Category Archives: funny things

Dressing Up and Dressing Down

education, etc., fashion, funny things, humor, , , , , ,

Recently, there was quite a flap in Houston, TX, that quickly went viral. It seems that the administration of James Madison High School had issued a dress code. For parents. Apparently, there had been a problem with parents who came to the school inappropriately dressed.

I had my own experience with restrictive dress codes, though it was not at school (once the administration decided that girls could wear slacks). No, this was at a job I once held.

One day Doris, the HR/accounting person, sent around a memo that prohibited the wearing of shorts or tops that did not cover the hips, as with leggings.

I immediately demanded clarification.  “What about skorts?” I asked. “And culottes? How do you tell when something is baggy shorts or an actual culotte?” (I had no intention of wearing shorts, skorts, or culottes.)

“And what is this about your top must cover your hips? Don’t you mean it must cover your ass?” I inquired. Doris protested that the two meant the same thing.

“I don’t know about you,” I replied, “but my ass is a lot lower than my hips.” (It’s even lower now.)

Doris shooed me out of her office.

But I was not to be thwarted. I kept running back to her all day with requests for clarification. “Pedal pushers? Are those allowable? Gaucho pants? How about palazzo pants?” I kept it up all day, much to the amusement of my coworkers. As far as I could tell, no one changed their style of dress based on Doris’s admonitions. It was not really a concern for me, as I habitually keep my ass, as well as my hips, securely covered. And I don’t even know anyone who owns palazzo pants.

The brouhaha in Texas was a different sort of dress code, however. The school prohibited trespassing on their sacred precincts wearing a variety of attire including satin caps or bonnets, hair rollers, pajamas, leggings, low-cut tops, sagging pants, short-shorts, and “dresses that are up to your behind.”

But these were not rules for the students (although I imagine they had to follow similar ones). These strictures were for parents. In point of fact, moms. Except for the sagging pants, dads were unlikely to appear at school in any of the banned clothing. Probably.

Although it sounds amusing, this was a very serious thing. One mother was even reported to the police when she showed up at the school wearing a t-shirt dress and a headscarf. She naturally asked to see a copy of the dress code in writing, and the following day one was sent out.

Some viewed this policy as an affront to African-Americans, who evidently see nothing wrong with headscarves or satin caps. And I have no information on whether the rules were as strictly enforced on white moms as well. (I do know that bandanas, aka headscarves, have been traditional bad hair day accessories for all races for decades. Maybe even centuries.)

I can perhaps see a school not wanting visitors to enter the actual building wearing pajamas and bathrobes. But for all those moms who must get their kids to school at some ungodly hour, then return home and get dressed and ready for work, the temptation to cut corners must indeed be great. I picture the crossing guards at the drop-off car parade scrutinizing drivers and issuing citations for unapproved curlers.

It’s a good thing most moms don’t have to get out of their cars to deliver their kids to school. There might be a Doris waiting to measure the altitude of their ass and debate the propriety of palazzo pants.

The Ivy League Play Book

education, etc., fun and games, funny things, humor, , , , ,

The Ivy League is a bastion of serious and stuffy academia. The ubiquitous ivy grows up the stately stone walls and into the students’ brains, curling around all the neurons crammed full of facts and statistics. The student body – and the faculty, for that matter – is so serious that no one cracks a smile. Those who receive a grade lower than an A frequently kill themselves. Everyone knows this.

Everyone is wrong.

My own Ivy League experience was with Cornell, which, if you read Quora, is just barely in the Ivy League. (Actually, we at Cornell used to make fun of Penn.) Cornell’s Hotel and Hospitality School program is one of the best in the world. The engineering school is no slouch either. But I digress. This is about how Cornell at times, like Camelot, is a silly place. It wasn’t a party school by any means, but far above Cayuga’s waters, we found ways to make our own fun back in the day.

Of course, there were the ordinary sorts of pranks. Punch at frat parties was doctored, not with roofies, but with something that made everyone’s pee turn interesting colors. Students swiped cafeteria trays to go sledding down the west campus hill. Occasionally, my friends and I dressed up in formal wear and would visit McDonalds, bringing with us our own tablecloth, glasses, and cutlery.

Then, naturally, there were hijinks in the dorms. We invented a few games to pass the time between study sessions or to take a well-needed break. One was Wall Gymnastics. You would leap in the air, spreading your arms and legs wide and brace yourself between the two walls. Points were given for the highest position and staying up the longest.

Another game was called Commando Putty. This was played with an empty pizza box and the kind of, well, putty-like substance that we all called plasty-tack and used to hang posters until 3M invented their stretchy hanger-dealies. It was like ping-pong, only without a net. Now that I think of it, kneaded erasers would have worked, too, but that was probably what the art and architecture students used. I don’t know if Cornell had a ping-pong team, but they did have an official Tiddly Winks Team, which I joined, though I never lettered in it.

The best diversion of all, though, came when my friends Roberta and Caren asked me to join them in playing a trick on our mutual friend Cyndi, who was – quite unfairly – going out of town for a couple of days. She unwisely left us a key to her room so we could water her plant.

We spent the two days she was gone turning her room sideways. We propped her bed and desk up against the wall. We placed her mirror on the floor and hung her posters sideways on the wall. We used the radiator as a shelf for her stack of books. Double-sided tape and plasty-tack took care of her throw rug and various desk accessories. Our attention to detail was obsessive. We even carefully taped the fringe on her rug to the wall so it would appear to be lying flat. We glued cigarette stubs into her ashtray.

The illusion was brilliant. When she returned from her trip, we all gathered at her door to see her stunned reaction, then gave jaunty waves and said goodbye. (We actually did return to help her restore the room to its rightful orientation.)

Even Cornell itself seemed to participate in the silliness. The university has a famous bell tower (which you can see above) and students were recruited to play the instrument. Usually, it was something inspiring and classical, but once as we trudged toward the dining halls, we heard the immortal strains of “If I Only Had a Brain.”

Come to think of it, maybe that’s why the other Ivy League schools made fun of us. We were simply enjoying ourselves too much while they were steadfastly soaking up all that boring education.

 

And I Thought Placenta Cream Was Weird!

etc., fashion, funny things, humor, skin color, , , , , , , ,

Of course, I was right. Placenta cream is weird. But not that long ago, it was touted as the latest beauty secret and sold to millions of women (skin care for men was not a thing back then). Made from the placentas of sheep, horses, or oceanic creatures, the products were available as skin creams, hair gels or conditioners, and facial masks.

Why placentas? Wisegeek reports: “Sheep placenta has been used for many years to promote general health. It is also typically used by consumers to produce clear and healthy skin, free of wrinkles and blemishes.” They add: “Every placenta produced by pregnant mammals contains vitamins and nutrients, but sheep placentas tend to be more accessible and more nutrient-rich.” Personally, I don’t want to think about that “accessible” part, although I suppose they are, compared to horse placentas.

Women have also been advised to eat their placentas, much as cats and other animals do. Well, not exactly as animals do. Humans tend to dry their placentas, grind them up (preferably not in the coffee grinder that they use for, say, coffee), and put them in capsules before they ingest them. Top Chef host and judge Padma Lakshmi did this, but I’m not sure that’s much of a recommendation.

In recent years, charcoal has been touted as the miracle beauty product. I’m pretty sure putting charcoal on your face for any reason other than skin care is nowadays considered offensive and likely to get you kicked out of any political office you might hold. But it seems that if you rinse it off before anyone sees you, it’s okay.

Beautifying charcoal comes in many forms: masks, toothpaste and toothbrushes, acne treatments, and various anti-aging products. It appears on every shelf of the health-and-beauty sections of your local drugstore. Some health effects are real: Charcoal has long been used in hospitals to treat cases of poisoning and by overindulgers to treat hangovers. But how charcoal is supposed to whiten your teeth remains one of the unsolved mysteries of the universe, at least to me. It’s counterintuitive at the very least.

The most horrifying recent beauty trend, though, is snail gel, which is better known as snail slime or mucus, except not on product labels. Let’s think about that for a moment. There’s a trail of slime that snails leave everywhere they go about their little snail business and now women are supposed to rub it on their faces.

(A lot of people think that eating snails is gross, so they call them escargot. I can report from experience that escargot have the texture of a chicken gizzard and are usually served cooked in garlic butter. Think of them as gizzard scampi and you’ve got the right idea. I ate them once at a business dinner and did not disgrace myself. But I digress.)

Apparently, the snail slime beauty trend started when snail breeders (that’s a real job) noticed how wonderfully soft the skin on their hands became. The appeal of snail mucus seems to be that it holds moisture in the skin, presumably by providing a slimy layer to trap it. Talk all you want about the glycoproteins, hyaluronic acid, and glycolic acid in snail mucus, but the main idea is that it makes your skin look dewy by hydrating you, something that can also be accomplished by drinking several glasses of water a day. But evidently holding the moisture right next to your skin with gastropod mucus is somehow preferable.

As beauty trends go, the one I get is exfoliation. Dead skin cells on the face and body are not a good look. My skin regimen (which I’m told every woman should have) consists of rubbing my face with a rough towel, washing my face, then drying it with another rough towel. I like to think my skin glows afterward.

Axe Throwing Is the New Darts

etc., fun and games, funny things, humor, , , , , , ,

Lots of bars have darts leagues. But increasingly, a number of establishments are devoted to throwing axes at wooden targets instead. Beer is served there. What could possibly go wrong?

My experience with axe-throwing is admittedly limited. I have watch Forged in Fire, where they sometimes make axes and test the weapons’ strength and sharpness by throwing them at targets. But that’s on TV and not being done in my immediate vicinity. (Full disclosure: I have thrown knives as part of a martial arts class. No beer was involved. But I digress.)

I don’t know if this is just a Thing in the Midwest (and Canada, where it started), but here in my hometown, plans are being made for an axe-throwing bar to be built. I would have braved the danger and checked it out myself, but it is only in the planning stages and I’m too lazy to drive to the one a couple of counties over. My derring-do has geographical limits.

Wild Axe Throwing (an inauspicious name if ever there was one) will be built approximately two miles from my house, in a retail area that features restaurants, car dealers, and the like. “My main goal is to provide entertainment to the city that I love,” says one of the owners.

Here’s how a local paper described the attraction: “The urban axe-throwing fun starts with an ‘axepert’ providing an introductory safety lesson, then guests aiming a two-pound axe toward a bulls-eye 14 feet away in several rounds of competitive games in a quest for the ‘Lumber Lord’ title, an honor that gets stamped in ink anywhere on the winner’s body.” Presumably, one can then retire to the nearest tattoo studio and have the symbol of victory made permanent, if one wishes. (Reputable tattoo businesses will not work on anyone who has been drinking, so the Lumber Lord might have to wait until the next day.)

What is the point of all this, aside from the fact that axe-throwing is just good, clean, All-American (or Canadian) fun? Some people claim that neurochemicals like adrenaline, serotonin, dopamines, and endorphins flood your brain and body when you throw axes. Adrenaline hikes up the fight-or-flight response and endorphins help mitigate sensations of pain. Throw in alcohol and a sharp weapon and I’d just as soon not stand too close.

The activity is touted as a family fun outing and also “an option for birthday and bachelorette parties.” Call me old-fashioned, but I miss the days when bachelorette parties featured hunky “policemen” who ripped off their clothes to music. Another suggestion is that axe throwing would make a fine corporate team building activity. Let’s just say that this could go badly wrong if someone had just been passed over for promotion.

Although it seems to resemble darts in some bizarre respects, there are also reasons to compare axe throwing to bowling. For one, axe throwers are in lanes separated from one another. (Being hit by a neighboring bowler’s ball is seldom a problem, but the axes weigh only two pounds and are thrown with rather more fervor than 16-pound balls are rolled.) Plus there is a state league and even a world organization.

And where does the alcohol come into it? Again, much like bowling, each throwing lane will have its own table and the establishment that will be two miles away will offer a small assortment of beer and wine. The beer I sort of understand, but I can’t really imagine a date beginning, “Hey, honey, let’s go out for a little wine and some axe throwing.”

Bowling isn’t shown on TV much anymore but I think it only a matter of time until axe throwing is. But it’s pretty sad when one has nostalgia for darts and bowling, not to mention laser tag and paintball, as actual sporting events.

I don’t know. Maybe if I try it, I’ll like it. The throwing knives thing was pretty fun.

Facebook, What Have You Done Now?

books, cats, etc., funny things, humor, pets, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , ,

We all remember going to an amusement park or a store and seeing a rack of hats or keyrings emblazoned with people’s names. What a thrill it was for kids to find their own names, and how disappointing when your name didn’t appear or was spelled another way! (Now, of course, parents are wary of putting children’s names on their clothing because of potential kidnappers. But I digress.)

Custom printing can be a wonderful thing. It meant that I was able to order two t-shirts for my husband and me featuring the cover of my new book. (Shameless plug: Bipolar Me, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and in bookstores.) Friends of mine have ordered multiple copies of shirts with screen prints of albums or book covers or business logos to give or sell as promotional “merch.”

But custom printing is also getting a little bit creepy. I’ve seen ads on my Facebook timeline recently for t-shirts that say: I May Live in Ohio But My Story Began in Kentucky. Now, this is true: I was born in Lexington, KY, and I now live in Ohio. But I can’t believe that some company has t-shirts that feature every combination of states in America and sells them to anyone who finds them appropriate. It would take 99 sets of shirts to account for former or current Ohioans alone. If my math is right (which I don’t guarantee), that would mean nearly 5000 shirts for every combination of possibilities. And I can’t believe that a t-shirt company routinely stocks thousands of differently worded shirts against the hope that someone will buy one.

No, these are targeted t-shirts. I’m guessing that Facebook has sold my birthplace and current address info to some company who has a template they fill in with Ohio and Kentucky, if I should be so inclined to buy one. Until or unless I do, that shirt may never actually exist.

But with all the brou-ha-ha about Facebook selling people’s information, I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised. After all, I was silly enough to tell people where I was actually born and now live, just in case, ya know, someone wanted to make sure that I was the right Janet Coburn they wanted to contact, rather than the one born in Hawaii who now lives in Minnesota.

I don’t really mind when Facebook sends me ads for shirts featuring my favorite singers with a list of all their songs. I can believe that John Prine and Emmylou Harris have enough fans that might want t-shirts but can’t get to concerts. Someone could actually have pre-printed those shirts. But again, the fact that I liked them on Facebook sure seems as though the fact’s been plucked from my favorites listing and sold. I never get ads for shirts featuring Metallica’s greatest hits or songs by Justin Bieber.

So what else does Facebook apparently know about me? That I’m a science and science fiction geek and a literature lover and a word nerd and crazy cat lady. That info could easily be generated by the pass-alongs I pass along. So, of course, I get ads for Star Trek items and book-themed gifts and shirts about the Grammar Police and anything connected with cats.  I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I just saw an ad for cat book shoes. And I guess I’m fine with that too, although I wonder how much such companies pay Facebook for the use of their algorithms.

But the home state/current state shirts have me a little spooked. Am I going to start seeing ads with my high school’s name? My favorite quotations? My political associations (if I had been bold enough to list them)?

Frankly, I’d prefer to remain a little anonymous and just wear nightshirts that say I ❤ My Bed.

 

What a Hoot!

etc., funny things, humor, television, , , , , , , , ,

Owls are everywhere these days. I can think of at least four series of commercials that use owls as pitch-birds: ones for travel, eyeglasses, higher education, and decongestant. I almost understand the eyeglasses one, since owls have those big eyes, and I figure the university one is on pretty safe ground, given that owls are associated with wisdom. Geico even had an ad featuring an owl, but given that company’s other commercials, it scarcely fazed me. At least it wasn’t as nerve-shattering as the little piggy one.

But the travel advice bird and the one hawking allergy pills baffle me. Owls are not known for migrating, at least not like swallows and buzzards are. And I’ve never heard an owl sneeze, though I think it would be hilarious, except for the owl snot. As far as noncommercial representatives go, owls are also not well known as team mascots, except for the Temple University Owls. I’m told owls are the 17th most popular team mascot in the U.S., but I didn’t actually do the research. I certainly admire whoever did.

But I digress. At least the sinus relief commercial featuring not an owl but a bee with the voice of Antonio Banderas sort of made sense, since bees are associated with flowers, which can trigger allergies.  Although Banderas may not have been the wisest choice. I associate Spanish accents with deadly killer bees. And while I would never accuse Antonio B. of such a thing, the subtle note of aggression makes me twitchy.

But I digress again. The subject was owls. Owls have lately been making a comeback of sorts since they became the de facto messenger pigeons of the wizarding set. But in real life, owls are hardly the noble birds that CGI Hedwig portrays on film. While most owls are represented as giving a calm but inquisitive “whoo,” there are also screech owls, which didn’t get that name by being melodious singers. Encounter one of those at night on a camping trip and you’re more than likely to drop your s’mores.

And owls’ eating habits are not, shall we say, dainty. Not devotées of the backyard bird feeder, they like their meat and they like it still kicking. They don’t chew their food, either, like their mama owls should have taught them. Watching an owl chow down on a mouse, snake, or even a rabbit, is stomach-turning. For the owl too, apparently. Because they don’t have crops or gizzards like civilized birds such as chickens, owls pay the price for their gluttony by spitting up (to put it politely) the unpalatable bits – bones, fur, feathers, scales, and such – before they can eat again. Scientists find these “owl pellets” interesting, but they’re really just disgusting. And so are the owl pellets. Apparently, you can buy the repellent pellets on the internet for science classes or some other use I don’t care to contemplate.

Hedwig aside, owls tend to the creepy rather than the cuddly. They have that whole Exorcist thing going on where they can turn their heads backward, a consequence of their having more vertebrae than anyone except a giraffe deserves. Ohio humorist and professional curmudgeon James Thurber had it right when he said, “you could send an owl into my room, dressed only in the feathers it was born with, and no monkey business, and I would pull the covers over my head and scream.”

(He was discussing Gertrude Stein and her literarily famous pigeons on the grass. Evidently, owls had a profound effect on Thurber. He had a book titled The Owl in the Attic and also wrote a fable titled “The Owl Who Was God.” The moral was: You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. I recommend it to your attention. But I digress. You could probably tell by the parentheses.)

The only literary owl that I can view with any sort of affection is the one in Winnie-the-Pooh, who spells his own name Wol and can also spell HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY, which (in case you can’t tell) means “A very happy birthday with love from Pooh.”

When it comes to real-life owls, though, I prefer to keep my distance. And when it comes to TV commercials, I haven’t been able to stand talking animals ever since that damned gecko with the ambiguous accent. Even that picture of the owl with this post makes me feel like it knows just a little too much about my past and is particularly judgy about it. 

Good thing I have enough self-confidence to look that bird in the headlamps and say, “Who, me?”

On the Road With Serial Killers

etc., funny things, humor, travel, , , ,

While traveling, I’ve encountered some serial killers. Well, two. Sort of. Near misses, anyway.

The first time was kind of meta. My car broke down and a nice woman stopped to give me a ride. “I’m going to take a chance that you’re not a serial killer,” I said as I got in. “Well, I’m going to take a chance that you’re not one either,” she replied. We both figured the odds were against both of us being serial killers and she drove me to where I could call AAA.

The second time was much creepier. I was driving down the highway, alone, on a Sunday night. It wasn’t dark and stormy, which would have been too atmospheric, but it certainly was dark. All of a sudden, my car started sputtering. From all that I’ve read about serial killers in true crime books, I knew that if my car broke down along the roadside at night, I was a sitting duck.

I nursed my car along. I passed exits with plenty of gas stations, but they were all chain operations where I was more likely to find a burrito and a doughnut than a mechanic. They may have also sold fan belts, spark plugs, and washer fluid, too. But I really didn’t know what was wrong with my car other than making funny sounds – the kind you sound dumb trying to demonstrate – and slowing down.

I took an exit.  Lo and behold! A proper gas station appeared, one that was open and wasn’t the burrito-and-doughnut sort. Sometimes I have that kind of luck, like the time a phantom gas station appeared in Arizona when, through a miscalculation, my tank was below E.

A short time later, as I was making pseudo-engine noises to the attendant, a man walked in. He was short and round and wearing rainbow-striped suspenders. Also, he had a beard. Potential serial killer. They look just like regular people, you know. That’s how they lure you in.

After he gassed up, he listened to my attempts at explaining my predicament to the clerk (who was no help at all). “Sounds like you’ve got a broken fill-in-the-blank,” the stranger said. “There’s an auto store just about a mile from here. You could get one there.”

“My car won’t run,” I said sadly.

“I could give you a lift.” There it was, the classic serial killer move – find a woman stranded on the highway and offer her a lift. Of course, the clerk could have described the man with the suspenders, his car, and maybe even his license plate. But then again, maybe not.

“I don’t have any money,” I said. Actually, I had some, though not quite five dollars. And no credit card.

“I think I have an extra fill-in-the-blank at home in my garage,” the gentleman offered. “We could get that.”

“I think I’d be more comfortable waiting here,” I said. That was code for, “If you think I’m getting in your car with you and going to your house, you’re crazier than I think you are.”

“I’ll be right back,” he said and drove off, leaving me alone with the clerk. Who, after all, might have been a serial killer. Could you dump a body into one of those enormous tanks that hold all the gas for the station? I wondered.

Before I could really work up a scenario (or figure out what to do about it), the man with the suspenders returned, which I really hadn’t expected. He installed the fill-in-the-blank and I was on my way. He never even gave me his name, which made me wonder if he had even really existed. I made it home safely, vowing never to travel again alone, or at night, or with less than five dollars in my pocket. Though of course I have, many times since. Shows you how cocky you get when you survive an encounter with a serial killer.

What I Learned in Ballet Class

etc., family, funny things, humor, , , , , , , ,

Back in the days before self-esteem was a Thing, my childhood nickname was “SuperKlutz.” I came by this honestly, I must admit. One of my more notable achievements was falling out of the car, sideways, landing on the pavement – with both feet still in the car.

Another was the time when I was hanging upside down on the monkey bars by my feet (I know, bad idea). My weak little ankles let go and I fell to the pavement (this was when playgrounds were still built over asphalt) and landed on my head, which some people say explains lots. I still remember the feeling of falling and the fleeting thought, “This isn’t so bad.” Then I hit the ground and changed my mind.

After a number of years of such escapades, my parents thought a ballet class might be good for me. After all, ballerinas developed swan-like grace and poise, another quality I was severely lacking. Mom and Dad thought that the terpsichorean art might be an antidote to my rampant accident-prone-ness. So I was enrolled in Norma Noble’s School of Dance. It sounded classy and was within a mile of our house.

It turned out that I loved ballet. Although tots nowadays wear tutus with any outfit including wee motorcycle jackets, our spangled costumes were reserved for actual recitals, which took place at a local grade school auditorium. My mother lovingly sewed my costumes from satiny synthetics and scratchy netting, with judicious accents of sequins and spangles and sweetheart necklines intended to simulate nonexistent physical attributes.

I remember the years by the costumes – the blue year, the lilac year, and most thrillingly the yellow year when we had the long sweeping net skirts of yellow and green that billowed past our knobby knees and seemed more grown-up and elegant than the frilly puffs that usually graced our nonexistent hips. (My sister took hula and was forever doomed to wear unnaturally colored plastic grass skirts and tropical flowers covering her nonexistent bosom.)

I also remember the first year we were allowed to have toe shoes, though my weak ankles did not thank me for them, nor did my toes which, despite wads of lamb’s wool, really took a beating. Criss-crossing those satin straps was a mesmerizing ritual, though. This was the stuff of real ballerinas.

As the time for the annual recital rolled around, we young divas got more and more excited. There were fittings for the costumes.  There was extra practice. There were posed pictures like the one above, awkward yet endearing souvenirs of a more hopeful time. (That’s me in the above picture, back row, second from the left, in the year of the blue costume. You’ll have to trust me on that, but I recognize the pattern of sequins.)

Perhaps most exciting of all, for our debut – and only – performance, we were to wear makeup. Bright red lipstick, which could be seen from the cheap seats. Never mind that it clashed horribly with the blue, lilac, and yellow costumes. Red it would be.

The only thing was, the day before the recital, I was cutting climbing roses from a very tall bush, standing on a chair. And naturally, that being the way of things, as I was carrying the chair and the flowers back into the house, I bumped the chair on the door frame. Bam! I hit myself in the face with the back of the chair.

My lip swelled up and bruised, but what could I do? Red lipstick was mandated. Hence the audience saw at the recital one ballerina, decades ahead of her time, apparently wearing purple lipstick.

Evidently, ballet did not improve my grace or erase my clumsiness. I went through the rest of childhood with an assortment of bruises, scrapes, scratches, fat lips, and scars. I gave up on ever shaking the nickname.

It’s still appropriate, even today.  Just the other night I was opening a bottle of wine and managed to pull too hard on the corkscrew. Needless to say, it hit me right in the face. But I had learned at least one lesson from my ballet experience.

I no longer wear red lipstick.

 

 

Off-Duty Santa

Christmas, etc., family, funny things, holidays, humor, , , , , ,

My husband looks a lot like Jerry Garcia, at least in his “Touch of Grey” phase. Someone once said that if he were darker, he would look like Frederick Douglass. But most of the time, he gets mistaken for Santa Claus – even if it’s summer and he’s wearing his tie-dye shirt. Kids these days don’t know from Jerry Garcia.

Even without the red suit, Dan is perfectly Claus-esque. He has the white hair and beard, the red cheeks, the girth. I won’t compare it to a bowl of jelly, but it would shake when he laughs if he weren’t holding in his stomach.

Children recognize him everywhere he goes and react accordingly. Just yesterday we were sitting in a doctor’s waiting room and were facing the glass-paneled door to the hallway. Suddenly a little boy’s face with saucer-sized eyes appeared in one of the panes. He darted away and came back with his older brother. While they were staring and ducking, a younger sister appeared. Brave and uninhibited, she waved and blew kisses and tried to work the latch that opened the door. She banged on the glass panel and waved for all she was worth, while her brothers were content to play peek-and-hide. Everyone in the waiting room was enchanted, including us.

However, with great power comes great responsibility and Dan always uses his Santa powers for good. Once at a highway rest stop, he saw – and heard – a toddler screaming incessantly at the top of his small but surprisingly energetic lungs. He walked over to the child and said, “If you don’t calm down, I’ll have to put you on the naughty list.” The screaming stopped immediately and the mother silently mouthed “Thank you.” A job well done.

Although when it first happened Dan was annoyed, he has since become used to and often enjoys his year-round Christmas magic. Upon meeting two young boys in a restaurant (their mother asked permission first) the kids came up to him to verify that he was, indeed, Mr. Claus, who was apparently slumming at a diner during his off hours.

The boys asserted that they had been very good all year. Dan turned a stern if twinkling eye on them. “You could be a bit nicer to your little brother,” he told the elder. “And you could try a little harder in school,” he advised the younger. “We will, Santa! We will,” they promised. “Okay,” he said. “Now both of you do what your mother says!” as he strolled out of sight.

Being a random Santa actually suits Dan better than being a professional Santa. I understand that the gig pays well, but you can’t get one at a large store or mall without the proper credentials. Those red velvet suits are expensive. And so is professional Santa school, if you can find one in your area. Besides, all the fun might be taken out of it if it were a regular though seasonal job. There would be tragic kids – bring my father back, make my mother well. Dan’s an old softie, but there isn’t much to say to that. And there’d still be the everyday difficulties of dealing with terrified children, peeing children, and children who ask for a Lamborghini. A real one, not a model.

Besides, I’d make a terrible Mrs. Claus. I look ghastly in red.

 

The Tender-Hearted Carnivore

cooking, etc., family, food, funny things, humor, television, , , , , , ,

gray steel cooking pan near orange lobster

My husband is a carnivore, or actually an omnivore, like the bear that he resembles. But if he tried to live like a bear, he would never survive. He’s just too sensitive about what he eats.

He’s not a member of PETA, but he has certain qualities in common with them. He won’t eat veal or goose liver because he objects to the conditions in which the animals are raised – closely confined and force-fed. It’s no life for an animal, he says. Neither is being slaughtered, sauteed, and served for supper, for that matter, but let’s leave that aside for the moment. I can sympathize with his position.

When he’s forced to participate in said slaughter, he’s even more uncomfortable. My mother was raised in the country and delighted in fishing. She also delighted in frying and eating her catch. Dan can tolerate fishing if it’s catch-and-release (though just barely). And he would refrain from commenting when my mother served up her self-caught delights. But on the way home, he would look positively morose.

He had an even more extreme reaction when we were on a sailing vacation off the coast of Maine. We anchored at a tiny, uninhabited island and the ship’s cook started a fire.  A huge pot of seawater and seaweed sat ominously nearby. So did a container of live lobsters.

Now, Dan doesn’t even like to watch live lobsters being prepared on television. He began referring to Emeril Lagasse as “the Evil Cook” when he saw the TV chef throw live crayfish into a hot skillet and laugh about it.  If I’m watching a cooking show, I have to tell him to cover his eyes whenever a live crustacean is going to be sacrificed.

Anyway, when the cook in Maine got ready to drop the lobsters in the pot, Dan took a melancholy walk around the island. Mind you, when he returned and found the lobsters bright red and safely dead, he devoured three of them, banging their bodies against rocks to get them open, proper lobster-cracking tools not having been provided. Lobster juice ran down his face into his beard. He wasn’t squeamish about that.

I began to think he was carrying his sensitivity too far, however, when he started objecting to barbecue restaurants whose signs featured happy pigs serving up platters of ribs. “They’re showing smiling pigs serving themselves up to be devoured,” he asserted. No amount of reassurance that the signs were merely illustrations could suppress his uneasiness. It was the principle of the thing.

When I totally lost sympathy for his obsession, though, was when he started objecting to TV commercials that showed cereal squares eating other cereal squares (and licking their nonexistent lips). He objected to the cannibalistic element, which he found offensive.

“They’re cereal,” I pointed out. “And they’re animated. No grain suffered in the production of the cereal. Nothing alive was harmed in the production of the commercial.” It didn’t matter.

“They’re presented as sentient,” he said, “and they’re eating their own kind.”

Well, there’s really no way to argue with that, so I just roll my eyes and don’t even try.

Oddly, Dan loves movies and shows about mountain men who hunt and forage for their food under harsh, primitive conditions. He doesn’t like it when the animals get their paws caught in traps and suffer because of it, but he suddenly doesn’t object to the killing of a sentient being and the subsequent devouring of it.

Despite his affinity with mountain men, I try to point out that he would be lousy at it. “Not if I was hungry enough,” he replies. “Then I could do it.” He’s eaten venison, but personally, I can’t picture him shooting, skinning, and butchering a deer. He might have to become a vegetarian at that point and his career as a mountain man would be over.

Until a moose was magically transformed into moose steaks and presented to him wrapped in styrofoam and plastic at the local grocery, I doubt he’d survive.