I love Uber. During a recent family trip to New Orleans, we took 10 Uber rides over five days, hopping in and out of strangers’…
Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
My fourth collection of columns, from 2014-2019
I love Uber. During a recent family trip to New Orleans, we took 10 Uber rides over five days, hopping in and out of strangers’…
I hate football season. I hate the nasally din of blowhard announcers and the monotonous green-turf glow that emanates from my living room for hours…
Let me stop you right now. Before you ask. Before you even launch into your pitch. Because the answer is no.
No, I don’t want to pay your beauty pageant fees. No, I’m not interested in funding your dream of opening a bakery. No, I promise that I cannot be convinced to contribute to your trans surgery.
It feels like every time I log onto social media, I’m being hit up by another grassroots fundraising campaign. But it’s not for the stuff we used to hear about — the stuff I’d happily write a check for. It’s not a family I know facing astronomical medical bills or an earthquake across the globe that left thousands homeless.
I’m about to take you on a journey to the dense, chewy nucleus of the grape Tootsie Pop that is my head. You have been warned.
You see, my brain is very busy. It’s a frickin’ railway junction. I pride myself on my ability to juggle, organize, and accomplish, even in a crunch — no, especially in a crunch. “Show me a quiet mind,” I always say, “and I’ll show you a to-do list that’s been criminally neglected.” This morning I did Kegel exercises while writing my column lead while being power-flossed in the dentist’s chair while feeling rather smug about it all.
But I had no right, it turns out, because multitasking is out and meditation is in. The Huffington Post declared 2014 The Year of Mindful Living, and Time magazine’s recent cover story declared, “If distraction is the pre-eminent condition of our age, then mindfulness is the most logical response.” Rupert Murdoch is meditating now. So are 50 Cent and Kourtney “it’s possible I can’t spell meditate” Kardashian. Meditation is the new kale; it’s the balm for all that ails us.
Remember the Harryhausen’s scene from the Pixar flick Monsters, Inc.? A variety of furry, fanged, tentacled beasts are enjoying a civilized evening at a fancy restaurant, the kind where you have to pull strings to get a reservation. And the sudden appearance of a wide-eyed, pig-tailed human toddler — believed to be toxic — sends them all shrieking into the streets, summoning hazmat teams and inciting mass panic.
A five-eyed blob tells a news camera, “I tried to run from it, but it picked me up with its mind powers and shook me like a dog!”
An eerily similar scene recently played out in a super swank Chicago restaurant, sending foodies shrieking into the blogosphere for days on end.
It seems a party of four dared to bring an infant into Alinea, a sort of culinary art gallery, where the morsels of sculpted monkfish and squab resemble flowers more than food. Once named the best restaurant in the U.S., Alinea sells tickets in advance to its nightly tasting-menu-palooza at about $250 per person sans tax, tip, or wine — and believe me, when your dishes include fiddlehead fern, something called “mastic,” and, I kid you not, helium — you’re going to need a lot of wine.