Curl up with a good blonde

Ground Zero Mosque

Okay okay I know as a liberal, human rights fighting democrat who voted for Obama, (even though it broke my heart that it wasn’t Hillary) I should also be fighting for the right of the ground zero Mosque

But I can’t and I don’t

Yes, they have the right to be whereever the hell they want to be in this country, just as any religious house of worship should, but come on!

Ground zero?? !!!

That’s like taking the wounds of the loved ones of the nearly 3,000 dead innocent people and just pouring in some salt, gasoline and rubbing.

I watched the towers fall from my roof in downtown Manhattan. I went down to ground zero and worked feeding the first responders in September of 2011! I got the gift of Asthma for my hard work, plus a heaping does of anxiety, PTSD, (that’s post traumatic stress not a sexually transmitted disease dears).. I did not bury someone I love and can not know what it was like for those who did, (if they were lucky enough to even have a body to bury)..but I cannot stand the idea of going to ground zero and seeing a Mosque.

It’s just not right!
Two &@*@*((!)))!_! Blocks from the demised towers, destroyed by Muslim fundamentalists, to put up a Mosque. NO! IT JUST ISNT RIGHT!

Yes I believe in the right of all Muslims to freedom of prayer, freedom of worship, as I do all religions, but NOT in this spot and quite honestly, if the folks behind this, really did care about peace and harmony they wouldn’t be fighting so hard to shove this up our asses.
If that Mosque goes up it will aid in dis-harmony and hurt peaceful innocent Muslim Americans
and
Osama and his crew of jackals will be laughing their butts off.
So No, I DO NOT SUPPORT THIS!
I don’t give a rat’s ass if Obama does. I don’t.
Nuff said.

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Proposition 8 is full of hate
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Proposition 8 can go to hell
there just made that up dears

let me tell you my darlings
out here in ptown for gay family week
there is no better place to celebrate today’s ruling
by California’s federal court that proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage
is unconstitutional

ok
ok
too early to celebrate
as for sure the right-wingers will appeal
but my dears
let us rejoice all the same

Judge walker, who is like my new hero dude
Wrote as follows:
Prop. 8 “fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.”

He also stated; “Proposition 8 both unconstitutionally burdens the exercise of the fundamental right to marry and creates an irrational classification on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Zippity doo da zippity ayyy judge walker is A OK!

Let me tell you, my own personal story with prop 8 my dears…my own brother voted for it, yep, my flesh and blood.
When I asked him how he could go to the polls and vote away the rights of his own sister to marry, he said, “I have to vote as the Torah tells me to.” Lord do I hate religion when it comes in the way of folks being able to think for themselves.
I was like but Bro, you just voted away my right to marry the woman I love, to which he replied, “Marry who you want, just don’t get married in California!’

Oy friggen vey.
Well clearly my brother wasn’t the only one who voted no to my human rights as 52 percent of voters in California can attest, but you know, I’d like to think that today, if the vote came up again, the majority would vote against it.

But regardless my darlings, going to the polls to take away my right to marry…WRONG.

So here in ptown, like I said, family week is happening, and yeah it’s annoying as hell, screaming multi-racial adopted kids of lesbian moms and perfectly coifed blonde-haired blue eyed children in designer ware for the gay boys. Sheesh I know you can’t generalize but ummm I AM ANYWAY. It’s like the gay boys have stepford kids and the dykes have a rainbow of sizes, shapes and colors. but hey in the words of a rock chick I had the pleasure of hanging with recently, “It’s all beach!”

Regardless of how annoying the thousands of screaming kids are, it’s pretty damn nice to see them all celebrating diversity, happy and healthy and just as annoying and with just as much ice cream dripping down their chins and un-mentionables dripping out their noses as the straight parents kids.

So to all the families in ptown this week
And to all the couples in Californian waiting for their chance to the altar
I say a hearty, happy and healthy YAHOOOOO
And as my dear old Irish bartender pal Colum used to say…
“FUCK THE BEGRUDGERS!”

well my dears
just in case you are starting to think i’m a big pile of sentimental mush
let me tell you i went out to see a wild ass- new wavish band called Space Pussy
was quite the night my dears
and i rocked so hard that Ryan Landry the lead singer asked me if i wouldn’t mind joining them for a future gig
“but i can’t sing, can’t stretch a note..” said I

“all i can do is jump around and scream!”

“Perfect!” said he… “What do you think I do!”

ahhah so who knows a punk rock career in the making
for this mental yentyl
hey stranger things have happened.
….
i’ve been hearing Patti Smith singing Gloria in my head ever since

GLORIAAAAA G. L. O. RIA
GLORIAAAAAAAAA

but the song, i would really do…or rather scream
should i ever really take the stage at the grand old age of umm 40-ish
would be this little ditty by the Xray spex
10 points to anyone who recalls this darling little bed-time melody

Oh Bondage Up Yours by the Ex Ray Spex

Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard
But i think
Oh Bondage Up Yours!
One, Two, Three, FOUR!

Bind me tie me
Chain me to the wall I wanna be a slave
For you all

Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more

Chain-store chain-smoke
I consume you all
Chain-gang chain-mail
I don’t think at all

Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more

Thrash me crash me
Beat me till I fall
I wanna be a victim
For you all

Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more

hey kids sorry not to post sooner
but i’ve been cooking, painting and writing up a storm for my show on WOMR, called BITE THIS
kind of a theme going since my column in BUST magazine
is called EAT ME
but i digress
anyway i’m staring at the rain over the provincetown bay right now
and it’s just glorious my dears
makes me feel as though
all of life’s troubles are far, far away
last night this not such a spring chicken
went out dancing till the wee hours
and showed all them 20-somethings
that 40-somethings can still full on rock baby!
now it’s all peace and mist and rain and gray water and surreal dreamy lost fishing boats
just magical
i do hope you are finding some peace in your summer
some time to play
dip in the pool, bay, ocean, river
or well at least bath tub
remember
life is about taking chances
open your heart
and let someone new in today
just put your toes in the pool my dears
the rest comes naturally

hey kids
this cowgirl is out in ptown celebrating the 4th of july holiday
saw the most amazing and endless display of fireworks from my perch over looking the bay last night
just magical
in the middle of it
i was overtaken with a feeling of simple and sheer joy
i heard a toddler squeal with delight and felt like doing the same
one of the gang i was watching the fireworks with said
man, i wish there was a pill you could take to feel like a toddler
someone else said
there is
it’s called acid
hmmm
well for me
it was called fireworks
i need to work on feeling like a toddler more often

happy 4th ya’all

My mother’s last name wasn’t Goldstein, Goldblatt, Lowenstein or Lefkowitz. It was Ross. Well, actually Ross was her married name. Harriet Ruby Gross was her maiden name. I went thru high school feeling extremely grateful that Gross wasn’t my last name. I mean the kids really terrorized a girl whose last name was Hicky. I can imagine what they do to you if your last name is Gross. I hear it now. “You know she’s really Gross. I mean Literally!”

When we would come home from school and mom would try to feed us some horrifying vestibule from the old country, (not the old country she was born in which was New Jersey but the old country her parents were born in; Hungary,) like Kishka, (don’t even get me started on Kishka, I think it’s cow intestines stuffed with potatoes, chicken fat and assorted meat parts, I don’t really want to know because I’ve eaten Kishka. Kishka also applies to the region below the bellybutton and above the groin.)We would announce, “MOM that’s really gross!” to which she would reply, “Don’t say Gross! That’s a lovely Jewish name and now they ruined it!”

They by the way, is a generic name given to any of a host of conspirators who take something nice and ruin it. Like for instance, “They” made the lovely pine trees Christian by anointing them as Christmas trees. “They have to take everything nice and make it GOY!” Mom would announce every Christmas season. “A pine tree was just a pine tree, until “They” ruined it!”

But I digress, my point is, mom’s last name wasn’t exactly ringing of matzo balls and Kreplach. When I finally decided to compile my many memoirs which were largely inspired by and often about my larger then life mother. I realized that while the title, “The Devil and Mrs. Goldstein” was an apt teaser of borsht lasagna to come, “The Devil and Mrs. Ross” didn’t quite work. Much the same way folks meeting a woman named Mrs. Ross weren’t quite prepared for mom who was more then Jewish, she was, if there is such a thing, uber Jewish. Now the name she should have had Mrs. Rosenthal would have worked but it had been de-jewishized.

I’d grown up thinking my dad’s name was shortened when his father came thru Ellis Island, the way lots of names did. “Rosenthal… what the heck!…Let’s just go with Ross. Next in line!” I didn’t find out until I was well into my 20’s that out of 12 brothers and sisters it was only my dad Marty and his idol; big brother Sam who shortened the name. They were both enterprising businessmen and didn’t want to suffer the wrath of anti-Semitism across this country in the 1940’s. So they went with Ross; a nice safe, generic name. I guess it was true. The only famous person I know with the last name Ross, is Diana Ross, not exactly a yenta. The name Ross never suited me as a last name, far too normal, I suspect, but it worked fine after an I was added to make Rossi, as my first and later on, my only name. Folks tend to think I’m Italian until I drop one too many Oys.

Harriet Ruby Ross almost sounds like an intellectual or a politician or a mathematician or a poet, or perhaps a musician and in fact my mother was all those things.

She played the violin at one point with an orchestra that I recall was the New Jersey State Symphony. She wrote poetry, one piece won a contest and was written about in a local paper. She was a brilliant mathematician, a college professor, spoke Yiddish, German, French and English.

But while I still sit in awe of all the accomplishments the over-achiever Harriet Ruby Gross- Ross made before I was born, I never really knew that woman.

The woman who raised me. Harriet, the larger then life, Yiddisha mama who saved more money on coupons than most people make in their lifetime, who could scold you in four languages sometimes at the same time, who believed that if her children visited a church we would be brainwashed by the “They’ and ruined the same way they ruined Easter eggs, this is the woman I grew up with.

She also taught me that laughing at life was often the best way to get through it and that there was only half joy in buying anything full price.

The name Harriet Ross simply doesn’t fit this woman and so I have decided to simply give my mother (god rest her soul) a new name. Why you ask. For the reason Jewish woman always answer a question with a another question. Why not?

So for all those in earshot, I shout out, loud and proud, I am Harriet Ruby Gross Ross Goldstein’s daughter!

Now I have to go. With all this excitement. My kishka’s are killing me.

hey kids
dragged my tired tuchas out to ptown for some of the three R’s
reading
riting
and relaxation
takes me about 4 days to shake off nyc when i come out here
so i’m still all jittery and wackadoo
plowing down the street like i’m late for something
sigh
never occurs to me how much city life makes you speed up
till you try to slow down
so on that note
pease and happy summer
to you’all

hey kids, sorry not to post sooner but its june and ive been knee deep in wedding food
this weekend i made my specialty
jewish kimchi
well its my kimchi recipe and im a jew
so thats what its called
anyway it was killer and even the korean guests came back for seconds, so that’s a compliment
hope you’re all staying cool if you can

meanwhile here’s how i make my kimchi
cut up cabbage, daikon, carrots, cucumber, radish
keep separate
cover in kosher salt, then cover in water and let it pickle overnight
make a dressing out of red hot chili flakes, fish sauce, garlic, sugar, rice wine vinegar,scallions, fresh ginger and love
next day wash off your veges and marinate in this fiery stuff
try to cut some of the heat with loads of sugar
marinate in this for two days, then serve
killer dude

hey kids
i have to say i don’t know diddly about soccer
and if it weren’t for the fact that just about every bar in the east village had folks spilling out of it and onto the side walk hooting and hollering and drinking beer and wearing soccer shirts and if it weren’t for all the banners that read
world cup
i wouldn’t have even known that it was like a big soccer thing
happening
so while i was at the gym
i decided to plug my ear plugs into the bike and check it out
i heard this terrible buzzing
and at first i thought there was something wrong with the tv
then i realized there was something wrong with the crowd
they were possessed by a thousand bees
then of course i turned on CNN
cause i couldn’t take another second of the noise
and heard all about the horn controversy
damn right they should ban those suckers
i mean sheesh
i dont even like soccer
and i was turned off pronto
by the horrible sound of a thousand horns
it must be worse to be on the field
so from one
non sports babe
who knows nada about soccer
i say hell no
don’t blow
your stupid ass horns

hey kids had something of a fabulous experience today
i dragged my jewish tuchas out to the WNYC headquarters to tape live on NPR’s morning takeaway show
the bit i was on was called smackdown and if you scroll down to my linkie love list
to Rossi on NPR
you’ll find me and my fabu barbecue sauce
the show went great of course my dears
but dear lord
this gal is NOT a morning person
how on earth do you early morning folks do it
what is your secret?
oh no
no
no
i don’t even want to know what the world looks like before 11am