So What if My Role Model is a Pot Dealer

I’ve made no secret of my certain affection for a fictitious middle-aged widow who supports her extended family weekly on Showtime at 10 PM.

There’s something about the way Mary-Louise Parker saunters as she effectively multi-tasks - Running her underground business while trying to meet the needs of her brood, inevitably falling from grace episode after episode, only to stay afloat and do a public service (Juggling hats again!) by supplying every inch of the food train with much-needed “happy” relief in the form of marijuana.

I’m not advocating drug use here. I’m quite anti-pleasure derived from substances other than chocolate or ice cream. It’s just Nancy Botwin (or Mary-Louise Parker’s character on Weeds) is such a prime example of a social antipreneur.

She has her principles and stands by them - She won’t deal in elicit drugs like crack or cocaine, traded her SUV for a Prius in a way that even Al Gore might have to slap her on the rear for just out of sheer adulation, and she puts her family first before her work. Read More…

Pluggin’ A New Site for Kids, Adults, & Educators Worldwide

Think Goofus and Gallant are enough to teach today’s kids the stuff that they need to make it in the real world? You’re wrong. These days it’s all about differentiation and having the proper toolkit in place to build your brain from the ground up.

So whether you’re a parent, educator, or kid looking to understand Math & Science in terms that actually mean something to the average individual who is not mathematically endowed (guilty!), A Write to Learn is an innovative and dare I say, fun approach to learning for kids and adults of all ages.

The brainchild of Barbara Gottfried Hollander, a former Book Reviewer for The Jerusalem Post and Columnist for The New Jersey Jewish News, the destination site for educational consulting features creative exercises geared to teaching kids practical and relevant applications, such as how to wrap your head around Chinese currency in time for the upcoming Olympics, and even lends itself to curriculum developers looking for a little inspiration for their courses. A Write to Learn aims to involve teachers and kids (how novel, right?), by showcasing the writing talents of young adults and looking to involve them in making a difference for the future.

Maybe I woke up on the less cynical side of the bed today, but Hollander’s world is one that makes me think that there might just be a brighter future in store.

Wall-E is a 1st Generation Mac that Falls In Love With An iPod - How’s that Possible?

Talk about having to expand your mental schema around inter-species relationships. In the film Wall-E (adorable Pixar-Disney flick, btw), the film’s title character, a robut named Wall-E, falls in love with Eve, who is another robot that inhabits the form of a a sleek, whitish veneered androgynous (suppository-ish) Apple-looking product. Now Wall-E is a junky, vintage object, but even he even reboots himself each morning with the sound of a Mac starting up, so it’s clear the old chap is a bonafide Apple product (maybe an Apple IIe?). All this Apple love is no coincidence as the film’s computer generated voices were the product of Apple. Did you happen to see the trailers too?

Not Your Al Gore Variety Hybrid

Is this a horse? A zebra? If the mother is a zebra and the father is a horse, what does that make their hybrid spawn Eclyse? Interesting to look at to say the very least. And much more entertaining than Al Gore’s pothead son getting pulled over and arrested for possession of a gazillion prescription meds. No jail time on this celebrity. Not at present. The pressing question on my mind is was he or wasn’t he driving a hybrid…

Did He Use Too Much Toilet Paper?

“Curb You Enthusiasm” and “Seinfeld” creator Larry David and his wife, Laurie, of 14 years announced their split. The split is said to be “amicable” and the two will continue to jointly raise their daughters. While David has made quite a name for himself for being the genius behind our most memorable cultural neurotic icons since Woody Allen, his wife, Laurie, an active environmentalist has pursed more serious undertakings. Her most notable role being that of producer of the Al Gore documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” and a recent college tour stint with Sheryl Crow. Of course the latter can only raise certain flags. Like, will Crow’s now infamous rationing of toilet paper inspire a future episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”? One can only hope so…

Green Never Looked So Enticing

Famed deep-sea explorer Jacques Cousteau is a name that nearly everyone knows. Another name and face which people should start to get acclimated to is Philippe Cousteau Jr., Jacque’s grandson and an environmental activist himself (see EarthEcho). A side note: Philippe’s sister Alexandra ain’t too shabby in the looks dept. either…

Philippe and Alexandra are taking their symmetrical faces and mutual adoration for the outdoors to TV in a new network show for Animal Planet called “Spring Watch USA.” No doubt Philippe’s timely interview with Reuters and the premiere of his new show (April 21) was deliberate.

Happy Early Earth Day everyone! Maybe by next week, I’ll be in a more celebratory mood if and when the Northeast finally emerges from its spell of freezing rain.

Rich People Don’t Defecate Like The Rest Of Us

Toilets have been on my mind a lot lately. Last week, I temped a job at Harvard University and noticed that the toilet had two levers for the flush, one for the big jobs and the other for smaller, more discreet ones. Unfortunately, I flushed multiple times defeating its purpose because I had no idea what the symbols actually meant. I had seen this type of contraption in Israel (where water is scarce), but never before in the U.S. so I made note of it.

Then the other night, I heard Jay Leno poke fun at the use of compost toilets, the energy-saving, environmentally green alternative to toilet paper. And suddenly these toilets are turning up everywhere. There’s even an entire site dedicated to it. Yesterday, as I waited 2.5 hours at the DMV to renew my driver’s license, I then read an article about celebrities practicing green living solutions (Earth Day is next month already after all). About the time I read about Pierce Brosnan and his wife owning one of these composters, I thought back to Leno’s apropos joke about a hose and a hair dryer being equally as effective as one of these $1600 machines. Moreover, can’t celebrities afford to hire people to wipe their own asses?

But the point is not the cost or the energy-conscious turn we’ve all taken since learning that world is going to melt into oblivion and Al Gore and his posse won’t be around to save us. It’s like those Chanel sunglasses or Fendi bags that women die to get originals of and eventually succumb to fake imposters. Simply put, disposing of our feces in environmentally conscious terms is now du jour. And that catch phrase that previously served as a social equalizer of sorts: Everyone’s shit smells the same. Well, it just doesn’t apply anymore because we’ve been irrigated before any stench could set in.

No one likes to talk about this kinda stuff. Frankly put (no pun intended) it stinks. But so does the self-righteous, moral high horse nonsense that goes along with those that use it. If I choose to write with the lights off in my apartment and let the natural light filter in (which happens more often that I like to admit), it’s not because I’m making a conscious decision to preserve energy. It’s cause I’m too lazy to put on a light. When I called my landlord to complain about heat being too high in the Winter it wasn’t because I was practicing an energy-saving practice, it was because I was burning up in there. Similarly, if I choose to buy crappy toilet paper, it’s cause it’s on sale and I can afford it.

Compost toilets feel elitist to me. Of course the high expenditure of the product lends itself to a certain yuppie demographic that plasters itself at will on the Sunday New York Times Home & Garden section in the hopes that all this plugging their proactive energy conscious lifestyles will later pan out when little Isabella (now 2) is on the waiting list at New York’s prestigious Dalton School.

As Mel Brooks would say, “It’s all bupkis.” And I know in the end, it is. It’s the whole stinking ride that gets to me sometimes though.