Dude

At NYC taco mini-chain Dos Toros, there's always this sign up about how you may only sit once you've gotten your food, i.e. no grabbing a seat upon entering. While I generally think lists of rules are HMYF (hipsters make your food) preciousness, in this case, it's a fine point. It's better for the establishment if people who have actually purchased something are the only ones sitting, and better for the people who've just bought a meal to be able to sit down to eat. So. After some of the usual haunts (Uniqlo, Housing Works bookstore), we stopped by a certain large-but-crowded Village coffee shop. No signs, alas, and all kinds of people sitting down while a friend went up to get the drinks. This is acceptable in a place with available seats, which wasn't the case.

But what's never acceptable is plopping down with your various Apple products (not plugged in, no wifi, so this wasn't post-Sandy recharging) and a glass of the gratis water from the establishment and no purchased anything, and no friend in line to get drinks. Dude had just parked himself, relying on the privilege inherent in looking like Ultimate Upscale Coffee-Shop Dude (whiteness, yes, but so much more) not to be asked to move aside.

So my husband and I had a little chat about Elaine and the eggroll dare in the Chinese restaurant "Seinfeld" and, in my attempt at becoming a more assertive person, I, beverage in tow, marched right up to dude and explained the situation. But his friend, he assured, was just two blocks away. Of course, as we all know, a friend who's said he's nearby is about to enter the subway in another borough, and we can safely assume that dude, in this situation, was exaggerating the proximity above and beyond whatever his friend had claimed, if there even was a friend. There was a bit more back-and-forth, and yeah, I soon gave up, as did a couple other women who appeared to be trying the same. On our way out, we saw that the friend had indeed arrived, and now it was the friend holding the table. Every man for himself.

Coffee shop breaches in etiquette, that I notice. And cute, fluffy dogs. Shortly after the aforementioned showdown, I was squealing at a couple when I noticed that these were not just any dogs but dogs being walked by Alec Baldwin and his new wife. Alec Baldwin in a really sharp suit. And yes, I watch "30 Rock." This is the second time in recent memory I've noticed a canine before the famous-person walking it. Not sure what to conclude from this.

"Deep physics"

This evening, I was out with Jo and his family, at the oddly-cheap-for-Tribeca Japanese place whose Grade is no longer Pending and now a respectable B. Yum! We'd just tucked into our meals, and amidst the Flemglish, I notice a familiar face not far from our table. Abs Millepied himself! I wasn't sure, so I (discreetly) asked Jo, who speculated that She might come in, which would, of course, confirm the first sighting. And who should then enter but a very pregnant woman-whom-all-men-who've-ever-found-me-even-OK-are-lusting-after.

In my last unmarried moments, I suppose I did risk being left for Natalie Portman, which I of course would have been kind of OK with, considering. This was all the more risky given that Jo had just gotten an especially good haircut at Astor Place, and considering an alleged shared interest in astrophysics (sustained, apparently* - I'd have been stuck talking French intermarriage with the Gallic beau). But a variety of factors - her being about to give birth, the presence not only of Abs and myself, but also the Belgians, created a buffer.

* Ha! "It would have been great if we had seen Jane fall for Thor, not because of what he looked like without his shirt on, but because behind the gruff exterior he knew more deep physics than she did."

Already dreading the search-engine traffic this post will attract

Sometimes, to illustrate the point that Americans could stand to eat more fruits and vegetables and consume smaller portions, we'll see a photo or news item about some festival out in Real America where the tradition is to eat a whole deep-fried pig on a popsicle, covered in nacho-cheese sauce.

Joseph Epstein announces (thanks A&L Daily!) the End of Higher Education because some prof at Northwestern, after warning his class beforehand, went all Monty Python (NSFW of course) on his class, presenting a live sex act. (How anyone can mention this story and not "The Meaning of Life" is beyond me.) Epstein includes in his curmudgeonly rant, for extra curmudgeon points, one supposes, a letter he had written previously to the president of Northwestern, where he himself had been a prof, complaining about the choice of Stephen Colbert as commencement speaker. Because unless students fall asleep hearing someone hold forth on new developments in microbiology, it's not educational. No matter that Colbert, aside from being "in the cant phrase, a fun speaker," is a political force in our culture, someone who will likely show himself to be historically significant, and whom graduates would likely remember having heard speak for years to come, in the way they wouldn't if an especially good stand-up comic got the gig. Colbert is Pop Culture, Epstein is Team Classical-Music-and-Foreign-Films, which is all we need to know.

He goes on to fault the sex prof for... researching sex; maintaining a website about his family; writing a book that "apparently argues" something not so outlandish that Epstein couldn't be bothered to skim or have an intern look at to verify; and wearing "leisure cut" jeans, whatever that means. While there seem to be some valid complaints about the prof's ethical behavior, up to and including l'Affaire Dildo, there's no need to throw legitimate research into human sexuality out with the this-particular-prof-has-issues bathwater. Or so one might think.

Epstein, however, is prepared to dispose of the entirety of academia as it currently exists. He goes off on the question of profs sleeping with students in the name of academic freedom - a fad, if it ever was one, in the 1970s, and certainly not in today's climate of (thank god, on this issue especially) extreme professionalization. Epstein sees the post-1968 moment not as a blip, but as the beginning of a slippery slope culminating in every class as an orgy during which, in fine George Costanza manner, everyone is simultaneously eating pastrami and watching television. He then goes on to explain to the curious reader that, while he sure had opportunities, he as a prof preferred an older woman. Well, that's crucial information. This, in turn, segues into the question of 18-year-old females' virginity or lack thereof in the late 1960s...

Forgive me if I'm getting a bit lost in all this - the article is at this point hopping seemingly at random between various Conservative Critique of Education talking points. Too much fluff, not enough Shakespeare! Slutty coeds! Marxist literary criticism!

Oh, but Epstein meanders back to a point, and his point is that sex is not a valid subject for research. Not that live sex acts in a classroom are about provocation and not education, which would have been reasonable, but that sex is in some mystical realm of the unknowable:

Students don’t need universities to learn about varying tastes in sex, or about the mechanics of human sexuality. They don’t need it because, first, epistemologically, human sexuality isn’t a body of knowledge upon which there is sufficient agreement to constitute reliable conclusions, for nearly everything on the subject is still in the flux of theorizing and speculation; and because, second, given the nature of the subject, it tends to be, as the Bailey case shows, exploitative, coarsening, demeaning, and squalid.

Note again the leap from 'dildo action in class=bad' - something I'd imagine most would agree with - to a blanket condemnation of all academic study of human sexuality.

I know I told Rita that my principal objection to anti-modernity is its tendency to be barely masked nostalgia for a time when it was OK to be a bigot, and I do hold by that. But with Epstein, it's all about the curmudgeonliness, no hint of veiled anything, and it's still damaging. Academia needs thoughtful conservative critics, thoughtful critics of the new, but what we get instead is undirected, clichéd nonsense about how things sure ain't what they used to be.

Coincidence

On the subway in one direction, I'm listening to Dan Savage's podcast, and I look over and see the guy next to me is reading his column in the Village Voice.

On the subway back, I'm reading the Abbé Grégoire's 1788 manifesto on what's to be done about the Jews, the one that set the stage for the emancipation of France's Jews during the Revolution. More specifically, I'm reading the chapter where he explains that the Jews, they have kids way too young. I look up to see a very young Hasidic woman pushing a baby carriage, accompanied by a girl of about 14.

Oh baby

You know that amazing Monty Python sketch, where Terry Jones plays John Cleese's mother, and the mom and her friend talk to the son in baby talk, even though he's like 6'5" and 35? "Oooh, can he talk, can he talk"? --"Of course I can talk, I'm the Minister for Overseas Development." Well, apparently this actually happens.

Yossi and Jagger II?

The ladies at Jezebel note "the subtle, but sexy, homo-eroticism" of a certain photograph of two pretty, albeit very hetero, politicians. Could a sequel be in order? Who'd be Yossi and who'd be Jagger? Barack would just have to be Barak, and to, well, speak Hebrew. He could be the half-Ethiopian free spirit, with Rahm the macho Sabra, tweaking their real biographies just enough to make the film work. Eytan Fox would, of course, direct. The result would be so beautiful that everyone would favor legal gay marriage, and all would be well in the world.

"She was there to sell makeup but the father saw more"

OK, one more comment on the story of the week:

Something sounded familiar about "Kristen's" trajectory: "Ms. Dupré said by telephone Tuesday night that she was worried about how she would pay her rent since the man she was living with 'walked out on me' after she discovered he had fathered two children." Thing is, "she was working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens, till her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes. What was she to do, where was she to go, she was out on her fanny."

Couldn't Dupré have just signed up to be the now-ex governor's nanny? Sure, his kids are a bit old for that by now, but Fran was still on the scene by the time Mr. Sheffield's offspring were well into their 30s. That way, many repetitive episodes later, after fighting off the evil Ms. Babcock, she could have become Mrs. Sheffield, er, Spitzer.

"The Whore of Mensa"

The comments to my post about Spitzer and his high-class 'hos reminded me of Woody Allen's "The Whore of Mensa." The gist of it is, there's a 'prostitution ring' of sorts made up of brilliant college-educated women who will talk to you about the Great Books, meant for men not getting enough intellectual stimulation from their own wives. Turns out this is pretty much how it goes at a high-class brothel.

My other comment about the Spitzer debacle was going to be something along the lines of, imagine how many dishwashers you could buy with $80,000. My mind has one track and one track only. But Wonkette already got around to a similar point, namely that for the price of just the one most-discussed encounter, he could have purchased a high-end stove.