Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Christmas Blues? Think Again.


I wrote this piece a few years ago, but the sentiment has stood the test of time. It's worth another reminder:


This will be the first Christmas EVER without my daughters. When you get divorced and your children are split in two, you know this dreaded day will come eventually. It’s like April 15th in December. Looking back, I’ve been blessed with 12 wonder-filled Christmas mornings, over a decade of giddy dawns. It’s been magical. I’ve had a good run. But this year, it’s my ex’s turn to experience all that.

I’ll miss the little things: The frosted cookies on a plate with a note to Santa; the frenzied, last-minute gift-wrapping; getting up before dawn to wait by the lighted tree, hot tea in hand, camera at the ready; and then that Kodak moment, the look of pure joy, mouths forming perfect ‘O’s’ as my sleepy children get their first look at Santa’s handiwork.

Yes, I’ll be alone on Christmas morning. But woe is NOT me, for I have been given the gift of perspective; an epiphany that, like the symbolism of Christmas itself, has come in the form of a newborn baby. Her name is Emilie. She’s sweet and beautiful…and lying in the intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, tubes as long as she is coming out of her in every direction. Emilie was born with a defect that prompted surgery three days into her fragile life. Her parents – my neighbors – are, understandably, on pins and needles. While the prognosis is good, and there’s every reason to believe that Emilie will wake up Christmas morning in her own home, still . . . I worry. I pray. And I count my blessings.

Certainly, I’ll miss my kids on Christmas morning. But there are much bigger heartaches, one being played out just a few houses over. As divorced parents, we need to look at the overall picture. It really doesn’t matter which custodial parent’s home your children wake up in on December 25. What’s most important is that they are alive, in good health and loved year-round.

So what do I plan to do, all alone, on that calendar day we call “Christmas?” Something I don’t do often enough: RELAX. I’ll sleep in, enjoy a long, uninterrupted cup of tea (what is THAT?) while watching the twinkling lights of my tree and start a new book. I can hardly wait.

About mid-morning, when I know my kids have ripped into all those gifts at their dad’s house, I’ll call to say “Merry Christmas” and let them know a similar scenario awaits their return.

And more than a few times, I will glance through the window, toward my neighbors’ house and try to imagine the joy unfolding as Emilie celebrates her very first Christmas with a family so grateful to have her home.

Christmas is about celebrating the life of children. And thanks to one precious baby, I’ll be singing a different tune this year… “Four calling birds, three French hens, two healthy children and a heart filled with love and gratitude for my bounty year-round.”


Can anyone recommend a good book for Lynn Armitage to read on Christmas morning?


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Thursday, December 17, 2009

Taco Bell Burritos Shrunk!

Taco BellImage via Wikipedia
Now that the Tiger Woods scandal is pretty much old news, let's talk about another cheater: Taco Bell! Yep, I bring you another installment of "The Incredible Shrinking Bread Loaf," only this time, we're talking burritos.

Drove through Taco Bell today to feed me and my teen. Lunch in a pinch. Ordered my usual bean burrito, and while it tasted the same -- hot, gooey and delicious -- it looked different, somehow. Upon further examination, I realized that the burrito I have loved for three decades is now SMALLER!

It has shrunk in both length and girth, and I am one unhappy senorita. The beauty of Mexican food is that it is so cheap to make. We're talking tortillas, refried beans and cheese configured a zillion different ways. It's a cheap, winning formula -- for everyone! But I guess someone at corporate headquarters (in Irvine, California, if I'm not mistaken) saw an opportunity to make even more millions by cheating consumers -- their bread and butter all these many years.

I don't mind if something gets smaller, as long as the price shrinks right along with it. That seems fair. But that's not the case, here. The price is still the same, but now we get less burrito.
I'll admit that if it weren't for Taco Bell, a lot of people would go hungry. But while it's still an affordable food choice, it's likely that we won't be as sated with the downsized portion as we were in the good ol' days, which means we may have to buy two burritos, instead of one.

Oh . . . I get it now.
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Thursday, December 10, 2009

Are Men Capable Of Monogamy?


First off, a BIG thanks to Jouda Mann for his guest post about the Tiger Woods mess. Very interesting take on it, Jouda. You understand men all too well, and I am about to respond to you in my own special way.

Here goes . . . OK, Jouda, and all you other menfolk, I know I'm making a massive generalization here, but guys . . . why can't you be faithful to just ONE woman? Yeah, I know there are women who cheat, too. But if it's such an equal playing field, why aren't they making the headlines right along with you?

This Tiger Woods debacle is just the most recent scandal. Earlier this year, there was Governor Mark Sanford, who admitted to an affair with his Argentinian "soulmate;" and let's not forget David Letterman's very public indiscretions with some of his female staff; in recent years, basketball star Kobe Bryant went to court to defend his philandering ways and presidential contender Jon Edwards cheated on his wife when she had cancer, the creep!; and then there's Sheriff Mike Carona from Orange County, former President Bill Clinton, and on and on. I've lost track of all the rich and famous athletes, entertainers and politicians who have FABULOUS wives and lives, but who have been caught with their pants down, haven't you?

I heard an interesting statistic this morning on FOX News: One in 4.6 men cheat in America. Then the expert wisecracked, "The rest cheat in Europe!" That got the news crew on the set laughing. Funny, but oh-so-TRUE!

What I don't understand is, what EXACTLY do you want from us women, guys? We give you our hearts, our bodies, our trust and our youth; some of us even allow doctors to slice into us to make our boobs bigger and our thighs thinner for you; we build our nests together, share our intelligence and humor and merge our lives with yours; we sometimes put aside our own dreams to help buoy yours; we nourish you, and comfort you and boost your egos and even clean your dirty underwear; and the most bonding and sacred thing of all is that we create LIFE together!

Is that not enough for you?

I understand how men lose all sensibility over beautiful, sexy women. Women get weak in the knees over handsome men, too. But even when men are lucky enough to get beautiful women to marry them -- in Tiger's case, a SUPERMODEL, which is like winning the marital lottery for men -- they eventually seem to lose interest in these goddesses, too.

So it doesn’t seem to be beauty or sexiness you’re after. At least not long-term, which should be a huge relief for all the women out there who are spending wads of cash and undergoing risky surgeries to attract your attention and keep you in their beds. Don’t do it, ladies! You’ll get cheated on eventually, too, especially if you’ve committed yourself to some superficial jerk who places great value in having a sexy bosom by his side.

Personally, I have some serious doubts about whether some men are capable of monogamy. And I'm not alone in my thinking, either. (Read here.) Be honest now, guys. When you stand up at that altar and make a promise to forsake all others and love and cherish only one woman, do you REALLY mean it? Or are you just playing the role that society expects of you?

Perhaps you start out with the best of intentions. Then real life takes over, years go by, stress and responsibilities creep in, passion subsides, you get older, boredom sets in. You miss the great sex. I totally get that. We miss it, too. But I think the difference between men and women is that we believe (perhaps mistakenly) that the emotional and intimate bonds, the life histories, that we have created with our men are stronger than their sexual urges for other partners. They usually are for us women, anyway.

Hey, this is a GIGANTIC topic to discuss and I can’t possibly cover every angle. But I need to know something before I wrap this up. For all you guys who cheat on your wives and significant others, I have an important question for you:

Do you do it for the thrill of the chase or for the chase of the thrill? Think about that for a minute.

Whatever your reason, please do us ALL a favor. If you know in your hearts that you can’t be faithful to one woman, only, FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, don’t marry us! Don’t have babies with us! Instead of saying, “I do,” be honest and say, “I’m sorry. I just can’t. There are too many other women I want to experience.” Think of all the time and heartache and airtime you’ll save everyone.

Or, here’s a more radical idea . . . instead of marrying a woman because she is GORGEOUS (at least in the beginning, until familiarity sets in), how about if you marry for LOVE?? Not lust, but real, true-blue, until-death-do-us-part love? And ladies, the same goes for you. Don’t marry a guy for what he makes, financially (golddigging being a big part of the problem in many cases); marry him for what he is made OF, instead.

I think if more couples married for love and scrutinized their mates for good character -- I mean if they were patient enough to wait to get married until they found partners who, in their eyes, were beautiful on the inside, as well as on the outside -- there would be far fewer public scandals, scorned women and rambling blog posts like this one.

So what do YOU think: Are men capable of monogamy?

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Monday, December 7, 2009

Tiger's Boredom Factor


My name is Jouda Mann, and with the recent upheaval over Tiger getting his jollies away from home, I felt that I had to rebut Lynn’s "Mad Mom" rant, and give a little perspective of my own. She has been kind enough to lease me some space in which to tell my point of view on the whole thing.

So here’s how I think the whole Tiger Woods thing went down:


The Lead-Up . . . From Tiger's Point of View

"All I ever wanted in life was golf and money. That way, I could set my parents up however they wanted to be, get a hot model wife, and everything could be good in life. Now I have all the money that I could ever want, and golf balls and clubs haunt me in my sleep.

I MADE IT! I'M HERE!

What's that? I'm only 34, and it's a reasonable assumption that I'm going to live for at least another 40 years? OK, what to do in the meantime?

Sure, we can decorate the house. Sure, we can buy other houses. And decorate them, too. Jewelry, cars, boats, restaurants, more jewelry, bigger, more extravagant cars, more exclusive restaurants, and I still have how much money left? Hell, what else can we do?

Sure, we can travel. Oh, wait, when we get to Borneo, the local government (magistrate, mayor, tribal chief, whatever) wants a photo op. And I'll have to glad-hand wherever I go. And there's some endorsement thing my agent tells me I have to do. What a waste of time.

Why the hell can't I just enjoy a simple trip with my Hot Model Wife?

Fuck it. Let's just stay home. You want to go to Emeril's new restaurant? I know it's going to be just like all his other restaurants, but it's one that we've never been to. Fine, you stay here and put more dead flowers in a vase. I guess I'll just go to that function that my agent told me about."


The Dirty Deed

(At the function)

"Yeah, thanks for the drink, bartender guy who really wants to break into the business, but you’re just doing this so you can pay bills in the meantime. Oh, hey, whatever-your-name-is. Yeah, I’m still swinging the clubs. Yeah, I’m sure Pebble Beach is going to be a beast this year. It always is. Yeah, I’m gonna go over here now, because I’m tired of talking about this."

(Hours later)

"Holy shit, everyone says the same thing. They’re all rooting for me. Good for them, but it’s not like that’s all I can do. Hey, who’s that? She’s really hot! She’s looking over here. She’s looking at me. Oh shit, here she comes.

Yeah, Hot Model Chick, I’m Tiger Woods, but you knew that. And who are you? Nice dress. No, Hot Model Wife isn’t here tonight, just me. Yeah, you know I want to spend some time with you, but this is a public place, I can’t just have you hanging on my arm when I’m Tiger Woods, and everyone knows I’m married to Hot Model Wife. But what are you doing tomorrow? Awesome. I’ll give you a call."

(Later, at home)
"Hey, Hot Model Wife, how was your day? That’s nice. The function? You know how those things are; same people, glad-handing, all that same stuff. Baby, I have to call Agent. Nothing big, but I need to know what this thing is that he wants me to do tomorrow. He said something about Chicago, and it would only be a one day thing. I’ll probably leave tomorrow afternoon, and be back the day after. Yeah, I’ll be in bed in a little while. I love you, too. "

(On the phone)
"Hey Agent, how’s it going? Nothing on the schedule for the next day or so? Ok, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to get me a room. Nothing too fancy, nothing in-your-face, but nice and quiet, maybe a little bit out of the way. Here’s the thing: I need it to be in your name, or anyone else’s name other than mine. I don’t care who it is, it can be Mickey Mouse for all I care, as long as it’s not my name. Meet me tomorrow at the cafĂ© on Some Street, and give me the key card. Ok, thanks."

(The next day, on the phone with Hot Model Chick)
"Hot Model Chick, can you meet me tonight at Out of the Way But Still Pretty Nice Hotel? Cool, I’ll see you then."


The Fallout

Well, we all know what the fallout is, don’t we? What? It turned out that Hot Model Chick was recording their conversations? And she played them back to prove it? Why, that means she’s just a golddigging whore! Now come on, is anyone surprised?

But all this doesn’t answer the big question: Why?

Humans get bored. Easily. All the time. It's why we do things like jump out of perfectly serviceable planes or off perfectly stable cliffs. It's why we strap waxed slats of plywood to our feet and go whizzing down snowy mountains at twice the speed of Oh My Fucking God. It is why we stuffed three perfectly healthy human beings who otherwise would have had a long, intelligent and fruitful life in any case into a tiny aluminum cone and sent them to a god-forsaken rock that's been winking at us from the sky for thousands of generations (well, that and propaganda, let's not forget that).

And yes, it's why some men occasionally fall down and accidentally slip their willies into other women. For that matter, it's also why some women occasionally fall down and allow other men's willies to accidentally get slipped inside them.

But, why another woman? Why would he go and let another woman get his nine iron, when he has Hot Model Wife there?

Men are simple creatures, in many ways. Low-hanging fruit is our game, for the most part. And when we think small, we tend to screw up big. I’d put money down that Tiger didn’t leave the house or hotel that night thinking “I’m gonna get some strange tonight." For the most part, men just aren’t that imaginative. But men are opportunists, and when the opportunity came up, he jumped at it, without thinking of the long-term consequences. If it had been coke, another party drug, or a small part in a murder, he just might have done the same thing. Anything to alleviate the boredom.

So there it is. Boredom, and opportunity, possibly combined with the fact that he never really cultivated and invested in a real relationship with his wife.But I have a more prescient question: Why does it matter?

It’s very plain to me that had he not had the skill to hit a small dense plastic ball farther than just about anyone else in the world, consistently and skillfully, he would not be The Tiger Woods. And were he not The Tiger Woods, he would not be followed around by people who make their living on photographing celebrities screwing up, and he never would have been in the paper. He would just be some guy that got into a domestic dispute when his wife found out about his extracurricular activities, and he would just be some guy that got into a fender-bender in his own front yard, warranting a passing entry in Fark, and then he would have been forgotten.

But since he is The Tiger Woods, we worship him. This despite the fact that he is famous for nothing but hitting a ball 300 yards and not having the sense to put it in his pocket after finding it, because at that point he had obviously won the game. And when I say worship him, I mean it, since there was actually a Church of Tiger Woods, that got disbanded after he turned out to be human.

Why are we Americans so fascinated by celebrities? I completely understand the desire to look at their lives as they play out in front of our eyes like a train wreck, but why does it deserve HOURS of air time?

Some of you might say “Well, Jouda, I want my child to be as successful as Celebrity of the Week."

I call bullshit.

You want your child to be happy. You want them to be able to enjoy the simple pleasures of sliding down a metal slide that burns their butt, and play in the dirt in a playground where they aren’t being photographed by people that are this close to being pedophiles. If you’re a good parent, you want them to be happy and healthy of their own merit, and in their own way. I would never want my child to be a Suri Cruise, or a Britney, or anything else that wasn’t exactly what she is.

The (still fairly recent) episode of Britney going ape-shit on a bevy of photographers should illustrate the fact that in many cases, you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl. You wouldn’t worship the little brat down the street that opened her legs for some jackass and spat out two burdens of society. Why worship the same little brat when it turns out that she can gyrate on the stage like a stripper, and her singing voice sounds decent with the help of some production magic?

Just last night, I read that Tiger’s exploits have led to a whole slew of mistresses, at last count up to five of them. So let me get something straight: As a society, we’re going to take a person out of their own local bubble, give them their every heart’s desire, tell them that they’re great, and they can’t and have never messed up on anything, and follow them around in fascination like we’re producing "The Truman Show," and then we’re going to be feel let down when he takes advantage of our idiocy and adulation, and when it turns out that our Idol of the Month has clay feet?

Is this an excuse for his behavior? Absolutely not, nor is it an endorsement.

But are we really surprised?


Written by Jouda Mann

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Tiger's Wood


Something smelled fishy from the start. Tiger Woods crashed his car into a fire hydrant right outside his home at 2:30 in the morning, and his wife bashed in one of the windows of his Escalade with a golf club to pull him to safety.

Huh??

First of all, Escalades are huge cars. I don't really see how Tiger could have been "trapped" inside that ginormous vehicle. Besides, how much damage could he have done to the car from just backing out of the driveway into the fire hydrant? From the get-go, I suspected a domestic-violence situation, especially given the early-morning hour and the fact that his wife was brandishing a five-iron. Yes, I said brandishing, as I suspect she was planning to use that golf club as a weapon with which to beat her golf-legend-of-a-husband.

Poetry, Mrs. Woods. Pure poetry. (Click here for the musical version.)

Now ask yourself, why would a woman chase her husband out of the house, wielding a golf club, at 2:30 in the morning and create such fear and panic in him that he accelerates in reverse out of the driveway and crashes the family's SUV? The only thing that could cause a woman to go that ballistic is . . . another woman!

This is how I think it went down: I think Tiger Dear snuck out of bed around 2:15 a.m., thinking his wife was sound asleep, and dialed up his mistress on his cell phone to make plans for their get-together next week at the golf tournament. But the wife wasn't asleep. She overheard the conversation and went nuts. She grabbed the closest thing to a weapon that she could find -- a golf club, as they must have hundreds of those lying around the house -- and chased his cheatin' ass out the front door.

At a party Saturday night, I proposed that very scenario even before all the facts started trickling in. I told everyone that I thought he had a mistress, and the wife must have found out about it. What was interesting is the reaction I got from the men in the room. They suddenly turned on Tiger's wife, despite the fact the she is a supermodel -- every man's dream wife, right?

"Well, her husband brings home millions," they said in his defense. "She should be happy about that, but she probably nags him all the time and he just got sick of it."

I guess all those PGA titles and piles of cash somehow give the world's greatest golfer a hall pass in life. Just like it was beyond comprehension that the Heisman-tropy-winning O.J. could have ever murdered his ex-wife.

What really burned me today is an interview I saw on Fox News. I don't even know who the interviewee was, but the reporter asked him if he thought Tiger might have a mistress. And this guy had the nerve to say that if Tiger did have a mistress, it's going to make him even more popular because now other men would see how "human" Tiger really is.

Give me a break! I guess when you're the world's greatest athlete, and you have all the fame and fortune you could ever dream of, and you're married to a beautiful supermodel with whom you have two perfect children . . . it's just not enough for one man.

It's only "human" that he would be bored and want more.