Yee Haw - County Fairs in the suburbs?

Last month, I achieved a career milestone; I got invited to perform at the San Mateo County Fair. It was pretty exciting, even though I wasn't on the headliner stage, which was reserved for the really big name acts - like Billy Ray Cyrus and The Village People. But it was thrilling to see myself listed in the ads (the small print section, "Plaza Stage Acts, featuring The Lucho Libre Masked Mud Wrestlers, Harold the Hip Hypnotist, and Others"; yep, that was me, "Others"!)
Then I got my confirmation letter, directing me to report to the stage immediately adjacent to the pig races. Hmmm . . . . I didn't realize anyone here in the 'burbs raced pigs. (Frankly, the closest any of us come to agriculture is going to Half Moon Bay to pick out halloween pumpkins, so the whole idea of a suburban county fair seemed sort of crazy to begin with.) But pig races are even popular here - When I got to the fair, I saw that my stage and the racetrack shared a set of bleachers, which were packed for the race before my set. (It looked like a close one between "Natalie Porkman" and "Kevin Bacon", but the surprise winner by a nose - by a snout? - was "Lindsay Loham".) Whatever, the crowd was all fired up, but then right before I went on, they announced that Lindsay Loham's mother was over in the livestock tent giving birth, so naturally the bleachers emptied.

I can't compete with a baby pig - I ended up doing my set for my family, a couple of truly saintly friends, the hypnotist's dad (who got the times wrong but didn't want to hurt my feelings), and a mom with a large brood of kids. I figured, well, she's a fan and a mom and obviously needs the entertainment, but apparently, no, she just needed a place for them all to sit down while she nursed her youngest. Very openly. In fact, my two teenage sons couldn't tell you a thing about my set . . . or in their words, that's not the set they were watching. But in fact they want to go back to the county fair every year, they found it so educational!, and meanwhile, if I ever get a swelled head, just direct me to the bleachers by the pig races . . . .

The Secret is 'out'

I hate to admit it, but every now and then I have a serious case of schadenfreude (taking pleasure in others' misfortunes), but only in the sense of delighting when someone or something overblown gets taken down a peg. (Like seeing that ostensibly perfect mom, the immaculately coiffed one whose whole-grain fed kids behave so perfectly, losing it and screaming at her kids in McDonalds'.) So imagine my delight when I read that the various co-creators of The Secret are at each others' throats in court!

I don't claim that positive thinking has no value, but I was always struck by the hypocrisy of Rhonda Byrne, The Secret's author, who claimed that she wasn't interested in profit, she just wanted to get the effectiveness of positive thinking out to the world. If it was really so effective, couldn't she just have visualized us all getting it, and saved everyone the $19.95 (or $29.95 for the DVD)? However, apparently she has now formed a production company, which is suing the web developer for infringing on their proprietary rights, and meanwhile the DVD producer with whom she developed the original concept is suing her for not making good on their original agreement to split the profits. It's all a bunch of complicated legal tussling over profit-sharing, copyright ownership, and employment versus independent contracting - basically fighting over the enormous income stream that has been generated by a philosophy that stresses gratitude, integrity, and generosity.

I was always a bit skeptical of anyone insisting that I just had to visualize a BMW in my driveway to manifest it - I was more interested in manifesting a clean family room and a tank of gas for less than $60. But now my skepticism has been vindicated by such delicious evidence of the underlying hypocrisy. Although who knows - maybe the lawsuits prove The Secret after all, and a bunch of lawyers visualized - then manifested - the most lucrative lawsuit they could imagine!

Family Movie Night

Life with boys is not what I expected when I decided to become a mom - sure, I knew I couldn't choose my kids' gender, but I was convinced I could raise my kids in a neutral way AND fulfill my maternal fantasies. So I couldn't frenchbraid their hair, but I could read them the Little House books - wrong, they preferred Captain Underpants. I bought them dolls and stuffed animals - they used the toys as guns. I'm gradually learning it's hard-wired, no matter how hard I try.
And it's not like ours is a macho, athletic household. My kids don't know anything about sports - we won box seats to a Giants' game, and they were more interested in the cotton-candy vendor than the action. (Other than Ben noticing a typical Barry Bonds move, not really hustling to run for a potential single, and very loudly he piped up, "That guy there isn't very good!") Ben takes drum lessons, David does theater and takes dance class, but they still have a boys' sense of humor, no matter how hard I try to be a civilizing influence. For example, David has invented a game where he tacks on an inappropriate phrase to the end of the title of songs from musicals. (His current favorite is adding " . . . in my pants" to classic musicals like Damn Yankees, so you get "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets . . . in my pants", and so on.) (Okay, I shouldn't laugh, but I've got to give him credit for an originality!)
Our recent family movie night was a great illustration of life in a boy-dominated household. We couldn’t agree which t.v. movie to watch, because I wanted Steel Magnolias (southern women bonding in the beauty parlor with great sarcastic oneliners!), but the boys preferred Alien Resurrection (the REALLY violent one in the series, where a cloned Sigourney Weaver gives birth to the ultimate monster child, and saves the world with Winona Ryder as an android). We ended up compromising by flipping back & forth between the two, which produced a hybrid I called "Magnolia Resurrection" -
"Ripley? You’re alive? I guess this means I’ll have to kill you."
"If you can’t say anything nice about anyone, come sit next to me!"
"Keep away from me, you disgusting slimy alien ."
"Ewww, that woman needs some serious lycra on those thighs . . . . "
"What are we gonna do? The aliens are escaping!"
"That boy is so confused he don’t know whether to scratch his watch or wind his butt!"

I decided to put the movie hybrid idea into my comedy show, but when I told the boys they immediately corrected me and said, "No, mom, what would be really funny is a movie called 'Alien Erection'. . . .". (I'll leave the ensuring gestures and sound effects to your imagination.) Meanwhile, I'm going to go re-read Little Women and see if the neighbor's daughter will let me do her hair . . . .

Hair today, gone tomorrow?

The other day I was lying with my legs hiked up, chatting with the charming woman who was ripping out my excess pubic hair by the roots, and Jen was telling me a few of her stories as a facialist/waxer (she's thinking of writing a book titled Pimples And Pubes). Apparently I am in the minority, since most of her clients opt for full Brazilians (everything off but a small landing strip), and I was a bit taken aback by how far we've come in our willingness to discuss (and deal with) unwanted body hair.

I'm a nice Jewish girl, so I know from body hair - I had to start shaving my legs at 11, and soon after that the hair on my upper lip started looking undeniably mustache-like. Back then, it wasn't anything I admitted to anyone - I begged my mom to buy me some Jolene Creme Bleach, which I'd seen advertised in a magazine, and ever since then it's been an endless cycle of plucking, shaving, waxing, bleaching, regrowth and repeat. Which I figured would go on forever.

Which would be fine, except why is it that when you DO want hair to grow back, it won't? LIke on that eyebrow I overplucked in high school? Or that one thin patch along my part? Sometimes I want to ask my body hair, How do you KNOW, and why are you torturing me by disappearing where I want you and reappearing in the most embarrassing places? (As I age, I spend more time in front of a magnifying mirror frantically tweezing those weird witch-like strands coming out of my chin.)

At least I've got company in my body-hair-obsession. The boys are both in full-on puberty, which produces numerous discussions of the various physical changes. Recently Ben insisted that he had real pubic hair, and David, who is 14, claimed that Ben, at 11, was too young. Ben pulled down his pants to prove his point, so David pulled down HIS pants to prove he had more. Fortunately, Scott stepped in, saying, "Boys, why are you having such a ridiculous argument?" Then Scott dropped his own pants and announced, "THIS is real pubic hair!"

After an evening like that, I think I'll go back to Jen and have some more hair waxed off - it's more relaxing!

Scary Movies

Seemingly overnight, I've gone from having to hold my boys on my lap during the scary parts of Wizard of Oz, to hiding my eyes when we watch movies they love. I've always been easily frightened by movies - I like to think it's because of my artistic temperament and vivid imagination, but maybe I'm just a wimp. (Actually, as a kid, I used to be so terrified by the witch in Wizard of Oz that I pretended I was rooting for her, so I wouldn't fall apart when she looked like she was triumphing; of course, I only had to resort to this strategy during the once-a-year broadcast, which we watched on our old black & white TV. We didn't get a color television until I was too old to stay home for the movie, so the first time I saw it in color, it was during a finals-week movie night in college, and when Dorothy opened the door to the technicolor of Munchkinland, I was at first convinced I'd picked up a contact high.) (Trying to explain this story to kids who don't remember life before DVDs and on-demand movies is just about impossible - even with leaving out the 'contact high' angle!)

My boys have always loved movies with explosions and technical wizardry -evil characters don't frighten them at all, and they sneer at the limited special effects in movies from my era ("Geez, mom, that exploding planet in Star Wars Episode Four is so lame!"). The new Star Wars movies were a bit too graphic for my taste (although I was even more frightened by the terrible acting!), but I kept up with the boys until the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out - David got the full directors' cut set as a gift, and he was really upset that I wouldn't watch it with him. So we struck a deal - I would sit through the 2nd one (with the really gory battle scenes) and he had to watch the 'chick flick' of my choice ("Clueless", which he ended up thoroughly enjoying).

Well, last night, we came full circle - without consulting me, Husband 2.0 rented "I Am Legend" for a guys' movie night. I came home, watched about 2 minutes and fled - explosions or global panics are one thing, but I was out of there at the first sighting of a flesh-eating zombie. The boys teased me for leaving, but at bedtime, all of a sudden they were both suddenly freaked out by the realistic premise and afraid they'd have nightmares. I made up some scientific-sounding nonsense about variations in human DNA and cancer strains and the impossibility of a mutating virus spreading that quickly, and they both settled down - it felt vaguely reminiscent of checking for monsters under the bed and reassuring them that the witch wouldn't come to get them in their sleep.

And I'm picking the next night-time movie!

Mom 3.0

Yesterday I met with someone I’ve hired to help me with web marketing. Obviously she knows more about this stuff than I do, that’s why I hired her, but I’m still amazed at all the terms and phrases she tossed off effortlessly that had me scratching my head. Apparently, we’ll start with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), then develop a template for an e-zine that will interface with my database as a way to strategically enhance my network; and eventually we’ll look at web-based affiliate marketing and potential links with e-commerce-indexed social networking sites, as well as the pros and cons of DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion) in PPC (pay-per-click). And we haven't even started exploring algorithmic search results, link farms (places that sell pork products?), and keyword stuffing (made from bread crumbs and sausage from the link farm, I imagine)
If you’re absolutely lost here, I’m so relieved! I don’t mind feeling like a technical luddite around teenage texting, because I understand the concept and I can do it, I just don’t feel like developing that much dexterity in my thumbs. But reading about the internet is already confusing enough. I like to view the web the same way I view flying in planes; my dad, a former Air Force Navigator, drew me diagrams of air currents and vectors, but in my gut I simply don’t believe a large metal object weighng several thousand tons, full of people and bad food, can leave the ground, so I just pretend I understand how it flies. I have no idea how the internet works, I just pretend I do so I can enjoy emailing, blogging, and googling (as well as all these new verbs!)
Now, apparently, we’re moving to Web 3.0. I think I get that Web 1.0 was just stuff on the internet, and Web 2.0 is more interactive, where you can respond to things, so how much more interactive is 3.0? I remember when I bought my first Mac computer, back when it had no hard drive and 512 K of memory – ah, the good old days! – and the big advantage of Macs was that they were ‘user friendly’. So if Web 3.0 is a dramatic improvement on user friendliness, what, is it going to ask us out? Make dinner? Get my kids to stop fighting?
Come to think of it, I can think of a bunch of great stuff Web 3.0 ought to do – but in the meantime, I have to study my terminology and learn the difference between DKI and DKNY. When my marketing guru mentioned Pay Per Clicks, I thought she was talking about paper clips – I guess I have a long way to go!

How do moms call in sick?

It's been over 20 years since I held any kind of normal job with sick leave, and while I relish the flexibility and freedom of being a self-employed freelancer, there are definite disadvantages, many of which crop up when I'm sick. In particular - If I don't work, I don't get paid! Plus many of the things I do can't be cancelled or subbed out (a rehearsal with 25 people needing me to teach them music, or an early-morning choral program where I'd have to notify the kids' parents 2 days in advance). As I was sipping hot tea, blowing my nose and feeling sorry for myself, it occurred to me that all moms have the same problem - at least those of us without full-time nannies who will also take care of us!

Moms can't call in sick and have a temp worker drive the carpool, find the missing ballet shoes, or figure out something new to do with chicken for dinner. I hope that many of us have supportive spouses who will pitch in, occasionally helpful older kids, or a good pizzeria on speed-dial, but there are always times when only mom will do. In our house, that tends to be right before bedtime, when I'm already half-asleep, but David HAS to talk to me about something critical or Ben can't find something he was supposed to bring to school 3 days ago.

My girlfriend and I fantasize about having a backup clone of ourselves, a version of "Anne B. Davis as Alice" from The Brady Bunch, a briskly efficient, wry, uniformed gofer who will clean house, lovingly reprimand the kids, and compete with us as to who makes the best strawberry jam. And that dream is never more tantalizing than when I really wish someone else could declutter my family room, make Ben clean out the stray papers in his backpack and go pick up David after rehearsal tonight, naturally on a night my husband has to work late. Oh well - the best I can do is to 'call in sick' to myself and give myself permission to order takeout. while I watch "Real Housewives of Manhattan" and feel smugly superior by comparison!