The Cats with Knives Book Club

I love to read. Which is why God, in all of his wisdom, has blessed me with a son who has actually said to me, more than once, “Reading isn’t my thing.” He isn’t completely accurate in that statement - when that child has a major project due, he will skim the first two paragraphs of a Wikipedia article on the subject like a champion!

But anyway, there’s only so much promising of a world of riches contained within the covers of a book that I can make to the kid. There are only so many reminders that I can give him that his middle name was very close to being Vonnegut. There are only so many times I can sing the Reading Rainbow theme as I force him to sit on a couch, TV-and-cell-phone-less for a half hour and read something. So really, you guys are my last hope. I’m hoping that some of you still read, and that some of you are looking for some good books to read over the summer. Also, I am totally exploiting the hole left by Oprah, by starting the Cats With Knives Book club. Here are my top five reads of all time*:

5. Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – Although Slaughterhouse Five is Vonnegut’s most influential work, I think this one is his most pointed, most thoughtful, blackest, and most human. If you have a hard time getting into Vonnegut because of the science-fictiony aspect of it, please plow through. The themes are timeless and relevant, and Vonnegut was funny and sad and amazing.

4. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro – I know, there was a movie about this, starring any manner of Oscar-winning actors. The movie is excellent. The book will astound you. Superficially, it is about the inner workings of a house full of upper-echelon servants, but ultimately, it is about an exquisite balance of love, duty, and regret. Each word in this novel is a work of art.

3. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell – I can’t believe this is only number three on my list, because I have read it more than any other book in my library. If you think GWTW is the work of an apologist southern, romanticizing the world of slavery, you could not be more wrong. At the end of the day, this book says that war is hell, and surviving war is hell, too. The characters in this book are magnificently rendered, and Scarlett O’Hara is possibly the most fascinating, complex, frustrating, inspiring, relatable woman in all of fiction. And, by the way, guys dig this book, too, no matter what they tell you in person.

2. The Risk Pool by Richard Russo – I recommend this book to more people than any other, and people rarely take me up on it right away, but then when they finally do, they are so sad that they didn’t get to it earlier. And they’re a little sad that it’s over and they can’t experience again. In essence, this is a novel about the ties that bind us, the myriad of concealed, destructive, insane ways that we try to love each other, and the ceaseless march of time. This is a beautiful, beautiful (and funny) novel.

1. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck – You know how people say that, when you get a really good oyster, you can taste the ocean? In Steinbeck’s novels, you can taste Monterey, California, before all the fancy California people moved in. Steinbeck’s writing, always so elegantly unadorned, focuses its strength, like magic, on one run-down neighborhood, over a period of days. It opens like this: “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” The characters in this novel are so flawed, and real, and so memorable, you’ll find yourself wondering, years after you read this book, whatever happened to them.

There you have it, the top five. Just barely missing the cut: Let the Great World Spin, The Shipping News, The Good Thief, Cold Mountain, A Fine Balance, Pride and Prejudice and Watership Down. Happy reading!

* “All time” = since 1936. Screw you, William Shakespeare!

Goodbye again, high school!

A summer or two ago, I went to my high school reunion with my friend-since-kindergarten Alison, where one of our former classmates came up to the two of us after a few hours and said, “I’ve been asking around. If you had to give a grade to your high school experience, what would it be?”

Alison and I looked at each other, and then looked back at the guy.

“I would say a solid, solid D+,” I responded, thinking that I was being pretty charitable with my grade.

“Yeah,” Alison said, “I was going to say D or D-.”

And here’s the funny thing: Alison and I went to high school with, for the most part, really nice people. Everyone pretty much left people alone, to my recollection. It felt like we were a relatively close-knit group, even if we had our own people that we mainly hung around with. But that’s kind of my point: even people who did not have a traumatizing high school experience often look back and say, “By God, I never want to do that again.”

We do it again, though, when we have children. And let me tell you, high school was no more fun for me then second time around. Here are a few reasons why:

High school kids are big stupid dummies – Yes, from their perspective, they know it all, but from my perspective, they are a tad on the overconfident side. These are people who were in 3rd grade or younger when the twin towers fell; they don’t remember “Just Say No;” and more importantly, they don’t remember Run DMC. Do you understand what that means? They think “It’s Tricky” is quaint, and don’t like it AT ALL when you get up and start rapping along. These high school bozos are clueless to all of the things they don’t know, and they arrogantly tell you what is what from the perspective of a sheltered, immature young whelp that has yet to pay a single gas bill, cell phone bill, insurance payment, or grocery tab.

High school parents are freaks – Is that putting it too boldly? I think not. I have been consistently amazed by the lengths to which parents will go to ensure that their marginally talented, mostly obnoxious child is seen as the grand star of the day. I know parents who call their childrens’ high school teachers over everything from how other kids are talking to the child, to missed homework assignments, to why the child was not made quarterback. Perhaps I am just too hard-hearted, but I have always felt like facing disappointment in this phase of life is probably good preparation for being a gracious adult. If my son, as a teenager who I entrust with a car, a cell phone, keys to the house and his own debit card, did not feel personally capable of navigating the comparatively mild world of high school politics, I would genuinely question my parenting skills.

High school is the only place where children are expected to be perfect in all areas – Think about it: high school kids are expected to follow an extremely rigid schedule controlled by bells and implemented through a complicated series of punishments from forced detention to expulsion. They are expected to have complete knowledge in language, math, science, history, physical education, music, art, and probably more things. They have to ask permission to go poop. Sometimes, they are forced to play dodge ball. It’s really weird! And then on top of that, we expect them to volunteer their free time to a sport, or a club, and there are complex rules of participation for that, too.

The people in high school who are always talking about “The Real World” are those who don’t live in it – Both in my high school experience and as a parent, I have heard a ton of conversation about “the real world.” But here’s the problem: the people who keep saying that don’t live in “the real world.” They live in the school world, where they get their summers off. People in the real world do not. In the school world, they get TWO WEEKS for Christmas. My work, in the real world, is like, “Hey sucker, enjoy this day that you get off for Christmas. And don’t forget to come back on the 26th.” Teachers do an amazing job, but in the real world, you do not have a test every two weeks. And also, a failure to do homework does not translate to failure in real life. I did almost zero homework in high school, and managed to get in all of my assignments in college, law school, and at work. Don’t email me about this, please.

High school is too dramatic – High school kids are super confrontational, and they will call you out if you do something - after consulting at length about it with their friends of course. They are unable to let things go without phone calls, text messages, and passive-aggressive allusions to it on Facebook. Oh my God, let it go. As adults, if we don’t hear from our friends every day, we figure that they are busy, you know, earning a living or having a baby or reading The Help (by the way, I have heard mixed reviews about this book. Some say it’s the best thing they’ve ever read, some say it was written for morons. I would like to know which I should believe. Please advise).

So, everyone, I hope that you’ll raise a figurative glass with me on June 5th, when this is all over. For those of you who are still going through it, I raise my glass right back to you, in sympathy.

My Generation

I was sitting in class the other night, and my professor mentioned that, once upon a time, he had been a guest speaker on a panel with Bianca Jagger and Pat Robertson. My classmates, who are just barely old enough to no longer be considered fetuses, were all looking at each other with their tiny baby eyes, saying, “Wha? Who are they?” Which made me start thinking about all of the other things that people who are in their twenties don’t know about and don’t remember:

1. Pre-microwave days, when we had to make our soup, hot dogs and nachos the old-fashioned way. My family’s first microwave was seriously the size of a mini-fridge and it had a dial instead of a digital display. It probably gave out enough radiation that we should have worn those lead aprons, but instead, we would STAND IN FRONT OF IT WITH OUR FACES DIRECTLY ON THE GLASS and watch the cheese melt. No wonder my eyeballs keep falling out.
2. The nuances of Three’s Company, e.g., the vast differences between Mr. Roper and Mr. Furley. Roper = pervert, Furley = moron.
3. When the only video game we had to play was Pong, and we thought that was AWESOME.
4. Television without cable. And without remote controls. People are always like, “I don’t get it. Why was the last episode of M*A*S*H the most watched thing ever broadcast on television?” Because there was NOTHING ELSE ON! And boy, if you were still watching TV at midnight, they would play that star spangled banner while showing a picture of the flag, and then – poof – take away your TV just like that! Test patterns until 5 in the morning when some stern man came on TV and read news like he was disappointed that you kept such unusual hours.
5. Instead of watching TV, we had to go outside and play all the time. And our parents literally had no idea where we were. They figured we were probably safe, but they were too busy smoking cigarettes and drinking gin martinis and driving without seatbelts to get too bothered about it.
6. Going out to dinner, by the way, was a treat back then. If you were a girl, you had to wear a skirt or a dress, and if you were a man, you wore a suit jacket or at least a tie, even to Chi Chi’s, which was known as Quite A Nice Restaurant back in the day.
7. We considered it scandalous that Shirley Feeney was contemplating having sex with Carmine Ragusa, even though she was, like, 26, and they’d been dating for years.
8. On the other hand, we knew exactly what those Love Boat people were up to.
9. We did not have computers. Some of us didn’t even have electric typewriters for a while. We wrote things out on pencil and paper and didn’t sit there and bitch mightily about what a substantial hardship it was.
10. We also learned how to spell, and didn’t know that one day, we’d be able to completely avoid all responsibility by blaming spell check for our inability to spell hierarchy.
11. If we wanted some juice, we got a bag of oranges, and we made juice with our hand-operated juice maker. There were no such things as juice-boxes. Also: if we wanted water, we went to the tap, which was the only place we understood water to come from.
12. And let me tell you, when Capri Sun came out, it seriously blew our minds.
13. We had portable music, on something revolutionary called a Walkman. We thought it was so cool that we could go out and exercise, and only have to carry something that weighed about five pounds, was as bulky as a toaster, and ran out of battery juice somewhere around the second side of our awesome mix tape.
14. Some of us still accidentally refer to our iPod as our Walkman, and our children look at us the way we looked at our parents when they called the refrigerator the icebox.
15. We did not have answering machines, voice mail, or phones that moved at all. When you called someone, the rule was to let the phone ring eight times, and if they didn’t answer, you just hung up and went about your day. People were mysterious back then! The phone company actually OWNED our phones – we just rented them.
16. If you got a busy signal and you really needed to talk to your friend about the new mix tape you just made, however, you could do an emergency breakthrough. And no one prosecuted you for misuse of public utilities or anything.
17. We didn’t know about the Middle East, and we didn’t care. All we cared about was the Red Menace. If you don’t believe me, watch the 1984 Summer Olympics, where, instead of competing, the Russians were busy building a superhuman named Ivan Drago. First person who gets that reference without looking it up gets a dollar.* NO LOOKING IT UP.
18. All of our cars comfortably fit approximately 14 people: three on the bench seat up front, four in the middle, and seven in the trunk area, wheel wells, or sitting on peoples’ laps. We didn’t care back then. People were hanging out of cars like monkeys.
19. I can’t even talk to you about what the grocery store was like back then. All I have to say is “bottle return area.”
20. Most of all, back then, there were winners, and there were losers, none of this, “everyone gets a medal and we are all special.” We knew we weren’t special, that’s why we worked so hard. So when we got our chance to meet Bianca Jagger, or Pat Robertson, you’d better believe that we appreciated it.


* By “you will get a dollar,” I mean that you will get a dollar if I happen to see you and if I happen to have a dollar. Don’t expect miracles.

Kendra

Webster’s dictionary defines slut as “a promiscuous woman.” It defines promiscuous as “not restricted to one sexual partner.” Therefore, a slut is a woman who is not restricted to one sexual partner. It does not clarify whether this means one sexual partner at a time, or one sexual partner in sum over the course of time. However, if the latter interpretation is correct, a lot of women are sluts.

What I don’t understand is why this term is used for 1) attractive women, 2) women who are flirtatious, 3) women who appear to be having fun, 4) women who are proud of their bodies and show them off however they choose, 5) women who are insecure, and thus show off their bodies the way they think other people want them to, 6) women who talk openly about sex, 7) women who appear to enjoy sex, 8) women other women are jealous of, 9) women who prefer certain men over certain other men, thus enraging the rejected men, 10) women who are smart and confident, 11) women who beat other men in contests, 12) women who beat other women in contests, 13) women who wear a lot of makeup, 14) I’m sure there’s more stuff I haven’t thought of. Feel free to fill in your own reason.

But in accordance with the Webster’s definition, none of these reasons for using the term slut seem even remotely correct.

And the reason all of this is coming up is because I just read an article mentioning Kendra Wilkinson, who has now been on TWO SHOWS that I cannot bring myself to watch. Two! And I’ll watch almost anything! Kendra Wilkinson is the lady who was living with Hugh Hefner at one point, but then she married someone else and took her baby to the Superbowl and the baby almost got smooshed! That was sad! Anyway, after the article, the comments (by men and women) all focused on two things: that her boobs were fake and that she was a slut.

I hate taking up for Kendra Wilkinson, when I should really be taking up for starving children and old people who are being robbed, but it just seems unfair to me that this women, who, at the end of the day is simply a wife and mom, is being called a slut just because she was maybe doing it with an old guy for a while, because she got paid for willingly posing naked for a totally legitimate magazine, for being successful, for marrying a rich guy, and for having fun and looking like she’s not even trying very hard at any of it. (And for those of you who are like, “Playboy is a gateway for aberrant sexual behavior,” I agree, but in terms of gateways, Playboy to sexual deviance is like Advil is to painkiller addiction. What do you want to focus on, Advil or Oxycontin?) It just doesn’t seem to me that Kendra qualifies as a slut. Furthermore, it really makes me sad when women get in on the slut-calling act. Men do all kinds of dumb stuff (the vast majority of serial killers, cult leaders, and people named The Situation are men, for example) and you think it’s your job to act all judgy about a woman who’s got a lot of boyfriends? Come on, ladies, where’s that getting you?

If you consider the definition, is it the worst thing in the world to be a slut? When you consider Osama Bin Laden and gigantic atomic tsunamis and children whose parents spend all day on Facebook and squirrels with rabies…is being a slut all that bad? My vote is no. So let’s just stop this slut talk. It’s not very nice, we could better spend our time on other stuff, and in the big scheme of things, sluts aren’t so bad.

Now, on a completely unrelated note: did you know that this blog has been around for a year? Yes. One year of me making up facts, airing my dirty, Oprah-related laundry, and not correcting my own spelling and grammatical mistakes. Some of you have been reading this from the very beginning, and some of you have just come onboard recently, but to everyone, thanks for reading. And - for those of you who have given me a thumbs-up, or posted a comment, or inboxed me, or stopped me in the hall, or followed my blog – special thanks to you for the feedback. I am desperately insecure and your words make up for the love I never got from my mother. Oh, hi, Mom!