Off the Cuff

I have unyielding appreciation for the genius that was Queer Eye. Arguably the thing that did the most for Gay and Lesbian Rights and acceptance since Ellen came out and Will and Grace moved in.

We know What Not To Wear got their contestants when their fed-up friends or co-workers reported them as having made one too many appearances in public that would incite a riot.

It was never clear to me how Queer Eye found their subjects, but they did always interview a number of enablers for each one who would admit that they would not sit down in his apartment without being up to date on their immunizations, or that they'd prefer not to be seen in well-lit public places while he was dressed "like that," or that they'd "just gotten used to" the smell after they'd given up on the novenas to the patron saint of hygiene. (Is it Wilgefortis? It ought to be. This is the gal who sprouted a full beard and moustache when she learned of her betrothal to some heinous king. She's also the patron saint of women in troubled marriages. Ladies, pay attention! Get rid of the chin hairs and the crappy spouse all in one novena. How efficient!)

Carson's book (we are on a first name basis, natch) Off the Cuff (Published by Dutton) touts itself as being written for straight men and the women who have the dubious honor of dressing them. And it not only instructs them on what a man should have in his closet, (more than just blue shirts, Lars!) but also how it should fit and how it should be made. The hallmarks of a well-made suit or shoe. Cuts, fabrics, styles of shoe, what is meant by the words seat, and rise and inseam. What buttons to button and how much cuff should show. Different knots for the tie.

And it teaches the everyday language of clothes. What words a man needs to be able to walk into a clothier or a tailor and ask for help - or talk to his wife. So when we say things like "Please don't wear that hideous houndstooth jacket to my boss's kids' bar mitzvah," he'll know enough not to look like he simply wasn't listening.

And the book is hilarious. Pee your pants funny. Try to read it out loud without howling. I think it will bring couples together over a very divisive topic, frankly. Carson as marriage counselor. Brilliant.

And so how did we get on this topic? Oh, right. What Not To Wear inspired me to buy makeup. Which I did. And was made over not by a drag queen per se, but by a tall, impeccably groomed, well informed man who was very prettily made up himself. Bought everything he suggested and he threw in a moisturizer just to be nice.

And as bizarre as that may seem, it can not even begin to approach the bizarre quality my life is about to take on. As though inspired by reality TV as well, my mother has decided that she and Bill will drive North.

To join me on vacation. God save the queen.

What Not to Wear

I was recently inspired by What Not to Wear. Inspired by Carmindy, who had transformed a total hag into a stunner - and the only thing she used that I don't have is a burgundy brown shadow to bring out her baby blues. Taxi! Take me to Sephora! And step on it!

Despite it being quasi-Reality TV, I have always been a fan. Of it, and of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Clinton and Stacy and the Fab 5 have been ridding the world of the stylistically inept for years and have been a riot while doing it.

To me it is not just about the show. Not just about being entertained by the subjects' inability to dress like a grown up or decorate beyond fraternity house chic. I don't mindlessly tune in to see which sweatpants-to-the-office-wouldn't-know-a-loafer-from-a-Louboutin-oh-my-God-are-those-pajamas fashion flunky is going to be brainwashed into fashion-consciousness in 60 minutes or less.

I bought the books.

Actually, I bought one book. One was given to me. As a misguided gift.

My ex-husband, before he was my Wasband, returned home from a shopping trip with it. He wasn't Christmas shopping, or Valentine shopping, or birthday shopping or anything like that. He was grocery shopping. At a big warehouse store known as BJs - where you buy everything in bulk, and unless you have a family of 10 (Kate Gosselin, are you listening on the set of your latest show?) or give half of it away, the food will go bad or your kids will grow to hate it long before you've used it all. (I remember my first trip to BJs - I was pregnant. The 5 gallon tub of pork chitlins made me convulse with nausea - especially so close to the tire display where the smell of rubber wafted inconveniently near.)

But BJs has a great book display. Huge selection of titles and rock bottom prices. This is where the famed book of quippy fashion advice came from. It was "What Not to Wear" - the BBC version, with Trinny and Susannah.

Lars came home from BJs and after we had hefted the 10 gallon vat of detergent down to the laundry room, and found a home for the 100 rolls of toilet paper, and managed to wedge the 12 pound bag of frozen meatballs into the freezer, and manipulated the contents of the cabinet to accommodate a 6 pound box of Bisquick, he placed the book on the dining room table.

Not yet familiar with the show, I was immediately offended.

"Who is this for, your mother?" I snarked. No fashion maven, she. Don't get me started.

"No, it's for you," he said, and actually, seemed sincere.

I was skeptical. And wanted to beat him senseless with the enormous bag of flash frozen salmon steaks. This is a man who for some time, when I presented on the stair in a perfectly turned out ensemble, often looked up and inquired, "What are you dressed up as?" or "What are you supposed to be?" or "Are you going out like that?"

All this from a man who only owned blue shirts when we'd met. Hardly in a position to judge.

But as luck would have it, I was in a pitifully bleak reading material situation and decided to give it a look. Good call.

Hilarious. Irreverent. And brimming with good advice. Name your figure flaw and Trinny and Susannah will not only tell you the best and worst blouse, pants, skirt, coat, and neckline for you, they will model it for you too! And tell you where you can splurge or bargain hunt for styles that suit you. Flat chest? Big hips? Stumpy legs? They will have you camouflaged and fabulous in no time.

I liked it so much that I not only tuned in to their show - I tuned into similar shows as well, and upon discovering the genius of Carson Kressley, I bought his book too. Every copy - from the $2 bin at my grocery store after the ladies in Disney jumpers and stirrup pants in my Superfresh obviously failed to see its infinite value.

Hello Out There from TV Land!

Maybe it was the writers' strike.

Not that I believe in striking, I think it is an adversarial way to try to get a point across, but nothing makes you realize the value you place on something someone does for you quite like that same someone depriving you of it.

Like the time I went on strike in my own home and refused to wipe the blobs of toothpaste out of the sink for a week to see if anyone noticed how perfectly icky and gross it is to have to look at when Mom doesn't rub it away while she neatly and politely gets rid of the blob she herself created while brushing....They noticed. They noticed and asked me to clean it. A failed mission.

But during the writers' strike, while all the creative genius voluntarily stuffed a sock into its own mouth, for philosophical reasons I am not sure anyone remembers (Sorry, guys, I have my own issues to contend with.) the less talented, or at least the lesser known, un-signed folks circumvented the whole mess and filled in the schedule with all manner of reality-based TV shows. "We don't have to write!" they must have said. "The material writes itself!"

And it does.

Paris Hilton snoots around the deep South making fun of less shiny more resourceful people. With her friend with whom she shares only one thing in common. They are both famous for no reason.

Bitchy, foul-mouthed, manipulative brides stomp their feet and hold their breath and screech and poke French manicured nails in people's faces until they walk down the aisle on their picture perfect wedding day.

The Kardashians. Need I say more? Keep up with them? Keep away from them!

And my favorite. America's Funniest Home Videos. Not only does no one write it, they don't film it either! So, an hour at a time, we all get to watch amateur video of Uncle Moe's pants falling down while he dances the Macarena at his niece's fire hall wedding. And a bunch of dudes in wife beaters drunk driving mini bikes off a makeshift ramp in some field until one of them face plants in a pile of manure. And half a dozen adorable clips of junior hitting daddy in the crotch with a golf club, wiffle ball, Frisbee, grill spatula or some other instrument not normally intended to inflict injury.

And now I think, "Isn't that really what I am doing with my blog?" I may not have the chops to crank out a first rate work of fiction, and I may not have the patience - or the interest- to pen a great biography. My material literally writes itself. And finds humor, very often, at others' expense. All I have to do is give it air time.

Feeling less full of myself, I think I'll go find the clicker and tune in to whatever show Kate Gosselin and her kids have been misguided into filming these days.

Reality Schmality

My family must be on hiatus.

While we wait for my brother's response to my sister's letter, which is bound to be as bizarre and entertaining as Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-banging outburst at the UN General Assembly, there is a lull in the entertainment portion of my life.

Against general principle, I turn on the TV to search for some entertainment. (Glee calls to me. Otherwise if it is not football season, the TV is just another thing I have to remember to dust.)

I remember the day we got a color television. (I am that old.) My Dad could not wait for us to see the difference in our afternoon cartoons. We tuned into Kimba the White Lion - which was, oddly, mostly green and white. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058817/)

On our 7-channel TV.

My TV has 800+ channels. I am really not sure how many exactly. It is right around the 800 mark that my hand cramps and I stop scrolling.

And what do we need 800 channels for? There is such a drought of worthwhile material, what could we possibly need that much air time for?

I nostalgically long for the long boooooooooop signifying the moment a station would go off the air following the national anthem (and would wake me up so the parents I was babysitting for would not catch me snoozing while Junior went snooping.)

I don't recall when it happened exactly, but it seems as though, like some opportunistic parasite, Reality TV has encroached on Written TV's territory, and like some flesh-eating virus, has taken over the whole thing.

Why is it considered entertainment to watch people's dreams dashed, and to be able to laugh at the comically bad but embarrassingly sincere American Idol contestants in the audition phase?

Dancing with the Stars? Dancing with the Hasbeens?

So you've had a multiple birth. Lots of people have. And you have your hands full with the 6 or 8 or 10 kids in your care. This would be the time to concentrate on figuring out how on Earth you are going to give them the best you have to give as a parent - emotionally, physically, educationally, nutritionally, etc - Not trot them out like some circus act.

Celebrity Rehab? Did we get the releases signed by trading a signature for a doobie? When did someone facing their demons become funny?

And who wants to watch anyone lose weight? (Or paint dry, or grass grow...) I would happily watch myself shed a few, but some fatty who clearly has emotional or medical problems? What fun is that?

And now, just as I am turning into Judgy Wudgy was a Bear and climbing onto my soap box, it occurs to me that perhaps I am guilty of the same sins.

Got a Black Magic Marker

I went to high school with a cheerleader who actually thought that these were the words to the classic Santana tune. As if Carlos Santana would actually sing about office supplies.

I have a talent for deciphering lyrics. All I have to do is sing along mindlessly to a song and they eventually occur to me. (My college roommate and I spent an entire finals week trying to figure out the breathy slurrings of Rickie Lee Jones' "Skeletons." We just had to keep singing it.)

I discovered this rare talent, and the fact that I can read and add things written upside down, in college, majoring in English Literature. I was studying Chaucer and reading the Canterbury Tales in, of all things, Middle English. The written words may as well have been gibberish. Alphabet soup. Scrabble. Anything but actual English. And it didn't help that it was centuries before we developed a hang up about consistent spelling or sentence structure.

But I found that if I sounded out each word phonetically and read the passages out loud, I could listen to what I was reading and actually understand what was written. My roommate didn't have much of an appreciation for the discovery, but I wasn't wild about her ranting in French, either.

So I can figure out lyrics to almost any song - and can remember them for years to come. It is not lost on me that I can still recite the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution thanks to the little jingle the folks at Schoolhouse Rock put together. And who doesn't remember Conjunction Junction What's Your Function? (Putting together words, and phrases and clauses...)

Yet I can't remember what it is my boss asked me to prepare for the budget meeting next week. Perhaps if he'd simply set it to music...

Now I realize that not everyone possesses this rare and utterly useless talent for lyrics. But I am not suggesting that it in any way indicates the strength of one's IQ or vocabulary or anything like that. Some fine, educated folks have failed miserably at this undertaking. It's just one of those things.

I had a friend in college who thought the refrain from Fleetwood Mac's "Second Hand News" was actually "I'm just sittin' here nude, I'm just sittin' here nuuuuuuuddde!"

Odd, but not entirely Salvador Dali.

There was a girl in my freshman dorm who thought Prince (back before he was the Artist Formerly Known As) was singing about a girl who "wore raspberries to bed" not one who wore a raspberry beret. She must have remembered Porcupine Pie.

And I had a roommate in my beach house who thought that when Tina Turner was singing that "All we need is life beyond the Thunder Dome" that she was really trying to convince us that "all we need is Martha Young!"

Who?

This unevenness of skill and ability, for lack of a better way to describe it, is exactly what I think may be the communication breakdown in some families. Some people are just simply not able to hear what you are saying. No matter how many times you say something, or write it, or shout it, or get on your soap box about it, to them, Mick Fleetwood is still sitting in his birthday suit.

So my brother, will never observe what others demonstrate. Will never look around him and attempt to blend. He'll never listen to what you've said, understand its importance to you and make mental notes about boundaries and customs. The countless subtle and overt statements made over and over just ricochet off of his brain and spin off into space where they orbit the Earth never landing anywhere meaningful. He may be trying, he may not be trying, it doesn't make a difference.

And we, unable to comprehend why such simple concepts and instructions can not be absorbed, accuse him of sinister intentions, and continue to rant about the same things over and over. Crazy idea to think that we'd keep putting the same ingredients in the pan and expect a different cake to come out.

So who is wrong here? I maintain that my brother should be held accountable for his conduct, and that of his children, (his wife is another issue altogether) and should comply with conventions of propriety and manners. Tow the line. Play by the rules. Just like everyone is expected to drive on the right. He should too. However, expecting him to understand why he must do so is probably a fool's errand.

He simply can not really hear us. His understanding is limited and finite.

And like him, the cheerleader from my alma mater will always think Carlos Santana has a Sharpie trying to make a devil out of him.

Jokers Wild

So now we wait.

What happens next depends largely on who opens the envelope.

There are a number of plausible outcomes:

a) Joe reads it, flies into a tantrum, and frantically contacts everyone in the family except my sister to rant in lengthy, meaningless, excessively loud run-on sentence fragments.

b) Mary-ellen (yes, hyphenated with lowercase second name...don't ask. I've stopped.) will open it and that hair that looks like it was subject to a nuclear holocaust, (Crayola would call it Kodak Film Box Yellow) will stand on end, and she will erupt in a rage toward my brother that takes on volcanic qualities, and her face will melt off in a scene not at all unlike that one toward the end of the first Raiders of the Lost Ark movie.

c) Mary-ellen will read it and in hissing, spitting, profanity-laced sentences, seethe that this is the reason why she has always loathed my brother's family and this letter is further proof that she is justified in her decades-long campaign to distance their little family from the extended family. Take my wife, please.

d) All of the above.

What can be assumed will not be among the potential responses, is a reasonable, measured, calm, reflective absorption of the material facts presented, followed by a phone call offering to peaceably discuss how the broken familial bonds might be restored.

Not a chance.

Whatever the response, it will be the kind of thing YouTube was invented for:

Slapstick.
Haphazard.
Unrehearsed.
The participants having no idea how hilarious their facial contortions and unbridled emotions can be to people removed from the situation.
Even funnier if set to music. Preferably John Phillips Sousa.

And then, when the fur has stopped flying, and the cushion stuffing has floated to the carpet, and the bric-a-brac lay in smithereens on the floor, and the cat has gone into deep cover beneath the barcalounger, and the children have fled to their friends' homes where cooler (and presumably better groomed) heads prevail, my brother and his wife, together or alone, will begin to plot their responses.

His will lamely endeavor to be a retort of some kind.

Hers will bear all the hallmarks of a full-blown counter attack.

Revenge always seems so much sweeter at this stage in the game.

Our Gal Sal and her Mail Bag

Game on, and it appeared my brother had brought a sling shot to a gun fight.

To my sister's advantage:

3-digit IQ? Check.
Vast vocabulary? Check.
Agile command of the English language and ability to make a point? Check.
Willingness to verbally hack him to collops? Check.

He had opened Pandora's Box and there was no stuffing the ugliness back in.

My sister, possessing a PC and having full facility with the use of email as a communication tool, did not have to sharpen and resharpen half a dozen pencils to compose her response. She sent me an email of the draft response, which was clearly a stream of conscious rant that Dennis Miller would have been proud to have spewed.

Blistering.
Articulate.
Succinct in its description of quite a number of infractions (clearly designed for him to painfully relive).
Brilliant.

But he, not having an email address or regular access to a computer (How do their kids survive middle school assignments???) would have to receive his response in the same way in which his had been sent. In a printed letter.

My sister sent the pages to print and then carefully folded and stuffed and addressed and stamped the whole shootin' match, and then gratifyingly placed it into the mailbox.

I can only imagine his trepidation upon spotting the envelope in his mailbox. The mystery would have to gnaw away at him... would it be good news or bad news? Maybe he'd just bring it into the house and think about when he would open it... in a moment of reflectiveness, and solitude, and far from the madding crowd he calls his family.

Or perhaps, his shrew wife plucks it from the mailbox or the dining table and has no such trepidation. And never having been a big fan of either of Joe's sisters, upon reading it, embarks on an apocalyptic tear that can be heard the world over.

Giddyup!