aaaaaaaaa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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 . . .

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

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

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

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 . . .

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

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

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 . . .

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

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)

No need for this crap in a cave.

Bad cell phone reception there.

Home/ Maker

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

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.