The Ray Bradbury Card

For the first 18 years of my life I lived in the same neighborhood of Los Angeles. I still live in that same neighborhood, but only during school breaks. While other areas of LA are celebrated across the country and around the globe as famous places for celebrity sightings, nightclubbing, recreating, and even just being gay, my neighborhood is unfamous--yes, unfamous, not infamous--for being so dull that TV location scouts think it can pass for neighborhoods in any part of the country except for Los Angeles. I say unfamous as opposed to infamous, because infamous things, like Hitler for example, are at least recognizable. He may have been a mass-murdering bastard, but show someone a picture of ol' Adolph and even an idiot can tell you who he is. But no, my neighborhood is the so bland in contrast to the rest of LA that I have witnessed it pass for Princeton, small town USA, and Orange County (among other places), and even Angelenos themselves are none the wiser.

Even celebrities who are new to LA (and theoretically should not know any better) avoid our neighborhood like the plague, running away from our moderately sized houses and our proximity to what they perceive as the ghetto, and instead bring their trendsetting to places like Malibu, Brentwood, or (for the extreme hippies among them) Santa Monica. No, these calm, residential hills in which we live are largely neglected, and we in this small town-like area of Los Angeles have nothing to be proud of here, nothing to rally behind except for our rather lonely and pathetic-looking hot dog stand sandwiched between a fire station and a gas station.

Well, I tell a lie. We do in fact have something besides hot dogs to rally behind, a celebrity to call one of our own: Ray Bradbury.

Maybe I've just been hanging around with the wrong people in this neighborhood (i.e. weirdos), but the Ray Bradbury Card is something that people from this area play at any given opportunity with an awe-inspiring lack of shame. We are so desperate for a celebrity of our own that we whip out the name of a nonagenarian who wrote a book that some of us were forced to read in high school and that some of us have never even heard of. I think the problem is that, being a part of LA, we feel somewhat inadequate. Even bumblefucks like Shawnee Oklahoma have hometown heroes like Brad Pitt to brag about, but we in this sleepy quarter of LA are reduced to bragging about "Fahrenheit 451," a title that nowadays people are more likely to accidentally pronounce "Fahrenheit 9/11."

I think the worst part out of our pathetic boasts is that we don't even know what the man looks like. I mean, to be fair, most of the country was pretty much unaware that he hasn't died yet (but we in this neighborhood knew that Ray's still kickin'!), and he had pretty much dropped off the radar until a recent LA Times article talked about how he was, in fact, still alive and living in this neighborhood. Okay, the article wasn't just about how he hadn't died yet, it was actually on the fact that he had turned 90 and the city was celebrating. Let me tell you, tongues were a-wagging here in my neck of the woods. I think the last time my neighbors and I talked so much about current affairs was that one time a few years back when a couple of Muslims flew some planes into office buildings in New York and a bunch of people died. Maybe you heard about that.

But anyway, my point is that people don't even know what authors look like. I for one can only identify JK Rowling, Dave Barry and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Unfortunately Laura Ingalls Wilder is dead (and so, barring zombie uprisings, I will not run into her on the street), and the only reason I could pick Dave Barry out of the crowd is that he rather shamelessly plasters all of his books with images of himself. But maybe not everyone is so incapable of recognizing authors. I will admit, I have a problem with recognizing people. It's not so bad as some people I've read about in the news, who cannot and will never be able to recognize members of their own family, but I will say that sometimes I mentally double check with myself if the woman I'm about to flag down from across the crowded room is, in fact, my mother and not a woman who, to anyone else, looks nothing like her. Most of the time I like to avoid any confusion when meeting up with friends by arriving at the meeting location well in advance and become completely engrossed in a book. Then the burden is on the friend to look for me and identify me. I used to think I was one brilliant and sneaky bitch until a friend found me, pulled the book away from my eyes, and said, "You seriously can't recognize THIS?"....Which he, yes, he, followed with a booty drop.

My cousin is new to the neighborhood, and after hearing the local legend of Ray Bradbury (We tell it around campfires: "Some say there's a man.....and some say he penned a story....but no one knows for sure. They call him....RAY BRADBURY"), she started screaming with a level of excitement usually reserved for Beatles concerts. She's from a tiny town in the deserts of Southern California, and so even extras from Disney Channel Original Movies count as celebrities in her book. I don't say that because I look down on her, but rather because I envy her. I wish I weren't so jaded and that my childhood memories didn't involve jokingly calling someone Frodo and finding out it's actually the guy who played Spiderman, or trying to drop little papers into Arnold Schwarzenegger's hair from my lighting booth. (For the record, I had a clear shot but I never hit the target. But his Secret Service detail didn't seem to notice.)

As part of her excitement my cousin pondered whether or not she should go to his house and get his autograph. She wondered if this was too pushy, asking for an autograph, and I wondered if it weren't too pushy to go to a neighbor's house, period, regardless of celebrity status. I guess that's what differentiates small town girls and city girls. While my cousins regales us with tales of time spent dropping by neighbors' houses in her small town, I can count on one hand the number of houses I've been in in my neighborhood. You might think that my family is just particularly cold, but in my defense the few neighbors that I did know would back us up on our philosophy of not randomly stopping by other peoples' houses. My best friend and I lived across the street from each other, and not once did we show up at the other's house without first calling.

I remember one Halloween when a few of us neighborhood kids were trick-or-treating together, we stopped at this one house. "The Perfect American Family" lived there. The dad very traditionally went to work and played baseball with the son over the weekend, while the mom stayed at home and baked cookies (organic ones, this being LA) and puttered around their garden. On the weekends they would go for family walks with their two young children and their great big shaggy dog and laughed like people straight out of an anti-drug PSA as they washed their car on their front lawn. The Perfect American Family with 2.1 children. My point is that they were quite obviously a normal enough family, something straight out of the Midwestern farmlands rather than LA. Anyway, we went trick-or-treating, and when we got to their house they offered us homemade Rice Krispie Treats (who bakes for trick-or-treaters???) and they even invited us inside. While my cousin and her friends probably would have thought nothing of strolling right into this house of unfamiliar neighbors, me and the kids from my hood stared at these people as if the two of them had just unzipped their pants and whipped out five penises each. This was so long ago that I can't quite remember if we ran away screaming in terror or backed away in petrified silence. All I know is that, to us, a taboo had been violated.

To her credit, my cousin is quick to adapt to life in LA and she stated that maybe she'd downgrade her stalking to simply going for strolls near Ray Bradbury's house in the hope of bumping into him. But as I have already ranted about, none of us know what he looks like. Disappointed only for a brief moment, my cousin then cheerily suggested asking any man who looks about 90 whether he's Ray Bradbury. I think the problem here though is the fact that, from what I've noticed, the power of suggestion is all too powerful when it comes to old people. My grandma is still relatively with it, thank G-d, but even with her I sometimes unintentionally get her to say (falsely) that she has already eaten lunch or that she has spoken with my brother that morning, simply by asking whether she has. So if we are to just start asking random old men in my neighborhood whether they are Ray Bradbury, don't act surprised if more than one person says yes. Suddenly our neighborhood park would turn into a modern remake of Spartacus.


In conclusion, I'd like to play the Ray Bradbury Card. Not only did I live in the same neighborhood as him, but I spent the first five years of my life on the same street. Take that, Shawnee Oklahoma.

An Ode to My Friend: The Toilet.

All good things come to those who sit on toilets.

Back in 7th grade Latin we were all having trouble keeping straight which prepositions took ablative and which took accusative. It's not an intellectually challenging issue, and we were all reasonably intelligent kids, so I think the problem was that we were all precocious enough to realize that learning Latin is a waste of time. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy this waste of time--I chose to continue learning Latin even through my first year of college--but, come on, Latin is about as useful as theoretical math. It's the sort of thing you can brag about knowing, and people are impressed that you know it, but it's generally pretty useless.

Anyway, our 7th grade Latin teacher suggested making flashcards of the prepositions and which case they take, and then studying them on the toilet. He made a vulgar joke that implied that the mental strain of trying to remember the proper case would act as a sort of natural laxative, and the entire class made faces like bored bricks. When you're 12 you're at that age where you want to pretend that you're not still watching Disney Channel original movies or Nickelodeon at home. You want to publicly distance yourself from childish things like potty jokes and fart jokes, which you secretly still find hilarious, because you haven't realized yet that these things will always be funny to you, and that eventually (if you're lucky) as an adult you'll find a social circle that actually encourages fart competitions. Unfortunately I have not yet found that social circle for myself, which makes me wonder if I should have tried to go to a lesser Big 10 school or if I should have tried to get into an Ivy League school. The Ivy League has always been really big on secret societies with somewhat perverted rituals, so farts certainly must figure into the equation somehow. But alas, there was never any hope of me getting into Harvard, or even a lesser Ivy. I suppose that's the price I'll pay for walking out of high school classes, arguing with teachers, and refusing to do chemistry labs because we did retarded things like write lab reports on the fact that gravity does, in fact, exist.

But anyway, back to studying flashcards on the toilet.

I think that was the moment that I realized that I loved Latin. Not because of Latin itself, but because the teacher was the first person I had heard publicly acknowledge that wonderful things can happen on the toilet. Through all my fickleness and changes in ideology (e.g. moving to Israel, moving back, that time in 8th grade when I decided I was Anglican, that time when I tried to be more Jewish than I actually am, etc etc), two things have remained constant: 1) I have always been pro-life, and 2) I have always respected the awesomeness of the toilet.



From learning Latin prepositions, to doing Sudoku, to reading a good book, is there anything that can't be made better by doing it while on the toilet? There's even something regal about the very position that one assumes while on the toilet. As I discovered during my freshman year of college (alcohol may have been involved...), sitting on the toilet without slouching kind of makes you look like a pharaoh.

Also, I feel like I am the only person who realizes how fucking amazing the invention of the toilet and the arrival of proper sewer systems are. People always go on and on about how fantastic this newfangled interweb contraption is, and how we can do things like rent movies, shop for groceries or stock up on ammunition all without leaving the comfort of our homes--but does anyone take a minute to reflect on how fabulous the toilet is? Nowadays when we flush we say farewell to our waste forever! I suppose when we tossed the contents of chamber pots out of windows and onto the street we probably thought we'd seen the last of that waste, but our modern toilets and sewers honestly get rid of it. No longer does our shit come back to haunt us by causing plagues or midlife crises at age 12! Vive the commode!

Thanks to the toilet, we get to live long enough to first love fart and potty humor, then pretend not to like it, and then finally come full circle by spending the rest of our adult lives ripping farts at the dinner table when we are home with our families or cracking out loud ones in supermarkets to embarrass our children. Man, I can't wait to be a proper adult.

Thanks, toilets.

Shopping wth Ema.

How my mother has lived this long without being shot in the face by a disgruntled shopkeeper at least once is completely beyond the scope of my understanding. I'm not saying a perfectly pleasant person myself, but I take pride in the fact that we have completely different shopping styles. Our first point of divergence temporarily misleads salespeople into thinking that my mom is an easy person to work with while I'm the pill. When some perky girl named Katy (they're always named Katy. Or Katie. or Katey. Or Cadey. Or Kadie. Or...you get it) asks my mom if she needs any assistance, my mom's response is always a hearty "Yes, please!" This is, of course, regardless of whether or not she actually needs assistance. Sometimes I think my mom just says yes because she likes forcing someone to listen to her as she thinks out loud. My mother browses the same few national chains several times a week--she probably knows the stock better than the managers--but without fail she replies in the affirmative when asked whether she would like help. This is then followed by 20 minutes of my mom wandering around the shop, pointing things out, and discussing their pros and cons as the sales assistant sprints after her, trying to keep up. My mom is an unbelievably fast walker.

Me on the other hand.... I always refuse help. Politely, of course, but still. I never really understood the appeal of having someone guide you, hold your hand basically, as you make your way through the store. Unless you're looking for a really specific outfit or piece of equipment, I feel like you should have the patience to wander around the store a bit by yourself. [I could make a comment here about how I think that's just a reflection about how society nowadays is afraid of being even momentarily directionless, but that's a long rant for a different day.] But what qualifies as "a really specific outfit or piece of equipment"? Let me put it this way: you cannot ask a sales assistant, "Excuse me, do you have any long black skirts?" but you CAN ask, "Excuse me, do you have any purple wetsuits with orange trim that only go to the knee?"

I know you're probably shocked, seeing as I'm such a huge fan of surfing and water sports in general (ok, ok, I'm actually such a terrible swimmer that I'd still wear Floaties if it were socially acceptable), but I've never had to look for a purple wetsuit with orange trim that only goes to the knees. I've had to look for purple wetsuits with orange trim before, but the length was unspecified so it did not qualify for assistance.

I especially liked it when shopkeepers in Israel would ask if I wanted any help, because in Hebrew you ask quite literally, "Is it possible to help?" "Efshar la'azor?" The polite response is to say something like, "No, thank you." But the correct response to the construction, "Efshar...?/Is is possible to...?" is to say, "I efshar./Impossible." I decided that this was deliciously dramatic, and eventually I couldn't contain myself any longer. A shopkeeper asked, "Is it possible to help?" And I looked at her like a woman on the edge, with a hint of weary helplessness in my voice, and I said, "Impossible." As in, not only do I not need your help, but it is in fact literally impossible for you to help. And because the word "efshar" cannot be paired with people (meaning, with efshar you cannot say things like, "It is impossible for ME to do xyz."), it implied that NO ONE on Earth could help me. I was doomed to walk the Earth's department stores, wandering seemingly endlessly like an eternal Odysseus with a shopping fixation. It was one of those times that I desperately wished that I didn't have an accent in Hebrew. It would have been nice for the shopkeeper to not brush off my bizarre response as that of a confused tourist/immigrant, and instead treat it like the serious response of an emo native Israeli. But such is the price one pays for immigration... Aliyah ain't free.

But once we get past that initial question, I'm actually a rather pleasant shopper. My mom, on the other hand, is the true pill. She means well, but she just cannot make a decision and stick with it for the life of her. I would understand it more if she were having trouble making up her mind on life-altering decisions or major moral dilemmas, such as whether or not she should sell her business or how she should vote on Prop 8, but the woman spent a full thirty minutes debating the various merits of three different pairs of jeans at Baby Gap. In front of the sales assistant, of course, who politely listened as my mother made up her mind then changed it several seconds later, and who helpfully contributed occasional, "Hmmm,"s and "Yup"s.

I think the problem is that my mom is under the impression that the Industrial Revolution and subsequent advances of technology never happened. We were looking for clothing to send to my baby niece who lives 3,000 miles away, and I think my mom was under the impression that if the clothing did not fit exactly or that if my sister-in-law wasn't crazy about the style, then it would be all for naught. I think my mom fancies herself a modern Ma Ingalls, who hand to sew by hand (and later by a primitive sewing machine) all of the clothing for her family, and if it were judged to be too ugly or too small, then they were simply fucked and it was a waste of valuable hours Ma Ingalls could have being doing industrious prairie woman shit like laundry and cooking. My mom seems to forget that nowadays if clothing is too small or too ugly, we can take it into one of the 300 million Gaps in this country (we now have one per citizen or green card holder) and exchange it for either the same outfit in a larger size or a completely different outfit. What amazing times we are living in!

Heyyyyyyy, guys! What's up?

Believe it or not, this beluga whale actually has something to do with shopping with my mother. Besides her irrational need to involve shopkeepers in her shopping excursions, my mother also irrationally believes that I want to dress a certain way. Which certain way? Well. In spite of my love of dressing in such shabby clothing that sometimes hobos welcome me as one of their own, my mother thinks that I would like to have expensive new clothing from Bloomingdales. Whenever I'm home she drags me into that store, and as I wander around miserably, with my bulging stomach creating unpleasant lumps underneath my Walmart t-shirt and my fat ass exerting dangerous pressure on the seat of my jeans from Target, my mom holds up tiny designer outfits and calls out, "How about this one?"

The woman is delusional, I tell you. I mean, bless her maternal heart, I think she honestly believes that I'd look good if I dressed better. I've tried explaining to her that I don't think we should be spending that kind of money on something that I'll without fail accidentally spill spaghetti sauce on and ruin, and also designer outfits only look good on twigs. On skinny girls, they look glamorous at their best. With me in one of those outfits, I look like a beluga whale trying (with limited success) to pass through a coffee stirrer straw.

It's sort of like the modern, Sea World version of getting a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

So I'm crazy.

About ten years ago, when I was 12 and my brother 13, my brother summarized the film "Brazil" like this:

"So this guy....he dreams a lot and he dreams so much that at the end he can't distinguish dreams from reality. Oh yeah, and he lives in the future."

And while I'm not sure that this is the best way to summarize Brazil, I gotta say that I kind of identify with my brother's interpretation of the main character. Minus the part about living in the future--though I guess I am living in the future, it just depends on who you ask, or rather when you ask.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about the fact that for my entire life I've had horribly vivid dreams. I say "horribly" vivid not because they're all nightmares, but because they're all so real to me that when I wake up the dream seems as real to me as memories--and not distant childhood memories, but memories as fresh as last week. You might wonder why this is horrible, but I think the answer is obvious: I think things have happened that really didn't.

Maybe this is why I get upset when I realize that, rationally, I can't hold a grudge against people for things they did against me in my dreams. Even when I realize rationally that it must have been a dream, the overpowering, irrational side of me wants to carry that grudge.

Most of the time my realistic dreams are pretty harmless. At most they're disappointing, like the times when I dream that old friends that I've lost touch with call me and we catch up and rekindle our friendships. I wake up in a good mood, but I don't immediately remember my dream. Later in the day, or perhaps later that week, I'll fondly recall the conversation, only to realize that I dreamt it all. Other times I dream that I am checking my e-mail, which perhaps says something about how boring I am. When I wake up from that dream, I start to get ready for the day without doing my usual pre-class e-mail checking.

All in all, it's been pretty harmless. Dreaming of checking your e-mail and not immediately recognizing that the dream wasn't real upon waking up? Not really a big deal.

But how about dreaming that you went to culinary school for five years and not immediately recognizing that the dream wasn't real upon waking up?

Yeah, that's right. Today (in real life) I walked by a famous cooking school here and watched through the floor-to-ceiling windows as the trainee chefs scurried about, stirring and chopping things. The teacher appeared to be barking orders, and some of the students looked rather flustered as they tried to obey him. I smiled to myself and walked on, thinking, "Gosh, I'm so glad I'm past that stage and now I'm the one giving the orders." As I rounded the corner I caught sight of the Hollywood sign, which was a jarring exit from my temporary re-entry into the dream world, caused by my watching the chefs. I don't really know how my brain works, but if I had to translate the process of what happened in my brain right then (in the span of less than a second), it'd be something like:

"Wait, I'm in LA? When did I leave Paris? I can't remember.... Well then when am I going back? I don't know. Why am I going back? Because I'm a famous chef there. A what??? How am I a famous chef? Cos I spent 5 years in culinary school in Paris. Wait wait wait. This is the same person who ate macaroni and cheese every day in Jerusalem because she couldn't figure out how to cook anything else. Oh shit, I must have dreamt those five years."



I seriously don't even know how to finish this post, other than with: "I am officially crazy."