Author: Tamar Anitai

Silly Things People Have Said to Me When I Tell Them I’m Not Having Kids

By Tamar Anitai

There will be no children in my future. Ever. Yes, I am married. Yes, my husband knows that I do not want children. Yes, we both realize we’re extremely fortunate to be able to elect to live childfree. He doesn’t want kids either. It’s part of the reason I married him. (That, and he has excellent hair.) He married me knowing that and also because I always clean the litter box. I probably brought up the topic of kids on the second date — it would have been a deal breaker. My husband would make the world’s greatest father. But that alone isn’t reason enough for me to become the mother I’ve never wanted to be, to take on a crushing financial burden or to add more to my already too-full plate. I love my friends’ children. Because I don’t have to take care of them. Their cuteness is there to fulfill my need to see cute things. I don’t expect them to behave for me, and they don’t expect 18 years of dinner from …

When The Only Trump Supporter You Know Is Your Dad

By Tamar Anitai

Yes, I’m still talking to him. Yes, I’ve heard the endless entreaties of “You should stop talking to him!” No, it’s not that easy. I’ve turned around, dissected and diagramed his reasons for voting the way he did, and I still don’t understand any of them. We share a gene pool, the same body type, the same skin and hair color and even the same missing adult incisors that never grew in. We share a similar sense of humor. But we don’t share the same political beliefs — particularly the belief that your vote should be cast to help advance the greater good, not just your own good. Fundamentally, aside from his support of the military, I believe that my dad voted for Trump because he wants to protect his financial assets. It took him a long time and a lot of physical labor to acquire them, and they’re not much, but they’re his. For that reason, to him, Trump was the best choice. Do I agree? No. He and I believe in very different …

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Here’s Why Brunch Is the Absolute Worst

By Tamar Anitai

Brunch is cancelled until further notice. (Photo: Mac Premo/TueNight) What I’m about to say may sound indelicate, impolitic or even impure, but here goes: fuck brunch. Brunch is the absolute worst. If breakfast is the most important meal of the day, brunch is the least important, most overhyped, overblown and overindulgent meal of all time. It combines two of my least favorite things (sitting too close to other New Yorkers and paying too much for eggs) into one undeservingly grandiose food event. Brunch doesn’t need the foolhardy pomp and circumstance and gratuitous excess of a Monster Truck rally. It’s just a plate of eggs, y’all. Let’s all calm down. Now, don’t go befouling your boy shorts. Just know that I truly believe that brunch is for sucker emcees and basics. It’s easily the biggest racket of the post-industrial modern age (next to thigh-firming creams — might as well rub a half-dozen hot glazed Krispie Kremes all over your legs because same/same.) Why spend $18 on two eggs when you know how many eggs $18 will …

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Arianna Huffington, a Cyborg and a Bag of Chia Seeds: Or, How I Spent a Perfect Sunday in a Painfully Long Mattress Ad

By Tamar Anitai

April 17, 2016 was one of the finest New York Sundays in recorded history. A Sunday so glorious it could’ve actually been God’s very own birthday. The real-life manifestation of “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” Or maybe L.A. had Airbnb-ed New York City for the day, and this was its way of saying thanks. A day lit so artfully Spike Jonze could’ve eBayed his camera equipment and retired forever. The kind of day that launched a thousand High Line Instagrams with hashtag #nofilter. However, I was not at the High Line. Instead, I was indoors at Casper’s’s first “Sleep Symposium.” Casper, the e-commerce company that will ship you a mattress that comes folded in half in a cardboard box. TueNight had asked if I’d cover the event for their “Sleep” issue. Now, why did I answer “sure, why not” as opposed to making up some bullshit excuse? I have no clue. It was pretty out of character considering I’m EXTREMELY lazy, and I like to spend my Sundays in almost complete monastic silence at …

9 Passive Aggressive Gifts They’ll Love. I Guess…

By Tamar Anitai

(Graphic: Helen Jane Hearn/TueNight) Ah, the holidays. ‘Tis the season to rejoice, make merry, listen to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” and bite one’s tongue when one’s confronted with the time-tested barrage of unsubtle passive aggressive comments from friends and family. Well, two can play that game. In the name of holiday harmony (and your sanity), why not bite your tongue as you wrap the world’s most passive aggressive gift ever? Why say it when you can pay it forward with a gift that does the indirect communicating for you? Why not give something that says you care enough not to say exactly how you feel but not enough to not be somewhat passive aggressive about it in your gift-giving? What? I was only joking! God. You don’t have to get so upset. 1. Fiberglass Confetti Eiffel Chair The gift that passive aggressively says “your taste in housewares is beyond basic.” $395, Modernica.com 2. Basic Repellant Phone Case For your “friend” who IS basic. $38, Valfre.com 3. Shut Up Cards The gift that …

Does This Slang Make Me Look Old?

By Tamar Anitai

Recently, I’ve had a lot of talks with friends my age (we’re all generally around 21) about getting older — something we know a fair amount about. Okay, I lied about the parenthetical part of that intro. We’re all pushing 40. And we’ve found ourselves in that awkward “not-old, definitely-not-all-that-young-anymore” phase. Well, not all that young unless we’re hanging out with, say, a random gang of 80-year-olds. Which I really should do more often because my skin would probably look amazing in comparison. Just kidding. That’s rude thing to say. Okay, not kidding. I thought it and meant it. I’m rude. Anyway, we’re deeply in that “woah, did you see so-and-so from high school on Facebook? How do they look so OLD” part of our show. Followed by the requisite pause… Then… “Do I look that old?” Then the rush of mutual assurances and “Oh my God, please, you look amazing,” various accolades doled out to our favorite Korean skin care products, agreements that the efficacy of moisturizer is directly proportional to how overpriced it …

What It’s Really Like to Be a Germophobe

By Tamar Anitai

(Graphic: Helen Jane Hearn/TueNight.com) I have a thing with germs. Many things, actually. Like Kim Kardashian’s ass, germs are nearly impossible to avoid if you want to interact with the modern world. Every street corner, coffee cup, toothbrush, dollar bill, door handle, work surface and orifice (whether human or animal) is simply teeming with unseen bacteria, possible parasites and other predatory pathogens. Or even just plain dirt. And you can’t escape it. It’s not that I’m prissy. I just can’t help but sense germs everywhere I go — and try to avoid them. I’m like Monk with boobs. In case you think I’m exaggerating, here, in no particular order, is a collection of my admittedly neurotic germ issues and thoughts: Let’s begin in the bedroom, shall we? Despite my despotic clean-freak neurosis, I know that my bed is hot bed of germ warfare. All beds are, and that’s a fact that will keep you up at night. My number bed-germ rule is this: No handbags on my bed. Ever. Ever-ever. No exceptions. Your bag goes …

Can We Please Stop Talking About Kale Now?

By Tamar Anitai

I’m here with a simple request: Can people who talk about kale please stop talking about kale? Don’t get me wrong. I like kale. I buy it. I eat it. I’ve bookmarked kale juice recipes, emailed them to myself, printed them out, and then immediately hated myself for doing that. Because if my teenaged Taco-Bell-loving-self could step into a time machine and visit me now, she’d shame-slap the shit out of me for being the type of stereotypical Brooklynite who cops to juicing kale. But at least — at LEAST —  I can safely say I’m NOT the kind of person who talks about kale. I don’t care if that sounds like reverse snobbism. Because this whole kale situation is completely and utterly out of control, and it’s time someone said something. If you fawn and gush and coo ad nauseam over kale like it’s your twin sister’s newborn or an adorable kitten, you’re most certainly an asshole. If you steer a conversation that was nowhere near the vicinity of kale toward kale, you need to check yourself and …

Ditching Sugar: Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

By Tamar Anitai

Oookay, so it appears I may have lied. I should’ve been specific about my no-sugar pledge. Because apparently I took advantage of a loophole that really meant “giving up cookies.” That would’ve been slightly more accurate and yet… still a lie. I defiantly and somewhat petulantly housed a chocolate chip cookie at around 9:45pm on December 31st. From that point in, I honestly did pretty well until about the second week in January. No sugar in my coffee, not even those Fage yogurts, which, as it turns out, have about a billion metric tons of sugar in them. I didn’t stop eating things like fruit, which, of course, contain natural sugars, or pasta which turns into maltose. Because life is too short and because a life spent scrutinizing labels is not a life I care to live and because that’s highly valuable time I could spend catching up on Millionaire Matchmaker. (The one with Jill Zarin’s daughter!!!) But I was very good about eliminating foods with added sugars. What I cut out of my diet in the sugar …

No Way Can I Give Up Sugar. But I’ll Torture Myself For 30 Days

By Tamar Anitai

(Photo: Nancy Gonzalez/TueNight) The s’mores cookie from Gregory’s Coffee. The chocolate cookies from Smith Canteen. 16 Handles (insert flavor of the week here______________). Pinkberry with mochi. Oh my God the Fruit & Nut Five-Star Bar I never talk myself out of buying at the supermarket. Um, what else? Oh yeah. Dude. DUDE. DUUUUUDE. Those chocolate chip cookies (or sometimes the peanut butter ones, sometimes both) from Jacques Torres. The occasional pint of Ben & Jerry’s. 4 p.m. peanut butter M&Ms from the vending machine at work. Those crappy orange jelly rings — the generic two-toned ones COVERED in granulated sugar? Oh my God I love those. The ones from CVS? Lord, yes. And drugstore York Peppermint Patties? I’ll miss you most of all. These are a few of my favorite things made of sugar. My other favorite things made of sugar? Pretty much everything else made of sugar. Are you sensing the self-defeating, Sisyphean nature of the worst part of my diet? Who am I kidding. That’s not even the worst part of my diet (she …

Saying Goodbye To Creepy Baby

By Tamar Anitai

Creepy Baby. (Photo courtesy Tamar Anitai) As a teenager, I quickly learned that in my household there wasn’t a lot money “just laying around” (unless you happened to find a $20 bill just laying on the ground). Unfortunately, a scarcity of cash was in direct odds with my innate love of new things that, to this day, is the reason my alcove is usually filled with packages. But this isn’t an anecdote about the emotional highs and lows of online shopping. Childhood trips to the mall were pretty much off the table (no funds = no fun), trips to Marshalls were on an as-needed basis only. But thrift stores were like a Supermarket Sweep gold mine, minus the heavy turkeys, cat litter and ticking timer. Nothing was off limits, and quantity was key. A life-long love of 25-cent vinyl and old-man golf pants (to think  — I wasted my thinnest years in plaid grandpa bottoms) and ironic tees began, as did a steady collection of lunch boxes, Avon figurines and ‘70s macramé basement castoffs, as …

Mad Men & Office Politics: Different Era, Same Drama

By Tamar Anitai

(All images courtesy AMC Networks) Like many of you, I harbor a very real Mad Men addiction. It’s not so dire that I need it in the morning before work (that would be very Mad Men, come to think of it), but it’s extreme enough that I often can’t get through the day without something triggering a knee-jerk Mad Men reflection, or a Mad Men-related Google search that leads me down a rabbit hole of mid-century minutia. I’m not proud to admit the number of times I’ve excitedly interjected the phrase, “That actually reminds of that one scene in Mad Men when…” into a conversation that, well, wasn’t about Mad Men at all. Even though the show is set in an office, Mad Men isn’t really a show about working, in much the same way that The Sopranos wasn’t really a show about the mob. It’s an evolutionary character study that just so happens to be set in a Madison Avenue ad agency. But strip away the intense psychological examination, and the show does realistically highlight the differences between …

Women Who Inspire: Jonatha Brooke

By Tamar Anitai

(Photo Credit: Sandrine Lee) NAME: Jonatha Brooke AGE: 50 OCCUPATION: Singer-songwriter, Creator and Star of the Autobiographical One-Woman Show My Mother Has Four Noses WHO SHE IS: Careful chronicler of nuance. Observer and interpreter of maladies. Of cautionary tales, the stories between the seams, the moments just before the bottom falls out. Think the poetic preening of Joni Mitchell meets the wry incandescence of Nora Ephron, with a voice that ranges from a whispering wind to a damning, devastating downpour. The pop-music poet laureate for the cautiously optimistic dysthymic in all of us. WHY SHE INSPIRES ME: Her music, though not preachy or pedantic or particularly crafted in the “get ‘em, tiger,”  spirit of Corporate McGirl Power Lite™, has always been both a security blanket and a beacon of hope for me. Like one-way advice from the big sister I never had. Lyrics like “I go on looking for comfort/I can no longer see to the left or the right/But I walk with my head held high and naked in the sun/Claiming these streets for myself” from “Paris” and “My hands get shaky …

All I Want for Christmas is… Pizza? 5 Gifts for Carb Lovers

By Tamar Anitai

‘Tis the season to celebrate awkward family conversations (“Nope! Still don’t have kids!”), the birth of whichever deity you may believe in, your general mildly pagan ways, and stretchy pajama pants you plan to change into to celebrate the most sacred and holy food group of all: carbs. Just admit to yourself how much you love carbs, whether or not you lie about eating them. It’s a truly freeing experience. Here are five no-carb gifts for the carb lover (i.e. me/ you) on your list. 1. Jeffrey Campbell Pizza Hi-Top Platform Sneakers And you thought there wasn’t a shoe that combined your love for cartoony pizza, the now-ness of the post-modern ’90s revival and your need for added height! In your FACE, I say! $250, Urbanoutfitters.com 2. I Want Abs But I Want Pizza More T-Shirt Aaaaaand therein lies the conundrum, printed perfectly on this tee, that masterfully nails the endless pizza-versus-abs chasm. (Personally, I always go with pizza over abs, because it’s easier. And tastier. And I can wear the t-shirt with pride.) $30, Shopjeen.com 3. …