What the hell did I just say?
Image courtesy of photostock/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer.

Around the age of six or seven, as soon as I got basic spelling down, I crafted a story about a half-man, half-pegasus creature named Beauty Mann. The extra “n” is a mystery to me now; at the time, I probably thought it gave him something special, as though a flying centaur needed bolstering in that department.

Beauty Mann wanted to leave the earth because it depressed him how violent and cruel we humans were. And yet, he alone could make it better through his beauty and kindness. The catch was that we humans had to prove to him that we deserved it in order for him to stay. So: we needed Beauty Mann’s love and kindness in order to be better, but he wasn’t willing to give it until we showed him we already had love and kindness. A conundrum, that. I can’t remember how I ended the story, but I’m sure it turned out well for us humans. I wrote this before someone had invented Fox News, so of course we were better then.

I shared the story with my teacher, who in turn shared it with the principal. The principal called me to the office to say how much he enjoyed the story, and could he hang it up in the hallway for a bit? A bit shy, I nodded, amazed that the story meant anything at all to anyone other than me. From then on, encouraged on by my parents, I wanted to be a writer. That determination has never wavered.

Fast-forward a decade plus, and there I am, getting a graduate degree in Writing. As I toiled away on a novel and a few screenplays, I fully believed that as soon as I graduated, I’d become my density: a paid creative writer. They hand you a degree and voilà, your vocation arrives wrapped in a bow atop a silk pillow. Right?

I wasn’t that naïve, of course, but I did believe that success would come much sooner. I had high school friends on their way to becoming doctors and lawyers and tech geeks. If they worked hard and put in the effort, they became the thing they’d studied for. For writers and other creative types, hard work is no promise that you’ll meet with success. Talent isn’t even as important as one might hope. One’s ability to be a working writer rests entirely on someone giving you a chance. On luck.

I do not come from wealth. I don’t even come from a middle class background. Once I saw how hard writing success was going to be, like the rest of the proletariat I had to find a job with a steady paycheck – one that was related to writing, for sure, but one that most likely would never live up to the carrot that dangled just beyond my reach. I had student loans to pay and cereal to buy.

So I found something. I actually enjoyed the work, even though I considered it temporary. The people were terrific, too. But I discovered very quickly something essential about myself: I did not fit well within corporate life.

There’s a smooth confidence in the business world. People speak corporate-ease to deliver unsavory news or to cover their lies. There’s a strong sense of hierarchy and leveling that often never reflects hard work, talent, or reality. Some people thrive on the competition inherent in business; not me. The politics are alarming, and woe to you if you refuse to play.

While in the corporate world, I always felt like a little girl wearing her mother’s business suit. It took an exceptional amount of energy to smooth down my normally straightforward talk into something shiny and acceptable, and it was draining. That’s not to say that I didn’t do a good job; I did. But it was never comfortable. I felt like an imposter.

Never did this become clearer to me than during a meeting with three of my colleagues one day. It was our weekly status meeting, where we typically went over what was on our to-do lists. This time, talk turned to a technology we were required but loathe to use. We complained. This system was outdated and clunky. Unproductive. When would it get changed?

I tried to find the phrase to describe how useless it was. But instead of the saying, It went the way of the dodo, my brain traversed to a deeper place. Without thinking, I blurted:

“It went the way of the dildo.”

There was a moment, before the embarrassment set in, when I tried to picture exactly what the way of the dildo could mean. Was it a dildo doing tai chi at sunset? Maybe it was a dildo, sitting cross-legged, dispensing wisdom to travelers who had come from afar. Possibly it was a dildo with a Fu Manchu, practicing karate. Or a dildo who could foretell the coming of the white buffalo. I don’t know, but this dildo seemed peaceful and mysterious.

A full moment passed before anyone said anything.

Even worse than the peccadillo itself was that I could not stop laughing. The kind of laughing that ends in tears, when you can’t speak for the hilarity of it. My colleagues, professionals that they were, smiled and stifled giggles but moved on from it, trying to shuffle papers and discuss the next topic. I couldn’t recover. Worse, I don’t think I wanted to.

Throughout the day, the dildo haunted me. I would burst into pink-cheeked laughter without provocation – by myself, in the cafeteria, when in conversations with different people.

I told friends about it.

“Way of the dildo?!” one cried, gleeful. “Did you laugh long and hard?”

I was not professional about it. And it bothered me that professionalism seemed so far out of my reach. Why couldn’t I be more polished? Why couldn’t I hide my childish impulses? This concern did not stop me from laughing about it, though. I’m laughing now.

I don’t know why my brain pulled the word “dildo.” Perhaps many creative types are built this way. Your mind goes to strange places because that’s what you’ve taught it to do for your craft. If I had been a comedy writer, “way of the dildo” would have been heartily embraced. That’s gold, Jerry. Gold. But I was not and am not a comedy writer. I was and am a professional businesswoman. Dildo talk has no place on the job.

I’m a paid writer of sorts now, and I’m in a terrific workplace. I’d like to say that I’ve resolved this disconnect between my creative self and what the business world requires of me, that I’ve become a corporate master, smooth and assuring. I have not. I’m still uncomfortable with the politics, the competition. But I get by. Mainly because I’m older, and therefore take longer pauses before I speak.

I can tell you that I will never ever drop “dildo” in a business meeting again. But if someone else does, I can’t promise I won’t laugh.

I’m “that person” – the one known for pointing out sexism, noticing gendered language, or speaking up about inequalities. I get eye rolls. Someone even patted me on the head once after I said, “Not ‘male nurse.’ Just ‘nurse.’” Whenever I speak up, people inevitably ask, “Why are you making this about gender?”

Then I read this garbage. Or learn about a movement called masculism. Or hear about one more gang rape and murder.

There will be no sheepish apology from me for being “that person.” Whether we like it or not, the world is divided by sex, and those sexes are not treated equally or given equal access to the power structure.

My pointing that out is not the injustice. Calling something sexist is not worse than the actual sexism.

I know – I seem angry. How stereotypical of me. That anger comes from having to defend feminism. Feminism should need no defense from me. It’s advocacy for a basic level of decency and equality we have yet to achieve. It’s an attempt to meet minimum standards. No one is asking for anyone’s dick on a platter.

You’re not babies, so I don’t need to sugarcoat this discussion. We all need feminism. Here’s why.

Non-Feminist Men:
Feminism is not about female superiority or male hate, despite what you might have been told. Here’s the definition of feminism. (Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.)

Feminism does not hold that men and women are the same. Everyone knows that there are sex differences between men’s and women’s brains, however small, and – even more importantly – individual by individual differences. Feminism does not pretend otherwise. Feminism holds that those perceived differences should not obstruct the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

Feminism is good for you, men. It’s good for everybody. It’s an attempt to take apart a system, oppressive and millennia-old, that tells all of us how to be and what we can be based on what’s between our legs. Be free, people.

In particular, you, heterosexual White men, are losing your power foothold as this system comes undone and access becomes equalized. We have a long way to go, but things are indeed changing. This transition might seem scary to you. We’re thankfully moving away from the time when you are considered the default person and everyone else is a special interest or doesn’t-deserve-any-interest group.

Of course, there’s backlash and idiocy when the power structure unravels.

Take it away, Willy Wonka.

An everlasting gobstopper of truth.

But we don’t have the energy to hold your hands, non-feminist heterosexual White men. You just need to DEAL. There is no sympathy here beyond what we all struggle with as human beings.

“Why can’t we all just get along?” you’re maybe saying. Of course we all want to get along. However, male privilege was fine with many men until it starting giving way under their feet. The cries about feminists being sexist and harmful are not only untrue but disingenuous, as these cries were absent when the power structure worked largely in men’s favor.

So cut it out with that bullshit. If you mean it, get behind real equality instead of pretending the issue is that we’re being unfriendly.

“But what about our problems and concerns?” some men have been known to say. No one’s dismissing or minimizing your problems or feelings. What feminists will eviscerate are the claims that those problems are the result of women or feminism. (Psst! Hey! Wanna know a secret? Eve never actually took the apple and handed it to Adam.)

The military draft, for example, is a turd of a patriarchal system, but it ain’t that way because of people with vaginas or the special privileges we hold. If you think so, your head is so far up your butt that you’re breathing recycled bullshit. You should see a doctor.

(Speaking of doctors, here’s a riddle: A father and son are driving on the freeway when they’re involved in a severe accident.  The father is killed instantly and the boy is rushed to the hospital in critical condition.  It’s a bad case, and the staff waits anxiously for the chief resident – a gifted neurosurgeon – to arrive.  Finally the surgeon makes it to the OR but, upon seeing the boy, stops cold and says, “That’s my son.” Who is the doctor? Answer: It’s his mother. That this is even a riddle that still stumps people makes my head hurt.)

Your individual problems are valid but not on the scale of problems caused by centuries of systemic oppression to entire groups of people. So, again, I say: cut it out with that bullshit.

And please stop whining about men not getting enough attention. Dwight?

As clear as the beet juice on your face.

Let me stress that this message is not intended for those of you who get it. Husband, friends, family – there are so many good, good men who fight for equality, understand injustice, and are progressive enough to make me feel thankful every day to be living in the 21^st century.

We’re not asking for men to prostrate themselves before women, lash at their backs in penance for anything, or put us on a pedestal. We’re asking for their advocacy.

Walk with us or get out of the way.

Non-Feminist Women:
Feminism has had a hand in making it possible for you to vote, control your own reproductive choice, and go to college, among many other things. Don’t take this for granted or posture against it so that you can be the “cool girl.” I promise you – no matter how many times you kiss the ring of the patriarchy, they won’t invite you in.

If you’re not convinced by what feminism has achieved and continues to accomplish, take a gander here.

Maybe you don’t think we need feminism anymore. OK.

Perhaps Ellen can convince you that even the seemingly small things matter.

And, remember: just because someone’s a woman doesn’t mean she’s on the side of equality. Some women are patriarchy-internalizing assholes. Don’t let any one woman stand in for all women. Use your best judgment.

Fellow Feminists and Womanists:
We’re not monolithic. We don’t all agree on the same nuances. That’s OK, actually. Screw it. I don’t care if you wear makeup or like cute shoes. These individual choices do mean something, but they’re for your own examination and comfort level. There are bigger, global, systemic tofu sticks to fry.

Feminism has historically not included women of color, immigrants, or LGBT persons. This blind spot to racial and class inequalities within the movement gave rise to womanism. These label distinctions are valid. However, and I may get in trouble for this, but I don’t care what you call yourself. I like to think both labels represent the same goal: make equality an everyday reality, including but not limited to, recognizing the racial and class issues that permeate, intertwine, and dissect gender considerations.

The way to do this is to listen. Recognize your privilege, White feminists. And learn. We can do better.

My grandmother was an immigrant who had six children, worked for a living, and kept her own bank account separate from her husband. The feminist movements of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s largely missed her because what drove the White housewives of those eras – goals like fighting to be part of the workforce – did not speak to my grandmother. As part of the lower class, she had to work, whether she wanted to or not. I know feminism touched her life in positive ways, but I’m not sure she knew that, nor did she know how much more she could do and be. I would love for her to have known.

Everyone:
I guess the only remaining question is: are you in?

I love movies. When I was in summer camp in middle school, the camp counselors would take us to movies during the heat of the day. The local movie theatre ran discount shows during off-peak times for large groups. We would all climb into the summer camp van for a 10:00 AM showing of movies like All Dogs Go to Heaven, An American Tail, and Milo and Otis. In the dark of the cool theatre, I would laugh, gasp, and hold back tears while choking down a big roll of Sprees. I loved every minute of it.

To me, the best thing about film – as with great literature and art, too – is the empathy it nurtures. At their core, movies let us experience someone else’s life: good, bad, weird. The best movies make you feel like you’re in deep. For example, when Artax was lost to the Swamps of Sadness, it was one of the worst moments of my 7-year-old life.

So of course I love watching the Oscars, self-congratulatory though they are. It’s the movies brought into reality, glittering and in a good mood. The inane red carpet commentary, the fake tans and ridiculous gowns, the bombastic speeches, the goofy elation of the winners, the losers trying to swallow the bitter taste of defeat.

ALL. OF. IT.

However, even though excited going in, by ceremony’s end I always feel deflated by its lack of greatness.

It’s no secret that the Oscars have been gradually losing their authority for what feels like decades now. What was once the preeminent event for writers, actors, directors, and others in the industry has become a shadow of its former self. The Oscars are the Norma Desmond of awards shows, applying smudged lipstick in a cracked mirror, mumbling. They no longer appear to hold the key to excellence, and therefore no longer seem to know what to do with themselves.

So what’s wrong exactly? Thank you for asking. I have a few feelings on that.

The Oscars no longer honor very good movies.
This isn’t really the fault of the Oscars per se, but a fault of Hollywood in general. Remember when movies were more adult?

Movies have always catered to 18- to 34-year-old White males, but at least they used to skew toward the latter part of that range. Remember some of the movies from the ‘90s? Movies like LA Confidential, Gladiator, Schindler’s List, Fargo, American Beauty, JFK, Fight Club, The Usual Suspects?

These movies were about adults with adult problems. In the ‘90s alone, Kevin Spacey had to juggle his secret identities, Keyser Soze and Rolo Tomassi; got shot by his tortured neighbor; and stuffed Gwyneth Paltrow’s head into a box. Things were serious.

But now it’s all YA book adaptations, Pixar, and comic books. That’s not to say these categories don’t include great movies; they do. It means that production companies interested in making movies, driven by the bottom line, are less likely to take risks on more unique projects.

So that leaves slim pickings for the Academy. Once associated with prestige, the Oscars now uplift such movies as Silver Linings Playbook, which was, despite some good performances, more contrived than an episode of Saved By the Bell. Compare that to another movie about mental illness and falling in love, Awakenings, nominated for Best Picture in 1990.

(You can’t. You can’t compare because there’s no comparison. Movies are getting worse. Sad trombone.)

The academy is supposed to skim the cream from the top. The movies they choose to nominate make more money, reach more audiences. In turn, that finances better quality movies in the future. Instead, desperate to keep up, they’ve traded in their art house and intellectual cache for a ticket to a One Direction concert.

The ceremony runs too long.
I don’t know what to say here except that I have to get up at 7 AM for work, and I’m not a morning person. Waiting until the end of the program to get to the best categories, which then pushes the ceremony past midnight, is cruel.

Be decent, Academy.

The entire thing is too predictable.
Remember when this happened?

Things like that don’t happen anymore because the Academy no longer honors riskier material and crazy geniuses. They shy away from provocation and controversy. Booooooooring. Is this not art? Are we not to be entertained? LET SHIT HAPPEN.

Perhaps the worst part of the Oscars is that everybody already knows who’s going to win. Several outlets make it a yearly ritual to predict the winners. And you know what? They’re mostly right. And that’s not OK. It shouldn’t be this easy to judge the judges.

Not only that, but the ceremony itself will be an unsurprising echo of the ones before it. I’m so confident in this that I will make a few predictions of my own:

• Someone will be really offended when the music cuts off his/her acceptance speech.

• Someone will drop the F-bomb.

• A dead person will be left out of the In Memorium portion, and then someone will be upset at this omission. (Probably not the dead person.)

• Someone will act shocked when they win, even though we all knew it would happen.

• Someone will mention Meryl Streep during his/her acceptance speech. It’s the new “I would like to thank God, my family…”

• The host will insult-joke someone in the audience, and there will be uncomfortable laughter.

• Anne Hathaway will win and say something that will cause me to have second-hand embarrassment for her.

Knowing all of this already, why should I watch? I could be getting 300% of my daily boob intake by finishing Game of Thrones, Season 2, on Netflix.

Look, I don’t have all the answers. (I know. I KNOW.) However, I do have a few suggestions that might improve the overall juju of this once-glorious juggernaut.

For starters:

• Stop being racist, you racists.
• Be choosy. That means being brave. Go out on a limb with new directors trying unique things. Stop honoring movies that won’t stand the test of time. If it looks like a Movie of the Week, it doesn’t deserve to be at the Academy Awards. (*cough* Crash *cough*. I’m still bitter about Brokeback Mountain.)
• Cut out the song and dance numbers. This isn’t musical theatre. In fact, in order to improve the energy overall, cut out a lot of stuff. Narrow it down to the 10 biggest categories and do the rest of the awards off-screen.
• Show us longer clips from the nominated movies. Because this. This is why we’re here. Remember?

• Bring in Chris Rock to host. Or Tina Fey. Or Amy Poehler. Or Louis CK. Or all four. Just get someone funny. Geez. Because when the jokes fall flat… erp. The horror. THE HORROR.

• Let people speak for a longer amount of time. The speeches are the best part. But first: serve alcohol.

• Make the President of the Academy rap his/her speech to make it entertaining. Otherwise, this is the most dangerously masturbatory part of the evening, when the Academy congratulates itself on continuing to exist.
• Give Leo an Oscar already.

• Good god, let other people win every once in a while! Meryl Streep and Daniel Day-Lewis have so many Oscars between them that their middle names are now legally Oscar! You realize that Daniel Day-Lewis is a pod person, right?

Sorry, method actor. So how would he get into character to play a murderer? Hm.

• Focus on the losers more frequently. They make the best faces.

• Linger on the more interesting people in the audience.

• Create new categories. How about: Best Ugly Crying Scene? Or: Best Use of Sarcasm? Best Acting by a Non-Human Animal. Best Non-Dialog Writing. Best Acting Alongside a CGI Character. Best Burp Sequence. Best Imitation of Meryl Oscar Streep. I don’t know! This is your job, Academy.
• Just be amazing. OK?

I love movies. I love what they can teach us, what experiences they let us have, what they can do for humanity. And it’s sad to me that the one institution we rely on to elevate the best kinds of movies has faltered over the years.

So c’mon, Oscar. I’ll be watching tonight, as I always do, with hope in my heart.

There are many wonderful things on the Internet. Cats live inside the Internet, for example. And people use a lot of exclamation points to show their emotions online. Not to mention all the naked people you can find on here, too.

But I think I’ve stumbled upon the bestest Internet something yet!

I’ve seen Mad Men. I work in marketing. I know how much thought and preparation, how many mid-day Scotch breaks go into a successful advertising campaign. So when I saw these twisted food ads from the 1950s, it confirmed my suspicion that Satan works in advertising. These ads are so ironically unappetizing, so White, that one wonders whether a hipster traveled back in time to create them.

The only thing I could do to make sense of the ads was caption them.

She’s excited to finally try someone’s mashed kidney on her white bread.

He knows what happens when one eats beans, and he plans on sharing that joy with his kid sister.

“My god! After years of ham, peas, and slick, gelatinous yams, I’ve finally gone blind!”

“What? You don’t eat the intestines of your enemies while wearing a clip-on? Savages.”

Hey, little girl. That’s not chocolate cake.

OK – I get that you can grill meat in your fireplace. I also get that their mother appears to be having an argument with the fridge. But that kid playing the accordion? Just another day in the nuthouse, I guess.

Nothing phallic to marvel at here! Move along!

I don’t know what this is advertising, but I just remembered that I need to practice my scowling.

“Ice cream for White people! Get your White people ice cream here!”

Dude. Calm down.

“Mother, what did we discuss? Whoever has the hot dog controls the radio. Father taught us that. And if that top was any lower, you’d be a convertible.”

“Gee willikers! I love frozen hand for dinner!”

I like to call this, “Dr. Kevorkian’s Hot Dog Express to Hell.”

My cat vomited this yesterday.

“Are you constipated? Has Velveeta got the cure for you!”

So eff all you vegetarian mofos.

If you like these photos, you can buy them over here. Sicko.

This one time, I went to a Renaissance Faire and stopped by a fortune teller’s tent.

(I know the above sentence is a lot to take in. It tells you that: 1.) I’m the type of person who goes to Renaissance Faires, 2.) I’m the type of person to solicit the services of a charlatan, and 3.) I went inside a stranger’s tent. I have no defense. I enjoy all of these activities.)

The fortune teller was a woman of a certain age with bright eyes, wearing the requisite dangly jewelry. Her tent was homey and purple and filled with flowers. She radiated comfort.

Rather than read my palm or sort out any cards, she claimed that in order to best tell me my future she had to hold my hand. This was the only way to galvanize the forces of the universe, which coursed through my body and flowed out of my fingertips.

“I didn’t know,” I said, wiggling my fingers.

She waited. I gave over my hand. It tingled under the weight of the universe.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re not here for relationship advice.”

I shook my head.

“You want to know something about your career.”

I sat up straight. “Yes,” I whispered.

“What do you want to know?”

“What I want is very hard to achieve. Will I be successful?”

She paused. “Yes. But it won’t be the way you envision.”

What was that supposed to mean? “I don’t —”

She held up her palm. Silence! She seemed to be receiving further instructions from my han– er, the universe.

She finally opened her eyes.

“TV. For your career. You need to watch more TV.” Then she let go of my hand, finished.

I sat back, stunned. How could she have known this about me? It can’t be Googled, you wouldn’t know it by looking at me, and there was no one she could have asked.

You see, at that time, I didn’t watch television at all.

***

It wasn’t always that way. There was plenty of TV watching in my house as a kid.

It all started with The Price Is Right. At the mere age of four, I was hooked. Every morning at 11, I would sit two feet from the TV and drink in the orange glow of Bob Barker’s skin. As Johnny Olson’s booming voice called out the names of housewives with bouffant hairdos and guys wearing Hawaiian shirts, I would gobble down on Cheese Balls.

(In the ’80s, Cheese Balls came in a tin, as opposed to their current barrel form. Still the same: there’s a lot of balls in there. I have no idea why my mother allowed this debauchery.)

“A car!” I would scream to my mother, who was sitting in another room. “They won a car!”

“That’s amazing,” she would reply.

“I can’t believe it,” I would say, shaking my head, Cheese Ball dust flying everywhere.

The show filled me with wonder and taught me how capitalism works: if you’re lucky enough to be picked, an older white man surrounded by beautiful women will grant you a few needed household items and maybe a trip to Santa Barbara, about which you can brag to your friends back at the widget factory. The Price Is Right taught me the value of stuff and the value of having all of the stuffs.  It made such an impression on me that to this day, I think of Southern California as nothing more than the place where the Price is Right Showcase Showdown Wheel lives.

But I learned other values from TV, too. There was Sesame Street. Heard of it? Sesame Street was loving and diverse, gritty and unsanitized. On it lived a great big bird of sunshine and a grumpy green goblin in a trashcan house, among many other fuzzy creatures. It took place in an inner city where celebrities came to visit. There were songs, learnings, and tripped-out cartoons. I absolutely loved it.

Some have criticized Sesame Street for various reasons. If it can be faulted for anything, though, maybe it’s for the glowing, hippie-like hopefulness it espouses. Or maybe for promoting the idea that the world can be good, kind, and helpful. Or for teaching us that utopia is achievable.

Though what else should we teach our children to have but hope? If this is wrong:

…then I don’t want to be right. But I am right, because it’s not wrong. If I believe in people, then dagnabbit, blame Sesame Street.

By late grade school and middle school, my taste in TV shows progressed even further. As I learned more about the world and my place in it, I saw the struggle and, at times, understood the necessity of fighting against forces of harm. Also, as a pre-teen, my gonads were changing and I was noticing more birds and more bees. My tastes moved thusly toward the beefy men of the action genre.

GI Joe was one of my favorite cartoons. I watched it every day after school, mostly because of this cool drink of water.

Flint, of the square jawline Flints

Flint had a thing for Lady J, another GI Joe character. The will-they-or-won’t-they chemistry of their relationship rivaled the best of adult programming. GI Joe was basically Moonlighting for 10-year-olds. I lapped it up, unsure of all those crazy feelings stirring inside of my burgeoning gametes.

Another after-school favorite was Thundercats. Man, just look at their badass symbol!

Lion-O was the Thundercat leader, and he would always scream out “Go!” before the entire Thundercats team sprung to action. No, just kidding. He yelled (and I’m not making this up): “Ho!”

Lion-o, big fan of the prostitutes

He was OK, I guess. Nice hair. I wanted to be another Thundercat, Cheetara.

She’s not even wearing pants. Circa 1985 P.G. (pre-Gaga)

I don’t think those shows were meant to impart anything. This was not smart television. The focus, if any, was about being entertained by your basic good vs. evil battles. These battles were never ending. Even though the GI Joes and Thundercats won their respective tussles every show, the villains would be back again the next week. There was never any progress. Even as a kid, I thought, “Didn’t Snake Eyes bite it on the last episode?” But then I would shrug, hunker down, and enjoy the ride, as was my American right. I don’t remember plot lines from any of these cartoons, just imagery and feeling, and I think that’s the point. I also don’t remember algebra anymore, though. So.

By high school, my TV viewing habits had altered once again. But this time, it had more to do with changes in my family life than anything of my own doing. While my peers were watching MTV’s The Real World, 90210, Seinfeld, Friends, and Saved By the Bell, my viewing habits had been curbed. I was not allowed to watch MTV at all, nor any of the “racy” teen or adult shows that aired at night.

Instead, I tuned in to Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist after school, and – on Friday nights – Family Matters and Boy Meets World. My TV tastes had become entirely wholesome apart from the sometimes-saucy Jewish jokes on Dr. Katz.

I fell out of the loop, couldn’t keep up with my peers. I didn’t know who Screech was. An owl, maybe? TV had become a source of angst, tension, shame. If you couldn’t discuss television with your friends, then there was nothing else whatsoever to talk about, except how dramatic and exaggerated one’s statements were! The only saving grace I had was The Simpsons, which, by some miracle, we were allowed to watch, though my mother frowned whenever Bart told someone to eat his shorts.

By the time I reached college and beyond, apart from The Simpsons and sometimes The Daily Show, I was as far from TV as I had ever been. Where I had fallen a step behind in high school, I was now trailing by a whole mile.

I tried to return to TV. I watched Friends and never laughed, not even once. This was also the dawn of reality television, when real people married fake millionaires and people who couldn’t sing judged hopeful singers. It was madness. The further away I had gotten from TV, the stupider it looked. It no longer made sense to me.

My old friend and teacher who had imparted so many values to me now no longer held any value at all. The fact that TV had done so much for me made its new, strange behavior even more hurtful. It was like screaming Who are you?! at a former best friend who had had the audacity to change.

TV thus became dead to me for many years.

***

But then the fortune teller happened.

I love movies. I write movie scripts, all kinds, hopeful that one day Mark Ruffalo’s chest hair will star in them. But TV? What did that have to do with my career? What could it possibly teach me?

After my visit with the fortune teller, compelled by the power of chicanery, I went home and made a list of television shows that others had recommended to me. Shows like Arrested Development, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, The Office. I put them on Netflix. I hadn’t watched a traditional sitcom in over a decade, and I wasn’t sure how this was going to go.

Arrested Development arrived first. I popped in the DVD. Words can’t really describe how I felt after watching the first season of Arrested Development, so I’ll just let an animated gif substitute.

It was awesome. It was smart. There was no laugh track or other stale tropes. It was humor so finely tuned and well written that you could watch it two, three, four times and catch new jokes, puns, and satire each time.

How had I missed this show? When did TV get so smart? Over time, I watched the other shows, too. Dexter had me riveted with its twists and turns. Breaking Bad was about as close to perfection as possible, yo. Some of the funniest (and most feminist!) moments happened on Park and Recreation.

There have been instances I’ve sat back on my couch after watching an episode of one of these shows, a bit red-faced. My hand had told the truth that day: I needed more TV in my life. It had a lot to teach me about plot, structure, and comic timing – all the features of good movie writing. And maybe I would try my hand at writing for television? It was a consideration I had never made before.

But it was more than this. These shows restored my faith in the idea that our entertainment can be worthwhile. Entertainment can be smart, can make a point.

When I had moved away from TV and tried to come back to it, I felt it had lost something. And maybe it had. Trash television is still king, and it’s of course OK if you enjoy it. Sometimes you just need to escape. But I had lost something, too: my ability to recognize television as a quality entertainment choice. TV, I discovered, didn’t need to be a complete waste of time.

TV and I get along better now. I still don’t get cable, but I am watching television shows regularly. And even though I haven’t had a Cheese Ball in several decades, I still sometimes want to hunker down with a good snack, sit two feet from the TV, and call out to my husband, “A new lab! Walter and Jesse got a new meth lab!”

Man. I love it when TV can make me feel like that.

Image courtesy of ahmet guler / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed of late. I do too much. We all do too much, don’t we? As an ex-perfectionist, I still sometimes think I can manage everyone’s expectations and my own, give one hundred percent to my relationships, and take care of basic human functioning while succeeding at every. single. thing. handed to me. I can do it all!

ROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!

If age and maturity have given me anything, though, it’s knowing when I’m defeated and being able to admit it.

So I’m here to say: I can’t do it all. Not well anyway.

Meow.

There was a time when admitting this was not an option. In high school, I participated in the annual school play, track & field, Odyssey of the Mind, Math League, chorus, and student government. My GPA never fell below a 4.0. On the surface, I excelled. Underneath, I was a giant ball of anxiety and disordered eating. I couldn’t admit there was anything wrong because I cultivated an image of having it all together. Of perfection.

(The fact that I was in Math League is probably the biggest indication that I was a deluded little thing and thought I could do it all. In a parallel world, I’m super good at math.)

Perfection is false. I’m sorry if this is a conclusion at which you’ve already arrived, but it’s taken me a while to get here. And I’d like to let it sink in.

I can’t do it all. Something gives, however small. Little pieces drop off here and there. Unanswered phone calls, dishes in the sink, realizing you haven’t trimmed your toenails in forever. A month passes and you haven’t spoken to your friends except for a few texts. These things matter. They make life nice. I would have some time for them if I weren’t so busy Living Up to Expectations.

At work the other day, in between half a dozen meetings, I slipped out to use the restroom. While on the toilet, I thought to myself, How can I make myself pee faster? I have to get back to work. Pee faster, Erin!

I tried to control the speed of my urine stream.

I can’t do it all.

My weekdays are spent working for a paycheck. My weekends are spent working for things that don’t pay. I’m always working at something. I’m tired.

I can’t do it all. I don’t want to do it all.

I think what I need is a little break. A few weeks, maybe a little longer, so I can refresh, refocus, repair. I want to watch Battlestar Galactica in my jammies. I want to spend a full weekend lost in a good book. I want to finish my kickass screenplay. I want to take a walk outside, holding my husband’s hand, with absolutely no destination in mind.

So I’m going to go do those things. And I’ll see you all in a little while.

Gird your bananas. The greatest show on the planet, Arrested Development, is coming back tonight on Netflix.

Are you ready? You don’t want to be left holding the teabag! Maybe even worse – you don’t want to prematurely shoot your wad by trying to download the episodes before the right time (12:01 AM PST and 3:01 AM EST).

Stay cool. Here’s what you can do to prepare yourself in just 15 easy steps – one step for each new episode.

1. Turn off whatever other television shows or movies you might be watching. I don’t care if it’s Boyfights, Girls with Low Self-Esteem, Les Cousins Dangereaux, Scandalmakers, Sugarfoot, or Caged Wisdom. Quality programming all, but you need to give your undivided attention to the great illusion about to unfold before your eyes.

And by illusion, I mean a trick in a magic show. And by trick, I mean a prostitute. And by prostitute, I mean your mother.

2. Get fancy. Put on your favorite jewelry made of beads. Or bees? A bead necklace in the shape of a bee. Or earrings made of bees trapped in beads. Or a ring with a picture of bees beading. Hold the phone! Someone tells me there are actually earrings made out of Beas.

Her? Different TV show but still acceptable, I guess.

3. Similarly, you may be feeling extra dressy considering the occasion. If so, only the right eyebrows will do – the ones made from an alpaca with alopecia. Affix them to your face thusly:

And remember: jean cutoffs go with everything and will effectively hide your thunder.

4. Now it’s time to make your favorite meal: a Mayonegg, or an egg dipped in mayo. If you’re feeling really hungry, serve the egg with a side of veal – a.k.a., secular flesh.

5. Open up your favorite bottle of vodka. Take a swig. Take a second. Then another. And another, until it’s finished. Everybody knows that vodka goes bad once it’s opened. If you don’t have any vodka, use Tea for Dong instead.

6. Do you know Hermano? Of course you do. Everybody knows an Hermano. Call him. Ask him if he’ll be watching the episodes tonight with your brother. What’s that? You don’t know where your brother is? I heard he was fighting dragons in the future. Didn’t he leave a note?

7. Make banner! Hang banner! Banner should read, “You’re killing me, Netflix.” (This will be in anticipation of bandwidth problems.)

8. If it’s not quite midnight yet, you might have time for a little pop-pop in the attic. Don’t worry. Your pop secret is safe with me. Just one naughty suggestion, if I may: let Lily lick Lionel’s lusty leathers. You won’t regret it.

9. As the new episodes begin, you may think to yourself, “Oh I’m not prepared for this.” It’s OK. This has been a long time coming and the build-up is intense – like waiting for a call from the Blue Man Group! Relax. Take deep breaths. Loose the seal of your sphincter. Do a little chicken dance to shake out your nerves.

It’s important to release this tension or you will get a build-up of bovem stercore, otherwise known as a condition called BS. This is not maybe, but surely.

10. If you’re hosting guests, refrain from touching them no matter how excited you get. NO TOUCHING or I’ll call the hot cops.

11. If you’re watching with your favorite puppet, make sure all of his kids are accounted for. He’s got them all over town.

12. Snack time! You’ve got to take a break at some point. Try a little English muffin with a side of hot ham water. Delicious. But DO NOT EAT the dead dove in the fridge! If you must use the dead dove, mix it in with whatever ingredients you have in your fridge – celery, Circus Peanuts, olive juice. You’ve got yourself a stew!

13. If someone tries to talk to you during your marathon viewing, turn to them and say, in as cold a voice as you can muster, “I don’t understand the question and I won’t respond to it.” Then condescendingly tell them that they must not be a Milford man.

Alternately, take the nearest Balboa Bay Windows magazine and smack the shit out of that person.

14. When you’re all done watching the 4^th season, you may need to take something to help you calm down and reduce the dizzies. I’d recommend a Teamocil. It may cause numbness of the extremities, though, particularly in the Linus area.

15. If all else fails, and watching the 4^th Season of Arrested Development has you so worked up that regular life no longer has any meaning, it would be a huge mistake not to do something about it. Let’s talk – I know the name of a great analrapist.

Image courtesy of tongdang / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have transportation phobias.

For one, I’m bad at flying. Not that long ago, I would cry during takeoff. Once in the air I would settle, but takeoff represented the last chance to bail before imminent destruction. It seemed downright stupid not to get off. I always wanted to leap out of my seat and shout, “I’ll just teleport there, thank you!” No amount of smiling people serving cookies could take my mind off the fact that I was about to leave the Earth.

Once, on a red-eye flight in a distant land, I noticed what appeared to be smoke pouring into the plane through the windows. I began to hyperventilate. The guy next to me, already asleep, let out a snore. I decided to use his body as a flotation device if needed. When a flight attendant walked by, I grabbed her arm.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the smoke monster. “Is the plane on fire? Why are the windows smoking? Are we in hell? ARE WE ALREADY DEAD?”

She stared at the smoke, then me. “That’s condensation from the air conditioner.” The way she emphasized –er on conditioner indicated she had a certain amount of contempt for my kind. I don’t blame her. I’m the passenger who causes trouble for other nervous passengers, the first domino in a panic chain reaction. I must be stopped.

My fear of flying is so bad that I even get nervous driving by Newark Airport on the Jersey Turnpike. The airplanes, which take off and land right next to the highway, are giant hawks that seem to hunt down cars like field mice. One of these days, I fear they’ll catch one.

I’ve also been in two car accidents. They weren’t serious and no one was injured, but they shook me. For a few months after the first one, when falling asleep at night, I would jolt awake in bed from the recurring image of a truck slamming into the side of my car. Sweet dreams indeed.

But I think the real culprit behind my transportation issues, if I had to pinpoint an origin, is the time I was in a train wreck outside of Jacksonville, Florida in the late ‘90s.

I had just been on a weeklong visit to see my grandparents, only about two hours into my 20-hour journey back home. I was young, about 18, and it was my first solo trip. My seatmate was an expat named Julia who lived in Switzerland and was home visiting family. The guy in front of me, James, was a 20-something trust fund kid with time to burn. And to his right was Lucy, a lesbian stripper on her way back to NYC. As Lucy mentioned many times, she was worried about any possible delays because she had to be back in time for her shift the next morning. Yes, you can get lap dances in the a.m. in NYC.

We were having a rousing conversation about – guess what? – travel phobias. Lucy mentioned she was afraid to fly. Julia wasn’t bothered at all. James said he had no issues, either, even after being in a plane crash and surviving. (James said many things during that train ride, some of them suspect. Like that a wild falcon once followed him around, or that he had almost died after getting lost in the Moroccan desert, or that he had once been in the crossfire of a drug shootout. I guessed these fantastical tales were for Lucy’s benefit, because she was blonde and pert. But the grander he made his life and the more obvious it became that he liked her, the more of a lesbian Lucy became.)

James sat on his knees, turned around in his seat to face Julia and me. “The plane crash was nothing,” he said. “Just some bumps and bruises. I love flying.”

“Then why are you on a train now?” I asked. (I was a rude brat at 18.)

“Trains are a romantic way to travel, a forgotten art. I plan on taking the train all the way West once we reach New York.”

It was hard to see the romance in the microwaved sandwich sitting in front of me, but I nodded anyway.

“I’ve taken every type of transportation, been in all sorts of accidents,” James said. “But never a train wreck.”

It’s funny how life works sometimes. I don’t believe that there’s any sentient being messing around with us for his own amusement, but sometimes I do wonder. Because right after James declared himself train accident-free, our train slammed into a tractor trailer that had stalled across the tracks, and we all lurched forward on impact.

They say time moves slower during a traumatic event. I wouldn’t say that’s true. It’s more that certain details stand out during the chaos. And even though the chaos itself moves at warp speed, it’s those details that seem to slow its pace. For me, it was seeing parts of the smoking tractor trailer fly past the window outside. Or watching my water bottle tumble and spill all over the back of the seat in front of me. Or seeing James do a cartwheel in the air and land in the aisle, eyes blinking.

We helped James up, looked around. Everyone appeared to be OK. Some luggage had come off the racks but thankfully hadn’t hurt anyone. A train conductor came running through the car, commanding everyone to stay seated. Then he disappeared.

Lucy stood. “I don’t know about you all,” she shouted, “but I’m getting the fuck off this train.” Lucy, it turned out, was a great leader in time of disaster.

We started filing out, shaken and quiet. Once outside, we had a clearer picture of what had happened: the first four cars of our train had derailed. Ours had been the fifth car, still on the tracks but lifted up at a weird angle. We were right outside of Jacksonville but a world away in a farmer’s field. There was nothing around us now but dirt roads, corn stalks, and sunshine. It was hot.

Other riders must have seen us through their windows and followed suit because soon the entire contents of the train – almost 200 people – filled up the cornfield. Children on a field trip who had been in the third car bounced out with bloody noses, excited and proud of their injuries. There was rumor that no one had been seriously injured and we consoled ourselves with this info.

I was physically unhurt, aside from having banged my head on the cushioned seat in front of me. Mentally? I felt detached from my body; I was unable to say much. James had lost a bit of his bluster. He sat by himself chewing on a piece of hay. Julia complained about train service in the United States compared to Europe. And Lucy, determined to get home, had stomped off to find someone in a position of authority so she could discuss alternate travel options.

It was almost night before they brought several buses to take us to the nearest train station. The school children, who had brought along glow sticks for their trip, were now running through the farmer’s field playing a version of tag. Their bodies disappeared and they looked like nothing more than zigzagging lights, shrieking fireflies. As I boarded the bus, I remember thinking that this image of the children is what I wanted to remember most. To this day, it’s the first image that comes to mind when I think of the accident.

For their part, the train company – let’s call them Shmamtrak – did a great job responding to the accident. They gathered us up, put us on either another train or a flight home, and fed us free meals for the remainder of our journey. Everyone on the train helped one another, too, a great reminder that humanity is at its core decent, even after injury and heightened anxiety.

Lucy boarded a flight back to NYC so she could make her shift. Julia had a relative take her onward by car. I got on another train and so did James. We sat next to each other on this new train home – a bigger, brighter car train with an upstairs. When we took off from Jacksonville, James turned to me.

“I feel responsible,” he said. But I shook my head no.

It wasn’t Shmamtrak’s fault. It wasn’t the tractor trailer driver’s fault, either. And it wasn’t James’ fault. It was no one’s fault. This may have been the hardest aspect to accept. It wasn’t in anyone’s control.

Perhaps that is at the core of all phobias: lack of control. The train wreck marked the start of my transportation fear issues, reminding me that I am orbiting much closer to death on any given day than I might like to admit.  We all are. As soon as we’re born, we have a contract with death. It would be nice if we could call the shots, control the moment and manner in which we go. I’d love to go in my sleep right after eating a gigantic ice cream sundae, but I don’t get to choose.

There’s a great mantra that Apache warriors would say to each other on the day of a big battle: “Today is a good day to die.” As morbid as it seems, this is actually a very life-affirming saying. If you know you can’t control when or how you die, how will this impact the way you live? Today is a good day to die when all the days before it have been good days to live.

I’ve boarded many planes and trains since the accident. I had a job that required travel, where I had to fly several times a year. I’ve been to Africa, which required five flights for the round trip. I take the subway to work every day. And I’ve been back on Shmamtrak trains many, many times – by choice. I no longer get as worked up about travel as I once did. Repetition helped to abate some anxiety. The more I traveled and came back in one piece, the less inclined I was to worry about it. I wanted to travel more than I was concerned with death.

I will never be the type of traveler who can forget that she’s thirty thousand feet in the air or that she’s racing along electrified rails at 100 miles per hour. What I can do is decide to live despite this fear.

That I get to choose.

***

If you have a flying phobia, a great resource is http://www.fearofflying.com/. It really helped me and I would recommend it.

Image courtesy of sritangphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So that title is a bit misleading. I’m not 35 yet, but I’m close.

Everyone knows that there are special risks associated with having a child after 35. At 11:59 PM on the 364^th day of our 34^th years as women, the shades get drawn across our uteri. If anyone tries to knock on the door, a cranky voice answers, “She ain’t here no more!” Our eggs shrivel up to dust and tumbleweed blows across our fallopian tubes. Our insides vacant, we’re doomed to walk the earth banging on a tin can, humming the theme song to Mission: Impossible.

Oh wait – that doesn’t happen? Huh. You might think some catastrophic event affecting millions of people occurs whenever a childfree woman turns 35. We hear a lot of shit about it, anyway. We are scolded, cajoled, harassed, patronized. We’re told we’re selfish, ignorant, and stupid. We aren’t prioritizing correctly. We will regret it. We’re ruining it for everybody. The underlying theme in all of these assumptions is that we women don’t seem to know what we’re doing.

I’m 100% positively absolutely certain that I’m not yet ready to have a child. I’m not in the “never” camp (yet). I’m not in the baby crazy camp (yet). I’m simply not ready. Not ready, firmly, at almost 35.

SOUND THE ALARMS THERE’S AN EMPTY WOMB ON THE LOOSE.

This “not ready” stage confuses and irritates people. I hear: “How can you not be ready? You’re almost 35.” Or: “What are you waiting for? You shouldn’t wait.” And, my favorite: “Better get on it.”

It bothers people that I exist in this space. People click their tongues at me, give me looks of pity. They stare at my stomach area, concerned for my insides. They’re worried about my potential as a woman. They’re worried I’m delusional, that I’m making a mistake. They suspect that my lack of enthusiasm is a judgment of their own life choices.

No. I’m just not ready.

I’m not ready for a number of things. I’m not ready for the life upheaval that I know awaits new parents: the complete change in schedules, priorities, time investment and management, and even physical wellbeing. I’m not ready to change anything about my life at this point. I like it exactly as it is.

I’m not ready to lose time – time for writing, watching TV, reading, anything. Everything.

I’m not ready to lose sleep. As a child, I got up at 6 in the morning, ready for Corn Flakes, cartoons, and Flintstones vitamins. I was a maniac. Today, I can sleep for 10-12 hours at a stretch. You won’t see me up before 9 on a weekend because I stay up late, a night owl at heart. The loss of sleep seems terrifying.

I’m not ready to give up the freedom to go to the movies, have a glass of wine, go out after work, eat at great restaurants, plan great vacations. I don’t want to survive, I want to thrive. Let’s call it life flexibility. Life flexibility maximizes enjoyment. I’m not suggesting parents have no life flexibility, but children do strain it. I’m not ready to let even a little bit of that go just yet.

I’m not ready to wipe anyone’s butt.

When I was 7 and Little Brother was 3, we were bouncing on the bed at our summer timeshare in the Poconos. Little Brother fell off the bed, falling headfirst into the corner of an end table. He needed something like a dozen stitches, some of them internal. The doctors said that he was lucky that the corner of the table didn’t sink too deep or it would have struck his brain. Right after it happened, I remember my mother, her face contorted in pain, wrapping towel after towel around my brother’s bleeding head. The frenzy of absolute panic, the despair of not knowing.

That? I’m not ready for it.

I’m not ready to try and make friends with people who I otherwise have nothing in common with except children. I’m not ready to argue with people about parenting choices or to be criticized for my parenting decisions.

I’m not ready for temper tantrums, crying fits, or not understanding what the hell is wrong.

Don’t get me started on gendered toys. Or the assumptions people will make about my child based on whether they’re a girl or boy. All of it – not ready.

I’m not ready to enter the cult of motherhood. I’m not ready to be called by the word “mother.”

I’m.

Not.

Ready.

I may be ready next week, next month, or in five years. I may never be ready. For me, the risk of having a child right now outweighs the risk of not having one. When the scales tip the other way, perhaps I will make a different choice.

If we women don’t feel ready to have kids until after we’re 35, or circumstances aren’t right until we’re well into our late 30s or even 40s (waiting for a partner, the right job, health benefits, housing, etc.), what is there for anyone else to discuss?

I know exactly what I’m doing and what this means. I’ve rolled the dice and made the best decision I can with the information I have. My decision is that I’m not ready.

Deal with it.

When I was in 4^th grade, there was a girl in my school named Jessica or Heather or some other snobby ‘80s name. She was perfect in the sense that nothing seemed out of place. She wore spotless dresses with spotless shoes. Her lunch, probably packed by Martha Stewart, was a careful mix of carbohydrate, protein, and a dessert, demarcated bento-style within her shiny Rainbow Brite lunchbox. She even had a napkin folded into a dainty triangle.

I wore hand-me-downs and sneakers and had skinned knees, and when I opened my lunchbox, my mother’s lovingly-made lunch tumbled out in a mess of squashed sandwich, bruised fruit, and leaking Capri Sun. My snack, Little Debbie Zebra Cakes, would be pulverized into crumbs within their plastic wrapper. My napkins contained notes from my mother or father with cute little symbols scrawled in black marker:

{drawing of an eye} {drawing of a heart} U

Thanks, Mom and Dad. Now I can’t use the napkin!

I didn’t hate Alexa, or whatever her name was. I was more in awe of her. But there was one thing about her that I wanted, and bad: her long straight hair.

Like many things about Tiffany, her hair was perfect. Blonde, thick, and shiny, it fell down her back like a heavy curtain. A small flip of her head resulted in a golden wave of hair, a solar flare from the brightest sun. You had to shield your eyes. One day she pinned her hair back with unicorn barrettes, and I thought I might die from jealousy and desire.

My hair is, and always has been, curly. Unruly, wild curls. Frizzy, big curls. Messy. My hair didn’t grow down, like Samantha’s, it grew out. Up until late high school, I had never had long hair. Nothing cascaded down my back except sweat in the summer. My hair wouldn’t hold a barrette and it had an aversion to combs. It wasn’t as beautiful as an afro or tight enough to control. It was just crazy.

To get my hair into pigtails was an ordeal that required ninjas. I couldn’t sit still long enough for my mother to find my natural part.

At night alone in my room. I would pull my nightgown back over my head and let it hang there, pretending the soft cotton against my shoulders was my own hair. I’ll just buy a dark nightgown, I would think, and go outside with it on my head. No one will know! These were the thoughts of a desperate idiot. At some point, I realized that I had to stop being weird. The nightgown would come off and I would stare at my mushroom head, full of loathing.

Outward bound. It begins.

I didn’t hate my hair in a vacuum; these thoughts were not mine alone. As the only person in my house with curly hair, I don’t think my parents knew exactly how to deal with it. My mother and father couldn’t comb my hair without causing me pain.

“You’re scalp is so sensitive,” my mother bemoaned as she ripped through the curls. Or, to others: “She won’t let me touch her hair.” As though that explained why I looked the way I did – the implication being that I looked terrible.

My hair trying to escape my scalp.

At eight, I got a perm. The thinking was that the only thing that could control my curls was more curl. I probably don’t have to tell you that this is not the type of reasoning that will get you into Mensa.

Nothing can be done, I heard. It is what it is. A head shake, a sideways grin, a pity glance. These told me that my hair was going to be my life’s burden. And that other people hated curly hair, too.

So when Stephanie from elementary school flipped around a sheet of straight hair, or could braid or tie it with a ribbon, it was a reminder that I would never get there. Never get to sleek perfection.

By the time I reached 9^th grade, I wore my hair in a bun every day. I couldn’t risk anyone seeing it in its natural state.

In high school, a kid once asked me if my hair was a wig.

As I got older, curly hair became a conversation starter, though not always a pleasant one. People will tell you exactly what they think about your hair, unsolicited. They don’t like it; they know someone with curly hair who can’t keep it under control; or do you know about such-and-such product that could really help you?

Curly hair is intrinsically tied to ethnicity, and people are not shy about asking me if I’m Jewish, Hispanic, mixed. Nothing reminds you how deep racism goes in our country when curly hair, typically a trait of people of color, is marked as undesirable. Black women, more than anyone, battle a constant barrage of opinions whether they straighten their hair or keep it natural. They’ve been told their hair is a “corporate don’t.”

Not unrelated: Curly hair is often thought to be unprofessional. At least one person has been let go for having it.

I have even been told that men do not prefer curly hair. This is such an understood opinion that the New York Times even wrote a big Eff-You to stand up for curly hair.

Despite these cultural messages, somewhere around college and after, I stopped fighting my hair. I got tired of hating it. Correction: I didn’t have enough time to hate it. The act of leaving it alone became its – and my – liberation. I let it grow out all the way instead of cutting it back like an unruly hedge. As it grew longer, it became better and better. The curls, once springy and vibrant, became weighted down and formed sultry S’s. I went to stylists who understood curly hair and gave me tips for styling it and what products to use to keep the curls spry. Products that would actually enhance the curls, play up a characteristic I had hated.

But it wasn’t just the appearance of it that had changed. I had changed, too. I started to see the value in having hair unlike other people. I liked that I didn’t have to do too much to it, not even blow dry it, to have a nice head of hair. I liked that the curls caught the light just so. I liked that I sometimes had romantic heroine hair.

More than anything, I liked that it became a part of my identity, how people came to know me. My hair is joyful and a little on the fringe. It’s multidimensional and twisty in its thinking. It looks like maybe it would be a good dancer. Curly hair is me.

It still has its unruly days. I keep bobby pins on hand for those occasions, and I forgive myself for the days I can do nothing with it. I imagine it’s what living with a teenager must be like: you love it in spite of itself.

There are still days I see a sleek bob and wish my hair could do that naturally. It can’t. But bobs can’t curl, either.

I didn’t write this blog post to posit that curly hair is superior. This isn’t a competition. I’m not looking to win anything. Blair from elementary school had beautiful hair and probably still does.

The difference is that now I believe I do, too.

My hair now. And I like it.

I’ve recently started cursing. Out loud, in front of other people. In my mind I’ve always cursed, but I never let the words escape my lips because I held fast to some romantic notion of perfection and ladylike-ness that is neither true nor attainable, at least not by me.

Cursing is the first door into the adult language world, a door I missed when it appeared in my teenage years. Friends from high school would curse all the time and I would huff and puff, scolding them with a glance.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” they would say.

“It’s impolite,” I prissed, brushing the crumbs off my pedestal.

In Season 9 of The Simpsons, in the episode “Das Bus,” Bart Simpson and a gang of other elementary–aged children find themselves marooned on a deserted island with no adults. They go mad, as unsupervised children are wont to do, in a terrific parody of Lord of the Flies. But before they dissolve into an amoral abyss of id and violence, they are at first happy about their newfound freedom. They get to be adults, stay up late, be in charge. Bart remarks, “I’m glad we’re stranded! It’ll be just like the Swiss Family Robinson, only with more cursing! We’re gonna live like kings! Damn hell ass kings!”

Similarly, I’m starting to let it all out. Out the foul language trickles, after years of being pent up, held in, pushed back. Bitches be cursin’. Sometimes it’s nonsensical, like damn hell ass kings, but that’s only because I’m inexperienced.

As I get more practiced with cursing, I find that I’m already playing favorites with a few of them. To wit:

Shit.
Shit is my absolute favorite. It’s biting, monosyllabic disdain. It even requires the curl of one’s lip to say. Whether attached to bull- or standing on its own, there is a certain je ne sais quoi about this delightful poop substitute.

Examples: Stop shitting around with me. Is this shit for real? I can’t believe you’re using such a shitty example. Fittingly, I don’t give a shit about caca.

Ass.
Variations: Asshole, jackass.
Everything having to do with the ass is funny. It’s funny because of shit (see above). But the real reason I like ass is because it’s gender neutral. Everyone’s got one or can act like one. The sphincter represents the deepest, darkest recesses of our psyche. Because of that, we’re afraid and we mock it. As is only natural.

Examples: That guy is such an asshole! Can I borrow your face while my ass is on vacation? Hey jackass, how’s the donkey?

Fuck.
This one isn’t so much a favorite. However, it’s on this list because the more I attempt to say it, the less scary it becomes. That’s not to say it loses its potency. Whether noun or verb, it will always be a bit sinister. It’s the Nosferatu of curse words, lingering in the dark and threatening violence. If you add fuck to anything, it becomes slightly scarier.

FUCK BURGER!

See?

Examples: Fuck, it’s just a word! I’m fucking afraid. Fuck. Cut it out with this fuckity-fuckness. I’m fucked. This burger is fucking delicious, though.

Damn and hell.
These are hardly curse words. They’re in the Bible! Still, they’re imbued with a certain crotchety spirit. They pair well, too, such as: damn it all to hell! When paired with “god,” damn even gets a spiritual boost. Damn and hell are as sweet a pair as your grandpa with Werther’s candy.

Examples: Damn it all to hell! But damning something to hell is a redundant expression. You just need to tell someone they’re damned or going to hell. You don’t need to say both; otherwise, it’s a damned waste of your time. To hell with philosophizing, though! Damn it!

Sometimes only a curse word will do. When yelling at your spouse or kid, saying, “Get your self down here! We’re late!” just doesn’t have the same punch as, “Get your ass down here! We’re late!”

Indeed, language precision is in the sphere of poets and writers and master debaters and cunning linguists. Cursing – arguably the most precise of our language choices – is therefore the apex of what humanity can hope to achieve in written or verbal expression. Curse words are the German words of all our words. Cursing is so powerful and pointed in its aim that if it were a weapon it would be a very sharp, tapered stick.

Cursing, if we want to be perfectly serious here, is necessary to the survival of humanity. I’ll let Lewis Black explain (and sorry in advance about this person’s shitty lack of apostrophes):

So there you have it, assfaces. What are your favorite curse words?

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There was a Facebook meme circling not too long ago – “The 100 Greatest Books That You’ve Never Read, You Feculent Dim-Wit,” or the like. It was based on a list of must-read books compiled by the BBC. Because the British inject random “u’s” into their words and write dates backward, we feel inferior to them. So this list became the list by which we judged our reading prowess. After all, the home of Shakespeare couldn’t be wrong.

Excuse me, wroung.

For this meme, you marked the number of books on the list that you had read. A higher score meant, of course, that you possessed a superior ability to read books. My Facebook friends posted their scores – 67 out of 100, 42 out of 100, 0 out of 100 (this latter friend happens to be a dog). No one had read the full 100 books. Friends posted their scores with comments like, “Guess I’d better get reading lol!” or “I had a bad English teacher,” or “I’m too busy to read.” Like most memes, this one left us feeling vaguely ashamed of ourselves once we were finished with it, nervous about what we seemed to lack and eager to compare to others.

The good news is that no one reads memes anyway, so cheer up.

As a writer, former English major, and avowed literature snob, I’m all in favor of book-shaming educated adults. What do you mean you’ve never read To Kill a Mockingbird? Do you like miscarriages of justice? What do you mean you’ve never heard of Zora Neale Hurston, Arundhati Roy, Gabriel García Márquez, or Kazuo Ishiguro? You deserve to work at a library. In prison.

But I also know that the literature canon is Whiter than paste and more male than a burping football. So I understand why some people might not relate to or enjoy reading those books held up as the “greatest,” and maybe – as result of previous disengagement – avoid books altogether.

For these people, I have a secret for you: even we English majors sometimes hate and refuse to read the supposed literary crème de la crème. (That’s French for “I use French phrases because English is too pedestrian for what I’m trying to say.”)

Yeah! That’s right – we hate some books, too! I, for one, refuse to read a number of books that often appear on high school/college curriculums and on “best of” lists. I also avoid reading books recommended by people who 1.) have handlebar mustaches, or 2.) smoke clove cigarettes.

I’d like to share these unread books with you not because I’m celebrating willful ignorance. Rather, I think we should all feel more comfortable about not reading literature with which we can’t connect – even books that have long been canonized. And I believe it’s OK to question their sacred status. Maybe it’s not that you don’t “get it.” Maybe some books are just terrible.

With this in mind, I present to you my literary enemies.

***

Ulysses by James Joyce
This book is based on the Greek myth, The Odyssey. You know, the one about that guy, Odysseus, who goes off to fight in the Trojan War (sometimes referred to as “The Great Condom Battle”), and on his way back home gets distracted by hot but dangerous aquatic babes. Crazy things happen. For example, his men almost get made into bacon. By the time Odysseus gets home to his wife, he’s been gone for 10 years and she’s ready to marry another, but Odysseus ain’t having that. Everything turns out OK in the end, and they celebrate with a feast of Greek yogurt. There’s also a character named Laertes, which I think is a great name.

Anyway, the modern version of this old adventure is compressed into one day, set in Ireland, and written so that you can’t understand it. Because Ulysses is consistently ranked in the top five books of all time, I tried reading the first two chapters to see what the hullabaloo was about. I literally cannot tell you anything that transpired. I think someone went to a fair? Or maybe someone had an abortion? They had an abortion and then went to a fair? Or maybe it was an aborted fair or an unfair abortion. I don’t know.

Without relying too heavily on stereotypes, I think James Joyce was a drunk Irish bastard.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville
This book is longer than [insert dick joke]! And it’s got more hot air than [insert blow hole joke]! Heavy on symbolism, long on whale anatomy description, and written by someone named Herman, this tome means something different to everyone. It’s a fable of man vs. nature, a parable of good vs. evil, or an exploration of the existence of god. Maybe it’s about man-on-sea mammal love, but if that’s the case, I don’t think it’s any of our business.

In terms of plot, Moby Dick is about a whale that avenges the death of his wife, who was killed right in front of their son, a little fish with one fin smaller than the other. That little fish is named Nemo, and he travels twenty thousand leagues under the sea to join forces with Echo the Dolphin, who’s from Atlantis, and Sebastian the Crab, who lives in an under-the-sea Disney World. Together, they take on an evil shark named Jaws, who eats White people from Cape Cod because they taste like chicken.

I did, in fact, read this entire book. I was forced to read it by a very excellent teacher whom I love to this day. But I will never read it again. Even if I was being chased by a whale and the only way to find out how to conquer it was to open the pages of the book, I would hold up my hands and say, “I’ve had a good run.”

I don’t think it’s too much to say that this book is my white whale. Don’t know where that particular phrase comes from, but it seems like a fitting description.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
No. I only have 50-some years left to my life, if that.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
This one might surprise you. But here’s why I have no interest in this book:
1. It was written in three weeks
2. It was written on a scroll
3. It was written by Jack Kerouac, king of the beatnik douchenozzles

I recognize that context is everything, and that Kerouac was writing introspective, boundary-busting stuff in the time of McCarthyism and cultural conformity. Good for you, Jack! Way to extend that introspection outside of your immediate sphere, like to women and non-White people.

OH WAIT YOU DIDN’T.

Plus, the beat poetry. Jesus Christ, the poetry. You weren’t doing us any favors there. What is it about snapping one’s fingers while talking that makes one a jackass? Beats me (doyouseewhatididthere). Want to do beat poetry right? Follow this guy’s example.

In conclusion, I probably won’t read this book because I can’t. Every time I try, I can’t seem to want to! It’s the darnedest thing. But hey: thanks, Jack, for making goatees and black turtlenecks a thing.

Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
This one may also surprise you. I love fantasy, but in movie form. I can’t read it. That goes for Game of Thrones, The Twilight Saga, or anything even resembling an alternate universe. I refuse to read four pages describing a sword, or to hear about the lineage of a werewolf who shapeshifts into an amoeba. Too much exposition kills the momentum. It’s like fantasy writers don’t quite get what’s important to readers – that is, sex and death and unicorns. Someone get on that for a band name.

Anyway, about the hobbits. I love them, hairy feet and all. I just don’t want to read about them singing songs and washing dishes (this really happens in the books). Consider your favorite show – maybe Breaking Bad. You’ll never see Walter White clipping his toenails, unless it’s important to the story. But this is the nonsense that regularly occurs in fantasy books. I started reading Game of Thrones and made it to page 4 before I put it down. The writer took several paragraphs describing someone’s lineage before that character beheaded someone. Still – four whole pages! It was a new record.

Thank goodness movie directors know what they’re doing and cut the hell out of fantasy books when translating them to screen. Even after all the cuts, The Lord of the Rings Director’s Cut trilogy is about 12 hours of footage. In this time, you could get a lot of stuff done with your life: apply for school, take out the trash, make a three-course meal, or read Moby Dick.

Another thing about fantasy is that the characters aren’t usually three-dimensional people, but symbols. This character represents greed, another represents hope, and another intellect. They just don’t seem real, which is strange because talking dragons are otherwise very realistic.

Junior Really Rockin’ Tolkien, I salute your imagination. I just can’t read it.

Anything by Ayn Rand
I started to read The Fountainhead, and then I took Rand’s “selfishness” philosophy to heart and stopped reading it. A book this terrible is nothing more than a taker on our bookshelves, expecting us to open its pages without offering anything of quality back to society. It’s a total welfare queen.

But the best part? I got the book at the library.

SUCK IT, RAND.
           

***

So there’s my list. What’s yours?

It’s no secret to those who know me that I have a preference for hirsute men. My husband keeps a small beard most of the time because he knows I like it. He also has hairy arms, sideburns, and a chest full of dark, snuggle-tastic hair. He’s beautiful.

In particular, it’s all about the hairy chest for me. I don’t know where this preference originates. I wonder whether it’s primal, part of my DNA, harkening back to the days when hair was necessary to warmth and survival. Maybe it’s because chest hair, peeking out from the crevices of a shirt, is mysterious and alluring. Maybe it’s because I’m hairy, too. Maybe it’s because chest hair eventually leads to this thing called, um, a happy trail.

Maybe. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I like hairy chests and I cannot lie.

There was a time in our culture when you didn’t see a lot of hairy chests. Beefcakes were smooth and waxed. My Ken doll never had hair squiggles down there or anywhere. Male models are almost always hairless. Brad Pitt, arguably the biggest heartthrob of my teenage years (the 90s), was hairless and sweaty in Fight Club. And remember the famous waxing scene from The 40-Year-Old Virgin?

Thankfully, things have been changing of late. First there was Wolverine, then Don Draper, then all the fellas in Anchorman. And if the latest Superman movie is any indication, hairy chests may be back in a big way.

I don’t want to toot my own horn (toot toot), but I think I may have had a hand in this Hairy Chest Revolution. If I may be so bold: I’m pretty sure Mark Ruffalo and I kept the momentum going.

***

Let’s rewind a few years, back to 2011. I was a youngin’ then, not even in New York for a year. The actor Mark Ruffalo was coming to New York City to participate in a Times Talk at the New York Times. The talk was going to be centered on his upcoming directorial debut, Sympathy for Delicious.

Now, I’ll just admit right up front that I really really really like Mark Ruffalo*. I like him as an actor. He was excellent in Zodiac and Shutter Island and We Don’t Live Here Anymore and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and more. He’s Oscar nominated. He also starred in one of the best worst movies of all time. So my wanting to go see him talk was purely out of intellectual curiosity for his craft and had nothing whatsoever to do with this photo:

Ruffles in the buffles.

Nope.

Anyway, I bought tickets. I arrived at 4:30pm for a 6:00pm show. I was first in line. Actually, I was the only one in line for about 45 minutes. Because I was there so early, security wouldn’t let me into the building. It was April, the air still chill. I wondered when everyone else would arrive, certain they wouldn’t get a seat.

Those losers, I thought, shivering on the sidewalk.

By the time the doors opened at 5:30, my husband had joined me, and there was a respectable line down the block. The ticket takers wrangled us. I ran into the auditorium, down to the front. I was a few feet from the stage, rapt.

My husband found me in the first row. “You didn’t have to run,” he said, panting.

The lights dimmed, an announcement made. Enter stage left, the Mark Ruffalo, dapper and lit up and waving like he knew us. We cheered. I think I giggled. Then he sat down and the reporter started in with questions.

For the next hour, I paid attention to the interview, invested in what he had to say. Truly, I did. He talked about his upbringing in Virginia Beach, his brain tumor, and his anti-fracking efforts. He talked about how he co-wrote the script for Sympathy for Delicious with his best friend, who also starred in the film. Talk turned to his upcoming role in The Avengers, starring as The Hulk. It was all fascinating. Mark Ruffalo appears to be a wonderful human being.

But in another part of my brain, a ticker tape ran: I’m ten feet from Mark Ruffalo. I’m ten feet from Mark Ruffalo. I’m ten feet from Mark Ruffalo. 

About an hour into the interview, the reporter announced that she would be taking questions from the audience. Questions! From the audience! Microphones were set up in the aisles and a few folks lined up in an orderly fashion.

My husband turned to me. “You’re going to ask a question, aren’t you?”

“I don’t have a question.”

But then the oddest thing happened. I stood up anyway. Without knowing what I was going to say or do, I moved to line up behind a microphone like the others. I couldn’t feel my legs. I couldn’t even see Mark Ruffalo anymore. A bright, shining light guided me up the aisle.

As I floated from my seat, it occurred to me exactly what I needed to say to him. I needed to tell Mark Ruffalo something very, very important. He needed to hear this message on behalf of humanity.

I was up. His eyes turned to me. I swallowed before finding my voice.

“Hi, um, this isn’t so much a question as a request. Um, could you please, when you’re playing The Hulk, not shave your chest?”

The audience snickered. I saw my husband sink down in his seat.

Mark Ruffalo, after a brief moment of what might have been shock, said, “Marvel, do you hear that?”

Laughter.

But I was serious. I stayed right where I was and made a stern face.

This was no longer just about his attractiveness or my preferences. This was about a hairy chest revolution. It was about letting hair be free. Not hiding it. Not conforming. Celebrating it. And what character better embodies that kind of natural freedom then a guy who can’t control his anger and turns green?

Seeing that I wasn’t going to budge, Mark Ruffalo said, “Um, that’s really not up to me.”

This is where is got a little awkward.

Because after he said that, I still didn’t move. I made another face – this time, something along the lines of How could you? Mark Ruffalo, being the kind man that he is, either didn’t like to see me in so much distress, or he just wanted me to step away from the microphone

He acquiesced. “I won’t shave my chest.”

“OK. Thank you,” I said.

“Cause it doesn’t feel good,” he added.

Someone in the audience shouted out, “This is New York,” as though that explained the likes of me.

“It’s New York,” he said. “That’s right. I won’t shave my chest because it’s New York. OK.”

“Thank you,” I repeated. I backed away from the microphone, my chest hair hostage-taking a success.

“All right. I gotta live up to that.”

(By the way, you can listen to the whole exchange here. I’m about one hour and 25 minutes in, during the questions portion.)

I sat back down. “I had to do that,” I said to my husband. “That was for you, too.”

“Hm,” he replied.

The very next week, to my delight, I had tickets to the New York premiere of Sympathy for Delicious. Mark Ruffalo was again going to give a talk after the movie, this time joined by his cast mates, including Orlando Bloom.

In the theatre, I sat next to a delightful young woman who was in love with Orlando Bloom. “I jumped out of a moving car once when I saw him on the street,” she said to me. I knew I was in good company.

The movie itself was decent, the performances even better. The cast spoke for about twenty minutes and left. We filed out of the theatre. I thought that was the end of it. But just as I headed for the front door, the man himself stepped out of a back room, smiling. People swarmed him. They asked for his autograph and to take pictures, they wanted to talk. He entertained everybody’s requests. I can’t imagine that level of intense social interaction with strangers.

By the time I reached him, Mark Ruffalo had been pawed at and drooled over but was cheery and handsome nonetheless. He smelled faintly of lavender. He smiled at me when I stepped up.

“You’re my favorite actor,” I said-whispered. “Can I get a photo?”

“Sure,” he said.

It was clear he did not remember me from the week before. I gathered my strength.

“Do you remember last week at the Times Talk when someone asked you not to shave your chest?”

“Yes?”

I gulped. “That was me.”

He laughed, gave me a sideways glance. “Ohhhhhh.”

Just like that. I was probably an anecdote now.

“Yeah. Sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“It’s OK.”

“You really should keep your chest hair. For humanity,” I said. My argument needed work.

He laughed. “OK.”

I took two blurry photos. Then he was whisked away by someone else.

Blurry photo #1.

***

More than a year later, I sat in a dark theatre waiting for The Avengers to begin. I waited, wondering. When he first comes on screen, Dr. Bruce Banner is his normal, beautiful self. But when he gets angry, watch out. The skin turns, the clothes fall off. Someone says something stupid, probably Loki or that other space guy. I don’t remember the plot. But it doesn’t take much to make The Hulk angry. So he got mad.

And there he was, a handsome shade of emerald. Shirtless.

With hair on his chest.

Who’s the other guy?

Coincidence? I don’t want to take all the credit, but I will say, on behalf of Mark Ruffalo and myself, “You’re welcome.”

*Mark Ruffalo: if you or your people happen across this article, I have a really, really, ridiculously good script for you. Promise. You can contact me here.

Image courtesy of rosezombie / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When I first moved to New York after a decade in Boston, I got a lot of weird reactions from people. I heard:

– “Boston isn’t a city. It’s a small town.”
– “Don’t you just love living in New York compared to Boston?”
– “I hate Boston. No offense.”
– “New York makes my ADD flare up.”
– “New York is dirty and dangerous.”
– “The Yankees suck.”

Though far and away, the question that I got most was, “Which city do you like best?” People asked this with expectant, suspicious looks on their faces, their estimation of me predicated on my answer.

The question aggravated me for a number of reasons, one of them being that I found it impossible to answer to anyone’s satisfaction. “Neither,” I said. And it’s true. I love both cities for different reasons.

Another reason it grated is because asking someone which city they like “best” suggests a sort of false permanence. For any one city to be better implies that everybody wants the same thing, that the city never changes, that you yourself never change. Whether you love one place above another is entirely contextualized to your life. Think about all of the places you’ve lived or visited. Your experience of those places is heavily influenced by your age, viewpoints at that time, your preferences, and the people you’re with.

As an example, for years I was unable to step into an IKEA because when I was 12, my mother yelled at me in one. Man, did I hate IKEA and all of their smörgåsbord-fahrvergnügen furniture! I associated that giant blue-gold warehouse with feeling sad. I was almost 30 years old before I went into another IKEA, and I’m only now realizing the gravity of having missed so many Swedish meatballs.

There are a lot of feelings wrapped up in the places we love. When I lived in Boston, I was in my 20s and going to grad school. I had my first adult apartment. I had a major relationship breakup. It’s the place of my first full-time job, my first experience with politics. It’s the home of my mugging. Boston was a great place to be a big fish in a small pond. I tend to see it as the city that nurtured me into adulthood.

In New York, I sometimes feel unhinged, in both good and bad ways. On the one hand, I can do almost whatever I want. On the other hand, I can do almost whatever I want. Scary. This is a big pond with big fish and little fish and medium fish. That’s why the sushi is really good. This is also a city that embodies contradictions: there is good and bad and ugly and beauty. It’s international and huge, provincial and small. This is how I see New York – it represents all the warts and glories of adulthood.

Loving both cities doesn’t mean I can’t clearly see the differences between the two. There are, of course, points of parity, some areas where one city edges out over another. I can only speak for myself and my own experiences, but I also think that I’m a fairly good judge given that I’ve lived in both places. To fairly compare the two, we have to take a look at the considerations people make when choosing city life. Things like:

1. Housing
The rent is too damn high in both places. Apartments are small and real estate agents are leeches. However, in New York, the rents are somewhat higher and there aren’t as many cheap neighborhoods. New York will also try to sell you a closet as a “cozy studio.” Though New York has better views, Boston has brownstones and cobblestone streets out the wazoo.

Winner: Boston

2. Public transportation
In Boston, the subways are fairly clean and color-coded, but they only run until about midnight. In New York, the subways are labyrinthine, sometimes smeared with poop, and they run 24/7. Boston’s subway has a cute name, “the T.” New York’s subway is called many names, none of them cute. But however we New Yorkers feel about the MTA, New York’s public transportation has to carry more people to more places than most other major cities, and it does it with few hiccups.

Winner: New York

3. Sports
I’m the wrong person to ask about any city’s professional sports teams. I don’t care. I can’t muster any enthusiasm. Whether your team is good or terrible, it says nothing about your hometown or your own accomplishments. Maybe the Yankees suck, ok? Maybe the Red Sox need to clean up a little bit. And yeah, maybe hockey is the Fredo of team sports. La la la la I can’t hear you.

However, I do find sports fans fascinating. Right after 9-11, I went to a Red Sox game where, in support of the tragedy in New York, the entire crowd sang along to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” Years later, New York returned the favor when, after the Boston Marathon bombing, the crowd at Yankee Stadium sang “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond. These acts of kindness are unheard of between the two rivals, where, on any given night at Fenway, you might get beat up for wearing a Yankees hat. This proves, once again, that sports fans can be greater than the sum of their own team.

Godammit, now I’m crying. I love all of you. Stop fighting.

Winner: Boston, because Fenway. C’mon. It’s a great park.

4. Food
New York wins. I’m sorry, Boston. New York runs the full gamut from terrible to transcendental, but the best here is the best everywhere. Except for burritos. Nobody does burritos quite like Anna’s Taqueria in Boston, and I cannot find an equivalent here in New York. Still, I’m too busy eating pizza, burgers, and donuts to feel too sad about it.

Winner: New York

5. Weather
Winter sucks in both places, though Boston sucks just a teensy bit more.

Winner: Definitely not Chicago.

6. People
New Yorkers can be rude, but Boston is on par. In general, city people are bustling assholes who always have somewhere better to be and you’re getting in their way. They’re also engaging, funny, and fiercely loyal to one another in time of strife. But maybe most importantly, city dwellers can put away the booze!

Winner: Both

You can see why it’s so hard to choose. After all the calculations are made, it’s pretty much a wash for me. The only deciding factor is this: Boston was right for me then, New York right for me now.

So please stop asking.

*There won’t be a Round 2 unless we somehow drag L.A. into this fight.

I’m about to have another birthday.

Having been on the planet a respectable amount of years now, I know some stuff. It’s nothing earth-shatteringly profound, like, Love is all you need. Pithy sayings like that might make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but they are often untrue. Rather, the things I’ve learned over the last 35 years are more practical than that. You could even say mundane.

Anyway, these are all the things I know so far and try to apply to my own life. Maybe they’ll be helpful to you?

Stay to the right on the sidewalk. Just like with cars, faster people go around on the left. Also, don’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk to talk or pull up your pants; move to the side and flatten your body so you take up as little space as possible. Please curb your dog, too. (I’ve learned a lot about sidewalk etiquette living in NYC.)

Moisturize your neck. Put sunscreen on your hands. These are forgotten, neglected places. It can show.

Sit all the way down on the toilet in a public restroom. You’ll be fine.

Related: Clean up after yourself in a public bathroom. Come on. Leave things the same or better than when you found them.

Eat good food. Life’s too short and too precious for garbage. As a general rule and within reason, if you can’t name all of the ingredients in something you’re eating, it’s probably trying to murder you.

Sometimes dreams don’t mean anything. That dream about your tooth falling out wasn’t necessarily about your need for approval from your neglectful father. Maybe you just slept on your face funky. Keep moving.

The planet is not lucky to have you. You’re lucky to be on this planet. Act accordingly.

You don’t always have to have an answer. Sometimes it’s better if you don’t. Not everything needs your opinion. Remember, you have the right to remain silent. Similarly, think before speaking. Maybe hold that thought until you’re a little bit smarter.

Winning an argument doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right. It could mean you’re a better bully.

Time goes really, really fast. Really fast. A year ago I wrote a similar piece about birthdays. I can’t believe another year has passed. Logically, I know it has. Emotionally, it feels as though I was sitting in this very place, contemplating these very thoughts yesterday, not ~365 days ago. The similarity of these moments, punctuated on a string of time, is what reminds us that we’re mortal. It’s unpleasant, but what can you do? I won’t suggest you live every day as though it’s your last, but the thought should maybe occur to you at least once a week.

Comparison is the thief of joy. I didn’t coin this phrase. I just find it an apt one for life in a capitalistic society, where the profiteers bank on us feeling inadequate. Fuck that noise, as the youth say. Everyone, no matter how much stuff they have or how perfect they look, has a perceived inadequacy. It’s called being human. Focus on what you can do within the parameters of your own life. It’s the only one you get.

Everyone has a story. It’s easy to sweep people into boxes. It’s the shorthand of ignorance and naïvety. And it does a disservice to humanity. Remember that everyone has a story to tell. Empathy costs you nothing.

Love is an action. Sure, you can express your love through words or gifts, but when it comes down to it, the only way to know its veracity is to see it in action. Love is in a bouquet of roses, maybe. But it’s most definitely in that moment when they run out to the store at 1:00a.m. to get Monistat 7 for you because you have a roaring yeast infection. Ahem. Hold on to the love doers.

If there is a god, s/he’s most assuredly not interested in making the world a better place. You know whose job that is? Yours. Mine. Let’s get on it.

Pay more attention to politics. Politicians are the people who can and will change your world, for better or worse. Not Miley Cyrus.  

If someone doesn’t like animals, stay away from them. They have no soul.

Being old doesn’t make you wise. You can be old and still be stubborn and entitled and stupid, same as a cranky baby. Stay open to learning, no matter your age. And know you can be wrong despite being a wizened old owl.

… so maybe we should be paying more attention to Miley Cyrus? Age is making me unsure of my certainty. This entire list is now being called into question.

Finally, be decent. Maybe everything on this list can really be summed up by this last statement. Being decent is the bare minimum of human relations. It’s zero on the scale from angelic to demonic. Everyone can do it, unless you’re a psychopath. Then you really can’t feel empathy. That must suck, and I feel sorry for you.

So this is what I know, all the contents of my brain. I’m hoping I’ll know even more next year! What wisdom can you share?

In my 20s, whenever anyone asked if I had any regrets, this was me:

I said this because I felt that regrets were for people who got impulsive tattoos and drank themselves sick. They were for people who didn’t make good choices. Bad people. Regrets were admitting you took a wrong turn somewhere, acknowledging you were imperfect. Me? I was so straight and narrow you could use me as a ruler. People who make no mistakes have no regrets. The end.

Remembering the yawping of that 20-year-old now makes me feel sick. If my younger self called me on the phone, I would hang up on her.

Turns out, saying I had no regrets has become a bit of a regret itself. Because of course it wasn’t true. I have plenty of regrets. Age has a funny way of forcing you to tell yourself the truth, especially when you see how tough life is. If you’re not making mistakes and feeling the sting of an occasional regret, double-check that you’re actually alive.

My particular regrets are organized around fear: being too scared to take a risk, missing opportunities, waiting too long to take action. My regrets are less about something I’ve done and more about things I haven’t. And apparently I’m not alone. This Forbes article explores people’s 25 biggest regrets. No surprise that many of them are about not living life to the fullest, whether in relationships with others or missing out on major life moments.

Three regrets from the article stood out to me in particular.

6. Worrying about what others thought about me so much.
This. So much. The danger of being a people pleaser is that you sometimes have to appease people who are diametrically opposed to one another. Good luck with that. I’ve wasted so much time (SO MUCH) worrying, nervous, sick to my stomach over things I couldn’t control – like other people’s thoughts. I’ve tried playing mental chess, figuring out three moves ahead. It’s exhausting and it doesn’t work. You may do a great job of pleasing someone else, but you’ll get lost in the process. It’s why, at my age, I still have to sometimes ask myself what I want. I have to do that because I’m not practiced at it, and knowing what I want doesn’t come naturally for me. It was always my job to know what others wanted first.

Thankfully, after spending some time working on this, I’m less of a people pleaser than ever before.

Maybe to a fault.

8. Living the life that my parents wanted me to live instead of the one I wanted to.
Remember that people-pleasing thing? Yeah. It started early. I can’t change any of it. That’s the hard part, isn’t it? Not being able to correct the past? The good news is that I’ve turned the ship around and am charting my own course now. And I think I’ve found my place.

19. Choosing the practical job over the one I really wanted.
So here’s that anti-risk part. I spent too long in practical but stupid jobs. I was a square peg in a round hole, and I was miserable. Even though it took me a long time to get here, I’m happy to say that I’m living more creatively than ever, inching closer and closer to a fully creative life.

Ultimately, I do regret nothing. I regret the many nothings that have dotted my life, all the pivotal moments marked by inaction. I’m doing what I can to change that behavior now, knowing full well I might make a mistake, do something stupid, look back and shake my head.

Because at the end of my life, if I have regrets, I want them to be about something and not nothing.

What are your regrets?

Dear Dipshit Turd Queen Butt Boil Sarah Palin,

Recently, you said some stuff about Christmas. Namely, that non-Christians are trying to “abort Christ from Christmas.” You said that Thomas Jefferson, were he alive, would have your back on this issue. You said some other things, too, but I started having an immune reaction to your stupid.

At first, I was confused. Had you actually spoken to Thomas Jefferson about Christmas? How did you re-animate him? Didn’t he want to talk about other things after being dead so long – like new technology, current government issues, and what’s up with Harry Styles dating one of the Kardashians?  I was also a little worried about how, biologically-speaking, one can abort a full-grown Biblical figure from the womb of a holiday.

Then I remembered it was you, and that you have a history of blurting out some doozies. I cycled through a bunch of feelings: incredulity, disgust, exasperation. This was me:

This so-called “War on Christmas” comes around every year. The Far Right throws out words like “values” and “traditions” and suggests that we are all a hair’s breath away of losing our right to drink eggnog. This is not true. At all. You are free to do whatever you like in regard to your holiday so long as it doesn’t break laws or hurt people. The end, right?

I wish. But you keep insisting. Christmas is precious, you say, and it’s under attack – like a wolf being hunted from a helicopter.

But what, exactly, is so valuable about Christmas that it needs defending? Why is Christmas such a delicate bubble ready to burst if an atheist or non-celebrant gives it the stink eye? Why can’t Christmas take any criticism?

You see, Governor Vice President Fox Talking Head Palin, the longer I thought about the “traditional” values of Christmas, the less I believed those traditions were actually worth defending. I would like to confess to you here and now that, in fact, I am declaring war on certain aspects of Christmas. You heard it here first. I’m ready to do battle over the things you insist others should conform to.

Let’s take a closer look at some of these things.

“Christ” is the reason for Christmas. It’s very odd that Jesus and Santa get put in a blender together every year. If I were Jesus, this would make me so mad I might flip over a table at a bazaar or something. Here’s how it happened: As early Christianity spread through Europe, religious leaders encountered pagans and wanted to convert them to grow their numbers. They noticed that the pagans had many festivals to celebrate the changing seasons, including winter. In an effort to make Christianity more palatable to the heathen hoards, they took a dash of Christianity and a whole heap of paganism and combined them together. And voilà! The celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday, later known as Christmas, was born. That entire “reason for the season” thing? Arbitrary. Mishmash. Square peg, round hole.

Oh, and Santa? Not related to Jesus Christ. Not even through his sister’s aunt’s second cousin thrice removed by the power vested in the fish monger.

Here’s a sincere question, though: DO YOU THINK JESUS GIVES ONE FLYING FART ABOUT YOU CELEBRATING HIS BIRTHDAY? I mean, as old as he is? Do you think he wants an iPad Mini? What do you possibly get for the son of god who has everything? Shit, he is everything. Alpha and omega, son!

Fact: the Bible makes no mention of an actual birthday, disregarding Jesus’ early life to the extent that one wonders why it even matters. Even by Christian standards, his death has more meaning than his birth. So why are we celebrating it?

Please be a dear and go ask Thomas Jefferson.

In the meantime, I declare war on the idea that Christ is the only reason for the season.

Insisting on “Merry Christmas.” The thing about this: If you can’t understand why people choose to use ”Happy Holidays” in order to encompass all the holidays at this time of year, to include all celebrants in the spirit of goodwill, then you are a big bag of flaming poo. Sure, say “Merry Christmas” if that’s what you celebrate. But if someone wishes you “Happy Holidays” and you feel this umbrella term is not sufficient, YOU ARE WRONG. You are not being oppressed or attacked. Your tradition is not being dismantled. You are not being prevented from celebrating your holiday the way you want to. Someone simply wished you well and you are offended because you are looking for a reason to be nasty.

Pop quiz time! Which of the following statements is offensive?

A. “President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end…”
B. “Our free stuff today is being paid for today by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that money comes due and, this isn’t racist… but it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due. Right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master.”
C. “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America…”
D. “Happy Holidays, asshole!”

Trick question. The answer is E. All of the above.

I hereby declare war on your insistence that everyone say “Merry Christmas.” I also declare war on your war against “Happy Holidays.” And finally, I’m declaring war on your understanding of what constitutes offense.

Lying about Santa Claus. An old man watches over you for a year and then breaks into your house to give you things made by his unpaid labor force. He frequents malls so children can sit on his lap. What is the value of this legend? What is the actual moral of this tale? Nothing. Be good, kids, and a creepy old dude will give you nice things. Isn’t this the very thing we warn our children about when out in the wider world?

Anyway, I’m sure you can see how strange this story is. But the strangest part of this sordid tale is the fact that we lie to our children about this guy’s existence. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t participate in the fantasy or that you’re bad if you do. By all means, the consequences of doing so are yours alone. You have to deal with the eventual outcome, and if you can – cheers to you. Your children, your choice. They will face greater disappointment in their lives, I’m sure.  For example, discovering that you are, in fact, their real parent.

But from the Christian perspective, this lying thing is in direct opposition to the Ninth Commandment. (I capitalized it because the words were written in stone. Respect!) Liars have a hard time getting into heaven. How did this one lie escape scrutiny when, say, homosexuality (which isn’t even a commandment) gets so much Christian attention? How did the Santa lie slip through?

Seems weird, non?

I declare war on your justification for lying and your cherry-picking of Christian ethics.

Good behavior = material possession. Life isn’t fair. You may be a do-gooder your whole life and have nothing to show for it except… I don’t know, character? Ugh! Who wants that! Being good in order to get something is the reason for the season! Children wait to see that they’ve made Santa’s Good List because it ensures they get gifts. Christmas equates good behavior with material possession. If this reflected real life in some way, it might be a good lesson for kids. As it stands, this was only true in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and even then – Charlie almost lost the whole shebang because he stole one Fizzy Lifting Drink. Just one!

Christmas also does a really good job of highlighting income disparity. This girl will not get what she wants for Christmas, even though her desires likely bend toward the creature comforts for which the rest of us don’t even need to ask. No matter how good she is, Santa will not be kind to her. He won’t even visit her. Why does Santa love rich people so much? Is it because he works for Congress? No! It’s because, year after year, we cling to an outdated myth that reiterates inequality. Basically, Christmas is for the Haves.

And the capitalism. Oh the unfettered capitalism! It starts earlier and earlier each year. On Thanksgiving, on Halloween. Mobs crush, violence ensues. People max out their credit cards. Feelings of inferiority abound. Christmas, it seems, is the promise of capitalism delivered in a shitty bow.

What’s that phrase? Something about a rich man getting into heaven and camels going through the eye of a needle? It’s a strange metaphor, sure, but basically: impossible.

I declare war on the way we give gifts at Christmas; good behavior and morals should not be tied to capital reward. I declare war on Christmas capitalism. And on strange metaphors.

People chop down trees. To put them in their homes for a month and then throw them away. Not to mention all the trees killed for wrapping paper, cards, bows. And then there are the plastic toys that take thousands of years to decompose. What are we doing? Are we mindless consumers? Is that what Christmas is? Yes?

OK.

I declare war on chopping down trees. I declare war on plastic toys made without care for the Earth. And I hope the sap from your Christmas tree rises while you’re sleeping, forms the shape of that thing from Ghostbusters, and devours all your gifts.

By now, Sarah, you’re probably dismissing me as a Scrooge, a malcontent, insistent upon ruining your good time by examining your traditions too closely. True! I plan to celebrate my version of Christmas. This will include giving to charities, saying “Happy Holidays” to everyone, listening to music by the light of a fake tree, and watching a movie about a certain third-grader struggling with male-pattern baldness.

In truth, I don’t want to declare war on anything. My good time shouldn’t ruin yours. I just don’t want to participate in the same Christmas you do. That’s the point. You see, I think you should be able to celebrate the holiday your particular way, and that particular way should not be imposed on others. Like most “traditions,” I believe Christmas can change based on social mores. As we evolve, so should our holidays.

And Sarah? Thomas Jefferson just informed me that he agrees with me on this. So do Nostradamus and Albert Einstein.

May the power of the Festivus Pole help you with your verbal diarrhea issue.

Happy Holidays,
Erin

Image courtesy of sakhorn38 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In 2003, I was mugged.

I lived in a Boston neighborhood undergoing gentrification (that’s the code word, of course, for what happens when privileged people move into poorer neighborhoods, forcing the rents up and the poor people out).

One half of the neighborhood had already undergone the complete transformation – wide lawns, landscaping, happy families. The other half of the neighborhood struggled to catch up – dilapidated houses, homelessness, constant police presence.

I lived in the struggling half. By no accident, my part of the rent was a mere $525 a month. This was pittance for Boston.

Every day, I walked from the train station to my apartment along the main boulevard. Always busy, always peopled. After a few blocks, I would turn left onto my street and walk up a steep hill to the Victorian house at the top: one half of which was my apartment.

On this summer day, 6pm and still bright out, I passed three teenagers before turning left onto my block. I barely noticed them; they were three people of dozens that I passed. And as usual my mind was elsewhere – work, boyfriend, writing, what to make for dinner that night.

I made it halfway up the steep hill to my apartment before I heard three sets of footsteps run up behind me. One of them threw his arms around me in a sort of backward bear hug. Because I couldn’t see anything behind me, I thought it was one of my friends from the neighborhood.

I said, “What are you doing?” Bewildered, maybe a little amused.

They said nothing.

“Hey guys!” I said, playful. “Hey now.”

Nothing. I struggled up against the bear hug grip. Whoever it was grew stronger as I fought harder.

That silence. That silence said everything. They didn’t answer because they had a job to do. They didn’t answer because they weren’t there to talk to me. They didn’t answer because I wasn’t allowed to know them on that level. They didn’t answer because there was nothing to say.

Then I knew. I knew I was being mugged when they said nothing.

First, there was the embarrassment. It seems strange to feel embarrassed at such a time, but there it was. Why did I feel such shame? I still don’t know. But I think it’s because I had let them in for a brief moment, equated them with friends, and then had been horribly wrong. How could I have thought they were my friends?

Then a sick coldness set in. Less of a panic and more of resolute helplessness. In the wild, I imagine this is what playing dead must be like. They had me, and there was nothing I could do. I shut down, stopped struggling.

With this deadness came clarity of purpose. I knew what they wanted, so I let my purse fall to the ground. They grabbed it and ran.

I turned as they ran away. One of them had cornrows. It’s the only detail I remember.

“I was robbed,” I whispered to no one. “Help.”

Neighbors did not come out of their houses. No one had heard a thing. How could they have? It was a silent crime.

I ran, following after them. I’m not sure what I had hoped to accomplish. When I reached the main street, I stopped. They were too far ahead, had spread out. I sat down on the sidewalk. Cried.

A car slowed: two big guys with a Doberman Pinscher in the backseat.

“Did those kids rob you?”

I nodded.

They handed me a cell phone. “Call the cops,” one of them said. “We’ll be back.” Then they took off after the kids in their car.

I dialed 9-1-1. The operator asked me to describe what happened, what my purse looked like.

“It had an… arm,” I faltered. “A long arm.”

“A strap?” she asked, gentle.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I can’t find the right thing. The right thing.” My mind had utterly shut down, almost every part of it.

“It’s OK. You’ve had some trauma. Do you remember anything about the person who robbed you?”

“There were three of them.”

“Men or women?”

“I don’t know. One man. Cornrows.”

This was as much as I could describe. By then, the cops had arrived. The men with the Doberman Pincsher had returned. They didn’t find the kids, but they had seen them and could describe them to the police.

I handed the cell phone back to them. I thanked them but I’m not sure if, in my state, I could let them know how much I appreciated that they stopped. My hope is that they somehow knew. They were everything to me in that moment. But as much as I appreciated their help, I’m glad they never caught those kids. I don’t know what they were planning to do with them. I don’t want to know.

Later, after my roommate came home and I had calmed down a little, the cops called. They caught one, they said. Would I be willing to identify him?

They pulled up to the house, yanked him out of the car, almost lifting him by his scruff.

“This him?” the cop asked.

Through the door, I stared. He had cornrows and looked me straight in the eyes. An unreadable face. A silent face.

I wanted to say, “What are you doing? Why did you do this to me? To yourself? You have so much life to live.”

The cop prodded. “Can you identify him?”

After a long while, I told the truth. “I can’t identify him. I never saw their faces.”

I couldn’t in good conscience identify this kid as my mugger.

The cop was less than pleased, but he accepted it. He shoved the kid back in the car.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter anyway. They had enough evidence to book him. He had been running through a neighborhood, his pockets full of loose change and my debit card. His friends were never caught, nor did the kid implicate them. He was on his own.

You should know that when I was mugged, my purse contained a total of four dollars.

*****

The concept of justice is a strange one. It suggests not only that there’s a righteous order to the universe, but that it’s one we can enforce and make right if it ever goes off course. In the case of my mugger, I often wonder whether justice was really served. Not justice for me but for him.

He was a mere 15 years old. It wasn’t his first offense, and getting caught a second time meant jail time for him. I know this because I was invited to his hearing, though I declined to go. I found out afterward that because he was so young, he was sentenced to juvenile detention until the age of 18. I also learned that he had two older brothers in jail.

I’m not suggesting that he shouldn’t have been held accountable because of his age. He should and he was. For better or worse, he paid for what he did to me. And for a long time, I hated my muggers. I hated them for the fact that I jumped every time I heard footsteps behind me. I hated them for the mace I carried from the train station to my apartment every day afterward. I hated them for making me feel unsafe in my neighborhood. I hated them for touching me. I hated them for targeting me.

But as I got older, that anger was replaced with sadness.

Abolitionist Theodore Parker once wrote, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” A century later, in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. used similar words in a speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

I want to believe that. I want to believe that justice isn’t simply a just consequence. That it’s something much more. It’s what’s right in the long run. It’s what’s moral beyond the scope of what immediately affects you and me, since our eyes reach “but little ways.”

This is why I wonder about him, wonder whether justice was ever really served. If there were real justice, my mugger’s parents would not have failed him, or their parents before them. If there were real justice, my mugger would not have grown up poor. If there were real justice, my mugger would have been engaged in school. If there were real justice, he wouldn’t have had so many disadvantages against him even before leaving the womb. If there were real justice, whatever circumstances led him to me that desperate summer evening would not have occurred. My mugging, terrible though it was, was just a blip compared to the long line of injustices dotting this kid’s life.

Two months after the mugging, I left the neighborhood altogether and moved in with my boyfriend. Because I could; I had the means to leave. In the years since, I’ve had many purses. And I’ve made back those four dollars and then some.

But what happened to him? It’s been over ten years. He’s a man now, if he’s still alive. Is he in jail? Does he have a family? Does he have a job? I sincerely hope, rather than believe, he has a chance of having a successful life. But I don’t know. I want to believe that whatever his crime against me, the moral arc of his universe is bending toward goodness for him.

Lots of you know that I write movies. But what you might not know is that the single greatest influence in my life as a screenwriter is a dark children’s movie that came out in 1984, when I was six years old. That movie is The Neverending Story.

Let me tell you why.

On the surface, the movie is about a troubled boy who dives into a fantasy world through the pages of a mysterious book.

But it’s so much more than this.

SO. MUCH. MORE.

It’s dark. Depressing. Horrifying. It’s got strange creatures and an ivory palace and a princess who’s got no jurisdiction whatsoever. It’s got a flying dog dragon who likes to have his ears scratched, and ice statues with full-on boobies and laser eyeballs.

Weird, right? It should be noted that this movie was produced in Germany. I don’t mean to stereotype an entire people but… somewhere in between backpacking across the world keeping hostels in business and trancing out to house music, these Germans came up with a delightful tale about the metaphorical destruction of the imagination.

I know. You’re so excited about this.

Where do I start? What’s the entry point for something that has sunk so deep into your psyche that you can no longer remember a time before it? My life began with The Neverending Story and it will likely end there, too. I’ll be the lunatic at the nursing home with The Neverending Story on a loop in my room. My last word will be “Moonchild” as my roommate chokes me to death for calling her “Morla” one too many times.

OK LET’S DO THIS.

***

The movie starts out with a little kid named Bastian Balthazar Bux (!!!!) getting scolded by his Dad over breakfast for being too imaginative. BEING TOO IMAGINATIVE. Says the man who gave his kid that name!

Dad says Bastian needs to “keep his feet on the ground” and stop drawing horses in his notebooks at school.

“Unicorns,” Bastian corrects him. Softly, trying to keep his imagination in check.

The basic tenet of The Neverending Story is this: adults lose their imaginations and thus become assholes. Remember that.

The reason this conversation has come up in the first place is because Bastian tells his Dad that he’s distracted. He’s been having dreams about his mom.

HIS DEAD MOM.

BECAUSE HIS MOM IS DEAD.

Look at this kid.

He needs a hug and a therapist, not a scolding. Bastian’s imagination “problem”—in that he has one—is like focusing on mismatched drapes when a house is on fire. Don’t knock the kid’s perfectly legit coping skills while the root cause goes unexamined. (Go ahead and give me a Psychology degree right now.)

Just to prove to his Dad that he’s SUPER paying attention during this conversation, Bastian makes a sort of finger Fibonacci and daydreams about the day he’ll have arthritis.

Jesus, Bastian. Don’t make me regret defending your imaginative ass.

Meanwhile, during all of this Bastian-bashing, Dad’s making a protein shake from raw eggs just because.

Then he drinks it down like a mofo who gives zero flips about REAL THINGS like salmonella, let alone IMAGINED (???) THINGS like unicorns.

“Son,” his eyes seem to say, “I get the squirts. And that’s REAL LIFE.”

Anyway, now that he has a full grasp of manly reality, Bastian heads to school. But on his way there, he’s accosted by some buck-toothed bullies who demand that he hand over his money.

Of course he doesn’t have any. What kind of life do they think he has? He’s a wretched little thing with a dead mother and a father who drinks chicken periods!

The bullies have cool backpacks and lots of pieces of flair on their jackets. They’re trying to steal from someone who clearly has less than them.

Look at their faces.

Those are COOL STORY, BRO faces right there. This is where it started. Ladies and gentlemen, meet your future Wall Street stockbrokers.

After these punk-ass chipmunks put him in a chokehold, they throw Bastian into a garbage dumpster where the city apparently stores all of its hay supply.

Bastian gets out, cleans himself off, and—just when he thinks he’s in the clear—the bullies see him again. He runs, they chase. Cue Benny Hill music.

Bastian finally loses them by ducking into a bookstore. Not just any bookstore, though—a mysterious one where no one’s shopping. Let’s call it Border’s.

In the center of the store is a Grumpy Old Man reading a book and smoking a pipe. This guy.

He accuses Bastian of being one of those kids who only like comic books and such. God, those kids with their alternative forms of reading!

Bastian’s like, “Dude, I escaped into a bookstore,” and rattles off all these classics he’s read. Grumpy Old Man is very impressed.

Bastian then notices the book Grumpy Old Man’s reading. It’s badass, with a weird symbol on the front in which two intertwining snakes bite their own butts.

“What’s that?” Bastian asks, all casual-like. No biggie.

DEFCON-1, SON! NOT FOR SALE! ABORT! Grumpy Old Man tells him to stay away from this book. It’s dangerous, not like the “safe” books Bastian’s read before. It’s irregular. Abnormal. Like a certain little kid we know, maybe? With this particular book, he says, you can’t put it down and just return to reality.

Then the phone rings and Grumpy Old Man gets up to answer it, putting the book down and returning to reality.

…. Heyyyyyyy now. Plot hole the size of a hay dumpster. Look away.

Bastian—well-read Bastian, overactive imagination Bastian—can’t help himself. He will be a curious nerd his whole life. He practically licks his lips as he steals the book and slips out of the store. But he does leave a nice note for Grumpy Old Man, saying he will return the book later.

Good kid. YOU ALWAYS LEAVE A NOTE.

Bastian arrives to school late. His class has already started and today is test day. Does Bastian enter the class and apologize?

No. He runs the hell away, escaping to read his crazy dangerous book in the only place most kids feel at home: the school attic.

Did your school have an attic? That’s cool. Mine didn’t. It especially didn’t have candles to light, motherflippin’ skulls, and wizard-y glass vials which I can only presume would be for casting demonic spells to torture children who refuse to play dodgeball.

Who authorized this?

Here’s where the story gets real interesting, though. As Bastian begins reading, we get sucked into the world of the book, the world of…

FANTASIA, a place from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Something terrible is happening to Fantasia. It’s disappearing, being eaten up by something called THE NOTHING.

Think about that for a second. THE NOTHING is an actual SOMETHING destroying an entire planet. German children must be great abstract thinkers because this part of the movie made nein of the sense to me at six. I guess there just wasn’t enough lederhosen in my diet.

Later, as an adult (ten seconds ago), I realized that The Nothing is called that because it leaves behind emptiness in place of beauty, and not because it itself is nothing. I also realized as an adult (five seconds ago) that Fantasia is most likely representative of Bastian’s imagination facing imminent destruction. Huh.

We know about The Nothing because three Fantasia citizens are casually chatting about it during lunch in the forest: a man with a snail, a man with a bat, and a giant rock man, called Rock Biter. Here they are.

Truthfully, this scene has always bugged me. It’s not the fact that one of these guys starts inexplicably snacking on a stick. And it’s not the fact that another one wears a top hat like he’s going to some kind of goddamned night at the opera. It’s the fact that this scene—and only this scene—is poorly dubbed.

Watch the lip synch for yourself here.

Even as a kid I remember thinking, “Hoo boy. Somebody got canned for this!”

But now I believe this had to be an in-joke on the part of the producers. Here’s how I imagine it went down:

Two producers sit in an editing room. They wear black turtlenecks. One turns to the other.

“Let us make funny ha ha joke on das stupid kinder,” says Producer One in a very Germanly manner.

“Yes. Let us make das words too fast for das lips, even faster than das autos on das autobahn,” says Producer Two, chomping on some bratwurst.

Then they laugh and share a cigarette.

It’s the only way to explain it.

Anyway, I want to point out that the Rock Biter (above) is made of rocks but also eats rocks. He’s friendly enough, I guess, but the movie kinda skirts the issue of his cannibalism. Shame—seems like a cool subplot.

Each of these characters has been sent by their people to seek help from the Empress, who lives in the Ivory Tower. The Ivory Tower looks like this.

I know what you’re thinking. This? This is the best piece of real estate on the entire planet? It looks like a bitch to clean with all those craggy rocks. How is grandma supposed to get up to the top? Are the school districts good? Does it at least have a heated pool?

No. It contains only a single room with a bed upon which sits a sick Empress who cries a lot. They don’t say what she’s sick with, but I think it’s safe to assume she caught cooties from The Nothing. They’re tied together somehow anyway.

Everyone’s confounded by it, including the Empress, whose confusion is perfectly expressed with beautifully waxed eyebrows.

The bad news is that the Empress can’t help anyone because she can’t help herself. This does not help quell the fears of the citizens gathered on the doorstep of the Ivory Tower.

So one of the Ivory Tower staff goes out to greet the crowd.

Meet Gary.

Gary is only one day from retirement and is too old for this shit.

“Gary,” the citizens cry out. “What in the hell is happening to Fantasia?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “The Empress doesn’t tell me dinkle.”

“But Gary,” they say. “Look at our heads! They’re too big to carry on our puny bodies. Fix them!”

“I can’t fix anything by myself,” Gary says. “I’m only middle management!” Adults are of no use in The Neverending Story.

Gary’s waiting for a great warrior named Atreyu to show up after being summoned. Atreyu is believed to hold the key to saving Fantasia.

Why is he so great?

BECAUSE HE’S HOT.

“BOING!” – Me at six. Atreyu was the start of my love affair with men who care about animals.

That’s his horse, Artax. We’ll get back to Artax.

Oh god. Artax.

Anyway, Atreyu must find a way to save the Empress and Fantasia from The Nothing. He is given the Auryn, a medallion comprised of two snakes eating their butts that will supposedly guide him on his journey, but nothing else.

No weapons. No help. Just a kid and his horse.

“Eff my life,” he whispers as the Auryn is placed around his neck.

Say hello to what Atreyu’s up against.

This is The Nothing.

Gosh, you’re saying. Just looks like a bad storm to me. It’ll pass.

You poor, pathetic idiot. That’s one hungry cloud of bad juju and it won’t stop until it’s gorged itself on the entire planet. Then it’s coming for the rest of the universe—even though that’s likely impossible since The Nothing is a localized atmospheric event consisting only of the elements from that particular planet.

NEVER MIND. BE AFRAID.

Remember the Ivory Tower at the beginning of the movie, with its expansive, craggy acreage? Here’s a little SPOILER ALERT for you.

BAM! Eaten up by The Nothing. Everything gone. The people, gone. The rolling hills and river, gone. The record collection and Hummel figurines, gone. Gary, gone. All of it gone!

So now you know what Atreyu is up against when he sets out from the Ivory Tower. He rides without knowing where he’s going or what he’s doing.

Here he is, riding.

And there, riding.

Oh look. It’s Atreyu, hithering and dithering.

SURPRISE! Atreyu doesn’t find a way to stop The Nothing and cure the Empress by riding the entirety of Fantasia like some kind of deranged cowboy.

What’s that? What’s going on with Bastian back in the “real world”? Don’t worry about him. He’s just chillin’, enjoying the book and having a sandwich in the school attic.

He’s cool.

…. FOR NOW.

Back to Atreyu. though. He’s decided for some godawful reason to ride through the Swamps of Sadness.

“That doesn’t sound good.” – You.

You’re right. So many children of my generation have been messed up by what I’m about to describe that I’m not sure I’m going to make it all the way through the next few paragraphs without flinging myself into a jar of peanut butter chocolate coconut. (It exists.)

******* You have been warned. *******

Anyway, here’s Atreyu and Artax slopping through the Swamps of Sadness.

Here’s the thing about The Swamps of Sadness: they make you feel sad. It’s right there in the name. So not only does Atreyu feel like garbage for failing an entire planet at this point, but now he’s in Fantasia’s equivalent of Florida. This seems to be rock bottom.

Then he notices that Artax is having a hard time getting through the mud. So he gets down off the horse to help pull him through.

But Artax stops struggling. Just stops.

“C’mon Artax,” Atreyu says, a quiver of panic underneath the bravado. Silly horse. WOSSAMOTTA U?

The horse, he realizes, is sinking.

Panicked, Atreyu pulls at him, fighting, trying to get Artax to move. But the horse just keeps sinking deeper into the swamp.

Atreyu pleads with Artex, telling him to move. Telling Artax he’s his best friend, that he loves him.

Artax is now up to his mane in oily mud.

“Stupid horse!” Atreyu cries, trying some tough love. He slaps the water to scare Artax into action.

The horse looks at him as if to say, “YOU BROUGHT ME HERE YOU SICK SON OF A BITCH.”

But it’s too late. The mud has slipped all the way up to the horse’s eyes.

Oh god. Artax.

The screen fades to black to the soundtrack of Atreyu’s wails.

“MOMMY? IS THE HORSEY DEAD?”– Children everywhere.

.

.

.

.

.

Fade in and we are left alone with Atreyu.

Just sitting there. Horse-less.

You can watch it all here if you really want to do that to yourself.

This scene is the reason why I started asking tough questions of my parents. “Since everything in life is so fleeting, why do we make our beds?” I would ask. “Who cares about homework when life is so fragile?” Etc. I started wearing black lipstick and quoting Sylvia Plath. I was a very popular six-year-old.

So Atreyu. Atreyu’s now all by himself and even sadder than before. But he keeps trudging along because he has to. Everybody’s depending on him.

This kid. For someone whose testicles haven’t descended yet, he’s got a pair.

Atreyu—muddied, tearful Atreyu—happens across a giant hill. The ground shakes and the hill becomes bigger and bigger until we’re looking at a giant turtle. A CRANKY turtle who’s allergic to children and sneezes on poor Atreyu repeatedly.

Meet Morla.

Listen, if my nostrils were in my forehead and my sinuses were acting up, I would be a grumpypants too. Morla, who refers to himself as “we” after being in the swamps so long by himself, tells Atreyu “we” don’t know one goddamned thing and to leave “us” alone.

“If you don’t help me,” Atreyu says, “you’ll die too!”

That’s when Morla goes from regular turtle to GANGSTA TURTLE. He laughs. He laughs with the cynicism of eleventy million jaded teenagers.

“We don’t even care!” he says. Then, just to show how much he doesn’t, he cuts himself and drinks his own blood.

Just kidding. BUT WAIT A MINUTE. If Morla is a depressed turtle and lives in the Swamps of Sadness, why hasn’t he drowned long ago like Artax? Is it because Morla wants to die and his punishment is living forever in loneliness?

God, this movie. It’s so twisted.

Morla finally tells Atreyu to seek the Southern Oracle, which is 10,000 miles away. Maybe the answer will be there. MAYBE.

Atreyu’s like, “Gee thanks. Was that so hard?”

Morla sneezes one last time and returns to his shell.

Atreyu is less than enthused that he might have to walk 10,000 miles for just a hint of help when he already spent half the movie wandering aimlessly.

Surprisingly, Atreyu, now covered in turtle boogers, starts to let the swamp get to him. Because this movie isn’t dark and terrible enough, our hero begins to sink in the mud.

I’ve neglected to tell you, but Atreyu’s not alone. He’s being hunted by a giant wolf-bear creature. You’ll meet him later. This creature wants him dead, and he almost gets his wish in this moment.

BUT THEN. Out of the parting clouds comes Atreyu’s rescuer, a dog-dragon hybrid named Falcor.

Falcor is a luck dragon, an animal abomination that would never exist in nature. But who’s a good boy?! You are!

Falcor carries Atreyu to safety, bringing him 9,891 miles out of the 10,000 he needed to get to the Southern Oracle. You can see the Southern Oracle from Falcor’s front porch, in fact.

A nice older couple, presumably the folks who adopted Falcor from the kennel, come out of a nearby hovel and greet Atreyu.

They offer Atreyu a steaming cup of hot worms. Yeah, worms. These two are hella small and covered in dust, so I think they’re mole people. I bet they’re into some freaky stuff.

It just so happens that Mr. Moleman is a “Southern Oracle scholar.” Sure, award yourself a degree from Bullshit University there. What he means by “scholar” is that he watches people trying to cross through the gates to get to the Southern Oracle like some kind of creep-o stalker with no hobbies.

Here’s Gate #1.

Mr. Moleman says that only people who really believe in their own worth are permitted passage through the gates. On cue, through a telescope, he sees a brave knight attempting passage. He invites Atreyu to watch as the sphinxes at the gate judge the knight’s worth.

As Atreyu watches, this happens.

YEAH. THEY SHOOT LASER BEAMS FROM THEIR EYES.

Sphinxes – 1, Knight – 0.

The sphinxes at the gate basically fry people who don’t really have any self worth. Take that, insecure people! Maybe death will learn you some confidence!

Atreyu gulps. Despite all common sense, he’s gonna try it. As he approaches the gate, he looks up.

OK, no wonder people become so intimidated at the gate. Those are some bodacious boobies.

Not only that, but look what’s at Atreyu’s feet.

Yep, that’s the knight they just fried. I’m sure apart from the grisly remains it doesn’t smell great either.

Atreyu braces himself, inching forward. But he doesn’t get far. Whether it’s from losing his horse, being sneezed on, meeting a dog dragon, or even watching a man just get murdered, you could say it hasn’t been a great day for him, OK? Maybe he’s a little shaky right now. Plus he’s, like, 11.

Sphinxes don’t care. Sphinxes want to blow shit up. They open their eyes, ready to shoot.

I’d like to tell you in this moment that Atreyu stands his ground, letting bravery course through his veins and feeling his self-worth in the face of these chicken-footed harpies.

Instead, he runs.

He runs like the dickens. So they shoot at him with their eyes. And THEY MISS.

Now we know two things:

1. Sphinxes made of stone can’t turn their heads and aim. Makes sense.
2. If you don’t have any self-worth, it’s OK. Just work on your sprints.

Oh, it’s not over for Atreyu. There’s another gate, Magic Mirrorgate. It shows a person what they truly are inside. Men have fled screaming from the sight of their inner selves.

And guess what, or who, Atreyu sees in the mirror?

Oh ho ho! Did you forget about Bastian in the school attic, reading his life away? Everyone’s forgotten Bastian, including his father, who never comes to look for him long after the school day is over. Even Bastian forgot himself until that moment.

Bastian looks up and can see Atreyu too.

What in the hell? FOURTH WALL BROKEN.

Bastian chucks the book across the room. After only a sandwich and an apple at lunch, his blood sugar is low and there are no Capri Suns in the attic. He must be hallucinating.

But it’s dark and stormy outside. He can’t go home just yet.

He stares across the room at the crumpled book. He’s too far in now. He can’t have failed that skipped test for nothing! So he picks it back up and continues.

Back in Fantasia, Atreyu has finally reached the Southern Oracle, an icier version of the sphinxes.

They tell him that in order to save Fantasia, the Empress needs a new name.

“Sure,” he says. “Bertha.”

“No,” they say. “The name must be given by a human child, found only at the boundaries of Fantasia.”

So off he goes with Falcor in search of Fantasia’s boundaries. They fly around for a while, assessing the damage and destruction that The Nothing has left behind, hoping they can find Fantasia’s boundaries before it’s entirely destroyed.

“Hey Falcor,” Atreyu says after a bit. “What’s a boundary?”

But before Falcor can answer, there it is: The Nothing. It churns and boils toward them, ripping Atreyu from Falcor and tossing him on a beach somewhere far away.

He wakes up, sputtering, and wanders into a cave.

This is where we meet Gmork, the giant wolf-bear creature who’s been hunting Atreyu since his journey started.

Wow. Much evil. Very blood. So overbite.

Gmork tells Atreyu he is a servant of The Nothing and will destroy him. Atreyu says that if he has to die, he will do so fighting.

Remember, this kid is a pretty good sprinter.

But before Gmork lunges at Atreyu, he reveals that Fantasia has no boundaries because it exists in the minds of humans. Imagination has no limits, silly!

Then Gmork attacks Atreyu and Atreyu shanks him with a homemade shiv because reality trumps imagination in this particular instance.

Scratched and bleeding but alive, Atreyu leaves the cave and connects with Falcor again, who takes him to the Ivory Tower, which is still standing. Remember this?

Yeah, that’s pretty much all that’s left of Fantasia now.

Atreyu goes in to see the Empress, who’s still sitting on that bed like it ain’t no thang.

“Oh hey,” she says. “Don’t look so sad. All of this was on purpose so we could invite Bastian into our world.”

Atreyu’s like, “Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. You crazy lunatic. My horse died and I shanked a wolf-bear and got turtle snot on myself. Who the hell is Bastian?”

On the other side of things, Bastian cannot believe they’re talking about him. The Empress pleads with Bastian to call out her name.

Bastian starts chanting. “It’s just a book, it’s not real.” Over and over, like his dad taught him.

Then the Empress makes this face.

“Oh FFS,” Bastian cries out. He leaps to the window and calls out a name for the Empress.

“MOONCHILD!”

I can’t tell you how many times I argued with friends about what name he shouts here. Until the arrival of the Internet, nobody was entirely sure. Here’s what we thought it might be:

Golf cart
Joanie
Toad
Mood Flower
Mosy
Bastian
Cornstarch

But no. It was Moonchild, his dead mother’s hippie name.

After he shouts the name, everything goes black. When he opens his eyes, he’s sitting across from the Empress. She tells Bastian that through his imagination he can bring Fantasia back to life, making it even better than it was before.

So he makes a wish.

Suddenly he finds himself flying on Falcor through Fantasia.

Everything has been restored. Atreyu and Artax—restored. Rock Biter and friends—restored. Gary—restored.

Fantasia—Bastian’s imagination—is back and better than ever and in no danger of ever disappearing again.

His father will just have to DEAL WITH IT.

***

So that’s it. That’s the movie. You can probably see why it touched a generation of kids like me, why it was so deeply disturbing and affecting.

It had so many lessons. For one, it taught us that animal hybrids are the wave of the future.

It taught us that Gary needs a raise.

It taught us not to give our children hippie names.

It taught us key things about German culture.

It taught us to make sure we can run fast.

It taught not to let adulthood get in the way of our dreams.

It taught us our imaginations were limitless.

It taught us that even if the people we love die, we have the strength to keep going.

And best of all, it taught us to keep reading.

Happy 30^th birthday to the movie that scared little children everywhere into daydreaming.