The Lipstick Chronicles

By Sarah

In honor of THE SLEEPING BEAUTY PROPOSAL's release this week, I thought I'd share a personal story that inspired the book: my three years with the Secret Jerk. Please feel free to enlighten us with your own experiences since it's a rare woman indeed who can get past twenty five without encountering one of these dingalings.

A Secret Jerk is a man who looks like Prince Charming on the outside and is little more than a snake charmer on the inside. This is Hugh, the boyfriend of my protagonist, Genie Michaels, who fakes her engagement when, after four years of a relationship, he suddenly proposes on national television to a woman he's been dating on the side, his "soul mate" with whom he is madly in love.

Like Hugh, my Secret Jerk was equally polished and academic. He was ten years older than I, then a mere twenty three, and I was dazzled by all his affectations. (Later I would realize why he dated a woman ten years his younger, but back then I was too naive to know about such concepts as Adult Male Inferiority Complex.)

My Secret Jerk wore lots of tweed, listened to Theolnious Monk and - though chronically unemployed - pretended he was superior to me, the gainfully employed, because he was pursuing a PhD whereas I held a useless B.A.

He also boiled coffee the French way, owned a well-seasoned omelet pan that, God forbid, he never washed, waxed nostalgically about the Sixties and drove old BMWs he worked on himself. His floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were loaded with every wanker male author, from Freud to Mailer to Cheever, plusthe hippie version of the Joy of Sex. On his walls hung Chagal prints, along with several pictures of his ex girlfriend, the professional ballerina, her legs split suggestively.

See? That's what make them Secret Jerks.They look so good to the general public, so polite and erudite and well read, and yet they display photos of their ex girlfriends splayed like Miss September.

Now, had I been older and wiser, I would have taken one look at the skinny ballerina, not to mention the French press and the Cheever and the hippie Joy of Sex and the oodles of brown leather, and headed for the door. But, like I said, I was twenty three and to me this man was unadulterated sophistication. So sophisticated was he, in fact, that I came off as tres pedestrian when I burst into tears having discovered a pair of black silk lace underwear (not mine, natch) between his sheets.

He never said he was committed to me, he explained. What did I want anyway? Marriage? Surely, I couldn't be serious.

He and his black-lace-panty-twinkie finally broke up when I seared off my corneas and called him in desperation from the emergency room. Apparently, the two of them were supposed to go out that night (cult film noir) and I ruined their night of black turtleneckfestivities by temporarily going blind. But she wasn't the first woman he cheated on me with and she certainly wasn't the last. My clearest memory is of him taking phonecalls in the bedroom and then scowling when I had the audacity to ask who "she" was.

The basic problem with me, he said, was actually him: he was not that sexually attracted to me. Sure, I was fun and intelligent and made him laugh. (And I paid for EVERYTHING.) But I did not have that certain....whatever it was, it was French. Like his coffee maker. And his ballerina.

The thing is, no one suspected this sliminess about my Secret Jerk. Everyone thought of him as intelligent and ethical, a real charmer. Yet, when I stop to think about how many times he surprised me with gifts or love trinkets. (Once he bought me a ceramic plate with a scorpion etched at the bottom.) Or how he insisted I go through psychotherapy before even considering whether to commit. (I did and cried non-stop for $210 hours' worth). I am baffled as to why I even stuck it out a month, let alone thirty six.

We finally broke up a year after I moved to Cleveland when we had this discussion: Would you stay committed if I became a quadriplegic?

Yes, it was one of those ridiculously stupid conversations only people with too much time on their hands  have, but it fast turned into a heated one. I said that of course I'd stay married to him no matter what his condition. He said he would be within his ethical rights to leave me and I should understand. Had I been closer than the 400 miles that separated us, I would have gladly made him a quadriplegic to test his theory.

The next day, I called up and broke it off. It was hard to do. It was hard like giving up cigarettes is hard (six months since I last sneaked one, by the way.) You know they're killing you, but you're so addicted, envisioning a life without them seems impossible. A week later he called me up and proposed marriage.

I said, "Surely, you can't be serious."

And that was the end of three years of pain and self mortification, all of which taught me what NOT to look for in a man. When I met Charlie shortly thereafter he was everything the Secret Jerk was not. Plus, he had a job and knew how to hold a hammer. There were other BIG differences, too, but considering this is a family forum (as if!) better not to go into detail.

God, that felt good to write. Such a relief!

To ex boyfriends and Secret Jerks. May they give us a lifetime of inspiration!

Okay...now who's yours?

Sarah

Hooey Wooey
By Harley

Elaine’s Dead End Job series got me thinking this week about one of my past odd jobs: sign-painting.

Despite having no credentials, in my 2nd year of acting school I snagged two sign-painting gigs in New York, on my block (Second Avenue and 4th street). One was “Sabina’s Discount Dog & Cat Food Store” and the other was “Astrology/Card Readings.”

“Astrology/Card Readings” was my great opus, a large sandwich board featuring a neon rainbow on a black background. My roommate Mary Anne noticed that I was putting in endless hours on a $25 job, but being an Aquarian, Mary Anne understood that Art is its own reward. Plus, there was enough black enamel left over to paint the walls and ceiling of our bathroom.

Oh, I threw my heart into the pet food sign too, but I’ve always had a special affinity for peddlers of the paranormal, what my friend Tara calls hooey-wooey. This includes psychics, astrologers, numerologists, Tarot-ists, Rune-ists, I-Ching-ists, palm readers, clairvoyants, those gypsy-in-a-case gadgets at the state fair, channellers, hypnotherapists, rebirthers, past-life regressionists, and pyschometrists. I’ve never met a douser, but after last week’s blog, I want to go visit Sarah.

In my bachelorette days, I got hooey wooey readings as often as I got my legs waxed, usually accompanied by Tara, a Sagittarius, a genius for discovering the latest Psychic to the Stars.

I came by this naturally. My mother (Aries) read playing cards. Her mother (another Aquarian) read coffee grounds. I’ve tried to do this too, but in the end, most coffee ground blotches look like the Loch Ness monster. Anyhow, my mom took me to a reading with Grace, an astrologer, when I was fifteen, and from then until I got married (to another Aquarian) (at exactly 7:32 pm PST, 11/29/97, so that our marriage chart would be propitious) I was a Hooey Wooey junkie.

What’s odd is that I hardly recall a single prediction from all those readings, with one exception: The Psychometrist.

Psychometrists get their information from touching people’s stuff. This one, Martha of North Hollywood, picked up signals from watches. Martha fit the Hooey Wooey profile: seedy house, excessive makeup, unlikely hair color, packrat tendencies, a sofa that suggested mice nesting within, and a smoker’s cough.

“I see a man,” she said in a heavy Brooklyn accent, eyes closed, holding my Cartier watch up to her forehead. “He’s not here yet, but he’s coming. Here’s how you’re gonna know him. You’ll be driving in his car. You’ll smell something. Sniff! Sniff! You’re gonna say to him, ‘what’s that smell?’ and he’s gonna say, ‘Why, that’s my new car smell.’ And that’s how you’re gonna know it’s him. He’s the One.”

I nodded.

Some weeks later, I was on a date, in the passenger seat of some guy’s Jeep Cherokee, and I started sniffing. “Do I smell—new car smell?” I asked. “is this car new?”

“Yeah, I just got it,” he said. “Why?”

As it turns out, He was not The One. Okay, he was The One for about 5 months, after which we parted ways on very good terms, and I went on to marry a man who drove a car that hadn’t had That New Car Smell in about thirteen years. I also stopped seeing psychics.

But I realized something this week: in 2002, my husband got a new car. In 2007, so did I. My car, which is barely 6 months old, has a vague odor of bubblegum and spilled coffee. My husband’s car, more than 5 years old, has . . . that new car smell.

Coincidence?

[cue Twilight Zone music].

Happy Monday!
Harley (Aquarius with Pisces rising and a Capricorn moon)

Today’s Guest Blogger, Toni McGee Causey, is a talented author whose first book, Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day, just came out to stellar reviews. Bobbie Faye is one pissed-off Contraband Day’s Queen (a Louisiana festival—think Mardi Gras, but with pirates and more drinking) who has to outwit the police, organized crime, former boyfriends, and a hostage she never intended to take (but who turns out to be damn sexy!), in order to rescue her brother from kidnappers run amok in the Louisiana swamps. Check out the details at her site: http://www.tonimcgeecausey.com/books/

CRAZY RELATIVES

I met one of my newest relatives at a signing last week, a little cousin, Lizzie, and she was absolutely beautiful. As I admired her very cute curls and big dimples, my aunt explained that in another week, Lizzie was going to become her dad’s own… aunt. That’s right, she was going to be her dad’s daughter and his aunt. At the same time. (My first thought: only in the south.)

Lizzie is my aunt’s great-granddaughter. Because of a tiny little snafu where Lizzie’s mom went after the dad with a knife while he was holding their child, and after the police and a lot of other people were involved, the mom had decided to give up custody to the dad’s grandmother (my aunt)—but only if my aunt adopted the “mother’s half” of custody. The dad will still retain his half.

Are you confused yet?

Yeah, me, too. (I was trying to parse all of this while at a bookstore to do a signing. I’m not sure I spelled my own name correctly on any of the books after this revelation.) I’m pretty sure we have already managed to screw up Lizzie, and she’s not even two yet.

Then there’s my other aunt (on my mom’s side)(hi mom!) who is a chain-smoker, always has been, always will be. There’s just one little glitch: she’s on oxygen, 24/7 now for emphysema. She’s completely unconcerned that she’s lighting up mere inches away from pure oxygen and a tank with enough fuel to launch her to Mars. I’m thinking: leaks. With the way things are made these days, you can’t have too much confidence. There will be leaks, people. I’m expecting an explosion just outside of Baton Rouge any day now.

I can’t keep track of who is not speaking to whom for various family infractions, theft, cheating and general dysfunctional behavior, not to mention the various cousins who are in jail, just got out of jail, or ought to be sent to jail. And really, the seriously crazy don’t bother me so much, because you just know to stay clear when they’re up to their antics. It’s the ones with functional insanity, who appear normal on the outside, who have me a bit wary.

When I mentioned this recently to my friend, Pam, she reminded me of the story she refers to as six-eighty-five – or as I refer to it, the cheap bastards story. Her nephew, back from his tour of duty in the war, was getting married to his high-school sweetheart. Everyone who could, flew in. The travelers had to fly a couple of thousand miles and then drive five hours from the airport to get to this Very Tiny Town in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin.

When they all arrived, Pam called her brother to find out where the rehearsal dinner was. “You’re not invited,” he said. “You can sneak into it after dinner, if you want.”

“I’m forty-something,” she told him. “I don’t sneak. And I don’t think our mom, who can barely walk, with be big with the sneaking. Or our crippled aunt and uncle. Not a lot of sneaking with a walker. And the only thing to do in this town if we don’t go to the rehearsal dinner is to go bowling, and I’m pretty sure there’s not a lot of bowling with a walker, either.”

Then upon reflection, she realized, the rehearsal dinner may cost a lot per person and she offered to pay. After some very lengthy negotiations, he called back, triumphant. He’d successfully negotiated the five extra people coming to the rehearsal dinner.

“How much for us to come?” she asked.

“Six-eighty-five.”

Six-eighty-five, she thought. Holy crap, what were they doing? Renting the country club? Hiring strippers for the Pope? What?

“Wow,” she said. “But okay. I’ll write you a check for $685.00.”

“No,” he said. “It’s six dollars, eighty-five cents per person.”

For $6.85 they were going to exclude the grandmother of the groom. If I’d been Pam, I’d have explained that even if it was $685, it was a helluva lot cheaper than him planning his own funeral.

Crazy relatives.

Sometimes, they’ll drive you crazy, but most of the time, for us writers, they are a gift from heaven. When people ask me where my crazy, messed-up characters come from, I have to sort of bite my tongue, because what I want to tell them is, “Are you kidding? I go to family reunions with a notepad and a recorder.”

Please, for the love of God, tell me you have them… some… at least one… nutty relative, and what’s the craziest thing one of them did.

-- Toni McGee Causey

(The Tarts are tickled to welcome distinguished guest blogger Jay Heinrichs, author of  Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion. 

                                                   

Jay is an expert in the fine art of rhetoric, and he's here with some sure-fire tips for turning down the marital stress level.  You can catch up with Jay at his blog, http://www.figarospeech.com/ or on NPR where he is a commentator).

How (Not) To Argue With Your Spouse

by Jay Heinrichs

                                                          

Tip #1:  When you find yourself in an argument, shift to the future tense.

Watch a couple in their living room, reading and listening to music (this is alarmingly close to autobiography):

• SHE: Can you turn that down a little?
• HE: You're the one who set the volume.
• SHE: Oh, really?  Who was blasting "Free Bird" all over the place this afternoon?
• HE: So that's what this is about.  You hate my music.

It's hard to make a positive choice about the volume knob once you start arguing about a past noise violation and the existential qualities of "Free Bird."  Look at the tenses the couple was using.  Each tense tends to correspond to a particular issue: blame, values or choice.  The past tense equals blame.  "You're the one who . . . ."  The present tense equals values.  "You hate my music."  Arguments in the present tense usually make people really mad.  The future tense equals choice.  It's the best tense for a marriage (or a nation!) but the couple fails to use it.

Let's rewind the dialogue and make the couple speak in the future tense. 

• SHE: Can you turn that down a little?
• HE: Sure, I'd be happy to.  But is the music too loud, or do you want me to play something else?
• SHE: Well, now that you mention it, I'd prefer something a little less Spinal Tappish.

Ouch!  He plays nice, and she insults the entire classic rock genre.  That makes him feel justified to retaliate, but he does it moderately.

• HE: Something more elevatorish, you mean?  That doesn't really turn me on.  Want to watch a movie instead?

By turning the argument back to choices, the man keeps from getting too personal, and possibly keeps her off balance, making her more open to persuasion. 

• SHE:  What movie did you have in mind?
• HE:  We haven't seen Terminator 2 in ages.
• SHE:  Terminator 2?  I hate that movie.

You just witnessed another rhetorical trick.

Tip #2: Propose an extreme choice first.

When you propose an extreme choice first, it will make the one you want sound more reasonable.  I used this technique myself in getting my wife to agree to name our son after my uncle George.  I proposed lots of alternatives -- my personal favorite was Herman Melville Heinrichs -- until she finally said, "You know, 'George' doesn't really sound that bad."  I kissed her and told her how much I loved her, and notched another argument on my belt.

Now back to our couple.

• HE:  Well, then, how about Lawrence of Arabia?
• SHE: Okay.

He knows she would prefer a different movie -- the desert just isn't her thing -- but it doesn't sound bad compared to the first choice.  Lawrence it is.  Which happens to be the movie he wanted in the first place. 

The distinction between the three tenses can determine the fate of a family, a business or a democracy.  The biggest comment I get about my book is that switching tenses really works.  Try it on your next victim.  My wife, Dorothy, has gotten so good at techniques like this that she now wins most arguments with me.  But she lets me pick the movies.

Let's Play Bond

By Me, Margie, who knows and loves them

Let's just get right to it, shall we?  It's no secret that the members of the virtual cocktail party that is this blog have a thing for hearthrobs.  Men and women both. 

In fact, left to their own devices, the men of this blog could spend hours just extolling the virtues of that siren who does the commercials for The Big O.  Good lord, even mention Emma Peel up in this place and you could start a damn riot.

And the women of the blog?  It's all Bond all the time.  Acceptance is the first step, girlz, so let's just not argue about this one, okay?

I'm not taking a formal position on the existing Bonds.  It's like chocolate and vanilla.  Um, no it's really not, and I think some of you know what I mean there.  There is nothing 'nilla about any of the Bonds.  Except for maybe Dalton.  Oops.  Said I wasn't going to do that.  Oh well - too late now. Moving on. 

Not because I want to, but because I'm going for a record five days in a row with no notes in my personnel file.  It's like those safety counts they do at the power plant. *32* Days Without a Dismemberment!

Here is my choice for the next Bond.  Oh yeah.  Guess where this photo came from?  It was from his meetings with the BOND people.  That's right.  So don't call me crazy.  It.  Could.  Happen.

I've heard people suggest Clooney or Clive.  Good choices.  But can we do better?

So instead of making this one of those "Ten Hottest Hotties" surveys, which is just too ordinary for me, Margie, we are going to play Casting Couch (who doesn't love that game?) and make suggestions for the next Bond and Ms. Bond. 

No objectification of the women either.  This Ms. Bond is an equal, not one of his cufflinks.  Get me?  If any of you boneheads even think of giving me a Jessica Simpson, you are going to get it, right upside your peabrain skull. 

Here's my pick.  Recognize this Doll?  It's Nicole.  I'll bet she's already killed men.  No malice aforethought or anything, but hey, shit happens.  Hell, if I were her, I'd make the Nitro Patch the second mandatory item. Okay, third.  Blood test results, don't forget.

Suspend time if you want - you can have the younger version of an actor, but he or she has to be alive. 

And just to make it really interesting (sorry, Harley and Ramona) we are going to assume any and all past and present Bonds are out of the running.  Yes, yes, it's cruel and unfair.  So is life.  Cowgirl up and give me someone else.  It'll be good for you. 

Michele's Choice -- Clive, of course!

   

Sir Guy, aka Richard Armitage

The Mental Orgasm

by Nancy                 

Finishing a book is a bit of a mental orgasm.  If you're a writer you know what I mean. I'm writing this blog late at night, after typing "the end" on my manuscript. My husband went to bed long ago, and I see Letterman even signed off. (There's no sound on the TV, but having it on while I work is sometimes a much-appreciated link to reality, if that makes any sense.)  But I think I just had one.  Euphoric release. So forgive me if this is dis-jointed. 

Writing a book starts with a fantasy.  And ends with one, too, only different.

Years ago, while spending a rainy holiday weekend with my extended family, we played the Who Do You Think is Sexy game in which participants ask each other to name the stuff of their sexual fantasies. My sister nominated Ralph Fiennes.  (Having just seen his Hamlet on Broadway.) My mother blushed and mentioned Jeremy Irons. 

In the spirit of the game, I felt emboldened to bring up Harrison Ford.  Who, shortly thereafter, got himself an earring and made me a laughingstock. Then he hooked up with the skinny dumb girl--surely a precursor to Paris Hilton--and I washed my hands of him forever. Harrison, you are dead to me. And while we're at it, what grown-up calls himself Harrison?  What?  You didn't have what it would take to make Harry work for you?

Other nominees that rainy weekend: Denzel.  Daniel Day Lewis.  (Think Mohicans.)

For my husband?  Catherine Zeta Jones.

My father held back in the game until we goaded him into revealing who, among all women aside from my mother, he found attractive. Mind you, my father was a dignified man.  Once the commanding officer of an Air Force base, he was also an engineer and became a lawyer as well as a Fortune 500 executive. He was a cultured, intelligent gentleman who raised fine cattle and enjoyed tinkering with high performance cars.  We assumed his taste in women would be no less impeccable.

He picked Loni Anderson.

Moral of that story:  There are some questions you probably shouldn't ask your father.

                    

(I was nearly forty years old when I had an equally appalling flashback to my childhood.  I remembered playing with my Barbie in my parents' bedroom---it was cool there in summer---and I found some doohickies in the bedside drawer. Little round plasticky disks that if you poked a hole in the middle, they made great rings or Barbie belts, little hula hoops--whatever. I didn't make the condom connection for thirty years.  Even now, I don't. want. to. think. about. it. Would you?)

I've been thinking lately about crushes, though. Not the kind you have in seventh grade, but the totally pain-free imaginary kind. Like the kind that can kickstart a book. Like I had on Harrison Ford. Like the one a readers recently wrote to tell me she has about a character in my books. It's gratifying to hear that my own fantasy man has turned on a lot of women, by the way. (Just remember, he was mine first, Kathy.)  The fantasy crush.

Everybody's allowed to have a fantasy life. (Some if us seem to exist primarily in Fantasy Land.--That's why we're writers!) We can all dream, right?

Around here, now and then you hear me mention the manly qualities of Anthony Bourdain.  (Yes, he's an acquired taste, and some of you may be put off by the heroin and the other women, but it's my fantasy, so lay off.) If pressed, I might also own up to having an appreciation of Andy Garcia. (Okay, imagine riding alongside him in a 1966 Mercury convertible across a vast desert, and nevermind that I---er, I mean you sunburn, just trust me when I say bare skin is part of the picture and it's definitely hot, but not burned.)

And what woman alive doesn't find George Clooney's self-deprecating drop deadness adorable? (I challenge any female to watch Out of Sight without salivating, and I don't mean for the popcorn.) I always felt Brad Pitt a little too California surfer dude to be appealing, but lately, those pix of him holding the hands of little kids and going gray at the temples? And if he can hold that tigress by the tail---Yeeoow, he must be a real man after all, right?

Around TLC this year, we've had a howling chorus of women calling for the hot bod of Blond Bond.  I can understand that crush, too. (Best movie review of the year?  Go here.)

A secret crush means you're not going to act on it, just enjoy.  You can safely imagine George or Brad snuggling up at the end of the day to listen intently to your litany of woes--your trip to the grocery story, the exasperating moment when the dry cleaner lost your gold blouse, the problem with the washing machine. He's not going to moan about his own lousy day at the office or make that face when you announce what's for dinner. Or find ways to weasel out of the household chores you saved for him to do. And he might actually see the dust on the furniture for himself and do something about it!  Or maybe he'll just sweep you off to Vegas and plunge you into that marble bathtub with champagne and a lot of stamina and pent-up sexual energy.

Perhaps I bring up the subject of secret crushes because now that I have finished this book, I plan to celebrate by going to see Oceans Whatever. I don't care what number it is, and frankly, if the theater accidentally shows the wrong Ocean movie or the sound system doesn't function, I will be fine.  I just want to look, and I plan to make up what those men have to say anyway. The experience might be better that way. I want to sit in the cool darkness and let my fantasies unfold.

Yes, finishing a book is an ordeal, but also a mental orgasm. A burst of joy and triumph and relief. I've been fighting with these characters for a year now, letting my fantasies guide the actions but allowing them to think for themselves, too--all in the service of satisfying a reader. But now it's time to satisfy myself.  Oceans it is.

Then it's time to warm up another fantasy, because I must soon write another book.

Whatever your fantasy is, I want to hear it.  Who's the person in your dreams nowadays?  And if you say Harrison Ford, you're going to have to 'splain yourself.

Me, I think I may go wake up my husband. I can do a Zeta Jones accent in the dark. 

G'night.

A Close Shave

By Elaine Viets

In April, I woke up out of a coma and didn’t recognize myself. About a third of my hair had been shaved off for brain surgery. I had an ugly gray-white bald patch, like a soapy Brillo pad, over my right ear, and long hair everywhere else. It was a hairstyle from Dr. Seuss.

I’d catch glimpses of myself in the hospital mirror and wonder who the weird chick with the bad hair was. I looked like I sang backup for the Eurythmics.

Mario Ortega, my hair stylist, called several times to see how I was. He also gave Don a warning: "Don’t let her shave her head. The hospital tries to talk people into doing that."

Sure enough, a physical therapist was in my room asking, "Are you going to shave the rest?"

"No," I said.

"It will look nice and even."

"Mario can fix it."

"How?"

"Wigs, extensions, a different cut. Mario’s a genius."

"Hmph," she said. "He better be."

Another hospital worker advised: "Better shave it. That’s what everyone does. You can wear nice scarves until it grows out."

I’d worn nice scarves to church when I was a kid. They slid off my head. Unless I was putting thumbtacks in my scalp, I was facing a slippery growing-out time.

Besides, I didn’t know what was under the rest of my hair and was afraid to find out.

My father had curly blond hair, but one summer, he shaved his head. My mother cried. Back in those early postwar days, people of German descent were called blockheads, and not just because we were supposed to be stubborn. Dad had four corners on his skull, and ringworm scars.

What if I had my Dad’s square head?

But then I’d accidentally see the chick with the weird hair. Maybe I should just shave it all and forget it.

Keep in mind, I’m not talking about people facing chemo who shave their heads, or dye their hair pink. That can be a courageous way of taking control when life takes it away. I mean people who’ve been in accidents or had strokes, and wake up from surgery with partially shaved heads.

Mario was not only knew hair – he knew psychology. Some doctors say doing a Britney Spears on your head is a bad idea. "Everything in your life has changed suddenly," one said. "You had a stroke. You can’t work, you can’t drive, and then you shave your head and can’t recognize yourself. You get depressed."

I made it home from the hospital with my remaining hair – and started going bald. It was coming out in handfuls. The hair loss was probably caused by poison (Dilantin), surgery and stress.

I tried a Donald Trump comb over, but it was about as successful as his. I looked at my shiny bare scalp in the mirror and swore I would never, ever make fun of a comb over again. I’m sorry, gentlemen. I now feel your pain.

My husband Don loyally said the baldness wasn't noticeable, which is the same lie I would tell him.

I took to wearing a baseball cap to cover the Frankenstein scars and bare spots. I did not look like a cute Hollywood rehab princess. The cap seemed to lower my IQ ten points. Hm. Maybe I looked more like Paris than I thought. But I felt like a freak show. And when I took the cap off, people would wince.

"It doesn’t hurt much," I said.

"It hurts to look at it," a man told me.

Yeah, it did. I called Mario, the hair genius. His work is featured in the June Vogue. If anyone could fix my head, he could.

Anne and Kay, two friends, drove me to South Beach. Oribe, the salon where Mario works, is incredibly chic.

"Can we go in?" asked Anne. "We’re like, uh, overweight."

No super model turned them away at the door. Mario didn’t wince when I took off the baseball cap. He washed, combed and snapped in two extensions that matched my old hair perfectly. The scars were hidden. The freak show was over.

Anne and Kay gave me the ultimate compliment: "You look like yourself."

I feel like myself, almost.

By Elaine Viets

By Sarah

My mother in law, Rosemary, is a witch. No, really. Not a Wiccan or a practicing Pagan. Not a bitch, Barbara Bush. I said a witch.

She is a slim, lovely, magical Welsh woman with dried herbs hanging from her rafters, two different colored eyes (one blue gray, one green) and a way of mesmerizing dogs so that they will not set one paw over the kitchen threshold without her unspoken approval. Weird.

Also, she has unwittingly dried up my well twice. Kind of.

I was thinking of her the other day while writing my blog about Fred, my new Basset hound who just gets better and better every day. Long ago Rosemary raised a litter of Bassets and she assured me that, provided there's a crate, Bassets are no harder to housetrain than other dogs. I figured she probably dried up the Bassets the way she dried up my well and that's when I remembered her with the dowsing rods.

I never really understood dowsing until I moved to Vermont and found that a bunch of my neighbors used professional dowsers to locate their wells. Moreover, these dowsers were not what I expected. Someone who picked off a forking apple branch and used it to detect water would probably be someone who dressed in purple robes and strung lavender around her neck, or so I thought.

Instead, most of the dowsers I've met here are graying farmers with paunches. One dowser in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, (home to the American Society of Dowsers) showed me his calloused hands and explained that a downside of dowsing was that the pull from the earth could be so strong that the bark from the dowsing rod would rip right off the branch, taking a bit of his palms along the way. Dowsers are the least New Agey people I've met. They wear flannel and probably vote Republican.

I went through a dowsing phase after writing a story about an elderly woman who was convinced a cluster of stones in the very chic South Woodstock, Vermont, were actually ancient Native American  sites built to serve as mini Stonehenges. In other words, calendars and such. While pointing out how the sun would rise perfectly through a slit in the stones on the morning of the winter solstice, Betty walked back and forth with her dowsing rods that were flapping madly. It was something about energy lines underneath and then she placed one dowsing rod on top of a standing stone where it spun like a top.

I was hooked.

That night, I went home and ripped apart two coat hangers (easy dowsing rods for the beginner.) Walking back and forth across my property, I tried to envision them as extensions of my inner antennae. They were tuning into the Earth's energy, I told myself. Be one with the rods.

Yet, as hard as I tried to plug into my inner antennae, the least successful I was. Frustrated that I couldn't detect any underground water supplies, I simply walked the floor of my house hoping the rods would spring apart once I crossed the water line. Still, nothing.

And then, in walked Rosemary who had no idea where my water line was. I pushed her to try the rods. She didn't want to. But when she did, the effect was perfect. As soon as she stepped over our water line, the rods sprang apart. Frankly, it was creepy.

People dowse for all sorts of things. Pendulums over a pregnant woman's belly are supposed to swing one way or the other depending on whether the fetus is a boy or a girl. Map dowsing, though cool, I've never understood. How can you find someone or something by dangling a pendulum over a map? I mean, I maybe can buy the rods as extensions of our inner antennae tuning into water energy, but a map?

Last fall, when the well guys were digging a new well after the previous one collapsed, I asked them about dowsing. Did they think you could use dowsing to find the perfect site for a well?

The guy who dug our new well took off his cap and waved it in front of him. "Pretty much anywhere you dig in Vermont you're gonna hit water sooner or later," he said diplomatically.

I dunno. What do you think? Is dowsing chance....or a way to tune into unseen energy?

Sarah

PS - Just found out the digital camera was locked in my glove compartment. Here are my pictures of Fred!

Tony Soprano, R.I.P.

by Michele

                                                            

It's not like a t.v. show has never ended before.  It's just that I've never cared.

I'm not an anti-t.v. snob, not hardly.  I don't recall my parents ever limiting my t.v. time. I watched a huge amount growing up, I'd say maybe four or five hours a day.  The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Gilligan's Island, Laugh-In, Green Acres, Lost in Space, Land of the Giants.  I could go on and on.  I don't think it did me any harm.  Maybe it made me glib, or gave me a short attention span, but since everybody else was growing up the same way, those were good survival skills in my generation.  Kind of like my kids and gaming technology.  If you keep them away from the Nintendo, how will they bond with their peers?

Despite my t.v.-drenched youth, once I grew up and got a life, I watched very little.  School and work and romance and kids were too consuming.  By the same token, to this day I don't read as much as I should or see as many movies.  I don't have the time.  So I ended up missing out on a lot of the big t.v. shows of the past fifteen years.  Friends -- I've caught a few in syndication.   The West Wing -- I'm sure I would've loved it, but the effort of tracking it down on the dial was too much for me.  Lost, 24 -- never seen 'em, don't miss 'em.  These days my t.v. viewing, to the extent it exists, consists of odd shows at off hours, shows on HGTV or Comedy Central that don't require the effort of following a plot arc over a period of years. (Except for The Office, which sort of doesn't require that either.)

But The Sopranos was different.  I read the big review that the Times did at the start of the second season and went whoa, I've got to see this.  We bought the first season on DVD and watched all the episodes obsessively in the space of a few weeks.  It would be midnight and I'd have to get up for court the next morning, but I'd be like, "one more? Please?" Once I was hooked, I never missed an episode. 

Why? 

Admittedly, at the time I discovered the show, I was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, the district where all the mob prosecutions on the Sopranos originate, and so the inside baseball stuff hit home with me.  My office was constantly referred to on the show, in passing, but I couldn't miss it, especially since my three best friends were all organized crime prosecutors.  But the realism didn't end there.  The show got all the legal stuff right, and more importantly it got the crime stuff right.  The bad guys -- who were actually the good guys -- were credibly craven and evil.  They killed without mercy, for money, for ego.  Women were disrespected and brutalized and beaten to death.  Cooperating witnesses were eliminated with no mind paid to the fact that they'd been your best friend your whole life.  It was like what I saw in my job every day, the ugliness confronted straight on, no gloss, no punches pulled.  It was a relief to see something that accurate on the screen. 

But that's not it, or at least that's not all.  Every little scene was filled with resonance and nuance.  The show made me think about marriage and infidelity and friendship and betrayal.  It made me think about money and education and social class.  It made me think about race and ethnicity and racism.  And it accomplished this without preaching, through the use of compelling characters and gripping plots.  A lot of the entertainment I consume is just a way to relax.  I enjoy it, but it doesn't change me, and I don't expect it to last.  Honestly, while I think my own books are great reads and highly entertaining, I'd be shocked if they were in print fifty years from now.  But The Sopranos, justly, will survive.  I completely believe these episodes will be watched by future generations.

As I write this, the finale hasn't yet aired, and I don't know the ending.  My prediction and my hope is that Tony will end up in a body bag where he belongs.  As much as I love the character, that's the only resolution that would sing for me.  Am I sad that it's ending?  Not really, because great art needs to end, and it needs to know when to end.  As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that matters is that the ending be true to the essence of the thing itself.  Which is why I'm hoping that Tony dies, and I'm hoping that Harry lives. 

                                                          

Epilogue

He's dead.  You don't believe me?  Think back to the penultimate episode, when Tony's lying in Junior's bed with the gun across his chest, thinking of the day on the lake with Bobby Baccalieri.  Bobby tells Tony, "They say when it happens, you don't even hear it coming."  You thought that was about Bobby's death?  So did I, but apparently not.

 

Come on Down!

By Rebecca the Bookseller

This month marks the end of an era. Bob Barker is retiring from The Price Is Right. He's 83 years old, and had a 50-year career in television, including 35 as the only host of TPIR.

They say the show will be back, with another host, but it won't be the same.

I'm not even a fan of game shows (ok, except the old Match Game, and that was really just to see who was loaded, and how far out Charles Nelson Reilly was going to fly) but I've seen The Price is Right.

In fact, if anyone reading this blog has NEVER seen it - not even one show - tell us. I'll bet you are few and far between.

The show was, like most game shows, pretty goofy. People running down the aisles:

"Busty McRedneck, C'mon Down!"

"PFC Billy Fresh Face, C'mon Down!"

"Clueless Joe, C'mon Down!"

Members of the military came in uniform. Big groups came in matching T-shirts. People screamed and jumped up and down and generally went nutzo.

And all the girls kissed Bob on the cheek. A nice polite kiss - not like some of those moves Richard Dawson pulled on Family Fued, y'know?

Bob was sued a coupla three times for sexual harassment by the 'Barker Beauties' - those long-legged evening gown clad manequin types who gestured towards the valuable prizes. They all settled out of court.

Other than that, Bob Barker seemed like a good guy. And he was socially responsible. Because he is a vegetarian, the show respected his wishes and did not advertise meat products.

And because he is an animal rights activist, the show honored his request to discontinue giving fur coats as prizes. He ended each show with a reminder to get your pet neutered.

It's been years since I've seen so much as a glimpse of the show, and Bob will undoubtedly live on in syndication forever. So for me, it's an interesting note in television history.

But for some people, the afternoons will never be the same. Which is very sad, in some ways, and very sweet in some ways. I mean, with all the terrible crap going on all around us, it's kind of good to know that people will miss something just because it was nice.