Debra Galant Explains the Universe

Crown of thorns, hold the popcorn

Warning: the following post is 100% humor-free.

One day, when I was a kid, I was walking in my neighborhood in Northern Virginia, and some kid, who I didn’t even know, turned to me, fixed me with a look of pure hatred and sputtered, “You’re the one who killed Christ.”

My memory is strongest when it comes to place, and the psychic punch of this accusation was so hard that it puts me right back there on Bren Mar Drive, a street where I also feared stray dogs and the taunts of children who made fun of the flesh-colored eye patch I had to wear to correct my lazy eye, which, from a distance, made me look like a Cyclops.

Last night, watching “The Passion of the Christ,” I started getting that creepy feeling again. I shrunk down into my seat at the movie theater, wondering if people behind me could tell, from my body language or some other subtle sign (horns?), that I was a Jew. Partly, I was paranoid because early on in the movie whenever I moved my head to the left or the right to see better, the woman behind me sighed loudly, as if I were repositioning my head merely to inconvenience her. Nothing like having your every movement scrutinized. But the deeper fear, of course, was that this movie audience – if they knew I was Jewish - might tear me from limb to limb. If there’s anything “Passion” communicates – beyond blood – it’s the power of a mob.

I saw it because of the buzz, because I was curious, because I wanted to be able to talk about it from the position of knowledge. I discounted all the accounts that it was gory. I wish I hadn’t.

It is gory. Relentlessly and gratuitously violent. And boring. If you want to see an hour and a half of people flaying a guy in a loincloth, this is your movie. But when I say flaying, I mean flaying. Routine Hollywood violence pales. I said to my husband, driving home, that “Passion” makes the TV show “24” look like “I Love Lucy.”

The anti-Semitism angle? I’ve heard it said several times that Jews and Christians see two different movies when they view “Passion,” but in the movie I saw, there was scene after scene in which an angry mob of Jews demands that the Romans kill Jesus.

But I got even more scared when I started trolling the internet for “Passion” stories after I got home. I started to get nervous when one weblog writer, talking about “Passion,” purposely put typos in the movie title so as not to allow people to find her site with search engines. That was where I learned about the church sign in Denver reading “Jews Killed the Lord Jesus.” Then I went on the yada yada blog, and read the full “Passion” coverage. Most astounding of all was the fact that there’s a new line of jewelry out, with pewter nails (replicas of the kind used to nail Jesus to the cross) tied to a leather strap. It's like that Lenny Bruce routine:if Jesus had been killed now, you’d have kids walking around with electric chairs on their necklaces.

The one moment in which I was able to see “Passion” from a remotely sympathetic point of view, was when – in the theater – I thought, why make a movie about all this hatred and torture, instead of what Jesus was trying to teach? And then I thought of Holocaust movies. There is a need to document things that are awful, to remind the world of the evil it’s capable of. But this would be like a Holocaust movie with no plot, except for the systematic torture of a Jew. No Schindler. No pianist. No kooky Italian clown. In most of the Holocaust pictures I’ve seen, there are some particular shocking moments, which stand out like the sudden shot of a gun. In “Passion,” there’s not one or two shocking moments. It’s non-stop gruesome, like a horror movie.

And I don’t know of any line of jewelry for Jews in which gas chambers are attached to pendants.

My advice. Even if you want to be in the know, don’t see it. You will regret it.

My hope. Word of mouth sinks the movie, and it gets nothing but a "best makeup" nomination for next year's Oscars.

Queen Esther Rocks

It's Purim Spiel time, and this year Temple Ner Tamid is doing Purimstock -- a Woodstock-inspired version of the Queen Esther and Haman ("Hey, man") story. If you'd like to hear the Megillah Players rehearsing, go over to my other website and check out the audio postcards.

Karen the blogger

And by the way, welcome my friend Karen Kaplowitz to the blogosphere. She blogged me long before either one of us knew what the word meant, sending me hilarious commentaries in the form of lists. When I started blogging, she began to investigate the giant web of self-expression, starting with my blogroll and jumping from link to link. You'll enjoy her humor and her Polaroid transfers as well.

Noah the vegetarian

Noah came home today with the news that he's thinking about becoming a vegetarian. He sounded a little like a politician floating an idea, waiting for the poll results.

"Why?" I said.

"Because it seems unfair to kill an animal just to give you a meal," he answered.

Yesterday, he came home with the news that he was going to become a hippie and grow a pony tail. That's fairly big news because for the past year he's sported a crew cut. He also reported that he wanted to go out and buy some hippie regalia, including tie-dye shirts and bandanas, and that his friend Tyler, who is a Republican, isn't going along with this hippie thing - although Andrew and Carey are.

Noah is 11.

I know that a lot of kids announce their plans to become vegetarians and few stick with it. Noah, however, decided when he was 9 to become kosher and has stuck to it. No one else in our family is kosher. In fact, the other night, when Noah got invited last-minute to a sleepover, I called Warren up, excited.

"Guess what? Noah's sleeping over at Rachel and Alex's. We can eat trayf. Pick up Chinese."

This doesn't mean that Noah's deeply religious. Just that he can stick to things. The other day, at synagogue, listening to all the prayers saying that God was great, terrific, wonderful, marvelous, etc., Noah said, "It sure sounds like we're sucking up to him."

I asked him later if he thought God had a sense of humor.

"I hope so," he said.

He says he's going to try the vegetarian thing for about a week, and if it's not too bad, he's going to stick with it. It will also make being kosher easier, he pointed out.

I countered with the fact that it will make cooking family dinners harder.

"And besides," I said. "You might have to eat some vegetables."

Noah, who hates vegetables, thinks they should call it something else then. He wants to be a carb-o-tarian.

I, meanwhile, signed up today for the South Beach Diet - on the recommendation of the rabbi's wife Marilyn, who I saw at temple Saturday, 30 pounds lighter than the last time I saw her. Which shows how religious I am.

It will be interesting to see who sticks to their diet plan longer, me or Noah.

My money is on the kid.

Ralph Nader

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Warren's birthday adventure

Highlights of Warren's birthday adventure (in which we time-shifted his birthday from Monday, when everybody but Warren has either work or school, to Sunday morning):

1. Awakened at 8 am on a Sunday morning and released from a nightmare in which I was naked, had a stolen cell phone but no money and had to navigate on upside-down Hot Wheels-like roads, etc.

2. Margot hacking and coughing all the way into the city from New Jersey.

3. Discovered new route to Jersey City (on the way to "the" city.)

4. Went to Clinton Street Baking Company, a "not your Zadee's Lower East Side" eatery, where we threw off the entire demographics of the place by being two geezers and two kids from New Jersey.

5. Had fun snapping pictures of everything.

6. Handed the camera to Warren to take a picture of me, only to discover I am ugly.

7. Deleted pictures and was reassured by family about ugliness.

8. Fried eggs on roasted artichokes, smothered in truffle oil!

9. "Not your Zadee's Lower East Side" prices either: bill was $48.

10. Went to see Triplets of Belleville! (The coolest movie ever, and if Finding Nemo wins for best animated feature, it's the biggest injustice since.... PUT YOUR FAVORITE INJUSTICE IN THE COMMENTS FOLDER).

11. Guy running the snack bar told Margot she looked like a "young Jennifer Connelly."

12. Debated whether the Belleville in Belleville was our NJ Belleville.

13. Snapped pictures of Belleville signs all the way home.

14. Recapped movie for Margot, who slept (but didn't cough) through it.

Novel distractions

I may have to go back to the old-fashioned typewriter in order to finish revising my novel-in-progress, Rattled. (Click here to read the first chapter.)

I mean, I was really, really diligently working on my revision of Chapter 23, which has my philandering real-estate developer Jack Barstad striding through the lobby of the Borgata hotel in Atlantic City, and I'd already spent a good hour looking at pictures I'd taken during a trip there in November, and wracking my brain for appropriate adjectives.

I'd gotten this far

It was classy. Boy, it was classy. Polished wooden tables, polished marble floors, polished tinted glass. Just goddamn polished. You could buy a lot of class for a billion dollars. So much class that you'd never know – unless you were in real estate, like Barstad – that the place was built right on top of a dump.

Barstad had always been partial to Trump’s Taj Mahal, with the big white elephants that lined the driveway, the turquoise onion domes and dripping crystal chandeliers. But he had to admit that the Borgata made the Taj look like a cross between a bordello and a Greyhound station. The Borgata – that’s where all the players were staying these days, the real high rollers, and the celebrities, in town from New York and Beverly Hills. He’d already spotted Bruce Willis and his entourage in the lobby. You practically had to make what Bruce Willis made to afford the Borgata, but who cared? Once you’d walked through the sleek chrome-and-glass doors, you'd never stay anywhere else in Atlantic City again.

when I decided to look up the word "arm candy" on the internet for the next paragraph, introducing Barstad's latest bimbo.

And that's where I found The Word Spy.

Arm candy, of course, is

(ARM kan.dee) n. An extremely beautiful person who accompanies a member of the opposite sex to a party or event, but is not romantically involved with that person (cf. eye candy).

but did you know that a booth bunny is

(BOOTH bun.ee) n. A model hired to work in a company's booth during a trade show.

and that a fluffragette is

(fluf.ruh.JET) n. A woman who has only pre-feminist cultural or political heroines (cf. suffragette).

Example Citation:

So I shall live with the Barbies and Little Mermaids, the handbags and hairbands that make up our pink world. Grace will grow out of it, and if she doesn't, does it matter?

She may never be a Germaine Greer, but she can drink sloe gin, subscribe to the Financial Times and join the Fluffragettes.
—Margarette Driscoll, "My girl can't help it, she loves pink," Sunday Times (London), February 28, 1999

Well, you get the idea.

If you're working on a novel, particularly a comic send-up of suburban manners, I can recommend many more interesting definitions to get you off task.

Like alpha mom, trailing spouse and puppy leave.

Hey, it's a dictionary isn't it? I'm working.

Viagra, Levitra, Cialis, oh my

Now, if only they had a pill to make us tired mamas want the damn football.

Mama Blog and her two baby blogs

Is it unmotherly to withhold google juice from one’s own offspring?

Let’s say, for example, the Child A has a website and Child B has a website, and that Child B’s website is wildly funny and Child A’s is not.

Child B writes, for example, this parody on parental translation:

Okay, now don't get me wrong, I think my parents are cool. But I do not appriciate it when they lie to me. And your parents will never get a lie past you if you read this translation page: If you say "When will we be there yet?" in a car, "Soon," means:"I'd tell you but I promised we'd be earlier than that." Take a shower, do your homework, make your bed, and other junk all mean "Get out of my face." Bed time is not when you get tired but when your parents haven't said anything for a while, and decide to say something. "I'll think about it," means "No," "Probably," means "No," and "It's your decision," means "No." That's nice," means, "I complimented you, now can I watch my show?" "I don't like the way you're complaining," means, "Stop trying to make a point." And what else I hate is that grown-ups think that kids will run around with pot the second they take their off them. And if in a shrink's office, if nothing they say leaves the room, why do parents get progress results? Aside from all that, grown-ups are usually nice. Usually...

Whereas Child A’s website is, well, let’s put it this way, a website only a mother could love:

Hey Welcome to the coolest website on the planet!!! My name is Margot and someday I'm going to be a star! I Love the theatre. Broadway rocks my socks! I like to sing, I like sushi, and rainbows!

Rainbows? Sheesh.

Now let us suppose that said mother put Child B’s website on her blogroll and that Child B soon discovers to his delight he has received a major infusion of google juice. In fact when he types the name of his website - “Your Average Midget” - into Google, it actually comes up. He's famous! A giant among midgets! And who does he have to thank? His mother, of course. (Actual conversation: “Who gives you google juice?” “Mommy gives me google juice.”)

Now Child A wants on the mother’s blogroll. Child A wants google juice.

So far this hypothetical mother has resisted, on the grounds of, well, standards. And she has started receiving, well, comments on her blogsite from Child A, and the comments are beginning to sound like ransom notes:

I luv you website Posted by: Margot at February 15, 2004 06:47 PM

I wanna be a link now Posted by: Margot at February 15, 2004 06:56 PM

A mother who puts her anonymous readership ahead of her own Child A would be a very, very bad mother, right?

OK. So let’s say this mother (ok, it’s me, all right), let’s say I offered google juice to Child A if she cleaned up her room. In other words, let’s say I offered to sell my readers out just for the momentary pleasure of seeing Child A’s floor clear of 18 million outfits. You would understand, dear reader, wouldn’t you?

But could I possibly be forgiven for giving the google juice away when the room is not cleaned up, just because Child A, asleep in her messy room, momentarily looks angelic? Would that not violate every principle of motherhood, blogrolling and negotiating with hostage-takers – not to mention teaching Child A that a mother’s bribes mean nothing?

Oh what the hell. What’s a little nepotism on the world wide web?

Sleep, dear Child A, and let me sprinkle a little fairy dust, um, I mean, google juice on you. Dream sweet dreams of being discovered, by a very special search engine.

LUV DEB

Courtesy Acme Heartmaker