leave all puns related to wands and engorgio charms in the comments

I think that Daniel Radcliffe will do a smashing job in Equus. It's a great play, and he is an underrated actor. He was hilarious as a bratty little horndog in Extras. However...

There was a time when the phrases "Harry Potter" and "love trail" existed far, far away from one another. I miss that time.

bershonsplosion

When I was in Michigan taking care of my Dad, I dug through what remains of my childhood possessions. After a combined nine moves since I graduated from high school, my parents and I have become expert purgers of memorabilia, ruthlessly throwing out anything not deemed necessary to survival because we know that soon we will have to carry it across state lines with our bare hands. In the snow. And all we get for Christmas is an orange and a nickel.

I'd planned on bringing back a bunch of my old drama club t-shirts for the gym, because nothing makes the Jappy girls who hog the elliptical wrinkle their noses quite like having to share air with someone wearing something reading "Theatre Guild 1996 presents Sartre's No Exit." What I hadn't planned on, however, was the awesomeness of the photos I found buried underneath my Goo Goo Dolls: Dizzy Up The Girl Tour souvenir hoodie.

Paging through them in my parents' basement, I fell on the cement floor laughing. My dad (who had just had surgery six days before) hollered down to make sure I was okay. He thought I was having a seizure.

Wouldn't you fall apart laughing if you pulled these photos out of storage?

[As a primer for what is about to happen, I suggest that you first catch up on the concept of bershon. Read it? Understand it? Did you live it too, seething with silent disdain at everything around you as you awkwardly lumbered your way through the wonder years? I hope so, because you're about to get a crash course in bershon from my adolescence.]

My first Homecoming dance. I went with three of my girlfriends from middle school, none of whom actually WENT to my high school, because I was so scared and embarrassed by life. That's me in the maroon dress (which at least five other girls were wearing that night) and that's my best best best friend Carol in the blue. Note her expression of relative happiness and contentment versus mine of utter humiliation at being forced to take a group photo, like, Mom, can we just GO already? Jeez!

Looking at this picture, I'm very angered by all the time I wasted thinking I was fat. Sweet Mother Mary, I'd kill to have those legs today. Of course, I'd be much nicer to them now. I wouldn't swaddle them in sheer nude pantyhose.

Let's move on:



Bershon: The Play

Scene One: San Juan, Puerto Rico. Our heroes are on the last day of a swanky Caribbean vacation.

EJ: God, this is so MORTIFYING. I can't believe our parents took us on this CRUISE and now want to take pictures in front of this spectacularly gorgeous ocean. What if someone from school is in San Juan and walks by and SEES me posing for this photo?!

Jenny: Nice attitude there, killer. Aren't I adorable with my little short bob and skinny limbs? I'm so lucky I haven't entered my awkward phase yet, unlike SOME people. Everyone says I'm just so cute.

EJ: SHUT UP YOU LITTLE BRAT. GOD, if you could SEE my eyes behind my John Lennon sunglasses, you'd see they were ROLLING BACK INTO MY HEAD FROM DISDAIN. Why is everyone trying to ruin my life?!

This is the stage crew for my high school theater group production of Much Ado About Nothing. If you want to replicate the effect, here's the formula: gather the ten most awkward misfits from every grade, dress them in black and give them power tools and walkie-talkies. Of course, even if we hadn't just finished running the show, everyone would still probably be in all black anyways. God, we were so deep.

I'm not in this photo because I was in the cast, so I'm probably backstage putting on six layers of eyeliner and white tights. Of course, I did run stage crew for a number of other plays and spent my fair share of time in blacks, listening to the Cure over the whirr of the handsaw in the workshop while waiting for my mom to pick me up after school.

I look at this picture and think "Bershonsplosion."

This is not so much "bershon" as it is "awesome." Before I did the redesign yesterday, I was going to make this photo into my new banner with the tagline "EJ Takes Life: Reveling in Awkward Moments Since April 2005." But I think it's better for everyone if we don't have to be greeted by that photo every single day.

This is me in seventh grade. I believe that we're at start of term nature camp, and that my arm is in a sling because Ian Olson (the class bully) stepped on it during a game of what was supposed to be touch football.

I have no explanation for the glasses, perm, white denim shorts, pose or the sheer horrible awkwardness of it all.

or a pony. i always wanted a pony.

I've been so busy over the last month, I'd forgotten it's almost my birthday until my mother called last week and asked if I'd email her an Amazon wishlist. Specifically, she said "If I don't have it in my inbox there's no way I'll remember to buy you anything." Oh, how my heart sings at such warm, maternal sentiments.

So what should I ask for? I know what I want, but for some reason Amazon doesn't have a listing for "fistful of cash." Amazon really doesn't have any of the other things I'm considering asking for, which include but are not limited to:

- Tap dancing lessons

- For my father to go another 30 days without having major surgery

- A plane ticket to Austin or San Francisco for vacation this spring

- A case of El Mawby champagne

- An effortlessly perfect score on the GRE, which I am taking in three weeks

- Mothereffing inspiration, because damn, I haven't thought of anything remotely decent to blog about in, oh, foreverish


Bah.

what happens when too much higher education happens to otherwise fun people

Jen: think i figured out why i really don't like my clinical prof

EJ: why's that?

Jen: she's the type who mentions Woody Allen when talking about Neuroses

Jen: also, she has Anne Geddes portraits of Celine Dion and babies in her powerpoints

EJ: oh ew

EJ: in what context?

Jen: a sort of attachment theory

Jen: dyads

EJ: as examples that dissociative sociopathy is alive and well in art?



How we both don't get laid more is just beyond me.

my highly informed insider opinions on the state of the union

Of all my "DC Moments," my most favorite is when I watched the 2004 State of the Union from the House press gallery. It was my first week as an intern at a DC paper and I'd already thought that I'd died and gone to Nerd Heaven when I got my press pass. The SOTU invite, which was tossed off to us interns at the last minute as a afterthought, was like getting in the gates of Nerd Heaven and being greeted by a horde of angels who looked like Jake Gyllenhaal holding platters of delicious candy-coated orgasms.

I had absolutely no business being there. I brought my handy-dandy little reporter notebook, but they told me just to enjoy the show, that we didn't need to bother reporting on it. I did make the rookie mistake of clapping when Bush came in-- because, um, he's the President, and think what you will about the man who holds the office but you clap when the President enters-- but a second later learned that if you are in the press gallery, you do not clap, you do not react to anything that is being said, you just scribble. Or, if you're an intern who scammed her way in there, you stand tree-like at the back.

I did feel a mite ticked off as the speech progressed and I realized that I was attending the most ridiculous SOTU ever. My big chance to witness history as it was being made, and I got the SOTU where Bush used the podium to lecture professional athletes on steroid use. It's fantastic to re-read the speech itself three years later, since it's basically a half-hour of "stay the course, stay the course, stay the course" followed by twenty minutes of a deliciously random grab-bag of election year wedge social issues. Bush has never been particularly statesmanlike, but that night he basically just shouted nouns from the Culture Wars ("Abstinence! Defense of marriage! Patriot Act!").

Watching SOTU tonight, though, I felt better about the speech that I'd seen. After all, at least I wasn't there to witness this gem live:

“We will also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.”

I really think that if I had been in the press gallery to hear George W. Bush talk about cars running on wood chips, I would not have been able to contain my snort of derision. And if clapping is frowned upon by reporters, you know that snorting is not exactly encouraged.

It will be interesting to watch the reaction to this speech, since Bush displayed an uncharacteristic humility in talking about Iraq. He's finally moving beginning to inch toward an approach that may revive support for the war, though at huge expense to his legacy. He can never convince people like me that we had any business getting into Iraq in the first place, but he could convince me to support our continued presence there if he accepted responsibility and framed it as a moral or humanitarian issue, not a political one. Of course, Bush admitting that he was wrong to lead us into Iraq has approximately the same likelihood of Dick Cheney assfucking Al Gore while burning American flags in an abortion clinic.

We created the circumstances that allowed the current chaos in Iraq to start and flourish, and I happen to think that we have a moral obligation to try and fix the mess we made. We're still in Germany and Japan today because of the democracies that we imparted onto them following World War II, and those followed a war that we didn't exactly start (yes, that master's in history is coming along very well, thank you for asking). Did we really once think that America can enter a sovereign nation with no history of democratic political traditions, depose its leader, start a democratically elected government and peace out within six months? I don't remember the entire nation being stoned in the spring of 2003, but that's the only explanation I can think of now. But what the hell do I know? I'm just an ex-cub reporter who snorts when the President talks.

This is really a whole other post, but my points are that Bush is the exact opposite of a statesman and is that I'm not as partisan as you might think; that yes, I could agree with a Republican on Iraq if we could clarify exactly what the mission would be. They'll never get me on gay marriage, though. After all, if Bush ever does apologize for Iraq then Cheney would need to do that assfucking within the sanctity of marriage.

glitter and hand-me-downs

The sky here today reminds me of one of my favorites lines from one of my favorite books, The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter.

"Because it's the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, it's more a dull shine, like frequently used silverware. We were all presentable enough, but almost no one was making any kind of statement. Out here in Michigan, real style is too difficult to maintain; the styles are all convenient and secondhand. We're all hand-me-down personalities. But that's liberating; it frees you up for other matters of great importance; the great themes, the sordid passions."

Driving to Panera for lunch today, my father all giddy from the dual thrills of wearing pants and leaving the house, commented that it was a beautiful Michigan day. I smiled and agreed with him as I steered the Crown Vic into the slushy parking lot. It's not a beautiful Michigan day, but it is typical. As I write this now, the sky and ground are the same shade of smudged white and the sun, what little of it is lighting the scene, will probably begin to set around 3:00. The sky is as unobtrustive as a sky can be, hanging low over the train tracks and Ag College fields like a watchful parent.

I opened the car door and stepped into a pile of melted snow, soaking my left foot. When I packed I knew that these heeled boots would be all wrong and when I put them on this morning I knew I'd be lucky if I didn't fall and break my neck on a patch of black ice. But I wore them anyway. Usually, whenever I come back to Michigan I do things like this; wear three-inch heels in the dead of snowy winter or wear unnecessarily attractive outfits to run to Meijer's when we're out of flour as if to communicate to any passerby "Okay, I am sort of from here but I am certainly not from here now." My snobbery glares brighter in Michigan than it ever does in DC.

Of course, today was the first time I've worn the boots all week. The rest of the time I've been in hiking socks and sweatpants as I cook and clean and generally act like I'm the parent. I say things like "Time for your nap," and "no animal crackers until you finish your vegetables" without a trace of irony. The situation that brought me here, much like the place itself, has a way of killing my usual twisted sense of smartassness.

My mind is always quieter in Michigan. It's as if that low-hanging pewter sky blocks out all the chatter and noise that decorates normal life, both the good and the bad. This week, my mind has been even quieter than usual. It's numbed by daytime television and then sharpened into focus every time he coughs, slowly stands up and winces from the effort.

There is no glitter to distract me this week. Just hand-me-down pain and gray skies.

putting the "ok"

To those of you who have emailed, called, IMed, whatevered, thank you for your kind words for me and for my dad. I wish that I was capable of focusing only on the good that comes from people like you; people who take time from their day to wish someone well even if the recipient of those good wishes is a stranger. It is a lovely thing you do, and I am so thankful for it.

Other things I am thankful for since I arrived in central Michigan earlier this week:

That Dad seems to be doing okayish, and that he agreed to be brutally honest with me the second he is not feeling okayish because after the events of last week he maybe has finally realized that he does not have to be the valedictorian of gallbladder surgery as well as heart surgery, because, well, at this point it would just be bragging. Right?

Snow. I had not seen snow until today. The SHAME, people. The SHAME. I used to wake a half hour early from October to March so that I could scrape off my windshield before going to first period, slogging out into the driveway in the dark because of course the parents' cars got the garage slots. And now I am not seeing snow until the middle of January? What of my roots? Have I become a wimpy Mid-Atlantic urban soul so quickly that I seriously have to ask which is better, to salt a driveway before or after the nighttime freeze? I am one missed snowball fight away from no longer being able to lay claim to a Michigan heritage here, friends.

24. Yes, I know 24 is awesome. I will watch 24. I said, I will watch it. I said, soon. Look, I work a full-time job and go to school and my Netflix queue is very full already, mkay? I will get on it, when I get the time. But yes, that premiere was excellent. Especially the last ten minutes of Hour 4. Yes, yes, very good. What, you want me to watch The Wire, too? Okay. No, not right now. Look, I will watch it when I watch it.

Playing gin with my Daddy, only to later realize I'd accidentally been cheating the entire time. Well, look, he didn't remind me that the runs have to be in the same suit, okay? I mean come on, I haven't played a card game that didn't involve waterfalls of Miller Lite since like 1999.

breakdown on the blue line

"Ladies and gentlemen, we will be stopped at the station while the train in front of us holds for a sick passenger. Thank you for your patience."

Everyone else around the Metro car wears the resigned, vacant expressions of rush hour commuters at the end of a long day, but at this our faces fall just a little bit more. It's 6:30 and we're all tired and not feeling particularly charitable, even towards a person so sick that s/he is halting Metro with ill health.

I know I'm in a mood. Because all of my comfortable work shoes are at the cobbler I'm wearing six-year-old boots with a broken inner sole on the right shoe and am walking on a blister roughly the size of Ted Kennedy. Tomorrow is the big biannual work event I'm in charge of and maintenance couldn't be bothered to set up the space on time, so I will just have to cross my fingers that there are tables waiting for me at 7 AM.

Oh, and my father is back in the hospital and today underwent his second major surgery in less than a month and I'm taking indefinite family medical leave to go to Michigan and take care of him and am kind of incredibly scared and for the last three days have started to cry at the slightest provocation, such as when a song by Nizlopi or John Gorka pops up on my iPod or when I see a tall white man with silver hair on the street or, y'know, the act of being awake.

I am not to be trifled with today. Even by people who aren't trying to trifle with me.

I look around me and for the first time see a twentysomething guy in a suit and leather jacket sitting two seats behind where I stand. He's poking at his Blackberry, which he then sets on the empty seat next to him as he rummages in his pocket, extracting a cell phone. Yes. He is using two electronic communication devices on the Metro while taking up two seats, surrounded by fellow commuters packed into the car and almost falling on top of him as he stretches his lower half into the leg space for the window seat.

Oh NO he did not.

I start polite. I turn around and look at him smiling, almost simpering "Excuse me, is someone sitting there?" as I point to the empty seat next to him. Obviously no one is sitting there, except maybe his imaginary childhood best friend.

He stares at me for the briefest of seconds, then lowers his head and begins to poke at his cell phone keypad. It's as if I spoke in Klingon. Maybe he's deaf, I too-generously think to myself. It's my better side trying to stem the tide of my growing anger. Oh, this is going to be so fun.

"EXCUSE ME." I am loud enough that the people sitting behind him (facing the other direction) and the several passengers in the aisle space between us look at me, all probably hoping that the angry girl isn't speaking to them. "CAN YOU PLEASE MOVE OVER? THERE ARE LOTS OF PEOPLE IN HERE WHO COULD USE A SEAT."

There is absolutely no way that a hearing person in his seat could not hear me. How do I know he can hear, you ask? Because he lifts the phone to his ear and begins to speak into it. "Dude, the Metro is stuck. I'm running late."

I'm pretty sure that by this point there is steam coming out of my ears, nose and pores. I've been feeling utterly helpless and alone and impotent for days, asking myself what kind of universe allows terrible things to happen to a man like my father and a family like mine. It's not this guy's fault that Dad can't catch a break with his health or that the four people in my family now live in four different states or that I don't have someone I feel close enough to to fall apart in front of like I need to, because if I don't get the inevitable breakdown out of my system at least once during this whole mess than I run the risk of doing it in front of my family and they shouldn't have to deal with it on top of everything else. Technically, yes, he is a jerk, but an innocent bystander/jerk.

But he is going to pay for it all anyways.

"Who the HELL do you think you ARE?!" I yell at him. Oh, he's heard me now. He's resolutely staring straight ahead still talking on the phone, but the color rises in his face from his dress shirt collar. The train jolts to life and lurches into the tunnel, right on cue as I start to really get into a groove. "No, really?!" I cry. "You think you're so damn important that you get two seats while everyone has to smash into each other in the aisle? Are you really that much of a self-important asshole that your fucking Blackberry gets its own seat at rush hour? Ooh, look at the big important man with his big important toys! There are PEOPLE STANDING RIGHT OVER YOU, you shit. What the hell kind of person thinks he's soooooo special that everyone else has to stand while he gets two whole seats to himself?!"

I'm so worked up that I barely notice we've reached the next station. He gets up, still staring straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge me or my tirade as he parts the sea of passengers and squeezes his way to the door, leaving the two seats in contention wide open. The older woman who had been between me and the seats looks at me like she's asking for my permission to sit down, like if she does so without my consent I might bite her. Oh God. What the hell did I just do?

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you all had to hear that. That is not me... he... people like that."

She nods silently and slides into the window seat, then pats the aisle seat next to her with her purple-gloved hand. I plop myself down and stare ahead just like the guy had moments before. I'm afraid to try and explain or say anything at all, so I take the yuppie way out and shove my iPod buds into my ears. And... and I swear I'm not making any of this up... my sister's voice suddenly fills my head.

I met a man without a dollar to his name
Who has no traits of any value but his smile...

I grit my teeth. I will not lose it any more than I already have, I will not lose it any more than I already have.

but he said mission accomplished

"There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship."

- George W. Bush, 10 January 2007



Um...

...

...


George. Honey. I don't know how to put this.






Somewhere deep in space, the universe is now collapsing into a gigantic black hole of irony.

thicker than water, but not champagne

Lordy.

I promised I wouldn't write about my family on my blog. But this weekend was apparently designed to test that promise in every way possible.

Look, it's not my fault if most of my extended family is wonderful and the remaining people are completely, one hundred percent without the ability to function in society.

The people who are wonderful are really, really wonderful. The kind of wonderful that family members only occasionally achieve, when you would want to be their friends even if you weren't related to them. They are the ones who are goofy and warm and start conversations with "So this one time in Kuala Lampur, when were on top of an elephant..." and not, for example, with pursed lips, raised eyebrows and "Wow, EJ, that sure is an interesting dress. Be careful you don't fall out there."

THANKS. Because when I've been on a plane for the last ten hours, I LOVE being greeted by you telling me that I look like a slut.

Flying to a family wedding this weekend, my flights were ridiculously messed up, and I enjoyed an unscheduled three-hour visit to the airport in Columbia, South Carolina that caused me to miss the actual ceremony. My mother's cousin picked me up at the airport, I threw on my ("interesting") dress and we booked it to the church in time for photos, the first and hopefully only time I will be in pictures for a wedding that I did not actually attend.

I went into this weekend prepared to judge. I mean, it was a wedding that basically joined their frat and their sorority. There were something like ten attendants on each side. I hadn't seen that relative getting married in five years, and the wedding was in Wichita, which, while it is home to both excellent steaks and Kirstie Alley, is not known for being a huge party town. Once we got to the reception, my judgmental predictions seemed to be coming true. Guests were drinking Bud from plastic cups and the DJ interrupted a Hootie and the Blowfish song to announce "John Smith, please come to the bar, John Smith, your shots are ready."

I also went in with clear expectations about how some of my family members would treat me. As my mother put it when we dissected the weekend later on, "Sweetie, it's not that they don't like you, it's that you represent all the choices that they prayed their children wouldn't make." You'd think I'd be offended by this, but it's so true. I don't want to get married and have lots of babies, I don't live a 15-minute drive from home and I vastly prefer the easy delights of indie pop to the coolie labor of Gilbert and Sullivan. My entire life, I've played the role of the loud bitchy single city girl who has an opinion about everything. They'll never see me as anything else and I can never make them accept me or care about me because they're too busy judging my every move.

But something strange happened this weekend. For the first time ever at a family gathering, I decided I didn't give a crap what those people thought of me. Somewhere in between the bacon-wrapped cheese cubes and my aunt wandering around with her fingers stuck in her ears to display her displeasure with the music, I stopped caring and I stopped judging my surroundings. Okay, so, if I ever get married, I strongly doubt that my husband and our bridal party will enter the reception to the dulcet strains of "In da Club," but the couple seemed to like it. So who gives a crap? What, only the people behaving like petulant children in the throes of a temper tantrum? Well, I'm not going to be associated with them, that's for damn sure.

The wedding definitely took a turn for the ridiculous after that epiphany, made all the more so because my mother was at my side about eighty percent of the time. It's one thing to acknowledge to your mother that you are human, that yes, you smoke and drink and make out with inappropriate people. I've only become comfortable admitting these activities in the last year. It's entirely another to perform them all in front of her, particularly when she is in the kitchen of the hotel room holding the afterparty, watching your uncle shotgun a Bud Lite at 4 AM. After the events of that night, there are not a whole lot of boundaries left between my mom and me. Not that there were a whole ton before.

Looking back on the wedding and the entire weekend, I feel like a line has been crossed. In some ways, I regret that my mom has now witnessed me at my most ridiculous behavior. Just as it's nice to idealize your parents as infalliable creatures, it's nice to have them think of you as somehow being untainted by life. Plus, fair or not, it's different for daughters than for sons. My male cousins have no problem palling around with their dads, and I'm pretty sure that they aren't writing diary entries or blog posts about their conflicting emotions over substance consumption in front of former authority figures.

But the thing is, she doesn't care. Most of my family members didn't care that I was out all night partying. They were just glad that I eventually made it there and wound up having a good time. Empahsis on there-- most of the snotty people in the family were too busy being snotty to even both to attend the event, and the ones that did stayed only enough to criticize everything from the flowers to the band. I may have been a silly drunk, but I was a silly drunk there celebrating the choices of a family member, which is more than can be said for the people riding their high horses into bed at 9:30. It's certainly more than they've ever done for me.

They chose to remain on the fringes the entire weekend, looking on as the rest of us hugged and gossiped and talked travel and food and wine and film. They were concerned with "propriety" and "decency" and "appropriateness," but I can't resent them because they're too lonely and angry to resent. I finally stopped taking it personally.

No, I didn't like it when one of them marched into the kitchen and acidly announced "So, EJ, I hear you had a good time with one of the groomsmen last night," in front of the entire extended family at brunch the next day. But instead of getting mad and stumbling for words , I smiled a Cheshire Cat smile and beatifically answered "It was a terrific party, thanks for including me," turned on my heel and walked away. And got some Advil. Because Lordy, did I need it.

merry and bright

Some of my favorite photos from Christmas Up North. Comments and more shots over in Flickr.

they buy stonehouse bread! celebrities-- they're just like us!

There was only one other family in the bakery when we entered. A rotund man with orange hair, a young boy who was maybe twelve or so, and a grandma type. The man looked very familiar, but in that way that people start to look familiar Up North, like maybe he sold you bait over the summer or he teaches organ at Interlochen and didn't that girl Megan take private lessons with him when you were thirteen? There are not a lot of strangers here, especially when in the dead period between Christmas and the New Year and the ski resorts are all empty because it's forty degrees and dry as a bone out.

We sampled the pesto hummus on the counter and instantly decided we had to have it. I followed Jen as she picked a container from the fridge next to the family. I definitely knew the man from somewhere...

Wait a minute. No, it couldn't be. Why the hell would he be in a bakery in small-town Northern Michigan? Shouldn't he be braising pigs' trotters in Puglia or something?

I not-at-all-subtly peeked down for the telltale sign. Sure enough.

Orange Crocs.

But no, it had to be a coincidence. No one remotely famous ever comes to this part of the world. I mean sure, Tom Selleck and Tim Allen have cabins here, but that's because we have lots of woods full of things to shoot and long straight roads where you can drive all coked out and never get pulled over. And sure, Jeff Daniels lives in Michigan because he hates Hollywood and loves the Midwest and a fun part of growing up where I did is selling him Girl Scout cookies. And yes, Demi Moore sent her daughter to the Academy for a hot minute, but apart from her one very random visit to the Interlochen Public Library, it's not like she ever spent a lot of time hanging out with the locals, snackin on pesto hummus and calling the baker by her first name. Celebrities don't do that. They're not normal. They hang out in their celebrity pod worlds, where everyone is very beautiful and very short and is so over being famous, like, it's such a pain. Except for Chris Noth, who was unexpectedly tall and has lost the weight and was in a very loud conversation about a ski trip in January in the middle of 41st Street. But I digress.

By this time Jen had noticed too. She probably couldn't help but, since I was at this point flat staring. I wasn't gawking, I was just really, really confused.

Back at the counter she stage-whispered "Is that...?" in a manner that was the exact opposite of smooth. We were still maybe seven feet from the family, and I'm sure they heard exactly what was transpiring. "I'm not... no, can't be..." I muttered back.

Suddenly the son was at my elbow to pay the cashier and I noticed that his t-shirt was from a Clinton Foundation event. And, because I have been in Washington for entirely too long, that's when I finally realized it really was him. Because no twelve-year-old in Leland, Michigan would be wearing a Clinton Foundation t-shirt unless he was the son of someone famous.

"Merry Whatever and Happy Whatsitsdoodle, Mary!" The orange man suddenly joined his son at the counter and ushered his family out as he waved to the cook and her assistant. As soon as the door shut behind them Jen and I gawped first at one another, then at Mary.

"So, um..." Jen asked, "was that who I think it was?"

"Oh yah, sure!" Mary replied. "He only uses our bread when he's baking here and does all sortsa charity events in the area. He's very particular about using local ingredients, dontcha know?"

Our mom looked at us as if we were nuts. "You girls could watch Food Network all day!" she said. "How did you not know that Mario Batali lives up here?"

Um, because we're normal and assume that all famous people live in New York and LA?

But whatever. That totally made up for not getting reservations at Babbo earlier this month. And Internet, aren't you proud that I didn't rush after him and ask him if Raechel Ray is that annoying in person? Because I really kind of wanted to.

bow people

Bow People are the people who place coordinating bows atop their Christmas presents. The parents make sure that presents from Santa and presents from family are never wrapped in the same packages, lest inquiring young minds put two and two together and innocence is forever ruined. Bow People beget offspring who don coordinating velvet hairbows and thick white tights, then sing carols to neighbors in high piping voices, knowing full well that their sweetness will get them invited in for some Christmas cookies.

Bow People never scream at the hapless, lying sacks of incompetence that cancel their connecting flight from Chicago to Traverse City for the second major holiday in one month and then lose their luggage. Bow People would certainly never demand to speak with a manager and upon being told that a manager was not available, a Bow Person would never say "Then I just hope you have a shitty Christmas, too."

We are not Bow People, we Hornes. But I did feel badly about the "shitty Christmas" remark later. Much later, after I finally received my suitcase at 7:00 on Christmas Eve.

When my sister and I were growing up, the Hornes were Bow People. We began making cookies around the first week of December, generally the same period when we would select and decorate our Christmas tree. Boxes upon boxes of red and green decorations would emerge from the basement, and knitted dollies and our mother's collection of Santas would parade across every unsuspecting surface in the family room. Mom would make pepper cookies, a raisin-stuffed concoction that no one else in our immediate family would even taste, and ship them to her siblings across the country. On Christmas Eve we attended services at our church, raising our candles on the third verse of Silent Night when you sing in German. Stille Nacht, hilege Nacht... I still know the alto part to pretty much every Christmas carol. I don't remember the last time I sang melody in church. Mother wouldn't stand for it.

The energy that other families conserve for Halloween, Easter, Veterans Day, whatever, was for the Hornes concentrated in December, as if we were trying to cash in our Martha Stewart points before years end. It is no coincidence that I grew up in a house that did not give a hoot for New Year's Eve. By December 31st, our parents were so spent from all the comfort and joy that they were left with the ability to do little more than pass out on the sofa whilst watching Law and Order reruns.

We all knew this year would be different. Dad's surgery was successful but the spectre of it has cast a pall over our holiday preparation, or lack thereof. It is difficult to coordinate presents for a litany of relatives from a hotel room in Rochester and the nurses in the ICU frown upon baking in hospital facilities. Jen managed to do a lot of our decorating after she finished her finals, but we outsourced our Christmas tree to the neighbors.

On Christmas morning my aunt (and nemesis) called to say hello and Merry Christmas, but really to brag about her family. To her, holidays are a competitive sport that is meant to be surmounted and conquered, not enjoyed. It was about 11:30 when she called, and I could imagine the horror in her voice when Mom informed her that 1) we were just now cooking Christmas breakfast and that 2) Christmas breakfast consisted in part of French toast soaked in Bailey's. We are Bailey's people, we Hornes.

I've been wearing the same pajamas since that breakfast. For the first time in my life, we didn't go to church on Christmas Eve. It didn't make sense to, since Dad needs to constantly both stretch and nap and also since we ate our Christmas dinner of mustard crusted tenderloin around, oh, 10:30. We've spent the last two days opening obscene amounts of presents while saying "you guys, we were going to take it easy this year," eating lefse and cornbread dressing and entire cloves of roasted garlic. We've slept in and watched Christmas classics like Scrooged and Elf and the entire second season of The Office. We've consumed an embarassingly large amount of wine, made even more embarassing that two of our family are technically not allowed to drink, one on the orders of the head of cardiology at the Mayo Clinic and one because she's nineteen. Granted, the cabin is gorgeously decorated tea candles and garlands and stuffed mooses wearing sweaters with fir trees on them. But we have not gone a-wassaling all week. In fact, except for a hideous trip to the Traverse City Mall I haven't left the cabin since I've been here, except to walk outside on Christmas Eve and marvel at the stars. Jen somehow knew every half the constellations and pointed out Cassiopeia, Orion's Belt, the North Star, the Big Dipper. Okay, the Big Dipper I could find myself. If it had been any clearer, I could have plucked it out of the sky and used it to scoop a snowball off the ground.

When that judgmental tone crept into my aunt's voice when she heard how we'd spent out Christmas-- being lazy, materialistic gluttons stewing in each other's company-- our mother silenced her with a quick "Well, we're doing Christmas with four adults. Four adults who all live in different states and never see each other and just went through a fairly major crisis. And we can do whatever we want for the holiday."

I can't believe how happy not being a Bow Family is making us.

of horndogs and poltergeists

It's Christmas, I just paid my AmEx bill, and I'm broke. So imagine my consternation when I open my DirecTV bill and found it to be almost three times the usual amount.

"But why?" I wonder. "DirecTV doesn't pay-per-view The Office or reruns of Scrubs on Comedy Central, and that's pretty much all I watch these days."

Further inspecting the statement, I find an impressive listing of charges labeled "Adult PPV" for the weekend I was in New York. This means one of two things:

1) The ghost who lives in my apartment took advantage of my absence and had a little Me Time (more on this ghost later)
2) My very polite and lovely Republican Hill staffer upstairs neighbor, with whom I share the account, had herself a little Me Time and I would have to ask her about the charges.

You know, there is just no good way to say "Hey, did you watch a lot of porn between December 9th and the 12th? Because if so, you owe me $104.79."

Of course I did ask (cringing all the way; I emailed her, since email is the coward's phone), and it turns out she had some "friends" staying at her house that weekend who spent their vacation in Washington watching pay-per-view porn instead of visiting the National Gallery or eating at Old Ebbit. In any case, she's paying me back, so that's nice.

But NOW I feel like I can't ask her what I really want to know, which is: "have you also heard that freaky tapping in the walls when you turn off your light in your bedroom? Because I'm seriously pretty sure I have a ghost, and would you maybe want to go in on an exorcist?" Seriously, I was up until 2 AM last night and the tapping. Will. Not. Stop. Every time I start to fall asleep I hear another *tap,* and it sends a jolt of adrenaline through my veins so potent it might as well be speed steeped in espresso.

But I feel like porn and ghosts all in one week would be too much for someone as sweet as she is, and she would start telling stories about that crazy girl who lives in the basement and spends her weekends performing seances and accusing her innocent neighbors of being perverts.

I mean, I'm curious about the ghost thing. But not curious enough that I'll risk coming off as some crazy lady. Y'know, because living alone with a cat never gives that impression.

don we now our gay apparel

I haven't felt much like blogging lately. I am really going through some major personal issues right now. You know, I just feel like I need to take some time to really work on myself, like, delve or whatever. To do some really heavy soul-searching and deeply ponder eternal questions, like "what does it all mean," and "what am I doing with my life," and "how do I look in this enormous green cardigan with jingle bell buttons and candy cane trim?"



The answer to the latter of course being "ridiculous."

I clearly have major problems. Because people who DON'T have major problems DON'T go to Buffalo Billiards on a Saturday night dressed as Cindy Lou Who.

My apologies to my poor friends who are also implicated in Donning Gay Apparel in this photo. But really, after our (very loud) public conversation about the relative merits of Mariah Carey Christmas albums versus Amy Grant Christmas albums, we pretty much gave up all hope of ever being allowed to sit at the cool kids' table in the cafeteria again.

praise be

My Dad is out of surgery. He's going into recovery in the next half hour.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm not sure exactly who I'm thanking, but thanks seem to be in order.

Am still holding my breath for recovery, but feel like the noose has been slightly loosened. And oh, does drawing that breath feel good.

Oh crap. Just realized I took Nyquil instead of Dayquil with my chicken noodle soup.

This is going to be a long afternoon.

and when i asked her what classic DVDs she wanted for Christmas, she thought for a moment and answered "Bring It On"

First, we have to get some business out of the way. You heard it here first: Spring Awakening is the next Rent. Actually, strike that, because it's inventive and raw in a way that Rent never was, or was before it had all its authenticity sucked out of it by commercialization.

"But EJ," you whine, "musical theater is so lame and unrealistic. It's gay men and Barbie doll women standing with their legs apart singing covers of ABBA songs out into space." "No friend," I respond, "this is not that kind of musical theater. This is the kind of show where the powerhouse eleventh-hour number is a song called 'Totally Fucked.' If you at all enjoy theater and/or rock music, click here. You can thank me later."

There. Dorky musical theater business accomplished. But seriously, this show was amazing.

Mom and I had a great weekend. She completely shocked me by enthusiastically spending Saturday poking around the Lower East Side and Mott Street with me, eating crepes and spending too much money on shoes. She was also kind enough to only gently laugh at me when we stopped by the Essex Street Market and I practically went into fits of excitement at a spice shop. But! Lavender-infused sea salt! It's like heaven bottled in a test tube!

Now, individually, my mother and I befriend gay men. Together, we make an unstoppable Fag Hag Delta Force Team. Once our (fabulous) waiter on at Del Frisco's on Friday night heard we were going to Spring Awakening, he told us to hit the bar next door after the show. We'd spent the entire meal chatting with him and finding out his life story, and once my mother learned that he had trained at another Big Ten school she talked his ear off trying to figure out what young actors they knew in common. I expect that he sent us to this bar knowing that friends of his would be there, and that later they could trade stories about that really funny woman from the Midwest who talks with her hands and has a slightly alarming mental Rolodex of New York-based chorus boys.

Now, based on what I've told you about my mother so far on this blog, would you at ALL be surprised to know that the night ended with her doing a shot of SoCo and lime with a musical theater professor and the advertising director of Ralph Lauren? Yeah, I didn't think so.

This is all apart from the advertising director of Ralph Lauren telling me he liked my coat (!!!), or when we saw A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday, or when we followed it with cocoa and wild boar papardelle at Fiamma in SoHo. And oh heavens me, I haven't even told you about how I walked smack into Chris Noth outside the theater.

Like I said, it was a great weekend.

consumerrific

I'm heading to New York this weekend with my mother, who has already warned me that we will spend a significant amount of our time there shopping. Not that I don't like this particular activity, but much of it will be shopping for Christmas and/or wedding presents for extended family members. It boggles my mind why someone who has Internet access, a bottle of wine and a corkscrew simply does not do all of their holiday shopping online from the comfort of their couch, preferably while watching The Office on DVD and nursing naughty fantasies involving John Krasinski, copier toner and Dwight's bouncy ball chair. But I've said too much.

I enjoy shopping and I enjoy New York, but the twain should not meet. I've nearly been killed by the hideous sea of humanity that floods into Manhattan on a Saturday. The worst was two years ago when Mom insisted that we get our picture taken at the Christmas tree outside Rockefeller Center. We wound up getting caught between the crowds exiting the 3:00 Radio City Christmas Spectacular and the crowd entering for the 6:00 show. It took a half hour to walk one block. The evacuation of Saigon was more efficient. And in the end the only people we could find to take our picture were some very short Japanese tourists, resulting in a photo angled so low that both Mom and I appear as if our faces are being eaten by our own chins.

The stores are better than the streets, if for no other reason than I refuse to enter an H&M anywhere on the island of Manhattan and therefore can avoid some of the more obnoxious visiting New Jerseyites, but not much better. I love to prowl for uniquely New York cute boutiques or neighborhood marketplaces, but that is because I live in an urban center surrounded by wealthy suburbs and can stop by places like Anthropologie after work. My mother, on the other hand, lives in Indiana and northern Michigan and therefore visits nice chain stores in New York with the kind of gusto usually shown by furloughed sailors at a whorehouse. Again, let me state-- I enjoy Coach, Club Monaco and the Container Store. It's just that I enjoy them so much that I go to them here, and would rather spend my vacation time hunting for vintage slips at a mothbally store on the Lower East Side.

However, we will have to make at least one pilgrimage to Rockefeller Center to visit the NBC Studio Store. It really is a fantastic place, especially the back room where they keep knickknacks and souvenirs from long-canceled NBC shows. I've purchased no fewer than two Saved By The Bell t-shirts there. The big reason, however, is to fulfill my mother's and my December-in-New-York tradition for the third year in a row: to see if the NBC Studio Store is finally making a Law and Order Christmas tree ornament. It's become our version of seeing The Nutcracker.

cawhfee tawhk

"Okay, I'm at the cawhfee shawhp.. what should I get?"

I look behind me at the teeny brunette in the black Northface jacket who has just barged into line behind me, yammering on her silver Razr all the while.

You have got to be kidding me.

"No, I'm eating breakfast. So, what should I order? Like, am I hungry or should I just get a drink?"

I am instantly reminded of Michael Caine's best line in Austin Powers in Goldmember: "There are only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch." Swap "Dutch" for "really Jappy girls from Nassau County" and I might have found my epitaph.

"So, like, should I get fruit? Or like, tea? Or is cawhfee better than tea?"

Oh, she is so lucky she is not in front of me. Seriously, I would yank her Japanese thermal-straightened hair right out of her head and stuff it down her throat just so I wouldn't have to hear that whiny, nasal voice.

"So like, what I should I get? I'm gonna be, like, late for class."

It's as I feared-- she's a college student. She could pass for a visiting high school student who is scared and overwhelmed and needs a little hand-holding, but no, she is a college student calling someone and asking them if she is hungry and if so, what she should eat. I weep for the youth of America.

"Are frappucinos the fatty ones? Am I getting fat?"

If she takes a cameraphone picture of herself and sends it to this person for pre-drink-order analysis, so help me, I am not responsible for my actions.

"Okay, so, like, I gotta go, cuz I'm like in the shawhp and like, I'm gonna order soon."

Maybe she's some kind of sex worker in a dom-sub situation, Ã la Maggie Gyllenhaal's character in Secretary. Is it wrong that I'm so much more okay with that than with a college student who has to call her mother from several states away for permission to order a latte?