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"But it's MY day!"

Dear Bridesmaids:

Thanks for supporting me and gritting your teeth through all of my hissy fits, meltdowns, passive-aggressive e-mails, inexplicable need for you to wear a hot pink, bulbous dress comprised primarily of taffeta, insistence on an unaffordable bachelorette party in Las Vegas at which I sobbed into my 10th margarita on the first (and second and third) night bemoaning the fact that my fiance was “totes getting lap dances from some bimbo right now — if he cheats on me it’s OVAH! OVAH!!,” five — count ‘em, five! — bridal showers at various inconvenient venues in the tristate area, plan to have the entire bridal party dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (for which you had to take five $100 dance lessons) as we all enter the badly-decorate banquet hall I spent seven months obsessively kvetching over and finally — listening to me say, for the 1000th time in my most plaintive, nasal whine: “BUT it’s MY DAY!”

There’s just ONE more eensy thing you gotta do ladies: see all those unsightly expression lines on your face? They gotta go. And YOU have to pay for it!

This just in from The New York Times: bridepsychozillas are now insisting their bridal parties get botox.

The fashion-conscious French

Gee.

I always knew the French were a tad more obsessed with aesthetics than most of their fellow earthlings, but this is taking it a bit far:  Faiza Silmi was denied citizenship because of … her outfit.

“I would never have imagined that they would turn me down because of what I choose to wear,” Ms. Silmi, 32, told The New York Times.

Her offending accessory? The veil she wears over her face in keeping with her Muslim faith.

Silly rabbits

They seem so fluffy, huggable and twee. Yet their Arcadian act conceals a cunning, Machiavellian mind that doesn’t fool The National Geographic for one second.

As the glossy histrionically reports, rabbits and badgers may ruin Stonehenge and some 280 other archaeological sites in southwest England alone.

The culprit? Global warming (of course), which has helped more and more tricky tunnelers survive the inhospitable blasts of winter.

Cheers to that

Wha you say? Wuz zat? Hang on lemme puh on my glasses so ken heer yu biter.

Good news, drunkards: drinking makes you happy and smart. This from an alcohol study center no less – notorious wet blankets!

The Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that stopping drinking – whether you’re a full-blown stumblebum or just an occasional tippler – can lead to health problems including depression. And get this: failing to hit the sauce with regularity (and aplomb!) can actually create a reduced capacity in your dried up raisin of a brain to produce new neurons, aka neurogenesis.

From the press release:

“ ‘This research provides the first evidence that long-term abstinence from moderate alcohol drinking – rather than drinking per se – leads to a negative mood state, depression,’ ” said study senior author Clyde W. Hodge, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and pharmacology in the UNC School of Medicine.

The study also found that the emergence of depression was associated with a profound reduction in the number of neural stem cells (cells that will become neurons) and in the number of new neurons in a brain region known as the hippocampus. This brain region is critical for normal learning and memory, and recent studies show that the development of neurons in the hippocampus may regulate mood.”

The kicker: the study was funded by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Good morning!

My daily commute is a veritable sprint from one unpleasant event to the next. But one person in particular crops on a daily basis to make my mornings (especially when I’ve hit the sauce too hard on a holiday weekend!) EEEEEEEEeeeek!xtra fun.

Her voice reminds me of the caw of a combative crow circling, circling, circling a wounded rodent, with occasional staccato-like undertones of the kind of grating, metal-on-metal violence often heard in subway stations (but usually emitted from the iron horse itself, not one of its dutiful human enablers). Bonus: standing and sweating through her daily, extended soliloquies sends my nervous system into such an overwrought tizzy, I no longer have to buy coffee in the morning. I’m awake!!

Her manner could be likened to that of addlepated street-corner preacher desperately trying to warn the heathen masses that if their blank, wooden denial of his/her vision of God(s) continues, their future as perma-charcoal is a given. She lacks subtlety, a quality I confess that I do find highly relatable.

Who is this meshuga lady? She is the person whom the MTA has chosen to equip with a large and effective bullhorn on the Uptown platform of the 4,5 train at Broadway/Nassau. She has evidently been tasked with keeping commuters “in line.” She approaches her job with the level of commitment seen in many of Stephen King’s classically campy portrayals of determination gone terribly, terribly awry: think Cujo/Chrisine/Annie Wilkes.

She extols riders to “get BACK!” when the subway’s arriving; she keeps riders updated with a constant news feed of delays due to sick passengers, police “activity”, train congestion; she insists that we “make ROOM for DEPARTING passengers thank YOU – that means you missy with the yellow tank top I see you don’t look at me in that tone of voice get BACK!”; she reminds us to “not crowd the damn door – get IN – don’t just stop at the door you in the brown suit there yeah you get IN hello people are you LISTENING TO ME?!” (Memo to lady: YES!)

Finally, if it’s clear that we will all lemming-like attempt to wedge ourselves into the metal cube that will deliver us (two seconds faster! Every second counts!!) to our plastic cubicles situated in large metal and glass cubes on various cubes or “blocks” throughout the city — despite her repeated, increasingly fortissimo orders and the clear fact that our fat asses are so not fitting on that car, she’ll elbow her way into the crowd and issue directives via her bullhorn directly in commuters’ ears.

While she hurts my brain many Mondays (and occasionally on Friday) and she hurts my soul every day (even on the weekends when I think about her) I have never seen an MTA worker who enjoys their work more than she – and that’s saying a lot. Has anyone else noticed Mr. Perky who patrols the Union Square stop? I get tired just thinking about him.

Mixed signals

These days, actresses are too thin. This just in from Captain Obvious.

OK, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to gather the empirical evidence (Kiera, more than one Kate, Angelina, more than one Nicole — and now even the previously bodacious Kristen Johnston is looking rexi).

The media at large and Hollywood make their bread and butter (ahem) in part by (overtly or not) encouraging actresses and models to “diet” themselves to the verge of malnutrition (how many jobs would Kiera get if her spare frame added 30 lbs? How many covers of top magazines would Nicole Ritchie — whose resume is as thin as her post-partum wasp waist — appear on?) and cashing in on the lucrative advertising, movie, god help us singing and modeling gigs they generate. Not to mention the controversy and increased exposure (and bigger, juicier paychecks) their increasingly wraith-like jutaciousness.

Living in a society where starvation is an issue for very few of its inhabitants, where walking down any city street you’re bombarded with images of bony divas juxtaposed with ads for 700 calorie coffee drinks and muffins could only lead to a justifiably addled perspective on food consumption. So you’ve got your average obese American who hates him/herself (my lanky, hot husband who is the last person who I would expect to fall victim to body dysmorphic disorder just last night referred to himself as a willowy marshmellow when I asked why he was comparing the pros of various local gyms), your American who’s perfectly svelte but lives in fear of becoming obese and obsesses over every last calorie and the miraculous few who are too smart, clueless or genetically blessed to give their love handles a second thought.

I do know that our coverage of dangerously thin models and actresses has to change. I love New York magazine — it’s witty, smart, cool but not overly so — and I rarely disagree with its tone. But a recent review of Get Smart struck me as oddly offensive precisely for those reasons.

Here’s a snippet:

“Like most young actresses, [Anne] Hathaway has dropped too many pounds — in a couple of shots her cheeks have sunken so deep that they can barely hold her giant teeth. But the sleekness, hard lines, the blacks and bright green against that ivory skin — yowza. I also like the scene where she wears a tousled jacket and loosened tie: It says ‘Okay, boys. Deal me in.’ After this and The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway must have designers camping out in front of her co-op.”

Let me get this straight: Hathaway is so skinny, all of the lovely, womanly fat on her face has completely disappeared; in fact, she looks like a horse when she smiles — her scrawny cheeks can “barely hold her giant teeth.” “Yowza.” I don’t know how David Edelstein got from point A to point B, and I’m not even going to address the “Okay boys. Deal me in” bit.

Just out of curiousity, after reading the piece I googled actresses anorexic. I got 459,000 hits. actresses too thin. I got 303,000 hits. actresses skinny beautiful. I got 1,060,000 hits. Boo.

Today, news of a model killing herself was reported — she may have had emotional problems. Surprise.

Fox News showed footage of her shattered body post-jump.

Pissing contest

Warning: Penelope has launched a borough-wide whiz-bang war against unknown (and possibly imaginary) foes. No fence, grass-patch, fire hydrant, trash bag, flower or front step is safe from her all-consuming pheromone-spritzing effort. She periodically insists on making rounds around various neighborhoods to gather information and assess the enemy’s (enemies’??!) progress.

As a General in her ruthless tinkle army, she often (pretends to) consults me (she’s a political animal and she knows better than to completely snub her second-in-command). Sniffing a suspicious blade of grass or hydrangea bush, Penelope will turn her laser-like attention to my pallid, unworthy visage.

She doesn’t need me to tell her that her pee pee’s in charge.

Lalalalalalala! I can't hear you!

Taking denial to a whole new level (is the entire staff secretly Catholic?) The White House opted to refuse to open a missive from the EPA detailing the negative effects greenhouse gases have on the environment. The policy, known officially as “high-tech peekaboo” put the e-mail in limbo (Catholicism again!) rendering it officially null and void.

The EPA sent the e-mail to The White House in December — in response to a High Court ruling that tasked the agency with determining if the gases pose a danger to health or the environment.

From The New York Times:

“Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.”

Inked

I just stumbled across a report that nearly one in four Americans between the ages of 18 and 50 has a tattoo.

What’s up with that?

My concept of what tattoos signify has evolved over time, and I wonder if my experience parallels a general pattern in America. (Granted, tattoos date back about 5,000 years – but for most of modern history, tattooed folk were peered at with the same kind of squinty-eyed suspicion one currently summons when listening to Dick Fuld pratter on.)

Now maybe it’s just me, maybe it was the times, maybe it was my age or my conservative upbringing, but when I was little, I associated tattoos with saggy, pallid biceps; prisoners; Wonder Wheel operators; evil-ass grannies; chain-smoking truckers with gnarled hands, orange-leather skin and a scary dash of ’tude.

I don’t have any tattoos and I don’t plan to be inked up any time soon. But now I associate tattoos with two of my favorite blond who happen to be sleek, sophisticated and fashion-forward.

And as globalization flattens the world and renders it into a single Brobdingnagian, weed-choked, patchy asphalt-paved, bullet-proof glassed strip mall and American’s cherished illusion of living in a nation of rugged individualists and exotics dissipates faster than Bush’s favorability rating, a tattoo does seem like a simple, fast way to differentiate myself from the roiling hoi polloi.

A deeply personal work of art on my left big toe/belly button/right butt-cheek in about an hour? Sign me up! (Except don’t: I don’t have a burning desire to commemorate a person or event with indelible ink on my bod – besides, getting a tattoo seems as unique as my own chosen vehicle of “self-expression” aka my chock-a-block, high-low, glitzy-drab, salvation army-barney’s warehouse sale, salvaged plastic bracelet-classic Tiffany’s necklace thanks Uncle Jim wardrobe. Everyone wears a uniform, from Wall Street i-bankers to emo boys.

(Except for a truly special short-bus select. The rest of us can only aspire to wear all-green all-day every day – or dance through the city to a salsa beat with a blow-up doll.)

Two of my best friends (the aforementioned blondes) have a bunch (okay — one has two, I believe soon-to-be three-in-one and the other has more than a dozen. I’ve lost count). Both ladies also have multiple piercings – a state of affairs that tends (empirical evidence only, no stats) to go hand in hand.

Also: both ladies enjoy shiny things. From glinting metallic bikes to sparkling diamonds to ocean water the sun throws a glinting ticker-tape parade upon …

Bottom line: they are bedazzled and bedazzling and enjoy bedazzlement. And their tattoos (and peircings) are lovely, unique and tasteful. The reasons each work was selected may elude me, but I do know they were all carefully considered, highly personal and enthusiastically received (by the ladies, not necessarily their parents or preppier cohorts).

Sprawling, complicated tattoos are becoming as common a sight now – and as bald an attempt at rebellion and/or general sassiness — as greasy long hair on men or singed bras were in the 60s.

A recent piece in Marie Claire explored the issues of tattoos and dating. Would a tattoo on your beau’s “upper left arm of a vibrant, crazy, and most unmistakably skinless man” make you think twice about getting horizontal? The tattoo was “Not a skeleton, mind you; a man with no skin—just organs, graphically rendered in sickly red, orange, and yellow swirls.”

It probably wouldn’t make me blink more than thrice, but then again, I dated a man who lived in a smelly garage in Billyburg with four other “artists”; he had a chicken as a pet. The chicken died about the same time as our relationship. It croaked after ingesting turpentine. Whoops. But I digress.

Christopher Hitchens may be right…. Is Bohemia as we know it dead or on the cusp of squawking to a halt as suddenly and sadly as our erstwhile chicken friend?

So here we are … living in a plasticized ungrungy Panopticon where all of the inmates, er, citizens are forced to attempt to differentiate themselves by submitting to a series of painful pricks? (Insert bad dating in NYC joke here).

I think I submitted myself to enough pricks for a lifetime, thanks … But if my whole snazzy librarian look starts to get stale I may just follow in Queequeg’s steps and express my existential and contradictory need to differentiate, lose and clearly define myself with an inky labyrinth.

Fat?

Diabetic? Got Cancer?

You have no one to blame but your Mom. Thanks, Science!

If you’re anything like me, you already blame poor Mom for your rapidly receding gums (srsly, thanks – I’m literally long in the tooth at 31), unsightly head of frizzy wannabe red but no cigar hair, more than generous dash of crazy-pants, affinity for dirty martinis and preposterously vertiginous heels.

I’m sure my Mom would react to this news like a napping tiger who’d just been nipped on her velveteen paw by a ballsy mouse – in one languorous but fatal move, she’d roar, snap, crackle and pop that mouse before it had a chance to explain itself, but here goes:

A high-fat diet during pregnancy (side note: what kind of deadly dull, self-abnegating sicko doesn’t enjoy a high-fat diet during pregnancy?) leads to an early onset of puberty, adult obesity, insulin resistance, teenage depression and breast cancer. That’s from Deborah Sloboda, a researcher at The Liggins Institute of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I’ve got my eyes on you Debbie Downer.