SWAK (Sealed With a Kitty)

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.

I Went to Yael's Bat Mitzvah, and All I Got Was the Swine Flu

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.

In the Buff!

Who would you rather see in the buff?










Option a: Avant-garde playwright
sporting fishing vest

Option b:

Humorist blogger
sporting tiara

Great news! You don't have to choose. You can see us both in the buff.

Even better news: we will not be naked. Cause the buff we will be in is the Boston Underground Film Festival, which will take place next month at the Brattle Theatre (known to the hard up undergrads in Harvard Square as the place to go on a date with that pretentious guy from discussion section).

Besides being a sporter of fishing vests, Richard Foreman is a freakdog playwright, and I mean freakdog with the highest level of admiration. Discipline is the key for a writers, and good ol' Richard, he gets up every morning and first thing, before he walks the dog or reads the Times or cashes the latest check made out to "Genius" from the MacArthur Foundation, he writes.

He writes dialogue. Not for any particular characters in any particular setting. Just dialogue. Then when he's got about 50 pages writ, he gathers it up and puts it on the internet for the free use of anyone interested in disembodied freakdog dialogue. This being America, home of the freakdog and the brave, a surprising number of people are interested.

One of them is Linda Austin, artistic director of Performance Works Northwest. Every year, PWNW hosts a Richard Foreman festival. Linda chooses a random section from Foreman's journals, lines up a bunch of artists (dancers, poets, etc.), and gives them 10 days to make some work based on the selection.

The performers bring a range of talents to the project. Or at least most of them do. Me and my squeeze the Cheese, we just brought a lot of crap we had lying around the house, and of course my predilection for the digital camera.

Guess which of the following items we did not have in the house before the 10 days of awe:










Hello Kitty head on musclebound transformers body? Had that.
Two-headed red corduroy cat? Had that.
Sword-shaped letter opener commemorating the Alamo? Had that.
Staghead candle holder? Had that.
Now Serving sign from the California Department of Correction permanently stuck on inmate 66? Had that.

What we didn't have was the goldfish, in either medium (cracker or rubber). But since we wanted to depict a Foreman poem called "The Goldfish King," we ran right out and got them.

With these treasures and our usual collection of plastic astronauts, plastic bison, and of course the head of Farah Fawcett on a pencil, we were able to cast a nice five-minute, four-act video. Although the closing credits did acknowledge, "Some goldfish were eaten in the making of this film."

Anyway, if you have ever wanted to see the marriage of a transgendered Hello Kitty to Farah Fawcett as set to accordion music, then the Boston Underground Film Festival is the place for you. Fishing vest and tiara optional.