Bubba's

Mr. Hendricks and I took a little Labor Day weekend trip to Wisconsin to visit the American Players Theater again. This year we stayed in Mineral Point at Brewery Creek Inn, about thirty minutes south of Spring Green. On our way home from the show on Saturday night, we stopped into a charming little dive called Bubba's on High Street. It was one of three little joints open at the seemingly very late hour of midnight. It was like walking back in time to the eighties when bars were filled with cigarette smoke, loud and drunk patrons and even louder jukebox music. Bare bones, just a bar, an electronic dart board and stools. We took open seats at the end of the bar and a young man with shaggy blond hair and glasses, clearly feeling no pain, told us he wasn't the bartender but that he could get us a drink.

"I mean, it's okay," he shouted, leaning into the bar. "What can I get you guys?"

Foolishly I asked for a gin martini. I have had problems before with gin martinis, in more upscale establishments than this. Apparently there is some debate about what exactly constitutes a martini. According to me, an authority on martinis solely based on sheer number of them consumed, a martini is gin with a bit of vermouth, shaken violently with ice, then strained into a cold martini glass. I prefer a cucumber garnish because of the gin I favor, but an olive will also do. What will not do is gin shaken with ice alone and strained into a glass: that is simply cold gin. Additionally, martinis are not served "on the rocks." Anyway, these were the least of our worries.

The "bartender" looked a little taken aback, but valiantly continued on. "Okay, and for you?" he turned to Mr. Hendricks.

"I'll have a vodka martini with Grey Goose," he said. It was too late to stop Mr. Hendricks from mentioning Grey Goose, but again, this was to be the least of our worries. Our friend put on his best professional demeanor and soldiered on, consulting with the woman two seats down from me to see if the bar had any vermouth.

A moment or two later, the real bartender came before us. He looked much like the impostor bartender in that he was also a bit loaded and friendly. "I'm so sorry," he began, "but we don't even have martini glasses here. We're just a beer and shot joint. I'm really sorry, the first round is on me. What can I get you guys?"

We reassured him that he did not have to buy our drinks. "How about a gin and tonic, then?" I asked.

"Sure," he said with relief. He looked at Mr. Hendricks.

"I'll have a vodka tonic," Mr. Hendricks said.

"Okay, then. I'm real sorry," he continued to apologize. Both Mr. Hendricks and I reassured him that it was fine, don't worry, we just want a drink, it's no big deal, again, don't worry. He seemed mildly reassured and went to pour our drinks.

Mr. Hendricks could not resist the opportunity to smoke in a bar, something he hasn't been able to do in Minnesota for a year or two. So he lit up and we tried to catch the American League scores on the tiny television hanging in the corner above the bar. Our teams were doing battle this weekend, and because we were on vacation we did not see any of the four games. Later we were to discover that they split the series: the A's won two games, each by a run, and the Twins won two games, each by about ten runs. The Twins are going to have to do a lot better than that if they want to get to the playoffs, but I digress.

Our small, strong drinks arrived and we gave our bartender a very large tip. We sat and drank. When we came into the bar, it was loud, but the jukebox (I use the term loosely: an electronic contraption with a screen, etc.) was off. Within a few moments of sitting down, someone had spent a good deal of money solely on Tupac Shakur. The loud, thumping pound of the music vibrated the seats. It was hard not to giggle. I mean, Mr. Hendricks was the only person of color within a hundred mile radius, but the townies in Mineral Point couldn't get enough of Tupac.

As we drank, I noticed a handwritten sign near the old cash register, taped to the mirror of the bar. It was entitled, "Bubba's Shit List" and underneath said, "talk to Bubba or the bartender in order to remove yourself from this list." There were about eighteen names, with number one being Billy Bob. I am not making this up. Two of the names had been crossed off, so it was indeed possible to make restitution. But how? And for what? I was deeply curious, enough to ask the woman next to me.

"Hey," I ventured, "what's up with that list?"

She turned to me and smiled. "I know, I was just looking at that! I know those people," she said.

"Do they owe money?" I asked.

"Nah, that wouldn't get them on a list. I know Billy Bob. I wonder what he did to piss them off," she replied.

I introduced myself and Mr. Hendricks to Dawn. She was in her mid-thirties, a regular nursing her lite beer and smoking her cigarette.

"Are you from around here?" she politely inquired.

You had to give her credit. There was no way in hell Mr. Hendricks and I were from around here.

I laughed and said, "No, we're from out of town. But I'll bet you knew that."

She smiled and said, "Well, I thought so, but you know, I don't know."

Our chitchat died down and she turned to talk to the bartender. Mr. Hendricks and I pondered the possible meanings of being on the shit list, and what you had to do to remove yourself from it. I was dying to get a picture of the list, but thought better of it. Perhaps the other patrons would not find it so amusing to have outsiders documenting their little piece of heaven. The smoke now had become almost unnoticeable, Tupac was still hollering, and a bar stool either fell or was tossed over by one of the young women in the bar. There was a very slight ruckus, warning us like distant thunder, and suddenly it was time to go.

We stepped outside into the not warm but not cool late August night and only then could I smell the smoke in a cloud around me and in my clothes and hair. It was just like the eighties when I went to bars and drank all night (beer, not gin: thank god, I'd have been in rehab about four times by now) and shot pool and played the same songs on the jukebox over and over. But I rarely got drunk: that wasn't fun. I spent a good deal of my twenties with friends in bars almost every night of the week, but we would sit and talk and drink and I still made it to work the next day. I'll bet our friends at Bubba's do, too. Our twenties are very forgiving, aren't they?

The next day I told Mr. Hendricks yet another winning-the-lottery fantasy: I would buy Bubba's and whip it into shape. The bartender would be a huge African-American man and the waitress a beautiful lipstick lesbian. There would be booths and a small grill, so you could eat fries and chicken wings. There would be martini glasses, and a "J.D." (an appletini) would be all the rage. There would be a state of the art ventilation system, so the person next to you could smoke like a chimney and you'd never even know it. The jukebox would have only music from the eighties: Prince, Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Richie, all that sort of thing. I'd still call it Bubba's, mostly because when we were teenagers, my brother and I would call our mother 'Bubba,' and she hated it. There would be a portrait of her, framed, with her name underneath, implying the bar was her namesake. She would hate that, too.

Then after about a year, I would sell the bar back to Bubba, and he could run it right into the ground. Everyone would come back, smash all the martini glasses, destroy the leather booths and never repair the ventilation system. All would be well again.

This Week in Baseball 8/12/08

Baseball season is coming to an end.  When there's less than half the season left, when there's not even fifty games left, it is ending.  So it's sad, even though our teams have had a rough time of it.  The Oakland A's are long out of it, have been at least since the All-Star Break, when their rookie first baseman was having fun with friends and decided to test the depth of a body of water with his head.  Daric Barton is lucky to be alive, and it is amazing he's not a paraplegic.  Bob Geren, manager of the A's, said of course he was relieved Barton wasn't seriously injured, but also implied that his lack of judgment was concerning.  I now refer to Barton as "head injury," as in, "Head injury hit a three-run home run in the third."



The Twins are flaming their little matchstick light of hope, constantly one-half game ahead of or behind the Chicago White Sox (or, as Bert Blyleven says, "She-cago").  Last week I saw an afternoon game between the Twins and the Mariners.  An obviously worked up Blyleven ranted and raved about the lack of endurance and ability of starting pitching, and the resultant stress on the bullpen.  "People work hard at their jobs, and they work nine to five.  These guys are working nine to one!" he roared.  Apparently Blyleven pitched 280 innings during his first major league season.  Today if a pitcher tops out at 200 innings, he's considered a "workhorse."  He went as far as to call starting pitchers "sissies" if they didn't or couldn't pitch deep into games, and said that they didn't have "the guts" (when he really meant "balls") to finish what they had started.  Clearly someone had put a nickel in him, and his cohort Dick Bremer blamed it on the Seattle coffee.



It's disturbing to find yourself in agreement with Blyleven, he of the "Circle me Bert" fame and the endless commentary on cookies and cupcakes, but there I was.  I don't give a damn about the bullpen and its so-called "stress," but I do think pitchers need to pitch a lot more innings and throw a lot more pitches.  Pitchers are bulking up and breaking down:  don't forget that one of Rich Harden's many injuries was due to his reaching for his alarm clock.  These guys are barely men:  why are they injured all the time?  The workouts and the steroids might have something to do with it.  And I am not a fan of the "specialist" role:  Denys Reyes has that ERA for one reason only.  He comes into a game with men on base and proceeds to do his usual bang-up job of giving up a two-run double, yet his ERA remains perfectly intact.



Last night Glen Perkins was under a lot of pressure:  he just became a  new father; the bullpen had been exhausted the day before in Kansas City, blowing a two-run lead and then losing the game; and he was facing the third-place New York Yankees, who are still the Yankees.  Meaning that they all take a lot of pitches and for reasons that are not statistically understood, Bobby Abreu always gets on base.  But Perkins pulled it off:  he walked three but got out of it every time.  Perkins usually pitches well and then, according to Bremer "without warning" something goes wrong and he starts to give it up.  Actually, there is a warning: it's called the sixth inning.  But last night it came and went and Perkins pitched eight, count them, eight, shut out innings, then Nathan came and finished it off with three strikeouts.



Tonight it's Mike Mussina, also known as "Moose," for the Yankees and Nick Blackburn, another rookie for the Twins.  I hate to say it, but even if they Twins win the division and go to the playoffs, they won't make it out of the first round because they'll have to go through New York or Boston, and they usually don't go through them.  They crumple.  But I would dearly love to be proven wrong.  Go Twins!

Natural Woman

definition of natural:  existing in or formed by nature, as opposed to artificial



Patients of mine, both young and old, will argue the case of hormonal contraception with what I like to call the "natural" argument.  "It's just not natural to trick the body," they will say.  Sometimes the argument is simply that birth control pills are not "natural," as if the Mountain Dew or Red Bull they drink is.  This argument has the corollary of "hormones are bad," but that is a discussion for another day.



What is, indeed, natural?  What is a natural woman?  Can it be argued that any of us today resemble, at least reproductively, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers?  While I believe that there is nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to sex, I don't believe that my generation and younger are anything like our fore-mothers when it comes to reproduction.  We begin menarche younger and younger, for whatever reasons that may be found for this, and we also begin menopause younger (known euphemistically as the 'perimenopause').  We bear fewer children, if at all, and also begin bearing them when we are a good deal older than was thought possible one or two generations ago.  What was 'natural' to our great-grand-mamas was to marry in their late teens or very early twenties; to begin having children fairly soon after marriage; to breastfeed those children; and to start the cycle again, repeating every eighteen months to three years until they were exhausted.



I generalize, of course, but you see what I mean.  There is an argument that 'modern' woman is not 'natural' in her hundreds of monthly cycles, i.e. having a period every month instead of being pregnant or lactating for several months out of her life.  It's not considered 'natural' to continuously dance that cycle every month for years without pregnancy.  Today we want to be able to control nature, but somehow remain natural.  We want to avoid pregnancy until we are ready, and that may mean when we're fifty, and we expect that technology will be there for us.  We do not expect limits.



Perhaps it is my own aging that makes me realize how little control we have, and the appeal that fate holds for some has seemed a more and more reasonable stance.  We can maneuver out of its way, perhaps, but it always gets us in the end with irony and surprise, doesn't it?  So it was with me and my uterus.  A uterus, it should be known, that has never been pregnant.  An intact, never used, factory model:  vintage, in fact, at forty-five years of age.  I had decided in my dotage and in my desire to avoid being a middle-aged freak show (first pregnancy at forty-six!) that I would get the Mirena intrauterine device (IUD), and maybe, as an added bonus, get fewer and shorter menses, too, in my waning reproductive years.



Alas, it was not to be:  upon examination my uterus, that pristine, still in the package uterus, measured ten centimeters deep, too much to have the IUD placed.  To say I was speechless is an understatement.  I was stunned, and my voice rose with each succeeding, "But how can that be?  I've never BEEN PREGNANT!"  Most uteri (yes, the plural of uterus:  is it not wonderful?) measure between six and nine centimeters, though sometimes, a uterus that has housed many a pregnancy will sound to greater depths.  And then there's my uterus:  a virtual five thousand square foot house just waiting to gestate a fetus or three.



When the shock wore off, and after another contraceptive plan was made, I wondered if I had fooled fate or had been fooled by it.  Perhaps I was designed to have a passel of boys, each a year or two apart, running me ragged but kept in line most of the time by their father, who made them behave like angels once a year on Mother's Day.  Maybe I would have had only one child, after successive miscarriages, my uterus a large, cold room unable to keep hold of a pregnancy.  Maybe that big old uterus was waiting for ovaries that wouldn't, or couldn't, cooperate.  Maybe fate was wise and knew that a uterus that size didn't have a chance of recovering after delivery, and decided not to let me bleed to death.  Who knows what explanation there is for what seems to me to be an anomaly, this seemingly capacious and capable uterus in my never pregnant body.  For a minute I wished I was twenty years younger in order to be a surrogate, because even though I've never wanted to be a parent, I've always fancied that I'd like pregnancy and have always wanted to know what it felt like to push a baby out of my body.



So here I am, waiting out the last of my (supposedly) fertile years, with a wondrous uterus that never got her day in the sun.  I hope she's not taking it too hard.  I hope she still feels like a natural woman.

This Week in Baseball 6/12/08

Well, the last place New York Yankees (okay, they're tied for third/last with Toronto and Baltimore) are in Oakland for a three game series this week.  Let's start with the moustaches, shall we?  Jason Giambi has been sporting his for at least a week, and he couldn't look more like a seventies porn star if he tried.  Every time he's in the batter's box, I have to look away.  Last night their reliever, Russ Ohlendorf, also had the same gruesome caterpillar on his lip, and I'm sure it frightened the A's lineup as much as it did me.  How these atrocities are being tolerated by the clean-shaven protocol of the Yankees, I do not know.  Remember when the Yankees acquired lovable mop-topped Red Sox Johnny Damon?  The burning question was:  is he going to cut his hair?  And, more importantly, is he still going to look hot?  Sadly, the answer is no:  for a man who wore the Jesus look really well, once that hair was cut, you realized his good looks were in his long locks.  Poor Damon:  he just looks unremarkable now, like nobody.  He's no longer the cute guy with the dimples and great hair and, according to some, spectacular ass.  I think his long hair actually enhanced his ass, though I can't really explain how that's possible.  At least he just cut his hair, and didn't opt for the neo-Nazi buzz cuts favored by Rodriguez, Jeter, and Joe Girardi.  Yikes.  We know the Yankees are professional killers:  do they have to look like it, too?  The only look missing in the Yankees dugout is what is referred to as 'date-rapist' hair:  slicked back, eighties style, with stiff, crunchy hair gel.



Well, on to the games.  Chien-Ming Wang pitched the first game against Dana Eveland.  The A's had plenty of chances, and Eveland only gave up two runs, but the A's still lost 3-1.  Last night Yankees pitcher Darrell Rasner went up against Justin Duchscherer, who used to be a reliever for the A's and now is in the starting rotation.  Duchscherer baffled the Yankees through each of his seven innings, especially with his long, slow curve ball that tops out at about sixty-seven miles per hour.  The announcers said a few times that next to the curve ball, the fast ball looked a lot faster than eighty-four miles an hour.  And for once, the A's hitters came through and scored a bunch (eight, to be precise) of runs for Duchscherer.  He's now 5-0 at the Coliseum.  The A's got six runs off Rasner in the third, and the Yankees never really recovered but rallied in the ninth off of the A's relievers, especially Kiko Calero.  But the A's hung on, and won 8-4.



The Twins, on the other hand, finally won a game and broke their six game losing streak in Cleveland last night.  The first night C.C. Sabathia pitched a gem against the Twins, and they lost 1-0 to the Indians.  As much as I need to support my hometown boys, I do love the C.C.  I mean, I love that big man who loves to pitch complete games, whose presence is wonderfully palpable on the mound, who looks so serious all the time, but you know he's just like a big kid on the inside.  Last night Paul Byrd got hit around a little, and the Twins got their win.  The Twins continue to have fielding problems, or should I say more precisely, Delmon Young cannot seem to catch the ball.  I can't tell if he's just not very fast, or if he can't read the ball off the bat, but it feels like I'm watching him chase down fly balls every freakin' game.  I mean, Jason Kubel and his knees were better out there, for god's sake.



Both teams finish their series tonight, and even though Giambi probably hasn't shaved that moustache, and Delmon Young will miss at least one fly ball, I'll be watching.

This Week in Baseball 6/3/08

I know, I know, it's been far more than a week.  Well, let's just catch up then, shall we?  Last Friday, the last-place New York Yankees (the television announcers could not get enough of this:  they repeated it every chance they could and explained:  how often are we able to say that?) came to the Metrodome and split a four game series with the Twins.



Twice Alex Rodriguez was thrown out at third in two different games.  The first time he ran on contact of what turned out to be a not very deep fly ball, and was caught because he didn't make it back to second.  The second time he had already stolen second base, mind you, while his team had a lead, and then took off for third and was thrown out there.  Did he really think Hideki Matsui couldn't hit a single to advance him?  What a moron.



We were supposed to see reliever-turned-starter Joba Chamberlain last night, but his start was postponed and Andy Pettitte took the mound.  I cannot like Andy Pettitte, of course, by default:  he is a Yankee.  But let me just say that he is one handsome man:  all big features with an adorable dimple in his chin; big, pretty dark eyes.  Not too shabby.  Anyway, I cannot like Joba Chamberlain, either, again, because of the Yankee clause in my contract, and he was easy to dislike:  I mean, what's up with that name?  Joba?  What the hell is that?  So I read all about it on Wikipedia, and found out some things that make it harder for me to dislike him.  His niece couldn't say her new brother's name, Joshua, and it came out like "Jahba" and he liked it.  His given name is Justin Louis.  The name stuck and he legally changed it, just like John Paul "Boof" Bonser did who pitches for the Twins.  Secondly, his father is a member of the Winnebago tribe, almost died of polio as a child, and needs a scooter (which he named Humphrey) to get around.  Like I can hate him now!  I know it's reverse discrimination and frankly, I don't give a damn.



The A's have been playing much more like themselves lately, which is to say, losing.  However, there are some bright spots:  they swept, SWEPT, the Boston Red Sox, and they beat Detroit last night in the bottom of the ninth.  Bobby Crosby continues to concern me:  they announced during the game last night that he leads the American League with nineteen doubles.  Once again, in the not too great distance, I hear two of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse gaining ground.  Mr. Hendricks joked that Crosby might be the MVP this year.  "We won't live to see 2009," I answered.  "Better cash out the 401(k) and the stock options, baby."  I was even more sure of it when Crosby hit the game-winning double.



Till next week.

This Week in Baseball 5/6/08

Well, it's been more than a week, but really, the last week or so is all I can remember of the multitude of games we watch or see bits and parts of while Mr. Hendricks' keeps his hand firmly on the remote control.  The A's, to every one's surprise and to others' delight, are playing better than .500 baseball.  So are, for that matter, the Twins, but their division has had a very slow start:  the Tigers are still having troubles (thank God they let go of Jacque Jones!) and the Indians' pitching staff still is shaky.  The A's salvaged one game from their series with the Mariners last Sunday, April 27th, and what a win it was.



Felix Hernandez, know as King Felix (one of the few nicknames you'll see here not personally bestowed by me), kept the A's off balance for six innings, striking out ten batters but walking four.  The Mariners announcers were yapping on and on about what a masterful performance it was, and that's why when it all fell apart, it was that much sweeter.  Not to dis King Felix, but really, walking four batters?  And he was already at one hundred pitches when he started the sixth.  He was doing a good job keeping the A's off the bases, but really, "masterful" it was not.  I've seen masterful, and it usually comes with the name of Johan Santana (god rest his Shea Stadium soul).  And the King was guilty of some poor showmanship:  when he finished the previous innings with a strikeout (desperately needed, I might add) he stalked off the mound pumping his fist.  That's like a batter standing outside the box admiring his shot to the seats.  Not nice, and be careful:  the next time up, the ball is going to be thrown at your head.  So when the Felix show began its painful but inexorable decline, it was delightful.  The A's won 4-2, after being shut out for five innings.  It was odd to watch Hernandez give it up, and to watch the manager and pitching coach watch him give it up.  I mean, the man had already thrown one hundred pitches.  Apparently, the pitching coach came to the mound and asked how Hernandez felt.  He said he felt good, and so he was left in to take the loss.



In a side note, I want it on the record that I adore Ichiro Suzuki.  I love everything about him:  his little sleeve pull at the plate, the way he's already running to first base as he swings the bat, the ballet-like fielding in center.  He floats over to the ball as if he were picking flowers or playing croquet.  Torii Hunter was wonderful to watch all those years with the Twins:  he was a movie star slash stunt man in center field, and it was dazzling to see him leap and dive.  Ichiro is a different animal.  He just gracefully appears out of nowhere, not even out of breath, while making a spectacular play look effortless.  Ichiro is quoted as saying something to the effect that sheer power doesn't impress him, but grace and intelligence does.



It has been exhilarating and frankly, a bit disturbing, to see the A's play so well this early in the season, and in this season especially, since they have been clear that they are "rebuilding" this year.  When teams say that they're rebuilding, you can count on frustrating games, disappointing losses, and infrequent wins.  A mere few weeks ago Bobby Crosby was batting .300, and I felt sure that I could hear the hooves of at least two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse not too far in the distance.  Now he's back to a .260 average, and it may be that the end of the world has been called off, at least for now.  The A's have been known in the past several seasons as a "second half team," so to see them racking up the wins so early is exciting, but also creates a little anxiety.  They're winning quite a few one-run games, or scoring late in the ballgame and winning late or in extra innings.  Last night I went to bed in disgust when Huston Street (Huston, I love you but you're killing me) blew a 1-0 lead.  He could not find the strike zone, and if I ever find out who kept calling that outside sinker pitch that none of the Oriole batters swung at, there will be hell to pay.  Anyway, they came back in the tenth and won it, but I was upstairs in bed; those west coast games are hard on the sleep schedule.



Tonight the A's continue their series against Baltimore, who personally I feel have one of the best looking uniforms in either league, and the Twins go to Chicago and play the Sox.  You all know my dislike of the White Sox, so I won't repeat it here.  Till next time.

This Week in Baseball 4/15/08

This week really starts last week, when we were at McAfee Coliseum to watch the Oakland A's on a brilliant Sunday afternoon take on the Cleveland Indians.  The A's had quite surprisingly taken the first two games of the series:  C. C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona were the starting pitchers and neither fared very well at all.  I was so excited to see McAfee Coliseum, and it did not disappoint, though Mr. Hendricks told me that everyone thinks it's a dump.  It is a shared field between the Oakland A's (baseball) and the Oakland Raiders (football) and only poor and/or stubborn cities don't have separate stadiums for their sports teams.  Additionally, McAfee is going to its rest in a few years when the A's build a new stadium in Fremont, California, so I wanted to see the joint before it went up in demolition smoke. 

"Baby" Joe Blanton (not his real name, of course:  I have a nickname for nearly every ball player I love and hate) was on the mound for Oakland, and Cliff Lee for the Indians.  Luck would have it that we were sandwiched between Indians fans, and they couldn't have been nicer.  Much more reserved than the blabbermouth wearing a Zito jersey who showed up around the fourth inning at the end of the row.  It was challenging to pay attention to the game with the sunny skies, brisk breeze, and good company.  It was also an unusual pleasure for me to watch major league baseball out of doors:  the Twins play in the Metrodome which, while never that appealing, really seemed like the ugly stepsister by comparison.  The A's lost, but we had a great time in the sun, Mr. Hendricks with his blue cotton candy, and my friend Zelda and I with our shared ice cream sandwich.  I even bought a sweatshirt with a zip front in the green and gold of the Athletics to wear on my walks when it's cold here in the spring and fall.

Back home I've had the opportunity to watch the A's and the Twins a little more closely, and, as usual, I have some complaints.  The A's beat the White Sox last night, but not after Huston Street, the A's closer, once again shaved years off my life as he allowed hits and a walk.  He finally got out of the inning, but not after much cursing on my part.  The Twins, on the other hand, blew a five run lead TWICE in their game against the Detroit Tigers, and I didn't even feel sorry for them.  First of all, you don't deserve to win when you blow a five run lead.  Twice.  Secondly, the Tigers have had a rough time of it, skunked twice in the last two games, and can't seem to get it together.  Granted, there are already injuries, but still:  these guys are great and I believe it's just a matter of time.  Thirdly, those Twins outfielders looked like all they did was chase balls around in the outfield.  Denard Span, who is playing right field while Michael Cuddyer nurses a broken finger, actually tipped a long (catchable) fly ball over the fence and gave Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez a home run.

So the Tigers won 11-9, and Jim Leyland may have felt a little sheepish about his "chat" with his boys the previous night.  Apparently, you could hear his voice through stone walls.  He told reporters it was none of their business when asked what he'd said to the players.  There's a story that he yelled at his former team, the Colorado Rockies, in the nude and while a clenching a cigarette between his teeth, with an inch or so of ash was hanging from its tip.  Paints a picture, doesn't it?  Today the A's are losing to the White Sox, and the Twins and Tigers play again tonight.

Why are the White Sox so unlikeable?  Ozzie Guillen, for one:  when he was the new skipper for the Sox, he was sort of colorful and had a devil-may-care attitude.  Time went on and more offensive and unbelievable things came out of his mouth.  Then he practically shamed to death, on national television, a pitcher fresh from the minor leagues because he couldn't bean the batter that Guillen wanted to punish.  So now he's just an obnoxious and ignorant ass, and he seems to like to have those kinds of players around, too.  A. J. Pierzynski is the first that comes to mind:  no one likes this guy.  However, I would have paid good money to see him in the clubhouse of his former team, the Giants, with Barry Bonds.  That's a tea party, my friend.  Juan Uribe:  looks so unhappy.  Some of the good guys are Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko and Jim Thome.  But overall, there's just a bad vibe.  And the television announcers are as annoying as they come, exclaiming, "He gone!" when one of the Sox pitchers strikes out a batter.  They just feel dirty and icky, kind of like the Yankees without the veneer of "professionals."

Till next week then.

Opening F**ing Day

Opening Day came very early to our mixed-marriage household (I'm rooting for the home team, the Twins, while my husband still holds out hope for his former hometown boys, the Oakland A's) this year. Five in the morning to be exact: that's when ESPN2 was broadcasting the season opener between the Oakland A's and the Boston Red Sox, live from Japan in the Tokyo Dome. While I waited for the water to boil for coffee, I saw two seconds of costumed dancers on the field, and the guys in the A's dugout taking pictures with their little digital cameras: they looked so excited! We curled up under a blanket and watched while Matsuzaka quickly fell apart in the first inning, and my happy cursing began as Mark Ellis' home run ball flew into the stands: "Yes, you motherfucker!" I curse at baseball whether I'm thrilled or appalled; it doesn't matter. It's baseball, and so for me, that means I sound like a sailor. My husband (then boyfriend) and I were on our third date, watching the White Sox and the Twins in a beer joint. About halfway through the game I realized I really didn't know this person well enough to be shouting "motherfucker" and "Jesus H. Christ!" every fifteen seconds. I turned to him and said, "Is my swearing bothering you? Really, you have to tell me." He looked at me: "Were you swearing?" That may have been the beginning of a very short fall into love.

Anyway, the ESPN2 announcers were one of the targets of my wrath this morning: they could have easily been mistaken for Boston Red Sox employees. All we heard was yap, yap, yapping about Dice-K and his triumphant return to Japan, blah, blah, blah. Red Sox Nation (sounds a little Klannish, don't you think?) was in full force at the Tokyo Dome, so while the A's had "home field advantage," it sure as hell didn't feel like it. They briefly mentioned that Kurt Suzuki, the A's catcher, was having a homecoming, too: we looked at each other and said, "Do they know he's Hawaiian?" About two hours later into the broadcast, they mentioned that his grandparents lived in Tokyo and were at the game. They mispronounced the third baseman's name halfway through the game: "Hanrahan looks at a ball." Hanahan, you morons. Then we had to listen (or not: my husband, what with the Y chromosome and all, can tune anything out) to these jackasses talk to Captain Jackass, "Bud" Selig, Commissioner of Baseball. Don't worry: the tough questions got asked, and we were reassured by Uncle Bud that the steroid issue was all under control. He went as far as to say that steroids weren't a problem for baseball, but a problem of the general society: yeah, I guess if you're Roger Clemens' wife, but I can't recall the last time I used steroids. Oh, wait, now I remember: never.

I love baseball, but nothing drives me crazier: the pitches swung at and missed (especially first pitches!), the showy but failed dives that boot the ball further into the outfield, the blown save. It already feels like it's going to be a long season. The Twins let go of Johan Santana, even though Carl Pohlad is the eighth richest among baseball owners: I mean, when you're twenty-three million years old, how much money do you need, exactly? The A's traded everybody, and are "rebuilding." Billy Beane is legendarily known for his heartless approach to trading, so much so that when his wife gave birth to twins last year, some swag predicted they'd be traded before their second birthday. My husband says it's easy to root for the Yankees or the Sox, because they win a lot, and that's nice for fans: to actually watch a team win a good deal of the time. It's hard to love the underdogs, the bottom of the payroll, but we do. The Sox fancy themselves underdogs compared to the Yankees, but one look at their payrolls ($143 and $195 million, respectively, in 2007) and you see that the Sox are the Yankees, but with a soupcon of personality. They have Manny being Manny, and their beloved Big Papi, and their drama queen of a closer, Jonathan Papelbon (known in my house as Hannibal "Cinnabon" Lector: if you've seen him pitch, you know exactly what I'm talking about). But they're still a big money, big market team, and no amount of quirkiness will change that.

Spring is the beginning of all the sweet bitching and moaning. Like the sounds of snow melting, running into the gutters, I wait for the first time John Gordon, radio "Voice of the Twins", calls Emil Brown "email" Brown. Like the songs of birds returning, it brings a smile to my face the first time in the season when Dan Gladden says "Barry Bonds is everything that's wrong with baseball". Then there's the television announcers, Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven, who sound exactly like an old married couple who continue to stay together, just to spite the other.

I love baseball because I can love and hate people for no good reason,
other than I just feel like it, and there are no consequences: I'm
sure David Wright doesn't give a damn that I can't stand him, just as
I'm sure that Johan Santana couldn't care less that I'd leave my
husband for him. I love Nick Swisher (a tragic A's trade casualty) because even though he chews tobacco and dates a model/porn star, he was raised by his grandmother and because she died of cancer, grew his hair out for wigs for chemotherapy patients. I hate Alex Rodriguez, but who doesn't? I love Jim Leyland, manager of the Detroit Tigers, because he looks like he runs a tight ship and because his peers call this old fart "Jimmy." I love Orlando Hernandez because he is so pretty it hurts, can touch his knee to his ear during his wind up, and because Cuban ballplayers often destroy their birth certificates when they defect, will always be about seven or eight years younger than he really is. He's been in his late thirties for about ten years now (in Cuban ballplayer years, I'm also in my late thirties). I hate how ugly the Texas Rangers are as a team, but love their manager Ron Washington. I hate Carlos Lee. I love Huston Street's little box step of a wind up, but couldn't forgive him for blowing the save this morning.

Maybe it's easier to get all worked up about a game that doesn't matter, than rant and rave and feel powerless over those things that do, like the war in Iraq, SUV, and poor transportation planning. Yesterday it was announced that four thousand Americans have been killed in Iraq; they, whoever they are, can't even come up with a number of Iraqi civilians killed, but the estimate is exponentially higher. Why is it that people themselves are always supposed to be working at becoming smaller through starvation and surgery, but cars and trucks keep getting bigger? Why are bridges collapsing, and why isn't gas eight dollars a gallon like it is in Europe? You see, these things are far more challenging than realizing tomorrow is the second game in a three game series. With baseball, there's hope, even with the specter of the Borg-like Yankees and the "lovable" Red Sox: those teams usually get to the playoffs, but then, it's any one's game. All bets are off in October.

Just like they are in November.

Middle-Aged Haiku

Gin and shoes: before
Forty, indulgence would have
Meant rehab and debt.

My Half-Gay Husband

He didn't start out half-gay. No. He was a regular straight guy who, he claims, marriage made half-gay by the incessant viewing of such amusements as What Not To Wear and Project Runway. One night he caught himself saying something like, "That woman should not wear yellow," and then exclaimed, "Jesus Christ! You've made me half gay!"

We both laughed our asses off, and still do, when another keen observation slips out when we're watching television or shopping. One time I said, "My gay husband" instead of "half-gay:" he sometimes makes the same mistake and then I yell, "Half-gay! Half-gay! Honey, I'm clutching on to the half that's straight!"

Many women are best friends with gay men, and bemoan the fact that they
can never marry them. Problem solved: you can make your husband half gay.
It's not as hard as you might think it is, and actually happened
without much effort on my part. First of all, if your husband or
boyfriend watches any kind of sport, you've got a running start. I
mean, come on: your man is watching a bunch of other men in close
physical contact. Personally, I think football is the gayest sport,
what with its inverse ratio of masculinity and butt patting. But don't
ignore basketball (so much contact) and baseball, which footballers
always think is gay (again, closet cases are often pointing the finger
at everyone but themselves). Secondly, home improvement is practically
a new national pastime, and moving from home makeover shows to fashion
makeovers is a small but significant step that can go by almost
unnoticed, until he says, "She needs a better bra." Remember, he may be stuck watching a woman get a fashion makeover, but he's watching a woman, with boobs. Suddenly, it's not so bad, is it?

The great thing about having a half gay husband is that you get all the
attention to detail, especially with your wardrobe, that you enjoyed
with your gay male friends, and you're sleeping with the same guy!
My husband not only likes to go shopping with me, but has a good eye and
will tell me when something is flattering or not. My style is louder
than his, but we can see those differences: I like to be noticed,
he likes to blend in. That is simply a matter of taste. He doesn't
mind being asked about the smallest of details: which flatware do you
like better? What color sheets do you think we should get? How about
towels? Every purchase gets the full review, and many stones are
upturned in the process.

I think he gets this from his dad.
When his parents first visited the States, we took them shopping.
We had to: they were obligated to return to India with gifts for
anyone they had ever laid eyes on. We went to the Mall of America,
which is overwhelming to those of us weaned on shopping malls, and
my soon-to-be father-in-law had to stop in every single store, just to see what they had.
He examined clothing like he was a tailor sent to memorize patterns.
My husband told me that his dad sewed a lot of clothes for him until he
became a teenager and only store-bought clothes would do. He even
lingered over children's clothes, while his wife teased him: "Are you
expecting? Who are you buying that for?"

He was also busy
calculating dollars into rupees, something that constantly shocked and
appalled him. I longed for him to speak more English, because he and
my father would have had so much to talk about. My father loves nothing
better than comparing prices from gas station to gas station, or from
country to country. He may very well have packed up to Kerala to get a
haircut that is even cheaper than one can get across the border in
Mexico. In fact, when we first met, I told my husband that my father loved
nothing more than saving a dollar. "Oh," he said, "then he's Indian
at heart."

Because my husband is only half-gay, his most favorite pastimes include
lazing on the couch, remote firmly clutched in hand, and searching the
channels for what, I don't know, or boobs. He has to be 'encouraged'
to share the housework, and even though baseball and cricket are the
sports that interest him most, any sport is better than nearly anything
else on television. We've sometimes told our friends and family about 'my half-gay husband' and the responses are usually uncomfortable laughter. It's almost like they think it's funny, like we do, but they also seem a little scared: is he really half-gay? Or gay? Why is it funny? Aren't they worried?

One night we were out with a friend of ours who is usually tragically casually dressed, and then will wow you once in a great while. This was one of the wows. She had a jacket on that I could not get over, and I talked about it with my husband while we drove home. I did mention, though, that her shoes weren't so great, but how I loved that jacket!

My husband said, "I didn't notice her shoes."

I turned to look at him and smiled. "The day you start noticing shoes, you are no longer half-gay. Then I'll be in real trouble, won't I?" We both laughed all the way home.

God? What Gods?

When I was in sixth grade, we learned about the Greek gods and goddesses. I was completely fascinated: there was a god for everything! How wonderful! How obvious! How brilliant! Their stories, their bickering and trickery, their very un-god-like behavior, totally captured my imagination, and I couldn't believe how lucky the Greeks were to have them. I think I knew it was too good to be true when I tentatively and wistfully asked my teacher, Mrs. Sause, if the Greeks still believed in Zeus and Hera, in Aphrodite and Athena and Artemis.

She started back, twisted up her disapproving face, and said, "No, no; they're Christian, like you and me." She eyed me in a way that made me feel not dumb, but . . . dangerous, I guess.

Disappointed but undaunted, I continued to carry these icons with me. I remember a wonderful book about Aphrodite, Athena and Artemis, one of those exciting, "women's studies" books that put a divine, feminine and feminist spin on the girls. I loved the idea of having a different god for everything; it somehow made so much sense to me. Elements were powerful and had unique properties: wind was not fire, and the sun was not the moon. Of course different deities had different assignments. One god? Come on! There's too much to worry about, even for a god, or even God. Sure, you might feel sorry for someone like Hephaestus, toiling as a smith when Aphrodite got all the adoration (not to mention sex). Yes, Zeus sounded like a pig, but Hera got to trip him up once in awhile. One God sounded less and less safe: I mean, Zeus being the Almighty? When he's busy assaulting nymphs? Like anything else is going to get done. No, better to have the pantheon, a magical system of checks and balances, than one crazy Father who demands blood sacrifice, isn't it?

Much later in life, I became acquainted with the Hindu pantheon: the Greeks had nothing on these people. I'm not sure if there's even an accurate count out there of how many gods and goddesses are part of Hinduism. Hundreds, for sure, maybe even thousands. These gods are very specific and very local. Yes, there are the 'stars': Shiva, Krishna, Laxmi, Kali, Ganesha. But every town and village on the Subcontinent has its own dear gods in addition to the celebrities. I loved Ganesha especially: who couldn't love a happy, cheerful, chubby god with the head of an elephant (big misunderstanding with the father, that) who loves sweets and is called upon for auspicious beginnings. Beginnings are my favorite: that's why I love spring so much. That, and the fact I'm a Minnesotan. I started collecting Ganeshas to place around the house, much to my husband's dismay. There's some sort of directive to have, I don't know, forty-eight Ganeshas in the house for good fortune. I still long for a spectacular Ganesha statue that sat about three feet high and almost as wide, perched in a shop window with a price a bit out of my reach, much to my husband's joy.

My husband is an atheist. It was one of the first things that I loved about him. The night we met, I learned he was raised by atheist, Communist parents in Kerala who had a love marriage. Meaning that because of the difference in caste (this was in 1973, mind you), his mother never saw her family again after she married. I'd always thought that I was an agnostic, or pantheist, because of my affection for the many gods of many places and times. My Catholic upbringing was too late, after Vatican II, for me to experience the ordained version of pantheism, the saints, but I still could appreciate them from afar.

Then my father had a carcinoid tumor on his right lung when he was sixty-seven, and I realized that no matter what, no matter what I believed or didn't believe, he might die, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it. And there wasn't anything anybody, or any god or goddess, or God, could do about it, either. And then I realized that just because I liked gods, didn't mean I believed in them.

That was surprising the way a stubbed toe, or a thunderstorm, or the slamming of brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of you, is: startling enough to take your breath away, isn't it? Wow. I wasn't agnostic, or pantheistic, at all: I was an atheist. Here I had thought all this time my affection was belief. But when it came down to it, I believed in none of them any more than I would a fairy tale. It was sort of scary at first, like working without a tightrope: what if this were really it? I mean, no nothing afterwards. Nothing after death. No heaven, no hell, no reincarnation, no "seeing" everything and understanding it all. Just . . . ceasing to exist. It's hard for the mind to get around that one, isn't it? It isn't, of course, if you've got some version of what's going to happen after death that you tell yourself. But if you don't, well, then you're just there, trying to wrap your imagination around nothingness. You realize that everything else will exist (for a time) but you. And others will remember you, but you will not exist, you will not remember, you will no longer be here.

As strong as the mind is, it is not strong enough to sit in this predicament for long without panicking. However, if you have a belief system that explains to and reassures you that something not terrible happens after death, or even that you'll get to see those who have gone before you, I can see how attractive that might be. But it still seems like a fairy tale to me. I don't mean to dismiss others' beliefs, but really, no one has come back to tell us what it's like after we die. No one really knows: that's why it's called faith. Or belief. These are not reliant on facts or logic or science. Feelings are something else entirely, too: just because you feel strongly that the afterlife is this way or that, or that your loved one's spirit is nearby, doesn't mean that it is. Combine emotions with the mind and well, you have an overriding desire to come up with a comforting yet somehow plausible story of what's going to happen after death.

But it's just all so much story to me. And that, really, is what seems to last, to have eternity to it: stories. The same stories and dreams and visions have been with us for millenniums, haven't they? The names change, but the same stories just get stronger with time, with centuries, till they are cemented in our hearts and minds. We think stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, but really, that's us. We're born, live and die. Stories, no. They just are. They are the ones that have eternal life, not us.

My Own Private Oscar: A Few Defining Moments

It's exactly twenty-four hours before our own Oscar extravaganza begins for the 80th Annual Academy Awards, and I'm feeling a bit nostalgic. Perhaps that's why I consider our little party of twelve an "extravaganza." Anyway, in no particular order, here are the moments that have stayed with me for the last twenty years or so.

#1: Diana Ross and Lionel Richie: 54th Academy Awards.
They performed "Endless Love" and even though that movie was gruesome, and the song is a bit treacly, you could feel the love. That was the spring of 1982 and I was watching the awards with a bunch of theatre students at the small town Catholic College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota. I was finishing my freshman year and the previous fall had met these guys during a production of Marat/Sade (much longer real title: you don't need to know it). We were all siting around, hollering at the television, and most of the crowd really started yelling when Diana and Lionel were singing their duet. Except for me and Steven R., a local Waite Park boy who I now realize was a dead ringer for Ashton Kutcher. We laughed a little at the ridicule, but then we told everyone to shut up, and watched Diana and Lionel give it up like they were the lovesick teenagers. I can still see them when I hear it on the radio. As for Steve/Ashton, he got a girl pregnant and didn't come back to St. Ben's.

#2: Bernardo Bertolucci: 60th Academy Awards.
For about six years I worked as a midwife with an overwhelmingly Latina (mostly Mexican-American) population on the West side of St. Paul, and I married an Indian immigrant about a year ago. So it's hard to explain the anti-immigrant tone of my screaming "Go back to your own goddamned country and make movies!" as Bernardo Bertolucci strolled to the podium to collect his Oscar for The Last Emperor. I hadn't even seen the movie. I'm not even sure who it was that I wanted to win, but apparently it wasn't him. Years later my husband told me how much he liked that movie, and I finally watched it with him. To say we both found it a little slow is an understatement. My husband finally confessed that it was the breastfeeding scene that had been the draw.

#3: John Irving: 72nd Academy Awards.
This night was fun. We were at my friend's house with about twenty-five people, all who had filled out ballots and loved talking back to the television. You could barely hear the telecast what with the smart ass comments and hooting and hollering. Near the end of the evening, though, John Irving gave a beautiful speech as he accepted his award for Best Adapted Screenplay from his own novel, The Cider House Rules. It was all about his grandfather (who performed abortions) and choice and women and I don't think I've ever been more proud. I just caught The Cider House Rules on television yesterday and was surprised to see how much I still liked it, how deftly the issue of abortion was presented when today it's become so blown out of proportion and at the same time, simply ignored. I've never been that big of a fan of Irving's, but he's still a kind of hero to me, even now.

#4: Jennifer Lopez: 73rd Academy Awards.
I have never seen such a dress on such a woman as the Chanel couture gray gown that Jennifer Lopez wore that night. It was a one-shoulder affair, with a very nearly sheer top close to her body, and a fuller, shiny silver taffeta floor length skirt on the bottom. On the red carpet, you caught a glimpse of her and turned to your viewing companion and said, "Are those her nipples?" During the ceremony, Ms. Lopez was a presenter and while the first few rows may have been enchanted by her breasts, the millions of the rest of us were at home, having to settle for a camera shot that stopped just below her collarbone. God, she looked beautiful! Truly like a goddess. Granted, her acting is limited (the best thing she's ever done is Out of Sight) and I'm completely unfamiliar with her music, but she is one gorgeous woman who looks marvelous nearly all of the time, and like she was born for it.

So tonight during the 80th annual Academy Awards, let's see if there are any moments worth remembering. If not, I'll be surrounded by my friends and lots of paella, red wine and flan.

Love Child

One day I had a patient complain during her annual exam that she had some pain in her throat, and she just wanted to make sure it wasn't caused by her IUD, i.e. intrauterine device. I paused, looked her directly in the eye, and said, "Are you saying that you think your IUD is hurting your throat?"

She blinked, and demurred every so slightly, but continued on, "Well, I just want to make sure--"

I interrupted. "Are you really asking me if that your IUD, in your uterus, can cause pain in your throat?" I asked as incredulously as I could, never breaking eye contact.

This was no fourteen year old girl. This was a thirty-two year old woman who'd had three children, vaginally, (not nasally, as you might expect from her inquiry) and thought that her uterus was connected, I don't know how, to her throat. I couldn't get the anatomical image out of my mind: where is God's name was the stomach, the liver, the heart and lungs? Was it all just flesh, some amorphous congealed mass of stuff? And then I thought of her daughters, and realized that if a grown woman carries around ideas like this, they don't have a chance.

My husband and I watch a lot of old sitcoms on television. Some are mildly entertaining, some more funny than others. My husband seemed to really like Becker, starring Ted Danson as a New York City doctor who hates people and loves to complain. I asked him one night what appealed to him, and he said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but he sort of reminds me of you." I burst out laughing, and he continued. "No, really, he does. He's really compassionate, he takes good care of people, but you'd never know it because he complains about everything so much." Later we came to the conclusion that really, I was a deadly combination of John Becker and Red Forman, the cranky dad on That 70s Show, who constantly threatens to stick his foot in your ass. They are both completely unsentimental and not very charming misanthropes, and I am their love child. Unfortunately, like John Becker, I work in health care, and this is my tale of woe.

Another thirty-something woman asked me if a noticeable difference in her vaginal discharge was caused by ovulation. She was using hormonal contraception at the time. "You're not ovulating; you're using the Ring. How do you think you haven't been getting pregnant? By magic?"

It's hard not to bark like Red Forman every time I hear something like this. I know it's completely unprofessional, but it drives me crazy. Ignorance is one thing: it's okay to be ignorant, especially if you're fifteen (or nineteen if you have evangelical parents). But to parade your ignorance as scholarship: that's another thing. Patients will often comment that they've done 'research' when asking me questions about contraception. Research? I want to say. Are you a Ph. D. candidate? Because that's research. What you're doing, I believe, is known as surfing the net.

Another bee in my bonnet is the 'natural' argument. "It's just not natural," a patient will whine when reviewing her hormonal birth control options. "I just don't think hormones are natural."

My tongue should be hemorrhaging from all the biting it suffers. "Nothing's natural," I want to scream. "There's nothing natural about wireless service, SUVs or lattes, either."

It's as if they want to avoid pregnancy, but don't want to have to actually do anything to avoid it. Everything is such an inconvenience: I can't remember to take a pill everyday, the patch fell off, the ring is weird, I don't like shots, etc. Women in the sixties couldn't believe their good fortune: if they just took this little pill every day, which was smaller than an aspirin, they wouldn't get pregnant. It must have seemed like a miracle, especially when abortion wasn't even an option. Today, I hear patients tell me how every single method has a problem. That's probably true: there's nothing perfect in this world. But the inability to tolerate even short-lived side effects is significant. We all think we are so unique, that we're tender lilies and the smallest chemical disturbance will destroy us: but somehow smoking (as a teenager) and drinking (ditto) are pristine in comparison to hormonal contraception. A patient wasn't concerned about her marijuana use because, you guessed it, "Pot is natural."

Obviously, those who are against birth control have waged a very effective and pervasive campaign of misinformation. It finally dawned on me that girls, and even most women, had no idea how hormonal contraception worked. Now I explain that to every patient with a new prescription, because I know better. These girls (and women) don't know things because it was their parents who wanted sex education out of the schools and in the home. I'd be hard pressed to name a more brilliant failure. Maybe sex education doesn't include information on contraception: okay, fine. But to have it encompass nothing more than "Don't have sex" is a crime. I won't even begin my lecture about the number of girls and women who don't have orgasms: that's another story for another day.

Around the world it is known that the more educated a woman is, the fewer children she bears. With a planet bursting at the seams, what is wrong with that? According to figures from 2006, there are an estimated 245 births each minute, roughly 4 births each second of every day. Less than half of that number die: 110 people per minute, or a bit less than 2 per second. The highest birth rates remain in the developing world, specifically Africa, which has corresponding low education levels for women. Hormonal birth control is responsible for decreasing birth rates, to an extent, in the developed world. Our sisters in the developing world, when they can get it, choose the non-hormonal intrauterine device. In fact, this is the most commonly used form of birth control in the world.

Why is it seen as more 'moral' to bear rather than abort an unplanned pregnancy? I think Howard Stern is a pig, but he once dubbed abortion "crime stoppers." Crude and insensitive, perhaps, but Freakonomics authors Levitt and Dubner came to a similar conclusion regarding the availability of legalized abortion and the decrease in the crime rates. We here in the United States are lucky, privileged and some would say spoiled: we have incredible access to contraceptives in this twenty-first century. Let's start using them, why don't we, and let's start telling our daughters and sons that it's okay for them to use them, too.

It's true that John Becker and Red Forman would, sadly, still be very proud of me as their ill-begotten spawn. But I must confess I am another sort of love child, closer to the real thing. I was conceived on my parents' honeymoon, and in a twist that could only be stranger than fiction, born on Valentine's Day. But that's not all: my father's middle name is (wait for it) Valentine. Inside, deep inside, I care. In a country that claims children as its most important and valuable asset with a skewed world view that puts fetuses on the highest pedestal, isn't it time to put our money where our mouths are and make each child a true love child?

I Saw Him First

Hear ye, hear ye, all you American Johnny and Janey come-latelys: Javier Bardem has been my boyfriend for about fifteen years now. If you've just recently seen him, all sexy and gorgeous at the Screen Actors Guild Awards with his tuxedo and open white shirt sans tie and thought, "Who the hell is this?" and then realized it was the psycho with the Dutch boy from No Country for Old Men, you're too late, my friend. You're also a little tardy if you vaguely remember him from the 2001 Academy Awards when he was nominated for Best Actor for Before Night Falls, though you do get bonus points if you actually saw Before Night Falls. Double points if you were in awe of his Cuban-accented English, his gait, and Johnny Depp's uncredited cameo in drag.

No, Javier and I go way back. Back to that delightfully dark Bigas Lunas romp that debuted another Spanish treasure, Penelope Cruz, called Jamon, Jamon (subtitled A Tale of Ham and Passion). Ay, mi amor! What a filthy, gorgeous pig he was then, arrogantly displaying his wares as a model auditioning in his underwear. The next time I saw him, he was a detective in Pedro Almodovar's Carne tremula (Live Flesh) who, after being shot in the line of duty (sort of) is permanently in a wheelchair. He compensates by playing basketball for the national team, and by demonstrating amazing oral technique in one of the hottest sex scenes in film. Then I was mesmerized by his portrayal of Reynaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls: he looked different, he sounded different, and he brought his mother and sister to the Academy Awards with him.

His first English-speaking role was in John Malkovich's The Dancer Upstairs, a political thriller set in the seventies in Latin America, and later I saw Mondays in the Sun, a dreary story of workers down on their luck. Javier looked about fifty years old in that one. Recently I saw one of his very first films, Huevos de oro, and was enchanted by it, but only because of the ending: the brute gets what he deserves, and there's a three-way that involves Javier and Benicio Del Toro. Yes, you read that correctly: rent it now.

Javier, por supuesto, doesn't think he's handsome at all. He chose his words carefully: "I mean, look at this face". Indeed. He is not pretty. His features are large and broad. His nose may have been broken: he used to play rugby for the national team in Spain. But he knew enough to run from handsome leading man roles and instead found characters more interesting to play.

He comes from a long line of actors. Accepting his SAG award he said, "My grandparents were actors, and when they died, they couldn't be buried in the cemetery because actors were thought to be homosexuals and prostitutes." He's seems unafraid to say things, maybe because he's not American. When Spain legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, he was quoted as saying, "mañana mismo, sólo para joder a la Iglesia". Translation: If I were gay, I'd get married tomorrow, just to piss off the Church. How can you not love that?

The voice. The eyes. The smile. The perfection of expression that so many non-native English speakers have while speaking English. The devil may care attitude. The shamelessness.Maybe I didn't see him first. But I sure as hell saw him before you did.

Unless your name is Penelope Cruz.