Happy Fab 40th, Kit!

Happy Fab 40th to one of my newest good friends, Kit. Kit and I met on a work project two summers ago that had us commuting weekly between Los Angeles and New York. The 16 hour days were long and the Red Eyes on Jet Blue were less than glamorous, but we also had a lot of fun.

At first glance, you might think that Kit and I aren't very much alike. For starters, I'm like a foot taller than her (Kit, if you're reading this, I actually have a bag of nice clothes of mine that shrunk that I'm planning to send to you). She's a Southern girl; I'm a Northern girl. She's brunette; I'm blonde. She calls herself a Jackass in jest; I try to avoid using any variation of the word "ass." She talks a mile a minute, to everybody, while some people might describe me as a bit reserved, calm. But on the inside, my inner monologue sounds a lot like Kit does on the outside - and that's what I like about her so much: she says so many of the things I think, but might not say out loud.

A big success in her own right, she's also a huge champion of others. She relates to people immediately, nodding as she soaks in all of their biographical information, gets the big picture fast, and sees things in them that others might not see. For that reason, she gives great advice and encourages and helps friends with gusto.

The Avis rental car lady at the Long Beach airport loved her when she asked the perfunctory "was everything satisfactory," and Kit, who doesn't do perfunctory, peered into the little booth, read her name tag and sang, "Di-ane, we've been C-ruisin' in the Mini." "C-ruisin!" Only Kit could make the mini-van seem kind of cool and make the Avis lady laugh too.

Kit was the first person I told about my idea for "My Fabulous 40th Birthday" and of course, she thinks it could be HUGE! Big TV Show! And I love her for that. She's also probably the one friend who hasn't even read this blog -- "I can't get the damn address right." -- and I love her for that too.

Happy Fabulous 40th, Kit!

Turning 40 - Wordle Style

Lots of different thoughts about turning 40 swirling in my head...here are some:

(After half-an-hour of trying to make this bigger, I give up. You can see it big by clicking this link.)

_APPY _ORTIETH _IRTHDAY, LANCE!

I'm sorry it has been a while...time got away from me, but I couldn't let the week wrap up without acknowledging that my friend Lance turned 40 last weekend.

I first met Lance when we were both the new college grads working at a PR agency in Los Angeles. We weren't in the same department, so I didn't know him well until we were both summoned as a last resort to fix a client situation. Apparently someone had rubbed a client the wrong way (possibly literally...we never got all the details), and they needed new reps to patch things up. So, they sent the kids.

Part one of the assignment was a road trip - my very first business trip. As we stood on line at the airport, I told Lance I liked his luggage. "Thank you, I won it when I was Teen Week Champion on Wheel of Fortune." I spent the rest of the trip hearing the blow-by-blow of Lance's 30 minutes with Pat Sajak, and was thrilled when several years later, I actually got to see the video tape. It is still the best half-hour of television I've seen in my life.

First of all, in the video, seventeen-year-old Lance is a soprano. Next, like a true publicist in the making, he squeezes a personal plug into every on-screen moment. For every letter he chooses, he mentions a friend or relative, "I'll take a 'K' as in Kelly, Pat." But the big moment comes when he's up big in dollars, and the puzzle is so easy to solve: "_oney Island _ot _og." Any New Yorker knows exactly what this is, but a kid from a small town in Northern California? Not so much. So he guesses a "Z" or something. But in typical, uniquely Lance-like luck, the next person loses a turn, the next is equally clueless, he gets a second chance and he figures it out! In the end, he wins a car and nearly suffocates Pat Sajak in a bear hug.

Back to the business trip - the clients loved us and the next week they were back in LA and we took them to the Dodgers game. Again, we knew nothing about entertaining clients, but we had a great time. We used all the money the company gave us to buy not only us and them beer and hot dogs, but everyone in our entire section. It was like spending the day with Ferris Bueller, without the snark and sarcasm.

Cut to 17 or 18 years later, and Lance still has that same joie de vivre. He reports that his wife, "J as in Jennifer," (for whom I believe he bought a necklace during his Wheel appearance - it was back when you still went shopping in their showcase vs. getting cash), had a great celebration for him that truly surprised and touched him.

So, Lance, _APPY _ORTIETH _IRTHDAY!! And many more!

Happy Fabulous 40th Birthday to My Oldest Friend

Just like The Simpsons is the longest primetime entertainment show on TV, and Phantom of the Opera is the longest running show on Broadway, Marianne is the longest running show in my life -- we've been friends since kindergarten -- and today is her fabulous 40th birthday.

Marianne and I were the best of friends growing up. We spent hours together doing a lot of typical 1970s stuff, mostly playing Barbies and rollerskating up and down the street. We had two pairs of roller skates that we'd take turns wearing - one was a set of sneaker roller skates and the other was the metal kind that went over your shoes and you needed a key to adjust. Clearly the sneaker set was superior, but we'd always take turns wearing both.

We also did a lot of oddball stuff, which was probably why we were friends. What defines oddball? Clown School.

I loved being with Marianne's family as much as I liked being with Marianne, and they liked me too. So much so that one time when Marianne was sick, they invited me to take her place at a John Denver concert.

I spent many June Thirteenths at some pretty great parties. Marianne's birthday parties were always wonderfully old-fashioned, with creative party games, relay races, and cakes with special dolls baked into them.

I'm not sure what Marianne is up to on this June 13th, but I hope it is a fabulous 40th birthday!

The Silly List (a registered trademark of My Fabulous 40th Birthday)

Other than the fact that these are observations I've made over the past four decades (or possibly just the last four years), this blog post has nothing to do with turning 40. Please allow me the detour to share...THE SILLY LIST.

The Silly List began a number of years ago, when my parents attended the opera for the first time and deemed it...well, silly. They weren't saying it was bad, just a little silly (to them). Thus began an ongoing mental compilation of The Silly List. Over the years, I've added to it - here are five of my top ten items on The Silly List. Again, silly's not bad, it's just silly; I have no feelings of ill will towards these inductees. Five more to come in a future installment, if you like these:

THE SILLY LIST

1. Pre-school Graduations. Four year-olds in caps and gowns - how could this not make the list?

(image: Sterni.net)

2. Twitter. Yes, there are practical uses (finding out when the cupcake truck is outside our office building) and at times it has emerged as a real news medium (the Iranian protests), but 95% of it just seems silly. I know, I'll be eating my words in the future...


3. Fruit Cozies. I know people love to knit, but does an apple really need its own sweater?


4. Paying Famous People a Lot of Money to Do Voiceovers for Animated Films. The kids have no clue, and there are so few kids' movies, we're going to go no matter who does the voices. Ray Romano isn't getting me into the theater.

(image: allmoviephoto.com)

5. Lamb Chop Ruffles. They're cute (I always want to save them to be Barbie toques) but what do they really bring to the party? At least their cousins, corn-on-the-cob holders and wine glass tags, have a function. Ruffles are pure frill. (As it turns out, after writing this, I looked it up and that's what they're actually called "frills.")


(image: tasteofhome.com)

More to come...

You Know...the Whatdaya-Call it...Part 2

I heard from a lot of you that you related to my issues with word retrieval (if you recall, my memory lapses included the words "cutting board," "counter-intuitive," and "iPhone.") I recently read this article by Cathleen Schine from the April issue of More, and thought you might get a chuckle out of it too.

This excerpt is the best part and explains it all, especially the utter surprise I always feel when I can't readily produce the word I have in mind...

"“That book . . . the one about . . . you know . . . ” I say.

“By what’s his name?” Sarah says.

“No, the other one, the other one . . . ” Molly says.

“Oh, that book!” Sarah cries.

“That one, yes, that one!” I say.

“By her!” Molly says, and we all nod happily.

This conversation took place in a publisher’s office a year or so ago: a writer, an editor and an agent, all of us the same age, all of us waving our arms and nodding vigorous encouragement to the others, as if we were hunting dogs, huge-pawed puppies in the woods of middle-aged memory just learning to retrieve dead ducks, gingerly, in our big slobbery jaws. Scientists call this inability to recall a name “TOT,” or tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. It has something to do with the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices. I’m sure there are scientific names for many of the varieties of memory challenges I live with, though few, I suspect, with such a jolly, colloquial ring as TOT." (MORE, April 2010, Cathleen Schine)

ROLL WITH IT: SARBJIT'S 40th BIRTHDAY BOWLING BASH

As I've said before, My Fabulous 40th Birthday isn't a monologue, it's a collective celebration of turning 40. And at least in my world, people are turning 40 every day in every which way. Just this week, I received an invitation from a new acquaintance to "party like it's 1970," heard from an old high school friend celebrating his 40th on the beach in Bali, and received this email from my college buddy, Sarbjit.

I first met Sarbjit when we were college freshmen. He asked if I'd come to his dorm room to help braid his long hair so he could tuck it into a turban, or more likely, a baseball cap. His mom had always done it up until then and he didn't know how. I bet he asked all the girls to do that. Nice try, Sab!

Anyhow, braiding led to friendship - one that has lasted 22 years to-date. Sab, a blogger in his own right, Sports Doing Good, offered up this lovely contribution to our collective 40th Birthday Celebration. I give you:

The New Becomes Old Which Becomes New Which Becomes Old…
by Sab Singh

April 11. My 40th birthday. Not something I was especially excited about but neither was it something I dreaded. Birthday are old hat at this point. I don’t think about my age much. Just sort of have a feeling about it.

But over the past 2 to 3 years, my birthday has taken on a new meaning because it is now another time for me to “party” with my nieces. Well, how do you party with the pre-5 year old set? You do what they like to do (what they consider “new school”, even if they don’t know what that term means). And if you are lucky, it is what you liked to do when you were that young. (old school baby!). And for my 40th, we found common ground…we went bowling.

My old school birthday entailed hitting the bowling alley in my hometown of Rockville Centre, NY. The bowling alley has been around for more than 30 years, which I find really comforting living in a world in which so much is new, with so much turnover that is not always for the best.

The bowling party entailed my parents (the older set), me, my brother and his wife (the not-so old set), and the girls (the newbies). We all took a shot at the old game of bowling, which has a decidedly new feel to it, with electronic scoring, fancy graphics, and a more polished environment.

The older sets laughed about how long it has been since we were in a bowling alley, how much fun it was, and then rejoiced in the wide smiles we saw on the girls’ faces after each new ball was rolled.

We had a great day, this celebration of the 40th year since my birth. April 11, 1970 launched a period of newness. And while some of the “new” has become (relatively) old, I am thrilled that the two newest people in my life who I love very much see that “old” as being new. And that feeling will never get old.