Sunday evening ramble

So much to ramble about! I'm long overdue for a ramble, and the topics have been piling up. I've forgotten about some of them, and others have been overcome by events. For example, a few weeks ago I was going to ramble about how strollers are Public Enemy #1--it's one thing to block entire passageways with them (and this happened again today), but some aggressive moms just love to charge at you. Of course, yesterday I shopped with someone who was using a stroller, and she did her best--certainly didn't charge at anyone--but sometimes you just can't get out of the way. So strollers are still the enemy, but sometimes, what can you do?

There's also been an ongoing roommate shell-shock ramble in the back of my head. As the summer progresses, my memory is jogged by milestones that last year were marked by his creepiness. And as I go through crazy weeks and weekends, an increasingly smaller part of me fears that someone will aggressive-talk to me just as I settle down to unwind (the concern is dually unfounded--prior to last night, it had been months since I'd had a moment to unwind). In any case, I think I'm recovering from RM trauma, since I'm less and less inclined to talk about it. Over the past few weeks, I've caught up with a few friends I hadn't talked to in a while. I relayed the entire saga over dinner on Tuesday, and then it came up again at lunch today and I just didn't feel like getting into it. My friend continued to ask, and I changed the subject.

Oh, and I meant to tell you guys about the event D. and I went to Wednesday--"Not Your Bubbe's Sisterhood." It was about Jewish women in comedy, and whether playing stereotypes for laughs is constructive or deleterious. D. and I discussed how the stereotypes played on in the youtube clips they showed just didn't apply to us--and a lot of the women there agreed. And yet we don't ask, 'who are these entitled, clueless Jewish women?' because we've all met them. And yet--we don't have an ethnic monopoly on them. That's the funniest thing about most ethnic humor: fill in the blank for your big fat ____ wedding, and most ethnic groups will identify. But many of the women in the room balked at the prevalence of the princess stereotype. They invoked their, our grandmothers: tough, strong women who made things work and whose strength helped their families survive. Both my grandmothers were strong women, and for all the crap I give my
mom about other stuff, she, too, is very strong. Entitledness was never an issue.

Michelle Cove, the moderator of the event, is directing a documentary on the new Happily Ever After. It's timely, given all the discussion about the future of monogamy. As Frank Rich discussed in his column this morning, what's up with all the shock about the Gores' split? They're human. The split has prompted a lot of chatter in print as well as online, none of it insightful. Meanwhile, I'm halfway through the New Yorker summer fiction issue (linked to it last night)--love how much I manage to read on the metro--and all the pieces so far are about relationships. Fraught ones. Are we going through a collective, national relationship crisis?

I'm in no position to answer that, so I'll leave it for you to discuss.