Did You Hear Who Won the Election?

Now that several weeks have passed, I am fascinated with how different people are letting the election sink in. Here is a sampling of encounters, eaves dropping, birthday party small-talk, and even a would-be Christmas card.

Reaction 1: Walking in downtown Boston, I passed a very large black man who was wearing a very large black t-shirt with the American flag in white. The T-shirt read, "My president is a black man." I wanted to high-five him. I did not.

Reaction 2: The morning after the election I was in a local diner and overheard this conversation between two older men.

"Did ya hear?"

"Yeah."

"Whaddaya think?"

"I think she knew more about what she was doin than he does."

"I dunno about that. She seemed a little bit ditzy to me."

"I got in that voting booth and I said, 'Put me down for what ever the hell you want! These choices stink!'"

"I guess everything's due to change now."

"Let's talk about the Bruins instead."

Reaction 3: My brother would not say who he voted for at a family birthday party. He is conservative -- but always has a few tricks up his sleeve, so I was really curious. I figured he would vote Republican -- but there was no way in hell Sarah Palin would do anything but drive him up a friggin wall. So, I kept asking him -- other people asked him, no dice. Then my sister-in-law walked up and outed him. "He voted for McCain," she said. Then turned to him and said, "Loser." Then it all became clear -- my brother holds dear the privacy of the voting booth because he really does hate to lose.

Reaction 4: A conservative aunt and uncle on my husband's side of the family are usually the first to send out their Christmas card each year and it always include a letter catching us up on the news of their family. This year they decided to send out a Thanksgiving letter praising God for being a beacon to us all in these unsettling times. They couldn't wait until Christmas to praise God? What's the hurry? I guess its all relative. I thought the push for legislation to shoot wild animals from a helicopter was a sign of the apocalypse -- they think a young black liberal in the white house is. Or maybe that guy in the t-shirt.

We're Number Two!! We're Number Two!!

The new list for Amerca's most dangerous cities is out and Camden, NJ -- my hometown, is NUMBER TWO!! We were beat out by none other than New Orleans -- God Bless 'em.

Cheer up Camden, you're Number One in robberies. It was that Number Three in murder that was holding you back.

Daniel Radcliffe and the Tacklebox He Rode in on

I have a crush on Kevin Spacey. I also have a "little thing" for Mike Timlin (middle reliever for the Red Sox) and an even "bigger thing" for Jason Varitek (captain and catcher). I think The Edge (of U2) is hot. Jeff Tweety (Wilco) makes me weak in the knees. So what does my husband think of this? He says he is happy to hear that I am interested in "the old guys," men that are in their 40's, men that are around his age. And I must say, that's true. I'm not sighing after all the young guys on the Red Sox, for instance. In fact, something about their 20-somethingness even bugs me.

But then their is Daniel Radcliffe. Yeah...Harry Potter.

He is far from 40, I know. But listen, I didn't have a crush on him when he was 10 -- for crying out loud. He looks like this now, for God's sake.

And now he is in a production of Equus in New York. For those of you who don't know the play -- it is fantastic and disturbing, the story of an emotionally unhinged young man who loses his shit and attacks horses -- the only warm-blooded animal he is able to relate to. There are only 4 or so characters and the staging is modern and sparse, including actors in wire-sculpture horse headdresses to play the part of the animals. The acclaimed and controversial original production had Richard Burton in it as the boy's therapist, the other central role. Because I lived right outside of NYC as a kid, I remember seeing the commercial for the production on TV -- and it used to scare me. Burton staring into the camera in extreme close-up, stressing how ill some boy was in his fabulous baritone, and then this weird horse mask flashed. Eeek! But it was not the horse heads or Burton's stirring performance that made the production controversial. It was the fact that the climactic (sorry) scene in the last act included full-on nudity. And not, "Let the Sun Shine In" romping-around-for-the-hell-of-it nudity. This was a scene that depicted the young man having ill-fated sex with an older woman. And so, when the news hit that Daniel Radcliffe would be playing the part in the London production last year, the first question was obvious: will Harry Potter show us his pecker?

Apparently the answer is yes -- which, amongst other reasons, was publicized so that if parents were oblivious to the plot of the play, they would not make the mistake of thinking it something appropriate for young Harry Potter fans. And as a result, once the play started its run, the adult theater-goers crammed the blogworld with reviews and more than one crappy video from someone's phone trying to show the evidence. One review was especially funny to me though. Having seen the production and therefore Dan in the nude, a male gay blogger wanted to weigh in on whether Radcliffe was homosexual -- which apparently is a hot topic, and by the looks of that leather vest -- it's no wonder. This blogger claimed with great confidence that Radcliffe was (sigh) heterosexual -- but, wait!, could tell by looking at his "tacklebox." Having never heard a man's genitals referred to as such, or the act of deciphering a man's sexual preference from how it was hangin, I asked around. Gay or straight I could not find a man that had heard of either the term or the talent. Now, as a disclaimer I must point out that none of these men were British -- so maybe it's simply cultural.

In any case, I'll do more research. I got my ticket to see for myself in January. Who bought the ticket for me? My husband. Who has, I guessed resigned to the fact that I've got a thing for the young man. And why not? His crush is on Beyonce -- who, last time I looked, was NOT in her 40's.

Pity and Nutrition

One of the great disappointments of my childhood was that my mom would not let me get a cool lunchbox. Paper bags had served her well through 5 children and she was not about to change course for the sixth one. But she underestimated my ability to beg.



I wanted a Brady Bunch lunch box something awful. I dreamed of bringing the Partridge Family to school with me every day.
But my ma would not budge.



"I'll spend all that money," she would say (meanwhile, how much could lunch boxes have cost in the early to mid-'70s??) "and then you'll end up liking some other TV show and want something different the next year."


So my mother disagreed with lunchboxes in principle, and even if she DID change her mind -- she wanted me to take one lunchbox to the grave. Hard to concoct an argument to counter that when you're 7.


But then I saw the lines of reasoning she would go for: Pity and Nutrition.

Pity: Milk cost a dime. I explained to my mother that when she sent my lunch in a brown bag, the dime would routinely slip between the folds of paper at the bottom and I would be reduced to tears. Could she imagine her only daughter going without a healthy, vitamin and protein-packed beverage? Sniffle.

Nutrition: Lunchboxes have Thermoses. You can pack all sorts of wonderfully nutritious soups in Thermoses, Mom. (P.S. I hated soup -- that is how desperate I was.)



But somehow it worked! The next August she said I could get a lunchbox! But then declared that SHE would pick it out. Tearful, I agreed. And what did I get? The classic red plaid.



My embarrassment at carrying that lunchbox for the next three years would only soften in my late teens when, consumed with punk chic, I carried a replica as my purse.

Survival Tips

I have been told this is an absolutely true story...

A friend was in line at a supermarket, in back of a very large woman. Despite the heat of the day, the woman was wearing a long coat. Then, as the woman took a step closer to the cashier, there was a resounding thud. My friend looked down to see a canned ham at the woman's feet. The cashier and other customers were also looking by this time.

Now, you must stop and ask yourself, if I were this woman, what would I say at this point?

Give up? The answer is:

Look around aghast and demand,

"WHO THREW THAT HAM AT ME!??"

This Good Feeling

You could not wipe the smile off my face today. The only sensation I could compare it to was how I felt the day after the Red Sox won in 2004. It is the notion that anything is possible. No outcome is inevitable. And that, as Tennyson said, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world.

But I also thought about something Deval Patrick, the first African American governor of Massachusetts said at his inauguration. He told the crowd to "remember this good feeling we have right now. Put it somewhere safe. Because the day will come when we will need it."

God bless President-elect Obama and God bless America.

Close Your Eyes and Make a Wish

I said a prayer and kissed my ballot for luck today.