Poetry Friday, The Galilee Hitch-Hiker, Part 7

A Baseball Game

Baudelaire went
to a baseball game
and bought a hot dog
and lit up a pipe
of opium.
The New York Yankees
were playing
the Detroit Tigers.
In the fourth inning
an angel committed
suicide by jumping
off a low cloud.
The angel landed
on second base,
causing the
whole infield
to crack like
a huge mirror.
The game was
called on
account of
fear.

Wow. "The game was called on account of fear." It feels like that happens a lot.

I still think I am dreaming in Brautiganese. Smoking cigarettes with Johnny Depp, doing coke with Dennis Hopper--it's all of a piece. Depp and Hopper, at least in image, are my rockstar poet-philosophers. If I could generate an image of Baudelaire, I am certain I would dream-smoke opium with him.

Two of my real rockstar friends and favorite bassists of yore, Feste and Demetrius, are reuniting for few shows this weekend. I will see them tonight at my favorite pub and I might even wander down to see them play in one of my favorite towns on the planet tomorrow night. Music! Friends! What a nice dark days of winter treat.

I may have been impregnated by aliens

Aliens because no bassists have been around (in that particular pregnant-making way) in recent months and impregnated because I am acting in what I consider to be pregnantly ways. Or maybe I am just behaving in the manner of the Real Live Bona Fide Gen-u-ine Crazy Person I may have become.

To wit:

--I am nesting like a madwoman. The nesting includes all manner of intensive spring cleaning (yes, in mid-January--remember, pregnant with alien or batshit crazy), reorganizing, and redecorating plans. I have even hired my ex-boyfriend, The Bassist of 2005, to finish the Unfinished Built-in Bookshelves and Work Space of Doom--the bookshelves begun by Demetrius before he was hired to play bass for rhymes-with Dowie Hay and left in middle of the project to go on tour with that little punk-ass bitch, Dowie Hay. I tried to finish them, but in turns out I am not handy with wood. (Shut up, Beavis.) Narcissistic String Theory Guy added some touches here and there, because he enjoyed playing with curves and angles, but they have remained woefully unfinished, unpainted, and pretty much unusable. Enter The Bassist of 2005 to finish the job--this month, for an excellent rate. Hurrah! Yes, all the bassists I know are also carpenters, and I apparently have to have had sex with anyone who becomes involved with the shelf project.

--I want to eat everything in sight as long as it is: not good for me, fattening, and/or outrageously starchy, salty, or sweet. Right now I would eat nothing but chicken wings, hashbrowns, and Golden Oreos if I could. (Warning: Do not go the way of the Golden Oreo. I provide the link only so that you can learn to identify and avoid this dangerous cookie. It took me a full year to lose the 12 pounds I gained when I quit smoking pretty much by replacing cigarettes with Golden Oreos.)

--I am craaaaaaaanky. Yesterday I flipped off an elderly woman in a Buick (granted, she cut me off and made me skid on ice), had a fight on the phone with my dental hygienist (what do you mean I can't keep rescheduling my appointment at the last minute indefinitely??), and verbally castrated a couple of Uppity Boys* in my first class (usually I save verbal castration for week two at the earliest).

So what do you think? Am I with extraterrestrial child? Have I finally gone mad? (It occurs to me that the preceding two questions do not constitute an either/or proposition.) Or is it a deep dark cold days of winter thing? Do I just need a drink? An oreo? A bassist?



*Do you know the Uppity Boy type? The ones who try to undermine the authority of an attractive young(ish) professor by flirting with her in class discussion? I have been teaching only upper-level courses for a few semesters and so I haven't encountered it in quite awhile. Jesus, is it obnoxious.

Vivant

Then something happened, something difficult to describe. Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I’d never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn’t know what. Maybe it was something I’d forgotten or something I’ve been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive. Yes, alive.


Over the break I finally watched Paris, Je T'aime. I am totally in love with it. It is running a close tie with The Lives of Others for my favorite film of 2007, though I guess both technically came out in 2006. I was excited about it from the time I heard of it. A collection of short films by some of my favorite directors--including my very favorite, Alfonso Cuarón--and with a group of amazing actors, including my Maggie.

I did not expect "14e Arrondissement" by Alexander Payne to be one of my favorites, but it was. We find Carol, played by Margo Martindale, to be the most pathetic person in Paris. The fanny pack. The bad French. The dorky earnestness. But then . . .but then this moment, these lines, that look on her face.

Do you remember the NYC blizzard of February 2003 followed by the freakishly warm weather? I was there at that time with a lov-ah, one of the one real loves of my life, holed up in the Carlton Arms on the Lower East Side. The however-many-inches of snow was melting and slushing in the 60+ degrees heat, and we were lying on the bed with the windows open. I turned to him and said something to the effect of, "I remember wishing this, exactly this, a long time ago." I know, cheesy. But, oh my god, if you've ever felt it. Something both a memory and a desire, realized.

Tell me no no no no no no nooooooo

There's a certain something . . . *poof*

Sleep deprivation + cold medicine = a very very silly Medusa.

Lockdown

Dr. Crazy has written a brilliant post about lockdown, the term I use to describe the emotional process by which unworthy lovers are forever shut out of the heart of the beloved. I think Dante or Petrarch or Sidney probably described it first, but I am the first to elaborate on its power via the analysis of space movies.

In any case, in occurs to me that the re-fling with Narcissistic String Theory guy might be always already doomed because lockdown was initiated years ago and my heart is not unlike a sealed tomb to him forever more. See this door? It's like my heart. See that opening, with the mist and the possibility?



Under the right wrong circumstances, it's closed.




Anyway, Dr. Crazy has written a post most excellent describing with precision and humor this devastating process of the heart. Go read it, and--hey--give her some love, because she has just gone through something worthy of the initial phases of lockdown. We may go to Crazy Medusa's to discuss or to avoid discussion of this. I have an early day tomorrow, but perhaps I will just stop by for a wee nip and a chat . . .

So it turns out I am sort of a jackass . . .

The second third (non)date was great. His friends are lovely and hysterical and fun. A friend I had met during the first Narcissistic String Theory Guy go-round was there, and he was warm and welcoming. Actually, they all were. I did get the feeling I was one in a line of women he has brought (brings?) around, although nothing specific gave me that impression.

It was a delightful evening, a non-date but a delightful evening.

Lame wooer

So tomorrow night is my second third date (the first third date being five actually I recently realized it's only been four years ago) with Narcissistic String Theory Guy, and he suggests we go over to his friend's house for a small gathering involving food, drinks, and baseball watching. Why do I feel like this is lame? I mean I love the baseball, but quite frankly if I were having a night of baseball I would want to watch it alone or with my friends and in a bar or better yet, in Fenway Park.

All week I have been looking forward to spending time with him, and this idea of hanging out with him and friends I have never met just seems . . . I don't know. I mean--I am still getting to re-know him and I don't know at all where I want this to go or what I want this to be, if anything. Am I being a jackass?

Frantic Bullets of Crap

• Middles of the week are hell this semester. Every week I am pretty much completely consumed with teaching and meetings for three days straight, unable to come up for essential things like air, food, blogs, and the new Netflix supplied crack-cocaine of Medusa, Rescue Me. This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that all of the "real work" of prep, grading, research, and writing has to happen during the other four days.
  
• Check out the new look-of-the-week feature on my sidebar. As some of you know, fashion is one of my favorite, most obsessive hobbies. When putting together my own outfits (which I never like to do until the day I am actually wearing it--making mornings frantic and packing a total nightmare) I have one or two looks knocking around in my head from one of the dozens of fashion and street fashion blogs I read every day. I do try to adapt the look to be age and work appropriate but some days I end up looking like a Swedish teenager. I thought it would be fun to make the influence factor more of a conscious process, so each week I will be posting a picture (or two) of the look inspiring my wardrobe choices for the week. You can click on the photograph to get to its fashion blog of origin. This week: rocking out the late 80s/early 90s Peter Pan look! with Marlboro Reds! in Paris!
  
• I have a third third date with Narcissistic String Theory Guy this week. I am not sure how I feel about it. Part excited, as in I can't wait to see him and hang out with him. Part cautious, as in not sure what this is all about. Why are we seeing each other again? Why now? I think this part-excited, part-cautious attitude would be okay, but the thing is that part of me is TOTALLY excited (wanting to throw myself into this) and part of me is TOTALLY cautious (wanting to run in the other direction as fast and as far as possible). So how can I be part totally something or even two somethings? Well, that's the fun (and the crazy) of me.
• Chalupa photos soon, I promise!
  

I am a super-classy date

A few of the things I said to Narcissistic String Theory Guy last night on our first date in five years:

1. "You are good-natured, but in an odd and specific way, so maybe not so much good-natured as odd-natured."
2. "I recently found some expired condoms that I think once belonged to you."
3. "You are a ridiculous human being."
4. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" (In response to his "Well, this is the most fun I have had in a long time.")
5. "Please shut up so that we can make out."

I have to say recycling is pretty fun.

Poetry Friday, Jack Donne

Break of Day

'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honor so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
O, that's the worst disease of love.
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

I feel this way every single time a man** leaves my bed, even though it's usually the case that I need to get up and take care of business just as much or more than he does. That Donne knew something about the woes of TCB when all you really want to do is make out with a bassist (or a front man or a sound man or a gorgeous coach or a narcissistic string theory guy, whatever the case may be).

Business is totally the "worst disease of love" and of blogging and of drinking cocktails and of Septembers of planned fun. At least I had the one glorious weekend in Favorite City. Sigh. It's not over yet though, right? More fun can be had, in spite of the towering pile of work. (I so wish More Fun himself could be had, but alas he's returned to the road with the rock-n-roll circus.)

By the way, I think a married man doth woo me. Except he's not really married, or rather he was technically married but had been separated for two years from his wife when I dated him five years ago. Will keep you posted, on his current marital status as well as the state of the woo.

*Okay, okay, every time a man I like leaves my bed. Let's just assume only men I actually like are in my bed to begin with.

The re-entry

The busyness of the re-entry, combined with a visit from More Fun this week, has left me no time to blog. I am still here, feeling at turns shell-shocked, energized, annoyed, ecstatic. Here's some of what I have been doing during my absence:

1. Attending the heteronormative dinner. Married with Children Colleague Who Refuses to Bring Her Husband to Work Things or to Exist as Half of Coupled Unit attended sans husband. Yay MWCCWRTBHHTWTOTEAGHOCU! (Really going to have to work on a better pseudonym for MWCCWRTBHHTWTOTEAGHOCU.)

2. Dancing with a man with a peg leg and parasol

3. Being cornered in a tiny pub by and very briefly enduring the advances of a Muckity Muck Professor of Fancy Medicine at Terribly Prestigious University who tried to woo me with ridiculous babble about Lear, the "soul," and "human nature"

4. Attending a vast array of meetings, one of which devolved into weirdly heteronormative part-professional, part-personal individual reportage of summer activities, during which I wanted to say something like "Well, there was this one really intense week when the condom broke. Thank god I had some Plan B on hand! I just threw myself into work on the revisions for that article." I also have this impulse at holiday time when I get those family form letters. (Someday I will post a Year of Medusa fantasy version of the holiday family letter.)

5. Drinking a vast array of adult beverages

6. Hanging out with the rock-n-roll circus

7. With More Fun, deciding on names for our children: for a girl, Emmylou Harris Fun, and for a boy, Lionel Richie Fun

The busyness and the More Fun fun will continue into next week. Planning to join More Fun in Favorite City this weekend. Could NOT BE MORE EXCITED about this. Remember how I said September is going to be mine all mine? I am really trying to let myself let that happen.

Santoro vs. Blake (in which I objectify tennis players)

A sleepy, punch drunk question for the interwebs after a very very very long day as I drift off to sleep while watching the U.S. Open in the garret-o-televisions:

Do you have to be stunningly good-looking to play professional men's tennis these days? If so, how do they weed out the less than stunningly good-looking players? Are head shots required at some point? Is there a super-secret underground World's Next Top Tennis Star pre-screening competition happening somewhere? A sort of cross between America's Next Top Model and a Zoolander walk-off in which players, guided and judged by, I don't know, maybe Andre Agassi and Bjorn Bjorg, are put through a series of tests--some involving tennis, some involving posing in various stages of sweatiness with rackets, trophies, etc.?

I mean, damn.






How's a girl supposed to get any sleep with this kind of thing going on?

Why I hate a meteor shower

I will admit it. I hate the Perseids. Is it because I know the Perseids are the pretty dust of the Swift-Tuttle, the comet that may or may not hit the earth in about a century? Not really, as we all know who to call if that's about to happen. Is this fear and hatred in sympathy with my ancient ancestors who knew a comet and its trail for what it is, a herald of certain evil? Yes and no.

It all began with a group outing arranged by the worst person I ever dated, who is the only ex-boyfriend I would never ever speak to again and who I might in fact slap in the face upon sight, a lovely man whom I will call Foxymoron. The original point of the outing was to see the Perseids but somehow by night's end it also included a ridiculous limousine, a cokehead and his alcoholic girlfriend, a very tipsy restaurant hostess Foxymoron was doing his most covert (but moronic) best to seduce while on a date with me, and a light-polluted beach. But a sandy, stolen Foxymoron wallet and very very expensive cab ride later, I was home safe and sound in my bed. All that was lost was a relationship that needed to end anyway. Since then, lo these many years ago now, I have regarded the Perseids for what they are, a sure harbinger of relationship doom. A couple of men have asked me to go see the Perseids since. That (unaccepted) invitation always proves to be the death knell, my friends, and within days the relationship is over.

I have nothing against a meteorite per se. I do love a falling star. I do not even mind all meteor showers. For example, I have no beef whatsoever with the Leonids. I could even appreciate a man who asked me to go to see the Leonids, as it takes a certain something to want to wait out a cold November night to see a bunch of shooting stars. I feel like any poser-yahoo can do the same in August.

Anyway, for those among you who are unbiased and unafraid of the tears of St. Lawrence, tonight's the night. Avoid Romans, cads, limousines, light pollution, and enjoy!

Secret message to the Mac Genius Bar genius guy

Damn your cool blue eyes, your faux-hawk, your swagger, and the way you totally ignored that woman who was next in line (I mean it was right there on the crazy Genius Bar wall-o-monitors, dude, "Next Mac customer: 1. Woman next in line; 2. Medusa ") to take care of me! Damn you, you cute cute cute cute cute cute CUTE genius man. No one has ever been able to persuade me to back up my data, much less to buy an external hard drive for said job. Damn damn damn you! I will not be so susceptible to your charms next time. Oh no. No I will not. I am onto to your Genius Bar Lothario ways! (See you next week for those tests on my logic board.)

A truly great text message

"I luv u. Let's get hitched!"

I am not going to offer much explanation except to say that More Fun appears to be well into his cups and feeling rather jovial on this fine summer evening. And, yes, he does propose to me every single time he gets drunk.

Medusa's Holiday Weekend

This holiday weekend has been pretty low-key, something that I usually do not mind but that this year feels like a kind of lame "kickoff to the summer," as all of the local news station insist on calling it. It's not like I made plans or anything, since this weekend falls during the three weeks before I begin the summer travels (which I have dubbed the Three Weeks of Six Weeks Worth of Work ), and it's not like I have not done some socializing and some relaxing. Still . . .something feels too lonely or quiet to me. Maybe it's that last year's Memorial Day weekend involved having a huge party with friends new and old, engaging in an ugly public argument and breakup with my boyfriend, and unexpectedly leaving town for a few days with the rock-n-roll circus. Maybe it's the sense that I should be doing something, that holiday pressure that I think we all succumb to sometimes. Anyway, I am not nearly as sad or mopey as this post has so far made me sound. What have I been doing with myself on this unholidayish holiday weekend during which I seem sad and mopey but am not?

• Well, the weekend began with me Building an Outfit over at the superfantastic Manolo's blog. You can check it out on the forum. I did not win but it was still superfantastically fun. My thoughts on my non-winning outfit are: a) I took a risk with matching the open-toed ankle strap pump with a city short (as really I prefer only flats with the city short or if a heel, a casual wedge); b) something is somehow off with the cut of the off-the-shoulder silk top, along with the placement of the ruffles; c) the necklaces, bag, and sunglasses are brilliant (and I may have ordered some of these items as a part of the retail madness part of this weekend, see below); d) I was never sure about the bracelet, though it does tie in with the shoes, but I think that's precisely why I do not like it, and I think it is too much with the necklaces; and e) the whole outfit might be a little boring--cream and brown with cream and brown. In any case, it was great good fun and I am very much looking forward to the next contest. Incidentally, I count this as the weekend's (only) "work."
• I have been following A. and Crazy's Vagina Power Weekend 2007 telephonically and on Dr. Crazy's blog. By yesterday they were feeling hungover and remorseful but I think this is wrongheaded and perhaps the undue influence of penis power. I am hoping they will reclaim the Vagina Power today, as Dr. Crazy and A. are fun and charming and witty and fabulous.
• I continue to work out as if it is my job. As you might surmise, working out like it's your job, which is to say for about an hour and a half every day, prevents you from doing actual work. Anyway, I am on some sort of mission that apparently involves seeing what will happen weight-wise, body-wise, and mood-wise if I work out for many days in a row. Today will be Day 14, and I think I might be (insanely) going for 30. The results thus far: I have lost 3 pounds; my legs, arms, and waist are visibly toned; and I feel almost too good--tons of energy, almost zero anxiety, and hence no work on looming projects this week, oopsie. I also feel like I might be living in the 1980s--the fitness-crazed 80's, not the cocaine-fueled 80's. I wonder what I would be feeling like if I had decided to live in the cocaine-fueled 80's** for 30 days. I would definitely have lost more than three pounds but I might be dead.
• Speaking of death, I almost choked on a cherry pit yesterday. During the near-choking, I thought about how funny and convenient it would be to die on Memorial Day weekend. I also thought it would be kind of nice to die by choking on a cherry pit, theoretically of course, as I am sure it would be a real nightmare physically. But how could you not smile just a little when in answer to your how did she die question, you got "she choked on a cherry pit"? Not only is it an alliterative death, but it prevents a maudlin and melancholy response. It's comical. By the way, I am not feeling particularly morbid this weekend, though the holiday inspires a kind of morbidity. I am always and have always been this morbid. There's this extraordinary line in Little Children (which I watched last night, see thoughts below) about all people being "miracles" because they know that everyone they love will die and they still go on. When I was very young, I realized just this--that everyone I loved would die and that I in fact would die. I completely freaked out and starting alerting everyone to this fact, like "Wake up, people! Do you not know what's going here? Why are we just walking around like this is OK?" Eventually I decided that this fact made life absurd and was a sign of God's excellent but sick sense of humor. (Around this same time, I started planning my funeral and have found such plans drafted out in various journals and diaries of my youth. I also was convinced I would die at the age of 24 right up until midnight on my 25th birthday, but that's another story.) So anyway, yeah, I was a freaky and morbid kid. But I still have that idea in my head. I still believe that this knowledge of certain loss and this refusal to let it stop us makes this life absurd. But maybe it does make us miraculous? Absurd or miraculous? An absurd miracle?
  
• Friday night I took a friend out for a belated birthday dinner and then we went to see another friend play music. I have been hanging out with the belated birthday friend since September. How to describe this relationship? We are friends but there is also an attraction and he has tried to make it a thing but ultimately it has gone nowhere and in the end I think we are just not that into each other. It's as messy and boring as the construction of that sentence. And the fact that I have now actually talked about him on the blog probably means that I am about to end it, at least in its current ambiguous configuration. Anyway, the other music-playing friend is the person some of you know as Demetrius or One True Love. Going to see him play with Ambiguous Friend (uh oh, a pseudonym, a sure death knell) was a kind of worlds-colliding experience, as it was at the bar that was my practically my living room during grad school and that contains at least three people I have slept with at any one time (Friday night's count was four) and everyone I had ever met was there. But it was actually kind of lame. My friends were nice to Ambiguous Friend. Ambiguous Friend was very laid-back but also seemed kind of bored. I was "meh" about the whole thing, even after two Sapphire and tonics. Who knew worlds colliding could be so uneventful?
• This weekend has provided the climax to the retail madness of the past two weeks, during which I have ordered far too many glorious treats from places like Sephora and Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and a gluttonous number of books from Amazon and local shops. Hmmmm. . .seems like I might be living in the mindless-consumerism 80's as well. Yesterday I went into Marshall's to pick up a sports bra and a pair of running shorts and ending up spending $116 on neither a sports bra nor running shorts but on things such as a DKNY chemise and the piece de resistance, for only $39.99, a new dog bed and burrowing blanket for the Chalupa:
  Isn't it wonderful? As you can see, it is most luxurious and absolutely perfect for our very girly-girl bedroom. Yes, it is big enough for a German Shepherd but she loves her super king-sized chihuahua princess bed.
  
• Ignoring Major Project due in June and the unwritten syllabus for my summer class and instead watching stupid T.V. (the Real World Las Vegas marathon, the kind of boring Shear Genius with the mechanical and unlikeable Jaclyn Smith, What Not to Wear, this new fixer-upper show with my imaginary boyfriend Andrew Dan Jumbo, who I have figured out reminds me of my second fiance, P.) and good movies like Blood Diamond and Little Children. Continuing with my reviewing style that is part Ignatius J. Reilly and part obvious pointer-outer that movies cannot resist the force 0f the heteronormative train, I will say that I thought Little Children was spectacular--the strangely funny darkness of it, the performances of Winslet and Connelly and really everyone, and the clean yet somehow stifling and oppressive look of it. Just a fantastic film, really. But the end feels odd to me. Is the optimism supposed to be ironic or does it seriously want us to think traditional family values will save us from our post-9/11 world of fear-mongering and bullying? Is it just Tom Perrotta? He does seem to be obsessed (Election, Little Children) with the cheaters-never-win theme. On the one hand, there is all of this wonderful questioning of the joys of marriage and child-rearing; on the other, there is this idea that the reason we are not being good mothers and fathers and partners is because our growth is retarded and we are behaving like a bunch of adolescents. Perhaps that is the final message: grow the fuck up and handle your dissatisfaction in a less deluded state of awareness. Blood Diamond slams the American marriage industry, indirectly blaming heteronormativity for massive bloodshed. Among its political messages is an unexpected one about family and life choices and the ultimate luxury of such choices. And that Leo. My my my.
  
• Hanging with the Chalupa. Here she is with a friend, known as "Baby," watching a home-decorating show featuring a bedroom that looks eerily like my own. If you look through the window in the shot, you can kind of see Hairy Yoga Guy's porch.

That's all from Medusa Central. I must go out into the sunshine with the Chalupa, perhaps break up with someone who is not my boyfriend, and at some point sweat profusely on an elliptical machine, perhaps in some sort of Jamie Lee Curtis-inspired head band. Happy holiday weekend to all!

**Updated to add: Apparently Lindsay Lohan was doing my living in the cocaine-fueled 80's for me this weekend.

Poetry Friday, Lorca

Wish

Just your hot heart,
nothing more.

My paradise, a field,
no nightingales,
no lyres,
a river, discrete,
and a little fountain.

Without the spurs,
of the wind, in the branches,
without the star,
that wants to be leaf.

An enormous light
that will be
the glow
of the Other,
in a field of broken gazes.

A still calm
where our kisses,
sonorous circles
of echoes,
will open, far-off.

And your hot heart,
nothing more.

Original Spanish here

This is what I--fevered, mesmerized, sleepy, exhausted, so so close to the end of the school year--want on this Spring day. Simple enough, no? I have no idea who the "your" of "your hot heart" might be, but that's not really the point. I am blogging the want (like blogging the lost) into the universe, via the powers of Lorca.

Random Bullets of Women, Mothers, and Beauty (and some links and an apology)

• I apologize for last night's melodrama. I am in the throes of something and, as I warned in an earlier post, I will be letting almost all fly here. Mix the throes of something with a few generous glasses of red wine and "almost all" flies out the window and you get a post like last night's.
  
• Lina has written an excellent post on Camille P . . .'s breathtakingly abhorrently increasingly poor attempts at theoretical analysis. I am glad the clear-headed Lina was able to put into words what I felt but was too blinded by rage to come close to articulating. I haven't been able to speak (or to type, apparently) CP's name for a full two years, ever since one of my students insisted on using only CP and none of the feminist critics we were studying to do a "feminist reading" of something or other. This student brought up her admiration of CP early in the semester, and I had to spend much of my time resisting the urge to leap across the room and strangle her.
  
• Continuing my zealous devotion to bad movies on the newly acquired HBO, I watched Flightplan night before last. This is one of those 9/11 movies not about 9/11 but that reference 9/11 (e.g. Reign Over Me, 25th Hour) in weird ways that force the audience to draw comparisons between 9/11 and things like anal rape. Flightplan draws a connection between post-9/11 racism and the collapse of "family values," essentially making the claim that Americans (and German pilots, of course) hate mothers and children and should be more ashamed of this than assuming all Arabs and Muslims are terrorists. In sum, post-9/11 hysteria is represented as less dangerous than the dissolution of the traditional family. The best things about the character--a working mother, an engineer no less--are actually criticized as she suffers all manner of punishment for not being a typical mother. I had a moment when I blamed Jodie Foster for not being a poststructuralist radical feminist film critic in choosing her movie roles. Then I thought that if she does indeed choose movie roles for political reasons I could see why she might choose this one: strong working mother who designs planes is targeted by terrorists and kicks some ass and shames some stupid conservative racists as well. But it goes all wrong, Jodie. Don't you see? Then I realized if I was Jodie Foster and anyone told me that I should chose my movie roles according to what might happen on any level as a result, I would tell that person to fuck right off. Then I realized for the umpteenth time that I am not the preferred audience for this movie or any, for that matter, that I have been watching on the newly acquired HBO. But then again I am, because I was riveted and I am not uncomfortable watching them or at the very least I am comfortable with my discomfort. And, like it or not, I have HBO now. So really only the people who are made potentially uncomfortable are the people who have to listen to my half-baked ideas about the shitty movies I watch on HBO. And, honestly, these are not really the same ideas I talk about and write about for a living. Those are fully baked, of course. No, here I am much more like Ignatius J. Reilly in my movie critiquing style. By the way, I am reminded of dear Ignatius as I read one of my new favorite blogs, the new and truly brilliant Korncrake!. If you have not checked it out, you must--especially you medievalists.
  
• I have a beauty recommendation, a beauty warning, and a beauty question.
  
• Recommendation: This at-home facial peel by Oil of Olay really works. I wasn't particularly worried about wrinkles--have very few and like the ones I have--but my skin was looking a little dull to me. After using this once, my skin looks perfectly radiant and plump and beautiful. I also have the most sensitive skin known to man, and this was not at all irritating.
• Warning: I was on my way to get a haircut the other day, and I met a very confused looking and acting woman in the elevator to the salon. She was about 60, perfectly coiffed, and in very stylish casual wear. She was talking to herself, expressing great concern about which floor she needed to get off on. I was headed to the fourth. She pushed buttons for the second, third, fourth, and fifth. At each floor, she would peek out and look down the hallway. She got off on the fourth floor with me and walked into the salon in front of me, blocking the doorway. The receptionist said, "Third floor, ma'am" and she turned around and nearly knocked me over as she rushed babbling back to the elevator. In response to the WTF? look on my face, the receptionist said, "She does it every week. She's looking for her manicurist on the third floor." I replied, "A bit off, isn't she?" My receptionist then revealed that no, not exactly: "She's just wicked senile. Looks great, doesn't she? She's like 80 or something. A lot of work done, by the best too". I am thinking that this is going to become more and more of an issue--getting a totally different read on people who are actually behaving somewhat appropriately for their age because said people are plasticized. I remember having a similar worry when people starting walking around talking on their pocketed cell phones with their Bluetooth technology, and I could not really distinguish them from the raving mad people roaming the streets talking to themselves (except the Bluetooth people tended to be saying much less interesting things). Pretty soon we are just going to assume all the crazy people have just had face lifts and/or are on the phone.
• Question: I am seriously considering going off the Pill, largely because I want to lose 15 pounds. Here's the thing, I don't really need to lose 15 pounds and I of the amazingly fertile women people in my family will very likely get pregnant if I have unprotected or condom-breaking sex. I gained 20 lbs. after I stopped smoking and went back on the Pill. Before that, I was pretty significantly under a normal weight, because I had crazy sinus infections and had been on antibiotics for nearly a year, so I needed to gain anyway--just not 20, I think. I have lost 5 since I gained the 20 but no more will come off and I am certain it is because of the Pill. Everyone tells me I look great, better than my thinner self, and I sort of agree. I definitely like the curves. I don't necessarily need to lose all of the rest, but 5-10 lbs. would make me much more comfortable and have me fitting back into many fabulous clothes I can no longer wear. I also kind of want to go off because I feel different when I am on the Pill, but mostly if I am honest with myself it is because I am vain vain vain vain. Thoughts?
• Since I began writing this, I have heard from ETF, who now is not leaving until later in the week. Seems the cosmos will not let the throes of anything get in the way of its need for irony.
  

Prime, The Uma, and a pathetic Friday night

How did I end up alone in the garret, watching a reprehensible "sophisticated character comedy," drinking an entire bottle of red wine, and being generally weepy and sentimental on a Friday night? Because, really folks, contrary to some of the evidence on this blog for the past few months, I am generally a naturally happy and spontaneous and funny and fun-loving social creature. I have my depresso moments (as well as the ominous "history of depression"--yes, even with the naturally happy disposition), but I know the depression for what it is and I know how to manage it. So last night had nothing to do with depression and, truth be told, it is not the first time I have chosen to sit at home with some cheap wine and a bad movie on a Friday night. And, yes, it was a choice. But why?

I blame a) my cable company; b) Ex Turned Friend; and c) Uma Thurman.

a) Earlier this week, I threatened to breakup with my evil and expensive cable company, so they came bearing gifts, including HBO, in order to get me not to switch over to less evil, less expensive cable company. Even though I currently have two great movies that students gave to me to watch and two from Netflix I am dying to watch, I am mesmerized by the many lame choices on HBO, including The Lake House (en espanol, no less), Hope Floats, and Prime, the movie I have now watched not only once when I was kind of trapped into watching it on a cross-country flight, but a second time BY CHOICE. More on this in a moment.

b) I had thought I would go to a going-away last-hurrah party thing for Ex Turned Friend last night. I could have gone had I planned better and I probably should have gone. I have been wavering about it for a while now, though, and I didn't do everything I needed to do to make it happen and ended up too exhausted to go anyway. We had our own last-hurrah thing, so it's not like I am an asshole for not going. It was just sad sitting around alone thinking about it going on while I was at home, even though I chose to be home, you know? I know. It doesn't make much sense and perhaps leads one to the conclusion that I just wanted to have a little pity party with myself last night. Moving on.

c) I have a fascination with Uma Thurman. I will watch any movie, buy any magazine, read any news item involving The Uma. I am even fascinated by anyone associated with The Uma, like Dash Snow, who is a pretty interesting dude in his own right but who more importantly for my Uma-fascination purposes is the son of Robert Thurman's daughter by his first marriage (i.e. the son of The Uma's older half-sister). Needless to say, I can not turn myself away from the screen when The Uma is on it, which is why last night I would not stop watching a movie that I knew full well had me seething more and more with each and every air mile as I made my way from coast to coast the first time I watched it. I can't really blame The Uma, though, because I feel like she made a lot of bad choices film-wise after the breakup with Ethan. It was as if she was getting some things out of her system, and we cannot really blame people for the bad art they produce when such is the case. With Prime, I think she was trying to send Ethan a message, something like, "You were not ready for me and our children and our life together you little fourteen years younger than me on an emotional level cheating emotional fuckwit, Ethan Hawke, and I should have not had children with you, and I should have let you go long before it came to that, and--look--I am totally having sex with the much younger, much hotter Bryan Greenberg, ON SCREEN FOR THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE, while you are being pathetic in Paris with Julie Delphy, walking around the streets of Paris, looking about 5000 years older than when you were with her walking around the streets of Vienna and NOT HAVING SEX WITH A HOT YOUNG MAN FOR THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE, but I forgive you in the end." So really The Uma was too distracted to see the message she was sending to the rest of the world with the movie, which is very simply "women in their thirties should not date men in their twenties because women in their thirties are 'on the clock' and want to have babies, and men in their twenties cannot be saddled with the emotional needs of women in their thirties, much less babies, so you over-thirty ladies must set those young men in their prime free. Because you? Totally past your prime." Scream now at this message, for as long as you want, as any self-respecting man or woman such as myself (who, ok, admittedly does regularly date much younger men and who usually does not feel disposed to be apologetic about it) should do. Absolutely do not do what I did, according to the following formula.

A + B + C= Copious tears over the "touching" last scene which brings home the "beautifully real message" of the film by showing The Uma and Young Man in His Prime staring lovingly at each other through a restaurant window, forever separated but knowing they have made the right decision for their oh-so-different futures. And, to make it worse, I had somehow come to think of (the eight years younger) ETF and myself as having necessarily suffered a similar fate AND that this fate was a beautiful thing AND oh who the fuck knows, as I was by then to the end of the bottle of Le Mazet. The point is that these were sanctimonious tears over a bad little movie made by a despairing Uma and over a romance with ETF that ended not over being on different paths or someone wanting babies or having different ideas about John Coltrane but actually over nothing more than the fact that in the end we are much better as friends.

Apparently I have a lot to get out of my system as well and I have a feeling I am going to let it all (well, pretty much all) fly here. I apologize in advance. And, Uma, if you are reading, I forgive you for making a movie that made me cry in spite of my better instincts. You are fantastic. Now I am going to stop being a maudlin freak and go out into the sunshine with my pup.

Fevah (in which I objectify fire fighters)

What is sweeter (and I do mean "sweet" as in "sweet bike, dude . . .ever take it off any sweet jumps?") than seeing two firemen in their little fire-fighting pants with their suspenders and their tight t-shirts shopping for dinner ingredients in the produce section of the grocery store? Nothing. I actually had to psychically slap myself a few times to snap myself out of the pineapple in one hand, mouth open, staring, blinking pose I assumed for oh, I don't know, a good 45 seconds. One of them caught me though and did the half-smile nod. I believe they were from the firehouse I run by every day on my summer running route. Ahhh. . . .the boys of Engine 7.

Spring has sprung, my friends, and I do believe I have the fever. This totally makes up for hairy half-naked yoga guy.