Things that DON'T happen in real life.. but seem to happen all the time on TV and in the movies

Masquerade balls. 

It's such a cheap shot. Oh, hey, I have a bunch of characters. They have all types of feelings for each other. Some are unrequited, tragically. Some are seen as socially unacceptable, either by society as a whole, or by the set group of people. Brilliant! Let's put tiny masks on them, spike the punch, and watch them make bad decisions. In theory it works, but there are too many inconsistencies for me to sufficiently suspend my disbelief. 


Known, documented issues with masquerade balls: 

1. Masks that cover barely half the face don't fool anybody. Actually, masks in general don't fool anybody. I know it's creepy, but if you were shown photographs of all the people you knew and saw on a regular basis, you could figure them out by their bodies and clothes. No one wants to admit to being that aware of other people's body parts, but face it, we all are. 
2. Humans, as a species, tend to take their clothes off and/or lose things while drinking. [[[Case in point: myself. You. All your friends.]]] So, at an actual masquerade party, people would get drunk and take their masks off. Therefore making the entire charade pointless. 
3. Before you say that people wouldn't drink at a masquerade party, think about it: it's a masquerade party. 
4. Finally, in any population present at a party, there are always those people, THOSE AWFUL PEOPLE that don't wear costumes. You know them. They're the ones wearing the exact same thing they normally wear, those same horrifically uncreative ones who "go as themselves" for Halloween (NOTE: It is acceptable to do this if you show up at the party after 11 p.m., when people have already begun following rule 2, and cowboy hats and boas are draped over random people, furniture, and people passed out on furniture). Anyway, those people make everything weird because they don't show up in masks, and they ruin the whole concept. Which, as I've stated, is built on flimsy logic to begin with. 

People get injured, get back up, and are miraculously unscathed the next day. 

Several weeks ago I fell down a flight of stairs. It sucked. I had a few drinks in me, but I was sober enough to feel every iota of pain. It was awful. I had to plan my lessons with whole blocks of dialogue, in case my lip (which I bit through) was still too swollen for me to talk (and students would read it off). For two weeks, I looked like an abuse victim. Bruises, huge and yellow, covered me. I couldn't bend down or kneel for a month. Yet people in TV and movies seem to get the crap kicked out of them and bounce right back. It makes me have more respect for Buffy, because at least, on that show, they address it. They literally say, several times, that she has accelerated strength and healing powers. 

No one's roots grow out on TV. 

This does not really require much explanation, but it brings up something that's just generally unfair about life: When you don't dye your hair, it takes FOREVER to grow. When you dye it, even slightly, the roots show up almost immediately. On TV, this never happens. 

Women wear loads of makeup and somehow don't look like prostitutes. 

I was watching Pretty Little Liars the other day (because yes, I watch that show. Partially to have some common ground with my students, but also because I genuinely like it). All of the main characters are loaded with makeup. The thing that I don't get is, they look fine. You know how you can wear makeup to make yourself look like you're not wearing any? It's like that, multiplied by eleven. What kills me is that if I (or any woman) wore that kind of makeup during the day (or even at night), I'd look ridiculous. I'd look like a trying-too-hard-hooker. Yet these girls (21-year-olds playing 16-year-olds, obviously), look pretty. I'm sure it's some combination of lighting and camera work. In fact, I know it is. I remember vividly how much more makeup I had to put on when going onstage. But it's just another inconsistency that bothers me. 

How to be a grown-up: COOKING

Sometimes I think there's a class I missed in college.

I can do wonders with numbers. I can tell a hell of a good story. I can outline the differences between multiple versions of The Maltese Falcon. I can talk Piaget and Freud with authority. I'm legally certified to teach 12 grades. But sometimes things happen and I wonder, how did I not know that? How did that fact somehow slip through the cracks on the 17-year sidewalk of my education?

This post is about cooking. I cooked plenty with my mother growing up, and I still call her constantly while I'm hovering over the stove wondering what I did wrong. But there are certain things that I don't know until she tells me, and from what I can gather, some of them are actually important.

There is no substitute for sugar. You can talk the benefits of splenda all day long, but if you try to make carmelized onions with it, it dissolves and leaves you with flavorless onions stuck to the pan. I used to make a wonderful asian-style lettuce wraps recipe (I have been too afraid to calculate the WW points), and I must have cooked it five times before my mother joined me and barked, "What are you doing? You have to use real sugar. The flavors won't bind. Real sugar brings out the flavor Leah!" How was I supposed to know that? Did I miss the day on how to yell with authority about sugar binding flavors?

Real cooks approximate. People on diets measure. Rachel Ray is the expert on not being exact. To avoid writing a long-winded rant about her, I'll focus on just this one unfavorable characteristic. Watch her cook and she'll say things like, "Oh, a pinch of this," and "A few shakes of this" and "A handful of that." Which is all fine and good if you're Rachel Ray, or Gordon Ramsay, or some famous sous chef in NYC, but for the rest of us who are actually concerned with the amount of muffin top hanging out of our jeans, it is necessary to measure. This lesson was especially confusing to learn. I have been on a diet of some form or another for most of my life. Even before I dieted, I knew that white bread was bad, and fat-free was good. I've also been a struggling, learn-as-I-go cook for most of my life, and it's mighty confusing when the people you observe cooking use this haphazard approximate measurement system. It makes me wonder if any famous cooks eat the food they make. But this lesson my mother taught me, in a very positive way. I interpreted it as, "If I'm logging 3 points for using extra virgin olive oil, I don't want to accidentally eat 4 points-worth and get fat. My mother, goddess of wisdom and kitchen-related wonder, responded with, "If you're logging three points for olive oil, you want to ensure that you enjoy every last drop." Truer words have ne'er been spoken.

Pre-ground thyme = mortal sin. My mother walked into my apartment a few weeks ago and was quite happy with what she saw. It's beginning to look more lived in and homey, as it should: We've been here almost 2 years. It's about damn time. But she did have one complaint, which she voiced quite vocally, as is my mother's custom: I had a tiny container of ground thyme in my spice box. Apparently, this is a moral sin, on the same level as involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide. Little did I know that a) thyme should NEVER be pre-ground, I should buy it and then grind it as I need it, and b) it goes bad REALLY quickly in ground form. This, of course, brings up an even more interesting question (and I like to picture Ice-T asking it in a super intimidating way, as if interrogating a possible witness to the aforementioned homicide): WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THYME GOES BAD? I mean, aside from the usual things that you'd expect: war, famine, sacrificing of the first-born, tulips wilting dramatically in a windowsill while Death Cab for Cutie plays in the background. The answer is that I don't know what happens when thyme goes bad. I don't know what warning signs to be on the lookout for. I just googled it, and no combinations of Thyme, Expires, Stale, Spices and a variety of other words lead me to the answer. I did, however, find several websites that believe time / thyme is a witty play on words. Sad. I guess I'll just have to be on the lookout. Still, I wish I'd known.