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If you’re like me, you’ve grown weary of Sunday evenings alone with a carton of Virginia Slims and a litre of Ketel One sorting your Carlsbad Caverns photos with one hand because you broke the other assaulting a parking lot attendant with a flash light.  Imagine my delight, then,  when last night I was able to break the tedium and watch the Eightieth Annual Academy of Arts and Sciences Awards Presentation Show. 

The annual Oscar telecast, not unlike an elderly eccentric aunt who rarely chews before swallowing and only occasionally wears pants but always drops a dollar in the mail to you every year on your birthday, never fails to horrify and delight us at one and the same time.

Case in point: the pre-Oscar red carpet interviews.  In an age when celebrities rarely possess a community college education not to mention a state driver’s license, the fact that most are nonetheless able to gracefully sidestep the dog-poo that is the entertainment channel-interviewer remains nothing short of miraculous.   

Here, I offer you but a sampling of questions posed to actors on the red carpet and challenge you to select the answer actually given by said celebrity:

Inane Question Number One: Ryan Seacrest to Jessica Alba: “Are you going to breast-feed your baby?”  Jessica’s response was:

(a)  None of your bee’s-wax Nosy Ned;

(b) No, I’m going to feed my baby shrimp tails and Corn Nuts;

(c)  Yes, and I’m going to sell my breast milk on e-bay to raise money for Darfur; or

(d) That’s a a rather personal question.

If you answered (d), you are correct.  [Fun fact: answer (a) was given by my husband when a co-worker asked him the same question about my lactation-plans].

Inane Question Number Two:  Unknown interviewer to Tilda Swinton:  “Who are you wearing tonight?”  Tilda’s response was:

(a)  Glad;

(b)  George Lucas;

(c)  Lanvin; or

(d) The National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Application Approval Board.

If you answered (c), you are correct.  [Fun Fact:  Tilda Swinton and I share the same birthday - November 5th.  She is older than I, and about four inches taller.]

Inane Question Number Three:  Gadfly Ryan Seacrest to John Travolta:  “You look amazing.  What is your work-out routine?”

(a)  As an Operating Thetan, I’m perpetually engaged in combat within the Galactic Confederacy on behalf of Xenu;

(b)  Chasing my man-servant, Paris, around the grounds with a pair of nail clippers and a cucumber;

(c)  Pilates; or

(d)  Two hours of weights, a half-hour of cardio each day.

The correct answer is (d).  Incidentally, doesn’t John Travolta look a lot like Curious George lately?

Final Inane Question:  Little Peter Pan Ryan Seacrest to Patrick Dempsey:  “You are usually Mr. Calm, Cool, and Collected.  How do you calm your nerves on a night like this?”  Patrick’s answer was:

(a)  Xanax;

(b)  A trip to the supermarket to inhale the cans of whipped cream;

(c)  Meditation; or

(d)  Ten-minute interludes in the womens’ restroom with a few chapters at at time of Fear of Flying by Erica Jong.

The correct answer is none of the above.  I dislike Mr. Dempsey so much [I don't know why! Dont' send me hate mail!!] that I actually didn’t listen for his answer.

 There you have it.  The first installment of the Annual Post-Oscar Quiz.  I can’t wait until next year. Until then, I’m off to pass out samples of my breast milk to shoppers at Costco.

There’s really no explanation for the photo above, MCS e-mailed it to me;  I sort of like the juxtaposition of the rather crude photo with a sentimental and serious topic such as passion.

A few days ago I wrote about passion.  I referred to a Time Magazine quiz regarding the same, and a few of you asked for it.  Here it is, but I warn you, if calamity ensues due to you and your partner’s diverse scores, don’t come crying to me.  (I scored 99; Elliott couldn’t get past the first question without a definition of “despair.” But he’s still the love of my life).  

 Here’s how the scoring works.  Rate each question along a scale of 1 to 9, 1 being definitely disagree, 9 being definitely agree.  Add up your scores and see how you score by way of the self-explanatory answer key.

 I would feel deep despair if _____ left me.  

Sometimes I feel I can’t control my thoughts; they are obsessively on _____.  

I feel happy when I am doing something to make _______ happy.  

I would rather be with ________ than anyone else.  

I’d get jealous if I thought _______ was falling in love with someone else.  

I yearn to know all about ________.  

I have an endless appetite for affection from ______.  

For me, _______ is the perfect romantic partner.  

I sense my body responding when _____ touches me. 

 _______ always seems to be on my mind.  

I want ______ to know me—my thoughts, my fears, and my hopes.  

I eagerly look for signs indicating ______’s desire for me.  

I possess a powerful attraction for ________.  

I get extremely depressed when things don’t go right in my relationship with _______.   

SCORES

 106-135 points = Wildly, recklessly, in love

86-105 points = Passionate but less intense

66-85 points = Occasional bursts of passion

45-65 points = Tepid, infrequent, passion

15-44 points = The thrill is gone.  

As a general rule, I am opposed to cannibalism.  Figuratively speaking, however, there are some people who are so yummy you just want to eat them up.   My husband is one of these people, or rather, he was one of these people, but then time and babies and needing to buy new tires and not exercising enough make one forget how yummy one is.   When we were eighteen I wished I could turn myself into liquid and inject myself into his veins; I wanted to turn myself into oxygen so I could slip into his lungs where I would be delivered to each one of his cells.  I think I told him this once. His response was much the same as when I told him I loved the smell of the tire department at Costco.  It is therefore with not a little bit of irony that I tell him, “Elliott, you are a very, very passionate man,” for he is not.   

A few weeks ago, Time Magazine featured an article about passion, presumably in the spirit of that non-holiday so loathed by single and non-single people with the same intensity – Valentine’s Day.  The article contained a quiz, the responses to which were indicative of how passionately the taker feels about his or her partner.  I rated high enough of the passion-scale to indicate that I love my husband passionately, but not so high as to suggest that I suffocate and control him.  Whew.  

I secretly worry about the narcissistic quality of writing, that it’s the cerebral equivalent of staring at one’s reflection in the mirror for hours.   The substantiation of ephemeral mush by way of keystrokes places this quality under the light. Why study the inside of one’s head? I’ve lived inside my head now for some forty odd years and it’s still fascinating to me, although highly unlikely to anyone else.  

In college I traveled to Hawaii for a month and a woman in her thirties, for some reason I can’t recall, came along.  A friend and I were lying on the beach talking, the woman within earshot and silent except for asking me, why are you so introspective?  I didn’t respond, thinking her question rhetorical and critical.  

Nothing much changes a person’s basic nature.  Only time and trauma and joy and tedium  soften rough edges and cause a person to choose A and not B, as B may have been a hot stove or a toxic person or a rut.  Eye color doesn’t change.  Nature doesn’t change.

Writing is at best cathartic and at worst narcissistic, and sometimes it is entertaining.  Eyes aren’t the window to the soul, words and sentences and paragraphs are.

President’s Day is Monday, February 18th, and I don’t know about you but I am dying to pay my respects to our founding forefathers by studying their hair. It’s too bad I live on the West Coast and not in Philadelphia, where the presidential “hair album” is scheduled to be on display at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences from February 16th -18th.   The hair album belonged to Peter Arvell Browne and contains locks of hair from twelve presidents who lived during Browne’s  lifetime, 1762-1860.   Apparently, it was not uncommon to ask famous people for their hair in those days, and it was not uncommon for hair to be given.  The hair album contains locks of hair from Washington (brownish-gray), Jefferson (reddish-gray), and James Monroe (hair color unknown).

I really don’t want to see dead peoples’ hair; I don’t care who they were when alive.  I don’t want to see their fingernail clippings or their boogers either.  The curator of the National Academy thinks the display will be a success, because “It gives you a sense of who they [the Presidents] were as people.” 

I disagree. 

I have had an ongoing obsession with Abraham Lincoln for as long as I can remember. I’ve read most of the Lincoln biographies written, I have books of photographs of him, and I’ve read his writings.  I even travelled to the Ford Theater and saw the chair he was sitting in when he was shot.  The chair is still covered with his blood and sits in a glass case in the basement of the theater.  In a nearby case is Lincoln’s top hat, his watch, and, yes, a lock of his hair.   If Lincoln’s corpse was also preserved under glass in the theater basement, I doubt staring at it would give me any more sense of Lincoln, the man, than staring at a photograph. Reading Lincoln’s words gives me only a rough approximation of his spirit.  I’m not too interested in his blood type or other facts about the container embodied that spirit.

I once read a magazine article comprised of letters from women about their worst bosses.  One letter in particular stood out from the others:  a woman took a job as an administrative assistant for a man who, during her first week of work, requested that she ask all the female employees in the office for a sample of their pubic hair so he could place the samples under glass domes like the ones pocket watches hang from.  

While there may be an elegant segue from that anecdote back to locks of hair from dead presidents, I don’t know what it is.   But maybe there’s a connection between Browne and the world’s worst boss.  Maybe they were both searching desperately for an organic connection to something they, themselves lacked.  Or maybe they’re both weirdos.

Update:  After Mae’s comment about Mozart’s hair, I had to google it for myself.  Look what I found:

Che Guevera’s hair:

Napoleon’s hair:

Jefferson’s hair:

Mozart’s hair:

And (drumroll) I’ve saved the best for last, Alexander Hamilton’s hair!

 I will probably be deaf in twenty years.  My Mom is hard of hearing and my Dad is quickly behind her.  It’s genetic, and to make matters worse, my parents didn’t attend large arena-concerts in their teens and twenties.  I did.  I also listen to my iPod at nearly full-volume.  So I may as well start saving my money for hearing aids now, because I will definitely need them. Thank God that today, the typical hearing aid is smaller than an egg o’ Silly Putty, which is what my grandmother’s looked like.

On the topic of music, one of my favorite past times is reading the celebrity playlists on iTunes.  There are some “celebrities” whose playlists I won’t bother reading, so utterly convinced am I that I’d have no interest whatsoever in their favorite songs.  (e.g. Kenny Chestny, Snoop Dog, Donald Trump).   And why am I confident you’ll be interested in my list of current favorites?  (That’s a rhetorical question). 

These are the songs I can listen to over and over without getting sick of them:

• Rainy Monday - Shiny Toy Guns.  This band is going to be huge.  This song gives me the same feeling I get when I drive over a hill and become airborne for the tiniest second.   A happy song about unrequited love.  Happy and hopeful at the same time.

• Any song from the Juno soundtrack.  Most of this music reminds me of a simpler time.  Very Simon and Garfunkel (Not “Rhythm of the Saints,” Paul Simon, but 1966 “Scarborough Fair” S&G).  But there’s other flavors in there too.  “Anyone Else But You” is the best.  A very sweet movie, as well.

• Girls in their Summer Clothes, Bruce Springstein.  This is vintage Bruce, probably because he recorded “Radio Days” with the E Street Band.  Girls in their Summer Clothes is a catchy tune, again about unrequited love.  I’m not sure why this is a theme with me.  I don’t have unrequited love. I married my unrequited love. It’s requited.

• Fade Into You - Mazzy Star.  This song is from 1993 when The Cowboy Junkies were popular, and this song has a Misguided Angel/Sweet Jane feeling to it.  I was in law school when Fade Into You was popular, and I still love it.  It reminds me of how idealistic I was then.

• Hey There Delilah - Plain White Tees.  My daughter sings this song in perfect pitch.  My husband plays it on the guitar.  It’s a sweet little song.  I think it was nominated for a grammy but it didn’t win. 

• O Mio Babbina Caro  - this is an aria from a Puccini opera, and I believe it was on the “A Room With A View” soundtrack.   The very end is so pretty it’s made me cry. It reminds me of a bird soaring. 

• Ein’ feste Burg is unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God)- Martin Luther.  Did anyone think I would get through an entire post without mentioning him?  This is my favorite hymn, to the extent one can really like hymns.  Luther wrote this in about 1510, and it goes, “A mighty fortress is our God; a bulwark never failing (fay ay ay-ling).  Religion, in those days, had so much military and combat-imagery.  I’m sure this is what God had in mind. Nonetheless, this song reminds me of being little and of being really, really safe.

• Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley.  No, this isn’t a spiritual or religious song. With a title like “Hallelujah” you wouldn’t think you’d hear lyrics like:

Well Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
she tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

I have no idea what these lyrics mean.  Unrequited love? It’s a haunting tune, though.

• Romeo and Juliet - The Killers. This is a cover of the Dire Straights song with the same title.  I have a huge crush on Brandon Flowers, though, so I like his version better than Mark Knopfler’s.  Mark Knopfler reminds me of Thurston Howell III (Jim Backus).

I’m always looking for new songs for my iPod.  I’ve downloaded Marine running cadences to run with, which I hear is sort of strange.  But it helps me go into a sort of running-trance.  Any ideas from you?

Perhaps one history’s greatest tragedies is the failure of world leaders to seek my counsel when considering just how to rid society of famine, pestilence, and trademark infringement.  Since my pink princess phone isn’t ringing ringing ringing with calls from Madeline Albright and the Pope, I’ll enumerate some of my ideas here.  Then maybe all of us can get on with the business of Livin,’ Lovin’ (She’s Just A Woman!)**

 Brilliant Idea One:  The Darfur Solution:   As most of you know, George Clooney has appointed himself the ambassador of Darfur, hoping to inspire others to send aid there.  Had George consulted me, I would have informed him of an obvious solution:  Manning Sperm Auctions. 

Archie Manning ,Peyton Manning, and now Eli Manning have proved they are genetically superior human beings and they should be replicated.  (There is the small matter of the youngest Manning, Duane who is an Olive Garden Manager in Federal Way, Washington.)  There are many young women, gay, straight, married, single, whatever, who would pay top dollar for a vile of Manning sperm.  Here’s the plan: Christi’s (London) hosts monthly auctions on viles of Manning sperm until the proceeds from said auctions reach ten digits.  Then we’ll air drop packages of Cliff bars, Crystal Light, and condoms/spermicide on the war-torn country.  Problem solved.

 Brilliant Idea Two:  Presidential Candidate Theme Songs .  Ever since Bill Clinton adopted Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” as his campaign theme song in 1992, presidential candidates have used popular songs to “brand” their campains.  They have done so, however, with dire and horrific consequences.  Recently John Mellencamp said he was uncomfortable with John McCain using his song, “Our Country” during the McCain campaign and asked that McCain stop.  (McCain is now using “Free to Be, You and Me,” By Marlo Thomas).   Unconfirmed rumors abound that Barack Obama is using Rock Around the Clock, but has changed the lyrics to “Barack Around the Clock).  Lawyers are in a tizzy filing requests for preliminary and permanent injunctions. 

I submit that instead of ripping off popular music, the candidates should think outside the box.  There is a wealth of unmined musical brilliance currently overlooked within the American Idol cast-offs.  For starters, Relando Lapuz is available.  His own song, “You Are My Brother” is perfect for Obama (please don’t send me hatemail suggesting I’m a racist.  Obama, himself, referred to himself as a “brother” when asked during a recent town hall meeting if Bill Clinton was in fact our first black president.”

In case you didn’t catch Renaldo’s stirring performance, I offer it here:

 Brilliant Idea Three:  Trap Osama Bin Laden.  When I was a little girl growing up in Kent, Washington, our Lutheran Church would host Pancake Breakfasts every Easter morning at sunrise.  Many would gather in the social hall as the scent of bacon and maple syrup wafted through the air.  One of the most obscure and mysterious facts about Osama is that he can’t resist a good old fashioned Lutheran pancake breakfast. 

Just as patriots united in Hands Accross America, the world, the WORLD should unite in the Great Pancake Breakfast Trap.  At a designated date and time, all Lutheran Church social halls in the world will offer a sunrise pancake breakfast.   Marine Special Ops will disguise themselves as volunteer servers.  Within forty-five minutes of the beginning of Trap ‘08, Osama will surface.  Special Ops will storm in with a giant butterfly net and capture the world’s most evil man.  Done and done. 

** Moparman/Momma-  Led Zeppelin Song “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman)” off of the Led Zeppelin II album, released October 22, 1969, produced by Jimmy Page.  Rock On!

I don’t think we have met, but I assume you are very proud of your son right now for winning the Superbowl and all.  I imagine you might be wondering why your son wasn’t named MVP, but don’t fret too much about that, it’s pretty traditional to give that award to the QB.

The real reason I’m writing this is to ask you how you came up with the name “Plaxico.”  I went to Wikipedia thinking that it might shed some unscientific light on the name-origin, but only your son is listed under “Plaxico”  rather than any explanation of the meaning of the word.  Did you make it up?  Also, Wikipedia states that the name is pronounced, “PLEX-ICO.”  Is that right?

I’m wondering if you went into labor without a name and started to panic when you were about 10 cm dialated.  I see you lying in the hospital bed, chewing on your ice cubes, your sister and mother by your side.  You look out the window. It’s a storm window manufactured by “Plaxico” in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.  “That’s it!” you exclaim.  Or maybe Plaxico was the anti-nausea prescription you took during your first tri-mester.  Hair relaxer? Cheap brand of tupperware?  Maybe you suffered an awful case of plaque and gingivitus while vacationing in Mexico and sought to commemorate the event by naming your first-born after your affliction?

Did you eliminate other names like soldering iron, microchip, petroleum biproducts, or Candyland?  Gwyneth Paltrow named her baby Apple, which is almost as perplexing as Plaxico, but at least she chose a noun that conjures up something organic, something one can eat.  I’ve never tried to eat a Plaxico or a lug nut or a blender.

I am sure you’re celebrating today.  I’m sorry to say I didn’t see the last quarter of the game, as I was fully loaded with gin.  After I made several unsuccesful passes at my girlfriends’ husbands, I passed out in the backyard under an azaela bush.  I woke up wearing nothing but my socks and a mailbox on my head.

Please get back to me as soon as possible with answers to my queries. Of course, if anything I’ve asked is unclear, don’t hesitate to contact my assistant, Paxil.