What I Learned from the Teevee : Family Film Edition

How does it feel to win the Uh Huh Her SXSW Fan Video Contest? Well, after a long day of fielding press requests and receiving Edible Arrangements, I can say: I feel like a pineapple in the shape of a flower. That's how I feel. Speaking of flowers: I am the flower and I want you to know how thankful I am that you helped me to grow. I once was a seed so deep in a pot, but with sunshine and rain, I grew up a lot, I sprouted these petals, so fragrant and GAY, to garden your hearts, and brighten your day.

B. asks: "Did you have any, you know, prior interest? In China?"

"Actually YES," I reply, "I've been interested in China ever since I saw Big Bird Goes to China, one of my favorite movies of all time. I watched that movie like twenty times, when I wasn't watching my other favorite movie The Wizard of Oz. OMG Snuffalupagus!"

I believe that Big Bird Goes to China was a television event rather than a traditional "film," but its quality exceeds the inherent limitations of its format. The performances are so strong, the narrative so engaging, that even were one to watch it on a Zune, it'd feel like IMAX. I feel I could drink milk off this child's skin, and it would be sweeter than normal milk and it wouldn't be weird that I wanted to do that instead of using a cup or a glass.

My childhood fascination with China originated in the following feelings: 50% Big Bird, 50% Sweet & Sour Chicken. Clearly as a pup I hadn't yet experienced the horrors of food poisoning, which're now so near & dear to me that I no longer eat meat from Chinese restaurants. Nor had I grown up and discovered that Big Bird isn't real, just like how Tinkerbell and democracy aren't real, either.

Furthermore, On Sunday I was thinking about how it's entirely possible that my formative desire to one day seek the bright lights of NYC was 50% Broadway, 50% Muppets Take Manhattan. Although I wasn't allowed to watch teevee, we had a VCR and often went to the movies with our Fig Newtons & juice boxes, and I'm 90% sure that most of my ideas about life come from kids movies. Thus today's special topic: "What I Learned [About How to Live my Life] from the Teevee: Family Film Edition."

The original mission of this segment, rambled on about in its first installment, (covering West Wing and The L Word) was somehow related to whatever I thought I was talking about when I "wrote" this paragraph of excellence:

I think the best television writers are also artists/educators, not just comedians/entertainers. Usually they're smarter than their shows imply [unless it is Alan Ball, Aaron Sorkin or Jim Henson, they have smart shows]. That's why TV writers're always dropping allusions to high art, to remind us of their literacy. Nietzsche must've done a triple-somersault in his grave, Mary Lou Retton style, when Jenny Schecter announced on The L Word that her story, "Thus Spoke Sara Schuster" had been published in The Best American Short Stories [Totally impossible, unless the guest editor was Ryan Seacrest or a chimpanzee.] Later, this became just one element of the glory which is Jenny's on-screen literary career, which is one of many reasons why I heart The L Word and it's strange little world of magic and make-believe.

Um, okay. I also did a Second Istallment focusing on the educational merits of The Real World, My So-Called Life, and Queer as Folk.

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Androgyny Rocks!

The Labyrinth frightened me on many levels. Howevs, David Bowie's androgyny wasn't scary at all, it was like "ground control to Ree-Ree!" I think my desire to date boyish girls isn't really David Bowie's fault though, it's probably more related to my deep affinity to Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. JK, she was like, 10 or something:

Riese, Scout (L to R)
[Actually, there's much better combos of me/scout photos that exist to prove my point, but I don't feel like looking through my photos right now, 'cause I'm trying to be efficient, like a Chinese person, to get practice.]
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The Best Solution to any serious problem is to read a book, 'cause then you'll get sucked into the story and save Fantasia, etc.

I love that writers -- by nature, 'cause they're always readers themselves -- write about nerdy kids who get to crawl into books to escape their life of outcast-hood (See also: A Princess Bride). I still try crawling into books now, except I don't wanna play in 'em anymore, 'cause I'd probs crawl into a lot of tense relationship moments between: 1) Lesbians, 2) Sad/anxious people in cities, 3) Sad/contemplative/drinking heavily people in the midwest, 4)Sad/demented people in the suburbs, 5)Sad/Soulless/Money-worshipping people in L.A., 5)Straight girls and a lesbians, 6) Nate & Blair, 7) Mr. Wind-Up Bird and May Kashara. Obvs, I'd still like to believe that at any moment, if I hitch onto the right story, I could possibly save the world -- that flying begins with a pull, proceeds with a push, and breaks into smooth blue trailsmoke, leaving a momentary but dramatic impact on the sky.

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Being an Orphan and/or Stranded on a Desert Island is endless amounts of ass-kicking, treehouse-building, limb-climbing fun: Swiss Family Robinson, Apple Dumpling Gang
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I spoke of Disneyworld, Swiss Family Robinson house, yes?

This is Where The Swiss Family Robinson once lived.

One day, they'll make The Boxcar Children into a movie (I'm sure they already have, but obvs it wasn't good enough for me to know about it) and then you're all gonna have serious fantasies about totally terrible tragedies that enable you to move to the trees, like Julia Butterfly, who I've also mentioned before. She is the girl that lived in the tree so they wouldn't cut it down, which I think is always a good solution to keep something around: move into it and build bridges and beds inside of it, then it can't leave you without breaking more things than you think can be broken. The results of this strategy have been, throughout time; mixed.

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Decision to move to New York filled with big dreams about making it there & consequently everywhere, etc. The Muppets Take Manhattan

No post-college ennui film (it's its own genre now) comes close to matching The Muppets Take Manhattan's accuracy: its bright-eyed idealism and complicated self-justifications, its shitty jobs & traffic accidents & broken dreams & dysfunctional relationships & the angst, oh, the angst of all its thwarted shots at fame! The naivite -- did they really think a Broadway producer would suddenly pick up their hometown hit musical Manhattan Melodies, without even a connection? We've all got our own Manhattan Melodies, you know, whether it be a book or a dream job, and so our hearts yearn for the troop when they bust into the agent's office, sans-appointment, belting out their opening number.

Any NYC Apartment search veteran does the math when the gang holes up in Grand Central's lockers (25 cents an hour, times 24 hours, times seven days ... midtown, shared bath, not too much crack ... best deal EVER!)
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"Saying Goodbye," though I doubt it touched me then, makes me cry now -- the lyrics really hit home, like a good Ani DiFranco tune. JK! (I mean, that's true, for me, but not for most other grown women not existing in a 1996 time-warp like I am)
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Then Kermie goes to the top of a super tall building, I think, right? And looks out over the city, tries to remember why he came. But he misses everyone a whole bunch. On youtube this sequence is in Portuguese, one of a handful of languages I'm not fluent in.

Miss Piggy's mugged in central park and snaps like we've all snapped -- becomes a monster on roller skates, anxious to retrieve her bag of discarded jewelery, makeup and pantyhose. People would ask if I worried about getting mugged in Spanish Harlem but I wasn't. What would they take? Lip gloss? I was broke with no money in the bank, or in my wallet, my credit cards were maxed out, my ID wouldn't even get you a rental car (I had three moving violations) and I doubt it'd be a viable fake for anyone liable to mug me in the first place.

Kermit's first restaurant job -- the one he accepts, regretfully, while waiting to make it -- again, so relatable. We know his bright-eyed coworker, she's the typified young actress, struggling through school and smiling like a critterish little milkmaid (she's defo got a spot on Top 100 Critters) while she makes bacon for people with real jobs.

And the letter montage! When all the friends split up 'cause they're all out of cash, they need cheaper rents & resume-boosting jobs? And then they all write to Kermit, who's sitting in the diner probs thinking "Sheesh, it's not easy being green." While he's reading, we see each character in his actual environment which of course bears no resemblance whatsoever to their normal lives. E.g., a minimum-wage ticket-taking job at a movie theater becomes a "Hollywood position." 'Cause they should all just tell each other the truth: this isn't going how I planned it, either. Forgive me, I dream the impossible dream, when I close my eyes it's all very clear and when I open them I run into a wall. Literally, metaphorically, all of it.

Then Kermie sells out, obvs, 'cause he got amnesia from getting hit by a car (SPOILER ALERT!), and he becomes like everyone else who dress the same and even all have the same names.

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I don't remember the next part but obviously they all reunite and they get the show on stage and they are a smash success and then Kermit and Miss Piggy (who're basically like the Bette and Tina of the Muppets) fall in love, pick up Angelica from Playgroup and get married, a ceremony I've cited in the past as being much like my wedding might be if I decided to throw a wedding as a joke or something. (Or if someone gets suckered into spending forevs & evs with me.)

Anyhow they all achieve their dreams obvs, just like I will, and also, so will all my friends.
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A bowl cut (w/hoodie and/or t-shirt, sneakers, jeans) never goes out of style: E.T., Flight of the Navigator, The Neverending Story, etc

I'm not lying, lately when I look in the mirror I think "I have 80's sci-fi children's movie lead male protagonist hair." My number two feeling is usually Ringo Starr.

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Developing Close Relationships with Stuffed Animals:
Toy Story, Indian in the Cupboard, Babes in Toyland

As the entire world knows since WE WON THE FUCKING UH HUH HER CONTEST SO ROVE ON ROVERMOM, ROVE ON!!!, Tinkerbell is not a real dog. Honestly though, having Tinkerbell makes me really wish I had a real dog, 'cause she's so cute. You should see her cute little face in the morning when she wants to play. JK, I haven't totally lost my mind. I have a lot of ideas about art as life and the difference between characters and real people and how we turn people into characters and what it means to have a cyber-personality and a real one and what real is and what truth is and what art is and so on so and somehow the existence of Tinkerbell is related to something profound I've yet to reveal/discover. But also I'm 35% positive she'll be coming to life, and then we can go on adventures. We are going to be Best in Show. Clearly Tinkerbell is excited to go China, she's already learned the word for "dinosaur."

Sunday Top Ten: You Pack Your Bags You Say I Love You But I Cannot Stay [City Girl: The Sequel]

So! Here we are in the clear -- that promised no-L Word land where Sunday Top Tens drop on Sundays ('cause of the Lord, obvs) and other blog posts appear more frequently. Yet I've spent four days attempting to write a fantastic mind-blowing blog post to initiate this new era, and now it's Sunday, and this is what I've accomplished: about two solid hours of staring at the wall, ten separate and equally unfruitful attempts to begin cleaning my room, twenty re-applications of eyeliner and/or blush (v. important when sitting alone at one's desk all day), approximately 300 check-ups on the youtube uhhatsxsw group boards, twentysomething sitemeter checks and subsequent track-downs of referring forum message posts, about two solid hours of staring at the floor, maybe 20 emails max, serious analysis of my hamstring/glute/cellulite development (and subsequent thoughts about my possible insanity), 60 changes from sweatpants to jeans and back again, massive french fry/cheeseburger/chicken fingers/eggs consumption, the installation of my new printer software and! This sentence! -- written (I believe) almost entirely in the passive voice (big no-no).

'Cause I think I've gotten to that point ... the point where when you take "all potential material" and then subtract "material I've already blogged about," "material I'm using in my book" and "material I can't talk about" ... you get ... um. Not a whole lot left to say. Let's say this is a sequel to this.

I keep ditching blogs after a few hours of work on them, which's exhausting. So I'm gonna go ahead with this one, despite urges to delete it and start over. This blog has no cohesive thought pattern. It's mostly a memoir, and it goes from nowhere to nowhere by claiming to be about somewhere. Next week I'm gonna use one of your topics.

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Here's the idea; I'm doing a reading on April 17th at Happy Endings -- I'll be reading, with Stephanie Whited, "Fucking Around" (the original -- I did a "Fucking Around 2: Local Edition" for the reading in September), which appears in the new book Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women. Are you COMING TO THE READING? Buying the book?!!! If you don't, I'm never talking to you again. Put it on your calender STAT.

So when I re-visited the story -- which personifies cities -- before sending it to Stephanie, and also when I was doing the interview, I was thinking about Place. Travel. And so on ... 'cause I've been a little jetsetter in '08 ... and, I'm looking for good travel essays to read, do you know of any good travel writers? Gimme some leads ... I'm trying to figure out a good angle for a piece about an upcoming trip and I don't know where to begin.

Usually too much traveling stresses me out (see; last year in which I didn't even board an airplane). But during my Agoraphobic Zen Meditation Gestation Period last fall, I became a monk with no attachment to this home and therefore I'm freewheelin'.

At the same time ... Haviland's gonna stay in L.A. for a few more months; she loves it. When I met Carly she was aiming to relocate to L.A. within a year -- instead, she's moving into her first Manhattan apartment this week. A;ex and Natalie are both looking for more permanent Manhattan residences. After many months away, Heather's back in the city, stage managing on Broadway.

And for the first time since moving here four years ago; I'm taking a serious break -- I'll be out of the city for most of the next two months. I will return like The Shining.

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"New York fucks me. New York fucks me so hard that I cry."
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I'm thinking about why I'm still here, and where else I've been. I'm thinking if I could be anywhere else, and if so when and how. I'm thinking about my friends settling in here or moving, and about every landscape I've resided in besides New York -- places I know not by choice but by circumstance -- and how different it feels to be where we want to be instead of where we've been born, or schooled. I'm wondering when my number one attachment to the city stopped being the city itself and started being the people living here.

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"Here I arrive there."
(Galway Kinnel, "The Road Between Here and There.")
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Me: I told New York I was going to start seeing other places.
New York: You'll come back.
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SUNDAY TOP TEN: WHERE I'M CALLING FROM
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10. Presently: New York As a girl; I believed everyone -- literally, everyone -- wanted to live in New York.

It seemed inherently better; brighter lights, bolder songs, deeper & more dramatic love affairs, loftier careers, sharper children, more dramatic art. I didn't think everyone would move there -- or even try to -- only that it was, like a tropical beach w/palm tree or Prince(ss) Charming -- something most everyone enjoyed dreaming of.

I grew up and realized that wasn't true ... but still I cannot, to this day, recall how I even got the idea that I wanted to live here, it's just always been that way. Was it someone else's idea, related to wanting to be an actress, or to the Muppets or YA novels? Does anyone remember? Do you?

I envy those with roots and inertia, those who've been someplace and stayed, or stayed close, who haven't needed to get away and reinvent and leave leave leave leave all the time, or move someplace where you can initiate a do-over without switching cities.

December 2003, Michigan, out for drinks with MacGrill friends & talking about the city to a coworker who told me she'd always wanted to visit NYC, that she envied my plans to move there ... She'd been living in the same small town in Michigan all her life, she said, and hadn't ever given much thought to leaving. I asked why, she said, "Well, I just can't imagine going anywhere else, this is where my family is," and then I thought, maybe that's the thing that separates people who move to cities from those that don't. We, for whatever reason, don't feel tethered to our family or community. There's nothing keeping us where we started from, or there's something even stronger than that (I'm thinking now of specific dreams) pulling us away.

9. Recently

Los Angeles

Over the past few months I've spent time in Miami, Orlando, Los Angeles and Austin, and though I found the weather more pleasant everywhere else, and Austin's scored vibe is probs healthier than NYC's chaotic reverb ... still, this city's made me a masochist to feel worthy of its streets, trains, secrets ... and I don't know if I could ever find a relationship this intense anywhere else. Nevertheless, I didn't want to come home when I was gone, but I think that's 'cause vaycay's always more fun than actual life, even if you live in New York.

Specifically, Miami and Los Angeles -- while super-fun to visit -- felt like skating a shiny expensive surface, flexibility relative to muscle, and everyone smiling about it, like obeying a different kind of ethos, like a sports car or a smile from a cashier or like songs about music. The sky/landscape is beautiful in those places but ... I prefer regions beneath surface: things you've burned and why, when and how you let go of pride, who you wish had never seen you cry, but did, what makes you wet, what's the first thing you do after leaving your office that you can't do while you're inside it.

Miami was one of the highlights of my year, but I knew I could never live there after that terrible season of The Real World.

Orlando

If you're a non-native New York resident who's involved in the arts, you have an implicated relationship to Los Angeles because we choose to live here, not there. But also; I know its representations better than it's actuality. The cycle of beach-going, expensive clothes shopping, and romantic drama typified in Beverly Hills 90210, The O.C. and South of Nowhere. Six Feet Under is set in L.A., but I always forgot that it was -- sometimes it felt like it could be any reasonably large city. The L Word, obvs, in West Hollywood.

Austin: will do in a pinch. Is flat and hot and relentlessly wide-open and soothing like a third drink. Reminds me of other places I could imagine raising a family: Berkley, Madison, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Burlington, Athens, Brooklyn. Seems it would be pleasant but it's in Texas, I'm not a Southern girl, I hate the heat. Also ... Austin doesn't humble me and make me want to give up every day -- like New York does -- which is how I check myself to see how bad I still want it.

8. Ann Arbor, MI (81-90) (92-97)/(00-01)(01-04)
"Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication amongst themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voice's accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place."
-Italo Calvino, "Cities & Memory 5," Invisible Cities
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The house I grew up in 'til 1994

I've lived so many lives there (divided neatly by unexpected tragedy), the town's almost amorphous to me. Most just know the University of Michigan. I'm always qualifying when I speak of my roots -- not that Midwest, you know, it's Ann Arbor. It's a college town. Not a suburb, really, no ... but no gun racks either. And going to University there; that was another town, too. I watched Sex and The City DVDs and waited to return. Ann Arbor wants you to like it, just the way it is, and however it may become.

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7. Ypsilanti, MI ('02)

Never had a chance with me. Is sprawl, is grey, feels sad or disappointed sometimes. In middle school, we'd played East and West, Ypsilanti's public schools, in basketball, they crushed us every time.

A decade later, when I started working at the MacGrill (while at U of M) out by the US-23 exit, I started hanging out with kids who lived there, mostly Eastern Michigan students, and eventually ended up living there w/my annoying boyfriend.

A few blocks down from our wall-to-wall cream-carpeted home (in its mind-numbing housing development) was a strip mall featuring Wal-Mart AND Big Lots, and this is what I did when feeling empty: bargain hunt. Such satisfaction. Driving, picking up Subway sandwiches, taking Oscar outside, grocery shopping, commuting, getting the mail, getting yelled at. People in Ypsilanti were always saying they'd get a raise soon, were never paid what they needed, or already need.

Ypsi's not sure who it wants to be -- a hip downtown but also rows and rows of sprawling strip malls on all sides with stores like Honeybaked Ham, Ace Hardware, Burlington Coat Factory. Then there's campus and the world-famous Penis Tower, historic Depot Town. There's where I was elbowed in the eye.

It's hard to have an affair in Ypsilanti, but I did, so maybe it wasn't. There's an abandoned paper mill and a body of water, we could sit there and kiss. We told each other all our secrets while the sun set. Then I could drive him home, and then go home to my mean boyfriend, make dinner, clean, stand wistfully on the tiny balcony littered with Oscar's abandoned stuffed paramours he'd humped to death, look at the tiny yard we'd selected. That little yard, and the trees behind it ... felt pathetic. My co-hab wouldn't leave me, so I left him. I felt he'd almost fooled me into giving up New York for the suburbs, I felt like I'd been hypnotized.

Leaving him felt a lot like being elbowed in the eye. But no: that was just his knuckles, our cheap white walls.

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6. Bronxville, NY (Sarah Lawrence College) (Fall '99)

It's all hills, and then the wind like a long flat slap in the face. I was acutely sad there and so I remember the village like that too (but moreso: like the pamphlets sent by SLC) ... tired, hungry (for many things including food) -- but neatly dressed, well organized, by all appearances functional ... the scent of chlorine upon my skin. Bronxville is aggressively quaint. I wished I was in the city, hated the past for being past, hated myself and my shin splints, my overpriced education, coming back on weekends. Many of my friends stayed in their dorms 24-7, eating Rice-a-Roni in bed & watching Radiohead videos, but I explored -- running in the mornings, studying in town at night, and all the walks from the Metro-North. It was beautiful, Bronxville, but while I was there I wasn't in the habit of paying attention to beauty.

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5. Interlochen, MI (97-99)

"My present world was always, in its mildness, a little disappointing. I've never since Ault been in a place where everyone wants the same things; minus a universal currency, it's not always clear to me what I myself want. And anyway, no one's watching to see whether or not you get what you're after -- if at Ault I'd felt mostly unnoticed, I'd also, at certain moments, felt scrutinized. After Ault, I was unaccounted for."
(Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep)

Is love. Or what I knew of it: The Academy. We paid attention to poetry and our desperately important selves. Isolation breeds delusions of grandeur, which is a good thing when applied to insecure & depressive teenagers. It was cold & wooded, but we never had to walk far and besides -- we were kids dreaming of NYC and L.A. But the secure fleeting woods are magical, like Hogwarts. It was by definition temporary. My New York dreams grew specific: I only applied to schools in NYC or the surrounding area. Everyone I knew would be there, or close. It was the only place to go.

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4. Concord, MA (1990)

The Old North Bridge! The Alcott House! Walden Pond! Concord has enough past, it's not worried about the future. This town is America. People should visit Concord instead of NYC, they'd find America on the whole much more pleasant. I can't go back there. I think the first time I saw NY was passing through on our way here, the first time.

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3. Champaign, IL (1981)

September, 1981, the father & mother bring their daughter home from the hospital. Because the mother & father are opposites, their daughter will grow up as opposites (but both sides firmly within her). Outside, the leaves are crispy red & gold and in the daytime, college students in bright orange sweatshirts walk past dutifully with books and at night, they stumble past, drunk and happy. The father reads out loud to his daughter from accounting text books, employing a exciting rise and lilt of the voice. And the daughter listens and believes it. Yes, stock analysis is a fairy tale! There'll be treasure at the end! The parents are in love first with the baby and by default (also from history's account), one another. They have routines by this point, yes? Familiar kisses, the familiar motions of everything. Like everything, if you say it right (and smiling), is that kind of fairy tale.

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2. Chicago, IL

Mom grew up here and describes an adolescence spent on street corners; all red hair, all attitude and teenage rebel scoff, cigarette dangling from unimpressed hand. We'd go see family there, sometimes, it was a default location for vacations or runaway fantasies. Now, Chicago is the home of Ingrid, my ex-boyfriend, Oprah and NPR. When I visited my ex in Chicago in the summer of '05 while passing through, I emerged from the Amtrak station onto familiar streets and realized I've been here a million gazillion times, but I've never given it much thought.

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1. East Clinton, Ohio

I romanticize the farm. I've set too many short stories in Wilmington or Sabina, exploited its heartland and the wholesome American lifestyle I imagined my family lived there (and my father had lived) until we grew up and everything fell apart. I know this place better than anywhere, have returned at least annually since birth, and write about it so much that people often get confused and think I'm from Ohio. I'm not I would've been entirely different. There were pictures like these, of my father's childhood, which he made mythical, just like I do to my own.

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New York: I haven't slept in like, three days.
Me: Do you want to do this later, then?
New York: Why? No, of course not. What are we waiting for?
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Friday night Carly was DJ'ing a party in the East Village at Beauty Bar so Alex and I pre-partied at Lucky Cheng's, "drag queen capital of the world," one of many New York attractions that neatly straddles terrible/AMAZING, which's the best way to be, because you're not too full of either. You can't hear yourself talk there 'cause the drag queens are yelling about giving fake blow jobs to bachelors and bridesmaids who're all drinking from gigantic tubs of fruity liquor. Our server reminded Alex of her alter ego, Chi Chi Rodriguez. It's like Disneyworld with drag queens instead of cartoon characters.

We even stayed at Beauty Bar after Carly left 'cause the next DJ was playing hot music too. That's right: I actually danced. "Danced." Surrounded by weirdos -- a sausage fest, some bitches, a few other homos -- but wtf, who cares, it's New York, a new layer on top of the old -- --

a birthday party there in 2000, with Sarah Lawrence friends, who I'd expected to hate now that I was living in the city but no -- out of context, I realized they were all quite lovely. It wasn't them after all, it was just Bronxville, and how I felt in Bronxville. The hulking, well-lipsticked drag queens petted and solicited and harassed, it was so gaudy, so disgusting, so tourist-oriented, so fucking beautiful.

The reason I'd gone to Manhattan in the first place in 2000 was because I needed to get over it so that I could handle going home for a more affordable education. I'd been dreaming of it since East Clinton, since before my Mom met my Dad, since before Chicago and Champaign, Concord, Ann Arbor, Ypsi, Bronxville, and before during and after those cities ... my twentysomething change-of-address forms.

But lately I've felt like claiming an allegiance for this city is like telling someone about a perverse sexual fetish, like it's fallen out of fashion (though it's always been popular to hate on).

But when I venture out of my hostile neighborhood and into the parts of the city that feel like the place I signed up for, I do still have moments of feeling like Belle in Beauty and the Beast ... like I might start hurling loaves of bread into the air ... like I've gone batshit on everyone and now I'm singing to birds landing on my fingertips.

"I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel ... and really didn't know who I was for ten strange seconds."
-Jack Kerouac
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When I left New York after my first residency here, I was tired of the city and so I spent the summer on the West Coast -- Seattle, Vancouver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berkley. I returned to the city the next summer, then back to Michigan.

Over the next two months, I'll be spending more time away from here than I've done since moving here in 2004. I wonder how that's gonna feel.

My roots will stay here, and I don't know why really, maybe it's perverted or masochistic. But though I've spoken out against sunshine, I've never argued against perversion or masochism.

Never argued for anywhere else.

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"Here I must turn around and go back and on the way back look carefully to left and to right. For here, the moment all the spaces along the road between here and there -- which the young know are infinite and all others know are not -- get used up, that's it."
-Galway Kinnell
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"New York is three hours late to meet me, like she didn't even miss me. Her eyes are green rimmed with red. She looks sick and devastating and gorgeous. Her nails are perfect and glossy. Later, she will use them to trace the entire length of my spine with a spotted trail of blood, like I did to Los Angeles, but this time I will like it and it will remind me of hearts and love."
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downtown nyc, nov.'05
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Auto-Fun of the Day:: 2-19-2008

Promise, I'll be putting up a real blog post super-soon. I was about to pass off the blame to Kick-Ass Fun, JetBlue, or Ilene Chaiken, but clearly it's my fault. I accept that. YES WE CAN.
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quote: "I hope you appreciate that I'm doing all my own stunts." (Kermit, to the Audience, The Muppet Movie)
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links: (1) Rosie on the recent L Word episode featuring a show called ... The Look (@rosie.com). (2) If I win, you'll get to see Lozo's goods, no lie: Totally Better Than a Dyke Duck (@WDWGDAB). (3) Beverly Clearly, my favorite author ever and the creator of my first fashion icon, Ramona Quimby, interviewed: Muse of Klickkat Street (@Oregon Live)

Sunday Top Ten: If You're Going to Hang Out, You Might As Well Hang Out AT THE MALL!

We went to the mall yesterday. You know, the mall? Where all the cool kids hang out, eating their Panda Express and getting Glamour Shots? The mall! The glorious Mall in New Jersey Somewhere! Upon entering I immediately exclaimed "I love the smell of commerce in the morning!" but I don't know if Hav or Cait got the reference, they probs thought I made it up, in which case they probs thought I was a very funny and creative person. In fact I'm not, after all, as I was quoting Mallrats (which was referencing Apocalypse Now, which was "adapted from" Conrad's Heart of Darkness.) AND believe it or not, this here is the tenth contestant in the "Sunday Top Ten Topic Contest" this week. I even considered doing a Sunday Top Ten of failed Sunday Top Ten topics, but I figured I'll save that winner for next week, or next year. I'm pretty sure I'll start thinking more clearly later this week, right now I feel all the ideas have been zapped from my head by Ilene Chaiken, my secret lover and BFF forevs. Also my flatiron died today and I'm probs more sad about that then any of you have ever been about your lesbian cat dying. How am I supposed to have hipster bangs without a hair iron?

Here's what we learned at the mall: we are OLD. You guys, we are really old, we are our grandmothers. We couldn't even be in Abercrombie for more than five seconds because not only did the entire place smell so much like a freshman frat party that we could barely breathe, but there was an impossibly thin little nymphette plucking around the store spraying even MORE Abercrombie cologne into the air, to maintain this sense memory atmosphere. And Hollister. Did I really shop here in college, and, if so, did I not feel a bit old? Hollister: the "California surf shack" exterior, the darkened windows, the emo music, the short-shorts. Haviland held up a pair and said, "These are boyshorts, right? These aren't actual shorts? Who wears this stuff?" I'll tell you who: the youth of America. That's how they get laid and do drugs, they just push the half-centimeter of fabric aside and they're ready for entrance, no need to disrobe. Look what happened to Jamie Lynn. We'd probs feel right at home at Talbot's or Ann Taylor with the rest of our age group.

The best part of our trip to The Mall was when this Kiosk woman asked Cait "Can I ask you a question?" and Cait was like "You just did," and just kept on walking. Anyhow, I love New Jersey Mall, 'cause it was mid-day on a Monday and so it was just us and the sweet smell of commerce. Also I love my friends, and I love my new sweatpants and they have in fact changed my life, I am approximately 10% happier than I was yesterday morning when I didn't have these sweatpants yet.

Anyhow, I used to really like the mall when I was actually a young person. I mean -- I used to think I liked the mall, just like I used to think I liked a lot of things that are embarrassing now, like chain wallets and boys who didn't wash their hair. We like, hung out there. Like it was our hangout.

SUNDAY TOP TEN: TOP TEN HANGOUTS

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10. The White Horse Tavern (The West Village):
When you're a little girl in the Midwest who dreams about New York, you dream about places like this. Once upon a time The White Horse Tavern was frequented by people like Dylan Thomas (who died there), Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac. Poor writers/starving artists can't afford West Village residences anymore, so The Tavern's become a tourist attraction. [UPDATE: Totally not. Totally still legit place to go, frequented by verified cool people, I have been alerted of this by more than one person.] I bet places like this still thrive like in Brooklyn but I'm guessing they're in an area of Brooklyn that requires transferring trains, which I clearly cannot do, as I am super busy. New York Magazine describes the WHT as "the nostalgic high temple of the Alcoholic Artist." Those are my people.

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9. The Hotel (Wherevs):
In junior high, hotel parties focussed on swimming, eating cake, and talking about boys. Sometime in late high school my friends started having a lot of "hotel parties" at the Wolverine Inn, a sketchy motel out by the freeway that seemed to take any business it could get, even large groups of rascaly 16-year-olds. My Mom the never let me go to any of these parties but that's OK, I had lots of fun at home staring at the ceiling fan, obviously.

But on Sunday night we had a hotel party and we agreed it reminded us a lot of high school parties, which is awesome, I like retroactive experience. Why'd we have a hotel party? Because Cait's 25th birthday cosmically coincided with The End of Les Misery Day and L Word Day! When Carly, Alex, Cait and I got to The W with our beer & carrots, remarkably only three hours behind schedule, the guy at the front desk was like "Any more than six people in that room is a disaster." We were like, fuck, because we're expecting about 30. (We didn't say that out loud, we said '10' and he shook his head and gritted his teeth like "prepare for SARS.") We were basically spooked into thinking that, were we to exceed capacity, we'd be eating each other's hair (and not in a good way, like how I want to eat Alice's hair) with our fingers up each other's butts and our elbows in each other's ears, and that security would march upstairs and murder us if we made any noise or if we were seen escorting many peoples up to our room. We panicked and started canceling the party but then we got to the room and were like, durr, it's totally fine. Then we drank some vodka and were like WHOOOO! It's TOTALLY FINE! and told everyone "JK" if they still wanted to come, and most of them did. Then we (Haviland, Cait, Carly, Alex, Myself & Ryan) had a slumber party which also reminded me of high school, with Carly and I playing the parts of the kids who keep talking really loud and making jokes while everyone else tries to sleep. Then the next day I went to Hollister and remembered that I am a dinosaur, not a high school student. Did you ever see that show "Dinosaurs" with the baby who hit his Dad on the head with a pan and went "Not the mama!" or whatevs? I loved that show. I was talking about it while we were at the mall actually, in the convo about what shows Ree-Ree was allowed to watch as a baby. Really I'm just a fan of anything involving muppets. This paragraph no longer has anything to do with hangouts, although, actually, I would like to hang out in Fraggle Rock, given the chance.

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8. The Factory (East Midtown NYC):
When you're a little girl in the midwest who dreams about New York, you dream about places like this that no longer exist. Andy Warhol's legendary studio -- where he mass-produced silk screens and assembled a team of "Factory Superstars" to help create paintings and be in his films and contribute to the overall atmosphere of hipster genderfuck artist revolutionary drug addict totally fabulous awesome super-cool way-hot hot hot hot people doing Important Things with Art to Change the World. It's okay that it no longer exists though because if it existed now, it'd probs have a blog and then Gawker might make fun of it and then New York Magazine would write an article about Gawker making fun of the Factory blog and then all of our heads would explode and we could make a film about that and put it on YouTube and then we'd be famous for like 15 minutes, or whatevs.

---

Sidenote: I wonder if the concept of a concrete "hangout" has been displaced by the advent of cell phones. You know? Like now we can find out where our people are instantly, even when they're on the go, so we no longer need a common meeting place where it's likely you'll find the people you can't get ahold of at that moment. Does that make sense? Also, someone's cooking cheeseburgers outside and I want one even though I just had dinner.

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7. The Fleetwood (Ann Arbor):
This is like The Salt of The Earth Hangout: The Fleetwood was the bomb. It's a 24-hour greasy spoon diner -- and always the same kids outside late with their rusty trucks in the lot back behind the restaurant. Gross bathroom, mediocre food, bad service ... but also when we were teenagers it felt TOTALLY REAL AND LIKE HONEST. We felt like authentic punks sitting out there at 2 A.M., smoking cigarettes and eating ketchup-drenched french fries with the kids who wore leather jackets adorned with safety-pinned fabric scraps bearing Food Not Bombs and Anarchy logos and had pierced everything and dyed everything else. Maybe that's the essence of a Real Hangout -- defined by the patrons rather than the establishment itself.

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6. The Peach Pit (Beverly Hills obvs), and here's why:
a) Every every moment is a good time for a cheeseburger, even if you're 5'8 and 110 pounds -- a frame often suggestive of a more restrictive diet -- cheeseburger and fries, Nat, thank you. Deluxe. I want at least two animals killed to make this sucker. YUMM, megaburgers.
b) The Peach Pit After Dark -- the nightclub attached to the Peach Pit run by Valerie and David and later bought by Dylan to save it from going under-- showcased a totally random assortment of 90's pop acts: Collective Soul, Donna Lewis, The Barenaked Ladies, The Cardigans, Eric Benet and Tamia, The Goo Goo Dolls, The Brian Setzer Orchestra, Duncan Sheik and Monica.
c) Nat, obvs. He's like Debbie Navatni -- the wise sage of all things adolescent. A way to a teenager's heart is through their stomach, etc.

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5. The Planet (West Hollywood but filmed in Vancouver):
Here's the thing ... if I knew that all my friends, all my enemies, and all my ex-whatevers would be at one specific coffee shop ... that'd be pretty cool, 'cause then I'd know exactly where NOT to go. But also, if I knew where Leisha Hailey was gonna be I'd probs wanna be there. Also, in The L Word, when you break up with someone, they don't just leave your life, they leave the entire universe. Even if you met them at The Planet, they will never again be seen at The Planet, because they're in the vortex with Papi and Mark, so you know. Urm. I like going to coffee shops where I can be a weirdo in my hoodie with my laptop and Ave Maria while everyone else functions like normal social humans.

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4. Worldwide Plaza (Midtown):
Haviland loves Worldwide Plaza. Seriously -- if it was a warm day in 2007 and anyone wanted to do anything, Hav or Heather would always suggest Worldwide Plaza. It's an outdoor seating area near a few food establishments and it's close to the Broadhurst (where Hav worked) and New World Stages (where Heather worked) and also near where everyone on Broadway worked (Broadway) which meant we'd always run into people she knew there. There's lots of sun, which Haviland enjoys and I try to stay away from as much as possible, lest it interfere with my intense Gorey-esque darkness and porcelin skin. Probs if I'd been like "I'd like to get married" or "I'd like to hold a relay race for handicapped animals of all shapes and sizes," Hav would've been like "OOO how's Worldwide Plaza?"

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3. Harlumbia (Uptown West):
In Manhattan you've gotta keep re-inventing space because there's not enough of it to go around, not really, like Carrie Bradshaw says (YEAH I'm quoting Carrie Bradshaw, and it is SOOOO not the first time I've done this): "After a breakup, the city becomes a deserted battlefield loaded with emotional landmines. You have to be very careful where you step or you could be blown to pieces." I think it applies to more than just breakups, though, you know? It's anything -- anything strong that left a mark. There aren't many neighborhoods in this city that aren't already cocked and loaded towards things I miss, and I've only lived here for a few years. And so I like to attack neighborhoods like I do with music (I play it on repeat 'til it's more associated with this repeating moment than with it's prior life) -- I can't afford to lose my favorite neighborhoods to the ghosts it now shelters, so I make myself go there, create new memories, new associations, fresher and different context. Like: this still exists, this place where you were, and that now you are. I feel like I've reinvented this particular neighborhood over and over and I must because it's my favorite: it was where Jake lived in John Jay, it was where I went to summer school, it was right below where Chase lived and so I'd walk there after stopping at Mo's because I was not just a friend but a friend/drug mule and then it was the closest neighborhood to my apartment and so then. also. also. also. It was where we spent most spring afternoons in '07 ... with her friend who sold used books on 110th and she'd play Jimi Hendrix on guitar and I'd read and we'd watch the genius kid play chess and we'd play chess and smoke cigarettes and drink liquor out of juice bottles. Then it'd become evening and we'd get food and walk home and cook it. I'd managed to avoid the area 'til about October, which's quite a feat considering its proximity, but then I was ready and I walked right to it and sat down with her friend the bookseller and we talked for a few hours about what happened this summer and what's happening now and it was really good, really nice. I walked there the next day too to go to my favorite stationary store ... day after day when there wasn't much else I could handle, other people in particular. But I was starting to feel safer & stronger. I was in physical therapy once for about seven months, and we'd do all these exercises to strengthen my quads to make my knees better and walking to Harlumbia I guess was like physical therapy for my little baby mind. Now I can do lunges.

---

2. The Mall, OBVS.
As a pre-adolescent, I loved the fuck out of the mall. There was nowhere we'd rather be: trying on Guess jeans at Hudson's, snatching fresh-baked samples from Mrs. Field's, paying $2.99 for poppy cassette singles at Musicland or Recordtown or whatevs, people-watching from a window table at Olga's while enjoying Orange Cream Coolers and gooey greasy pita bread-and-cheese "sandwiches," imitating what we imagined to be grown-up sex noises while sitting in Sharper Image's suggestive massage chairs. The boys would shoplift handfuls of gummy candy from Mr. Bulky's and we'd buy BFF necklaces from Claire's or get $3.00 makeovers at The Body Shop. I guess it was a safe temperature-controlled space for our parents to send us, though mine was obvs the last to permit such things (fascist, etc.) -- safer than downtown, where I fled to as soon as I got old enough to know better. Maybe the mall was a space station where I could pretend to be like all the other kids, potentially -- my present state of being wasn't nearly as important as what I'd possibly come there to improve via purchase.

Who'd be there? Who might we run into? What fun adolescent hijinks might occur? The mall as a centerpiece of teen culture is somewhat passe at this point -- I think the internet is the new default blame for adolescent hijinkery. Now it's impossible for me to enter a mall without feeling my very presence in such a space is ironic. Now when we go it's very specific -- we're looking for these items, these are the stores where we may locate said items, etc. But just going to the mall to hang out -- to pretend we're there for anything but commerce -- seems ludicrous, almost. Also,the mall is in decline, I read all about it in The Economist. You can also look at pictures of dead malls at deadmalls.com. It's kinda gross and fascinating. As I've mentioned, I'm mildly obsessed with Detroit and its structural decline, and deadmalls is no Detroit, but still.

---

1. My Apartment:
My place is the best place in Manhattan to hang out, and here's why -- I can't possibly be late for something that's happening in my own apartment. Plus, all my stuff is here, so if I need anything, I can just like -- get it! Also we have The Roof, another top hangout. Also it's the cleanest/neatest occupied-by-twentysomething-peoples apartment I've ever seen, seriously. Except for my room, my room is not one of the cleanest rooms I've ever seen, because I've got a lot of stuff. Which brings me back around to why this is a good place to hang out = all my stuff is here. And by "all my stuff" I mean "my new sweatpants" which you must realise is how other people probs feel about getting new cars. I haven't even wiped my hands on them yet (I tend to confuse my pants with napkins when I'm eating and computing at the same time), that's how much I love them.

*
I've sat in corners at parties hoping for someone who knew the virtue
of both distance and close quarters, someone with a corner person's taste
for intimacy, hard won, rising out of shyness and desire.
And I've turned corners there was no going back to, corners
in the middle of a room that led to Spain or solitude.
And always the thin line between corner and cornered,
the good corners of bodies and those severe bodies that permit no repose,
the places we retreat to, the places we can't bear to be found.
-from "Corners" by Stephen Dunn

Sunday Top Ten: We Don't Know So We Wait for Tomorrow

You'd think "dream jobs" woulda been an easier topic, but maybe it's something I've never truly thought about, not specifically, like B2 does here, and how Rob does in High Fidelity when he makes his "Top 5 Dream Jobs" list. [Coincidentally, many of my ex-boyfriends declared a perceived unique affinity to the character of Rob when that movie came out. He's very rumply-haired, obsessive, emo and dissatisfied and likes making mix tapes, so that's something.] [???] So the idea of "dream job" is that when you get there; that's where you've wanted to be, and then, at last, you relax. Your life is in stasis.

And what's dawned on my monkey-mind lately is that a future prospect of relaxation/contentment is precisely what motivates us into anxiety, which is semi-hilarious -- people disguised as robots, robots disguised as people -- just as the concept of a settlement is what inspires and propels the argument. So we run around like maniacs in order to one day stop running? Human beings are retarded. Clearly we don't want to relax that much, otherwise we'd be doing it, right? Or not? This paragraph had a point when I wrote it last night, and I'm not sure what that point is anymore. I'm leaving it in in case it occurs to me later.

I never thought I'd be able to do what I wanted to do in life by getting up and going to a job every day so maybe I never thought about what that Dream Job might be? [I've also been consistently aware that I'm somewhat limited by fibromyalgia and what hours I can manage and still keep that under control, etc., but that's another blog entry -- like a really boring one, actually.] Anyhow, I just imagined always waitressing or temping or dealing crack to supplement writing until my first book deal or television development contract. Luckily, I sort of love waitressing a little, even though I'm bad at it, I'd totes waitress right now if anyone would hire me. [Waitressing became intoxicating, almost; its unpredictability, though it provided for a certain risk of complete poverty, also implied the possibility of jackpot treasure striking at any moment. Though it wasn't likely you'd make $200 on a Friday night ... it also wasn't impossible, which meant you could plan ahead allowing the chance of improbable good fortune. Also, I loved the exhaustion. I loved running around all night like my life depended on it, like if Table 59 didn't get their Bruschetta before their Pasta Milanos, a great cloud would open above us and G-d would strike us all with lightning bolts. Which it would, in the form of douchetards. A million small, achievable tasks.]

I look back on my whole life before now and I'm amazed I've gone this long without a steady "job," considering I went out and applied for jobs as soon as I was old enough to legally work (age 14, but you can't use knives until you're 15), even ultimately foregoing extracurricular activities (soccer, theater) in favor of closing Dana's Deli every night, and foregoing an active social life all through college in order to waitress. I loathed, all my life, the idea of not having a regular job for even one day, let alone so many months. If I'd've told myself in March that I'd be, right now, without a steady reliable place to BE and reap income for at least 20 hours a week (outside of my apartment), I'd be like "Wha?!!! What's going to happen, Psychic Weirdo?" Actually, there are at least 500 things that Riese-in-March wouldn't've believed about her future. No, probs like, 1,000. Most of all I never thought I'd have bangs, obvs.

Sooo ... in High Fidelity, this is Rob's Top Five Dream Jobs List:

1. Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, 1976 to 1979
2. Producer, Atlantic Records, 1964 to 1971
3. Any kind of musician, besides classical or rap
4. Film director, any kind except German or silent
5. Architect (seven years training)

Laura reads his list. This conversation happens:

Laura: So you've got a list here of five things you would do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object?
Rob: Yeah.
Laura: -- and one of them you don't really wanna do anyway.
Rob: Well, I did put it at number five.
Laura: Wouldn't you rather own your own record store than be an architect?
Rob: Yeah, I suppose.
Laura: And you wouldn't wanna be a 16th century explorer or the King of France--
Rob: God no.
Laura: Well, there you go then. Dream job number five. Record store owner.

And here's the thing: he totes IS a record store owner. Get it?

*

I had to scour the archives to ensure I'd not written on this before; a recent archive look-through (I can't remember why) made me aware of the fact that I repeat myself LIKE WHOA. I mean, seriously, clearly the side-effect of my EPIC output is that I don't remember what I've said and not said, and therefore I'm liable to post the exact same Sunday Top Ten more or less twice. I could save a lot of time with cutting and pasting, obvs.

SUNDAY TOP TWELVE, PART ONE
(12-8)
DREAM JOBS
"If time, history, salary, and qualifications were no object."
(Also, requires attendance, as in, no freelance hoo-ha, like totes "be here, this time, etc." kind of situation. To be a "job.")

---

12. A Staff Writer/Editor/Whathaveyou for one of the following publications:

Vanity Fair (1919-1924), Sassy Magazine (1990-1993)
Rolling Stone Magazine (1970s), Mademoiselle Magazine (1950s-60s)
The New York Review of Books (1963-1979), JANE Magazine (1995-2000)
Ms. Magazine (1972-1980), McSweeny's (2000-2002), New York Magazine, (2001->3/2007)
MIGHT magazine (1995-1997), Spy Magazine (1986-1996),
The New Yorker (1992-1998), The Paris Review (1953-1983)
Vogue (1963-1971), ElleGirl (2005-2006),
Curve (present), Bitch (present), Bust (present), Radar (present)

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11. Super Hip Bartender in Fictional Location/Someplace Hip 'n Fit in the 70s

Most actual bartenders hate their jobs; something about having to cut a lot of fruit early in the morning. Or maybe that was just my bartender friends at The Olive Garden and the Mac Shack, 'cause we sold so many drinks requiring fruit garnishes. Anyhow, in the movies, this always looks like a good way to meet cute girls and make wads of cash and be overall very cool, and also be frequently drunk for free. Mostly I wanna dance around on the bar to that remix of "Can't Stop the Moonlight" or do tricks involving glass cutting through air, the subsequent pour of burning liquid ... and the few times I've bartended -- filling in -- I've liked the speed, the potency of what you have to offer, the ability to hook people up most of all. It feels like you're the Goddess of Loose Inhibitions, which is not a bad thing to be supervising.

---

*
Had a bad day, as bad as they come.
Time to get a real job, you gotta stop having fun.
So I, so I got a real job, I'm working nine to nine.
I'm making five bucks an hour till the day I die.
*

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10. Schoolteacher

This's actually something I truly would want to be if it didn't require a degree and waking up at 6 A.M. I wanted to do Teach for America until I saw a friend enter the program idealistic and bright-eyed and exit on anti-anxiety medications and a persistent case of influenza. I want to teach kids about books. If you read Savage Inequalities and don't want to be a teacher, then you have no soul, sorz. I probs'll be a writing teacher one day, ideally as good as the ones I've had, or that dude in "My So-Called Life" who started The Liberty Lit, because that's what you do after you've published a book and no one will hire you to do anything else because they don't realise you're not about to 'take off' [this's happening to me already, and it's super-annoying, it's like this weird in-between place where you become totally unemployable and unemployed], and you can teach Uni or private school w/o a teaching degree, I think.

---

I'm one third passion, and I'm two thirds pride.
I said I used to have a life once,
He said, "I used to like your smile once."

---

9. Travel Writer

I would like to be sent all over the world for free and given all the nicest things, like footrubs, free bathrobes and fruity non-caloric cocktails. Also I'd climb mountains. I'd like to be like Pam Houston. I just want someone to pay me to have fun and get drunk is that too much to ask? On that topic, Curve magazine, the home of Stacey Merkin, has asked me to do a piece about a trip I already went on (the r-family cruise), which means I've got one foot into -- OR, RATHER -- OUT OF -- of the proverbial door, yeah? Totes. Wait. Does this count as someplace you have to go to every day, according to my rules? Huh. Yeah, probs. I have to go to like, BALI every day. "Go to Disneyworld!" Okay. Will do.

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8. Basketball Player

First of all, I'd be in really good shape. Second of all, basketball is fun, and third of all, it would be a good way to meet girls. Or maybe it wouldn't be. My Mom used to go to a lot of WNBA games with her buddies. I don't really know what to say about that.

---

"I got a picture of the way the world has summed me up.
If I could have one wish, I sure wish that I had never grown up.
I got a picture of the way I looked when I was three.
I came out laughing, screaming, dancing."
-Tegan & Sara, "More For Me"

---

Okay, I'm sure there are at least 100 more dream jobs. I seem to have more thoughts ABOUT dream jobs than I do actual dream jobs. I'll finish this later this week. I just thought of one. Oh, it's funny! [Imagine Stewie saying that] Saving it. Oh man, I just had a lot of good thoughts about it too. Also saving them. I will be happy I stored up all these thoughts later this week when I realise I still haven't written that story for the reading. Erk.

The protagonist of our teevee show, Morgan, is cited in the character descriptions as "struggling with ambition and inertia." I guess we write what we know.

This, after all, is what I know; this blog, my body which never learns, my friends, my books and my hat and my ipod and my bag and my favorite jeans and Chuck Taylors, this cruel expensive city, the muscle in my chest that once composed a relatively intact heart and has, in the past six months, been hollowed out and beat up and doesn't know how to put itself back together anymore, because it was such a scotch-taped and rubber-cemented deal to begin with, and has been for over a decade ... my fingers, this keyboard, my mean crazy neighborhood which never stops screaming, my roof and it's respite, my inbox, how hugs work, sleeping, the hours, the hours, the hours ...

I can say I want to be a rockstar, I mean, who doesn't want to be a rock star? I don't know, what is my dream job? What is my dream? What do I want? I know: I'll figure it out, right? I've got time, yeah? Not really, though.

The problem is, I've been the girl that knows what she wants, or at least acts like she does, pretty much my whole life. Now I don't even recognise myself, because so much changed on someone else's volition, so many choices were made FOR me, and I can't seem to UN-do them. I keep trying to work it out in language, hoping that'll translate to life soon enough. I'm certain something's off but don't know where to begin, and by "where" I mean "if."

I've had a series of "big pictures" -- huge all-consuming projects -- Conde Nast, [redacted] magazine article, totes mad twatwaffle, teevee show ... Right now we're in a waiting period, so to speak, on the teevee show -- so this week, for the first time pretty much all year, I've actually had to think about what like, MY big picture is. Two days after the story I told in "1" on the "SomeDay Top Ten," I declared I didn't want to write anymore I just wanted to work at Big Boy's, which even though I later decided was retarded, was still quite a shakedown for my mind ...

... maybe the reason I find it so unique and revolutionary every time I come to the revelation that I don't know what I want, which turns out to be something I've discussed at length in all journals, live, blogged, and otherwise, for years, when I actually look into it -- is because it's at odds with who I believe myself to be, essentially. So the rest of it is such a phase I forget about it even only days after it's concluded.

When it comes to this stuff, I'm a goldfish.

Anywhere else on earth is a good place to figure out these things; New York isn't so much. Because everything's so expensive. The air is urgent, like if you don't suck it all in right this moment, it could evaporate, and you'll be left unable to breathe.

*
There's a part in "Muppet Babies" when they're facing a bunch of doors
and don't know which one to enter.

Gonzo says he can take care of it: "I know this place like I know the back of my hand."
Gonzo chooses the door and they end up being lead into something awful,
probs an outer-space abyss of some sort,
a monster, something, I don't remember if they went in or just looked at it,
it doesn't really matter,
and Gonzo adds: "I guess I don't know the back of my hand very well."

*
(Gonzo's dream job: Professional bowler.)

(our stolen bowling shoes, high school graduation)