How to Show Up for Your Friends When All You Really Care About is Tacos RN

Being a good friend is hard, especially as an adult. We have so many demands on our time and attention: spouses, homes, children, jobs, and--especially--tacos.

Back in high school or college, your friends were probably your top priority. You had more time to really sit down with your friends and shove tacos in your face at all hours of the day and night, but now you have to carve out the time to be a good listener and really show up, which is hard to do when all you can think about is the carne asada tacos you're going to eat later, as soon as you're done listening to your friend describe her child's experience of being bullied on the school bus, maybe also with guacamole, though that can get messy.

What does it mean to really show up for your friends? Without thinking about tacos? 

Well, it's hard to explain, but you know it when you see it: maybe you send them a handwritten note, or a care package. Maybe you call them on the phone, instead of just texting or liking one of their posts on social media, just to let them know you're thinking about them and not exclusively about fried halibut tacos with a mango slaw and a tiny bit of sour cream. 

Maybe it means trying to make them feel seen, to validate their experiences and to listen without judgment. You should strive to truly BE in any given moment with your friends, even though it's hard to be present when you can't decide if you prefer hard shell or soft shell corn tortillas, and even then, whether you prefer the soft shell ones fried in oil and sprinkled with cojita cheese as opposed to simply warmed up in the microwave because that's faster and easier.

Think about what brings you peace and joy: Maybe it's your tribe. Maybe it's your village. Maybe it's being savage (when called for). Maybe it's your spirit animal. Actually maybe it's recognizing that loosely throwing around any and all of those terms is deeply problematic if you're not indigenous. So if you aren't, maybe don't do that?

Also maybe try to put yourself in the other person's shoes: how would you feel if you were telling your friend about your mom's hysterectomy and she was staring off into the middle distance, and when you asked her if she'd ever had an ovarian cyst she said "Huh, what? Oh sorry, I was just daydreaming about pico de gallo with extra cilantro and how weird it is that some people think cilantro tastes like soap when it is obviously an herb of the gods. Can you repeat the question?"

That would suck, amirite?

One strategy you might try is to eat tacos before you go to an important event like a wedding, graduation, or funeral. That way, you're thinking a little bit less about how great tacos are going to taste a few hours from now, and instead focusing more on trying to stay awake because you're in a taco-induced coma.  

The point is, be gentle with yourself. It's a heavy lift, but it's actually possible to be a good friend and also only really care about tacos.

No, YOU’RE The Jesus!

I haven't watched much of the Democratic debates for several reasons: (1) I don't think elections should be treated like the Super Bowl, and the debates are even more boring than football; (2) I have always preferred Elizabeth Warren and don't want to argue about why; (3) I am a registered undeclared voter, do not belong to a political party, and despise the two-party system; (4) I plan to vote against Trump in the general election even if the alternative is a turd sandwich or a Hydroflask (save the turtles!)

But last night and the followup was fucking amazing, if only because of the relatability of--as the Jewish magazine The Forward puts it--"two old Jews arguing about whose arteries are worse."

As a secular ethnic atheist New York City-born and raised Jew, I have substantial experience with just this type of argument around the dinner table among aunts, uncles, and others who try to win arguments by yelling the loudest and gesticulating the most dramatically. For example, one of my relatives (who shall remain nameless) would respond to sassy teenage exhortations of "JESUS CHRIST, [MOM/DAD/AUNT/UNCLE]!" with 

"No, YOU'RE THE JESUS!!!"

Last night's argument between secular ethnic atheist east coast-born and raised Jews Mike Bloomberg (MA) and Bernie Sanders (NYC) over income inequality had a serious ring of the familiar. It was like watching a cross between balcony muppets Waldorf and Stattler and my relatives get into it over Thanksgiving dinner or Passover. 

Let's take a simple example of how I imagine a dinner table conversation would go between Bernie and Bloomberg (also substitute any of my relatives) about their health. (picture all of this in yelling):

BLOOMBERG: So, uh, did you ever talk to my guy at Columbia?
BERNIE: What guy at Columbia?
BLOOMBERG: The CARDIOLOGIST, Goldstein! He's Shirley Sokoloff's son-in-law, very bright. Very bright kid. Graduated Stanford cum laude. One of the best in the City.
BERNIE: What with the cardiologist? I don't need a cardiologist.
BLOOMBERG: You don't see a cardiologist? You're trying to kill yourself now? My guy at NYU said I had the heart of a 29 year-old.
BERNIE: My ass a 29 year-old! You have a stent! What 29 year-old has a stent? Show me ONE 29 year-old with a stent!
BLOOMBERG: No stent! NO STENT! I just had the plaques removed!
BERNIE: Ugh, plaques schmaques, there was just a study about the plaques in the Times.
BLOOMBERG: They stopped delivering, I don't get the paper version now for some reason, I can't figure out what happened.
BERNIE: So what? Get the online version! The subscription!
BLOOMBERG: What with the subscription? Now I need to pay for the internet?
BERNIE: Whatsamattah, you can't afford $5 a month for the Times? 
BLOOMBERG: Ach, fuhgettabout it, it's a whole production with the passwords. I can never remember the goddamned passwords.

And so on. What a hoot.

The Importance of Choosing to Fight Back

On November 18, 2016, less than ten days after Trump was elected president, Sarah Kendzior, PhD, a Missouri-based journalist and scholar of authoritarian regimes, published a column in the online Dutch magazine, De Correspondent, titled: "We're heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the age of Trump." 

I've shared this piece before; and if you don't follow Dr. Kendzior's work, I highly recommend it. It's eerily prescient. I keep returning to her words as sort of a guidepost for how best to withstand the pressure-test of our struggling constitutional democracy. One particular section of her column really stands out as a sort of barometer of conscience. She wrote:

We are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Authoritarianism is not merely a matter of state control, it is something that eats away at who you are. It makes you afraid, and fear can make you cruel. It compels you to conform and to comply and accept things that you would never accept, to do things you never thought you would do.You do it because everyone else is doing it, because the institutions you trust are doing it and telling you to do it, because you are afraid of what will happen if you do not do it, and because the voice in your head crying out that something is wrong grows fainter and fainter until it dies. That voice is your conscience, your morals, your individuality. No one can take that from you unless you let them. They can take everything from you in material terms – your house, your job, your ability to speak and move freely. They cannot take away who you truly are. They can never truly know you, and that is your power. But to protect and wield this power, you need to know yourself – right now, before their methods permeate, before you accept the obscene and unthinkable as normal.

I was born in 1977, shortly after the Vietnam War ended, but before 9/11 and climate change set us on a course for the enormous and seemingly insurmountable challenges we face today. It was a relatively calm handful of years that I think gave people (especially white people) my age the false impression that domestic tranquility was the norm, when in fact a broad view of history tells the opposite story: that human civilization is just one long conflict, with small breaks in the storm for those privileged enough to enjoy them.

But I also grew up, as a Jewish person, in the shadow of the Holocaust, raised by a Holocaust survivor, given to understand that we had been divested of our property and livelihoods, hunted down, and killed by a white supremacist power structure, and that we probably would be again someday. We were to remain forever vigilant of this. Even and especially in America. We were not to be complacent. In retrospect, my grandmother's obsession with nose jobs was really about assimilation and self-preservation. Ever tactful, she would tell me, "you didn't get your mother's figure, but at least you got her nose!" Our little noses would never tell on us, and we didn't even have to pay a plastic surgeon to keep our secrets.

I guess that's why I have a really hard time accepting the "everyone has to make their own choices" logic about following government orders that are illegal, unconstitutional, or unethical. Yes, everyone has to "make their own choices." But we also have to own the consequences of those choices. We have to view our choices in a historical context. We have to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and accept that sometimes our choices are the same ones authoritarian collaborators would once have made, when the stakes were much higher than they are today.

Choices, sometimes, are a matter of life and death, and even when they aren't, you can never really count on anyone to choose anything besides naked self-preservation. Everything else--our morals, our consciences-- is subsumed by that raw instinct.

We just watched this happen with Lisa Murkowski's decision to knowingly acquit a President of conduct she knows full well is impeachable. We've watched it since the beginning of the Dunleavy administration, with lawyers and commissioners bending themselves into Auntie Anne's soft pretzels of self-justification to justify the unjustifiable on behalf of venal and craven leadership. 

As Dr. Kendzior said, It's human nature to conform "because everyone else is doing it, because the institutions you trust are doing it and telling you to do it, because you are afraid of what will happen if you do not do it, and because the voice in your head crying out that something is wrong grows fainter and fainter until it dies."

Accepting that has been hard for me, but I am working on it. Everyone has to make their own choices. True enough. So I'm choosing to fight back and to not let my voice die. There is inherent value in that. Even in a David-and-Goliath battle where all you can do is brace for impact and go down swinging, (to mix at least three metaphors), it is worth making a record of your objections. There is inherent value in simply saying and acting in a manner that preserves for history that "this is not okay." There is inherent value in "being the change you wish to see" by taking care of yourself and others.

To do that effectively, though, you have to be inner-directed. You have to divorce yourself from outcomes. You have to treat every day as a self-contained vacuum in which--just for today--you continue to make the wrongness known. You have to abandon any expectations of company. It's a lonely fight, but the alternative is worse.

The alternative is abdicating your time and bartering your voice to purposes and causes that you know deep down are just plain wrong. It's easier to pretend it's not wrong. It's easier to tell yourself that you're the adult in the room. That you need this or that job. That this will all blow over. Really, it's easier to not care at all. And many people make that choice, I suppose. But it's not one that I am personally capable of making, and I guess that's just something I also am working on accepting about myself.

We can't just sit around waiting for things to get better, because they won't. If we care about our future as a society, about empathy, about compassion and ethics in our leadership, then we can't really afford to choose willful blindness and complacency.

Really, My Dude?

Governor Dunleavy just doesn't get it, or maybe he just doesn't care. I don't know which, but it's probably both. Here he is on the 8:30 p.m. flight from Anchorage to Juneau last night, asking someone to move their bag out of the way so that he and his third floor minions (whom the state pays six figures for doing more or less nothing) can sit in first class on Alaska Airlines.

This is a big no-no, and every Alaskan politician knows that. Ever since Frank Murkowski traveled the state in a publicly-funded private jet--which Sarah Palin immediately sold in a stunt-queen gesture of solidarity with the commoners--gifting yourself special perks on air travel has just been a bad look.

Every Alaskan has seen senators, legislators, and governors sitting in coach, because, DUH, optics. Look, I get that Governor Dunleavy is 6'9. His entire horseshit brand is built on his height. But Fascist Giraffe™ can easily sit in an exit or bulkhead row and have just as much legroom without exposing himself for the asshole he is, and not have to do that thing where he watches his constituents shuffle past him and his lackeys like zombies into coach class.

That averted-eye look of shame most first class passengers give to the coach plebes as they walk on by to seat 26E is apparently not in Dunleavy's repertoire. I don't care if you're a gold-level million miler who gets free upgrades and it costs the state nothing. I can count on one hand the number of times that I, in my 12+ years as a lowly AAG state employee, took even a free upgrade offered to me while traveling for work. 

Because, again, optics.

For high-profile politicians especially, it's simply a really bad look to lounge around in first class; especially while you are out here in these Alaskan streets telling elders they have to pay 140% more to live in the Pioneers' Home, cutting ferry service to the point that rural Southeast needs to beg for diapers on Facebook, and slashing Medicaid funding because Donna Arudin.

The hypocrisy is stunning, and the flagrant flaunting of privilege is even worse. Mike Dunleavy or Micheal J. or Big Mike or Tall Mike or Mike J. or whatever TF he's calling himself these days is the living incarnation of mediocrity ascending to the heights of power based on nothing but privilege and family wealth. It's certainly not his charisma or intellect or hard work that got him where he is, since, I think it's safe to say, he's proven himself fairly deficient in all of those areas.

The legislature gavels in today, and if "The People's Governor" is starting out with free drinks for rows 1-4 at 30,000 feet, it's going to be a looooooooooong session, my dudes.

File This Under Things Literally No One Asked For ...

 . . . And that yet somehow now exist and are being marketed for $75 because . . . Gwyneth Paltrow? Here's how the actor and lifestyle guru's latest gift to female humanity went down:

NO ONE:

LITERALLY NO ONE:

LIKE, ZERO PEOPLE:

GWYNETH PALTROW: Here is a $75 candle that smells like my vagina, which I will literally call "This Smells Like My Vagina."

NO ONE: What does your (and by your, we mean "Gwyneth Paltrow's") vagina smell like?

GWYNETH: I'm glad you asked! It's a "“funny, gorgeous, sexy and beautifully unexpected scent”, a mix of “geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with damask rose and ambrette seed."

SOMEONE: Oh, it's unexpected, alright.

NO ONE, ONCE AGAIN: What does it cost? 

SOMEONE: Please say Nothing.

GWYNETH: Oh, you. No! I'm selling it for $75 on my website.

Not since the jade egg--which is the last thing Gwyneth told us to shove up our coochies and thereby bought herself a hefty legal sum in damages--have I thought about Gwyneth's vagina. Actually, scratch that, I have NEVER thought about Gwyneth's vagina, or imagined what it would smell, look, or--God forbid--taste like.

First off, I don't like vaginas. Not one bit. Vaginas are the one and only reason why I am regrettably 100% heterosexual and also not a midwife, doula, or OBGYN. I have no interest in anyone's vagina--not even my own. I am like the Dr. Seuss/Sam I Am of vaginas. I do not like them in a park, I do not like them in the dark. I do not like them in the rain, I do not like them on a train. I do not like them during childbirth, I do not like a single vagina on earth. 

So why would I buy a wax facsimile of Gwyneth's vadge? Maybe I would, if only to confirm that, as advertised, it is "funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected" with a "mix of geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with damask rose and ambrette seed." 

Because let me tell you something: I don't believe it. 

Unless this candle comes with Chris Rock, I promise you it is not funny. It is also not gorgeous or sexy, at least not to me, because as noted above, I find vaginas gross, but also even if I liked vaginas, it is a fucking CANDLE. 

Also, not for one minute do I believe that Gwyneth's vagina or anyone else's smells like geraniums, lemonade, roses, and cedar absolutes. What the fuck is a cedar absolute? Is it different from a cedar uncertain? What is an ambrette seed? And what is bergamot? I don't even know what these things are. I had to Google every single last one of them and you will too. I think you need a total household income of over $500K per year before the Illuminati makes you privy to this kind of information.

Regardless, I don't/won't buy it. At BEST, Gwyneth's vagina smells like soap. At worst, it smells like the crotch of her Lululemon Bikram yoga pants mixed with Chris Martin's junk. But "post-Bikram yoga crotch sweat juxtaposed with that dude from Coldplay's ball sack" just doesn't have the same ring as "ambrette seed" and "cirtrusy bergamot," and I don't think people would spend 75 cents for that, much less $75. Most people could probably accomplish almost the same thing by sticking a Hanukkah candle in their 'na for a minute and sparking it up.

But even if this candle and Gwyneth's vadge both smell as good as advertised, I just think it's a little . . . um . . . weird? To light up a candle like this? Like how is this date going down? "Hang on a second, hand me a lighter . . . let me dim the lights and set the mood here by flooding my apartment with the stench of celebrity poon?"

I don't think so, people. I don't think so. In this case, it is much better to curse the darkness than light a candle.

Once You Go Brand Name Pepper Flakes, You’ll Never...?

You’ll never ... go to an Irish wake? Drink a chocolate milkshake? Nothing quite rolls off the tongue on this one, but still. Come on. We’ve all been there. 

You sit down with a piping hot slice of pizza. You reach for the red pepper flakes, sprinkle them on liberally, take a bite, and BAM. Something’s off. WAY off. It’s the GENERIC red pepper flakes, and you can tell the difference.

That’s why brand name pepper flakes are the only kind of red pepper flakes you can ever consume again. Flatiron, McCormick, whatever. The point is that your pepper flakes shouldn’t be some supermarket off-brand like Frosted Ohs or Froot Hoops. Your delicate palate should not have to endure such a grievous affront.

It’s kind of like salt. You wouldn’t just put any old salt on your food. There’s Pink Himalayan Salt. There’s Black Sea Salt. There’s Tahitian Sea Salt. Hell, there’s probably a Mariana Trench Salt or a Norwegian Fjord Salt for all I know. Point is, you’re not just gonna pick up any old salt shaker and unload. Even that little brat Morton with her yellow raincoat and umbrella is better than THAT. 

Do me a favor. Next time you order pizza take those little red pepper flake packets that sometimes come with it, open them up, and dump them right into your eyeballs as a reminder that you are not so much as to LOOK at a generic red pepper flake again.

Seriously if more people would just put on their big girl/boy/they panties and cross the Rubicon to brand name pepper flakes, we’d probably have cured cancer and solved climate change by now. 

I want you to go home (or if you’re already home stay there) and think long and hard about this because brand name red pepper flakes will change your fucking LIFE.

Capisce?

Climate Change is Finally Real Because Kim Kardashian Said So ... OR IS IT?!?!

I don’t know you guys. I just don’t know who or what to believe anymore. 

2002 has jumped off to a confusing start after famous-for-indiscernible-reasons Kim Kardashian West tweeted that "climate change is real." Just two days later, however, has-been singer/songwriter Meat Loaf said climate change is a bunch of bollocks and that Greta Thunberg has sadly been brainwashed into thinking otherwise.

That leaves me, stuck in the middle, unsure which of these two eminent authorities on climate science to believe: the aspiring lawyer, ass-exhibitionist, and author of an entire book of selfies, or a 72yo named after Wednesday's school lunch who by his own admission would do "anything" for love except "that."

I mean, y’all can see how fucking real the struggle is here. 

On the one hand, Australia is a blistering inferno to the point that kangaroos are turning into flash-jerky and old ladies are practically diving into the ocean to escape encroaching flames while koala bears roast in the shell of eucalyptus trees like the whole continent is a Coleman BBQ. Alaska has also had its warmest year on record, and sea ice is getting harder to find up here than a boyfriend without a felony.

On the other hand, piles of scientific paper that have been accumulating since the early 1960s and that could at this point reach the rings of Saturn if laid end to end suggest irrefutably that earth is warming at alarming rates and that people are the reason. 

On the third hand—which I don’t have so I’ll just say ass cheek—devastating hurricanes, refugee crises, and octopi washing up in Miami parking structures suggest that Kanye’s boo has the better end of this argument. 

After all, the counterpoint is coming from an okay boomer named Meat, which again science suggests is a little bit of the problem because agriculture and cows burping methane. I guess by “doing anything for love” he actually meant “sliding back into relevance for being a moron.” What “that” is remains a mystery, however, but by deductive reasoning and process of elimination (i.e. science), we can conclude that “that” is NOT “piling on a teenager for trying to ensure her generation still has oxygen by the time they can vote.” 

Ever since Jenny McCarthy told me not to worry about polio because vaccines make autism, and Gwyneth Paltrow said underwire bras start breast cancer and that we should be shoving jade eggs up our vaginas, I’ve taken all my medical advice and scientific information from any celebrity on or above the C-list who opens their mouth. 

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do the same.