Vogue is worse than porn

I hate that magazine. It is bad for your health. It makes women think they are not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, accomplished enough. It is revolting.
But Vogue India just took the cake of clueless offensiveness by doing a fashion shoot with actual impoverished Indian citizens modeling expensive brands like Fendi and Alexander McQueen. The brands get mentioned in the credits, the names of the "models" do not.
Of course, there was a brouhaha in India about this; to which the inexcusable cunt who runs the magazine there replied: "lighten up".
Wow.
In countries where the disparities between the haves and the have-nots are abysmal, the haves typically behave towards the unfortunate majority with utter callousness and contempt. They simply refuse to acknowledge reality. For them, the poor don't even amount to individual people. They are servants or beggars or nuisances. They are somebody to try to differentiate yourself from with as much arrogance and ostentation as possible. In fact, the poorer your countrymen, the more obscene your display of wealth. Which is why it doesn't surprise me that someone at Vogue India could come up with such an insulting fashion spread. What is amazing is the sheer imbecility and the unrepentant gall of the response.

From the NYT: "A man modeled a Burberry umbrella in Vogue that costs about $200. Some 456 million Indians live on less than $1.25 a day".

Religious absurdity

The extremes Orthodox Jews go through in order to keep the Sabbath have always seemed to me absolutely insane and ridiculous.
At the time when the Bible was written, turning on the light meant starting a fire, an activity which indeed was a lot of work. Every activity banned for the Sabbath was basically a pain in the ass.
3000 years later, not anymore.
But the Orthodox go through these insane lengths to keep the Sabbath. So now you have elevators that stop on every floor. You have people who tell you you can't steep a tea bag in boiling water, or your children cannot play Lego (it's building), or that toilet paper needs to be pre-cut, God forbid you exert yourself wiping your tuches on the Sabbath. In a Jerusalem hotel, an Orthodox woman can request that a non-Jew operate a blender so she could feed her baby lunch. Which is awful. Is mashing a banana considered taboo during the Sabbath? Haven't these people lost all sense of perspective?
They have taken the beautiful, meaningful, civilizing biblical concept of a day of rest and turned it into the most banal, impossible obsession. Instead of worrying about the toilet paper and the tea bag and the switch and the blender, why not really use the Sabbath to reflect on your moral behavior in the world? If God existed, I doubt It would be cheering the genius who decided that steeping a tea bag is a sin.
But since modern life is getting more modern by the minute, even the Orthodox have to come up with ways of cheating their own crazy rules. So now there are inventions like this:

...the Kosher Lamp, with a shade that can be twisted to block out the bulb’s light but that does not turn it off.
..Zomet created the metal detectors used to screen worshippers at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, in a manner that uses electricity in a way not prohibited on the Sabbath (WHICH IS?). It also developed pens that use ink that disappears after a few days, based on a rabbinic interpretation that only forbids permanent writing,(!) and Sabbath phones, which are dialed in an indirect manner with special buttons and a microprocessor. (YOU HAVE TO BE JAMES BOND) According to Mr. Marans, the Israeli army bought 1,000 of these phones in 2007, so that Orthodox soldiers can take part in military operations on the Sabbath and holidays (!!!). Hospitals and medical personnel also use these technologies. “Obviously they are needed to protect the country, but we want to limit the desecration of Shabbat as much as possible,” Mr. Marans said.

What desecrates the Sabbath in my view is the perversion of the original intention of the Bible.
What, may I ask, is the difference in effort between twisting a shade and flicking off a switch? None. Moreover, leaving the light on for an entire night seems a bit irresponsible in these Global Warming times, no?

Rabbi Herschel Schachter, the head of the rabbinical school at Yeshiva University in New York... said... "if you make the burden slightly lighter, it’s O.K. The Torah doesn’t want to make life impossible.”

You don't say... It is not written anywhere in the Torah that thou shalt not steep a tea bag or use a cell phone or ride in an elevator. The whole point of the Sabbath is to make life easier for mankind.
So what the hell happened?

Look who's whining now

It is nothing short of amazing to hear Republican complaints of biased media coverage of Sarah Palin.
The nerve these people have is beyond.
Jilted Clinton Women: if you as much as vote for these Republican androids just because this throwback to the dark ages happens to be a woman, it should weigh in your conscience forever. You do not deserve to be women. You do not deserve to live in the 21st century. You deserve to live in a cave.
I will personally blame you if this country starts resembling Iran.

It's APPalin'

There is absolutely nothing to be proud of if you are the parent of a pregnant 17 year old girl. NOTHING.
As a parent, you should be ashamed of yourself for not having taught your child how to take care of herself.
As my mom used to say to me at that age (and this is the best abstinence speech, or at least the most effective one, I ever heard):
"And don't you come crying to me if you get pregnant, you hear me? If you do, I swear I will break your teeth."
What can I tell you? It worked.
Oh, but the Republicans, those freakish monstrosities of nature, those spawns of Satan, they spin this moronic disgrace around and all of a sudden a preggers 17 year old is seen as embracing "life". Give me a fucking break.
It is nauseating.
Nobody is even talking about abortion. Goddammit, if you are old enough to fuck, you are old enough to use a condom. Because at 17, you are not old enough to have a child.
But what about those rumors about Sarah Palin faking a pregnancy? If they are true, then surely she can't be VP. She lied! And how! And lying and cheating just do not happen among the political class in this farkakte ass country. If the rumors are not true, I commend whoever Democrat came up with them. We are finally baring our Rovian fangs.

And if McCain croaks...

...which is not unlikely, given his age, she is going to be the President of the United States?
Permit me to express strong feelings of panic over this potential scenario.

Hillary must be wishing she'd crossed party lines.

Doesn't seem like the smartest strategy to me. Trying to appeal to the jilted Hillary voters and Republican women now seriously fantasizing about Obama, but picking a woman who nobody knows, who governs a place where there are probably more penguins than people. Was this the best choice? Weren't there any other prominent Republican women with more of a profile? This is pathetic.
It just goes to show how out of touch the Republicans are. This is an empty gesture that to them looks like change, or they think they can fool us into thinking it is change. It really isn't and everybody with half a damaged brain cell can see that.
Now, the only way McCain can win is if this country is still held back by racism. This is still a very distinct possibility. However, time will tell if we indeed have come a long way. After all, a Black man is actually running for President. And he has a very good chance of achieving it. Things have changed.

Chatty Californians

New Yorkers are simply not used to the level of friendliness of the people in the strange planet called California. People here are chatty and love conversation. The waiters talk to you, the restaurant hostess talks to you, the valet parking guy, etc. Everybody chats. In NY nobody ever tells you anything which is not germane to you sitting down, paying for dinner and making the table available for the next patrons, even if it is all done nicely. Nobody has the time or the inclination to know everything there is to know about you and your state of mind at the present moment. My New Yorker companion had a bit of culture shock every time we went to a restaurant and wait staff asked every 10 minutes if everything was okay. Chill out, I said. You are in California.
Unfortunately, one night we had the table neighbor from hell.
We are at a fancy, quiet, nearly empty restaurant in Palm Springs for a classy celebratory dinner, and in the table next to us (with an empty table between us) sits who I can only describe as The Ugly American.
He and his wife are evidently soused already. He wants to know where we are from. We oblige. I say NY, but because I have the accent of a Mata Hari, he then inquires about it. So I say Mexico. Then he simply cannot get over the fact that being blonde and blue eyed I am indeed a Mexican. It's as if I said I come from Venus bearing gifts. He asks the tall, white, green eyed Mexican waiter (for real) if he believes that I am a Mexican. The waiter graciously says "of course". This does not mollify this fat slob. Basically, the subtext is: "all the Mexicans I know are brown and poor, or servants, like the waiter here, so you cannot possibly be one of them".
With our unequivocal body language, we take our attention back to our table, hoping he'll take the hint. But the barrage of questions continues. He has never been to NY. Shall he rent a car in NY? No, we say, under no circumstances are you to rent a car in NY. Take the subway instead.
Oh, but the subway is intimidating. No it isn't. It's fast and cheap. He insists on the intimidating nature of our public transportation, the subtext being "I would not get my ass anywhere near the subway because black people will mug me".
It is clear that the moment he saw us arrive, he took the opportunity to stop talking to his equally disagreeable wife, who, we were forced to learn, was celebrating 7 years of marriage to this putz and each had grown children of previous, etc, etc.
The wife goes to the bathroom after telling him in slurred whispers to let us eat in peace. And then he starts again.
"If I went to NY, I would love to go there with people who could show me around. For instance, if you came to (the hellhole I call home), I would do that for you. I would host you in my house... the insinuation being that when he comes to NY he expects us to do the same.
I can tell this man has rotting garbage in his head. If he were in a David Lynch movie, rotting garbage would ooze from his ears. I know a lascivious bully when I see one.
And us, we are unfailingly polite throughout. Sometimes, politeness can be harmful to your health. I should have politely said that we wanted to have a private dinner conversation. But I didn't. This man ruined my meal and my night.
At one point we raised our glasses and said "salud" and he screamed "salud" at us from his table.
The wife then decided to go flirt with the Maitre d'. There are some long suffering saints in the California hospitality business, I can tell you that.
I wish I could say this story had Cheeverian overtones, but these people were so vulgar and so ignorant, the only correlation I can find are the mountain people in Deliverance, and I bet they had better manners.

Biden, Vidi, Vinci

As occupied as I am with the premiering of my opera prima, I heard rumors there is some sort of a convention somewhere in Colorado...
I cannot tell you how relieved I am to be spared of the nonsensical circus.
Having said this, I'm very happy about Joe Biden. I've always liked Joe Biden. He was always funny and smart at the Jon Stewart show, which is indeed the only reliable source of political news in this country.
But wait a minute, wasn't Biden the one who said Obama was "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy"?
Apparently all is forgiven.
Not so with the couple from hell, the Clintons, who I hear are still making trouble.
I have this to say to the 18 million Hillary supporters: Stop acting like the jilted woman. Grow yourselves a pair, goddammit, and stop whining. Angry because she lost? Angry at who, exactly?
It's unbecoming, and worse, truly unpatriotic. Right now all you should be fighting against with every fiber of your being the possibility of another Republican presidency. Anything else is insane, irresponsible and downright suicidal.
Politics makes me vomit.

Joshua Tree National Park

The backyard of the magnificent animal picutred above is a place you need to see in your lifetime. It is like being in another planet. It is so beautiful, not even the best photographs can convey what you see with your naked eye. I love the desert.
But if you come in August, make sure you listen to the Park Rangers and bring a gallon of water for yourself. We had two measly bottles of Evian (we travel in style, dears) and they lasted for about five minutes. I now know what it feels like to be Lawrence of Arabia.
Also, bring a hat. Being from NY, we thought we might be able to find a deli inside the park where we could buy more water and cheetos, if we saw fit. No such thing at a National Park. At 1 pm in the afternoon, as we were visiting the Cholla Cactus Garden (see above), I thought that one more minute under the sun and I would become mousse. It was about 106.

The United States of Litigation

Guys, we seriously need to talk.
At LaGuardia airport, at Au Bon Pain, I buy something that is labeled "Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice".
In my poor little benighted mind, this is associated with good health and sunshine and a good morning to one and all.
However, below the title some fine print explains that I should be aware that consuming this unpasteurized product can be harmful to my health as it may contain bacteria, etc, etc. Which is to say, in human language we can all understand, that the corporation will not be blamed and or sued if I get the runs after drinking a freaking glass of ORANGE JUICE.
You know what, maybe in Calcutta you drink orange juice in the street, you die. At Au Bon Pain? WTF?
In the name of god, if even orange juice has now been tainted by corporate insanity, nothing is sacred anymore. Nothing.
This is similar to my complaint about All Points West. And to the fact that in the US individuals have abdicated their own personal responsibility and adulthood (without a peep) to corporations and the government. We might as well all wear Depends.
Go to a beach, everything is prohibited. Go to have lunch al fresco, this is what you find:

What would the Founding Fathers say? What happened to the land of opportunity? To the cradle of individualism? Mind you, if this hysterical worry about everything we breath and ingest was a genuine health concern, we would all have medical insurance by now. This is simply fear of litigation. Fear of losing money. A pox on all of you, evildoers. May you rot in hell.

I eat as much as Michael Phelps

Almost.

Here's a sample Phelps menu:

Breakfast: 3 fried egg sandwiches, 2 cups coffee, 5-egg omlette, bowl of grits, 3 pieces of french toast, 3 chocolate chip pancakes.
I think the 5-egg omelette is an exaggeration.

Lunch: 1 pound pasta, 2 ham and cheese sandwiches, energy drink (1,000 calorie)
Me, after one pound of pasta I could eat another pound of pasta. Screw the ham and cheese.

Dinner: 1 pound pasta, 1 large pizza, energy drink (1,000 calorie)

But, does he snack?
Also, he needs to diversify his diet. He needs to eat more ethnic foods. His menu seems very boring. Why have pizza after pasta? Better have suckling pig after pasta. And then dessert.

Because I am terribly competitive, this is what I had yesterday for dinner at the astounding Great NY Noodletown, Temple of Infinite Happiness:

Half roast duck
Salt baked calamari
Salt baked whitefish
Pea Shoots with garlic
2 platters of thin noodles with roast pork

I shared with my friends, but I could have had the same meal all over again. And I ate more than anyone at the table. That's because I am the Olympic champion of Eating Chinese Food.