“What are you reading/watching/eating??” the readers ask. Well, here’s an ultra-short compilation:

Isn’t it great when a friend writes a novel, and you think it’s amazing? Check out Rakesh Satyal’s amazing debut, Blue Boy. It’s the perfect book for anyone who has ever spent a day feeling bullied, suppressed, misunderstood, downtrodden, or tyrannized. In other words, everyone on earth.

Also, I’m always one for New York-escapist fiction, when it’s done right. Paula Froelich’s Mercury in Retrograde feels like a vacation in my own city–not an easy feat for an author to pull off.

And Sam Raimi has finally stopped making cheesy superhero crap and gone back to his roots–cheesy, gushy, viscera-filled horror. If it’s not playing in your town, rent the Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In. Yes, I said Swedish vampire flick.

And if you haven’t read this, and you a) live in the U.S. and b) plan to ever get sick/injured/pregnant sometime in your life, I suggest you do so. Special bonus feature: I have it on good authority that Obama’s already read it.

Some men have a tendency to call women “crazy.” They toss it around like a Frisbee on Labor Day. But the worst part is, they’re sometimes under the severe delusion that it’s actually true.

See, the thing is, very few people are actually crazy, by the formal definition. According to psychiatric stats, only around 4% of the population actually has some diagnosable mental disorder. “Yeah” some men are saying, “the other 96% aren’t in my dating pool.” Well, given that there are 155 million women in the U.S., if you do the math (and you know I’m serious about this shit if I’m doing math) it means your chances of actually meeting a certifiable nutcase is like 1 in 100,000. Or something.

Arguably, every human being is his/her unique brand of crazy — but that pretty much robs the adjective of all its meaning. So when a man calls a woman “crazy,” usually there’s something else operating. Like this:

What he says: Christ, she’s all pissed off about nothing again. All I did was disappear for a couple days and not return a few calls, and she goes totally nuts. That chick is crazy.

What he means: Rather than deal with the fact that I behaved like a 6-year-old on PCP, avoided all responsibility for a situation I’d created, failed to consider someone else’s feelings, literally pretended that what happened never happened, and thus caused this reaction, I’m gonna go with “she clearly has a mental disorder.” Since that’s the only way someone could think my behavior was less than perfect.

There are a few other variations as well:

What he says: She’s crazy.
What he means: She “inexplicably” yelled at me for leaving the half-full milk carton on the counter overnight. And the ice cream. And the leftover brisket.

or:

What he says: She’s crazy.
What he means: She didn’t think my story about exhuming a sunflower from my nose was the funniest thing since Richard Pryor’s “pigs are pigs” routine.

And my personal favorite (also the most ubiquitous):

What he says: She’s crazy.
What he means: She won’t sleep with me.

Of course, there’s a big juicy paradox in the middle of all this (I call it the Gender Catch-22): The surest sign that you’re crazy is you think everyone of the opposite sex is crazy, while never questioning your own sanity. So chew on that.

Not a chance. But I will sort of miss it when (if) it does go.

Oodles of words have been written about the differences between men and women. Trying to conceptualize just how many is like those graphics showing how many pennies are in a $10.5 trillion government bailout. For a long time, I wrote off most gender-based rants as a bunch of unenlightened crap–at the end of the day, regardless of sex, we’re all clumps of the same carbon matter. Man, woman, hermaphrodite, Spice Girl–chop us open and do we not all bleed?

Now, after a little more experience–and a delve into the science of it all–I’m willing to admit that when it comes to genders, there are a few minor (in a relative sense) differences that wind up slaughtering any attempt at rational communication or understanding (especially since one of those differences is the definition of “rational”).

If I had to encapsulate it (which I don’t but will anyway) I’d say it comes down to a limitation in imagination/empathy. For both sexes. For instance, I can imagine, at least somewhat, how the parents of a murder victim feel, or how an abused child feels, or a laid-off employee or a harassed waitress or a pregnant woman on the C train. But there’s no way in hell I’ll ever really know, or care to know, what it’s like for some dude who hasn’t been laid in 4 months to be standing in a church receiving line and see the girls’ varsity track team go bouncing by. Apparently, it’s horrible and embarrassing. Cry me a f&*$% river.

See? No empathy.

Of course, there’s another side to all this: If you are in possession of a working penis, then women are women–not people, made of the same matter as you, but alien creatures put on earth to taunt (and sometimes slake) a libido that has evolved to make damn sure you impregnate at least one of us before you get chomped by a tiger or hit by a bus. Read the rest of this entry »

So Twitter. If you don’t know know what it is yet, you may soon be the only one. As with any new form of communication that sucks us all into its vortex (TV, anyone?), Twitter’s rise is bringing all sorts of criticism, with bloggers and other Web pundits (pot? kettle? black?) leaping on cyber-soap boxes to proclaim that tweeting–that’s “sending Twitter messages,” for the uninitiated–will bring about the end of civil discourse and rational communication…both of which have remained oh so alive and thriving on the Internet.

The bottom line with all this new networking and communications technology is that it’s simply a vessel. Human beings can’t communicate something that isn’t there. We can’t be anything other than ourselves–it’s one of our cutest limitations. And one thing we want is to be heard–to feel that what we think/feel/say matters. Give us a shiny new Web site that allows us to broadcast our thoughts in 140-character chunks from any location in the world, and we will happily do so. Even if it means we get fired/sued/dumped/vilified. That’s the beauty of self-expression–you can’t stop it once it’s started.

So while movements are rising among “anti-Tweeters” (you have to love people who define themselves based on what they’re against–it’s a uniquely hilarious form of inauthenticity), I say go forth and tweet if you’re so inclined. If you have something pithy to say, transmit it to the world. Announce that you just fed your cat, or spent the night in jail for public urination, or decided that Memphis is the fourth circle of Hell. Embrace the ability to see a bit further into the lives and minds of others. Ignore arguments that there’s “something wrong” with all this micro-information–since when is more information ever a bad thing in this technology-crazed era?

If you want to see the best and worst of Twitter behavior thus far, check out my latest piece in Discover.

And if you want to follow me on Twitter, click here. I promise, at the very least, that I update it far more often than this blog.

After a couple months, I’m getting used to this whole “30″ thing. At the least, it makes for a handy punchline — “I don’t have to put up with this bullshit from overcharging deliverymen/surly bus drivers/dudes in bars…I’m 30!” It’s a nice mantra, a reminder that I’m not as terminally stupid as I once was–things do improve with age. Really the only downside (besides those ever-desiccating eggs) is the hammering of “nevers” you have to get over– I’ll never be a twentysomething prodigy; I’ll never spend my youth romping through Kuala Lumpur; I’ll never have a torrid, foolhardy affair with an Estonian blackjack dealer; I’ll never found a major religion.

But one thing I’ve realized is that all the angst that accompanied the birthday wasn’t because I was losing anything — it’s that I was gaining entrance into a game where there’s nothing to win. I spent my twenties thrashing and writhing around until I congealed into the “Me” that I’m stuck with for good. So here I am! Welcome to life’s next stages! And what’s on the menu for the next 30 years?

Well, there’s always marriage — not typically a recipe for insta-bliss. Or I could go all alternative and try polyamory. No thanks — keeping one relationship together is maddening enough. Or this era’s blueplate special, served only in certain locations: Singlehood, the classic “life alone with Cat and her endless successors” scenario. Again, no thanks.

And career! Don’t forget career! That life-affirming occupation that fills 80% of your waking hours and gives you purpose and meaning in the universe. Except it doesn’t — not really. Which is a good thing, or else we’d have had massive rounds of Wall Street seppuku in the past six months.

Then there’s motherhood. Another nice thing about 30 is losing the ability to bullshit one’s self. Sure, I want to see the golden temple in Amritsar and climb the steps at Macchu Picchu and write a meaningful book that changes lives and stays on shelves longer than a week and a half–but all my body really wants to do is get knocked up and churn out some offspring. Millions of years of evolution versus my 5-year itinerary. Who’s gonna win that one? Read the rest of this entry »

As much as I loathe math (as anyone who’s ever watched me struggle to add anything with 2 digits can attest) I’m gaining a new respect for it. Why? Because it’s one of the few things in the universe that humans, as much as we try, can’t fuck up. It exists separate from us, and its rules are unchanging. There’s no possibility for spin or interpretation. Two plus two equals four, whether you think it does or not. If the entire borough of Queens thinks it’s five? Still four. Warren Buffet? Still four. The Pope? Definitely still four.

Unfortunately, just about everything else is not quite so infallible — meaning that we can (and do) mangle, maul, and distort it all til it’s near-unrecognizable. Be it the solution to the AIDS crisis or the importance of monitoring volcanoes, we can knead it, beat it, douse it in flour, and wring out anything resembling actual truth. All by saying so. It would be remarkable, if it wasn’t leading to so many people getting royally screwed.

The main problem is language. Math doesn’t care about lexicon or context or syntax. Call it nine in the shower, or seven at gunpoint — it’s still four, asshole. The same cannot be said for just about every other concept. “Love,” “insanity,” “crisis” — these things all have completely relative meanings. We let the “smart” people make up meanings for them, and then go along with whatever the crowd says.

Take “experts.” It’s a funny word, with a strangely-placed “x” slapped on before the “pert.” But that makes no difference in actual practice. Call someone an “expert,” and suddenly we believe everything they say. We look at them in a new light, superior beings that have tapped into some existentially pure well of knowledge, despite the fact that they’re really just shmucks like us who may or may not have read a few books.

Experiment with it — watch what happens. “This is my friend Ty, he’s a Japanese fetish porn expert.” Ohhh, ahhh, how impressive! He must be so smart! Sounds a lot better than “he spends his days watching YouTube videos of men wrapping their faces in schoolgirls’ dirty socks.” Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna sermonize on every detail in the film and whether it was loyal in body mind and soul to the book, like every other blogger in creation. Oh wait, who am I kidding — of course I am! But mercifully, not here. Check out my pseudo-review at Discover’s Science Not Fiction blog. To sum up: Nuclear war ain’t quite what it used to be. Oh, and for the record, get a halfway decent actress next time, guys.

Human beings are funny. We waltz around, prisoners in our own heads, absolutely certain that everything we think and perceive is “real,” and not just a concoction of chemicals swirling in our skulls.

Take the classic “white Toyota” example: You spend your waking hours cruising along the roads, noticing other cars in a “I could tell you I saw them, but not what make or model” kind of way. Then you shell out $15 grand for a shiny white Prius and head back on the highway, pleased with your economically and ecologically sound purchase. All of a sudden, the world is a sea of white Toyotas. They lurk at every intersection, in every parking garage, in line at every toll booth. Your consciousness can barely handle the onslaught of white Toyota-ness that’s besieging your senses.

So is it all a cruel joke played on you by the universe? Did everyone in the Tri-State area miraculously head to the Toyota dealership on the same day? Did some marketing mastermind implant subliminal Toyota-buying messages in the morning news? Hardly. Your brain is suddenly switched on to a certain object, your awareness is shifted, so now the plethora of white Toyotas that was always swirling in your peripheral consciousness is now smacking the center of your brain. In other words: They were always there, dumass — you just didn’t see them.

With this in mind, I can’t help but wonder if the same can be true for mental disorders. If a somewhat rare mental disorder is all of a sudden ballooning into an epidemic, is it really that so many more people have it? Or are we all suddenly just paying more attention? Particularly since, at the end of the day, there’s no such thing as a “mental disorder” unless we make it up in a book. Ebola or bubonic plague — they exist. Just ask the boils and destroyed lungs. But “autism”? Really its just a set of behaviors that we put on a list. Who’s to say that autistic people are really “disordered,” unless we label them as such?

Anyway that’s my theorizing for the day. Read my latest piece on the autism epidemic, and an innovative new potential treatment, here.

Yes, I know — the law firm system is tanking. If you’re still entrenched in it, you don’t need me to tell you this — unless you’re busy clutching to those last non-billable threads of denial.

The fall of Legal Babylon is neither surprising nor unexpected, really — for years law firms have been the remora slurping up the I-banking shark’s bloody scraps. But, of course, now that it’s actually happening, we scream and flail like teenagers in a horror flick who just can’t believe they’ve discovered a psychopathic killer in the dilapidated shack filled with slashed newspaper clippings and rusty tractor blades.

So here we are, treading water in the era’s last gasps, wondering what will happen to all those fancy law degrees and six-figure promises. I will say it’s amazing how fast the game can change–when I started blogging somewhere in the blur that is 2005, capitalism was God, investment banks were His emissaries, law firms were the loyal priests, and blogs were some outer rim exercise in self-ruination. Now I get Gmail missives from 3Ls begging me for Wordpress tips.

But the fact is that the first step towards adjusting to the New World Order is giving up the delusional idea that the old way was how things were “supposed” to be: Law firms were houses of prestige, where the smart and risk averse could trickle in from their elite schools and dive into (moderate) riches. All of this was “right,” and it was “good.” Why? Because our career counselors and parents and peers told us so. And because money is, after all, money.

The problem is, we modeled our entire lives based on someone else’s promises. Kiss the right ass, get the plumb job offer. Bill the right hours, get the right bonus. And all of that is GOOD - it makes you successful, important, meaningful, and, of course, rich. Except now it’s all crushed under the weight of its own hubris, and the internal bleeding is carrying associates out like a burst dam. The irony is pretty rich, particularly if you’ve been getting plaintive e-mails for years (which I have) from woebegone associates bemoaning their horrible fate at the hands of the billable hour, and their yearning for escape. Thought you were miserable in that fourth year associate job? Now that it no longer exists, it’s suddenly worth slitting throats for (figuratively speaking, let’s hope).

For the record, I’m not happy that so many biglaw associates and staffers (and partners, oh my!) are getting the proverbial Prada loafer up the ass. Read the rest of this entry »