Protocols of the Elders of Zaius

We left the office early on Monday to take the kid up to the pediatrician for his 1-week follow up appointment. The pediatrician's office is a few blocks south of the nicest mall in town, the only one with a Nordstrom. 

At the intersection before the mall, waiting in the left-turn lane, we saw a person in a white gorilla outfit holding a sign that said "Jew Bankers Bankrupt Nations"

Perplexed, the wife said that she didn't get the outfit, or, for that matter, the sign.

Oh that's just your standard old-timey antisemitism I replied. Jews controlling all the money in the world sort of thing. We should tell that guy that the 19th Century called and it wants its antisemitism back.

Her: But why is he standing outside the Jared The Galleria of Jewelry?

Me: Because you can't spell Jewelry without Jew?

We got the left turn green arrow and she started driving

Her: But what's the deal with the white gorilla outfit? Could he not find white sheets or a Ku Klux Klan outfit?

We get to a traffic light before one of my employers' branches.

Her: And shouldn't he be protesting in front of a bank? I mean, I know this is your bank, but shouldn't this be where he is standing?

Me: Yeah, no clue. And if this is some sort of Gaza protest, it hardly seems to be the most coherent way to do it.

---

The follow up appointment was because the kid had come down with bronchiolitis sometime while during the Thanksgiving break. We took him to the pediatrician last Monday, and when the wheezing in his lungs (but not him) appeared to respond well to a treatment from the nebulizer, the doctor wrote us a prescription for an in-home treatment.

I'm sure someone out there has a game where you have to guess whether a word like nebulizer is an actual medical device or the name of a weapon in a Star Trek episode. And one of the signs that parenthood has changed you forever is the weird level of excitement the wife and I felt when discovering that someone sells a pediatric penguin nebulizer with an igloo carrying case.

Since the kid screamed bloody murder for the 5-minutes-that-seemed-like-an-eternity while the nebulizer was attached to his face, Doctor K wanted to give us options when it came to the in-home treatment. One was a chamber and inhaler contraption that we would put on his mouth and lungs and spray, the other option was to give him a concentrated syrup that, as a side effect, would make him hyper. She wanted us to know that there would be no judgement passed if we felt uncomfortable holding the kid down and misting him with medicine.

Being old and lazy parents who feel that our two to his one is still a mismatch in his favor, a hyper version of him was going to shift the odds further in the wrong direction. And since I have no problems doing anything doctor-endorsed that can stop the crying, the choice seemed pretty clear to me.

Actually I have no problems doing old country endorsed approaches that can stop the crying, but the attorney wife isn't quite down with anything not cross-checked against a baby book. Like all good Muslim parents from the Levant, I keep suggesting we rub his gums with Arak liquor whenever he is fussing because of teething.

Dr. K told us that she phoned in the prescription to our neighborhood pharmacy. I paused. This was his first prescription, and its not like he has ID? how was this going to work?

"You should be fine. Just walk up to the pharmacy and they'll give you the stuff. No one's figured out how to make meth out of the active ingredients <pause> yet"   

We went to pick up the prescription from the pharmacy. The tech behind the counter asked us if we needed any help with the instructions as she unpacked the components. She caught sight of the kid sleeping as she pulled out the inhaler.

Tech: Does he have asthma?

Wife: We don't think so, he just has bronchiolitis

Tech: How old is he?

Wife: 9-months

Tech: Oh wow, <looking down at chamber> that's scary.

After the fact, once the wife had calmed down, we discussed that if the Gap can train you how to optimally fold a shirt, and my nearby bagel chain will not pour you  hot tea past a certain height in your cup, there needs to be "bedside manner" training for pharma techs that tells them NOT to describe the items they are about to hand to a new mother as "scary"

I was holding the sleeping kid in the car seat and watching the conversation on the pharmacy closed circuit TV screen. While I know there would have been many unpleasant complications had the wife not checked her emotions, the opportunity to have watched recorded footage of her reaching across the counter, pulling the Tech closer and punching her in the face would have been kind of awesome.

We got home and washed the apparatus and prepared it for use. It was an 6 inch tube separating a holder for the inhaler from a Silence of the Lambs mask for him. On the tube, there were cute illustrations of how to use the apparatus on a teddy bear, showing how the Albuterol goodness got into teddy's lungs.

No one among the three of us was impressed.

–Nadia

King’s Crossing

So, Smith's final album "From a Basement on the Hill," (because I don't count that remastered crap as anything other than his B-sides, and fully insist that "Basement" was the last piece he largely completed prior to dying) was edited and completed by his producer and his girlfriend.  The same girlfriend conspiracy theorists insist killed him.  My take--heroin addicts and heroin addicts who are schizophrenic would completely do something like stab themselves in the chest.  Just saying.

Anyway, on the song "King's Crossing," this darkly beautiful song by a man who very clearly knew he was going to die soon, he asks. "Give me one good reason not to do it," at 3:58, in post-production his girlfriend added in her voice to whisper "Because I love you."

As David Foster Wallace said, "Every love story is a ghost story."

–Sofia

Baby Britain

As long as you’re OK with my love of Baby Britain, which is a fine example of a westerner using his Anglophilia for good. It’s the best Beatles song ever.

Revolver’s been turned over

One of my favorite memories about my trip to London in December 2003 was how good the music in public spaces was, especially considering it was Christmas. We were in an Indian restaurant for lunch, and they played an unedited version of the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York.

I have attempted to add that song to my repertoire of baby lullabies but the wife is having none of it. She’s expressed reservations about the opening lyrics, my attempts at growling through Shane MacGowan’s “It was Christmas eve babe, in the drunk tank”. I thought I would be safe just by cutting out Kirsty MacColl’s “ya scumbag ya maggot, ya cheap lousy” but no…

–Nadia

Now let us geek out to Elliot Smith

First, I assume by our mutual girlish love of Nate Silver, Wes Anderson, and gossip that you are an Elliott Smith fan? If so, I will continue.  If not, we're breaking up as sorority sisters.

–Sofia

Logo?

Courtesy of Miss Brown:

It’s nice but…

I really like the Nadia and Sofia logo.  Can you make Nadia MORE Middle-Eastern, and Sofia MORE Eastern European?

(G_d I am such an old whiny Jew)

–Sofia

Man Crushes, Part 2

I think we need to briefly digress our conversation to discuss our mutual man-crushes.

As a born and raised American westerner, I attribute my deep and abiding love of Anglophilia to a culture and a nation where truly old "things" and traditions still exist.  We lose our shit out here to a building built in 1920, and clamor to have it included in the historical registry.  Our accents are flat and affect-less, we are the part of the country where Americans and immigrants came to build new lives, so our attachments to anything are out of pure sentimentality.

Thus, it is a well-known fact that I fold at the sound of a British accent because it represents something that is eternally and sorely lacking in this part of the world.

Let us discuss the following bullet points.

1) Ian McShane, a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, has a voice like a good scotch.  I want it poured over everything.

2) Michael Caine.  He along with Morgan Freeman are my adoptive Grandfathers, and they read me Dickens aloud every night.  I will put on a widow's veil and properly mourn when Michael Caine passes.  If you ever want to fall madly in love, watch his episode of "Inside the Actor's Studio," and tell me you don't want to leave the wife for him when he starts speaking in Cockney rhyme.  (I have forewarned the husband that I will piss myself and scream/sob should I ever encounter Sir Caine.)

3) Jamie Oliver.  My cousin married a proper Cambridge-educated Englishman, whose blood boils every time someone calls a woman "love." He finds it common and cheap.  I find it fucking fantastic.  Whenever Jamie Oliver calls a cafeteria worker "love," I sigh.  My other man crush Anthony Bourdain wrote about Jamie Oliver in one of his books, and apologized for originally classifying him as an obnoxious British punk kid who lucked out on a restaurant, admitting that if Bourdain had Oliver's money and clout, he didn't know if he would use it for the good Oliver does.  The man has taken on the cause of improving eating habits of the poor, and he is practically a saint for doing so.

4) Jesus Mary and Joseph, Shane Taylor in Band of Brothers.  His character not only speaks an American accent but convincingly plays an American cajun without veering into weird-hick territory.

5) Damian Lewis, my man Major Winters, plays an American soldier turned sleeper cell agent in Homeland.  G_d strike me down, but when that man whips out his prayer rug on the show, I get a funny feeling (Like all nice Jewish girls do).

6) Ben Kingsely.  My actress friend once described to me the resume of an actor while working at the surprisingly large and successful Utah Shakespeare Festival, the living example of what can be accomplished when a very wealthy patron leaves all of their money to the arts in southern Utah.  She explained that every actor has one to two go-to accents that they can do, usually British or Irish, if working in Shakespeare, meaning that they can reasonably cover the regional dialects of Britain and Ireland while still sounding like they know what they're doing.  The fact that Sir Kingsley has played everything from a Polish Jew, to Ghandi, to every range of British character, to Iranian-American, to Russian, to Egyptian, to Australian and does so in flawless accents is apparently near-impossible to accomplish. Even the best will fail once in a while, and according to her, Kingsley has never missed the mark once.

7) There is nothing more appealing than a British thug in a great suit.  Hand/neck tattoos optional but highly appreciated.

8) Were you aware that Idris Elba of "The Wire" (aka Stringer Bell) is a fellow Jamie Oliver east-ender?  Now you know.

9) Nate Silver is to you like Jon Stewart is to me, especially when he does his "old Jewish woman" voice.

–Sofia

Man Crushes, Part 1

Great Idea. Having Nadia and Sofia wax lovingly and critically (these words are actually synonyms in most Mediterranean based languages btw) about young Nate Silver seems to be far less creepy than me talking about my man-crush for him. So we'll make that the palette cleanser after I do:

The wife has been remarkably understanding about my Man Crushes. Most likely because her first experience with one created the false impression that they were harmless. I was hypnotized by the evil tiger (Tai Lung) in Kung Fu Panda. When the credits rolled and I saw that the voice was Ian McShane, Deadwood's Al Swearengen, it made sense.

How is it that people whose home countries were so thoroughly and permanently screwed up by British Colonial rule can still be anglophiles? And what does it further say about me that my man-crush anglophilia is mostly directed at English actors (McShane as Swearengen, Shane Taylor as Eugene Roe in Band of Brothers) speaking in American accents?

I figured I would go with a less obvious Band of Brothers man-crush than Damian Lewis as Dick Winters. Seeing as he's now on some hit TV show (Homeland) that I have not seen, but understand that he may or may not be working for an Arab terrorist, that one I should best keep to myself.

The only man-crush I have on a man who speaks in an English accent is Jamie Oliver. His cookbooks are part of the appeal, the recipes are are simple and delicious - the man encourages the use of Indian curry paste from a jar and even gives instruction on how to scramble eggs just in case you've been doing it wrong all this time. But other than the occasional bit of slang in his recipes (brilliant and sarnie), its not like I’m attempting an Essex accent while cooking with them. 

The appeal of him being an EnglishMAN is due to who he is not. He is not the over-the-top American alpha-male celebrity chef, nor is he Englishwoman Nigella Lawson, who causes me to feel an uncomfortable tingle down there every time I hear her speak.

Hearing Steve Inskeep's awkward flirting with her during NPR segments, you imagine the way she talks about food is the same way she talks about sex. Far be it me to question her very successful business model, but let's just say I prefer to keep my attention focused on the room in the house where I am less incompetent. Another difference between food and sex is that it is far less expensive, and far more legal, to pay a professional to show you how the former should be done right.

When I lived in Virginia, my neighbor would regale me with some of her exploits, much to my confusion. I think it was there that I developed my aversion to mixing food with sex.

Her: There is nothing better than licking whipped cream off someone during sex

Me: Wouldn't that get stuck in the chest hair? <pause> Oh, on the girl, right.

Anyway, where was I?  Yes, all of these crushes pale in comparison to my nerd envy of young mister Silver. I mean I am the man who chose his graduate school major on the basis that "I had all the other nerd attributes, poor social skills, fear of women, I just needed to get better at math."

So for young Mister Silver to have reached the pinnacle of my "profession”, when all I ever do is just move numbers around in spreadsheets.  Other than emulating a teenage girl watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I'm sure Nadia and Sofia would. But all I can think of right now are the lazy ones:

Silver? Why so modest? I understand Gold maybe a little too cliché, but Platinum! Titanium! You've earned it.

Silver is extending his relationship with The Old Gray Lady? Isn’t she too old to give him children?

–Nadia