Some Pig

Elegant in Their Simplicity

Anyone who has spent any time working with adolescents knows that there are a lot of principles of classroom management that transfer to everyday life.  The concept of consequences is particularly useful, even in dealings with fellow adults.  For example, Warren and I have guaranteed the durability of our marriage by agreeing that whoever initiates the divorce gets full custody of the kids.

Warren started talking some nonsense this morning about going on an adventure.  A motorcycle trip.  With his college buddy.  Around ICELAND.  "It'll be a journey of self-discovery!"  he said.  "It will make me a better person!"

"That's fine, honey," I said sweetly, "as long as I can date while you're gone."

Touche!

I counterproposed a tour around Iceland in his motorized wheelchair, which is the only motor-driven device he'll be driving by the time our kids leave home.  Somehow that doesn't seem to appeal to him.  Oh well.

"Sex" and Lies and What I Learned

Well, I saw it!  ... and if you have to ask what "it" is, never mind.  Toasty met me halfway, bearing bootleg cocktails in her purse (something called a "French Silk," I think, and I insist that you tell everyone the secret formula in the comments now), and we settled in for a visit with Carrie and the girls.  I have to admit that what the reviewers said is true:  As a movie, it is not a resounding success.  One of the many things I loved about the show, the snappy pacing, clearly owed a lot to the half-hour format of the series, and with the movie clocking in at two hours and forty minutes, there were long stretches of ... well, long stretches.  That led to a domino effect in which the funny moments and sentimental moments and thought-provoking moments that make up the appeal of SATC were spread so  far apart that they lost much of their punch.  As an example [spoiler alert here], was it really necessary for the storyline to follow the girls through most of a Bryant Park fashion show just to put Samantha in a position to have red paint thrown on her fur coat by PETA types?  The moment resonated in the previews, but it took so long to get there in the movie, it almost went unnoticed.  A subplot featuring Jennifer Hudson playing a PA named Louise from St. Louis who longs for her own Louis Vuitton handbag  is so lame, it limps.  A sharp editor with some good computer software could've trimmed this down to under two hours and ended up with a much better movie.

But in the end, I don't think whether or not the film is any good even matters.  I'm willing to wager that most of us who are flocking to the movie, myself included, pretty much don't give a damn if it's good or bad or halfway in between as long as it's Sex And The City.  For those of us who loved the show, the movie is like a long visit with your friends who moved away after you spent years in each other's back pockets.  Everyone's changed a little, but fundamentally the same; the conversation takes some time to get rolling and the immediate shorthand references don't work right away, but after awhile it's like - well, not like you've never gone away, but like the time you spent apart doesn't matter as much as the time you spent together.  The characters stay fairly true to form, I think, although not everyone agrees with me, and some of the same logistical impossibilities remain.  For example, if Miranda is such a driven career woman who's made partner at her firm, how is it that she has three days to spend helping Carrie pack her clothes to move?  Who's watching Charlotte's daughter while she's gallivanting about to dress fittings and taking the dogs for a run?  I presume there's a nanny, but we never get even a whiff of a helpful au pair about the place. 

As I was driving home, I pondered the situation.  Given the stark differences between my life and the SATC  gals, why do I feel such a fierce loyalty to the show?  I came to a realization - aside from the one about popcorn and Nestle Crunch not being a real dinner, I mean.  I realized that I love SATC because it's the one show that doesn't lie.  Oh, sure, it isn't exactly real life.  There's the oft-noted conundrum of [insert query here concerning Carrie's a) wardrobe, b) social life, and c) evident disposable income on a freelance writer's salary].  Even the dorky guys are cute (Steve), and while Carrie bounces from heartbreak to heartbreak, there always seems to be another straight, solvent, good-looking guy right around the corner to rebound with.  (Trust me, that was not my single-in-the-city experience by a long chalk.  I used to joke that I could be airlifted into Alcatraz and I'd still be home reading an improving book of a Saturday night.)  But what SATC gets right is the fact that life - real, grown-up life - is hard, and even when you get what you want, it usually comes with some kind of trade-off or unforeseen complication attached.  Carrie gets her man in the end, but has to sacrifice the fairy-tale wedding and penthouse apartment along the way.  Miranda has to find a balance between her ambition and her marriage.  Even Charlotte, she of the charmed life and Park Ave apartment, wound up changing her entire religious outlook along the way.  And even living in the center of the social universe, they still wind up alone watching old movies or going out to dinner with the girls on New Year's.  In a way, Carrie and the girls represented an idealized version of my own single life: Sometimes confusing, sometimes seemingly directionless, sometimes astonishingly exhilarating.  They were me, only in much more expensive clothes and attending much cooler parties (And having a lot more sex, too, hence the title of the show.  After all, no one wants to see Sex-Deprived in the City, do they?).  I don't know if Darren Star actually meant for me to interpret the show this way, but I loved the show because it portrayed how hard it is to find - and hold onto - true happiness.  Unlike most shows, in which being happy is a foregone conclusion and the perfect ending is right around the corner, the characters in SATC have to work at their happiness.  They find it and lose it; work at regaining their balance and discover they have to negotiate the terms all over again.  That's what feels most honest about the show to me.

Letters From A Broad: Political Edition

Dear Hillary Rodham Clinton,

I want to thank you and congratulate you for running an epic, historic campaign.  I watched your speech last night and it was emblematic of your approach - dogged determination coupled with a ferocious grasp of current events, liberally (ha! political pun!) seasoned with the faintest whiff of pugilism.  While some people may hear pejoratives in that, I do not.  You were one hell of a contender on the campaign trail, adapting as you went along until you finally hit your stride as the bolshy broad who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.  Some of your biggest obstacles in your campaign were internal (Mark Penn's pathetic excuse of a strategy, your "better" half's tendency to get a little loopy around the edges when not carefully monitored) and yet you rose above them and kept on a-chuggin'.  For 50% of the population, you have showed that, truly, anyone can grow up to run for President of the United States (provided, of course, that s/he is a natural born citizen over 35 years of age and ... oh, I'll stop showing off my intimate knowledge of the Constitution as soon as it gets annoying.  What?  Too late?  Oops.).  Your campaign will be the case study against which future female Presidential candidates - perhaps even you - measure themselves.

But.

It is now time for you to find some way to stop fighting within the party and start fighting FOR the party.  Please.  I am begging you.  As someone who has two little girls herself, girls who might themselves want to be the next Hillary someday, I plead with you to come to your senses and realize that we stand at a fork in the road.  Down one road lies a graceful exit from this race with a burnished reputation and a heightened influence on internal party matters, influenced in no small measure by everyone's realization that you could have roiled the waters to a much greater extent and caused much more anguish for the party than you did.  Down the other road lies internal and external division, and an extended and inglorious wind-down to the inevitable conclusion, leaving a weakened Democratic candidate and sore feelings all around.  All hail President McCain!

Until this point, I have agreed with your contention that you had every right to stay in the race.  I also agree that you have faced the challenge of unacknowledged, insidious, institutionalized sexism and bias from the media - just as Obama has faced the challenge of unacknowledged, insidious, institutionalized race-based prejudice and bias from certain groups of voters.  However, at this point, it is time to face facts.  Michigan and Florida chose to hold their primaries when they did, and they earned the consequences they received.  The media did what they did and said what they said and you can't change that.  Your advisors did not serve you well and they can't roll back time and call for do-overs.  So, please, let this end - with no veiled threats, no backroom deals, no holding onto the hope of last-minute changes of heart in the delegates.  Please.  

I thank you in advance,

Some Pig

                                                                                                                                                                               Dear Hillary Supporters Who Are Threatening Write-In Campaigns or Defections to McCain:

If this doesn't make you think twice about voting for a spoiler, just mull this over:  Supreme Court Justice Alberto Gonzales.

That makes me break out into a cold sweat.

Some Pig

Jekyll and Hyde, Table for One

I have to make this fast because the kids are playing nearby and I don't know how much time I have between summonsings.  Is that a word?

India is playing with a little friend of hers from day care.  These two are often separated because there are times when they don't play together well.  I was, of course, laying all the blame at the other little girl's feet because, hey, MY kid's brought up with discipline!  And manners!  And all those other good things.

Imagine my consternation, then, when it turns out that MY child is the one who's being an enormous pain in the tuchus.  Actually, to be honest, her behavior has been pretty heinous.  She's not sharing well.  She's not taking turns.  She's complaining about her toys.  And she's whining, whining, whining.  Trying to be objective here, her little friend is a bit overbearing, but in an only-child, used-to-her-way kind of way.  It certainly doesn't warrant the constant whine-fest my daughter is offering in return.  We've already had two or three of those mother-daughter conversations in the stairwell that consist of me hissing You will treat your guest well and behave or I am calling her parents right now and India - well, whining.  This isn't her standard M.O., either.  We spent the better part of five hours with a little friend of hers last weekend and I never heard a peep out of either of them - well, aside from the screams and giggles, that is.

So have any of you had this experience, where one of your offspring's little friends turns your ordinarily at least somewhat bearable child into someone you'd gladly sell to the gypsies?  What did you do about it - or, as Dr. Suess would say, what would YOU do if your bloggy friend asked YOU?

Meanwhile, I Remain Semi-Conscious in the Suburbs

Sex in the City opens tomorrow!
Sex in the City opens tomorrow!!
SEX IN THE CITY OPENS TOMORROW!!!!

I'm hoping Warren won't mind if I desert him for the night leave him with the kids for the evening.

I'll leave you with this fabulous pic of the girls hanging out across the pond:

OMG. Is SJP not in full Carrie mode, rocking that chapeau?  I'm afraid she didn't quite hit the same high note in the NYC premier:
Um, SJP?  You need to go tell the seamstress she forgot to finish the hem of the dress.  It looks like a high school "Elements of Fashion Sewing" final gone horribly awry.  And the semi-seventies half-straight/half-wavy hairdo isn't helping.  But!  I will forgive all when I hear that anthemic theme music.  I just wish I could go to the theater in my jammies with a pint of ice cream, since those are the circumstances under which I usually saw the show... Would people find it strange to be sitting next to a woman in flannel pj pants and a stained t-shirt with fuzzy slippers on, noshing on chocolate fudge brownie chip ice cream with her feet up on the chair in front of her?

Letters From A Broad, Pissed Off Consumer Edition

Dear MegaPharmaMart,

I realize you are in a fight to the death with the Targets and Wal-Marts of the world, but does every drug store now gracing the planet have to try to compete with the discount giants on the sheer amount, number, and volume of non-personal-care-related items they cram under one roof?  I realize that wishing the local drug store would just carry items reasonably considered to be personal-care-related is akin to longing for the days of the village apothecary and doctors making home visits by horse-drawn carriage, but really, do you honestly think anyone goes to the local Rite-Aid to buy a rice cooker?  However, I will agree to let you stock all kinds of cheap, unattractive, shoddily-made goods, schmaltzy greeting cards, designer knockoff sunglasses and like if you agree to try to impose some kind of coherent internal logic to your layout, along with clear and intelligible labeling.  I realize it might be just me, but it took me five circuits of the store today to find bug dope because I didn't think to look for it in the same aisle as oil filters for the car and liquid laundry detergent - all of which were helpfully located under a sign that said "Household".  Um, what?!?!  What house do YOU live in?  May I introduce you to my friend, the Dewey Decimal System, or perhaps the alphabet??

Crabbily,
Some Pig

PS You may exempt your surprisingly large selection of wine from my general condemnation of superfluous goods offered at drug stores, although I guess that would count as "personal care related".

PPS Could you up the quality of those wines at least a notch?  If I find myself in extremis for a glass of a piquant but noble red some night, I hate to think I'm limited to the best the Messrs. Paul Masson and Ernest & Julio Gallo have to offer.


Dear Toothbrush Companies,

Do you know how long it took me today to find two (2) toothbrushes (teethbrush?) for two adults (me and my better half) that were exactly the same?  All I wanted were two ultrasoft bristle brushes.  I did not need any other bells and whistles.  I did not want an "oral health care system."  I did not need cheek scrapers, gum pickers, mouth massagers, or anything else you dreamed up to charge the tooth-cleaning consumer another ninety-five cents.  I just wanted two goddamn brushes that didn't whir, buzz, vibrate, or otherwise demand batteries, an electrical outlet, or a guinea pig running on a wheel to power them.  Can we all get on the same page here?

Some Pig


Dear Fortune 500 Company With a Vested Interest in Planned Obsolescence,

I have happily used the razors produced by one of your five thousand subsidiary companies for years and years and have generally been satisfied with the results (barring the occasional lapse of attention and resulting bloodbath in the tub, but I don't hold that against you).  Being at least somewhat concerned about the effects my actions have on the planet, I was glad to use a razor with replaceable blades and keep some plastic out of the trash stream.  While admittedly not as earth-friendly as going au naturel, keep in mind I  work with adolescents, and hairy appendages are not an option when you want them to concentrate on the causes of WWI rather than your grooming habits.  So imagine my consternation when I trolled through the vast selection of replacement blades on offer at MegaPharmaMart, only to find that my brand of blades are not available there.  I can only imagine that they were sacrificed to make room for the Christian bestsellers, five-for-$10 tank tops, and extra vacuum cleaner bags considered essential for any well-stocked megapharmamart these days.  Now I am on the horns of a dilemma:  Either I can buy another kind of razor, thus rendering my current razor useless and wasteful; or I can drive somewhere else, thus burning gas and contributing CO2 to the environment to find blades elsewhere; or I can suffer silently (and fuzzily).  Given that I teach high school students, that last option?  Ain't gonna happen. 

Signed,
Frustrated and Furry


Dear Customer and Cashier at MegaPharmaMart,

After I have spent the better part of an hour trying to procure such arcane and esoteric items as toothbrushes, soap, and bug spray, the last thing I want to do is line up for the one cashier on duty, only to get behind the one person left in the Western hemisphere who is not in a hurry between 4 and 7 p.m. on a weeknight.  Actually, that is the second to last thing I want to do - the LAST thing I want to do is listen to that customer, confused by the complications of making a "transaction" using a "debit card" requiring a "PIN", get involved in a long discussion with the equally befuddled cashier about how it was better in the old days when people used cash, which further digressed into a paean to the good old days when money was referred to as "specie" and attached to the "gold standard," which was almost as good as 16th century Holland when you could use tulip bulbs for money.  Do me a favor, people.  If you have that much damn time, please do your shopping at two in the afternoon or some other hour that falls outside the normal work day.   Oh, and welcome to the 19th century.

Some Pig

Weather or Not

We're getting the hell out of Dodge!  I've been packing for a lovely long weekend in The State Formerly Known As Home, where we will celebrate the birth of our eldest daughter.  The problem with packing for a late spring weekend is that "late spring" as the rest of the country knows it doesn't exist in Maine. So I have to be prepared for temperatures ranging from fifty degrees and raining to eighty degrees and sunny, and any permutation thereof.  The only thing we don't usually get this time of year is snow, although I'm sure there's some old timer out there chewing his gums and reminiscing about how this is the anniversary of the freak snowstorm of '32.

Weather forecasts, which are of some help most of the year, aren't of much use in a New England spring.  Barometers, anenometers, all that stuff might as well be oracle bones.  You have to take the predictions, even from the gummint, with a large grain of salt.  When someone tells you what the weather is definitely going to do, it's best just to nod and smile politely and then plan for the exact opposite.  As a case in point, we've been told to expect rain showers for the past three days and exactly none have materialized.  This is why I've packed shorts, jeans, tshirts, fleeces, wool socks, sandals, aaaaand rain gear.  Happy Memorial Day!

UPDATED TO ADD:
We left the First In The Nation Primary State two hours ago (75 degrees, sunny) and arrived here only to dig out our long sleeves and sweaters (61 degrees, brisk wind, clouds and sun).  The weather oracles had promised me seventy-degrees-plus all weekend.  See what I mean?

Teachers Need Vacation After Dealing With Stuff Like This All Year

Dear Darron's* Mom,

I have received your emails indicating that Darron "doesn't understand" his current grade posted on the school website, and he is "confused" about why his grade is so low.  I also caught the not-so-subtle subtext to your message that Darron is unwilling to approach me himself, so I am not doing my job by allowing him to fall so far behind instead of chasing him down and making sure I hand him the work.

As I was reviewing Darron's current grade, I noticed an interesting phenomenon.  Surely it is absolutely 100% coincidental that Darron just happens to be absent almost every time I give a quiz in class.  It is also merely an unfortunate concantenation of circumstance that every time we have any kind of change or irregularity in our schedule - a half day teacher workshop, say, or an assembly - Darron just happens to be absent on those days as well.  And this synchronicity is made even more anomalous given that Darron's absences are excused, which means that he must just happen to get sick, have a dentist appointment, or otherwise need to leave school on the exact same days that we have some kind of altered schedule.  Which is why I was shocked, shocked, to find that he was not in school today, the day we had an all-school assembly.  After all, there's no possible way that you, his mother, could be colluding with him to cut school by excusing his absences. 

So I'll strike a deal with you.  You stop enabling your son and blaming me for his crappy work ethic, and I won't point out the coincidental timing of his excused absences. 

Sincerely,

Some Pig

*Yeah, Darron's not his real name. Because I like having a job.

I Likes Me Some Old Guys, Part Deux

My goodness, I had no idea there were so many fellow oldsterophiles out there!  I had six comments in one day!  That's, like, 42 comments in dog years!  Why yes, I am a shameless attention hound, why do you ask?

Anyhoo, I realized after posting this that I forgot a few fabulous faces. I also added a couple based on popular acclaim.  I hope none of these guys hold it against me that they didn't make the first round when I'm looking for Mr. Some Pig #2.  So without further ado, here are some more superannuated hotties:

Mmm, MMMM.  What is there to say about this guy that hasn't already been said?

Oh, Misha, Misha!  I forgive you for leading Carrie astray on SITC that last season.  You can take me on a sleigh ride through Central Park a-nee-TIME.

I do like a man who looks good in a tux, and (to quote the song) nobody does it better ... makes me feel bad for the rest.  Nobody does it half as good as you, baby, you're the best!  Yeah, yeah, I know Daniel Craig is the new face of Bond, he's a little edgier, gives Bond a bit of rough after too much smooth, blah blah blah yadda yadda.  The upshot is, THIS guy is Bond in my book, world without end, amen.

Here's one added by popular acclaim:
Proof positive that a misspent youth doesn't mean you have to wind up looking like a Slim Jim!  Either this man is graced by one phenomenal set of genes or there's a picture-of-Dorian-Grey thing going on here and Keith Richards gets all Robbie's wrinkles.  (I'm sorry, Keith.  I keep cracking on you, which is really picking the low-hanging fruit, don't you think?)

I had SUCH a thing for Gabriel Byrne when I was in grad school.  I drooled all over the theater when I went to see Little Women (generally not considered a chick flick in the traditional romantic-comedy sense).
Yeah, I wouldn't mind being "In Treatment" with him!  (Snort, snort.  I am such a dork.)

This one's for Toasty.  Harry doesn't really do it for me, especially since he went and got hooked up with a human praying mantis a female Skeletor Calista Flockhart, but as my Latin teacher useta say, De gustibus ... Yeah, I know.  This leaves me in the "meh" zone, too.

I canNOT believe I forgot the mellifluously voiced Jean-Luc Picard, otherwise known as the (very accomplished Shakespearean actor) Patrick Stewart:
Proof positive that excessive testosterone IS an asset. 

Okay, this is my last one and then I'm going back to REAL posts (i.e., bitching about stuff that happens to me).  This particular person doesn't make the "A" list because I read some rumor somewhere that he was stepping out on his wife with some arm candy many years decades his junior.  Official notice, buster - you're on the bubble!  One false move and you're dead to me.
But, uh, nice going on that little sideline you have with that Third World debt/hunger/Africa stuff.  You keep it up and someday you'll make something of yourself.

Damn, I'm Old

I am walking down the halls at the end of the day and I pass a fellow faculty member I've never seen before.  He's lean, dressed in typical teacher, sorta-preppy sorta-casual mufti.  His face is a little weathered, with smile lines and crinkles around the (sky-blue!) eyes.  He has a full head of short, salt-and-pepper hair, heavy on the salt.  The overall effect is a not-quite-so-old Clint Eastwood. 

In the split second it takes him to walk past me, I notice my head whipping around to watch him go by while my mind says things like, rrrrRRRROOOOWWRRrrrr... is it hot in here or is it just you?  A sandwich is a sandwich, but you, Mr. Manwich, are a meal ... and other similarly objectifying and terribly unreconstructed thoughts.  And then I realize, I find him so attractive not DESPITE the fact that he looks like he's got some years on him, but BECAUSE he looks like he's got some years on him.

It's official.  I'm middle-aged. Pretty soon I'm going to be a grandpa-grabber. 

If I'm going to be a letch, might as well give the people what they want!  I mean, damn, how does it figure that Clint's older than Keith Richards, and yet about a thousand times more attractive?

Hell, Johnny Dep's over forty!  Whoot whoot for the oldsters:
Thank you, People magazine, for that photo.  I hereby nominate you for a Pulitzer, a Nobel AND a Congressional Medal of Honor for your service to (wo)mankind.

Let's face it, this guy keeps getting better with age:

Oh, what the hell.  If you're going to be a grampy-grabber, why not go for the best?

Yeah, it might not be the most recent picture of him, but what's a decade give or take when you hit your eighties?  [NB:  Note that Mr. Newman's generational cohort, namely, Robert Redford, does NOT make the 'grabbable grandpa' list.  I have standards, you know.  Those pretty blonde boys, they often don't age so well.  Oh, sure, he's still got the facial structure, but ... meh.  Not feeling it.]

I was going to end this photo essay with a recent picture of Carrot Top to prove that not all men age gracefully, but I just can't sully my parade of male pulchritude with that travesty of nature.   It would be like following Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony with a rousing chorus of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Enjoy, ladies!  Some Pig out.