One Obama, Two Obama…

There was an article in the NY Times last week that caught my attention.  It seems that Barack Obama has a half-brother, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo who is currently living in China.  The President and Mr. Ndesandjo have the same father, a Kenyan goat herder who somehow or other wound up getting a graduate degree from Harvard.  They both had  American mothers who were white; in Mr. Ndesandjo’s case, a Jewish woman who is still alive and living in Nairobi.

I was up much of last night trying to figure out what the relationship between the President and this woman might be called.  There is a wonderful Yiddish word, machitanistah (I’ve thoroughly mangled the spelling, I’m sure) that is used to call the family that one inherits when one’s son or daughter gets married.  I was hoping  that there would be a similar Yiddish term that would apply to the connection between President Obama and this woman. But from everything I know, there isn’t one…..either in Yiddish or in English.  So this (Jewish) woman needs to be described simply as, the mother of the half-brother of the “leader of the free world”.  (Catchy acronym–MOHBOLOFW)

There was a  demonstration in Washington last Thursday by the so-called “tea baggers”  protesting the pending health care reform.  Some of the demonstrators were carrying placards that were, as Paul Krugman described them,  ”grotesque”.   Some of the signs displayed  a Holocaust photo of bodies piled on top of one another with a caption drawing a parallel between the Obama Adminstration and the Nazis.  I find this appalling.  Of course, there’s not much that can be done  to control someone who acts in such a hateful, disproportionate way.  But still, I find it very upsetting.   What upsets me even more is the tacit approval of the alleged  responsible leaders of the Republican Party who were at the microphones and speaking to the assembled crowd.  One of those leaders was Eric Cantor, who as the  Minority Whip  is the second highest ranking GOP member in the House.  I’ve cited Mr. Cantor in a previous posting.  Mr. Cantor is Jewish.  I wonder how he feels, as a Jew, about the trivialization of the Holocaust  implicit in those signs.  I have an urge to call his mother and tattle on him.  For Mr. Cantor to be silent in the face of such behavior is a shonda. (Another wonderful Yiddish word.  Meant to convey an “embarrassment” but, and here’s part of the essence of the Jewish psychology, an uber ”embarrassment” because it’s within viewing by gentiles.  For example, playing basketball on Yom Kippur is   frowned on, doing it in front of gentiles is a shonda.)

I don’t like writing about politics.  There are enough people doing that and doing it way better than I can.  But I do like writing about irony and statistical oddities.  Here is an example:  There are 217 Republicans in the House and Senate combined.  Of that group, Mr. Cantor is the only Jew.  In other words, there are as many Jews who are mothers of Barack Obama’s half siblings as there are  Jewish Republican members of the US Congress.

And by the way, of the 217  Republicans in Congress, there are no, that’s right… zero, African-Americans.  Put another way, there are more Kenyan goat herders who have fathered American Presidents than there are black Republicans in the United States of America’s greatest legislative institution.  Now, that’s a shonda.

Note:  Democrats in the House of Representatives include over 40 African-Americans  and over 30 Jews.  In the US Senate, there is only one black Senator, a Democrat.  There are 13  Democrat and Independent Senators who are Jewish.

"The Republican Party is in its root a party of inclusion......" Eric Cantor, Los Angeles Times, 11/6/09

Facebook Failure

It’s true, I’ve failed at Facebook.  As I had threatened , I joined FB about ten days ago.  I’m amazed that I’ve lasted as long as I have.  My sole purpose was to use it to somehow spread the word about my blog.  The problem with that idea is that I’d actually have to friend  people.  (yes, friend…right up there with google as the latest verb.) This has proven to be a lot harder than I thought.  Oh…of course, I’ve friended a few people, namely the people with whom I work.  So, now the yard or two that separates us in the real world has been eliminated.  Somehow, I don’t feel any better.

But friending  people who I don’t regularly see  is something I can’t get myself to do.  It seems like some kind of exercise in….in.., I can’t come up with the word I’m looking for.  (Maybe by the time I finish this, it will come to me.)  It’s not that I’m too busy to be spending time on FB; quite the opposite…it’s  just the kind of thing that might keep me off the streets and out of trouble.   But I seem to have a conviviality block that I can’t get past.   What little experience I have  noodling around on the  FB site  reminds of an aphorism I  sometimes refer to  when one of the people in my office wants to take a listing of a property that’s so outrageously overpriced that it is essentially unsaleable.   I suggest that spending time trying to sell something like that is  ’like eating soup with a fork….it keeps you busy but doesn’t fill you up”.  My strong suspicion is that FB is a lot like that

Apart from my reticence to “reach out and touch someone” on FB,  I also had an unsettling experience within the first few days of joining.  A friend…..a real friend,  wrote something nice to me on my “wall”.   I wrote  back the next day saying, “I knew there was something about you I like.”  That would have been fine….except it went,  in error,  to a woman who had written to me around the same time.  I became aware of this when she wrote back in a way I took as flirtatious, asking what it was specifically  that I liked about her.  For a few minutes I thought that I had somehow walked into a Seinfeld episode.  And I was George!!  I never want to be George.  No one wants to be George.  I freaked and starting begging Luap who had suggested the FB vehicle in the first place , to  somehow make things right.   Finally I calmed down and did the mature thing.  I turned my computer off and hid under my desk.  

There has been one bright spot in all this.  Luap  posted a notice on FB that Nire’s most recent sonogram had revealed that….that…IT’S A BOY!.  Exciting.  Congratulations on Luap’s FB page were pouring in from all over.  (The presumption is that it would have been the same if it was A GIRL!)  One  extraordinarily clever person responded to the news, “I just knew there was a chance  it might be something like that” . (That was me).  It got me thinking of  an  ad I had come across a long time ago when a baby’s sex was a mystery until birth.  The guy whose ad it was,  promised, for a fee,  to predict the gender of the baby  with 100% accuracy.  And to induce people to pay for his service, he offered a money back guarantee if he was wrong.  Very clever guy.   Sounds like someone I might like to be friends with. 

P.S.  The word I couldn’t come up with remains elusive.  The blog probably suffers for it.  C’est la guerre.

Luap's and Nire's baby in the fetal postion

Back In Treatment

In the 1970′’s, during Phil Donahue’s heyday, there was another show on in the same time slot, The Stanley Siegel Show which my ex-wife, Aliehs and I would sometimes  watch.  Stanley’s “gimmick” was that he was just himself…no artifice.  One of his segments included a real-time session with his psychotherapist.  He would lie on a couch and have a mini-session with his real life shrink.  What makes me think of this, is that the column I’m writing here may have more than a passing  resemblance to that kind of self-indulgence.

A while back, I wrote that I had quit my therapy around the same time as the main character (Gabriel Byrne)  in HBO’s In Treatment quit his.  My guess is that when the new season starts, he’ll go back into some kind of therapy-he has a lot of unresolved issues. ( Hopefully, it will be  with someone more interesting and a lot hotter than his former therapist, played by Diane Wiest).    I had been  thinking about going to see a new therapist and I thought there would be an interesting symmetry if he and I start anew at the same time.  The new In Treatment season will probably not start until the spring.  Unfortunately,  I couldn’t wait that long.  

I’ve had a number of therapists in my life….all of them men.  I decided I wanted to have the experience of being in therapy with a woman.  With that in mind, I got the names of a few  therapists located in downtown Brooklyn.  I decided to interview two of them.   Both of the women I saw seemed smart and insightful and  I felt that either one would be a good ‘fit’ for me.  Although  I was initially torn in choosing which one I would continue with,   I  rather quickly came to a decision.   There’s a locker room joke I barely remember but the setup has something to do with a man interviewing for a new woman assistant. There are many applicants each of whom seems  more qualified than the last.  He  quickly picks one.  A friend says, “How were you able to make a choice so quickly? They all seem so qualified.”  The man answers, “Easy, I just picked the one with the biggest tits.”    In my case, picking the therapist also turned out to be  easy…I  simply picked the one that took my insurance.   Sadly, a sign of the times.

As I mentioned, I thought I would use this column in the way that Stanley used his show.  But as I’m writing, I’ve realized a few things.  Not that I don’t trust and love you all, but I don’t think I want to expose myself in that way.  And, I seem to recall that Mr. Siegel had some kind of breakdown after the demise of his show and fell into some kind of  downward spiral.  So,  he may not be the best  model to emulate.   What’s more, he was getting paid oodles of money for  being so risky with his privacy.   As you may have guessed, the pay  here at the Ironicman blog factory is rather low.  So, I’m taking a step back here from the brink of being overly confessional and revelatory.  Which, as I think about it, is probably the best thing for the blog adventure, as well.    I don’t know about you….but there’s only so much of that kind of stuff I can read.

Buddy, Can You Spare A ….

I had dinner the other night at a local Thai restaurant with my friend, G.  It was rather late when we got there and the place was pretty empty.  Early on in our meal, an African American  couple with an infant in a carrier came in, placed it on a table for four that was right next to ours and sat down.    I’m not sure why, with so many empty tables , that they chose to sit right by our table, but they did.  We (G and I) were involved in a fairly serious conversation so I was less than pleased by what I foresaw as trouble.  And sure enough, within a few minutes the baby was fussing and starting to cry.  G, who tries not to get stressed about these kinds of things , refused to be annoyed and  started cooing and making faces at the baby…almost enjoying him.  He seemingly wasn’t  bothered at all  by the fact that this couple could have sat anywhere but had instead  placed a crying baby within a foot of us.  G’s placid demeanor in the face of this storm made me feel as if  I was having dinner with Ghandi.  So, it was left to me to be the sole repository of any unhappiness with our situation.   And of course, I rose to the occasion. I’ve seen (and been part of) this exact dynamic that often takes place in  couples (for clarity’s sake, G and I are not a romantic couple).  Often, when one of the parties gets upset, it’s not unusual  for the other to stake out the opposite position even if it’s at odds with their inclination.   In this case, either G could see me getting upset or made a very reasonable guess that  I would soon be bothered,  so he easily moved over to a position of insouciance.  (As an aside, very occasionally  the reverse happens…..most likely on the tennis court.  G is more apt to be bothered by some intrusion to our court than I am. I simply adopt a  beatific smile reminiscent of the Dalai Lama and let him take care of the steaming for both of us.)

The baby calmed down, we continued our conversation and the meals we had ordered were served.  Me, Pod Thai…G, a plate of pork chops.  We began eating and soon after, the baby’s father looked at G’s platter and said, “Man, those look good…can I have a bite?”  Yes….a stranger who we don’t know from a hole in the wall says just like that, “CAN I HAVE SOME OF YOUR DINNER?”  These folks were already on my list of people who:  I want to know where they’re  going to be eating next so I can avoid that restaurant.  They now moved easily to the top of that list.  G,  who doesn’t get rattled easily said something like “I like your style”  or  “go for it” and  obliged.  He cut a piece, put it on his fork and extended it to the stranger sitting next to us. 

We ultimately finished eating , paid our bill and left the restaurant.  Once outside, I asked G if he would have reacted differently had it been a white guy asking the same question.  He said, “No, not at all”, and I take him at his word.  The reason that  I asked  is that I sense in myself  the instinct to “bend over backwards”   in a situation like that where I’m dealing with someone who is  a minority.  Almost an overcompensation based on some internalized guilt.  It brings to mind Malcom Gladwell’s premise in Blink.  Even when we make what may look like a quick decision, it is formulated by a lifetime of information that his been processed by our brain.  In the case in point, had I been the one asked to fork over some meat by a white guy, I think I probably would have asked him if he was crazy.  But if it had been a black guy….I think my brain would start firing all its neurons, protons, all kinds of particles….everything, calling up every piece of  the history of the oppression, prejudice and racism that had ever come its way.  And in a moment that looked instantaneous, a “blink”, I think I probably would have offered the guy my pork chop, the  side  dish that came along with it, my beer and possibly a ride home.

The Not So Great, ‘Great Gatsby’

I have some huge gaps in my literary background.  I wouldn’t know where to begin to list them   Let’s just say there are many great works of literature that have somehow eluded me.  These include more than a few  of Shakespeare’s plays.  This lack is  especially apparent in my office where a number of the players are former actors and know  the Bard’s works very well.  Chapter and verse.  I like that Luap, De and Nire are  knowledgeable in this way.  I  also like that my office is high fallutin’ in that way.  What I don’t like is how much of a slug I  feel like when my ignorance of those and other classics is exposed.  

Every so often I decide to take steps to remedy this shortcoming.  I usually gird myself and promise that  I’m going to read one of those classic novels that somehow fell through the cracks in my public school education.  And the one that usually heads the pack is, Moby Dick. That’s right….I never read Moby Dick!   Call me pisha!  (For a translation, ask your rabbi.)  It’s not that I know nothing about it…..I know enough that I can usually get the crossword puzzle answer, ”Ahab”.  But, I bet there’s more to the book than that.  I’ve often heard it referred to as THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL.  How could  I not have read what is  believed to be  THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL!!   But whenever I’m about to head off to  Barnes and Noble to buy it, I poll whoever is around at the time and  I swear, I’ve never met anyone who has read it that has actually liked it.  And it’s looong,  too ( I think).   I’m all for self-improvement but there has to be some hope of a payoff.  So, Moby Dick remains unread and will probably remain so.

This past Sunday was a miserable weather day.  I was looking forward to staying in, listening to music and catching up on some reading. I started going a little stir crazy so I decided to take a walk  and pick up another IMPORTANT BOOK that had also escaped me…The Great Gatsby.  I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to read this.  I don’t think I ever saw the movie and there are never any crossword puzzle clues referring to it  (it seems as if this is the primary source of everything I know), so although I have a general sense of the book,  I don’t know too many specifics.   I bought the soft cover copy ($15.95) at B&N .  Well….I can’t tell how (pleasantly) surprised I was to discover how short a novel it is!  Not great at all.  Small.  179 pages….that’s it.  I’ve been feeling like such a sap for not having read a book that’s only 179 pages! What an idiot!   All those years that I couldn’t throw around Gatsby references because of a measly 179 pages!  What a travesty.   But ever the one to make grapefruit juice from grapefruits (another expression I’m trying to coin.), I’m going to learn from this experience.  I’m going to list all the GREAT BOOKS missing from my resume and cull the ones that are less than 200 pages.  Jeez,  when you think about it, you could read three, maybe four Gatsby’s instead of one Anna Karenina!

Fifty Blogs to Leave Your Lover

This will be my fiftieth posting of this adventure which has gone on now for about six months.  A little time for reflection.  I have been thinking of sharing more of my private life  in my entries.  That is, being even more self- indulgent than I already am.  But I’m afraid of  losing the small but devoted (my words) readership I have.  And of course, if I wanted to let any portion of the public in on exactly what’s going on in my life, I could always join Facebook and bore my “friends’ with the details.    Speaking of which, Luap has linked this site to his FB page and is now encouraging me to join  as a means of getting my blog “out there”.  There are a couple of reasons I’m reluctant to join;  up until now, I’ve enjoyed a “holier than thou” attitude about the whole Facebook concept…similar to my snobbery around  Reality TV shows (some points here for consistency).  It will be hard to give up this superior air to which so many  people seem  attracted.  Also,  I don’t need more friends,  I need better ones.  (Unless of course ,  the “more” friends happen to have a house somewhere  warm in winter or  a beach house  with a pool.)

At any rate, I was feeling kind of self-satisfied about getting to this fifty mark when I came across an article in the Times  that completely took the wind out of my sails.  Some woman living in Conneticut is about to conclude a year of reading a book a day.  That’s right…365 books in a year.  And not just junk books… good ones.  I read the article pretty carefully;  from what I could gather, it seems that all she has been doing is reading.  I was looking for some hint that this had either affected her marriage or her relationship with her kids or even a suggestion that being so sedentary had contributed to a weight gain of say, 50 , 75 pounds.  Nothing like that.  Not even a mention of some tension because she was  constantly ”shsshhing” everyone around her.  Nope, everything seemed hunky dory.  Good for her.   But almost certainly, she’s not someone you want to run into at a cocktail party.  Can you imagine the conversation…”So, have you read any good books lately?”  There goes the evening….probably the weekend.    

Her accomplishment made me think of a speed reading course (Evelyn Woods) I took about forty years ago. (yes, whilst in utero).  Those were the days when I was unmoored and looking for ways to “improve myself”.  In the final class I remember reading a novel, a classic,  in about twenty minutes.  Then answering some questions relative to the book.  And indeed, I had an adequate comprehension of what I had read.  Very impressive.  But what  I wasn’t told is that those same speed reading techniques also fostered speed forgetting.  So, in just a matter of a few days the whole thing was a fog.

Apart from being envious of this woman’s accomplishment, I’m even more jealous of  the notoriety she gained by having that article  in the Times.   I know there’s nothing I can do anywhere nearly like  what she did.  (Self discipline is not my long suit…the only thing I can get myself to do on a daily basis is breathing in and out….and sometimes, I  forget  the “out” part).   So it seems like I’m destined to  continue to write these columns in relative anonymity.  Of course, there’s always the possibility that I could do something really unique to gain attention.  Maybe writing the blog from a hot air balloon that comes untethered……or something like that.

Are You Juish?

This past week marked the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. (When I was growing up, this was called Succos. Somewhere between the years 5720 and 5770 there was a name change.  If a Jmail with notification of the change was sent out, I didn’t get it.)  From what I know, this holiday commemorates the  marking  of the harvest.  It is one of those rare Jewish holidays that is not mournful and sober…more a celebration.   In other words,  the usual, ” they tried to kill us, they failed, now let’s eat”,  is not the  theme  at play here.   During this week, orthodox Jews will ordinarily take their meals in a representation of a  hut called a Sukkah. Other symbols of the harvest that  make their appearance during this week are the esrog, a lemon-like fruit, and the lulav, a palm-like  frond.  Despite years of attending Hebrew school, sadly, this more or less exhausts my knowledge on the subject.

This week also brought to my neighborhood a horde of orthodox young men and boys, (‘black hats’, as Michael Chabon calls them) who felt compelled to stop every person who came their way with the query, “Are you Jewish?” (see note below) Except, for some reason that’s unclear to me, the question always comes out, ”Are you Juish”?  There may be some hidden meaning to that slight slurring .  It may be some kind of shibboleth…almost like a secret handshake.   At any rate, these guys were both everywhere and relentless.  When  someone did answer that they were indeed Jewish,  that person was then asked to hold the esrog and shake the lulav while some kind of prayer was recited.  Apparently,   it’s considered a mitzvah, a good deed, to get them to perform this ritual.   I never know for sure whether it’s a mitzvah for the person doing the coercing or  for the potential convert. 

Ordinarily, one can expect to be accosted while walking outside on the streets but an office or a store is usually a safe haven.  However, early in the week when Zil was alone in the office some of the ‘black hats’ came INTO the office asking her if she was ‘juish’.  This seemed to me to be a violation of some unwritten law…a breach of protocol.  Not to offend anyone, but it reminded me of the stories of bears now making their way into suburban back yards because there are too many bears or too little food in the wild.  Evidently, my office was no longer sacrosanct.  This development raised the threat level, in my mind,  to amber.

The next day I saw a young man  pedaling his bike down Seventh Avenue with a small  Sukkah in tow.  A Sukkahmobile.  He and several of his comrades set up shop by the curb just outside my office.  They were now persuading people to go into the  mobile Sukkah , to perform the mitzvah.  Now I was really in trouble.  There would be no leaving the office without having to either lie about my heritage or be paraded onto the float.  Neither option was appealing.  At one point in the day  I needed to leave the office and take my motor scooter  on an errand.  I donned my helmet and steeled myself as I set out towards my scooter which was parked just beyond the Sukkahmobile.   An amazing thing happened.  No one stopped me or  more than glanced in my direction.   It’s as if the helmet was semitic  kryptonite.  Evidently, the helmet gave me enough of a ‘bad boy’ look that there was no point in stopping me. (‘Bad boy’ Jews are rare).I was home free!  So, for the remainder of the week, whenever I needed to go anywhere , I would just grab my helmet and walk around the neighborhood like that.  Looking more than a bit like a doofus and certainly suffering from acute helmet hair….. but with absolute impunity.

NOTE:  My friend Evets has a unique way of dealing with this.  He claims (and I have no reason to doubt him other than he makes things up from time to time) that what follows is his standard conversation:

Black Hat: “Excuse me, are you Juish?”  

Evets  “Are you?”

B H (non-plussed while regarding himself):  “Of course I am.!”

Evets: “That’s funny, you don’t look Jewish”. 

                                                                                                                                                                 

 

My holiday outfit

Tennis Anyone?

This title has been a long time coming.   I belong to a tennis club in Brooklyn,  The Knickerbocker Field  Club.   (http://www.knickerbockerfieldclub.com/)      There is a lot that can be written about the history and nature of the club, but that’s not what this is about.  By viture of this blog -not my tennis- I have a bit of a following at the club.  Often, when I’m there, someone (actually it’s usually the same person) will suggest I blog about something that has taken place while I’m there.  For a few reasons, that doesn’t appeal to me.  First of all, I don’t much care for the use of  ”blog” as a verb.  It sounds a bit like I’m vomiting on someone.  I much prefer “write”, almost as if I’m someone who IS a writer.  And secondly, I  try and be very selective about the subjects that I bore you readers with.   So this offering has not much to do with my club but does have something to do with tennis.

 A guy I’m friendly with who recently took up the game told me that he had come across a photo of me on the internet.  He was looking for places to play in Brooklyn and Googled, “tennis in Brooklyn” and  somehow or other a picture of me appeared.  Apparently, I’m a lot more popular than I think I am.  I had a number of disparate reactions to this….I was kind of exhilarated by the thought that I might be famous in  some way (which means I can give up this blog) but I was also a bit put off….that somehow I had become so available, so accessible to the general public.  I’ve grown accustomed to and sort of enjoy my anonymity.  It’s my security blanket….something I thought I could count on.  It helps me sleep at night.

In any event, I wanted to see exactly what my friend had seen, so I Googled the same term…”tennis in brooklyn”.  I selected “images’ on the Google toolbar.  I was shocked to see what I found.  Page upon page of photos of Andy Roddick’s wife, Brooklyn (yes, Brooklyn) Decker. (I’d say Google has some work to do on its algorithms…but that too, is for another time…and for someone who actually knows what an algorithm is.)  Ms. Decker is a swimsuit  model, so almost all the photos were of her half-naked.  I was looking for a picture of me and I got a naked babe.  Something seemed wrong, what happened to the alleged sighting of ME?  So, after spending two,three,  maybe four , at tops five, hours scanning the photos of Brooklyn (just to make sure my face was not somehow in the background of some bikini shot), I gave up.  No Me.

And then, as often happens,  my mind started wandering.  To places that it has no business visiting.  Trying to imagine how Ms. Decker’s parents came up with that name.  Did they try out all the boroughs?  Was “Staten Island Decker” given a fair shot?  And didn’t they think  ”the Bronx Decker”  had a certain  panache to  it?   As usual,I’m probably being way too concrete in my thinking about this.  There are countless reasons for choosing “Brooklyn” as a name.  Maybe Ms. Decker is of Dutch descent and her parents  simply anglicized the old Dutch name for this borough.  Or maybe they were huge Dodger fans…or maybe bridge  afficionados. (The span, not the card game, kind) I can imagine that anything is possible.  And after all, who am I to judge.  I was born upstate in Kerhonkson, NY.    Maybe my parents toyed with the idea of an unconventional name but  went for something  much more traditional.  But I have to tell you, today I wouldn’t mind having that name…Kerhonkson Stein.  Very, very cool!   Almost as good as Brooklyn (Double?) Decker.

 

Not sure but I may be waaayy in the background

Stay Tuned…..

I was at my house in the country a few weeks ago, alone and with an empty Saturday night staring me in the face.  There was  nothing that I felt compelled to read and I had tired of looking at the performance going on in my calves so I did something I rarely do.  I.turned to mindless TV.  I say mindless because I tuned in to ‘Reality TV’.   I found myself watching Survivor, something I hadn’t done in many years.  I gave up watching all reality shows years ago  because they’re so addictive.  Addictive in the way that a lot of us want to see the havoc wreaked by a car crash.  This  doesn’t appeal to my best instincts, so I’ve made a point of  avoiding these shows.  An added plus is that I get to act self-righteous and superior  when I  discuss this with whomever is still talking to me.  As I watched, I soon realized that part of the  appeal of the show is (are?) the young, barely dressed nymphettes  that are members of each team.  I can’t quantify it, but my guess is some (large) proportion of viewers are partially drawn to the show for that reason.  My politically correct head finds this insulting…other parts of my body are way less put off. 

I followed this show with my very, very first visit to Project Runway.  (In for a penny, in for a pound!). For those of you further afield from popular culture than I (or me), the show is an ongoing competition between a number of aspiring clothing designers with eliminations, a la Survivor,taking place each week.   Some of it was fun and interesting…a lot, pretty boring.  But, of course, the show also had its complement of beautiful young models. (I think the networks are on to something here)  How they managed to get an hour out of what little took place is part of the genius of the people in charge of these things.  In a way, it’s similar to a televised football game.  I’ve read  somewhere that in the 3 hours or so that it takes to broadcast the game, there’s about 8 minutes of actual action. 

At any rate, I left the TV on after Runway had ended and for a few minutes I thought the network was re-running the same show because I saw some of the same scenes repeated.  But then I realized, it was a different show.  This one was focused  on the  models who had been  assigned to each designer in the prior show.   This was too inane, even for me.  I turned the TV set off.  Too much reality for one night. 

This got me to wondering if this goes even further.  For example, is there a reality show about the cab drivers who drive the models to the venue where the runway is.  And for that matter, how about a show about the dispatchers who send the cabbies out.   I kind of like where this is going.  Maybe there’s something out there about  the real estate brokers who find the dispatchers  the homes  that they live in.  Now, that sounds really, really  interesting. My fifteen minutes of fame may be right around the corner!

To Calve and Calve Not

I was lying in my hammock this past weekend and happened to look down at my legs.   As is always the case there was a riot of activity taking place in my calves.  For some reason,  small spasms  are continually present in that part of my legs.   After I’ve ridden my bike or played tennis, the activity is exaggerated and can be more  entertaining than a three ring circus.  And these twitches are like snow flakes- no two are  alike.  So, when I’m really bored and there’s nothing on TV a fun option is to just spend an hour or so staring at my legs. 

I’ve found that almost everyone I know has some anomalous physical condition which they’ll share at some point.  Usually, if you hang out with friends long enough and  run out of things to talk about or drink enough, someone will show you  some weird thing they can do with their tongue or some other body part.  And that usually opens the floodgates for everyone else in the room to showcase their “talent”.  Actually, it rarely starts with the tongue .  Often it’s some kind of joint flexibility like bending one’s thumb back against one’s wrist.  Then it gradually escalates to the tongue stuff….usually showing how you can touch your nose.  Occasionally, someone can do something really, really crazy with their tongue.  I try to be around for these occasions. 

As a kid, I can remember my father having some strange thing in one of his hands where he could make his knuckles cross or something like that.  My, brother and sister and I (not me) would beg him to do his “trick”.  He was smart and did this sparingly so as to make it seem all the more special.  He was also very  flexible and could  place a leg behind his head.  This was even a rarer treat.  (All the more so because I’m very tight  jointed…I can’t even put one of my legs behind someone else’s  head. )  My brother, for his part, could easily touch his tongue to his nose.   Now my sister’s ‘talent’ doesn’t technically qualify as one.  It’s not something she could do on demand but still it’s worth mentioning.  Over dinner we would try and get her laughing hard enough that so food would come out her nose.  This was especially exciting (and dangerous) when she was eating peas.  My guess is this is not something she showcases nowadays. (It’s not lost on me-nor was it on my therapist-that there’s no mention of my mother here. Let’s leave it at that.)

Sometimes these parlor tricks can be obliquely sexual in nature.  Obviously,the tongue stuff has a certain sensual quality to it….so it’s best done in mixed company.  Sometimes this can lead to even sexier stuff.  I was at a dinner party last year and a friend, Diane (who was really loaded) demonstrated doing a standing split while running one leg up a wall.  Very, very impressive.  And kind of hot. My groin (which hasn’t fully healed, thanks for asking) hurts just thinking about that.

But to get back to me and my calves (remember that’s how this started),  it doesn’t take much for me to display this condition of mine which frankly, I’ve found  to be unique. But, clearly I’m hamstrung (it seems I”ve replaced the foreign words and phrases that I promised with bad puns) because if I’m not wearing shorts I have to get partially undressed to parade my calves.  I’m not averse to doing that, it’s just that it’s such a drag in the winter when I’m wearing all sorts of layers.  Maybe I should cultivate another skill that’s less dependent on the season.   Actually, I do have this thing where my middle fingers form a huge “V”.  Not so good for swimming and certainly not nearly as interesting as the calf thing but still something to share in the dead of winter when my friends and I (not me) roll out our idiosyncrasies. 

done