Fried & Convicted, page 6
Imagine if Celeste Holm called the gas station for a couple of gallons of gas so that bitch Eve Harrington didn’t get to go on as Bette Davis’ understudy in All About Eve? Life-altering.
But frankly, useful and fun as smartphones are, most of us, myself included, have become needlessly boorish and rude because of these amazing devices. In fact, I was severely chastised recently, and rightly so, because I unthinkingly answered a call while my companion was mid-sentence. It was rude, I admit, but I hear the ring and turn into one of Pavlov’s dogs. I’ve always considered myself a pretty polite person and I am appalled at my behavior.
So . . . I checked online at the Emily Post Etipedia (seriously). It seems I’m not the only one who’s been led into loutishness by a smartphones. Legions of us have to learn to behave better.
Therefore, when out in public, I’m now going to try to keep a ten-foot distance between me and anyone else whenever I talk on the phone. Face it, nobody wants to hear me answering my phone and saying “Yes, I picked up the biodegradable toilet paper for the RV.” Likewise, sitting at breakfast at Crystal, I don’t want to hear the guy behind me discussing his date’s nipple jewelry.
And I know I was giddy when I discovered I could download a snippet of “There‘s No Business Like Show Business” for my ringtone, but I will now revert to a less intrusive sound. After all, while there may be no people like show people, everyone else at Browseabout would probably prefer not to hear Ethel Merman. Ever.
Also, as of today I will make it a new habit to identify myself when texting to people who might not have my number stored in their phones. Many times I’ve been pinged to read “meet me at Mixx at 6?” or “were you scandalized by Showtime’s Masters of Sex tonight?” and I have to type “um . . . who is this?” So embarrassing.
As for those pings themselves, I will try to turn the sound off and just glance at my screen occasionally. I’m telling myself that we don’t have to be available 24/7 even though it’s technically possible. I’ve been in a room when a cacophony of pings erupt and I’m always saying to the person next to me “Was that me or you?” Seriously, I have to learn that texts don’t always require an instantaneous answer. I may meet my Waterloo with this one.
A corollary to the pings is the swoosh of sent mail. If a person you are talking with turns their back and you have a second to send an email, the swoosh they hear may sound like you are passing gas. You’ll want to avoid this.
And finally, when I am engaged face-to-face with others, at the bank or shopping, I promise to give them my full attention. I am not awfully guilty of texting or talking in the checkout line, but last week as I answered a text and smiled at the cashier, I inadvertently donated money to some charity that does not share my values. Oops.
So, as I obsessively check in on Facebook, text my friends, consult Trip Advisor, and answer any call that comes my way, I will try to be more polite about it and enjoy the good, try to avoid the bad, and be certain not to behave like the ugly.
I promise to practice better cell phone etiquette. Is there an app for that?
September 2014
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK THUMB
I’ve been a volunteer in my day, but as far as I know this is the first time I have ever acquired a volunteer. And it’s free-range and flowering in my front yard.
I’m talking about, of all things, an unsolicited bushy beanstalk thingy that sprouted in front of my house. After being gone for several weeks this summer, we came home to find our petunias trampled by a wild leafy plant with blossoms and little green balls.
Dumbfounded, as we don’t have 4-H clubs in Manhattan, I posted a photo of the mysterious greenery on Facebook. “What the heck is this? “ I queried.
Answers ranged from zucchini or squash to Venus Flytrap. When, overnight, the largest green ball turned burnt orange, I had my answer. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!
Just call me Farmer Jacobs, cultivating a bona fide pumpkin patch spanning the front of my manufactured home. How much farther from Fifth Avenue and 54th Street can I possibly get?
But how did vegetables sprout on my lawn? I consulted the Old Farmer’s Almanac, frankly, the very last book—even behind The Wit and Wisdom of Richard Nixon—I ever thought I’d read. In the book title Old Farmer’s Almanac, is the almanac old, or the farmer? I want to know whether to be insulted or not. But I digress.
The venerable Almanac said the plant was a “volunteer,” meaning it wasn’t planted there on purpose and probably came from seeds gusting into my north forty from somebody else’s pumpkin patch. Alternately, it could be, get this, deposited by a sea gull airlift. Really? We all know what sea gulls deposit on cars just back from the car wash and it’s no stinkin’ pumpkin seeds.
Then, it hit me. Did I plop a pumpkin in front of the house last Halloween? I flipped through the zillion images on my iPhone and, sure enough, last October we had a seasonal tableau with a big fat pumpkin and two baby pumpkins in the front mulch bed.
Since benign neglect is my landscape plan, like the attention I give all my shrubbery, I just left it there to fend for itself when we wintered in Florida. Apparently the gourds decomposed and come summer, squash!
Once the mystery of the origin of the species got solved I asked myself, now what? Wikipedia said pumpkins are “widely grown for food and recreation.” Either I channel my inner Barefoot Contessa and bake pumpkin pies (highly unlikely) or gather my gourds while ye may and enter that Delaware classic, Punkin Chunkin’. Actually, that IS about as far from 54th and Fifth a person can go.
Every day I would visit my personal pumpkin patch. Each night I would troll the Internet reading up on the care and feeding of my bumper crop. Mind you, I never actually did anything recommended, as I was too busy surfing the computer, but I had great intentions.
Ergo, one day, as I stood admiring the homegrown produce, I noticed a white powdery substance on some of the leaves. Uh-oh. My familiarity with white powdery substances has been limited to powdered donuts and well, um, let’s leave it at that. It couldn’t be either, so what was it?
The Almanac announced I’d contracted Powdery Mildew. Well, not me personally, but my crop. The good news was it might make the leaves turn yellow and drop, but it would not hurt the pumpkins. The bad news was that leaf loss might expose the pumpkins to sunburn. Seriously? Do I spray them with Banana Boat SPF 30?
Again, I sought agricultural advice. Turns out I could use an expensive fungicide, which sounded hasty to me, or simply wash the leaves with mild soap and water, like a fine sweater. I chose the latter, bending over to hand wash my plant, my rear end to the street, looking for all the world like one of those lawn ornaments of the old lady bending in the garden. The effort was not attractive, but it was successful.
So here it is, almost October. I plan to harvest the homegrown pumpkins for Halloween, ready for carving or cooking. Or, most likely, just looking. But I will leave one good gourd out in the mulch pile to decompose and incubate for next year.
Just think of the potential volunteer armies we could have if I rotated my crops. Would rotting marshmallows bring Easter Peeps? Might discarded strawberries bring strawberry fields forever? Would decomposing grapes spring forth a vineyard?
“Pumpkins are fine, but I’d rather have wine.”
—Fay Jacobs, Old New Yorker’s Almanac
October 2014
AN ATHLETE OF OLYMPIC PROPORTIONS
Well, I failed to enter the Delaware Senior Olympics for another year.
Several friends enter annually and this year they came home as Pickleball medalists. The game’s name alone makes me want a pastrami sandwich. But I understand it’s big with athletic seniors who bow just a bit to age. Pickleball combines half-court tennis with flailing ping pong paddles. I know better than to step in front of that speeding bullet.
But every fall I look at the Senior Olympics registration form, searching for something I could possibly enter. There should be a category for just filling out the paperwork, then making a two-pointer chucking it into the circular file.
The list of Olympic events, from A to Wii, just brings me back to my sordid athletic history.
The flashbacks start with archery. In addition to my theatre and journalism classes, I needed three college credits in physical education, so I went to the archery range. Thankfully it was a pass/fail grade and you passed as long as you didn’t skewer the instructor to the bull’s-eye. Have you tried to draw back a bow and shoot an arrow without scraping your forearm with the taut bow string? I would have aced the course if I’d been graded for the size of the hematoma on my wrist.
My basketball career was short. I played back in the day when women had to stay on half the court, guards in the back, only forwards could shoot, and everybody wore unflattering apron pinnies over their street clothes. It was a look. In junior high, the first time I got under the basket to take a shot, an Amazonian schoolgirl blocked me with her meaty fist to my chin. I spent the rest of the season at the dentist.
I guess I could have played bocce, which I enjoyed once with friends who had a bucolic farmhouse and plenty of turf for a court. I came home and instantly bought a bocce ball set in an attractive attaché-like case. I dragged that never-opened bag in and out of four houses, two condos, one RV and my manufactured home before it went away at a yard sale.
Once, over 30 years ago, trying to impress the athletic person who became my spouse anyway, I tried biking. Days after purchasing a K-Mart special, we biked 25 miles from Easton to St. Michaels in Maryland. Fortunately, it was totally flat terrain.
Using my college acting skills, garnered when I wasn’t slapping my arms silly at archery, I used chipper conversation to mask my panicked wobbling. We completed the schlep and followed up with cocktails and Preparation H. Ow.
Thinking me a biker, my honey planned a cycling trip to Nantucket. I have to admit to feeling smugly superior on the ferry, when others were in cars and I was decked out with bike, backpack and a tiny rear-view mirror on my glasses.
And then we docked. The cobblestone streets could shake loose a kidney. And there was a humongous paved hill straight up to our hotel. Instead of planting a flag at the summit I planted my bike and walked all weekend. When we got home I hung the two-wheeler on hooks in the garage where it rusted to the wall and was conveyed with the house.
Moving right along, Olympic choices include alien sports like horseshoes. The only actual horseshoe I ever saw was nailed to the hoof of a carriage pony on Central Park South. Racquetball was out because the concept of four walls, a hard rubber ball, and me just screams detached retina. And the Track and Field category is based on running, jumping and throwing, things I only do when I see a large spider. And the shot put, javelin, and discus throw events must be sponsored by rotator cuff surgeons.
Then there was volleyball. At summer camp at some lake in Connecticut I spent what little time I was not at theater rehearsals on the volleyball court. I practiced mostly duck and cover moves, but I was pretty good at punching the ball on my serve.
My career ended in the summer of ’62 when I got under a spiked ball with my whole hand but took the brunt of the hit with my middle finger. For the rest of the summer I wore one of those metal and foam rubber finger splints and wound up permanently giving everybody the bird. Not how to make friends and influence campers.
The truth is, golf might just be the only sport where I have a snippet of credibility. When I first picked up a set of clubs eight years ago, the idea of my taking up a sport was so hilarious to my friends they all wanted to play in my foursome. How horrid was I? I aspired to “riders”—shots hit far enough to warrant riding in the cart to retrieve them. I was the league clown in a league of my own.
Then, I improved just enough to ruin my game. As a garden variety bad golfer, I was no longer a novelty or so amusing. Besides, the wordsmith in me couldn’t overcome the contradiction in the term par. Why is below par on the course a good thing and feeling below par after a night of martinis a bad thing?
Conversely, if being above par means better than average, why is taking ten strokes instead of two to get the green not a good thing? Semantics ruined my concentration.
So I’m still a spectacularly horrid golfer, although I do play if I want an afternoon in the sun communing with baby bunnies. But there’s certainly no golfing at the Olympics in my future.
As my New York Yankees say, there’s always next year. Perhaps 12 months of practice might ready me for Wii bowling or shuffleboard.
In the interim I guess I will just have to content myself with the Triathlon. Type, Edit, Proof.
October 2014
BIBBITY BOBBITY BOO!
With Halloween just around the corner, I visited a pop-up Halloween Spirit shop, looking for an outfit for my dog. After all, the pet parade is this weekend. I also needed some inspiration for costumes for me and my wife, as we never miss the opportunity to bar hop in Rehoboth on Halloween weekend.
As I trolled aisles filled with monsters, superheroes, and a disturbing array of bloody body parts, I flashed back to ghosts of Halloweens past—and lessons learned from them.
First, select a costume that does not make your spouse hate you. Back in the ’80s at a D.C. party, I knew we’d dazzle the crowd with our two-person camel costume borrowed from a local theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. We won first prize, but the rear end of the camel didn’t talk to me for a week. And I had to pay for her chiropractor.
Next, be mindful of your ability to dazzle while still being able to eat and drink. Reference the previous example. Only the person in front of the camel’s hump could sip and chew without disrobing.
One year we attended a penthouse party with a fairy tale theme. Let’s face it, almost all of the fabulous fun events and costume parties we attended back in the day qualified as “fairy tale” evenings. But this party requested that the fabulous fairies and their dykey cohorts come as costumed Cinderellas, Rapunzels, or evil queens. There were always a couple of garden-variety evil queens in street clothes making snarky comments, but that made the parties even more fun.
The costume winner that year was Snow White, in an authentically designed and hand-sewn Disney outfit with perfectly coiffed black wig, enhanced by this man’s perfect black beard. Sadly, though, he had his waist cinched within an inch of his life and could not eat a morsel. A Grimm choice. Ba-da-bing. I think Bonnie and I stretched the theme a little by going as Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Okay, that might have been the “Movie and TV Musical Theme” year. The details are lost to Father Time. But Bonnie donned her little green Mary Martin lezzie outfit (MM was one, you know) and I got dolled up like that famously flaming Captain Hook. And yes, Cyril Ritchard who played Hook was gay, too.)
That time Bonnie got to take full advantage of the catered buffet and flowing beverages while I tried to balance a plate on my elbow and a martini in my hand without gouging people with my big plastic hook.
So, having learned my lesson, we went to a subsequent party—TV theme—as a grape-stomping Lucy and Ethel from I Love Lucy. We wore wigs and peasant dresses, painted our feet with purple food coloring, and were done. We ate and drank unfettered.
The next lesson is to ignore judgmental young store clerks. Just a few years ago, friends here at the beach hosted a 1960s hippie party, which sent dozens of folks to one of Rehoboth’s two hippie-era clothing stores for tie-dye and wearable blankets. I guess we got there late in the week because I overheard a clerk actually say, “Here come some more old people for tie-dye.”
And they weren’t even evil queens.
I can’t remember the year, but it was when that kids’ show Teletubbies featured a purple creature called Tinky Winky, wearing a triangle on his head and carrying a red purse. The American Family Association hyperventilated about the character looking “gay.”
Well, they may have castigated him in Utah, but here in Rehoboth we celebrated him. I showed up on Halloween at the Blue Moon dressed like Tinky Winky (hands free for cocktails!) and so did several other revelers. All the Tinkies were here, were queer, and the American Family Association never got over it.
Standing in that Halloween Spirit store I realized that growing older is mandatory but growing up is not. The rumor is that if you haven’t matured by age 50 you don’t have to. I’ll drink to that, especially if my costume allows me the freedom to do so.
I’m just as excited about Halloween this year as when I was eight and dressed like Roy Rogers, or thirty-four and sharing that two-person camel. Only now I’m older and wiser. I will make sure my costume is fun but minimalist, with no orthopedic dangers or impediments to feeding myself.
Oh, and Windsor will go to the parade dressed simply, as well. He’ll want to be free to forage for boardwalk French fries.
Actually, this year I may just wear a plain half-mask and my T-shirt with the words, “People don’t stop playing because they get old; people get old because they stop playing.”
Happy Halloween.
November 2014
LETTING GO AT THE PET PARADE
It was the perfect match of motive and opportunity. I had an adorable one-year-old Chihuahua who needed a forever home and it was time for the Halloween Pet Parade.
But I suppose you’re wondering how this schnauzer-identified writer came to be seeking a family for a homeless, pointy-eared Chihuahua child.
My friend Sally’s daughter, in a misguided fit of kindness, took in the homeless pooch. An apartment dweller who works long hours, said daughter was in a situation that didn’t work for her or the pup. So Sally decided to find the dog a new home, enlisting unsuspecting us in the scheme.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” answered Sally.
Okay, then. Off we went with our schnauzer Windsor and little Miss Anonymous. For the record, young Windsor, in the throes of puppyhood, was just to be a spectator at the parade this year. He could decide for himself if he wanted to dress for success next time. Good thing, as our hands were full of Chihuahua.
