Get Outta My Face

When I run for elected office -- I'm debating President of the United States or President of my book club -- know this:  My solution for vamoosing some of our kajillion dollars in national debt will include the sale of Florida.

I've floated this idea before in the Twittersphere, and it gained huge traction among my dozens of followers.  My list for why the state should be forced into secession is now one bullet point longer.  And this is the kind of bullet point that eclipses every other point in the history of bullets.

• Florida is where people get their faces eaten.

Kinda gives a whole new meaning to "face-to-face confrontation."  Or "in your face."  Or "facial."

I am going to stop that train of thought in its tracks.  It's on a one-way trip to Disrespectful Town.  Actually, it may have already reached its destination.

Because what went down in Miami this past Saturday afternoon is the height of horrific gruesomeness.  If you haven't heard about it, you probably live in a viewing area where the broadcasters get to nix any storyline that makes their news anchors vomit in their mouths as they try to keep up with the teleprompter. 

Whether you come at this post with zero background or a growing portfolio of newspaper clippings on the event, I'd recommend you put down the Mountain Dew and the pop rockets.  Both because that's a dangerous combination and because things are about to get nasty up in here.

Here's the deal.  A guy was taking a leisurely bike ride near the Miami causeway at 2PM on Saturday afternoon.  As he was enjoying the light Memorial Day weekend traffic and the smell of suntan lotion in the air, something caught his eye.  That something was the sight of two naked, grown men on the sidewalk near the causeway.  One of those men was leaning over the body of the other in a Crouching Maniac, Hidden Cannibal kind of way.  As the biker approached, he experienced one of those moments in life that isn't a moment in life because this moment never has previously happened in anyone's life.  He realized that Crouching Maniac was chewing.  Specifically, he was chewing the face of the other man.

The preceding sentence is literal.  I am not trying to pull some grammatical trick for literary effect.  Literally, Crouching Maniac was eating the face of the hapless victim.

The biker yelled at Crouching Maniac to stop.  Maybe the biker also threw a Power Bar at him to see if that would work as some kind of distraction.  No dice.  So the biker took off as fast as his 10-speed would carry him and flagged down the first cop he could find.  Said cop approached the scene and repeated the pleas for Crouching Maniac to please stop with the mid-afternoon massacre already.  Again, no dice.  In fact, Crouching Maniac's only response was to GROWL at the cop.  So the cop shot Crouching Maniac.  And even THAT didn't work.  Crouching Maniac wouldn't stop crouching or being a maniac until the cop had shot him several times, resulting in Crouching Maniac's death.

You know you're witnessing quite a scene when multiple deadly gunshot wounds seem like the most humane offering this side of a Mother Theresa sponge bath.

When the carnage finally ended, the victim was rushed to the hospital with only his goatee remaining.  Again, the preceding sentence is literal. 

In the aftermath, the cop that came upon naked Hannibal Lecter wasn't identified because he was so traumatized.  The biker has been interviewed in the press.  The fact that he can still talk pre-qualifies him for some kind of diplomatic post in Syria or Russia, I think.  Because that's fortitude.

The rest of the free world is wondering what in God's name is wrong with Florida.

While the authorities remain tight-lipped (perhaps because of a new-found appreciation for their lips), there have been reports that some suspect that Crouching Maniac was high on bath salts.  One policeman noted that bath salts often cause people to become super-humanly violent and inspire them to take off their clothes.  He adroitly noted that he was previously unaware of bath salts inspiring someone to eat the face of another man.

Bath salts, you wonder?  Those little crystals that are supposed to dissolve but remain disturbingly solid in that relaxing bath you never have time to take?  Yup, those are the ones.  Apparently those are the new street drug of choice. 

They are sold by legitimate stores under the guise of being actual bath salts or deodorizers or pool cleaners.  They come in small packets, containing just the right amount to ingest or snort for a meth-like high.  While Florida banned these products last year, they can't keep up with the manufacturers, who simply change the chemical compounds of the crystals to remain one step ahead of the law and its pesky bans.

According to the DEA, users of bath salts experience highs whose side effects include "agitation, insomnia, irritability, dizziness, depression, paranoia, delusions, suicidal thoughts, seizures, and panic attacks.  Users have also reported effects including impaired perception of reality, reduced motor control, and decreased ability to think clearly."  One dude, who bragged about all the other drugs he'd done, said his high off "bath salts" lasted 8 agonizing days, during which he wanted to kill himself and everyone around him.

A high like that from an over-the-counter home refreshener that costs a couple bucks a pop?  BAR-GAIN.

Actually, let's flip that coin for a second.  If anyone within range of cable news, print media, or this blog post EVER contemplates trying bath salts EVER in this or future lifetimes, they are crazier than Crouching Maniac was.  Do you really want to mess with something that might have you eating faces?  If parents can't scare their kids away from these substances now, they should hand over the reins and have their responsibility orbit limited to keeping ice cold.  There is no scenario in which the face-eating threat doesn't trump the impulses of even the stupidest teenager. 

• "Have fun at the prom, Timmy.  But remember, if someone offers you bath salts, just say no.  Jenny has a lovely face, but how embarrassed would you feel if you ATE IT?!?"
• "I heard Billy has been experimenting with bath salts.  I don't want you hanging around with him anymore.  I'd like you to have both cheeks."
• "Do you really want to have to look at yourself in the mirror one day and think I wish I was looking at myself in the mirror but I'm not because I did bath salts with Joey one slow Saturday night and he ate my eyeballs?"

But I suspect we all could have taken a more academic approach to the whole "bath salts" thing and gotten scared enough by textual description alone.  I don't think we needed Florida to give us another off-the-charts madman to hammer the lesson home.

Sidenote to Crouching Maniac's girlfriend-widow: your protestations that he must have been hexed by a Voodoo curse are helping no one.

Bottom line:  Let's ban the sale of bath salts in all its possible forms and start getting serious about promoting the sale of Florida.  That panhandle looks like it's just asking to be ripped off from the continental U.S. in the same maneuver usually reserved for breaking the turkey's wishbone at Thanksgiving.

As an added bonus, keep in mind that Donald Trump owns a huge compound in Palm Beach.  We can throw him into the deal.  (Mitt, he'll still be able to mail you checks.)

(Yes, Mitt Romney reads this blog.)

More Soup for Them

Take a minute to imagine eating a single meal over the course of 24 hours.  Or leaving one meal with no concrete idea of where your next will come from.  Or hearing your child cry about being hungry, and responding that there's nothing to eat.  Or having the only time you're indoors be the time you get to sit down in a bare cafeteria with strangers for an hour.  Heck, imagine leaving a meal without the option for a snack if you get hungry before the next one.

Now imagine that you're not just imagining any of that.

Yesterday, I joined a team of people from my company to volunteer for a few hours at a local soup kitchen.  It was a really eye-opening and rewarding experience -- and not just because I was allowed to participate in a food preparation process to feed more than my immediate family.

The soup kitchen is located in Portland, Maine's biggest -- okay, only -- city.  Okay, big town.  Whatever.  It's the place in Maine where the most people live.

It was a muggy, hazy sunny day.  Our company van deposited us on a run-down sidewalk where trash was doing that warm-day festering thing in the gutters and all the buildings looked like they were sweating into their crumbling foundations.  The soup kitchen is a nondescript building that overlooks a Salvation Army thrift store and several run-down apartment buildings.  When we arrived at 10AM, there was a handful of men already in line for lunch, which would not start for another two hours.

A quarter of a mile away, people were grocery shopping at Portland's Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market.

We were greeted in the kitchen by a group of about a dozen workers.  The group included a small number of full-time kitchen staff, and the rest were volunteers.  A few women who come in regularly to help, and a couple high school students who were doing their community service work.  My colleagues and I were given aprons, told to wash up, and dispersed among various tasks. 

As you can probably imagine, the kitchen was humming with activity.  The size of the kitchen itself is about the size of some people's home kitchens.  Three walls were lined with stainless steel sink basins.  The fourth looked out onto the cafeteria and stationed the buffet from which volunteers could serve food to the patrons.  The center of the kitchen housed two double-ovens and a long stove top and grill.  There was a long stainless steel counter steps away from those cookeries. 

The radio was on, the fans were losing their battle against the humidity, and everyone was cheerful.

I was put on broccoli duty.  I sliced three boxes of broccoli.  The heads got tossed into a bowl with the stalks, which I had to trim to remove the tough outside.  All of those parts were going to be made into a soup for some yet-to-be planned meal.  Anything I discarded was put into a large pot for delivery to a local pig farmer.  When I finished with that, I made iced tea and limeade and set those out in the cafeteria. 

While I was busy with those tasks, other people were cutting hot dogs, grilling cheese sandwiches, making salads, slicing desserts, and preparing bag lunches for people who didn't want to come in and sit down for a meal. 

Just before the doors were to open for lunch, the kitchen manager offered to take me on a tour of the pantry.  She showed me their walk-in freezers, their rows of condiments and canned goods, and the pallets they stack boxed items on.  She also gave me a bird's-eye view of the kitchen's operations.  All the food they use is "rescued" or donated.  While I was overwhelmed by the amount of 32 oz cans and loaves of bread and bottles of ketchup, she told me their supplies were alarmingly low, and confessed she was not sure how they were going to survive the summer.  Perhaps it's because they are serving 48% more meals this year as compared to last; that soup kitchen alone serves almost 1,000 meals a day, and about 32,000 meals a month -- just staggering numbers.

The soup kitchen is open for 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  Their meals accommodate vegetarians and gluten-free eaters, and everything is made with nutrition in mind.  They provide dog and cat food because they had noticed patrons (or "clients," as the kitchen workers call them) would give their own food to their pets instead of eating it themselves.  Every Thursday, they also host a grocery day, where clients are handed a box-top to fill with food laid out on tables set up like aisles in a grocery store.  They do food tastings for things like brie cheese, which many clients have never before tasted.

While the soup kitchen serves a huge variety of food, yesterday the main course was actually soup.  There were three options, plus the offering of a grilled cheese, two different salads, and two different desserts.  I was staffed as a server behind the vegetarian chili.

It was fascinating to see the people who came for lunch, and to see their numbers.  The doors opened at noon and there was an immediate surge of people.  Some were old enough to need a walker, others looked like they were in high school.  There were roughly equal amounts men and women.  There was one young couple with their toddler, and the numerous high chairs and booster seats indicated that families were regularly accommodated.  Some men spoke only Spanish, one spoke only French.  Some had obvious physical handicaps, one looked like an Olympic athlete.  Some dressed in rags, others looked like they had just stepped off a cruise ship.  Some were clearly intoxicated, others looked like they had never touched a beer.  Some refused to make eye contact, others were profusely appreciative.  That line of people blew the doors off every assumption or stereotype you'd associate with people who frequent a soup kitchen/food pantry.

That line also did not dwindle until just before 1PM, when the doors closed.  Nearly 60 minutes of a steady stream of people looking for something to eat.

When the windows to the buffet closed, we started cleaning up the kitchen and the cafeteria.  The staff gently nudged the patrons to finish up and head out.  No one complained.  Everyone cooperated.  One man stopped me on his way out and said he'd see me at "suppah."

The most poignant moment of the day for me was during this exodus.  A young man -- probably 18 -- wearing a long winter coat despite the warm temperatures, finished the meal he'd eaten in silence and headed out the door.  He dragged behind him a flimsy rolling suitcase the size of two pizza boxes stacked end to end.  I realized that I was probably looking at everything this person had in the world, and it weighed less than my 8-month-old son.

Needless to say, I was profoundly touched by this experience.  It reminded me that there is no one face of homelessness or food-neediness. It's not just chemically-addicted panhandlers. It's immigrants trying to make their way.  It's day laborers who eat breakfast and then perform manual labor until the sun sets.  It's people with a job whose salary only covers the rent.   It's children.   And it's more.  Yesterday also taught me how desperately these places, which operate on a shoe-string budget and depend so much on the charity of others, need help from those who can give it.

I came back to the office and fired off an email to HR to see about coordinating food drives here at the office, and I am trying to figure out a system at home for us to make regular food donations.  I'm no hero.  It's so easy to buy an extra box of pasta or set out a carton for other people to put food in.  I don't even want to think about how hard it is to wonder if your kids are going to have lunch tomorrow.

I urge you to consider donating to your local food pantries as well.  Here's a link to a food pantry directory - just enter your state or zip code and you can find one near you.  According to the kitchen manager I spoke with, the items they go through most quickly are coffee, condiments (especially ketchup) and pasta.  The next time you're at the grocery store, why don't you pick up an extra can or bottle or box?  Someone will appreciate it.  A lot.

Flapping in The Breeze

Twitter produces some odd phenomena.  Behind a cloak of pseudo-anonymity, people wax poetic on the glories of pizza, share pictures of their shoes, set dinner dates, and blast their followers with opinions on everything from #DWTS to the #TrayvonMartinShooting.  Mothers tweet to try to keep up with their kids, politicians tweet to try to pass legislation, and Ashton Kutcher tweets to prove he really is just an idiot.

Perhaps the craziest Twitter phenomenon is how completely it sucks users in to its 140-character orbit.  Who needs cable news when I can get Luke Russert to tell me who's winning an NHL game and which Lockerbie bomber just died?  Why bother to make friends when I can get daily encouragement from an avatar?  What's the point of leaving the house if I can look at pictures of celebrities traveling the globe from the comfort of my unmade bed?  We're quickly becoming a culture of human-bots who trade handicrafts for carpel tunnel and personal interaction for digitized stimulation.  We want the immediate gratification of a real-time play-by-play of everything, but through the safe and distanced medium of our smart phone.  We want it now, but we want it impersonal.

With an iPhone as the ultimate shield, many members of Twitterdom trend towards a bravado and extremism they would never dare to assume in, of all things, a face-to-face interaction.  In good times, that can result in laugh-out-loud humor that gets you through otherwise boring daily chores, like waiting in line for a new license at the DMV or getting ready to go to confession.

In bad times, it puts the "bull" in cyber-bullying and both periods in b.s.

My personal solar system in the Twitter universe saw a solar flare of the latter variety beginning on Sunday night.  I never thought social media could make me flabbergasted, but this Twitter spectacle did.  I'd go as far as to say that I was agog.  That's right -- I said it.  AGOG.

I follow a handful of very funny women who happen to be united in their undisguised contempt for Chris Brown.  He's the now-23-year-old R&B singer who infamously beat up his then-girlfriend Rihanna in February 2009.  A few months later, he accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to community service, five years of probation, and domestic violence counseling.  A few months after that, he did a Larry King interview where he claimed not to remember the incident, said he was "shocked" it happened, and blamed the media for driving a wedge between him and his former girlfriend.  Then in March 2011, Robin Roberts of Good Morning America tested his memory loss and asked about the incident and the resulting restraining order that requires Brown to stay 50 yards away from Rihanna.  (Sidenote: I wonder who brought the tape measure when they collaborated on the remix of Rihanna's ditty "Birthday Cake," which features Brown rapping about wanting to “f***” her and “give it to her in the worst way.”  I guess it's those kinds of sweet nothings that teach a girl how to forgive and forget.)  Anyway, CB didn't much appreciate Ms. Roberts' journalistic bent, so he threw some chairs, ripped off his shirt, and I think strangled a passing robin.

While Brown's career faltered a bit because of these...ummm...missteps?, he bounced back like a fist recoiling from a jaw bone and released a new album, performed at the Grammy's, and even won a Grammy.  At which point he proclaimed, like a true gentleman, that all the "haters" could "HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY Now!  That’s the ultimate [BLEEP] OFF!”  (Of course, he made that proclamation via Twitter.)

Needless to say, Senor Brown has given people plenty to hate.  He beats up those he claims to love, and then tarnishes his apologies with behavior that ranges from immature to dangerous and demeaning.  He pretends to take responsibility and then acts completely irresponsibly.  He gets held largely unaccountable for his actions and then rubs his untouchability in the face of everyone who cares to pay attention.

Despite these detractions, Brown has managed to amass a legion of die-hard fans who will brook no dissent.  They're so loyal in their devotion and so strident in their opinions that if the fans -- known as "Team Breezy" -- had been told to look elsewhere for someone to follow, their most suitable options would probably have been Osama pre-Navy Seals or Sarah Palin.  If brown is not your favorite color, get ready for your Team Breezy flour bomb.  If you don't name your first child Chris, regardless of gender, your poisoned pacifiers are in the mail, care of Team Breezy.  Should you ever cower when Brown himself goes to pull out a chair, you'll be slimed like a presenter at Nickelodeon's Kid's Choice Awards.

And God forbid you ever criticize the "musical talents" of the guy who croons "Big Booty Judy" and "Ain't Thinkin' 'Bout You."  That's what Chrissy Teigen (@chrissyteigen) and Kelly Oxford (@kellyoxford) did on Sunday night after Chris Brown performed at the Billboard Music Awards.  Like everyone else in the live and at-home audience, these two women remarked on the fact that Brown was clearly lip singing.  Teigen benignly tweeted "why sing when you can dance." Oxford took it a step further and wrote "Hey Chris Brown, those BMX bikes didn't distract me enough not to notice you get paid to sing and can't do it."

Thus was unleashed a rain of fire and brimstone the likes of which only Sodom and Gomorrah can relate to.

Team Breezy plowed a war path up and down these women's Twitter feeds, lobbing insults normally reserved for the bathroom stall doors of a particularly skeevy Greyhound bus station.  Four letter words that I can't type here and that make me blush and grimace at the same time.  Actually leveling death threats for daring to state what appears to be an agreed-upon fact.  Vitriol so violent that the International Business Times devoted an article to it. 

Each of these attack tweets (I like to cal them "twacks") was misspelled and associated with Twitter handles like "Luvah" or "ElementarySchoolWasEnough" or "SexTouristDestination."  So if there's anything redeeming about this particular phenomenon, it's that Chris Brown is only being further defined by the company he keeps.  And it's not the type of company that's greeted cheerfully anywhere other than prison.

Sadly, though, that same company is decidedly female.  Scores and scores of young girls jumping to the defense of a man whose platform is anti-girl.  Demanding of Teigen what Brown ever did to her, when the very same question should be asked of them -- what has he ever done to or for you to inspire this blind loyalty and terrifying bully mentality?  Are you really so lacking in friendships and community that you find identity and comfort in waging a publicity war with throngs of people you don't know on behalf of a man who'd smack you for back-talk?

Girls, girls, girls.  Put down your phone.  Step away from your computer.  Wash your mouth out with soap.  Do your homework.  Find someone to hug.  Because you're spending way too much time chasing down the wrong enemy.  Just because you're doing it over an Internet connection doesn't make it any less tawdry or unforgivable.

Dear Abby: The Mommy Wars

Today I will be kicking off my "Dear Abby" series, where I do a post on a topic that a reader has suggested to me.  I've decided that I will do these posts every Friday.  Which means fathers everywhere will soon be confused when everyone starts saying Thank God It's DAD every Friday.  You can explain to them that DAD is Dear Abby Day.  I'll be too busy blogging.

Today's topic is the magazine cover heard 'round the world.  It's this rectangular powder keg, in all its glossy glory:

I picked up Time's May 21, 2012 edition the other day.  The last time I read a Time magazine was the time I forgot to bring my book to the gym in 1999.  Upon greeting my long not-lost non-friend, I closed my right eye so I could stop looking at Jamie Lynne Grumet's boob and was immediately underwhelmed.  Either Time is really taking a bullet for the eco-conservative Green Team or they've hit the bottom of the material well, because the issue was shorter than the alphabet books my daughter makes at pre-school.

I'm guessing the slight heft of the magazine is more owing to the latter.  In fact, if I were to put on my Michael Jordan I'll-Bet-On-Anything hat, I'd wager that the editors at Time are afraid that's exactly what they're running out of: time.  I bet they're desperate for readership and trying to cut costs so that Father Time doesn't tell Time that its time is up.

After I read the mommy article, I became convinced I was right.  And I was mad I lost my Michael Jordan speed dial button because I could have just made myself some millions.

The desperation over at Time was confirmed because the content of the article only tangentially related to the explosive image and headline on the cover of the magazine.  Clearly the boob-sucking pre-schooler and the gauntlet-throwing "Mom Enough" challenge were simply a clever ploy to get all of us riled up and ready to spend $5 on 6 pieces of paper.  If they'd accurately depicted the "related" story in a pictorial, it would be a photo of a grandfather dressed in scrubs lecturing a frazzled mother while trying to hide his giggling from her.  And the caption would read "Science -- Who Needs It?"

Needless to say, I have a lot of reactions to the story, but I'm going to try to boil them down to three. 

Reaction 1:  The actual subject of the cover story, Dr. William Sears, is a jerk.

The focus of Time's reporting is not Pilates teachers with breasts just waiting to be suckled.  Instead, it's Dr. William Sears, who published the first edition of The Baby Book in 1992.  In that brick of a book (it's 767 pages long!), Dr. Sears advocates for "attachment parenting."  Boiled down, attachment parenting dictates that "the more time babies spend in their mothers' arms, the better the chances they will turn out to be well-adjusted children."  The basic tenets of such a doctrine are that:

• Mothers should not let their children fuss.  At all.  Every cry should be tended to.
• Mothers should not put their babies down.  Ever.  If mommy needs to use her hands for something other than toting Junior, Dr. Sears sells a sling that mommy can rig to her torso and deposit Junior into.
• Babies should "co-sleep" (ie. share a bed with) their parents.
• And yes, as Time walloped us over the head with, mommy should breastfeed Junior for as long as possible.  Biologically possible.  Not socially-acceptable possible.

As I will discuss more below, I have no real issue with attachment parenting in and of itself.  It is certainly not for me, but if some mothers feel like that's how this whole parenting mystery unfolds itself for them, fine.  And wow.

But I have a real issue with Dr. Sears.  He, together with his wife, cobbled together the attachment parenting movement relying on their personal histories, their Catholic faith, and their random reading choices.  Both Dr. and Mrs. Sears felt abandoned by one or both of their parents in their own childhoods.  Both are deeply religious.  And both got the idea for their life's work from a book called The Continuum Concept.

This book was written by Jean Liedloff, a college-dropout turned part-time model who decided to go dig for diamonds in Venezuela in about the 1960s.  (I'm serious.  On all counts.)  She noticed that the indigenous people in the South American jungle carried their children with them all the time, and that those children seemed to "cry less" than American babies.  Based on her uneducated observations, she wrote The Continuum Concept and told mothers everywhere they needed to be more "connected" to their children.  She went on to decide never to have children of her own.  The Searses went on to decide to make her their prophet.

They've so bought into the attachment parenting thing that Mrs. Sears actually says things like "[leaving a baby] to cry in her crib damage[s] her brain."  Dr. Sears is quick to chime in with a comment that putting a baby in a crib is putting a baby "behind bars."  The only way to save your baby from dyslexia or jail, they conclude, is for mommy to a stop everything except lactation.

The couple peddles this lifestyle despite the fact that there is no scientific support for their statements and mountains  of it to contradict them.  They hold essentially firm despite the decidedly sexist undertones of their message, which they try to soften with suggestions that fathers "do the dishes" or book mommy a massage.  Their response to doubters is simply to say that their method is the method God likes, and that their preaching is based on the practices that have worked for them.  Then they condemn any mother who would dare put her baby on a schedule or on a bottle, even though that's the method Dr. Spock likes, and those are the practices that have worked for millions.

My bottom line: if your idea of childbirth is just moving a baby from the womb to other side of your epidermis, enjoy your years as a kangaroo.  I just hope you have a reason better than Dr. Sears' say-so to do it.  To my mind, his game is an exploitative racket.

Reaction 2:  The whole "Mommy Wars" firestorm needs to be extinguished.

Time magazine is just as exploitative.  After the whole Ann Romney "don't tell me I don't 'work' just because I never 'worked' outside the home" debacle, the world has fallen down the Mommy Wars rabbit hole.  "Working" moms versus stay-at-home moms.  Attachment parenting versus helicopter parenting versus I just want my kid to be a good person and not too clingy and eat the occasional vegetable parenting.  Time magazine asking if you're mom "enough."  As if mothering is some beach the U.S. Marines are trying to storm.

Enough, already.  In the history of time, no perfect parent -- much less mother -- has ever been identified.  Probably because every parent started off as the kid their parents scarred or neglected or screwed up in some way.  Imperfect children grow up to be imperfect parents, and the whole wide world is made up of imperfect people. 

Some kids grow up to be better people than other kids grow up to be, sure.  But I think it'd be tough to argue, with a straight face, that Johnny is so much more well-adjusted than Albert because Johnny piggy-backed his mother until he outweighed her.  There's a lot that goes into making us who we are.  Of course a huge building block is how we're raised during our formative years.  I can say, though, that a lot of who I am is the result of things I had to go off and do on my own during, for example, the big bad years of kindergarten.  My mother could have never let me shed a single tear under her watchful eye, but I probably would have still suffered from confidence issues after a crush wasn't reciprocated or some other fact of life -- that my mother had no control over -- hit me upside the head.

In other words, an extra month of breast-feeding does not, to my mind, a Mother Theresa or Warren Buffett or Gisele Bundchen (I'm using her as a self-confidence standard-bearer) make.  Not in and of itself.

What WILL make a difference, way more often than not, is a semi-sane, semi-grounded mother.  And whatever it takes for mommy to find the sweet spot to her parenting is what mommy should do.  As long as, of course, it's not the sweet taste of coke on her teeth after she snorts a line or some similarly illegal and universally frowned upon parenting technique.

Mommy pitting herself against mommy is just unhelpful.  Spend your time taking care of your kids and taking care of yourself, in the way and to the degree that resonates with you.  Don't worry what the mommy next door is doing if it's just to criticize it.  Find a different way to reassure yourself that what you're doing is right for you and yours.  Cutting your fellow mommy down to size to make yourself feel righteous is very middle school of you.  That's a sure-fire way to teach an imperfect attitude and approach to life to those kids hanging from your neck.

And every media outlet or other third-party who wants to do the pitting just to generate sound bites is beyond unhelpful -- it's cheap.

Reaction 3:  This is just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Despite all of the above, there's no way to look at that cover and not feel like it's raining softballs.  In that vein, let's end this on a light note. 

I think you can take your cues from your kid on when is the right time for you two to stop with the breast-feeding routine.  If your kid can verbalize any of the following, I'd say you're getting more than just cues that the end is 'nigh.  You're receiving spam from Mother Nature delivered via a megaphone:

• "Mom, I need to wash down the spaghetti o's.  Has your right breast recovered from this morning?"
• "Hey guys, I need to take a break from tag.  I'm parched.  Mom, put down your book and pull up your t-shirt!"
• "Move over, Sam!  You're hogging all the boobs!"
• "Today Bobby was telling me about these things called juice boxes.  What in the world are those?"
• "Mom!  I passed the test!  I got my driver's license!  Can we celebrate with both sides?!?"
• "MAAAAA!!!!  THE BREAST MILK!!!!"

Submit your idea or suggestion for a "Dear Abby" post by emailing me at abbysblog@rocketmail.com.  All the other, intricate details of this something-for-everyone are explained here. 

TwiHarder, Kristen

One of my least favorite types of celebrities is the type that acts like she is doing the rest of us a favor.  Like we owe her a thank-you note or an Edible Arrangement for all the trouble she went to making $5 million to run from Armageddon or suffer from a bout of amnesia or walk around half-naked giving googly eyes to Channing Tatum.  It's the biggest pile of malarkey, and it's always a case of the punishment not fitting the crime, as it were.

What the were am I talking about?  Well, according to my excel spreadsheet, the starlets that act the most down-trodden by their starletness are the ones who are over-hyped and under-talented.  The ones who'd be foaming the skim milk for my decaf latte were it not for some stroke of incredible luck or fortunate breeding.  The ones who should be spamming the shit out of a Paperless Post thank-you to every tween on the globe for their under-developed taste and access to their parents' cash.

Sitting at the top of this Pantheon of Pooh is one Kristen Stewart.  This girl has irked me from the moment I first saw her pout her lips and shrug her shoulders.  The only performance of hers I ever enjoyed was when she was Jodie Foster's daughter in Panic Room, and that's probably only because she spent the entire movie locked in a room in some kind of diabetic trance. 

Somehow, her unexceptional ability to look panicked in a room led to more roles.  For example, she took a star turn in In The Land of Women, where she just looked panicked about whether she'd get Adam Brody's character to kiss her.  The she somehow landed the coveted role of Bella Swan in the Twilight movies.  Four movies in which she's just looked panicked in a truck or in the woods or in a church.  Somewhere along the way, she found the time to film The Runaways, where she looked panicked about whether Dakota Fanning's Cherie Currie was going to outshine her own Joan Jett.  And who could forget Welcome to the Riley's, where she looked panicked about James Galdofini's character trying to lure her away from her life as a young stripper.

Now she's out promoting a blockbuster remake of Snow White, where...imagine this...she's going to be running around more woods looking panicked because maniacal wolves are chasing her and Charlize Theron wants her head.

Conclusion: K-Swiss has amassed world-wide fame and a small fortune for her one-note acting thanks to her lucky break as the Juliet to Robert Pattinson's Romeo, just with more fangs.  As you may have surmised, any "range" she shows is book-ended by mild panic and extreme panic.  She just amps up the volume of her panic by the strength of her scowl, the degree of osteoporosis she allows in her back, and the amount of distance she puts between her upper and lower lips.

You'd think, then, that K-Stew would be all smiles off the set.  All chipper and gracious and lovely and super-psyched that she'd managed to pull one over on Meritocracy.  All "I'm just as amazed at all this as you are!"

Not so much.

In interview after interview, Kristy acts like she's just woken up on the wrong side of a Goodwill donation bin after a night of mosh-pitting and chain-smoking.  She acts like she can't believe someone is expecting her to, like, say actual words in response to other words about whatever piece of crap entertainment she's just been paid boatloads of money to look aloof in.  Her enormous apathy about everything translates directly to her presentation.  I have never once looked at this girl and thought "wow, she looks nice."  Heck, I've never once looked at her and thought, "wow, she looks like she definitely showered today."

I mean, look at her at this year's Met Gala:

And here she is at this year's Coachella:

Not much of a difference between the two looks, if you ask me.  Except in the grassy-knoll one, she's smiling for the first time since 2003, and that's only because her neighbor just told her a bird decorated the top of her hat.  Otherwise, same messy hair, same glue-gunned attire, same dirty feet.

When she does deign to exercise her vocal chords, it's normally to take a thinly veiled pot-shot at the industry that has allowed her mini-mogul status.  Something about how the hysteria over the Twilight series has ruined her life, or how the film didn't turn out how she'd envisioned it when she doodled on the script.  Or -- and this is my personal favorite -- how she soon wants out of acting because she doesn't want to be a "professional liar" for the rest of her life.

Ummmm....Kissy?  I know you only completed 7th grade and did the rest of your schooling via "correspondence," but I expected more of even you.  We understand that when we go sit down in that big dark room, after the popcorn and soda finish dancing and we've all silenced our ringtones, that what comes next is a "movie."  We get that you're just delivering lines someone else wrote for you as they concocted this thing called a story.  In fact, the very reason we're in this box staring up at a football field of a screen is so that we can look at things that as 3-year-olds we liked to call "make pretend."  Don't worry -- no one actually thinks Taylor Lautner can turn into a werewolf or that Robert Pattinson can jump that high or that you have the vocabulary range to talk for two hours.

That being said, I am concerned that someone has been sucking your blood.  Because you're deathly pale and oxygen doesn't appear to be reaching your brain and your energy level is registering at "scary low."

Also?  Anytime you want to stop with this acting business you keep telling us you're enslaved to, by all means, walk away.  You've got the cash.  You apparently don't have the drive.  So go find some philosophy class or pottery studio to look disappointed in.  We'll be fine.

To the extent you decide to stick around, do us a solid and add "having a good time" to your repertoire of forced emotions.  Just twi, Kristen.  Twi for us.  Then twi harder.

Let Them Eat Cake

Yesterday, the citizens of North Carolina voted in overwhelming numbers to pass an amendment to the state constitution that bans same-sex marriages.  The amendment reads:

“[M]arriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”

In so doing, North Carolina joins 30 other states, including all southern states, with a similar constitutional provision.

I could spend this post making jokes about how North Carolina has officially dissed native son Clay Aiken.  Or about how its most famous national senator in recent memory, John Edwards, would be the perfect poster boy for the gay political movement were it not for the sleazy heterosexual affair he was having behind his cancer-stricken wife's back.

But I'm not going to.  This issue deserves more respect.  And better background music.

There are a lot of ways to describe what North Carolina did yesterday:  Shameful. Embarrassing. Sad. Frustrating.  Depressing.  Backwards.   

And it is.  It is all of those things.  But perhaps the thing strikes me the most is that it makes absolutely no sense. 

This constitutional amendment was the brainchild of a group of Republican lawmakers.  They were afraid that a previously-passed statute banning gay marriage would be struck down by North Carolina judges.  You see, the North Carolina state constitution, much like the federal one, puts the most important stuff up front.  And the first statement in the North Carolina state constitution reads as follows:

"We hold it to be self-evident that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness."

Those whipper-snapper Republicans stopped cheering for the Blue Devils long enough to realize they had a potential problem on their hands.  Their little statute saying that only some committed relationships count kiiiiinnndd of flies in the face of all that crap about equality, inalienable rights, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Some interfering judge might do a little side-by-side comparison, hearken back to Con Law 101, and smack that statute down as "unconstitutional."  So those Republicans threw back a few gimlets, gosh-gollyed about how much they hate how judges like to be impartial and fair, and ripped a page out of the playbook of their favorite dictator.  If we don't like what our constitution says, why not just change the constitution?!?  And on Tuesday, that's what they did.

That history speaks for itself.  The very proponents of the amendment knew that they were advocating for its passage because it was the only way to shore up the pile of shit they were standing on.

But the Republicans of course had ready-made allies for this fight.  Those allies were up for anything that would distract attention from, say, preacher scandals, like the North Carolina pastor and politician who was charged with six counts of aiding and abetting prostitution.  Together, the Republicans and the Religious concocted a rallying cry as concise as it was baffling.  "We're not anti-gay," they affirmed in mock horror, "we're pro-marriage!"

Oh God, please strike me down. 

My dear Republicans and Religious, let's start at square one.  Can we all agree that what same-sex couples are asking for IS pro-marriage?  Like, they want to get married, and they want the state to recognize the validity of that marriage?  Okay.  Now let's take a baby step forward.  You are telling a man that he can't get married because he wants to get married to another man.  Is there any room in your brain to see how that's anti-gay?  See, the way this works is, the guy and the guy who want to get married are "gay."  And you're telling them they can't do something that a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old guy can do.  Well, can do as long as they can prove the girl was paying too close attention to the sermon on why birth control is bad, indulged in too much of her parents' moonshine one night, and is now pregnant.  So to everyone with a conscience and the ability to play the game "one of these things is not like the other," what you're doing is anti-gay.

And now let's take what might be a giant leap.  Hold on to your britches.  Allowing only men and boys to marry women and girls does not make, and has not made, marriage some glorious, sparkly institution.  In fact, Las Vegas is in the business of making marriages a joke.  So is Kim Kardashian.  Our secret service agents just made a global spectacle of themselves because they hide their wedding rings faster than Usain Bolt runs a 100-meter dash.  A lot of those priests you revere because of their marriage to God have been caught diddling with little boys. 

And guess what, North Carolina?  You know who has the highest divorce rates in the country?  YOU!!  The southern states, who are most staunchly "pro-marriage" (as long as it's between two unprepared heterosexuals), are also the place where that heterosexual love turns to bitter acrimony and broken families.  In fact, while divorce rates were SLOWING in the northeast (which includes many states that recognize gay marriages) they were RISING in the south, including in North Carolina.  So why don't you slow down a hot second before you start proclaiming your commitment to the pro-marriage movement. 

The undertones of the Republican and Religious "argument" are, of course, profoundly religious.   One of the champions of the North Carolina ban on same-sex marriages said that North Carolina was simply doing what "God wanted," not what "some group of adults" wants. 

The hypocrisy and blatant inconsistencies here are again blinding, on aurora borealis proportions.  These proponents are unabashedly saying they want to enshrine "God's will," which they apparently have unique and direct access to, in what is supposed to be a secular document.  The same people that cry out for separation of church and state when Obama wants insurance companies to cover the costs of contraception turn around and make their interpretation OF THE BIBLE into the law of the land.  They want the state to stay out of the church, but they want their church to tell the state what to do.  I spent three years in law school.  On day one, we learned that's not how that works.

What is more, the entire foundation of a democracy is to listen to what "groups of adults" want to do, and then do that.  If a big enough group of people want to fix a bridge or repeal a tax break or elect a certain person, that action is supposed to happen. 

If we ignored what groups of adults wanted to do, and only listened to some loud-mouth's version of what their God wanted to do, then LeBron James would be assigned to fruit-picking from the tallest trees, Hillary Clinton would be darning socks, and Halle Barry would be serving two life sentences for her repeated attempts at inter-racial coupling.  Also, I'm pretty sure God and Jesus were the first PR team to hype this thing called "love thy neighbor."  If discipleship to God is something we want defining our public actions, why isn't that mantra winning the day?

I am hesitant to stereotype here, since the message of this post is dismay at a social failure to tolerate and accept.   But it is interesting to note that the stereotype of the anti-gay marriage movement is that it is made up of the people who are pro-guns, anti-big government, and pro-war.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say guns have hurt a lot more people than two dudes sharing a last name.  I'm going to marvel at the fact that the government isn't welcome to meddle in people's business unless it's to tell them who they can marry.  And I'm going to call a whopper of a b.s. on the notion that we'll "bring justice" to the terrorists for daring to tell us how to live, when we simultaneously tell a group of people that the way they live is wrong. 

All that said, I don't want to end this post with thoughts of hatred based on a stereotype.  More than that, I don't want to live any part of my day carrying around a hatred based on a stereotype. The bottom line is that I feel sorry for the majority opinion-holders of North Carolina and their ilk.  They look ridiculous and they don't realize it.  They are acting out of fear and they don't see it.  They are preaching values but acting without them.  They are missing out on a trusting relationship with an admirable community of people.

It's a shame that logic and reason can't trump narrow-mindedness.  We should all be embarrassed to live in a country that talks about bringing freedom to other shores but denies it on our own.  We should share in the sadness and the frustration of the people whose lives and loves are denounced by laws such as North Carolina's.  And then we should move beyond the depression we could easily sink into, and figure out how to get backwards moving forwards again.

Because same-sex couples should be able to spoon-feed each other an over-processed cake in the middle of a wedding reception -- theirs -- just like the rest of us.

All Lathered Up

In case you've been busy reading real news lately, let me catch you up on what the rest of us have been focused on:

• Drew Barrymore took her baby bump to lunch the other day.  Thanks, people.com, for the investigative heroics that resulted in your blowing the lid off the secret pregnant women had tried to maintain for so long: where we go, so goes the fetus.
• Prince Harry received a humanitarian award from the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. last night.  That news was shocking only to Irena Newton, who'd spent months perfecting her theory that Prince Harry = playboy.  When she learned that a single person could have more than one personality trait, she moaned that science had betrayed her and cursed her ancestors for leading her down a primrose path.
• Patricia Krentcil, a New Jersey mother, was indicted on a single charge of child endangerment because she allegedly took her five-year-old daughter into a tanning booth with her.

If you knew none of these things before reading this post, the only ignorance you should really be ashamed of is your insensitive disregard of the news surrounding Ms. Krentcil.  The fact you don't know about her means:

(A) You need to get your hearing checked and up your eyeglasses prescription, because you are the version of mute where you're deaf and blind.  Which I'm not sure is technically a "version of mute," but I like shorthands.

(B)  You were totally preoccupied foiling the terrorist plot to bomb another airliner.  Shame on you.

(C)  You don't watch enough of the Today Show.  Which means you let Ann Curry win.  I don't even know how you can stand yourself.

(D)  All of the above.

The story surrounding Ms. Krentcil goes like this: Once upon a time, there was a woman who liked to go tanning.  Like, a lot.  I mean, look:

The woman tanned so much that she turned into leather.  PETA became so apoplectic, they didn't know whether to flour bomb her (which had the advantage of helping bring her back to her natural hue) or force her to pose in a sheet with cut-outs for her eyes (picture your first ghost costume) on top of a tanning bed.  So they just sent her a very condescending letter.

Then one day the world's most astute school nurse took time away from telling a little boy to "shake it off" to notice that Ms. Krentcil's 5-year-old daughter (also pictured above) had a minor sunburn.  The nurse asked the daughter how she'd gotten the sunburn, and the daughter reported that she'd gotten it from going in the tanning booth with her mother.

And then the world exploded.  Oh, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Everyone, that is, except Ms. Krentcil.  And probably her daughter.  Actually, no one is coming out of this situation looking all that great.  What can I say -- it is not a good fairy tale. Not everything that happens in this world ends with a prince, a meddling fairy, and a white horse.  The sooner you can accept that, the better.

The epilogue to Tanorama and The Nosy Nurse involves said nurse calling the authorities to report the 5-year-old's sunburn.  Those authorities filed a complaint alleging that the daughter was an "abused or neglected child" because her mother took her into a "stand up tanning booth causing first degree burns."  Tanny Mammy now reportedly faces up to 10 years in prison and presumably risks having her daughter placed in protective services.

Those are all the facts I know based on what I have heard and read.  I hope that there is nothing more sinister at work here.  I am going to go on faith that this little girl has only suffered a sunburn and maybe a dose of bad luck at having the mother who put the "tan" in "GTL" during her mentorship of Jersey Shore's Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino.

If that is really all there is to the story, I believe our only reaction to it should be pity.  Essex County, NJ should be doing sunscreen drives, not bank-rolling this "criminal" investigation.  Ms. Krentcil should probably be doing weekly check-ins with a therapist, not a probation officer.  Her daughter should be given lots of hugs.  Most of them from her mother.  She should also be taught that she is good just the way she is.  Mostly by her mother.

Again, based on the basic facts I've outlined above, it seems as though there's nothing more sinister at work here than a mother with self-esteem/body image issues and a confused little girl.  Ms. Krentcil has, not surprisingly, adamantly denied bringing her daughter into a tanning booth, and I actually believe her.  I base this on the fact that if you asked my four-year-old daughter if she'd been into a tanning booth, she would say yes.  Even though the only booth she has ever been in are the ones that sometimes are an option at a restaurant.  Not only do kids that age have fantastic imaginations, but if you ask a question in a way that remotely suggests their answer should be "yes," they'll answer "yes."  Ms. Krentcil's daughter was all the more predisposed to giving a tanning-bed related explanation for her sunburn because her mother is clearly spending a lot of time in or near a tanning bed.  Tanning beds are probably a big topic of conversation in the Krentcil household.  They may even serve as furniture, or perhaps feature prominently in the hallway artwork.  So, just like my daughter tells people that she "went to work today" when really she was at school, for the Krentcil daughter, all roads lead to the tanning salon.  And now she's probably scared sideways to see the reaction that her tanning bed reference has kicked up.  Just as scared as my daughter would be if someone started calling her Dora phone and loudly demanding bridge financing post haste if she ever wants to see her father again.

I'm not usually a fan of the slippery slope argument, but this is an instance that screams out for one.  If it were a crime to forget to properly apply sunscreen on your children every day, I'd be in jail for decades.  I will also risk future background checks by admitting that sometimes my kids don't get 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and I let the one with teeth sometimes skip brushing those teeth.  They've been near the exhaust pipe of a running car, they've walked by someone smoking a cigarette, and my daughter enjoys a Chicken Nugget every now and then.  One time, my husband and I were even watching an episode of Dexter, and we let her sit with us while she looked at a book.  Long story short, she had nightmares about rivers of ketchup that night.

These types of parenting glitches are one of the only ties that bind parents.  We all have our different trigger points, our different techniques, our different priorities.  But we all make mistakes.  We are also all human, and many of us have serious issues of our own that unfortunately affect our relationship with our kids.  For some it's from the buffet of body image issues, for others it's a chemical dependency, for others it's an insane drive to overachieve.  None of this is to say that Ms. Krentcil is a model parent or that she's doing right by her daughter.  It is simply to say that she doesn't belong in jail.  Or that if she does, we should all watch our back.

If the Essex County prosecutors need to bulk up their caseloads, I'd suggest they figure out their jurisdiction over the mothers featured on shows such as Toddlers & Tiaras and Dance Moms.  Those women are practicing live taxidermy on pre-school girls, stuffing them full of warped ideas about how to spend a Saturday and how to mainline sugar, then hair-spraying them so there's not a fiber out of place when they're mounted on a platform in front of a row of child predators masquerading as judges.  The other alternative, and I'm just spit-balling here, is that law enforcement authorities everywhere focus on initiatives like finding lost or kidnapped children, stopping sexual predators before they strike again, and arresting parents who beat, demean, and/or starve their children.  Then they could leave the skin care issues to CVS.

Away In A Mansion

Away in a mansion,
With a bedazzled crib for her bed,
The little baby Simpson,
Laid down her enormous head.

The eyes on the websites,
Cringed at the news,
That little mini mogul,
Must've left quite a bruise.

Move over, Jesus.  A baby whose anticipated birth may have eclipsed your own has finally been born. 

That's right, people.  On Tuesday, Jessica Simpson finally gave birth to a line of shoes for Macy's daughter.  Then the nation breathed a sigh of relief and the Guinness Book of World Records raced to the presses.

Poor J. Simps just survived the longest, most obvious pregnancy in the history of mankind.  Or at least people.com.  For crying out loud, her pregnancy was longer than:

• Her sister Ashlee's singing career;
• Her "good Christian girl" phase; and
• Her time spent receiving a formal education.

People have theories.  Some believe the baby realized Jessica is not fit to care for a newborn, so the baby just waited until it became a kindergartner and then skipped out of the womb.  Others believe Jessica didn't recognize the signs of labor and got caught up in the fun of heavy breathing while she tried to blow up a balloon.  I personally think she was the innocent victim of a Benjamin Button scenario, in which she was impregnated with a grown person and she had to wait for it to shrink to a size suitable for birthing.

I'm not here to judge.  Whatever your belief system, the bottom line is we all end up at the same place.  The baby is born.  And if that alone doesn't make you find religion, then you, my friend, are what I like to refer to as a loser.

There were two things that made this pregnancy feel like it took up so many calendar days (other than the fact that it actually did).  The first was Jessica's appearance.  The second was Jessica's mouth.

Let's just call a spade a spade.  Jessica looked like a spade.  Her mid-section was huge, and only her feet and her head were somewhat tinier. 

Now everyone hold on a hot minute.  Pregnant women should not be judged for their shape.  Pregnancy takes ahold of your body and then expands it to a degree you never thought possible.  I was in no way shape or form a pregnant lady in any shape or with any form.  I considered pregnancy jeans a cruel challenge and anything with any cinching at the waist a form of self-flagellation.  I would never remark in any demeaning or derogatory way on the physique of a pregnant woman.

Until I saw Jessica Simpson.

This girl looked 9 months pregnant right around the time she noticed the first pangs of morning sickness.  Her attempt to keep her pregnancy under wraps ('member how she made a big deal of holding out so she could sell the story to the top bidder?) was the most hilarious thing I've seen since Bridesmaids.  Jessica!  Honey!  I can see your baby waving at me through your shirt.  Give up the act!

She had a baby shower in March.  At that baby shower, she said she felt like she was ready to pop.  Which might explain why everyone at the shower came dressed in a hospital gown and brought warm towels.  It looked like she actually might pop out all over the 25 pairs of shoes she was gifted for the baby that day.  AND THAT WAS ALMOST TWO MONTHS BEFORE SHE ACTUALLY HAD THE BABY.  We should find the name of her ob/gyn and put it on billboards across our country's highways.  No one should trust a man or woman who would let his or her patient carry something inside of them that Wal-Marts everywhere looked at and said "Holy shit!  That thing is H-U-G-E!"

While your eyes tried to compose themselves, your ears took a beating.  Because Jessy Jess let some of the craziest shit fly out of her mouth during these past 251 months of pregnancy.  That's saying a lot for the girl who made herself famous with a request for clarification on chicken-or-tuna.  She made over-sharing seem junior varsity, and made TMI wonder if WTMI (WAY TMI) sounded too much like a radio station.  Hell, I will send her this just to give her ideas of other things to talk about.  I'd so much rather hear about how her daughter was saying "Dukes of Hazzard" at 3 months than hearing about Jessica's sexual urges during the second trimester.

Jessica's dad, Joe, really put the whole thing in perspective.  As he always does.  He said the birth of his grand-daughter was a miracle.  Indeed, Joe.  Indeed.  It's a miracle that baby didn't have to send a ransom note for its own life after having been seemingly kidnapped inside the womb.  It's a miracle that baby turned out to be a baby and not a waiter at a Mexican restaurant that Jessica confused for guacamole.  It's a miracle that baby didn't exit the birth canal, throw its swaddle on the ground like a football, and yell into the camera "Boooooyaaaaahhh, Nick and Vanessa!  We.  Win!" 

It's a miracle that baby hasn't held a press conference yet. 

There are already too many Simpsons talking.

Skinny Girl, Fat Head

It pains me to have to write this. 

Bethenny Frankel is driving me nuts.

For my OCD audience:  First, stop dusting the keyboard, it's clean.  Second, you're right.  I didn't watch a Bethenny show last night, so I'm kind of cheating at my own rules for Reality TV Week.  But see the part about "my own rules"?  Shut up.

Some of you may not know Bethenny.  Not that I "know" her.  She doesn't even answer my tweets.  It's probably just because I moved out of New York before she got famous.  Otherwise, I'm sure I'd know her because we'd be doing yoga together and vying for the same competitive play-date circles.  But I know about her because I have watched her show, I have visited her website, and I have even read one of her books.

For those of you that aren't enlightened, Bethenny started off as a natural foods chef -- a trade she picked up after looking for something to keep her occupied while her super-duper-rich fiance was super-duper-busy raking in the dough.  After she became runner-up on Martha Stuart's Apprentice, a/k/a Pity Party, she was cast on Real Housewives of New York.  (Even though she neither owned a house nor was a wife.)  I couldn't watch RHONY because my brain circuitry got all pissy when I even considered it, and would throw a hailstorm of eyelash twitches my way.  But apparently of the all the nitwits on that show, Bethenny was the least nitwittish and earned herself a loyal set of fans.  The Bravo network smelled potential, gave Bethenny her own show, and her popularity exploded right around the same time I told my brain circuitry to eff off, I was going to start tuning in.

Bethenny Ever After followed ...  well, Bethenny ... as she tied the knot at 40ish with her baby-daddy, Jason Hoppy.  It documented the birth of their baby, Bryn, and it rolled hours of tape on her steady and then meteoric ascent to global domination.  Bethenny started cropping up everywhere.  She "wrote" how-to books on everything from how to be "naturally thin" to how to succeed in business without even really trying.  Nope, the last part is a musical.  Bethenny's version was how to succeed in business while busting your hump and making sure everyone knows how much hump-busting you're doing.  Then she combined two of her life's passions -- being thin and being drunk -- and she came up with a line of cocktails she named Skinnygirl.  The low-calorie solution for getting a buzz without getting a bum.  The drink that makes the skinny girls feel self-righteous and the heavier girls appreciate that the product that makes them cry with shame also allows them to drown that shame in at-the-ready, artificially-sweetened liquor.  Beam, Inc. bought the line, kept Bethenny on as a consultant or something, and now she wears a diamond ring that has been classified as a lethal weapon and lives in an apartment in the same building as Jay-z, Beyonce, and their baby plant, Blue Ivy.

When Bethenny spun off from RHONY to do her own thing, she had me.  I thought she was witty and self-deprecating.  You know those "confessional" moments every reality show does now, where the star narrates or reflects on what we just saw them do in "real time"?  Hers were actually entertaining and usually pretty funny.  I admired how hard she worked.  I respected how she showed us that even though she was pretty, was doing quite well, and had the world's most good-natured boyfriend-then-husband, she had vulnerabilities and insecurities just like the rest of me-all-of-me.  And I REALLY LIKED that despite the weird version of the fame bubble she was living in, she didn't seem to take anything -- including herself -- too seriously.

Now she says shit like "building my brand" more often than I sneeze.

Now she is drunk on her own Kool-Aid.  Seriously, it's amazing what a sudden influx of millions of dollars will do to you. She is trying to get her veiny little hands into every market: shapewear, cleanses, body products, yoga DVDs, and of course the wines and the spirits.  She's even getting a talk show this summer, which Ellen DeGeneres is producing.  This season of her reality show has tracked her every apartment-renovation decision, and highlights big moments like the one where she wonders whether she really is THAT big-time that she's going to plunk down thousands of dollars on one silly little table.  This is her new version of a cliff-hanger.

Now she takes herself as seriously as monkey pox or a slow Internet connection.  She tweets like a maniac and it's always about how she works her butt off so that she can be with her "peanut" (Bryn, the baby).  Or it's about how she just wants to know what her fans want, so she can fight tooth and nail to hire someone to deliver it to them.  Or it's about how she's trying so darned hard to polish her penthouse so that we can all be jealous and wowed this season and not have to wait until next.  I honestly think she might believe she invented mothering, working, and maybe even indoor living.  Her new definition of sacrifice is just not expecting a thank-you for those inventions.

The moment that really pushed me over the edge was a tweet she had the balls to send yesterday.  Remember Madeleine McCann, the little six-year-old girl that disappeared from her family's hotel room in Portugal several years ago?  Well, police now seem to have a break in the case and think she may be alive.  This is what B-Frank tweeted yesterday in response to this news:

They're re-opening that case about madeleine (the girl missing from portugal). Breaks my heart now that I have a peanut.

NOW THAT YOU HAVE A PEANUT?!?  Pre-peanut, you couldn't be bothered to have emotions about some poor child crying for her mother and some poor mother crying for her child and the days, weeks, months, years they've spent worrying and wondering what the other was doing and thinking and feeling?  But now post-peanut, you've suddenly sprouted a heart and can fathom the depths of this tragedy?  And you want to tweet about it in a non-genuine way, because really you want the focus to be on YOU, your broken heart, and your peanut?  (Who, by the way, you named Bryn.  Rolls off the tongue pretty easy.)

I think that was the moment Bethenny jumped the shark on her own life.  She's lost all sense of scale, perspective, and humility.  I guess every empire-builder eventually does.  I mean, look at Donald Trump.  David Koresh.  Napoleon.  The Donald married a gal who doesn't even speak English and showed up at their wedding dressed as Carmen Miranda.  David Koresh ended up on the wrong side of a Branch Davidian bonfire sponsored by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.  Napoleon met Russia and then was exiled to the one island France could find that sounded unappealing: Elba.

Maybe Bethenny's talk show will flop because the only person she lets talk is herself.  Maybe she will be outed as a walking, talking skeleton that escaped from a 7th grade science classroom.  Maybe Bryn will go through her goth phase early. 

I don't know how it's going to happen, I just know that the demise of Bethenny is 'nigh.  She is walking a line that is as thin as the one around her waist.  And I'm not going to stand by and watch.  (Until the end gets very bitter.  Then it will be fun.)

Win Some, Lose Some

I don't really think anyone needs me to explain the dog-and-pony show that is American Idol.  If you have been so out of touch with American pop culture for the last decade, you're probably someone who votes in actual elections and who has no idea about -- or real interest in -- blogs.  Unless of course the blog was a daily analysis of how the Diane Rehm Show on NPR still manages to book guests despite Diane's death-croak of a voice.  That you'd be all over.

Now all my readers are going WTF?  The Diane Rehm Show?  She's lost us.

Exactly.  (By the way, here.)

So we've established that you all know what American Idol is.  For those who missed last night's show and haven't had time to enjoy their DVR feed as of yet, let's review the bidding. There are six contestants left:

• Jessica Sanchez. The girl who looks like she couldn't lift a cat but can sing the barn doors off. The Sanchez you would never dream of saying "Dirty Sanchez" around unless you were really just trying to get Jessica to take a shower and get the eye glitter off, already.
• Skylar Laine.  Like Reba McEntire, just with a hair's breadth less twang and a lot more microphone pounding.   Reba before she left the Grand Ole Opry for the CW Network.  Reba if Reba also likes ATVs and guns (not on stage, at home).
• Phillip Phillips. Son of normal-looking (I presume adoptive) parents with apparently sick and/or stupid senses of humor. Proof positive that Dave Matthews is the biological father of at least one child in Leesburg, GA and mated with a girl who does a nasty Funky Chicken dance.
• Elise Testone. The only contestant that can go out drinking with PP.   Legally, anyway.  Complete with cigarette-soaked growl.
• Joshua Ledet. Star of the next Tyler Perry movie, "Son of A Preacher Man."
• Hollie Cavanagh. Inspiration for Polly Pocket.

To judge them on pure singing alone is to engage in a six-way Sophie's Choice. They are all good. Sometimes great. Even the judges, in all their wisdom, are stumped (more on that later). I have my favorite, you have yours, God has His.

So let's just leave last night's individual performances out of it.  In fact, let's ignore even more of the show's staples.  I mean, there are enough websites that provide what I'm going to call the standard fare of American Idol rewind:  Ryan Seacrest jokes.  Amateur critiques of amateur performances.  Feigned disgust that people actually watch this stuff, when the internal inconsistency is that in order to feign your disgust over what happened at last night's broadcast, you had to watch last night's broadcast.  And that deep down, in places you don't even like to think about, you enjoyed every second of those budding artists prancing around the stage doing vocal high-wire acts.

I'm not going to give you any of those things.  I'm not even going to feign disgust at the show's general premise or longevity.  I don't know how it's doing as compared to seasons past, and I don't care.  I think American Idol is entertaining as hell, in part because of all the insane things that happen and are said.  If there was an Idol flag, I'd wave it as proudly as Sarah Palin crowds her lapel with pins of the American flag and the view of Russia from her house.  Hate me for my taste (hypocrite), love me for my honesty.

Instead of all that blather, let's take a fresh perspective on last night's winners and losers, shall we?  In a nod to the six remaining contestants, we'll do six of each.

I'm a lady, so winners go first.

WINNERS

1.  Royalty.  During the first hour of last night's show, each contestant had to do a cover of a Queen song.  Seriously, when was the last time you saw a picture of Freddie Mercury and enjoyed a series of nightmares soon thereafter?  Queen has been off everyone's radar since maybe Wayne's World and the Bohemian Rhapsody head-banging by Wayne and Garth in that tiny little car.  But last night, two of the original members came on to give the remaining 6 a kind of coherent and seemingly genuine pep talk.  Then those of us over [ahem] were reminded of, and those of us still in high school were introduced to, how Queen's music can really help you navigate many of life's curveballs.  Butterflies in your tummy?  Listen, there's this Crazy Little Thing Called Love.  Need a motto for your turn with Cuba?  Fidel liked "I Want It All," so that could work.  The junk in your trunk got you down?  Well, honey, Fat Bottomed Girls have been known to make the rockin' world go 'round, so chin up.

But Queen wasn't the only one with a resurgeance last night.  Randy Jackson was given back his post as the Prince of Yo.  He was wearing the pin last night to prove it.  (No photo available as of press time.)  Good on you, Randy.  Good on you.

2.  Teenagers.  Some of the strongest singers, in that even my deaf 98-year-old aunt can hear them with the tv set at a reasonable volume, are not of legal dating age except in the states they're from.  For crying out loud, I don't even know if 16-year-old Jessica Sanchez is old enough to baby-sit my kids.  Hollie and Skylar are both 18, and Joshua turned 20 a couple weeks ago.  Another reason why college is waste, everyone. 

3.  Miley Cyrus.  This girl's recent press has focused on her vanishing waistline, her boyfriend, and her narcotics.  But last night Hollie ended the show with a Miley Cyrus classic, "The Climb."  And we all hearkened back to the old Miley, the one who couldn't sing and couldn't act but was famous anyway.  The old Miley, whose press team only had to worry about (a) how to cover up that little fling she had with Pops and (b) how to convince us that when she was gyrating on a stripper pole at the Teen Choice Awards, she was really rubbing against a pencil in a bid to convey her love of school.  It was a nice reunion, is what I am saying.  We miss you Miley.

4.  Star Wars.  Fans everywhere were thrilled to see that Jennifer Lopez and C-3PO share a closet.  Even more exciting, gold MC Hammer pants and gold UVA-UVB swim shirts are a major focus of JLo's next line for Kohl's.  Everyone wins here.

5.  Hyperbole.  The judging triumverate is really hitting its stride.  They can now look at a Cheez-It and declare it a square of French culinary delight that does things to the human tongue that taste buds weren't originally designed to recognize.  Last night they bandied about phrases like "transcendent," "100 million percent," and "you're just so ready."  Also, of course, "goosies" and "she's gotta have it."  Theater personnel were handing out tranquilizers just to keep the studio audience calm.  In case over-reaction is contagious.

6.  THAT KFC COMMERCIAL.  There was a commercial that was so genius I am formally launching my bid to rename Mensa.  So we can call it KFC.  Kid stands up at the family dining table during dinner.  He's all "Jane, I'd love to thank you for a lovely meal."  Jane's all, "It's mom, dufus."  Kid's all, "This dinner is so awesome" and some other stuff that didn't matter because his tone was so smarmy pitch-perfect and the parents' glances across the table were so spot-on.  I immediately rushed out and thought about buying some fried chicken legs until I remembered that I live in Maine and we only fry haddock.

LOSERS

1.  Simon Cowell.  Not only is an unauthorized biography about him coming out, but this was just another week where he had to think about how he is the real Biggest Loser.  Went off to start the American version of the X Factor and came back with F's instead.  His over-produced, over-hyped flop didn't dredge up one ounce of the talent Jessica Sanchez has in one of her 16 ounces.  Sorry, Cowell old chap.  Your gamble didn't work.  Sounds like you have gads of cash though, so you'll probably be just fine.

2.  Supporting Casts.  Remember when Idol tried to blend in some Tommy Hilfiger to give the contestants fashion advice?  Yeah, me neither.  Not even Jimmy Iovine got his usual screen time mentoring the kids.  There wasn't even a featured guest judge.  And for God's sweet sake, stop referencing Jason Derulo and the stupid song we're supposedly helping him "write" along with Coke.  I've never met Coke, and I don't want to help Jason with song lyrics.  Do you know how much time this blog takes up?  Stop crowding my plate, Idol.

3.  Hammocks.  Hammocks were innocently out there, strung between two trees and swinging in the breeze.  Then along comes Elise Testone and she fashions some part-wing, part-parachute do-hickey and attaches it to the back of her dress for song 2.  That's leisure abuse, Elise, and you've got La-z-Boys and snuggies everywhere running for cover. 

4.  Sign Language.  I hate how the contestants (most of them, anyway) hold up their fingers to show us what number they are.  We get it.  When Ryan Seacrest says that to vote for you, we can text 5701, you're the 1.  We don't need more help.  Concentrate on your song choice.  Leave the number deciphering to us.

5.  Logic.  The judges, for the life of them, couldn't pic favesies last night.  They loved everyone.  They even, to a person, announced that they hope they can all come back.  That no one has to go home. 

Uhhhh....guys?  You know how this show works, right?

6.  Me.  For Christ's sake, I just made a Winners-Losers list about Queen night on American Idol.

I Love Loving Them

Last night was Night Two of Reality Television Week. Or what some call Every Week; This Week; or What Is A Week?  I Measure My Life in Jersey Shore Marathons.

I watched Giuliana and Bill.  It airs on the Style Network.  I tried not to think about that too much as I watched.

The "Giuliana" in question is Giuliana (DePandi) Rancic.  She is the host of E! News, one of the "judges" on Fashion Police, and a microphone-shover on red carpets everywhere.  I think she also wrote a dissertation titled Hemingway: How to Take a Floor Length Evening Gown and Make It A Cocktail Dress, and she is credited everywhere with jump-starting the name-mashing craze when she started calling Angelina and Billy Bob "Bang."

She wears lots of make-up.  Her super-hero name would be Sideways, because when she stands sideways you can't see her.  She is one of the few people in the country who would benefit from more time in Paula Deen's kitchen.  Preferably right near the deep fryer.  When she talks about all the delicious pasta her mother makes for her, you wonder how awfully long her tape worm is.

The "Bill" in question is Bill (no maiden name, he's a dude) Rancic.  This is the guy who won the first round of The Apprentice in 1974.  He has been not working for Donald Trump ever since.  Now he spends most of his time in Holiday Inns giving lectures about entrepreneurship to Baby Boomers who are more focused on why their scrambled eggs look blue than what Bill likes to call "thinking outside the box."

He wears lots of hair gel.  Every day he is photographed leaving somewhere or going into somewhere, and every day he looks like he's just dug deeper into Dapper Dandy's Dress-up Chest.  He is one gold chain away from a pocket watch.  I think I just saw him walk by my window swinging a cane and whistling "Singing in the Rain."

If you clicked on the link above, you'll see the Giuliana and the Bill entwined in a red silk sheet, pretend-nakey underneath, with the ever-creative slew of red roses thrown around them.  The theme song to the show is shorter than a Mel Gibson fan list, and includes nothing more than some gal warbling "I Love Loving You."

Now I know what you're thinking.  This girl wants us to think she hates these two poor people who only ever wanted to dominate the channels people DIY craft on.  She is spewing vitriol to mask her jealousy of a woman who can carbo-load and still have knees bigger than her thighs. 

You would be wrong.

Despite myself, I can't help loving GandB (#Twitter).  I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my reality-television hour.  I laughed.  I cried.  I threw out my mommy jeans.

For all the schmaltz and "amazeballs" and gossip masquerading as "entertainment news," these two come across as very real on television.  And their show actually seems to portray something in the neighborhood of reality.  She is at once the girl you wish you could be (or at least have her closet) and the girlfriend you wish you had, and he comes across as a good guy who just happens to speak in cliches and truisms. 

Last night's episode was a whopper.  It began with Giuliana undergoing -- and documenting -- her double mastectomy, and ended with the couple finding out that their gestational carrier was pregnant with an embryo that was all Rancic.  You swung with them from that low to that high over the course of sixty minutes -- which was only a bit shorter than the 2.5 weeks they had in real life to ying-yang from a brush with mortality to an embrace of new life.

The double mastectomy was in response to the breast cancer doctors discovered during a screening related to Giuliana's treatments for infertility.  GandB filmed the scenes related to the surgery, from the drive to the hospital to the drive back home days later, with a handheld camera.  That added to the intimacy of the moments they captured, from Giuliana's parents' tearful admission that they were nervous for their daughter, to Bill's attempts at putting on a brave face for his wife, to the "drainage bags" Giuliana had to "wear" under her pajamas when she finally left the hospital. 

Giuliana talked repeatedly about her choice to find the positive, her love for her family, and her guilt at "putting them through this."  She showed sincere pluck and light-heartedness in her recovery, making fun of Bill with her mother and using a hosting gig for New Year's Eve Times Square as motivation for recuperating quickly (the surgery was just 18 or so days before NYE.)  She wasn't show-offy or martyr-like when she announced the goal of honoring the couple's commitment to host the event; she was nose-to-the-grindstone admirable.  And funny.  And awesome.

And successful.  GandB made it to New York and participated in a round of press for the NYE show.  During some lame interview with a dittering blond who asked how they were going to kiss at midnight, GandB received a call from the fertility clinic they'd been working with to freeze embryos and have those embryos implanted in a gestational carrier.  Having kept the procedure a secret, they nonchalantly escaped to their hotel room to take the call.

The moment they found out the carrier was pregnant gives me goosebumps even as I type this.  Giuliana burst into mascara-ravaging tears that not even a hotel napkin could staunch, and Bill was barely able to contain himself.  They both said "thank you" an average of 6 times a second, and repeated how happy they were and how much they appreciated what the carrier (who was also on the phone) was doing for them.

As anyone who has heard about the Rancics knows, this pregnancy was a long time coming.  They have been very up front about their struggle to have a baby, and have seemingly made the subject more kosher to talk about.  I always admired them for acknowledging the disappointments of no-pregnancy and a miscarriage, and for, again, their choice to focus on the positives and never lose hope (lines I think they got right out of one of Bill's speeches, but in this context, they reverberate).  Their willingness to expose themselves on this very sensitive subject, and the very genuine way they dealt with it, earned them legions of fans.  Now every single one of those fans is cheering the news of their baby on Facebook and Twitter.  I also heard A.C. Moore is out of yarn due to all the baby-blanket-knitting.

I think my favorite part about GandB is that they honestly seem down-to-earth.  They have a swanky pad and their own restaurant and their own show and several jobs apiece that have them criss-crossing the country, but they never brag or act like they're saving the world one designer frock at a time.  Their schedules are jam-packed but they never complain or act like they're only doing it to "keep the fans happy."  In other words, they're the exact opposite of Bethenny Frankel.  (I'll get to you and your "en" that should be an "a" some other day, Skinnygirl.)  What is more, they actually seem to love each other, and the curse of reality t.v. couples may not strike them divorced.  I don't think they're our Nick and Jessica.  Our Jon and Kate.  Our Ashton and Demi.

So I can honestly, proudly say I have never been happier for someone I don't know at all.  I am happy for Giuliana that her surgery is behind her, and I hope her cancer is too.  I am thrilled for GandB that someone with her strong cheekbones and his perfect hairline will make their crowd a three this summer.  They are taking a different route to get there, but it doesn't matter.  It is going to be one hell of a Birth Day.