Hey, sorry I've been a bit slow to reply. It's been a weird 24 hours.

First, someone posted a really quite funny joke on the Yale Law School electronic bulletin board that was a mock-up of a Harvard Crimson article that said I had been hired as a professor at Harvard Law School. Some people thought it was actually serious! I guess April Fool's Day was a while ago, but I am, as anyone can tell you, not particularly a legal scholar, so it seemed an obvious lampoon. But crazier things have happened.

Then I had to figure out if I was actually going to write this op-ed piece which could be really bad for Obama, who I like. The problem is, it could be bad for me too, because it's about his friendship with the leaders of the Weather Underground, and I think unless I condemn them utterly I look like a bad person.

Then some other things happened, but I can't remember what they are.

Life never really stops being high school, which is worrisome, though I suppose I've made an effort to never quite escape college.

So, back to your question: What am I looking for? I am not going to say that old trope that I'd like someone with a sense of humor, because EVERYBODY says that, and what does that even mean? I'm afraid the answer really is tall, handsome and smart, everything else is just extra. I really like the standard good things. All my boyfriends have been the theme, with very little variation on the theme. They've all been kind of obvious choices, except that they have been terribly difficult, given me a hard time, made my life unmanageable–and I think I've had enough of that.

What's your wife like? How long have you been married? Do you like being married? Someone I know who is happily married recently described the whole thing to me as kind of tawdry, and he didn't mean it in a bad way. I think I know what he was trying to say. Just getting through the day is kind of tawdry.

Did want to mention, by the way, that they've come a long way toward treating psoriasis, so there's no reason you should have to live with the condition. But imperiousness–not so much. I mean, the only treatment is meeting someone who knows how to handle it.

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I agree with you the that Birkin bag situation amounts to madness. It's not like it brings you pleasure, like absinthe or cocaine, and yet it's being dealt with as such. Crazy! But women are crazy. And bags are cult objects. See?

As for boyfriends, I gave your interrogatory considerable thought. I must explain that my relationships amount to these rather rambling affairs with no real beginning or end, and what goes on in the middle is pretty indefensible. Pretty much, the way it always goes is it starts by, I meet some guy, sparks fly like shooting stars and fireworks and every other pyromaniac's delight–until things cool off of their own accord. Then usually he realizes he just doesn't want to get involved, which I know is code for doesn't want to get involved with me. And logically, that should be the end.

But it never is. Somehow, I just don't or won't go away, and there's enough good energy to keep things going, sometimes in fact years will go by in this middling state of no relationship, but here we are. I am very good at the bad dynamic. And I've managed to derive a reasonable amount of pleasure and satisfaction from it, or I suppose I would have recovered from this sickness by now.

At any rate, the way these relationships usually end is that finally, one fine day, I can no longer bear the pain of what's not happening, or I meet someone else who I defy technology with, or my friends give me an ultimatum because they can no longer stand to listen to me complain, or we just drift apart. Someone moves to another city or another continent, somehow I am saved by the bell.

Not that I haven't had my share of cohesive relationships that have ended with screaming matches in the TWA terminal in the Saint Louis airport (all right, so that was many years ago) or by exchanging cross words across Barrow Street. And a couple of times, I've even told someone he's just not what I wanted, or I've had that said to me. But mostly, it's all just slipped away. For a Jewish girl, I am shockingly mellow, and have really failed to hold out for a ring or anything solid. What can I say? I'm a little mutant.

And then, with all of them, time goes by, and they turn up again, there's either a reason to be in touch or there's no reason not to. Sometimes it seems like no sooner am I out the door before the guy realizes, Oh fuck! Should have never let her go! And by then it's too late. Men don't get this: When women are done, they are DONE.

But I'm always happy to keep up. I'm really not a bitter person. Which is truly a character flaw: bitterness is a self-protective trait that alerts us to when enough is enough, and I just have no sense of that. I'm just too interested to see what will happen next, and bitterness doesn't figure into the plot twist. I don't really have much use of it in any part of my life, frankly. After all, everyone who has ever hired me has eventually fired me. But then they've usually found a way to get me to work for them again, later on. Time goes on, you're up, you're down, it just doesn't seem worthwhile to be bothered about what someone did to hurt you years–or even days–hence.

My old boyfriends are like my whacked-out family at this point. I loved every single one of them so completely and truly that I just can't see fit to lose them now. I never compromised on love, I never forced myself to love someone because he seemed like the right idea or to fit the bill, I really fell hard for every guy I ever loved. You know, it's like, je ne regrette rien. I guess this is all very corny, and the result is that I'm alone now, but it's never been dull.

Your love life has led you to a more natural outcome, so for you having exes hanging around is just a pain, it's ghosts of Christmas past. But for me it's still an ongoing story. I'm waiting to see how the plot thickens–or thins…

The post How Relationships End appeared first on Jewcy.

Hope you killed the man in Reno!

You are so Johnny Cash!

That is so Jew-y of you!

I love that you are multitasking TV shows. Excellent! I too multitask, thereby accomplishing nothing, but you, you create hit fake news shows. Right now, as I compose this email, I am also sitting on an Amtrak train and reading an article about this poor (actually, apparently quite wealthy, but never mind) Palestinian scholar who can't get tenure at Barnard because she wrote things that might be construed as less than kind about Israel, and I am also eating a Cup-of-Noodles soup, and having a phone conversation about termites with my mother. But you are probably coming up with the next Daily Show for HBO and an online version of The Onion for Slate or something like that, and maybe even writing a buddy movie for Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, or whoever the kids think are funny these days, all the while I'm just typing this email and slurping away and telling my mom to look in the Yellow Pages for an exterminator.

If that paragraph made no sense, forgive me.

I'm not good at doing six things at once.

It's funny you should mention the 237th richest man in the world. As I told you, my thesis is about intellectual property, and there's a section about how rich you would be based on the order in which you receive valuable information, like a hot stock tip. And I go through the regression from the 27th richest to the 270th richest to the 27,000th richest person in the world.

So, you see, maybe our work has something in common.

Speaking of failed relationships, I know a lot about those. Somehow all my ex-boyfriends are still in my life now. No idea why. I might just look good in a rearview mirror. And all of them are good guys, just no one I'd want to be bound to anymore.

One of them, who now produces movies in LA, is somewhere in Connecticut right now, and I think he wants to hang out, which is possible, because Connecticut is, after all, a state the size of Connecticut. It's not a state the size of Rhode Island, but nothing is very far from anything else here. Eek!!!

Anyway, my favorite people all live in Brooklyn. This is a foul fact I accept.

A goattee is better than a soul patch.

All good men go through an earring phase.

Look, people in Wisconsin wear tube socks to scuba dive. You can't be blamed.

I wore nothing but black all through college. These things happen. I still have a nose ring. It looks good when I'm not wearing any clothes.

Everyone makes mistakes.

Next: Staying friends with an ex

The post What the Memoirist and the Comedy Writer Have in Common appeared first on Jewcy.

Just for fun, today I challenged my classmates to come up with six-word autobiographies of themselves, because apparently there is some new book that collects such thing.

They came up with some good ones:

Dead poet reincarnated as lawyer. Remembers.

Who has Wire Season 2? Return!

Extending childhood by accumulating university degrees.

G-Chat. Facebook. YouTube. Where was productivity?

Quarterlife crisis eventually becomes midlife crisis.

Saw my prettiest sunrise too young.

Possible snow Monday, I love California.

Why must it all slip away?

I can't believe I said that!

Failed to write an autobiography in six words.

I had a few for myself, couldn't narrow it down. Here they are:

I came, I saw, I wrote.

I didn't come, but I wrote.

I hate myself. Want to die.

Bad parents, bad boyfriends, good words.

Harvard. Job. Fired. Job. Fired. Yale.

So, Ben, what's yours?

Next: Don't hate me for living in Brooklyn

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Okay, Ben, I am now writing to you once again with my physical address present, because I am going to explain to you about the Birkin bag, which is nothing like the Birkenstock sandal. This website has some pretty nice pictures of Birkins, which are named for Jane, and you can also refer to the Wikipedia entry for further information. And then you can feel free to order one from wherever you like and send it to my residence, as is written out below, should you feel inclined to do so. I shan't complain, and indeed will be quite grateful, and will even feel it necessary to pay you tribute, to compose haikus and do ceremonial dances in your honor–in fact to show you gratitude however you see fit.

Actually, I guess I'm not going to explain anything about the Birkin bag, just let you know that it would be nice to have one. I'd prefer the Hermes orange color, but I'm not fussy.

But enough about that. Glad to hear you don't cheat on your wife. Or at least not that you're going to admit to me and everyone else. That's wise. Of course, if there's anything you want to put out there, this might be the way to do it.

So you're working on a movie, and you're doing something more with television. You're busy! What's the TV show?

I myself am not so busy. I finished law school in January, although I am still working on my thesis, which is about intellectual property and the Constitution and the invention of Hollywood and the commercial nature of American creativity and how much it sucks to move and how bicycles improved courtship possibilities in 1818. It's about other things too, it's pretty much about whatever is on my mind as I'm working on it, because Yale Law School encourages its students to think expansively. Pat Robertson, for instance, is a graduate of this institution, and he makes diet drinks.

There are many graduates of Yale Law School we're more proud to cop to, but Pat Robertson is a funny one.

So I've been living in New Haven for the last few years, but once I finish studying for the bar I'm moving back to NYC. Where do you live? Please don't say Brooklyn! Everyone lives there at this point. It's become so impossibly hip that my motto is now Kabul before Cobble Hill.

Do you wear Birkenstocks?

Have you already ordered me a Birkin bag?

Do you think anyone reading this will?

Next: Telling your life story in six words

The post Buy Me a Birkin, Then Tell Me Your Secrets appeared first on Jewcy.

This is a picture of my dog. I live with her. I do not live with the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates. I do not live with the 1986 New York Mets. I have never been a Communist. I have never voted for a Republican. Just thought you should know.

From: Ben Karlin To: Elizabeth Wurtzel

I am really proud of the fact that I have no idea what a “Birkin bag” is. I assume it is a handbag and that it is not made by the same people who make the sandals. I think that’s "birken" – and I guess I am also proud I don’t know how to spell that….and am too lazy to take the 3.2 seconds to look it up on the computer.

In many respects, this is the equivalent of you not getting the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates reference – which was a team known as “The Family.” They adopted Sister Sledge’s “We are Family” as their theme song and went on to win the World Series with Willie “Pops” Stargell and the pitcher with the baddest-ass looking glasses and delivery in baseball history.

I love that guy.

I am working on a movie right now and it’s about someone who lives in the shadow of his parent’s really bad divorce. Like, even though he is an adult and on his own, it still colors everything he does. And early on he brags to a friend about having never cheated on a girlfriend. (His dad has cheated on all his wives) And the friend tells him that he is an emotional cheater. He gets bored and cheats emotionally, which is basically the same thing.

But it is and it isn’t. Like, there are three levels to an affair:

1. Thinking about it, wanting it, but not acting on it in any way
2. Thinking about it, wanting it, talking about it with the person, but stopping short of physically consummating it.
3. Thinking abut it, wanting it, and doing it. (“It” here referring to frottage.)

They are all affairs and carry consequence, emotional and otherwise, but my strong feeling is #1 and even #2 can be forgiven. We are flawed. And sometimes even #3 can be forgiven – but not really. I mean, people forgive affairs all the time – and maybe if I was writing this from the perspective of a 65-year-old instead of 36, I would be more kind to cheaters. But I kind of think you can’t justify messing around on someone you have made a commitment to. Unless of course, the relationship is already over and it just hasn’t collapsed yet. Then the affair is basically just punctuation. Dirty, dirty punctuation.

I’m not sure any of this equation is relative to nerdlingers talking about it all theoretical and shit on a website.

Now I am realizing that I kind of evaded your question. Do I do this? Well, there was definitely a time in my life when I felt at ease flirting with people, in print and in person, when I was otherwise engaged. I think even when I was actually otherwise engaged. But since I got married, not so much. I wish I could say this is because of gallantry or some other such romantic ideal – and maybe there is a tiny part of it that is driven by that impulse – but I think it has more to do with guilt and the whole Golden Rule thing.

I re-wrote this last part a lot, torn between being totally honest and the realization that upwards of 67 other people may be reading it. I wonder if it’s possible to forget them. Make this a Method exercise. Probably not. Fuckin’ Heisenberg.

Ben

Next: Birkin Bags, Yale Law School, and the perils of hipster Brooklyn

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