Friday, February 27, 2009

The power of Regenerist, perhaps?



I blog from The Oyster Bar at the Providence airport. I was already on the plane when the captain announces that we're not leaving for another two hours due to a crazy windy rainstorm in Philadelphia. So I disembarked and found myself thirsty. The waitress just came over.

WAITRESS: Hello, what can I get for you?

ME: A pint of Bass please.

WAITRESS: May I see your I.D.?

ME: You cannot be serious.

WAITRESS (all pissy and serious): Yes ma'am, I am.


This happened last night, too.


ME: Hi, American Spirit Mediums, box please.

CONVENIENCE STORE CLERK: Sure, wait can I see your I.D.?

ME: Are you kidding me?

CONVENIENCE STORE GUY: We have to card anyone who looks under thirty, sorry.

ME: Ha! I'm old enough to be your mother! But hey, you just made my night.

As if that's not enough to make me laugh, a seventeen year-old guy hit on me last summer. Swear.

So. About this Benjamin Buttonesque anti-aging trip I seem to be on? I think it's my skin care regimen. That and drinking lots and lots of water. I've been using Olay Regenerist products for years now. Ladies, I'm telling you, this stuff is like the fountain of youth. Check out the Daily Regenerating Serum which goes on light and gel-like, and the lovely-scented, fluffy mousse-like Micro-sculpting cream. Love them.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Bobby Jindal IS Kenneth Parcell

Here is NBC's response to bloggers' response to the Republicans' response to Obama. Brilliant promo, NBC.

Chris Matthews mutters "Oh God" over Jindal's appearance



Chris Matthews, meh, I can take him or leave him. But this clip of him muttering "Oh God" as Louisiana's Governor Jindal comes out to make his retort to Obama's speech? Wow. So great.

What is with the antebellum background? Are they trying to be serious? It looks like Scarlett O'Hara might come sliding down that curvy banister any second.

And who knew Governor Jindall fathered a love child named Kenneth Parcell who works as an NBC page!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

"Bill Maher's Life After W."




Unfortunately, the interview with Bill Maher in the new (March 5) Rolling Stone by Sean Woods isn't online, because it's a good one. Here's an excerpt from page 36.



"The Republicans are geniuses at picking very small issues and making them giant issues. We've already seen it: Obama wants a more informal White House,
which has a lot of the conservatives enraged. In the Bush years, a jacket and a
tie were required to enter the Oval Office -- not to mention a strictly
enforced two-drink minimum. But Obama has said, 'We're gonna keep it a little
more laid-back,' and people are acting like he's going to cover the Oval Office
with black-light posters of Pam Grier, for God's sake. It's not like he's
showing up in cornrows with a neck tattoo. He's just taking his jacket off. And
by the way, you fucking clown posse, you may have forgotten, but when people are
working, that's what they do: They take their jacket off."

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Dog sitting



I'm dog sitting for this lovely girl, a ten year-old Belgian Shepherd. What a sweet doggie. She is very sad that her owner is gone, though. Most dogs don't mope as much as this breed, but when I researched it, I learned that they have to be with "their human." This breed tends to bond to one person, and they don't do well when left alone. To cheer her up I bought her Snausages and have been taking her everywhere I go. She loves the beach more than anything.








There's something about this shot that reminds me of one of Andrew Wyeth's melancholy and wintery paintings. She seems to be wondering, "Where is my dad and why did he leave me?"



Into the light.

"Angels" by Flight of the Conchords

Catching up today on TV shows I've missed with HBO On Demand, I found this song from Flight of the Conchords Season 2, Episode 1 pretty damn funny. And if you can play A, E, F#, and B on your guitar, you can play this. Here's "Angels."

Calvin Klein soft core porn



I got my new Rolling Stone today and in it was this very "comin' atchya" Calvin Klein Jeans two-page photo spread. My first thoughts were 1. they are all jail bait, 2. those man-children are way too good looking to be straight, and 3. although this is kinda hot and hell, I wouldn't kick these three waxed, chiseled male models out of anywhere for eating crackers, is this kind of risque or am I getting old?

Turns out this is a still from a new ad campaign. The video full on reminds me of soft core porn and looks like it was shot in 8mm for a Basic Filmmaking 101 class. And it's already been banned in the U.S. (go figure). You can watch it here. We sure as hell didn't have ads like this in the 80s. Back then, people were freaking out over a picture of Brook Shields just sitting there in her Calvins because the ad copy read, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." How things have changed.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Mickey Rourke's speech at the Independent Spirit Awards

Last night on the red carpet, Mickey Rourke said "I'm going to clap my ass off" for Sean Penn if he won for his role as Harvey Milk. And it happened just like that. But Rourke's acceptance speech from Saturday night when he won Best Male Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, well, you've never heard anything like this. How great it would have been to hear this kind of stuff at the Oscar ceremony. Damn, this guy is just too cool.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

And if the Nazi cougar wins . . .



It's pretty feasible that Kate Winslet will be toting an Oscar statue to the Vanity Fair afterparty tonight (which she fully deserves). This most likely will result in even more Americans' shock and disapproval of The Reader portraying a hot sexual relationship between a 36 year-old woman and a fifteen year-old high school student in 1958 Germany. One critic even posed this issue to Winslet, which resulted in one pissed-off Oscar nominee. She responded:
I'm so sorry, "statutory rape"? I've got to tell you, I'm so offended by that. I genuinely am. To me, that is absolutely not this story at all. That boy knows exactly what he's doing. For a start, Hanna Schmitz thinks that he's seventeen, not fifteen, you know? She's not doing anything wrong. They enter that relationship on absolutely equal footing. Statutory rape – really please, don't use that phrase. I do genuinely find it offensive actually. This is a beautiful and very genuine love story and that is always how I saw it.
For the record, the age of consent in Germany at that time was (and still is) fourteen. But the scandalously-younger-man-with-cougar aspect of the film is the least of its worries.

The Reader
has gotten flack from people claiming it's a Holocaust apology, and, incredibly, a Holocaust denial.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner (whom I've had the honor of meeting as a staff photographer for my university newspaper), has praised The Reader as “a film that deals powerfully with Germany’s reconciliation with its past.” He said that “it is not about the Holocaust; it is about what Germany did to itself and its future generations.” He called it “a faithful adaptation of an important book, that is still relevant today as genocide continues to be practiced around the world.

Holocaust survivor Abe Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's National Director, agrees with Mr. Wiesel. "As we move further away from the Holocaust we must continue to tell the story of the Shoah in ways that will reach and touch new generations."

If you haven't seen the film, spoilers follow.

Although I haven't yet read the novel, the film version makes it pretty clear during the courtroom scene that Winslet's character Hanna Schmitz is a non-questioning, non-thinking, non-pondering sheep. She is no enlightened liberal, just a simple, uneducated working class loner. When asked by the judge why she accepted her duties as an SS guard, she asks him, "What would you have done?" She's not being a wiseass, she is genuinely baffled by his question. It never occurred to her to defy orders from headquarters. When asked why she let three hundred people burn to death, she flips out and screams about how she couldn't afford to lose control over her prisoners, banging her hand on the desk in anger. She just doesn't get it, and it will be many more years before she finally does.

Another "hit you over the head" moment in the film occurs when Michael's law-school classmate argues that all Germans, like Hanna, should have known better. "Everyone knew. The question is, how could you let this happen? Why did you not kill yourself when you found out?"

Bernhard Schlink, the author of the novel upon which the film is based, met with Charlie Rose in December. They had a poignant, frank discussion you can watch online here about his coming to terms with learning that people close to him had done some horrible things during the Holocaust, and how it affected his relationships. He also explains the situation in terms of generations in an interview with NPR:
[The Reader] is about "the problem of what does it mean to us [and] how do we cope with the fact that someone we love, admire [and] respect turns out to have committed an awful crime?"

Speaking as a member of Germany's "second generation" — the generation that came after World War II — Schlink explains: "It's an unsolvable problem — the second generation can't just expel the parent generation from its love and solidarity."

And yet, he says, not breaking from the guilty often means that the second generation becomes entangled in that guilt. For Schlink, the conflict came to light when he learned that one of his favorite teachers had denounced people to the Gestapo during World War II.

Schlink hopes that his fiction will help the generations to come:

"The second generation finally wasn't and isn't silenced by revulsion, shame and guilt," he says. "We all tried ... to make that past speak out for our [generation] and — even more so — the next generations."

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Mickey Rourke should win



Yesterday in an effort to catch up on my Oscar homework, I sat in the theater for an ass-numbing six and a half hours watching The Wrestler, followed by Frost/Nixon, and ending with The Reader. I've already seen Slumdog and The Visitor, but not Benjamin Button and Milk.

I'm hoping that Mickey Rourke will win Best Actor. He has had some amazing roles in his day and has been unfairly underrated. I met him and his brother Joey when they co-owned a little boutiqueyish candy store in Beverly Hills called Mickey and Joey's (sadly, Joey died of lung cancer in 2004). This was back in 1989 when I was dating a friend of theirs when they were all bad-boy biker types peeling around L.A. in custom Harleys. Mickey had just finished playing Charles Bukowski in Barfly (1987) and I was in awe. He was handsome and charismatic and dangerously badass and a brilliant Method acting weirdo and I was, like all women back then, a little bit smitten. Regardless of his je ne sais quoi, the guy always was a great actor and it's cool to see him back in the saddle. He deserves this win.

About his face . . .



. . . which seems to be the hot topic du jour. Why he looks so ravaged and different is because he was a professional boxer for five or six years back in the 90s, and his face got pummeled. He needed multiple reconstructive surgeries -- five on his nose and one on his cheek -- and consecutive plastic surgeries to correct damage. Yeah he looks different, but give him a break. And he's 56 years old now.

If you don't know too much about Mr. Rourke, The Onion's A.V. Club has a great little Mickey Rourke 101 Primer.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Go tanning, angry people of New England!



Yet another crazy anger-management story in the news this morning. This time, in a suburb of Boston, a guy was at a Dunkin Donuts waiting for his coffee. It was taking too long for his patience level so he left, but probably in a huff, letting the Dunkin Donuts guy know that he was pissed. The two got into an argument, and the Dunkin Donuts guy followed the customer out to his Jeep and in a show of over-the-top fuck-youness, slashed all four tires with a pocket knife.

I think I know why New England people (not to mention the crazy chimpanzee in Connecticut who ripped the face off his owner's friend) are flipping their pancakes. It's this brutal shitty weather!

When we don’t get enough exposure to sunlight our moods suffer. More specifically, serotonin levels, a hormone associated with elevating your mood, rise when you’re exposed to sunlight. Studies like this one show that exposure to UVA rays really does make you feel better. So if Old Man Winter is a little devil on your shoulder encouraging you to beat someone with a driver or slash their radials, perhaps you might want to look into a visit to your local tanning salon to warm up and chill the hell out.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

He got the sarcasm beaten right out of him



Today's best Cape Cod Times story recounts an altercation between two grown men -- over rude manners -- resulting in one man beating the other, in classic Cape Cod fashion, with his golf club. I'm with the door-holder guy. What he should have said was, "You're welcome, your highness. I'll be sure to sprinkle rose petals in your path the next time, too."


Man allegedly clubbed by teed-off Falmouth golfer

FALMOUTH — An alleged lack of manners at a Sandwich Road gas station led a local man to beat another man with a golf club, the police said.

Police officers were called to the Hess gas station at the corner of Sandwich Road and Route 151 at 6:45 a.m. Monday following an altercation between two customers. The incident began with one man not saying "thank you" to another man as he held the door open for him, police said.

When he was exiting the gas station, police said, a 50-year-old East Falmouth man held the door open for Carlos Navarro, 38, of Falmouth. When Navarro allegedly failed to thank the man for opening the door, the 50-year-old man allegedly uttered a sarcastic "thank you" to Navarro, police said.

Navarro told police he believed he had been disparaged, which led to a heated argument. Navarro then went to his car and retrieved a golf club — a wood not an iron — and struck the alleged victim several times in the stomach and legs, police said.

Police said the alleged victim suffered minor injuries in the incident.

Navarro was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in Falmouth District Court yesterday and was ordered to stay away from the alleged victim. Navarro faces a pretrial hearing March 31.

Monday, February 16, 2009

My Dad's handkerchief mouse

I was at my parents' house today and my babysitter Jimmy from back in the day (as in the 70s!) who is also a dear friend of our whole family happened to stop by with his wife and kids. We got my Dad to do his "handkerchief mouse" which he's been doing for probably fifty years now, at least. It never ceases to entertain little kids and give us old farts a good laugh, too.

Are you a Grand Titan of the KKK? No? Oh, just chilly then!


What does bat-shit-crazy "Da Vinci Code" monk Silas have in common with . . .


Scary KKKish crucifix-bearing parade marchers . . .


who look like the underground orgy-digging "Eyes Wide Shut" club . . .


who closely resemble old school Trekkies . . .


who spawned the Next Generation of desperately-in-need-of-girlfriends Jedi wannabe fanboy guys.

So what do all these people have in common?

A lot . . . with infomercial believing, thermostat-wary, TV-addicted Americans.




Can we just talk about this phenomena? First of all, Snuggies are so damn lowbrow trailerpark UGLY. Second, they are $28 including the shipping, which is a ridiculous price to pay for something this stupid. Third, and scariest of all, over 4 million of these things have been sold.

What is wrong with a bathrobe, the lazy man's classic attire of choice? Do we really need to look like we're channeling a Grand Titan of the Ku Klux Klan? People of America! Get a grip! Who would you rather resemble?

A pill to erase bad memories



"Removing bad memories . . . will change our personal identity since who we are is linked to our memories. It may perhaps be beneficial in some cases, but before eradicating memories, we must reflect on the effects that this will have on individuals, society and our sense of humanity."

~Dr Daniel Sokol, lecturer in Medical Ethics at St George's, University of London

The BBC reports that Dutch scientists have discovered that the beta blocker propranolol has another effect besides helping heart health. It erases bad memories. Now everyone, it seems, will be able to experience their very own Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I wonder if this will become the next ridiculously overpriced street drug like Oxycontin.

Read the story of this bizarre discovery for yourself.

Friday, February 13, 2009

The Obama Mashups have landed

He barely finished recording the audio version of his memoir Dreams From My Father, and already the club mixes are spreading throughout YouTube Land. Although he's just quoting his friend Ray, it's pretty funny hearing Obama say
There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you,” and “You know that guy ain’t shit. Sorry-ass motherfucker ain’t got nothing on me.”

Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Young Flyers



So I came to Western Mass to see my nephew bang the skins in the Battle of the Bands at a club called the Elevens in Northampton. His band, The Young Flyers, won (WOO!) and proceed to the finals this Sunday night. Right on. I'm really proud of the kid. Nice job Andrew, Matt, Chris, Ben, and Jay!


Bass player Jay and Zildjian Boy Setting up.


Here's Andrew getting plugged in. Ha! I had to laugh when I saw this pic of the patch cord happening to position itself hilariously just as I snapped the photo.


Why Ben wears a Day of the Dead mask whenever he plays, I don't know. One of the judges wrote on his official sheet, "Vocals is hot, and looks French." Um, Matt's from Kansas.


My niece Kate, my sister Debby, and Andrew post-performance. The band rocked, as Andrew's expression shows.


I love this pic of Andrew chilling after their set with his awesome girlfriend Rebecca. I finally got to meet her this weekend and she is such a lovely person. They are a great team.

The smoking Chinese toddler

I'm not sure which is more disturbing - the smoking, or the fact that he's perched on the motorcycle, and without a helmet, no less. Nice parenting.

Stop Pouting: A message to Republicans



Closet blogger friend/smarty pants Harvard guy Bob sent out the following well-researched, most excellent essay this morning. Kudos to him for clarifying Rush's misconceptions. He writes:

Stop Pouting

Although a final House/Senate has not been finalized, both Houses have agreed to some form of a stimulus bill. For six years, Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. During that time, they squandered the largest budget surplus in American history and swiftly converted it into the largest deficit in American history. They gave us the worst economic times since the Great Depression.

The Republicans’ AM radio spokesperson, drug addict Rush Limbaugh, has stated that he hopes that Obama fails as President. He and Republicans predict that the stimulus bill will fail because the New Deal did not solve the Great Depression—World War II solved it. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate was 25% in 1933 when the New Deal was introduced but by 1937 the New Deal brought it down to 14.3%. Due to pressure from the opposition party, some of the New Deal programs were modified. As a result, unemployment swiftly rose to 19% in 1938 and we entered a new recession. Corrective actions were taken and by 1941 the unemployment rate was down to 9.9%. The numbers quoted by I-get-a-Rush-from-drugs-Limbaugh and Fox News are false. Moreover, WW II was the largest government employment plan in our history and the Depression was solved by government stimulus programs.

The Republicans’ only idea is to reduce taxes. In 2002, a tax rebate was issued. Many economists agreed that a fast infusion of cash would spark the economy. Based on economic theory and free market history, it was a good plan. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. In spite of that experience, they reduced taxes—but mostly for the wealthy. It didn’t work. They tried it again in early 2008—it didn’t work! Why do they think what failed three times will suddenly work this time? It won’t, and their insistence verifies that they have no new ideas and all they can do is complain about FDR. They are mad that they lost the White House and both chambers, so they are pouting. Well, they lost for good reasons.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Monday at the Moan and Dove





This is the Moan and Dove in Amherst, one of my favorite bars. It's a warm, cozy oasis of great alternative music, flickering pillar candles, cool art, and a huge selection of great imports and microbrews. It's fun to be back in town for a visit.



My sister Debby, my nephew and drummer extraordinairre Andrew, and me.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Old Jews Telling Jokes



Old Jews Telling Jokes is a great new website. Here's an excerpt from it:

Some of the best [jokes] provide a window to the culture of a bygone era. They can reveal the concerns of a generation or even the generation before. Anxieties of coming to a new country, of prospering, of assimilating, of having families, of fearing and worrying about, well, everything. Humor was and is the ultimate anti-depressant.

My father gathered twenty of his friends to share their favorite jokes. We set three rules for the production: the joke-tellers were to be Jewish, at least sixty years of age and they were to tell their favorite joke – the one that always kills.

Here, you will find them, Old Jews Telling Jokes.

-- Sam Hoffman

Posted On January 22, 2009

Friday, February 6, 2009

A self-indulgent, proud-Auntie blog



This is my nephew Alex who's graduating from high school this year. Auntie is proud he doesn't suck at basketball. Unlike him, I usually missed my free throws.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Bill Gates unleashes hungry mosquitoes at TED conference


(pic: TED / James Duncan Davidson)

This is so great. Bill Gates, who's retired from software and has since turned his attention to other matters, was speaking at the TED conference. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is an organization that has this annual conference in Long Beach during which, according to TED's website, "now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)."

One of Bill's passions is to stop malaria (the other is to improve our dismal educational system). He and his wife's foundation has spent over a billion dollars fighting the disease, but perhaps he didn't think that the audience was taking it seriously enough. So he opens a jar of mosquitoes and says, "Not only poor people should experience this."

Who'd have thought Gates had such a great sense of humor? He should have his own "Punk'd" show. I can't wait to see the video of his TEDTalk, which is supposed to be online in 24 hours. Check here to see if it is.

I went to the Gates Foundation website, specifically the section about malaria, and found out that 800,000 people die from malaria each year. In Africa, 2,000 kids die from it each day. Jesus! His foundation is working to develop malaria drugs, a vaccine, to improve mosquito control, to develop public awareness, and ultimately to eradicate the disease.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Quahogging in the blizzard?



It's been snowing like mad all day today on the Cape. It's supposed to snow through tomorrow. The wind is howling at 30 miles an hour. And it's really cold. My dad and I had planned on going clamming tomorrow for quahogs, which entails wetsuits and waders and the whole cold-water winter protection thing and standing up to your waist in the 35-degree Atlantic with a pitchfork digging in the sand for your mollusks. Which I was kind of psyched to do, before the blizzard hit. Earlier tonight he says:

DAD: It looks like it won't be too bad to go quahogging tomorrow.

ME: Oh yeah?

DAD: Yup it's going to be warmer. It's supposed to be 29 degrees. That will be pleasant.

Pleasant! That is the exact adjective he used. I'm trying to be one of these hardy New England Yankee Cape Codder types, but come on now. Seriously.

Who cares if Michael Phelps sucks down bong hits? Really.

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