Stuff About Being Jewish I Have Heard Lately That Has Tickled Me

"I think being a New Yorker is probably like being Jewish: You're either born that way or you aren't, and while you can convert, nobody will make it easy for you and nobody thinks it's the same."
—From Capella's blog, on her impending move

"You've heard the saying: Gentiles leave and don't say goodbye. Jews say goodbye and don't leave."
—From a guest at a Shabbat dinner in Venice earlier this month, as we all edged ever closer to the door and never quite got there

"When you get back from Vegas, let's go for drinks. Or Jewish drinks: food."
—From another AD with very good hair, by way of Facebook email

Also, at the end of a craps table at Mandalay Bay last week, I was positioned next to some guys who kept saying, "Easy money, all day, every day! Easy money!" They said this before each shooter rolled the dice. And I'm like, hello, Jewish much? No, not. We don't say that stuff on account of we're superstitious, even if we're just rolling dice, and not even naming babies before they are born or wishing somebody a safe flight. (Maybe we could say "easy money" and then also say kein ahora each time too, but that would get cumbersome and also kind of embarrassing.)

Reckless Driving Incident

Today I was browsing the grocery aisles at Target when another woman shopper ran her cart right over the toes on my flip-fopped right foot. I was startled and it hurt like hell, and moreover I thought it was going to mess up my 20-minutes-old pedicure (OPI Cajun Shrimp).

The other woman was so upset that she might have hurt me that she frantically apologized over and over, and then in a flash of panic let slip out, "Can I kiss it?" But not in a creepy foot-fetish way (like that guy outside the Macy's offices in San Francisco who always used to accost us on our way up from the BART station talking about, "nice...pretty...toes..."). But in a total Jewish mom kind of way; I could just hear the words coming out of my own mom's mouth. After the foot pain subsided, I released my toes from my massaging hand, and told her, no, no, no, it's no problem, of course you didn't mean it, things happen.

Then she said, "Are you...are you Jewish?" Yes, I'm Jewish, "Are you the daughter of...?" Nope, wrong Jewish parents' daughter. But I knew the reason she'd been distracted enough to run over my foot was that she was fixed on me trying to discern whether I was this person she suspected I was. I had wondered why she'd been staring.

[Vastly oversimplified kicker:] In this town, people offer to kiss your foot after running it over with a shopping cart in Target. In the Target in Queens, they steal your full cart so they can use it themselves, and throw all of its contents, including your scarf and winter coat with a monthly MetroCard in the pocket, on the floor under the boys' underwear racks. OK, so maybe that only happened once, but it obviously scarred me.

Things I Thought About During Yoga Class Tonight

work
house paint
spinach (whole wheat pasta with)
sweatbands (useful?)
blue-eyed boy
the Ashram (curious)
Super Bowl
Pasadena
TMZ
work
check-engine light
glasses
dry cleaning
rain (unhappy with)
mom
working out (tomorrow)
friend (AE, moving)
positivity (striving for)
work
restaurant recommendations (Grove adjacent)
friend (LP, studying Final Cut Pro)
tomatoes
vacation (Mexican Riviera cruise?)
vacation (Turkey?)
this list (making)
Valentine's Day
PBS
vacation (San Simeon?)
Coachella
wine
working out (last Thursday)
friend (MG, feathered haircut)
New York (Capella, moving to)
New York (work, traveling for)
steam cleaning (carpet)
Project Runway
Devon Aoki
Lululemon
headlines (punchy)
Obama
Dubai (L.A. Times article on)
Santa Barbara
sister (birthday, Wednesday)
Essie polish in Wicked
yogi rhetoric (vs. stereotypic California rhetoric)
Huell Howser
friend (MW, cute glasses)
looseleaf paper (notes from 1992 to EW on)
work
blue-eyed boy (cold, coming down with)
Ikea
Times Square
new dress (bras to wear with)
Zicam
Home Depot
donuts (I wish)
Bed Head mousse (integrate?)
State of the Union

Is anyone in here really getting close to achieving transcendence? Man, honestly, that must be amazing.

Newsflash: Heidi Klum's Trainer Probably Does Not Support Your Eating Habits

The year I moved to Los Angeles from New York, so did the Victoria's Secret fashion show—a plus for me, since it's one of my favorite events to cover. Watching the televised version tonight of this year's spectacle jogged my memory to a moment I'd spent at the show's after-party in 2005 at the armory.

It was pouring rain outside. Inside, I was dutifully noshing on hors d'oeuvres with an event-world friend who introduced me in a conversation circle to a man who was apparently in the stable of top trainers charged with maintaining those supermodels' bodies. I must have made some off-the-cuff remark about how I figured a little risotto ball or two never killed anyone, and how I drink my vodka with soda water so as not to take on too many of the unnecessary calories associated with sugary mixers anyway.

But this man was palpably, unapologetically disgusted by my unforgivable lack of restraint. He was shocked—shocked!—to learn that someone currently sharing his air might indulge in one microgram of risotto. There was no discernible irony on his face when he turned around—as if toward a pit of photogs snapping flashbulbs—then it was pivot, poof, gone.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have to rely on things other than my perfect body to earn my living—like reporting on events, where risotto balls come with the territory.

He's The One I Blame For My Treo Dependency

me: covering gq's vma party @ the mirage. soo wish u were here. smooch times infinity squared. luv u like soja luvs freedom.

CJ: no justice no peace. i'm sitting on the floor at anna sui taking polaroids of my shoe. isn't fashion so glamorous?

me: wait wish u were here 2 c this 1 lothlorien girl in a hemp anklet doing the robot w/her casa z man on the dance floor. like 1 of these kids is not like the others.

CJ: BIG THANGS POPPIN IN 5768. SHOFAR SO GOOD. APPLES AND HONIES. CHALLAH BACK.


**
L'shana tova tikatevu, homies.

I Can't Believe It Was Six Years Ago

Cabin Pressure

Six days after my nephew was born, I got on a plane at PHL and headed home to LAX. Since having said goodbye to my sister at her house the day before, I'd hardly stopped crying. Part of it was the obvious: Because I'd decided to fulfill my commitment to attend the wedding of a dear friend in L.A., I'd left Philadelphia before my nephew's bris. This had been a rending choice. Part of the reason I was sad was that I didn't know when I’d see my sister again, or the baby, and “time marches on,” as my dad is so fond of saying. And I hate that it does.

The other reasons for the tears were more abstract. Everything had been hyper-poignant in Philadelphia. Like when I ate with my folks at City Tavern and my dad’s salad came with a purple orchid on top, and my mom was so determined that she should take this little second-hand flower to my sister. She dusted off the blossom and asked the waitress for a Styrofoam cup to transport it in. My dad poured a half inch of water into the cup, and my mom placed the bud inside, and we kept it in the cup holder of the rental car until it could safely be delivered to my sister. The way my mom was so precious about how this flower must be taken to her daughter—this killed me. There are lots of other reasons too, but my Internet self is not nearly honest enough to dissect them here.

I hardly slept a wink before I got on the plane, and then got up at 6 AM to head to the airport, where the security line was a hundred miles long and I barely got in Southwest's nightmarish B line in time to get an aisle seat directly in front of a screaming baby, for whose parents I should have had sympathy, particularly under the circumstances of our own family’s developments, but didn't because I was so dang tired. Seeing the tears, the girl sitting in the window seat asked with genuine concern if I was OK, and I really believed she was interested in the answer—which I would have told her with details, because I am the type, but it’s so complicated and I’m not even sure what it is.

Something about my mom handling an orchid from my dad’s salad with extreme care because it was for her daughter who is recovering from surgery, and because my mom would have always done anything for her daughters? Something about how I have a tiny new nephew who weighs five pounds less than my cat, and who could be god-knows-how-old before I see him again because we live far apart and that sucks? Something about how I’m going to turn 30 in a month and people in Philadelphia seem to be doing different things at 30 than people in New York or L.A., and how that complicates the value system in my head?

Meanwhile, the guy in the middle seat, who was wearing a ball cap that was brown mesh in the back and fake woven wicker on the brim, was oblivious to my--er--lack of composure. And he had a lot to say to me about his cat Daisy and the dog who’s name I can’t remember, and the crawfish his wife found in a pond and put in their daughter’s aquarium. (The wife, who goes by “All-Biz Liz” because she makes the family's decisions, and has no faith in her husband's decision-making abilities, had trouble carrying, which is why they had their daughter so late in life. So I was told.) This man had no idea that I was not really in the right emotional space to be on board with his idea that the way to make a million quick is to be a child’s birthday party entertainer, like this Safari Lady who came to one of his daughter’s friends’ parties and got $200 for entertaining the kids with goats and snakes for an hour. Can you imagine? $200! Get a couple of those bookings in a day—maybe four in a weekend—and you’re so set! That's the way to do it, boy, I tell you.

I tried to cover my head with the blue Southwest “blanket,” so I could “sleep,” but its mystery fibers were asphyxiating me, so I moved it aside from my face just as a stewardess walked down the aisle. She asked me did I need a hug, and gave me one, and seemed to really, really mean it. She offered me a drink on the house (which I wouldn’t normally have declined, but I had to somehow get myself to the rehearsal dinner in Pasadena without falling asleep at the wheel) and came back instead with some water and a box of tissues. Women have this ability to give hugs and make people feel better. It’s amazing how many men don’t (all due respect to those who do).

And my inability to understand their reasons for that must come from the same Mars/Venus schism that ultimately results in the husband wearing a shirt that says, “I’d rather be fishing but my wife’s nagging would scare away the bass." Or what have you.

Anyway, I was all prepared to come home alone in a taxi (the blue-eyed guy was in Cleveland, and my parents were in Atlantic City on a day trip from Philadelphia, so who would come get me?), and was prepared to miss the noise terribly. But when the wheels touched down and I turned on the ol' Treo, there was a message from AE and oh my god she totally missed me and she's checked my flight status online and knows I'm early and is on her way to pick me up and we'll have lunch and discuss, it's all good, girl, for real.

Thank heaven for friends. For real, girl.

Can I Help it That my Future's so Bright?

This one time I took the Chinatown bus from New York to visit my sister in Philadelphia. It was hella hot outside and we went to catch the end of the Live 8 concert with Stevie. So we're walking and this guy stops us on the street and says to me, "You look like that one singer--what's her name? Mariah Carey!" And after he walks away, I go to big Dubin, "I don't think I really look like Mariah Carey, do you?" And she goes, "No. It's just that nobody in Philadelphia wears sunglasses that big."

Broadcast News

Years back, shortly after we'd moved to New York, my girlfriend and I wanted to coauthor a book about customer service. We were both Californians who had been shocked and appalled by the sorry, sorry lack of service or respect given to the customer out there and we wanted to tell those stories. (For example, once at my home branch of Citibank on First Avenue, the "service specialist"--who'd been brought out in an attempt to pacify me after I'd insisted on more help--told me that the reason they hadn't posted a notice about some huge fee I'd been assessed is because, "This is a bank, not a library.") My friend is now, impressively, working on a book about Turkish politics, for which she was paid a spectacular advance, so my potential coauthor is tied up with other projects.

But, even now back in L.A., I've got stories. CVS recently converted my local Sav-on pharmacy to its nameplate. I have a single prescription there, and it's always a nightmare trying to fill it--there are long lines, nobody knows what they're doing, the staff is suspiciously young, your drugs are never there even after you call in to verify they're ready, they never have your proper insurance information, they never get your name right, and therefore tell you after an hour that they're turning up no records for a Ms. Goobin. I'd had so many shockingly bad experiences there (i.e. a month ago I waited nearly two hours for them to figure out my prescription, so that by the time I got out to the parking lot with my validated parking ticket, the attendant told me I'd been in there way too long and had to pay. If you know me personally, you can imagine about how well that went over.) that I actually laughed out loud the other night by myself when I saw a commercial talking about how CVS is so friendly and knowledgeable and is sure to save you time and money, and always delivers on their promises of being ready with your meds when you're in a hurry.

So I'm in there last night, and it's roughly after-work time, 7 PM or so, and there's almost no line, and I'm actually remarking to myself that things seem to be running more smoothly, and maybe CVS has worked out the kinks by now. So I'm giving the guy all my personal information, including insurance data, prescription info, phone number, birth date. This goes on for a few minutes, until some of his coworkers from way back in the pharmacy start hollering at him: "Turn off your speaker phone!" My girl-issue pills: public record.

City Search

DailyOM
November 6, 2006

Living Streets
The Energy Of Cities

The cities we reside in have souls. Our cities consume, create, evolve, and breathe much in the same way Mother Nature does. Each city is unique, defined not only by the individuals who call it home but also by the energy it exudes. Some cities are suffused by an aura of unshakable calm while others seem continually frenetic, even during the early morning hours. Many inspire creativity within us or arouse our curiosity. A city's energy is dependent on many factors, including the geography, the people, the industry, and the culture. Residing in a city full of warehouses and factories feels very different than one living in one populated by artists and museums. Some cities elevate the soul while others seem to squash it, and fate may lead us to either.

If the urban center you presently call home feels oppressive or robs you of your vitality, consider relocating to a locale that is more nurturing. You may find that leaving your city is an impossibility, however, if circumstances in your life compel you to remain or the universe has plans for you that involve your staying put. To cope with the stress of working and playing in an environment you have an aversion to, first ask yourself how the city you live in makes you feel. Then take steps to cleanse your home, your work spaces, and your life of the energy that is dragging you down. Try smudging your personal and professional spaces with sage or sweetgrass to dispel negativity. Keeping a quartz crystal on or near your person can ensure that there is always positive, loving energy nearby that you can draw from when you feel affected by your city. And you can do your part to promote widespread good energy by sending love and white light from your heart out into the city each morning and night.

As you become increasingly aware of the way your city makes you feel, you can refine your cleansing efforts to meet your individual needs. If you seek out others who feel driven to purify your city's energy flow, your combined efforts can become a larger movement that promotes healing and goodwill. You may find that, after a time, you are gradually drawn to those aspects of your locale that energize you, helping you come back into balance.

Where my Girls At

I love covering beauty events and product launches because undoubtedly there is always a very chic woman talking about natural ingredients and advanced science in a sexy and sweet accent, usually French, sometimes Nordic. (One time I went to a launch for a new line of French cosmetics on the penthouse terrace of the apartment belonging to the brand's impossibly chic red-lipped in-house publicist, with views overlooking Fifth Avenue and Broadway, right across from the Flatiron. It was outrageous. Then I walked home to my tiny unchic, unfit-to-bring-over-style-arbiters apartment with bars on the windows and the cat's litter box next to the sofa, because there's no place else you can put it when all you've got is 200 square feet.)

I also love these events (because you walk away drunk, with armloads of free stuff and) because they are always filled with women, since the beauty editor crowd tends to be exclusively female, with, like one flaming queen with a pinky ring at the next table for good measure. And I always find this to be a very inspiring environment. All these beautiful ladies, all career women, with glamorous lives, generally supporting and not being mean to one another, as I think is the common perception of women en masse.

Today I went to a cosmetic launch in a sparkling hotel penthouse, with delicious coffee and fresh-squeezed juices, where I listened to a lovely Nordic woman talk about rare berry extracts. Then I collected my Marimekko swag bag and headed to another luncheon in the same hotel, where 650 women (and five queens) bidded on handbags in an auction benefiting lupus research. I sat next to a soap opera actress originally from Texas (the daughter of a minister), whose life was nothing like my own. And I found our conversation to be engaging and genuine, and I learned something. Because you can learn something from everyone. ("Even a damned fool," as my grandfather used to say, but that wouldn't apply here.) And it's rather pleasant when you exchange thoughts on life with other smart gals in a room full of smart gals just doing their thing, just like you're doing your thing.

For the Sin of Envy

It’s been two weeks since my last confession. I mean my last blog confession. It’s only been one day since my confessions in synagogue on the Day of Atonement for the sin of…

…slander, and for the sin of gossip.
…for the sin of selfishness.
…for the sin of indulging evil thoughts, and for the sin of lust.
…for the sin of not hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and for the sin of being poor in spirit.
...for the sin of speaking foolish words, and for the sin of not controlling my tongue.
…for the sin of being proud and for the sin of lacking zeal.
…for the sin of not being quick to forgive, and for the sin of holding resentments.
…and for the sin of eating a peanut butter Balance Bar on the fast day so that I could file a story on deadline without fainting…

…and miscellaneous others. By the way, for high holidays services, we joined the congregation of the synagogue led by the cantor who married my sister earlier this summer. And it was such a rich, song-dominated, warm experience that evoked my eleven years of Jewish summer camp in Malibu—one of the great blessings of my childhood and adolescence—more vividly then anything else since.

(Something else evoked summer camp recently too: At the Abbot-Kinney Cool Kid festival, we ran into a fab girl who had been a fellow camper back in those days, who I always thought was like the best, funniest, most outgoing version of me on a good hair day. And she’s still as awesome as all that, so it was such a kick to see her.)

Anyway, I was moved to confess here again when I got delivered to my inbox today a Snapfish photo album containing pictures of a minutes-old child belonging to an old flame. By all rights, he shouldn’t even know how to reach me. But he still does, and here’s why.

To start from the beginning: In college, I spent a couple months dating (well, it was more like “hanging out,” since as close as anyone came to going on proper dates in Berkeley was having a face-size hummus sandwich at Intermezzo or sitting on Sproul Plaza and listening to the drum circle and talking smack about how passersby reeked of patchouli.) a fellow film student who I’d really started to like, by the time a mutual friend told me he’d had a girlfriend the whole time. Naturally it should have been over, severed cleanly, right at the moment I’d paged him 4-1-1 (ha!) to confirm that it was true. But it lingered on as things do, until it got really ugly, and we’d hiked up to the Big C one night, and he was distraught and told me up on that hill he’d have to tell her the truth, and when we came down, he went straight to her house, if I recall, and did just that. It was high drama, and she was beside herself, and moved away or something, and the details are sketchy, but he followed her out of town, and I didn’t have contact with him for years. Until.

It was winter in New York two years ago and I was cold and I was trolling Friendster, and there he was, married, with a baby. I wrote him to say it was nice to see him settled and happy. Within two emails it came out that he loved his daughter very much—a beautiful biracial girl with wild, light curly hair, huge eyes, and a Christmas birthday—but his marriage was a disaster.

He’d gotten that girl from our college years to take him back—and then he’d gone and married her.

I’ll have to skim over a couple months spent rapt by the weird sham of an electronic affair I’d had with him after we got back in touch, because I’m not proud of it. But I was lonesome, and I envied him his life: He drove his sensible sedan back to his family in his warm condo every night. And he envied me my life: single, totally unencumbered, responsible only to myself, spent money on shoe sales and not diapers, went to parties in New York for a living (never mind that I rented a frigid apartment where I lived alone and never had enough heat or hot water or enough electricity to run my space heater without blowing the fuse, and then when I invariably did, having to pray to god that my super was in town so he could unlock the gate in the sidewalk and flip the fuse box down there so the lights would come on again). It was a perfect storm of mutual jealousies and intense history.

I asked him one day why he married that girl, with whom he fought all the time, and who didn’t seem to make him happy, and who he didn’t seem to make happy, and who hadn't made him happy enough seven years earlier to keep him from cheating. “I just wanted so badly to win,” he said, about the years he spent monomaniacally trying to get her back. “I lost track of what it was I was fighting for.”

This weekend his wife delivered their second child, a son. They’d decided to try for another child when they had a period of upswing in their relationship in the winter. He doubts now that it was a good decision, but he will be a good father, I’m sure. Insofar as you can be a good father to a child while failing to communicate honestly with his mother.

From my reconnection with him, I've really learned the lesson about the grass not being greener on the other side. But an even more valuable one is the one about making sure you know good and well what you're fighting for before you dedicate your life to that pursuit—because you just might get what you fought for.

Seasonal Affective Dialing

The other evening I used my stuck-in-traffic time to call a kinky-haired actor I used to go out with in New York. My call was completely out of the blue, and there was no time elapsed between inkling and execution (I handle a lot of decisions this way—dubious). The conversation could have gone any which way—we haven’t seen each other since our last date was pervaded by an icky sense of doom sometime around last December. But it was really, unexpectedly, warm and gratifying.

One night last winter, he and I had met up in Union Square, from where we would walk to dinner on Avenue C. The red-and-white-striped booths that comprise Union Square’s annual holiday shopping bazaar were set up and twinkling with white lights. He took my hand (which for me was a paradise since New York winters were tough for me and I always fantasized about having a bigger hand into which to deposit my cold and gloved littler hand, but most winter days this was just a fantasy). Not more than a few paces from there we’d run into the kinky-haired actor’s father. His family was from New Jersey, and still lived there, except for his brother who was a lawyer in Midtown. And here was the dad, planning to go to the movies alone after work (since the mom was in Europe on book publishing business, if I recall), offering instead to take us to dinner (which we—or he—appropriately declined).

The kinky-haired actor lived in a city where he had these roots and this potential to run into a parent—and I had nothing more than a few years’ worth of roots in town. No family and only one friend who knew I existed before I turned 25 and went off to grad school. (And only I knew that I’d had a lot of more confident, more carefree times before I materialized in New York).

I think I was incredibly jealous.

So flash forward to our phone conversation on Thursday night and he’s asking me about L.A. and I’m saying it’s great and I’ve got so much history here, and all of my old friends who knew every detail and nuance (and who knew all about the happier times, and who where there as they were happening)—and my parents too. And I told him how I thought it was really enviable that he ran into his father that time, and how now I live in a place where I can just go get a carton of milk with my mom if I need milk, and that I’d just done that today. He said he’d just done that with his mom too.

I wonder if he knows I wouldn’t have left New York when I’d had the opportunity if we’d stayed together a little longer.

Then my phone beeps low battery, and I’ve got to go anyway, so I tell him that even though I meet lots of people, I don’t easily forget the people with whom I spent the kind of time that I spent with him. He echoed that sentiment emphatically. And he said he hoped it was reasonable to think we might get a drink or a coffee when I’m in New York in November—right around the time of year when we’d met last year, and had our marathon first date, during which we’d sat in Tompkins Square Park and talked about being Jewish and falling in love while leaves fell on our curly heads and we brushed them away.

Everyone Comes to New York for the Jam, but Nobody Buys It

On a beach towel in Santa Monica yesterday, I was reminded how glad I am that I’ve left New York. But it wasn’t just the Pacific sand that reminded me; it was the article I finally got around to reading in New York magazine there—“Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness,” by Jennifer Senior, about the scientific study of happiness and what sort of people attain it. In short, it’s not New Yorkers.

"From the point of view of the happiness literature, New Yorkers seem to have been mysteriously seduced into a way of life that conspires, in almost every way, against the basic level of contentment. The large points first: Most happiness researchers aggree that being surrounded by friends and family is one of the most crucial determinants of our well-being. Yet in New York, as surprisingly neighborly a city as it is, is still predicated on a certain principle of atomization. Being married would help in this instance, obviously. But New York City’s percentage of unmarried adults is nine points higher than the national average, at 52 points.

Then there’s the questions of the hedonic treadmill [the undending hunger for the next acquisition], such a demonic little term, so apt. Isn’t that what New York, the city of the 24-hour gym is? More charitably put, one could say that New York is a city of aspirants, the destination people come to to realize dreams. And of course we should feel indebted to the world's dreamers (and I thank each and every one for creating jet travel, indoor plumbing, and The Simpsons) but there’s a line between heartfelt aspiration and a mindless state of yearning.

Economists have a term for those who seek out the best options in life. They call them maximizers. And maximizers, in practically every study one can find, are far more miserable than people who are willing to make do (economists call these people satisficers)… New York doesn’t just attract ambitious neurotics; it creates them. It also creates a desire for things we don’t need—which not coincidentally is the business of Madison Avenue—and, as a corollary, pointless regrets, turning us all into a city of counterfactual historians, men and women who obsessively imagine different and better outocomes for ourselves.”

And the most resonant point the author made discussed a study in which a Columbia researcher went to a high-end gourmet store and set out samples of six different kinds of jam. She promised a substantial discount to shoppers who wanted to buy a jar of their preferred jam after sampling. The following week, she set up the same sampling station, only with 24 kinds of jam instead of six. The weekend there were six jams, 30 percent of samplers decided to buy one; the weekend there had been 24 jams, only 3 percent of shoppers bought. Essentially, too many options mess with people. This is what New York does to people’s minds. And to their dating habits.

"Everyone comes here for the jam, but no one buys it."

That all the men I was dating in New York knew exactly how many choices they had for women (and that they always seemed to be looking over my shoulder at the next one coming down the block who might have something on me) and that those choices were basically infinite, was a particularly cruel punishment for me because I had already punished myself earlier in life by sticking with a very long relationship with my ‘Tross who knew—because of his easy charm and the fact of his rock stardom—he had a million options, and could consequently never commit to a single one. One of his dearest friends once told me, “I wish [your ‘Tross] would spend more time with you. It’s bad for a man to have too many choices. He’s standing at a buffet table and sampling so much he’s making himself sick.” Always a sampler, never a buyer.

My ‘Tross in Oakland of course proves that it’s not just New York men who are crippled by their glut of opportunities. But back in L.A., I’ve already met men who aren’t. And this is encouraging.

If everyone comes to New York for the jam, but no one buys it, maybe here I’ll find the right buyer for my jam. That is, if anyone’s ready for this jelly.

Down Dog, Interrupted

I’m in yoga this morning, just enjoying a gentle readjustment in the child’s pose, when the fire alarm goes off, transforming the room from the quiet sanctuary of self love and relaxation that I’d really, really needed today into a manic disco of flashing white lights and sirens and some dude saying muffled things over the P.A. system. It really is a classic summation of the experience of being me: The girl tries to relax, but the circumstances of her life make other plans.

And that’s OK though. I know I suck at yoga, because (I am strong but not terribly flexible and because) my mind does not like to shut off. The business of focusing the breath and letting the mind be clear is not my strong suit. Still, I enjoy yoga whenever I manage to get there because I love the idea that I’m doing something pure and purely for me, and my motives for that period of time are totally solid and uncorrupted and there’s no hip-hop with mean lyrics playing in the room (I love that stuff in spite of myself, so it’s usually on the speakers wherever I am) and I’m not investigating people I shouldn’t on Friendster or watching crime scene video on Court TV’s Forensic Files. It really promotes in me a sense of love—mostly love for self, but more than that too.

When I lived on East 10th, there was a yoga studio on the block. (until it closed, because who could afford a space on that block anyway? Certainly I couldn’t afford my own apartment.) And in that studio there was a teacher who always encouraged us to silently dedicate our practice for that day to someone in our lives whom we loved and was struggling and was therefore in need of good thoughts and positive energy. A dear old friend and a neighbor on that block—a very small and brilliant Korean girl with a nervous streak to rival any Jew I’ve met including myself—also used to go to that class. One day, she’d gone in the morning and I’d gone at lunchtime, and over dinner she’d said, “Girl, I dedicated my practice to you today.” And I’d said, “Oh girl, I dedicated my practice to you!” And it made me feel so warm and so loved and so grateful for my friends that the body movement part of the class was almost irrelevant.

Among the reasons I’d so needed the relaxation today: Last week my mom discovered my blog. And my guess is that her response was not unlike many mothers who discover their children’s blogs: She was “scandalized” and found my “values” questionable and actually said that I was not likely to ever meet “Mr. Right” with my objectionable values all up on the Internet. I hope she is not right about the last bit, but I know she is not right about the first bit. I do have good and honest values, and in fact I think they are as traditional as my mom’s. This is mostly about my struggle to make heads or tails of the men I’ve met along the pursuit of real love and respect and mutual admiration and attraction. And I only wish in my discussions I could be as honest as Megan or Capella.

My mom—who was nearly 30 before she was married (an old maid in her generation) and a PhD in biology, and who is a very outspoken woman in spite of her diminutive size (seriously, look out)—always taught her daughters that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and to be strong, and to believe we could do whatever we wanted to do. So I will try to understand her visceral reaction to seeing her daughter reduce her own life to simple quips about boys and shoes (this is not the case, but this is only what she saw in her shock). But I think I will give this blogging business a little more of a go before I decide that what I’ve actually done is reduce my life to a series of punch lines about boys and shoes.

Another reason I was in need of some relaxation this morning: Turns out the delightfully easygoing Midwestern man who recently became my ex-boyfriend did have a fab time at his high school reunion. (Did I mention he was captain of his soccer team and was his high school's 6-foot-4 prom king with all-American good looks, green eyes, and freckles? He thinks he mostly won because he split the black vote. But if I’d have had a vote, I bet I would have picked him too.) A fab time that culminated with him making out with a fellow alum in a McDonald’s parking lot, followed by breakfast at a diner across the street. This bit of news actually struck me as almost retro-hot, and didn’t upset me too much. (This is probably because the girl lives in Detroit and is not likely to fly to L.A. to make out with him in local McDonald’s parking lots in the future.)

But I do still have a fondness for that man. And I respect the things about him that probably won him his prom king reign: his easily accessible wit, unambiguous smile, integrity, interest and aptitude in sports on TV and in the park, unwillingness to even pretend he was listening to my home decorating tales, sensitivity almost exclusively on the inside (except for an inexplicable favoritism for romantic comedies like Must Love Dogs), and all-around totally-from-Mars dudeness. Apparently this particular set of qualities does not a good long-term match for me make. I spent a lot of time preparing turkey sandwiches (“sandos,” as we called them, with extra avocado, which he loved and called “green gold”) for dinner (for him—I'm a vegetarian) in front of World Cup soccer or a movie on TV—which I enjoyed very much. But maybe my destiny is to do less of that and more of something else. (Although I’m not sure about this, because I watch King of the Hill with an envy for Hank Hill that is deeply unreasonable.)

After returning from an awesome summer-long Indiana Jones-like dig in Turkey, my tiny, brilliant, neurotic Korean girlfriend broke up with her long-term, dude-like boyfriend (whose primary ambition included a big-screen plasma TV for Eagles football) on the grounds of a similar sort of incompatibility. (Last Valentine’s Day, she felt like going to Medieval Times in the Bronx or wherever it was, just because she thought it would be a fun adventure. He wanted to put on a button-down shirt and go for dinner and a show in the city; this was more like his kind of adventure.) And we both think the changes in our love lives are sound and smart. But there is something very missable about a comfortable, settled life with a man like that.

Anyway, after standing around outside the Equinox gym in Westwood for a while (I was just glad I wasn’t the guy in the robe whose massage had been interrupted by the fire alarm), we resumed our yoga practice and eventually finished with a series of three cross-legged ohms and the instructor gave us each a little forehead massage using a dab of rose water. And it seems to me that this is what it’s all about: We encounter lots of noise, but if we rededicate ourselves, we always return to something sweet and soft and fulfilling. Or something like that.

Docksiders: Don't Do It

This is a story about docksider shoes.

But first, back up. In New York I dated a Brooklyn painter who behaved toward me in such an infuriatingly disrespectful manner that, when our summer fling ended two (three?) summers ago, I didn’t think of him at all fondly when I thought of him at all. Then, naturally, in the days before I left the city for L.A., we had one slightly scandalous eleventh-hour night in Williamsburg—actually, for me it was a kiss goodbye to the chapter in my life in which I made out with boys with paint under their fingernails in their million-story walkup studios with broken windows—and the result was that I left my favorite Neiman Marcus leather gloves with the cashmere lining at the bar where we’d been. It was his borough, so he picked them up for me, said he would drop them by my box-filled Manhattan apartment, never did. I moved to L.A. and he never mailed them like he said he would. (“Don’t you know I have pieces in the Armory Show? I’m really very busy.”) Instead, he pawned them off on a friend who’d recently moved to Hollywood and could give them to me.

So the friend loses one glove somewhere along the way, and calls me to introduce himself and say he’s a moron for being so careless, and he’d like to take me shopping for new gloves. The whole thing seemed positive at first. How gentlemanly and how gracious of him to want to return the gloves to me, when his friend certainly hadn’t been in any hurry to be dutiful about that. But then: Was this shopping trip going to be a date? Sure sounded like it. If so, first of all, I had a boyfriend. (That situation would change quickly, as it turned out—but that’s unrelated.) Second of all, was this guy pimping me to his friend in L.A.? Like writing my number on a bathroom wall?

Anyway, what the hell, right? Fast forward through a lot of miscellaneous details, and I find myself briefly dating this painter’s friend—in spite of the thing I figured was a for-sure deal-breaker when I first saw him: docksiders. Now, I appreciate that he’s from Brookline, Massachusetts, and that he went to some kind of fancy boarding school. But there is no excuse for docksiders. Particularly not when paired with—wait for it—brown socks and shorts.

I realize that since I’ve already criticized one potential suitor for his pleated-front pants, some readers might think I really don’t want happiness at all—but that instead I want well dressed. Not true. I just think things like docksiders and pleated-front pants can be indicators of a lack of self-awareness, social stiffness, and other things more grave.

And there was indeed something else even more inexcusable and inexplicable. This turned out to be the most flatulent man I’ve ever met—possibly the most flatulent man in America. I forgive a lot; I really do. I am past the point of rejecting every man for some small, insignificant thing he does that I can’t stand. My mind and my heart are open these days. But, come on. At first it happened in the middle of the night—the first night we spent together—when he’d gone to the bathroom to do his business. Completely excusable: It was his own house, and it’s a perfectly natural bodily function, and he was polite enough to do it behind the bathroom door. So then he comes back into bed and keeps doing it. Hrm. But I can still excuse that—right?—on the grounds that maybe he thinks I’m asleep (although it’s hard to imagine that anyone could sleep through all that). So then I have a small dinner party, and he spares my guests, but when they leave he reserves his flatulence privately for me. Repeat that same scenario at a dinner at his house later that week: He’d never do in front of his friends what he’d do alone with me—a woman he was presumably courting—and with no request to be excused, and no explanation, except, “I was just born this way! Haha!” After two weeks of enduring this with patience, I said, “Huh. It’s interesting that you do that in front of me, given that we just met.” He said, “We met two weeks ago.” Scandalous, really. I like a man who treats a lady like a lady. At least for the first month.

I’m sure there are some lessons to be learned here. One of them must have to do with attraction versus repulsion. Here was a man I really wanted to really want to be with. Gloriously interesting job, a terrific adventurer, well traveled and well read, smart, a good blend of silly and serious, borderline O.C.D. (this for me is a plus), interesting family history. So I tried to overlook the fact that the docksiders/brown socks/shorts combo really repulsed me. (By the way, I think he thought his family’s wealth and its legacy, and his interesting job made him an uncontestable gem in the eyes of all women, but I could be wrong about his vanity.) I was getting good at overlooking other icky bits too. But then you introduce the flatulence, and there’s only so much a girl can bear to force her feelings. When you reject someone based on lame (albeit gag-worthy) stuff like docksiders, you may be sabotaging yourself, rather than protecting yourself from a life with someone who does that thing you didn’t like—because you’d get over it since it didn’t matter anyway. But if you’d rather turn the other way than kiss the man in bed with you—no matter how many millions his art family gave to the Met—you’ve got to cut your losses. The Forcing-It Balance is a slippery slope, like the Wear-Down Theory (which I’ve seen from both sides, and I’m still trying to figure out if it can lead to a sustainable relationship—but that’s another matter).

[Full disclosure: He would later send the "let's-not-do-this-anymore" email, not me.]

The other thing about Docksiders is that he reminded me—from the very beginning—of a man (a boy, really) with whom my sister once tried to set me up, and with whom I went on one date to see the Hold Steady at the Bowery Ballroom, and whom I really, really wanted to like, but couldn’t. This was mostly on account of his tendency to send me text messages like, “Dancing with self in room to Madonna!” I mean, it’s cute…but we just met. So be a man.

Iced Coffee Glut

The delightfully easygoing Midwest man who recently became my ex-boyfriend did have a select few things that he liked to have just so: he ordered his Starbucks [whatever they call the medium size] coffee in a [whatever they call the large size] cup every day (presumably so it wouldn’t spill in the car on the way to work, although I never thought to ask why), and he always selected the baby four-tined Ikea fork from the drawer full of better, five-tined forks because he liked how its diminutive size made him feel like he was getting to eat more food.

I liked that he had at least a handful of preferences and needs like that, because I find it comforting to have things just so too—although for me this is the rule and not the exception. In the winters, when I lived in on East 10th Street and First Avenue, I walked up First in the mornings to get my coffee (large, light with skim, three Sweet-n-Lows) from the Dunkin’ Donuts at 12th Street, before I got to the L train at 14th. In the summers though, when it was nice enough to walk all the way to work (I am the rare freak for whom it can’t ever get too hot or too humid), I walked over to the Second Avenue Dunkin’ Donuts, and got the iced version of the light-with-skim-and-three-Sweet-n-Lows coffee. I took a lot of pleasure in my morning routine—as I think most people do—and I enjoyed the semiannual changing of the coffee seasons as just one part of the fun about changing seasons. New thinking, new attitude, new possibilities.

Here in L.A., as people like to say, there are no seasons. There is always only iced coffee. And I really love iced coffee, but what’s my motivation if I get to have it all the time? It’s so easy and comfy here; it’s a little bit freakish. Like how, if the two-liter bottles of Diet Coke are on sale for 10 for $10, I can buy 10 and just roll the shopping cart out to my car with all them in there, and then drive the car to my house, and then bring the sodas to the fridge, and the ones that don’t fit in the fridge can fit in any number of empty cabinets until I’m ready to drink them (which will be, like, tomorrow, because I drink a lot of Diet Coke). For me there is the illusion here that I don’t have to force myself to do great things because great things are not happening at a frenetic pace around me, taunting me. I’ve come to realize that this is indeed an illusion. And maybe it’s a relief of an illusion, compared to the pressure of New York (where people may not be doing things that are any greater than the things folks are doing here, but they’re breaking more of a sweat and being louder about it, while drinking and smoking more). I got complacent. Complacent—and legitimately happy too, in a comfortable, off-duty way that I haven’t enjoyed in a while (thank you, easygoing Midwestern man). Generally speaking, complacency may not be a bad thing, although I’m not sure yet.

Recently, when we were driving on Melrose, we passed something, some historic Hollywood landmark—I can’t remember what now—and I remarked to my Midwestern man that that was a place I used to go to in high school. And he said he thought it must have been very cool to grow up in L.A., as I did (he was brought up in Champaign, Illinois, and moved to L.A., as people do, to try to sell scripts). I guess it was cool, but it also corrupted me: it maybe stripped me of my ability to see for what it is the energy and vitality in this great city. Mostly I just feel like it's home.

Of course no one living in New York was actually from New York; that was what I understood. But I thought most of those folks were from L.A. It turns out, most folks aren’t really from L.A. either, but they came here in search of ambitious and good and beautiful things. That’s what I’m back here searching for too. Iced coffee and all.

Cool Like Dat

Here's the dilemma. Regrettably, I’ve come to learn that I’m kind of cool. And by "cool" here, I mean more or less hip to some stuff that the innovative and sometimes slightly subversive kids of the world are up to--even when I'm not doing it myself because I'm not interested, or for other reasons--and I have some attachment to snarky humor and irony. And I'm at least minimally culturally aware. I mean, I'm not too cool (I don't have bangs, for example, and when I did, in eighth grade, it was not cool), but I'm kind of cool, and I frequently wish I weren't cool at all. I have a friend, a sweet, sweet girl who sells advertising for a radio station in California's uncool Central Valley. A girl who is getting married soon to a man (definitely cute, based on photos I've seen, and presumably also kind and devoted to her) who manages a supermarket there. She has acrylic nails and buys home decor at Hallmark. I envy this wonderful, dear friend of mine her totally unselfconscious, irony-free life.

Rewind a few months. When I was living in the East Village, the landscape of first dates I had with cool boys was so vast, I can't even step back to adequately survey it. Musicians and painters and Oberlin grads galore. Boys who lived in very dirty converted industrial spaces in very bad neighborhoods. Boys who wore colorful Pumas that came from very, very limited editions. Boys who spun records, and boys who owned bars where other cool boys spun records. Anyway, needless to say the whole experience was exhausting, and unrewarding, and either they were fraudulent, or I behaved fraudulently when I was near them to impress them, or both. So I was essentially single, and painfully, the whole time I lived in New York. (N.B.: That bit about me being single all that time is basically a fib, on account of my ongoing long-distance dramas with my 'Tross in California, affectionately so called to shorten the nickname Albatross, which I got sick of saying after many hundreds and millions of times over five-plus years. But I digress.)

So eventually I thought all I really wanted was a totally uncool guy. After all, who wants cool as an exchange for a real and meaningful relationship? Certainly not me. At least not any more, now that I'm a grown up with nothing to prove except my own real happiness—and that only to myself. So I convinced myself that I wanted to meet just a nice, uncomplicated, irony-free man, maybe even someone who unselfconsciously held down an office job, and didn’t criticize or scrutinize stuff he deemed uncool, and then I could be happy.

Eventually I did meet a man like that. Sort of. I met a man who was so honest with himself and with me that I never felt insecure or unloved...even though it was much too early in our relationship to feel loved unconditionally, but I totally did, because he encouraged it. (That should have probably been the first red flag, but I tend to ignore those anyway.) He was an Ivy grad times three different schools. Jewish. Tall and handsome, with pretty, light eyes. From a good, loving family. Sent me dozens of postcards through the mail for no reason with little drawings on them. Man of my dreams, maybe? Maybe.

But then one day, we're talking, and I made some totally innocuous reference to Bobby Brown, husband of Whitney, singer of "Everybody's Humpin’ Around." Silence. This man didn't know who Bobby Brown was. There was no excuse for this. At six years older than me, and someone who grew up in this country, this man fit squarely in the demographic of people who have no excuse for not knowing who Bobby Brown is--except for a totally mind-blowing failure to understand (or participate in) pop culture.

Later, he would turn up for a date in pleated-front pants. And I would be mortified, and I would at that instant feel in my gut that we (I) couldn't recover from that. And we wouldn’t.

Now, I'm not a big Bobby Brown fan. Frankly, I don't care one way or the other about Bobby Brown. But I think people ought to be a part of the pop cultural conversation and know who he is. So it turns out--as I suspected--I don't need someone cool enough to own or work at a bar or play an instrument or wear limited-edition Pumas, but I would like someone aware enough to understand a passing, inconsequential reference to Bobby Brown. And I think my need for that kind of silliness is a curse--because what does it really matter?--but it is what it is and unfortunately there’s no changing it.

Anyway, it’s my prerogative.

Here Goes Nothing

Some years ago, when I started writing for a living, I stopped altogether writing for or about myself. These days I write about parties. (More specifically, I write about the flowers and table linens at parties, but we'll get to that, I'm sure.) Six months ago I moved to Los Angeles from New York to do the same. And since then, for a number of reasons (theories include: the extremely comfy yet unmotivating quality of Los Angeles and some short-lived but undeniable romantic contentment), I've not challenged myself to do anything especially great, and I recently realized how unbecoming that is on me. So, I'm hoping that taking up the cliched pursuit of blogging (lord knows I am not above cliches) might choke some inspiration out of me.

Some anxieties about this include but are by no means limited to:

• What self-respecting person who ever wants to keep a job or her friends or meet a man can be completely honest writing about her life online? And what's interesting that's not completely honest?
• I'm afraid I'll approach this with some grave seriousness--precisely the opposite way I approach writing emails to girlfriends that turn out to be really funny because I let it flow and have no expectations of any sort of greatness or sharing-with-posterity appropriateness.
• I want to write my memoir. This is my pie-in-the-sky life goal. And if I jot stuff here, aren't I robbing it from the future book I ought to be working on?
• I'm lazy. I'm likely to forget my own Web address or something. I do stuff like that sometimes.

A note about the title of my infant blog: In college at Berkeley, before I'd ever lived completely alone, I had a lousy tendency to rely on my devoted and detail-oriented roommates to do stuff for me that I might have done myself. Like, my idea of cleaning the apartment was taking all of the books and papers and putting them in neat stacks (I really can't stand clutter). Et voila! Done. Whereas I would let the girls take the Q-tips to the switches on the oven to get out the grit, for example, or bleach the bathroom floor. I handled the clutter, they handled the filth. They used to tell me that my attitude about cleaning was: "You get the gist." You know, look, I put forth a little effort, it looks better in here, yada yada. In some ways that may be the way I approach the other areas of my life. I'm a broad-strokes gal, not a details gal. I'm a writer and editor, but copy editing is my worst nightmare. I don't really like the buck to stop with me. This is not self deprecating; it's simply true. I know myself. And that's half the battle.