Low-Tier Normies, Wicked Sons & Nepo Babies

The anxiety is building. I got an email last week asking me for two references for a possible job. I felt hopeful. It’s been days. How long does it take to ask someone if I’d be a worthwhile hire? How long does it take another one to answer? Do I jinx it all by even committing these sentences to paper? By hitting “publish?”

When the phone rang yesterday afternoon, as I was taking a ten-minute snooze, I didn’t want to look to see who it was. Uncertainty was hope in that moment. They were calling to tell me I got the job and it’s even better and bigger than what I applied for. At the same time, I knew it was unlikely and when I finally looked at the message, I knew my hope had been fantasy.

Later the phone rang again with a number I didn’t recognize.

“This is your congressman, Hakeem Jeffries….” Did I want to hold the line for a constituent call? I did not.

Suzi was at the pet hospital Monday—she got an MRI, a spinal tap, the works. She had a seizure a month ago. She was hobbling a week and change ago and shrieking in pitches that made my skull spasm and ring as if the worst of the worst of the worst had befallen her. She hop-walked on constitutionals and let murmured cries escape. She had been on a cocktail of gabapentin and codeine and another narcotic and Tylenol and looked stoned most of the time. I kept expecting the worst and then, it felt all of a sudden, she was better.

She’s not hobbling. She’s not crying. She’s not medicated anymore. We are still taking it easy for the time being, and she has to go back in May for an orthopedic visit but it seems now that this latest unease was a muscle pull or strain of some sort. Was she playing too hard? Going too rough and tumble? She did she land funny on a run in the park?

Does it matter now? Not really. She’s well(ish). She seems with it. Lucid. Energetic, except for at this very moment as the spring sun pours in the through the window and she luxuriates in its illumination.

Isaiah got a haircut last week which he hated and regretted and swore up and down he’d never cut it again. He went on and on about being so upset he was “speechless,” blind to the irony and took my laughter as mockery of his ‘do rather than amusement at his histrionics. He wore a baseball hat on the subway to shield himself. His coach called him “Unc.” He complained he looked like an egg. He complained that formerly handsome (kinehora), he was now an LTN (low-tier normie).

By yesterday he said it had grown out enough that he felt good again.

Here he is in a video filmed pre-haircut.

He was cast to play a high school jock of the kind that populated the teen shows of the UPN and CW from days of yore for a parody bit about nepo babies produced and written and starring the son of two famous actors.

“He was cast,” I write, as if deus ex machina herself got involved, and not lil old moi who saw and responded posthaste to the nepo baby’s post looking for boys in NYC for the gig. There was more email back and forth than I would’ve expected but then, I’m not in the biz, and maybe it’s like that sometimes.

On the morning of the shoot Isaiah was hard to wake, and I got nervous about his being late and making a bad impression and felt myself stage-momming out for a job he never even asked for. In the car, I told him all of this—how silly of me to be pushy about this—and if he wants to do other such gigs, that’s fine but he has to take the lead.

Today’s the end of Passover (well, tomorrow, but the last two days are holidays) and I went to services this morning. I had a dream I found a trove of tallits belonging to my dad; that’s neither there nor here. It felt consoling; warm. After the service there was a kiddush, a little something to eat and drink, and Sam asked me how the seders were last week. I got teary-eyed answering and then in a subsequent conversation cried again. Going to services makes me feel close to my father.

In fact, the seders were lovely. Rebecca and Cliff hosted and my dad’s absence was conspicuous. We sang the songs his way (dirge-like but with tremendous oomph!) and remembered his jokes and parsed the text in the way he loved. Still, it felt a little empty to me.

I thought a lot about the parable from the Haggadah of the four sons—the wicked; the wise; the simple; the one who knows not how to ask—amidst especially the context of conformity and community. What makes a community? What are the rules that govern it? How much dissent can it endure before it breaks down? How elastic can be? How porous? But also, when we call someone wicked—what does that say about us, about our need to label people and categorize them? About our disinclination to allow that people can change? And why is the son wicked anyway? Because he asks a pointed question? Because he doesn’t accept everything as it’s told to him?

At the service this morning, the rabbi spoke of the killing of the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites as they fled through the parted waters of the Red Sea in the biblical story of the Exodus. He made a connection to this week’s threat of “annihilation” of Iran. Wait, let me correctly quote DJT in case you missed it:

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

What an abominable thing to say. What an abomination our president is.

Sam made the point that he was threatening nothing less than committing genocide. I hadn’t thought of it quite like that but it’s true—and patently unforgivable. What a time—wretched and scary and violent.

Behold the budding magnolia.

May it distract you from the mayhem and may peace and harmony prevail everywhere.