My Favorite Hollywood Couple

Forget Bradgelina, Posh and David Beckham, and the freaky Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

I want to see more of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. Besides for exuding compassion and a great sense of humor in every off-beat character they play, they are really great comedic actors!

Who are they? You probably know Jerry Stiller as the obnoxious dad of George Costanza and the other obnoxious dad of Carrie Heffernon on King of Queens.

Anne Meara has been on TV less but is just as hilarious playing roles like Miranda's mother-in-law in Sex and the City and Spence Olchin's mom in King of Queens.

But not only are they people of exceptional moral character, they are one of the most abiding testaments to true love in our modern age.

They met in New York as struggling young actors and married in 1954 and are still happily married today! That's amazing. And as if that wasn't enough, Jerry Stiller's memoir (published in 2000) is titled: Married to Laughter: A Love Story Featuring Anne Meara. Awwwwwww.

I love you guys, sniff.

Trying to move on

I want to tell you about a recent demeaning experience I've had.

It happened a week ago and I thought I've moved on and there was no need to post about it. But my mind keeps revisiting it and each time it does, I feel a little lump in my throat and a churn in my belly. So obviously I haven't moved on.

Last week, exactly one week from this hour, I went to go get my semi-annual teeth cleaning at "the only game in town" for grad students. Seriously, this place has a monopoly because they're the only one accessible by foot, which is the quintessential student m.o.

So naturally, I begrudge them their exhorbitant monopolistic rates and question whether they are "real" dentists anyway. Many a time I've gotten estimates of how much a cavity filling would cost, only to have them inflate it by 200% when it came time to pony up. They are no better than a crooked auto-mechanic. Seriously I should sick the Feds on them and write a letter to the Dept of Health and Human Services or something.

Anyway, so I was dragging myself to the teeth cleaning and when it came my turn, I was greeted by a portly middle-aged white woman. Nothing bad so far. But I do remember wondering, "Who is she? I've never seen her before. Where's the middle-aged Hispanic woman that usually takes me to the chair?" But then...and here is what I can't stop reliving...

She sits me down on the big dentist chair and as I recline uncomfortably, she starts thrusting a sharp pick into my gums repeatedly. I can feel the blood trickling from my bludgeoned gums, down the sides of my tongue, and into my throat and I want to scream, "What the hell are you doing?!!! Is this your first time?!" But it gets even worse.

I don't scream. I politely "take it." And as she's leaning into my face, her surgical mask just millimeters away, she burps.

A wet, stinky burp.

Yeah, I'm not talking about a polite exhale of air that can be mistaken for a hiccup. Ok? I'm talking: I heard gurgling as that burp made its way as an angry peptic mass from the gut to the esophagus to the mouth, until it finally exploded into her mask.

I think I smelled a faint hint of onions.

And then she burped again. And again. And again. All in all, I probably endured five wet burp clouds exploding near my defenseless gaping mouth until she finally said, "Ok, why don't you rinse."

I spat out a mouth full of salty blood. I glared at her.


I felt so small and helpless. And dirty.

People helpin' people and science!

My brother is a linguistics student at Cal and needs help with a survey. Would you be so kind as to take the two surveys? He (and I) would be ever so grateful. They are short and fun.

Click here to get to the survey homepage.

Mergers and Acquisitions

I'm learning about those time-honored corporate transactions known as M&As in class now and thought it would provide the perfect opportunity to do a little merging of my own.

From this day forward Alice in Wonderland ("Parent-blog") will hereby merge with Law-and-Disorder ("Subsidiary-blog") because I realize that I'm just too darn lazy to keep up two blogs at once.

WITNESSETH

WHEREAS the Boards of Directors of both blogs (myself being the sole director, sole shareholder, president, CEO, CFO, COO, employee, and coffee-gopher-intern) have approved the merger;
WHEREAS the subsidiary-blog was failing in performance reviews and returned no profits, as measured by entries, since the end of Winter 2007;

The Parent-blog and Subsidiary-blog shall hereby merge at the Effective Date, Subject to the following terms and conditions:
(1) Parent-blog shall be entitled to all intellectual topics and property formerly designated as the sole domain of Subsidiary-blog;
(2) Parent-blog shall periodically, on a regular and timely basis, produce entries concerning law school and topics related to the legal field in general; and
(3) Subsidiary-blog will cease to exist as an ongoing venture and will only be accessible for archival purposes.

As soon as practicable after satisfaction or waiver of any conditions set forth in subsequent one-woman Board meetings, the parties hereto shall cause the Merger to be consummated by filing with Blogger, and shall to the best of their ability refrain from using this kind of nauseous legalese hereafter.

What Women Want in a Man: Every inch matters

First of all, get your mind out of the gutter. It's not about that.


Recent studies show that women prefer taller men. Duh. You don't need a researcher to tell you that!

But did you know that men can compensate for their shortness by padding their (not shoes but...) wallets? Women are willing to relax their height standards for a bigger bank account. That's probably not surprising either.

But exactly how much money makes up for each inch?

A study of 20,000 online daters by Gunter Hitsch and Ali Hortacsu of the University of Chicago and Dan Ariely of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that a 5-foot-8 man was just as successful in getting dates as a 6-footer if he made more money — precisely $146,000 a year more. For a 5-foot-2 man, the number was $277,000.

But short women have it good. A 5-foot-6 woman needs to make $59,000 more than a 5-foot-0 or 5-foot-2 woman to do as well. She’d need to make $50,000 more than a 5-foot-4 woman. Take that Elle McPherson! As a 5-foot-almost-5 woman I find this liberating. I'm definitely buying some trendy ballet flats now!

Overall, I find these studies to be depressing. They seem to confirm with to-the-cent accuracy that age-old truism: looks matter a lot. And therefore: life is unfair.

For more trade-offs, see nytimes.com/tierneylab.

I'm such an idiot!

Sometimes I'm so retarded I can't stand myself. Everyone gets the occasional paper-cut. But leave it to me to give myself a paper-cut on the nose! Right smack on my snauser.


What happened: so I thought it would be comfy to read a report on the couch. As I started to drift off into a nap I suddenly jerked myself awake, report in hand...and the rest is history.

Let this be a lesson to you all: Paper and naps don't mix.

No Spring in Sight

It snowed yesterday.
SNOWED!

The White White Mountains

The White Mountains is like the Yosemite of New England: a beautiful national park for campers, skiers, and day-trip hikers alike (like yours truly).


But very much unlike Yosemite, it's covered in snow even in the last week of March! Imagine our surpise as we descended from our car only to find four feet of snow everywhere and signs saying: "Closed for the season. See you in May!"


This was not the springtime conditions we anticipated...but we tried to make the best of it.