• Saying goodbye to Carroll O'Connor

• Employment and Gray Hair

• Face Time

• Getting Ready for the Ball

• Random Acts of Kindness

• Walker is a Spy

• It Takes a Village to Date a Man

• Killing the President's Dog

• "Chicks before Dicks" vs. "Bros. before Hos."

• Dating after 9-11

Tuesday, June 26, 2001.

10:10am. Arrive in Westwood for Carroll O’Connor’s Mass of the Resurrection with two of my best friends who I met while working on All In The Family.

10:15am. Find amazing parking space after moving two trash cans in funeral wear.

10:20am. Arrive at the church steps, sign in the guest book and watch the big celebrities brace themselves and face the massive press line. Wonder what is must be like to have a camera in your face during a moment of shock and grief. Ponder the price of fame.

10:30am. Decide to have a cigarette away from the growing crowd because Carroll would have liked that. Will quit again tomorrow.

10:45am. Share favorite Carroll stories with my two friends. Realize that with this great and funny, kind and super-smart man, an era of style and grace in television was about to be buried. Begin to feel enormous sadness at the passing of a soul whose kindness to the hardest working little people will never be equaled. By anyone. Ever.

10:50am. Go in the church and sit behind, Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner. Realize that in the ‘70’s, the stars were old and the supporting cast was young. Come to grips with the 2000’s, where the executives are stem cells, the stars are young and the supporting cast is 30 something and the cameos are old or on ‘Touched By an Angel.’ Listen to the beautiful music and feel deeply sorry for Nancy, Carroll’s beloved wife and soul mate.

11:00am. Listen to the service led by Cardinal Roger Mahony. It is elegant, humble and spiritual just like Carroll was in his life. Weep quietly during the Offertory Hymn. “On Eagles Wings” and the lone, mournful violin rendition of “Oh Danny Boy.”

1:00pm. Drive to the Regency Club for a massive luncheon in Carroll’s honor.

2:30pm. Sit at a table where 9 of us eat salmon and drink wine and Jason Wingreen eats veal and has a scotch. Decide that Carroll would have loved that. Realize that “All In the Family” was the veal and scotch of its day. Politically incorrect, tastier than anything else around, substantial and a little intoxicating.

3:00pm. Pay our respects to Nancy who rubs my friend John’s stylishly shaved head and says “Ah. Now your brains can show!” Realized that Carroll would have said that. Missed him terribly.

Friday, June 29th.

8:00am. Realize that the week is over and Carroll is gone, and with him and the 76 doves that were released on the steps of the church, went an era of work in television where the script was called the play, the network did not attend wardrobe fittings, and the young respected the old. Those were the days.

Years ago, I was at the Seattle zoo with my very pregnant college friend and her 5 year old boy, Ben. We were yammering away, speed speaking like only ex-New Yorkers can do, when all of a sudden a 450-pound gorilla started scooping up handfuls of poop and flinging it viciously at us. Ben was screaming..."Mommy, mommy! Make it stop. MAKE IT STOP!" To him, Mommy was that powerful. That's how I felt on 9-11. SOMEBODY. MAKE IT STOP! I'm freelance and single so I had nowhere not to go and no one to not weep around. So I hunkered down under a blanket and let the newsmen be the head of my household for the first few days. But by Saturday, no more virtual men, I needed some human contact. As fate would have it, my neighbor and I had decided that this particular weekend, 9-14, we would go out among the men. We are happily divorced, have great hair and are both under 130 pounds. Other than the end of the world... what was stopping us? 

Wait a minute! Maybe now we'll get it right? Maybe now we'll make really good end of the world decisions? But it all felt so silly. So pointless. So soon. So we decided to go out, have a nice dinner on the Santa Monica pier, have a few cocktails and simply LIST our new Really Good Ideas about what types of men we should be dating. We didn't agree on everything... I like tall, trim, funny and a good sized... libido. She likes wine connoisseurs, beards, a dash of neurosis and a good sized... bank account. But here's what we both agreed on.

• Someone like The Equalizer who can take a soda can and a piece of dental floss and make a satellite dish to urge the mother ship to send help!

• Someone who can busta move. Because those men are truly fearless.

• Someone who won't piss off terrorists. Really. I've dated men who piss off waitresses. Must have manners!

• Someone who can get the president on the phone. Someone who can get the enemy on the phone.

• Basically, someone you'd want in your lifeboat.

But we didn't know anyone who fit that bill. Yet. "YET" was the operative word here. For far too long, we'd positioned ourselves in front of men who only had one thing in common. They had chosen well. They had chosen US. Now, it was time to go out and choose a better grade of man. After all, it was only a matter of time before the Anthrax would find us or we'd be a nuclear shadow on the pavement. As we gathered up our Campari glasses and headed for our corner table, we overheard a tiny blond lady say "I only watch Brian Williams. He's cute." What now. News trading cards? Will you trade me a Wolf Blitzer for a Ted Koppel? Okay. They're the only ones we watch on TV as the 'End of the World Turns'! My friend was quizzing me en-route to our lobsters. 

"Brokaw?"
"Beady eyes." 
"Rather?" 
"Baggy eyes." 
"Jennings?" 
"Bedroom eyes." 

LIGHT BULB! My 9-11 Yardstick. Peter Jennings. 
"And yours?" I asked. "Who's your yardstick?" 
"Phil Jackson" she said without losing a beat. 

Well. We both had a quiet moment of reverie as we imagined our new fantasy dates. Nice. Nice! Both of those men are sexy, virile, ladies men. So why is that a good thing all of a sudden? It's the perception of procreation... of survival They're successful, big, strong, handsome hunters and gatherers that are easy on the eyes. What IF we're in a bunker for the half-life of plutonium? We're back to basics. There's a slight pheromonal hysteria out there. We mammals can smell danger and it makes us act crazy! One of my male friends dumped his girlfriend of 4 years THAT NIGHT, another one asked his girlfriend of 9 years to marry him. So it's shaken us right to our romantic, sexual, primal, mammalian, gorilla, continuation-of-species core. So 9-11 survivors? Get yourself a Millennium Yardstick. It's the most useful tool for dating after The Horrible, Terrible, No Good Day. For you men, I hear Anna Kournikova is the measuring stick of choice or how 'bout Ashleigh Banfield or Katie Couric? Bottom line? No more dating out of the lifeboat. As the song in 'Moulin Rouge' says... "don't live dream to dream." And all you gorillas out there? Watch it. Because we WILL make you stop.

September unemployment was at 4.9%. October it’s climbed to 5.4 %. It made me wonder. Did the Terrible Horrible No Good Day bring on .5% more gray hair on my head? I think it did and I think that’s GOOD! Let me explain. I am competing for screen-time with the gen-y generation who can make a feature film and edit it on an ibook for pennies on the Old Hollywood Dollar. But what gen-y doesn’t have is gray hair. Maybe Manic-Panic pink, or blue or green….but definitely not gray. Some of them even run networks. In the old days we used to grumble when we had to pitch to The Fetuses. Well, those have become the GOOD old days because now we’re pitching to The Stem Cells!

Years ago, when Stem Cell’s only had lowly positions, I worked on “All In The Family” as a writer’s secretary. It was my job to care for all the gray haired Men In Charge. One of them was Milt Josephsberg who actually wrote the classic lines for Jack Benny.

What’s in a face? “WIPE THAT PUSS OFF YOUR FACE!” When you hear that you know you’re in trouble. “FACE OFF!” More trouble. “SIT ON MY FACE.” Better. But here’s my favorite. When e-mails and phone calls just don’t cut it, it’s time for FACE TIME!

On 9/11 the world watches as the face of history changes. As the day unfolds, I’m on the phone to everyone in New York. Well, not everyone, just the ones I know … or dated. Everyone feels so far away and all of a sudden, simply hopping on a plane and visiting NY is a patriotic act. Raise the flag, Mama’s coming home to face the music!

At the airport, the military personnel have their game faces on … and their canteens. I guess bottled Evian doesn’t have the panache the National Guard is looking for! The x-ray-checkers are more reverent. They aren’t talking about their latest booty call as they question a man extensively about his eyeglasses. He has a brown face. I breeze through the x-ray with a heap of electronics and a colossal video camera in a bag, which no one questions. I have a white face. Wait…didn’t the head of the Northern Alliance get assassinated with an exploding video camera? Hmmm. Getting on a plane nowadays is all about faces. Up and down the aisles, everyone does a quick face inventory. Maybe some people are looking lower but we’ll never know!

In the cab, I chatter with Deshaun the driver, whose face could launch a thousand ships. We see the skyline and discuss the missing World Trade Center. We talk about the buildings like they were old friends. He says he’s lived his whole life with them and I tell him they were built when I was in High School. For the next 10 minutes Deshaun flicks the overhead lights on and off and drives, without looking at the road, as he stares at me in the rear view mirror. “You don’t look a day over thirty! Keep on doin’ what you’re doin’!” he says. All he sees is my face. I briefly fall in love with him.

I get to my hosts house and there’s a face recognition system for security. It has computers that will ‘learn’ my face. Which face, I wonder…my happy face, my stress face, my hello-let-me-in face?
Phew. I’m relieved that no Mission Impossible Bad Guy with a peel-and-stick face will be able to get in the building and slit my throat while I sleep.

I’m exhausted but I’m in New York! I go out and stand on a busy street corner in midtown Manhattan. I have a cigarette while I decide what, if anything, to do. A sea of faces go by. The Selma-Alabama Face, the Heroin-Chic Face, the CEO face, the Cat-Ate-the-Mouse Face. The Sad, Happy, Only-a-Mother-Could-Love Face. Sometimes people tell stories to put a human face on an event. But here, in New York the event IS the human face.

My grandfather used to sit on the edge of his chair in front of the television and watch game shows. Not because he liked Jeopardy but because he liked to judge people. “Simpatico!” he’d shout. “NOT simpatico!” He was fervent about his game and got me involved in sizing up the human face at an early age!

But little did I know that 30 years later on the corner of 57th and 6th avenue, I’d realize that the human face gives me enormous energy. That’s why after the faceless crime of 9/11, New York was calling me into its steady stream of strangers and friends. I see an old college face with a shock of new gray hair surrounding it. I meet the face of her youngest child while it is screwed up in a tantrum. I have lunch with an old boyfriend whose delightful orgasm-face I can still see in the shadow of his smile.

What’s in a face? Everything. If history is the connection of a thousand biographies, then life is the connection of a thousand faces.

I’m not a very good girl. Oh, I don’t mean that I’m bad to the bone or that I’m hankering for a spanking. I simply mean that as a youth I was a tomboy, as a wife I was one of the guys and as an adult I prefer electronics to clothes! Not very girl-like, right? Well…

Once upon a time two weeks ago, I came home to find an invitation to the glamorous Oviat Room for my friend’s birthday. It was beautifully embossed, with words that said ‘dinner, dancing, live orchestra, formal, tails and top hats.’ Oh my God! Fantasy, Romance, CLOTHES! Two totally conflicting thoughts were smashing around my head. Pure pleasure. Because this event is every girl’s dream. Pure panic. Because this event is every girl’s dream. And I’m not a very good girl!

I had to get a grip. My survival skills kicked in and I started digging in my closet. Under the motorcycle boots and the overalls, the 10 pairs of black jeans (including my summer PASTEL blacks) and the tee shirts, I find my post-trousseau. You know, the box of stuff you’ve collected that you can’t possibly part with…or wear… AFTER the marriage ends? Foofey scarves, shirts with embroidery on them… leggings and sporty things with girlie accents on them that well meaning friends gave me, to sort of trick me into wearing some semblance of fashion. Eureka! I find something! A black satin long flowy skirt that’s skintight at the top and wider at the bottom and a black top with thin, very feminine straps. Whew. I’ve actually test driven this outfit to the Academy Awards one time and I KNOW it has a totally acceptable turning radius and it’s very aerodynamic. I actually love it. My girlfriends think it’s too plain.

OK. I’ll accessorize. Diamonds. Check. Gloves. Check. Hair: up. Nape: exposed. Now comes the shopping. Shoes: The mule, the pump, the slide, the t-strap. The lingo alone makes my head spin. Manolo Blahnik, Via Spiga, Sesto Meucci, and Rangoni. The brand names make me crave Italian food! I stop for Pizza. Next the Foundation Department. That’s girl argot for undergarments. I start to hyperventilate at the thought of panty hose and shapewear. What the hell is shapewear? (Something you need after Pizza!) Smoothers, waist nippers, the slim slip, the corset strip, the belly busters and thigh shapers. Now for the items that ADD shape. Full breast enhancers, water pads, self-adhesive crescents? Wait a minute! Wait just a Cinderella-Carl-Jung-Joseph-Campbell-women-have-no-self-esteem God damn minute! This is ridiculous. I may not be a very good girl, but I’m a very good women…and it’s about time we women give ourselves a little more self respect or else we might as well just dress in our own self imposed burqas and give up the ghost! And let’s not even discuss the thought of undressing all that faux beauty in front of a man.

Oh my God! The man! I almost forgot the invitation said YOU AND A GUEST! Now I’m in a new kind of tizzy.

There is a guy, we’ll call him Joseph, who was my number one choice and the next nine choices, except he doesn’t dance. Hmmmmm. #11) Boy Next Door, loves to dance but oh-so-boring. #12) My dance-til-dawn gay friend. #13) My stand by Internet Buddy. #14) Solo. I’m thinking 12. But wait. Would I be at The Ball with 11, 12 or 13 and be dreaming of #1? You bet! And then it hits me. If I don’t go for #1, I’ll never get #1. Not at work, not in life and definitely not at The Ball!

So I take a risk. I describe the party to Joseph and before I even get to the dancing part, he’s jumping up and down on the sidewalk. “Oh me, take me!” “But you said ‘I won’t dance!’” “No, no! “ he says, “I said I don’t dance … but I will. Look!” He grabs me with his cigarette dangling and spins me around the sidewalk like a very modern day, hyper, more vigorous version of Fred Astaire. Surprise, surprise. I’m going with #1!

I no longer think I’m a bad girl. I may not be what you think I should be… but I’m an all natural, risk taking, trumpet skirted, spaghetti strapped, aerodynamic-comfortable-outfit kinda girl and I’m very ready for The Ball! Are you?

New York City, July 1999.

It’s a zillion degrees in the subway tunnel that takes me from my beloved west side to the la-di-da east side. It’s not a happy trip. It’s a trip that’s taking me to Beth Israel hospital. More specifically the AIDS ward where my blood-brother is really sick. Emerging from the tunnel I get that summer-scratch-‘n-sniff experience wafting into my nose and that assault of sirens piercing my eardrums. “Bomb scare!” someone announces. “Business as usual!” someone quips. The city keeps pulsing and I keep walking.

When I get to his room, Robby’s watching “I Love Lucy” on TV. He’s happy for a change. He’s laughing. He’s got a hankering for a Big Mac and I run downstairs and pick up a huge McDonald’s spread. It includes four Happy Meals, maybe because of the toys, maybe because of the title. I always buy too much food because I’m cramming the next 40 years into the next few months. We spread the food all over the bed and we pretend we’re on a picnic. We reminisce about our trip cross-country. We scream with laughter at our childhood tree house. We sing a Beatles song.

I climb into the bed with him and hold his shivering body as his temperature soars and his mind goes with it. We make it through the night, often in ten-minute chunks. The morning comes and so does the doctor. Oh, oh. He’s got that two-weeks-to-live look on his face. He says just that.

My world collapses. I can’t breathe. It’s dark and it’s 9:00 in the morning. There are screams and I’m not sure where they’re coming from. Robby fixates on his cat and makes me go home to feed Freddie. I stumble down the hall. Grown men are crying. I feel as though I’m in bedlam in the 1860’s.

I race down the subway stairs into the morning rush hour. I’m pushed along with the crush of bodies. And then I see it. A woman pushes a baby stroller to the precipice of the plummeting staircase. A man, without losing a beat, picks up the front end and carries baby and stroller down, down, down to the bottom. He goes his way, she goes hers. What? They don’t even know each other? I’m stopped in my tracks... on the tracks...by a Random Act of Kindness.

I feel a tickle and a sneeze in my heart. Look! There’s a club footy man with braces and packages. Without losing a beat, three people give up their seats to make room for his extra needs . Look! There are three strong men holding the train doors open for a co-ed. Ok THAT one I can understand! But my point is this. On a very normal day, in a very loony city, surrounded by very busy strangers I witness 2.5 Random Acts of Kindness.

New York City, October 2001

It’s two years later and fall in Manhattan. Amidst all the madness, I sit on the steps in front of Lincoln Center. I’ve got Chagall over my right shoulder and trees bursting with color in front of me. I’ve got a coffee in one hand and I’m puffing a perfectly sinful cigarette with my other. A very pregnant lady struggles with a rolly-cart that keeps tipping over. Someone helps her. RAK 1 up and it’s only 9:00am. I’m officially in heaven. I call my friend Beth in Los Angeles and explain that I’m having the exact opposite of a mid-life crisis and would she please name it for me. She is the ONLY one in my world who loves words and is truly not anti-semantic. “It’s a mid-life celebration!” rolls off the tip of her tongue. Yes. That’s it! Who can wait for a Happy Ending? I celebrate the Happy Middle!

The day Robby died was a Very No Good Horrible Day. The day the planes hit the World Trade Center was a Very No Good Horrible Day. But I tell you this with a tickle and a sneeze in my heart ... I guarantee you this tragedy will turn us into the best versions of ourselves. The Random Acts of Kindness WILL rise from the rubble ... and we WILL continue to celebrate.

What if the kid’s a spy? OK he doesn’t seem to be all that diabolical, but
Johnny “soon-to-be-on-Oprah” Walker could be a secret agent. Remember the movie “War Games?” Maybe the kid’s in over his head. Try this: Walker has an affinity (or maybe an obsession) with Islam and volunteers to infiltrate the Taliban. (It’s much more exciting than playing paintball on weekends.) He studies with a Holy Man. (He needs to learn how to blend in.) He leaves the Holy Man in a hurry. (The CIA dispatches him.) He’s filthy. (Al Jolson ring a bell?) He doesn’t give a whole lot of info when captured. (Winks and nods to the military until he gets his handler notified.) No treason charges? Hmmmm.

I come by this conspiracy-theory talent honestly. My uncle is Markus Wolf, the old Cold Warrior enemy of the United States. He was The Man Without a Face, Le Carre’s model for Karla, who brought down Willie Brandt’s government while he was head of foreign intelligence for the former East Germany. When his spies were getting arrested in the west he had no idea why. So he read the western press and found out exactly how they were being noticed. And then he changed that! (His spies were observed doing excessive window-shopping. In the eyes of the capitalist west, that was grounds for suspicion. They never buy things... they must be communists… and they were.)

So what IF Walker is a spy? Let him give us the intelligence he was able to gather. And if he’s not? Well hell. Let’s get our special-ops into the Middle East pretending to be spiritually lost gen y’ers and we can HAVE some American Intelligence in the Arab World. Don’t you wonder about the scenarios of infiltrating Al Qaeda? Hamas? The PLO? It’s nearly impossible. So why not young American boys? Wouldn’t they be more trustworthy to us than Northern Alliance and Taliban types who seem to switch sides at every corner? Are we going to set up a “government” of Afghan and Taliban elitists who have flip-flopped more than once? You bet. So why not let Walker come home, treat him like we would treat all other busted secret agents and hope that he was a spy. We’ll never know the truth about him. I want my story to be true. Don’t you? Because it gives me hope that we can actually infiltrate these strange-to-us cultures and eliminate terrorism. Can’t we have democracy, a free press, all our civil liberties in tact AND some silence? Walter Cronkite recently said we should videotape everything but keep it under lock and key for a year. What? Not see every video, know every detail, hear every “expert” spouting minutia 24/7 RIGHT AWAY? Unheard of. Un-American. But he might be right. These19 terrorists who killed our innocents, were what they call in the spy trade, sleepers. They have infinite patience. Why can’t we? When we saw Bin Laden’s first tape, CNN featured a geologist who new exactly where the cave was. The next Bin Laden video message had a giant map behind him. The latest one has a burlap sack in back. No more caves. No more clues! So please. Can ‘t we just SHUT UP for a minute, be patient and win this thing before we spin this thing?

Part of me was glued to Bin Laden’s latest videotape. But part of me wishes we had shoved it deep into John Ashcroft’s desk drawer until Walter Cronkite said we could all stay home on a Friday night, order pizza and watch it together. Anchovies ok? I can hardly wait to see how this thing ends!

Ok this is shocking. When you type ‘DATING’ into the amazon.com search engine, the three books that come up on the screen are:

• The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating and Sex -- Joshua Piven.
• Women, Sex And Dating, For The Single Man -- Perry Rose.
• 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter: And Other Tips from a
Beleaguered Father, (Not That Any of Them Work) -- W. Bruce Cameron.

Joshua, Perry and Bruce. What do they have in common? They’re GUYS. And they wrote those books FOR men. Huh? Then there’s Dr. Harville “Getting-the-Love-You-Want” Hendrix, Oprah’s guru Dr. Phil
“I’m-so-famous-I-don’t-need-a-last-name” McGraw and of course John
“Men-are-from-Mars-Women-are-from-Venus” Gray. So how DO you go from being a Venutian xenophobe to a Martian xenophile anyway? I always knew it takes a village to date a man but I had NO idea it took a handbook to date a woman.

I became a delta force girl operative and peeked inside the boys' handbook. Here’s what it taught:

“Learn how to remove stubborn articles of clothing and slip away from a
blind date. Discover the secrets of dealing with a bad kisser and of
surviving a meeting with your date's parents. An appendix of great pickup
lines, breakup lines, and all-purpose excuses. What to do when you wake up next to someone whose name you can't remember.”

Well really now! No wonder we need a village. We have to discuss all that crap with our girlfriends, gay male friends, ex-boyfriends and a few
strangers on an airplane. But what sayeth the bibles? Look at the difference between the cover of the girl’s bible, Cosmo: “LAND THAT MAN, ACE YOUR JOB, AND LOOK YOUR SEXIEST EVER!” and the boy’s bible, Maxim: “PRETZEL SEX, TYSON TALKS, GET THAT TEMPTRESS!”

Let’s look inside:
MAXIM’S CODE OF GUYHOOD:
Rule #2,738: Women who claim they “love to watch sports” must be treated as spies until they demonstrate knowledge of the game and the ability to pick a Buffalo wing clean.

Rule #8,911: Never allow a telephone conversation with a woman to go on
longer than you’re able to have sex with her. Keep a stopwatch by the phone; hang up if necessary.

Rule #9,076: When receiving oral sex while driving, always:

* Wear your seat belt.
* Close the sunroof.
* Smile.
* Make extended eye contact with as many women in other cars as possible.

INSIDE COSMO:
Dating Diary
Thursday
“Sebastien didn't call until 8 p.m. What's up with that?! Wound up having a major "boys suck" bitchfest dinner w/Olya. Friday Sebastien and I had another fabulous time talking over dinner. He dropped some zingers, though. He's divorced!

Sunday
Well, the girls are divided when it comes to being with a divorcé. On one
hand, it shows that at some point in his life, he obviously wasn't
commitment-phobic -- but then again, maybe he is now after going through a bad marriage. And being the first woman he has dated since, is definitely an ego stroke, but there's also the possibility that I could be Rebound Woman. Plus, it's a lot of pressure! If things don't work out between us, then I could potentially turn him off from dating for another year. And that sort of guilt is something I definitely don't need.”

These are actual quotes from Cosmo and Maxim. OK they are for 20-something boys and girls, not for men and women. But here’s a secret. No matter WHAT age you are it’s the same damn thing. In the beginning you feel giddy. You say stuff like “I feel like I’m in high school again.” You have raging hormones. Later on you say stuff like “Quit it. We’re not in high school anymore.” The hormones have iced down.

So what takes it from that ‘hot-sexy-intense-focused-fancy-footwork-dipping-while-dancing-romantic-constant-arousal-haze’… to that ‘HE’S-IGNORING-ME-SHE’S-IN-MY-SPACE’ end run? Selfishness? Laziness? Fear? Bills? I dunno.

But here’s what I think. It’s really stupid that dating has become a “village” vs. “handbook” experience. The dictionary defines a date as: “an arrangement to be present at an event.” Ok. There it is. BE PRESENT. That’s all we should ask of each other. So women, just think of your man as your village and take a deep breath and let him know as simply and as honestly as you can, what’s on your mind and in your heart. And men, just think of your woman as a precious bit of software, that sometimes needs attention in a disk-first-aid-scan to de-fragment your relationship’s operating system. And if you’re both present for this event, and do it with unconditional love, maybe you won’t go to Defcon 1 when you look at your lover, and want to run him over in front of the village, or brain her in the head with the handbook!

“Buddy down!” Two secret service agents run after an exuberant Buddy who races after a car as it leaves the Clinton compound in Chappaqua. Too late. The dog is dead. Hit by a car. No Clinton or Rodham in sight. The whole incident leaves me rather unsettled. Why? Why am I tossing and turning at night upset over the dead Buddy? It hits me. A friend, recently beleaguered by all things male, decides he has no idea what on earth an Alpha Male is. I blurt out “it’s a man who has command of his dog!” There. Now I’m blaming Clinton for killing his own dog. Why didn’t he teach Buddy better? Why wasn’t he there? Why wasn’t he in charge? Sheesh! Alpha Male Backlash.

What the hell IS an Alpha Male? Remember all that hubbub about Iron John? You should read a book called “DATING Iron John” (by Linda Sunshine.) Yeah, ladies… with all these raging hormones enticing Soccer Moms and “Sex and the City” CEO types to scoop up rescue workers, firefighters and men in uniform… to have and to hold for better and for worse… I say we must investigate this Alpha Phenomenon a little closer.

Modern Humorist has a survey “Are YOU the Alpha Male…a self-test for chimpanzees.” Maybe it will apply:

When I screech:
A) The other chimps listen and are interested in what I have to say.
B) I am in a confused terror.

When it gets down to it:
A) I can win a fight against any of the other males.
B) I need a pointy stick to get any respect.

All the chimp babies are:
A) Mine.
B) Somebody else’s.

OK. Maybe that’ just silly! In a more scholarly paper, Peter Cunliff-Jones writes: “Odey, the Alpha Male of a troop of Nigerian rainforest monkeys, bares his lengthy fangs and fluorescent penis.” Well! That’s one attribute I hadn’t thought of. So, other than a fluorescent penis, what else might the Alpha Male need to carry that titular crown? "The Alpha monkey has to protect and lead the group well. If he doesn't he is deposed. Odey has only been the Alpha Male for one year, and his troop includes the deposed Monarch and three young Male Pretenders.” Very stressful! Does this sound like the dot-com world? Or maybe the corporate world? But in the corporate world we don’t always like the Alpha Males. Often they protect only themselves and lead their troops into rack and ruin. Howard Fineman of Newsweek describes the debacle we know as Enron and says, “The Big Boys were allowed to dump their stock… but the average Joes and Janes could not.” 1.2 Billion Dollars in hidden debt? The employees have no jobs, no health care and no 401k’s? Kenneth Lay must have had some kind of fluorescent penis! The Beta’s got buried. The Alpha is in Aspen!

But it goes back to the Wolf Pack. It has been said that human society mirrors the wolf society. (Poor wolves!) Oh sometimes it appears vicious. There’s a lot of snarling, biting and domination. (Sound like Enron?) But wolves are monogamous, have day care, elder care and yes, even birth control. Until very recently the concept of Wolf Pack birth control baffled scientists. The Beta Males and Beta Females would ‘get busy’ but never get pregnant. The scientists realized that when the Alpha Female played the snarling, biting domination game on the Beta Female, the Beta stopped ovulating… out of fear. No eggs? No babies. When the pack’s population was too thin, the Alpha domination stopped and the Beta babies were born. Hmm. Smart. So it’s protection, procreation and progeny.

Did you know that women with certain baby friendly hip-to-waist ratios are more appealing to men? Did you know that tall men on average earn $600 annually more per inch than their shorter male counterparts? It’s primal. We can’t help it. And let’s face it. We love our Alpha romances. They run deep and strong and they get our juices flowing. When Princess Leia says “I love you” to Han Solo… he simply looks into her eyes and says, “I know.” Harrison “Han” Ford. All Alpha. All the time. The words are cocky. But the delivery is not. It’s pure love. He loves her completely. Deeply. With reckless abandon. And that’s how we’ll survive… as long as we don’t run out in front of a car!

The view from lower Manhattan is radically different. Without two, giant towers to look at we seem to be focusing on one, glorious Lady Liberty. Let's take this as a metaphor and a message for the politicos. We need to
change the views.

For a brief moment, we got the Senators all singing together. Now they're back to their pack mentality, roaming the halls in cliques and bullying each
other. Will there be no peace between parties? Probably not. Unless we change the seating!

Sit the Senators in alphabetical order, or better yet, sit them democrat/republican/democrat/republican. Think about it. Don’t you wonder why, exactly, the senators sit divided, across the aisle from each other?

Here’s what The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee told me. ”Tradition.” Tra-‘dish-an. The handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction. (Websters) THAT'S IT? There’s no law that dictates the seating?

No. But seniority does come with better views. Lott and Daschle have the
best seats in the house. Dayton and Allen have the worst. Jeffords moved from sitting next to Bennet to sitting next to Kerry. He’s on the democrat side this year. But he’s not a democrat.

So what started this ‘aisle’ tradition anyway?

Betty Koed from the Senate Historical Office told me with great passion that contrary to what people think, the seating has nothing to do with our common association of democrats/left and republicans/right. The process of splitting up the parties began after the Civil War and the seating followed. She said, “We don’t know why they chose each side.” But she took my fax number and about three minutes later faxed me six pages to read. See? Government can work quickly!

Here’s what you need to know. According to an article by Robert C. Byrd,
“The custom of grouping senators’ desks by party is very old but not always rigidly followed." "Apparently during the 1840’s and 1850’s Democrats could be found sitting at random on the Whig side.” It was in 1877 that the practice developed of moving desks back and forth across the center aisle to permit all the members of each party to sit together. Only twice did the balance of power become so uneven that democrats spilled into the republican side and vice versa. During those two times, the seating became known as the “Cherokee Strip,” suggesting that the overflow of majority party senators were off their reservation. Ouch.

Remember when we were younger in elementary school where the idea was to learn how to play well with others? The teachers sometimes sat us
boy/girl/boy/girl. Since the senate is not yet made up of fifty percent
women, that seating arrangement is out of the question. But let’s get back
to the point. We don’t seat the Black Caucus together, or group the Women Senators together. So why do we insist on “tradition” when playing well with others clearly isn’t happening on the Hill?

I SAY SWITCH THE SEATING AND SWITCH IT FAST! In order to proceed governing this country in the spirit of healing and cooperation, I see no other way than to mix up the seating. No more cheating. No more bullying. And Senators? The practice of writing your names on the desks when you leave? Isn’t that graffiti or tagging? You are all on thin ice. Now go to your room and think about this!

“Even though he says he loves me, I’ll never go out with him because YOU saw him FIRST.” That’s Chicks before Dicks.

“Even though she’s super hot, I’m never gonna go out with her, cuz she dumped your brother’s best friend’s cousin.” That’s Bros before Hos.

Ok. That’s the gen-x version of the age-old sisterhood vs. brotherhood conundrum. It also sounds like youthful pack mentality. But this week in Colorado, I had a disturbing revelation. Women are pathetic, men are appalling and they do stick together. Now I’m in deep trouble. So at least hear me out. I was at the Comedy Festival, which happens once a year in Aspen. Buyers go to meet funny, up and coming stem-cell comics, get hideously drunk because of the altitude, schmooze, ski, dine royally on expense accounts and occasionally get laid. But this year was different. First of all, Aspen is so horribly expensive that the only cheap places to eat are the pizza parlor and the crepe cart… the latter being outdoors in front of the historic Wheeler Opera House in 3-below-zero weather. These two places are only acceptable to be seen at for one visit apiece by the non-hoi polloi, or suffer the consequences of being seen as a loser, cheapskate and on your way out of the business. Secondly, the economy stinks, so everyone is sucking it up and tightening their belts. Since no one wanted to be seen at the pizza parlor twice, companies sent less people. And finally, 9-11 has sucked the air right out of silliness, free speech and freewheeling spending. So in that atmosphere of less oxygen and more strife, we met to do some ‘Business of Show.’

We all want to attract the herds to our shows and movies no matter how
artsy-fartsy or indie-schmindie we are. So we act like herds ourselves. We stampede here and there, caught up in the mad dash based on prey, fear, excitement, flow and… well... look at all the reality shows… just plain stupidity. But when there is trouble in the air, the herd closes in tighter and runs faster. It’s safer that way. So why do I think that women are pathetic and men are appalling? Because in two public debates and two interviews of high-powered sociable troglodytes, the women spent an enormous amount of time apologizing and the men spent an enormous amount of time in a pissing contest. The most fun example of this was the free speech debate where Oliver (“Platoon”) Stone rolled his eyes, made faces and snorted loudly out of his nose while Matt (“South Park”) Stone repeatedly called Oliver ‘Bud.’ But was it funny? Not really. It was disturbing and precarious. There was more danger in the air and the herd was forced to stop and watch those two carry on, thus becoming vulnerable. If there was any female in sight on stage, she might have nipped the pissing contest in the bud by acts of contrition, or some lighthearted apologies. And while the women at another event were stepping all over themselves apologizing for even breathing on each other’s sentences, the men (had they been there) might have shown them how to do that victorious Olympic dismount even when the landing might have been a little clunky.

So “Chicks before Dicks” and “Bros before Hos” is an old fashioned theme with new language. But I’m not sure it’s going to work. In order to make the herd run more smoothly, I think we need to mix it up a little. So hum a little West Side Story, think a little Hatfields and McCoys or listen to a little DMX. But remember, in times of trouble, if we don’t ALL stick together, someone’s gonna get killed.