Displaced

Why is everyone so surprised that Mel Gibson is anti-Semitic? I didn’t have to read his remarks to the cop who pulled him over for drunk driving last weekend or even see The Passion of the Christ to believe it: I read the reviews (also here and here) and ran back through the stuff I know about his dad and thought, “Huh. Well. Anti-Semite. Figures.”

Mind you, I’m not glossing over anti-Semitism, I’ve just got bigger fish to fry. Like the skinheads and Austria. Mel’s further down the list. It’s like when Tom Cruise finally went around the bend: it’s hard to watch his movies without remembering that he’s blind crazy, I’m not asking him to dinner anytime soon and it ends there for now.

The uproar surrounding Gibson’s tirade seems as hollow and disingenuous to me as the surprise so much of the media expressed when it was confirmed that Saddam had no WMDs.

Let’s get shocked and awed by something that’s really shocking and awesome. Like this.

*Claude Raines, Casablanca

This lamp looks excellent. It is slim, stylish and takes up almost no visual or desk space (if you use the clamp and not the weighted base). The downside? It was noted on Apartment Therapy in response to a question about a lamp a reader had seen on CSI. You mean CSI, the show with all the dark offices and underlit labs? That CSI? Oh. OK. Great.

I have to agree with the New York Times that this is the quote of the day:

“What happens in Estonia stays in Estonia.” – Phillippe Reines, a spokesman for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, when asked if she had been in a drinking contest with Senator John McCain on a Congressional trip.

If I had just one small wish today, I wish that all DVDs had to include outtakes. You can’t convince me that something funny didn’t happen on the set of A History of Violence or The Hours or An Inconvenient Truth. C’mon. Something funny must have happened at least once. Ed Harris’ fake eye pops out or Virginia Woolf actually laughs or one of the slides of New York underwater is upside down. Come. On. Just ONCE.

My grandmother spent about a billion hours a year mulching, hydrating, feeding, clipping and worrying over several spiky rose plants. In return, she got back six or seven blooms per summer. I, on the other hand, have profusions of blossoms that appear as early as April and continue into the fall. I spend about 15 minutes every two weeks cutting them back and watering them.

There is no killing a rose bush in San Francisco. They will bloom no matter what horrible mold or evil bug attacks them. As far as I can tell, roses will thrive even if you only water them once a week in the summer and not at all in the winter.

The difference between me and my grandmother is zones. I am in Zone 9. She is in Zone 4. Apparently, so the web tells me, the country is divided into gardening zones. Greenhouses categorize and sell plants by zone. Much like raising children, it is bad form to compare them and worse to imply that one is superior to another, but it is impossible not to notice that Zone 9 supports the flowering plants that everyone wants in the garden and Zone 4 supports mostly fir trees.

So, this week, thorny points go to San Francisco. Keep up the good work.

Bruises? Check.
Strains? Check.
Abrasions? Check.
Landed on neck? Check. Landed on face? Right on.
Dropped steel bar on head? Check.
Displaced rib? Yup. Both sides? Yes.
Fallen into net? Of course. Fallen to mat? Pretty much. Fallen to floor?? No…oh wait.

Last night, I was on the trampoline learning to helicopter around 360 degrees. I got it and then lost it, only making it 3/4 of the way around. I came down off balance, skidded sideways, fell half on the bed half on the side mat, caught my leg and dropped over the edge four feet to the ground. If I’d been able to get my hands up, I might have been able to stop the momentum. As it was, I got my arm down only as I hit the floor, preventing a head-hitting incident that might have required me to wear an embarassing brace or helmet of some sort. Good thing I only had to deal with the embarassment of a spectacular fall and whatever yelling I did on the way down.

I can see how the fall happened. I run into doorframes on a regular basis. What I can’t sort out is my trajectory. Facing forward, I fell sideways onto the RIGHT side of the trampoline. How the hell did my LEFT leg end up stuck on the trampoline when I landed on the floor on my right elbow facing downward?? I need one of those crime scene reenactment teams. And a new knee. And possibly that helmet.

On a related note, who knew Colbert could tumble? (Well, tumble a little bit.)

A friend of mine just moved back to her native London. The day before she left, we went to collect her three-year-old from his ultra-cool day school. As he made his rounds of goodbye hugs, she made conversation with another British three-year-old.

Her: Are you watching England tomorrow?
Him: Yeth.
Her: What do you think? Beckham going to make another goal?
Him (looking down, ashamed at her ignorance): It’s about the whole team.

We just saw Cars at the huge multiplex. There was a guy, about 30, wandering around in a full pirate gear. Plastic dagger, open shirt, 3/4-length pants with a rope belt and so on. He was waiting to see Pirates of the Carribean and, turns out, a not too shabby girlfriend.

I guess it’s like they say about women who date married men: they have a demonstrated ability to commit (need for divorce or extensive therapy be damned).

An Asian kid at the next table who’s been tapping away on his laptop just closed a cell phone conversation with, “Cool beans. See you later.”

Are you kidding me? That phrase jumped the shark in 1995, didn’t it? Did I miss a memo?

Asian Mafia Boy’s spot has just been taken by a mechanical equipment salesperson in a baby blue and white diagonal plaid shirt who has honed his sales voice to within an inch of Tom Cruise’s in Jerry Maguire. His poor wife. (By “his” I meant Salesboy’s, but come to think of it Katie seems like she’s up a creek too, so my heart goes out to both of them.)