Sarah Palin's Hurt Feelings

"I consider it cowardly. It's not true. That's cruel, it's mean-spirited, it's immature, it's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news that's not fair and not right."
(Sarah Palin, responding to attacks by McCain Aides, NYT 11/8/2008)

I always marvel at conservatives who get hurt feelings when someone says something untrue or outrageous about them even after months of their doing the very same thing against someone else.

Palin’s hurt and surprised reaction to the barbs being cast toward her by her own party, in fact the crew of her own campaign partner, would be pathetic and disingenuous if they weren’t also so funny.

Why should she be surprised, when the campaign that she and McCain ran was dishonest and vicious, accusing Obama of “paling around with terrorists” (when he didn’t), inciting cries of “kill him” at her rallies without comment or criticism of those cries, and ridiculing Obama’s community organizing efforts (see Giuliani’s notorious snickering disdain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HahW5Qd_-7o&feature=related).
(I love the irony that Obama’s skills at community organizing were the very things that buried Palin and McCain in the national election!)

The Republicans have for the last 8 years at least, been extremely skillful at creating moods, atmospheres, climates wherein a certain psychological playing field is encouraged within which the rules for engagement are carefully established.

Cheney created a climate of fear, so that anything that seemed to challenge his definition of what constituted a terrorist threat, including any kind of negotiation or peace-seeking round-tables, could be labeled un-patriotic or dangerous to national security.

Bush created a culture of acceptance and excuses for blatant stupidity, and by that I mean actual stupidity, not just bad decision-making, encouraging suspicion against intellectuals and in fact, any sign of intelligent thoughtful consideration. Over time, Republicans managed to re-create a new America in which intellectuals were to be distrusted and ridiculed.

Since America exports nothing more than services, entertainment and money, we have fallen behind China and Japan (which we also spent many years making fun of). When was the last time you bought anything – I mean anything! - that was “Made In the U.S.?

Our last actual exportable product was cars, but our cars couldn’t compete with Japanese imports, which were pursuing fuel efficiency for 10 years before American carmakers stopped to think about it. The only things American cars had to offer was brawn, sort of the image of America itself, and since ‘”brawn” has become the last thing a consumer (other than someone who hauls or farms for a living) wants in their vehicle, our car companies are failing. Executives of these companies had all the same information available to them as the rest of the world (news of global warming, knowledge of increasing fuel prices, the fact that we are dependant on unfriendly countries for oil) and yet they ignored the handwriting on the wall, and, because our Republican administration encouraged a climate of American distrust of innovation and a blithe ignorance of the concept of “the Future” (as well as “The Past”: see 1970), they kept building the same big cars, consumer desire for which was soon to be obsolete.

[I feel enormous sympathy for those who work for GM and Ford. They trusted their executives to do the right thing; after all weren’t these executives making millions for their good judgment? This year alone, the CEO of GM will make, as base salary, over $1.5 million. But then again weren’t the executives of Enron and World Com and Bear Sterns and Washington Mutual and Tyco and all those other tanked companies doing the same? And didn’t their employees end up on the same unemployment line with nothing to show for their loyalty as car workers will soon be standing?]

Now of course, after years of Republican disdain for negotiating and coming to the table to try to understand America’s problems along with her enemies, the current Administration has finally recognized their folly. They’re finally listening to their generals in the field of war (something Rumsfeld was notorious for refusing to do), as General Patraeus tells them that one of the best strategies for achieving stability in Iraq (and, ostensibly, Afghanistan) is to meet with our enemies and negotiate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1FK-JdLEN4).

So perhaps when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld created and honed a new American sensibility of fear and paranoia, along with the dismissal of the possibility of war fought not only on the ground, but in the hearts and minds of the enemy, maybe they wasted some time. Maybe they wasted 7 and a half years.

When you create a culture of loathing for new ideas, for distain of alternate strategies, for the castigation of whistle-blowers, for hatred of those who ask questions, and an utter disrespect for truth, you reap what you sow.

And so, to Sarah Palin who is shocked, shocked! when her own team turns against her with anonymous attacks that resemble nothing more than schoolyard backstabbing, I say: “Welcome to Your World”. Welcome to the world you and your party created. Deal with it. Or better yet, change it. After all, now is the time for change. Yes, you can.

Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 6 (Finally!)

7:30pm (one week later)

I return to my apartment from yet another visit to the local Starbucks to see the telltale flashing light on my answering machine. I listen. Oh my God. It's Peter Mehlman. He's calling me, himself, to give me the date and the name of the article ("Star Trekking", The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 16, 1988). It’s like that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” when Indy just gets annoyed with all the flash and flourish of saber and knife combat and just shoots the guy. One quick call, and my search, my agonized, obsessive search, is over. Deus Ex Answering-machina.

He’s surprisingly relaxed and open for someone who is as famous as he, calling someone who is as not famous as me. Mensch that he is, he even left me his phone number. My hand is trembling as I fumble for a pencil to write it down. This phone call has me swearing that, down the line, I myself will call some other fledgling writer and do this pro bono gesture for them. If only I could become someone whom they’d actually care to hear from. I lean in and listen as each digit is offered.

“… 4-3-7 [beep]” “Beep”? BEEP? Wait a minute, “beep” on the 8th digit?? What have I ever done to my answering machine that it hates me so much it must cut off the last digits of Peter Mehlman’s phone number?

I become very still. Perhaps this is not my path. Perhaps I am not meant to write in the world of Hollywood where there are so many layers between the writer and the writing. Perhaps I should just be watching TV, perhaps “The Office” where this kind of stuff happens in a really hilarious way that ends up with some kind of gentle moral.

10:00pm:
Called it a typical day as a New York freelance writer. Turned on the TV. Finished wine. Tomorrow I’ll go back to work on my play, perhaps adding a scene wherein the woman with one too many cats finds a message on her answering machine from an old boyfriend, asking for her hand in marriage, only the last two digits of his number get cut off.

You gotta admit, it’s not a bad twist.

(Coda: I called Mehlman’s agent back, gave him my email address and Peter and I emailed for a while, and eventually actually met. We became friends of a sort; he’s a great guy by the way.)

Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 5

4:31pm:
I stand, sling my backpack jauntily over my shoulder and then freeze, as I realize that I never closed my change purse and that loud, Vegas-slot-machine clanging and rolling and loose-metal-hitting-tile sound is coming from me. The actors in the room (of which there must be dozens, this being New York City) must truly envy me now, because all heads are turned my way and all eyes are on me. This would be a great time to break into song. Trouble is, I don't know any songs and I can't really sing. So, feeling the bad kind of deja-vu, I find myself back on my knees, picking up nickels.

4:34pm:
Clutching the treasured article to my breast, I quickly find the Xerox machine, which, in this new millennium, no longer takes coins. It needs a card of some sort which one can find only in another room (far, far away), at the end of another line. I'm learning the ropes of the Library Universe, a microcosm of the City where things, good or bad, come to those who wait at the end of interminably long lines.

4:50pm
Repeat line experience from 12:20pm. Now, instead of a pencil, I have a "copy card", the equivalent for a Library patron of a backstage pass to an Elton John concert. Eager to get this over with and now, of all times, overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to write, I swipe the card on the copier, slip the original into the copy machine's maw, make the copy, return the original, stuff the Xerox in my back pack and run.

5:50pm:
Home! Where a writer ought to be. Where, if I had been this day, I might have something to show for these past six hours.

And as I empty my backpack onto the desk next to my closed laptop, it slowly dawns on me that if I had spent the last six hours writing – doing my own work - instead of looking for some other writer’s work, I might have the jump on my play, a really profound and touching piece about a woman who owns just one cat too many. But here it is, dusk, and once again when someone asks me how it’s going, I’m going to have to answer, “Well, the big news is that I decided to move the page numbers up to the upper right hand corner from the bottom of the page and I feel like the rest is just going to be smooth sailing.” There’s nothing worse to a writer than that empty feeling of not having written.

I guess when they say if you want to be a writer you’ve got to write, they’re, well, right.

But wait! I do have something to show. I have the Mehlman article! I did research today, and research is intrinsic to the writing process! It’s actually almost writing! I realize that instead of berating myself I should be patting myself on the back. This document is going to help me, inspire me, teach me the true definition of compelling.

I pour myself a glass of wine, sit myself down, unfold the article and... I turn over the piece of paper to its front side. I turn it over again. The article seems to have two backs. No front. I've Xeroxed nothing. I've paid to copy a white sheet onto another white sheet resulting in two white sheets. I look up at my ceiling in time to see a little drop of water forming at the far corner.

5:59pm
Just under the water droplet, my eye is drawn to my bookshelf, where I notice a book listing the names of Writer's Guild members. I look up Peter Mehlman and find the name of his agent. The agent seems to be St. Peter at the Gates in this particular world. I write up a letter describing my day, seal it in an envelope and mail it. To the agent.

Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 4

12:20pm:
I arrive at the New York Public Library in all its cavernous, intimidating glory and proceed to look for the reference room, aka "the room with all the answers". Not too surprisingly, that room has a line snaking out of it thirty people long and when I approach the counter in an attempt to ask if this is the "right" line, the Man at the Desk, the Master of the Line waves me back as if I were a gate crasher jumping the ropes at a celebrity wedding.

"You see the end of that line?" he asks me. "Yes, but..." "That's where you go." I wait for the cheers from those already lined up but fortunately they're on my side; all they want to know is if they're in the right line. The people in front look slightly happier than those in back who are just hoping someone else gets behind them. That's where I come in.

12:45pm:
I'm first in line! The Line Master gestures me forward. For some reason, I feel like Oliver about to ask for a second bowl of gruel. "How do I find articles by specific authors?" I ask, and he lifts a bony hand and points… back to the end of the line, right by the entry doors I passed thirty minutes ago on my way here. "Back there. Computers. Use this." He hands me a pencil that's not even a whole number 2 but more like a fraction. It has no eraser. That's O.K, I think. I'm getting closer. Soon, it will all be worth it.

12:46pm:
The Library computers are so ancient they look fake, like the computers on a Star Trek episode before the Enterprise upgraded its technology. Touching the sticky keyboard makes one think not twice but six times. In order to spare my fingerpads the Ebola virus or whatever else might be stuck on the smudged keys, I decide to type with my knuckles. Looking like a smartly dressed Neanderthal, I enter "M-e-h-l-m-a-n". Several catalogue numbers appear and I jot enough numbers down that I feel like I’ve covered all the possibilities. I ask the guy next to me, "What do I do now?". He answers "Give 'em to the guy. He gets you the articles." "What guy?" Yes, you guessed it. The Master of the very same thirty-person line I was, only minutes ago, at the head of.

4:30pm:
Hours later, seated at a wooden table that could seat sixteen in some Hamptons French farmhouse-style kitchen, I'm beginning to feel faint. My research has expanded to the point that I have now looked in every periodical going back to immediately after Mehlman's birth. The chances of him having written an article before he was 10 years old are slim I realize, but I am obsessed. He's written plenty of items, all amusing, but none seem to have that naïf-in-New York City, pre-LA quality that I'd heard about.

Almost everyone else who was at my table has gone, having found what they came for. Each time one of my tablemates stands to leave, I feel a pang of jealousy and a strange sense of abandonment. "I thought we were in this together! What do you mean you're leaving?" I think. My jealousy springs from the knowledge that soon they'll be breathing air that doesn't feel like it's been strained through a sock.

In four hours I've only found one article by Mehlman specifically about New York (a practical guide to summer shares). But I'm tired, the wooden seat is getting hard, and I don't want to be the last one who gets to slam her books shut, shelve them and depart. I'll take it! I'll copy it here and pore over it at home. I tip one open side of the big green book atop the other, resulting in a soft slam. My companions look up at me briefly, jealously. "Yes!" I exude silently. "I'm done. I get to go home!"

Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 3

11:17am:
I rise to the disappointed shaking of heads and the sense that I've let the team down. Sullenly, we file onto the platform, into the sad silence of a platform without a train. It doesn't matter that in three minutes there'll be another one: the train you miss is always the "best" one. I avoid the eyes of my fellows and keep myself busy thinking about the treasure at the end of this tunnel, metaphorically speaking: the Mehlman article and the secrets it will reveal about the what makes the written word grab someone's, besides one's own mother's, attention.

11:20am:
A local pulls in and I step inside. Oddly, even though it's 11:20am on a Wednesday, there is not a single vacant seat. I realize at that moment that I've never actually seen "a seat" on the Number One line. True, I've seen hints: a 5 inch strip of orange between two sets of American thighs, but that 5 inch beam of color is quickly blotted out by the not-to-be-trifled-with hips of a middle-aged woman who would certainly complain if her seat on an airplane was only 5 inches wide but here on the subway, seems overjoyed.

The resulting effect is a sort of checker-boarding of passengers all the way down the row, knees protruding in and out as people try to retain a portion of the bench; the pattern shifting as one passenger stands and another slides back. It’s kind of like the Wave, only performed horizontally instead of vertically. I stand, because I'm only passing through, just until I can catch the express.

11:23am:
We pull into the platform just as the express does. Perfect timing. Only our doors aren't opening. "How ironic!" we all exclaim in our different ways, some grinding their teeth into nubs. Some travelers lean on our doors, watching like children with noses pressed against a candy store window as the express opens, and then closes its doors.

"I can wait," I think, "Let someone else fight this battle," and I sit.

Suddenly, our doors explode open. I look up with only the slightest curiosity -- this is typically a tease. But suddenly the express across the platform re-opens its doors. In spite of my naturally low blood pressure, my subconscious throws out the challenge: "You can make it!"

As one, the entire human contents of the local scrambles for the openings -- The Great Subway Escape -- just as our doors begin to slide shut. It's right out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark": the squeezing doors, the second set closing just beyond; the ever-narrowing passage to freedom! All that's missing is rolling boulders. Are we quick and agile enough to get out before the poisoned spears appear?

Twang! Evidently not. My body's out, but I'm not moving. The doors have closed on my backpack. My fellow commuters, always eager for a free show, surround me, some trying to yank me out, some shoving me from behind and, as always (this being an entertainment capital), a few watching, Snickers bars in hand. Helpless, I watch as the doors on the express, barely 10 feet away, slowly hiss closed. It sits there briefly, taunting me.

Suddenly, the local opens its doors and spits me out onto the platform. I'm free! From my knees I look up, just as the express shudders to life and begins to chug away. Quickly, I spin back around just as the local, insulted no doubt by my abandonment, slams its doors shut and departs.

Back on the island of "Missed Trains", I wait.

Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 2

11:00am
Buoyed by the fact I live in a city with one of the greatest libraries in the world, and grateful for an opportunity to side-step any actual writing of my own, I head jauntily out the door of my building, when - bam! I'm flattened by a sixty-something, ipod-wearing roller-blader. "Sorry!" he yells back to me. "No problem" I respond, noting yet another example of the under-reported courtesy New Yorkers consistently offer after nearly killing someone. Up on my one good leg, and about to retrieve my backpack, I watched the grey-haired figure recede, marveling at the eclectic variety of personalities the city spawns when - squash! My backpack is neatly bisected by the wheel of a hurtling bike messenger whose sleek, aerodynamic helmet makes one wonder about the shape of the head inside. "Watch it you idiot!", he suggests, advising me, in his way, that the streets of the city can be dangerous if one is not wary. Grateful for the reminder and not entirely sure he was unarmed, I shout back "Thanks!" with not a trace of sarcasm.

11:15am
Looking for somewhere a little safer, I head to the subway: down the stairs and toward the token booth. A small line has formed, and I arrive just as the electronic beep begins to sound: the train is on its way. Those in line look anxiously over their shoulders at the tracks. From the distance, we hear the click-clacking, bad horse-gallop sound effects that signal the near arrival of a train, just as I reach the front of the line and put my $20 down.

"What?" the clerk asks.

The man behind me groans, "Oh, c'mon." His immediate future, along with those of the rest of the line, is in my hands and we can all hear the train sliding in and squealing to a halt.

"One."
"One what?"
"One fun pass."

(I feel ridiculous even as I say it down here in this place that is so far from "fun" it may as well be Hades.) The guy behind me suggests helpfully: "Hurry the f- up!" Obligingly I do, predictably I drop my change and my quarters roll under the token booth, just as we hear the hissing of the doors opening behind us and the rumble of passengers tumbling out. I bend down quickly, and the man behind me straddles my head as he leans in to the agent. From my crouched position, I look up and I'm in a Rugby scrum: there's a canopy of hands above me, moving en masse toward the token booth. Down below, I crab-walk toward the turnstiles to avoid being trampled, but it's too late. A loud hissing and screeching marks the departure of the train.

The train itself makes noises too.

(continued tomorrow)

Hold On To Your 401K; It's Going To Be a Bumpy Ride

Regarding the $700 billion dollar bailout: Americans don't seem to get (possibly because our clueless President hasn't explained it) that this bailout is chump change. It sounds like a whole lot of money to the average Joe but it's one of those little tiny band-aids in the band-aid box, just to tide the banks over. It's not going to cure or solve the problems of our economy and the stock market crash on Friday reflected that. There are dozens more banks set to collapse, and who knows what other ancillary businesses that were part of this shell game will follow.

After 8 years of the Republican philosophy of "winking at the rich", we're all in big trouble. The "Trickle Effect" that Reagan loved to espouse goes both ways. Welcome to the Trickle UP effect: the repercussions of ignoring a middle class that's been suffering since this administration came to power. Did you plan to retire in the next 5 years? If you didn't vote for Bush, I am sorry for you. If you did, then you're reaping what you've sown.

As my broker says: "Hold on to your 401K; it's going to be a bumpy ride."

The One Time We Didn't Let Bush Have His Way

Does anyone remember when Bush was pushing to privatize social security by having everyone put everything into the stock market? Raise your hand if you're happy that we didn't let him get away with that one. Had we let him have his way, not only would you have no money to look forward to from the government; neither would the government. Even when the stock market was flying it was a stupid idea, but typical of the Bush Doctrine: details, truth, and a respect for past history are just annoying little mosquitos in the path of a bad idea! Swat 'em and move on!

In hindsight, it was worse than stupid; it would have been a crime. Or should I say, another crime.

Could this be a lesson that conservatives can learn from ? That is; don't let small minded, shoot-from-the-hip (with Cheney's doofus aim) cowboys, with big mouths and small ideas, wreck our country any further. Wheresoever they have led, disaster follows.

When we finally get off this ride, we'll be facing the rise of Iran and Russia, bold now that we are weak and our allies distrust our judgement, along with the resurgence in Afghanistan of the Taliban; so much stronger and more organized thanks to the five years we've given them to train while we've been dithering about in Iraq! We'll be up against the rising instability in Pakistan, the grandstanding of China (if you thought Russia was getting aggressive, keep your eye on China!); hell, I'd watch out for Venezuela at this point. They could invade us this Friday and just take over the country while we're all standing around watching the Dow plummet again on news of another hundred thousand layoffs.

And where this administration has not led, but instead refused to control, other equally catastrophic disasters have followed as well. When I'm not watching the Dow plummet, I have taken to watching little towns across the country get wiped off the map after more and more powerful Hurricanes crush the coasts. Wildfires and floods become more furious each year (I get Hurricane Ike's total destruction of Galveston, but watching the flooding of downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa made even me lift an eyebrow) all predicted, including the subsequent shortage of gasoline in the South, by the way, by Al Gore.

And now, the economy. By the way kids, this is just the beginning of the bank failures. There will be dozens more. So if you think your savings will be replenished when the market initially bounces after the bail-out bill pays off the bankers, you are in for a sickening surprise.

So back to my original premise: As always, thanks to all of you who voted against Bush, and thanks again, for those who didn't let him have his way with our retirement funds.

America, unlike Europe, has a notoriously short memory. This one time, America, let's remember how we dodged this bullet, this one time we stood up to a bad idea.

Where's the Arrogance? I Kinda Miss It...

Where's Dubya?

We haven't seen much of our President (his name is George Bush in case anyone's forgotten) starting just about when hurricane Ike hit and wiped Galveston off the map, and certainly hardly at all since the Sub-Prime Mortgage meltdown hit and wiped all our savings off the map.

But I remember the old Bush; the one who used to stride out in front of reporters and spout stuff like: "Misson Accomplished", or when he was congratulating Michael Brown on his good work for FEMA at the site of Katrina, or when he was crowing about torturing prisoners using waterboarding and other tactics, or when he was telling us about the success of the invasion of Iraq and upon the capture of Saddam Hussein (who was he again? What did he have to do with US security again?).

But where is he now? The grinning man in the White House now seems broken, bowed and, dare I say, embarrassed? He's like a great big "oops!" walking around. He was never a leader but now his troops decimated, disgraced and scattered (Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Brownie, Libby, Ridge, Whitman), he seems lost, alone, ignored. Right where he belongs, and belonged before he got elected as our president. Or did he get elected?

Here's a little game you can play with your social circle: try to find someone who voted for Bush. It's so weird: Apparently, no one voted for him! I can't figure out how he became president! All my conservative relatives didn't vote for him, my Republican friends didn't vote for him; nobody in the gas lines in the South must have voted for him, right? That would have been stupid! We know no one in the Northeast voted for him. Those who were proud of American integrity, leadership, power, stability, strength, and who believed in the American Dream, they couldn't have voted for him, right?

I can't figure it out. And I think he can't figure it out either. "How did he get there?" we used to ask each other. And now, the expression on his face says it too: "How (the heck) did I get here?" God knows.

Goodbye To You (Glaciers, Rain Forests, Lots of Cute Animals)

Have you noticed as I have, the spate of recent articles with the phrase "vanished" in the title, along with "disappearing", "dying", and "perishing" (simply I suppose because writers are just getting tired of the word "vanishing")? Here's a small sample:

"Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril"
"Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace"
"Saving the World's Vanishing Shark Species"
"Brokaw Explores the Vanishing Chilean Sea Bass"
"On Emptying Seas, A Vanishing Way of Life"
"Vanishing in the Wild, Mountain Gorillas"
"Louisiana's Vanishing Wetlands"
"Coral Reefs Vanishing Faster Than Rain Forests" (they're winning!)
"Vanishing of Frogs, Toads Tied to Global Warming"
and of course,
"The Vanishing Middle Class" (whose relation to Global Warming is the fact that those who control and blindly support big industry are out-sourcing and down-sizing at such a rate that your kids will be the only thing not vanishing, because they'll be living with you, never having found a job.)

More recently I've read about:

"Northeastern Bats Are Perishing and No One Knows Why"
and an update on the frog situation:
"Link to Global Warming in Frogs' Disappearance is Challenged"

The frog article makes the case that perhaps global warming plays a part but in fact it's a fungus that's killing off the frogs. Yes, Virginia, in many cases of these "vanishings" it is true, a mysterious fungus, or a mysterious cancer or a mysterious virus is what is killing off these species. But that's like saying it's not global warming that is flooding the low-lying parts of the world, it's water! Or it's not global warming that's shrinking glaciers, but excessive heat! It's part of the game that has even purportedly "intelligent" people dodging the issue entirely. "Having lost the argument about whether in fact life forms are disappearing, let's debate about what's making them disappear and make absolutely sure that we don't get blamed for this!" (they cry). "Whatever it is, it's not us!" (they cry) "...and who gives a hoot really whatever it is, as long as we don't have to change our lifestyles or admit we were wrong!!"

I know a few people who have, on principle (the same principle that guides those who believe it is impossible for man to have walked on the moon as well as the principle of "someone else will pick it up"), refused to see the Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". These people believe it to be full of political propaganda and hysteria, and perhaps also, the truth, which, once commonly accepted, won't help any of those who still want to buy a Hummer. And insisting that they will never view the film, they have missed out on the indescribable fascination of watching as, systematically, almost all the catastrophes that Gore predicted 5 years ago when he first started to give his presentation, have come to pass. (If only he could predict the moves of the stock market as accurately!)

I don't know a better argument against the idiocy of denying that global warming is going to cause us some big hurt (and by us, I mean the world, and even rich people who are in another part of the world but whom we still bump into at Starbucks), than the fact that scientists on the side of the deniers never even heard of Global Warming until Gore and the world's environmentalists started yelling about it, and when their predictions started coming true, well, the naysayers (generally the political right) had to get some guys from the same think tank they hired to keep the tobacco companies in the black ("smoking is GOOD for you!") to start saying that Global Warming is natural, periodic, inevitable and has nothing to do with Greenhouse gases, and man-made pollution.

But if that's the case, and now, even these GW deniers say that GW is going to cause problems in the future, then why didn't these scientist (or "scientists") start warning us about it long before Gore? You've noticed that now even Bush is conceding to the fact of GW. What he won't admit is that it's man-made. But why, if it's a natural occurence, did not one scientist on the conservative side ever warn us about rising seas, and more severe hurricanes, and decimating heat waves? Wouldn't that have been helpful? Why didn't they notice or predict, as Gore et al has and did, that there would be disastrous economic consequences of GW, along with preventable loss of life (remember the 2003 heat wave that killed 14000 in France alone?), and suggest that perhaps we ought to worry about neighborhoods in low lying areas, along with our record albums stored in the basement? Doesn't that seem odd? Why were environmentalists who believe GW is man-made able to predict and warn about the problems that we face today, 40 years ago, but those scientists who are trying to sell us on the "natural cycle theory" totally silent, and caught off guard?

I'll tell you why - it's because these anti-GW "experts" are pushing a theory purely to protect conservatives' investments in big industry. You don't hear them reminding us that they predicted melting glaciers and poles and killing heat wave, and that these phenomena were all completely expected in the grand scheme of things. Because those who deny global warming now, never saw it coming.

It was the environmentalists who noticed that glaciers were receding, heat waves were becoming more frequent and increasingly lethal, droughts, devastating fires and floods were increasing in severity, and suggesting that even if you lived on the prairie you might still consider investing in a row boat to tool around main street. The average environmentalist has been predicting issues related to GW for about 40 years. And in the last few years, the only brakes on this environmental juggernaut have been applied by those crazy tree-huggers and their insistence on truth. Those nuts!

So what can you do with naive ignoramuses who continue to ignore and downplay this issue ? Same thing you have always done - argue as much as you can stand, and then when they start getting all emotional and start attacking your virtue, your patriotism and your hairstyle, walk away. Unfortunately sometimes you're sitting across a dinner table from them and although you may have the impulse to pass the mashed potatoes - to their heads! - you must not, because that's rude and not worth the loss of perhaps a very good side dish.

And you know what eventually happens? As much as these deniers argue and huff and puff and make fun, they quietly come around. They come over to our side of the argument so serrupticiously that we who have been warning and doomsaying never get to gloat (darn!). But that's OK, because even better than gloating is to have people convinced that this is a real issue and has to be addressed. And people who were once in denial, once they "get it" become really passionate! People who convert (to anything) are typically even more devout than those who were raised with a certain set of beliefs. You know how people who quit smoking are absolute vigilantes when it comes to smokers? And become much more hardline than people who never smoked? Well that's how converts to environmentalism are. Guilt is good!

So I welcome naysayers. I have to. I know they will eventually see the light (one more violent hurricane or drought or devastating flood in the red states ought to do it). Now we just have to work on the ones who don't believe in evolution. Forget about the ones who don't believe we walked on the moon. Let them hold onto something!

Message to Michelle Obama: Your Eyebrows May Cost Your Husband the Presidency!

Can I just offer this one piece of advice for Michelle Obama? The single, best, most effective thing she can do right now to help her husband's campaign and increase her popularity ratings is to pluck her eyebrows differently.

Right now, her eyebrows angle down in that angry way that cartoonists use to denote anger - even emoticons use downward eyebrows to depict the "bad" or "angry" little round face. It's a simple, visceral facial signal that every human recognizes. Even infants! Michelle, pluck them straight across or with a happy little arch. Let's win in November! All it takes is an intelligently wielded pair of tweezers to bring peace and prosperity back to our nation.

I'm not kidding. This is the kind of thing people in the public eye need to think about.

The same advice can be (and I have) given to Katie Couric and Nicole Kidman, both of whom are suffering from the "Vulcan effect" of collapsing middle brows from over-doses of Botox (which relax the muscles between the eyes and result in an overcompensation by muscles at the ends of the brow). How do I know this? Don't ask.

I doubt Botox is Michelle's problem (although who knows) but the three of them could bring themselves back into public graces by that small adjustment.

What we need is a president who understands that these issues are just as important to the average American (more so in the coastal states) as the wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan. One can never underestimate the importance of being thin, young and unwrinkled, over the smaller issues of Weapons of Mass Destruction and a lack of Universal Health care.

I Did Understand. I Do Understand. And I Told (You) So. How Bush Created ISIS.

Hey, did you hear (June 16) that 4 Star General David D. McKiernan, Commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said that the problem in Afghanistan is bigger than just the problems in Afghanistan? As Homer Simpson would say, "D'oh!" As I would say: "Duh!"

So slowly, slowly, the American military leaders are figuring it out! How great! Even though they were warned that this "bigger problem" issue was made clear to them by every advisor who suggested maybe we shouldn't get mired in another (um, Vietnam) wrong (Vietnam) unwinnable (Vietnam) war, the problems of which were bigger than the country it encompassed (Vietnam).

SO once again, those of us who saw clearly, a mile away (actually half a world away), just via good common sense and also having grown up watching America floundering in Vietnam (that word again!), that entering into a war overseas was painfully, obviously ridiculously idiotic, have to sit and wait and watch as years and years and YEARS later, the American military machine starts admitting that "hey, this ain't workin'".

Of course, as with any admission that one's plan was ill-conceived (moronic), the military on the ground figured this out probably two years ago, and have had to slowly, gently, convince their superiors who have been told by Bush that he wants no negative news out of Iraq, that trying to bring "stability" to the middle east is like herding cats, only the cats have sub-machine guns and shoulder-launched rockets.

These admissions, which you (reader) will start hearing more and more frequently, are the beginnings of the end - the end of denying the realities of the war and a dawning realization that there is no such thing as "winning" in this war. At best, there will eventually be an orderly pull-out leaving behind either an American or UN presence to get shot at by the members of various tribes as civil war breaks out. If only Saddam Hussein was still around! We could have handed this mess right back to him! This place will only be able to survive with some kind of dictator in place, which will occur naturally soon after we leave.

Before McKiernan came on the scene, his predecessor, McNeill (what is it with the Irish?), noticed, gently, quietly, that not only was Afghanistan falling apart (huge rise in the Taliban and Al Quaeda since we invaded to clean them out), but now Pakistan wants to join in the fun - Al Quaeda has a nice firm foothold there now! Send your thanks to Paul Wolfowitz, and to Donald Rumsfeld who dropped our troops into hell, and then put their foot on the gas as they turn their backs on them and sped away.

I'd like to say "I told you so". But who do I say it to? And what's the point?

The Katie Couric Problem

The Katie Couric Problem

NOTE: since I originally posted this blog, and as I predicted, it was reported today (April 12) that Katie will be leaving her position for who knows what in the wake of the pitiful performance of the CBS Nightly News which she was hired to anchor. The powers that be there are still rangling over what it is she will go on to, making stupid suggestions and ridiculous predictions, on their way to assigning her to another equally inappropriate position - prime time interviews on a cable channel (which no one will watch and will itself be gone in 6 months), or a "serious" talk show along the lines of Oprah Winfrey's show.

If they were smart, they would put Katie into a talk show of course (as I suggested), but it shouldn't be on cable and it shouldn't be in the afternoon or anywhere near the evening, but around 11am - to compete with - or at 10am to lead into - "The View". There is where Katie will flourish - in a mid-morning program geared toward women, with soft interviews and lots of humor and silliness. Maybe a little more like "Ellen" than "Oprah".

Katie is more than capable of handling semi- and "nice" - celebs but not hard news personalities and please: not hard news. She has no street cred among news people, nor even among people who simply make it a habit to watch news. C'mon CBS, stop wasting your time and money and do what is being whispered about! Get Katie out of there, quickly, get her a pretty set with flowers on the coffee table, along with a big New York Starbucks mug, and bring on the attractive and non-controversial celebrities and she will be a huge hit. The producer who jumps on this will be a hero and the move will be considered "brilliant" and everybody will be happy.

Of course in this case, it's no great shakes to be right about this all - in fact it's not like the folks at CBS didn't know this would happen about 12 seconds after they signed the deal with Couric. You know it's just that the idea seemed like such a good one; sort of the same way that invading a country - ANY country - after being attacked sounded so good to a lot of idiots not too long ago. It just takes one brave, smart, non-conformist to speak up and save the day. If only Colin Powell had worked for CBS...

And now on to the original blog - which seems awfully prescient if you ask me...

I used to be a loyal viewer of CBS Nightly news but I, like most other
people, have abandoned CBS in favor of either NBC or ABC (they are
virtually interchangeable - with equally wonderful, warm, capable
newsreaders), specifically because Katie Couric is such a
pitiful presence on a night-time news program.

CBS will never, ever win the first place in the Nightly News hour with
Katie at the helm, and surely by now they know that, but in the short
run there are a few things they can do to keep the few remaining
viewers who are too elderly to turn the channel from abandoning them.

It's hard to believe that any market research CBS did before hiring
Katie indicated that the morning audience for Katie would follow her
to evening news. If they didn't do the research (even if just asking
the people who work there), certainly they're kicking themselves now! But really
any intelligent person could have told them that what people,
especially women, watch in the morning is a zero indicator of what
they will watch in the evening. In the morning we're looking for
lighter programming; something that can be half paid attention to
while we're getting dressed and packing lunches.

In the evening, we've faced a day of decision-making, read the paper,
discussed current events with co-workers and are looking for
thoughtful, serious information delivered by newscasters we respect.
Katie Couric has never been a "newscaster" in the mind of the public,
and I know this might come as a shock to you, CBS, but the fact that she is
a woman is not only insignificant to women viewers, but is, in fact, a
strike against her. (Frankly, if you had stayed with the warm,
serious, well-respected Bob Shieffer you would probably be competitive
with the two other nightly news programs, but that's a whole 'nother
letter!)

But please, don't get the wrong idea: it's not because she is a woman that she can't succeed (now listen carefully - this is a subtle point), but because she is a woman without street cred. Give me a Diane Sawyer or a Christiane Amanpour (in fact, they
could hands down win the night if they put Christiane at the news
desk), or one of the capable newswomen we've seen reporting from Iraq,
or at the scene of the Katrina disaster. But Katie Couric, with her
crisp white shirts and finely pressed hair, reading the news about
death, destruction and mayhem all around the world is actually
distasteful. They may as well have hired Martha Stewart.

So what to do? Here are a few suggestions.

First of all, please tell Katie to get a new Botox doctor. She has
overdone it with the mid-eye injections to the point that her outer
eyebrows are winging out like Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Have the
make-up people never heard of the "Vulcan Effect" from a Botox overdose? She's beginning to look like poor Nichol Kidman who also used
be a beautiful woman but who must be visiting the same Doctor as
Katie. She too, looks like a angry creature commuting on the Starship
Enterprise. Take a note from Brian Williams who has the most mobile
forehead in the business. He fairly bleeds compassion and concern.
Charlie Gibson too, can knit his eyebrows into a winter scarf. Take
it from my guy, Katie: lower the dosage, and then just a few
injections above the outside brow to compensate.

And it's impossible to miss those eyebrows because the lighting is so hot on
poor Katie's face that the only features left to see are her brows,
her pupils, her nostrils and her lips. It's like her face is a police
sketch. Between the bright lights turned up to 11 and her lack of
angular facial contours, her face looks like a harvest moon. She
looks waxy and plastic which is what you expect from the Regis and
Kelly show, but which is exactly the wrong effect for a nightly news
reader. And what's with the cakey orange make-up?

On to the hair. The stick-straight hair just looks ridiculous.
Attention producers: Katie is not 30 and she's not Jennifer Aniston.
She's not working on Wall Street or going to clubs with her
girlfriends, or modeling hair products for Garnier Fructis. She looks
like she had her head on an ironing board right before she came out to
take her seat. Not only does it look unnatural on a woman of her age
(and frankly is a little behind the curve of fashion anyway), it
simply adds to the full-moon face effect. Would Brian or Charlie
mousse their hair so that it sparkled with product and stood up at
crazy angles like Bart Simpson's? Of course not, because the viewer
doesn't want that. CBS viewers want newscaster hair; Kennedy hair;
50s era hair; respectable hair; no matter how old they are.

Americans of all ages, and particularly CBS-watching Americans, belong
to a collective news-viewing consciousness, and we want our nightly
newscasters to look like products of a certain nightly newscaster
private school. Katie looks like the weather girl who is just filling
in until the regular guy gets back. If they're not willing to send
Katie to Iraq to do some front-line reporting, then at least make her
hair look real. Let's see some waves, a little texture and some
volume. Let her look ever-so-slightly disheveled as if she'd been
somewhere in her life, other than the make-up chair.

Ok, next. Katie, you are not interviewing us, so lean back! Couric
has a tendency to lean into the news as if she's trying to make a
connection with the viewers watching her from behind the teleprompter.
This means viewers get to watch her eyeballs jitter back and forth as
she strains to read the words, instead of the naturalistic,
all-knowing affect that Brian and Charlie have mastered. Is it that
she's not used to reading so many words? Or is it that the words are
bigger than daytime TV words? Whatever it is, she seems to be
straining, and whether it's to make a connection with us (her morning
show trademark), or because she's simply having a problem mastering
the reading material, she comes off looking vulnerable and desperate.

Relax, Katie! Sit up, vertically at least, or even tilt back a little
(like Charlie!). Try to cultivate an attitude of confidence. If you
look worried, how do you think we're going to feel? We want concern,
compassion and a sort of Godlike omniscience. Not fear. Think Walter
Cronkite. And if you're having trouble getting the words out, whether
it's pronunciation or rhythm, well, that's what rehearsals are for.

Then again, maybe the leaning and the straining is a consequence of
the Tammy Faye Bakker mascara that the make-up people have piled onto
her eyelashes. How could anyone see through that sticky forest of
spiky hair triangles? Every time she blinks, I'm concerned that she
won't be able to open her eyes again. That mascara is caked on like
breading on a corn dog, and the ultimate effect is that this CBS
nightly news hostess looks like a Raggedy Anne doll.

It's not poor Katie's fault - she's doing what she does and does well - reading -
it's just that it has nothing to do with news and we don't want to watch her do it at night. Soon enough, when CBS runs out of faultless producers to fire, they'll fire Katie (or "promote" her), moving her in to the position she should have been granted as soon as she left The Today Show, which is: her own morning TV show. It will have nothing to do with news, and everything to do with celebrity interviews and cooking
demonstrations and she will be a big hit, competing handily with "The
View".

What a terrific error CBS made and how far back they've fallen with a
decision made certainly by a committee of nervous yes-men, who think
(or pretended to agree) that newsreaders are followed like rock stars
from one show to the next. This isn't as big a disaster as invading
Iraq, so they can comfort themselves with the knowledge they didn't
make a blunder on quite that scale, but as far as CBS news'
credibility, it's on a par.

Courage, Katie.

It's the Writer's Life for Me, Or, Looking for Peter Mehlman

Like most struggling New York writers, I'm far more interested in reading about other struggling writers who have somehow "made it" (ranging from landing a villa in Tuscany to landing a studio apartment with heat) than actually writing anything.

I’d read a lot about writers who had gone to LA and were suddenly being paid to write, which seemed like such a great idea, and I began experimenting with the idea of being not a New York writer but an LA writer, that is; someone who writes sitcoms. This means you have to write sitcoms of course, but more importantly, it means you have to include a third party into your solitary life: the “agent”.

As a matter of fact I’d been lucky enough to get not one, but two agents and fairly quickly; it’s just that they were perhaps unlucky to get me. The first one died shortly after she signed me (she was, I’d been told, a living legend in the business and then evidently decided to become just a legend) and unbelievably, the next agent who agreed to represent me lost her husband in the World Trade Tower disaster and left the business. I felt more than a little bad about these encounters and tried not to feel personally responsible, but another part of me wanted to avoid dragging someone else into this most personal endeavor, and so I decided to forgo the agent thing, and just keep writing and hoping someone read my stuff and liked it.

I knew this was in fact possible, having heard of the success of a once-struggling Manhattan-based writer who started out writing humor essays (like myself), and who had written one especially hilarious article that convinced Hollywood he was funny enough to let in the "We'll Pay You For This" Club. This tale was one that fledgling writers had been passing around for years and so, one day, I decided to track the apocryphal article down. What made this urban legend particularly intriguing was that the writer who had made it "really big" (meaning that now people write about him) was Peter Mehlman, one of the original writers of "Seinfeld".

Having exhausted by phone all of the tips that a fellow humorist had offered ("I think it was sometime between 1982 and 1988, in the 'New York Times Magazine'. No, it was the 'New Yorker'. No, no wait, it was the Op Ed page of the 'Times', that's where it was. No, wait a minute, now that I think of it...."), and unable to compose a concise or coherent question to submit to Google (I tried: “Peter/Mehlman/article/got/job/Seinfeld” and “Peter/Mehlman/hired/Seinfeld/basis/one/essay/funny” and got subjects ranging from admiralties on British ships to the entire oeuvre of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.), and wanting to see if I could track down the actual article using the skills I’d learned watching “Law and Order”, I hit the street to begin my investigation.

I decided to start at the landfill for all written words in Manhattan: The New York Public Library.

11:00am
Buoyed by the fact I live in a city with one of the greatest libraries in the world, and grateful for an opportunity to side-step any actual writing of my own, I head jauntily out the door of my building, when - bam! I'm flattened by a sixty-something, ipod-wearing roller-blader. "Sorry!" he yells back to me. "No problem" I respond, noting yet another example of the under-reported courtesy New Yorkers consistently offer after nearly killing someone. Up on my one good leg, and about to retrieve my backpack, I watched the grey-haired figure recede, marveling at the eclectic variety of personalities the city spawns when - squash! My backpack is neatly bisected by the wheel of a hurtling bike messenger whose sleek, aerodynamic helmet makes one wonder about the shape of the head inside. "Watch it you idiot!", he suggests, advising me, in his way, that the streets of the city can be dangerous if one is not wary. Grateful for the reminder and not entirely sure he was unarmed, I shout back "Thanks!" with not a trace of sarcasm.

11:15am
Looking for somewhere a little safer, I head to the subway: down the stairs and toward the token booth. A small line has formed, and I arrive just as the electronic beep begins to sound: the train is on its way. Those in line look anxiously over their shoulders at the tracks. From the distance, we hear the click-clacking, bad horse-gallop sound effects that signal the near arrival of a train, just as I reach the front of the line and put my $20 down.

"What?" the clerk asks.

The man behind me groans, "Oh, c'mon." His immediate future, along with those of the rest of the line, is in my hands and we can all hear the train sliding in and squealing to a halt.

"One."
"One what?"
"One fun pass."

(I feel ridiculous even as I say it down here in this place that is so far from "fun" it may as well be Hades.) The guy behind me suggests helpfully: "Hurry the f- up!" Obligingly I do, predictably I drop my change and my quarters roll under the token booth, just as we hear the hissing of the doors opening behind us and the rumble of passengers tumbling out. I bend down quickly, and the man behind me straddles my head as he leans in to the agent. From my crouched position, I look up and I'm in a Rugby scrum: there's a canopy of hands above me, moving en masse toward the token booth. Down below, I crab-walk toward the turnstiles to avoid being trampled, but it's too late. A loud hissing and screeching mark the departure of the train.

The train itself makes noises too.

11:17am:
I rise to the disappointed shaking of heads and the sense that I've let the team down. Sullenly, we file onto the platform, into the sad silence of a platform without a train. It doesn't matter that in three minutes there'll be another one: the train you miss is always the "best" one. I avoid the eyes of my fellows and keep myself busy thinking about the treasure at the end of this tunnel, metaphorically speaking: the Mehlman article and the secrets it will reveal about the what makes the written word grab someone's, besides one's own mother's, attention.

11:20am:
A local pulls in and I step inside. Oddly, even though it's 11:20am on a Wednesday, there is not a single vacant seat. I realize at that moment that I've never actually seen "a seat" on the Number One line. True, I've seen hints: a 5 inch strip of orange between two sets of American thighs, but that 5 inch beam of color is quickly blotted out by the not-to-be-trifled-with hips of a middle-aged woman who would certainly complain if her seat on an airplane was only 5 inches wide but here on the subway, seems overjoyed.

The resulting effect is a sort of checker-boarding of passengers all the way down the row, knees protruding in and out as people try to retain a portion of the bench; the pattern shifting as one passenger stands and another slides back. It’s kind of like the Wave, only performed horizontally instead of vertically. I stand, because I'm only passing through, just until I can catch the express.

11:23am:
We pull into the platform just as the express does. Perfect timing. Only our doors aren't opening. "How ironic!" we all exclaim in our different ways, some grinding their teeth into nubs. Some travelers lean on our doors, watching like children with noses pressed against a candy store window as the express opens, and then closes its doors.

"I can wait," I think, "Let someone else fight this battle," and I sit.

Suddenly, our doors explode open. I look up with only the slightest curiosity -- this is typically a tease. But suddenly the express across the platform re-opens its doors. In spite of my naturally low blood pressure, my subconscious throws out the challenge: "You can make it!"

As one, the entire human contents of the local scrambles for the openings -- The Great Subway Escape -- just as our doors begin to slide shut. It's right out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark": the squeezing doors, the second set closing just beyond; the ever-narrowing passage to freedom! All that's missing is rolling boulders. Are we quick and agile enough to get out before the poisoned spears appear?

Twang! Evidently not. My body's out, but I'm not moving. The doors have closed on my backpack. My fellow commuters, always eager for a free show, surround me, some trying to yank me out, some shoving me from behind and, as always (this being an entertainment capital), a few watching, Snickers bars in hand. Helpless, I watch as the doors on the express, barely 10 feet away, slowly hiss closed. It sits there briefly, taunting me.

Suddenly, the local opens its doors and spits me out onto the platform. I'm free! From my knees I look up, just as the express shudders to life and begins to chug away. Quickly, I spin back around just as the local, insulted no doubt by my abandonment, slams its doors shut and departs.

Back on the island of "Missed Trains", I wait.

12:20pm:
I arrive at the New York Public Library in all its cavernous, intimidating glory and proceed to look for the reference room, aka "the room with all the answers". Not too surprisingly, that room has a line snaking out of it thirty people long and when I approach the counter in an attempt to ask if this is the "right" line, the Man at the Desk, the Master of the Line waves me back as if I were a gate crasher jumping the ropes at a celebrity wedding.

"You see the end of that line?" he asks me. "Yes, but..." "That's where you go." I wait for the cheers from those already lined up but fortunately they're on my side; all they want to know is if they're in the right line. The people in front look slightly happier than those in back who are just hoping someone else gets behind them. That's where I come in.

12:45pm:
I'm first in line! The Line Master gestures me forward. For some reason, I feel like Oliver about to ask for a second bowl of gruel. "How do I find articles by specific authors?" I ask, and he lifts a bony hand and points… back to the end of the line, right by the entry doors I passed thirty minutes ago on my way here. "Back there. Computers. Use this." He hands me a pencil that's not even a whole number 2 but more like a fraction. It has no eraser. That's O.K, I think. I'm getting closer. Soon, it will all be worth it.

12:46pm:
The Library computers are so ancient they look fake, like the computers on a Star Trek episode before the Enterprise upgraded its technology. Touching the sticky keyboard makes one think not twice but six times. In order to spare my fingerpads the Ebola virus or whatever else might be stuck on the smudged keys, I decide to type with my knuckles. Looking like a smartly dressed Neanderthal, I enter "M-e-h-l-m-a-n". Several catalogue numbers appear and I jot enough numbers down that I feel like I’ve covered all the possibilities. I ask the guy next to me, "What do I do now?". He answers "Give 'em to the guy. He gets you the articles." "What guy?" Yes, you guessed it. The Master of the very same thirty-person line I was, only minutes ago, at the head of.

4:30pm:
Hours later, seated at a wooden table that could seat sixteen in some Hamptons French farmhouse-style kitchen, I'm beginning to feel faint. My research has expanded to the point that I have now looked in every periodical going back to immediately after Mehlman's birth. The chances of him having written an article before he was 10 years old are slim I realize, but I am obsessed. He's written plenty of items, all amusing, but none seem to have that naïf-in-New York City, pre-LA quality that I'd heard about.

Almost everyone else who was at my table has gone, having found what they came for. Each time one of my tablemates stands to leave, I feel a pang of jealousy and a strange sense of abandonment. "I thought we were in this together! What do you mean you're leaving?" I think. My jealousy springs from the knowledge that soon they'll be breathing air that doesn't feel like it's been strained through a sock.

In four hours I've only found one article by Mehlman specifically about New York (a practical guide to summer shares). But I'm tired, the wooden seat is getting hard, and I don't want to be the last one who gets to slam her books shut, shelve them and depart. I'll take it! I'll copy it here and pore over it at home. I tip one open side of the big green book atop the other, resulting in a soft slam. My companions look up at me briefly, jealously. "Yes!" I exude silently. "I'm done. I get to go home!"

4:31pm:
I stand, sling my backpack jauntily over my shoulder and then freeze, as I realize that I never closed my change purse and that loud, Vegas-slot-machine clanging and rolling and loose-metal-hitting-tile sound is coming from me. The actors in the room (of which there must be dozens, this being New York City) must truly envy me now, because all heads are turned my way and all eyes are on me. This would be a great time to break into song. Trouble is, I don't know any songs and I can't really sing. So, feeling the bad kind of deja-vu, I find myself back on my knees, picking up nickels.

4:34pm:
Clutching the treasured article to my breast, I quickly find the Xerox machine, which, in this new millennium, no longer takes coins. It needs a card of some sort which one can find only in another room (far, far away), at the end of another line. I'm learning the ropes of the Library Universe, a microcosm of the City where things, good or bad, come to those who wait at the end of interminably long lines.

4:50pm
Repeat line experience from 12:20pm. Now, instead of a pencil, I have a "copy card", the equivalent for a Library patron of a backstage pass to an Elton John concert. Eager to get this over with and now, of all times, overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to write, I swipe the card on the copier, slip the original into the copy machine's maw, make the copy, return the original, stuff the Xerox in my back pack and run.

5:50pm:
Home! Where a writer ought to be. Where, if I had been this day, I might have something to show for these past six hours.

And as I empty my backpack onto the desk next to my closed laptop, it slowly dawns on me that if I had spent the last six hours writing – doing my own work - instead of looking for some other writer’s work, I might have the jump on my play, a really profound and touching piece about a woman who owns just one cat too many. But here it is, dusk, and once again when someone asks me how it’s going, I’m going to have to answer, “Well, the big news is that I decided to move the page numbers up to the upper right hand corner from the bottom of the page and I feel like the rest is just going to be smooth sailing.” There’s nothing worse to a writer than that empty feeling of not having written.

I guess when they say if you want to be a writer you’ve got to write, they’re, well, right.

But wait! I do have something to show. I have the Mehlman article! I did research today, and research is intrinsic to the writing process! It’s actually almost writing! I realize that instead of berating myself I should be patting myself on the back. This document is going to help me, inspire me, teach me the true definition of compelling.

I pour myself a glass of wine, sit myself down, unfold the article and... I turn over the piece of paper to its front side. I turn it over again. The article seems to have two backs. No front. I've Xeroxed nothing. I've paid to copy a white sheet onto another white sheet resulting in two white sheets. I look up at my ceiling in time to see a little drop of water forming at the far corner.

5:59pm
Just under the water droplet, my eye is drawn to my bookshelf, where I notice a book listing the names of Writer's Guild members. I look up Peter Mehlman and find the name of his agent. The agent seems to be St. Peter at the Gates in this particular world. I write up a letter describing my day, seal it in an envelope and mail it. To the agent.

7:30pm (one week later)
I return to my apartment from yet another visit to the local Starbucks to see the telltale flashing light on my answering machine. I listen. Oh my God. It's Peter Mehlman. He's calling me, himself to give me the date and the name of the article ("Star Trekking", 1988).

He’s surprisingly relaxed and open for someone who is as famous as he, calling someone who is as not famous as me. Mensch that he is, he even left me his phone number. My hand is trembling as I fumble for a pencil to write it down.

This phone call has me swearing that, down the line, I myself will call some other fledgling writer and do this pro bono gesture for them. If only I could become someone whom they’d actually care to hear from. I lean in and listen as each digit is offered.

“… 4-3-7 [beep]” “Beep”? BEEP? Wait a minute, “beep” on the 8th digit?? What have I ever done to my answering machine that it hates me so much it must cut off the last digits of Peter Mehlman’s phone number?

I become very still. Perhaps this is not my path. Perhaps I am not meant to write in the world of Hollywood where there are so many layers between the writer and the writing. Perhaps I should just be watching “Miami CSI”.


10:00pm:
Called it a typical day as a New York freelance writer. Turned on the TV. Finished wine. Tomorrow I’ll go back to work on my play, perhaps adding a scene wherein the woman with one too many cats finds a message on her answering machine from an old boyfriend, only the last two digits of his number get cut off. You gotta admit, it’s not a bad twist.

Sexy Vs Sexual

When I thirteen years old or so, I used to go to slumber parties to which we were obliged to bring, not only our own pillow, but some sort of "sexy" bit of reading material, mainly for the purpose of grossing each other out. Unfortunately for me, at my house, the closest things to "sexy" reading matter were my father's Journals of American Medicine wherein maybe, if I was lucky, I could find a photo of some poor guy's sad sack penis with a bad case of the blues. (Which meant, at least in those magazines, that the thing was actually blue.) These were met not with titillation but with wonder, and would change the party dynamics such that, instead of talking about sex, we'd be discussing seriously tangential topics like, "What would you do if you didn't have any eyebrows?"

Times have changed, media has changed, and although thirteen year old girls' slumber parties march on, these days you can bet they're not having a hard time finding reading matter. These days you can't read a magazine in public without worrying if someone reading over your shoulder isn't wondering why you're interested in something called quadra-sexuality, or hygiene for pierced genitalia, as you innocently turn the pages on the way to analysis of the past President's blow-jobs. And these are the news magazines.

Sex is so ubiquitous in today's media that, instead of being the first thing anyone reads in the dailies, which is the way it used to be when I first started reading the papers, the sex stuff is what you turn to after the stock quotes. It's lost its appeal. You get the feeling that there are two kinds of humans in the news: Sexy models and actors who really don't need to have sex because they already have personal trainers; and slightly overweight, average-looking Joes (and Jills) who turn into raving sex fiends if someone puts a hand on their leg.

This saturation of the media by sexually related articles has achieved for intimate human relations the same results as salting a great steak. We know it's basically good, but the flavor is wrecked. You'd never think that American-style overkill could empty the world's oceans of fish, but it can; and you'd never think reading about sex could make sex boring, but it has.

This style and the topic of sex and sexual indiscretions are what book and magazine editors call "sexy". "Sexy" in this case means full of the details and hot-button phrases that denote sex but which have nothing to do with lovemaking. In fact, their purpose seems to be to remind us of what we're missing if we're not "sexy" by the standards of gaunt, twenty-eight year old fashion editors.

Sex has of course always sold, but it first became a general media darling when advertisers on Madison Avenue began to distill the most obvious elements from the phenomena of attraction. Stylists found that virtually any object, animate or inanimate, would be more likely to be purchased if it was "sexy". This meant: cool, mysterious, detached; without age, obligation, employment or underwear. One button left open on a model's top allowed a glimpse of a lacy bra, turning an unremarkable white blouse into an erotic garment of forbidden allure. Soon, in the American tradition of more is better, one button became two buttons, and then no buttons, until we now see advertisements in which women, nude from the waist up, gaze longingly at a shirt draped over the back of a chair halfway across the room.

Men are depicted the way Madison Avenue thinks men should look, so sweating men are considered "sexy". Sweat implies strength, action, membership to an expensive health club or more likely, ownership of a misting bottle. If you believe the ads you see, there exists no product for men that won't cause them to break out into uncontrollable perspiration, whether that product is French Roast coffee or their Toyota 4-Runner.

So what is this doing to us? These are the images that consumers observe and imitate. What we see in newspapers and magazines and in films and television are the major influences for style and, more importantly, behavior. What we're heading toward (some would argue, where we are already), is a culture of preening, posing, very good-looking, totally unapproachable people. People for whom having sex is no big deal, but for whom being intimate with someone is a total mystery.

What media really needs, in, if not one of its darkest hours, then at least its slimiest, are manners. Journalistic manners. Like we used to have at the dinner table: chew with your mouth shut and let's try to keep the conversation somewhat intelligent -- only for reading matter. Book authors are free to write what they know and certainly what sells these days; who can blame them. But editors of magazines and other periodicals might want to consider a stylistic change. Like: Leave a bit more to the imagination. Keep one's sensationalistic voice down a bit. And for God's sake, put some clothes on!

My Online Dating Profile

What am I like? Well, let me ask myself. What are you like -- oh, sorry, I didn't know I was on the phone - sorry, I'll wait.
OK, now, let me ask you if I may: What are you like? Are you like, some kind of a stalker who won't take no for an answer? Or perhaps a person who uses an online dating service to post pictures that are 6 years old in an attempt to lure some poor schmuck to the rocks like the Sirens in that movie "Jason and the Argonauts"? Or was that Jason and the Golden Fleece? Anyway, the one that got the Oscar for best supporting Cyclops.
Or, continuing this line of questioning: are you generally a nice person who hasn't had sex since 2002 and is just a little anxious? Perhaps a combination of all three? But not a stalker really, at least that's what my friends say (except for maybe David but he's not a friend anymore, not since he sent that mass email about what he called my "problem" which was really not my problem but his which most everybody wrote me back to tell me).
Most of my friends would say I was fairly "normal", just like you probably, and I like all the same things that "normal" people like, for example: long walks on the beach with a metal detector; jumping into public fountains in a wet suit and snorkel collecting spare change; going to shows and shouting out the lyrics to all the songs along with the cast; hitting the rowing machine at the gym while singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", or, alternatively, “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore”, and also making friends with guys who are bench pressing 200 lbs. right when they’re sucking in their guts for that big lift.

As you can tell from the pictures, I am in pretty good shape for someone who's 54, even though I'm not 54 and I am 43, and my friends are also 43 and I was born in 1963 or 65 (I can never remember). I like to do all the things outside my apartment that other "normal" people do, like shopping for food and toilet paper, and sometimes going to Starbucks and "having it my way" by spending twelve minutes constructing a drink out of all the adjectives they have on the overhead signs. Sometimes I like to go to Starbucks and just sit and listen to people at the other tables, and sometimes I interject my opinions in their conversations just to be friendly. Sometimes I'll join them at their table, just so I don't have to yell. Every once in a while you get a meanie who doesn't want to listen and looks at you like you're some kind of a nut, but I just usually handle that by knocking their mocha latte onto their laptop. Typically, when I come back (I like to visit Starbucks several times a day) they're gone and never return, which is OK with me! As you can tell, I am very social and a lot of fun!
So you might be thinking: why do I have all this time to go to the gym and to Starbucks, but why would you think that unless you yourself were unemployed? If you are one of those judgmental suspicious types, maybe we just aren't meant to be. You might want to ask yourself, why do I always make these negative assumptions about people? Maybe that's why you're still single and have to resort to an Internet dating service, did you ever think of that? Don't you have any friends who could fix you up? Anyway, since you're wondering and even thought I don't really care what you think, I do have a job and it is fairly high-paying which allows me to be in actual semi-retirement (even at the age of 45!). But more on that later.
A typical day for me is to wake up (I don't need an alarm, usually the people pounding on my door to turn down the volume on my TV is enough to rouse me), get dressed (by myself, silly!) taking care to turn my socks and underwear inside out, then I take my medicine, and head out for breakfast. I used to go to a local diner but I found that the Episcopal Church offers such a great breakfast special which even comes with a free orange, that you'd be an idiot and a snob to pass it up. And I hate snobs! Right after breakfast I head over to Starbucks where I like to work at my job, which involves typing on my computer and looking at the screen and occasionally looking up to see who else has come in.
I have all the hobbies that "normal" people do, including working out, reading, leaning out my window and yelling "Watch out below!" and waiting to see what everyone does, and dancing. I am a great dancer and will get up and perform at the drop of a hat, or a strategically placed dollar, and I don't necessarily have to have a partner. Sometimes I just get up on the table and let loose, but not at Thanksgiving and never on the kids' table, so don't worry!
And you, what are you like? Well, you are single or you can get out of the house regularly between the hours of 2 and 5:30pm. You like to have sex but you don't always have to have the lights on, and you aren't adamant that your partner takes off all their clothes or even gets in bed with you. You are fit and healthy and willing to be tied up and left for hours on your own without complaining or wondering what the point is (sometimes I like to go shopping and you never know when the urge will hit me!). You also have your own apartment that you own and that there's no way you could get evicted no matter how many cats you had or how loud you had your TV volume turned up or if you liked to check the recycling bins for cans and bottles late at night when it really shouldn't bother people.
So I hope there's someone out there for me; I haven't had that much luck on this particular site, even though I have had a few "repeat" customers (Melvin622 if you are reading this, you can forget about me coming back out to the oil rig!), I am a real believer in that old adage, "There's someone for everyone," or is it, "As long as you don't take the bracelet off, you're not breaking parole"? I look forward to hearing from you!

Virus Alert

Virus Alert
by Deb Victoroff

In the past, whenever good friends moved away, they always promised to "write", or at least write back, and of course, never did. Never, that is, until e-mail. Now my friends not only keep in touch - they aggressively fondle me with every tiny bit of info-email that floats by, no matter how trivial. These pals of mine who once wrote me gorgeous essays on the most serious and intimate topics, and who expounded poetically on issues of ethics and politics, now send me petitions, pyramid letters and bad puns. Pages of them, every day, sometimes twice a day. I'm getting more junk mail now from close friends than I ever did from strangers.

And in among these non-letter missives, there often appears the inevitable notification, a combination between gossip and an alien sighting: The Virus Alert.

The first time it happened, I was thrown into a thrilling panic: a Computer Virus! Did I have it? Was I going to be part of the collective electronic consciousness that would be infected? Would I see all my friends down at the Free Computer Virus Clinic, lining up for cyber-synthesized penicillin?

The first virus warning I ever got was for "Melissa" which I took as an anthropomorphic indication that she was the jilted cyber girlfriend of the "2001" computer Hal. The Melissa virus sounded intimidating not just because I got the feeling it was younger than me and had a better job, but because vague reporting of its destructive trail allowed my imagination to run wild: that after it ate your hard drive, it would go to your refrigerator and eat all your leftovers, all your flowering plants and any small pets that had the bad luck to wander into its path.

I waited breathlessly for it to show its (type) face. I expected it to arrive attached to salutations like:
<> or perhaps: <>, but it never appeared in my mailbox and I felt slighted.

Over time however, other viruses have come my way, most of them with benign-sounding, friendly names, as if they were being emitted from some pink, Barbie-doll iBook. There was "Kali" and I assume her auto: "The Love Bug"; an invitation: "Let's Watch TV!", plush toys called "Bugbear" and even: "New pictures of family!" and "A Card For You!" (at least someone still sends cards…).

Now I've become virus-paranoid. I don't open any email if the subject heading is unfamiliar, or even if it is familiar, but just too damn cheery. But that hasn't stopped one infection from slipping past my most vigilant efforts.

I call it the "You've Got Mail" infection because it doesn't require that you open mail from an anonymous source but actually embeds itself in letters from friends, just when they're getting to the good part: just when your pal is telling you that she ran into your ex with his new girlfriend and what he said, and then what she said, when all of a sudden, BAM! You're infected. "You've got mail, Hee Hee!" it might say, which you don't notice at first because of course you want to know what that blonde idiot in the too short skirt had to say. But that's when it gets you.

You'll notice that suddenly, your cuticles look ragged. Just below your armpits you'll suddenly find extra flesh flapping as freely as a museum banner. You'll notice that your thighs have morphed into flabby cushions and, if you're a woman, your legs, which you swear you shaved this morning, will have stubble again. Men will notice that what they affectionately referred to as "the spare tire" around their waist, is now the wheel from a Monster Truck rally.

And that's just the physical stuff.

Your mind will wander. You'll begin to wonder what your place in the universe is and why everybody got out of the stock market without telling you. You won't be able to get your mind off the guy at the bank who put you on hold and never picked up again.

But the most terrifying thing about this virus is: it's impossible to tell whether you're actually infected, or whether you've just started to look like this since you got your own blog and that, unlike everyone else's blog, yours had something to say.

What to do if you suspect you suspect you're a victim? Well, you can bet there's an anxiety-producing website on line that'll offer the cure. Only take you about 9 hours to find, and then about an hour to figure out how to use it. But what do you care? You're already sitting down.