3 Dinner Conversations

We were grounded this weekend with the rain and kids with coughs. By Sunday night, we needed outsiders to amuse us. So, we spontaneously organized a dinner party. My brother and his family and my buddy, Suze, were roped in with the promise of pork chops and mashed potatoes. Nothing brings the guests running like pig and potato. That's my little Martha Stewart tip for the day.

Martha's new daytime show was a topic of conversation this evening. I have had the luck to catch it a couple of times, which is odd because I usually don't watch daytime TV. It is so amazingly BAD that I was overjoyed to stumble upon it. When she isn't plugging her reality show or her magazine, she's making awkward conversation with celebrities or flubbing art projects. Suze saw her try to pipe in scrambled eggs into egg shells. First, you have to wonder why would someone do such a thing. But then there is the wonderful part of watching Martha realize that the eggs were too hot to pipe in. She and a celebrity buddy burned their fingers attempting this maneuver until she finally admitted that she had never made this dish before. I also saw her try to make styrofoam grave stones with John Lithgow and made a royal mess of things.

God, it's awesome. If you didn't hate her before, you most certainly will now.

From Martha, we turned to sexual harassment in the workplace. A friend of ours nearly got canned from a major financial firm last week for joking around with a friend. This joke was observed by a male secretary who reported him. Mountain. Mole hill. And the poor sap is in serious trouble. In the past six months, my husband has had to fire two temps who crossed the line. I'm forbidden to say anything more.

Suze said that the publishing world has much laxer standards than other industries. One guy she worked with showed other women in the office naked pictures of himself; I guess he thought they would be impressed. In this same office, there also was a long discussion about bringing in strippers into the office for some guy's birthday; some people thought that it was a fine idea.

Maybe we're jaded, but the incidents that have destroyed the careers of our friend and the two temps seem so trivial. (Wish I could say more). Nothing wrong with properly constructed double entrendre in the workplace, I say. Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge.

Then we also talked about gifted and talented education programs or classes for kids with pushy parents. In NYC, they are increasing the number of G and T schools in order to keep middle class parents in the city. Also the mainstreaming of special ed kids may also be leading to the rise of these program. We all had benefited from honors classes in our past. Tammy and Suze and I all remember pretending to be dumb in order to fit in. But we also have some reservations about how these programs unfairly monopolize resources.

My boys ate their cookies and staggered upstairs to play video games. Little Julia demanded her bottle. Suze had to catch the bus back to New York. The evening was done.

Comments

[A]

Yes, watching Martha, I cannot look away. Its like crack. Or a car accident. Pick your favorite figurative.

I caught an awful segment with Christina Applegate last week where Christina was clearly not "getting" Martha and their banter was so bad I felt embarrassed for both of them. In reference to "Married With Children", Martha said something like "I don't know how you all in that family survived" and Christina said "yeah, well they are actually all really pulled together in real life" in a weird non-funny way. ::cringe::

My Hubs is always forwarding me emails from work that his co-workers send to each other that are shockingly sexually suggestive. All in good fun, and they ARE funny, but I'm so surprised that they get through. These emails are sent to the entire Los Angeles office. Weird how different office culture can be from one company to another.

[Macaroni]

That's funny because I recently told a friend that I couldn't possibly serve mashed potatoes at my dinner because then everyone would want to marry me!

[Tammy]

You can always lure us to your house with the promise of food. I was actually dreaming of the pork chops and mashed potatoes we ate last night and wishing I had taken a doggy bag for lunch today.

My first job in advertising often felt more like I was working in a frat house than a global company. As "freshman" ( a term that was used by the CEO) we were required to buy beer at 5pm on Friday for the entire department, as well as the directors. At times, kegs were ordered. It was definitely fun, but I know that their policy has changed since then. I belive that a new employee, who was also a recovering alcoholic, complained and the workday happy hour ended. There were many aspects of that work environment which no loner fly in the post-dot-com boom environment.

[catie]

Actually what Martha said about the egg dish was that she never piped the eggs in the eggshell before, she always used a tiny spoon to do it.

I love Martha and absolutely adored the old show. I dislike the new show and hope very much that eventually they move it back to the old show's set up. She's much better taped where she doesn't have to be rushed to make commercial breaks and good God, who cares about her making these food dishes with celebrities? I mean, it's just horrible to watch.

Also, the John Lithgow thing was interesting to me because he was promoting a children's project book he's written and the idea of all the projects is that they take a long time to make. Whereas Martha is all about everything being done quickly with the aid of nifty gadgets. She simply could not wrap her mind around the concept of WANTING something to take a long time to do.

[Kai Jones]

I find it weird that you would hesitate over the resources required to educate TAG kids but not over those required to educate special ed kids. The system is legally obligated to educate the TAG kids to the best of their ability, not just to "normal" or "average", just like it's required to educate special ed kids. Both of my kids are TAG, and one is *also* in need of special ed.