The pi part: Today is March 14, the beginning of Daylight Savings Time. It’s also Pi Day, an international celebration of 3.14, the magical mystery number that allows us to calculate stuff like the area of a circle. Pi actually is a relationship rather than an amount. It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It has been calculated to more than a trillion digits past the decimal point. That’s something to gush about, it you’re a Pi geek. The official Pi Day web site calls it “transcendental.” But enough about pi.
The coffee part: I wouldn’t know a thing about Pi Day if I hadn’t seen it on Facebook this morning before the hot beverage kicked in. The important thing is that while I was trawling Facebook, I came across this video one of my friends had posted as a little morning pick-me-up. (You may have to sit through a short ad for “Capitalism: A Love Story,” but it’s worth it.)
Breaking news (or as they like to call it, “Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere”):
And that, folks, is how they do it.
There’s another one about the end of print journalism and the effect it will have on crazy old loons who hoard newspapers (not to mention kindergarten teachers who need it for paper mâché projects).
Happy Pi day, all you loons out there. May your days be long, at least for a while.
This week on “30 Rock,” Alec Baldwin‘s character saw his own death when a corporate deal he was against became unstoppable. Everywhere he turned, people who once clung to his every word were suddenly indifferent.
They’ve already started distancing themselves from me.
When the distancing starts, it’s only a matter of time before you come to work and see somebody else’s name on your office door.
In psychiatry, distancing is part of a mental disorder. In business and politics, it’s a perfectly acceptable survival ploy. Just this week, Cadillac was distancing itself from General Motors to avoid being tainted by the stigma of bankruptcy. Citigroup ceo Vikram Pandit was distancing himself from his company’s previous missteps. President Barack Obama was distancing himself from the Washington establishment to try to get support for his health care reform package.
People desperately want to get as far away as possible from other people’s mistakes, miscues and misfortunes. When Britney Spears’ bipolar episode culminated in shaving her head and a trip to the psych ward, for example, the media rebuked her as though she had committed a mass murder; when she gained a couple ounces of belly fat and stumbled through her moves on the MTV Video Music Awards, they wrote her off completely. It took a year — and a new record that topped the charts on the day it was released — for her to tentatively regain persona grata status with the media.
Distancing is part of our American psyche. To our grave discredit, we do it everyday. Ordinary people like you and me shun other people in our schools, at our workplaces, on our streets, and in our churches.
Four years ago, “Good Morning America” reported that an estimated 160,000 children miss school every day out of fear of attack or intimidation by other students. This includes lunchroom snubbing and vicious gossip. It hasn’t gotten any better since then. “Mean Girls” is alive and well in our schools.
Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Amish, Hindus, Bahá’í members, Scientologists and some evangelical Christians shun members who fail to meet their standards of faithfulness. The Amish call it Meidung, which means “avoidance” in German. Terms from other denominations include “disfellowshipping,” “marking,” and “disconnection.”
You don’t have to commit any sort of sin to be shunned in secular society. You just have to be something other people fear. Fat. Homeless. Old. Sick.
We seem to actually believe that if we distance ourselves from these people — physically, emotionally, or otherwise — we will not have to face their reality in our own lives. Some of us publicly claim we care about these people, but privately we do not want them to get near us. Some of us simply turn a blind eye. And some of us say and do hateful things to those fat, homeless, old and sick people — as if that actually separates “them” from “us.”
Take Howard Stern, for example. He bashed Oscar-nominated “Precious” star Gabourey Sidibe on his radio show this week, calling her “the most enormous, fat black chick” he’s ever seen and pronouncing her a one-shot wonder who will never be in another film. He’s wrong, of course. She already has completed another highly anticipated indie film and is starring alongside Laura Linney in Showtime’s new comedy series, “The C Word.”
But Sidibe’s career opportunities are beside the point. What matters is why Stern finds it necessary to so vehemently — and cruelly — distance himself from a woman whose size exceeds Hollywood beauty standards. After a major backlash over his remarks, Stern claimed he was just concerned for her health. He compared her to his “Too Fat to Fish” sidekick, Artie Lange, who attempted suicide in January.
She is in a deep crisis and she needs help badly. That’s all. It’s all very sad.
He may be right. Or he may not. But the fact is, he has appearance issues of his own. He has gone to great lengths and has taken medical risks to avoid being seen as unattractive. He had plastic surgery on his face, including a nose job, and liposuction to remove his double-chin. He dyes his hair to cover the gray. It doesn’t take a genius to see how desperately Howard Stern wants to distance himself from Gabourey Sidibe.
Let me be clear about something. I am 60 years old and I could stand to lose a few pounds. I color my hair. If face lifts were free and carried no risks, I would get one today. I love it when people tell me I don’t look my age. But deep inside I know the truth: Not looking old doesn’t mean I am not getting old. Every time I have to enter my birthdate on a social networking site, I pray that the year won’t show. And even though I am single, I won’t try online dating anymore because I know my age will automatically exclude me from consideration by men I might actually find attractive and interesting. I don’t avoid people who are my age and look it, but I still look in the mirror when I get home to make sure I don’t yet look as old as they do.
It makes me cringe to write these words. But it is the truth. And every time I confess something like that, I immediately begin to see the bigger picture. I don’t want to avoid getting old; I just want to do it with some sort of grace. I don’t want to avoid men my age; I just want to meet an unattached heterosexual one who still looks hot to me. And I don’t want to be skinny (at my age you have to choose between ass fat and facial wrinkles); I just want to feel good in and out of my clothes.
So I won’t distance myself from you if you don’t distance yourself from me. And I promise to continue to pull the covers off anyone who shuns someone else to try to make themselves feel better. I expect you to do the same, even if it’s me.
It’s not enough anymore to be good at what you do. It’s not even enough to be gifted at it. No, you have to be passionate about whatever the company does just to get an interview.
I started this morning as I do every morning, checking out the latest employment ads for writers and editors. There were ten. One was for a translator, another was for someone to take notes in a courtroom and e-mail them to the *real* writer, a third wanted someone to manage a social networking site for video games, the fourth was looking for bloggers who will pump out content for free just to be published on the Internet, two more were for technical writers to develop user manuals, three were for marketing blurbers, and the last one — the only ad actually seeking a journalist like me — was for a yoga magazine web editor.
Yoga Journal, the world’s most widely read yoga magazine, is looking for a creative, hardworking, tech-savvy online editor, who is passionate and knowledgeable about yoga.
In addition to education and experience, they were seeking the usual: an editor who is “skilled, tech-savvy, flexible, creative and resourceful.” And just for good measure, they repeated the need to be passionate.
Passionate and knowledgeable about yoga. Yes, we said it above, but we’re saying it again. Our magazine and web site live and breathe asana, meditation, and yoga philosophy. If you don’t, you won’t be a good match.
You can’t just know a lot about it, as I do. You can’t just be a practitioner, as I am. You must be passionate about it. Every employer seems to require that now. Video games, car repair, fashion, vitamins, high school badminton. “Must be passionate about.”
Interested? No good. Willing to learn? Forget it. Must. Be. Passionate.
But why? Does being passionate about something make one better able to write about it? I think not, especially after reading the definition of the word in Webster’s Dictionary:
1 a: easily aroused to anger b: filled with anger, angry
2 a: capable of, affected by, or expressing intense feeling b: enthusiastic, ardent
3 : swayed by or affected with sexual desire
While some of these characteristics might be useful to a novelist, none would appear to be a particular asset for a journalist. We are trained to research, investigate, interview and finally write about any and every possible subject. No intense or ardent feelings are necessary.
It galls me to have to be passionate about something or be counted out before an employer even sees my resume.
It reminds me of a story my mother used to tell about looking for a job during World War II. She filled out an application to do light aircraft maintenance, as did many young women at that time. She stood in line for hours just to get an application, filled it out, then stood in another long line to turn it in. When she finally got up to the window, the personnel lady asked, “Why do you want to work for the government?”
The question seemed ridiculous to my mother. She needed the job to pay the rent and put food on the table. Why else would she be looking for work? So she responded:
Same reason you wanted your job. I need to eat.
My mother was passionate about survival. The personnel lady was visibly displeased, but eventually she succumbed to my mother’s ultimatum: either give her a job or send her to the appeals line. After all that waiting in line and arguing, my mother went home with a job. She was a riveter.
I, on the other hand, am a writer. It’s not something I dreamed of being when I grew up. It’s not even something I do. It’s something I am. I scribbled books before I knew the alphabet. My mother used to make blank books for me by cutting page-sized pieces from newspaper and stitch-binding them on her sewing machine. I would scribble on the pages and hand it to her. She would “read” it back to me as a story. I was a writer before I could write.
I was editor of every school newspaper from elementary school to college. I was a paid “teen correspondent” for my local newspaper all through high school. Aside from the occasional odd job, I have always earned my living as a journalist.
My college roommate used to say all she wanted was a peon job where no ambition was required. Reading the writer-wanted ads on Craigslist, I see her point.
Sarah Palin‘s seething hatred for the liberal Hollywood elite seems to have subsided just in time for her to try to become one of them. So far this week, that effort has included a stand-up comedy routine on Jay Leno‘s reclaimed “The Tonight Show,” making the rounds with producer Mark Burnett to pitch her own TV show about Alaska, stopping by the “American Idol” set, and horning in on the goodies at the Oscars gifting suites.
If a guy from another planet happened to drop in on Palin’s little Tinseltown tour, he’d surely mistake her for one of the Hollywood types she claims to loathe — especially if he observed some of her diva behavior.
Insiders at the Oscar gifting suites said she was an uppity, ungrateful bee-otch. E! News reported that Palin insisted the suite be opened two hours early for her. She took thousands of dollars worth of goods and services, but refused to be interviewed or photographed.
She arrived with a huge entourage that grabbed everything in sight. One vendor said:
They were like locusts. She showed up with like 20 people, and they immediately swarmed the place taking everything!”
Palin had said earlier that her visit was to support the Red Cross and she would donate some of the stuff she took — like the 40 sets of Aiaiai headphones? — to charity. But that’s what she said about the $150,000 wardrobe the Republican National Committee bought for her, and that never happened. Ask John McCain about that fiasco.
On Wednesday, Palin stopped by CBS to meet the elite and pitch her show. According to the Hollywood Insider, one of the CBS execs joked:
She’s pitching a sequel to Commander in Chief.”
The White House may be just a fantasy, like her childhood dream of being the next Howard Cosell, but her future as a celebrity looks good.
Thursday she meets with NBC Universal TV Chairman Jeff Gaspin. Think about it. She could end up on the same network as her SNL doppelganger, Tina Fey. If Fey got sick, Palin could play her on “30 Rock.”
Nobody wants to see that, but it would be a lot safer than watching her try to play president.
The only reason the public cares about a squeaky-clean, obscenely rich athlete cheating on his wife is that it proves he’s no better than the rest of us. It makes him ordinary. And it justifies our disdain for privilege.
That’s why the most important thing Tiger Woods admitted in his scripted, internationally televised apology for his “irresponsible and selfish behavior” was that he thought he didn’t have to play by the rules. That’s what we all wanted to hear. He had to acknowledge it to regain our love and trust.
Our skepticism dropped a tiny bit when Woods said:
I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead I thought only about myself. … I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. … I felt I was entitled.
Yeah, baby. That’s it right there.
It was as if he could read our minds. He knew that his sense of privilege was what really made us so angry. We thought, “Who do those rich celebrities think they are?” We sneered, “They think they can get away with anything!”
And Tiger told the whole world we were right.
Then he took it even further. He said he needed to be more like us:
I was wrong, I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me.
With those words, Tiger Woods instantly became lovable again.
The rest of his speech — about needing help, trying to become a better person, getting back to his Buddhist roots, and trying to salvage his marriage — was mostly filler.
What we all really want now is for him to get well and get back on the course. We already know far more than we ever wanted to, about his private life. Most of us really, truly don’t want to see one more photograph of some sleazy porn star he hooked up with in Vegas.
We just want to see him sink another amazing putt.
(AP Photo/Joe Skipper, Pool)
NBC’s tape-delayed coverage of the Winter Games has created a firestorm on Twitter and Facebook. The network’s policy of taping most events, promoting them all day, and then showing them in prime time after everybody already knows the outcome—and advertisers pay a higher premium—is a major disappointment, especially for viewers on the West Coast, who have to wait hours after an event is over to see it on TV.
But it’s not just the tape delay that sucks. On top of Bob Costas‘ motormouth and bulging surgery-enhanced eyes—and Dick Button‘s tired, self-indulgent commentary—the network seems to have no idea how to cover sports.
One of the worst examples was shoving live microphones in coach Bud Keene‘s face while he was pumping up Shaun White for his final gold-medal run on the half-pipe Wednesday night. That’s like wiring a dugout for sound during a World Series. You do that, you deserve whatever you hear.
On Wednesday night, America heard a few muffled F-bombs. So what? NBC announcers Pat Parnell and Todd Richards immediately apologized for the language, explaining that there was a lot of energy on the hill in that situation. If the language was so offensive to them, why did they air that footage? It wasn’t crucial to the event coverage.
They aired it to manufacture excitement because the whole country already knew what happened long before the tape-delayed broadcast was shown.
And who cares about a couple of words that no one would have noticed if Parnell and Richards hadn’t drawn attention to it? It’s just words. As a crazy Dane once said, “words, words, words.”
POLONIUS
What do you read, my lord?HAMLET
Words, words, words.POLONIUS
What is the matter, my lord?HAMLET
Between who?POLONIUS
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.HAMLET
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.POLONIUS [Aside.]
Though this be madness, yet there is method
in ‘t. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?HAMLET
Into my grave.POLONIUS [Aside.]
Indeed, that is out o’ the air.
How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will
leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.—My honorable
lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.HAMLET
You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except
my life, except my life.POLONIUS
Fare you well, my lord.HAMLET
These tedious old fools!
Tedious, indeed.
Director Kevin Smith posted this image on Twitter, with the caption:
“Hey @SouthwestAir! Look how fat I am on your plane! Quick! Throw me off!”
“Clerks” director Kevin Smith shared a two-day hissy fit on Twitter after he was asked to leave a Southwest flight from Oakland to Burbank on Saturday night because he was too fat to fit in one seat. He also posted this Podcast (it’s full-length, so you might want to listen later):
Smith called the airline every name in the book, using the eff word in all of its forms at every possible opportunity. Southwest apologized on Twitter and in their blog and online — even though they already had accommodated him on another flight and given him a $100 voucher for his inconvenience.
Aware of the airline’s policy on oversize passengers, Smith had originally purchased two seats for a flight, but decided instead to fly standby on the earlier flight, which had no double-seats available. He was already seated when a Southwest attendant told him the captain had deemed him ” a safety risk,” he said. Southwest says it began vigorously enforcing its policy, which has been in effect for 29 years, after “seeing an increase in the number of valid complaints from passengers who traveled without full access to the seat purchased because a large customer infringed upon the adjacent seating space.”
In other words, passengers don’t want to be crowded by a fat person sitting next to them.
There’s just no nice way to say that, even though Southwest has come up with every euphemism in the book.
So how does the airline decide when a passenger is too fat for one seat? Any customer who can’t lower both armrests or whose body overflows onto any portion of an adjacent seat is required to book two seats. Southwest will refund the fare for the additional seat if the flight isn’t completely full.
So why is Smith so angry?
He says he was able to lower the armrests, that the passenger next to him said she was fine with him sitting there, but the captain asked him to leave anyway. Here is his story, a la Twitter:
I got to the airport early enough to try to bump-up my flight to 5:20 – a practice @SouthwestAir does often.I was told 5:20 flight was packed, but I could go Standby. They sent me to gate. Told lady whole story, and she said there wouldn’t be two seats on that earlier flight. I said I only needed one seat & that I didn’t buy an extra seat because I’m fat (which I am), but because I’m anti-social and didn’t want to sit next to someone & possibly have to make convo (in person, I’m very shy). She said she understood. I was issued the solo ticket. I get on the plane: open seat in the front row. Put my bag away, the sit between two ladies. As I’m about to buckle my extender-less seatbelt, the woman who issued the ticket to me appeared in the doorway of the plane, came over to me and said the Captain said I wasn’t going to be allowed to sit there because I was a safety risk. I asked for clarification and was given none (also asked “Please don’t do this” but that, too, fell on deaf ears. Ladies on either side said I wasn’t a problem. SWA-lady said arm-rests the decider. Arm-rests come down, and voila! I’m legit! I’ve passed the stinkin’ arm-rest-test. And still, the lady asks me to get up and come with her off the plane. I get up without a fuss at all, quietly grab my bag, make eye contact with a fellow Fatty who was praying he’d pass, and leave. You think I wanna fuck around on an airplane? I was right: I fit in that seat. But I can’t risk not complying: I’m more afraid of AirFeds.
Aside from the foul-mouthed rant that followed this explanation, it’s plain to see that Smith was humiliated by the experience. And he clearly doesn’t believe he is over-the-armrest large. He may be in denial about his size, but that’s not the issue here.
The issue is, how do we make airplane life comfortable for large people without sacrificing our own comfort?
I hate being squished in my seat. But I am always squished, even if there is not one fat person on the plane, because the seats are so tiny and so close together that my knees are jammed against the seat in front of me — and I am only 5-foot-3 with very little extra weight on my bones. My elbows jam into the person next to me when I buckle my seat belt. I can’t lower my food tray without poking myself in the chest and abdomen.
How can airlines possibly blame passengers for that? If they stopped trying to stuff 200 passengers into a 150-passenger plane, the problem wouldn’t exist.
If I had a dollar for every person who yelled, tweeted or Facebooked, “Shut up, Bob Costas!” during the Vancouver Olympics opening ceremony Friday night, I could quit all of my petty freelance jobs and live off of the interest.
One unhappy online camper took the words right out of my mouth:
Bob Costas needs to shut his damn mouth about Canada. And pretty much everything else. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
That’s the frustrating thing about TV. We can yell all we want but it can’t hear us.
Another frustrated viewer pleaded for help on Yahoo:
How do we get Bob Costas to shut the &%$# up?
If you have any suggestions that don’t include anything violent or illegal, I’d love to hear them. Every two years he manages to ruin large swaths of the opening ceremony with his unending blather.
Kindred Yahooans gave their best suggestions:
Costas’ logorrhea ruined the reverie for people like me, who maintain not only a fondness for our hearty northern neighbors but have always considered their homeland our ace in the hole should the Fox News wingnuts and their followers ever become the majority this side of the border.
Turns out, I may have to move there just to get away from Costas.
I just got a press release from Scores New York, a “gentleman’s club” that is lobbying for pole dancing to become an Olympic sport.
Pole dancing, like pole vaulting, actually has a national governing body, the U.S. Pole Dance Federation. It has national competitions (see video above) and takes itself seriously as a sport. A sexy sport, but still, a sport.
We should have seen this coming when rhythmic gymnastics got a spot on the Olympic podium. Ribbons, poles, what’s the difference, really? Other than the fact that nobody’s stuffing dollar bills down the panties of the girls on the gymnastic teams, of course.
Here’s how ESPN put it, before the national pole dancing championships last March:
We all have pre-conceived notions of pole dancing. They’re not entirely wrong. But if you can watch a woman suspend herself six feet in the air simply by clenching her vice-like thighs—as a dozen of them will do at the USPDF National Championships, on March 15 in NYC—and not leave with respect for their athleticism and an enlightened perspective on their craft, then you’ve got problems above our pay grade.
But still. Come on. This is a stripper’s thing. A lot of activities that are highly athletic don’t necessarily belong in the Olympics . . . do they?
What if a group of superstuds laid out a set of rules for fornicating, including moves, positions, and quantifiable measurements of success? Say they formed a national governing body, the U.S. Fornicating Federation, and set out rules for safety, competition and judging, complete with a Code of Points for judging based on technical moves, artistry, transitions between positions, performance, choreography and execution. Would that make it a sport?
Certainly legions of men and women have considered sex a sport throughout the ages — and have considered stripping and, yes, pole dancing one of its highly rated skills. Entire countries, such as Sweden for one, have lobbied for its free practice without moral or Biblical restraints attached.
But let’s cut to the chase. Becoming an Olympic athlete takes years of training and sacrifice, not to mention unmitigated time and financial commitment from parents. Would you pay for fornication lessons — including the pole dancing element — for your kids? Would you drive them to practice and cheer for them at all the youth tournaments? Would you proudly display a “Proud Parent of a Joe Blow Middle School Fornicating Champion” bumper sticker on your Prius?
I’m guessing not.
What better way to start a blog of daily diversions than with a candy heart expressing my sentiments about the bleeping holiday that looms just two days away?
I started out thinking it would be fun to make my own talking hearts to comment on the day, but once I got onto Cryptogram.com and started to type in my own sayings, dark messages began to appear as if some pissed-off Lupercian wanted his holiday back.
Not that I could blame him. It’s one of many pagan holidays co-opted by early Christian event planners, like Christmas took over Yule and Easter took over Ostara. Valentine’s Day took over the Feast of Lupercalia, a sort of spermapalooza involving goats and blood and butt-slapping, all of which was supposed to heighten fertility. The irony is that it worked as well as most modern medical interventions, short of in-vitro fertilization.
But I digress (which is my job as a daily bleeper).
My point is, I never have liked Valentine’s Day. Not even when my boyfriend bought me heart-shaped boxes filled with chocolates or a dozen red tulips to prove his undying love and affection. It just embarrassed me. I felt like society was his mother shaking her finger at him and telling him he better get to the store and get me some stuff, or else. As soon as I opened the candy or got the flowers, I just wanted to say, “OK, people, show’s over. Nothing to see here.”
I’m not a cynic. Honest. It’s just that Valentine’s Day feels like some sort of cheesy nationwide reality TV show. I can’t imagine getting dressed up and going out to dinner on Valentine’s night without continually looking over my shoulder for Ashton Kutcher to tell me I’ve been punked.
My antidote is to spend the evening with friends, indulge in some sinfully rich food, and watch my favorite account of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre: “Some Like It Hot,” starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.
And if somebody sneaks a little kiss in the kitchen, I’ll never tell.
