Me Me Me

I’m swamped at work and can’t take time for personal musings right now. Thank you for reading this and for and for supporting me; I hope to start it again at some point. Or maybe I’ll try to write a play!

I’m so determined to see all the Oscar movies before next Sunday that I subjected myself and my darling husband to The Reader on Valentine’s Day! Cuckoo sex-crazed former concentration camp guard fixates on teenage boy — perfect fare before a delicious but overpriced dinner at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor (where Renee Zellweger and dreamy Dan Abrams, legal guru of NBC, had their first date a couple of weeks ago! But I digress…). 

My point in mentioning The Reader is not to muse on Kate Winslet’s Oscar chances (which now seem not-so-certain since she got nominated for this movie and not the other one). It’s to note my preference for craggy male stars such as darling weirdo Ralph Fiennes, who plays the messed-up adult version of the teen boy who slept with cuckoo Holocaust villain Kate. Ralph! (Say it with me: Rafe Fines.) I do love him. And I get to meet another craggy dreamboat this week, at a press event for the Broadway play Impressionism — Jeremy Irons! Loved him since Brideshead Revisited.

Craggy men tend to be foreign, because American stars feel they have to be jocks with perfect hair and teeth to be sexy (wrong). But there’s always my dear Clint. And Sam Shepard! James Taylor, circa 1980. And Chris Cooper. In the junior division, keep an eye on promising cragster Hugh Dancy (even though he’s short; the best craggy men are tall). The guy from Twilight has potential too.

What is the appeal of the craggy man? He’s mysterious yet approachable, intelligent but not a blowhard. I am making this up, and it seems ridiculous even as I type it. But for whatever reason, the Lincoln-esque stars are closest to my heart.

When I was young, I ate anything I pleased — and a lot of it was what is now called junk food. I don’t remember that term being used in the 60s and 70s, I really don’t. I should try to trace the origin of placing the adjective “junk” before the noun “food,” because it’s perfect in its descriptiveness and its ability to produce guilt.

Anyway, let’s start the day with a list of delicious things that are bad for you. McDonald’s french fries. Kentucky Fried Chicken original recipe flavor. Real Coke (which I plan to resume drinking on my deathbed). Fettuccine alfredo. Cannolis from Rocco’s on Bleecker Street. Haagen Dazs chocolate-coated ice cream bars. An enormous Absolute Bagel, the best in New York, from Broadway and 108th Street. Okay, that one isn’t technically bad for you, but it goes straight to your waistline and makes you starving two hours later, which is the same thing.

What broke me of consuming (most) of these bad, bad things? My two weeks on the South Beach Diet (strict version!) a couple of years ago. Oh man, that Dr. Agatston deserves all the millions he’s made off that book. He is some kind of genius. If you can spend two weeks eliminating sugar and carbs (especially my weakness, pasta), learning to love salmon and asparagus and salad, it truly changes your view of eating forever. (You also can’t drink during those two weeks, but let’s not go there this early in the morning.)

So, here I am — with the willpower to enter the Dunkin’ Donuts shop in the 50th Street subway station every morning and order a small coffee with skim milk and NOTHING to eat. (Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for posting the calorie counts next to those delicious looking glazed doughnuts.) My “prison breakfast” of a boiled egg and a hunk of cheese is in my purse. And thank YOU, Dr. Agatston — I guess!

Just spent a wonderful long weekend in Atlanta with lots of quality time with my adorable daughter — including dinners at what are supposed to be three of the best restaurants in town. Although I am opinionated (!) and judgmental in most areas, I am truly easy to please when it comes to restaurants. I don’t make a fuss about changing ingredients in a dish, or ask a million questions about the menu, or complain about the location of my assigned table, or speak to the waiter in a condescending tone of voice.

But! I like a certain level of service, one that’s neither dismissive nor creepily solicitous. This weekend, I got both extremes. First was dinner at one of those trendy former warehouses; my daughter, four of her friends and I arrived on time for a 7:30 reservation (hey, these 23-year-olds have late parties to attend!) and were kept waiting in a crowded bar area for 45 minutes. Seeing my face (which tells all) after the first half hour, the host said, “We’re waiting for someone to leave your table, but we can’t ask them to hurry. And we won’t ask you to leave, either.” Well, if you don’t have enough tables, buster, don’t take my RESERVATION! The bad service continued after we sat down, but whatever — I’m boring myself as I type this.

Okay, now the other extreme. A well-known restaurant with nouveau southern cuisine — and here comes the waiter, preening and touching us and speaking in a tone of voice I haven’t heard since my last college pep rally. This man is HAPPY. He is ENERGETIC. I feel like the love child of the Grinch and Scrooge (if they could procreate) as I recoil from his ENTHUSIASM. Then I look at my always-polite cousin (the one I idolized as a kid) and see that she’s having the same reaction I am. Whew! 

I sympathize with the waiter who just came out with a book about all the horrible things restaurant patrons say and do. I have never been a waiter and would not have the stamina for it. But! If you’re gonna be a waiter at a fine restaurant, figure out how to time the service so it’s attentive but not overbearing, knowledgeable but not obnoxious. Bon appetit.

I’m gazing at a photo of me and my darling husband at the Phi Gamma Delta formal in February 1975, and what strikes me (besides the obvious, which is how young and thin we were) is that my haircut is almost exactly the same as the one I have now. My hair has always been an issue — unattended, it hangs in my face like a curtain. (Remember Cousin It on The Addams Family? That’s my natural state.)

I have tried every hairdo and length, never with ideal results. Anna Wintour bob? Check. Short pixie do? Check. Long and streaming? Tried that too (see Cousin It). As James Rado and Gerome Ragni so eloquently put it in “Hair,” “Knotted, polka dotted, twisted, beaded, braided, powered, flowered and confettied, bangled, tangled, spangled and spaghettied!”

In recent years, I had insisted that the front of my hair remain long enough to push behind my ears (see Cousin It). A couple of months ago, however, my nice hairdresser covertly cut the sides shorter and more angled. It looks pretty good –- to other people. To me, it’s something to keep pushing out of my eyes. “Stop messing with it,” my DH says. “It looks fine.” Actually, it looks just like it looked in 1975, when I drunkenly posed with him on the dance floor in a seafoam green nylon halter gown.

His hair?! HA! That’s another story altogether. He looked like Berger from Hair when we met, so let’s just say that his flowing do has undergone a more drastic change. But never, ever, did it hang in his face.