I want to go to Moscow

Blargle Blargle

2010-08-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

I am really sick of saying this, but apparently it needs to be said every time a judicial decision is reached/ every time Sonya Sotomayor is confirmed/ every 30 seconds:

The follow question to "Does it matter that Vaughn Walker is gay?" is not:

"Does it matter that Thurgood Marshall was black?"

It's "Does it matter that Justice so-and-so is white/straight/male/etc?"

All gender is gender, all race is race, all sexuality is sexuality. They're not optional. No one is the control group.

All right, back to your regularly scheduled lives.

Hallelujah (or, one of these days I'm going to have to actually mail these)

2010-08-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

Dear The New Yorker,

It is totally awesome that you had a profile of Brad Paisley in your most recent issue. I realize that for very good reasons, all of your letters this week will be about Atul Gawande because oh my God, but I have some thoughts about Mr. Paisley that I've been thinking for the better part of a year and this is as good a chance as any to express them. My thoughts in a nutshell: you blew it.

For the reader who lives without any knowledge of contemporary country music (which, to be fair, is probably the average New Yorker reader, fine), the article does a perfectly adequate job explaining who Brad Paisley is, why his songs are good, and why lots of people who don't subscribe to The New Yorker care. But, it skates only lightly and superficially over the gonzo, bonkers radicalism that Paisley espouses. Seriously, American Saturday Night is a nuts album. It is a stealth bomb thrown into the current heart of country music and a peppy refutation of an entire socio/cultural/political outlook. It is, I believe, the most important artifact of popular culture from the last twelve months (sorry, everyone who liked The Kids Are All Right). I cannot overstate how seriously you whiffed while writing about this shit, structuring the whole thing as a general "hey, there's this guy in middle America who writes a bunch of hit songs and this one time he decided to write about race" profile. Opportunity = lost.

To hear Kelefa Sanneh tell it, the shocking thing about Paisley's hit song "Welcome to the Future" is its final verse, in which the election of a black president is contrasted with the racism Paisley's friend experienced in high school. This third verse comes after a first verse described as "goofy nostalgia" and a second verse that goes entirely unmentioned.

No! No! No! No!

I am trying to be restrained here, but dude missed the entire point. Yes, race is a big deal in a country song, and yes, a pro-black-president message is fascinating and daring. But, it's not just writing about race (as Sanneh points out, Tim McGraw's "Southern Voice" contains a list of multi-racial shout-outs), it's how this song writes about race: it's about racial progress. Unlike 99.99% of the country music currently on the radio that grapples in any way with the past, "Welcome to the Future" is decidedly NOT nostalgic.

Verse 1: You used to have to go to the arcade to play video games -- now you don't! Because stuff got better!

Verse 2: The narrator's grandfather fought in WWII. The narrator has a video conference with Tokyo. Which is better -- killing people or trading with them? Trading with them!

The standard contemporary country orientation toward the past is one of rue, regret, or gentle headshaking at these crazy modern times (example: Bucky Covington's "A Different World" in which the reasonable universe of his childhood where you got "daddy's belt when you misbehaved" is contrasted with our current, coddled, every-kid-gets-a-trophy times). And why does Paisley's unique challenge to this nostalgia matter?

Because this is the backbone of the current Republican message: stuff was good once, now it's bad, make it like it used to be in the '40s or the '50s or the '60s, what do you mean it used to be bad, everything was easy and folks knew how to be and now it's all a mess.

And this attitude isn't just limited to Republicans; I can find you plenty of liberals who would agree with the sentence "everything was better in the '60s and kids today suck." It's an attitude that fears progress, fears change, makes a lot of sense right now, and I think is super-comforting and totally dangerous.

So what does crazy, radical, out-there Brad Paisley say to all of us in the midst of the mishegas of 2010, when we long to go back to those simpler days?

Things are different now. We can't put them back.

Besides, things used to be pretty bad.

Now, they're better.

And if The New Yorker doesn't notice what this is or what it means, honestly -- it's probably all for the best. Keep being crazy, Brad, I won't tell.

Kisses,

Me

Oh, Rikki Lake, you were so good in Hairspray

2010-07-27T20:59:00.001-07:00

Just finished watching The Business of Being Born because it streams on Netflix. First two thirds, I'm thinking "all right, a couple too many shots of ladies in inflatable tubs, but overall your analysis seems wise." That analysis: that birth in the US is weirdly both over-medicalized and under-effective in patient and baby mortality rates, that we're gaga for C-sections without understanding that it's major surgery, and that historically, OB's (mainly men) have tried to get women to follow the latest birthing trends by scaring the pants off of them about how terrible it will be for the baby if they don't.

With which I agree! We should (on this issue) be more like Europe. Absolutely. Yay vaginas. Yay being sensible, yay encouraging women to make informed decisions, yay not fear-mongering wildly -- oh wait. There's more.

That would be the movie's last third. Where two doctors (both male) and Louann Brizendrine (who would be my arch-nemesis if she knew who I was) talk about the real, as yet unproven, risks of Cesarians. Their speculation? By depriving women of the post-birth release of oxytocin, mothers who have C-sections are putting their children at risk for autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, impaired bonding, reduced affection, reduced maternal protectiveness, and more. In fact, as the French scientist expert dude put it (you have to do a French accent if you want the full effect): "When you give a monkey a C-section, and then show the monkey the baby, it does not love the baby. It will not care for the baby. And what are we creating now but a world without love?"

That's right, mamas. Your birth? Responsible for World War Three. Now try to relax, remember stress is bad for the baby.

Limits

2010-07-25T23:03:00.000-07:00

This is terrible timing. My body thinks it's 1 o'clock in the morning in Tennessee. I am totally exhausted. But, I also have too much to say and the person I usually say it to is making avant-garde music in Germany right now, and I have decided not to declaim to the dog. Partly because my theory is chock full o' spoilers. Consider yourself warned.

Yesterday I finished reading Infinite Jest. Everybody is right. It is brilliant, it is frustrating. It is long. The footnotes really could be endnotes except for the multi-page ones. You'll be glad if you have, at some point, taken calculus. It will break your ever-loving heart. Etc.

But I also was pretty stunned by the depiction of the women in the book and figured there was some important essay by Jessa Crispin or Katie Rophie or someone about it. And all I could find was this fine but small post pointing out the passivity of the moms in the book. What's up with that? Where are all the feminists? In comas? The author of the post is totally right -- passive, denial-riddled mothers are a major theme, and they tolerate, for unexplained reasons, some truly noxious father behavior.

And but so there's more. In addition to the laid-back-to-catatonic mothers there are two main female characters: Avril Incandenza and Joelle Van Dyne, or, in archetype, the monster and the saint.

Avril Incandenza is, I have to admit it, a fantastic creation -- someone paid a lot of attention to women who want to project that their children are free to make up their own minds and express themselves, while simultaneously broadcasting desires of an almost crippling ferocity into the crania of such kids. She's a great, soft-spoken, eternally patient, totally hobbling demon woman. But, unlike every other major (and perhaps a plurality of minor) characters, we never for a moment get inside her head. Her flaws -- sexual, parental, incestuous -- are legion and yet, barring a brief allusion to an alcoholic dad and dead mom (which for this book are the most petite des pommes de terre) they are maddeningly unexplained. She's an ice queen, a giant slut, a borderline pedophile, and a potential terrorist and we have no idea why. (more on this later)

Joelle there's less to say about -- she's fantastically beautiful and then she isn't. Really, she isn't. Reading up on the speculations, there's an almost desperate quality to the desire some fans have for her still to be bang-up hot from head-to-toe. It's chin-to-toe, folks, though her hair seems fine. Joelle is given some smarty-pants traits (an interest in cinema, a super-cult radio show), but she's mostly there to be the Prettiest Girl (and then not) of All Time. She (unlike Avril) gets to be sweet and caring, but remains a pretty uncomplicated Object of Male Attention. Dudes' (her father, Orin, most of the planet) looking at her fucked her up one way; their looking's cessation fucked her up in a different way; and, hopefully, because I really do want her and Don to ride off into the holocaust-flecked sunset together, a dude loving her will be her salvation. Which is fine, as far as it goes -- but this is as far as it goes. These are your ladies.

Yes, there are other women in the book (Kate Gompert, Pat Montesian, Wardine, Clenette) but the pages spent on their internal lives dwarfs those given to J. O. Incandenza, J. O.'s dad, Pemulis(es), Lenz, Mario, Bruce Green, Tiny Ewell, Poor Tony, Maranthe, Steepley, et al -- not to mention the main (Hal) and secondary (Don) protagonists. It's like not even close.

So, what does this all mean? Does it mean anything? The novel's a Hamlet story from the title on down and maybe Gertrude's frosty exterior and red-hot sexual voracity will always be opaque to her son. So what if the book isn't about women's lives in the same way it's about men's? Maybe it's just a book about dudes. Adolescent dudes and older dudes and how their fathers destroy them and how their mothers let it happen and sometimes they meet vulnerable women with gorgeous faces and fantastic bodies who happen to be cheerleaders and so what?

Well, because the book's not only about masculinity (although I do think it's a major concern). It's about (yes, I know, in addition to entertainment and the environment and competition and addiction and depression, jeez) the fundamental existential difficulty of empathy. The fish in the water joke is told here for the first time, and it permeates the whole book. Can you truly understand what someone else is going through? Can you Identify? And can you capture, if only for a moment, if only one Day At a Time, the grace that comes when you do?

And I'd say the answer is for the reader is: you can when the author can. I had no doubt as I was reading that I knew exactly what it's like to be a physically gifted, grammatically obsessed tennis prodigy with a bum ankle and some major socio-cultural (not to mention economic) privilege. I could tell you honestly that I spent several years of my life as a blue-collar prescription drug fiend who burgled to finance his habit after destroying a promising football career. I can smell the stink of cigarettes from Boston AA meetings and the horror of realizing that the ritual of drug paraphernalia is the only thing I have to look forward to in a given day. I could make you believe I played Eschaton.

But I don't have a clue what makes Avril Incandenza or Joelle Van Dyne tick, and so here is where the empathy runs out. The lack of a female character with a tenth of the heart and complication and fleshed-out backstory and in-the-present pain that the men have is a big brick wall that the central project of the novel runs face-first into. It's a giant novel with a shit-ton of inertia, so it doesn't go splat when it hits that wall, but it darn sure wobbles on its way through.

The novel begins and ends with its two protagonists in a shared (though spatially and temporally separate) kind of particularly awful pain. Their internal thoughts are clear, but they have no way to communicate such thoughts to the outside world. They are rich with life but to the outside world can present only the crudest grimaces and gasps. This condition, it is clear, is a kind of hell, for in Hal's words: "I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I'm complex."

What he said.

Another Letter

2009-02-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

Can you tell I'm procrastinating?

Oh good.

Ahem.

Dear New York Times,

Forgive me for writing again so quickly, but I could not contain my shock at this week's Ethicist. In it, a parent wonders whether it would be ethical to permit her over-18-year-old son from smoking marijuana during a family vacation to Amsterdam, because while she discourages it at home on grounds of illegality, in Amsterdam it is perfectly legal.

My shock came not from the subject matter but the destination of the letter. Surely, this is not a question of ethics, but of manners, and Judith Martin ought to have set the whole family straight.

Her son should be chastised, and promptly, for placing his parents in the awkward position of having to prohibit or condone his behavior, when properly, it is none of their business.

Had the son wanted to display a more courteous attitude to his family, he could have responded, "Oh? Amsterdam. I have long wanted to observe the local culture" when the vacation was proposed, and then, casually said at the end of dinner, "I am going to visit a coffeehouse" or "I think I'll continue sight-seeing" and left it at that. Having instead apparently said something along the lines of, "Oh, goody! Legal weed!" he has now forced his parents into acting like parents must when confronted with a child's passion. They will want to find the best local hash; take photos of his smoking it for the grandparents; perhaps bring home a souvenir bong; all something of a burden. I only hope this family's mania for the truth has some boundaries -- he seems like the kind of boy who would exclaim, "Thank you so much for letting Sarah come visit for Thanksgiving. I am hoping that we will have lots of sex in the guest room."

I can't say I was surprised when I discovered that the family vacation plan was changed to Switzerland, and I must admit the young man deserved it for his rudeness. As the saying goes, "if you're not old enough to smoke pot without bragging about it to your parents, you're not old enough to smoke pot."

A Letter to the Editors of the New York Times

2009-02-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

That I did not send and therefore will not be published:

In response to What Do Women Want? I am very impressed that scientists have gone to such great lengths to study female desire, and somewhat pity the women who watched bonobos gone wild with electrodes strapped to their ladyjunk.

However, I regret to inform all of your dedicated researchers that they are somewhat late to the party. Every single one of their startling, groundbreaking bits of sexuality insight have been known for decades to the single largest industry of women's pornography. I am referring, of course to the romance novel.

Apparently, scientists can prove that women get turned on paying attention to other women's bodies as a locus for desire: EVERY romance novel contains a lengthy, breathy description of how attractive the heroine is, how her flimsy clothes strain to hold in her bounteous body, and how mad with lust this drives our hero.

Women are, according to the article, also turned on by complete strangers and also intense emotional connection. Two things that, in real life, are going to be difficult to find in one person. However, in EVERY romance novel, the dude is both brand-new to the woman but yet can penetrate (with his insight) to the depths of her very soul.

Finally, and most controversially, women seem to test highly for fantasies of submission and domination - except, of course, in the fantasies and not real life, they actually are asking for it. Again, without judgment or a nature/nurture debate -- I dare you to find a single romance novel where the woman is the sexual aggressor. I'm not saying they all have rape -- it could be a stolen kiss, followed by a masterly display of masculine self-control, but the guys are the ones doing the pursuing.

In conclusion, New York Times, I applaud your discussion of this research (although I must admit that the photographs made it somewhat difficult to read on the subway), but I must tell you that The Defiant Debutante and her kinswomen knew it all long ago.

The Importance of Being English

2008-10-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

On my evermore intense quest to devote all my free (and unfree) time to pointless election micro-spectating, I came across the following passage by Tory mayor of London Boris Johnson (as quoted by Andrew Sullivan):

Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea. To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune. To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty stunning achievement for an American president.

But, as yet unremarked upon by Sullivan or TPM, or any other blog I can find is the source of the quote. Dude's referencing Oscar Wilde! From The Importance of Being Earnest:

To have lost one parent, Mr. Worthing, might be considered a misfortune. To have lost both smacks of carelessness.

And now, the question: intentional allusion (my vote), or is Wilde enough of the daily imagination of Brits that this construction has become standard? Also -- only 2 more weeks until I get my life (and, God willing, my country) back.

I am Not a Pundit

2008-09-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

And I have no idea what the American People's response to the last 48 hours will be, but I have to say that, from where I sit, John McCain had 4 advantages over Obama 1 month ago:

1) Experience, esp. in foreign policy
2) Reputation as a truth-teller
3) Cozy relationship w/ the media
4) Reputation as tougher and less wimpy in a crisis

And, from this l'il ol' chair, I can't help but think that between Palin, the negative ads, the Palin seclusion campaign, and the suspension freakout, he may have blown all of them BY HIMSELF in a month.

Now, just to prevent jinxing, I'm going to tap on wood, throw salt over my shoulder, and spit three times.

A prayer

2008-09-24T21:56:00.001-07:00

Dear God, let this be the shoe vomit.

P.S. I spent yesterday vacuuming moth larvae from the ceiling. I would prefer not to have to do that again, thanks.

Ugh

2008-09-22T21:26:00.000-07:00

And on a wildly more personal note, I just realized tonight why we are suffering our 2nd annual late summer/early fall moth infestation.

Last year, the moths all decided to live in our bread board (in its convenient plastic crumb-catching tray, feasting on our crumbs). So, of course, this year, we've been diligently checking and washing the bread board. No moths there, but yet somehow still moths.

Until tonight, when after making a post-Passion Play cup of cocoa, I saw. The moths have been living:

1) in our whole wheat flour jar from IKEA

and

2) in the dog biscuits

Both of which, are, of course, safely in the trash bag, which is safely in the trash container outside. But, still. Ugh. I killed about 5 out of 8 moths that I saw tonight, and I'll try to finish them off in the next few days, but I'm feeling a little too grossed out to go to bed alone right now.

And, in all the moth business, I wasn't able to drink my cocoa, so now it's cold and has a skin. Double ugh. I saw a 4 hour play tonight. I wanted my cocoa.

Barack Obama will never read this post

2008-09-13T10:50:00.001-07:00

So I can feel pretty sure that my campaign advice can offered without fear of affecting things badly.

Everyone's shorts are in a knot (mine included) about what Obama should do faced with an attack of lies, more lies, fake outrage, and fake outrage + lies.

Go negative? Hire Bill Clinton? Stay positive? Make more ads about the 80s? Okay, no one wants that. Here's my two cents, for whatever it's worth (and, at this point, I think it's worth is primarily keeping me sane):

There's a scene in the 1st season of Mad Men where our protagonist, Don Draper -- 40ish, fit, talented -- invites his boss, Roger Sterling -- older, white haired, ruthless -- over to his home for dinner. Over the course of dinner Sterling gets drunk and makes a pass at Don's wife. Don is livid, but what can he do? Hit the man? No. Insult him? Unlikely. So, he says nothing, and, the next day, Sterling invites him to lunch. Where they eat and eat and drink and drink. When I watched this episode, I was like "geez, why all the oysters and cocktails?" Upon returning to the office, the men are told by an elevator operator (whom we saw Don chatting with earlier) that the elevator is out. So they take the stairs. Up twenty five flights. Don is younger and better at it, Sterling refuses to ask for a break, and when they arrive at Floor 25, Sterling walks in the door and promptly vomits 32 oysters all over the shoes of their client.

Obama's job? Keep going up the stairs. And bribe the elevator guy. McCain and Palin are going to vomit all over the American public. And we just have to hope they don't like it.

Tony Kushner's imaginary drag name

2008-09-10T15:12:00.001-07:00

As he writes in the introduction to Homebody/Kabul, would be "Eara Lee Prescient"

And I have to say that's how I feel re-reading my last column in light of the whole Sarah Palin shebang. What are we talking about? Her kids, her uterus, her kids' uteruses, and her physical appearance.*

Politicians. And women politicians.

Not that women writers or feminists are being uniformly helpful about this either. They've made the personal their stock-in-trade, and so our presidential election becomes an extension of the Mommy Wars. I like her. I hate her. So what? Do you think she'd be a good presidential understudy? The most cynical thing I think I've thought this election cycle was when somebody said, "They're just nominating her to get the women's vote." My first reaction was "Oh, that won't be bad for the Democrats. Women hate other women." And scene.

I'm hoping that the 24-hour media cycle, billion-blog news OD thing will give way, at least a little, to issues of substance. (I know, a girl can dream). Although I have to admit that this inclines me toward despair. What can I do? Stop reading the stupid Internets like it's going out of style, and remember to breathe. We'll see how well those go.

*And yes, like 99% of women, she is both the victim of this and it's eager perpetrator. Who put this stuff on the table? Often Palin herself. Does that mean it's worth talking about? I don't really think so.

X and Woman X

2008-07-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to this on Jezebel, which was sad and disturbing and reminded me a lot of this from the world of Gawker Media lady overshares, and also made me think about this:

None of this would be happening if they were men.

Because there are no "men's issues" blogs. There are "issues" blogs and "women's issues" blogs. Imagine for a second that Ross Douthat and Joshua Michael Marshall and Reihan Salaam were invited to an event called "Thinking and Drinking." Would their sex lives EVER be on the table as discussable? Would their behavior from college? No, and partly because they didn't put these issues there. They, like their "old media" counterparts, Leon Wiseltier and Sy Hersh et al, talk about the election and the economy and the environment, while Sandra Tsing Loh and Caitlin Flanagan and Judith Warner talk about their children and their sex lives. When 2nd-wave feminists coined the phrase "the personal is the political" I don't know if they intended it to be this kind of substitution.

Women get attention, lots of attention from people (including avid reader me) about their personal lives. It's interesting. I'm interested. In their STDs and tampon follies. In their visits to the ob/gyn and their heartbreaking breakups. But, I don't know what this attention all adds up to.

One of my good (male) friends asked me recently, apropos of the young male writer deal (Ben Kunkel, et al) where all the young women writers are . . . and my first, uncharitable, thought was: getting drunk, having sex, and writing about it on their blogs. Yes, it's unfair and there's institutional sexist, patriarchal reasons behind these differences, but the comparison stands: Emily Gould has a memoir coming out where she talks about, um, herself. Keith Gessen wrote a novel and founded a magazine. With almost no women writers. Which somehow doesn't make it a "men's magazine."

And, finally, the shittiest part of all of this comes down to biology. Yes, men aren't oversharing as much on their blogs and they're way further ahead in both old and new media in talking about the big-picture political stuff, even though I'd take Megan Carpentier's analysis over Matt Yglesias's any day. And, yes, I have to wonder if the hunger we have, as a society, for the inner lives of women writers creates its own kind of glass ceiling where you can have a column as long as you promise to self-gossip. But, even if we did away with all of the societal crap, we'd still come down to this:

What are the two hot-button issues on the Jezebel interview? Rape and abortion. Two things that even feminists will fight each other about, two things that lead to blame and judgment and "how dare you" or "why didn't you" or "I never would have" or "you don't understand." The twin worst outcomes of sexual behavior -- the demons lurking around the corner of supposedly liberated, late 20s carousing.

Two things that are never, ever going to happen to straight men.

After "Resume"

2008-06-10T19:09:00.000-07:00

Or "Dorothy Parker Tries to Remove Her Pubic Hair"

Nair smells icky
Razors cause bumps
Sugar's sticky
And cold wax clumps

Brazilians are burning
Right up to the tush
Scissors take learning
You might as well bush

I am a part of a crucial demographic trend

2008-03-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

And here all this time, I thought I was just wearing pants and cardigans.

Sometimes it takes a blog

2008-03-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

To remark on the one angle of the Eliot Spitzer situation you are 100% positive has not been covered by the mainstream media. . .

It's eerie similarity to a song by mid-90s folk-pop band The Nields. Keep in mind that George Fox was the alias Spitzer used at the Mayflower Hotel, and read:

Best Black Dress

Mr. George Fox requests the pleasure of my company
By pointed envelope marked "Special Delivery"
And I know what this means, most certainly
This means tonight Mr. George Fox will take me to Club Century

In my best black dress
In my best black shoes
Why should I refuse?

Most days are not like this, you understand
Oh no, most days find me taking ideas in shorthand
In a room alone with changing wedding bands
Mr. George Fox, I've got better things planned

In my best black dress
In my best black shoes
What have I got to lose?

He says, "That's what's wrong with this generation
You're supposed to be making something new
But it's so much more fun to play in your parents' historyland"

Speaking of which
Mr. George Fox has a daughter just my age
I've seen her once or twice at the other end of his estate
She has long purple skirts and an old mutt she got in college
I wonder if she's seen me creeping home at night through the foliage
Has she seen me?

In my best black dress
In my best black shoes
Would she be confused?

The Busy List

2007-11-14T23:42:00.000-08:00

I was looking at my name on a list of ushers (my current work-study assignment) last week. Next to people's names were various designations: jobs they held, year and department. Next to mine was an asterix and the words "The Busy List." I have no idea what the Busy List and am only moderately interested in finding out. Now that I know it exists, however, I'm feeling quite justified in being on it. In addition to ushering, I'm directing a show at the Cabaret, on top of all the regular classwork plus TAing plus thinking about next year stuff. Life (as defined by regular exercise, sleep, church, and reading novels) bit the dust around mid-September and hasn't returned.

It's tech week, though, and I'm having all kinds of directing flashbacks. It's been about 6 years since I've done this. Scratch that. It's been exactly 6 years since I've done this -- I always have a play going up the weekend of The Game -- and it's amazing what's faded (many, many useful skills) and what's remained (my emotions). During tech week when everyone's digging in and hunkering down and fighting for what they want and crying in the corner, during tech week when it seems so life-and-death, I always become weirdly detached. It's the moment when I suddenly go, "You guys, it's just a play." I tend to do this about 48 hours before we open. It's not particularly helpful.

So, everyone's running around and doing things and asking my opinions, and no one's slept and everyone's on edge and I'm continually asked if I want to either:

A) Tell someone I like very much who's exhausted to work still more on something

or

B) Tell someone that I like very much who's exhausted that I don't want to use that thing they stayed up all night making

The only way to get through these moments, I think, is to have a clear sense of vision. A perspective that "I don't care if you plucked single hairs off a thousand llamas, this is sweater doesn't look the way I want it to." And I just don't. I kind of go "I dunno, what do you think? Sweater? No sweater? Meh, it's only a play."

This is the same me who will write for months, years on "only a play" or rehearse tirelessly, convinced that a single missed word or comma or realization or breath will inexcusably alter the course of the piece. But put me in tech week, and I'm suddenly the captain of team, "why are you guys so worked up about playing dress-up?"

Anyway, it's extremely late and I can't sleep because I'm afraid of making decisions that will make people that I like very much who are exhausted upset.

And, for the past week, whenever I do get to sleep, I just dream about the play anyways.

Decisions

2007-10-09T18:39:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you come home from rehearsal and you have a giant to-do list, featuring things like homework, producing chores for the show that opens in 12 days (aaaah), making a giant cardboard circular sign (actually that technically falls under producing chores), applying to various schmancy playwriting contests that do things like require a CDR with all of your documents when you are ALREADY SENDING THEM IN TRIPLICATE.

And, instead of doing one or some or any of the things on your to-do list, you start cooking because . . . well, you're starving, and there are things in the fridge that can turn into food, but very little that can be eaten w/o being cooked. So, now it's an hour and a half later and the to-do list is still as long and you're busy pretty much all of tomorrow, but . . . you have made a tuna casserole (complete with corn-flake crust) and are roasting a chicken and cooking greens so as to have meals for the rest of the week. Because that's the other thing. I kind of hate eating out around campus. Whatever you eat for dinner (barring Mamoun's or Noodle which are absurdly cheap) will cost around $10 and be thoroughly unexceptional. I have a high/low relationship with food . . . either it's homemade and cheap or it's a restaurant and nice and better in some way than home. $10 worth of lousy Pad Thai is a week's worth of dinners, or a couple used books, or a fifth of a haircut.

And I'll figure out the damn playwriting contests once the chicken is done.

Postscript for all you feminists out there: Beloved Husband is actually in more rehearsals than I am, and won't be getting home till midnight. But he made linguine with tomatoes and cannellini beans on Sunday, so we can't be too mad at him.

Good things

2007-10-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

The best pie crust recipe I have ever tried. Why? It involves vodka. For serious. Sign up for the free trial and steal this sucker. Or else just buy the magazine.

The best piece of theater I have seen in a long-ass time. Why? Chuck Mee and Tina Landau are awesome and able to bypass mere "relevance" (one of my least favorite program-note terms ever) and achieve import.

The show that is currently consuming my brain, but making me very happy.

I still feel as though the water level of my own busyness keeps rising (right now, I'd say it's at about mid-shoulder). On the other hand, I've reached a state of Zen-like calm about the fact that I might not finish my big homework projects for the semester (full-length original screenplay, new biography play, among others) and I'm okay with that. It seems like a sort of mental transition has started, and suddenly the fact that I'm going to graduate is provoking a weird sort of senioritis. Not that I shouldn't do my homework because it doesn't matter, but that I shouldn't do a half-assed, just turn it in to be done with it job, because it does matter. Some lightbulb went off October 1st and I'm not writing for my teachers anymore. I'm writing for me. And, you know, God willing, some other folks, too, eventually.

Life and shoes

2007-09-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

Unlike many ladies, or at least many ladies on the TV, I am not a big fan of shoe shopping. This stems largely from the fact that in addition to being concerned about consumerism and the environment, blah blah blah, I also have a bunion. Like the Golden Girl I am. (Related: I was going to link to WebMD, but their site claims that bunions result from wearing tight shoes, which is UNTRUE. I have worn high heels for a total of 90 minutes in my life and still have weirdo deformed feet. So phooey on you and your sexist ersatz genetics-avoidance, WebMD).

Anyway, I'm not so into shoe shopping, but faced with one pair of hole-riddled red Chucks, I figured I was going to have to face up to the impending New England fall. And I went to DSW, where I found this . . . a shoe called the Playwright. Which, shockingly, are actually pretty comfortable and kind of what I was looking for (in "cigar" if you're curious). Not too casual, not too dressy, nice cushy arch support; they are flat enough to fit in my bike's toe clips, and stretchy enough to accommodate said bunion.

And, I have to admit, I was feeling pretty stoked about wearing shoes that matched my chosen career right up until I went to look for them on Zappos, in case I wanted to order another pair in black. Turns out the style got discontinued in 2005. . . except for children.

Apparently, they're the only ones interested in playwrights. Sigh.

Smatterings

2007-09-17T18:58:00.001-07:00

1) I did the career meme . . . ooh, a meme, like a real blogger. Top career recommendation? Anthropologist, which, although I've never considered it, is not all that far removed from playwright, when you think about it. At least playwright as I tend to be. They also gave me psychologist and teacher . . . somehow, I don't think anyone puts playwright on a career counseling website, for good reasons.

2) When I went outside tonight to take the laundry down, it smelled like fall. And the first smell of fall always makes me incredibly happy.

3) I finished last week's Sunday Times crossword ON SUNDAY, which was a life first. And, probably a sign of a very relaxed summer in which I got to perfect my crossword skillz. Of course, this Sunday when I sat down to polish it off, it was hard again, so I got all pouty and put it in the recycling.

4) The Wonder Dog had a "hot spot" last week (no, he was not receiving T-Mobile wireless) and had to be taken in to the vet, who informed us that -- A) he has going to be fine and B) it was a really good thing we had brought him in because his lymph node was getting all swollen. Went home with a bunch of antibiotic pills and some spray (weirdly, the same stuff I was given when I had pink eye). Luckily, the WD will eat anything, so getting the pills down is no trouble. Hot spot is fading into oblivion, and, after the Winter from Hell f/ the Wound that Would Never Heal, I'm remarkably sanguine about things like vet visits and the Elizabethan Collar.

5) Almost done with The Known World and ready to move on to either New ~~Haven~~ England White or Pictures from an Institution, both of which I'm predicting will be speedier.

6) I love that they call it an Elizabethan Collar.

Books n stuffs

2007-09-07T16:34:00.000-07:00

Last first week of school down, and I'm still going (moderately) strong, although I'm kind of staring into the abyss of overwhelmedness that is to come -- my guess I lose it early October, barely hang on until Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, become despondent that the winter will never end in February and then freak out that I'm graduating in April-May. But, you know, just a guess.

I'm thinking mostly today about books. The fantastic Sarah just started a book blog which is funny and smart and makes me feel really inferior about how few books I read this summer, but that's okay. I'm in the middle of The Known World which is fascinating, but surprisingly slow going, with a lot of characters and time and place shifting going on. I'm feeling ready for something a little more linear. . . and maybe not so sad. I just finished working on a sad play, and I could use a novel where everything more or less works out in the end.

I'm also thinking about books and the way that they can worm their way inside your brain, and how it can be great -- like, it's okay if everyone thinks I'm an eight-year-old freak, because Matilda could make people fly. It can also work not so well, when a book takes over your brain and won't give it back. I think that my innate anxiety about being a loser when I started playskool was infinitely heightened by reading Prep the week before I began my first year. The novel brought all my miserable eighth-grade emotions to the forefront and reduced me to an insecure fifteen-year-old. I don't know how quickly I would have felt comfortable in my own skin had I not read the book, but I have to say, if you're at all suceptible to private-school, not-having-the-right-clothes angst, don't read this book moments before diving into an all-new academic setting. In New England.

Finally, I'm thinking about books because Madeleine L'Engle died today and that makes me sad. Because she was an awesome writer and because she wrote books for an audience that NEEDED them. I remember walking around my second grade classroom trying to get people to read A Wrinkle in Time and nobody would because its first sentence is "It was a dark and stormy night." The books you read from age 8-14 are so important, such a lifeline -- partly because everything else is so hard -- and I feel nostalgic for that intensity of readership. I miss staying up late to find out what happened next. I miss wanting to read just one more chapter. I miss books that made sense of things that nobody I knew personally could explain to me. I want a book like that.

Year 20

2007-09-03T07:20:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is my last first day of school. May something-or-other be will be first last day of school.

I'm a little bit freaking out.

I've been going to school for nineteen years now, and I'm about to begin Year 20. I've been going to school longer than I've lived in any city, longer than I've known almost anyone except for immediate family. There have been breaks and gaps and lousy years and sick days and all that, but it's school. It's familiar. And, as per usual, I'm working today to finish up my summer assignments, totally unsatisfied with any of my first-day-of-school outfits, and basking in pristine new school supplies. (www.thedailyplanner.com is a new addiction) Oh, and of course because it's school photo day, I have a new giant pimple on my forehead.

But this is it. Barring an unlikely late in a life desire for a PhD or a sudden, desperate shift to law school, I'm filling out my course registration forms for the last time. I wish I could say this new-found perspective filled me with wisdom or an appreciation for every fleeting moment or something, but instead I'm a little bit anxious, a little bit excited, a little bit afraid I won't be able to sleep very well tonight. The usual.

I'm baaaack

2007-08-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

Hi world! Back from the land of bloglessness, which, you know, okay, I only visited for 10 days, but that seems like a reasonable time period for a vacation. Right?

Things that are new:

Based on the increased productivity, and (probably more important) decreased consumption/appearance/why-don't-I-live-in-New-York anxiety, I am choosing not to register my new computer on the campus wireless server. To call it a decision actually gives me a little too much credit, since, when I went to the library today, I did my darndest for the first half hour to find an alternate server, but then, shockingly, I actually got some work done on my play. And I gotta say, I think those two are related. According to this plan, if I really need to check my email, I can always go to one of the terminals, but not while writing. So says I right now, we'll see how it works in practice, but it feels like a baby step in a good direction.

I think I'm going to sign up to be a lector (sp?, feeling like Hannibal) at church. Father Dan suggested it last year, along with teaching Sunday school and generally jumping into parish life. I was a little freaked out at the time commitment, so backed away from all of it, but this seems like a reasonable way to be a little more involved without being all-consuming. It was weird, though, when I talked to Fr. Dan on Sunday, he responded, somewhat surprised, "And you're comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people?" and I came back pretty quickly with "Yeah." I mean, I never would have thought of putting it on a resume or anything, but enough high school theater and college improv, and reading the Word of the Lord doesn't seem like such a big deal. Again, we'll see if I follow through, but putting these things in the Internet makes them more true, yes?

Finally, in much more trivial news, "Hey There, Delilah" by the Plain White T's is the single worst song ever. Really. In my book, it beats "My Humps." It's awful. I think it's important to note here, that I freaking love pop music. I was rendered incapable of dinner conversation earlier this week because a Justin Timberlake song was playing in the background of the restaurant. I saw "Crossroads." In the theater. So, hatred of this song is not coming from genre disdain, but genre love and genre pride. The fact that this piece of uselessness was the number one song in the country last week depresses me almost as much as the current session of Congress. America, what are you thinking? You invented pop music, America! Don't let this song triumph! And, above what? "Umbrella?" "Suicidal?" "BARTENDER!?!" These are great songs, America, or at least, fun summer anthems to sing in a car with the windows down while drinking milkshakes. "Hey There, Delilah" is a ballad with no purpose, beat, or melody. It's only redeeming quality is that it's not "Hey There, Jessica" but that's only because the guy in the band actually met a woman named Delilah whom he thought was cute. No Biblical overtones. No overtones at all. Frankly, I don't think there are even tones. Whew. All right. That's it for now.

Not a break-up, just a break

2007-07-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Internet, I kind of need to break up with you. Or, maybe not a break-up, just a break. For a couple of weeks, to clear my head so I can figure out what's important to me. It's not your fault, Internet, it's nothing you've done, it's me. You make me kind of insane. Love, Dorothy

So, as you may have noticed, I haven't written very much on this thing recently. For a while, I was blaming the lunacy that is school, but it's almost August, so I feel like that explanation probably can't be leaned on right now. I think, actually, it was a bunch of stuff -- sudden concern about the privacy thing, energy expended on writings elsewhere, and generally getting out of the habit. But, now, I'm going to use this final (-ish, for a while, oh hell, I'll probably be back in a month) post to talk about why I need to break up with the Internet.

It occurred to me today as I was sorting through worm poop -- a hazard of the whole 'compost your own vegetable waste' thing -- that I spend a quite substantial portion of my awake hours consuming media that has no direct bearing on my life. I know this isn't a particularly new revelation -- not everyone who buys Vogue is a skinny billionairess, not everyone who reads Pitchfork has an annoying complete music collection, they're about fantasy, they're (made-up word alert) aspirational -- but the particulars of my own reading habits hit me upside the head this afternoon. Perhaps it was the poignant contrast with the poop. Every day, barring electrical catastrophe or errant delivery person, I read The New York Times, New York Magazine, the New York Observer, and I frequently read Time Out New York. What city do I live in? You guessed it. Not New York. A quite reasonable 2 hour MetroNorth commute away, but still. Why do I know how much an apartment in Boerum Hill costs? Why do I care?

I also read Gawker, which is about publishing -- a field I am not in, and Defamer, which is about Hollywood -- again, not so much. The only Gawker media blog I can legitimately claim as my own, is Jezebel, but then again so can 51% of the population. There was a whole thing today about single women's refrigerators, which I followed (don't ask me why) through several websites, culminating in my realization that: I have a very full refrigerator. And I'm married. And I've never been a single, living-alone adult, so I have no idea what I'd eat under those circumstances. My default guess is Popeye's fried chicken and lemon ginger tea, but, who knows? Also, related to above, who cares?

Also, while I'm double-decker navel-gazing -- see, I'm looking into my own navel as an individual, but I'm also looking into the navels of blogs while I blog, ooooh -- there's the whole consumption thing. Which is I think where Jezebel gets me down. I really don't go shopping very much. I would like to. I like clothes. Every time I go into a New York city clothing store, I touch lots of things and imagine a life in which I could wear them and then leave, in my flipflops, empty-handed. Stuff's expensive, and I feel like even if I could afford one shirt or dress or whatever, it would just sit in my closet, because the life I live takes place quite efficiently in jeans and t-shirts. But I read magazines, because they're wicked fun and I read blogs and all of a sudden, much like New York real estate and nanny trends, I know all about Kiehl's and Phillip Lim and things which, really, am I ever going to purchase? Unlikely. But I know. Daily Candy's in my brain, telling me when the Catherine Malandrino sample sales are, despite the fact that the last clothing purchase I made was at the Salvation Army. This is why I freaked out at the end of Friends with Money, when Jennifer Aniston's in bed with the dude and he says that he wants to buy nice furniture, but he doesn't know where to go, and she says "I know where." Even though she's a school teacher (and then a maid), she's been sitting on the knowledge of where to buy nice furniture for years. Which is why she goes to the makeup counters and steals all the little free samples and -- okay, look, if you haven't seen this movie, go do it, because it's fantastic, and it's also a more eloquent and funnier exploration of what I'm trying to get at here. Whew. Anyway . . . .

As I sifted through the poop, thinking about what was on my agenda for the day -- take down laundry, drive BH to the train station, yoga, make the no-knead bread dough, so there will be bread tomorrow -- and what was in my brain's repository of knowledge, I felt totally weird. I have somehow acquired information and opinions for an alternate life, a life that, if I were slightly different I would be leading. Same age, same demographic, same college degree -- but instead of making the many bizarre decisions I've made, I would have instead moved to New York and gotten a job in publishing. And I'd live in Brooklyn. And I'd eat out a ton. And I'd buy clothes at little boutiques with handmade sparrow appliques on them. And have bangs. And I'd know the people who were snarked about. Maybe I'd even be a professional snarker, who knows? But I chose differently. I didn't want to do that or be that. I chose the not-money, not-glamor path, I chose the cook-a-big-pot-of-chicken-and-rice path, I chose the dog and the garden and the sneakers, so why am I spending several hours online imagining I did otherwise?

Who knows? Maybe simple escapism, the same reason people put on pleather jumpsuits and play Second Life. Maybe just to keep tabs. And maybe, since it's ultimately all funded by advertising, it's all aspirational: I (in some, until recently unconscious part of my brain) want to be the chick in publishing, she wants to be her boss, her boss wants to the people they profile and nobody likes her shoes or her haircut or her handbag, so we all just keep wanting up and the late capitalism schooner stays afloat.

I guess the other answer is that I could read things more accurately geared at myself, but I don't really know what that is. Bust gets on my nerves, for reasons previously discussed, and I feel like any sort of neo-hippie homemaking blog, where they talk about things like composting and making bread is likely to be so self-righteous as to make me vomit. I mean, essentially, all I'm looking for is a magazine/ website that's Catholic, feminist, celebrity-obsessed, anti-capitalism, pro-shopping, completely irreverent, wickedly funny, featuring 10 new recipes, and amazing clothes under $100. And it has to update frequently. And have dog-training tips. And will tell me what my next haircut should be. That's all.

So, if you have any suggestions, please send them my way. Otherwise, I'm going to try and take a break from the web for a while. See if my self-esteem and perspective cells grow back. . . besides, you know who I haven't seen in a while? TV. I bet TV will totally help with all this . . .

Good news/bad news

2007-03-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

I've always had an intense moral relationship with dentistry. I grew in the first wave of flouride treatments and orthidonture, but, blessed with a resolutely old-school (and, actually, kind of old) dentist, I never endured anything more than a teeth cleaning. And, every year, I was fussed over: "Oh, such clean teeth, never any cavities, going to put us out of business."

I was/am strongly bent on being good, and took a great deal of condescending pride in my oral hygiene -- tooth decay was for other, lesser children of inferior, slovenly stock. This attitude lasted me all the way up to age 23 when I got my first cavity, the probable result of drinking unflourinated water for the better part of a year. Okay, I figured, everyone's human.

Well, there's no dental insurance on the fabulous health plan here, but it took me a while to figure that out, and then, it looked as if we were going to switch insurers because BH's company would cover us, and, with one thing and another, I hadn't been to the dentist in almost two years. Until Friday.

The good news: I got my teeth cleaned (damn, did it take a while to scrape off all that plaque). I got the fear of God put into me again about flossing and mouthwash. The hygienist was extremely nice and non-sadistic . . . unlike my childhood hygienist who always commented that the only way to know if you were flossing hard enough was blood. . .

However . . .

The bad news: I have a small cavity on my right back molar. Many explanations are possible, the most logical by far being: well, you didn't go to the dentist for two years, dingbat. Or, my current favorite: you're a bad person. Original sin has found its way into my teeth, and I'm a little nonplussed. I also have an appointment to get the cavity filled next week, and, yes, I'm paying for all of this out of pocket. Grrrrrrrr.

Hello again . . .

2007-03-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

It's me.

I feel as if I should have some kind of massively exciting reason to have been away for weeks and weeks, but it's more a combination of things:

1) inchoate grumpiness
2) frequent travel
3) lots of little miniprojects requiring the sending of emails or the attending of rehearsals or the scheduling of schedules

leading to

4) marked inefficiancy on the major projects, like, you know, writing plays. Not been so good at doing that recently.

leading to

5) inchoate grumpiness

Nothing major or life-shattering, just the feeling that, for no good reason other than late winter, my batteries are weak, and I kind of just want to stay in bed. To put this in other terms, I have read virtually every magazine on the news stand for the month of March. I have magazine brain. Lots of pictures, few words, and the belief that shopping and/or exfoliation and/or kitchen reorganization will remake me into the person I was meant to be. Except I don't have the energy to shop or exfoliate, let alone attack the kitchen -- just to read magazines.

This isn't totally fair -- I'm caught up on laundry, I've cooked a lot of yummy meals the leftovers of which are pleasantly frozen for a rainy day. I even got a thank-you note in the mail today for a package I received on Monday, and I'm seeing the dentist (of my own volition) on Friday. So, it's not depression with a capital D, just feeling . . . "meh." And "meh" makes a hard blog post.

On a break from the magazine rack, I read Julie/Julia this weekend and it was pretty great, and reminded me that:

1) I am a better cook than I was a year ago and that's cool
2) it's okay to be young and grumpy and take it all out on absurd schemes
3) blogging can be good

It also made me realize that

4) it is highly unlikely that I will have a book deal by 30

But you can't win them all.

I guess what you can do is make cocoa while the weather still demands it, knit, and be glad there are so many magazines to read.

Where are they now? department

2007-02-11T18:22:00.000-08:00

So I'm reading along in the NYT article about Drew Gilpin Faust being named president of Harvard, and it all seems pretty normal until the last paragraph.

I quote:

George Thampy, a freshman, said of the selection: “I think it’s a great step forward — a bona fide scholar who’s a woman. In some ways you could say it’s a reaction to the last president and that fiasco.”

George Thampy! From Spellbound right? He's the slightly lisping bespecacled homeschooled kid (no, no, the other one) who features Jesus in his autographs. He's the big competition, the villain (if there is one) of the movie. It's got to be the same George Thampy, doesn't it? Good to see he's adjusting well to college.

Oh

2007-01-26T10:44:00.000-08:00

A true story:

In mid December, 2006, our heroine attends a birthday party. Since she attends after a stint as an usher (part of the indentured servitude aspect of PlaySkool), she is wearing her one (count them one) pair of black pants.

Upon returning home, she notices a bizarre stain on the bum of the pants. It is white and kind of crunchy. Our heroine recalls her behind's proximity to a candle where she had been sitting. She decides that wax stain removal is difficult and she decides to take the pants to the dry cleaners.

There is no dry cleaners near where our heroine lives. She avoids cleaning her pants for weeks. And weeks. The pants sit in a bag in a forelorn heap. She instead wears her beloved husband's pants whenever she ushers, which is, like, every day. He gets kind of annoyed.

One day, towards the very end of January, she decides to solve the wax-butt problem herself. Armed with a trusty copy of Home Comforts she lays paper towels atop the pants and irons them so as to dissolve the wax. The wax does not dissolve. At all. Our heroine begins to think that perhaps she does not have a wax stain. In a fit of intuition, she decides to taste the now six-weeks-old stain.

It is sweet. She had sat in frosting.

Our heroine puts the pants in the regular laundry hamper. She will wash them tomorrow. They will be clean in time for her final ushering gig of the year.

The end.

Dog of Pathos

2006-12-21T07:58:00.000-08:00

So, Tuesday night, Wonder Dog somehow stepped on something sharp in our backyard and sliced up his paw pretty serious. We spent a good long chunk of time at the Emergency Vet Hospital, after failing to get the bleeding under control at home, and he ended up with several sutures, and a little puppy cast with a splint. We ended up painfully aware of the fact that pets don't come with health insurance. Yesterday was the hardest because he just had no idea what was going on, and my heart would break every time I saw him hop around. Today's been easier, so far, because he's getting better at manuevering and seems less sad. Luckily, he'll still eat anything, so getting the antibiotics and pain meds into him is easy. He's mostly sleeping, though, which is, in itself sad, because he's usually such a whippersnapper. Tomorrow we go to our vet to have the bandage changed and to make an appointment for suture removal. I want to explain to him how it'll all be fine, and, if he just stopped trying to eat his cast, we wouldn't have to put the plastic cone on him, but he doesn't speak quite enough English to grasp it. I have no idea how anyone has children.

))<>((

2006-12-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen, Miranda July's movie Me and You and Everyone We Know, go see it now. It was our inaugural NetFlik, and is super-fantastic. Large, enthusiastic thumbs skywards.

Maybe I've Just Got No Sense of Humor

2006-12-13T15:04:00.000-08:00

But I found this utterly ridiculous.

Heftily, dykily, and Jewishly yours.

Advent

2006-12-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

There are lots of good things about belonging to a parish two blocks from your apartment:

It is really hard to be that late to church.

You can get a good sense of your neighborhood.

You can stop by the Italian pastry place across the street and bring home pastries very easily.

You will run into the nice woman who runs Wonder Dog's obedience school every week.

There are also some things not so good about belonging to this particular parish, namely that the sermons are decidely hit or miss. So, in my very 21st century way, I've been reading this guy for extra Advent ideas. Between that and these folks I feel plugged into the liberal Catholic world, without having to join the university congregation, which is just weirdly too undergraddy for me somehow.

Re-thinking globally

2006-12-08T19:41:00.000-08:00

So, every couple of all the times, I read something about the environment/ global warming and get all angried up. This week, it was this article in the NY Times about how ski lodges are having to manufacture fake snow for all their skiers because there's no real snow anymore. Which, you know, is a polluting act in and of itself. And I read this and had my typical reaction which was: "Oh damn. Global warming. I should turn down the thermostat and drive less today." Which was completely in line with the general message I've been getting about environmentalism since I was a wee tyke in a moderately progressive elementary school: the best way to affect change is small, personal decisions. Use fewer paper towels, turn that soup-can into a pencil holder. And, for the first time, this week, I started to wonder if this advice has been a giant disaster from an environmental standpoint. Yes, if we all made incremental changes in our individual energy use, the environment would benefit, but we're not. Nowhere near it. So, I can sit in my apartment and feel good about my carbon footprint, but so what? I've been exhorted by the leaders of this movement to be a responsible individual when maybe I should have been told to scream or dance or write a letter or just generally freak out about stuff like how much fuel the airline industry burns, or what to do to ensure cleaner factories are built by American companies abroad. I love my worm bin, but my worms are a very tiny drop in the bucket. Anyway, I'm angry and het up and if anyone has more political-action-type-things they want to suggest in addition to the individual-responsibility stuff, I'm all ears. Phooey on acting locally.

Decembrrrrr

2006-12-03T14:48:00.000-08:00

The weather seems to have finally changed for the cold, which is both calming (I am in New England, after all) and annoying (the heat in campus buildings is approx. 9000 degrees, so these days I have to begin all my classes by dashing to the bathroom and removing my copious underthings, necessary for the 2-mile bike ride.) But, it's coinciding very well with my newly found free time, and encouraging much burrowing behavior. I filled two big jars with homemade Haitian relish yesterday and am planning to start on the season of soups tomorrow, with a Cook's Illustrated version of Thai chicken and mushroom soup.

Also, in nesting news, I had a completely inactive Thanksgiving. Really. I barely moved. I stayed in town, watched 21 hours of television, and mostly slept. It was great, and, after a fall with 4 tech weeks in a 7-week period, I was ready for oblivion and mind-rot. It was so successful, I actually found myself wondering whatever happened to ol' Anna Karenina (whom I abandoned on pg. 450 back in September). I'm still a good 300 pages from the end, but it was exciting to have the physical time and emotional energy for recreational fiction. To be filed under "duh", it's also a really good book, yo.

All this rest and recuperation will be pretty shortlived, alas. I start a big ushering assignment, which will likely see me all the way up to Winter Break, but I had a good hunker-downy kind of weekend, in which non-work outweighed work for a change and there was precious little travel. In preparation for a class on Tuesday, I also reread my favorite play ever (we have to bring in a selected scene), Escape from Happiness. This is a play I have seen, directed, and read more times than I can count. It still brought hyperventilating, neighbor-alarming laughter and genuine tears . . . I think because a) it's a fantastic play and b) it's pretty much completely and totally about my family.

A bulwark

2006-11-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

There are bad days. There are days when everything goes horribly wrong and you can't even muster the energy for tears or rage. But then again --

There are good days - when the party you voted for actually won the House and the Senate (way to go, Virginia!), when it's 62 degrees in New England in November, and your play is opening and you're hopeful and scared and even Britney Spears seems right with the world, and then your professor pushes class back an hour so you can eat lunch at home.

There will be bad days, but I want to put this day out there as a shield to push them back just a little. There will be bad days, but there are good days, too.

Boo humbug

2006-10-29T11:50:00.000-08:00

By and large, I'm enjoying fall this year. The weather has been lovely, if blustery, the trees look rad, and the farmers' markets sell awesome apples. I even got to sleep in an extra hour today and still make it to church on time. But I'm totally annoyed by Halloween. Whether it's dodging nearly nude college students on my way home from work Saturday night, or noticing that a third of Target has been taken up with candy displays, I feel only curmudgeonly. "What I stupid holiday," I mumble, biking past the green with its black-cat "Boo Haven" signs. "Why does anyone find this fun?" I ask, stuffing stale candy corn in my mouth at the library. As I'm not usually this misanthropic, I've been wondering why I suddenly hated something that seems to make little children and single people happy, and I think I've finally figured it out. When you're in Play School, every single bloomin' day is Halloween: wear outlandish costumes, put on lots of makeup, pretend to be someone else, blah, blah, blah. It's a busman's holiday, except my bus is the make-believe sparkly kind. The last thing I want is more theatricalism and escape: give me a holiday where you come home at five pm, eat dinner with your family and watch network television. Now that sounds fantastic.

Worm poop, etc.

2006-10-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

The busy-ness continues apace, although I have decided to drop (temporarily, I promise) the 9:30am class I was auditing, which has pushed me (temporarily, I promise) back over to the "sane and rested" side of the spectrum. Mmmmm, rest. Mmmmmm, sanity.

Spent the weekend buying terrifying pink bedroom decor for "We're Celebrities" and seeing "Eurydice" at Yale Rep. It was amazing, beautifully theatrical, and my eyes are still puffy from having cried for its hour and 45-minute duration. What more there is to say about it is deeply and freakishly personal, to the point where I think I should be examining my ceiling for MacArthur Genius wiretaps, and lies outside the sphere of my blogging. Suffice it to say, if this show comes to a place where you live, buy a jumbo box of Kleenex and go.

Also went out to a 1st anniversary dinner last night at the swankiest restaurant named for a remote-controlled vacuum cleaner around.

This morning, largely as a means of work-procrastination (I'm applying to contesty-type things that range from unlikely to impossible, but having been brought up on a steady diet of "You can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket" I'm applying anyways) BH and I cleaned out the worm bin. As I may have mentioned here before, we have a giant Tupperware in our back yard where vegetable waste goes and is helpfully turned into compost by about 1000 earthworms. Part of this process, though, is harvesting the compost, and I decided this morning would be a really good time to dump out the contents of the bin and separate it into piles of "worm" and "not worm." When you have 1000 worms, this takes a while. The good news? We have an enormous bucket of compost, which can sit in our garden beds all winter, and the worms can be left to themselves for another 3 months, or so.

Tonight I have first read for one play and first tech for another. This makes me really happy.

Self-promotin' is the best promotin'

2006-09-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

Hey world, so, as I may have mentioned to you, if we've spoken briefly or gmail-chatted, or even if you've just noticed me falling asleep on the floor (actually, I think that only applies to BH), I'm extremely busy.

The reasons for all this bustle are multifold, but the most exciting of them is that I'm involved in three productions in the span of six weeks. 24-hour theater, which I am "curating" aka "doing a ton of work for" will be going up in a week, so right now I'm herding the Drama School cats into writing, directing, designing and producing in a period of time (24 hours over 5 days) that is both too short and not short enough. Once it ends, there's:

We're Celebrities . . . We're Just Not Famous Yet written by yours truly and premiering at the Yale Cabaret. It's about teenage girls, Angelina Jolie, Jessica Simpson, and the fact that I spent waaaaaaay too much time last year watching "My Super Sweet Sixteen." Directed by the fabulous Ms. Becca Wolf and going up October 19, 20, 21.

Then, mere weeks later, is:

Bibles and Candy also by me, and going up at PlaySkool. This is my official yearly production, and is about NGO workers, missionaries, journalists and the fact that I spent a certain amount of time in pre-Aristide-coup Haiti. Directed by the talented Mike Donahue and going up November 9, 10, 11.

Let me know if you're interested in tix to either or both, and apologies in advance if I forget your birthday, don't return phone calls, and am generally a social delinquent. My already-picked New Year's resolution is not to put on any plays for a couple of months.

Hello again

2006-09-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

Notes from all over:

1) I made jelly! And it gelled! We have a lovely grape arbor in our backyard, which means that, in early fall, we are suddenly innundated with pounds and pounds of Concord grapes. And they're actually harder to use than you'd think -- you can't really make grape muffins or grape pie, so you're pretty much left with jelly. For my first batch, made a couple weeks ago, I followed the directions on the pectin box religiously and ended up with several jars of grape syrup. So, this time, I disregarded their timetable and just boiled the tar out of my grapes and it worked. Six whole jelly jars worth. And there are still enough grapes out back that I could probably get another batch in. Yay. The true victory will come when I eat the homemade jelly on homemade bread this winter. Mmmmmmmmmm.

2) School goes well. Not quite up to first week levels of stylishness and confidence but a hell of a lot better than I was doing a year ago this time. Various scheduling demons are conspiring against my production this fall, but I feel, perhaps due to the 2 beers I had with dinner, that the show will emerge victorious. At the very least, I don't hate my play yet, so that's nice.

3) The cold is better. I actually did the mature thing and stayed home from school, instead of being brave and carting tissues everywhere and dragging the whole thing out for weeks. So, I mostly feel fine . . . except I still have a window-rattling chest cough, that prompted the following exchange this morning.

Me walking down busy street: Cough Cough

Dude on cellphone walking past me: Blah, blah, blah . . . . Wait, hold on a sec.

Me: COUGH COUGH COUGH

Dude (clearly annoyed that he might have to save my life): Are you, like, okay?

Me: Cough. (Nod). Cough. (Nod).

Dude (back on his cellphone): So, anyways, then I said . . .

4) Wonder dog is back in obedience school, in the hopes that he will become even more wonderful. And, God willing, learn to walk on a leash without dislocating the shoulder of whoever happens to be walking him. So far, my favorite thing about it is I'm forced to remember where he was, obedience-wise, in January, when we first signed him up and how far he's come since then . . . for example, we couldn't even leave him in the house alone uncrated at that point. So that feels nice. Even if he's a yanking machine on leash.

5) I like fall. Always have. Comes from being a nerd, I think, and enjoying school-supply shopping a little more than is socially acceptable. Also sweaters and apples and everyone's birthday. And lots of holidays and the good kind of Daylight Savings. It seems appropriate to be bustling around and getting things done, as opposed to February where all tasks except for the most nesty seem onerous, and I really just want to swath myself in flannel, read dense Russian novels, and wait for spring.

Bleh

2006-09-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

So the first week of PlaySkool went quite well -- I made it to classes more or less on time, knew what I was supposed to be doing, enjoyed the polite chitchat at the requisite BBQ and managed to pedal myself around town on my newly gearless (early anniversary present) bicycle. The Year 2 version of me was kinder, wiser, better dressed, and more self-possessed. I was thinking of declaring victory and looking into cloning myself.

Then we went away last weekend for a lovely wedding in Chicago, featuring a record four ministers (2 getting married and 2 performing the ceremony). Unfortunately, the weekend also featured: strong unidentifiable allergens, many smokers, 2 airplanes, 2 trains, 2 subways, a bus and a car, and a 30-minute period spent standing outside in the rain after 4 hours sleep. Not surprisingly, I am now staying home from PlaySkool, rubbing the skin under my nose a deep magenta, and frightening the dog with my deep-chest coughs.

Much sleep and tea are the day's agenda and I am, actually, starting to feel a little bit better, which is why I can summon cogent self-pity as opposed to yesterday's mere clogged bewilderment. But still. I was doing so well. It's only week 2. How can I already be miserable, wearing a sweatsuit, and behind on my schoolwork? How?

Ready or not . . .

2006-09-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

It starts tomorrow.

August 15, 2006

2006-08-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

We had blue sky our first day in Beijing, and blue sky returns to see us depart today. Coming back to Beijing after having traveled for two weeks, the city seems a little more navigable, and the few Chinese phrases we’ve learned do us well. Our plans to visit the Great Wall were stymied by constant drizzle, but staying inside and catching up with friends has been wonderful. For the past three weeks, I haven’t slept more than two nights in the same bed, and I’m looking forward to going back to home and real life, but there’s so much here I’ll miss. The food – from nice restaurants, to street stalls run by members of China’s Hui Muslim minority in Xi’an and Kaifeng – has all been good, sometimes spicy, sometimes comforting, but all good. Knowing that I can’t just wander out and find a bowl of fresh hand-pulled noodles with beef and bok choi for under a dollar, that’s depressing. I’ll miss the people – the language barrier made it difficult to connect with at times, but never impossible. I’ll miss the friendliness and the bluntness I’ve come to appreciate. I’ll also miss the sights: old people doing tai ji on random scraps of grass in the midst of the towering gray city; temples full of ancient statues and modern worshippers; even the frantic growth of buildings and businesses, feeding on the shared belief that China is the future and the future is now.

I’m exhausted from the struggle to do simple things like get on the right bus or buy a cold bottle of water, but my two-word Chinese vocabulary has grown, as has my confidence. Today, Colin woke up early and went on a walk, past the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, to a group of elderly gentlemen sitting with pet birds. “Zaijian” one of the birds squawked at Colin. It means “Goodbye.”

August 10, 2006

2006-08-24T09:18:00.001-07:00

We’re here. We’re finally here. The Terracotta Warriors that I read about and saw pictures of ten years ago are now meters from my face. And they look amazing, overwhelming at first for their number and then for their individuality. The statues stretch on for the length of several football fields, and each one’s hairstyle, body, and facial expression is distinct. That one has a mustache. That one seems to be smiling a little. More than anything else on our trip, this sight has been a tangible goal for me, and it’s kind of odd to realize that we made it. Granted, it took an airplane, a ten-hour train trip, and a grueling, elbows-out-stepping-on-children fight to board the public bus, but we finally got here. And, to be fair, the train trip from Kaifeng was kind of great – we shared sunflower seeds with the woman across from us, and communicated in giggles and gesture, while passing corn fields and permission orchards.

Looking out over the sea of clay bodies before us (and looking back at the sea of tourist bodies behind), China seems . . . big. Big in numbers of people and big in square miles and big in thousands of years of civilization. Its sheer heft hits me hard, and despite the thousands of cameras clicking and the utter inanity of the audio-guide (actual quote: “On his left, you can see his left hand”), I’m in awe. After walking through all the tombs, we sneak back into the first, most impressive hall. Colin has brought his i-Pod and we each pop in an earbud, tuning out everyone else and, listening to music in our 21st century way, we stare again at the warriors from 246BC.

August 5, 2006

2006-08-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

Lessons learned in Xiamen, a primer:

Our two-day trip to Bangkok to see friends was supposed to end in a flight back to Macau, but the flight was cancelled because of a typhoon. So, we walked into the office of the Thai budget airline we were flying and asked where else they flew in China. The answer? “Xiamen. Next flight leaves in an hour.” “Great,” Colin said, and changed our tickets. At which point, I opened up the Rough Guide to find Xiamen on the map. Oh, so that’s where we’re going, I thought. Which brings me to

Lesson One: You can’t get what you want, so hope you like what you get.

Traveling through China with no grasp of spoken or written Chinese quickly brings you to a land of zero control and constant surprise, with sometimes wonderful consequences. For example, our first night in Xiamen, we walk into a street café at midnight and point to line in our phrasebook – “What are your local specialties?” An hour later, full of freshly killed (trust me) frog, eel, clams, and fish, we we’re delighted. It wasn’t what we had planned to eat, necessarily, but it was wonderful.

Lesson Two: When in doubt, follow everybody else.

There is a ferry from Xiamen to the nearby Gulangyu Island, a pretty and popular tourist spot full of colonial architecture. When Colin and I reach the dock, we (at my urging) follow the (rare) English sign saying “Gulangyu Island Ferry.” We end up on a ferry with perhaps three other people. Next to us is a ferry with perhaps one hundred people. I start to wonder if we’re on the wrong ferry. A new ferry arrives next to us. Tons of people start streaming on. I wonder more anxiously. At this point, a man on our ferry hands us a pair of binoculars and communicates that we are on a 40-minute ferry ride to look at Taiwan through binoculars. In the remnants of a typhoon. At which point we leave and go follow everybody else.

Lesson Three: Chinese TV is nuts.
The English-language programming is edited so poorly that it’s difficult to follow a movie you’ve already seen and is being broadcast in English. The Chinese programming has fascinating ads for the Community Party featuring violinists in red-sequined bikinis and beautiful young women singing a pop song about the wonders of the CCP, as images of the Forbidden City swirl in the background. Although, silly as I find it, I have to admit the US invented the patriotic bikini, so I probably shouldn’t be talking.

July 30, 2006

2006-08-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

I don’t get Hong Kong. I like Hong Kong, I certainly am enjoying Hong Kong, but I don’t get it. It’s sleek, modern, and, previously unbeknownst to me, full of trees and great for hiking. On a purely physical level, it’s such a contrast to the China we saw on our bus ride here. The trip is only a few hours, but it passes through several worlds, from the giant city of Guangzhou to the suburbs, to the urban/rural hybrid that dominated most of the trip. From my window on the bus, I could see tiny farms with ancient brick houses, flanked on one side by the six-lane highway and on all others by rising concrete apartment complexes. I can only imagine what this all looked like ten, twenty years ago or what it will be in the future. From the comfort of my bus, it’s easy to romanticize the back-breaking life of a peasant, but it’s hard to be happy about the omnipresent smog or the clumps of white tile buildings with reddish brown streaks under every air-conditioning unit. It looks like the buildings are sweating rust, I think. Then, I think, don’t begrudge them their AC.

Hong Kong has so many things the rest of China seems to lack: beautiful buildings, large parks, Western-style entertainment (at Western-style prices), and enough freedom of the press for the local newspaper to cover protests over illegal conditions in a plastic-toy factory on the mainland. Interestingly, it also seems to lack some things Beijing has like an interesting contemporary art and rock music scene. But, despite their differences, Hong Kong is still a part of China. Sort of. With separate currency and a trip through immigration. I start wondering if China needs Hong Kong like a dry country needs its county-line liquor store: control can be maintained precisely because there’s an outlet. But mostly I don’t get it. As far as my passport’s concerned, I am no longer in China. I don’t know if China would agree.

July 28, 2006

2006-08-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

I’m a lot calmer, a little hungrier, and in a completely different city. The calmer is partly because we landed in Guangzhou yesterday, and it feels saner and more manageable than Beijing, and partly because after my taxi-based freak-out, Colin and I spent a day roaming around on borrowed bicycles and suddenly Beijing felt more real. We most rode through ancient alleyways between courtyard neighborhoods called hutongs, where people have been living for thousands of years. The hutongs are beautiful to ride by on a bicycle – how I’d feel about living without indoor plumbing is another thing – and most of them have either already been torn down or are slated to be. I wish there were a compromise between ancient-but-decrepit and modern-but-soulless, but I can’t say I have faith in the current architectural climate to find it. Riding through the hutongs made Beijing feel human, though, and made me feel a little more human, too.

Guangzhou is a city of food. The major item on our itinerary when we were planning a trip to Guangzhou was “eat” and we are succeeding admirably. Last night, we spent two hours searching for a restaurant our Rough Guide told us was “probably the best restaurant in Guangzhou” but didn’t label clearly on tits map. We tried to get there via the clean, efficient subway system, which worked right up until the part where you get off the subway and have to walk on the streets. Long story short, everyone we met was extremely helpful, but to people who can’t read, speak, or understand Chinese “Chongxin Lu” sounds an awful lot like “Qianjin Lu” and we ended up with a detailed map and several people’s kindly mimed directions to the wrong street. So, that took a while to fix. But, finally we made it there, we ordered our dinner with the help of an English speaker pulled from a nearby table and it was yummy, all the more so because we had earned it. This morning we go out for dim sum. A block from our hotel is Da Tong, one of the most famous dim sum establishments in town and we show up hungrier than made sense after all the food we ate the night before. We eat dumplings after dumplings, custard tarts, sweet and savory filled buns, almonds, and finish with ginger milk pudding. It is perhaps the best breakfast imaginable, and I’m very sad to think about it being halfway around the world from my normal life. This beats the pants off brunch.

July 24, 2006

2006-08-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

I am sick of taxicabs. Sick, sick, sick of them. I am sick of watching this city whiz by me in a sea of gray buildings against gray skies, or worse crawl by me in a traffic jam, so I can distinguish restaurants from parks from foot massage parlors, but in which I still have absolutely no idea where I am. Ever. I can’t say the name of the street where I’ve been living for the past four days and, even if I could say it, I couldn’t tell any of the many cabdrivers I keep encountering where it is, partly because I cannot communicate at all, and partly because I don’t know how to get there. From anywhere. So I hand cabdrivers little scraps of paper with directions in Chinese written on them or else hand them the cell phone that we have borrowed and stay out of the way. I have never experienced a new city this way before. Usually, I get out my guidebook and walk around or else take the subway or buses, but all of our friends swear by cabs, and, given how sprawling this place is and how unfamiliar, I understand it. But I’m frustrated at being permanently discombobulated, and it makes me feel like I don’t know Beijing at all. I have my fuzzy impressions of cars and bicycles and carts and people and building after building after cranes and cement trucks building more buildings, but I hate feeling lost and I feel lost all the time. And I’m sick of cabs.

July 22, 2006

2006-08-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

Tourism! It begins today. Alison lives a few blocks from the Forbidden City, so we wake up this morning and walk there, clutching our street-vendor egg sandwiches and dodging the persistent “art students” inviting us to come see their shows. Thanks to the vendor onslaught, I learn my second bit of Chinese: “Bu yao.” It means “I don’t want any.” And it proves useful, especially as the Forbidden City is completely and totally packed. It’s the summer, it’s a Saturday, and as all the Beijingers will point out, it’s a “blue-sky day” something I don’t even think of treasuring back home, but which is apparently extremely rare around here. And so, temporarily, free of care and pollution, we, along with a hundred thousand of our new best friends visit the Forbidden City. Which is enormous. Our audioguide comes with a helpful map that lights up as you walk along, so I can tell if I’m in the Hall of Enduring Harmony or the Gate of Supreme Harmony. Although, given the fact that I’m trudging through the halls and the gate, surrounded by people talking, taking photos, and tour groups with loudspeaker-ed leaders yelling “Mr. Wang, Mr. Wang from Chengu, please come join your group,” it feels at times less like Supreme Harmony and more like Supreme Irony.

The Forbidden City is beautiful and its scope summarizes far more accurately than any textbook the breath and power of the dynasties that inhabited it. Trying, for a moment, to erase the bustle and the matching parasols and Mr. Wang from Chengdu and imagine it as a real, separate world of concubines and eunuchs, state secrets and palace intrigue is hard, but fascinating. The strangest thing about the Forbidden City is how empty its museum rooms are. Despite the immaculate care with which the imperial buildings have been and are being restored, they house exhibits that are, well, kind of lame – a few dusty objects, a couple lines of captioning. It’s not until dinner that night with Eric’s Chinese fiancée Joy that I learn the explanation – the Palace’s true opulent treasures were either stolen by the Japanese during invasion, taken to Taiwan in 1949, or else are sitting currently in rooms deep below the City, covered in layers of dust. It seems that some things about the Forbidden City stay forbidden.

July 21, 2006

2006-08-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

We’re here, really here, in Alison’s beautiful apartment, about to pass out, but we made it. Okay, I did fall asleep in the back of the taxi from the airport because we were stuck in an hour-long traffic jam, and I did have to scream “Ni hao” for ten minutes before we were let into Alison’s courtyard by her neighbor. And, yes, right now Beijing is a blur of lights and traffic and heading either to or away from some sort of “Ring Road,” but we made it. We even got to see some art.

Alison works as the International Programs Coordinator for the Beijing Modern Dance Company, and the night we arrive in China is a performance there by company members who are recent graduates of the Beijing Dance Academy. Thanks to traffic and a small bout of taxi confusion, we get there a few minutes late, but I still get to see several pieces. In addition to being gifted athletically – they leap through the air, flip, spin and generally gymnastic their way all over the place – the dancers also seem to be exploring subjects important to them. Teen angst, suicide, young love and sex are all up there, but the most powerful sequence by this group of early 20-somethings is about school examinations, graduation, and entering the work force. The fear of not passing exams, or not being good enough is palpable, despite the fact that the performers have already made it. They graduated, they are all members of the Beijing Modern Dance Company, but the stress has yet to evaporate.

After the show, we go to dinner and then to a lovely bar, where I fall completely asleep in my glass of grapefruit juice. Thus back here, and to bed.

July 20, 2006

2006-08-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

I see Beijing before I experience it, from the window of our nonstop flight from Newark. Clusters of tall buildings appear below, in seemingly random and impulsive groupings: six identical apartment buildings here, twelve matching office compounds there, as though the city were an urban-design video game being played for the first time. “Colin,” I whisper to my husband, “it looks like Sim City.”

We are visiting China to see my friend Alison and Colin’s friend Eric, who have both been living and working in Beijing for the past four to five years. I had taken a semester of Chinese history back in high school, but except for a vague recollection of successive dynasties and a picture of the Terracotta Warriors, I know very little about China and am unsure what to expect. Third world chaos? Oriental splendor? Whatever I was expecting, though, it wasn’t matching apartment buildings. I only have so long to contemplate what the buildings will look like from the ground or what they mean for modern China because our landing plane suddenly starts lurching toward the ground and I’m distracted by airsickness.

Head firmly in lap, my stomach somewhere near my tonsils, as we make our bumpy descent into Beijing, I hear the teenage American boy sitting next to me mutter, “I hope this is worth it.” All I can think is “You and me both, kid.”

In the meantime . . .

2006-08-23T07:01:00.000-07:00

China posting to come (promise, promise, promise), but, for now, a welcome back to our neighborhood.

Sometimes, you read The Onion. Sometimes, The Onion reads you.

OMG/PEK!

2006-07-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

So BH and I leave in 4 hours to go to the train station to go the airport to go to China for a month.

Don't have an itinerary.

Don't speak/read the language.

Don't have access to Blogger b/c of internet censorship.

Expect a lot of blogging when I get back.

Finally my Wednesdays have meaning again

2006-07-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

Carry on!

Hell in a handbag

2006-07-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

Warning: spoilers and strong opinions ahead

Went to see The Devil Wears Prada last night, which I thought was quite excellent. Not perfect -- it still had some sitcom-worthy putdowns and a truly uninspired soundtrack -- but extremely good, and, in my somewhat humble opinion, the best movie about women and work since Legally Blonde.

I read the book when it came out a few years ago, and it was fun in a Nanny Diaries-type way, especially since I was in the middle of my first "real job." Adjusting to the whims and coffee preferences of another person, after spending college contemplating Faulkner and the meanings of identity was difficult and frustrating; long hours and lousy pay didn't make it any better. But where Devil the book was unalloyed whining/revenge fantasy (and I appreciated it for those reasons), Devil the movie is a smart and complicated look at what it takes to get and stay ahead.

Meryl Streep is fantastically fun to watch and the clothes are pretty and I'll forgive a lot for a good montage sequence, but the most striking thing to me about the movie is that it provides what I think (at my admittedly early age) is a worldly truth: no one is going to make your career for you. One of the big plot points of the movie (which, I actually don't recall from the book, but that may just be my memory) is editrix Miranda Priestly's replacing her faithful Nigel with her competitor Jacqueline, as part of a scheme to maintain control of "Runway" magazine. At first glance, this is horrible and unfair, and that's certainly how protagonist Andy sees it. But the makers of the movie shade it for us. When Nigel explains how he's going to have his fabulous new job, Andy asks if he's told Miranda. "Of course" he explains, horrified at the idea that it might be a secret, she put him up for it. Well, cool, that's nice of her (and believable that Meryl's Miranda might have done it), but then it's not really your job is it, Nigel? It's Miranda's to give away, and, when she needed to use it to save her own head, she did. The publishers of the magazine don't keep their star editor around because they like her, and she's playing as viciously with them as they are with her. Or, to put it another way, how likely is Nigel to find his dream job when he's afraid to send out a resume without his boss's approval? As portrayed in the movie (and, again, I'm willing to wager, not the book), he is as much of a cautionary tale as Miranda. She trusts no one, but he doesn't trust himself.

The final thing about the movie that I liked was the obvious joy it took in portraying the seriousness that goes into frivolity. Again, I think this is a difference from the book and one that only makes sense. The book was written by a pissed-off 22-year-old and, in all the best ways, it showed. The movie, however, was written, directed, and produced, by folks who've been in the industry for long enough to know that while some people might find it absurd to obsess about a piece of fabric or the angle of a shot, in fact, these small decisions have enormous power and influence in society at large. The "cerulean" monologue could just have easily been about camera frames and music videos. And, maybe as someone seeking to justify the relevance of her own easily-classified-as-frivolous creative pursuit, I appreciated that.

Final piece of Devil trivia for anyone who's still reading: the editor at the meeting with Miranda who wants to shoot florals against an industrial background is none other than famously creative/ famously impossible former Artistic Director of the Public Theater, George C. Wolfe. Which, I think, is a hell of an in-joke.

Independence Day

2006-07-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

We sang this in church on Sunday.

I'm personally dedicating Verse 2 to the Supreme Court.

Hunch confirmed

2006-06-29T19:07:00.000-07:00

You know sometimes you have two friends and you think, "wow, if they were in the same place, I bet they'd get along really well; they have lots in common, including things that I do not share with either one."

And then one of them posts on her livejournal about liking a book with dragons and the Napoleonic wars.

And then the other one posts on her livejournal about liking a book with dragons and the Napoleonic wars.

And you think, yes, I do believe I was correct.

Don't all you journalists have English degrees?

2006-06-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

So, the most annoying article in the Times today probably was Alex Witchel moaning about having to make polite conversation with those seated next to her at dinner. (Remind me not to sit next to her, should the occasion arise) But the second most annoying article, according to this gal, was this: Caryn James on the shocking new trend that "more and more movies" display, in which a moral lesson is learned after a sinful character does all sorts of despicable things. The groundbreaking trend? It's actually more fun for the audience to watch the bad stuff than the redemption.

Sound familiar? It's probably from such flicks as Click? Bruce Almighty? The Devil Wears Prada? Or, wait a minute . . . devil, devil . . . that reminds me: maybe this is the plot of Dr. Faustus, Paradise Lost, and the hundreds of works influenced by them for the past 500 years? Just a thought, Caryn.

Also -- the eye has now mysteriously almost completely cleared up. Color me baffled.

Depressing news closer to home

2006-06-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning with a mildly goopy and bloodshot eye.

It's baaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaack.

Though, admittedly, not as bad as before.

Appointment with the optho for tomorrow afternoon.

Looking into magic charms and/or patron saint(s) of eye problems.

Sigh

2006-06-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of being a generally compulsively busy person (and believe me, there are many) is that I don't usually read the entire newspaper. I glance at page one and the editorials, read arts and Thursday/Sunday Stupids cover-to-cover and occasionally skim the science/metro/business (and even more occasionally) sports sections. But, now that the whole teaching-kiddies-to-write-plays thing has subsided, I've got some time on my hands, and, mainly as a method of creative avoidance, I've been reading the whole thing. . . and shit's fucked up.

I know that the primary business of newspapers is to sell drama and that there might not be anything more annoying than overpriviliged white lady hand-wringing about global warming, but I tell ya, I feel like wringing. I'm fundamentally pessimistic about the ability of this country (and, to tell the truth, other countries as well . . . sorry, Europe, but your track record's not as good as you think it is, and Asia -- oy) to adopt measures to halt or even slow it down. And I know the Earth's climate has been through a lot, since before there was even the possibility of humans, but I also think that massive climate change will likely cause enormous human suffering, even if some new forms of species pick up where the old ones left off. I also tend to figure that the suffering will be distributed, as it tends to be, largely to those who were already suffering in the first place.

I feel pretty good about the life that Beloved Husband and I lead from an ecological perspective (bike-based transportation, recycling, composting vegetable waste, buying local organic produce when possible, using energy efficient light bulbs, living with a hot house in the summer and a cold one in the winter, etc.) but I also feel like an ineffectual hippie weirdo bucket drop.

Anyway, enough whining from me. The Earth and people will contine to function and maybe things will get better. At least the Warren Buffett thing is good news. I know because I read every single article on it.

Otherness and other thoughts

2006-06-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

Saw two v. different pieces of art this weekend, but they've both got me thinking about similar stuff. First was Sunday afternoon, when I went to NYC and got student-rush tix for The Light in the Piazza, which is closing soon, so I figured it was now or never.

So beautiful. I mean, I realize, duh, everyone loves this show, so I wasn't exactly surprised to find it beautiful, but I really, really enjoyed it, more than I've liked most things I've seen recently. Victoria Clark was great, and the music was lovely, but I think the thing that I liked the most was how disturbing it was. The story [warning: musical spoiler ahead] concerns a mother and her daughter visiting Italy. The daughter is mentally handicapped and the show's central dilemma is how much of a "normal" life she should lead. And it's fraught: what's best for the daughter, the mother, the daughter's boyfriend who doesn't know about her situation, responsibility vs. taking chances -- it was all dealt with. And, here's the big, big thing . . . the production doesn't demand that you agree with it. It presents certain characters in a particular situation, the choices they make, and allows you to say "Wow, I think that's a terrible decision," or "Gosh, I'm afraid and don't know what's going to happen" but you're disagreeing with the characters not the play. To make an admittedly facetious comparison, if you object to Forrest Gump, you also object to Forrest Gump. Not so with this show.

Then, on Monday, Beloved Husband and I went to see X-Men 3. Which was actually quite similar in terms of moral quandries to TLITP. The X-Men are, by virtue of being mutants, different, physically and mentally, from "normal" people, and the central dilemma of the movie is how much mutants should be pushed toward (or even offered an option of) normality. However . . . it's not a good movie. It could have been a good movie. It should have a good movie. It has good actors, interesting ideas, and an enormous budget, but instead of bringing them together for some good, old-fashioned storytelling, it pulled confusingly at our heartstrings (evoking ACT-UP meetings, abortion clinics, and DNA modification) and then just blew crap up for 15 minutes. Also, I think it bears mentioning that in the big "do you change your powers or use them" debate the two main female characters decided to give up their extraordinary abilities (either by getting the vaccine or asking Wolverine to killing them), whereas the man who faced it ended up staying the way he was. And flying his big gay wings over San Francisco. Which is great and all, don't get me wrong, but why did he get to be loved for the way he was and not the chicks? Just asking.

Also, in a final (please, please, I hope) eye update: I woke up yesterday with a case of pink eye in my right eye (yes, the one that has been plagued since mid-May). Went to the doctor, got some antibiotic drops, and it's looking way better, but still. Truce? Please?

Phew

2006-06-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

All right, world, I'm back, after a harrowing, but in many ways very good three days. The weekend was spent at Camp Wightman with the kids from the playwriting program. [And, yes, it was a little weird to take a group of entirely minority children to a location pronounced Camp White-man. To their credit, they got over it way before I did.] It was fun, but also exhauting, just being that present to another person's needs and never really getting a moment off or to myself or to relax. The best part of the whole weekend though was not the awesome camp activities -- sharing someone's first s'more, nature hike, swim in a lake, night away from home -- but the plays that they wrote. They're really totally amazing, alive with imagination and unexpected plot twists. Also, a soft-shoe number performed by a chorus of dead professional cat-fighters. As casting stands right now, I'm playing an evil high school Mean Girl (typecasting, I know) and a magical, four-armed, rainforest-dwelling woman with stars on her cheeks that can control the weather. I'm excited for costumes . . . and when am I not?

I also got the papilloma removed yesterday, which was a little more harrowing than expected.

Me, a week ago: So, should I arrange for someone to come pick me up?
Receptionist: Oh, no, this is a really easy operation, you can just walk out of here.

So I wasn't particularly worried until the UNANTICIPATED giant needle came for my eye. I'll admit, there may be a philosophy behind this: if we tell the patients we'll be sticking a giant needle in their eye, they will probably freak out, so let's just hope they don't notice. However, it's very difficult not to notice a giant needle WHEN IT'S COMING AT YOUR EYE. So, I kind of freaked out and started hysterically sobbing (I'm sure, at least 50% because I had finished the last 30 pages of Gilead in the waiting room and was pretty close to tears already). Hysterical sobs finally calmed down, papilloma was excised, but I was in no condition to get myself home. Luckily, Beloved Husband showed up and has been a superstar for the past 24 hours as I've mostly slept, popped Advil, and wiped fluid from my eye. It's looking a lot better today and will hopefully be somewhat normal looking/feeling by the end of the week. Because I am really, really sick of having a hurty eye.

Rain appreciation

2006-06-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

Just taking the time to point out that I'm really glad it's raining today.

I'm still grumpy from the swollen, warty eye and don't really feel like doing anything that approaches productive this morning.

And, since it's dripping a dismal rain, I can accept my sloth as opposed to feeling oppressed by the sunshine into jogging or some such nonsense.

Bad moods ---- bad weather

Good moods ---- good weather

When they switch up, it's all confusing.

Ow

2006-06-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

I am having a bad month with eye health.

Having been previously diagnosed with a papilloma (scheduled -- well, in fact rescheduled, but that's another story -- for removal on Monday), and having suffered through a disturbing round of near-blindness caused by Colorado dust, I woke up this morning to find my eye swollen, purple, and tender.

Diagnosis from the eye doctor at Health Services? A stye.

I am very sick of it hurting when I look at things. And, come to think of it, when I don't look at things.

Things to which I have been up

2006-05-31T16:56:00.000-07:00

A smattering:

1) Going to a beautiful wedding in Colorado. It had sort of all the ingredients one would want in constructing the ur wedding -- beaming bride, happy groom, deliriously joyful parents of the bride and groom, spectacular natural landscape, and completely incomprehensible-old-man-toast by someone's grandfather full of what would be cliches if I lived in rural Texas. Also a prominent and somewhat surprising mention of "Cats" in the homily. The musical, not the species.

2) Catching up with college friends as a result and feeling both excited to see people, distraught at how rarely I see them nowadays, and guilty realizing the extent to which I was kind of a flaky friend sometimes. But I'm trying not to dwell and just be a little more pro-active now.

3) Teaching at this program in the afternoons. Which means that, for the third summer in a row I find myself wearing unflattering matching t-shirts, carrying craft supplies, and playing Zip Zap Zop. Which, of course, I love (okay, not the t-shirts), but still. I'm definitely experiencing a little more deja vu than I had intended. And I'm constantly having to stifle the urge to say "But when I did this before, we did it like this." And that's hard for me.

4) Re-typing draft one of the play from Word to FinalDraft. Which means, if things go according to plans, I'll have a proper-looking document by the end of this week, from which to make corrections and changes all summer long.

5) Enjoying the weather. Damn, am I enjoying the weather.

Should I be offended?

2006-05-31T09:22:00.000-07:00

A real post is coming, but in the meantime -- offense? Perhaps gratitude that I'll never be trendy?

Only in New York, kids

2006-05-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

Do they do things like this.

Parfum

2006-05-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

Summer after my sophomore year of college my mom and I took a trip to France. We did lots of fun things like roam around the countryside looking at churches with C. and eat rich food with silly names, and we also went perfume shopping. Perhaps I had just been reading too many gay men's memoirs where they talked about how stylish their mothers were, but I decided that I really needed to have "a scent" [you know, for my nonexistent gay son to remember me by] and I smelled 100 little strips of cardboard in an effort to find one, and finally I did. And I really, really liked it. I started wearing this perfume pretty much every day from about June 2000 to June 2002, when I decided that the most important thing was to smell as unappealing as possible in an effort to scare away fatal-disease-carrying mosquitoes.

And then I came back to the US and the last remaining milliliter of perfume sat in its little bottle and I made $7 an hour and tried to distance myself from all things collegiate. Until I went to New York last month. And I visited the enormous Times Square branch of the Parisian perfume megalopolis and started smelling the little sticks again. Which, of course, all smelled ickily like perfume. Until I got to the one that I used to wear. Which, oddly enough, just smelled like me.

So I came home, discovered that Amazon sells it for 40% off, and bought a bottle. That arrived today. And, am now probably part of a very small group of people proud to say, "Hey, I smell just like I did in college."

In other, more positive, less-ranty news

2006-05-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

Beloved Husband is written about in the Washington City Paper.

Mazel tov.

Forget the slope

2006-05-19T06:40:00.000-07:00

Things are already pretty damn slippery.

I know they do lots of things really, super-awesome well, like provide accurate sex-education information to teenagers and sign the Kyoto accord, but Europe's also creeping me out these days.

Here's a story from England, about permitting the genetic testing and then discarding of embryos without severe genetic disorders. That's right, you can mix up a batch of embryos in a lab, scan them, and if they have a strong genetic chance of getting cancer in their forties toss them out with the bathwater and start again. This is terrifying. Forget all the people who have made enormous, important contributions to the world between ages zero and forty-five, forget the fact that you're dealing with chances, not definite knowlege -- this is designer babies. The future is already here. It's taking the freaky, picky, consumerist language used by the mothers-by-choice profiled here and adding the life-is-something-you-can-buy philosophy of this lady. It's aiming for perfection and it is, as is, eugenics.

Maybe it's just because I read Never Let Me Go last month, but reading these stories together makes me feel like the day is not long off when women and men in poverty will be selling their eggs, sperm, uteruses, kidneys, and blood to create and support a ruling class of body buyers, armed with their credit cards and a belief (as told them by their credit cards) that they deserve the best, whether that's a tall, blond, disease-free child or a brand-new heart.

I know, I know, I know it's really difficult to have disabled children or to have people die in middle age of diseases that could be prevented with transplants. But I am deeply freaked out that this is the way the market is choosing to deal with it.

Because taste is the highest measure of self-worth

2006-05-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

I finally started downloading songs from i-Tunes last night, prompted by the recent acquisition of an i-Pod in the family.

And these are the 7 songs I chose to download, in no particular order:

"Locked Up" -- Akon
"The Talkin' Song Repair Blues" -- Alan Jackson
"Toxic" -- Britney Spears
"Rebel, Rebel" -- David Bowie
"Fancy" -- Reba McEntire
"Footprints" -- T.O.K.
"Maps" -- The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs

No idea what this says or means except that I'm now much more inclined to sing and dance at the computer. And it's really friggin' addictive.

Also -- Beloved Husband returns home today, which means a probably decrease in the amount of blogging and watching of the Gilmore Girls marathon. On the other hand, it'll be good to have a human in the house again -- I'm starting to narrate my internal monologue to the Wonder Dog and he's looking a little overwhelmed.

2 cents

2006-05-12T19:27:00.000-07:00

My vote for the most bass-ackwards opinion piece about l'affaire Kaavya (should you live in a gossip-free cave) is today's op-ed by Whitney Otto in the NY Times.

Her main point -- you can't be a writer and an overachiever. Real writers, like, drink and smoke and stuff and that's what makes them great. Also, she tries to make a weird put-down of/ paean-to chick-lit, which is pretty daring for the author of How to Make an American Quilt.

I want to prove her central thesis wrong, but I feel like I'd just be offering myself up as an example, making it very easy for naysayers to point out my own short-comings. Which, of course, raises the question: would I be more offended at being called a bad writer or a bad overachiever?

Stop what you're doing and go watch this movie right now

2006-05-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

I'm usually a really terrible person to watch television with. I'm an obsessive channel surfer and a speed reader, which means it's usually just a blur, and then when I do stop to watch something it's almost always a reality program in which people are horrible to each other.

BUT, tonight I stayed in with the puppy and saw an amazing movie on TCM -- Imitation of Life - Claudette Colbert, not Lana Turner.

I had read about it before as a famous tragic mulatto story, but it's way much more than that. It's about commerce, capitalism, single mothers, friendship, Aunt Jemima, education, race, and identity. And it's complicated, keeping up the surprises, despite being fundamentally a melodrama. For a 2006 audience, there are moments of discomfort watching Louise Beavers be the stereotypical mammy, but way fewer than watching a preview for "Bringing Down The House." And she's the hero. For her intelligence and ideas, not just her warm, fun-loving personality.

Favorite and most "holy cow, this is 1934" line:

Claudette Colbert about Louise Beavers' character's daughter: She's very smart.

Louise Beavers: We all start out smart. We don't get dumb till later.

Plus really great supporting performances from Ned Sparks and Warren William. And an amazing job from Fredi Washington, an important African American actress and civil rights advocate, unlike the white lady in the Sirk remake.

So go watch it. And if your friend stops by to deliver mangos 10 minutes before the end, you can make him stay and watch it and try not to tear up.

Houseguests and Handtools

2006-05-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

Our most recent house-guest departed Wednesday AM, causing me to realize that, over the last month, we've had four people from assorted cities near and far camp out on our futon, and how nice it is.

Part of this I attribute to location -- my proposed slogan for New Haven is "halfway between where you are and where you want to be" [also a good motto for professional school] -- and it turns out to be somewhat true. People are often traveling from one place to another and find it convenient to camp out here. Or, people come here for weddings or workshops or just plain visits.

And, like many things, including, as I am discovering these days, racheting, the more you do it, the easier it is. So, even if I can weirdly morph into the kind of person who worries about whether there are flecks of toothpaste on the bathroom mirror, having one guest per week makes me calm down about whether every dust bunny has been hunted and exterminated.

Also, having a grocery store and an Apizza 1-2 blocks away does wonders for the ease of hostessing.

In other news, I am currently working as unskilled verging-on incompetent labor for the Carlotta Festival of New Plays. See racheting. Also see me two stories in the air on the genie changing gels. Also see me breaking the elaborate screen doors with my foot. There's nothing like working backstage, though, to get an appreciation for the enormous amounts of effort that go into putting up a show. Or three shows in rep. And it's made me come away with two vows: 1) I should make sure that what I write is good because several people will be involved in bringing it to life and it would be lame if it sucked. And 2) Inflatable sets. Totally underrepresented. Currently thinking . . . moonbounce?

Booooooooooks

2006-04-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

So after moaning on and on about how I can't find any decent books to read, I was recently ushering and found myself with lots of time on my hands and thus finished three pretty awesome books in short order. They are, chronologically:

1) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro -- if you've read the reviews and know what it's "about," you'll miss some of the suspense, but the good news is that it's as expertly crafted as mystery, and you'll still be turning the pages frantically trying to figure out "why" and "how" even if you know the "what." Also, I think it's actually not about what it's apparently about anyway. I think it's about something much sadder.

2) The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Dandicat -- a short story from this was excerpted in the New Yorker a few years ago. The weird thing for me was how little, in many ways, it actually felt like fiction, and how much it just felt like "Yup." Not at all the book I thought it was going to be after the first chapter, but good and memorable and, I think, much better than the book I thought it was going to turn into.

3) Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson -- OMG. I know, right, how, when you read Shakespeare, then you have this tendency to say to people "Wow, like Hamlet is pretty good, eh?" and everyone looks at you like "Uh huh. That's why there's been incessant hype about it for 4 centuries." Well, this may not be Hamlet, but it is like really famously good. And deservedly so. Man. Unsentimental coming of age is hard. Unsentimental yet captivating mentally ill people are hard. Difficult beauty of a landscape I've never experienced is hard. And yet, it's just so good. And really is, in some very fundamental ways about housekeeping. Both housekeeping and house keeping, what they mean and what they accomplish and what they inhibit. Anyway, just read it. Preferably, as I did, with a wonder-dog curled up on your lap.

In completely unrelated news, we are now randomly blessed with extra cable channels for a probably brief period. This means that I can spend every possible moment watching My Super Sweet Sixteen and call it research for a play. Transitioning back into the "real world" upon graduation will be pretty damn difficult at this rate.

Paper trail

2006-04-23T12:10:00.000-07:00

In a (succesful) effort to avoid working on my play, I have been cleaning the house, which has generally been going swimmingly. Dishes washed, trash taken out, pictures hung, laundry put away, all fine, until today. When pretty much the only thing left for me to clean was my desk. And which forced me to confront my profound fear of paper.

Now, by and large, I am pretty intolerant of phobias. I mean, I understand that they exist and that they can be devastating, but whenever I hear about someone with a phobia, my Puritan ancestry kicks into high gear, and I just want to scold, "Oh, get over it. Whatever, it's just spiders/heights/space aliens/etc." But, I too, am afraid. I am afraid of paper.

I trace part of this to being in a program in which I read about 200 pages a week, almost all of which is Xeroxed or printed and write/revise between 1-40 pages a week. My desk is always cluttered with paper. My bag is always full of paper. I come up with systems, like folders or binders, but they tend to collapse under the sheer volume of paper. Also, much of it is drafts , a special kind of paper hell in which you can be carrying around 300 pages of virtually identical material, demarcated by only the subtlest changes. Add to this, the acculmulation of junk mail, bills, and the occasional wedding invitation or piece of real correspondance that plagues any modern household, and I stop being able to cope. I just let it pile up, until you can't even tell that my 5-foot long desk is made of wood.

I would rather do pretty much any chore that deal with paper. Dishes? Yep. Vacuum? Absolutely. Clean the toilet? No problem. I can even get a kind of karmic peace from scrubbing and scouring. But paper only brings me to a state of twitchy immobility, denial, and rage.

All of which is a long way of saying that on Thursday I called these people.

Which may be the best decision I've made all month.

A potpourri

2006-04-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

Oy. A good, yet exhausting week, in which we traveled through 8 states and 1 district with no voting rights in an effort to celebrate both nights of Passover, the morning of Easter, a new baby, a friend recently returned from the Subcontinent, and my 90-some-year-old grandmother. Oh yeah, and due to circumstances too horrific and embarassing to recount, we (okay, Beloved Husband) refiled our taxes for the four-bajillionth time.

Which may be why I find myself blogging without much to say. Hence, a potpourri (that's right, stuff from trees, covered with underarm deoderant and sold to posh people):

1) This is cool. At least to me. Via Eve Tushnet.

2) They didn't award a Pulitzer Prize in Drama, even though they did publish the both honorific (hey, you almost got a Pulizter) and humiliating (see also: almost) list of runners-up. Can't say I was too heartbroken, not really having any dogs in the fight, but it's prompted some reflection on "Whither [wither?] playwriting?" Which, is, ya know, always fascinating to everyone.

3) Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had their baby and I totally didn't care. For real. They even named it some weirdo name and I didn't care. Yeah, I know, I was shocked, too. I think I may actually be at celebrity supersaturation. Thank God I have these bitches to keep me entertained.

4) The semester's almost over. Ah, the academic year.

5) Which means I'm 1/3 done with play school.

6) Oy again.

Bites from the Big Apple

2006-04-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

Went into NYC today to have lunch with the mom before she saw Lisa Kron's play Well, which, FYI, is great and you should all go see, like, immediately, right now.

Anyway, as I had already seen "Well," I hopped back over to the East Side, walked 20 blocks and roamed around window shopping, in Bloomingdale's and the Body Shop and Barneys. It was a gorgeous day and, despite carrying around a computer in my bag, I was just happy to be out and about people-and-clothes-watching. And thinking, far more frequently than I normally do, "Damn, I hope she's your daughter, mister." I decided, at Barneys, that I would just walk around each floor, looking at the designer collections and just touching things, that I thought were pretty, seeing as how there was nothing I could afford in the entire store, except tank tops and salt shakers, and I'm not buying a $48 tank top. I'm just not. Most things were nice, but not heart-stopping, but there was this one dress. Sigh. It was Zac Posen, against whom I've nursed a grudge for a while because he's apparently BFF with boyfriend-of-an-8-months-pregnant-lady-stealer Claire Danes, of which I disapprove (although he got redemption points for dressing Marissa Janet Winokur for the Tonys.) But I digress.

There was this dress. It was so beautiful. Off-white, button-down sundress in cotton or maybe silk, I think (something soft and flowy) with wide straps and a sash and pockets, and it looked young and fresh and adorable, but not little-girly. It was just beautiful. They had a smaller size which was definitely too small for me and a larger size which might have maybe been a possibility on a good day, except not because this dress was more than one month's rent on our 2-bedroom apartment. So I spent some time staring at it, and then ascended to the other floors, looked at shoes and home furnishings and the retardedly sexist-named Mrs. John L. Strong stationary. And on the way back down, I stopped off to visit it again. Behind me there was a super-skinny teenage girl with long brown hair, fabulous jeans and heeled boots and her super-skinny mom with long brown hair, fabulous jeans and heeled boots. I went up to my dress. I held its side. I started saying goodbye. "Mo-OM." I heard behind me. The girl was running. She caught up to me and grabbed the other side of the dress. "Oh my GOD! I have to try this ON! This dress is SO CUTE." Sigh. I let go of my side and looked at her. "Here," I said. "It's the cutest thing in the store."

And made it back to Grand Central, where I bought an ice-cream sandwich and the Lindsay Lohan/ Meryl Streep W to ease the pain.

Oh, this is why it is hard

2006-04-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

"The main thing that we learn from a serious attempt to practice Christian virtues is that we fail." -- C.S. Lewis

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -- Samuel Beckett

And, of course, I am now infinitely more cheerful about the my religious and artistic life.

Off to fail!

aaaaaaaaa

2006-03-31T11:02:00.000-08:00

I recently decided that despite what calendars and popular imagination tell us, there are in fact only 2 seasons in New England, not 4.

Salient Characteristics of Season A (as I'm calling it):
Back door = open to yard
Transportation = bicycle
Laundry = dries on clothesline
Typing = without gloves
Walking dog = generally pleasant
Clothing is worn = for self-expression

Salient Characteristics of Season B:
Back door = closed
Doors to room = closed
Curtains = closed
Transportation = bicycle + cursing, bus
Laundry = dries in dryer, dries on clothesline + cursing
Typing = with gloves, hat, fleece, 2 pairs of pants (indoors)
Walking dog = + cursing
Clothing is worn = to approximate bed for the painful hours that one is not asleep

And this is the first week since early October that feels like Season A.

The sun is shining, Beloved Husband is planting millions of vegetables in mini-greenhouses, the dog just learned how to fetch, the worms are contented, and I am happy. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Not grabbing my sawed-off shotgun and heading for the hills . . . yet

2006-03-29T07:42:00.000-08:00

But I'm a lot closer to revolutionary anti-taxation wingnuttitude than I was a week ago. The summary:

1) 1 phone call to the IRS
2) 40 minutes with 3 different customer-service reps at H & R Block on Friday. Highlight of the conversation:
Customer Service Dude: Huh. Huh. Huh.
Me: Yes? Can you help?
CSD: Nope. But I've never seen anything like that. Huh.
Me: Do you know of someone I could talk to who could help?
CSD: Huh.

3) 25 minutes with another customer-service rep at H&R Block on Monday
4) 1 email from H & R Block yesterday
5) Another phone call to the IRS this morning
6) Yet another 30 minutes with H&R Block today

Net result: yes, the government really does want to penalize you for contributing to your retirement if you're a married person, filing separately. No really. That's what the IRS said. Penalty, penalty, penalty for getting married and trying to save money -- well, nice to learn what our nation's government is rewarding. Excuse me while I embark on a fury of shoe-shopping and cocaine-snortage to finally get some joy out of my hard-earned, oh wait, I no longer have a job . . . anyway, it's been a rough week.

So, maybe I'll go drop some tea into the Quinnipiac or something. Or just bang my head against my desk . . . over . . . and . . . over . . . again . . .

Hello, world

2006-03-24T13:54:00.000-08:00

All right, so, many things have been happening recently. In the life realm, my play went up last week and also closed (4 perfs. and an invited dress) and I'm still adjusting to life without it. I think it's the odd joy of writing for the theater, that you basically spend six months hidden away from human contact, creating these people in your brain, only to get four weeks to spend with actual human beings making it all possible. And now I'm back to the solitary part again, and I kind of miss (okay, I really miss) the live human beings. I think, though, weirdly, being without them will force me to invest in my imaginary ones.

You know, when I lay it out like this, it always surprises me what I spend my days doing.

I also, thanks to the play, got to see friends and family, albeit too briefly, which always has the nice effect of situating me more firmly in the world. Like saying "Here is my apartment" and "this is where we go to get pizza" causes my apartment and pizza place to come more into being. I blame this, of course, on J. L. Austin.

And, in public intellectual news (because, really, if not to paste things on one's cat, why does one have a blog but to be a public intellectual?) here's an article recently of note: the fairly thorough and rather snarky profile of Caitlin Flanagan in Elle. Now, you'll all have to take my word on this because I merely ranted these thoughts aloud to Beloved Husband instead of posting them in searchable permanence on the internet, but I totally said all this stuff like a year ago. Well, maybe without the interview-based anecdotes. But everything else. Really. Actually, the interview stuff is the most surprising to me -- how she comes across in this article and in her New Yorker pieces as . . . passive-aggressive and wussy. And, frankly, even when I was throwing my Atlantic across the room screaming, "'Had no career ambitions other than motherhood' my ass! You have a Master's Degree!" I appreciated the fact that she didn't pull punches. That she fought, dare I say it, like a man, being direct and aggresssive, and, yes, sometimes wrong, but also -- Social Security for nannies -- sometimes right. Here she cops the "ooooh, I love my babies so much I couldn't stand to be apart from them but who am I to judge another woman, p.s. I am toally judging you" crap that we should all be utterly sick of by now. Finally, I feel like it just bears saying that, okay, Caitlin, you made your name with the controversial pronouncement that "When a mother works, something is lost." However, I gotta say having lived through the working-mother thing, I'm pretty sure that when a mother stays home with the sons she's self-described obsessed with, employing a nanny, a personal assistant, and a maid in order to tell the world how much she loves sacrificing for her family, something is also lost. Namely, those two kids' shot at growing up to be themselves.

Done is the next best thing to good

2006-03-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

I finally finished my skirt yesterday! I've been working on it intermittently since January, and (as BH can testify) there were several close calls in which I swore like a sailor with gangrene in his peg leg and threatened to throw the machine out our first floor window. But, in a burst of work-avoiding productivity, I actually finished the darn thing yesterday, and, as soon as we can afford a digital camera, I may even post a picture.

For the last couple weeks, I've been storing the sewing machine in the costume shop at school, where the very nice costume ladies have been helping me when asked, but largely staying out of my hair, which I appreciated because this really is the first thing I've ever sewn by myself. Like getting two pieces of fabric to attach in a straight line was a mammothly big step here. And so, when, after slaving for weeks over my basic, basic, easy skirt, I finally finished, the head costume dude walks in. And starts inspecting my (hideous, deformed) seams. He is aghast. He reaches for a seam ripper. "But if you had only tucked under the edge, then this wouldn't fray . . . how about we just rip this out and --" "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" I reply. I am done. I need to just wear this skirt, even if evaporates into thread after the first outing, even if it's uneven and raggedy and see-thru (don't worry, I do own a half-slip, Mom).

Next time, I can properly measure things and tuck the edges under.

Maybe.

Oh the dog

2006-03-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

Hmmmmm.

So the dog decided to start destroying things when left at home alone. This, after having been very well behaved when solo until about 3 days ago. So he destroyed the gardenia we were nurturing through the winter. And he got into the garbage, eating, we suspect moldy cheese or some other unpleasant foodstuff, requiring BH to get up every hour, on the hour, last night to let the dog relieve himself. His gut seems finally to have calmed down, but still. It was a heck of a night. I don't know what we're going to do the next time we leave the house. And mostly, I don't know WHY. You've been fine for months, dog. Why now? There wasn't even anything GOOD in the garbage. We just got you neutered, which, according to everything I've read, is supposed to make you BETTER behaved and CALMER.

The Mercedes is starting to look pretty good right now.

The Divine Secret Senses of the Evensong Hunger Moon who's Good in Bed

2006-03-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

I don't know what to read.

I mean, I realize this sounds like a stupid complaint because clearly I am in writing school and one of the quirks of writing school is that they also make you read a lot, but the net result is that when, such as now, I actually have time to read things other than plays assigned for class, I don't know what to read.

It's Spring Break, and, although I'm staying home in chilly New England, to celebrate the breakiness of it, I figured I should read "something fun" and turned, as I sometimes do, to the genre known as "women's literary fiction."

Now, just in case all you read is Proust, I should explain that "women's literary fiction" is a distinct genre from "chick lit." Chick lit books feature educated young women with glamorous but frustrating jobs in big cities who date a score of amusingly dreadful men before noticing the cute, smart, wealthy guy with the great career who's been there all along. You know, that guy. Chick lit books end with weddings and shoe shopping, not necessarily in that order.

Women's literary fiction, however, is about an older, more conflict-ridden woman, who has been burned in love and family and finds herself at some sort of crossroads. She is helped by a kind gay/ black/ Chinese/ elderly person/ troubled teenager with experience and perspective who helps the woman sort through her troubled past and embrace with passion her uncertain future. At the end of the book, there is always 1 DEATH (usually the helper person, esp. if they are old or gay, although not necessarily) and 1 BIRTH (always following the accidental/ miraculous impregnation of the troubled woman who either was not interested in reproduction or thought herself to be infertile).

Now, look. I like being uplifted as much as the next girl. Truly. I unironically cried at "Titanic." And, after six months of Aeschylus and Chekhov, I keep thinking that I want to crawl in bed with Jennifer Weiner et al. I started reading this kind of book as escapism a few years ago, and I figured, it's time to escape again. So, this past Sunday, I did virtually nothing other than read National Book Award winner (!) Three Junes by Julia Glass. And there's the 35-year old woman. And the life-affirming dead gay guy. And the accidental pregnancy.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

People, please. Get it together. Write something different! Isn't there something out there between Dostoyevsky and US Magazine? I don't want to spend my Spring Break reading post-Oscar bitchiness on Defamer. Or, to amend, I don't want to spend my Spring Break only reading post-Oscar bitchiness on Defamer.

Sigh.

This is where, Beloved Husband butts in and says, "Hey, if you're going to writing school, why don't you take some time and, ya know, write?" And that's why, Dear Reader, I married him.

Choices

2006-02-27T15:08:00.000-08:00

My own fingernails: bitten, crumbly, bleeding wrecks. Been biting them since I was 8, and, although, they sometimes surface in moments of great calm and look sorta normal-like, they can only be kept presentable with the help of regular manicures, which I have deemed an unconscionable luxury.

Our dog's fingernails: strong, long, healthy, capable of putting deep grooves in the lovely pinewood floors of our apartment.

One of us is getting their nails trimmed and filed professionally tomorrow.

The other one is bringing the dog treats.

Teams

2006-02-27T06:54:00.000-08:00

[So, I should have posted this like 8 months ago, but I didn't, so I am now.]

I had been going to a fair number of baseball games this past year. Orioles/Red Sox, and then Nationals/ everybody. And baseball games as Richard Greenberg and everyone else knows can be kind of mesmerizing and kind of really boring. And, during the boring bits, when you're not drinking beer or eating hot dogs or pretzels or ice cream or cotton candy. But not nachos. Never nachos. Anyway, when you're not eating and the game is a wee bit boring, you start looking around the stadium, and if you're me, you notice something weird.

Chicks are wearing pink baseball caps.

And, at first, I'm really annoyed. Now, I'm actually pretty annoyed already by the fact that you can get multiple versions of the same team's cap -- red on blue, blue on red, etc., but at least within a realm of possibility delineated by the team's official colors. Baseball caps are an expression of allegiance, they let people know from far away what team you're on -- they can provoke instant sympathy or else, they can provoke something like when our next door neighbors made Beloved Husband's friends move their car, b/c of one of them was wearing a Sox cap.

But pink?

Huh?

First, there's the total utterly unsexiness of the pink baseball cap. Unlike a real baseball cap, which, if you're a girl, has a kind of "I'm wearing my boyfriend's too-big t-shirt kind of thing," the pink cap attempts femininity. And then fails. Because it's not actually flattering at all. And, unlike real baseball caps, which get cuter the more worn and dingy they are, the pink caps only look gross when they're not brand new.

But even more importantly, they are undermining the entire point of a baseball cap. Unless you are right up close to someone, you can't tell whether she's Cubs or White Sox, Angel or Devil Ray, it's all a pink blur. This is important information, ladies, this is why you wear a baseball cap, and now you're not broadcasting anything.

Wtf?

After mulling it over, for a couple of games, though, and getting progressively angrier at the pink chicks, it finally dawned on me what was going on. The baseball caps were doing what they always did; I just wasn't getting it. The caps weren't there to show team allegiance, that was just a secondary benefit. They were there to show something far more important: membership in Team Girl. Instantly, gazing out on a stadium, I could identify the girls. There they were, a whole pink-capped sea of them. And, maybe when cap-wearing girl passes another cap-wearing girl, they exchange a small nod, an acknowlegment, that yes, before their team-fandom, comes their gender-fandom.

I could finally relax. I comfortably into my seat. I accepted the pink caps. I even smiled at the Spice-Girls-faux-feminism of it.

Until I saw the them.

A smaller subset of chicks was wearing lavender caps.

I give up.

Why you don't put a guy with Asberger's in a prominent public position . . .

2006-02-23T09:23:00.000-08:00

Larry Summers is finally out of Harvard, and, while there's not a lot of love lost between us, I'm also pretty pissed about the way the whole thing went down. Was LS a boor/oaf/jerk with a permanent case of foot-in-mouth disease? Abso-freakin-lutely. Would I have picked him were on on the committee? Hells no.

But was he also right about Harvard's doing a number of retardo things, justified solely by "I'm Harvard, bitch!" ? Um, yeah. To wit, unlike 99.9% of all other educational instutions, unlike Summers arrived, Harvard used a 14-point grade scale. Thus, when applying to oh, say, a job, or an internship, or grad school, or pretty much anything on which your GPA was required, you had to convert your 14-pt grade into the 4.0 system. And it took boorish, oafish, jerky LS to say "Hey, that's dumb. Stop doing that." Which is pretty much how he interacted with everybody.

The best summary I've found of the whole shebang is here.
And the worst news from my perspective is that the #2 candidate is rocking Columbia's world while we're back to the drawing board.

O'Malley, stop looking at my vah-jay-JAY

2006-02-22T06:16:00.000-08:00

So, "The Vagina Monologues." It's V-Day (or it was a week ago, I'm catching up here) and colleges around the country are performing Eve Ensler's woman-parts-positive monologue-fest. Is it a good play? Eh. Is it a good thing to be doing? I'm not sure, but I think so. When I saw it in college, I was deeply moved, not just by the actors onstage but by the sense of community. This giant group of women, none of whom were part of the usual "theater scene" all came together because they believed in the project, and, (in contrast to such goals as "make connections" "establish my career" etc) to have fun.

Ten Red Hen, whom I met, oddly, at a wedding years ago, makes some excellent points about the whole V-Day deal, but I also think she misses several important vaginal boats.

Yes, it's not that great a play. Yes, it's probably more about therapy in some ways than truly amazing art, but so what. I don't know if Eve Ensler was gunning for the Pulitzer, so much as trying to hit a chord with women, and, like it or not, the chord hitting.

'Hen criticizes The Vagina Monologues for being "your mother's feminism" and not "challenging," while at the same time, recounting stories of college-age women who have a hard time talking about their own sexuality. Which, to me, raises the question: is this really so generationally removed, or do many women, even now, need to reclaim the word, reclaim the idea of "Hey, I have a vagina and I like it." Hell, when Ensler wrote the piece, there were no Brazilian bikini waxes, there was no "labia reconstruction surgery." Just being okay with having the vagina God gave you seems even more revolutionary now than it was 10 years ago.

I'm not sure what "your mother's feminism" is (and, frankly, the tone of it is pretty anti-woman sounding to me -- but maybe that's just because I like my mother). However, the V-Day movement as I saw it was student-directed and student propelled, not a lot of aging boomers with gray pigtails storming the campuses and demanding that we all get down on the floor with hand mirrors.

Finally, 'Hen's final point seems to me, the most off-base. To quote:

Ensler clearly has a schtick she doesn't mean to change. When one of the actors from the above my friend's production actually attempted to write her own vagina monologue, about the misogyny of her religious background and her own exploration of her sexuality--Ensler called up and reamed the producer out for daring to add anything to her precious text.

I'm sure she did. Because she had a union contract with the theater. To produce every word she wrote, without changing the old ones or adding new ones. Because the posters said "The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler." Because that's how plays get produced in this country. And, if your friend's actor wanted to write about her own vagina and perform about her own vagina, that's fantastic. The 'Monologues as currently written are lacking in diversity and depth. Great. Fabulous. Call it "The Vagina Show." "Vaginas on Parade." Sell tickets. I'll be there. But don't use feminism as an excuse to break copyright.

Play

2006-02-14T17:21:00.001-08:00

So, I'm supposed to write a play.

This is, after all, why I decided to go to playwriting school. However, I am in rehearsal and in classes and running around like a crazy person and trying to fill out my financial aid information and occasionally trying to see friends and family and loved ones and dog, not to mention go to church, exercise, or eat meals, and it begins to dawn on me that I am too busy with drama school to write my play.

So I will write my blog.

Problem = unsolved.

Goodnight sweet Nick

2006-02-09T10:10:00.000-08:00

So Nick got the "Out." And, not without reason. His suit was weirdly girly. And mauve. Mauve is rarely the right answer. Stoner Kara, therefore, is mysteriously still "In." But the bigger mystery, really, is Santino. He is not that good. He has not won a challenge in ages. In fact, he is routinely almost booted out and then miraculously saved from the chopping block. Why? Well, the judges will insist "Oh, Santino is so talented, he just [fill in the blank]" "He just went too far." "He just doesn't know what works on a woman's body." "He just made the flowers shiny." No, Heidi, Mugatu, Nina, and Special Guests, he just doesn't design very well! He just doesn't! He keeps making the same dress over and over again!!!

Now, for anyone (hello? hello?) out there who doesn't routinely follow Bravo, this may all seem like the irrelevant bitchy picking of nits (and, I mean, okay, it is). BUT, there's a larger issue at stake, I think, which is the "Assholes must be fabulous artists" disease. Satino stays on Project Runway not despite his digusting derogatory comments and unflappable arrognance but because of it. Blame it on Van Gogh or Liam Gallagher but we're still in the twitches of Romanticism, and people love them crazy madmen artists. And, I think it's only fair to point out, I mean madMEN.

I really think that if the Project Runway designs were presented to the judges with no knowledge of who designed them our balding, bearded Missourian friend would be long gone. And, frankly, as a woman artist who tends to show up places on time, make sure everyone's eaten properly, and send thank-you notes, I'm a little peeved when I see being a jerkwad equated with being that much closer to the gods. I want a pantheon that appreciates "please" and "thank you," dammit, and, especially now that we're missing a famous "nice girl artist," shit like this makes me mad.

As you know, in fashion, one day you are IN, and the next day . . .

2006-02-08T18:38:00.000-08:00

So tonight's the almost-pre-ante-penultimate "Project Runway" and I just gotta say that if Kara doesn't get the high-heeled Teutonic boot, I am going to be extremely surprised. Daniel V. and his elaborately greasy hair are clearly not going anywhere (well, okay, partly just because he has immunity, true) and Chloe and Nick should hang on by virtue of their tastefulness and general good spirits (although, Nick's been having a rough time recently ever since the motherf***ing walkoff, poor dear). The judges still seem to have a soft spot for Santino (although, if he designs another detail-saturated, butt-enhancing baby-doll dress don't say I didn't warn you.) But Kara, I mean, why are you still here? Your danger dress was so, so lame.

Anyway, if it's not Kara, then I guess it would be Nick, because Santino is just too good for TV and Chloe has been a reliable second-place for way too many challenges. And, without the ability to say "Andrae" will Santino continue the Tim Gunn impression? Or will it just be too sad? Sigh. Only 4 more weeks left and then what will I do with my Wednesday nights? Not watch Mugatu Kors, that's for sure.

In other news, the dog passed obedience school tonight. He even got a little special toy for having done his homework well. I give the toy a week, tops, before he rips it open to devour its squishy plush innards, varmit hunter that he is. But really, as long as he's not eating my slippers, I can't complain. Until 5am this morning, when he wakes me up to step on my neck and whack his happy tail in my sleepy, sleepy face. Then, I can complain.

Art meets life

2006-02-03T21:36:00.000-08:00

So, I'm home alone with the dog watching "Skulls" on channel 149 and "Legally Blonde" on channel 26. This is either the trashiest Ivy League thing I've ever done, or the Ivy Leaguiest trashy thing. Either way, the Harvard/Yale + Reese/Joshua Jackson doubleheader is pretty great.

Also, there is a character in "Skulls" named Caleb Mandrake, which is hysterical. He should totally hook up with Vivian Kensington from "Legally Blonde."

And I should get a pen with purple feathers on top.

And a pink rhinestone-studded dog collar.

For the dog.

Uncommon Woman

2006-01-30T21:07:00.000-08:00

So Wendy Wasserstein died today. I found out, in a setting I'd find hokey if I couldn't vouch for its veracity. All the playwrights from Drama School went to the local arts high school and spoke to the theater students about writing (ours and theirs) and art and life. It was fun, probably partly for the ego-stroking of getting asked questions as though I had any business answering them, and part of it because talking to high school students about writing plays is almost unavoidably fun. And then, on our 10 minute break, L. said to me, "Wendy Wasserstein died today."

I finished up talking to the kids, and walked home alone, as the weather (and, I swear, it happened like this, heavy-handedness be damned) turned cold and a light drizzle started. I read her NY Times obit. sent to be by my mom, and just sat there in the Drama Library stunned by a lot of things. By the fact that she's my mom's age, and graduated from a Seven Sisters School in the same year. By the fact that she just had a play go up at Lincoln Center which dared, in an era that produces such deep fare as "Bush is Bad," to implicate a liberal baby-boomer for prejudice against Republicans. By the fact that she has a 6-year-old girl and that's fucking young to lose 100% of your parents. And by the fact that I still, somehow, found the Times and the AP obituaries condescending. Incomplete. Maybe they always say only the most obvious things -- Thomas Edison, inventor of light bulb, or whatever -- but still. Funny feminist isn't enough. Her plays are heartbreaking, too, especially if you've been paying attention to women, to people, for the past 30 years.

I directed "Uncommon Women and Others" my sophomore year of college. It was the first play I ever directed and it her final play from Drama School. When I gave the scripts to my actors and we had a read-through, one of the women -- a fantastically smart, perceptive, and acerbic person -- asked me "So, you're not planning on doing this straight, are you? I mean, what's your interpretation?" I was taken aback and mumbled something, but the truth was, yeah, I was going to direct it pretty damn straight, and dare audiences in 1999 not to see themselves up there. And I think it worked.

A couple of years later I was at a very nice event held by a very retarded "arts" society and Wasserstein was there to pay homage to the Andre Bishop, the guest of honor. Beloved Husband (at that point, actually, Beloved Boyfriend) kept kicking me under the table to make me go up to her and talk, and I eventually stammered something like "Wow, you're really great" before she went to assume her rightful place next to Natalie Portman. Oh well, he assured me, you'll meet her again.

The last play I directed in college (and, who knows, perhaps ever) was "Three Sisters" and BH pointed out to me a few years ago that in her book, "Shiksa Goddess," Wasserstein says that every play she's ever written has the same plot as "Three Sisters." It's true, too. Put that in your obituary.

The dog ate my . . .

2005-07-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

So I've been AWOL for almost a month now and feel like apologizing to the ether. Sorry there, ether. I totally meant to fill your technovoid with my musings, but instead, as Beloved Fiance's mentioned, there's been some things going on.

Like moving. I know hating moving is like hating genocide or like the Coalition Against Sexual Violence (where's the Coalition for Sexual Violence?), but really, much like genocide and sexual violence, moving is totally terrible. There's a hard-core get-things done Zen-like trance that I can reach in the middle, but mostly I find myself thinking "All right. That's it. It's all going in the trash and I'm renouncing material possessions. Just a few t-shirts and a bowl and a spork. That should do me fine. And some sneakers. And maybe a book or two. And these barrettes. And that record. And this other book. . . " Sometimes it strikes me as a symbol of all that's wrong with the consumerist first world that we actually have a genre of television devoted to watching people throw away belongings they know longer use. We have a subset of television victims with whom we are all supposed to sympathize become they own too many possessions. This being only a couple generations removed from the Depression. But then, thinking back to every non-first-world home I've visited, I remember that the folks there are just as tchotke-happy as we, just like they like to eat as much as we do -- we can just afford more food and more knickknacks. We take it to excess not because we're worse people, but because we can.

And speaking of materialism, BF and I are mid-way on our attempt at home-ownership. There's still all kinds of papers to be signed and mortages to be discussed, and nothing will be final until "The Closing" (sounds like a science fiction series or a Mormon ritual, don't it?) but we're getting there. And I really hope we make it. We've learned enough from the past month of house-buying shenanigans to know that if this house doesn't work out, we might just get an apartment and start looking in the winter, but it's been an educational crash course in real estate. And bargaining. And coming face-to-face with your dream self and having to have that awful reckoning where you realize that you don't become the good version of yourself through shopping. It's "if I buy these pants, I'll do yoga every day" times 10,000. So I've been reeling back and forth between
"and we'll have dinner parties and I'll write every day and clean every other day and garden and do pottery and adopt stray pets and bake bread" and "Oh h-e-double-hockey-sticks, I could barely keep a one-bedroom apartment clean(ish) and generally operational, what are we thinking?" But I still think it could be awesome. And I really hope it works out.

And finally, speaking of adopting pets, we've been housesitting for the past 11 days and the house includes two very friendly, highly slobberific dogs who have a tendency to wake up at 5:30 in the AM demanding all kinds of highly urgent things. Side A: Early mornings are truly beautiful, and all that stuff in poems about birds and dew -- turns out it's true. Side B: Good Lord, I miss bed.

A tale of three Gwens

2005-06-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

First and foremostest of all, I have to hand it to the Neptunes. A year ago, I had grown disillusioned . . . sure their milkshakes brought all the boys to the yard, but what were those boys going to do once they got there? Move around to the same tired handclaps? I had written Pharrel & Co. off and, well, you know what they say about second acts in American careers.

And I was wrong. First there was "Drop it Like it's Hot" with its glacial yet persistent pace, its tongue clicks and glottal stops, and now there's my new favorite song, "Hollaback Girl" now playing in three different incarnations on local radio. Before this song, the Gwen Stefani singles had been leaving me mostly cold. The first song just sounded a lot like Madonna, which is, you know, fine, but also not that interesting. The second song sampled from "Fiddler on the Roof" and mostly served to show that our girl Gwen is no Jay-Z (or, perhaps more accurately, Dr. Dre is no Kanye West . . . who, btw, appears on the new Common song basically saying everything that August Wilson is trying to talk about in Radio Golf . . . the man is a genius, Good Lord . . . but I digresss).

And then Gwen came out with "Hollaback Girl" which combines catchy beats, high school rivalries, and just enough swearing to have three different radio versions. The pop station, where I heard it first cuts out the bad word with a graceful elision, as if to imply that Gwen merely trails off, leaving us to fill in: "This my . . . this my . . ." In fact, the first time I heard it, I couldn't even tell if there was supposed to be a bad word there or what bad word was supposed to be. Next time was on one of the hip-hop-and-r&b stations, where it sounded like, "This my shhhh, this my shhh." And, finally, I heard it on my favorite hip-hop-and-r&b station where the offending word was replaced by a series of goofy sound effects (cowbell, bo-ing!, crash, etc.)

Wondering what all of this meant about the personalities of these radio stations, about race and gender in America (like you do) and the parallel lives lived by different social groups in DC, I checked out the video online. Where Gwen, at the crucial moment puts her finger to her lips, to "shhh" us, and it hit me:

Catchy beats, high school rivalries, finger-to-the-lips coyness -- 'fess up, Gwen, you stole your shit from OutKast.

Why I'm raising the hypothetical childrens in a cave (Part 1)

2005-05-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

No need for this crap in a cave.

Bad cell phone reception there.

Home/ Maker

2005-05-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

I just made a skirt. Kinda sorta. To be more precise, I took a pillowcase, cut off a couple inches, sewed a hem-like thing, and snuck some yarn in the hem-like thing to make a drawstring. From far away it looks like it was made by a five-year old girl, and from close-up it looks like it was made by a five-year old boy. But, hey, it's mine. Had I not spent last week ragging on Bust I might be able to say that its DIY aesthetic was really a feminist (post-feminist?) statement, but instead I'll just admit it: I want to know how to sew. I really do. I'm not aiming for a complete Vogue pattern lifestyle, and I'm willing to walk away from the whole hipster-knitter thing with neither bitterness nor longing, but I would like to be able to sew a couple of basics. Curtains, for example, seem like a good place to start. And it'd be nice to be able to rehabilitate almost-perfect things from thrift stores. A begininer sewing machine is cheaper than an iPod, which is also encouraging. So I decided I should start small, and small I started, doing the whole thing w/ my dinky travel sewing kit from the front desk at work, and I may even wear it tomorrow, if the weather and my self-esteem hold.

Here's where I have to be honest, though.

It's not just sewing.

I live in a nesting fantasyland.

I could blame it on the fact that, starting in 2 weeks, Beloved Fiance and I are going to be nomads for 2 months, and I'm experiencing anxiety over our not having a home, but I think it's both deeper and shallower than that. For an empowered career woman with a fairly messy apartment, this is going to be a shocking confession, but I just really like thinking about housework. I don't nearly enjoy doing housework as much, but I find imagining it really soothing. Or watching it on television. Or reading about it. Or really, really reading about it.

In the way that I daydreamed about hanging at the mall as a 10-year-old, or keg parties at 15, now I think about having a washing machine in our apartment. Owing a vacuum cleaner. Painting the walls. Planting a garden.

And, yeah, sewing my own clothes, at least every once in a while.

Home/Sick

2005-05-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

Bleh. I wish I had more interesting things to say about being sick except bleh, but bleh's about where I'm at right now. Got the cold a week ago up in Boston and had been priding myself on dealing with it stoically until Friday night when the bastard decided to whomp me in the head. And chest. And throat. And, for a time, the ears, although that seems blessedly shortlived.

So now I'm a full-fledged snot monster, staying home from work and wishing (as I have on sick days for the past 20 years) that we had cable. Beloved Fiance also has caught said cold and there's an unfortunate run on the sympathy supply in the household. It hasn't yet devolved into an "I'm more pathetic! (cough, cough)" "No, I'm more pathetic! (sniffle, look forlorn)" fistfight, but give us time. He's got the moral highground advantage since I gave the cold to him, but I can do a better job of impersonating tubercular movie stars of the '30s, so I'd put the odds at even.

The only other news of note is that it looks like BF's cousin is getting married this summer (congratulations!) and we'll be attending 3 weddings in 4 weeks. I think this means that when I get better I get to go shopping. That's something to look forward to. Oh, and I'm so totally over Bust magazine. I keep thinking it will be awesome since it's published by former Sassy people and Sassy is one of the big reasons that I made it through the Mean Girls years with a sense of humor and a decent record collection. But Bust, well, it's kind of a, you know . . .

Look, I am absolutely these people's target demographic and that's what sucks me in. Their covers are like a list of things/people/ stuff I've been thinking about (PJ Harvey, Eddie Izzard, Sandra Oh . . .) and they aim to put the femme back in feminist, which is peachy by me. But somehow the actual articles are always really lame. "Hey, doesn't being pro-choice rock?" "Yeah, totally. And I made my shirt out of old napkins." Put it together with the crochet-your-own-vibrator-cozy ads in the back, and I just start to feel very old. I mean, in my book it's dandy to think a lot about women's rights and to want to wear kitschy faux-vint clothes and gobs of eyeliner, but these folks seem to condense the two. And, honey, you're not helping women in the Sudan by cutting your bangs short and wearing a poodle skirt with your tattoo. You're just not. At the end of the day, it's a lot more Suicide Girl than Riot Grrl, and I remember the early '90s too well to buy in.

America

2005-05-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

I'm sick of meeting ex-Catholics.

I saw the headline yesterday on the front page of the Baltimore Sun, while leaving CVS, and I didn't stop to read it because I knew it would make me mad.

So I waited until today, until I was done having a truly lovely weekend and needed to actually get down to the business of working, to check on it. And the headline, it seems, was right. As the New York Times, in their incontrovertible New York Times way, put it, "Vatican is said to force Jesuit off magazine."

And, yes, okay, maybe they didn't force him off, maybe they just politely said, "Hey, you should move on to other things now," and yes, being a priest means obedience, it means going where someone tells you to go, in the hopes that it's also where Some One tells you to go.

But still, it makes me mad and it makes me scared. The story, in brief, concerns Father Thomas Reese, SJ who was the editor of America magazine (which I'm only familiar with because I liked to roam around the periodical room of my college library. It was under "A," so I found it easily.) Father Reese apparently published articles with pro- and con- positions about things like gay priests and giving communion to politicians who were pro-choice. And now he's not the editor there anymore.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I'm sick of meeting ex-Catholics.

I'm sick of people like Jack Miles who go from writing really fascinating books on theology to writing snide and smug essays about how lame the church is and how glad they are they've left it. I'm sick of conversations like the one I had last night with an intelligent, articulate young woman about how meaningful she found the Catholic church when she was younger but now she's grown up and realized it's wrong and harmful and is so glad she left.

There is such a need in this country and in the world for smart, passionate people (especially clergy and involved laypeople) to debate, discuss, and argue these issues. To press for change while holding on to what is holy. And, if (and I know it's an IF) someone who was doing these things as a priest, is getting censured, I don't know what else to do but be mad.

I'm so sick of meeting ex-Catholics.