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?

1. Gawker's Blogghurrahia

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,
MLB

You lose some, you oughta win some.

Sunday Top Ten, Part Two: I Thought, Therefore I Know

This's the second installment of: SUNDAY TOP TEN:
KNOWLEDGE TAKING UP A LOT OF SPACE IN MY BRAIN THAT PERHAPS COULD BE USED FOR OTHER THINGS, BUT SINCE IT'S NOT, ANYONE WANT ME TO BE ON THEIR PANEL?

As you may recall from two days ago, when you read Part One ... (You did read Part One, right? It was really important. Like, would you just skip Kristy's Great Idea and go straight to Mary Anne and Too Many Boys? No, you wouldn't. Or: if you wouldn't read any BSC books, how's this: would you skip Genesis and go straight to Numbers? No, you wouldn't. Because Numbers is boring. Why skip the fun stuff, e.g., the creation of the world, for the more tedious stuff, e.g., the Law Concerning the Marriages of Heiresses, weirdo? Yes, I'm still speaking inside this pointless parenthetical statement. What if this whole blog was a parenthetical? I just LOLed to myself thinking about that. Ha. ha. That'd be a clever blog title, "Parenthetical." Someone write that down. Seriously. OK, just checked and it's taken by someone who hasn't updated since August of 2005. Shame on you, parenthetical slacker.)

[Ha!]

[I'm gonna be on this panel on Monday for Audacia Ray's new book, which y'all would love, so buy it now, please. I'm quoted in it (totes pseudonym) AND it's good/engaging/relevant. Also, Ray's blog, Waking Vixen, is literally the first blog I ever read regularly: I've witnessed her whole evolution from relatively-unknown to totes-superstar-with-fancy-template, and it's really interesting/fantastic to watch that happen. Yay go her!]

OKAY ON WITH IT.

5. "Film"-Making

My heart burst, then broke, when I discovered my new iBook came with "iMovie": I remembered poor ol' aspiring filmmaker me in the mid-90s with my 10,000 VCRs and 30 Video/Audio IN/OUT cords and all this assorted ghetto movie editing title creator/sound mixer/special effect madness I'd created basically out of popsicle sticks. Furthermore, I'd sunk hundreds into Adobe Premiere .005 and extra hard drives to create my 10-minute application tape for NYU Film School, which, for some reason I no longer recall, wouldn't output to video. I had a mental breakdown and decided not to make movies anymore.

Seriously, I made like, 400 movies, often requiring Lewis to don embarrassing costumes for music videos like "Heal the World" and "Roll the Bones." I hope he gets married soon so I can show these masterpieces to his new wife.

For your entertainment--okay--for MY entertainment, please check out a 1997 classic: "Von Gut: Raw and Uncensored." This's an example of what we used to do for fun. It's also an example of how my sense of humor hasn't really evolved since I was 15.

And then there's things like this, that clearly demonstrate:
1. I needed a tripod real bad. Usually I just set up my camera on a random surface and hoped for the best.
2. I cannot dance.
3. Hello: lesbian.
[Yes, I still identify as "bisexual," bi-rights peeps/agent representing my book about bisexuality, don'tcha worry.]
4. Lewis Bernard is The Supreme Soul.

4. Major League Baseball, 1987-1993

I collected baseball cards, played my Strat-o-Matic, was wholly obsessed, walls plastered in Nolan Ryan posters. Then, as I grew and my interest began to fade, the players sealed the deal by going on strike! I still believed in the love of the game and was shocked that the players cared so much about their paychecks. Why'd anyone strike, when they had such an awesome job? I'd play baseball for free. I already did, actually. Also, I wished I was a boy, so I could play baseball and not softball. Softballs seemed so cumbersome, like girlhood in general.

3. How to Fold Shirts, Sell Shirts, and Match Shirts to Pants

During holiday season at Banana Republic, our daily sales goals included an optimistic number of "credit card opens." That's code for convincing unsuspecting khaki-hunters to sign away their financial futures to Gap, Inc. for a 20% APR. Though I retained a few valuable apparel-related skills, I never mastered the art of the credit-card-"sale."

Supervisor: Marie, today your shift goal is $500 in merch, and for credit cards ... just open one credit card today. Do you think you can do that? Just get one person to open a credit card?

Me: [laughing] Um, probs not.

S: Okay, well, let's work on your pitch. Give me your pitch.

Me: Uh-- [as whatevs as possible, not trying at all.] So ... like ... do you want to open a credit card?

Supervisor: Well ... it's better to be a little bit sneakier about it, like when they're in the dressing room, just tell them: [totally getting into it:] Do you have a Banana card? Okay, well, let's get you one because you'll save 10% on all that if you open one today it only takes five minutes, I can even prepare the stuff at the register while you're making your final decisions, we'll get you all set up with that, only takes one minute, okay?

Me: [No intention whatsoever to listen to this advice] Right-o! Good idea, Janet/Kathy/Samantha/Rita/Lucy/Whathaveyou.

My major problem with retail in general is my overall inability to convince anyone to buy something I don't think they should buy, e.g., almost everything except food, and even then: I can talk someone into dessert, but I've never been good at making a table spring for fried mozzarella or some other cardiac-arrest-inducing atrocity. I think credit cards--especially store credit cards--are a really bad idea, and no one should get one.

I was in nearly $30K of credit card debt during my tenure at Banana, how could I ethically recommend another human dip their toes into the pool of misery that was dragging me to the depths of post-college angst?

So, over the course of my employment at Banana, I opened a grand total of zero credit cards. I feel pretty good about that. Obviously I didn't stay on past January, and I felt pretty good about that too.

2. Food/Nutrition/Calories

Seriously. Try me. Anything, anything, anything. This info's completely useless to me now, clearly, but friends who discover I have the golden ticket can't help but rail me for info, which I secretly love, 'cause then I can at least employ my smarts, and make them wonder if I'm crazy.

My Mom was a nutritionist, though she switched in '99 to social work ["I got bored of thinking about food all the time. I didn't even want to eat anymore." --Mom]. Living with a nutritionist when you're in a bizarre unqualified period of body-dysmorphic-disordered-what-have-you is like living with your father the CIA agent while having a schizo-manic episode. Mom had the literature. I am a very good student. I wish I could erase some of that information, though, namely the nutritional content of muffins. That was really disappointing.

1. Undergraduate Theater B.F.A. and B.A. Programs

Interlochen Arts Academy, my junior year of high school [1997]:

My best friend Ryan's doing calf raises on the cement steps of the Picasso dorm, eating Pringles from the can, his carefully gelled hair obscured by an oversized Stussy hoodie: "I'm dropping Theater, becoming an Academics major," he says, popping a chip, and, without a trace of irony, adds: "I can't act anymore. The only joy left in my life is food."

To illustrate, he crunches a whole stack of Pringles. He hands me a chip, I accept, and then he flashes his trademark earnest, wide-eyed stare, the imagine all the people face: "I'm becoming a monk, moving to Africa. Bringing the joy of food to the starving children of Africa."

The truth, of course, was less Ghandi, more Stagedoor: John'd gotten the part he coveted in Blood Wedding, which'd spiraled into this whirling discontent and re-evaluation of life priorities. Ryan was a senior.

His plan'd been to go to a top theater program, do the crazy-competitive-audition thing with other theater majors, but now: "I'll just apply to everyone who sends me a nice pamphlet."

And he does. Dartmouth, Brown, Ithaca, Sarah Lawrence, DePaul, Boston University, whomever. Thirteen applications. We hastily construct essays explaining his drop-out of Interlochen's program but insisting on a desire to pursue theater in a B.A. program. Though I chose to take the year off to focus on my academics, I feel this'll only enhance my understanding of the theatrical arts in an undergraduate setting....

The next year, Ryan's at Sarah Lawrence, I'm a senior, and my boyfriend's the school's best actor [the aforementioned John, natch. My roommate's an actress and both her and John shipping off most weekends to round after round of audition for coveted spots at top schools.

At campus, the student body's obsessed with who's getting into Juilliard or Carnegie Mellon, etc., who's advanced to the next round, who's getting interviews and phone calls and auditions. Obsessed to the point that I'm surprised more people did not jump into the lake when our admission/rejection information arrived. I was glad I wasn't a theater kid, I was stressed out enough about John and Ashley's fate.

Both years: I learn all about it, by proxy. Like, inside-and-out. Admissions stats, audition process, the point. What is the point? Whatevs. Showcases. Are you pretty? Do you know people?

And eventually? John's one of Carnegie Mellon's lucky 20, and now does Shakespeare in Oregon. And Ryan actually did take time off from SLC to go to Africa and re-build communities and feed children.

....and all the men and women merely players....

Sunday Top 10: Those of Us Who Think We Know

[P.S. I've started posting again on Auto-Straddle, for those of you with interest in such things.]

Next Monday, June 11th, at 7 P.M., I'll be appearing on a panel at the Museum of Sex for Audacia Ray's new book Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration. That's right: me, on a panel, having sex. Just kidding. That's private, weirdos [sex]. I'll just be talking about my former life, in which I found internet dating to be a very bizarre/enchanting little adventure.

I met lots of cool people, like Justin "Bush is a Friend to Israel" The Banker, who delighted in purchasing cocktails for the eccentric writer/waitress/model personality he projected onto my body. He tilted his tanned head condescendingly, laughed indulgently, like: Look at the cute monkey doing tricks!! She says such strange things!

Or Joey "Not Actually Jewish Even Though He's on JDate," who took me to a baseball field to smoke pot, then to his Mom's Bay Ridge beauty salon, after-hours, to have serious conversations in chairs topped with hair-dryers. He had feelings. I had feelings too, but not for him, which led to a series of psychotic voicemails. "I really opened up to you! I feel USED!" I felt used too, because he said he was 5'10 and he was NOT. Like, 5'8 at the most.

Anyhow, I have a girlfriend now, but for the purposes of this panel, I'll be recalling the great repository of information I've still got in the old noggin.

Internet dating's not the only thing I know a lot about even though the information's no longer relevant to my life. There's a lot of things I could ramble on about based on prior immersion, despite present ignorance. Here's some of them.

[I'm doing this Top Ten in two segments. Because I have this tendency to write ten gazillion words about everything. Who's got time for that? Not me, not you. Why not just do it in segments? Yeah? Good idea, Auto-Win. Thanks. I mean, look how long this intro is! You must be going BLIND from staring at the computer!]

SUNDAY TOP TEN, PART ONE:
KNOWLEDGE TAKING UP A LOT OF SPACE IN MY BRAIN THAT PERHAPS COULD BE USED FOR OTHER THINGS, BUT SINCE IT'S NOT, ANYONE WANT ME TO BE ON THEIR PANEL?

10. Emo Pop-Punk Music.

It's all about driving in his purple KIA ["It's BLUE!" -him] on highways by strip malls, singing along: This world's an ugly place, but you're so beautiful to me. We attend dozens of concerts, he crowd-surfs. He's got bleached tips & pierced tongue, shops at "PacSun." CDs are your basic nightmare: Blink 182, Alkaline Trio, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, Newfound Glory, Starting Line, Something Corporate, etc. I still think Unwritten Law's okay. I interview Sugarcult and Yellowcard for The Michigan Daily, which makes him feel close to stars: he likes me even more, he finally reads my writing.

It's easy-breezy-sinister-beautiful. The sinister part's a secret though, even from me. The music is so earnest! So fresh! If it was a color, it'd be bright purple that secretly made you stupid just to look at it. [Like my blog! JK!]

We're at an all day outdoor concert in Vegas when several 16-year-old girls flash pierced nipples at once ...

I tell him: "We're too old for this."

He replies: "Are we? Fuck. What do I do now?"

I realize I'm suffocating with him, one day in my bedroom. I flee. I leave him and all his music behind me.

A month or so later, he'll comment: "I notice you never listen to our music anymore."

"Our." It hurts me more than it hurts him, to hear him say it like that.

*
9. College Basketball, circa Fab Five Era.

The Fab Five--the starters for University of Michigan's '92-'93 basketball team--almost won the NCAA championship twice. My interest started fading following Chris Webber's early departure for the NBA, then it declined steadily 'til dropping off completely 'round the time I started going to school there. Okay, I figure if you're still reading this paragraph, you know who I'm talking about, so we can cut down to the marrow, if you will.

Now, they've been stripped of everything due to recently-discovered player-payment scandal. Bullshit: obvs these players were getting competing offers! Michigan's not the only school to offer special treatment to it's college basketballers.

Hello, just rent Blue Chips, starring Shaquille 'Rappin' Genie with an Attitude' O'Neal!

My father and brother and I read the book, saw the documentary, watched every game. My Dad was a mentor for the basketball team, so we got good seats, which we'd be on the edges of, usually. It was a pretty glorious era, in general. So when they took those titles back, they also totes stole my CHILDHOOD! Fo' reals, punks.

Also, when C-Webb called that time out, I cried. Seriously. Tears. Bawling.

*
8. How to Give Blow Jobs

The thing is, I put a lot of time into mastering this skill, and now it's totally useless.

Just kidding. I mourned that loss for about negative ten seconds. Totally hurt my jaw. I was like: Oh well.

Also, I'm never giving a blow job to a dildo [like the lesbos do in porn movies]. Because that'd be retarded.

Hi, Mom!

The thing is, by talking dirty like this, I'm preparing for my panel, obvs! I don't want to get nervous when the other ladies say stuff about sex, because they are like, super-educated Sexuality degree-holders or hot sex-blog ladies, e.g., Alt Porn Star Lux Nightmare, Writer Madeline Glass, and Ellen Fredrichs of teenwire.

I'm just me. I'm gonna be like: What's up, my banner'll make your head explode! Once I went on an internet date with a girl who showed me photos of guy's wieners she had stored on her cell-phone, and I was like, dude, if I wanted to look at that tonight, I wouldn't be on a date with a girl right now, obvs. Bada-bing. Leggo of my eggo, bitches.

*
7. Photography.

Took an NYU summer class and loved the cool, red-and-black-warm darkroom, the recluse from the feverish city heat. My project's titled: "I'm Not Just a Waitress." I photograph my Olive Garden co-workers in uniform, pair photos with captions explaining what they "really" do: actors, singers, dancers, students, fathers, mothers. Ranjit: the food runner with a degree in some complicated science I'd never understand, useless in the U.S.A 'cause his University's in Bangladesh.

Michigan, Advanced Photo: Did an independent project with a new all-girls middle school. Pondered self-esteem, faltering sense of self in pre-adolescents, wrote research paper, took photos, did long interviews with the girls, surveys, read Schoolgirls. We have a gallery show and are told to pick up our projects from the classroom the following week. I go there: mine's gone. Totally 100% disappeared.

Felt symbolic, like: you can't really "capture" anything, even with a camera, which's allegedly their point. You've just got memory, I guess. Which is a very tricky thing.

So yeah, I quit photography. Over it.

*
6. The Brady Bunch

The thing is, TV in and of itself's never been that exciting for me. As a singular entity, it's silly, I'd rather read a book. It functions only in it's unique method of telling a story: in that there's untold backstory and process, and the possibility to watch it with other people. I liked this show 'cause I liked the backstory [via Growing up Brady, the classic literary work by Bary Williams, a.k.a. "Greg," and various Brady trivia books]. I'd read about the eps before watching them: I was interested in context, in how a show comes together as a story, as a marketable good/service in a capitalistic Western society, as a collection of humans with distinct personalities gathering to complete a project as a team, as a particular significance re: history and social import.

This's just to say that I wouldn't watch The L Word or America's Next Top Model in a cave. I like the commentary better than the thing itself, often.

That being said: Why the F did I become obsessed with The Brady Bunch? I'm comforted to know that Haviland Stillwell totally loves The Brady Bunch too and read Growing up Brady. And I want that line to come up when you google her, that'd be awesome.


P.S. If you don't come to my panel, then I will never forgive you. Unless you live far away, or I owe you three or more emails/phone calls, which's like ... everyone.

P.P.S. Okay: if you don't come to my panel, then I might forgive you, unless you live far away. If you live in NYC and don't come, I might forgive you, but the odds are not in your favor, kiddo.

P.P.P.S. Also JK, I'm totes talking about other stuff, not just internet dating.

Sunday Top 10, Part Two: Demented and Sad, but Social...Right?

This is Part Two of this week's Sunday Top Ten, "Clubs Which I Do Care to Belong To," which's really a Top 15. For the explanation behind this theme, please see "Part One." I could go on about it here, but let's face it: I probably will go on. And on. For hundreds and hundreds of words.

---

SUNDAY TOP FIFTEEN, INSTALLMENT TWO, 7-1:
CLUBS WHICH I DO CARE TO BELONG TO

7. Duane Reade Dollar-Savers Club, Food Emporium Gold Card Club, Subway Sub Club, et al.

File Under: "Examples of Riese's Questionable Money Management Skills."

I grew up clipping coupons and donning hand-me-downs/TJ Maxx-pilfered "trend items," so you think I'd be better at things like "Buy nine subs, get one free!" Not so. This's one of many of my endearing incongruous personality quirks.

I visit Duane Reade almost every day, yet I lived in NYC for two years before joining their club, a choice which's likely cost me hundreds of dollars. What's wrong with me? Nothing, obvs, my fate's repeatedly sealed by Duane Reade's sub par line-waiting experience.

The Scene: Two employees idly re-stock Massengill, one totally-over-it cashier stares wistfully at the tiny sparkles on her acrylics. A line of impatient bitches mutates into a store aisle. The customers in line are suspicious of all customers not in line; their eyes dart dangerously at every passing patron because now that the line's spiraled out of control, someone could possibly CUT in line, unjustly, then act all innocent about it, Really? The line ends HERE?, yes, someone could misinterpret the line's evolution, someone could start a new line, a shorter line, over in Photo, where a half-brain-dead employee is possibly opening a register [or doing nothing at all, probs], and I start wondering if it'd take less time to get sick, go to the doctor, get a prescription, take it to the back register, get it filled and pay for my other items as I pay for my [by this point, necessary] Xanax.

By the time I've actually paid for my items, I'm certain I can't spend one more moment of my life on this particular errand, and thus, I repeatedly forewent filling out the membership club forms.

Similarly, back in Michigan when I was living off lunch shift tips [total=$30-$35/day] and dining at Subway daily, why didn't I just ask for a Sub-Club stamp? I don't recall ever earning a free sub. Haviland's always amazed that I've foregone the Tasti-D card as well.

However, I was always a member of the Delia*s Discount Domain. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular club: sorz. I'm not gonna footnote it, because it's better for my reputation as Super-Cool that you stay in the dark. For those of you who know what I'm referring to: yeah, totes.

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6. The Wingnuts

Wingnut:
1. "A nut with wing-like projections for thumb and forefinger leverage in turning."
2. "What Delp dubbed us."

Ingrid¹ reminded me in the last post's comments of one high school club I proudly belonged to: The Wingnuts. Our writing teacher, Delp, at boarding school² [cited in last post for the "this school's a country club" doctrine] referred to us [us=Ingrid, Sheetal³, Meg⁴ and me] as "Wingnuts," because we were very bright children with excellent thumb-forefingering skills. From what I saw on television and read in YA novels, the cool kids at other schools had more prodigious monikers, like 'The Heathers" or "The Queen Bees" or "The Plastics." That's the difference between High School and Weirdo High School. I've illustrated this difference below, employing photos from Beverly Hills 90210 and Sweet Valley High.

Club activities included: riding in Delp's car/istening to Bob Dylan, driving to the 7-11 for Frozen Cokes, lounging in the Traverse City Borders Bookstore, eating lunch and talking about poetry, being reminded of our status as Grasshoppers. When you're stuck on a tiny little campus, "driving to the 7-11 for Frozen Cokes" is like "train-hopping to Chicago" for other kids. It was AWESOME. [Seriously.]

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5.The Mickey Mouse Club

I watched The MMC every day. Granted, it was on a short list of shows I was permitted to watch [including Fraggle Rock, 3-2-1 Contact, Square One and Kids Incorporated], but my love for this variety program was pretty tried/true. I wanted to be in it, too, and fantasized about traveling to Orlando and being [discovered] in the studio audience [read: fully sent out for pamphlet, begged parents, etc.] Mostly, this was related to my dreams of becoming a fab singer/dancer, like my hero Shirley Temple. Unfortunately, my dreams were thwarted because I cannot sing or dance. Instead of being on the MMC, I performed Send in the Clowns on my futon for my parents. A lot of kids from that show got famous and some are in rehab, so in retrospect, good thing I wasn't on it. Instead, I'm living proof that not all drug addicts need rehab. [JK, everyone! I'm unemployed because I want to be, not because I'm a drug addict! I can't afford DRUGS!]

My Dad used to tell me how in the 50s, the show was semi-decent and Anette Funnicello brought all the boys to the yard. Personally, I liked Tiffany, who joined MMC-spinoff band THE PARTY. I bought all their albums, and danced alone in my room to them, like a totes weirdo loser:

Tiffany's the girl with the curly hair. I love Chase and Damon's matching haircuts, and that I still remember their name, and probably all the track listings. My fave song was "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend." I performed that a lot too, sometimes for my grandparents, those lucky ducks.

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4. Vodka/Club Soda and a Club Sandwich

Though clearly this category, included here on Lozo's suggestion, is enabled by it's play on words, it ALSO enables me to discuss the essence of Groucho's statement [which, P.S., I realized yesterday was quoted in Annie Hall, which is probs where I know it from]. I'm not sure what's in a club sandwich, but I think it involves a lot of meat and possibly bacon. The consumption of club sandwiches is one of many things that separates me from other Americans, along with watching American Idol, knowing the rules of the game "football," and enjoying pork products and outdoor BBQs.

I don't like sandwiches. Here's why:
1. I don't like lunch meat, except low-fat beef bologna.
2. I don't like biting into things.
3. I don't like things that other people like.
3a. Unless that thing is Freedom.
3b. Or vodka.

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3. Fruit of the Month Club

I need some vitamins like whoa. Monkeys eat more fresh fruit than I do, by like, 400%. Harry & David used to just sell fruit and chocolate, but now they probably sell like, Sushi. If someone got me a FOTMC membership for a major or minor holiday [Purim, Bloomsday and Belated Memorial Day totes counts], I'd give this person something special. I can't promise marraige, because back in December I promised to marry whomever purchased me The Paris Review Interviews, and said "I am a decent cook, and I promise to always keep my svelte figure," and TB bought it for me. So I have to give away something else. Okay, my first born.

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2. The Bloomsbury Group

I suspect the Bloomsbury folks--Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, E.M Forster, Clive Bell, et al--purposely shunned the word "club," but I'm going to include them anyway because it's my blog and I make the rules. I sometimes wonder if the internet's prevented the emergence of true artist/writer groups like they had in the old days, or at least in the old days of my imagination. Which's why TB and I are opening a bed & breakfast and it'll be special for artists and writers and such, especially homos. Once, Ryan-C and I accidentally went to a gay bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere, upstate New York. Luckily, Ryan was gay, and both of us liked eating banana bread and reading all day while the lesbians went a-hikin'. I was sick then and was limited in what I could do, physically, so I was jealous of the hikers, but also happy to read. Ibsen, Nadine Gordimer and Homer. The owner hated us, we ate all his banana bread. At our place, you can eat all my banana bread, cause I made it for you, weirdo.

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1.The Special Secret Lesbian Club

On Episode 408 of the Showtime Hit Series [and by "hit" I mean "listening to TLW dialogue often feels like being HIT over the head with a dead lesbian horse, except that lesbians don't like horses, they like monkeys, I learned that on The L Word"] The L Word, Tina confesses to her ex, Bette, that now that she's gone to the dark side [a.k.a. dudes]: "I miss the way we communicated subtly, I miss the way that we worked together to make everything around us so beautiful. I miss being surrounded by women, and I miss being part of something so secret and special."

Then this conversation, which I've cut-and-pasted from my L Word Online Recap Blog, Auto-Straddle, happened in my living room following Tina's statement, which was found dubious by my friends and "popular opinion."

Haviland: Did she say secret?
Me: Yeah, like you know--it's not a secret but [I understand what Tina is saying and I like it, but everyone is talking over me, so I retreat to my cave of ignorance/bisexuality.]
Meg: Yeah, she misses the secret code and the secret handshake--
Haviland: What did you say?
Yana: What, you don't know the handshake?
Haviland: [totally in "Maude" voice, all gravely and been-around-the-block-and-had-a-ciggie-after]
Honey.
[beat]
I've been a lesbian for a looooong time.....

That being said: I've been an Undercover Outsider in the In Crowd most of my life, finding corners in the middle of crowded rooms, but [forgive me, ye womyn's music Haters, in advance, for what I'm about to say], even as a kid, I'd feel a particular peace when my Mom'd tote me to lezzie folk music concerts--though I had no conscious forbearance of personal queer-dom, I've been breathing easier in the queer world far before I came to identify as such. It's outsider culture, and it is, still, to me, a little secret and special; at least it's somewhere that lacks the presupposition that I'm anything like anyone else.

*

My book, when I get back to it, is not so much about bisexuality as it is about being "bi-everything." About the 10,000 clubs to which I've pretended/genuinely deserved to be a member, about masks and trying to be happy/sad with such paltry, ridiculous truths, about feeling always like at least half a fraud, like I couldn't stop being undercover. Like I needed to hold something back--at least fifty percent--or else lose everything. Like not giving everything's the same thing as lying. Who's the "real you," yeah? Generation ME? Is there a "real you," and why's the default "reality" always whatever's being pulled off in the present tense?

*
Dr. W: Why's it so black and white? Why're you a fraud or always telling the "whole" truth? Is there anywhere in between?

Me: No, there is no coexistence, [dramatic flourish of legs over armrest], I'm a FRAUD!
*

No one ever guessed anything about me just from looking: no one'd guess that I'm queer, or a writer or a or even smart. "I would never guess that _______" I can be anybody, I can be anything, tell me what to do, you say jump I say I'm already jumping, look--

For every apparent revelation: a million secrets, stories denied and squelched by each reincarnation. A love/hate relationship with everything I've stood behind. Gay/straight, Jewish/Quaker, Genuis/Airhead, Sane/Insane, Artist/Robot, Social/Recluse ... It's like I've been everything and it's opposite, and've gathered enough narratives to hold my own amongst any of them, now. Though I refrain from anything of import following "I am." Maybe here's a place where I can be all of those things at once and be validated instantly simply by the very fact that I'm writing it and I have a sitemeter.

In fact, this particular truth feels indulgent, why should anyone care, that even acting as though I think you should care is breaking into another character, which's the only one I've yet to actually play: confidence.

Sometimes it's nice, after all that, to retreat into a club which you find you're already a member: someplace special and secret but already understood, maybe with only one other person, or two other people--maybe with virtual people that you don't even know--maybe with hundreds, where you've got nothing to prove, you're assured you can handle at least what this situation demands, because but what more assurance can I have you have not told me, that I will be there, I and the canyons of my heart, its vast and vacant majesties...

*

Dear Mr. Vernon,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,
The Breakfast Club

*
I am
a brain, an athlete,
a basketcase
a princesss
and a criminal.
Does that answer your question?

*

Join the Club.

Let's rock.

Hands-down-totes-Auto-Straddle.

*
Some remaining clubs I hadn't the time to cover: Friendship Club [Degrassi: The Next Generation], I Hate Rachel Green Club [Friends], Hunt Club, Cat Scratch Club, Buena Vista Social Club, Culture Club, Equinox Fitness Club, Drama Club, Yale Club, Harvard Club.

---

¹Ingrid: Ingrid and Krista were my suitemates my first year (11th grade) at boarding school. Then we became BFFs and, the subsequent year, became Wingnuts. Ing lived in NYC, twenty blocks south of Krista and I's Sparlem place, following her graduation from University of Wisconsin. Now she's in Chicago getting another degree in Art History, which's a very useful topic.
²boarding school: Interlochen Arts Academy.
³Meg: Is Meg. Northern Michigan reared. I'd crash at her NYU dorm almost every weekend when I was at Sarah Lawrence. Now she's in Michigan, I think. We met in my first writing workshop--which's also where I met...
⁴Sheetal: Raised in India, then Laguna Beach, then Interlochen. Then Johns Hopkins. Then NYC. Once convinced me, based on her evident germ-a-phobia, that she and her boyfriend had never even made out. I believed her because she wouldn't let me drink her PowerAde.

Sunday Top Ten: Not the Same as Other Kinds of Clubs

In September 1986, in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, Kristy Thomas developed what is now known as "Kristy's Great Idea." And, behold: Ann M. Martin [who, as Carly recently informed me, is a totes lesbian], began the chronicles of The Baby-Sitters Club--a story which resonated so deeply with its readers that now, even though it's 2007 and many of the series' original readers, myself included, are allegedly grown-ups who ought to be hiring their own baby-sitters [First I need to learn how to take care of myself, then I can handle a little squirt who cries even more than I do], are still curiously obsessed, as indicated by last post's comment thread.

But first: because MY attention drops into Deficit when writers make esoteric references to masterpieces they assume I've read, e.g., The Brothers Karwhathaveyoukov¹, Madame Bovary², or Ulysses³, without explanation--let me give you the secret sauce, lest you stray from this post: "I got the idea on the first Tuesday afternoon of seventh grade. It was a very hot day. It was so hot that in my unair-conditioned school, Stoneybrook Middle School, the teachers had opened every single window and door and turned off all the lights." (K.Thomas, 1986.)

WOC⁴, right? I've been talking about air conditioning a lot lately? Right?

OMG, about 75% of you are totally eyeing right-hand scroll bar right now: I didn't get baby sat by no club. God, I wish I'd learned how to read great books. Where's that nice lady who always helps me with my dentures? SHIRLENE!!! Where's my Jell-O? I'm gonna scroll down here, find myself a topic I understand ....or girls making out with other girls? ... I wonder if when Riese has babies, she's just gonna be like, "My babies are so cute, I'm gonna get someone from that hands-down-totes awesome club to sit on them." Boring.

Onwards and Upwards....[P.S. I mention masturbation twice in this post, and neither of those times include Kristy Thomas.]

"Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
-Groucho Marx

Just in case there's not enough misappropriated quotation of this famous line, I'm doing it again, applying it to myself, and then spurring a Sunday Top Fifteen [to be written in two installments, because I've got so much material!] from the fine silk of its robust loins.

Here's a club I was in. It was called "the soccer team." I liked to distance myself from the other girls by dressing less preppy and wearing my sunglasses, even though the photographer'd told me 100 times not to. I slipped them on at the very last moment, like swift-armed Neo:

Michigan, 1996.

SUNDAY TOP FIFTEEN, INSTALLMENT ONE, 15-8:
CLUBS WHICH I DO CARE TO BELONG TO

15. The O Club:

Back before the Internet was invented and before Western Culture went to hell in a synthetic handbasket, it was possible to make it to the age of 12 without knowing about orgasms. Or maybe that was just me, 'cause most of my present female friends, I've learned, knew all about 'em: they were totally rubbing one out before bed while I was reading Anastasia Krupnik for the thirtieth time. So perhaps my O-Club co-members were a bit more enlightened than me. Which'd explain why they thought it was funny to create a club called "The O Club" in 8th grade, and record our first (and only) club meeting, which took place in the nook under my loft bed. Initiation included a relatively dramatic series of high-pitched moans and yells, which I thought represented the entire action referenced in our club title. But actually that would've been "The Fake O Club." We even had a membership card. See photo, left. That's our motto on the card: "Let's rock." Write that down, boys.

*

14. Fight Club:

I'd clearly get my ass kicked if I was in the Actual Fight Club, though I took Self Defense when I was a Girl Scout, and I've got some lean/muscular legs that can put up a good fight. Mostly I just like saying "The first rule of ..." Apparently, I like it SO MUCH that I employ this phrase in my textual communications with complete abandon! A quick search of my Gmail archives has revealed extreme overuse. Some examples [and this's just the tip of the misappropriation iceberg]:

To [Gretel]: "Rule Number one of Marie Club: Everything she does that seems malicious or perhaps of negative intent is, in fact, almost always simply a result of her being: 1. a space-case, 2. out of it, 3. flustered, 4. on the verge of an anxiety attack, 5. drunk, 6. all of the above, as well as on tylenol cold and flu."

To [redacted female friend]: "Rules of masturbating when you live with your boyfriend: There are no rules to Fight club."

*
13. Sam's Club

When our [our=my family] life fell apart in the early-to-mid-nineties, so did my Mom's hippie-organic-healthy rules about food [e.g., no yellow #5, no corn syrup]. For many months, I relished in this lax policy, subsisting on fried mozzarella patties and fried popcorn shrimp, purchased frozen in 40 lb. bags at our local Sam's Club. Mom was a member [she needed bulk foods for PTA-related events], obvs, as was everyone's Mom. That 48-pack of Pepsi helped soothe my teenage soul. And decay my teenaged bones. They didn't have a lot of healthy stuff there. If you wanted a barrel of apples, you'd just like, start an apple farm, right?

Also, they sometimes sold like, Trampolines? They'd always have something random hanging from the ceiling that cost around a bazillion dollars. If I had a trampoline right now, I'd put it in the street and jump on it. Actually I wouldn't, it's so hot out there, I was sweating like a whore in West Harlem-who happens-to-be-wearing-pants instead of a whore-outfit because her calves are covered in bruises from running into walls.

*

12. The Special People's Club:

Welcome to the Dollhouse, in which the bitingly ostracized 11 year-old Dawn Weiner (Heather Matarazzo) creates "The Special People's Club" with her only friend, Ralphie, was one of my favorite films ever. When I made Ryan-C⁵ watch it in 1998 [we were doing that "trading-favorite-movies" thing you do with your best friend to "understand them fully"], at film's end, he announced: "Marie, that movie was really fucked up. I think you're mentally disturbed," and then pretended to be really scared of me all night. He meant it affectionately of course. [His favorites include Time Bandits, Fanny and Alexander, The Opposite of Sex, The Lost Boys, Buffalo '66, Brazil, Run Lola Run and Witches of Eastwick.] I watched it 500 times and decided it was my life's goal to make it a little bit easier to be thirteen, female, and alive. That's why I invented "The O Club" and got a college degree in Education. Just kidding about that last part. I have an English degree, it's really useful. I mean, they didn't even make me read Ulysses.

DAWN: I was wondering if . . . Well, I've been thinking seriously of building another clubhouse, and I wanted to know, would you be interested in being my first honorary member?
STEVE: What are you talking about?
DAWN: The "special people" club.
STEVE: Special people?
DAWN: What's the matter?
STEVE: Do you know what "special people" means?
DAWN: What?
STEVE: Special people equals retarded. Your club is for retards.

This movie, though considered controversial [Apparently the raw truth about seventh grade is harder to handle than blood/guts/violence], developed a strong passionate following, and jump-started the careers of [lesbian!] Matarrazo [Saved! The L Word], Eric Mabius [The L Word, Ugly Betty] and Brendon Sexton, III [later Oscar-snubbed for his supporting role as Warren in Empire Records, then going on to star with Oscar-winner Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry.]

*

11. The No-Girls Allowed Club, all variations on the He-Man Woman Hater's Club

First of all, I'm a feminist. Second of all, most female-friendly clubs involve things I don't understand. For some reason which I cannot recall as I am no longer retarded, I actually went to Sorority Rush at University of Michigan in 2000. I was placed in a group with about 30 other rush-ees, most of whom'd been fake-baking all day and enjoyed bragging about how they'd only consumed 1200 calories a day since 1986 and now survived on pure air. Enthusiastic elder robots shuffled us from "house" to "house" for presentations of re-dubbed pop songs [changing Mandy Moore lyrics to Alpha-Chi-Omega lyrics, whatever they were, I dunno, I was too busy trying to kill myself with an index card] followed by five-minute "interviews" with random sorority members. It was unbearable. I was like, Wow that totes sucked, and went back to the dorms, eager to commiserate my misery and disgust with my friends. But they were like, What did you like better? A-E-Phi or Chi O? [To any "Greek" readers: I'm not talking about you, you're awesome. I'm talking about sorority girls who don't read this blog. Also, I'm not talking about you: my friends, because all my friends in school were Greek, except Natalie. See: I like to be the out-girl in the in-crowd, get it?]

*

10. The Breakfast Club:

I've seen this movie about 100 times. I've almost got it memorized: I can even tell you which dirty words have been ignorantly extracted from the televised version [it drives me insane]. I own it. And not until just this very moment, when I was about to type out a club-related quote from The Breakfast Club, did I realize that there might be a connection between this reference to clubs in the film and the film's title. Which, BTW, is never really explained. I think they just liked the way it sounded. I sure do. OMG, this IS the explanation. Seriously, I've been watching and quoting this film since 1994 and I just now realized this. I feel like I just had a really private and special moment on this blog. You guys? I love you. JK. Don't throw that word around. I don't love ALL of you.

Claire: You know why guys like you knock everything?
Bender: Oh, this should be stunning.
Claire: 'Cause you're afraid.
Bender: Oh God, you richies are so smart, that's exactly why I'm not heavy in activities.
Claire: You're a big coward.
Brian: I'm in the math club.
Claire: You're afraid that they won't take you. You don't belong so you just have to dump all over it.
Bender: Well, it wouldn't have anything to do with you activities people being assholes, now, would it?
Claire: You wouldn't know. You don't know any of us.
Bender: Well, I don't know any lepers either but I'm not gonna run out and join one of their fuckin' clubs.
Andrew: Lets watch the mouth, huh?
Brian: I'm in the physics club.
Bender: Excuse me a sec. What are you babbling about?
Brian: Well, what I said was that I'm in the math club, the latin club and the physics club.
Bender: Hey, cherry, do you belong to the physics club?
Claire: Thats an academic club.
Bender: So?
Claire: So, academic clubs aren't the same as other kinds of clubs.
Bender: But to dorks like him, they are. What do you guys do in your club?
Brian: In physics, well, we talk about physics ... properties of physics.
Bender: So it's sort of social. Demented and sad, but social, right?

I quote that last line a lot. It applies often.

*

9. Country Club

At smart-kids school, many of my classmates belonged to country clubs, and they'd take me, like I was their Little Match Girl. Like, Tennis, what's that? Why's everyone wearing white? "Tan" is a verb? Also, the summer of my fifteenth year, I visited a friend in St. Simon's Island, GA, and every day we went to the country club and laid in chairs and looked at the sun for hours, it was so weird. In St. Simon's Island, even the fifteen-year-olds were drunk, and they drove cars that looked like tanks for children. Though I imagine these clubs're probably a cesspool of vanity and sin, it's nice for a day to get all the lemonade you can drink. Also I think tennis clothes are hot, aren't they? Maybe I'm just thinking about Dana Fairbanks.

Really, though, I love "country club" as a metaphor. At Interlochen, Delp harped: "This's a country club, kiddos. Just wait til you get to the real world, it'll eat you alive." You know what, though? It totally did.

Every day we'd be made to repeat:

Delp: What do you know?
Class: Nothing.
Delp: What is this place?
Class: A Country Club.

We knew it though. We were like: More lemonade, thanks. Let's just sit on the beach and listen to poetry, fall in love with each other and then, fully in the throlls of crescendoing adolescent love, also fall in love with Raymond Carver, Mark Strand, Stephen Dunn, Jim Harrison, Pam Houston, Robert Bly, Kathleen Ann Porter, Anne Sexton, Bruce Weigl, Charles Baxter, Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder, Stuart Dybeck...

In this photo, we almost look like we're at an actual country club, instead of about to get on school-buses to be transported to "Morp."
[That's "prom" spelled backwards, for those of you who are retarded. JK you're all smart. Smarter than me, even. 99th percentile. Go y'all. You all get in to Julliard, early decision. Congrats.]

Actually, just thinking about that now: we used to have no purpose in life besides reading books, talking about them, and then, in exchange, learning a little biology and having some awkward achy bones. That totes rules.

At Interlochen, the question was: "Does the ocean need to be listened to?"
The answer was: "Yes. Listen up: trees are falling."

*
8. The Baby-Sitters Club, Obvs

I was a good babysitter. Except once I locked the kids out of the house. Luckily I lived across the street. So after Emily stopped crying, like waaa waaa I'm five and my baby-sitter just locked me out of the house, we chilled at my place. They loved me anyhow, 'cause I never figured out how to talk to adults and children and people my own age differently, so I was pretty straight with them. About boys, and crack, and SARS.

"...and for me at age eight, just before I started at Emerson and started liking boys, the queen of Girl-Land was Stacey McGill of the Ann. M Martin YA series The Baby-sitters Club. Mom scorned the Sweet Valley Twins but admired Kristy and the girls on account of their implicit entrepreneurial spirit and hence, she forgave their whitewashed fluffy mass-marketed package.

Stacey worked summers as a lifeguard, and on the painted covers of those pastel-bright paperbacks, her long tanned legs dug into the sand like they'd crept up on her from underground, like maybe she was part mermaid. The cover art for Book #8, titled Boy-Crazy Stacey, pictures our heroine, adorned in a conservative yellow sweatshirt and her trademark red lifeguard jacket, cradling a freshly rescued young girl in her arms as a hunky lifeguard, tanned and as cut as a Ken doll, bandages the girl's injured foot. His shirt is unbuttoned to the waist. That was the kind of man I wanted: the kind that'd save a little girl's life with his shirt unbuttoned. And I also wanted to be a Mermaid. I wanted to be close to women who knew how to do whatever it was that Stacey did so well to bring all the boys to the yard, which I would be doing soon, too, because I was almost eight. Who Needs Baby-Sitting when there are BOYS around?"

-[me], one of 500 bad drafts of my "book," which I'll never finish, because I'm doing this.

It'd be different now: with Outlook, AIM and a simple homepage, the girls coulda been entrepreneurs way faster, but whatevs. Their exploits formed the base for grown-up work of similar literary merit, e.g. Sex and the City. (Hello: Mary Anne/Charlotte, Stacey/Samantha, Claudia/Miranda, Kristy/Carrie) . Furthermore, they struck a special chord amongst lesbians, who like strong women that have jobs and money and obvs the stories had a homosexy feel to them. Carly shared with me an essay, written by her friend Jane, entitled "Why Mallory's Gay." [UPDATE: Jane is now recapping the BSC TV series on her blog. Check it. LOL.] Some of the evidence includes:

-When the “gang” head out in the storm with Lucca to rescue Kristy from drowning in the pouring rain, Mallory is seen wearing plastic yellow overalls, galoshes and matching hat.
-Mallory jumps at the opportunity to secure her house for a party being thrown in Kristy’s honor.
-While there is no proof to this statement, Mallory was surely uncomfortable having to be crammed in a small car with Lucca, a boy, considering she “hates boys” (this fact taken from the book Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym) in which she explains her disgust for the two aforementioned items).
-Mallory‘s clothing brings up certain questions. Consisting mainly of suspenders, shorts and button down shirts, her wardrobe is rather un-heterosexual. She is also seen to wear ties on occasion, an accessory associated with males and lesbians.
-When Kristy goes off to see her dad and the members watch her get into his car, one exclaims, “Kristy has a boyfriend?!?” Mallory’s reply is, “The world must be flat.” This is clearly a reference to the fact that Mallory is infatuated with Kristy and believes that there is a chance at a relationship...

I learned a lot about babysitting from the BSC. For example: I kept getting babysitting jobs and I never locked anyone out of the house again.

"I felt deliciously scared--and happy. We were friends again...The Baby-Sitters Club was a success. I, Kristen Amanda Thomas, had made it work, or helped to make it work. I hoped that Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey, and I --the Baby-Sitters Club --would stay together for a long time."
-"Kristy's Great Idea," Kristy Thomas, 1986

Stay tuned til the rest of this top fifteen comes out later this week, I know you can't hardly wait.

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¹A famous book by Dostoevsky. Often quoted by smart people.
² This is a book by Gustave Flaubert. I quoted him and talked about him in that blog entry that got erased by zoho writer.
³ There was this list of the best novels ever and this book was number one. By James Joyce. Luckily, before I could feel too bad about myself, I saw that number two was The Great Gatsby, which I have read. Also obvs read Lolita. That's two in the Top Ten alone! I'm a genius.
⁴ WOC: Weird/Of Course. Maviland (Marie+Haviland) term, created to indicate strange coincidences of massive import.
⁵ Best friend/life-saver/life-changer, we met at boarding school in 1997, and later went to Sarah Lawrence and then to Manhattan together. Since then, he's been all over the world, and I've mostly been here.

Carousel of Progress: Beverage Bottles, Google Empire, Transportation, Interns

It's been a fantastic week for Progress. I'm now [sorta] employed, I journeyed to Pathmark for groceries [and stepped directly into a lagoon of tomato sauce, facilitating a somewhat sensual experience between my foot and the cleaning-man's mop], replaced my gapingly-holed Chuck Taylors with brand-new-[sized-too-small] Chuck Taylors [the ten minutes allotted for this errand did not provide for additional store visits to hunt down proper size, whatever, my feet'll shrink or my shoes'll grow, it takes two to tango], got my hair did [Visa's especially excited about that], and....yes...!!!...although the globe is warming, my room is cooling because...

(!!!)

Roommate-Ryan, who coincidentally happened to read my blog for the first time this week, removed those soul-stifling bars from my window, AND, before I was able to jump out, filled said window with my AIR CONDITIONER! Ryan's the best roommate ever, besides Zoey. And me, 'cause last summer, I installed THREE air conditioners in Lo and I's apartment, inspiring Lo to comment: "You're such a lesbian today!" That's right. But now that I'm the girly one in my lesbo-ation-ship, I've got no time/strength for such things. I have to do my hair, etc. Anyway, enough about me. Go Ryan!

a power of butterfly must be the aptitude to fly

So, re: hair? On my first visit to DRAMATICS NYC [also'd be a good name for Nation on Saturday Nights], I thought "Hm, my stylist's name is TRAFFIC? That's weird. Maybe his parents were drunk, or Nascar fans, or both." But this time, my stylist's name was ZONE and his assistant's name: ENERGY. Today, at my new job, I commented to the girl-who-was-training-me: "Everyone who works here has a porn star name!" [E.G., Denver, Rod, Asia, Javier.] Then I said to myself: "Riese, you're not in your room anymore, shut up, weirdo!" She laughed/agreed though. Because I was funny/right. Not really/kinda.

Anyhow I wanna go to hairstyling school so I can get a job at DRAMATICS NYC and change my name to TOXIC.

Onto installment TWO of The Auto-Win Carousel of Progress: Winter-Fresh Edition. I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. Like I ever did. I mean, it's getting worse. My brain is tired 'cause I woke up at 6 A.M. to go to work. That's right, WORK. Did I mention that already? Obvs I'm not cut out for this "working" thing, I'm never going to work again ever. Over it. Totes tiring. What am I talking about? Right: the wheel. You know what though? That was a good one, yeah? The wheel? That was a fucking amazing idea, the wheel.

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BEVERAGE CONTAINERS:


W/O: The New Poland Spring Bottle Caps...

Are accidents waiting to happen. Not even waiting, really. Rather: "actively exploding all over my bag/bed/floor/what-have-you." Has happened approx. 100 times since the cap's introduction, including this morning, when, as you know, I was on my way to my JOB. I didn't have time to check the front bag-pocket for damages--and, fast forward to several hours later: I reached into aforementioned pocket for emergency tampon to find it'd taken on the form of a dead jellyfish, if jellyfish were made out of cotton and not jelly. Why change a good thing, Poland Springs? You had the right idea by bottling water, which's a classic choice, so you had to compensate by inventing a new kind of cap? Seriously, what?!! I'd like to sit it on that meeting, which probs went like this: Hey, this is nice how I can suck water out of this bottle like a baby suckling his mother's breast. Let's change it because we hate women.

W/: Screw-Caps for Wine Bottles

Because I can't possibly go a single post w/o mentioning the Olive Garden this week: we had this wine called Lambrusco--probs sells at Pathmark for about $4.99/bottle. It had a screw cap, but this was back in '00, before screw caps were hip, so we were trained to cover the "opening" process [which in all other instances involved a flourish of "wine key" and a rare opportunity to demonstrate hand-eye coordination or really any useful brain activity whatsoever] with our napkin¹ to hide the cheap-wine-giveaway suggested by the screw cap. I'm glad this stigma is gone, and now there's nothing embarrassing about ordering Lambrusco at The Olive Garden, except that you're at The Olive Garden.

I prefer 'em and love their proliferation: easier to store in crowded refrigerators, easier to tote and easier to open and subsequently hide if one is drinking in a place where one is not supposed to be drinking, e.g. work [not my new job that I started today, obvs, but other jobs I clearly no longer have for whatever reason], and doesn't require purchase of ghetto wine opener which breaks on first usage. Much like my heart.

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THE RAPIDLY EXPANDING GOOGLE.COM EMPIRE:

W/O: [certain elements of] Gmail

Sometimes, in an attempt to prove a point about why I couldn't have Barbies or go to the cool-kids party, my Mom'd say: "Marie, if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" And I was like, "Um, obviously. Why would I want to be alive if all my friends had just jumped off a bridge?" So, I got gmail. I even suggest gmail to my friends, and then shun them if they don't join up [except you, dear Haviland, and your adorable AOL]. But for reals, it drives me crazy that I can't put mail into good old fashioned FOLDERS. Labels? Wha?! I've never enjoyed labels much. Some of my least favorite include: top/bottom [re: lesbian sexual assignment, apparently for life], "artsy," bisexual, bi-curious, slut, JAP, slacker. I don't need my "Hav" label to indicate which emails are from Haviland--that much's apparent by her email address in the "FROM" field, yeah? Seriously: do you know anyone who's like "Thank G-d for those labels, totes helps me organize my life. Vigilant about the labels. I can see clearly now the rain is gone." This's what I want, and it's what I had on yahoo/hotmail/other retarded email servers: my inbox is just for emails I've gotta respond to. I'd like folders for the rest of it, and I don't wanna "archive" everything I've responded to, which'd be Gmail's solution. I tried indicating emails-needing-response with "stars," but then they slip out of top-spots and my starred emails end up being people I never really intended to respond to, like random dudes I met on J-Date in 2004. That's not a hypothetical. Also I label my emails anyhow, just cause I trust Google blindly, like I'm that douchebag and Google's jumping off the bridge, and I'm like, wait up! wait for me!

W/: Google Reader

I love Google Reader for what it truly is:"Google Reader helps you keep up with it all by organizing and managing all the content you're interested in. Instead of continuously checking your favorite sites for updates, you can let Google Reader do it for you. From news sites to your friends' blogs, Google Reader helps you keep up-to-date with all the online information that matters most to you."

I love Google Reader for what it is accidentally: Say, hypothetically, that one's girlfriend compulsively erases her blog posts at a rate so rapid it'd be hard to keep up if one wasn't informed of each posting more-or-less immediately: well, luckily, it's all stored in the Google Reader cache. Every last redacted word. Holla!

I've refrained from lauding the glory of Google-Reader on this blog because: 1. Google is evil, T.B. read all about it, they're spying on us, etc. [I use "google is evil" and "Al Queda" in this post. And "DRAMATICS NYC." And "porn." P.S., I hate George W. Bush and I love Rosie O'Donnell.] 2. I suspect that when people read this on G-Reader, it doesn't show up on my site-meter. But I'm abandoning pride at the gate, kids.

I actively monitor about 75 blogs right now, a feat only possible with the help of my third favorite site (GMail and this blog being first and second, respectively) on the internet, Google Reader, a site I would make sweet, gentle (and occasionally rough) love to were it physically possible (Don’t even get me started on what I would do to GMail, and as for my own site, well, let's just say it does just fine.)
-Amish, NYC blogger and a member of my social web back at the ol' alma matter, University of Michigan.

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TRANSPORTATION

W/O- AIRPLANES:

Absolutely everything about travel-by-plane is resolutely unpleasant. I know planes've got advantages: e.g., they move super-fast, which's especially important for overseas travel, as no-one wants to spend their vay-cay on an ocean liner. [Except cruise -ers, obvs, like me, but then there are people who get seasick, like Haviland, which's why she took sea-sick medicine and then started hallucinating: Everything's just so--BRIGHT!]

It's not the "flying" part that I despise, it'd be fun to learn fly a jet or go-go-gadget copter. But large commercial airliners are floating torture chambers: we're willingly strapped to Gravitron -esque "seats," we wait like Patient Robots for the moment we're permitted to recline half-an-inch, relish this moment...and then, for anywhere between 30-500 minutes, we experience unpleasant physical sensations like fresh-oxygen deprivation and virus transfusion (transmitted via little devil robo-tit fans) and THEN! THEN!, the half-inch recline is snapped mercilessly from our hands [often by a tired/hungover flight attendant while we are literally unconscious, which's like someone waking you up by whapping you on the ass and screaming MAKE ME SOME COFFEE WOMAN! not that anyone ever did that to me every single morning ever], like a stork bending to snatch up a chortling child. Then you land--which's when you're pretty certain you're about to die--and are spit out into a huge building that smells like rotten festering dehydrated humans. Sorta. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up in a paper bag. That's why I take trains from New York to Wisconsin. Also because I'm afraid of Al Queda.

W/- LEXUS (I want to make this plural, but how? LEXI? LEXUSES?):

Once upon a time, I bought myself a car. Before you run away with any Riese-was-wealthy? ideas: Lexuses, moreso than other brands, maintain value, and I knew I needed to sell my car within a year of purchase 'cause I planned on being a part of it in New York, New York post-graduation. I wanted to maximize my return, like a year-long car rental?

Anyhow: driving it was like dancing! I'd never liked driving really, it was fine, got me from here to there. I thought shiny expensive cars were just shinier than other cars, and somehow grinned with bling-teeth-money-tongue-cash-tingle, I didn't realize it was almost like a different kind of car. Like, totes AS ADVERTISED. When I was really sad, which I was often then [the heart breaks into small pieces, etc.?], I'd drive it around Ann Arbor for hours, singing along to Fiona Apple: Cause I do know whats good for me, and I've done what I could for you, [imagine me pounding dashboard with I-Am-Woman triumphance] and you're not benefiting, and yet I'm sitting, singing again SING SING again! [almost yelling now, getting very upset] How can I deal with this, if he won't get with this? Am I gonna heal from this, he won't admit to it... Or I'd just park it in the parking lot of my elementary school, Eberwhite, and take a nap with the air conditioner or heater still on. Depending on the season.

The Lexus was white. It was so not-me. So entirely thoroughly not me, it was like floating through life in a stolen spaceship, which sometimes happens to be exactly what you need.

WHY HASN'T THIS HAPPENED YET?: Teleportation.

Even those of you w/o several seasons of Star Trek in your brain's back-log have certainly wished [out loud, probs] to be teleported. I usually declare this particular desire while sitting in someone's apartment or house late at night, imagining my own commute home: bus, cab, car, train, whatevs--anything besides the only other tolerable commute I've experienced, which's "falling asleep and having A Parent lift me and deposit me instantly into my bed, a.k.a. falling asleep and having A Parent lift me, deposit my body into a car, drive me home, and carry me to bed," which hasn't happened since the late 80's.

But if there were teleportation, I could import Unpaid Interns from all over the globe. Especially now that I've got an actual job, time's tight. A.K could flow my paper, Lozo could blow on my hands, Razia could stick it to those mofos and unintentionally practice precognition, Moonkiller could tote my things because she invented the totem pole, Mercury obvs is doing my hair and "word verification" was the cleverest thing EVER for number #1, M could recite Run DMC's It's Tricky which is no small thing, the spaz's ass is black man's kryptonite [making us quite a planet], kate'll let me use her hair products and can count words in her head, and carlytron wouldn't even need to be teleported, she totes lives here, could take a cross-town bus to perform a skit, a game, whatevs. And I need carlytron because we gotta bring The Truth About Stacey and Mallory and the Trouble with Twins to the screen ASAP.

And lk coulda written this post, if she'd wanted to, then I coulda been that black [dirty] angel, yeah, tooth to nail and [perfectly] translating [vain] words [are what sticks to the real]...crawling underground, lifting the phone [could hear our] voice, no black mark [upon their foreheads], yeah, yeah, environmental transformation. That's some translation, ghostwriter.

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¹: Also known as the "tail," required to be on our persons at all time, lest someone place a scalding hot lasanga plate into our hands. Once I was delivering lasanga to a table and I handed it to the server and said: 'do you have a tail?' and he said, No, I don't need it, and proceeded to handle 5,000 degree plates with his bare hands. I decided he was my hero, and now I can do the same thing. I was an excellent expo for this reason.