It's tough working for a celebrity, apparently. Because there's a self-help group for them. No, really. I've googled all over the web on Celebrity Employees Anonymous (why do I feel sure it's a twelve step programme?), and all manner of wordage. Any clues, anyone?

I am going to stop reading blogs for four hours while I write about CRM, IT integration, and the wireless enterprise. There, I've said it.

Rhyme is hard-wired into our souls. (Not mine, I'm strictly prose)

Did you hear poet Ian McMillan on the Today programme? Ironically trying to get something to rhyme with Wilkinson? Great.

I'm in the dentist, this morning. Did I mention that I'm irrationally frightened of the dentist? It took me ages to find my special touchy-feely yoga-enabled Lavender oil sharing set-up, and I love them. But I'm still scared. Not least since the previous dentist disappeared in a puff of alleged malpractice litigation, which did not make me feel great. The new dentist looks like one of the male models in the picture stories in Jackie magazine in like 1983. He's cute, perfectly formed, but you only see him sitting down. He's nice though.

So I'm pacing the reception, awash with nervous energy, making everyone else feel like they'd like some drugs and why don't I just siddown, when the five waiting dentees start a conversation with the receptionist (they all bizarrely seem to be in the same social circle, or are rather un-London and talk to each other) about how her sister has lost ten stone. Ten stone. Ten stone. Hear the sound of that, folks.

We talk variously about how (diet and exercise - how retro), why (like, you need to ask), and is she different (her own mother walked past her in the street). I shared that I had lost some (significant amount of) weight. They all congratulated me. Another woman said she found dieting hard, and we concurred that it's about changing your eating patterns rather than being on-a-diet or off-a-diet.

It was like a twelve step programme, only with dental treatment.

That is all.

Not seasonal, I know, but she's clearly a few elves short of a grotto.

I can't believe that the Friday Five is the best meme at the Bloggies. Sheesh. I mean, who decides? OK, OK, I know who decides (and note, Freudsters, when I was typing "who decides" I kept typing "who decodes") - it's for the people, by the people yadda yadda blah blah.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Friday Five is pyramid selling for the blog generation. It's taking the meme to its ultimate, teeth-clenchingly dull final resting place.

Come the revolution (or, as we should probably all say nowadays, the evolution), those Friday Fivers'll be the first up against the wall.

Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. No, really.

Once, in the mists of time, I signed up with meetup - don't even ask me why; the last thing I want to do is meet people off the internet - and now they mail me to invite me to the Judaism meetup. I realise it's all automated, and a real person hasn't seen any of this, and it's the first Monday of every month and all. But surely there's an irony to the April meet-up being on the First Seder Night (Passover) of Pesach. Cultural crossover: think Christmas lunch with Jacobs cream crackers (aka matza), lots of dirgy songs, tired kids, evening timetable, the refrain over the traditional dish of egg and saltwater of "why don't we eat this all year?", and a coupla arguments thrown in. I mean, how could you miss it?

So I'm talking through a project with D. The man who once linked my self-esteem to my weblog stats, but I still speak to him.

me: blah blah blah
him: I don't know what advice to offer
me: I'm not sure it's an advice offering scenario
him: it's a male thing. I have to.

Men, right?

Just in case you can still sleep nights - the Guardian's report on the terrorism threat to the UK.

Julia Magnet on the oys of being Jewish in London/the UK. Short on the joys, we are. [via Stephen Pollard]

Last night: 21 grams: still thinking about it. Shattered, modern narrative that makes you do the work. Which is good. It's about salvation, methinks. Everyone's looking for something (in the words of the song).

So I can't sleep - rare, I know - and I'm lying in bed and I figure, this is the moment I'll register for the new sign-up only Media Guardian. I tell them my inside leg measurement and my maternal grandmother's gefilte fish recipe (OK, I exaggerate), and nothing happens. I don't know if it's an error, if they already have my email address because I signed-up once before (boy is there an opportunity out there for people with sign-up overload. If only I could f***ing remember), or if they're all out to get me. Probably the latter, right?

update: they kindly emailed me my password. I'm in.

My week so far: two Limmud meetings, an extremely early night on Friday, shul yesterday, lunch at F&Ms, curry with S on Cricklewood Broadway (I may have a new preferred curry house, you'll be pleased to hear). So, quiet, then.

Lunch yesterday was a real laugh. Talk turned to my blog, as it invariably does, nowadays. Blogs are very now, very zeitgeist, apparently. Lots of the lunch guests had read about them this week. I know, I know, this has turned into a tale of meta-blogging, where I'm a blogger talking about other people talking about my blog. It's silly. It's self-referrential. It's possibly annoying. A couple of lunch guests were fairly sure they'd rumbled me as someone else, but I firmly told them no.

What was fab was the conversation - about something else, thank the lord - between S and M:
her: It's on the fifteenth, isn't it?
him: No, sweetheart, it's definitely later
her: Are you sure, sweetheart?
him: Quite. Sweetheart.

Imagine this, through clenched teeth, sweetheart. The wonder of marriage, eh?

"We are human beings - and our reach exceeds your grasp"

Cluetrain Manifesto

Wordsmith celebrates its tenth anniversary.

People tell me stories, amazing stories. And I want to write them all down.

Last February I wrote about Taiwan innovalue and their rather strange adverts. Now they don't exist. They heard?

"For a couple of years, I actually had myself convinced that I'd be happier living in the past - the 20s and 30s specifically."

For a reason I don't know, I am currently very taken with the phrase "the grande fromage."

Recipular Moment - Sasha's Couscous and Mandarin Salad

Here's a salad I invented. Impress your friends by how complicated it looks, while knowing deep down that it's dead easy.

Ingredients:

couscous (although you can also use quinoa) - about 400g

salted cashew nuts - 300g bag

tinned mandarins in own syrup - 3 or 4 little tins

dried sour cherries - 3 or 4 100g bags (you can get these in Tescos, or, if you live in Kilburn, in any persian-style shop)

fresh dill

runny honey

balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

Method:

pour boiling water with a little vegetable stock over the couscous... just so it's almost cooked, there's dressing going later. If you're using quinoa, then you have to boil it for 20 minutes, pretty much

put your cooked couscous/quinoa in a big bowl.. the salad should double with all the other ingredients

drain the mandarins, and reserve the juice

empty in the cashew nuts, dried sour cherries and mandarins

snip quite a lot of dill into the salad

into the mandarin juice, add some runny honey, a little balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper

pour the dressing over the salad, and turn it over a couple of times

this salad is best prepared the night before, so the flavours meld

You can do it different ways... cranberries. Or if you can't find dill, use coriander, and swap the balsamic vinegar for soy sauce (though forget the salt then), and make it a little South East Asian.

I'm in Love with the Girl on the Virgin Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk.

Jack Kerouac would be 82 today. If he wasn't, y'know, dead.

My friend is in a job interview. Senior, board level. Big chance. With the big cheese.

CEO: How good are you?

My friend: I don't have a problem selling myself, but I think it would be arrogant to respond to that

CEO:Only if you're wrong

[friendless banter]

CEO: How do I know you've not reached a plateau, shot your load? What would your referee say about you?

My friend: How do I know you've not spoken to him?

CEO: I haven't

[My friend talks about his strategic vision, sharp cost control, superlative people skills. The CEO listens.]

CEO: I have no idea who your referee is

[my friend subtley sells his referee]

CEO: But if he says that you're in

My friend: I must call him, then

The CEO doesn't flicker.

It's tough out there.

Your intrepid local reporter: there's some kind of incident on Minster Road which includes ambulances (plural) and people being taken away in police vans. You read it here first.

Melanie Phillips and Stephen Pollard on Max Hastings.

Not so much out to lunch as away with the fairies. That's... who is that?

More Fiction...

I call Joshua late on Wednesday night. He's a night person, like me; I know he'll be watching reruns of LA Law on cable, surfing the internet, getting his people in the US to call him. He's like the Chief Executive of his own address book, that guy.

“Hey, Talia, good to hear from you. How’s it going with, er, Martin?”

He pauses while recollecting Martin’s name, as if he’s retrieving it from a vast mental database. I wonder, briefly, how many people he knows.

It’s a constant game, that Jewish who-do-you-know, and it gets tiring. At parties, at work, at family occasions, there’s a dull backdrop of white-noise, buzzing away saying “isn’t he Marissa’s cousin who married that lawyer from Liverpool? You know Marissa, she used to go out with my brother’s former business partner.” Quite often, when you meet people, you go through an initial “who do we know in common” protocol, and it can be quite time consuming. Not to mention dull.

I think there’s a way around this. I’ve developed, but not yet patented, the concept for a new technology which would solve this problem. It’s a utility that you can download to your handheld/PDA gadgetery, called JewishGeography v2.3. it works like this: when you meet someone, you beam your palms at each other, and the technology merge-purges your address books, and comes up with the thirty six people you know in common. You can then work through them, in alphabetical order, saving a huge amount of wasted time on people you don’t actually both know. Of course there’s the perennial Jonny Cohen/David Levy problem: there are a certain number of people who have a one-to-many relationship with the same name. So there are like twenty David Levys. JGv2.3 would keep a website version-controlling these multiple personalities, so Jonny Cohen would become JonnyCohenUK23. obviously users would have to update this regularly, but I think it could be a winner.

Joshua’s still waiting for me to answer him.

“Yeah, OK. He’s, y’know, nice. Course he’s a bit too nice-jewish-boy for me, but it’s ok for now. Don’t tell anyone I said that, OK?”

“Sure, yeah. Why are you going out with him if you don’t like him?”

I am a top return for that fabulous google search: can I print out the internet. And we all know the answer: no - it's bad for the planet.

I would like it to be known that I am having my second good hair day in a row. I mean, my follicles may be filled with parabens, but I'm exactly the position on the curly frizzy continuum (ringletty, but not solid) that I want to be. Clearly a sign from the abishter.

A friend calls me. Well-dressed guy. He has a question.

"What is it, about Jewish people, and their pockets? Always bulging, ruining their suits?"

I suggest that it's not just Jewish men who are prone to over-carrying the kitchen sink.

He responds:

"Is it because they lost their homes? So they have to put everything in their pockets?"

FICTION...

Being a headhunter is basically being an estate agent with a few zeros on the end. Here’s a job/house – it’s empty. Here’s a candidate/buyer – they fit. A bit of high-touch consulting, a few long lunches and hey presto a fifty thousand pound fee.

At work, we have lunches for everything. Lunch in the oak-panelled corporate dining room, for those above the salt, every day. Lunch when people join (we are a friendly firm). Lunch when secretaries get pregnant (we are a family firm). Lunch when we win new business (we are a successful firm). Only we don’t do lunch when people leave to go to a competitor (we are a failing firm) they just disappear.

Tarquin gets promoted from Junior Consultant to Consultant, largely on the strength of parentage and his old boy network connections and breaks open the bubbly at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon. He has his wine merchant send it over, on the basis of a rumour he heard from the management committee.

I hear him on the phone to his wife. She is blonde and they have four identikit blond children. Would they hide me from the Nazis?

“Pookie,” he whispers, “Jamesie told me, strictly entre-nous, that I’m in. Announced tomorrow, but always good to be ahead of the game, eh?”

She whispers something to him on the phone. I love it when people in offices other halves’ tell them they love them.

“Yes, yes, I – “ he lowers his voice to a whisper even I can’t hear “- you too. Now, call up the chappies and let’s do dinner tomorrow night at the Ivy.” A few words at the other end. “Yes, yes, I know, mention Grandpa, he practically owns the private dining room. Can I leave the menu to you? Kiss the kiddies for me. Chow.”

Kimberly and I remain at Junior Consultant level, banging our heads against the glass ceiling at every turn. We talk about setting up our own firm, it’s just a phone, a fax, an ISP and a database, right? I remind her that we’re on the outside looking in, and the people who make it – like Tarquin - are on the inside looking up.


* * * * * *

I can hear Tarquin in the next-door office. He has no sense of volume control at all. Very occasionally he lowers his voice and I know he’s either whispering sweet nothings to his wife (or possibly a string of other women, though that’s pure conjecture) or looking for a job. Given that he’s got “managing partner 2008 onwards” tattooed in indelible ink on his forehead, he’s unlikely to be jobhunting. And anyway, he’d obviously want to be headhunted.

Crispin Carlson, the leader of the Banking practice, whose blood is so blue he’s practically opaque, is leaning against Tarquin’s open door. One of the things that I can never fathom is, the more money you have, the less you should appear to have. So the guy’s from old families who went to the right schools and whose parents have a pile in the country often have fraying (Pink’s, obviously) shirt collars and cuffs, and slightly unkempt suits that look like they could do with a dry clean.

On the other hand, my third-generation immigrant genes require perfection at all times; freshly pressed, not a wrinkle in sight nor ladder of tight. Almost as if there is a diversely proportional relationship between having money and looking like you do. Not that my parents are paupers – they wouldn’t want people to think they don’t make a living – but they’re comfortable.

I can see an egg stain on Crispin’s Turnbull and Asser tie. The voice in my head that is my Mother tuts, silently.

“Tarquin, that idea you ran by me at the practice meeting yesterday.”

“Any thoughts on that, Crispin, going forward?”

The difference between me (and possibly Kimberly) and everyone else at Brothers and Wiggles is that no one ever asks a straight question. And people are always talking about going forward. I mean, what other direction in there to go in?

“I think the idea may have legs, Tarquin. I liked it. Thomas likes it. And Zane was impressed.”

Zane is a young high-flying consultant who just transferred from our Wall Street office, to inject some buzz-word bingo into our slightly ailing financial services practice, and he’s the current golden boy.

In partnerships, personalities go in and out of favour. I know, because when I was a lawyer, the same games were played, albeit for less money and over a shorter period of time. So somebody’s star is never stationary, it is clearly on the ascendant or descendant, and the trick of office politics is to hedge your relationships so that your net interaction direction is an upwards trajectory. Too much hard work for me, I get sick of constantly having to benchmark everyone I’m talking to.

“Glad Zane liked it. He’s impressive, isn’t he?”

Tarquin’s playing the game too. But then he’s a fabulous game player, having had the secret rules imparted to him at Eton or Sandhurst or his Oxbridge College or anywhere, in fact, that I haven’t been. The rising stars’ rating is generated by the number and frequency of vague references to their obvious talent made on a daily basis. And of course Tarquin knows his time will come, and he’s merely issuing credit notes.

“He is, boy. But your idea. Definitely has legs, why don’t you take it for a walk?”

I keep a notebook in my desk for writing down English phrases heard in the office, and that’s definitely going in there. Together with “throwing toys out of prams” and other childhood- and pet-related terminology.

Tarquin’s phone interrupts my thoughts about the alien language the financial services practice in particular, spoke.

“Hetherington-Palmer!”

I hate it when people bark their name at my when I call them up.

“Yes, no problem Katy, you’re a star.” I imagine Katy preening herself at the other end of the line, surrounded by her below-the-salt cheaper office furniture, and saying “no problem, HP.”

I know it’s only a matter of days until some kindly-uncle type asks me to perform a menial task with the sop that “I’m a star”. Yeah, right. A legend in my own lunchtime. Most of the men here only call secretaries a star. It’s not a compliment.

“Crispin, that was Katy. Apparently there’s been a bit of a ruckus at your club, and they just called and said could you postpone your lunch appointment, the place is crawling with journos.”

“How unusual. I’ve been a member of the Athaneum for years, and we’ve never had anything like that. And I’m meeting some old school chums for lunch, thought there might be an assignment in it. Better go sort it out.”

And with a flourish of his poorly pressed suit-tails he’s run down the corridor. I half expect him to jump to the ceiling at the end of the corridor like a naughty schoolboy.

How can I be expected to do any work when there is real, live theatre in my office?

I turn to my inbox, because while I’ve been earwiging I’ve heard ten or eleven signifying pings that tell me I received email. Some joker from the IT department loaded the sound files when they came to clean my PC, and although I probably could find out how to turn it off, I quite enjoy the slight distraction. I’m a short-attention-span kind of girl, so it breaks up my day nicely.

Of course most of the emails I get are of the “have you left a parcel in reception” sort, which are both annoying and uninformative. And of course it’s a global email system: there’s someone in our Chicago office who keeps choosing ALL to send messages that say things like “I left my favourite Snoopy mug on the second floor” which get sent to everyone in the known Brothers & Wiggles universe. I’m surprised she still has her job, or at the very least keeps replicating the same mistake.

One of the things about email is the escalation procedure manoeuvre, which I’m as guilty of as anyone. Before email, you’d never ask your secretary to make thirty-two copies of every memo you sent and just for good measure CC them to the CEO, your mum and God, but somehow, the subtle power of the CC and BCC buttons are endemic now. Peter might as well see this (rough translation: should cover my arse). Tim should glance over this (rough translation: it’ll scare the shit out of Pete to see that Tim’s got this too. That should make him respond pretty damn quick). I imagine in the future there might be university courses of the subtleties of when to blind copy someone (CYA) and when to just plain copy them. The upshot of all this is that when I strip out the mug-emails and the multiple-copy emails, there’s only about two real ones a day left. Like memos, really.

Crispin is bumbling up the corridor like a fading Oxbridge academic. I hear him take up his door-leaning position again outside mine and Tarquin’s offices.

“Tarquin, just looked into the ruck at my club. You’ll never guess what. It’s quite shocking really, especially at the Athaneum.”

Tarquin looks up from him PC, although I don’t know why, as he rarely keys anything, preferring to use the secretaries for manual-labour tasks such as sending emails and checking his diary. But he’s skilled at looking busy.

“Pray tell, Crispin.”

“Well, you know Peter Starr?”

“The ageing B-lister with that Channel Four arts programme? What’s it called? ArtSmart?”

“Never know if it’s ArtsMart or ArtSmart, but yes, that’s him. I was sitting next to him at a table at the Ivy only last week, you know. He was with one of those young model types. You know the sort.”

“I do. But he’s hardly our sort of fellow, is he, Crispin?”

I know that gay people have a Gaydar, and Jewish people have a Jewdar, and that black people don’t really need a Blackdar, although doubtless there are a whole range of other –dar jokes out there. And I can be a little sensitive in this blue-blooded haven, (my Antisemite-dar) but I know what kind of fellow they mean. And I know why he’s not their type.

Peter Starr is Julie Stein’s father. I read a Relative Values profile in the Sunday Times recently of him and his brother (a moderately well-known media lawyer, Stein & Partners, who seemed to have built his practice on the back of his brother’s rather argumentative – ie litigious – approach to being employed). Peter changed his name once he made his way up the BBC, having started out in production, and then crossed over into radio journalism, and moved from there to presenting TV arts programmes. He’d turned into something of a late-middle-age celebrity; apparently he got sackloads of fan mail at his Hampstead home from ladies who get their roots done twice a month. His career now was made up of a mix of TV work, opinion pieces in lesser known magazines, and the occasional talking head/chatshow appearance, where he could always be counted on for good value.

Light on content, heavy on media-camaraderie, Peter Starr looked like an advert for expensive hair implants, with his not-quite-believable thick straight hair hanging in a heavy fringe over his forehead, affording him the chance to sweep it out of his eyes whenever he ran out of something to say. He had a reputation as an intellectual lightweight, and a wife who could apparently run rings around him, Barbara, who ran a small but commercially very successful art gallery a short walk from their Hampstead home.

“Oh, I don’t know, HP, there’s something about him I like. Though hard to place as a candidate.” Crispin smirks, as he says this. The firm is renowned for its discretion, and, even if it did place media personalities, the last thing it would want is a flashy TV star with a big mouth.

“So what’s the connection with the Athaneum?”

“Well, seems that he was lunching with Sir – “ Crispin lowers his voice, but I just hear him mention the name of the director general of the BBC, who the firm’s Board practice had just placed as a non-exec director at an up-and-coming third generation telecoms company.

“Really? He’s better connected than I thought.” I hear Tarquin make a mental note to invite Peter Starr to something or other. Star possibly on the ascendant?

“Yes, anway, they were having lunch, in the members dining room, and there was the most awful kerfuffle. Linda Stanton-Briggs, you know her?”

“Isn’t she a researcher to Peter Mandelson? The one who had an affair with – “ Tarquin lowers his voice this time, and I can’t quite hear the name of whoever he’s talking about.

“Yes, exactly. That was a scandal, that one. But very hush-hush. People in high places have a lot of power. Well, Linda was seated at the next table, I don’t know who she was with, but she’d had a couple of glasses of the old vino – “

“They have a wonderful wine cellar there, you know. My grandfather’s a member.”

“Quite, Tarquin, yes. Quite. Well, on the way out, she was really quite the worse for wear, being escorted by her friend. When she walked past Peter’s table, he apparently ignored her. And she started yelling and screaming “Don’t ignore me, Peter Stein, I’m having your baby!”

“No! I can’t believe that! At the Athaneum of all places. And there must be, I don’t know, thirty years between them?”

“Oh, at least. He must be late fifties at the youngest, and she’s, well, young enough to be his daughter. And he has a wife, you know the Stein Gallery in Hampstead?”

“God, these things are a mess. People have very complicated lives, don’t they?”

Tarquin is so arrogant that I want to wring his neck. He’s twenty seven, and married with two kids already, and has his whole life mapped out in front of him. And it will bear a remarkable similarity to his father’s and grandfather’s. But what gives him the right to be so sanctimonious? Who knows how their life is going to work out.

“Yes, they do.” Crispin says this as though his own life is pretty damn complicated, and years later, I find out that he’d been having an affair with a series of young, male researchers, generally at other firms, for the majority of his professional career. And he has a wife, too. As Tarquin said, other people’s lives…

“So what’s going to happen?”

“Oh, it’s already happened. Don’t know how, but the press got hold of the story immediately, and by the time Starr – “ I hate the public school thing of calling people by their surname “ - got outside, there were hoards of paparazzi there. Methinks it will be the front page, tomorrow.”

I’m so much on the inside here, that I even get to know what’s going to be the top news story in twenty four hours time. Amazing.

“Well, Crispin, thanks for filling me in. Quite something. Always rely on you for an interesting tale.” I can feel Tarquin’s smile through the partition. I imagine it looks something like the Joker in Batman. It’s a smile designed to garner support.

“OK, well, toodle-pip.” Crispin starts walking along the corridor, and turns suddenly, semi-crouches down and mimes pulling two guns out of his holster like a Wild West veteran. “Don’t forget, amigos, it’s a war for talent out there.”

I think this is a reference to the firm’s current mission statement; win the war for talent. It sounds to me like its phraseology has been randomly spawned by a beta-test mission statement generator developed by a failed management consultant.

It's a cat manicure. No, really.

What did promiscuous people do before the internet?

Because, as we all know, masonic rituals can go fatally wrong. [try sashablog sashablog for a password, it's the NYT.]

CNN.com - Spalding Gray found dead - Mar 8, 2004

I had fabulous baba ghanoush(Eggplant with Tehina) with S last week at Maroush (how poetic).

"Google has improved my sex life, tightened my abs, and brought me closer to God." [via Darren]

Well, someone on the Evening Standard seems to have given Norman Lebrecht a hard time.

"Beware of March 15."

No Fear Shakespeare translation.

How news travels through the blogosphere.

Suzy Gold - gey gezunterheyt

[Spoilers, should you care.]

Felt I should put my £7.90 where my mouth is, so down to the Swiss Odeon Cottage last night (when I should have been working, I know...) with M.

Short form: not half as bad as I expected. Gold taps to die for. The plot is meaningless, the acting is atrocious (especially Iddo Goldberg), and Summer Phoenix's mouth seems to have a mind/part of its own. Some cute little observations. Some inspired writing, as well as some crass-first draft type writing. Ultimately, a commercial film that is nowhere near MBFGW or any other such movie, but if you're Jewish, there are gags you'll like.

The premise doesn't work. You don't get why Suzy is all confident and North London one minute and then the minute she gets in a non-Jewish environment she's all tongue-tied and nervous. And the truth about - most - monied North Londoners who shop on Marylebone High Street, dress expensively, have a lot of lattes and work in TV is that they have loads of non-Jewish friends. Of course. And they've probably been out with loads of non-Jews, even if they end up marrying in. And like, her parents wouldn't be over the moon about the NJB being a caterer: they'd rather he was in investment banking. And he kisses the mezzuzah when he goes in the house. Like, p-u-leease.

And the non-Jews are all multi-racial families and hippies and live in bohemian high-rise pads. Or council flats. Low slung furniture. And go to pubs all the time. And Suzy and Darren go and see Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - which is not being revived, except on TV - at the Screen on Baker Street. Suzy's Mum appears to wear the same suit for Yom Kippur as she does for her daughter's wedding, which would never happen. And Suzy has to wear a bridesmaid dress the like of which has not been seen since 1983. And someone who's hair is that straight just wouldn't wear that dress.

And her friends are like fakes of the Sex in the City girls. Only not as well written. And it's a bit too OTT on the "this is a shiva - when people die"... you feel like it's made for non-Jews, but in case we think they're stupid, let's explain. But, weirdly, the Yiddish isn't translated, you're supposed to get it from context.

It's cute, it's partially well-observed, someone I was at Cheder with did the music, it doesn't set the world on fire, it's nowhere near as good as Me Without Your or Wondrous Oblivion (both of which are better films but way less commercial), and you wanted to edit the script. Badly. But, having said all that, it's not bad. The eight people (we didn't know) in the cinema last night had a little seminar on the way out, and we all agreed, so it must be true.

iGod, iPod, who knows? [via Cory]

Sometimes, because I have door-dwell and phone-dwell, and need to do everything at some kind of super speed, I misdial numbers. So instead of 1571 to listen to my messages on my voicemail, I dial 1517. Very Martin Luther, no?

Things that cheer me up: Mark is insecure; Darren is funny.

I hate IMAP. That is all.

Via Lurid, geopolitics, call centres and the Middle East. Sheesh. Because - ob-vi-ous-ly - if only there were outsourced call centres in the West Bank and Gaza the whole of the Middle East crisis would be solved.

"I'm very tribal - I'm Labour." Alistair Campbell in today's Guardian.

Perhaps this blog is the urtext of my life. Then again, perhaps not.

Authentic Kabbalah red string: there's one born every minute...

It's Sex in the City meets Witness. Gah. Stop: stop making more and more TV shows that are increasingly outrageous because what used to be interesting isn't because we saw that last week. Get out more. Please.

From Friday's Guardian: Centaur windfalls 'unfair' to journalists.

Dr Who with, er, a comedy twist?

Belleville Rendezvous: Spirited Away meets Finding Nemo, with a Django Reinhardt soundtrack. "Cameo's" from Josephine Baker, John Malkovitch, and others...

Oh, and - belatedly - Purim Same'ach. Kinda passed me by this year: more when I land.

But driving through Golders Green tonight, I was surprised by the surreal sight of grown hasidim in fancy dress. That's fancy dress other than the traditional eighteenth century Polish nobleman's garb. Just the weirdness of jesters and Ali G's crossing the street, shiker. It's a strange, strange world...

Can't really process any more information: Jewish Book Week, Jonny Freedland, The Fab Four. More, later. Maybe.

So I came back from Manchester on the M6 Toll road; it's like a parallel universe. It's got the barren landscape of True Stories or any other American road movie, and it has tolls (like malls) and a toll plaza and all manner of Americana. The Toll Operative even exhorted me to have a nice day. And it has no speed cameras. When you pay your toll and all the lanes merge I felt for all the world like I was coming out of JFK.

Why do we keep appropriating americanisms? Why does Tony think he's El Presidente? What's happening to the NHS and free tertiary education? OK, OK, it's just a motorway....

Stephen Pollard says everything I want to say about anti-semitism on the Left, but better.

Everything that was good about my Big Fat Greek Wedding has been stripped out of Suzie Gold and given to East is East. That's what I think and I've not even seen the movie.

I have tickets for Jewish Book week on Sunday - Jonny Freedland reading from his new, unpublished novel, and the Fab Four about bright young thing writer-types. I think I'll still be in Manchester, and it'll be too much of a faff to try and get my ten quid back. If anyone wants them, email me, or - if you actually know me - calll me, and I'll arrange for you to get them.

Long story, but I'm in Manchester (Cheadle branch).

He had whiskers on his chin again

For those of you even slightly concerned about my bus stop - I cooled off since the summer when they said they would take down the advertising panel on the shelter, so we could see and not knock people down when we drove out of the path. I waited. Months.

Along came the wind and blew them in again

Then I sent an email every so often to everyone involved. No reply. Then I cc'd my local councillor (whom I have met a number of times over this matter). Yesterday she replied - turns out everyone involved in this at London Buses and Camden has moved on. Start again again.

Poor old Michael Finnegan....Begin again.

Turns out Pure and Simple is neither pure nor simple [thanks, Courtenay].

So, fortuitously, on the way to a meeting in Camden, I saw a mobile phone shop that sells wire things. So I spent twenty quid on a generic piece of wire for my 7250i (120 pictures and climbing). I've installed the "software", so it recognises me, but I can't find the "software" to transfer the pics with. The Readme files has these helpful hints:

"The best step of using the USB Cable is to plug in USB Cable firstly, then to plug in Mobile Phone and work the software.
The sequence is opposite while closing. You have to close the software firstly, then pull out USB Cable . Otherwise, the
computer won??t be work normally or will be cut off.

The operation is probably different because the different model of Mobile Phone has different software to support. Moreover
, the software of different model which can support the functions and has the greatest difference. You will be clear the
detailed information if you check the assistant file of software. "

So, none the wiser, then. I do have a (new?) programme in my programme list called PL-2303 USB Serial Driver, which could be it, but the only option is to uninstall. Duh.

When did life get this hard?

I'm having "coffee" with so many people today that I feel like a cross between an insurance salesperson and Chief Marketing Officer for Costbucks.

I think it should be known that I made superlative butternut squash and sage rissotto last night. I'll post the recipe as soon as I get a chance, but I think the secret is (a) in the nutmeg, (b) cooking the squash in vegetable stock and then using that as the liquid for the rice (with some nice wine, of course), and (c) good company.

Why is no-one else worried about parabens in shampoos and hair products? Say something, please.

Some say baigel (bay-gull), some say beigel (buy-gull) - the capital's vanishing beigel trail (which I am convinced they're spelling wrong. Call me a Litvak, if you must.)

Nextbook.org - a gateway to Jewish literature, culture and ideas.

From yesterday's FT (and courtesy of my Dad) - Business logs on to blogging. I mean, enterprise blogging, isn't that just a shared network drive?

"Along with other potentially disruptive technologies, weblogs or "blogs" have come a long way in a very short time. Now some believe this new form of web-based publishing is poised to enter the corporate mainstream.

While some workplace weblogs are being set up by "rogue" employees, with or without official sanction, a growing number of organisations in both the public and private sector are recognising the potential of weblog technology to streamline communications, reduce e-mail overload and improve co-operation.

"We see this as an enormous potential market," says Greg Lloyd, president and co-founder of Providence, Rhode Island-based Traction Software, one of the emerging market leaders in the enterprise weblog tools market.

"Blogs provide the ability for individuals to be able to write directly to the web using simple Office tools techniques, no more complicated than e-mail, to basically have an archive of their thoughts and conversations automatically maintained in time order," he says.

"This has just enormous implications for how people handle working communications and business processes and we are really at the beginning of that."

Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, the US-based IT consultancy, agrees that weblogging has caught the attention of business, but he cautions that it is still early days. "Enterprise weblogging is attracting a lot of corporate interest as a way of streamlining communications," he says."

Sadly, you have to have a subscription, so there's not a whole point in my even linking. Sorry.

I'm never sure if your pronounce B3TA as Bee-tuh or bee-three-tee-ay. You know, like C3PO.

How retro. Clearly from the pre-suicide bomber era (remember the IRA on the mainland? How there were always evacuations? Five minute warnings? Don't you just wish for that now...) - French railways search for their threatened bombs on foot.

What do KMS HairPlay, Redken Soft Ends, KMS Curl Up, Modern Elixirs Styling Serum, Big Sexy Hair Conditioner,
and even the organic stylee Phytomist have in common?

They all have parabens listed as an ingredient. 100% of them. Sheesh.

A series of good hair days.

OK. Consistent, mild low-level panic all the time. Three unfinished projects? Great idea and no time to write? Time of the month? Slight sore throat, but could just be too many late nights? Mmmm.

Time To Move On?

I know there are geeks out there. Some of them might even swing by here ocassionally (I once had a boss who was always swinging by my office. I felt like Tarzan. Or Jane). Anyway, I need to move on from Micr$s$ft Outlook - it's terrible with IMAP, and it's upsetting me. I need something that looks nice, synchronises with a palm PDA, and does IMAP without breaking twice a day. Ideas?

So just yesterday I set my blog to email me everytime I post. Which is cool; I always think that I must make a proper backup. But now I - randomly - get the post when I post it, then about twelve hours later, and then sometimes some other time too. Gah?

Because you've probably always wanted to read my blog in Russian. At least, I'm guessing it's Russian.

Update: I guessed wrong. Shit happens. It's Greek, apparently (as in it's all Greek to me). Thanks M.

Autism: except I can't help wondering if Simon Baron-Cohen is Ali G's brother.

Milion Writers Award for Fiction.

the Blogosphere?a land where the smart get smarter, the connected connect to one another, and the losers go home: blogging on blogging again. At the Village Voice.

24-hour museum.

Is it mozzarella? Is it challah? No, it's a treccia.

Word Count
I've just done something... slightly scary. Partly in terms of a backup, partly just because, I've copied my entire blog into word, unformatted text. And counted. Since January 2002? 213,000 words. Sheesh. Now about ten percent of that is blog guff, date headers and the like. So let's say it's more like 191,000 words. Then, let's say only about 30% of it is interesting. That's still 57,000 words. A novella.

Everyone has a sock fairy, I'm guessing, but I seem to have a black-clothes-fairy. In recent months, these items have whisked themsleves away for better climes:

black camisole that matches a pair of knickers

a pair of black stretch wool trousers which were my comfy-yet-smart kegs of choice

a black t-shirt that matched a skirt. Serves me right for buying things that match

my new, black bubeleh t-shirt I bought in New York

Most upset about my new t-shirt. I mean, where can it have gone? One day, I left it folded on the chair in my bedroom - the next day, v-a-r-nished.

Are you bipolar?

"As much as depression was the illness of nineties, mild bipolarity has become the new diagnosis for a slice of society that includes hard-to-treat depressives and some with a personal disposition that perhaps hedges into ordinary moodiness."

I have a butternut squash and some sage. What would I have done before the internet? Looked in recipe book indexes?

On a separate, but recipular note, I'm pretty sure A&A made this Delia bread and butter pudding on Sunday, and it was fabulous, dahling.

Google in Yiddish. I've arrived.

Chicks with Dicks. Dick Lit. Please.

From The Postbag: Two

[these are real, btw, I'm not making them up]

Sasha,

I write, as a Jewish reader of your blog, extremely concerned about your lengthy discourse, on a historically and geographically centric event which you attended. Unfortunately, this repetition, of a highly intellectual theological debate, together with a bit of local gossip, has absolutely no relevance to the majority of people who read your blog. In the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury "TOO JEWISH"!

I and many like me, are concerned, that you do not lose sight of the rule of blogdom, which centres around an opportunity to read, the rants and musings of those who do not attend anything of intellectual substance, but sit in a flat, looking for anything to write about by watching television, reading print media and looking out of the window.

This well established creative approach to blogdom, reflects those who read your blog. I went out to the shops sometime in September 2000, but thereafter realised (on installation of one of the first high speed connections), that there was never any need to venture out again.

I receive all intellectual and sexual sustenance from reading from my computer screen. I receive all food from takeaways, I receive all basic provisions from delivery shopping.

I recently purchased a car on the internet without needing to step outside my door. This last purchase was particularly interesting, because I realised on delivery, that I actually didn't need it (although I did need the process of buying it). I also discovered that my desired part exchange had been stolen. On ringing the police and being asked to confirm when I had last seen the damn thing, the response to my reply of September 2000 revealed, (as I am concerned your recent blog entry does) a fundamental misunderstanding of blog culture.

With this in mind, I hope you will reconsider the aforementioned lengthy entry on your blog, and ensure that standards do not diminish by use of an over-developed intellect.

Yours,

Blogwatch (presently bored and unemployed)

New phrase I just invented: mezuzah surfing. It's when ober frumers knock on your door asking you to give tzedaka (charity) soley because they saw your mezuzah and figured you're Jewish.

Years ago, I looked at a house in Hendon (it was the cheapest house there was, because it was at FiveWays Corner, and you could only go one way when you came out of the house, because of the traffic, and it invariably wasn't the way you wanted to go), and they had lots of old, overpainted mezuzahs. I asked the woman about them, and she told me: "I think they're something Jewish? They were here when we moved in, and they feel like they're part of the history of the house, so we felt we couldn't really remove them."

Cute, eh?

Reminds me. When I lived in Singapore, I was in a rented apartment, and tacked my mezuzah up on the doorframe. The thing about Singapore is that every comes from some religious tradition or another: Buddhist, animist, moslem. The phrase you hear people say all the time is "it's my custom" - it's a catch all for whatever their thang is. Went away for the weekend, came back, mezuzah gone. Varnished. Covered in clear coating of polyeurothane (Alexei Sayle reference for the 0.001% of the world who get it). I called the doorman, and we couldn't actually communicated, and got into advanced charades, where I'm pointing at my door and he's thinking I'm a nutter. I ask him to call the maintenance guy to see if he knows where it is.

The maintenance guy calls me on the phone, and isn't that interested. It's Sunday night, long weekend, he's tired. Can't it wait till Monday? Suddenly, the phrase comes to me: "it's my custom," I tell him, "I can't sleep without it on my door." Oh, I should have said. He rushes straight round, and finds it, and refixes it, because, after all, it's my custom.

Kids oriented, but a great resources: parties in North West London.

Here's a question: is someone a friend or a friendster?

I think doing the Atkins diet is like being in a cult.

Apricot kernels are supposed to be good for you.

Not my problem, but interesting - when journalists blog, editors get nervous.

Is it just me, or is Bloglines buggered? I'm now - technically - reading 43 sites, and I can see the updates, but I can't click and read the feeds. I've opened and closed to my hearts content. Now what?

So I mind parabens in deodorant, and I've thrown them all away, and bought new, expensive, crystal ones. This morning in the shower, I read the back of my (Redken/Loreal) shampoos. They have parabens, too. Do I mind? I'm thinking, probably I do...

Have you noticed how the world revolves around smaller and smaller specialisms and interests? This isn't chick-lit - it's Irish Chick Lit. Funny how Jewish chick-lit has all the Jewish taken out of it; reading as an insider, you know that forty eight recipes books, North London and a propensity to phone in a passive aggressive manner every day is Jewish. Other people probably just think it's an interesting characterisation (I'm talking about one of Anna Maxted's books here - don't know which one, they're all the same.)

Not Only Is It Emes, It's A Fact

Just got back from hearing "The Boundaries of Heresy" panel at Jewish Book Week (or, as we like to call it, Book Week. To go with The Embassy, The Chronicle and The Quarterly. Because when the whole world's Jewish, who needs a signigifier?). The panel was Louis Jacobs, Geoffrey Alderman, David-Hillel Ruben and Clive Lawton, chaired by Joshua Rozenberg.

Without a doubt, the best thing about Louis Jacobs is that despite decades of being away from the Greater Suburban Northwest, he's lost neither his Manchester accent nor northern sensibility, and he's a great racconteur. He's also pushing eighty five, and while totally on the ball, surely not as sharp as he was in 1957. Anglo-Jewry likes nothing more than old men who are well-past scary.

Joshua opened the evening with a short history of the Jacobs Affairs (1961 and 1964), and then posed a series of questions Louis Jacobs; what's his view on Torah min hashamayim (the concept of the five books being straight from heaven - effectively divine revelation), given the chance to look back on the Jacobs Affair, does he now beleive the Israel Salanter view that "not everything that is thought should be expressed, not everything that is expressed verbally should be written, and not everything that is written should be published." Not the question will we have Jewish grandchildren, which Louis Jacobs already has, but will we have the office of the Chief Rabbi in the future, some room for personal reflection, we may or may not get onto the current chief Rabbi, and the future of Anglo-Jewry. Short-order, then.

[Anglo-Jewish history lesson: short form. Louis Jacobs was on track to be Chief Rabbi, he published We Have Reason To Believe in 1957. In 1959, for a host of probably politcal reasons, people read it, and discovered that he wasn't commited to Torah min hashamayim, and beleived in a divinely inspired text. He never made it to Chief Rabbi, head of Jews College, or even back to his original pulpit. This one ran and ran. Two Jews, three opinions? Not even close. Lesson over.]

Geoffrey Alderman, who's a historian and the author of Modern British Jewry, talked us through the pre-history, the history, and the post-history. But it was Jacobs who came out with the gem that about the Maurice Joseph affair at Dennington Park Road, where he was apparently denied a pulpit for admiting that he couldn't honestly pray for the restoration of sacrifices. And this from a shul with a mixed choir. Struck me that Alderman's not so much a professor of Jewish history as a professor of Jewish gossip: while fascinating, his stories took on the timbre of a North London Friday night dinner table and the broiguses that includes. Kinda Suzie Gold with balls and politics.

I was only very slightly surprised that there were probably 700 people in the room, five men on the panel, and of the ten or so questions from the audience, only one from a woman. Quel surprise that that woman was me. I was interested to know what Rabbi Jacobs thought about a post-denominational future for Anglo Jewry (he mentioned in passing the idea of having a "foreman for all the Jews", which I was keen for him to expand on). He took it as an opportunity to "tell tales out of school" with his unique mix of boyish charm and northern humour. Edited highlights:

Isaac Woolfson (then president of the United Synagogue) said to him: "they tell me your aim is to bring the intellectuals nearer to the synagogue. First, you'll never succeed. Secondly, who wants them?"

Talking about Chief Rabbi Adler during the "Joseph Affair" at Dennington Park Road, he said that Adler "inhibited Joseph from serving as minister in an orthodox shul.". "Where did Adler get his inhibitions?" Jacobs asks. "The same place he got his gaiters - from the Anglican church."

"Who am I?" he continued. "My zaide came from Telz in Lithuania. My first community in Manchester was thoroughly heimish, I taught a blatt gemorah in Yiddish. When I came to London, it was different. Ango-Jewry used the word frum, but added meshuggah. Meshuggah frum - gone too far. But a very high level of piety, all the Lords and Ladies and Knights, kneeling on the floor on Yom Kippur. I believe very strongly in minhag Anglia, but that's nothing to do with my theology."

And theology is what still turns Louis Jacobs on. He was much more excited about debating the philosophical nuances than in community politics, or he was tonight. I have no idea what he was like as a thrusting your Rabbi in the early sixties. All I do know is that sometimes, the people of the book turn into the people of the argument, and no-one wins. Clive Lawton said that the tragedy was that we'd trapped Louis Jacobs in a time-warp talking about his first book, and in doing so, had lost out on all the other great work and works he might have produced if things had been otherwise.

Also, we might have had a chief Rabbi from Manchester, and that could have been no bad thing.