Eric Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Jennifer Mendelsohn

Good morning guys.

I totally forgot about the Ides of March, but my life has been chock-full of mild paranoia and strange coincidences of late. I realized this morning that I forgot to share my horoscope (which is Eric's, too, actually) for yesterday: "You are on the precipice of added recognition, fame, and fortune. People talk and write about you--Aries and Libra persons play instrumental roles." Now, Daniel, you're an Aries. And people have been talking and writing about me (in "The Fray")--OK, they've been vilifying me--but that counts, doesn't it? I also found it strange that after watching Sunday night's Sopranos, which ended quite violently, I had a terrible dream that a friend was killed in a gangland hit, and I was being accused of his murder. I woke in a start, terribly distressed, and called him first thing Monday morning to make sure he was OK, and he laughed at me ... until lunch time, when he got into a car accident and totaled his car. (He's sore, but OK.) Coincidence? You be the judge.

I'm not sure either of you knows this, but I am incredibly superstitious, a trait that I'm well aware is better suited to some kerchief-headed woman from the old country than a professional woman in her 30s living in a major metropolitan city. Right now, I can spy at least one penny on my bedroom floor that I refuse to pick up because the tails side is up. I realize this is quite ridiculous, but the only time I've ever broken the rule (I distinctly remember saying to myself, "This is so silly! Just pick up the damn penny!"), something disastrous happened that very afternoon, thereby forging an unshakably visceral link between the two for me. I suppose this is somewhat akin to the phenomenon whereby you eat a food that makes you sick, and then avoid it like the plague for years afterwards. Do you remember that fabulous Atul Gawande New Yorker piece about nausea and vomiting that explained all that? I am still rather wary of mussels for that reason. What's even funnier is that after being up all night, violently ill from bad mussels, I had to spend the entire next day with the band Hanson for a story I was writing. Despite the fact that I was still green to the gills, I swigged an entire bottle of Pepto in the car on the way over and tried my best to be perky, just like Ike, Zac, and Taylor. Did my distress come through in the resulting story? You be the judge.

The Oscar race this year leaves me quite cold. In fact, I am plugging Judy Berlin as a write-in candidate. (I stole that joke, btw, from our brother Matt, who called me during the Westminster Dog Show to announce that their golden retriever, Cooper, had won on the write-in vote.) Of the nominated best films, I have seen only The Sixth Sense and American Beauty. The former I enjoyed immensely, but not enough to make me think it's Best Picture material, and the latter I couldn't watch without noticing at every turn how, in its smugness about suburbia, it is an almost perfect inverse to Eric's film, a fact noted by many critics as well. Of the nominated performers, I'm rooting intensely for Hilary Swank, if only because her nomination proves to me that one can still do fine work in a small film and get recognized. (Read: You don't have to be bankrolled by the Weinstein brothers.) But my movie tastes have long been out of synch with the Academy. Titanic, Best Picture? Did the voters see the same movie I did? The one where Leonardo DiCaprio's character, in trying to sound all smart while discussing a painting, says, "I love his use of color" without even a smidgen of irony? Oh, never mind. The last movie I absolutely adored (besides Judy, that is) was probably Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies.

OK: My last thought has nothing to do with anything, but I just have to say something about it. There is an absolutely perfect piece in the new Harper's by Meghan Daum called "Music Is My Bag," in which she talks about the perils of being a teen-age music geek. In the lede, she describes a "fifteen-year-old boy with the early traces of a mustache who hangs out in the band room after school playing the opening bars of a Billy Joel song on the piano, and who, in an unsuccessful attempt at a personal style, wears a fedora hat and a scarf decorated with a black-and-white design of a piano keyboard." Lord have mercy, didn't we all know this boy? Who among our friends didn't have a fedora period in high school? And Daniel, if I remember correctly, weren't you what they called a "choir fag" at Kennedy High? I of course, was the female version of him, with my cello-playing, All State orchestra, music-camp-every-summer past; I'm not sure, but I think I might have actually had the telltale "Music Is My Bag" tote that we all schlepped circa 1982. Are there still kids like this? I also couldn't help but notice that Daum is the one who wrote the New Yorker piece about the impossibility of surviving as a freelancer in New York; her Harper's byline says she now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. Will that be the next move for any of us?

Love,
Jennifer

P.S.: In another bit of kismet, I see there's a story on the wire about a California serial killer who was denied the right to have a sweat-lodge ceremony before his execution; he claimed he needed it to properly atone.

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