On Christmas Eve, the Estate provided the venue for the Matzo Ball, the annual overnight-camp social-style dance for young single Jews wanting to get shitfaced and laid in Boston. Perhaps I had too many bloody marys at home with Jen before venturing out, but by the time my father dropped us off at the club (couldn't have felt more like a bat-mitzvah--except for the drunk part) all I wanted to do was dance. And it's not just that urge to dance that I always feel when the songs that were popular during my overnight-camp (Pembroke) social days come on, like "Boom Boom Boom" which they did play off of Jock Jams Vol. 2; it's that desire to do nothing but dance, to move, to focus on the physical when the music's loud and any attempt at conversation extends no further than an embarrassing repetition of "what" after the incessant and unnecessary demand,"Hey, what's your name?"
I feel like an idiot saying, "what." I feel like an idiot dancing in a club, but I'd rather be the silent idiot than the one screaming into a stranger's ear that I just love this song and I just love dancing. Perhaps if I had wanted to have sex with a nice Jewish boy stranger, than I would have made the verbal effort or at least danced closer, slower, deeper, whatever, but you can only make the dance-walk away move or disappear to the bathroom so many times at an event designed to get Jews to procreate and make more Jews before you run out of energy and have to let Mr. Future Business-Exec buy you a drink just to show him what an asshole you really are.
I didn't want to get laid. Once I walked into the club, I really wasn't in the mood. And it's not just the emotion-less environment of an atmosphere where there's so much noise, you can't listen to anything, but, this perhaps irrational fear that I'm merely pushed into a too-familiar gene-pool festering with Tay-Sachs. I would never not date someone simply because of the fear that our great-grandfathers studied Talmud together and married their children off to keep business in the family, but ever since I was a six year-old in Hebrew School, various Jewish authorities in my life have repeated over and over that I HAVE to marry a Jew simply because I am a Jew. My parents, on the other hand, could care less whom I fall in love with (within upper-middle class liberal Northeast reasoning, let's be honest) and have never forbade me from following my heart.
My heart, more often than not in my middle- and high-school days, led me to goyim. (I love light eyes and have a weakness for blond hair, as well as WASP mothers that can teach me how to bake things other than kugel.) And after endless Holocaust education (and a lesser amount of pre-WWII antisemitism education), I understood--by middle school--the historical, cultural, and religious reasonings for marrying a Jew, but that illogical rationale of Jew over Love instilled in me by those authorities has now manifested itself in a feeling of boredom and an almost complete lack of desire when placed in Jewish mating environments, like the Matzo Ball.
I know that I will probably have nice Jewish babies with a nice Jewish boy because of a common social understanding and shared experiences whether or not we marry or divorce, thereby making every rabbi and Hebrew school director I have ever known very happy, not to mention my grandparents who just love when my brother brings home shiksha girlfriends; but knowing that, and knowing that I don't want to make small talk and don't want to just get laid and don't want to make Jew babies just yet, I see no harm in just dancing. And in the immortal words of Jennifer Lynn Reiss: "The world just needs more dance!"
Friday, December 26, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Eww, econ
“[A]nyone who says we’re in a recession, or heading into one—especially the worst one since the Great Depression—is making up his own private definition of ‘recession.’” —Donald Luskin, The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008
A day later, Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy. Stop hating on Paul Krugman.
Thank you Washington Post.
It's All In The Family
My father, seated on the couch next to me, is now creating his own blog--granted he has copied and pasted his pending book for consumption. This shit really does grow exponentially. Enjoy the rape scenes.
Look at that face!
Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in.
“How,” he wondered aloud, “did we get here?”Thank you New York Times
Sunday, December 21, 2008
A Family Poem For the Holidays
A Real Wyner
Until recently, I used to wish
my mother had not changed her name back
from Lockwood to Lachowitz,
had not decided the shtetl-past
found in three syllables was worth
the linguistic hideousness.
I could have been truly Anglicized,
Lauren Lockwood—a Hollywood star,
even though it sounds more like a porn
star. I wished, growing up, her name-
change had remained, spread, renamed
all the Lachowitzs of the world
Lockwood for good like my well-off
Westchester cousins passing for WASPs.
Holly Ilene Lachowitz, my mother,
fresh out of college, alone in midtown
Manhattan—aside from a crazy
roommate scavenged from the yellow pages
who one time spotted my mother naked
on her way to the bathroom
and remarked on her likeness
to vanilla ice cream, I want to lick
you, she said. After that, Holly
really was alone—a poor accountant,
a woman in a man’s world, a Jew too.
She was afraid she would not get hired
with the name Lachowitz in bold
on her resume. So she became
Holly Lockwood, a perfect match
for her blond hair, green eyes, lucky
remnants of Polish and Austrian
ancestry. But that nose, that hooked nose,
almost looks likes a penis if you stare
down at it from the front, there’s this ridge,
this mushroom bulge at the tip. Lachowitz
would have made it grow like Pinocchio,
though Lockwood was the lie, and with a job
it seemed to shrink, to pale in importance
compared to her ability to fill
out timetables as well as her blouse.
Nowadays, a Jew doesn’t have to think
twice about landing a downtown job,
doesn’t have to feign WASP connections—
Yankee swaps at Christmas time, glossary
of yacht club members, their mothers, their boats
named after those mothers, preceding
diminutive mandatory—or turn
all attention to that long, blond hair.
Nowadays a Jew can afford
to return to Lachowitz from Lockwood,
can eat latkes for Hanukkah
in the office and take time off
for the High Holidays, can stop lying
about the Lockwood family ancestry,
blaming the nose, if asked, on some German
who penetrated the family gene pool
hundreds of years ago, Dem Deutschen Volk.
Thank god I’m not Lauren Lachowitz,
though my father’s Wyner has given me
my fair share of bad jokes and rude remarks
and almost legal recourse to whine
about it. Vilna to Viner to Wyner,
Afrikaans for wine-r, from Russian
Lithuania to South Africa,
a map of the Jewish Diaspora,
assimilation in the consonants.
We made it up, like the Lockwood, but less-
overtly Anglicized, over-
compensation for a lack
of Mayflower money. But thank god
I’m no Lachowitz. I still find the tone
hideous, and with my minor lisp,
I can barely get that “z” out without
incident. My mother feels the same way.
Why else would she have condensed nine letters
to one, an initial, a single “L,”
period, in between her first
and acquired last name. Holly L.
Wyner. I bet she couldn’t wait to change
her name again, for a single man, not
fifty in an office who all turned
at exactly the same moment
to look at her rolling buttocks
as she shook out her hair and walked on by.
How disappointed she must have been
to marry my father and realize
the hoped-for change would be a setback,
possibly, to some points of view—not mine—
Lachowitz to Wyner, obnoxious,
her Queens accent, he with his Boston tone.
Me with a medley of the two,
especially when I’m drunk and that lisp
can’t be kept a secret under my tongue.
Why couldn’t his Sephardic side have stayed
in Spain, remained Abravanel,
so exotic, so sexy, Sephardim
compared to shtetl-Ashkenazis
with their lisp-unfriendly last names. Damn you
Isabella. Lauren Abravanel.
It doesn’t really go. I’d need a new
first name, but in the tradition
of assimilation, I was named
after a movie star, Bacall,
my mother after the film industry
itself, her sister, Marilyn,
after its most tragic bombshell.
I wonder if my grandparents knew
Miss Monroe was born Norma Jean Baker
or if they cared at all when they filled out
their daughters’ birth certificates,
unable to predict how many times,
Holly would change her last name
for the men around her, if they cared,
if one even discussed such things at all,
if they felt nervous bringing two Jewish
girls into the world, a man’s world,
a WASP’s world where Holly would have to be
blond and silent, or that loudmouth Jew,
but never the two in the same office.
I doubt it crossed their minds, as my grandpa
sold those Wall Street stockmen their watches,
worked as a jeweler, mastered the stock
market through small talk. I doubt it,
as his wife used her master’s degree
to stay at home, raise kids, play house.
But now, after assimilation
and ensuing years of atheism,
thank the god I don’t believe in
I’m not Lauren Lockwood,
a name for the American dream,
but a real Wyner, a real Jew, Amer-
i can, two thousand years of scattered-ness,
assimilation in the consonants.
Until recently, I used to wish
my mother had not changed her name back
from Lockwood to Lachowitz,
had not decided the shtetl-past
found in three syllables was worth
the linguistic hideousness.
I could have been truly Anglicized,
Lauren Lockwood—a Hollywood star,
even though it sounds more like a porn
star. I wished, growing up, her name-
change had remained, spread, renamed
all the Lachowitzs of the world
Lockwood for good like my well-off
Westchester cousins passing for WASPs.
Holly Ilene Lachowitz, my mother,
fresh out of college, alone in midtown
Manhattan—aside from a crazy
roommate scavenged from the yellow pages
who one time spotted my mother naked
on her way to the bathroom
and remarked on her likeness
to vanilla ice cream, I want to lick
you, she said. After that, Holly
really was alone—a poor accountant,
a woman in a man’s world, a Jew too.
She was afraid she would not get hired
with the name Lachowitz in bold
on her resume. So she became
Holly Lockwood, a perfect match
for her blond hair, green eyes, lucky
remnants of Polish and Austrian
ancestry. But that nose, that hooked nose,
almost looks likes a penis if you stare
down at it from the front, there’s this ridge,
this mushroom bulge at the tip. Lachowitz
would have made it grow like Pinocchio,
though Lockwood was the lie, and with a job
it seemed to shrink, to pale in importance
compared to her ability to fill
out timetables as well as her blouse.
Nowadays, a Jew doesn’t have to think
twice about landing a downtown job,
doesn’t have to feign WASP connections—
Yankee swaps at Christmas time, glossary
of yacht club members, their mothers, their boats
named after those mothers, preceding
diminutive mandatory—or turn
all attention to that long, blond hair.
Nowadays a Jew can afford
to return to Lachowitz from Lockwood,
can eat latkes for Hanukkah
in the office and take time off
for the High Holidays, can stop lying
about the Lockwood family ancestry,
blaming the nose, if asked, on some German
who penetrated the family gene pool
hundreds of years ago, Dem Deutschen Volk.
Thank god I’m not Lauren Lachowitz,
though my father’s Wyner has given me
my fair share of bad jokes and rude remarks
and almost legal recourse to whine
about it. Vilna to Viner to Wyner,
Afrikaans for wine-r, from Russian
Lithuania to South Africa,
a map of the Jewish Diaspora,
assimilation in the consonants.
We made it up, like the Lockwood, but less-
overtly Anglicized, over-
compensation for a lack
of Mayflower money. But thank god
I’m no Lachowitz. I still find the tone
hideous, and with my minor lisp,
I can barely get that “z” out without
incident. My mother feels the same way.
Why else would she have condensed nine letters
to one, an initial, a single “L,”
period, in between her first
and acquired last name. Holly L.
Wyner. I bet she couldn’t wait to change
her name again, for a single man, not
fifty in an office who all turned
at exactly the same moment
to look at her rolling buttocks
as she shook out her hair and walked on by.
How disappointed she must have been
to marry my father and realize
the hoped-for change would be a setback,
possibly, to some points of view—not mine—
Lachowitz to Wyner, obnoxious,
her Queens accent, he with his Boston tone.
Me with a medley of the two,
especially when I’m drunk and that lisp
can’t be kept a secret under my tongue.
Why couldn’t his Sephardic side have stayed
in Spain, remained Abravanel,
so exotic, so sexy, Sephardim
compared to shtetl-Ashkenazis
with their lisp-unfriendly last names. Damn you
Isabella. Lauren Abravanel.
It doesn’t really go. I’d need a new
first name, but in the tradition
of assimilation, I was named
after a movie star, Bacall,
my mother after the film industry
itself, her sister, Marilyn,
after its most tragic bombshell.
I wonder if my grandparents knew
Miss Monroe was born Norma Jean Baker
or if they cared at all when they filled out
their daughters’ birth certificates,
unable to predict how many times,
Holly would change her last name
for the men around her, if they cared,
if one even discussed such things at all,
if they felt nervous bringing two Jewish
girls into the world, a man’s world,
a WASP’s world where Holly would have to be
blond and silent, or that loudmouth Jew,
but never the two in the same office.
I doubt it crossed their minds, as my grandpa
sold those Wall Street stockmen their watches,
worked as a jeweler, mastered the stock
market through small talk. I doubt it,
as his wife used her master’s degree
to stay at home, raise kids, play house.
But now, after assimilation
and ensuing years of atheism,
thank the god I don’t believe in
I’m not Lauren Lockwood,
a name for the American dream,
but a real Wyner, a real Jew, Amer-
i can, two thousand years of scattered-ness,
assimilation in the consonants.
Nike vs. Obama and Phelps
There is, for me, a peculiar shame in TV-induced tears. I don’t know why, but I find crying in front of a television to be particularly ridiculous, especially if it’s a typical twenty-one minute-ish episode and not a solid hour of It’s Not TV It’s HBO. It may be the empty sense of abandon I experience after a good cry that cable television can only exacerbate by cutting to commercial, or that feeling that perhaps I’m an android, in which case, tears are going to seriously screw up my motherboard. So this Olympics summer, when I found myself brought to tears by Nike’s “Courage” commercial that featured clips of everyone and everything from Cristiano Renaldo (determined to win) to antelopes to astronauts to an unborn fetus (determined to be born), set to The Killers’ “All These Things That I Have Done,” I thought I might have been reborn out of the gaping vagina that is Nike enterprises. Swoosh indeed.
I wondered why the rest of the Olympics didn’t make me cry, why the sight of Momma Phelps losing her cool in the bleachers as her son defied physics, as well as Mark Spitz, didn’t elicit as real an emotion as the one manufactured at Nike headquarters. I know they have some damn good advertisers, more successful than any Phelps-approved product--they have to with all those human rights violations--but it all came down to length. Brevity is key. At one full minute, Nike hit their target. They pumped the emotions at a frenzied pace so that the tears exploded out of my eyes before I could fully realize what had happened. The Olympics, on the other hand, were long, drawn out, and after Phelps won, I really didn’t give a shit. I had to wait to get some emotion, and when the moment finally came, Deborah Phelps—like her son—did a better job than any of us on this side of the TV—as well as the chromosome connection—could ever have.
Despite my reluctance to cry in front of a TV screen, the big screen has, on occasion, made me weep. I cried at “Mighty Joe Young.” Also at, “Apollo 13.” Or every time Forrest talks to Jenny’s grave and talks about how much he misses her or Raymond Babbit repeats the "Who's on First?" sketch. But these are easy. I have an unwavering fondness and sympathy for gorillas (the bigger the better), Tom Hanks, and the mentally handicapped--especially Tom Hanks as someone who is mentally handicapped. Which is why, sitting in my living room, sobbing and staring at a flash of the Nike logo on TV, I thought, 'what perfect timing,' now I'm ready for Obama.
Hardly more than ten days after Phelps bobbed his goggled head up from under the pool of millions of dollars of endoresement deals, Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Denver to accept his party’s bid to become the 44th president. I wanted to cry—it seemed an appropriate and well-orchestrated time, everyone was doing it—but Katie Couric had already ruined that for me by smiling, not blinking, and reciting over and over how Obama would be the first African-American president if he won. Thank you. I had not realized that. I don’t know if I was more pissed that Obama as an individual was constantly reduced to his African-American-ness as polite talk for epidermal speak, or that Couric seemed smug that she had moved us Americans at home to tears by relying on that one glaringly obvious fact. I should be fair—I’ve never liked Katie Couric, and mostly for reasons found above her neck that produce an aura of perkiness I find more suitable in a Chihuahua, that and she has no lips. But something about being milked for tears by a woman I ultimately find boring as some mediocre orchestra crescendos into Obama orgasm oblivion just didn't do it for me the way Nike did--it's all about the arch support.
I wondered why the rest of the Olympics didn’t make me cry, why the sight of Momma Phelps losing her cool in the bleachers as her son defied physics, as well as Mark Spitz, didn’t elicit as real an emotion as the one manufactured at Nike headquarters. I know they have some damn good advertisers, more successful than any Phelps-approved product--they have to with all those human rights violations--but it all came down to length. Brevity is key. At one full minute, Nike hit their target. They pumped the emotions at a frenzied pace so that the tears exploded out of my eyes before I could fully realize what had happened. The Olympics, on the other hand, were long, drawn out, and after Phelps won, I really didn’t give a shit. I had to wait to get some emotion, and when the moment finally came, Deborah Phelps—like her son—did a better job than any of us on this side of the TV—as well as the chromosome connection—could ever have.
Despite my reluctance to cry in front of a TV screen, the big screen has, on occasion, made me weep. I cried at “Mighty Joe Young.” Also at, “Apollo 13.” Or every time Forrest talks to Jenny’s grave and talks about how much he misses her or Raymond Babbit repeats the "Who's on First?" sketch. But these are easy. I have an unwavering fondness and sympathy for gorillas (the bigger the better), Tom Hanks, and the mentally handicapped--especially Tom Hanks as someone who is mentally handicapped. Which is why, sitting in my living room, sobbing and staring at a flash of the Nike logo on TV, I thought, 'what perfect timing,' now I'm ready for Obama.
Hardly more than ten days after Phelps bobbed his goggled head up from under the pool of millions of dollars of endoresement deals, Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Denver to accept his party’s bid to become the 44th president. I wanted to cry—it seemed an appropriate and well-orchestrated time, everyone was doing it—but Katie Couric had already ruined that for me by smiling, not blinking, and reciting over and over how Obama would be the first African-American president if he won. Thank you. I had not realized that. I don’t know if I was more pissed that Obama as an individual was constantly reduced to his African-American-ness as polite talk for epidermal speak, or that Couric seemed smug that she had moved us Americans at home to tears by relying on that one glaringly obvious fact. I should be fair—I’ve never liked Katie Couric, and mostly for reasons found above her neck that produce an aura of perkiness I find more suitable in a Chihuahua, that and she has no lips. But something about being milked for tears by a woman I ultimately find boring as some mediocre orchestra crescendos into Obama orgasm oblivion just didn't do it for me the way Nike did--it's all about the arch support.
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