See, I can be Grumpy About Important Issues, too

Two members of the California State Assembly introduced a version of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act to the floor last week. You know, the Kevorkian one. This seems fairly huge to me, not only because I am a Californian who will eventually die, but because the aforementioned Oregon law will come before the supreme court next fall. But for some reason, nobody's talking about this, not even if you count bloggers as somebodies.

I am not even positive what introducing a bill to the state legislature entails. I believe the Assembly reconvenes on Thursday, at which point they presumably catch up on each other's vacation stories over tuna melts before getting down to the Compassionate Choices Act. I wish someone with a Google ranking high enough to make himself helpful would tell me what's going on. A few days ago I at least had the Assemblymembers' press release; that was better than the three articles I found, each of which contained large chunks of the relase interspersed with awkward transition-prose. But now that the Eureka Times-Standard has written an editorial whose message is Free Your Mind and the Rest will Follow, the Assemblymemberstaff has replaced the release with the editorial. Yes, I'm sorry, I withdraw my earlier generalization. The Eureka Times-Standard is not nobody. Quite.

Even if this bill turns out to be the product of two crackpot left-wingers jerking each other off, I still want the facts. Why won't anyone give me facts? I can't spend my whole life googling state legislation. I have a job, you know.

Oscar Roundup: Suck it, Robert Verdi

A Career-Making/Breaking Best and Worst Dressed List:

The Best:

As usual, Samuel L. Jackson was the only man who dressed with both sense and creativity. If I ever make a Best Dressed of All Time list, he'll be the only man on it. That is why I am so frustrated that I can't find a picture of his outfit tonight.

As for the women:

• Cate Blanchett was the clear winner for the evening.
• Bridgid Coulter, who may well be an accomplished person in her own right but who is also Don Cheadle's wife, put in an attention-grabbing second.
  
• The great Helen Mirren led us all to wonder anew how Taylor Hackford ever managed to snag her.
• There were also strong, though not breathtaking, showings from Kate Winslet, Tanya Lewis Lee (Mrs. Spike) and Catalina Sandina Moreno.
  

The Worst:

• Laura Linney, who came dressed as a toilet seat cover
• Melanie Griffith, who came dressed as Mystique the evil Shape-Shifting mutant from X-Men (we should also note that while Antonio Banderas has clearly lost his mind, he can still wear a pair of pants)
• Spike Lee, who came dressed as a Shriner. This picture does not really capture the effect. I like that he wore sneakers, but what can you say about a man in a fez? Where's Ataturk when you need him?
  
• Kathy Griffin, who would probably have escaped inclusion with the very worst were she not so painful to listen to that I had to mute her every time she came onscreen, forcing me to stare at her dress and contemplate its ugliness.

Mike requested a special list for People Who Look like they're Eating Shit Whenever they Talk. Obviously the list would begin and end with Renee Zellwegger.

He also wants all of womankind to know that the empire waist is a bad idea. Obviously, he did not call it the empire waist, he called it "that dress that makes Gisele look pregnant." Our early research has turned up no evidence of Gisele actually being pregnant, so I'm going ahead with the advisory notice.

THAT'S IT! THAT'S THE LIST!

Oscar Roundup: Suck it, Sean Penn

I’m not going to comment on the winners and losers from tonight’s Oscars because, frankly, I didn’t bother to see most of the movies nominated. According to Chris Rock’s montage from the show that means I’m in the majority. Either that, or it means I’m black.

The most important part of the show was clearly the monologue, which was notable for the fact that it was actually funny. Sean Penn’s objections aside (what, do you have to turn in your sense of humor when you’re in rehab?), Chris Rock proved a brilliant choice for host. It’s probably because he comes off as not giving a fuck. I laughed my through the opening and snoozed my way through the rest of it. I wonder if a lot of funny stuff happened during the five-second delay that didn’t get through. If I hear about Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz kissing for four seconds and having that dumped out on the delay, I’ll be crushed.

Some other thoughts:

• How the fuck does Hilary Swank have two best actress Oscars? I mean seriously, who is Hilary Swank?
• My favorite part of the show remains the highlights from the technical awards. I love watching the crotchety film geeks ogle the impossibly attractive actress who is their consolation prize for not getting their Oscars on the big night. It has to be a double-edged sword for the actress, who is being asked to rub against these (probably bad smelling) guys before they go back to their windowless closet of an office. On the other hand, at least you know that at least someone who matters in Hollywood thinks you’re smokin’.
• Did anyone bother to give Prince an advance copy of his script? And does Prince really need the presenter’s gift basket more than say, Lisa Loeb?
• Was the orginal plan to have the boys' chorus, in red sweater vests no less, who sang back-up for Beyonce stand in the dark or did the director notice their raging hard-ons during the rehearsal and decide to shroud them in darkness?
• Also can the academy please do a better job of keeping its later presenters away from the free booze (I’m sure there’s free booze) before they present? Dustin Hoffman was obviously shitfaced.
• Whose sister did Martin Scorsese knock up? Oscar's? Why is the academy so pissed at him?
  
• Living on the West Coast is awesome. The Oscars are over and we’re awake to blog about it.
  

Who Won? It's an Honor Just to be Nominated Edition

It's Oscar night, which means that FFH is already camped out in front of the preshow watching Star Jones greet all the celebrities. The first people to arrive were Morgan Spurlock of Supersize Me and his fiancee the vegan chef. Of course the documentarians arrive first. Not much in the wedding section today, probably because people didn't want to compete with the Oscars. That's just like getting married on Super Bowl Sunday or Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

27 February 2004

Gay Couples with Clear Winner: 0 of 0
Straight Couples with Clear Winner: 4 of 5
Men: 3
Women: 1
Ties: 0
Disputed Results: 1

Year to Date

Gay Couples with Clear Winner: 3 of 4
Ties: 1
Disputed Results: 0
Straight Couples with Clear Winner: 39 of 49
Men: 29
Women: 11
Ties: 5
Disputed Results: 5

Call me the Medium

Last night I dreamt I was Ariel Sharon, and I walked away from peace negotiations because I needed to blow my nose and couldn't find a tissue. If today's events had not mirrored my dream quite so closely it would be very very funny.

The Most Talented Poster in FFH's History

I don't know how Akil found us, but we're certainly honored that he did. He also has a blog.

While we're on the topic, it should be noted that Akil is also a secular jew. He and I attented the CSJO Youth Conference for a number of years over Memorial Day Weekend. His performances during the annual Sunday-night talent shows were always one of the most anticipated parts of the conference. We're hoping that he'll play some shows in San Francisco in the coming months.

Alpha Dogs and Beta Decay

So my first week at my new job is over, and I think I can safely blog about it without jinxing things. I'm at UCD, specifically the Public Health department of the Med School, specifically the Ag Center. As I have learned, it is one of 9 Ag Centers across the country funded primarily by the National Institute for Occcupational Safety and Health to study Agricultural health issues specific to their regions.

So how is it working for an organization devoted to improving the health of working folk? On the one hand, everyone is well-educated about ergonomics. I have an adjustable purple chair and was encouraged to redesign my work station to meet my own comfort, which I did. On the other hand, the office is located right next to a superfund site. I mean right next to it, as in you walk out the door and point to the giant lead drums and go "that's where the Beagle Project was." Ah, the Beagle Project. Up until recently (I have heard 10 years from one source, 6 months from another), some UCD research scientists were irradiating Beagles with God-Knows-What to study...how many gamma rays it takes to make your dog glow? I don't know. Anyway, pretty much the first thing everyone says on your first day is "you didn't drink the tap water, did you?"

Speaking of dogs, my boss, with whom I share an office, graciously asked my permission to bring in her two Chihuahuas. I am no great lover of the breed, but I find Chico and Olive pretty appealing. Olive seems to be the alpha dog. She's rather fat, and when she gets bored she waddles around begging for grapes. Chico, who gets cold easily, generally naps under his blanket for most of the day. They're very well behaved, affectionate and quiet, except when making this vaguely asthmatic Chihuahua noise which is apparantly known as a "reverse sneeze." I'm a little worried about running over them in my ergonomic chair though.

And then we Beat our Helmets into Glockenspiels

Tonight was a special night at the Kol Haddash congregation of Albany, CA. Sherwin Wine, the founder (the founder!) of Secular Humanistic Judaism dropped in to give a talk. Since Rabbi Wine is also Mike's old Hebrew school teacher from Detroit, we schlepped over to Albany to say hi, and to give me my first taste of organized secular humanism (not counting that one memorial service at Ethical Culture).

From what I can tell, Secular Humanism totally rocks. The congregation is full of terrific old people, and Rabbi Wine himself is just the most adorable. He gave a short lecture on the history of Ashkenazic Judaism and I had no idea how little I knew. His style reminded me a little of Peter Awn's (another great teacher). I had a chance to tell the Rabbi how adorable he was at the Oneg, and he was nice enough to tell me how Michael was one of his favorite students of all time. This is something people tell me relatively often, but I never get tired of hearing it. It was all just so cute.

The funniest part of the evening, though, came during the reading, when a congregant informed us that we had beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into tuning forks. The funny thing is, I think I like it better that way.

That is, rather than pruning hooks, you troglodytes.

Well, at Least I'll Be Free on May 1

The Sacramento Kings very likely cost me two free meals today by trading Chris Webber to Philadelphia and therefore sealing their first-round exit from the playoffs. That's a lot of slices of pizza and days of schmoozing with reporters from bigger papers.

So while my coverage of the NBA is shortened by one round this year, Webber's season will last just as long. Sac with Webber wasn't getting out of the second round. Philly, who will be No. 3 in the East, isn't beating Detroit (or if Shaq stays out for long, Miami). So really this trade does nothing except let all the subtly racist Kings fans gleefully celebrate the elevation of Serb Peja Stojakovic and cracker-ass cracker Brad Miller to the biggest stars on the team.

Your official FFH NBA Finals prediction: Spurs over Pistons in 7 games

Just When You Thought This Day Would at Least End Before Sucking Any Harder

WKCRA is reporting that someone in Roseville is poisoning puppies by throwing dog treats laced with rat poison (of a type no longer sold in stores) over their fences. However, I can't link you there because they don't update their website that often--probably because by the time KCRA3 Reports comes on, everyone in Sacramento, Yolo and Placer Counties is asleep except for me and the fucking fucking goddamn fucking sorority girls across the street. They never sleep.

I was about to delete the above to avoid AdSense stripping us of our ads, but then Mike said we should leave it and see if we get ads for Hot Sorority Girls. Now that I've said "stripping," we obviously will.

In Which I Serve as a Character Witness

Oh, and Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), who is apparently at least as pissed as I am these days, is my dad's most prized ex-student. If the way he honors his ex-professors is any indication, the congressman is also a thoroughly decent guy. No offense to Congressman Wally Herger, but I wish I could vote for Hinchey.

Today is the Greatest Day I've Ever Known

Not. Today was totally fucked. What happened to me today should be a cautionary tale to disobedient children. It was the emotional equivalent of finding blood in your urine. If I had galley ships I would be sitting in them right now ignoring Agamemnon. If I had hurricanoes I'd be on the heath mouthing off (actually, there was a tornado in Natomas yesterday, but you'd never know it from here). If I had an attic I'd be pacing up and down it on all fours and biting people to protest Mike's bigamous marriage to the governess.

Don't be alarmed, I was not the victim of any agression and I will be fine sometime soon.

However, I am too pissed off to relate my sob story, so if you really want to know what happened to me today, ask Mike, and bring the world's tiniest violin. Since the former is at work and therefore not blogging, I will, through clenched teeth, focus on the three bright spots in this infected day. I will mix my metaphors when I damn well please, so park your mouse right there, BrooklynDodger! You do not want to mess with me right now.

1) Speaking of teeth, my new dental plan has worldwide coverage, meaning that if I can get a Saturday appointment I can fly into New York for a weekend and have my own dentist in Poughkeepsie take out my wisdom teeth. She's a genius, and just about the only person to have ever touched my teeth. I was her first child patient when I was about five.

2) The woman who cut my hair today (grrr I hate getting my hair cut) has a cat that is half siamese and half bobcat. That's pretty damn cool. His name is Nigel.

3) Someone from the clinic recently quit, and apparently the higher-ups' refusal to give me a permanent position was the last straw. Which is flattering, and that's why it's a bright spot.

Tomorrow I have two things on the docket.

1) Missing Gigi's Mom's funeral, which I'm really sad to be missing and

2) Starting a new job, which is why I have to miss the funeral. I sincerely hope I am more pleasant by tomorrow at 8:15 am or this could be a really unprofessional first day.

Right, Like You've Never Googled Yourself

Interestingly, a Google search for "jeff posnick thirty four blog" gets you to Free-Floating Hostility, but not to 34. A search for "anna mirer" gets you the gentle suggestion that you meant to type "anna miller."

Now Open: Position of Headline Writer

I think some editor at the New York Times has a half-wit niece that managed to nepotize her way into a position where she gets to think up headlines. How else can you explain this:

The Artist Formally Known for Prints: Yinka Shonibare is a Doodle Dandy

See p186. Either that or some syphalitic copy editor is slipping them in.

It's Almost as though I Had a Lit Hum Paper Due

My college years were full of internet novelties that seemed like comic genius at the time. I barely ever used the internet before I got to college, and Columbia's ethernet seemed like the key to Aladdin's cave of whimsical time-wasters. On a trip down memory lane I recently hunted up some of the best beloved sites, and a lot of them still exist. After all, we're not the only ones who are whistful for the dot-com bubble years. We saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "All of Your Base Are Belong to Us." So here are a few web madeleines for the nostalgic:

• VirtualCrack.com still offers a creative alternative to e-cards.
• Mahir can till invitate anyone who is want to come to Turkey, especially nice nude models
• The Official Ninja Website has a frightening number of advertisers.
  
• The Political Compass is quite current. Take the test and find out where you lie. Mike ranks -6 economically and -6.1 socially. I rank -8.5 economically (making me practically a communist)(practically, as opposed to actually like some of Mike's ex-girlfriends) and -5.74 socially. Although I'm not surprised to find us both squarely in the bottom left quadrant, I would have predicted the opposite orientation relative to each other. We're not even close to John Kerry. So take your score with a grain of salt, but do check out the Iconochasms page. It has a fascinating list of quotations from current and historical figures of political prominance.

Happy recherching!

Anna Gets Schooled

Isaac was classy enough to point out by email rather than in public my mistake about his use of "less politics." In the 12 years I've known him, Isaac has never once been wrong, and this time was no exception. He defended his choice thus: " 'Politics' is construed as a singular collective", like "physics" and most words [ending] in "-ics." That may be because they derive from neuter plurals [ending] in -ika, which take a singular verb." I looked this up, of course (because I have never been wrong either in the course of my acquaintance with Isaac) and it turns out that either way is correct. When "politics" is used in the sense of the business of rulers it always takes a singular. Most other uses of the word, including political positions or attitudes (which is how Isaac presumably meant it) can take either a singular or a plural verb. So while I will contine to use "fewer politics" I will no longer cast aspersions on "less politics."

I feel that any correction, retraction or apology ought to run where the error ran, so I am posting it. In fact, perhaps I'll make a regular feature out of what I've learned from my own errors in language--I'll be William Safire's abject alter-ego.

Who Won? The Iron Chef America Wins Big Edition

Hidden deep inside the Wedding section, atop of the second page anyway, is the news that the Food Network's Bobby Flay has married Stephanie March, formerly the glamourpuss A.D.A. on Law and Order SVU. This news inspires many serious questions, not the least of which is how a basic-cable star even meets a main character on a network series? Perhaps this is just more proof that NBC is in deep trouble. I mean, five years ago Benjamin Bratt scored Julia Roberts.

20 Feburary 2005
Gay Couples with Clear Winner: 0 of 1
Ties: 1
Disputed Results: 0
Straight Couples with Clear Winner: 9 of 10
Men: 7
Women: 2
Ties: 1
Disputed Results: 0

Year to Date

Gay Couples with Clear Winner: 3 of 4
Ties: 1
Disputed Results: 0
Straight Couples with Clear Winner: 39 of 49
Men: 29
Women: 11
Ties: 5
Disputed Results: 5

I Accept my Swedish Overlords

Anna is not nearly as entertained by IKEA as I am.

She does, however, enjoy assembling furniture. That's important because after trying to assemble a bedside table with the vaugely incestuous name "Fornbro," only to find that pre-made holes were misaligned, I accepted defeat. IKEA had worn me down with 2 and a half hours of shopping in circles (though it was broken up by a phone call to Jeff to find out how big our TV is). Anna finished the table and one more, now we have a lovely set that towers above our mattress. The fun of IKEA is finding out what sort of Swedish nonsense syllables it has assigned to the coathanger or the plastic drying rack. Besides the Fornbros, our lamp seems to be made by a company called Not.

On a pitstop at a Courtyard hotel in Emeryville, we ran into a gaggle of Jet Blue flight attendants. It was a perfectly nice hotel and I was surprised to learn that the airline stashes its traveling crew in such decent digs. With the low fares, and lack of a union, I figured they would be put up in a Motel-6 or maybe slept in the terminal.

Also notable was the fact that Anna drove the 60 miles to Emeryville, CA. She acquitted herself well, keeping reasonably cool through her first, though hopefully not last, Berkeley traffic jam and getting us off the freeway without incident. I, however, continue to press a phantom brake pedal on the passenger side whenever we drive together, something she is getting pretty damn sick of, if you must know.

Parkinson's? It's Fine, it's Great!

Isaac recently enjoined FFH to write "more funny bits and less politics." Leaving the misused modifier aside, I agree that we have been rather long-winded lately. However, I would like to point out once again that Isaac doesn't have a blog. When he does get one, FFH will be equally supportive if he decides to fill it with apolitical drollery, a direct feed from electrodes hooked up to Richard Perle's brain, or a blow-by-blow account of the life of a Latin scholar who, perhaps, secretly wonders if he should have stuck out the whole llama studies thing.

So, since we believe that current events, like green vegetables, can be delicious if served properly, here's a link to an AP article on the Vatican's position that it is very good that the Pope has Parkinson's. And you, with your wanting to cure diseases! I will let His Holiness speak for himself instead of treating you to the furious rant with which I greeted the article (and that was before I clued in to the fact that "health" was code for "stem cell research"). Oh wait, His Holiness can't speak for himself because of the Parkinson's. So I will say this: it is one thing for God's vicar on earth to reject the life of the body for himself, but a lot of Catholics with terminal diseases are praying to die of something else.

Thank you to everyone who controlled the impulse to point out how lame it is to post articles already posted on Wonkette.

We Couldn't be More Proud of Akil

So Akil's off the Road to Stardom, going out by being himself, refusing to bad-mouth the other contender as Missy Elliott egged him on.

We hereby invoke the Jeffrey Posnick Rule and name Akil the Mensch of the Month.

The Roid to the White House

The New York Daily News, in typically understated fashion, reported today that in the mid-1990s the FBI approached Major League Baseball regarding the use of steroids by its players. According to the story, an Ann Arbor-based agent had been tracking steroids at the request of former University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler and the investigation led him to discover rampant steroid use among ballplayers. The agent, Greg Stejskal, said he contacted MLB's chief of security and put him in touch with steroid dealers. Nothing ever happened.

The implication of the story is that MLB knew that it's home run chase of 1998 was tainted by drug use. On ESPN's mid-afternoon talkfest today, the sportswriters who chase fame on television demanded accountability from commissioner Bud Selig. Many made the point that Selig chose popularity over the principle of having a clean game, and that he should be made to answer for that. And certainly he should since it makes all those protestations of the past two years that he was "Shocked, shocked to learn of the extent of steroid use in MLB" total bullshit. I doubt many will be surprised to learn that Bud Selig is a tool. A tool.

But the list of people who are implicated by circumstantial evidence includes every one who owned a baseball team after 1994, and that list includes the president. President Bush, who was just Governor Bush at the time, owned the Texas Rangers until 1998 when he turned a a nearly $15 million profit by selling the team to Scott Boras' future bitch Tom Hicks. The team's value appreciated thanks to a taxpayer-funded stadium in Arlington. Now, Hicks is stupid with money when it comes to sports (Sure A-Rod, we can pay you a quarter of a billion dollars, and by we, I mean George Steinbrenner), but one suspects that when he plunked down $250 million to buy the Rangers he had some assurance that whole enterprise wasn't about to fold up and drift away. And since the great power surge of the late 1990s supposedly saved the league after the 1994 strike, it would suggest that George W. Bush profited from baseball's steroid infestation.

I don't believe Jose Canseco when he asserts in his book that Bush had to know about steroids on his team, because I think that teams can hide things like that in the clubhouse. But if an FBI agent uses his name on the record, well, you take a major step forward into the realm of the plausible. Bush used the 2004 State of the Union to take the lead in the fight against 'roids, but this could just be a Saved By the Bell situation. I am speaking, of course, of the episode where Zack Morris and his friends from Bayside were cast to be in an anti-drug spot with famous actors, but off the set those actors were actually smoking a bunch of weed.

Valentine's Day in the Salt Mines

After answering my home phone last night to hear April’s customary “Hi Mike!” replaced with “What the hell are you still doing there?” I decided to arrive at the basketball game early. In fact, I got there 45 minutes before tip-off (which drew notice because my colleague who covers the men’s beat sometimes shows 45 minutes after tip-off) and was rewarded by uninterrupted exposure to the Jock Jams CD.

Since it was Valentine’s Day and women’s basketball, there was hardly anyone there. There were, however, Valentine’s-Day-themed promotions such as the half-time game where they put three bases out on the court and had a guy answer questions about his girlfriend so he could score. They were also selling red carnations. After the game, Mike the head Sports Information guy walked up with a flower and we had the following conversation:

Mike 1: (showing carnation) I’m not going home empty-handed tonight.

Mike 2: My wife doesn’t care about that shit.

Mike 1: Of course she does. They all say that.

Mike 2: No, no. She really doesn’t.

[Editor’s Note: The above exchange is only funny in the context of the post below it.]

After the press conference, I came back to find the head of another carnation sitting on my computer. “That means I’m going to murder you,” Mark the stat guy explained.

Happy Couple's Validation Day

My husband is a wonderful man. He is a much kinder person than I am, and I try to learn from him daily while he puts up with my self-pity, self-criticism, short temper, compulsions, defective housekeeping, vegetarianism, allergies, mercurial religious/ethnic identity, habit of calling all appealing creatures "puppy," hostility toward the practice of waxing, insistance on muting the best baseball/football/soccer/hockey/tennis/curling events on TV, nighttime paranoia followed by a morning ritual he once compared to trying to wake up an angry wolverine, and inability to drive.

So, you see, it is in no way a reflection on Michael's value as a husband or on my appreciation of him that I decided to make Valentine's Day a girls' night. Perhaps I'm being a little jumpy here because when I went back to New York for the summer everyone thought we were getting divorced, or perhaps it's cause my dad mounted such an effective guilt campaign to win the holiday back from my mom's girlfriends. But I've always felt a festival that congratulates people on pairing off was not only superfluous (since they get congratulated for it all year long) but outright destructive (it's the day out of the year you're most likely to settle for some schnook just to avoid the pitying look in the eye of your cashier at Blockbuster). Therefore even if Mike had not been working tonight, I probably still would have invited the girls over.

Mona, April and Gigi-in-Spirit joined me after work, and we immediately set to work on that staple of any Girls' Night In, assasinating each other via video game. April brought her X-box over to hook up to my TV so she could show us a game called Halo--specifically the level she had customized so that you could win by fatally shooting your friend a mere 5 times instead of the usual 10. Her name in Halo World is She-Wolf, so Mona dubbed herself Beowulf. I was torn between Virginia Woolf, Paul Wolfowitz, and Wolf Blitzer, but in the end they all had too many letters and I just went by Vixen. It turns out watching April and Mona play video games isn't that different from watching Jeff and Scott play video games, except that from time to time April will put down her handset and say "no, no, go find a semi-automatic weapon, I'll wait." Then it was my turn to play and Mona killed me 10 times, only managing to kill herself thrice in the process. She tends to confuse her trigger finger with her grenade-throwing finger and blow herself up. I tend to get confused about which way is down and find myself looking at the floor or the ceiling while Beowulf stands right in front of me and blasts me with her plasma gun.

To round off the evening we watched G.I. Jane and tried to be big about Viggo Mortensen's shorts. Then Mona taught us belly dancing. See? If you must celebrate Valentine's Day, it should be all about your peeps. If you need a holiday to tell someone you care about them, you need to relax a little.

Who Won? The Hot Guys Get Married in February Edition

The only funny thing in the weddings section today was someone who changed her name from Elizabeth Lee to Elizabeth Luu. Another strong performance for the women, though.

We've noticed that so far only one in fourteen couples with pictures has been gay. Is that just because it's the offseason? So much for the destruction of a sacred institution.

13 Februrary

Gay Couples with Clear Winner 0 of 0
Straight Couples with Clear Winner 5 of 6
Men: 2
Women: 3
Ties: 1
Disputed Results: 0

Year to Date

Gay Couples with Clear Winner: 3 of 3
Straight Couples with Clear Winner: 30 of 39
Men: 22
Women: 9
Ties: 4
Disputed Results: 5

In Which I Drop Names

I interviewed another prospective Columbia student today, a very nice kid who plays about a thousand instruments and runs a jazz radio station at his high school. He's quite familiar with Road to Stardom, and when I told him Akil had lived down the hall from me in Carman it looked like Columbia rose several notches in his estimation. As Form pointed out, Akil had a rough week on the show, but he's hanging in and we're rooting for him so hard that it's getting tough to watch without yelling at the screen. This is also the reason I'm no longer allowed to read Vogue or David Denby's movie reviews. I'm not allowed to watch Animal Planet because the dogs make me cry.

Blogging in the Acceptable Time

Out of concern for my professional life, BrooklynDodger sent me this article about bloggers getting in trouble for talking about their bosses behind their backs. Although I probably will only work at the clinic for another day (I have a new job in the works but I won't jinx it by posting about it yet), I certainly wouldn't want to be fired.

I have always taken the position that anything I say about people in the dark I should be prepared to say in the light. That doesn't stop me from maliciously gossiping; I just think if I'm caught I deserve what I get, i.e. when I accidentally emailed the head of my high school's alumnae association with the information that her son had been "blown by a quarter of our class--the quarter that wasn't on financial aid." That was quite possibly the most painful moment of my life, but I deserved a far worse. I do feel badly that the poor woman heard it from me, especially since she's been nothing but gracious, but on the whole I feel that letting out that kind of sentiment in a safe and trusting environment is the most positive thing I can do with it. What's my alternative? Repression is fraught with its own perils.

However, the Free-Floaing Hostility is not really a safe place for the products of my acid pen, and I did take something of a risk by blogging so viciously about Dr. Mormonstein and Febra. I will have to take a long look at that.

Hostylefax Part Deux

As promised, a quick round-up of the Mary Gordon book tour's stop in San Francisco:

Tuesday morning: The Hostylefaxer arrived in Berkeley. I was picked up at the train station by Arlene, the escort who has been hired for my mom. I didn't know being an author meant you got an escort, but apparently this is a thing. Arlene, as it turns out, is the bomb, and knows a lot of funny stories about authors behaving badly, though she sadistically refuses to use names. She held up a copy of Pearl in lieu of a sign with my name on it. We drove to a bookstore called Mrs. Dalloway's (Mike: "Sounds like a big party") and met Mom. Mom was in unusually high spirits, having drawn an audience of 70 people in the middle of the day. She had, however, had to edit her reading extempore, because the owner of Mrs. Dalloway's happens to be the daughter of McGeorge Bundy, to whom Pearl makes a disparaging allusion.

Next to San Fran, for a radio interview on KCUF with Febra Bagel-Jerks. Febra was a little off. Not actually hallucinating in the studio, but strange. In the pre-interview she told us about the bereavement center she runs, and about how her show has huge followings in Australia and Japan. She asked my mom to sign her copy of Good Boys and Dead Girls because that was the book she'd taken the most flak for owning. She got stroppy with my mom for not talking enough while she was testing the volume levels and got stroppy with me for asking her to mention the website, though she subsequently helped herself to so much of it that I wondered what morons used to ask my mother before she had a website. During the interview Febra congratulated my mom on her tenure ("Um, thanks. I've had it since 1994"), asked her what it was like being one of eight kids (Um, I was an only child. My mother was one of nine.), and displayed very little control over her own train of thought. Mom was frantically trying to make eye contact with me the whole time, especially when her cell phone went off, but I kept my eyes glued to the floor to avoid absolute collapse.

The hotel, as I have mentioned, was quite swanky, though Mom said the one she stayed in before was even nicer. There were complimentary yoga baskets, among other amenities. However, they did fail to answer the phone when mom was being called for a radio show. She took them to task and got a free bottle of wine out of it. We got manicures while watching Oprah's interview of a woman who has had so much nose surgery she has to open her nostrils with Q-tips every morning.

That evening meant another reading, this time at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books. The young woman who was introducing my mom was a lot nicer than Febra about plugging the website, though she got into trouble with Arlene for saying someone looked beautiful in a photograph "even though she's older." The reading was a success, though Mom couldn't be convinced of it, and we met the brother-in-law of Harold, who was our mail man back in New Paltz. We ate dinner at the fancy restaurant at the hotel, leading me to my discovery that I no longer enjoy eating out.

Not much happened on the second day except that Mom and I got into a furious argument about reproductive rights for the mentally handicapped that ended in us not speaking for several minutes, though that might have been influenced by the presence between us of a fruit and cheese plate. She also confessed that certain schools of literary thought make her feel "like I'm the only dog in a room full of cats, and there I am gnawing on a knuckle bone while the rest of them have just finished exquisitely disemboweling a vole." You heard it here first, an FFH exclusive.

Limey Love Connection

BrooklynDodger alerted us to the hot story of the day, namely that Prince Charles is finally going to make an honest woman of Camilla Parker Bowles. Big Poppa Dodge suggested that FFH play an unscheduled game of Who Won? on the posh pair, prompting the following conversation:

Anna: So who do you think won, Chazzer or Parks?

Mike: Prince Charles is always the winner; he's ugly.

Anna: Really? But he's a prince.

Mike: Always. He'd win over Tayshaun Prince. (pause) He'd win over Prince.

HostyleFaxer

San Francisco

So here I am, on the road with Mary Gordon, behaving like a pushy publicist ("Allow me to interrupt your discussion of Lyn Hejinian's critical theory to plug MaryGordon.net") and getting fed a lot of room service. The hotel is very nice, but giving readings and interviews is hard work and Mom deserves it. I'll blog more extensively about her radio interview yesterday with a station I'll call KCUF FM and I woman I'll call Febra Bagel-Jerks who really sucks but I'm on a timed internet connection so you'll have to wait. For the moment I have discovered that I no longer enjoy eating out. I'd rather have grape nuts in my own kitchen. 24 seconds and counting, must post! Ta!

Steve Nash is Fucking Awesome

Here's the genius of the Phoenix Suns: Late in the fourth quarter, Sacramento's Cuttino Mobley gave the Kings the lead with a 3-pointer from the corner, then left his arm in the air as he jogged slowly back on defense. Meanwhile, Amare Stoudamire blows past him, takes a pass from Steve Nash and hits a short jumper to make it a one-point game. In the NBA, where a decade of walk-it-up offense has slowed the game, players' internal clocks say they have a few seconds to celebrate an important basket. By running, even after made shots, Phoenix steals a ton of easy points. The Suns take nearly half of their shots in the first 10 seconds of a possession and nearly three-quarters before the shot clock hits 9. That is a commitment to playing the game a certain way. It has some statistical basis as well, since, according to 82games.com the chances of scoring on a possession decrease considerably as the shot clock ticks closer to 0.

Stats aside, I found myself sitting in the auxiliary press area at Arco last night hoping that a generation of 8-year-olds is watching tapes of Steve Nash. Watching him drive the Suns is incredible. His court vision is amazing, which is sort of a shock given that when I had long hair like that, it interfered with my peripheral vision. Nash scored 33 points and dished out 17 assists as Phoenix beat Sacramento 125-123. I have to admit I'm a little spoiled when it comes to Nash. I've only seen him in person against the Kings. That means he's being guarded by Mike Bibby, who can't (or won't) defend him. I mean, Nash doesn't defend Bibby either so it's usually a fun match-up (Though Phoenix actually used someone named Joe Johnson, who is actually really good, against Bibby for most of the game last night.)

It's in vogue in NBA pressrooms to question whether the Suns can keep this up during the postseason, when teams actually get back on defense. I think Phoenix will kill halfcourt defenses in the playoffs just as they do in the regular season because when Nash comes barreling down the court at 60 miles per hour, defenses are like deer in headlights having to react. It will be interesting to see if teams start to pick up Nash fullcourt in the playoffs and really commit to it. I don't mean the 3/4 court stuff you see in the NBA where someone walks the floor with a point guard but no real defense is attempted. I mean pressure, when people get into Nash and force him to give the ball up before he gets players into scoring positions. Nash does turn the ball over, but the Suns' style (as did the Mavs of the last four years) creates so many extra possessions that it's not a big deal. Maybe people have tried that and I just haven't seen it. I really can't say.

Anyway watch the Suns if you get the chance. Hopefully they'll win a couple of rounds in the playoffs and get teams to start emulating them.

Missives from Domestic Life

As predicted, I crapped out out before Anna did when we threw the football during halftime of the Super Bowl. It was, however, harder to leave because Anna has improved her sprial and is now getting more distance on the ball. We are attributing this advance to added upper body strength due to our workout regimen, though we cannot account for the better technique since we haven't thrown the ball in weeks. Anna believes her improvement was only a matter of time since football, in fact, demands that you throw like a girl.

Anna has also completed the task of sewing two patches onto the legs of her jeans. She has poked herself approximately 12 times per leg with a needle while finishing the job. It should be noted, that while Anna gets holes in the legs of her jeans mine always wear out in the ass (which Anna also patched) first. I leave that out there for people to draw their own conclusions.

Last night we watched Orginal Sin, which is remarkably terrible considering that Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie spend a considerable portion (the parts they spend tending to a flock of alpacas, anyway) simulating coitus with lots of nudity. Something for everyone, right? Not really. We turned to that after a false start on Luther, which looked unspeakably wretched. The movie stars Joseph Fiennes and Jonathan Firth, and we can only imagine how much those two talked fratricide on the set.

Mary Gordon's West Coast Swing in support of her book Pearl hits Berkeley and San Francisco today. FFH staffer Anna is following the tour and will file a report sometime in the next 36 hours.

Also coming in the next 36 hours, a discussion of the Phoenix Suns the most watchable team in the NBA. They come to town to play the Kings tonight and FFH will be on the scene as well.

Sports Whores Find an Unlikely Voice in the Style Section

Some of our readers will not be familiar with SportsSpeak, the language my mom created to help her out of her sports dyslexia. The principle behind SportsSpeak is that when conversing with a man about sports, one need only memorize four sentences, and then master the art of placing them in the right context. For the uninitiated, these sentences are:

• At this point in the season it could go either way. [This would be very very bad to use on Superbowl Sunday, unless you're talking about basketball.]
• We'll be fine as long as we don't have anymore injuries.
• Well, so much depends on the coaching.
• What really matters is, can he come through in the clutch?

My mother astutely observed that if she pulled out one of these sentences about every seven minutes, the man would fill in the rest of a half-hour's conversation with his own insights, and at the end of that time he would turn to her and say "It is so refreshing to meet a woman who's really knowledgable about sports."

I took this lesson to heart, and have used it on more of my husband's colleagues than you can count (the Hobbs High School football coach was a favorite conquest). I have acquired some more sophisticated sports bromides over the years, and I've gotten so good at it that my mother has taken to calling me a Sports Whore. But this morning I tip my hat to the Sports Pimp, one Brendan Tapley, who wrote this week's "Modern Love" column in the Times.

Mike, ever the schmaltzer, usually makes me read "Modern Love," and it's usually a snoozer. But this week I was riveted by Tapley's account of learning the male lingua franca, which had long eluded him, by following Patriots football. "These days, I speak passable Manglish," he writes, "But you can tell I still have an accent." Tapley thereby wins a place in my list of favorite written sentences. First place belongs of course to Anthony Lane: "The problem is not that this is agitprop...but that it is kitsch, and the problem with kitsch is that it is like comedy with its hand down its pants, taking far too much pleasure in its own conceit."

Our (other) Long National Nightmare may be Winding Down

Suge Knight may be going back to jail. He was arrested Saturday night in Barstow (Barstow???) after being caught with marijuana in his trunk, which is a violation of his parole. Free-Floating Hostility is shocked. Shocked!

As an interesting aside, a Google search of "Suge Knight" and "violence" turns up 9,350 hits. Also, did you know that his real first name is Marion? It sure explains things.

Who won? Don't Call It a Comeback Edition

A strong showing for the women on Super Bowl Sunday, giving them their best winning percentage of the season. Could this be the start of something big? It's early yet and the scoreboard for the year still shows a blowout, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Also we at FFH feel mortified that we never extended wedding wishes to former NYC first lady Donna Hanover, who married her college sweetheart..

6 Februrary
Gay Couples with Clear Winner 0 of 0
Straight Couples with Clear Winner 3 of 4
Men: 1
Women: 2
Ties: 0
Disputed Results: 1

Year to Date
Gay Couples with Clear Winner: 3 of 3
Straight Couples with Clear Winner: 25 of 33
Men: 20
Women: 6
Ties: 3
Disputed Results: 5

Super Bowl prediction

For those of you waiting to put your bets down, here is the official FFH Super Bowl prediction: New England 31, Philadelphia 17. This basis of this pick is that I owe Form more favors than I do Rachel. Although speaking of Philly, Akil is still in the running on Missy Elliot's Reality Show.

Other Super Bowl Predictions:

• Robert Kraft will say something in Yiddish while accepting the Lombardi trophy
  
• Joe Buck's obsession with Randy Moss' ass will manifest itself with jokes about end zone celebrations.
• The NFL will fine Bill Belichick for wearing a hooded sweatshirt during interviews because it doesn't want the league to be associated with the Dungeons and Dragons club.
• I will crap out before Anna does when we go outside to throw the football during halftime.
  
• Without the possibility of boobies, no one will watch the halftime show.
  

Ain't Nobody here but us Chickens

Some of you may have seen a post last night or earlier today in which Mike made reference to the Fight Club section of the blog which will be appearing soon in our sidebar. But, as you all know, the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club. Mike has been severely reprimanded.

Anyone who is confused by this post and wishes to be unconfused should check out what AdSense has to say about fraudulently clicking on ads.

Super Bowl Analysis

From an email Dave sent me regarding Eagles wide receiver Freddie Mitchell, who said that he didn't know the names of any of New England's defensive backs :

Now him saying he cannot remember the names of the Patriots Cornerbacks is
funny. But what is exceptionally funny is that two of the cornerbacks are
named "Earthwind Moreland" and "Randall Gay." (The other one, "Asanate Samuel"
has an quite distinguished last name, if I do say so myself.)

I think this stands on its own.

Blog Renovations Complete

The Queer-Eyeing of FFH is finished. Thanks to Anna for her skills at both HTML and eyeing.

Anyone who doesn't like the new look should contact FFH to receive his or her voucher, redeemable for one ass-kicking. This means you, Goldman, though probably only in fantasy baseball.

Change can be Beautiful

FFH is undergoing a cosmetic revolution. We appreciate your patience while we work out some kinks with seraf fonts, alignment and the like.

Happy Birthday to Mike

Mike turned 25 this morning. He is very sad about it, but I think he looks distinguished.

Labor Pains

BrooklynDodger informs me that Andy Stern, posited by the New York Times Magazine as the future of organized labor, disbanded the Service Employee International Union's Health and Safety Department. Since I think that's an important issue for union's to address, I have some concerns about him as a leader of the labor movement.

The issues that Stern says he wants to address within organized labor, primarily the steady erosion of its power base in the new economy, are certainly the most vital questions facing this country in the new century. The American middle class exists because of labor unions and social insurance. But with the former disappering and a sustained attack on the latter the primary goal of the current administration starting tomorrow, the American way of life is in danger. Stern argues that organized labor needs to question its internal structure, its alliances to the Democratic Party, and its commitment to New Deal policies that he dismisses as 60-year-old ideas. The AFL-CIO is composed of member unions and Stern wants it to act like a corporation and merge smaller unions into a larger groups. This, in his mind, makes organized labor more efficient. If one union represents all the workers within a given industry, the companies will have a hard time breaking it. Stern believes this is the only way for unions to be relevant in the 21st century. Opponents dismiss this approach as overly corporate. In what one might call an act of insidious conservative bias, author Matt Bai never touches on the idea that unions are democratic and representative organizations, not tools of the leadership. That belief, that union leadership acts without the support and consent of the members, comes straight from noted football fan Rush Limbaugh.

Stern is right, however, when he says that most of the labor movement is not built for the global economy. But that's not a surprise because the global economy was built to castrate the union movement. The game is rigged in favor of capital and (I started to put therefore here, but took it out and will leave that argument to those who believe it more strongly that me) against workers. Americans are being punished for the standard of living that unions helped create. Well-paying factory jobs, as part of the overall post-war economic boom, created the economic prosperity of the 1950s.

Stern is right when he says those days are gone. His solution is to start starving union beauracracy and and pouring that money into organizing the Wal-Mart's of the world. That's well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that a job at Wal-Mart in 2005 pays less than a job at GM did in 1980. That means an overall decline in the American standard of living. And while it may mean an increase in the standard of living somewhere else, the extent to which that goes up is limited by governments that don't enforce labor and environmental standards, and that don't allow workers to organize on their own to create better conditions.

So while unions have to do a better job of organizing in the future, they also need to demand that the U.S. government do a better of job of protecting its workers. The purpose of a corporation is to legally make money for its shareholders. That means, if necessary, setting up offshore to avoid corporate taxes, sending jobs overseas to make lower-cost goods and working to weaken regulations here. The Clinton economic agenda eliminated tarriffs through trade agreements in order to better facilitate the flow of capital around the world. Clinton's heart was in the right place and wanted provisions for worker rights and environmental protections in these agreements. Those provisions, of course, are completely unenforceable, meaning that labor standards in countries that now import goods into the United States never really changed. So while I'm very happy for Chinese factory workers or Indian computer programmers who have new jobs that pay better than whatever they were doing before, what do you tell the American worker who has lost that job? If the unions are dying and outsourcing is the official position of the government, who is left to speak for the 50-year-old factory worker, whose job has left the country?