Dearest Friends: The Cliff Notes Version

The holiday season is upon us – and with it comes the annual arrival of the Family Holiday Letters. Just once, I’d like to receive a holiday letter that tells it like it really is. But for now, I’ll settle for translating into real life English one of my favorites.

December, 2006
Dear Cherished Friends and Family,
(Translation: If you’re on Mom or Dad’s BlackBerry or are one of the kids’ My Space friends – i.e. approximately 732 of their nearest and dearest – you’re receiving this.)

We want to wish you all a very Merry X-Mas, Happy Hanukkah, Wonderful Kwanza, Fabulous Festivus, Wacky Winter Solstice, and Totally Terrific 2007! Well, it's that time again. So just what has our fun foursome been up to?

We’ve seen some exciting times in ‘2006. Kevin is now a full-time consultant (When not meeting his colleague Bambi for business meetings at the local Motel 6, he’s sacked out on the couch.) Kristie continues to keep busy with the kids and household. Her latest project? Cataloguing the condiments. (She alphabetized the spice rack one night at 2 am during a diet pill-induced high).

The kids are both super-busy with sports, school, and their social scenes. Kev Jr. had to take a break from his ultra-competitive travel soccer team (Kev Sr. punched out his coach) to focus on his own lucrative computer company (He’s addicted to on-line poker). And Kendall’s working hard at her studies (Mom "edited" her term paper on “The Importance of Ethics in Contemporary Society”) but still finds time for friends old and new–she’s such a people person! (She’s hooking up with guys from the Looking4Luv chat room). Even our golden retriever Kasey has had a great year; he’s really settled down (We upped his Prozac).

Hope things are equally super with you and yours!
Love & hugs from Kristie & Kevin, Kev Jr. & Kendall (and woofs from Kasey, too!)

PS: Be sure to check out our family website, featuring live streaming video from our (just re-decorated for the PTA Home & Garden tour) kitchen! (The house is in foreclosure and our marriage is toast.)

Laurie Reel Thing Chick Flick Review: "The Holiday"

Okay. Before I tell you how much I LOVED this movie, let me just say that my numero uno chick flick pal (my sister) and I have been seeing coming attractions for it since (and I am not exaggerating here) last summer. In fact, we saw the trailer so many times that with no sign of the actual movie by Thanksgiving, we just assumed we had somehow missed its release. (What’s up with these coming attraction people anyway? You get all excited about seeing whatever it is that is coming soon to a theater near you, only to find out that “soon” is a month for which you don’t even have a calendar or clothes yet.)

Anyhoo, the coming attractions were so relentless and the combined star power (Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black, etc.) so dazzling, that I just assumed that the actual movie could in no way live up to the pre-release hype. I am happy to go on record here that (cue the drum roll): I was wrong. In fact, I’d say that “The Holiday” is up there as one of the best examples of the all-too-often dissed chick flick/romantic comedy “genre.”

The premise? Two single 30-somethings nursing broken hearts decide to switch houses and lives; Cameron trades her to-die-for sophisticated beachside spread for Kate’s oh-so-cozy little cottage in the English countryside. (It’s not as predictable as it sounds; there are some surprisingly good twists along the way.) Both Cameron and Kate are adorably believable and Jude Law, with his absolutely gorgeous blue eyes, had me at his first charmingly British accented “hello.” And while Jack Black is not my personal idea of a hunky male lead, he won me over with his funny patter and "Yes, I know I'm not most women's idea of eye candy" ways. (Plus, as an added bit of fun, Cameron’s character is a producer of movie trailers so the action will stop every so often to reveal a fake but authentic sounding coming attraction based on what she is going through.)

Looking for a good, light, fun, but still SMART chick flick? Go. Right now. (Personally, I would leave Him at home, but only you know your own guy’s tolerance level for this stuff. As for moi, mine is still complaining about being sucked into seeing “Running With Scissors.”) After you see it, please be sure to let me know what you think. (Was I right or was I right?)

The Offspring's Significant Other Comes to Town

Xmas break. Your college kids come back, sometimes with a full laundry bag, sometimes with an Offspring’s Significant Other in tow. For my friend Laney, a mom of two college-aged sons, having one of their SO’s under her roof recently was a real eye-opener.

Here she graciously shares what she learned:

1. "No matter which nail salon you treat your Offspring’s Significant Other to a manicure in, you can be sure that BOTH of you will know someone there, and then you will have to talk about stuff that you don't want to, like: “Who is this young woman that is with you? A daughter that you have concealed for 21 years? Your husband’s secret girlfriend? Yours?’"

2. "Always be nice to the Offspring’s Significant Other because they have their own cell phone on which they can call to report everything that is going on at that very moment to their own parents. Right in front of you. Hopefully only good stuff but that's only if your child (their boyfriend) is cooperating."

3. "Sleeping Situations: forget about it! No need for guest rooms, extra cottages, or convents. They do what they want to do, when they want to do it -- as long as it's not in your car. In other words, make sure that your kids have a double bed or an air mattress that sleeps two. No comment."

4. "Don't ask questions about anything unless it pertains to where or what you all will be eating out the next night. Don't ask about your own child's health, workload, plans post-college, etc."

The upside? Terrific, x-chromosomed company at the nail salon, chick flick, or to split the salad pizza. And someone else who really gets – and loves – your offspring as much as you do. The manicure: $15. The gift of an almost daughter without the muss and fuss? Priceless.

Some Real Hot Air

It started innocently enough. An enormous blow-up jack-‘o-lantern popped up on my next-door neighbor’s lawn. A super-sized inflatable Santa landed on the roof of a local garden center. And then a 12-foot snow globe took up residence on another neighbor’s front yard. But what began as a trickle, quickly became an out-and-out flood, and suddenly my suburb (yours, too, right?) has turned into a grounded Macy’s parade of super-sized holiday inflatables. And thus, another thing-we-just-have-to-buy trend (remember holiday front door banners anyone?) is born.

Before you accuse me of bashing blow-ups, let me say for the record that I have nothing against them; on the contrary, I think they’re fun. And that’s a good thing, too, cause I’m pretty sure this trend is more than just full of hot air. I see a whole calendar year of holiday specific airblown inflatables (oversized red heart-shaped boxes of faux-chocolates in February, prancing gigantic green leprechauns in March, bunnies-on-steroids in April, etc.) coming our way.

But attention manufacturers of yard inflatables: want to really move some merchandise? Come out with blow up lawn decorations for the real seasons of my life. I haven’t bought any gigantic goblins, snowpeople, or 2007 numerals – yet. But the day my local Costco stocks big blow up bottles of Valium suitable for snowed-in-with-nothing-to-do snow days, giant party noisemakers for back-to-school season, or oversized “Caution: Enter at Your Own Risk” signs for that time of the month, I’m caving.

It's Not About You. It's About Me.

Okay, it’s official. Men and women don’t know what to get each other for holiday gifts (like, duh). And, in fact, they choose things for their Significant Others (“SO”) that they’d really like to receive for themselves (double duh). Results of one timely study really do give new meaning to the phrase: ”It’s not about you. It’s about me.”

Don’t believe me? Check out the oh-so-catchy titled “Why It Is So Hard To Predict Our Partner’s Product Preferences: The Effect of Target Familiarity on Prediction Accuracy,” published in the December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research by the egg-heady University of Chicago Press. (Note to my SO: a subscription to this publication is so NOT a good idea. Think People Mag or Star.)

So basically, what “Why It’s So Hard…” says is that people who live with and love each other are LESS likely to choose the perfect gift for each other than perfect strangers who use “gender specific” preferences (i.e. women generally lust for jewelry and perfume, men for cars and other women). Pretty pathetic, huh? Apparently, because we think we know our honeys so well, we don’t take in new info or clues about them. We think we know everything about them already. Plus, to add fuel to the flames, while women are more likely to both give out gift-giving clues and to listen to clues from their husbands/boyfriends/honeys, men are less likely to give clues to and listen to them from their wives/girlfriends/sweeties. (Got that? Even when it comes to gifts, women talk and men don’t listen. Men don’t talk even though we want them to. Amazing how we ever got together to require gift-giving in the first place.)

All of which validates my personal time-honored gift-giving technique. When it’s a biggy for moi, I pre-select. That way I know I will LOVE it. Romantic? Maybe not. But effective? Yes. And, of course, I ask Him for suggestions for things he’d like for his big occasions. His birthday was in November. I’m still waiting. (But now that I’ve read about the above study, I may just ask a random stranger in the mall to pick it out for me – as long as what he chooses isn’t named Peaches and comes with her own pole.)

Reality TV: The Turn On

The other day my friend Dora came over to cut my hair and made me tune into “Wife Swap.” (She had the scissors, so who was I to argue?) In case you are, as I was, unfamiliar with this groundbreaking example of cinema verite, “Wife Swap” takes the female heads-of-households from two polar-opposite families and makes them switch places – husband, kids, house, job, the works – and then shows the audience at home what happens.

The night we watched, the two families were on the opposite extremes of the discipline spectrum: one ran their household like a combination boot camp/juvenile detention center, the other like a wet T-shirt-filled spring break fling in Cancun. You can just imagine the fun shenanigans that ensued. It was like a car wreck – I just couldn’t stop myself from watching – and tsk tsk’ing about each family’s behavior: this one was too lenient, the other one was too strict, with the implication, of course, that mine was just right.

And that’s when it hit me – why we can’t get enough of shows like “Wife Swap,” “Nanny 911,” and the like. With just a few clicks of the remote, chances are good that we’ll be able to eavesdrop on a family even more dysfunctional than our own. That’s something I’m going to try to keep in mind as I prepare to spend 13 days on vacation with six other people sharing my DNA and/or address.

So stay tuned. My Fussy Family on Vacation should be good for several new reality series – or, at the very least, blog posts.

Laurie’s Reel Thing Chick Flick Review: “For Your Consideration”

Let me say right off the bat that Christopher Guest’s “Best in Show” is my absolutely favorite flick of all time (if you haven’t seen it, and especially if you are a dog person, go out and rent it RIGHT NOW…I’ll hold on). So when I heard Guest had made another “mockumentary,” I was psyched. Naturally, I had to see “For Your Consideration” the minute it opened, so I dragged my friend Andrea to a 1:50 showing last Saturday, when all the normal people were off making a dent in their shopping lists.

After we recovered from the shock of having to pay $3.50 for a bottle of water, we made our way into the auditorium to join our three fellow intrepid movie-goers. Right before the lights went down, two more viewers – an older couple – came in. The man carefully surveyed the whole (nearly empty) theater, and proceeded to lead his wife to the row right ahead of us…and into the two seats DIRECTLY in front of ours. (Fortunately, she set him straight, fast.)

Anyhoo, “For Your Consideration” offers a tongue-in-cheek, behind-the-scenes look at the making of a small independent film and what happens when its cast gets wind of a rumor on the Internet (or the InterWeb, “the thing with the e-mail” as the film’s dorky PR guy calls it) that some of them are looking at Oscar nominations. The set-up is a perfect one for Guest to do the thing he does so well – poke (for the most part) good-natured fun at a world that, like community theater (“Waiting for Guffman”) and the folk music scene (“A Mighty Wind”) practically begs for it. Watch for Catherine O’Hara’s performance as veteran actress Marilyn Hack (her red carpet-ready makeover is painfully funny and right on the money). Jane Lynch is drop-dead hysterical as the co-host of the “Entertainment Tonight”-like TV show that fans the Oscar rumor flames and Eugene Levy is, as always, perfect, this time as the talent agent who answers a cell phone call while assuring his client that nothing is as important to him as the actor’s stalled career.

“For Your Consideration” – check it out and let me know what you think. (C’mon, you know those stores will still be there tomorrow.)

Confessions of a Cranky Consumer

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year (tra la!). So why aren’t I feelin’ it? ‘Cause I’m cranky. And I’m cranky because:

1. I have a cold and my head is all stuffed up and my nose looks like it could understudy Rudolph’s.

2. I got this cold helping a certain offspring with a big exhausting project. She returned the favor by sharing her germs with me.

3. My four-door sedan is developing a complex as the only non-SUV in the mall shopping lot.

4. All four of that vehicle’s doors are bearing fresh new dings courtesy of all those huge suburban behemoths squeezing themselves into the “compact cars only” spaces.

5. My ego is still suffering from the indignity of having to squeeze myself into a pair of pantyhose for a holiday party last night (no further explanation needed).

6. “Oprah” was a re-run today. And, I didn’t like it the first time around.

7. My neighborhood Perfect PTA Mom let slip that she had finished all her shopping by September 17th and that…

8. …she hand-knit the matching sweaters her kids are wearing on their family greeting card…

9. …that came in the mail last week…

10. …in an envelope she addressed by hand in calligraphy last July.

See what I mean? So, what’s making your crank-o-meter kick into high gear?

My Real World Holiday Wish List

Yes, yes, I know that it’s not about the gifts. And that the true meaning of the season is being with family and friends, and that their presence in my life is their present, and yada yada, yada.

However. As long as gifts are going to be exchanged (Who are we kidding? ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ Of course she should have!), wouldn’t it be nice to get some you actually want to keep and not re-gift at the earliest possible opportunity? So, to make things easier for my nearest and dearest (and more fun for moi), I’ve come up with a list of what I could really use:

From my daughter: a phone call that doesn’t start with “Mom, I need.”

From my mother-in-law: a compliment

From my friendly neighborhood alpha mom: a conversation without the words “college,” “gifted,” or “advanced Mandarin” in it

From my Freshper-son: an empty laundry bag

From Him: something in a small package pre-selected by Me

From my office Secret Santa: to-die-for home-baked brownies with negative calories (i.e. eating them makes you lose weight…a girl can dream, right?)

From my hairstylist: a coiff that I can replicate in my own bathroom and without enrolling in beauty school

From my canine kids: a big wet kiss before they drink out of the toilet

So, hey! What do you really want?

My Message from the Shopping Gods

Uh oh. I lost my ATM card today.

I think the shopping gods are trying to tell me something. Oh yeah, I got it now: “Buy it on-line.”

Fortunately (or not, depending upon your view of my bank balance), after giving out my name, rank, social security number, first four letters of my mother’s maiden name, astrological sign, and all rights to the TV serialization of my first book, my faux-friendly “we-appreciate-your-time-thank-you-for-continuing-to-hold” financial institution (that would be bank to you and me) agreed to pop a replacement card in the mail.

Now let’s hope I get to the mailbox before my fellow accountholder (who, for the record, is enjoying this unscheduled banking holiday way too much).

Games Gal Pals Play

All together, now:

“Fas-cin-a-tion, Remco’s Fas-cin-a-tion,
Fas-cin-a-tion, the game we love to play!”

If you can supply the tune to the above, chances are, like moi, you grew up playing board games with names like “Fascination,” “Sorry!” and “Mousetrap.” If you didn’t, back in the day when people trudged five miles to school in the snow (even if they grew up in Florida), we actually played games that didn’t have the word “video” in front of them.

The other night, a group of girlfriends and I took a joint trip down memory lane with a PJ and board game get-together. It was a blast. My friend Amy’s husband collects vintage board games on eBay (she questions the allocation of their hard-earned funds for used pieces of cardboard and plastic, but hey, there are so many other things he could be collecting that I personally think she really can’t complain) so she supplied the entertainment.

To refresh your memory, Fascination comes with two cheapie but functional plastic mazes; two players compete against one another to see who can get their three metal balls where they have to go first; when successful, a battery lights up the console board. Talk about bringing out one’s dormant competitive streak. Let me say here now that this is harder to do than it sounds. And for the record? I won both my bouts. (Too bad this skill does not translate into real life.)

But Fascination was just the warm-up for the main event – the breaking out of “Mystery Date” (not to be confused with “Barbie’s Dream Date”). The object of this very un-PC game is to get a matching outfit of three pieces in the same color – say either a smashing ski ensemble of pants, sweater, and skis, all in powder blue, or a Cinderella-like evening ensemble of ball gown, fur wrap, and shoes and handbag, all in powder pink. The first person to assemble her outfit gets to try and match with a suitably attired date hiding behind a secret plastic door whose doorknob is twisted with great ceremony. Again, this is harder than it sounds. First you have to get all the pieces of the matching outfit, then you have to land on a special “open door” space, and then you have to be lucky enough to get your matching guy.

In fact, the whole thing is a pretty apt metaphor for what I remember of dating life. You can be wearing stunning – and matching – beach attire, spin the dice, land in the right spot, and still get the guy with the bowling bag.

For the record? I lost Mystery Date. I guess some skills – or lack thereof – do translate into real life.

The New Suburban SUV/Body Mass Index

So, on the one hand, there was all this uproar in Spain a little while ago barring those models with too low a body/mass index (BMI) from modeling in fashion shows in that country. (The body/mass index? That would be some too-complicated-for-this-mathaphobe formula calculating height and weight that would basically prevent 90% of the planet’s superstar models/waifs from strutting their stuff on the runway).

On the other hand? I read that Banana Republic and some other stores are actually going to start offering sub-zero (“00”) sizes that are even smaller than the size 0 now all the rage with the Nicole Richie-wannabe set. Turns out enough people are taking in their too-big size 0’s (Who are these people anyway? They’re not hanging out at my local mall) to make this a viable proposition money-wise for the retailers (and we all know that that’s what’s fueling the bottom line here, not a burning desire to save fashion x-rays a trip to the tailor).

Okay, maybe I am jealous. The only part of me that would qualify for a sub-zero size would be my earlobe. So instead of the traditional body/mass index, I propose my own suburban version: the “SUV/Body Mass Index.” Basically, this formula would discourage any woman who weighs less than a single tire on her super-mega-sized sports utility vehicle from getting behind the wheel of it. (Hint: If you need a stepstool to step up into the driver’s seat of your SUV, think sedan.)

So, if you have a high enough SUV/BMI, you’d still be able to hop into your sports utility vehicle to go to the mall to pick up some real women-sized (something above a zero) fashions. If your SUV/BMI was too low, however, you’d only be permitted to cruise over to the mall for the purpose of hitting the food court. And hey, while you’re there? Have an extra Cinnabon for moi.

My Birds Eye View of the DeVito Debacle

Ohmigodohmigod.

I was actually THERE IN THE AUDIENCE when Danny Devito appeared sloshed on "The View” on Wednesday and I totally missed what was probably rhe biggest scoop of my journalistic career.

Here’s all I wrote about Danny Devito in my Thursday post: 1) He was plugging his new Xmas flick, 2) he was funny, and 3) put his funny personality together with the smarts and hunky good looks of John Stossel and Thomas Gibson, respectively, the other two "View" guests that day, and you’d have The Perfect Man.

Shoot me now. Who knew that Danny was drunk? I didn’t give him a Breathalyzer. The guy’s a goofy guy…I thought he was just being himself (i.e. goofy). (To my credit, my friend didn’t have a clue either.)

So what’s with all these stars behaving badly? To add insult to injury, the same day Devito did his thing on their set, “The View” hosts actually chatted about the recent Michael Richards scandal and Rosie recalled having Farah Fawcett on her former daytime talk show the same day Fawcett went on to make her infamous wacked out “Letterman” appearance. Rosie even mentioned thinking to herself that Fawcett had make-up on her nose during her "Rosie" appearance (hint: it was a powder but definitely not make-up).

So yes, I missed the DeVito thing. Oops. My bad.