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March 31, 2004

:: girls' night mascot ::

Many of you know about our every-second-Monday girls' nights, which have been referred to, variously, as "a cultural force", "completely out of hand", and "where did you say you were going to be again? I've got a camera..." (the latter doesn't work, boys. Stop asking.) No, I'm still not going to publicly post the pictures, and no, boys are still not allowed.

Anyway, we have at various points drunkenly discussed the idea of having t-shirts or hats or maybe just a hat (that we can pass around for story time, bien sur) or perhaps satin jackets (we were really drunk that night) made for all of us, but this never seems to properly capture the spirit of our adventures (just to give you an idea, we decided back in December that it would probably be a good idea to take up a collection for bail money, just in case). Today, Brenda found just the thing: the Florence doll.

We might have to dip into the bail kitty for this one, kids.

March 30, 2004

:: n.b. ::

A few readers have told me they like some of the photos in the Gallery enough to wish to use them as desktops. Since I'm way too lazy to create an actual souvenirs area on this site, why don't you just let me know if there's one you'd like to have and I'll export a nice fresh graphic just for you.

Don't say I never gave you anything.

March 29, 2004

:: more long overdue photography ::

Lazy git that I am, I'm still processing and posting the shots from my trip... as of today, there are 60-odd photos of Laos from December 2002. Go and have a look, would you? Note: I'm still trying to work out how to get the descriptions to appear in slide show mode. As of now, you'll need to scroll through the photos one by one to see the explanation of what the hell you're looking at... PHP people, help is always appreciated.

In other news, not that you asked, but the weekend was lovely. Nelson Algren apparently inspires some pretty incredible photography...

March 25, 2004

:: one more thing ::

This is even better than the cowboys. Who knew?

:: i'm not old, i'm not even drawn that way ::

I should probably clarify something about yesterday's post, considering the feedback I've received over the past several hours. Teenaged girls in punk rock gear or no, I really don't feel old. Age for me has yet to become something I feel at all. I celebrate birthdays, I suspect, largely because every year I find it a minor miracle that I'm still around. Besides which it's a great excuse to get everyone together in the same place at the same time.

If anything, those girls made me happy because some things (like the Ramones) are simply great forever, and it's good to see that they're still loved.

March 24, 2004

:: random tidbits ::

In the absence of any major events to share this week, how about these little nuggets...

there's a new pimp in town
This neighborhood being milquetoastland (hence my plan to get out of it soon), I have been proud, ever since Phineas informed me years ago that I was putting in a solid fashion bid to be the world's first ever white female pimpdaddy, to be the only pimp in the 'hood. Last week, however, that all changed. On the way home from somewhere, I was in the passenger seat when we finally managed the left turn at Belmont & Broadway. I spotted him just before we reached the intersection: bright blue double breasted suit, pale blue alligator shoes, hat to match, and a puffy white long fur coat. Sunglasses on, talking on his cell phone just south of the door to Chipotle. Lindsay spotted him half a second later and we pulled over to see if I could get a decent shot. He either figured out what we were doing or is just a long-form pacer, because he came all the way around the corner and walked half a block eastbound before turning back, giving me a good 15 yards in which to capture him in all his glory. "Did you get your picture?" he asked me, then. "Yeah... thanks," I said. "No problem, girl. The name's Cadillac."

Cadillac was there again yesterday, just outside the Chipotle, a vision in grass green and purple. "Hi, Cadillac," I said as I walked by. "Hey girl," he answered without removing the phone from his ear. "Lookin' good."

pop culture and me
Not long ago, I was ruminating on how advertising has a singular appeal to me and my peer group at the moment (well, the stuff that isn't completely appalling - you know what I mean. ok, at least you could pretend to know what I mean), because the Accoung Sups and Creative Directors are our age. But in a typical example of spoke-too-soon, I soon thereafter began to notice all manner of little pop-culture references that had me completely befuddled. There's a huge billboard for Citibank somewhere on Randolph I think, and I've got no idea what it means, beyond 'Citibank is cool and you should give us all your money right now'. Something about bling.

So I guess I had my window and now it's closing, I thought. Well, that's OK. I've got more than enough obscure literature to start building up a rep as an eccentric but lovable intellectual snob (gotta have a Plan B, right?). But then something else unexpected happened. I can't tell whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm somehow oddly comforted.

We were at the Shedd Aquarium on Saturday afternoon, because my need to go diving is rising to a fever pitch and the closest I can possibly come is to put my forehead right up against the glass at the Caribbean Reef tank and pretend. Waiting in line, I was looking around thinking again what a gorgeous building it is when I spotted two teenaged girls slumped on a bench over by the store entrance. Initially I barely registered them, but then something struck me as odd. I looked again. It still took me a minute to figure out what it was that was tickling the back of my skull. Here were two girls, either sisters or best friends, waiting for dad in a museum on a Saturday afternoon, doing their best to look bored. Nothing unusual about that - I almost certainly cultivated the same look at that age. And then it struck me: the look. These girls were wearing the exact same thing I was wearing at that age. Skinny jeans. Chuck Taylors with writing on them in black Sharpie. T-shirts of the Ramones and Sex Pistols. One was even wearing a narrow-lapel sport coat, just like the one of my boyfriend's that I used to wear sophomore year. The haircuts even looked familiar. I was torn between feeling really young and really old. Hell, I was wearing my Tears for Fears concert shirt from 1985 just last weekend, and here are these 14 year old girls doing the same thing. It's strange how short the cycle of fashion has become. Is this just two kids emulating Avril Lavigne instead of Britney Spears, or is there some kind of punk resurgence going on? Regardless of the whole generational relativity thing, I was comforted, and I think it's because I'm hoping for the latter.

March 17, 2004

:: Elvis is King ::

Happy Fake Irish Day, everyone! I swear, in this town St. Patrick's Day is a bigger deal than New Year's Eve. On Saturday afternoon, driving through Wrigleyville was almost as bad as during the Cubs playoffs - the same milling throngs of drunks spilling and staggering out of the bars and into the middle of the street - just in green this time instead of red and blue. I wonder if the Hidden Shamrock is packed even as I type. I'm half tempted to grab a camera and head on down there, but the other half is terrified at the very thought, so it's not likely to happen.

And now, I need to mention the Elvis show last night. Of course it was spectacular, and his voice is amazing and Steve Nieve on piano was killer and the music was grand, but we'll get to that in a minute. First, there were two non-musical moments that are going to stick in my memory for some time.

1. The Heckler. First off, why someone would pay $65 for main floor tickets to the Elvis Costello show, only to then shout, "Elvis! You're an asshole! Fuck off and die!" during the quiet intro of a lovely song, is utterly beyond me. But someone did. Elvis stopped the music, took two steps in the direction of the offending party and invited him up on stage for a little mano a mano. When it became clear that this was not going to happen ("I don't know about you, but I'm here to play some music. If you want to take it up with the rest of the crowd, be my guest"), he picked his guitar up again. "Got anything else to say, motherfucker?" he asked. Apparently not. And the song began.

2. Hobbits. The basic shape of the show was a one-hour set followed by roughly an hour and a half of encores. Toward the end, maybe during the 3rd-to-last encore, Elvis grabbed a ukelele and played The Scarlet Tide, the Oscar-nominated song written by himself and T-Bone Burnett. Not that the nomination was anything to cheer about, as "it didn't fucking win." Then: "I'll tell you one thing about the Oscars..." we waited. "Fuckin' hobbits."

Favorite musical moments are hard to pick when I've got so many to choose from, but I'll give it a shot anyway. In no particular order:

Watching the Detectives. An incredibly chaotic arrangement of this track, especially considering there were only two people on stage playing it. Elvis came up with some almost Fripp-like sounds on his Gibson, and the guitar, piano and synth were in a constant state of rhythmic shift held together solely by the vocals. As Coz put it in the train on the way back north, "coffee shop cabaret from hell." Fantastic.

Almost Blue. This song is a heartbreaker no matter how you slice it. For me it packs an extra punch, in that the lyrics remind me of a piece I wrote years ago in the throes of a breakup. I can't really say anything specific about the performance that will explain why it was so transcendent a moment - maybe it was just me. But I doubt it.

This House Is Empty Now. Elvis played a lot of love songs, including most of the tracks on North. This one came early in the first set, shortly after we arrived (we were late). At the end, on the final chorus, Elvis stepped away from the microphone and walked out around the monitors to the apron of the stage. He sang the final lines unamplified and a capella: "This house is empty now/ There's nothing I can do/ To make you want to stay/ So tell me how/ Am I supposed to live without you?"

God's Comic ---> (What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding. God's Comic lends itself well to musings on the afterlife, where Elvis imagined Heaven with the Supreme Being reclined on a faux-fur waterbed filled with tropical fish, in an 80s nightclub with Hungry Like the Wolf being played over and over and over again... and then it was monologue time. After a series of excellent shots at the Bush/Cheney administration, an anthemic rendition of the Nick Lowe classic drove the idea home. I particularly liked the part where Elvis, after mentioning the creationist push against the teaching of evolution in bible belt schools, imagined chimpy looking in the bathroom mirror in the morning: "what a waste of a good ape." Indeed.

We also got to hear a lot of the new stuff from the forthcoming record, which sounds really promising. And did I mention about the sparkly silvery shoes? I thought about hanging around the stage door after the show and trying to take them from him, but I figure hey, he's Elvis. He deserves them much more than I do. Doesn't mean I can't covet, though.

March 15, 2004

:: spring, my ass! ::

I'm blaming it on the weather.

Way way back (2 weeks ago) at the end of February, which now seems long cold months away, remember that lovely warm weekend? Sunday afternoon, I was wandering around the neighborhood in a skirt and a pair of flip-flops, and despite my hangover and cold and corresponding dayquil haze, that day shines fairy-tale bright in my memory. Admittedly, that could have something to do with the new apartment too, since we found it that day, but never mind that. The weather perked up our spirits, the sunshine warmed my toes, and I was grinning like a fool. Since then, it's been unrelentingly cold and mostly gray and it's sinking in, I'm afraid. Not for the first time, I am amazed at how much greater an impact weather seems to have on my mood than it ever used to.

Parallel to the coming of spring (spring is still scheduled to arrive sometime soon, right?), things are looking up - I've got a project to work on (finally), money coming in, and lots of creative ideas running through my twisted little noggin. I've got a gorgeous new rockstar flat to move into in six weeks, with an excellent roommate. That sinus infection/cold thing didn't turn out to be SARS. And yet, and yet. And yet, I find I'm moody and sullen today, glaring out the window at the gray sky when I really should be Photoshopping, muttering under my mental breath about loves lost and places I'd rather be, reading through old poetry and pecking out a piece here and there. These murmurs create an undercurrent that taxes me, makes it difficult to work, to focus. I tell myself to keep moving, slice on through this, lest the current become a riptide and carry me away. I've got nothing much to be worried or gloomy about anymore, but here I am being gloomy just the same. And since I've long ago lost the teenaged notion that gloom is somehow romantic and mysterious, I'm bemused and slightly annoyed by this. At the same time, I find it amusing that as much as financial concerns and woes can contribute to my stress level (as those who've been around the past few months will certainly attest), the fact that I can breathe a bit easier again really doesn't have much of a positive impact on my mental state. Really, if no money = depressed and neurotic, shouldn't money = confident and euphoric? Come on, at least give me bubbly and cheerful! But no, it's more like no money = depressed and neurotic, money = absence of financially-driven depression and neurosis. I guess the rest is up to me, to replace the space once occupied by worrying about where the rent was going to come from. I'm fine with that. I just would like the gloom to lift. To go for a walk with the sun on my face. Yep, I'm blaming it on the weather, whether it's the weather's fault or not.

In other, completely unrelated news, I saw my last opera of the season last week. Say what you like about Gilbert and Sullivan - frivolous and goofy they indubitably were, but don't think for a second that they didn't know it. Pirates of Penzance was great fun, done in the grand old G&S 19th century style, without a lick of irony. The self-deprecating wit of the script and music was beautifully framed with colorful costumes (including leggings and footwear I would wear with glee - I did consider hanging around the stage door afterward but I had my doubts about the shoes being the right size), well-acted and beautifully sung performances, and ostentatious choreography involving hula hoops. Yes, hula hoops. Bless them. It was a great end to a great season.

This week, tomorrow night in fact, I'll be seeing Elvis Costello. Funny how an entire season of opera at the Lyric costs about the same as two tickets to see Elvis - at least, if you buy them through Ticketbastard. I know I really should be more noble and steadfast in my hatred for them, but when the legends of my youth stroll into town, those lofty principles tend to go hide under the bed.

Yesterday (to continue in a totally nonlinear fashion) Lindsay and I went down to Chinatown for dim sum and research. You see, what with my Chinese dragon rug and red enamelled urn and tendency to wax rhapsodic about my months in southeast asia, Lindsay has suggested we just go with an Asian motif and have done with it. Not in the red walls and bamboo everywhere sense, mind you. Just in the little touches here and there sense. You follow. Which means, of course, that we need something Asian in the entryway. What we need in the entryway, in fact, is a gigantic red silk and gold lantern with a big long tassel. Maybe two. We also need more things with chinese dragons on them. The good news is that we found exactly the perfect things. The bad news (well, bad for some - we were pretty pleased) is that we also found gifts. For our hungover friends, we purchased objects that make loud irritating noises: a small lacquered box with two tiny birds on springs that chirp alarmingly loudly when the box is opened, shaken or looked at funny. Also a lovely heart shaped jewelry/music box engraved with the words, "From the bottom of my heart" on its plastic lid. When opened, a little LED in the center of a brass heart hot-glued to the tacky red felt lights up and the tinny strains of "Für Elise" waft out. Klassy. For myself, a lucky jade pendant. It was cold out yesterday, and today I feel I need all the luck I can get, so I'd say it was a good buy.

I'm still blaming it on the weather. Just so we're clear.

March 7, 2004

:: sanctity, shmanctity ::

Over the last couple of weeks, there's been an unbelievable amount of talking and bitching and whining and fighting and debate over the topic of gay marriage. It goes without saying that I find this distressing - in fact, I can't work out whether it's more depressing than irritating, or vice versa. I have never been able to understand why anyone would care who anyone else sleeps with (unless of course you're involved with the person in question), or why the gender of newlyweds should have any bearing on the validity of their marriage.

Even more appalling to me is the backing argument that's constantly parrotted by the proponents of this new constitutional amendment banning gay marriage: we must preserve the sanctity of marriage. First off, has anyone seen the latest divorce statistics for this country? I'm one of them, for god's sake, and so are roughly half my friends. Sanctity of marriage, my ass. But divorce isn't even the best example of this. Let's take a look at recent issues of TV Guide. There's The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Joe Millionaire, Mr. Personality, My Big, Fat, Obnoxious Fiancé, and of course the crowning glory of recent television shows that make you ashamed to be alive: The Littlest Groom. If there's going to be a push in America to make marriage a more cherished and respected institution, I suggest we start by arresting all the producers who agreed to air these shows, and offering therapy and/or sterilization to their rabid fans. Because you know, this country is scary enough with Chimpy at the helm. When we can marry off total strangers for cash prizes on national television without anyone batting an eye, but couples who honestly love one another aren't able to make the same lifetime committments just because they happen to have matching genitalia... well, it's days like this when I pull out the UK passport and stare at it wistfully.

March 3, 2004

:: boring is the new smart ::

About ten years ago, having found myself jobless, in possession of a more or less totally useless (on paper, at least; I'm not disparaging my education or anything) degree, and largely without achievable goals in my second year out of college, I began to consider what so many others in the same situation do: going back to school to earn a(n even more useless) terminal degree. My first order of business was to write to some universities to gauge receptiveness to my projected course of study. Now, granted, I can see how an unsolicited missive from a woman wishing to do an MFA in Directing (Theatre) alongside an MA/PhD in History, Classics and Anthropology of Religion might seem... well, a bit schizophrenic. But I was convinced that my supporting argument tied it all together, and some even thought it made a lot of sense. The 'some' in question, of course, being my friends and former professors, who might have just been humoring me.

Regardless, the response from the Universities I contacted (Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, among others - let it never be said that I lack ambition) was less than stellar. Some suggested (with varying degrees of snarkiness and condescension) that I make up my mind and pick just one course of study, others didn't reply at all. Only one school seemed willing to go along with my harebrained scheme: the University of Wales. Now, I can't even remember how I decided to get in touch with them to begin with, but apparently I hadn't done a whole lot of research, because when I got this response and began to look into Aberystwyth and the surrounding area, I discovered that there are precisely two things in Aberystwyth: the University, and sheep. That's it. No wonder the head of the department was so eager to have me. I expect I was the first person in some time to have an idea for a course of study that didn't involve agriculture or animal husbandry.

On to Plan B: gain entry to one of my target schools, in whichever department would have me, and somehow cleverly sneak into my weirdo course of study. It was then that I discovered I wouldn't get in anywhere, ever, without taking the GRE. OK, fine. I did well on the SAT and ACT back in high school; I was confident in the quality of my undergraduate education. This should be a piece of cake, I thought. I went out and picked up a book, skipped straight to the practice test and took it.

I failed.

Well, okay, I didn't actually fail, because I'm not functionally illiterate. But I did really, really poorly. Looking back at the parts I did worst on, I realized my downfall was the analogies... you know, juvenile:jejune as hat:chicken and so forth. It seems that somewhere along the line, while I was developing my allegorical and metaphorical abilities, I lost all sense of traditional logic as applied to literature. Or something. Basically, I would sit and stare at these questions and the four multiple choice answers and, while I was able to exclude at least two of the choices right off the bat, as often as not I found myself able to make a strong argument for either of the two remaining ones. Ultimately my decisions became arbitrary, or worse, subjective - I would pick an answer because it sounded pretty (plinth is just so fun so say!) and not because I actually thought it was right. I did this because I realized I could no longer climb inside the head of the Testing Authority and give them the answer they were looking for. Also because I resented the fact that someone thought my entire 3 and a half year educational experience, which included reams of written work and I can't even begin to calculate how much reading, could be assessed by a machine and a #2 pencil.

When I saw this article in The Atlantic Monthly (link via Arts & Letters Daily), my experience with the GRE (which I wound up never taking, thank you very little) came flooding back to me in all its humiliating and irritating glory. Apparently, they're restructuring the SATs now, for those of you too lazy to click on the link, and they've axed the analogy section and replaced it with essays. But, true to form, the only way to get a decent score on the essay is to be boring, predictable, needlessly pedantic, and arguably crazy. It seems unimaginable to me that between Hemingway, Shakespeare, Stein and Kaczynski, the Unabomber came out most likely to gain entry to the Ivy League. But there it is. Parents, make sure your kids have lots of pepper spray and padlocks when you ship them off to Dartmouth. You just never know about that freshman year roommate.

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