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For Those About to Rock, We Mute You

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is calling for a maximum volume for MP3 players (here) to protect the hearing of music fans who are courting tinnitus and hearing loss by turning the volume up to damaging levels. The EC’s recommendation calls for a default music player setting of 85 decibels, with a maximum of 100 decibels, which any music fan knows is hardly enough to allow the music to envelop their consciousness, reverberate through their entire body, become etched into their soul, and induce a state of paradoxical serenity.

As a lifetime user of personal portable music players, I must admit to being a fan of LOUD. What’s the point of listening to White Zombie if the volume is so low that Rob Zombie is whispering sweet nothings into your ears? Perhaps this explains the perpetual dull ringing in my ears that doesn’t really bother me until I start listening to it. I fully expect to need a hearing aid when I get older, but honestly, it will be a small price to pay for earphone euphoria. Don’t listen to the EC, kids. Live loud and die deaf. Turn the music up to 11.

You know what’s damaging to the ears? Sirens. I hate when I’m walking down the street, and an ambulance or fire truck whooshes by with a blaring, inescapable 120-decibel siren, because then I have to turn up the volume on my iPod.

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By Meredith – December 13, 2009

Frogs Who Run

A few weeks ago Mr. P finished his first half-marathon, an arduous jaunt through Newton, Mass (home of the infamous ‘Heartbreak Hill’). It was a triumphant expression of his newfangled passion for running that, strangely, only manifested after I myself had quit running under the revelation that my body did not enjoy rhythmic pavement pounding.

“I didn’t know frogs could run,” I joked once, fanning Mr. P’s fears that his proud French id was crumbling into a sweaty over-achieving American super-ego. Because regular running for exercise is very un-French. Witness the reaction to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, disparagingly dubbed “Sarko the American” by his subjects, whose jogging habit is viewed as a right-wing conspiracy (physical fitness being a hallmark of totalitarian regimes). And, how undignified it is to see the President’s knees!

The French just don’t see a need to compensate for their pleasures with pain. They don’t see the runner as a virtuous sportsmen in pursuit of peak physical fitness, but rather as a vulgar individual on the brink of over-exertion. Surely the French sentiment about jogging was only confirmed when Sarkozy collapsed last summer while running in the heat. Many blamed witchy-wife Carla Bruni, who reportedly holds Rasputin-like influence over Sarkozy’s fitness regime.

I am currently reading the semi-marvelous book Paris to the Moon, a collection of vignettes  by American journalist Adam Gopnik about living in Paris. There is a hilarious chapter about when Gopnik and his wife went to a soon-opening Parisian gym with the intention of joining. A ravishing woman with long hair and lightly applied make-up gave him a sales pitch:

“It was going to bring the rigorous, uncompromising spirit of the New York health club to Paris: its discipline, its toughness, its regimental quality… everything would be not just a l’americaine but tres New Yorkais. Best of all, she went on, they had organized a special “high-intensity” program in which, for the annual sum of about two thousand francs ($400), you could make an inexorable New York-style commitment to your physique and visit the gym as often as once a week… though she had a million arguments ready for people who thought that when it came to forme, once a week might be going overboard, she had nothing at all ready for people who thought once a week might not be forme enough.”

The gym improvised on an unlimited membership for Gopnik, who showed up a week later to find that the gym was not yet open. The ravishing woman apologized and gave him a bag of chocolate truffles. When the gym finally opened, he attended an opening party where they served crepes with apricot jam and creme de marrons. Gopnik reflects:

“The absence of the whole rhetoric and cult of sports and exercise is the single greatest difference between daily life in France and daily life in America. It’s true the French women’s magazines are as deeply preoccupied with body image and appearance as American ones. But they are confident that all problems can be solved by lotions… Among men, an enthusiasm for sport simply segregates you in a separate universe: You are a sportsmen or you are not. The idea of sports as a lingua franca meant to pick up the slack in male conversations is completely alien here… Sports is a hobby and has clinging to it any hobby’s slightly disreputable air of pathos.”

So, given all this, you see why it is so bizarre to see a frog run.

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By Meredith – December 12, 2009

Flip Turn

I’ve been swimming twice a week for the past month. My newfound access to a pool all started about three years ago, when Mr. P joined the Boston Sports Club in Framingham. This BSC was actually a bares-bones hotel gym, attached to a Sheraton, but it sported a full-sized swimming pool (the only reason Mr. P joined). The sparse offerings meant that Mr. P only paid $39/month, and he had access to the numerous other BSCs during off-peak hours. Soon after we moved to Arlington, the BSC in Framingham closed, transferring Mr. P’s membership to the Natick club, and more importantly, upgrading him to a Passport Membership, meaning he had all-access privileges to all but the most swank BSCs for $39/month (going rate: $99/month). Then, Mr. P decided to join the gym at the large university where he works, and so he transferred his BSC membership to me for a nominal fee. THEN, last month, I received a letter that the BSC in Natick (still my official “home” club despite never having stepped foot in it) was closing, so my membership was being upgraded to a Passport Premium, meaning that for $39/month, I have unlimited access to ALL of the BSCs, including the two premium clubs, one of which is very convenient to the commute to my new job, which I happened to start the day after the Premium Passport went into effect (going rate: $129/month, I hear).

So long story short: I have access to one of the nicest indoor pools in metro west Boston for $39/month. I have not swum regularly since around the age of 13, but my girlhood was filled with swim teams, swim meets, and of course swim practice. I have fond memories of swimming lap after lap after lap under the duress of coach Kay, who dreamed up insane drills like only taking one breath every 25 yards, or doing 30 flip-turns, or swimming kick-only laps without a kickboard.  Practice would always end with a mock meet, and the losers would have to re-string the lane lines onto the large metal storage wheel. These memories are fond not because I enjoyed them, but because they are so pronounced in my cerebrum that I associate childhood with swimming. I remember coming out of the locker room with my sister after swim practice and seeing my father waiting for us, sitting on the stairs near the exit with a book. I remember spending hours at swim meets in order to swim in three, maybe four events. We’d play cards, read books, and share snacks. I’ll never forget one particularly long competition, when my mother produced a bag of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies and I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world.

Despite starting at the age of 6, I was never a strong swimmer. My arms are long and my shoulders are broad, but I never mastered the technique. Backstroke was and is my specialty; the technique just came naturally to me, and so whatever accolades I received in swimming was as the backstroker on my club’s second-best medley relay team. Even now, I can whip across the pool with backstroke, my propulsive arms in perfect circles, my shoulders bobbing assuredly, my legs kicking indomitably. (The kick is the major weakness in my freestyle, as I just can’t maintain the rhythm, and my legs get twisted when I turn to take a breath).

But despite never being a champion, those miles and miles of laps 20 years ago became hard-coded in my muscles, and last month I resumed my swimming regime with surprising ease. (No doubt some credit goes to yoga, which has done wonders for my back and shoulder strength). I feel a certain satisfaction returning to the major past time of my youth, as if I had reached the other side of the pool, took a long rest, and now I’m swimming back to the start.

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By Meredith – December 10, 2009

Boy Scout Fudge

This evening I entered the Alewife T station to an unsettling din of boy-yelling. The clamor rang out like a unruly boys choir, with unchanged male voices unleashing indiscernible warbles that were promptly lost within the cavernous station. As I neared the turnstiles, a young boy in a Boy Scout uniform approached me with a tray of tooth-picked bits of chocolate and clearly pronounced the sentiment of the mad chants: “Free fudge samples!”

Yes, it seems that the Boy Scouts are taking fund-raising tips from their female counterparts. And, not to be outdone by the puerile connotations of “Girl Scout Cookies,” they are hawking “Boy Scout Fudge.”

The samples were an enticement, you see, for $5 boxes of fudge stacked at a centrally-located folding table, manned by two moms who were watching their charges vigorously dart around the subway station while probably wishing they had daughters.

The unreceptive attitude of the commuter crowd did little to dampen the tykes’ enthusiasm; I suppose children might find it strange that adults aren’t as sugar-crazy as they are, but they seemed to nobly bear the downcast vacant eyes of the people who gently streamed past the ricocheting trays, intent on apathy.

While it always gladdens my heart to see Boy Scouts fearlessly brandishing their dorky uniforms to the world, there’s something distinctively unappetizing about accepting unwrapped confectionary from a tray borne by snot-covered hands in a subway station. Isn’t that how plagues start?

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By Meredith – December 9, 2009

Your Civic, Dude

If I did nothing else today, I voted. I know I already blogged about the special election primaries for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but I get a certain geeky thrill from the actual act of voting. My voice, compiled amid hundreds of thousands of other voices… is heard, like a thundery civic choir. Voting is cool!

I always expect voting to be a huge hassle, so I allotted 45 minutes to the task of driving 4 minutes to the polling station and casting my ballot for a single race. I arrived at the local elementary school at 6:50am and loitered around the lobby until the polls would open at 7am. An elderly couple stationed themselves outside the gymnasium doors and peeked through the windows at the workers, and I wondered if they really had to be somewhere, or if they were the most impatient people ever, or if they wanted senior-center bragging rights that they were the first at the polls this morning.

As I waited for the polls to officially open, I perused a bulletin board, plastered with loose-leaf letters from fourth graders to phantom pen pals in El Salvador (I’m not sure why the letters were on a bulletin board instead of in El Salvador, but it made me suspicious of all my elementary school teacher’s pen-pal schemes.) The grammar in the letters was impressive for fourth graders, although the content was typically juevenile (“If unicorns are real I want to buy one”; “I am from China, not Chinatown”; “When I grow up, I want to be a pet sitter”; “It is cold and the animals are going to sleep”; “Does it snow in El Salvador?”)

The gymnasium doors swung open at the stroke of 7am. God bless those trusty senior citizens who work in the polls, every one of them pert and alert, their nimble fingers flipping through the voter registry with time-honed proficiency. By 7:01, I was filling in the circle next to Martha Coakley, a tingly twitter of pride in my chest that I helped elect the woman who will almost certainly be the first female Senator from Massachusetts. Do us proud, Martha.

I was saddened to read that today’s voter turnout was light, especially given the legions of mourners who flocked to Ted Kennedy’s casket last August to “pay their last respects.” Those people got it wrong. If they truly wanted to pay their last respects to Kennedy, they would have flocked to the polls today to choose his successor.

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By Meredith – December 8, 2009

MBA? Maybe!

Huge congratulations are due for Mr. P, who was just accepted into the part-time MBA program at the large university where he works. It’s a triumphant ending to an arduous process that began over 6 months, when Mr. P told me, “I’m thinking about applying to the part-time MBA program,” and I replied, “Why the hell would you want to get an MBA?”

But it’s done, and I’ve been more than supportive. After the GMATs, the essays, and the Kafta-esque process of attaining transcripts from a French university, Mr. P received his acceptance letter in the form of a USPS Priority Mail box. (No need to play the time-hollowed “thick or thin” guessing game with this envelope…)

mba1

The acceptance letter was tucked in a classy black leather portfolio. It just screamed “future Master of the Universe.”

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Now that Mr. P has been accepted, he is trying to decide if he actually wants to go. After all, compared to the typical MBA applicant, he’s older, geekier, and more married, so the prospect of sinking the bulk of his free time into a degree that’s not guaranteed to pay off in the future isn’t entirely appealing. Like I said in the beginning, “Why the hell would you want to get an MBA?” Because he can, I guess.

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By Meredith – December 7, 2009

Vote Coakley!

This Tuesday, Massachusetts voters head to the polls to fill the US Senate seat laid void by Ted Kennedy’s death last August. Technically, Tuesday is just the party primaries, but no doubt the Democratic victor will triumph in January’s special election. Because this is Massachusetts, where the Democratic hegemony can only be usurped by really exciting Republicans like Mitt Romney.


The four Democratic candidates are Martha Coakley (entrenched Massachusetts pol/current Mass. Attorney General with lefty white-collar appeal), Michael Capuano (entrenched Massachusetts pol/US Congressman with blue-collar appeal), Alan Khazei (social entrepreneur/City Year founder with grassroots appeal) and Stephen Pagliuca (venture capitalist/Celtics owner with rich asshole appeal). Coakley is the front runner, with Capuano safely at her back, and Khazei gaining enough momentum to poll equally with Pagliuca, who is wasting his money on countless 30-second commercials that do nothing but remind me of my relative poverty.


The primary race is receiving a fair amount of media coverage, although Massachusetts is still in shock that no Kennedy — not nephew Joseph, nor widow Vicki — stepped up to claim a nearly guaranteed trip to the Senate. Yes, Caroline, I think we would have even taken you. Farcically, there is a Libertarian candidate named Joe Kennedy, who does attempt to “preempt any potential confusion caused by my name” by stating clearly in the nether regions of his website that he is not one of those Kennedys. Potential confusion? Why on Earth would anyone be confused if they saw the name “Joe Kennedy” on a ballot for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat?


I watched the final debate last Monday night, when the candidates tangled (at times, ignobly — Capuano and Pagliuca, I’m looking at you) over the Patriot Act, abortion, health care, and foreign policy. All four attempted to show that they were ready for big-time Washington politics, with only Coakley pulling off a convincing senatorial demeanor. One frivolous but telling question: “How has your household changed since the recession?” Capuano said “Lightbulbs. We’ve changed to energy-efficient lightbulbs” (evidently he was re-purposing his prepared response for a question about how his household has become more green.) Pagliuca, a millionaire, said he was donating more to charity (props for not trying to spin some BS about clipping coupons, but he is hopelessly out of touch). Khazei earnestly prattled about his family’s grave economic hardships (touching and probably truthful, but a bit pitiful). Coakley gave a pat response about her family eating out less (believable and empathetic to the choices that many other well-to-do Americans have made).


The debate reaffirmed my decision to vote for Coakley, with Khazei my second choice. I hate to admit this, but my main reason for voting for Coakley is that she is a woman. Now you may say that I should vote on the issues, not on gender… but the under-representation of women in Congress is an issue. It’s a huge issue! There are currently 17 women in the Senate. Since the Senate was established in 1789, only 38 women have served (seven of whom were appointed after their husband’s death). Times have changed since the Eighteenth century, and it’s crucial for female representation in Washington to keep the pace with larger social progress, less the focus of politics remain a warped periscope, looking out for the interests of whatever it is that white male millionaires are interested in.


Given this, I don’t think that it’s wrong to vote for a qualified, smart candidate based on her gender (plus, it assuages some of the guilt leftover from all my Hillary and Sarah hate during the last Presidential election.) As Coakley herself once said, “Women always did all the work anyway, so we might as well get credit for it.”



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By Meredith – December 6, 2009

Stop Acupuncture Now

Tonight I was in Cambridge, walking to my acupuncturist for my seasonal qi tune-up, when I saw a large group of protesters further ahead of me on the street corner closest to her office. They were all wearing black and holding identical white signs with red letters. As I neared them, I squinted at the signs: Stop Acupuncture Now, they seemed to say.

Good Lord, they’ll protest anything in Cambridge, won’t they?

Only a few steps later I realized that the signs actually said Stop Afghanistan War, which was a relief, because I didn’t see any escorts who could deliver me through the crowd so that I could receive my needle treatment with minimal harassment.

Stop Afghanistan War, indeed. At this point, you might as well try to stop acupuncture.

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By Meredith – December 2, 2009

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like… Um…

The neighbors across the street seem like festive folk. I’ve never talked to them — hell, after two years, I’ve never actually seen them. Their garbage magically appears on the curb; the snow and leaves are mysteriously whisked away. I believe they are middle-aged homebodies who, when needing to leave their home, scuttle out their back door and into their creaky mid-80s red Toyota, quickly, for fear of the ravages of fresh air and sunlight.

Yet I have warm, neighborly feelings towards them because of their year-round seasonal light displays that twinkle nightly in the windows of their second-floor veranda. Every month or so, a new motif: Hearts in February, eggs and bunnies in early spring, flowers in May, flags and fireworks in July, pumpkins and ghosts in October, turkeys and cornucopias in November. The light designs are evocative of decades past, with a corny garishness that would make anyone under the age of 50 wince. Witness December’s display:

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This is the same display that greeted us when we moved into our home two years ago this December. I remember looking out the window on our first night here and exclaiming, “My god, the neighbors have a phallus in their window!” (And yes, I did actually use the word ‘phallus.’) Mr. P concurred that the yellow-tinged candle with the orange billow of flame did, in fact, look terribly phallic. It was unmistakable, although my archaic digital camera cannot properly render the resemblance. Whenever I look out the window in the month of December, I think: Phallus.

So tonight, I came home from work and saw that the Thanksgiving lights had been replaced by the Christmas lights. And there it was, the Christmas phallus. ‘Tis the season.

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By Meredith – December 1, 2009

Ego Yoga

Today I did yoga for the first time in a week. Because yoga, strangely, never quite found a place within the Thanksgiving tradition.

Worried that my muscles had become taunt and sapless, I barricaded myself in my little study/makeshift studio and engaged in 90 minutes of power yoga, filled with endless vinyassas, continual downdogs, and unrelenting chaturanga dandasana. I opened my hips, bent my back, rolled my shoulders, twisted my chest, and splayed my limbs to the far corners of the Earth. I squatted, folded, balanced, stretched, extended, rolled, saluted, and stood perfectly still. I inhaled, and exhaled. Ahh, the conundrum of yoga. How can an activity that’s so physically taxing be so very restorative?

In the past year, I’ve steadily become addicted to yoga. I had feared that the initial rush of enthusiasm that blossomed after my first Ashtanga yoga class (which inspired me precisely because it left me a hobbled, sweaty mess) would abate after I realized just how much time, repetition, and leg strength was required to perfect all the cool-looking poses. Yoga isn’t all laying on the ground and thinking about kittens.

The first three months of yoga were a test, not only of my physicality but of my mentality. I had conditioned myself into believing that a punishing 6 mile run was a good workout, so adjusting to yoga forced me to reconsider what constitutes exercise. At first I felt lazy — look at me, laying on a mat instead of pounding the pavement! — but now, after 10 months of diligent, dedicated yoga practice, I am beginning to see the fruits of all of the time spent hunched over a mat. Like, no more knee aches, no more swollen ankles, better posture, better breathing, total anticipation of each and every yoga workout (as opposed to the chore-like dread of running), and some sleekness to my naturally-bulky muscles. I could touch my toes… then, I could lay my hands flat on the floor… now, I’m working on touching my nose to my knees without bending my legs or ripping my hamstring.

Even cooler, three weeks ago I finally pulled off a respectable Crane pose after hundreds of attempts. I could scarcely believe it when my feet rose off of the ground and my torso inexplicably stayed put. I felt a vague urge to break the staid concentration of the yoga class by drawing attention to my triumphant arm balance, but I was content to silently relish in having my knees securely perched within my armpits. Now, I can’t stop doing Crane pose. I even go into gratuitous Crane pose. In class, I glance around at my fellow participants, proud that I’m now in the elite club of Crane attainers. But I try not to let my head get too heavy, lest I topple over onto my face.

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This is not me

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By Meredith – November 30, 2009