It Goes to Eleven

Anyone who was reading this blog about this time last year (which was almost the last time I posted. Oops?) may recall that I'm a big fan of birthdays. Particularly my birthday.

Which is -- ahem -- today. And not only is it 11/11, but of course this year it's 11/11/11, making it even more super special cool.

I share my birthday with Fyodor Dostoevsky, Kurt Vonnegut, Leonardo DiCaprio, Calista Flockhart, Demi Moore, Carson Kressley and Stanley Tucci. Oh, and Jessica Sierra! From American Idol Season Four! An impressive crew, no?

Today also would have been the fourth birthday of someone very special: a beautiful little girl named Madeline Spohr, who died suddenly in April of 2009 from a respiratory infection -- a consequence of her having been born eleven weeks early. Her parents have established a wonderful charity called Friends of Maddie that supports families with preemies in the NICU.

The Spohrs have recently recorded a sweet song that Maddie's dad wrote and are making it available for download --for just .99! -- with all the proceeds going to Friends of Maddie. Read more about the project here. If you would consider spending 99 cents for a really good cause, and/or making a larger donation to Friends of Maddie, it would totally make my day. And more importantly, it will make the day of a family with a new baby going through a difficult time. And that would be really super special cool.

Thanks, friends!

Dude, Where's My Car?

A week ago today I woke up to discover that we had been (involuntarily) relieved of my trusty ten-year old Volvo station wagon. The previous evening, there had been a rash of car break-ins throughout our neighborhood, and some upstanding individual had managed to make off with our family car, strewn with granola bar wrappers, stuffed with the kids' library books and with their beloved Bop It in tow. I've been joking that justice will be served when the thief sees what's under the carseats, but that joke is wearing thin. We want our car back.

I'm telling you this because I just read this story, about a woman in Boulder, CO whose stolen bike was recovered a mere four hours after she posted about it on Twitter and her blog. It can happen, and I'm confident that our car can be found in much the same way.

Because the car didn't just disappear.

It's somewhere in Baltimore right this very second. We suspect, based on the pattern of other thefts from our neighborhood, that it is somewhere in the vicinity of the Reisterstown Road Plaza, in the neighborhood that stretches towards the intersection of Park Heights and Seven Mile Lane. (When our other car was stolen in '07, my husband had the unbelievable good -- or bad -- luck to see the thief driving our stolen car to run errands at the Plaza Home Depot. A chase ensued, but the thief managed to get away, only to abandon our car a week later.)

So, have you seen our silver 2001 Volvo V-70 wagon?

• The license plate starts 8AD.
• If the driver is using a blinker, the right one is fast blinking due to a burned out bulb.
• There's a campaign '08 bumper sticker on the left rear bumper.

If you spot my car being driven in Baltimore, or see it abandoned somewhere, please call the police. And anything you can do to spread the word would be so appreciated. Because my three year old would really like his favorite Thomas the Tank Engine umbrella back. And his mother would like to be able to teach him that sometimes the good guys win.

Thank you.

Update 6/2/11: Due to an error on the part of the police dispatcher, the car was not reported stolen -- as in, entered into the database -- till yesterday. What this means for its possible recovery, we're not sure. But we're, uh, not very happy about it. Next time, I'm calling Bunk and McNulty.

Did Someone Say "3 Backyards"?

So it got to the point this spring that I was talking about my brother's latest film so much on Twitter that a follower in North Carolina -- a place that the film has yet to play -- actually dreamed about seeing it. I guess I'm not a bad publicist, huh?

But it occurs to me that while I was quite wrapped up in talking about the film on Twitter and Facebook (Disclosure: I actually run the social media for the film) that I hadn't said a word about it here since this post from last year.

And much has happened since Eric was named Best Director at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, making him the only person in history to do that twice. (Sorry. I had to get that in there.)

Namely, the film was released! In actual theaters! With popcorn! My brother, whom I adore, if that isn't totally obvious, was profiled in the Arts and Leisure Section, among many other places.

And major critics like those in The New York Times and the New Yorker really liked the film. No, no, they really liked it. They used words like "exquisite" and "American independent filmmaking at its best."

But the good news is it's not too late! 3 Backyards continues to play arthouse theaters around the country, with more bookings continually being added. Check this list to see if it's coming to you. You can also buy 3 Backyards on DVD beginning 6/28. Haven't seen the trailer? Well, it's your lucky day!



Which brings me to something fun.

Right after I saw 3 Backyards at Sundance last year, I told Eric it reminded me of a quirky little film called "Winter of the Witch" that we used to watch in elementary school, a film we always just called "the happy pancake movie."

But oddly enough, after seeing the film's New York premiere, actor Stephen Wallem, who co-stars with Eric's best friend Edie Falco on Nurse Jackie, told Eric that 3 Backyards reminded him of ... the happy pancake movie.

Which got me thinking about the happy pancake movie and why it stayed with so many people.

Which led me to write a story about the happy pancake movie and why it stayed with so many people.

A story that appears in this Sunday's New York Times. Hope you like it.

And here's your chance to enjoy 22 minutes of blissful Me-generation nostalgia.



Are you one of the witch faithful? Please let me know!

Hello? Is This Thing On?

So, um, yes. It's been a little ... quiet in these parts.

I thought it was time to make an appearance and say hello to anyone -- that means both of you! -- who may read this space but who aren't on Facebook or Twitter, where I'm alive and well and sharing brilliant nuggets of wisdom on a regular basis. I also give out toasters and tote bags. Join the fun, won't you?

I wanted to use this opportunity to say something rather shocking. I hope you're prepared.

I do not care about this season of American Idol.

At.

All.

I don't know what's wrong with me. Is it them? Is it me? Is this something I need to discuss with a professional? Or is it that I discovered that I enjoyed the brilliant recaps of P.F. Tompkins more than the show itself?

I don't know. I just...can't watch.

I can't watch that Scotty McCreery. He skeers me, with his man-child freakiness and his eerie resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman and that sideways tilt thing he does with head and the microphone.

I can't watch Jacob Lusk, who shrieks at me, and always seems dangerously close to having a religious epiphany or an aneurysm during every performance.

I can't watch Haley Reinhart, in those dresses they put her in that always seem to make her look like an office temp in 1987.

Not a fan of James, even with his precious back story and his tail thingies. And Lauren? The one I think is probably the most commercially viable and strongest voice? I find myself captivated not by her performances but by the fabulousness of her eyebrows and by the insane amounts of mascara she wears.

I get about everything I need from the recap in the last two minutes, when they show a 20 second highlight of each performance and flash the 866 numbers on the screen. I sometimes fast forward and hear a snippet of the judges, but Good Lord, are the judges boring this season or what? As Time's James Poniewozik said on Twitter, the judging is "like a dial that goes from 'great' to 'awesome.'" (I would add the all-important stop at "I love you, man!" from Steven Tyler.)

Hey! Speaking of which, did you know that I'm the newest "Top Cop" for the Us Weekly Fashion Police? Well, I am. And fittingly, one of my first jokes -- in this week's issue, with the royal wedding on the cover -- is about J. Lo and Steven Tyler. Proving that maybe I have been paying attention. Just a little.

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Growing up, I never attached any special significance to the so-called holiday season.

We didn't celebrate Christmas, and Hanukkah was just another in a string of Jewish holidays that was festive, but not really noteworthy. We would light our menorah, eat our latkes, and get chocolate gelt. A crisp dollar bill or two might arrive in an envelope postmarked Miami Beach. But there was no "official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle." No nights rendered sleepless with anticipation. The Christmas season was mostly special because we got off from school.

The most special time of my year was always...this one. It was the first two weeks of November that I looked forward to. They were positively electric.

Why? Because of Halloween. God, how I loved Halloween. I loved dressing up. I loved trick or treating. I loved giving out candy. I loved eating candy, which was otherwise essentially verboten. I still maintain that the smell of a trick or treat bag -- not the smell of any one particular candy, mind you, but the sweet smell of the mingled wrappers -- is one of the best aromas in the universe. Yankee Candle needs to get on that one. (And noodle kugel, while they're at it.)

But it didn't stop there. November 1st is my brother Eric's birthday. So there would be more celebration. And a Pepperidge Farm layer cake, the Mendelsohn family standard. There's a photo of one of Eric's parties where he's blowing out the candles at the kitchen table and you can see all of our trick or treat bags hanging from the doorknob behind him. Now that I'm a parent, I cringe for my mother, wondering how she managed the collective insanity of five small children completely hopped up on sugar.

November 7th is my brother Andrew's birthday. More celebration. More cake. (You're feeling the frenzy by this point, no?)

And then came the jewel in the crown of my year: November 11th. Why, it's Veterans' Day, for God's sake! Is there any holiday that has a bigger hold on little girls' imaginations?

Just kidding.

I mean, it is Veteran's Day. But it's also my birthday.

And I'm a firm believer that the world can be neatly divided into people who don't make a big deal about their birthdays, and people who do. Count me firmly in the latter group. I take after my friend Maggie, who believes the celebration of one's birthday should extend to the entire month of one's birth. Hear, hear.

I always loved being the birthday girl, having my moment in the sun. Waking to find the kitchen festooned with decorations and presents. Having the day off from school. (That was for the veterans, not me, of course, but it only added to the mystique.) Getting to choose my favorite dinner. And of course, the cake. I've never outgrown my passionate love of birthday cake, though I've long since moved on from Pepperidge Farm. I find it virtually impossible to attend a child's birthday party and pass up a piece of cake -- the more icing, the better. (Read about last year's birthday cake debacle here.)

Even now, the crackle of burnished leaves underfoot and the smell of the air at this time of year makes me incredibly wistful and nostalgic, for a time when Halloween signaled the start of all the magic. You can have all your chestnuts roasting on an open fire and your sleigh bells jingling. Just save a Kit Kat and some birthday cake for me.

Sugar and Spice

I distinctly remember the moment in high school when I realized that every single one of my mother's close friends was a teacher.

Well, to be more precise, it wasn't the moment I realized it, but the moment I realized what it meant.

My mother was a kindergarten teacher, and the fact that virtually all of the adult women I knew were teachers as well -- including every single member of the tight-knit crew with whom my mother had gone to New York's Hunter College -- was just one of those facts that had never merited any special consideration before. It was just something about my world that I had absorbed, like the fact that we were Jewish, or that we lived in the suburbs.

But one day the implications of it finally dawned on me: it wasn't an accident or a coincidence that all of those women were teachers. They all became teachers because there just weren't very many options for women graduating from college in 1952. (Mom also knew a rogue nurse or two, to be fair.)

Perhaps that's why I had always harbored a romantic fascination with the one friend of my mother's who had refused to conform. Sue Slade marched to the beat of her own very distinctive drummer: an honest-to-goodness Bohemian, she became a theater casting agent and even once worked as a secretary for Marlon Brando. Sue eventually wrote a play called Ready When You Are, C.B., which ran for 80 performances on Broadway, directed by theater luminary Joshua Logan. It's still performed in schools and community theater from time to time. Sadly, she committed suicide in 1971, the year she turned 40. I never got to know her.

By the time I graduated from college almost 40 years after my mother and her crew, the idea that women could only be teachers or nurses seemed to me like a quaint relic, something akin to Victrolas and corsets. It had been drummed into my head throughout my childhood (see: Title IX, Free To Be You and Me) that I could be absolutely anything I wanted to be and the fact that I was a girl wouldn't limit me in any way.

I laughed when my first editor after college, after watching me turn around a transcription project at lightning speed, warned me never to let anyone know how fast I could type. It seemed charmingly anachronistic. He was mostly kidding, right? Because no one really thought that way any more, did they?

I'm now the mother of two little boys who have female doctors and female T-ball teammates and a female Senator. Maybe I haven't been watching the messages we're sending little girls these days as vigilantly as I could, but I naively assumed that we were still mostly on the right path. (I do take credit for sending a letter to Nickelodeon four years ago complaining about their sexist marketing of Dora. I loved that my then two-year-old son was a fan of a show with a strong female lead character like Dora. Why did they only make Dora merchandise suitable for little girls? Did they really need to spin off Diego just because he was a boy?)

Which is why I was so disappointed when I opened a recent Land's End catalog and saw this:



See, it turns out that boys and girls "aren't built the same." Girls' coats apparently need to be "pretty & playful" while boys' are "rugged & ready." Really? In 2010? It seemed so ludicrous -- so 1952 -- that I find it incredibly hard to imagine the meeting in which this copy was approved. Did someone think it was an episode of Mad Men, maybe?

Has no one at Land's End heard of Brandi Chastain?

Or Hillary Clinton, a woman who mounted a completely credible bid to be the President of the United States a mere two years ago?

I was irked, but dropped it. An aberration, I decided.

Until last night, surfing around looking for bunk beds for my boys, I came across this:

Sigh. Need I walk through the litany of misconceptions here, starting with the idea that girls "just wanna have style" and need "sweet" bunk bed designs, while their boy counterparts need "manly" bunk beds that are just as "tough and cool" as they are?

For the record, marketers of the world, I'm perfectly ok if my three- and six-year-old sons sleep in "sweet" beds. They are neither particularly tough nor cool, and I'm fine if things remain that way for a while.

But you know who is tough and cool? And rugged and ready? Their seven year old cousin. In fact, like scores of little girls before her, she recently started trekking regularly to the ice rink with big dreams.

You know. To play hockey.

So take that, Land's End and simplybunkbeds.com. I'm choosing to believe that Alexandra is the kind of little girl we should be raising in 2010, one who won't fit in the ridiculously outdated stereotypes you're still trying to sell her. And you know what? I bet Sue Slade would be proud.

Irksome: Some Things Me No Likey

Because let's be real. My last post was way too Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms. To make things right, here are 10 Things That Irk, Annoy or Otherwise Make Me Unhappy. With apologies to anyone who read an earlier version of this on Facebook.

1. Any food that's well-done or burnt.

2. Heavy metal music. Also, in the same vein: professional wrestling. Although I did once do a story about Stone Cold Steve Austin.

3. Far too many grammatical and spelling mistakes to catalog. But I'll go with people who say "I could care less," when they mean they couldn't care less. Because that's not bad grammar. It's just stupid.

4. Science fiction. The whole damn genre. There, I said it.

5. The default assumption that I wanted mayo on my sandwich, even if I didn't specify. Because I didn't. And while we're at it, bread with caraway seeds. Caraway seeds are the devil. In little Satanic seed form. Or something like that.

6. People in crowded public places (stores, airports, etc.) who don't pay attention to where they're going and back everybody else up with their cluelessness. (See also: entitled highway mergers, non-signaling lane-changers.)

7. The popularity of flats and skinny jeans. Whoever is responsible was clearly not thinking of my needs. I cannot rock this look. Trust me.

8. Getting the cuffs of a wool sweater wet, like while washing my hands. Worst. Sensation. Ever. Also, wet socks.

9. TJ Maxx's ridiculous policy of making you put your items on the dressing room hanger so the attendant can count them for you. Even when it's clear you only have one item. Or, more broadly, any unnecessary, officious formality. Inefficiency, generally speaking, drives me bonkers.

10. Lemon desserts. Why anyone would bother with lemon when there's chocolate to be had is one of life's great mysteries.