Why yes, this IS a copout

Some of you may have noticed that I don't write so often. I've made excuses before, but when you get right down to it I'm just lazy. Too lazy to create the funny, too uninspired to dream up the haha. And I apologize for making you wait for my random flashes of brilliance: you deserve better.

I was thinking this as I read the Great Ali's recent post, which kindly offered to provide interview questions, per these rules:

If you would like to participate in the ME interview, here are the rules.

1. If you want to be interviewed, leave me a comment that says “Interview me”.

2. I will respond by emailing you 5 questions (I get to choose the questions).

3. Update your blog with the answers to the questions and let me know when you have posted it.

4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When other comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

And like I said, I've been grossly delinquent in my own originality, so I'm swiping Ali's who swiped someone else's, and so on. Plus, who doesn't love to be interviewed about themselves? Probably the Dalai Lama, but he's disqualified because he spends too much time with Richard Gere, who loves to talk about the Lama. It's all "Lama this," and "Buddha that." Get a room, Ricky and Lama!

Here then, Ali's questions, and my answers:

1. What is your favorite movie?? Now tell us the one we REALLY want to know...the movie that you are embarrassed to admit that you love and can watch over and over and over?

Pulp Fiction, and here's a little story by way of illustration:

The first time I saw this movie I was in Boston, visiting some friends from my summer Israel trip and checking out colleges. This girl invited me to stay at her place for the weekend (clue no. 1), and we hung out, going out with her friends, giving each other backrubs (clue no. 2) and generally having a good time. But I was stupid, and so I made no move in any sort of romantic/boob-ish direction. The last night I was there, we went to go see Pulp Fiction. I hadn't seen anything like it in my entire life. The dialogue, the blood, the music, the sodomy - it was genius. Sometime during the movie, I felt a hand on my upper thigh (clue no. 3). My friend had abandoned subtlety.

What did I do? Here were the thoughts in my head:

"Wait, did she? Oh man, she did. That's her hand, and it's on my thigh. It's up there, man. Oh my god, is Zed raping Marcellus Wallace? Um, I have to make out with this girl right now. Or do I? I'm staying at her house, we're going there right after this. Do I say anything? Is there anything I could say that wouldn't sound like I'm rejecting her very generous and insistent offer? Maybe if I say nothing, and act like I don't notice her hand, which is now pretty much massaging my hip, and moving ever closer to - holy crap, that was HILARIOUS! Man, Samuel L. Jackson should be in like, every movie from now on. OK, just play dumb, and watch the rest of the movie, and you can hook up at her place, where there's a bed, and it'll be more comfortable anyway."

Only your favorite movie would compel you to put off the perfect hookup situation. Or maybe your especially screwed-up priorities. Did I mention how few girls I dated in high school? No, fewer. Fewer. Yeah, that's about right.

As for the movie I'm embarrassed to love? There is no shame in loving Say Anything... because John Cusack is awesome. On the other hand, there is a little shame in having a strange fixation on Ryan Reynolds, and being able to watch any movie he's in. Van Wilder? Funny. Waiting? Strangely absorbing, and hilarious. Definitely, Maybe? Unconscionable. And yet I cannot turn away.

2. If you could have any superpower, what would you choose? And what would your superhero name be? any ideas what your costume might look like?

The power to kill a yak from 200 yards away, with mind bullets. That's telekinesis, Kyle.

My name would be Motion, and I would wear no cape. My logo would be a stencil of me kicking Isaac Newton in the crotch as he sits under his apple tree. Where's your equal and opposite reaction to that, bitch? That's what you get for taking credit for gravity. Are we supposed to believe that it didn't exist before the 18th century? Screw you and your stupid wig.

3. What is your biggest pet peeve? What is one thing that you do that might drive other people crazy?

I hate being reminded to do something I already know that I have to do. It's not that I don't know I'm supposed to replace the garbage bags in the garbage can - I just don't care enough to do it right now.

And since I have always believed I know more than I actually do, this pretty much extends to anyone telling me to do anything. I could be lying in a pool of my own vomit, and you could come by and say "Hey, you should roll over, otherwise you're going to choke to death." My immediate internal response will be to inhale puke, just to spite you. See? Now I'm dead. That's what you get for trying to help me, dickface.

What might drive people up a wall is when I don't do things I'm supposed to do. It might be even more aggravating when I snap in response to your demand that I stop being so oblivious. That might bother people. Like Wife. Possibly. One can never really know for sure.

4. Choose one moment in your life you could go back and do over...what would you do differently?

I'm guessing your first suggestion would be the Pulp Fiction scenario mentioned above. But I've got a least 6 or 7 of those puppies in my past, so how to choose one? I could choose the day I decided against going to Michigan and to go to YU. I could choose the day I decided to stay in business school and not switch to English. I could choose any number of screwed up interviews, or professional decisions. Or how about the time I spent a summer at this other camp because a girl convinced me to come, only to get there and find out she was already dating the guy who is now her husband?

We'll go with the summer I spent in Israel, because I blew not one, not two, not three, but six different hookup opportunities in less than 9 weeks. Because I am the MASTER, that's how.

5. Create the playlist you would choose if you could hijack a radio station and be a dj for an hour:

"This or That" - Black Sheep

"10 A.M. Automatic" - Black Keys

"The Wolves (Act I and II)" - Bon Iver

"The Teeth Collector" - Pretty Girls Make Graves

"God" - The Dodos

"What?" - Tribe Called Quest

"Looking for Astronauts" - The National

"Da Mystery of Chessboxin'" - Wu-Tang

"Holland, 1945" - Neutral Milk Hotel

"Boom" - The Roots

"You're No Rock'n'Roll Fun" - Sleater Kinney

"All Fires" - Swan Lake

"Definition" - Black Star

"Gun Street Girl" - Tom Waits

"The Greatest Man that Ever Lived" - Weezer

"New Partner" - Bonnie "Prince" Billy

"The Bleeding Heart Show" - New Pornographers

Because I'm a snob.

So then, if you'd like to be interviewed, say so in a comment, and verily I shall ask you 5 questions. Kindly post them on your blog, or if you have none, write them on a postcard in lipstick and mail it to me, and I'll do my best to transcribe it here.

2 for the price of none - rejection, I knew ye only too well

You're such a wonderful audience, you're so great, I'm back for an encore today.

Let me say a few words about rejection. Personally and professionally I am intimately familiar with the word no. My interaction with the ladies before Wife was a multi-car pileup of unrequited adoration, a wonderfully varied story of friends and friends and friends and not a lot of heavy petting. And even when I did get the girl when I was starting out, it was always before they decided they liked bases 2-3 (4 being right out, as in the counting for the Holy Hand Grenade).



Later, I moved into the Friend Zone, where I established a truly magnificent estate, with rolling hills and endless vistas of really good friends with great smiles, heartbreaking eyes, and empty black hearts. Women, as a gender, have some serious creativity when they want to let you down easy. Or just let you down. Now they're all great stories -
"What the hell are you doing!" "
What if you have a really good friend that you want to be more than just a friend? Oh, that's sweet, you thought I was talking about you? Of course not, silly!"
"I know I said I'd go to the dinner with you, but I thought you were asking for a ride home. No, I'm not deaf. Why do you ask?"

ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

This is the part where Wife would come in and say "but you won in the end! Look, you've got me! And Child!" And all this is true. But for all the ladies who came before, you all sucked.

This wonderfully tragic trend continued into my professional life. Bizarre, convoluted scenarios played out around my job applications. Firms closed up shop, partner meetings were called for the first time in a firm's 50-year history, one firm swore they'd "have a final decision next week" for six months. For years I worked connections, networked, pressed flesh and put my game face on for crippling rejection after horrific blows to the ego.

Until yesterday.

Through a process of 12 - 12! - meetings, conversations with every one of my references, writing samples, and call after call from helpful connections, I got an offer for a job I really want. It's a community job, working for the Tribe in pursuit of "continuity," whatever that means. As for details, well, given the almost complete lack of filter I use on this site, certain things will have to remain a mystery, if only to protect myself and my organization. Suffice it to say that, just like when Wife gave in and decided to date me, this is well worth the wait, and the misery, and the stress, and the waiting, all the waiting.

As for all those other law firms and organizations? I happily wish you a year of venereal disease and flat tires on highways in the middle of traffic.

What'd I miss? And G-d Bless Eleska

I've was out of town, and then celebrating the new year, which is the Year of the Kreplach. Meanwhile, I stop blogging, and the whole world goes to hell. Financial markets crash, Sarah Palin puts together a coherent sentence, the Brewers make the playoffs, Child develops a crazy multicolor rash from putting everything within reach into his mouth...a simple e-mail would have sufficed, Planet Earth.

But first things first: last night's vice presidential debate blew. Boooorrrring. Biden didn't call Palin "little lady," and Palin didn't freeze at the first mention of Afghanistan. Sure, she was tight, but this is just the fourth time she's appeared before a camera, right? I mean, she wasn't a news anchor or anything. She hasn't held any sort of executive position before, you know?

She used the word "maverick" almost as often as she talked about "how we do tings up dere, in Eleska." She was like a Bears Superfan, except without the gigantic swinging belly.



Biden, for his part, did not snort in derision, at least into the microphone. And he also didn't screw up too many facts, which is a nice switch for him. But all he had to do was not get in the way of the McCain snowball, now gaining force as it rumbles further down the mountain.

If I could sum up the past few weeks of polling, it would go thusly: "Huh, Palin is a chick! And she's hot! That's cool, I like hot chicks. Whoa, when she opens her mouth, she sounds like George Bush. I may be drunk, and about to have the bank foreclose on my house, and watching my nest egg disappear by the second, but I don't think I like George Bush. Let me get out my 401- wait, where did that go? Well let me check my medical insur- no, can't afford that either. Wow, Bush is a DICK! Palin must be a dick too!"

So that's settled.

I went to business school as an undergrad, majored in finance. So everyone in my major classes wanted to be an investment banker, because that's where the money was. Lots and lots of money, for lots of crazy hours, but hey, it's a buttload of money, right?

And now the investment banks are gone. Sure, Goldman is still there, and JP Morgan, but they're not i-banks anymore. Now they're... something else, I guess. Either way, I just feel bad for the guys coming out of my program this year. Where will they go if they want to be gigantic douches? Not everyone can be a hedge fund manager, and accounting is not nearly so flashy. And law school, while rife with douche, takes more work, and Daddy only said he'd pay for college, so that cuts out grad school.

I guess the thing we should be concerned about is all that douche overflowing into other sectors of the economy. So if you're parking valet gets all snooty about parking your Civic, just take a few breaths before stiffing him on his tip. Remember, just a month ago he was making 500K and snorting coke off silicon tits in a Soho martini bar.

I'm not going to even bother going into the whole collapse, mostly because I have no idea whether it was because of deregulation or encouragement by the government of banks to increase their subprime mortgage business so poorer people could own their own homes. All I know is that the market lost $1.2 trillion dollars of imaginary value last week, and that's not a good thing.

So if you could all check under your imaginary couches, and in the depths of your pretend purses and dream glove compartments, I'm sure we can find that money. Maybe we can even give some of it back to my old classmates. I don't know about you, but I'd like the guy parking my car not to have a death wish.

MMMMMMMMMM - beer

I'm from Wisconsin, where we're known for dairy products and beer. And sure, technically we are the main producer of neither cheese nor alcohol. But California can kiss my ass, because cheese is still ours. Let's see you ultra-hip San Franciscans wear foam cheese wedges. Maybe then we'll relinquish our smelly crown. Doesn't sit too well on your faux-hawk, now does it?

Whatever. At least we're still super fat.

But forget ice cream for a second. I'm here today to talk about beer. Glorious, wonderful beer.

I remember my first encounter with alcohol. Padre was hosting Bridge Night, because poker hadn't made its big splash on our naive Midwestern town yet. I wasn't more than 4, and came in to say goodnight to Padre and all his mustached friends. Next to his cards was a tiny glass of what I took to be chocolate milk. Padre drank chocolate milk for breakfast every day, and it made sense to me that he would also drink it at night, or at work with his lunch, or maybe from a sippy cup before he settled down for his nap.

But this was a new one on me: why would Padre be drinking such a tiny amount? And it was already warm! I asked Padre "can I have some of your chocolate milk before I go to bed?"

"N- uh, yeah, sure buddy. Just a sip, though, you don't want all that sugar to keep you up."

His friends grew quiet as they all watched me sip what I now know to be chocolate liqueur. "Ew, that chocolate milk isn't good anymore, Padre!"

Well that brought the house down. And I learned a valuable lesson: chocolate liqueur should never, ever be drunk. Ever. They were right to laugh at me. It's a silly, silly drink, good for little old retirees who have already killed many men, and so no one would dare laugh at their Nancy-boy cocktail.

So began a lifelong adoration of alcohol. I never really made it past beer, although Wife has matured to single-malt scotch. Now she sneers at people in bars who order blends, and ask for their 50$/shot Macallan on the rocks. "See that guy? With the ice? He shouldn't even be allowed to order. HEY PAL, WHY NOT LET ME PISS IN YOUR GLASS, IT'LL TASTE THE SAME." (Note: Wife may or may not actually have said that. But she's damn well thought it.)

Being from the great city of Milwaukee, when I saw this article I got immediately nostalgic. PBR is a legacy, one that used to reign over the Milwaukee skyline , like the Citgo sign in Boston


or some annoyingly huge building in New York.

And then I learn, after reading the whole thing, that PBR, Milwaukee's finest crappy beer, has moved to Chicago, of all places.

Well fuck you too, Pabst. I'm going to go drink Bud Light.

Ahhh who am I kidding, I hate the Belgians.

And now for something very special

How many times have you thought of someone from your past and said "I wonder what happened to _____? Knowing her, she's probably a feminist poet who posts their missives on Youtube, and also helps organize a film festival in a foreign country?"

That's happened to me twice. And this time, I'm actually spot on.

Here to you I present Ms. Rena Sherbill. Former Lady Ace legend, current writer for the Jerusalem Post, film festival coordinator, and Def Poetry aspirant.



Bad. Ass.

A little cheese with your post today?

You get 2 posts today because we who wear chic trousers are especially nostalgic, and heard about exciting fun happenings in our old Brookline hood. Damn you all for getting on with your lives.

Things I miss about Boston:

- Shabbos basketball. Nowhere else can a bunch of Jews roll up with strollers and ankle braces and own the court for an afternoon.

- Rooftop parties in Beacon Hill, where the only light comes from the streetlamps below, and you can end up having a half-hour conversation with someone whose face you never really see. It's like the adult version of a summer camp bonfire, only you get beer instead of burnt marshmallows.

- New babies. Sure, there are new babies in Pittsburgh. But no one I know is having them. Congrats, folks whose internet anonymity I respect.

- Trying to find friends who aren't smarter than me by several orders of magnitude, and happily failing on a regular basis. I could try tossing a few conciliatory words to the fine folks of Pittsburgh, but I'm not feeling up to it just now.

- Men's softball. The last oasis of chauvinism in the Commonwealth, where guys can get together and pull hamstrings and lose pop flys in the non-existent sun, then come home to the little lady and young'uns and make up fantastic tales of athletic prowess and glory. But odds are wifey is on call, or prepping a conference call with Tokyo, or saving affordable housing in Dorchester, so you just collapse on the floor and, with all the machismo in your being, ice your bum knee.

- Finding that the most conservative person in the room is really just apprehensive about big government, and truly a fan of individual liberties. And if he happens to be an incoming Supreme Court clerk, well that's just gravy.

- Ultimate Frisbee at Driscoll and Amory fields. This will be a longer post when the weather allows, but something about diving in the mud after a ridiculous toss by Sam the Vermont Hippie, just past the outstretched fingers of the Kinney, just feels like...home.

- Milk Street Cafe in Post Office Square. I think everyone in Boston misses this. Personally, when I inhale a sweet meatball sub and wash it down with fresh lemonade, I want to see everyone I saw over the weekend, all gussied up business style, serious in their power lunches.

- Pre-Shabbos drinks, which I lump in the same familiar, warm category as last minute dinner plans. But the dinner must be a mishmash of prefab side orders, a chicken recipe made up twenty minutes before candlelighting, and lots of wine.

- Barbecuing on a back deck. This may sound hoity-toity (now that's a phrase that deserves a new life) and "summering in Hyannisport"-ish, but if the deck is a garish blue, the entire structure is slowly peeling away from the building, and the whole thing looks out onto a beautifully ragged parking lot or a tiny tiny backyard, and is about three feet wide by ten feet long, then it's a little bit cozier. With a few beers, it's downright adventurous.

- Making really offensive jokes in the company of people who understand that I was raised by wolves, and therefore have no sense of tact, or place. To finish this off, some fine examples:

"Vote? Women shouldn't be allowed to read!"
"You already have a boyfriend, it's just that he's getting married to someone else."
"Basically, Cardozo is just a bad law school. You get a terrible education there. That's why I didn't go." (Said, it turns out, to someone who was starting there in the fall. It's a lovely school. Really.)
"Big firm lawyers are capitalist pigs."
"That's your grandmother? Why is she wearing an eyepatch? Is she a pirate? Yarrr!" (this one I'm really sorry for. I didn't know about cancer that can dissolve bone. I still feel terrible about this one.)
"Women who wear a kippah and tallis are almost exclusively lesbians." (This, I maintain, can still be debated by reasonable people.)
"If your husband is fine with it, Wife and I are always looking for new...frontiers."

Sure, there was context, and subtle inflection to indicate I was kidding. But it was nice to work with a safety net of friends who wouldn't kick me out if I was too obnoxious, because they knew I wasn't rude, just not very funny. That's probably what I miss most.

I am weak, so weak

From the very beginning I have taken a firm stand against the juggernaut behemoth that is Facebook. Even when I learned that many people I love and respect had surrendered to its wily, sexy charms, I said "Nay! I shall not be swayed!"

And then I found out that I can find people with whom I went to camp. People who might forgive me for my obsession with proper grammar. Who might remember me when I was awkward and quiet, instead of awkward and outspoken. Gosh, with an opportunity like that, who could blame me for giving in?

So today I've succumbed. I am on Facebook, searching madly for people I once knew who now have children and double chins and less hair. It's like a constant high school reunion, except no one is having sex in the janitor's closet. And for those of you who know where I went to high school, it could happen. I don't know where the janitor's closet was/is, but I bet people were/are having sex in it. No one I know, but still.

Do not think that I'll be neglecting the Fancy Pants, though. Despite its god-awful name, which gets worse every time I have to type it, I'm standing by my blog, and shall update it as I see fit, as always. So don't think that just because I'm on Facebook, and football season is over, that I'm going to give up this crazy plan of writing out things I think.

Stop & Shop, messing with my brain

I went to buy some pommelo and ricotta cheese for my famous fromage d'eau Freedom, a wonderful little dish I made up once when I was high on crack and PCP. I went to Stop & Shop because it was closest, and I could avoid the BU kids at Shaw's.

But it wasn't Stop & Shop. Not anymore, anyway.

Fresh vegetables? Fruit that will still be good when I wake up tomorrow? What is this nonsense? I refuse to believe it's the same store. And in fact I firmly believe that it is not.

They have changed the inside, like a hollowed-out pumpkin that has been replaced by the same pumpkin goo, yet somehow the goo is prettier, maybe a nicer shade of orange. The seeds are tasty, and the guts not so stringy. The plain white candle once placed in the middle has been replaced by fresh beeswax, a fragrant lightsource so novel you'd think it was a Whole Foods pumpkin (and that, I think, is about as far as that metaphor will be stretched). Also, instead of crappy muzak, there was nothing. The hum of the new refrigerators was enough to drive one insane.

It was when I started expecting little old ladies around every corner that I knew where I'd seen this layout - I was in Publix, of all places. They had taken the Florida version and swapped it with the New England one, and that left me without a sense of place, without the comfort of my home grocery store.

They just...they shouldn't do that without some sort of warning, that's all I'm saying.

Sacrelicious

I am afraid.

The Simpsons movie comes out this weekend. It comes out today, actually. Some of you may have already seen it by the time you read this. Disappointment is inevitable, I suppose – while they supposedly got most of the greatest writers back to work on the script, can it really compare to 4 of the best episodes, even chosen randomly? Am I going to wish I had spent those 2 hours watching The Monorail, Treehouse of Horror IV (the one where Homer sells his soul for a donut), Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk, The Last Temptation of Homer? Quite possibly.

How is the movie supposed to compare? The show has been around for 18 seasons, almost as long as my brothers, and funnier, too (couldn’t any of you have been banned or kicked out of a foreign country this summer? You guys were everywhere!) Whole friendships have grown out of shared love of individual characters. Hours and hours and hours have been spent in deconstruction and nostalgia, more than were spent, say, studying, or trying to attract a mate. As the whole of TV is to Homer, The Simpsons is my teacher, mother, secret lover.

But Phil Hartman is dead. Patty is out of the closet. And Ralph doesn’t even have to wear rubber pants anymore. These things won’t ever change.

So we move on. We hope the movie at least attempts to live up to our unattainable imagined ideal, and give Groening & Co. props for the effort.

Unless it blows, in which case we weep into gallons of sweet delicious beer, the kind you’d step over your own mother just to get.

Today is devoted to the show. So proclaim your favorite episodes, characters, lines. And let us all share in The Simpsons’ glowing warming glow.

For me, Ralph Wiggum is the beginning and end of Simpsons randomness:

“What’s a battle?”

“I bent my Wookie!”

“It tastes like…burning!”

“Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and then the baby looked at me.”

“Me fail English? That’s unpossible!”