Oh man — the drama. Rosie needs to tell the world that the women on The View don’t get along. And as girls must do… Barbara’s striking back by using her television show to hurl lessons at Rosie. Ladies — can’t you just write each other a letter? We don’t need to be a part of this little cat fight you’ve got going on. I can’t even bring myself to watch The View on a day when I am home sick and my computer is freezing up on me.

I wish you were one of the many celebrities who threatened to move to another country if Obama lost. Oh. Wait. Nevermind.

Tags: television by Amy Boshnack
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Ok, enough already. 

Enough with malls putting up Christmas decorations before Halloween. 

It’s insulting enough to somehow suggest cheap tinsel horns and stars* mounted to parking poles will swing my attention away from driving past the mall enough to make me realize, “hey, I need to shop,” if I didn’t already. It’s insulting to think it’s OK for giant ornaments strung from the rafters to take precedence over and crush the meaning from my kids’ (and my own) anticipation of Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Anyone remember Thanksgiving decorations?

Halloween is kinda silly, though, so I’ll say this: Let me and my children look forward to Thanksgiving — a holiday that holds some sentimental nostalgia — without steamrollering it into a mental wasteland by making my kids think they’re getting toys any second now.

If they’re so effective, Malls, then just leave them up year-round. I suppose there has been some psychological study that says it’s effective. But I bet they haven’t figured out what happens if you just beat people over the head with it. I’d love it if everyone got jaded and went back to bed instead of waiting in lines at 4:30 in the morning to buy this year’s Kick Me Elmo.

I know, you say, “But you don’t have to shop at the mall. It’s free speech.”** And I don’t, and it is. 

But we do go to the mall. It’s still in very poor taste.

Appoint me King. I’ll fix it.

*Yeah, there’s Channukah too. But let’s face it: we don’t get overrun with giant dreidels. Not as much, anyway.

**Maybe you don’t say this. Someone does, though. 

Tags: diatribes, The Emperor decrees by Andrew Turner
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Last night I watched The Universe, a series on the History Channel. The episode was about the impending collision between our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and our nearest neighbor galaxy, Andromeda. You read that right — our galaxy is going to collide with another galaxy. Do you have any idea the kind of damage we’re talking about? Your homeowner’s insurance is not going to cover this. I don’t care what your deductible is. 

And it isn’t a controversial subject, with good arguments on both sides, like whether or not we landed on the moon. No, the galaxies are on a collision course and will, without a doubt, slam into each other with a force you haven’t seen since ever. NASA implies that there’s hope for Earth, claiming that the “space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide.” But it isn’t like scientists have ever observed anything like this up close. And the scientists on the show described all sorts of ways that we could get crushed by stellar matter or irradiated or boiled or sucked into the super black hole at the center of each galaxy. One thing is for sure — our galaxy is going to be eaten by a bigger one. I don’t know what the Milky Way thinks about this, but it can’t be good for us.

So, yeah, it’s got me depressed. I mean, what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning? It’s all going to be vaporized anyway when the galaxies collide. “Scott, take it easy,” you say, “the galaxies aren’t going to collide for another three billion years. You’ll be long dead, dead for about three billion years already. And it’s likely that humans will have long since been killed off, extinct from some super virus or planet-killer comet or nuclear armageddon or environmental disaster. Three billion years from now, there’ll be no one left on Earth to care about the galaxies colliding.”

It’s nice of you to say. I appreciate your trying to cheer me up. Still, I can’t help but think that humans might survive those viruses and nukes and still be around three billion years from now, with Andromeda getting ready to have its way with our dear, sweet Milky Way. Sure, you and I won’t be around to worry about it, but what about our children? Okay, their children? Maybe my math is off by a few years, but certainly someone’s children will have to deal with this. And do you want to be remembered as the generation that passed the buck on preventing the galaxy-collision to future generations? I don’t.

“Scott, don’t worry,” you say, “three billion years is a long time. Future generations will have really, really good technology. Everything will be in Hi-Def. They’ll just jump on star cruisers and get the hell out of the galaxy before the collision.” Maybe they will. But only if we start working on it right now. It’s true that three billion years is a long time, but transporting the human species out of the galaxy and locating a suitable replacement planet in a different galaxy ain’t like dusting crops, boy. And, as we all know, every year seems to go by faster and faster. Those last billion years will feel like only a hundred million. The time to act is now.

Sadly, I doubt we can turn to our government for action. After all, what did the Bush administration do about the impending collision of not one, but two galaxies? In eight years, precisely nothing. And has Obama even mentioned the path Andromeda is on and his plan to stop it? Not once. There is no plan. Every day the galaxies draw closer and no one in power seems to care at all. They won’t even return my phone calls. It’s enough to make me want to go to bed and wait for the inevitable.

Tags: science by Scott Stein
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Today’s money-saving tip: Crap out on a holiday.

Go nuclear. Pick a holiday that is kind of exhausting, yet not too heavily sentimental, and limit it to your household. Maybe Thanksgiving, maybe Hanukkah, maybe a birthday, just pick one and rein that mofo in.

People will squawk. Maybe the first year, someone will have to volunteer to come down with something contagious. Then, the next year you can say, “We had a very special X day last year when it was just the X of us at home. We’ve decided to make it a tradition for our household.”

It’s all about getting over the hump. It gets much easier after the first shock. People survive. If they still want to have some sort of connection with you, tell them to drop something by the house. Don’t be home. At Easter, maybe a basket for the kids. At New Year’s Day, aspirin and tomato juice for you.

It is doable. People do it all the time. If you lived in Europe, you’d do it. If you had intermittant outbreaks of ebola, you’d do it. You don’t have to do it every holiday, but it can also work for baby showers and weddings.

Take back your day. Spend it baking, reading, wrapping, rapping — whatever. Save a buck. And have a happy.

Tags: advice by Ruby Mac
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I understand renaming stadiums — for both the financial benefit to the company and the venue. More luxury boxes, new bathrooms, better facilities for the disabled, a retractable dome, an advertising reach in the millions (or billions), and a whole slew of other things. I don’t understand the need to rename a bridge in honor of a former New York senator and United States attorney general who, yes, sadly, was assassinated. If his family wanted to raise money to pay for the costs associated with the change I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with this; the man did serve our state and country. But I can’t understand why New Yorkers should have 4 million of their taxpayer dollars used toward this ridiculousness.

Yes… you read that correctly. It will cost $4 million to replace road signs so that The Triborough Bridge, which connects Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx, can be called The Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. Even in good economic times this would be a stupid thing to do. And, as if to make it feel less absurd, the spokesman for the New York State Department of Transportation said he understands we are in tough economic times and he won’t put bids out to complete the transformation until 2011. In 2011 I still won’t want to spend $4 million dollars on this project. Just call the bridge what it is… The Tri – Borough!

I can think of lots of things the state can spend this money on. Is my ranting unwarranted? Does this make sense to you?

Tags: money by Amy Boshnack
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“I wonder who made this mess with the same kind of food I just cooked.”

“This is probably mine.”  

“My room is where dishes go.”   

“It is the future and ice trays refill themselves.”   

“Our TV has a sensor on it that knows when you leave the room.”

“Dishes are transported from the sink to the dishwasher through a magical process no one can fully understand.”

“Everyone likes dance music.”

“I wonder where these paper towels always come from.”

“I don’t know why people buy laundry detergent when they can just use the bottles that grow out of the laundry machine for free.”

“When you brush crumbs onto the ground they disappear.”

“If I take only one beer from you every day, when it comes down to it, it’s really like I’m not taking any.”

“We live in such a good neighborhood that we don’t need to lock our doors.”

“Why does the trash always disappear on Monday?”  

Tags: diatribes, ends & odd by Kelly Conaboy
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October 31, 2008
I dream Gail and I go to what looks on the outside like a suburban multiplex. Once we go inside we see that it’s a very old building with quaint architecture and we can’t find the box office. We follow flights of stairs going down, down, down, and we wind up in a quaint, modular movie theater in which you can’t see the screen. There are vending machines with caramel dipped marshmallows wrapped in wax paper for 49 cents. I go into the men’s room, but the urinals are too high for me. There are low tables where people play cards. I perform card tricks in the men’s room, but a man from the theater board of directors eyes me suspiciously.

August 30, 2008
I dream I go to a hard-boiled crime movie with my dad, but the plot turns in a way I’m afraid might upset him. The protagonist is gay and getting progressively more womanly and strange throughout the movie. At one point he is making out with a man who has metal studs on his face and a large segment of the audience gets up to leave. One guy is so appalled that he faints, and his friends pick him up and lay him across the chairs. I am a little annoyed with this movie, too, and I can tell my dad would like to get the hell out of there.

August 3, 1998
I dream the coming attractions of a new fantasy film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. An enchanted gorilla captures Edward Asner and puts him into a mammoth glass of water. The gorilla clamps his hand over the top of the glass so Asner can’t come up for air. Asner struggles until he realizes that he can breathe under water, and he is filled with insight.

Tags: Fred's dreams by Fred Siegel
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Here in Chicago, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company is currently mounting a well-reviewed “Young Adult’s Production” of The Glass Menagerie, which raises the question, “what production of The Glass Menagerie is not for young adults?” 

I don’t mean this at all facetiously, because there is no more poetic and poignant play in the American canon, and its status as an American literary classic is very much merited.  

But when I saw a production some years ago at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, it struck me that, as gloomy as the play’s portrait of the repressed and crippled Laura Wingfield might be, it represents a kind of wish-fulfillment on the part of Tennessee Williams, a determinedly brave and poetically false obscuring and softening of a much darker reality that might have been difficult for 13-year-olds to absorb or accept.  [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, creative writing by Michael Antman
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How many times have you gone into a parking lot and been annoyed by a car taking up two spots? Seriously, it makes my blood boil… and I am a relatively calm person. But if I am in a hurry (which is basically all the time) or I have a car load of kids or I just don’t feel like walking an extra two rows, I do consider (but have never done it) running my key along the side of the precious vehicle in my potential spot. Is it really that difficult to get between two lines?

I know some people don’t park that way intentionally — but completely unforgivable are those obvious offenders who feel they deserve to take up two spots in order to safeguard their car from potential disaster.

I’ve found my solution to those inconsiderate when parking their cars. I Park Like An Idiot bumper stickers. Genius!

I have the guts to order them… just not sure I would have the guts to slap one on a car. Would you?

Hat Tip to Entertainment Buzz on CafeMom.

Tags: diatribes by Amy Boshnack
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Michel de Montaigne invented the essay, and could well be the only person to have ever written one. Plenty of things called essays have been written, of course, and many — Lamb’s, Hazlitt’s, Emerson’s — are justly celebrated. But none are exactly like the ones Montaigne wrote.

In a way, they are just the opposite. Montaigne invented the name, too. It comes from the French word essayer, meaning to try or attempt. You could say that to write an essay about something means just to take a stab at it. Montaigne’s began as brief commentaries on favorite classical quotations, but soon expanded into wide-ranging meditations — the quotations became simply a means of triggering a train of thought, which Montaigne would then follow wherever it led.

This is what makes his essays different from those others, most of which have served as vehicles either for exposition or style or both. To be sure, Montaigne’s writing is stylish enough. He invented the plain style, clear and casual as the best talk. But for him style wasn’t an end itself; like a window, it was meant to be looked through, not at.

Montaigne also doesn’t seem to have arrived at any conclusion before he began to write. The point of his writing wasn’t to advance a position, but to record a process of thought. This is writing as an act, first and foremost, of self-examination, not self-expression (though it is that as well, of course). I have long thought a great opportunity has been missed in the failure to explore the essay as a method rather than a form.

But what about journals and diaries? Aren’t they examples of writing as a method of self-examination? Usually, though some, like Gide’s, are pretty clearly private performances meant for public consumption. The difference, however, between what a diarist does and what Montaigne did lies in the indirectness of his method: Montaigne explores himself strictly in relation to his chosen topic — such as one of those classical quotations. This enables him to get to know himself, not by recounting and pondering his quotidian round, but by seeing how his mind works.

Which brings me to the point of this column, in which I plan to try my hand at Montaigne’s opening gambit by riffing on a quotation every week. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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