I've been remiss in my blogging, in my off-line private journaling, in my correspondence, in my workout schedule, in my housework, in my banking, in pretty damn near everything in which I could possibly be remiss.

I have made up a short list of, not exactly resolutions, but things I want to be able to say, this time next year, that I have accomplished.

Podcasting. RJ and I have a library of sound files from our days in radio comedy, and I intend to put them on-line.

Skinning. Once and for all, I want to learn how to skin this site and make it work correctly.

Sales. Time to put some of my quilts and other hand-mades for sale, and on-line.

Finish. Anything, really, but specifically three or four quilts that are in various stages of completion, or non-completion.

Fit into the jeans I bought yesterday. They are way, way, way too small, and I don't buy clothes that don't fit, but they were also way, way, way too cool, and have given me an incentive.

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, the Miami Herald ran a big ass story about "The December Dillema". That dillema, apparently, is what to do about Christmas and Chanukkah in mixed families. I'm not going to touch that issue with your ten foot pole, but I am going to address their solution.


First of all, matzoh is not associated with Channukah in any way, shape or form. Second of all, it doesn't look like a happy Bavarian cottage, it looks like a freakin' graveyard. Third of all, what the fuck is wrong with just being Jewish, and having Jewish traditions, like Channukah gelt, and spinning the stupid dreidle, and lighting the menorah? And eating fried food? Huh? What is so wrong with that, that we have to coopt the traditions of another religion that coopted their traditions from the pagans who went before (i.e.: the Christmas tree)?

I accept that in mixed faith families, there may be some issues, but, hey. A tree is for Christmas, and not for Channukah. There is NO SUCH FUCKING THING as a Channukah bush, OK? Calling it that makes it no less a Christmas tree. And a Christmas tree, no matter how much my girlfriends try to convince me otherwise, is a symbol of Christmas and of Christ's birth, and not just a house-sized air freshener.

And you know what? I'm OK with that. I respect that. I honor that. I may feel like a stranger in a strange land this time of year, with most of my neighbors decorating the outside of their homes with lights, and the non-stop Christmas music in public places, and the never-ending barrage of all things Christmas, but. But I am a minority. Not in the minority, as in, most people enjoy this and I do not, but A minority. I am a Jew, and this season is not about me or my beliefs, it is a holiday, no matter how secularized it has become, of major significance to Christians. I may even go so far as to say that my recognition of Christmas is more religious than most of my Christian friends. As an outsider, it is easier for me to focus on the meaning of the holiday than of its commercialism.

The RLA grew up in a Jewish ghetto, and has no appreciation for Christmas. He is even, dare I say, a teensy bit offended when invited to share the holiday with our Christian friends. I, on the other hand, having grown up as the only Jew in a one-Jew town, understand that this is an offer of love. Christians, by and large, feel as though their Jewish friends are missing out on something special by not "having Christmas", and so throughout my childhood and into adulthood, I have been invited to tree-trimming parties, to Christmas dinners, and Christmas morning breakfasts. (As an aside, there is nothing I love better than a slice of fried ham with red-eye gravy on Christmas morning, made from the left overs of the Christmas Eve ham. Oh, I am such a bad Jew.)

What the RLA doesn't see is the love that those invitations hold. It is a manifestation of peace on earth, goodwill to men. It isn't a subtle, or not-so-subtle attempt to convert us. It is an acceptance of who we are, and an offer to share with us, what is so special to them. And that, my friends, is true love.

But I digress. I was bitching about a Matzohbread house. That, dear readers, is a cop out. That is not embracing the differences and the "true meaning" of either holiday. That is a piece of shit and not to be tolerated by Christian or Jew. I don't want my Christian friends making potato latkes and calling it hay in the manger cakes, or lighting a menorah and saying that it represents the Christ child, the three Magi, Joseph and Mary and however many goats, horses and sheep are required to make up the number 8.

I want Christians to be Christians, and Jews to be Jews, and Muslims to be Muslims, and Hindis to be Hindis. I am all for a belief in something bigger than us in the universe, but I don't think that a mishmash of pantheism is good for anybody.

Separate, but equal. Share the holiday, but don't force it. I'll invite you to my house for potato latkes and applesauce and chocolate gelt, if you'll make me a slice of fried ham with red-eye gravy. I'll teach you the dreidle song, and you can skip the Twelve Days of Christmas because I already know it. I'm happy to wish you a Merry Christmas, and not a generic Happy Holiday, because it isn't a threat to who I am or what I believe to acknowledge and honor your beliefs.

And, that, in the end, is what this season is all about. Merry Christmas. Happy Channukah. Blessed Kwanzaa. Whatever the hell you say about Tet.

This is it. I've had it. I'm mad as hell, and you know the rest.

First this, and then this.
I loved Daniel Franco . I want a Daniel Franco suit. I would wear his designs in a NY minute. That asshat Santino is an asshat. A petty, drama queen, talented, ruthless, batshit insane egotistical asshat. But let me tell you how I really feel about her.

As for Niner? Well, the Florida Marlins can just take their balls and move wherever the hell they want. I wash my hands of them. Back to the Metsies for me, girls.

Feh.

Oh, and a Bush joke, because, well, because they are so easy and they make me so happy.

Ralph Nader, Al Gore and George W. Bush go to a fitness spa for some fun.

After a stimulating, healthy lunch, all three decide to visit the men's room. There they find a strange-looking gent sitting at the entrance who says, "Welcome to the gentlemen's room. Be sure to check out our newest feature: a mirror that, if you look into it and say something truthful, you will be rewarded with your wish. But, be warned, for if you say something false, you will be sucked into the mirror to live in a void of nothingness for all eternity!"

The men quickly enter, and upon finding the mirror, Ralph Nader steps up and says, "I think I'm the most truthful of us three" and he suddenly finds the keys to a brand new Bentley in his hands.

Al Gore steps up and says "I think I'm the most ambitious of us three" and in an instant he was surrounded by a pile of money to fund his next Presidential Campaign.

Excited over the possibility of having a wish come true, George W. Bush looks into the mirror and says, "I think...", and is promptly sucked into the mirror.

Back in the day, when the family still owned the store, all of us grandchildren were expected to be the sort of walking advertising you just can't buy. We were all clotheshorses, and we came from a family of clotheshorses, and the family business was clothing. There were tailors and ladies dressmakers and milliners up in the branches of our family tree, and that was that. There was no questioning the edict. We were to dress well whenever we appeared in public.
This was particularly difficult for me, because I used to ride my bike twenty miles a day after school, and longer on the weekends, and it was cutoffs and tank tops on my bike. Daddy hated me to come to the store dressed like that, and, thirsty or not, it was in through the back door, and back out. No witnesses.

And then, too, it was the 60s, and I was in the first incarnation of my hippydippy dress: granny boots, maxi skirts, ponchos, crocheted things. Whenever I appeared like that, my mother and father would look at me and announce with scorn, that I was wearing a (what sounded to me like) lopsedeckle, which, they assured me, was Yiddish for "shapeless horse blanket."

Of course, my mother also swore to me that "keebebe und katchka feeder" meant pot roast. It does not. It means horse shit and duck feet, or something like that. But she always said that was what was for dinner on nights she made pot roast (which I thoroughly disliked) so, pot roast it was.

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot lately about lopsedeckles, and how the current trend towards sweater coats seems to epitomize the image. They only look good on Uma Thurman, or Gwynneth Paltrow or any other excessively willowy thing. On short, plump secretaries, they look like, well, like a horse blanket. Especially when they are made of some lumpy acrylic yarn, and they either need to be washed or have been over-(machine)-washed and dried, been sat on for hours and gotten miserably stretched out over the ass.

While I'm on the subject of acrylic, this fake fur thing has got to stop, and now. Real fur does not get matted, or nappy, doesn't look grimy and lasts and lasts and lasts. Fake fur cuffs and collars get ratty looking after the first wash, and go down hill from there.

But I digress. Because I've been thinking about the infamous lopsedeckles of my youth, and I wanted to write about them for you, I hopped on board the internets and did a quick search of Yiddish terms. Even allowing for the spelling variations (Yiddish being basically an onomatopeoic language) there is no lopesedeckle.

There is, however, this:

"Leibtzudekel - Sleeveless shirt (like bib) with fringes, worn by orthodox Jews"

That has to be it, yeah? But there must have been some sort of slang usage, because, well, because my mother and father never would have condemned me for looking like an orthodox yeshiva boy, would they?

Miss JoJo graduated from puppy school last night, and although she was smart enough to carry her biscuit back to her place in line before she ate it, she was hardly the valedictorian. True to herself, though, she was voted Friendliest Dog, or, as I like to call her, Miss Congeniality.

What a hoot.
In other bubbles of non-information that are rumbling around in my head, today is my cousin's birthday. He's a still photographer for major motion pictures, and thanks to him, I am three degrees of Kevin Bacon. This is good bar conversation fodder.

The Bob has signed a contract with XM Radio to host a show starting in March 06. This means I now have to get xm radio in my car or house or some damn place.

I have yet another new addiction now that ANTM is over for the season, (NIK WUZ ROBBED!!) and that is Project Runway. I somehow missed it last year, so I don't understand why I'm supposed to hate Daniel so much. Since he seems to be a neurotic mess with sloppy hair and meticulous tailoring skills, I, of course, love him and want him to win. And, seriously, what's up with the bitch who won't share her closest space?

Look, I know I have a problem with internet surfing in that I do way, way, way too much of it. I follow random link to random link all over the information superhighway, and usually end up on some one-lane dirt road to nowhere because I took an off ramp after seeing an interesting billboard...

Very often I bookmark those lost little dead ends. Sometimes I link to them. Sometimes they go to the mental graveyard that such detritus deserves.

And then, once in a while, I find something truly wonderful. And that is why I need your help, dear readers. Because I found a truly wonderful site and didn't bookmark it. Although I have a shoe addiction, when it comes to purses, I tend to schlep the same one ratty leather bag around until even I realize that it is a disgrace. And the site I stumbled over was a purse designer.

More acurately, it was a pair of purse designers. I think they were English. I think that they both had names that started with an H and that their company and thus their site was both of their names. They had reasonably priced goods that were stylish and trendy. There was a hobo bag in particular that made my shriveled little heart go pitterpat. I think it was in a metallic burgundy leather.

Now, I can write a search string like nobody, and I found a 1983 article on AIDS from Rolling Stone and a source for a copy and the author's name and another article citing the first one, all within five minutes of my boss requesting it thus: "Sometime in the early 80s there was a story about AIDS in Rolling Stone. It may have been a cover story. I think they used the phrase gay plague."

Yet, no matter how I search, no matter what string I put together, I cannot find this website again. I have searched for photos of metallic leather hobo purses. I have ransacked the lists of British designers. I have gone through Google like Sherman through Georgia. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Goose eggs.

I'm asking for help* here. Please?

* I erase my histories and caches with obsessive regularity, so don't suggest that. Plus, I stumbled across this a month ago or more. I've checked all the links on Manolo's Shoe Blog, and the purse blogs. I'm just stumped.