Goodbye

for now. Thanks so much for reading.

Play That Funky Music, W.G.

Thanks, Linda for the tag. I love doing these lists but am actually not so good at them. The drill? List your favorite six current songs and then tag six others.

My songs:

Cocteau Twins - The Hollow Men
Ryan Adams - Winding Wheel
Pavement - The Hexx
Coral - In the Morning
Delgados - The Light Before We Land
Mogwai - Two Rights Make One Wrong

My victims. Let's see your JACK:

LadyLitBlitzin
Jeff
David
Crumblord
Hebdomeros
Kevin

Webfessional

What is your postsecret?

Handsome Devil

Here is a link to all of the cover stars from all of the singles and albums released by the Smiths.

Reality Bites

K and I stumbled upon the premiere of The Real World VIII: Austin last night after the ball game. I'm not a big fan of the reality universe in general and had stopped watching Real World back at Hawaii, but after teasing glimpses of normalcy on Real World VII: Philadelphia, last season, I thought, what the heck. Besides, Austin has a great indie music scene and progressive values that seem to be the antithesis of the rest of the state. Surely something interesting will come of their existence there.

Am I a prude?

Sure, the shows are heavily edited to provide titillating content. I mean, the cast memebers probably talked about studying Russell's paradox, their work in the Peace Corp, and how to solve the blight of inner cities, right? I'm sure it all got edited out. Instead, what were we subjected to in the first hour of real-world madness? Everyone, within five minutes of getting to the house, talked about with whom they wanted to hook up. Within a few hours, they were drunk and scantily clad. Within two days, there had already been a fistfight outside a bar, with one RW member requiring surgery to pull out the impacted bone in his orbital socket.

I'm sure our discussions revolved around similar topics as freshman or sophomores in college, but everything in the show just seemed so high school. This morning, I visited to some of the popular RW message boards online to get viewers' takes of the premiere. Surely, like me, they thought VIII was the lamest ever.

Wrong.

"Best show ever!" They gushed. "So and so is cool and crazy." "So and so is crazy and cool." "So and so is hot and crazy and cool." Are these the only words in the young adult lexicon these days? How did these kids get past the verbal portion of their SATs?

I know these kids are young and will grow up and have real issues, but let's stop being polite and start being real, okay? These kids will never be people with whom I identify. We will never have similar existentialist crises whether at 25, 35, or 85. These kids will graduate onto other, "adult," reality shows, for sure, but they will be shows such as Fear Factor and, if they happen to procreate, Nanny 911. Why isn't there a reality show that reflects the lives of me and my friends? It wouldn't be boring. Sex and drama and drunkeness for eighteen episodes is boring. Complexity in life is not boring, even if it's an episode on someone struggling with debt or with the decision to make a drastic job change or to have kids. Sorry, if the Real World is indicative of some real cultural undercurrent to which I am not a part, I'd rather remain here in fantastyland any day.

Capturing History

We just got back from a long weekend at Gettysburg. I'm kind of a history geek and K is an avid ghost hunter, so Gettysburg offered the best of both worlds for us. Of course, both elements receive varying amounts of overkill in the town, judging by the number of tours and gift shops, but the idea of Gettysburg is really fascinating to me from a fiction standpoint. Here was a tiny town (pop. 2000?) of modest ambition suddenly overtaken by the blood and sweat of 150,000 men for three short days and now, almost 150 years later, is still saturated in it, drowns itself in it. There is no future there, only history. It is a photograph, an imprint, and the people who live in the town either hold the picture up proudly or get crushed by it.

Anyway, I've got some kind of story swirling around in my head but haven't grasped the particulars yet aside from a couple of paragraphs jotted down in haste: someone trapped in a history that is not hers. Maybe even just titled "History." We'll see.

In addition to the story, the reams of history, and the crisp new copy of Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage I picked up at our B&B's bookshop, I spotted a lot of interesting birds (my new hobby) in the fields and surrounding woods: a red-winged blackbird, a black-capped chickadee, a ton of sparrows, and my prize jewel, the eastern bluebird, which looks like a cross between an indigo bunting and a robin.

As for K, she took well over 200 pictures and did turn up some ghostly orbs in a good deal of them. There wasn't much action at the "haunted" B&B we stayed in, Gettysbury College, or the battlefields at daylight, but K did find a lot of paranormal stuff in the basement of the old oprhanage (now the Civil War Soliders Museum), so she's stoked.

Even if you're not a fan of history, the paranormal, or birds, Gettysburg is a striking town: manicured, quiet, quaint, fragrant, picturesque. It is worth one weekend or a thousand.

The Sound of Sappy

While Jeff has reminded me that I have yet to get a snowball this season, I have been busy indulging in other gulity pleasures, like downloading old Duran Duran (not the hits but the long, indulgent pieces full of bad Simon LeBon poetry) and Sunny Day Real Estate songs (there, I've said it: there's emo in the house). I'm not sure what my worst musical indulgence is; I like so many weird things I can usually justify it being on my mp3 player. In fact, the worst things on my player now are Duran Duran's "Last Chance on the Stairway," a triumph of eighties synthesizers and John Hughes moviesque melodies, "The Reflex" (the horror!), and perhaps Killing Joke's "Eighties," if only because it sounds so dated. Once I had Justin Timberlake's "Body Rock," although I've never stooped to having a Britney Spears song. I always wonder what other people are listening to on their headphones on the gym and whether they would recoil in horror if it were somehow transmitted over the speaker system. Is there anything you're ashamed of loving but will gladly relate it on a public forum?

Beach Reads

Kudos to Salon for its Summer Reading Series. C and I were talking about this last week, kind of, about famous authors and what they're reading (for an example, check out Nick Hornsby's column in Believer magazine, "What I'm Reading"). But why famous authors? Why can't us not-so-famous authors or even nonauthors contribute? Do famous authors have better tastes, better influences, or just better luck? A small nitpick: why start out the series with a review of War and Peace? That's like drunken me, in my college years, always asking the party hosts to play Pink Floyd, aka instant party killer.

I Wanna Know What Love Is

I had a dream last night about someone who had a crush on me a while back. It was uncomfortable then, as he tore down my friends and relationships in the hope, I suppose, that I would come to my senses and see what I was missing with him, and it was similarly uncomfortable in the dream. To be fair to him, I know have acted similarly in the past. It's mind boggling when someone we see as a perfect fit doesn't feel the same way. Unfortunately, it seems to have a lot more to do with a certain look than it ever does with personality or beliefs or what have you.

I've always theorized that our hormones decide with whom we fall in love. We want to propagate our genes, and they're looking for the robust, good-looking, healthy types. The Brad Pitts, not Sid Vicious.

But I know that not to be entirely true. I know some people replay their first parental relationships and fall in love, because their fathers treated them like shit, with Sid Vicious over and over again, the never-ending rehabilitation project.

If hormones explain the good-looking types and environment explains the emotional type of crush, how to explain people who only fall in love with skinny guys or girls who look like Angelina Jolie? Did they mate with a similar-looking person in a previous life and are subconsciously trying to reunite with them?

I also think we fall in love with people because we think they're perfect for us. For instance, the guy in my dream—he didn't really know me, and he never will. He only loved his idea of me, how I'd complement him if we were together. But he had no idea how we'd actually be together. We sense, if our crushes only change a little, bend here and there, that they will be perfect. We're always willing to take the risk.

But why? We fall in lust with strangers everyday. What does it mean? Why and how does anybody ever fall in love at all? I don't understand love, and I never will. Regardless of how real or fake it is, we'll do so many stupid things for it and it hurts so bad when it's not returned. Dear reader, I wanna know what love is. I want you to tell me.

It's Scholastic!

Finally, after months of delay, C, LadyLitBlitz, and I had dinner! It was great to see LLB again after several years' lapse. I am happy to report she looks the same as when we last parted, that is, during college. Some people just age well, and LLB is one of them. It took C and I about an hour each way to get to the restaurant, so we had a lot to talk about, mostly books and literature. It reminded me of how much I have fallen behind in my reading over the years and how many great books are out there that I've been wanting to read. I doubt there will ever be enough time to read them all, but I will try to make a dent before my time is up and, if I'm lucky, maybe I'll contribute a few of my own to the publishing ranks.

So now I'm way excited about reading again. It reminds me of when I was in grade school—every time the Scholastic Book Club catalog came out, I had to order at least one book. There was no way all those books were going to get past me. It didn't matter that I was the biggest nerd ever. The thought of all those crisp, new Scholastic books on their way to our school, stuffed with free Clifford and Little House on the Prairie posters, was my drug. And so it is again. Library, here I come!

We Are Live!

The Summer issue of JMWW is up! Enjoy.

Da Family

K, L, and I spent the weekend in Philly for Phillygirl's bachelorette party/bridal shower. We've anticipated the event for weeks, wondering whether "da family" would be as advertised. First off, we did some spa stuff at a salon in the northern suburbs of Philly, where Phillygirl's extended family has moved recently from the city. Lest you think loud, brash Italianess is confined to Phillygirl's family, the salon was full of Phillygirls getting their weekly waxing, manicures, pedicures, or facials. I was fully expecting Marissa Tormei to walk in at any moment or perhaps that we were on the set of My Cousin Vinny's Big Fat Wedding.

Onto the the cookout at Phillygirl's aunt's house, where we met her assorted cousins and aunts and Aunt Pat. Although I am not sure how we came on the subject of female body hair, Aunt Pat informed us toward the end of the cookout that her south pole has lost tufts of hair recently. Our code for her thereafter was Patches. Not to be outdone, Phillygirl showed us her newly waxed south pole at her mother's house because, she explained, "it looks fuckin' good." Phillygirl's mom, who looks to be in her forties but sounds about eighty, a result of her fierce smoking habit, appeared and told her to get her fat ass off the floor and downstairs. Little did she realize that L was lying on the floor, not Phillygirl. Alas, embarrasment is not a word in the family lexicon.

L had a headache, which had nothing to do with, I'm guessing, the volume or velocity at which Phillygirl's family engages in conversation. It was less conversation that a verbal free-for-all which, of course, a soft talker like me just hands out shower towels to the real athletes. Anyway, L took an Advil, an aspirin, and a Percocet courtesy of the family pharmacy. She threw up a few hours later, but for those blissful few hours, she was headache-free.

After we settled, the bridal shower guests showed up. We were disappointed that Patches did not attend. Phillygirl's Dad cooked three huge bowls of meatball/sausage spaghetti. Phillybirl opened more gifts, and the subject turned to breasts and nasty women who were not present, you know, the usual girl stuff. K and I went to bed early, and then the next day we sauntered into Philly for a few touristy things. My highlight? Cerealities, a restaurant on the UPenn campus that serves only breakfast cereal. I had a custom box of cereal made to go, which consists of equal parts Count Chocula, Trix, Kix, Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Oat Squares, Apple Jacks, and Froot Loops. It is the bomb. I hope I don't lapse into a diabetic coma today. After lunch, L and Phillygirl went to the Mütter Museum of Medical Oddities, but K and I had to get back to Baltimore before the pharmacy closed. Phillygirl joined us later in the evening for crabs on the deck. It was a somehow fitting end to the weekend, although if I hear about body parts, body processes, or the phrases "beating my ear off" or "monkey arms" again, it will be too soon.

Fisher-Price Superstar

I had a dream the other night that I was in a mall with my family and one of the stores we passed housed a weird church. My family wasn't interested in going inside, but I decided to take a peek, as it was set up caberet style with a stage in the far back. They were doing some time of musical review, and I noticed, much like in some plays, the actors were actually staked out in the audience and would join the action onstage at specific times. However, these planted actors weren't people—they were poorly constructed automatons that reminded me of the Fisher-Price Adventure People from the seventies. They even had painted, plastic hair.

Anyway, I convinced my family to come in and watch the show, if only for its craziness. There was even a automaton sitting next to us at our table! Eventually we left, and I brought home a small shoebox with plastic parts in it. Later, in my kitchen, I noticed there was movement within the box, movement in the form of a chocolate-colored mouse and a small grey one. There was also a glass of water with small red and purple octopi the size of M&Ms. I remember thinking to myself, "that crazy church is trying to mess with life." Anyway, I really wanted the plastic parts for some unknown reason, so I took the box outside, placed it on the ground, and carefully picked the pieces out, leaving the mice and octopi inside.

I'm not sure what this has to do with stem cell research or my often close-minded opinion of church devotees. The oddest thing about the dream, however, was that from my reading of How the Mind Works, that the hardest thing in robotics is to create robots that walk like humans. In fact, it's not certain whether this will ever be feasible because of the hundreds of muscles we use to balance ourselves while walking. Therefore, why would I dream about something I know not to be true, in funky old Fisher-Price-looking robots at that? I guess you have to believe in the power or miracles. Or the power of Fisher-Price

The Quiet Life

I was prepared for another racuous holiday weekend in Canton, but it was surprisingly quiet, peaceful, with most of the obnoxious Cantonite neighors away somewhere else. I was talking to a school friend at another school friend's cookout, and she lamented the fact that our society has gotten too materialistic, that she longed for a simpler life for her children. God, I could just hug her. I have felt that way for so long, without any outward signals from anyone else, that I just assumed I was alone in my yearning for a peaceful, simpler life. I tire of living in Canton, hearing about the spiffy new cars people want to buy, the catalog orders from LL Bean and Lands End, the lack of sustenance in conversation about anything except what one had for dinner at the Bay Cafe. I just want to move out of the city, in a house away from everyone, where I can hear the crickets at night and watch the birds in trees during the day, but I am spoiled, so spoiled. In the city I can walk to the grocery store, to the bank, to the video store, to Subway, to the gym if we changed gyms, to the park, to eat. I don't want to realize at 8:30 on a Wednesday night that we're out of milk and I need to drive out and get some if I'm going to eat breakfast the next day.

We watched Sideways as our end-of-the-holiday movie. So many people are so-so about it, but I really liked it. It was much funnier than I expected.