I Just Blogged To Say I Love You.

Dear Hotness That Is Vous,

Hey. It's Sera. I know, I know. It's been way, way too long, hasn't it?

I went halvsies on this here blog o' hotfulness with Simon Of The East, and here I sit in Santa Monica, having blogged not a whit in so long you've probably taken us off your bookmark list in betrayal and despair.

It's like this, folks. There was a strike; and then I went back to work and it was, let us say, very slightly busy; and then I was done and I got to go on hiatus, but it was this tiny hiatus compared to the hiati to which we who write for your couch-bound entertainment are generally accustomed. Just under a month, which is nothing to sneeze at, I know - I have friends with their own businesses who haven't taken time off in three years, and I have friends with kids who haven't had a day to themselves since the friggin' nineties. But still, it was only just long enough for me to take care of business.

What business? I'd love to share, because what's a blog for if not to digitally toot one's own metaphorical horn, but I can't. I'm uber-Jewlicious in my level of superstition, and all the shit I've been rocking is mid-rock. There was a point last week - Tuesday going into Wednesday, to be precise - where I got so in the zone I worked all night and straight through the next day. Don't feel bad for me, it was bliss, to just dive in the creative deep end because I want to rather than because I'll get fired/production will shut down/my professor will give me an F.

Sometime in the next few months, I'll either post about what/whom I was working on because things bloomed in fantastical fashion, or I'll have fallen on my face and have a hilarious cautionary tale with which to entertain you.

The one little thang I can tell you 'bout is that I got invited to contribute to a lush and deviant collection of gothic erotica curated by Susie Bright. It'll be out in time for Hannukah, I do believe. Because I apparently don't get enough of it at work, I wrote about a demon. I think I was a disgruntled nun in a past life.

So, yeah, I'm a slacker and I suck and maybe I remind you of your deadbeat dad who always said he'd call but almost never did. But, like your dad, beneath my charming, possibly drunk exterior, I really do love you and have the best of intentions.

xoxo,
Sera

Let's Get the Hell Out of This Desert.
Some Disorganized Passover Thoughts From Simon

It won't be the same watching The Ten Commandments this year, what with the guy who played Moses having passed on. ("I guess we can take his gun now," said a less-than-reverent friend. "Oh, too soon?")

But we've got plagues of our own to worry about; didn't you see that ABC debate? Some people aren't wearing flag pins!

We've been so damn busy, in fact, that my family didn't even get around to planning our seder until a few days ago. While Julia and sister Jo normally undertake the Charoset preparation, this year we opted to outsource to brilliant local cateress and VHJ Lisa Feinstein, whose Provisions offers an enticing, original Pesach menu (full disclosure: she's also a client. But I wouldn't steer you wrong).

This year, as ever, a lot of us will participate in a ritual that celebrates freedom. And as always, we'll be asked to consider the ways in which we're still somehow enslaved – to our obsessions, our emotional baggage, our chemical dependencies and other bad habits.

Like every year, we'll be enjoined to recall our people's past sufferings and – at least at our table – to consider how we are obligated to witness and, if possible, alleviate the sufferings of Jews and non-Jews alike, everywhere in the world.

We'll parse the symbolic importance of the items on our seder plates, and the youngest child (ever more precocious and performance-oriented) will charmingly enunciate the four questions about why this night is different from all others.

But I've got a question of my own (I can't help it – I'm the youngest sibling myself): How will this year be different from all others?

I ask because I'm experiencing something strange and unbidden, something attached to and yet wholly separate from the dark, anxious meandering that has marked the last several years. Like I've been wandering in the desert but see, in the distance, the possibility of a shady sanctuary.

I promised myself, this election season, that I wouldn't get sucked into the vortex of political obsession. A lifetime of disappointments dotted with half-hearted victories – and culminating in the dumbshit dystopia of the Bush years – had persuaded me that laying my bleeding heart in the center of the highway as a ritual sacrifice was no longer an option.

I had just about comfortably settled into what I regarded as a Mature Middle-Aged skepticism, and thus could regard all electoral jousting from an armored remove. Exhibit A? An entry from this very blog that promised, "Your candidate is a sociopath." So much more fun. So much easier. So much less painful that having a dog in the race.

Then along came a candidate who got me believing.

So about this strange flowering of hope in the Bush-bleached desert of my soul. It's forced me to admit some things to myself. That as much as I've decried the politics of fear, and as much as I've turned the mighty X-ray of my dialectical mind on "hope" as a trope, I'm just as fearful as anyone.

I'm afraid that if I open myself up to the blinding rays of what could be, a trap will spring shut on my flesh and spirit. I'm afraid that if I dare to believe in a candidate who seems to speak for the best in us rather than the worst, I'll find myself deceived. That a Pharaoh or a Karl Rove or a James Earl Ray or some operative in a black helicopter will end it all with a bullet or a conspiracy or a conspiracy of bullets. For all the invective I've leveled at the fearmongers, I've been a loyal consumer of fear.

Here's the thing: Hope is the opposite of fear, it's true. But hope isn't just a big soft hand that lifts you onto a fluffy carefree cloud, far above the whirring blades of despair. Hope is an invitation, whether the hearty roar of a fired-up crowd or just a sexy whisper from the universe, to leave the dreary confines of one's grey cell of detachment. To come out and play. Hope will ring the doorbell, but you've got to drag your sorry ass outside.

I am 43 years old. During the sweltering, chaotic summer of my birth, three extraordinary kids drove down to Mississippi to stand up for a more inclusive vision of democracy. The loyal exemplars of traditional values, fine Christians all and fiercely protective of their local heritage, repaid the efforts of these hopeful Americans with a fusillade of bullets. The martyrdom of this trio fell hard on two California Jews who were soon expecting their third child, the one who'd later be tasked with the four questions at the Passover table. They gave me Andrew as a middle name, in honor of Andrew Goodman, a young Jew who sacrificed everything to extend the blessings of liberty.

I wasn't quite four years old when Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Once again, the hopes of forward-thinking, open-hearted people were shadowed with anguish. And what followed might fairly be called forty years in the desert.

And in the decades since, so much destruction. So much betrayal. So much enslavement to triviality. In such a world, isn't hoping for better just a burden? Let's just hide in the bunker, catch up on some TiVo'd triviality and gird ourselves against the wicked, wasteful world with a Costco-sized supply of contemptuous wisecracks.

But then, wouldn't you know it, the doorbell rings.

Maybe you saw this video of a fantastic poem by an incredibly promising young writer/performer. It moved and delighted me because it cut to the heart of this dilemma I've been kvetching about.

Here's the part of the Passover story I'm focused on this year: Getting the hell out of the desert, and how seriously scary that is. How much easier it would be to stay in Egypt, to be gangsta-hard and stylishly cynical, rather than make the long, hot, sweaty, hopeful trek. How tough it is to believe that the angry red sea of the status quo will give way for us, no matter how resolutely we march. But also about how impossible it is, when hope rings the doorbell, to pretend you're not home.

Have a beautiful, meaningful Pesach. On this potentially liberating holiday, I greet you with all of my tenderly, tentatively hopeful heart.

In Sickness and in Health

Presenting a couple of Very Hot Jews.

They were married around this time of year 58 years ago, and they remain, to me, a model of nuptial loyalty and companionship.

They are there for each other. This is the irreducible kernel of married life – not flowers or neckties or nonstop lovey-dovey. The "in sickness and in health" part of those vows is no joke when you spend your entire lives together.

Mama recently had some (long-awaited and much anticipated) surgery and Dad was there, just as she was there for him during his procedure not long before. They are wise enough to know they also need outside help, but each remains a pillar for the other.

And that matters a lot – not just for them, but for a lot of other people, too.

The cake actually reads "Keep up the good work."

Julia and I just celebrated our anniversary as well. The date marked two years of marriage but also 17 years together; having both survived ill-advised early hitchings, we coasted along in unwedded bliss for 15 years. But the same principles apply, I'm happy to say.

We went to the movies and then to a fantastic restaurant, where we drank rosé bubbly and looked moonily at each other and ambled (with much hilarity) down memory lane. 17 years have truly flown by, and it's because we're having a blast together.

But the thing that I realize with increasing clarity? The best, the absolute most sterling and precious thing about a long-term relationship? Being known. Not having to explain. Anticipating and being anticipated. The way one's reflexive bullshit collapses in the wake of a wry look from the other. Hearing something on NPR in one's car and knowing the other is laughing at it in her car. The mere thought of doing all that work to be known, ever again? Exhausting beyond belief.

photo by Josh Pickering

And as we get older we succumb to the vicissitudes of aging and must of necessity fuss over each other. We will (and do) talk of pills and doctors and exercises and the diminishing keenness of our senses. Sunrise, Sunset. In sickness and in health.

For as long as possible.

More to Come. No Joke.

Sime's wife hates practical jokes. She says she finds nothing practical about them. Maybe there's something to that, especially as concerns Internet communications; you've come to trust the Web as a semi-reliable provider of news and information, and suddenly it's crawling with prankish faux-stories designed to give the unwary an aneurysm.

So trust us, it's no April Fool's Day joke when we tell you that we regret not having posted an update lately and that we will soon. We could give you the usual litany of excuses – workload, international intrigues, those little two-tone pills that also give you terrible dry mouth – but by now you should know that we're just not very consistent. Call us pisher. But soon enough you'll be seeing a pipin' hot new post from your fave Hot Hebrews. Abso-freakin'-lutely.

Oh, and we're converting to Mormonism.

A Letter to Eliot Spitzer

Dude.

A ton of ink has been spilled, already, on your stupid zipper moment: How law-and-order types are invariably heavy-breathing hypocrites. How you've set the cause of government reform back 20 years. How powerful men can't keep it in their pants. How you're roadkill in the Justice Department's illegal wiretap war on Democrats.

There are so many valid (and stupid) points to be chewed upon, and the mighty termites of the fourth estate are masticating busily as we speak.

But if we may, we'd like to ask a question that no one seems to have considered.

You paid HOW MUCH?

Seriously, bro. Like, four grand and change for a hooker? The AP says you might've spent as much as 80 large, all told.

OK, maybe you're a specialty client, and you're into some crazy shit. But you're in New York, where no request is too unusual! Isn't there any competition in that market? We gotta know: How is it that you were ready to pony up that kind of cheddar? Isn't the prevention of waste and fraud your specialty? And we hate to press the point, for all kinds of reasons, but you, of all people, paying retail?

We believe you could get the full menu for no more than five Benjis, and that's just on Craigslist.

You might still have been caught, but at least you wouldn't look like such a chump.

Sincerely yours,

The Very Hot Jews

What a Night. Again.

It was another incredible, spiritual Sat. night at the Classic Rock Singalong. Thanks to everyone who played and sang (including Jim Mills, Very Hot Jew Mike Ruekberg, Jason Chesney, Dean Macneil, Paul Plagens, Mark Cade, Maureen Mahon, Jeff Nimoy and Matt Docter), to our brother-from-another-mother Josh Pickering for the incredible photos (including the one below) and a lusty rendition of Spinal Tap's "Big Bottom," and to the fine folks at M Bar. Let's do it again soon.

I'm not a religious man, but the Singalong is my church, and worshipping at the altar of pop melody with y'all is truly a privilege.

See the MySpace blog for a recap of the night. For now, here's a pic that captures the spirit of the evening, with Paul leading "My Best Friend's Girl." That's me on handclaps and backing vocals.

See you next time, I hope.

Open Your Hymnbooks, Please.

L.A. people: Sera has rhapsodized at length about The Classic Rock Singalong, and we want to remind you that there will be another one on Sat., March 8 (that's tomorrow, as I write this) at the same place (M Bar in Hollywood). It'll start around 10, and we hope to see you there.

Doesn't it seem like your friends are always talking about these shindigs in cavernous lofts and warehouses that have huge guest lists and DJs playing music so hip you can't possibly dance to it and are rumored to be crawling with hot, hot celebrities who kiss each other on the cheek and spend the rest of the night texting their friends at other parties?

This is not one of those.

The CRS is a comparatively intimate gathering in a friendly club with a reasonable amount of seating for your tired tushy. It is entirely about turning off your CrackBerry and being heard rather than being seen. And aren't you ready for that?

There will be a great deal of full-throated wailing as the band guides the audience through a parti-colored wonderland of pop hits. There will be love in the air. There will be imbibing of spirits. There will be spontaneous gyration. Perhaps someone will remove her/his top. You never know.

Lyrics will be provided. Don't pretend the next song is too cheesy for you. Just lose yourself in it. You'll thank us later.

Life Is Too Short Not To.

We have a headache. Which is to be expected, considering that less than twenty-four hours ago, we consumed a MASTERFUL AND GENIUS SEVEN-COURSE MEAL WITH WINE PAIRINGS. No, we didn't go to some schmancy Zagat-touted restaurant. This event of worldwide importance transpired at the homey abode of Simon's lovely sis-in-law Jo. All 84 plates of wonder were created by VHJ-inner-circleite Matt. Sime and Sera, when not moaning in full-mouthed ecstasy, kept exchanging burning glances that clearly said, "We must blog about this immediately. The world needs to know."

The chef at work.

We don't know about you, but we love us some food porn. Also, we enjoy reading about other people's personal lives. This post is for you if you are like us. It's a glimpse into the VHJ's near-n-dearest at their boho best. (If you aren't into fatty meals or candid snaps of folks you've never met, this post will bore you to tears; sorry; come back later; love you, mean it.)

You've heard of Matt before. He is the one who, when Sera was feeling like emo crap in a bucket of suck, arrived at her pad bearing pasta maker, bacon, Gorgonzola and cream. He's a fine writer, but more pertinent to this here blogversation is his blessed food-related obsessive-compulsive disorder. Matt owns a cookbook written by the psychotic genius who chefs the French Laundry, which is one of those restaurants that require reservations six months in advance. The cookbook talks about cutting little squares of meat "against the grain," fridging fresh fish in exactly the position in which they swam at the moment of their demise, and other frankly weird shit. Many of the recipes start with unseemly bits of offal, and end four days later. Not joking.

Most of us would treat such a cookbook as a novelty item, a glimpse into the inner-mindfuck of a true artist we could never imagine emulating. Matt, on the other hand, sees a fun challenge. He's the foodie equivalent of those crazy bastards who decide they want to swim the English channel.

As you can see, Matt likes to eat.

Matt called Sera up a few months ago and told her he hankered to engineer a feast for twelve. It would be a bit of work, he said with hilarious calm. Would she pitch in her producer's mind for drama and help him create an evening so cool, Oprah would beg to film it for a segment concerning the joie-de-vivreiest Angelenos in the history of ever? Strategy meetings ensued; invitations zipped into the hot little hands of our lucky, lucky jury; and the harmonic convergence of this weekend was the orgiastic, drunkarific result.

Our motley tribe descended upon Jo's, dressed to the nines. Here is the part we recommend to all of you. This is the thing that life is too short (and also waaaaaay too long) not to do: next time you plan a soiree, do mention to your friends that there's no such thing as overdressed.

We know, we know, there's no way in hell you're cooking that much. We understand; when supper's left to us, we usually end up serving pizza and cupcakes. Not everyone is lucky enough to know a cook as talented and maniacal as Matt. But even if your dinner party was catered by drive-thru, it shouldn't stop you from requiring festive attire. Believe us when we say you will derive special pleasure from dining in your finest. You will rediscover the deep hotness of your friends. Also, drunk people are more fun to watch when they're dressed to give an acceptance speech.

So, we mingled in the candlelight, champers-tipsy and newly re-in-love with one another. Simon rocked the orange velveteen blazer and pearl tie-bar. Lovely Wife Julia donned black silk, platform heels and a sideways tiara.

Power couple.

Jo poured her Semitic loveliness into a sparkly gown previously worn by a chanteuse at Cannes.

Sparkly Jo with longtime companion, Wiener.

Dinda and Mollie came as that couple at the cocktail party who make you reconsider swinging as a lifestyle.

Mols and Dinda, on the drive over. You know you want them.

Shana wore a blue crocheted flower in her hair; her Brit beau Dave, natty vest and rocker hair.

Intercontinental love in action.

Michael mixed thrift-store finds with designer duds in that envy-making way that overworked, sleep-deprived, yet nevertheless supermodelesque production designers do.

Matt's Very Hot Musician bro Andy wore a hat that made us reappraise our previous dismissal of Abraham Lincoln as unsexy.

Matt's girlfriend-cum-sous chef Lindsay wore her slinkster dress from Junior Prom, because it still fits, bitches.

Sera wore silver leather flowers in her hair and a capelet fashioned from 100% muppet fur.

Sera as rejected Dorothy Parker's Vicious Circle candidate.

So, we ate a lot. We took pictures of that, too, which we will share here for your droolification.

First, Matt served a soul-crushingly delish amuse-bouche of hamhock paté (sounds gross, tastes like a three-picture deal making artistic horror movies executive-produced by Guillermo del Toro - oh, and you get final cut on the films, and also James McAvoy/Natalie Portman will wake you each morning with a loving round of oral sex. Actually, as good as that all sounds? The paté was better).

Then he served us soup we would gladly kill for. Matt's initial inspiration for the whole event was Sera's offhanded remark that she quite liked the onion soup at Doughboy's, a hipsterlicious Hollywood bakery. "Dude, I can make an onion soup that will make you believe in Jesus," Matt shot back. And so he concocted a heavenly liquid requiring several days of simmering and several pounds of asiago - hands-down the best fucking soup Sera's ever tasted (and, full disclosure, very nearly enough to make her consider emailing Christ an application for the position of Personal Savior).

We strongly suggest someone get this soup on the table for the next Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. If anything can get 'em in the mood to lay down arms, it's a still-bubbling bowlful of broth, spongy bread, and ooey-gooey cheese.

If memory serves, right around the soup course was the first time Jo burst into tears of joy. This behavior would continue throughout the evening, as new and miraculous taste sensations were set before her sparkling bosom.

Many charming toasts were made, and glasses of wine were imbibed. We can't remember how many. More than four but less than all the wine in the world. Matt and Lindz split their time between the table and the roasting-hot kitchen, from whence nirvanic smells wafted. They emerged bearing skate - the fish, not the wheeled shoe - in a vertical sculpture of garlic and pan-seared lemon slice on a nest of oniony delight. Several people proposed marriage to Matt. When he gently refused, we offered to be his slave forever, as long as he cooked us skate every day.

Next came this complicated ravioli-esque pasta dish we can't recall the name of. Redolent of cheese, bursting with sweet buttery goodness, many members of our group decided that they would rather eat pasta created by Matt than anything else they could think of. Yes, including that.

Jules with her pasta plate.

After that, a palate-cleansing grapefruit-tarragon sorbet which Sera failed to photograph on account of she was shrieking with laughter and already so full she feared it was a mistake not to rent forklifts to get people back to their cars after the party.

The Very Hot Jews like meat. We like it so much that we suddenly realized we weren't really that full when Matt set before us a dish of lamb so beautiful we wanted to bronze it. It tasted just as good as you imagine.

Plating the meat course, sexily.

Then we took a much-needed breather - from the food, if not the drink, since Matt took that moment to bust out an epic bottle of dessert wine - and exchanged funny and embarrassing personal stories. Not to harp on the whole dress-up thing, but wearing spangly getups tends to jog one's formal-event memory banks. Visions of Sadie Hawkins Dances past pop into one's head. Michael charmed us with tales of helping his date - a girl! - make her dress. Sera recalled being helpfully informed that her prom dress made her look like a stripper. (It so didn't, at least in comparison to the stuff she started wearing later in life.) Tuxedo war stories abounded. Recollections of exotic travels punctuated by sumptuous meals that lead inevitably to heinous, gut-annihilating food poisoning. Life - isn't she grand?

Finally, Matt served dessert. He ended with another paté, the perfect symmetry of which seemed to soothe that OCD part of his brain. It was made of dense, dark, spiritually enlightening chocolate in a créme anglaise with pistachios. We all had seconds. Plates and fingers were licked. Groans of delight and overindulgence filled the air. Everyone swore they'd take a bullet for Matt, because protecting his gift had become the purpose of our lives.

Dessert, by the time Sera remembered to snap a pic of it.

And then, weary, some of us sloshed enough to require a cab, we collapsed into satiated heaps.

And that, handsome readers, is how the VHJ party. L'Chaim!

The Child Is Father to the Jew

Quick note: Sorry, sorry, sorry for such a long dry spell, peeps. Life's been crazy and the computer died and ... oh, it's all so grown-up. Read on and you'll see what I mean. Meanwhile, Sera says thanks so much to all of you well-wishers. She hopes to post a broadside about her post-strike existence soon.

Simon here. A recent trip to the bosom of J's East Coast family involved, among other things, many, many layers of clothing and much time spent observing the nephews as they spiraled through the mood spectrum (infra-cranky to ultra-manic).

These two small maniacs stomped and sputtered, declaimed and dissembled, whined for juice, narrated improbable yarns about headless vampires and sperm-whale superhighways, erupted into ear-splitting conflagrations, petitioned for their parents' attention ("mommy ... mommy ... mommy ... mommy ... mommy ..."), announced that they are going to KILL me, recited impromptu shanties about poop and dinosaurs, offered their artwork, schoolwork and other handiwork for approval, demanded applause, melted into despairing tears at the world's unjust denial of their entreaties for chocolate milk or more TV, capered and gyrated with their underwear on their heads, provided updates on their flatulence, turned their noses up at pizza, attempted to yank out their mother's hair, apologized for aforementioned yanking and, in late-evening moments of sweet gentleness, rested their heads against a shoulder and whispered their love in a way that would incline all but the stoniest soul toward amnesty for their myriad offenses.

Somehow their parents manage not to be deranged by this daily onslaught. I doubt I could remain so steadfast, which is only one more reason I declined to board the reproduction express, though I do enjoy being an uncle.

Still, these nonstop kinder-antics (as well as my old friend Dan's chronicles of daddyhood on his brilliant blog, The Chucklehut) have been focusing my thoughts on what new-agey types might call child mind.


The contrasts between the explosive kid energy we observed during our visit and my daily ruminations are oddly revealing. I know I, too, was once a crazed tot who scrawled spaceships and played spy and imitated Groucho Marx's walk and interrupted my parents every 2.7 minutes with some rambling, homespun narrative. Now I spend most of my day writing and editing and pitching myself for more writing and editing and also accounting and going to the gym and going to the bank and filling out forms.

Indeed, if there were a single activity that could encompass what we generally regard as adulthood it most likely wouldn't be coitus or cocktails. It would be the filling out of forms.

I don't want to suggest that I'm unhappy with my life. Sure, I sweat to make ends meet. Recently my massive, customized PC collapsed like a stricken brontosaurus, leaving me to wonder if reams of vital life-data had been consigned to the vapor-heap of history. Still in all, the white-knuckle aspects of owning a business are cake next to the existential acid-burn of shlepping to some workstation cubicle and cowering every time the boss walks by.

But let's face it: Adulthood is a sham.

There. I said it.

It isn't that we graduate to maturity. It's that our child selves just play an increasingly less rewarding game of dress-up. We play the filling-out-forms game, at the expense of other forms of play. But that part of us that wants to write poems about pooping dinosaurs will never be vanquished, and will never stop yearning to be unleashed again. The child mind longs to do its thing.

Am I advising you to neglect all your grown-up responsibilities? Am I saying you should simply let all your bills go delinquent and your accounts lapse, stop answering the phone, throw all your stuff in a Spongebob commemorative tote and light out for the territories? You bet I am.

But you probably won't, and that's OK. I won't either. So here's a compromise. And what's more adult than that?

Every day, give that rambunctious inner toddler a good half hour. How you release the long-caged rugrat that is your eternal child self is utterly up to you, and I hope it doesn't involve short-circuiting the blender or throwing all of your tax forms in the pool. Maybe it's some kind of wild rumpus, or a quiet session with your crayons, or an epic throwdown between a dusty detachment of green plastic army men and seven headless Barbies.

But I guarantee you that when that half hour is up, your shamming adult self will feel more refreshed than a werewolf after a banquet of co-eds.

Tell me how you do it.

Why We Kvell
a quick note from Simon - who knew?

So, Sera is mysteriously out of town but flashed a special Jew Signal in the sky to remind me to tell our bloggy mishpuchah that she's got an essay up on Why We Write, a site where film and TV writers tell about how they ended up that way. Sera's piece is a juicy recollection of her angsty youth, which will furnish you with both understanding and delight. Nu, so read it already.

And if, after that burst of discursive candor, you're in the mood for a geekier shade of writing about writing, perhaps you'll meander on over to the newsletter that the fair Julia and I just released. It's got a sampler plate of goodies about language on the business side, and there's even a place to subscribe, so's it can sidle up to your inbox every month.

OK, enough pimpin' for one post. I know what you're really wondering: where's Sera?

Since we exist to stoke your imagination, we invite you to use the comments section to concoct short narratives about where in the world our smokin' Jewess might be (extra points if it's done in the style of a bodice-ripper paperback). Or, if you prefer, about where I might be going when I leave town tomorrow night. No fair chiming in if you actually know. The winner will get a shout-out in a future post, which could possibly mark the start of a dizzying rise to fame (and subsequent Britney-level crash-and-burn). So get to scribblin'!

A Thing About Stuff
by Virtual Simon^TM

Blogging has so quickly and pervasively become part of what the culture talks about that it's easy to forget why people do it. Sure, a lot of the time it's just a way to blather without interruption or vent one's spleen (guilty as charged), but the most rewarding thing about doing this here Very Hot writing has been exchanging ideas and wishes and pleasantries with all of you. The comments just get more moving, perceptive, wise and funny every day. Please keep 'em coming.

I've been laid up with a mysterious virus for a week or so, during which time such strenuous activities as going to the store or standing up for five minutes or longer made me feel as though I'd run a marathon. Thankfully, Sera's been kicking serious ass with her last few posts – as the comments below amply demonstrate – and like a lot of you, I've felt inspired and more than a little challenged by the ideas she's been exploring.

I don't mind telling you that the pleasures of VHJ.com are accompanied by nagging anxieties: What can I write about? Will I sound self-involved and/or pompous? Are readers disappointed because my discursive hobbyhorses are so often less hot and less Jewy than they have reason to expect? Should we be updating the site every day with little newsy bites rather than more infrequent, long-winded vision quests?

Now Sera has raised the bar. I can't see myself following her provocative, revealing meditations on sacred dancing and silence with some riff on pork products or monster movies. Not that those aren't worthy topics, but I want to follow her lead for now and explore some more trenchant territory.

Fact is, I've been thinking about stuff.

No, not "thinking about stuff." Thinking about stuff. Material goods. Possessions. The items we covet.

Like Sera, I'm a professional writer. I don't write a TV show (and even if I did, I wouldn't be writing one now, would I? Solidarity!); our clients hire the fair Julia and me to craft all manner of marketing materials, lifestyle-branding collateral, entertainment hype and other glittery promo-prose. We do pretty well, but running a business in the ruined Bush economy can be punishing, especially if you've got a mortgage and insurance and kindred grown-up expenses. Checks come in and the money's already gone, devoured by a ravenous pack of bills.

Which doesn't keep me from wanting more stuff – shiny Fender Telecasters, vintage barware, some groovy art from a local gallery, an Armani coat, an SLR digital camera, moon boots, a jet pack ... you get the idea.

But even when I do get more stuff and bring it home, my awareness of all my old stuff is enhanced. It's as though everything I already own and have neglected has let out a collective sigh, like weary prisoners welcoming a new inmate.

I've realized that what I really want is less stuff.

This thought feels super Zeitgeisty. Peeps are buzzing about a book called The History of Stuff. The Green movement may be too late (or WAY too late) to save us from spending our golden years in wetsuits, but they've certainly raised awareness about reducing consumption and petty acquisition. And in our own sphere, our beloved housemate is moving out to co-habit with his beloved GF and now faces the herculean task of transferring his boatload of possessions from our place to various storage locales.

And then there was this story I heard on NPR not long ago about the decline of commerce on Second Life. For those of you who don't know, that's a "3D online digital world" where people can log on and have a completely digital existence. They can even spend real money to buy virtual money ("Linden Dollars") so they can purchase virtual things like online land and furniture for the online cribs that sit on that land and cars for their online commutes. Real brands like clothiers and athletic-shoe makers and soft-drink purveyors have thrived there. Third-world businesses have busily evolved manufacturing centers for virtual goods; dirt-poor residents of Asian villages actually "make" stuff on computers for netizens to buy. I shit you not.

But everything in the cyber-sphere is ahead, so Second Life and kindred sites are experiencing a debilitating downturn now; the NPR commentator noted the grim site of shuttered stores on the virtual thoroughfare.

Imagine telling your virtual child that there'll be no imaginary Chanukah this year, and that you'll all have to tighten your (unreal, though likely Prada) belts and spend less money on nonexistent things.

This story didn't impress itself on my increasingly forgetful gray matter simply because of its rich comic possibilities. In my mind, the virtual production of virtual stuff for virtual acquisition – and the virtual economic collapse of said industry – engendered a kind of spiritual metaphor.

Because when we have reached such an ethereal summit of consumption – when the "thing-ness" of the things we buy is subordinated to the crackish intoxication of buying itself – we are confronted by a paradox of koan-like dimensions. We are focusing our energies on buying ... well, not nothing, exactly, but no-things. But what we have to show for it is nothing. The experience of acquisition is all. Scratch that: the virtual experience.

I don't have a flop on Second Life, but the piles of things that clutter the margins of my world, so many of which I lusted after and schemed to get, may as well be made of ones and zeroes.

I want less stuff and more (non-virtual) experience. I want to unload what I've got. Want to give me a present? Make a no-interest loan in my name to an entrepreneur in the developing world via Kiva.org, or send some livestock to a third-world villager through Heifer International so he or she can raise goats in the fresh air instead of making virtual crap.

Now, tickets to a show? A trip to Hawaii? Those I'll take.

P.S. I speak only for me. Sera's birthday is upon us, and as far as I know she will still accept material goods. Thank you.

On Shutting Up.
(a thinly-veiled rant by Sera)

In the middle of my week-long workshop at shiny happy Esalen, my teacher made a suggestion that changed my life for, I hope, evah. Here's how it went down.

We spent the morning dancing (ecstatically). At lunchtime, she rang her little Tibetan bell and gestured for us to gather 'round the tealight votives. And then she told us she'd chatted with one of her students, who gave her a great idea for an exercise. This exercise, she said, was totally optional. But she felt it would help us stay with the stuff we were learning in the workshop - because we only work for four or five hours, and spend the rest of the day eating organic food and soaking in the hot springs and staring dumbly at the beauty all around us... and, of course, yammering on and on to each other about our jobs back home, our favorite yoga position (I like Buddha Reclining On Futon With Remote Control), the dubious merits of polyamory, our awesome therapists, the horror wreaked by Tara Reid's plastic surgeon, and whatever other topic best serves that universal Esalen pastime, flirting like it's 1968.

The idea, she said, was to Hold Silence. That means this: outside of the short discussions we have while working, no talking for 24 hours. Little stickies reading "In Silence" would be provided; if we wore them, everyone would know not to be offended when we mutely pointed at stuff. "Just see how it goes," she said. "It's optional. But it could be interesting."

Noise erupted in the Dance Dome. Excited chatter, with an edge of panic. I knew immediately that I would be grabbing the opportunity to be In Silence for 24 hours. God knows I've never done it before, and who knows when I'd ever get to try it again?

I've long been fascinated by silence. I keep thinking (and then forgetting) I'm going to google the phrase "silent meditation retreat," for example. See, I am a person who knows she talks A LOT. Words are my living, my fluffy pillow, my titanium shield, the fat marshmallows in my Ovaltine. You know those t-shirts that say "Jesus Is My Homeboy"? The English language is my homeboy.

This is so true of me that it deserves another paragraph or three. Y'all know I make my Very Hot mortgage payment by typing words in script form. Did you know that before I sacrificed my freakish ability at the altar of College Substance Experimentation, I was also a Spelling Bee champion? It's t-r-u-e. My seventh grade year, I was nine nerdy kids away from going to Washington to compete in the Nationals. (Remember that the next time you think you're the geekiest person you know. You know me.) I have this inner sense of words, their little motors and gears, the weight of their individual letters, how they came to be. When I first read Lolita I cherished it for what it was: porn. Not kiddie porn - though there are a couple of nice moments if you're into that too - but word porn. I could feel Nabokov rolling around in the English language like Demi Moore on a bed full of a crisp nonsequential bills. I saw a kindred spirit - hey, I ain't saying I'll ever write like the dude, I'm just saying I feel where he's coming from.

Back in the day, when I was a poor freelancer, I often churned out press releases and artist bios for Sime's Lovely Wife Julia, then an editor for Dreamworks Records. Those pieces were essentially two pages of interview quotes, each followed by a variation of the phrase "he said." Jules sent me a three page list of alternates for the word "said." Hazarded, relayed, quipped, elaborated, confessed. Some so useful, some so awkward, some so unexpectedly intimate. Oh, how tickled I was by that list of said words. I still have it somewhere. I think it is awesome. The fact that Simon and Julia understand my deep and abiding affection for that list is a primary reason we're such good friends.

So, yeah, I heart me some blah blah blah. But I also know that there's more to life, and more to me, than just pleasurable discourse. And I'm a curious kind of chick. I wanna know what's on the other side. So I grabbed a stickie and declared myself In Silence.

Full disclosure: I had a moment of oh fuck no, what have I done?! I couldn't figure out how I was going to shut up for that long. I've never even shut up through an entire dinner. Not even when pissed at parents or boyfriend - I always opted for the acid "pass the butter," at the very least. But I got a hold of myself. The anxiety passed, replaced my a warm, glowing nugget of excitement in my belly. I do love an exercise.

So, the next 24 hours were epic. I learned so much about myself that I could easily fill four or five posts - not that I'm going to, because a lot of it wouldn't translate. Well, that's a lie, it probably would, I just don't want to tell you about it. It's not that I don't love you - I do. You're so damn Hot, who could resist you? It's just... a lot of what happened isn't funny. It's not light, blogarific material.

Some of it (lucky you!) is blog-friendly - like when I got busted in the Dance Dome in the middle of the night by an irate Australian Esalen employee in a strange hempy hat for doing various [redacted] things with another workshop member. And then there was dinner in the packed, buzzing dining hall, In Silence amid a sea of blabbing folk, unable to shut out their gobsmackingly inane conversation with the sound of my own voice. Around the third time the guy at the next table repeated the key phrase of his disturbingly meal-inappropriate tale ("I was so disgusted with myself that I just vomited. I vomited and vomited and vomited!") I started laughing hysterically and simply could not stop. Tears rolled down my face. My In Silence dinner companion stared at me with benevolent confusion before finally shrugging and returning his full, rich, intense Silent focus to the brownie he was consuming with near-erotic concentration.

Anyway, a lot of my experience can be summed up by saying: I had a few of the best conversations of my life.

I had no idea people would keep talking if I didn't punctuate their tale with "mm hmm"s and wry observations. Turns out - people will talk. In fact, if you just wait long enough, they'll tell you the thing they really wanted to say all along, the thing they were scared of saying, the thing they were half-hoping you would cut them off before they got to (and half-praying you wouldn't). Because I wasn't speaking, my only job was to listen. I did a fair smattering of nodding, too. And I cried a bit - I had a conversation with a woman that lasted over an hour, in which she told me some pretty deep and serious personal shit. She spoke simply and clearly about being scared, and my heart broke like a loose pill in a handbag. I felt helpless and honored. Afterwards, I thought about how I ordinarily would have tried to give that woman advice. But what do I know, really? Doubtless nothing she hasn't heard before. All she really needed was someone to listen. So: yay for that In Silence Stickie. It helped me do what, under normal circumstances, I am probably not mature enough to handle.

Why am I telling you this? Well, this morning my well-meaning neighbor stopped me while I was walking Mojo.

"I heard on the news," she said. "Tough break."

I asked her what she was talking about. She said she'd just heard a report indicating that the WGA strike might go on for another year.

I assured her it was all rumor. No one knows how long the strike could last - that's the nature of striking. A year... well, that is serious doomsday predicting. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying it's not fact, and it's upsetting, so why spread that around?

I know a lot of you distractingly sexy people have found this blog because you are TV fans and you are looking for info, any info - even, in the absence of something better, speculation from a random producer on a show that gets ratings that would cause Shonda Rhimes to stick her head in an oven. So I would like to take this opportunity to say: NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

By no one, I mean people who are not media moguls. If you are not hearing the gossip from Peter Chernin, you are doing the strike-time equivalent of feeding Britney another frappuccino. No good will come of it. And at this point, we are all getting tired. Tired people are vulnerable. They get upset more easily. I work off my strike hours these days at WGA Headquarters, cleaning out the musty, musky vans and pulling staples out of wooden sticks. I stand in a room stacked high with picket signs, listening as a half-dozen or so increasingly tired and vulnerable writers speculate. Optimism for up to fifteen minutes devolves quickly into resigned exhaustion - teetering dangerously close to raging hopelessness. Luckily, we have electric staple guns into which to channel our frustration. BAM! BAM! Another sign successfully constructed. Take that, AMPTP! By 7:45, the conversation magically turns to this year's object of writer player-hate, Diablo Cody. I'm not kidding - this happens every single shift I work. Someone disparages the authenticity of her stripper background and says people don't talk like Juno. Which is apparently unacceptable because... Juno is meant to be a searing look at the cold hard reality of the word choices of plucky preggers teeny-bops? Since she was going to be writing about it, Diablo wasn't really all up in the body odor of the lapdance-ee of the moment, but rather safely ensoconced in The Matrix? (Hey, Diablo - if you're reading this? Just between me and you, I think you deserve the hype. I checked your box on the nomination ballot the WGA sent. And yes, you can buy me a coffee.)

Anyway, whilst the night shift of bespectacled writers duct-tapes splintery sign handles, bitches pithily, and prognosticates like a bunch of balding Cassandras, I think you know I am telling the truth when I say: I say nothing.

Wouldn't you like to join me? In saying a little more nothing? I think we could all use the company, because it is difficult to sit still with agitation. Any good Buddhist will tell you that - trying to cope with anxiety and worry is why a whole shitload of 'em dumped their previous church of choice and picked up meditating to begin with. I'm not even a bad Buddhist, I'm a secular Jew who eats bacon and mostly dates gentiles, yet I know this truth with the same deep certainly with which I know that the word for something way uncool to religious people is not spelled the same way as the word "religious" (i.e.: "sacrilegious," a word that totally would have sent me to Washington if I'd gotten it instead of stupid, stupid "tectonics." Not that I'm bitter.)

It is difficult to just be with the Not Knowing. Actually, the word "difficult" is too mild. It is totally fucking hard as shitballs in the Sahara to just be with the Not Knowing.

But the other option - spinning rumors, worrying, kvetching, trying to turn suspect information into a cohesive grid - doesn't help. Just because a theory is logical doesn't make it true. The true thing is that we little guys, writers and viewers alike, have next to zero control over the strike. We can choose to picket, send pencils to moguls, write a blog. But we can't tell either side's negotiators what to do. We can't make the big shit happen, or stop happening. We are along for the ride. Sucks, but it's true. Now you know how 99.9% of people felt during any historical event you ever read about. Honestly, if you set your mind to it, you can probably have more impact on which candidate lands the Democratic presidential nomination than on the outcome of this strike.

I've been contacted a few times since the new year by various fan site administrators and journalist types, asking if I could verify a rumor that the show I work for has been cancelled. Apparently the rumor is strong and pernicious. I'd like to use this rumor briefly, as an example of why we should all put on In Silence Stickies. Here goes.

If a network TV show was cancelled, it would be in the legitimate press. And before that, it would almost certainly be scooped by the likes of Nikki Finke - who herself is so sick of sifting third-hand info that she just took a week off. It wouldn't happen in secret. It couldn't. Nor would a network in wartime want it to - cancelled shows are pilloried for the masses, their gruesome severed heads set up on stakes. The better to freak out striking writers.

It's natural to want to feel some sense of control in crazy times. To search for a fact, any fact, to quell the insecurity. But I got bad news: what you're clutching to your chest ain't a fact. It's a crazymaking little rumor. It's about as good for you as snorting a pound of pixie stix.

So, in the absence of grasping at straws, what are we left with? Good question. Here's what I know - and I am a supreme expert, because I spent an entire twenty-four hour period in silence, which, I'm not sure, but may be some form of worldwide Jewish record.

We are left with listening.

Not listening to the rumors - that's almost as bad as repeating them. They're like... let's pick a good metaphor here, shall we? They're like mosquitoes. They bite you. What they carry gets in your blood stream. Swat 'em, yo.

But listening to people - even the people spouting streams of totally unverified crap - is pretty damn fascinating. You learn a lot about a person by how they tell a story. By what they latch onto. By what upsets them, what energizes them, what they need reassurance about. Any time your friend opens their mouth, they are giving you the opportunity to get to know them better. No matter what they say. Same with your parents; same with that disgruntled Hollywood florist fearing for their job; same with WGA Commander-in-Chief Patric Verrone. Slap a mental In Silence Stickie on yourself for a hot second. Wait. See listening as an exercise less in grasping for something to comfort your harried mind and more as an opportunity to learn a little something about whoever's doing the talking.

I don't mean to sound all teacher-y about this. All kidding aside, I consider myself to be a near-total novice in... well, a whole fuckload of things having to do with human interaction. I didn't become a writer because I was so genius at understanding people; I did it because I was so confused by people that I figured if I reconstructed their behavior on paper, I might be able to make better sense of it. I'm sharing because a)I am over the fear-mongering, and wanted to announce it publicly; and b)the above-suggested attitude adjustment has turned this time of grand weirdness, ick and uncertainty into a fun experiment for me. Talking people are the test subjects, the strike is the lab. If you want to come talk to me, I'll be in the corner with a clipboard, taking notes. I'm the Jewish one with all the hair. You know, the one with her mouth shut.