Soap snobbery

I’m a soap snob, and I’m proud of it.

I am the kind of person who is extra-particular about what kind of soap will enjoy the privilege of connecting with my skin. For example, I will pay $5.99 for a single bar of specialty soap instead of paying the same for an eight-pack of a brand I would find at a supermarket. Yes, one bar of good is worth eight bars of mediocre.

Where did my soap snobbery begin? Where nearly everything else does, in childhood. The only soap that my mom would buy was Zest. Why, I have no idea, but those aqua-colored bars were the only ones we used – and I got tired of them real quick.


I hoped for some Dial once in a while, or Ivory or even Safeguard (see how low my standards were back then?), but when you are not in charge of the shopping, you have to accept whatever’s in the bag. To this day, I not only will not buy Zest, I won’t even touch it. Now, I doubt that Zest is significantly worse than any other brand of supermarket soap. But I have had more than my fair share of it in this lifetime, and enough is enough.

Years later, when I was in college and had little disposable income, a bar of soap became an affordable luxury. I haunted tiny boutique stores in Santa Monica, often carrying away one small bag containing a single bar of rose- or lemon-scented soap, or several guest-sized servings of same. Under the influence of Alexandra Stoddard (author of “Living a Beautiful Life” and other MM Best Books Ever), I chose soaps with ground vanilla beans and fluffy flecks of oatmeal. (It didn’t take much to make me happy.)

I would collect soaps when I traveled – often, it was the only item I wanted that I could afford in the store. I bought soaps faster than I could use them, and it took some thoughtfulness to make sure most of them got their turn in the bathroom. In time, nearly all of them did (and those who did not, Two Dogs and I gave away to friends).

Today, there are no bars of soap in the Hakim bathroom. Only shower gel. Two Dogs is fond of Avon Naturals, and I buy it in bulk when it is on sale. We have a lavender shower gel with an overpowering scent (Two Dogs said he could taste it in his beer).



I also bought two 24-ounce bottles of combination shower gel/shampoo/bubble bath from Ulta (above). It was a buy-one-get-one-free deal. As with many things in life that don’t work out in the end, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Two Dogs likes the orange one, so he can have it. As for the chocolate…I know now that chocolate is something best experienced in 72% cacao squares and ice cream. Not in shower gel.

I’m going back to soap. I’ll be smart about it, buying one bar at a time and not buying another until the one I have is almost gone (unless I travel and go into a gift shop and see something special…I need to make room for surprises!). I will alternate between fruit and flower scents, and anything else that’s interesting. I will not buy soaps from regular supermarkets. “Natural” supermarkets, like Mother’s in Orange County, Sprouts, and Whole Foods, have excellent selections, but nothing that comes in an eight-pack. (That’s a good thing.)


The "good guys" at the natural supermarket...


...and the "bad guys" at the regular supermarket. (Notice the Zest in the bottom right-hand corner.)

P.S. I bought this lemon verbena soap from Trader Joe’s. It makes our bathroom smell like lemons. Yummy!

A little time machine from a yard sale

At a neighborhood yard sale not too long ago, I picked up this little gem:



I may be one of the minute percentage of people who would call a TV Guide dated March 18-24, 1967 with a drawing (a actual pencil drawing, by Bernie Fuchs) of Jackie Gleason (Generation Y asks, “Who the hell is he?”) a “gem”.

It is so from way back then that programming in color is specially noted. It is so from way back then that NBC had a series called “Experiment in TV”, and one of its shows spotlighted intellectual Marshall McLuhan.



An hour-long show featuring an intellectual on network television? Where can I hitch a ride to March 19, 1967? (Meandering Mouse was around back then, but at one year and eight months old I was not yet prepared for the mind-blowing McLuhan experience.)

But 1967 wasn’t a good year for meandering mice of the four-legged variety. Take a look at this ad for D-Con:



Somehow, the words “amazing mouse-killer” offend me much more than the imagery of a woman jumping on a chair at the sight of a tiny rodent. Maybe a dose of Midol will help:



It will change something more than your mood!

And look…what’s this?



It’s text! Text in TV Guide! Text in TV Guide…that tells an actual story!!!

When was the last time you saw so many words on a magazine page?

Popular magazines are far from being scholarly journals, but in the golden age of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, they gave people so many words – and so many ideas. Life and Look may have put celebrities on their covers, but underneath those famous faces, readers found well-researched stories and in-depth analysis of the issues of the day. Magazine publishers assumed that not only a.) you could read this much text, but b.) you wanted to read this much text.

What you will find in a 2011 TV Guide can barely be called reading at all. It’s word filler, much like those meat “extenders” that fast-food restaurants use to add heft to their hamburgers. If you try to “read” it, its meaning will slide right out of you, just like a fast-food burger slides out of your digestive system. You will have gained nothing, but have lost time.

This is why I will never stop collecting old magazines. Reading them is so much more intellectually enjoyable than reading (most) new ones.

Yard sales, for the most part, are not too rewarding for the prospective customer. These are the items that most people want to banish from their households for good – old clothes that haven’t reached the vintage stage yet, VHS tapes (how boxy and bulky they were!), and stacks of once-read Danielle Steel paperbacks.

Yet we always stop and look.

We never know when we will discover a gem hiding in the trash…a little time machine to a more thoughtful time (“I Dream of Jeannie” notwithstanding).



Look, Ma, no Surgeon General’s warning box!

Savagery for stupidity: a bad trade

Terry Jones, a Florida pastor who famously threatened to burn a Koran last September 11th, made good on that threat on March 20, 2011. As proof, he videotaped it and put it on his website (I’m not putting that link on here). Jones and his followers pronounced the Koran “guilty” of “death, rape, torture of people worldwide whose only crime is not being of the Islamic faith.” (It has long been a crazy conservative tactic to blame the book.) Jones said that he has no desire to be in an anti-Islam movement. That is like someone saying that he has nothing against my husband and me, and then setting a match to a photograph of us. Jones is old enough to realize that it’s what you do, not what you say, that matters.

The world media ignored this event for the most part, except for the wire service Agence France-Presse. The news of the Koran burning eventually reached Afghanistan, and after that angry men ran amok, resulting in the deaths of 24 people, including seven UN workers.

Burning a Koran is lame and pointless. First of all, it’s far from the only copy – you can’t kill a religion by destroying a single so-called “holy book.” Second, it’s needlessly provocative. I am an atheist, but I know I won’t bring people over to my side by burning a Bible.

If I did, though, how responsible would I be for what happened next?

Jones said he was not responsible for the riot deaths in Afghanistan. He is right. Why couldn’t those Afghan Muslims have thought: “Well, an American jackass has burned a Koran. So what?” We can only be responsible for our own behavior (unless we are mentally ill); we cannot be so for that of other people, whether it be those in front of you or those on the other side of the world. Stupidity is bad enough, but to respond with savagery is like setting fire to a pyramid of feces. (If you’re reading this during a meal, pardon me for the gross imagery – but it is so fitting, isn’t it?)

Evolve already, people.

Snapdragons!

A beautiful sign of spring.

What does the word “oldies” mean now?

Some of you have gone through it already. Some of you have not.

If you’re lucky, you will go through it. But you probably won’t like it.

I’m talking about that not-so-magic moment when you hear a song from your high school days…on the oldies station.

For me, it was even worse. I was listening to K-EARTH 101, the premier oldies station in Los Angeles, and “Fresh” by Kool and the Gang came on. I was in college the year it came out (1985).

Suddenly, I felt that much…older.

If you listen to K-EARTH, or any other oldies station, you’ll find that it’s now full of 1970s and 1980s songs. When I was in high school, “oldies” meant the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes reaching up to the early 1970s. I was way into 1960s music back then, far more than what was currently on the radio, and in addition to listening to K-EARTH and KRLA 1110 AM, I bought oldies 45s from a small record store on Venice Boulevard, not far from my high school. I still have most of those 45s somewhere.

What joy I heard in “Summertime” by Billy Stewart, “Groovin’” by the Rascals, “Let’s Live for Today” by the Grass Roots, “Friday on my Mind” by the Easybeats, “Come on Down to My Boat” by Every Mother’s Son, “Laugh Laugh” by the Beau Brummels, “Winchester Cathedral” by the New Vaudeville Band, and so many other songs that you don’t hear on the radio anymore, even oldies stations, unless you subscribe to Sirius XM.

The line that divides oldies from “today’s music” moves slowly, but it moves. Back in the 1960s, “oldies” meant songs from the 1930s and 1940s. Where does one go when the oldies are the songs you once tried to escape from with older songs?

To talk, that’s where. (The good kind – the kind you’ll find on NPR, Pacifica, and progressive radio stations. The opposite of “progressive” is “regressive”. Think about it.)

Now I’m as eager a collector of radio podcasts as I used to be of 45s. Rarely does a day go by without listening to talk in my car, on my computer, and even through the radio sometimes. I have all but stopped listening to the songs I loved.

Maybe that is why I feel so dull and dry inside too often.

What does the word “oldies” mean, anyway? If songs make you feel young and happy…are they really that old?

If songs can make me feel excited and fresh again…why aren’t I listening to them?

Farewell to the “last star”

When I woke up this morning, I looked over Two Dogs’s shoulder and saw the television on. Two Dogs had woken up early and turned it on, but had come back to bed. I listened, and the commentators were speaking about Elizabeth Taylor.

I froze in shock. There is only one reason why news commentators talk about old-time movie stars at the top of the hour. I listened and watched the screen even though it was blurry through my astigmatic eyes. I didn’t want to put on my glasses and read the words on the screen. I knew what those words would be.

Even hours later, it is still hard to believe. I am not ready to live in a world without Elizabeth Taylor. Even though she was seventy-nine, an age which is near the average American lifespan – and more years than she may have expected given her epic struggles with health – this is more than the death of a movie star. It is the breakage of one of the last strong threads between now and Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Ms. Taylor was a role model for me growing up, even though I had missed her heyday of the 1950s and 1960s. Reading her biographies took me away from my surroundings of unpopularity and financial struggle and into a world of glamour, beauty, fantastic wealth, and never having to worry about finding love. Back then, I thought it was fabulous to have been married so many times.

Now, multiple marriages don’t sound so “cool” to me (especially when there’s no loving spouse to be there at the end). Ms. Taylor’s life was filled with physical suffering, weight problems, addictions, and furious public disapproval as well as diamonds, gowns, and worldwide fame. Perhaps the modest joys are the best ones.

I have seen a few of Ms. Taylor’s films, some not too long ago – The Sandpiper, The VIPs, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? No doubt, I will be renting more from Netflix soon – perhaps I’ll even muster the courage to take on the four-hour-plus Cleopatra.



Take some time to think about what Elizabeth Taylor means to you – and remember a time when even great scandal didn’t eclipse great beauty and mystique. (You never opened a fan magazine and saw a photo of Ms. Taylor going to the supermarket!)

Farewell to a good friend (part 2)

When I went to the Tustin Borders last month, it had still not started its liquidation process, and thus still looked neat inside. When I went to the Orange Borders (at the Block), those dreaded “Everything Must Go” signs were already in the window – and I should have known what that meant.



The store was all but gutted inside. Whole shelves were denuded of books, the magazine section had nothing left but the ones people don’t want (including Grit – it’s been decades since I’ve seen an issue of Grit), and the once-charming Paperchase section felt more like an abandoned ghetto.








I remember watching with eager eyes as this store rose from the ashes of the old City Shopping Center. I passed by it to and from work, hoping that the store would open soon so I would have a more convenient book-buying experience. And once the store opened, it was great to stop after work, especially when it was after nine p.m. and I wanted to reward myself after a hard day. (Books or not, I never want to commute after 9 p.m. again.) The Block had other places to enjoy, such as the now-closed Hilo Hattie, the now-closed Virgin Megastore, the AMC movie theater, Café Tu Tu Tango, and Koji’s Shabu Shabu restaurant. But it was the Borders which kept me coming.

It was a downer of a shopping experience. I did not find what I was looking for, most notably the March/April 2011 issue of Writer’s Digest, which had some important freelance information. The one thing I might have purchased was this exercise video, “The Flat Belly Workout”:



But at the time, it was that or the Writer’s Digest issue, and the Writer’s Digest would potentially lead me to hundreds if not thousands of dollars of income, so…I went to the nearest Barnes & Noble to purchase it.

Now, Barnes & Noble is not having stores liquidated. It is still a functioning bookstore, and coming there after leaving the Borders was like seeing the difference between the Getty Museum and the average Greyhound station. If you don’t believe me, go into the closest B&N. Especially if you live in Glendale. The three-story B&N at The Americana at Brand is a book palace, worth saving to shop in.

I used to think that it was a poor marketing practice for B&N to charge $25 per year for its rewards card, while the one for Borders was free. Now I think this is just another case of “you get what you pay for.”

I can still shop at Borders – the one at South Coast Plaza is now the nearest one to me, and I can always go online as well. But without the stores in Orange and Tustin, it will no longer be as convenient.

P.S. I went back to the Orange Borders when I had money to pay for the “Flat Belly Workout,” and it was gone. It bothered me more than it should have. I did want to buy one last thing here, but I could not think of anything else I wanted here, and the store was even more empty than it was the last time. So I walked out of the doors, most likely for the very last time.



I think of the old saying, “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to buy so many great books at these two stores, even as I know that because of my Amazon Kindle (and the iPad I plan to get), my book-buying habits are going to be different from now on. I see myself buying more e-books and less physical books, even in functioning B&Ns. My bookshelves will be full of old favorites and books that don’t translate well in e-form (such as art books), while everything else hides in my e-readers.

Books will always be with us, just as music will. It’s only how we connect with books that will change. And that’s OK.