Where Do We Go Now? -- or -- "Divine Providence"

Obama, will you please just put the gloves on?
~~~~~

I don't know what to say about politics any more.

Pennsylvania has happened. And it's gone pretty much gone the way we expected: Obama trailing by about 10 points, Hillary claiming the expected result as an underdog win, too many more primaries to go.

Which is why this is such a great time to talk about anything else, like my recent visit to Providence, a place decidedly free of politics as it busies itself quietly being the best little city in New England.

I do not know how in the living hell I have never gotten there before. Well, actually, I do know. I blame their highways-

---

OK, wait, I have to jump out for a moment: Hillary is on TV right now, giving her victory speech. Besides a gauche, horrifying plug to have people visit her website to contribute to her campaign, she also just said, moments ago, that what the Democratic party needs is a fighter. I feel so torn about this. I agree, we do need a fighter. And I'll admit it, I am really starting to get that shaky-knee, shawl-scrunching feeling whenever I see Obama. In the debate last week, for instance. Could you possibly have stood there any more calmly on national television while the woman in the pants-suit just absolutely trounced you, like a silverback trying to smash its way into the chewy center of a coconut?

Could you?!

Look, Obama, you're cool, you're calm. I get it. And I still kind of like you. But I am really starting to get that dredgingly bored, dating-the-nice-guy feeling about you. Could you please, umm.., do something? I am getting pretty tired of standing in the dark alley next to you, quaveringly clutching my purse, while someone beats the shit out of you. I am all for the high road, but maybe - from your vantage point up there - you could stop painting Bob-Ross watercolors all the time and get out your grenade-launcher, just for once. Because Hillary sure as as shit is. At the very least, dance and dart a little, throw a jab, if only just for me. Obie, it just breaks my heart to watch you stand there in front of everyone, getting another Wellesly Wedgie. You're becoming like Marty McFly's father on Back to the Future.

Good God, right now, Obama - as I am sitting here typing - Hillary is totally stealing all of the forward-looking hope-talk that you have been home growing for over a year and she is totally - live on national TV, right in front of everyone - spinning it like a spider into this Pennsylvania-sized Knit Sweater of Hope and Dreams. As if this were her message all along. Stop! Thief! Someone grab her - that one, right there: the shape-shifter!

Ughh...

You know, despite her talent to become anything to anyone, it just so bothers me that the only form she cannot assume is that of the Person of Integrity.

---

OK, back to Providence. It's such a gorgeous city: it's like a mini-Washington, D.C., crossed with the Batman-movie set at Universal Studios. And there is the-

---

Shit, now Obama is speaking! Except that I haven't really been listening. As I have already explained to you above, Obie, I really just need you to start doing something. I am so totally done with all of your talking. Maybe it's time we start thinking about other seeing people.

Look, I get it. Good speeches: check. Great diction: check. Super-duper patriotic entertainment endorsements: check (Springsteen and Mellencamp). Majority of popular vote, greatest number of states won, most delegates, most money, most integrity: check, check, check, check, check.

But, Obama, you know what? It's tough-love time. I ain't listening to you anymore. Your words hold no meaning for me. I wanna see action or I don't wanna see you at all. Look, you got the tools, you got the 'tude. Now get the fuck out there and fight!

---

So, anyway, Providence was just lovely, and the beds at the Biltmore were a dream! I think there was pillowtop on top of the pillowtop. As if in Lourdes, my friend was claiming his bed had just about cured him of scoliosis, such was the miraculous softness. Now, mind you, I could have used a DVD-player with the flatscreen, and the tile in the bathroom was cracked, but I am not complaining. No place is perfect. You never get all of what you want, all of the time, all in one place.

---

Not even in a place as lovely as Providence, and most certainly not in politics.

~~~~~

Top Chef - Noooooooo!

The Tailgate Scandal



Oh my God. I've barely learned your name!

Eric, right? No, Bobby! Jake! I think it's Jake. (Oh, it's Ryan. I had to check Bravo's website.)

Whatever. You were the most adorably cute, "I-can-sit-here-on-the-couch-with- my-Haagen-Daas-and-still-feel-like-we- are-developing-a-relationship" person in all of reality television... well, at least on Bravo... and at least for the year of 2008... or at the very least for the first half of the year.

How could they have voted you off? Can't they see how cute you are, standing there arms crossed raising your eyebrows in the super-fitted chef's jacket, or whatever they call it. This would never have happened on Idol!

Besides, you were just starting to reveal to us, through specially-designed hints and clues, that you were probably almost ready to start letting us know that you may, under certain circumstances, quite possibly be a totally raging, out-of-control homoholic.

Exhibit A: You were just warming up to calling everyone "Honey."
Exhibit B: Just this episode you blithely admitted that you knew next to nothing about football, that you preferred to spend your time and money on clothes.
Exhibit C: You completely failed at barbecuing for a bunch of tailgaters, people who would chomp down on a squirrel foot if it were slathered in BBQ sauce and slow-roasted over mesquite.
Exhibit Duh: You're from San Francisco.

Ryan, don't you see that they set up a trap for you?! A tailgate BBQ to draw out the gays! And you sauntered right into it. All the other guys on the show (a whole 6-lane-pileup of failed sexualities) even they knew how to play it. Crazy-guy-with- all-the-hats ran "straight" for the chicken wings. Crazy-Aussie-guy (who a mere twelve hours earlier was in a bubble bath with Crazy-hats-guy) even he went for charcoaled chicken skewers, as fey as those squidgy twisted things turned out. For God's sake, even little lesbian Richard had enough sense to shape his pate - pate! - like a burger to throw the judges and fans off the trail of his gayness. And it worked: those football fans pawed his pate like it was the brownie batter at the bottom of the bowl.

Granted, I guess it can be said that you tried, too. I mean, at the very least you did cook your food on a gas grill, outdoors, at a tailgate party, in the ominous shadow of a football stadium. Mustering all of the straightness that you learned from your endless childhood watching of Happy Days, you tried - with every wrinkle-free fiber of your being - to conjure up a nice sandwichy meal "for the masses." But in the end the best you could do was "Lamb Crepinette with Piperade Cilantro-Pine Nut Puree & Espelette." Sorry, Ryan, it just wasn't enough.

I guess some people, like that adorable Billy Elliot who tap-danced his way into the colicky, bigoted hearts and minds of some small Scottish mining town, some people just can't not shine their light. That was you, Ryan. That was you.

But by this point it was too late - your fate was as sealed as a GladWare Freeze-and-Fresh container. The weakest gazelle had been separated from the herd, and it was all tears and tantrums from here on out.

Bottom line, you were just too beautiful for television and I think the judges had it in for you. That ball-point-pig Tom Callichio had obviously had enough, sitting there week after week, pan-searing in his envy at your beautiful, full head of hair and your super-super-square jawline. And that's not even taking into account your doe-like eyes or your preternatural adorableness.

But, case in point that it was totally rigged and that they all totally knew how it was gonna shake down: the usually colorful and sparkling Padma came out instead wearing this gray-and-black, striped, off-the-shoulder jersey material thing, making her look like Cameron Diaz at a West Hollywood funeral. I think she knew the end was nigh. I think backstage, despite all the protestations and beatings-of-the-breast, I think she was simply outvoted. So there she bravely stood, both pre-mourning your exit and silently protesting, like the mother of a fallen Greek hero staring out from the ramparts of Troy, saying, just as I am right now, that I don't care one lick about all your consolations, people, I am gonna grieve this... meanwhile, I am late for my Pilates class.

Which is what Jake, or Carl, or Ryan or whatever his name is would have wanted us to do. He would have wanted us all to carry on, to bravely go on shopping, to go off on our yoga retreats, to find new and interesting uses for escarole, or mango. He would have liked for all of us to try to construct our lives, try, so that one day we might achieve even half of the beauty that was already so easily his.

-----

Politics: Running in Place

YELLOW ALERT: The political rat race - an exercise in futility?

I don't know if I am reflecting any kind of national sentiment here or not when I say: I am totally fucking sick of politics.

What even a month ago seemed so exciting is now mucky and exasperating, like trying to find a lost shoe in a swamp. I think the thought that finally hit home for me was that, for God's sake, it's April. The fourth month of the year! A quarter of the way through! Furthermore, the year is 2008. No longer can we say that the smoke is still clearing from the new millennium's starter gun. 2008! It's 2008 - how the hell did this happen?!

So I've come to realize lately that not all that much has happened in this, the Year of Ken Molnar Finally Getting Things Done, and I am starting ever so slightly to freak the fuck out. And so, like any New Englander worth his salt, I am choosing to place the blame externally. In the high court of my own personal Salem, I am slamming down the gavel and accusing you, Politics, for stealing away the last three months of my life. Sure, you helped drag me out of my apartment and - improbably - to the gym, where I chased after you (quite literally) daily on the treadmill, with the three-inch Chris Matthews on-screen as the ever-present carrot. But that only ends up making me the mule, or - more precisely - the hamster, running on his little existential wheel, getting nowhere. Regardless of the analogy, time - I think - has been wasted.

As you can see, I am not all that big a fan of the passage of time. I'm all for AIDS and cancer benefits, but Time is the real enemy. But where is the foundation? Where are the ribbons? Stop this one and you stop all the others. Another one I am not the biggest fan of is Change, as much as Obama (and that blathery Chris Matthews and all the others) tells us that this is what we are totally primed for. And, yeah, I am willing to concede that I am more than ready to eject Bush into space; that's change that even I can believe in. (Wasn't he the one talking about sending someone to Mars?) But then after that, when all the world is right again, we have to go back to no more change, and no more passage of time.

Like Lucy in the chocolate factory, stuffing fistfuls of candies into her mouth and pockets, trying to keep up with a runaway process, I too feel like I am always looking for the pause button. I would like a moment to just focus and grab a hold of things, but - for every moment that I do - well, about 12 billion micro-moments have slipped by. And then, when I run after them, even more get away. You get the picture. The soap opera said it best: Like sands through the hourglass ... Or, if you want something a little bit groovier, there's always the Steve Miller Band to tell that Time Keeps on Slippin'.

But even my hair is a constant reminder. Like some scary page-a-day calendar that I can never quite put down, my hair stays with me, or - more precisely - doesn't. It peels away daily like one of those movie montages of the passing seasons: numbered pages falling away over transparent, sliding images of blooming flowers and falling leaves. My friend Michael tells me that time starts to move even more quickly as you get older (he's got 15 years on me). And it's not that I don't know this: a month goes by in a blink now. But I think what he is telling me is that - at his age - a year goes by in a blink.

Not looking forward to this. Thank you, Michael.

All I know is I've got to do something. So no more politics, at least for now. It might be productive for the country, but not so much for me. I've already been running in place too long this year, and I don't need one more excuse to help me keep on doing that. I've got to get moving because, you know, time certainly is - it's the bus that never runs out of gas. In fact, it's like the perky yellow VW in Little Miss Sunshine: you can't even stop it if you wanted to. The only thing to do is run along side it as fast as you can, and hope that there will be a few friends there, when you need them to help pull you up.

-----