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.

Done and not done

Progress?

Last week's list:

1. Plan summer class
2. Work on Major Project due to publisher tentatively in June:
   
1. Email several people I want to be involved to ask them to be involved, including AB, AE, LE, and KC.
2. Look over some guidelines and sample thingies
   
3. Decide on several important details regarding format and content
   
4. Email some other people
5. Compile
6. Write proposal
   
7. Cross fingers
8. Send
3. Clean out study by: filing this year's course materials, move boxes to basement, moving big photo project somewhere, setting up sewing machine, cleaning out files, and getting S. to come over for an estimate on finishing shelves.
4. Meet with TDC
   
5. Scary medical test Not such a big deal at all, turns out
6. Insane Workout Plan 19/20 days; 5 lbs. lost

Things done instead:

1. Wrote last-minute proposal for grant (Very good money. Keep your fingers crossed for me.)
2. Partially cleaned out second closet and gathered shoes to take to Salvation Army
3. Corresponded with directed-study student about project
3. Watched Grey Gardens three times. It is a little distressing how much I find myself identifying with Little Edie.
4. Watched Tape twice. I can't believe Linky didn't write this movie, as he is the master of what I call the "what?-what?!-what! conversation"--those conversations you find yourself in that are contradictory and confusing in terms of what is being said but that keep you talking because you ARE certain you do not like the weird power dynamics of the conversation. The dialogue of such a conversation intermittently lapses into this:

Person A: What?
Person B: What do you mean, what?
Person A: What are you talking about?
Person B: What?!
Person A: What!

Nearly the whole of Tape is a brilliant example of the what?-what?!-what! conversation. It's dead realistic in terms of how conversations go (a Linklater hallmark, to my mind).
5. Upgraded my sad, old, dying cell phone to this one. It was cheap with my free upgrade, but I am not sure I like it. I am, however, apparently a sucker for a promotion involving the seven deadly sins.
6. Sent flowers to my awesome niece for her 7th grade graduation
7. Talked to my eight-year-old nephew about the potential scariness vs. the potential coolness of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (It's very important to him that the potential coolness outweigh the potential scariness, and he will often send me to a movie ahead of him so that I may determine the scariness-coolness ratio.)
8. Read Falling Man
9. Fretted

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.

Brad Pitt's ass is mesmerizing

Yes, I am watching the newly acquired HBO again. So far, the above is all I have to say about Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Edited to add, 12:36 a.m.: And ultimately the above is all I have to say about Mr. & Mrs. Smith. And I do mean "mesmerizing" in an original sense, à la Franz Anton Mesmer, in that I believe Brad Pitt's ass has a sort of trance-inducing magnetic force. This must account partially for the fact that I have now watched this movie two or three times and I can't ever really remember anything that happens in it. Everything about it will be erased from my mind by morning. Right now, I know it is a sleek and smartish and funny send-up of all deadly middle-class surburban marriages. But all that is already being slowly crushed by the weight of all that confusing beauty (as well as the magnetic force of Brad Pitt's ass).

By the way, I was fast asleep tonight by 9:30, having been mesmerized by BPA and exhausted by grading, etc. The only reason I am awake right now is because Paloma called me (on the cell phone, which turns into the emergency/bail me out of jail, please phone after midnight on weeknights) to ask me if I could hear random explosions in the distance. She had been hearing them sporadically for about two hours, they were freaking her out, and she couldn't sleep. After listening for a while, I heard them and came up with this explanation to calm her down: dynamite blasting at a rock quarry. I told her I recognized the sound from when I lived in Indiana. She was relieved because she had been thinking [laughingly] that "maybe The Idiot was right and the terrorists had followed us home!". So she got off the phone to go to sleep. I am now wide awake. I do not really know what the sounds are. They sound kind of cool in the (quarry-less, I am pretty sure, within any conceivable ear shot) distance. And while I do not think G. W. Idiot is right about anything, I am left sleepless.

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.

PSA: Gyllenhaal alert

Jake Gyllenhaal will be on this morning's Today show, within the next ten minutes or so.

Updated to add: Lame. Jake said a few words, then Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal's character in Zodiac) yammered on and on about the STILL! NOT! OVER! case. I wanted Mark Ruffalo to run in screaming and punch Graysmith in the face. Then I wanted Robert Downey Jr. to show up and snort some lines of coke off of Jake's bare chest.

Funny or sad?

• Those fifty midterms I have been avoiding grading all day? When I just finally went to my bag to get them. . .no midterms. Yep. I left them in my office at school. And how do I feel about this? Not unlike a school child on a snow day.
  
• I got a rejection letter in the mail. I was confused for a good twenty seconds or so, because I had forgotten I had applied for a position there.
• My dormant late 80s crush on Robert Downey Jr. has returned with force over the past six months or so. Why, you ask? I can only speculate, but to start I might consider what these three characters * have in common.

*Went to a screening of Zodiac last night. I recommend it, though it's looooooong and unwieldy in that David Fincher way and almost too carelessly misogynistic in that David Fincher way--but I think with a purpose, as the case was looooong and unwieldy. That, though, of course doesn't explain the carefully careless misogyny. Maybe the carefully careless misogyny falls within the parameters of the very sick yet very funny tone of Fincher's movies. The vehicle for so much racism and sexism is humor, and there's this weird sick humor in his films. Anyway--I do recommend it, if only for its unsatisfying, never-ending conclusion and its hilarious and disturbing send-up of police incompetence (or corruption. . .I can never really figure out which or if there's a real difference).

Letter of Irritation, Girly-Girl Edition

Dear Otherwise Good and Nice Boy,

When I say I am going to hang out at home and call it an early night (yes, on a SATURDAY NIGHT), I mean it. No matter how sweet and charming and sexy and caring and cool and funny and smart I think you are, I am probably not going to be persuaded to change my mind. In fact, I do not want to be persuaded.

I am not being coy. I really do want to get into my flannel pj pants and outrageously large, mismatched wool sweater (it's 16 degrees fahrenheit outside) at about 7 p.m. and curl up with my chihuahua and a glass of red wine and finally watch Marie Antoinette, which I wanted to see in the theaters until reviewers convinced me it was a girlish mistake. And then I really do want to be in bed by 10 p.m. and maybe read a little of this book and be asleep by midnight on the outside.

And if I want to spend a Girl's Night In with Sofia and Kirstin and Martha and the Princess Puttalily Fandango (Chunk-o-Pup's name when she's feeling fancy on a Saturday night), I do not need to be ridiculed. Making fun of me in a playful affectionate ("You are so goofy and pathetic but it's cute because I know how punch drunk this month has left you") way is one thing, but making fun of me in a kind of belligerent and coercive way? Unh uh, not okay. Do you really want to shame me into hanging out with you?

See, I know when I need me some me time. I know how and when I need to take it. I know that tomorrow I will wake up refreshed and happy. I know that I will end up having LOVED every irreverent and visually absorbing minute of Marie Antoinette. I know that I will have really enjoyed that Southgate opens her novel with this Wilt Chamberlain quotation: "Everything is habit-forming, so make sure what you do is what you want to be doing." I know I will make some coffee and Irish oatmeal in my sunny kitchen. I know I will do a little morning reading and find this and feel real excitement for the coming Spring. I know I will feel a little more ready to face a positively bone-crushing March with its no less than a million and fourteen academic commitments.

Your contribution to my evening and my morning will have been to introduce a little bit of worry that maybe I will die alone because maybe I am lame and boring and pathetic. And then I will worry for you because I will be concerned that I hurt your feelings and I will see the beginning of the end of an otherwise very nice sort of friendship and I will fret that you are pushing my buttons and that everyone KNOWS what happens when my buttons are pushed. And then I will worry a little bit about my buttons and if they are neurotic or narcissistic or irrational buttons.

In the end, though, I think I will decide that my buttons are just fine, thank you very much, and I will get another cup of coffee and curl up under my puffy pink comforter and forget to be irritated about anything at all because I am happy by myself and with myself. And that really is worth something, isn't it?

Yours,

Medusa

Though you are the size of my head, I shall defeat you (or Die Froggy Die)

As you can see, things have been quite busy around here, with froggies needing to die painful deaths and such.



The Chalupa and I are getting along marvelously, but sadly it looks like this will only be her foster home until I find her a better, most perfect home. She is not doing so well with the many stairs involved in living in an attic and with the spastic dog downstairs, with whom she shares the yard. She loves nothing more than to be in my lap, but my lap is unavailable for large portions of the week--often 12 hours a day. I am in touch through the veterinary hospital and various rescue leagues with some wonderful people, so I feel confident we will find her a great home. Already there are a couple of good possibilities. Still, it will be a sad day indeed when she goes. There's always the possibility I will not be able to let her go, but I need to remember it will be better for her. So, for now, I will be making the garret the happiest possible foster home for Her Majesty, Chapula Chunk-o-Love.

In other news, the semester is off to a busy start. Once again, my course-release time (for research) is being sucked into the Black Hole that is my Toxic Devil Chair's service agenda, including the many obligations of serving on search committees for multiple searches run in the most stupidly fucktarded (and I am almost quite sure illegal) ways possible. My classes and my students are awesome. My colleagues (with exception of Toxic Devil Chair) are awesome. Foggy C, while fucked-up in various ways, is fine. My personal life, since resolution of Big Deal Personal Suckage, is full of all manner of bright and happy possibilities. If I could just find a way not to let Toxic Devil Chair toxify my life, I would be fine.

In New Year's Resolution news, "goofing off" is going particularly well, which is why I think I will ignore the prep for a class I have only taught once two years ago (a perpetual untenable position I find myself in due to utterly unrealistic demands of Toxic Devil Chair) and the stack of ungraded papers to go see Pan's Labryinth this afternoon and then settle in with the Chalupa for wine and Grammy fun (and froggy killing) this evening.

Let's start buildin' some hurtin' bombs

I am jumping on the Trailer Tuesday train, which I have been enjoying over at Addy's, to recommend . . .wait for it. . . Rocky Balboa. I loved it. I went with my father on New Year's Day. In addition to it being everything I need a Rocky movie to be, it's completely self-aware of its super cheesiness. It's also an homage to the original Rocky, which was well-loved and often quoted in my house as I was growing up. (Come to think of it, my father probably took me to the original.) It has the familiar grimy shot after grimy shot of South Philly. It has the awkward budding of an inspirational friendship. It has the training sequence, complete with raw eggs and the running of the steps. It even manages to squeeze in a "Yo, Adrian." It also unfortunately has the weird brand of racism and xenophobia present in all Stallone films. There's also the problem of it being an over-the-top product placement vehicle for HBO.

Nevertheless, you will be sucked in, you will be emotionally manipulated, and you will be glad that this film is able to so blatantly manipulate your cold, black, film-sophisticate heart. I dare you not to cry or at least do that shaking-of-the-head, tearing-up laughing thing or at the very very least smile a genuine smile for the simple fact of movies in our lives.