As a child, did you ever wish you could snap your fingers and change your world? God knows I did. Like many kids, I was alienated. And like many kids, I pretended to be Endora from Bewitched.

Okay, friends have advised me that this probably wasn’t the first idea that sprang to the minds of most eight-year-old boys, since it’s slightly disturbing and maybe a little pathetic. But to me, Endora represented power. Fearlessness. A take-no-prisoners attitude. She was everything I was not, and by the simple act of donning a bedspread (which approximated the caftans Endora wore, and became my magical cape) closing my eyes, and waving my arms, I was able to travel to parallel universes where a bolder, more commanding Eric set the rules; where life went the way I believed it should.

Trying to make your parents stop fighting? Want to be friends with an armless girl? Need to save the lives of people in a bus accident? Simple: imagine your powers creating the proper outcome. No cat-eye makeup required. Just a bedspread and a fervent belief.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as an adult, I no longer don that tattered bedspread. I no longer pretend to be someone else, mostly because it’s not nearly as cute now. But like most of us, I still long for that mystical connection, to that idea that I have some measure of jurisdiction over my own universe. Because let’s face it, things can get really twisted these days.

So how, I propose, do we invoke magic as adults?

I have a few ideas I’d like to suggest. None, you may be relieved to discover, involve a beehive hairdo or making potions. They’re just simple activities that, at least for my money, help bring me a little bit closer to God.

First, I try to meditate. Not often enough, and not for nearly as long as I should, because, for me, being forced to sit still is a form of brutality that should be covered under the Geneva convention. As someone juggling two jobs, as an exec for a TV network and as a writer (substitute your jobs here – career woman and mother, rodeo clown and underwear model, etc), I often have a hard time slowing down for a stoplight without checking my e-mail. But when I do meditate, ideas happen – ideas that, when I’m consumed with the myriad distractions of the typical day, can’t get through the clutter.

Second, I have a dream board. Stop laughing. I think those cork things where you tack up pictures of the things you want actually work. Because they’re a great reinforcement. I had a picture of my first book up there before I even got an agent.  I’m just sayin’.  Of course, my dream board is a rugged steel board with magnets, which just screams manly. And it’s in my bathroom, which probably seems kinda weird, but it’s the one spot in the house I know I’ll be in every day with my eyes open. And talk about a captive audience.

Third, I speak in positives. About fifteen years ago, I was $53,000 in debt from some business decisions apparently made while I was either drunk or insane. I constantly reinforced my poverty with my friends as if being broke was a badge of honor, like military service or watching Ken Burns documentaries. It wasn’t until I began talking about (and praying about) how I was gonna get myself out of debt that it actually happened. I talked and prayed HARD. And within months, I met a wonderful woman at a party who changed the direction of my career, and in one year’s time, I was debt-free. How’s that for magic?

Fourth, I listen to that little voice in my head – what is usually referred to as “women’s intuition”. With no disrespect to my female readers, stop hogging the glory! Everybody has intuition, most people just don’t listen. I like to think of it as God whispering in my ear, although, because I only have one ear that works, I sure hope he remembers to whisper in the right one. Of course, sometimes He can scream like a howler monkey and we don’t pay any attention. Example: someone got me involved, a few years back, with a scam artist. I had a bad feeling about him from the minute I met him. But I ignored it. And let me tell you, it cost me plenty.

Finally, I try to accept what is. This is not very entertaining and can, in fact, be a bummerpalooza. And, I must admit, I don’t always do it without attempting to take someone down with me. After all, spreading the pain around seems like the democratic thing to do. But there really is a kind of peace in surrender, in simply saying, “What will be, will be, because I’m too damn exhausted to try to control it.” My partner, for example, is a bit of a slob. (You know, the clothes lying around the house type.) I am obsessively neat and orderly. This provoked a lot of fights early in our relationship. But after a while, I accepted it – and in doing so, I began to appreciate the myriad of other astounding qualities he possesses. Of course, like any good spouse, I’ll deny this to his face.

I really do think magic exists. And I think it can take many forms. What’s your wand? Let me know I’d really like to hear.

Last weekend, I went to a wonderful benefit honoring the fine work of a large Los Angeles charity that provides critical services like housing and health care to financially challenged gay kids and adults. It was a beautiful, funny and moving event. But the moment that really made me break down, the moment when I lost all emotional control, was when I won two items in the silent auction.

 Perhaps I should explain.

 Most benefits these days have such an auction, where participants bid on random stuff – a basket of DVD’s, Botox injections, framed jailhouse poetry by Todd Bridges – by writing down amounts on a bid sheet. Typically, this is a civilized process where people attempt to outbid one another on items they particularly want.

 Now, I had long ago learned that the key to successful silent auction prize snagging is in the last-minute bidding. Bidding early on only increases the price of the item, thus rendering it the kind of purchase that – in your what-the-hell-have-I-done hangover the next morning – you rationalize as an extremely generous donation to the charity. One you had no business making.

 Early bidding also insures that you’ll be outbid, since people have an hour or two to top it. And rest assured, they will. The smart auction bidder swoops in and makes their one and only bid at the last second, and only for an item whose cost has not been absurdly bid up, thereby snaring the prize and insuring that the price of the item remains a steal – a purchase of such extraordinary value that it serves as a keen reminder to anyone within earshot of your outrageous financial acumen.

 Well apparently, others have learned the wisdom of my techniques, for more and more, I find myself hovering over an item at the last minute – my item, mind you – next to someone doing the exact same thing. And not in a friendly way. Perhaps it’s the free-flowing liquor that makes someone decide they will kill or maim to win that Jonathon Adler lips vase. Maybe it’s the desperate desire to inflate one’s self worth by owning a stick drawing done by Kelsey Grammar that makes people ready to rumble. But whatever the case, there is something about silent auction bidding that seems to bring out the worst in people.

Case in point: at an event a few months back, I had placed a bid on a set of ceramic plaques by the pop artist Peter Max. (This sounds much more hoity-toity than it really was; there are thousands of these plaques, it ain’t like I was buying an original.) In typically brilliant fashion, I placed my bid just as the auctioneer was counting down the final seconds before closing. The bell rang, and I won. Then, to my complete shock, an older man in a tweed blazer stepped in front of me, pulled the bid sheet off the table, and proceeded to write in his own bid – AS they were collecting the sheets.

I confronted him, but he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “No habla Ingles”. (He was white.) I should have complained, but I was loathe to make a scene at a benefit, since nothing says “misplaced priorities” like complaining because a charity got more money for an auction item. These auctions are also staffed by volunteers who really aren’t in the mood to referee a fistfight over a signed Grease 2 poster or a facial.

But I wasn’t about to let this happen again. So, at last night’s event, when I found two items I wanted, I set to work.

The items were conveniently located about five feet apart; so I began to calculate whether I could drape myself across the table like I was the charity’s Man of the Month, thus obscuring the items in question with my head and feet. The fact that I am generally not considered any charity’s Man of the Month became moot when a volunteer noticed what I was doing and requested that I not attempt to recreate a Playgirl centerfold atop a card table.

Still needing to scare the other bidders away, I did what any reasonable, determined silent auction bidder would do. I began crazy talking.

This, for those who have never tried it, is simply a running commentary filled with colorful epithets and meditations (spoken in an outside voice) on the ways in which you would enjoy dismembering various attendees. I have found it to be highly effective and quite easy to do, since most of us have a few of these stored up from the drive to the event.

Success! I scored two of the three items I bid on, the charity got a small lump of cash, and no one was hurt (if you don’t count the eight-year-old girl who overheard my remarks and is now in counseling).

So you can see why I was so moved by this event. I mean, nothing says “giving to others” like getting a smokin’ deal on Christmas presents.

I just finished serving on the jury of a manslaughter trial. Prior to this, the closest I had gotten to a courtroom (since testifying in a civil case as a teenager) was sitting in the potential jurors area smoothing out the wrinkles in my Yoda costume. A jury of my peers always seemed like a group of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty in time for Judge Judy. 

Apparently, I am now one of those idiots. And I have to tell you, I’m a happier person for it; because I saw, firsthand, how well the system can work.

My jury was a group of thoughtful, albeit poorly dressed, individuals of all ages and from all walks of life. We took the three charges against this man very seriously, and deliberated vigorously and with passion. And when we acquitted him on all three counts and I was able to make it to Palm Springs in time for a Jennifer Holliday concert, I celebrated the judicial system of this great country of ours.

Don’t get me wrong, nobody was trying to make quick work of a man’s fate because they had a facial. The day ends at 4:00 p.m., whether you’re ready to stop deliberating or not. Which leads me to my one criticism of the courts of Los Angeles: what’s with the 10:30-4:00 schedule?

It’s no wonder the system is so backed up. I’d have been up for 8:00-5:00 days, since that’s still at least two hours shorter than my typical work day. Granted, the time can drag a little when you’re sitting there watching them mark evidence and go over the same points of fact time and again (there’s an awful lot of procedural rules apparently left over from the powdered wig era), but hey, toss us some Red Bull’s and let’s move this thing along.

It’s not like anybody on our jury was falling asleep, anyway – they had the air conditioning in there cranked so high you could cure meats. It was 90 degrees outside and I had to carry a parka into the building. Besides, when you get to the juicy stuff – this case was actually quite tragic in its events – it’s like a real life Law & Order with higher stakes and shorter commercial breaks.

The gentleman facing these charges had already been through a year of hell, had probably spent $50,000 on his defense, all because of an event he had not instigated but had been an unwitting part of. So why drag out the case even longer with these Barbie-sized work days? Do judges bartend on the side and need time to remove the robe before Happy Hour?

Most of the people involved in the legal system – attorneys, judges, court reporters – are quite well-compensated. Would it be too much to ask for them to work the kind of hours normal adults do? If court days were longer, we could cram a lot more cases through the pipeline, and then more people could sue each other for stuff than ever before.

Wait.

It seems difficult for many Americans not to stereotype Muslims as violent extremists looking to light their panty shields on fire. Or to label Mexicans living in Arizona as illegal immigrants who enjoy a whimsical desert decapitation.

Therefore, in honor of the mid-term elections, I have decided that, in the interest of fairness and inclusiveness, we should begin stereotyping all groups.

I am excited about the appointment of so many Republicans to the House of Representatives, so that we can continue our longstanding tradition of corporate welfare for the rich. Headed by a man whose affinity for the spray tan community indicates an extraordinary lack of self-worth, these newly installed officials should take their election as a mandate to snatch America back from the jaws of the atheist, pot-smoking Democrats who want to take all your money away and turn America into China, Jr.

I hope that 2011 will see an end to dirty wetbacks taking the $40 a day lettuce picking jobs away from Real Americans, and an end to homosexual couples attempting to pretend they’re Real Families by adopting unwanted children.

I hope that we will see Asians taking Driver’s Ed and women learning to lock themselves in a padded cell when pre-menstrual.

I hope that we’ll find older white men remembering that they are the Chosen Ones and acting accordingly.

But most of all, I hope that we can all come together as one – one big, racist, misogynistic, fear-filled group of reactivists who can’t see the forest for the trees. A group that has no conception of the notion that, while there’s a little truth in every stereotype, our differences are what make us unique and what make life interesting. And that maybe God has a reason for them.

That’s the America I know and love.

Oh, hell, the Hassidic neighbor is ringing the doorbell for the third time today. I’m gonna tell him I’m busy frying a pig.

Perhaps I should reread this post.