I Am Never This Happy

Pinch me, would ya?

Things just have a way of coming together this week. In fulfillment of earlier prophesies mentioned, I got an Italian flag for my desk at work, and it is rigged to hang from my pencil cup by a series of binder clips and rubber bands. I realized this won't do much to help the person who thinks I'm Mexican, because the Mexican flag is exactly the same as the Italian flag, plus a swooping eagle in the white field. (I may have dark hair and eyes, but I'm pasty as hell. So much for being a quarter Siciliano.) Also, my Shy Violet doll arrived in the mail, and she is exactly as I remembered her, and filled me the warm gooey feeling inside that I had as a gloomy little kid cheered up by her toys.

Then something crazy happened. See, I collect Fisher-Price Little People. I had a modest collection when I was a kid, which I must have sold at the family tag sale in a moment of gross misjudgment. Since 7th grade or so, I have been rebuilding my lost collection (and doubling it a few times over) from pieces harvested at other tag sales, thrift stores, flea markets, vintage toy shops, and eBay. Well, my parents are moving out of their house into a condo, so my sister drove down to clear all her stuff out of her bedroom (to take to her apartment or give to Goodwill -- everything must go.) In a box of junk in her closet, she found two surviving Little People, a blonde girl in a blue dress, and a freckled fireman. Originals! Not somebody else's originals that I adopted as my own, but ones from my actual childhood! And it was a complete surprise; they just arrived in the mail unannounced, on the same day as the Shy Violet doll. I got THREE new toys in the mail in one day, so I'm a little daffy today. (Yes, I'm inching up on 25 years old and I collect old toys. Deal with it.)

Far more important than toys, though, is that I finished my first short story in FOREVER. I actually made it through the first draft without beating myself up over it and giving up. And, fittingly, it is about a girl and her sister selling their toys at their grandparents' tag sale. It was a blast to write, remembering all the goofy things from pre-, during, and post-tag-sale, and combining the most memorable snippets from years of tag sales into one representative weekend. My grandparents would be so thrilled to see me publish something, and I don't know if this one is a publishable level of good, but just sending it to them made them so proud (and, I think, quite amused to see and hear themselves on the page.)

But life gets better still, because a certain someone who is long, long overdue to be happy and loved, has been made quite happy and is on the way to sort-of-kind-of-don't-jinx-it being in love, and I am absolutely giddy with excitement for him; I would be turning cartwheels if I were capable of such a thing.

I'm sure I'll come off of this high tomorrow when my sweet gentle Zinnia will turn into a wrathful, flesh-slicing beast as we take her to the vet for a gingivitis check-up and a nail clipping. I don't know. Maybe even bleeding at the hands of my cat won't bring me down.

DENIED -- The Return!

How exciting! I remembered to grab a length of DENIED stickers and stuff them in my purse. Because yesterday I saw that same "Chicago to Mexico in 30 Seconds" ad on the side of a large parked tourist vehicle, some kind of fake trolley car. I slapped that baby with a DENIED sticker, and slapped it good.

So I find that if I wait a couple of days between posts, I accumulate interesting stories for a good post instead of, "Hmmm...let's see...how about a narrated tour of data-sorting an Excel spreadsheet?" (Sorry about that.)

Such as last Friday, when a woman at work called me a Daigo! My ethnic-slur cherry has been popped. This woman is always saying derogatory things about Italians, such as when she said "God Bless You," in the you-just-sneezed way, upon the pronunciation of my last name, or when I was able to pronouce a different multi-syllable surname, she sneered, "What are you, Italian?" So on Friday, she says in conversation, with utter contempt: "My son-in-law talks with his hands -- He's Italian! They all do!" I smiled and said in a good-natured tone of voice, "You've really got it in for my people, huh?" She rolled her eyes at me and groaned, "Friggin' daigos." Without even thinking, the words "Oh my god!" escaped my lips, as in, "Oh, my god, you actually felt that was acceptable to say, and right to my face!" I need to run to the travel store down the street and get a miniature Italian flag to display on my desk. (Hopefully, it won't be interpreted as a response to the World Cup.)

Today has been a day of racist and Christian-supremacist forwarded emails. The problem with exchanging email addresses with the oldest people in your family, the people who are the last generation to remember the precious family stories that need to be shared and retold, is the dramatically-increased probability of receiving nasty, obnoxious forwarded emails. I do not believe pro-America means anti-every other country. I do not believe it is a sign of devotion to your faith to shit-talk people of other faiths. I do not find security in my sexuality or the sacredness of my marriage through gay-bashing. I do not need to slam other ethnicities to feel good about my own. By hey, maybe I'm just QUIRKY like that! Argh. And it's very rare that I don't know it's coming; any email with a subject heading that starts with "Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd:" can't possibly be good news. But I click on it anyway, and fill with rage and despair. There are days when I feel plucky and write pointed responses to this garbage (which never changes the mind of the sender, but at least gets me off their "Would Appreciate Racist Humor" forwarding list.) Today is not one of those days.

So on this crappy day, I got a friendly reminder from eBay that the auction for the Shy Violet doll I'm watching will be ending soon. Good old Shy Violet, that doll I loved dearly and who disappeared at some point in my childhood, whose picture I use as my profile image no less (that's not MY doll, just a picture I found on the internet.) Winning the bidding war (at only $10 with shipping) has been my afternoon pick-me-up.

And hey, she's colored.

Blogthings Smackdown

If you troll around on blogs or myspace and whatnot these days, you can't avoid running into a blogthing quiz. "What is your power color? What city do you belong in? What is your summer of 2006 anthem?" They are the pinnacle of what I refer to as the Co-Opted Individuality Culture, where people (let's face it, mostly girls) think they can develop a true individual self through the products they buy and the cutesy labels/pre-packaged identities they give themselves. If you think you can distill your personal essence, or discover new dimensions to your soul, by answering six questions that will determine "What Flavor Jellybean Are You?", then congratulations, you have been co-opted. I hate to admit that I sometimes get sucked into these things, even as I openly critique them for their oversimplifications and wrong-headed assumptions. But this one REALLY pissed me off.

I took a quiz called "Are You a Lady?" and scored 33% Lady. A few navigations later, I found the "Are You a Gentleman?" quiz. I scored 36% Gentleman. Does this mean I'm 31% hermaphrodite? (Oh, the gender confusion! Pardon me while I reassess my genitals.) Actually, blogthings would have me believe I am 64 -- 67 % classless troll, because this was all about manners. Now, I was the gal in college who filled up her academic requirements with classes such as "Women and U.S. Society" and "Gender and Culture", so it was on pure instinct that I printed out the questions for the male and female quizzes for furious analysis.

The following statements appeared on both quizzes [and the quiz-taker must check off all statements that apply]:

*When it's up to you to tip, you always leave at least 20%.

*You never talk on your phone when in a restaurant or at the movies.

*You don't tell sexist or racist jokes.

*You do not interrupt people speaking to you.

Now, these are just plain good manners. But "You do not discuss religion or politics at the dinner table"? That's no fun! [It's just not a Mom's-side-of-the-family get-together without Mom and her sister and brother hollering at each other over prayer in school or the Pledge of Allegiance!]


Here are some choices that were gender inversions of each other:

*You don't reveal your age or weight unless absolutely necessary / You never ask a lady's age or weight. (Because the worst thing in the world is to be middle-aged and fleshy. Unless you're a guy. Then you can be as ancient and fat-ass as you like.)

*You never ask a gentleman how much money he makes / You never talk about how much money you make. (Because women don't have jobs! "Oh, Mr. Man! What's it like to have a career?")

*If a gentleman offers to pay for a date, you politely accept / If you ask a lady on a date, you politely insist on paying. (Because again, women don't have jobs!)


Here are some choices for the ladies that are just plain ridiculous:

*When in doubt, you dress up; you would never look too casual for an event.

*When in doubt, you dress modestly, saving sexier clothes for the right occasion. (Careful, ladies. Not too casual, not too sexy. How about a collared, long-sleeve dress, with a lace-trimmed burlap sack on your head?)

*You don't discuss your past relationships with the person you're dating. (Are you crazy? That's mandatory! If a "gentleman" tells a "lady" he dumped his last girlfriend because she hung out with her guy friends, that is the lady's cue to run for the hills!)

*You carry the smallest purse possible, depending on the occasion. (So purse size is an affront to manners? I'll remember that next time I'm in the company of someone who's pissing me off. Instead of saying, "Fuck you!", I'll just say, "Guess what? This big-ass purse isn't even FULL! Take THAT!")


Here are some choices that weren't necessarily gender inversions of each other, but they were the same choice number, as if one had been replaced by the other:

20. If you are on a diet, you do not discuss it at the dinner table / You never chew with your mouth open. (What if my diet is based on my religion and/or politics? Can I discuss it then?)

25 [final question]: You don't allow your friends to drive drunk / You never ask if you look fat.

There you have it ladies. Let the fellas worry about everybody getting home safe. You just keep your mouth shut about those extra 10 pounds.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to drink milk straight from the carton, scratch my crotch, belch, put my elbows on the table, sneeze without covering my nose, and ask some unescorted gentlemen their age and weight.

Those Modern Chicks Are For the Birds

FOR THE BIRDS

I talked to my grandparents this weekend. They had heard there was a fire on the subway in Chicago, upon which Grandma remarked, "Those damn terrorists." It was actually just an electrical malfunction. This makes me wonder how much the News Machine is trying to make everything sound like potential terrorism (Be afraid! All the time!), and how much my Grandma is just personally worried about terrorists. She was very relieved when I told her it wasn't terrorists.

Grandma is not stupid when it comes to politics; she's not one of the easily herded elderly. In 2000, she voted for Nader because, and I quote directly, "This two party system is for the birds!" For the birds! In 2004, when the, uh, republican candidate was seen with a box-shaped protrusion on his back during the debates, and he blamed it on a "badly tailored suit," Grandma said, "Bullshit! Even your grandfather and your father wouldn't go out in a badly tailored suit, and he would, with all the money he has?"

So I hate to think my Grandma has been taken in by the fear-mongers. (The terrorists could strike rural Connecticut! Possibly in your garden or tool shed! Wrap your pets in duct tape!)


ONE OF THOSE MODERN CHICKS

I did not change my last name when I got married. I had a whole list of reasons. The main reason was that I didn't want my identity to disappear: You can't find Violet Lastname anymore, because she doesn't exist, and you would never know to look for her under Violet Otherlastname. It felt sexist that I should have to change my name. My family name is all but extinct, because the Lastname men have a knack for producing daughters. It's also well-known among the old-school Italians of Danbury: "Are you the Lastnames of Liberty Street?" I'm mostly Italian, and Bill's last name is Polish, so the idea of suddenly having a Polish last name felt, well, foreign. I'm glad I kept my name for all these reasons, but it has also been the source of some excellent conversations.

Me: It's pronounced "Lastname", but my ancestors pronounced it "Cognome."
Woman 1: Wait, but I thought you're married?
Me: I am. I kept my name.
Woman 1: Oh, so you're one of those modern chicks?

Woman 2: But I thought you're married?
Me: I am. I kept my name.
Woman 2: I hate that!

Woman 3: So, what does Mr. Lastname do for a living?
Me: Actually, "Mr. Lastname" is my Dad.

and most recently:

Me: [singing] "Willlllllll-lliammmmmm! Willllllll-lliammmmmmmm!"
Bill: Stop taking my name in vain!
Me: I didn't take your name at all! AW, SNAP!

The Best Way to Sort DVD's...

...is no longer the way my household sorts DVD's. Sigh.

Because I am a full-blooded film geek, I sorted them alphabetically by director, and chronologically within the director. That is just cool, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. Here is how our shelf went:

Allen: Annie Hall
Anderson: Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums
Arteta: The Good Girl
Ashby: Harold and Maude
Benigni: La Vita e Bella
Bergman: The Freshman
Bird: The Incredibles
Brooks, A: Real Life, Lost in America, Defending Your Life, Mother
Brooks, J: Broadcast News
Cholodenko: Laurel Canyon
Coen: Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Hudsucker Proxy, Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?
Coppola: Lost in Translation
Curtiz: Casablanca
Daldry: The Hours
Forsythe: Local Hero
Gilliam: The Fisher King
Guest: Waiting for Guffman
Hallstrom: What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
Hanson: Wonder Boys
Jenkins, P: Monster
Jenkins, T: Slums of Beverly Hills
Lee, A: Brokeback Mountain
Lee, S: Do the Right Thing
Leone: Once Upon a Time in the West
Lumet: 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network
Mendes: American Beauty
Minghella: The Talented Mr. Ripley
Mitchell: Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Mulligan: To Kill a Mockingbird
Nichols: The Graduate
Payne: Election, About Schmidt, Sideways
Peirce: Boys Don't Cry
Pulcini & Springer-Berman: American Splendor
Polanski: Chinatown
Reiner: This is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally
Reitman: Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II
Sayles: Lone Star
Schlesinger: Midnight Cowboy
Scott: Blade Runner
Shyamalan: The Sixth Sense
Soderbergh: Erin Brockovich
Wilder: The Apartment
Yates: Breaking Away
Zwigoff: Ghost World

[Disclaimer: This collection is FAR from a complete representation of our favorite movies. These are ones we happened to find at a good price. We have not deliberatly omitted Life Aquatic from the Anderson collection or Citizen Ruth from the Payne collection, we just haven't collected them yet. And we have entire directors unrepresented, so if you're thinking what kind of person would have Shyamalan but not Hitchcock on their shelf, you can just bite us, because we have taped a ton of Hitchcock off of Turner Classics (in the proper wide-screen presentation), while I think we found Sixth Sense at a yard sale.]

So even though my method was totally awesome and hard-core, Bill was never able to find the disc he was looking for, and was frequently aggravated, so I alphabetized them the regular way, from About Schmidt to Wonder Boys. I guess it's kind of amusing to see Lost in America next to Lost in Translation. Still, may the classic method live on, in anyone who reads this and is inspired by greatness.

Me Mooning Over Actors

Every year I write a magazine-style column with my predictions and personal favorites for the Oscars, and I guess my Mom has been reading them, because she just sent me the Parade Magazine interview with the man I've been pulling for three years running, Paul Giamatti. Which was sweet, even though Parade Magazine is absolute garbage. Oh my goodness, he's an actor, but he eats lunch in a deli! Wearing jeans! Just like us regular people! Can you imagine? From Giamatti's direct quotes, he sounds like such a cool guy, but the writing style of the interviewer was beyond irritating. First of all, is it possible for any of these fluff-journalists write about Paul Giamatti without insulting his looks? He is not ugly. He is an ordinary-looking guy whose class and intelligence put him over the top into the Modestly Handsome category. And the same can be said of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who also gets pointlessly dissed for his appearance. (Hey, dumbasses, they're not models, THEY'RE ACTORS.)

In fact, while I'm at it, I'm going to reiterate my earlier stance that ALL of the actors nominated at the most recent Oscars are damn nice-looking guys. In each category (Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor), there were three guys who are straight-up blazingly hot (that's Terrence Howard, Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix for Best Actor, and George Clooney, Matt Dillon, and Jake Gyllenhaal for Supporting), one guy who's Distinguished-Grey handsome (David Strathairn; William Hurt), and one guy who's so awesome and talented that his attractiveness is skewed from ordinary to charming (Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Giamatti.) Enjoy some unauthorized photos, in collage form:












I make a lot of collages.

A Flibberty Jibbet?

Yesterday I was feeling particularly show-tune-y, which I haven't been in years. I was in 7th or 8th grade when I first raided my mother's LP collection, and played them over and over until I could sing the entire score [or at least all the leading lady vocals] from My Fair Lady, West Side Story, The King and I, The Sound of Music, Guys and Dolls, Camelot, Carousel, South Pacific, Oklahoma, and more I can't think of at the moment. (I have this recurring fantasy that I'm competing in a "Show-Tune"-Off. Usually the judge says the name of a show and I have to sing at least one song from it, beginning to end. Even if there were someone crazy enough to stage such a competition, I wouldn't win because my mother's LP collection doesn't go past 1970. They would ask me to sing from Rent and I would warble, "Five-hundred twenty-five thousand six-hundred ... pancakes.")

As I was picking my brain for the sequence of lyrics for "The Impossible Dream" and trying to remember whether the "funny/honey" or "candy/brandy" verse comes first in "I Enjoy Being a Girl" [and Bill was asking, "Can't you do this AFTER I leave?"], I remembered an odd conversation I had with Mom during that 7th or 8th grade Broadway phase. I was showing off my new expertise by pointing out that both West Side Story and The Sound of Music have a song called "Maria."

If you are unfamiliar with these songs, here are some unauthorized lyrics.

WSS: Maria / I just met a girl named Maria / And suddenly that name will never be the same to me / Maria / I just kissed a girl named Maria / And suddenly I've found how wonderful a sound can be / Maria / Say it loud and there's music playing / Say it soft and it's almost like praying / Maria / I'll never stop saying Maria [ -- by Stephen Sondheim!]

TSOM: How do you solve a problem like Maria / How do you catch a cloud and pin it down / How do you find a word that means Maria / A [flibberty jibbet???], a [will-o-the-wisp???], a clown / Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her / Many a thing she ought to understand / But how do you make her stay / And listen to all you say / How do you keep a wave upon the sand / Oh how do you solve a problem like Maria / How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand [ -- by Oscar Hammerstein II!]

Mom hummed a snippet from each song, thought about them briefly, and then told me she hopes I aspire to be the sort of person from the latter song rather than the former, an individualist rather than a mere object of adoration.

Is that cool?

I mean, on one hand, the firm values of creativity/individuality/rebellion/etc that Mom stressed on me are the reason I am who I am, and if I didn't learn to value those things about myself, I probably would have gone berserk and I'd probably be in an asylum or whorehouse or coffin [or suburb! Ahhh!] But it kind of felt like, I won't be the girl guys are attracted to -- I'm going to be the crazy chick. And I look at my string of botched attempts at boyfriends [before Bill], informed by the head-on philosophy of "Who needs pretty when you're ECCENTRIC!", and how I made an ass of myself, how the fellas turned away in embarrassment and looked around for someone more ladylike to dance with. But maybe, in more recent years, for each time a guy has told me, with at least some admiration in his voice, that I'm "not like other girls," I have my inner Maria Von Trapp to thank.

And what the fuck is a flibberty jibbet?

The Sketch That Got Away

I set out to write a comedic sketch. I generally don't do this; when writing I want the freedom to not be funny. (Besides, my sense of humor is too low-key to advertise as comedy. Audiences would demand a refund.)

I wanted to write the character I sort of developed during my disastrous run taking improv acting classes. (I am way to hard-wired shy -- and too hard-wired with a writer's brain -- to be an improvisational performer.) The only scenes I did that were remotely good were when I reached into my inner Judy Garland. The character came out three different ways in as many scenes: In one she was a stage mother with an untalented daughter, and they were gutting and carrying a deer carcass for some reason. In another she was getting tipsy with her songwriter after a concert. In the last, she and her leading man were shooting a terrible film and misbehaving between takes. All the scenes were varying degrees of train-wreckish, but I got some damn interesting stuff out of them, and I thought I could write a kick-ass scene (for a yet-to-be-determined project) with the character, the ideas, and the glistening polish of Revision.

It's not funny at all. I actually wrote melodrama. I'm surprised at myself. I'm kinda pissed off about it, only because I've been trying to kick my own butt to write for so long, and then when I get something interesting I can't even use it, because I'm 20 years too young for the role. (If it were a sketch it wouldn't matter, but if I wanted to, say, make this a one-act play or something, it would have to be cast more realistically.)

O cursed creativity! Why must you thwart me so?

I guess I'll just go home, put on my most glittery red cocktail dress, and sing along to Judy Garland Live at Carnegie Hall until something strikes me as funny. (Besides the sight of me wearing my glittery red cocktail dress and performing "The Man That Got Away" in front of my cats. [Which is an even more impractical sketch, because there's no way I could drag Zinnia and Ruby up onstage...] )

My Brain Tripping On Its Own Acid

Yesterday I got home, and Ruby, my sweet little kitten, wasn't there. I knew she wasn't going to be there, because Bill had just dropped her off to get her little kitten uterus taken out, but this is her first time away from home since we adopted her last month, so it made me sad.

This situation just has to be the explanation for the thoroughly fucked-up dream I had last night.

I dreamed I had just given birth to a baby boy. I couldn't believe I had, because I didn't remember the birth, but I told myself it must have been one of those complicated ones where I had to be knocked out for the whole thing, so don't worry about it. I was surrounded by people who were throwing name suggestions at me. (Proof that this was a dream. I would have picked out a name months in advance; that's the only part of parenting I'd be good at.) I was holding the baby briefly, and then the people started passing him around and examining him, as if that would bring out the right name. ("Hmmm ... Squirmy legs ... He's a Brandon, no doubt.") I mentioned that two of the names I was leaning towards were Gavin and Caleb. (Further proof that this was a dream. Not my favorites at all.)

Then someone said I should name him Loy, because that name means "my brother." (I don't think this is true in real life.) As soon as this was said, my stomach turned into knots, because I suddenly remembered I had another kid that I completely forgot about. I furiously picked my brain for details. Was it a girl? If it was, I would have named her Clara. (Actually true in real life.) The name rung a bell -- I did have a daughter Clara. But how long ago was that? Last week? A year ago? I realized that I probably just put her down somewhere and forgot about her (the way I do with water bottles, when I take off my earrings, etc), but it couldn't have been in my house because I would have noticed her by now. I came to the sickening conclusion that right now she could be anywhere, lying on top of a stack of books or something, and certainly dead. Then I tried to talk myself out of it. Someone had to have found her. People adopt babies found on doorsteps all the time. Surely if there was a baby left in a bookstore or coffee shop, SOMEONE with maternal instincts would have cooed "oh, you poor thing" and taken her home to be loved as their own. But I was terrified to say anything, lest I remind everyone fawning over my baby that I misplaced my first one. (Waking life commentary: So my husband and all my baby-obsessed friends didn't notice that Clara disappeared either?) I kept quiet, until I announced to everyone that I have decided to name him Danilo.

So. This post is for the next person who tells me I should have kids.

Let It Be Known That I Suck at Pool

In fact, anything that requires physical dexterity and precision is pretty much a lost cause. (Oh, wait, but I play the clarinet. How does that work?)

A valiant, perhaps foolish, effort was made to teach me to play. For my first five or so shots, I didn't get the cue ball to hit a single ball. The first time I actually hit one (which didn't go anywhere), I bought myself a drink. (Clink = drink. That would have made an awful drinking game; I would have been the only sober one at the table.) And yet a valiant effort was still made to teach me to play. Dear Teacher: Bless your heart, but I will always suck at pool. Here is all I learned:

*Don't play pool in a skirt. Especially not a short one.

*Don't drag the cue on the ground as you approach the table. You will be laughed at.

*Don't play pool if gym class made you cry.

*The purple ball is the prettiest.

You know what would make pool WAY more fun? Instead of six pockets, each table would be outfitted with six Hungry Hungry Hippos. Just think of the calls: "Seven, corner Hippo." Infinitely cooler. I would play that game any day of the week. I submit my architechtural drawing:

So that happened. But on the flip side, I am AWESOME at Spit. That is a great game. No Hungry Hungry Hippos needed there. The first time I played Spit was in maybe middle school; Sara taught me to play the day she took me out on her parents' boat on Lake Lillinonah. Ever since I have been molding young Spit players, be they friends, boyfriends, and everyone inbetween. Dear Pupil: I'll make a mean player out of you yet.

Today I am singing Jason Mraz on loop and itching for a deck of cards.

Snarking From the 39th Floor

Taste of Chicago, or, How to Make the City's Best Food Taste Like Shit.

Every year something like 100 different restaurants set up in Grant Park, and prepare their food outdoors, in crappy make-shift tents, in mass quantity, yielding poor quality food sold at a higher cost than at the actual restaurant. Now, I can understand tourists falling for this thing, but why the residents? Why eat a humid slice of Giordano's while standing between screaming children and a row of port-o-johns, sweating and swatting away insects, when you can get it in the restaurant (or to go) any time of the year? Why does straight-from-the-Dominick's produce seem more glamourous when exchanged for tickets? Exchanging tickets is only fun when you've played 20 rounds of Skee-Ball for them, and you receive a misshapen, neon-colored stuffed animal for your efforts.


Get Outta My Town

Some douchebag spends his 60th birthday in Chicago and it makes the paper. Take that shit to Houston or Kennebunkport, don't come here. None of us voted for you.



The Next Generation?

A furor erupted this year when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made one of the worst, if not the single worst, Best Picture choice in their 78 years, annointing the shrill, uneven Crash instead of the eloquent, uniformly excellent Brokeback Mountain. A few characters at the center of the finger-pointing aftermath were loopy curmudgeons Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine, who proudly announced they cast their ballots without having seen That Gay Movie. The film community called for stricter guidelines, that Academy members should have to see all the nominated films or abstain from voting. The subtext, though, was that these two and many like them are old farts who don't even watch movies anymore let alone make them.

Just a few days ago, the Academy announced the newest members invited to join the elite organization. One of them was Dakota Fanning. F'chrissakes! Was this a calculated move, to counter-act the critism of the dinosaur demographic? Great, so now we have voters whose idea of progressive filmmaking is Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, AND those who wouldn't have been able to see 4 of the 5 most recent Best Picture nominees because her mommy doesn't let her watch R-rated movies.


It's Friday

... and I made myself some new wallpaper for the work computer. If you download this, set it as your wallpaper, and stretch it to fill the screen, the colors will blur and blend in a funky way. Makes me want to go swimming. (Oh, man, now I wish I was swimming!)

Vacation, Day 3: Vacation

Road trip to Providence! We figured if we're going to be making all these trips back to Connecticut for family milestones, we might as well try to get some vacation out of them. I have barely been to New England outside of the bubble that is northern Fairfield County, so I decided to give Providence a whirl. It's a city, it's on the water (fresh seafood!), so why not?

There is this ridiculous crap-hole just before the state border called Olde Mistick Village. It's not the actual village of Mystic, just a tourist trap of expensive knick-knack stores in a fake-historic buildings, so you can buy souvenirs to always remember the time you ... bought souvenirs. The only reason we stopped there was because we thought it was a rest area, and we had to take a wicked piss. Those weasely bastards put the bathrooms at the far, far end of the fenced-in faux-village, so we had to walk the winding path past Ye Olde Saltwater Taffy Shoppe, Ye Olde Seashell Shoppe, Ye Olde Hippie Clothing Shoppe, Ye Olde Pokemon Shoppe, and about 10 other Ye Olde Overpriced Garbage Shoppes before finding a nice porcelain hole to pee in.

Providence is quite a nice-looking city. We drove around and found ourselves on the Brown campus. For lunch we were hoping to find a clam shack of sorts, but ended up at a little Thai cafe. This neighborhood has a street very much like the strips Bill and I have walked in other college towns like Madison, WI and West Lafayette, IN: It's got the used vinyl and CD store, the used bookstore, the used clothing store, the bead store, the cheap jewelry store, the sushi joint, the overstock junk store like Uncle Fun, and a coffee shop at every intersection ... oh dear god, it's the Olde Mistick Village for the college student demographic! (If only they had a souvenir penny-flattening machine with Pabst and pot leaf imprints.)

We were meeting Robert and Anthony in the city, but since they wouldn't be there for a few hours, we drove a couple miles north to Pawtucket, where Bill's great-grandparents are buried. (No, I do not go on vacation without collecting obituaries and tromping through cemeteries.) I had the name of the cemetery, as well as the section and plot numbers, so I figured we were good to go. Then I realized I didn't have an address for the cemetery, so we drove in circles until the cemetery suddenly appeared before us, it's stone monuments glittering white in the sun! What luck, right? But was this the Catholic Cemetery? We drove towards the gate, watching headstones go by with names like Palermo, O'Malley, Krszyszyzsyk -- aw, hells yeah, it's Catholic! We got to the gate, saw it was the right cemetery, and drove in to discover the place was HUGE, and the section numbers were in no order at: Section 1, 60, 23, D, M, 45, A. But we didn't drive around that long before we got to the right section. More good luck! Now all we have to do is find plot 279. The plot numbers were actually in order, so we followed the 200's up to maybe 273, and then there was a patch of uninterrupted grass about four plots wide, and then the numbers picked up at 283. If they were buried here, the stone was either missing or sunken below the grass. "We're probably standing right on top of them," Bill said. He got the tire iron out of the rental car and jammed it into the ground looking for the stone. He hit something hard, and the tire-iron scraped against it noisily ... but it was just a small cluster of rocks. The cemetery office was closed, and we had no resources left, and then Robert and Anthony called to say they just got in, so that was it. I was thwarted. All that good luck for nothing.

We walked around the city with Robert and Anthony, and ate dinner at McCormick and Schmick's. From our online searching, it seemed Hemenway's was THE place to eat, but they were closed for the day, so the second THE place to eat was McCormick's. We ate some glorious seafood; the rare yellowfin tuna medallions were smoooove. All of a sudden, as we were sampling each other's monkfish and stuffed clams and scallops and raspberry salmon, Peter Dinklage walked by! Holy crap! THE Peter Dinklage! Screen Actors' Guild Award nominee Peter Dinklage! (For The Station Agent!) He went from the bathrooms to the front section of the restaurant. Bill did a fake walk-around to see where he was sitting; his back was to the entrance, so if anyone was going to recognize him, they wouldn't see him until they were leaving. We had a whole discussion on the ethics of approaching celebrities. (Flattering? Rude?) He was still there as we were leaving, but it seemed like he was having a pretty intimate dinner, so we decided not to bug him. A quick search at the internet station back at the hotel revealed he was shooting Underdog in Providence.

For the rest of the night, we saw the fireworks over the capital dome and went out for some drinks (had my first mojito, now in my repertoire of favorite drinks), and the whole time Bill kept saying "Peter Fuckin' Dinklage!" We had a good time with Robert and Anthony. Oh, I should probably mention that Bill and Robert are first cousins, so technically we had wall-to-wall relatives on this trip, but this was totally different. Bill and I are both the odd-one-out in our families, so when we "discover" new relatives who are like us, it's very exciting; Bill and Robert didn't see much of each other in the past, so getting to know each other as a friends rather than that-person-who-is-related-to-me-for-some-reason has been cool.

The next morning we drove to the rental car place to take a shuttle bus to the airport to take a plane to Chicago to take the L-train to our apartment. (Still didn't take a boat.)

Vacation, Day 2: My Family

We drove from the Hartford area to Norwalk, for my grandfather's 85th birthday bash. (He won't be 85 until the fall, but this was the best weekend for relatives across the country to travel.) It was held at -- gulp -- a yacht club, and I have no idea why; we aren't that crowd of people at all. They have a strict dress code of no jeans, and my Uncle Dom loves his jeans so much, he has already purchased for himself a specially-made casket lined with denim. But I guess someone got him to wear khakis. (Amazing, because he attended his mother's funeral in jeans and flannel; you would have guessed he was going deer hunting.)

The club was on a small peninsula on the Long Island sound. It was guarded by some snappy nautical flags and tennis courts occupied by toned and tanned blondes in blindingly white mini-skirts. This seems to be what people think of when they think of Connecticut, but this is completely foreign to me. (The part I grew up in is woodsy and semi-rural.) Bill and I crept around the outside like we were afraid a pack of Yalies would appear and shoo us away with canoe paddles.

We met the coolest people there, Vivien and Zoe. Vivien's parents were neighbors of my grandparents when they lived in Greenwich, and my mom and Aunt Jane used to babysit for her. She stayed at my grandparents' house when her mother was dying. Her father remarried and moved the family to France, but Vivien hated it there, so she stayed with my grandparents until they found some relatives in the states to take her in. Mom and Aunt Jane hadn't seen Vivien since she was a little girl, so it was an emotional reunion for them. But Bill and I really hit it off with Vivien and her partner Zoe. Such fun, sweet, smart people. We ended up hanging out with them for most of the day.

It was a brunch with an open bar, so Papa was pretty tipsy when he got up to address us. (He had the disclaimer beforehand: this speech will be drunk and completely off the cuff.) He told an old people joke that is only funny when delivered in his voice, and then when he tried to say something serious, when he started to say how fortunate his life has been, he got so choked up he couldn't talk. (Mom says she has only seen Papa cry three times previously: When his mother died, when he danced with my mom at her wedding, and when we threw him and Grandma a surprise 60th wedding anniversary party.) It was the first time ever that absolutely all of my grandparents' children, their spouses, grandchildren, their spouses, and great-grandchildren were all together -- that's a crew of 24. And even though Papa was overwhelmed by his blessings to the point of tears, that didn't stop certain people from needling my sister about being the last grandchild who hasn't married yet. She is the youngest grandchild, she just graduated college, she and her boyfriend have been together less than a year, so there is absolutely no reason for her to be married already. Her boyfriend is an awfully good sport about it, even the painfully tactless inquiries of "Have any announcements to make?" (This was also milked at a wedding on my dad's side last month, especially after Joanna caught the bouquet.)

My parents cut out pretty early, because they always get tired out so easily. I sort of felt guilty about not leaving with them, since they get so depressed about how little they see if me, but I see my cousins even less. I've gotten to really like my cousins. When I was a kid, they were scary and intimidating, because they're all between 10 and 15 years older than me, so they seemed more like aunts and uncles. But the age difference is nothing now that we're all adults. Also I'm new enough to adulthood that I feel the need to emphasize I am Not A Kid Anymore, that I am not an extension of my parents but my own entity. And who wants to leave a party early when pizza lies in the near future?

After my hopes of asserting I'm not a baby anymore, Bill and I arrived at my parents' house, where my mom was wearing the dress she hand-sewed for herself when she was third-trimester-pregnant with me.

To be continued...

Vacation, Day 1: His Family

Friday morning Bill and I woke at the ungodly hour of 4:45 and lugged our sleepy selves to pick up the Foster bus to take us to the Blue Line L-train to take us to O'Hare Airport to fly us to Bradley Airport and took a shuttle bus to the rental car place to get a car to drive to his parents' house. (If only we could have taken a boat for some reason.)

Bill's plan was to grab some lunch from Franklin Giant Grinders, hurry to his parents' house, and eat during the England-Portugal game. (He is crazy into soccer; I couldn't care less.) But Franklin was actually showing the World Cup on their TV, so we got to eat at tables like civilized people, and we were able to share in the delight of seeing a girl wearing a t-shirt that said "You betta check yo self before you wreck yo self." (By the way, I would like to plug the deliciousness of their grinders. The first time I went I got eggplant parm, and this time I got chicken parm, and both were chock-full of saucy, cheesy goodness.)

We arrived at his parents' house, and Bill barely kissed them hello before turning the game on. Since I had no interest in the game, I picked up the local newspaper on the coffee table, and read what has become my favorite sentence of the week, and will probably remain my favorite for the month at least: " 'The world is not exactly brimming with idealism,' said the accomplished violinist." That was our punchline for the weekend: Follow any sentence with "said the accomplished violinist." (This same paper once did an article about my father-in-law, with this same ear for juxtaposition. Stuff like "A long-time baseball fan, he enjoys frequenting the Foxwoods and Mohegan Suns Casinos. A grandfather of 11, he noted, 'There is a lot of traffic on my street.' ")

After the game was over, we got to do what I wanted to do, which was go to the Hartford Public Library, and print obituaries of Bill's dead relatives off of microfilm. (My primary non-career-related hobby is genealogy. Which has been and shall be the source of many death-themed activities.) Nothing makes you feel more like a Crazy Person than cursing at the obituary page from 1921 because they neglected to note the passing of a Polish farmer from the outlying rural area. We also drove around a bit looking for a local historic landmark, the Buttolph-Williams house, because the name Buttolph is awesome.

Back at the house, Bill's brother Stephen and his girlfriend Terri-Anne came over for dinner and a game of Trivial Pursuit. Bill invented a marvelous word. The question was, "How many strikes do you get in a game of [conkers? I can't remember the name]?" Bill asked rhetorically, "I wonder if that means per turn, or for the whole -- " and, failing to come up with a word like inning or quarter, said, " -- flurggen?" Later, my father-in-law was chiding Bill about a restaurant dinner from years back: "We go out to dinner, and Billy orders the most expensive thing on the menu! He says, 'Oooh, bouillabaisse, I love bouillabaisse!' Unbelievable! Then your mother and I think we're finally going to get the check, and he says, 'I'll have a cappuccino.' I said to him, 'I'll cappuccino YOU!' "

If this entry were some sort of workbook from a grade-school language arts class, I think it would have something like this at the end of the lesson:

VOCABULARY POWER

"Let's play a few flurggens of conkers," said the accomplished violinist. Buttolph replied, "I'll cappuccino YOU!"

To Be Continued...