An Ohio Governor's finest moment

For several years, there has been a gigantic banner hanging in downtown Cleveland on a building across from the "Q," where the Cleveland Cavaliers play. It is a sparse Nike ad, with an image of LeBron James slam-dunking. It says only, "WE ARE ALL WITNESSES." It is a thing of beauty, and it sort of takes your breath away, and it makes you sort of proud to be a Clevelander.

But it turns out that it is in violation of some Federal law regarding the size of an advertisement and its proximity to a highway (the "Witnesses" banner is not far from where I-90 bisects Cleveland). Why this "violation" was not an issue two years ago but instead, say, THE FREAKING DAY OF THE FIRST GAME OF THE FIRST NBA FINALS THAT THE CAVS HAVE EVER REACHED IN THE HISTORY OF THEIR FRANCHISE, I don't know. But I do know that Ohio's Governor, Ted Strickland, is stepping up.

Strickland has deemed the sign "commercial art," which means it's not subject to the Federal and Ohio Department of Transportation regulations. My personal favorite Strickland quotation regarding this issue: "'We are determined to make sure this city has the opportunity to continue to enjoy this beautiful display of commercial art,' he said. Strickland disputed the notion that declaring the banner art will give Nike a special benefit. 'This is not about Nike,' he said. 'This is about Cleveland.'"

Yeah, governmental entities that aren't the Governor's office. Don't you dare try to dampen our enthusiasm and/or screw with our potential glory. Not this time.

I have some very personal Doors-related issues

From The Plain Dealer's Web site:

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Doors' Krieger and Manzarek set Rock Hall, HOB gigs
Posted by John Soeder
May 01, 2007 10:57AM

Doors members Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek are set to drop by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for a reception at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 24, to mark the opening of "Break on Through: The Lasting Legacy of the Doors," a new exhibit devoted to the classic-rock band. The event is open to museum members, who can make a reservation by calling XXX-XXX-XXXX. [Number omitted because I am not willing to give the Rock Hall more "free publicity" than I alredy am with this post -- even if this is just a blog that nobody reads.]

From there, guitarist Krieger and keyboardist Manzarek zip over to House of Blues for an 8 p.m. concert of Doors music by their new band, Riders on the Storm, featuring ex-Fuel vocalist Brett Scallions. Tickets are $28-$200 at the HOB box office, or charge by phone.
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Problems that I have with this:

(1) The Rock Hall now has a "special" Doors exhibit, after it's had a permanent Jim Morrison exhibit for 12 years. (I know that Cub Scout uniform has been hanging there for as long as I can remember.) The history and ongoing evolution of rock and roll is rich territory to mine; surely they can present something totally new?

(2) The Rock Hall's "special" Doors exhibit is titled, "Break on Through: The Lasting Legacy of the Doors." Love the curators though I do, the Rock Hall has such a lame template for exhibit/program naming:

"Popular Song Title Here: The Life and Legacy of Band or Musician Who Wrote Aforementioned Popular Song"

Other examples of this issue: "Revolution Rock: The Story of the Clash." "Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie." "In the Name of Love: Two Decades of U2." "Catch A Wave: The Beach Boys, the Early Years." I think you get my point.

(3) Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek have sunk so low that they have named their new band "Riders on the Storm," which is a worse name than that of probably 95% of the Doors tribute bands out there.

(4) The most expensive ticket for the House of Blues show is $200! $200!! Because I measure prices in number of drinks at the bar (for less expensive items) or cost of an airline ticket to Australia (for more expensive items), let me just say that you could get from Cleveland to Sydney for less than it would take to get you and three "Touch Me" fans through the House of Blues door that night.

I'm just saying.

Shadiest crap ever

So the Saturday before Mother's Day my mom busts into my bedroom at 8:30 a.m. with a piece of paper in her hand. (One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was giving Mom a key to my house, which she never uses when my husband is in town but which she will often use when he is gone, to let the dog out or otherwise assist me while I am at work, etc. [Having just written and re-read that, I guess giving her a key is not such a mistake after all, but anyway.])

She puts the paper in my groggy little hand; it is an advertisement for a Mother's Day essay contest being held by a local beauty salon. Write an essay about how great your mother is, win lots of nice prizes including a spa day, lunch for two, gift certificate to a jewelry store, what have you. The bottom of the ad reads, "Must be 21 and older."

I am a fairly decent writer (I do so for a living), and I do enjoy my mother, and since I am confident that I will not be competing with some crayon-scrawled missive written by a cute kid, I decide to enter the contest.

Mom finds out yesterday that a 14-year-old won the contest; Mom asks the beauty shop owner how this is possible if the contest was only open to entrants over 21 years of age. Response: "The mother is the one who has to be 21." I take significant issue with this "clarification":

(1) Is it really necessary to codify such a rule? If you are a 21-year-old mother, your kid might be -- at most -- five or six. If a five- or six-year old can write a persuasive essay on his mother, just give the prizes to him. Because that's remarkable, and that five-year-old deserves a spa day. However, chances are, the child of a 21-year-old mother is no older than an infant or toddler. In which case a strong grasp of the English language and the motor skills necessary to write with a crayon are most likely still lacking.

(2) Are there really so many young mothers in our small town who have substantially-advanced and articulate infants that would participate in a relatively unpublicized contest at a small beauty salon so as to make such a rule necessary?

(3) I never would have entered a contest where I had to compete with teenagers. It's like that episode of "Seinfeld" where Kramer bests children at karate. I feel quite sheepish about the whole thing.

All of which leads to the obvious: the rule was originally created to level the playing field, but the beauty shop owner had a winner in mind and was forced to "clarify" her rule at the last minute. Thinking that nobody would figure it out. But, as Judge Judy says, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. It's not that I need the prizes or the "glory." I just hate being lied to, and I hate when people assume that I won't figure out their idiocy.

The fix is in.

So, anyway, I hereby "publish" my essay on Mom. Because being blogged about is even better than winning a spa package.

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Mother’s Day Essay Contest
Written for Mom, by Me

It is commonly thought of as a horrifying fact of life that, eventually, we all turn into our mothers. A corollary to this horrifying fact is the exceedingly horrifying fact that, indeed, our mothers are always right. Nobody ever wants to admit these truths, but, alas, they are as certain as death and taxes. If you’re lucky, you can suffer these realities with a smile of respect and admiration for the woman who gave birth to you – with no small measure of love, reserved for the times when she isn’t criticizing or telling you what to do. If you’re really lucky, however, you can embrace these realities and be grateful that you’re turning into your mother who is, by the way, always right. I am lucky enough to fall into that latter category; I have hit, so to speak, the mother lode: I get to be as cool as Carol and I am right all the time!

Wicked.

I fought it long and I fought it hard – no way are you right on this one, Mom, you’re crazy! – but with each passing year it becomes a little clearer that whatever advice she gives, whatever assessment of a life trauma she offers, whatever criticism she levels at my inane behavior…correct, all of it. Correct, correct, correct. The truth of the matter is, accepting her Supreme Knowledge of All Things has set me free. It’s hard to worry about things, because she tells me everything is going to be OK. And since she’s always right, everything will be OK. From the mundane to the extraordinary, she has yet to prove me otherwise.

Like the time not too long ago that, against my lazy and pathetic protestations that I didn’t want to put in a garden this summer, she forced me to come to her house, divide her hostas and transplant them to my own perennial-bed-in-the-making. I whined and complained the whole time. I even injured my foot on the shovel because in my stubbornness I chose not to wear my gardening shoes. (She brought me the peroxide as I sat on the front lawn. Another sign of a quality mother: no matter her age and the condition of her arthritis, she is the one who runs to the medicine cabinet while you sit in the grass with a teeny tiny cut.) And you know what? The following day, as I considered the beautiful hosta garden taking shape in my own backyard, I had to admit that she was right. Once again. I did want to garden this summer. Mom, let’s go to Petitti’s!

Or the time I woke up to my beloved puppy, Jet, having a seizure on the floor next to my bed. Kicking wildly, foaming at the mouth, staring at me with a blank, expressionless eye that I was certain indicated her imminent passing. I did not then understand that it was a seizure; I truly did think she was dying. (To fully appreciate Jet’s importance, one must realize that when she was six months old my husband and I commissioned a portrait of her that hangs in our living room. Jet is, therefore, exempt from the sort of ugliness that dooms the rest of us mortals: she will not, cannot, ever get sick or, heaven forbid, pass away. She exists on some alternate plane of eternal dogs.)

Jet came of out the seizure just fine, and resumed her morning canine activities such as crying for her breakfast. I called Mom in a raving, sobbing, weeping mess. What she told me is the sort of advice that really only comes with age, the kind of wisdom that mothers dispense but that 32-year-olds ignore until they live for a few more decades and figure it out for themselves, only to slap themselves on the forehead and exclaim, my mother used to tell me this all the time!: life is not perfect. People are not perfect. Dogs are not perfect. You do not know what is going to happen next. It could be joyous, it could be heartbreaking. Whatever it is, it is going to happen, and it will all be OK. In the meantime, just love. Love Jet. Appreciate her. Appreciate those around you. Never leave angry. Never take anything for granted. Keep it in perspective. Take it with grace and everyone will be just fine.

I try each day to live her advice. Sometimes it’s hard because I am still mostly a young uptight thing who has more bratty days than I’d like. But each day that I wake up and Jet is a happy, non-seizuring girl, I am grateful. Each day that I have a loving family around me is another day when I count my blessings. I strive to acquire prematurely Mom’s wisdom of age. As they say, youth is wasted on the young. Mom inspires me to belie that aphorism.

She also inspires me to drink vodka and smoke the odd cigar, but that is another story entirely.

Isn't she supposed to be one of the most respected journalists in America?

This morning I happened to be watching The View. I am not necessarily proud of this, but my work schedule is different for many of the days in December and I thought, hell, let's see what comes out of Rosie's big trap. They were talking about that recent story where a rabbi threatened a lawsuit if the Seattle-Tacoma airport did not add a menorah to its display of Christmas trees. The discussion among the stunning and brilliant View dames went the expected course: there should be Christmas trees! and menorahs! and "Kwanzaa bushes!" and "Ramadan candles!" And our View set should be decorated with all of those! (No joke.)

But then Barbara Walters chimed in with a very brief comment about Hanukkah that was very easily missed because someone else was talking over her. (Imagine.) I am paraphrasing here, but she said something to the effect of, "Hanukkah is a festival of light, when they commemorate the temple burning down."

Honestly, one of the most venerated journalists in the United States, and certainly one of the most celebrated women in the field, does not even know what Hanukkah is. Even if you put aside the influence Barbara Walters wields ("If Barbara Walters said it, it must be true."), the mere fact is, she should be smarter than that.

It is not like she mixed up Tu B'Shevat and Tzom Gedaliah. Barbara Walters should be learned enough to understand that Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple, when one jar of consecrated oil, that was only sufficient to burn for one day, burned for eight instead.

You could say this is splitting hairs, as Hanukkah does involve light and a temple. But, commonly, if someone asked me what Hanukkah was -- or if I was going to say one sentence about the holiday on my insipid daytime talk show -- I would not say, "That's when Jews celebrate the temple burning down." I would probably say something like, "That's the celebration of one day's worth of oil's lasting for eight days." Which is simplistic, to be sure, but at least it is cleaner, contextually.

Regardless of how you feel about the original SEA-TAC airport story itself -- whether you think the rabbi or the airport overreacted, whether you feel our society is hyper-litigious, whether or not you'd prefer your airport staff playing "cultural anthropologist" or, say, screening your baggage and trying to ensure on-time departure -- you have to admit that you expect more from Barbara. At least I do.

Truth in advertising on Thursday's "Martha"

Yesterday Martha Stewart and guest Angela Bassett crafted some personalized baby items, such as onesies and diaper bags, stamped with the initials of Angela's twin offspring, Bronwyn and Slater.

It was all very lovely and sweet until Martha and Angela, extremely satisfied with their creations, held the little crafts up to the camera to reveal...two side-by-side sunhats emblazoned with a "B" and an "S," respectively.

Martha says we're supposed to craft these items "while the babies are napping." Now, I'm not a mom, but: BS, indeed.