Debra Galant Explains the Universe

Midnight madness

Did anybody else catch the interview on Morning Edition Thursday with Alice Flaherty, author of The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block and the Creative Brain?

It turns out that this urge to tell the world every little thing that’s on our mind is a disease and it actually has a name, hypergraphia. “Compulsive writing” (and I always thought it was just being prolific) is actually a sign of flawed brain chemistry. The take-home message of the piece: it’s a lot better than writer’s block, but if you’re up past midnight scribbling away, you’re not well.

Well I could have told you that.

As I write this, it’s 12:36 am, and I’ve been going hard since the morning, racing to Newark and Jersey City and then Montclair, and I’d finally caught up on e-mails, turned off the computer and climbed into bed when I remembered hearing this story on NPR. And I just had to make sure that everybody in Blog World knew about it.

The question on the table: If staying up past midnight writing is a disease, then is the fact that thousands of people are now up posting to the blogosphere an epidemic? I’m too tired to check the CDC. But check out the story on NPR and tell me what you think.

Snow Day!!!

There are two ways to make sure that school is cancelled when it snows.

11-year-old boy method: Wear your pajamas inside out.

15-year-old girl method: Call up the school system's telephone recording every 15 minutes until 2 a.m. and scream until they finally post a cancellation announcement.

Ripped (off) from today's headlines

Hospitals want others blocked from performing cardiac surgery

Headline courtesy Newsday

AP Tuesday January 27, 2004

WUTEGGSIT, N.J. -- The Wuteggsit PTA was devastated today to learn that its spring open-heart surgery fundraiser will be cancelled because of threatened lawsuit by a major New Jersey hospital trade group.

“This is so upsetting,” said Mandi Rosenbaum, chairwoman of the event. “The kids have been looking forward to this for weeks.” Rosenbaum is just one of a dozen mothers who had been training to perform open heart surgery at the “Open Your Heart” capital campaign event scheduled for February.

A single cardiac surgery can bring in $25,000 in fees. “That’s a year’s worth of library books, special assemblies and juice for class parties,” Rosenbaum said. “Now what are we going to do? Hold a bake sale?”

Another organization hoping to cash in on the cardiac surgery craze was Cub Scout Den 532, which had planned on holding a “Open Heart Rally” instead of its traditional Pinewood Derby.

“Anybody can carve a stupid piece of balsa wood,” said den leader Cecil Penderglass. “Cracking open someone’s chest cavity and unblocking a coronary artery, now that’s craftsmanship.”

The hospital group stood by its campaign to keep heart surgery in hospitals. “Sure, anybody with an anesthesiologist and a pair of latex gloves can perform open heart surgery,” a spokesman said. “But it’s not as easy as it looks.”

Mars? What's the big deal?

© Debra Galant 2004

Having promised to explain the universe, it is high time I got to the subject of Mars. There was lots of news about Mars this week, although most of it was overblown.

1. The Spirit, NASA’s first rover to land on Mars, was out of touch.

So? NASA should meet my husband. There are times, particularly when dinner is ready and he’s not home from work yet, when my husband cannot be found. Is this a national emergency? You know, NASA, you’ll never hold onto a rover if you hound it morning, noon and night for data about its whereabouts. Sometimes guys just need a little bit of space. Or, you know, they can’t find a cell to call home on.

2. The Mars Express found water on Mars, in the form of ice.

So? There’s water everywhere, especially places it’s not supposed to be. I spilled half a bottle of water on the car seat today after coming home from the gym. It made a huge mess. We have a leaky gutter that drips so loud when it rains that it’s almost impossible to hear the television. The front steps are coated with ice. Here on earth, this is considered a nuisance.

3. President Bush wants to send astronauts to the moon, and then to Mars. This will cost gazillions of dollars.

So? I want to send my kids to sleep-away camp, and then to college. This will also cost gazillions of dollars. Now, if President Bush offered to send my children to Mars…

4. A second NASA rover, the Opportunity, had a flawless landing on Mars Sunday and sent back mind-blowing pictures to the scientists at home.

So? Show me a second child anywhere that doesn’t outshine their older sibling.

And by the way, Houston, do you think it’s such a great idea to send two siblings off on their own to a distant planet, while you stay at home and watch on the nanny-cam? You know what kind of trouble Spirit can get into. Just wait ‘til he gets wind of all the attention that your precious little Opportunity is getting.

Swank-o-Matic

Strat-o-Matic is a baseball fantasy game in which you use cards based on the actual statistics of real baseball players. You can play it on a game board or on a computer and you can mix-and-match your teams so that Babe Ruth and Derek Jeter are teammates or so the ’27 Yankees can play the ’99 Yankees.

Or, if you have the creativity of a Tom Swank, you can really mix it up, and create leagues and tournaments that only the truly obsessed can understand. Like the under .400 league, composed only of players from teams with lousy records, or the A-Z league, in which no team roster could contain more than one player whose name started with the same letter.

When my son Noah and I met Tom, at the Yogi Berra Museum a couple of years ago, Tom had a tumor the size of a large egg protruding from his cheek. The tumor disappeared, but he’s been battling cancer ever since. And the word is that he’s going to lose the battle and lose it soon.

Last year, Noah and I dragged Tom to Glen Head, NY to Opening Day of the Strat-o-Matic season. That’s the day when scores of grown men go to the Strat-o-Matic headquarters, a little nothing building in a Long Island parking lot, and wait in line for hours – no matter the weather – to pick up the new cards with the statistics from the previous season. They could get the cards in the mail. But they prefer to make an adventure out of it, and bond with their fellow fanatics. To get a mental picture of it, you sort of have to imagine the kind of lines that form to see Santa in shopping malls at Christmas, and then imagine that all the kids are middle-aged men with beer guts and sloppy clothes.

But they’re great, these guys. They’re great because they have passion. I met two lawyers who’d flown in from Toronto, skipping court, and a guy who’d flown in from L.A, and was planning to fly right back as soon as he picked up his cards. Tom, who is a well-known figure in Strat-o-Matic circles, had made the trek many times before, but he really had no business schlepping out to Long Island in the cold with his health as bad as it was. He went as a favor to me. I wanted to do the story for public radio. And he went for my son Noah, who he drafted into the Strat-o-Matic world that day at the Yogi Berra Museum and who came to win a very special place in Tom’s heart.

Next Friday is opening day in Glen Head. It will be the same as always, the same boisterous crowd - but for the absence of the most passionate fan of them all. I’m glad Noah and I dragged him there last year.

Last February, Tom entered a Valentines Day essay contest at the Star Ledger. He wrote an essay about having cancer when his grandson Justin was born and how he bargained with God for just five more years so he could get to know Justin. He was one of the finalists in the contest too, but when the paper called him about running the essay, he was in the hospital. Whoever answered the phone - and it was probably his mother-in-law, who doesn't speak English - didn't understand what the paper wanted, and so the essay about Justin never got published. It really burned Tom that it worked out that way, that he was cheated of his chance to win that essay contest.

He got his five years though. Plus some extra innings.

Tomorrow night, if Tom says it’s okay, Noah and I are going to visit him at the hospice. I hear a bunch of the guys are going to come, and someone’s going to smuggle in a six-pack, and if it’s at all possible, there’s going to be some Strat.

Through the looking glass

© Debra Galant 2004

I feel as if I’ve just stepped through the looking glass, and into a very, very crowded bar.

In 2003, I was still a blogging virgin. I wasn’t posting columns to my webpage yet. Today – three weeks and about a million internet hours later – I learned about google juice.

I learned that you get good google juice by linking to, and better yet, being linked to by other websites. Particularly, you know, those popular blogs and websites, the ones where all the cool bloggers hang out.

Which is, when you think of it, the same principle behind getting invited to sit with the popular kids in the cafeteria. Be sitting with them already.

But here’s the thing. I didn’t know that this cafeteria – or crowded bar – even existed until three weeks ago. I didn’t know that there were this many people in the world all had opinions they were so eager to vent. I didn’t know I was being ranked by google. I knew how to use google, sure. I looked up things all the time. Just usually not myself. Now, embarrassingly enough, I do.

The funny thing is, I’m writing for two audiences. There’s Mom, Dad, Sue, Karen, Walter, Char, Ellen – normal people in the real world. People I’ve actually shared meals with.

And I’m also writing for Ellie and Mark Federman – my new blog-world pals – and for people who link to me from Ellie’s “Prose and Cons” page. It was Federman, of the Marshal McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology in Toronto, who told me about this platform, typepad, in the first place, and who filled me in on the concept of google juice during an hour-and-a-half telephone conversation today. And it was Ellie who told me that I had to get rid of the picture of myself with the American flag behind me because it made me look like a right-wing kook. Which is why you now find my pony picture on this page. (Cuter, anyway.)

So, I have gone from blogging virgin to blogging slut in three weeks flat.

I have discovered what the black holes are in my subtitle.

And I am spending less and less time out in the quote-unquote real world.

I did, however, go out to lunch today, where I discovered that poor Sushi Hana was virtually deserted – the result of the recent proliferation of sushi restaurants in Montclair. I also learned that they serve a Debbie roll, but - and here's irony for you - it features calamari, the one food in the whole world I'm allergic to.

I also took a long walk, and went by the Glen Ridge Pool, where I saw the bright primary colors of the sliding board and fountain rise out of a field of snow. Set against a 4 pm winter sky of pinks and blues, it was an odd and lovely sight.

Don't Touch That Dial! 24 v. State of the Union

© Debra Galant 2004

"WHAT????? I live for Tuesday at 9pm! The State of the Union address is already on every other channel! Talk about it on FOX News! Don't strip us of 24 and make us wait another SEVEN days! This is so frustrating to have to skip a week - every season this happens - and 24 is such a riviting (sic) show that you have to stay on top of...FOX, you've created all these24 Addicts - and you refuse to give us our fix! Shame on you!" – 24 fan on Fox’s online discussion board

Really, it wasn't that bad missing "24" tonight, was it? In fact, without a score sheet, it would have been hard to tell which you were watching: Fox's critically-acclaimed political thriller or the State of the Union address.

President of the United States:
24: Large-pored black guy with chance for Oscar nomination
SOTU: Simian-looking white guy with lock on Republican nomination

Threat:
24: Nation at imminent risk from Salazar brothers and Nina, who are arm-wrestling over weapons of mass destruction
SOTU: $120 billion war rescues nation from “dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" while pissing off the rest of the world

Secret weapon:
24: Jack Bauer
SOTU: USA Patriot Act

Comic relief:
24: Kim Bauer getting chased by a mountain lion
SOTU: Eye-rolling by Ted Kennedy

Writing:
24: Entire thing tightly-scripted by professional writers
SOTU: Entire thing tightly-scripted by professional writers

Family values:
24: Baby shows up at CTU and causes general tizzy
SOTU: One little state okays gay marriage and causes general tizzy

Audience reaction:
24: General acclaim, tempered by smart-ass comments from Gustave at Television Without Pity
SOTU: Many standing ovations from half of the room

Next episode:
24: Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2004, 9 pm. Eastern time
SOTU: Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005, 9 pm. Eastern time

eBay merchandise:
24: Kiefer Sutherland signed poster, $40 starting bid on eBay
SOTU: GEORGE W BUSH AUTOGRAPH VIP COBALT CUFFLINKS, $49 starting bid on eBay

All vegetables considered

© 2004 Debra Galant

I suffer from TDD, television deficit disorder, a condition that leaves me perpetually clueless when it comes to the latest on Madonna or Britney. I depend almost completely on the kindness of NPR to keep me well-informed about the world, which is why I almost missed today’s big story: Jacko showing up to court 20 minutes late, dancing on his SUV and throwing a party for his fans.

I know this only because I happened to be walking through Macy’s at the hour of Jackson’s court appearance, and there happened to be a flat-screen TV embedded in the wall outside the ladies room. I wasn’t really paying attention, but even when you are looking at clothes you don’t need, marked down 75%, you can pick up a certain urgency in an anchor’s voice and the buzz of a televised crowd. Not to mention…a TV, in the petites department? What the hell was going on? Oh yes, I said to myself. Michael Jackson’s trial. I’ve heard something about that.

Later, on carpool duty, my radio tuned to NPR, I thought I’d hear more on the Jackson story. But, nope. Just to make sure I hadn’t missed it, I came home, looked up NPR on the web, and listened to their 7 o’clock top-of-the-hour newscast.

That’s when I realized that my husband was right. NPR truly does serve up a different kind of newscast than the mainstream media. News that’s good for you could be their motto. The brown rice and broccoli of the media.

Here was NPR’s top-of-the-hour line-up at 7 pm eastern time:

1. Bush appoints Charles Pickering as a federal judge while Congress is in recess (broccoli)
2. The Supreme Court refuses to block a GOP redistricting plan in Texas (spinach)
3. Two defendants in Virginia plead guilty in a terrorist plot (eggplant with garlic)
4. Stock prices up somewhat (pickle)
5. Business inventories rose in November (stale rice in the back of the refrigerator)
6. Justice department won’t fight court order allowing John Hinckley to visit his parents (ratatouille)

It did turn out that NPR ran a story about Jacko after all – but not in the day’s news summary, not with their own reporter (they interviewed a correspondent from People magazine) and, unlike just about every news outlet, they didn’t feature it on the front of their web page.

Don't get me wrong. I love NPR. But for dessert, I did have to turn on CNN. I only watched for a minute. Just a little taste was all I needed. After all, it’s January. I ate too many sweets over the holidays.

That's so gay

© Debra Galant 2004

Gay people scored a victory in New Jersey this past week, when the state passed a Domestic Partnership Act. Now, gay couples will get the kinds of privileges that those of us wedded to the prosaic institution of marriage take for granted – like having your shrink visits covered by your spouse’s health insurance.

But that doesn’t change the fact that on playgrounds across the state, the worst insult imaginable is to say, “That’s so gay.” It’s an insult that has stood the test of time, going back to the Sputnik era, when I was a kid, when bullies puffed themselves up by accusing weak, powerless specimens of childhood of being “homos.”

When kids say, “That’s so gay” they’re usually not referring to matters of sexuality. Kids, as it happens, are equal-opportunity offenders. They will just as easily offend the disabled with “That’s so lame,” the intellectually challenged with “That’s so retarded” or the denizens of the inner city with “That’s so ghetto.”

But as it happens, bullies have to watch who they insult. Because the guy they picked on in third grade might just grow up to be one of the Fab Five from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” – and get to go through their closets and insult their sportswear on national television.

When “Queer Eye” came onto the scene – what, five months ago? – I thought it was going to be another one of those stupid reality shows, like “Joe Millionaire.” It sounded like a flash in the pan, a punch line to a joke on “The Simpsons.” And yet here we are all these weeks later and you can’t get away from it. It comes up in synagogue. Teenage girls think it’s the cooler than Justin Timberlake. Staid, middle-aged white women practically snort wine out their noses recounting their favorite episodes.

Before you know it, “That’s so gay” won’t work as a playground insult at all.

This is not the first time a group of outsiders have come out of nowhere to define the popular culture. In Neal Gabler’s book, “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” he describes how the whole Hollywood studio system was created by Jewish immigrants fresh from the shtetl. The Jews not only invented Hollywood, they invented the whole idea of America that Hollywood peddled in the 30’s and 40’s, right down to Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”

So if the Jews can invent White Christmas and queers can tell straight guys how to dress, what’s next? Suburban white boys wearing baggy pants and gold chains in order to look ghetto? Oh yeah. Eminem.

Here’s my dream.

If Jews and gays and boyz in the hood can turn the power structure of the American playground upside down, then maybe everything is up for grabs.

Maybe fat people will get to run the fashion magazines - or even model for them. Maybe 18-25 years olds will stop being the most powerful demographic in the marketplace. Maybe menopausal women will be considered hot – and not just by themselves.

Maybe the word gay can even go back to the original meaning of "being keenly alive and exuberant: having or inducing high spirits."

It's America. Stranger things have happened.

Give my regards to broadway

© Debra Galant 2004

In my house growing up, whenever one of us came home and asked if anyone had called, my father always answered the same thing: “MGM.”

As if.

The truth was, despite the talent that coursed through our house like water gushing from a broken water heater, talent scouts rarely called. Actually, they never called. Nor did scouts for major league baseball teams, recruiters for the CIA, high-powered literary agents or the Beatles. If nominated we would have run, but strangely, the call to carry the mantle of our party never came.

In fact, the only calls from people who didn’t know us personally were from people trying to sell us something.

So please don’t mention to my children that while they were out the other day, somebody claiming to work for a talent scout called to see if they could audition for a TV commercial.

Unfortunately, the “booking agent” asked for my daughter’s name (and I said it) just as she walked through the door from school. I hung up so fast that I aroused said daughter’s suspicion.

“What was that?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“I heard my name.”

“Dentist,” I lied.

A search on the internet a few hours later turned up a website filled with sob stories from people who’d actually answered the siren call of television fame – from the same so-called talent agency – and found themselves parted from substantial sums of money.

Funny thing is, despite having signed up for the National Do Not Call Registry in September, I’m getting more unwanted calls than ever. And not just more calls. Weirder calls.

The other day, a doctor’s office called offering me a free physical.

A few months ago, when I tried to get rid of a call from a chimney sweep, the guy turned nasty. After I turned down his services, he actually threatened to report me to the authorities for having a dirty chimney. When I questioned his business ethics, he slammed down the phone.

He called about a month later. I recognized his voice, of course. To him, of course, I was just a phone number on a list. But the snarl in his voice had seared itself into my memory.

And I’m always winning free vacations in Orlando, a city I can’t stand.

So when the call comes from the MacArthur Foundation, offering me a genius grant, I’ll probably blow it.

Half a million dollars to reward my creativity? Yeah, right. Genius? Hold on. There’s call-waiting. I better go. Might be MGM. Just put me on your do-not-call list.