Category Archives: Mishpucha (mi familia)


Before the weather goes completely to hell

The sea was gorgeous this morning. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

All before noon, I have

  • Washed, dried, and folded a load of laundry.
  • Fixed some killer French toast — oops! — liberty toast for Karen. Recipe below.
  • Fixed ham and eggs for my son.
  • Macerated four cups of dried fruit in dark rum to make Alton Brown’s fruitcake recipe. I’ll let you know if it’s worth the effort.
  • Done my grocery shopping for the weekend.
  • Mailed off the mortgage check.
  • Brined a few pork chops.
  • Marinated chicken in onions, yogurt, salt, black pepper, cayenne, cumin, turmeric, and fenugreek.
  • While she was showering, I watched my wife in a sweet, yet somehow creepy, stalkerish way.

Why do most restaurants screw up French toast? It’s not that tough. Slice French bread into four slices, each 3/4 inch to one inch thick. Put the slices into a one gallon ziplock bag in one layer.

Beat two to three eggs, 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup milk, a slosh of vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a shake of cinnamon. Pour this into your ziplock bag and roll it around to evenly distribute the liquid. Throw it into the fridge until you are ready to use it. (It will keep overnight. On weekends, I always make two days worth.)

Fry the bread in butter over medium heat. When the toast is crispy on both sides, slosh some maple syrup into the frying pan. The syrup will get very hot, will partially caramelize, and will coat the down-side of the toast. Pour everything out onto a plate.

As my son used to say when he was three, “Wallah!”

Now, if only I can

  • Get some editing done.

D.

Atlantic Boulevard

This afternoon, Jake and I had a slightly disappointing time tidepooling. Not much but snails, hermit crabs, and a few sad-looking anemones. This was only slightly disappointing since the sea was beautiful and, hey, on the North Coast, any sunny day after Halloween is pure gravy.

On the drive home, I exercised a father’s prerogative, attempting to inculcate similar values in my son. In other words, I played Soft Cell’s Sex Dwarf for him, stopping periodically to make sure he understood every delicious line of the lyrics.

Then I told him about the time in med school that Karen and I used a snip from the song, I would like you on a long black lead/You can bring me all the things I need, for our answering machine, figuring, “Hey, who calls us?” Our parents, our friends . . . either way, good joke, right? No. The first person to leave a message was my medical statistics prof. “Um . . . sounds like a fun party. I’m calling to let you know the time of the final has changed . . . ” Yeah, whatever. Oh, how I hated medical statistics.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. (more…)

Stamper’s paradise

This one’s for my sister. (For the rest of my readers, skim through to the end. I won’t disappoint you.)

From Sea Shell City.

I missed her birthday this week, which I would like to say is a rare occurrence, but my memory says otherwise. I remembered to call (see? there have been worse years) but it’s still rather slovenly to forget like this. I mean, she never forgets my birthday, or Jake’s. (more…)

I’m the Daughter of a Traitor

Most of my family were thrown in internment camps during WWII by FDR for the “crime” of being Japanese-American. Of course, none of those internees ever committed even a slightly treasonous act but suffered the consequences of the loss of their civil rights.

On the other hand, my (now deceased) father’s story is a great deal more complicated. My great-grandfather was forced to leave Japan because he was a supporter of the old order. When the Meiji restoration occurred (the emperor seized control), he was on the losing side of the power struggle and emigrated to the U.S. where he was a successful farmer. He went back to Japan and bought real estate and lived quite comfortably. His daughter and her husband stayed in the U.S. and that was where my father was born.

He was sent to Japan at the age of seven to be educated. His parents stayed behind, so he was raised by his grandfather, a very strict but fair man. When the shit hit the fan in 1941, my great-grandfather publically stated that the Japanese government had their heads up their asses and would lose the war. The police questioned him but let him go. Actually, the Japanese government and military knew that it was a bad idea but, for extraordinarily stupid reasons, they went ahead and attacked Pearl Harbor anyway. Why would a government knowingly commit an idiotic and catastrophic mistake? (Sound familiar?)

In any case, my father, then 14, suffered beatings and abuse because he wasn’t a “patriotic Japanese citizen.” Determined to prove his loyalty, he ran away from home at 16 and found work making bombs in a Tokyo factory. I suppose he may have committed high treason for this activity. His bombmaking job didn’t last, however.

The U.S. firebombed residential sections of Toyko, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians who were NOT engaged in the war effort. People ran for the rivers but the heat was so intense, the water boiled and they were literally cooked to death. My father saw bloated bodies floating in the water with their skin peeling off their flesh. He escaped the same fate through sheer luck.

After Japan’s defeat and the subsequent economic dislocations perpetrated by Douglas MacArthur, my great-grandfather lost most of his money and had to sell his real estate holdings. My father eventually decided to go to the U.S. He was still a U.S. citizen.

When the Korean War broke out, my father was drafted by the U.S. Army. He served two years and was a model soldier. For the next 50 years, he worked hard, raised a family, and was a law-abiding, contributing member to society.

I believe that a rational person would forgive my father’s “treason.” He was young, his allegiance was to the country where he was raised, he was pressured as disloyal by his peer group, and he later served in the U.S. military (a rather ironic twist, imho).

This is my father’s odd history with bizarre twists and shifting patriotism (or lack thereof). FDR and the U.S. government are hardly the heroes in this story, but neither are the Japanese; atrocities abound for all.

So what country deserves the patriotism of its citizens? George Bush’s America? HAH! Not a goddamn one deserves my loyalty, but that’s a consequence of my family history and post Vietnam/Watergate cynicism.

Weird Halloween

Not what I’d call my first choice for Halloween. Only decent stuff I could find at the viddy store: Evil Dead, Reanimator 2, and Ringu. And what does Jake want to watch tonight? To Kill a Mockingbird.

Um . . . not scary?

Maybe I’m in a bad mood because I’m using my kickass new gas range/oven and the house smells like natural gas. That’s not right, right?

At least I figured out how to use my kickass new dishwasher.

***

Halloween never used to be my favorite holiday. That would be Hannukah, for obvious reasons; second favorite, July 4th. Call me a revolutionary at heart. That, or a pyromaniac. What is it with me and incomplete sentences today? I seem to be hung up. On them.

Maybe I’m gearing up for a month of crappy speed-writing.

Here’s what I remember about childhood Halloween: almost nothing. My only costumes were cheapy store-bought rigs with simple gowns, masks held in place with rubber bands that always broke way too early. If I have my goody sack in one hand and I’m holding my mask to my face with the other, how do I knock? With my foot, naturally. Some neighbors objected to my door-kicking technique.

I watched the Charlie Brown Halloween Special every year. I don’t know why; I hated every aspect of that show, from Charlie Brown’s pathetic “I got a rock,” to idiotic Linus’s Great Pumpkin religion, to Snoopy, who nowadays makes me think those dog-eating cultures have the right idea.

I carved unimaginative pumpkins, mostly for the seeds. Yum. Soak in brine, rub off most (not all!) of the stringy orange guts, then roast in the oven until crispy. Chew up whole. Your colon will thank you for the fiber load.

No, I had to hit adulthood to fall in love with Halloween.

***

My favorite Halloween: second year of med school, Karen and I held a Reanimator Halloween party. We played a video of Reanimator for our friends, who were told to bring food shaped like body parts. Our friend Dean brought a chocolate cake shaped like feet. Karen carved out a watermelon, made it look like a head (pumpkin-style), filled the shell with fruit salad, and stuck a bunch of yellow Gatorade-filled hypodermic needles into the watermelon rind.

I have to finish cooking dinner. Nothing fun, unfortunately: pork chops, yams, and broccoli.

D.

Technorati tag:

Wonder Boy 10/25/95

I made Beth’s peanut butter cookies for Jacob the other day — he really loves ’em with white chocolate chips and pistachios** — and I’m making homemade pizza for his birthday dinner tonight. Usually, I use a focaccia dough (two cups of bread flour, one cup of water, one teaspoon of salt, one packet of yeast, one tablespoon of olive oil), but the crust always comes out too thick. Good, but thick. So tonight, I’m following The Fanatic Cook’s thin crust pizza recipe. Cross your fingers.

***

I’ll save more Jake stories for future birthdays, but here’s one for today.

As a toddler, Jake was a perfectionist. If he couldn’t do it right, he wouldn’t do it at all. This drove us crazy because he wouldn’t talk. We knew he could talk. Just knew it. One day, at a Vietnamese restaurant in San Antonio, Karen and I leaned in towards Jacob and pointed at a young Texan couple at a nearby table. “Bubbas, Jake,” we said, keeping our voices low. “Buh-buhs. Buh-buhs.”

“Buh-buh,” Jake said. It was his first word.

“Yes!” we cried. “You did it. Now do it again. Bubba. Buh-buh.”

Nothing. He kept his mouth shut for another year, and then he began talking in full sentences.

***

Happy Birthday, Jake!

You’re Ten NowNo More Free Ride

You’ll find the classifieds on your bed.D.

**Yes, Beth, I’m tweaking you.

A joyous blog meme; Jake & Doug’s near death experience

Gabriele has tagged me. Now we’re even.

This one looks kinda fun . . .

(more…)

But Onan knew that the seed would not be his . . .

I imagine other homeschooling parents have well thought-out curricula for their children, complete with lesson plans, lectures, daily assignments, and weekly field trips. I suspect they would shrink in horror at our ‘just winging it’ approach, also known as, “Okay. What do you want to do today?”

As I’ve mentioned before, we homeschool the lad because he was bored silly in 3rd Grade and the school wouldn’t give him challenging material. Currently, he’s reading To Kill a Mockingbird and studying grammar from Strunk and White, chemistry from Larry Gonick’s Cartoon Guide to Chemistry, and geometry from a book so dense it swallows thought. He hangs out with Karen in the office. Since she’s online reading political blogs much of the day and Jake never stops asking questions (about one every two minutes), he’s getting schooled in politics, government, and geography as well. He knows enough about current affairs to call our preznut an asswipe.

Never did I think we would become the sort of homeschooling parents who teach their kid from the Bible . . . until now.

As a direct result of my evil atheistic wife’s addiction to the Television without Pity Duggar Thread, Karen rediscovered the Brick Testament this morning. The Brick Testament pops up in the blogosphere every few weeks. In it, the Rev. Brendan Powell Smith has reduced much of the Old and New Testaments to a Lego extravaganza.

I’d love to say the Brick Testament sparked in my son a burgeoning lust for spiritual knowledge. In fact, he noticed this picture of Lego Adam taking Lego Eve doggy style, and I guess the sight of it sparked a different kind of lust.

On a more uplifting note, I can honestly say that my little atheist son spent the whole day reading Genesis. Really.

I think Bible studies are important. Even if you’re not a believer, the Old and New Testaments are part of our cultural heritage. Take a look at Bartlett’s Quotations sometime — check out how many pages are devoted to biblical quotes. I bet you’ll recognize most of them, and in many cases you’ll find yourself saying, “That’s from the Bible?” So, yeah, this stuff is important.

Unfortunately, Jake’s newfound passion for Genesis meant Karen had to explain the concept of “spilling one’s seed” to an almost-ten-year-old boy.

To her credit, she didn’t say, “Ask your father.” First she tried to explain masturbation to him; then she had to explain coitus interruptus. It took her a long time to explain this because she couldn’t stop laughing. Jake says, “Mommy is seriously cracked.” (He means she was cracking up.) Karen says, “At least I managed to avoid the whole topic of orgasm.”

By the way: contrary to popular belief, the Onan story is not a criticism of masturbation or coitus interruptus. God got cheesed because Onan violated the spirit of levirate marriage. Here’s the deal: Onan’s older brother Er died without children. By the laws of levirate marriage, Onan was obliged to take Er’s wife Tamar as his own and impregnate her. Her children would be considered not Onan’s, but Er’s. That way, Er’s bloodline would not die out.

Tamar, however, was a babe. Yes, yes, I know you can’t really tell that from the Brick Testament photo linked above. They fuzzed out all the good bits, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Tamar was hot. Selfishly, Onan didn’t want to get Tamar pregnant because he wanted to keep her as his love toy for as long as possible. If you remember that we Jews consider our children to be our afterlife (sort of), Onan’s selfishness deprived Er of his immortality.

That’s why God iced him.

I bet Karen hopes Jake gets back to Geometry tomorrow.

D.

“Are you spiritual?”

Um. Helloooo, Blogger? Is there a good reason why this post was up for several hours, and then disappeared, only to reappear as an older (AND INCOMPLETE!) draft version on my dashboard?

Or is this post being yanked by an even Higher Authority?

Cue Twilight Zone music.

Damn. I hate telling jokes twice.

At a Christmas party a few years ago, one of the local wives asked Karen, apropos of nothing, “Are you spiritual?”

Here was my wife, a firm atheist, being questioned on faith by someone who could only be described as a true believer. I watched, dumbstruck. I expected blood. But I had underestimated Karen yet again. As an attentive student of Miss Manners, she handled the question with ease.

“What an interesting question,” she said. “And such a good question, too. Isn’t it odd how infrequently folks talk about spirituality with people they hardly know? I wonder why that is?” And so forth. She kept at it until the topic had strayed a safe distance from the hot button of spirituality. The other woman never knew what hit her.

I was relieved — not so much because Karen had handled the question so deftly, but because no one had bothered to ask me.

No one ever talked religion in my family. We went to temple rarely, and in those days (the mid- to late-60s) rabbis sermonized on politics, not faith. The Holocaust was scarcely twenty years old; we all knew folks with tattoos on their arms. As far as I could tell, being a Jew meant (1) never forgetting the Holocaust, (2) supporting Israel, and (3) not believing in Jesus.By age five, the muse had me staging boxing matches in my head between God and Jesus, Jesus and the Devil, the Devil and Jesus versus God, and so forth. My knowledge of Jesus came from watching Bible-thumpers on Sunday TV and whatever I could find on weekdays. A few years later, I would be Garner Ted Armstrong‘s biggest fan. I suspect I had a better understanding of Revelations than I did of Genesis.

That might explain how I came up with the Hannukah Lobster.

After that bit of humiliation, I brow-beat my parents into signing me up for Hebrew School. There, Israeli women who pronounced my name Dog taught me to read Hebrew, and later, a tyrannical cantor taught me my cantillation marks so I could belt out Torah lines with the best of ’em. Religious instruction consisted of disjointed Bible stories taught as historical fact with nary a word of moral or ethical analysis. As for Talmud — Talwhat?

Our rabbi fancied himself a comedian, a Jackie Mason in tefillin. What a dick. His whole pre-ceremony interaction with me consisted of a twenty minute interview, during which he badgered me about how baseball was a sport for intellectuals. He got me to cough up some dirt on my family, which he used during my bar mitvah as ‘humorous’ snark. Yeah, that’s right — in front of my friends, family, and the whole congregation.

That ended my schtick with Judaism, at least for a while.

See, it’s this last bit that Blogger keeps eating. Not the whole post, just this last bit. Grrr.

A few days ago, I mentioned Borges’ story, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, wherein a little known, marginally successful author sets out to rewrite Don Quixote word for word. I’m beginning to feel like Menard, only it’s not Cervantes I’m struggling to channel. It’s me.

Well, here goes. One more time. This time I’m saving the HTML in a separate text file.

***

Over the years, my spiritual pendulum has swung from Judaism through Agnosticism to Zen Buddhism. I’m what you call a Jew-Boo (if you’re trying to be nasty, that is) or a Juddhist (my preferred designation). Those of you familiar with Buddhism know that its precepts are compatible with other religions. Zen, especially, is more a philosophy than a network of faith-based beliefs. So it’s not all that weird, despite what some of my tribe might think — the ones who sling the Jew-Boo label, that is.

Now that I’m an adult, I can take charge of my education. I have a halfway decent library on both Zen and Judaism, and I’ve read a fair fraction of it. I’m not an ignoramus. For that matter, I suspect I’ve read more of the New Testament than the average American Christian.

Nevertheless, when it comes to practice, I’m as piss-poor a Buddhist as I am a Jew.

The pendulum tends to take a sharp turn back towards Judaism whenever I’m faced with a pediatric airway emergency. Times like those, the last thing I want to believe is that I’m the one whose solely responsible for the life of this child. Those situations are frightening enough without that kind of load on my shoulders. Yup, that’s when the big time bargaining comes in.

Me: Hey, God? You remember me, the guy who recites his Shema every few years or so and hopes like crazy he’s catching You in a good mood. Well, hey, look. It’s like this. I have this kid here, she’s eighteen months old, and I would really appreciate it if you would help me look after her.

Him: (silence)

Me: Okay. Be that way. How about this: if things work out okay, I’ll start working on my son again. I mean, he’s nine years old. How entrenched could his atheism be? I’ll do my best, Lord, I really really will.

And so forth.

When you get down to it, I want to believe, particularly at times like those. Security, that’s what it’s all about. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I’m not particularly afraid of my own death. I am concerned about the safety and health of my family and my patients, and so I want to think Someone is up there watching over us.

At the same time, I realize no one makes it out of here alive.

That’s why questions like “Are you spiritual?”, “Do you believe in God?”, or even “Have you been saved?” distress me. The answer to all three is the same: It’s complicated.

You know something? For the folks who ask those kinds of questions, “It’s complicated” is the last answer they want to hear.

It’s complicated because I’m not the perfect Vulcan my wife is. It’s complicated because, while I hate blind faith, I’m too attached to my memes to let them go. It’s complicated because, like any true Agnostic, I really don’t know the answers.

I’d like to think my confusion is the hallmark of an intelligent mind, but I know it is nothing more than what it is: confusion.

And it doesn’t help that every time I come within a hair’s breadth of something approaching an epiphany of self-understanding, Blogger eats my column.

Okay. Here goes. Save HTML file. Hit publish button.

D.

A Birthday Wish List: Part 3

This is it, folks. The home stretch. Soon, you will be privy to my most intimate hopes and dreams.

It’s still not too late to click over to Boing Boing, where you can treat your eyes to Flying Spaghetti Monsterotica. Hey, there’s a reason why Boing Boing is number one: they give you guys just what you want to see. In this case, a naked woman (I think) clothed only in Saran Wrap and spaghetti.

On the other hand, all I have to offer is the warped Woody Allen-meets-John Waters schtick that runs through my head. Here ya go.

#4: I want my body back!

A couple years ago, I decided that a man really ought to be able to see his penis when he goes pee. Is that so much to ask? At the urging of a doctor-friend, I plunged into the Atkin’s induction diet and discovered the wonders of bacon, eggs, cheese, and more bacon, with a few more eggs for good measure.

The weight came off, I had to buy a new wardrobe, but I still felt crappy. I had no energy. I felt like I had Crisco for blood. When I tried a more reasonable diet (South Beach), the weight came back, a pound a day. I realized there was nothing for it: I needed to add some carbs back to my diet, but the only way I could do that was to exercise.

I used to laugh at my hospital colleagues whenever they’d been injured biking or doing something else vaguely athletic. “No one ever broke or sprained anything sitting on their couch,” I’d say. That’s how much I hated exercise — I made lame jokes to excuse my torpor. But a year ago, desperate to feel like a normal human being again, I joined a gym.

I surprised myself by sticking with it. And, you know, I found out something surprising: I’m a mesomorph. I put on muscle with relative ease.

I began to look pretty damned buff.

Then, about a month ago, my gym closed. Just for a few days, the manager said. We have to bring the plumbing up to code. Four weeks later, they’re still closed.

And now, damn it, I can’t pass the pinch test.

What I dream of:

Looking like this again.

What I’ll be satisfied with:

Avoiding a return to my fat clothes’ drawer.

#3: I am such a whore for brains, beauty, and fame.

It’s true. If a woman has all three, I’m lost. There was a time, a very brief time, oh, for maybe a few months after I saw Beetlejuice, when Winona Ryder did it for me. The fact that she was tribe, well, that only added spice (Winona Laura Horowitz — you figure it out). But then she got all klepto for Dolce & Gabbana black leather purses and Gucci dresses, and, you know, I’ve never looked at her the same way. (Click the link to find out what else Winona had in her trench coat!)

I mean, she might be able to play smart women for the movies, but how smart is she really?

Y’all know about my jones for Olivia Hussey and Jacqueline Kim, but honestly, I don’t know much about either woman. Not in the brains department, anyway. On the other hand, 10,000 Maniacs’ Natalie Merchant has it all, and damned if she doesn’t choke me up whenever I see her on TV. Now, if only she would jam with Trent Reznor, I’d be in heaven.

Ah, well. I can only pick one perfect dame for this particular birthday wish, so I’m gonna choose Cintra Wilson.

If any of you aren’t familiar with Ms. Wilson, you might begin by checking out Bookslut’s interview with her. Karen and I own both of Ms. Wilson’s books, and we read her weekly column in the Bay Area’s Freep, The Wave. (Note: to read Cintra’s column, The Dregulator, online, you’ll need to download the pdf — see link in upper lefthand corner of The Wave’s home page. It’s worth it. You’ll get to see Cintra’s newest photo, Cintra in dark lipstick, gggrrrahghglllrlll.)

Not only is she beautiful, but she looks like a different beautiful woman in every photo she takes. Don’t you see? She’s a one-woman harem! And oooh, is she ever smart. I especially loved her snark on the Bush Campaign in the last election, saying that Bush’s only plank was “the strengthiness of strengthy strength.”

Arguably, Cintra’s master work is her collection of essays (A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-examined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease, and other cultural revelations). Here’s a quote from her rant on Los Angeles, which is sort of a latter day nonfiction version of what Nathanael West had percolating in his brain when he wrote The Day of the Locust:

“L.A. is the place where Satan squats with an enormous ladle and dips deeply into his black cavity to extract huge soiled wads of cash, which he then pitches at the heads of the inhabitants below with such speed and force that they are rendered first unconscious, then punchy and depressed. This affliction causes them to overfeed the Dark Lord a-more with their incessant compromises in the workplace, and He devours and digests their creepy and self-negating decisions by day, and befouls them anew with the sooty issue of their moral failures each evening.”

Karen and I chortled when, in the middle of Terminator II, the Wrath of Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton‘s character dreamed of a Los Angeles devastated by nuclear holocaust. (And, yeah, a lot of folks in the theater just sorta stared at us.) So you know where we stand with respect to Cintra Wilson’s take on L.A.

(Hmm. I wonder, though, if there’s a neutron bomb which would leave Sahag’s Basturma Sandwich Shop and all the great Chinese restaurants and sushi bars untouched.)

What I dream of:

An evening of dinner, dancing, and sparkling conversation with Ms. Wilson. We have one of those nights where we are both on, you know what I mean? We play off each other, our comic riffs building to feverishly trenchant heights.

Afterwards, she touches me on the hand — a light touch, but a lingering one — and says, “Call me, any time,” and with her lusciously dark mouth gives me a chaste but emotion-packed kiss full on the lips.

What I’ll be satisfied with:

I bought Karen some Max Factor “Black Cherry Truffle” lipstick. I have a well developed imagination.

#2: A night of male bonding.

Just so you know I’m not a total cooch hound, there are some guys out there I’d like to know better. I suspect Dr. Otter is a great guy, and probably has a few stories to tell, and if DHH doesn’t want me, I might as well experience things vicariously through Doc Ott. I’m also intrigued by guys that seem quick-witted and brainy, like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, and it would be a blast if I could pal around with some of my favorite directors, like John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, Tim Burton, or David Cronenberg.

But if I had to pick one all-around great guy to bar-hop with, it would have to be Bruce Campbell.

I know him and love him from the Evil Dead movies, especially Army of Darkness, but Bruce has also had great bit rolls (from The Hudsucker Proxy to both Spiderman movies) and, hey, I happened to like him as an obese, elderly Elvis in Bubba Ho-tep. But there are two things you need to know about Bruce: he answers emails from his fans, and he has a heckuva writer’s brain, too.

We’ve bought both of Bruce Campbell’s books, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way and If Chins Could Kill. The first is sort of a blustering guy version of Carrie Fisher’s Postcards from the Edge, in style, if not in content. The second is Bruce’s memoir. Karen and I just got it from Barnes & Noble, and it’s a fine read.

What I dream of:

Carousing Hollywood with Bruce Campbell, getting only drunk enough to enjoy myself, but not so drunk that I can’t remember every moment until I’m too old to care.

What I’ll be satisfied with:

Watching Army of Darkness for the umpteenth time.

And . . . drumroll . . . my number one birthday wish (you knew it had to be about sex, didn’t you?) . . .

#1: An evening of exquisite torment at the hands (and whips) of Lydia McLane.

She’s bad. She’s beautiful. Performance artist and model Lydia McLane has been my wicked dreamgirl ever since her centerfold for City Slab (Volume 1, Issue 4: buy it!), wherein she wore nothing but a pair of devilish horns. Subscribe to The Slab and you’ll be treated with loads of Lydia, frequently in nasty vicious mean dominatrix garb, and not much of it.

(By the way: those of you who follow my Tangent Reviews know I loves my City Slab. Urban horror at its finest.)

Lest you think I’m some sort of shallow, testosterone-hypercharged vehicle for balls, I’ll have you know that Lydia is one smart cookie. From her website bio:

“Lydia is currently a student working towards her Masters of Clinical Psychology and is employed part-time with an agency that specializes in chronically mentally ill individuals. She is a trained Hospice volunteer. Lydia enjoys literature, Opera, all animals, live music, dancing, and other life enriching activities.”

See? She likes chronically mentally ill individuals and all animals. Lydia, I’m yours.

What I dream of:

Lydia, make me your bitch!

What I’ll be satisfied with:

How do you like the new outfit I bought Karen?

Don’t forget the spiked heels, Karen.

D.

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