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The Deppths of Sexy

The Sexiest Man Alive? Probably!
Really, People magazine? Really?

Today People magazine proclaimed that Johnny Depp is the sexiest man alive (here), prompting many other people to wonder if People has seen a recent photograph of the 46-year old actor, who is reportedly hiding from America in the French countryside. Long gone is the baby face with totally cool guileless eyes that seemed to gently rout through every nook and cranny of a woman’s mind, body and soul. Let’s face it, the man’s face is becoming discernably saggy, his facial hair scraggy, and his eyes baggy.

This is Depp’s second time at the helm of living sexy men, having also won in 2003. Depp joins the pantheon of fellow double winners Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Richard Gere. (Who wants to bet that Brad Pitt will go for a third time? How about a fourth time? How about posthumously?)

People magazine touted Depp as “the king of cool with the killer cheekbones” and “Hollywood’s most irresistible iconoclast,” which confirms the aphorism that attractiveness is only half of what P/people consider when assessing male sexiness. A quick scan of other recent winners — Matt Damon, Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Pierce Brosnan — reveal intangible qualities beyond mere physicality: maturity, sophistication, integrity, a certain ruggedness. More notable is how each man was arguably past his physical prime by the time he is anointed (except Ben Affleck, who never quite reached his prime).

Old ladies like me will remember the first time they ever swooned over Johnny Depp, way back when he was the hunk of 21 Jump Street. (His character’s name was Tom Hanson, which surprised me, for I honestly thought his character’s name was Johnny Depp.) Then Richard Grieco joined the show as Booker, challenging but never surpassing Johnny’s hearthrob supremacy. Wasn’t there some episode when the two faced-off, ostensibly about some detective thing, but we all knew that they were fighting for wall space on the bedrooms of every adolescent female in America? (For the record, I was a sickie who favored Peter DeLuise, but only because nobody else liked him and I figured my “chances” were better. I employed this strategy a surprising number of times, including Donnie as my favored NKOTB, William as my favored Baldwin brother, and Duff as my favored Guns N Roses member.)
So, is Johnny Depp really the sexiest man alive? Of course not. It seems Hollywood is running out of plausible candidates worthy of universal sex appeal. PerhapsPeople magazine should look to other arenas, like sports (Tom Brady!), letters (Po Bronson!), and of course politics (Barack Obama!) instead of recycling aging actors who inspire more nostalgia than passion.

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By Meredith – November 18, 2009

Viva Flibanserin!

An antidepressant called Flibanserin is being hailed as the ‘Female Viagra’ after it has been shown to increase libido in women (here on BBC). The drug was ineffective as an antidepressant, but the women in the clinical trials reported “significant improvements in their sexual desire and satisfactory sexual experiences.” And… they were still depressed? What more do they want, a pill that cleans bathrooms? A pill that gives them equal pay for equal work?

Flibanserin may come to market in two years, no doubt re-branded with a sexier name that conjures lust pills rather than insecticidal chemicals, and with a flashy ad campaign featuring a middle-aged cougar innocently toying with her prey for the camera as she and we imagine all of the hot sex that will commence when… um, turn off the television, I have to go barf.

The serendipitous discovery of Flibanserin is being compared to the discovery of Viagra, which was originally intended to be a heart medicine until its aphrodisiac effects were observed. Or so the story goes. We all know that the discovery of Viagra was a triumphant cumulation of hundreds of years of modern science, which was founded solely for the purpose of allowing men to attain hours-long erections. Is it a coincidence that Isaac Newton died an 84-year old virgin, and 400 years later we have a pill that cures erectile dysfunction?

According to the article, some doctors are “skeptical about the need” for pills to boost female sex drive. And judging by the women in the Viagra/Cialis/Levitra commercials, I’d have to concur. They’re unflaggingly rearin’ to go, spurred by the mere idea that their partner ingested an erectile dysfunction drug 15 minutes to 36 hours ago that may or may not land him in the emergency room with a boner that just won’t go away. It makes her feel wanted… deeply, almost pathologically wanted.

Indeed, women are often told that their sexuality is all in their head and that any dysfunction is psychological, like “you don’t want to have sex with your husband because he doesn’t help with the housework.” And some researchers say that a woman’s flagging sex drive may be “normal.” Well, just because a woman’s loss of sex drive may be mental or age-related doesn’t mean that there is no need for a pill that will enable her to see past her partner’s inadequacies or transcend her ebbing estrogen! For what is science for if not to enliven our plight with consistent, pleasurable sexual encounters?

Posted in In the News.

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By Meredith – November 17, 2009

First Day!

Today was my first day at my new job. It’s sort of a misnomer to call it my “new job,” since I’ve been consulting for this company for the past two years. Perhaps that’s why my nervousness wasn’t centered around if I would like the work, or if I could live up to expectations, or if I’d get along with my co-workers. No, instead, all weekend long I obsessed about my first day outfit.

I wanted to really ‘dress to impress’ on my first day. Soon I’ll go back to my normal casual slob chic, but on the first day, I wanted people to think, “By virtue of her wardrobe, Meredith is a professional to be taken seriously!”

Mr. P thought that dressing up on my first day would only emphasize my subsequent nonchalance, although I reminded him that I employed a similar bait-and-switch technique in the beginning stages of our relationship. I’d spend an hour grooming and dressing in preparation for our every encounter. As he became more attached to me, I gradually grew more casual to the point where “doing my hair” involves a big ole’ hair clip and “make-up” is a coat of lip balm.

And now, when I do dress up, Mr. P is witness to this ugly backstory involving myriad outfit changes, mirror obsessing, and “Does this dress go with these shoes?” I modeled 5 outfits, and he dismissed one outfit as too fancy, another as too summery, another as too sexy, another as too scary, and another as looking like something his grandmother would wear. “You mean she would have worn it when she was my age, or when she was 90?” I asked. “Because, you know, it makes a difference.”

I ended up wearing the dress that Grandma P would have worn when she was 60, because I believe Mr. P mistakes “retro” for “antiquated,” and also because it’s a lightweight dress that I want to squeeze one more wearing out of before the cold weather comes in earnest.

Of course, I wound up being overdressed, and none of my new co-workers could have cared less what clothes I wore… although, at a meeting, one middle-aged woman seemed impressed that I wore a watch, because she said that only old people wear watches. “Young people use cell phones to know the time,” she said.

“Well, my watch is much nicer than my cell phone,” I said, and everyone laughed. Who needs nice clothes to dazzle people when you’ve got unwitting wit, after all?

Posted in The 9 to 5.

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By Meredith – November 16, 2009

Requiem for a Commute

Last Thursday was my last day at my old job. (My new job starts on Monday). I was saddened to leave the company where I’ve been for 8 years (minus those 18 months when I left to work at a doomed start-up before returning, tail firmly between legs). I’ll miss the people, I’ll miss the work, but above all, I’ll miss the commute.

I’m the type of nostalgia-prone person who memorializes events as they are happening. So on Wednesday (my second-to-last day, and Veterans Day as well so there were significantly less fellow commuters than usual) I brought along my archaic digital camera to visually render my beloved commute for posterity.

First, I walk to Mass Ave towards the bike path. Greeting me on Mass Ave is an aging commercial strip with a bunch of sad-sack stores such as the Hair-Port USA, which according to the neon-orange sign in the window has been ‘under new management’ for at least two years. “It’s Time for a Supersonic Cut!” Oh, I wish it was, but it’s 7:30am and I’m on my way to work.

hairport

On Mass Ave, I could grab a bus to Harvard Square… if I wanted to shave a few years off of my life by standing on an alternately careening, alternately screeching to a halt vehicle for 30 minutes. So I walk past the bus stop, and this “unofficial” bus stop erected by a local resident. Unfortunately, it’s too far from the actual bus stop to get any use, and I’ve never sat there, but it’s nice to have options.

welcomesitdown

From there, it’s just a hop skip and jump to the bike path. There’s a brief view of the lovely Spy Pond…

spypond

And then I hit the path, which is typically busy with commuters, exercisers, and people picking up their dogs’ poop (not pictured).

bikepath

After about a mile, the Alewife T station rears its big ugly concrete head.

alewife

There’s always a train waiting at Alewife, and I snag a seat even on busy days. I then devour as much as the New York Times as I can in however long it takes the MBTA to deliver me to South Station (25 minutes on a good day, 40 minutes on an exceptionally bad day). Normally the train becomes quite packed, but on Veteran’s Day I had enough room to do Sun Salutations… if I had wanted to.

t

I surface in downtown Boston. I get a jolt of energy from the hurried streams of fellow workforce warriors plowing to their offices amid the vibrant urban cacophony of horns and sirens. I walk past the Federal Reserve and across the Fort Point Channel, just beyond which is my former office.

fortpoint

Eight hours later, I emerge from my office and head back to South Station. South Station at dusk… always a welcome sight!

southstation

Most days, I head off to my yoga class in Cambridge. Other days I have errands to run, places to go, people to meet, French classes to fumble my way through. Oh, I’ll miss this commute, for it allowed me to think of myself as a Bostonian as opposed to a suburbanite who is just visiting.

Posted in Massachusetts, Nostalgia, The 9 to 5.

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By Meredith – November 14, 2009

Ar, Fetch Me Dryer Sheets

The staid sign outside of this Cambridge laundromat says “Wash ‘N Dry,” but inside you’ll discover a weird and wonderful pirate-themed environment in which to launder your clothes. I live too far away to even consider doing laundry at Captain Bubbles, and the place doesn’t quite meet my exacting standards for laundromat cleanliness, but it makes me happy to know that such a place exists.

cimg3795

Posted in Massachusetts.

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By Meredith – November 13, 2009

Periodic Pain Will Prevail

A particularly gloomy weekend forecast for Boston in today’s New York Times…

Periodic Pain Will Prevail

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By Meredith – November 12, 2009

Let Them Eat Cake

Betty walked into the lobby of her office building on Wednesday morning with an unusually high sense of purpose. Today, she would not just be a marketing database analyst, responsible for entering various bits of data into a vast information system and then extracting other bits of data for purposes of lead generation, email communication, and campaign optimization. No, today she will make a difference in the lives of her co-workers. She would win their respect and good graces. She would be the undisputed hero of the Marketing Department. For she bore cake.

Chocolate cake, in fact. Homemade, with enough butter to qualify as ‘fudgy’ and enough sugar to make children scream.

There was no special or celebratory occasion. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday. It was just a little gesture to brighten everyone’s day, to give them the extra kick they needed to get them through the morning. And how clever she was to bring a treat on a Wednesday morning, when the previous weekend was a distant memory and the upcoming weekend was still out of grasp.

Betty walked off of the elevator and directly to her cubicle, holding the cake in her arms. She was able to rest the tupperware container on her lap while riding the train, but she had to hold it with both hands as she walked to the office to keep the cake from sliding and the icing from getting mussed up. Her forearms ached, but this small sacrifice made her cause seem even more noble. Look what I went through, so they could eat cake.

During her commute, she had debated how she should distribute the cake. Should she cut pieces onto paper plates to hand out directly to her co-workers, with a little plastic fork tucked conveniently under the cake? Or should she simply place the cake in the kitchenette to allow for serendipitous discovery, and then send a floor-wide email out to her floor (‘Chocolate cake in the kitchen!’) to ensure that she receive the proper credit for her goodwill?

After evaluating the benefits of each scenario, Betty decided to leave the cake in the kitchen, then modestly alert her favorite co-workers to the cake’s existence, then send out an email to the entire floor. With the cake in her hands, she headed back to the elevators and then towards the kitchen alcove.  Voices drifted through the hallway as she approached, and she was pleased an audience would witness her cake’s arrival.

“Good morning,” Betty said, stepping into the circle of 6 or 7 of her co-workers. She smiled brightly and then looked towards the counter where she intended to triumphantly place the cake. Only, sitting on the counter was a large pile of bagels surrounded by 3 or 4 tubs of flavored cream cheese! She realized that everyone was holding a semi-eaten bagel.

“Morning, Betty,” John the Communications Director said, raising his bagel in her direction. “I brought in bagels!”

“From the Bagel Hut!” Kelly the Graphics Intern chimed in. “They’re sooo good. Like, nice and chewy.”

“What’s that?” Jamie the Junior Copywriter asking, peering at her Tupperware. “Is that a chocolate cake?”

Betty felt her face grow hot. “Yes, a, um, chocolate cake,” she said. “It’s homemade.”

“You made it from scratch?” Tina the Marketing Analyst asked before taking a big bite of her sesame bagel.

“Yes,” Betty said lamely, looking around the cramped kitchenette in vain for a place to set her cake down. “Does anyone, um, want a piece?”

Silence. “Maybe after lunch I’ll have a bite or two of cake,” George the Product Manager said.

“Yeah, me too,” Jamie said. “After lunch.”

“Did you want a bagel, Betty?” John asked.

“I, um… I’m okay.” Betty went over to the refrigerator, which was so crammed with lunch bags and leftovers that her Tupperware didn’t have a chance of fitting on the top shelf. “I guess I’ll put out the cake after lunch,” she said, hugging the Tupperware to her body as she inched her way out of the kitchenette.

“Mmmm, looking forward to it,” Jamie said, before turning to John and asking, “Which Bagel Hut did you get these from? The one off of 16 or the one over in Melrose?”

Betty stalked back to her cubicle. What a stinking coincidence! In the 2 years that John has been there, he has never brought in so much as a piece of leftover Easter candy, let alone bagels. And what did he do, anyway? He spent 5 minutes buying bagels, while Betty spent 2 hours sifting, mixing, stirring, and baking her cake, and she’s relegated to a mere after-lunch-dessert provider?

She stared at the Tupperware, small fury welling in her throat as she sat down in her chair. The silence in the cubicle farm was deafening. Soon her coworkers would emerge from the kitchenette, their spirits lifted, their morale boosted, and their stomachs full of bagel.

Posted in Miscellany.

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By Meredith – November 11, 2009

I Don’t Care if You Don’t Care

My regular readers of this website (or “Mom” and “Dad,” as I call them) may have noticed that yesterday’s post about being accused by a local teenager of listening to the Backstreet Boys received a record-breaking number of comments: Eight! That’s eight times the number of comments that any other single post on this website has ever received! (In stock market parlance, we’d call that an ‘eight-bagger’ and proceed to demolish a bottle of fine Romanée Conti in celebration. But I’m taking it in stride.)

So maybe my regular readers are wondering if the deafening silence that greeted every painstakingly-crafted post for the past six years finally caused my already-fragile personality to cleave into eight imaginary commenters to keep me company during my slow descent into madness, hmm?

Actually, I’m receiving some attention from Universal Hub, a website that semi-selectively aggregates blog posts, Twitters, and news items from around the Boston area. Yesterday’s post was featured here. A previous post about wet cat food was featured here. And another post about lobster baroness Linda L. Bean was featured here.

As casual as the attention may be, it is gratifying to have a stranger’s tacit appreciation for my writing. But… I actually received more than eight comments. Several people felt compelled to say things along the lines of “Who cares?” and “This is stupid.” I didn’t approve those comments to display on my website, and I was surprised at how angry they made me. I didn’t ask anyone to care. I don’t write to make anyone care. To borrow a line from Green Day, I really, really don’t care if you don’t care.

I abide by Kurt Vonnegut’s seventh rule of writing, which is “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” 90% of what I write on this website is to please my bff Amy, who became my muse in high school when we’d write each other long notes while idling away in classes. I developed a narrative voice solely for the purpose of entertaining her. It’s all quite unconscious, really… I don’t hold an image of Amy in my mind and imagine her reading what I’m writing. But my writing style is infused with a well-honed sense of what she’d like to read and how she’d enjoy reading it. And I instinctively knew that my imaginary Amy (as well as the real Amy, who is as faithful a reader as Mom and Dad) would get a kick out of “She’s listening to the Backstreet Boys,” even if most people would say, “Who cares?”

So I’m trying not to get distracted by the comments or by the idea that strangers are picking through my writing in search of arcane grammatical mistakes with which to taunt me. I write for myself and for one other person, and the day she says “Who cares?” or “This is stupid” is the day that I’ll take up a new hobby, like bull riding, crack pipe collecting, or listening to the mother-effing Backstreet Boys.

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By Meredith – November 10, 2009

She’s Listening to the Backstreet Boys

On Friday afternoon I took a non-purposeful yet nimble stroll on the bike path. After a week full of meetings, appointments, errands, and a nagging pile of work, how quenching to bask in the crisp autumnal daylight while listening to an instructional French-language podcast about helpful phrases to know when dropping off clothes at the dry cleaners (or “le pressing,” a delightful cognate) and enjoying my penultimate freedom Friday before my new full-time gig picks up.

I walked about 3 miles to the border of the town of Lexington before turning around. As I neared the Arlington High School, groups of teenagers began to pass me as they retreated from their school day — some grim faces, others festive, others utterly void. The path runs adjacent to the high school’s well-groomed athletic field, and a large section of the perimeter chain-link fence has been pried open to allow unofficial access to the grounds from the path. During and after school hours, students congregate here to do teenagery things like flirt, aggrandize, smoke, and plot to destroy their young lives before they have even started.

Ahead of me, a gaggle of teenagers sat perched on the railings on both sides of the path. It was mostly boys, dressed and groomed in a cool, casual, sloppy style. They struck me as smart kids; none of them were strikingly attractive, or large, or ugly, just pleasant-looking kids with normal-sized skulls and the understated mannerisms of future collegians. Yet the way that they flanked the path was odd and disconcerting, and a self-conscious reflex from my own youth kicked in as I approached them. Silly, I chided myself. Why should they take notice of a thirty-something woman with no aberrant physical traits who is just one of many recreational users of the bike path, passing by them as she minds her own business?

Why? Because they’re teenagers, emboldened by the proximity of their cutthroat high school, fresh from a day filled with bloodthirsty banter and contemptuous posturing, and just plain bored.

As I walked through the gauntlet, I felt eyes on me. Oh yeah, they could sense my unease: the too-rapid gait, the eyes trained on the ground. Someone had to seize this opportunity to comment wittily on this awkward adult, to exploit her weak fortitude, to funnel their angst into cowardly cruelty. Someone had to say something.

“She’s listening to the Backstreet Boys,” one brazen youth announced (which I clearly heard because, in fact, I was not listening to the Backstreet Boys. I was still listening to instructional French language podcasts on low volume so I would not get a headache from the farcical French enunciations.)

Hot rage flooded through my body as I plowed ahead on the path. The Backstreet Boys! I listen to a wide range of music, from hardcore punk to classical to traditional Indian to experimental rock to pop industrial to post-trip hop to lo-fi indie to new wave to cabaret to breakcore to big band to cock rock to French hip-hop. In fact, just about the only two things that I don’t listen to are country & western and the Backstreet Boys.

The middle finger on my left hand sprung erect, although I could not muster the requisite gumption to turn around and brandish it in the direction of my harasser. Impassioned retorts involving four-letter words rose to my lips, but they could not attain the necessary clearance from the rational part of my brain to be vocalized. After all, it wasn’t my race, gender, appearance, religion, or family that was being slandered. I can’t call a minor “you little f**k” because he grossly underestimated my presumed musical taste.

Still, the Backstreet Boys! Did he seriously judge me to have such a moronic undeveloped taste in music, or did he just have a bully’s instinct to know that I’d be severely perturbed by such an unjust smear? As I walked through the town center, I took stock of myself in the reflections of the store fronts. Sure, I’m sort of frumpy in my Adidas track pants and fleece sweatshirt, but did I look that… lame?

(I know… listening to French podcasts doesn’t exactly make me cool.)

Posted in Existence.

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By Meredith – November 9, 2009

An Afternoon with Al Bore… I mean, Al Snore… I mean, Al Gore

“Wanna go see Al Gore?” I asked Mr. P over breakfast, trolling the Harvard Book Store event calendar for visiting authors I could tolerate listening to for an hour without committing mental hari-kari.

Mr. P shrugged. I shrugged back.

“Okay,” he said.

Sure, we wanted to go. Al Gore is a global name, a respected leader, and a key figure in one of the most urgent movements of our time. He’s got Nobel Peace Prize energy. He’ll appear in history books—possibly with his own volume. So yes, we wanted to see Al Gore. But we weren’t excited, like OMIGOD EFFING AL GORE!

We arrived an hour early to line up at the Unitarian church in Harvard Square. We wanted (and got) good seats. The man behind us installed solar panels for a living; the woman in front of us was an environmental science professor. Their eco-cred made me feel a little fraudulent. Sure, I recycle. I take quick showers. I buy local arugula and avoid fast fashion. But like 99.9% of Americans, I’m not doing the planet any favors. I had, in fact, just bought a brand-new internal-combustion car the week before. And now here I was, waiting to see Al Gore.

In person, he doesn’t really look like Al Gore anymore (see photos below). The beard is gone. He’s slimmer, balding, and visibly graying. He opened with a warm anecdote about being recognized at a café in California:

“You know, if you dyed your hair black, you’d look just like Al Gore!”
Big laughs. Because yeah… it’s true.

Then came the humblebrag:

“I was on the phone this morning with the Prime Minister of Denmark…”
Of course you were. You’re Al Gore.

His hourlong talk? I won’t say it was boring—impending global doom is hard to snooze through—but his delivery is famously… dry. The voice, the pacing, the tranquil hand gestures—it’s like watching a very earnest robot explain compost. I lost the thread somewhere between alternative fuels and oil prices and gently floated in and out of consciousness.

He did light up when he got to the solution: Collective political will.

“It’s important to change the lightbulbs, but it’s more important to change the policies,” he said. “We have a democracy problem in America.”

He blamed television.

“The average American watches five hours of TV a day. And someone’s making up for me.”
(Pause for laughs.)

He explained how 80% of campaign funds go toward television ads, forcing candidates to cozy up to special interests.

“I’m not talking about corruption,” he clarified. “I’m talking about a serious defamation of American democracy.”
Which—okay—but also… is there a difference? Or just fewer subpoenas?

Despite the lack of oratorical sizzle, I walked away inspired. Everyone got a copy of Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis—a glossy, textbook-style tome with photos, charts, and sidebars. No Q&A (boo), but Gore did stay to sign books. No personalizations allowed, but he looked Mr. P in the eye and said, “Thanks for coming out.” Then he looked at me and asked, “How’re you doing?”

I’m fine, Al Gore. I just bought a gas-powered car and now I’m reading your climate crisis textbook on recycled paper. We’re all doing great.

Al Gore, Saying Something
Al Gore, Saying Something
Al Gore, Saying Something Else
Al Gore, Saying Something Else
Al Gore's Signature
Al Gore’s Signature
This picture from Al Gore's book says a million words
This picture from Al Gore’s book says a million words, one of which is “revenge”

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By Meredith – November 7, 2009