See you next year!

I actually really hate when people say stupid shit like "see you next year!" in late December, but I found my fingers typing it anyway. I'm headed out to the Left Coast in a few hours for a week of road tripping, hiking, baby-meeting (both in- and ex-utero), and hopefully as little rain as possible. I'll tell whatever stories need to be told upon my return, but in the meantime, hope everyone has a lovely and restful holiday-type week.

Later!

Photo flashback of the week

Third- and fourth-funniest, 1970

Happy Holidays!

Several years ago, my brother made the claim that I was third funniest in the family -- according to him, the rankings look something like this:

1. Stovie
2. Mom
3. Me






4. Dad.

Now I take issue with my third-place ranking after Mom, since I think it should be advertent funniness only (Stovie claims it is overall comedic effect), but I have never aimed as high as first place. This delightful holiday card, just received in today's afternoon post, shows the ease with which he retains his title. As it is written, "may your days be merry and bright..."

By popular demand

Ok, it's only popular demand if you think of Colliculus as really, really popular. (Which, of course, he is.) Anyway, by popular demand, here's a shot of the new beret.
I tried to highlight the pretentiousness with both expression and backdrop, but couldn't work in a shot of me reading Le Petit Prince or Camus -- self-timer problems. The other night I saw my shadow and decided that it kind of looked like Sam Kinison, which was pretty deeply disturbing, so now I'm more ambivalent than before...

Recognition and misrecognition

This posting was prompted by a spooky coincidence that came to my attention last night. Here, two quick Pangea-type anecdotes on misrecognition, and then a series of small-world type anecdotes, many of which hinge on recognition. All have taken place since my move to Spookytown.

MISRECOGNITION
1. I'm at the first meeting of an anthropology database workshop, I guess I'm on the advisory committee now (at least, that's what it says on the new line in my CV). At the mini-reception after the meeting, one of the anthropologists walks up to me and, apropos of nothing, says, "Are you Indian?" "Why, no," I say, and leave to get a drink.
2. It's Thanksgiving and I'm at my cousin's house, where I've been going to various family events for more than 20 years. Even though she's only in her early late forties, she has a new granddaughter -- as with many modern Orthodox, she got married quite early, and her son did too. Her son and daugher-in-law stopped by for a while with the baby and also with the daughter-in-law's parents. I was up in the living room with the baby and its (not-related-to-me) grandparents when she started crying, so I picked her up and started talking to her a bit in Yiddish and then singing to her to calm her down. Her grandmother, the one who is not my cousin, looked at me and said, "How do you know Yiddish?" "Well," I said, "I only know a little, not nearly as much as I'd like." "But how do you know Yiddish? Aren't you Puerto Rican?"


RECOGNITION
So I've been keeping two topics off limits on these pages, entertaining as they may be: work and my love life. (My feeling is that these are better covered via other channels.) But now I'm going to bring in some dating stories, because they're really necessary to get the full effect of the ridiculous "small world" stuff that keeps happening to me here. When I first moved to Spookytown, I kind of dated up a storm in an internet dating kind of way -- I found some of my best friends in Chicago this way, in addition to some boyfriend types, so I'm willing to sift through lots of chaff to get to the occasional golden wheat kernel. Or whatever. Anway, I'm on hiatus now (12 guys in 2 months = kind of exhausting), but as recently as last night realized that I am still dealing with "small world" fallout from this dating storm. So I'm including them here in my Spookytown recognition stories.
1. I go out with a physicist on Friday, and make plans to see him the following Friday, even though my hopes are not high (more of a "second chance" kind of date). On the Wednesday between these Fridays I go out with a neuroscientist to this bar/restaurant that I had never been to before (and have not been to since), in a neighborhood I was visiting for the first time. Before we leave, the neuroscientist says, "Let's go up and check out the roof bar, I think you'll like it." We do, and who do we run into within seconds? Yes, the physicist. (Would have been more awkward if I'd actually really liked either of them.)
2. The following week I go out with this conflict resolutionist in a neighborhood I'd never been to. After the date I'm in the metro station (the only time I have been in this station in 3 1/2 months now) and this guy walks by, does a double take, comes back and says, "Excuse me." "Yes?" "Don't I know you from [internet dating site X]?" J-ka, upon hearing this, said, "It would be my worst nightmare!" But in reality it wasn't so bad, if a bit creepy at times (e.g., when he said, "but, as I recall, you're originally from New York, right?"), and it was quite easy to write the gentle-but-firm rejection when he wrote to me later that night.
3. The Armenian Queen befriends another resident of her yuppie apartment building just before he moves out. "You should meet him," she says, "I think you have a lot in common." After hearing more about him, I agree to meet up in a friendly-type way, not a set-up type way, since he doesn't quite sound like someone I'd date, and we arrange to all meet at Queenie's house and then go to dinner and a movie together. I get there first, and when he walks in the door I say, "Oh, it's you! Hi!" Because I have met this man many times before -- he has been my waiter almost every time I have been to the only restaurant in HippyDippyville that I actually like. He served me my first meal here when I was apartment hunting, he served me and Dad our first meal here when we first drove into town, he served me and my parents and Stovie and J-ka their last meal here before they drove away after helping me unpack. And, just a few days previously, when I had been on the last of my internet first dates, this one a Sunday brunch, he had brought our food to the table when our own waitperson had been apparently too incompetent to do it (leading me to to tell my date about a few funny interactions between this waiter and my Dad, who prefers a more New-York-hustle style of waiting tables). Two particularly funny things come from this. The first was that he did not remember me at all, like I didn't look familiar or anything, which is entertaining since we'd really spoken quite a bit over the course of the previous few months. The second is that to top it all off, this overly young guy had written to me online and I had written back and said, "I'm now on hiatus, but we could meet up in a friendly-type way," and he responded and said, among other things, "Hey, wasn't that you at [place X] on Sunday at brunch?" So on this one Sunday morning, 2 months after my arrival, I was sitting in this 50-seat restaurant with one date, just two tables away from another guy who wanted to date me, and was served food by a third guy that my friend was trying to set me up with.
4. Oh, we're still going. My friend G.G., who was until recently a conference friend only but turns out to spend lots of time in Spookytown (on purpose!), said recently, "I should introduce you to some of my friends, I think you'd get along." G.G. is great, the kind of person I love to spend time with and feel comfortable with even though I don't know her all that well, so this boded well for her friends. So the other night we go out with Lieberman, who sounded really cool -- I didn't know what she did for a living, but had seen some of her art photographs, which were quite good. Now Lieberman looks kind of familiar, in a tickling-the-back-of-your-mind kind of way, but I let it go until she turns to me in the middle of dinner and says, "Wait, did you present a paper at the MLA in New York in 2002? I was on your panel!" And in fact, I had sat next to her for a solid hour and a half at that thing, and now remember her and her paper well -- I think it's the change in both hairstyle and glasses that kept me from making the connection. Then at post-dinner drinks, her husband comes in, and looks intensely familiar. But I figure that I'm primed to look for familiarity now, with the Lieberman-MLA thing, so dismiss it. Yet after about twenty minutes he turns to me and says, "I've met you before. Where do I know you from?" We went through all the cities we've been in over the last five years, and all the social gatherings here in Spookytown (for me, that totals 3, so it was pretty easy), but couldn't figure it out. But I definitely know him from somewhere...
5. The last one (for now). About a month ago (maybe a bit more) this handsome Swede writes to me online, seems pretty good in lots of ways, but then ends up writing something kind of stupid. I call him on it, and even though he apologizes things kind of degenerate, and we end up not meeting up. Cut to the other day, when he shows up again in my inbox, saying that he's just moved to HippyDippyville, doesn't know people here, still feels terrible about the whole e-mail thing, wonders if we could meet up in a low-pressure friendly way, as it would be nice to know someone here. This seemed fine to me, so we arranged to meet up for a drink in this nice bar one town over. Assuming he lived close to the metro, I had told him the general area of HippyDippyville where I lived, nothing too recognizable, and when he offered to pick me up (which I would never agree to, of course) he wrote, "We might live closer than you think. Do you know the blinking light at the bottom of [Street X]? I live about a block and a half in." Well, my friends, *I* live on that street, just a block in. And it turns out that he is, in fact, now my next-door neighbor. As in his house is directly behind my house, such that our driveways are adjacent. It's a good thing that we won't be dating, and that he isn't stalkeresque -- he's a good guy, and a cat lover, so now I get to have a friend next door and, once I know him better and trust him, a convenient cat sitter. So that's cheered me up some.

And therein lies my epic tale showing, once again, the world is in fact a quite tiny place. More to come, I'm sure!

Today's PSA

I just learned yesterday that everyone is entitled to a free credit report from all three reporting agencies once a year. As part of my ongoing background check for "work" (many of you have already been called or visited in person to verify that I am, in fact, "patriotic" and a "loyal American"), I had to explain aspects of my credit report and found inaccuracies on all three. And I mean serious inaccuracies, not just that I had been a "Profesor" at the last (also misspelled) university where I worked.

Anyway, go here https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp and get your three free reports if you haven't already. I am always surprised by the extent to which others are incompetent, though at this point I'm not sure why.

New heights

of pretension, that is. Yes, after years and years of holding out, I have finally succumbed and bought a black beret. It's kinda Patty Hearst, kinda Madonna 'aught three, kinda hipster beatnik whatever. And I'm loving it!

Photo flashback of the week

Just flew in from Chicago this morning (and boy are my arms...wait, sorry). I got an e-vite last week for a big party in D-Dawg's newly renovated Bronzeville Manor, and the thought of the hyper-efficient socializing, with so many friends gathered in one place, was too much to resist, especially when combined with a super-cheap last-minute ticket. So off I went. I was having too much fun to take pictures, and don't even really have wacky anecdotes to relate, so will simply summarize and say: two parties, non-stop socializing, balmy weather (high 20s-mid 30s!), good food, delightful people = just what I needed.

So instead of documenting my jet-setty Chicago weekend, I'm going to introduce a new feature to these chronicles: the photo flashback of the week. When I was back home for Thanksgiving, I was forced to address some stuff that I'd left in the garage back in '95 when I moved out to Berkeley. One thing was a suitcase filled with late 80s-early 90s clothes (and if you think that half of it came right back to Spookytown with me, you are so right -- once the musty smell comes out of the circa-1985 black paint-splashed t-shirt from Greenwich Village it will be a new wardrobe staple). Another thing was a hatbox with greeting cards, postcards, and photos. I will spare you all the many postcards of Morrissey with or without the Smiths (how many did a girl need? Apparently five), but have started scanning in the photos as part of my new digital photo archiving project (facilitated by my new scanner) and feel compelled to share.

Below is our first entry for Photo Flashback of the Week: our pet guinea pig, Squeaky, photographed in either the summer of 1984 or 1985. Although Stovie and I longed for a real pet of some sort, read here cat or dog, we were instead given a guinea pig whose only functions in life seemed to be eating, drinking, squeaking, and excreting. Luckily for him, out of all these characteristic behaviors we chose the squeakiness for the naming. This photo shows how we used to take him for walks on the front lawn of the suburban manse, or hook the leash over a low branch and let him graze as we lay out and read.

Squeaky died the same day as the Challenger crash, in January of '86; we think a stray stream of toxin on the part of the exterminator was to blame. RIP Squeaky -- we hardly knew you.

High Art

This afternoon Mr. T. e-mailed me from work (he usually bikes to the metro, so I hope his morning journey wasn't too snowy and dangerous) and sent me a link to this picture of a sculpture called "Cock Bob," currently on display in the sculpture garden of the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, a lovely place that I used to periodically bike to back in the day.
The sculpture was apparently mentioned in an online interview with Bill Griffith, also from our favorite low prestige island to the right of Manhattan, and it's found here on the Zippy website: http://www.zippythepinhead.com/pages/1places/cockbob.html.

Also art, but of a different nature, is this soup packet, purchased recently in a local bodega (cognate with boutique, btw), and featuring this little Shrimpie, complete with captain's hat and fishing rod with hook.
It kind of reminded me of the pig with the cleaver -- did Cap'n Camaron hook himself with that rod? Or does he have it in for other shrimps of the sea? It's quite the mystery.

The snows of yesteryear

So, when I realized I'd be moving from Chicago to Spookytown, I thought, "well, at least I won't have to deal with those terrible winters anymore."

And yet, this is the scene that I have woken up to find this morning. Here, the view from my living room out to the Pimpmobile, snowed in at the curb (and me without a shovel),

and here, the view from my kitchen out to the backyard.
This is our second snow of the season, and it's just the second week of December. I am highly displeased. Oh well, I'd better head to the closet and dig out my Russian winter gear...

UPDATE: So I was kind of cranky when I posted this at 8:30 this morning, but then, I have to say, cheered up once I got outside. The sky is blue, the air is kind of balmy (a nice 35 degrees, where it feels much warmer), everything was already melting and the streets were clear. So I started to feel bad for complaining. But I arrived at work to find almost nobody here, and just now (9:45 am) learned that according to some website that I didn't even know to check, the university is closed until noon. It's so absurd! For like three inches of slushy snow! So I'm kind of bummed, because I could be home in pj's, doing my work surrounded by the kitties. But instead I'm one of the hardy few here, all from northern climes. My goodness, the denizens of Spookytown are totally pathetic when it comes to snow, even more pathetic than Miss Complainy here...

My family: DW? Or TT?

The anthro circus was in town last week from Wednesday to Sunday, with endless paper attending, shmoozing, and running-into-people-in-the-hallway conversations that lasted for hours. All this for five days of non-stop action, including leaving the house by 7 to make 8 am panels, trying to be a decent hostess for my friend Dr. A., who was somewhat traumatized by the very non-SoCal cold, and also doing organizational work for our own panel. (It kind of kicked ass, btw -- I'll be glad to share (via e-mail) details of the panel topic and papers, or a copy of my paper, which is in fact pretty entertaining and covers Pangeaic-type topics, including being described in newspaper profiles from my field site as having "jet-black curly hair" and "swarthy" skin.) By the conference end I was feeling kind of hyper-stimulated, but in a much better mood than previously, although that only lasted a few days. My base state here is one of general isolation, socially and intellectually, at least for now while I work on finding my people, and so it was good to be reminded that I am in fact part of a real community of like-minded people -- smart, interesting people who seem (for the most part) to be glad to see me. I remember the first time I went to this conference back in '98, when I knew maybe two people, and it was heartening to see how much had changed -- now I knew people at every panel in my subfield, and couldn't go two steps at the SLA cash bar without running into someone else. It's funny -- now that I have the Phancy-shmancy letters after my name, I am one step up the well-demarcated hierarchy, and there are people who kind of suck up to me, or worry that I won't remember them. (These people clearly still grad students.) Ooh, the power.

Anyway, the conference came hard on the heels of Thanksgiving, which was another bolstering experience. I drove home for T-day for the first time in ten years, and decided en-route that I will never again drive on Wednesday -- I could handle traffic for the entirety of Staten Island, or the entirety of Delaware, for that matter, but Trenton? Seriously, it was like insult to injury. In any case, the weekend up in NY and then Philly filled an important gap in my daily life here -- I was surrounded by people who have known me for years (some of them even pre-natally), understand me, and love me. By contrast, here I can count on one hand the people here who get me and possibly like me, and one thing that can't be faked is temporal depth -- of my friends here, only Queen Esther and her husband, The Israelite, know me from back in the day and are odd in similar ways (not just academically). Being clutched to the bosom of the family reminded me that, as I am fond of saying, the nut does not fall far from the nut tree. My family is great! And a bunch of weirdos. Leading me to muse throughout the weekend: are we delightfully wacky? Or total tardos? From the outside, people might lean towards the latter assessment, but I have decided that I am firmly on the side of the former.

Thursday is traditionally the day that we go to my Dad's side for kosher takeout food: Thanksgiving has historically meant to me farfel, glatt kosher bbq chicken, and half-sour pickles (his sister didn't like to cook or host people, so gatherings take place at his niece's/my cousin's house). This year, though, my cousin cooked up a storm, with all kinds of vegetable goodness -- it was, by far, the best T-day food I'd ever had, and vegetarian Stovie gorged like there was no tomorrow. Dad looks forward to this day for months, I think, and it's particularly meaningful ever since his sister died a few years ago. So even though he knew many people would be coming in jeans, he made an effort to look nice -- nice, and kind of gangsta style, no?
As I uploaded this picture it reminded me of nothing so much as this picture of my Dad's dad, Grandpa Izzy, which I brought with me when I did my fieldwork so people could see what my family was like. (I had felt that if I was going to be nosy and get all kinds of information, I was morally obligated to give some back.) One good friend of mine, a "future revolutionary" who carried around pictures of Che and Fidel in his wallet (mostly to impress the ladies, I believe), took one look and said, "Ooh, nastoiashchii gangster!" (Oh, a real gangster!). He was pretty cute, my grandpa, if more concerned with reciting blessings over the seder plate than any gangster-type activities, and obviously contributed something to my Dad's sense of style.
The hat, if a bit old-school, was quite popular -- Stovie wore it for his little Piano Man moment (NB that we grew up not far from where Billy Joel was born and bred).My little cousin (my cousin's daughter, making her officially first cousin once-removed, I guess) also took a crack at stylishness. She and her brother had control of my camera for almost the whole day, making most of the pictures you see here happy surprises.
I include this picture of me and her mom not because I look drunk or dazed or whatever (I only had a little Manischewitz, I swear!), but to show the vagaries of genetics -- how did I end up with a blonde, fair-skinned, grey-eyed first cousin? Or, perhaps more appropriately, how did she end up with me? My cousin, like her mom, is kind of a hoarder, and the T-day feast took place amid a bit of chaos. This may explain some of the antics that ensued.
For example, although there were delicious vegetables galore, Mom decided to try, or really only pretend to try, the p'tcha, possibly the Jews' worst contribution to world cuisine. Ever. This take-out version is slightly less bilious-green in color and wobbly than my grandmother's homemade version. Whenever I think that garlic can fix anything, I remember that it cannot fix jellied calves feet. Feh.
I avoided looking at the jellied ickiness by concentrating on the cutest of Coke cans, airplane half-size, which were sprinkled around the table. So wee! So adorable! My cousin took a picture for me of the can itself,
and then of her petting the can, which, until the new baby arrived, was the cutest thing in the house. Is that a good cousin or what?
Fights broke out, although I'm not really sure about what.














Also, naps were taken, despite the portrait series going on in the living room.
In the end, it was a great day, especially the part where I went through my Polish travelogue (with photo album) with my cousins -- it's their grandparents too, but I don't think they'll ever make it over there, and they were glad that I had.

Traditionally, we go to Mom's side for T-day Part II on Saturday, but this year it was moved up to Friday because there was some auction or something on Saturday (priorities, people?). So we headed over a day early to Aunt Feedy's, site of the traditional Turkey Feast, although this year she was also promoting anthropomorphized oranges for some reason.
Aunt Feedy is my Mom's twin (fraternal) and like her in many ways, particularly in being short, talkative, and wearing a lot of black (um.. where am I going with this?). Feedy just had a largish extension put on her small northern New Jersey house, doubling the sqaure footage and providing space for all kinds of reclining furniture, although photos of this furniture in use are unlikely to make it into, say, Town and Country magazine.
Feedy has got a pretty good winter hat collection going, and Stovie found himself, once again, unable to resist questionable hat choices.
Other family members were more clearly pleased at being photographed, particularly my cousin-in-law (of sorts) Rachel (it's his drag name, though we decided he was more a "Raquel" when wearing my Spanish shawl), who leapt into several pictures with glee,
and always seemed ready for the camera even when others were not.
After a second day of hard-core Thanksgiving eating, I found myself unable to face the fancy cheesecake Dad had brought in from the Island, but he was so horrified that I had chosen pound cake over bakery goodness that he hassled me to the point where I barricaded myself behind a row of soft drinks so I could eat in peace, delicately hiding each mouthful behind my palm.
A security breach by J. David, Feedy's eldest, meant that my shame was documented for all time.
More interesting to J. David than the pound cake, though, was the new toilet his parents had installed in the new addition's bathroom, which apparently had some kind of exciting flushing mechanism. (I have a 20-second video of the tank in action, for those who are interested. ) My Dad, though an engineer, evinced no interest whatsoever, and steadfastly refused to take part in toilet tank explorations. So J. David, forcing the issue, removed the tank cover and brought it into the living room. That's a self-satisfied grin if I've ever seen one.
But it's Dad who had the last laugh, since he apparently snuck in when we weren't looking and put the lid back in its rightful place. It must be hard to be so very stubborn.

So there you have it, glimpses of my delightfully wacky family. It's good to know where you come from, I guess, if only so you can look at yourself and say, "Huh. Nature and nurture both -- so not really my fault."

Car Talk

So for the last month and a half, the interior of my car smells like wet dog whenever it rains. How? Why? It's not like it's from an actual dog who sat in my car and then left very smelly fur behind. Strewing about lavender or placing cedar blocks on the floor does not help.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? I'm kind of to here with this...


(A: My dog has no nose.
B: How does he smell?
A: Awful.)