Duped again: Is Steven Slater just another false hero?
I was practically falling over myself with a combination of glee and envy last week when I heard the story about Steven Slater’s epic resignation. As everyone knows by now, he’s the JetBlue flight attendant who supposedly took an inordinate amount of abuse from an irate passenger until he reached what I call his customer-service shelf life. This is the point at which you know you can’t do this job one moment longer. Most service-industry folks have one. Mine came after 10 years of waitressing when a customer berated me for serving him steak-cut fries instead of the curly fries we’d run out of. I fantasized about dumping the fries in his lap and squirting a tub of ketchup in his face before walking out the door for good. Instead, I let him belittle me for an entire evening, cried on the drive home and promptly gave my two-week notice the old-fashioned way.
Unlike me, Slater didn’t just daydream a magnificent exit with an expletive-filled PSA and a slide down the plane’s inflatable emergency chute. He went right ahead and lived it. And I went right ahead and signed on as the 61,403rd supporter of his Facebook page. By last Thursday night, his fan tally hovered at 200,000, but as much as I liked the suggestion by another fan that “White Castle should rename their sliders ‘Slaters,’” that number no longer included me.
After reading a short blurb titled “Is Steven Slater a Hoax, Too?” on Slate (slate.com), I fought back my inner Howard Beale and the companion urge to pour my bourbon directly into my keyboard—I didn’t need another trip to the Genius Bar, so instead of punishing my information source, I begrudgingly clicked “unlike.”
After the initial story spread like Rod Stewart’s seed, The Wall Street Journal and CBS News did this antiquated thing called “vetting,” in which reporters check out the “facts” of a story—usually done before publication—and, wouldn’t you know it, there are witnesses who contradict Slater’s version. How much Slater will be discredited by the time this goes to press, I can only surmise. But even at this juncture, I could hardly be more disappointed if my kid were to become a Christian fundamentalist and take up golf.
For me, it isn’t just the possibility that this particular story has a less vicariously liberating side than initially portrayed, though that is certainly a knife to my left lung. I so love to see the little guy win, and it really sucks when the little guy turns out to be a cheat. But it’s the cumulative effect of these Boy-Who-Cried- Wolf incidents that leaves me hollow.
The revelation that the Slater story might be more than it appeared was immediately preceded by the uncovering of a similar hoax perpetrated by The Chive, in which a young woman named “Jenny” quits her job via dry-erase board, displayed in a series of photos. I didn’t find the Jenny joke compelling because I was too engrossed in the more organic, slapstick victory of Mr. Slater.
But I fell for Balloon Boy in a big way. I watched from my office that day, horrified and near tears. It was just like watching a late-night Sally Struthers commercial for starving children: I knew I should turn it off, but I couldn’t. I just kept imagining it was my child in that silver, Mylar balloon contraption, spinning and hurtling across a blue sky. I very nearly sent those wicked people a donation.
And, of course, we know our government agencies aren’t impervious to such reporting shenanigans. The Department of Agriculture didn’t waste any time validating an out-of-context video clip of employee Shirley Sherrod making what appeared to be racist comments. They just took the carefully edited clip posted to the Interwebs by a right-wing blogger as empirical evidence that Sherrod needed to go. So bumbling was the reaction to the offending snippet that it made me long for the Bush administration. They would never have fired anyone based on a lie, and there’s plenty of proof of that.
I’m beginning to think we’re a society of Patsies, too many gullible Charlie Browns. So much false information is dressed up to look like truth, and when we so richly reward the lowest common denominator (hi, Snookie!), why look any deeper? Why aim any higher? We live in an era of an ever-changing media clamoring to get the story first, instead of clamoring to get a story right. Our worldview is so defined by Photoshop and blogger pundits and the entertainment-izing of news programs that strive to keep our attention and feed our insatiable appetite for drama that it’s tough to decipher the presented reality from truth.
No matter where the fault lies, there’s something especially disappointing in the knowledge that Steven Slater may have acted disingenuously. Because what he did—or rather, the original story of it—was an unleashing of something primal that many of us suppress day after day as we go through the motion of our lives. We are reamed daily at our jobs, and by politicians, and church leaders, and bankers and by the airline industry, too. We are assaulted from every angle, and most of us put our heads down and muscle through because we can’t afford to blow. There’s just too much to lose.
But there is a deep satisfaction in knowing someone is ballsy enough to risk it all, a celebration in seeing a small part of yourself reflected in that defiant stick-it-to-the-man act. With his outburst, Slater offered a sense of vindication to those of us who only dream about doing it. His act offered a sense of attaboy! possibility. That he may have orchestrated the whole thing is deeply disheartening and leads me to think Jersey Shore might be a more accurate depiction of who we really are.
(As published in San Diego CityBeat.)
Proving that one person *can* make a difference
Check out what I found in my inbox last night:
Dear Aaryn-
I read your blog post today. You are absolutely right in pointing out our grammatical mistake with the English language, it was not intentional. That was an error on our part and we have changed the text to read “coach.com anyway.”
We strive to give our base a good experience when exploring our site and discovering new styles.Please feel free to call me at [redacted] or at jennifer@polyvore.com.
Did I actually call Polyvore a bimbo??? I take it back. Polyvore is no bimbo. Polyvore writes in cursive, sends thank you notes, and knows her dessert fork from her salad fork.
See my latest CityBeat column (also below this post) for context. It wasn’t up for 12-hours before the Polyvorites were all over it. And might I just say, kudos to Jennifer and Polyvore for that. Gigantic, enormous, bigger-than-the-Oxford-English-Dictionary kudos to them. Of course, I’d be even happier about the correction had she included a pair of shoes as a gesture of apology. Wouldn’t that really have been the right thing to do? Then I’d be calling her a mensch in addition to sending big wet cyber-kisses.
A Way With Words: Thoughts on the selective butchering of the English language
While browsing the fashion collages posted at Polyvore the other day, I clicked on a link for a brooch that had caught my eye and received the following message: “This item appears to be out of stock. Continue to coach.com anyways?” Something tells me Coach did not approve that message.
That a girl raised on the pristine streets of Salt Lake City should venture to the Coach website is absurd. I hail from the place that patented the claw bang and the annoy-een habit of drop-een the “g” from the end-eens of words. Coach is beneath my station.
But even more disturb-een (OK, I’ll stop now) is the usage of a non-word word on a website that boasts 140 million monthly page views, a guerilla attack on the English language if I’ve ever seen one. Especially—or should I say, expecially?—because fabulously dressed women should know better. Use of “anyways” indicates one’s proclivity for dotting her “i”s with bubbly hearts, a habit that should be illegal for anyone older than 12.In that one message, Polyvore revealed her inner bimbo.
Here’s the thing: There is the purposeful creation of a new word to make a point or an intended misuse on the side of irony, and then there is the insidious, Palin-type jackassian nincompoopery, and never the twain shall meet. What follows are a few examples of the latter, so-called words that cause my spellcheck feature to freeze in exasperation.
Schoobrary: The only way this can be taken seriously is if it’s delivered with a snicker and a set of air quotes. In case you live under a rock—or anywhere in the entire world outside of San Diego—“schoobrary” is a lazy, shortcut term to describe the long anticipated Downtown library, which, if ever built, will house a school. Only, “schoobrary” isn’t really a shortcut because when you use it in a sentence, it still requires an explanation. “Schoobrary” isn’t a word, and I have to question whether Scott Lewis (CEO of Voice of San Diego) wasn’t munching on schooby snacks when he coined a now-broadly used term that sounds more like a cartoon dog’s breakfast cereal than a place of higher learning.
Athletical: Like its bastard cousin “schoobrary,” “athletical” is a regional colloquialism. And by regional, I mean used in Wisconsin. By my father-in-law. “That kid on my soccer team is a natural. He’s really very athletical,” he might say. Or, “Sure, Brett Favre is a fuckwad. But you gotta admit, he’s still got his athletical abilities.” The first time he said it, I squelched my urge to correct him. It’s sort of endearing, after all, and since I respect my elders, I chose to say nothing and make fun of him here instead.
Nucular: Dubya. Need I say more?
Heighth: Usually accompanied by width, “height” is guilty by association. Unless you have a lisp, “heighth” is not a word.
Irregardless: Ah, one of my favs. Like the phrase “for all intensive purposes,” this oldie but goodie is fun to say, flows off the tongue, gives the impression that the speaker has contemplated his situation from every possible angle and is completely, maddeningly wrong. It’s frequently overheard during grocery-store exchanges between long-lost acquaintances catching up while palming the avocados. One or the other person complains about his boss or cloying in-laws or the options for his upcoming colonoscopy. “I could take the pills or gag down the juice, but, irregardless, the emptying is going to suck.” People: It’s “regardless” or “irrespective.” Pick one and go with it. (And, FYI, my in-laws say the pills are the way to go.)
Expresso: Do you think they’ll serve expresso at the schoobrary when it opens? No. They will not. You know why? Because there is no such thing as “expresso.” There is also no such thing as a “venti.” Yes, it takes less time to make an espresso than a pot of coffee, and you can now get it in an extra-large cup from a drive-thru window. Certainly, this is very confusing. But when you order a double shot of expresso in your venti látte, you just sound like a douche bag.
Douche bag: OK, this is a real word that is, admittedly, pretty fun to use out of context, specifically when applied to people who frequent Starbucks, attend tea-party rallies or go by the name Mel Gibson. On the other hand, it’s tired and offensive. It should be scratched. Or not.
Supposebly and ostensively: These substitutions for “supposedly” and “ostensibly” sound so similar to the real thing that it can be tough to catch the imposters, especially if the person speaking has a Hungarian accent. But again, they’re not words. They’re faux words and they’re dangerous because the temptation to use them ironically can be irresistible, and if substituted long enough, they will become part of the user’s vernacular. Say a thing often enough and it becomes the truth. Which brings me to my next word…
Nonplussed: Ah, the pièce de résistance of my pet-peeve world. An actual word, to be nonplussed is to be perplexed, and how awesome is it that the meaning and the sound are in direct contrast to one another? It just blows my hair back. This definition, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, goes back to the early 16th century, and I’m sticking to it. But it’s been used to mean “unfazed” or “nonchalant” for so long, by so many people—et tu, New York Times, et tu?—that the wrong definition has become a commonly accepted definition.
And while such an occurrence doesn’t make me very happy, it should bring great hope to those who support schoobraries, those cultivating their natural athletical abilities and the fashionistas of the world who have to decide if they would like to click through to coach.com anyways.
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)
Back to school: The unintended side effect of being a parent
If you were to offer me $10 million to do high school over again, I would turn you down before you could finish your sentence. It wouldn’t matter if I were allowed to take with me all the hindsight I’ve collected since tossing my mortar board out the window of my mother’s white Toyota Corolla with the lapis-blue interior. I suppose you could sweeten the pot with Elin Nordegren’s $100-million divorce settlement from her naughty little Tiger and I might entertain reliving the misery.
Oh, those many brooding days spent slumped against the cold brick of East High School on the corner of 13th East and Ninth South, bangs draped across my dark-lined eyes, chain-smoking clove cigarettes while skipping Mr. Koenig’s typing class. I never could stand his greasy comb-over or his resenting scowl or his plaid, short-sleeve, button-down shirts or, most especially, his shiny, shiny patent-leather shoes. I dreaded, with all the force of my scornful teenage angst, the way he trolled the rows with his hovering red pen, ready to slash it across my page of typos, his enormous belly pushing against my shoulder as he leaned in to make his mark.
Ewww. No. Not even Elin’s hush money is enough to make me endure the pettiness, the hormones, the mean people and—worse—the stupid people. God, those stupid people. And now they friend-request me on Facebook? Ignore. The irony in this scenario is that I am going back, and I’m not getting paid to do it. That’s right: I’m going to do it all again, gratis! And I’m not just doing high school. I’m doing K through 12.
Because I’m a parent, you see. And this educational do-over is the part of being a parent that nobody ever warns you about. It’s the part I certainly didn’t ponder with any amount of critical thought when I decided to be a mother. I sort of figured you just had to make it until the kid’s 5 and then send her off down the road with her princess backpack and her lunch box and she’d pop out of Harvard at the end.
But I cozied up to Harsh Reality last week as I sat down for kindergarten orientation in the library of my daughter’s new school.
By the time Sam and I filed in to the parents-only event, we were relegated to the child-sized seats at the front of the room. My ass didn’t fit on the chair like it used to, but I had no time to harrumph about this because I was suffering a flashback comparable with those once induced by the LSD I took in my teens. Hmmm…maybe it was me, and not Mr. Koenig, who was the jerk, after all.
The days will be long for my girl, jam-packed with math, reading (independent and aloud), writing (modeled, shared, interactive) and social studies. Granted, despite the endless budget cuts, there is one very generous 20-minute block of each day dedicated entirely to PE, music and art, so it’s not like she won’t have an outlet. Important, too, because when she gets home, she’ll need to focus on the homework.
There will be lots of that apparently—a weekly packet full of it—and You Know Who will be sitting at the dining-room table doing the math, the reading, the writing, the social studies. I started to sweat as I read the information packet, remembering too vividly the many nights of crying over Algebra III equations with my tense and utterly helpless mother next to me. Oh my God, people! What did I get myself into?
I was trying to snap out of my PTSD when I became aware of another thing I hadn’t fully internalized but which became shockingly clear to me that night in the library: Those stupid people from high school? They grew up and became stupid parents. And they were sitting behind me, not raising their hands, blurting out questions willy-nilly, talking over the teachers and other patiently waiting parents.
“But, my little Caeidyn has to eat before the 11:15 snack time. Can he just sit quietly at his desk and eat when he gets hungry?” No. He’ll adapt. “You said that there’s no food allowed on birthdays. But, can I bring cupcakes for little Makynzie?” No. You may bring pencils… “How about popsicles?” Nope. No food. “So, what you’re saying is that Jaelyinn can’t bring cookies for the class on her special day?” Collective gasp.
That was it. “Must we really engage in this line of discussion for 10 minutes?!?” I hissed at the clodpates. “They. Said. No. Food. Is it edible? Yes? Then you can’t bring it! And what the hell kind of name is Jaelyinn, anyway?!?”
It’s been proven (by researchers at MIT, among others) that résumés topped with “black-sounding names” generate fewer job interviews than those bearing names more phonetically pleasing to the Aryan ear. But employers would do well to know that people with creatively spelled WASPy names that include lots of consecutive vowels (unlike mine, of course) tend to be coddled, entitled pricks who will call in sick to work on their first day. Or ask for a nap after their lunch break.
OK, so I didn’t really blow that night in the library. I rolled with it. I took my lumps and a lot of deep breaths. I sat quietly taking notes, since that’s what a good student does. I might have even thrown up a little prayer to the friendship gods asking, Please, I’ll do anything without complaint—even division of fractions!—so long as you don’t let my child become besties with Jaelyinn.
Because that fate might just drive me to black eyeliner and a carton of cloves.
GGGOOOAAAALLLLL! Urging American soccer haters to reconsider their position
It’s a slippery slope being a fan of The Beautiful Game. One day, you’re minding your own business, blowing the blood vessels in your eyeballs by blowing your much-maligned vuvuzela. There you are, rooting for France, throwing back mojitos at Vagabond during lunch in South Park on a Thursday, alongside the business set, who’ve sneaked away from their jobs because 90 minutes of footie and a cocktail will bring them a sliver of joy in the drudgery of an otherwise craperrific day in a whole endless string of them. Soon, you find yourself so charmed by the exuberant fans of the other team that you bid adieu to Handball Henri to jump up and down and shout “Viva Mexico!” with everyone else in the place.
You’re caught up in the thrill, and your little world is cracked open wide by the immediate connection between you and human beings of every culture on the planet. You’re excited for Mexico, sure, but now you really can’t wait to root, root, root for the home team the following morning. And the next thing you know, you find out you’re a traitor to America. Huh?
Certain right-wing fundies have been studying their talking points again and collectively smearing the World Cup, the U.S. men’s soccer team and, presumably, the ubiquitous soccer mom. In recent weeks, these vocal, elitist xenophobes have called soccer “a poor man’s or poor woman’s sport,” one that liberals “jam… down our throat” as part of the “browning of America.” Because baseball is stacked with freckle-faced redheads.
“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us,” said Glenn Beck in one of his tirades. “It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get. It doesn’t matter how many bars open early. It doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run: We don’t want the World Cup. We don’t like the World Cup. We don’t like soccer. We want nothing to do with it.” Beck the Troglodyte went on to mention the hooliganism perpetrated by hooligans before offering proof of our more civilized society: “I haven’t seen the baseball riots.” Apparently, the ever-present bench brawl doesn’t factor into Beck’s we’re-superior equation of sports-etiquette.
Oh, Glenn, you cotton-headed ninny muggins! You make me want to get all Zizou on your ass.
Have you never heard of the Cleveland Indians’ Ten-Cent Beer Night riot of 1974? What about Disco Demolition Night of 1979? Or does your selective comprehension of history exclude the events of history?
I would think you, of all people, would be incensed that fans rioted against an honest-to-God homegrown genre of music at Comiskey Park. What’s more American than disco? Thanks to disco, “YMCA” is played at stadiums (and weddings and bat-mitzvahs) all across your favorite country. And Gary Glitter may have been disco in costume only (and British, to boot), but he gave the American fans you hold up as examples of refined behavior the never-ending opportunity to drunkenly chant duhn-duhn-duuuunh-duh-HAY!-duhn-duhn-duhn-duhn-duhn-duuuuhn-duhn-HAY!
Frankly, that and the apathetic wave are more annoying than one honking vuvuzela blown into your ear at close range.
Also, news flash: America’s favorite pastime wasn’t even invented by Americans. The English invented it. Football? English blokes. Basketball? Wave to Canada, Glenn. You can probably see the socialists from your porch. OK, how about golf? you might ask. Well, other than not being invented in America, there’s little agreement as to its origins. I’d put my money on China since the Chinese make all our shit.
With a need for stop-start-stop action as desperate as the tea baggers’ need for spell check on protest signs, the Glenn Beckians don’t have the attention span for a sport with no commercial breaks. A Wall Street Journal study of four NFL games from last season found the average amount of play time was 11 minutes. In essence, an American football game is a three-hour block of beer-gulping, ball-scratching, slow-it-down-so-I-can-grasp-it time for Neanderthals who only understand domination and a playbook.
And fútbol? With one 15-minute half separating 90 minutes of non-stop running, this difficult sport has more intensity, agility, athleticism, power, control, finesse, creativity, innovation, nuance, grace and true teamwork than any other sport I can think of. Ours is definitely not the best team on Earth, but the U.S. men’s soccer team is the best of us, and any bloviating ethnocentrist in a Brooks Brothers suit should be able to get behind that team, which last Friday played a match complete with America’s favorite dramatic elements:
After an excruciating first half, the U.S. came back (overcoming hardship) from a debilitating 0-2 deficit to Slovenia, the smallest country competing (David and Goliath). Landon Donovan (the boy next door) patiently crafted the first goal just minutes into the second half, and the way the ball left his toe, soared across the field and into the corner of the net was nearly lyrical (the hero comes through).
Michael Bradley, the coach’s son (hello, Lifetime Television for women) tied things up with a second goal. Our goalkeeper, Tim Howard (one of the best in the world), dove and leapt to stop several dangerous attacks. And what should have been the third and winning goal (defying the odds) was taken away as quickly as it had happened (heartbreak) by a call so egregious (disbelief) that the announcers apologized and the rookie ref may be expelled from all future matches (vindication). Now the question remains: Can the U.S. overcome such a psychological test and advance to the next round? If we didn’t adore this kind of drama, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition wouldn’t exist.
The U.S. finishes the first round the day this issue hits the street. Whatever happens, the tournament continues until July 11. C’mon. Blow that vuvuzela. Even if it’s just to annoy your dogmatic neighbors.
(As published on June 23, 2010 in San Diego CityBeat.)
In a ‘State of Distraction’: Oh, Internet. You’re bad for me but I just can’t quit you
Can you imagine life without the web? If not, pay a visit to Slate and read the last four-months’ worth of articles by writer/illustrator James Sturm, who, like the CEO of BP, wanted his life back, and who, unlike the CEO of BP, had a right to feel so inclined. With the support of his wife and editor and I’m sure many other people, including one friend who changed all the passwords on his computers so he couldn’t give into the temptation to cheat, Sturm systematically, methodically unplugged.
Gadzoinks! He what??? He quit the what?! I was awed and stupefied. But, later, when I came across a story about Internet use and attention span, I heard the familiar if faint “pssst” whispered into my ear by the universe.
I’d been procrastinating several projects by scanning the day’s headlines with one eye and skimming the shortest posts in my Google Reader with the other, saving the longer ones (those that required scrolling and didn’t have pictures) for later when I’d have more time—which, I’ll be honest, is so 2004. And then, there it was, the link to a piece that I both clicked on and read. As in, the whole thing, from beginning to end.
I’d tell you the headline now and the name of the author, but it’s been bumped off the main page of the site on which I’m pretty sure I’d read it, and since I didn’t bookmark the link, it’s little more than a shortcut removed from the dock of my mind, a momentary cartoony dust ball of pouf! Repeated searches with every related keyword imaginable have been fruitless—if by “fruitless” one means “used up 45 minutes of valuable time that could have been better spent doing 17 other things at once,” none of them particularly well.
The fact that the article was there and now it is not, and that it had been buried in the cyber heap of constantly changing, need-to-know headlines, highlights the point of the article itself, which was, if I remember correctly, this: The Internet is dumbing us down. Not only do we opt for the take-away message of a newsy blip versus a whole concept, but we have also nurtured an inability to focus for a period of time long enough to get past a teaser. The upshot is that we know a teensy little smidgen about every single topic. Go on: Ask me what I know about welding.
In his July 2008 Atlantic piece (which he’s since expanded into the aptly named book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains), Nicholas Carr asked, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” To which I say—with nothing more than my verifiable and repeatable inability focus on a single New Yorker article from start to finish without taking headline- and e-mail-checking breaks as evidence—yes, yes it is.
“I’d sit down with a book, or a long article,” Carr said in a recent NPR interview, when asked what prompted him to write the book. “And after a couple of pages, my brain wanted to do what it does when I’m online: check e-mail, click on links, do some Googling, hop from page to page.” And here I thought I was the only one.
It’s very nearly a form of ADHD, something about which the unknown author of the non-existent piece to which I referred earlier, mentioned. Indeed, his list of warning signs included things like failing to pay close attention to details, an inability to sustain and complete tasks, reluctance to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort, a lack of follow-through, being easily distracted, procrastinating, forgetfulness—. Where was I going with this again? Oh, yeah! The petrifaction of our brains.
Carr shoves the knife in even further by pointing out how the human brain is adaptable and that our “chronic state of distraction” leads to a decrease in creativity, an inability to engage in complex thinking and a lack of introspective, contemplative thought. In other words, too much Internet is turning us all into Sarah Palin. It’s a horrific thought, but I take solace that at least I don’t look like a tranny.
Sure, I can multi-task with the best of them. But I’m eerily cognizant, as I meander the web for information, that there is no positive benefit to my existence in knowing that Belinda Carlisle had a 30-year coke habit, that Tipper and Al didn’t have affairs, that World Cup refs can outrun the players (yeah, right) and that a baseball coach lost his World Series ring while drunk.
I experience no spiritual growth by knowing that housewives upgrading their wedding rings for bigger, shinier models and that models of the super kind committing suicide are the latest trends. And I can’t tell you how much I’d like to un-see the photos of the matador impaled through his throat and mouth last month by an 1,100-pound bull. I tried not to look, but in my support for the bull, I couldn’t resist. I’m pretty sure lack of self-control should have ranked high on that symptoms list.
The jobs report for May was dismal; oil may gush ’til Christmas and—wait! Rue McLanahan died? And Dennis Hopper, too? I gotta share / mourn / celebrate that on Facebook! I mean, besides trying to be the first person to let everyone know that Michael Jackson died, what, exactly is the currency in knowing that Kate Hudson got a new rack or that six New Jersey women recently got butt implants made of caulking and cement (oops)? Answer: There isn’t any.
It’s all about self-monitoring, and I need to do more of it, starting last Friday. A part of me is really impressed with Sturm’s ability to go cold turkey and I’m tempted to try it. But I’m not that strong. I’m just going to dip my toe in, sign off for the weekend and see how goes the cold sweats. Guaranteed, I’m not changing any of my passwords.
(As published on 6/08/10 in San Diego CityBeat.)
(My point to) Counterpoint: An open letter and a plea to a restaurateur
Dear Cameron,
These are trying times, as I’m sure you’re aware, and a girl needs a place where she can forget about what troubles her for a spell. An urban place where she can sit on a tall stool in a corner by a window, chin on her palm and one leg crossed over the other, her feet falling asleep for all the dangling and legs clad in skinny jeans and the fabulously stylish red shoes that are—after a long day of circumnavigating Republicans in the workplace—just a little too tight.
She needs a place where she can feel like she’s part of a hip trend but is simultaneously indulging in one of the city’s best-kept secrets, a place where she can flirt mercilessly with a cute waiter but still be more discreet than the 20-something set. In short, she needs a place where she is transported to the Amalfi Coast by sipping citrus-infused Prosecco while feeding her inner Parisian with a ham and butter sandwich.
It takes a special person to recognize the complex pleasures and healing properties of such a simple combination; it takes an enlightened individual to put a ham and butter sandwich on his menu. No offense, Cam, but I have it on good account that there’s a woman behind that decision.
Counterpoint is my go-to spot du jour when things become dire. And after last week, I had my face set on devouring one—possibly two—of your little Euro cholesterol bombs to assuage my ever-sinking faith in humanity. I was ravenous when I arrived on Wednesday night. So you can imagine my dismay when nowhere among your eight sandwiches did I see the specialty on which I’d set my face.
“Sorry, but we took it off the menu,” said your muscular bar boy Ryan with the dangerous, laser-beam eyes and tight gray T-shirt. I nearly started to cry, I was in such agony. “But the fried bologna is really great!” He was trying to fix things. “We could share it,” he said.
Maybe you should give him a raise.
“Could we feed it to each other?” I asked. I may have twisted a strand of hair around my finger just then. OK, so I wasn’t more respectable than your younger patrons. But I wanted Ryan to be so enraptured that his only choice was to present me with a ham and butter sandwich! This is comfort food, and I was despondent. Have you, by any chance, had time between changing the beer on your taps to read the news lately? It’s ugly, Cam. U-G-L-Y.
This will probably come as a shock to you, but BP has been low-balling / disguising / hiding / lying about (choose your descriptor) the estimated number of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. Steve Wereley, a mechanical engineer at Purdue University, told Congress on May 19 that, actually, no, there is no way in the deep, deep pockets of greedy oil companies promising to pay for “legitimate and objectively verifiable” damages that 5,000 barrels of oil are pouring out each day. The real number is somewhere around 20 times that much. Did you watch the video of the oil gushing, Cam? It’s breathtaking. NPR correspondent Richard Harris encouraged listeners to imagine seven fire hoses on full blast all the time to get an idea of the oil currently “mushrooming” into our ecosystems. It took the images of an oil-drenched soft-shell crab and an iridescent blue dragonfly with brown sludge dripping from its delicate wing before I removed The Huffington Post as my homepage.
May 19 also marked the anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s death. The poor woman had her head chopped off because her husband didn’t quite grasp the concept of who, exactly, was responsible for the X- and Y-chromosomes in the family. (Something tells me it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.) On the same day 474 years later came the story of the excommunication of a nun in Arizona—and don’t even get me started on Arizona—revealing once and for all where the Catholic Church draws its line. Sister of Mercy Margaret McBride signed off on the abortion of an 11-week old fetus in order to save the life of a patient, a mother of four who was in heart failure. Never mind all those priests who diddle little children and get the wink-and-nod as they’re quietly shipped off to other parishes with whole new gaggles of wide-eyed, impressionable children at their disposal. Approve the removal a clump of cells from a uterus and it’s a lifetime of You Do Not Have A Place With Us. As it was in Boleyn’s day, so it is in McBride’s: This is a man’s world.
If you don’t believe me, Cam, look at what’s going on down under in the down under. According to the Australian news program The Hungry Beast, womanly parts are too unseemly for print and have thusly been photoshopped right out of existence. All the naked lovelies in their glossy magazines have ethics-board-mandated little-girl vag, which may please the aforementioned and very ill priests, but which has also convinced grown women that their “pendulous” labia minora are an aberration requiring removal. Some call this self-mutilation. Others call it “neat and tidy.”
Kentucky is running a racist named after Ayn Rand as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate, Texas is re-writing its history books, and here in California, a billionaire is buying the governor’s seat with promises of tax breaks for the wealthy and massive job-purging amongst the state rolls. And for God’s sake, Bret Michaels just will not die!
Do you see where I’m going with all of this, Cam? Directly to your pub. To drink. And eat a sandwich. The fried bologna is pretty good. But it’s not the same. So please. Cam. Cameron. Do the right thing. Be a hero. Listen to your wife and put the ham-and-sweet-butter sandwich back on the menu.
Oink,
~aaryn
(As published in last week’s issue of San Diego CityBeat. Sorry for the delayed posting.)
It’s hard to be alone
I’m struggling. I have been on my new schedule—working for The Man two-and-a-half days each week and for myself the rest of the time—for five weeks now and I am finding it next to impossible to prioritize, to focus, to be disciplined. I have so many things on my plate that I choose, instead, to eat off the floor. Really, I have no idea what that means but it seemed like the right thing to write. And given that the right thing to write has been eluding me lately, I figured I’d write it. Wait…this is becoming an Escher painting.
That I am unfocused has less to do with a lack of inspiration than it does the many distractions I am, admittedly, allowing into my workspace. I suffer an abundance, a constant flow, of incoming noise and shutting it off is proving to be a task greater than cleaning up an oil spill. Sure, I put a containment dome on my iPhone but then there’s Facebook. I put a containment dome on Facebook and messages hurl forth from my email. I put a containment dome on my email and there are groceries to be purchased and a filthy bathroom that needs scrubbing.
Write a post? A column? A review? A book? Though Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is trying to convince me otherwise, I still indulge the I-can’t-start-now-I-only-have-15-minutes mindset. It’s a hard habit to break. After all, spin class is starting at noon and I have to prepare.
Spin seems to be the only place I go these days where I have no problem shutting out the too-many creativity-sucking distractions. But it became clear to me yesterday that my problem of being incapable of eliminating the extraneous bullshit isn’t unique.
At yesterday’s class, there were three women perched on bikes at the front, pedaling like they were on a flat country road, ho-hum, engaged in a discussion loud enough to be heard over the pounding drone-like music. Of course, if you can talk during a workout, you are not working hard enough. I picked up my effort on their behalf, hoping some of my dripping sweat would spray in their direction. During cool down, another girl made a phone call. It must have been an emergency situation—perhaps her roommate couldn’t find her beach towel, perhaps her boyfriend needed to know she’d just finished spin class—because why else would you make a phone call while in a class of any kind unless there were an urgent need? And then there was the guy at the back of the room waiting to use the punching bags, pacing this way and that in his knee-length shorts and a grey t-shirt with the sleeves cut off in such a manner as to reveal his entire rib cage and waist, alternately talking on his cell phone and listening to his iPod.
I think it’s official. We, as a society, have not only perfected the art of ruining the planet, but we have a fairly complete inability to be alone with our thoughts. Generally speaking, this is bad. Very bad. And for me, in particular, as it pertains to my writing, it is exceedingly dangerous. I have been given the incredible and lucky opportunity of time, of extra daylight hours, and I have to figure out how to use it efficiently. I must become more adept at compartmentalizing the noise necessary for my work, and tuning out everything else. Like, yesterday. I’d ask for tips on how best to do this but I think the only way is to just do it. There is no other route. Is there?
Aftershocks: Don’t believe the current bad rap on adoption
Within a week after the news that Torry Ann Hansen had put her 7-year-old adopted son alone on a flight to Russia carrying with him her resignation letter, we received a thick envelope from our adoption agency. I thought it was a request for a donation, so when I read the contents, my stomach dropped.
The World Association of Children and Parents (WACAP*) is one of two agencies that facilitated Hansen’s adoption. That WACAP initiated a conversation with its families about the controversy speaks volumes about the organization. WACAP is renowned for its integrity and rigorous practices. It is one of the most—if not the most—highly regarded agencies in a business whose regulation can be slippery.
While reading the material WACAP sent addressing the situation, I thought back on our vetting experience. Our adoption was domestic, so I’m not too familiar with the protocol for international adoptions, and I wondered about the similarity between Hansen’s approval process and mine. In retrospect, like a woman who gets an epidural, it didn’t seem that painful. Yet, given what I knew, the connection between Hansen’s actions and WACAP’s requirements simply didn’t add up.
I scoured the Internet for more information. I rushed to dig out our paperwork, kept above Ruby’s closet in boxes stacked behind a plastic bin of family photographs and one crate filled with dusty books from college. I went to the computer archives and opened file after file, each containing some part or another of six months’ worth of information diligently culled as proof we were qualified to parent.
I was scavenging half-a-year of my life, every detail of which had been agonizingly but necessarily white-gloved, gold-starred and notarized. Looking back, I remember being at times resentful of the invasion of privacy and at others straight-up angry. I had, it turns out, forgotten the pain; to this day I adore the quaint remark, “If I can’t get pregnant, I’ll just adopt.”
Yes! Just!
Sam and I had to answer—separately—51 multi-part essay questions. We exposed every aspect of our lives from the time we were children (describe your parents’ marital relationship while growing up, what you feel was missing in your childhood and what you would do differently) to how we view ourselves (discuss your experience with counseling, therapy or personal growth practices). They even excavated our sex life (discuss your efforts to conceive biologically, including infertility, diagnosis, assisted reproduction therapies and their results and how you have dealt with your inability to have a child).
We were asked to defend our future parenting style (discuss how you plan to discipline your child and how you will spend quality time with him / her) and contend with possibilities (what is your understanding of your responsibility / commitment to an adopted child in whom special needs have developed following a placement and what do you think being a good parent means?).
We got letters of reference and medical exams. We were fingerprinted, background checked and interviewed—together and individually—multiple times. Meanwhile, 14 women I knew became pregnant, three by the “Oops!” method of family planning. When we finally brought our baby home, we had to send a Personal Letter of Acceptance.
“We did review all information about Ruby that was provided to us,” I wrote, “and have no reservations about taking on the lifelong commitment of being her parents.” At that point, all the other stuff fell away. We had a daughter. We were in.
And so was WACAP. They continued to follow up intermittently for a year with additional visits from our social worker, plus phone calls and e-mails making it known they were available if we needed anything. They underscored the network of support. Based on my experience, and though our circumstances were different, I have little doubt that Hansen’s vetting by WACAP was equally as thorough.
In a column on boston.com last week, E.J. Graff wrote of two tragedies in this story. “The little tragedy is what happened to Torry Ann Hansen’s 7-year-old son…. The big tragedy is that Russia may respond by suspending adoptions to the US.” Already, Russia has temporarily suspended WACAP adoptions, leaving matched children and adoptive parents in limbo. To be sure, waiting to hold the child you’ve been matched with, who has taken up residence in your heart, is the most excruciating part of the process. But to Graff’s tragedies, I would add another—the (misguided) bias against adoption—as a possible third. People turning away from adoption because of misperceptions would be the worst thing that could happen.
In 34 years, WACAP has brought nearly 10,000 children home to their forever families. Of those adoptions, only 1 percent has resulted in disruption. Of course, zero would be the more preferable percentage, but we don’t even see that statistic among biological parents—see the U.S. foster-care system for proof—and the media isn’t exactly clamoring to cover this story.
WACAP is doing good and important work. But the process isn’t perfect. How honest prospective parents are with their agencies is only going to be as honest as they are with themselves. It’s tough to vet for that.
As for Hansen, who knows what her story is? I’m going to say she got in over her head—that she was too scared, too stressed or too embarrassed to seek the help that was there for her. This doesn’t excuse what she did, and the repercussions of her deplorable choice remain to be seen. It is my hope, though, that people will recognize that Hansen’s unhappy ending is not the norm. It’s our happy one that is.
*To read WACAP’s full response, go here.
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)