Monthly Archives: December 2012

Is Cremation the Way to Go?

06 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in Confessional, Opinion

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Cemetary

19th Century Cemetery on W. 21st Street in Manhattan.
Photo by Julie Seyler

BY LOIS DESOCIO

My brother, Gerry, died this week last year. And since his life for decades was in Florida, but his family lives in New Jersey, the decision was made to cremate him, so we could bring him home, and have him home with us, forever. In the year since his death, two old friends have died, as well as a few parents of friends, and some relatives. The bulk of them have been cremated. As a result of all this, I have become obsessed with thoughts of cremation. Thinking of my brother (and six years ago, my father), going from whole to embers is unsettling. But is lying six feet under and turning skeletal any more pleasant?

My mother, on the other hand, who is a healthy 79 years old, says she doesn’t want to be cremated. Or buried. She wants a mausoleum. For the whole family.

Which brings me to this – I can’t decide, and if I drop dead tomorrow, it’s out of my hands, because, while I have a will, I left that part blank. I’ve always had visions, since my age was in the single digits, about what it must be like to be dead. Currently, my mental pictures have me with makeup on, dressed in my skinny jeans, and dangly, sparkly earrings, lying in a box in the ground, looking exactly the same, except I’m dead. Dead, but intact. But now I have to take it all seriously – I’m on the right side of 50. And it’s not that I’m feeling doomed – just more responsible.

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Hanging On to (And Finally Letting Go Of) the Chooba Diamond

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Confessional, Men

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the chooba diamond- drawing by Julie Seyler

A Little Chooba Diamond on Her Hand.
Drawing by Julie Seyler

BY BOB SMITH

Have you ever heard of the Chooba diamond? I invented it when I was 11.
In 1965, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons had a pretty big hit on pop radio with a song called, “Let’s Hang On.” It’s a bouncy anthem about love gone wrong featuring Valli’s powerful falsetto, and one of the verses begins like this:

That little chip of diamond on your hand
Ain’t a fortune baby but you know it stands
For the love (A love to tie and bind ya)
Such a love (We just can’t leave behind us) …

The chorus exhorts the girlfriend to:

Hang on to what we’ve got
Don’t let go girl, we got a lot
Got a lotta love between us
Hang on, hang on, hang on
To what we’ve got.”

Somehow, I misunderstood the first line of that verse.  I thought Frankie said, “that little Chooba diamond on your hand,” instead of “chip of:”

I’d had zero experience with diamonds (or engagement rings, or girls, for that matter), so I  assumed Chooba was a designation of origin for a rare type of diamond unknown to me.  The “ain’t a fortune baby” line made sense because he did say “little,” after all.  So in my quaint understanding, Frankie had purchased an engagement ring for his girl set with a minuscule, but nonetheless highly-prized and mysterious, “Chooba diamond.”

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Fortunate Son Number 234

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Men, Opinion

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draft card

My son most likely will never receive a draft card – is that a good thing?

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I was looking for something in a drawer in my bedroom recently, and came across a relic from the 1970s – my draft card.  It occurs to me that the Baby Boomer generation is in a unique position when it comes to military service. While we were the last generation of men in recent times who were saddled with compulsory military service, most of us didn’t serve.  So we are unlike our fathers, who mostly did serve, and unlike our sons, who may never have experienced the threat of compulsory service.

I think that every man my age remembers going down to the Draft Board and registering.  Those of us who were more fortunate were able to claim college or other exemptions.  The less fortunate got their induction letters, and were sent to war.

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A Thousand Words on the Vagina

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Opinion

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Mixed media drawing by Julie Seyler

Mixed Media Drawing by Julie Seyler

BY JULIE SEYLER

When Lo and I were getting this blog together, Naomi Wolf’s book, “Vagina: A New Biography, celebrating Wolf’s vagina, was published and reviewed all over the place.  The book is back in the news since the November 25 broadcast of the CBS television series, “The Good Wife,” had Stockard Channing, as attorney Alicia Florrick’s mother, touting the book as the must-read of the year.  The point being that Wolf’s research supporting the conclusion that the vagina is the source of all power and happiness has created a lot of buzz over the past few months. Who would not want to know that if you, the goddess, connect in to this particular orifice, you will touch nirvana.

At the time the book was published, the September 10, 2012 issue of The New Yorker had Ariel Levy simultaneously reviewing “Vagina” and the E L James’ runaway erotic bestseller “Fifty Shades of Grey”, part of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy. This amused me because these twinned reviews, in a 1000 words, seemed to encapsulate the ambiguity of a woman’s self-perceived sexuality in the early 21st century.

The September 14, 2012 Sunday New York Times Book Review approached the book completely differently.  The editors paired Toni Bentley’s incredibly witty take of “Vagina,” with a review by Jennifer Homans on Hanna Rosins’ tome, “The End of Men”, the theme of which ponders whether the feminist movement has succeeded in killing masculinity.  Now that’s a topic for a blog-a-cussion.  I divert. More on that to come …

As to these books, I have not read them and probably won’t.  I completely cop to the fact that therefore I have no right to comment.  To me, they sound boring, predictable and effortful. (I backtrack … maybe I should at least delve into the S & M kick of the “Fifty Shade” series, and then revisit the books of the Marquis de Sade to see if everything new is old again.) But I am no scholar. So take me back to the days when I discovered the classic 1970, “Our Bodies Ourselves.”  I smile – it said all I needed to know. OK, that and a few Penthouse porno tales about the housewife and the plumber.