Summer Cocktails for Moms

We moms have it hard in May and June.  The social calendar that we tend to throughout the year virtually explodes for the spring season, with graduation parties and birthday parties and class parties and final exams and proms and cookies to bake and brownies to bake and teachers to thank and yearbooks to distribute and camp trunks to pack and backpacks to unpack and trip forms to fill out and letters to send to camp and Father’s Day to plan and little league playoffs and final recitals and band concerts and about a million other obligations that keep our heads spinning.  Until now.  Because now, we have reached Nirvana.  We have reached the end of June.

         

Ah.  Say it with me.  The end of June.  Now exhale.

            

At the end of June, and well into July and August, Mommy needs – no, Mommy deserves - a cocktail.

            

Here are some of my personal summer faves.  Continue here.

Interview with Annabel Monaghan, author of new YA novel, A Girl Named Digit

You know that feeling you get from holding a new book in your hands, excited by the promise of the first few pages?  That’s how I felt when I first read A Girl Named Digit by Annabel Monaghan.  It was a Saturday morning.  My Kindle and I crept downstairs in the dim morning light and hid under a blanket on the far end of the couch in the sunroom, pretending that we were still asleep.  In that way, I disappeared from my family’s radar for the better part of the morning, and by the time they found me and begged for breakfast, I was already hooked on Digit.

            

And that was good news, because before reading her novel, I was already hooked on Annabel Monaghan.

Annabel and I met in a novel writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College in the Fall of 2010.  She was there to workshop a project called Digit, and since her novel was completed and the rest of ours were not, we read her manuscript first.  In person, Annabel is funny and self-deprecating and humble and smart.  She’s the one you want to sit next to in class so that you can pass notes back and forth and give each other meaningful eye rolls, as if a continuing education course at a local college is the same setting as your high school biology lab.  (Which, in a way, it is.) By week two, we had our own little inside jokes. As I sank into my couch, I desperately hoped that her book would live up to the real her. Continue reading here.

My husband the...triathlete?

Artist, yes. Successful businessman, sure. Snarky comment maker, indeed. But here are words I'd never thought I'd utter: I'd like to introduce you to my husband, Brett, the triathlete. When Brett and I met in 1996, he was merely a summertime tennis player, and, when I was not chain-smoking, I occasionally attended a step-aerobics class. In Central Park, we went to Sheep Meadow to hang out instead of going for a run around the reservoir. I thought we were perfectly matched in every way.

When we moved in together in Brooklyn a few years later, we joined a gym and attended spin and yoga classes side by side. Skip ahead 12 years, and you will find that spin and yoga is where I still remain. Brett, however, has moved on. Way on.

My husband now goes to the gym. A lot. He has a trainer. He does something called box jumps. He wears something called a weight vest. When I said I'd marry him in sickness and in health, I didn't know quite how healthy he meant.

Continue reading here...

Up Close and Not so Personal With 50 Shades of Gray author E.L. James

When I heard that the author of 50 Shades of Gray was going to be speaking at Willow Ridge Country Club in Harrison, NY, I immediately emailed my friend, writer Annabel Monaghan.  “You’ve got to come with me to hear E.L. James,” I begged. 

            

Annabel and I met in a novel writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College about a year and a half ago.  On the first day of class, we went around the table and introduced ourselves.  It was instant kinship.  In the oft-recycled words from the film Jerry Maguire, she had me at “I wrote a YA novel about a math genius that falls in love with the FBI operative hired to protect her from terrorists,” and I had her at “my main character is a teacher and mom who lies to her family and her employer and takes off for a much-needed vacation.”

            

Who else to sit next to at a 50 Shades luncheon than one another?

            

“I’m going to have to think about it,” she wrote back.  “On the one hand I want to attend, and on the other, I fear it might suck out my soul.”

          
Understood.  Continue reading here.

Down Under

Last week, an Australian lingerie company emailed me to suggest that I use my platform as a blogger for the Huffington Post to promote their website. They offered to compensate me for subtly selling their products in my posts, and invited me to contact them for further information.

Needless to say, I did not respond. I have journalistic integrity, for starters. But perhaps more interestingly, these people clearly have no idea what kind of underwear I wear. If they did, I seriously doubt they would be asking for my endorsement.

Now, why would an Australian lingerie company reach out to a woman who wears sweatpants most of the time and writes from a room over her garage? Good question, indeed. My mind puzzled through this conundrum as I got dressed for the day in my comfy cotton bikini briefs and a bra I picked up at a two-for-one sale at Kohl's.  Continue reading here.

The Perfect Accessory: a husband or a scarf?

“Brett,” I ask my husband, “What’s the weather like today?”  He has just come in from a brisk run and is panting a bit.

            

“It’s nice,” he says, a slight hesitation to his voice.  He knows what’s coming next.

            

“Nice cool or nice warm?”  I ask.  “Should I wear a jacket?  A sweater?  Just a scarf over my t-shirt?  Or, like, a scarf and a sweater?”

            

Brett ignores my questions and walks past me.  “I’m going to take a shower.”

           

“Maybe my leather jacket?!” I call up the stairs after him, but he does not reply.

            

My husband of 13 years does not reply because he knows me too well.  He knows that I am hardly ever satisfied with my preparations for the weather and that, somehow, this is his fault.  Click here to read the rest on The Huffington Post.

            

The Chocolate Wars

Let’s agree to agree: chocolate is delicious, and it’s also good for you.  But, like all great love stories, this one has a twist: in order to reap any health benefits, the chocolate you eat should be dark, dark, dark.  

            

Here are some Real Facts paired with some Julie Facts about dark chocolate.  Continue reading article on the Huffington Post.

How to Get a Book Deal: Tiger Mom, Diet Mom, and Me

Amy Chua, also known as The Tiger Mother, received a high six-figure advance for her 2011 memoir.  In this book, she recounts in great detail the ways in which she uses traditional Chinese parenting methods to drive her daughters towards perfection in the arts.  This is old news, of course.  But now there’s Dara-Lynn Weiss, aka the Diet Mom.  In the April issue of Vogue magazine, Dara writes honestly and openly about the strict parenting methods she employed to help her overweight seven-year-old daughter slim down.  Within a few weeks, she, too, had a book deal.

            

What do these women have in common?  The publishing world would say that Chua and Weiss are both exemplars of the new “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” parenting genre.  If you push your kid too hard, you get called out.  If you act too lax, you are scrutinized for not demanding more.  Either way, if you are willing to throw your daughters under the bus, there’s always something to write about.

            

It’s not so much about the children in these scenarios as it is about the mother.  The secret to securing a book deal these days is to expose one’s inner bitch to the world. Go to The Huffington Post to continue reading...

The Sandal Revolution

The box arrived from Bloomingdale’s just as my husband, Brett, was walking out the door to attend a neighborhood meeting one evening.  That’s bad timing, when the UPS guy comes face-to-face with one’s husband.  The uniformed man stands at your doorstep, a guilty look on his face, as he hands over the goods.  He knows the rules.  He knows he’s supposed to drop the package when your husband is either a) at work, b) at the gym, or c) has left the house precisely eight minutes ago, but sometimes he screws up and gets caught.  The husband looks at the return address on the box, sees the name of a clothing store like Bloomies, or an e-tailer like Gilt, or a supermegavirtualworld like Amazon, and shakes his head sadly at the UPS man.  Dude, he thinks, You’re complicit in her schemes.  I’m so disappointed in you. Read the rest of the article on the Huffington Post Stylist here....

Loved the Hunger Games? Other Great YA Books that Adults Should Be Reading

Confession: I read children’s books. For fun. Like, all the time. Did you get hooked on Harry Potter? Torn apart by Twilight? Did you Hunger for more of The Hunger Games? Did you think, well, I’ll only do it this one time, because they’re making the series into movies and everybody’s reading them? Well, that’s nothing.

When I‘m on a YA bender – and, hello world, I’m on one now! -- I read at least one teen title a week.

For me, reading YA is like having a candy bar in the middle of my lifelong diet. Filled with nougaty goodness, it’s easy to digest and damned satisfying. And, when I’m done, I don’t have to discuss it with my book club.

Reading YA is like temporarily leaving your grown-up, responsible day job to cut class and hang out in the food court at the mall with your new BFF.

It’s, like, totally ahmayzing.

So, without further ado, here are some of my top picks for grown-ups who sometimes wish they could recapture their teen years or who just like reading about adolescence. Maybe you have an adolescent in your house and you can share titles. Maybe you don’t. It doesn’t matter to me either way. I’m a book pusher and this is just good stuff.

Read the rest on the Huffington Post...

Fake Academy Awards 2012

Last year, my husband and I created a matrix in order to determine how to win an Oscar in 14 easy steps. You can view it here on the Huffington Post.

So, without further ado, from our imaginations to your computer screen, here are the top Oscars that no one in Hollywood will be receiving this year.

Best picture set in France in which all the actors speak with British accents:
Hugo

Best picture set in Sweden in which all the actors speak with slightly different, untraceable, can’t-quite-put-your-finger-on-where-they’re-from accents:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best period mustache. And the nominees are:
Jean Dujardin for The Artist
Sacha Baron Cohen for Hugo
Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs

Best dramatic actor on 4 legs. And the nominees are:
Joey the horse from War Horse
Rosie the elephant from Water for Elephants
Maximilian (Blackie the Doberman) from Hugo

Best comedic actor on 4 legs. And the nominees are:
Dolce (Palmer the Pomeranian) from Young Adult
The dog (Uggie the Jack Russell) in The Artist

(I’d like to make a prediction here. Uggie is the clear frontrunner, having won this year’s Palm Dog award at Cannes and having already played a dog in Water for Elephants. Palmer the Pomeranian has no prior experience in films and was hard to work with, according to co-star Charlize Theron.)

Best Acceptance Speech:
The Artist

Best Brad Pitt film. And the nominees are:
Oh, you know what they are, right? In case you don’t stalk him like I do, it’s Moneyball and The Tree of Life. The odds are, that when you take Brad Pitt and put him in a baseball film based on a book about sabermetrics, there is a 37.5% chance of a win, based on prior statistics in which he was nominated for 5 Golden Globes but only won 1, most recently losing to George Clooney for best actor. Now, if you also account for the 4 Oscar nods Pitt’s received over his career, plus the 4 BAFTA nominations, and if you multiply that by the number of children he has, both biological and adopted, you will discover absolutely nothing about The Tree of Life.

Best dramatic, sad-as-heck movie that was marketed as a comedy:
The Descendants

Best movie that I can’t make fun of in any way, shape or form because of the 9/11 subject matter:
Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close

Best Julia-Child-as-Margaret-Thatcher Award:
Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady

Actress you hope wins so that she doesn’t act out afterwards in anger and retribution:
Rooney Mara for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best movie in which the director realizes he’s aged out of playing the fumbling, bumbling romantic lead:
Midnight in Paris

Best movie based on a novel that took forever to get published, thus giving hope to frustrated novelists, like myself, and the hopeful mothers of these novelists, like my mother, who brag about their offspring at dinner parties despite the fact that their creative, brilliant children haven’t sold a manuscript. Otherwise known as The But Look What Happened to Katherine Stockett Award:
The Help

Think of others? Feel free to add them below. Let’s watch the fake awards pile up, at least until the real ones do this Sunday, February 26th on ABC.

Lessons from Downton Abbey: A Jewish American Princess studies the Dowager Countess

I admire the British for so many reasons. They have a rich history of beheading enemies of the monarchy without ever compromising afternoon tea. They colonized half the globe and yet managed to ensure that no other colony’s accent would sound exactly like theirs. In particular, I idolize the Brits for their fictional characters. If shipwrecked on a deserted island and in need of reading materials to last a lifetime, I’d much rather have aristocratic and feisty Emma Woodhouse and her charming Mr. Knightly with me than Puritanical Hester Prynne and her pastor, Arthur (yawn) Dimmsdale. Give me Heathcliff and Catherine! Bring me my Bridget Jones! Oh, heck, just give me any book that was later turned into a movie starring Hugh Grant and/or Colin Firth! And, now, thanks to Downton Abbey, make sure that I always have the BBC on my telly. (Yes, even on that deserted island.)

Turns out, there’s a lot a Jewish girl from New York can learn from the fictional, Victorian-Era Crawleys and their estate in North Yorkshire. In honor of the upcoming finale of Downton Abbey’s second season, I’d like to share some of these delicious bits of knowledge.

1. Marry your cousin.
Clock ticking? Desperate for a mate? Tired of being set up by your mom’s gay hairdresser? Sick of having half of your grandmother’s mahjong group insist they have the perfect guy for a “mature” woman like yourself? Dear Jewess, don’t fret. The next time your dad worries about who will take over his condo in Boca once he passes on, ensure him that you’ve got his back. Promptly fall in love with your cousin and gain an immediate heir to the estate. Now, don’t go screwing things up by, let’s say, screwing a Turk who then dies in your bed or by pretending you don’t love your cousin when you really, really do. Don’t let the cousin go off to war on Wall Street without telling him how you feel. Worry later about the genetic complications this might prompt, including blood-clotting disorders; for now, stay focused on Boca.

2. Just shut up already.
When people ask me how I am doing, I actually tell them. Sometimes, I go on for several minutes, blabbing and spewing and confiding, analyzing and hypothesizing and then circling back to the original point with some sort of diarrhea of the mouth. What can I say? This is nearly unavoidable when the double helix of your DNA looks like Fran Drescher and Woody Allen snake dancing. An English Lady would never behave like that. She would hold her tongue and smile in mixed company, only divulging her true feelings to her maid. Even if she were bleeding internally during cocktails, I like to think she’d keep concerns about her spleen to herself. Perhaps if I wore a corset, I’d feel less like talking, and therefore, become all the more charming. I’d certainly look better. It’s worth a shot.

3. Use your father’s influence for your own gain.
Oh, wait. We Jewish American Princesses have already got this one down. Check it off the list!

Interestingly, gossip about season 3 of Downton Abbey has some suspecting that Cora Crawley, wife of the Earl of Grantham and daughter of American dry goods multimillionaire Isidore Levinson is actually…gasp…Jewish. With a name like Levinson, it’s certainly possible. And it would help to explain the overlapping behaviors between Jewesses and Countesses, at least in this instance.

(Read the full piece on Tablet here.)

4. When and if that doesn’t work, sneak around behind Papa’s back.
This is really fun. There is no telling what can be done once dear old Papa is out of the loop. This is how most of my shopping at Bergdorf Goodman was done when I was in high school. Afterwards, I would hide the packages so my dad couldn’t document the trouble my mom and I got into with his Amex. But now I see that this was nothing. When done with the English flair of a Crawley, you can achieve true greatness behind your father’s back. You can fall for your politically-minded chauffer and still have time to dress wounds back at the makeshift convalescent hospital set up in your family’s dining room. You can, with help from your mother and her maid, remove the dead Turk from your bedroom and place him back in his own bedchamber. You can then work a romantic deal with a well-known publisher, exchanging your heart for the safety of your public reputation. Shhh. As long as Papa doesn’t know, then you are not a whore, or a slut, or in fear of being disinherited, disowned, or dishonored. There shall be no dissing whatsoever without Daddy’s knowledge. (Easier by far just to go on a shopping spree, if you ask me.)

5. In a tiered society, it’s best to be at the tippy top or the briny bottom.Honestly, the servants and the Dowager Countess seem to have the most fun in and around Downton. There is much to scheme about when you spend all day mending fancy people’s socks and cleaning their underclothes, which explains why O’Brien and Thomas are so delightfully awful. Same with Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess, the most influential of the upstairs bunch. Once she properly positions an off-kilter, feathered and flowered hat atop her curls, she’s got nothing to do all day but gossip and connive and dream up the next sharp barb. And that’s the way life should be as the top 1%. It’s not as much fun being stuck somewhere in the middle, like me, and like dear Bates. He’s got some money, but he’s also got a limp and had a wife who was a bitch. No one wants to be him. And then there’s Isobel Crawley, who has so little power next to Lady Grantham that she had to retreat to France for a while. She’s no fun at all.

When all is said and done, in my next life, I’d like to come back as a British Dutchess or Countess or Heiress. Any ess will do. I’d like to have someone dress me for dinner and I’d want to learn how to ride a horse in the countryside without having to worry about my hay fever.

Oh, and one last thing. I’d like to be able to celebrate Christmas, even if it is fictional and during wartime. Lucky for me, that’s exactly what the Crawleys will be doing this Sunday, February 19th. Now, raise your heirloom quality, cut-glass crystal goblet and follow my lead. Cheers, everyone.

Sexy Grammar for Dummies: “The Bachelor”

The lights are low. I have a glass of white wine in my left hand and a pen in my right. My high definition TV is flickering in front of me like a fire in a faux log cabin on a one-on-one date in Park City, Utah. It’s Monday night, my kids are asleep, my husband is at the gym, and I’m alone at last. Alone with the grammatically incorrect Bachelor, Ben Flajnik, and his sixteen beautiful, grammatically incorrect sister-wives.

Tonight, I plan on getting serious with them. Tonight, I am writing down all of their infractions and giving a metaphorical rose to the worst offender.

It’s hard to rock a bikini and lounge all evening in a hot tub while simultaneously keeping hair and make-up in place. Everyone knows that. So imagine how nearly impossible it must be to do so while also confusing subject and object pronouns.

This is certainly not the first time that The Bachelor (or ette) has featured hotties that lack critical pronoun usage skills. Just to set the record straight: “I” is not automatically proper, no matter what your grandmother told you or how white your teeth are. In recent years, Bachelors Jake Pavelka and Brad Womack unrelentingly and unapologetically pummeled the English language week after week in their search for true love.

So, when Ben declared in the second episode of this season that it was “Time for Emily and I to explore our relationship,” I knew he was ready to find his perfect match, too.

Many fans of the show already recognize and accept the grammatical limitations of the participants, but we suffer through the rape of Strunk and White anyway, just for another glimpse of Fiji from a helicopter. But, what fans fail to realize is that they key to who (whom?) is chosen lies within sentence structures, not between the sheets.

Consider this. After just a few weeks in, I can predict who the finalists from season 16 should be. By cross-referencing the women’s speech patters with Ben’s, I have narrowed the search down considerably. My bachelor matchmaking skills aren’t 100%, but I can probably garner healthier results than the participants, who are wrong 15 1/2 out of every 16 times. I don’t usually brag, but it’s like my very own JDate for Dummies.

The front-runners include:

Courtney
We viewers don’t really like her, but Ben does. And ABC loves her for being the bitch that brings in the ratings. In sizing up the competition, Courtney said, “I think her and I are complete opposites.”

Rachel
She doesn’t say much, that one. But she did say, “I have to stay focused on Ben and I.”

Jennifer
“Clay Walker is a superstar. And he’s having a concert for Ben and I.”

Emily
Alas, even the pretty Ph. D. candidate makes mistakes. “I’m worried that, because Ben has such a strong connection with her, any animosity between Courtney and I could result in Ben thinking negatively towards me.” Oh, Emily, your speech is so wrong, but what you say is so right. Stay out of it, and keep your eyes on the prize.

Here’s what I’d like to see in an upcoming episode. Forget skiing down a hill in San Francisco or repelling illegally into a crater. Take all of the remaining women - wearing cute jean shorts and sundresses, of course - on a group date with Ben to the UCLA campus. There they will bypass the skateboarders and Frisbee throwers and enter the Humanities building, where they will have to strip down to their string bikinis and sharpen their Number 2 pencils. At the start of a bell, they will take the verbal portion of the SATs in a classroom with full-on central air conditioning. The last one to start crying gets a rose from Ben, who, shirtless, hugs her tight while uttering that well-worn Bachelor adage, “If we can make it through this, then there’s nothing we can’t do together.”

Now that’s some sexy television right there.

Pornography for Mommies

Originally posted on the Huffington Post on January 18th.  Read it here or below.

Let me get one thing straight here, oh Moms In Desperate Need of Erotica: I am not joking. This is not about getting hot and bothered by watching your husband clean the kitchen. It’s not even about getting turned on by hiring a sexy electrician to boss around your kitchen.

I have done both of these things in the name of love, but I no longer need to, thanks to E. L. James and her erotic romance novel, 50 Shades of Grey.

I heard about this book from a friend, who spoke in hushed tones over the tops of her children’s heads as we waited in line for tables one Sunday at the local diner. That’s how you know a book is really dirty, by the way, because of the hushed tones. That’s how I found out about Judy Blume and Francine Pascal and V. C. Andrews, the holy trinity of early 1980’s soft porn. Granted, I was 11 at the time, and I didn’t know squat about sex, so I thought reading about it was amazing. I turned down pages where Something Happened (He put his hand into her pants! Shit, he’s her brother!) and re-read them over and over, just enjoying the feelings these words created in me.

“Everyone in Armonk is reading 50 Shades of Grey,” my friend Deena insisted, her hushed tones becoming less hush and more hysterical. “Moms are forgetting to pick up their kids at school! You can’t even get it! It’s sold out at bookstores everywhere!”

Since when are there bookstores everywhere, I wondered? I haven’t seen one for two years. This book is making people cookoo for cocoa puffs. And it’s not like this is the first time erotica has infiltrated the suburbs. What about Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series? Or Blume’s Wifey? Or every Harlequin Romance since the beginning of Fabio?

And, since when is the phrase “everyone in Armonk” an endorsement for anything, except perhaps…Armonk?

So, naturally, after leaving the diner, I downloaded the book on my Kindle and began having virtual sex in under a minute.

(That’s an exaggeration because it doesn’t really get good until 20% in. But after that, the sex doesn’t stop. Sorry about the ridiculous Kindle math – I have no idea what this equals in realtime pages.)

Is the book cheesy and awful? Yes. In order to get to the good stuff, you will have to sit through a British author who sometimes forgets her characters are American (“marquee,” by the way, means “tent”) and who likes her adjectives in triplicate, since the author couldn’t trust us (or herself) to think we could picture the image with only one descriptor. Therefore, Grey’s personal office is “palatial, swanky, sterile,” while the rest of the office space is “cold, clean AND clinical.” (Now that I’ve pointed this out, it’s going to drive you crazy.) And I’ve never read about a character that moves his features quite so much. In one scene alone, Grey’s mouth “quirks up,” “his lips curl in a wry smile,” and “a ghost of a smile touches his lips.” His grey eyes “alight with curiosity” or turn “dark” and “distant” within seconds.

As one would expect from a good romp, there’s a lot of overtly suggestive writing to laugh at. I mean, this guy “cocks his head” five times in the first few scenes of the book. Gee, I wonder what that means? Oh, naturally, that he’ll end up showing us his penis! (Excuse me, I mean his “impressive length.”) Duh. And, for the record, Christian Grey has the longest index finger of any character in the history of literature. It starts out as a “long-fingered” handshake when they meet, but follow it as you read, because eventually, that long finger is literally everywhere. And you will admire him all the more for it.

What is Anastasia doing in this pre-sex dance of theirs? “Squirming uncomfortably under his penetrating gaze,” of course. And tripping, and blushing nonstop. It’s hard not to blush when a man (hot, long-fingered, or otherwise) says, “first I’m going to spank you and then I’m going to have my way with you.” Oh, sorry. Did I give too much away?

Here’s the fun (funny? strange? uncomfortable to admit?) part: when you put the book down, you will actually want to have sex with your husband. Like, a lot.

After 13 years of marriage, it’s a damned revelation.

“Matt’s exhausted,” my friend, Sarah, told me.

“Jim’s excited that there’s a sequel!” another friend said.

“It’s actually a trilogy,” Sarah said, slightly awe-struck. With over 900 pages of E. L. James on our bedside tables, we could all be having sex with our husbands…indefinitely.

“Jeff and I are going away this weekend – should I bring this book?” Amy asked.

“Yes!” We told her.

Yes, I tell you. Yes, and yes, and oh, baby, yes.

Working out? Listen Up! What will be your gym anthem of 2012?

Certain songs make me nostalgic for a particular time or place. The first kiss song. That break-your-heart, break-up song. The crackling ember campfire song that makes me long for sleep away camp even though I hated sleep away camp. When these tunes come on the radio as I’m driving along in my SUV, I am instantly flooded with memories. Air Supply, Donna Summers, Joanie Mitchell. I know I’m lame (and old), but, as long as the windows are up, I sing along.
And then there are the Gym Anthems.

If you go to the gym a few times a week like I do, then you know what kind of tunes I’m referring to. Think top 40, heavy-bass, techno/dance music.

Gym Anthems are songs that come on the car radio and make me think of doing push ups. Of pedaling as fast as is humanly possible on a stationary bike in a Cycling class. Of counting reps as I do bicep curls with 2-pound weights in hand. Rihanna. LMFAO. Flo Rida. The strangest sensation comes over me when I hear one of these tunes outside of the walls of the gym. I’ll be driving to pick up my kids from school, and bam, on comes Rihanna’s latest and greatest, the one that sounds like this: “We fell in love in a homeless place….” and it’s like I want to start running on a treadmill at a 4% incline.

My response to Top 40 music is Pavlovian.

I’m pretty sure that’s when Rihanna imagined her album going platinum or whatever, she did not sit around with her producers fantasizing about some 40-year old suburban woman recognizing her #1 single as a cardio torture song.

I’m pretty sure that this tune was meant for rocking out at a club.*

*And, no, New York Sports Club doesn’t count.

Similarly, when Adele wrote her amazingly sad ballad “Someone Like You,” did she sit at the piano during a creative explosion and think, “I want to write the hottest cool down song of the year?” Does Adele know that every time I hear this song, I am stretching my hips after spin class and basically staring at my own crotch? DOES SHE KNOW THIS? I really feel like this is important information to share with the artist. I could use her own lyrics and everything, saying, Adele, I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited, but I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it….

So. This phenomenon got me thinking. Since so many people will be heading back to the Stairmaster this January, with a renewed club membership and a renewed sense of purpose, I thought I’d help you find the right tunes. What would be some fun pairings of music and gym activities for the New Year, like partnering wine with cheese or wine with a glass? What will be your ultimate Gym Anthems of 2012?

Here are some teams to try.

Doing box jumps:
“Never Again” by Ja Rule

Running up and down stairs while your trainer looks on menacingly:
“Titus Andronicus” by Titus Andronicus

Getting stuck in the last row during a filled-to-capacity spin class:
“Fat Bottom Girls” by Queen

Counting sit-ups with the occasional wink-and-nod to your hot self in the mirror:
“Gold on the Ceiling” by The Black Keys

Subtly adjusting one’s package, surreptitious nose digging, picking of thwedgie (thong wedgie), or yoga farting:
“I Wanna Do It” by Sonny and the Sunsets

Running on a treadmill while watching a Zumba class through a glass partition:
“Armada Latina” by Cypress Hill, featuring Pitbull and Mark Anthony

Sizing up the competition before a group fitness class begins, such as, who brings her own yoga mat, wears the newest Lululemon tank, has the biggest pocketbook hanging off the thinnest arm….you know, basic stuff like that:
“Fly” by Nicki Minaj & Rihanna

Bouncing on an elliptical machine to a Guilty Pleasure Song that you don’t tell anyone you bought, and, when a friend walks by, you immediately change over to Coldplay on your ipod:
“Love you Like a Love Song” by (yikes) Selena Gomez

Strutting and/or Peacocking and/or bending over the water fountain provocatively:
“Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer (men)
“Vogue” by Madonna (women)

Relaxing during a shower and a steam using bath products pocketed from a W hotel:
“5 O’Clock in the Morning” by T-Pain and Lily Allen

Waiting in line for a post-workout smoothie in your Free City hoodie:
“Pumped up Kicks” by Foster the People

Sitting on the couch after deciding not to go to the gym in order to catch up on new episodes of The Bachelor:
“This Year’s Love” by David Gray (Yes, there’s a song for that. Turns out, there’s a song for everything.)

Good luck, gym rats and couch potatoes. Let me know what you’re listening to while signing up online for your favorite spin bike, or doing tai chi, or reading Self magazine….

I Quack for Groupon

In the weeks leading up to Groupon’s IPO – which had its incredibly successful public debut Friday – there has been much talk about the magic (or lack thereof) that makes Groupon, well, Groupon. Is it their gorilla marketing campaign? Their ginormous subscriber list? A sales force that rivals in size the Red Army? Perhaps.

But, if you ask me, the quality that sets them apart is…ducks.

You see, the first time I used a coupon from Groupon was to take my family on an amphibious tour of San Francisco. Let’s get one thing straight here: I would not be caught dead on one of these boat-vans in my home city of New York, arguing that riding on an amphibious vehicle is akin to wearing a skort. Plus, as if the weird boat-van doesn’t draw enough attention to your lame posse, everyone riding this thing is given bright yellow “quackers” – kazoos shaped like Daffy duck lips - to wear around the neck and blow into when feeling enthusiastic. Which is often. (Quack once if you see the Ghirardelli chocolate factory! Quack twice for Pier 39! And Pier 40! For Alcatraz! Quack to the homeless man! Quack three times if you think the captain of your tour self-medicates!)

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s those tourists that look like tourists, and on a duck tour there’s no question about it: you’re from outta town.

But, I rationalized, as I contemplated my computer screen’s daily deal a few days before heading out to the West Coast, no one in San Fran knows me. And for one day only, Groupon was offering the tour for 64% off. It was like getting three quacks for the price of one! What the hell. I went for it.

A week later, my family and I took a ride on a giant skort. And, as the captain blasted “We Are Family” from the speakers in his hindquarters while all of Union Square looked on and felt sorry for us, I smiled and waved like I was on the Popemobile. It was a quacking riot.

Therein lies Groupon’s true secret: they know the price of your dignity, and they undercut it every time.

How to Win an Oscar in 14 Easy Steps

Earlier this week on the Huffington Post, Andrea Savage gave us a look at the role that cunnilingus played in this year’s Academy Award nominees for best actress, noticing quite rightly that three out of the five women nominated were recipients of oral sex in their films.

Used to be that all you needed for an Oscar nod was to play mental retardation or have a convincing physical affliction, right?

Not exactly.

You see, for several years now, my husband and I have been working on a theory. An award-worthy, dazzling in its theatricality theory, as to how to get nominated for an Academy Award.

Forget commentators debating about and forecasting the winners. Here's how it's really done by the pros.

Step 1: Pick a setting. As real estate agents know, there is hardly anything more important than location, location, location. And if you want to be nominated for an Academy Award, you’d be wise to select either Boston or England as the setting for your film.

Now, with Boston, you’d get something like Good Will Hunting, or Mystic River. Also, The Town and The Fighter (Yes, I know it’s set in Lowell, people. No need to get all technical on me.) Heck, New York native Martin Scorsese knows all about this, finally deciding to set a film in Boston just so that he could win himself a much-overdue Oscar for The Departed.

Had it been set in the Bronx, it surely would have lost to Little Miss Sunshine.

Now England sometimes has the edge over Boston, as witnessed last night in The King’s Speech. That’s because the Brits are way classier than us Americans, and everyone knows it. Which brings me to Step #2, the need for an accent.

Step 2: Sound really smart or really dumb. That’s the allure of the Boston accent versus the British one, right there. Apparently, Christian Bale did a better job of sounding dumb than Geoffrey Rush did of sounding smart, and so last night, we had a winnah.

Step 3: Play a real person.

Step 4: Play white trash.

Step 5: Play a boxer or a cop or a bank robber, a cowboy, or a Mafioso.

Step 6: Play gay.

Step 7: get raped.

Step 8: Have an impairment or affliction of some kind.

Step 9: Have a drug or alcohol addiction.

Step 10: Go to war. (Preference given to World War II and Vietnam, as they are cinematically “the bloodiest.”)

Step 11: Play someone making a comeback, or an underdog.

Step 12: Get assassinated.

Step 13: Sing.

Start combining the above, and watch the awards pile up.

Let’s see how it’s done.

Play a real person with a Southern accent = The Blind Side.

Play a real person with a British accent = Shakespeare in Love.

Not bad, right? But, if you combine three or more of the above, you will see how exponentially better the movie becomes. It’s a Mendelian square of Oscar genetics.

Play a real person with a British accent and an affliction = The King’s Speech.

Play a real person with an accent who is assassinated: Gandhi.

Play gay = Philadelphia, The Kids are All Right.

Fine. Those were solid movies. But let’s see what happens if we complicate matters.

Play gay with an accent = A Single Man.

Play a real person who is gay and gets assassinated = Milk.

Play a gay cowboy with an accent = Brokeback Mountain.

Here’s another combination.

Get raped = Monster’s Ball.

Play a real and gay person who gets raped = Boys Don’t Cry.

Get raped playing white trash outside Boston = The Accused.

And another:

Play a white trash underdog fighter = Million Dollar Baby.

Play a real person underdog fighter = Raging Bull.

Play a white trash real person underdog with a lot of “fight” in her = Erin Brockovich.

Play a white trash real person underdog with a Boston accent whose two sons are fighters = The Fighter.

And just for fun:

Play a guy with an accent and an affliction who goes to war, meets real people, and is the penultimate underdog = Forest Gump.
Now, that’s hard to beat. However, if you get lucky, you can sometimes strike a combination at the Six Sigma black-belt level, such as:

Play an underdog singing cowboy with an alcohol addiction and an accent trying to make a comeback = Crazy Heart.
Step 14: When all else fails, get Leo DiCaprio wet. (What? Did you not see Inception? What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? And the mack daddy of all wet Oscar movies, Titanic?)

Surely you now see how easy it is to win an Academy Award. I’m so excited by this matrix that I’m frantically writing up the formula on my windowpane as we speak, just like Jessie Eisenberg did in The Social Network, while playing a real person living in Boston with a social impairment. (In fact, now that I think about it, real people with social impairments writing up formulas on windowpanes at Ivy League schools could constitute an entire level of it’s own. Or maybe I just have A Beautiful Mind.)

Battle Hymn of the Mouse Mother

A lot of people wonder how it is that Jewish parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many doctors and lawyers, so many rabbis and Hollywood producers, one Itzhak Perlman and the occasional Madoff. They want to know what it’s like inside the suburban minivan of a Mouse mother’s world, to see whether they, too, could drive a perfectly normal child into years of psychotherapy.

Well, I am here to say that they can, because I am doing it.

People see me out with my daughter in public and comment at how well behaved I am, even as she is brow-beating me and publicly humiliating me. So many people wonder why, when my children call me stupid, I am able to remain calm and not smack them upside the head. They say, Mouse mother, how can I emit calm like you, even while raising independently-spirited, self-directed, emotionally strong children? How is it that your children are bright even though you got a D in 8th grade Latin and attended a college known more for its fraternity system than for academic rigor? Mouse mother, please, they beg, tell us your secrets. And so, after generations of protected silence, I am here to squeal the truth.

With a little practice, you, too, can be a Mouse mother like me.

Not sure why you’d want to, but that’s for another memoir with a high six-figure advance entirely.

Anyway! Back to my battle hymn, which is really much more of a whine.

Anyone can be a Mouse mother; you need not be Jewish to lack Tiger skills. So, please understand that for legal purposes, I’m using the term “Jewish mother” loosely. So loosely, in fact, that when I say “Jewish Mother,” I mean absolutely anyone except for Amy Chua.

Here are the things that I, as a liberal Jewish mother have allowed my children to do and/or done for them:

• Skip 2 months of Hebrew school in order to perform in a local performance of The Nutcracker
• Bribe them to play piano, practice the violin, make their beds, brush their teeth, and to be nice to me and others – oh, what
the heck, let’s just say “bribe them constantly” and leave it at that
• Talk them out of playing any and all contact sports for fear of them breaking their noses
• Talk them out of playing any sports that involve running because of the funny way they run
• Allow them to watch no less than 2 hours of television a day and to not let them stop until they had both committed to
memory a complete episode of iCarly
• Suck their thumb until the age of 7 and/or carry around a dirty, beloved shmatte like Linus from The Peanuts
• Write notes to a teacher excusing their inability to do homework because American Idol was on
• Choose all their own extracurricular activities, including fencing, Lego robotics, and a class in which my 5-year-old daughter was taught how to sing karaoke like a drunken idiot at a bar.

Now I know some of these seem unconventional, but if your goal is to have a human child like mine, as opposed to an automaton, for example, then you’d do well by following my example of mediocrity and a little dose of who-gives-a-hoot.
To prove that this type of parenting can achieve the desired results, I would now like to share a few success stories.

A Tiger mother might spend two complete chapters of her memoir explaining how to get one’s children to perform at Carnegie Hall, or at the very least, how to obtain an audition to the Pre-College program at Julliard. But a Jewish mother can boil the answer to that down for you in a few simple words: by kicking and screaming. As a Mouse mother, I prefer to regale you with impressive stories of just the opposite, and so I shall call this instructional section of my writing “How To Ensure That Your Child Never Achieves Much of Anything in The Arts.”

I recently took my daughter, Zoe, for a trial class at a ballet studio where some of her friends were enrolled. After the class, we discussed what she thought about it and tried to decide together whether or not she would be signing up. Being a Mouse mother, I didn’t really care either way. The signature move of the Mouse mother is the shrug, which I did repeatedly as we spoke. I wrote down our conversation verbatim because I thought it was so emblematic of our mother-child dynamic.

Me: So, what did you think of this ballet class?
Zoe: I didn’t see any machines there.
Me: Huh?
Zoe: You remember that place where Andrew took a class once? They had candy and drink machines.
Me: Oh.
Zoe: And ice cream. We used to eat ice cream before his class.
Me: You mean, that hip-hop class on Central Avenue?
Zoe: Yes! And they had stuffed animals to buy and also dance clothes. And a TV to watch.
Me: Uh-huh.
Zoe: That’s the kind of dance class I want to take.

It’s clear to any Jewish mother out there that this girl understands her culture. Zoe knows that professional ballet is just not in her future, so why even try? How smart of her to know that, come puberty, her Polish genes will betray her, ensuring a body so low to the ground that it’s better constructed for potato farming than arabesquing. The closest she will ever come to doing a split is with her Barbie doll’s legs. And that’s so totally cool with her, as long as she can buy stuff and enjoy snacks.

It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

My firstborn, Andrew, proved to be another story entirely. He actually seemed to have some drive beyond the candy-and-shopping aspects of the theater. In fact, he tried out for and was given the coveted role of Fritz in last winter’s production of The Nutcracker at SUNY Purchase. Now, a Tiger mother would have spent weeks, days, and hours preparing her child for such an audition and would then feign modesty and humility but secretly take credit for the child’s success when he did well. But not me. I merely got Andrew a nice haircut and told him to smile a lot in front of the choreographers. Like the Mouse mother I am, I believe a nice Jewish boy with dimples can get ahead in this world merely by knowing his left from his right and by following his own interests.

Seeing that her child has a passion and talent for something of worth, a Tiger mother would certainly push and squeeze and prod and threaten to the point that a) the child got really freaking amazing at the skill and b) the child really hated both the activity and the Tiger mother. Where a Tiger mother values perfection, a Mouse mother values diversification above all else. Why stick to just one thing and become the best at it when you can try so many fun activities and be mediocre at all of them? Which is why, once Nutcracker season had passed, I did not take Andrew to The New York City Ballet. Instead, I took him straight to rec basketball.

Call me naïve, but so far, this renegade technique really seems to be working. And by “working,” I mean its produced children who, at the ages of 8 and 5, are pretty happy doing their job…of being kids.