There is simply nothing left to add at this point regarding the BP oil spill.  It has easily surpassed Exxon Valdez in size, and while the “top kill” procedure begun Thursday to essentially plug up the hole is so far “on track”, it is not yet “mission accomplished”.  President Obama held a news conference yesterday to address the blame game, who’s-in-charge, the moratorium on new drilling, and answer questions about his rapidly graying hair.  I’d resemble Barbara Bush if I had his job.  How did Reagan keep his from going gray?

An investigation last week turned up a proverbial “smoking gun”, proving that North Korea is to blame for sending a torpedo into a South Korean warship on March 26th, resulting in 46 deaths.  Both sides of the Korean peninsula have shut their doors on each other as tensions mount.  Will instability in the region lead to war?  Is that what Kim Jong Il is after?

There’s a better chance today than there was Wednesday that gays will no longer have to pretend they’re not if they want to serve in the military.  The House voted Thursday to send a defense bill to the Senate which includes an amendment for overturning Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT).  Say it again.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Already, some powers that be want to wait until studies on the policy are completed in early December before jumping into this.  It’s been on the books since 1993.  It’s absurd.

Memorial Day is Monday, when we honor those who have died in our nation’s service.  We remember far too many.  Did it surprise anyone else that, with the addition of our National Guard and Reserves, we had nearly enough men and women in the past ten years to fight two wars at the same time?  Without a draft?  Anecdotally, many enlist for lack of other life options.  Some are looking for ways to pay for college.  Other are interested in the rigid discipline of a military life, while thousands upon thousands genuinely want to serve their country, nothing more.

I’m currently reading journalist Sebastian Junger’s book WAR, detailing five months he spent embedded with a combat platoon in Afghanistan.  It’s a macho account and Junger is honest and specific as he details the physical and emotional experiences of these men in the Korengal Valley from June to June, 2007-2008.  What’s stuck in my craw is something he observed early on; the idea that rapidly, the reasons and politics of why and for what these men were fighting were irrelevant.  They were in the armpit of Afghanistan with no electricity, no running water, no phones, where soldiers were encouraged to smoke (if they didn’t already) because there was nothing else to do…except fight.  A shoot-out with the enemy was their sole purpose for being there.  Too many hours without engagement and their lives felt dull, pointless.

Is it possible that war has gone on since the beginning of time because men must fight?

The question is hardly unique, but in addition to reading WAR, I just finished watching HBO’s “The Pacific”.  While World War II had distinct enemies in Japan and Hitler’s Germany, the Taliban has become somewhat elusive in Afghanistan.  Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party were made to disappear quickly in Iraq, but then what?  Both wars will never end in well-defined victory for either side.  War is brutal.  It repels and fascinates simultaneously and it occurred to me that perhaps George W. Bush HAD to go to war because it had been far too long between combat missions.   Honestly, is it in a man’s nature to seek out conflict whether it’s relevant or not?  Is there a physical need to come to blows?

Obviously, not all men are interested in battle.  But historically, one war or another has taken place somewhere on the planet at every point in time.  And for the most part, it’s the men who start them, the men who fight them, the men who win and lose them and the men who die in them.  With humble and great respect for the women killed while in service to our country, on Monday, we’re mostly mourning our sons, brothers, uncles and fathers.  What they’ve done, how they’ve sacrificed, is beyond what I’ll attempt to grasp.  But then I can barely comprehend war because, as a woman, I have no need to battle in ways that could kill me.

As I said, it fascinates me.  I wish it didn’t.

I don't know her, but I like her. Not "like" like her - more in a judicious way.

I couldn’t agree with Elena Kagan more than I do about the comments she made in a 1995 Harvard Law Review article.  Referring to the senate confirmation hearings on Supreme Court Justices, she called the whole thing a “vapid and hollow charade.”  She believed senators should require nominees to talk about their views on legal controversies, like Roe v. Wade.

After having been chosen yesterday by President Obama to replace John Paul Stevens, retiring this summer, one can’t help wonder if Kagan wants to take those words back.  I hope she doesn’t.  Did you watch any of the hearings involving Roberts, Alito or Sotomayor?  “Vapid and hollow” is a gentle description.

Senators with I-speak-so-the-world-may-hear-my-mellifluous-voice syndrome drone on in front of these nominees, eliciting little in the way of revelatory information.  Unless you’ve got Ted Kennedy lambasting Robert Bork as if Bork were Beelzebub, or Anita Hill dropping a few salacious accusations against Clarence Thomas, we’re all in for another yawn fest come July when Kagan faces her own Senate confirmation hearing.

Or maybe not.

As expected, Republican Senators are already talking about holding Kagan to “The Kagan Standard”.  Does that mean instead of softball questions, they’ll be throwing hard fastballs?  Curveballs?  Staying with the sports metaphors, will one of them ask what team she plays for, and how she’d vote if there were a case before the court seeking to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)?

Just last year, Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by President Obama to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.  There was the usual spinning hamster wheel of punditry and opinion, most focusing on these words she’d spoken several times before:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Conservative white men from different corners cried “racist!”  (Really?  Really.)  If they’d taken the time to read the entire speech from which it was culled and they were wise white men, they would’ve understood the point she was trying to make.  In the end, she apologized for her poor choice of words.  She did not, however, apologize for the sentiment behind them.

Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina woman, just as there is no denying Thurgood Marshall was a black man.  Did anyone really believe that when Marshall joined the Supreme Court, he was going to form opinions not influenced by being the grandson of a slave?  Free of any resulting emotion from his denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because he was black?

Not too long ago, the Supreme Court was made up of nine white men.  Though many of them were “wise”, they continued to uphold laws that discriminated by race and gender.  Thurgood Marshall began changing that even before he landed in the Supreme Court in 1967, but his inclusion began a leveling of the playing field in the country’s highest court.

In the 1980s, Sandra Day O’Connor gave the court its first female justice and, though a conservative (and a registered Republican), it was her deciding vote that prevented Roe v. Wade from being overturned.  Whether she liked it or not, or would admit to it, being a woman influenced her decision.  How could it not?  Her opinion came from the mind of a woman.

Over and over, senators from the opposing party of the nominating President seek to prove that, in fact, the nominee is NOT a judicial eunuch, which they pretend to seek.  Ridiculous! To judge is to form an opinion.  Opinions are based on evidence and interpretation.  No one can interpret free from the brain inside his or her head.  I have a Venus brain and so, when lost, will ask for directions.  The Mars brain will simply drive around in circles.  Venus and Mars may both get to the same destination, eventually, but let’s not pretend who we are doesn’t affect how we get there.

So, Elena Kagan.  Oh, go ahead Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice, and get the pot stirring by claiming that “millions of Americans will be outraged when they learn that Obama has picked a Supreme Court nominee with a demonstrated hostility to the very armed forces that make our freedom and constitutional rights possible.”  (Really?  Really.)  The facts: Harvard has an anti-discrimination policy.  The military discriminates against gays with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, so the school doesn’t provide assistance to the Armed Forces when they come onto campus to recruit.  The policy was in place before Kagan became dean of the law school.  She didn’t touch it.  The Armed Forces still recruit at Harvard.  They just don’t get help from the Crimson.  Does that mean that Kagan spits in the military’s face?  No.  Maybe she just doesn’t agree with any kind of discrimination.

Hmmmm.  I wonder why?  Is it just because she’s an evolved human or because she’s felt the sting of being singled out, and not in a good way?  Will she uphold Roe v. Wade out of judicial respect and precedent or because she has a uterus?  Will she vote to overturn DOMA because it’s a form of discrimination or because she knows that homosexuality is not a choice one makes?  I sense she’d apply all these reasons in forming her opinions.  I’d like to think come summer, we’ll be able to listen as she openly shares her views on hypothetical cases that might come before the court.  I live in a dream world.

I want the next Supreme Court justice to be confirmed because of who they are, not because they’ve successfully convinced us that who they are will not affect how they judge.

I spent part of New Year’s evening up at the Laundromat (spooky place on a quiet night but oh, their machines are powerful!) drying two loads of clothes because our dryer died during the Rose Bowl.  When I returned home and found my husband cooking dinner on the grill because the burners on the stove weren’t working, I paused.  Perhaps there was a connection.  My eldest daughter was in the shower while I was hypothesizing and came out complaining there was no hot water.  The problem was systemic and so I called the gas company.  The woman on the other end tried to talk me through resetting the automatic earthquake valve shut-off but it was dark outside and I wanted a gas man.  (No earthquake, just a basketball jolt during a game of h-o-r-s-e.)  She set me up with an appointment the following day (Saturday) for any time between 7am and 8pm.  When I asked if she could narrow that down or have the gas man call me when he was on his way, she replied that the technicians did not carry cell phones with them in the field.  Is it me, or is that the dumbest explanation you’ve heard in a long time?  My eight-year old neighbor has a cell phone.  Homeless people carry cell phones.  Did ya know, when they ask for money, sometimes it’s for calling cards?  So my husband and I took shifts throughout Saturday and behaved as chorus members from The Music Man waiting for the Wells Fargo Wagon.  Thankfully, he did not pass our door but stopped in to show me how to reset the earthquake thing myself so that he wouldn’t have to charge me for the visit.  The two of us then relit the pilot light together on the hot water heater, checked the stove and the dryer, shook hands and wished each other a Happy New Year.  He should’ve wished me a happier New Year than the one I was currently having.

Our main computer got sick over the holidays so my husband took it to the Apple Store on New Year’s Day for some TLC.  He was told it was TFD.  (Figure it out for yourself; my mother-in-law reads this blog.)  I therefore cancelled the Time-Warner Cable appointment I had worked so hard to get for Saturday morning.  My wireless Signal Strength is “poor” and I want so much for it to be “excellent”.  I want 2010 to be excellent also, but I think starting it out with wet clothes and a busted Apple is not an auspicious beginning.

Speaking of apples, I make an incredible apple cake in my KitchenAid mixer.  About thirteen years ago, after my husband and I had been dating for several months, he gave me one for my birthday.  At the time, I thought it was a deal breaker.  I was hoping for a mix-tape that would include all the songs he associated with our love.  Instead, he got me a very expensive, very heavy domestic item.  Today, it sits proudly on my countertop as it has every day since I received it, and is a testament to the enduring relationship I have with cooking and with him.  I love my KitchenAid.  So you can imagine how aghast I was to hear my friend Anna rejoice after receiving one for Christmas last week.  “Wait, you didn’t have one already?” I managed.  Anna is the Anna from GlutenFreeAnna.com – she, of the celiac disease Anna.  She survives by making and cooking just about everything she consumes.  How is it possible that she’s gone this long without?  Let’s not belabor this.  She has.  And now, her brushed chrome, KitchenAid mixer on steroids (it’s so much bigger than mine) is about to change her life and I’m so darn happy for her.  But here’s the crazy thing; another good friend of mine received one this Christmas also.  At the New Year’s Eve party I attended, she pulled me aside to share her good fortune.  Both of these friends had received the mixers from their husbands and I was beginning to realize just how romantic a gift it really was all those years ago.  And we had family movie night on New Year’s and watched “Gremlins”.  Weird movie, but there’s a memorable scene where the little, ugly suckers are all over the house and the mom finds them in her kitchen.  She’s a momma-bear type, ready to take them on herself, and waits for one of them to land in the KitchenAid.  She reaches around, manages to flip the switch and poof! –  dead, mutilated gremlin.  It’s a powerful little appliance that became a theme to my weekend and every average to excellent cook and gremlin killer needs one.  They’re expensive, but it’s possible to find deals.  Try Craigslist.

He looks a little like my ex-fiance.

And last but not least, Ed Begley Jr.  I went snow tubing with a friend and all of our kids on New Year’s Eve day because you can do that here in Los Angeles and still go surfing later.  (I didn’t.)  My friend is relatively new to Southern California and we laughed at how spotting celebrities in certain neighborhoods can often be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.  Around 2005, the first famous person she encountered was Ed Begley Jr. of “St. Elsewhere” and “Living with Ed” fame.  I smiled because, if you live in the vicinity of Studio City and don’t have at least a tangential connection to Ed, you really aren’t getting out of the house enough.  She agreed because today, she hikes with his wife on a semi-regular basis.  That night, at the New Year’s Eve party I attended, the second person to smile at me when I walked in the door was Ed.  He doesn’t know my name, but he knows my face.  The next morning, I was more than halfway through my 15-mile run (training for the LA Marathon) when I stopped into a carwash in Burbank for some water.  There at the checkout, looking  down at me from a bottle of Begley’s Best was Ed again.  Like KitchenAid mixers, everyone should have him in their house.  He’s a genuine pioneer of the green movement.  Moving into this next decade, let’s remind ourselves to reduce, reuse and recyle.

Happy New Year.

On the 4^th day of Christmas…coffee, my true love gave to me FOUR coffee beans…

You’re thinking espresso beans that you chew, right?  Chocolate covered? Yeah, no.  Not a fan.  I feel like a hillbilly when I eat them and they get stuck in my teeth worse than tabouli.  Minutes after chewing, I’m still finding bits and pieces hiding in the nooks and crannies of my mouth, though it does remind me fondly of my father who spent probably half his life picking tobacco confetti off of his tongue from the non-filtered cigarettes he smoked.

No, we’re talking the Coffee Bean (and Tea Leaf) store.  I drove by four of them yesterday (I swear), just so I could keep some journalistic integrity (really?) for this damn 18 days thing.  I’ve even included a map of the locations close by.  I don’t feel strongly that living near a Coffee Bean gets you much.  They’re not quite as prevalent as Starbucks, and I don’t think they’re quite as good either.  The smell upon entering is one that strongly suggests flavored coffees, of which they sell a lot.  On the shelves of the one I went to at the mall (Christmas shopping, of course), I saw blends of French Vanilla, Chocolate Raspberry and Crème Brulee.  I didn’t make a face but there was judgment in my heart.

For the sake of my readers and because I could afford the calories having run 27 miles (Liar! You only ran 6!), I decided to try one of their signature holiday drinks so you wouldn’t have to.  After careful consideration, I went for the Dark Chocolate Peppermint Latte and, of course, ordered it half-caff.  I didn’t do any of that non-fat, low-fat nonsense because I think the half-caff request was challenging enough.  After two minutes, they shouted out “JoAnn – chocolate peppermint latte!” and I hung my head in shame.  It’s not who I am.  I’m a coffee drinker and upon tasting my beverage, it appeared I had ordered some hot chocolate kids’ drink.  Technically, it was a latte and so should have had at least a slight café flavor but I detected none.  It also wasn’t hot so I drank it like a child and it was gone by the time I got to Target (more Christmas shopping) a mere few minutes later.  I was full and thought I probably shot the wad on calories for lunch, which made me sad because I knew I’d be hungry for something more substantial later on having run 32 miles.  (Liar!)

After doing some higher math on the Coffee Bean’s nutrition chart, I concluded that the drink was no less than 400 calories.  If I did, in fact, decide to eat lunch on top of that, it was really going to cut into the bag of Trader Joe’s Kettle Corn I wanted to enjoy later during the Steelers-Browns football game.  I decided against lunch, didn’t have time anyway, but only enjoyed the kettle corn later and not the game.  Those poor Steelers.  They were cold and awful.  Ben, Ben, Ben.

On a scale of one to five, I have to give the Coffee Bean’s Dark Chocolate Peppermint Latte a measly rating of one and a half.  If you call yourself a latte, you better damn well have some coffee in you.

Next: 5 scoops of Christmas Blend (after I talk about kicking a ginger)

Last night, it was still possible to see the world simply as it is – good, bad or something in the middle. The weather was Los Angeles typical: sunny and warm. People spoke about Tiger Woods; about how much turkey they’d eaten; about how difficult it was to get back into the groove on a Monday following a long weekend. It was November something.

Today, it is December and all aspects of life are viewed through December’s eyes. It’s officially the holiday season, and regardless of how and what you celebrate, December colors everything, for better or worse. If you were born in December, chances are the focus on your birthday was less than the attention paid someone born in June. If you recall a death that happened this month some years past, you recall how difficult the holidays were that year (and maybe still are.) Couples get engaged in December (the first of my dozen or so proposals took place on Christmas Eve). Babies are conceived this month (hello – why do you think there are so many September birthdays?) Even President Obama, when he tells us tonight that he’s sending more troops to Afghanistan, will talk about putting more boots on the ground “as early as Christmas”. In other words, December cannot and will not be ignored. I’m not even going to try.

Let’s jump into some advice, which I’ll try and heed myself: the holidays were never meant to be stressful. If too much is taken on, knots will accumulate in shoulders and there won’t be enough chardonnay in Los Angeles to dissipate the tension. Learn how to say “no”, gently. Don’t try to attend three parties in one night if you’re lucky enough to be invited. Resist the urge to make everything from scratch or all things by hand (I have no such urge). Just say NO.

Shall we begin with entertainment? Kids want to do it all, so it’s good to have a plan. Let’s start out easy and cheap (which, shame to say, I’ve been accused of being more than once). If you have a DVR, start recording. If not, simply be aware that holiday programming begins in earnest today and much of it, though certainly not all, is worth sitting down and watching with your kids. The classics (“Rudolph…”, “Frosty…”, the original “Grinch”) will remind you of your youth and it’s always nice to feel young again. It’s supposed to snow tonight (kidding), so after the homework has been done or the diaper has been changed/baby fed, snuggle up with some warm vanilla milk* and kick off the season with a little cheer that won’t cost your family a thing; that is, if you regularly ignore your cable or DirecTV bill each month.

This week -
Tonight:
“The Year Without a Santa Claus”, followed by “Santa Clause 3: the Escape Clause” on ABC Family. Starts at 7pm. 
“A Christmas Carol: the Musical” and “A Grandpa for Christmas” on the Hallmark Channel. Check for times.
Wednesday, Dec. 2nd:
“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” on CBS, 8pm.
“Christmas in Rockefeller Center” on NBC, 8pm.
“I’ll Be Home For Christmas” on the Hallmark Channel. Check for times.
Thursday, Dec. 3rd:
“The Polar Express” on ABC Family, various times.
Friday, Dec. 4th:
“A Muppets Christmas: Letter to Santa” on NBC, 8pm.
“Frosty’s Winter Wonderland”, ABC Family, 7pm.
Saturday, Dec. 5th:
“The Santa Clause 2” on the Disney Channel, check for times.

*I make warm vanilla milk with vanilla syrup like they use at Starbuck’s. The best price by far on this is at Smart and Final, although you can get small bottles at your local grocery store. Yum