Murder in Jerusalem

The conference call came in at 3:30 pm, as planned. The day had been busy, with meetings in midtown, an impromptu stop at Whole Foods at the Time Warner Center, phone calls from press accompanying me as I walked westward along 59th Street.

I was in the process of eating a hasty Whole Foods salad when my client called.

Gulping down my peppermint water, I reached for the phone, affecting an unhurried voice, a voice that said that I was prepared and professional rather than scattered and sweating profusely in the aftermath of my race across town and marathon salad consumption.

As all the parties exchanged their greetings, I quietly directed my browser to CNN.com; after all, I hadn't seen the news since early in the day and wanted to peruse the headlines. Instantly, stark wording filled the screen, announcing a terrorist attack on a seminary in Jerusalem, at least seven dead.

"Omigod, there's been a terrorist attack in Jerusalem!" I gasped, realizing a millisecond later that I had just blown my facade of complete focus. My thoughts flew in a flurry as I scrolled down the page, sifting for information. Seminary? Which seminary? For teachers, scholars, rabbis, visiting American students on their year-abroad program? Who were the victims? Kids? Teens? Adults? Israelis? Foreigners?

My blood ran cold, thinking of the children of friends studying in Israel for the year. Only last year my own daughter was a student in Jerusalem. Her best friend was currently spending her year abroad studying at Hebrew University. Twentysomething years ago, I was a student at Hebrew U as well. That year, the worst thing that happened was the murder of John Lennon in front of his apartment building in New York City.

I switched to Jpost.com. Their report told me that the attack happened at a well-known school, Mercaz Harav, founded by Rabbi Kook, the former chief rabbi of Israel, father of the religious Zionist movement. It described a chaotic scene, blood everywhere, students hiding under desks and in bomb shelters, 50 ambulances arriving, police storming the premises, looking for the terrorist.

Somehow I assumed a bomb. In our time, terrorism has become inextricable from bombs, particularly of the suicidal/homicidal variety. But there was not a bomb. There was a killer with a gun.

Like on an American college campus, except programmed to kill only Jews.

500 to 600 shots fired, announced Jpost.

Though my ear was pressed against the phone receiver, I was no longer on the conference call. I was somewhere in the cybersphere, floating between New York and Jerusalem, mentally multi-tasking, out of time and place, out of my mind.

Weirdly, I heard voices talking animatedly, including my own. No one had responded to my exclamation about the attack in Jerusalem. Did they hear? Do they not care? Evidently not, for we were deep into discussion of strategy and marketing of the project at hand. I saw my right hand scribbling notes, felt my head nod in assent, heard myself murmur my approval. My eyes, however, remained glued on the computer screen, reading, seeking information, switching between Jpost and Haaretz, checking out nytimes.com and the AP report, seeing how Foxnews reported the story versus msnbc.com, going even to the right-wing Arutzsheva.com to see if I had missed any details. I learned that the killer had most definitely been killed by a part-time student.

Did I actually speak out loud or had I simply imagined my outburst?

The phone conference moved into specifics. We compared notes on our best media contacts, connections within the community. Quietly, I took stock of everyone I knew to be in Jerusalem -- my sister, brother-in-law, their kids, dozens of friends and their families, a couple of clients, a project partner, old boyfriends, old relatives, a cast of characters interchangeable with my New York circle of friends and loved ones.

As the New York afternoon grew old and the conference call drew to a close, the personal calls started coming and we all said the same thing to each other. How horrible. It's been so long since something this terrible happened. Is everyone accounted for? Have we heard anything from anyone in Israel?

I spoke to my husband and my sister in Israel. My daughter, Middle Babe, called to tell me that her best friend called to let her know that she was safe at Hebrew University. My youngest, Little Babe, came home from school and I casually asked him whether he had heard anything at school (he hadn't), wondered if I should give him a heads-up about that which he was likely to hear about tomorrow at school.

I counted forward five hours and decided against calling Big Babe, my oldest, studying in Berlin. It was the middle of the night in Europe. He would hear in the morning.

It is now night and the news reports are more complete. The gunman was not Palestinian but Israeli Arab, from East Jerusalem. I do not even know what this signifies. There was widespread celebration in Gaza. This needs no interpretation. Eight are confirmed dead. Several of the wounded are critically injured. One of the rabbis at the yeshiva, weeping, told the Israeli government it could go to hell. Many of the students died clutching sifrei kodesh, holy books. Photographs from the crime scene show bullet holes through glass, bloody tzitzit, body bags lined up on the floor, members of Zaka collecting human remains for burial, blood, blood everywhere.

Tomorrow is Topsy Turvy Day at SAR Academy, the marvelous school Little Babe attends. He has his crazy outfit all ready, cannot wait to get on the bus in mask and cape, a dress rehearsal for Purim, a joyous celebration of the start of the month of Adar.

The murdered students at Mercaz Harav Kook had gathered tonight for special classes on the meaning of the joyous month of Adar. Instead of celebration, there will be funerals, said one of the grieving rabbis.

Emails for phone vigils and solidarity calls with Israel now fill my inbox. Jewish message boards are filling up with reactions to the murders. I find myself wondering if SAR will even celebrate Topsy Turvy Day tomorrow, or seek to postpone it. I try to think like an administrator, like a rabbi, and figure out the right reaction, the proper message, the teachable moment for American Jewish kids in the face of this tragedy in Israel.

It would have been clever to end this post with the assertion that today, everything went topsy turvy in Jerusalem but the reality is that what happened today is nothing too unusual, has plenty of precedent.

And sadly, the lesson for our children -- even now, in the 21st century -- is that being Jewish is sometimes a crime that is punishable by death.

War and Betrayal

At Friday night dinner, our friend Nella told us about the performance of Macbeth she and her husband Jack saw this past week at BAM, describing it as the most transcendent and absorbing theatrical experience they had ever had.

Instantly, I took stock of the memorable Shakespearean productions I have seen -- Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford Upon Avon in England in the spring of 2004; King Lear performed by a community theatre in Middlebury, VT some 15 years ago; Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare and Company in the Berkshires three summers ago; As You Like It this past summer at Shakespeare on the Hudson in Garrison, NY; Kenneth Branagh's masterful film adaptation of Hamlet, first glimpsed at Cinematheque in Jerusalem in 1998.

Though I love the inspired lunacy and quick wit of the Shakespearean comedies, I am utterly undone by his tragedies, adore finding myself face to face with such grand themes as Fate and Irony and The Vast Indifference of the Universe, not to mention Tragedy Itself.

Shakespeare's sense of the tragic lingers long after one has left the theatre. That is part of his genius and his enduring appeal. Shakespeare's tragedies are exquisite torment, a sore tooth to be tested every few moments by a probing tongue.

Hearing Nella gush about BAM's Macbeth induced me to move it to the exalted Must-Do position on my cultural To-Do list...until last night's SoHo production of George Packer's exquisite, urgent and of-the-minute drama, Betrayed rendered Shakespeare suddenly irrelevant.

This blog is not a repository for reviews, so I will demur detailing the superb performances of the Culture Project cast, or the well-wrought script by Packer, a journalist who had been sent to Iraq by the New Yorker and who wrote the award-winning book, The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq.

Betrayed is based on Packer's experiences as a journalist in Iraq. The essence of the play's success lies in his ability to isolate one aspect of the fiasco that is the War in Iraq: the betrayal of Iraqi civilians who risk their lives for the Americans, going to work every day in the American compound as translators, as drivers, as secretaries and support staff and eventually find themselves marked for death by Iraqi death squads and civilians for being so-called "spies."

What Packer found out though his interviews with these brave, principled, desperate or foolish Iraqis is that the American government couldn't care less about their fate. And as US personnel and officials hid behind protocol and codes and bureaucratic procedure, many of the helpful, America-friendly Iraqis were hunted down like dogs and killed.

The War in Iraq is many things, none of them good. It is based on a lie that is built upon a house of lies that is difficult or maybe even impossible to untangle.

It is misguided, confused, poorly-planned, badly-executed, ill-led, immoral and, yes, very tragic. Packer is not so lefty as to pretend that Saddam wasn't a monster, that life under his regime was not a hell for Iraqi civilians. He doesn't glorify Iraqis either, making certain that the audience understands the manners in which they botched opportunities for their own redemption.

The play is not an anti-War in Iraq polemic, but it is pretty difficult to emerge from Betrayed feeling good about George W's war. Still, George P steers clear of too-easy, sloganeering politics to shine a klieg light on one terrible narrative in the midst of this tragic war.

The story that Packer illuminates allows the audience to shift from a general political stance to something far more tangible and specific: sadness, despair, outrage or just plain anger at the US government's moral and bureaucratic abandonment of the Iraqi civilians who risked their lives to help the US effort BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED IN AMERICA.

By the time the curtain falls on Adnan's soliloquy, the audience is stunned into heavy silence, brought to a place beyond consolation. Packer's Betrayed is drama beyond redemption. It presents a glimpse of hell, tragedy as a darkened funhouse whose roof is caving in and whose floor has rotted away.

And the culprit, the demented grand carnival master, is not the Germans or the Russians or the Japanese or Lady Macbeth this time, but the Americans.

The United States.

Us.

Chocolate or Vanilla?

There are moments in life when it seems that everything comes down to two choices: Elvis or the Beatles; the Sharks or the Jets; steam room or sauna; innie or outtie; tomato or tomahto; boxers or briefs; Israel or the Palestinians; Tylenol or Advil; Paris or London; dogs or cats; pro-life or pro-choice; creation or evolution; morning person or night person; Tom or Jerry; red wine or white wine; Hillel or Shammai; vanilla or chocolate; Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Such a moment is now, of course, with the people in my life divided neatly or messily into the Hillary or the Obama camps, with leakage into the McCain camp...in case Obama gets the nomination.

Such a situation exists in my household as well, with HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe) swept up in the cult of Obama while I stand staunchly behind Hillary, trying to communicate to my two voting age children my political preference without being overly heavyhanded about it.

Restrained though I may be on the homefront, except in arguments with HOBB where I defend myself against his assertion that the Jewish resistance to Obama is covert racism, every time I leave the house, the question hangs heavy in the air and I happily volunteer my opinion.

"What do you think of Obama?" asked my friend, a Hungarian poet and filmmaker I bumped into yesterday in the hallway of the Jewish Theological Seminary, prompting a discussion where we discovered that we share the same perspective. "Who you vote for?" the Korean manicurist asked last week as she painted my nails. "My parents are voting for Hillary Clinton. Who are your parents voting for?" I overheard Little Babe's seventh grade friend ask yesterday as they played Go in the living room.

If the election could be held in the locker room of The JCC in Manhattan, my preferred hangout, Hillary would sweep. Within the JCC locker room reside Hillary's staunchest supporters - tough and smart Jewish women from New York who are incensed by Obama's easy wrestling of the party's support away from hard-working Hill. As they see it, Obama is a Ken Doll with poseable limbs, a young, charismatic white guy who happens to have black skin, an exercise in smoke and mirrors, a rock star, a media creation, the Britney Spears (pre-breakdown) of politics, an undeserving and possibly dangerous choice for president.

And I think it is safe to say that among members of my parents' generation, it would be impossible to find even one person who thinks Obama is a good idea. A journalist friend and I exchanged emails recently comparing notes on our liberal parents' adamant opposition to the junior senator from Illinois.

Though I am not a fan of Elizabeth Wurtzel, the famously-troubled author of Prozac Nation and other books, a disgraced Ramaz alum seven years my junior who ruined her life publicly through drug addiction, random sex and plagiarism and who is now, inexplicably, a student at Yale Law School at the age of 40, I must heartily recommend her op-ed of last week in the Wall Street Journal, entitled Hillary Agonistes. Therein, she nailed the Obama mania sweeping the nation, deconstructing it in a rather brilliant manner. Her main thesis: the Hillary-Obama drama is the story of women and success in America. Smart woman works her butt off to succeed, plays by society's rules, defies society's rules, has it all, pays her dues, proves herself worthy and young upstart guy just waltzes in and steals the corner office out from under her.

Yep. That's exactly what is going on.

To mix media metaphors and to riff on the pundits: in the reality show that is the 2008 Presidential Race, Obama is our American Idol and Hillary's just been kicked off the island.

Dumb Bunny

Bunny got on my Amtrak train in Philadelphia, alighting with her Coach bag, Searle jacket, True Religion jeans, bleached, Japanese-straightened tresses, Tiffany's necklace, Converse sneakers and a bouquet of flowers, balancing her Blackberry Pearl to her cashmere-clad shoulder.

"Is anyone sitting here?" she asked, pausing from her phone conversation to address me from her considerable height. I was on my way back from a kinetic convention in DC, had logged about 10 hours of sleep over the four nights of my stay, had been sustained by my morning Venti from Starbucks and a nightly glass (or two) of Pinot Noir...with a Caesar salad or two in between...had spent untold hours on the phone with reporters and had now finally ended my fact-checking with the Washington Post and was slumped low in my window seat, lovingly caressing the Collected Works of Oscar Wilde that I had just pulled out of my bag with the intent to read.

It was a Thursday afternoon and the train was packed. From Baltimore until Philadelphia, I shared my seat with a forty-something guy I guessed to be a professor of English at the University of Maryland. He had been an ideal seatmate; nodding courteously to me in welcome, then spending his travel time reading Evelyn Waugh and dozing. Pulling into the Philadelphia station, he hopped off the train. His replacement was a student. U of P, it seemed. Rich kid, based on the clothes, accessories and attitude. Mediocre scores and transcript, I guessed. Sorority girl. Boyfriend at Yale or Princeton. Twenty years old.

A few minutes into the train ride towards Manhattan, my first impressions were confirmed. My seatmate -- Bunny , believe it or not -- was a senior at U of P. There was a boy or a friend or a suitor of some sort who wanted to take her for drinks and dinner but she didn't see the point. There was a party that night at the Yale club that she was bound for. She complained about a dress whose pleating was ruined. She should have sent it in a steamer trunk. There was a test she took that she was unprepared for. It had something to do with geopolitics. Her mother thought she should have studied more. Actually, she thought she did okay and her mom shouldn't worry about it.

Bunny's private cell phone conversation rang clear and loud through the Amtrak car. The frumpy, chubby, Jewishy college girl across the way, who got on in Baltimore (Goucher student? University of Maryland? Towson State?) shot annoyed glances Bunny's way but Bunny was way too involved in her conversation to take note. Finally, Girl Across the Way plugged in her i-pod headphones. A guy in front of GATW turned around a few times to gape at Bunny who was oblivious to the fact that she was pissing off the entire Amtrak car, probably because she was so vexed about her dress. But evidently not so vexed that she didn't go into great detail about another dress she just bought. Then she talked about a friend and her sorority. Then she talked about Hong Kong, where she evidently grew up.

Long-limbed and slim, blond and utterly bland, Bunny kept rearranging her legs on the seat arm in front of her, trying to find new ways to tuck her five feet nine inch self into the cramped space. She compulsively referenced the Yale Club, as if it might disappear unless she kept saying its name, as if afraid that her fellow passengers might miss the news that she was going there. Tonight. For a party.

She talked about a Harvard-Yale event. She talked about last year's trip to Madrid. She talked about her upcoming trip to Acapulco and how insane she was for going! That adventurous, globe-trotting Bunny! And to think that I had the honor of sitting next to her!

While the tales of Bunny's life were certainly riveting, I was finding it rather difficult to concentrate on "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," the short story I was currently reading. After ten minutes, difficult evolved into excruciating and after fifteen minutes, excruciating became impossible. I was stuck in a loop where I could only read and re-read the paragraph where Mr. Podgers, the chiromantist, foretells the murder he sees in Lord Arthur's palm.

We stopped at one of those forgettable stations between Philly and NYC. As the conductor came around to collect tickets, I half-stood, looking around the crowded car for available seats. Seeing none, I blurted to the conductor, "Do you see any free seats?" Scanning the car, he told me that he didn't see anything. Bunny turned towards me and our eyes locked. I fixed her with a look that I hoped was at once calm yet hinted of underlying violence.

"You are talking extremely loudly," I said. "Could you please try to keep your voice down? It's really annoying."

Bunny was taken aback; indeed her expression conveyed surprise mixed with mild affront.

"You are sitting next to me," she finally said. "This is a small space."

I sniffed the air for fear and picked up only the faintest hint. While it normally takes very little to provoke me into confrontations with strangers, I found myself loathe to have a showdown with Bunny, perhaps because she was the same age as Middle Babe and I could foresee my daughter in a similar situation on a train, annoying the hell out of a middle-aged woman whom I hope would give my girl the benefit of the doubt.

However, I was in touch with my inner vigilante and paid tribute to my desire to slug Bunny in her privileged, white bread face. Or chop up her creased dress with gardening sheers. Or pour Nair on her Paris Hiltonesque locks.

If there is anything I hate more than loud public cell phone yapping, it is entitlement. Of which Bunny had plenty. And narcissism. And lack of consideration. And self-absorption.

"That's right; it is a small space," I conceded, gazing down at her with folded arms. I hoped I sounded just like one of her English professors, telling her that the paper she handed in on Zadie Smith was substandard. "That's why when I speak on the phone -- which I did the entire way from DC to Philly -- I do so quietly, out of consideration for the people around me. Also, out of respect for my own privacy. I think I know every detail of your life right now. I hope everything turns out okay with your wrinkled dress."

Well, that shut Bunny's mouth but alas, the lowered decibel yapping lasted for, oh, about five minutes...and then resumed at full volume. By this point, I wanted to borrow some poison from Lord Arthur. When the train pulled into a new station, I stood up, grabbed my Swiss Army knapsack, Oscar Wilde collection, Old Navy pea coat from 1999 and H&M black leather bag, stepped over Bunny with a haughty, "excuse me" and went in search of a seat where I could enjoy Wilde's acid-penned depictions of people just like Bunny, written more than a century before the invention of the cell phone.

The Importance of Being in Dublin

At 2:20 in the morning, the gracious sitting rooms of the Hotel Merrion in Dublin are sparsely populated. At any other hour of the day, from breakfast to just about an hour ago, it takes a reservation to gain a seat on one of the floral upholstered armchairs or sofas but now I sit in near isolation, typing on my trusty laptop while HOBB sleeps in our room.

It has been a four-day whirlwind trip to Dublin and I have fallen madly, deeply and heedlessly in love with this city. HOBB has warned me to stop telling everyone who will listen that I never realized just how close Dublin is to New York because it sounds terribly naive but I cannot stop myself from marveling out loud over this late-in-life discovery.

For the same amount of time that it takes to fly from New York to, say, Seattle, I have landed in Europe's most charming, agreeable and marvelous city.

And they fed me the entire flight, shaming the US airlines who have adopted an unconscionable food-free policy for its cross-country flights.

It is two hours past midnight and I appear to be the only person in the lobby save for the group of polyglot people singing in the next sitting room over. About an hour ago, I was shocked to see refined older couples staggering drunkenly through the lobby. They were followed by groups of hipster rock-star types who probably were rock stars. A few young newlywed couples in expensive garb also made appearances but eventually all departed, leaving just me, the embers in the fireplace, the spirited singing one room over and my impressions of the past few days.

So...what can I report about my new love -- Dublin -- when I should be grabbing the few hours of sleep I have before my 9 am flight?

Nothing organized or rational, merely hints and fragrances -- snatches of "Dublin City" piping through HOBB's i-pod as we rode the bus in from the airport; the ubiquity of woolen scarves and overcoats on passing pedestrians; a genial good-heartedness in absolutely everyone I have met, from the hotel staff to shop owners to cab drivers to locals; the verve and bop of Grafton Street; the happy incidence of Insomnia Coffee shops outnumbering Starbucks; cathedrals and churches looming large upon the city's landscape but standing still and somber and lifeless as mausoleums; Trinity College forming the thriving, beating heart of the city; the dependable Liffey belting the city round the middle, asserting itself more modestly than the Thames but becoming more beautiful by night; a city staple: folk singers in bars who never leave without a rendition of "Molly Malone;" the well-preserved old storefronts and building facades which harken back to the world of my childhood and realms glimpsed only in novels and dreams; beyond; the palpable legacy of Joyce, Wilde, Yeats, Stoker, Swift, Shaw and their literary comrades in arms in every brick and cobblestone of the city; the transfusion brought by the new affluence and vitality pumping through the streets; the sorrowful undercurrent born of the memory of poverty and woe; and the gentle, lyrical accent scenting the air, keeping it fragrant even as Dublin diversifies, welcoming an international community.

I can hardly explain the sense of wellbeing I experience here. I can barely contain my joy at the ubiquitous beauty that results from the good marriage between the architecture and landscape of the city. I want to capture the inspiration that flows, like the Liffey, through the middle of Dublin, pulsing up through the soles of my feet.

I am awash in the sense that I have returned to a beloved place from long ago.

My first day here -- bleary-eyed, beleagured by jet-lag --I fancied that I had landed in a New England town, a section of Boston or Cambridge or Brooklyn Heights I had somehow never seen before.

The feeling was akin to those dreams where one discovers a room in one's house previously unrevealed.

The magic of my visit is further enhanced by my new friendship with Oscar Wilde, forged last night when I started reading The Picture of Dorian Gray aloud to HOBB on this very sofa.

Of course, I felt somewhat self-conscious about reading aloud in public, yet it was also lovely and romantic and reminiscent of our early courtship and marriage when I insisted on reading HOBB Harriet the Spy, the seminal book of my childhood. And so I read, keeping my voice barely audible, glancing at HOBB to make sure he was awake and listening. After two chapters of Dorian Gray, HOBB grew tired and asked to go to our room. We decamped there and went to bed. A short while later, he fell asleep, yet I lay awake, tired in body though agitated in spirit.

My thoughts were stirred by Lord Henry and Dorian and Basil.

Or more pointedly, by Oscar Wilde, of course, who utterly captivated me, making me put aside the volume of Moravia I packed for my trip, forcing me to stumble out of bed at an hour well past midnight to join him on the floor of our $400 a night hotel room.

And so I bunked down with Wilde, Dublin's native son, dead at the age of 46, banished and broken, survived by his brilliance, wit, insight and devil-may-care joie de vivre.

Last night, in the city where Oscar Wilde was born, over a century after his death, I dragged the quilt cover from the bed and sofa cushion of my hotel bed to fashion a makeshift bed for myself in the foyer of our room -- just outside the bathroom,with access to light -- and continued to read The Picture of Dorian Gray, passing out from exhaustion only when the sky turned gunmetal outside our hotel window.

Finding me sleeping on the floor, the Collected Works of Oscar Wilde resting on the carpeting beside me, HOBB stepped over me on his way to the bathroom, passed out like a drunk --drunk on literature, on Oscar Wilde, on Dublin, on love itself.

It is preposterously late now...3:15 am. Even if I fall asleep now, I will gain only two hours before needing to wake, pack, toss down some tea and head to the airport. The group next door has segued from Irish folk songs to Spanish melodies, Broadway tunes and early Jazz standards. The waiter came by and brought me a complimentary bowl of nuts and spring water. He must feel sorry for me, typing alone in a sitting room.

He needn't pity me in the least. I feel like the luckiest person in the world.

I have discovered Dublin.

And I have discovered new love.

Delusions of Grandeur

Yesterday afternoon, a dozen or so of HOBB's graduate students traipsed through the Urban Bungalow for a holiday brunch. What struck me instantly was their sincerity...and youth. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, they were not much older than our oldest son, 23-year-old Big Babe, now living the life of the expatriate American writer-at-large in Berlin.

The presence of so many young adults who technically could have been my children made me feel a bit like The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. The presence of Little Babe, Middle Babe and Alfie the Pomeranian completed the domestic tableau.

Then again, in my high black boots, black tights and black and purple dress, I felt more like the Bungalow Babe Who Lived in a Platform Shoe and the tableau was more punk than pastoral.

After the students had all cleared out, I fell into conversation with one of HOBB's colleagues. A former editor of a community newspaper, her part-time position at the university was her only current means of employment. She had three small children whom she was devoted to raising, nevertheless, her minimalistic working status gave her "an inferiority complex" around her colleagues at the school, she confessed, many of whom were high-powered, high-profile, high-achieving journalists.

While I was inclined to protest the very notion that she should suffer from intimations of inferiority, as a forty-something who has been waiting for her "real" life to begin for, oh, the past twenty-something years, I knew exactly what she meant. For a variety of reasons -- some very different from hers (I've been horribly over-employed for much of my adult life, for instance), others similar (I am often in the company of well-known, successful writers) -- I, too, have had a complex about my personal achievements.

And I insist on the legitimacy of my feelings. After all, though I've worked hard most of my adult life and kept our family solvent and even been reasonably successful in my chosen field, what I've really wanted is something quite different: reams of articles, stories, a bestselling book or two, a writer's life, a writer's legacy.

And though I am prone to falling into the gloom of under-achievement, I still believe that my life can change course any second now.

We talked for a while, this mother/journalist and I, trading details of our lives. She described herself as coming late to journalism, to marriage, to motherhood. My trajectory was completely opposite, I said. I did everything early. Married at 22, I became a mother at 23 and freelanced my way as a journalist until it became clear that I needed to get a full-time job or my children would go naked and starve.

I changed professional course when I was 32, opting for full-time work outside of journalism.

Because of financial constraints, I didn't have the opportunity to pursue my writing, I said.

No, she corrected me. You did. But you chose something else at that stage of your life.

Her honesty took me by surprise. I resisted the idea, then considered it and finally embraced it. She was correct. I decided to pursue another means of income for a variety of well-considered reasons.

Anyway, there we were on a frigid and overcast Sunday afternoon in mid-December: two writers with six children between us, confessing our feelings of inadequacy. Physically, we could not have been more opposite; one of us is small with long blond hair, the other tall with short dark hair. One of us feels under-employed, the other over-employed. One of us is raising small tykes, the other has two children who are no longer minors and another on the verge of becoming a Bar Mitzvah. I don't know her age exactly but I doubt there is a decade between us.

I look at this woman and see an enviable, balanced life -- marriage, children, a part-time job at an Ivy League institution, an apartment in the greatest city in the world. And I cannot guess how I appear to her but know that similar elements are also present in my life.

And while I will happily accept praise for any of my achievements -- including my ability to pair high black boots with a purple and black summer dress -- I retain the right to hold onto my sense of sadness in the face of unfulfilled personal ambitions because it is this very sorrow that has the power to propel me forward.

All I Want For Chanuka...Is For New York To Be Just Like Zabar's

To see me on the street, you'd never guess that inside this Bungalow Babelicious bod resides a grumpy old lady. Lately, however, everything in this town has been getting on my nerves...leading me to upgrade one of my favorite part-time activities -- kvetching -- to full-time status.

As I've blogged recently, the inconsiderate locker room behavior of my fellow Upper West Siders has been a source of irritation, then again, it hardly compares to the menacing, loud and potentially lethal threat posed daily by NYC teens on our city's subways.

A recent video has been making the rounds, showing a group of loud and obnoxious black girls verbally and then physically harassing a white guy on the A train. The video's posted on one of my fave sites -- Gawker (http://www.gawker.com/) -- where the reader feedback is heated. An article about it occupies an entire page of today's New York Daily News.

While the veracity of the video is being questioned, it sure has touched a nerve among its viewers. To read Gawker's readers' comments is to discover a fellowship of urbanites who are all-too-familiar with the incidence of menacing teens in this town, especially on the subway. The racial component is either irrelevant or highly relevant, I cannot decide.

Still...my reaction to outta-control teens who hold entire subways cars hostage to their thuggery (during daylight hours, at least) is annoyance, not fear. Frankly, I want them to shut the $%&* up, get off my train, stop terrorizing little kids and old people and everyone in between and learn some basic respect for humanity. I want them to stop ruining the quality of life in this town. I want them to get the message that their behavior is unacceptable...and has repercussions.

This is such a ubiquitous problem that I am astonished that Mayor Bloomberg hasn't devoted himself to the task of cleaning up our subways -- coming down hard on the offenders, dispatching SWAT teams, if necessary to patrol the subways and start handing out summonses for offensive behavior. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that there is no disincentive for these vilde chayahs to continue their wilding. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that New York's Finest are busy putting tickets on improperly parked vehicles during the very hours they should be maintaining a watch on our subway system.

No one, it seems, is minding the store.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Yesterday, while hurling myself against the windy gusts that were sweeping up Broadway, I was hit in the legs by flying debris. An entire stretch of Upper West Side sidewalk, from 82nd to 83rd Street was covered with fallen leaves, papers, crinkly cellophane and empty plastic bags.

It used to just be midtown, but Manhattan's mess is now spreading upward. I don't know who to blame for this...the a$$&*!es who throw their trash on the ground despite the fact that there is a garbage can on every single city block, the store owners who are too busy raking in the holiday bucks or the city's sanitation and maintenance workers.

All I know is that it's making me kvetchier and kvetchier, putting me deeper and deeper into an I Hate New York state of mind.

And speaking of stores...here is my final kvetch of the day, though it has nothing to do with New York City, per se. I am bloody SICK of hearing Christmas music in almost every single store I go into, a public plague that kicks in the day after Thanksgiving and infects the entire nation.

I am tired of the fascistic imposition of a regime of over-played melodies and songs conveying false cheer and relating to a holiday that not all of us celebrate, a holiday that itself has been hijacked by the spirit of consumerism. What is especially annoying is the juxtaposition between the upbeat holiday songs and the often-surly behavior of the store clerks. For an especially unpleasant shopping experience, I highly recommend The Gap on W86th Street and Broadway, a poorly-managed emporium where the clerks are either mentally-impaired or winners of the World's Most Hostile Store Employees contest... or both.

The faux holiday spirit is a problem with America, however, and the entire nation would do well to see the brilliant Reverend Billy documentary -- What Would Jesus Buy? -- which I blogged about last week. Watching WWJB?...and actually meeting Rev. Billy last week at a live performance with the choir of his Church of Stop Shopping at a club in Chelsea... I was reassured that my grumpy reaction to the pervasive Christmas spirit in stores was not, alas, anti-Christian.

I was also heartened to hear my Christmas-related kvetchiness affirmed by Big Babe, who has been visiting from Berlin this past month. Returning home two nights ago for Chanuka candlelighting, having been dispatched by me to do food shopping, Big Babe stated that the ubiquitous public Christmas soundtrack was really getting on his nerves.

The one Upper West Side store that was refreshingly Christmas Music-free, he reported, was Zabar's.

Which made me realize that the last bastion of hope on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, nay, the entire island of Manhattan, is Zabar's.

In addition to its unparalleled stock of foodstuffs and kitchen supplies and refreshingly Christmas music-free ambiance, there are no out-of-control teens patrolling the store, terrorizing the customers. The sidewalk in front of the store is always clean. Best of all, however, the same women who leave their wet towels in the steam room at the JCC (which Zabar's supports, incidentally), yap loudly on their cellphones and let their little kids run amok or sing their heads off in the locker room of that venerable establishment are on their very best behavior within the haven of the store that Saul built.

In a city where no one is minding the store, I nominate Saul Zabar, the city's best storeowner, for the position of Mayor of New York City. I also nominate myself to be his campaign manager, a position I am free to take now that it is clear that Stephen Colbert is not running for Prez and therefore does not need my services. I am confident of victory, as we will be running on a Quality of Life platform.

All I want for Chanuka is for New York to be just like Zabar's.

Mini Maria Callas Invades JCC Locker Room; Holds Innocent Women Hostage

It was cute for about three minutes.

While stepping out of the steam room at the locker room of The JCC in Manhattan, a tiny, tinny voice singing faux arias reached my ears. Walking to my locker, the sound grew stronger and soon I passed a dark-haired little girl singing to herself while her mother sat quietly beaming by her side, helping her get dressed.

At first I smiled. It was sweet, this screechy, off-key voice in baby falsetto. Opening my locker, I was therefore surprised to see women around me rolling their eyes, pursing their lips and even setting their teeth with displeasure. Wow...what a bunch of misanthropes, I thought, retrieving my knapsack from the locker. Ladeez, I wanted to say to them as I applied my body lotion, don't you feel recalled to your own childhood at the sound of this innocent child chortling to herself, oblivious of her surroundings? How could you begrudge a little girl her self-expression?

Within another five minutes or so, I found myself joining my sisters in sourness. The voice of the little girl swooped and soared with fake fealty with nary a peep from the mother to the effect that her little darling might want to keep her voice down as they were in a public place. As I hooked my bra, the screeching soprano bounced off the metal walls of the lockers in a manner reminiscent of fingernails on the blackboard. A woman next to me actually placed her hands over her ears, grimacing. I nodded in sympathy, furrowing my own brow in annoyance as I spritzed on perfume. Struggling into my pantyhose, I thought I discerned vibes of pride radiating from the silent, doting mother as she presented her little vocal prodigy to the public of the JCC's locker room.

If you want a laboratory of life on the Upper West Side, you might do well to spend a day inside the women's locker room at The JCC in Manhattan. I love this place and often plan my professional appointments around making it to my beloved 5th Floor gym (not to mention the numerous cultural programs at the facility) but after several years spent hanging out there, listening to conversations and observing behavior and interactions, I feel ready to deliver some jeremiads to my fellow Upper West Siders.

The theme of this series of sermons is Self-Absorbed Lack of Consideration.

Sermon number one would be directed to the preteen girls on the swim team who talk at ear-splitting decibel levels and generally leave their sopping towels on the floor, obviously awaiting the ministrations of the cleaning staff.

Sermon number two would be directed to moms of babies and young children who tend to occupy miles of locker room space with their paraphernalia, seemingly oblivious to the needs of anyone else.

Sermon number three would be directed to these moms and caretakers who do not seem to notice their kids running amok, popping in and out of lockers and flipping open the curtains of the supposedly private section of the space.

Sermon number four would be directed to the girls and women who hold forth on their cellphones as if they were in the comfort -- and privacy -- of their own homes, revealing details about their lives you never wanted to know.

Sermon number five would be directed to the girls and women who feel moved to leave disgusting personal items in the shower stalls and damp towels in the steam room.

And finally, my last sermon would be directed to the mother of the mini Maria Callas and all of her sisters in crime. The central message of this missive is as follows:

Your kid's singing is cute for about three minutes and we will smile in friendly acknowledgment of their innocence, charm and precocity.

After about three minutes, however, we start to entertain severe doubts about your intelligence and maternal fitness and self-esteem. It will become clear to us that you are actually getting off on the exposure your extraordinary offspring is getting by screeching to a captive audience that is trying to simply get dressed in peace. And because you remain so oblivious to the fact that the locker room is, indeed, a public space, we will fantasize about sending you and your singing darling "straight to the moon, Alice!" as Ralph Kramden so memorably and poetically put it.

God and the Exploding Zamboni

Little Babe is in seventh grade at a Jewish day school that has four classes per grade, which means that, as of last winter, his weekends have been consumed with the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs of his one-hundred or so classmates.

No matter where HOBB and I go on the weekend, we need to arrange driving and carpooling, as a great many of these events take place outside of Manhattan. So, last night, following the conclusion of the trippy and hard-to-follow Bob Dylan-inspired flick I'm Not There, we drove up to Dobbs Ferry to retrieve Little Babe and some Upper West Side kids from a partay at a club on the banks of the Hudson.

Because of the freezing temps and the morning snow, however, we found ourselves in one of those Holy Freaking Mother of God!! kinda skid-spins while pulling off 87 in Ardsley.

And once we stopped shaking and shouting and saying Shema and realized we had not been hit by oncoming traffic after all (though dozens of cars drove past us with drivers shouting and swearing and giving us the finger), we drove like geriatrics the rest of the journey, esp with Little Babe and his friends in the Bungalow-Van.

With each passing year, as I identify yet another fear I harbor, I become more firmly of the opinion that phobias have gotten a bad rap. While they are presented as some kind of pathological state of mind, what could be more rational than fear of a harmful object or substance?

Googling "fear of ice" earlier today, I found out that, indeed, there is a phobia named in its honor -- namely, pagophobia. However, I beg to differ with the classification of this fear as a phobia. Fear of ice is not a sign of mental illness but intelligence. People actually die from encounters with ice. In their vehicles or on their own two feet.

I am still traumatized by Dr. Atkins's death which resulted from a fall he suffered while slipping on the notorious "black ice," that in turn resulted from snow that fell, freakishly, in New York several Aprils ago. In fact, the word "black" coupled with "ice" sends shivers up my spine. No pun intended.

Many years ago, when we lived at the American Museum of Natural History, Little Babe developed a fear of Black Holes. Late at night, he used to call me into his darkened bedroom to express his fear of getting sucked into one and having his atoms crushed. Though I did the motherly thing of calming him down by reassuring him that he was in no danger of encountering a Black Hole anytime soon, I completely related. My fear of Black Ice is pretty similar. I am afraid of slipping on it and having all my bones crushed.

Which brings me to the ridiculous concept of Ice Skating.

Skidding on ice is a terrifying occurrence that I try to avoid during winter time. Indeed, since first observing it in my early childhood, I have failed to understand how this prelude to broken bones actually became a sport. And an Olympic sport, no less.

Yes, yes... I can understand that in the time of Hans Christian Andersen, in a place as freezing and backwards as Copenhagen, skating down frozen boulevards made sense. However, with the advent of the modern taxicab, bus, subway and car, there is no excuse for risking one's life in this manner. In fact, I think it's time to proclaim people who pursue figure skating professionally as judgment-impaired -- nay... stupid -- a view confirmed by the film Blades of Glory.

Skating parties were one of the banes of my bane-filled childhood. The skating rink was either populated by show-off skinny girls in Olympics-style skating dresses or maniacs bent on knocking you down on your butt. The music in the rink was always tinny and demonic; indoors, there was a damp, foot-scented ambiance that was only slightly mitigated by the promise of hot chocolate. The hot chocolate served by the emporia in question, however, was inevitably the rip-off version of Swiss Miss, manufactured by Pathmark supermarket.

Though I was an accomplished swimmer, cyclist and tree-climber, I was utterly unable to balance on the invariably too-tight skates that bound my ankles painfully and subjected my feet to frostbite while exposing the rest of my body to uncomfortably cold temperatures.

Fortunately, none of The Three Babes developed a fondness for skating and I can count on the toes of one, still-frostbitten foot the amounts of times I have taken my offspring to a skating rink over the two-plus decades of my mothering.

Anyway, two news stories today affirm the wisdom of my unpopular anti-skating point of view:

• A report of a girl who drowned trying to save a dog who had ventured out onto a pond covered with a film of thin ice and,
• A CNN report of an exploding Zamboni at a skating rink in Philadelphia
  

And while the death of the girl who ventured out onto ice is sheer tragedy, the Zamboni story signifies something quite different, I believe.

While there's an element in this story that hearkens to the science fiction theme of "our machines are turning against us," I discern the hand of God in the exploding Zamboni.

Obviously, the technological advancements of the 21st century have done nothing to dissuade human beings from voluntarily subjecting themselves to the dangers of ice. This failure has made God completely meshuggah with despair. Out of this sense of cosmic desperation He/She has now concocted a new and dramatic warning sign perfectly in sync with the early 21st zeitgeist, that is to say, something explosive.

I predict, however, that wily psychologists are already hard at work coming up with a snazzy-sounding phobia to signify the "irrational" fear of exploding Zamboni machines, thus training us away from our innate, natural -- and potentially lifesaving -- fear of ice.

You Steal My Cab, You Die

I was running late by about 15 minutes and had just emerged from the subway station at Times Square huffing, puffing and utterly stressed out. This was the third meeting with an important client on an important project and I could not seem to arrive on time.

Walking westward along 42nd Street while facing eastward (in other words, walking backwards), I was delighted to see a cab pull to the corner, about to discharge a customer.

Instantly, my hand went up in the Nazi-salute that is the time honored way of hailing cabs in New York City and sent a silent prayer of thanks to The Almighty.

But what was this??? A blur of big blond hair ran past me towards the cab. Astonished, I broke into a jog and overtook the poacher.

"Excuse me," said I, "but you must have seen me waiting for the cab."

An overly-made-up fiftysomething woman snapped at me with a Texas twang, "Waaaalll, it's not like you were running for it!"

WTF?

"Hailing cabs doesn't entail outracing other people," I sputtered as we strode shoulder to shoulder, jostling one another. "I was ahead of you, I hailed the cab and it's mine!"

"I'm taking it!" the Southern Belle from Hell proclaimed as we approached the car. I reached for the door and threw it open but the hussy jumped inside. I was stunned, then infuriated.

I've had yuppie scum steal my cabs; I've had hostile rapper-types steal my cabs; I've had little old ladies steal my cabs...but I have never lost a cab to a big-haired out-of-towner.

Fury boiled up in me, threatening to pour, lava-like, down the streets of Times Square, drowning New York's entire theatre district... which would hardly have made a difference yesterday since the strike was still in progress.

"I hope you die," I said calmly, then slammed the door shut on the hem of her coat.

And walked on to my important meeting, horrified yet oddly elated.

I Married Reverend Billy...or How to Tell Good Shopping from Bad

THERE'S my guy, Reverend Billy, the inspired performance artist who preaches against mindless consumerism in the malls, Starbuckses, Victoria Secrets, BestBuys, Stapleses, Disney emporia and Walmarts of America backed up by his robed, gospel-singing Church of Stop Shopping.

I love this guy, which probably explains why I married him.

Well, not him exactly, but his Jewish counterpart.

Yup...Husband of Bungalow Babe is the Hebrew cousin of Reverend Billy, preaching his own brand of anti-consumerism from the pulpit of our home.

I love that about him but as someone who also understands the concept of retail therapy, HOBB's religious zeal against buying makes me want to bolt from his synagogue from time to time.

We saw Rev. Billy in action in the new documentary, What Would Jesus Buy? which I loved from start to finish. Anyone who has sensed the apocalypse -- which Reverend Billy brands the Shopocalypse -- walking into a Costco will adore this movie which explores not only the mindless acquisitiveness of the American Christmas season but the disturbing provenance of much of our cut-rate goods, the closing of Mom and Pop stores when big box retailers gallop into town, the misguided impulse of parents to buy their kids "everything," and naturally, the out-of-control debt racked up by many Americans.

Oh, and the positing of Mickey Mouse as the Christ Child, the deification of this cartoon character in plush form, the alternate reality created by the architects of Disney Land and Disney World and all things Disney.

Perhaps my fave moment in the movie is when Reverend Billy bursts into a Disney Store at a mall and holds up a stuffed Mickey Mouse, proclaiming, "Mickey Mouse is the Anti-Christ!"

Gotta love this guy.

Though HOBB has not been known to launch proactive anti-shopping offensives in malls, he has nearly fainted in Macy's, broken out in hives in Gap, experienced low-blood sugar at Tiffany's, bolted out of Target and wandered in a fugue state through malls. He owns about 2 items of clothes, doesn't crave electronic toys or gadgets and don't even get me started on the state of our minivan, one television set (hint...my late Grandma Dorothy bought it for us in 1984) or much of the stuff in our home.

And though I, too, loathe mindless consumerism, I am also a willing practitioner of mindful consumerism from time to time, distinguishing between good shopping and bad shopping in much the same way as nutritionists divide good carbs from bad.

For instance, while Walmart is surely Purgatory, Target is Paradise and Loehmann's is often a glimpse of The World to Come.

While spending an entire Sunday at Woodbury Commons is a pathetic waste of time, dashing through it for an hour or two at the end of a day can be fun.

Snagging a great Isaac Mizrahi dress (bought for $24.99 from Target) is often more therapeutic than a month of psychotherapy.

And discovering cut-rate treasures at thrift shops is the most orgasmic experience outside of sex.

Not that I would ever confuse shopping with sex.

I must say that I do find HOBB's hatred for purchasing an attractive character trait and now that my kids are no longer little, I can concede how much I hated going into stores like Toys R Us or even FAO Schwarz, which I have always found obnoxious...hardly the wonderland everyone seems to think it is.

And though I stand four-square with HOBB on the evils of acquisitiveness, I have also determined that what often draws me to shop recreationally is the guarantee of easily-acquired happiness. The dress I am likely to find on sale at Banana Republic or the furniture that Ikea is offering hardly ever fails to bring me a small measure of joy.

Naturally, it's all about having a sense of perspective. These are things, after all, and just the icing on the cake of life. The happiness of finding that fabulous black velvet party dress that fits like a glove (and only for $58!!) does not begin to compare with the happiness of artistic achievement or human connectedness or the joy of travel or finding oneself in the midst of a magnificent forest or on a beach at sunrise or sunset or holding your newborn child in your arms or having your child graduate from elementary school/high school/college/graduate school or really great sex, or all those wonderful key moments in life, etc, etc, etc.

Obviously.

And one last thing...sometimes, the act of "going shopping" is less about the stuff and more about providing a context for something else...talking about difficult matters, for instance. Sometimes, launching on a quest for a new coat or pair of shoes with one's child provides a venue for having important conversations that would be difficult or awkward to have while sitting on the living room couch or facing each other down at a restaurant.

At times like these, the longed-for object is really a McGuffin...Alfred Hitchcock's term for the illusory goal that drives the plot of his movies... creating an opportunity to spend time together in the real quest to bring more happiness into our lives.

Beware of Speeding Mare

I often feel badly for MOBB.

Whenever Mother of Bungalow Babe calls during working hours, she anxiously prefaces her words with, "I'm catching you in the middle, aren't I?" which is true on every level -- in the middle of the work day, in the middle of a meeting, an e-mail or two or three or ten, a phone conversation, a deadline, a project, a press conference, a trip to the airport, a cab ride to a meeting, a lunch date, a proposal, a bathroom break, a negotiation, a workshop...you name it...you might know it...perhaps you live the same way as I do.

I feel bad for MOBB but in truth, I cannot talk during work hours and often find myself trying to ascertain the urgency of the matter without sounding snooty or impatient or disrespectful. And many times, what is NBD (no big deal) to me is a BFD (big frikkin' deal) to her.

Or to my teen daughter, Middle Babe.

Or to Big and Little Babe, my adult and pre-Bar Mitzvah sons, respectively.

Or to HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe), who often calls mid-day to chat cozily about marital or domestic or family stuff from his cushy office in the middle of his cushy life as a professor.

While I bolt like a mare on speed through my work day. By which I mean that my work life is super-intense. But don't go feeling bad for me; I am stimulated by my work and turned on by the projects and causes I promote and love my clients (some, of course, more than others) and feel plugged into the zeitgeist.

And just so you don't go thinking I'm a workaholic or anything, let me state for the record that I also play hard.

Naturally, there is stress. Stress is my oxygen. And I'm not downplaying the deleterious effects of stress or the fact that those nearest and dearest to me have seen me utterly break down in tears over the stress or simply act psychotic, and yes, some days or weeks or months have been impossible and I have a huge sleep debt and I've made myself meshuggeh and seen my skin break out and gained or lost weight and felt deprived of simple pleasures like having the head-space to read fiction at the end of the day and screamed at my husband for not being an international banker and said that I'd rather be a corporate drone than run my own business for one more second but five years into this adventure I have determined that either I'm masochistic or I actually like the mare-on-speed sensation.

Probably, it's a bit of both. As BSOBB (Birth Sister of Bungalow Babe) once put it -- some people don't have a low gear.

But let me not mislead my readers. Family always does come first. For real, true emergencies. Just not for workday chitchat.

Still, I usually do chat with MOBB, even in the middle of my workday because I love her and would hate to be thought of as a bad or insensitive daughter. At the conclusion of our conversation, she'll often sigh and remark, admiringly, "You have such an interesting life!"

Which makes me smile and regard her acknowledgement as a true sign of the success of feminism. And while I was driven at first by the sheer necessity of working hard to bring in the funds that would help keep our family afloat, I see the payback in ways that exceed the joys of solvency. It is gratifying to be a grown-up in the financial sense and enjoy the autonomy that comes with owning my own business.

Finally, not to gloat, but readers of my post from last week will know exactly why I am posting the following Breaking News item, which just popped onto CNN.com:

Investigators pass security at 19 airports with bomb parts

Transportation Security Administration: Checkpoints only part of total security

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Investigators with bomb-making components in their luggage and on their person were able to pass through security checkpoints at 19 U.S. airports without detection, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Passengers pass through security at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois.

GAO officials are expected to testify about the investigation Thursday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The investigators reported that most of the time security officers followed Transportation Security Administration policies and procedures, but investigators were able to take advantage of "weaknesses in TSA procedures and other vulnerabilities."

Check out the sad state of airport security by clicking on this link to the story:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/14/gao.airport.security/index.html.

In other words, La Guardia Airport: I want my frikkin' pink sparkly lotion back!

Airport Safety for Dummies

(LaGuardia Airport, NYC) -- I am really annoyed.

The TSA clerk at security confiscated my favorite lotion from Target, a shimmery pink confection that couldn't be transformed into an explosive for all the science in the world.

Naturally, I should have thrown the bottle into my check-in luggage, but having just flown back from Berlin with the lotion in my carry-on, I hardly foresaw a problem. Nevertheless, the high school drop-out who screened my bag most certainly did, triumphantly removing it AND the carton of organic half and half that I had taken with me to improve the horrible in-flight coffee.

I am not being paranoid when I note that she did so cheerfully.

Most assuredly, one of the perks of her job is throwing out the expensive "dangerous" belongings of utterly innocent passengers. Who have interesting jobs and lives. Who are educated. Who travel. Who had a momentary lapse in packing judgement either because they were hurrying or had no problem transporting such goods on international flights or simply wanted the stuff with them.

So annoyed was I to see my lotion in the trash bin that I contemplated retrieving it. Foreseeing a Page One picture in the Daily News -- featuring me stoically clinging to the lotion bottle while being escorted out of the terminal by security police -- I returned to the reality at hand.

Besides, I didn't want to miss my flight.

Still, I tried to reason with the clerk even asking if I could transfer the contents of the lotion to a smaller container. She said that "the rules" were that I had to do this outside of the security checkpoint. I informed her that her "rules" were retarded. The elegant, grey-haired businessman next to me cracked up while tying the laces of his oxford shoes.

Eyeing my tossed lotion longingly, I trudged to the gate nevertheless, drawing the looks of fellow travelers, most likely due to the steam coming out of my ears and the dangerous gleam in my eyes.

At the gate, I questioned the US Airways personnel about recourse and was told that they had nothing to do with the (retarded) rules...but that I should approach a TSA supervisor. The flame of hope was rekindled in my heart! Swiftly, I envisioned a librarianish older woman, wise and seasoned, to whom I might present my case.

No such luck.

Arriving at the security check-in, I found the supervisor, a dumpy Hispanic woman sorely in need of braces. Again, she cited "the rules," shaking her head in a practiced, infuriating, mock-sympathetic way.

Rolling my eyes at her and informing her that both she and her staff had no idea what they were doing, I gave up and went to my gate, fuming. I love that lotion and really depended on it to enhance my already sallowing NYC skin in LaLa-Land, where I am headed for a music convention this weekend.

I am now at the gate, waiting to board my plane. Logging into CNN.com, I see that the lead story is about a bomb scare at La Guardia on an incoming flight from Chicago. Even as we speak, the bomb-sniffing dogs are leaving the terminal, having successfully determined that there is no bomb. All incoming flights are being delayed.

The sad reality is that the TSA security drones have no skills other than rule-following and it is doubtful that they would catch any terrorists looking to blow up aircrafts unless these terrorists were transporting bottles of pink sparkly lotion.

I place my trust with the bomb-sniffing dogs and would like to borrow them to sniff out my lotion and return it to me.

And then, when they are done sniffing, I'd like to turn them on the TSA staff.

BELATED BERLIN DIARY

Exactly one week ago, I was on my way back to NYC from Berlin where I had gone to visit Big Babe who has embarked upon the life of a Starving Expatriate American Writer only a few short months following his graduation from Columbia University.

My trip to Berlin was less about sightseeing and more a one-woman Red Cross mission. Meeting Big Babe at Alexanderplatz, I was horrified but not really surprised to note his resemblance to Franz Kafka...all sunken cheeks and haunted eyes. Plus, he was shivering in his thin jacket. My maternal radar had told me (even as Big Babe kept denying) that my beloved firstborn had run out of money, oh, about two weeks earlier and I came prepared to stock his pantry, supplement his inadequate wardrobe and bring him the books he simply could not live without.

The second of my suitcases was so laden with wares that I had to pay a $50 overage fee at JFK. Contained therein were not only coats and jackets and jeans and socks and blankets and sheets and books but also a bag of bagels, a tub of scallion cream cheese, a tub of smoked salmon spread and a pound of French Italian Roast from Zabar's -- soul food for a homesick and broke Manhattanite.

With a surplus of work and back-load of projects, I had come for an extended weekend visit, leaving NYC Thursday night and returning by Tuesday. I spent the last minutes before boarding on the phone with a NY Times reporter and sat whispering in my seat into my Blackberry in the seconds before take-off, terrified that I was going to be thrown off the plane for the security breach by the German flight crew.

My time in Berlin was a magical blur of museums and opera (Carmen) and classical music (a Brahms program at the Philharmonie) and bars (most notably, Hairy Mary's) and cheap restaurants and rides on the S-Bahn and U-Bahn and counting Arab kaffiyehs wrapped rattily around the necks of Berliners (27 in four days) -- evidently, this season's must-have accessory. I logged untold kilometers walking on Berlin's cobblestoned streets and untold hours of Skype conversations and Blackberry conversations and innumerable e-mails and Sh'mas whispered over the phone to Little Babe back in New York.

Berlin always hits me like something familiar and alien all at once. I thought I was so bloody original to frame it as "New York in the Seventies," until I saw this very phrase pop up in an article in this past Sunday's Home magazine supplement to the NY Times. With its cheap rent, preponderance of graffiti, ubiquitous smoking, restless youth culture, dangerous undercurrent and fluid economy, Berlin does zap me back to my days as a teen navigating my way from the nondescript streets of my native Douglaston and Forest Hills to the thrilling landscape of Manhattan, finding stories on every street corner, falling in love with the unknowable yet endlessly fascinating people I would pass hurrying down West End Avenue or up Madison Avenue, scripting screenplays and melodramas, hoping to rewrite the story of my life any minute now.

Berlin is the blond and blue-eyed Irish-Italian boy I used to make out with on the floor of his Corona, Queens living room with a black velvet Jesus -- complete with bleeding heart and a crown of thorns -- watching pitying from a nearby wall.

Dangerous, forbidden, repellent yet undeniably sexy.

Berlin is a lure for young Americans, particularly of the artistic bent. Big Babe loves it; this is his fourth visit there and he is conversant in German, has written and published articles about the culture and life in this city. This trip, I met his friends, a loosely-connected group of semi-and underemployed smart kids in their Odyssey Years as David Brooks so memorably put it. Many of them look like Big Babe -- undernourished and ill-clad. They share large multi-room apartments with each other or sublet rooms from Germans. Rental for a large room in a decent neighborhood is low...about 150 to 250 Euro per month.

So, here too, is a throwback to New York in the late seventies when studio apartments on the Upper West Side could be had for $300 a month and a rented room could cost as little as $200.

Because of the famously difficult task of getting employment as a non-German, Big Babe and his friends often face cash flow issues, starving while they wait for payment from the States for articles written, trying to find internships with visiting American academics or teaching at English language institutes or doing babysitting for American families or having some kind of steady gig from abroad, like website design or another skill that travels well through cyberspace.

If you ever need your maternal instincts reawakened, go to visit your kid in a foreign country about two weeks after they have run out of money.

My time with Big Babe was filled with hilarious dysfunctional moments. One day we came back to his room in Kreutzberg to find half the furniture missing...including the couch I was sleeping on. His friend, who sublet the room before him, had come to reclaim his furniture. The following day he claimed his down comforter. (I will spare the reader any discomfort by refraining from describing the sleeping arrangements minus the couch and blanket.)

And Big Babe showed me a hand-drawing made by his depressive roommate Helena that is so bizarre as to be a potential Exhibit A in her forthcoming trial for insanity. Evidently, Helena has an issue with men peeing while standing up. She has spoken about this repeatedly with Big Babe but not even on the level of "please do not leave the seat up."

Instead, Helena has told Big Babe that it is unnatural for men to pee standing up and has waged a campaign against this.

Her latest salvo is this drawing that features a standing man urinating with a big diagonal line drawn through it, Ghostbusters-style. If memory serves me correctly, there are droplets of pee coming out of a downward-pointing ween.

Penis-hating German roommates aside, the trip contained numerous discussions about making money and solvency and the viability of Big Babe staying on in Berlin. And while I was zapped back to my own adolescence and post-college experiences where I, too, never had enough money and often starved between dates with men I didn't really like and trips home for Shabbat where my mother picked fights with me because I had broken some kind of parent-child contract by moving out of the house before marriage, I nevertheless was able to toss off the memories of myself in the New York of the 1970's and embrace the reality of being an adult in the 21st century and pass onto my son some critical advice:

Money is essential.

And whatever you think is your bottom line is probably too low.

While it's great to opt for a life of meaning and art and adventure over affluence, poverty sucks.

Besides, you are too much of a bon vivant.

On Tuesday morning of last week, I left my bon vivant in Berlin and caught a flight back to Kennedy. Once back, I hit the ground running, attending Little Babe's orchestra practice, starting him on homework and then running out to a client meeting which lasted until 10 pm.

Berlin is an experience I need to process. Though I have an aversion to the city, it is fascinating to bear witness to its reinvented life in the 21st century. It is especially fascinating to see Berlin through Big Babe's eyes and to add my commentary to his observations. I fully understand his kinship with the city even as I find it personally repellent.

And then, there is the matter of being an American Jew in the Berlin of the 21st Century.

Coming from Manhattan, it all seems so pathetic. There are well-meaning but futile attempts to revive Jewish life in Berlin, but the synagogues remain largely empty, the community largely uneducated and the glorious Jewish museum preserves the memory of a community that was completely destroyed.

Leaving the Jewish museum on Saturday afternoon with Big Babe, I felt my insides scooped out. While it had reminded me somewhat of the new Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, there was hardly the triumphant emergence through the halls of despair into the sunshine of the present-day Jewish holy land.

Outside the doors of the Berlin Jewish museum resides no such hopeful view. Instead, there are the paved-over ashes of the Jewish life that had once thrived in this city -- bone shards of the countless Jewish artists, musicians, writers, teachers, doctors, rabbis, radicals, business people, politicians and young intellectuals like Big Babe who found themselves seduced by Berlin, believing in it even unto death.

Mother Nature as Nazi Stormtrooper

It is rare that New Yorkers perceive another American city as more stressful than their own.

The last time it happened was two summers ago when Katrina devastated New Orleans and now we are in the throes of another such moment as the nation -- nay, the entire world -- watches San Diego burn.

Because The Colbert Report was replaying last week's shows, HOBB and I tuned into CNN last night at 11:30 and spent an entire hour glued to the tube. First, America's sweetheart Anderson Cooper collected dispatches from San Diegans who had fled their homes while camera crews filmed scary reports from correspondents in the field, fire fighters and officials. Then, at midnight, as if America hadn't had its fill of tragic scenery, the baton was passed to a funereal Larry King who emceed the horror show from the safety of his CNN studio.

Naturally, the televised images were not the first I had seen, in fact, I had spent most of the day flipping computer screens between my email and the homepages of foxnews.com; cnn.com; nytimes.com; latimes.com; in addition to Reuters; the AP; the local San Diego paper -- the Union Tribune; blogs; sites belonging to local synagogues, the local Jewish Federation and the JCC; and other venues from the purgatory that has become San Diego, California.

Like the death toll in Iraq, the numbers of evacuated residents kept rising, the number of homes and businesses destroyed kept getting higher.

Friends who felt safe on Monday were packing their vans up by Tuesday and heading to hotels or family in other states. In my mind, I transported myself into their beautiful homes, recalling my last trip to the area, how I marveled at the flawless weather, the utterly calm feeling of Southern California.

How I indulged in that snide, Woody-Allenesque East Coast supremacy, secretly curling up my lip in disdain for the utter lack of stress or adversity in the lives of our San Diego friends.

Remembering how I scoffed at the fact that there were even weather reports on the news, how I quipped that television stations would save a bundle by firing their meteorologists and simply printing a sign that contained a single word -- PERFECT -- which they could flash on the screen to report describe the day's weather.

And perfect still applies, as in perfectly horrible. Perfectly shocking. Perfectly devastating.

Or, as some have said, The Perfect (Fire)Storm, the confluence of all the factors that culminated in this holocaust.

The way that the flames of the San Diego wildfires have moved over the hills and through the canyons reminds me of nothing more than SS stormtroopers moving in on the unsuspecting and innocent populace.

Yes, this is the way events appear to this Jewish New Yorker as she witnesses the devastation of San Diego: Mother Nature has turned into a Nazi -- homicidal, hateful, bent on sheer and total annihilation.

MEDIA ADVISORY: BUNGALOW BABE TO MANAGE STEPHEN COLBERT'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Because I fell asleep on the black leather couch last night while Anderson Cooper was replaying Matt Lauer's cringe-worthy interview with international laughing stock and Republican liability Senator Larry Craig and his pretending-to-trust-him-and-trying-really-hard-not-to-grimace wife, I missed Stephen Colbert's announcement on The Colbert Report that he was kinda considering running for president of the U.S.A.

However, through the magic of YouTube and my ability to spell Stephen Colbert's name correctly, I was able to recapture this media moment where ingenuity, satire and the dawning realization "hey, that's not a half-bad idea!" merged in simultaneous orgasmic oneness.

But "hey, that's not a half-bad idea!" is the understatement of the 21st Century.

Colbert's prankish announcement is the most uplifting, greatest, fully flipping amazing news our nation has had since September 10th 2001.

We all know that Stephen Colbert (previously referred to in this blog as my BF, a fact that I'll just have to confront honestly yet noisily in the media) is a natural winner. However, to win the election as the first Democratic/Republican presidential contender, he'll need a brilliant campaign manager -- a well-connected, Manhattan-based strategist whose thinking is so far out of the box as to be off the wall.

Such a campaign manager would ideally be a woman, prefer short skirts and boots, possess a supernaturally high energy level, be madly in love with her client, have a way with words, be capable of courting the press, love to travel, have, oh, about three photogenic children and a husband with no pending lawsuits against him and be able to hide evidence of her past unpaid parking tickets, ignored jury duty summonses, unreturned library books, unpaid pledges to college radio stations, under-decorated apartment, penchant for watching YouTube videos of questionable artistic and moral value, the kitten she once abandoned in a Westchester parking lot, her fondness for visiting Before and After plastic surgery websites and refusal to buy age-appropriate clothes or even shop at any store other than Target, Old Navy, H&M, Loehmann's and Forever 21.

In other words, I hereby announce my candidacy for the position of Stephen Colbert's campaign manager.

And if I haven't managed to convince you that I would be the most kick-ass campaign manager ever, here's one more unique selling point: the smart-aleky yet Catholic Colbert would benefit enormously from teaming up with a smart-aleky yet Jewish gal.

Together, we would epitomize the Judeo-Christian image America likes to have of itself.

So, Comedy Central and Mr. Colbert, I hope you are reading this.

America is hot for Stephen and so am I.

How to Perfect Ann Coulter

Okay, this one is simply too easy.

The poster grrrl for neocon outrageousness, the horsey Ann Coulter, opened her yap again, this time to Donny Deutsch on national television.

This dispatch, from CNN.com:

Conservative commentator and best-selling author Ann Coulter may find herself in the midst of a controversy for comments Monday suggesting America would be better if everyone was Christian.

Asked by CNBC host Donny Deutsch what the U.S. looks like in her dreams, Coulter said it would look like the Republican National Convention in 2004

"People were happy,” she said, according to a transcript provided to CNN by CNBC. “They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America." (Video: Watch Coulter's comments on CNBC)

When Deutsch responded, "It would be better if we were all Christian?" Coulter said "Yeah."

Deutsch, himself Jewish, continued to press Coulter on her remarks, asking, "We should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians then?"

"Yeah," Coulter responded, adding "Well, it's a lot easier. It's kind of a fast track."

"You can't possibly believe that," Deutsch responded. “You can’t possibly. You’re too educated.”

"Do you know what Christianity is?" Coulter replied. "See, we believe your religion, but you have to obey. We have the fast track program."

Later in the interview Deutsch asked Coulter if she doesn't want any Jews in the world, Coulter responded, "No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say."

"Wow, you didn't really say that, did you," Deutsch said.

Oh yes, she did.

Knowing that the cameras were rolling and the eyes and ears of the nation would once again be trained on her.

No surprise with this calculating fascist media whore, just the latest in a series of verbal scud missiles.

Who knows what the hell she really believes and who the hell cares?

But since we're talking about getting perfected, I've got a great suggestion for Ann Coulter:

Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

In other words, shut your stupid mouth.

Hello Muddah, Berlin-Style

Whilst walking Alfie the Pomeranian at 7:30 this morning, my Crackberry vibrated with the promise of a new incoming e-mail.

Digging the addictive device out of my raincoat pocket (hastily thrown atop my shorts and bra-less t-shirt so as not to scandalize Morningside Heights, esp my disgraced neighbor Lee Bollinger), I saw that the new missive was from none other than Big Babe, my firstborn, recently graduated from Columbia U and now based in Berlin.

Two days ago, I bought a mega-cheapo ticket to Berlin (Delta, direct, nonstop, round-trip for $450!!!!!!!) to see my son and the news of my impending arrival awakened that instinctual impulse shared by offspring of all ages: the instant awareness of things lacking in one's life and the composition of a list of such items to be shlepped by one's parents, often internationally.

With Big Babe's permission, I am hereby reproducing his request list:

1. Books from that bag I left in the dining room: Updike collected stories, a few others that can be chosen at random. I forget what's there...possibly Schnitzler and Svevo? Naked Lunch??? I really am at a loss.
2. Gap 3/4 peacoat (hanging in front of house)
3. A couple of scarves (you know 'em)
4. My leather gloves (should be in some coat pocket)
5. A few blazers from my closet. Green corduroy banana republic one; somewhat stiff brown cord one w/big pockets (you know it)...whatever else you feel is classy enough.
7. A couple button-down shirts (same instructions)
6. Some more Henley shirts (in hideous cupboard next to closet)...and another sweater or two (black wool turtle-neck and maybe a zip-up or two)
7. My pleather fender shoes (ersatz converse)
8. a pound of Zabar's coffee (F.I., ground for Melitta)
9. More pairs of socks!!! (alle Farben)
10. A warm cap / hat - like that stupid black thing with the pompom
11. Anything else that you think would improve my quality of life here
12. My portable typewriter - only if it isn't too much of a pain in the ass
13. Hyemin
14. The Complete New Yorker - it's on the shelf in the livingroom. If the whole things too much of a hassel, then take the discs out and put them in the protective vinyl sleeves I have in my room inside that CD / DVD storage box.
15. Before I left, I was looking everywhere for a notebook that says "World Turned Upside Down" on it. It's a thin (50 sheets), beige and classy notebook with non-recycled paper...It should be 1/2 filled up. Maybe it made its way into the piano bench or with elsewhere with sheet music. No need to turn the house upside down to look for it...but if you do see it lying around, please bring it.
16. My opera throw with the Chagall design on it. It's rather light and non-bulky.

OK...I think that's about it. Remember, all these items and quantities are negotiable...and Dependant on what you can physically bring with you. I can even meet you at the airport if you need help!

Luv ya!


So....there you have it. The modern Wish List of an American in Berlin. To learn more about Big Babe, visit his amazing blog at ajg2106.blogspot.com.

And stay tuned for word of Middle Babe's Wish List from Towson, Maryland. We're planning to visit her the weekend before I fly to Berlin. She has warned me that her list is extensive and might require many trips to Target.

Donations can be made to Bungalow Babe in the Big City.

Earmark the funds Hello Muddah.

Stephen, Be My Hero Tonight!

(Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel) -- It is 4:20 a.m. and the boarding for my flight to New York via Prague begins in five minutes.

Naturally, I'm seated near the illy counter, drinking a double cappuccino and eating chocolate cake...and writing on my laptop.

Next to me, Little Babe is plugged into his Mac, watching the Top Ten Naruto Jutsu.

Just before closing my computer down at my sister's place in Har Adar and throwing my luggage into the waiting taxi, I learned something very disturbing about tonight's Colbert Report, which I cannot watch, alas, since I will be en route to Prague.

So disturbing was it that I couldn't board my flight without registering the following plea to my BF Stephen Colbert.

Here it is:

Dear Stephen,

During the day, it came to my attention that on your show tonight you will host a nefarious person by the name of John Mearsheimer. He is one half of the duo responsible for the book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, which revives the basic theme of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

That theme is: The Jews did it.

What?

Everything, beginning with dragging the US into the Iraq War.

Because of Israel and their greater loyalty as Jews than Americans.

And come to think of it, Israel probably shouldn't exist. Yeah, once upon a time there was widespread American and world support, but it is time to drop that charade.

Because Israel is full of controlling Jews who in turn control US Foreign Policy.

The issue is Jews and control, you see. But really, it is Jews and power. A paradigm the world cannot accept.

The Jews, state Mearsheimer and his writing buddy Stephen Walt, exert this supernatural control over things. And with their amazing power, which is wielded chiefly through this dangerous entity called THE ISRAEL LOBBY, they control YOUR life!

Thankfully, in the United States, Mearsheimer and Walt's poorly-researched, outrageous book has not gotten rave reviews. A recent, measured New York Times Book Review by Leslie Gelb basically decimated the work. Also, check out Jeffrey Goldberg's whip-smart write-up in The New Republic.

Too many other intelligent reviewers, while stopping short of praising the work, nevertheless refrain from calling it what it is.

Perhaps because -- in a baffling and illogical leap -- the Israel Lobby conspiracy camp is quick to accuse their detractors of censorship or stifling debate.

They scoff that the default mode of their critics is the overused charge of anti-Semitism.

Well....this new breed of university-bred anti-Zionism is indeed anti-Semitism...simply adorned in the socially-acceptable sheep's clothing of academia.

So, Stephen, while I will admit that I was dismayed to hear that Mearsheimer will grace your show tonight, I am still holding out hope that you will remove the wooly cover and reveal the wolf beneath.

You are bold.

You are fearless.

Out him and his cronies as the Jew-haters they are.

Rah, rah, ree! Kick him in the knee!

Rah, rah, rass! Kick him in the other knee!

Nah....kick him in the ass.

Hard.

Yours,

Bungalow Babe