Let me ask you something

Wouldn't have it have been smarter to just stop after, say, 3? Maybe 2? I mean, call me pragmatic or, at worst, skeptical of the odds, but is this one of those situations where you just keep at it until you get it right?

Evidently the Discovery Health Channel will answer that question:

Imagine a family with six children under 14 living in an 1100 sq. ft. house, with one bathroom. Now imagine that all 6 of those children are autistic.

Also, EPIC FAIL at house selection.

Just Saying: Don't Tase Me, Bro

This morning I decided to check in with NY1 (news ALL MORNING!) just in time to hear Pat Kiernan utter this interesting phrase:

"The NYPD is set to receive a refresher course on taser usage..."

Well, that's probably a good thing, I thought. The less wayward taser activity, the better.

"...as well as dealing with the emotionally disturbed."

Huh. I hope those two things aren't related.

As it turns out, they are.

Let's have a show of hands at who's terribly surprised that New York's finest are out there zapping The Crazy. How about there in the back? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Corporate rock for the idiot's soul

I am sitting on the subway, pretending that I'm not crying because of a Lifehouse song. I just, um, have something caught in my eye. Something called desperate self-loathing.

I am damaged at best
Like you've already figured out
I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart that's still beating

No doubt some songwriting think tank was handsomely compensated to conjure that up, and yet it still manages to so perfectly encapsulate how I've felt for the last 6 months, 2 years, decade or so.

I'm hanging on for one more day
Just to see what you throw my way

OK, really, Lifehouse? Low blow. So you're really leaving me no choice but to furtively wipe away tears that at least have the courtesy to slide down the far side of my cheek so as not to be totally obvious. I really abhor public displays of blubbering, and the D train is the last place for emotional spectacles.

Occasionally, as I explained to Tom this afternoon, I have a bolt of clarity over what a wretched creature I can be. It's like all my mistakes and bad judgement and normally manageable regret gets crystallized all at once into a giant monolith of Flawed Character that I can only gaze at in terrified awe, like Kubrick's barely evolved primates. It seems so inescapable and overwhelming. I have dug myself such a hole, and sometimes everything seems lost.

"Why hate yourself?" Tom advised. "What not hate something more deserving - like Dickface."

I don't want to hate Dickface. I don't want to feel anything about him at all. As a matter of fact, I don't want to feel at all period. I'm so tired of this. I hate my own weakness and lack of self-control, and I hate that I'm reduced to something as pathetic as complaining to Tom about my bad mood. There's no way to win, really. Survey says: you're a loser. Number One answer.

I left the Stereophonics show early tonight, even despite the novelty of Adam Zindani of Casino on rhythm guitar and backing vocals. I had issues with the set list, it was hot and crowded, and my back was unhappy with 3 hours of standing. I tried to enjoy myself, but it was not to be. The monolith looms large, and there is no ignoring it at the moment.

I blame you, Lifehouse.

Summer of '62

I haven't watched a episodic TV series in a long time, probably not since college. In a practical sense, there's no way I can commit to be available at a particular time every week to watch something. And much to the horror of most everyone I know, I refuse to get TiVo. It seems pretty pointless since the Discovery Health Channel reruns episodes of Untold Stories of the ER often enough to ensure that I catch every adorable second of Dr. Dorian's screen time (call me, Armand!) Plus given that almost every series goes immediately to DVD upon the completion of each season, I can always Netflix anything that really warrants my attention.

On the other hand, I don't take commitement to a series at all lightly - when I'm a fan, I'm a fan all the way. I keep scrapbooks, I go to conventions, I made a small shrine in my closet and pray to it. And I can hardly bear the disappointment of getting all emotionally invested in a show, only to have it go to complete shit or get cancelled before its prime for lack of viewership. Which seems to happen more and more frequently these days than in the tender, golden years of my youth.

So while I was intially intrigued by the concept when Mad Men premiered last year, I kept my distance. After all, could I really trust that AMC would see this thing through? Plus I had no great love for The Sopranos, and Matthew Weiner's pedigree was the show's biggest selling point at that time. Oh, what a difference a year makes. Your marketing dollars were well-spent, AMC, because I am 110% on board for the 2nd season. Although now I have to be somewhere every Sunday at 10PM. Dammit.

Reasons I have fully embraced Mad Men

• According to the production team, everything involved with the set design is authentic pieces from the early 60s - the costumes, the cars, the furniture are all genuine, as opposed to reproductions meant to look period. Bravo, set designer - many awards may you win, and Chris may you someday hire.

• The behavior of the characters is also firmly rooted in the social mores of the early 60s, including the not-so-PC bits that might have otherwise been glossed over in favor of not offending the masses. There is constant drinking ("Shall we drink before or after the meeting? Why not both?") and smoking, openly rampant sexism and slightly more subtle racism. It's bold, sure, but it's also refreshing to see the time period portrayed for what it actually was - good and bad - as opposed to some watered-down interpretation to make the everyone who was there feel better about themselves.

• Jon Hamm is my ideal male specimen made flesh - he is big and dark and often depicted making the sex. And I can see this on a regular weekly basis? Excellent.

• Much like The X-Files, my previous long-standing TV obsession, it's the sort of show that rewards you for hanging in there from the beginning (or, in my case, watching the entire 1st season on my iPod before picking up the 2nd) since the backstory is revealed in layers. I remember getting seriously irritated with Alias when, in an attempt to attract a bigger audience, the writers decided to close the 1st season by burning down the entire original premise of the show and starting over. I call bullshit on you, J.J. Abrams. Chris Carter was having none of that - if you started watching The X-Files in the middle of the 4th season, then you sir were just fucked and that's how it was. Man, I miss the good old days when we all had 60-minute attention spans.

• It makes me yearn for a time when I could get away with wearing fabulous tailored dresses and roundtoe heels on a regular basis. Something about the strict social code of dressing up is very appealing. One does tire of one's fashionably distressed jeans being suitable for almost every occasion, after all.

• I did mention Jon Hamm is sexing a lot of laydeez, yeah?

Don't need no education

James and I were having fancy cheese at Otto on Sunday night when I realized that I'd forgotten a lot of things that happened in college. For one thing, I'd somehow forgotten that James had also been an RA until we started trading ridiculous on-duty stories. Even though both of us have been certified Grown-Up People for some time now (haha - no, really, we have jobs and debt and stuff), it's a little bizarre we manage to find bottomless nostalgia in talking about When We Were In School. You know, back in the day. It feels like another life. A life where I wore messenger bags exclusively and had an unfortunate taste for Smirnoff Ice.

At some point in the last few years, I stopped being on academic time. (I also gave up Smirnoff Ice, but somehow that seems less sad.) For most of my life, this would be the time of year when I would actually start to pine for school. Even for a long time after I graduated, I would still find myself conditioned to think of late summer as time to get ready for...something. Then I realized that after Labor Day I still had to go to the same job, sit at the same desk and order the same chopped liver sandwich for Steve. Oh, and make my student loan payment on the 8th of the month. Fantastic.

I was really good at school. And I mean that in the way that some people are really good at video games - all I cared about was getting the High Score on my transcript, getting to the next level, killing the big boss with my super-combo move. OK, maybe not the last part. But when I think about it now, I wasn't terribly concerned with, you know, learning anything. I'm sure I absorbed a few things here and there - I will spell you under the table, for example, thanks to reading about the exploits of Flavia and company in 11th grade Latin. It was like The Hills of ancient Rome, only with more conjugating of the verbs. ANYWAY. Much like how mastering Gears of War doesn't have much residual benefit to your everyday life, my gift for deftly navigating the hurdles of secondary education didn't actually make me a more knowledgeable person now that my value as a human is more than my cumulative GPA.

By the time I got to college, manipulation of the academic system was almost second nature. I knew exactly the bare minimum of effort I needed to put in and still satisfy my need to overachieve. I seemed to have an eerie ability to churn out term papers in the 11th hour - I would almost go into some sort of trance (no, seriously) and spew words and hope that I was making a rational point somewhere in there. It was a game of chicken to see what I could get away with, how much I could coast on my innate intelligence.

I remember being handed back an essay I had written for my 20th Century American Literature class - an essay I had finished approximately 2 hours before it was due on two books I had not actually read, only skimmed for quotes. Oh, and it was about 3 pages shy of the minimum required length. I got an A. That was the moment at which I realized that I was effectively minoring in Complete Bullshit. As a matter of fact, if bullshit had been a real choice of major (it probably was at Gallatin), it would have prepared me much more effectively for my chosen line of work.

After I got home from dinner with James, I had a text exchange with the tour manager for one of my bands.

"It's good to be off the road," he said. "But I'm not exactly looking forward to going back to school."

Compared to spending weeks in a van with a bunch of hungover, unshowered dudes?

College - it really is much better in retrospect.

Surprise! You've won a raging anxiety disorder!

The basic premise of "Scare Tactics" is a little absurb, at least from the viewer's perspective. Is it really that entertaining to watch people be freaked out by completely fake and often beyond stupid scenarios? I guess there's some smug satisfaction in thinking that YOU wouldn't completely lose your shit if confronted by a "failed genetic experiment" - i.e. a midget in a rat costume.

However leave it to Japan to pervert the entire concept by taking it way above and beyond limits of reasonable restraint. Now there probably isn't anyone among us who probably wouldn't react the same way as this poor woman if two guys ON FIRE came running toward you after carjacking someone and firing weapons in your general direction.



She doesn't seem terribly relieved when she finds out that the whole thing was staged as an exploitation of her emotional response to lack of PERSONAL SAFETY. All in good fun, right? She even gets a t-shirt...and probably agoraphobia for the rest of her life.

Just Saying: Choking hazard

On the site where I sometimes shop for bras (because I need a special kind of assistance from the UK), they sell this, which both frightens and perplexes me:












Seriously?

I ask much of my bras, yes, but light bondage isn't usually part of the deal.

The rest of me

I had not seen Marta, the woman I prefer to do my waxing, in several months - only because she works the evening shift on weeknights, and I had been making weekend appointments for the sake of convenience. She does an especially...shall we say thorough job, which is much appreciated in the summer months.

"You lose weight," she commented during my session last week. "Leg up now. Good girl."

People have been commenting on my weight loss a lot recently, although always in the same flat, objective way that you state obvious facts. I suppose there's the inherent implication that I look good or better than I did 15 or 20 lbs ago. "Society says it's a good thing anyway," shrugged the guy who had recently dumped me, after mentioning that I definitely looked thinner. He would go on to make the same observation two more times over the course of our attempt to be just-friends one Sunday afternoon. I realized that being thinner did nothing to make me more or less attractive to him, so why did it matter?

That's the disconcerting thing about getting attention for this particular weight loss - I can't really take any credit for it, so I feel somewhat disingenuous in accepting (implied) praise. You know how there's a running excuse among weight-challenged that they have "a thyroid problem"? Well, I really do. As in, I no longer have one. My metabolism had been on the skids for years, but now I take a pill every morning which kick starts it to a normal level my crippled thyroid could never achieve. Oh, and I can't drink anymore - which was a mostly unanticipated side effect of The Cancer. Sort of a blessing in disguise. Possibly as a side effect of the medication or my months of medically imposed abstinence, I currently have the tolerance of a 4th-grader. The last time I tried to have two glasses of wine, I felt like I might need a good old-fashioned coma to shake it off. So between the sobriety and the synthetically-boosted ability to burn calories, I have managed to drop a pants size through no real effort on my part.

I have never been what could be construed as "skinny," nor am I now. I was probably never even what's commonly thought of as "fat," even at my heaviest weight in high school. As a woman, being tall simply puts you squarely in the general category of "large" where your weight doesn't really have as much impact. "Skinny" implies that I could somehow also be "small," and there was no way of doing that. I recently told one of the guys in my office what I weigh, and he looked at me incredulously. "There's no way," he announced. "That's 50lbs more than me." I pointed out that I'm also about 4 inches taller than he is.

When I was 12, we took a class trip to Ellis Island. I chose this particular opportunity to strap one of my mother's belts around my poochy lower stomach so I could tuck my shirt in - something I never did for shame of not having the flat belly my friends did. I remember several people complimenting me during the day that I looked skinny - the highest praise you can bestow on a pre-teen, natch. Even though I got to be desperately uncomfortable over the course of the day, it still never dawned on me what a ridiculous fucking nitwit I was for doing potential damage to all of the cargo one carries in one's mid-section. And let me tell you - crushing your abdomen under the unforgiving restriction of a gingham belt is not without consequences. I had what we charmingly referred to in my family as "the trots" for two days following this little adventure in body sculpting. Sometimes I wonder if I managed to rearrange my organs - Is my spleen warped? Is one of my ovaries stuck in my gall bladder? Certainly people have done more self-destructive things in the name of vanity, but this has always been my pinnacle of lunacy for the sake of appearances.

After college I made a conscious effort to eat better - I kicked my Wendy's habit, embraced portion control and learned that low-fat dairy products are in no way offensive. As a result my weight leveled off, and while I was certainly still Large by virtue of my height, my horizontal size had stablized in the "average" range - or so says my MySpace profile, anyway. I feel no need apologize for being a size 14 in jeans anymore than being a size 11 in shoes. None of the resolutions I've made in the last several years have involved my weight - lately, they're more along the lines of "buy new cookware" or "stop saying 'retarded'."

Except now I have even casual acquantainces mentioning how thin I am, and I can't help but thinking, "How fat did you think I was before?"

The downside of being the thinnest I have in my adult life is feeling a strange paranoia about gaining the weight back. It snuck off when I wasn't paying attention, so what's to prevent it from making a return while I'm less than vigilant? I'm being forced to think about something that I had happily designated a Non-Issue.

I still don't tuck my shirts in, by the way. Some things never change.

29 Dimensions of Evil

I've decided that I'm not comfortable with eHarmony.

My primary reason for this is the obvious – people that require a 40-question survey to find someone suitable for a relationship don’t need to be validated or encouraged to breed. These are the same singles that shake their fist at the sky with one hand while the other clutches a dog-eared copy of The Rules. They just can’t understand why it’s not working out. After all, they know exactly what they want - right down to the percentage of time their ideal partner ought to spend thinking about lawn fertilizer.

Enter Dr. Neil Clark Warren (and do we really believe he's a doctor in any legitimate sense?) acting as the shepherd of lonely hearts everywhere, guiding the lost and lovelorn into satisfying, nurturing, heterosexual relationships (read: marriage - living in sin is not eHarmonious). But live and let live, right? What do I care if a website wants to get some aggressively rigid people hitched? As long as they pair up with each other, fewer of them are left to intermingle with the general population.

On the other hand, more and more I notice how subversive the eHarmony message really is. That’s right - I'm on to you, Dr. Neil, and your propaganda machine. Something about all the shiny, happy, racially matched couples in the commercials is starting to look very Orwellian, is it not? Big Brother wants you to get on with the business of socially-approved mating and populating The Nation. Your life is empty and meaningless - find your pre-screened, genetically suitable mate today! Work is good! Resistance is futile! Soylent green is people! Pretty soon we're all going to be assigned numbers, sent off to gender-specific work camps and living under the rule of androids. So maybe that's a little dramatic, but it's a slippery slope - especially given that we live in a time when our rights to bring shampoo aboard an airplane are under attack.

It's also worth pointing out that the whole foundation of the eHarmony process is false: "We match you based on 29 dimensions of compatibility." Let's face it - most people don't have 29 dimensions. None of the people I know have more than two or three. If you do have 29 dimensions, then it's a probably safe bet you also yell obscenities at strangers and wear your underwear outside your clothes. Stay right there - the bus for the group home will be picking you up shortly. Try this experiment: find someone in your general vicinity and ask him to tell you 29 things about himself. I guarantee that by the time he reaches number 7, he's saying things like "I like beer pong" or "I own the Foreigner box set."

Have we all gotten so jaded as a culture that we no longer trust ourselves to decide whether or not we get along with someone well enough to engage in a relationship? Has the day come when we need to have a computer program determine this for us, based on whether we like “slapstick” or “gentle” humor? There is no option to select “dead baby jokes” which eliminates most of the people that I personally would find compatible.

The other premise of their “matching system” is also laughable. According to Dr. Neil, we can only find The Right Person by showing them "who you really are at the very deepest level." This makes me think of the moment in the V miniseries when the aliens peeled their skin off, revealing who they really were at the very deepest level: EVIL LIZARDS FROM SPACE! Think about the last few people you even remotely considered seeing naked - did you really want to know who they were at the Very. Deepest. Level? Probably not. For that very reason, most of us have enough common sense to keep our crazy to ourselves. Quite frankly, I don't even want to know who I really am at the very deepest level - I'm sure it's a cold, dark pit of dysfunction. Let's not even think about it. For that reason, I'm keeping my reptilian sheen under wraps, thank you very much. Is it really the best idea to wear your damage on your sleeve for the sake of dating efficiency? That’s like being introduced to someone and saying, "Hi, I'm Terry, and I have deep-seated issues with abandonment and an unresolved attachment to my mother. Are you free this weekend?" Trust me when I say that your deepest levels need to be kept away from the masses whenever possible if we’re all expected to deal with each other on a daily basis.

Despite the assertions of the eHarmony ads, there is not “someone who’s been waiting for you since the day you were born.” Besides being more than a little creepy, it promotes the false notion that two people can be snapped together like Legos, assuming that their tic marks in a survey match up. That being the case, I'd even like to start a campaign here and now to champion the superficial relationship. One which might not lead to marriage! One based on only 1 or 2 dimensions of compatibility! There’s something to be said for simply – and this is crazy, so bear with me – getting to know someone in order to ascertain his or her suitability as a mate. Or maybe even just suitability for hanging out and watching the SciFi Channel. Let’s all try to have fewer relationship requirements beyond “Not a convicted felon” and “Makes a genuine effort,” and maybe we have a chance to beat Dr. Neil at his own game.

Just Saying: This is my office

We are a sitcom waiting to happen.

Mike: I was so exhausted, and then I got home last night and had dinner, and I was like "Shit, now I'm all awake."

Jay: What did you have for dinner? Cocaine?

Another Year

Today is my birthday, so I can do what I want.

Maybe it's a bad idea. In high school and through part of college, I used to go to McDonald's on my birthday and order the Deluxe Big Breakfast - the one with the pancakes, biscuit, eggs and sausage. That was also a bad idea, yet one that I kept up for a good many years. The only remotely edible thing out of that assortment was maybe the biscuit - god, what was I thinking?

The next birthday tradition that I instated was to wear a nice dress and get so drunk that I spent July 7th filled with stomach upset and shame (not all that dissimilar to the Deluxe Big Breakfast, actually). Anytime there are more than 3 complimentary drinks lined up for you on the bar, the night will not end well. Or so I hear. However since I how have the tolerance of a 4th-grader and no real desire to put myself to sleep at 8PM, binge drinking is off the list.

This year I've decided that I'm going to be fancy for no good reason, other than it is my birthday. So why not? James and I are having brunch (something I almost never do - as a rule, breakfast food should cost no more than $5 and be consumed before 10AM) in Soho, going shopping for things like fragrance and shoes, and then indulging in a dinner that we probably can't afford. I will wear a nice dress and probably end up dancing to Kylie Minogue at a club where none of the men want anything to do with my equipment. And that's pretty much fine with me.

Crush Alert System raised to code red

I spent today doing the most patriotic thing I could think of - watching both seasons of Sleeper Cell and rooting for the terrorists.

This is largely due to my long-standing crush on Oded Fehr.













Besides being a stone cold fox, Oded Fehr is one of those Safely Brown actors of indeterminate ethnicity, so he's often cast as The Arab Guy. This has a certain twisted irony since he's actually from Israel. Even less logical, he was inexplicably Hispanic in two of the Resident Evil movies - then again, he was also beefed up, kicking ass and cracking wise, so who am I to complain? He also reminds me of someone I have a crush on in real life, which is a little weird, but gets me one step closer to finalizing casting for the movie of my life.

Being that this is Showtime, the harrowing tale of an undercover cop infiltrating an Islamic sleeper cell in Los Angeles obviously requires lots of graphic sex and nudity. What's the point of being allowed to show tits and not doing it at every opportunity? So I was a little disappointed that pretty much everyone gets laid at some point (including someone's mom), except for Oded Fehr's character. They even give him a hot wife and still no action. So wrong. And then finally halfway through Season 2, he gets a few nude scenes...except that it involves torture and something sharp being shoved up somewhere very unpleasant. But, hey, I'll take what I can get. Thanks, homeland security.

Overprotected

I've decided I really need to get going with this tanning business. It's now officially summer, and I'm still morgue-quality pale. I know, it's shameful.

Unfortunately, I no longer have the luxury of a roof deck on which to drench myself in UV goodness. Like most amenities at my last apartment building, the roof deck was nice in theory and a little low-rent in practice. It had fake grass, lots of oversized wood furniture and essentially looked like the lawn & garden department at Home Depot. I haven't been up to the roof of my building now, but I suspect that it's probably not somewhere I want to be while scantily clad. That being the case, this summer I'm left with laying out in Central Park, where the trade off for real grass is being ogled by tourists from Minnesota. Ah, well, so be it.

This afternoon, during my regular Duane Reade run, I realized that I need to get some sunscreen. I'm a fan of the current trend in spray-on suncreen because it meets the needs of the independent sunbather quite well. Maybe other people are capable of oiling themselves up between their shoulder blades, but quite frankly, if I could bend that way, I would have more lucrative career options.

As it turns out, spray-on sunscreen is available in the following degrees of coverage:

• SPF 4 - probably just Pam cooking spray in a different package, no?
• SPF 30 -the new standard in bare minimum sun safety. Remember when just 15 was OK?
• SPF 80

Wait. SP5 80? Really? Have we really lost that much faith in the ozone layer that Coppertone is making what amounts to a spray-on shirt?

I managed to find a spray in SPF 10. I like to live on the edge of danger. Here's hoping that I'm not immolated on the Great Lawn.

May Joe bless you

It's a sad day. George Carlin is dead, and somehow there seems to be a little less honesty in the world.

As previously mentioned, he was responsible for my earliest realization that simply pointing out the ridiculousness of everyday life could be funny. Thanks for that, sir.

How to be dead

Yesterday afternoon at work, Jenny and I were discussing how we would like to be disposed of after we're dead. As you do.

"I think I'd want people to eat me," she announced. "Like, you know, have a big dinner and eat me. They could have roasted Jenny or rack of Jenny or Jenny burgers."

This is extra awesome because Jenny is vegetarian. Her original plan was simply to be buried in her black & white polka-dot Betsey Johnson dress.

I had never really put all that much thought into specifics, although I definitely don't want to be buried. Or eaten, for that matter. Although for some reason, the indignity of being stuffed, dressed and put on display in an expensive box before being left to rot seems worse than having my remains marinated and pan-seared to be served with au gratin potatoes.

The preciousness with which dead people are treated has always confused me. We are, in the simplest terms, just sacks of meat with a temporary sparkle of consciousness. The whole ceremony behind the disposal of the meat-sack - whether it be to bury it, taking up (as George Carlin once said) valuable land space that we could put to better use, or burn it and keep the ashes on display somewhere to be revered - is weird and a little cultish.

So as these things go, the concept of being made into jewelry is no less dignified, I suppose. But really? Who comes up with this stuff?

What is a LifeGem®?
The LifeGem® is a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life, or as a symbol of your personal and precious bond with another.

So in fact diamonds could literally be your best friend, assuming your best friend is dead.

The whole site is completely bizarre - moreso because they are Totally Not Kidding - but my favorite bit was in the "how to order" section.

Separate out NO MORE THAN 8 ounces (about 1 Cup) of the cremated remains and tightly secure in a plastic bag or other plastic container. DO NOT send all of the remains unless you have chosen our additional scattering option or return option. We only need 8 ounces to produce all of the LifeGem diamonds on your order.

Just to clarify - they want you to MEASURE OUT a cup of your loved one's ashes, put them in a Tupperware and mail them off.

"Hey, I love your ring!"

"Thanks - all it took was one scoop of Grandma!"

More Great Moments In Music Licensing

Here's something YOU oughta know, VH1: I'm going to have a seizure if I hear that Duffy song one more time.

Maybe it's not really fair to complain, though, since any small gesture by the mainstream entertainment overlords to promote up-and-coming artists should be encouraged. I have over 700 hours worth of music on my iPod, and even I'm bored. Given that I'm inundated with new music on a regular basis, I can't imagine how people with real jobs and no access to free album advances manage to stumble across anything other than what the marketing monkeys dangle in front of you.

Ah, but there is a way. Music supervision to the rescue. However, they will only take you halfway there. Like all good things, you have to work for it.

Generally I have very little patience for car commericals since (along with erectile dysfunction medication) there are few products that I'm less likely to buy, no matter how hard you sell it. I do have to applaud Kia, though, for a clever concept as well as for introducing me to Joe Purdy.



After seeing the commerical for the 30th time, I realized that I found the song endearing rather than annoying and did a little research online. Having an intense fondess for gifted songwriters, I promptly added all of Joe Purdy's albums to my collection. I can't imagine I ever would have heard of him otherwise, given that he is unlikely to collaborate with Timbaland and my refusal to watch Grey's Anatomy.

One afternoon there was a marathon of that short-lived Dick Wolf experiement Conviction on SleuthTV (yes, it's really a channel, and I feel sorry for you if you don't have it - Simon & Simon reruns!). I got sort of suckered into the show itself, but after 12 hours of hearing the theme song, I was intrigued enough to find out who it was. The song was edgy and electronic and not really the sort of thing that you'd think would lend itself to a show about 20-something Manhattan ADAs and their wacky hijinx. Oh but it works! Thus my introduction to Syntax.




Streaming episodes of Conviction are archived here, for the curious - it's really pretty entertaining.

More recently, VH1 was running an ad for it's trifecta of trainwreck narcissim featuring Rock of Love, My Fair Brady and Scott Baio is 45...And A Tool, using the inspired choice of (thanks for the chyron in this case) Ben Lee's "American Television." Solely through pop culture osmosis, I knew two things about Ben Lee up until that point - a) he is Australian and b) he once dated Mandy Moore. While I wasn't totally in love with the album after I finally listened to it, there were certainly enough good songs to make it worthy of downloading. As a matter of fact, I apparently wasn't the only one who realized there was a possible marketing opportunity here (really? you think?) - about a month after the ad stopped airing, VH1 added the actual video to its limited rotation of music video programming.



So this is how it's going to be now, I guess - we're forced to use commercials for things we don't even want as our introduction to new music. I just hope the cold hard truth of that inspires the creative use of lesser-known artists. I'm proof that it actually will entice people to purchase music by the artist in question. It does take the extra step of digging around on the internet sometimes, but when your iPod has 10,000 songs that you don't want to hear, isn't it worth it?

Nothing on the internet ever dies

You know how we always hear that once you unleash something into the wilds of cyberspace, there's really no way to effectively kill it? It just spreads and mutates like that virus in Resident Evil, except maybe with less reanimating of the undead. OK, fine, bad analogy - shut up.

Anyway, when I was in college, I maintained a fansite for Rockapella. Yes, really. Lo and behold, I discovered this morning that it still exists.

And it's AMAZING: Rockapella Paradise

Where purpose goes to starve to death

I hate Times Square.

Contrary to what everyone might think about my cold black heart, there are very few things I actually, legitimately hate. I can't even think of what they are right now because they usually hang out in "Inoffensive" territory until they try to get all up in my face and I have to bring the drama. Hating things takes too much mental energy, and that's time I can spend watching "Law & Order."

First of all, there's a distinct lack of purpose in Times Square. No one really has anywhere they need to be. No one is motivating with focused intention toward the ESPN Zone, I promise you. There's a lot of aimless wandering, a lot of being distracted by shiny objects. Look, there's the big Cup O' Noodles with REAL STEAM, holy shit! And I don't mean this purely as a standard rant on tourists who at least have the excuse of New York City being a novelty or sorts. (Although, PS, this is not Disneyland, my out-of-town friends - I don't come and stand in your driveway back in North Dakota and impede your getting things done, do I?) There's also plenty of people who live here who get in my way. Believe me when I tell you: I walk with purpose. Even if I don't have somewhere I expressly need to be, I walk like I do. I have long legs, I walk quickly (plus, it's hard to hit a moving target). Respect the natives and those with purpose - move aside.

The other reason Times Square is even more off the list than normal is something I discovered rather accidentally. After enjoying a Henry Rollins talking show at Town Hall one night, my roommate and I went in search of something to eat. It was 11pm. On a Thursday. Late for some, sure, but this is the city that never sleeps! This is Times Square! The neon-lit, corporate-owned tourist trap where anything is possible! Surely some chicken fingers and a Diet Coke at one of the fine franchise restaurants is a reasonable goal. Sure, we were going to have to pay $15 for it, but we made peace with that. First stop: the Olive Garden - closed. Fine, ok, although I could have rocked some (unlimited) soup, salad and breadsticks like a hurricane at that point. Next stop: Heartland Brewery - closed. Seriously? What is this shit? Ok, enough with the chain eateries - we head over to Ellen's Stardust Diner. Open! Score! Although only serving dessert. It should not be this hard to get some actual food at 11pm in Manhattan. If you're going to incite the huddled masses to breathe free, at least have some potato skins waiting for them. We finally ended up at Applebee's, whose kitchen miraculously closed at midnight.

So I am done - DONE - with you, Times Square. It's bad enough that I have a lot of Stupid And Useless in fanny packs preventing me from getting where I need to be at my usual speed. But to nearly deny me edibles at a perfectly reasonable hour, oh "center of the universe"? Unacceptable. You officially have nothing to offer me, and I will cry no tears when the remainder of you that isn't owned by Disney is converted into NYU dorms.

You mean...they lost?

One of the most distinct memories that I have of growing up under the care of my dad is his favorite Hank Williams Jr song. We used to listen to this particular album on cassette (I know - old school) over and over in his car. I can't believe that I still know all the words to this day.

Just Saying: Snack Edition

"Bacon: the candy bar of meats," Tom opined over email.

"I'm getting that on a t-shirt for you," I replied.

"Too late. Where you think I first saw it?"

Oh, I don't know - apparently they sell these bad boys at Whole Foods.

The Living Unicorn, Take 2

Like most little girls (and the occasional little boy - hi, Chris), I was obsessed with all things equine, unicorns in particular. I had a vast collection of My Little Ponys. I pretty much wore out our VHS copy of "Legend" (although, to be fair, Tim Curry as Satan almost trumps the unicorn factor on the scale of awesome in that movie). I'm fairly certain at one point I made myself a horn out of an old paper towel tube and some glitter (I mean, really, who didn't?) and wore it around the house.

So you can imagine my utter glee to find out that the big selling point of the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1985 was...are you ready...a real live unicorn. I'm totally not making this up. I was so excited by the mere concept that I almost had a heart attack while sitting in the nosebleed seats at Madison Square Garden, waiting for a glimpse of The Living Unicorn. There is also the distinct possibility that I was wired on the sugar from too many Cracker Jacks. Finally, finally at the end of the whole fiasco, with lots of dramatic fanfare, a single spotlight illuminated a creature in the middle of the center ring - and it was an alpaca with a plastic horn strapped to it's head. I think it was the most anti-climactic moment I've experienced thus far. Would it really have been too much to ask that they use, oh I don't know, a horse? I have been disillusioned with the circus ever since.

Fast forward 20 or so years, and this is kind of like that. Maybe slightly more biologically valid, but come on.

Tyranny & the blank page

OK, I admit it - I have a complicated relationship with Barnes & Noble.

For one thing, the only books I ever buy these days are blank. I like to have at least 2 or 3 blank journals on deck at all times, for some reason. It feels good to have them sitting there on the bookshelf, waiting for the future to be scrawled on their pages. Of all the chain bookstores, Barnes & Noble really has the best selection of journals. So much so that I had a hard time choosing one this past weekend - there were several leatherbound versions that I really liked. Although one of them had a big brass medallion on the cover and looked like it ought to contain some kind scripture from the Priory of Sion, so I passed on that.

I can often spend the better part of an hour picking through the assortment, since I have rather particular requirements. I do prefer lined to unlined, but that's not a dealbreaker. It probably goes without saying that I have no use for anything with inspirational quotes or fuzzy pink covers. I also pass up anything with a page count less than the King James edition of the Bible - since I can burn through an average journal in 3 or 4 months, bigger is better. I have visions of trying to store these things in 10 or 15 years, and finding the space for a series of mismatched little notebooks with 6 weeks worth of entries.

The downside is that going to Barnes & Noble also means facing my deep-seated issues with my own unrealized potential (according to other people, anyway). The Union Square megastore in particular gives me a minor anxiety attack - it is mind-bendingly huge, the stacks rising like monoliths on all sides. Being confronted with that much reading material at once is overwhelming - it always makes me consider the fact that there are more books in the world that I could ever read in a lifetime, even if my reading habits weren't limited to the time I spend waiting in airports. And, quite frankly, books make me feel bad about myself.

Someone commented to me recently that it was funny how musicians need almost no incentive to be creative, whereas writers need to "force" themselves to write. I can't speak to the former since I'm only musically employed, as opposed to musically inclined; however I certainly can attest to the defeatist struggle with words. It's my own fault (as most things are, at the end of the day) for simply sitting around, thinking about writing instead of actually doing it. There are some nights when I even have to force myself to write in my journal. I can generally only muster the willpower for that because (to paraphrase my friend Jenny), if I don't write it down it's like it didn't happen. But when all is said and done, my journals end up in the trunk in my living room. I'd really like to write something for public consumption, and it's been an albatross I've carried around for a good long time.

"You should really do something with your writing," people tell me, as though its an antique lamp that I let lanquish unused in my garage. Sometimes I get motivated and think "They're right, I'm going to sit down and really be serious about this." Then I generally stumble into a Barnes & Noble and immediately feel defeated by the idea that any book I would write has already been written by someone who wasn't an unmotivated procrastinator and with a better vocabulary. Sigh.

I need to go home and confront my journal tonight - I didn't write anything last night, although I had plenty to record. It was after midnight by the time I got home, and I simply didn't have it in me. As for writing things that other people might actually see, I'm working on that.

Oh Hai, I Can Has Wabbit?

The surreal world of pet ownership, courtesy of my mother.

Flower108055: all the boys seem to be adapting to the new food
MuseGrlNYC: what new food?
Flower108055: oh
Flower108055: i forgot to tell you
Flower108055: the vet said that dave is most probably allergic to the food that he has been eating since forever
MuseGrlNYC: oh wow
Flower108055: so he wants me to give him this new food made from rabbits
MuseGrlNYC: wait...what?
Flower108055: made from dead rabbits
Flower108055: rabbit meat
Flower108055: so on the way home, i'm thinking: how can i just give dave this food and not the others - i would have to keep him locked in a room so he couldn't get to the other food dishes downstairs, have a separate litterbox
Flower108055: that's not going to work
Flower108055: so then - duh! - i decided that everyone was going to have to change their food
MuseGrlNYC: so now they're all eating dead rabbits
Flower108055: yep and loving it
Flower108055: has to taste better than that diet food
MuseGrlNYC: that's just a scary state of affairs
Flower108055: speaking of rabbits, our little rabbit is back - the one that eats the grass outside my backdoor every nite
MuseGrlNYC: well, now the cats are going to want to eat it

Roaches: Stronger Than Reagan

There is a roach in the hallway outside my office. It's large, it's a little confused and it's a resounding endorsement of the idea that roaches are The Terminator of insects.

Tony and I first saw it this morning on our way back from Whole Foods. We haven't really had a vermin problem here since the Great Mouse Epidemic of 2004, so I was genuinely eek!ed to see Exhibit A: Large Roach. It was lying on it's back in front of the ladies' room, legs and antennae flailing. It was sort pathetic and yet still gross.

"Step on it," Tony told me with the subtext being Because I'm not going near it, ew ew ew!

No. Thanks. And besides - it looked like it was having enough trouble without me crushing its exoskeleton with my Payless flats. I did wonder, though, how a roach comes to find itself the wrong way up on the floor and not smashed or otherwise still hanging in there for good measure.

"There's a roach outside the ladies' room if anyone wants to check it out," I announced to the office. Perhaps not surprisingly for my office, someone did.

A couple of years ago I would have said that it appears to be true that roaches are like Reagan - the just refuse to die. Man, that was such a good joke - I used it for a long time and, and it had so many hilarious applications. Then Reagan had to finally up and kick it. So annoying.

When G and I were coming back from getting lunch at the deli, I was quite surprised to see the roach again - it was cautiously crawling across the linoleum, past our office door. We sidestepped it yet again, since I really don't see any reason to get yuck on my shoes. Also? Ew ew ew!

I have to admire that our friend the roach managed to not only right itself (I assume no easy task) but stumble all the way down to the hall to the offices of the UNITY church. While it did seem disorientated and unsure as to why in fact it was not dead, I assume it has found sanctuary somewhere since it was no longer in the hall when I went to the trash chute just now.

Then again maybe someone from the UNITY church decided that all God's creatures aren't equal after all.

How'd it get burned??

What is it with southern California and fire? It's just not a day out there unless something's going up in flames - trees, houses...or Courthouse Square from Back To The Future. I mean, have you people no sense of decency?

Apparently the Universal Studios backlot burned down earlier today.

A couple of years ago, when Chris was working on the lot at "Crossing Jordan," we commandeered a golf cart and did our own little private tour. Our main motivation was (obviously) that golf carts are really fun, but there was the added bonus of getting to see most of the sets, evidently for the last time.

So here's to you, Universal backlot...that fake plane crash was pretty sweet. Bummer.

Sorry, wrong number

Sometimes I miss not having a home phone.

Ever since I left college, I have lived a mobile-only life. This is fine in most respects since I'm hardly ever home, and it's easier to only give out one number. On the other hand, I've come to realize that I'm don't necessarily love the expectation that I'm always accessible. Not to mention that I'm missing out more and more on the beauty that is the misdial wrong number.

Like almost everyone I know, not only do I never misdial people, I quite frankly have no idea what people's phone numbers even are anymore. I just select a name on my contacts list, hit the green button and viola! We are connected. None of this dialing of numbers. It sort of takes the sport out of telecommunications, no?

In the 6th grade, there was a girl in my class whose home phone number was one-digit off from the county mental health hotline. Yes, really. And given that the mentally unstable are perhaps more prone to err in their dialing than most, her family got a lot of very interesting calls at dinnertime.

We got a bunch of wrong numbers at my house when I was growing up. There was a period of about a year when we got a series of calls from an old woman, looking for Pearl. Our phone would ring, some member of the household would answer and be greeted with said old woman shouting "Pearl? Hello? Pearl there?"

I still have no idea who this woman was or what her relationship was to Pearl, but eventually we began to feel a strange affinity to Friend of Pearl. We were less and less abrupt in telling her that she had the wrong number. She became like a regular fixture in our routine. I found it hard to believe that she could keep misdialing the the number the exact same way so many times, but old people are capable of persisting in the same mistaken behavior like no other creatures. My grandmother has alternated in calling me Christine or Judy (the names of my aunt and mother, respectively) for most of my life - most commonly, though, I am called "Judy-Uh, Christine-Uh, Sarah." (I would also answer to "Get over here and clean this up, and don't make me come get you.") Eventually Friend of Pearl stopped calling, and to be honest, we sort of missed her. I think once she even left a message on our answering machine which we seriously considered saving. Just in case Pearl ever called - she would know someone was looking for her.

If you want a hit, you gotta make it fit

This song came up on my iPod this morning as I sat on the train that whisks me toward my dubiously rewarding job in entertainment. It struck me as both funny and deeply sad that, 31 years after it was written, it's truer than ever.

And, much like in 1977, apparently high-waisted jeans are now back in fashion - something that is also deeply sad.

Welcome to the club

A couple of years ago, one of our lead singers came to town to do some scheduled press events. He was quick to show off his most recent tattoo - a large anatomical heart with blue stitches on the right side of his neck.

"When the guy was doing it," he recalled, laughing a little too ironically, "he was saying, 'You're in a whole new club now, man.' I guess that's true - I mean, there's no getting an office job now, huh?"

It wasn't as though he didn't already have full sleeves on both arms (and occasionally some ill-advised hair color choices), so he was already a proudly deviant member of society. But apparently in the body modification community, there are just certain things that push you to the next level of separation from the general populous by their high level of visibility.

I always think about that even now when I see people with neck tattoos. It's essentially a wordless announcement: "I feel secure in the fact that I will never need to hold a job that doesn't involve either a nametag or a hospitality rider." I wonder if they share some kind of mutual acknowledgement when they see each other on the street, as though to say, Ah, I see you have made the same regrettable decision I have - go in peace.

Last Friday I was killing time in at the Liz Claiborne outlet in Lebanon, TN. Trips to see my family generally involve some kind of foray into discount retail - it's one of the few things that brings us together, the others being Law & Order and a love of artichokes.

My mother had struck up a conversation with the woman behind the counter as she rang up the purchases. I looked over and noticed something very familiar on the woman's neck.

"Thyroid?" my mother was saying to her, smiling sympathetically. Pointing at me, "Her too."

"I had it out before Christmas," said the woman who worked at the Liz Claiborne outlet store in Lebanon, TN. "I had a big nodule. It wasn't cancer or nothin' like that."

This woman was 40ish and a bit haggard-looking, and I noted that her 6-month-old scar didn't look all that dissimiliar from my now month-old one - a 4-inch red line across the bottom of her throat. The obvious indication that one is either endocrinologically unsound or has recently been attacked by pirates.

"You'll probably notice them a lot more now," my mother commented as we left the store.

Them? You mean, my people?

To be honest, I do find myself taking more than a cursory glance at the necks of my fellow commuters on the B train in the morning. I've yet to see The Mark of Synthetically Regulated Metabolism on anyone. It might be a strange moment when I do see someone, and they realize that I am one of their kind. But I guess we will exchange knowing nods, perhaps a fist-bump - we with the scars upon thars.

Oh, I wasn't using that stupid gland anyway

I was a little ambitious when I packed for the hospital, I admit. I brought two books, my journal, headphones, a change of clothes and slippers. The closest thing I got to any semblance of normalcy was struggling into my sweatpants on Saturday. I forced myself to brush my teeth so I would feel a little more human - as well as for the benefit of the medical professionals that needed to be in close proximity to my face - but that was really all I could manage.

As it turned out, I didn't actually go into surgery until about 3PM on Friday, about an hour behind schedule. I was starving and sort of cranky but relatively calm, even when they straight up walked me into the OR. That part was a little strange - there were 3 nurses, fully scrubbed in, and the anesthesiologist. The radio was playing. Everyone seemed to be very relaxed and friendly, which made me feel better and less likely to have my usual panic attack. I guess the only sign of my restrained anxiety was that I just kept babbling like an idiot. Dr. V was marking me while I was getting an IV, and that's the last thing I remember - no counting backwards from 10 and being told to imagine a happy place with palm trees.

I did not say anything cute when I woke up. I'm not sure I said anything intelligible. They asked if I was in pain. I kept saying that I was, mostly because I felt so delirious and my feet hurt for some reason. The morphine that was subsequently pumped into my IV made me sick. I threw up in a little plastic bin as soon as I was wheeled into my room, which in retrospect was probably the best thing for me. I felt a good deal better after that.

Friday night was hard. I didn't get up to the room until almost 9PM. I felt queasy and had the worst sore throat in recent memory. From the breathing tube I'd had during the 4-hour surgery, they told me, as opposed to the 4-inch incision in my neck and the discharge tube that was currently sticking out of it. If you say so, folks. It was probably the longest night of my life - I couldn't really get comfortable enough to sleep. And everytime I got myself into an OK position, the light would snap on, and a nurse or attendant or one of Dr. V's residents needed to mess with me. That went on until after midnight. Add to that the fact that I was sleeping on some kind of possessed air mattress that kept self-adjusting. I also hadn't had any solid food in almost 36 hours, and the endless supply of drugs, making my stomach very unhappy.

On the plus side, however, I could talk fairly normally (which was a relief), although it did start to hurt after a while. Dr. V told Mom that he had gotten everything with no complications, but he found some lymph nodes that looked suspect and removed them. I will get the pathology results on Thursday when I go for my follow-up appointment. I will need to do a dye test and then a scan to determine if any of the cancer cell are anywhere else in my body - if not, I won't need to do the radioactive iodine treament, which is a relief. Once all that is determined, I can start on the hormone replacement - that's really the light at the end of the tunnel. I won't feel anything close to normal until I start taking the hormones.

By the time I was discharged on Sunday morning, I felt better than I expected. I was able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted, and I could keep the sore throat at bay with Tylenol. As soon as they let me eat solid food on Saturday (after my breakfast of chicken broth and hot chocolate, I was allowed a regular lunch and promptly sent Mom to get me a hot dog), I felt immensely better. Even the removal of the drain from my neck wasn't bad as I expected.

"You should have seen the look on your face," my mother laughed at me. "You were like Really? It's over? That's it?"

I had indeed excepted the removal of 5 inches of plastic tube from my incision to be at least twinge a little. Not so. I didn't feel a thing.

At the moment, I guess I feel pretty good physically. In some ways, I feel both better and worse than I anticipated. The pain has really been minimal - other than the persistent but diminishing sore throat, I have almost no pain at all. The incision is sore but more of a nuisance than anything else. I can shower adn dress myself and am generally pretty mobile. The down side is that I am utterly exhausted. Even doing little things takes all the energy I have. Mom and I went to the grocery store, and I needed a two-hour nap when we got back. I will go a few hours where I feel pretty normal, and then it's as though someone opened a valve, leaking all the strength out of me.

The other strange thing has been the fact that Dr. V needed to reimplant the parathyroid glands - 3 out of 4 of them made ir out alive - and they are currently, to quote the dorky-cute resident who came in on Saturday, "stunned." It will probably take a few months for them to start working again. Until then I am on massive doses of calcium and vitamin D. If my calcium level gets too low, I get this weird tingling in my hands and face. If it gets really low, I have a seizure and die. So that's a little scary.

That's the physical recap. Emotionally I feel kind of blah. I hate being so drained and constantly needing to sleep. And I do mean constantly. More than that, I hate being removed from my regular life. It's unfair that everyone else can go about their business, and I can't right now. I can barely bring myself to shower and pull on sweats. I don't like missing work or just feeling like I'm trapped in the apartment, waiting to get better.

Everyone has been calling or emailing to check in, and that's been nice. Tracy and G came to visit in the hospital on Saturday with their respective partners. Tom called this morning on his way to work - talking to him made me feel better, which I hadn't when I woke up. So far everyone has been surprised that I can talk and that I sound pretty normal. I wish I felt more normal.

I'm mostly just impatient with the process. I want my life back.

Just a flesh wound

I actually look worse than I feel. No, really.

I plan on telling people that I was attacked by pirates.

My thoughts exactly

This showed up at the hospital on Saturday morning. You have to wonder if the people at 1-800-Flowers thought it was a joke.

None for me, thanks

On Friday night, I consumed the last alcohol that I can have for a good long while. After a healthy combination of tequila at dinner followed by vodka at Arlene's Grocery, I have no doubt that I was annoying and vaguely incoherent. I kept giving people shots of whiskey, probably in the hopes that they would join me down in the depths of intoxication. After all, this was my own personal mardi gras - one final hurrah before the cold, harsh restrictions of the medical community take hold. I cannot have any alcohol in my system for 14 days prior to surgery.

The cruel irony in this, of course, is that I leave for SXSW on Wednesday morning.

In a way, I'm actually glad that I will be making my first pilgrimage to Austin under strict orders to remain sober. My willpower is generally no match for an open bar, of which there will be many, but I don't really have much of a choice. Drinking = no surgery, and I would like to be relieved of The Cancer post-haste, thanks very much.

The Good
- I will be getting very little sleep as it is, and it's probably better than I actually do sleep, instead of passing out into liquor-induced unconsciousness

- Only minor risk that I will say something completely offensive to the wrong person, as opposed to absolute certainty when Johnnie Walker comes to hang out

-More room for BBQ and tacos

On the other hand, I'm also being realistic.

The Bad
-Drunk people (i.e. everyone else in downtown Austin) are insanely irritating if you're sober.

-Finding a way to explain why I'm good with Diet Coke, really, thanks - without getting into the real reason why I'm not throwing back scotch because it's free and in vast abundance.

-Booze makes bad bands better. In terms of both playing and watching.

So it will be interesting.

I have something to tell you

I have cancer.

Initially, when the reality was yet to fully settle in, the most effective way of managing the news seemed to be to treat in the most off-handed way as possible. Oh, hi, by the way - cancer, I has it. Crazy, right? I know!

Even still, the actual words - "I have cancer" - are weirdly heady to say out loud, and I've done it almost every day for the last two weeks. They don't flow delicately. They land with a sickening thud at the feet of whomever I'm telling. It's not my intention to impart the information so brutally, but I realized rather quickly that there is no nice way of saying it, only roundabout detours.

My endocrinologist tried to use Big Words. "Your biopsy showed stage II papillary carcinoma cells," he said evenly, shuffling papers in my file.

"So it's thyroid cancer," I said.

He cleared his throat. "It's low-grade cancer. It's not cancer." On the last word, he made exaggerated finger quotes.

This was not a lot of consolation for my mother, whom I called after leaving the office with my diagnosis of "low-grade cancer."

"Maybe it's like low-fat milk," I offered, trying to make her laugh. "Not as bad for you."

I had gone to my endocrinologist with every expectation of finding out that my hormone levels had crapped out and that I was finally due to start thyroid medication. Instead I left with an appointment with the ear, nose and throat surgeon at New York-Presbyterian and the unavoidable duty of telling people.

That first day, I told a lot of people. Not because I wanted sympathy but as a way to somehow make it real. After all, I felt fine. Maybe if I said it out loud enough times, the gravity of the situation would sink in. Every time I said the words - "I have cancer" - I pulled back a little to shield myself from the shrapnel from the impact. Trust me, it's not an easy thing to say. But they still seemed like just words.

So no matter how many people I told, it wasn't really real until I went to go see the surgeon. Until there was a camera up my nose, and I was staring at my own vocal chords. Until the details of the procedure and its aftermath were laid bare, in the form of a black ink drawing that the doctor sketched on a sheet of white paper in his lap. On the diagram, he drew long, looped lines to show where the nerves that control my vocal chords were in relation to my thyroid. In rare cases, damage to these nerves could result in a total loss of the ability to speak - or worse, in death, if the vocal chords were paralyzed in such a way that they lock and prevent breathing. All sold, the removal of my thyroid could take upwards of 6 hours because of the delicate dissection of these nerves.

There were other worst case scenarios of surgery - the inability to absorb calcium and vitamin D, bleeding, infection - but for some reason, the potential-but-unlikely damage to my vocal chords is the thing that stuck with me all day. Not because I have a lack of confidence in the surgeon. He seemed very nice and more than competent. He answered all the questions that I had and didn't make me feel foolish for being uneasy. He was also honest about the very real possibility that the cancer might have spread - there is no way to know until after my thyroid and lymph nodes have been removed and biopsied again.

I'm actually a little afraid at this point - which I'm not really willing to tell anyone, lest they think I'm making a lame bid for pity. This is very serious business, as much as I've been trying to pretend that it isn't. I just hope it's not the time that I need to pay for all the bad things I've done in my life. I'm fine with having a scar - what's one more? - and taking pills for the rest of my life. I just hope that's the worst of it.

When it's all over, I want to be able to say that I don't have cancer.

Romance, finis

For about 10 years, I have used the same line: Valentine's Day is like Hanukah. It's a holiday that doesn't apply to my people. I don't begrudge other people in celebrating it, and I don't use it as an excuse to feel inadequate. Just like Manishevitz never makes me feel bad about being an Irish-Italian gentile, the onslaught of advertising for diamonds and lingerie has never made me pine for a boyfriend. If anything, I sort of feel bad for all the men who get pressured by Hallmark into really awkward gift-buying and manufactured romance. I've always been happy that it wasn't something I had to deal with, much like 8 nights of playing dreidel with Uncle Saul.

Though I've had a predominently male social circle for as long as I can remember, I have very little experience with the standard mechanics of dating. I don't have much patience for the the rules I'm supposed to follow. If I like someone, I tell him so. I don't wait three days to return emails just to be coy. Because I find The Game so inherently tiresome and inefficeint, I content myself with my stable of adopted brothers. Even so, I take the whole business of dating rather seriously. It really takes a lot for me to sit up, bat my eyes and throw myself into the fray, so I choose my prospects carefully. I wouldn't say that I'm picky. I'm extremely flexible as far as age, location and employment. But I do require a high level of compatibility - for instance, if he's deeply offended by the occasional dead baby joke? Red flag.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out on my first real date in almost 5 years. I met him, quite unexpectedly, at last month's poker game. He asked me (twice) in all seriousness if I was flirting with him. As I mentioned, I'm not really known for my subtlety. I liked him immediately and didn't really care if he knew it, which I think is a felony in some states. Nevertheless, he seemed interested, called when he said he would, and we went out on a Saturday night. It all seemed kind of unreal - he was cuter than I remembered him, we talked effortlessly, and he laughed at most of my jokes. I had a great time. As it turns out, he didn't.

Defying my every impulse toward fatalism, I spent a few days trying to convince myself against what I knew was true. But no amount of positive thinking makes the phone ring. It's one of those classic cases where there can be no closure or even the satisfaction of finding out where you went wrong (for purely informational purposes, of course, as opposed to masochism). As I said to Chris the other night, "You think you want to get that email, but really, you don't."

I'm disappointed, but of course these things happen. It's just that the timing could have been a little better. I don't necessarily feel bad about the fact that I'm going home tonight to watch "Law & Order" and sort my laundry. But I've noticed that I have decreasing patience for the incessant Match.com commercials. "It all starts with a look." Right - and it ends with what? An ill-advised anecdote? Wearing the wrong shoes? I guess I'll never know.