Touch me in the Morning

It has been many years since someone so young touched me so intimately. And I didn't even get her name. We were at Logan airport last night making our way back from a day in Boston. The airport was empty and checking in was a breeze. Then we got to the security line. It was forty-deep and moving slowly. Still, we had plenty of time. So when I was finally called forward to go through the metal detector, I neatly placed all my belongings in the bins. I quickly walked through to retrieve my purse which contained the new watch I had just given my husband for his birthday. (Why he handed it to me to carry for him in the first place, I don't know but, I am sure that it was what caused the following to ensue.) As I reached for my bag, the TSA screener told me to wait. I picked up the bag anyway and replied that I was just getting my purse. A bit more harshly this time, she again told me again to wait. I waited until I saw one of my boots fall off the x-ray belt onto the floor and I picked it up. Big mistake. "I told you to wait!" The rather butchy screener commanded. "I am waiting," I replied calmly, "But my stuff is falling on the floor." The Silly Ant spoke into her walkie talkie, "I need a female agent over here immediately!" A moment later a very young woman approached me and asked me to step aside, explaining that she needed to pat me down and give my bags a look. She was maybe 23 at most, and very new to the job. "I'm going to use the wand and whenever it goes off , I'm going to have to use my fingers to check the area." She seemed very embarrassed by this. I told her that it was okay. She waved her wand over me stopping whenever she manually examined each metal part of my bra. When she got to the underwire she said, "I'm just going to slide my finger over this part of your bra." I wanted to giggle but, thought better of it." I need to ask you to roll over the top of your waistband so I can examine it. Would you prefer a private room for the examination?" She asked. "No, that's alright" I said smiling at her. She proceeded and I was sure that she was nearly done with me. "I need to put my hands down the front of your pants to examine this area." She said waving her hand over my lower torso. "Would you like a private screening room?" "What?" I said, "Can you please repeat that?" She repeated that she needed to put her hands down the front of my pants to examine me. At a momentary loss for more appropriate vocabulary, I asked her, "Are you saying that you need to grope me genitally?" ("Examine" would have been a far better word but, things were getting personal way too quickly and I was a bit appalled at how swiftly this operator worked.) I tried to read her name tag but she was so much shorter than I am that I couldn't make it out. I looked over at the middle-aged man going though my carry-on and saw that his name tag had "Michael" printed on it. What's with the first names only? It's not like I'm ordering a meal at the Olive Garden. Why are TSA agents allowed to hide their full identity from the pubic? I wondered. "Would you like a private room?" The young agent asked me again. "First, I want to know what you're going to do." Still at a loss for a better way to put it, I repeated my question, "Are you going to grope me genitally?" She nodded. Holy cow! I thought, I guess we had better get a private room for this. So, off we went into a dimly-lit, tiny office off to the side with only a curtain as a door. Inside was a small black desk and lots of clutter everywhere. It hardly looked like a private examination room. I had expected an ultra-modern, all-white room with lots of harsh lighting. Another female agent followed us in and stood by the curtain. Things were getting more and more Chained Heat with every passing moment. Then the agent told me she was going to "examine the area." Bracing myself for what promised to be a very amateur quasi-gynecological experience, she slid her hand quickly across my clothed bellybutton and said we were done. "Is that all?" I said. I didn't want to press the point but, she had told me that she planned on putting her hands down the front of my pants. She nodded, "That's all." The curtain was opened and I was released in possession of the vague idea that I had somehow (no pun intended), gotten off very lightly.

Chained Heat, 1983 starring Tamara Dobson & Linda Blair.

"Don't chu walk away from me, you chalk-faced whore!"

Gag me!

There are lots of Hillary Clinton novelty gifts for sale but none for any male candidates. It's a shame because I would love to own a pair of Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich elf dolls, if only they existed. I'd also like some John Edwards bar soap, an Obama propeller thinking cap/beanie and maybe a John McCain whoopie cushion to fool unsuspecting guests!

The Hillary Nutcracker. Other favs which are currently available are the Mighty Monkey, Freud Head Lollipops and Gummy Haggis.

Wig the Innocent

It's only a tiny bit cruel because we laugh at them. But, they are such good sports and isn't that why we have pets and babies in the first place? If it weren't for the innocent ones so eager to please, our hearts would harden and deny that we too, once felt the desire born out of pure love, to amuse the ones that fed us. (Although, that Maltese looks like he's going to need some serious therapy.)

Some days

Some days I have nothing to say. Some days I feel like this photo. If I open my mouth, there will just be trouble. Sometimes these days stretch on into weeks. I wish I could just shut up without everyone wondering why I have suddenly gone mute. I want to walk around with small flash cards that get the point across: How much? Thank you. OK. Not bad. Hello. I'm sorry. Good bye. You're beautiful. That's funny. Ouch. No, thanks. The blue one. No, not that one, the other. Maybe. I'll think about it. I like it. Tastes like it smells.

Big Stink

With a very annoying slogan, "We are what you think," Bigthink.com made its debut this morning in its first day on the internet. With backers such as Nantucket Nectars founder Tom Scott, and venture capitalists David Frankl and Peter Thiel, along with Larry Summers, the disgraced former President of Harvard, the site's creators, Peter Hopkins and Victoria Brown hope that Bigthink will make a big splash as a meeting place for intellectuals. Unfortunately, It's more like a fat kid's cannonball.

Using quick jump cuts reminiscent of a Gap commercial, Bigthink shows snippets of commentary by luminaries and nerds alike. But, as it now stands, the site feels very much like a half-built house. The walls are up but the heat's not on, the toilets don't flush and there's no furniture. For example, Under Architecture & Design, they have Zac Posen briefly opining about who he thinks are some of the fashion greats. Posen is truly likable but, couldn't they have gotten someone with a bit more gravitas say, I.M. Pei or, Oscar De La Renta? In choosing which subjects to be fully on-line in time for their debut, Hopkins and Brown have made their priorities very clear; they have no less than three experts each on Economics, Literature and Theater & Film but, they have no experts at all so far in Dance. It just doesn't take all that much to dot one's i's or cross one's t's and the fact that they couldn't get all their topics up by opening day makes the whole concept appear a bit half-baked. Metaphor-mixing aside, the highlights include (rhyme unintentional), Peter Gomes and former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins reading his poems, Questions about Angels and The Lanyard.

Creating an on-line platform for the likes of Anna Devere Smith, Richard Meier, Robert Thurman, and Moby along with many others is actually, quite a wonderful idea. Despite the very low-brow sponsors, ITT Technical Institute and Netwinner.com, an on-line gambling enterprise, the fact alone that Donald Trump and his combover are unlikely to ever make an appearance makes it worth logging on and hoping for more.

My secret nun fetish: Saint Angela Friend of Girls

An early proponent of education for girls & women I know that I can't be the only non-Catholic woman to harbor a nun fetish. I think that there are many closeted nuns but, we are afraid to come out and do anything about it because it means not only converting to Catholicism, but, also renouncing all the fun, earthy pleasures*we still very much enjoy.

(*My list: Sex, travel, good wine, artisan goat cheese, cake, & Viggo Mortensen. Apparently, it's not that I don't love God enough, it just that I can't taste him or, watch him fight bad guys naked on film.)

But, I have recently discovered that there is someone who has already done it all for me: Saint Angela. I wasn't named for her but, it would have been fine with me if I had for, she dedicated herself to helping educate girls, specifically those who did not or would not marry. Back in her day, an unmarried woman was basically relegated to a life of servitude. Which wasn't all that different from being a married woman, only, it came without any of the protections such as a husband might occasionally offer.

Angela Merici was born in Desenzano del Garda (about halfway between Milan and Venice) sometime around 1474. She is most noted for founding the order of the Ursulines, a group of nuns named for Saint Ursula, patron saint of students. The Ursulines believed in working out in the world, uncloistered which was very unusual at the time. (Though I have read that St Charles Borremeo eventually saw to it that the Ursulines were cloistered like all other nuns at the time: "In reality she was in advance of her own times. Her plan of religious women without distinctive habit, without solemn vows and enclosure, was directly contrary to prevailing notions at her period, and under the influence of St. Charles Borromeo at Milan and subsequent papal legislation (under St Pius V) the Ursulines were obliged to adopt the canonical safeguards then required of all nuns." - http://www.cin.org/saints/merici.html)

Orphaned as a young girl along with her sister, Merici went to live with her uncle in Salo, a town not very away. After her sister suddenly died as well, Merici became a member of the Third Order of Franciscans and when her uncle died, she returned to Desenzano at age twenty and devoted herself to educating the mostly ignorant and ignored girls of her home town. Of course, like any good saint, she is said to have had visions of angels on more than one occasion, and received heavenly messages through her dreams. (In contrast, my extraordinary dreams usually involve me running the marathon, not promoting healing or education to the needy masses. So, that's how I know I'm not destined for beatification.) She also is said to have gone blind at one point and then had her sight miraculously restored.

"Angela's methods were far removed from the modern idea of a convent school; she preferred to send her associates to teach girls in their own families, and one of her favorite sayings was, 'Disorder in society is the result of disorder in the family'. It was by educating children in the milieu in which they lived that she strove to effect an improvement in social conditions."- http://www.cin.org/saints/merici.html

Damn! That's a big head!

Here I am with superfly jewelry designer, Wendy Brandes at her New Year's Eve party. What I want to know is: why if my head is 25% bigger than hers, am I not 25% smarter? Photo by Tana Lee Alves

Say Cheese!

I guess I woke up on the wrong side of the New Year so, forgive me in advance, those of you who have spent your hard-inherited wealth on any of these unsightly architectural features but, it's time to take aim and fire. My beef, as always, is with the architects and so I am not going to discuss fugly interior furnishings at all. Besides, I clearly remember when as a teenager, I believed hot pink was a great choice for my bedroom door and my radiator cover. This was made worse when I discovered mauve and repainted said door and radiator cover in that awful, awful color. Bleech! So, until I recover from my own teenage color palate, I am sticking to going after the real modern-day villains of the American landscape: developers and architects. Here is a photo list of some truly Heinous Home-Design Mistakes: 1. The McMansion. Yours for only $9.95m 2. The Flag pole in front of the McMansion (Not strictly speaking, the fault of any architect but, super-cheesy unless you happen to reside in a post office.) 3. The three-car garage. (Really adds to that municipal parking feeling.) 4. Interior columns. Ionic, Doric or Corinthian: what exactly is the point? To make your home look like a court house or a library? They're about as charming as having Vivaldi's Four Seasons piped throughout the fillings in your teeth. Unless of course, you're mafiosi in which case, they're lovely! 5. Pointless cathedral ceilings. If you're not saying mass everyday in your living room, why have ceilings so high? The scale is all wrong. Cathedral ceilings don't in and of themselves, impart grandeur. Sometimes high ceilings just look dumb especially when all the other necessary features are missing like, say, a vaulted wood overlay and $2m worth of art on the walls. (We won't even discuss the central air vent way up high on the right.) 6. The sunken ceiling. Who even came up with this wacky idea? Is this in case your ego suddenly grows as large as your 5,000 square-foot house and expands upward? 7. Fugly marble tiles in the bathroom that allow realtors to claim that the house has "marble baths." There is marble and there is marble and it doesn't come from Home Depot. (Nor is it usually paired with another color, notice the brown tub and the white floor.)