The Whole Goodwill Toward Men Season Is Officially Over – Don’t Get Me Started!

That’s right, even before the bell knolls the midnight hour tonight, signifying the new year of 2007, I’m telling you that people have gone back to their nasty little selves earlier this year. They always talk about the sales for the holiday season and its impact on the economy but no one looks at the fact that despite the Christmas stuff has been in the stores since August, the feeling of the season seems to go away faster and faster every year. The whole goodwill toward men season is officially over – Don’t Get Me Started!

I made the decision to eat every crappy thing that I fancy before the end of the year. Not that there’s some wacko resolution in sight to only eat vegetables and tofu on the horizon but just the same I decided to splurge on take out food that was fried and salted to death. Sure I feel like crap after I eat it but if you don’t, where’s the fun in it? Anyway, I decided to go to Panda Express where they make food that I think has so many preservatives that it might be able to survive a nuclear holocaust. I noticed that a car pulled up just about the time I did and there they were, the perfect all American family, a Mom (wearing “Mom” jeans) a Dad (buzz cut and also wearing “Mom” jeans with a sweater tucked into his pants) and a teenage daughter (whose hair was something that the not cool kids wore in the 80’s, not sure if she had bad hair or a mother that thought it looked nice because that was the last time she had gotten her own hair done in a salon instead of using the economical and so effective Flowbee she got for Christmas 1999 that she still used to cut all their hair). So I get out of my car and begin to proceed to the door of the Panda when suddenly I can’t help notice it. The entire family is taking quick glances at me and then straight ahead. Now I’m a fast walker, everyone has always told me this and I don’t disagree, it comes from a place of impatience about life but it’s really just my regular pace. Well, the three little bears start power walking to get to the door before me like nobody’s business. I mean, they are practically running with the arms pumping at their sides. They look at me and then increase their speed again. I couldn’t help myself; I walked faster just to piss them off. Finally, they reached the door ahead of me and then had the nerve to look back at me with a kind of smirk that had a big “so there” written all over it. I so badly wanted to scream, “I wasn’t trying to win you idiots, I was just trying to help you get some of that extra fat off your caboose!”

Now these people are the people who definitely have a fish on the back of their car so it always cracks me up when I see these types get as nasty as a lesbian wrestler wrestling her current girlfriend’s ex. I mean they get downright mean. Once inside of course they don’t know what they want, they need the price of everything repeated at least twice and the wife with her frosted short do is in need of sampling everything as if they’re in a God Damned Baskin Robbins! “There are no pink spoons here bitch!” They were buying for what seemed like a family of fourteen, no doubt there were more of these white, white, whiter than white people at home. And as they left I could hear the guy behind me ask for “Mandaranian Chicken” (It’s really Mandarin but he added letters and pronounced it like Iranian was added to the end of the word) and I laughed in spite of myself.

I’m sure these people got into their reasonable car with the fish and the “My child is a student, blah, blah, blah” bumper sticker and went home to feed the family who were sitting there reading the bible and wearing their “holiday” sweaters with the snowmen on them. After dinner the father probably told his son it was time to take down those lights on the house as the women folk cleaned the dishes and began to take down the tree.

But here’s the deal, for all the going on of the Christians about wanting to be more Christ-like and/or all the forgiveness of other’s sins I just find it hysterical that just a few mere days after Christmas that the whole thing the season is supposed to be about has already been lost; discarded if you will. And why? Sure I’ve heard people say, “Oh if everyone could be the way they are at Christmas the whole year round it would be a better world” when really what they mean is that if everyone hid their real personalities all year then we could all seem as though we were living Stepford lives and wouldn’t that be nice? Well we all know that it wouldn’t (even from the recent horrible remake of the classic film). No, I say, be who you are all year round and don’t try to put the façade on once a year because you’re not fooling anyone. You can put a wreath on your car, a giant blow up snow globe on your lawn and even give to less fortunate but underneath it all you are is just jerks who feel your better than everyone and that can’t stand the fact that someone might get into the store before you. And so, until next year…the whole goodwill toward men season is officially over – Don’t Get Me Started!

More On The Death Of… - Don’t Get Me Started!

As the year comes to a close we’re bound to lose a few more notables. Doesn’t it seem as though so many people die around the holidays? (And I’m talking about the ones from natural causes at the moment, not at the hand of a relative who really didn’t want the Chia pet they got from their brother whom they’ve hated since they were six and he killed their hamster, Silas who happened to look a little like the Chia pet) No, I’m talking about the likes of James Brown and former President Ford at the moment. What got me was the day after the big announcement about Ford the anchor on the local news back east said, “And we’ll be right back with more on the death of former President Ford.” Does that make any sense to you? I can understand, “More on the life and presidency of…” I can even understand, “More on the legacy left by…” But “More on the death…” – Don’t Get Me Started!

I mean, come on, what more is there to tell? They hadn’t released the cause of the death, it was basically an announcement, he could have died three days ago but they liked the idea of a Christmas death for the announcement or something but other than that, how much more could there be to tell about the death of someone? What is the obsession we all have with the way we treat a public figure’s death anyway? There are all the days of talking about the person when no one has talked about them in years. Then there’s the logo that CNN and the other news channels create and as if the logo with the picture of him with the American flag seemingly coming out of the back of his head isn’t enough, no they have to have a theme song too. It’s like going to a grade school performance and having it over produced with a budget from a Broadway musical. I’m not saying we shouldn’t honor these people but come on, is it not a bit much? And what’s the deal with everyone “lying in state”? The former president I get but having James Brown laid out at The Apollo? Can anyone explain that one to me? (Yes, that was rhetorical because no matter how you explain it to me, it won’t make sense.)

Thank God, Judaism affords you one last piece of decency by demanding a closed casket. I know some do open caskets now but you can bet I’m going sealed in like Janitor In A Drum when I go! There’s no need for anyone to be looking at me after I’m gone. I’d rather have a life-sized air brushed cutout of myself that people can take pictures with any day. I remember the first funeral I went to that had an open casket. Now like I said, being Jewish and having gone to only funerals of other Jewish relatives I had never given a thought to the whole open casket thing. So when a friend’s mother died, I immediately went up to her at the church and she just happened to be standing next to the casket. Imagine my surprise when mid-hug I looked down and saw her mother? I mean, you can’t get out of seeing your first dead body, made and suited up like that without even flinching your body because your friend will know as she’s hugging you, but I managed to do just that and thank God. I was shocked, she didn’t look peaceful she didn’t look anything other than like a mannequin wearing the wrong shade of foundation – beyond creepy and no thank you.

The other thing about the public figure deaths is how everyone goes on and on about it. I had someone begging me to drive them to New York to see James Brown laid out, thank God I was leaving that day but I can’t even begin to imagine the whole scene let alone waiting your turn to file past a body that no longer has life in it. I remember when Princess Diana died and my mother was riveted to the television, for days she could talk of nothing else. And although my mother will kill me for writing this, my mother takes celebrity deaths to a whole other level. She’s one of those people who do everything including buying the souvenir program (People magazine’s special limited edition on whoever just died). She acts as if she knew these people personally. It’s gotten to the point where she’s not even satisfied to just talk about the most recent death. At Thanksgiving this year, we’re all sitting around and I can’t even remember what we were talking about when suddenly she comes out with this gem, “Can you believe it’s another Thanksgiving without John John Kennedy?” This is true and I’ll just let you bask in this comment with no further comment from me.

I get it that we all have to go at some point and that when you’re in the public’s daily life you get a little more than your fair share of hoopla when you go but am I being too much of a Pollyanna when I think that we should celebrate someone’s life during their life instead of after their death? It’s like the “honorary Oscar” you get when the Academy thinks you’re about to die. They don’t give it to you when you can enjoy it they give it to you when you have six months to live. It’s like the classic gag you used to be able to buy in the back of comic books, you know, the dollar on the string. You would put the dollar on the ground and then when someone goes to pick it up you yank the string and the dollar goes flying back to you. That’s how I see those Oscars, they have retractable cords on them and they’ll be back at the Academy in no time. So in the meantime I guess we have to be thankful that we have cable so that we don’t have to watch twenty-four hour coverage of funerals. (We can always switch over and watch Notting Hill for the eight hundredth time! Is this the only movie they play anymore?) And if we want we can always switch back to see the logo, hear the theme song and hear them say, “More on the death of…” – Don’t Get Me Started!

Why Do The Wrong People Travel, Travel, Travel, When The Right People Stay At Home? – Don’t Get Me Started!

The above is from a song that Elaine Stritch does in her one woman show from a Cole Porter musical she was in, Sail Away. It sums up my experience yesterday as one of the hoards of people traveling by air from one part of the country to the other. I know that I travel more than most (for work, not exotic locations) so I’m more used to the fact that you have no control over schedules, luggage or pretty much anything else these days once you’ve passed through the metal detector, they basically own you. But it boggles my mind that some people just don’t get the fact that no matter how big of an asshole they become it’s still not going to get them to Cleveland any faster. Why do the wrong people, travel, travel, travel, when the right people stay at home? – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’ll admit it, for this recent trip back east I went cheap. I had a free plane ticket on Southwest that was going to expire and I just decided to go for it. Now for those of you who don’t know, Southwest is what my guy calls the “bus” airline because there’s no assigned seating so you basically have to hope you get an “A” group boarding pass which will allow you to get in the plane with the first forty-five people and pick out a better seat than the “Bs” and “Cs” – make no mistake about it, it’s not like you’re going to get to jump into the first class seats because there is no first class. Now you can check-in online 24 hours in advance so everyone in the “As” has their boarding pass printed out from their computers while the “Bs” and “Cs” look to the A line in envy.

So of course having an “A” is not enough. No, you have to get to the airport early so that you can be in the front of the “A” line so that you’re ahead of the 44 other “As” in the line. You move from line to line and at the end of the day, Soylent Green is made from people. At any rate, I was in the A line before boarding the plane (an hour before the flight and I was still the fifth person in line) when they made the announcement that our flight was going to be delayed because it was the last flight out to Vegas and we were going to wait for three other planes to come in that were running late to try to accommodate the people who were transferring from the other planes. Immediately I smelled a rat, this could not be true, however, in light of all the begging I heard in BWI to get people to board, maybe they were really holding to get these people to their destination. Whatever, I knew we were delayed around a half an hour but then the next announcement came. There were 60 mph winds in Vegas so we were on a hold from the travel Nazis. Now I knew that we had a five hour flight ahead of us and by the time we got there the winds would have died down but no go, we were on a two-hour delay now.

As I stated before, once you’re at this point, they have you and can do whatever they hell they want. But oh no, immediately it had to start. The first one was a guy in a business suit rushing to the counter. A few minutes later we hear over the speaker, “And for those of you who have connecting flights from Vegas, we will be holding those flights there for you so that you can make your connections to your final destination.” Next to me I notice a woman, probably in her fifties with dyed black hair, looking like perhaps she could have played Rocky’s mother in the seven hundred Rocky movies. Much like the Peanuts character, “Pig Pen” she had an aura of cigarette smoke about her that was not confined to her clothes and when she would speak, although she wasn’t at that moment smoking a cigarette, you could almost see the smoke issuing from her black lungs through her mouth. “Ah, this is horrible – my son is taking a flight outta Newark and meeting me there, I can’t believe this is happening. This is ridiculous, they should do something.” I calmly tried to explain to her that it was a weather thing that people didn’t think about but due to the fact Vegas is in the desert it has high winds and can get very cold. “Huh, I knows that about the cold. I looked up the weather before I packed and it’s a good thing that I did cause I was going to pack all my summers clothes and then I saw it was going to be cold there.” <I don’t understand how people think they’re going to the Bahamas and that it’s always hot in Vegas, it’s not, as I’m writing this it’s freezing outside>

And so the heavy audible sighing continue as they tell people not to leave the gate area because if the Air Commandant says the winds are okay for us to leave we’ll leave before the two hour wait we’re on. Some people made pals with the other people in line, some kept looking at their watches and some were humane enough to allow the person next to them to run to the bathroom and save their place in line. One of my favorite announcements was when they got on the microphone and said, “Those of you on flight 2201 to Vegas, I just wanted to give you an update. There is no update at this time. So once again, if you’re traveling with us to Vegas tonight I repeat, we have no update on the delay at this time.” This of course, made me crazy. Don’t get on the mic to say there’s no fucking update. If you get on a mic at a gate at an airport, you’d better have an update or be doing Karaoke.

Finally we get on the plane and the flight attendants are mad at the delay and taking it out on us. The one flight attendant looked like the drawing of Marlo Thomas from “That Girl” don’t misunderstand me here, she didn’t look like Marlo Thomas, she looked like the cartoon, all you saw were eyes, big lined lips and a flip. The other two flight attendants were the white Weather Girls (for those of you not gay or living under a rock in the 70’s, The Weather Girls were two very large black women who brought the world the now classic disco/gay anthem “It’s Raining Men”) These two women were so “hippy” (and that’s me being polite) that they had two choices, they could either walk sideways down the aisle just a scoonching as they went along or they could walk the aisle and have their hips get caught on every arm rest. More than a million times they came through, their hips leaving a path of turned over drinks and destruction.

Upon arriving here in Vegas, the airport, being New Year’s Eve weekend is packed so tight you’d think that it was a mosh pit. Bad enough all these people are here but they also had all of the “Vegas Characters” from the different hotels to meet the planes. There were bad showgirls with feathers, too much makeup and you could tell they would never be a showgirl in a show, just in Bernard from Topeka’s fantasy after he called for a showgirl prostitute to come to his room. There was “Caesar” from Caesar’s Palace, freezing his thighs off in his short skirt and armor. And oddly missing was one of the many zillion Elvis impersonators.

Now baggage claim in Vegas can either take ten minutes or a good hour and a half. To use Vegas lingo, it’s a crap shoot. But people should understand that is why the slot machines are right there and that when you see these enormous oversized luggage carousels that it may just be an indication that it may take some time for your luggage to arrive. No, everyone jockeys for position closest to the conveyor belt – and here’s a tip – don’t let your fucking kids get closest to the luggage, there are real people who need to get their luggage and go and don’t want to sit and watch little Johnny put his grubby hands on every bag going by or practically lose a leg because he’s stepped on the thing, even though you told him not to and he is now screaming and circling with the luggage attached by his foot through the handles of a fake Fendi duffle bag.

So people start using their “I’m-talking-a-little-louder-so-everyone-can-hear-me” voice, “What the hell. I thought this town was about service, it’s been almost fifteen minutes and I don’t see our luggage. Marge, this is ridiculous, I don’t care that we’re going to be here for a week, I told you we could have carried everything on and you could have just rinsed out our undies in the sink each night to keep us fresh!” These people find themselves righteous and funny at the same time which is odd considering they don’t possess either of those qualities.

All in all, I’m just asking that those of you who don’t or do travel often to understand that you have no control in an airport setting so just take a Valium and relax. Think of the classic Doris Day song, “Que Sere Sere, whatever will be will be. The future’s not ours to see, Que Sera, Sera.” Load it into your Ipod and your head and you’ll see, it will help you. And as I am now on the other side of my travels (for about a week) I have to reflect, shake my head and wonder why do the wrong people, travel, travel, travel, when the right people stay at home? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Bless The Beasts And The Ugly Children – Don’t Get Me Started!

I am at this moment, sitting in the Baltimore/Washington airport. Surprisingly enough, things are rather calm and it doesn’t feel quite like I need to be Molly Brown keeping everyone’s morale up in the life boats from the Titanic. I have to say that it is amazing how much luggage everyone seems to have anymore. I remember years ago I was in the show, You Can’t Take It With You and an inside joke (and one that really didn’t make any sense) written under the title of my script was, “Yes you can, if you don’t have too much luggage!” Well, apparently these people never heard of this or the phrase, “travel lightly.” I mean I saw one guy who had four suitcases – what in God’s name must he have in there? I immediately was mostly concerned that he had to buy a new piece of luggage while he was here visiting because he received so many gifts and yes, I was more than a bit bitter when my thinking went in that direction. But that’s not what is getting me the most today at the airport. No, what’s getting me are all the ugly children I’ve encountered. I’m not talking in their behavior (for once) I’m talking what we used to call, “butt ugly” from babies to tweens. Geez! Well, all I can say is bless the beasts and the ugly children – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’m telling you right now, these kids are so ugly I can’t even imagine what the holiday photos must look like with these ugos. I mean what do the friends and relatives of the family say? You couldn’t even say about these kids, “Wow, that’s certainly a big head. Wait until he grows into that melon!” (Because after all, isn’t that what you say when YOU encounter a kid with a big head?) The parents look “unfortunate” at best. I don’t know if this is genetics, the part of the country or what really but they aren’t what you’d call lookers either. Could it be that I’m used to the tanned attractive west coast set? I don’t really think so. I’m thinking that I just happen to have hit “ugly day” at the airport. Where ugly flies free or something. Oh God, that would make me one of the uglies…must take a Xanax immediately!

The parents can certainly and should certainly do better – there are enough beauty products at Wal-Mart to make even the most unattractive soul look a little better but with the babies, unless you go to the drastic measures of a baby wig, you’re stuck with what you get and I’m here to tell you that it isn’t pretty. I know what you’re thinking and yes, I’m going to be quite comfortable in hell, can’t wait to get there as a matter of fact.

Here’s the other thing about being in this airport. Is every flight attendant and pilot bulimic? I’ve never seen such an array of crappy food in a one block radius. There’s nothing but fried, sauced up food at every turn unless you want to get really crazy and get a salad in a small cup from McDonald’s that you shake or something. Do the “crew” not eat in the terminals? Is there a lounge where they have all organic veggies at their disposal? I think not, and thus my theory, they’re all eating the same shit I just ate but the difference is that they are puking it up by the second “leg” of the trip. (It’s possible I’ll be doing the same, even though my flight is non-stop)

And while I’m here at the airport, I have never in my life heard such begging for people to get to their flights. Every few seconds you hear, “Mr. White, Mr. Jim White, will you please come to gate A4, we’re really wanting to take off to Oakland.” A few moments later you hear, “Jim? Jim White? We’re still waiting for you at A4, everyone else is on board and they really want to take off. Please come to the gate.” Another minute passes, “Come on Jim, we really need to get going, won’t you please help out by coming to the gate now?” Enough already, what are gate attendants your mother now? Leave Jim’s ass right here where it belongs and let those poor sons of bitches waiting to take off just take off.

On the whole I like airports. I get them, unlike life there are big signs telling you where to go, what to do, you have places to eat and if you get tired of carrying your shit you can pay someone a couple of dollars to do it for you or rent a cart. Oh if life were that simple and I could get someone to carry all my mental baggage. But alas, although the airport is less than crowded today (a few mere days before the big Vegas New Year’s Eve – shocking, no?) I can’t tell you how much I wish that everyone could just board when they’re supposed to, someone could help the crew to not be bulimic and finally that someone (are you listening God?) could help all these ugly children. Bless the beasts and the ugly children – Don’t Get Me Started!

DelaWHERE? – Don’t Get Me Started!

There are several reasons you should know where Delaware is, it was the first state, its motto is “The Small Wonder”, it’s where my father was born and it’s where I am right now to spend Christmas with my man and his family. DelaWHERE? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now before we begin children, you need to know that I used to come to Delaware every summer with my brother to stay with our grandparents. When my parents moved back here after living in Arizona for my formative years to take care of my grandparents, I came back for a visit and stayed. Stayed for over eleven years due to the fact that I found something I wouldn’t have found anywhere else, a six foot black man who took my heart away. The good news is that my parents and my guy and I now live in Las Vegas but once a year, I make the trip to spend Christmas with my guy and his family. And so it would come to pass that this is where I am now, God help me.

The thing about Delaware that I was aware of when I lived here for eleven years is that these people don’t get out much. Now don’t worry your little heads that I’m going to be slamming Delaware for no reason, I have reasons. This is the land of people who are very conservative and have little to no interest in really seeing the world. As my grandmother who lived here used to say when my parents wanted to take her to Hawaii or somewhere, “I didn’t lose nothing there.” The implication of course, if you didn’t lose something somewhere there was no reason to leave home. That’s pretty much (yes, here comes the major generalization) how I’ve found the rest of the populace here.

These are people who shop at Talbots and think that a red scarf is, “daring”. If it doesn’t have ducks on it or come from L.L. Bean they don’t know about it and amazingly enough they don’t want to know about it. I knew I was back in Delaware when I was in my first store and some woman was talking about being “hoome” – now you need to get this accent down, you have to say the “o” in the word home, like you’re pronouncing the letter itself. So there’s an “o” in the middle of the word, “home”. And believe me when I say, they stare at me.

A lot of people would say that I’m imagining this but I can assure you that I’m not. I may as well have green hair or something. I remember one of my favorite stories about my parents was when my mother first met my Dad’s family. True, my father’s family lives in what we lovingly call, “lower-slower Delaware” but even northern Delaware possesses these swell qualities. Apparently someone from my father’s family said, “What’s that girl got on her eyes?” It was eye shadow. Now that was the 1950’s but little has changed. Sure there are homosexuals here and it’s not like I’m wearing a “pride” t-shirt but for some reason they can tell that I’m not one of them. This used to bother me when I lived here but now, I LOVE it. They don’t know what to do with me or how to get rid of me fast enough.

God help homosexuals or anyone a little different here in Delaware, it can’t be easy. See, I didn’t really care about it when I lived here because soon after I got here I met my guy and it’s been eighteen years now so something went very right. I cannot even begin to imagine going to the one gay bar here looking to meet either Mr. Right or even Mr. Right Now. So my hat and is off to the people living and loving here.

Here’s the disclaimer, I don’t care if you don’t like gays, Jews, etc. that’s just fine but these people have no sense of the art of subtly. They do everything but point. Their mouths drop open and they whisper to one another behind the corduroy collars of their big puffy down dark green coats and meanwhile it’s them that need the help.

One of my favorite things is the Delawareans who feel as though they’ve really evolved. They drive their Lexus SUV, clutch their Coach handbags and shop at the mall. What I don’t get is who told these people that they were so much better than everyone else? No one, that’s who, my theory is that they are so afraid of anyone or anything being different that they have to kill it, make fun of it or ignore it. They don’t want, God forbid, to be have anything throw them off their game. They’ve created a corner of the world that is a small town without being a small town and they don’t want anything to rock the boat. (Say it with the “o” sound, please)

So here I am for the next week and let’s hope I can make it through. The good news is that I found a little take out place that has WiFi and to completely send my point home, here’s what happened when I got to this little restaurant to write this blog.

Me: You have WiFi here right?

Girl Behind Counter: What?

Me: WiFi, you know a network for computers?
Girl Behind Counter: Oh, you mean the wireless thing? I don’t know what that is you said but we do have wireless here.

Point, Case, Made! DelaWHERE? – Don’t Get Me Started!

When Bad Things Happen Around The Holidays – Don’t Get Me Started!

Okay, we’ve all heard it or had it happen to us. Something really shitty happens and someone says, “Oh, why did it have to happen around the holidays?” Well I’m here to tell you that shitty things happen everyday and it doesn’t matter if it’s around the holidays or not, there are just shitty things happening in your life and they don’t care about the holidays. For example, this week my best friend’s mother went into the hospital and had to have major surgery so she won’t be out by Christmas. My computer has died and I have no idea whether or not I’ll be able to get the information I’ve been saving to its hard drive for the past two years. That’s right all my classic Don’t Get Me Started blogs and everything else in my life may be gone forever. The list of shitty things going on with me at the moment are too endless to list here for all of you. When bad things happen around the holidays – Don’t Get Me Started!

You see what I think life is really doing for us when shitty things happen around the holidays is giving us something to focus on that will take our mind off of having to go to an airport, travel, see a million people in a few days and try to get along with our fellow man when we really don’t want to at all. As well as the pressure to figure out what to get our loved ones so that they will not open our gifts and immediately think, “How much do you think I can get for this if I return it? Ooh wait, there’s that party at Tom’s this week and I’m supposed to bring a gag gift, this will do for sure.” I think that when the “bottom drops out” around the holidays, it’s sort of a blessing in disguise. You can say, “Oh, I didn’t get a chance to shop or make the usual sugar cookies because my cat has an ingrown nail and I’ve been at the vet all week. You can’t imagine what I’ve been through.” Even the slightest shitty thing is bound to get you out of a few things that you really didn’t want to do during the holidays. The best is that you can always end any excuse with the now classic phrase, “And of course, it had to happen over the holidays!” Everyone will simply bow their heads and do a slight shake signifying that they understand how awful it must be for you to have some sort of inconvenience happen to you at the most inconceivable time, “the holidays”.

The thing is that it doesn’t matter what time of year it is when something awful happens that makes your life stop, making you have to focus on something that you didn’t ever want to think about to begin with in the first place. But I tend to believe all of the clichés – everything happens for a reason, life doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle, that which does not kill us makes us stronger and finally, don’t take any wooden nickels.

So believe me when I say that I have great sympathy for anyone who is going through some rough stuff but it doesn’t heighten it or make it worse because it’s the holiday. It’s an awful thing to have a loved one in the hospital, to have a computer crash or a number of other things go wrong at any time in your life but that’s what life is really all about, isn’t it?

So stay safe, take your vitamins and may you not have anything go wrong during this holiday season but if something shitty should happen, remember that you can always use it as an excuse for not baking or shopping and that will certainly help to make your holiday a little brighter. Remember that sometimes when bad things happen, life is telling us something (usually, it’s telling you that now you won’t be able to make that horrible mistake of buying that fuchsia pashmina for your sister-in-law). And if that’s what happens when bad things happen around the holidays – Don’t Get Me Started!

Miss U.S.Alright, Okay Enough Already – Don’t Get Me Started!

I suppose you’ve all heard by now that Miss U.S.A., Tara Conner is going to rehab instead of giving up the tiara, courtesy the pageant’s major contributor Donald Trump (who knows so much about beauty with that hair, please). Now like almost every other person in the world, I didn’t even know about this year’s Miss U.S.A. until she was on Project Runway. She seemed like your standard fare when she was on Runway (although I really thought that she chose the wrong dress, even though I liked Kayne’s stuff on the whole – if you want to relive any of Runway check out the Runway page on my site - http://www.somelikeitscott.com/somelikerunway.html). Anyway, the past few days have been filled with this young girl from Kentucky that we never really cared about and I say, “Miss U.S.Alright, okay enough already – Don’t Get Me Started!”

The stories go that the evil “big city” took her in and spit her out (or she was “spitting out a little Miss Teen U.S.A.). She was drinking before she was of age (anyone besides me remember the pictures of Drew Barrymore at 13 wasted at every club in LA now that was something to be appalled about!) and she was caught “making out” with Miss Teen U.S.A. who she shared an apartment with in New York courtesy of the pageant. Now the real question is, “What is Miss Teen doing sharing an apartment in New York without a real chaperone?” Who cares about Miss U.S.A.’s crazy activities? Is she really a role model? And if you say that she is I beg to differ with you because how can any pageant winner be a true role model without a talent portion to the competition? That’s where all the substance is, oh no, I know some of you are saying that it’s in the “super suit” swim suit and the white pumps but I beg to differ. It’s all about the jazz dancing, bad opera singing and classical instrument playing for me.

So yesterday morning on the Today show they had four ex-Miss U.S.A.s on to discuss the pageant, the current Miss U.S.A.’s behavior and reaction to the fact that she was staying. Their legs were crossed so tight I’m convinced they constricted the blood flow to their brains (if there was ever any evidence that they had any). First of all, is it required that you have to have a southern accent when you’re in a pageant? One talked about how great pageant life was and one was so busy telling us she was on a game show chasing the tail of Vanna White that they were of little to no help or harm. When asked about whether or not Miss U.S.A. and Miss America in this day and age could still be considered role models for young girls, the juice really started. One of them started wrinkling her nose and said, “Um, you know, I hate it when people compare Miss America and the Miss U.S.A. pageant, they are totally different. I mean, in Miss U.S.A. you can flirt and you know, it celebrates young women being young women.” Okay, once again I have to say, Miss U.S.A. has no talent portion to the competition! Oh yes, being able to flirt is sooo much more important than dancing on pointe, I think not.

As someone who is friends with a former Miss America contestant (yes, her local pageant people “bedazzled” everything she owned within an inch of her life) I can tell you from going to all the state preliminaries and one of the actual preliminaries when the pageant was in Atlantic City (where it belongs even though I live in Vegas where the pageant resides now) that the Miss America gals bust their ass, not only on their talent portion but really doing good deeds (and working out). Furthermore, it is a pageant that awards scholarship money. I’m sure they get an apartment and a lot of the stuff that Miss U.S.A. gets but I remember another friend who wasn’t good enough to get into Miss America (she had managed to lose every local pageant) who was granted immediate access into Miss U.S.A. without even going to one pageant.

But I guess what really pisses me off is when people compare the recent Miss U.S.A. scandal to the big scandal of former Miss America Vanessa Williams. Vanessa Williams was in compromising photos, she was not going around town doing a poor Britney Spears or Paris Hilton impersonation nightly. And what saved her everyone? I’ll tell you what saved her, she had a little thing I like to call, talent. And where did she showcase that talent but on Miss America and not Miss U.S.A.! So don’t cry for me, Tara Conner and give me your apologies, I don’t care enough about you. (And it’s not just because you lost Miss Universe wearing that shit colored dress Kayne made you) No one really cares about Miss U.S.A. or Miss America if you go by the ratings but I think Donald Trump knows a lot about ratings and I think that’s why the big press conference and national apology. So I hope that little Tara gets the help she needs, gets off the hooch and stops making every straight man’s fantasies come true by smooching on Miss Teen U.S.A. but more importantly, Miss U.S.Alright, okay enough already – Don’t Get Me Started!

Back Your Ass Up! – Don’t Get Me Started!

My brother, who is a VP of Information Technology for a major pet retailer, is always saying, “You should back up your computer.” Sure, the whole backing up thing made sense to me and I always meant to do it but it never happened. And then on Saturday while making copies of the holiday DVD for my guy’s family of last year’s Christmas as a gift for this Christmas, my computer started acting strange so I decided to do what every IT person will tell you to do, I rebooted. The only problem was that in that quick decision to reboot my computer I had no idea that I would change my life. When I walked back into the office room in my home, there it was, what my IT guys at work had told me about when it happened to my old work laptop, it was <dun, dun, dun> the blue screen of death. The screen was completely blue with a lot of text on it that basically translated to, “Your computer is dead, that’s right, it’s only two years old but it has ceased to exist and in its death it has taken everything vital you’ve ever thought or had information on. Goodbye cruel computer owner.” So what I’m telling all of you is back your ass up! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now I have always prided myself on being bi-techual so I figured I could figure this out. At first I rebooted again – blue screen o’ death. Then I decided to try to start the computer in “safe mode” – just as I thought that it was going to start and it was all going to be okay, there it was – blue death screen. And right about then is when the panic started to set in. That feeling of dread that can only be caused by a computer with your life in it shutting its doors forever like the sarcophagus of King Tut or your car stopping in the middle of an intersection, dead. In my family, this is what we call “automotive mode” because whenever a car stopped working my father would enter this zone of complete utter devastation and constant thought about the car until it was up and running again. He could be on fire but would never know it because he was thinking, “if only I could go to the junkyard and get some parts, I know I could make it work.” Devastation, depression and general malaise follow in automotive mode and I was headed there very quickly.

I own a Dell so I called their support line and after forty-five minutes on hold I got someone named Dan who had such a thick Indian accent that I know that this was a name he just made up to make us Westerners feel better that we were talking to someone in another country when it came to a product we thought was made and supported in the good old US of A. I put all my hopes on Dan and his ability to fix this with a few, “hold down the ctrl key and hit the F1 key, etc.” After hitting a bunch of different buttons, I’m a little ashamed to say that I had to keep asking him to repeat what he was saying because I couldn’t understand with his accent. We kept saying to one another, “Now that is “f” as in Frank, right?” I felt like I was landing a plane or something, “Roger, C as in Charlie, D as in Dogfight, Alt and the letter S as in slit my wrists.” Finally it was time to reboot the computer. I heard myself saying to myself, “This is going to work, Scott, remain calm.” And then, there it was…ask not who the blue screen knolls for, it knolls for thee. Then Dan said those fateful words, “Okay now we’re going to reformat your hard drive. You have it all backed up, right?” Suddenly Dan seemed like a first date that you tell, “I love you” within the first three minutes and all he wants to do is get away from you. Much like the date scenario, Dan began giving me all sorts of advice about getting someone else locally to pull the data off of the computer and then trying to get back to him. He couldn’t give me a direct number but he could give me his voicemail number and then he would call me back. Yeah, right.

I called several computer places and they were more than willing to come to my house (because let’s face it, Carl the Computer Guy has no store or anything) and try to pull the data off, it would cost a fortune, was a one hour minimum and they didn’t know how long it would take to get all the information off of the computer, if they could, probably about three hours or so. And most of them told me that the hard drive was probably toast and would need to be replaced as well.

And so it came to pass that I threw myself on the mercy of my brother. I figure acknowledging that I never backed up the computer was the first step in the healing. Thanks to UPS and around $60, my computer is now on its way to my brother and I will say silent prayers that he can not only get the information off of it but that he can breathe life into it. “Life, life, give my computer life!” <If you haven’t seen Young Frankenstein see it immediately> However, how could I leave all of you without my Don’t Get Me Started blogs, I couldn’t so where there’s a will, there’s a way to bitch! But let this cautionary tale be more than a fairy’s tale to you. And whatever you do, for God’s sake, back your ass up! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Where Is Jesus? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Okay, I have a lot to do before Thursday when I leave to go back east to spend Christmas with my guy and his family. I mean, a lot to do and I have to work Monday through Wednesday so I’m looking at a week of trying to get everything I’ve put off or didn’t put off to get done at the last minute and then settling for what I end up actually getting accomplished. To be honest, I don’t even want to think about it at this point. However, I did come across an idea that would really help me out. See, I was thinking if Jesus came back say this morning, most likely the world would be crazed and I wouldn’t have to work the rest of the week therefore I could get a lot done. So now that I need him I have to know. Where is Jesus? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now just hear me out on this one. There’s no need for him to make a big show out of it or anything and come back on his birthday, besides, by then I will have done everything I need to do. No, I need him to come back now. I need him today. Just think how everyone would be like, “Oh my God, did you see Jesus on with Matt and Meredith today? He looks great.” My thought is that with all Christians running around trying to find out where Jesus is at the moment and what he’s doing, they’ll forget about shopping and stuff which will make the stores less crowded, out of respect I won’t go to work and my flight will be less crowded because a lot of people just might see the big “J” coming back as a sign of the end of the world. As far as I see it, it’s win-win for everyone, Christians and Jews alike.

All the obvious reasons apply as far as the Christians go for wanting him back and maybe just maybe he’ll be able to sort out how there can be so many different kinds of Christians helping to heal their own community. As far as the Jews go, you know we’ll want Barbara Walters to interview him, “So Jesus, do you mind if I call you Jesus? What’s all this water to wine business? Could you give us all an example of it right now? You know our next segment is with Martha Stewart and she says a deep Merlot goes great for the season and matches the cranberry wreath, so I don’t know if you can be as specific as all that but is it possible to make a nice Merlot? I’ve got some Evian right here so at least you know you’re starting with a quality water.”  

I would love it. I’d especially love for him to go on every one of those television evangelist shows and just say, “No, I really didn’t mean that and furthermore I don’t remember talking to you personally. Hey everyone, I’m sorry to say that all the money you’ve been sending in has been going to his mistress, his gay lover and his methadone habit. No, I’ve never talked with this guy and from what I’ve seen him do, I don’t WANT to talk to this guy. Keep your money, use it to pay your gas bill and I’m just assuming that this will be this guy’s last broadcast. Look for my new show, Jesus and Friends (sort of a variety show like Carol Burnett yes, we’ve hire Bob Mackie to do all the costumes and expect some crazier magic than that Mindfreak show) starting next Sunday in this time slot.”  Come on, how great would that be, huh?

Of course there would be skeptics who would challenge him on Jesus Factor, “Okay you have one chance to walk on the water to be able to go on to winning the $50,000.” The possibilities are endless, think about it, The Bachelor Bethlehem featuring Jesus. There are a million more where that came from in my head but I can’t give them all away because I’m hoping to be in a development deal with Jesus and Lifetime. But getting back to the main reason why it’s such a good idea for him to come back right now, besides the obvious selfish ones I listed before it would also do a lot of people good to be able to see him and remember the reason for the season, don’t you think? So, keep your eyes peeled and keeping checking the CNN crawl at the bottom of the screen and maybe if we all clap our hands hard enough proving that we do believe in Jesus he’ll come – you know, just like keeping Tinkerbell alive with applause. Where is Jesus? – Don’t Get Me Started!   

Bite This! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now I know that we all worry about the fact that the holidays are upon us and that we’re going to be eating to excess many things that we shouldn’t even be eating in the first place. So naturally the diet industry is filling every channel with tips and tricks to make it through the holiday season without looking like Violet from Willy Wonka (who turned into the largest blueberry in recorded history) and had to be “juiced” by the Oompah Loompahs. In addition, many of the cable channels have been offering their advice as well in between commercials. Well, last night I heard one that made me just lose it. The fitness and diet expert (who of course weighed 3 pounds) was giving advice and then she did it, she said, “I understand that it’s the holidays and you shouldn’t deprive yourself. What you should do is have one bite of whatever it is you want to eat, so you won’t feel deprived, one bite or two at the most.” How this bitch could say this with a straight face is beyond me. Bite This! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now the problem with this woman’s suggestion is that it is steeped in about as much reality as Violet and the Oompah Loompahs. As someone who can do without desserts (once he has deprived himself and had the sugar DTs for about two days) let me tell you that even one small taste and it’s all over. It’s unrealistic to believe that anyone could just take one bite of chocolate cake, smack their lips like my cats when they eat and then walk away. Who this woman is I don’t know but I’m sure she makes a huge living giving out advice like this to people who are overweight and/or think they are overweight. This advice is ridiculous. I especially loved her “helper” on the show who was a small woman too and she would stand behind the “expert” with her plate of cake and the one forkful she was going to revel in. The expert (without looking behind her said), “Melinda, did you only have one bite?” The woman didn’t answer, she just nodded her head. Now if I were that expert and I didn’t hear a real response I would assume that Melinda was now about six forkfuls in. But the expert seemed confident her charge was doing the right thing. (Personally I think it’s because they would have to pay Melinda more money if she spoke on camera so we just hired to eat and not be heard)

There’s another commercial on here in Vegas right now for a doctor who has developed a revolutionary weight loss system. The commercial starts with the typical camera zooming around the world’s largest buffet made entirely of cinnamon buns, doughnuts and other assorted crappy food. The female announcer’s voice over goes something like, “Ho, ho, oh, all that food this holiday season. Some people put on up to ten pounds during this season but that doesn’t have to be you. Our revolutionary weight loss system will get you ready for bikini season early.” Now as the camera is still zooming around the food like a helicopter ride through the Grand Canyon, up pops the doctor in the right hand corner looking a little like picture in picture and as if the big glazed honey bun that is over is head is about to land on him and crush him to death in a gooey, sensational mess. He talks about how it’s easier to lose weight with a friend and if you get someone else to sign up with you then your first month is free – great way to sucker in your friends to go on a diet and get a discount for yourself. Now here’s the deal. The doctor, who is about ten inches tall on my television, is fat. That’s right, here he is talking about this revolutionary program and he’s got a 56 inch waist. He ends the commercial by saying, “And this holiday season, let the pounds go on someone else’s hips not yours! Call Today!” Never mind that this is hardly in the holiday spirit of things, giving the gift of poundage but I have to say it, physician, HEAL THYSELF!

This is the same reason I won’t go to a trainer that is fat. If the trainer is fat, how can they know anything about how I should train to look my best? Shouldn’t your trainer be what you aspire to look like when you become your own finished product? Yet there are a ton of these meat head guys walking around with the “trainer” shirts on who shouldn’t ought to be. Of course maybe I’m wrong maybe they just train people for those eating contests or something.

I get the idea behind portion control mentally, but physically I’ll eat all of anything that is in front of me. And please don’t put me at a party where all the food is laid out on a table buffet style. I’ll stand at the table and just graze until you no longer have to mow the back forty (or clean the dining room table as it were). I will chip and onion dip my way into a coma.   

I do appreciate that the diet industry is trying to help out obese America with putting tips on television in between us finding out that you can make almost anything with a Pillsbury Grands muffin from pizza to a homemade Cinnabon (and wouldn’t you have loved to have been in on that testing). But here’s the deal, come at us with some real tips that will help us. Not eat one bite. No one is going to eat one bite unless they are Nicole Richie who really doesn’t eat at all. I think they hook her up to an intravenous once a day and give her some sugar water and that’s about it. No wonder she got stopped for drunk driving, all she has to do with her body weight is have a thimble full of booze and she’s more of a drunk than Otis from the old Andy Griffith show! Honestly, looking at Nicole Richie is like watching Karen Carpenter, without the talent. But I digress and offend. I’ll do my best to keep going to the gym during my holiday travels and I’ll do my best to eat responsibly. But I always think of my guy when he asks for a bite of what I’m eating and likes it. He’ll say, “May I have most of that?” That’s how I feel about the food at holidays and if fitness gurus on television don’t like it, they can Bite This! – Don’t Get Me Started!

If You Have Children, Please Parent Responsibly – Don’t Get Me Started!

Here’s the disclaimer, I like kids, I really do, I was one myself once and I often still act like one. I think they’re great but the people that annoy me are the parents. Why oh why do some parents assume that because there’s no discipline or rules in their home that this is the way the rest of the world was created too? Didn’t these “parents” go to school and have to follow rules? Don’t some of these “parents” have jobs where they must follow rules of conduct? Or is it that there are too many rules everywhere else so when it comes to their brand of parenting, it’s suddenly a production number that was cut from Anything Goes? If you have children, please parent responsibly – Don’t Get Me Started!

I thought I timed it right. I thought I would be safe. I went to the grocery store at around 4:00pm today thinking I’d make it before all the ladies with suits on and tennis shoes would be “picking up” dinner or items to make a meal for their family (yes, professional women everywhere have now instantly been outraged). Well, on that score I was pretty successful. On first glance there were just a few older people milling about the aisles and me. Now let me say that I am someone who does not stop to read the labels of life, if I’m in a supermarket, I’m there to get food and try to talk myself out of the candy bar that is on sale at the moment at the checkout (unsuccessful on the candy bar, by the way – a Take 5 – chocolate, pretzel pieces, caramel and a million calories I’ll never have a chance of burning off). And so it would come to pass that I went down the cereal aisle because yes, I needed to buy more oatmeal to try to lower my cholesterol so that I don’t become a solid.

The minute I got into the aisle I saw them, two boys I’d say around eight and ten. A little pushing and a little shoving let me know in an instant that these two were brothers. (I recognized it immediately having one brother myself) The older one shouts at his mother, “Hey Ma, can we get some Captain Crunch?” The mother, very far down the aisle from her children (who are standing next to her cart) says, “No, we have cereal at home.” The older of the boys grabs a box from the shelf (be warned, this is why grocers put the kids’ cereal on bottom shelves) and goes running to his mother, who in the meantime has started talking on her cell phone. “This kind, Ma, this is the kind that we should get…can’t we have this kind?” The mother barely glances at her child and then says in a whisper as if the person on the other end of her phone can’t hear, “Put it back.”  The boy goes running back to his younger brother and their cart where he got the box. Meanwhile, a woman is pushing her cart down the aisle and stops because the boys and their cart are in her way. After putting the box back on the shelf the older brother tackles his younger brother and starts to wrestle with him, knocking into the woman’s cart. The woman says, “You boys shouldn’t be playing in the aisles. May I please get past you?” The mother, still on the cell phone comes stomping down the aisle, I was sure she was going to say something to her children who were still wrestling on the floor but oh no, she opens a mouth to the woman just trying to pass with her cart, “What did you say to my children?” The woman calmly repeated what she said and the mother says, “Look bitch, you shouldn’t tell other people’s children what to do.” The boys are looking up at their mother with a look of triumph, the mother goes back to her phone conversation and the woman after a look of disbelief finally gets past the boys, their mother and their cart.

I guess you get what I’m going to say before I even say it. I don’t care what you do with your children when you’re at home, that is your business. But out in the world there is a thing called, “other people” and they don’t want to tell you how to raise your children they just want to get past you and your monkeys and buy some God Damned Special K! Is that too much to ask? I think not. So do what you will but please tell me that there are still parents out there somewhere who don’t allow their children to run amok, who teach them to respect their elders and who understand that disciplining is not a four letter word (as you can plainly see, it’s a twelve letter word). So during the holiday season as well as throughout the year, if you’re going to parent, please parent responsibly – Don’t Get Me Started!

(If you’re reading this after sundown, Happy Hanukkah!)

If This Was My Mother Writing She’d Say It Was The Anti-Semetics At Work Again – Don’t Get Me Started!

Five out of the six calendars in my home have it wrong. Please don’t ask why I have so many calendars in my home, okay, I’ll tell you. Some were gifts and the others I just liked so you pretty much can’t go ten feet without running into a calendar. Not that I care all that much about what the date is but like everyone else, I buy them for the pictures (wink, wink). But here’s the deal, you’ll never find a calendar with the wrong date for Christmas but look for Hanukkah and I don’t care how Jewish you are, you’ll be confused. Why? Because some state the “first day of Hanukkah” and others list (correctly) “Hanukkah begins at Sundown” which it does. If this was my mother writing she’d say it was the Anti-Semitics at work again – Don’t Get Me Started!

You see the whole thing about Hanukkah is that it is the miracle of lights; the fact that the oil burned for eight nights when they weren’t sure it would even burn for one night. Therefore, the holiday begins at night there are no Hanukkah day activities. Now while I don’t think it’s anti-Semitism at work here (Did you hear they had a conference in Iran this week to talk about why and how the Holocaust didn’t happen? If it didn’t happen, why do these morons spend so much time talking about it? Me thinks they doth protest too much!) Anyway, the deal is that it is NOT Christmas Day, it’s Hanukkah Night but because it doesn’t fall on the same day every year on the calendar, we as Jews have to do the continual mental dance. “Now it says, first day of Hanukkah, now that would mean that the first night is the night before or are they saying the first day of Hanukkah meaning that that night will be the first night?” It’s God Damned exhausting, I can tell you that much.

So I’m calling it. This year Hanukkah starts on Friday night, December 15^th so count that as night one and count seven more after that and that my friends is a little thing I call Hanukkah! So don’t look at your calendar because the ones that say, “first day of Hanukkah”, also list the “last” day which we now all know doesn’t count because the last night of Hanukkah happened the night before the supposed last day of Hanukkah. Got it class? Good because now I’m really exhausted over the whole thing.

I get it, we Jews are crazy, the dates of our holidays seem to change each year because the Jewish calendar goes off of the moon’s cycles and not the sun’s. I don’t really understand it all myself but I know enough to know that’s why of our holidays every year seem like they’re happening on different days. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?

But the deal is that the people who make the calendars with the kitties on them and the twelve months of a different picture of Barbie should certainly be able to find out what date the Jewish holidays are starting and know that our holidays start at sundown, Although apparently that is not the case as my five calendars have proven. So for your benefit, I do hope this solves the mystery for you. And although I don’t think that there are any nefarious forces behind the confusion on calendars, I do think If this was my mother writing she’d say it was the Anti-Semitics at work again – Don’t Get Me Started!

“And Then Jimmy Got To Bring Home The Class Bunny” – Don’t Get Me Started!

There’s nothing worse than opening up a Holiday card and having that dreaded quarter folded paper fall out. You know, the “what we did all year” updates in the form of a piece of paper. If I haven’t talked to you all year, what would make you think I would want to know what you did every day for the past year? Don’t you think we would have talked? Now this may sound harsh but it’s really just the facts. I don’t care how many graphics you put on it or pictures of the kids when they carved the pumpkin, the plain fact is that your update is going to be the least representative thing about how your life really was this past year. Oh sure, some of you are really good at just giving the highlights but it seems that the highlights reel gets me about as excited as seeing sports bloopers. You’re going to write about the life you wish you had and if I want fiction, I’ll read Harry Potter. So please stop it already with the, “and then Jimmy got to bring home the class bunny” – Don’t Get Me Started!

I know that there are people right now ferociously trying to work on their fourteenth draft of their holiday letter and God knows there was a great Everybody Loves Raymond about it but let me take some pressure off of you, don’t write them because now I’m going to tell you how those of us who read it really feel. We’re bored by your goings on. Unless you climbed Everest or won a Nobel Prize, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t care that you traveled to the Grand Canyon and Suzie said, “Gee Mommy, isn’t this grand?” and how funny and ironic you thought that was because it’s neither.

Friends of mine get one such letter every year that is so juicy good that we read it together and laugh ourselves sick at all of the, “Then JR was made the class treasurer. You know he’s really great with money, in fact although he’s only eight he’s balancing our checkbook now. We really think that we have a Mensa candidate on our hands.” What they don’t tell you of course is that little JR hasn’t said two words that are intelligible ever, still eats mud at eight and is more like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman when it comes to the whole money thing. 

The bad news about technology is that now people can do more stuff to “spice” up the year in review letter, like add a million photos and then put thought bubbles over the heads of everyone, trying to be funny with sayings like, “Happy Holandise!” because the picture is of the whole family when they took that family cooking course at church. I hate them all. And most of the time, the pictures are of such a poor quality that you can’t really tell what you’re looking at in them. If you’re going to include photos, make them large enough so that I can see how fat you’ve become, how much hair your husband has lost and your child’s “Dumbo-sized” ears clearly. Don’t be putting these tiny pictures on it that I have no way of seeing what to really criticize.

Then there’s the whole adding the Santa shaped glitter that falls out all over God’s creation when you open the card. I don’t care that your kids think it’s cool or that the scrapbook club says, “It’s a must” – it gets all over my floor and then I have to hope I got it all so that the cats aren’t shitting out Santas for the next week.

If you’re sending cards, send them and include a real photo of the family. (I have enormous guilt about throwing them out and have a drawer stuffed with just such pictures because I think it’s kind of rude to thrown them out although with technology what it is today, it’s probably not that expensive if I throw them out.) But please, please, don’t send the year in review letters inside the holiday card unless you want all of your friends to be making fun of you behind your back for a new reason.

I care about you, honestly I do, I also care about making your holiday card list because it lulls me into a sense of feeling like a good person and popular, but I also have to tell you, I don’t want to read about everything you’ve done all year like I’m your teacher and you’re writing an essay about what you did on summer vacation. So send the card, add something like, “Wow, can’t believe we haven’t talked all year, let’s catch up soon.” But know that if you add the dreaded quarter folded paper with your family’s life on a piece of 8 ½ x 12 paper, oh I’ll read it all right and I’ll also make fun of it as I’m rolling my eyes I’ll say, “ can you even believe how exciting that year was for them? And then Jimmy got to bring home the class bunny” – Don’t Get Me Started!”

The Rabbi Who Stole Christmas(Trees That Is) – Don’t Get Me Started!

Oh I know you’re all waiting for it so I won’t disappoint you. I’m weighing in on the Christmas trees in the Washington-Tacoma airport. I have been to this airport many times and I have to say it’s a very nice one. Here’s the quick recap for all of you who have been sick or in Europe. A rabbi walks into an airport (no it’s not a joke, well not a Jew, a black and a priest kind of joke anyway) sees the Christmas trees, demands equal time by asking that the airport erect an eight foot menorah or else he’ll sue. The airport officials have no time to go about erecting menorahs and say that they would then have to represent every other type of religious holiday and so they decide instead to yank the Christmas trees altogether. Monday, Frontier Airlines (that only leases space from the airport) employees decided to pool their money and put Christmas trees on their counters. Since the airport does not own their space, they’re allowed to do it, most of the Whos from Washingtwhooville are fine with it except the rabbi who stole Christmas (trees that is) – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now I get the whole equal time thing and I’m the first one to bitch when it comes to there only being one end cap of Hanukkah merchandise to the aisle after aisle of Christmas lights and decorations but oh well, no one told you life was going to be fair. By the way, it isn’t so get the fuck over it.

The deal is this, as I’ve said before, as a Jewish child growing up your parents equip you with two facts that easily get you through Christmas. One – there is no Santa Claus. Two – we get eight nights and they have one day of Christmas. This is all you need to know as a child to see that you are getting the better end of the deal. So when all your friends are making out their lists for Santa at six years old, you’re doing your best Jackie Mason impersonation shrugging and saying, “Goyem, if it makes them happy why shouldn’t they believe in the Santa?”

Now when you compare the two holidays you’ll see that the only reason that Jews made such a big deal out of Hanukkah was so that their children wouldn’t feel left out. Hanukkah, while it was a miracle that the oil lasted for eight nights instead of one, really can’t compare to say Passover a holiday commemorating the whole smearing sheep blood over your door to protect the first Jewish born from being killed and smiting the Egyptians down with their Pharaoh’s own plague against the Jews instead striking the first born of the Egyptians, including his son. Now that’s some reason to celebrate. But what I’m saying is that this holiday really can’t compare with the Christian’s Savior being born. Sorry kids, I get it. The oil lit the lamp, the lamp stayed lit but that’s no “fall on your knees, oh hear the angels voices” kind of moment, it’s a GE commercial. 

I love Hanukkah, love lighting my candles and watching them burn down but I can appreciate a good Christmas tree too and I see no reason to get all mishuggah over a tree in an airport. Most of the time when they put up those big menorahs it gets on my nerves if you want to know the truth. Why? Because they have the maintenance guys light them during the day usually when you’re not supposed to light them until sundown and besides it’s about seeing the candles dwindle down as the days of the holiday dwindle down and not about some electric bulb in the shape of a flame staying lit until you unplug it.

In a perfect world everyone would be included in everything and then we would all be a little too much the same, thus boring as shit in my book. So I say, “haul out the holly, put up the tree before my spirit fall again…” (Go over to My Favorite Things page to hear the whole song from Mame) Trees have nothing to do with Jesus unless of course you say that he had something to do with creating the trees, which we all know that he didn’t because that would be his father who created them. You know, supposedly his father is the big “G” and we Jews certainly believe in him and if he created the trees (and created a burning bush to talk to Moses) who are we to deny a tree being in an airport? It’s not like they had a manger scene with live donkeys in the airport, which I would complain about but mostly because of the smell, they are trees for Christ sake! (Christ sake – some people will be offended some will find the humor – those who found humor go to the front of the line)

The thing is that a tree never hurt anyone and when we stop seeing the beauty in trees (even the dead ones that people fill up with lights and a bunch of handmade crappy ornaments or worse, those God awful Christopher Radko blown glass ugly pieces of crap – I know I just wrote Christian gay sacrilege) if we can’t see the beauty and appreciate it, there’s something wrong with us. Even us Jews plant trees in Israel for special occasions and when people pass away as a way of commemorating their life by creating a new life. The tree is a symbol of life and is a life itself. So why get so upset about a tree in an airport, rabbi? Having a menorah in an airport isn’t going to make me feel included. I’ve had a lifetime of being picked last for every sports team in school, as a gay man I’ve being told I shouldn’t and don’t exist by people and the government I pay for and I’ve even had people who didn’t want to be my friend because I was Jewish so a menorah isn’t going to make a difference, is it really? Because every injustice done to me, made me stronger and made my heart grow three sizes (like the Grinch). And shouldn’t a rabbi be known for bringing a community together and not as the rabbi who stole Christmas (trees that is) – Don’t Get Me Started!

I Don’t Mind Not Being Carded – Don’t Get Me Started!

This year will be another year of not sending out holiday cards for me. I can’t take the pressure. I mean, who gets one, who doesn’t and who gets just a signature and who gets a whole bobbemyseh (story) on the inside of the card. It’s all too much so I choose to abstain. The thing is that I did send out cards years ago so I always wonder if anyone is expecting them from me? The people who are my friends I talk to all the time and while I do appreciate getting a pretty card in the mail, I’d rather have them remember my birthday or just send me a card when they see one they like or think that is funny or whatever. To me, holiday cards seem to go more to acquaintances then friends. So here’s the official announcement, I don’t mind not being carded – Don’t Get Me Started!

The year I made the cards I was a regular craft-o-matic. Three different colored inks, stamps and embossing powder that had to be heated over the stove, the whole thing. I was Murray Stewart but by the time you get done you’ve made all these cards, written in all of them, pay to send them out and then what? I know, I know, if you’re like my mother you’ll say, “It’s just a nice thing to do.” And I’m not denying that it is a nice thing to do, I just don’t want to be a part of it. Truth be told, the reason is not the cards or the postage, it’s all the “keeping track” that wears me thin. Now if so and so sent me a card last year, then I have to remember to send one to them. Or if they didn’t send me one then I suppose I don’t have to send them one this year but then it looks as though I had my feelings hurt because I didn’t get one from them so I should send one anyone. Mainly because it could have been a mistake and they just forgot to send me one so they’ll send me one this year and then I won’t have sent them one and then I’ll feel horrible and also because if it wasn’t a mistake it makes me look like the “bigger person” for continuing to send them. Now I don’t know if I’m the only one in the world with this inner monologue when it comes to holiday cards but I’m just telling you this is just the start of how my mind begins to race over the whole thing.

Now understand that I like getting cards, I like to look at how pretty they are and I line them all up and I look at the cards and say, “Well, don’t those look pretty?” But that’s where it ends until they gather dust and eventually get thrown away. (Now I sound like my father – the man who always told us to never take a picture unless there’s someone in it because if it doesn’t have a person in it, you’re really wasting film because you really won’t care about the picture when all is said and done. I hate to admit it but the older I get the more I agree with him. I don’t tend to save the photos of the sunsets, only the ones with people – I know, without scenic photos how would we know what Mount Rushmore looks like – another argument for another time.) My point is that I’m a complete hypocrite. I love getting and sending cards, just not at the holidays when there’s all ready enough stress.

Trust me when I say that I send at least one card out a week for a birthday or for no reason at all but the holidays just don’t make sense to me and I think it may have something to do with being Jewish. Now what I mean is, that I blame Hallmark, I’ve been on this tirade before but it’s true. If you go into a Hallmark and search for the Hanukkah cards, you’ll have quite the hunt on your hands and when you finally find them, they’ll be these smaller than Christmas card sized, sealed with plastic wrap instead of a box and come in an weird number of cards like eight to a box.

And what am I supposed to send to friends who aren’t Jewish? I can’t send them a Hanukkah card but I’m also not going to be sending a card with the manger scene on it. I suppose I could send the generic, “Happy Holidays” cards but let’s be honest aren’t those always the ugliest ones? They just seem too generic for me and I’m the least generic person I know (as if you didn’t know by reading my very opinionated opinions here). Then there are the “funny” cards with phrases like, “Happy Whatever” well these seem to just reflect an attitude of disdain and while I have plenty of that, is that really what I want to be sending out to show my sense of holiday happiness? I don’t think so.

So hopefully when you started reading this and were completely appalled by the fact that I said I don’t want and won’t be sending out cards you now understand that just like everything in life, “it’s not you, it’s me.” The whole mishagas is enough to make me more meshuggina than I already I am. So if you want to send me a card, send it but don’t look for one from me and if you don’t want to send me a card I’ll understand. I don’t mind not being carded – Don’t Get Me Started!

(to be continued...)

Technological Advances In Frustration – Don’t Get Me Started!

When you consider that the first all-talking movie, The Jazz Singer (please remove all thoughts of Neil Diamond and Lucy Arnaz from your mind) was released in 1927 and by 1939 you had movies in color like Gone With The Wind and Wizard of Oz, you can’t help but marvel at the way the technologists of their day created something literally from almost nothing. From cranking a handle to show pictures that moved to talkies to the big budget color musicals you’re only talking a little over ten years. Amazing. So you would think that when people can do that and yes, I’ll use the old cliché, can put men on the moon, one would think that they wouldn’t send a piece of technology our way before its time. I am now specifically talking about the “voice recognition” technology. Or as I like to call them, technological advances in frustration – Don’t Get Me Started!

Let’s begin with the automated “guest service” systems that use the voice recognition system. I loathe these almost as much as I loathe having to talk to someone from Outer Mongolia when I finally do get a person. A person who’s knowledge of the English language consists of knowing just enough English phrases to piss you off you know like, “Britney no underwears, you see?” Very helpful when you have an erroneous charge on your credit card.  It makes you wish you had asked for it in Spanish even though you don’t speak Spanish; because you would probably stand just about as much of a chance understanding the person.  But I’ll leave these people alone for the moment. No, I’m talking about the unmistakable medicated voice that says, “Welcome to the voice recognition system. I can help you do many things.” This is a lie. The electronic Jack In The Box is going to understand you just about as much as your parents did when you were a teenager. When you get this for the start of your call, either dial “0” and hope they aren’t a company that doesn’t completely prohibit you from talking to a live person or hang up and figure it out yourself. I have just saved you three hours, a lot of alcohol and your pet getting yelled at by you, providing no satisfaction to you and your dog wondering, “When the hell is this idiot going to shut up and give with the Milkbones?” Some allow you to “key in” your information using your telephone keypad. Always key in when you can and realize that although you typed in a four, the “See And Say” barn animal when you pull the cord is going to call it an “8” or simply “moo” at you. I hate it all.

Worse than the regular prompts on these systems are the ones that try to make the situation better after they’ve fucked up. They have no skills to make it better; they’re a computer for Christ sake! Someone was smart enough to make the system apologetic in its words so I guess that’s something. “I’m sorry I did not understand you, will you please repeat the information?” Now my first reaction is always, “You don’t understand me? Who does lady? I have a list of people in my life who don’t understand me right now, do you want to take a number?” But once again, my wit and venting would be lost because then I’d have to hear, “I’m sorry I did not understand you, will you please repeat the information.” I think I’m going to try that line the next time I’m in an argument or don’t agree with someone. You know, someone is talking about how gays shouldn’t be married, I’m just going to say, “I’m sorry, I did not understand you, will you please repeat the information again?” I’ll keep repeating it over and over again like the automated systems until they break down and agree it should be legal or hang up on me (even in person).

And for those of you (like me) walking around with the phones that dial when you say a person’s name. If you truly use this feature, you are risking losing every friend and piece of sanity in your head. I was so excited when I got a phone that had this on it (about four phones ago – I’m a technology junkie – only the latest and greatest, please) so I spent the two hours saying everyone’s name into the phone recorder. You have to say it like three times or something because the phone is “learning”. Learning my ass. Not one call that I ever tried to make with this phone dialed the right person. I would say, “Mom” and it would say, “Michael” – it was like doing word association at an analyst. But the part that’s going to make you really crazy is that it’s your own voice mocking you. No matter whom you say you want, the recorded you will tell you whom you should be speaking with instead. I have never been so frustrated in my life. There I would be, on my Bluetooth headset (of course) screaming, “ MOM!” and it would be me answering back to myself from a much calmer day, “Michael”. I thought about re-recording everyone’s name in a state of agitation, as a possible fix for the software or update as you will but I just couldn’t take it.

The thing here is please don’t try to give us technology that either we’re not ready for or is not ready for us. It’s a little like Phen Phen, it was the greatest diet pill invented until someone discovered it killed you too. Well, at least you’d have gone down three casket sizes before you went, right? I understand that there’s trial and error in everything but put the rats from the lab on the phone with the voice recognition system or Ahmed from American Express and you just see how crazy that rat gets. There was an old commercial Orson Wells did for Almaden wine. He would say, “We will sell no wine before its time.” I’m suggesting the same thing, don’t sell us on any technology until it really works and if you can’t do that, please make sure that the computerized people can understand the words, “mother-fucker”. Technological advances in frustration – Don’t Get Me Started!

Whatever Happened To Gift Wrap? – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’ll admit it; I do most of my shopping online. There are a few reasons for this; one is that if I go into a store most likely I’m coming out with something for me and usually not anyone else. Prime example was today. I went into Banana Republic with thoughts of everyone but myself, what I came out with was a stunning blazer for a third of its original price that fit me perfectly. The second reason I shop online is that almost everyone I shop for is in another state so it makes it much more convenient to do shopping and shipping online. However, there’s one slight problem, at almost every place I’ve shopped something is missing this year in trying to send a swell looking gift. Whatever happened to gift wrap? – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’m very careful when I’m shopping online to make sure that when I get to the shipping address that it isn’t listed as the same as billing. When it’s time for the gift message, I always put one in and then I buck up and curse at the fact that I’m paying an additional $5 to $7 for gift wrap that amounts to a box with a cardboard ribbon/band on it. But pay it I always do because I want it to look nice when it arrives. Well, this year I’ve had to tell everyone to not open the box that comes to them because it’s the gift wrap too. I hate it, I hate it mostly because I know what I would be thinking if I were them, “Hmmm, no gift wrap, eh. Didn’t think I was worth the extra money to have it gift wrapped, I see.” But honestly, from Sharper Image to Amazon.com no one has the gift wrap option and I hate them all for it.

I know that I could have everything sent to my house, wrap it and then send it out but now you’re just talking crazy. Not that they wouldn’t look amazing, after all, I was a professional gift wrapper at a major department store back in my day and I have some mad skills when it comes to wrapping. But then I’d be paying to ship it twice and Jewish or not, that’s just crazy. So I’m forced looking like a schlepper instead of a superstar.

I have to wonder why these places don’t offer gift wrap this year? I could almost swear that some of these places did offer it last year. Did some of the elves get laid off at the North Pole or what? Or do they just not want to hire people to put the crap in a different colored cardboard box? I’m baffled and not happy about it one bit.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that you’re suddenly in “Let’s Make A Deal” when you’re shopping online. Everything is either on sale or will be on the “Friday sale” or it’s out of stock. These sales seem to be so random. I can’t figure them out really. So now, along with the feeling of being seen as cheap for the lack of wrap, I’m feeling like I’m probably being ripped off along the way too. Whatever it is that I’m buying is most likely going to be on the Wednesday at midnight to 12:05am sale or something and I know that I’ll miss saving that $2 and it’s killing me.

Dear God, it used to be that all you had to worry about with online purchasing was identity fraud but oh no, not now, it’s suddenly catching the crap when it’s on sale, looking to make sure it’s not backordered, checking the addresses twice, looking for the gift wrap button and only finding a “free gift message” – that’s a crock too, the “free gift message” is printed on the invoice (usually with the prices). Why did they take the joy out of this shopping too? And shouldn’t it all be getting faster and easier online. Shouldn’t it just be whipping around at such megabyte speed that you could even choose what color wrap you want and a coordinating card with it? Shouldn’t we be getting more options, cheaper, faster and better? If not, what the hell do we need with progress? What do we need with twelve million search engines if none of them can find the gift wrap? I think I’ll start an online store where you have your unwrapped gifts sent to me then I’ll wrap and ship them to wherever they need to go. Sure, it’s going to cost you a fortune but they’ll all be coordinated, wrapped within an inch of their lives and you won’t be saying, whatever happened to gift wrap? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Stumble Off The Stage And Go To The Kitchen – Don’t Get Me Started!

You couldn’t really call me a Dolly Parton fan, I like her a lot and I’ve even seen some of her less than great movies more than once (I’ll admit to knowing “Straight Talk” a little bit better than I should) but I’ve always just liked her energy, attitude and frankly (though I don’t own any of her albums) I like her voice. The exception to this is Nine To Five, I love, love, love this movie, everyone in it and everything about it. I quote it often and although people have no idea what I’m saying (for the most part) I get great enjoyment out of it. But why in the world the Kennedy Center Honors people would pick Jessica Simpson to sing the classic title song to Nine To Five at the ceremony for Dolly Parton is beyond me. Stumble off the stage and go to the kitchen – Don’t Get Me Started!

I have no problem admitting I know all the words to the song, “Nine To Five” or that I know that Dolly Parton wrote that song by clacking her nails together to make that percussive opening to it. I love it and I love the way she sings it. And if you don’t know, apparently I know it better than Jessica Simpson who forgot the words at the Kennedy Center and just stopped mumbling, “so nervous” and left the stage. No one applauded, nor should they have applauded. I don’t know if I’m more offended that they chose someone like her to sing the Parton classic or that they’re calling her a “singer/actress” in all the articles about the incident.

The thing is, what is Jessica Simpson really? She’s a product that was created by producers who knew she looked hot, could sing a little and would sell records. And so she did. Only by the grace of all that is celebrity did she wind up in a Hollywood marriage with someone as marginally talented as herself and have a hit television show. Perhaps Jessica should just go ahead and start hanging out with Paris and Britney as the only requirement to hang out with them is apparently that you forget to wear your underwear.

I’m tired of these so-called “stars” being invited to events that outclass their abilities. The only way Jessica Simpson should be allowed in the Kennedy Center is if she buys a ticket. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, today’s gang of celebrities don’t have the talent or the savvy of stars of yesteryear. I think it’s because becoming famous requires so little these days. All you have to do is have one song hit the charts or a sex video slip out and you’re suddenly a star. I don’t blame Jessica, I blame the disease of celebrity that has gripped our every moment and thought.

There’s a line from Terms of Endearment that Shirley Maclaine delivers brilliantly to Danny Devito who is hanging on her every word, “Don’t worship me until I’ve earned it.” Well, that’s how I feel about these celebs of today; they haven’t earned it yet so you won’t see me worshipping at their altar any time soon.

I feel bad for Jessica Simpson, I feel worse for Dolly Parton and I feel still worse for anyone who doesn’t know the movie Nine To Five. If you don’t know every word of it, run I tell you, to the nearest place that sells DVDs and buy it. You’ll want to watch it over and over again. Just thinking of Dolly Parton saying, “Ah Judy, could you come back here for a minute?” puts a smile on my face. And for Jessica well, she proved her worth as she did her best stumble off the stage and go to the kitchen – Don’t Get Me Started!

Nothing Says Christmas Quite Like A Dead Cat In The Hat In The Front Yard – Don’t Get Me Started!

 

I love to see all the houses decorated at this time of year, honestly, I do. I think they look pretty. I love to see the people who have obviously spent hours on every detail to create the perfect holiday scene in their front yard. I don’t even mind the people who just have lights up and some candles in the windows. Now I’ll admit it’s a little odd seeing these wintery holiday scenes here in Vegas but I like it. I marvel every year to see the new inventions that they’ve come up with, who can ever forget the year the icicle lights first came out? Or the second year of the icicle lights when that was all anyone put up. Along with great inventions like icicle lights a few years back they invented the inflatable characters for your yard. Well, I think that some of these are cool and others not so cool but here’s the deal, when I go to work in the morning, there’s a house that has all of their inflatables unplugged (in case you didn’t know, they have fans in them to make them stay inflated) so all you see is the limp nylon deflated carcass of Santa laying on the front of the lawn. Nothing says Christmas quite like a dead Cat In The Hat in the front yard – Don’t Get Me Started!

The people who only have one inflatable in your yard, God bless you. You get the idea that “less really is more” and that one, much like Lance Bass is enough. But to the people who have done an ode to all things inflatable, it just looks cheap or as if you’re selling them. Do you really need the inflatable SpongeBob with the Santa hat on next to the inflatable Santa, only to be next to the inflatable Frosty? It’s too damn much I tell you. And if you drove past the house when all of these are just lying on the lawn deflated, looking like some bizarre mass murder you’d be creeped out too. I can’t take it I tell you. I can’t see Tigger coming up out of the chimney all happy one night and the next morning see him laying there as if the chimney is eating his leg and sucked all the life out of him. At the very least you have to admit that it’s disturbing.

And as if the inflatable people and animals weren’t enough, last year someone came up with the great idea to make “snow globe” inflatables where there are actually things like a Snowman family or the Disney characters in a big plastic bubble and it half-heartedly blows fake snow around in it. You know where I’m going here. That’s right, all I can think of is that TV movie of John Travolta as the Boy In The Plastic Bubble. I can’t help it, every time I see one of those I want to go to the yard, put my hand up against the plastic and doing my best Glynnis O’Connor impersonation and kiss a snowman through the plastic wrap! This I also find a little creepy, like pheasant under glass, it’s holiday characters under plastic. And if you ever see these deflated, well let’s just say that it looks like a used condom and you can fill in the details with your own filthy imagination.

Now if I was a kid today and my friend had these inflatables in their yard I know exactly what I would do. That’s right, I’d do what Mickey and Judy would do, I’d put on a show. I’d have all the kids in the neighborhood that played instruments form a marching band, I’d get a line of girls to do my own version of the Rockettes and I’d have the kids with no talent put on clown makeup and hold the strings of the inflatables as if they were walking them down Broadway. Of course I would need to double cast myself not only as the big announcer for the show but a lead from a Broadway show doing my number before the start of the parade. Always plan ahead, see the Broadway numbers come first and then I can get back to my “broadcasting booth” which would really just be me crouched and smashed between the house and Mrs. Miller’s hedge with a drum stick from my brother’s set as a microphone. Okay, that scared even me, it all came way too fast and I can envision it all too perfectly. And now you know how I spent my childhood, trying to get the kids in the neighborhood to put on a show much to their chagrin. 

Well, I hope that’s what some kids are doing out there with their inflatables. It seems as though the era of the inflatables has killed the imagination. You no longer have to figure out how the thick light up plastic candy canes are going to look lining your driveway and whether or not they’ll be too much what with the reindeer and the entire manger scene. Today it’s just, “Plug in the Santa and the sixteen other inflatables Martha, and there you go, you got you some Christmas.” Well that’s all well and good for the creatively challenged but here’s the deal – if you’re going to have these things, you’re just going to have to have them inflated 24/7 because if you don’t, it’s suddenly going to look as though Jim Jones gave Kool-Aid to Santa, Tigger, SpongeBob and the rest of the “inflatable followers”. See, I told you it was creepy. Nothing says Christmas quite like a dead Cat In The Hat in the front yard – Don’t Get Me Started!

Friends Don’t Give Friends Crap – Don’t Get Me Started!

I can tell that some of you are all ready so nervous just from reading the title of this blog that you’ve broken out into a cold sweat. You’re saying to yourself, “What if I don’t know I’m giving crap?” “What if all I can afford is crap?” “Why is Scott so damn judgmental?” “Why do I love Scott and everything about him so damn much?” (Okay I admit it I threw that last one in purely for my own self-gratification.) The thing is that you don’t have to give something expensive to make a friend’s holiday bright and don’t forget that expensive things can be crap too. But don’t worry my little loves; I’m going to walk you through all of it. Rule One: Friends don’t give friends crap – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now unfortunately, I can’t list the items by name that I’ve been given through the years that were crap because most of my friends read this blog (they had better be reading, they’ll get their written quizzes later and if someone hasn’t been reading, their crap gift goes in a future blog) but the good news is that I have received more crap gifts from acquaintances than actual friends. (How do you tell the difference? By the gifts of course, keep up.) Okay, you forced it out of me, when I was doing theatre, every year we would do a Christmas show and do a gift exchange, invariably I would be given a Christmas ornament. If you’ve read any of my blogs you know, I’m Jewish so why anyone would give a Jew an ornament is beyond me. I don’t care if it is the limited edition 2006 Etch-A-Sketch Hallmark ornament or not, this Jew does not have a Christmas tree and therefore, there is no need for giving the gift of ornaments.

Practical gifts – these are a slippery slope and one you simply shouldn’t give unless expressly asked for by the recipient. This would be anything that slices, dices, makes Julian fries or lights when you clap. The problem with a practical gift is that it’s almost always saying something you don’t want it to say. No matter how cool you think it is or think that someone else will think it is, it still says, “As seen on TV” on the side of it and it can never end good. An example would be that set of Tupperwareish containers that all collapse on themselves. What a gift like this says is, “The last time you brought deviled eggs to my house they smelled and tasted funny and you’re a generally clean person but apparently you don’t clean your containers well enough so here I bought you seven hundred different sized plastic containers that you don’t have any room for but at least they all squash down, your food won’t taste weird and isn’t that cool?” You’ve just given crap.

Explanation gifts – I knew someone once who would barely let you open the gift before they were explaining it to you. <I start to open the gift> My friend, “I don’t know if you’re going to like this or not but I remembered that one time seven years ago when you had long bangs that you liked that barrette I had and I thought that you would want one for when you wash your face to keep your hair out of the way but then you cut your hair but I just saw they made them again and I thought you might grow your hair back out so I got it for you anyway but if you think it’s a stupid gift I’m sorry and you can take it back.” This person was also huge into the “collection” gifts. “I know you’re Jewish but you played Bob Cratchet in the Christmas show last year and this year in the collection they had Tiny Tim and Scrooge so I wanted to make sure you had everything in the collection and I think that next year they’re coming out with each of the ghosts too, so…” This is why the good Lord invented Ebay. If you have to explain it or I already know what I’m getting because it’s part of the collection from last year but isn’t my china pattern, it’s crap.

Now I’m a huge gift person but I like to give something when I see something so perfect for someone any time of the year and also make a big deal out of birthdays because that you own alone. (Unless you know people with the same birthday but you get my idea). So the idea of getting something for someone just because it’s Christmas or Hanukkah has always felt like a lot of pressure for a little pay off. This craze that began quite simply gets more stressful every year and I see no reason to buy into it. If you buy into it you end up getting someone “Jams from around the world” in a six-piece gift set from the supermarket. So allow me to help you so that you don’t become one of the crap people.

First of all, think about the person. How close are you? Do you spend a lot of time together? If so, you’re ahead of the curve because you’ve seen these people in their natural habitat. If you know they go to Starbucks everyday then it’s a perfect gift and one that they’ll use. (There was a Starbucks card with cartoon people on it awhile back so I wrote my name and my friend’s name with a permanent marker above the people’s heads on the card – she still uses that card and it’s been two years). Personalized stuff is great, whether it’s a luggage tag or pen it shows that you cared enough to really pick it out for just them. (The exception is tiny license plates and key chains that are pre-printed off a rack unless your name is Shaniqua and then God Bless, your friend DID go out of their way to get it made.) Another good tip is to listen, a lot of times someone will tell you what he or she really want in everyday conversation, “So I get into the gym today and I can’t find my headphones for my Ipod again.” They make decent headphones where the cords all coil up in a handy case. Listen and learn is the best advice I can give and if you really get stumped you can always still get a Chia pet. (Just kidding)

The important thing to remember is that you don’t have to spend a fortune and don’t try to guess what someone else is going to get you so you can spend that same amount because that’s a game you can never win. Holidays are the time when you can finally impose your taste on someone else, okay I’m kidding but the thing is that if it’s something you really like (and don’t have to explain) then most of the time the person you’re buying for will love it too because you like it. I love when someone says to me, “I wanted one of these for myself but I just haven’t gotten one yet so I wanted you to have one.” Now you not only get something cool that your friend is envious of but you know what to get them the next time you need a gift for them.

There have been years when I’ve gotten a lot of gifts and years where I’ve gotten just a few but the quantity does not matter here, it’s all about the cliché – the thought behind the gift. Hell, a friend of mine once gave me a pinecone that came from a house that Donald O’Connor once lived in. He knew that I had loved Donald O’Connor and although it felt a little like that I Love Lucy episode when she steals a grapefruit from Richard Widmark, it’s something he knew I would love, didn’t cost anything and I still treasure. So please, before you grab in desperation for that so-called gift that is really just a mug with candy in it remember, it doesn’t have to be something they’ve always wanted or you’ve always wanted, it just needs a little thought behind it. Because friends don’t give friends crap – Don’t Get Me Started!

And for some great gift ideas, check out WWSW? The new What Would Scott Want list of gifts…

Spin This Off– Don’t Get Me Started!

Raised on television like most of us were in the 1970’s and 80’s I know the power of a good spin off. I remember thinking the minute that Lindsay Wagner appeared out of nowhere on the Six Million Dollar Man that in a very short time they were either going to have Bionic babies or she was going to get her own show. Today’s reality programming has caused many imitators that can’t really be called spin offs but I smell some coming our way very soon that we need to be very afraid of and need to say, spin this off  – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now back in the day some spin offs worked and others didn’t. I don’t think anyone would argue that Rhoda, Maude and The Jeffersons were all great spin offs. But some of us also remember The Ropers, the spin off from Three’s Company too so we know that they didn’t always get it right but at least they were working with characters we liked. Who cared that they completely changed who the character was and how they behaved – case in point, Mrs. Garrett leaving Different Strokes for her run on Facts Of Life. The point is that they were actors we wanted to see more of and more featured so even if they went to a show that required them to change a bit (Phyllis Lindstrom from the Mary Tyler Moore Show are you listening?) it was worth if because you got to see more of Cloris Leachman or whomever.

Reality shows should just leave well (or bad) enough alone. We all remember the start of it, when The Bachelor became The Bachelorette or was it the other way around? But now we’re sinking lower and lower. Now “New York” from The Flavor of Love is getting her own show for no apparent reason – and don’t ask me how I know about her, I’m already embarrassed I mentioned her. But it doesn’t stop there. We know that Martha Stewart’s version of The Apprentice didn’t work but I’m looking deeper into a more insidious way of “spinning off” reality shows.

This past week I Tivo’d my Friday night fave, “What Not To Wear” on TLC. If you don’t know about this show then you should but suffice to say that it’s a makeover show where a male and female stylist find someone with a really offensive wardrobe, make them throw everything out and shop for a whole new wardrobe in New York using $5,000 on a Visa card. I love the banter between the two hosts and although I don’t always agree with Stacy and Clinton, I love this show. Now they’ve tried things to “spice” it up, like making over three women about to go to a high school reunion that haven’t seen one another since high school but the format has always been basically the same. That is until this past week. This week, suddenly it’s just the Clinton show going to help a couple in California not only with clothes but their emotional lives as well. Now I like Clinton just fine but explain to me when he got his therapy degree? Why anyone would listen to him about relationships is beyond me. Maybe he does have some sort of degree but the whole thing just bothered me and frankly, bored me. I mean, here he is driving up in “his” Jaguar (subtle product placement there) to save this couple of thirteen years who really need very little help. This was not an extreme makeover by any stretch of the imagination and though I’m sure the couple themselves got something out of it, I felt like Morales from A Chorus Line, “And I felt nothing.” I can only hope that this was an experiment that the Network Frankensteins at TLC tried and won’t try to make it a new show. I need Stacy, I need the fluff of changing someone’s wardrobe and them realizing how much they changed inside too and I need Clinton to wear some damn socks but what I don’t need is the Clinton show.

Also from the land of things I don’t need, is Carson Kressley from Queer Eye on QVC selling clothes for two hours. I find him the most annoying of “the gays” on Queer Eye and now he’s the Kathie Lee of QVC? Do we think he really made these clothes? Now some of you may think that I’m gay bashing what with Clinton and Carson but that’s the beauty of being gay, I can say it’s stupid and not fear that anyone thinks I’m coming out against “the gays.”   

I guess I need to face facts that the times they have a changed but I long for the good old days of spin offs that made sense and had people we cared about on them. I don’t want to see The Biggest Loser winner go on the Great Race and then wash their new Ford (product placement is important). What I really want is to turn on my television and see Carol Burnett doing an old movie parody, Valerie Harper with a schmata on her head and Dianne Carroll as Julia, is that too much? Apparently. So television, spin this off – Don’t Get Me Started!

Good Grief, It Was A Charlie Brown Christmas Already! – Don’t Get Me Started!

At the constant risk of dating myself, I have to say that I love the modern conveniences of cable/digital television and the invention of Tivo. But one would think that with all of these hours of programming to fill that surely the networks would allow the classic Christmas television programs to stay where they’ve always been, you know, like say, around Christmas for Chrissakes! Good grief, it was a Charlie Brown Christmas already! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Like having Lucy pull the football away from me; I cannot even begin to believe that A Charlie Brown Christmas has already been on network television! What the hell is going on here? Suddenly I feel sure of nothing. I understand that we have to have the Christmas stuff in stores prior to Thanksgiving now because retailers are competing with online retailers and the whole holiday is really about seeing who can sell the most crap earliest for a holiday that the last time I looked still only comes on December 25^th every year but what does that have to do with watching Snoopy decorate his doghouse or hearing Linus tell us all the “true” meaning of Christmas?

I know what you’re saying, get over it, buy it on DVD and you can watch it whenever you want but see what some people don’t get is the joy you had every year waiting for it to be “the” night where the Charlie Brown Christmas and the claymation specials were on television every year. I don’t care that I never celebrated Christmas, I need to see me some Peanuts characters dancing around the pathetic tree, Hermey the elf and the Heat Miser just like every other small and big kid in the world. Well, now it’s no longer all on one night apparently because Charlie Brown and the gang were already on without me and I think that Hermey has probably become a dentist this year without me as well. How can I survive without hearing the nasal voice of Rudolph (due to the fact he has his nose cover on because his father’s embarrassed of his nose – another story for another time) say, “Clarice”?

I love that I can microwave popcorn (though a part of me does miss watching the Jiffy Pop pop) and I love that I can record anything I don’t want to watch right now or watch without commercials but I truly feel as though getting rid of playing the Christmas specials on one night, closer to Christmas itself is a big mistake. It’s almost like they didn’t know where to put them so they just shove them in wherever they can when they won’t disturb the ratings for classic shows like Deal Or No Deal or Grey’s Anatomy.

Here we are, living in a generation who puts every show in “blocks” on television. If you wanted to you could watch the entire season of Project Runway or Flavor Of Love all in one day as they play all of them in what we used to call “marathons” but are now called “blocks” and yet they can’t figure out that it makes sense to give us a “block” of all our classic Christmas favorites?

Go ahead and tell me that I’m old and I don’t get how Christmas or consumers work or anything about television programming but how many of us would have really liked to pop our popcorn and settle in for a night of clay that walks, talks and sings this year? Count me in! Technology has made a lot of things better but some things are just better left alone. If you notice there’s a lot of merchandise that features the characters from our favorite old Christmas special shows so someone besides me must remember. Television executives (who no doubt read my every word) I beg you, leave the Christmas specials alone and put them all on one night please. And whatever you do, please don’t try to “update” them. I don’t want to see a claymation version of Frosty wearing “bling” and rapping, I don’t want to see Rudolph with his Ipod on and I don’t want to see Fred Astaire’s claymation version of himself krumping. I know everything in life changes but come on, good grief, it was a Charlie Brown Christmas already! – Don’t Get Me Started!

How Can We Get The “Care” Back In Health Care? – Don’t Get Me Started!

When you go to a doctor’s office, normally the people you have to worry about are all the sick people but the last few times I’ve gone to the doctor, I’ve noticed that most of the nurses and worse, the scheduling and paying nurses seem not to understand the word, “care” is in their profession’s title. How can we get the “care” back in health care? – Don’t Get Me Started!

So I go in and I sign in with the check-in nurse. I understand that this is the first place everyone has to stop in order to move forward so one might naturally think that this person would try to give the illusion of being helpful, engaging or at least cordial. Now I understand that they have five questions they need answered (1. name, 2. doctor seeing, 3. appointment time, 4. date of birth and 5. any insurance change) now you can look at this one of two ways, with always asking the same five questions, they should be able to understand that they’re going to ask those same questions all day long and be decent about it or they can be over it and not even bother to look up in case you’re on fire or something. The check in nurses at my doctor seem to always choose the latter and I’m convinced if they had to pick me out in a line up I would get off easily if it depended on them recognizing me.

There I stand looking around the room at all of the sickies, doing what everyone else does. I’m wondering who looks the healthiest to sit next to and then after I sit down I look around the room to see if I can diagnose what the illness might be that everyone has. There was a woman today sitting two seats down from me who couldn’t stop sneezing. She sneezed and I said, “God bless you” about a million times. She’s in for the common cold, an easy one. The child coughing with that phlegmy kind of cough – bronchitis. I always call my mother an ADD (Almost A Doctor) because she has medical books where she looks up every symptom anyone might have and she’s always just close enough to the proper diagnosis that we keep going back to her asking her to look in the book to find out what we have for any particular ailment.

They call me in and the male nurse refuses to make eye contact and tells me to get on the scale. Now I notice that I’m on the wrong side of the office to be seeing my doctor but before I can say anything, she’s got a hold of me – Scrubalina, I’ll call her. Now I’ve seen Scrubalina before, although she wears the cute scrubs like everyone else she has no time for anyone or anything and I’ve seen her even yelling at the doctors like they are complete idiots. Everyone listens to the great Scrubalina. I don’t know why everyone is afraid of her as she’s only five feet tall but she’s just so demanding and forceful that you’re afraid if you don’t do what she says she’ll take you down. The male nurse motions to the scale and I get on and almost immediately Scrubalina has my wrist, “I’m taking your pulse and this that I’m putting in your ear is to take your temperature. Okay, go sit in that blue chair over there until there’s a room available.” God, she’s scary. So I go and sit in the chair, meanwhile, the nurse for my doctor sees me sitting there and we exchange pleasantries. Then my doctor gets sight of me and I’m relieved when I say, “I think I’m on the wrong side of the office. Can I come on your side?”

The exchange with the doctor and his nurse is fine. I like both of them, they laugh at my jokes and we all are more than civil with one another. But then I have to go pay, first I have to pass Scrubalina who is screaming at another doctor, “I knew he lied when he said he had tested his blood sugar levels this morning and now you know it so what are you going to do about it doctor? <catching another nurse passing by> Don’t put them in that room and where’s the file I asked you for?” Keeping my back close to the wall like I’m in a 007 movie, I manage to get to the area where you pay and schedule appointments.

Now much like a zoo, they make you stay behind a red line so that you don’t disturb the animals, I mean nurses, in their natural habitat. You get to watch them talk to one another ignoring you, laugh about other patients and then finally call you up to pay. I got through the whole paying thing, almost when from behind comes Scrubalina screaming at the DeVry graduates behind the counter. “Hey, Shantiqua. I said, Shantiqua – Bernadette what is Shantiqua doing?” “She’s helping a patient.” “Well, I don’t care about that, you better tell her that Dr. Jimmy isn’t coming in today. He just called so she can figure out what to do about his patients, not me? Get it? Well, then tell Shantiqua that!” I admit although it wasn’t a complete cower, I did sort of step aside and bow my head a little bit. Finally I paid and then I said that the doctor wanted to see me in six weeks and could I make an appointment. Bernadette looks at me and just laughs, “We don’t have the calendar ready for January yet. You’ll have to call when it gets closer to January.”

As I started to walk out of the door from the patient rooms, it flung open and I was almost decapitated by a drug salesmen swinging a box of sandwiches that no doubt Scrubalina would need to decide if and who was getting. As I walked out of the office with my prescriptions, paperwork and samples all I could think was this was how I was treated and I have good insurance. Not to go all Hillary Rodham on you about how bad our health care system is, especially for those without insurance but all I want to know is how can we get the “care” back in health care? – Don’t Get Me Started!