Pennermag.com

I saw the most profound thing on the Oprah Winfrey show the other day. I know, I know talk shows? Profundity? Oprah?

Anyway, she was interviewing Renee Zellweger and they were talking about fame. Interestingly, they agreed that fame wasn t something that changed who you are on the inside rather it changed people s reaction to you.

Lately, I ve been considering that thought. Sitting here in my office, I feel no different than I felt when I was three, thirteen, or twenty-three but how people have treated me has changed.

Friends that Adam and I have known for years seem to think we re different, because we own these cars or live in this house or that house. I didn t realize until I thought about how I live my life, more objectively, that it seems different from the outside than it feels from the inside.

Adam and I talk about this all the time because we see ourselves as poor kids. I remember growing up in the basement of my grandmother s home in East New York and Adam remembers using the free lunch card because his mother was on welfare.

What I fear more than anything else is being that poor kid from East New York, Brooklyn. What I see in Adam is a fear of being that kid in the free lunch line. That fear has been the genesis of what we call striving.

We re always on the lookout for the next best car, or house, or whatever can shake off the poor kid feeling yet it clings like bad body odor. I think, though, we may have just turned the corner on those feelings. I think, for now, we re going to stop striving so hard and start living more.

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Behind the scenes here in blogland, I’m dealing with what has to be the second most annoying aspect of our ‘information superhighway,’ — comment spam.

I know you can’t see it out there, but on a daily basis, us bloggers, who like the interplay and back and forth of posting and reading folks’ comments — have to deal with people who want to sell you illegal drugs, get you gambling in on-line casinos, and other schemes.

They’re goal — to attach them selves to content-rich blogs in hopes that they will increase their Google page rank and get more eyes in front of their projects.

In order to combat these folks, there are a number of scripts that we run behind the scenes to combat them.

I think it may be a losing war. I’ve all but eliminated spam from my mail box with a host of sophisticated filters. Additionally, I’ve all buy stemmed the tide against spyware that attaches to our computers and forces pop ups, weird home pages and random search bars. But comment spam is eluding me. So for now, no comments will be accepted on the blog until I can stem the tide of the hundreds of spam comments I receive an hour.

I love the world wide web, but I can’t fullyl utilize it until I can get ahead of the spam curve again.

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To paraphrase Julian Bond; The Republicans are shameless, the Democrats, spineless.

As it turned out, this was not the ‘most important election of my lifetime.’ That election was in November, 2000.

That was the time to fight, to wail, to win.

This year’s campaigners and get-out-the-vote folks remind me of those people who doggedly watch CNN FN or subscribe to Money magazine.

They’ll hear that Google is the stock to buy, and there they are buying up stock at $190, when the time to buy was a month ago when it was $90 or $100.

The time to fight is always NOW. We can’t wait until ‘things get bad’ to fight the good fight. The time to fight was during the Clinton administration when certain Senators were blocking judicial nominations. The time to fight was during the Gingrich revolution. The time to fight was when the Florida recount hung in the balance.

Now is the time to fight those who want to prevent gay marriage. Now is the time to fight those who would overturn a woman’s right to choose.

If not now, when? In 2008 when that becomes the most important election of our lifetime?

Maybe $3 billion dedicated to stem cell research can lead to a cure for spinlessness in Democrats.

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I’ve eaten beets for the first time in thirty years. When I was three and in nursery school — we had a hot lunch and snacks daily. It seemed, more often than not, we had beets for lunch. They were red and nasty. I didn’t like them, their smell, their look, and I banned them from my diet.

So, there I was browsing the produce section at Whole Foods and Adam suggests we try some beets. He’s always liked them, he said, why not try them. I looked at him and said . . . beets, but I haven’t eaten those in thirty years.

He countered — you eat anything, raw fish, caviar, snails, and any number of things most people would turn their nose up at . . . so I bought them.

Beets are not the cook’s friend. They take forever to cook, stain everything worse than grape juice, and frankly don’t taste that good. They have a certain earthy flavor, I don’t think I’ll ever grow to appreciate.

A week later, I tried them again, with dried cherries and cranberries. The berries were good — my kitchen smelled like roasted beets — bad.

It was an experiment, and I think I’ll leave the beets alone. Adam will have to get his beet fix somewhere else. I’m going to cook my current favorite until we’re tired of that — turnips.

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You would think Los Angles were three or four square miles — the way people talk.

“Oh, I can only live on the Westside,” many say. Even if it makes them permanent renters.

“I’d love to meet you in Beverly Hills, but I never travel east of the 405,” a Brentwood resident once told me.

So, now, our new house in Sherman Oaks, is being measured in terms of its proximity to the Westside.

“If you take Beverly Glen, or Coldwater Canyon, you can be there in ten minutes,” many have said.

The thing is, I’m probably not going to the Westside all that often. Sure, I see friends, but it’s not my primary shopping/eating area. After a few forays there when I moved to Los Angeles, I found Hancock Park and Hollywood more to my liking. They were friendly, off beat, and more my speed. And really, I’m done with the $10.00 martini.

So, I’ll see what Ventura Boulevard has to offer, and I’ll get back to you on whether or not I’ll need to go over the hill.

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