acerbic bubblegum

Blogger is just so five years ago, don't you think?

2010-06-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

I was having a quarterlife crisis in anticipation of my 25th birthday and decided to cope by switching to a trendier blogging platform.

Read my new blog, please. It's much shinier than this stupid old thing. There's a picture of me in a bikini, if that sounds at all enticing.

Apparently I have more things to say about The Hills.

2010-04-27T23:05:00.000-07:00

I guess it makes sense that the end of The Hills would be similar to the end of The O.C., if you lump it together with Laguna Beach as a single entity. They both lose their leading ladies, then the focus bounces around erratically for a while, with a final season of balls to the wall insanity that introduces an entirely new tone. I loved the fourth season of The O.C. for being so campy and self-referential. I'll be much more enthusiastic about a similarly self-aware and farcical final season of The Hills, as opposed to watching it continue to drift aimlessly toward oblivion.

However, revolutionary as it may be, I'm not sure I can stomach the turn Heidi and Spencer have taken toward developing a new reality genre: horror docu-soap. I feel guilty for comparing Heidi to Frankenstein's monster back when it felt moderately insightful, rather than obvious and cruel. It looks like Speidi's descending trajectory may be fascinatingly tragic, which is tragic, but, you know, fascinating.

Oh, also, The City is garbage but I love Erin and she should have her own show.

My new favorite reality show about the trashiness of the state in which I grew up.

2010-04-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

The New York Times thinks Jerseylicious would be "mildly entertaining if it weren't so blatantly trying to horn in on the now-faded "Jersey" mania of [Jersey Shore and Real Housewives of New Jersey]."

My disagreement with this critique is based on the belief that relishing in the absurdity and unabashed trashiness of some New Jersey denizens is not, as the Times asserts, a "tired shtick," "flogged over and over again by lazy television executives." I contend that New Jersey is, in fact, deeply hilarious and sociologically fascinating, and that it is logical, appropriate, and necessary for television executives to capitalize on this wellspring of entertainment potential.

While I certainly appreciate the entertainment value provided by Jersey Shore and Real Housewives of New Jersey, these two programs barely scratch the surface of what New Jersey has to offer. Only one member of the Jersey Shore cast (Sammi, ugh) is actually from New Jersey. (Pauly D is from Rhode Island and the rest live in New York.) And while Real Housewives of New Jersey is amazing, it provides a limited glimpse at the range of outrageous personalities one is likely to encounter in the Garden State.

Jerseylicious takes place at Gatsby Salon on Route 22 in Green Brooke, New Jersey. When I was in high school, and occasionally during the summers when I was in college, I worked as a receptionist at Fine Lines & Artistic Nails, in Chatham, New Jersey, a mere sixteen miles from Gatsby Salon. So naturally, I was intrigued by the concept of the show, but I didn't necessarily have high expectations for a "comedy docu-soap" on the Style Network. But, I swear to you guys, it is seriously compelling. Until the most recent episode, I was uncertain as to whether the show's appeal would translate to wider audiences that lack a thorough understanding of regional culture and customs, and as such, I was hesitant to blog about it. Now, though, I can confidently endorse Jerseylicious.

What brought on this onslaught of enthusiasm, you might ask? Well, last night, one of my television yearnings was fulfilled when two of the most stereotypically Jersey girls I have ever seen received a rather harsh makeunder from Edward Tricomi himself at Warren-Tricomi Salon in Manhattan. I could attempt to describe it, but no matter how many superlatives I used, I'm not sure that you'd completely believe me. So I have to show you:

That is just one of the more satisfying segments of last night's episode, which was almost entirely focused on the deconstruction of these girls' self-caricaturization.

In anticipation of your arguments, I will point out that, yes Olivia bears a strong similarity to Jersey Shore's Snooki. HOWEVER, Snooki, amusing and endearing as she is, is from MARLBORO, New York. In other words, not anywhere near New Jersey! Whereas Olivia is a real deal Jersey girl, through and through. Jersey Shore may have aired first, but really, Snooki is biting Olivia's style (indirectly, obvs).

Although Jerseylicious is by no means a comprehensive examination of what it means to be, well, Jerseylicious, it does uncover a few more layers of the amazingness that is New Jersey.

P.S. Just for the record, at this point in my life I would sooner cut my own hair than go to any salon in New Jersey, because I am a humongous snob.

Dear diary.

2010-03-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, I find it necessary to attempt to interact with other human beings without relying on my extrovert boyfriend as a social navigator and small talk safety net. My best friend Jess is currently on a business trip in Los Angeles, and she invited me to fly down for the weekend to partake of her free hotel room at the Viceroy in Santa Monica. In June, we went to Cameo Bar at the Viceroy for my birthday, because I really wanted to lounge amongst Kelly Wearstler's decor. And the space did feel as fun and sexy and glamorous as I imagined it would. I was so excited to spend a few nights there for free, but seeing the space in daylight seriously dampened my enthusiasm. It's still cool and fun, but everything looks much cheaper and crappier and tackier when you can actually see it clearly. On Thursday night we had happy hour drinks at Cameo Bar with our friend Trey, and then dinner at Dominick's with Jess's coworkers. Everyone ordered the chicken, which was highly recommended, and did in fact turn out to be pretty great. The appetizers and cocktails were also good. And the ambiance was nice on the back patio, with exposed brick walls covered in foliage, and a fireplace. On Friday, while Jess was working, I walked around Santa Monica all morning, bought a pair of knit shorts from American Apparel because I had forgotten to pack pajamas, and spent the afternoon reading by the pool at the Viceroy, wearing a hooded sweatshirt over my bikini because it was so breezy and overcast. At night, Jess and I had dinner at Ma'Kai Lounge. The food was not bad, and from the patio we could see the sun setting over the ocean. But the service was kind of weird. The waitstaff seemed confused about the table numbers, and throughout the meal, they kept trying to give us various things that we hadn't ordered. Also, the waiter, who was kind of a ridiculous bimbo, made a comment about Jersey Shore when he checked Jess's ID, and asked if she gets that all the time, and we both sort of felt pissy at him after that. It was fine, though. I can never really be unhappy as long as I have edamame to nibble. After dinner we wandered up and down the Third Street Promenade, on a quest for black ballet flats for Jess. Once she found a pair she liked, we went to Bar Chloe, where the bartender told us all about her problems finding a boyfriend who won't insist on hanging out more than one night a week, and served us sugary, weak cocktails. Trey met up with us after a while and then so did my friend Ken and his boyfriend Saul, after a misunderstanding that involved them driving to Cameo Bar and wondering why they couldn't find us. Toward the end of the night, Jess and Trey disapprovingly observed that I, the girl with the alcohol tolerance of a six year old, was barely tipsy after several drinks. But the space was cozy, and it was nice to not be hungover on Saturday morning. Jess and I had a lackluster brunch at the Georgian Hotel. After a huffy, hush-voiced conversation about the terrible service, we very seriously decided that we would only tip 15%. It was warm and sunny at that point, so we walked to the pier, bought thin, ugly towels for $8 each, went to the beach, lay down in the sand for approximately fifteen minutes, observed one another's goosebumps, put our jeans and sweatshirts back on and went to the promenade. Jess bought a pomelo at the farmers market. At Barnes and Noble, I bought Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin, and Jess bought a book of short stories by Tolstoy. Then Jess got Pinkberry while I commented effusively about how much I fail to understand the appeal of frozen yogurt and oddly segregated toppings. We went back to the Viceroy and tried to read by the pool, but even in jeans and sweatshirts it was so cold we gave up and went up to the room. I was reading and Jess was in the shower when a siren started blaring, interspersed with a noisy announcement that there had been an "event" in the hotel and that we should stand by and await further instruction while they verified the event. The siren and the scary announcement repeated over and over while I threw my book, jewelry, contact lens case, glasses, and birth control pills in my purse, and paced around outside the bathroom, trying to decide whether to tell Jess to get out of the shower or not. Eventually, the siren stopped and a new announcement assured us that everything was "all clear." I spent about an hour applying "a shitload" of eye makeup, striving for sort of a Jenny Humphrey effect, and then Trey picked us up and drove us to Hollywood Boulevard, where we ate sandwiches at Cafe Audrey and then had a couple drinks at Essex Public House, where the waiter was cartoonishly energetic. Jess wondered aloud whether he was an actor or a writer. I guessed both and was right. He told us a little bit about his acting career and the six screenplays he's written, and asked us about our jobs (well, their jobs) and favorite movies. I said Funny Face. He told us his favorite movie is The Princess Bride. We all agreed that was a good one. Then we went to Bar Marmont and felt glamorous. The bartender was wearing a fun top hat. There was nowhere to sit, but then we found a random, awesome, empty back room with a decoupaged ceiling and decided to make ourselves at home and risk getting yelled at. Once we did, a couple other guys followed our lead and we said hi. They said they were from DC, graduated from Georgetown and George Washington in '08, and had flown to LA for the weekend to look at apartments, because they were thinking of giving up their finance/consulting jobs to become producers. Then we left to meet our friend Eric, who went to high school with us, and Trey brought us to his friend's birthday party at a gorgeous house in the Hollywood Hills. Mostly everyone at the party knew each other from Harvard, usually the Harvard Lampoon, except for Eric and me. Everyone was so friendly and funny and welcoming. I talked to BJ Novak for a few minutes, and asked him about the time his character on The Office was reading I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. He said it was Mindy Kaling's idea, to underline how douchey Ryan is, and that they had considered the possibility that some people might misinterpret it as a more positive reference to Tucker Max, but those people are dumb, so whatever. While I was talking to him, it didn't even occur to me that I had the "Subtle Sexuality" music video on my iPod in my purse. But it's probably for the best that I didn't think to mention that, because I would have told him how much I love the part where he says, "My rhymes bite like piranha," and I was already struggling to not give the impression that I wanted to have sex with him. (I have watched "Subtle Sexuality" at least a hundred times, and when Ryan grabs his crotch at the end of his rap it always made me feel kind of squirmy and uncomfortable. I think from now on it might make me feel slightly aroused. (The word "slightly" is used here in an attempt to be considerate of Ed's feelings.)) He is a lot cuter and cooler-looking in person than on The Office. He was wearing hipsterish glasses that really worked for him. Writing this now, I'm second-guessing whether I actually hallucinated the entire experience, because I was drunk and it seems like something that I would make up. Assuming that this was not a dream, which I'm pretty sure it wasn't, but I need to reconfirm with Jess and Trey, I then announced, awkwardly, I'm sure, that I have a boyfriend, and stopped bothering him. Later on, I attempted to demonstrate my still-in-progress yoga headstand in this little indoor/outdoor exercise room next to the pool. Unfortunately, my super drunk strength was canceled out by my lack of any balancing ability whatsoever. Also, I may have accidentally flashed a boob in the process. Then we went back to the hotel so I could finish packing for my crack of dawn JetBlue flight from Long Beach to San Francisco. I was the only passenger on my $50 SuperShuttle ride (versus $100 for a taxi), which arrived at the Viceroy at 4:25 AM. I was very, very, very sleepy and disoriented at the airport, which I found unpleasantly reminiscent of the type of airports that Jess and I wound up at whenever we flew RyanAir to or from Scotland when we were abroad junior year. (The cold, early morning mist, in particular, reminded me of the time that the shack of an airport two hours outside Paris completely shut down due to fog, stranding us with several flights' worth of passengers in a middle of nowhere town with only two taxis for 24 hours or so.) Anyway, I had booked such an early flight because I wanted to get back to San Francisco in time to go the the Vintage Expo at the Concourse Exhibition Center, which turned out to suck and be a waste of $20 for admission. ($10 each, but I paid for Ed.) I was hoping to find some cool vintage costume jewelry like I bought for Jess and my mom and my sister at the "Deco the Halls" expo in December. But all the jewelry was from later decades and tackier and uglier and more expensive and behind glass, so I couldn't try lots of things on without it being a hassle. The fact that I hadn't slept for longer than 45 minutes or so on the plane may have accounted for some bias, but still I think it actually did kind of suck. We went to Whole Foods and I got some triple cream cheese and Ed got real food that more closely resembles meals and then we came home and watched The Office and 30 Rock and napped and vegged out for the rest of the day.

So I had fun in Los Angeles. It was awesome to spend time with Jess and Trey, and I especially liked how everyone treated me as if I am cool and interesting and not stupid and annoying, which is how I usually feel. (I guess I should wear high heels more often.) I could never live there, though, because I can't really drive and thus am limited to cities with adequate public transportation.

No such thing as too much Wonderland.

2010-03-12T11:42:00.000-08:00

I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by the idea of falling down a rabbit hole and landing in an absurd and whimsical world full of nonsense and riddles and talking animals.

I have read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass more times than I could possibly begin to calculate. When I was little, I yearned for blond hair and blue eyes because I wanted to be Alice, and was only somewhat mollified when I learned that Alice Liddell, who inspired the character, had been a brunette, and that John Tenniel's iconic illustrations were based on a different girl. When I was 10 or 11, I wrote a one-act play of Alice in Wonderland, cajoled my neighbors and sister into divvying up all the bit parts so that I could play Alice, and directed a backyard performance for our parents. In high school, I sometimes read the "Mad Tea-Party" chapter of Alice in Wonderland for the "Humorous Interpretation" category at Forensics competitions. (My other HI piece was one of the Oompa-Loompas' songs from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.)

I recently decoupaged my coffee table with pages from the books. I have several pieces of Wonderland-inspired artwork (not including the coffee table) decorating my apartment. I have a pet rabbit who blogs under the pseudonym The White Rabbit. And my most deeply cherished ambition is to one day write a fantasy novel that could be deemed a classic, worthy of being shelved alongside the Alice books, as well as The Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door, and the Harry Potter series.

Alice in Wonderland was one of the only animated Disney movies that my family did not own on VHS. I first saw some portions of the movie at IKEA's in-store daycare center. I missed the beginning and didn't even know what I was watching, but the images of Alice, the caterpillar, and the Cheshire Cat were indelibly etched in my mind. This fleeting snippet of a memory is one of the earliest that I am able to recall. I can remember how desperately I wanted to see the entire movie, and when I finally did, I was baffled by my friends' complaints that it was "weird" and "creepy." I loved it, of course. I bought the DVD a couple of years ago and have watched it a few times since then. I also remember a live-action series on the Disney Channel, Adventures in Wonderland, being one of my favorite television shows at the time. And this past December, I very much enjoyed SyFy's Alice mini-series.

So it should probably not come as a surprise when I say that I loved Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. It is my favorite interpretation of the books that I have seen so far.

Ed, Motts, and I saw it last Friday at the Kabuki, which is the only theater where I will watch a movie that has just opened, because you can choose your seats online. I bought tickets a month ahead of time, counting out the seats to make sure that we would be in the exact center of the row. I was tempted to dress up in my most Alicey outfit, but thought it would be wiser not to draw attention to myself, since I was smuggling a 'shrooming rabbit in my purse. I did wear my black and white striped fingerless gloves that I got for $5 at the Marc by Marc Jacobs store a couple of weeks ago, because Ed said they looked sort of Tim Burton-ish. And then, approximately .5 seconds before it was time to show the hostess my ID (we went to a 21+ screening), I realized that she couldn't stamp my hand if I was wearing gloves, and I had to step out of the line to pull them off and I was flustered because of being nervous about getting caught sneaking Motts into the movie. The bar was serving "Mad Hatter" cocktails with absinthe and triple sec, which resulted in a generally nauseous audience once the 3D got going. Several people had to sprint for the bathroom after Alice fell down the rabbit hole, and I was pleasantly surprised that nobody actually vomited in the theater. The girls from Paul's Hat Works were there, dressed in adorable Mad Hatter costumes with tutus and face paint and, obviously, top hats. I ran into them in the bathroom after the movie and attempted to take a picture with my cell phone, but for some reason it was determined only to record video, so I ended up with a couple of blurry, two-second video clips instead of a still photo. (Maybe Motts had been messing with it in my purse?)

I tried to avoid reading any reviews until after I had seen it, and when I got home, I immediately went online, to Rotten Tomatoes, and was shocked to find that it only had a 53%. It seems that many critics were underwhelmed due to high expectations, found the 3D distracting, wanted a more faithful adaptation of the book, thought the characters too flat, or condemned the narrative as either too straightforward or not cohesive enough. Not that anyone cares what I think, but just for the record, I completely disagree with all of these complaints.

I loved the 3D. I found it wonderful and decadently gorgeous and thoroughly immersive, far more so than Avatar or Up.

I thought most of the characters were fantastic. I liked Mia Wasikowska's Alice, Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen the best, but Anne Hathaway's White Queen was also good, aside from her makeup, which I thought could have been better. I tend to dislike most interpretations of Tweedledee and Tweedledum, but they were all right here. I thought the caterpillar was slightly disappointing, and the White Rabbit should have been either cuter or handsomer. The March Hare was fine, but nothing special. I thought the Cheshire Cat was phenomenal, the most perfect illustration of the character that I could have ever imagined.

The story is a fairly standard Hollywood narrative, especially in comparison to the books, which have almost no narrative structure whatsoever. But I'm not sure how it could have been anything else. It's a big budget Disney movie, and I doubt that it could have ever gotten made without an emphasis on external conflict and a more typical story arc. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a more faithful version of the books, with their meandering, nonsensical plot lines and emphasis on wordplay, riddles, and poetry. But that sort of interpretation would most likely have to be an independent film, or, since that phrase seems to have lost all meaning at this point, it would at least have to be more "indie" than this movie, with a considerably smaller budget.

(If I were writing a film adaptation of the Alice books, mine would be a surreal, episodic version. I'd do Though the Looking-Glass and have the plot follow the book as closely as possible, with an emphasis on scenes and characters that audiences haven't seen before. Alice's kittens, the mirror that melts at her touch, the backwards looking-glass house full of living chess pieces, the countryside marked out like an enormous chessboard, the Gnat with his odd, mournful jokes and the other looking-glass insects, the forest that makes you forget who you are, the practice of punishing criminals before the crime has been committed, the Sheep in her dark, mysterious shop that transforms into a little boat gliding along a stream full of scented rushes and then back into a shop, Humpty Dumpty, the White King with his ridiculous Anglo-Saxon Messengers Haigha and Hatta and their ham sandwiches and hay, the Lion and the Unicorn fighting for the crown and the Unicorn's deal with Alice that he will believe in her if she will believe in him, the White Knight and all his inventions, Alice's transformation from a pawn to a queen at the Eighth Square, her dinner-party where the various courses introduce themselves and refuse to be eaten, and the explosion of chaos at the end, when everything turns into everything else and Alice shakes the Red Queen back into a kitten. It would be a screenplay full of fresh, cinematic, potentially iconic imagery and linguistic playfulness and nobody would ever buy it because it wouldn't follow the rules about structure and stakes and plot points and pacing.)

That's the thing about Alice in Wonderland, though. It's so full of resonant imagery and characters and ideas, there's really no limit to the number of film adaptations that could be made. I would have been sad if Tim Burton's version had sucked, but I didn't expect it to be the definitive version, because the books are and will always be the definitive version. I would watch a new Alice in Wonderland once every six months or so for the rest of my life, if filmmakers continued to churn them out. All I required to be happy with this particular Alice in Wonderland was for it to be gloriously Tim Burton-esque, dark and twisted and indulgent and visually overwhelming. And it was, and I was happy. I will probably go see it again in a couple of weeks, but in IMAX this time, to see how it compares with Dolby Digital 3D.

In the future: Pod people

2010-03-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

In the future, there will be three kinds of people: pod people, city people, and land people. But most people will be pod people.

Pod people will live in pod colonies. There will be many pod colonies all over the world. Most will be built facing the ocean, with a few in other geographically desirable areas. Each pod colony will consist of a single massive structure, designed to house several thousand pod people as comfortably, efficiently, and stylishly as possible. The architectural designs of the pod colonies will vary wildly, but functionally, they will be nearly identical. Pod colonies will provide spaces for pod people to sleep, eat, work, learn, and play.

The defining element of the pod colony will be the pod itself. Within each colony, pods will share an identical core structure, but will be endlessly customizable to the most precise and eccentric specifications of the inhabitant. Pods will be extremely compact, but the size will be more than adequate because they will be so perfectly calibrated to the inhabitant's needs. All pods will be constructed using materials of the highest quality, and will be arranged with the utmost attention to ergonomics and aesthetic appeal.

All pods will be equipped with an array of sophisticated technology. Pods will be self-cleaning, thanks to automated systems that require no effort on the part of the inhabitant, aside from occasional straightening up and putting away of personal items. Beds will make themselves with the flick of a switch, and the entire pod will routinely sterilize itself while the inhabitant is elsewhere, ensuring that the air is always fresh, dust is never permitted to accumulate, carpets are always vacuumed, and bathrooms always sparkle. Garbage shoots will instantly whisk all waste away to be sorted and either discarded or reused as appropriate, and laundry shoots will similarly remove soiled clothing to be cleaned in a central location.

Built-in computers will serve as communication and entertainment systems, offering inhabitants on demand access to any type of media at any time. These machines will include large screens with a small ticker visible in one corner at all times, regardless of what else is being displayed on the screen. The ticker will track the user's media consumption and virtual communication habits in an easily digestible format, broken down into various categories and subcategories. Pod technology will be sleek, sexy, and intuitive: all the most seductive Apple products rolled into one flawless device.

There will be pods for singles, pods for couples, and pods for families with up to two children. Single pods will include one computer, one desk, one desk chair, one bed, one bedside table, one wardrobe/chest of drawers, one toilet, one bathroom sink, one shower, a small refrigerator, a small kitchen sink, a small counter for very basic food preparation, a single burner for very basic food preparation, a small love seat, a coffee table, and one additional chair of the inhabitant's choice: either a simple upholstered chair, a recliner, or a chaise lounge. Couples pods will be similar, but each inhabitant will have his or her own computer, desk, desk chair, bedside table, wardrobe/chest of drawers, bathroom sink, and additional chair. The bed, sofa, and refrigerator will be slightly larger than in single pods. Single and individual pods will consist of two rooms: a living/sleeping space, and a bathroom. Family pods will be divided into five rooms, for the sake of privacy: a shared living space, one bedroom for the parents, one bedroom for the children, one bathroom for the parents, and one bathroom for the children. Each child will have his or her own computer, desk, desk chair, bedside table, wardrobe/chest of drawers, bathroom sink, and additional chair. The sofa, refrigerator, kitchen sink, and kitchen counter will be slightly larger than in couples pods, and a second burner will be provided. Couples and families will be limited to one chaise lounge per pod. All pods will include adequate lighting.

In essence, each pod will resemble a small but luxurious room (or suite, in the case of family pods) in a fashionable boutique hotel, but with expressive customization options reminiscent of a MySpace profile, communication and entertainment systems reminiscent of an enormous iPad, and a robotic maintenance system reminiscent of The Jetsons.

In addition to thousands of private pods, each pod colony will contain cafeterias, fitness centers, offices, classrooms, libraries, and socialization areas. All pod people will be considered members of the pod colony in which they live, and will have equal access to all community spaces.

The cafeterias will serve healthy and delicious food in correct portion sizes. Snacks and desserts will be provided in moderation, and gorging will not be facilitated. Pod food will be simple and natural, and all food will be made from fresh, raw, organic ingredients on the premises. Most ingredients will be grown on the roof of the pod colony, or on small farms on the land immediately surrounding the pod colony. Pod colonies will sometimes trade with other pod colonies for specialty items. Some ingredients, meat in particular, will be procured from land people. However, before agreeing to accept meat or other animal products from land people, pod colonies will thoroughly verify that animals were raised humanely and sustainably, without hormones, antibiotics, or unnatural feeds. Any pod person who prefers to prepare his or her own food will be welcome to do so in the communal kitchen of any cafeteria, where plenty of natural ingredients and the highest caliber tools and equipment will be made available.

Fitness centers will be open twenty-two hours per day. Once every twelve hours, the fitness center will close for one hour to sterilize itself. There will be a wide variety of machines, equipment, and classes, and pod people will be encouraged to explore different types of exercise. Personal trainers will be available for support and motivation, and to ensure that pod people are performing exercises safely and correctly. Personal trainers will be warm, welcoming people who do not judge or intimidate. Yoga will be quite popular among the pod people, and in many pod colonies, some of the most attractive spaces with the most beautiful views will be designated for the practice of yoga.

Pod people will have access to a myriad of therapists and analysts who will be happy to discuss anything at all, from the most trifling neurosis to the most debilitating trauma. There will be matchmakers to help pod people find the perfect mate and dermatologists to help pod people perfect their skin. All pod people will have equal access to health care, which will be easy to provide, since pod colonies will be quite safe and there will be few accidents, and since everyone will have the necessary resources and education to remain as healthy as possible. There will be design consultants, aesthetic experts who will offer their assistance in order to maintain the overall attractiveness of the pod colony and its inhabitants.

Every pod person will receive an education that exalts and encourages empathy, intellectual curiosity, analytical ability, personal expression, and imagination. This education will endorse no theology, but will instead foster a combination of healthy skepticism and nurtured spirituality. Pod teachers will not promote notions of separatism, elitism, or nationalism.

Since all pod people will have access to all media electronically, print will become impractical and unnecessary. However, some pod people will still prefer to read words printed on paper at times, and each pod colony will contain an extensive library of physical books and magazines for this purpose.

Socialization areas will be tailored to a staggeringly wide range of interests. There will be spaces for people who like kittens, spaces for people who like trance music, spaces for people who like classical music, spaces for people who play video games, spaces for people who want to have sex, spaces for people who take various drugs. (All recreational drugs will be legal and freely available to any pod person over the age of eighteen who passes a brief educational course and exam.) These socialization areas will be easy to navigate and open to any pod person at any time, with the exception of a few spaces which will be off limits to pod people under the age of eighteen.

Pod colonies will have no currency. All colony members will have all their basic needs provided for, and will have access to unlimited media and communication, for free, for as long as they choose to live in pods. Anyone who wishes to become a member of a pod colony may join freely, and will be assigned his or her own private pod. However, all perspective members must agree to fulfill the following requirements:

1. All pod people must contribute to the colony. All community roles will be performed on a voluntary basis. Teachers, chefs, personal trainers, yoga instructors, engineers, therapists, design consultants, and so on, will do their jobs because they find them interesting and satisfying, and because they wish to contribute to their colony. Their only additional reward will be personal pride and, if they are good at their jobs, recognition from the community. Those who are not drawn to a particular role will be assisted in discovering a passion, and those who are uninterested in pursuing a community role out of passion or interest will be encouraged to take on more menial tasks. These jobs, though rote and not particularly fulfilling, will be fairly easy, since the true drudgery will be handled by robots. There will be no specific requirements for what "contributing to the community" entails, and pod people will always be free to devote a day or several to leisure and relaxation. However, if a pod person routinely refuses to make any sort of contribution, it will eventually be brought to the attention of the community, and appropriate, considered measures will be taken on a case by case basis.

2. Hatred and cruelty will not be permitted. Acts of violence will be strictly prohibited, outside of a few designated socialization pods. No pod person will be allowed to inflict suffering on another pod person. Disagreements must be resolved through logical, articulate discussion, and if that is not possible, a conflict resolution specialist will be called upon to facilitate harmony. If a pod person cannot resolve a disagreement peacefully, he or she may be put into temporary isolation or even ejected from the colony.

3. Pod people must be committed to sustainability, in all forms. Unnecessary consumption, destruction, and waste will be discouraged. Each couple will be permitted to produce a maximum of two children. Single parenthood will be socially accepted, and a single parent will be assured of having all the resources necessary for her or himself and her or his child. However, single parents will be limited to one child per individual. (A single mother may have two children as long as the father or fathers do not have additional children with other women. Paternity tests will be administered when there is any doubt.)

Birth control will be provided to all pod people, and most pregnancies will be planned. The very few accidental pregnancies that do occur will be discovered almost immediately, and a quick, safe, painless abortion will be an easily available, socially acceptable option. Adoption will also be an easily available, socially acceptable option. Same-sex couples and infertile opposite-sex couples who wish to raise one or two children will be encouraged to adopt from among the few unwanted, orphaned, or abandoned children, or children who have been removed from unfit parents. (Parents who find themselves unsuited to parenthood will have the option of giving their child to a same-sex or infertile couple who have applied, and they will be free to visit that child throughout his or her life, should the child agree to continue such a relationship.)

Once a woman has given birth to her second child, she must either: A. agree to be sterilized, B. agree to take birth control and abort any accidental pregnancies, C. agree to adopt out any future children to a qualified couple who cannot have children of their own, D. file for a special dispensation to exceed the two child limit and convince a committee that she is uniquely suited to raising well adjusted members of the community, or E. agree to take all of her children and leave the pod colony if she does become pregnant with a third child and subsequently refuse to abort it or give it up for adoption. In the event that a woman becomes pregnant with twins, triplets, etc., exceptions to the limits can be made.

4. In order to partake of the infinite cornucopia of media, pod people must provide feedback. In some cases, they will simply be prompted to click a button indicating whether they "like," "dislike," or are "unsure" about any post, video, or image. At other times, required feedback may consist of a somewhat but not unreasonably extensive survey. Usually, there will be an option to include a written comment, but comments must adhere to basic grammatical structure, capitalization and punctuation. Comments that do not meet this standard will be rejected by the comment filter. As long as the commenter displays a functional command of his or her native language, though, the comment will be read and considered by a qualified party. Feedback will be used for the continued enhancement of the media and technology available to all pod people.

In the future, this is how the pod people will live.

I'm probably judging you.

2010-02-24T12:35:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty judgmental, I think. Here are some ways that I judge people, roughly in order of importance:

Do you smell bad?
Are you rude or inconsiderate?
Are you overbearing?
Are you arrogant or egotistical?
Do you chew loudly, or with your mouth open?
Are you wearing unflattering shoes?
Do your posture or mannerisms cause you to invade my personal space?
Do you carry yourself as though in a position of power?
Do you lack self-awareness?
Are you smart?
Are you smug?
Do you have interesting things to say?
Do you actively listen to other people, or do you prefer to hear yourself talk? Do you play with your phone while others are speaking to you?
Are you fixed and rigid in your opinions?
Are you a Republican?
Are you conservative?
Do you like Lost? If not, do you actively dislike it, or have you just never watched it? Or are you a lapsed Lost fan?
Are you good at banter and/or picking up on sarcasm? Can you distinguish between sarcasm, sincerity, and facetiousness?
Do you enjoy making cynical, negative, dismissive comments about hipsters, hippies, Twitter, bikes, or Lady Gaga?
Do you read?
Do you like animals?
Do we have similar taste in movies or television?
Are you empathetic?
Do you seem to harbor any biases against predefined groups of people?
Are you tense or high-strung, or do you have a relaxed, comforting presence?
Do you smoke weed?
Do you disapprove of drugs in general? Do you support legalization?
Are you outdoorsy?
Are you boring?
Do you drink? What kind of drinker are you?
Do you "work out" regularly?
Are you fun?
Are you a "foodie" and/or do you enjoy wine tasting? What about cheese?
Are you religious? If so, how religious?
Is your vocabulary noticeably limited?
Do you tend to take things/people for granted?
Do you drive frequently, even when other forms of transportation are readily available?
Is your vehicle large or ostentatious?
Do you appreciate art?
What about tasteful design? Do you have a developed aesthetic sensibility, particularly with regards to fashion and home decor?
Do you endeavor to present yourself in a contrived manner?
Do you enjoy whimsy?
Is your lifestyle more indulgent or ascetic?
Do you use, or at least attempt to use, correct spelling and punctuation in your online communications? What about capitalization? How do you feel about the Oxford comma?
Do you prefer to text message or talk on the phone?
Do you litter?
Do you routinely disparage or condescend to others in order to cultivate a sense of your own superiority?
Are you thoughtful?
Are you unusually sheltered for your age?
Which is more important to you, being nice or being honest?

Alice in Wonderland in three dimensions.

2010-02-16T17:40:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, I decoupaged our $20 IKEA coffee table with pages from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Of course, I didn't tear up my own beloved book that I've had since I was little. I ordered a used copy from AbeBooks. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite finished when I ran out of pages, so I guess I need to order one more.

Valedictorian of weed.

2010-02-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

It's about time I was valedictorian of something.

Oaksterdam also sent me this sweatshirt for free, which is sweet because, since I am picky about fabric softness and didn't do sports as a youth, I never accumulated an adequate sweatshirt collection.

Happy Valentine's Day.

2010-02-14T22:05:00.000-08:00

I made this for you.

I hope you had a nice and loving weekend. I did. Ed took me to Spork, in the Mission, and everything was perfect and delicious. He also bought me some miniature cupcakes and salted caramels from Sweet. I love salted caramels and I had actually never eaten a red velvet cupcake before tonight, so that was cool. I wore a dress and high heels and lipstick and a necklace and a thong and a frilly bra, and usually I won't wear any of those things, so for me to wear them all at once is a pretty special occasion, indeed. I realized tonight that before I met Ed, which was a little over six years ago, I had never had a boyfriend or even a date on Valentine's Day, so he is my first and only Valentine. I love him.

Pulling a Ginsberg?

2010-01-29T19:16:00.000-08:00

Shortly after moving to San Francisco, I went to the Beat Museum, and then to City Lights, where I bought The Dharma Bums, Naked Lunch, and Howl and Other Poems. I liked The Dharma Bums, but I didn't find it particularly earthshaking. I only got through the first third of Naked Lunch before giving up in disgust. But "Howl" resonated pretty strongly with me.

So when I heard that there was going to be a movie about "Howl," I was excited. And when I discovered that there would be a special screening at the Sundance Kabuki Cinema here in San Francisco, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers, I bought tickets immediately.

Ed and I saw the movie last night, and we both enjoyed it very much. It is not a traditional feature film nor a documentary, and some might be underwhelmed by the unusual juxtaposition of courtroom drama, direct narration pulled from interviews, a reading of the poem itself, and animated sequences. But it worked for me. I wished there had been more hand-drawn animation and less computer animation, but I understand that that would have been prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. It would have been nice if the computer animation could have at least been made to resemble traditional animation more, because I found certain parts of the animated sequences too cold and slick. But that is my only complaint. James Franco is obviously much too attractive to portray Allen Ginsberg convincingly, but he managed to be the perfect movie star version of Ginsberg. And while I'm on the subject, I'll say that I find Jon Hamm far more attractive when he's portraying a lawyer defending artistic freedom than a womanizing advertising executive. Anyway, the movie is good, I liked it and recommend it.

But also, I'd like to share some facts about Allen Ginsberg's life. He graduated from Columbia with a BA in literature, and then lived in Manhattan for a little while before getting arrested as an accessory to crimes that his friends had committed. Instead of jail, he was sent to a psychiatric institute, and when he got out, he moved back into his father's house in New Jersey for a while. Then he moved to San Francisco. He had a nice apartment in Nob Hill and a job doing market research. He was gratified to find that he could handle a nine to five office job, but he felt stifled and creatively blocked. He was miserable and began seeing a therapist, who asked him what he wanted to do. He told his therapist that he wanted to quit his job, get rid of his nice apartment in Nob Hill, and just move into a small apartment with his boyfriend and write and read and fuck and smoke pot and just do whatever he wanted. So his therapist said, "Why don't you do it, then?" So that's what Ginsberg did, he quit his job and moved into a one room apartment with his boyfriend, and that's when he wrote "Howl."

Now, if you'll indulge me, (and if you're not willing to indulge me, maybe you shouldn't read my indulgent blog where I write about myself all the time) I'd like to share some facts about my life. I graduated from Middlebury with a BA in English, and then lived in Manhattan for a few months. (I lived at 208 East 7th Street. Later in his life, Allen Ginsberg lived at 206 East 7th Street.) But I couldn't find a job and I was very lonely, so I moved back into my parents' house in New Jersey for a while. Then I moved to San Francisco, to be with Ed. We lived near Alamo Square at first, and then we moved into a nice apartment in the Marina. I did an account management internship at an advertising agency, and then I worked as a content producer for a website, reviewing various Internet services. I was gratified to find that I could handle a nine to five office job, but I felt stifled and creatively blocked and lately, I have been kind of miserable. So Ed and I moved out of the Marina and into a studio apartment, and I quit my job.

Today was my last day. Now I am going to take some time off to read and write and just do whatever I want.

Dining in the dark.

2010-01-28T16:34:00.000-08:00

On Friday, Ed and I "dined in the dark" at Opaque. My best friend Jess went to the Opaque in Los Angeles and raved about the experience, so when Groupon's deal of the day was 50% off dinner for two at the one here in San Francisco, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to try it.

As the reviews accurately reflect, the food at Opaque is not amazing. It isn't bad at all, it's just simple and basic and nothing special, especially considering the price. There's a choice of two salads, then either chicken, fish, beef, or pasta, and a choice of two desserts. If we hadn't gotten the 50% discount this might have bothered me more. But the experience is so cool, I think it's probably worth the full price even though the food is just adequate.

The restaurant is literally pitch black. I was prepared for this, but I guess Ed didn't realize that we would be completely blind for the duration of the meal, so he was considerably more disoriented. But personally, I loved it, and actually found it pretty easy to adjust. I think that it was easier for me because I used to be very into theater, and so I've done a lot of acting exercises that involve visualizing things that aren't there. And just in general, I spend a lot of time in my own imagination, so it wasn't uncomfortable for me to be forced to imagine my surroundings. Ed suggested that maybe this is why I prefer to keep the lights dim in our apartment at night, while he tends to keep more lights turned on, which makes sense. The downside to that is that I guess I am pretty tuned into my other senses normally, so I didn't experience the dramatic heightening of sensation that Ed did. The wine did taste wonderful, but I think that's mostly because Ed surprised me with a particularly nice bottle.

There are other restaurants that try to replicate the "dining in the dark" experience with blindfolds, but for me, the darkness itself was the essential element. It felt so tangible and velvety, like we had been dipped into a dreamworld. I found it surreal and stimulating and exciting, which is how I feel about almost anything that causes you to perceive the world in a completely new and different way than you are used to. It definitely reminded me of dreaming, but also of "flavor tripping." (When we moved into our last apartment in the Marina, we had a housewarming party, and at the party we had miracle fruit, or Synsepalum dulcificum, which are berries that make other foods taste sweet for the next hour or two. So everyone eats one berry and then tries various foods and excitedly discusses how crazy everything tastes.)

I loved the way that the darkness wraps you up like a blanket, hiding you from everyone and hiding everyone from you. I also enjoyed eavesdropping on other peoples' conversations. There was a couple sitting very close to us who seemed to be having a very awkward second or third date. The man had a thick European accent that I couldn't quite place, and he was being fairly rude to the woman he was with, who was having more trouble functioning in the dark. They were pretty entertaining. But of course, I was very aware that other people could easily eavesdrop on our conversation, so I felt compelled to speak as quietly as possible and to hush Ed when he raised his voice. And of course the main thing I wanted to talk about was blindness, and what it would be like to be blind, but the waitstaff are all blind and for all you know they could be standing right next to you the whole time, so it's this constant struggle to not say anything that could potentially be deemed insensitive.

I think it would be good for society if people were occasionally deprived of one sense at a time. It would keep us from feeling too powerful.

I'd want to go back to Opaque if the food were better. According to Jess, the food at the one in Los Angeles is similar. I looked at reviews of a restaurant in Paris that also serves food in the dark, but it sounds like even there the food is lackluster. I so wish there was a restaurant like this with really great food, and a more extensive menu. If such a place existed, I would go as frequently as I could afford to.

Go away, spambots!

2010-01-21T09:43:00.000-08:00

Leave my blog alone! I'm tired of getting ten spam comments for every real comment, and I delete all the spam immediately, anyway. Go bother someone who gets more than fifteen visitors in a day.

This is a very sad picture.

2010-01-14T15:12:00.000-08:00

I quit.

2010-01-13T21:55:00.000-08:00

I feel like the word "quit" has an abrupt and forceful connotation that's kind of outdated in most contemporary quitting scenarios. But I guess it is technically correct to say that I quit my job today? "I gave my two weeks notice" sounds so anticlimactic. And "I gave my two weeks plus two additional days notice" sounds even more anticlimactic.

Anyway. As of February 1st, my official job title will be Trophy Girlfriend/Starving Artist. For a few months, my time will be spent reading, writing, and doing yoga. After that...who knows? A talent agent once suggested that I could potentially make a living as a foot model, so there's always that.

This is what I think of the Jersey Shore cast.

2010-01-07T23:20:00.000-08:00

I adore Snooki. Sometimes I worry that she's beginning to grate, but she wins me back over almost immediately. I do wish she would allow herself to be groomed more flatteringly.

At first, I found The Situation amusing and almost charming, but he has gradually revealed himself to be a deeply tragic figure, which was an interesting development, but it's becoming a downer.

Ronnie is extremely sensitive, extremely shallow, and extremely silly, which turns out to be an endearing combination.

Sammi is an hysterical drama queen who tries very hard to come across as sweet and laid back.

JWOWW is basically awesome, but it's a confusing, slightly uncomfortable kind of awesome.

DJ Pauly D looks like such a tool at first glance, but upon closer examination, he's funny and charismatic in an authentic sort of way. That kid's going places, mark my words.

Vinny is too much of a normal human being to be a good television character, but he does occasionally contribute unexpectedly entertaining commentary.

Angelina has an appallingly inflated opinion of herself, and would not tolerate having her delusions challenged.

This is where I live.

2010-01-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our apartment.
This is Ed's closet.

This is my closet.

This is the bathroom.

(The bathroom is inside my closet.)

This is the bedroom.

And this is the living room. (It's the same room.)

We need a new TV stand. (It's hard to find a TV stand! They are so expensive and yet they almost always look cheap.)

This is our bookshelf and our Motts.

This is the kitchen.

This is our breakfast nook. (Right now it is bike storage.)

That's all.

Questions?

2010-01-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

If I blogged in more of a cutesy baby voice would that be endearing or annoying? Would it help me go viral, like Carles's distinctive writing voice on Hipster Runoff? Would it help if I posted cute pictures of myself to verify that I am authentically cutesy and not a poser?

Should I start blogging entirely in rhyme? I bought a rhyming dictionary several years ago and I have barely used it. Maybe I should write television recaps that are also poems?

Does the Internet need more television recaps? I feel like, no. But also, I like reading several different recaps of the same show, because it's interesting to be reminded of how many different ways people can perceive and interpret the same thing. Or "consume" it, as we said in my American Cultural Studies class.

I feel like everything worth blogging about has already been blogged about extensively, and nothing new is happening, and when new stuff does happen, too many other people blog about it before I even have time to process what happened. What should I blog about? Does anyone care what I have to say about anything? Are blogs over in 2010? Should I switch to Tumblr?

I got a Flip camera for Christmas, but what should I do with it? Should I vlog?

How can I become prolific, glamorous, and bohemian?

I have thoughts. I'm just not sure what to do with them. Do you have any suggestions?

This is going to be my decade.

2010-01-01T22:38:00.000-08:00

I made a list of twenty-two new year's resolutions last night, and one new decade resolution. I'm not going to post the entire list, because some resolutions are too personal. But they range from the banal to the grandiose, including: (1.) go to yoga 2-3 times per week, (8.) paint, (6.) don't bite or pick at your cuticles, (22.) be more social, (2.) eat less candy/cookies/chips, (3.) eat more vegetables/fruit. Another resolution is to devote more effort and attention to my appearance, and to develop a personal style that is more expressive of my taste and personality. (Rather than a lazy mishmash of t-shirts, American Apparel hoodies, and remnants of a time when my parents still paid for my clothes and my primary sartorial objective was blending in on a preppy college campus.) Several resolutions involve writing projects or other artistic endeavors. I have also resolved to rededicate myself to this blog, with a goal of two or three new posts each week.

My resolutions are more ambitious than usual this year, but the turn of a decade seems conducive to dramatic changes, and I feel optimistic. I had been stagnating lately, but now I am full of ideas and intentions. This is going to be my decade, during which I plan to become prolific, glamorous, and bohemian.

Oh, this is a little odd, but Motts made a resolution to start his own blog.

Hello, Deco Ghetto.

2009-12-03T17:43:00.000-08:00

As much as Ed and I have enjoyed living in the Marina for the past year, it was time for a change. The Marina is lovely, but it feels more like a cross between a sleepy beach town and a preppy college campus than a neighborhood in a major city. It's a bit isolated from the rest of San Francisco, particularly if one is inclined to be lazy and reclusive, which I am. Plus, it's built on landfill, which tends to get all jiggly in an earthquake.

So, over Thanksgiving weekend, Ed and I moved out of our spacious one bedroom apartment in the Marina and into a studio overlooking Market Street, on the cusp of Hayes Valley and the Mission. Our new building, which was built in 1931 and converted from a hotel to apartments in the 1950s, is not as well-maintained as our old building, but it has so much character, I don't mind. Instead of a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the sound of foghorns, we have vintage streetcars running outside our windows all day and all night. And instead of a fifteen minute bike ride along the water, my commute is now forty minutes on two buses. We don't have a garage anymore, so Ed is back to parking on the street. Oh, and our rent is exactly $1000 cheaper.

We haven't finished unpacking yet, and I've had a terrible cold for the past few days, so I haven't really had a chance to explore our new neighborhood at all. But I'm excited.

I've got nothing.

2009-11-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging lately because I haven't had anything fun or interesting to write about. For the past couple of months, I've mostly been moping about my job and consoling myself with television and candy. It's bad enough that Ed has to put up with my constant whining about how boring my job is and how worthless it makes me feel. I don't think there's any reason to inflict it on the rest of the world.

However. Steps are being taken. I'm working on becoming more fun and interesting, but it's a process. I plan to have some thoughts that are worth writing down in the near to near-ish future.

I would like to recommend a fun thing!

2009-10-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

Ed and I have frequently discussed the possibility of going to Burning Man, which I find really appealing in theory, but not so much once I consider the logistics and expense and ~~dirt~~ dust and wind and lack of plumbing. Burning Man seems so interesting and also so uncomfortable, I can't determine whether it would be a thing that is fun or a thing that is not fun.
On Wednesday night Ed and I went to see How to Survive the Apocalypse: A Burning Opera, which was very interesting and not at all uncomfortable, and so, so, so fun. It's a musical about Burning Man, so of course it's crazy and absurd and ridiculous. But it's also executed surprisingly well. It could easily devolve into a mess, but it doesn't, which is awesome and impressive. Plus it's in Teatro ZinZanni's antique Belgian cabaret tent, which is one of the most magical settings I have ever experienced. Out of a group of six people, five of us have never been to Burning Man. It didn't take long for us to be seduced by the performance. By intermission, we were planning our costumes. Since Wednesday night, I have managed to convince myself that I can handle the logistics and expense and ~~dirt~~ dust and wind and, most importantly, the lack of plumbing.

If you are in San Francisco and you enjoy things that are fun or cool or interesting, you should definitely go see A Burning Opera. As of right this second, there are tickets available for the last two performances, on Monday, October 19 and Tuesday, October 20. But since they have been selling out pretty quickly, maybe they will keep extending the run. And there are plans to take the show on the road, starting in Los Angeles, so if don't live in San Francisco you may still have a chance to see this show, which, have I mentioned, is really fun?

I changed my mind.

2009-10-07T12:04:00.001-07:00

I tried so hard to convince myself that The Hills could still be magical, but it just isn't anymore. If the protagonist and narrator of the show can't even bother to pretend to care about anything that happens, neither can I. I'll still watch, but I'm not going to write about The Hills anymore.

And I'm never, ever going to write about The City because it's terrible.

The Hills, post-Lauren.

2009-09-30T19:42:00.000-07:00

After much contemplation, I have decided to continue to watch The Hills, post-Lauren, although I feel certain that without Lauren as the centerpiece, The Hills will lose those fleeting, poignant moments of truth and poetry and genuine emotion that I so enjoyed.

Obviously, the world of The Hills has always existed within its own strange, artificial bubble, but Lauren's uncalculated authenticity set a tone that allowed the occasional genuine moment to occur. Lauren was the anchor that tethered the show to reality, the mutual friend or frenemy who provided the plausible, if tenuous, ties that bound the rest of the cast to one another. Now that Kristin has stepped in to take over as narrator, the show must inevitably twist and warp into an entirely new shape. I feel no affection toward Kristin, but I do find it serendipitous that she and Lauren happen to be perfect foils for one another. Lauren, the perpetual victim, took everything personally, and insisted, "The show is not fake and this is really my life." Kristin, "the bitch," says, "I pretty much do anything they have me do because I don't care. I mean, we're filming a TV show. Let's make it interesting. Let's have a good time with it."

Based on last night's season premiere, I think there's a palpable sense of relief to be rid of Lauren, although it is obscured by the more readily apparent apprehension and resentment toward the newly appointed narrator. As far as I can tell, the cast prefers not to be tethered to reality, and without Lauren, The Hills is free to float up and away, into a universe that's entirely free of substance or meaning or consequences. Now they can all collude to create as much drama as possible, without being hampered by any lingering concerns about cruelty or embarrassment or shattered relationships.

I think that The Hills, post-Lauren, still has the potential to be interesting, but it will be interesting in an entirely different way. The poetic banality will be replaced by surrealism, as the various cast members attempt to define this brave new world of pure artifice.

Audrina, Lo, and Stephanie are striving to create some form out of the nothingness by establishing the easy camaraderie of camp friends. At camp, you leave behind your real life and your real friends and, if you so choose, your real self. You make camp friends, who are different and separate from your regular friends. Camp friendships exist within an imposed, confined environment. Within that environment they may be imbued with meaning and power, but they tend not to translate well once removed from their original context. Audrina, Lo, and Stephanie are friends because it's more fun and convenient to be friends with one's bunkmates. Heidi is also free to transition into their klatch, now that Lauren is out of the way. But Kristin hasn't agreed to this unspoken arrangement. Just because she's moving into Lauren's old bunk doesn't mean she's ready to accept these girls as automatic friends.

Kristin, like most people who appear on reality television, isn't here to make friends. Her job is to be the bitch, and she has every intention of earning that paycheck. This attitude sets an entirely new tone for the show, highlighting its seams and its self-enclosed nature. She has two predetermined love interests to choose from: Brody, her ex-boyfriend, or Justin Bobby. (Of course, she could make a play for Spencer, but if she possessed that level of commitment to drama, she'd probably be a real actress by now.) Flitting from one to the other and back again is the most logical choice from her perspective, that of a confident, flirty actress who has been hired to instigate drama. It violates the girl code espoused by her new bunkmates, but at this point, Kristin has no incentive to commit herself to these girls or their code.

We'll see how it goes.

Books!!!

2009-09-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

All I want to do is read. I want to quit my job so I can stay home and read all day. I wish that, as a (free) alternative to grad school, I could just move to some kind of hybrid of a library and a monastery. I'd take a vow of silence and dedicate myself to nothing but reading for one or two years. Lately, I am so overwhelmed with the desire to read everything all at once, I am finding it impossible to focus on one thing at a time.

I started reading a series of lectures on character archetypes. (Kindly provided to me by Scott, of Go Into The Story.) But thinking about character archetypes reminded me that I had been meaning to read The Portable Jung, which had been sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of months at that point. So I decided to read The Portable Jung before I finished reading Scott's lectures. But it's taking me forever because I keep getting lost in my own thoughts while I'm trying to read. So I decided to take a break from that and read The Journeybook instead. Since The Journeybook is a collection of fairly short essays and interviews, I managed to get through it without getting sidetracked. And then, before I could get back into The Portable Jung, I started reading "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious," from this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine. But for several days I was unable to get past the first couple of pages, because I kept getting the sense that I shouldn't read it until I was able to really give it my full attention. Last night I finally got a chance to finish reading the article and now, of course, I am frantic to read the Red Book. But it won't be available until December 4th and I probably won't actually get my hands on it until Christmas, so in the meantime I have renewed motivation to finish The Portable Jung.

Anyway, BOOKS, you know? This article about the Red Book sent my mind reeling in a hundred directions, but one thing I keep thinking about is how much I love books as physical objects. I am not completely opposed to the idea of e-readers, by which I mean, they're fine for other people but I don't have any interest in owning a Kindle or a Sony Reader. Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent blogged very enticingly about reading on his iPhone, which only intensified my iPhone lust. But I can't justify the monthly cost of an iPhone now or anytime in the foreseeable future, and even if I did get one at some point, I would definitely still buy a lot of paper books. Because I just love books. I love buying books and I love holding books and I love looking at them on my shelf. I love the way they smell. I have seen the Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin on five different occasions, and I'd gladly go see it again if I had the opportunity. The Red Book is going to be on display at the Rubin Museum of Art from October through January, which is so coincidentally perfect because Ed and I were already planning to go to the Rubin when we're home for Christmas, to see an exhibition of mandalas. Until a few days ago I had never even heard of this book but now I am beyond excited to go see it in person and then read my own copy immediately afterward.

To conclude this gushy, unfocused, maybe slightly insane blog post, here are some of my favorite books. Not my favorite literary works, but the books that I count among my most treasured possessions.

Aldous Huxley says...

2009-09-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

"To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large— this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual."

Crazy shit.

2009-09-09T20:53:00.000-07:00

In the past couple of months, nearly one hundred people have ended up at my blog after Googling some variation of the phrase "crazy shit." I find this kind of hilarious. What are these people expecting to find? Is my post about Salvia divinorum satisfying their yearning for some crazy shit? Apparently there is a CrazyShit.com, which hosts mostly pornographic video clips, as well as other video clips which, based on a glance at the thumbnail screenshots, seem gross and disturbing to me.

But if you are looking for some crazy shit that is neither pornographic nor gross and disturbing, I guess I can make a few suggestions.

Lately I have been reading The Portable Jung. I haven't been reading it very quickly, because every time I encounter a new concept, I get all excited and inspired and distracted and overwhelmed with ideas of my own, and I have to make a concerted effort to drag my attention back to the text. So far it seems like a pretty good introduction to Jungian psychology. I would say that it qualifies as crazy shit.

I would also recommend Daniel Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism to any casual reader looking for some crazy shit. Of all the books that I have read recently about psychedelic shamanism, I would say that this one is the breeziest and most entertaining.

Last month, Ed and I went to the San Francisco launch of The Journeybook, which is an exploration of consciousness, spirituality, and psychedelic culture through essays, interviews, and artwork. So far I have only flipped through it briefly, but I am certain that it contains a plenitude of crazy shit.

The other unread book lingering on my bookshelf is The Phenomenon of Man. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest, wrote it in the 1930s, but the Roman Catholic Church prohibited its publication until his death in 1955. Teilhard's ideas about the evolution of consciousness sound totally crazy and also very appealing and exciting.

If you don't want a whole book's worth of crazy shit, you might be interested in the essays at Reality Sandwich. Some of them are a little too crazy, even for me.

Or, if you want some cinematic crazy shit, Ed and I have been getting into Hayao Miyazaki lately. We actually haven't seen Ponyo yet. But Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle, and Laputa: Castle in the Sky are all very crazy and trippy and wonderful.

I think that's pretty much all the crazy shit I have to offer at the moment. If that wasn't what you were looking for...too bad.

Why reading is like sex.

2009-09-02T17:36:00.000-07:00

I tend not to read much contemporary fiction. I am the type of person who compulsively reads anything with text in my vicinity, so when contemporary fiction falls into my lap, I read it. But I never think to seek it out, so unless I'm looking for something to read at an airport or my parents' house, I usually gravitate toward the dead white guys.

This is partly because I majored in English at Middlebury, and while I don't want to generalize about the experience of everyone who ever majored in English at Middlebury, I personally found there to be a strong emphasis on the canon and very little emphasis on anything else. Of course, this had a lot to do with the classes that I chose. I did read Coetzee's Disgrace for the senior comprehensive exam, and I took Contemporary Ireland Through Fiction and Film for my freshman seminar so, obviously, I read some contemporary Irish fiction. But for the most part, we stuck to the classics. And as I read all these important and influential books I became increasingly aware of all the important and influential books that I had yet to read, and the list of books that I intended to read just kept growing exponentially, and of course it's impossible to ever catch up.

But there's another, weirder reason. As much as I'd like to be more familiar with what other people are writing and reading and discussing right now, there is a part of me that remains hesitant. Because books by living authors are a little bit scary. Dead authors are safer.

I have this extremely obnoxious habit of subconsciously measuring the text that I'm reading against some hypothetical projection of my own potential literary genius. So I'm reading from a critical, analytical distance, and in the back of my mind there's this nagging voice, just compulsively evaluating as I go along. Yes...hmm, that's interesting...ah, I see what you did there...oh, so this is going to be a theme...ooh, that's a nice turn of phrase... But if the book is really great, at some point that arrogant little voice will stop short. Oh, wow. I don't think I could have done that. This is good. Once that moment comes, I lose the self-conscious distance and I allow myself to get swept away in the text. My ego floats away and I give myself over the author. It's a blissful sensation. To me, it's the literary equivalent of an orgasm.

And it's so much easier for me to lose myself in a book if the author is dead and his or her genius is well established. Because with the author's reputation as a safety net, I don't have to trust my own instincts. I have the validation of countless literary scholars. And since a dead author only exists on the page and in my imagination, he or she can't intrude on my reading experience. So it's a bit like masturbating. I'm relaxed and alone and comfortable and the orgasm comes quickly and easily.

But when the author is alive and I don't have years of critical context to fall back on, the experience is more challenging. I'm forced to confront the author's continued existence. He or she is out there in the world, being a person, just like I am a person. The author is looking over my shoulder as I read, which makes me feel awkward and self-conscious and pulls me out of the book. I have to like and respect and trust the author before I can relax enough to let myself go. So it's more like sex. Not so safe, not always so comfortable, especially when the author is new and unfamiliar. Things are more likely to go awry. Of course, when the chemistry is right, the experience is vastly more rewarding. But you have to take a risk.

So basically, what I'm saying is that canonical fiction is to masturbating as contemporary fiction is to sex. (Incidentally, did you know that the new SAT doesn't include analogies? How tragic is that? Analogies were by far the most fun and challenging part of the SAT!) Also, I guess I should try to be more promiscuous, as far as reading is concerned.

These are the things that I want.

2009-08-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

1. I want a salaried day job that is interesting, challenging, and at least somewhat fulfilling.

2. I want to write a screenplay that is good, and I want somebody who is good at making movies to make my good screenplay into a good movie.

3. I want an apartment in Manhattan or Brooklyn, with patterned wallpaper and plush carpets and an in-unit washer and dryer.

4. I want a Yorkiepoo puppy.

5. I want to be happy with my hair and my skin and my eyebrows and my fingernails and my body and my wardrobe, simultaneously.

6. I want to drink ayahuasca in Peru.

7. I want to spend at least two or three months in Western Ireland.

8. I want to write a series of fantasy novels inspired by Irish mythology, entheogens, and Carl Jung.

9. I want to marry Ed in Vermont, in the winter, and I want to spend our honeymoon at Jade Mountain in St. Lucia.

10. I want two children and I want at least one of them to be a girl.

Mad!

2009-08-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

Last night's Mad Men made me mad, for two reasons. First of all, I was a little upset to find that our DVR had cut off the last five minutes. But more importantly, what the hell, people who built Madison Square Garden on top of Penn Station? I have spent so many hours of my life sitting in Penn Station. Like, seriously, so many hours. Because I always get the timing wrong and wind up waiting forty-five minutes for the next off-peak train back to New Jersey. And I'm always so jealous of Ed because his parents live in Westchester and he gets to take Metro-North to and from Grand Central. I would love to have spent all those hours waiting in glamorous Grand Central instead of hideous Penn Station! Fuck those assholes who tore down the old Penn Station and built Madison Square Garden. They suck.

Uncomfortable vs. interesting.

2009-08-21T08:50:00.000-07:00

I like things that are interesting, but I do not like to be uncomfortable. Many of my choices and preferences stem from my desire to seek out interesting things while avoiding discomfort.

I feel better now.

2009-08-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

I spent this past weekend in New Jersey and New York with family and friends. I took a yoga class and got a massage and a facial. I saw Animal Collective in Prospect Park, which was amazing. I read Joseph Campbell's introduction to The Portable Jung. I enjoyed the novelty of seasonally appropriate weather. Plus lots of eating and drinking and lounging around.

I feel much better. Ideas are starting to percolate.

I have a serious problem.

2009-08-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

I don't like conflict. I just don't find it interesting. I am an aspiring fiction writer who lacks an interest in conflict. And I suspect that this may be an insurmountable obstacle. Since, you know, conflict is fairly essential to telling a story. So...this is a pretty big problem for me.

It isn't that I'm unwilling to introduce conflict into my stories because I'm overly protective of my characters. It's that I am genuinely, objectively uninterested in stories with high stakes. I like stories that are small and quiet and meandering and thoughtful. I like complex characters and nuanced relationships and unexpected moments and witty conversations. I prefer books that explore emotional depths and the potential of language. I prefer movies that are silly and aimless. I don't enjoy stress or unhappiness, and I don't seek it out in my entertainment choices.

When I was in elementary school, a teacher once illustrated the importance of conflict in stories by explaining that if one were to write a picture book about white fluffy clouds frolicking in a bright blue sky, dark stormy clouds would eventually need to arrive and ruin the fun. And I remember thinking, why do the dark stormy clouds have to show up? I would rather read a book with just white fluffy clouds, and no dark stormy clouds. Since then, my perspective hasn't really evolved all that much.

To me, subtle, unacknowledged tension is so much more compelling than overt conflict. I guess that's why I love The Hills so much. But the thing about subtle, unacknowledged tension is that you have to pay attention in order to notice it's there. And it's hard enough to get people to read your unpublished, unsold, unrepped work in the first place. It's basically impossible to get them to read it slowly and carefully and attentively and maybe even more than once.

I took a lot of creative writing classes in college. And whenever we discussed something that I had written, a curious phenomenon occurred. My first draft would generally recieve a lukewarm reception. So then I'd do some very slight rewrites based on the comments, and turn in a barely altered second draft. And my second drafts nearly always got rave reviews. Paragraphs that I hadn't touched since they were overlooked or criticized in the first round of discussion would provoke gushy praise in the second round. I never really knew what to make of that.

I don't mean to be one of those writers who rejects criticism and insists that readers "just didn't get it." Those writers are usually obnoxious, untalented jerks. I don't think that I'm an obnoxious, untalented jerk. And I actually love constructive criticism. Positive feedback tends to be hollow and nonspecific and useless. I know that my stories aren't flawless works of genius, and I want to make them better, so when I do get helpful, insightful criticism, I gobble it up gratefully. But I'm starting to think that maybe I need to highlight all the phrases meant to indicate underlying tension, so that readers will notice them the first time around. Like, literally, highlight. With a highlighter. And maybe write "tension!" in the margin, with an arrow pointing at the highlighted phrase.

Or maybe I'm just doomed to be invisible and ignored forever, because I'm too small and quiet and insignificant and I don't know how to grab readers' attention. I probably should have pursued visual art instead of writing. You don't need to have conflict in a painting. But I've neglected that skill and I'm not very good at it anymore. It's pretty likely that I could end up being a trophy wife, with the luxury of writing as a hobby. But then I'd feel obligated to wear skirts and high heels all the time. And I'm so much happier and more comfortable in jeans and sneakers.

I wish somebody would just tell me what I should do with my life.

I would very much like to own these drawings.

2009-07-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

How amazing are these soft pastels? They are by Karin Bubas, and are currently showing as part of her solo exhibit, "With Friends Like These..." at the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver. I think they are great. Here is an interview with the artist.

Abraham Lincoln says...

2009-07-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control mans' appetite through legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not even crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded."

Just for the record...

2009-06-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

I thought The Hangover was stupid. I'm not opposed to stupid humor in general, but this movie was too dumb for me to enjoy very much.

The script was written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the same writers responsible for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, so I obviously went into the movie with certain expectations. I figured that it would be juvenile and gimmicky, and that any female characters would be depicted as simplistically and cartoonishly as possible.

I did my best to enjoy the movie, anyway, but I just didn't didn't find it particularly funny. I think that Lucas and Moore are good at coming up with a high concept premise, but they always go for the cheesiest and most obvious jokes, and they suck at creating characters. I prefer comedies in which even the antagonists are interesting and likable. Lucas and Moore write comedies in which even the protagonists are uninteresting and unlikable.

I was relieved that there were barely any women in the cast. The fewer opportunities these writers have to portray women, the better. Unless they want to hire me as a consultant, they should just stop trying to write women characters at all.

Also, I don't understand why they think it's so funny to use the words "gay" and "fag" as immature insults. I mean, in The Hangover, whatever, I guess you expect that kind of thing, but they did it in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, too, which is a PG-13 romantic comedy! What's the point of using those words and alienating a significant portion of the audience, for no comedic payoff? I really resent the smug, privileged attitude that pervades the work of certain straight, white, male writers.

The couple of times that I did laugh, it was in response to Zach Galifianakis's delivery. I did enjoy "Tigers love pepper!" (Although I liked Zach Galifianakis better at Comedy Death Ray, when he was making fun of my job and looking for magic mushrooms.)

Ed thought it was stupid, too.

Lauren Conrad's literary debut.

2009-06-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

Having watched all five seasons of The Hills and a few scattered episodes of Laguna Beach, I have developed a certain impression of Lauren Conrad.

She is nice, but not exceptionally nice. She is pretty, but not exceptionally pretty. She is fashionable, but not exceptionally fashionable. She seems reasonably bright, but has never indicated any interest in academic or intellectual pursuits. Lauren Conrad is, above all else, average. She is exceptionally average. And that's what makes her so eminently watchable.

We, the audience, relate to Lauren, not because we share traits in common, but because she is so abnormally normal. We can generally expect her to behave and react in a way that we would consider normal. We can project our own personalities on her. All she has to do is silently widen her eyes, and we fill in the missing dialogue ourselves. We know what she's thinking, because we know what we're thinking.

I have never watched Jon & Kate Plus 8. But if Jon and Kate had, literally, 2.5 children, I would probably tune in. Because to be so literally average is both rare and interesting.

I want to believe that Lauren wrote L.A. Candy herself. Of course, I assume that an editor or editors helped her plan and outline the story. And that there were editors providing assistance and support along the way. And that those editors polished the final draft with a heavy hand. But I think that L.A. Candy is informed by Lauren's thoughts and emotions and expressed in what is essentially her voice.

Lauren has never appeared to have a literary bent. It would be unreasonable and unrealistic to expect her to know how to structure a novel, or to have a developed literary voice. If L.A. Candy were competently written, I would be forced to conclude that a ghostwriter was responsible. Fortunately for me, it is not competently written.

The narrator shifts from one chapter to another. Stylistically, there is no differentiation between the five different narrative voices. Whenever possible, nouns are modified by clichéd adjective pairings. On the first page alone: "white silk nightie," "loose blond curls" "chocolate brown eyes" "white silk sheets" "strange, sweaty guy." The verbs are distractingly precious and are often modified by the most obvious possible adverb. Again, on the first page alone, the protagonist "[smiles] mischievously," and her hair "[cascades] softly." She slinks into bed, slides onto the sheets, and nestles next to her dream guy. Naturally, said dream guy gazes into her eyes. More than anything, Lauren's writing voice reminds me of my own early creative writing attempts. I imagine I'm not the only one who recognizes this earnest, overly descriptive style. And once again, by reminding us of ourselves, Lauren endears herself through mediocrity.

The story and characters do not explicitly mirror the stories and characters we already know from Laguna Beach and The Hills. If they did, the book would be very dull, since we are already excruciatingly familiar with those stories and characters. And nobody who pays attention should have expected Lauren to fling dirt and catty judgments at thinly veiled versions of people she knows personally. Overt bitchiness would be utterly out of character, and it would undermine Lauren's overall appeal. But I think any attentive reader should be able to glean a great deal about Lauren's feelings and opinions.

The expected, behind the scenes perspective on camera men and body microphones and MTV producers would be fairly entertaining on its own. Of course, we are all so savvy and we know that there are camera men and body microphones and MTV producers, and it isn't hard to guess what those things are like. But since most of us have not personally experienced that life, it is still interesting to hear it described by someone who has. There is more to L.A. Candy than just that, though.

Although the characters are not explicitly familiar, their characteristics are. We learn exactly how Lauren feels about girls who come to Los Angeles in search of fame, who gradually devolve into bleached, bronzed, surgically enhanced clones. We learn how she feels about tabloids, and clubs, and celebrities, and orchestrated relationships with fellow cast members, and backstabbing friends. We learn how she feels about being exploited, about how being on television simultaneously expanded and limited her life, about how she resents being misleadingly edited. We learn that despite her resentments, she enjoys the experience, or at least she did in the beginning.

For me, the most fascinating aspect of L.A. Candy is the characterization of the protagonist's best friend and roommate. You might expect this character to resemble Lo, or Heidi, or perhaps Audrina. But while she shares a few minor qualities with Lo and a few with Audrina, this character seems to be, for the most part, a figment of Lauren's imagination. The protagonist, whose name is Jane Roberts, has known her friend Scarlett since kindergarten. Scarlett is depicted as a strikingly gorgeous, sexually liberated intellectual. Scarlett only wears jeans and t-shirts. She refuses to brush her hair, which is very long and very dark, and she doesn't wear makeup. She's "a rebel with off-the-charts SAT scores who never [hesitates] to say whatever [is] on her mind." Jane is docile and cheerful and naïve, but Scarlett is bitchy and insightful. Scarlett seems to represent everything that Jane is not and, by extension, everything that Lauren Conrad is not. There is a pronounced wistfulness in the depiction of the contrast between this pair of BFFs. While Lauren is not academically or intellectually inclined, she expresses a great deal of admiration and respect for those who are, and she seems envious of women whose dispositions allow them to be sexually confident and free. She also seems acutely aware of her own banality, which comes across even in her choice of character names.

L.A. Candy is just barely adequate as a novel. But as a cultural text, it's fantastic. And it's pretty entertaining. Perfect for reading on the beach.

Lauren Conrad isn't a good actress, nor does she try to be, and yet she's extremely watchable. She isn't a good writer, nor does she try to be, and yet she's extremely readable. That alone intrigues and impresses me.

Jerry Garcia says...

2009-06-22T23:15:00.000-07:00

"To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe. And I think every human being should be a conscious tool of the universe. . . .

When you break down the old orders and the old forms and leave them broken and shattered, you suddenly find yourself a new space with new form and new order which are more like the way it is. More like the flow."

Getting old.

2009-06-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Today is my 24th birthday. I have yet to experience any aging-related angst, since I am continuing to get decidedly hotter and just generally more awesome with the passage of time. At this rate, I may begin to resemble an adult by the time I'm 30.

Is it possible to spontaneously die of despair?

2009-06-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

Sarah Haskins sold a screenplay with essentially the same logline as my spec script. I pretty much want to die.

She might be Internet famous, but now Haskins is hoping to branch out. She recently sold a screenplay with her writing partner, a friend from college. It’s called Book Smart, and chronicles the two overachieving girls who realize in the middle of their senior year of high school that they don’t have boyfriends and haven’t had enough fun. They decide to put their minds to getting boyfriends by prom and “hilarity ensues,” says Haskins, adding that it just might be inspired by real life. “I'm not going to spoil the ending but you can see it in 2017.” [The Daily Beast]

My screenplay, Those Girls, chronicles one day in the life of two overachieving girls on the verge of graduation, who realize that their high school memories consist entirely of homework, extracurriculars, and college applications. On this particular Friday, they're determined to create some new memories involving drugs, alcohol and boys, so they buy a bag of weed and crash the popular kids' party. Of course, hilarity ensues, and of course, it is inspired by real life.

So...anybody want to buy a screenplay? Superbad meets Gilmore Girls? Please? It's good, I promise...

FML.

Advice for little sisters.

2009-06-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

Society bombards teenage girls and young women with implicit messages about how we should live our lives. I don't mean to contribute to that bombardment, but to offer the following words of wisdom as an antidote to some of the unhealthiest messages that we receive on a daily basis.

If a guy insults you, demeans you, or attempts to capitalize on your insecurities or vulnerabilities in order to make you feel bad about yourself, he is not worth your time. Do not flirt with him. Do not hook up with him. And definitely do not date him!
Any guy who revels in behaving like an asshole is just trying to distract you from the fact that he does not have an interesting personality. People who are clever and interesting do not need to be obnoxious or rude in order to get attention.
Guys will not always treat you the way you deserve to be treated. But they will often treat you the way you expect to be treated.
You are not a princess. You should not expect to be treated like a princess. You should demand respect and consideration, and in turn, you should treat others with respect and consideration.
Your value as a person is not determined by male attention, or lack thereof.
Being in a relationship will not automatically make you happier.
Being skinnier will not automatically make you happier. Being healthier might.
Your appearance will always impact how you are perceived. But it does not and should not define who you are.
Other girls are not the enemy unless you make them the enemy.
You are in charge of your own happiness, so live for yourself, not in deference to other people's demands and expectations.

Some of these are obvious and self-evident. In fact, I hope they are all painfully obvious and self-evident. But unfortunately, when I look at advertising and fashion magazines and celebrities and movies and television, this seems not to be the case.

Salvia divinorum is some crazy shit.

2009-06-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

I tried Salvia divinorum for the first time about a month and a half ago.

I went to a cigar shop on Chestnut Street and sifted through a dusty box of tiny plastic bags, which contained a black powder and were marked with different strengths: 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 30x, and 40x. I choose the 15x, which was $40.

That night, I turned off all the lights in our apartment except for a single gentle floor lamp in the living room. Ed put Merriweather Post Pavilion on the record player. I poured myself a glass of ice water, because I had read that the smoke would be harsh and unpleasant. As I nervously settled myself on the couch, I repeated, "Don't laugh, don't laugh," over and over in my head, because I had also read that many people see and sometimes even interact with a female spiritual entity when tripping on Salvia, but that laughter scares her away.

I leaned forward and took a single hit of Salvia from a bong. I held it in for as long as I could before exhaling. The smoke was harsh and unpleasant, so I immediately took a sip of my ice water. But as I held the glass to my mouth, I realized that this was a mistake, because people tripping on Salvia are known to drop and break things, especially glass things. So just as the Salvia took effect - and it does so very, very suddenly - I panicked about the possibility of dropping the glass, and I froze in an awkward crouch between the couch and the coffee table.

I'm not sure if I managed to place the glass on the coffee table, or if Ed took it away from me, but either way, I was stuck in this awkward crouch. As a child, I often had nightmares in which I was unable to move, and in retrospect, this experience was strikingly similar to those nightmares. As I struggled to free myself from my frozen position, I saw and felt colorful pixels trickling down the outline of my body. They seemed to be the force holding me in place.

I was extremely confused and disoriented. I felt as though I had flashed back to a long-forgotten childhood version of myself, and I was trapped in a dream. I asked Ed what was happening to me, and he reminded me that I had just smoked Salvia. I couldn't remember anything that I had read about Salvia. I couldn't quite grasp the concept of mind-altering drugs, in general. I asked him why I had done this to myself, and he told me that I had wanted to try it and see what it felt like. This sounded ridiculously foolish and reckless to me. Ed assured me that the sensation would go away if I just waited a little while.

He helped me get unstuck, and into a reclining position on the couch. I relaxed and stared at a framed Kandinsky print on the wall and listened to the music. The colors in the Kandinsky print ebbed and flowed pleasantly. The music was dramatically enhanced. For the first time, I was able to confidently perceive the sound of a record as being significantly "warmer." I got lost in my own thoughts for what felt like an eternity, but was actually only a few minutes. I can't remember what I thought about, only that it was incredibly fascinating and wonderful.

Once the peak had ended, I gradually came to my senses, but remained in a vaguely childish, dreamlike state for the next hour or so. I decided that although the experience was frightening at first, it was also interesting and enjoyable, and that I would like to try it again sometime, but that I would remember to use a plastic cup instead of a glass. I felt sure that if it hadn't been for the glass, I wouldn't have panicked at the beginning.

In the days after my trip, I felt exceptionally energetic, content, and optimistic. Also, ever since then, whenever I listen to Merriweather Post Pavilion on my iPod, I go into a mild trance, which is lovely and relaxing.

I'm sure that I looked silly during my Salvia trip, but I certainly never felt silly. I never felt like laughing, and I couldn't fathom why that is such a common response. For me, the experience was very serious and intense, and not something to be taken lightly. There is still a fair amount of black powder left in that tiny plastic bag, but I have yet to try Salvia a second time. I want to, but whenever I consider it, I feel apprehensive and unprepared. I will do it eventually, though.

My bike is sexy.

2009-06-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

I get a lot of compliments on my bike when I'm riding to and from work. The vast majority of these compliments come from old men. I choose to assume that this is because older men are more likely to appreciate classic design, and not because I sort of look like I'm twelve years old and am therefore a bit of a pedophile magnet.

I love the Marina.

2009-06-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

When we started looking at apartments, we didn't consider the Marina. As far as we were concerned, the Marina was exclusively reserved for obnoxious guys in striped shirts and aviator sunglasses, and prissy girls in yoga pants and pearl earrings. Instead, we looked in the Lower Haight, the Mission, and NOPA. You know, the cool neighborhoods. But apparently, it's hard to find an affordable, well-maintained one bedroom with bay windows and a garage in the cool neighborhoods. So, in our desperation to find a pleasant place to live, we turned to the Marina. And fell in love.

Now, we gaze at the Golden Gate Bridge though our bay windows. Foghorns remind us of our proximity to the water as we drift to sleep. The car stays tucked in our garage, since Chestnut Street is just a short walk away, with its impressive array of unnecessarily adorable boutiques, spas, restaurants and bars. And if there's anything Chestnut Street can't provide, it's only a few more blocks to Union Street. Sometimes, as we meander along, observing the impeccably groomed masses with their fluffy, friendly dogs and admiring the gorgeous Art Deco architecture, I wonder how this can possibly be a real place. It’s too perfect, too pretty, too clean. I ride my bike along Marina Boulevard, looking out at the yachts and sailboats, at Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, and I think, even the air is gloriously fresh here, smelling of sea salt and flowers and freshly cut grass. And I consider how lucky I am, to live in a neighborhood so idyllic that simply glancing out my window or strolling down my street is a truly joyful experience. Living in the Marina feels like living in a quaintly delicate watercolor illustration, and I love it.

I am not in a very good mood.

2009-06-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

Reasons to hate America today:

George Tiller, a brave doctor who helped desperate women with nowhere else to turn, was murdered in church by a religious extremist yesterday morning.
Gay people can't get married in California, or most other states.
Choosing to ingest a substance more benign than caffeine makes me a criminal.
Not only did our country resort to torture, that torture included rape and other horrific sexual abuses. It is unlikely that the people ultimately responsible for these policies will ever be punished. Many Americans continue to insist that waterboarding and other forms of torture are acceptable.
Police officers brutally and sadistically taser innocent people, sometimes as many as twenty times, sometimes until their victim is dead, and regularly excuse this repulsive abuse of power by shrugging and repeating the phrase, "Resisting arrest."

Reasons to feel okay about America today:

The Hills was surprisingly decent last night.
Um...we have a black president, so that's still cool.

Feminist psychonauts?

2009-05-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

In my fantasy world, everyone would be a feminist psychonaut. But in reality, I think there are probably very few people who would describe themselves as such. So to discover a book about the uniquely feminine aspects of shamanism was an extremely pleasant surprise.

In The Woman in the Shaman's Body, Barbara Tedlock skillfully weaves extensive anthropological research together with stories about her own experiences studying shamanism around the world and becoming initiated by a traditional Guatemalan shaman. Tedlock is uniquely qualified to speak on this subject, and she does a phenomenal job of uncovering the role of women in traditional shamanism, as well as holding other scholars accountable for their failure to include women in their own shamanic research. This is an incredibly fascinating book. It's much better than I expected it to be, and I highly recommend it. It's far more accessible and entertaining than the cover might lead you to believe.

The more I think about Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, the angrier I get.

2009-05-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

When Observe and Report came out last month, plenty of bloggers were outraged about the date rape scene in particular, and the treatment of Anna Faris's character in general. And I totally understand why a lot of people had problems with the movie, but when I saw it, it didn't really upset me. It's an intentionally ridiculous dark comedy, and the characters are supposed to be awful and absurd. There are definitely some questionable moments, and I didn't love it, but for the most part, I found it funny and wasn't offended.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, on the other hand, infuriated me. It exemplifies everything that I hate about the depiction of gender in comedies. And the fact that the misogyny and homophobia are somewhat subtle makes it all the more insidious and problematic.

At first, I was actually pleasantly surprised. The premise is adequately clever, it's well executed, and there are plenty of funny, albeit cheesy, zingers. I liked the ghosts, especially Emma Stone's character. (Yet another dorky girl, although not so cute this time.) And I didn't have a problem with the portrayal of Connor Mead as a glamorous, successful womanizer at the beginning of the movie.

So here are the aspects of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past that did bother me.

1. Connor is supposedly a heartless Lothario because he's been hurt in the past. Because Jenny, a childhood friend on whom he had a crush, kissed another boy at a middle school dance. That, apparently, is supposed to justify him spending the next twenty-five years treating women like garbage, like disposable, brainless pieces of trash who exist only for his own brief pleasure and amusement. Um, no. Sorry. I mean, fine, be an asshole who treats women like shit, but you don't suddenly become sympathetic just because a girl you liked kissed another boy when you were fourteen.

2. I hated the depiction of the bridesmaids. Apparently the filmmakers thought it would be hilarious to portray three bridesmaids as interchangeable, worthless, vapid, disloyal sluts. I disagree.

3. For some reason, there are several references to homosexuality that come out of nowhere, add nothing to the movie, and are questionable at best and offensive at worst. If there were some justification in the context, that would be one thing, but all these references accomplish is to reinforce dated and restrictive notions of what constitutes acceptable masculinity and femininity, and to paint gay people as being inherently weird and ridiculous. Not cool.

4. There is nothing substantively appealing about Connor Mead that should justify Jenny's interest in him, beyond their shared childhood memories. He's a good photographer. He's physically attractive. Those are his good qualities. Nothing else. Jenny should have stuck with Brad.

5. Connor never actually suffers any real consequences for his actions. People say a few mean things about him, the ghosts scare him a little, and he undergoes some pratfalls. That's about it.

6. Worst of all, in the end, after his experiences with the various ghosts, Connor realizes that he should stop behaving like a womanizing asshole. Because if he doesn't, nobody will like him and he'll wind up miserable and alone. That's the reason. The entire reason. Not because, say, women are human beings and they should be treated as such. Not because treating people cruelly and callously makes you a bad person. No. The big revelation is that Connor has been rejecting the idea of love out of cowardice, but that he will be happier if he opens himself up emotionally. That is the big fucking happy ending that's supposed to make the audience root for him. At no point does it dawn on him that women have brains and emotions and are worthy of consideration and respect. At no point does it occur to the protagonist that it would be better to be a less selfish, self-involved person. He has no reason to believe that he could make Jenny happy. Just that being in a relationship with her might make him happy. And that's supposed to be a satisfying romantic comedy ending.

Fuck that shit.

Window-dreams.

2009-04-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

purple coneflowers sway
behind my house
they are ugly but the
...........deer
will eat them. fearless they don’t stop they don’t even seem to
notice
Rocks and Sticks
and throwing they don’t care at
all and I run run run at them and yell and run and they don’t
flinch. Just stare
not even scare so stupid won’t run away chase them
so stupid the eyes big and round they are doe eyes
with my eyes looking with your eyes
so stupid. I am
that deer
obviously
stupid
but the grass the grass is burnt burnt like a wick fireflies and
...........stars and
...........pixiedust cry down
...........from the octopus
...........ink
...........sky
singeing the grass with tiny holes like meteors invisible small
and they glitter in the milky green shivering in the wind blades
............................................winking dew and frost
the water runs sorrowful blue sighing through squelching mud banks traced by dandelions
.............................................................................................................................howling
.............................................................................................................................yellow
.............................................................................................................................&
.............................................................................................................................white
dotting the shaggy emerald hillside with their bursts
of day they know they know the air
is breathing in the dandelion dusty white petals
not trying to fly just
...........inhaling and
...........exhaling
the air a rainbow Roy G. Biv of powdery vapor
............................................like sugar

California is a nice place to live.

2009-04-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

You should read Food of the Gods.

2009-04-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

Food of the Gods is without a doubt one of the most fascinating and intriguing books I have ever read. (And I have read a lot of fascinating and intriguing books.) Anyone with any intellectual curiosity whatsoever should read this book. Even if you are completely resistant to Terence McKenna's ideas regarding psychedelics, you will still find plenty here to ponder and enjoy.

McKenna starts out by establishing his thesis: that psychedelic mushrooms are the original "tree of knowledge." The beginning is tough, because it's obviously difficult to make any kind of convincing, coherent argument about archaic cultures. McKenna makes a valiant attempt, though, and backs up his assertions with as much evidence as one could reasonably expect. I found this part of the book to be the most difficult to follow, and I imagine that many readers would find it equally difficult to swallow.

Once you've muddled through the first part, Food of the Gods becomes increasingly accessible. McKenna tracks the rise of various substances and their influence on the development of culture. "Drugs," in this book, are defined in such a way as to include alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar, chocolate and television. As tempting as it may be to dismiss this interpretation out of hand, McKenna offers a wealth of thought-provoking historical knowledge that is worth considering.

Food of the Gods presents so many controversial, perplexing, and frequently compelling ideas. I don't believe that they are all meant to be taken literally, and even if they are, I wouldn't. But it is worthwhile and occasionally even inspiring to be exposed to such a radical perspective on humanity.

Adventureland is my new favorite movie.

2009-04-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to blog about Adventureland, because it seems kind of unnecessary. Like, hey, you know that movie that looks really good and got really good reviews? Well, I thought it was really good! But I just can't stop myself. Adventureland is so perfect, I'm compelled to gush about its brilliance.

Personally, I love movies that are smart and understated, full of moments that feel poignant and insightful, truthful yet absurd. I find them life-affirming, probably because I tend to see life as a series of poignant or absurd moments.

Last summer, I wanted to love The Wackness, because it's that type of movie. It's meandering and musing and playful and it feels real and raw and honest. But The Wackness is also extremely flawed, and the flaws distracted me so much that as much as I liked it, I just couldn't love it.

Adventureland is sort of like The Wackness, except that it's flawless. It has a coherence, a unity of vision that generally only occurs when there is a real writer/director involved. It's a good story, executed perfectly. The structure, the dialogue, the characters, the acting, the atmosphere...I honestly thought that every element was on point. And it was a lot of fun to watch, which is really the most important thing.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I have ever walked out of a movie theater and thought, "There is not one single thing I would have changed about that movie. I have no criticisms or complaints whatsoever." I was happy to sit in a theater and be entertained by it, and I was happy to leave the theater knowing that this film now exists in the world, like another gleaming, polished gem.

So, yeah, if you haven't seen Adventureland yet, I recommend it.

Oh!

2009-04-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that The Hills is coming back tonight. In comparison to the dull dreck that was The City and the sloppy mess that Gossip Girl is devolving into, The Hills will probably seem thrillingly brilliant. Or it will be disappointing crap and I'll just give up on television forever. (Except for Lost, which never disappoints. But I don't even really think of Lost as television anymore...it's more like...an ideology that infuses my life with meaning.) I don't know, though...maybe I'm naively optimistic, but I have a good feeling about this (presumably final) season of The Hills.

Random thought...it's interesting how emphatically this promo picture from MTV reinforces Lauren's alpha status. She's on the left, so we look at her first as we read the picture, her expression is far more confident and assertive, and she doesn't have to display her breasts in order to demonstrate value and draw attention to herself. When I look at this picture my eyes move diagonally from the top left to the bottom right, from Lauren's face to Heidi's breasts, skipping over Heidi's face entirely, which seems to be the appropriate response to Lauren and Heidi in general.

My Lost babies theory.

2009-04-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

I've been ruminating on the pregnancy problems that occur on the Lost island for some time now. I read a few different recaps every week, including the esteemed Doc Jensen's analysis on EW.com. But although I think that my particular theory is fairly simple and obvious, I have yet to see it espoused by anyone else. So here it is. If you don't want to wade through all the background information, just scroll down to the paragraph that begins with, "Okay, so here's my theory" in bold. (Spoilers, obviously. Don't read this if you are behind on your Lost episodes.)

We know that when women get pregnant on the island, there are problems. The Others brought Juliet, a fertility doctor, to the island in the hopes of resolving these issues. When Juliet began studying and treating pregnant women on the island, she discovered that during the second trimester, the pregnant woman's white blood cell count would plummet, and her immune system would appear to attack the fetus. After roughly 100 days of pregnancy, the woman would die. Juliet theorized that this problem occurred at conception, and suggested taking a subject off the island to test this theory, but Ben rejected the idea.

When Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on the island, Claire was already pregnant. Ethan kidnapped Claire and brought her to a medical facility, where he observed her and gave her drug treatments. Claire escaped and eventually gave birth to baby Aaron without complications. This seemed to support Juliet's theory that the pregnancy problem occurs at conception.

When Juliet discovered that Sun was pregnant, and had conceived on the island, she warned Sun that if she remained on the island, she would die. Sun later escaped the island and gave birth to a healthy baby in South Korea.

In "LaFleur," Amy, a member of the Dharma Initiative, was supposed to be transported to the mainland to give birth, but she went into labor two weeks early. Juliet was reluctant to assist her, given her previous failures to save the lives of pregnant women on the island. Since they were back in 1977 at the time, Sawyer suggested that whatever had caused the pregnancy problems might not have occurred yet. He persuaded Juliet to deliver Amy's baby, which she did, successfully. This seemed to support Sawyer's theory that some event would later occur on the island, which would cause pregnant women to die.

Okay, so here's my theory: I think that Sawyer and Juliet were both wrong. There was no event that caused these pregnancy problems. I think that normal human beings have always been able to conceive and give birth on the island. Sun could have given birth on the island, and she and her baby would have been fine. Juliet incorrectly assumed that some sort of birth defect occurred at conception because she was only monitoring pregnant Others. I think that that these pregnancy problems are only an issue for the Others, not for normal human beings. I don't know if the Others are ageless or ghosts or zombies or aliens or what, but they are not normal human beings, and that is why they can't reproduce.

If my theory is correct, it would explain the Others' habit of stealing normal, human babies. When Danielle Rousseau gave birth on the island, the Others stole her baby, and Ben Linus raised Alex as his own adopted daughter. When Flight 815 crashed, the Others kidnapped several of the survivors who had been in the tail section of the plane, including the children. The Others kidnapped Claire and apparently intended to cut her baby out of her before she escaped. They also kidnapped Walt. In "The Brig," Ben revealed that Juliet had infiltrated the survivors' camp in order to determine whether any of the women were pregnant, so that the Others could kidnap them.

Finally, in the most recent episode, "He's Our You," Amy, who has just given birth, seconds Radzinsky's suggestion that they kill Sayid. She justifies this position by explaining that she considers Sayid, who she believes is a Hostile, or Other, to be a dangerous threat, specifically to her newborn baby and the other children. This fear seems reasonable enough, if Sayid really were a Hostile/Other. Her newborn baby is named Ethan, and if he is the same Ethan who we have already met as an adult, then the Others do eventually kidnap him and raise him as one of their own.

Tonight's episode, "Whatever Happened, Happened," centers on Kate, who recently gave up Aaron under mysterious circumstances. I have a feeling that the Others' pregnancy problems and baby stealing tendencies will continue to be relevant in the gradually unwinding plot of Lost.

Emma Stone will play yet another cute but dorky girl in Easy A.

2009-03-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

Ed and I watched Superbad last night, in order to compare and contrast it with my screenplay, which is basically Superbad for girls. (I like Superbad, but I think my screenplay is more interesting, just because teenage girls are so much more complex than teenage boys.)

Toward the end, during the scene when Jonah Hill's character drunkenly attempts to hook up with Emma Stone's character, Ed wondered aloud why Emma Stone is always made to look like a dork in movies, despite being so pretty. I'm assuming that he was also thinking of her character in The House Bunny when he asked this question. I pointed out that in Superbad, she has to be at least a bit dorky in order for Jonah Hill's character to conceivably have a chance with her. In general, though, she does seem more relatable than your average starlet, which makes her kind of perfect for cute but attainable type characters.

Coincidentally, this morning I woke up and read that she will be playing yet another social misfit in Easy A. I read Easy A a few months ago, when the 2008 Black List came out. Of all the Black List scripts that I read, it was definitely one of my favorites, and I think Emma Stone is perfect for the lead. Plus, it's about time we start seeing some decent comedies with female protagonists. I'll be looking forward to seeing the movie in 2010 or 2011.

Loving or hating I Love You, Man.

2009-03-28T19:40:00.000-07:00

I had every intention of seeing I Love You, Man, regardless of reviews or word of mouth, because Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are great. But last week, my best friend Jess, who adores them about as much as I do, told me that she hated I Love You, Man. Not only that, but the two friends who she saw it with also hated it. She said that there was too much awkward, uncomfortable humor, as in Meet the Parents. I hated Meet the Parents, and didn't watch the sequel, because I also dislike humor that is based on discomfort and humiliation. And when Ed and I went to see Sunshine Cleaning last week, we heard people commenting about how much they hated I Love You, Man as they were leaving the movie theater. Ed and I were baffled and sad to hear this. How could it be bad? It's Paul Rudd and Jason Segel! And it has an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes!

We saw it last night and personally, I really enjoyed it. It wasn't the best of the newly emerging bromance genre, but it was fun and entertaining. I appreciated the fact that the women in the cast got the chance to be funny and interesting, and were treated like real, three-dimensional people instead of cardboard cutouts. And it was nice to see a wedding from the point of view of a man who actually wants to get married, as opposed to the typical bridezilla crap. For me, the worst part of the movie was the actual "I love you, man" declaration, which felt forced and boring.

The audience seemed to enjoy it, and a lot of people even clapped at the end, which was weird. I mean, it's a cute movie, but definitely not the kind you clap for. But then as we were leaving, Ed overheard some teenage girls complaining that it sucked.

I don't know. I liked it. And I found it pretty benign. I could easily understand why some people might find it underwhelming, but I just don't get what there is to hate about I Love You, Man.

Reading is fundamental.

2009-03-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

So I've been revising and polishing my screenplay, and I think it's pretty close to being done, which means that it's about time to start working on the next one. I have a rough idea of what I want to do, but it's not enough to start outlining a story or create a logline just yet.

First, I need to do some research. I ordered a few books to get started, and I'm really looking forward to delving into them. They are:

Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, by Terence McKenna
Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, by Daniel Pinchbeck
Mushroom Wisdom: How Shamans Cultivate Spiritual Consciousness, by Martin W. Ball

Twilight is kind of legitimately good, in a way.

2009-03-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

When Twilight came out in November, I read a few articles and blog posts that attempted to explain this cultural phenomenon. They usually included excepts from the books, to demonstrate how horribly written they are. And they usually discussed Stephenie Meyer and her Mormonism and indicated that the Twilight books are basically romance novels for girls who are still scared of sex, and of their own sexuality.

Ed suggested that we watch it the other night, and I figured we could put it on in the background while I worked on screenplay rewrites. Since I wasn't particularly interested in Twilight, I assumed that it wouldn't be very distracting. But it turned out to be so much more engaging than I expected. And the more I think about it, the more I think...it was actually kind of good.

It is a cheesy, ridiculous wish fulfillment fantasy for teenage girls. But how many cheesy adolescent male fantasies have been made into movies? Why would an adolescent female fantasy be any less legitimate? Why shouldn't girls get the same indulgence? And for what it is, it isn't bad. Yes, it's absurd and silly and melodramatic. But teenage girls are absurd and silly and melodramatic. Twilight successfully captures what it feels like to be a young girl in a particular stage of emotional development. I was very impressed by its authenticity. And authenticity is such a valuable quality, it makes it easy to overlook mediocrity in other areas.

I was also surprised by how much I liked Kristen Stewart. I thought she gave an excellent, relatable, sympathetic performance. She's interesting to watch and she projects depth, and I'd be glad to see her in other movies.

Robert Pattinson...I thought he was attractive in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but I just don't understand the appeal of Edward Cullen, as a character. I mean, that's not really true. I completely understand the appeal. But the character doesn't appeal to me, personally, at all. I actually find him kind of repellent. I think it's safe to say that brooding and dangerous is not even remotely my type. And I didn't understand why, in the movie, he sometimes spoke in this weird, working class sort of voice that didn't seem appropriate for a vampire movie at all. I guess Robert Pattinson's American accent is still a little rough, and he was trying too hard to hide his real accent...letting a bit of it through probably would have felt right for the character. But I would also be perfectly happy to see him in something else. He seems talented, I just didn't care for him as this character. But I'm not sure if I would have really liked anyone as Edward Cullen.

So, yeah. I thought Twilight was funny and entertaining and, in some ways, insightful about the emotional experience of being a teenage girl. While I would never read the books, I'll be interested to see the next movie when it comes out.

I really wanted to love Sunshine Cleaning.

2009-03-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

Sunshine Cleaning is the first movie of 2009 that's written by and, to some extent, for women, that isn't completely terrible and insulting. Plus, I like Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. So I wanted to support it the weekend that it opened in San Francisco, and I really wanted it to be great. But unfortunately, I was a little bit disappointed. The premise is intriguing and promising: two sisters need money, so they start a business cleaning up crime scenes. And the characters are all very likable and interesting and complex and well-written. And there are plenty of strong, resonant moments. But to me, it didn't feel like it went anywhere. There was so much build up and so much potential, but the payoffs didn't satisfy me at all. Also, Emily Blunt is a good actress, but she is so British. I don't think she really could have or should have done anything differently, but she is just not convincing as a girl from Albuquerque. I couldn't quite suspend my disbelief enough to buy her as Amy Adam's sister. Her voice and her mannerisms and her face are all so clearly English, I don't know how she can possibly get away from that.

But anyway, you should still see it, because it's interesting and it's something different and unusual. And because it's important to support women screenwriters and directors. But be prepared for a low key, character driven narrative. With lots of gore.

Motts says hello to the Internet.

2009-03-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

This is Motts. He's named after the applesauce. Initially I tried to name him Chaucer, but it didn't stick. He was a little offended that I posted a picture of my new bike the other day, when I have been blogging for almost a year now and in all that time I have never introduced him to the Internet. He says he's much cuter and more wonderful than my new bike, and I can't disagree.

Motts is a lop-eared dwarf rabbit, and he's about four and a half years old. He enjoys nibbling on dandelion leaves and cilantro, turning his bowl upside down and spreading his food all over the floor, and hopping around the room while listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers or The Kills. Motts has lived in Vermont, New Jersey, New York and California, and he has visited Ohio. He likes road trips and doesn't mind flying on airplanes. He is a very smart bunny with lots of personality. I'm pretty sure he likes Ed better than me, which is bullshit because I am the one who cleans up his poop.

UPDATE: Motts has decided to start his own blog, which can be found here, if you are interested.

This post is for bragging.

2009-03-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

Until recently, I took the bus from my apartment in the Marina to my office in the Presidio every day. The bus ride itself was only about ten minutes, but with walking to and from the bus, and waiting for the bus, it usually ended up taking about a half an hour each way.

Finally, I realized that if I had a bike, I could take the path that runs along the water most of the way. I'd only have to go up a slight hill in the morning, and I wouldn't really have to ride in traffic. So I decided to invest in this Electra Amsterdam bicycle. Isn't it adorable? I don't know anything about bikes, I just knew that I wanted it to be cute and easy to deal with. After doing some research, I concluded that a Dutch style bike was perfect for me, and I got this one at a local bike shop.

Now, instead of taking a bus along Lombard, I get to ride past Alcatraz, a yacht yard, the Palace of Fine Arts, Chrissy Field and the Golden Gate Bridge twice a day. My trip takes about fifteen minutes instead of thirty, so I have time to eat breakfast before I leave in the morning, and I'm not at the mercy of NextBus when I want to get home. Plus, it's already helping me lose weight. I am not a bike kind of girl at all, but I am so in love with my new bike. Except for Monday, when I got caught in the rain and showed up to work soaking wet, and had to dry off with paper towels in the kitchen. That sucked.

To blog, or not to blog?

2009-03-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've been neglecting my blog, yet again, but this time I have a good excuse!

When I first started blogging almost a year ago, I was very emotionally repressed, due to my advertising job and my uncomfortable living situation. I needed an outlet where I could express myself, and I also wanted to get back in the habit of writing regularly. So a blog seemed like the perfect thing for me at the time.

Since then, I started a new job editing a website and Ed and I moved into our own apartment, which is wonderfully pleasant and comfortable. Once we got settled into our new place, I started working on a screenplay, which naturally took precedence over my blogging. Over the past couple of months in particular, I've really been pushing to get the project completed.

But it's basically finished now, at least until I get some feedback on the most recent draft. So I'm going to try to get back into blogging again. Probably.

Also, I joined Twitter the other day but I barely have any Twitter friends yet, so follow me, please!

New shoes.

2009-02-13T18:28:00.000-08:00

After wearing the same pair of black and white Converse sneakers almost every day for two years, they are looking a little grungy. Last week I noticed four holes, one on either side of the ball of each foot. So I decided that it was probably time for a new pair. (Particularly since I wear them to work every day.) But breaking in a new pair of Converse is so weird. First of all, the new ones are way less comfy than the old ones. And second, whenever I walk I glimpse a blinding white flash out of the bottom of my eye with every step, which I find very startling and distracting.

I will not be deterred by Demetri Martin's aggressive marketing campaign.

2009-02-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

As you may have gleaned from this blog, Ed and I watch a fair amount of television. And lately, we have been seeing a lot of commercials for this new Comedy Central show, Important Things With Demetri Martin. Yesterday, I read an article about Demetri Martin on NYMag.com. The article described his new show as "reminiscent of Chappelle’s Show, except without the racial edge—as if Dave Chappelle were a white guy who went to Yale and was obsessed with palindromes." So that sounds promising, right?

I suggested to Ed that we should check out the show when it premieres. Ed wasn't too thrilled with my suggestion, since he finds the commercials pretty irritating, but I told him about the article and he agreed to give it a chance.

Then last night, he was flipping through the channels and I happened to notice that Demitri Martin's Comedy Central special was about to start. Tuesday is the one night of the week when there is nothing good on, so we watched it, and I found it hilarious. Ed liked it, too, but probably not as much as I did. We were both reminded of a dorky version of Mitch Hedberg, which is definitely a good thing.

So his new show premieres tonight, and today, Gawker and Jezebel are absolutely coated with ads. I have high hopes and I'm looking forward to watching it tonight, as I try to settle down after a new episode of Lost. But all this hype is sort of grossing me out. I feel like this guy's been in my face all week! I'm getting sick of him already, and I haven't even seen his show yet! Cool it, Comedy Central!

I am loving this marketing concept.

2009-02-06T17:03:00.000-08:00

So, The Wackness comes out on DVD this Monday. Hidden inside one of the DVD boxes is a "Golden Ticket." Whoever finds the "Golden Ticket" wins a weekend trip for two to Amsterdam and a bag of weed, which they can pick up at a coffee shop once they get there.

Amazing! I mean, it helps that I enjoyed the movie in the theater, but yeah, I'm totally buying the DVD now.

SF Sketchfest: Comedy Death Ray

2009-02-02T18:49:00.000-08:00

We saw Comedy Death Ray at Cobb's on Friday night. It was entertaining, but not particularly impressive. Andy Kindler did a scathing impression of Dane Cook, which was great because Dane Cook sucks and should be ridiculed as often as possible. There were surprise appearances by Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Samm Levine (Freaks and Geeks), in an enthusiastic but uninspired American Idol parody skit, which I really wanted to like, but couldn't.

The rest was mainly stand-up, and for the most part, it was amusing but sort of flat. Funny, but not hilarious. A lot of it seemed tentative and unrehearsed.

But Zach Galifianakis made fun of me! Woo! I've never been singled out by a comedian before, so that was very exciting. I informed him that "I write really boring reviews of, like, services, like, technology services, like VoIP and identity theft protection." He didn't know what VoIP was. Fortunately, Andy Kindler chimed in and informed him (Voice over Internet Protocal) while I stammered, "It's like, phone, over the Internet. It's cheaper." Yup, awesome.

Congratulations, Mom!

2009-01-28T17:23:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to my mom, who took a train into Manhattan today, specifically to go to the Manolo Blahnik store, where she purchased two pairs of shoes at 75% off. I am astonished and proud.

Um, yeah, this is awesome.

2009-01-27T16:43:00.000-08:00

I fully support the noble work of the Official Anti-Benjamin Button Club. It was such a relief to discover that a group of altruists have banded together to denounce this utterly misguided failure of a film. O.A.B.B.C., you are providing society with a much needed service, and I salute you.

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part IV

2009-01-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part I
Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part II
Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part III

On New Year’s Eve we spent a particularly outrageous and inebriated evening at Nikki Beach. After exuberantly ringing in the New Year, Kitty, John, a number of other new acquaintances whose names I cannot presently recall, and myself adjourned to some yacht or another to supplement our intoxication with a bit of cocaine. Once aboard the yacht our salacious night grew exponentially more so. At one point, Kitty and I found ourselves surrounded by a cluster of men as they discussed our relative beauty. Apparently our allure is multiplied when we appear as a duo, according to this group, which, by the way, included at least one successful actor and a rap artist or two. They collectively explained that our similar features subscribed to the male preoccupation with twins. We giggled and rolled our eyes at them, as we so often do in such situations.

“Oh, flatterers.” I dismissed their compliments with a laugh. “Surely you cannot think we are so young and naïve as to amuse you by kissing for your entertainment.” A collective noise of regret and dismay was uttered by the crowd. “You must realize that girls only engage in such behavior, you must realize, when absolutely positively absolutely desperate for male attention, and as you yourselves must realize, we already have that.”

Unfortunately, my speech was not as well received as I expected it to be, for my voice was rather slurred and I was having a great deal of trouble not collapsing in a heap on the deck. Also unfortunately, since I had prevailed in the conquest of John, Kitty was not feeling quite as self-assured as I. Anxious to please the demimonde of handsome men, she was quite prepared to acquiesce to their requests. After endless pleas and cajoling, Kitty and I shared a brief stage kiss for the pleasure of our audience. Despite the number of celebrities aboard that yacht, following our performance, Kitty and I were the stars of the party for the remainder of the evening.

I, of course, was not available and therefore fairly aloof and disinterested from the abundance of male attention. Kitty, on the other hand, was most assuredly single and therefore should have used the situation to her advantage, perhaps to ensnare the actor or one of the rappers. Instead, she spent the majority of the evening following John as though she were some sort of lost puppy.

That evening marked my first experience with peyote, a drug of which I had heard tales, but to which I had never previously been formally introduced. I am sorry to admit it, but it seems that John was taking advantage of my befuddled and uncertain state. As guests began to disperse, I discovered John and Kitty speaking intimately in a corner. They did not appear guilty when they noticed my presence, but instead welcomed me towards them. John pointed out that he had unfortunately missed out on our much discussed kiss, then mentioned that he found it mildly inappropriate that I had been performing lesbian antics for a crowd of men without his approval or prior knowledge. Well, I certainly had no intention of upsetting John, but in my current state I was unable to articulate that fact or explain myself whatsoever, so I simply gargled a regretful cry and threw myself into John’s arms for forgiveness. He stroked my hair a bit, which calmed me, then wondered aloud if perhaps we might reenact our kiss for him, simply to prove that it was, as I had claimed, a stage kiss and nothing more.

I have no desire to recount the ensuing events exactly, nor can I even remember them clearly enough to do so. I do know, however, that the three of us somehow found ourselves in John’s hotel room. More precisely, the three of us somehow found ourselves in John’s hotel bed. After a great deal of persuasion, something or other occurred involving nudity and far too many limbs. I consider myself fortunate that the memory is hazy at best. At some point during the encounter, I experienced a moment of clarity or perhaps a hint of sobriety, realized what was taking place, disentangled myself from the mess of bare skin and leapt from the bed as quickly as possible. Naturally, in my self-centered way I expected that to be the end of the situation. Instead, Kitty and John continued their horrible behavior, apparently disregarding or failing to notice that I had extracted myself. I stood in shock, watching…well, watching something utterly distressing and unacceptable happen before my very own eyes. Too distraught to speak, I simply stood there and waited for them to notice my absence. When they did not, I flew into a jealous rage.

I have no idea why John kept a gun on his dresser. I have the sneaking suspicion that he was not the person he had originally claimed to be. Surely it is a hazardous and imprudent idea to engage in a ménage à trois with one’s holiday fling, for I now realize that is all I was to that depraved young man, and her beautiful but terribly spiteful bosom friend with a loaded weapon within reach? Particularly if one intends to continue canoodling with the spiteful best friend long after the girl who, though perhaps nothing more than a meaningless holiday fling, is quite thoroughly and desperately in love with said depraved young man, has removed herself from the situation.

Yet despite the harsh betrayal inflicted on me by my now former lover, it was Kitty who bore the brunt of my fury. Clearly, John was a positively vile individual, and at this point in my life I am readily able to admit that fact. I was foolish, infatuated, naïve, what have you, and John was simply a mistake, an imprudent error on my part. If I am a poor judge of character, then I am perfectly willing to accept this entire dreadful experience as retribution for my own personal flaw.

Kitty, however, was my best friend, my closest confidant, my partner in crime. She was perfectly aware of the full extent of my love for John, and she blatantly violated the sanctity of our friendship. Perhaps if Kitty had been seduced into this unfortunate circumstance, as unwilling and innocent as myself, I might have forgiven her, but this was simply not the case. Kitty’s desires were utterly transparent throughout our time on the island, her jealousy and resentment souring our entire holiday. Nevertheless, I have always been thoroughly loyal to Kitty, and I do not think it unreasonable to expect the same of her. Harboring inappropriate feelings for John is one thing, but intentionally and deviously plotting to rob me of the man I love is another entirely.

And so, dear reader, I killed her. Shot my very closest friend in the world in a fit of hysterical distress. Understandably startled, John sprang from the bed. He looked at me with a face so full of pure astonishment, I felt almost proud. I gazed back at him with sang-froid. After a moment of silence, reality dawned on me. Paralyzed with shock, I stupidly waited for John to phone the police, but instead he dressed, hurriedly and wordlessly, flung a few belongings into a suitcase and, after one final incredulous glance over his shoulder, dashed from the room. I then proceeded to pass out, curled like a cat at the foot of the bed. When I regained consciousness, I slowly understood what I had done, and came to the conclusion that the only course of action was to turn myself in and throw myself at the mercy of the court.

My father assured me that his excellent and skillful lawyer would settle this whole confusing matter as expediently as possible. For quite a long time, I honestly believed they could not send me to jail. It seems I was mistaken. I am a murderess now, and cannot, therefore, be allowed to go unpunished, regardless of how remorseful I may be. My lawyer is frantically working on an appeal, but in the meantime I’ve done quite a bit of reading, been concentrating on my writing and art, and I’ve also come up with a lovely line of handbags. If you happen to be interested, Ménage à Trois or Murder is the name of the line, they’re available in all Reinard shops and most department stores, and they’re simply to die for.

SF Sketchfest: A Staged Reading of The Hills

2009-01-25T02:36:00.000-08:00

You will probably not be terribly surprised to hear that I found the staged reading of The Hills funnier than Celebrity Autobiography. You may be surprised to know that Ed agreed with me!

There weren't any big surprises, though. If you've seen The Hills and find it amusing, it's pretty apparent that a staged reading of the dialogue has the potential to be hilarious. And it was. I especially liked Rob Huebel's Spencer impression. He was able to scrunch up his face in a hilarious approximation of Spencer's freakish face to head size ratio. Rob Riggle was great as Brody Jenner, and I also enjoyed the stand-up routine he did prior to the main part of the show. Also, the narrator, Tom Kenny, who is apparently the voice of Spongebob Squarepants, is amazing. I want him to be my friend.

Everyone was great and had some very funny and accurate impressions, with one unfortunate exception: Janine Garofalo as Lauren! In a Q&A after the performance, she admitted that she had never seen a full episode of The Hills, only clips, and that she found Lauren difficult to imitate, so she resorted to twisting her hair and speaking in a deadpan voice. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that I could come up with a passable Lauren Conrad impression in under an hour. The show is so funny and everyone else has clearly put some effort into their characters, so I was disappointed that Janine Garofalo didn't bother.

Nevertheless, it was a great show, a packed house, and Ed and I both had a great time.

SF Sketchfest: Celebrity Autobiography

2009-01-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

We saw "Celebrity Autobiography: In Their Own Words" at Cobb's last night. It's definitely a great concept, and it was funny and entertaining, but I wished that they had chosen more current celebrities. I didn't have a solid point of reference for the majority of them. The only one that was really easily accessible for me was the 'N Sync autobiography. I mean obviously, celebrities don't write autobiographies when they're in the prime of their careers, but it was just a little disappointing to feel like I was several years too young to really appreciate the show.

It was cool to see Rachel Dratch, Jason Sudeikis, and Will Forte, though. They are all much more attractive in person. Afterward, Jason Sudeikis and Will Forte were signing autographs and taking pictures near the door. I would usually never even think to get an autograph, but we were walking right by them and there weren't that many people crowded around, so Ed convinced me to stop and ask them to sign my program. Standing there waiting for Will Forte to acknowledge me was a lot more awkward than I anticipated, but by then I had invested so much time waiting, it would have been even more awkward to just walk away. Literally I think the last time I asked for an autograph, it was a guy in a Mickey Mouse costume at Disney World. Which I was going to tell Will Forte, but then it became too awkward with the waiting, and I got too flustered. And while all this waiting and awkwardness was going on, Jason Sudeikis left! And, no offense to Will Forte, but I would much rather have gotten Jason Sudeikis's autograph...because he's the Floydster on 30 Rock!

All that awkwardness sort of overshadowed my memory of the show itself. I remember that I laughed a lot, though.

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part III

2009-01-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part I
Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part II

It was too late for the beach, so after a marvelous hour at Hermès and piña coladas at L’Iguane we retired to our perfectly charming villa, toting a number of fabulous new handbags. Weary from our traveling, we decided to call it an early night.

Naturally we slept far later than intended, for isn’t that always the way? After donning the most superb bikinis, newly purchased for our trip, we scurried off to enjoy the sun, sand, and all those lovely amenities. Tragically, Kitty somehow managed to drop her telephone in the pool, rendering it useless. Never one to be out of touch, it became immediately necessary for her to find a replacement, and I was left to my own devices for a bit. Lazing about in the sun and sipping strawberry daiquiris alone quickly grew dull, so I thought I might wander off for more shopping while Kitty was otherwise engaged. I was just leaving Calypso with a bag of perfumes and deliciously scented candles when who should I encounter but our dear new acquaintance, John.

“Chloë, how lucky I am to see you again so soon.” He truly did seem delighted to see me, which I found flattering, of course. After a bit of idle chat, he invited me for cocktails aboard the yacht that a friend of his had chartered for the week. Well, naturally I could not turn down an offer to mingle aboard a lovely yacht. After overcoming a bit of mal de mer, I found myself in high spirits and enjoyed myself terribly. I will not reveal the name of the extremely wealthy and famous and handsome man in temporary possession of the yacht, for fear of being tacky. I will admit, however, that upon my discovery that John was, in fact, a man with interesting connections, I was rather intrigued.

Well, after having such a fabulous time on the yacht, I was positively desperate for more time with John. I was searching for an excuse to see him again when he reminded me of our dinner plans that evening. Kitty, John and I enjoyed a positively fabulous meal at L’Esprit de Saline, and the three of us got along swimmingly, I must say. Kitty made one last feeble effort at John, batting her eyes and giggling idiotically into her own cleavage. While this tactic often works wonders with men, following our afternoon on the yacht, it was clear that John no longer had eyes for any girl other than myself, and no amount of flirting on Kitty’s part would overcome my force majeure.

“You know, Chloë,” he said to me while Kitty was in the ladies’ room, “you have the most enchanting green eyes.” I blushed, not from modesty, but because, although I do have naturally green eyes, they are enhanced with colored contact lenses.

“Oh, how sweet of you to say so,” I purred. “Thank you, darling.”

After supper, instead of returning to the villa, I adjourned to John’s hotel for coffee and a night swim, to Kitty’s chagrin. She said nothing upon being informed of my plan, only raised her eyebrow knowingly in that way best female friends are wont to do. I made up my mind to ignore her disapproval and allow myself to have a simply wonderful rendez-vous with John. At the risk of being crude, dear reader, let me assure you, I did.

Well, suffice it to say that John and I grew extremely close, and were nearly inseparable for the remainder of my time in St. Barths. This is not to say that all was rosy perfection. Indeed not. There were occasions when John would suddenly go off by himself at terribly unusual hours. Sometimes he would rudely leave before finishing a meal, just after arriving at a party or club, and when I slept in his hotel room, he would occasionally disappear for an hour or so in the dead of night. It was a bit off-putting, of course, but I was so terribly besotted with John that I attributed his odd behavior to mere eccentricity or moodiness. Of course, Kitty was a bit of a problem as well, a soupçon of jealousy and I dare say bitterness tainting our holiday at all times, but nothing unbearable. John grew more dashing and attractive each night, and before long, my Christmas holiday became tremendously romantic.

The three of us devoured incredible meals at Maya’s night after night, lunched at Taiwana, drank aboard yacht after wonderful yacht, indulged in mild debauchery at Li Ti St. Barth and Le Petit Club, and just generally had a magnificent time. While Christmas day was not particularly traditional, it was lovely. We exchanged gifts and there were so many delightful Christmas brunches and cocktail parties and dinner parties, we simply dashed from one to the next in a flurry of holiday festivity.

While Kitty sunbathed, John and I enjoyed many a piquant tryst in our gorgeous villa. I am not the sort of girl who divulges base details of my romantic encounters, but I will tell you, John was simply remarkable in every possible way. I have never considered myself especially inhibited, particularly when under the influence of one mind altering substance or another, but John challenged me and taught me and at the risk of mild exaggeration, changed me permanently. Two days and I was obviously smitten. Five days, I was clearly infatuated. After ten I was hopelessly in love.

Lest you make incorrect assumptions, dear reader, let me assure you that I am not the type to go falling in love on a moment’s notice, throwing my heart about and constantly searching for affection. Love has never been my idée fixe, but John was irresistible. Please believe me when I declare that John had really and truly won my heart. Perhaps the atmosphere of our island paradise impacted the rapidity of my falling in love, but one way or another, it was inescapable. I would have done anything for John, positively anything. I was simply spellbound by his jaunty charm, his savoir-faire and dapper good looks, not to mention his enticing British accent.

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part IV

Damn the Man!

2009-01-14T20:42:00.000-08:00

I kind of have a thing for movies that whip me up into a self-righteous fury. Maybe that's why I liked Milk so much. It's a legitimately terrific movie, but I think the self-righteous fury thing was definitely a factor. Anyway, everyone should really see American Drug War: The Last White Hope. Seriously. See it.

Grow up.

2009-01-13T08:47:00.000-08:00

Lily and Rufus are easily the most immature characters on Gossip Girl. In other news, I didn't watch any MTV whatsoever last night. I felt so free and clean when I woke up this morning!

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part II

2009-01-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part I

At this point, I should mention that Ambrosia travels with me regularly, as I cannot bear to be separated from her on any occasion, and generally her behavior is the very model of perfection. Clearly the heat must have affected her somehow, because as I was fanning her with my boarding pass, she squirmed out of my arms and went tearing down the terminal as quickly as her stubby legs could carry her. Naturally I dashed after my beloved dog, but I was wearing espadrilles, not my own creation and therefore slightly too large, and they did not lend themselves to rapid movement. I was beside myself, of course, calling Ambrosia and staggering after her in a panic. Imagine my relief when a lovely man swooped down and snatched my wayward puppy, thwarting her would-be escape, and promptly returning her to my loving arms.

“Oh, my goodness,” I breathed, delighted with Ambrosia’s savior. “I can’t thank you enough, how deft and wonderfully kind you are.” Not to mention absolutely scrumptious, I added silently.

“Nothing at all, miss. Couldn’t let this one escape, much too pretty,” he replied, reaching presumptuously into my lap to rub Ambrosia behind the ear. I was immediately taken with our new acquaintance. He had rakish nut brown hair, disarmingly soft coffee eyes, and was dressed smartly in khaki pants and a perfectly fine linen shirt, cream with navy blue stripes. His lovely accent made it abundantly apparent he was British. Naturally, I was immediately reminded of Prince William, for isn’t every girl immediately reminded of Prince William when she encounters a handsome Brit? John’s coloring was wrong, but nevertheless. Oh, yes, that was his name, John.

Kitty attempted flirtation, of course, but need I even inform you of her failure? My darling friend is beautiful and clever and wealthy and generally everything perfect, but surely, dear reader, you cannot be so misguided as to think darling and wonderful Kitty could be any sort of competition for my lovely self. After allowing us a moment for introductions and the briefest of pleasantries, she edged in and thrust forward a slim arm to shake John’s hand. I will confess, I have always envied Kitty’s hands. Her fingers are long and slender, her knuckles small and unobtrusive, her nails perfectly manicured at all times, a single elegant and dainty ring on the pinky of her right hand and a slightly larger gem on her left ring finger, and no scars or scabs or other unsightly imperfections whatsoever. In addition, her skin is significantly more golden bronze than mine at all times, partly due to the fact that I possess a naturally pale, peaches and cream complexion, and partly because she is a shameless user of faux tanning lotions and sprays.

Unfortunately for Kitty, however, I had already come to the conclusion that John was by far the most charming man I had ever met. Just moments into our coy exchange, our teeny prop plane was ready to be boarded. Kitty and I regretfully bid our dear new friend adieu and prepared to enter our toy of an aircraft, handing over our tickets.

“Ladies,” John called, clearing his throat, “If I may be so bold as to make a humble proposition. I’m in terrible need of a favor.” We gladly paused to hear his parting words.

“If there’s anything we can possibly do for you at all, we would be more than happy to help.” As much as I adore Kitty, I must confess that at times she is painfully affected and tragically lacking subtlety.

“Well, this is awfully embarrassing, but you see, I am temporarily stranded. I was unaware of the circumstances of the St. Barths airport, and was therefore not as wise as you ladies, to fly commercial. After an endless wait, we were finally cleared for landing, ages behind schedule.”

He pronounced the word "shedjuwool," which Kitty obviously found irresistible.

“How positively devastating,” I sympathized.

“Well, now you see everything has gone to shit, more or less. I have an engagement tonight, but with all the difficulty in actually reaching my destination, it seems likely I will be unable to attend. The time involved in securing and awaiting a flight or a ferry to St. Barths is formidable, and I just thought, well, this is terribly embarrassing but, if by any possible chance―”

“Oh, if you need to get there immediately,” Kitty interrupted, “we could easily offer you a seat with us. If you’d like.”

“I would be utterly indebted to you both,” John said gratefully.

“Of course,” I stepped in. “As ridiculously miniscule as these puddle-jumpers are, I don’t think it should be a problem to fit in just one more person, do you?” I prettily widened my eyes and pouted drolly at the pilot, who was, as promised, handsome and French. He seemed to consider the situation, examining our tickets for just a moment or two, then gave a slight nod.

John further demonstrated his charismatic appeal throughout the brief but turbulent flight. Kitty and I found ourselves utterly enamored, giggling and tossing our hair in full force. As we disembarked, John thanked us profusely for our generosity and finally asked the question we had both been waiting for since just after meeting our dear new friend.

“Where are you ladies staying?”

“Villa au Soleil,” Kitty answered before a syllable could pass my lips. “And yourself?”

“Hotel St-Barth Isle de France,” he said with a grin. “May I inquire about your plans? How long are you holidaying, if you will be much too busy to attend dinner and perhaps a party or two while you are on the island?”

“We have absolutely no plans whatsoever,” I told him honestly, to Kitty’s dismay. She frantically mouthed incoherent words, which were lost on me since I do not possess the ability to lip read. I do not subscribe to the school of thought requiring girls to confuse and manipulate men through their feminine wiles, relying on tricks and games and learned techniques to trap them. Beauty is truth and truth is beauty and so on.

Anyway, John was delighted with us and we were enraptured with him and before parting ways we agreed to meet for dinner the following evening.

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part III
Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part I V

"Needless to say..."

2009-01-09T11:51:00.001-08:00

Next time you are recounting an anecdote in an online review, in a blog post or comment, or on a message board, please do me one small favor. If you find yourself typing the words "needless to say," pause for a moment and consider whether you actually mean "suffice it to say." "Needless to say" means that something is obvious and self-evident. If you use this phrase to precede a story, you are either misusing it egregiously, or your story is not worth telling.

Oscar Bait: Fuck, Marry, Kill

2009-01-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

Fuck: Slumdog Millionaire. I'm glad I saw it once, but I have no interest in watching it again. I definitely understand why everyone loves it so much, but at the same time, there were a couple of things that really bothered me. First of all, the pace never really varies. It's just full speed ahead all the time, as we cut from one intense, stressful, upsetting situation to another. I need a break to catch my breath once in a while! In my opinion, the frantic pace doesn't give the characters enough time to build meaningful relationships with one another. And while I appreciate the cleverness of the narrative structure, I'm getting tired of reading about how freaking genius it is. It is a clever device, but I just don't think any narrative gimmick is really worthy of so much praise. Anyway, despite my complaints, I did enjoy this movie. It's very good, just not one of my favorites.

Marry: Milk. I loved this movie so much, I totally want to gay marry it. I was expecting it to be a little dry, like a history lesson, but I was completely riveted and entertained from start to finish. Everyone delivers an incredibly compelling performance, but the stand out, for me, was Emile Hirsch, because I wasn't expecting it. Sean Penn was amazing of course, James Franco and Josh Brolin were great, but they were pretty much great in the way that I expected. Emile Hirsch and, to a lesser extent, Diego Luna, really surprised me. I was also surprised by the relationship between Sean Penn and James Franco. I guess I just thought James Franco would be sort of a sidekick, or background figure, but there is a real love story in this movie, and it's a good one. I would watch it again and again, and I'll definitely be rooting for Milk to win some awards.

Kill: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This isn't really fair, because I went into this movie expecting it to be terrible. But whatever, I still thought it was terrible. When I heard that they were making this movie I was psyched, because I really like the Fitzgerald story. Then I read an article saying that they had just used the premise of the short story, and none of the plot. At that point, I knew I was going to be disappointed, but Ed wanted to see it so I tried to have an open mind. Just kidding, of course I didn't really try that hard to have an open mind. I expected to be irritated but I didn't expect to hate it as much as I did. There's no structure, it's overwrought and heavy handed and clunky, and it's shallow and superficial but pretends to be deep. The short story is surreal and whimsical and funny and structurally coherent. The movie is none of those things. Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton were great, though.

Oh my. A Gossip Girl rap.

2009-01-06T14:20:00.001-08:00

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part I

2009-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

How should I begin? My name is Chloë Reinard. You may have heard of me, or at the very least, my family ought to be somewhat familiar. If you do not know who I am, suffice it to say that I am an heiress. I’ve done a bit of modeling as well, and I’m quite interested in fashion. Last year I designed a few pairs of shoes. I have extraordinarily teensy feet and awfully particular taste besides, so the exact shoes that I search for simply never seem to exist. Finally I conceded defeat and created my own. They’re dreadfully lovely. If you’re at all intrigued, they’re called Ambrosia, after my positively adorable Maltese, and they’re available in Reinard shops and most department stores, I believe.

Well, let me see, what else ought I mention by way of an introduction? I grew up in Manhattan, mostly, and I recently acquired my own loft in Soho, which is truly magnificent. I am currently nineteen years old. My birthday is August 29, which makes me a Virgo. Last spring I graduated from The Dominican Academy of the City of New York, which is entirely female and overwhelmingly Catholic. Instead of rushing off to university immediately, however, I opted to delay for a year and sort of find myself. You know, give myself a bit more time to mature.

So I spent a few months playing the incorrigible socialite, stumbling about from celebrity soirées to museum galas, charity balls to restaurant openings, and, oh God, fashion show after fashion show after fashion show in a sort of substance induced haze. When I happened to find myself conscious during daylight hours, I shopped frantically, as though I could purchase a raison d'être for myself. Please do not misinterpret, I was far from lonely. My bosom friend Kitty Douglas was by my side constantly, and we were nearly always surrounded by a bevy of privileged bon vivants who frequented all the significant social events en masse. I appeared intermittently on the party pages of glossy fashion magazines, flirted with paparazzi in order to obtain more than my fair share of the spotlight, and kissed so many movie stars that eventually the glamor of it all began to fade. The marijuana and prescription pills of my high school days expanded to include occasional GHB and eventually a bit of cocaine, which helped postpone but could not prevent the insufferable indolence that eventually ensued.

It has just occurred to me that you may assume I mention my drug use by way of an excuse. This is most certainly not the case. For quite a long time I prided myself on allowing nothing whatsoever up my delicate nostrils. This eliminated the possibility of cocaine of course, which so often was de rigueur. Even after I was educated in the ways of powdery white lines and tiny silver spoons, my substance of choice was always alcohol. I was never involved in any sordid deals; I simply accepted what was offered me, as is polite and tactful. Please, dear reader, by all means spare me your pity or judgment. I do not seek it, I only want to explain my entire story as thoroughly and honestly as I possibly can.

I ultimately fell into a lethargic fit of boredom that lasted for weeks. As the days grew drearily shorter I became weary of the tiresome Manhattan scene, with all its artistic pretensions and vapid dilettantes. After a night spent lounging about, watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and sipping merlot, Kitty and I hit upon a terribly appealing plan. Clearly, I was desperately in need of a long and languid holiday. My family was not immediately enchanted by the suggestion, as it required my absence from a number of traditional holiday festivities, the most crucial of which being the annual Reinard Christmas Eve Gala. My father and his despicable new wife were not inclined to spend their Christmas outside Manhattan, but after negotiation were convinced of my need for a bit of an escape, for the sake of my mental health. Wonderful Kitty, darling Ambrosia, and myself were off to St. Barths in no time at all.

The airport in St. Barths is miniscule, and therefore unable to accommodate the Reinard company jet, so after a rather unfortunate commercial flight to St. Martin, Kitty and I chartered a small plane from St. Barth Commuter. In the Princess Juliana International Airport, which, by the way, is not air conditioned, we waited in a state of jubilant anticipation for a handsome French pilot to take us to our holiday paradise.

As we languished in the heat, Kitty and I continued a conversation begun during the previous flight. Kitty was endlessly lamenting her inability to maintain a relationship with anyone worthwhile, citing her unwillingness to compromise as the determining problem. After a brief miscommunication, Kitty clarified that her difficulty was not inability to compromise on an object of affection, that is, the problem is not that her standards are inappropriately high, but that instead she generally refused to compromise with her object of affection, that is, the problem is that she is a spoiled brat who will never in her life do anything that she does not want to do. She simply could not comprehend why any affectionate gentleman should require her to make the occasional sacrifice on his behalf. Allow me to be perfectly clear, dear reader, these are most certainly not Kitty’s own words, I am simply paraphrasing.

“I don’t mean to be selfish,” Kitty sighed. “I know that a girl has to compromise in order to have a good relationship, I just never seem to be able to make it work.”

“Maybe it’s an issue of quality,” I suggested. “I wonder if perhaps you met someone you could truly love, pleasing him would be sufficient incentive to make a few concessions from time to time.”

“I’m not sure,” she mused. “You may have a point. Is it possible I’ve yet to find someone good enough for me?”

“Well, that isn’t precisely what I meant, but more or less, I suppose. I do believe that I, for example, would do anything for a man if I were genuinely in love with him.” I paused and considered my rather bold statement. “Perhaps not literally anything,” I qualified. “I would never murder anyone, obviously. And I would not engage in a ménage à trois. But anything else, I’m fairly certain I would do if I loved someone passionately enough, and he wanted it desperately enough.”

“Murder I can understand, but you would really never have a ménage à trois?” Kitty inquired.

“Never,” I responded without hesitation, and went on to explain that in addition to the fact that I am decidedly heterosexual, I have read countless advice columns and articles warning young women of the dangers a threesome can pose to an otherwise healthy relationship. The potential problems are countless: general awkwardness and discomfort, manipulation and pressure on the part of the man, jealousy and lack of confidence in the relationship on the part of the woman. In addition, the image of one’s lover cavorting with another woman can often have a devastating effect on both partners. Apparently that particular male fantasy is one that a loving wife or girlfriend must never oblige, an assertion I agree with completely.

“That sounds logical,” Kitty agreed. “I think I may adopt that particular rule for myself. Although if I’d had gallons to drink, there is a slim chance that I might, possibly, under very specific and unlikely circumstances, be enticed to participate as the second woman,” she admitted ruefully, and I giggled in reply. “But anything else, you would do? Commit a crime other than murder, or move to Antarctica, or dye your hair brown, even?”

“I think so, yes. If I loved him enough, and he wanted something badly enough,” I repeated, “then yes. I would do anything he asked of me, ménage à trois or murder being the only exceptions.” I savored the phrase, enjoying the sound of it, and the drama, slightly proud of myself for the idea.

Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part II
Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part III
Ménage à Trois or Murder: Part I V

Okay, Kanye.

2009-01-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

In a recent interview with Fader Magazine, Kanye West had this to say:

I’m the only voice for the guys because rap dudes don’t rap about love, and R&B dudes rap about love, like, “I want to love you.” So Pink is making songs, Ciara, all these male-bashing songs, so I’m like the only dude to speak up for the guys from an intelligent, really been in a relationship type perspective.

"The only dude to speak up for the guys from an intelligent, really been in a relationship type perspective?" Really? "An intelligent, really been in a relationship type perspective?" This, from the guy whose idea of "the coldest story ever told" is the most generic breakup I've ever heard. I mean, seriously, Kanye, what is it about your subject that makes her so "heartless"? Let's see...

In the night I hear 'em talk
The coldest story ever told
Somewhere far along this road
He lost his soul
To a woman so heartless
How could you be so heartless?
Oh...how could you be so heartless?

Okay, so this is the coldest story ever told. And you've lost your soul. And your ex is quite heartless. But what is it about your tale that makes it so very cold? And what did your ex do that was so heartless?

How could you be so
Cold as the winter wind when it breeze yo
Just remember that you talkin' to me though
You need to watch the way you talkin' to me though
I mean after all the things that we been through
I mean after all the things we got into
Hey yo I know its some things that you ain't told me
Hey yo I did some things but that's the old me
And now you wanna give me back and you gonna show me
So you walk round like you don't know me
You got a new friend
Well I got homies
But in the end it's still so lonely

All right. So, again, your ex is quite cold. And she needs to watch the way that she talks to you. And you've been through quite a lot together in the past. You suspect that there are some things that she hasn't told you, and you have, in the past, done things that you regret. Now that you are no longer together, your ex has moved on and cut off contact with you. That's actually fairly standard breakup procedure, Kanye. I still don't see what makes this "the coldest story ever told."

How could you be so Dr. Evil
You bringing out a side of me that I don't know
I decided we weren't gonna speak so
Why we up 3 AM on the phone
Why do she be so mad at me for
Homie, I don't know she's hot and cold
I won't stop, won't mess my groove up
Cuz I already know how this thing go
You run and tell your friends that ya leaving me
They say that they don't see what you see in me
You wait a couple of months, then you gon' see
You'll never find nobody better than me

Wait, so you're irritated that your ex walks around as if she doesn't know you, but you are the one who decided that you weren't going to speak any longer? But then you found yourself talking to her on the phone in the middle of the night? And you can't understand why she's confused and angry? You consider her evil...why? Because you need someone to blame for this new side of you that you don't know? And while her friends disapprove of you as a boyfriend, you're inexplicably certain that she'll never find anyone better.

Talkin' talkin' talkin' thaw
Baby let's just knock it off
They don't know what we been through
They don't know bout me and you
So I got something new to see
And you just gonna keep hating me
And we just gonna be enemies
I know you can't believe
I could just leave it wrong
And you can't make it right
I'm gonna take off tonight
Into the night

Yeah. Blah, blah, you've been through a lot in the past, we've been over this. It doesn't seem as though you'll ever be able to resolve things, so you've decided to give up on getting any sort of closure.

Let me get this straight. You and your girlfriend broke up, for undisclosed reasons. Despite attempting to make a clean break, you've wound up talking a few times since the break up. And because of this, you are both feeling confused and frustrated. You have decided that you don't want this failed relationship "messing your groove up," so you're going to throw in the towel and run away from the situation. And that, apparently, makes this "the coldest story ever told," and makes your ex "a women so heartless." Thanks so much for that insight, Kanye. I really appreciate your amazingly unique, intelligent, really been in a relationship type perspective.

The House Bunny is better on airplanes.

2009-01-01T21:16:00.000-08:00

Ed and I attempted to watch The House Bunny recently, but I found it so excruciating that I had to turn it off after about ten minutes. I like Anna Faris and The Girls Next Door, and the fact that both of the writers are women. But it was just so agonizing to watch, I just couldn't bear the stupidity. Every character was such a shallow caricature, I had to wonder if the filmmakers had ever actually encountered a real live human being. For example, the smart but socially awkward pre-makeover Zeta sisters couldn't be smart but socially awkward in a way that felt even remotely genuine. No, they had to be spastic mutant freaks, bashing the audience over the head with the over the top characterization. And Shelley the Playboy bunny couldn't be ditzy and sweet and human, she had to be brainless to the point of utter absurdity. I can't think of a single character that had even a hint of complexity; they were all insultingly flat. So anyway, we gave up on The House Bunny because I was in such distress.

A couple of days later, I was on an airplane, flying home for Christmas. And it happened to be one of the planes with personal screens on the back of each seat, so you can choose from an assortment of movies and television shows. I was reading a magazine and listening to my iPod when I noticed that the guy sitting next to me was watching The House Bunny and cracking up. After seeing how much he was clearly enjoying the movie, I decided to give it another try. And while the flatness of the characters still bothered me, I enjoyed the movie and was entertained enough to pass the time. I think there were a few scenes cut from the airplane version, which may actually have been an improvement.

So, basically, The House Bunny was a pretty big disappointment, but it was entertaining enough to watch on an airplane.

Monday Night Television Extravaganza doesn't usually hurt this much.

2008-12-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

I never had any intention of watching Bromance and I wasn't particularly optimistic about The City, but Ed and I are in the habit of watching a week's worth of television every Monday night, and since none of our normal shows were on, we sort of wandered over to MTV and got sucked in by the combined horror of Brody Jenner and Whitney Port.

I only saw the second half of Bromance, but that was so much more than enough. I've grown accustomed to watching flimsy young women primp and prance in a desperate, clumsy struggle to win the favor of the resident queen bee. It's always pathetic, but it's such a common phenomenon, I think we're all inured to it at this point. Seeing guys do the same thing, though...well, it's new, which makes it harder to stomach. Watching Brody Jenner luxuriate in the role of the queen bee was creepy, to say the least. He's adopted Paris Hilton's "tell me I'm pretty and bask in my reflected glamor" shtick, which is weird enough to begin with, but he's thrown in a strong emphasis on objectifying women, naturally.

So last night, the competing "bros" were challenged to wrangle two sufficiently attractive women in order to gain access to a nightclub. Once they made it into the party, each was required to give a toast, celebrating Brody's general awesomeness. Later, Brody reclined in a large jacuzzi and arranged his potential "bros" in a row, pressed shirtlessly shoulder to shoulder in the water. He evaluated each "bro" based on some vague criteria and cast the least desirable "bro" out of the house, ostensibly because the rejected "bro" was a sloppy drunk, but really because his fedora and facial hair made everyone want to punch him in the face. (Myself included.)

The familiar fusion of homoeroticism, hyper-masculinity and misogyny is always revolting, but Bromance really takes it to a new level. It made me sad and embarrassed for men, and also sad and embarrassed for women. So many women are taught to believe that their value lies solely in their sexual appeal, and men have learned to believe that their value is determined by their ability to lure said sexually appealing women. So here we have a cadre of meatheads competing to demonstrate their sexy women luring abilities in order to win the love of another man. Gross, and not an entertaining kind of gross. Just gross.

As for The City, I didn't have high hopes for Whitney's ability to carry a show, because she is so very boring. But I thought there might be potential for the other characters to be interesting. I miss New York, and I miss the sort of people one tends to find in New York, and I thought I might enjoy watching New York people do New York things. But instead of making the premise more entertaining, the setting actually made The City far more difficult to watch. On The Hills, all the awkwardness and the tension and the fighting is silly and cute. It's like watching kittens fight. On The City, though, it's like we went from playful kittens to middle school mean girls, which is considerably more upsetting and less fun.

And, as I wrote last night during the show, I think that these new characters are just too self-conscious to make the staged reality format work. Lauren Conrad has a genuine talent for being utterly herself on camera. She doesn't seem to consider how she is being portrayed, or how she might intentionally skew the narrative. The other characters on The Hills do attempt to exert control over the storyline, but they are so laughably inept that reality shines through. The City, I think, will probably always feel less real and more staged, because the characters are so obviously thinking about how they wish to present themselves, and how they might secure a larger role and more time on screen.

Fortunately, Gossip Girl is back next week. Oh, and speaking of which...Olivia Palermo, you will never be Blair Waldorf! You can be pretty and rich and bitchy and wear headbands all you want, but we love Blair because she is witty and interesting, which I doubt you will ever achieve.

Apparently I'm unintentionally liveblogging MTV tonight.

2008-12-29T22:11:00.000-08:00

Um, I am also deeply offended by this extended preview for Bride Wars. So now I'm contemplating, is Bromance a bigger embarrassment for men than Bride Wars is for women? I'm leaning toward Bromance being the bigger embarrassment for men...but only slightly.

I thought The City might be good because people in New York would be more interesting than people in Los Angeles. But it looks like people in New York are too self-conscious to pull this off at all.

My name is Caitlin, and I'm a sugarholic.

2008-12-12T14:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a Princeton University professor presented evidence that sugar can be addictive. His studies with rats indicate that binging on sugar affected the rats' brains in the same way that drugs and alcohol affect the brains of humans. After their sugar binges, the rats became dependent on sugar and went through withdrawal when their supply was cut off. Then, when the sugar supply was reintroduced, the rats consumed more than ever. The rats experienced craving and relapse, and underwent chemical changes in their brains that mimic those caused by drug and alcohol addiction.

I am not remotely surprised by this discovery, because I have known for many years that I am addicted to sugar.

When I was a senior in high school, I never had time for breakfast, my first free period was late in the day, after my friends had already eaten their lunches, and I often missed dinner due to play rehearsal or other activities. There were days when I subsisted on nothing but a Frappuccino and candy from the vending machine. A few years ago, I became very determined to change my eating habits, so I decided I would no longer have cookies or candy in my dorm room. Instead, I stocked up on healthier snacks like fruit and granola bars. It wasn't long before I broke down and started eating the sugar cubes that Ed and I had for coffee. But I never experienced any other type of disordered eating. I have never binged on other types of food, I have never starved myself, I have never purged. I don't typically overeat.

I'm more in control of my sugar addiction now. I only let myself buy candy occasionally, but when I do, I still eat too much, too quickly. If the government outlawed sugar, I would probably be healthier and better off. But that would be absurd. The fact that I have difficulty controlling my sugar consumption does not lead me to conclude that the choice should be taken away from me, or from those who find it easy to enjoy sugar in moderation. I may decide to eat a single piece of candy or an entire bag of candy or to never eat candy again. But either way, it's my body, and it should be my choice. If I were eating so much candy that it became a threat to my health, I would hope that my loved ones would encourage me to change my lifestyle. And if I were unable to control my sugar consumption, I would seek professional help. But since I am able to indulge my sweet tooth without falling into destructive habits, I expect to be allowed to make my own decisions about what goes into my body.

If it isn't obvious by now, I think that the same logic applies to drug prohibition. Imagine if we arrested people with eating disorders, or spent $44 billion a year in an utterly futile attempt to prevent people from eating junk food. That wouldn't make much sense, would it?

Recommendation.

2008-12-06T12:01:00.000-08:00

If you have movies On Demand through your cable provider, you should check out "Humboldt County." I think it's been playing in small film festivals and independent movie theaters in random cities, and I could imagine it potentially feeling a little dull in a theater, but it's perfect for watching at home.

I felt ambivalent about "The Wackness" when we first saw it in a movie theater, but we recently watched that at home, as well, and I liked it so much more. I think when you go out to a movie, you expect a more structured, emotionally intense experience. But usually when I'm watching a movie in my living room, I crave something quiet and laid back...a thoughtful, interesting movie that won't stress me out too much. "The Wackness" was much better in that context, and I think "Humboldt County" has that same pleasant, relaxed vibe that I prefer when I'm lounging on the couch with Ed.

Based on the poster, I was expecting a stoner comedy, but "Humboldt County" is something different and more interesting. The main character, Peter Hadley, is a tense, awkward, emotionally repressed medical student at UCLA with an extremely demanding father who also happens to be his professor. When he tells Peter that he's going to have to fail him, Peter freaks out a little. He sleeps with a mysterious woman who brings him to her home in Humboldt County and then abandons him there. The first part of the movie feels a little forced, but I think most fish out of water stories tend to struggle a little in the beginning, while the mildly convoluted scenario is being set up. Anyway, the real story starts once Peter gets situated within a community of pot-farmers on the gorgeous "Lost Coast."

The story is a little bit thin, but the acting is great and the scenery is beautiful. If you're in the mood for a cozy movie night, you'll probably enjoy "Humboldt County." The tone and pacing are similar to "Garden State," but "Humboldt County" feels smarter, more original, more authentic, and less smug and overwrought, in my humble opinion.

Chester French, Flobots and Matisyahu at the Warfield on Sunday, November 3rd

2008-12-03T19:27:00.000-08:00

Caitlin and I caught a nice show last Sunday at the Warfield. We were a little delayed by a terribly slow KFC experience so we got in just as Chester French was finishing up.

I still don’t know what to think of Chester French. They recently put out an EP, but it was only two songs and a few remixes of material that had been on Myspace for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I like those two songs and the EL-P remix. I’m just not sure if they’re going to crank out some really special material just yet. It’s a shame that we only caught their last couple of songs.

Anyhow, we settled into our seats in the midst of a sleepy Sunday night, only to be roused with some forward thinking political sentiments, statements and songs by the Flobots. Hailing from Denver, Colorado, this group has a unique style and message. I thought it was great that they made a point of addressing the recent passing of Proposition 8 in California, and let everyone know that the protestors in California had inspired gay rights activists in Denver. These guys are fun, but their sound is a little redundant and I found their lyrics hard to make out at the show. The band was more talented than I expected but their volume overpowered the two MC’s at times.

Matisyahu came out last to headline the night. It was instantly clear that he’s a musician with great command of his talent. He played a lot of his newer material and lesser known songs, but it was still a complete set. He also put on quite a beat-boxing exhibition.

Since Matisyahu doesn’t play shows on Saturday nights, if I ever catch him again, I hope it’s on a Friday. It’s just hard to really get pumped for a Sunday night show after a long weekend. Here are a few featured tracks from the show:

Matisyahu - Smash Lies
Flobots - Stand Up
Chester French - EL-P Remix

-Ed

Disappointment.

2008-12-02T10:05:00.001-08:00

Monday night television extravaganza was kind of a let down yesterday. Gossip Girl, blah. (Also, memo to Josh Schwartz, you're only supposed to recycle the good parts of The O.C., not the stupid stuff that nobody liked.) The Hills, blah. Heroes, um, excuse me, but how is it even remotely plausible that the fucking comic store guys were the only ones to even consider the possibility that EVERYONE'S FUCKING POWERS WOULD OBVIOUSLY COME BACK AFTER THE ECLIPSE WAS OVER? And How I Met Your Mother was a repeat.

I miss Lost.

Bad habits.

2008-12-01T13:13:00.001-08:00

I just bit my nails for the first time in almost a year. This cannot be a good sign.

Conspiracy on The Hills.

2008-11-25T11:00:00.000-08:00

Last night's episode of The Hills was easily the best of the season so far. "You Did This" had that perfectly enticing blend of fiction and reality that got me hooked on the show in the first place. In order to tease it apart and then put it back together again, though, we're going to need some background information.

Audrina and Lauren have been drifting apart, and back together again, and apart, and back together again throughout the current season. And whenever Audrina drifts away from Lauren, she always seems to drift towards Heidi. If you recall, Heidi recently invited Spencer, Stephanie, Audrina, Justin Bobby, and Audrina's sister Casey to one of her work events. It was clear from the start that this was an inappropriate and unprofessional move by Heidi. So why did she do it? Perhaps because sad, lonely, peripheral Heidi was attempting to forge a new alliance within the show? My suspicions were confirmed later that episode, when Stephanie informed Lauren that "a new crew" seemed to be in the making. (That Stephanie is a wily one. She knows that Lauren will always be the star of The Hills, and she's playing the game accordingly.)

So Audrina has been spending some time with Heidi and Spencer, the nefarious masterminds behind the now classic "antagonize Lauren, create drama, get attention" maneuver. Audrina recently moved out of Lauren's house, which puts her at risk of being phased out of the show. So what does she do? She takes a page out of Spencer and Heidi's book and starts a rumor about herself and Lauren, claiming that Lauren supposedly hooked up with Justin Bobby. She frantically shares this rumor with every character on the show. (And with the media, naturally.)

And somehow, relentlessly sincere Lauren never saw it coming. She never does. In an added twist, she's painted into a corner. While it's readily apparent that Lauren finds Justin Bobby repellent, she's initially reluctant to make this point, because she is so attached to the notion that she is infallibly nice. Eventually though, she can't help but let Audrina know that she finds Justin "disgusting." And while it took Lauren a little while to put the pieces together, I think that during the final scene in the club, when she accused Audrina of being "worse than Heidi," it was evident that she had finally figured out what was really going on. Lauren's behavior would be quite overwrought if she were merely responding to Audrina's absurd accusation. But she is actually reacting to the discovery that Audrina, like Heidi, has been manipulating her in search of screen time, when all the while Lauren has foolishly considered Audrina a real friend.

Justin Bobby also seemed dissapointed by Audrina's machinations, and disillusioned about the show itself, when he remarked, "It's not just you, it's all of us." In the context of their conversation, this comment made no sense, but if they were actually discussing the fact that Audrina had made these rumors up in order to get attention, it fits, as does Justin Bobby's abrupt departure.

The interesting thing about the "antagonize Lauren, create drama, get attention" maneuver is that, while the antagonist temporarily succeeds in seizing the spotlight, it invariably reinforces Lauren as the protagonist. Nobody - not Spencer, not Heidi, and certainly not Audrina - can compete with Lauren's ability to play the victim. The reason for this is simple. Lauren isn't acting. Lauren, somehow, persists in the belief that these people are her real friends, that "The Hills" really is her life. She is truly shocked when her "friends" turn on her. What chance do Audrina's lackluster acting abilities have against Lauren's genuine emotions?

Meanwhile, Holly is learning to play the game like a pro. But unlike most of our friends on "The Hills," Holly isn't playing for attention - she's playing for her sister. It's obvious that Heidi is in so deep, the only way to save her is to do it from within the show. And her tactics are impressive. By moving in with Lauren, Holly positioned herself closer to the spotlight that Heidi so desperately craves. In last night's episode, she asked Spencer to tell Heidi that she stopped by, knowing perfectly well that he would not. Then, she went to visit Heidi, and asked if Spencer had passed on her message, again, knowing perfectly well that he had not. What a clever way to drive a wedge between them!

Both Holly and Stephanie have had the benefit of watching The Hills on television before joining the cast and thus, they have the distanced perspective necessary to play the game more strategically, like chess.

As for Spencer and Heidi... I think they are running out of moves. Spencer just doesn't have the imagination to sustain his villainous role. He's more of a brat than a villain at this point, moping around, petulantly calling people names and needling Heidi. If he were smarter, he'd make better use of Stephanie, but I actually think it's more likely that Stephanie will figure out how to use him for her own advancement.

After my brief post yesterday, I remembered this story, claiming that Spencer and Heidi had a deal with Us Weekly, promising exclusive access to an eventual staged wedding. Now that the wedding has taken place and the agreement with Us has been fulfilled, what's left for Spencer and Heidi? My hypothesis is that Heidi has despised Spencer for a long time, but was forced to continue the charade until the wedding. Now she'll be free to get a divorce and move on with her life, which will presumably be the focus of the next season of The Hills.

All in all, great episode. Just as I was starting to lose interest, it sucked me back in.

This is either very good news, or very bad news.

2008-11-24T14:33:00.000-08:00

I am pondering what Heidi and Spencer's elopement means for the fifth season of The Hills. We've been dancing around this possibility for so long...now that it has actually come to pass, what happens to the show? Will it become more interesting, or more boring? I honestly have no prediction...but I guess the anticipation will keep me from losing interest altogether, at least for the first few episodes.

"San Francisco Values."

2008-11-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

Bill O'Reilly is afraid to go near the Presidio at night, apparently. I walk through the Presidio every night, from my office to the bus stop, which happens to be outside the Lucasfilm headquarters. Very frightening indeed.

Gossip Girl would be better if I were consulted.

2008-11-18T10:14:00.001-08:00

Lately I'm getting the feeling that the people who write recaps for Gossip Girl put more thought and attention to detail into the show than the actual writers. I love Gossip Girl, but I would love it even more if they actually managed to capture the tone and enthusiasm and depth of feeling that the recaps often achieve.

I do think that the last couple of episodes of Gossip Girl have been ambitious, which I appreciate. Last week I was impressed by the thematic consistency of the various plot threads, all involving different characters using each other, being used, or both. And this week, it really seemed like the writers were carefully orchestrating a series of explosive confrontations, but then instead, each dramatic turn just quietly fizzled out. It seems like there is so much potential in every episode, but it is usually squandered by sloppy writing.

If I had my way, the characters' back stories and defining traits would be more consistent. Their personalities should drive the plot instead of conveniently fluctuating in service of the plot. Seriously, if the audience can remember the various nuances of each character, the writers ought to be able to do the same. I'm getting tired of the mental gymnastics required to make each characters' actions feel plausible.

Nate can't even remember why he was mad at Chuck or Vanessa in the first place. Vanessa and Dan desperately cling to their moral high ground, yet they never refrain from engaging in their own inept attempts at manipulative scheming. Dan is clearly a terrible writer, and yet he had a story published in the New Yorker and famous authors are willing to mentor him? Eric vanishes completely, only to reappear whenever someone else needs a sidekick. Chuck loves Blair but doesn't bother to attend her 18th birthday party? He begs for his father's trust, affection and attention, then breaks into Bart's safe and exposes secrets that drive away his new wife and stepchildren? Blair agonizes over Cyrus Rose becoming her new stepfather but displays utter indifference toward her future stepbrother? Bart knows the intimate details of Eric's love life before Eric does, but he doesn't recognize the extent of Lily's current relationship with Rufus? Or the fact that Dan was investigating him for an article? Jenny watches Agnes burn her dresses without attempting to stop her or slapping her in the face? Aaron makes grandiose, elaborately planned romantic gestures before becoming interested in an actual relationship with Serena? And then out of nowhere, abruptly announces that he is ready for monogamy?

Serena is actually the only character whose inconsistency no longer bothers me. At the end of last week's episode it became apparent that her personality is so weak and flimsy that she basically just reacts to the people and events around her, while having no core values, interests, goals, or deeply rooted traits of any kind. I guess that's why everyone finds her so charming all the time, because they can just project their own personalities on her.

Don't get me wrong, Gossip Girl is fabulous, but it's also frustrating because I know it could be so much better.

Oh. Really? Hmm...

2008-11-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

There will be yet another season of The Hills. I'm surprised, and not necessarily pleased.

California is silly.

2008-11-13T15:56:00.000-08:00

I have been living in San Francisco for ten and a half months now, and I still cannot get over the fact that the National Weather Service issues an alert every time it is slightly cooler or warmer than usual, and every time it rains. I go to check the temperature and I see "Severe Weather Alerts for San Francisco" in bright orange, and I'm like, "What the fuck?" After four years in Vermont, when I see a severe weather alert I'm expecting, like, three feet of snow or a -40 degree windchill. So I click on it, all perplexed, and I see something like this:

... POSSIBLE RECORD BREAKING TEMPERATURES ON TAP FOR THE SAN FRANCISCO AND MONTEREY BAY AREAS THROUGH SATURDAY...
THE COMBINATION OF STRONG HIGH PRESSURE ALOFT AND OFFSHORE FLOW WILL USHER IN VERY WARM TEMPERATURES ACROSS THE FORECAST AREA FRIDAY AND SATURDAY. MAXIMUM TEMPERATURES MAY APPROACH RECORD LEVELS IN SEVERAL LOCATIONS OF THE FORECAST AREA FRIDAY AND SATURDAY. HIGH TEMPERATURES COULD REACH THE UPPER 70S TO MIDDLE 80S... EVEN ALONG THE COAST. THESE TEMPERATURES ARE 10 TO 20 DEGREES ABOVE NORMAL FOR MID NOVEMBER. TEMPERATURES WILL BEGIN TO COOL ON SUNDAY AS HIGH PRESSURE WEAKENS AND A SEA BREEZE DEVELOPS.
PEOPLE PLANNING OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES THROUGH THE WEEKEND SHOULD TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION THE VERY WARM TEMPERATURES AND ADJUST ACTIVITIES ACCORDINGLY. WEAR LOOSE FITTING LIGHT WEIGHT CLOTHING AND DRINK PLENTY OF WATER. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SHADE AND AIR CONDITIONING IF AVAILABLE.
NEVER LEAVE CHILDREN... THE ELDERLY OR PETS IN ENCLOSED AUTOMOBILES... EVEN FOR THE SHORTEST TIME. TEMPERATURES CAN QUICKLY RISE TO LIFE-THREATENING LEVELS... EVEN IF THE WINDOWS ARE PARTIALLY OPENED.

And then I feel compelled to make a dramatic announcement to my coworkers: "Ahem, ahem. You guys, I just want to let you know that there's a SEVERE WEATHER ALERT. High temperatures could reach 85 degrees this weekend...EVEN ALONG THE COAST. So be careful out there!"

Excuses, excuses.

2008-11-12T23:12:00.000-08:00

So while Ed was languishing, computer-less, I was caught up following the election in excruciating and unnecessary detail, and I have also been busy furnishing and decorating our new apartment. I still had time to blog, really, but my mind has just been too distracted to focus. I've been thinking that maybe I should try writing shorter and more frequent blog posts. I can't help agonize over almost everything I write, as though it were going to be graded or published, which can make blogging prohibitively stressful and time consuming. So I'm going to try to relax a little and not be such a perfectionist about every post. To the ten or so people who have been checking back here regularly, I apologize in advance if you notice a drop in quality! Hopefully quicker and dirtier blogging is better than no blogging at all.

Of course, there's always the possibility that this is total bullshit, and all my blogging motivation will just fade away after I make all these excuses and promises. I guess we'll see!

Back in the Saddle: Covering Rock with Strings

2008-11-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a while since my last post, but I can explain. You see, I had a great MacBook Pro, but one day I was working at the foot of my bed with a glass of water when out of nowhere, Motts (our rabbit) snuck up on me and tickled my feet with his whiskers, which caused me to spaz out and knock the water onto the MacBook, shorting out the logic board. So I waited and waited and finally the new MacBooks came out. Now I'm finally set up again and I hope to be a bit more consistent.

On the music front: I was definitely able to make the most of my first summer in San Francisco and all of the wonderful festivals that blew through the Bay Area. I did post on Alice Waters' Slow Foods Festival, but there's plenty more that I'd like to back blog about some other time. Today I'd rather just restart my blogging by talking about how awesome string instruments can cover rock music. I can't get enough of it and maybe that can be attributed to the fact that I played in a few orchestras when I was younger, but either way it's awesome. Orchestral music can be a little difficult to get into, kind of like Victorian design and Eddie Ross. (Quick tangent: I love "Top Design" and am pretty pumped that Nathan Thomas won. He's incredible and I'm planning on replicating his painting from the show's finale.) What I typically enjoy about orchestral composition is the layered texture that comes with the sound of various instruments mixing their tones together. I get the image of weaving or knitting sounds together from the various musicians, whether it be a quartet or a full orchestra. Metallica's S&M is a great example of how strings can add texture and detail to any arrangement. I vividly remember watching that concert on MTV (back when MTV was still about music) and I actually picked it up on vinyl the other week. It's fantastic. I've recently come across string band covers of both Muse and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They're pretty awesome, and the Chili Peppers covers make up an entire album. I couldn't find a link to download it, but I was able to find a torrent last week.

The String Quartet covering Muse - Time is Running Out
The String Quartet Tribute to The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Also, not quite strings, but close: Scala & Kolacny Brothers - Under the Bridge

Anyhow, I'm glad to be back writing about music and I hope that Caitlin and I will be much more consistent through the end of the year and beyond.

-Ed

Home sweet home.

2008-10-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

Our first night in the new apartment:

The view from our living room window:

Our bus stop:

Chihuly at the de Young.

2008-09-27T20:46:00.001-07:00

Bathing Shall Be Prohibited During an Electric Storm: nineteen. (conclusions)

2008-09-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

eighteen. (announcements)

Our heroine is alone in the yellow house. The Slut is in London and the Virgin has left to be with Mr. Right. The Bitch is at work, but even when she is home she barely makes an impression, roaming aimlessly through the house, hollow without her wonderfully fierce bitchiness. Everything seems exceptionally clean in the empty house and the cleanliness calms and refreshes our heroine. The strong sense of absence heightens her sensitivity to her environment. She feels sure that if the yellow house were not refreshingly neat, it would have to be unbearably cluttered and filthy.

Summer is nearly gone. And it is time for our heroine to decide if her time in the yellow house has been a success or a failure, if she will continue to write or instead resign herself to a grownup job at a big corporation with health insurance and an office. She has not written much. Some poetry, a few short stories here and there, but nothing substantial, nothing that matters. Nothing that confirms her hope that she is meant to be a writer, meant for greatness or at least for significance. She suspects that the summer has been a failure so far as writing is concerned. It seems she is too vain, too superficial, too superfluous, too typically feminine to write anything of importance. She had hoped to transcend her silly femininities this summer, devoting herself entirely to serious literary pursuits. Instead, after a few months with the Bitch, the Slut, and the Virgin, she is more female than ever.

With guilt and disappointment, it occurs to our heroine that she has spent the first months of her adult life preoccupied with her hair and makeup, agonizing over romantic relationships, distracting herself with fashion magazines, shopping for shoes she cannot afford, gossiping with and about other girls, and internally criticizing them in a truly ruthless and feminine manner. She has wasted her time and her parents’ money. She has utterly, utterly failed.

“But that’s who I am,” she says aloud, and her stringy voice should echo in the empty house, but of course it does not really echo. She is vain and superficial and feminine. She is. And judgmental, she realizes, thinking of the Bitch, the Slut, and the Virgin, and missing them, and wishing she had known them better. The Slut is really not such a slut, after all. No more of a slut than our heroine had been, stupidly sleeping with the Poet. And the Bitch is no longer a bitch, and the Virgin is no longer a virgin. But our heroine has been a terrible bitch, to her roommates, to the Mailman, to everyone. And what did she really ever have against the Virgin? She hated her just for being innocent and idealistic and beautiful. Our heroine is just a slutty, jealous bitch, she decides, and imagines the words “JEALOUS. SLUTTY. BITCH,” tattooed on her face, stamped in bold black lettering on her forehead. So what else could she have hoped for, what could she possibly have hoped to accomplish this summer? Did she think she could distill her entire being into pure intellect and sensitivity of perception, exorcising all of her frivolities and weaknesses? What would be left, if that were possible? Perhaps it has been worth it, after all, to come to this realization, this reluctant but inescapable acceptance of her entire self.

But then what should she do? Should she continue to pursue writing, even if she can only produce irrelevant fluff? How can she ever hope to go outside herself, or will she always be constrained by her own insubstantiality? Should she look for a job in advertising or public relations or fashion, and give herself over to her own superficial preoccupations? Is that all she is worth? Even after her dismal acceptance of herself, she still somehow knows that she is worth more than this. But why? What makes her think she is worth more? What makes her think she is so worthwhile in herself? And what is wrong with doing one of those things, if it would make her happy? If she is capable of some greater intellectual endeavor, does that obligate her to dedicate herself to that? And she still does not even know if she is capable. Does she need to be? Is it really something she needs? Or can she somehow reconcile these two halves of herself? It is possible that she can still be something worthwhile, still produce something worthwhile, without rejecting her frivolous feminine side?

Our heroine has an impulse to light the pages of her notebook on fire and throw it in the grass and watch it burn. She has an impulse to do something, anyway, something symbolic and yet active, to go outside her mind and do something, be something in the world. She could burn her notebook, if she wanted. All the stories and poems are saved on her computer. But the random thoughts, the scribblings, the pointless observations, those would be lost. What are those worth?

She is relieved to see the Mailman arrive. The emptiness of yellow house is no longer refreshing. It is beginning to terrify her, and she welcomes the escape from her thoughts.

“I love you, Mailman!” she calls to him from the front step. He tilts his head to the side, puppy-like, and gazes at her quizzically as he approaches.

“I’m not a mailman anymore, silly,” he remarks.

“Yes, but you are my mailman, Mailman.” He reaches the door and she clings to him like a life preserver before pulling him into the yellow house.

He sits on the couch and she perches next to him, legs tucked underneath her, facing sideways to she can look at him directly. He is not perfect. Their relationship is not perfect. It could possibly be more fulfilling, and there may be someone out there who would be more right for our heroine, more satisfying and less frustrating. But she does not care anymore. She does not want to search for the absolute ideal relationship, because she wants the Mailman. When she is with him, she is happy, and when she is not with him, she wants to be with him.

“You’re a sweet baby,” he murmurs, and pulls her close to him, pulls her head into the nook his shoulder forms. “I missed you. I love you.”

“I’m so happy that you love me,” our heroine whispers.

She presses her cheek against his face. It feels warm and good, so she rubs her face around a little. The Mailman laughs at her. Our heroine loves the feeling of their shared warm skin. She wants to be naked and warm and squishing all of their skin together. But a girl cannot strip a man of his clothes and lay naked on top of him just to enjoy the feeling of their skin. It would be unfair. The Mailman would want to have sex, and that would distract from concentrating on the warm skin.

She cuddles closer against him and he startles her by gently seizing her ankle and pulling off one of her socks. Our heroine notices the sudden sensuality of peeling off socks. It feels like peeling off a layer of skin. She wishes she could wear a whole sock outfit, just to experience him peeling it off. Not like an orange peel. Smooth and fluid, like a banana peel. And afterwards, the banana feels naked and tingling and slightly erotic and slightly cold.

She offers the Mailman her other foot.

I'm sad.

2008-09-15T19:40:00.000-07:00

I cried tonight. I sobbed and I wailed and I flailed my limbs and I (literally!) gnashed my teeth. I thrashed around and howled until I nearly hyperventilated, just like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. This was over an apartment.

But it was such a beautiful apartment! It was only $1800 in a great location in Pacific Heights with parking included and a view of some gorgeous painted ladies and it had hardwood floors and a backyard and a huge, amazing walk-in closet and a beautiful kitchen and a beautiful bathroom and bay windows with screens and blinds and the most incredible art deco architectural details ever. And we were the first ones at the open house and the first ones to apply and we didn't get it because the landlord said that our application was great but he rented it to the person whose application was at the top of the pile, which means the last person to apply! And even though I tried so hard not to get my hopes up, I had already furnished and arranged and decorated the entire apartment in my imagination. Oh and we also lost the second best apartment we have seen so far because we couldn't commit to it until we heard about the first apartment.

And as I was working myself into hysterics over how unfair it all is and how frustrated and helpless I felt and all the wonderful possibilities vanishing into the ether, one needling thought crept into the back of my mind. "If McCain wins the election," I couldn't help but muse, "I will feel just like this, but it will be so, so, so much worse." And then I thought, "Why do you have to be so dramatic? Do you like being miserable?" And then I thought, "'Gossip Girl' and 'The Hills' better be fucking awesome tonight." And the interesting part is that I could not stop crying the entire time I was thinking all these things. And no, I'm not even PMSing. I just really, really wanted that apartment.

Bathing Shall Be Prohibited During an Electric Storm: eighteen. (announcements)

2008-09-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

seventeen. (the storm)

The Bitch does not return to the yellow house until late the next night. She goes straight to her room without speaking to anyone, and closes the door. In the morning, our heroine finds her slumped at the kitchen table, sullenly staring at a slice of burnt toast. Our heroine sits down across from her.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” The Bitch is drained of anger, and since she is mostly comprised of anger, this leaves her an empty husk. Her ferocious beauty is gone, and instead she looks worn and haggard.

“She slept with him before you did, you know. She wasn’t trying to steal him from you.” The Bitch looks at our heroine with her cold, dead eyes, and does not deign to respond.

“Really, you should be mad at your boss. I mean, he slept with her and then you in the same night, at the same party.” When our heroine observes that this will not elicit a response either, she continues recklessly.

“And it obviously wasn’t safe sex, since he got her pregnant. That’s pretty bad, don’t you think? I hope you made him use a condom.” The old Bitch, the Bitch our heroine knew and loved, would have exploded at this. But this broken husk of a Bitch only glowers. Our heroine gives up. As she stands to leave the kitchen, the Bitch speaks in a flat, expressionless voice.

“I was thinking of moving out.”

“Oh.”

“I can’t live in this house anymore, not with her.”

“Don’t you think that’s an overreaction?” Our heroine immediately considers the absurdity of this question, given the Bitch’s performance the night before.

“Not really.”

“But didn’t you hear what I just said? She didn’t do it to hurt you, she slept with him first. He is the one you should blame.”

“No.” The Bitch does not even look at her, does not even acknowledge her argument. “I can’t live with that slut.”

“Don’t you think that’s unfair, though?”

“No.”

“Fine.” Our heroine leaves the room, bored with this new Bitch, this passionless and unresponsive Bitch.

She is tired of this pointless drama between the Bitch and the Slut. Their respective problems are course and vulgar and yet dull as well. She goes up to her room and calls the Mailman. It has been a few days since she put the reading list in the mailbox, and they still have not spoken. The phone rings for a long time and, assuming he will not answer, she expects to feel relieved but is disappointed instead. Then, just when she expects to be sent to voicemail, he picks up.

“Hey you,” he says, sounding happy and surprised.

“Hi.” Our heroine is unexpectedly nervous. “Hi,” she repeats.

“Hi,” he says warmly. “I’m glad you called.”

“Me too.” She hesitates. “I made you a reading list.”

“I got it.”

“What did you think?”

“Well, it sort of reminds me of a high school reading list.”

“Oh. Well, I just thought if you were just going to read a few books, they might as well be classic, important books. That seemed the most worthwhile to me. I didn’t mean for it to be insulting.”

“No, I wasn’t insulted.”

“Oh, good.” Our heroine runs her hand through her short blonde hair, tugging at the dark, grown out roots.

“I’m reading On the Road now.”

“Oh, cool. How do you like it so far?”

“It’s okay.” They both pause, and then he indicates that it is her turn to introduce a topic, as is his habit. “So . . .” This time, it does not irritate her.

“I miss you,” she states simply.

“I miss you, too.”

“I went out with that guy for a little while, that poet,” she confesses.

“Oh.”

“Is that okay?”

“I guess. What happened?”

“Nothing. He was an asshole. I didn’t want him.”

“Do you want me?”

“I think so.” She should be happy, she should be excited. But why does her heart feel crushed within her chest all over again? She does miss him, and she does want him back.

“Can I see you? I want to see you.”

“I would really love to see you. Will you come over after work tomorrow?” The thought of seeing him both terrifies and exhilarates her.

“Yes.”

“Good.” On the verge of hanging up, our heroine realizes why she is still in agony. “Wait. Listen . . . I’m really sorry. I’m sorry for everything. For being so impatient and demanding and insensitive. I expected so much from you, and I thought I was giving you so much because I loved you so much and because I was always so affectionate with you. But really, I was never very patient or understanding. I think I was a hypocrite, and I’m sorry. I think I was just so paranoid about you rejecting me, that I found rejection in everything that you did, and that wasn’t fair, and I just didn’t notice some of the considerate things that you did. So I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Feeling satisfied and correct, she returns downstairs. Finally ready to write something, she gathers her notebook from the coffee table. It is covered in multicolored wax from the various scented candles. She is scraping the wax off the last page of her incomplete story when the Bitch calmly accosts the Slut on her way down the stairs. Apparently the Bitch changed her mind about leaving the yellow house, and instead she has decided the Slut should move out instead. Intrigued by this development, our heroine waits for the Slut’s response to this absurd demand.

“Fine,” the Slut answers calmly. “I will move out.”

“What?” Our heroine is too surprised to refrain from chiming in.

“Yeah. I’ll move out.”

“Really?” Even the Bitch is astonished. That was easy.

“I found out yesterday that I was accepted to this culinary school in London. In a few weeks, I’ll be over there. And in the meantime, I’ll probably just move home and figure out all the details.”

The Virgin, who has been standing at the top of the stairs during this exchange, calls down, “I’m actually moving out soon, also, as a matter of fact.”

The Virgin makes her way down the stairs, steps authoritatively around the Bitch and the Slut, and announces her plans to move in with Mr. Right.

“Wait,” our heroine chimes in again. “Does this mean that you aren’t a virgin anymore?”

The soon-to-be-former-housemate-formerly-known-as-the-Virgin flushes from her face all the way down to her chest and shoulders which, shockingly enough, are partially exposed by her loose and mildly sexy sundress. She shakes her head and looks down at the floor.

Our heroine shrieks, leaping from her seat and bounding over for a childish embrace. She has never felt such affection for the Virgin until this moment. And really, she has seemed less chaste than usual recently.

nineteen. (conclusions)