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.

By a stroke of good luck, I have seen three Chekhov plays since the fall in outstanding productions, and I have fallen in love with this melancholy Russian. I said I wasn’t going to talk about theater here; I’m not a reviewer and have never wanted to be one. But having seen Uncle Vanya the other night, a couple of weeks after The Cherry Orchard and a couple of months after The Seagull, I realized why actors are obsessed with these plays.

Chekhov understood longing for something more, something greater. He understood human pain and folly. He certainly understood the boredom of everyday living! Some of his characters are laughably deluded; many are oblivious. On one level, the plays are merely slices of life, which explains why they are done badly so often. But when the actor and part are a good match, and when the rhythm is right, you think… I know these people! That’s ME. 

The women in Chekhov are problematic. (I haven’t seen Three Sisters in 20 years; too bad THAT one isn’t coming to town so I can reconsider those girls.) They tend to be over-dramatic pains in the butt, but whatever. He wrote them more than 100 years ago. And by the accounts I’ve read, Chekhov himself loved women and was something of a babe magnet, notwithstanding his TB. 

As for the character of Uncle Vanya — I absolutely adore this man. When his brother-in-law, the full-of-himself old professor, decamps at the dacha with his beautiful young second wife, Vanya proceeds to have a mini-breakdown as he contemplates all those years he spent balancing the ledger book, doing the same old thing day after day. Uncle Vanya is like Peggy Lee, belting, “Is that all there is?!” Watching him rant and lament and wave a pistol is just about the most fun anybody could have in a theater.

I read a rather bizarre story this weekend about a designer who makes jewelry from bits and pieces of Barbie dolls. Like, earrings formed from Barbie hands. Or necklaces that have Barbie eyes and lips worked into the design. I have been pondering this and don’t quite know what to make of it. 

I owned the original 1959 Barbie, with a ponytail, striped swimsuit and cat-eye glasses. Lord, I wish I had that doll now; I could probably take a nice vacation from the proceeds. Sadly, I have NONE of my Barbies, and believe me, in the 60s I had every possible permutation. Barbie and Ken, Midge and Allan, Skipper and Scooter. Bubble-headed Barbies. Kens with fuzzy and vinyl “hair.” The Barbie Dream House. The Barbie Mystery Date board game, in which the loser was stuck going to the prom with Poindexter. A bevy of shiny leatherette carrying cases for Barbie’s clothing.

Oh, the clothing! None of that velcro junk my daughter had during her circa-1990 Barbie-loving period. The original Barbie clothes had snaps and hooks and didn’t look cheap. Each outfit came with a brochure that showed all the other outfits, the better to form a wish list for future acquisitions.

These days, girls are done with Barbie by first grade. (Luckily, my adorable daughter missed the age of Bratz, the hooker dolls. Barbie looks like Eleanor Roosevelt compared to those.) But back in the day, we were still playing with Barbie at age 10. I swear, it’s true! An innocent time indeed: cookies after school, a little homework, Barbie fun, and soon it was time for The Beverly Hillbillies or Bewitched. No Gossip Girl, in which we’re supposed to believe that Chuck Bass will start running the family corporation at 18 — if he can control his taste for hos and cocaine long enough to assume his birthright. (Okay, I buy it, because Chuck is played by the divine Ed Westwick.)

Alas, it’s a different era in every way, and I’m relieved not to have a 2009-era 10-year-old whining for Juicy Couture rather than Limited Too. Fortunately, my adorable daughter WILL be able to haul out her (extensive) Barbie collection to share with her little one someday. Her dolls and clothes are carefully folded away, ready for Granny Kathy to participate in planning Barbie and Ken’s wedding with the next generation.

I’m gonna have to stop giving my favorite famous people shout-outs in print, because as soon as I do, something goes wrong. My dear Eli Manning and the New York Giants went down with a whimper in the playoffs. Caroline Kennedy withdrew her bid to become the Senator from New York. And now my idol Clint Eastwood, so wonderful in Gran Torino, has been unjustly overlooked in the Oscar nominations.

What’s happening, people? One word from the mighty ME ME ME should ensure enduring success to all those offered my blessing! For I am always right. (Oops, a little Virgo-ness slipped in there. The sin of pride! It’s a sin that I can spot in others a mile away, and I’m talking about YOU, George W. Bush. But his pride surely DID goeth before a fall. You, too, Cheney!

There was a joke when I worked at Child magazine that anybody I interviewed ended up getting a divorce, sometimes at the very moment the issue (featuring my fawning story of their happy family life) showed up in print. I broke up Melissa Rivers’ marriage, for example (after having been in her L.A. home on 9/11! But that’s another story). Christian Slater’s wife (allegedly) cut his ear in a stairwell with a glass just after giving me a serene-sounding interview. Dylan McDermott and his gorgeous wife Shiva Rose broke up soon after I spent a day photographing their home. So, celebrities — beware!

As we watched the HBO inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial, my tears started when the tape of Marian Anderson singing “My Country Tis of Thee” ended and my dear Josh Groban and Broadway baby Heather Headley sang the whole song. Wow! From that moment on, I was like a leaky faucet. Pete Seeger in his jaunty knit beret, leading the crowd in “This Land Is Your Land” next to Bruce Springsteen … beautiful Beyonce singing “America the Beautiful.” Adorable Malia and Sasha snapping photos (while some unknown child sat passed out COLD right behind Obama). The setting! The symbolism! I could watch that concert 100 times, and I probably will.

This is a day that I never really believed would happen. Barack Obama! I have to pinch myself to believe that this smart, unflappable, visionary man is going to be sworn in as President. Heck, that he even WANTS to do it, given the hideous state of affairs he’s been left to clean up by the previous administration. The fact that he tapped Hillary to be Secretary of State speaks volumes about how secure he is as a leader.

Of course, the carping by the Fox network right-wingers will begin anew tomorrow. But today? They’ve gotta shut their traps and watch the joyous celebration of millions of people who did not succumb to fear-mongering and hate on Election Day. Yes, we DID!!!

As you get older, it’s hard to hold on to a sense that anything is possible — you lose that wonderful, youthful feeling of invincibility, that eagerness to rush in and tackle something you’ve never tried. Even as an idea takes shape, you’re aware of all the obstacles, all the gaps in your own knowledge and experience. The risks outweigh the rewards. And besides, you’re tired. Preservation mode! 

Unfortunately for me, the status quo has never kept me happy for long. I used to marvel at folks who could do the same thing, day after day, who didn’t seem to long for … whatever. That’s a far more attractive way of living than feeling dissatisfied or regretful. Don’t you hate negative people who give off a “I’ve been screwed by life” vibe? But how do you keep doing what has to be done while holding on to the idea that something new and wonderful is still possible? 

When I look around at all the Baby Boomer moms who have successfully guided our kids out of the nest, I think about what we could accomplish if we put our minds together. We are so smart, and we have so much energy and know-how. What should our 10-year plan be? And how can we convince ourselves to go for it, whatever “it” is?