That was the end of the reruns

I'll be back with fresh, compelling new content bright and early tomorrow morning. In the meantime, don't forget to watch the season premiere of Mad Men tonight. Woo-hoo!

Summer reruns: How do I explain a bidet to a four-year-old?

Lat but not least, no set of reruns would be complete without including what I believe to be my number one traffic generator of all time. It's from 29 March 2009 and here it is again.

Help! My husband, my son and I were over at my cousin's new house last weekend and while we were walking around the master bath and oohing and aahing over the size and decor it was hard not to notice that she had one of those things (I blush when I say the word) next to the toilet. I can't help it, every time I see one they just scream out to me "We have lots of s*x and don't shower afterwards." Anyhow, my four-year-old asked why they had two toilets in the bathroom. I was embarrassed and didn't know what to say, so I told him that there were two so that no one had to wait while the other one finished. He said "nasty" and didn't push it any further. But seriously, what do you tell the kids?

Mother of God woman! Part of me wants to be calm and reassuring but an even bigger part of me want to throttle you. I'm really floored by this. I mean really. What the hell kind of a question is that? Based on your description and your shame-based reaction to it, I'm going to assume what you're talking about is a bidet. There, I said it. Bidet. Repeat after me. Bi-day. See? Nothing happened. It's just a word.

Similarly, a bidet is an object and as such it can't good or bad, it just is. Whatever discomfort you feel about bidets is coming from your own sick mind. Bidets don't scream anything. They can't because they're objects. Sex is another word that's just a word. You might have a better grip on what to tell your son if you could bring yourself to spell out the word sex in an e-mail to a stranger. Similarly, penis, vagina and anus are just words. As words they can't be anything but neutral. As body parts they can't be anything other than morally neutral either. What ever meaning or significance they have, their rightness or wrongness, comes from you. They are also the body parts that get washed in a bidet. See? Simple words describing simple, every day acts. No big deal. No cause for alarm. No sweeping statements about my character for the simple act of describing something.

Your skittishness about spelling out the word sex or even writing the word bidet speak of much larger issues you have about your body, other people's bodies and the biological functions those bodies perform. For the sake of your son, please talk to somebody about this stuff. You owe it to him and more importantly, you owe it to yourself. How can you expect to be an effective parent if you can't call things what they are?

So to answer your question, "what do you tell the kids?" The answer is the truth. Tell them the truth about this and about everything else. Rather than making up a lie and getting the response you got (which by the way is the seed of your neuroses taking root in a new generation --good job!), you could have told him something as simple as "some people wash themselves in a bidet." That way, you could have called a thing what it is and you could have told him the truth at the same time. If it led to more questions, then you could have answered them. Truthfully. Pretty simple stuff, really.

And while we're on the subject of the truth, people do use bidets to clean themselves. Really. That's all they're for. Having one doesn't say anything, because it can't. It's a thing if you remember, and things don't talk. So do me a favor if you haven't already stopped reading. The next time you're in the presence of a bidet, climb on board. The Pause that Refreshes will take on a whole new layer of meaning, believe me.

Summer rerun: Pottery Barn doesn't sell Wabi-Sabi

This post ran originally on 3 December 2008.

So last week those kids over at Apartment Therapy ran a piece hailing the arrival of what they were calling the Wabi Sabi style of decorating. Ugh. Here's the photo they used to illustrate this "new" style.

It looks sterile and affectedly rustic, sort of a pared down Scabby Chic. There's nothing Wabi Sabi about those photos.

So what's Wabi Sabi? Wabi Sabi is a Japanese philosophy, it's not a style. It's purposefully un-chic and anti-trendy. Wabi Sabi is a uniquely Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature. It accepts and appreciates the natural cycles of growth, decay and death. It's simple, slow, uncluttered and it reveres authenticity above all else. And THAT is not for sale in a catalog or at the mall.

Now that Feng Shui has run its course as an Asian idea that could be appropriated to sell candles and knick knacks, I suppose the tastemakers out there are hunting for a new one to take its place. Not so fast I say. Feng Shui, while it was an aesthetic school of thought, was also an animist belief system. Embracing Feng Shui makes sense to me if you are ethnically Chinese, but if it's not your culture then it's a pose --you'll always be an outsider looking in. Sorry.

Wabi Sabi presents a similar problem but even more so. Wabi Sabi is an outgrowth of Zen Buddhism and carries with it all of the cultural trappings of Japan. I find a lot about Japanese culture that's fascinating and worth looking at more closely. Reading about Zen, or Wabi Sabi for that matter is interesting because like a lot of Eastern Thought, it runs in diametric opposition to the ideas that undergird the West. I can read about it, I can think about it, I can bring parts of it into my life, but it can never be fully mine. 

I love how Japanese pottery looks. Its rustic and imperfect finishes are an exercise in studied imperfection. I'm fascinated by it and when I look at a Japanese tea set I can appreciate its beauty. But I'll never fully grasp the cultural history behind it so I let it be an interesting and beautiful piece of pottery and leave it at that.

In many parts of the world, things that are American are cool. And sorry George Bush, it's not because they envy our "freedom." What they envy is the sophistication all things American represent. They may hate our bullying foreign policy, but they admire our pop culture. If you ever find yourself in a non-English speaking part of the world, pay attention to the T-shirts people wear. 

I remember spending a couple of days poking around in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica some years ago. At one point, I was sitting alone in a cafe and watching Costa Rica reveal itself to me. The woman who waited on me was a Russian transplant who spoke Russian-accented Spanish which was wild. I'd never heard Spanish spoken quite the way she spoke it. Through a combination of my American-accented Spanish and her Russian version of it, we could understand one another. I wanted to hear how on earth she ended up in Puerto Limon, but she wasn't interested in talking about Russia or Costa Rica for that matter. It was kind of odd, but I'm flexible, I'd survive if I didn't hear her story. However, what I couldn't help but to notice was that she was wearing a T-shirt that read "Blonde Cool Bitch in Hollywood!" Now this woman didn't speak English and probably didn't know what her T-shirt said. But her point wasn't to have it make sense. Her point wasn't to call herself a blond bitch. The point she was trying to make was that she was westernized and sophisticated. But it was a pose. 

No sophisticated westerner would be caught dead in something like that. The story of a Russian woman who emigrates to Costa Rica and waits on tables must be fascinating. I kept trying to pry it out of her, but she kept discounting her own experiences and instead wanted to talk about American TV shows. I gave up eventually. Adopting the cultural trappings of a culture you don't understand doesn't make any sense to me and it seems like a waste of energy. You also end up being a poseur, and that's never a good thing.

What's the point of all of this? Well the point is that finding an $1800 table with a distressed finish isn't Wabi Sabi despite what you may read in a magazine.

Try this if you want to get closer to the spirit of Wabi Sabi.

Not really, but it's a lot closer to the spirit of Wabi Sabi.

If you want to bring some Wabi Sabi influences into your home and life, running out and buying a bunch of crap isn't the way to do it. Instead, take care of the things you own and let them grow old under your care. The scratched up kitchen table your family's gathered around for 20 years has a story to tell, your story. Common sense and sentimentality will tell you to hold onto it and you should --you don't need an ill-informed decorating trend to tell you that. Should someone tell you that your old table is Wabi Sabi, you have my permission to call them a "Blonde Cool Bitch in Hollywood!"

Summer rerun: From the land of the shoo-fly

This post ran originally on 29 November 2008.

I was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; and no, I'm not Amish. I've been away from those gently rolling hills for a long time but Thanksgiving makes me nostalgic. I may not be Amish, but it doesn't take an Amishman to appreciate pretty countryside and an urge to make things by hand.

Arguably, Lancaster County's signature dish is a little something called shoo-fly pie. Shoo-fly pie is one of those things that everybody's heard of but never encountered first hand. Shoo-fly pie is one of my favorite things to bake and it can't be the holidays in my house without it.

The first time I ever made one for a party, everyone thought it was so exotic and cosmopolitan. That is funny on so many levels at one time I can't stand it. Anyhow, here's my recipe for cosmopolitan and exotic shoo-fly pie.

Pie dough for a nine-inch pie
1 cup of all-purpose flour
2/3 cup of firmly packed, dark brown sugar
5 tablespoons of unsalted butter (softened)
1 cup light molasses
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup boiling water

Roll out pie dough and turn into a nine-inch pie plate. Trim and flute the edges. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, brown sugar and softened butter. Mash with a fork until it reaches a consistent, crumbly consistency. In a separate bowl, beat together the molasses, egg and baking soda with a large spoon until blended. Stir in the boiling water and mix thoroughly (this will begin to foam). Stir half the crumb mixture into the molasses mixture and pour into the crust. Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture evenly over the top. Bake a 400 degrees, on the center rack, for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake until the pie filling has puffed around the sides and is firm in the center, about 20 to 30 minutes more. Cool on a rack.

Summer rerun: A whole new take on bathroom mosaics

This post ran originally on 25 November 2008.


Christoph Niemann is a former New Yorker and now Berlin-based artist who writes a blog for the New York Times. Niemann's Abstract City is always an interesting read. He talks a lot about his family and their transition to living in Germany. In a post he wrote in August, he talked about his bathroom renovation project.

According to Niemann, he'd always had a dream of doing abstract pixel drawings of masterworks using nothing but colored 4x4 ceramic tile. 4x4 is the default size for bath tile and it's something I chase people away from under normal circumstances. After having seen Niemann's handiwork, I doubt I'll be so quick to dismiss the stuff anymore.

Check this out. Here are two David Hockneys. And next to each is how Niemann interpreted them in 4x4s.

In some kind of a play for my sympathies, he took on a Rothko and it has me swooning.

Now, he's using layout software to draw a grid and then he's assigning each square a color from a palette. I'm really floored by what he did here. I mean, who could imagine taking boring old 4x4s and turning them into this? Certainly not I.

So after playing around for a while, he settled on a Warhol.

Using Andy Warhol, who was himself doing an homage, in a bathroom makes prefect sense and here's the shower stall he ended up with.

I have never seen anything like this. I'm used to looking forward at new stuff that's coming down the pike, I never think to stop and re-evaluate what's already here. These tiles are everywhere and he probably paid a dime apiece for them. I go through my normal working life thinking that wall tile that costs $35 a square foot is cheap. 4x4 ceramic is so far below my radar that I can't even see it. Pardon me, my paradigm just shifted.

So with the master bath done, Niemann turned his attention to the bathroom shared by his three sons. He relates that his sons are obsessed with the New York subway system, so he turned his interpreting skills to an MTA map.

His plan was to tile the entire bathroom, so he imported his layouts into a 3-D renderer.

So with his layout rendered, all that was left to do was install the tile. Check this out:

Mr. Niemann, I owe you a thank you. Several thank yous actually. I read the New York Times every day because I like to stay informed and I believe that the Times keeps my horizons expanded. Sometimes, and this is one of those times, they get expanded so far I don't recognize them anymore. Wow.