Name that mama

Commenter mom2bnsb is no longer a mom to be. The baby is here! And despite everybody’s best efforts, his name isn’t Tiger, Immelman, Jacqueta Verde, or any of the other, ah, thoughtful suggestions various relatives offered along the way (Jesus Peace Muhammad? Yes, they’re two very popular names worldwide — along with the thing everybody wants — but the Husband should stand in the corner for proposing that one while mom2bnsb was in labor.) Meet my new nephew, Wyatt Marshall Gardiner.

But now mom2bnsb needs a new blog name. I suggest a verb name. An active verb, considering what her life’s going to be like for a while.

Congratulations, mom and dad.

A marathon day

I’m just back from watching the London marathon. A great day. The men’s race was extremely fast: Kenya’s Martin Lel won in 2:05:15.

Saw all the winners, plus a good portion of the other 35,000 runners. Missed the Maasai warriors, but did see Elvis.

Video and photos here.

Harry’s Bar takes pity on poor Yanks

“Hemingway haunt gives discount to ‘poor Americans’”

ROME (Reuters) - Harry’s Bar, the famed Venice watering hole where Ernest Hemingway held court over hearty food and stiff martinis, is offering a discount to “poor” Americans suffering from a weak dollar and subprime blues.

The owner has posted a sign outside, promising Americans “a special 20 percent discount on all items of the menu during the short term of their recovery.”

This doesn’t help writers, then. The discount is only on food, not drinks.

And drinking is what Harry’s Bar is designed for. I’ve been lucky enough to visit Venice, and — of course — stopped by Papa’s legendary hangout. Harry’s is near the spot where the Grand Canal empties into the Lido di Venezia. The view is glittering and timeless. But inside, the bar reminded me of the cabin of a boat, with dark wood and tiny windows. The design focuses your attention on either (1) the bar, or (2) the shadows lurking in one’s soul — which in turn sends your attention to (3) the bar. I don’t drink whiskey, but I ordered a shot, emptied my wallet, and toasted the big man. Then the Husband and I got out of there and took the kids out for pizza.

Back from London…

…where I made it through Waterloo station without the CIA spotting me. Sorry, spooks; if you thought you’d catch me on CCTV buying a dozen chocolate doughnuts at the Krispy Kreme stand — better luck next time.

More later.

Let it bleed. With leeches.

And people think crime writers love blood?

“Demi Moore admits to bizarre beauty secret: ‘I let leeches suck my blood.’”

“I feel like I’ve always been someone looking for the cutting edge of things that optimise your health and healing.

“I was in Austria doing a cleanse and part of the treatment was leech therapy. These aren’t just swamp leeches though - we are talking about highly trained medical leeches.”

I had to turn my head, because spitting coffee directly onto a computer can wreck the logic board. Moore says leeching “detoxifies your blood - I’m feeling very detoxified right now.”

“You watch it swell up on your blood, watching it get fatter and fatter - then when it’s super drunk on your blood it just kind of rolls over like it’s stumbling out of the bar.”

Miss Moore explained how she prepared herself for the leeches. “You have to do a turpentine bath first - that’s part of the therapy,” she said.

“The other thing I found out is that leeches don’t like hair so if you are hairy be prepared to do some shaving or waxing - they much prefer a Brazilian.”

At this point the Husband found me on the floor, laughing so hard that I needed the Heimlich maneuver. When I read aloud to him that “leeches don’t like hair,” he nodded sagely and said, “God has blessed me. I have never been attacked by a leech. Not even a medically trained one.”

Moore reminisces: “You first feel worse then you feel better. But I’m going back - I only got four leeches and I feel a bit cheated.”

Next: beauty experts drill holes in celebrities’ heads, as the Incas did, to let toxic vapors escape.

(Via Althouse.)

Happy Easter

Can’t say I’ve ever dreamed of a white Easter. But that’s what our patch of the world’s having. Hope yours is bright.

Peeps Show II

If you want to waste some time with a smile this Easter weekend, check out the Washington Post’s second annual Peeps Diorama Contest — “A bounty of mallow” that rained down on the paper “not like locusts but like meteors of great ambition and, yes, some arts-and-crafts psychosis.”

My favorite is “Peeplona: The Running of the Peeps.”

“Princesszilla”

Prepare yourselves for the mutant descendant of Bridezilla. It’s an even more extravagant, self-indulgent, and infantilized high-maintenance bride, who plans a “fairytale wedding” because “Every girl wants to be a princess, don’t they?”

Shakila was Cinderella for the day, wearing ivory silk, sugared with gold and crystals. Her groom rode into the Hilton’s ballroom on a white horse, and they sat on raised thrones… Shakila had wanted to arrive in the pink pumpkin Cinderella carriage that Katie Price graced so spectacularly when she married Peter Andre in 2005. But it was booked. So she had a Cinderella carriage made from ice instead.

This £200,000 ($400,000) wedding is the high-end tip of the princess iceberg. Disney is now in on the act. It has launched “Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings,” a bridal collection “inspired by the Disney princesses.”

‘A lot of the women who are marrying today grew up with the Snow White movies and the Cinderella movies,’ explains Sandra van Vreedendaal, of Disney Consumer Products. ‘Women who buy them are a real mixture - some just love the dresses, or they might love the princesses, or are die-hard Disney fans and want the whole package.’

I have a couple of problems with this trend. Okay, I have a bunch of problems with it, but two I can mention briefly enough that my hair won’t catch fire.

1. Weddings are not about the bride being pampered and oohed-at on “her” perfect day. They’re not the Miss America pageant, or a coronation, or a photo session for girls who dream of being snapped on the red carpet by paparazzi. Weddings are about two people declaring, in front of the community, their promise to build a life together.

2. For crying out loud, to get married you need to be a woman. Not a child. Grow up.

This longing to play princess-for-a-day isn’t limited to the bridal realm. I recently received an invitation to a Cinderella ball, a “dream come true” night of tiaras, ballgowns, and dancing with our Prince Charming. I hope everybody who attends has a blast, but for me, the invitation came years too late. Call me twisted, but I don’t want to be a teen princess. If somebody ever stuck a crown on my head, I’d want it to come with serious power. Give me territory. Give me intrigue. Give me battle plans, and the legions to carry them out.

Cinderella? Forget it. I’d go to the ball as Boudicca.

Life intrudes

Today: writers’ group meeting, parent-teacher conference, reading the page proofs for Mission Canyon, reviewing the copyedited manuscript of Crosscut, feeding and chauffeuring two high school boys we’re (unexpectedly) housing during a rugby tournament, and attending a lecture in London. Also: writing 2,000 words of the new novel.

Later, y’all.

Giving up snark for Lent?

Last year for Lent I gave up snarking. In response, my husband, my blog commenters, and even my literary agent deluged me with snark-worthy news stories, trying to get me to break my vow.

Now Snart writes: “Here it is Lent, and we haven’t asked if you’ve given up snarking this year. Sorry. Do let us know, so we can ‘help’ you along!”

The answer is no - I haven’t forsworn snarking. This year I’ve given up using my hands. It’s easier. Granted, with my arms tied behind my back the driving does get dicey. But I’m a whole lot less stressed out.

Nevertheless, vow or no vow, I am trying to avoid sarcasm. I want to become a kinder human being, and not make kittens cry, and avoid going to hell. As proof, here are recent stories I have not commented upon.

“Dawn Goes Lesbian.” For those in North America who still think the BBC broadcasts Jane Austen adaptations 24/7, brace yourselves. This documentary follows “Dawn, a girl-girl with a big love for men (’as friends, lovers, boyfriends, anything!’) [who's] prepared, for our sake, to thoroughly immerse herself in the lesbian life for a whole month.” The program was so hugely insulting, I can only beg the world’s lesbians: please don’t judge all us straight women by this twit. Thank God the Guardian’s Anna Pickard, snark-maestra extraordinaire, live-blogged this one so I didn’t have to.

Fur Flies at Beauty Pageant.

GOLDEN HILL, Md. — Contestant No. 1 sashayed down the catwalk, her hair bouncing in blonde curls, and smiled a radiant beauty-queen smile. She picked up a furry dead rodent about the size of a football.

Then she took out a very sharp four-inch blade and stuck the point in just above the animal’s tail.

“Then,” she said, narrating the incision as sweetly as a Miss America contestant talking about world peace, “you’re going to want to take your knife . . .”

It’s the Miss Outdoors 2008 pageant, which “combines the worlds of beauty contests and competitive muskrat skinning.”

” . . . You want to take your knuckles,” 17-year-old Samantha Phillips, Contestant No. 1, was saying. One of the pageant judges squinched up her face in shock. “And separate the meat from the hide, just like this.”

“Oh my God!” a boy in the audience yelled, at the sight of a woman in perfect makeup with her hand inside a muskrat.

Then, from another part of the crowd: an older woman’s voice: “She’s good.”

I repeat: I have not blogged about this.

Goodness has its limits, however, and the next story pushed me beyond mine: Language barrier scuppers walker.

A man who planned to walk from Bristol to India without any money has quit, after getting as far as Calais, France.

Mark Boyle, 28, who set out four weeks ago with only T-shirts, a bandage and sandals, hoped to rely on the kindness of strangers for food and lodging.

But, because he could not speak French, people thought he was free-loading or an asylum seeker.

He now plans to walk around the coast of Britain instead, learning French as he goes, so he can try again next year.

Mr Boyle, a former organic food company boss, belongs to the Freeconomy movement which wants to get rid of money altogether.

In Boyle’s freeconomy, generosity apparently begins with gimme. And so the Blanche DuBois walking tour grinds to a halt.

He forgot that give-and-take should involve more than taking. Well, I’m happy to give it to him.

Good vibes needed

Andy Greig, my webmaster and eyewitness to the earthquake, has just been diagnosed with cancer. He’s getting ready to start chemotherapy, and he’s blogging about his experience at Grumpy Old Git (a misnomer of a blog title if there ever was one).

Send him your good vibes, helpful thoughts, prayers, and mojo. Everything good should go his way.

“A very British earthquake”

So says a BBC reporter about Britain’s biggest quake in a quarter of a century. The Times calls it huge.

Huge? Initial USGS readings put it at magnitude 4.7. British seismological readings have it at 5.2.

It hit in the middle of the night, 200 miles north of me, so of course I slept through it. But I heard reactions on the news this morning. “It was horrible.” “It was quite severe.” “I thought I was probably going to die.”

Meaning, specifically: “The blinds were visibly shaking.” “Stuff fell off the shelves.” “The cat went doolally.”

The banter among the TV morning show hosts has been amusing. Who knew we were near tectonic plates? said one. (Ssh - don’t tell him they’re everywhere. And only a few miles down.) Another shook her head: People say they felt it in Amsterdam. How could that be? Is that possible? Her co-host nodded. It must be aftershocks. More nodding. Aftershocks.

Ooh - somebody watched the TV disaster flick 10.5: Apocalypse and picked up the jargon! Though not, sadly, the science.

Sorry. I shouldn’t make fun. There were some minor injuries, and tremors are indeed eerie. But I’m a quake-jaded Californian. I can tell you what happens when the earth shakes beneath old, unreinforced brick buildings: walls and chimneys fall down. This is how people get hurt, especially people who run outside to see what’s happening. What’s happening is that chimneys are falling on people who run outside.

My kids are bemused. Says my son, the cynic: No wonder people freaked out. They got hit by bricks, but didn’t hear soccer yobs yelling “Come on, you reds!” or see a single football hooligan throwing the things at them.

My daughter, who right now is one mile from the San Andreas fault in California, is incensed. “NOT FAIR!” she IMs. “Man, I miss all the best disasters.”

And what did that BBC reporter mean by a “very British” earthquake? “Everybody’s talking about it, but actually it was quite mild.” As a senior seismologist at the British Geological Survey put it, “It’s an extremely large earthquake in UK terms but not large in world terms; we’d classify it only as a light earthquake.”

I’m glad people are okay.

Attagirl, Mom

From a phone conversation with my mother yesterday:

Me: How are you?

Mom: I’m all right - but how’s that cold you’ve got? Are you feeling better?

I shook my head and laughed. She had just come out of knee replacement surgery.

But why was I surprised? She planned the op for this week so she’ll have time to get fighting fit before the arrival of a new grandbaby and her next trip to England. And if this story is to be believed, she’s a whole lot tougher than Prince.

It’s all material

I’m home. I’ll post photos of my trip soon, but for now, here are random observations from my travels:

How big a hassle has flying become? USA Today now offers a text message service that tells you the waiting time to get through security at various airports.

American magazines are now required by law to put Britney Spears on their cover. Including, I think, Boys’ Life and Foreign Affairs.

There’s a reason airplane lavatories have a sliding bolt that locks the door. Because otherwise the sign says VACANT, and dude, I really, really didn’t need to get such a good look at your, ah, technique.

But it’s all material for the next book.