Author Archives: 40andover

G-d bless books and smart phones

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I am a prisoner of my blackberry(ies).  I read books on my iPod.  I am gidiot (idiot for gadgets). 

They prevented bad things from happening one night on the subway.

A few nights ago, I was on a stalled train for 25 minutes.  There was more than one would-be rabble-rouser in my car.  But so many people had gadgets or books, that no one took the bait.  I ended up having to walk through four or so cars to get to the front of the train in order to exit at my station.  In each of those cars, the would-be rabble-rousers were unsuccessful in provoking any meaningful disturbance.  People were reading or playing electronic games.

There is hope for our civilization.  How ironic that, in this case, it comes packaged in electronics that in a larger sense rob of us of our identities and anonymity.

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Only in America and only in New York

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POST-SCRIPT:  The part about the beer is my imagination running away with me.

I get out of the 96th Street subway station at 94th Street (if you live outside NY, just trust me on this) when I go to the gym.  Invariably, I pass the same panhandler asking for change.  He is not earnest in his request (“spare change?”) because he sits on a standpipe in front of the storefronts and doesn’t really work the crowd.  I feel guilty not giving him something but I rationalize my hard-heartedness by concluding that if I were a beggar I would be the best damn beggar on the street and this guy is so mediocre at his job that he doesn’t deserve spare change.  And this beggar is rather, well, blasé about the whole begging thing.  You see why New Yorkers are a breed unto themselves; we even have jaded beggars.

So far, for a New Yorker, nothing new in this story.  YET.

As I pass him, and he is saying a half-hearted “spare change?”, his cell phone rings and he answers, “hey, where you at? I’ve been waiting for you.”

What, to go out for a beer?  Or does he meet his friend every night and while he is waiting, begs for change?  A kind of “fringe benefit” or “value added” for his wait time?

I couldn’t make this stuff up and I am really sure I wouldn’t want to.

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Minister of Senior Activities

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There is a reason why No-Where-istan is struggling.  Look at our minister of senior activities.  This is what happens when your country has NO health care for the elderly.  They sit in subway stations with a keyboard and moving dolls dressed in Santa outfits.

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First Family Sunday Brunch of 2010

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So, last week, as I mentioned in my blog, as part of our family tradition, we gather together on the Sunday after Christmas for brunch to kvetch while our mouths are full of food.

Because at that brunch we didn’t kvetch enough or talk enough about our petty grievances against the humanity, the world and the next door neighbor, we re-convened at my house this Sunday.  We hoped the snarky energy that I emit in my home would provide a better venue for the spirit of our gathering.

Unfortunately, my sister couldn’t come because she had to cover for a sick colleague (“Doctor, heal thyself,” I say).  Besides the patients are so used to rounds, they could round themselves.  Still, my sister is a professional and went to the aid of her patients.  So, already, good karma started to push out my snarky energy.  AND IN MY OWN HOME.  How galling.

My brother-in-law came and he is really too sweet to have to carry the banner of acerbic, sarcastic humor.  He also has high blood pressure and a teensy cholesterol problem.  So, I ratted him out in the middle of brunch when he ate chocolate cake by sending the following pictures by email to my hard-working sister:

Needless to say, my brother-in-law is now on a diet of lentils, rice, and anti-oxidants.

Also, our dear cousin for whom my sister broke ground by cooking scrambled eggs, came this Sunday.  If my sister can cook eggs, well, I can, too.

SO THERE!!!

We are NOT competitive.  Really.  Nooooo, sireeeee.

Anyway, another cousin came over, too.  He is really a wonderful kid and it was actually hard to be snarky.  It was an odd feeling to want to be nice and gentle.  Wow, age does mellow a person.

But, let’s re-evaluate tomorrow.

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2010

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Happy 2010!! Is it “twenty-ten” or “two thousand ten”?

My favorite non-starter was “O10” (as in “O9”, even though letters have no place in these numbers).  I think most people have realized that “O10” is non-sensical. It would have been ok had we referred 2009 as “OO9”.  Then we could pretend that it was the year of international people of mystery and be relieved that that movie has ended.  Anyway, I am going off on a scary tangent that will reveal just how odd I really am.

So my first neurotic moment of 2010 happened even before midnight:

We had friends over for New Year’s.  Many were parents of kids about our son’s age.  So, I asked a burning question:  have you told your child(ren) about the danger of electricity and water?  A few nights before I had asked POB (partner of blogger) if she knew whether our son knew about this danger.  She didn’t know and immediately I had visions of our son waking from a sound sleep in the middle of the night, finding an electrical appliance, running a bath and electrocuting himself.  POB promised me, PROMISED me, that she would talk to our son about this.  (Sometimes, my son likes to test me and push back on my warnings and this was one I didn’t want risk.)  POB also assured me that she would call a psycho-pharmacologist the next business day so that I could get the help I needed.

Epilogue:  POB kept forgetting to tell our son.  So I had to tell him and I told him that he couldn’t test my authority on this one.  (Luckily, POB did call the psycho-pharmacologist for me, as one of HER New Year’s resolutions:  for both of us to have a happy, healthier year.)

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The Clan

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On Sunday we gathered at my sister’s house for the traditional Jewish post-Christmas brunch, to go over the number of tourists who got in our way and the number of merry people who infected the usual ennui and bad humor that are so quintessentially New York.  Because we are open-hearted, if narrow-minded, my sister’s Catholic husband was welcomed to join. We sat down to a traditional meal — high in salt smoked fish oils and low nutrition and low in any nutritive value.  Not a vitamin in sight.

But something different happened this Sunday, and I have yet to process the event fully.  I saw — or else I would not believe this — my sister cook something.  Our cousin can no longer eat the usual fare that is our cultural comfort foods.  My sister, who had never before used her stove, made our cousin freshly scrambled eggs.

Last year, she got married to a wonderful man who is kind and always in a good mood.

This year she is cooking nourishing food.  I can see a trend, but I can’t yet see the trajectory.

For background, my mother and I had suggested to my sister, when she bought her apartment in 1999, that she just convert the kitchen to a den.  All she needed were a phone, a stack of take-out menus and a mini-bar fridge for diet coke. But she insisted that an apartment needed a kitchen.  So we suggested that she get the fiberglass demo version of a stove to save some money.  A few years after she moved in, my partner finally took out the plastic envelope with the care instructions and warranties and turned on a burner.  (I was horrified that she diminished the resale value for no apparent reason.)

I was nervous seeing my sister at the stove, thinking she might hurt herself.  Our cousin was so touched at my sister’s domestic effort once he realized that she never cooked anything for anyone, even her husband.  Also, our cousin is a life-long bachelor (save for a short-lived marriage a long time ago) living in a tiny studio with a mini-bar fridge, and therefore unaccustomed to home-cooking.  He could not stop complimenting my sister on the eggs.

We forgot to kvetch about the tourists or the merriment that interfered with our hardened and mean personalities.  Instead, at this brunch, we just all talked and were glad to be together.

Next year, we may be singing folk songs and a bonus round of kumbaya or maybe my sister will have knitted each of us something in seasonal colors.  I think I’ll read up on Ebenezer Scrooge, so I know my part and can be the standard bearer against the march of time and humility.  I hope Scrooge doesn’t get nice.  I don’t “do” nice.

You see why I am worried.

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Transportation Safety Administration

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We know that TSA personnel are mean and threatening.  They enjoy lording over passengers and looking at each pereson suspiciously.  And yet, they still seem to effect that attitude of “I’m doing you a favor, so don’t piss me off.”

We also know that having some one’s smelly shoes in a bin next to your bin (and permeating your coat and blazer) is no way to start or end a trip. 

My favorite, though, is the full-body glaucoma test, where you are in a Woody Allen-esque orgasmatron machine as jets of air hit various areas of your body.  The point is to find any trace chemicals.  I also had someone swab my dirty underwear (I was on my way home) looking for trace chemicals.  And, G-d forbid, you wanted to pack some hair gel.

We put up with these and other indignities.  Why? Because they are keeping us safe.

Hmmm.  Then how does a man previously denied entrance into this country, whose family alerted the authorities that he was dangerous, walk on a plane with a syringe and more liquid than “allowed”?

What have we learned?  TSA personnel are mean and threatening AND incompetent.  Luckily, the terrorist in this case was more incompetent.

There are a lot of very qualified people out of work.  Maybe we should upgrade our TSA personnel (and personality).

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No Holiday For Us

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My son refused the time-honored Jewish tradition of going to the movies on Christmas.  It is a variation on the theme of sitting in the dark until the holiday passes.  In the movies, you sit in the dark, too, but are possibly diverted for 2 or so hours.

We took a walk along Broadway.  It is a gray day and the lingering snow is in that only-in-New-York-could-snow-be-so-gross state.  Everything is closed, even the eatery I called which had a recorded message naming the soup of the day.  In the back of my mind I had a feeling that that recording was for the soup d’autre jour.  Thursday, for example.  Our son didn’t want to go on this walk to — as it turned out — nowhere, and the fact that there was no “there” there justified further whining.

Now we are home, watching educational movies (because we are those creepy kind of parents who have very few videos just for fun).  Now that I have watched the biography of Abraham Lincoln for the third time in six weeks, I am so creeped out by my own parenting that I may have to buy the entire video library of SpongeBob.

Maybe my partner will talk me off the ledge.

The good news is tomorrow is NOT Christmas.

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The ties that bind

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Humans are bound together by many things (being human, for one).  But there is a litany of things that people say are intrinsic to being human and, therefore, we share.  If you read my blog before, you can imagine my eyes rolling at lofty connections.  But I came upon one tie that caught me quite by accident.

A person’s relationship with his/her hair stylist.  Most people don’t think about that relationship.  It is the only one where if you “step out”, you can’t hide it.  If you are unfaithful, you have to break up because your hair stylist will know you went to someone else.   Don’t even think that skipping a few “trim cycles” will protect your indiscretion.  The very fact that you avoid your hair stylist is evidence of your guilt and your infidelity.  Fooling a spouse or a lover, piece of cake.  Hair stylist?  All I can say is that I am glad that those open razors (a la Sweeney Todd) are not in fashion anymore.

I always thought of my relationship with Miwa as “oy, she will look at how I let her beautiful cut go to hell, like an overgrown garden.”  And always wondered if she would break up with me because I was so unreliable about getting my hair cut.  Yet, ours was a different relationship.  Miwa talked to me as much as I talked to her.  So, I knew about her mother’s death and her difficult and conflict-ridden relationships with her mother and her daughter.  I knew she felt  guilty that her daughter was her surrogate in caring for her dying mother in their native Japan. I knew that she left her family for a career in the US, which was so radical in so many ways, even more so in the decade in which she did it.  In her youth, it seemed, she did what she wanted and then figured out how to pick up the pieces.

I knew that, while Japanese and not Jewish, she knew how to cook for a seder since her male companion was Jewish.  I knew that his mother and his sister and sister’s family never (it seemed to her) showed any respect or appreciation for her efforts.

I also knew that she recently had a bruising fight with cancer and that she won rounds 1 and 2.  I also figured she was anywhere from mid-50s to mid-60s.

Miwa was too tired in round 3 to cut hair.  She wouldn’t schedule appointments.  That was a bad sign because it was her art and her passion.   In a 45-minute flurry of hair flying out of her scissors, she could make me look vital (and less like a graying middle-aged person) and yet I didn’t look like the proverbial 50 year-old trying to pull off a mini-skirt.

Finally, I had to have someone else cut my hair.  I held out as long as I could until I started looking like a hippy. I felt like I was betraying a dying friend but Miwa had said during each of my last two haircuts that, if she were unavailable, I should have Mary cut my hair.  Mary is very good, but Miwa was an artist.

Miwa lost the fight in Round 3.  She was actually in her mid-70s.  And I bet she took the death blow rather than stay alive and be helpless.

Miwa, I toast your life lived on your terms.  I know you had regrets.  I hope you healed as many of them as you could before the end.

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Don’t Impinge on My Holiday

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On Christmas, Jews go to the movies and, before the 1980s, ordered in Cantonese Chinese food (now we have more choices).  It isn’t as if we have a holiday to celebrate although the Federal Government long ago, in a flagrant “fusion” (I don’t want to say violation) of the separation of church and state, declared Christmas a national holiday.

It used to be that if you went to a movie theater you would see all your Jewish friends in the neighborhood.  And you knew NOT to talk about synagogue matters even in whispers because even a stone deaf Jew can hear when you talk about synagogue politics or intrigue.

Over the past few years, I have noticed that the movie theaters are crowded and some people are wearing new hats, gloves and jackets and talking about recently received presents.  Hmmmmm.  Chanukah has usually come and gone by that time.  Hmmm. 

I thought that the fun and cheer and Norman Rockwell-like frolicking started at sundown on the 24th when, magically, everyone you know has a beautiful voice and all (miraculously, one could say) sing Christmas carols in perfect harmony.  Everyone, of course, has a chimney with a fire (why, if Santa is supposed to climb down, would you want to roast him and your presents in the fire) or at least a broken window for the Great White Man from the North Pole to enter.  Then, off to Christmas Mass where long-lost friends, lovers, siblings and parents materialize right on the music’s rhythmic beat to surprised and loving looks, but surprisingly little body contact.  (In my family, I assure you, the music would stop and the prodigal person would be asked for an explanation of his or her actions and what atoning actions will be undertaken.)  Christmas morning, everyone wakes up cheerily despite too much eggnog and other Santa’s helper drinks.  Then everyone spends the day on the 25th having meaningful talks, kumbaya moments and epiphanies.  So, clearly no time for the movies.

Am I wrong?  This wouldn’t be the first time. 

But, it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t hang mistletoe or go a-wassailing because it is not my holiday.  So, don’t squeeze me out of tickets to the movies on December 25th because THAT part IS my holiday.

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