It's already 3:21 A.M. ... I'm slightly stoned/sleepy and the screen sometimes looks like it's 3-D with pixels of red changing colors in dots. I just ate a granola bar but I put it in a sandwich bag first to make it easier to deal with crumbs. I have a lot of crumbs in my life. Metaphorically.
It's 3:37 AM. (I wrote "I'm 3:37 A.M." first) I wish I had another granola bar. I'm editing this movie for Broadway World and learning how to use Final Cut at the same time. When I'm editing something, I get really into it like almost nothing else I do. Between November 1994 (when The Sads became The Darkness) and October 1999 (when I became Happy), I edited videos compulsively to fill the fat loitering hours, it was the only thing that could distract me or absorb me. I don't know if I'm happy or sad right now. I think I'm happy.
I think it's a nice break to do something more technical, nice to deal with bounds when I'm used to writing for a willing audience, which's so ... well ... boundless. !!!
But I think I'm also behind on things like um ... for real, I really am going to comment about those um, comments and respond to some emails y'all wrote me. Basically at this point it's gonna have to be The Iliad of Comment Responses to justify the wait. Or like; The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which took Diaz 11 years to write and omg speaking of -- book club is NOW people. NOW. You don't have to answer any of my questions, FYI. I just rambled per ush. What day is it?
Did anyone else think last week's rumble was really meta though? I mean, it's not often that a theory I present in a post evolves into a full-fledged hypothesis without me even changing its content. The Science Fair hypothesis: "It's not a good idea for Autowin to meet people from the internets."
Results: Clearly ... TRUE!
On a totally unrelated note, one of my least favorite things about blogging is this: though it may not seem this way, I hold back a LOT OF STUFF. Though certain weirdos have liked to accuse me of having no self-censorship or withholding abilities, that's absolutely not the case, as any long-time readers are very well aware. I'm fully capable of blithely sporting a swimsuit in the middle of a snowstorm and pretending I'm audio-captured by my iPod when my friends/readers ask me if I'm cold.
I learned all about how to hold back -- both w/r/t information and spiritual virginity -- during my many years as a high-class prostitute. That's not the point though -- the point is ... it really fucking pisses me off when people who've really established some pretty fan-fucking-tastic narratives within my life go off at me for saying ... absolutely nothing whatsoever about any of it.
Why don't I say anything?
1. 'Cause 99% of people are good. For example -- "that woman" is a good, inquisitive, talented and sensitive person with a good heart and ultimately good intentions.
2. I try not to waste my time with unnecessary drama when I could be playing with tweezers or tinkerbell.
3. It's totally unfair since most of the people who read this will probs take my side even if I'm wrong, so it's mean to present anything that could have two sides.
4. 'Cause I'm scared of opening up a can of worms and inside it will be all the gross ugly things about me, stories about how terrible I am too (which are usually misinterpretations, clearly).
4a. However, sometimes I just gotta say that honesty can be a real bitch but bitches can be even bitchier.
I mean ... me? Really? I try really fucking hard not to hurt people here, or be immature. I don't talk shit about people or identify people and say shit I shouldn't say about them -- arguably I did this once ... (the supreme court will get back to me on this particular misstep/miscommunication eventually). ONCE. MAYBE. (And also that one time that I wrote stuff and deleted it the next morning for real, though in my defense it wasn't worse than what'd been said about me) (I'm starting to feel like the existence of this paragraph might be countering my point, which I think is meta, but maybe isn't, I'm not that smart).
So why assume that I'm doing it this time? I don't know. Statistics would suggest it's not likely. So whatevs, if someone gets hit by lightning or wins the lottery today, then we can talk.
I mean -- I'm doing this -- being direct instead of having a passive pity party. So who knows what could happen next!!?!? LOLKATS? Maybe I'll publish my complaint letters to my friendish-peoples to my brother's blog about complaint letters to companies: me to the man.
Wow! I hadn't even thought about that stuff in like five days. Now it's all out of my system and I can get back to things that matter. Here's some auto-fun for snack.
Quote: "He who has a pact with aloneness can even now prepare for all of this ... embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant, you say. That shows it is beginning to dawn around you; there is an expanse opening about you. And when your nearness becomes distant, then you have already expanded far: to being among the stars. Your horizon has widened greatly. Rejoice in your growth. No one can join you in that." (from Rilke's "Fourth Letter" from Letters to a Young Poet)
Links:
1. nerve's design issue includes "dating advice from graphic designers" , a Stefan Sagmeister interview: "A Very, Very Graphic designer," (@nerve.com) and a piece on the evolution of limosine design and our wildest dreams; "it seats about twenty." (nerve.com)
2. on the stage, no more mr. tough guy (@the nytimes)
3. elitism is not a dirty word: "Categorizing 'the best' isn't confined to art; it plays out in sports, cinema, pop music and beyond." (@the la times)
4. teenagers who prefer to read online -- is it really reading ? (@nytimes) and lost for words: "[the uk] spends more on books than any nation in europe, but many haven't read one in the past year." (@guardian.co.uk)
5. global input requested holler australia - publishers fight against imported books (@the australian)
6. in which you look like you're losing a piece of your soul: "waitress" (@this recording)
7. stef's note: "I always wanted Bette Porter to explain art to me." -- jennifer beals' top five favorite photography books, in which i am not in love but open to persuasion (also @this recording)
8. blogging is ruled by grubby stupid boys (@gawker)
9. ira glass and bob discuss the angry commenter/newspaper comments debate: "comments on comments" (@npr's on the media)
10. the long island railroad is new york's lifeline in the summer -- a fleet of rescue vehicles destined for the beach ... a report from every station down the line: "the 11:11 to Penn Station" (@the morning news)
11. novel thinking: "creative writing is as popular today as critical theory was a decade ago, how does it fit in with the study of english literature?" (@times higher education uk)
12. katy perry ("i kissed a girl") actually answers ten entire questions. (@the village voice)
Showing posts with label rilke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rilke. Show all posts
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Auto-Fun of the Daytones :: 7-8-2008
automatic semantic fundamental auto-mechanics
in july
+++
quotes:
"Oh save me from knowing myself
if inside I only melt."
(Eileen Myles, from "Milk")
++
in july
+++
quotes:
"Oh save me from knowing myself
if inside I only melt."
(Eileen Myles, from "Milk")
++
[from the sorted books project by Nina Katchadourian.]
I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.
[Rilke, I am Too Much Alone in this World, Yet Not Enough]
[collage by jessica burko]
I am in Washington D.C.
eating nerds from a box.
There are two flavors: grape, strawberry.
The strawberry is more delicious.
When I was a kid,
I was a nerd, but cute enough
for loftier social circles.
It was a darned dance:
undercover nerd, cape-less, hapless,
i can read your mind, leap buildings
bound buildings in my singular binding
and then
fly fly away.
I wish I'd known
that I could've been a strawberry.
That would've been so delicious.
So sweet, and so cold.
-Marie Lyn Bernard, 1:35 AM on July 8th, 2008
links:
1. Junot Dìaz says "Grand Theft Auto IV is brilliant, but despite what virtually all the reviews claim, it ain't the revolution." (@wall street journal)2. Also, children of the future, we r worried that u r dumb. P.S., we r also dumb. We're The Dumbest Generation. :"The problem is that instead of using the Web to learn about the wide world, young people instead mostly use it to gossip about each other and follow pop culture, relentlessly keeping up with the ever-shifting lingua franca of being cool in school." (@the la-la-land times)
3. Clay didn't, as the magazine claims on its homepage, invent New York City. But he did build New York Magazine, and that, to me, is enough. The piece was even worth enduring Tom Wolfe.A City Built of Clay (@nymag)
4. "I survive the degradation that has become America—a land that exalts itself as a bastion of freedom and liberty while it tortures human beings, stripped of their rights, in offshore penal colonies, a land that wages wars defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, a land that turns its back on its poor, its weak, its mentally ill, in a relentless drive to embrace totalitarian capitalism—because I read books. I have 5,000 of them. They line every wall of my house. And I do not own a television.": Surviving the Fourth of July (@truthdig)
5. OMG, a teevee show is starting fashion trends, it's a revolution: Forget Gossip, Girl; the Buzz Is About the Clothes (@the ny times)
6. Jezebel's Tracie & Moe on "Thinking and Drinking." Did not go too well. Slut Machine's take is: here. (@huffpo & @one d at a time)
7. "Juicy Campus" is helping kids who were assholes in high school to become douchebags in college: "Uncensored, racist and shockingly nasty, online gossip forum Juicy Campus has students trembling." (@radar online)
8. "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.": The Urge to End it All. (@nytimes)
9. "Sex is interesting, even when it's bad. Sex memoirs, on the other hand ..." (@the smart set)
10. Why writers can't go it alone. (@the guardian uk blogs)
11. Poem #3: Prose Poetry Chain/Julianna Spahllholz/Neighborhood (@in posse review)
Friday, May 23, 2008
Auto-Fun & NEWNOWNEXT VIDEO of the Day :: 5-23-2008
Ladies and gentlemen of the press, fairies, ponies, unicorns, uh huh her groupies, tinkerbell and littlefoot, etc.: I'd like to share with you, before the auto-fun and the snack (graham crackers and peanut butter w/apple juice obvs), a short film. This film was created by me because last week we attended the Logo NewNowNext awards and now I'm supposed to have a video for The L Word Online documenting our efforts. That video will come. Just like rain, snow and me to Carly's office to teach me this g-dforsaken program (Final Cut Express). Using the four or five skills I mastered on FC today, I've assembled a little preview/teaser. I like the word "teaser," it's like oh! Is that a feather on your nose or are you just happy to tease me? Etc. I encourage you to visit the youtube page to view this, you can select "high quality" and it's way better. This video includes superstars like Me, Alex Vega, Caitlin's voice behind the camera, our friend Carly, Michelle Williams, Heather Matarazzo (and her GF Caroline who we know from Cruise '07), Wilson Cruz (RICKIE VASQUEZ!), Candis Cayne, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Eichner, The Dazzle Dancers, Heloise Williams and the Savior Fair, Michelle Paradise, Maeve Quinlan and Jack Mackenroth.
Also our super talented friend Robin does photography for them and so she made lots of memories for us:
quote: "We can so easily slip back from which we have struggled to attain, abruptly, into a life we never wanted; can find that we are trapped, as in a dream, and die there, without ever waking up. This can occur. Anyone who has lifted his blood into a years-long work may find that he can't sustain it, the force of gravity is irresistable, and it falls back, worthless. For somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. Help me, in saying it, to understand it." (Rainer Maria Rilke)
links:
1) How to Judge a Book by Its Cover:"what makes a good blub?" (@the guardian uk books)
2) Possibly not just in it for the drama: La-Lohan & Sam I Am (@jezebel) Although I don't link to the blogs of people I know (in some way) in the auto-fun (see: shared items), I occasionally break that rule when Lozo turns three, or when Stef writes basically a Pulitzer-Prize worthy poetry series about the iconic lesbian couple, LOLohan and Sam-Ro. It's not to be missed, that's why it's linked here AND in the shared items. Forevs and evs. (@big-exit)
3) This year at Thanksgiving I can't forget to be grateful for the cutting-edge New York Times Thursday Styles Trends Pieces, like this one! "I Love What You Didn't Do To Your Chip Nails" : "Like untied high-tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, [chipped nail polish is] now part of a deliberate look." (@nytimes)
4) Cameron Mackintosh is trying to "rediscover the heart of Lez Miz." I hope it's in the first hour or so 'cause after that I drifted off. (@The Philadelpia Inquirier)
5) It's the guy they wouldn't let into the country! Sebastian Horsely interviewed: "The Dandy Man Can: Sebastian Horsely, lover of rock and Francis Bacon, gets deported for 'moral turpitude." (@nerve.com)
6) Ellen DeGeneres asks McCain to walk her down the aisle. (@salon.com) and the video is up at jezebel.
7) Thirteen Ways of Looking at Super Mario Bros (@yankee pot roast)
8) I LOVED THIS: "Exposed" by Emily Gould (@the ny times magazine)
9) Poem: "Neck" by Sarah Arvio : "I love you with all my soul / and all my I don't know what else to say / my friendishness and my girlishness." (@the new yorker)
10) I am not the only person on earth who reads while in traffic, in line, on the exercise bike, at the dinner table. This girl does too. She's also got tips on a site that offers books as disguised workish documents: "Wherever you may find the moment". (@reasons you will hate me.)
Also our super talented friend Robin does photography for them and so she made lots of memories for us:
quote: "We can so easily slip back from which we have struggled to attain, abruptly, into a life we never wanted; can find that we are trapped, as in a dream, and die there, without ever waking up. This can occur. Anyone who has lifted his blood into a years-long work may find that he can't sustain it, the force of gravity is irresistable, and it falls back, worthless. For somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. Help me, in saying it, to understand it." (Rainer Maria Rilke)
links:
1) How to Judge a Book by Its Cover:"what makes a good blub?" (@the guardian uk books)
2) Possibly not just in it for the drama: La-Lohan & Sam I Am (@jezebel) Although I don't link to the blogs of people I know (in some way) in the auto-fun (see: shared items), I occasionally break that rule when Lozo turns three, or when Stef writes basically a Pulitzer-Prize worthy poetry series about the iconic lesbian couple, LOLohan and Sam-Ro. It's not to be missed, that's why it's linked here AND in the shared items. Forevs and evs. (@big-exit)
3) This year at Thanksgiving I can't forget to be grateful for the cutting-edge New York Times Thursday Styles Trends Pieces, like this one! "I Love What You Didn't Do To Your Chip Nails" : "Like untied high-tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, [chipped nail polish is] now part of a deliberate look." (@nytimes)
4) Cameron Mackintosh is trying to "rediscover the heart of Lez Miz." I hope it's in the first hour or so 'cause after that I drifted off. (@The Philadelpia Inquirier)
5) It's the guy they wouldn't let into the country! Sebastian Horsely interviewed: "The Dandy Man Can: Sebastian Horsely, lover of rock and Francis Bacon, gets deported for 'moral turpitude." (@nerve.com)
6) Ellen DeGeneres asks McCain to walk her down the aisle. (@salon.com) and the video is up at jezebel.
7) Thirteen Ways of Looking at Super Mario Bros (@yankee pot roast)
8) I LOVED THIS: "Exposed" by Emily Gould (@the ny times magazine)
9) Poem: "Neck" by Sarah Arvio : "I love you with all my soul / and all my I don't know what else to say / my friendishness and my girlishness." (@the new yorker)
10) I am not the only person on earth who reads while in traffic, in line, on the exercise bike, at the dinner table. This girl does too. She's also got tips on a site that offers books as disguised workish documents: "Wherever you may find the moment". (@reasons you will hate me.)
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Weekend Auto-Fun :: 3-29-2008
quote: ""That had been in Agnes's mishmash decade, after college. She had lived improvisationally then, getting this job or that, in restaurants or offices, taking a class or two, not thinking too far ahead, negotiating the precariousness and subway flus and scrimping for an occasional manicure or a play. Such a life required much exaggerated self-esteem. It engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart. Her days grew messy with contradictions." (Lorrie Moore, "Agnes of Iowa")
links:
1) "When a missed -- or misguided -- literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.": "It's Not You, It's Your Books" (@nytimes)
2) Major League Baseball's first "plus-sized" all-male cheer team: "Florida Marlins bring on a heavy-hitting cheerleading squad" (@la times)
3) Students for a Free Tibet (the country): "How Three Canadians Upstaged Bejing" (@globe and mail)
4) Goosebumps is back: "R.L Stine Rides Again" (@the walrus)
5) Very appropriate for me today: "A History of the Hangover" (@slate.com)
6) Agenda based video games tested -- Faith Fighter ("I like to play as Buddha: because he's blue and I don't think it will offend anyone"), Bible Fight, Ethnic Cleansing ("racist, anti-semitic, Neo-Nazi blasting away 'blacks, spics and Jews'), The Zoo Race Game, Night of Bush Rapturing, Left Behind: "What Would Jesus (or Hitler) Play?" (@jewcy)
7) Margaret Atwood salutes a childhood classic, Anne of Green Gables (@the guardian uk)
8) Brooklyn/San Francisco is the new Manhattan/L.A. "Sisters in Idiosyncrasy (@ny times)
9) "The Beggars" by Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann (@poetry magazine)
10) Chuck Klosterman asks, "What's the difference between a Road Movie and a movie that just happens to have roads in it?": "On the Road" (@the believer)
links:
1) "When a missed -- or misguided -- literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.": "It's Not You, It's Your Books" (@nytimes)
2) Major League Baseball's first "plus-sized" all-male cheer team: "Florida Marlins bring on a heavy-hitting cheerleading squad" (@la times)
3) Students for a Free Tibet (the country): "How Three Canadians Upstaged Bejing" (@globe and mail)
4) Goosebumps is back: "R.L Stine Rides Again" (@the walrus)
5) Very appropriate for me today: "A History of the Hangover" (@slate.com)
6) Agenda based video games tested -- Faith Fighter ("I like to play as Buddha: because he's blue and I don't think it will offend anyone"), Bible Fight, Ethnic Cleansing ("racist, anti-semitic, Neo-Nazi blasting away 'blacks, spics and Jews'), The Zoo Race Game, Night of Bush Rapturing, Left Behind: "What Would Jesus (or Hitler) Play?" (@jewcy)
7) Margaret Atwood salutes a childhood classic, Anne of Green Gables (@the guardian uk)
8) Brooklyn/San Francisco is the new Manhattan/L.A. "Sisters in Idiosyncrasy (@ny times)
9) "The Beggars" by Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann (@poetry magazine)
10) Chuck Klosterman asks, "What's the difference between a Road Movie and a movie that just happens to have roads in it?": "On the Road" (@the believer)
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Evolving Weekend Auto-Fun:: 3-8/9-2008
quote: "Beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror." (Rilke)
**
links: jennifer l. knox is blogging at best american poetry: todd colby's kryptonie & yesterday was national frozen food day (@bap blog), how many billionaires does it take to fix the school system (@nytimes magazine money issue), photographs of models eating (@slate.com), the grim reader (@poets & writers).
**
links: jennifer l. knox is blogging at best american poetry: todd colby's kryptonie & yesterday was national frozen food day (@bap blog), how many billionaires does it take to fix the school system (@nytimes magazine money issue), photographs of models eating (@slate.com), the grim reader (@poets & writers).
Monday, December 10, 2007
Sunday Top Ten: The Most Hollalicious Entertainments of 2007
As you probs know, I'm a highly esteemed list-writer, thus your weekly "Sunday" Top Ten and, subsequently, my LA-LA-LA-LOVE for the month of December a.k.a. International List-Writing Month. Every December, writers turn their misty eyes away from the present and towards the immediate past, eager to Review the Year, rank and file passing events and assess the bestiness of various entertainments. For example: The Top 25 Entertainers of the Year (Entertainment Weekly), The Year in Ideas (New York Times Magazine), Best Magazine Covers of 2007 (ASME), The 10 Best Books of the Year (NY Times Sunday Book Review), Best Products of the Year (Stereofile), Best Book Covers of the Year (The Book Design Review), 100 Best Films of the Year (London Times), Best Reviewed Albums of the Year (Metacritic), Best Books of the Year (Publishers Weekly), Voice Writers Pick Their 20 Favorite Books of the Year (The Village Voice), Highlights of 2007: Design (frieze), Music Bloggers Best of 2007 (stereogum), Year in Review: Hookups&Breakups, Video, Year in Photos, In Memoriam, Gossip, Etc. (MSN), The ADD Year in Review in Comics (Comic Book Galaxy), The Year in Art (ArtForum), Best Films & Best Games & Best Music & Best Books (PASTE Magazine), Top DVD Box Sets of 2007 (The New Yorker), The Ten Best Dressed of 2007 (People), The 2007 Esquire 100 (Esquire), Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2007 (project censored) and The Year's Most Notable Renegades (Radar). See, I love lists. December is to Riese what um, October is to people who like baseball (right?), or um, July for people who love the sweltering heat.
I think someone is grilling cheeseburgers outside my window. Apparently I live next door to a former methadone clinic (How do I know these things? Well, 2007 has been a very educational year, perhaps I'll be Reviewing it soon!), maybe they have cookouts now instead of methadone, 'cause I feel like it often smells like cheeseburgers around here. Good cheeseburgers though, not like, crap ones. Maybe only Sundays, maybe it's got something to do with Church and therefore with Jesus, I should join the Church. I just need a colorful hat like the black ladies wear.
So anyhow, today's Sunday Top Ten begins my long look back at '07, otherwise known as "The Worst Year EVER," which means looking back is a lot like poking a spork into my eyeballs. JK, obvs I love re-living trauma, it's my hobby basically. I'm not even kidding, CLEARLY IT IS, hello, I have a blog. Anyhow, it wasn't the worst year ever, I've grown and changed so much this year, I love everyone and everything. There are so many more of you than there were then: this can not be dismissed, this is not everything but it is a lot of things.
So, December is a time for you to ask: Riese, what's on YOUR mind? What are YOU thinking? Let's talk about YOU. You know? Except I'm saying it to myself so it's like: meememememememe. That's the secret code word I use to let you know that I'm aware I talk about myself all the time. Like, I've already talked about myself once, so why don't I talk about myself talking about myself, that's like, post-hipster-blogstar-metatastic.
Last year I did this: The Top 10 Best of 2006 (general), Top 10 Best Quotes of 2006, The Out-Loud Spoken Kind, Top 10 Best Quotes of 2006: Some Highlights from the Written Quotes, and the Top 10 Best Books of 2006: Some of Which I Have Actually Read.
Let's address that last one right now. I said it then, and I'll say it again because I want to: I read a lot, but hardcovers are expensive and heavy, therefore I rarely read them and thus rarely have an opinion on the Best Books of the Year though people expect me to. I never read new releases. If I'm gonna read a new book, it's gotta be either in first-edition paperback or acquired for free (publisher's proofs, etc.) or at a used bookstore. Therefore I'm remarkably unqualified to rank and order books. Like; last year my list included two books I'd actually read, the rest just looked good.
So I thought, well, I'll just expand the category to include all forms of entertainment released this year (except music, I'll leave that to the experts, besides, y'all know it's Tegan & Sara, obvs. And Uh Huh Her), unfortunately, I haven't been to a single movie in all of 2007 and I rarely watch teevee. Seriously, every time I watch teevee, I write about it. It's a 1:1 ratio. If I've watched a show, you've been the first to know.
It's been pointed out to me that my life this year has been a bit cinematic. I mean, who needs movies or a hardcover when you've got your own live-action film playing out right before your eyes? That's right: you don't. So I present what was supposed to be the Top Ten Entertainments of 2007 and ended up being a list of pretty much every single item of actual "entertainment" I've engaged in all year.
Magazines:
10.The Atlantic Monthly's 150th Anniversary Issue: Not only did this inspire me to give up multitasking for about a minute -- seriously, multitasking as I speak -- but its little blurbs about "The American Idea" warmed me all the way through my thick skin and straight to my gut. I transcribed my favorite in Auto-Universe.
9. Almost every single issue of New York Magazine, Esquire, Radar, Bust, Bitch, Women's Health & Fitness, Missbehave, Nylon, Good, The Advocate, Paper, Elle, Curve, Teen Vogue HOLLA, Poets & Writers, Jane (til it went under) and Glamour. Also obvs there was this really good article in the August issue of Marie Claire written by MEEEEE about my sweating disorder. Okay, I'm not gonna lie, I buy that magazine every month.
8. Hey! Speaking of magazines. A;ex and I went to the GO-NYC Magazine 5th Anniversary Party (their photos here), which was essentially a series of lines: to get in, to check your coat, to get a drink, to get another drink, to get another drink (eventually obvs just got a double), to get your coat back (that was the worst line of all the lines). The Lesbian to Bartender ratio was about 500:1. I told Stef it was a good thing she didn't go, as her rockstar-event-coordination experience would've likely led to a head explosion at this particular party, and she noted that "lesbians can't organize themselves a glass of WATER," quickly followed by "i just wanted an excuse to use that expression."
Anyhow, I still heart Leisha Hailey even though I didn't get a chance to tell her I'm sorry about Dana. 
Dani looks exactly in person how she does on teevee except more endearing. I feel like she's single and the world is her lesbian oyster, go get her ladies. Everyone, including us miraculously (see line-waiting paragraph, above), was drunkity drunk drunk or tripping on something, esp. Guinevere Turner. Rose Troche and Guinevere reminded me of how Haviland and I are gonna be in ten years. I'll be the one telling a drunk story about getting dumped for Leisha Hailey, and Haviland'll be going "Riese, Riese," like trying to make me shut up 'cause we're in public and I'll be quoted. Also, there's something strangely sexy about Rose Troche, I can't put my finger on it (or CAN I?), I think it's 'cause she's so talented and prolific. They said they're talking about a sequel to Go Fish, that more or less sounds like the worst movie ever. They should call it Go Fish 2: Back in Group Therapy. Maybe they were just kidding. I couldn't tell. You know how women are.
You guys, also, Dani is defo not currently involved with Tila Tequila. Howevs, I still think she might win on Tuesday. I still heart everyone and we had a good time. Goooooo GO! Oh also, "It's a Small World" Story Number 500; A;ex ran into some friends of hers who were there with their friend who is a commenter on my blog/now person-I-know-through-my-blog. Crazy, yeah? We all hung out, go GO! Oh, I said that already. Moving on.
*
Movies:
7. Wanna know something brill? I figured I could think of a good DVD at least, something I got on demand ... but 2007 was Totes THE YEAR OF NO MOVIES ANYWHERE -- no movies in the theater, and no movies at home either! I have no clue how this happened, I probs have watched an average of 50-100 movies a year in every single year but this one. I used to watch at least a movie a day. Seriously. I guess I was sort of living my own version of Girl, Interrupted/A Beautiful Mind/Man of La Mancha for a good chunk of the summer, so whatevs. Fuck! What a weird-ass year, seriously, the only narrative films I saw this year were Art School Confidential ('cause Shane was in it) and this 9-11 movie that was on teevee when I was sick with food poisoning. I did watch a few docs: An Inconvenient Truth, Jesus Camp, The Devil's Playground, Gay Republicans, This Film is Not Yet Rated, When the Levees Broke.
Sicko looked good, I'd recommend it, I should see it. Thanks for the recommendation, Riese. Um, what movies came out this year? That movie about the girl from Grey's Anatomy getting preggers? Any gay movies? Are you my mother? Where's your head at? I wonder what it's like in there, that big cavernous theater. Movie magic. Hoo-ha. If you're just turning in, here's an update: the last movie I saw was Dreamgirls, it was the best movie ever so I knew I never had to go back to the movies again.
Theater:
7a. HOWEVER I've been to the theater, more than once even! I saw Spring Awakening (twice)! And Les Miserobvs ('cause Hav was doing Fantine)! Also Heather conned me into Naked Boys Singing!, which made Natalie and Annie and me drink heavily and giggle uncontrollably. The same thing happened at Les Mis actually. I saw some bad plays too. Won't go into that.
That photo is Haviland in her Factory Girl costume. Hard core, totes.
*
The World Wide Webbernet:
6. Regularly Updated (at least 2-3 times/week most of the year) Blogs That Made me LOL consistently: Why Don't We Get Drunk and Blog? and FourFour
It's rare that writing (aside from my friends' emails) makes me literally LOL. Like every time it happens I note it to myself: "Riese, you just LOL'ed!" So yeah, one gay and one straight man inspired me to think, over and over again, consistently, all year long with triweekly posts are more and think "holy shit, that is hilarious, and I never would've thought of that": Lozo and FourFour. And for that I am grateful. Mazel Tov. (Sidenote: Totes aware there's plenty of funny blogs I'd probs LMAO or even ROFL to, but I've only got so much time, already maxed out, thus the short number on this list. Sometimes I'm scared like I can't find another good blog, I've got so much reading to do already!)
5. The following websites have endeared themselves to me over the course of this year, in which I became 75% human, 25% cyborg: Arts & Letters Daily, bartleby, Google Reader OBVS, facebook, poets.org, new pages, bookslut, mediabistro, feministing, and the endlessly fascinating Sitemeter. All the items I've ever tried to make you read on Google Reader are here: My Shared Items Blog. Then also there's the Auto-Universe Archive of all the things I've tried to force you to read via link. I think I spend way more time reading stuff on the internet than I realised until just this moment. I guess it's that there's still so much left I haven't read. It never ends, like, your perfect blog could be out there still.
Google Reader offers trends. They've just offered me supreme wisdom, and this is it: I'm apparently super-good at reading my friends' blogs, and I read way more blogs on Tuesdays and Fridays than any other day of the week.
*
TeeVee:
4. Sugar Rush: It took me about four months to take up the suggestion that I watch Sugar Rush, and I've still only seen about half the episodes, and by "episodes" I mean the lesbian storyline, perfectly edited for my viewing pleasure by this girl on YouTube who's account is now suspended, dammit. At this pace, I'll be checking out Quarterlife by March '08, never fear Elizabeth. Watch Sugar Rush (WARNING: that link goes to a later episode, I just can't find any links now that the girl's lost her account, but that'll give you an idea I guess), you just may want to pinch Kim's cute little cheeks. She's a total critter. And it doesn't take itself too seriously, I think. Plus, Sugar goes to prison, because apparently that's what women do in the UK, maybe it is illegal to be a lesbian there.
3.
The L Word obvs! Best show ever, clearly. So dynamic, so well-written. The characters just crawl inside you and take up residence. No honestly; I think the online community's enhanced this show, for me and for everyone, and it has its moments, like the basketball scene and the episode where everyone fucked. I've never watched it alone since Season One, and I don't think I ever could: to me, it's inherently part of a larger narrative, the one about the way we actually live, which apparently, for me at least, involves meticulously tracking sexual encounters and making fun of deaf people. Also, South of Nowhere, great show. Spencer: such a critter.
2. Like With Most Entertainments, I do 95% of my teevee watching at the gym, where the best channels are MTV and Bravo, then there's basic network channels ... which means I see a lot of America's Next Top Model, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, and The View before Rosie quit. At home, I've also enjoyed, from time to time, The Office, Degrassi: The Next Generation and the best show ever A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila. Actually, even Tila I've watched all of at the gym in re-runs the next day. Oh! And Carly lent me the entire series of Arrested Development on DVD, which is funny, two thumbs up. 2007 is almost over and I'm nearly done with Season Three.
I watched Gossip Girl with semi-obsessive interest until they introduced "Vanessa." I accepted many things about this show that bore no resemblance to the books I so dearly loved, but Vanessa was supposed to be a quasi-lesbian with Doc Martens and a shaved head. WTF?! This new Vanessa looks like a Saved by the Bell extra from 1992, and has none of the original Vanessa's quirkiness or overall cool. The real Vanessa is like the girl who dated Macauly Culkin in Saved! Sigh.
*
Books:
1. OK, so, Books I Did Read This Year, In Chronological Order: The Revolution Will Be Accessorized: BlackBook Presents Dispatches from the New Counterculture (various), 20Something Essays by Twentysomething Writers (various), The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold), Everything Else in the World (Stephen Dunn), Bitchfest (various), Name All The Animals (Ali Smith), Area Code 212 (Tama Janowitz), Indestructible (Cristy Road), The Book of Genesis, Exodus, John, Daniel, Revelations (by G-d or his minions or whatevs), Girlbomb (Janice Earlbaum), The Mistresses' Daughter (A.M. Homes), The Glass Castle (Jeanette Walls), The Collected Poems of Rilke (Rilke, obvs), Naked on the Internet (Audacia Ray), The Bigger The Better the Tighter the Sweater (ed. by Samantha Schoech & Lisa Taggart), So Much to Tell You (John Marsden),
Nobody Belongs Here More Than You (Miranda July), Lucky (Alice Sebold), The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath), I Love You More Than You Know (Jonathan Ames), Microthrills (Wendy Spiro), The Whole Story and Other Stories (Ali Smith), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, (Grace Paley), Running With Scissors (Augusten Burroughs), Come to Me (Amy Bloom) and will probs finish The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (ed. by Tobias Wolff) by the end of the year.
And also, formidable efforts were made into the following: Don Quijote (Miguel De Cervantes) (222/773), The Art of Love (Ovid) (117/206), Empire of the Senseless (Kathy Acker, library has it now) and 1984 (about 75%).
In that photo, I'm saying: "Reading is fun, y'all!"
Of those, the only ones that were released this year are the book I was in and the book I spoke on a panel about. I have come to the conclusion that the internet has provided me with the illusion that I'm fairly caught up on the happenings of the year when in fact the only thing I'm actually caught up on is what people talk about on the internet. I'm skipping life and going straight to commentary on it. This year has been hands down totes the weirdest thing ever. I can barely even believe it, and I've seen some shit.
Do you guys read books? I think most of you do. But I'm not sure, maybe when I talk about books, y'all are like snoooozeeee when's she gonna talk about Haviland naked again? Here, I'm going to find out, please take this poll, thank you:
I hope you like books. I'm writing a book, seriously. That's become my running gag, like the chicken dance on Arrested Development, except unlike G.O.B., I can actually write a book. I just like, haven't put it all together yet. But I totally could. And like, will. If you wanna know what books I think you should read, you can go to my a-store. There, no excuses! Also Lozo, still want you to read that Jonathan Ames book, I hope you got it. Hm. Guess what? I just burned a hole in my dresser. But I put out the fire, don't worry. Remember that saying "love is friendship set on fire" or something? I always thought that was sort of stupid. It seems like, whatever you want to feel, someone's got a quote to validate you. A proverb, or something. Anyone know how dpis and ppis work? Like, if a magazine wanted a 300 dpi photo from me, do they really mean ppi? I need to figure this out.
I think someone is grilling cheeseburgers outside my window. Apparently I live next door to a former methadone clinic (How do I know these things? Well, 2007 has been a very educational year, perhaps I'll be Reviewing it soon!), maybe they have cookouts now instead of methadone, 'cause I feel like it often smells like cheeseburgers around here. Good cheeseburgers though, not like, crap ones. Maybe only Sundays, maybe it's got something to do with Church and therefore with Jesus, I should join the Church. I just need a colorful hat like the black ladies wear.
So anyhow, today's Sunday Top Ten begins my long look back at '07, otherwise known as "The Worst Year EVER," which means looking back is a lot like poking a spork into my eyeballs. JK, obvs I love re-living trauma, it's my hobby basically. I'm not even kidding, CLEARLY IT IS, hello, I have a blog. Anyhow, it wasn't the worst year ever, I've grown and changed so much this year, I love everyone and everything. There are so many more of you than there were then: this can not be dismissed, this is not everything but it is a lot of things.
So, December is a time for you to ask: Riese, what's on YOUR mind? What are YOU thinking? Let's talk about YOU. You know? Except I'm saying it to myself so it's like: meememememememe. That's the secret code word I use to let you know that I'm aware I talk about myself all the time. Like, I've already talked about myself once, so why don't I talk about myself talking about myself, that's like, post-hipster-blogstar-metatastic.
Last year I did this: The Top 10 Best of 2006 (general), Top 10 Best Quotes of 2006, The Out-Loud Spoken Kind, Top 10 Best Quotes of 2006: Some Highlights from the Written Quotes, and the Top 10 Best Books of 2006: Some of Which I Have Actually Read.
Let's address that last one right now. I said it then, and I'll say it again because I want to: I read a lot, but hardcovers are expensive and heavy, therefore I rarely read them and thus rarely have an opinion on the Best Books of the Year though people expect me to. I never read new releases. If I'm gonna read a new book, it's gotta be either in first-edition paperback or acquired for free (publisher's proofs, etc.) or at a used bookstore. Therefore I'm remarkably unqualified to rank and order books. Like; last year my list included two books I'd actually read, the rest just looked good.
So I thought, well, I'll just expand the category to include all forms of entertainment released this year (except music, I'll leave that to the experts, besides, y'all know it's Tegan & Sara, obvs. And Uh Huh Her), unfortunately, I haven't been to a single movie in all of 2007 and I rarely watch teevee. Seriously, every time I watch teevee, I write about it. It's a 1:1 ratio. If I've watched a show, you've been the first to know.
It's been pointed out to me that my life this year has been a bit cinematic. I mean, who needs movies or a hardcover when you've got your own live-action film playing out right before your eyes? That's right: you don't. So I present what was supposed to be the Top Ten Entertainments of 2007 and ended up being a list of pretty much every single item of actual "entertainment" I've engaged in all year.
DUE TO MY BARELY PARTIAL PARTICIPATION
IN THE NEW RELEASES OF THE YEAR OF 2007,
I PRESENT
THE ONLY 10 ENTERTAINMENTS OF 2007
WHICH WERE ALSO PUBLISHED/RELEASED IN 2007
IN THE NEW RELEASES OF THE YEAR OF 2007,
I PRESENT
THE ONLY 10 ENTERTAINMENTS OF 2007
WHICH WERE ALSO PUBLISHED/RELEASED IN 2007
Magazines:
10.The Atlantic Monthly's 150th Anniversary Issue: Not only did this inspire me to give up multitasking for about a minute -- seriously, multitasking as I speak -- but its little blurbs about "The American Idea" warmed me all the way through my thick skin and straight to my gut. I transcribed my favorite in Auto-Universe.9. Almost every single issue of New York Magazine, Esquire, Radar, Bust, Bitch, Women's Health & Fitness, Missbehave, Nylon, Good, The Advocate, Paper, Elle, Curve, Teen Vogue HOLLA, Poets & Writers, Jane (til it went under) and Glamour. Also obvs there was this really good article in the August issue of Marie Claire written by MEEEEE about my sweating disorder. Okay, I'm not gonna lie, I buy that magazine every month.
8. Hey! Speaking of magazines. A;ex and I went to the GO-NYC Magazine 5th Anniversary Party (their photos here), which was essentially a series of lines: to get in, to check your coat, to get a drink, to get another drink, to get another drink (eventually obvs just got a double), to get your coat back (that was the worst line of all the lines). The Lesbian to Bartender ratio was about 500:1. I told Stef it was a good thing she didn't go, as her rockstar-event-coordination experience would've likely led to a head explosion at this particular party, and she noted that "lesbians can't organize themselves a glass of WATER," quickly followed by "i just wanted an excuse to use that expression."
Dani looks exactly in person how she does on teevee except more endearing. I feel like she's single and the world is her lesbian oyster, go get her ladies. Everyone, including us miraculously (see line-waiting paragraph, above), was drunkity drunk drunk or tripping on something, esp. Guinevere Turner. Rose Troche and Guinevere reminded me of how Haviland and I are gonna be in ten years. I'll be the one telling a drunk story about getting dumped for Leisha Hailey, and Haviland'll be going "Riese, Riese," like trying to make me shut up 'cause we're in public and I'll be quoted. Also, there's something strangely sexy about Rose Troche, I can't put my finger on it (or CAN I?), I think it's 'cause she's so talented and prolific. They said they're talking about a sequel to Go Fish, that more or less sounds like the worst movie ever. They should call it Go Fish 2: Back in Group Therapy. Maybe they were just kidding. I couldn't tell. You know how women are.You guys, also, Dani is defo not currently involved with Tila Tequila. Howevs, I still think she might win on Tuesday. I still heart everyone and we had a good time. Goooooo GO! Oh also, "It's a Small World" Story Number 500; A;ex ran into some friends of hers who were there with their friend who is a commenter on my blog/now person-I-know-through-my-blog. Crazy, yeah? We all hung out, go GO! Oh, I said that already. Moving on.
*
Movies:
7. Wanna know something brill? I figured I could think of a good DVD at least, something I got on demand ... but 2007 was Totes THE YEAR OF NO MOVIES ANYWHERE -- no movies in the theater, and no movies at home either! I have no clue how this happened, I probs have watched an average of 50-100 movies a year in every single year but this one. I used to watch at least a movie a day. Seriously. I guess I was sort of living my own version of Girl, Interrupted/A Beautiful Mind/Man of La Mancha for a good chunk of the summer, so whatevs. Fuck! What a weird-ass year, seriously, the only narrative films I saw this year were Art School Confidential ('cause Shane was in it) and this 9-11 movie that was on teevee when I was sick with food poisoning. I did watch a few docs: An Inconvenient Truth, Jesus Camp, The Devil's Playground, Gay Republicans, This Film is Not Yet Rated, When the Levees Broke.
Sicko looked good, I'd recommend it, I should see it. Thanks for the recommendation, Riese. Um, what movies came out this year? That movie about the girl from Grey's Anatomy getting preggers? Any gay movies? Are you my mother? Where's your head at? I wonder what it's like in there, that big cavernous theater. Movie magic. Hoo-ha. If you're just turning in, here's an update: the last movie I saw was Dreamgirls, it was the best movie ever so I knew I never had to go back to the movies again.
Theater:
7a. HOWEVER I've been to the theater, more than once even! I saw Spring Awakening (twice)! And Les Miserobvs ('cause Hav was doing Fantine)! Also Heather conned me into Naked Boys Singing!, which made Natalie and Annie and me drink heavily and giggle uncontrollably. The same thing happened at Les Mis actually. I saw some bad plays too. Won't go into that.
That photo is Haviland in her Factory Girl costume. Hard core, totes.
*
The World Wide Webbernet:
6. Regularly Updated (at least 2-3 times/week most of the year) Blogs That Made me LOL consistently: Why Don't We Get Drunk and Blog? and FourFour
It's rare that writing (aside from my friends' emails) makes me literally LOL. Like every time it happens I note it to myself: "Riese, you just LOL'ed!" So yeah, one gay and one straight man inspired me to think, over and over again, consistently, all year long with triweekly posts are more and think "holy shit, that is hilarious, and I never would've thought of that": Lozo and FourFour. And for that I am grateful. Mazel Tov. (Sidenote: Totes aware there's plenty of funny blogs I'd probs LMAO or even ROFL to, but I've only got so much time, already maxed out, thus the short number on this list. Sometimes I'm scared like I can't find another good blog, I've got so much reading to do already!)
5. The following websites have endeared themselves to me over the course of this year, in which I became 75% human, 25% cyborg: Arts & Letters Daily, bartleby, Google Reader OBVS, facebook, poets.org, new pages, bookslut, mediabistro, feministing, and the endlessly fascinating Sitemeter. All the items I've ever tried to make you read on Google Reader are here: My Shared Items Blog. Then also there's the Auto-Universe Archive of all the things I've tried to force you to read via link. I think I spend way more time reading stuff on the internet than I realised until just this moment. I guess it's that there's still so much left I haven't read. It never ends, like, your perfect blog could be out there still.
Google Reader offers trends. They've just offered me supreme wisdom, and this is it: I'm apparently super-good at reading my friends' blogs, and I read way more blogs on Tuesdays and Fridays than any other day of the week.
*
TeeVee:4. Sugar Rush: It took me about four months to take up the suggestion that I watch Sugar Rush, and I've still only seen about half the episodes, and by "episodes" I mean the lesbian storyline, perfectly edited for my viewing pleasure by this girl on YouTube who's account is now suspended, dammit. At this pace, I'll be checking out Quarterlife by March '08, never fear Elizabeth. Watch Sugar Rush (WARNING: that link goes to a later episode, I just can't find any links now that the girl's lost her account, but that'll give you an idea I guess), you just may want to pinch Kim's cute little cheeks. She's a total critter. And it doesn't take itself too seriously, I think. Plus, Sugar goes to prison, because apparently that's what women do in the UK, maybe it is illegal to be a lesbian there.
3.
The L Word obvs! Best show ever, clearly. So dynamic, so well-written. The characters just crawl inside you and take up residence. No honestly; I think the online community's enhanced this show, for me and for everyone, and it has its moments, like the basketball scene and the episode where everyone fucked. I've never watched it alone since Season One, and I don't think I ever could: to me, it's inherently part of a larger narrative, the one about the way we actually live, which apparently, for me at least, involves meticulously tracking sexual encounters and making fun of deaf people. Also, South of Nowhere, great show. Spencer: such a critter.2. Like With Most Entertainments, I do 95% of my teevee watching at the gym, where the best channels are MTV and Bravo, then there's basic network channels ... which means I see a lot of America's Next Top Model, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, and The View before Rosie quit. At home, I've also enjoyed, from time to time, The Office, Degrassi: The Next Generation and the best show ever A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila. Actually, even Tila I've watched all of at the gym in re-runs the next day. Oh! And Carly lent me the entire series of Arrested Development on DVD, which is funny, two thumbs up. 2007 is almost over and I'm nearly done with Season Three.
I watched Gossip Girl with semi-obsessive interest until they introduced "Vanessa." I accepted many things about this show that bore no resemblance to the books I so dearly loved, but Vanessa was supposed to be a quasi-lesbian with Doc Martens and a shaved head. WTF?! This new Vanessa looks like a Saved by the Bell extra from 1992, and has none of the original Vanessa's quirkiness or overall cool. The real Vanessa is like the girl who dated Macauly Culkin in Saved! Sigh.
*
Books:
1. OK, so, Books I Did Read This Year, In Chronological Order: The Revolution Will Be Accessorized: BlackBook Presents Dispatches from the New Counterculture (various), 20Something Essays by Twentysomething Writers (various), The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold), Everything Else in the World (Stephen Dunn), Bitchfest (various), Name All The Animals (Ali Smith), Area Code 212 (Tama Janowitz), Indestructible (Cristy Road), The Book of Genesis, Exodus, John, Daniel, Revelations (by G-d or his minions or whatevs), Girlbomb (Janice Earlbaum), The Mistresses' Daughter (A.M. Homes), The Glass Castle (Jeanette Walls), The Collected Poems of Rilke (Rilke, obvs), Naked on the Internet (Audacia Ray), The Bigger The Better the Tighter the Sweater (ed. by Samantha Schoech & Lisa Taggart), So Much to Tell You (John Marsden),
Nobody Belongs Here More Than You (Miranda July), Lucky (Alice Sebold), The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath), I Love You More Than You Know (Jonathan Ames), Microthrills (Wendy Spiro), The Whole Story and Other Stories (Ali Smith), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, (Grace Paley), Running With Scissors (Augusten Burroughs), Come to Me (Amy Bloom) and will probs finish The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (ed. by Tobias Wolff) by the end of the year.And also, formidable efforts were made into the following: Don Quijote (Miguel De Cervantes) (222/773), The Art of Love (Ovid) (117/206), Empire of the Senseless (Kathy Acker, library has it now) and 1984 (about 75%).
In that photo, I'm saying: "Reading is fun, y'all!"
Of those, the only ones that were released this year are the book I was in and the book I spoke on a panel about. I have come to the conclusion that the internet has provided me with the illusion that I'm fairly caught up on the happenings of the year when in fact the only thing I'm actually caught up on is what people talk about on the internet. I'm skipping life and going straight to commentary on it. This year has been hands down totes the weirdest thing ever. I can barely even believe it, and I've seen some shit.
Do you guys read books? I think most of you do. But I'm not sure, maybe when I talk about books, y'all are like snoooozeeee when's she gonna talk about Haviland naked again? Here, I'm going to find out, please take this poll, thank you:
I hope you like books. I'm writing a book, seriously. That's become my running gag, like the chicken dance on Arrested Development, except unlike G.O.B., I can actually write a book. I just like, haven't put it all together yet. But I totally could. And like, will. If you wanna know what books I think you should read, you can go to my a-store. There, no excuses! Also Lozo, still want you to read that Jonathan Ames book, I hope you got it. Hm. Guess what? I just burned a hole in my dresser. But I put out the fire, don't worry. Remember that saying "love is friendship set on fire" or something? I always thought that was sort of stupid. It seems like, whatever you want to feel, someone's got a quote to validate you. A proverb, or something. Anyone know how dpis and ppis work? Like, if a magazine wanted a 300 dpi photo from me, do they really mean ppi? I need to figure this out.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Everything is Far and Long Gone By
Someone once said: "You win some, you lose some." Lots of people've said it since then, but someone said it first, though I don't know who.
Back in February--that lazy thick winter--when TB and I were courting via g-chat/email/comments and I was bemoaning her refusal of a pre-March 18th real-life meet-up, I posited this threat: "What if I'm TAKEN BY THEN?" and she responded: "You win some, you auto-lose some."
Then I killed myself. Now I'm dead, and I'm writing this blog entry from the underworld, where I'm thinking about other things that have died, or, if you will, been LOST.
P.S. If you've google-searched for LOST the TV show and ended up here, then you are indeed lost. I've never seen that show. What I do know is that Charlie Salinger's had it rough: first he lost his parents in a car accident, then his brother dated J-Love-Hewitt, who's super annoying, and now he's abandoned on a desert island? That's ridic.
I was kidding about killing myself. Actually, TB amended that statement with: "That'd be tragic," and then we made a date for the far-away future (March 24th) and I suggested "You can get drunk and visit me at two a.m. any time between now and then." Obvs she did, four days later, and the rest is history. Auto-winning all around.
However, not everything's got such a happy ending. You do indeed win some and auto-lose some.
Here's some things we've auto-lost lately. I don't miss all these things, really. I just want to talk about them. 'Cause don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone? You know?
As far as I know--and my knowledge's not so far in this area, as I check Gawker sporadically at best--this feature has unceremoniously disappeared. Blogyreeia's probs responsible for 50% or more of my current readership: a Blogherria link usually results in 4,000+ additional page views on the day it's posted, and many of these viewers become permanent readers. Some become permanent girlfriends [TB found me through Gawker, oddly enough], or job offers, or douchebags who stop by to drop some negative vibes, therefore sealing their fate to rot in hell. Really, I only mourn it insofar as it could affect me personally, obvs, cuz I'm in Generation ME, duh! Even when they say mean things to me/don't actually read my post ['cause it's funnier and snarkier just to make fun of me and pretend like the only people on earth who can be ironic or sarcastic are Gawker writers themselves], I'm still like Awesome, totes Gawkered!. Because there's no such thing as bad publicity, unless you're one of the 10,000 dudes who's life they've mercilessly ruined in other features, like "Douchebag of the Week." I could say mean things about Gawker, too, but I'm trying to be the mature one in this relationship. OK, one thing's that we both use a lot of bright colors, actually. And one of us is running a purple-and-green flash-enabled ad for Clariol hair products, and it's not me.
However, I'm hoping the absence of Bloggerea'll result in less pointless-overdone-NYC-centric posts ["Omg, apartment hunting is really hard," "Omg, The L Train!"] by NYC-bloggers hoping to be linked by Gawker. Though it doesn't always work out that way.
Maybe they need a new Bloguria intern, in which case I'd like to volunteer my services, 'cause I specialize in unpaid writing gigs that take up massive amounts of time and make me feel popular/poor. Here's today's Bloggerwheea, as composed by me:
As you can see, I linked to myself and to my girlfriend, 'cause obvs that's what I'd do if I really made Blogherria. I'd probs link to Haviland's myspace blog, too. Hell, I'd like to any NYC-residing blogger who emailed me, that'd save a lot of time.
I've personally never used it to find blogs to read: I can hardly keep up with all the blogs I love without seeking out new ones. [Hell, I can barely keep up with RKB alone.] That's the same way I feel about human relationships. I developed most of my initial blogroll from the NYC Bloggers Google Group I'm in, now it's just mutated into an incomprehensible monster.
Some people I link to still won't link to me, but I keep linking to them, because I'm humble and no one can jock my style/hold me down, I've got to keep on movin'. Now I'm just rambling. Maybe I wouldn't link to me after all.
UPDATE: I've decided to do Bloggorhea myself. I mean, it's a great idea. It's like opening a Subway Sandwiches franchise, but without the "income." That's right. Check it out.
When I confess my love for magazines, most women'll respond with a knowing whisper: "I know, I love US Weekly, shhhh!" But I'm like, "Did I say I love sycophantic crap? No, I didn't. I said I love magazines." And though some of the magazines I love are, indeed, crap--some aren't. And those that aren't, I usually pick up at Global Ink. They had all the queer mags: Curve, Advocate, Velvetpark, et al, as well as all lit mags (n+1, VQR, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Black Clock, etc.) and--well--everything. International shit. Fashion photo feminist fitness whathaveyou.
Yesterday: that beautiful afternoon, all sky/hope, we visited Ahmad by Tom's Diner and TB played chess while I read Waking Vixen's book, sun in everyone's eyes but also in our hearts, I ventured to the corner for cigs [for others, not myself, weirdos] and passed Global Ink and its sign announcing impending closure. I'd been lamenting the new distance between myself and Global Ink since I moved, now I can't even be bitter over that. Now I gotta go to like...um...I guess one of those places with the purple lights? Universal News or something? Whatevs. I'll just subscribe to bitch, bitches.
Also: here's the thing about Us Weekly/Star/InTouch: if you're so interested in the scandalous romantic activities of celebs like A. Jolie, Lohan and Spears et. al., then you'd probably really enjoy novels. You know, books? Scandal, romance, threesomes, preggers unmarried ladies, fancy clothes, everything, eat it to your heart's content, fo'reals.
Dear MetroNorth,
Yesterday was our last trip together, and also my first morning ride, as we've generally been meeting around 5 or 6 in the evening for the past 23 days. Every single day, can you believe it? I'm not big on commitment, so this's a big deal. Though it's been a good ride, I won't miss you. You're okay, significantly better than the subway, a camel, or a half-assed donkey, but you're not teleportation or a Lexus. You're just--well--you.
Here's some things I think you could work on for next time:
-On Friday and Saturday evenings, your train is packed with the most annoying people on the entire planet. They fall into two categories:
1) Girls with fake tans and too much foundation who're smart enough to drive from their homes to the train station in Westchester without running their SUVs into a tree, but not smart enough to have a conversation that would qualify as even slightly resembling the educated English they've likely learned in their Tony public schools. They make me want to jump out the window, even if that lands me in Fordham.
2) Twentysomething Men with large quantities of beer and loud, imposing laughter that trickles into my personal earspace, also inducing suicidal thoughts. Seriously, they drink a lot of beer on the train and talk really loud. Can't something be done about this?
-Often, you've neglected to take my ticket. I know this's cause I look trustworthy, but looks can be deceiving. For example: every time you walk by, I purposely try to look like I've been riding this baby since New Haven, specifically to avoid your request of my ticket. It usually works.
-Why're there so many creepy middle-aged dudes who look like they're about to whip out their junk and masturbate to the thought of me galloping through a pool of sweet cream in a cheerleader outfit? Or the thought of me like, just sitting there? Seriously, they're not even slick about it. Just like, ew, read the Wall Street "Journal."
Do you remember when we first met, Metro North? I do. October, 1998, Manhattan to Bronxville, I was visiting the city under the guise of college visits, it was was before I'd developed that crippling phobia of most public restrooms--so I'd used yours to expel the contents of the Shrimp Tempura dinner I'd just consumed at an Upper West Side Japanese place. It didn't sit well, I told Ryan I felt sick ... I went to the same restaurant two years later 'cause I felt the odds'd be in my favor [or 'cause I'm a retard: who knows the answers to these terrific and terrifying questions? Not me.] and ended up food poisoned again. You oughta look into this: something lurks in your kitchen.
I went back to my seat, calm/clammy, gave Ryan a hand massage on the way home, because I always'd do that for him on the Metro North. The next year too, when I rightfully lived in Bronxville, wasn't only visiting. It's inhumane, really, how we use the same spaces over and over again for different lives. I've re-defined you once again, Metro-North, like people do all the time with songs.
I know what you're thinking: that wasn't really the first time. You're right. The first time we met was the night before I got sick in your bathroom--actually, we'd nearly missed you. We'd had dinner in Soho at a bistro with slick black-clad homosexual waiters with perfect butts in cheap pants, serving expensive bottles of anything to anyone: the first time I drank wine at a restaurant in America, like a grown-up. We were drunk. I wrote a poem about it. Remember that? Of course you do. I was seventeen, so, please, forgive me for my inability to write poetry, but I'd written these lines, among others, about our dash to catch you: Lighthearted and lightheaded,/we leave,/run against the city pouring over us,/my laughter trails your speed,/our sprint to the station./I lean against the pillars,/the poles/yellow, red,/you press your fingers/to my lips./We spend the evening urgent,/still panting.
There was more to that poem, before and after those lines, but surely you've suffered enough, yeah?
It seems I've written about Ryan a lot lately. I wonder if it's because of you [TB] or because of you [Metro North]. I've ridden you [MN] to get to you [TB] for 23 days, but not today. The seats are navy blue and maroon. I wonder if late at night, people fuck there, or fight. Or cry. I cried there last week but it was too crowded, I couldn't get a seat, so I stood and cried. I think that if you're crying, someone should offer you a seat. Not an aisle seat where your feet are fighting rolling-suitcases and tiny women with entitlement issues, a real seat in the corner for leaking women.
Because Ryan saved my life back then. I told him that but I don't think he got it. I mean, I said it: Ryan, you saved my life. Ryan was gay and he was my best friend and he reached across all obvious boundaries into my depression and told me I didn't need it. This was no small task, 'cause depression was my best friend before I met Ryan. Back then, before Ryan, I wore glitter on my face, I stared at the ceiling for hours on end, trying to will myself into participating in what I'd once known to be a life, I listened to the Empire Records soundtrack every morning in the shower and wore a winter hat that hid most of my face, and I had sunglassees and a video camera to hide my eyes.
Ryan pulled all that stuff away from my face and my eyes and actually loved me, which I'd believed, then, to be impossible. I mean, for the future, my love'd been used up, I thought. I was empty. Like if a heart was a prune.
And so: here we are again. Your [MN] tracks, that same view out the window, rushing/blurring, trees on amphetamines, people like pearls bursting then vanishing in the distance, you stop, open proverbial doors, and then we walk, subtle but violent and without thinking because sometimes it turns out you actually don't have to think at all! Just walk out when the doors open, like you know the way. Your [TB] tracks, once I drew both of us, I outlined your body with the words: save me from myself. The words were darker than the bodies, and true. The tracks of the outline, you see?
MLB
Back in February--that lazy thick winter--when TB and I were courting via g-chat/email/comments and I was bemoaning her refusal of a pre-March 18th real-life meet-up, I posited this threat: "What if I'm TAKEN BY THEN?" and she responded: "You win some, you auto-lose some."
Then I killed myself. Now I'm dead, and I'm writing this blog entry from the underworld, where I'm thinking about other things that have died, or, if you will, been LOST.
P.S. If you've google-searched for LOST the TV show and ended up here, then you are indeed lost. I've never seen that show. What I do know is that Charlie Salinger's had it rough: first he lost his parents in a car accident, then his brother dated J-Love-Hewitt, who's super annoying, and now he's abandoned on a desert island? That's ridic.
I was kidding about killing myself. Actually, TB amended that statement with: "That'd be tragic," and then we made a date for the far-away future (March 24th) and I suggested "You can get drunk and visit me at two a.m. any time between now and then." Obvs she did, four days later, and the rest is history. Auto-winning all around.
However, not everything's got such a happy ending. You do indeed win some and auto-lose some.
Here's some things we've auto-lost lately. I don't miss all these things, really. I just want to talk about them. 'Cause don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone? You know?
As far as I know--and my knowledge's not so far in this area, as I check Gawker sporadically at best--this feature has unceremoniously disappeared. Blogyreeia's probs responsible for 50% or more of my current readership: a Blogherria link usually results in 4,000+ additional page views on the day it's posted, and many of these viewers become permanent readers. Some become permanent girlfriends [TB found me through Gawker, oddly enough], or job offers, or douchebags who stop by to drop some negative vibes, therefore sealing their fate to rot in hell. Really, I only mourn it insofar as it could affect me personally, obvs, cuz I'm in Generation ME, duh! Even when they say mean things to me/don't actually read my post ['cause it's funnier and snarkier just to make fun of me and pretend like the only people on earth who can be ironic or sarcastic are Gawker writers themselves], I'm still like Awesome, totes Gawkered!. Because there's no such thing as bad publicity, unless you're one of the 10,000 dudes who's life they've mercilessly ruined in other features, like "Douchebag of the Week." I could say mean things about Gawker, too, but I'm trying to be the mature one in this relationship. OK, one thing's that we both use a lot of bright colors, actually. And one of us is running a purple-and-green flash-enabled ad for Clariol hair products, and it's not me.
However, I'm hoping the absence of Bloggerea'll result in less pointless-overdone-NYC-centric posts ["Omg, apartment hunting is really hard," "Omg, The L Train!"] by NYC-bloggers hoping to be linked by Gawker. Though it doesn't always work out that way.
Maybe they need a new Bloguria intern, in which case I'd like to volunteer my services, 'cause I specialize in unpaid writing gigs that take up massive amounts of time and make me feel popular/poor. Here's today's Bloggerwheea, as composed by me:
Blogorrhea: So Many Stupid, Annoying, Worthless People on This Planet
-Bloggers who mine material from the MTA and/or the revolutionary activities of drunken twentysomethings: "humorless and talentless." [why don't we get drunk and blog? ]
-Times writers who scorn menopausal women, have limp dicks: "really sick." [pink india ink ]
-Ivy League Students who don't buy rare books from street-vendors: "poison." [thunder, perfect mind ]
-Athletic Apparel Companies who can't spell OR, at least, pass off stupidity as purpose: "lazy." [copyranter ]
-Store managers who force employees to force shoppers to open credit cards, despite employee's strict moral code: "unethical." [this girl called automatic win]
As you can see, I linked to myself and to my girlfriend, 'cause obvs that's what I'd do if I really made Blogherria. I'd probs link to Haviland's myspace blog, too. Hell, I'd like to any NYC-residing blogger who emailed me, that'd save a lot of time.
I've personally never used it to find blogs to read: I can hardly keep up with all the blogs I love without seeking out new ones. [Hell, I can barely keep up with RKB alone.] That's the same way I feel about human relationships. I developed most of my initial blogroll from the NYC Bloggers Google Group I'm in, now it's just mutated into an incomprehensible monster.
Some people I link to still won't link to me, but I keep linking to them, because I'm humble and no one can jock my style/hold me down, I've got to keep on movin'. Now I'm just rambling. Maybe I wouldn't link to me after all.
UPDATE: I've decided to do Bloggorhea myself. I mean, it's a great idea. It's like opening a Subway Sandwiches franchise, but without the "income." That's right. Check it out.
2. Global Ink on Broadway/110th
When I confess my love for magazines, most women'll respond with a knowing whisper: "I know, I love US Weekly, shhhh!" But I'm like, "Did I say I love sycophantic crap? No, I didn't. I said I love magazines." And though some of the magazines I love are, indeed, crap--some aren't. And those that aren't, I usually pick up at Global Ink. They had all the queer mags: Curve, Advocate, Velvetpark, et al, as well as all lit mags (n+1, VQR, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Black Clock, etc.) and--well--everything. International shit. Fashion photo feminist fitness whathaveyou.
Yesterday: that beautiful afternoon, all sky/hope, we visited Ahmad by Tom's Diner and TB played chess while I read Waking Vixen's book, sun in everyone's eyes but also in our hearts, I ventured to the corner for cigs [for others, not myself, weirdos] and passed Global Ink and its sign announcing impending closure. I'd been lamenting the new distance between myself and Global Ink since I moved, now I can't even be bitter over that. Now I gotta go to like...um...I guess one of those places with the purple lights? Universal News or something? Whatevs. I'll just subscribe to bitch, bitches.
Also: here's the thing about Us Weekly/Star/InTouch: if you're so interested in the scandalous romantic activities of celebs like A. Jolie, Lohan and Spears et. al., then you'd probably really enjoy novels. You know, books? Scandal, romance, threesomes, preggers unmarried ladies, fancy clothes, everything, eat it to your heart's content, fo'reals.
3. My Relationship with the Metro North
Dear MetroNorth,
Yesterday was our last trip together, and also my first morning ride, as we've generally been meeting around 5 or 6 in the evening for the past 23 days. Every single day, can you believe it? I'm not big on commitment, so this's a big deal. Though it's been a good ride, I won't miss you. You're okay, significantly better than the subway, a camel, or a half-assed donkey, but you're not teleportation or a Lexus. You're just--well--you.
Here's some things I think you could work on for next time:
-On Friday and Saturday evenings, your train is packed with the most annoying people on the entire planet. They fall into two categories:
1) Girls with fake tans and too much foundation who're smart enough to drive from their homes to the train station in Westchester without running their SUVs into a tree, but not smart enough to have a conversation that would qualify as even slightly resembling the educated English they've likely learned in their Tony public schools. They make me want to jump out the window, even if that lands me in Fordham.
2) Twentysomething Men with large quantities of beer and loud, imposing laughter that trickles into my personal earspace, also inducing suicidal thoughts. Seriously, they drink a lot of beer on the train and talk really loud. Can't something be done about this?
-Often, you've neglected to take my ticket. I know this's cause I look trustworthy, but looks can be deceiving. For example: every time you walk by, I purposely try to look like I've been riding this baby since New Haven, specifically to avoid your request of my ticket. It usually works.
-Why're there so many creepy middle-aged dudes who look like they're about to whip out their junk and masturbate to the thought of me galloping through a pool of sweet cream in a cheerleader outfit? Or the thought of me like, just sitting there? Seriously, they're not even slick about it. Just like, ew, read the Wall Street "Journal."
Do you remember when we first met, Metro North? I do. October, 1998, Manhattan to Bronxville, I was visiting the city under the guise of college visits, it was was before I'd developed that crippling phobia of most public restrooms--so I'd used yours to expel the contents of the Shrimp Tempura dinner I'd just consumed at an Upper West Side Japanese place. It didn't sit well, I told Ryan I felt sick ... I went to the same restaurant two years later 'cause I felt the odds'd be in my favor [or 'cause I'm a retard: who knows the answers to these terrific and terrifying questions? Not me.] and ended up food poisoned again. You oughta look into this: something lurks in your kitchen.
I went back to my seat, calm/clammy, gave Ryan a hand massage on the way home, because I always'd do that for him on the Metro North. The next year too, when I rightfully lived in Bronxville, wasn't only visiting. It's inhumane, really, how we use the same spaces over and over again for different lives. I've re-defined you once again, Metro-North, like people do all the time with songs.
I know what you're thinking: that wasn't really the first time. You're right. The first time we met was the night before I got sick in your bathroom--actually, we'd nearly missed you. We'd had dinner in Soho at a bistro with slick black-clad homosexual waiters with perfect butts in cheap pants, serving expensive bottles of anything to anyone: the first time I drank wine at a restaurant in America, like a grown-up. We were drunk. I wrote a poem about it. Remember that? Of course you do. I was seventeen, so, please, forgive me for my inability to write poetry, but I'd written these lines, among others, about our dash to catch you: Lighthearted and lightheaded,/we leave,/run against the city pouring over us,/my laughter trails your speed,/our sprint to the station./I lean against the pillars,/the poles/yellow, red,/you press your fingers/to my lips./We spend the evening urgent,/still panting.
There was more to that poem, before and after those lines, but surely you've suffered enough, yeah?
It seems I've written about Ryan a lot lately. I wonder if it's because of you [TB] or because of you [Metro North]. I've ridden you [MN] to get to you [TB] for 23 days, but not today. The seats are navy blue and maroon. I wonder if late at night, people fuck there, or fight. Or cry. I cried there last week but it was too crowded, I couldn't get a seat, so I stood and cried. I think that if you're crying, someone should offer you a seat. Not an aisle seat where your feet are fighting rolling-suitcases and tiny women with entitlement issues, a real seat in the corner for leaking women.
Because Ryan saved my life back then. I told him that but I don't think he got it. I mean, I said it: Ryan, you saved my life. Ryan was gay and he was my best friend and he reached across all obvious boundaries into my depression and told me I didn't need it. This was no small task, 'cause depression was my best friend before I met Ryan. Back then, before Ryan, I wore glitter on my face, I stared at the ceiling for hours on end, trying to will myself into participating in what I'd once known to be a life, I listened to the Empire Records soundtrack every morning in the shower and wore a winter hat that hid most of my face, and I had sunglassees and a video camera to hide my eyes.
Ryan pulled all that stuff away from my face and my eyes and actually loved me, which I'd believed, then, to be impossible. I mean, for the future, my love'd been used up, I thought. I was empty. Like if a heart was a prune.
And so: here we are again. Your [MN] tracks, that same view out the window, rushing/blurring, trees on amphetamines, people like pearls bursting then vanishing in the distance, you stop, open proverbial doors, and then we walk, subtle but violent and without thinking because sometimes it turns out you actually don't have to think at all! Just walk out when the doors open, like you know the way. Your [TB] tracks, once I drew both of us, I outlined your body with the words: save me from myself. The words were darker than the bodies, and true. The tracks of the outline, you see?
I would like to step out of my heart
and go walking beneath the enormous sky
I would like to pray.
[rilke]
As Ever,and go walking beneath the enormous sky
I would like to pray.
[rilke]
MLB
You lose some, you oughta win some.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
You Got a Fast Car, I Got a Plan to Get Us Out Of Here
A lot's happened lately in the smokin ' hot life of Auto-Win . Not "good things" necessarily [besides the Marie Claire article, yow!!!], like winning the lottery or surviving cholera, but "things that've occupied significant mind-space." What follows is the result of "space-mind."
[Speaking of space; moved on Monday night, with assistance from the Man-with-a-van, Little Fierce Haviland, Tara "I Haven't Worked Out in a Year But I'm Still 10 x Stronger than Fitness-Fanatic Marie" D, and my new Angelic roommates Ryan and Zoey. I'm still unpacking, a.k.a. co-existing with chaos, but I'm gonna be happy here. It's delightful. I haven't been this close to a New York Sports Club since '04!!]
However, I learned a lot about myself while packing, e.g., I own eight sticks of Secret deodorant and six travel-sized tubes of toothpaste. This means I often leave home unsure if I've adequately transformed my body's natural bacterias from "gross" to "powdery/minty freshness" and I attempt to immediately remedy this at my local Duane Reade. Because of "love thy neighbor," etc.
Today on This Automatic Life: MY GREAT ESCAPE PLAN
**
**
There's this sensational moment in Beverly Hills 90210 when Brenda discovers that Kelly n' Dylan have been riding the hobby horse and she's like: "Look, I hate you both. Never talk to me again!" and walks off into the California sunshine. Next season, Brenda's in London. Poof!
[I fully realize the lead sentence of that graf is possibly the best way EVER to begin a sentence.]
[Besides: "So, I saw America's Next Top Model at the gym today ... [or "Last night, while Haviland and I lay naked in a field of poppies..."]
I really liked that scene, so I re-enacted it in 1997 by running away to boarding school. All my friends cried. Leaving home felt like actual flight, even though we drove there and I cried for the first three days and wouldn't let my Mom go home. Luckily [!!!] I still wore ski caps then--every day, even in the summer, ALWAYS--so no one could see my puffy eyes anyhow.
The point is: even if we haven't personally been betrayed by Dylan+Kelly, we've all felt like walking off into the sunshine sometimes. It's an itchy instinct: you face disaster, heartbreak, challenge, loss -- you flee -- If the life you lead is not the one you dreamed about, then flee. [-Micheal Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World]
**
Like many New Yorkers, I've dreamt of living here all my life. [Read: threatened to run here all my life.]
Now when I get pissed off, I can't say I'm leaving you for New York City! so I just say really crazy things, cause what do you say when you're already living out your escape plan?
I think we've all got our "Screw it all, I'm moving to ______" plans/threats. Right? Yeah.
Ryan, mid-mental-breakdown, often announced he was: becoming a monk or moving to Africa to feed the children because food is the only joy in my life now, and I'd like to share that joy with others. Krista fantasized about a custom-built lakeside house in the woods, in Northern Michigan, Scot often threatened to flee for Chicago [home of his brother and The Cubs]. My Mother's announced more than once that she's moving to Australia: we have family there, and the gays can marry.
What's your great escape plan?
**
**
Bring it Back Home Y'all: Michigan
This's a common narrative thread in my blog. You know the deal: no DSL (or DHL), no Duane Reade, no MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF KICK-ASS FUN, no Haviland, no Tasti-D-Lite. Possible job involving pantyhose, e.g., a cubicle, GM, Bob Evans.
**
Reno, Nevada:
I haven't spoken to Kim in two months. Somehow, because I too have delusions, I still imagine her going "sure, friend, come stay!"
**
Flowers in Hair, etc. ..San Francisco, California:
Reno's appealing partially cause it's close to San Francisco. I imagine many New Yorkers threaten to move to San Fran when times are tough. Some people threaten L.A., but those people are not the kinds of people NYC wants anyway. Like, take your sunshine and your plastic body parts and your smoothies,whatevs, see you at the End of Days, suckers.
Which leads me to this hypothesis:
The most common escape-routes of New Yorkers are, in order of popularity:
1. San Francisco
2. London
3. The suburbs
4. Home, wherever that is. Sometimes, home is "New Jersey," but that doesn't stop you.
**
No-Sin City. Las Vegas, Nevada:
I don't understand the appeal of gambling. I'd only gamble if it somehow involved Scattergories, but even then, I'd rather just chill and play the game. [Which I'd Automatically Win, P.S.] Isn't money enough of a game as it is, and therefore, isn't gambling kinda meta? And therefore Already Over?], TB and I enjoy tossing about the moving-to-her-parents'-house-in-Vegas idea. Like Jack and Diane, Sid and Nancy, Jack and Dean, and Waldo of Where's Waldo?:
"I could be a bartender, and you can be a cocktail waitress."
-TB
[Relationship metaphor, anyone?]
When we aren't working or sexing, we'd be writing/reading. A few miles away, lights would continue blinking, cash-ching-chinging, coin-clattering, pop-crooner-gay-magician-showing, but in our hideaway, all that would feel so far away from our Waking Life that it'd almost not exist whatsoever.
Challenges include: TB's employed in NYC, The U-Haul joke, and if Al Queda attacks, they're definitely hitting Excalibur or Tropicana first. After totes smashing the hell out of Circus Circus. Not that we'd be in any of those places, but we could be passing through on our way to the library .
**
Astoria, Queens, New York City, New York:
Astoria's practically on a different planet, just because I know if I lived there, I'd never leave my apartment. I'd start thinking about the Q train and get super overwhelmed and need to lay down. So I'd lay down and stare at the walls of my big 500-dollar room, drink something fizzy with a lemon twist--and decide to stay in Astoria. Maybe I'd go out with Vater, cause she always meets weirdos in Astoria at the Athens Cafe. Then I could start a blog about being a twentysomething upwardly-mobile entry-level-employed savings-accounted gal in the big city, except it'd be about Vater's dating life, not mine. That would be the "twist." To seperate it from the other 65 already up on that topic.
**
Summer Camp:
I don't know if I'm qualified to teach a child to do anything besides how to cook Easy-Mac, but it'd be fun to be like C'mon kids, lets go eat worms! and stuff. Or direct plays. Or make poetry and lanyards. Then I could get away from all you people and be around the children because Children are the Future, just like Whitney said. Also, I imagine getting very tan and sheperding the cool kids into the counselors-only area to smoke and talk about lesbian sex.
**
Wilmington, Ohio:
My Grandparents wanted all their grandchildren to land in a top-tiered University, and if not: Wilmington College. Even sans college, they'd take me in with open arms and I'd feel like the Best Grand-Daughter Ever. But sometimes it gets so quiet there at night that trucks whizzing by are comets through a cornfield; I get scared all over. Like all that space, that quiet must hold a really dark secret. Also, I'd find a way to go into debt at Wal-Mart or Odd-Lots.
**
**
Wherever Ryan Is:
He won't disclose. Apparently it's top-secret. [Still more reassuring than last year, when he lived in Beirut.]
**
With Ryan's parents on the ranch in Oklahoma, regardless of Ryan's actual location:
Because it's beautiful there, and I love Christy and Ted and Grandmother. I'd be like, Lets go round up the horses! or whatevs. Chop chop! Gallop! Then we could go into town 'cause there's tons of good food there if you like BBQ Ribs and coronaries. Also, Poteau, Oklahoma is home of the world's highest hill [in Ryan's backyard!]. If it were one foot taller, it'd be a mountain.
**
**
Chicago:
Anyone who grew up in a Midwestern state without any of it's own super-hip-cities [e.g. Michigan, Indiana] knows that Chicago's always the default escape route. Everyone's got a friend or two in Chicago. I've got like: six [I rarely talk to, which doesn't make them any different from my friends here]. Ingrid would take me in. She'd cook me filet-with-fancy-sauce and I could read her Harper's and New Yorker and listen to The Roots while Ingrid furthers her Art History knowledge. I could work for Oprah or Barak Obama. Or both.
**
Eugene, Oregon:
Everyone's happy here, I think. You can't be like "Oh, I'm sad, and I live in Eugene." Right?
**
Missoula, Montana:
Delp, our Interlochen writing teacher/surrogate father, often scoffed at our stress over the college admissions proccess, admonishing that if we knew what was good for us, we'd move to Montana, where we could fish and write all the time. I've never been, but he was right about everything else, you know?
**
That being said: I've got no escape plan right now. This is good: right here. This apartment, these roommates. My friends. Whatever life I build for myself over the next month. TB, striving towards perfection, etc. All of us, all of us, all of us.
[Speaking of space; moved on Monday night, with assistance from the Man-with-a-van, Little Fierce Haviland, Tara "I Haven't Worked Out in a Year But I'm Still 10 x Stronger than Fitness-Fanatic Marie" D, and my new Angelic roommates Ryan and Zoey. I'm still unpacking, a.k.a. co-existing with chaos, but I'm gonna be happy here. It's delightful. I haven't been this close to a New York Sports Club since '04!!]
However, I learned a lot about myself while packing, e.g., I own eight sticks of Secret deodorant and six travel-sized tubes of toothpaste. This means I often leave home unsure if I've adequately transformed my body's natural bacterias from "gross" to "powdery/minty freshness" and I attempt to immediately remedy this at my local Duane Reade. Because of "love thy neighbor," etc.
Today on This Automatic Life: MY GREAT ESCAPE PLAN
**
"[W]hen you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs. I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month."
-Joan Didion, "Goodbye to All That
-Joan Didion, "Goodbye to All That
**
There's this sensational moment in Beverly Hills 90210 when Brenda discovers that Kelly n' Dylan have been riding the hobby horse and she's like: "Look, I hate you both. Never talk to me again!" and walks off into the California sunshine. Next season, Brenda's in London. Poof!
[I fully realize the lead sentence of that graf is possibly the best way EVER to begin a sentence.]
[Besides: "So, I saw America's Next Top Model at the gym today ... [or "Last night, while Haviland and I lay naked in a field of poppies..."]
I really liked that scene, so I re-enacted it in 1997 by running away to boarding school. All my friends cried. Leaving home felt like actual flight, even though we drove there and I cried for the first three days and wouldn't let my Mom go home. Luckily [!!!] I still wore ski caps then--every day, even in the summer, ALWAYS--so no one could see my puffy eyes anyhow.
The point is: even if we haven't personally been betrayed by Dylan+Kelly, we've all felt like walking off into the sunshine sometimes. It's an itchy instinct: you face disaster, heartbreak, challenge, loss -- you flee -- If the life you lead is not the one you dreamed about, then flee. [-Micheal Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World]
**
Like many New Yorkers, I've dreamt of living here all my life. [Read: threatened to run here all my life.]
Now when I get pissed off, I can't say I'm leaving you for New York City! so I just say really crazy things, cause what do you say when you're already living out your escape plan?
I think we've all got our "Screw it all, I'm moving to ______" plans/threats. Right? Yeah.
Ryan, mid-mental-breakdown, often announced he was: becoming a monk or moving to Africa to feed the children because food is the only joy in my life now, and I'd like to share that joy with others. Krista fantasized about a custom-built lakeside house in the woods, in Northern Michigan, Scot often threatened to flee for Chicago [home of his brother and The Cubs]. My Mother's announced more than once that she's moving to Australia: we have family there, and the gays can marry.
What's your great escape plan?
**
Plan of Escape:
Or, What I Think About When I Think About Saying Goodbye to All That
Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying
Or, What I Think About When I Think About Saying Goodbye to All That
Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying
**
Bring it Back Home Y'all: Michigan
This's a common narrative thread in my blog. You know the deal: no DSL (or DHL), no Duane Reade, no MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF KICK-ASS FUN, no Haviland, no Tasti-D-Lite. Possible job involving pantyhose, e.g., a cubicle, GM, Bob Evans.
**
Reno, Nevada:
I haven't spoken to Kim in two months. Somehow, because I too have delusions, I still imagine her going "sure, friend, come stay!"
**
Reno's appealing partially cause it's close to San Francisco. I imagine many New Yorkers threaten to move to San Fran when times are tough. Some people threaten L.A., but those people are not the kinds of people NYC wants anyway. Like, take your sunshine and your plastic body parts and your smoothies,whatevs, see you at the End of Days, suckers.
Which leads me to this hypothesis:
The most common escape-routes of New Yorkers are, in order of popularity:
1. San Francisco
2. London
3. The suburbs
4. Home, wherever that is. Sometimes, home is "New Jersey," but that doesn't stop you.
**
"My God, how much there was then to leave behind and forget."
-Rilke, "The Prodigal Son"
**-Rilke, "The Prodigal Son"
No-Sin City. Las Vegas, Nevada:
I don't understand the appeal of gambling. I'd only gamble if it somehow involved Scattergories, but even then, I'd rather just chill and play the game. [Which I'd Automatically Win, P.S.] Isn't money enough of a game as it is, and therefore, isn't gambling kinda meta? And therefore Already Over?], TB and I enjoy tossing about the moving-to-her-parents'-house-in-Vegas idea. Like Jack and Diane, Sid and Nancy, Jack and Dean, and Waldo of Where's Waldo?:
"I could be a bartender, and you can be a cocktail waitress."
-TB
[Relationship metaphor, anyone?]
When we aren't working or sexing, we'd be writing/reading. A few miles away, lights would continue blinking, cash-ching-chinging, coin-clattering, pop-crooner-gay-magician-showing, but in our hideaway, all that would feel so far away from our Waking Life that it'd almost not exist whatsoever.
Challenges include: TB's employed in NYC, The U-Haul joke, and if Al Queda attacks, they're definitely hitting Excalibur or Tropicana first. After totes smashing the hell out of Circus Circus. Not that we'd be in any of those places, but we could be passing through on our way to the library .
**
"You got a fast car/I want a ticket to anywhere."
-Tracy Chapman, 'Fast Car"
**-Tracy Chapman, 'Fast Car"
Astoria, Queens, New York City, New York:
Astoria's practically on a different planet, just because I know if I lived there, I'd never leave my apartment. I'd start thinking about the Q train and get super overwhelmed and need to lay down. So I'd lay down and stare at the walls of my big 500-dollar room, drink something fizzy with a lemon twist--and decide to stay in Astoria. Maybe I'd go out with Vater, cause she always meets weirdos in Astoria at the Athens Cafe. Then I could start a blog about being a twentysomething upwardly-mobile entry-level-employed savings-accounted gal in the big city, except it'd be about Vater's dating life, not mine. That would be the "twist." To seperate it from the other 65 already up on that topic.
**
Summer Camp:
I don't know if I'm qualified to teach a child to do anything besides how to cook Easy-Mac, but it'd be fun to be like C'mon kids, lets go eat worms! and stuff. Or direct plays. Or make poetry and lanyards. Then I could get away from all you people and be around the children because Children are the Future, just like Whitney said. Also, I imagine getting very tan and sheperding the cool kids into the counselors-only area to smoke and talk about lesbian sex.
**
"We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one noble function of the time, move."
-Jack Kerouac, On the Road
**-Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Wilmington, Ohio:
My Grandparents wanted all their grandchildren to land in a top-tiered University, and if not: Wilmington College. Even sans college, they'd take me in with open arms and I'd feel like the Best Grand-Daughter Ever. But sometimes it gets so quiet there at night that trucks whizzing by are comets through a cornfield; I get scared all over. Like all that space, that quiet must hold a really dark secret. Also, I'd find a way to go into debt at Wal-Mart or Odd-Lots.
**
" 'I'll be thinking of you,' he'd say at the door,
while already he'd be in his car,
singing, the music all the way up."
-Stephen Dunn, "Often The Pleasures of Departure"
while already he'd be in his car,
singing, the music all the way up."
-Stephen Dunn, "Often The Pleasures of Departure"
**
Wherever Ryan Is:
He won't disclose. Apparently it's top-secret. [Still more reassuring than last year, when he lived in Beirut.]
**
With Ryan's parents on the ranch in Oklahoma, regardless of Ryan's actual location:
Because it's beautiful there, and I love Christy and Ted and Grandmother. I'd be like, Lets go round up the horses! or whatevs. Chop chop! Gallop! Then we could go into town 'cause there's tons of good food there if you like BBQ Ribs and coronaries. Also, Poteau, Oklahoma is home of the world's highest hill [in Ryan's backyard!]. If it were one foot taller, it'd be a mountain.
**
**
Anyone who grew up in a Midwestern state without any of it's own super-hip-cities [e.g. Michigan, Indiana] knows that Chicago's always the default escape route. Everyone's got a friend or two in Chicago. I've got like: six [I rarely talk to, which doesn't make them any different from my friends here]. Ingrid would take me in. She'd cook me filet-with-fancy-sauce and I could read her Harper's and New Yorker and listen to The Roots while Ingrid furthers her Art History knowledge. I could work for Oprah or Barak Obama. Or both.
**
Eugene, Oregon:
Everyone's happy here, I think. You can't be like "Oh, I'm sad, and I live in Eugene." Right?
**
Missoula, Montana:
Delp, our Interlochen writing teacher/surrogate father, often scoffed at our stress over the college admissions proccess, admonishing that if we knew what was good for us, we'd move to Montana, where we could fish and write all the time. I've never been, but he was right about everything else, you know?
**
That being said: I've got no escape plan right now. This is good: right here. This apartment, these roommates. My friends. Whatever life I build for myself over the next month. TB, striving towards perfection, etc. All of us, all of us, all of us.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Sunday Top Ten: This Might Be It, Actually
"I want to be consistent
with the truth as it reveals itself to me," Gandhi said, and I felt
the hard permission right words give us
to disobey, to become ourselves.
I loved thinking that integrity
might be fluid, and still do,
though the indulgent, rudderless
and without shame, love to think so too,
and the truth is
the indulgent are my careless brothers
half the time.
-Stephen Dunn, from "Loves"
**
The last non-English-350-related all-nighter I pulled was December '99, and it ended in the same spot that April 28th's wake-a-thon did. I didn't go to Columbia but I took summer school here and still prefer its serious buildings and ancient/earnest embrace of sunrises/sets more than just about any other Uptown Park. One of my favorite parts of the island, fo' sure.with the truth as it reveals itself to me," Gandhi said, and I felt
the hard permission right words give us
to disobey, to become ourselves.
I loved thinking that integrity
might be fluid, and still do,
though the indulgent, rudderless
and without shame, love to think so too,
and the truth is
the indulgent are my careless brothers
half the time.
-Stephen Dunn, from "Loves"
**
December 1999, Harlumbia:
....we ate the inside of our cheeks, and then each other's hearts. I tapped frustration on tabletops.
"Let's go see Jake," I said, grating my cheeks to my teeth like sanding wood. "Let's go to Columbia and see Jake."
"Let's!" Meg said.
"How far is it?" Ingrid asked.
"One hundred and ten blocks," I said. "We can totally walk."
"Let's do it," Meg said. We ate our cheeks, then our cookies, and then we walked as far as the 1-9 stop to go uptown.
**
"Let's go see Jake," I said, grating my cheeks to my teeth like sanding wood. "Let's go to Columbia and see Jake."
"Let's!" Meg said.
"How far is it?" Ingrid asked.
"One hundred and ten blocks," I said. "We can totally walk."
"Let's do it," Meg said. We ate our cheeks, then our cookies, and then we walked as far as the 1-9 stop to go uptown.
**
This time: April 28th. 8 A.M. Sleepy sun rise, we emerge on 113th, Rex-Walls style. TB smokes primary cigarettes, makes promises.....I desire Zen, I listen, place faith, I squint because one never anticipates such disasters, never prepares appropriate eyewear: it was night-time when I left, it's suddenly bright I would like to step out of my heart and go walking beneath the enormous sky.
**
"The times are so peculiar now, so medieval and so unreasonable, that for the first time in a hundred years; truth is really stranger than fiction. Any truth."
-Gertrude Stein.
**
I'm waiting for edits/approval on the Sunday Top Ten. Because we can only say so much before we say too much, or the wrong thing, or not enough. You never think before you talk, chose your words, be careful:what happens when all I've got left is words? Sometimes it seems really lame that English is the only language I'm fluent in. It's a cop-out. There's gotta be other ways, you know? To say what I mean? Someone in some country is getting it out and I'm not, and I want their linguistics."The times are so peculiar now, so medieval and so unreasonable, that for the first time in a hundred years; truth is really stranger than fiction. Any truth."
-Gertrude Stein.
**
**
**
Where's the joke? Where's my punchline, punch-face? Automatic Laugh!UPDATE: Killing the Sunday Top Ten that was in progress for this week. Totes TMI. I gotta hold some things back, yeah? It's hard, always (always!) to determine how much, exactly, I oughta give here. Right now I'm in a new apartment, surrounded by boxes, putting together a new life, or something.
**
Where's the joke?
Knock Knock.
**
Because it wouldn't be autumn at Marie Claire without Marie Lyn Bernard,
my essay "Feels Like Teen Spirit," to appear in "The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater: 20 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image, and Other Hazards of Being Female" [Seal Press/Avalon, June 28], has been picked up by marie claire for their August issue.
!
Eat THAT, [redacted] magazine.
**
Because it wouldn't be autumn at Marie Claire without Marie Lyn Bernard,
my essay "Feels Like Teen Spirit," to appear in "The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater: 20 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image, and Other Hazards of Being Female" [Seal Press/Avalon, June 28], has been picked up by marie claire for their August issue.
!
Eat THAT, [redacted] magazine.
**
I had another idea for a Sunday Top Ten:
Since I'm moving, I thought I'd catalogue the top 10 weird stuff I found while packing. For example:
The photographer asked: "You wanna try again?" and I snuck a look and noted: Why, when this one is perfect?I wasn't actually happy though. I was like, what am I doing with all these patchoulli-pothead-flowy skirted-lesbians? Then I went to University of Michigan and was like: what am I doing with all these Hard-Tail-Pantsed Herve-Bag-Toting (TOTES) douchebag-sorostitutes? Then I realized: Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
Obvs.
**
I also found a story--some notes for stories, handwritten and typed--and started reading it, thinking maybe it was mine or TB's, and I could quickly ID and store appropriately. The language was familiar but then gradually the story became that way, too, and it was really really really good, and I kept reading it though I knew I shouldn't, but it was about things I knew about, so I think that's OK. So, you, I hope it was.
**
I'm dipping my spoon into a jar of Skippy and then rolling it all about the field of mini-chocolate-chips and then eating it like that's not totally weird.
**
From the currently-under-consideration Sunday Top 10, entitled 'What's Really Been Going On' or 'Nine True Things' :8. Two-Spirit/Loki/Fire Hydrant/TRANNY PRIDE
T.B.'s just announced she's becoming a man. I'm not kidding, kids.
"I'm getting involved in the transgender rights movement. Totes campaigning. Go trannies! Like is that okay? Can you be--
[erupts into totally non-maniacal laughter]
--straight again? After I just like, totally made you into a lesbian? Is that okay? Can you be straight now?"
[pause]
"Oh my God. What will we tell your mother?"
-T.B.
T.B.'s just announced she's becoming a man. I'm not kidding, kids.
"I'm getting involved in the transgender rights movement. Totes campaigning. Go trannies! Like is that okay? Can you be--
[erupts into totally non-maniacal laughter]
--straight again? After I just like, totally made you into a lesbian? Is that okay? Can you be straight now?"
[pause]
"Oh my God. What will we tell your mother?"
-T.B.
She's not cutting her tits off, like Max. Just dressing in drag.
"I usually wear men's clothes. Why, I don't know. I'm not a Freudian."
Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless
"I'm gonna be the most hipsterish man ever. I'm gonna be a drag king, like the hottest and fittest drag king EVER. Vita Sackville-West, whatever."
-T.B.
Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless
"I'm gonna be the most hipsterish man ever. I'm gonna be a drag king, like the hottest and fittest drag king EVER. Vita Sackville-West, whatever."
-T.B.
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