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2001-11-16 | 9:59 a.m.

Because we are often late to school, I am a drop-off mom while most of my "school friends" are walk-in moms. I see them strolling out as I arrive. They see me, too, which keeps me from haranguing my kids as much as I might otherwise.

Today Sharon knelt down beside my passenger-door window and recounted that she had been behind me on the freeway the other day, both of us late to pick up the kids from school, her sort of riding in my wake, when she got stopped by a highway patrol and ticketed. And all she could think was, "Get her too!"

I've gotten a lot of feedback on Michael Jackson. Today Duff showed me this "movie," which illustrates his shocking transformation. I find I too have more to say about MJ but I don't know how much patience you have for my theories. But I will say this: Michael Jackson's life is like a fairy tale, by which I mean not that he lives in a castle in Neverland, but that there is a moral to the story that we can learn from. You would think---I would think---that if you had all the money in the world (and for our purposes, MJ really does have all the money in the world), you could remake yourself into your ideal of beauty, whatever it is. But actually, you can't. You might say, well, maybe Michael likes the way he looks. But I'm not convinced, because I've seen his latest album cover. To judge by the image he chose---I think it's fair to assume he had creative control over that decision---he'd like to look more elven, or elvish; more like Elijah Wood in Lord of the Rings. It's certainly not Michael Jackson as he looks now. More like Michael Jackson 15 years ago. Maybe it is him, just perfectly lit for high contrast and with eyebrows. But in life, you cannot always control the lighting. And that's the moral of the story, right? Kinda like "The Fisherman's Wife" or "The Woman Who Lived in a Bottle." You gotta stop wanting or it'll ruin you.

In other news, I'm going to be studiously avoiding all media outlets in an attempt to see the Harry Potter movie without having my experience tainted by some yack-a-doodle-do critic.

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