I grew up in a Very Small Town in the south of Florida. My (extended) family was the entire Jewish population of said small town, and had my grandparent's house burned down in about 1956, the entire shtetl would have been eliminated, since we all lived in that same house.

Christmas time would come, and we would decorate our store (AFTER Thanksgiving, thankewverymuch) for same. We would drive down to Miami to the display wholesaler and pick up garlands, and bells and snowflakes and order our supplies of wrapping paper and ribbons. (Actually, this would happen way before Thanksgiving, the ordering and shopping for decorations.)

By Thanksgiving, my GirlCousin and I were making boxes, and curling ribbons, in preparation for the Christmas rush. Boxes. Hundreds and hundreds of shirt boxes and dress boxes and thousands of curled ribbon balls, neatly ordered like green and red checkerboards inside the tops of said boxes. All of them neatly stored under the display counters. The wrapping table would get set up. We would race each other to see who could wrap a box faster, tighter, and with the least number of pieces of tape. I think the record was 3 pieces of tape and under 30 seconds. Everyone in the store answered the phone by saying "Merry Christmas, Stuart Department Store."

My parents would pile my brother and me into the car and we would drive around town to look at the Christmas lights in other people's yards. Nothing says Christmas like a lit-up coconut palm, and don't try to tell me different. One good hard frost and the oranges would sweeten up on the trees, too.

For some reason, however, my whole life, my Christian friends thought that I "had no Christmas" and took it upon themselves to give me one. I have probably decorated as many or more Christmas trees than any Southern Baptist. I would get an invitation to one friend's home and then another. Come for eggnog and decorating the tree! Come for hot cocoa and tree decorating! Come and help us put up the tree! OK. Sure.

The Sistergirlfriendgirl and her family had Tiggywinkle ornaments. Those were the little hedgehogs from Beatrix Potter books. I LOVED the Tiggywinkles. Flash's family had delicate old glass balls from her grandparents. Another friend made popcorn strings. One year when I lived in New York, Bean and her mom decided that decorating the tree wasn't enough Christmas for a nice Jewish girl, and they took me out in a snowstorm to pick their tree out from a lot on Sixth Avenue, and then Bean and I then had to drag the damn monster all the way across the Village to their WestBeth apartment. Brilliant. One of my favorite Christmases, ever.

On Christmas Day, I always made sure that I had an invitation to the most Southern of my Southern friends' homes, because that meant a slice of left-over ham, pan fried and served up with red-eye gravy and grits with enough butter and tobasco sauce to choke the original pig. Or me. Yummmy. Red eye gravy.

Those are great memories. Thank the baby Jesus that nobody had become so brow-beaten into political correctness that I didn't get to have them. I was not, and my parents were not, hell, even my GRANDPARENTS were not offended that I was asked to be part of someone's Christmas celebration. Nobody thought that my friends were trying to convert me. Especially since I returned the favor by teaching them the freakin' dreidle song, and handing out chocolate Chanukkah gelt.

There was no breast-beating and fretting over whether or not we should say Merry Christmas to our customers. Well, in all honesty, probably because we knew for certain that we were the only Jews in town and so a Merry Christmas would not be unwelcome, but also because in those dark days, it was considered polite to express recognition of another's beliefs rather than trying to pretend that we all worship the same nebulous concept of holiness in some non-specific way that could offend nobody and everybody.

I am growing tired of political correctness, can you tell? I think we need a new definition of it. I think that political correctness should be me telling my Christian friends Happy Channukah and them telling me Merry Christmas and we all smile and say "YESH!" Does it matter? The bottom line is that we are wishing each other peace and joy.

Namaste. The god in me recognizes the god in you. We are all one. Merry Christmas to all, unless you prefer Happy Channukah. Or a bountiful Kwaanza. Or whatever.

Namaste.

I was surfing around on the internets just now, and as usual, ended up on Go Fug Yourself, because those girls are a stitch, and I can never get enough of snark about celebutards. They have advertising on GFY, and I don't mind, in fact, now and then I click through to cute clothes or stuff. Today, though, the top ad is from PETA and it's some claptrap about the "horrendous cruelty in the Australian wool industry."

You know what? Fuck 'em. Fuck every one of those PETA assholes. I mean, what? Shearing sheep is cruel? Is it cruel to cut your own hair? Granted, sheep generaly don't go into the whole shearing process voluntarily, but horrendously cruel? Uh, no.
I am so over PETA. I am over people who think it's OK and desirable to ruin a perfectly good fur coat by tossing paint on strangers. Assault is OK? I don't care if it's assault by cream pie or assault with a deadly weapon, assault is assault is assault. Matters of degree don't matter to me.

I am over people who believe that they have the right to dictate how I live, how I dress, how I eat. It's still, although just barely, America, people. That means I have the right to wear a shearling coat and you have the right to be appalled. You do NOT have the right to make it illegal for me to wear it, nor do you have the right to damage it because you don't like it.

If only that were true, there would be a lot of women on the Metrorail with their makeup bags torn from their hands, their capri-pants-with-spike-heels ripped off their bodies and their weaves snatched from their heads. Not to mention the veritable rainfall of cell phones that I would single handedly cause. But I digress.

If I want to eat fois gras, I should be able to plunk down a thick wad of cash at Chef Norman's and dine on a tender morsel of delicately seared fatted goose liver, by G-d and Ben Franklin, I should be able to. Fuck PETA and their isms. Go chew on your own granola, assholes. I'm with Tony Bourdain on this one. There is something fundamentally wrong with people who don't enjoy food.

And yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that it's really bad for me to wear fur, as much as I love the stuff. Maybe that's why I live in Florida, so I can't give in to temptation. Although, in my own defense, the only fur I own is older than me and came to me from my husband's maternal grandmother. It's a lovely black Persian lamb car coat with (on me) 3/4 length sleeves trimmed in black mink. Or maybe black unsheared beaver. Soft. Thick. Furry. Warm. And, hello? economically speaking, a hell of a lot more efficient than a woven cloth coat. It has lasted 60-some years. It is still in pristine condition and doing a good job of keeping me warm. Find me a down vest with those credentials. Oh. Right. Down is probably cruel, too. So if down is bad, and wool (where the animal fucking lives after its resources are harvested, hello?) is bad, and fur is bad, what are we furless humans supposed to wear to keep warm in the winter? Should we crank up the heat on our non-renewable resource gas or oil or coal heaters? Should we use electricity from the same non-renewable, corporate whore-owned sources? Should we just hibernate?

Just believe and live the way you want, and stay the fuck out of my pantry and my closet. And my bedroom. And my womb. And my liquor cabinet. And my face.

And just so you know? Leather is lovely and pleather is just nasty.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I had two and a half martinis last night at Star's house, along with some yummy latkes and apple pie and I went from loquacious drunk to laying on the bathroom floor to puking out the car window all the way home... in five minutes flat.

On two and a half martinis?!

What is wrong with me? Is it age? Is it her brand of vodka? Is it my liver, finally saying enough is enough?
The last time I tried to keep up with Star, much less Star and her sister, I ended up in a 16-hour power nap. I blamed it on drinking margaritas in the blistering sun on Sarasota beach, but I may have to rethink the drinking with Star.

I just wish I knew what happened. Oh, I mean, I know what happened. I drank too much and had to answer for my bad judgement. But how it happened? How did I go from jolly buzz to sick como un perro in a (literal) heartbeat? If I'd been in a bar, I would have sworn I was dosed. But since I was among family and friends, I just have to sack up and admit that I simply couldn't hold my martinis.

Woof. I remember telling the RLA on the drive home "you've never seen me like this." He was worried that I was going to make a habit out of it. To tell you the truth, the last time I was sick like that was 30 years ago, before I learned that gin and I are not friends. In fact, gin and I don't even like to be at the same parties.

It's my birthday! Yeah! Presents! Adoration! Tiaras! Whoo-hoo!

I'm officially older than dirt, and have lived more than half of my expected life. I can still drink young punks under the table, and shake my bootie till the wee small hours. I can't actually get up the next morning, but by the middle of the afternoon, I'm fine. It's the small victories, people.
The RLA was the first with the presents this morning. He gave me a beautiful Spanish fan... for the hot flashes. On the one hand, I think this is lovely, and dear and sweet. On the other hand, I'm ready to shove the thing up his ass for reminding me about them. He insisted that I bring it to the office, to have it always at the ready.

I was too polite to remind him that my office keeps its thermostat at the requisite Florida setting of Meat Locker, and that I keep a heater under my desk to keep from getting frostbitten toes. I don't think he reads my blog often enough to read this, either.

My second present was from RJ, who sent me a birthday e-card that had a downloadable tiara. I'm wearing it. I have absolutely no shame. Or pride. One or the other. In an hour we'll have our company holiday lunch, which means... more presents!! And food!! And wine!!

Life is good. Or at least a hell of a lot better than the alternative.



Please note the fabulous red Swingline stapler in the background among all the crap on my desk and surrounding areas.

I was saddened by the notice of Peter Boyle's death. While I have managed to see absolutely no episodes, ever, of Everybody Loves Raymond, and I loathed his character in Joe (but, well, we were supposed to), I have always adored his turn as Frankenstein's monster in Young Frankenstein.
Young Frankenstein is arguably one of the best Mel Brooks movies, ever, anyway, what with its all-star cast, and spot-on satire of the genre, but Peter Boyle stole the show when he and Gene Wilder did their song and dance number.

Last March, The Coolest Person in The World (tm) was in Boca, and we met up at a beach-side bar. We promptly put down a plate of oysters, requiring the drinking of a shot (or two) of vodka to prevent any untoward side effects of said oysters. Then, because a single shot of vodka can get lonely, we had to have several more. I think there may even have been a bottle of champagne as an apperitif prior to heading out for dinner.

Dinner required more alcohol, because we eat our steaks rare, and, you know, e-coli and stuff. In any event, I was fairly well oiled by the time someone at our table pointed out that Peter Boyle was sitting two tables away. I behaved myself, and did not accost him until he passed us on his way out.

Then I stood up (not at all unsteadily, I may say) and very politely told him "Mr. Boyle, excuse me, but I just had to tell you that the scene in Young Frankenstein where you do "Puttin' on the Ritz" is sheer brilliance. It has always been one of my favorite pieces of your work. Thank you."

He just gave me a big-ass grin and told me that his wife always said that was "real" acting. I got the feeling that he was just a tiny bit happy that it was Young Frankenstein and not Raymond that I wanted to talk about.

After he left, and The Coolest Person In the World (tm) thanked me for not falling over or otherwise embarrassing her, we watched him leave and thought, damn... he does not look healthy. I'm really a little surprised he lasted as long as he did.

The RLA, our new friends the PDBs* and I went to Art Basel this weekend. There I learned a couple of things I didn't know about Art. That's art with a capital a, proles. Art that costs more per square foot than I make in a week. This is Important, Gallery Art, and not for folks like me. The dealers were Very Happy to make that clear to me.
Here's what I learned, in a nutshell.

1. The only art worth looking at in this vast space was art created eighty to twenty years ago. Joan Miro, Yves Tanguy, Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse... like that.

2. There are only two acceptable positions when drawing/painting/sculpting a nude. These are, in the case of a female, lying on her back with a point of view directly up the ole cooch, foreshortening the head to irrelevance, or, in either gender, bent over and fingering one's own arsehole.

3. The dealers are self-absorbed, arrogant assholes who have a blatant disdain for artists or their audiences. Consider this interaction.

RLA, picking up a postcard advertising a "commissioned portrait show": Commissioned portraits? By whom?
Dealer: Artist X. If you want to commission a portrait of yourself. That's what this show is about.
RLA: Really? I'm a portrait artist myself. (He reaches into his jacket for a postcard.)
Dealer: NONONONONONO. I don't want to see that.
Me: Really? Not even to be polite? You won't just look at it?
Dealer: NONONONONO. We're really just focused on what we are doing here.
Me, looking around and seeing nobody in this booth except myself, the RLA, the little beige dealer** and his assistant: "And a roaring fucking business that would be."

RLA and I stomp out.

4. Big-headed Japanese anime-style cartoon children or Sailor Moon-dressed pubescent girls are hott.

5. Magnetic tape, when stretched across a frame into a 5-foot square, is worth $70,000 dollars, and there is at least one idiot willing to pay that much for it, because the piece was already sold. Or at least that's what the abusive bitch who yelled at me for several minutes for looking at said piece too closely and (GASP!) BREATHING ON IT!!! told me. To add injury to insult, she didn't even move her cell-phone away from her ear as she was loudly berating me.

6. Glitter is hott. So are rhinestones and shiny plastic "gems".

7. Impasto is back with a vengance. The thicker the build up the better. It is important to use silicon caulking as a base for your paintings.

8. Figural art (if it isn't big-headed anime or self-fingering nudes) is totally not hott. In fact, if you are a figural artist, you need to be an "outsider" artist and do big-headed, big-eyed Keane sort of little girls in densely inexplicable situations that are vaguely distubing. Extra points are awarded for including dead animals in the composition.

9. Sculpture is good if it: sits on the floor, is constructed of iron or steel or blackened metal, represents random body parts unrelated to each other or anything else in the installation, is kinetic. In fact, one of the nicest pieces I saw consisted of two old-fashioned floor fans, painted shiny black, facing each other. In between was a piece of magnetic tape (AHA! a trend?) spliced into a circle, held aloft and shimmering by the wind generated by the two fans.***

10. There seems to be a factory somewhere in Miami that produces women of a certain age with identical nose jobs, inflated lips, too-tight cheek bones, highlighted blonde hair and plastic grapefruit inserted under their skin on the fronts of their chests. They travel in packs, too. They are not shy about opining about the Art they are looking at, either. Their bust size is higher than their IQs. This is a quote from one of them: Look. This is all symbolic. This symbolizes a bridge.

The "this" in question was a photograph, one of a dozen or so in an installation, that depicted some sort of dining table detritus stacked up to look like, well, in her defense, a bridge. Or a dock.The rest of the photos were of what the dining table would look like if you let a pack of ten year olds play with their food for a couple of hours. Sugar cubes arranged in circles. Crumbs piled up into tiny pyramids. Like that. I refrained from asking her what she thought the bridge was symbolic of. I didn't want to get yelled at again.

On a related note, the RLA and I watched "Art School Confidential" a couple of weeks ago. Rent it. If you ever went to art school, film school or knew anyone who did, you will laugh yourself sick. If you didn't? This movie is a documentary, really.

* Persons Dressed in Black

**The dealer was monochromatic. He was sort of tanned, his hair was sort of brownish, he was dressed in a tan/beige suit with matching shirt and tie, and he was wearing perfectly circular, thick-framed, light tortoiseshell glasses.

*** No. Really. That was one of the best pieces, except, you know, for the old masters like Stella or Warhol.