Mortification at the Movies

Hello??

Did it occur to anyone in Hollywood that fans of Sacha Baron Cohen's edgy/outrageous humor might be coming to his latest flick with family members in tow?

Specifically... one's sweet and especially innocent 14-year-old son?

Well, innocent no more, thanks to the proliferation of penises, deluge of dildos, scenes of actual sex, heart-stopping Hitler references, gaudy gay overlay, Mideast mangling, black-baiting, tongue-burning language torture and generally perverted prank that is Bruno.

Make no mistake: I live for this stuff. The jokes and sight gags were coming fast and furious, the audience around me was nearly frenzied with hysterical laughter and I had tears streaming down my face from repeated convulsions of mirth.

The problem was balancing my enjoyment of the movie's breathtaking chutzpah with sheer mortification, for sitting to my left, my young teen was watching simulated gay oral sex, a naked dominatrix with overstuffed boobs weilding a whip and other such visual delights.

More than once, a reflexive maternal hand flew up over his eyes to block his vision...shaking, because I was shaking with hysterics.

Whether or not Bruno is a good film is up for debate. It is certainly a shockfest, one which I would see again and again. It also showcases its star's ingenuity, fearlessness and intelligence, not to mention lithe, waxed and often unclothed body.

The issue is that Bruno, and several other films like it, need a special warning to go with them, something that prepares filmgoers for the terrific squirming that will overtake them if they are seeing the movie in the company of, say, their children or -- horrors! -- their parents.

When we left the theatre on Saturday night, I noted that my shirt was sticking to my body. I had literally broken out into a sweat with worry about how this film would effect my son and equally, what he would think of the mother who sanctioned his consumption of this lurid entertainment.

It reminded me of the nearly-equally icky time I watched The Heartbreak Kid with my parents at their home. Except then, I wasn't worried that I was poisoning someone's developing mind.

But perhaps I needn't have fretted. Seated afterwards at Fine and Shapiro, the kosher deli on West 72nd Street, I asked Little Babe for his assessment.

"Funny," he declared, biting into a hamburger. "But really, really weird."

Shabbat Shalom from the Love Shack

Friday morning at the bungalow.

Little Babe rode off to camp on his bicycle.

Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians frolicked in the grass, pulling on their extra-long leashes.

Big Babe dropped an email from Thessaloniki, where he is spending Shabbat.

Middle Babe called to say she was taking the day off from work and catching a 3 pm bus to Boston.

HOBB texted a Shabbat Shalom from Maine, where he is stuck for the weekend at a cello camp...with a small group of retired, overly-serious amateur musicians in a remote locale near the Canadian border.

And I set up my laptop on the porch of the Love Shack to tackle a full day's work, with the lush forest looming before me and the promise of Shabbat whispering in my ear.

Shabbat Shalom!

Midsummer Midlife Hair Crisis

That's me on the porch of our bungalow earlier today.

It's probably not too visible between the oversized shades and American flag but those are PIGTAILS sprouting out of my head, placed there to contain the voluminous and anarchic nature of my hair, which I am seeking to grow this summer.

Call it my midsummer midlife crisis: a stab at long hair.

Since childhood, I've always been a shorthaired girl, with brief forays into Joan Jett-like shaggy overgrown do's and a few grade-school years of long straight hair and bangs, which invariably ended up being cut too short by my mother.

A layered bob has been my classic look but for some reason I was inspired to grow out my locks this spring and have therefore added several inches to my hair...both horizontally as well as vertically.

You see, my hair tends to grow sideways and even upwards.

Hence the pigtails.

So far, the hair has gotten rave reviews but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that getting it to look good takes waaaay more time than I am used to expending on grooming matters. I'm a squeeze of the eyelash curler, swab of the eyeliner, swat of the lipgloss kind of chick. I have never had my hair styled and frankly scoff at women my age who have such low regard for their time as to spend it inside a beauty parlor.

(For the record, I have no problem with regular mani-pedis and consider them essential to mental health. But hairstyling?????)

So, there it is -- my midlife crisis: my hair.

No fancy red sportscars, no dalliances with younger men, no running off to "discover" myself.

I already have a black Honda Accord, two fabulous younger men in my life and discovered myself a long time ago -- around the age of nine, to be exact -- when my mother broke the shocking news to me that I would never turn into a boy.

Though I was stuck being a girl, I vowed to become a spy and traveler, writing my adventures down.

And that is what I do, snug as a bug in a rug in my bungalow, late into the night.

Eden Invaded

Little Babe called at 9:30 to let me know that the camp bus arrived back from bowling and that he was going to sleep over at his friend Colin's house. Could I meet him right away in the parking lot with a change of clothes, some Axe deoderant, toothbrush and his i-Touch charger?

Having just arrived back in the bungalow after a day spent sprinting to and from appointments in Manhattan, I let the duffle bag fall from my shoulder and stood still for approximately 5 seconds before assembling the requested items and tossing them into a backpack. Though the last thing I wanted to do was go back out into the chilly rain, the sleepover at Colin's house also entailed Little Babe's good friend Morry and was irresistable. Three-way sleepover. YEAAAH!

In the kitchen, Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians reacclimated themselves to the bungalow from which they had been banished for several days after their friendly barking became the cause of neighborhly complaints. Stepping over them, HOBB began unpacking some of our bags and settling in for the July 4th weekend, reacclimating himself to the cabin he hadn't seen since Monday morning.

While the rain beat a tattoo on the ceiling and I readied myself to run to the car, I found myself possessed of a peculiar, territorial feeling; what was he doing in my house?

Once outside, the soggy ground spongy beneath my sneakered feet, I sought to understand the resentful sentiment that had taken root in my heart. The inner sanctum where I had spent the previous three nights in splendid, spouse-free isolation had just been invaded, my solitary Eden colonized.

I allowed myself to dwell in the moment of outrage, my bungalow heart feeling caged, obstinately resisting the necessary transition from me to we.