And Just Because

Ren, I just want you to know that when I get back on Sunday, I'm BACK.

Imminent Departure

It's finally time. My last day as a professional highligher/typist is Friday, my flight leaves Sunday morning(7:00 AM?!?!? What was I thinking?!?!?!), and I report to work on Monday morning. What happens in the next week? A jam packed combination of social activity, packing, and panic(both the quiet and not so quiet kinds) awaits.

It has never been this hard to leave someplace before. I had less than a month to prepare the first time I moved to New York, and I moved to Minneapolis with close to the same amount of notice. I shudder to think that this might mean I'm more of a grown-up than I was when I arrived. Life in the Twin Cities has been quite a combination of highs and lows, but I will still miss everyone I know who hasn't started planning their East Coast move(there are a few foolish types who still think they're not included on my list of inevitable transplants).

Please, help me reverse this distressing maturation process. The going away party is Friday. Immature behavior should be rampant.

Loading and Unloading

Thank God none of the remaining furniture is worth all that much. Posting some of the remainders as free is going GREAT. The place should be empty by the end of tomorrow.

Hired!

I knew my tireless enthusiasm for popular culture would come in handy. It's time to pack my bags-I just found out I got the job I interviewed for yesterday.

Is Big Fun big in Korea right now?

This article reads like a summary of Suicide Club, except without the weird interlude with the Japanese David Cassidy lookalike stomping on puppies in a bowling alley.

Yes, that really happens in the movie.

Word on the Street

A few things I heard today while walking around Brooklyn:

1. No, YOU'RE the bitch I'm talking to right now(said into a cell phone).
2. How you doin', pretty toes(said to me)?
3. There are mushrooms growing in the bathroom.

Things I learned today:

1. A lot of work goes into showing people that stars are just like us.
2. You can tell the truth and still be sued for defamation.
3. If I don't pick an official "moving" date I'll probably never get a job.
4. I'm too old to function on two hours of sleep.

Too Much Sun

It is officially summer in my universe: after a lovely day spent with family and friends, parts of my arms and chest now match the dress I'm wearing. This would be less embarrassing if the dress were sleeveless and weren't a V-neck. As it is I have lobster colored decolletage.

Graduation Day

It's sunny, the temperature is in the mid-70s, the hammock is up in the shade, and my sister, the Greatest Classics Scholar on Earth(tm), is officially a college graduate. It seems like only yesterday you were crammed into University of Iowa "temporary housing" with eleven girls from West Des Moines, and today you're skipping your ceremony to drink champagne on the back porch with me. I don't think I've ever been so proud.

Congratuations, Dana. I love you. You're the best.

A Textbook Case

An article I wrote a few years ago has been published in a composition textbook. I get to call something I did a textbook example of good writing. I never thought that would happen.

The best part? The Nation paid me more for the permission than they did for publishing it the first time.

If only the piece could also clean up the atrocious mess I'm staring at in my soon to be ex-apartment.

Brooklyn Time Warp

I spent most of today drinking with an old friend from the long ago days of Nation interning(2005 seems so far away!), but it has been the time I've had to walk alone that have been my favorite. I got off the subway yesterday and found myself more than halfway to my old aparment(where I am staying) before I realized what I was doing. I don't think I've ever felt more at home anywhere, even at my parents' house. I have to remind myself continually that I haven't been living in New York for the past two years, I have been living in Minneapolis, because it just doesn't feel like any time has passed. I feel as happy and as right here as I did when I first moved, and it seems just as navigable as the town I grew up in.

Maybe that isn't such a good thing, what with growing up in a town of 5,000 people. Maybe Brooklyn is just an overgrown suburb now, filled with people too big for the Midwest but not big enough for Shanghai, or some such nonsense. I don't care. I still love the feeling of being one negligible part of one huge metropolitan unit.

And now I have to present my friend with her birthday present: a handbag sewed from vintage early 90s highlighter bright Beverly Hills 90210 fabric.

Goodbye Smut and Eggs

Things that have changed in Madison since I moved away:

1. "Smut and Eggs," your opportunity to watch hardcore pornography over breakfast and hair of the dog, is gone.

2. The State Street Arcade, well loved porn store, sex shop, and gay pickup joint, has been forced out thanks to higher rents. The Art Box strikes again! It has been replaced by a soon-to-open restaurant. The owner of that establishment has too much moxie and not enough bleach to make me eat there.

3. Duane, my coffee guy from college now owns his own cafe/art space/performance location/conference space/hippie/biker/furry hangout, the Escape Java Joint.

4. The Paradise(my most fondly remembered old haunt) now has Led Zeppelin on the jukebox. And not even decent Led Zeppelin; it was Houses of the Holy. Also, some of the female patrons wore tube tops. Thankfully, the beer was still cheap and the fried food is still the best in Madison.

The real motives for the abortion ban

My sister figured it out. Dick Cheney is basically the head of the skeksis, but rather than stealing the essence of podlings in order to maintain his shriveled, damned existence, he must drink the blood of unwanted babies. Soon he will have enough to return him to the power of his youth!

Morning

Nick Cave and I are spending some quality time together this morning. I wish he weren't twice my age; I think he's my soulmate.

Sleepovers

On Friday night I went to a sleepover. There were sweatpants, there was nail polish, and we drank wine with straws. It was the first time in 15 years I've been in a room with that many women my own age. It was pretty magical, or maybe I am just a spectactularly bitter human for not letting go of all that grade-skipping angst sooner. Either way, thank you ladies.

Out of Place

Despite my best efforts, I am not a very neat person. I don't put things away all the time, I am comfortable going to be without hanging up my coat, and a host's home would need a lot of disorder to attract my scorn. This is not Ethan's family philosophy.

Last night, I used one of the hand towels in one of the bathrooms, and when I was done, I placed it back on the towel rack folded neatly in half. When I used the same towel this morning, I found it refolded, in thirds, hanging next to its identical twin.

I do not fit in here.

Dispatch

All the action is finished, and now all that is left is to watch basketball, sleep, and head back tomorrow. The best quote of the day goes to my Great-Aunt Quava(that's pronounced Kee-way-vuh, but no one knows why). She stumbled on my great grandfather's headstone while walking to her seat, looked down at the ground, and exclaimed,"Oh my goodness! I just tripped over Daddy!"

Second place goes to my cousin Richard, age 45, of no specific occupation or location, when he said, "Journalism? Rock & Roll? That's cool. Yeah, I know Jon Bon Jovi from back in the day."

Third place does not belong to any statement, but I have to recognize the joy in my sister's eyes when she tasted KFC for the first time.

The little things my sister and I have learned since coming down are really striking. I always thought I got my stubbornness and rebellious streak from my mother, but it turns out my grandmother used to risk her Baptist father's patriarchal wrath in order to go dancing and to baseball games with my grandfather. They also eloped and only told their parents when his mother found the marriage license. We can't really ask my grandmother to elaborate; she keeps asking me how the trip from New York was even though I haven't lived there for over a year. It's not worth trying to correct her.

We've found some of the most amazing photographs(hidden in a closet, natch)-a picture from our great grandmother's river baptism sometime around 1910; one of two young men sitting on a car dressed in impeccable suits(no one knows who they are), and my personal favorite, the series of photos of what looked like a vaudeville show featuring 20 or 30 men dressed in blackface. I don't know who took the pictures, who it is that is in them, or what else might have been going on, and I guess we never will.

ETA: Three free round trip tickets and a night at the Marriott later, I'm home. Thank. God.

The Tragedy of Death and Boy Meets World

It's been a rough day. A death, general sadness, and several other less than desirable little frustrations and tragedies have befallen me and my loved ones today. In order to distract myself, I decided to find side by side pictures to prove that the square first victim in Zodiac was in fact the nerdy kid from Boy Meets World that later got cut from the cast to make room for Tobanga's enormous breasts. And then I couldn't find any. Minkus has been erased from history, and I cannot get a break.

I will post a picture of Springer Spaniel puppies instead. The one on the left looks just like my puppy who got cancer last year about this time...oh forget it. Puppies are cute. I'm going to take a nap.

Breaking: College Sex Mags not good for Girls

The author of this article can't manage to write it without describing the attractiveness of the women involved or including quotes that reinforce the "girls in college are still totally stupid about sex and should just be good because when they do stuff that ends up in smut they totally feel bad about it and that just isn't cool" stance on female sexuality. It you write an article about sex magazines on college campuses, why spend so much time woman bashing(especially when it is women who are starting the things) when you have tons of material for Harvard bashing?

Why I hated Babel

Everyone expects PL to win Best Foreign Film on Sunday, and it may actually deserve it. Setting aside all the mass culture American reasons(highest grossing Spanish film ever, most well known nominee), it is an amazing film and a beautiful achievement. As the Oscars approached I've seen a lot of second guesses about the "future" quality of Pan's Labyrinth. There seems to be a lot of speculation about whether the blend of fantasy and political horror story will stand the test of time. Guillermo del Toro clearly doesn't want to be Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, so that criticism doesn't necessarily hold any water.

The more important thing to look at is that del Toro was the far superior Mexican director of the praised films this year. Babel, to put it succinctly, SUCKED. The 2.5 hours you might spend in the theater could be summed up by the following: "life sucks and it hurts, but if you have to choose a color to suck in, don't choose brown. White and yellow are way better. Hell, in the 21st century, red is probably better, but no one really knows because no one tells those stories except David Treuer." Seriously, don't waste your time with that convoluted shit. When it takes the gold on Sunday, it'll be another blow for real cinema fans.

Babel displayed none of the maturity that Pan's Labyrinth showed at every turn. There were no surprises, no moments where people behaved in anything other than the most mechanistic, deterministic way. A truly affecting movie about "fate" or "god" or "connection" involves surprises, moments where, beyond all reason and cynicism, goodness is actually rewarded, evil actually punished. It doesn't hurt when the good are uniformly punished on film; it only feels manipulative and schematic.

The reason the Japanese story resonates is because it is so tangential; the young girl hurts even without her father's complicity in minor international incidents. She would act out and self-destruct even if her father were an arms dealer who shot Cate Blanchett himself. Her hatred, anger, and despair was the only part of the film that made sense. When you compare this to Naomi Watts in 21 Grams and the "model and the dog" segment of Amorres Perros, it telescopes what Gonzales Inarritu does well and magnifies what he does very very poorly.

Stay Tuned for More...

A celebration

Happy Birthday David Bowie! I can't believe you're 60. You're really far too cool to be that old. I mean, of course Mick Jagger and Macca and Johnny Rotten are old farts, and even Iggy Pop and David Byrne and the Roxy Music Brians are starting to seem up there(Eno less than Ferry though, probably because of the fashion baldness), but you? I never dreamt it would come. Are you going to release a children's album of epic terribleness? Or will you merely continue to bless us with inspired cameos like your Nikola Tesla in The Prestige?

Actually, if you recorded an album of children's stories in character as Nikola Tesla I'd be okay with it. Please just keep being weird, that's all I ask.

Sincerely,
M