Is This Thing On? by annie newman

You Funny Little Good-for-Nothing Meme

(This title is from a Maurice Chevalier song which we wish we could reproduce on this blog. Suffice it to say that Mimi is a girl and Chevalier is asking if he's her guy. It all ends in a lot of suggestive French snorting of the sort that La Skolnique and ourself refer to as "hon, hon!"

As to why we are answering this meme, it's because we never have done one before, and we filed our income taxes a full 20 hours before the deadline, and we are very proud of ourself.)

1. We've come to realize that our last kiss ...was shared with someone we have completely forgotten

2. We are listening to ...the knockabout comedy of Odillio and his work crew painting our house

3. We talk ...to the trees, but they never listen to us.

4. We love ... iTouch apps. To a really frightening degree.

5. Our best friend ...is La Skolnique. Although it's okay if we are not hers.

6. Our first real kiss ...was extraordinarily hot. 

7. Love is ...on the whole, a positive thing.

8. Marriage is .... a socio-economic construct for which there is (just briefly, right now) no real reason.

9. Somewhere, someone is thinking..."will this pain ever end?"

10. We'll always...eat m&ms.

11. The last time we really cried was because....We were feeling emotional.

12. My cell phone ...plan has really good coverage.

13. When we wake up in the morning ...we'd really rather not.

14. Before we go to bed... We kick the cat out of our room.

15. Right now we are thinking about... errands. 

16. Babies are... so fragile

17. We get on Myspace... never.

18. Today we...feel about as lonely as usual.

19. Tomorrow we will be... Just about as lonely. But we will not be with in-laws, which reminds us that there are worse things than loneliness.

20. We really want to be... financially solvent, and of some help to people.

21. We are allergic to...penicillin

22. We are annoyed by... humorless people

23. One food we refuse to eat is...snail caviar

24. The most recent thing we've learned is... even when it hurts like a sonofabitch, it's not personal.

25. The number one thing on our bucket list is... stay the hell away from the bucket

26. Something we've always wanted to learn to do is... speak Spanish

27. We have a high tolerance for... children

28. We have a low tolerance for... narrow mindedness

29. My wish... for my daughter to be safe and happy after her father and I are gone.

30. Person in front of whom we wouldn't mind behaving like an idiot if we saw them in real life...George Clooney.

All Aboard!

We've said it before and we'll say it again: travel is no pleasure. 

Why, then, is so much of our life spent on the road?

It is an odd conjunction of circumstances, none of which you will find interesting.

 For one thing, our contractor Odillio has been bring the Old Newman Place up to code for so long that they've actualy changed the code twice since we started. Ha, ha! 

No, seriously, we knew when we bought the place that it was only "turn-key" in the sense that you could put a key in the lock (if you wished) and turn it, but the door would probably fall away from you and the wall fall over you, like the old Buster Keaton gag. And the rest of the neighborhood would laugh their tails off but you yourself would not be so happy.

For the past four years we only took care of emergencies. Then our lamented Mom left us a certain amount of money and we started re-doing the house.

At certain points it has become necessary for us to leave the house. Sometimes this is because we are beginning to exhale, as well as inhale, plaster dust.

Sometimes it is because, as much as we love Odillio and his crew, we feel that if we hear one more Spanish pop-gospel tune in the middle of the night (9 AM), we might run amok with a staple gun in our mouth, and it won't end prettily.

We also want to travel now because we have rarely travelled in the past.

When we were a child, our parents loved traveling and, even more inexplicably, they loved traveling en famille. This, although we were the child most likely to need a potty break halfway through a traffic jam in the Lincoln Tunnel, and our brother became hysterical with fury if his London Broil touched his peas.

As we grew older, we hated travel more and more. This was because we were constantly being sent places. Camp in Canada. College in Central New York. Our Brother's College in Illinois, to disengage him from the hands of a gold-digger.

When we found ourself ensconced in a damp bedroom off the Gloucester Road because someone felt we should study abroad, we re-enacted that scene from "Gone with the Wind", except this time God was witnessing the fact that we would never travel against our own wishes, ever again.

Therefore, on Thursday we are taking a train to Washington, DC.

Former President with an unnamed friend.

Schleppin' 'Cross the Wilderness

"Wait. Is there gonna be a test on this?"

We don't like to make comments about our friend JC, who is a very smart man and much larger than ourself. But the man complains a lot. He truly does.

Last night, f'r'instance, he was Twittering from his seder. which already is going to get on God's nerves. But it might have been okay if his tweets has consisted of comments like : "This haroseth is incredibly yummy" or "Memo to self-do not actually eat bitter herbs".

Instead, we heard nothing but complaints.

"Let my people go...out for a sandwich!"

"My stomach is rumbling so loud it drowned out two choruses of 'Dayanu'!"

"I swear to God that hard-boiled egg is a gonner if I don't get some brisket within the next five minutes!"

The fact is...and anyone who has seen The Ten Commandments can bear me out on this...the Exodus was not a journey for sissies.

First of all, we (not just ourself this time, we mean all the Jewish people) had to leave the house without packing. Our own mother, never a vain woman, couldn't leave the house without fifteen minutes of makeup and hairdressing, and, as to some of our more princessy friends, we think they would rather be caught by Pharoah's henchmen than be seen in their gear from spinning class. So already the complaints would start.

Our bff La Skolnique ("Chava the Peacemaker") would have to run back twice to see she had turned off the stove (had the camel pee on the fire) underneath the tzimmes. Which no one would eat anyway, because it looked like mortar and reminded them too much of work.

JC (or, as he would have been known in Biblical times, "Joshua the Fresser") would have demanded to be carried aloft by his handmaidens, claiming some old stonelaying injury; his comments ("So who told you to bring the half-baked bread? Half-baked gefilte fish would have been okay but why the bread? Did anyone remember the half-fermented wine?") would make his wife and child beg for Egyptian citizenship.

You see how tiresome this would get? And he wouldn't be the only one. 

Our brother, Pesche With the Open Mouth, would be lecturing his adorable two sons (Sholem the Pure and Mordecai the Yeller) about the true meaning of the holiday, whilst his wife, Judith the Balabusta, would illustrate with healer-approved tub toys.

"Did anyone bring noseplugs? I've got a deviated septum!"

Over at our part of the caravan, we ("Hannah the Unpaid") would be trying to comfort our Beautiful Daughter ("Tauba the Annoying"...once you start these things it's really difficult to stop)...while we searched high and low for her father, "Baruch the Messy", who, we hoped, brought her prescription manna.

Our only point here is that Passover could be a lot worse, so everyone pipe down and pass the affikomen. And if you don't know what that is, you weren't on the Exodus anyway. You get to tell the jokes on Sunday.

Like Mike

This is Michael Ruhlman, a writer.

He is, for we love to put first things first, a truly nice-looking guy.

Second, he is a good writer. He mostly writes about food but has also written about Boys, Houses, and small sailing craft.

He is one of these people who can look at a very small thing and then talk (or write) about it for hours.

A stoner. No, wait, we didn't mean that. A WRITER.

We would like to write as well as Mr. Ruhlman. So we are going to follow Ruhlman's rule, which decrees that the best way to become a good writer is to write every day.

We're going to write it here and we're going to write it short and illustrate it profusely, so it ought to be easy to read and very quick. We know you're a busy person.

Check back often. And, this for the foodies in the (incredibly small) audience, we are not going to follow Ruhlman's other rule, which, if codified, would go something like: "You are a fake foodie if you do not create your own veal stock. Veal stock is food magic and anyone with a functioning neurological system, like you don't even need a brain, can put it together from roasted veal bones and h2o. If you do not make your own veal stock, you are nothing but a stooge."

Yes. Well. We buy ours from Eli Zabar.

How Real Life Differs from the Comics

"Rose is Rose". Used without permission on account of we only have 1.5 readers right now, and what could it hurt?

We have read the comics throughout life and with great joy, but Rose is Rose, pictured above, is our current favorite. 

(Serves you right, For Better or For Worse. We didn't want to go back thirty years in time. We don't like having to wait another ten years until April is born.)

But Rose is Rose is letting us down.

Rose, a stay-at-home wife and mother, likes staying at home. She cares for her husband and her little son and a lot of animals in the neighborhood.

She does things like setting out feed for birds.

Rose isn't Disney, so it's not like the birds fly to her outstretched hand and perch on her ring finger and whatever. But they are cute birds and they appreciate the gesture and sometimes even sing her a little song.

We, on the other hand, set up a bird feeder station and got what appears to be the outtakes from "the Birds" but in a version directed by Quentin Tarantino.

We get nothing but black birds. Small, ugly black birds with sneering bird nostrils in their beaks.  

And they came in droves. Dozens. Blackbird-pie amounts.

And they pooped while they ate.

And then they fought. This is the evening plan of the average bird at Annie's Last Chance Saloon:

1)Arrive

2)Poop

3)Poop again

4)Grab sneering beakful of suet-based bird chow

5) Kick crap out of fellow bird.

Meanwhile our cat Fuzzy is making book on the outcome.

If this keeps up, we're going back to Brenda Starr.

Good--Now You Know How We Felt

"Pride, in short, begets perseverance. All of which may explain why, when the repo man is at the door, people so often remind themselves that they still have their (pride), and that it’s worth something. Because they do, and because it is.

However much pride may go before a fall, it may be far more useful after one." 

--from "When All You Have Left is Your Pride" by Benedict Carey in today's Times

We have never yet figured out why it's so hard for us to hold a job.

True, a lifelong lack of self-esteem has sent us to ever-sillier and less-consequential jobs, and we tend to question authority in completely inappropriate ways. That's a bad combination. We're not proud of it and we don't think it means that we're smart. We think it might mean that we have a hard time distinguishing appropriate behavior and regular social cues. 

True also that many people find us entitled and arrogant. Hmm. We think some of these people came to work needing to find something like that.

We're trying to tell you that we don't think we're too good for work, and we're not ashamed of hard work, and, even as we wrote that sentence above about "silly" work, we're not really putting anything down. We spent one very pleasant summer handling phone orders for the 'wichcraft chain of sandwich shops, and, in addition to bringing us about as close to Tom Collicchio as we ever hope to be, it was a lot of fun and we got to eat a great sandwich every day. 

It wasn't silly at all, except some fashionistas' need to know that there is not one single tiny atom of fat in their fat-free lattes is a little silly. Each to his or her own.

However, as more and more people lose their jobs and try to arrange their lives around a routine that either isn't working (like pretending they're still employed) or won't be working for quite a long time (like looking for a new job), we find that we have a lot of sympathy for these newly-unemployed. It is very difficult to give yourself permission to be unemployed, but you're going to have to do it.

If you don't, even if you do get a new job as soon as you can, you're going to have bad memories about this time in your life. You might hang on too closely to your next job, or you might take the first thing that comes up, or the thing that seems steadiest, instead of the job that's right.

Attitude is crucial. (So is cutting down on your extraneous expenses and concentrating on the things that count, but you'll find other blogs to tell you how to do that). If you look on your time of unemployment as a period of failure, you'll always feel (at least a little) like a failure.

Try to remember that you are still yourself, and that you existed before this job and you are still existing after it.

Our parents lived and worked in a world where you only got fired for embezzlement or trying to kill the boss. (In some advertising agencies, you could only get fired for doing both at the same time). Whenever we got fired--we've already admitted it was more than the average working jane--they felt it as a judgement on themselves.

Our own generation has moved jobs and 401k's frequently enough, has changed careers one time or more and have come to believe that work serves life (instead of the other way around, which came to its reducto ad absurdum in the crash of '87.) Still, we went though enough business-card mixers in which your next paycheck, promotion or sex act could depend crucially on your job title. A lot of us still think we are our job and nothing more.

The big challenge of this new economy, outside of keeping food on the table and the kids in school, is going to be keeping our sense of self, our identity as individuals, even though it is unsubstantiated by paycheck or perks.

It's going to be difficult, but we've found, from long experience, that it is possible.

Kingston: Lousy with Prejudice

TO THE EDITOR:

I own my own home on Andrew Street, a nice slice of Kingston just behind the high school, with Kingston Hospital on one end of the street and Benedictine on the other. I've owned my home for four years but only recently been able to upgrade the house from its 1932-vintage heating, elecricals, plumbing and windows.

This week my contractor and his men are doing windows and preparing for an outside paint job. 

We're used to people coming up and asking us about the work, so I wasn't surprised when an elderly gentleman stopped in front of the house and said that he was the "inspector".

He went on to say that my windows were "in wrong", my porch stairs "didn't seem right", and he had the gravest doubts about the house in general. He was going to have to ask for a Stop Work order, he said. And, of course, I would need a Permit.

I'm from Manhattan, where people generally respond to this overture by saying, "Get the **** outta my house" or "How much?". Because, let's face it, it sounds like this guy (with no ID or license, just that vague "Inspector" title) is about to tell me that he can make my troubles go away with only a $500 check, and make it out to cash, please.

Also, my contractor had already checked with the City to see if he needed any kind of a permit, long before we had started work.

I called the Kingston Fire Department on the idea that they could identify this man and answer some questions. The polite lady there told me that if he said he was an inspector, he was an inspector. (The man had not yet offered his name, along with not offering ID or any kind of license).

I asked if I needed a permit to paint the exterior of my house. She said she didn't think so, but it was up to the Inspector. I asked her if I needed a permit to put in new windows, or new porch steps.

She said she really didn't know and I would have to ask the Inspector.

I asked her if there were any laws, rules, or ordinances which dictated the actions taken by the Inspector--rather, the actions he had threatened to take. Surely this couldn't just be up to one individual?

She repeated that she had no idea and I would have to ask the Inspector.

I said, "Well, what if he's drunk?" which seemed to displease her very much and that's how we ended the conversation.

Do I need to mention that my contractor is dark-skinned and speaks Spanish? He's an American citizen--there was an article about him in the Freeman when he passed his citizenship test. He owns his house and his business and, like both my grandfathers and a lot of other people, he came to America with a little money and a lot of brains and made a nice business for himself.

He works harder than anyone else I've ever had at this house and he pays plenty of taxes. He doesn't take anything from the government except education for his children, who deserve a lot better than what Kingston can give them. Kingston being the place that allows tattoo parlors to move in, cosily, right across the street from the High School. 

As far as the "inspector" or anyone else is concerned, my contractor could be named Leonard Bernstein or Paddy O'Gill and be as blond as JFK or as black as President Obama, and speak any language he wants to speak. He shouldn't get any different treatment.

Why, then, was the "inspector" calling on his cell phone and saying that I had "a bunch of immigrants" working at my house? Why was he asking me where my contractor was from? ("Mary's Avenue," I responded, which made the inspector look slightly confused.)

Why, for that matter, do teams of men delivering materials to my house try to speak to a white male visitor in my yard, instead of any of the Hispanic men or me, even after I identify myself as the homeowner? Why do so many of my white acquaintances giggle nervously when they see I'm employing a Hispanic crew?  Why do they say I should have called O'Brian or Connelly or Fouchard or Klein? 

I try to have respect for Kingston. I'm not flipping my house--I mean to live here for a good long while. In the course of these renovations, I've given plenty of business to local merchants and work to local professionals.

Maybe some people would say that I don't understand the way the city government works, because I'm not "from around here".

But even if the prejudice is only personal, not institutional, the sloppy way in which the Building Safety unit is run, and the Old Boy's network by which it seems everything in Kingston is run, leads to an amplification of prejudice.  

My contractor tells me that this "inspector" is well-known for giving Hispanic people a hard time. Nobody stops him, of course.

The "inspector" himself told me that he was looking at my house because "the neighbors" had told him "something's going on." What, several Hispanic men working hard on repairing a house? Scandalous. No good can come of that.

Can some or any of your readers, or yourself, explain to me why this arrant bigotry is not a scandal, and is perfectly acceptable to my fellow Kingstonians?

Sincerely,

Annie Newman

I sent this letter to the City Editor of the KIngston Freeman tonight after the events described. I don't think they're going to print it, so I wanted to record it here, at least.

Our Pal, Futility Mike

On this day of Hope and Change, let us ask you to change over to our friend Mike Little's insanely humorous blog, http://www.futility.typepad.com.

Mike, a staid journalist by day, is one of the funniest and most depressing people in the world. He lives in Washington, DC, where, were it not for his good wife, he probably would have been locked up weeks ago, to keep him from standing on the sidelines of the inaugural parade, wagging his penis in the general direction of Dr. Jill Biden.

He doesn't have any particular lust for Dr. B, or for that matter for the First Lady or the Prez or the Veep. It's just the kind of thing he would do. And he voted Democrat and everything. He's just a hell-raiser.

So go on over and see what Futility Mike is up to.

After Inauguration, No More Laffs? A Re-Mix

After we posted this a few days ago, we realized that it could have been improved in so many ways, from using the correct font, to cleaning up the spelling errors, to uh, actually being funny. So we mixed it up a bit and this entry is now something like a whole new entry. Really. 

Some people--the New York Times in particular--are a little concerned about what happens after George W. Bush goes home.

No, not the eternal question of Will he really leave the White House? What guarantee do we have? Or even Has anyone even told Dick Cheney about this?

The big worry is, what will we laugh at now?

For as many years as anyone's been counting, Presidents have been funny. 

Maybe it started with Vaughn Meader and the JFK comedy album. Lots of people don't remember this deeply funny tribute to a man who was inaugurated with, if possible, even more idealistic hope than President Obama, but it rocks. Check it out at YouTube. 

We have to thank our friend La Skolnique for this reference. And also for the joke, made when she was 3 years old, that goes like this:

La Skolnique's Dad, Le Pere Skolnique: What little girl has the best Daddy in the whole world?

La S.: Caroline Kennedy!

LBJ was funny because he came from Texas.  And his wife was named Lady Bird.  And he showed his appendectomy scar to reporters. So that might have been more "horrifying" than "funny", but at least it brought the man down to earth. Did it ever.

Richard Nixon was funny for the same reason that watching a cat trap a mouse is funny.  The cat takes itself so damn seriously. The mouse is blithe, unconcerned. Okay, the "kill" is not so funny, and neither was Watergate. But everything before and after was pretty cool.

Gerald Ford? We're still collapsing in mirth. The falling down. The dumbness. The pardon.

And Jimmy Carter was from the south. Always funny. He also had extremely humorous teeth. We'll see how funny teeth can be if Joe Biden does anything to attract attention to himself.

Reagan...even his best pals made fun of Reagan, and he joined in, because he was a sociable and humorous man. (You pretty much had to be, to get along with Jack Warner back in the day). Of course the opposition made fun of him too. Everyone was pretty happy, except the people who were dying of AIDS.

Poppy Bush was preppy and his wife looked like a human with Mad Cow disease.   

Now, with the Clintons you also got a two for one. Because even if you saw Hilary as an important trailblazer, there were still her hairstyles. And Bubba? Unlike FDR and JFK, WJC was dumb enough to to get involved with the girl under the desk. FDR just flirted with them. JFK didn't know their last names.

And then there was W. Don't make us talk about that.

Now we have Barack Obama, about whom no one can speak without getting a little verklempt. And even when those lumps in the throat go away...which they have to, someday, right?...he's just cool and competent and intelligent and strong and sweet and wonderful and has a terrifically good build.

So, no, not much funny. Not even from the Chicago in-laws who, back in the seventies, probably would have had a Norman Lear sitcom of their own.

But here's something I figured out. And JC, if you're reading this, you can have it free for nuthin'.

 

We're not saying the resemblance is a bad thing. But it certainly does exist.

The Presidents and a New One

Left to right: Oh, Come on, you know who they are.

There are all kinds of ways to decode this.

For example, are Clinton and Carter wearing red ties because they're the good guys (in my history book, they certainly are.) In which case why is Obama wearing a (gulp) blue tie?

Or were all the Dems supposed to wear red ties and the Reps to to wear blue ties, just as a kind of a gentle joke sort of thing, and Obama didn't get the memo? Which would be completely understandable, by the way, because he's the only one of these guys who has anything to do outside of standing around waiting for photo ops, and he's pretty darn busy.

Why do Poppy and W. look so much more youthful then Bill and Jim? Jim in particular has shrunk so much with age, Obama might have stepped on him by accident if they had stood next to each other. Perhaps it is true that the Most Important Job in the World ages a President. In which case, it's obvious that Bush 41 and 43 did not consider it to be all that important. Poppy could probably still throw a touch football with the best of them.

Damn it, why are they all smiling?? Why? Why? We took a look at our stock portfolio this morning and, believe us, there is nothing to be smiling about. Even if Bill did just tell the one about the Intern and the Leader of the Free World. (After which Poppy told the one about who Dick Cheney had had, in that exact same chair, and W. giggled, and Jimmy sank to his ancient knees in prayer.)

Could they all be smiling because each man knows his own legacy is secure and smells like roses, while W., who knows damn well that his smells like fertilizer (and doesn't know what "legacy" means anyway, except if it's when you have to let a fellow's younger brother into the frat because the fellow was a member in good standing, no matter how much of a damned outsider the brother is) is merely smiling in relief because it's finally over?

There's a space between Jim and Bill. Is that where Reagan should have been? No, really, are they doing some kind of thing like when we set a place of Elijah at the Passover table and he'll be there but we won't be able to see him? Because, if so, sheesh. 

We realize that in certain circles, the ones with the "Palin 2012" bumper stickers, Reagan is considered a sort of demi-god who was too good for this earth--the way we think of JFK, and Elvis. But really. As one who lived through it. Sheesh.

Could it be that Jim has a kind of stinky Old Guy thing going on? We hope not. Granted the man must be about 112 by this time, but he was one of our earliest heroes and every passing year has only made him more heroic to us.

We cast our first vote for Jimmy Carter, and we watched as he became one of the most unpopular presidents ever (until W. came along and we all realized how unpopular a president could be). We watched him go home to Plains in something like disgrace and we watched as Reagan's shallow, shallow charm made everyone dislike Jim even more. 

But Jimmy has spent the 29 years since then building homes for the homeless. Whereas Bush 41 has been playing touch football, Bill has been pimping his wife (it might not be all that bad, but he hasn't done anything for humanity, has he?), and Bush 43 went into retirement on or about January 23, 2000.

We wish we could find a pic of Obama sitting down and talking things over with Jimmy. Those other guys can go grab a sandwich somewhere.