As we sit down for lunch at Navy Pier's Riva restaurant, Chicago Shakespeare Theater director and founder Barbara Gaines glows with the slightly flustered enthusiasm of a parent about to send her only child off to a highly competitive college.
The company's production of "Henry IV, Parts One and Two," is about to move from Chicago, where it has run for five weeks, to England, where it will be performed as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's prestigious Complete Works festival. The logistics of moving a play -- including all of its sets, its cast and technical elements like its lighting design -- across an ocean are daunting. But the challenge is well worth it, says Gaines, because of what it means to have the company perform on Shakespeare's home ground at Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Once the company arrives in England, Gaines says she plans to take them all for a walk, along the River Avon to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was christened and buried. There, she says, they can all "say our own thank yous, privately, to the old man who started it all."
Though Gaines is no elitist -- there's hardly room for snobbery at Navy Pier -- she is willing to say, that, yes, "I do believe that Shakespeare is a civilizing influence."
"As artists, we are involved in trying to clarify the human condition," she says, managing not to seem self-conscious about it.
No need to elaborate
The Henry plays, in particular, she says, have an important resonance for a modern world in turmoil.
"The real 'gasp' line for contemporary audiences comes when the prince [Hal, son of Henry IV] is advised 'to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.'" She says, "Basically, they're setting up a phony war in France to distract people from a civil war at home."
Pausing to take a bite of her Caesar salad with well-done salmon, Gaines doesn't elaborate. She clearly doesn't feel she needs to.
But later in our meal, she returns to a similar theme, recalling the scene when Prince Hal worries to Falstaff that his ragged army seems to be composed only of poor men, and Falstaff answers, "Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better [men.]"
"When you think about all the leaders who have sent men into battle as food for [gun] powder," she muses, "Expendable. ..."
A conversation with Gaines is something of a mental roller coaster ride. Though she describes her approach to theater, and to Shakespeare in particular, as "not what you call 'intellectual'; it's very visceral," she is obviously a sophisticated and subtle thinker, one incredibly well-versed in the texts with which she works. But Gaines, 59, also waxes poetic about her love for shopping at Target and how being awarded an OBE (the Order of the British Empire, an honor granted by Queen Elizabeth) didn't change how she does her laundry or cleans up after her dog.
'That money was gone'
Gaines' striking humility -- some have characterized it as frailty -- is rooted in the experiences that led her to found Chicago Shakespeare. After spending four relatively successful years acting in New York, in 1980 she returned to Chicago (a city she'd fallen in love with as a Northwestern student) and soon found herself unable to work, limping around on a badly injured knee.
"All the money I'd made in New York, after two years of being unemployed, that money was gone," she recalled.
So, with $1,000 left to her name, she started giving actors' workshops on Shakespeare, her favorite college subject, and hoped that something might somehow change.
"I thought my life was over," she says now. "O-V-E-R."
Those workshops led to Gaines' first Chicago production: a creatively staged "Henry V," held on the roof of Lincoln Park's Red Lion pub.
That was exactly 20 years ago. And it's hard for Gaines to decide whether it's too long or too short a time to be believed.
She smiles brilliantly at the thought of moving from the rented rooftop to Stratford-Upon-Avon -- and doing it largely on her own terms. Enthusiasm seems to spill out from her tiny frame.
"You never know how the British critics will receive these plays," says Gaines, who is much-loved by Chicago audiences and generally well thought of by local critics. "But for me, that's almost beside the point. For me, the miracle is that we're there together."
[In fact, the British reviews do later turn out to be rather mixed, with the Chicago actors' faux-English diction coming in for particular criticism. There often seems to be an essential Catch-22 for Americans doing Shakespeare in Britain: they're either too American to get it or trying too hard to be English.]
Chicago Shakespeare approach
But Gaines' opinion of her cast is already solid. She describes herself as having been a "good actress," in contrast to the "great ones" whom she directs today.
"When I say, 'Chicago's finest actors,'" she says, "that's synonymous with this country's finest actors."
And she proudly contrasts the Chicago Shakespeare approach -- employing largely local actors, producing lesser-known works along with the traditional blockbusters -- with what she calls "the New York approach," featuring high-profile TV and movie actors in in-the-park productions of the old favorites.
"I lean toward the complex [Shakespeare plays]," she says. "The 'problem' plays are only problems because they expose our own issues."
For the rest of the afternoon, Gaines' issues will consist mainly of figuring out how to manage her company's biggest-ever road show. But for now, she is happy to sit still for a moment and to enjoy the view from Navy Pier.
Friday's column: Does this hiring scandal make us look fat?
Must we now pretend to take seriously the city's campaign to land the 2016 Olympics? Is that really what we've come to?
This week's news that we beat out Houston and Philadelphia to make the top three finalists for a potential U.S. bid to host the Games was not exactly earth-shattering. (It is, after all, hard to imagine being a less-attractive summer destination than Houston.)
But we got all puffed up and celebratory about it anyway. Because, frankly, we've been feeling a little desperate lately.
It was not so long ago that it seemed like people loved us, well, just for us. Sure, it was slightly condescending, the way they affected such genuine surprise when remarking on our vibrant cultural life, our clean streets and our fabulous restaurants, like they expected our standards to be permanently stuck in "No fries, chips!" mode.
But, still, they fawned and fussed over us. They featured us in fancy, glossy magazines.
And we got used to it.
The Kirstie Alley effect
There's nothing quite like those first days after you've been on a big diet and made your debut in your new, skinny clothes. Everyone tells you how great you look. They all want to know how you did it. All the attention goes to your head and, without realizing it, you're prancing down the hallways of your office building and grinning flirtatiously with strangers on the street.
Then, in far, far less time than it took you to lose the weight, people stop noticing. And those super-expensive jeans you bought aren't looking quite as cute as they did originally, anyway. Without the blinding glow of positive reinforcement, you start to notice certain things that you'd been blocking from your mind: like how low-fat muffins taste like cardboard.
From there, it's a slippery slide into a needy kind of paranoia. You want people to notice how great you look, but you're also convinced they've begun to pick up on how, in ever-so-subtle ways, you've started to let yourself go.
Chicago's urban renaissance has followed the same pattern. We worked hard on ourselves. We got really beautiful. And even though we swore we were doing it for ourselves, that it didn't matter what other cities thought, that it was all about making positive changes, not just meeting some socially mandated aesthetic standard, we still loved the way it felt to be so suddenly glamorous.
We felt a little sorry, really, for Seattle, trying so hard to hang on to that whole '90s grunge and coffee thing, when it was clear that the fickle finger of trendiness had moved on. We promised ourselves we'd be more graceful about it when the time came for us to pass the torch to some other city. Of course, that sort of thing was easy to say when Boeing was hightailing it out of there to make its new corporate home here.
We're not quite so blithe about it now.
Now we find it newsworthy when some big organization -- the National Restaurant Association convention, United Airlines -- decides to stay here.
A cute slogan is probably next
It's making us feel a little anxious, the way we have to get all gussied up just to hold people's attention anymore. We've been furtively checking out those keep-the-spark-alive books, thinking about trying out some new seduction tricks, like maybe wrapping ourselves in Saran Wrap. (What is Christo doing these days, anyway?)
And we've begun to suspect that other cities might see through all this elaborate posturing.
"Hosting the Gay Games," we told them, with some swagger, "was practically the same thing as having the Olympics."
Was it just our imagination, or did the other two U.S. Olympic finalists, Los Angeles and San Francisco, roll their eyes at that one when they thought we weren't looking? Philadelphia said they did, but that was probably just sour grapes.
We've been trotting out every achievement we can find -- our airport is even busier than Atlanta's! -- but the fact is that people just don't seem as impressed with us as they once were.
Look, we're not naive. We can see how it's partly our fault. You get comfortable; let things slip a little. The tulips on Michigan Avenue probably weren't as impressive as they might have been this year.
But just because some of the magic's faded a little, that's no reason to dump us for some flashy young tart like Austin.
We'll admit we've been a little distracted lately, getting caught up in petty fights over goose livers and how best to express our contempt for Wal-Mart. And we've been losing sleep -- just a little -- over some of this corruption stuff, which seems not only morally hazardous but also tacky.
But, listen, we can change. Just tell us what you want.
Collapsible stadium? Absolutely.
Private money to pay for all the overhead costs? Not a problem.
Civic pride? Sure. We feel great about ourselves. Really.
Seen in Lincoln Park lately: this Container Store market tote, which is basically a high-end, personal version of the baskets that you pick up in the grocery store when you are not getting enough stuff to justify a shopping cart.
When I first started seeing them, my pathetically baby-centric brain assumed that they must be some sort of infant carrier.
But, as they've proliferated, it's become clear that they are used for toting around multiple errand purchases and farmer's market buys.
This strikes me as somewhat bizarre, since I've always hated the ones you can get in the grocery store (if you happen to be buying, let's say, orange juice and milk, the thing quickly becomes absurdly heavy and awkward) and I can't imagine deciding that I need to have one of my very own.
Aren't backpacks and shoulder bags infinitely easier to carry around?
Still, as a serious neat freak, my devotion to the Container Store (a place I approach with reverence) remains such that I can't completely dismiss the market tote. I keep thinking that it must have some virtue that I'm missing.
I'm willing to admit that I'm wrong on these things -- the Crocs are really comfortable, dammit -- so I am open to being educated about the benefits of paying $30 for what is, essentially, an open picnic basket made of canvas.
Yet another reason to be creeped out by the new 9/11 movie
Every time I see a commercial for Oliver Stone's new movie, World Trade Center, I ask, "Who would want to see that?"
It's really hard for me to imagine that people would be interested in re-living the destruction of the World Trade Center as a paid entertainment experience. Honestly, to my mind, if you can't remember what it was like to watch it fall, you have some serious attention deficit issues.
I do understand, however, that my reactions to these things are generally not representative of the public at large. First, I am incredibly squeamish about movie death and violence in general -- not, oddly, because blood and gore bother me, but because I have a weirdly over-empathetic reaction to seeing people in pain (even fake pain). Second, I readily acknowledge that my status as East-Coaster-in-exile might make the whole deal a lot more visceral and real for me than for someone who never set foot in the Trade Center or didn't know anyone there.
But still . . . .
There's just something unspeakably weird about our impulse to quickly translate actual tragedy into entertainment. And, if you happen to share my utterly liberal and biased view of the world, you can feel affirmed in sensing that weirdness. Because The Washington Times, newspaper bastion of conservatives everywhere, is heartily endorsing Stone's movie, as are lots of other conservative pundits.
More pregnant ramblings to drive Steve Rhodes crazy
Broadsheet, the women's issues-oriented blog at Salon.com, has posted a whole host of pregnancy-related links, including one to this New Yorker article about research into preeclampsia.
The piece, written by author and Harvard medical school professor Jerome Groopman, touches upon some of the big themes I've been (much less articulately than Groopman) wrestling with in the last few weeks, including the strange dearth of serious research into pregnancy-related medical conditions and health risks, and the circumstances in which the best interests of a woman (health-wise) and those of the unborn baby she carries are directly opposed to one another.
There's also a link to the "Shape of a Mother" blog, something which, I must admit, I had a really hard time looking at. The photos of the round, pregnant bellies are one thing, but the stretch-marked and deflated post-partum abdomens are something else entirely. Rationally, of course, I understand that my body is not going to instantly snap back into its old form. But, somehow (probably we've been so trained to hide our "flab" from one another), I hadn't fully processed how much of a transition we're talking about. It seems totally shallow and vain to worry about such a thing, since, obviously, having a healthy baby is the most important thing, etc. etc. But, still . . . there's something disconcerting about the incredible length of time when your physical body just isn't you.
Personally, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept that I can feel and see my belly move (quite the future soccer player I'm carrying, thanks) and know that it's not me moving . . . it's a whole (or mostly whole at this point) other person. When you see pregnant women on TV or in the movies, they're always all, "Come here, honey, the baby's kicking," and misty-eyed husband comes and places his hand there to feel it. None of them seem at all weirded out by the whole Alien-esque quality of the experience.
In a certain way, it does, I imagine, begin to prepare you for the thrill ride that is parenthood. Any illusion that you are comepletely in control is pretty much out the window when you are, say, just about to fall alseep and your kid-to-be decides it's an excellent time to practice some of the latest in-utero dance moves.
I think then whole idea that there is soon going to be another person living in our home is still somewhat surreal/theoretical for R. (Honestly, it's only starting to be seem totally plausible to me.)
There's all this stuff that we probably should be doing, like starting to clear out our home office so that we can start converting it into a nursery, that we just don't seem to begin. It's a little embarassing that people keep asking about what we're doing to get ready (the term "layette" is thrown around with some frequency, which seems terrifyingly Victorian). Because, except for the Pack n' Play we bought so our friends' baby Charlotte would have a place to sleep when they visited, we haven't gotten a thing.
I've been trying to read the Consumer Reports Guide and Baby Bargains books (is it wrong to try to cheap out on some of this stuff?), but, seriously, it's confusing and sleep-inducing. (In all honesty, though, almost everything is sleep inducing at this point, at least when it's 90 degrees out.)
I guess, in some ways, I'm still holding on to the fantasy that the baby is not going to take up a lot of room in our lives, literally or metaphorically speaking. (I decided to actually write that sentence rather than just thinking it, as I have been, so that I can really laugh at myself a few months from now.)
Fortunately for me, my best friend is several months ahead of me on the motherhood curve and her experiences are offering something of a primer in what to expect (short, trite answer: the unexpected).
When you're as ignorant as I feel now (and reading all the books, which, being a serious study nerd, I am, of course doing, only makes me feel more clueless), a few weeks of experience looks an awful lot like serious wisdom.
Her message, she says, is that you can overcome any obstacle. But what I've learned, in an afternoon with "success coach" and author Aleta St. James, is that, sometimes, being self-centered and slightly clueless can really work out well for a person.
St. James has arrived in Chicago for an engagement at a new age-y alternative medicine conference at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. Despite having a reservation at a hotel adjacent to O'Hare Airport, she has flown in to Midway. And she has made no arrangements to get from one place to another.
She has taken a cab from Midway to our lunch appointment, at Transitions Bookplace on North Avenue, where she has been killing time, enlisting the staff's help in storing her bags and setting up a work space in the bookstore's small cafe. She has been here for more than an hour by the time I arrive, early, for our interview.
"How can I get from here to the Sofitel?" she asks me, referring to her suburban hotel.
And, while it's tempting to suggest to St. James, a self-described "intuitive," that she figure it out for herself, I find myself offering to give her a ride to Rosemont after we eat. She is one of those women who, although she is nearly 60 years old, projects a certain youthful helplessness. I have, for reasons I can't fully explain, the distinct sense that she will never make it to the suburbs without me and that dropping her off at a Blue Line stop would only result in disaster. I am also fairly certain that she has never had to carry her own suitcase. Anywhere.
'I was born intuitive'
St. James -- a stage name, changed from the less glamorous and more ethnic Sliwa -- began her adult life as an actress. And, while she achieved some success in the world of theater -- the height of her fame was a run as the lead in an Amsterdam production of "Hair" -- she became best-known, on the New York acting scene, as a coach/therapist for her fellow actors.
"I was born intuitive," she explains, over vegan gazpacho and chicken salad, "so I could understand what people were thinking or feeling in their subconscious."
She supplemented these natural abilities by studying various philosophies and techniques, including actualism, primal scream therapy and massage.
"I probably went to medical school three times with everything I studied," she tells me earnestly.
And, indeed, while she might not have an M.D. next to her name, St. James has managed to use her studies quite profitably. Coaching sessions with St. James run $300 for the first hour and $200 for each additional hour. For the money, her clients get a reading of where their energy "blocks" are -- "I've been 100 percent accurate in terms of being able to read people, even over the phone," she says -- plus a "healing," in which she lays her hands over the "blocked" area, and a plan for how to change their lives, which generally includes books, tapes, exercises and positive-thinking mantras.
Seminars in 'ageless living'
St. James says she gets most of her clients by word-of-mouth, but she openly acknowledges that business really took off in 2004 when, just three days shy of her 57th birthday, she gave birth to healthy twins in a New York hospital.
"I did something everyone said was impossible," she says.
The enormous media attention that surrounded the birth -- at the time, she was said to be the oldest woman in North America to give birth to twins -- launched St. James into the new age guru equivalent of superstardom.
The twins, Gian and Francesca, now 19 months old, were conceived using donor sperm, a donor egg and implanted in St. James' womb via an IVF procedure. She is raising them as a single parent.
When I begin to ask practical questions, like about the grave health risks faced by both St. James and her children as a result of the late-in-life pregnancy, she shrugs them off. This was, she says, "absolutely the right thing" for her to do. It was "meant to be."
While adoption is certainly the right path for some, she says, it was not for her.
Interested in the logistics of how she cares for the twins, who she has left at home in New York this weekend as she attends the Rosemont convention, I ask how she found her nanny.
"Oh," she says casually, "I just prayed for her." (Stupidly, I've been relying on Craig's List.)
St. James seems not to be bothered by those who point to her decision to have children so late in life as somehow selfish. Instead of answering their criticisms, she rightly points out the sexual double standard that had the late night talk show hosts joking about her advanced age when the story first emerged in the New York tabloid press.
"David Letterman was talking about me being in Depends," she says, "How old was he when he had his son? No one jokes about men being in diapers at 57. They're all out on the golf course."
Thoroughly enjoying the last laugh, St. James has built an entire enterprise out of her age-defying pregnancy. She's giving seminars on "ageless living" and has just published a new book, Life Shift (Fireside, 247 pages, $24), that offers tips to readers of all ages on how to "let go and live your dream," no matter what it might be.
After finishing her salad, St. James is ready to head out to her hotel.
"I hope you know where we're going," she tells me, handing me a slip of paper with the address on it. "Because I don't."
Friday's column: War wrecks wedding dreams, but love and life go on
Amira and Karim wanted their wedding to be memorable.
They planned a week-long series of events for their families and friends -- 300 guests in total -- that was to culminate, Saturday night, with a lavish ceremony and black-tie reception.
Now, instead, they will -- if they're lucky -- be spending Saturday night in transit, somewhere between the Middle East and Chicago.
Amira and Karim were supposed to get married in Beirut.
Amira, a first generation American who grew up on the East Coast but spent many of her childhood summers with her extended family in Lebanon, and Karim, a Lebanese national who is completing his medical studies in Chicago, have been in Lebanon all month. They had arranged for a few dozen of their American friends to join them there last weekend. But, before their friends could arrive, Hezbollah fighters breached Lebanon's border with Israel, taking two soldiers captive, and Israel retaliated with a series of attacks, including the bombing of Beirut's airport.
Last Wednesday night, Amira and Karim sent an urgent e-mail message to their invited guests, reporting that "things are very tense here, but we are safe."
They wrote that they were leaving Beirut to stay with relatives in the mountains and apologized that they would not be able to host everyone as planned.
"It was the apology that really got me," says Wendy Sternberg, a Chicago physician who read the e-mail in Paris, where she was to have boarded a flight for Beirut to join the wedding party. "These are two people who are really proud of where they come from and they were so looking forward to sharing their country with all of us."
'Rising from the ashes'
The elaborate itinerary Amira and Karim had prepared for their American friends, about a third of whom were traveling from Chicago, included tours of the Bekaa Valley, home to vineyards and ancient Roman ruins, and a hike among the famed Cedars of Lebanon. They also planned several days in Beirut, which they described as the "heart of the Middle East" and a city that is "rising from the ashes" of a devastating civil war.
Those plans, of course, are all cancelled now.
But surrounded by their parents and all the local relatives and friends who fled Beirut to join them in the (for now) more peaceful mountain region, Amira and Karim went ahead with their plans to have a wedding.
They sent an e-mail to their friends on Tuesday, reporting the happy news that they'd be married the next day. And that they'd managed to arrange safe passage back to the U.S., via Jordan, for this weekend.
It's an ironic sort of honeymoon trip, especially for Amira, a city employee who is planning to pursue a Ph.D. in conflict resolution or international relations. And, while the newlyweds will return to their downtown apartment with a great sense of relief, an unshakable anxiety also will follow them home.
Though they say they appreciate the outpouring of love and concern that has flooded their voice-mail and e-mail boxes, Amira and Karim don't want their friends in Chicago to make a fuss. They asked, in fact, that their full names not be shared with anyone outside their immediate circle, because they didn't want to draw attention to themselves.
They also did not want to make political statements or create problems for their relatives still in Lebanon. So their e-mails and phone calls have remained strikingly neutral, avoiding everything beyond the indisputable facts of their situation: They are unhurt, they are getting married, they are coming back.
For the would-have-been wedding guests, this clarity is both inspiring and confounding. The story of the latest violent crisis in the Middle East is now, for them, personal. But it makes even less sense than it did before.
And, for Amira and Karim, Arab Christians who hope for an independent Lebanon, one democratically governed and free from Syrian influence, the situation is heart-breaking. They don't know when they will be able to go back or what will be left of the brilliant sights they hoped to share with their friends.
The best-laid plans
There was supposed to be a wedding at St. Elie Church in Beirut on Saturday. Beautifully restored after being damaged in the civil war, it sits at the western edge of downtown and is graced by a statue of Pope John Paul II, who visited there in 1997.
Instead, the church will stand empty.
So, too, will a banquet room at the luxurious Casino du Liban, where there was supposed to be a reception.
The 300 guests who were supposed to be there will remain scattered, clustered in distant corners of the globe, as an evening that was supposed to be full of joy passes quietly.
Nothing is turning out the way it was supposed to.
But Amira and Karim are unhurt. They are married. They are coming home.
I always have strangely mixed feelings when I read an article, printed elsewhere, that I had really intended to write. It's weirdly affirming, first of all, since it seems officially approved as a good idea. And I'm generally happy to be able to take something off my "to do" list, even when it's been done by someone else.
But I also feel like kicking myself. Because I really should have gotten around to it.
I'd been meaning to write about urbanbaby.com's New York message boards ever since my best friend told me about the raging debate that had popped up there about whether it was OK to leave your sleeping baby alone in your apartment while you went to the laundry room. (The site also has Chicago-specific content, but it's nowhere near as angst-ridden. Hooray for the well-adjusted Midwest!)
Anyway, Emily Nussbaum has totally beaten me to it, with this amazing feature, just out in New York Magazine.
Now, if someone else would just hurry up and write that 3,000 word ode to the Snoogle pillow I've been planning, I might be able to squeeze in one last vacation before my maternity leave.
"The president believes strongly that for the purpose of research it's inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder. He's one of them."
-- White House spokesman Tony Snow
OK, so here's it played out today. First, upon hearing that the Cook County Democratic Committee officially nominated Todd Stroger to run for Board President in his father's stead, I decided that, come November, I will, for the first time in my life, vote for a Republican. Tony Peraica doesn't seem like a super guy, but I'd rather vote for him than endorse this nonsense.
Then, just hours later, as I was coming to terms with my own creeping moderate-ism, I listened to highlights (if you can call them that) of the Senate debate on stem cell research.
Yes, I tried to remind myself, thinking people can disagree on this subject. It's a big ethical question. Etc., etc.
But, really, I just don't believe that. For me, it is, like gay marriage, a complete no-brainer. Harms no one, could benefit many.
I do recognize that it's the "harms no one" that is up for debate in the stem cell research question. The President, along with Rick Santorum and lots of other religious conservatives, believes that the use of an embryo in a lab for research purposes is, in fact, harmful to the point of murderousness.
(I have my doubts about whether Bush really, really believes that or if he's just playing to his base, but let's leave that paranoia aside for the moment and take the man at his word.)
If the roughly half a million frozen embryos locked up in labs right now are all people in a state of "suspended life," isn't their routine disposal the equivalent of a holocaust?
And if that's going on, why aren't these passionate advocates of life doing everything they can to "save" those babies? They should be recruiting thousands of women to carry these embryos to term. Hell, the Bush daughters are of child-bearing age, surely they could each take a year off to save a human life.
Thus ended my brief flirtation with bipartisanship.
I had a long cab ride this afternoon, from River North up to Albany Park, and, as luck would have it, my driver was chatty and friendly in all the best possible ways. And, after a couple of minutes of good-natured banter, he launched into a tale that I fully expect someone to develop into a great novel someday.
In addition to driving the cab, Peter is a photographer. This weekend, he was completely booked with parties and weddings. So he had only a short break between a Saturday afternoon wedding and another engagement. He was going to briefly visit a friend and stopped off at a convenience store to pick up something to drink.
While he was inside, someone broke into his car. And, along with the usual cash, CDs, etc., they took a bag that held some of his equipment and . . . the film containing the wedding shots.
It was not a total loss -- he had two rolls of film in his jacket pocket -- but it was pretty close. Everything he'd shot of the ceremony was gone.
I should mention that Peter was not nearly this straightforward in telling the story. In fact, he did not make it clear, until the story was over, that he was the photographer. (He started off with, "Let me ask your opinion on something," then told the story in third-person narrative.) At one point, I thought he was actually the groom.
Anyway, his question, asked only half-jokingly, was, "Would you kill the photographer?"
He'd decided to refund all of the couple's money, to give them prints of everything he could and to provide a large, framed version of the formal portrait shot he'd taken of them at no charge. But this, he knew, was no real substitute.
(I suggested that giving them the portrait first might soften the blow a bit before telling them about the loss of the rest of the photos.)
As he dropped me off at my destination, he asked, "Will you come to my funeral?"
There's an old adage about how, if someone makes you nervous, you should just visualize them in their underwear, and they won't be nearly so intimidating.
It doesn't work.
The idea behind it, I guess, is that we all look rather ridiculous when stripped down to our skivvies. But the truth of the matter is that not everyone looks silly and harmless. Some people look really, really hot.
And I happen to remember Jim Palmer, the major league pitching legend and Jockey underwear pitchman, as one of them. I used to cut out his ads from my dad's Sports Illustrated magazine and pin them up on the cork board in my bedroom.
So thinking about him in his underwear isn't making me less anxious. It's making me feel like a giddy kid with a pathetic crush.
And when he walks into 437 Rush for our lunch together, looking eerily like he did 20 years ago, I am reduced to near speechlessness.
Fortunately, this doesn't matter much because Palmer, the Hall of Famer and broadcaster, is a pro and hardly needs to go through the motions of being asked actual questions. I barely have to choke out a topic -- "food?" -- before he is winningly spinning a perfectly media-genic series of well-crafted anecdotes.
Superstitious 'Cakes'
"Everyone used to call me 'Cakes,' " he says, "because I'd always eat pancakes for breakfast before pitching."
Banishing from my mind any reference to the obviously degrading term "beefcake," I continue to listen and scribble diligently as he explains how he missed the ritual meal once, catching an early-morning flight, and how, after losing that game, he vowed never to skip his pancakes again.
Pitchers are, of course, notorious for superstitions like these, and Palmer had his share.
"I'd do a thing where you put nine balls on a pool table, and if you sink nine, that means you'll pitch nine innings," he says. "And if you only sink one or two, you start over."
He'd also chew three pieces of bubble gum at a time and once won 10 games in a row wearing the same T-shirt under his uniform.
Now that I know all of this about him, I should be feeling a bit more comfortable. I should take the interview in hand and ask penetrating questions about the state of the great American pastime.
Instead, I offer up a fawning remark about how fascinating I find weird pitching rituals and the fetishization -- inner monologue: Oh, God, did I really use that word? I did. Quick: Picture him in his underwear. No, wait, don't! -- of The Arm.
He orders the grilled halibut and gamely keeps talking.
"In sports," he's saying, as I re-focus my attention, "there are a lot of variables you can't control, so you try to control as many as you can."
Work around the house
Naturally right-handed, Palmer protected his pitching arm by learning to do as many other things as possible with his left hand: playing tennis, carrying his suitcase, doing work around the house.
Carrying his own bag? Working around the house?
"Life was a lot different back then," he says when I point out that these do not sound like things a superstar athlete would generally be caught dead doing.
When he and his wife first moved to Baltimore, at the start of his career, he says, "We bought the $26,000 house because we couldn't afford the $28,000 house. And, on my off days, I painted it myself."
Palmer laughingly agrees that it's hard to imagine Mark Prior wielding a paint brush with his million-dollar arm, but it's a laugh with the tiniest hint of an edge. Though he himself was lucky enough never to suffer from the chronic injuries he calls "Prior-Kerry disease," Palmer did miss two seasons with a rotator cuff injury.
"I won 250 games after I had that torn rotator cuff," he says, "There's luck and there's genetics in that. . . . In a way, one of the greatest things that happened to me was getting hurt. It made me appreciate God's gift."
In Chicago for the White Sox-Orioles series and to make an appearance at a Kane County Cougars game as part of a cholesterol-awareness campaign sponsored in part by drug-maker Merck, Palmer is slightly bemused by the city's love affair with the dreadfully performing Cubs.
"I think the whole Cubs thing is very charming," he says diplomatically, but he makes it clear that he's an American League guy. "The White Sox are there for the long haul," he predicts.
He is clearly a fan of Ozzie Guillen, whom he likens to his old manager, the riotously hot-tempered Earl Weaver.
'You get used to it'
"You know, if I was Ozzie and I got to manage this team, I'd be a bit full of myself, too," he says. And, looking back on it, "Would a lot of American League umpires like to have had Earl take an anger-management class? Yes, but it would have ruined the fun."
Palmer doesn't think intense media scrutiny causes much of a problem for Ozzie or his team.
"You have a bad day at work," he says, "and if you're a pitcher, or a manager, or an athlete, you read about it in the paper. But, after a while, you get used to it."
Really? I ask, you really reach a point where it doesn't get to you anymore?
"Yeah," he says.
And I wonder if I will ever get to a point where visualizing an interview subject in his Jockey briefs will cease to be a serious distraction. I'm certainly not there yet.
Friday's column: Sometimes, it's mom's health vs. baby's
Right from the start, we should have known something was wrong. But the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last February, came as such a breath of fresh air that we didn't dare question it. Still, when an influential group of doctors bucked current baby-centric trends to suggest that the benefits of keeping depressed women on their medication during pregnancy might outweigh any potential risks to their unborn children, we should have noted just how remarkable it was.
Instead, we thought it was just a much-needed return to something resembling common sense: the notion that a woman's health rightly comes first in most circumstances, since, ultimately, it is her well-being that will help her baby thrive.
That all seems laughably naive now, in light of revelations first circulated on the Internet and extensively reported in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, that most of the study's 13 authors had financial relationships to the drug companies that manufacture the very antidepressants they were evaluating.
We should have known.
It's different when it's you
As it turns out, there are an awful lot of things that we should know, but don't, about how to manage health risks during pregnancy. It is incredibly difficult to conduct a serious clinical trial -- the kind of study that typically yields the most clear, definitive results -- involving pregnant women because of the ethical and liability issues associated with exposing their babies to any sort of potential risk, whether it's from eating a certain food or taking a particular medicine.
So, at the moment, the prevailing American philosophy is that if it seems there might be any risk at all, it's better just to avoid the prospect entirely.
Like many women, I've rather sheepishly gone along with this, dutifully abstaining from all sorts of theoretical hazards.
In principle, this really bothers me -- I am the adult here, after all, and I do have a reasonable amount of common sense -- but, in practice, I find that a previously undiscovered conservative streak has come to dominate my psyche. If something should go horribly wrong with my child, do I really want to spend time asking myself if that fabulous meal at Sushi Samba might have been to blame?
There is, of course, a school of thought that says this is excellent preparation for motherhood, that I should be practicing the whole not-about-me-anymore way of life.
But there's also something a bit more complicated going on. The whole idea of pregnancy has changed radically. Rather than being a fairly routine part of adulthood, it is now (for those of us not in our teens, anyway) celebrated as an accomplishment, revered as something utterly sacred.
And while nobody really wants to go back to the ridiculousness of the bad old days, when you couldn't even say "pregnant" on TV, this obsessive celebration of gestation has some downsides, too.
Early bonding has its price
It begins with the now-standard early ultrasound, in which technology gives women an in-utero glimpse of the fetus they're carrying at a phase when, a couple generations ago, many women didn't even yet realize they were pregnant. This moving image packs an unbelievable emotional wallop, even for the most committedly pro-choice among us.
And, on through pregnancy, nearly every test, instruction and checkup emphasizes the unborn baby as a person separate from its mother, with interests that are not always shared and that are sometimes, as in the case of antidepressants, in direct conflict.
Once the baby's sex is established -- as it almost always is, these days, several months before birth -- the parents-to-be are routinely asked for the baby's name. Attributes of personality -- active, excitable, night-owlish -- are bestowed on kids before they ever enter the world.
When things are going well, this is fun and charming. But when things go bad, always-painful dilemmas are now doubly complicated, with new and complex emotions subtly tipping the scales toward ever-increasing levels of expected maternal sacrifice. Your own mental health is just a concept, but your baby has a face and a name.
Research or marketing ploy?
The JAMA researchers say their ties to the big pharmaceutical companies had no influence on their study, which was funded by the government, not by private industry. They argue, essentially, that it's pretty much impossible to find any expert in their field who hasn't taken a speaking, consulting or research fee from a drug maker, so we all should just take their word that they weren't compromised.
It's impossible to know, of course. Which puts us right back to where we started.
We're looking for straight answers, for an objective assessment of risks over benefits. Instead, we get politics and marketing and who knows what else.
It's enough to make you long for the days when a pregnant woman could smoke a cigarette and grab a cocktail to soothe her nerves.
In yesterday's column, Eric Zorn refers to the quirky "urban madness" of two Chicago guys on a quest to spot every taxi with medallion numbers 1 through 100. Number 80 is apparently AWOL.
I know this is supposed to be one of those stories where you laugh at these doofy guys and their odd-ball numberic obsession.
But I'm not laughing. Because I count cabs, too.
It used to be just a casual thing, just noticing the number of a cab when it drove by. Sometimes, I'd see an old street address of mine, or the year I was born.
And then, on an early date with R., when we were in the habit of taking very long walks around different neighborhoods, just because it was a way to spend time together and talk, we both happened to spot cab number 8. It seemed amazing, when there are over 6,000 cabs driving around, to see one still driving around with such a low number.
Then we started actively looking.
Shouting out low numbers when we spot them has become one of those weird Rain-Man-like affectations we share (possibly a manifestation of genius, but, still, a level of dorkiness we'd rather not pass on to our child), which mostly bemuses our friends.
Our obsession reached its peak, though, when we decided that we wanted to ride in cab number one on our wedding day.
We'd spotted it a couple of times -- it's a Yellow Cab, in case you were wondering -- before then, but never actually gotten a chance to hail it.
So I actually called Yellow Cab to make a special request. I talked to a bunch of different people there, most of whom clearly thought I was insane, but, eventually, my request made it all the way to the CEO's desk.
I got the phone number of the driver who usually manned cab number one (a really sweet guy named Mohammed) and made arrangements with him to pick us up from the wedding in Lincoln Park and drive us down to the River North restaurant where we were having dinner afterwards.
Unfortunately, in describing (with ridiculously precise -- and utterly bridal) detail where I wanted him to pick us up, I made a critical error. In explaining the exact location at the Conservatory Garden where we'd be, I happened to say something like, "You know, by the zoo."
So, naturally, he waited for us at the main entrance to the Lincoln Park Zoo.
And I'd been slightly off on the time we'd be ready, since I had no idea taking family pictures would require so much time. (I come from a very small family, but married into a big one.)
By the time we went to look for Mohammed, he was long gone.
And, though I had programmed his number into my cell phone, I did not carry my cell phone with me down the aisle. (I really hope people don't actually do that.) His number was locked in my parents' hotel room.
So, R. and I did what any other self-respecting city dwellers would do. We crossed the street and hailed another cab.
People did give us some strange looks, like, "Don't you people plan anything?" But it is remarkably easy to flag down a cab in your wedding dress.
And R., to his great credit, had the foresight to be carrying cash, which was applied to our fare and a very generous tip.
As it turned out, the ride downtown (and great photos of us emerging from the random cab as our somewhat confused wedding guests looked on) was one of many highlights of the day. The driver was a wonderful West African guy, whose name I have totally forgotten, but he was really kind and happy to have helped us out.
Most of us will never experience what it's like to travel to a whole new world. Every place we go is somehow the same -- no matter how "exotic" our destination, the sight of a familiar brand of jeans or the smell of a fast food outlet or the sound of pop music will remind us of "home," and how the world is becoming smaller and smaller.
But, last night, I met some young travelers who are truly experiencing the world in a whole new way. My friend Simon, who lives in Nairobi, Kenya, is here in Chicago to chaperone a group of Kenyan boys. The boys, most of whom are orphans, are part of a rural youth soccer program and they're visiting as part of a cultural exchange program sponsored by the American Youth Soccer Organization.
Before this trip, many of them had never left their village in central Kenya. In fact, the trip to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, to go to the airport was such a big deal that six busloads of villagers came along to see them off, just for the experience.
They traveled for almost a full day to get here, which is a pretty brutal introduction to airplane travel. Many of them kept looking out the windows of the plane for almost the entire journey, looking to spot some land beneath them.
Because they live pretty much directly on the equator, their days and nights are of even length throughout the year. So, when they arrived here, after all those many hours of flying, they were shocked to find that it stayed light for so long into the evening. It's something they learned about in school, Simon told me, but they never imagined what it would be like. They were not sure the day would ever end.
Since arriving, they've been settling in with local host families and playing soccer in some of the local parks. They've also gone on lots of cultural outings, like last night's visit to Ravinia, where Sweet Honey in the Rock and Ladysmith Black Mambazo were playing.
The boys were driven up to Ravinia, from the city, along Sheridan Road. And, as if a typical American home wasn't luxurious enough, the elegant mansions of the North Shore struck them as eye-poppingly beautiful. They kept asking who lived in each one ("The President?") because they assumed that homes of such consequence must belong to very famous, powerful people.
Once in the park, the boys huddled close together, both for warmth -- a pleasantly chilly evening by our standards qualifies as pretty darn cold to them -- and for comfort. Because of the program, the crowd at Ravinia was more racially diverse than usual, but the boys still stood out, both for their matching warm-up suits and for the way they unabashedly held onto to one another. Kids here outgrow that kind of physical affection long before they get to be 12 years old.
They were not crazy for the pre-concert picnic experience that is such a big deal to us. Something about the idea of such a large crowd of people traveling all that way just to sit on a lawn and eat is, admittedly, rather odd when you think about it.
But the Ravinia Festival folks [full disclosure: I am a volunteer with some of Ravinia's Community Outreach and Eduction programs] had provided tickets for pavillion seating for the kids, so they could actually see the performers on stage. And, once they were seated there (where it was warmer), the attraction of the place was more obvious.
The program, from Sweet Honey in the Rock's pan-African sounds to Ladysmith's traditional South African music, was not totally familiar to most of the kids, since much of what they hear on the radio is rap and pop, but they connected to it immediately. And they had huge smiles on their faces by the time the performance was over.
The boys are so unfailingly polite that it's hard to know exactly what they're thinking about this experience. I'm guessing that their sense of culture shock and dislocation is pretty profound, since I often feel that way when I return here from only a couple of weeks in rural Kenya or Tanzania. The sheet material bounty of what's here -- the amount of food in a typical grocery store, for example -- is truly overwhelming. It's almost embarassing to me to have them see the riches with which we are surrounded.
And I wonder, too, what they will say about this place when they return home in a couple of weeks. Will it even seem real?
Charlie Trotter was one of my first-ever "Lunch With . . ." interviews, back in 2001 and our conversation remains one of the more memorable ones in five years of the cushiest job in journalism.
Partly, it was the food, a multi-course tasting menu that offered my first taste of peeky toe crab, among other delicacies. And partly it was the setting: a single table set up in the window of his then-recently opened "To Go" shop on W. Fullerton Ave. Customers came and went -- gawking and speculating all the while -- as we sat there for at least two hours, enjoying a nice wine pairing with each course.
Back then, I was a seriously conscientous (and relatively newly hired) Sun-Times employee, so I actually went back to the office when the interview was over, despite being fairly tipsy.
And, since then, one of my colleagues continues to call my (less and less frequent) good hair days, "Trotter hair days," since I had, quite transparently, tried to doll myself up for our interview.
It wasn't so much that I wanted to impress him. But, as someone who has been a "foodie" since approximately age 4 (the moment when Dad promised me I could order anything I wanted off the grown-up menu, as long as I was quiet through the whole meal and, no fool, I went with lobster), I wanted to convey my respect. Having an audience with him was a big deal to me.
Despite all of this, I had never actually eaten at his restaurant. Until Saturday night.
I'd had a couple of opportunities: a media dinner, which I turned down because the freebie seemed (1) unethical and (2) more importantly, not the "real" experience. And a guy I once dated was rather infamous around the singles scene for making periodic reservations (which has to be done a few months in advance) there and then taking whoever he was seeing at the time for a meal there when the reservation came around. Weirdly, I liked this guy enough to spend a lot of time with him, but didn't consider him "special" enough for a dinner at Trotter's. I didn't want to cheapen the experience.
But R's and my first anniversary seemed like exactly the right kind of occassion.
I spent almost the entire day Saturday in a state of anticipation. I got a manicure (because you can't eat that food with imperfect nails, can you?). I had a very light breakfast and lunch, so I'd have a good appetite (not that that's been a problem lately). I took a nap, so I wouldn't get sleepy. I tested multiple outfits to make sure they could comfortably accomodate a full pregnant belly.
And, most importantly, I practiced ordering a glass of champagne in my coolest, most totally composed voice.
Despite my feeling that many of the pregnancy-related food restrictions are overblown expressions of a hyper-aversion to risk that results from our overly litigious culture, I've found myself (mostly) following them anyway.
Because, really, on the small chance that something does go horribly wrong with my baby, I don't want to have a moment of asking myself if that spicy tuna roll or glass of Cabernet was worth it.
But having dinner at Trotter's on your anniversary? Come on. Champagne is required.
And I was itching for any hint of disapproval from my fellow diners.
Then we arrived for our dinner and discovered that the restaurant now offers a "Beverage Tasting Menu" to accompany its 10-course dinners that provides a perfectly-paired non-alcoholic drink with each course. Beginning with a sparkling fennel soda (very refreshing) and ending with a Apple, Beet and Celery juice that had definite red wine characteristics.
Each drink was served in (of course) the perfect Reidel stemware and each one was more fabulously unexpected than the last (I recommend the date and tangelo juice cocktail for everyone's drinking pleasure).
While R. was enjoying the perfect glass of wine with each of his courses (He went the "Grand menu" and I went with the "Vegetable menu," which meant we got twice the over-the-top descriptions from our server. I always love it when there are 17 ingredients in something that is the size of a finger sandwich.) I got to sip my lovely beverages in all their virtuous, non-alcoholic glory. It beat the hell out of sparkling water.
I was, in fact, so delighted by this option that I completely ditched the champagne plan. (And I totally chickened out of making a point to demand foie gras, as well.)
And, yes, OK, sure $45 for six very small servings of juice was probably a bit outrageous, but, really, that's sort of the point, isn't it?
Elizabeth Berg, the accomplished novelist who lives in Oak Park, has just published a beautiful new book, inspired by an incredible true story. She has just been on a national book tour. She has established herself -- following a mid-career boost when her 2000 book, Open House, was an Oprah's Book Club selection -- as a consistent presence on the best-seller lists.
So I feel a little guilty when, moments after sitting down at an unadorned booth at the Cozy Corner restaurant, we fall into conversation about a million different things, almost none of them even remotely literary.
First, there is Berg's partner/longtime companion (it's weird to say "boyfriend" for a grown-up, isn't it?), Bill Young. Young runs a book promotion company, and I'm constantly running into him as he escorts book-touring authors to their interviews around town. Though I've rarely gotten the chance to exchange more than a few words at a time with him, I have to confess to Berg that I've found him quite charming and that, in fact, I'd love to write a novel with him -- "literary escort," how great a job title is that? -- as the lead character.
In my obviously overworked imagination, I've envisioned their meeting and courtship, which, I've assumed, must have unfolded over the course of a book tour.
I ask Berg if my hyper-romantic version bears any resemblance to the real story of how they met.
"Oh yes," she says, with a lusty laugh, remembering the first time she encountered him, when he picked her up at the airport. He was standing there, holding a copy of her book.
"And, in fact, I believe the first thing I said to him was," she continues, lowering her voice to take on a mock-seductive tone, "'I think I'm the one you're looking for.'"
Green or yellow soup
Berg, who modestly describes herself as a "bottom feeder on the New York Times [best-sellers] list," seems not to have a pretentious or angst-ridden bone in her body, which is a remarkable -- almost frightening -- thing for a writer.
"Oh, believe me, I have my moments," she assures me, "but part of it is Bill. He just wakes up in a good mood. He's so positive, so even-keel. It's not really possible to be neurotic around him."
Berg and Young are wisecrack-trading regulars at this throwback of a diner, which Berg likes, she says, "because when you ask for soup, they ask you, 'green or yellow?'"
As she settles in, she gives me a voracious eater's tour of the extensive menu, recommending the chicken gyros, the Greek salad, or "if you can do it, a burger, fries and a milk shake."
She pauses for a moment when our waitress arrives, and then, after checking to find out what Bill ordered in her absence (she is trying to limit his gyros consumption), continues her recommendations, "Or, you know, you can't go wrong with breakfast."
Checking out the food at other tables around us, she also notes that the mac and cheese looks particularly good today. Eventually, she settles on a Greek omelet, with a side order of thick-cut Greek toast. And, though she sometimes asks them to hold the potatoes, this is not one of those days.
Instead, as she sits here by the window (a table preference that started because her dog was tied up outside and needed watching and now has simply become a habit), she seems to have settled in for an indulgently long and pleasant interlude.
Feeling at home in Oak Park
She has been traveling all over the country to promote her latest novel, We Are All Welcome Here (Random House: 187 pages, $22.95), and says her own airplane reading of choice includes "celebrity rags. So, if you need to get caught up on Brad and Angelina, I'm your woman."
And, if there is any thought that this is the just the slow, easy glamor of a famous writer's life, she would like to point out that the next item on her agenda for today is an oil change for her car.
Berg, who spent much of her adult life in the Boston area, has lived in Oak Park for five years now and has only lately begun to think of it as home.
"I was an Army brat," she says, "so I don't often feel at home in places, but I'm getting there."
But her easy banter with the waitress and hostess gives her away as far more rooted here than she lets on. She shares pictures of her newborn grandson with them, swaps diet stories and catches up on the local gossip. In the space of an hour, she has pulled me into their circle as well, telling them I'm pregnant and enlisting them in her campaign to persuade me not to find out the baby's sex until it's born.
Picture of inspiration
It feels almost unsporting to try to rope Berg into a more traditional author-interview conversation about the fascinating back story behind her novel. A reader, Marianne Raming Burke, sent Berg a photo of her late mother, Pat Raming, a polio victim who managed to raise children and live independently while paralyzed from the neck down. She was hoping Berg might somehow find a way to write about Raming's life.
"Look at this," she says, pointing at the copy of the photo the publisher had given me, "Look at how perfect her lipstick is."
Those well-painted lips were the inspiration for Paige Dunn, the heroic but flawed mother in the fictional We Are All Welcome Here, Berg says.
And then she takes a big, hot sauce-covered bite of her omelet and turns the conversation back to other topics.
It was a rather jarring sight: The friendliest of our neighborhood dog walkers -- a woman I think of as not just sweet or pleasant or nice, but, in fact, Minnesota nice -- was headed down the street in her trademark wide-brimmed hat, one hand on two enthusiastically towed leashes, the other clutching a book that had clearly drawn her attention away from her canine charges, who looked ready to take off at any moment.
You couldn't possibly miss the title of the book, which was printed in big, bold capital letters on a plain white background. Why Men Marry Bitches, it screamed, with that last word designed to look like it had been scrawled in hot pink lipstick.
That was the first I'd seen of Sherry Argov's book (Simon & Shuster: 246 pages, $14.95), which hit bookstores in June and has been selling briskly ever since.
The title, for reasons that are perhaps obvious, quickly captured my imagination. And, without fail, whenever I mentioned it to someone else -- male or female -- they immediately responded by saying something like, "Whew . . . you should talk to my friend . . ."
Apparently, everyone knows at least one man who is married to a, um, witch. And they're all pretty curious about how it happened.
But purely intellectual curiosity doesn't sell a lot of books. The people who are buying Why Men Marry . . . are not just wondering how it is that affable Jack wound up with nagging, volatile Jane. Instead, the audience for this book consists largely of women who have a much more specific question: "Why did Jack marry Jane rather than me?"
Advice for the nice
This is a book for nice girls. Nice girls who, despite their seemingly attractive niceness, are still single.
Argov's main point is that, the whole Mary Ann vs. Ginger thing notwithstanding, men don't really go for "nice." They go for "interesting." And, she writes, "the fastest way to become boring to a man is to always do as you are told."
So she sets out a whole program of bitchiness, emphasizing assertiveness and confidence over actual rudeness, which is meant to turn an otherwise ordinary woman into a highly sought-after potential bride. In the days before profanity became ubiquitous, this was known as "playing hard to get."
Nice girls, of course, tend to reject this sort of strategizing, but Argov insists that it is completely justified by all the classic ethical philosophers or, at least, that turnabout is fair play. "The reality," she says, "is that men stretch the truth and strategically omit critical information all the time in order to have their cake and eat it, too."
As a married person -- and a still-wearing-the-rose-colored-glasses newlywed, at that -- I expected to be somewhat horrified by Argov's advice. I want, of course, to believe that my now-husband proposed to me in a feverish fit of romanticism, not because I skillfully (or unskillfully) manipulated him into it. And I do like to think of myself as, well, nice.
So it came as something of a shock to find out, as I read Argov's book, that I'd actually nailed some of the finer points of husband-snaring bitchdom.
For example, the decision not to live together before we got married -- made, I must admit, not so much for moral or tactical reasons as the pragmatic desire not to have to move all my stuff -- was a key strategic call, as was my laisser-faire attitude toward his bachelor pad, which I did not attempt to redecorate until it officially became "our place."
"Think like a bitch," Argov counsels women tempted to call in a feng shui consultant, or at least a cleaning service, to deal with their boyfriends' dirty sock-strewn abodes, "Leave it nice and miserable at his place so that when he visits your place it will feel like he's 'Movin' on Up.' "
At the time, I just thought of the sock thing as "not my problem." Like so many masterminds, I was blithely unaware of my own genius.
Like Elton John sang . . .
Bitchiness, like the miniskirt, seems to go in and out of style with a certain regularity. It had a big moment in the mid-'90s, when following "The Rules" seemed like a good idea.
And then, as Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigned for the Senate by going on a "listening tour" and Martha Stewart got her comeuppance, it faded.
Now, once again, it's back. You can trace its most recent resurgence using the height of Katie Couric's heels or the sales of Ann Coulter's horrible book.
And this leaves the rest of us -- the self-described nice girls, like my favorite dog walker -- wondering what to do. Must we cast aside our inclination for quiet politeness?
I got my answer on Thursday morning's L ride to work. After I stepped into a crowded car and grabbed a pole as the train headed downtown, a woman standing across from me demanded, in what I can only imagine was her most bitch-like tone, "Isn't anyone going to offer this pregnant woman a seat?"
Sufficiently shamed, several people did.
And I, blushing furiously, gratefully accepted one.
And to give poor Steve Rhodes a break. (See item 8 here.) Most regular people are able to just avoid reading stuff that doesn't interest them, but Rhodes is a Very Important Media Critic, and, as is often the case for under-recognized geniuses, he must suffer for his art. At this point, the therapy bills must be really piling up.
