Monthly Archives: August 2011

August 12, 2011 · 8:54 am

Friend of the trendless

Do you know what’s trending? The word trend as a verb, for one.

Trend as a verb has been around a long time, but its use was always narrow. Data points trend upward, for example. As best I’ve observed, the verb trend is usually followed by an adverb or other modifier.

Lately, everyone’s talking trending, which I fear went out as soon as it came in. Or should anyway. I know, I know, it’s on Twitter, it’s on the news, it’s on the radio, it’s PR-speak. The Today show has introduced a daily feature, accompanied by the most annoying techno music, called “What’s trending Today?” At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, this bugs me. I suspect I’m a party of one.

This doesn’t mean I don’t notice trends. One hit me between the eyes this week. Three times in 36 hours, in fact. Does that ever happen to you? Never heard of something and within a day it’s everywhere?

What’s trending? Pisco. First I read about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan enjoying a Pisco Sour at a local establishment; then twice more, someone or other was noticed to be sipping it; I think one might have been Justice Antonin Scalia. I’ve read that, as trending goes, Pisco could be the new Mojito. Or for D.C. foodies, the new Mumbo Sauce.

According to PR Web, Pisco consumption in the United States increased 101 percent in 2010. Whether or not that’s a legitimate trend would depend on what it was in 2009, or 2008. I was always taught that a trend is at least three data points.

I haven’t tried this Peruvian potion, Pisco. Heck, I’m not sure I even know what it is. One source I consulted says it’s a brandy while another calls it a spirit. We have a knowledgeable guy at our local liquor store, but I’m afraid that if I went in asking about Pisco, he’d laugh, sigh, roll his eyes or all three.

If he did, I’d know it’s already trended.

In a piece on Monday, Slate cautioned us to not hate Pisco because it’s fashionable.

I don’t think I’ll be serving up piscopolitans any time soon.

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August 11, 2011 · 8:36 am

Shock therapy

Two readers took me up on my offer yesterday to share a personal story about a 70s fad. So here goes.

The year was 1973 and a wild trend was sweeping the nation. The fad and the name—streaking—had begun centuries earlier, but for some reason it made a big comeback in 1973.

During the time of this craze, my job as a seventh grade girl was to spend as much time as possible on the telephone. My girlfriends and I talked for hours after school and on the weekends. Literally, hours.

Our household phone hung on a wall in the kitchen. Like many houses, there was a circular traffic pattern joining the foyer, living room, dining room and kitchen, where my brothers used to chase each other pushing Tonka trucks. The phone cord reached from the kitchen to an arm chair around the corner in the dining room, where I spent the bulk of my adolescent years.

One Saturday afternoon my parents tried everything to get me off the phone. Little brothers yelling and screaming, pots and pans clanging, nothing fazed me.

Just then, my very clever parents paraded in and ran the foyer-living room-dining room-kitchen circuit. All they had on were novelty hats, which they held over their frontal regions. The phone receiver I held instantly crashed on to the floor.

Parental streaking: The fast-acting remedy for your difficult teenager.

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August 10, 2011 · 8:31 am

Lame that tune

I’m back from the beach, where my husband and I enjoyed a few days with some long-time friends. We came home with sand in our shoes, color on our cheeks, some soft ice cream stains and a terrific new game.

Our friends made up this game, which was great fun. I encourage you to play it, but one of the creators is a prominent intellectual property lawyer, so you’d best not steal the idea.

The homespun dinner table game offers the best in musical entertainment, laughter and profound humiliation.

Each person staying in the house was asked to bring his or her MP3 player to the table and hand it over to the leader. We had 10 players. One by one, each person’s song list was set on Shuffle and three songs were played—at random; for the benefit of the Podless, that’s what “shuffle” means.

I believe, anthropologically speaking, that our iPods are telling relics, revealing much about our true selves. And admit it, don’t we all have one or two songs in our libraries that we’d rather not have anyone discover?

Well, that’s the point of the game, and somehow the Shuffle function can bore right through to that one song that reveals to your loved ones—and the fellow dinner guests you’ve just met—your inner pathetic dweeb.

So here’s how it works. The first player, who happened to be I the other night, surrenders her iPod to the leader, who pops it into the speaker system. When a song comes on, the rest of the group gives it a thumbs up, thumbs down or some sort of gesture that in essence means, make it stop—now. It’s a little like Pandora Radio. We all decided that the make-it-stop option should be limited to three per voter, as some people are natural-born critics.

My first song was a little lame. It was Chris Isaak’s version of Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man.” As uncoolness goes, I’d hoped Chris Isaak and Neil Diamond would cancel each other out. Turns out, in a group where half the members were over 50 and the other half under 27, I wasn’t so lucky. Thumbs down. Shuffle stopped at my second song, Heart’s “Crazy on You,” which nearly everyone agreed is one of the best songs ever. Saved. Number three killed me. It was Ray Stevens’ “The Streak.”*  ‘Nuf said. (Don’t look, Ethel!)

A few other players were almost as exposed and embarrassed. The hostess blushed as her device found “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The group agreed that my husband took the prize with Claudine Longet’s “Lazy Summer Night.” Who remembers Claudine Longet? The elder half of our group remembered Ms. Longet–her having been married to Andy Williams and having been convicted of fatally shooting her Olympic skier boyfriend and having been with the family at Robert Kennedy’s assassination and funeral.

The younger half of the table was busy banging out a drum chorus of “Make it stop.”

Try the game at your next dinner party and let me know how it goes.

*In the meantime, who’s old enough remember “The Streak?” Who’d like to hear a real life story about 1973’s fleeting pastime?

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August 5, 2011 · 8:26 am

Loving Lucy

I love Lucy.

If you do too, then you know that tomorrow, August 6, 2011, would have been Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday.

I knew quite a few people who would have turned 100 this year, but this weekend we celebrate Lucy.

If I had thought about it earlier, I would have planned to revisit the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Lucy’s hometown of Jamestown, N.Y. I made a pilgrimage there several years ago, when it was just a museum—and a monument of sorts. I decided then that one of my dream jobs would be the cashier in the gift shop. The Center has been vastly expanded since then and now offers a Tropicana room, which you can rent out for parties. Maybe I’ll celebrate my 100th there.

I’ve been an I Love Lucy fan since I saw my first rerun as a young child. It would be hard for me to choose a favorite episode, but I can say with certainty that the most famous ones are not my favorites. “Job Switching” (the candy factory), “Lucy Does a TV Commercial”  (Vitameatavegamin), “Lucy’s Italian Movie”  (stomping grapes), those are for amateurs. “Bull Fight Dance” and “Ethel’s Birthday” might be in my Top 10, along with “Mr. and Mrs. TV Show,” in which Lucy and Ricky sing a jingle I still remember. Do you?

I like any episode in which actor Frank Nelson appeared. He played several different roles throughout the show’s run, most of which included his signature “EEE-Yeeeeeeeeesssss?”

Lucy’s writers played with words, lampooning Ricky’s Cuban accent and occasionally poking fun at English. Remember this one?

I could go on and on. Many documentaries have been produced and volumes written about this American icon and her imprint on American culture. There are hours—even days—to be spent going through the Jamestown museum. Go and see it for yourself.

Do you love Lucy? What’s your favorite episode? How will you celebrate her 100th birthday?

I’ll be away tomorrow but when I get back, I plan to take a day off with my two cats—Ricky and Lucy—and invite my friend Sara to bring over her complete collection of DVDs. I’ll put on my hostess pants and serve up a bottle of Aunt Martha’s Old Fashioned Salad Dressing.

Like Lucy in Episode #98 (“Lucy Cries Wolf”), I may be tied up for a while. See you sometime next week.

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August 4, 2011 · 10:49 am

Super coincidence

Darn you, Stephen Colbert.

On Tuesday I had jotted a blog idea on the back of an envelope and had only to fill it out. This, you recall, was the day the nation’s policymakers approved the creation of a Super Congress of 12 members, to hammer out solutions to the federal budget crisis later in the year.

I had outlined some thoughts about the notion of a “super” Congress. My mind spun the notion into a “Super-duper” Congress, beneath an “Über” Congress. I swear I wrote this, even if you don’t believe me.

As I fleshed out the outline in a hotel room Tuesday night, I flipped on Comedy Central for a little bedtime snack of super-reality.

I found Stephen Colbert interviewing New York Times Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt. Near the end of the interview, Colbert recited the very notes I had just typed in. Great minds.

You’ll notice, if you follow the link to the interview, you might or might not experience a problem with the audio. On one computer, I could get the audio; on another I could not. I did a search on “why can’t I get audio on Comedy Central?” and learned that plenty of people experience this same technical glitch.

Among them is a young person whose conservative father has cut off all of his/her access to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert; this young person was trying to find a work-around.

As a parent of a former sneaky teen, I sympathize with well-meaning parents who want to control access to inappropriate content. But The Daily Show and The Colbert Report? Seriously?

So, I correct myself. Not “Darn you, Stephen Colbert.”  So he unknowingly stole my idea. He got there first. Plus, he has a few more followers than I do. He has millions. I have hundreds.

I say, “You, go, Stephen Colbert. You’re a super, a super-duper, even an über role model.”

Oh, and I’m not even going to bother with “Satan sandwich.”

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August 3, 2011 · 8:30 am

Poker face up

Last night, I noshed from the free dinner buffet at the Residence Inn, my home away from home. While most hotel guests watched baseball in one corner of the lobby, I had the whole dining area to myself; so I spread out in front of the large flat screen TV. They must have known I was coming because it was set on my favorite reality channel, C-SPAN.

The federal debt proceedings were winding down, just as a Senate Banking subcommittee hearing on mortgage foreclosures was airing from earlier in the day. Ah, my old milieu.

I was a financial services lobbyist for many years, spending countless hours in the House and Senate Banking Committee rooms, attending hearings and staffing witnesses.

On C-SPAN you can always tell who’s staffing the witness. It’s typically the person in the camera shot trying not to flinch as his or her boss delivers testimony to committee members from the witness table.

I find it enormously entertaining to watch these staff people, who aren’t always used to being on camera. Because I’ve been there.

Facial movements can be a powerful study in nonverbal communication, often to the point of distraction. Unlike Congressional staff—those people who work for members of Congress—who are accustomed to being on camera, witness staff often must sit excruciatingly still for the slow-going three-to-five minutes their witness is testifying, then again during the Q&A. Even moving one’s eyeballs in a tight shot can appear exaggerated to millions of viewers.

If you have trouble maintaining a poker face as I do–as I used to–controlling a cringe is one of the hardest things you can do, especially once the prepared statement has been read and questions must be answered. Eye-rolling was not tolerated in our house when I was growing up; this is the rule has served me best in my professional life.

If you ever find yourself in the position as the person-behind-the-person, take some tips from me:

  1. Pretend you’re one of those human statues seen on the streets of European cities. Keep your eyes glued to your witness, not the camera lens or extreme corners of the room.
  2. If you don’t think you can do this for three to five minutes, pretend to take notes, though be aware, if you happen to be follically sparse, looking down too far could bounce a bright beam back at the camera.
  3. When your witness strays shockingly from the talking points or pre-rehearsed answer, fight the wince and keep your eyes open. Lock your jaw, lest it drop abruptly and harm your cause.
  4. Finally, if you have friends in the room, don’t make eye contact. Trust me.

The next time you catch a hearing on C-SPAN, see how many Dos and Don’ts you can add. Or maybe you’ve been there and have your own list?

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August 2, 2011 · 10:59 am

M is for . . .

In January of this year, my father and I went to visit the grave sites of his parents, who are buried in Northern Virginia. I hadn’t been since my grandmother was buried in 1970, when I was 10, so it was as though I were visiting that cemetery for the first time.

I find grave markers interesting, so I walked around to visit some of my grandparents’ neighbors, noticing the years of their births and deaths, wondering who might have been when they lived above ground.

I came upon this marker, which stopped me on my path.

Wow, M. Who could this be? Could she be Monica, without a last name? Could it be someone with no family, or someone whose family couldn’t afford any more than a single letter?

For the past six months, I’ve imagined who M was, when she or he might have lived and died. I’ve created scenarios and stories in my mind. Was she a wartime nurse? Was he a child? Does M’s family, if they exist, ever come to visit? Are flowers ever placed on M’s grave? I just couldn’t let it go.

Recently I learned that a friend’s son has a summer job mowing grass and maintaining the grounds at that same cemetery.

I jumped on the chance to learn M’s identity. I e-mailed this picture to my friend, asking if her son could find out who this deceased person, with whom I’d been so preoccupied, was.

A day later, the reply came:

“Not a person. It is a plot marker to direct the grave diggers.  As in ‘plant Mr. Jones at 4M.'”

 This is the first time I’ve been disappointed to learn that someone didn’t die.

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August 1, 2011 · 10:30 am

Culinary crack

I don’t do reality.

Reality TV, that is. Count me out of any televised competition that involves voting anyone off, sending anyone home or criticizing anyone to his or her face before millions of viewers. To my mind, while contestants are willing, there’s nothing more disturbing than watching someone being humiliated. Maybe this goes back to the days when I was always picked dead last for teams.

Since the inception of Survivor and American Idol, I’ve proudly shunned these competitions and rolled my eyes at my friends who get all wrapped up in discussing who’s faring how each week, using contestants’ first names as if they were their buddies.

I find it disgusting to hear people talking about “Scotty” and “Taylor” and “Adam” as if we knew them personally, getting into the dynamics of the competitions and the personal attributes that are going to make or break their success.

There but for the grace of God go I.

I am hooked on The Next Food Network Star. Or I guess it’s just called Food Network Star this season. I wouldn’t know; I never watched the previous six seasons. In Season 7, I haven’t missed a single episode, as contestants are called to create signature dishes, work around situational constraints, endure criticism by celebrity chefs and demonstrate their on-camera presentation skills, for the chance to have their own Food Network show.

As it often works with addiction, I was lured into my first taste by a peer. In the late Spring, a friend from church was generating buzz and support for a fellow church member who had auditioned to become one of 15 finalists. Ever loyal to my churchies, I faithfully went online every day and voted for Mary Beth Albright, whom I had met a few times. She’s a dear.

Mary Beth indeed became one of 15 finalists so, when the season debuted June 5th, I was there—in front of the television. My husband and son jumped on the chuckwagon.

Soon our family conversations, even during the week, centered around the fact that Penny was a good cook but wasn’t likeable, that Alicia’s constant crying was going to hurt her chances, that Mary Beth was going to have to punch up her dishes if she’s to survive. When Paula Deen praised Mary Beth for putting buttermilk and panko in her meatloaf, I immediately altered my own meatloaf recipe. We bristle when the judges speak to our girl harshly, even though we know she can take it.

Every Sunday night, at the end of each program hour, our house is filled with gasps and exclamations, shrieks and high fives, as Mary Beth escapes—often narrowly—the judges’ cleaver.

I recognize that my addictive behavior is hurting my relationships. We’ve left family parties early to make it home in time (we’re a DVR-less household) and already, I’m fretting over how to broach this with friends who are hosting us at their beach house Sunday night. Would it be impolite to request an hour in front of their television? Or is it better to leave a day early to make it home in time for the final four?

Seriously, I’ve got the shakes.

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