Anna's Bloviations

MEETING AT THE RESTAURANT
"Hi. I'm here to meet a friend at 7 pm."
Hostess 1: "I think she might be here already."
I scan the foyer but do not see her. "Has she already been seated?" I ask.
Hostess 1: "No, she went to the ladies room. Short blond hair and bags?"
I hadn't seen my friend in over a year but I couldn't imagine her cutting her hair short. And did the hostess mean shopping bags or bags under my friend's eyes...
"No that doesn't sound like her," I say.
Hostess 2: "Oh no but she just looks like she would be your friend! And she said she was meeting someone here at seven."
I brace myself for a marked change in my friend's appearance. And then I see the woman who Hostess 1 and Hostess 2 think looks like she would be my friend. Her hair is shoulder length, not short. The same length it was the last time I saw her. She is wearing a leather jacket (so am I) and a pretty scarf (so am I). The bag in question is a duffle bag she just bought. We give a great big hug.
Hostess 2: "See I told you! Look at you two. You got the look!" she clucks appreciatively.
She indeed looks fabulous. As always.

HELP WANTED OK, so I don't mean to sound like I'm always bashing Americans. Or worse that I'm a snob. But in other parts of the world, restaurant wait staff must undergo rigorous instruction until they have learned to not only serve wine correctly, but have also mastered the art of unassuming attentiveness. This is true for high-end as well lower-end restaurants. The goal for the waiter/waitress in training is to become as serviceable and quiet as the fine-linen napkin you unfold onto your lap. This kind of professionalism is unfortunately rarely exhibited by most fast-food-raised wait staff in the States. Look, if I go out to enjoy dinner with a friend or with hubby, I don't need or want a specious side-order of vacuous college student leaning into my table mis-pronouncing 'Frittura Di Calamari.' Furthermore these college kids have an absolutely deplorable sense of timing -- no doubt from having no first-hand experience of what it means to linger over and enjoy a multi-course dinner.

WHERE'S THE BEEF? On this particular evening, our superficially peppy waitress seats us and while we are still just pulling off our jackets, asks if we would like anything to drink. She extends the wine list while neither my friend or I are in a position to grab hold of it. She leaves the table as she should but then just as I begin perusing the wine assortment, pops back over to tell us about the dinner specials even so we haven't even cracked our menus open. Then our whirly waitress disappears altogether until I have to finally call a young gentleman over to get us some wine. I order a bottle of one of my favorite reasonably-priced Chardonnays: J. Lohr "One glass?" he asks. "No two please." What, does he think I'm planning on drinking down an entire bottle of wine by myself while my friend looks on?

LIFE, SHE'S A GOOD Fortunately the wine softens the glaring shortcomings of the personnel and I settle in to listen to my pretty friend bring me up to date on family, career, vacations, books, and gossip. She tells me that she loves to read my blog page and I feel absolutely honored given everything else she could be reading instead. She only gently scolds my insensitivity regarding my too-often-mentioned size-2-ness and I promise to take note in future blogs. Mind you this is a woman who just turned fifty and got carded at a pub just a few short years ago! Our lives are rich and we are both in good places. We have interesting jobs which are thankfully subsidized by adoring hubbies. We savor two Irish coffees, split the eighty dollar check, and I think life is good.

A smart-assed friend of mine, let's call him John, emailed me this: OH NO -- THIS CAN'T BE TRUE -- ANNA YOUR GONNA DIE!!

Very funny...

To which one of the email recepients also included in this distribution group (a conservative corporate lawyer from Missouri), responded: "Anna, if I catch John's drift, here's my home address: xxx xxx Avenue, City, MO. Stop by any time you are in the 'Lou.

Very funny...

ANNA RHYMES WITH SAUNA -- which prompted this limerick back:

There once was a lady named Anna
A liberal and acerbic primadonna
Tendered oral invites by a lawyer named Dave
The clandestine rendezvous turned wickedly grave
Eunuch Dave now practices law in Botswana.

No wonder people filter me out as Spam on their servers... Oh well. I try.

Language Trends. Has anyone noticed lately that Valley Speak disappeared? Remember when just about everyone under the age of thirty spoke thus: Has anyone, like, noticed lately, that , like, Valley Speak, like disappeared? This hackneyed word seems finally to have headed for the hills. Thankfully! I won't miss hearing it one bit.

Valley Speak has been replaced to some extent by the strong influences of Hip Hop which have given us expressions like: fly (adj. hot looking woman), scrub (n. a loser guy), baller (n. a decent guy), dope (adj. hot looking woman), and tool (n. an endearing term for idiot).

Interestingly it is a third language influencer -- that of hi-tech, that got to me personally the other day. A good acquaintance asked me to take him off his Spam list and in the same week, one of my virtual conservies wrote -- Anna has been filtered out as Spam on my server. Ouch! This means, "not only am I dumping you but I am casting you to the same junk lot as my Viagra ads and bank loan promotionals I filter out on my computer." I'm not sure even Shakespeare could have done a better job coming up with a more wounding double-entendre. Having said that, dear Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to make hide nor tail of the afore mentioned sentence; indeed it would have been an absolutely meaningless statement to anyone who read it up until the end of the 20th century.

Tip: If you don't like getting Spam from friends but are too polite to say anything, keep it that way! It's just their way of sending a 'hello ping' to friends they want to keep in touch with but don't get a chance to see very often. And who knows? They might even occasionally send you something funny or enlightening to brighten your day!

Well Bush has definitely usurped any wind Nader hoped to put in the CNN/Fox sails with his announcement that he supports an amendment to the constitution defining marriage as that between a man and a woman. I am absolutely appalled and hope that Congress will see fit to swat this discriminatory act into the trash heap where it belongs.

I'm really starting to appreciate the southern gentleman's sage refrain of yore, "don't worry your pretty little head." Or, ignorance really is bliss. I'd have a lot less grief were I to concentrate on improving my non-extant cooking skills or maybe planning my next vacation destination. I must just keep reminding myself that I have potentially converted one Republican voter this year. If we have an election anything like the last one, it might make all the difference!

Unless of course the Supreme Court intervenes again to select a President for us...

WHAT NEXT, POLYGAMY?? -- not likely. Once the vitriolic same-sex marriage opponents run through their predictable list of why gay marriage should be banned, I invariably hear: what’s next for god’s sake, polygamy!? Before getting to polygamy, it should first be said that the so-called arguments against gay marriage never stand up upon closer scrutiny. Taking religion out of the picture (as one should when talking about civil marriages), there is just no rational reason to deny marriage based on a person's sex.

One argument I frequently hear against the historic Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling for same-sex marriage is that the people, not the courts, should decide. Really? Until the Supreme Court intervened in 1956, the 'people' didn’t allow Rosa Park to sit at the front of the bus simply because she was black.

The second argument I hear a lot is the procreation factor. Sorry but that doesn't fly either since there is nothing to stop heterosexual couples from marrying who choose not, or are unable, to have children. And by the way, there’s no shortage of humans as far as I can tell anyway. Well, it’s about protecting children they cry! I have yet to see any empirical evidence (only manipulated statistics supporting one or the other side) that children who are raised by gay couples fare any better or worse than those raised by heterosexual couples. We don't stop criminals, drug addicts, and the genetic dregs of society from marrying and raising kids so why should gays pose any greater threat to the safety and best interests of children? As a side note, the Catholic Church in fact often places children from dysfunctional heterosexual families into the loving, caring arms of gay couples. Go figure.

I hear a lot about tradition and how marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Well might I remind those who would make this argument that up until not too long ago slavery was tradition, a woman not voting was tradition, and the banning of inter-racial marriages was tradition. It’s not natural! Well there are at least four hundred fifty species in the animal kingdom who would beg to differ. Lastly I hear a lot about the bible and God. At the Massachusetts State House not long ago, a ten-year old girl protesting with her parents against gay marriage screamed out at a gay man that he was going to burn in hell. There was good reason our founding fathers drew a firm line between church and state and this is just such an instance.

This is when I usually hear: Well what's next, POLYGAMY!? If gays are claiming their constitutional rights are being denied, aren’t polygamists also being denied their right to religious freedom? Won’t they insist that their form of marriage be recognized?

Polygamy is under federal law illegal in the United States but is nonetheless quietly practiced by Mormon Fundamentalists, a splinter group of the Mormon Church which gave up polygamy for good back in the early 1970’s. Sadly the Mormon Fundamentalist’s rendition of polygamy seems to be often nothing short of pedophilia wrapped in the cloak of religious freedom; girls twelve and fourteen-years-old are forced into marriages with men twice and three times their age (including marriages with their own step-fathers). These vulnerable girls grow up in an insular environment that offers them no opportunities towards financial freedom or self-fulfillment. They are quite literally considered to be chattel which means that even women of consenting age are not really consenting given that property isn’t in position to consent or not. The young women who somehow manage to escape this existence have testified that they felt completely helpless and trapped. Many have half-a-dozen children by the time they are twenty, have limited education, no job skills, and no one to turn to for assistance.

In essence, the Mormon Fundamentalists' beliefs with respect to polygamy are seemingly dichotomous to the basic legal rights afforded in a civil marriage. Hence the thought of polygamy gaining a legal footing in the U.S. would mean that Mormons would be undermining their own markedly unusual scripture. If, however, one of their prophets were to be suddenly hit by a revelation that said they must seek legal recognition from the government, I doubt they would have an easy time convincing a judiciary- or legislative body to tailor civil marriage laws so as to dovetail to this religious sect no matter how titillating the thought of having a harem at one's disposal might be to certain members of the afore mentioned bodies. And let’s face it; a secular version of polygamy isn’t likely to gain much popularity either. A polygamist would, quite frankly, be crazy to aspire to the legal obligations, rights, and protections provided under the legal status of civil marriage given that as it stands now, the polygamist has only to worry about alimony and child support with wife number one.

Gays, on the other hand, are not seeking marriage based on the argument that they are being denied their religious freedom. Simply put, consenting, tax-paying gays are asking to be afforded the same legal rights that two consenting, tax-paying heterosexuals enjoy in a civil marriage. If a gay couple is further interested in a religious marriage, why then they're on their own in terms of convincing their respective church to marry them. Some churches will. The majority won't.

With over twenty years of marriage under my belt, I’ll be the first to say that marriage is hard work. The high divorce rate amongst heterosexuals gives ample evidence that this is the case. I say if a gay couple is willing to make the ultimate commitment to join in matrimony, and are willing to take on all of the love, joy, responsibilities, tears and travails their marriage will no doubt bring them, go for it! We need all the love on this planet we can muster. Anti-gay marriage proponents squawking that if gays marry then next on the list will be scores of Americans signing up for polygamous relationships should instead be nurturing their own relationships rather than expending so much energy in judgment of others. Maybe we could get the divorce rate below 50% if they did.

And on that note: Reason 317

Continuing on fashion in the U.K.... So the daughter while in London fell in love with MANGO -- a clothing store which is located almost everywhere in the world EXCEPT America i.e. Ankara, Aruba. Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Guadalupe, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldavia, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Venezuela.

MANGO does a really good job knocking off designer clothes and selling them for great prices (well this would be a true statement would the dollar be more robust). MANGO's retail locations are beautifully appointed and buyer friendly. So why isn't the gorgeous store MANGO in America? It could have something to do with their labor practices, although I haven't noticed many American clothing manufacturers showing much compunction about taking labor off-shore to China where workers earn a meager .40 cents an hour to make a pair of jeans. But whatever. Maybe MANGO's reservations into entering the American market are based on other marketing considerations. I could imagine, for instance, that unless MANGO changed its sizing policy, American women might unhappily realize that they aren't really a size 6 after all thanks to American clothes' manufacturers fudging the fitting so that women are made to feel thinner than they really are i.e. I fit into a size 2 U.S. GAP pants but couldn't get my toe into a size 2 in London. In MANGO I am a size 6 thank you. MANGO probably figures that if they had to make anything bigger than a size 12 (which they would have to do if they wanted to market to American customers) then why bother? Their gorgeous sexy clothes would look like crap on a woman with thirty-plus-too-many-pounds spilling over and out of the soft-pink, Channell-styled mini-skirt and cropped skimpy t-shirt by MANGO. To make matters worse, no American women would buy into the obligatory sexy stilettos to complete the outfit. No way the Nike-sneaker-trekking Ami's (let alone the Birkenstock ladies) are going to consider that. And finally and because I'm in a bitchy American-women-bashing mood... Who would want to put these sexy clothes on American women who invariably carry themselves like they are trudging across the dusty Great Plains?

Welcome to 80% of the women I encounter on a daily basis while commuting into what is considered a sophisticated metropolitan city in the U.S. Never mind the men. This on a subway car that is dinged and dirty with an atrocious-sounding woman announcing the next stop. Except for the Aquarium, stations which were updated just a few years ago look like they never were. All in all, Americans and America's infrastructure are really starting to look third world country-ish if you ask me. Or perhaps a better analogy would be a sixty-year-old woman who has taken lousy care of herself over the years; she's out of shape and just plain dumpy looking. I mention all this because just having returned from well-outfitted London, it's so acutely noticeable.

With nation-wide deficits in almost all 50 states, it doesn't look like a major makeover for America's infrastructure is in the offing anytime soon. And frankly, I'm not sure I would trust Americans with the task of a make-over even if we had the money. I mean look what the flush 90's brought just to my little town -- eyesore energy-guzzling McMansions that have no proportion or context to the lovely 17th, 18th, and 19th century homes surrounding them. And, btw, the roads are still poorly paved and they still haven't buried the tangle of telephone wires in the historic downtown area.

Maybe the television networks could come up with a show similar to Extreme Makeovers on ABC. Aesthetically-sensitive countires like Switzerland or Italy could came in as consultants and help get America back on its aesthetic legs. This would be good for everybody's economies as tons of jobs would be created to fix-up potholes, dented trash barrels, sprawling ugly strip malls, falling-down manufacturing plants, rusty chainlink fences and the like. Who would pay for all of this? Advertisers and corporate sponsors. Think of all the Before and After pictures you'd have....

I'M BACK from London with a suitcase full of stories feeling both extremely jet-lagged and refreshed at the same time. But no stories tonight except to mention the plethora of stilettos which I can still hear clicking en masse and with a vengeance along the streets of London (the sound is not unlike horses clumping along a paved road if they were Starbuck's caffeinated). Teeny-boppers on up to the grannies wear them. Amazingly and in spite of careful scrutiny, I was unable to detect even the slightest trace of a grimace or furrowed brow on the radiant faces of the stiletto-donners. This baffled me because I have worn stilettos and KNOW how they feel on your feet. Hell many women I saw in London were sightseeing in stilettos i.e. walking from the London Tower bridge all the way along the Thames to the Westminster Bridge. That's miles! The treacherous cobblestones and slick, rainy sidewalks didn't deter them one bit. Don't ask me how they do it but they look terrific. I guess I've just spent too many years walking a dog unhindered for miles on end that I could ever switch to scrunching my feet into pointy-toed heels to totter to my destination. But I did learn to tie my scarf in a very cool European way. That will have to do for the time being.

Said my Republican friend a few days ago (whose confidence in Bush has eroded recently): So I have come to you, my liberal friend, to help me feel good about Mr. Kerry. What can you give me?

Dear Republican Friend:

Well to start with I could give you a big kiss for the mere fact that you have shown up at my virtual liberal doorstep. But obviously a kiss alone wouldn't be enough to get you to vote for Kerry (were it so easy!). So here goes:

I had previously gone on record as saying that there wasn't a Democratic candidate who all-out inspired me. Up until recently, all of the runners had suffered what has been ailing Democrats for a long time: their inability to present a cogent vision that doesn't alienate voters because it sounds so glum, whinny, and expensive. They've also had an extremely difficult time uniting their party because the party itself tends to be a much more eclectic mix than that of the Republicans. But then along came the Democratic primaries and something great happened. Dean showed fire-in-his-belly-rhetoric that matched any Republican's. Edwards came along and demonstrated that it is possible for a Democrat to present a message in a positive light. But it is Kerry who has been able to capitalize on this configuration by taking these elements and incorporating them into his own campaign.

So what does that say? Nothing really except it looks like it is going to be a Kerry/Edwards ticket. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that there is no such thing as a perfect candidate and Kerry is no exception. He's had some great ideas in the past, the downside of which that not many of them got very far. He has some serious accounting to do to prove he is not just as much a 'special interest schmoozer' as those he claims he is going to show the door. He's also known to be a opportunist and flip-flopper.

Nonetheless, I think the key appeal for me is the vision thing. So if you were to ask me what Kerry's strengths are in terms of deserving to beat Bush, I would say:

1) Kerry seems to have a keen understanding of the importance of incorporating policies which will make this country an environmentally sustainable one so that your children and grandchildren can enjoy life on this planet (V.s. Bush, who not once in the State of the Union speech mentioned the environment, even so as far as I am concerned it will come to be a national security issue that far exceeds any terrorist threat we could ever think of. And yet nearly every policy Bush espouses is one that follows oil to its invariable demise in the near future).

2) He is keenly aware that our military is dangerously over-extended and international relations frayed almost beyond repair and would seek to rectify this (Vs. Bush who has recklessly and arrogantly pursued a unilateral foreign policy that we will be paying for many decades to come both in terms of debt and LIVES).

3) He is keenly aware that our record budget deficit is grossly out of whack and will do something about it (Vs. Bush's out-on-Mars ideas that you can keep cutting taxes and continue spending gobs of money at the same time).

4) And finally, Kerry has the political clout and infrastructure connections that will be vital to success.

If you close your eyes and listen carefully you can hear the Bush re-election campaigners lock, load, and start to take aim with $100 M worth of ammunition at Kerry's botoxed forehead. It's going to get ugly for sure. But just keep thinking about your little baby due soon and you'll know what to do when it comes time to pull the lever in the voting booth...

More to come but I'm afraid I have about 500 people on hold wanting to weigh in on gay marriage...

On one of the darkest of my days as a liberal, comes light. Dark because over the last two days I have fielded hundreds of calls from constiuents who are crazed and angry about the Massachusett's Supreme Judicial Ruling on gay marriage. I should qualify that by saying that the majority of phone calls are coming from the elderly populace.The one's who don't threaten that we will all burn in hell if we don't support an amendment defining marriage as that between a man and a woman shriek that THE PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE ON THIS ISSUE. How dare four judges decide for the entire state they say!! Seems to me that there have been some very important issues in the past whereby had the 'people' decided instead of the courts (whose duty it is to uphold the CONSTITUTION), we would still have segregated schools and the outlawing of interracial marriage. The fact that the Massachusetts Legislature has been too chicken-shit to take a stance on this has put the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) in the uncomfortable position of having to make the decision that it did based on suits brought before the court. In my humble opinion, if State and Church are indeed seperate, then this issue is a civil rights issue and the SJC's ruling was right on.

The glimmer of light. One seventy-three-year-old woman called to say that she was in support of gay marriage. She has been married forever, has a gaggle of kids and a herd of grandchildren. And what she said to me was this, "Marriage isn't easy that's for sure. So if two people love each other and want to give it a shot let them! Who cares if they're the same sex? We need all the love in this world we can get."

The other glimmer of light came from a staunch Republican friend of mine. Here is his email to me:

Dear Anna Bloviations;

I come to you in need of liberal guidance.

My confidence in GW is beginning to quickly erode due to such "minor" offenses including but not limited to: draft dodging, complete fiscal irresponsibility, his unfathomable support of the religious right (did you see 60 Minutes on Sunday?, oofa) , not to mention the whole Iraq "thing".

However, with all that being said, JFK doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy either (RCW's picture doesn't exactly lend a whole lot of confidence!) So I have come to you, my west coast liberal friend, to help me feel good about Mr. Kerry. What can you give me?

Humbly,

XXX

I'm going to need a few days to answer him as I myself have a few issues with 'JFK.' I'll get back to him though.

"In his speech last night, John Kerry said this was the beginning of the end of the Bush administration. I agree. Sure, it may take another five years, but this is it." -- Jay Leno

My Dem friends are euphoric that Kerry is coming out so strong and that in recent polls, it would seem that Bush and Kerry are neck and neck. Yeah right. Wait till Bush starts firing 100 Million dollar’s worth of ammunition at Long John Kerry. I can just imagine the nice little campaign commercials Bush's people are at this moment choreographing: Would you want THIS man as President? One who flails against special interest but has himself taken thousands upon thousands of dollars from the very people he claims he will show the door? And don't forget this Senator comes from THAT State -- the only one in the country to allow gay marriage. Hope Kerry's speech writers and strategists are coming up with either some very good answers or some very good diversion tactics 'cause I don't think bringing up his Vietnam war record is going to get him out of this so easily..."I know about killing people which is why I know what it means to accept a contribution from a lobbyist???" Oh boy. In addition to attacking Kerry, the Bushies will no doubt start ramping up the scare-Americans tactics designed to well, scare Americans into believing that it's better to stick with an administration that already has a handle on 'taking care of all the evil, bad guys' than to go with a newbie.

Bush has a couple of things of course that he should be very worried about, the most obvious of which is the WMD thang. I'd say he should be worried about the record deficit too but for some strange reason, most Americans don't seem to be very concerned -- maybe because the numbers are so unfathomably big that it's kind of like trying to imagine the universe. You can't. So Bush will probably be able to fudge his way out of accounting for our budget problems but he may not be able to Oreo Cookie his way out of it if enough people watch THIS SHORT MOVIE. Cheney could definitely start to become a liability for Bush according to reports that are being printed in international newspapers strongly suggesting that Vice President Dick Cheney could come under criminal investigation for his role in a massive bribery scandal while he was head of Halliburton (interestingly American papers haven't thought the story newsworthy enough to print). Bush's National Guard service (or lack there of) could be a pebble in his shoe as well i.e. it's looking more and more like the "D" word might be applicable after all. Speaking of more, Michael Moore aptly points out, "What if any of them [National Guard and Reserves] chose to do what Bush did back in the early 70s -- just not show up? I've seen Republican defenders of Bush this week say, 'Yeah, but he made up the time later.' So, can today's National Guardsmen do the same thing -- just say, when called up to go to Iraq, 'Um, I'm not going to show up, I'll make up the time later!'? Can you imagine what would happen? Of course, none of them are the son of a Congressman, like young Lt. Bush was back in 1972."

Hubby just went off to London again and the daughter and I will be meeting him on the other side of the pond end of this week. I decided to make a batch of chocolate cookies to get us through the week. God and didn't I FLUB them up? How can you mess up Toll House cookies? Oh I know. While dancing around the kitchen to Aretha's Gold I think I forgot to put the baking soda in. Or something like that. Flat as a pancake they were. Come on. It was Aretha!

To all of the rabidly angry citizens who are in an uproar about the Massachusetts’s Supreme Judicial Court ruling upholding that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples -- rather than civil unions -- would meet the edict of its November decision, I say:

IF YOU'RE AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE, DON'T MARRY SOMEONE GAY!

I was so meant for royalty was the thought that crossed my mind as I waved to the throngs of people passing underneath the balcony on which I was standing. I had always wanted to stand on a balcony and wave to the masses and here was my dream fulfilled.

The door out to the Senate balcony had been mysteriously locked; so a couple of us (a few adventurous Senators included) crawled through a side window to the balcony facing the Commons. The Senators stood discreetly in the shadows lest roving reporters 'catch' them having snuck out to the off-limits balcony. Which meant that essentially anyone looking up to the State House this afternoon saw a woman in a bright red parka beaming from ear to ear and happily waving to the million-and-a-half people below. The roar of the crowd was astonishing and, well yes, I kind of got caught up in the moment and momentarily pretended it was all for me. Heh why not.

We had a perfect view down to Tremont Street when the amphibious Duck Mobiles filled with Patriot's players finally came into view. I admit I didn't see Tom Brady the quarterback but I did catch the glint of the trophy he was holding (made by Tiffany's). The glint in my heart was brighter though. A 'caper' is exhilarating (even if it's just sneaking through a window) and frankly I wish that they weren't so few and far between. Kudos to us rebels who defied the locked door. I think second to being born into royalty I would have liked to have been a first-class thief like Robert Wagner in the 1968 series, It Takes A Thief. For the exhilaration factor.

Oh did I tell you that hubby talked to his older brother? The one who tried to commit suicide over the holidays? He didn't have time to talk because he was late for a tennis game.... does anyone else see anything a bit incongruous here?

Maybe you had to be there (or at least be watching it on TV) to appreciate the artistic vision behind it, but on AM radio headed back from a spectacular weekend of skiing, Aerosmith singing to the backdrop of Bush talking about space programs was, well, just kind of odd.

We made it back home shortly after the kick-off. Couple of things I would like to note about watching most of Superbowl XXXVIII (I fell asleep during the third quarter and woke up at the end of the fourth):

1) I remain duly impressed by the yellow line they are able to superimpose somehow on the screen to indicate the first-down marker.

2) Is it my imagination, or when they show re-plays do they now color enhance it so that it looks like you are watching a Playstation Football video game?

3) What was UP with that sleazy halftime program and the lame commercials? Was that the best MTV and Madison Avenue could come up with? The 'flirtatious duet' billed by CBS between Justin and Janet? Yeah if you call a dog trying to hump another dog flirtatious -- never mind the breast incident. The supporting dancers all seemed to be dressed up in drag and looked like they had just stepped out of a seedy French burlesque show. Kid Rock dressed up in an American flag poncho looked completely out-of-place except that his cowboy/rock lyrics juxtaposed to lewd rap helped to make the whole thing positively surreal.

4) As far as the commercials go, erectile dysfunction and emasculation (the beer commercial) seem to have been the order of the day. I'm sure a whole psychological study could be done on that... No doubt O'Reilly is chomping at the bit to emasculate a few liberals under the pretext that the Lefties are responsible for the moral decline of the Superbowl halftime show. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I am still dreaming of the giant improvement in skiing I made over the weekend. For the last twenty-plus years, since my days first learning to ski on the Austrian alps with hubby-to-be, I have been hanging out at the same intermediate plateau. But this weekend I just took it to the next level. The fall on Saturday helped. The minus ten degrees on the top of the mountain made for a sheet of ice that no amount of desperate flailing could help halt Anna Bloviation's head-first vertical descent down the mountain. "Well honey," I said to myself, "you might as well just enjoy the ride." In this relaxed state, my body took over the reigns from my terrified brain and then, wow, it wasn't so bad! I landed about twenty feet below hubby, who with classic Austrian encouragement said, "You keep pooting your veight on the back ski. Dhat's why you fell," and proceeded to ski on. I won't bore you with all of the expletives that followed him down the hill but unlike all the other times I got up only to put my 'veight' on my back ski again, I listened. No, not to hubby. To my body that had just offered me up an epiphany. Whereas my mind had been screaming bad advice at me for the last twenty years i.e. "Oh jesus freezing christ, what the hell do you think you're doing way up here California girl!" my body, it turns out, possesses all of the calm, rational skills to keep itself alive in dangerous situations.

I leaned my body down the mountain and hurtled forward. "I have faith in you body!" I yelled. And sure enough it did all of the things that are counter-intuitive to a mind that wasn't introduced to skiing until its twenties and is now going very fast down a double-black-diamond course. I kept my shoulders facing squared to the bottom of the mountain and leaned my weight forward onto the downhill ski (if you've ever hiked, you know that your body naturally leans backwards as you descent a mountain). When I wanted to turn I gently took the weight off the downhill ski and began putting it onto the other ski. And so on and so forth. The conditions were still icy and so I was going faster than I would normally want to go but the laws of physics were proving to hold true even for Anna Bloviation's. Hoola look at me ski...Or, it's never too late to teach an old dog a new trick.