I know she’s worried about it because when I offered to write a piece to her specifications she said “Make fun of me.” Like my dogs, I hunt rabbits that surrender the same as the ones that run. Like a proper roast, I hope all of you will join me in abusing Pia in the comments below. No matter how deep your gratitude to Ms. Savage may be, how tender your affection or how robust your admiration, I just bet you can mock her for something. If you’re reluctant just leave sentence fragments. Not going to.

I first met Pia through the magic of BlogExplosion. No matter how many times I clicked on the little number, the frame just stayed on this site. At that time, and the last time I checked, too, Courting Destiny was nine out of every eight BE sponsors. Finally I decided that this must be a very important blog, not yet appreciating the paradox. In that moment I became a BE pioneer myself by reading what was on the screen. I even scrolled.

The first of Pia’s pieces I read was a long piece. You know what I mean, about her. Tangent to tangent like an epileptic mathematician, Pia described her diagnoses and her political positions and just what she thinks about men of a certain type, described someplace she once lived once and what was around the corner from, discussed how little she made as a social worker and how much they charge for a cab ride, how meaningless she found the stereotypes of Jews and why yo
can still call a cop if you get lost in Manhattan. I was tempted. I felt like I was following Tarzan shopping by vine for the perfect boutoniere. What amazed me then was that in the last sentence of the post a light came on and the whole journey suddenly made sense. I realized I had discovered a new literary voice, perfect for an electronic medium in that it needn’t draw breath.

Hooked on Pia’s writing and knowing exactly where I could find more, I was there for her debut in the arena of online politics. I quickly learned that those who blog politics as a hobby are much like those who run for office professionally except that they don’t need nice clothes to be stupid in nor a camera to show their backsides. As best I recall the discourse, Pia speculated that a family murdered by Christians was as dead as if they’d been murdered by Muslims for which she was called liberal, non-linear and treacherous. Scurrilous charges but not meritless.

From that day to this one, Pia’s taught me how to comment, to answer comments, why both are important unless you have allergies but not yet how forgoing grammar enables someone who can only type 40 words per minute to publish 2500 an hour. If you know a good publisher, the woman needs a book deal just to catch the overflow. If you don’t know a publisher, maybe give her a link so she can finally beat technorati in numbers as well as letters. If you have no site to link from, then God bless you.

In conclusion, I wish Pia well this Yom Kippur although I suspect God would take an hour of silence before a day of hunger and thirst. But don’t beat yourself up. Your blogging friends will take care of that.

William Shatner goes to court with a woman who’s about three feet tall, who it happens he’s infatuated with.

James Spader and William Shatner get in the ring to wrestle for the right to sleep with Candice Bergan

And God Damn! I haven’t even told you about the murder trial yet! And shit that’s the one with that creepy peeping tom and the pissed off judge who was married to the deceased, who slept around, and holy shit is that Peg Bundy?

Hell of a way to spend an hour on a Tuesday night. And I’ve just now come with a word to describe it.

Boston Legal is a spectacle.

And don’t let that fool you; It’s not all flash–though shock and awe are to be expected when William Tiberous Shatner (as he called himself during his roast on Comedy Central… did you see that? It was hilarious) steps into a courtroom– There is plenty of substance behind the star-studded ensemble cast and the fact that one particular law firm seems to get all the freaky cases. It’s one of the most socially conscientious shows on the air, and not in a preachy way like the last few seasons of M*A*S*H. And the dialogue… as an actor I would water at the mouth to be fed scripts like those.

If you’ve stopped by here often, you’ve no doubt heard of it.

Along with taste in music, my preference for the show above and beyond any other currently being aired is something I share with our esteemed electric-haired one. And what’s not to love? James Spader, Candice Bergan, and William fucking Shatner under one roof, intelligent comedy that isn’t inhibitave to human drama… it executes on a lot of things that are lost on mainstream TV. Especially that of the 90s–the post-reality tv peak portion of this decade has seen a bit of a resurgence– oh and by the way have I ever told you how glad I was when Friends ended? But I digress

I can’t get enough of James Spader as Alan Shore. Pia can’t either of course, though I lack her additional, shall we say, “perspective.” His wit is razor sharp, and his delivery finely tuned, both in the comedic and the dramatic. Furthermore, he has a sense of irony that is without parallel. As an actor he’s one of the foremost of my role models.

The first episode of the show I saw was the second one of the second season. I can pinpoint the exact moment I became hooked. Alan Shore was cross-examining a murder victim’s housekeeper, who had just given unexpected and damaging testimony. He started to ask sort of softball and yet expository questions, all the while stretching his arm in the same manner that a pitcher might.

“Mr Shore, what are you doing?”
“I’m warming up.”

And the lens flares as he throws his finger out at the witness
“Did you kill Joe Nolan?”

See that’s the other thing. Boston Legal is expertly shot, and expertly paced. Its beat, as communicated by the lens flares and the music (I’ll get to that later), is engaging, and permeates throughout all aspects of production. The actors work off of it, but not in a way that seems disingenuous.

Of course, at times the fourth wall is broken, usually by Alan or Denny, and it’s a device employed often to great hilarity. The second episode of the third season was a prime example. I’d quote it, but I figure since I could just as easily show the clip. Damn do I love Youtube.

And oh yes, the music. Blues guitar in the vein of early Clapton, Hendrix, and Stevie Ray Vaughn with a sometimes soothing, sometimes howling vocal part. Hell, I could watch an hour consisting of just the bumps they play when transitioning between scenes, where they show beautiful shots of Boston while the guitar lays down hot licks. And the insertion of guitar licks on occasion into the scenes is often invigorating. I’ve made mention in this space of my love of the blues. I’m also a tremendous fan of the use of music to drive the energy of a scene. And where that category is concerned, Boston Legal is among the top in my book, along with Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and everything that’s ever been done by Quentin Tarantino. And there’s nothing quite like a cutting guitar riff to hammer in a beat, or a rapturous blues singer to add ambiance to those balcony scenes.

The ensemble cast and the characters they portray are what any TV writer would hope for to work with. Alan and Denny are a comic duo in the classic sense. Which isn’t to say that there’s nothing new, and in fact they’re vastly different from say, Abbot and Costello, but their relationship is built on that tradition. And on such time-honored ground, something new and unique has been created. A gun-toting legendary attorney with “Mad Cow” and a morose yet funny, somewhat narcissistic, crooked but honorable intellectual. Both are big time charismatic showmen in the courtroom, and they bounce off each other in a way that makes them devastating in court together. Which is good, because it seems that no one else in the firm will defend them when the shit hits the fan and their nefarious habits come to turn on them. Denny gets Alan off. Alan gets Denny off. Of course, they’re not gay–both of them exhibit rampant heterosexuality.–but they have slept together.

They both lust after Shirley Shmidt (for the record, and despite the fact that Candice Bergan is 40 years older than me, I get it) and somehow that hasn’t come between them until now that Alan has finally put a real move on, the opening line of which is I’m sure the one Pia said in a previous post she’d quote in her intro to this piece. Which is odd, actually, because Alan refused to show Denny the tasteful black and white nudes of a nineteen year old Shirley he bought off the widow of an ex-lover of hers. (Curse network television and its churlish “decency” statutes). I was hopeful for this episode, and remain such for the future, but I was disappointed. Is it weird that I have such a desire to see Alan Shore, a character I identify with on many levels, sleep with Shirley Shmidt? Not that I’m particularly shocked if it is, I mean I’m a strange person and I take pride in it, but it can be useful to pinpoint the ways which one is strange. But the interaction between Alan and Shirley has been a pleasure since they first met. (I apologize for the quality on that one… I don’t quite have the resources to cut a higher-resolution sample of that scene from my archives. and that one was shot with a camcorder)

I never watched Murphy Brown, save for clips, but I’ve always loved to see Candice Bergan (the daughter of Edgar Bergan and the sister of Charlie McCarthy) whenever she popped up . Her poise and delivery have always been fantastic for comedy, and yet so eloquent as to give dramatic moments an almost desperate reality. Vis a vis, the episode in the first season, when she had to cross-examine a woman with Stage Four Alzheimers, and we found out in the end that her father suffered from the disease. It was downright painful. In this show her comic disposition is more reactive. She’s not quite the “straight man”, (that’s Rene Auberjonois’ Paul Lewiston who embodies for me every administrator I’ve ever had a cheerfully adversarial relationship with. You know they’re good people and you don’t bear them any real ill will, it’s just that you understand that your purposes in life are at least on one level in fundamental opposition), as most of her witticisms seem to be returning fire, but more to the point she’s the sane woman surrounded by nutcases who she happens to adore.

And then there’s Brad Chase, the rapid-fire litigator (”Do you do tongue push-ups?) who looks like a Ken Doll but doesn’t play the part. Doesn’t flinch as he punches out a deranged ex-con who barged into the courtroom with homemade plastic explosive. At first he hated Alan, though later on he came to better terms with him. I suspect that Alan always somewhat liked him, even though he always pokes fun at him. One feels obliged when one is dealing with a man who hesitates to say “lesbian” or “vagina” (I don’t flinch at the word and perhaps even say it more than some of my female friends, but personally I prefer “vulva.” Has a nice feel as it comes off your lips. Which I guess is what makes it such a suitable descriptor) Denny loves him like a son, but the two don’t interact as much as one would think. Brad didn’t get Lori Colson in the first season, but he got Denise in the second. I wonder if I was the only one who was laughing when he found out that she married Daniel Post in the third.

I hardly have the space nor the time (I should really have already submitted this… I work best when there’s a bit of a ticking clock) to examine the entire cast, but suffice to say, the possible interactions between the characters make me fuck-all of jealous of anyone writing for that show. And I love the new guy now. Last I saw Craig Bierko was in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and he was only around for three scenes, but you could tell that he had the chops and just needed something to roll with. Well, he found it.

When she had been born, somebody had forgotten to attach the rulebook for male/female relationships. It was going to be their fifth date, and she couldn’t, she just couldn’t.

There was nothing offensive about him. He didn’t look like an axe-murderer or somebody she would be scared of in a dark alley.

Actually, when they weren’t together she would forget what he looked like. It was always a shock when he rang the bell and she saw how handsome he was.

Maybe it was his personality. She wasn’t sure that he had one. Yet when they were together they would laugh as she hadn’t laughed with anybody in a long time.

She slept with him that night. And then she knew.

Twenty one years later, when her daughter, Nicole couldn’t decide whether or not she liked a guy, she told Nicole the real, no holds barred story of how she had met her father.

Twenty five years after that she and Nicole told her granddaughter, Liz, how she wouldn’t have been born, if he hadn’t decided to splurge on her that night.

“Granddad, but he’s so cheap.”
“Not when it counts, Liz, and never in bed.”

For the last 2 years I’ve been a blue gal living in the red state of Virginia. Just prior I was a blue gal living in the blue state of New Jersey. So it came as a complete surprise this past weekend when I ran into a gal I went to high school with. This was only the second time in nearly 20 years that I randomly ran into a former classmate, the other being the time I ran into the dude who was my freshman biology partner and who this squeamish gal thanked again for heroically carving up ‘our’ frog.

This latest run in did give me pause for thought. 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. Now it’s nearly 20 years later, and I’ve never had a class reunion. Should I be concerned? What is the appeal of class reunions anyway? Let’s face it, while it’s a lovely idea, no one really goes to a reunion to reunite with former classmates. In reality, everyone goes to see if the burnouts survived and if the homecoming queen has spread in ways other than she was rumored to have back in the day. And everyone wants to know what ever happened to the little geek who got stuffed in a locker, hoping that he’s turned into a buff dude rolling in the dough while the abusive bully is himself a rolling dough boy.

And then there are those that go with the specific purpose of recapturing their glory days or trying to capture vicariously what wasn’t by showing off their current successes. Personally, I enjoyed high school and I have predominantly fond memories that I sometimes revisit when I hear my beloved ’80s music. I’m content leaving my memories intact. Unless of course a reunion means seeing the abusive bully who paid more attention to his appearance and stuffing little geeks into lockers show up fat and balding. In that case I’d go, high five the former little geek and say, just as the title of my high school senior prom did, “Let The Good Times Roll”!

Her hair is the subject of much debate at the salon. It has grown over three inches in seven weeks. If she were too shave it, would she become Samson?

She gets up from the fuchsia love seat, goes into the small bathroom, takes off the facial mask, washes her face with the Clarisonic battery charged brush that really does minimize pores. She puts on anti-wrinkle cream, moisturizer, glimmering moisturizer foundation, lip plumper, lip liner, and lip gloss. Her eyebrows are dyed the same color as her hair, and her eyelashes are dyed several shades darker.

Her hair is 40’s wavy fullness. It’s look at me hair.

Delilah is such a pretty name, she thinks idly, and a name she would have hated just a few years ago. But this is the era of Beulah’s, Bella’s, Tillie’s, Rose’s, Sophie’s, and other names from times before hers.

Tonight is one of the holiest of nights. This holiday she won’t be celebrating it with her family. What family?

She used to have a large one and they are all dead or dispersed or she isn’t speaking to them, or they aren’t speaking to her.

There is her sister who needs her to keep her from spending 48 hours recovering from her mother in law. Sometimes, she thinks that they deserve each other. Really though she loves them both.

Today her sister told her that the children of women converts should have to go through a more rigorous Hebrew School to be Bat Mitzvahed. The only time she finds herself at a loss for words is when she speaks to her sister. Yet she knows that her sister has a good heart, though some people would disagree. She feels so guilty for writing something not wonderful about family.

Guilt, guilt, guilt. Guilt engulfs her. Guilt is taking her place at the dinner table tonight. And guilt for having guilt sit in for her. On this second holiest of nights, after every Saturday, she should be with family.

When she and her sister were growing up, girls who came from families that ate bacon* on Saturday mornings never went to Hebrew school, just dance school, music school, and any other after school things their parents deemed necessary to becoming a true upper-middle class American girl.

She takes her hair out of its pony tail, and brushes it fiercely.

Tonight, tomorrow, on Eruv Yom Kippur and Yom Kippur, two day a year Jews go to Temple. Many celebrate both days of Rosh Hashanah. Some services are so hot, tickets are scalped. But for her it was always a family holiday. Her father only went to Temple for the sermon and the late afternoon discussion, never the prayers. She likes the prayers but never knows when to stand and when to sit.

She should initiate phone calls or emails to friends and family. That is traditional. She hasn’t received one card in the mail, and can’t seem to access the email cards. So she has no idea to whom she owes cards for she sure hasn’t sent any. Lazy, she is really lazy.

Should she put that in her blog? That she can’t access the cards? Her blog is supposed to be “big.” But she was blackballed by Mediamatters dot com.

Bloggercelebrity has likened her to a prostitute, and she can’t really dispute that.

Her goals in life never included blogging. Her blog was a happy accident. So why does she feel so guilty? Is it a bad thing to be quotable?

Like the Jewish holidays, blogging has become increasingly hot and mystifying. She thought it might actually help her career.

What career?

She looks in the full length mirror. Passes for just another woman on the Upper West Side. Black jeans, black spandex tee, Black Nike Mary Janes, and a blue jean jacket. It’s almost leather jacket weather. No, the jeans won’t do.

She wonders when the food stores won’t have lines going into the street. On Jewish and Christian holidays, and of course Thanksgiving and the Superbowl stores could have multi-hour waits.

She wants Weight Watchers cookies & cream ice cream bars dipped in c
Cool Whip Free. Fairway or the West Side Market must have some.

Though most people, including her sister’s mother-in-law take out or use caterers, there’s always more to buy.

Six thirty. That will be safe. Jews aren’t supposed to spend money, go to movies, travel on anything but foot, or do any work on major holidays. Jews are supposed to contemplate the Torah readings, plus their own lives.

She’s a writer. She does that every damn day minus the Torah.
“Shit Cool Whip Free isn’t dairy. It’s all artificial. Will be sold out.”

She really should put on the all purpose, from black tie to lunch, good black skirt, out of respect as her mother would say. When she lived in an Orthodox neighborhood, her mother didn’t even think that she should use her laundry room on Saturdays “out of respect,” for the Orthodox. But they would use the pool, say they couldn’t carry money and would pay during the week and then of course “forget,” and do it again the next week.

“Respect” was a big thing to her family. “Respect Christians for letting us live here without killing us.” Her parents were born in New York. They never seemed to remember that.

“Respect your teachers even if they pick on you.” “Respect people. Never ask personal questions. Let people tell you what they want you to know.”

But she lives in a different world than her parents did. People think that you’re not interested if you don’t ask the price of their new SUV. And she can’t decide what to wear. Maybe a denim pencil skirt would be a good compromise.

She’s a blogger with a somewhat recognizable name, in blogging circles. And that translates to what?

She knows how to weave a good story. Why does that make her feel so guilty?

It’s too damn personal. She isn’t respecting the tenets of her upbringing. But every therapist and every pop-psychologist would tell her to get with the program.

Maybe she should have accepted an invitation to go to Temple. Maybe if she were truly religious she could feel less guilt and more worthy.

Why is she mired in family tradition?

Her parents moved with the times. Her mother looked better in a mini skirt at 50 than most 20 year old girls did. Never micro-mini’s. If they happened to be away on a Jewish holiday, they didn’t always celebrate them. Her parents were known for being modern.

Even modern sounds old fashioned, she thinks, as she puts on more lip gloss. People marvel at how young she looks. Immaturity will do that, she thinks. Though her parents looked much younger than their ages.
“A lady never has to give her age…” And something else that she can’t remember. She’s no lady.

She decides to wear the jeans. On the way out of the apartment, she vows to have a truly great agent by the first signs of snow.

With her luck there will be an early frost.

Guilt: Food makes the Jew

*Bacon is from a pig which is very unKosher. Most regular families, when she was growing up ate bacon with eggs on Saturday mornings, and lox, salty smoked salmon, with bagels on Sunday morning.

Fortunately, smoked salmon became cheaper and her family was richer by her early teens.

Jewish families would have spare ribs, fried rice with pork and shrimp in Chinese restaurants. After her long roast young Tom Turkey stage at Patricia Murphy’s, the restaurant with English gardens, aquariums, women in colonial costume serving baskets of honey buns and popovers, she graduated to shrimp stuffed with crabmeat;

The first time her parents ever ate shrimp in a home was at her apartment when she was 25. They liked it.

I’m talking blogs talking about detailed sexual histories. Relationship
books. True romance magazines. Penthouse letters. I’m talking about the
guy who wrote a completely inaccurate book about Men not being that into
you that has his own TV show. I’m talking about the umpteenth attempt of some woman to prove a completely unsuitable man is the father of her child. Or it’s cheating cousins on Jerry Springer.

Whatever it is, we are obsessed with people’s relationships.

Of course, I have a theory as to why this is. And this may be that
unfortunate quarter spent studying accounting talking. Past performance is
an indicator of future returns.

We’re obsessed because we like to look at other couples and say, “Oh, my
man acts exactly like that.” And we roll that forward into the future. That’s probably also why we have to make our own mistakes in love… because
otherwise we never learn.

But it goes deeper than that.

Before we get involved with someone, one of the keys is finding out their
complete relationship history. How many people have they slept
with? Have they been married? Kids?

Sure, it shouldn’t matter. If two people want to be together enough,
their pasts are just that. Their pasts. But it’s like a realtionship resume.

If he’s been with a million girls, chances are he doesn’t see you any
differently. If she’s only been in three relationships, none of which
have lasted less than 3 years, she’s going to be attached to you like glue.

Kind of gives a whole new perspective on references and calling the
previous employer, doesn’t it?

We’re obsessed because no matter what book publishers and Oprah would have you believe, there’s no particular logic to who falls in love and why. No
matter how much we want to stop and think about things, and make decisions with our minds for our own good… alot of times we don’t.

If you’ll excuse the metaphor, it continues to hold the more you examine
it.

People with too much experience may cost to much to hire, or may be moving from employer to employer with no thought for anything but themselves. Of course, if they don’t have enough experience, you wonder if they can even do the job. Or why they were let go from their previous position.

Extracurricular activities can help or harm you; depending on who’s
looking at your resume and what the job description they’re hiring for is.

There are things that you just leave off a resume, no matter how accurate
they are, or important to your experience they were.

The best ones show management potential.

You’re not supposed to include your race, gender, or age. But they’re
more important than they should be.

And remembering all the details that should be on your resume is hard when
you sit down to figure it out; and only important when you’re looking for
a job. When you’re happily employed, the resume itself is less important.

My resume?

Really sparse actually.
I wonder if there’s someone I can pay to spruce it up.

Small houses dot each side of the road all the way out to the four-lane. About the only exception is the local park, whose ball fields come to life in the springtime with t-ball, baseball, softball, and soccer games and practices.

Almost unnoticed now, if not forgotten, is an old abandoned white concrete building which sits on the left side of the road just before you reach the park entrance. For the first two-thirds of my life, that was Miss Nona’s store.

Miss Nona was a rather short older lady who, best I can remember, always had a tall bouffant-like hairdo, and almost always had a smile on her face. There were two gas pumps in front of the store, and as long as she was able, she’d come out and offer to pump your gas.

The inside featured an old-fashioned top-opening drink cooler. You’d slide the door open, reach down inside and pull out your favorite soft drink in a glass bottle. There was a bottle opener built into the side of the cooler.

Some of my earliest memories of the little country store are of running across the field after baseball practice and buying a Gatorade. Or before practice to buy some Big League Chew.

Miss Nona lived in a house right next to the store, and would open up for business before daylight. She ran the store all by herself the majority of the time. She was there open to close. For many years, she sold biscuits in the mornings. And around lunch, she would slice up stick bologna and hoop cheese and make sandwiches.

It seems like she was always busy doing something around the store. If there were no customers to tend to, she might be sweeping up, inside or out. Or stocking the shelves. I asked her for a job once when I turned 16, but she said she couldn’t afford to hire any help.

I recall my Dad telling me about the time some man tried to rob her. I don’t remember all of the details now. I remember it happened early one morning when no other customers were there. Short story shorter. She kept a shotgun under the counter. Fired a warning shot or two. And no one ever tried to rob the store again. I love that story.

Seems like my parents had always known Miss Nona. Although, looking back, I guess they only knew her from the store. More than once, during somewhat hard times, I remember Miss Nona would let my Dad buy bread, milk, and anything else we needed on credit. Just to get thru until payday, when he would pay her back.

Maybe because she knew my parents, I always felt safe when I was there. I liked to think she’d treat me like one of her own grandkids. Although she probably would’ve treated any young person that well.

As I got older, I’d stop by on my way to work for a snack. My usual was a honey bun and a little Coca-Cola. I remember one day not long after I started driving, I stopped by to get gas. I would never let her pump my gas. So when I was done, I went inside to pay, and came back out to discover that I had locked my keys in the car.

First time that had ever happened to me, and I was a bit distressed. She, undoubtedly, had seen this situation many times. Brought a straightened wire hanger out and had my door unlocked in seconds. I don’t remember if I ever thanked her for that. I hope I did.

Time gets thin. And as Miss Nona got older, she started closing the store a little earlier in the evenings. And then she stopped opening at all on Saturdays. And eventually, although I can’t remember when, she closed the store for good.

Miss Nona had always looked exactly the same to me, for all the years I had known her. Except for the one time that I saw her after the store closed. I had heard that she was having some health problems. And she looked twenty years older than I remembered her.

No one ever reopened the little country store. Someone put a fish market in the building for a short while. But even that’s been gone for years now. When the town grew, it did so on the east side. All the new fast food restaurants, and convenience stores, the Wal-Mart Supercenter, and other businesses, opened there. The west side of town has just kind of been forgotten.

Today, little stores like that one have become scarce. Big money and chain stores eventually put the little man, and woman, out of business. They call it progress. Feels more like we lost something to me.

Miss Nona is no longer here. Although I can’t remember when she passed. The memories of that little country store, like the highway that runs past it, fade a little more each day.

Most of us will never achieve widespread fame. If you consider that an achievement. But to be remembered fondly by those whose paths we crossed years after we are gone. To have touched someone’s life, even in a small way. That’s something.

I suppose there have been thousands of little country stores in the world. Thousands of Miss Nona’s.

But to me, there will only ever be one.