Apt. 11D

The 5 Best Wedding Gifts

Trust the New York Times to come up with laughably, ridiculous wedding gifts. I don't know many people who can afford a $609 espresso maker as a wedding gift. I don't know that many people who really need a $609 espresso maker. Here's my list of the best wedding gifts:

1. Cash. It never goes out of style. I'm Italian, so this is what we do. $100 if you don't go to the wedding; $150-200 if you go to the wedding. I'm not a big fan of the tradition of the wedding couple walking around the room to collect the checks in a silk bag, but money is always good.

2. The Gift Registry. People put stuff on the list, because they really need it. Get it for them. You can throw in something small of your own to add creativity. A couple of my friends bought us sheets off the registry then added candles and some Al Green tapes.

3. Pots and pans. 11 years later and we're still using our set from the wedding.

4. An excellent set of knives. Still using them.

5. Wine and martini glasses. There have been casualties, but there are still enough in circulation.

Harry b had a good post at Crooked Timber a while ago on this.

Much more HERE.

When Being a Woman In Politics Might Actual Be An Asset

Michelle Cottle writes a really fascinating profile of Nancy Pelosi in the New Republic this week. She writes that Pelosi have so been so effective in blocking the Bush administration and strong arming fellow congressional members that she has a developed a reputation of being "a power broker and all-around political badass." She is now "being touted as one of the most powerful speakers in modern history."

Part of Pelosi's success may be the fact that she's a woman. She's able to snow some people who underestimate her strength. She can give a grandmotherly lecture when necessary. And charm and flirt other times.

How Are You Coping?

Elizabeth writes that she has changed her consumption habits as a result of rising food and energy costs. She's not alone.

Gas prices have come into the calculations about what we're going to do for vacation this year. This summer, we have to go to my in-laws shore house in North Carolina. We decided to drive down, rather than fly. We were also thinking about driving all the way to the mountains for half the week, but the time crunch and the gas tank crunch might nix those plans.

The trusty, old 1981 Toyota Corolla with the rusted out fenders died a few months ago. RIP old red car. We kept it around for weekends when we sometimes needed two cars. But after Jimmy the Mechanic hauled it away to the dump, we chose not to replace it. Why buy another hunk of metal that doesn't get a whole lot of use, except for that rare time when both boys have baseball games at the same time?

I would like to be cutting back more than we are. But things keep coming up. The boys needed new bathing suits. All of my jeans exploded at the knees at the same time. I have to buy birthday gifts and wine for parties. Money is hemorrhaging around here, and it's bugging me.

Tenacious or Desperate?

I haven't written much about the '08 election in the past few weeks. It seems quite obvious that Obama has the nomination locked up. Well, it's obvious to everybody but the Clinton camp. While I'm an Obama supporter, I am not rejoicing in Hillary's defeat. I have never been in the Hillary-Puppy-Killer camp. I am also a bit disturbed by the undercurrent of sexism that had a hand in her defeat.

I have mixed feelings about Hillary's refusal to quit even though the writing is on the wall. On the one hand, I do admire tenacity. At track meets, I always root for the chubby kid who insists on finishing the race even though he's lap behind everyone else. On the other hand, watching her continue to campaign smacks of insanity. It's uncomfortable watching her desperate efforts to get the Florida delegates and insisting that she still has a chance. It's like she's in her own separate reality.

Tabloid Talk

I just came back from the gym. I had to run off the afternoon donut with the kids. My rule at the gym is that as long as I'm doing 3.9 on the treadmill, I can watch any old trash on TV. Donuts for the brain. So, it's the E! Channel and Entertainment Tonight for that 50 minutes.

I watched the Kardashians for 1/2 an hour. I don't really get why these girls have their own TV show. They are rather stupid fashion victims. The leg wax truck must pull up to their house daily. Two weeks on an island and those girls would have unibrows, goatees, and hairy monkey legs. And I'm Italian, so I know about these things.

All the talk today was about Brad's and Angelina's $70 million dollar spread in France. How did those two get so rich? They must have more money than the gross nation product of one of their adopted kids' countries. Angelina can buy plenty of tent dresses to hide the varicose veins from her pregnancy. Still, that house looks pretty sweet.

Amy Winehouse is disintegrating. Her hair is falling out and her stomach is bloated.

Our celebrities are a strange lot -- baby collectors, semi-literates, exhibitionists, promiscuous, drug addicts, mentally unstable, pathetic, shallow. Without luck and proportional features, they would be living in double wides and working at Wal-Mart. Thanks to the gossip websites, we can have daily fixes of their foibles. We can tear them down and worship them at the same time. Too bad there can't be a stupid tax, because these people have too much disposable income.

I would like to order a new batch of celebrities, please. People with talent, brains, and class. I demand role models. Where should I look?

(One funny gossip item. Matthew McConaughey's brother, Rooster, named his kid Miller Lyte.)

Mommybloggers Demand Respect

Read here.

Weekend Journal

Ian walked into the little book room where his grandparents were sleeping on the futon/air mattress combo and serenaded them with the theme song from Star Wars. I snuck a bottle of chilled white wine into the swim club. One set of white legs is covered in Dora bandaids, while the other set is festooned with more manly skin-colored bandaids. Charred meat on the grill. Candles on the porch. Ice cream at the pool. Leftovers for lunch. Where are the bathing suits and sun screen and beach towels? Will my white legs blind the children?

I'm recovering from a weekend of guests and excess. The words will resume after I jump start my brain. All I can manage at this moment are some photos.

It's Cousin-Marrying Time!

A TX court ruled yesterday that the state had illegally seized up to 468 children from their homes at a polygamist ranch in West Texas. It's a victory for inbreeding, sister-wives, recessive genetic diseases, 15 year old brides, inadequate education, 52 siblings, sack dresses, lost boys, and arranged marriages to old dudes.

Oversharing

Emily Gould, the former writer of Gawker, writes about her online experience:

But is that really what’s making people blog? After all, online, you’re not even competing for 10 grand and a Kia. I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K.

Gould writes about getting pummelled by Kimmel over the Gawker Stawker section of Gawker. I actually show this clip in my Media class. Students love it.

All the dirt here. Wow. I'm very tempted to nuke this blog.

UPDATE: The NYT had to shut down comments on this article. 727 people wrote in to question why this article was worthy of the magazine cover.

Laura Is

When a tower of ungraded blue books sits on my coffee table mocking and shaming me, I have found it ever so beneficial to completely ignore the ungraded papers and instead use that time for catching up on all the technology that I've missed out on over the semester. Yes, it's high time that I learned about Twitter and text messaging. Priorities are a key to success.

Well, I'm about three years behind on the text messaging thing, but I haven't had any need for it. If I want to talk to my friends or hubby, I call them. I'm not meeting up with the kids at the Peach Pit on the spur of the moment. No one really needs to know where I am at every given moment. However, my 20 year old babysitter only communicates via texting. She doesn't answer phone calls or e-mails, so I had to learn. It was super easy and then I spent the rest of the week pestering everyone I know with messages. "what r u doing?"

I signed up for Facebook last summer during a Catch Up With Technology Procrastination Fest. I noticed that some of my friends were using twitter to up date their status, so I HAD to sign up for twitter and link it to Facebook. Maybe I will try to send a twitter via my cell phone today and link it to Facebook. I could blow hours of time with that one.

Twitter is social networking software. You key in a sentence or two about what you are doing. It is the equivalent of the status update on Facebook. I suppose that teenagers use Twitter and Facebook status lines in the same way that they use texting - to alert friends of meet up points and to nervously make sure that your friends don't forget you.

I'm amused by the 30 and 40 something use of twitter and facebook status. The best status announcements don't just say "I'm eating food at a restaurant." The best ones must convey irony, ennui, and oblique references to 80s music. "I'm eating day old sushi in Chinatown while considering setting up a Depeche Mode fansite." They aren't supposed to announce the really big things in your life, but the weird minor stuff. You aren't just "I'm eating a sandwich". You are "Assembling the best grilled cheese sandwich and declaring it king of all sandwiches."

I'm amused by the elegant use of a sentence. It's modern Haiku.

I actually don't update my status all that often, because it takes a lot of work to be clever and ironic, but I'm enjoying the status of others.