IT'S SNOWING, SO IT'S TIME FOR SPORTS

Although it wasn't the best sports story of the year, it was the best headline:
METS GET PUTZ. I don't care how he pronounces it, New Yorkers are gonna be all over set-up man JJ Putz (who says his last name rhymes with "foots"). He'd probably be better off if his name was Robert Bigballs. And then the putz admitted to the New York Times that all through high school he didn't even know that his name was a derogatory term! Where had he been living--- Schmuckville? Personally, I can't wait to read the New York Post after his first bad outing. PUTZ BLOWS... well, you get the idea.

CC Sabathia is going to be a great addition to the New York Yankees. But I doubt AJ Burnett will, be unless he finds a Stay Healthy pill that's not illegal. And while I'm not convinced yet that Joba is a starting pitcher, I'm not as pessimistic as the naysayers who think he's risking his life and career by throwing a ball in the first five innings.

Last year, when my memoir Hats & Eyeglasses came out, there was a big hoo-haa on some of the blogs because I had the audacity to question whether some online poker sites were on the up-and-up. Last month 60 Minutes and the Washington Post came out with a big investigative piece about how Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet had cheated some of their players out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It seems a former employee had cracked the software code and knew everyone else's cards at the table, which certainly gives you, oh, like a hundred percent edge. Sheesh, you just never know.

This Week in Sports:
Although the University of Oklahoma Sooner's quarterback Sam Bradford won the Heisman trophy this year, his team was beaten in the NCAA BCS Championship by the Florida Gator's, whose quarterback Tim Tebow who won the Heisman last year…

Pitcher John Smoltz (41), who has played twenty-one years for the Atlanta Braves, was signed by the Boston Red Sox…

Four NFL head-coaches were fired after their teams failed to make the playoffs. They include Detroit Lions coach Rod Marinelli (his team went 0-16 this year, a league first), Cleveland Browns coach Romeo Crennel, New York Jets coach Eric Mangini and Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan. The only one to find a new home is Mangini, who is going to the Cleveland Browns…

The Boston Celtics, the best team in basketball, is on its first losing streak in a long, long while.

CAN WE CHANGE NEW YEAR'S TO MARCH?

Am I the only one who thinks these holdiays have gone on for what seems like forever? I just took down the Christmas stuff, which I love, although I do have to ask myself again and again what a nice Jewish girl like me is doing with a perfectly trimmed tree that I set up on Thanksgiving Day. Okay, the tree is only three feet high and it's not real, but still... I agonize over which ornaments should go where, I turn the tree on the minute I walk into the house (white lights or colored? I can never decicde, so I switch from year to year) and I move the glass snowman from the left side to the rihgt, this Yankee's snow globe from right to left, from the minute I put it up til I take it down on New Year's Day.

But this year it seemed like the holidays just dragged. Maybe it's because the paperback of Hats & Eyeglasses is coming out in 5 weeks and I feel like there's so much to do.

But then I thought this.... why do Christmas and New Year's have to piggy-back on each other? Why can't we move New Year's to the spring solstice? Wouldn't that give us something to really celebrate? Wouldn't we be in better moods if the New Year really was about a new beginning? If you live in the Northeast like I do, this is the bleakest time possible. But spring... well, New Year's with crocuses popping though the snow would make us all feel so much better.

I'm gonna start a facebook group about this and see if I can get a movement going. Happy New Year to all.

CAN YOU JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER?

I can't stop wondering if people judge books by their covers.

I know you're not supposed to, and some might be embarrased to say they do, but I'll admit that I am drawn to certain books because they look like fun or because they look sexy.

When I first saw the hardcover jacket for Hats & Eyeglasses. I began fretting that it was too foreboding, too dark, too... well, hats and eyeglassy. I worried that women, who are my target audience, would be put off by it. I started emailing and calling my editor every five minutes to suggest changes. Can't we make the water bluer? Can the hat (which was originally a fedora) be a woman's sunhat instead? Can the glasses be more retro or feminine or 1950's or something? Can we turn the hat around? To say she had it up to here with me is akin to saying the Beatles played a little rock music.

When she called to tell me the paperback was going to have a completely different look, I was ecstatic. But then I started fretting anew. I held off until I could no longer.

I called her a few months ago. "Isn't it getting to be that time when we need to see the new cover?" I asked sweetly.
"Yes," she groaned.
"Do you have it already?" Now I was excited.
"Yes," she admitted.
"So???????"
She was loath to send it to me because we had had such to-do's about the last one.
"Does it have a person on it?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Does it look like fun?"
"Yes."
"Is part of it green?"
Now she hesitated. "Yes," she finally said, "but what would make you ask that?"
"I don't know, but I always thought a little of the cover should be green."
So she sent it. And when I opened the file, I started crying. It was everything I thought it should be and more. And I knew that if I saw it at the bookstore, I would buy it. Because the cover spoke to me. I am so over the moon.

WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME?

Okay, I gotta admit, it started with a crock-pot. I'd always wanted one, or thought I might, but it's so big that you just have to use it and if you don't you have to add on another bedroom for all the appliancesyou once thought you couldn't live without, like the clay pot cooker and the rice maker and the mini deep fry and the small, medium, and extra large George Forman grills. But for Christmas this year, Mike and Marissa (Mike works with Steve and is the most fabulous guy) bought me one. A real Crock Pot, and it looked so cool that I offered to make hot appetizers for Christmas Day. My sister told me all about her Swedish meatballs and kept telling me how easy they were. Lynn Biederman (co-author of the great YA novel, UNRAVELING) told me about these puff pastry/sausage thingys, sort of a fancy pigs in the blanket, and really, who doesn't love a pig in anything?

I got up Christmas morning a little hung over, and I was thinking that I should have had someone go to Sam's Club (I'm not a member and boycott it at all turns) and bought the 48 piece hot hor devours tray. But not me. I got to work shaping those tiny pork and turkey meatballs, which I shaped into perfect little balls, about the size of small Christmas balls. But there were literally hundreds of them. My sister told me I should use grape jelly and chili sauce and just put the whole thing in the crock pot for 8 hours.

But you know me--- if grape jelly is the easy way, then homemade peach jam might be better. And chili sauce from a jar? Wouldn't ketchup, fresh grated horseradish, some lemon juice, and a dash of freshly ground hot peppers be better? We almost had to evacuate because the horseradish and the peppers were so aromatically overwhelming, but after turning on all the fans and opening the doors, things calmed down a bit. No matter that it was 34 degrees.

By the time the meatballs were swimming in the sauce, I was exhausted, every dish in the house was filthy, and I had an attitude as big as Iowa.

But on to the sausage puffs. Lynn told me to buy a package of sausage and a package of puff pastry dough. Oh please. Went to Fleisher's butcher shop and got homemade sage sausage, on to Bread Alone to get fresh puff pastry. Lynn said it took twenty minutes to put together enough for a hundred and fifty pieces. It took me four hours to put together enough for 60 pieces. Then they had to be cut and frozen. By then it was four in the afternoon.

I was furious, and I didn't know who to lash out at. So I just pouted and went to Christmas dinner, itching for a fight. But my friends are nicer than I am and it was lovely. Everyone gushed about the great food I had made.

After two hours, I had to go home because I was too exhausted to stand. There I did another two loads of dishes. I called my sister to complain. "You made the meatballs?" she asked incredulously. "I use frozen."

And right then I got it--- my drive to be perfect made my holiday a nightmare. I could have used grape jelly and the frozen meatballs, and maybe people wouldn't have gushed, but they wouldn't have barfed either.

Why didn't anyone ever tell me what a pukey little control freak I am? Oh right, they probably did, but I stopped talking to them!

I am now a new girl. Next time you need hot appetizers, call me. I'll bring them straight from Sam's Club. I'll just throw them in the crock-pot! And you'll probably never know the difference. Or care.

THE WHITE HOUSE LOVES POKER!

As if it wasn't just cool enough that Obama got elected (I'm still weeping with joy), the man loves poker! This makes me so happy. We need our president to have nerves of steel, the very first attribute of a good poker player. We need our president to know how to bluff--- think John Kennedy and the Russians in Cuba. We need our president to know how to kick back and relax. Yes, we need Obama, but the thought that he'll have friends over and play poker makes the White House seem like the coolest place to be next year. So I'm sending over a copy of Hats & Eyeglasses the minute the inauguration is over, and waiting for my invitation. Really, Mr President, I'd make a good addition to your game. Really I would.

PSSST, CAN I TELL YOU A SECRET?

This is what's been going on lately--- everyone wants to tell me their secret. I don't mean little stories that they've been meaning to tell their best friend or their shrink or even their trainer--- those earrings they stole from a local store, or the co-worker they kissed at a holiday party, or the gossip they've been spreading about an office mate.

No, I mean full-on, BIG stories, huge secrets that they have never shared with a soul before. Stories about cheating and binging and lying and more. Stories about bags of stolen money stashed in the basement behind the boiler, or husbands that are secretly gay and having numerous affairs with married men, or obsessions that border on psychosis. Stories that make me blush, which is no easy feat. Stories that I will take to my grave, because that's part of why they're telling me--- because they know I will not tell a soul.

Because I was honest in my memoir, Hats & Eyeglasses, because I let it all hang out, and, most importantly, because I admitted that I had never told anyone about my own problem, people feel that they can share anything with me. So they email and tell me that they are staying up all night for 5 days in a row playing online poker and then walking into the operating room to do surgery, or that they have stolen their kids college fund and put it into a slot machine in the local casino. They stop me at the post office and ask if they can meet me for lunch. I can see the look in their eyes, the furtiveness, the tears welling up. And part of me wants to run away. I'm afraid that their secrets will overwhelm me, that I'll take on their problems as my own. But I listen, because I wish that when I was in trouble--- when I was playing poker online and lying and afraid all the time--- there was someone I could have opened up to. Do I think that would have changed the outcome? No, not at all. But I think that it might have moved things along, and that when people tell me their dirty little (and big) stories, it brings them one step closer to stopping.

At least that's what I tell myself.

QUIT YA BITCHIN'

Everyone has been emailing me about Aurelia Taveras, a lawyer and TV commentator who started gambling and eventually lost nearly a million dollars in the casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Unfortunately, some of the money belonged to her clients. Now she's suing the casinos that she lost in, saying they should have recognized her addiction and not let her play. She says she would spend days at the tables--- not eating or sleeping, brushing her teeth with disposable wipes so she didn't have to leave her seat. Her little dog was often at her side, and it made me wonder if she made the doggie wear disposable diapers or something. Somehow this is starting to sound like the crazy Astronaut.

People want to know if I think Taveras is in the right, because, as I tell in Hats & Eyeglasses, I also lost huge sums of money playing online poker, although all that money was my own. They've also been telling me about a guy in England who is suing his bookie for taking his bets when he was a constant loser.

What the hell? Why does everyone have to lob off their screw-ups on someone else? I'd like it better if Taveras had said, "Okay, I did this, it felt good at the time, I'm ashamed and mortified that it got so out of control, but there's nobody to blame but myself." If she said that, I'd send her twenty bucks for her defense.