I'm Sorry I Sweated in Your Shorts

Dear Anonymous Large Guy Whose Shorts I Wore at the Gym Tonight,

I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart (or the heart of my bottom, as it were) for your unwitting generosity.

Had you not left your ginormous black shorts in the locker room yesterday, I would not have been able to run/sweat my way to Nirvana while listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Talking Heads and Leonard Cohen atop the elliptical machine at 6.8 miles an hour.

You see, after a whirlwind day that began with the tombstone unveiling for the inimitable Leo Chester at a New Jersey cemetery and included a 3-hour jam session in the basement of Congregation Ramath Orah with Little Babe, his extraterrestrially-gorgeous cousin Hannah and his BF Joe for my November 13th musical performance at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, I truly needed to work my ya-yas out. ("Ya-Yas" is code for my growing terror that my idea is idiotic, that I cannot sing, that we will get kicked out because of the new security alert due to those packages from Yemen and that all the time I'm spending on rehearsing and planning should be channeled into my grad school program instead.)

Anyway, around 6 pm, grabbing my workout gear and combination lock, I flew out of the house while HOBB was on his way home from his orchestra rehearsal, leaving him a VM asking him if I had heard correctly; had he indeed offered to serve as chef for the evening? If so, I'd see him in one hour, sweaty yet satisfied.

Problem was, when I got to the locker room, there was no evidence of my itty bitty lil black shorts which I could have SWORN I put in the leopard-print bag before I bolted out of my apartment in a paranoid frenzy that my gym ambitions would have been waylaid by HOBB's arrival. (I was probably right, therefore not paranoid. Just experienced in the ways of my husband.) I dug deeper inside my bag. There was a sports bra, tank top and sneakers. Nothing else.

Sprinting to the front desk in my underwear (winter coat draped over my shoulders and pulled tight around my midsection), I poignantly pleaded for a pair of shorts or pants...perhaps something placed in the Lost and Found?

Nothing doing.

"Men's also??" I asked, noting that the staffer had checked only the pile of women's clothes.

Laughing, she withdrew a truly impressive pair. Yours.

"If you can keep 'em on, they're yours!" she said, handing them over.

Normally skeevy about borrowing clothes and all that (I get grossed out just thinking about it), I threw the shorts on, pulled the waistline drawstring tight, folded over the waist twice and, voila, I was ready to hit the fitness floor.

Passing the mirror, I tried not to look too closely. I looked cool/weird. Actually, much more weird than cool. And somewhat deformed by the bunched-up fabric. You must be an impressively, uh, statuesque person. Your shorts were so baggy that even folded twice they almost hit my knees. Coupled with my V-neck sleeveless black shirt, I did look artistic and edgy yet possessed by the sudden desire to be modestly-attired...on only one part of my body. Sculpted arms and shoulders and even some cleavage peeped out of my tank-top but the billowing fabric encasing my haunches reminded me of the gym attire of super-tzinius* yeshiva girls I sometimes see at the gym near my bungalow.

I was self-conscious, yes, but mainly overjoyed. Salvation was mine. And all because you left your shorts to me.

Because of you, my workout was not hijacked by my negligence. Indeed, I sweated like a freak in your supersize shorts. The guy to my left kept casting me concerned looks. He probably thought I was on drugs because I ran with my eyes closed, mouthing along to the songs.

So, thank you again for helping me get my three-miles of Zen tonight. Heaven knows I needed every inch of that journey for I will surely be up for hours to come writing my midterm paper for tomorrow's class.

Now, every time I pass a large man at the JCC, I shall wonder if he is you.

Warmly,

Bungalow Babe in the Big Shorts

_____________________

*modest

Ooohh!! Oooohh!!! Pick me!!!!!!

Brad's Cafe is dangerous to my productivity. I sit here with my laptop, sipping their lethally strong iced coffee with soymilk, answering emails, making phone calls, meeting tons of people I know and doing everything but what I ought to be doing, namely schoolwork.

Today, instead of starting my History of Journalism paper (on the German press during the Third Reich) or any of the three papers due for my outside course in Sociology (can someone please explain why academic writing is so dense???) or even helping my friend promote her new book (I promised to send out a flurry of e-blasts. I will, I swear, just haven't done it yet) I found myself perusing literary social networking sites and stumbled onto one I actually liked.

It is called Fictionaut.

The thing is, this band of elitist snobs issue you invitations only if they deem you appropriate.

So I signed right up, filling out the form where you make the case as to why you ought to be invited, with the words, "Google me, bitch."

I was paying homage to the scene in The Social Network, of course, where Mark Zuckerberg gets his customized business cards.

But maybe that's not a highbrow enough reference for the Fictionaut fascists. Maybe I ought to have included an allusion to a Bergman or Fellini film. Or Godard. I bet the readers of Fictionaut love Godard.

Anyway, while breathlessly (get the allusion??) awaiting news of my membership application, it occurred to me that I was having a flashback to that universal memory from childhood. The one where you stand pathetically on the sidelines while the jocks select worthy players for their team.

(The following paragraph is a gratuitous and self-indulgent digression. Skip if you like.)

A scruffy tomboy until I turned overnight into Lolita at the age of 12 I was in a state of constant rebellion against any kind of group enterprise and completely negative about team sports. The thing was, I really didn't care about the game but once I was chosen, took great pride in the fact that I could kick a kickball out of the field, shoot baskets fairly well and was an ace dodgeball and gaga player.

So, I am not sure whose childhood memory I am appropriating or maybe I am tapping into a paradigmatic memory that is readily available to all adults.

The point is, I am sitting at Brad's quietly praying, "pick me!"

Bad Student for a Day

No one cares that I was racing to class this morning with my BlackBerry pressed sweatily to my ear because of an urgent phone call from a family member about a crisis-in-progress. With my pocketbook cutting grooves into my left forearm and my computer bag bouncing against my right thigh I flew across Amsterdam Avenue, barely minding the traffic turning from W116th Street, concentrating only on the conversation and the fact that I was surely going to be late for my 9:30 a.m. Art and Culture seminar.

Our professor, an exceptionally nice guy, has made it clear that the one thing he really hates is lack of punctuality.

So, when I arrived, panting, four minutes late, he was not pleased.

Sinking into my seat, sunglasses fogging up from my rising body heat (thank you, menopause) I wished to blurt out the reason for my tardiness, the amazing fact that I had arrived at all, the revelation that I actually felt like a heartless bitch for hustling off the phone call to attend to something as relatively unimportant as an art and culture class, that sometimes it was freaking difficult to be an adult student, that is, deal with everything that goes along with having serious connections and responsibilities -- aging parents, kids, a husband and friends who were getting sick suddenly and whose own parents, siblings and spouses were dying at an alarming rate.

But graduate school means never having to say you're sorry but...so I just swallowed my discomfort and blocked out the crisis.

The seminar was good, great in fact, with Mark Harris, the film critic and author (Pictures at a Revolution) and lots of entertaining movie clips and a generally relaxed atmosphere. There was lunch with HOBB at Cafe Nana, a visit to Dodge to scout for a student to profile for a forthcoming class assignment, speed-of-lightening responses to pressing emails, retrieval of phone calls, conversations with family members about the crisis, plans to get to NYU Medical Center later that night and then, Evidence and Inference at 2:30.

I made it a priority to arrive on time. Today's session featured a lecture by a Sudhir Venkatesh, an ethnographer, that riffed on the excellent book Random Family by Adrian Nicole Leblanc and the various techniques of getting people to talk about their lives. I thought of my penchant for having perfect strangers reveal deeply intimate matters and was moved to ask whether one ought to being wary when one evidently possessed a particular knack for getting people to talk.

While our professor reframed the question to illustrate the difference between the ability to elicit a response and the ability to extract valuable information from a subject, Venkatesh's response was cutting. He noted that many first-time ethnographers had a narcissistic belief in their own abilities. There was some laughter in response. Was it directed at me? Did my question reveal me as to be a narcissist? I was surprised and not a little bit hurt.

Hours later, exhausted by the emotional trajectory of the day, returned from the meeting at NYU Med, thinking over the numerous calls and emails, trying to figure out when I could fit in a phone conference with Little Babe's History teacher and how to get Middle Babe the Trader Joe's gift card by tomorrow so she could buy food for her college dorm in Towson, Maryland and whether I could slip out early from my History of Journalism class tomorrow night to catch a friend's book talk, I realize that my four-minute tardiness and my possibly boastful question makes not a whit of difference in the grand scheme of life. What matters is the material under discussion in the classroom, the takeaway from the lesson, the experience of meeting important scholars, the kernels of valuable guidance, the revelations that come, unbidden, in the middle of class as concepts bloom around you and you skip happily through the fragrant field of thought, selecting your signature bouquet.

Swing Kid

For over four hours today, I was happily sequestered inside Dance Manhattan on West 19th Street taking the Swing Dance Crash Course.

O. Mi. God. Best fun in a long time and I have lots of fun.

Fabulous teachers, partners and music.

Only during the last 30 minutes did I begin zoning out, the result of sudden and extreme hunger and two hours sleep last night. I had been up doing my travel grant application in the middle of the night...despite a party where I had 2 shots of tequila, a huge glass of wine and coffee with amaretto. I never used to have any tolerance to booze. Now I can drink like a guy. Soon, like a sailor.

I wore a swingy black dress to class today. A sash in my hair. Fishnets. Black Mary Janes.

The effort was appreciated.

It was so good to resume dancing, given up over the last several months of travel and supreme busyness.

I'm still supremely busy but also supremely determined to have certain elements in my life.

Swing dance is one of them.

And there is an academic angle to my enthusiasm. While researching resistance efforts in Germany in the period leading up to WWII, I discovered that there was an anti-Hitler movement of young people called the Swing Kids. A movie was made in the nineties, by this very name, and is considered a cult classic. It awaits me at the Barnard library.

Enjoy the following clip. It'll make you wanna jump up and dance!

Deconstructing Uncle Miltie

Yesterday afternoon, between my Art and Culture writing seminar and the final of six sessions on statistics (part of my Evidence and Inference class), I spent a delightful 75 minutes in contemplation of the breakthrough antic comedy of Mr. Television himself, Milton Berle.

The venue was a class for seniors held at the JCC in Manhattan and I gained admission by virtue of the presence of my mom -- a sweet-tempered septuagenarian from Great Neck. Sitting around a table much like the one I had occupied early that day at Columbia was the fast-forward version of my morning seminar group -- men in loose-fitting jeans wearing hearing aids, women in black leggings with their walkers folded against the wall; faces rapt and respectful, turned towards the instructor and the video monitor.

Having spent the morning debating postmodernism, it was a sheer relief to lose myself in the vaudevillian shtick of Berle. Worried that I had offended my professor and our visiting lecturer -- a world-renowned professor of architecture -- by my observation that postmodernist theory often veers into complete BS, I was soothed by the sight of the Berle in drag, Berle tussling with Frank Sinatra, Berle tap-dancing, Berle doing his opening monologue on the weekly Texaco Star Theatre television show, Berle ad-libbing and improvising in that era before taped TV shows, Berle tossing the yiddishisms around like they were weightless matzoh balls.

Berle created an entire genre, argued our instructor, without using the word genre.

Berle's show offered a pastiche of performances, which was itself an innovation, said our teacher, without using the words pastiche or innovation.

From the portal of his laptop, our instructor (seventy-something and bespectacled) presented dozens of video clips of Berle footage, noting that the symbolic value of Berle supersedes the depth of his humor.

By the way, added the instructor, he didn't find Berle all that hilarious. For true comic genius, he said, come back next week when the comedian under discussion will be Jack Benny.

There was no discussion of Berle as product of late capitalism or espousing phallo-centric comic tropes or embodying a populist aesthetic. For 75 minutes, no one mentioned Derrida.

Instead, there was my mom's delighted laughter and her whispered commentary that she remembered the time he had Bob Hope on the show and the little television set she had in her house in Warren, Ohio and how her parents loved him, Mr. Television, Uncle Miltie, and that it was all so long ago but oh, it was so good to remember.

The Assignment Dybbuk Has Been Vanquished!

Dear Reader,

At approximately 2:14 am, I logged onto Courseworks and posted my revised article on the first Bang on a Can marathon -- May 10, 1987 -- the first Fringe Art assignment for my Art and Culture seminar.

Unlike my first draft, the revision did not suck.

In fact, I really, really like it.

Yes, it took several hours and the excruciating surgical work of editing down to fit the 600-word allowance (from an embarrassing 1100...oh, just about 500 over the limit) and a bunch of research and the digging up of little known facts and some checking up on what else was going on in the world at the time but HALLELUYAH and Praise the Lord for the Assignment Dybbuk that plagued me for the past six weeks has evidently been slain.

NOW I can go to sleep.

Possessed by the Assignment Dybbuk

Something has happened to my writing over the past month or perhaps to me.

Let me clarify: the writing for my graduate program.

The process is torturous. I have anxiety about getting started. I'm not sure what my point of view is. To delay the starting process I over-research the subject then feel buried beneath mounds of information. My fingers freeze or perhaps it is my brain. I don't hear my voice in the finished product.

I've pondered the matter and concluded that I have a condition called Assignmentitis.

In my case, it is caused by possession by an entity I think of as the Assignment Dybbuk.

The Assignment Dybbuk is like a mean girl who sits across from me as I work, cracking up at my pathetic efforts to write something that is worthy of the graduate program of an Ivy League university. Like a mean girl, the Assignment Dybbuk makes fun of my clothes, my hair, my penchant for biting my cuticles when nervous (did I mention that my fingers look like they've been attacked by zombies?) and my ideas.

Because of the presence of the Assignment Dybbuk, I don't have my typical writing mojo, that freewheeling up-yours attitude that frankly fuels my work.

I feel constrained, even constipated.

And if I reread my writing, I find it competent but like a Golem: all body and brawn but devoid of soul.

Or sounding curiously like a press release, the result of 16 years working in public relations.

So maybe it is not an Assignment Dybbuk at all but a PR Poltergeist that has inhabited me?

In any case, I am possessed. So I need to choose a method of exorcism that is tailor-made for the particular sort of spirit that feasts on graduate students.

Such an exorcism requires not holy water but steaming hot coffee.

Such an exorcism requires not prayer but innumerable source citations.

Such an exorcism requires not rage but a kindly, generous, empathetic attitude.

After all, my personal dybbuk might be the spirit of a Journalism School student applicant who was rejected from the program and is compelled to spend eternity tormenting those who got in.

The Particular Sadness of Stepping Outside Jewish Time

I am fond of talking about life in New York City as the antithesis of the classic Diaspora experience. In this most Jewish of metropolises, being an MOT* imparts insider status by which I mean cultural, social and intellectual street cred as well as the sense of being a member of the majority despite the demographics.

Compared with other places I have visited or lived in, New York City induces a nominal degree of compromise between one's Jewishness and one's secular self.

If you don't know what I am talking about, consider the fact that alternate side of the street parking is suspended for every single day of yom tov...that is, those days of Jewish holiday observance where one is commanded (among other things) not to travel, hence, move a car.

Or, minus at the university level, local public schools are closed for major Jewish holidays.

Or, that you can find kosher food just about everywhere -- even in bodegas -- with kosher restaurants morphing from shleppy to gourmet, drawing a distinctly diverse consumer crowd.

Or that men with yarmulkes are a ubiquitous sight...and not just on Shabbat and holidays.

Anyway (yawn), New York is a uniquely comfortable place to spread out and just be Jewish, ya know, parade with Torahs down West End Avenue, parade up Fifth Avenue in salute to the State of Israel, wear Purim costumes on the subway, gather in Riverside Park to throw challah crumbs into the Hudson River, build Sukkot all over town, etc...

So, it was with a certain degree of sadness that I experienced a clash between my yiddishkeit** and other life this year for probably the first time in my life because of the holidays of Tishri landing like an alien spaceship on my grad school schedule.

For three solid weeks, I faced down the dilemma of missing class or missing the holiday, including evening meals with family and friends, synagogue services and other aspects of the tradition.

I must confess that with the exception of Rosh Hashana, I chose to attend class throughout this month, with much compromise to my holiday observance. What this meant was dashing in and out of class, arriving late or not at all to meals and services, adjusting my soul's frequency as I bolted between the various destinations.

Beyond the matter of picking up a pen to take notes or the myriad other ways in which I broke the halakhot*** of holiday observance, there was the fundamental issue that entering the classroom expelled me from the cocoon of Jewish Time.

The minute I entered the Journalism School building, it simply ceased to be a Jewish holiday for me.

And by the end of the third Triple Whammy of the month of Tishri (see previous column on the matter of Triple Whammys), I feel a distinct sense of loss, a particular sadness that comes from having to choose between being a diligent student and being an observant Jew, a struggle that is hardly uniquely mine but still, something that I have experienced first on the cusp of turning fifty. Which is possible only in New York.

________________________

* Member of the Tribe

**Jewishness

***commandments/Jewish law

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? A 21st Century Class Project

The assignment:

For Thurs., Sept. 30: Prepare a five-minute oral presentation on an artist working solely (or almost solely) on the web. (You can augment the presentation with web materials, which you'll be able to project in class.) Describe the artist's work -- in your language, not relying on visual examples. Contextualize the artist and position him or her historically. What is the artist's critical reputation? Why is the artist noteworthy, original or otherwise important?

My Project:

The Dumpster

Some background:

What the heck is this?

The artist (s):

Who are these dudes?

Golan Levin's work combines equal measures of the whimsical, the provocative, and the sublime in a wide variety of online, installation and performance media. He teaches courses in audiovisual systems and information visualization at Carnegie Mellon University, and is represented by bitforms gallery NYC.

Kamal Nigam has expertise in data mining and machine learning with an emphasis on analyzing text and internet data. Formerly Director of Applied Research at Intelliseek, he has just started a position at the new Google engineering office in Pittsburgh.

Jonathan Feinberg takes pride in executing the invisible-yet-essential. He works in the Collaborative User Experience group at IBM Watson Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a drummer he has worked with such bands as They Might Be Giants, Lisa Loeb, and Church of Betty.

What does Lev Manovich have to say about The Dumpster?

Read it here!

What's so unique about break-ups??? Zillions of artists have drawn inspiration from broken hearts. Such as:

This guy

And this guy

And this guy

Let's tackle the questions posed by our professor:

• How would I explain this work?
• How is it inextricable from new technology?
• What's the revenue stream?
• What central idea ought to emerge in a review?
• What traditions does this draw on...or not?

Let's take a look!

The Dumpster, 2006

So, what becomes of the broken hearted?

21st Century art.

Tofu and Yahoos

There are certain things I expect when I patronize a natural foods restaurant in New York.

Tofu is one of them.

Yahoos are typically NOT on the menu.

And yet, inexplicably, there was a tableful of drunken, loud-mouthed, tattooed, conspiracy-theorist, anti-government, anti-Semitic rednecks seated next to HOBB and me at Quantum Leap earlier today.

Their conversation sounded like an NRA pep rally hijacked by neo-Nazi survivalists punctuated by the laugh track of "Hee-Haw."

Sipping miso soup, HOBB rolled his eyes as the loudest of the gang expounded his beliefs on the "media," -- a.k.a. The Jews -- and their absolute control over everything from (yawn) the international money market to Hollywood to the war in Iraq.

As the strains of this conversation reached my ears, I put down my spoon, unable to ingest my delicious dolphin-free, dairy-free salmon chowder. I was incredulous, then angry, then simply mystified. What the f@#$ were these nogoodniks from Nowhereville USA doing at this East Village eatery, where half the diners wore Tom's Shoes and deliberately uncombed hair and had an anemic, animal-rightsy look while the other half were cutting edge creative types wearing interesting designer ensembles?

It was a good question, one that HOBB and I sought the answer for throughout the duration of our whole earth, whole food, locally grown, non-GMO, fair trade meal.

Part of the answer, it seemed, is that this group had thought they would get into some legendary New York restaurant for Sunday brunch, sans reservation. When that fell through, they mysteriously ended up at Quantum Leap.

Though their irritating twangs lingered in the air, the townies eventually faded into the serene background of Manhattan on a Sunday in September. Happily, their offensive influence was shortly erased by the magic that greeted us just a few blocks away in Union Square: an outdoor exhibition of architectural magnificence -- Sukkah City -- featuring contemporary, creative renderings of the humble huts erected by the wandering Israelites in their desert journey towards the Promised Land. Though this journey took place thousands of years ago, Jewish tradition commands the construction of such huts with the advent of the holiday of Sukkot -- sometimes awkwardly termed "The Feast of the Tabernacles." Those who grew up in an observant Jewish home -- or were friends with observant Jews -- know the thrill of building this ritual clubhouse every fall, the joy of decorating it with fruit and flowers and vegetables and tinsel and trinkets and colorful posters.

The real fun is that this ritual object is entirely usable, in fact, the mitzvah is for the Sukkah to be utilized, that is, inhabited. So, for seven days -- or most of them -- observant Jews will take their meals in the Sukkah, with the extremely religious going as far as to sleep there as well.

Sukkahs and Sukkot are not the first things NJs* tend to know about Jewish tradition so it was fairly mind-blowing to note that by three p.m. today, Union Square was as packed and rowdy as a rock concert. Eager spectators of Sukkah City hailed from just about everywhere on the planet, with an especially heavy representation of French folk. A heady stew of languages and accents churned and brewed in the air. Cameras clicked. Gothamite children and oldsters mingled with teens, students, vagrants, and enchanted (though somewhat confused) tourists. Poses were struck. Videos were filmed. Everywhere people were blabbing extemporaneously -- as if talking in tongues or seized by the spirit -- explaining to their friends or passers by or no one in particular what a Sukkah is; what the holiday, nearly upon us, is all about.

HOBB and I walked, open-mouthed, through this carnival-like setting, greeting those we knew, smiling at others who looked familiar, admiring the architecture and art inspired by this ancient yet simple structure first erected by a fleeing slave nation. We marveled at Manhattan's magical, Sukkah-like quality, its penchant for serving as a harbor and home to all who seek sustenance and shelter, even rednecks just riding through.

____

*non-Jews

The Gift of a Yom Kippur in Bed

I felt it coming but didn't relate the symptoms until they converged upon me -- around 5:05 p.m. yesterday -- smack in the middle of my "Evidence and Inference" class.

The sky had darkened dramatically and without warning. The wind whipped up. A ferocious rain beat down on Broadway. I tried to act like a graduate student and not look out the window. Casting surreptitious glances to my left, I was astonished that no one seemed to notice that Armageddon was upon us. The guest lecturer continued his class. The students nodded with intellectual intent and took notes. But I was the kid with the A.D.D., barely able to constrain herself from rushing to the window and shouting: "OMIGOD!!! Do you see this storm????"

What did restrain me, though, was the simultaneous acknowledgement that the dull pain I had been feeling in my back and bones for the past few days, the pressure in my sinuses, the throbbing headache, my increasing nasal congestion and drip, my urge to run to the bathroom every few seconds added up to one incontrovertible fact: I was sick.

And on the eve of the eve of Yom Kippur, too.

Well, despite my best holistic efforts to overcome this illness by natural means -- horrendously bitter tincture of echinacea and goldenseal, gallons of green tea, gentle exercise and a sweat fest in the steam room of the JCC locker room spiced by drops of tea tree oil which burned my skin -- it is the eve of Yom Kippur and I'm sicker than I even was yesterday, feverish, indeed.

So, as my family finishes their seudah mafseket* and takes their seven sips of water before the advent of the 25-hour fast and their departure to Ramath Orah for the Kol Nidrei service, I am shivering in bed, covered with a woolen blanket from my late mother-in-law's house in Westport, CT, blowing my nose every few minutes, trying to self-diagnose.

I've got it narrowed down to strep throat, bronchitis or the flu. It might also be a killer cold.

It goes without saying that I am not going to shul tonight, in fact, when HOBB declared, half an hour ago, that he didn't think it was a good idea for me to go out tonight, I started laughing. Middle Babe and Little Babe, seated at the dinner table, were casting me concerned looks as I snuffled and spoke in a barely audible nasal monotone. My illness is so obvious that I could not believe he thought I would even entertain such a notion.

Though I am possessed of a macho instinct to fight off impending illnesses, I know when to admit defeat. Right now, I'm at the stage where I am considering calling the doctor because I might need antibiotics.

Being me -- that is, ridiculously, excessively, childishly introspective -- I am attempting to examine the meaning of this Yom Kippur affliction, or more exactly, trying to extract meaning from it. Liberated or barred from a community prayer service tonight, depending on how you look at it, I will endeavor to read the Kol Nidrei service by myself, with an eye towards seeing something I had never seen before.

From their home in Great Neck, my parents, FOBB and MOBB, just called with their pre-Yom Kippur wishes. Their kindly voices imploring me to stay in bed, drink fluids (despite the fast) and keep my feet warm returned me to my long-ago childhood, to the remarkable feeling of standing on the cusp of Yom Kippur, when I was overcome with awe at the notion of the Gates of Heaven opening for humankind to petition God.

Their wishes for my recovery and for a sweet, healthy and happy year, was spiritual medicine, removing me from the often-cynical sense of despair I am afflicted with in my adult life. Their unambiguous love for me and Jewish tradition made me certain that there is a unique gift to a Yom Kippur spent in bed.

Thus edified, from my bedroom perch on Amsterdam Avenue and West 116th Street I am momentarily strengthened to send out wishes to all of humanity for a sweet, healthy and happy year.

_____________________

*final meal before a fast

LIFE IMITATES ART! Woody Allen Quotes Alvy Singer Quoting Groucho Marx

On the eve of the eve of the eve of Yom Kippur comes this stunningly asinine comment by Woody Allen at the very start of his interview with New York Times journalist Dave Itzkoff:

Asked on Tuesday morning if it was appropriate to wish him a happy Jewish New Year, Woody Allen made it clear that such formalities were not necessary. “No, no, no,” he said with a chuckle, seated in an office suite at the Loews Regency hotel. “That’s for your people,” he told this reporter. “I don’t follow it. I wish I could get with it. It would be a big help on those dark nights.

The irony here is especially deep when one recalls the scene in Annie Hall where Alvy Singer renders Groucho Marx's quintessential quote of (Jewish) self-deprecation: "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member."

Since there is nothing to say beyond Allen's pathetic confession/delusion that his people are not Itzkoff's people I'll leave this alone and return throughout the day to read the reactions of my people to the once-great director who built his public persona on little more than simply being a Jew.

Wiki, Schmiki... I Survived a Triple Whammy!!!

It is the Monday after the first Triple Whammy of the 5771 High Holiday season and the fact that I'm eating HOBB's leftover turkey from Rosh Hashana dinner in the morning is an indication of my mental state.

What is a Triple Whammy, you may ask?

For those unaccustomed to the nuances of Jewish ritual observance a Triple Whammy is a three-day retreat from reality, a state of existential lockdown that occurs when a two-day festival abuts Shabbat. For those who abide by the rules of the religion, what this means is

• No transportation
• No communication (phone, texting,emailing,TV,internet, etc..)
• No work
• No creative endeavors (writing, filmmaking, painting, building, etc...)
• Dress-up clothes
• Lots of synagogue attendance
• Lots of davening (praying)
• Lots of meals
• Lots of merriment
• Lots of panic at the thought of all the stuff happening around you outside of the bubble of holiday observance

Rosh Hashana, which began Wednesday night, segued into the Sabbath two nights later. There was literally not even a second of secular time in this transition, creating what some wisecracking observer of Jewish life famously coined The Triple Whammy. I kind of feel like I came up with this phrase and maybe I did but so did many others, at about the same time. The phrase has a late twentieth century feeling to me, tasting of irony and a grudging fondness for the very observance that might just possibly be manmade, does not fit with modern life and drives us utterly mad.

In less than two weeks, the second Triple Whammy hits with the advent of Succot and the week after that, we get it again with Shimini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Please Google these terms if they are new to you; I have school work to complete after I post this entry!

And speaking of school work, I am probably posting as a form of procrastination for one of my J School assignments -- to contribute to a wiki. While I spent an inordinate amount of time researching the matter at hand -- the concepts of fusion and appropriation as they apply to art and culture -- I am freaking out at posting my research. I fear inadvertent plagiarism. I fear writing something utterly obvious. I fear not getting the links right. I fear being unmasked as some cyber-poseur.

Analyzing my anxiety, I understand myself to be suffering from PTWTSD -- Post Triple Whammy Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is not the wiki per se that poses such a challenge (okay, maybe it is, just a little) but the prospect of catching up on EVERYTHING, cramming the amount of life lived by normal people over the course of three days into a handful of hours.

And then there is the Mondayness of it all. The suckiness of Mondays is a universal truth. Having PTWTSD on a Monday is a heavy cross to bear.

But HOBB's delicious leftover turkey helps. So does the misappropriation of Christian imagery in the context of a blog post about the after-affects of Jewish ritual observance. But the fun is in the fusion. Or confusion. Or the fact that unless something science fictiony happens, Monday will eventually morph into Tuesday, which will be exponentially less sucky than today for a million reasons, chiefly because by then I am sure to have posted my wiki entry.

Bungalow Babe in the Big University. Part One.

Today, dear reader, was DAY ONE of the fabulous adventure of Bungalow Babe in the Big University, occasioning this special blog-within-a-blog post.

(If I had the cyber-savvy, I would have fiddled with the name of this blog, adding a carrot pointing upward to the words "Big University" but since I have no idea how to do that I'm taking this low-tech approach. It is a skill on my To-Do list for this year.)

At 5:40 am the alarm on my BlackBerry went off, filling my ears with its faux African drumming. The plan was for me to brew the world's most excellent cup of coffee (Oren's Beowulf Blend...pricey but so worth it!) while answering the emails I had neglected to address the previous night due to a Mad Men marathon, jump on the treadmill from 6:15 to 7:15, shower, take a phone call from a soon-to-be-ex client at 7:30, dress, check email again and sail out of the house at 8:20 with the intention of arriving at 8:30 sharp for the first day of Orientation for my MA program in Art and Culture writing at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

That was the plan. What ended up happening was the gulping down of two cups of coffee when I realized that the email I needed to send included a report I had forgotten to write, the writing of the report, the taking of the client phone call while sneakily proofreading my report, a hurried shower while pondering the report, a mad dash back to my laptop to edit the report, the emailing of the report, a hair drying frenzy that resembled an epileptic fit, a mirror-free make-up application in the elevator and an Olympian dash out the front door of my building at 8:55 causing me to arrive at the J School building with my dress glued to my skin with sweat.

But, dear reader, that is where the stress ended and the wonderfulness began. Gathering registration material, I went up to the Lecture Hall on the third floor to meet my fellow MA students and to begin my life as Bungalow Babe in the Big University, an adventure I have waited 27 years to claim!

Yes, it was 27 years ago that I met the NY Times writer who was to become my husband over the matter of Columbia J School. He was a renowned graduate of the school and I was a new college grad who had just gotten admitted into Columbia's MFA program, about which I was having severe second thoughts. (Hint: huge tuition; nothing that seemed terribly marketable about the degree; worry that students were silver spoon kids.)

I cringe/laugh to recall that I arrived for our meeting at the now-defunct Famous restaurant on W72nd Street on an overcast day in February bearing photocopies of everything I had ever published in my life...all my college clips (lots of reviews and feature stories), short stories, essays and poetry and the secret hope that he would be so bowled over by my oeuvre that he would call his editor who would hire me on the spot.

Well, that didn't happen but what did was that:

a: he told me I didn't need J School

b: he called me 10 days later to say he was reading my work, thought I was a really good writer and would I like to go out with him

c: I didn't attend the MFA program at Columbia, went elsewhere, hated it, dropped out after two semesters and I

d: got married to said Times writer

e: became a freelance writer

f: became a publicist

g: had three fabulous kids

h: nurtured the hope that one day I would indeed attend the J School

That day has come to pass and I cannot quite believe it. Neither can The Three Babes, all of whom are proud/queasy of my sudden student status. Amusingly, I bolted out the door to my orientation just as Little Babe was crawling out of his adolescent slumber, staggering to the bathroom to get ready for his 10th grade orientation. As I reminded him that I was off to school, he gave me a look familiar to parents of teens everywhere; the combination eye-roll and silent plea to be put out of one's misery.

En route to the J School, I received a text from Middle Babe giving me the report from her Maryland college campus and wishing me luck and even got a shout out from Big Babe, my journalist son in Berlin, an accomplished arts writer who is contemplating grad school himself. (Byline: A.J. Goldmann)

Exactly 12 hours later, I returned home with a spring in my step and a song in my heart and two Margaritas coursing through my veins, the result of Happy Hour at the Underground, a bar on West End Avenue I had walked past hundreds -- nay thousands -- of times yet never patronized. I was not yet a student.

As I unpacked my reading material for next week, the names, faces, stories and voices of my new classmates swirled around me, forming a kaleidoscope. The details of their lives were points of riveting color -- the guy who reported from Haiti, the female journalist from Atlanta whose father is a minister, the young woman traumatized by covering homicides, the student who heard my Elliott Smith ringtone and told me he loved "Waltz #2" -- and I marveled at the transformative quality of a single day.

It is not hyperbolic to state that today, my entire life changed, folding in on itself like the back cover of Mad magazine where A meets C and forms an entirely new picture.

There is so much to report about today but I'll be telegraphic, focusing on a few savory takeaway tidbits:

• Food is needed. Instead of extra pens, I'm bringing snacks with me, chiefly string cheese, nuts and soy chips. Everyone was famished.
• Water is needed. The water fountain on the second floor is filled with the moldiest, warmest water in Manhattan.
• Turning off your cellphone, BlackBerry and laptop for several hours to discuss ideas is essential to brain function. The presentations we heard from our deans and professors today precluded being plugged in. Our two-hour class meeting was uninterrupted by bleeps, screens, urls, electronic messages and the culture of false urgency and instant responsiveness. As a result, my mind sprouted wings and soared. Quite literally, I had flights of intellectual fancy.
• I am in the company of extraordinary people. By this I mean my fellow students as well as the school's faculty. I could weep with gratitude at the opportunity to learn alongside and from them.
• Hope is the thing with feathers. Whatever that means. But what I mean is that, unless I am really wearing candy-colored glasses, this particular school or program attracts people who are hopeful about the future. Or their ability to positively impact it.
• The thing I've done for the past 16 years -- PR -- is not evil. In fact, I'm especially proud of a story I pitched which appears in today's Wall Street Journal. Written by the uber-talented Diane Cole, it is about the newest High Holiday Prayerbook of the Conservative movement, a beautiful work called Lev Shalem -- Complete Heart.

You can read it here.

It's now the morning of Day Two of the Fabulous Life of Bungalow Babe in the Big University. I actually fell asleep blogging and resumed in the pre-dawn hours. HOBB has already secured my promise to pack early so we can head up to the bungalow right after the J School picnic this afternoon. It is the last weekend of the summer and we are hosting a dinner Saturday afternoon at the Love Shack in honor of our 27th anniversary. I have a dorky inspiration to sing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" to my husband at this shindig but might resist as Little Babe will be in attendance.

Having a student mom is one thing. Having a student mom who performs songs from The Lion King could prove costly, necessitating years of psychotherapy.

Besides, I've got reams of reading for school to do, plus my first assignment: to cover a cultural event I would not normally attend. I am salivating at the thought of perusing the weekend section of the Orange County, NY daily, the Times Herald-Record, searching for the very calendar listings that made me roll my eyes in the past, teen-style. In the lower Catskill region there are scores of weird-ass, redneck, Hasidic, quaint and otherwise inexplicable cultural offerings... and they all bear my potential byline.

The transformation is underway.

The View from Friday

Little Babe is asleep on a mattress in the living room next to Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians who clearly believe they have died and gone to puppy heaven. With a dopey, love-besotted fascination, I watch their furry little backs rise and fall in tranquil slumber. Nala sleeps in the crook of Little Babe's right thigh while Alfie reposes somewhere near his toes. On the pillow, my 15-year-old's Jim Morrison-like mop of long curls reminds me of a finger painting he once did with chocolate pudding.

Though my other children are elsewhere -- Middle Babe on Long Island, at the home of her Gentleman Caller; Big Babe, in his adopted home of Berlin -- I have heard from both this morning. Middle Babe texted to confirm our travel by Short Line bus later today up to our bungalow in Monroe with her BFF and in an email sent in the middle of the German night my 26- year-old son gladdened my heart by informing me that he plans a month-long visit back to New York in November. Yeeess! Already my mind is fast at work conjuring up effective strategies (handcuffs, brainwashing ala A Clockwork Orange, large sums of cash, all the Zabar's babka he can eat) to get him to stay.

On Monday, we drive our 22-year-old daughter back to her college in Maryland for her final semester so this weekend is our last together...though, in truth, she comes home in two weeks for Rosh Hashana. Still, this last-Shabbat-of-the-Summer-with-My-Daughter does make me kind of maudlin and Middle Babe is sad in advance, not because of her impending separation from us but from her Gentleman Caller, a fine young man who is attending Law School in New York.

In other news, a COTB (Cousin of the Three Babes) is asleep in Little Babe's room. Leggy, blond and stunningly beautiful, she and Little Babe share rock band aspirations, spent half of yesterday at Guitar Center on 14th Street and vacillate between being young sophisticates and overgrown puppies themselves. They are the human versions of Alfie and Nala crossed with the aforementioned Jim Morrison and Gisele Bundchen.

Sadly, SOBB (Sister of Bungalow Babe) is in a Jerusalem hospital, having fallen off her bicycle and shattered her clavicle earlier this morning. I just got a call from her husband and had to beg him to refrain from calling MOBB and FOBB (Mother and Father of Bungalow Babe) to convey this news. My parents will be spending the weekend with BOBB (Brother of Bungalow Babe) who knows about our sister's accident as he is a doctor and is the first family member my Israeli brother-in-law called.

Who else did I neglect to mention? Oh yes. HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe), who is in his Columbia office. Our week together included beloved (injury-free) bike trips and films that ranged from the appalling (Eat, Pray, Love...what the #$% were we thinking????) to the unforgettable (The Pawnbroker) to the darkly compelling (Life During Wartime).

Next week, we celebrate our 27th Anniversary. I want to say that I hardly believe this number and yet that is not true. I have a deep cache of memories -- magical, marvelous, tragic, transcendent -- that seem to span not 27 years but an entire lifetime. The only reason to disbelieve the number of years I've been married would be to deny my age.

AND SPEAKING OF COLUMBIA....I've got some stuff going on there today including co-hosting a blogtalkradio program, taking a Mac skills class, surveying the fitness center to see if it is worth joining (last time I belonged I bolted after learning that the meager number of cardio machines bred a culture of vulture-like behavior as frantic fitness buffs hovered over you while you tried to enjoy your 30-minute workout) and checking out whether my Columbia ID has that magical door-opening power.

This is the way it looks from the morning of the last Friday in August 2010.

The Apple Store is My New Starbucks

It is 7 pm and I am sitting on a black stool in the basement of the newish Apple Store on 67th and Broadway.

I am halfway through my two-hour Personal Projects session, during which I have figured out Power Point, learned how to sync my Columbia email with my Outlook, sent about 20 emails, Googled theaters in Manhattan where Life During Wartime is playing, checked out the offerings at the Fringe Festival and moved the Skype icon onto my Desktop.

Today's visit is the fifth I have made since Monday morning when I came by to retrieve my brand new MacBook Pro after it underwent a weekend-long transplant of computer files from my PC. Based on the fact that my presence here this week beats the number of times I visited a Starbucks 5:1, it is clear that I am at risk of developing an Apple Store addiction. Aside from the high school geeks and twenty-something slackers, the clientele is fun to look at, with plenty of familiarish faces (celebrities???). I am completely fascinated by this place, quite unable to tear myself away.

I can hardly believe that I am the owner of a Mac, secretly think that it lends me a hardcore varnish of cyber-coolness. Yeah...it took several years of being the only PC-user in a house dominated by a Mac Monopoly and once I got the machine, several days of dysfunctional email service and emotional sessions with Geniuses and frantic phone calls to the nice people at OnetoOne and late night trouble shooting sessions with the nice people at GoDaddy but I am finally sitting in the basement of the Apple Store, happily blogging after all, a sure sign that I have crossed over to the dark side.

In fifteen minutes, I will leave to meet HOBB for the 7:50 pm showing of Life During Wartime at the IFC. I'm almost confident that things are okay; I just have to make sure my Columbia email is actually staying on the university's server. I'm going to check my test PowerPoint presentation one more time. I'm going to check if any new messages need responding to. In a couple of minutes, I'll be ready to shut down my new Mac, leave the Apple Store and have a life.

Burning Down the House

HOBB drove up to the bungalow earlier tonight -- when it was still Thursday -- after his new media workshop at Columbia and I stayed in the city because of several appointments tomorrow in Manhattan. The most pressing one is the 9 am drop-off of my brand new MacBook Pro at the Apple store on Broadway so a resident "Genius" can transfer the files from my mega-sucky Acer PC into this sleek, slivery machine which I expect will change my entire life. The purchase of the Mac was inspired by my impending identity as a full-time graduate student at Columbia, in the very school where my husband is a professor.

The thing is, it is nearly 4 am and I am still awake. The grande iced coffee I had at 8 pm might have something to do with it. I was en route to the gym at that hour and needed something to inspire my three-mile elliptical workout. The caffeine worked so well that I was wired even after my sweat-drenched session, so after showering, I wandered down to the 3rd floor of the JCC to check out the Israeli dancing and was surprised to find a party-like scene with dozens of people doing complicated choreography to contemporary and classic Hebrew songs. It was so fascinating that I stayed until midnight, enchanted by the spectacle, talking to people, fantasizing about learning these dances and joining the Israeli dancers as soon as possible, maybe even by next week.

It was well after midnight when I returned home (having stopped at Fairway to buy steak and lambchops and then having walked with a friend up to 96th street) and I was completely famished so I put the meat up to broil and went to turn on the television, a rare treat enabled by my solitude. (If any other members of the Bungalow Family had been around, vigorous negotiation would have ensued and I would have retreated to my room with a grumble and a fashion magazine.)

While I was watching Law and Order, the meat caught fire in the oven. I found out because of the sudden urgent beeping sound the oven was making. Also… the smell of burning appliance that filled the urban bungalow. I rushed to the kitchen, saw the fire and became paralyzed with fear. What to do??? I couldn't remember. Should I google "fires in oven?" I wondered as I stared dumbly at the dancing bonfire behind the glass. I didn't want to open the oven door as I was afraid of flames leaping out, fed by the oxygen...on the other hand, I was pretty sure letting a lively fire burn in the kitchen was a bad idea.

After a small eternity, the fire burned itself out. I breathed a sigh of relief, removed the charred pan and actually ate parts of the lamb chop that had not turned into charcoal.

To calm down after my ordeal, I watched two back-to-back Law and Order episodes, each more disturbing than the next. That morphed into two episodes of a true crime show called Snapped which features women who commit heinous crimes...and almost get away with it. Both episodes last night had to do with women having affairs who kill, or try to kill their husbands.

After a futile fifteen minutes spent tossing and turning in bed, I got up and decided to research what to do if I were to encounter a bear in the wild. This quest for information arose out of my early morning hike with HOBB on the Appalachian trail earlier today, the first twenty minutes of which were spent in abject terror, anticipating an up close and personal bear encounter.

Because the information I found strikes me as both reassuring and helpful, I thought I'd pass it on so others who fear bear encounters might be likewise armed with useful knowledge. Maybe later I'll look up what to do if your oven catches on fire. Or what to do when you can't fall asleep, though I have a solution and this is it.

Close Encounters: What to do

If you see a bear, avoid it if you can. Give the bear every opportunity to avoid you. If you do encounter a bear at close distance, remain calm. Attacks are rare. Chances are, you are not in danger. Most bears are interested only in protecting food, cubs or their "personal space." Once the threat is removed, they will move on. Remember the following:

Identify Yourself

Let the bear know you are human. Talk to the bear in a normal voice. Wave your arms. Help the bear recognize you. If a bear cannot tell what you are, it may come closer or stand on its hind legs to get a better look or smell. A standing bear is usually curious, not threatening. You may try to back away slowly diagonally, but if the bear follows, stop and hold your ground.

Don't Run

You can't outrun a bear. They have been clocked at speeds up to 35 mph, and like dogs, they will chase fleeing animals. Bears often make bluff charges, sometimes to within 10 feet of their adversary, without making contact. Continue waving your arms and talking to the bear. If the bear gets too close, raise your voice and be more aggressive. Bang pots and pans. Use noisemakers. Never imitate bear sounds or make a high-pitched squeal.

If Attacked

If a bear actually makes contact, surrender! Fall to the ground and play dead. Lie flat on your stomach, or curl up in a ball with your hands behind your neck. Typically, a bear will break off it's attack once it feels the threat has been eliminated. Remain motionless for as long as possible. If you move, and the bear sees or hears you, it may return and renew its attack. In rare instances, particularly with black bears, an attacking bear may perceive a person as food. If the bear continues biting you long after you assume a defensive posture, it likely is a predatory attack. Fight back vigorously.