Oddities and Obsessions

Last year, a few weeks before Christmas, a gnarly mole on my shoulder was deemed ‘highly suspicious’ by my dermatologist. Although the biopsy results weren’t in yet, I prepared for the worst. Death. Just two months shy of my fortieth birthday a growth the size of a peanut was going to take me out – rob the world of all I had to offer it, and rob me of the third season of Jersey Shore. With death imminent I needed to get my affairs in order. There was a lot to do: sort out my will and testament; cancel my Netflix membership; and, most importantly, guarantee a good turnout at my funeral.

The funeral part was tricky – trouble was I’d been a bit snippy all year. Annoyed some people. Burned some bridges. If I didn't make amends quickly there was a good chance I was getting buried with just the gravediggers in attendance. In need of a quick way to redeem myself with everyone I had pissed off, I decided to send out Christmas cards. I’d never done it before, but a joyful holiday greeting featuring a jolly Santa and his elves wrapping glittery presents seemed the perfect way to remind everyone of my wonderfulness. Cards, address book and pen in hand, I dipped in to a new sushi restaurant in the neighborhood to grab lunch and pen my final correspondence to loved ones.

I am not now nor have I ever been a Girl Scout...mostly for the simple reason that I grew up on the upper west side of Manhattan and it just wasn’t a thing that we did. It wasn’t ever a viable option. I also felt that there would be only one reason to join and that that reason would designate me a traitor. I would not have joined to perform tasks to learn life skills or help humanity, I would have joined to have access to the greatest cookie in the world: The Thin Mint.

About 6 months ago, my boyfriend and I were meeting some friends of his for dinner and drinks at a local restaurant. We were laughing and drinking and having a great night out when he leaned over and apologized for being a bit delayed (he’d been working in Long Island on a restaurant mural and missed an earlier train). He said, “But I brought something to make it up to you.” and opened his bag to reveal the trademark green box.

Without missing a beat- barely even taking a breath- I grabbed my coat, threw money on the table and announced our immediate departure. I did it unconsciously. I could think of nothing but tearing open the plastic sleeve, eating everything inside and basking in the chocolate mint haze that I’m always left in, post cookie feast. I’m a simple girl.

Does Jiminy Cricket sit on your shoulder? He sits on mine – always has. The first time I saw Pinocchio; he jumped right off the screen and onto my shoulder and has been there ever since. If he were simply my conscience, I would consider that a good thing, but he is not my conscience; he is my worst critic!

“You think that photograph is good? Are you an idiot with absolutely no taste? Print that and the world will laugh at you.”

“You prefer A Place in the Sun to Citizen Kane? Are you friggin’ out of your gourd? Tell anyone that and the world will laugh at you.”

“You are wearing what? That? Put that on and the world with laugh at you!”

It never stops. It is most embarrassing, however, when I fix dinner for company. I will get a compliment and before I can smile and say, “Thank you” I blurt out, “I put too much salt in the sauce, I over-browned the meat before I stewed it …” TMI provided by Jiminy.

On the way back to the car after some lunchtime phở, we stepped into a bird store to say a quick what’s up to the caged canaries and parrots. In the middle of the store, I sneezed and my temporary front tooth flew onto the floor. I picked up the tooth, shrugged at the puzzled proprietors and parrots, and drove to my dentist to have it reattached.

The dentist said this might happen. Cautioned me not to eat anything sticky or chewy. I gazed longingly at caramel apples at Farmer’s Market last week, and had to eat my grilled cheese from Phil’s with a fork and knife. That’s the result of deciding to replace my cracked front tooth with a porcelain crown, and having this temporary plastic piece stand in while the crown’s manufactured. It’s no fun.

I’m used to eating anything I want. Cutlery is never a concern. And now, for three weeks, I’m relegated to eating only that which can be cut into small pieces. I feel like a toddler getting his pizza slice diced into manageable bites. Child’s play.

I am not a totalitarian, you probably aren't either, but there are times when our leftist minds linger on a fleeting thought that fatally undermines our morality. This thought is induced, as I'm sure you are aware, by an errant sock.

Stories have been written to explain the missing sock. Some claim that gnomes are responsible. Others suggest that socks may have just fallen behind the dryer. These tales answer the ontological question: Why is my sock missing?

I am far more concerned with the political and ethical implications of this conversation. Namely, how should one judge a sock that is missing its partner. The school of thought, which I tend to follow in my daily life, is one of tolerance. I throw the singular sock in with rest. One big socky family. Beautiful.

The other school, says with fascist efficiency: "This sock is not normal, eliminate it."

Imagine life without Twinkies? A year ago Hostess Brands went into bankruptcy. This week, in the wake of a labor strike, it sounds as if they may be winding down operations permanently.

I've never been a Twinkies fan, but I love the word. Just for example, from a Seinfeld show, Jerry describes Newman: "He's a mystery wrapped in a Twinkie." It doesn't even have to make sense to be funny.

And in Blue Man Group, the blue men watch intently as a volunteer from the audience tries to eat a Twinkie with a knife and fork. Do not ask me why this is hilarious. It just is.

And even though I may have eaten four of them in my entire life, just say the word and I can smell those sugary vapors that escape when you tear open the package. I remember what it's like to bite the yellow sponge-rubbery cushions of cake and into white filling with the resistance of shaving cream. I can feel the oleaginous residue left (for hours) on the roof of the mouth.

Charlotte Dean

I was reading the waffle recipe that comes with the Toastmaster Waffle Iron and it says that you put ½ cup of batter in your waffle iron to make a 9-inch round waffle.  Seems simple enough. 

About three years ago, I was in Nashville at a weekend songwriting workshop. I stayed at a hotel that claimed to be next door to a Waffle House. To me, when you say “next door,” that means you can walk out one door to the sidewalk then walk up a path to another door.  That’s “next door.”  To get to this particular Waffle House from my hotel I had to hike up a short hill to the highway, walk about 50 feet to the next clearing, then down the same short hill to get to the parking lot of the Waffle House.  Clearly it wasn’t designed for foot traffic from the hotel. Then again, I didn’t really stay in Nashville long enough to explore this design further.

Why is a mimosa called a mimosa? The flower is sort of pink and spikey. The drink is spiked...? The drink is actually orange, fresh orange juice and preferably good champagne and it was first served (or first served under the name mimosa) at the Paris Ritz.  But I’m still not certain why it’s called a Mimosa.

Cherries Jubilee is easier to determine.  It was invented by Auguste Escoffier who prepared the dish for one of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Celebrations in the late 1800’s and paved the way for other fruit flambéed desserts, notably Crepes Suzette which legend has it was created in 1895 at Monte Carlo’s Cafe de Paris by a 14 year old sous chef by mistake – he got too close to a chafing dish and the alcohol caught fire– as he was serving the Prince of Wales who was dining with a young lady whose name was, you guessed it, Suzette. 

My good buddy Al Yankovic invited a group of his friends to attend the premiere of his short movie entitled Al’s Brain….at the County Fair!! His invitation was sweet. It included the phrase “for those of you who feel like schlepping down there..”

The film was about the workings of the brain and had cameos from the comedy world’s elite, including Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (Tim & Eric) Patton Oswalt (Brilliant Stand-up Member of Comedians of Comedy and the voice of the Rat in Ratatouille) and Thomas Lennon (Reno 911, I Love You Man) to name a few. This was a special event held at the Orange County Fair Pavilion where Al’s Brain will be showing for the entire run of the Fair.

During the event, which was private and the night before the Fair opened, we were treated to  “A Taste of The OCF”.

For decades, women’s magazines had basically three subjects: food, dieting, and sex. Gradually, a fourth one evolved, and now it has literally taken the lead. The January issue of Better Homes and Gardens proclaimed “Get Organized!” The February Good Housekeeping promised “More Calm, Less Stuff: Declutter Closets in a Day,” while the February Ladies Home Journal announced “Banish Clutter: Your New Organized Life Starts Today.”

And these are just the tip of the home-organizational iceberg. I haven’t checked Cosmo in a while (I’m more of an EcoSalon kind of girl), but we can probably expect it to jump on the clutter(ed) bandwagon fairly soon with “Less Stuff, More Sex!”

It was George Carlin who was the first to call our attention to stuff, and although we laughed, we pretty much went on our merry collecting way, blithely adding more and more, well, just plain stuff (and fancy stuff, too, along with electronic stuff). Here’s a measure of how far we’ve come—or fallen.

My husband’s and my first house was half of a double. The house was three stories tall, and you had to climb all the way to the third floor to find even the semblance of a closet. It was so shallow that it wouldn’t accommodate a clothes bar with hangers, and we settled for storing a few seasonal pieces by hanging them on the row of six wooden pegs lining the back wall. Recently I came across the following suggestion for managing the detritus of our consumerism: just turn the smallest bedroom in the house into a walk-in closet. (Ah, but where, then, would I store all those piles of papers sitting on the shelves and floor of that room?)