girlbitesdog

My mortal enemy has been vanquished. That’s right cruel viper; I have conquered you. I did it! I conquered my fear of snakes. Or maybe I can say, I’m not afraid of this particular corn snake. Her name is Lilu, like the character in The Fifth Element. She doesn’t have teeth.




My Caramel Corn Colored Nemesis

I have been terrified of snakes since I was a child, but not anymore. Snake aversion therapy worked. I’m feeling a bit smug right now. So I’m wondering what fear to conquer next. What are my biggest fears? Heights and being buried alive. I can’t imagine I’ll be buried alive anytime soon, soooooooo, heights it is. If I get over my fear of heights I’ll be a better skier. Getting over my fear of being buried alive isn’t going to make me better at anything.

I’ve been afraid of snakes my whole life. I remember as a young child seeing a garter snake slithering through the front yard of my stepmother’s grandmother’s house. My step-cousin swung a hoe down on it and chopped its head off. The poor snake writhed and twisted. I’ll never forget that image. I remember seeing other snakes as a child. Sometimes they’d be shimmying through the water next to our boat when I was on fishing trips with my grandparents. They never bothered me before. I don’t know when my fear of snake really took hold. Maybe it was watching my step-cousin kill one so brutally that planted the thought it my head that snakes are awful and dangerous.

BTW, that scene was repeated when I was 17 years old in college on a retreat with other students in the San Bernardino Mountains. Pretty, huh?

Pretty full of rattlesnakes, I should say. See the arrow on the mountain? I consider that a Native American warning.

One scaly intruder that appeared to be the size of a semi truck slithered it’s way to our rooms. To say it was big would be to say that the Taj Mahal is big. It was BIG, and it rattled. Someone from our group called the maintenance department. A guy pulled up in a pickup truck, pulled out a hoe (apparently the weapon of choice for snake-i-cide) and chopped its head off. He took the hoe and flipped the head in the bushes. He took the body and threw it in the back of his truck and drove away. Just like that. It wasn’t seeing the snake being killed that bothered me so much as the casual way that the man did it. Like it was the kind of mundane task that he did 10 times a day. Which meant that I was in 10 Times a Day Rattlesnake Country. That was a place I did NOT want to be. So I spent the rest of the retreat a bit jumpy and constantly looking underfoot.

I started snake therapy by just looking at pictures of snakes. Not pleasant. As I kid, I wouldn’t even pick up the S volume of our World Book Encyclopedias at home, for fear that I’d accidentally turn to the wrong page and be greeted with a bunch of color pictures of snakes. Funny, when was the last time I saw a set of encyclopedias? I guess Wikipedia must have been devastating to the World Book/Encyclopedia Britanica sales force.

I graduated from looking at pictures of snakes to looking at real life snakes. Then I made it to the final frontier. I can now pick up a snake, hold it and put it around my neck. BTW, when I put her around my neck she tries to go into my hair and down my shirt.



Excuse me snake, but I don't like you like that.


It feels amazing to conquer a fear. I feel like I’m powerful. I went from the kind of person who would run away from a snake to one who will let one coil itself around my wrist, slide up my arm, twist around my fingers. I haven’t just overcome a personal fear, I’ve overcome an instinctive one too.



We color coordinated our outfits. Animal prints are in. Snakes are very fashionable.




I totally want a snake bracelet.

TV Killer

I did it. I finally killed my TV…sort of. It died from neglect. I moved three months ago, and I never called Comcast to set up cable at my new place. I kept meaning to do it, but procrastination ruled my life. Instead, I got a subscription to Netflix. Love it. It’s weird to go through life without MSNBC. No more Keith Olbermann. No more Rachel Maddow. No more Chris Matthews. Then I stopped listening to NPR in the mornings. Now I’m living in a bubble. I have no idea what’s going on in the world, with dire consequences. I was the very last person on the planet to find out that MacKenzie Phillips had been screwing her father for 10 years. When I hear stories like that it makes me realize how thankful I am to have a normal, caring dad. And now I can forgive my dad for anything because he was never weird or creepy or deviant. Hey Dad, remember that time when I was four and you went out for cigarettes in the middle of the night and I woke up and you weren’t there and I freaked out and ran up and down the halls crying? Forgiven. Hey Dad, remember that time when I was five and you made my oatmeal and I complained that it tasted funny and you told me to eat it anyway and then later you realized that you’d put spoilt milk in it? Forgiven. Hey Dad, remember that time when I was four and I was sitting at the table with you and my sister Macy and I leaned back in the chair and accidentally tipped back and fell and hit my head and started crying and instead of getting up and helping me you and Macy sat there cracking up? Unforgivable! I’m still holding a grudge about that one.

Car Killer

I did it. I finally killed my car. Not sort of, for real. I wrecked my beloved Infiniti G20. Beloved because it lasted for so long. 220,000 miles! I was going to drive that car until the wheels fell off, but no. Instead, I rear ended another car on the 280. *sigh* It was so sad seeing my hood all crumpled up, headlight broken, radiator dented. I looked at its broken little body at the mechanic’s and thought, so this is what it feels like to be a murderer. I wonder if that car knew when I picked it off the lot that I would kill it one day. Kind of like how plants in a nursery start to shake when they see me reaching out for them.



Okay, so that's not actually a picture of my car, and my car wasn't that badly damaged, but this is what my soul felt like inside.

So now I’ve got to go get another car. I soooo loved not making car payments. I’m tempted to use my insurance money and just get another 1999 Infiniti. But there’s a spicier side of me. A side that wants something, hmm, faster. Zippier. Sadly, zippy comes at a cost. I wrecked my car more than three weeks ago and only yesterday did I make it to a dealership to test drive another car. I know I need to get another car, but I don’t want to haggle over a car with some guy in a cheap suit.

Mastery of the WASP-y Sports Continues…Archery!

My WASP-y sports pursuits have taken a turn for the lethal lately. Fencing, shooting. I seem to gravitate toward weaponry. And why not? There’s something incredibly satisfying about taking up arms. Makes me feel all caveman-y and primal. What will it be next? Jousting? Well, I don’t think it’s fair to say that I’ve mastered archery. I’ve only taken one lesson. As with fencing, I decided to turn to the internet for guidance. I typed “Archery San Francisco” into the search engine and voila! Cupid’s Gate at Golden Gate Park. The cost: $80. For my $80 I get two hours of instruction, a bow and a quiver of arrows.

The archery range is far out in the Avenues, close to the chilly Pacific Ocean, and it occurs to me as I’m standing in the park in November, shivering with my Ralph Lauren ski jacket on, that archery really should be a summer and/or indoor activity, because while it’s technically a sport, it’s not something that you can warm up and work up a sweat while doing it. Under Armor, my instructor informs me, is necessary to keep me warm.

First I get safety instructions. Don’t dry fire the bow, meaning don’t fire it without an arrow loaded. Why? Because it can damage the bow, I’m told. Don’t walk across other lanes where people are shooting. Well, that certainly seems wise. I don’t want my session to end with me looking like Saint Sebastian.

Is it just me or does he look like he’s enjoying being tied to a post and shot with arrows? Surely this must be a fluke. Let me investigate by looking at some more pictures.





And why's he wearing that tiny loin cloth?



And where are those other guy's pants? Last time I checked pulling out arrows was not a pants optional event.




Alright buddy. That's it. You're not fooling me. I'm on to you and your arrow penis. Put it back in your pants.

How did I never notice this before? Saint Sebastian was a total freak.

So what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, archery. So how does it work? I take a heavy metal bow, I load my arrow onto it and pull back the string. I line up the target, the tip of the arrow, my lips and eyes all in the same line of sight. I look through a sight on the left side of the bow and when everything is in line, I release.

So I shoot off about 100 arrows, and a few times I manage to hit the yellow center. How do I like it, asks my teacher. Hmmm, it’s okaaaaay, I answer hesitantly. He looks disappointed that I’m not showing more enthusiasm. Truthfully, I was bored and both my arms were sore from holding the heavy metal bow. He tells me that I’m pretty good for a beginner, but that with practice I can get to the point where it will be unusual for me to not hit the center. He takes a few videos of me shooting arrows to show me how to correct my form. I finish my two hour lesson, pay him his $80 and take off. The next morning I wake up and both my arms are hurt.

Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about archery. I’m surprised because I was initially so bored with it, but now it’s planted itself into my head and I want to try it again. I want to get to that magical point where it’s unusual for me not to hit my target. I think I might go back for a second lesson.

Here I am. Check out that form.

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/936a70ea83e39e0efc9ffabba4952f23/video/7200764

Next and final WASP-y sport of 2009, SQUASH!

Squash, prepare to be mastered…

Leigh’s domination of the WASP-y sports continues. This time, fencing.




The great realization of technology is that it has replaced the Yellow Pages. Gone are the days of flipping through that big brick of a book. Want to know where to fence? Just type “fencing San Francisco” into Google and voila! You get several construction and landscaping services and drum roll please…Halberstadt Fencing Club at your service. And lucky me, they had a beginners foil class. For $134 I could take 8 classes over a two month period. After a quick bit of math, I cheated and used a calculator, that comes out to a mere $16.75 a class. An unbelievable value. Finally, I can afford to be a WASP. Eagerly, I sign up.

Lesson 1

I walk into the gym. I use the word gym because it smelled like a gym. Kinda sweaty and musty. But instead of being off putting, it was more reassuring. It gave me the feeling that this place wasn’t too fancy pants. Every time I’d seen people fencing on television they were usually English and oh so sophisticated. Barely breaking a sweat and often taking moments to engage in witty repartee in between parries and reposts. Normally they’d be fighting in some great hall or grand ballroom in an English manor house. They were too cool for school. Very WASP-y and oh so intimidating.  Not so with this place. The fanciest thing about the  Halberstadt Fencing Club was its name. Everything else about the club said that people got down to business and worked.

I learn that there’s only one other student in my class and I’m delighted because a small class means more attention. I meet my trainer and like most trainers of beginners I’m even more delighted to see that he’s encouraging and has the patience of a saint.

On day one, I discover that there will be no swordplay. No, no. Instead, we pretend that we have swords, or foils as these particular swords are called. I move forward and backward in a ballet plie position with my hand out as if I am a butler holding a tray of drinks.  I lunge over and over. Even without the foil, at the end of the hour long lesson I’ve worked up a sweat. And the next day my right thigh feels like it’s been pummeled.

Lesson 2

Horray, swords! Ahem, I mean foils! Finally, it seems I’ve been trusted to be armed with weaponry. And I can’t wait to use it to vanquish my enemy. But no, there’s a catch. I will be vanquishing a wall. I spend my lesson plie-d striking my foil at a carpeted wall. While I try valiantly to vanquish the wall, it does not fall. Although perhaps that’s a good thing as it seems to be supporting the building I’m standing in.

Lesson 3

Immediately I know there’s something very different about Lesson 3 because it starts in the dressing room. There are two dressing rooms, an antichamber co-ed room and a women only room. The antichamber is full of fencing jackets and masks. My teacher takes me there to fit me for a jacket. First he points out the chest protectors. They look like plastic bras. I put one on and I’m reminded of two things 1) Xena: Warrior Princess and 2) fetishism. About that second one, there are so many straps and buckles and restraints and Velcro to everything I am wearing, and then to top it off I put on a glove and a mask. Surely there’s got to be somebody into that. I just typed fencing fetish into a search engine and sure enough… Although to be fair, I probably could have typed doorknob fetish into a search engine and, hmmm, I think I’m going to resist the urge. Anywhoo, moving on. Actually, not moving on for a second. I’ve discovered that there’s not just a fencing fetish, there’s also a fence fetish. Yes, people who get sexually aroused by fences. Whatever floats your boat. Hmmm, I wonder if there’s a boat fetish. Okay, now I’ve got to stop. I don’t want to go down this road.

Back to my trying on the fetishistic fencing accessories. I didn’t occur to me at that moment, and it probably should have, that there was something very ominous about my wearing a chest protector. Exactly what, pray tell, would I need to protect my chest from? The answer was soon made clear to me. It wasn’t until Lesson 3 that I came to two stark realizations. Here’s the first realization: it really, really, really hurts to get hit dead on in the chest and stomach with the point of a foil. The word chest protector, as you can see from the picture, is a bit of a misnomer.



It doesn’t protect the entire chest. But I guess they didn’t want to call it a boobage-area only protector. But they should have because everything that plastic brassiere doesn’t protect can be hit by this:

And while the point is blunted so as not to pierce the skin, muscle, bone and vital organs, as you can see from this picture, it’s not blunt enough not to hurt. And one would think it would have occurred to me that it would hurt to get hit with a pointy sword, but it hadn’t until it happened the first time it did.

As I said, I had two stark realizations. Here’s the second: I was going up against a ringer. While I was wearing the school’s second hand, ill-fitting and slightly smelly fencing clothes and accessories, my fencing partner showed up in his own gleaming white, perfectly form fitted jacket, mask and glove. Even the teacher admired the material of his jacket. And as it turned out, this wasn’t my partner’s first time at the rodeo. He’d fenced before, a realization that became painfully obvious on Lesson 3 as we stood face to face, saluted each other and began our first bout. Or maybe I’m just making excuses.

Lessons 4 through 8

Overall, I got in a few good hits. I sweated as much as if I’d done an hour of aerobics. I was killed many, many times. 

Next up: Archery!

I went to Texas for my youngest brother’s wedding. I was on my way back to California so I was leaving the hotel and walking to my rental car in the parking lot. When I got to my rental car I noticed something not so pleasant. There was a little round glob of bird poop on the driver’s side window. Ick. Not wanting to have to look at that on the 45 minute drive back to the Hertz parking lot, I took the key to my car and flicked it off the window. To my surprise the “poop” flew away. Turns out it was a bird poop moth, a moth that through years of evolution has disguised itself to look like bird poop under the theory that most (notice that I didn’t say all, yes I’m talking about gross, freaky people) creatures don’t like to eat their poop. That little moth was the most magical part of my trip because I’ve never seen poop turn into something alive.

All Hail King Ronnie

Excuse me, but when exactly did Ronald Reagan become our Lord and Savior? First we name an airport after him, which BTW was already named after another president, George Washington. How soon we forgot about him. Then the speakers at the Republican National Convention practically cream their shorts going on and on about how great he was. And now the coup de grace, this ridiculous statue. Bronze, seven feet tall. Did my tax dollars pay for this monstrosity? Probably not, but part of me wishes that they did so I could just be that more outraged.


Let us all bow our heads in solemn worship of King Ronnie.

What exactly was so great about Ronald Reagan? He loved Nancy? So what? He was an optimist? Um, yeah and… Nope, still not seeing it. When I was a kid I thought Ronald Reagan was the Antichrist. One of my friends, a fourth grader so I was convinced that she knew everything, pointed out to me that each of his names, first, middle and last had six letters in it. Ronald Wilson Reagan. Six, six, six. 6 6 6! Sign of the devil. That terrified me. He terrified me. Michael Jackson’s Thriller video terrified me. I was easily terrified. Cut me some slack, I was only eight.

I’m not saying Ronald Reagan was evil (actually, I am and he was) I’m just saying he wasn’t a saint. But Republicans are firmly in a time of the reinvention of Ronald Reagan and for reasons completely unknown to me, the media seems to be going right along with it. Hmmm, so let’s see what we’ve forgotten:

Oliver North and the Iran-Contra Affair. Selling weapons to our good friends in Iran and using the money to try to illegally overthrow the Nicaraguan government by funding the Contras. I still can’t figure out how he got away with that one.

Screwing Air Traffic Controllers who went on strike for better working conditions even though he’d pledged during his campaign that he’d be friendly to unions since he’d been the president of the Screen Actors Guild. What happened when the air traffic controllers went on strike? Reagan demanded that they go back to work in 48 hours and when they refused he got scabs to replaced them, fired the strikers and banned them for life from returning to their jobs. I’m not sure how that last part was legal, although he did rescind it. They reapplied for their jobs and some were hired back 15 years later. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Oddly enough before this all happened the air traffic controller’s union endorsed Reagan over Jimmy Carter. I’m bet they’re wishing they could take that one back.

The Savings and Loan fiasco, remember that one? No? Just ask John McCain. He can fill you in.

Shuttering mental health hospitals, Superfund cleanups, the HUD scandal, John Wayne Gasey clown-boy rape-murders, okay I made that last one up, but I could keep going and going.

BTW, when it comes to the spit and polish Republican revisionists are doing with Reagan, they tried and to some extent are still trying to do the same thing with Nixon. Pat Buchanan himself seems to be on a one man crusade to reinvent Nixon as the near savior of humanity and he would have gotten away with it if those pesky Scooby kids a.k.a. Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat hadn’t been meddling around.

What seems most perplexing to me about the whole Republican Reagan canonization is that it’s doing nothing to attract new blood to the Republican Party. If the last election has taught us anything it is that youth is the future of politics. Candidate Obama electrified the barely legal crowd.



Even kids who weren’t old enough to vote were urging their parents to come out for Obama. But what were Republicans doing? Not only clinging on to a dead icon who, if alive, would have been in his 90s, but nominating a candidate who was in his 70s and constantly being questioned about his vigor and ability to stay alive through his first and possibly second term in office. McCain’s solution was to pick as his running mate a much younger, but much stupider Sarah Palin. Consequently, it was fear of Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency that probably drove more people away from McCain.

Republicans holding onto Reagan is like Democrats saying that Martin Luther King, Jr. is the future of the Democratic Party. Yes, I love King and what he’s done for civil rights and human rights is immeasurable and we should never forget that and we should always acknowledge his contributions. But for every amazing accomplishment of King, sadly he is not our future. His life was cut down and he’s gone.

Even more perplexing is that when prominent Republicans are questioned in television interviews about their waning numbers and asked how to increase those numbers they never seem to “get” it. A key example would be that Republicans are losing the Latino/Hispanic vote, a crucial vote because this is the fastest growing voting bloc in the United States. The obvious solution would be for Republicans to soften their immigration stance and (and this is harder) try not to sound so xenophobic, but no, they refuse. I always here the same answer from Republican operatives about those dropping numbers, “We just need to do a better job of getting our message out to the public.” Just today I heard Mitt Romney parroting that message on This Week with George Stephanopoulis. Essentially what prominent Republicans are saying is, “We’re losing votes because we’re not yelling loudly enough.”


Rush Limbaugh: He won't take your brown votes, but he will suck on this giant brown penile fetish symbol.

My feelings about the King Ronnie phenomenon are twofold. The Machiavellian side of me wants the Republican leadership to continue down this silly path of destruction. Shoring up their base of white, Southern males by appealing to the basest of instincts will only serve to further alienate them from a society that’s more than ready to leave them behind. That’s one side of me. But the more “Christian” side (in quotation marks because I’m agnostic and it’s ironic in more than one way) wants to take a live and let live attitude. I want to live in a pie in the sky world where Democrats and Republicans can find some common ground. I don’t want to live in a fascists versus socialists kind of world.

Even on the most controversial issues there’s always something we can agree on. I give huge props to the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Obama to speak at their commencement and I give huge props to President Obama for daring to talk about abortion during his speech. Talk about grabbing onto a third rail. He didn’t just grab the third rail, he hugged it and gave it a big sloppy wet kiss. But why can’t pro-lifers and pro-choicers agree on a few issues? How about this: I don’t know any pro-choicers that are pro-abortion. Nobody thinks abortions are great. Most people who are pro-choice feel so most strongly in cases of rape, incest and health of the mother. Those topics are too hot to touch, but what about teen pregnancy. Can’t both sides on the abortion issue agree that if there were fewer unwanted pregnancies there would be fewer abortions? What are the two ways to have fewer unwanted pregnancies? Sex education and birth control. If pro-lifers could let go of just a little bit of rigidity they could achieve their ultimate goal which would be fewer abortions. But maybe it’s like asking Republicans to loosen up their stance when it comes to immigration. Their ultimate goal would be to get more votes, but Rush Limbaugh doesn’t want a bunch of shiny, new, brown votes so forget about Republican-backed immigration reform. It’s just not going to happen. Fewer abortions because we give school age kids condoms. Nope, that’s not going to happen either.

The more I ponder it, the more I want that live and let live option. I don’t want to fight my Republican neighbors. I’m pro Affirmative Action. I’m pro choice. I’m pro gay rights; excusez moi, I meant to say I’m pro EQUAL rights. But I’m also pro gun (“From my cold, dead hands” thankyouverymuch Charlton Heston), pro law enforcement and pro death penalty in especially egregious cases. And I don’t consider myself a walking contradiction in any way. I recognize the fact that there are some divides that just can’t be crossed. But in a way, I don’t because that’s the old way of thinking. People who don’t cross boundaries are the older generation and they, thankfully, are on their way out. There’s a new generation that’s coming up and as much as it kills me to say it, I think it may just be a better generation than mine. More open-minded, more visionary and more willing to accept change. And more than anything, ready to refuse to accept a Republican monarchy. They won’t be bowing down to any more King Ronnies.

The story was a hoax. The woman, for reasons I don’t yet know because the case has not been resolved, made up the whole thing. Did police find her in the trunk of her car? Nope. They found her at the happiest place on Earth. Disney World. The description she’d given of her kidnappers, those two black men, didn’t exist.

When this particular turn in the plot of the story of the fake victim, Bonnie Sweeten, was revealed it reminded me of a case I’d seen in the news years earlier. A man from Boston named Charles Stuart.

In 1989 Stuart, a manager at an upscale fur store, shot and killed Carol, his wife of five years. She was pregnant at the time. They’d just come from a maternity class at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He claimed to police that as he and his wife were sitting in their car at a stoplight when a black man carjacked and kidnapped them. The black man robbed them both, then shot Charles in the stomach and Carol in the head. She died that night. Her baby was delivered by caesarean section, but had seizures due to oxygen depravation. The baby ended up on life support and died 17 days later when Charles pulled the plug on him. According to one news report I read, Charles drove to the predominantly black neighborhood of Mission Hills to kill his wife to give his story more credibility.

Boston police arrested a black man who they believed to be the murderer and Charles Stuart, prick that he was, ID’d the man as his wife’s killer. This case could have had an even more tragic ending but for the fact that Charles’s brother Matthew ratted him out. Matthew revealed that he met Charles in his car the night of the murder, he saw Carol dead in Charles’s car, and took from Charles Carol’s jewelry. and the gun that killed her. Matthew put them in a sack and dumped them over a bridge. Charles, realizing that the jig was up, decided to dump himself over a bridge. He committed suicide.

And of course, there’s the mother of all A Black Man Did It crimes, the killing of the two sons of Susan Smith. Remember this picture?

This is the composite sketch made by the police based upon the description that Smith gave. She claimed that she and her two boys, 1 and 3, were carjacked by this man while they were sitting at a red light. Well, not so much.

Luckily, in this case it appears that the police were doubtful of Smith’s story from the very beginning. Nine days after her supposed carjacking America learned the truth. Smith was a child killer. She rolled her car into a lake while her two sons were strapped into their car seats. Her motive for the crime? She was having a sexual relationship with her wealthy boss’s son. He broke up with her and she wanted to get him back. He broke up with her in a Dear John letter, here’s part of what he wrote:

Susan, I could really fall for you. You have so many endearing qualities about you, and I think that you are a terrific person. But like I have told you before, there are some things about you that aren't suited for me, and yes, I am speaking about your children. I'm sure that your kids are good kids, but it really wouldn't matter how good they may be ... the fact is, I just don't want children.

And seeing that he didn’t want children, Smith decided that hers were expendable.

I like this picture much better.

By the way, Susan Smith has landed on her feet, or should I say on her back. After being convicted of murder she was sentenced to a life. (Although, unfortunately a life sentence isn’t what it used to be. She’ll be eligible for parole after serving 30 years.) While in prison she had sexual relationships with two guards. She was discovered because she contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Also, she’s been looking for company. She put a personals ad on an online dating site called WriteAPrisoner.com. BTW, she likes rainbows and Mickey Mouse and she’s a Libra. I’m digressing, but when I found this ad I felt compelled to show you. Write A Prisoner has since removed the ad.

That was a bit of a digression.  But back to my original point of these crimes. All of these stories happened years apart, but they have a theme. That imaginary black men love to carjack people? No. They all involved a brutal, high profile crime, children in danger (or the second worst thing, a pregnant woman), a white perpetrator and a black scapegoat. These are just three, three of the best known, but there are so many other cases where the finger has been pointed a black person when the actual criminal was white. I did a cursory search on the Internet and easily turned up more.

Sweeten, Stuart and Smith could have told the police that a white man committed these crimes, but they decided instead to blame blacks. These deceivers preyed upon society’s fear of black men and the stereotypical belief that blacks are predisposed to be violent. In the Stuart case the deception worked, at least temporarily. His actions did nothing to improve race relations in Boston.

Of course all of these cases are so high profile, but what about the little ones that don’t get any media hype? Even in my own tiny way I’ve seen it. As a prosecutor, I’ve seen so many auto theft cases that go like this: Guy (who isn’t black) gets stopped by a police officer. The officer runs the license plate of the stopped car and the car comes back as stolen. The officer asked the driver where he got the car. The typical answer? On the corner, bought for cash, from some black guy. His last name, the officer asks. Hmmm, says car thief, I don’t know. His phone number, the officer asks. Hmmm, says car thief, I don’t know. His address, the officer asks. Hmmm, says car thief… Well you get the idea.

But, hey, Mexicans don’t feel left out. There’s plenty of scapegoating to go around. You’ve got Jose. Jose? Yes, Jose. Who’s Jose? Well, when the car thief gets stopped, if he didn’t get the car from a black guy he got it from Jose. What’s Jose’s last name, the officer asks. Hmmm, says the car thief, I don’t know.

By my calculations, Jose and that black guy have stolen every car in Santa Clara County. They are on a two-man crime spree. They must be stopped. Therefore, I have made it my life’s mission to find Jose and that black guy. Once these two menaces to society are stopped we can have our county back. Hell, we can have our country back…once we catch that black guy. No more throwing mothers and brood into the trunks of cars to do god knows what to them. No more shooting pregnant women in the head. No more rolling toddlers into lakes. Finally, we can sleep soundly.

How many times had I seen that directive? But I’d been a slave to the box for so long. I’d like to say I was raised by two parents, but there were really three. As a latch key kid television raised me. When I should have been, as my teachers would say in many evaluations, applying myself, television stole me away instead. Even in the summers when the pool beckoned, the TV beckoned even louder. All My Children, followed by One Life to Live, followed by General Hospital, followed by Donahue, followed by the Oprah Winfrey Show (before it was just Oprah) followed by the evening news. That was an entire day of my summer teenaged life absolutely wasted.

Fast forward to my now adult life. I’m old. I have no time to waste. I don’t have any money to waste either. In fact, I’m on a savings kick. I’m cutting waste at every opportunity. Now that my roommate has moved out, I’ve been feeling the pressure to cut even more. So that very thought came into my head when I opened my Comcast cable/high speed Internet bill. $150. That’s right. $150. Per month. Except I forgot to pay last month, so the bill was $300. Um, ouch. Here’s the kicker. I don’t even get HBO. That’s right, no H B fucking O. I cancelled the HBO after the Sopranos ended. I didn’t see the need in paying extra since I only had HBO for Sopranos and Sex and the City.

So why am I paying so much for cable? Nobody else I know is paying this much. I decide to be a troublemaker. I call Comcast in a huff and demand answers. I get on their dial one for English, dial two for Spanish system. And eventually I get to a choice that asks me to dial four if I want to cancel or downgrade my service. Yes, I do. So I dial four. I get on the phone with a woman. I tell her I want a discount. She tells me I already got a discount when I signed up for the service four years ago. And that I got free installation. And this and that. And blah, blah, blah. If I want a discount I’ll have to downgrade to fewer channels she says, which coincidentally happen to be the channels that I don’t watch and also happen to be the non-high definition channels and what was the point of me spending all that money to buy a high definition television if I can’t watch the HD channels she says. And I’ll have to kiss my DVR goodbye so no more recorded shows she says and on and on. You see, she points out, you’re getting a great deal with us so no, we’re not giving you any discounts. Thank you and goodbye and go fuck yourself, she cheerfully tells me.

Damn! I hang up the phone in defeat. She sounded so triumphant, gleeful. It dawned on me what just happened. I’d been routed to a hard seller. Someone specially designed to deal with wayward sheep like myself. Disgruntled, disaffected sheep cheeky enough to suggest that they not get fleeced. She got me good. I’d been beaten and I knew it.

And I was pissed. So pissed that I picked up the phone the next day and called Comcast again, but this time I meant business. Dial one for English. Dial four to downgrade or disconnect. Me: Hello I’d like to disconnect my service.

That’s right. This time I didn’t ask for a discount. I went nukular. Not nuclear. No. Nu-ku-lar. I told them to cut the cord. May I ask why you’d like to disconnect your service, the cordial man on the line asked? Me: Because I can’t afford it. He goes on to give me the same spiel that the first woman did, if I downgrade it’ll be cheaper and so on, but I explain to him that if I downgrade I won’t get BBC America anymore and that’s the station I like. He does some, hmms and some pauses and says well, let me check on some things and then he taps on his keyboard for a bit and viola! Magically, he discovers before unknown discounts. It would bring my bill down by about $300 a year. Not good enough I say. Now I’ve got a little bit of power and I’m getting greedy. I don’t want $25 knocked off the bill a month. I want $50. But nope. He can’t get there. We’re in a standoff. Neither of us is budging. It’s either $50 or I’m kissing Comcast goodbye.

He hems he haws, finally he agrees to disconnect my service. But, he says, you’ve already paid up to a certain point. You’ll have to call back to get it cut off. Well, just put in the order now, I tell him. I can, he tells me, but if you call back you’ll get a few extra days of free cable. Okay, I say, knowing full well that this must be some kind of trap.

In the interim I ponder what it will be like to be TV free. I went without a TV for a couple of years of college. That was so easy. I lived in a dorm. Friends and parties were literally at my doorstep. Who needed a TV? The only entertainment I wanted was music.

So fast forward again to today. I imagined my new TV free life. It looked dangerous, exciting, glamorous. I imagined people at work asking me, “So Leigh, did you catch Idol/Dancing With the Stars/Amazing Race last night?” And I’d be like, “No, I don’t even OWN a television.” And I’d say it in a lofty, offhand, but totally kick ass way. Like, I don’t own a TV because I was out doing shit with my life, holla! And being out on the town with all my new free time with swilling cocktails with flashbulbs popping, holla! That’s how I was hoping it was going to turn out.

But I was scared, scared that I would just be sitting in a noiseless, vacant apartment wondering what was happening in the world. And since I didn’t have a television to overpower all the random apartment creaking noise, jumping every 15 minutes.

Well, I waited until the day Comcast told me to call, that was yesterday, and I called. Turns out, that was a totally fake day that that guy gave me. Or rather, what he didn’t tell me was that I had to turn in my cable box that day. That wasn’t going to happen because I was working late in the office and the Comcast store would be closed by the time I got home. Well, just shut off my cable, I told the customer service rep, and I’ll turn in the box over the weekend.

When I got home that night I walked through my apartment door prepared, centered like a Buddhist monk, ready to accept a television free life. Well not entirely. A friend let me borrow his box set of Firefly DVDs so at least I had something to keep me entertained. But when I came home and noticed that my DVR seemed to be recording, hmmm, working. I flipped my TV on and sure enough, my cable box was still functional. It felt like something from the Godfather. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Suddenly I’m starting to realize the problem. I can’t kill my television; I just want it to commit suicide.

Defeated again, I call Comcast and tell them I’ll take the $300 annual discount and keep the cable. If anybody asks me if I watched Idol I’ll just have to settle for saying, “Sorry, I only watch BBC.”

Oh Mickey, You’re So Fine, You’re So Fine You Blow My Mind.

Mickey Avalon is my new musical love. He’s a glam rapper who’s tearing it up at clubs around the country. How to describe Mickey Avalon? Hmm, let me think… He’s the grandson of Holocaust survivors. The son of heroin addicts. A recovering heroin addict himself. A former prostitute on Hollywood Boulevard. His sister died of a drug overdose. Um, yeah. He’s keepin’ it pretty real. Perhaps as a nod to his days as a street walking he has a lyric in one of his songs, “Mickey Avalon the kosher salami. For twenty you get Chachi, but forty gets you Fonzie.” What’s a Chachi? What’s a Fonzie? Oh, don’t act like you don’t know.

What about Mickey’s other employment history? Well, he raps about it: “I used to work nights at Hot Cock dot com, but then I got fired when my mom logged on.” What else did he used to do with his mom? Sell pot.

Most people who know about Mickey Avalon first heard his most famous song from the movie Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The song is called My Dick and it’s about, um, well you can probably guess. It’s a filthy, filthy, hilarious song.

Since the majority of Mickey’s lyrics are about smoking crack, cursing our Lord and Savior and selling his ass on Hollywood Boulevard, I was utterly bewildered by something I saw on his website MickeyAvalon.com. It read as follows: “Have the Ave. at your Sweet 16 or Bat Mitzvah.” Huh? This is from the guy who raps about his dream woman, “The Ave’s on the market for a mistress, and I couldn’t give a shit about the riches as long as she suck dick and do dishes.” Can’t you see that at your next bat mitzvah? Mazel tov!

But intrigued by the Ave’s invitation, I read on. He writes on his site, “hit up my booking agent if your daddy can afford me for you. Comes with a private show, and me all to yourself.” Okay, interesting. But there was more. That little blurb came with this picture. This was Kaylee’s Sweet 16 birthday party. Wait a second. I needed a moment to take this moment in. Somewhere out there is a 16 year old girl named Kaylee, beloved daughter, apple of her mother’s and father’s eye. Adorable Kaylee, who’s dear mother and father paid to have a crack addled, former male prostitute come and sweat all over their darling little girl and her teenaged friends. I would give my left arm to post the pictures from the party, but the website for the preposterously named Bakersfield Paparazzi, the operation that photographed the event, is down for maintenance. DAMN IT! What do I have to say about the mother and father of Kaylee? You are the most AWESOME PARENTS EVER!

His latest video. As you watch it remember, he played a 16 year old's party.

Can someone please explain to me how it is that gay marriage is legal in Iowa and not in California? WTF!? I didn’t flee running and screaming from the Midwest for this kind of bullshit. Who do those corn fed hucksters think they are? More progressive than us, apparently. Iowa has shocked the crap out of me.

The Comments Section of Our Lives

Last week I met one of my good girlfriends for drinks at one of the City’s See and Be Seen watering holes. Unfortunately it was a popular place, even for a Tuesday night and the only table that was available was in the very back behind a pillar. Aaahhh! I wasn’t paying for $12 drinks to Overlook and Be Overlooked. How was I going to meet any cute guys behind a big pole? Mercifully, a better table came open. We took it and not four minutes later there was a guy standing at our table. Hey, he said motioning to his table, my friend’s really shy but he wanted to talk to you. Is it okay if we join you for a drink, he asked.

Wow! Classic wing man action happening. I had to admire his technique. So with that intro my friend and I got to talking to Shy Guy and Wing Man. Although Shy Guy wasn’t shy. Well, maybe too shy to make a first move like boldly walking up to our table, but not shy once he got to talking. And that was part of the problem. He did almost ALL the talking. He asked almost no questions of the two of us. Worse, when my friend talked I wondered if he was listening to what she said. He talked to her about her being from Hong Kong even though she told him she was from Japan. He was a lawyer, a partner at a firm. And he seemed shocked when he found out that I was a lawyer too. Close your mouth dear. Why is that such a shocker?

There are so many problems with a guy doing all the talking. One, if he’s talking he’s not listening. Like thinking that my friend was Chinese instead of Japanese. Two, it makes a girl think that she’s not important. Like what she’s saying isn’t worth paying attention to. Three, it makes the guy come across as an insecure braggart. BTW, it wasn’t even necessary for him to brag. That’s what his wing man was for. Everything important Shy Guy told me about himself Wing Man already told me. The way it should have worked is Wing May should have been talking up Shy Guy and Shy Guy should have looked all self effacing and talked himself down.

Getting in our personal space too soon. Making bitter comments about his ex-wife. Asking four times for our phone numbers. Shy Guy made so many mistakes. I’m not going to enumerate all of them, but considering how wealthy he was and how desperate he was to get a date it made me think that I could have a very profitable career as a dating coach. I had the raw materials. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was smart and accomplished and interesting. Not the right guy for me, but the right guy for somebody, if he doesn’t make the same missteps.

As I recounted the night in my mind, it made me wish that I could tell this guy (free of charge) where not to go wrong. And I wouldn’t be bold enough to tell him to his face. But what if I could say it another way. What if life had a comments section? My blog has a comments section. If you don’t like what a write, you can tell me. You can tell me anonymously too, no less. A very liberating proposition. But that’s just about my writing, not about my life in general. Would I want a comments section about my life? Would anybody? I guarantee if that guy had one he’d be getting more dates.

And then I wonder what would people be writing in the comments section of my life. Nasty stuff? There are a lot of haters out there. Fuck ‘em. I’m one of the few people out there who laughs at hate mail. It used to bruise my feelings when people were nasty to me. Now it makes me giggle. There are a lot of jealous people out there. And if they’re jealous of me then I must be doing something right. That’s not to say that I can’t take constructive criticism, it’s just to say that I can tell the difference between the two.

If someone were putting something in the comments section of your life what exactly would they write? That Clueless Shy But Not Really Shy Talks Too Much Doesn’t Listen See and Be See Bar Guy has no idea.

Vacation All I Ever Wanted, Vacation Had To Get Away



So the Go-Go’s song went. Remember the Go-Go’s. Ah, the ‘80s. What ever happened to them? The Go-Go’s, not the 80’s. Belinda Carlisle, she was so cool. Wait, I’m getting off track. This isn’t about neon and shoulder pads and sweaters with shoulder pads and hair with wings and bangs that go up and down at the same time and, wait, I’m doing it again. Let me start over. This is about VACATIONS. I want one.

And I just got back from one. Correction. I just got back from TWO. Skiing wintry Colorado and then hitting the beach and baking in beautiful Sydney, but I’m ready to take off again. Problem. None of my friends want to go anywhere. Come on people. Nobody? But vacation’s all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away. Come onnnnnnnnn. Somebody please. I don’t wanna go by myself.

My top two choices: Bali and Kenya. A few years ago I found a book called Hip Hotels and a couple of weeks ago I found a corresponding website called hiphotels.com. From there I found a Kenyan hotel called the Shompole. It's surrounded by Masai villages and zebra herds and mountain ranges.



That's one of the bedrooms.



That's the pool.

You can’t tell me that this isn’t one cool looking hotel. I will admit that the fact that every room comes with mosquito nets gives me pause. And yeah, they did mention something about leopards. And, yes, Kenya did have those riots in ’07 after the elections that killed about 1000 people and… Wait, I’m not explaining it right. Forget about all that stuff. Every country has its problems. We illegally wiretap and torture people and we still get tourists.

My point is, I work, I’ve saved up a more than a month of vacation time and two far away continents are beckoning. I can practically hear them calling my name, one in that African sing song-y way that Kenyans sing and I don’t know how people sing in Bali, but Balinese are singing my name in a sing song-y Balinese way too. With about four or so months advance planning I could be on safari dodging big cats a la Roy from Siegfried and Roy. Or in Bali doing, um, Bali stuff. What kind of Bali stuff?  I dunno. Bali Hai?

Favorite Expletive of the Week

Shepard Smith losing his shit live on Fox News, slamming his hand on the anchor desk and yelling out, “We are America! We do not fucking torture!” Um sorry, Shepard. I think what you meant to say is, “We are America! We should not have been fucking torturing.” ‘Cause we did.



Hilarious.

Remember back in the day when we had moral superiority. When we put our bad history of slavery and genocide of Native Americans and Jim Crow and lychings behind us? When we could lecture South Africa and Cuba and China and Russia about violating human rights. You know. The days before Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and torture memos. We were sooooo smug. Telling the rest of the world how to behave. If anybody knows anything about me it’s how much I love being smug. Not a pointless, smugness. No, no. I was born with noblesse oblige in my blood. Give to the needy, kind of smugness. There but for the grace of God go you Leigh smugness.

How noble I was in high school, writing my Amnesty International letters to petty Third World governments. I, righteously demanding they release those activist journalists from prison. Or buying toys for homeless tots for Christmas. Or spending my summers volunteering for kids when I could have been baking at the pool. You know, making the world a better place, I’d say with an air of cool, detached, teenaged loftiness. Man, I thought I was the shit. Man, I was a little shit.

At least with my beloved Barack Obama we’ve regained some of our world prestige. Take that you froggy Frenchies! While you were having Muslim riots in the suburbs, we so called backwards ‘merkins were electing a black guy who’s name rhymes with Osama. Don’t tell me we’re not progressive. In yo face.

If you read my blog regularly you know that one of my New Year’s resolutions was to master the WASP-y sports. And unlike my other resolutions (floss everyday, don't be late, stop cursing like a sailor on shore leave) I've decided to actually follow through on this one.  First up on my list was skiing. On January 1^st I decided to hit the ground running (or, um should I say skiiing) in lovely but stinky Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Why stinky? It’s the “Springs” part of Steamboat Springs. There’s a tinge of sulfur in them. While I was on the slopes I kept thinking that someone behind me let a fart rip.

Cost of my ski excursion:

airfare: $500

jacket: $400

Yeah, the jacket was a bit pricey. That’s because I got it at Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren, WASP extraordinaire. Or should I say Ralph Lifshitz. A WASP pretender who’s actually Jewish. $400 for a Ralph Lauren jacket is a steal actually. I bought it four years ago. You can’t get them that cheaply anymore. Now, they run you twice as much.

1^st pair of gloves: $60

2^nd pair of gloves: $45

3^rd pair of gloves $80

Explanation: I’m the Goldilocks of ski gloves. The first pair were too small, the second pair weren’t warm enough. The third pair were just right.

ski pants: $59

wool long johns: $80

4 pairs of wool socks $13 ea.

wool hat $20

group ski lessons: $300

goggles: on sale 50% of $80

palatial accommodations: free.

Total cost:

Pricey? Oh yes. Nobody ever said being a WASP was cheap.

What a sweet friend I have who’s putting all 12 of us up in her place. Let me get back to the palatial part. I was reminded of the Overlook Hotel. I fully expected to go tricycling down one of the hallways and see a couple of pale girls in blue and white frocks asking me to play with them forever and ever. We left one of our friends behind one day to catch up on some work. He needed to use my laptop and I also fully expected to come back and see variations of “All Work and No Play Make Jack a Dull Boy” typed over and over.

So how’d it go?

Day One: This is how you put on a ski. Yup, that’s where I started. I was shown how to put on a ski, and a good thing too because otherwise I would have walked through the snow barefoot. Notice I said put on a “ski” not “skis”. We were only allowed to put on one ski. Just one. That’s how I started.

So I did my one ski, one boot scoot for a few minutes until I moved on to the next step, and you’ll never guess what that was. Go on, I’ll wait. You’ll never guess. If you guessed two skis then you are WRONG! No, just kidding. You’re right. I put on both skis. And I spent my morning mercifully being handled with kid gloves by my two instructors. Day 2 and Day 3 were me on the lift. I was fully prepared to shit a brick when I got off the lift the first time and the second and the third and the forth, but miraculously I managed to ski down. As terrified as I was, and I was, it was hard to be too scared when there were five year olds skiing past me. After all, I wasn’t skiing black diamonds. If your ski run has the name Hansel and Gretel with paintings of little gingerbread men decorating the sign you’re not likely to break your neck going down it.

But then something curious happened. Instead of getting better at skiing I started getting worse. I lost my confidence. I would ski in a wedge the entire way down the mountain. Very painful. And I wondered why the heck I was doing any of this. Why did I make this New Year’s resolution in the first place? Why was I doing something that scared the bejesus out of me? What was I trying to prove to myself? I wasn’t having any fun. I couldn’t even hang out with my friends. They’d been skiing since they could stand upright. They were skiing black runs. Even if I made steady progress and went skiing two or three times a year I would probably never catch up to them.

This is when one of the best and worst aspects of my personality kicked in, stubbornness. It makes me stick with certain things long after I should have quit them: friends, flute lessons, calculus, law school—yes, law school, although that one worked out okay in the end. I’m a crap tennis player, but that hasn’t stopped me from picking up a racket for the last 19 years and sucking at tennis. I’m just not one to give up and admit failure. Sometimes I succeed; sometimes I fail, but for better or worse, I don’t quit.

So there I was at the lift, looking at the long way down, knees shaking, grimly determined when something crucial occurred to me. It wasn’t so much a discovery, more of a realization. I’m afraid of heights. I’ve known since fourth grade that I’m afraid of heights, I just never put it together that that would be a problem with skiing. But it’s hard to ski down a mountain if you’re scared of heights. I figured that I’d just have to ski scared and work on my fear of heights later. So I did.

Since my first trip to Steamboat I’ve taken a second one and a trip to Tahoe. And I’ve managed to continue to ski through my terror, refusing to give up. On my last trip my ski instructor took me down an especially steep hill, a little too steep for my comfort. I made my way down shaky kneed with a lot of encouragement from him. “Congratulations,” he told me. “You just did your first blue run!”

On my second trip I was in a ski class with an older woman in her 50s. I’m a mother, she explained to me, and I have to tell you it would make me feel so much better if you were wearing a ski helmet. Sure mom, I thought, I’ll get right on that. But I had no intention of buying a helmet. They were heavy and bulky and hot. I ignored her advice. This was pre-Natasha Richardson ski tragedy. Poor Natasha Richardson. She died from a head injury after a fall during a lesson on a beginner slope. That was a bit of a freak accident, but it got me thinking. A death on the slopes in unusual, but how many people have fallen and had concussions? I flashed back in my mind to the two hard falls I’d taken off of horses last year. Both times I hit my head hard on the ground. Both times I was wearing a sturdy, top of the line riding helmet and it still felt like someone had rattled my brain. Even if I were a careful skier, I couldn’t control the people around me. There were plenty of hot doggers on the mountain. And the blue/black runs transitioned into the beginner green runs. The younger people coming off those blue/black runs were moving like maniacs. What if one of them crashed into me? How much did I love my head? Um, quite a bit. That mom was right. I wasn’t going back up without a helmet.

As a side note, I’m smarter than this woman, not the mom, another woman: she was skiing downhill while talking on her cell phone. Dangerous and stupid. How busy is your life? Really? RE-ally? I’d like to say that seeing that was a fluke. I’d like to say that, but I can’t because there are some very, very busy and important people out there who’s lives are so go go that they absolutely must endanger themselves and everyone else on the slopes to take those very important phone calls while flying down a mountain.

Final WASP sport analysis: skiing accomplished! Will consider height aversion therapy for improvement.

So that’s one WASP-y sport down, three more to go. Archery, squash and fencing to go. Which one should I do next? Hmmm…

Like many women, I have an uneasy relationship with Barbie. I had a Barbie, but I also had a Christie. Who’s Christie, you ask? Unless you’re black or a Barbie doll collector I’m guessing that you have no idea. Christie was Barbie’s black friend. I hated my Christie. What did I hate most about her? She had black hair with gold streaks in it. I didn’t understand the gold streaks. Maybe it was a nod to the tackiness of the ‘80s. I have no idea, but it made her look like a Solid Gold Dancer.

Here she is, with Babs.

But why didn’t I, a black girl, want to play with a black Christie doll? I bet a dime store psychologist would say that I had low self-esteem and wanted a white doll with blonde hair instead of a dark skinned black doll, but that’s not true. I had other black dolls that I played with. The problem was that Christie just wasn’t as much fun. The reason I didn’t want to play with Christie is the same reason most girls don’t want to play with Barbie’s kid sister Skipper. She was a sidekick. Barbie was the main attraction. There was no Christie Dream House. There was no Christie convertible. I guess Christie had to live under a bridge and take public transportation. Did Christie even have a job? I don’t remember there being a Christie flight attendant or a Christie astronaut. I guess Christie must have been on welfare to boot. Who wanted Welfare Christie? Not me.

Times have changed for Barbie, somewhat. There are and have been for quite some time black Barbie dolls. Or “African American” Barbie dolls, as Mattel likes to call them. That actually bugs me too. Only the black dolls are referred to by their race. There’s no such thing as a white Barbie for sale. She’s just Barbie. It sends another message to little girls that white is normal and black is different.

I have a male friend who’s black who worked at Wal-Mart. He was in the toy department one day when an older white woman asked him where she could find whatever the particular baby doll du jour was. Something like a Betsy Wetsy. It was the holiday season and she was looking for the doll for her granddaughter. He thought the question was odd since Betsy Wetsys surrounded them. They’re right here, he told her in a somewhat exasperated voice. She gave him a very nervous look, said okay, grabbed one of the boxed dolls and quickly walked away. Odd again, he thought. She seemed really jumpy and uncomfortable. He couldn’t figure out why until he looked at the dolls and noticed that they were all black Betsys. She was too timid to speak up and say that she wanted a white one.

If the chocolate Betsy ever made it to that woman’s granddaughter, I’m wondering what the reaction would have been. Tears? Pouting? If the child were white with a black doll, she’d be in the, pardon the expression, minority. As a child I had black and white dolls, but none of my white friends had black dolls. Are you white with daughters? Would you ever buy your daughter a black doll? Why not? Are you afraid of what your child’s reaction might be? Why would she react negatively? Why not buy a black doll and see how your girl reacts. Do it! I dare you. What’s the fun of having children if you can’t conduct harmless, mildly entertaining psychological experiments on them? It might reveal a lot to you. But the revelation won’t be unique. Sadly, most girls black and white prefer playing with white dolls.

Looking for the quintessential American girl? Why not try an American Girl. They’re a popular collection of dolls. Some come with a back-story. There’s Samantha, a turn of the century white doll who fights against child labor. There’s Kirsten, the 1854 Swedish immigrant doll. There’s a bit more flava with Maria Josephina, the Spanish-speaking New Mexican doll. There’s Felicity, a wealthy American Revolutionary era doll. Her father owns an indentured servant, which is just a polite way of saying white slave. Then there’s Addy. She’s black, and a runaway slave. What to say about Addy? Well, if the doll is historical, I suppose it’s only logical that she might be a slave.

The American Girl dolls don’t sit around their Malibu Dream Houses. They face adversity, adversity they are always able to overcome through pluck and perseverance. But what’s the fun of having a slave doll? What kind of games do you get to play? Dodge the whip? Underground Railroad choo choo train? Hide and go hide some more?

I kid. A bit too viciously maybe. Addy is a great American Girl, the kind of doll I would have loved to have had when I was a girl. All of the American Girl dolls and their accompanying stories are compelling. I do have a gripe about them though. In the Historical Characters doll collection there’s only one black doll. The same with the Native American doll and the Hispanic doll and the Asian doll, only one of each. You don’t get to chose. It gives them a token-like quality. But with the white dolls you can go from the colonial period all the way to the disco era.

But like I said, I only had one gripe. I love the dolls. They’re not dressed like tramps and they don’t have Barbie bodies. There’s even an option on the American Girl website that lets you configure your own doll. I’m sure that parents in the know have known about these dolls for years longer than I have. And I probably have nieces who for years have been wondering why they haven’t had an American Girl from me under the Christmas tree. Um, sorry about that, Auntie Leigh dropped the ball on that one.

American Girls cost around $100 bucks. Ouch, that’s a lot of money for a doll. I guess self-esteem and a healthy body image have their price. I don’t like the price, so I guess that’s two gripes not one. But for that price you get to make the doll your own. You even have the option of making a girl with dark skin and what they describe as “textured black hair”. I was really hoping to see a girl with an Afro, but no, she has pretty, long hair that’s not super straight. On second thought, an Afro? It’s not 1973. This isn’t Shaft. What was I thinking? Not even Angela Davis sports an Afro anymore.

Now I’m far too old to play with dolls. Not to mention that I’ve always thought it was really creepy to see adults with doll collections. So I was a bit surprised that Barbie popped back up in my life, but I guess that’s just Halloween. I decided to take a cue from the children around me. You’d never see a little boy shunning a Spider-Man costume because the boy is black or Hispanic or Asian. Why should I limit myself? Still, for Halloween I skipped Barbie and Christie. I went as Marie Antoinette. Next year, Snow White.

1. The sign will read: Cat for Sale. I was thinking of being a bit more risqué with the title, but Pussy for Sale was just too sophomoric and um, easy—excuse the pun. My cat had diarrhea two months ago. The whole sordid episode started when my vet told me that my cat’s food had too much grain it and that was the reason that he kept vomiting. So the vet recommended that I change his diet. I switched him to an all protein, no grain diet. That solved the vomit problem, but it led to something much, much worse at the other end. I woke up one morning and thought, “Ugh, I smell poo.” Then I went back to sleep, confused. Then I woke up again and saw a brown streak on my pure white blanket. Still, I didn’t put two and two together. I’d been eating chocolate in bed in the dark the night before—DON’T JUDGE ME! So I just figured that that was what I saw. But then I noticed another streak and another and another. And then a horrible thought crossed my mind: I poo-ed on myself in the middle of the night. I pondered the idea momentarily and then I remembered that I wasn’t a two year old and that I hadn’t poo-ed on myself since then. No, something far more sinister was at work. Something furry that meowed. It wasn’t me. It was Muffin. So if you want a pooping vomit machine that will ruin your brand new Vera Wang sheets have I got the cat for you. Just leave your contact info in the comments section of Girl Bites Dog.

2. I think being “spiritual” is just pure laziness. I have more respect for people who make the commitment to get out of bed on a Sunday morning, shower, shave and go to church. Buying a scented candle and shopping at Whole Foods doesn’t give you any religious bona fides.

3. It’s dumb for parents to make their children eat everything on their plates. Yes there are starving children in Africa, but making your kid fat isn’t going to help them.

4. I want to go back to a time before I ever heard the words Taliban and Al Qaeda. Notice that I didn’t say that I want to go back to a time before the two groups existed, just before I knew they existed. Yes, I want to be that selfish about it. I would be willing to ignore the suffering of others for my own comfortable ignorance. I remember the first time I heard that some crazy group of men in Afghanistan made kite flying illegal and killed women for “getting” themselves raped. I thought it was some kind of bizarre, localized cult. Well, it is bizarre and it is a cult, but it’s not localized anymore.

5. My favorite quote as of late, “Never miss a good opportunity to keep you mouth shut.” I have no idea who said it, but I want to kiss him, close mouthed of course.

6. Attention all media: for the love of God will you please stop comparing Barack Obama to Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln. I find it more than a little disturbing, considering how those two presidencies ended.

7. I think it sucks that Pluto was downgraded from planet status. The International Astronomical Union decided to de-planify Pluto. Excuse me, but who made the IAU the boss of everything? You can’t say that a planet’s a planet for 76 years and they suddenly decide that it’s not anymore. I’m taking Pluto back.

8. As a child I never learned the proper way to hold a pen, so I hold my pen just like a four year old would, and I find that annoying. I’d like to hold a pen like an adult, but I just don’t know how. Sometimes I look at people holding pens and try to get pen holding tips. I spy on pen holders because I’d feel like a moron if I asked an adult to show me the proper way to hold a pen. Except from left handed pen holders; I don’t trust them.

9. You heard me right. Left handedness is just plain weird. You’ll never convince me that they aren’t writing with the wrong hand. There’s something odd about it.  I was convinced that Barack Obama might have been the second coming of Christ, until I say him holding a pen.  I don’t trust left handed people…or their funny scissors. 

10. I just realized as of late that my gaydar is broken. How did that happen? I live in San Francisco, the gay capital of the world. Maybe my gaydar just got lazy and gave up. A single woman needs gaydar to avoid certain unfortunate misunderstandings. I just typed “gaydar repair” into Google and my first result was The Gaydar Repair Manual on Amazon.com. Excellent! (Guitar making sound a la Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.) I will be ordering said manual. I clicked on the site and learned that The Gaydar Repair Manual is the title of a CD. Bogus.

11. Now that Ricardo Montalban is dead how often am I going to hear the words, “rich Corinthian leather”? I decided to Google Corinthian leather, mostly because I couldn’t spell “Corinthian”. And I discovered a couple of notable things.

1) The actual quote is “soft Corinthian leather” not “rich Corinthian leather” or “fine Corinthian leather”.

2) There’s no such thing as Corinthian leather! WTF! That’s right, you heard me. Chrysler made up the term as a marketing ploy. According to Wikipedia Chrysler’s soft Corinthian leather was mass produced in Newark, New Jersey. Ricardo how could you?! I feel so betrayed.

See the commercial here.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIL3fbGbU2o 
 

12. I’ve made it to number 10. I’ve surprised myself considering that I’m still battling writer’s block. Still. What’s it like to have writer’s block? You know when you’re in a conversation and you’re trying to think of a person’s name that you’ve forgotten? You know how frustrating that is? “It’s right on the tip of my tongue,” you say to the person you’re speaking with. That name is juuuuust out of reach, but you want it so badly. If you could just…um…remember… That’s how I feel when my fingers sit unmoving on my laptop keyboard. Or to engage in a bit of potty talk, it’s just like being constipated. A lot of straining and effort with very little result. Now imagine being constipated for four months. Think about how that would feel. That’s how I feel every day because that’s how long I’ve had writer’s block.

13. I have a friend whose girlfriend broke up with him via text message. TEXT MESSAGE! Nasty! If you want to break up with your significant other it should be in person unless you’re in a long distance relationship where that’s not practical. Then you’re not a total jerk if you do it over the phone. But here are the ways NOT to break up with your boyfriend/girlfriend: phone, email, text message. Or any new technology yet to be invented. If some enterprising genius decides to invent and market holograms I can guarantee you that soon thereafter some guy will break up with his girlfriend using one.

14. What’s it like to be in my 30s? I’m young enough to still get acne, but old enough to watch my hair turn grey. Oh joy.

15. I need more black friends. Damn you San Francisco. Blacks are running out of this city like it ran out of Afro Sheen. I love my white friends but if I have to go to another dance club and hear Sweet Home Alabama, Sweet Child O Mine or Sweet Caroline one more time in one more club I’m going to shoot myself.

16. If you’re white, don’t call me articulate, or well spoken for that matter. Every black person who can properly conjugate a vowel gets that compliment. As one of my black friends said, “What they’re really telling you is that you’re so articulate…for a black person.” You know what bugs me about this the most? I AM articulate, so I never get to enjoy the compliment.

17. Every time I turn on the television I’m inundated by commercials from companies talking about how environmentally friendly they are. I suppose I’m fine with that, I suppose, if you actually are good for the environment, but that’s not what’s happening. The commercials are from plastics, coal, nuclear and oil companies. I’m reminded of when Phillip Morris did all of those “Talk to your kids about smoking” commercials. Really? How about some “Talk to adults about smoking” commercials. You’re evil Phillip Morris. Your product is addictive and it causes people to die slow and lingering deaths and no amount of PR is going to change my mind about that. Chevron and British Petroleum (or BP as they like to call themselves now, like Kentucky Fried Chicken now likes to be known as KFC. Hey just ignore that everything we sell is fried and will make your ass expand and put you in an early grave) you don’t care about the environment. You care about screwing us with high gas prices and making record profits. You use a miniscule percentage of those profits to invest in research for renewable energy, so eff you and your stupid “We rescue baby sea turtles” commercials.

18. I hate it when people I don’t know what to Facebook friend me. Who the hell are you? Why do you want to be my friend? You don’t even know me. What’s the point of having friends you don’t know? Do you really want strangers following the comings and goings of your life? For them the answer is yes. These people are attention whores. They don’t want to be your friend. They just want you to see all the fabulous things they are doing with their lives.

19. Why are Republicans all of a sudden so concerned about the national deficit? I didn’t hear them whining when George Bush was pushing through tax cuts in the middle of two wars. Hello! Those tanks don’t pay for themselves. Quit your whining and pass this stupid stimulus package. Is it going to work? Frankly, I have no idea. What I do know is that we tried things the Republican way for the last eight years and this is where it’s got us. And here’s a news flash, nobody knows if it’s going to work. Not the experts, not the proponents, not the detractors. And more interestingly, we’ll never really know if it worked. If it works Republicans will just say that some other reason brought our economy around. You can’t convince ideologues that they’re wrong no matter how much evidence to the contrary you slap them in the face with.

20. I had a trial recently where the defense attorney asked the victims if they were in the country legally. It’s not the first time that I’ve done hearings in court where the defense attorneys have gone there. First, let me just say that I have the utmost respect for 99% of the defense attorney I oppose. They’re professional and strong advocates for their clients, exactly the way they should be. That being said, the 1% who ask victims their immigration status when it’s not relevant to their case are really lowdown. Asking a victim if he’s hear legally when it’s not relevant to the case is just a way to intimidate undocumented immigrants when they’ve been victimized. To switch it around, I wonder how those attorneys would feel if I asked their clients the same thing. I guarantee you they’d be outraged.

21. I steal my ex-boyfriend’s food while he’s on vacation. Problem: I have no food in my fridge. It’s late. I’m hungry. I have no intention of getting dressed and dragging myself to the grocery store. Even the one that’s a three minute drive/eight minute walk from my apartment. Solution: My ex-boyfriend’s refrigerator. He has plenty of food; I have the code to his security system. I don’t even have to take off my pajamas. He lives right across the street. Free food, hurray. But how awful is it that even the good things in my life are bad.

22. 99% of my hard work has been rewarded…with more hard work.

You see, bitter ‘til the bitter end.

A recent conversation:

My friend: Horsemeat tastes like ass.

Me: Indeed.

I don’t think my friend caught the double (or is it triple?) entrendre. I’d never eat a horse. Horses are for riding and loving and giving carrots. And then I asked,

Are You a Jew? Hey that Rhymes!

You can’t swing a cat without hitting a Catholic who doesn’t love talking about Catholicism.. Catholic this, Catholic that. Having gone to Catholic school. Catholic nuns at that school. Even the lapsed Catholics love talking about how they've renounced Catholicism.  No matter how hard they try Catholics just can't get enough of Catholics.  The sexual fetishtic attraction of Catholic schoolgirl uniforms, hopefully with adults and not schoolgirls wearing them. There’s an entire cottage industry of Halloween costumes devoted to it.







See…  By the way, if you want any of these or you want your girlfriend in any of these just go to Amazon.com.

Episcopalians never go on and on about the Anglican church. Evangelicals can't shut up about religion, but only because they’re trying to convert you. But you know who are curiously silent? The Jews. I never met any Jewish converters. Except maybe Jews for Jesus, but they don’t count. Since most Jews don’t advertise their Jewiness (yes, it’s a word I found it in the Merrian Webster dictionary, um, I think) sometimes you don’t know if a person is Jewish unless you ask. So I wonder, is it okay to ask if a person is Jewish? And I wonder because when I’ve asked a person if he’s Jewish there’s almost always an uncomfortable pause for a moment and very reluctant yes. I’ve always wondered why there’s the reluctance, because if I ask a person if he’s Catholic there’d be no reluctance at all, but an enthusiastic YES, YES YES!

So I decided to do some undercover Hebrew investigation. Well, it wasn’t really undercover. I just asked a Jewish friend. Specifically my Jewish friend J. I use his initial J to give him some anonymity. Although, his actual name is Jay, so that doesn’t make him very anonymous, does it? Our conversation:

Me: J, you’re a Jew, right?

J: On both sides.

Me: Speaking on behalf of all Jewish people in the world, tell me J. why don’t Jewish people like to admit that they’re Jewish when you ask them?

J: That’s not true.

Me: It is when I ask them.

J: Well, [name omitted] does. And [name omitted] does. And [name omitted] does. See, I’ve just disproved your theory.

Me: But they’re your friends, and your friends are all extra Jew-y. That’s a word, by the way. It’s in Merrian Webster. They’re proud of being Jewish. You all belong to synagogues. You named your son Abraham. By the way, nobody ever asks me if I’m black. It’s so weird, somehow they just know.

J: It’s not that people mind being asked if they’re Jewish, it’s that they mind being asked the question that comes after that question.

Me: Meaning?

J: Meaning first they ask you if your Jewish and then they ask, “Well, tell me why do Jews…” and then comes the really anti-Semitic thing, like why do Jews control the media or something offensive like that.

Me: Ah, gotcha.


Why My Ass Hurts

The bruises on my butt have finally faded away. Before you jump to the conclusion that I got them from making some questionable life choices, just know that I got them because I fell. Not in love. Literally I’ve fallen. Repeatedly. The latest time was during a sneaky trip over to Bloomingdales. It was raining. I was wearing rubber soled shoes. The escalator was very slippery. When I entered the store I wiped my shoes on the welcome mat, but to no avail. Damn you, slip ‘n slide escalator. I was carrying an umbrella at the time. Even though I was holding onto the rail my feet just slipped ahead of me. I felt so betrayed by them. And my butt landed hard on the metal escalator stair. I’d like to say that I hit just one stair and stopped. I’d like to say that… But that’s not what happened. I hit the first one, and then I slid to the next and the next and the next, bumping my ass on each on the way down. And just for comic effect, half way down the stairs my umbrella popped opened. I looked like a klutzy, wet Mary Poppins. The result of my fall was a horizontal zigzag bruise on my butt that looked suspiciously like the shape of the edge of the escalator stair.

The fall happened as I was recovering from another nasty spill. That was a fall down a set of concrete stairs at work. I blame Jimmy. Jimmy Choo, the brand of stilettos I was wearing. As I was walking down the stairs the heel snapped on one of the shoes sending me tumbling down the stairs. Or did I trip causing the heel to break? Or was I pushed? It happened at work so I’m not ruling out any possibilities. I fell down the stairs, ripped open my pants and caused a bloody gash to knee. Having the full force of my weight come down on my knee as it hit asphalt was painful. Having that happen in front of a crowd of people walking into the county building was excruciating.

While I was limping and bleeding and in pain with papers and files scattered into the wind I had another problem to deal with. I had a courtroom full of witnesses and cops waiting for me because I was scheduled to start a hearing in five minutes. With a hole in my knee and a hole in my pants and a broken heel it seemed unlikely that I’d make it to court on time. I limped back to my office and called to tell them I’d be late. I limped to the office first aid kit and played amateur medic and bandaged my wound. I looked bad. Like something that would start innocuously enough, but would fester and turn gangrenous. I tried not to picture myself biting down hard on a piece of leather while a doctor sawed off my leg. Next I limped to my office and pulled out the sewing kit I bought 10 years ago on a whim and never thought I’d need. It had grey thread that was a perfect match to my heather grey trousers. I did a three minute rough and ugly patch job. The shoes, what to do about the shoes? I didn’t have a spare pair. I kept meaning to bring an extra pair to work, but I never got around to it. So I was stuck with a four inch stiletto heel on my left foot and a no inch flat shoe on my right foot. But I was a little trooper and like all little troopers, I soldiered on. I just reminded myself of Marilyn Monroe. I read once that she had her shoes altered so that one heel was always a little shorter that the other to give her a more flouncy, sexy walk. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what I told myself as I made the long lopsided walk to court.

Coming Out to My Dad

I went home for the holidays. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my dad eating dinner. The television was on. The television is always on, and it’s always loud. Is everyone in the house going deaf? Earlier in the day I’d come out of the shower and walking into the den. The television was on, loudly. Where was he? Not there. Where was my stepmother? Not there. Nobody was there. The house was empty. Why won’t they turn the TV off? Are they scared that evil spirits will fill the house if it’s quiet for five minutes?

So back to sitting at the table eating dinner. The Hawaii-Notre Dame game was playing on the television. "Do you want to change seats so you can have a better view of the TV?" my dad asked. It seemed like the perfect time for me to come out to him, so I did. "Dad, I don't like football," I replied. There, I’d finally said. I officially came out of the closet and told my dad my deepest darkest. I. Didn’t. Like. Football. My dad eats, drinks and breathes football. He played football in high school. All three of my brothers played football from the time they could stand and hold one. Two went to college on football scholarships. Even today at age 63 he referees football games. And I, his beloved daughter just came out to my father and told him that I don’t like football. He gave me a look. What was that look I saw in his eyes? Hurt? Betrayal? No, it was sometime more. Something deeper. Much more profound. I’d never seen anything quite like it. He looked at me as if I'd just renounced our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

So what else was the holiday like besides that little speedbump? Fun. Nice to see my family. The other parts? Stereotypical in their normalcy. Who am I dating? When am I getting married? When am I moving back to Arkansas? Normally I easily deflect such petty pleas, but my dad hit me in the gut with one. Maybe he was still smarting from my football comment. He asked me how much I pay in rent. Answer, $2300. For that price, he tells me, back home I could get a four bedroom house in a gated community. Gated. He knows my weaknesses. Snobby, exclusivity. Keeping out the riffraff and such. Everything I long for in life.

Then he twists the knife. How much equity am I building from the apartment I'm renting he asks nonchalantly. A mean question to be sure because, of course, he knew the answer, a big fat ZERO. But if I moved, I protested, my salary would be cut in half. It hardly matter he said; nothing costs anything here. I thought back to the $60 parking ticket I got in San Francisco three days ago. The meter had only expired 10 minutes earlier. That ticket would have been $5 here, my dad chimed in. I'm not sure he was exaggerating. When he picked me up from the airport he paid the parking attendant on the way out. It was $2. He made small talk with the pretty parking attendant sitting in her booth. As we drove away he complained that he should have taken a receipt from her. Who knows, my dad said, she might have cheated me; parking could have been only one dollar he mused and maybe she took that second dollar for herself. Two dollar parking. TWO DOLLAR PARKING!!!

Random Thought, Because Life Can Be So Random

Why after a person is executed on death row do the authorities remove the prisoner’s body and put it into an ambulance? Why an ambulance? It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?