If you want to see my brief pictorial review of the New England Flower and Garden thingy at the Expo Center, it’s here.

Met a friend who’d just returned from Israel in the People’s Republic of Cambridge yesterday. It was kind of an overcast Winnie-the-Poo style blustery day, which I like. My first memories were of days like that–I can’t say whether it was early spring or late autumn, but the pleasure I take in inclement weather is due to a kind of emotional atavism. It’s like liking Paul McCartney and Wings, who I learned the phrase “inclement weather” from, by the way. You remember the song, “With a Little Luck”:

There is no end to what we can do together.
There is no end, there is no end.
The willow turns his back on inclement weather;
And if he can do it, we can do it, just me and you.

I can’t say whether this is, objectively speaking, a good song. It’s inextricably tied to the mystical, blustery, happy-sad days of my childhood. I will say I’m grateful it was Wings on the soundtrack of my early days, and not, like, Billy Ocean.

Speaking of. We went to John Harvard’s Pub to hang out yesterday, and it was, like, eighties night, or something, and all my worst memories from high school came rushing back. Eighties nostalgia should be illegal. It was a decade without merit. And the music reflects that. But for those poor children of the Eighties, I guess Wham! is their Wings.

So we’re sitting there aghast, reliving the audio car crash of the eighties over and over, and my friend’s like, all that’s lacking is Billy Ocean’s “Get Out of My Dreams, Get into My Car” and sure enough, next thing you know, it was booming from the sound system. I think the chorus bears quoting at length:

Get outta my dreams
Get in to my car
Get outta my dream
Get in to the back seat baby
Get in to my car
Beep Beep, yeah
Get outta my mind
Get in to my life
Ooooooh
Oh I said hey (Hey) you (You)
Get in to my car

After all that desperate entreaty, did she ever actually get in? I don’t think she did. He’s still begging for it on the fade-out, isn’t he?

Whereas Sir Paul manages to get his rocks off in his pop song: “Can’t you feel the comet exploding?” Yeah, baby.

Anyway, the New England Flower Show’s going on at the Expo Center at the JFK/UMass stop. So when I got on the train there yesterday afternoon, you had quite a few passengers who looked like they don’t usually take the T getting on. Gingerly, with wide, sort of frightened eyes. And then they look at you sort of pleadingly, like, “please don’t hurt me!”

It’s hard to believe, when you use the T more or less daily, that there are really people who never do. Public space can be a scary place when you’re not used to it. And even when you are. There’s danger everywhere, from germs to bad behavior to the constant threat of bodily harm. It’s a wonder it works most of the time. I mean, it’s pretty amazing that people from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds can all share the same train without incident for the most part. But I can see why SUV-suburbanites would be sceptical.

I brought along some reading that turned out to be somehow appropriate. I subscribe to The Atlantic Monthly, although for the last several years, since its neocon editorial shift, it’s been consistently irritating. There’s apparently a class of people out there who think it’s still 1954, and they all write for The Atlantic. There was a big brouhaha in the last issue on the subject of good girls giving blowjobs. For the trust-fund chicks in question a blowjob’s about the only meaningful job they’ll likely ever have. I say put ‘em to work!

In this month’s issue there were seven(!) lengthy letters to the editor on the subject of teenage knobgobblers. It’s supposedly an epidemic now. Ever since it was on Oprah. But come on. What happens to people when they have kids? Are their memories of their own teenage years automatically erased? I can tell you, and this is probably TMI, but when I was a teen, I didn’t have any trouble getting it, either. I don’t think it’s anything new.

The author of the piece, Caitlin Flanagan, laments: “What girls are discovering, to their infinite heartbreak, is that boys will happily agree to any form of sexual experimentation a girl cares to offer [duh], but will reserve certain honors for the girls who build power in the ancient ways.” It comes down to what evolutionary psychologists call the “Madonna/Whore dychotomy”–but our children aren’t learning about evolution in school, unfortunately, so they’re missing out on some vital information here.

She goes on: “If you want a boy to invite you to the prom, or to treat you well, or to speak highly of you to his friends, or to spend long hours thinking about how he can work his way into your heart—if what you want from him is courtship, romance, and respect—the very last thing you should do is ambush him with a sexual favor.” But what if you just like giving head? Help me out here, girls? Is it possible you could enjoy it? I had a girlfriend in high school who sweared she loved it.

Caitlin concludes: “That girls no longer know this to the marrow of their bones—that this knowledge comes to them in a slow awakening of misery and shame—is testament to how badly our culture has failed them.” Wow. It’s worse than reefer madness! Reminds me of the Victorian-era cartoons depicting the “two paths”:

So, girls, think twice before you give that first blowjob. It could lead to a life of complete and utter dissolution. And boys, for God’s sake, stop touching yourselves!

Anyway, we stopped into the Harvard Hillel Center before the pub, and, always on the look-out for free T-reading material, I picked up a copy of the Harvard Mosaic(a review of Jewish Thought and Culture)–although I see here that an annual subscription actually costs $25.65, which is $12.82 per issue. I wonder why I thought it’d be free?

Anyway, I guess that means I cadged a copy.

I wanted it, particularly, for an essay on “The Debate over Circumcision and Conversion in Nineteenth-Century American Reform Judaism,” which seemed like it would be ideal T-reading for the trip home, and was! The big question Reform Judaism was grappling with in 1843 was whether converts to Judaism should be snipped. In the able hands of author Lora Dagi, the debate reads like a thriller. It’s pretty riveting, let me tell you. Will they or won’t they snip it? The answer’s yours for $12.82.