Let us eat cheesecake: Most folks are letting their carpets get dirty; I’m letting mine grow in
I picked up the phone—my landline—to make the call, but then hung up. I picked up the phone again, and hung it up again. I held the phone close to my chest, closed my eyes and sighed. Then I dialed the number for Cox Communications. After having had a landline my entire life, I was about to go cold turkey with nothing more than my cell phone.
Still, I was deeply attached. There’s something reassuring in knowing the phone is there, that it won’t go missing if I forget to charge it, that I’ll be able to connect to the Police Department—and not the Highway Patrol—in an emergency.
(This is exactly like the one that hung on the wall in the kitchen of my childhood home. The cord was ten thousand tangled feet long.)
But like many families experiencing stagnant wages and increasing costs, we’re feeling an economic pinch. Cutbacks are necessary. And aside from my irrational attachment to a rotary dial phone, ditching the old-fashioned phone seemed a rational place to begin.
So. Goodbye landline. And accompanying long distance. And HBO. The tiny amount of television we watch trumped our love for Treme (we’re keeping our Netflix membership, so we’ll catch it later). The shadow of the Belfer guillotine is looming over our Sparkletts account, too, among other creature comforts.
These first cuts saved us roughly $60 a month.
Not huge, but not bad either, I thought as I soaped my body in the shower later that night. And then, while soaping: Jeeze, I really need a bikini wax. Hello, priorities!
According to a September article in The New York Times, “[c]onsumers at all income levels have been splurging on indulgences while paring many humdrum household expenses.” The article goes on to state that austerity only goes so far before a consumer loses control and binge shops at Barneys.
Not only am I not the only person forced into some tough decisions these days; I’m also not the only person pitching stuff traditionally considered mandatory (“basics like diapers, socks and vacuum bags”) while still splurging on stuff we’ve now been convinced is mandatory (“fripperies like purses and perfumes are best sellers”).
Fripperies. What a fantastic word.
Now, praise Jesus, Ruby no longer need diapers. I practically live in flip-flops and I have hardwood floors. And don’t be ridiculous: I’m not quitting perfume. I am, in fact, the demographic in the Times story. I’m guilty of bucking basics for Balmain.
Not all indulgences are expensive, the Times points out. “But they could be on a party-supply list: premixed cocktails and coolers, cheesecake, cosmetics and wine.”
Cheesecake saw a 22-percent sales increase in the last year. People: There’s been a run on cheese cake! Who would have thunk it?
Certainly I wasn’t thinking about cheesecake there in the shower. I was thinking of Ginger, my esthetician, to whom I feel a special allegiance. I feel responsible for my part in the success of her independent business. But I also know the money I spend on depilatory practices each month could be money that goes to my child’s struggling school. Or perfume.
Put in perspective, the decision was a no-brainer. Ginger often belts out Johnny Cash tunes while ripping those natural but unwanted hairs from my labia; I will miss her, if not that.
As I lathered up and began to tend to my unruly nether region like I did way back in the day, before I became convinced that it was somehow passé, vintage and unsightly to look like a grown woman, I actually found a new appreciation for pubic hair. Specifically my own, but really, for all pubic hair. I am vintage! Cue Helen Reddy.
I thought it was fun to spruce up my marital sex life with a “landing strip,” or a neatly defined triangle, or a craftily carved “G” (for the Green Bay Packers). But my mother was nonplussed. “It sounds really painful,” she once said. “And if women want to look like Barbie Dolls down there, they need only wait until menopause when it falls out all by itself.” So true.
How women became convinced that it’s necessary to look like porn stars—or worse, like our prepubescent daughters—is beyond me, except to say that I think it’s the same sort of hypnotism used by some seriously ingenious marketers.
Lululemon has a bajillion people utterly incapable of experiencing Savasana without a pair of $98 yoga pants made with their signature luon®. And the late Steve Jobs continues to wield power, convincing the masses that we must have the iPhone 4S even though we already have a perfectly good iPhone. And iPad. And MacBook Pro. And 27-inch iMac.
Bikini waxes and couture yoga attire and too many electronics—fripperies all.
Or—are they? Luon® is pretty soft, after all. And this column was composed on my beloved Mac- Book Pro. Ours is a consumer culture, and items like these, while splurge-y, can make a person feel good and capable. A self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps. Or maybe a life-is-short attitude combating the more depressing realities inherent in downer items like thermometers, flashlights, fertilizer and batteries, the sales of which have taken a plunge lately.
I’ve already made my choices. Anyone know where I can get a good piece of cheesecake?
(As published on October 25, 2011 in CityBeat.)
Remember my friend Kia?
Former CityBeat writer needs a bone-marrow transplant: Kia Momtazi is a 10 seeking a 10, and she needs your help
“Then I’m sitting through the longest haircut of my life, and I’m bluffing through all those generic conversations you have to have with people who cut your hair and clean your teeth and such. She’s asking where I live and what I do, and she heard I was getting married and when was that happening? And the whole time I’m describing the life that was my life yesterday, but is no longer my life today, or tomorrow, or any day I can yet foresee. —Kia Momtazi
One of the first staffers I met when I began writing for CityBeat nearly five years ago was my friend Kia. Vibrant, smart, gorgeous and unselfconsciously hip, she reminded me of a much more vibrant, smart, gorgeous and unselfconsciously hip version of my 23-year-old self (and, P.S., exactly zero of those adjectives applied to me in the first place). In other words, she was worlds ahead of who I was—and damned near close to who I wish I’d been—in my 20s. I was drawn to her for many reasons, but if I had to sum it all up, I’d say it was her humble magnetism. She was living a take-no-prisoners life while I felt, at the time, like a prisoner in my own. I liked living vicariously as I watched her do what I wish I’d been brave enough to do at her age. On a scale of one to 10, she is an eleventeen.
Shortly after I’d gotten to know her, Kia left San Diego for a grand adventure of self-discovery. When she described her itinerary to me before leaving, I immediately thought of Eat, Pray, Love, only more interesting and without self-pity. It’s too bad she didn’t have a book deal, since the woman can write like a mo-fo. After going north, and then south, she eventually went east and built a life in a place more prone to equality than our Golden State. Kia fell in love and planned to get married.
Kia is wise beyond her years—as they say, an old soul. She is beautiful, warm, funny, kind, creative, insightful and smart.
She also happens to be fighting for her life, which took an unexpected detour last spring when she learned she had Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma.
As Dorothy Parker might say—and as I wrote to Kia in an email back then—this is terrible. It’s fancy terrible. It’s terrible with raisins in it.
In true Kia form, she has approached her illness with a determination and grace that I can’t muster when dealing with a checker at Michael’s, let alone a life-and-death circumstance. And—luckily for those of us who adore her writing—she’s employed her particular gift for storytelling, sharing her experience at CaliforniCancerCation.
“I think I’m supposed to envision the cancer as the Evil Eye of Sauron,” she wrote last March, using The Lord of the Rings as metaphor. “My spleen is Mount Doom, and all the cancer cells are a grimy army of snaggle-toothed Orcs. My will to heal and positive body responses are… hobbits? Sam and Frodo? Rudy and Elijah Wood? No, no, much better: I’m Viggo Mortenson! Aragorn, King of Men! Yeah!” Who wouldn’t want to read that book?
Kia has chronicled her diagnosis—and loss of independence, as she returned indefinitely to her parents’ home in Visalia, Calif., accompanied by her faithful partner, Annie. She’s written with stark honesty about a spring and summer filled with chemotherapy, hospitalizations and invasive procedures. She shared her frustration, anger and sorrow, still managing to be funny: With the help of Annie, she filmed Cribs: Hospital Style live from Room 32. In September, Kia flew east, stared down Hurricane Irene and married her love. She thought she had cancer “in the bag.”
“The thing is,” she wrote on Sept. 28, “five days after we returned to California, I learned that cancer is never in the bag, except maybe several years into remission. Or perhaps longer than that, I’m not sure. I have no control. Plans are made to be changed. And nothing is guaranteed.”
Folks, Kia is in need of a bone marrow / stem-cell transplant, and because she’s an extra-special kind of girl—the kind who goes big or goes home, the kind of girl we here at CityBeat celebrate—not just any old bone marrow will do. The National Bone Marrow Registry matches people based on a 10-point scale, and Kia needs the surf-skipping, corn-rowed Bo Derek of matches. Kia needs a 10, and, currently, not one person in the entire registry is a 10.
In an effort to find Kia’s bone marrow doppelganger, CityBeat arts editor Kinsee Morlan has launched Operation Perfect 10; if christiansingles.com can facilitate lasting matches, then why not an alt-weekly, right?
Please consider joining the national registry and spreading the word. Make this article go viral. Anyone could be Kia’s Perfect 10, but people of Persian-American background would be especially desirable candidates since she descends from the land of beautiful smart people. I am an Ahskenazi Jew, but I joined. The way I see it, the Persians and I have the giant schnoz in common, why not bone marrow, too?
It takes all of 20 minutes to read through the details about what it means to become a potential donor (you could save someone’s life) and order your free kit to determine if you’re a match. There are no needles involved, just a cheek swab.
Operation Perfect 10 is seeking the perfect cheek swab. One of us hobbits may hold the fate of the Fellowship. Please: Go forth and swab. For Kia.
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)
You all knew I couldn’t resist it, right?
In case you haven’t heard, an organization called One Million Moms (OMM) has got its flesh-toned, 98-percent-nylon-2-percent-lycra granny panties with the lace waistband all bunched up inside its uber-tight butt crack. Trust me: I’ve been to the group’s website. OMM and its members are not happy.
A child of the right-wing American Family Association, OMM has myriad reasons for its angst, best expressed—allbeeit with kweschunable grammer usidge and speling—in ironically titillating calls to action and letter-writing campaigns.
These people don’t like bunnies (the Playboy kind). They don’t like Walgreens, Rite Aid or CVS selling “v*br*tors, d*ld*s and other s*x toys.” They definitely don’t like the gays stepping on their marital turf—you should see how verklempt they are at Home Depot’s fun and wholesome rainbow float in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade.
>And the reason for their latest you-stop-it-right-this-instant-or-I’m-pulling-the-car-over-and-you-are-walking-home, father-knows-best effort to save the world from heathens?
Ic* cr*am.
It’s true. A good chunk of Americans are hurting, the economy is wheezing like a tobacco addict smoking a no-filter Camel through her trach hole, and it all comes down to milk and sugar for these self-proclaimed one million moms, who tally only 36,392 on their Facebook page as of this writing.
According to the USDA, more than 16 million American children lived in food-insecure households last year. Meanwhile, OMM and its members are having a tizzy over the name of Ben & Jerry’s newest flavor.
In homage to a vintage and hilariously funny Saturday Night Live sketch starring a rather svelte Alec Baldwin, the soon-to-be-released ice cream is called Schweddy Balls.
A rum-flavored vanilla ice cream packed with fudge and malt balls, this combo could have just as easily been called Better than Orgasm or Goes Best with Bong Hits. But OMM probably wouldn’t take kindly to those, either. I’m sure the decision makers who were gathered around the conference table in the Department of Ice Cream Naming were well aware of the dangers when settling on Schweddy Balls.
To OMM, Schweddy Balls is the dog-whistle call to arms; it is the Marilyn Manson of confections. Obviously, it will lead to premarital sex, pot use and school shootings. Perhaps worst of all, it will turn good Christian children gay. It’s a slippery slope, folks.
But to a normal human being, Schweddy Balls is just another excuse to have dessert before dinner and chortle like a 12-year-old.
Imagine, if you will, that you’re standing at the counter in one of the Ben & Jerry’s Partnershops, their independently owned storefronts—the franchise fees of which have been waived—that provide jobs and “entrepreneurial training to youth and young adults that may face barriers to employment.” Now imagine ordering two Schweddy Balls in a cup. You are a sports fan, after all.
As if going for ice cream weren’t already completely awesome.
There’s no way to keep a straight face in this situation, and suddenly you’re laughing right along with the kid behind the counter, a kid who might have been one of those 16 million who didn’t always have food on the table.
It’s quite possible that the kid who’s serving up your Schweddy Balls just might have struggled through school to a constant hum of hunger, performing worse academically than his more fortunate counterparts, as research has shown to be the case for kids who don’t have enough to eat. Certainly, not knowing when your next meal is coming sets up a barrier to all kinds of things, not just later employment.
And yet, there he is, serving your Schweddy Balls in a dish, laughing and working for a living wage, something Ben & Jerry’s includes as part of its three-pronged mission to address social, environmental and economic issues facing Americans.
“Ben & Jerry’s is founded on and dedicated to a sustainable corporate concept of linked prosperity,” states its website. “Underlying the mission of Ben & Jerry’s is the determination to seek new and creative ways of addressing all three parts, while holding a deep respect for individuals inside and outside the company and for the communities of which they are a part.”
OMM has a mission statement, too: “Our goal is to stop the exploitation of our children, especially by the entertainment media (TV, music, movies, etc.). Mom, [One Million Moms] is the most powerful tool you have to stand against the immorality, violence, vulgarity and profanity the entertainment media is throwing at your children.”
It’s sort of like the same goal, only totally not.
Perhaps what OMM and its members should do is set aside all the letter writing and—egads!—open a book (besides the Bible, I mean). Perhaps they should turn off the offending “entertainment media” and go do some community service. Clean up the neighborhood. Visit the elderly. Feed the homeless. Mentor a child. Maybe they should hop over to CVS, get a good v*br*tor and get over themselves.
Or—maybe they should have a blind taste test in which they take a big ol’ lick of Schweddy Balls, followed by a swig of water to cleanse the palate, and then take a big ol’ lick of sweaty balls to see if they can tell the difference.
(Published on September 28, 2011 in San Diego CityBeat).
Revisiting an oldie, day two
This is the second of my vintage articles I’m re-posting. I wrote it for CityBeat back in the spring of 2010 after a spate of racist events unfolded at UCSD. What I wrote then is pretty pertinent to where I am right now, in my current state of mind, even if I may no longer be as interested in—or as concerned with—treating people delicately when discussing race. The lone comment on this story underscores why my attitude has shifted. Someone named “wilder” said about my piece:
take a chill pill. live and let live. not everyone is out to get everyone else. grow up.
Indeed. I will not take a chill pill. And clearly, of the two of us? wilder and me? I am the grown-up.
I’m a grown-up on a serious journey, and while I’m happy to have the serious discussions to which I refer in the text below, you’re either coming with me or you’d better get out of the way.
***************************************************************
As most readers know, mine is a blended family. And while skin color is not my focus when going about my day-to-day life—when I’m praising and disciplining, wiping and nagging, feeding and doting and generally loving up on my kid—it would be a lie to say I don’t see skin color. I see it every day.
Or, it’s not so much that I see it, per se, since I’m not talking about light-passing-through-retina-to-optic-nerve kind of seeing. It’s more of a perpetual existential awareness of race, in general, and of white privilege, in particular.
It’s something I’m acutely aware of when, say, I overhear a white man at my dentist’s office joke with a booming laugh, that his favorite hygienist is in danger of coming back from her African honeymoon “with a bone through her nose.”
Or when a white male college student says to a white female college student, “The reason why UCSD has low enrollment of black students is because the school doesn’t have a decent athletic program.” Or when the white female college student responds with an emphatic and confident, “I totally agree.” Which makes perfect sense, of course, since all black people are athletes, rock stars or gangsters.
In situations such as these, my cave-woman impulse is to bang on my chest with my fists while screaming, What the fuck is wrong with you, you spoiled, small-brained, advantaged diplerp, booger-wads? But I’ve found this approach doesn’t get me very far toward engaging these people in a thoughtful chat about why their expressed viewpoint is so skewed. And racist, too. There’s that.
But I’m more evolved than a prehistoric human (hopefully). If I flew off the handle every time I came up against someone who didn’t want to discuss white privilege, nobody would talk to me anymore.
Most who will talk about it will only talk about it so much before they halt conversation with the that’s-just-white-person’s-guilt defense. Even calm and respectful attempts at defending my position with irrefutable examples have a time limit that, once reached, results in eyes darting to anything but mine.
Too often, though, it’s not that white people are unwilling to continue a talk about white privilege. Rather, they cannot talk about it at all, due to their refusal to even acknowledge in the first place, the myriad privileges they enjoy, which were never earned, but which are nevertheless as inherent as any genetic trait.
But, still, like rolling a boulder up a mountain, when the subject comes up, I try.
One of the hazards of being the white parent of a black child, as a tireless advocate in the effort to eliminate racism, is the perpetual risk of alienation. Another parent once told me—as we chatted about educational paths for our daughters and I expressed my desire for a school with lots of diversity—that I’m “overly sensitive to race.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not overly sensitive to race. I’m aware of it. There’s a difference.” That parent and I haven’t spoken since.
I can’t be too passionate; I have to be just-right passionate. I can’t be too outspoken; I have to be just-right outspoken. And by “just-right,” I mean the perfect amount that doesn’t make the person on the other end of the dialogue uncomfortable. Never knowing what the “just-right” amount is—though it’s usually very, very little—if I’m not careful, I quickly become that lady, the one standing in a sea of eggshells with the chip on her shoulder. And really: Be careful what you say to her.
Making sure others are comfortable makes me constantly uncomfortable, and I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t what it’s like to be black in America.
Of course, talking with or confronting strangers is hardly as loaded because my investment is negligible. I’m less inclined to fret about the repercussions of speaking up (did I say too much? Did I offend him?). A checker at Smart & Final recently said to me, during what was otherwise a casual discussion about the difficult economy we’re all enduring: “Those Somali women are crooks. Every last one of them. They are ruining our race.”
“That’s an ugly thing to say and I don’t share that viewpoint,” I countered as I grabbed my stuff to leave, while she flushed and mumbled that I’d taken it the wrong way. Outside, I was calm, but inside I was raging. (As an aside, when Googling “famous white women outburst” to find a metaphorical example, the first two hits were Serena Williams and Kanye West. I’m pretty sure neither of them is a white woman. But! One is an athlete, while the other is a rock star, which reinforces what those intellectuals up there in Paragraph 3 were saying.)
The point is, strangers are easy to address because whichever tack I use, I always walk away, and it matters not what they think of me.
But the same does not go for friends and family. When a conversation with people I care about comes to an impasse, there is no grabbing my things and leaving. I have to find a way to move beyond the discomfort, accept that we don’t all see things the same way and still be true to my values. Like anyone else, I get angry when I feel like I’m not heard, like I’m misunderstood or like I’m being dismissed. But huffing around in hysterics doesn’t nurture relationships.
I try to be mindful, especially in the heated moments, that we all view the world through the lens of our own life experience. It just so happens that mine has taken me on a different path than most. And while I want those whom I care about to take it with me, forcing things isn’t going to make them want to come along.
So I don’t let frustrations keep me from trying. I will always try. I can’t not try. And this, I hope, is how things will change for my daughter and her generation.
Budget Woes: California is one hot mess with a tough governor
This week’s installment of BAIHH (acronyms are so stupid, and I just needed to prove it) was going to be a meditation on the state of state government, except I can’t quiet my mind.
The deadline for passing a state budget is here, and in the balance hangs the future of lots of stuff, including my topic du siécle—education—or, more specifically, the operation and financing of the 2011-12 school year. I don’t dare to think much beyond that—sort of like our leaders. The difference is that they’re paid by you and me to consider the future when making decisions that affect us, and we have little say (none, if Republicans get their way) in any of it. Depressed yet?
False Solutions: Waving goodbye to the yellow school bus
Hey-ho, readers. I have a public-service announcement for you: Don’t have children. Too late, you say? Well, this piece is for you, too.
The reason I say this is not because kids suddenly need to talk to you every time you pick up the telephone to chat with your best friend. It’s not because they use their favorite Hannah Montana rubber stamp to decorate the floor, baseboards and west-facing wall of your newly painted dining room. It’s not because you have to hold post-potty depositions after every single mother@!&#*^!! bathroom trip—complete with hand sniffing and counterarguments—about whether hand washing actually occurred. No, this stuff isn’t why I implore you to put on a rubber.
I beg because trying to get a decent public education for your child in this city is like walking up a down escalator. On crutches. While simultaneously patting your head and rubbing your tummy. It’s way more fun to be a childless hipster. Even a tragic, brooding one.
The reasons San Diego children are completely screwed are myriad. But the standard We’re broke! excuse has brought us to the latest emotional, ideological, political and un-thought-out decision to do away with all but federally mandated busing.
For those who don’t speak educationese, that means the roughly 6,000 students in San Diego Unified who aren’t designated as special-education kids or who aren’t bused out of failing schools under No Child Left Behind—and further encouraged by the district’s very own School Choice program, mind you—will no longer have access to transportation. School-board members Scott Barnett, Shelia Jackson and John Lee Evans like to paint it as a return to neighborhood schools. I like to call it re-segregation.
Currently, parents who can afford it are asked to pay to use school buses. I’d advocate for increasing the fee before puncturing all the bus tires, but that’s because I care. The school district, though, has been incompetent when it comes to tracking current payments, with approximately half of the 5,000 paying families delinquent. (Oh, bureaucracy. You’re so adorable I want to squeeze your chubby cheeks!) Of course, it is difficult to track bus ridership in the day and age of children swiping pre-paid ID cards each day to eat cafeteria lunch.
According to an analysis by the district’s very own Tiger Team on Transportation, it costs $32,000 annually to operate a bus. This is whether one child is on a bus (say, a federally mandated rider) or 40 children are on a bus (say, all the kids who live in the general area and could get on that bus but won’t be allowed to). Here’s the thing: The school board would sorta need to know who’s riding the bus in order to know how much money could be saved by eliminating bus routes. Can I get a witness?
Anti-buser Scott Barnett says that eliminating busing will save teacher jobs and he projects an overall savings of $3.1 million—amid an estimated $140-million deficit. Drop, meet bucket. (Things will change a bit with the governor’s new budget, but unless Evans is open to reason, it’s unlikely busing will remain untouched.)
Interestingly (which is probably why the school board is uninterested), the Tiger Team projects that 36 schools will be below capacity if busing goes the way of the dodo bird, and at least 11 will be over capacity.
Mission Bay High School could see enrollment nosedive as much as 75 percent if its bused students don’t find another way to get there. Teachers will be laid off, and then the school will be—what? Operated at 25-percent capacity? Or will it be shut down and remaining students sent—where? And if the latter, will they be—bussed? Or will Barnett arrange for them to have taxi vouchers? He seriously proposed taxi vouchers as an answer to busing. That’s out-of-the-box thinking.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town where the real beating will take place, Lincoln High School—with 2,100 to 2,700 students enrolled in any given year—will absorb as many as 1,120 students, according to the Tiger Team. Jackson pshawed that as a “worst-case scenario” and defended her vote to eliminate busing by saying that there’s no way to know what the actual number of new enrollees would be. I love the let’s-just-hop-in-the-car-and-see-where-we-end-up plan of action. It’s an especially effective policy when you start on empty.
I ask Jackson & Co.: What already-large high school can absorb another thousand students? Or even 500? Or whatever made-up number you’d like to propose? Will you accommodate this mystical influx by building more buildings? I wonder if the school board has wondered whether that will cost more than $3.1 million.
The elimination of busing will be the third decision in a series aimed in a not-so-veiled way at closing down magnet schools. With the redistribution of magnet funds and the phasing out of Title 1 funds, my daughter’s school will face a reduction of up to 47 percent of the student body if busing is axed. Taxis are likely out as an option since I don’t know one parent who’s going to put a first grader in an Orange Cab, or on a city bus, for that matter. Will my school operate at half-capacity? Will it close? And how many teachers will be let go? Yup. I see the savings now.
Readers: On the morning of May 10, our school board met to discuss this issue in an air-conditioned room. The National Weather Service recorded the high temperature in San Diego as 68 degrees that day. And they say busing is a waste of money.
Any estimation of savings from eliminating busing is magical thinking. Educating our city’s kids with nincompoops as sitting board members is the sad, sad reality.
Don’t write to me, silly! Write to the school board and urge them to take busing off the table. Then write to aaryn@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
Going Home: Planting my feet on familiar but not familiar ground
One of the perks of being a grown-up is that you can eat cupcakes before dinner if you feel like it. Hell, you can eat cupcakes instead of dinner; it’s totally up to you because you’re a grown-up. It’s the thought of this benefit upon which I rely whenever being an adult means dealing with un-fun stuff. Like when you have to make the trek back to where you came from because someone you love has died.
Such was the case last week when my mother and I boarded a flight together to mark the passing of one of her closest friends, a woman integral to my upbringing.
To say the journey was dirge-like is an inaccurate portrayal of what went down. Of course there was sorrow, but viewings and cemeteries just aren’t how my people roll. I come from celebratory stock, and there was no funeral. There was instead a celebration at an art gallery with several hundred people recounting memories of way back when.
I visited with the people my mother calls “the village of fools” that raised me, some of whom I hadn’t seen in decades. I caught up with people I never thought I’d see again, and some who, to be honest, I never thought about once I’d left: I chatted with old neighbors, parents of friends, friends, friends’ kids, former teachers, a woman who used to babysit me and even a woman I used to babysit.
“You showed me Michael Jackson’s Thriller for the first time and—Whoa!” she said as we toasted. “It scared the crap out of me, but it blew my mind!” I had no business caring for a child back then. Perhaps I still don’t.
Of course, parts of the trip were dreadful: We come from Utah, after all, where the only thing more dreadful than not being able to get a cocktail before noon is not being able to replenish the alcohol supply at a memorial service because the state-run liquor stores all close at 7 p.m.. That kooky old Beehive State. It makes Arizona look progressive.
As sad as some moments were, my trip to the homeland was a real-life version of The Twilight Zone, an adventure in the surreal. The heaviness of the experience was lightened by good stories, really good people and I think, if I remember correctly, some seriously good weed. Moral supremacists can pass all the laws they want, but people will find a way. Suck on that, prohibitionists.
Many things have changed since I left Salt Lake City nearly 20 years ago.
The (still small) downtown is unrecognizable, with ongoing development causing us to take several detours as we strolled. Same goes for my high school, where Disney’s High School Musical series was filmed. There’s a stunning library—boasting architecture worthy of a city like Chicago—that was not just open, but filled with people.
My grandparents’ home was razed and replaced by a McMansion with three garages and a whole lot of black roof. And my beautiful, turn-of-the-(20th)-century childhood home that my mother worked so hard to restore, had a notice of condemnation taped hastily to the front door. This was especially unsettling, mostly I think because it seemed to mirror the implosion of my parents’ marriage and the unraveling of my nuclear family.
But other things were so unchanged that I felt as if I’d never left, an equally disorienting feeling.
Mrs. Backers Pastry Shop, where my mother used to buy all of my birthday cakes, was as explosively pink and kitschy as always. The old glass cases were packed with cupcakes and cookies, and the smell of sugar as I pushed through the big glass door brought me to tears.
I wiped my eyes and told the girl behind the counter about how I used to freeze one flower—perhaps a dahlia or daffodil made of the world’s best butter-cream frosting—from my birthday cake each year and save it for a sweet tooth emergency. She just stood there and looked at me like I had 10 heads. But I didn’t care, because she had stiff claw bangs, which is way more permanent than my public display of nostalgia. Clearly, she did not fully appreciate the spectacularness that is Mrs. Backers’ butter-cream frosting.
Also unchanged was a popular restaurant where my family used to celebrate special occasions (Mother’s Day, graduation, the day I got my first period, what have you). The people on the wait staff looked vaguely familiar in a ruddy-ski-bum, college-y sort of way.
I ordered the world’s best eggs Benedict to a soundtrack of “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, followed by The Cure’s “In Between Days” and then “Big in Japan,” by Alphaville. I had to check my Swatch watch to see what year it was. I even checked my reflection in a nearby mirror to make sure I wasn’t wearing acid-washed overalls with one strap undone, pants legs tucked into two pairs of brightly colored socks, layered and scrunched down into lace-up ankle boots. Eighties attire must die.
Speaking of dying, I’m not super-experienced in dealing with death—a lucky streak I’m happy to maintain—so I’m still sort of wide-eyed from the shock of seeing how time can fly and also stand still.
For the moment, I’m suspended in the life-is-short awareness, an acuity that will dissipate in a few days. I’ll be distracted by the minutia again soon enough, but not before I serve my husband and daughter Mrs. Backers’ cupcakes for dinner.
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)
Put Down The Glass: Kate Hudson inadvertantly sparks new legislation
Late last week, Radar Online posted photos of a pregnant Kate Hudson drinking a glass of what looked like red wine while vacationing with her boyfriend in Argentina. The comment section of the website had barely begun to overflow with its collective opinion broadly castigating “the little tramp” before outraged Republicans leaped into action.
Though it’s too late for Hudson’s baby—who will likely have small eyes and thin lips due to genetics, rather than some fermented South American grapes—the GOP plans to use one of the tentacle-like arms of its small government to help ensure all pregnancies, forced and otherwise, are safe for the baby.
“Drinking while pregnant is absolutely not acceptable,” House Majority Leader John Boehner told CityBeat in an exclusive Skype interview recently. Boehner wept as he spoke, his shoulders heaving, orange self-tanner dripping from his chin. “That’s why I have sponsored House Bill 1920. The bill’s number is a nod to women’s suffrage. I thought of it myself,” Boehner said, wiping his face with a white monogrammed kerchief.
“HB 1920 is referred to in committee meetings as the Pregnant Women Cannot Drink Anything But Dasani Bill. Now, we realize that’s sort of a tongue twister for those on Main Street, especially for the lady-folk who shouldn’t be trusted with anything more than casserole decisions. So, the actual working title is the Fund the Troops Bill, which even a retard can understand.”
If passed, HB 1920 will make “the ingestion of alcohol by pregnant persons” a federal crime, punishable by up to 25 years in prison or—depending on overcrowding—as a seventh-grade science teacher in Texas. The bill makes no exception for nail-polish remover being absorbed through the skin.
“Pregnant women shouldn’t be painting their nails in the first place!” Boehner exclaimed. “This bill is unambiguous.”
GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee offered tepid support in a recent radio appearance, saying the bill “is certainly a baby step—get it? Baby step?—in the right direction,” but that it falls short by not addressing the unwed-mother issue.
“First Natalie Portman, now this?” he asked. “It’s an epidemic! Just look at how Kate Hudson flaunts single-motherhood, wearing that string bikini, her baby-bump shiny and taut like Jim Cramer’s forehead. The woman doesn’t even have stretch marks! It makes me horny—I mean—it’s just not reality for most women, and to put that message out there is irresponsible.”
Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, now living with his Argentine lover, had a slightly different take. “She [Hudson] should get married if she’s met her soul mate. But the wine? Well, they do things a little different down there.”
Murphy Brown did not respond to requests for comment.
Boehner laughed off Huckabee’s concern.
“He’s just so passionate when it comes to food and marriage. What I tell him is, ‘Whoa, slow down, Huckster. You didn’t lose 110 pounds overnight.’”
Indeed, Boehner privately calls this bill his “test-tube baby” because future legislation will be modeled after it. “If HB 1920 passes—and I feel confident it will,” he said, “we will criminalize the ingestion of soft cheeses, straining to poop and sex after the first trimester.”
To be sure, this bill is but one part of a larger tapestry to protect the unborn: Combined with funding cuts to Planned Parenthood, the repeal of healthcare reform, the decimation of the public-school system and changes to labor laws, Republicans hope to guarantee millions of fetuses the right to life but little more.
“What happens to the kid after birth is not my business,” Boehner said, his hands in the air. “We just want to get ’em here with a normal head circumference. I ask you: What’s more joyous than the moments immediately after the doctor sucks the mucous out of a newborn’s face with that turkey baster thingy? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing is more glorious than the ‘Wah!-wah!-wah!’ of a child taking his first breaths of fresh air.”
Nancy Pelosi balked in reaction.
“Whether that air is fresh is a matter of debate,” she told NPR, citing GOP demands that the EPA be barred from monitoring greenhouse gasses.
“Nancy, like all women, is no longer relevant,” Boehner said. “I’m speaker now, babe, so you can shut it and fix me a bourbon.”
While activists have expressed concerns about what happens to these children once they’re born, Republican legislators have offered more innovative ideas.
Missouri state Sen. Jane Cunningham points to Maine, Utah and Virginia as examples of out-of-the-box thinking. “Like mine, these states are doing away with child-labor laws so kids can work at age 14,” she told CityBeat.
“Let’s face it: Our schools suck and kids deserve other options. So, right here in The Show-Me State, not only are we opening the job sector for those under 14, but we’re also eliminating restrictions on the numbers of hours and days a child can work. Easy peasy.”
Boehner is elated by the prospect of Missouri’s contribution. “The tax cuts we extorted from the Democrats last December [for the wealthiest 2 percent], have resulted in an astronomical number of jobs added to our economy, which means a need for labor. So, to skeptics, I say, pshaw!”
For now, the focus is on preventing women from following in Kate Hudson’s footsteps. But in the long term, Boehner and his colleagues hope these little fetuses grow up as patriots who enlist in the military and fight America’s wars.
“Only a retard doesn’t want to die a hero,” Boehner said.
Want to commiserate over a cocktail? I don’t care if you’re pregnant. Write to aaryn@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
Spa Schma: No mud masks or hot-stone massages for this girl
When it comes to self-indulgence, there are three types of people in the world: Those who spa, those who do not spa and those who repeatedly attempt to spa, each time thinking, Surely, this time I will experience a gelatinous descent into the eucalyptus-scented nirvana that so many of my girlfriends rave about. Yet this third type of person always emerges from the steam more tense and aggravated and knotted and kinked than when she first slipped her feet into the complimentary rubber pool shoes. Shoes that have been worn by other people. With who-knows-what-kinds of foot fungus, and, dear God, I hope they wash them every night.
Can you guess which group I fall into?
I find it awkward to have someone I’ve never met rub me with oil and make small talk to the sounds of Enya and crashing waves on a loop. It strikes me as absurd when a stranger with good bone structure and tiny pores uses a magnifying glass to unclog my aged ones.
And then there’s the whole being-naked-in-front-of-other-people thing. I don’t know the psychology behind it, but I’m actually more comfortable getting a bikini wax than I am taking off all my clothes in a locker room.
Granted, I realize this is an unhealthy attitude toward my body, and I have worked to overcome it. I’ve spent more hours on topless beaches than I have in community service, and I’ve done my fair share of public streaking. If you were on Granada Avenue in North Park on election night, 2008, that was my flesh you saw bounding by.
Yes, public nudity is easier when you’ve thrown back any combination of seven different cocktails, but most spas I’ve been to don’t encourage cocktails, furthering my general disdain for them.
For my husband’s recent birthday, I checked us into a hotel in La Jolla known for its spa. I’d booked a massage for him but not for me; I’d planned to sit in the poolside jacuzzi with a good book and a glass of wine while I waited. But after noticing Dijon mustard-colored bubbles creeping toward me—never a good sign—I opted to kill time in the women’s spa, hoping for a whirlpool with a more strictly monitored pH. As usual, my experience was about as relaxing as being on a 12-hour flight with a colicky baby and seats that don’t recline.
Inside the women’s locker room, I fumbled to undress much like I did when I was 13 and awkward, embarrassed to be naked in front of other girls. The mandatory naked-showering in seventh-grade gym class— enforced by the rigid Mrs. Allen, who stood snapping her gum at the shower exit, waiting to inspect all the girls—is a trauma still with me 28 years later. See? Some teachers do make a lasting impact.
Pushing thoughts of Mrs. Allen out of my mind, I wrapped myself in a thick spa robe, and shuffled outside to a whirlpool secluded in an alcove of lush plants and bamboo. I was terrifically uncomfortable, but I recognized this to be irrational: I was the only one in the place.
Girl, I said to myself, this is a spa and you’re supposed to be naked. Be a grownup. Get over it. So I shrugged off the robe and my neurosis and sank into the (much cleaner) whirlpool.
My hamstrings and low back thanked me. I had been soaking for a good 10 minutes and was just beginning to relax when I noticed the sign. “Proper attire must be worn at all times.” People: I couldn’t have been more horrified had I farted publicly.
My hamstrings and low back seized. My breathing became sharp and shallow. I had to get out of there before all the people who weren’t around noticed me, the stupid girl who went naked at the spa!
Paranoid? Oh, totally. What’s worse is that I knew I was being paranoid, but I was powerless to overcome it. Instead, I cut my soak short, calmly lifted myself out of the water, and dragged the robe around me. My heart was pounding and I quietly berated myself for taking off my swimsuit in the first place. Which is about when I noticed my robe was on inside out.
I felt my cheeks turn red as I hurried to peel the robe off and put it back on properly. Still determined to make this work, and with another 30 minutes to kill, I decided to sit in the steam room. In my terrycloth robe, of course. But it got mighty hot in there, as steam rooms tend to, and I finally said aloud to nobody, “Fuck this.” Again, I undressed and laid the robe down as a barrier between my derriere and the wood bench.
It was quiet, warm and peaceful. My hamstrings and my low back were thanking me and I was just beginning to relax when a drop of hot water—and then another, and another—fell from the ceiling onto my forehead like Chinese water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip. Then began an ominous, throaty, machine-like groan. It started low and got louder, a stuttered and angry rumbling that culminated with a burst of hissing and a cloud of thick steam.
Which is when I thought of Auschwitz. I shouldn’t say that, but it’s the truth. Call me the Juan Williams of saunas. Call me what you will, but the plain fact is that thoughts of torture and murder effectively cancel out any possible spa benefits.
My hamstrings and low back seized. I was done.
I gathered my robe around me and used it to dry off. Then I got dressed, fast, and retraced my steps to my hotel room. Then I called room service and ordered a hot fudge sundae.
The Big Scare: Is my daughter a wingnut?
“Do you want to go to the beach?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go to the zoo?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go to the aquarium?”
“No.”
This is a typical conversation between my daughter and me these days, and it’s not just limited to offers of big excursions. It happens when we discuss the possibility of doing anything other than viewing High School Musical 2 for the 943rd time. And as a woman who once practiced kissing techniques using a Shaun Cassidy album cover, I totally get it. Zac Efron is so fine that even a newt could recognize the hypnotizing hum of his sky-blue eyes. And there’s always the possibility that he and Vanessa Hudgens will finally get that uninterrupted kiss. A glass tank full of shimmering sardines has nothing on that.
Still.
Any opportunity I offer my child—from walking the dog to taking piano lessons to learning about tsunamis through wild bathtub splashing (who wouldn’t want to do that?!?)—is met with a definitive oh-hell-to-the-N-O! It’s unbearably frustrating to be on the receiving end of such assholery. It’s like a never-ending tap dance: See me over here? (Rhythm roll.) I’m trying to entertain you! (Shuffle-ball-step.) Trying to make your life fabulous! (Windmill arms, jazz hands. Big! Smile!)
Response from my child: No.
It makes me want to punch myself in the face while wearing the jagged, over-priced, purple quartz ring I was forced to purchase at Hunt & Gather after it broke when Ruby dropped it on the floor—after already having been reprimanded (twice) for dropping other breakables on the floor. Mark my words: I’m going to give her that ring on her wedding day.
Worse, though, than the self-face-punching frustration is the gut-punching thought I had in recognizing this pattern of now-predictable negative responses: Is my daughter a Republican?
Oh, how the head spins. I nearly had to lie down after typing that. That my child should grow up to be a Republican is my third worst nightmare. (The second is that she would also be an evangelical golfer, but I’m going to stay positive.)
When I first voiced this concern to my husband, he brushed me off. “Don’t ever say that!” he said. That I should accuse our Pride and Joy of such an ugly thing made him angry, which is totally understandable. The possibility makes me angry, too. For six years, we’ve worked hard to raise a good, solid liberal who can one day hold her own against the 19—or is it 20 now?— children that have been delivered into the world through Michelle Duggar’s Slip ’N Slide vagina.
We own a hybrid. We recycle and eat organic. We clean trash off the streets in our neighborhood several times a year and donate to the less fortunate. We practice throwing peace signs at aggressive drivers with ugly bumper stickers. We have naked time. We listen to Michael Franti.
Despite all these efforts, the growing evidence is disturbing.
Our child is selfish. And greedy. And she doesn’t like to share. That is, unless we have something she wants, and then, of course, we’re expected to share. No discussion, no meeting half way. She balks at reasonable concessions and then goes nuclear, taking what she wants as we’re still trying to figure out a compromise. This, because getting what she wants is in her best self-interest and long-term goals, everyone else be damned.
She is—and it pains me to admit it—a hypocrite.
To make matters worse, she comes in a mesmerizing package filled with promise. With giant brown eyes, dimples and a gap-toothed smile, she can wrinkle her forehead and present herself in a seemingly genuine and well-intentioned manner. The kid can placate a gullible crowd with a determined, passionate and convincing argument, even though—upon closer consideration—it lacks rationale and is filled with holes and, yes, sometimes a few fibs. She’s so good that we, too, are susceptible to her sideways, circular, grammatically challenged fast-talk. Thanks to a few well-played hugs and kisses, cuddles and compliments (“Mama, your eyes look so pretty today!”), she tends to get most of what she wants, often at our expense.
Horrified by this set of circumstances, Sam and I put Ruby on the couch the other day and forced her to watch Inside Job, followed by Sicko and two episodes of The Rachel Maddow Show. We then offered a comprehensive lecture about the dangers of global warming; the constitutionally protected right of American women to have access to safe abortions; why gay marriage, prostitution and pot should all be legal; and how it’s totally normal that a shirtless Zac Efron makes her blush.
After she passed a short quiz and went to bed, we turned to the child-development literature where we learned that Ruby is right on track with respect to age-appropriate behavior. Not only is she behaving exactly as she’s supposed to be, but she’s also still ripe for the imprinting of our atheistic, heathen-based, live-and-let-live belief system. She is not (thank every pagan God) a Republican. She’s just acting like one.