you call it commingling the ol' angiosperms.

But not much.

In fact, I am such a garden-variety goody two shoes, that when I was in a performing arts fest this weekend, it involved

not yams in the can (and no, I don't mean the kind of can you can find in Aisle Seven, if you step rather gingerly around the all-too-apt Piso Mojado sign), but merely pancakes from a mix.

And even then, when I was having trouble getting my 1 cup measure into the box (I know, getting my 1 cup measure into the box sounds like it could possibly be a euphemism for some really perverse thing one of the NEA Four might have tried and failed to get funding to do, but really, it isn't), I was so goody two shoes that instead of just dumping my Bisquick all over the place (again, dumping my Bisquick all over the place is, alas, not a sexual euphemism), I just fumphered my way through the performance, hoping if I cut back on the milk, all would go well.

It didn't.

Which meant no steaming stack of pancakes to buy the audience's love.

But we did win their hearts with the video that played while my batter ran rampant over the sizzling-hot onstage griddle (again, NOT a euphemism).

Because if you are going to confront an audience with a brilliant director's impenetrable storyline, you might as double your pleasure, double your fun by mashing it up with yet another brilliant director's impenetrable you-know-what.

And no, I am not talking about his yams.

The audience was certainly amused. Though I don't think any laughed so hard they peed themselves. Sorry, Karen. Maybe next year.

Ten Artistically-Inspired Days that Shook the World, Just As Though the World Was an Itsy Bitsy Snowglobe and Art Was a Curious Toddler

2009-07-16T23:16:00.000-07:00

As we all know, in Christianity the biggest holiday of the year involves a kindly man in a fabulous red suit getting loaded on his sleigh.

I mean, loading up his sleigh and giving everyone a nice gift.

Judaism being the fun time that it is, our biggest holiday of the year involves a week and a half of begging forgiveness, culminating in swinging poultry around and then beheading it.

Why do we do this? Because if you behead the poultry and then swing it around, it makes a really big mess.

Oh, you meant, why the swinging chicken in the first place? It's because we're hoping God will let us live for another year. Unlike poor Mr. Chicken.

Something is Kosher in the State of Sweden

Thus, the Days of Awe: ten days to prove your life is worth something.

Now, I realize we're barely past Bastille Day, talking the run-up between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur may seem a little premature.

Mayhem and Mob Violence:

Storming of the Bastille, 1789, or

the Fortunoff's Going Out of Business Sale, 2009?

I guess the Ten Days of Awe are on my mind because here at Dutchboy, we are heavy into the Ten Days of Are We Really Going to Pull This Off?

Instead of swinging a soon-to-be-headless hen around, we are swinging around the words of a certain glabrous playwright.

Of course, when you are working with Richard Foreman's diaries, you can let fly any which way you want, because no matter how the pages land, they are not going to make any less sense than they did when they were delicately packaged by the genius' own hand.

Oooh, that makes it sound like Foreman has The Thing is taking his dictation.

Thing, take a memo: it is once again time for the Annual Richard Foreman Festival.

Which means that for the past week, the Cheez and I (and a bunch of other Portland artists/performers) have been madly making art. Or what we hope is art. It's a little hard to tell until the bun is out of the oven.

I'd love to tell you all about it, because it's been zany and weird and wonderful. And because I pretty much tell you whatever the hell else I've been up to.

But I won't. Because I'm hoping you'll come see the performance. It's this Sunday, 5 pm, at Imago Theater. Which no, is not the usual venue, but yes, is air conditioned. So hopefully this year we'll really do some performing, and not just some perspiring.

Although I don't want to give too much about our piece away, I guess I can whet your appetite (HINT!) by sharing this exemplum of a perFOREMANce from the year before last. Click that full screen icon and turn the volume up. Because who doesn't want to see a larger-than-life Hello Kitty confront the Golfish King?

Of course, this year's piece is totally different, because the text is totally different.

Well, maybe there are one or two similarities. Suffice it to say, we found we had a few more random objects around the house that are waiting for their close-up, Mr. Demento.

Kicky, Kikey Camp Vamp. And no, I don't mean Samuel Clemens.

2009-07-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Mark Twain. Dorothy Parker. Erma Bombeck. Brilliant and talented all.

But let's face it, they never really amounted to anything.

No Oprah Book Club. No Twitter feed. And no reading at Powell's City of Books.

How sad and tragic and empty and leopardless their lives must have felt.

Filmed by the devoted Cheez, June 30, 2009.

Eat Your I ♥ NY Out

2009-06-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes, though you've eaten enough, and maybe more than enough, you just can't help but go back for more? Even though you are already really, really, really full, and whatever else you intake is just going to make you feel sick?

(If you have no idea what I am talking about, you clearly are not Jewish. Not even a little bit, three generations back, on your father's side)

Well, that going back for more even though you have clearly already had too much—that's what I did last week.

With the whole city of New York.

Yes, I (swine) flew back from the Big Apple in May, then turned right around in June and took another bite.

And lest you think gluttony was my only indiscretion, I also am guilty of balling students. Plural, I know, how bad is that? Older. Younger. Male. Female. How can MacaroniManiac do such things?

I'd like to blame it on the Martinis, and the Mets.

The Martinis being the Pink Martinis, who were playing Carnegie Hall. And the Mets being the baseball team that even though I grew up thirty miles from Shea stadium, I'd only gone to see twice in my entire life, until a certain Joey Smallwood-wannabe convinced half of Portland to trek across the continent to celebrate his birthday.

And while we were in the neighborhood, I figured we might as well have a knish.

(for those of you who do not order your meals with a side of Maalox, let me just explain that knish is a two-syllable word, beginning with a hard "k" and ending with the most nostalgic case of heartburn)

So between attending the swanky concert and the soggy ball game, I took a passel of Portlanders and their stray pals on a nosh n shlep of ethnic eats across lower Manhattan.

It was a light midday grazing, at least by Jewish standards:

three flavors of falafel
north Asian dumplings
arepas (for the Maalox-swillers in the audience, arepas are like an Andean hamantaschen. Except they're made with corn meal instead of white flour. And savory rather than sweet filling. And not meant to be reminiscent of chewing anyone's body parts. In other words, nothing like hamantaschen)
kasha knish
the world's greatest doughnuts (listen, when you live with a Canadian, doughnuts count as ethnic food)
and the piece de resistance: takoyaki, just like Mama used to make.

Provided you had the kind of Mama who'd whip up octopus balls whenever you needed a nosh.

Perfesser, will this be on the test?

Only on the taste test, Joey, only on the taste test.

I did enjoy the food. And the concert (despite lack of martinis in liquid form). And the fact that the baseball game ended early due to rain.

Still, I was glad to get back to Portland. Where, while you can't just walk from arepas to octopus balls, you can bike to almost anything, (including to the annoyance of snobby New Yorkers, who can damn well kiss my hot knish).

And so, home from having octopus ball-ed Joey Smallwood,

I proceeded to hop on my favorite two-wheeled conveyance to seedball the city.

Seedballing being not, as the picture on the right might suggest, a chocolatey snack, albeit still a quintessentially Portland pursuit.

in which a woman who proudly boasts of wearing vegan shoes (you can always tell a Reed graduate) instructs a gaggle of do-gooders in the ins-and-outs of guerilla gardening.

Because while we may not have anything as fancy shmancy as New York's new High Line way out here in provinces, we do have a bunch of high on life along with, well, let's just say that what that vegan shoe trods upon is not the only grass to be found in Colonel Summers Park young persons, willing to flout the law just to make the flowers bloom.

So yes, I've been balling my students.

And spreading my seed.

But still, there are worse crimes to commit.

Like having that second donut.

Forget the Martinis and the Mets. I'm going to blame it on the Canadian version of the Twinkie defense.

Celebrityation of Life

2009-06-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

Icons may come and go, but irony will last forever.

Despite Melissa Joan Hart's direst concerns, upon dropping Farrah Fawcett won't get the cover of People after all.

Yes, cruel fate has done what Jacklyn Smith, Kate Jackson, Cheryl Ladd, and Lee Majors' divorce lawyer never could.

Upstaged Farrah.

Farrah had her place in American pop culture, to be sure. But even she could be outshone . . . at least by a certain someone who shot to stardom young, even hobnobbing with political bigwigs—only to have his career compromised by allegations of sexual misconduct with minor, which in turn set off a downward spiral that included financial mismanagement leading to foreclosure on a beloved home, and incoherent public behavior sparking suspicions of alcohol/substance abuse.

But who really cares which dead celeb is on the cover of People?

Well, given the 3.75 million print copies in circulation, with up to 50 million website hits in a single a day, apparently more Americans than you can shake a glittery glove at.

Why are People Who Need People so plentiful? Because all those great literary tomes you can find at the checkout stand embody the two things we yearn for in the great nation of ours:

1) the opportunity to be famous (witness the deep humiliations suffered by Reality TV celeb-wannabes just for their fifteen minutes of not yet voted off the island fame)

2) any crumb of gossip evidencing how incredibly f*ed up and unhappy famous people are

Read all about it: famous people have affairs, get divorced, do drugs, ruin their lives. And god love em, don't you wish you could too?

Of course, regular non-famous people can do all those things, and they do, but not with all the glamor and attention of Britney Spears.

Breaking news: I just googled Britney Spears to see if I'd spelled her name correctly, and the first story to come up was about Britney twittering a memorial to Ed McMahon. The second story was about Britney mourning Michael Jackson. Apparently the reason we churn out new celebrities is so we can have someone emote over the death of the old celebrities.

Because seriously, who ever even heard of Melissa Joan Hart until Farrah nearly dropped dead on her People parade?

Loud Pushy Author, Deal With It!

2009-06-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

I have a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase

LOUD PUSHY JEW—Deal With It

It was a gift from my friend Kent's boyfriend. I think he meant it as an insult. But screw him. Because I love that shirt.

When I used to wear it in LA, people would go wild. I'd get compliments on it constantly. I remember the time when a woman stopped me on the street and tried to buy it from me to send to her daughter. Or the evening the guy behind the counter at the frozen yogurt store loudly announced when my turn came, Can I help the next loud, pushy Jew, please?

Actually, when you work at a dessert-selling establishment on the border of Beverly Hills, there is pretty much always another loud pushy Jew waiting to be served.

In Portland, alas, people plotz when I wear the shirt. And the worst part is, they don't even know what plotz means.

There are so few Jews here, merely identifying someone as Jewish is presumed to be an act of anti-Semitism. Even if you are the Jew you're identifying as a Jew.

Actually, just the word Jew itself freaks people out. They seem to think it is a slur. So in case anyone of you reserved goyim are still confused about this, let me set you straight:

The word Jew is perfectly fine WHEN USED AS A NOUN.

When used as a verb, no. Under no circumstances should you EVER say Jew someone down. Unless of course you want to be anti-Semitic, in which case, go right ahead. But trust me, you'll pay for such prejudice.

And I do mean pay retail.

Also not so kosher is using Jew as an adjective. As in Jew lawyer or Jew neighborhood. Let something like that slip out, and chances are, you are going to offend. Maybe not every time, but play it safe. Go with attorney of the Hebraic persuasion, or geographical enclave of the former Israelites, and you'll probably be better off.

I guess it is confusing when a perfectly legitimate, non-derogatory word gets dragged down just because some people use it as a slur. I once spent a whole summer working with high school students, trying to get them not to use the word "gay" as pejorative, as in that shirt is so gay or that song is so gay.

Years later, I moved to West Hollywood, and let me tell you, it is a city packed full of men in gay shirts blasting gay songs.

They are, in the words of a certain Jew author, quite regularly gay there.

West Hollywood, that is so gay.

Not to be confused with San that is so gay by the Bay Francisco.

Or Vancouver that is so gay, ay? British Columbia.

Every place I have lived since graduating from college is so gay. Including, of course, lesbiriffic Portland.

Today, my squeeze the Cheez and I spotted the same two sensibly-shod women biking together three different times across southeast Portland, with a canvas Pride Festival tote bag dangling proudly from one set of handlebars. During the final sighting, Cheez overheard the women speaking to each other in what you know I cannot help but describe as a foreign tongue.

They're German, he said. That explains their (lack of) fashion sense.

Oh I said. I thought they were just lesbian business casual.

Those German lesbians are so gay.

But what is even gayer than German lesbians (aka dykes auf bikes), or a WeHo gym bunny in a metallic shirt gyrating down Santa Monica Boulevard to the extended dance remix of I Will Survive?

Well, according to the Oregonian: me! To be fair, they actually meant me and the rest of the contributors to the new Portland Queer anthology. But I'm a loud pushy Jew, why shouldn't I elbow (glove) my way to the head of the line, just like it was the fro yo of homo?

Anyway, if you want to know more, I'll be reading my piece not one, not twice, but thrice (that amount is so gay) in the coming weeks:

Reading Frenzy – 921 SW Oak St, Portland – Tuesday June 16, 7 p.m.

Powell’s City of Books on Burnside – Downtown Portland – Tuesday, June 30, 7:30 p.m.

Q Literati! – Q Center – 69 SE Taylor, Portland – Wednesday, July 8, 7 p.m.

I promise, if you come to any or all of the readings, you'll be entertained. And I guarantee that once you hear my piece, you will surely proclaim, that is so Jew.

Furange County

2009-06-04T21:28:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you have wondered from time to time about what Macaronimaniac does for a living.

So have I.

All I know is, today I am doing it in Orange County. Or, as the snide liberals of West LA, the UK Financial Times, and Gwen Stefani (not a group that usually have much in common) all like to say, Behind the Orange Curtain.

Before the plane even landed at John Wayne Airport, I knew things would be different here.

When I glanced over at the dozing aging businessman in the aisle seat, I couldn't help but notice his chronometer.

Clearly, this wasn't just any Mickey Mouse operation.It was the world's leading Mickey Mouse operation.

I, however, was not headed for Disneyland. I was headed for the Irvine Marriott. I made my way from the airport on foot. First step (well, first 100 really fast steps):

Cross the street.

All ten lanes of it.

That's four whole lanes more than the drive-thru JavaHut

I passed in an office park on the way to the hotel.

Although when you are too lazy to walk from your car to the coffee stand, your lifestyle may be less Java Hut than Jabba the Hut.

The person working the front desk at the hotel happily informed me I was getting an eighth-floor room with balcony.

Imagine my joy when I pulled open the curtains, slid open the door, and looked out upon the wondrous land named for its beautiful citrus groves.

Talk about Room With a View. Although I'm not sure parking lot, concrete "water feature," and glimpse of freeway is quite what E. M. Forester had in mind. Merchant and Ivory, meet Marriott in Irvine.

I did have a great night's sleep, what with the constant rush of the 405 Freeway surviving as a kind of white noise machine. Up early, I joined my colleague Nick, with whom I actually bummed across Europe after our freshman year of college, for a slightly shorter and less inspiring jaunt across the parking lot to the nearest office park.

We were charmed to notice a bunny lurking next to one of the indistinguishable beige office buildings. What a lovely moment. I only wish the Rose City Rabbit Fanciers could have seen it. We did kind of wonder what the rabbit was doing in an office park bounded by a 10-lane street and the 405 freeway. Until we noticed another rabbit. And then we figured they were probably doing what bunnies usually do, and we'd best avert our eyes and hop off to our own less re-productive meeting.

After ten hours in a windowless meeting room, we returned to the hotel, and I headed down for a swim in the indoor-outdoor pool. Which, like everyone who's ever done any online cruising, mysteriously looks a lot better in the picture on the website. As I swam my first lap, I was somewhat alarmed to notice what seemed to be a gaggle of Hell's Angels-wannabes gathered poolside.

At least, that's what I, swimming without my glasses on, thought they might have looked like. I mean, I'm pretty sure that one guy was wearing a black leather vest with no shirt. That rest of the crew all had on red t-shirts adorned with some acronym I couldn't quite make out. Except for one guy who was wearing a short sleeve plaid flannel shirt (kind of defeats the purpose) and a yarmulke.

I had assumed this would be the strangest sight of my trip to the pool, but, as so often proves true in my life, I was incorrect. Because just as I got in the elevator to come back up to my room, who should come rushing down the hall for a ride skyward but a thin, young twenty-something clutching a Wii.

They got pissed off at me for playing in the lobby he explained.

Uh huh I nodded noncommittally before taking the plunge and adding you probably know this but um you seem to have a tail.

Yes he said There will be a lot of us here this weekend. We're having a convention.

I began to wonder if this explained the rabbit in the office park.

As it turns out, that rabbit was a little too, well, actually animal for this crowd. This crowd being Califur.

Yes, I am sharing my Orange County experience with a hotel full of Furries. Security provided by those acronym-clad Hell's Angel-types (who hopefully will not turn this into some kind of Fuzzy Wuzzy version of the Altamont Speedway Free Festival).

As Nick and I headed up to our respective rooms after dinner, we crowded into an elevator that was dominated by another guest maneuvering a bell hop cart loaded with his personal Califur gear.

Why do you think he had that large electric fan? Nick asked, once we were safely ensconced on our floor.

I can only assume it gets rather hot inside those costumes I answered.

Now, as I toss and turn trying to sleep in the same hotel with hundreds of horny (in perhaps multiple senses of the term) furries, I'm left wondering: did that mild-manned sixty-something businessman on the airplane have something in his carry-on that lets him wear his Mickey fetish on more than just his wrist?

Memorial Dazed

2009-05-27T07:57:00.001-07:00

Memorial Day. A solemn occasion for remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.

Not to mention an excuse to party for three days straight, to kick off the season during which Americans party for three months straight.

Giving your life so that a bunch of yahoos can go powerboating while shitfaced, that truly is the ultimate sacrifice.

Though we did not go powerboating, my squeeze the Cheez and I did enjoy some full throttle fun.

Where? you ask.

Well, here's a hint: the slogan was It's a Family A'Fair.

No, not the Poor Spellers for Incest Association.

The 103rd Annual Multnomah County Fair. No kinky sex in that. Unless of course you count the Rose City Rabbit Fanciers' Double Open Show.

I'm not sure what exactly "double open" refers to, but I'm sure whatever it was, they were doing it like bunnies.

An organful of mood music for all your rabbit fancying needs

The Fair exhibits were fascinating.

Though not necessarily impressive. Unless you are impressed by how much a giant vegetable can resemble a wiffle-ball bat.

Note how this lovely display of prize-winning roses nicely camouflages a Fair-goer in bright floral polyester top.

Think of it as the Magic Eye Can't Believe You Wore That Out in Public

The fair is held at Oaks Park.

A name which might conjure up Frederick Law Olmstedfast bucolic delights. But is actually a semi-seedy amusement park.

Not to say Olmsted didn't have a fluming good time on an E-ticket ride himself from time to time.

Whilst the Multnomah County Fair is free, the rides at the amusement park, which although permanent exude that aura of rusting hazard usually associated with a weekend carny on the most rundown outskirts of town, are not.

Luckily, as we arrived, a departing park visitor offered me his only-slightly-torn ride bracelet. In other words: Free Memorial Day Not Quite Carny Rides!!!!!!

Just one more indicator that Barack Obama has truly brought socialism to our nation.

And since we were all in the Spirit of America, our first stop on the midway was the Lewis and Clark Big Adventure. Which turned out to be animotronic proof that George Santayana was right: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to be haunted by it.

Warning: this cannot accurately be called a "Thrill Ride" inasmuch as it is fairly boring, even after I edited out half the ride. I think it is most enjoyed by those Oaks Parks attendees who have enjoyed a Portland-style puff on the old peace pipe to celebrate their encounter with the Shoshone.

We wound up our visit with me conning Cheez into going on an actual scary ride.

Of course, when you are so prone to motion sickness you feel vomity if you try to read a map while you are riding shotgun in the Macaroni and Cheez Mobile (aka, our '99 Saturn), just about any ride is a scary ride.

Confident that centripetal force would cause Cheez only to puke on his own lap, and not on mine, I dragged him over to one of the park's newest rides, the Spider. Here is how it is billed on their website:

The Spider Don't get caught in this Spiders web of fear. Keep your bug spray with you at all time. A very serious ride!!

Clearly, the copywriter had had a little too much of the old peace pipe. Or maybe not enough.

In any event, we waited a quarter of an hour, got on for the last ride of the night, spent ninety seconds screaming, and about twelve hours waiting for Chuck's nausea to pass.

We might as well have been drunkenly powerboating, sick as he felt.

And really, nothing goes with the Red-White-and-Blue Patriotism of a Great American Holiday like a little Green-Around-the-Gills.

I(pecac) can hardly wait for the 4th of July.

SWAK (Sealed With a Kitty)

2009-05-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

Ever since I gave away my car with the I'm Pro-Accordion and I Vote bumper sticker, I've worried that people may have trouble gauging my political leanings.

So in case you're wondering: I'm a feminist-environmentalist-urban dwelling-lifelong vegetarian, and I'm pro-seal hunt.

You heard me right.

Feminist.

Oh, wait, was it the pro-seal hunt part that surprised you?

Yes, I'm pro-seal hunt like the Rock is pro-wrestling. Really, it's the least I could do. Because while I am from the great state of I ♥ New York my squeeze the Cheez is from the land of I ♣ Seals.

Not that he's ever clubbed a seal. No indeed. He's a gentle sort. Bookish and computer geekly and not much of a hunter. So instead of clubbing seals, he just gets out the can opener and opens himself a tin of seal meat, when the need arises.

Which luckily is none too often, on account of how hard it is to find the canned seal meat over at the Trader Joe's.

Actually, Trader Joe's doesn't stock any food from anywhere in eastern Canada, due to outrage over the seal hunt. Chocolate produced by enslaved child labor, that they have.

But a little organic produce from Moncton, New Brunswick, no dice. Too tainted by the several-hundred-miles-away proximity to seal hunting.

Which is a little like boycotting Duke University because it's so tainted by what happens in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Now, I understand that seals are all white and fluffy and adorable (unlike enslaved children, who tend to be malnourished and scabby). But you know, so are lambs and marshmallows. And the Trader has no problem pushing those.

So what's the deal with seal?

Well, for one thing, as one of my favorite Rumbolts put it, you take anything out on the snow and kill it, it's going to look gruesome. Martha Stewart's beet salad would come off like the Manson family supper.

Luckily, beef slaughter always happens in an attractive manner.

But seal, they make for a picture-perfect Greenpeace fundraising campaign.

Not that Harp seals are endangered. There are over 5.6 million of them frolicking about. Frankly, Harp lager is in greater danger of being completely annihilated by Newfies.

Cod, on the other hand, which seal eat, are kind of screwed, numbers wise.

Which is what has the good people of Newfoundland, who depended on the cod fishery for centuries, until overfishing by international fleets in the North Atlantic caused the entire collapse of the cod fishery, equally screwed.

And now, they can't even sell their seal to the Trader Joe's.

Luckily, the Japanese are still buying. Because the Japanese know first-hand that sometimes something that seems fluffy and white and cute and adorable really ought to be bludgeoned to death ASAP.

PDX v NYC, a Catty Analysis

2009-05-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

I love New York. It's the sort of place where you can hear a resident assert, This is the cultural capital of the world with no hesitation. And no irony.

Even if that person has never lived anywhere except New York and Waltham, Mass. Not to diss the fine cultural assets of Middlesex County (sorry, typo there . . . should have been asset singular), but maybe a broader perspective is in order.

Sure, New York has Broadway theaters, the Whitney, MOMA, Carnegie Hall, countless galleries, and of course the Met of the opera persuasion and the Met of art museum persuasion (not to mention the Mets of baseball playing persuasion).

In a week, I saw work by Jenny Holzer, Chuck Close, Pablo Picasso, Claes Oldenberg, Sophie Calle, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, and zillions of others. My feet hurt just thinking about all that art I shlepped around seeing.

And my throat hurts just thinking about all the friends in NYC I told about seeing it. On account of they never get a chance to cash in all that cultural capital for themselves. Because their time is spent elsewhere.
Like standing on line to get into the Trader Joe's.

Now, no one is mistaking Portland for the cultural capital of the world (well, no one who hasn't also mistaken an architectural landmark for a good place to put a minor league baseball stadium, a car turning right for a car turning left, and a seventeen-year-old for a consenting adult).

But still, I want to proclaim the glory of the arts in Portland, even at the risk of sounding like a rube from the provinces. Or a reporter from the New York Times.

Because everyone in Portland is a freaking artist. We may not have the Algonquin Hotel, but still, any friend of Dorothy (Parker) can be moved by my musings in the new Portland Queer anthology. My squeeze the Cheez is singing in the flash choir. The neighbor who was caring for our cats while we were in New York? She was also frantically finishing up the paintings for her first demi-solo show. The gallery had actually offered her a solo show but she didn't have time to do enough work to fill the space; apparently showing an empty kibble tub and a well-scooped litter box did not suffice as art.

But, you may be thinking, the artistic endeavors of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Perhaps you're wondering about the rest of the city, the public servants and the transportation advocates and the newshounds and the like. Can they too really all be artistes?

Keep your hat on, Humphrey, and cast your peepers on this:

Yes, that's Metro President David Bragdon, Bicycle Transportation Alliance Executive Director Scott Bricker, Oregonian reporter Peter Ames Carlin, Deputy Secretary of State Barry Pack, and (er, I don't know what he does for a living and I forgot to bring the program home so I can't check) James Harrison, donning cat toys on their heads and dancing to the choreography of the inimitable Linda Austin at Cabaret Boris and Natasha at Performance Works Northwest.

For a bunch of guys with no dance training and only two rehearsals, they were pretty good. But what made the evening purrfect was the festival of feliness fineness known as Cattitude.

Transgenderd.
Transpecies.
And apparently big fans of transfats.

This is what it looks like when doves cry. And the audience laughs so hard they nearly pee their pants canary bird yellow.

I'm going to quit my day job and follow them, like people used to follow the Dead I remarked to a fellow audience member.

Then I remembered I don't have a day job. Because I live in Portland, the where-we-work-just-enough-to-support-our-creative-endeavors capital of the world.

I Went to Yael's Bat Mitzvah, and All I Got Was the Swine Flu

2009-05-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 29, 7:00 pm: As Cheez and I, newly arrived in New York City, emerge from Penn Station, he is reminded of something he read years ago, about how coming to New York after a long absence feels like you've just gotten out of in prison.

Saturday, May 9, 9:45 am: As Cheez and I lumber through a subway tunnel on the way to meet some friends for brunch, I remark that after ten days, being in New York feels like we're currently serving a term in prison.

When I was growing up, there were commercials that played frequently on suburban TV to promote tourism to the Big Apple. The tagline, delivered by a rotating cast of celebrities, was I love New York! It makes my heart beat faster!

Of course, so do anxiety, heart disease, rabies, scarlet fever, and sardine poisoning, but you don't see Sandy Duncan or Lauren Bacall starring in jazzy little commercials about them, do you?

Not now that there's TiVo, you don't.

Just walking down the street our first full day in New York, we felt all the rush of excitement that Times Square and Broadway have to offer. Indeed, I could almost hear Julie Andrews belting out some strange rendition of These Are a Few of My Nut Jobby Things:

Giant white kitties

And guys with light sabers

Hassids with cell phones

seeking Middle East flavors

Or maybe the song to be singing is just

How much is that friar in the window? The one with the thoracic stigmata . . .

But really what makes the New York City so special are the great people who live there.

And their pet pigs.

I spotted these pink-trimmed porkers (and no, I am not referring to that lady's track suit per se) while we were enjoying that May 9 brunch. Before Cheez could even say, "Cancel that side order of bacon," I'd run out from the restaurant to take some pictures.

Since I was in New York, among my pushy element, I was not the only one. My friends are not going to believe this said a very nice Jamaican immigrant, shaking her head over how these crazy white people in America carry on.

Even the guy at the Watchtower Society table pulled a camera out of his pockets to take a few snaps. Apparently, Jehovah you can witness any time, but a pig on a leash Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, now that is a true sign the end times may be upon us.

Or if not the whole end times, at least a real bad outbreak of H1N1.

It's Only Funny Until Somebody Loses Her Voice

2009-04-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

In addition to the usual run of poofdahs, drag queens, and future presidents, my college friends and acquaintances included a few frummies, two of whom had the following memorable conversation senior year:

Frum 1: You know, the Catholics only have to go to Mass once, EITHER Saturday night OR Sunday morning.

Frum 2: Yes, but you have to arrive on time, and you can't talk during the service.

Frum 1 and Frum 2, Jewfros a-flutter
observe Hebe in Hat about to make gefilte
out of Mom's fish

Now one of those very frummies has invited me to the bat mitzvah of his daughter. My very goy Cheez has never been to a bat mitzvah, so of course I did just what any adherent of my ancient and sacred sect would do.

I started poking around on the internet.

On Interfaith Family, I found an article about what a goy should and shouldn't do as a bar/bat mitzvah guest. Then Googling bat mitzvah guest I stumbled upon the same article where it was originally published. And I couldn't help but notice the original includes this amusing instruction:

Not speaking during services. While you may see others around you chatting quietly--or even loudly--be aware that some synagogues consider this a breach of decorum.

I emailed Ruth Abrams, my editor at Interfaith Family about how that line does not appear in the IF version. I am imagining you looking at the original, chortling with an "Oh please," and cutting that part out.

Ruth emailed back, noting that one of the very first pushy Jewish mothers to go on record, Gluckel of Hameln, admonished her children not to stand in the back and talk during services—and then described people doing precisely that. Constantly. Way back in the seventeenth century.

What was most amusing about this exchange is that the email that landed in my inbox immediately after Ruth's was from my nearest and dearest convert to Judaism, neighbor Edith. Who was advising me on how to prep Chuck for the big b.m. (which is how my mother always referred to bar and bat mitzvahs).

You could take him to Congregation Neveh Shalom, where he'll find out that people just yak during the services, so you can't hear the rabbi anyway. At Havurah Shalom there seem to be more converts like me, and non-Jewish partners, so people actually seem to be listening. I'm not saying either is better, of course.

Of course she wasn't saying either was better. Which just goes to prove, you can put a shiksa in the mikva, but you cannot make her genetically pushy. Er, I mean genetically Jewish. No, wait I did mean pushy. Oh, wait, same thing.

Do you people ever shut up? Cheez asked, when I read him the various emails.

To which we learned the answer is yes.

Jews shut up when we have laryngitis. Or rather, we open our big mouths but nothing comes out.

Which is what happened to me for the better part of the past two weeks.

Eleven days in which I could not talk at all.

Screw heart attack. Laryngitis came close enough to decimating me that I henceforth deem it The Silent Killer.

Have you had any Zen learning? a friend asked, when I bumped into her on the street and scribbled out a note explaining why I wasn't saying hello.

Why yes. I had the sort of Zen learning only a silent Jew can have:

1. Screw Socrates. Inventing writing was totally a good idea.

2. On the other hand, it's terrifying to see all of your remarks written down. Most are actually pretty unremarkable. Or remarkably inane.

3. Under normal operating conditions, I talk aloud to myself even more than I thought I did.

4. Cheez is a very nice guy. I will luvvvv him forever. But I will never pick his sorry heiney as a charades partner.

5. It's no damn wonder two year-olds have tantrums. Knowing everyone else can communicate in language when you can't, or can't beyond the most rudimentary level, totally sucks. You'd kick and cry and throw things, too.

Or at least, I did.

What finally seemed to cure me was the freshly grated horseradish I prepared for this year's seders.

Perhaps if they put a dab of that on the communion wafers, the crowd at either-Saturday-night-or-Sunday-morning mass would be a little chattier.

ATF meet WTF

2009-04-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

From the AP:

PITTSBURGH - A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. Friends said he had been upset recently about losing his job and that he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

I guess that gunman showed all those gun-banning Obamakins just how important it is to preserve the right to bear arms, no matter how flipping unstable the arms bearer is.

The right wing must be so proud of all the fear-mongering they've generated. I know how much they celebrate cop killing in all their rap songs.

NWA does stand for National Rifle Association With Attitude, doesn't it?

Wow, that do-rag really brings out Wayne LaPierre's beady little eyes.

The usual NRA response to these sorts of shootings is some statement about how this shows that we need more armed, trained civilians carrying concealed weapons around, so they can pick off any potential crazed shooters.

I'm sure the Pittsburgh police realize that if only they'd had a few of those, everything would be just peachy right now.

The Scariest Thing at the Fred Meyer

2009-03-30T18:37:00.001-07:00

There is something eerie and disturbing about food that is disguised as other food.

I thought this genre reached it height - or should I say its depth - with marzipan pigs.

I was wrong.

It's a hamburger! It's fries!

It's cake that looks like a hamburger and fries!

Not to be confused with the best cake in the world, which I made this weekend for my squeeze the Cheez's birthday.

A lovely chocolate cake. So rich, so moist, so well loved that no one ever guesses my secret ingredient.

And if that grosses you out, MORE CAKE FOR ME!!!!

Hey, at least it doesn't come with frosted red fake "ketchup."

Rated PDX for Sax and Violins

2009-03-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a little something you don't see every day.

Reality-based street fighting with musical accompaniment.

I crossed paths (though not, I'm relieved to say, guandao) with the Bruce Lee-wannabe at a 24-hour concert, or really 24 consecutive 1-hour concerts, commemorating the 7 years our nation has now been at war.

Classical music seems to me to be the perfect way to mark the senseless violence of war, given that my earliest (and let's face, about my ONLY) exposure to classical music was when it accompanied the senseless violence of Tom and Jerry cartoons.

I didn't stay for all 24 hours, I'll admit. But I did learn a lot from the many hours I was there.

1. A well-equipped travel bar sure comes in handy.

2. Lots of those fancy-pants musical instruments are really nothing more than one bunch of strings getting all up against another bunch of strings. String-on-string violins, if you will.

3. After the first 7 hours or so, it becomes increasingly hard to distinguish between the highly cultured and the homeless based on smell alone.

4. The opening phrase of Franz Biebl's Ave Maria, when arranged for 8 trombones and a tuba, sounds disturbingly similar to the opening phrase of Alex Chilton's Kanga-roo, when covered by This Mortal Coil. Makes you wonder if the tuba is itself a mortal coil.*

(Note to macaronimaniac fans: that makes two blog entries in a row mentioning the tuba! How exciting is that? Now if I can just find a reason to blog about that I Love Lucy episode where Ricky's band goes on tour to Europe and Lucky sneaks back some undeclared cheese inside a certain brass instrument - Tuba Trifecta!!!)

5. Charlie Daniels totally ripped off the plot of The Devil Went Down to Georgia from Histoire du Soldat by Igor Stravinsky.

Baby's First Self-Abnegating Mockery. But Surely, If Baby is of My Tribe, Not the Last.

2009-03-12T22:34:00.001-07:00

Who can forget the first time they heard this great phrase:

Did you get the evite to the bris?

Okay, well, I've actually only heard it once, years ago on a visit to Jew York. And technically I overheard it, because somebody was saying it to someone else.

So no, I didn't get, never have got, the evite to the bris. I guess I'm not that popular among the digitally-savvy catered ritual circumcision set.

Actually, I just checked. Bris doesn't make the cut (as it were) among the alphabetized list of standard evite templates. Indeed, the entire section of templates called Baby's First does not seem to include that particular Jewish phenom Baby's First what is that shaky old man doing with that knife and why is everybody looking at me so weird and ahhhhhhhhhh what the hell happened to that whole kill the ram instead idea?

I suppose you can substitute of these standard Baby's First evite selections for your next bris, if you get creative with the captions:

That's One Way to Snuff the Candle!

Wait, Those Don't Look Like the TOENAIL Clippers

I'm One-dering What Happened to the Rest of My Smokestack!

Please Stop Saying How Cute It Looks All Little and Waggly

I was reminded of the evite-to-the-bris query because I just received a bat mitzvah invitation. Though the invite itself was still of the old school printed-and-stuck-in-the-post persuasion, instead of an RSVP card, there was a request to RSVP to [common Jewish girl's name]batmitzvah@gmail.com.

Suddenly I understood why every few years a new web-based email catches on. So that the Jews can each have their unique simcha RSVP addresses.

Rachelbatmitzvah@aol.com - that was probably taken back during the Clinton administration.

Shoshonabatmitzvah@hotmail.com - can you get more Windows98?

Devorahbatmitzvah@yahoo.com - been there, davened that.

Still, it's a little weird to see my 3000 year old religion suddenly become trendy. Inspired by the bat mitzvah invitation, I googled Nachamu, the first word of the haftorah I chanted back in the day (Nachamu means "Comfort" in Hebrew, although my mother insisted it meant "Again" in Yiddish as she nagged me to practice it over and over again . . . thus proving that to a true Jewish mother, comfort and nagging — same thing).

Gawky thirteen year old me, as I Nachamu-ed and Nachamu-ed through the summer of 1981, could I ever have imagined that my very bat mitzvah day would end up appropriated by the most Catholic of icons?

No, I don't mean Mother Teresa.

I mean the Material Girl. Whom none of us had ever heard of back when I was heading to the bima.

Think of it, a headline so improbable the supermarket tabloids wouldn't even print it:

My Bat Mitzvah Saved Madonna's Marriage!

Er, except it turns out, the Madonna-Guy Ritchie marriage was about as saved as ... well, as my squeeze the Cheez's Born-Again mother thinks my soul is.

Back when I was thirteen, the name Madonna referred to someone who wasn't so much Like a Virgin as, well, THE Virgin. And if being Catholic wasn't particularly fun on a date, being Jewish was even worse. Jew=nebbishe neurotic Woody Allen.

Now, in a flash like a bris evite swooping through the internets, we are cool.

One minute you're Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, a kid who plays the French Horn in your New Jersey high school band (What, you couldn't get nerdier than that? Had little Davey Hershkowitz nabbed the last tuba in the band room? Or did you figure this was the only way to get your pubescent lips and French in the same sentence?). The next thing you know, you are being called the sexiest man alive.

Forget a black man is president.

A Jewish man is sexy!

That, my friends, is an historic occasion.

Or as we like to call it, a miracle.

The sort of miracle that really does make you want to Welcome Moshiach With Acts of Loving Kindness.

(If you didn't get that joke, or any of the other bits of Jew humor herein, please don't feel bad. Me, I am a Jew, and a humorist, and I still didn't get the evite to the bris. I guess feeling like you're missing something is the essence of Jewish identity. Right down to the foreskin).

Bloggers Against Web 2.0

2009-03-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

Why do all these people want to be Facebook Friends with me?

Why do they even call it Facebook Friend?

Why not Facebook Acquaintance?

Or, in one exemplary case, Facebook Guy-I-Made-Out-With-After-the-Spring-Musical-Cast-Party-Sophomore-Year-of-High School?

If our "relationship" didn't last much longer than the Half Hollow Hills High School East production of Pirates of Penzance, I think the world can safely assume we have no need to re-connect a couple decades later.

Because we never really connected in the first place. We just made out a couple of times.

That doesn't even qualify us for Facebook Friends With Benefits.

I realize this rant makes me sound like a crotchety old Luddite railing against the new.

But so what if I'm not the Modern Major General of Social Networking?

These days, Wikipedia is fulfilling all the major functions of the Modern Major General anyway.

As we crotchety old Luddites like to say, Thank Heavens for the internet!

(Or should that be Thank Al Gore?)

It's not like we don't all wonder whatever happened to that guy we made out with at the cast party sophomore year of high school. But that is what Google is for, people.

Google him. Read his Linked In profile. Google Image Search him if you dare. Then go back to whatever you were supposed to be doing when you started procrastinating by Googling that guy you . . . well, you know where this is going.

This week, one of my clients told me Look into this Twitter thing to see if there's anything interesting we can do with it.

And there is!

We can mock it.

One of the first Twits (yeah, I know they're supposed to be called Tweets. But Twits is so much more apt. And at least it's not as bad as what some people call them) I read was a Twit that sent me to a Blog which announced a new Comic Book Series based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

In the time it took me to wade through all that dot-communication, I could have just read the damn novel.

I know I have a copy of it somewhere.

Someone gave it to me for a birthday present senior year of high school. Who was that?

Wait, I remember. Laura Gregorio.

Hey, I wonder what she's up to these day.

Alas, she doesn't seem to be any of these 14,000 Laura Gregorios, as far as I can tell.

Oh, wait, what was I saying here, to you? Right, I was making fun of our obsessive need to fake-connect with anyone we have ever met. I believe I was just about to say some other snarky thing about Twitter.

Yes, yes. Right after the Jane Austen thing, I found a Twit feed that was for parents whose kids have ADHD.

Now, it is not nice to mock people with neurobehavioral disorders, I know.

But mocking their parents is another thing.

Maybe if they turned off the Twits, put down the Crackberry, set down the Laptop, unplugged the TV, and, I dunno, took their kids on a nice long hike in the nature, the whole family might find it a little easier to concentrate.

Depending on how much high fructose corn syrup is in their trail bars.

So in the interest of promoting real dialogue, with depth and nuance, here is what I am going to do. I am going to log onto Facebook, accept whatever Friend invitations have been stacking up, and invite all those people to comment on this post.

Just like a nice old-fashion 1970s Rap Session.

With people I haven't seen, or thought about, since the 80s.

(Although feel free to chime in whoever you are, whether I have seen you since Reagan left office or I've never met you. That's what this whole Web 2.0 is all about, after all).

It's Only Funny Until Somebody Loses an Eye. Then, It's Hilarious.

2009-03-02T09:08:00.000-08:00

The Cheez and I are living life dangerously these days.

We've been eating peanut butter AND bulk bin peanuts.

It's like playing Russian Roulette with legumes.

Cheez, being Canadian, is of course obsessed with safety.

So much so, that he collects the Safety Cards from airplanes.

So if you're on a jet that starts to nose-dive, and you discover to your great dismay that your handy pictorial guide to unintentional deplaning is missing, Blame Canada.

The pile of purloined safety cards actually makes me feel distinctly unsafe. I am always a little worried that Homeland Security will raid our house, find the cards, and drag us off as potential terrorists. Because it's not just the airplane information that we have on hand.

We're also stockpiling weapons.

You see, while he collects airline safety cards, I collect . . . SOUVENIR SPOONS.

So right after Cheez commandeers the EXIT row, I could, theoretically, gouge out your eyeballs, while regaling you with fond memories of that business trip I took to Columbus.

But of course, we wouldn't do that. We don't want to hurt anybody. Quite the opposite.

Which is why I thought I'd share some travel tips I picked up from the safety card on our recent trip to California.

SAFETY CARD TIP 1:

In an emergency . . .

. . . it's okay to wear wedge heels with a business suit.

SAFETY CARD TIP 2:

Just make sure you . . .

. . . iron your suit,

so you don't look like some zhlub who'll never get upgraded out of economy.

SAFETY CARD TIP3:

Make sure to choose pants . . .

. . . that are comfortable, so you can maneuver easily in an emergency . . .

. . . without any unsightly VPL.

SAFETY CARD TIP 4:

If you are traveling with a child, or anyone who may require assistance in an emergency . . .

. . . please remember . . .

. . . people with fabulous 80s coifs should secure their own masks

before assisting people who were too lazy to comb their hair

and just threw on a baseball cap instead.

SAFETY CARD TIP 5:

You know that trick with the magnifying glass

that sets ants on fire?

. . . if you have x-ray vision, don't use it while the plane is airborne.

SAFETY CARD TIP 6:

It turns out what you heard in the bathroom in junior high is true . . .

. . . you can make a baby just from going swimming with a boy.

But the most important travel tip I learned was not from the safety cards.

It was from some fellow passengers who were waiting at the baggage claim.

Look very closely at the soldiers.

These guys are total travel geniuses.

They have figured out how to sneak extra carry-ons.

CAMOUFLAGE!!!!

So why, if they can camo-on all they want, are they at baggage claim?

Let's just say the TSA wouldn't let me take my hiking poles into the cabin.

One can only imagine what "outdoor equipment" the trained-to-kill-with-your-tax-dollars corps might have needed to check.

Short Like My Uncle Murray, alav ha-shalom

2009-02-17T22:43:00.001-08:00

There are short stories. And short-short stories. And flash fiction.

And then, that most particular of all forms, the six-word short story. Believed to have been invented by Ernest Hemingway when he penned this ditty:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Although some sources give it as For sale: baby carriage, never used.

Amazing, you can put a whole story into just six words.

And still people misremember two of them.

In the age of SMSing and Twittering and generally not bothering to read any print, there's been a renewed flurry of (short-term) attention for six-word stories. But it never really resonated with me, until the Hipster Yidsters over at Reboot published a bunch of Six Word Jewish Memoirs.

The potential of this genre has me starry-eyed. Six point-starry eyed, to be precise.

Here's the first batch I've come up with. They're not all memoir, inasmuch as they're not true-to-my-life, but they're true to Jew life more generally.

(Caveat goyim: there's a lot of Jew-specific humor here, so some of you may want to wander out for a mayo on Wonderbread sandwich rather than reading on)

Parents forbade intermarriage. Living with Sheygetz.

I got it all on sale.

What goes with everything? Sour cream!

Brit milah: unkindest cut of all.

My father, circa 1977: midlife Jewfro.

If my mother called once, dayenu!

Double unveiling: Bubbe's tombstone, sister's nose.

Six words? That's SO not Jewish.

I cordially invite you to add your own. You know you want to . . .