Maybe I’m just not paying attention to the things that matter?

My Little Sister: Yeah, so you aren’t impressed by doctors anymore, huh?
me: Hahahaha. I think that’s true. I didn’t even realize that. 
MLS: You aren’t. I was way impressed [by this guy]. Harvard med school.
me: Yeah. Been there, done that.
MLS: Hm, I want to be at your level: “You ain’t shit” to everyone you meet.

It’s hard to say what’s important anymore.

It used to be that my mom would ask us about a guy’s GPA, SAT scores, where he got into college, where he was going, what his major was, what his parents did, on and on and on until I felt like I should start handing out questionnaires to would-be suitors who would, upon facing this seeming rectal exam thoroughness, hightail it and run for some other girl with less crazy family members. This kind of high-security clearance zeal has been replaced by one sole question [ultimately the only one that matters]: “Is he nice?” which is her way of asking, “Does he make you happy?”

Not that the idea of being in-laws with Harvard Medical School doesn’t get my mother’s engines purring somehow. But she knows Harvard Medical School doesn’t make a man great or nice or even a man.

That, and I’m sure my parents are well aware of my abilities to screen out a man. Though, of course, bad ones manage to make it past the hurtles sometimes too.

I think I’m deceptively easy to win over. Make me laugh. Make me think. Make me blush. Rinse. And repeat.

My perfect NYC date.

Last night, I had what amounts to my ideal date in NYC.

We met at 7:30 at my absolute favorite restaurant here: Hell’s Kitchen. We started off with Kitchen Coolers, which are perfectly refreshing drinks made of Tanqueray, fresh lemon juice, and a splash of black tea. The lighting there is perfect–low, dim, romantic, with candlelit shadows dancing across the walls and faces of patrons. The decor is slight and tasteful and not distracting. The food is eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-your-head good. It’s loud but not terribly so.

JET and I could still have our gossip in between bites of delicious guacamole, bean dip with corn cakes, bass stew, ahi tuna with salsa verde, and plantain gorditas with goat cheese. I’m pretty sure we were moaning audibly.

Two hours later, we walked up to the Lincoln Center Loews Theater, with a short detour to Magnolia Bakery for their dreamy banana pudding. We watched Burn After Reading by the Coen Brothers, which has received cooler than lukewarm reviews from critics and the “nonprofessional” reviewers I know. Both JET and I enjoyed the movie– it must have had something to do with George and Brad being there. That, and at one point, “clusterfuck” was seriously employed in dialogue and it was spot on. Moments in the film were incredibly gratuitously violent. But otherwise, it was an entertaining film and I would recommend that people rent it.

Regardless, I was happy to treat JET to an entire night of food and man gluttony. It was probably the best date I’ve ever been on in NYC, which should make the men that we associate with incredibly jealous.

Well, there’s an interesting theory.

George Bush: The Comeback Kid

by Stanley Fish

In the past year I have hazarded a number of political predictions, some of which (like the prediction that in a McCain-Obama matchup the Iraq war would play for the Republicans) panned out, and some of which (like the prediction that Hillary Clinton would easily win the Democratic nomination) didn’t.

Now I would like to enter these treacherous waters again and venture another prediction: within a year of the day he leaves office, and no matter who succeeds him, George W. Bush will be a popular public figure, regarded with affection and a little nostalgia even by those who voted against him and thought he was the worst president in our history.

Yes, I know that right now Mr. Bush is associated with an unpopular and disastrously expensive war, with an economic collapse brought about in part by an administration that abhors regulation, with a spectacularly inadequate response to hurricane Katrina, with a precipitous decline in America’s reputation. After all, this is a guy whose name was never mentioned at the national convention of his own party, the guy that John McCain seems barely able to remember (just as after the Enron debacle Bush seemed barely able to remember that he ever knew Kenneth Lay).

But when Bush leaves office, he leaves behind all those liabilities, even though he had a large part in producing them. The war, the economy, the environment, the Middle East, a newly bellicose Russia — these will all be either McCain’s or Obama’s problems, and Bush will just be someone who shows up regularly and says mildly self-deprecating things about himself on the way to doing some good deed, perhaps in the company of his father and Bill Clinton.

What does Bush have to do? Not much, just be himself, not the wise and inspiring leader of the Western world — he never quite got that one right — but the amiable, funny, folksy and gregarious guy who tricked himself and the rest of us into thinking he was something more. Now he doesn’t have to do that. We’ll not be depending on him, so we’ll be free to like him.

And the fact is that he’s likable. I don’t mean on the superficial level of being someone you’d want to have a beer with. It’s deeper than that. He comes across as a basically decent man who is at peace with himself. Despite the fun poked at his verbal maladroitness, he is actually quite skillful (certainly more skillful than either Al Gore or John Kerry) in conveying his positions succinctly and persuasively. (He didn’t win two national elections — well, maybe one — by accident.) He may not be an intellectual, but he isn’t dumb and he is shrewd enough to play his “aw shucks” personality for all it’s worth. And he has a really good sense of humor (something Barack Obama seems to lack) and a comedian’s ability to make capital out of his own malapropisms. Putting aside the agendas for which he will no longer be held responsible, what’s not to like?

In addition, the road to rehabilitation will be shorter for him than it was for some of his predecessors. It took a while for Harry Truman’s feistiness to erase the memory of the 22 percent favorable rating he had at the end of his tenure. Richard Nixon had to make his way back from disgrace, and he did it being smarter than anyone else (he was, I think, the smartest president of the 20th century) and becoming an astute political commentator and historian. Jimmy Carter just continued being good and after a while it payed off in a Nobel Prize. Bush I’s basic, undemanding decency kept shining through after he left office. Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan didn’t need rehabilitation; each would have won a third term easily and still could (even though Reagan is dead).

Of course, rehabilitation can’t begin until your term is over, which may be why Bush is acting as if his term is, in fact, over. Some think that either Henry Paulson or Nancy Pelosi is now president. There are still occasional foreign policy forays and talks with international leaders, but they seem more ceremonial than substantive. Bush remains the titular head of his party, but the party is running away from him, and he seems irrelevant to the political process. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, for it allows him to appear to be above the fray as he prepares to exit or, rather, as he is already exiting.

How will he occupy his time? Roving ambassador? Baseball commissioner? University president? (Don’t groan; he’d probably be good at it.) I don’t know, but I do expect that one night in the not-too-distant future, some TV host will be calling for the drum roll and announcing, with pleasure and pride, “Heeeere’s Georgie.”

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Interesting right? Compelling? Maybe only a little.

I have to say though that after I saw the documentary Journeys with George, I was really taken in by W. Not in a “Oh, I’m so lucky he’s my President! Yippee!” sory of way. But definitely in along the linse of ”What a sweet dopey man”.