quidquid quidquid

Sketchy Academic Functions: A story about Karl Rove, my big rack, and a fellowship I didn't get

2011-12-13T20:02:00.000-05:00

This is something I've needed to write about for a long time.

I just read an article on Jezebel about this blog post about sketchy job interview parties at the American Philosophical Association meeting, and it is hitting so close to home that I am taking a break from doggedly trying to finish my novel to write this post.

Even though I've never been on the academic job market, I am all too familiar with this scene. I worked behind the scenes for years at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, which is the academic organization for professors of Latin and Greek. I have to say before I weave this tale of outrage that the people who run the APA are genuinely some of my favorite people on Earth. Integrity for miles. It's just too bad you can't say the same for all of the attendees.

Through the years, I saw it all at the APA. I went to every VIP cocktail party, met all the muckity-mucks. I worked the whole Saturday night circuit. I know the cheap yellow Chardonnay, the cheese cubes, and the endless uncomfortable chatting. As an undergrad with a plum internship, I got to see the fanciest side of being a professor of the classics.

I also got to learn early in my academic career about the seamier side of the profession. I learned at the conference about the absolutely prodigious amount of drinking that goes on. The hotel bar on any night of the conference is positively crawling with academics and overstressed bartenders. We'd hear at the post conference briefs about the shortage of limes, of clean high-ball glasses. I heard from hotel staff again and again that academic conferences often meant good business for the prostitutes who hung out at the hotel bars.

And as I went, I learned about the antiquated gender and class politics of Classics. That the profession is an Old Boy's Club. If you're not familiar with that term, here's roughly what it means: if you're not a rich white male, you are in trouble.

I experienced what you might call the perfect storm of these components when I interviewed for the Lionel Pearson Fellowship at the 2005 annual meeting. I was a freshman in college when learned about the fellowship, which funds one year of graduate study in Classics at an English or Scottish university, and I instantly set my sights on it. My amazing advisor Davina did an incredible job grooming me for grad school and for fellowships, and I in turn worked my ass off in school and at umpteen jobs and extracurriculars and leadership positions. I ended up applying to something like six schools and eight national fellowships for grad school. But I had my sights set on going to Cambridge on the Lionel Pearson. I nearly wet my pants with glee when I was named one of four finalists and was invited to come interview at the annual meeting.

The meeting was in Boston that year. It was my first trip to the city I now call home. I arrived with just a few hours to go before I was supposed to meet up with my fellow potential fellows and the fellowship committee for dinner.

When I arrived at the appointed meeting spot, it was a cluster of men. Young men, old men. The committee, the candidates. All men.

And do you know where we went for dinner?

Do you?

You do not.

Here's where we went for dinner.

DICK'S LAST RESORT

If you've never had the misfortune of visiting this particular chain, the schtick at Dick's Last Resort is that all of the waitstaff are incredibly rude to you. The restaurant features dishes like Crab Balls and Pork Bonerz. Each guest is outfitted with a rolled up white paper dunce cap that reads somewhere between Dime-Store Pope and Ku Klux Klan, upon which your rude server will write a rude nickname for you. I think they should rebrand and change their name to Patriarchy's Paradigm. Go big or go home, you know?

If this sounds unbearable as a matter of course, I invite you to imagine being subjected to this in the company of the people who will make or break your greatest dream for your undergraduate career. Imagine, if you can, being the only woman at the table.

Imagine, if you can bear it, your hat says DOLLY PARTON.

If you pull it off immediately, will you ruin everyone's fun? If you storm out of the restaurant, will you be disqualified from the fellowship? If you concentrate really hard, will you melt into the floor and disappear? These were the questions that filled my head.

I pulled the hat off. But I did not storm out of the restaurant. I ate my fried basket of whatever and sipped a beer and tried to make the best of it. But I have never felt so negatively aware of my body and myself as a woman. My breasts felt huge under my smart Oxford shirt. When I got back to my hotel room, I was left with a slimy, uncomfortable feeling. When I called my dad to tell him about it, he told me he thought I was probably toast.

Are you wondering what happened the next day? I bet you are. Luckily, it's also a good story.

I don't remember much of the interview, to be honest. I don't think we really got through many questions before one of the professors--whom I long to call out by name but whom I will describe only as a professor from a small liberal arts school in the South--hit me with the most balls-out crazy interview question I've ever gotten.

Ms. Jones, imagine you get a phone call from Karl Rove. Here's what he says. We'd like your expert opinion on how to protect our country from Islamic extremists, based on your study of the suppression of the Bacchanalia in Rome. What would you tell him?

I was gobsmacked. That man smacked my gobs. But as soon as I regained my ability to speak, I knew the answer. "Well," I said. "I'd tell him that the suppression of a rogue religious element, like the Bacchanalia, in a nation with state-sponsored religion, like Rome, doesn't really have anything to do with the suppression of a faith in a nation with a specifically outlined separation of church and state, like we have here in the US." For a moment, I felt smug. It had to be the answer he was looking for.

However, this was not an acceptable answer. The professor who had asked the question pushed me further and further, trying to force me to offer some advice to Mr. Rove. But I stood by my response. He lost his temper. Here are the last words I remember of that horrible interview: "Ms. Jones, you are being very evasive!" That's when I knew my dad was right.

And I totally was. I didn't get the fellowship.

So, that's how Dick's Last Resort, Karl Rove, and unbelievable academic bullshit lost me the fellowship I'd spent four years working toward. I still stand by that answer, though. What a dumb question.

Luckily, my interview for the Mellon Fellowship a few weeks later went a lot better, so I wound up with a bigger, better fellowship in the end. I wound up going to the University of Texas. And, well, you know how that went.

...the Aristocrats!

DISCUSSION QUESTION:
What's the worst interview you've ever had?

Guest Post: You're Mufasa's Boy

2011-10-26T11:03:00.000-04:00

Today's guest post comes from Julia Reed, Harvard PhD student in theology and women, gender, and sexuality (aka Sex and God) and my friend since 1st grade. You've already enjoyed her wisdom on the topic of old people having sex, and today she will regale you with an insightful deconstruction of The Lion King. Read my review of mine and Julia's recent viewing of The Lion King here.

My first year in graduate school I stuffed my schedule with courses in philosophy of religion and gender and queer theory; the material in those courses not only became central to my own work and teaching, but burned the circuitry of my psychic life. The lion’s share of my emotional vocabularies, coping structures, and understandings of self and love and loss comes from the texts and pedagogies of those baptismal months. And with all due respect to the years of work behind and ahead of me, maybe the best way to tell you about the relationships between Freud and Augustine and Judith Butler and Jesus and me might be to say that most of it I learned many years earlier from a scene in The Lion King.

Full disclosure, however: despite my, like, amniotic love for the The Lion King, there are aspects of the film that make me uncomfortable and angry, even though I know they are perhaps the only politically viable stories to tell in a Disney film. Scar is what queer readers might call a "deadly sissy"-- a malignant threat to a heterosexual dynasty, infuriated by his impotence, marked by physical weakness and leanness, resentful, malicious effeminacy, treachery, and association with other outcast deviants (the hyenas). Mufasa and Simba, on the other hand, are manly, monogamous tanks. Once Scar deposes the reigning heterosexual family, the circle of life is broken--the landscape literally becomes a black, bleak, lifeless boneyard---until Simba's triumphal life-ejaculating roar re-colors the savanna. (NB: Lion prides are not dynastic, and young males usually leave between 2 and 3 years old to take over other prides, kill the resident cubs, bone each lioness, and nap. Though I remain unconvinced that the cubs don't ride around on ostrich asses, because, please.)

The scene I'm talking about, however, is during Simba's exile. Rafiki, having caught Simba's "scent" in the air--the scent of the promise of life, restoration, latency, unclaimed birthright--has followed him to his No Worries Hakuna Matata land of plenty and anomie. Taunting Simba with nonsense, he finally whispers, "You're Mufasa's boy," prompting Simba to run after him. "You knew my father?" Rafiki responds, "Correction, I know your father." The scene's pulse quickens, the music becomes martial and insistent when Simba sighs that his father died long ago. Rafiki jumps up excitedly: "He's alive. I'll show him to you. I know the way." What follows is a masterful dreamlike pursuit sequence through the bases and roots of knotted trees. We don't know if we're above or underground; Simba, the brick-house big cat, crawls slowly, clumsily, desperately curious. I remember watching this scene the first time and feeling electrified at the possibility, the hope, that Simba would in fact meet his resurrected father in the open beyond the gnarled gauntlet. Rafiki stops Simba, parts a sheet of tall grass, and whispers, "Look down there." Simba peers down into a perfectly clear shining pool and sees himself. Deflated, he looks away: that's not my father, that's just me. Rafiki: "look… harder. He lives in you." But Mufasa is not Aslan. Unlike Bambi's mother, we have seen his dead body. (Like a reverse doubting Thomas, I could not quite believe it.) He appears as a specter in the sky to say, "Mark me. Remember me"--the words of Hamlet's father's ghost.

"Remember me"; "remember who you are"--I heard these exhortations, and still hear them, not as reminders of Simba's divine right of kingship, but in a literal, physical sense of the words themselves. Re-member yourself. Re-member your members. Put back together the parts that make you up--what in Freud's German literally translates to "investments" or "the places you've set yourself in." Which is only to say that the loss of these loves, these parts, would transform you and will transform you. Which is to say, says the father's ghost, you do not remember me because you have not grieved me; you have not re-membered yourself. Make my death a part of your life and your living. Not because you have rejoiced in it, but because it is a loss that brakes and builds you.

For me this does not mean that you will take your father’s place, that you will fully re-member yourself through your identification with him, and that he has therefore been successfully mourned as an honored legacy continued in and by you. (For Bible breathers: “Seeing you have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, that is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10)). It does not mean that we become the fully re-membered, resurrected bodies of our fathers, mothers, formative loves and teachers. We are never fully re-membered in memory and resurrection (Mufasa, the father) by those who re-member us and thus re-member themselves (Simba, the son, who becomes a father in the end) because losses and absences are real and cannot be undone, even by love and helpful meerkats. After his famous conversion in the Milanese garden—“Pick up and read, and put on the new man, Jesus Christ”—Augustine in his Confessions gives us one of the most beautiful passages in theological literature on memory and desire, continually pursuing the God whom he loves, who is in him and eludes him. “Late have I loved you […] late have I loved you. […] You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours” (Book X.27.38). Augustine has converted, but there is no consummation; though he seeks God in the “vast fields and palaces of memory,” again God retreats. “If I find you outside my memory, I am not mindful of you. And how shall I find you if I am not mindful of you?” (Book X.17.26) We’re not talking about a dead God here, but a God that is always greater than we can remember. So Augustine’s love beckons him to the perpetually unfinished re-membering of himself and God.

Full disclosure, encore: J. Christ is not in my wardrobe. But Augustine’s ongoing re-membering—both of his spiritual body “after” conversion and of his God in his memory—takes place between the presence and absence of the beloved, the old man and the new one, the realities of loss and the possibilities of remembering. It’s about the fog of desire, memory, and the parts of us that are made up of our love for the living and the dead. It’s about what we say to the dead to keep them alive: “Wait. Don’t go. Don’t leave me,” as Simba says to the sky.

Thanks go to this tumblr for this and all of the incredible gifs in this post.

Discussion Question:
What important life lessons have you learned from children's movies?

Everything the light touches is our kingdom

2011-10-25T12:06:00.000-04:00

When The Lion King came out in the summer of 1994, I was 11 years old and about to start middle school--probably a smidge too old to nerd out on a Disney movie.

But nobody told me and my best buddy Julia that. We saw The Lion King together one sweltering Tennessee afternoon and declared that we wanted to see it again. And then again. And then again. We saw it over a dozen times in the theater that summer, and our enthusiasm never waned.

I was a child obsessed. When I wasn't begging my parents to take me to the umpteenth matinee of The Lion King at the Carmike Cinemas, I was making up dances to the soundtrack, or combing the Bellevue Mall for Simba paraphernalia, or just wishing the internet existed so I could write The Lion King fanfic the livelong June. I clipped every article I could find that mentioned the movie and collected them in a file folder, like I was Simba's senile old relative.

I had all the Burger King toys and the bedding and even the coveted trading cards, which I begged my parents to buy me approximately every five minutes. There was a Lion King Trading Cards Swap Night down at Bellevue Mall one special night. I spoke of nothing else for weeks leading up to the event. Mama took me but I was too territorial over my collection to let the other children even LOOK to see if they wanted to trade. That is...not a strong negotiation tactic.

Not my bedroom but close enough

In the 17 years since the film was originally released, I have Hakuna Matata'ed my way into adulthood and eventually stopped clipping The Lion King articles. And, much in the way Simba and Nala joyfully and unexpectedly reunited, I have rekindled my friendship with dear Julia, who is now working on a PhD at Harvard but still shares my predilection for musicals and eating gummy bears.

So when we found out The Lion King was being rereleased, we knew what we had to do.

LUAU!

We chose Fresh Pond Theater for our Sunday afternoon viewing--it seemed fitting to go to a theater that clearly hasn't been renovated since the original release of The Lion King.

We walked into the theater and we were the only ones there.

Julia, always resourceful, had smuggled in a bottle of wine, and I had a near-endless bag of gummy bears. We had our favorite movie and an empty theater.

I let out a barbaric yawp of joy.

We sang each of the songs at the top of our lungs. We ran up and down the aisles dancing with joyful jazz hands for "Hakuna Matata" and with soulful lyrical interpretation for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight." Julia stood on the armrests to sing "Just Can't Wait To Be King." The wine was gone by the time Nala and Simba reunited.

We sobbed when Mufasa died but we wailed when Simba met up with Rafiki and decided to go back to Pride Rock. By the time Rafiki intones, "He lives in you!" we were holding hands and letting the tears roll down our faces without wiping them away.

We knew we'd love seeing The Lion King again but I don't think either of us were prepared for how grown-up the movie really is. This movie is positively Homeric in its scope--you deal with love, death, family, power, and a whole passel of other themes in the course of this 90-minute children's movie. We couldn't get over how unexpectedly sexy it is--Simba's weirdly anthropomorphic and masculine body. The whole "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" scene. Look at Nala's come-hither stare!

That was the night Simba became a man. Er...lion.

On our drive home, emotionally exhausted in the extreme, I asked Julia if she'd write a few words for me about the experience of seeing the movie again all these years later, now that she's armed with all kinds of information about how to interpret texts. Tomorrow I'll be sharing Julia's ridiculously insightful essay about The Lion King, so don't forget to tune in!

I leave you with this. Everyone likes to try to sing the opening of The Lion King, which goes something like NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASIBANYA BABADEEZIBABA. Here I present to you opening lyrics of "The Circle of Life" translated from Zulu into English:

Here comes a lion, Father
Yes, it's a lion
We're going to conquer
A lion and a leopard come to this open place

The stirring opening notes of this song are basically HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY A LIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNN IT'S A LION OVER THERE! Disney, you so literal.

Many thanks to this life-affirming Lion King gifs tumblr for this and all the LK gifs in this post.

Discussion question:
What's the most fun you've ever had seeing a movie in the theater?

all roads lead to quidquid

2011-10-07T11:15:00.000-04:00

confession time: I really do not care for U2

I have recently hit 20,000 unique visits to my dumb little blog. In honor of this milestone, I’d like to share some statistics with you.

I love Google Analytics. I love combing through the stats and seeing how people get to my blog. Many come from Facebook or Twitter, but 20% of my traffic comes from search engines. And Google Analytics allows me to see what everyone is searching for that brings them to my blog. These searches fall into a few different categories:

DID NOT FIND WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING FOR
blueberry aioli recipe
cabbage drug
Chaka Khan marinade
dogs pulling airplane on snow
floppy melon doggy floor
grad school classics social life (haha)
“hello kitty and pocohontas” (I assume they were looking for this but instead found this
I like Boston
Jerry Doreen cabbage patch value
living in a cabbage truck
meeting a perfect person
one of the reasons was difficulty
Rodney King verdict

FOUND EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING FOR…
Babyland General Hospital
being naked is awesome
Biloxi pirate ship
culture shock for a southerner living in Boston
everyone in Boston says all set
grad school classics bad idea
I lost my glasses in the ocean
Mardi Gras do’s and don’ts
satc 2 carrie selfish brat
surviving New England winters
terrible experiences in grad school

…DESPITE ALL ODDS
American girl Samantha watercress sandwich
Boudreaux Jenkins
cartman twelve gangs
cauterized uvula
definition of imagicillan
healthworks naked or nude or nudity
jack rabbit acceleration Toyota Avalon
lambert the sheepish lion discussion
mardi gras tablescape
number and color synesthesia mental math
shaq snow measurement boston
tree gives birth to child

POOR UNFORTUNATE SOULS
chicken parts
classics grad school that will pay for me
despite all my rage I was still just a level 3 mage
having s*x with a cabbage patch kids doll
naked site:quidquidquidquid.blogspot.com
naked womens changing room celebrations
old s*x in the bouet (I think this one is my favorite)
quidquid, human body party
rub some baby powder on the cabbage patch doll

GOT ANSWERS TO THEIR QUESTIONS
are children impressionable?
do New Englanders dislike southerners?
do southerners hate New Englanders?
do the indigo girls do private gigs?
is it bad luck to pick beads up off the ground at mardi gras?
should I go to grad school in classics?
what do women think about being nude in the locker room?

and finally, there’s a category that I can only call

GOOGLE IS MAGIC
classy bitches in fur coats
fingernail’s grip on reality
Georgia peach season in New England
grad school is like a vodka drinking contest
hit the players club bout a month or two
starburst mouth burns
the worst kind of mischief that can get into the country

DISCUSSION QUESTION:: What’s your favorite stupid search term that led to my blog? What’s your favorite quidquid post? Thanks so much for reading my blog and sharing the link with aw your peeps.

in celebration of being naked

2011-09-12T20:00:00.000-04:00

Brugge 2 by Spencer Tunick. Installation of 700 naked people arranged in a theatre in Bruges.

There are brave souls in every land
Who worship nature, grand and nude,
And who with swift indignant hand
Tear off the fig leaves of the prude.
--Robert Ingersoll

I recently bit the bullet and splurged on a membership to the local fancypants all-female gym. This place is incredible. I’m talkin soothing eucalyptus steam rooms and unlimited towel service, y’all. It’s the swankest gym I’ve ever been to and I adore it.

So I was surprised to see that the Yelp score for my gym was only 3.5 stars. What more could anyone want out of a gym??

A quick read through the comments revealed a troubling trend: women were voting Healthworks down because of the naked women in the locker room.

Wait, what?

Okay everyone, listen up. This is important.

BEING NAKED IS AWESOME.

Just ask this girl.

Locker-room nudity has long been a source of anxiety for me. Even when I was a small child, I assumed that a room like a locker room that was designated for single-sex clothes changing would be an acceptable place to take one set of clothes off and put another set on.

I was wrong.

Surrounded by my blushing cohorts, each one modestly turned to face the lockers, all of whom somehow knew how to change clothes without exposing one square centimeter of flesh (I still haven’t figured this one out), I quickly realized that I’d better follow suit or risk being considered an underage Sapphic exhibitionist. So I dutifully turned toward the lockers and learned how to put a swimsuit on without removing my teeshirt.

Even then, I knew the truth.

These girls were full of shit.

Being naked is great.

I’m not alone in my ~radical~ views on nudity. The ancient Greeks didn’t just go naked in their locker rooms—they did their entire workout in the buff. That’s why gyms are called gyms—the name is derived from the Greek word gymnos, which means naked. These people are complaining about nudity in a place that we basically call the nakedtorium.

Modern luminaries like Alexander Graham Bell, Leonard Nimoy, and author Robert Heinlein are also vocal proponents of the benefits of nudity. Abraham Maslow, the brain behind Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, states "I still think that nudism . . . is itself a kind of therapy." In fact, there are thousands of people all over the world who believe in the benefits of nudity. They’re called naturists or nudists.

Are there tangible health benefits to nudity? Yes. No. I don’t know. WHO CARES? It feels great. Sleeping naked keeps your temperature regulated nicely, not to mention the feeling of cool sheets pressing against your body. Swimming naked means no nasty infections from wet bathing suits, not to mention the feeling of water rippling across your body. Sunbathing naked stimulates vitamin D production—which we northern dwelling creatures need so badly in the winter--not to mention the feeling of warm sunlight warming all of the palest, most secret places. The mental benefits? Immeasurable. Being naked does a body good.

So here’s your imperative: Go take your clothes off!

Not sure what to do with your new nude self? You can participate in World Naked Gardening Day, or the World Naked Bike Ride. Wikipedia helpfully suggests nude activities like skinny dipping, nude snorkeling, nude canoeing (or “canuding”), or even nude hiking or ”naked rambling.” (I participate in an alternative version of naked rambling, wherein I stand around my apartment in the nude and talk to myself.) If you also enjoy thumpy music and flashy lights, you will love going naked at Burning Man and other regional burns, where clothing is optional. My particular tribe of burners have pioneered the field of nude line-cooking at our annual Pantsless Pancake Breakfast.

It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you try doing it without clothes.

Now go forth and naked your world up!

If anyone needs me, I'll be naked in the locker room giving my gym a bad name.

Discussion question:
Do you like to get naked and run around? If you think I'm nuts, please tell me, because that will be fun too.

My Own Private Lilith Fair

2011-08-29T17:00:00.003-04:00

It's only life after all

It was the late 90s and I was a child of Lilith Fair.

It was a great time for female singer-songwriters. My CD tower toppled with titles like Little Plastic Castle, Under the Pink, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and This Fire that spun on constant rotation on my 3-CD changer. If it had sandals, an acoustic guitar, and a vagina, I was listening to it in 1998.

So you can imagine my reaction when I learned that the next assembly at my Tennessee high school would be an Indigo Girls concert.

In an unprecedented move, the Indigo Girls decided to kick off their summer 1998 tour with a tour of Southern high schools. I've never understood why. But I didn't care why. I just knew it was going to be the best day of school ever.

When the fateful day came, I was ready. I picked out the perfect outfit: my offwhite Lilith Fair t-shirt from summer 1997, a floor-length maroon hippie skirt, Birkenstocks, and the pièce de résistance: a crown of maroon flowers for my head that I made myself out of an embroidery hoop and fake flowers from Michaels. I submit the following photographic evidence, taken that very morning:

Lanier and I pose like this in most pictures

I sized myself up in the mirror that day. The tiny bells on my crown were tinkling optimistically. The naked Venus figure on my t-shirt offset my long tiered skirt perfectly. I just knew that the Indigo Girls would know I was a true fan.

When we filed into the auditorium, I was nearly breathless. I snapped this photo of my friends Chris and Jessica waiting for the show to start.

Imagine the scene. Franklin High School auditorium, 1:00pm. I am perched in the 2nd row on the edge of my red plastic seat, tearfully wailing How long til my soul gets it right in exuberant harmony with the Indigo Girls. Rocking. The Fuck. Out.

The rest of the student body...is not.

They are restless, bored--watching the show with approximately the same enthusiasm as had been displayed at a recent assembly featuring actor Chris Burke, best known as Corky from Life Goes On.

This is my life, y'all.

When Emily and Amy said they'd have time for a few questions at the end, a hot wave of excitement rushed through me. What would I ask them?? The resounding silence from the other 800 people in the auditorium meant that I was going to have to think of something, fast.

It was a total accident. Someone, I don't remember who, had recently returned a little stuffed sheep to me that they had had for some reason. It was in my backpack.

Chris with sheep

I called out to them that I wanted to give them a present. I handed the little sheep to Amy. She thanked me and put it on one of the amps along with a few other little doodads. A little black sheep.

It turned out to be a fitting gift. A number of high schools ended up canceling the scheduled Indigo Girls concerts, ostensibly because of profanity in their music, but actually because the Bible Belt often has problems with The Gays and especially The Gays exposing themselves and their lifestyle to Our Children.

Huge, HUGE props to Doug Crosier, our principal, for being such a cool guy. Check out this Rolling Stone clipping about the cancelations, where Doug nails it with a pitch-perfect soundbite:

And as for my sheep, well...That summer, when I saw them play at Lilith Fair, I was sure that I spotted him on top of their amp. Wishful teenage thinking or a symbol of solidarity between the Indigo Girls and their shameless superfan? I may never know.

Discussion Question:
What's the best school assembly you ever had?

who's it gonna be?

2011-08-23T20:05:00.003-04:00

you know you lookin at a winner

Thank you, internet. I knew you'd help me find the perfect home for these size 10 men's hot pink Converse All-Stars. And you did. The entries were all amazing in their own way but there could only be one. The public has spoken.

CONGRATS DAVID SHIFREN!

David's days of being shoeless on the playa are over. This lawyer-by-day, burner-by-night wild man has vowed to party in these beautiful footboats until he drops. I think he's the perfect forever home for these poor orphan sneakers.

David, I hope you'll take a pic of you tearin it up in these bad boys for me to post here. I'll shoot you an email to make arrangements for shipping.

YAY INTERNET!!!

Discussion Question:
What's the best thing you've ever won in a contest?

who shall rock the kicks?

2011-08-22T11:10:00.007-04:00

Only one of you will walk out of this with a new pair of shoes.

In case anyone is just joining us, I made a blog post last week announcing to the world that I was giving a pair of men's size 10 hot pink Converse All-Stars to the person who could give them the best home.

The entries are in and they are amazing. We've got men, women, and even a couple vying for these subtle foot coverings.

Now it's time to vote! Just leave a comment on this entry (with your email address! no anon comments!) telling me who you think should win these shoes. On Tuesday at 8pm EST, I will tally the votes and name a winner.

Now meet your contenders!

ENTRY #1
Meg Z: Hangover Warrior
i will wear them every saturday when i am hungover chugging pepto bismol as a sign of solidarity from my feet to my liver, stomach and butt.

ENTRY #2
Matt Flagg: Road Runner, Road Runner
I require these size ten pink sneakers. My shoe size is 9.5. I have sentimental regards towards Converse because I used to run road races with my poppin Allstars. I'll never forget running the River Run in Jacksonville in some Converse and looking down from the Hart Bridge to the St. John's River while running over a wet open grating.

PLUS

If you give me these sneakers, I will strive to go to Burningman. And wear these bad boyz.

ENTRY #3
painsthee: Spousal Style Synchronicity
Actually, my feet are that gigantic, and as a bonus, my hubs and I wear the same size. And then we could do that thing where we each wear ONE of the pink shoes and one black shoe. And then this could be incorporated into a "make everyone nauseous with our twee-ness" but then perhaps could morph into some sort of crazy black and pink harlequin halloween costume, or better yet, a pink and a blue shoe, and then we could rock the "shim" gender confusion costume. THE POSSIBILITIES!

ENTRY #4
David Shifren: Shoeless on the Playa
These shoes are just my size - and style. I'm a regular at NYC Burner parties (i.e., every weekend) and at the Burn. I have an extensive playa-fabulous wardrobe, including more hot pink than even my female and gay friends.

But I'm currently without fun shoes since my last pair recently fell apart (mid-party - I kept dancing with my shoes held together by duct tape). I've been reduced to wearing my extremely boring dress shoes (I'm an attorney by day).

I promise to provide an excellent home for these shoes, giving them TLC to make sure they last despite my wearing them every weekend (and many weeknights). I want these shoes so badly I'd even be willing to come to Boston to pick them up.

ENTRY #5
Captain Gonzo: A Simple Man with Simple Needs
They will fit the Gonzo nice & you know I will rock them hard and hug often :)

ENTRY #6
Meghan: Pink-Shoe Prom Queen and Tasteless Tastemaker
I am also named Meg and I ALSO WEAR A 12!!! You know how hard it is to find shoes? Peggy Hill and I have a sororal bond when it comes to shoe sizes. For the most part, I have to buy all of my shoes online, without trying them on. Before the internet, I was subject to men's gym shoes and for occasions like prom, forced to wear dress shoes that were obviously manufactured with tasteless trannies in mind.

I would wear them while sitting on the subway eating a combination of keilbasa, mexican street corn and baklava and carrying a Welsh Corgi. Just think of the conversations I could strike up with all the tasteless trannies who are gonna be soooo jealous...

ENTRY #7:
bluestarfish’s sister: World-traveling DIYer
so I'm not entering since I'm only a men's 8.5, but my sister has bigger feet than me. Converses are like her favorite. I think she owns at least four pairs, but none of them are pink. She would love the shit outta them. I think the only ones that aren't decorated are the tie-dyed ones, because those are already super awesome. I can't promise that she would decorate them, but I would bet she does. She is about to go on a big adventure... She's is studying abroad this semester, so in a month she's leaving for France! Those shoes would see the WORLD. She gets off a plane in London on her way back, and I think she has plans to visit Italy and some of those other countries nearby. She could wear those shoes all over!

Discussion Question:
Who among these seven entries is most deserving of a brand new pair of shoes? Comment and vote!

converse all-stars sneakers giveaway

2011-08-18T19:51:00.005-04:00

these shoes are free as a bird now

How I got these shoes is not important. What's important is that I'm giving them away.

I have a pair of brand new men's size ten hot pink Converse All-Stars that are looking for the perfect home. But shoes this magnificent can't be sold willy-nilly. They need the right owner. Not just any man (or giant-footed woman) can rock these puppies. I know someone out there needs these shoes.

Is it you? Is it someone you know?

If you or someone you know needs or wants these shoes, comment on this post and tell me why. Would you wear them every day? Are they the perfect finishing touch for your burn night outfit for Burning Man? Would you turn them into an amazing art project? Be convincing.

On Monday night I'll post the finalists and you'll have 24 hours to vote for a winner. Whoever gets the most votes will have these beauts shipped to their door posthaste. (If you're headed out to Burning Man and want to wear them, I'll do my best to get them to you before you leave.)

this is how fast I will ship them to you

Tell yo mama. Tell yo friends. Tell anyone you can convince. Please, please repost this link! Even if you don't need these shoes, I bet someone you know does.

Now it's time to Paul Revere it and let your set know about this remarkable opportunity.

tips for moving (learned the hard way)

2011-08-17T19:48:00.004-04:00

working too hard can give you a heart attackackackackack

I have moved every summer for the last 10 years--with one sweet exception in college. My considerable consternation with moving has been well documented. I was pretty sure I'd said all I have to say about the matter.

But now the time has come once more for me to cram all of my worldly possessions into boxes and schlep them into my next apartment, and just like clockwork, I want to write about it. I recently noticed that last fall's post Tips for Living in a Tiny Apartment is my 2nd most popular blog post of the year, so I think it's time for a followup. Let's talk moving.

BEFORE YOU PACK

purge
It's time for some dehoarding, whether you're moving across the globe or just across the street. Go through every single object you own and get rid of anything that's damaged or that you don't use. If you're getting rid of a lot of stuff, I suggest throwing a party with a Drunk Thrift Store theme. Ask your guests to bring some booze, and in return invite them to raid designated boxes of your possessions. Everyone will get looped and start putting your clothes on and leafing through your old Seventeen magazines and you'll save yourself a trip to the Goodwill.

plan
Get all of your parking permits and address changes squared away a few weeks before the move, because lord knows you won't have time for anything responsible like that once your life is in boxes.

do all that stuff you've been meaning to do
Over the course of your dehoarding, you no doubt found some things that needed dry cleaning or mending or supergluing. Do it now. While you're at it. clearly mark all of your mostly empty consumables like foods, bath/beauty products, cleaning products, etc. USE ME and do your best to use them up before the move. Whatever you haven't taken care of by your move out date gets chucked--it wasn't important anyway.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

-lots of packing tape
-new box of garbage bags
-one thousand newspapers (I unscrupulously take stacks of the free ones advertising cars or apartments.)
-a few sharpies
-cleaning supplies set aside for cleaning up at the end
-bags packed with essential clothes, medicine, personal care items that you'll need throughout the move
-all of the boxes. This is the most important part. My favorite boxes for moving are white bankers boxes, because they have tops that fit on without being taped (although I do recommend taping them!) and because it is physically impossible to pack them too heavy. Aside from these priceless gems, never pay for boxes. Get them free off Freecyle or Craigstlist, or at virtually any local store. Liquor stores usually have a zillion boxes.

YAY BOXES

PACKIN ALL YOUR STUFF

start with the least essential stuff
Picture frames, decorations, books, DVDs, off-season clothes, etc. Then handle your kitchen stuff, pantry, and linens--things you'd generally use daily but can live without for a few days. Save your clothes and bathroom for last, since those things are the most disruptive to be without.

label the bejesus out of your boxes
Write the name of the room the box should go in on all four sides of the box so you can see it no matter how it is stacked. Write what's in the box too. When you get there, you can set each box down in the room it belongs in the first time you set it down.

pack smart
-Pack your glasses and other breakables in wine boxes from the liquor store. They come with perfect cardboard dividers.
-Pack your books and other heavies in white bankers boxes or other small boxes. Otherwise they will be too heavy to carry.
-Cushion your breakables with towels and clothes instead of bubble wrap when possible.
-Pack linens and clothes in double-bagged garbage bags. Gather clothes in your closet in groups of 5-10 garments at a time, then pull the garbage bags up over them. Tie the bag at the top around the hangers. Clothes can hang here until they're ready to move. At the new place, you can just hang the clothes up and cut the bags off of them. VOILA your closet is intact!

put everything in a box
You are going to hate yourself if you have to carry a bunch of odds and ends out of your almost empty apartment one at a time. There are going to be things that don't want to fit into boxes--fans and shower caddies and sleeping bags and other randoms. Save a couple of bigass boxes for the very end to throw all of the last-minute stuff into.

MOVIN ALL YOUR STUFF

invite a bunch if people
You cannot have too much help doing this. With two people, it will take two miserable hours to move out. With five or six, it will take half an hour. Bribe them with snacks and beer and the promise of helping them move when their time comes.

load smart
Put the boxes in the truck first and the furniture last. When you get there, get the largest furniture in place before you start moving any smaller items in. Otherwise you could be setting yourself up for a very unpleasant game of 3D Tetris when you try to set your rooms up.

order a pizza
Nothing is better than ordering a pizza the first night in a new apartment. It's good practice for remembering your new address.

Discussion Question:
What are some of your hot tips for moving?

talkin bout the old folks too

2011-07-28T15:30:00.001-04:00

69-year-old DJ Ruth Flowers starts her set with O FORTUNA. How sick is that??? Someone please invite this fierce beast to Transformus to camp with us at IHOP.

When the phrase "the last taboo" caught my eye in an internet article recently, my interest was piqued. In this ever-changing world in which we live in*, what could possibly qualify as the last taboo? Incest? Torture? Stirrup pants?

No. It's sex among the elderly. This according to Dr. Virginia Sadock, professor of psychiatry and director of the Program of Human Sexuality at New York University.

Pfft. "That," I thought, "is the least scandalous scandal ever." Shouldn't we all be so lucky to remain sexually active into our twilight years? How could something like geriatric sexology take the crown for a dubious distinction like "the last taboo?"

So I decided to engage in some hard-hitting journalism and go straight to a reliable first-hand account. It seems that a dear friend of mine, who is octogenarian and FABULOUS, has had the very same subject on her mind recently. She gave me the following account of living the last taboo:

Ten years ago I found my last sweetheart in the old folks exercise class at the "Y." I was 69 and he was 71, and we started a hot sex life that has endured for 10 years. The only problem is we aged as we reached 80 and 82, which has put a crimp in our hot sex. We figured it was all over at first. However, we still have desire and keep our once-a-week date which we both look forward to. We cuddle and kiss a lot until we head for the bed and continue kissing and caressing and manually pleasing each other. There's no penetration but we both feel satisfaction and lots of affection. And we've discovered "back scratching" is sort of an aphrodisiac and a wonderful aperitif after making love. (The gorillas obviously were onto the "back scratching" too.) Then we have coffee and watch "Family Guy." And laugh a lot....[Her boyfriend] and I still can't keep our hands off each other after 10 years! The taboo is all in our heads.

Admit it. You're clutching your pearls.

But why?? Why are we so squicky about the idea of older people remaining sexually active? Is it a vestige of our Judeo-Christian notion that non-procreative sex is verboten? Or is it just a symptom of the rampant ageism in our culture?

When I have big squishy questions like this about sex and religion and the Western tradition, I turn to my dear friend and fellow Nashvillian Julia, who is working on a PhD in theology and women, gender and sexuality (aka Sex and God) at Harvard. And we ~~gchat about it~~ have a Platonic dialogue.

Julia: i think generally speaking sex is structurally normative, as in: there are powerful political, cultural, social, etc. forces that structure the sexual and sexualized body as heteronormative, meaning: YOUNG, straight, able-bodied, etc. many of our prejudices about what an able body is, in fact, have to do with its sexual capabilities.
me: WHOA so true
Julia: what is an "impotent" body?
me: if someone is disabled, one of the first questions that arises in the brain: can they still have sex?
Julia: EXACTLY
we have very similar prejudices about the aged body

So it seems that it's both--that our ageism is wrapped up in our idea of the heteronormative sexualized body. WHOA. Leave it to a Harvardian to blow your mind.

So what does this all mean? Sure, geriatric sex is a taboo. What does it matter?

Here's how it matters. 26% of the American population belongs to the aging Baby Boomers generation. Among them, 87% of married men and 89% of married women in the 60-64 age range are sexually active. Among Americans over 80, 29% of men and 25% of women still engage in sexual activity. That means we're looking at millions and millions of sexually active elderly folks in the coming years.

That part isn't the problem. The problem is that our cultural taboo related to geriatric sex creates an inability to acknowledge the phenomenon in any meaningful way. Sexual support and sexual health care for the elderly is severely lacking. STD rates among the elderly are out of control. Just like abstinence-only education for teens leads to skyrocketing teen pregnancy rates, lack of sexual support among the elderly can lead to the spread of STDs and other public health issues. And, according to another of my many Nashvillian friends pursuing higher education with an emphasis in sexuality:

"When you combine lack of knowledge with lack of resources, you get gonorhyphallis."
--Lanier B., sex educator extraordinaire

And nobody wants that.

So what can we do to avoid this public health crisis? Start here: don't be afraid to talk to the elderly folks in your life about sexual health. You're bound to learn something interesting from them, and maybe they'll learn something important from you. I mean, Grandma Moses didn't start painting until she was in her 70s. It's never too late to learn new tricks.

*apologies to Sir Paul McCartney

Discussion Question:
Talk about how awesome you will be when you hit your golden years. Will you rock DJ sets with Ruth Flowers in Paris, or simply enjoy postcoital viewings of Family Guy with your hot boyfriend/girlfriend?

where everybody knows your name

2011-07-07T18:31:00.006-04:00

When it gets to "Wouldn't you like to get away?" I totally lose it

I grew up watching Cheers with my dad on what seemed like a nightly basis. Despite the fact that I was, say, 24 months old and had very little in common with a cast of New England barflies, I loved Cheers. I still think it's one of the great sitcoms of all time.

I think it's my lifelong love of Cheers that's kept me searching for a place where everybody knows my name.

I went home to Tennessee recently to visit my family, and I made more than one trip to my favorite watering hole, The Pond. The Pond is a fine drinking establishment in Franklin, owned by the wonderful Eddie Martin and his son Justin, fellow Grassland General and Franklin Rebel. It opened nearly a decade ago, and just in the nick of time for my friends and me to start turning 21. Everyone used to hang out at Waffle House in high school, but you can't smoke there anymore and they don't warm up your coffee after you've been there awhile, so everyone started convening at The Pond instead.

One particular day, I settled down belly up to the bar with my bff Emily and a big ol Shock Top to listen to one of Eddie's signature stories. Eddie can weave a story like you can't believe. Dewar's and cigars, snakes and warm concrete, and even a cameo from the good people at Grumpy's Bail Bonds (believe me, that link is worth clicking). Everyone was spellbound--when they weren't cackling.

Amid the laughter, patrons started to file in one by one. At least a dozen people. By the time each one got to the bar from the door, their favorite drink was already waiting on the bar for them before they'd said a word. Eddie never missed a single beat of his story.

That's the beauty of a small town: recognition.

It's hard to get used to living in a big, impersonal city. There's a constant desire just to be recognized.

But I've found one little place to call my own here in Cambridge: Andy's Diner.

My dear Julia introduced me to Andy's, which sits just between my office and my apartment. There's nothing too fancy about Andy's. But the food is fantastic, and the vibe is utterly unpretentious, which is pretty uncommon in these parts. Julia and I started going for lunch on Fridays when I first started my job. We'd share a plate of fries and suck giant Diet Cokes and rattle the windows with our peals of laughter.

It wasn't long before I invited JSJ, who invited Sarah, and then...

it kind of became a thing. PANCAKE FRIDAY.

We mob the place every Friday afternoon, and Kelly and Carol, with the patience of saints, bring us pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches and excellent stories and sometimes Carol puts her cold hands on my neck to make me squeal.

l to r: Carol, me, Kelly

So here's to Eddie, Carol, Kelly, and all of the customer service people in this world who go above and beyond in their jobs to shine a little bit of light into the darkness.

Discussion question:
Do you ever just wanna go where everybody knows your name?

look away, look away

2011-06-30T19:16:00.003-04:00

A recording of "Dixie" that's nearly 100 years old. Don't click on it if you find the song offensive.

It will surprise absolutely no one that my high school mascot was the Rebel. It was the same little guy as Ole Miss, but in our school colors of maroon and grey.

Couldn't find the right color but you get the gist

Our school seal had a Confederate flag in it, too. They flew by the dozens at our Homecoming celebration. The whole thing is antiquated and offensive and silly but it's pretty much par for the course in the South.

But I learned something interesting today.

I always learn the most interesting things at lunchtime at work. All the ladies crowd in the small kitchen and take turns microwaving their leftovers and Lean Cuisines and run their mouths about this and that while they flip through old OK magazines.

Today I learned that there are schools in Massachusetts that use the Rebel as their mascot. What?

Specifically I learned about the euphoniously named city of Walpole, MA. Walpole High School students are the Rebels just like we were. (All except the girls' field hockey team. They are the Porkers.) Until 1994, they used a Confederate flag as their symbol and sang "Dixie" in the stands. Unofficial lunchtime reports suggest the "Dixie" tradition persisted far beyond '94.

Even more confounding is the fact that a neighboring landowner has put up a gigantic Confederate flag adjacent to the field. He refuses to take it down amid much scandal.

photo from boston.com

What is happening here??? This place is well over 300 miles from the Mason Dixon line.

I really have no idea what to make of this. In Tennessee, you hear people speak of "heritage, not hate" when they explain the Confederate flags on splashed decals on their cars or superimposed over the silhouettes of busty women on their teeshirts. But how can it be "heritage, not hate" when there's no claim to the heritage? Is this an example of a weird fetishization of the South, similar to the way white culture has fetishized Native Americans as sports mascots for ages? Call me simple, but I had no idea you could find Rebels outside of Dixie.

Discussion question:
Someone please help me make sense of this.

PS I SAY FRANKLIN YOU SAY REBELS

so yesterday

2011-06-22T19:18:00.004-04:00

I am sick to death with some kind of evil sore throat and all I have the energy to do is sit here in my tatty Lindsay Lohan hoodie (yes, the very same one she's wearing above) and discuss the relative merits of pop singles released by famous actresses in the 2000s.

It's a topic that's close to my heart.

Most of these songs are dreadful, it's true. But others are underappreciated pop gems that deserve a closer look.

The thumbs-down songs largely speak for themselves. What is there to say about, say, the almost eerie soullessness (and palpable sense of effort) of Gweneth Paltrow's recent foray into singing?

Or the unbearable tinny monotony of Kim Kardashian's debut single?

they playin my jam they playin my jam they playin my jam they playin my jam they playin my jam they playin my jam they playin my jam they playin my jam turn it up turn it up turn it up turn it up turn it up turn it up dj

Or even Scarlett Johansson's cover of "Falling Down" from her album of nothing but Tom Waits covers (besides the fact that it is, objectively, one of the worst songs of all time?)

Ugh. Okay. Have a little ginger or something to cleanse your palate, and get ready for the good ones.

"Stars Are Blind" by Paris Hilton (2006)

I know what you're thinking. But listen to it first.

Tell me that isn't an effortless, chill, beachy, summery song. Nice reggae vibe without trying to riff too hard on Bob. The video is a not-entirely-successful ripoff of "Wicked Game" but I gotta say, I'm not mad at it. I think this song represents Paris Hilton at her most likeable. I realize that this is a low bar but I stand by my statement. And I'm not alone on this one: critics kind of can't help but like it.

"Rumors" by Lindsay Lohan (2004)

This video was shot at the height of Lilo's voluptuous redheaded appeal. She's 18 years old, famous as all get out, and feisty as hell.

Okay, the song is kind of meh. But the video is pure mid-2000s poppery, from the blatant product placement to the miniskirt-intensive rooftop choreographed breakdown at the end.

Basically, this video is a must-watch for anyone who considers themselves a fan of either (1) shiny things or (2) boobs.

She's no Madonna, but she comes off looking pretty cool, at least by 2004 standards. Compared to her film career, I think we have to chalk this one up as a modest success. ...is modest the right word?

"So Yesterday" by Hilary Duff (2003)

Hilary Duff was sixteen when "So Yesterday" came out, and I think it's surprisingly age-appropriate.

Can you believe how dressed she is in the video? After watching "Rumors," Hilary looks like a nun in her jeans and long-sleeved jacket.

What can I say? Ever since I first heard this song's clever phrasing and reassuring message, it's been one of my secret go-to cheer-me-up songs.

(Confidential to Hilary Duff: The teeshirt thing was creepy.)

Readers, I leave you with a quandry. A Jennifer Love quandry.

If you don't remember this song, don't fret. It's not early dementia. This song peaked at 124 on the American pop charts in 2002. I am fairly certain that I am probably one of twelve people on Earth who are aware of this song.

I truly can't decide if this song should be chalked up as a win or a lose for Jennifer Love Hewitt. The song is pretty bad, as is the video. But, she's wearing a fierce outfit and seems to be trying out a little bit of an edge, which is commendable. Most importantly, I heard this song probably three times when it came out in 2002 and I've never forgotten it. As an editor, I know that "memorable" is one of the best compliments you can give to a piece of artwork.

JLH has a pretty illustrious acting career. She was on Kids Incorporated, for pete's sake. Does "BareNaked" [editor's note: yes, this is actually how the title of the song is styled] live up to her acting resume?

Your vote.

Discussion Question:
"BareNaked" by Jennifer Love Hewitt: a Jennifer Love win or a Jennifer Love lose?

quidquid quidquid, always tackling today's relevant issues.

Guest post: The Outsider's Guide to the New Englander

2011-06-14T18:41:00.003-04:00

Today's guest post comes to us from my friend Molly of Wicked Cheap in Boston, who could no longer stand idly by as I maligned her native culture with my Southern ramblings. She offers a valuable counterpoint to my extensive whining documentation of my culture shock as a native Southerner living in Boston.

I grew up in New Hampshire, and took the 60 mile trek south to land in Boston for college and beyond. I've been away from New England for a total of less than two months of my entire life. I like it here. I like the people. I usually like the weather. So when somebody starts to talk smack on my native land I take it personally.

I've heard it all - New Englanders are rude, Boston drivers are clueless, Southie accents are horrible, Red Sox fans are the worst. I'm here to tell you IT'S WRONG. ALL OF IT. (Except maybe the drivers part.)

So, because I'm so nice and not-rude, I've put together a little something to help you all (excuse me, "y'all") out:

Molly's Wicked Awesome Outsider's Guide To The New Englander

1. What you may deem as "rude" is really just a general distaste for small talk.

Now, I like to think of myself as a polite and friendly person. But I am not about to start making conversation with a stranger just for the sake of talking. It's simply not in my genes. If someone asks me a question (I'm a magnet for lost tourists needing directions), I'll gladly answer, maybe even ask where they're from. But chit chatting about the weather or "how about those Sox?" No. NOOO.

I know I share this trait with a great many of my fellow New Englanders. I have my theories as to why. We walk, talk, generally function a little bit faster up here because you never know when the next blizzard is about to hit. It may be June but a Nor'Easter is just around the bend and I have to get my lawn chairs and orange cones out to block my parking space I DON'T HAVE TIME TO TALK. I like to think of it less as rudeness and more as EFFICIENCY. (Though it could go either way in the example of my dad ending every phone call with an abrupt "good enough!" and a click.)

The best compliment I ever received from a stranger came a few years ago. Waiting at a bus stop, an older gentleman walked over and sat by me. I was nose deep in a book (an extremely popular "this means I don't want to talk to you" device), when he said, "excuse me, I won't bother you anymore after I say this, but you have really beautiful hair." Now THAT is how you compliment a New Englander. The promise that the forced conversation does not have to follow. Straight and to the point. And not at all rude.

If you're wearing any Yankees paraphernalia, all bets are off. You asked for it.

2. Just give the accent a chance

First: The Harvard Yard is not a parking lot. That's not cute anymore. Second: the thick Boston accent is not nearly as prevalent or as exaggerated as Hollywood would have you believe.

Leo, I love you, but lets leave the dropped R's to Marky Mark.

Let me show you how it's done.

But I promise, just listen to some townies for a while, you'll learn to love it.

3. While we're on the subject of speech - nobody in Beantown actually calls it Beantown

We do say wicked, but never "wicked pissah." I have no idea where that even came from. If you're in the 'burbs, you get your Sam Adams at the Packy (though in the city its still called a Liquor Store because we don't want to confuse the college kids). The T includes the subway, bus, commuter rail and ferries but most people are just referring to the subway (which is awful). Ask for a reguluh coffee at Dunk's and they'll give you cream and sugar. The B's and C's both play in the Gahdin, but the Sox are over at Fenway Pahk. All set?

4. If you haven't tried candlepin bowling yet, you really should

5. Nobody cares about you, soccer

Yes, New England has a professional soccer team (and lacrosse for that matter). No, I've never met or heard of anyone who cares about them. It's all about Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics, Patriots. If you're gonna live here, choose one or more and stick with it. Or at least respect the fact that you moved to a sports culture and things are gonna get FIERCE. Boston sports teams go through long phases of being just awful. Then improving for a few years, then breaking our hearts again. There's a whole psyche around being a Sox fan. I may or may not have a baseball related tattoo. I'm just saying. Fans can get rambunctious and annoying at times, but it doesn't last forever. Enjoy it, get involved, paint your face.

And that, friends, is all you need to know. Now get outta my way and quit hogging the sidewalk.

Discussion Question:
What would you want an outsider to know about your native culture?

the true meaning of "all set"

2011-06-13T21:00:00.001-04:00

In this post from last month, one of many discussions on this blog about my experience as a lifelong Southerner moving to Boston, I mentioned the odd way that Bostonians use the phrase "all set."

I had definitely heard people say "all set" before I moved up here and, I probably even said it myself from time to time. But I had never heard it used with such a frequency until I moved up here. Bostonians say it CONSTANTLY. You might hear the following conversation at Dunkin Donuts.

CUSTOMER: I'll have a coffee.
CASHIER: You want a donut or are you all set?
CUSTOMER: No I'm all set.
CASHIER: Okay that's $1.25.
[money and coffee are exchanged]
CUSTOMER: Okay am I all set?
CASHIER: You're all set.

Am I exaggerating? Not really.

As I mentioned in the aforementioned post, I did some Googling and found several discussions online about this peculiarity of Bostonian speech, both on Urban Dictionary and on message boards.

There's a lot of discussion online about how difficult non-Bostonians find it to understand the many shades of meaning of the phrase. After all, the word set has 464 definitions in English, making it the word with the most definitions out of all the hundreds of thousands of words in our strange language. The phrase literally could not be more ambiguous.

"All set" seems to have a range of meanings, from "okay as I am" to "ready" to "finished." This site even cites a third-generation South Bostonian who uses it when people break up: Teresa's all set with that guy, he was an ahhshole.

I had a major realization the other day. All of the many meanings of "all set" converge into one single idea: not wanting to interact with someone any further.

Yes, it's true. This phrase is used constantly in Boston because everyone hates to talk to strangers.

"Are we all set?" means "Can we stop talking now?"

"I'm all set." means "I would like to stop talking to you now." or even "Stop talking to me."

Let's revisit the Dunkin Donuts scene.

CUSTOMER: I'll have a coffee.
CASHIER: You want a donut or are are we almost finished talking?
CUSTOMER: No donut, just stop talking please.
CASHIER: Okay that's $1.25.
[money is exchanged, coffee is handed.]
CUSTOMER: Okay are we done interacting?
CASHIER: Yes thank God.

Oh, New England. Y'all crazy.

It's 55 degrees and raining today. I think I'm all set with this weather.

Discussion Question:
What's your favorite regional verbal tic?

dancin in the dark

2011-05-18T20:30:00.001-04:00

At a Paul Simon concert in Toronto on May 7th, fan Rayna Ford screamed out a request for the song "Duncan," calling out that she had learned to play the guitar on the tune. Paul heard her and pulled her up on stage to have her sing the song. I dare you to watch this and not choke up a little:

Thanks to Sammy Jane Allison for linking me to this great story about it on NPR.

You can feel the soaring joy and trembling disbelief as she straps Paul's guitar on and starts strumming along. She finds her rhythm as she goes, but her performance punctuated with irrepressible moments of giddy gratitude. She can't believe it. Paul Simon is watching her play "Duncan." She brings the house down with tears streaming down her face.

It's hard not to imagine yourself in the same position. Admit it. You've been fantasizing over it ever since the first time you saw Bruce Springsteen pull Courteney Cox onstage in the "Dancing in the Dark" video.

How impossibly young and gorgeous are they in this video??

It's so easy to imagine it. I'm a few rows back at a Lil Wayne concert, wired on sheer excitement and squinting through the plumes of smoke issuing out of the fog machine. Between songs, I scream out SWIZZZZZZZYYYYY! PLAY SWIZZY! Weezy squints out at the audience with his hands shielding his eyes from the stage lights, wondering who has requested such a deep track--a true fan. He catches sight of me and grins, the rainbow of pulsing lights glinting off his grill. Out of nowhere, the helicopter-chop crescendo of the beginning of the track booms out of the wall of speakers. Weezy points at me and gestures for me to join him on stage, laughing. I point at myself (who, me?) and then laugh, shaking my head (no, I couldn't) as my friends push me up towards the stage.

I jump up on stage with the help of a few refrigerator-sized security guards. I give Weezy the most effortless hip-hop hand-clasp-then-hug greeting with a familiar smile and a wink, and then like magic a golden mic appears in my hand. I'm a little taller than Weezy, so I throw my arm around his shoulder, resting on his dreads, as I furiously spit the opening lines:

You know me I just be chillin in the Phantom
Listenin to opera
Gun is my bodyguard
Call it Kevin Costner

Weezy laughs in disbelief at my unexpectedly tight flow. He slugs me on the shoulder jovially to indicate his appreciation, mouthing the words as I rapid-fire spit them like I've been practicing for this every day of my life. (Which I definitely haven't.)

When I reach the final lines (WEEZY THE BEAST! KATIE THE MONSTER! And we're gone.), Weezy lifts his chain off of his neck and places it around mine. There are so many diamonds on it that it actually makes a soft bling blingbling sound. The crowd loses it, nearly knocking us backwards with their adoration. Weezy and I forget the encore and head straight to his bus to start working on my album.

Bonus: scroll up and watch Bruce and Courteney dance to "Swizzy."

Discussion Question::
Which musician would you most want to be pulled onstage by?

on the value of useless trinkets

2011-05-13T13:52:00.002-04:00

I read an article today that filled me with total delight: What Your American Girl Doll Says About the Rest of Your Life. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions of the article, but who cares. Let's talk about American Girl dolls.

I had a Samantha doll for whom I purchased Molly glasses. I didn't particularly connect with the Victorian orphan's story, but she had brown eyes and brown hair like me, so she was in.

I had a variety of little outfits for my nearsighted orphan: a beautiful pink striped party dress, a navy winter coat with a snow-white muff, a crisp white summertime sailor suit, a stiff cranberry Christmas dress, and even a delicate nightgown.

photos from this American Girl collecting website

I read the little accompanying Samantha books too. They weren't particularly memorable aside from Samantha's birthday party, an elaborate affair featuring petit fours and home-churned ice cream, the latter of which is befouled with salt by evil neighbor Eddie. Not cool, Eddie. Not cool.

God knows what amount of whining I had to pitch for my parents to actually buy me some of Samantha's accessories. Anyone who is not familiar with the American Girl doll collection could not possibly believe how overpriced and useless these little trinkets are. I had a tiny doll (a doll for my doll!) and a tiny music box and a little brass lunch tin with a tiny plastic watercress sandwich and peach and a tiny embroidered handkerchief. But what really tickled my mom and me were the useless little kits.

I had two of these useless little kits. The Summertime Amusements set came with a tiny sketchbook, a tiny paint set with tiny tubes of real paint and a tiny artist's palette, and a tiny pine satchet that says "I Pine for You." This photo doesn't give a sense of scale, but the sketchbook is about the size of a business card.

Early 90s retail cost: $22
You thought I was kidding, didn't you.

Even more tempting was Samantha's Gingerbread House Kit, which came with impossibly small gingerbread pieces, a few tiny pieces of candy, a miniature pastry tube, and instructions for making the icing and assembling the whole thing.

Early 90s retail cost: $15
accessory photos from this alarmingly comprehensive American Girl dolls wiki

I'd beg and beg my mom to let me get into these kits and, I don't know, paint a teeny tiny picture in the sketchbook or (let's be real here) eat all of the stale component parts of the gingerbread house when my hammy little hands inevitably proved unable to assemble the tiny thing.

My poor mother. This was her:

Samantha still holds a place of honor in my childhood bedroom, all snugged up with my favorite stuffed snow leopard and a plastic Betty Boop doll who, characteristically, can't seem to keep her dress on. I guarantee that my mother could still put her hands on the still-pristine Summertime Amusements or Gingerbread Kit in five minutes flat if given the task. Guess whether or not she'd led me get into the kits if I asked her today.

So you can imagine my despair when I learned today that Samantha has been retired. Aw hell naw. But I am feeling grateful that my mom never let me tear into Samantha's accessories--I'll sell them on eBay one day to put my kids through college. Maybe it's time for a trip to Georgia, aka Doll Mecca, to visit Babyland General Hospital and then the American Girl Boutique and Bistro. Samantha can have a plastic watercress sandwich and get her hair did.

PS I have two relevant links to share: one which shares my sentiments exactly (and even makes a salty ice cream reference) and the first of eight YouTube videos of Samantha's movie, which I bet you never knew existed. In case you're wondering, yes, she does wear that sick signature checked dress in the very first scene.

Discussion Question: What overpriced silly stuff did you have as a kid?

they should arrest you and whoever dressed you

2011-05-02T21:07:00.004-04:00

I started drinking at the crack of dawn last Friday. Against all better judgment and reason, I invited my girlfriends over to watch the royal wedding and drink champagne before work. Jess and Helen turned up right on time at 5am, only a little disoriented. Julia arrived in her bathrobe and a party hat. We had grits casserole, biscuits, berries, and at least Kate Middleton's weight in champagne.

We modified a variety of royal drinking game rules I found online to suit our purposes. We remembered Diana at every mention of her name with a MAY SHE REST (and a drink), and honored Her Majesty the Queen's presence on screen by drinking continuously.

The wedding party looked more perfect than dolls. But if you looked past the heirloom jewels and the endless rows of military medals, you could see that William and Kate really are two people in love. And that's pretty special, no matter what. I didn't expect myself to get so emotional when they exchanged vows.

We oohed, we ahhed.

We laughed, we cried.

And then, somehow, we went to work.

As for my favorite moment, well, it's between

"You look beautiful."

and

Discussion Question:
pssh you know what we're here to talk about. ROYAL WEDDING DISH you know you have a lot of feelings

Things I must begrudgingly admit I like about Boston

2011-05-01T19:45:00.001-04:00

taken out of context I must seem so strange

Winter is ostensibly over here in Boston (although don't tell the winter coat I'm continuing to wear most days), so my homicidal winter madness has subsided temporarily. After a winter so insane that the snow had to be measured in Shaquille O'Neals, every bud, blossom, and shoot is an impossible miracle.

My skepticism about living in Boston is well documented. Very well documented. The 30 Rock episode where they go to Boston for a week in January ("Winter Madness" S04E11)--particularly the experience of native Southerner Kenneth--pretty much sums up my dominant feelings about this place.

And let's face it. I don't really fit in here. People have a hard time understanding my accent. Yesterday, when attempting to order a blueberry ale, the waiter helplessly asked me to repeat myself over and over again, asking, "Blueberry aioli?"

I never realized that my daily habits were so redneck until I moved to Cambridge. I live in an apartment complex with dozens of units, but we are the only residents who ever use the small common yard out front. I can often be found out front working on craft projects like Tanie's space shirts or assembling our many dozens of pieces of IKEA furniture in my overalls from the Fairview Tractor Supply Company. Nick and I also like to sit in our deluxe canopy camp chairs and read.

just LOOK at those rainbow glow-in-the-dark pony bead accents!!
I guess it goes without saying that this picture was not taken in Boston.

The neighbors walk by and they're all

It seems like something happens every day that makes me feel like an alien. Facebook friends of mine know all about my considerable distress about the difference in Southern and New England traditions--in my world, a white elephant exchange is not called a yankee swap and people not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day get pinched.

Even the smallest things are different. I started noticing recently that every monetary transaction I experience up here ends with the cashier informing me that I'm "all set." This is not an unusual thing to say at all, until you realize that every cashier says it every single time without fail. A quick Googlin' informed me that this is, in fact, a Boston tic.

But despite the cultural differences and the winter (oh lord, the winter), I have to admit that I'm coming around to a few things about Boston. Since I hate being such a Negative Nancy about New England all the time, I thought I should fess up to the things I've started to like.

BLUEBERRY ALE

They put fresh blueberries in it!!

from LittleBill's flickr

WATCHING SPORTING EVENTS IN BARS

All the beer and shouting--it feels like home!

WALKS ALONG THE CHARLES

Glistening water and athletic rich people rowing crew--what's not to love?

LIVING NEAR THE OCEAN

Seagulls scream at you on your way to work. You can almost smell the salt air. You can drive up to New Hampshiah and eat lobsters that mere hours before had been minding their own business in the ocean.

from Ken-ichi's flickr

THE NORTH END

Boston's Little Italy. They've got the best Italian food this side of Trastevere. There is magic in the air. And garlic.

from bradunc01's flickr

HARVARD SQUARE AT NIGHT

It's no Bourbon Street, but there are drunk Harvardians! And Christmas lights!

TOP OF THE HUB

There's a swank restaurant at the top of the 52 story Prudential Center. The view is astonishing.

from Basically Boston's flickr

Julia and I had a boozy lunch there last weekend.

THAT is the face of a woman enjoying her life in Boston.

And finally, my favorite thing about living in Boston is

BEING OUT OF CONTEXT

It's good for you. It reminds you who you really are underneath it all.

Discussion Question:
Tell me about a time you've been out of context.

despite all my rage, I'm still just a chick with nothing to say

2011-04-19T20:50:00.006-04:00

I recently learned about The Bechdel Test and now I can't get it out of my head. The Bechdel Test, born of classic queer comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, is a laughably minimal three-part test for movies:

1. It has to have at least two women in it
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man.

this image is from DTWOF author/illustrator Alison Bechdel's blog here

After watching two very enjoyable and ostensibly more or less feminist-friendly movies and realizing that they both just barely passed the test (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Forgetting Sarah Marshall), I decided I should do a little research.

Thank goodness for the Bechdel Test Movie List, a website that rates over 2100 movies according to the Bechdel test. They have a great icon system to indicate how a movie scores--a system I am going to borrow from shamelessly here for simplicity's sake:

= Fewer than two women
= Two or more women, but they don't talk to each other
= Two or more women, but they only talk to each other about a man
= Two or more women and they actually manage to talk to each other about something other than a man
= Passes but only just barely

Using the Bechdel Test Movie List, I have compiled the following highly academic study:

BECHDEL TEST RESULTS FOR MOVIES I AM SUPPOSED TO LIKE VERSUS MOVIES I ACTUALLY LIKE

I used two sample sets for my MOVIES I AM SUPPOSED TO LIKE group: the top ten AFI Top 100 Movies and the 2011 Best Picture Nominees. Let's start with the AFI picks.

1: Citizen Kane (1941)
2: The Godfather (1972) (surprisingly not on BTML but the internet tells me it does not pass)
3: Casablanca (1942)
4: Raging Bull (1980)
5: Singin' in the Rain (1952)
6: Gone with the Wind (1939)
7: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
8: Schindler's List(1993)
9: Vertigo (1958)
10: The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Wow! That's...not very many smiley faces. According to this list, women in the top ten films of all time are limited to the following topics of discussion: how to fashion a dress from curtains, whether one is a good witch or a bad witch, and what might happen when they get to Auschwitz.

captioned for those who cannot read lips very well, such as my husband: 'are you KIDDING me?'

Real talk? The only movies I've seen on this list are the ones with smiley faces next to them. ...and The Godfather.

Well, surely the 2011 Best Picture nominees will be an unblemished field of smiley faces. Right?

Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

...oh.

Looking at this list only reaffirms my vehement belief that Winter's Bone should have won Best Picture this year. If you haven't seen it, see it immediately. It is breathtaking. The actual Best Picture winner, The King's Speech, only contains two short interactions between women that barely register as legit conversations: a brief introduction and a mother telling her daughters a story. Maybe that's part of why I thought it was such a total snooze compared to Winter's Bone.

The Bechdel Test is an embarrassingly low bar. It's not a test for determining whether a movie is feminist-friendly--it's merely a metric for determining if a movie treats women like human beings. Of course, not every movie has to pass the Bechdel Test--there's always a place for male- and female-centric movies. I'm pretty sure Steel Magnolias wouldn't pass the reverse Bechdel Test. But if only the occasional movie didn't pass the test, the test wouldn't exist in the first place. It is downright sickening how few popular movies from the past century pass the test.

What's so scary to me is not that many popular movies marginalize women. I didn't roll off the cabbage truck (or...whatever) yesterday. What's truly disturbing to me--what fills me with Smashing Pumpkins levels of rat-in-a-cage fury--is that the movies we hold up as the finest examples of the medium are guilty of the same sins as 1980s beer commercials. Strip away the grandiose cinematography and the heartfelt performances and you've got the same old bull we've been seeing since the beginning of time--women existing only in relation to men.

I'm ragin' like Achilles.

I know, Brit. I know.

As for MOVIES I ACTUALLY LIKE, here's a hastily assembled list of my perennial favorite movies to watch, in no particular order:

Annie Hall (1977)
Clueless (1995)
Little Women (1994)
Mean Girls (2004)
St. Elmo's Fire (1985) (not on BTML but believe me, definitely passes)
Steel Magnolias (1989)
Sound of Music (1965)

See?? It's not that hard!

awww you guys

So I'm curious. How do your favorite movies of all time stack up to the Bechdel Test? Look them up here and report back. Have any of my female readers out there experienced a similar SHOULD LIKE/ACTUALLY LIKE dichotomy? Holler back and let's talk about ladies who have better things to talk about than men. And in doing so, we'll be passing the test ourselves.

Bonus discussion question: Creative types out there, I need some advice! How do other people with creative jobs keep their creative juices flowing in their off-hours for their own projects? I've missed blogging but I'm finding it so hard to find the motivation to write blog posts after long, draining days of editing. Tips??

one of many reasons I will have difficulty getting past St. Peter

2011-02-24T19:18:00.003-05:00

Forgive me, y'all, for I have sinned.

I got into all kinds of mischief when I was a kid, but none quite so infamous as what we got into at the church that was adjacent to my neighborhood.

(If you're going to get all church-lady on me and faint over the idea of, say, kids stealing donuts from a Bible study meeting, you should probably stop reading now.)

Growing up in the sprawling suburborural reaches of outer Nashville meant that my little subdivision was surrounded by country roads and cow pastures and other subdivisions and not much else. I liked to read Baby-Sitter's Club books, and I was always baffled when Kristy and the gang would walk "around the corner" to grab a candy bar or walk to the library. Around what corner? All that's around the corner from my house is more houses that look like my house. And a church.

My best friend Bradley and I used to ride our bikes in the church parking lot pretty much every day. On weekends, kid's soccer teams used to play matches in the churchyard. Sometimes they'd leave the refreshment truck parked at the church through the week. Brad and I were fixated on breaking into that truck, perpetually mocked by the enticing Pepsi logo on the side.

Once, we got caught trying to break into it. I tearfully pleaded for forgiveness. Brad rode his bike into a ditch and pretended he was dead. I'm think Brad eventually got into that truck, but I ran away before I could partake in the endless fountain of Mountain Dew.

A whole new world of mischief opened up to us when the congregation broke ground on a beautiful new chapel.

I can't go into a lot of what happened. I do not recall anyone ever rollerblading in the sanctuary while it was under construction. If anyone ever walked in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the sanctuary during Sunday Mass while wearing an elaborate Godzilla mask, I don't know anything about it. And I swear up and down that, to this day, no one can explain how the Virgin Mary statue's missing thumb ended up in Bradley's mom's junk drawer. Our mothers are still horrified over that one.

There is one crime I am prepared to own up to.

Let me set the scene for you.

It is 1989 or 1990. The Simpsons is a cultural phenomenon. And Bradley has somehow managed to secure a can of red spray paint.

We are drunk with power.

We creep over to the church construction site under the guise of riding bikes. I spot the perfect canvas immediately.

Brad hands the can to me. I feel the weight of it in my hand. I squint up at the white construction trailer in front of me, almost blinded by its gleaming blankness. I push my glasses back up on my sweaty nose and take a deep breath.

I write, in three-foot-tall letters, the worst swear word I can think of.

I never got caught.

Discussion Question: What kind of unbelievable mischief did you get into as a child?

why I decided to leave grad school in Classics

2011-02-13T17:06:00.006-05:00

I'm really excited to be guest blogging over at Worst Professor Ever this week. I'll be offering some advice for folks who have made the scary decision to leave university life for the big Other--life outside academia.

What can I say about academia that hasn't already been said by the Simpsons?

After a truly wonderful undergraduate career at Loyola University New Orleans, wild horses could not have stopped me from pursuing graduate school. I loved my close-knit Classics department with its inquisitive, enthusiastic students and supportive, sparkling faculty. With Davina as my incredible mentor, I was on top of the world. I studied hungrily, taking exactly twice the number of Classics classes I needed for my major. I was sure beyond doubt that I was born to be an academic.

Grad school was an ice-cold glass of reality in my face. The University of Texas Classics Department proved to be nothing like the supportive nest I'd left behind in New Orleans. I could (and who knows, maybe will one day) write a book about what a truly terrible experience I had in graduate school. Cultivating special relationships with wonderful people like Mary Jane and Douglass Parker (and other folks--you know who you are) was all that got me through, but it wasn't enough to balance the scales. Parker was retiring and couldn't take me on as an advisee. Suffice it to say that I decided by the end of my first semester that I would stick it out until I finished my master's degree and then be finished.

How could I have so quickly turned my back on a career I had been cultivating so carefully for so long? Was it the total lack of joy many of my colleagues seemed to take in their work? Was it the appalling insufficiency of faculty interest in and attention towards graduate students? Surely a smart, willful young woman like me wouldn't let a bunch of haters keep her from her dreams. Ultimately I found that my decision to leave wasn't about the toxic environment I'd found myself in for graduate school. I realized the whole thing just wasn't for me.

At my father's advice, I wrote myself a letter at the beginning of my last semester reminding myself why I decided to leave graduate school. He told me it would be nice to have one day to remind myself why I had done what I did.

Now, more than four years later, I am sharing it with all of you.

January 16, 2007

I'm leaving for a lot of different reasons.

I'm leaving because graduate school in Classics does not suit my personality. The fact that I am an effervescent, enthusiastic, extroverted, excitable, bossy, innovative person is a major liability to my career as an academic. The ideal academic personality is truly ascetic, valuing hard hours of studying hard Greek in a hard chair with too little sleep and too little to eat in a too little apartment. I am not an ascetic. In fact, I'm a little bit of a hedonist. My desire to spend long lazy weekends doing whatever I please, my desire to spend quality time writing and reading, and my desire to hold my family and personal life ahead of my professional life all make me an undesirable candidate for a PhD. Also, my skills with organization, with people, and with leadership are all squandered in this environment. When do I get to let that huge part of my personality shine in graduate school? Hardly ever. Instead, these truly useful and desirable skills are frowned upon, or tolerated at best. I need a job where my interpersonal skills, my creativity, and my leadership ability are utilized, not ignored.

Getting a PhD in classics is a career cul-de-sac for me. After obtaining my PhD, I would be lucky to be offered even a temporary position at any university. This university would likely be in an undesirable city for me, and almost certainly a city where Nick would be unable to find satisfying work. This job would pay me an insultingly small amount to at once teach multiple classes (many of which I would not be qualified to or inclined to teach) and continue my own research in the Classics in the hopes that one day I might become tenured somewhere by publishing multiple works of nonfiction about minutiae in ancient texts. The best I could possibly do as a Classics professor would be gaining tenure and earning $75,000 as a full professor at a nice private university.

I don't want to be a Classics professor anymore. In fact, I am pretty sick of studying the Classics, period. Latin and Greek appeal to me because they are languages, rather exquisite languages, but not because I have any special connection to the ancient world. There. I said it. I do not feel any particular connection with the ancient world, aside from the one that has developed from studying it for years and years. That's the heart of the matter.

I don't want it, I don't want them, they don't want me, and it wouldn't be good anyway.

You are better off in a real job. It might seem empty and meaningless sometimes. Remember that it is not actually any more meaningful to be studying puns in the Hippolytus. Accounting for minutiae in ancient texts is not inherently valuable in any special way. In fact, it is a waste of your talents.

Don't ever be discouraged or worry that you made the wrong decision. You did the right thing.

I've never had to reread this letter to reassure myself. I've never regretted my decision to leave graduate school for a moment. I so was afraid that life outside of my own research would feel empty and meaningless, but I adore my work. With apologies to the great Nadine Eckhardt--ever since I left academia, my life's been duck soup.

So be sure to tune into Worst Professor Ever this week to see what kind of advice I come up with for people who want to explore life on the other side of the fence. WoPro is a fellow disgruntled former classicist from UT's grad program who is turning her defection from academe into an awesome blog. She's a gutsy woman whom I admire and with whom I enjoy drinking beer and talking noise periodically. Go check her out.

Discussion Question: Have you ever written yourself a letter?

metamorphoses

2011-02-09T20:30:00.002-05:00

I'm tired of talking about death on my blog. But important people just. keep. dying.

Douglass Parker is gone. My dearest darling Dougie. You already know the story of how I loved him. He died yesterday at the tender age of 256 of injuries sustained from a heated agon with an organ grinder's monkey.

But you oughta see the monkey.

When he saw the effusive blog post I wrote about him last year (here's the link once more for the cheap seats in the back), he emailed me with one of his signature lyrical missives:

You've done me proud, and I'm almost afraid to go out for the mail, lest the crowds of the classical curious crush me in their rush. That "familiarity of friends or lovers from another lifetime," while quite true, could get frantic with the huge readership you must have...

He signed it Best love, doug. I blushed from my head to my toes. I wrote him back with eager tales of my exciting young life, but I guess he really started to decline around then. I wrote and wrote but I never heard from him again.

Readers, I loved him.

I loved to write for him. Translations were my votive offerings to him. So I've unearthed my circa 2006 attempt at a Parkerian rendition of a scene from Apuleius' Metamorphis. If that sounds boring, you have never read any Douglass Parker. Or Apueleius. I wrote this for Doug's Apuleius class and performed it with classmates Steve and Steve for Doug and the whole class.

NB: I do my best to keep this blog appropriate for all audiences. This is ancient literature so it's okay that this entire piece is about sex. Consider yourself warned.

Elbow Grease
an adaptation from Apuleius' Metamorphosis

CHARACTERS:

Trixie, an adulterous wife
Phil, her cunning lover
Marc, her clueless husband

SCENE: It is late morning on a weekday in Marc and Trixie's modest home. Light is streaming in between cracks in closed shutters. A large pot rests in the corner, and a bottle of perfume sits on the dresser. Trixie and Phil are in bed, entirely obscured by covers, candoodling. All is quiet but for giggles and smacking noises. Suddenly, the doorknob rattles; someone is trying to get in.

PHIL (popping his head out from under the covers):
Did you hear that, my darling?
I thought I heard knocking!

TRIXIE (popping her head out from the other end of the covers):
It's nothing, my baby,
just neighbor kids playing.
Now stop all this nonsense
and get back to--

The doorknob rattles again, this time louder.

MARC (from the other side of the door):
Trixie?!?

TRIXIE (leaping up clumsily, kicking Phil in the process, pulling a robe on over her nightie, trying to smoothe her frizzy hair):
Shit-SHIT-shit, shit-SHIT-shit,
my husband is home!
(Louder, towards the door):
COMING!
(mumbled, to herself, with raised eyebrows):
I wish.

PHIL (petrified with fear, pacing the room in a robe and shaking his hands):
Oh no oh no oh no.
He's home he's home he's home.

TRIXIE (exasperated, whispering, hissing):
Stop it and shut up and get in my pot!

Phil looks up expectantly and lustily.

(now really exasperated, pointing at the pot):
NO! No no no! In the pot!!

Trixie grabs Phil by the arm and hurls him towards the pot, throwing his clothes in the pot on top of him. She pats her hair one last time, grabs a bottle of perfume and spritzes it on herself, spreads the sheets on the bed hurriedly. She takes a deep breath and opens the door.

TRIXIE (icily):
So sorry it took me so much time to answer.
I'm working on weaving and covered in blisters.
So why are you home at this quite early hour?
Forgotten we've run out of money for flour?
(with increasing hostility, up in Marc's face)
Forgotten your wifey a-weaving all day?
Forgotten the thick stack of bills left to pay?
I wish I was Daphne, the slut-queen next door
With lovers and manfriends and callers galore.

MARC (looking wounded):
Oh darling, my darling, it's not what you think
My boss is in court, I've got it in ink (waves around piece of paper)
He gave us the day off, believe or not,
And I found some poor sucker to buy that old pot!
It's a big useless thing and it just takes up space
And for six smackeroos, it can fill up his place!
(Looking pleased, he starts to walk into the bedroom.)
Would you give me a hand with this big heavy thing?

TRIXIE (jumping in front of him and talking sarcastically):
Oh, my big man, he got him a swell deal.
And for six big old smackers! A regular steal.
Well, let me just tell you, you're dumb as a louse
I sold it for seven without leaving the house!

MARC (excitedly):
Sweet sassy molassy, oh could it be true?
That pot sold for seven by a woman like you?
But the pot is still here, Trixie. Where is the guy?

TRIXIE (nervously)
Old boy jumped in the pot just to give it a try!

Phil pops out of the pot right on cue, wearing only his robe and a tie. He adjusts his tie and pushes his glasses up on his nose, affecting a very serious air.

PHIL (regretfully):
I tell ya, Miss Trixie, I'm not gonna lie
I was willing to give your old warhorse a try
But it might be just a bit too ancient for me
There's cracks and there's chips on the side, you can see
And one thousand years worth of oil residue
And the pot is just covered with sticky black goo!
(turning to the husband, speaking to him as though he were a slave)
You there, dear boy, go do something for me
Give me a flashlight so that I can see
The extent of the damage this pot has incurred
It's too dark in here and my vision is blurred.

Marc, taken aback, pauses for a moment and then scurries off, returning with a flashlight.

MARC (hesitating):
On second thought, friend, leave the looking to me
I'll scrape out the goo for a nominal fee.
I'm just kidding, good man, I will clean it up right
and we'll have it to yours by the end of the night.
(Marc moves towards Phil, pulls him out of the pot and shuffles towards the door.)
Now, thank you for coming, and if you would please--

PHIL (assertively, leading Marc towards the pot):
No, tonight is no good, sir, I need it today
My-–uh--mother, who needs it, is in a bad way
I'll just stick around while you give it a wipe
And take these few moments to talk with your wife.

Marc shrugs and climbs into the pot with the flashlight.

Marc (from inside the pot):
This jug is so filthy--this black goo, it reeks!

TRIXIE (leaning over the edge of the pot, facing the audience):
Mind if I take just a few little peeks?
(Phil creeps up behind Trixie on his knees and lifts up her robe. His head disappears under the fabric. She is visibly surprised.)
OOOH! O-oh my god, that's dirty as hell.
(She realizes she's spoken out loud and tries to recover.)
I mean, uh, the pot, um--clean it up well!
(With increasing intensity)
It's been months since it's gotten a good proper cleaning
So keep at it boy! (whispered, to Phil) If you get my meaning.

She gasps loudly. Marc pops out of the pot and turns to look at her. She straightens up quickly and you can hear Phil's muffled yelp as she suffocates him.

MARC:
Are you okay, Trixie? You're getting worked up.
(Starting to climb out):
You want some tea? I'll make you a cup.

PHIL (muffled): I CAN'T BREATHE!

TRIXIE (horrified, trying to recover):
I CAN'T BREATHE! I CAN'T BREATHE! You're stirring up dust!
I need to lay down. (aside): 'Cause I'm shaking with lust!
(Marc looks up; he's heard her aside)
I mean must! I mean rust! My god, is it hot?
I think right down here on the floor is the spot.

Trixie sinks down out of view suspiciously behind the pot. While Marc bangs away inside the pot, Trixie's legs slowly rise back into view from behind the pot and they move around suggestively.

MARC (calling up from inside the pot):
So, Phil, my good man, just what do you do?

PHIL (poking his head up so it is visible above the pot):
I'm a personal trainer at 12th and Magoo.

Phil's head disappears as Marc's rises out of the pot. Marc looks perplexed, looking around.

MARC (cautiously, confused):
Say there, dear sir, why are you on the floor?

PHIL:
I'm, uh, showing her stretches!

TRIXIE:
Never done these before!

Marc sinks back down into the pot with his brows furrowed. Trixie's legs rise back into view. Her legs move in time with the banging in the pot. Suddenly a clamor arises from inside the pot.

MARC (explosively):
Oh, dammit, goddamn it, I've done it again!

Trixie leaps up and looks over the edge of the pot. Phil leaps up behind her and starts going at it vigorously.

TRIXIE (exasperated, even pained):
Oh Jesus, you dumbass, you're scraping too hard!
Ouch! Stop it, you'll hurt it! You're scraping too hard!!
(Phil stops his wild gyrations. Trixie looks relieved.)
That's better, much better, oh thank you, my dear.
But I'm thinking you missed a spot right over here.
Just a little bit left, and a little bit south
Just do it the way you would do with your mouth!

MARC (confused, still down in the pot):
Just do it the way I would with my mouth?
What on earth in the world are you talking about?

Trixie takes a moment, still bent over, grasping at what to say. Phil's eyes roll back in his head and he makes the face of la petite mort. He stops and smiles and wipes his brow and dusts his hands off, rewrapping his robe and stepping away. Marc rises slowly out of the pot as soon as Phil is safely away.

Um, Trixie, you're acting a little bit whack.

Marc sets down his tool.

TRIXIE (explosively, speaking neither to Marc nor Phil):
So you're stopping and thinking I'll cut you some slack?
You're worthless, just quitting whenever you're through,
Didn't think of the pot, what she needs, did you?

Trixie pauses, thinks, and turns on Phil, assuming a cool demeanor.

Well, I reckon she's got just as clean as she'll get
Just seven denarii and we'll be set.

She pauses again as Phil fumbles for his wallet in the robe. She picks it up off the floor.

Here's your wallet right here, sir, I'll get it right now.

She counts out a few denarii, starts to hand it back, pauses, opens the wallet again and takes out all the money, pauses, and then takes out a credit card. An ancient Roman credit card. She hands it back to him with a hearty clap on the shoulder.

That should do it! I tell ya, that's a deal sir, and how!

She smiles and walks over to the pot, pulling out Phil's clothes.

And, honey, ya see, I got you new pants!
They'll look fabulous Saturday night at the dance.

She hands the pants to Marc and kisses him on the cheek, looking over at Phil pointedly.

Well, pack it up boys, and take her away,
I've got lots of weaving to finish today.
It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr.--What was your name?
Well, it's been lovely to meet you, dear sir, all the same.

She stops and checks her watch.

Okay then! See ya later! I hope you can manage!
Watch out now! You don't want to add to the damage!

Marc and Phil dutifully scoot the pot towards the door in silence. Phil is glaring at Trixie. They walk out and shut the door. Trixie checks her watch. After a few beats, there is a knock at the door.

MAN'S VOICE WITH HEAVY ACCENT:
Trixie? You here baby?

Trixie smiles and pats her hair and spritzes on some perfume and walks over to the door.

THE END

If you'd like to read a proper obituary for Douglass Parker, there's a lovely one here.

Tips for Southerners on Surviving New England Winters

2011-02-01T19:30:00.000-05:00

This mixtape is brilliant. Download it free here.

In case you haven't heard, Boston sucks during the winter. How much does it suck? Almost as much suck as Shaq is awesome.

Boston's Shaq-o-metric snow-measurement system

Yep, that's 60+ inches of suck already this winter, with more falling as I type this. Even my devotion to Shaq is not enough to shake my long-established skepticism of New England winters.

So how is this sun-ripened Georgia peach dealing with her first winter in the frosty hinterlands of Massachusetts? Well, I have a few tips for all y'all on how to survive this nonsense.

#1: BUY A GIANT COAT

That pert little wool peacoat you've always worn straight through the winter? That's Aprilwear up here, pahdnah. Head to Land's End or Eddie Bauer or one of those other outdoorsy stores that choked your mailbox with catalogs straight through the 90s and find you a big, warm down coat.

I went with this one from Land's End, and it is so warm that I could wear it with nothing else under it and be comfy all winter long:

I also urge you to consider buying 2 or 3 subzero sleeping bags and having a tailor fashion them into a sort of hyper-warm adult snow onesie.

#2: CHEER YOURSELF UP WITH SOME GOOFY ACCESSORIES

Nothing says EFF YOU, SNOW like a pair of colorful wellies. I bought these ugly red and yellow ones from Marc Jacobs for a mere $28. I can tell the snow is already offended.

And hey, you've gone this far! Why not go further?

Thanks Racked

Take a cue from fellow FHS alum Ke$ha and put some kittie ears on your hat.

#3: GET A S.A.D. LAMP

It's totally just as good as the sun.

#4: GO ON VACATION

Don't try to fight it. Just buy a plane ticket to somewhere, anywhere warmer and more hospitable. I hear Chernobyl is lovely this time of year.

...Assuming your plane can take off.

#5: GET A GYM MEMBERSHIP

There are only two places in the whole city that feel like the South during a Boston winter. One is your shower and the other is your local gym.

Listen, listen. I know you're a Southerner and your idea of a vigorous workout is fishing the last RC Cola out of the cooler. Just trust me. Even if you never burn a single calorie, it is worth the monthly membership fee just to go bask in the 80 degree heat and 95% humidity. It's sweaty and smelly and if you bring your own bucket of chicken it basically feels like home.

#6: BE WILLING TO TRY SOME WINTER SPORTS

I mean, just check out this video of me and Nick and our friend James tearing it up skiing and snowboarding at Nashoba Valley:

#7: TAKE YOUR VITAMINS

Since you haven't felt sunlight on your skin since September, it's time to start taking some Vitamins. Vitamin D will help you feel less like a zombie. Now I finally have some use for the 200 bottles of Vitamin D I bought at Publix last year!

#8: GET AN APARTMENT WITH HEAT INCLUDED

This is the most valuable advice I got before I moved to Boston. We have free radiator heat in our apartment and THANK GOODNESS. Our apartment is so warm that we--no joke--sleep with the window partially open so we don't suffocate.

#9: STAY WARM WITH HAPPY MEMORIES OF THE SOUTH

When all else fails, close your eyes and go back to your happy place: The South. For me, that will entail FINALLY finishing my blog series on our amazing Southern summertime road trip. Catch up with the entries here:

one: we're on the road to nowhere
two: "Spectacles in the Surf: Seeing and Not Seeing on the DePalma Family Vacation"
three: miles covered
four: you got a fast car: drivin through the mountains

DISCUSSION QUESTION: How do you beat the winter blues?

goodbye, Boudreaux dog

2011-01-27T18:06:00.003-05:00

I have been avoiding this. I don't want to put this into words. It makes it more real.

Our Boudreaux dog was hit by a car on December 30th out at Nick's family farm in Tennessee. He was still alive when the DePalmas scooped him up and took him to the vet, but he didn't survive the ride over. He died peacefully in his NeNe's arms, wrapped in his favorite blankie. We built him a wooden casket and buried him on the DePalma's farm, his favorite place on earth. We sowed the freshly turned dirt with a thousand tears. Two days later, we returned to Boston with the heaviest of hearts, a family of four now a family of three.

We miss him every day. The hardest moment is sliding our keys in the lock. The deafening silence in place of a jingling collar.

Boozie's death only took a moment. What really matters is his life.

taken December 25 2010

Boudreaux Jenkins DePalma began his life with us on January 3 2009. Nick and I had been looking for a dog for ages with no luck. Boo was the first dog in the first cage at the Atlanta Humane Society, trembling uncontrollably with a cocked ear. We took him outside to get to know him and he ran in blinding circles, barely interacting with us. I was kind of skeptical but Nick just knew. This was our dog. He had been in the shelter before--brought in as a stray and adopted by a family the fall before. He had been returned on Christmas Eve. The family said he was too much of a handful. A handful he was. Barely an hour later, we were driving home with him.

Everyone thinks their dog is the best dog in the world. Ours actually was. He ran as fast as the wind, but he snuggled like a baby, limp as a ragdoll in your arms. He wanted to talk to us so much that he'd sing out in frustrated syllables, mimicking our conversations. He caught birds out of the air while leashed on a walk, not once, but twice. He was the king of the dog park, always setting in motion a massive all-dogs-included chase. Some of his toes were black, and the others were pink. He looked handsome in his red collar--always a red collar. He liked running, chasing squirrels, walkies, frisbees, potato chips, chewies, and most of all, his mom and dad.

When Julia was taking Goosey into the shop for an estimate after her run-in with a lawncare truck, she brought Boozie with her. The folks in the auto shop circled around Boozie, patting him and admiring his handsome face. One old man remarked Well, isn't he just better than a person? He was. Our baby. Our little mung bean.

Boudreaux leaves behind his devastated mother and father, his indifferent catbrother Moppy, both sets of adoring grandparents, and a loving extended family. Our little nephew Fuzzy in particular had a very special connection with our little black and white pup. Boozie also leaves his best friends Gilbert, Phineas, Felix, and Felix.

We miss you so much, little one. We can't believe you're gone.

Boudreaux Jenkins DePalma
Loving Pupdog
Born July 4 2007
Died January 30 2010
Forever Our Little One

Discussion Quesion: Talk with me about all the pets you've loved and lost.

a total loss

2010-12-13T20:54:00.001-05:00

This will be important later.

The Spruce Goose came into our lives during the long winter of 1998. My mother made the questionable decision to spend her birthday weekend chaperoning our yearly Forensics team trip to Gatlinburg, TN, and when we returned home, Mama’s beloved green 1995 Mazda 626 “Cindy” (so named for our favorite supermodel) had been replaced with a big silver-blue-grey luxury sedan. Our new 1998 Toyota Avalon was big, wide, smooth, and fast—so abrupt in accelerating that we came to call the car “Goosey.” Over the years, I formalized her name to “The Spruce Goose,” after Howard Hughes’ massive flying boat. My massive flying boat.

just look at that badonkadonk

Mama drove Goosey for seven easy years. She cruised to the grocery store or Cool Springs a few times a week, but never much more than that. By 2005, Goosey still looked brand new. That summer, I bought Goosey from my parents for a few grand and brought her out to Texas to start my new life in Austin.

Goosey no longer lived the life of luxury to which she was accustomed. I drove Goosey hard over the pockmarked Austin roads. I scraped against brick walls and scuffed the bumper on other cars. Goosey was the victim of her first hit-and-run in a coffee shop parking lot. She had her front windshield smashed by an errant rock thrown up by a lawn mower at my apartment complex. She took flight as I tried to turn off a Texas highway into a parking lot on my way to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, flattening a stop sign en route and coming to rest perfectly within the lines of an empty parking spot. As her front driver’s side hubcap rolled away in silence, half the town flooded out of stores and homes to see if I was okay. I was. And so was Goosey. I took her straight on to New Orleans and back again.

Goosey’s been totaled at least twice before. In 2006, I got distracted while careening down a one-lane road near the house I grew up in and drove off the road and straight into a historical landmark. I shouldn’t go into too much detail, since it’s probably very much against the law to destroy historical landmarks, even accidentally, but suffice it to say that I did my part in breaking down 10 to 12 feet of the Walls of Oppression. The entire passenger side of my car was unspeakably mangled. The insurance elected to fix my beloved car, for reasons I still don’t understand.

In 2007, Nick and I were driving a packed-full Goosey to our storage unit in Austin when a teenage girl crossed three lanes of traffic to turn right and slammed into us, dragging us with her through the turn. We were deep into our first listen of the new T. I. album, and we did not miss a single beat of our enthusiastic car-dancing as we were dragged 20 or so yards down the street. I hollered at the girl when we got out of the car. Nick went across the street and bought her a Gatorade. My insurance fixed my car again and we rejoiced. However, I can never hear "You Know What It Is" without remembering the fateful first time we heard it.

Goosey’s had all kinds of adventures my insurance company doesn’t even know about. Goosey was our tour guide for our massive Southern road trip this summer, carrying us 4000+ miles in a little over a month.

She rode on two boats in North Carolina. She climbed the Smokey Mountains, got sand between her treads at the Outer Banks, and endured the soggy days and nights in Jefferson National Forest.

At Transformus, she was parked in a meadow on a hill for the long weekend. It rained and rained and rained and the cars on the hill slid down the muddy slope like toys. It took half a dozen attempts to get her unstuck—two of the tow trucks brave enough to try ended up getting towed themselves. Finally a man who can only be described as an angry mountain ginger in a kilt got behind the wheel and sledded Goosey General Lee–style down the muddy hillside. Nick and I screamed out in victory until our throats were raw. Goosey emerged unscathed and fondued in mud.

I’ve always attributed my car’s unlikely ability to emerge victorious over collisions to my baby doll head. Nick bought a number of dismembered vintage baby dolls at an estate sale in Austin just before we moved to Atlanta, for reasons that are still somewhat unclear to me. On the drive home, I impulsively stuck one of the baby doll heads between the dashboard and the windshield.

apotropaic baby head

I immediately felt safer, like the baby doll head was helping me watch the road. She’s been there ever since, guiding the way on our road trips like a mermaid figurehead on a ship. Sometimes I think Nick and I are the only ones who like it. I’ve been pulled over by cops for no other reason than they wanted to tell me my doll was creepy. But my doll head keeps me safe, so I don’t care.

from our summer roadtrip

At least…until a few weeks ago. My dear friend Julia borrowed my car to do me a favor and ran over a tool that fell off a lawn care truck. The damage is entirely cosmetic—the car still runs fine—but my insurance just informed me this morning that the car has been deemed a total loss. After all the daring escapes and brushes with death, a small superficial wound has spelled the end of my Goosey Girl. I guess 1998 Toyota Avalons don’t go for much these days. I haven’t spoken to the adjustor yet, so I am still holding onto the hope that somehow Goosey will get fixed in the next ten days and will be able to carry us home for Christmas. But realistically, I might have to say goodbye to my girl soon. So let’s all raise a glass to my Goosey girl and the good times we’ve had.

Discussion Question:
Have you ever loved a car?

An Open Letter to Shaq

2010-11-04T20:30:00.000-04:00

Dear Shaq,

I have followed your career since I was a little girl. I was watching the draft with my dad that day in 1992 when you got first overall pick and became one of the Orlando Magic. I adored you--a giant handsome man with a big smile and a rhyming name.

Wikipedia tells me that you spent much of the summer of 92 learning some moves from Magic Johnson.

Magic was my love. I thought he was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen.

I liked to pretend that Magic Johnson was my boyfriend, but I liked to pretend that you were my friend. I thought it would be fun to hang out with you. I thought we could play some hoops and you'd lift me up to the rim so I could dunk like you.

Fast forward nearly twenty years. You're still delighting me. You're making me laugh on Twitter. You're performing straight-up brilliant freestyle raps dissing Kobe Bryant. And recently, you did the best thing yet.

That's it, Shaq. We need to be best friends.

We finally live in the same city. I just moved to Boston too. Do you like the cold weather? I do not like the cold weather.

We have a lot in common. I've lived in Louisiana and Texas too. I also like to get drunk and freestyle rap, but I'm not nearly as good as you. And when I was a kid I was one of the tallest kids in my class, so I totally know how it feels to be you.

I like to make silly videos too. I have an idea for your next one. It should feature me, you, and Snoop Dogg. I feel like he's really the perfect person to round out our friend group. You can dress up as the female vocalist of your choice, Snoop Dogg can dress as a Sesame Street Character,

and I'll dress as a cat.

I'm always a cat.

We can do a passionate lip synch to some old school Janet Jackson in the backseat of whatever enormous car you happen to be riding in that day. I'll even let you pick the song.

Or if you've had enough of dressing up, you can come to my house and I'll fix some New Orleans-style barbeque shrimp for you and me and my husband, Nick. He's pretty cool too--you'll like him. I have to warn you though, our apartment is pretty small.

So anyway, hit me up on Twitter if you want to hang out some time--I'm @quidquidkatie. I'm pretty busy with my new job, and as I understand it, you are too, but I'm sure we can find some time.

Go Celtics!
-Katie

---

Discussion Question:
Who are your imaginary celebrity bffs?

didn't roll off the cabbage truck yesterday

2010-10-24T19:01:00.000-04:00

Photo from Awkward Family Photos

Like every good 1980s girl, I had a Cabbage Patch Kid or two. I loved them--yarn hair, creepily vacant eyes, tattooed asses and all. But I never stopped to wonder where they came from.

There is actually an unnecessarily complex mythology surrounding the origins of the franchise. I won't attempt to summarize but suffice it to say that it involves a ten-year-old boy starting an orphanage to save the Cabbage Patch Kids from slave labor in a gold mine. However, what I'm talking about here is an even more improbable creation story. And this creation story is true.

In northern Georgia, there is a small town called Cleveland. In this town, there is a magical place.

Babyland General Hospital,
birthplace of Cabbage Patch Kids

Sort of like Tara...okay not really.

Yes, Babyland General Hospital is the birthing, nursery, and adoption center for Cabbage Patch Kids. You can go for free and see a Cabbage Patch Kid being born.

WHAT

How I went virtually my entire life without knowing this fact is beyond me.

But wait, you are no doubt saying to yourself. How exactly is a Cabbage Patch Kid born?

I'm glad you asked. I'm going to turn it over to the poorly written Wikipedia article for a moment.

Dolls are "birthed" every hour during business hours in a procedure during which one of the "LPN's" (Licensed Patch Nurse) assists the Magic Crystal Tree in producing each doll. When the intercom announces that a Mother Cabbage is in labor, a nurse hurries to get ready for delivery of a new Cabbage Patch baby. With the nurse are the pink and blue bunnybees that pollinate the kids with crystals, determining if the newborn is a boy [blue crystal] or girl [pink crystal]. The nurse comments on how much the Tree is dilated and injects with "Imagicillin," an "experimental but highly recommended" drug. If the need arises, a "C-section" or "Cabbage section" may be administered....A full-featured Intensive Care Unit is in place to handle premature births and otherwise unhealthy newborns.

The Magic Crystal Tree and Mother Cabbage, from whom all Cabbage Patch Kids flow

So some rabbit-bee creatures fertilize some cabbages and then a magic crystal tree gives birth to some human children with the help of a nurse? And the cabbages get shot up with an experimental drug? I can't believe I'm saying this but this is better than Teen Mom.

Let's see the blessed event unfold for ourselves:

I...can't even

As far as I'm concerned, the greatest horror in all of this is the names. Cabbage Patch Kids have the least euphonious names ever. If you go to www.cabbagepatchkids.com you can see an ever-refreshing slideshow of birth announcements.

Wait...she was born with pigtails?

ACTUAL CABBAGE PATCH KID NAMES:
Austin Jerri
Doreen Jillaine
Zena Jordyn
Tammy Betsy
Jaylee Derek
Grady Damien
Buck Clay
Gwynyth Kimber
Glendonn Ragan (A FEMALE NAME)
Garrison Dusty
Jaidyn Celia

And finally, bleak vision of the future:

What if this is what happens to bad people when they die?

This post is missing a huge shoutout to Mary Nell, who is responsible for alerting me to the existence of Babyland General Hospital. Once my disbelief gave way, we discovered via a quick Google search that someone out there had gone and done the most brilliant thing ever:

Kudos.

Discussion Question:
Can you cobble together even one respectable name out of the names listed above?

Tips for Living in a Tiny Apartment

2010-10-05T18:31:00.007-04:00

This song came on the radio last night and I nearly knocked over my chair in my eagerness to turn the volume up. Hey, want to know how I got that awesome embedded Big Pun YouTube to start at a specific point in the video? Super-easy HTML tutorial here.

Nick and I have lived in our fair share of tiny apartments. There was our little shoebox on San Gabriel in Austin--our first apartment together. It was really only big enough for one person, so Nick put most of his stuff in storage and moved in with little more than a suitcase. And then there was our itty bitty place in Midtown Atlanta a couple of years ago. The oven and fridge were sort of whimsically shrunken, and there was no door on the bedroom. Oh, the joys of renting.

We're now getting comfortably settled into what is probably the smallest of the three tiny shoeboxes we have inhabited. I figure our 2+ years experience with surviving in close quarters with two grown adults, a hyper dog, and a demanding cat has got to count for something. So I thought I'd try to impart a little wisdom about surviving in less than 500 square feet.

#1A: GET RID OF ALL YOUR BIG FURNITURE*
*You can keep your bed.

So long, ugly green chair.

The Goodwill did not accept ugly green chair. I was really quite offended.

So long, giant red vinyl couch. So long, coffee table, bedside table, dresser, desks, end tables, and book cases! Up to my parents' garage you go, heirloom dining table!

#1B:...AND REPLACE IT WITH MINIATURE VERSIONS FROM IKEA

IKEA Ingo dining table ($69.99) and 4 IKEA Ivar chairs ($19.99 each)

IKEA Laiva TV Stand, $20

IKEA Laiva Desk, $20

#2: NO SPACE IS TOO SMALL TO BE USEFUL

Like...above the kitchen cabinets!

Or...below the ottoman!

Or...that tiny section of wall! Looks big enough for a broom to me.

#3 REPURPOSE YOUR BELONGINGS

A drinking glass becomes a dainty container for your makeup brushes.

Your knickknack rack becomes an out-of-the way place to stash your makeup.

And who needs a coffee table with a centerpiece when you have a beat-up army trunk and a salad bowl from your wedding registry?

#4: HOOKS, HOOKS, HOOKS!

If it was good enough for the Shakers, it's good enough for you.

#5: KEEP THINGS FLEXIBLE

It's all about being modular, man. Think you don't have room for a guest room, a dining room, and a living room? Sure you do.

In this photo, it's configured like a living room. Push the trunk aside, fold out the futon, and you've got a guest room! Or push the trunk aside, pull the dining table and chairs out into the center of the room, and you've got a freakin banquet hall! It's like HOGGWARTS, dude.

...okay, almost like Hoggwarts.

The last rule is the most important.

#6: BE SURE YOU REALLY, REALLY LIKE YOUR ROOMMATE.

Discussion question: Have you ever lived in a tiny place? Do you have any tips to share?

check out more pics of our tiny apartment on my Flickr

An Editor's First E-book*

2010-10-04T19:01:00.008-04:00

* I think e-book is the nerdiest spelling since e-mail but I do whatever Merriam Webster tells me. ...generally.

Olsen Twins, chopped and screwed.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I read my first e-book this weekend.

My interest in e-books is well-documented. I love to talk peoples' ears off about the endless possibilities of digital publishing, but I was starting to feel like I was all talk. What if reading an e-book was just totally lame? How could I make such sweeping statements about the future of the publishing industry without actually experiencing an e-book firsthand?

My homegirl Serenity Gerbman recommended a book called Room (hardback here and Kindle version here) on her Facebook wall a few weeks ago. She called it her fiction pick of the year so far, which is very high praise from a well-read lady like Serenity.

I stopped by a bookstore to check it out. It's pretty new, so it's not out in paperback yet. Having approximately .5 inches of available space left in one's tiny shoebox apartment does not make a person want to stock up on hardcover novels. And anyway, it cost $25, which is just more than I can spend on a book right now. I put the book back on its stand and walked away with a sigh.

Nick got a sweet iPad for his studies at MIT, and we're both in love with it. On Saturday morning, curled up in bed in my pjs, I had a brilliant idea. I grabbed Nick's iPad, opened the Kindle app, and moments later, I was reading Room.

The premise is simple and intriguing: Jack and his mother have been locked in a room for all of Jack's life. Just like any good episode of Law and Order: SVU, the story is RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES, very clearly inspired by the abduction and rescue of Jaycee Lee Dugard. I have a little obsession with stories about feral children and children in captivity. Have you read this incredible article about Dani, a little girl in Florida who was neglected and confined to a room for most of her life?

I could not put this book down. I read it in two days in just a few sittings. It's narrated from Jack's perspective, and his gaze is unflinching. I cannot recommend it enough.

I hardly noticed that I wasn't reading a regular book. Nick has an iPad case with a cover that flips open just like a book, so it felt like a book in my hands. So much so that I kept reaching with my thumb and forefinger to turn the page. No eyestrain. Delightful.

The iPad Kindle app allows you to touch any word in the text and get a dictionary definition. Can you imagine what a learning tool that must be for younger readers? This feature helps me understand how interactive e-books could be. Classicists, imagine a dynamic Perseus-style text for reading. Social networkers, imagine discussing an interesting book with people from all over the world from inside the text itself. Kids, imagine reading texts above your reading level with effortless aplomb.

This is all well and good, but there's one test every reading platform must pass: can I read it in the bathtub?

The answer is a resounding YES. Nick, I'm sorry I took your fancy new toy in the bathtub.

...actually, I'm not.

Discussion Question [two-parter]:
A: Have you embraced e-books? Do you think the experience is comparable to reading a traditional book?
B: What is the funniest part of the "Gimme Pizza" video above? Please cite specific moments.

Days of our Loyns

2010-09-20T20:50:00.003-04:00

“To be ranked in the top 10 among southern universities for 20 years in a row is quite an accomplishment and reflective of the hard work and commitment of our students, faculty and staff."
-Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., Ph.D., President of Loyola University New Orleans

When it came time to pick a university, I had the best. idea. ever. Why not go to college in New Orleans?

My fellow Honors students, largely out-of-staters like myself, spent much of our first weeks of school marveling at our brilliant idea. How did no one else think of this??? we'd exclaim, our mouths full of crusty Po Boys and bellies full of beer.

we are GENIUSES (thanks losanjealous)

I loved Loyola. I loved the people, the classes, the music, the food, the culture, and most of all, the city that provided the setting for my golden undergrad years. I left my heart in New Orleans that muggy May day in 2005 when I moved away for good.

One of my college buddies told me today I should check out an article in The Maroon, Loyola's school paper. While reading the story of ADG's mysterious removal from campus and Sig Ep's suspension for the fall semester, I typed my own name into the Archives search box to see what came up.

Oh, the treasures. OHHHHH the treasures! Four uniquely hilarious remnants of my undergrad days.

4/7/05: ROBERTS A FINALIST FOR TRUMAN; JONES WINS MELLON FELLOWSHIP

This article is a dual-pronged shoutout to me and my girl Abby Roberts. We were ballin pretty hard in 2005. Abby was a finalist for the Truman Fellowship, and I had just scored the big Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanities. I was, as we liked to say, a mellow felon.

oh yes. that was a good look.

What on earth could be funny about a straight-ahead news story about scholarships?

"If I was a movie star, Davina would be my manager. She guided me through literally dozens of applications for fellowships."

What a f#$%in soundbite, huh?? Davina was the greatest mentor of all time, and if I found myself in need of someone to manage a nascent acting career I would be calling Davina first, but WHAT MADE ME SAY THIS TO A REPORTER? Out of the mouths of babes...

11/6/03: STUDENT BLOGGERS EXPOSE PERSONAL LIVES ON NET

Why, yes! That IS my hideous hairdo in the photo that accompanies this article! Thank you for noticing!

Isn't it super meta of me to be using my blog to link to an article where I comment about the New and Mysterious Phenomenon of Weblogging? Katie-generated gems of wisdom include:

"[Blogs are] kind of contagious. You read one of your friend's blogs that have cute pictures and mood icons, and you can't help but want one."

and

"It's a lot easier to be passive-aggressive and say inappropriate things on the Internet than to actually face reality. That goes along with the territory of blogging."

11/5/04: REACH OUT AND POKE SOMEBODY

Having already demonstrated my considerable expertise with social media, it is no surprise that the Maroon clamored to get my sage opinion when a new phenomenon called The Facebook swept campus by storm in 2004.

Katie Jones, classical studies senior, said she checks Thefacebook.com once a day to see if she has any new friends.

On the plus side, I did make a pretty spot-on prediction:

"Once Loyola picks up on (Thefacebook.com) more, it will be huge," Jones said."

9/4/03: GET YOUR MONEY'S WORTH: GO TO CLASS by Katie Jones

My darling college roommate Joe worked for the Maroon, which somehow yielded my being asked to write an editorial.

The 2nd anniversary of 9/11 was a week away. Bush had just called the war in Iraq a "catastrophic success." I was living in the most vibrant, wonderful city basically on earth ever.

So what did I write my editorial about? Going to class.

You really just need to read the editorial. Look, here's the link again. I have wanted to reread this article for a long time, and I have to say it aged pretty well. I really enjoyed reading it lo these many years later. My dear friends will know that all of the hypothetical situations mentioned are taken basically verbatim from our freshman year.

Reading this editorial really took me back to those warm, spicy days. My wonderful friends and all the things I learned. The crawfish boils and the shotgun houses. The streetcar rides and sunrise nights. The shenanigans and the debauchery. I miss those days.

And that side ponytail I'm rockin in the photo? A catastrophic success.

Discussion Question:
What are your favorite remnants from your college days?

The Chicago and Kansas concert in Boston has been changed to the Kansas and Boston concert in Chicago

2010-09-19T22:25:00.000-04:00

I've been here in Boston (well, Cambridge) for two weeks now. I have learned a lot in that time.

-Locals who find Southern accents charming outnumber those who find them off-putting. When I referred to the cashier and bagger at the grocery store as y'all, the bagger cried out Y'all should come back here, okay? and beamed like she'd greeted a native speaker in Spanish.

-You can take the train to Wonderland.

From herrafeliks' Picasa gallery

-Actually, you can take the train almost anywhere. In fact, we've only taken the car out 3 times since we moved here.

-People don't really smile or say hi on the street, but most will smile back if you initiate.

-Everything is more expensive.

-Making new friends is the best part of moving.

stayin sassy

-Autumn is a season that actually happens in some parts of the world. I am wearing long sleeved shirts that I have never worn before.

Look at all those clothes! BONUS: my replacement glasses came!

-Living in the city is complicated. You have to move your car once a month so they can clean the streets. The apartments are tiny. Sometimes the trains close down at weird times or break. In exchange, I get to live within walking distance of virtually anything my heart desires. So far, the tradeoff is working.

-People here are very educated and well-spoken. I have a feeling my competition for jobs is VERY stiff.

-Did I mention that our apartment is tiny?

-Silly art projects do wonders for the job-search grumpies.

-So does chocolate cake. And wine.

big ups to Nico for hosting that wonderful dinner

So what does Cambridge have in store for the DePalmas? Only time will tell. Hopefully gainful employment and eventually a functioning oven. In the mean time, I'm gonna be getting to know this big, weird, cold city.

Discussion Question:
What is the hardest move you've ever made?

When through the woods and forest glades I wander

2010-09-16T18:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, while I was waiting for the T to take me back to Cambridge after my excursion to Arnold Arboretum with Molly, a busker horrified me by playing "O Holy Night." There may be a nip in the air up here, but that's ridiculous.

And then he played "How Great Thou Art."

Elvis' rendition feels appropriate, somehow.

The last time I heard that song was at Grandmother Shirley's funeral two weeks ago today. The hometown vocalist warbled it sweetly over my grandmother's closed casket.

Hearing it felt like tripping and falling.

I guess you could say that I haven't really dealt with my grandmother's death yet. She passed on peacefully with my father by her side on August 29th. I was somewhere in Virginia or Pennsylvania or somewhere when I got the news. I felt so far away from everything.

The entire three-day trip up to Massachusetts was a blur, spent mostly in silence in a blank, determined state. The animals seemed to understand the intensity of the situation and behaved amazingly--Boudreaux in Nick's lap in the UHaul and Moppy catatonic in his carrier in the Spruce Goose.

We weren't scheduled to move in until the 1st, but the stars lined up and we ended up completing the final six-hour leg of our trip AND getting the keys and moving our stuff in on the afternoon 31st. We managed to clear enough space to lay the mattress on the bedroom floor and collapse when we were done, both of us trembling with exhaustion and Nick nursing a busted big toenail.

The next morning, I went to Logan Airport and flew to St. Louis, and then made the three-hour drive to Bevier in record time in my zippy rental car. When my mom asked me later how the brakes were on the car, I told her that I was pretty sure I didn't get a chance to use them at all on the trip up. I flew towards my family as fast as I could travel.

I pulled up to my grandmother's house just like I had done a hundred times. But when I walked in, she wasn't in her chair in her nightgown. Then I remembered. She's gone. I didn't cry until I saw a copy of the program for her funeral propped up in the kitchen, her birth and death dates in script below a photo we took of her at Thanksgiving a few years back. It just did not compute--standing in her kitchen, breathing in her smell, looking at this unmistakable evidence that she really was gone. That night, my mother and I slept in her bed.

I picked out my outfit for the funeral before I left for Boston at my mother's suggestion. While picking through the racks at TJ Maxx, I could just see the disgust registering on my grandmother's face as she surveyed our options. Zipper detail? Tacky. Ruffles? Uggy. I settled on a conservative black knit cardigan, a black pencil skirt, and grandmother's pearls. I could not disrespect my grandmother's memory by showing up to her funeral in an outfit with a lace cutout or other such nonsense.

And the next morning, we performed the most sacred of human rituals: burying our dead. My extended family sat across the front row, each of us holding on to the person next to them. I hardly let go of my father the whole morning. Grandmother didn't want an open casket, because she didn't like people staring at her, but they let me see her before the funeral started. Her lipstick was perfect. Her hands felt cool, like wax.

We buried her beside her husband and my sister. According to an old family tradition, a spray of 50 fat red roses adorned her casket. A few of us grabbed single blooms before they lowered her into the ground.

An autumn drizzle began to fall. I pulled my cardigan tighter around my shoulders. The pastor read the poem Grandmother Shirley had transcribed in her own shaking handwriting to be read at her burial.

When he got to I am the gentle autumn rain, we looked into the falling droplets and I think we all looked for her there. I think I'll always look for her there.

We miss you.

Discussion Question:
What do you think happens to us after we die? Be honest.

instructions for moving far, far away

2010-09-05T21:34:00.000-04:00

First, you need a reason to leave.
A new job, a new lover, a new school, or just wanderlust licking
     the soles of your feet.
You will know when it is time to go.

Sometimes it helps to bring someone along with you, or to meet someone there.
     You can meet your lover there, or bring your dog along.
Sometimes it's nice to go alone.

Find a place to live.
Look for a home that feels like vacation, somehow.

You'll need to take all your things off of your shelves and out of your cabinets.
You can get boxes at liquor stores.
You can steal a thick stack of newspapers
     like the free ones that advertise cars
     or the other free ones that advertise local bands
     out of the graffitied plastic racks outside the grocery store.
They are good for wrapping the things that might break.
Only bring what you really need.
You will have to buy the packing tape.

If you are rich, pay someone to pick up all your boxes
     and carry them out of your place
     and load them into a truck
     and drive them to your new city
     and take them
          box by breaking box
     into your new home.

If you are not, you'll need to do these things yourself.
Of course, you can't do it by yourself. Your things are too heavy,
     too many.
Take the friends who rescue you out for pancakes.
Pancakes cost less than movers anyway.

Pay attention to the drive, or the flight, that takes you to your new city.
Remember where the trees start looking different.
You might leave something there.

Get good directions and
     eat breakfast every morning. You are tired.
You are not normal right now.
But take heart--
Soon you'll get there and suddenly you're there.

forever young

2010-08-27T15:25:00.000-04:00

do you really want to live forever?

My grandmother--Grandmother Shirley, the coal miner's wife, the stubborn Midwestern spitfire, the fixer of mashed potatoes and conquerer of crossword puzzles, a woman who loves Wild Turkey and Lifetime movies and her family, the woman who raised her only child to be my incredible father--is coming to the end of her life.

That tough old bird was diagnosed with lung cancer and given six months to live. That was five years ago. The cancer hasn't put too much of a crimp on her style, but she does hate the oxygen she's had to wear for the last few months. She just stopped mowing her own acre+ yard recently.

After her first round of chemo in years yesterday, she passed out in the passenger seat on the way home. Her blood CO2 levels are far beyond what would be fatal for most people. They revived her quickly and now she's awake and alert, joking with us over the phone. But her CO2 levels aren't budging. She says she's ready to go and the time is near. The doctors don't disagree. She says she isn't afraid to die, just afraid to suffer.

Daddy's on his way up right now. Mama and I are taking things minute-to-minute, trying to decide what on earth to do, given that I am supposed to leave for Boston in less than 48 hours. When it rains, it 500-year floods.

at my cousin Matthew's wedding in 2008. from left, my cousin Jeannie, Grandmother Shirley, my mother. my father is above.

I'm not a pray-er but I am a believer in positive vibes. Send your warm thoughts up to Northern Missouri right now to my Daddy and my Grandmother Shirley and our whole family as we celebrate the hell out of a life lived well.

Discussion Question:
If death is a part of life, why is it so hard to let the people we love go?

you got a fast car: drivin through the mountains

2010-08-27T13:18:00.000-04:00

Nick and I made it out of town around noon Monday, headed due west on I-40. I love how quickly the familiar Tennessee Valley gives way to hills and then mountains. For whatever reason I spent half the ride in a truly venomous mood, irritated with Nick and with the dog's incessantly digging toenails. Luckily, a first screening of Eminem's fantastic new album did much to rescue me from my aimless ire, as did a stop in Knoxville to inhale Zaxby's in the parking lot and talk endless shit about how totally unappealing Knoxville is.

Towards Asheville, the mountains began to rise impossibly out of the ground straight up for the sky, like the trees were rooted in each other's branches.

me and Boudreaux

Nick and Boudreaux

What if Boudreaux was the same size as us?

We reached our roadside motel around dinner time and lazily spent the evening eating Italian takeout and indulging in cable TV. I have to admit that the motel is delightful. Our room faced the backyard, which featured grills and picnic tables and a horseshoe pit and a pool and two massive poles that stretched up and up to hold a huge Exxon sign that bathed the yard in a soft blue light at night. Boudreaux in particular loved the motel's resident bunnies, which scampered across the grounds silently throughout the night.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that does not look like an Exxon.

I hope you brought your own horseshoes.

Boudreaux says: Can't talk now, mom; there are bunnies.

Since we were due at Edisto Beach early afternoon, we got up early Tuesday to hit the road. Before Nick got up, I walked down to the breakfast buffet. Feeling virtuous, I passed over the pastries in favor of a big bowl of oatmeal and a few apples stashed in my purse for the road. Then I poured myself a bowl of Froot Loops and inhaled it standing up, since everyone knows it doesn't count if you're standing up.

Nick should have had more Froot Loops.

We drove southeast on 26 out of North Carolina and straight through South Carolina. The mountains rolled and rolled into hills and finally level coastal ground. We stopped for half a peck of peaches at a farm stand. The peaches are gorgeous, like jewels. While standing in the shade outside with Boudreaux, I am 90% sure I was solicited for sex. What kind of prostitute wears wicking clothes and brings her dog along? Apparently they do things a little differently in South Carolina.

We also stopped at a Piggly Wiggly for some groceries. All the signs inside were hand drawn with considerable panache. When I complimented the manager and told him it had been ages since I'd been in a store with handmade signs, he smiled and asked, "What do you mean?"

I found a pink Silly Band in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot that is shaped like god knows. Of course, I added it to my collection. Facebook blew up with suggestions, and though many were hilarious, none really convinced me.

A parrot? George Jetson's hair?

After that, it was a long flat empty drive to Edisto Beach State Park.

NEXT TIME: Setting up camp

Discussion Question:
wtf is that Silly Band??

* * * * *

This is part four in my series about my August of Camping and Tramping.

one: we're on the road to nowhere
two: "Spectacles in the Surf: Seeing and Not Seeing on the DePalma Family Vacation"
three: miles covered
four: you got a fast car: drivin through the mountains

miles covered

2010-08-25T23:30:00.001-04:00

I'm sorry but this song is still incredible.

I can't believe our August of Camping and Tramping is already over! We got back to Nashville yesterday, and Nick and I are both recovering and being spoiled at our parents' houses for a few days before we LEAVE FOR BOSTON SUNDAY!

How about some trip stats?

Miles traveled: 4,004
Days traveling: 26
Hours driving: 72+
Route: Atlanta, GA to Franklin, TN to Edisto Beach, SC to Franklin, TN to Jefferson National Forest, VA to Shaker Village, KY to Charleston, WV to Shenandoah National Forest, VA to Hatteras, NC to Emerald Isle, NC to Wilmington, NC to Conway, SC to Atlanta, GA to Franklin TN

This balls-out crazy trip surpasses our former record-breaking trips: Atlanta to NYC to Atlanta (1760 miles/30 hours) and Austin to Nashville to Chicago [to Berlin via plane] to Nashville to Austin (2682 miles/44 hours, not counting the plane trip to Berlin). We love to drive but even we have to admit that this was a little nuts. But my LORD was it fun!

As you can imagine, I have a lot of posting to do about our adventures! I'll be getting stuff up one post at a time over the next few weeks. Now that I've learned to use Blogger's handy-dandy blog-scheduling tool, with any luck I'll have blogs posting even after we leave for Boston Sunday. Have I mentioned that I'm moving to Boston on Sunday? I digress. If you want a little ~sneak peek~ of our adventures, check out my flickr for lots of pictures.

Stay tuned for all kinds of assorted fun.

Discussion Question:
What is the longest road trip you've ever taken?

* * * * *

This is part three in my series about my August of Camping and Tramping.

one: we're on the road to nowhere
two: "Spectacles in the Surf: Seeing and Not Seeing on the DePalma Family Vacation"
three: miles covered
four: you got a fast car: drivin through the mountains

"Spectacles in the Surf: Seeing and Not Seeing on the DePalma Family Vacation"

2010-08-13T21:38:00.000-04:00

"The Atlantic is not my Gulf, that much is true. She's choppier and grittier and colder, less inviting--just, I suppose, as she should be. But she's my ocean now."

I was splashing around knee-deep in the water at Edisto Beach when I composed these lines rather dreamily, dragging my fingers through the surf and squinting in the low sun. I got to But she's my ocean now at exactly the moment a three-foot wave overtook me from behind, knocked me off my feet, and swept my glasses from my face.

I grasped after them wildly as the wave pushed me, limbs akimbo, into shore and then sucked me back out again. I caught nothing but fleeting handfuls of churning water and sand.

they were my favorite pair.

I paid enough attention in grad school to understand the symbolism. No one knew about seeing and not seeing like the ancient Greek tragedians. And no one likes to talk at excruciating lengths about the tensions between seeing and not seeing more than classicists.

Remember Tiresias? The prophet from Oedipus the King and Antigone and Seven Against Thebes and lots of other incredible stories?

Sporting a sexy hipster beard on a Lucanian Red-figured calyx-krater c. 380 B.C

The whole thing with Tiresias was that he was blind, but he was a prophet, a seer. He couldn't see but he could see. Get it? Get it??

Get it???

Tiresias is emblematic of a recurring issue in Greek tragedy: is seeing knowing? Is not seeing not knowing?

As I groped half-blind and sopping for the shore, all I could think of was Tiresias. I knew this had to mean something, my new ocean blinding me. Maybe now I can see?

The only other time I've ever lost my glasses in the sea, they came right back to me, washed up at low tide and rescued by an alert lifeguard. I guess that's why I'm not too worried--they'll come back to me one way or another. And anyway, I had the foresight to bring a spare pair with me this time.

You got me this time, Atlantic. But I hope one day we can be friends.

Discussion Question:
When is seeing knowing? When is not seeing knowing?

* * * * *

This is part two in my series about my August of Camping and Tramping.

one: we're on the road to nowhere
two: "Spectacles in the Surf: Seeing and Not Seeing on the DePalma Family Vacation"
three: miles covered
four: you got a fast car: drivin through the mountains

we're on the road to nowhere

2010-08-08T18:28:00.000-04:00

Bangin new music video from Biscuits and Gravy, ie my best friend Emily and her friend Steve.

As many of you know, Nick and Boudreaux and I are celebrating our transition from the Dirty South to Yankeeland by taking a big aimless camping trip this month. Since I know you've all been losing sleep wondering where we were going to go first, I have decided to end your tossing and turning.

Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Asheville, NC, where we will spend one lazy night before making our way to Edisto Beach State Park in South Carolina. We'll be camping for three nights in a tent in a secluded spot in a live oak forest about 1.5 miles from the beach. How did we choose this particular locale? It's the closest place on the Atlantic where we can camp with our dog.

X marks the area we'll be camping in.

We have big nothing planned while we're there. The week will consist of

grilled peaches

sunrises over the beach

Edisto Beach State Park

farm-stand produce

meeting other camping hoboes

Edisto Beach State Park

shish kebabs for every meal

and most importantly

dog butt in the sand

artist rendering of Boudreaux

Wish us luck as we embark on the first 600 miles!

it's gonna be just like this, except with less snuggies and children

Discussion Question:
Where do you want to see Nick and Katie go on their month of Camping and Tramping?

* * * * *

This is part one in my series about my August of Camping and Tramping.

one: we're on the road to nowhere
two: "Spectacles in the Surf: Seeing and Not Seeing on the DePalma Family Vacation"
three: miles covered
four: you got a fast car: drivin through the mountains

it's a feast! so enjoy!

2010-07-31T08:42:00.000-04:00

I'm tryin to tell you somethin bout my life

The last few days have seen the unique torture of moving every item you own out of your house, complete with Nick somehow bending space and time to fit our entire 1000 sq ft apartment into the tiniest U-Haul I've ever seen:

IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A MOM'S ATTIC!!!

AND with our subsequent semiserious leg injuries from running into the trailer hitch with all our might:

like this but solid metal with more sharp edges

And in the midst of the please-let-this-be-over-soon madness, I got an email from Kevin Wildes SJ PhD, the president of my beloved alma mater Loyola University New Orleans, reminding me that today is the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus and patron saint of the university.

Father Wildes' email contains an excellent summary of Iggie's life that you might enjoy.

Ignatius was born in 1491 as a member of the Basque noble family. He was a courtier and military officer who eventually was wounded in battle. While recovering from his wounds, Ignatius had a deep, personal experience of God's love for him and all creation. Over time he developed an ever deepening awareness that creation was filled with God's presence and that God labored for all members of creation. Because of this experience, Ignatius believed it was possible to "find God in all things." For Ignatius, even the smallest things could lead him to unity with God and he lived his life to give witness to the God of love.

Ignatius and his early companions quickly found themselves at home in universities. Ignatius and the Jesuits thought that universities, which celebrate human accomplishment in the arts, sciences, and the professions, are places where God can be encountered. Ignatius also understood that ideas were not only things to be studied for their own sake but, he believed, our ideas affect who we become as people. Ideas affect the lives we lead, and in this way, they shape the world.

St. Ignatius has inspired and touched me ever since my Ignatian Spirituality class in college with Father Fagan. Iggie's life and legacy fascinates me, and I feel a very special connection with Ignatian Spirituality that transcends religion. The tenets of self-awareness, effective love, discernment, and even of finding God in all things speak to me as an atheist and work for me completely in my worldview, so long as I think of "God" as another way of saying "the energy that connects everything," which, let's face it, it basically is.

handsome fellow, huh?

I feel like my years at Loyola really educated me as a whole person--which is one of the hallmarks of Jesuit education--but it wasn't just the 10000 Classics classes I was able to savor. What I learned in that Ignatian Spirituality class alone was worth all four years of tuition. Know yourself. Show your love through your deeds. Wait to make a decision until a feeling of peace moves through you. And most importantly, look for that energy that connects everything everywhere. Have gratitude for it always.

Happy feast of St. Ignatius Loyola! Wish us luck as we travel to Nashville today!

Discussion Question:
Have you ever connected with a religious figure or text or whatever outside of your religious beliefs?

hell is a half-packed house. pass the packing tape!

2010-07-28T08:09:00.000-04:00

I wanna go back to sleep.

To say that things are kind of crazy right now is the understatement of the century. July has seen my bittersweet last day of work at Peachtree Publishers; a wild visit from my beloved Davina; a trip to Missouri to visit my grandmother, great uncle, and wonderful cousins; an incredible experience in North Carolina at Transformus, my first burn, which included serving breakfast to hundreds of people in the woods AND having my car, the Spruce Goose, get stuck in a muddy ditch and only barely survive the subsequent 5 tows out; AND teaching a crazy week-long all-day critical writing class for 14 middle schoolers at Margaret Mitchell House that involved taking a major field trip EVERY DAY.

I am exhausted.

And guess what! The U-Haul arrives tomorrow afternoon!

Remember how we're moving to Boston? Well, now we are actually starting the moving part. We're packing up our stuff, driving it to Nashville Saturday morning, putting it in storage, and taking the month of August off for our Summer of Camping and Tramping, wherein Nick and I make no plans and do whatever we feel like and drive all around and go camping. I cannot wait.

Sadly, there are a whole lot of boxes to be packed and loaded and unloaded before our carefree August begins. Le sigh.

Moving has always made me a little emo. Hence the Modest Mouse. I realized tonight that I always end up doing the same thing when I move: listening to "Gravity Rides Everything" and writing about how much I hate to move. So I have unearthed some of my emo scribblings about the trials of moving over the last decade or so for your enjoyment.

MAY 2003: Moving out of my dorm room (and temporarily to Davina's house) and into my first apartment
TRAUMA: My suitemate "broke up" with me--i.e. told me she didn't want to be friends anymore.

MAY 14, 2003--the room is emptying itself gradually. boxes have been lugged endlessly and we've almost purged ourselves of this year. and in a very real way. in the cleaning of the suite, one of my suitemates decided that our friendship belongs out in the dumpster behind new res* with the discarded magazines and ill-fitting jeans, things too heavy or not worth moving to a new place...

moving out last year found me in the same place - sitting in my empty dorm room, listening to modest mouse** and crying quietly to myself at the prospect of time in franklin. taking on new things is easy for me - it's giving them up that sucks. this has been a really marvelous year for me despite all the infinite drama.

this morning, i was staring at a pile of clothes that didn't fit me anymore. i could not bear to get rid of them despite the fact that i would never wear them again. ashley said to me, "katie, you never throw ANYTHING away." this statement has rung true for me all day.
*new res = New Residential Hall, now Carrollton Hall, my dorm at Loyola. No one thought New Rez was a weird name for a dorm and we were all sad when it got a real name.
**bonus! according to livejournal, I was listening to "Gravity Rides Everything" as I wrote this entry.

MAY 15, 2003--My sophomore year of college has been drained to the dregs. Last night was a true-blue disaster*...I sat in my spot on Steph’s stripped bed and looked around that room for the last time. I couldn’t help but stare hard at the wake left by four girls who can’t wait to move away from one another...I just wonder how I’ll feel when I read this in a year or two.**
*I still think true-blue disaster is a great turn of phrase. To my dismay, it appears 132 other times on the internet so I can't claim it.
**according to livejournal, I was listening to "Trailer Trash" by Modest Mouse when I wrote this entry.

MAY 2006: Moving out of my apartment in Texas after my first year of grad school
TRAUMA: Facing the end of the hardest year of my life and reckoning with the idea that I had to go back the next fall

Not very much has changed. Three years ago at around this time, I was having a smoke and ljing about my awful move out of New Res. Now I'm having a smoke and ljing about my awful move out of Villa Solano. I hate moving. Particularly moving out. Moving in is kind of fun, actually. I just want to be FINISHED - have all this shit moved out of here and get in the car and just RUN - run away from Austin and this life that has treated me so strangely....

Steve's been very retrospective about this year, and I am all whateva whateva. I don't think I am ready to digest this year yet - I just need to get out of here and clear my head and rest for a while....Too much thinking for tonight. Time to sleep for about twelve seconds before the packing resumes.

JULY 2008: Moving from Texas to Atlanta
TRAUMA: Moving across the country.

I'm sitting looking around my apartment half-packed and there's trash everywhere and stuff all over the floor. I have to get all of this packed up and ready to drive out of town on Saturday morning. I'm leaving for Atlanta and it's really starting to set in. It's so weird to be leaving Austin even though I knew all along that this was a temporary engagement and that I was only gonna be in Austin for a little while which is really bizarre. Nick and I use to say to each other almost every day oh my God we live in Texas and it was so weird and now we're like oh my God we're leaving Texas this is so weird.... I should stop rambling but I just seem like I need to record this feeling. This sort of like half-packed, unsettled, weird feeling, having said my goodbyes but not yet being out of town.*
*If this reads a little funny, it's because this is transcribed from a livejournal voice post, where I did spoken blogs.

* * *

Soooooo...I'm sitting here looking around my half-packed apartment and feeling kind of emo and weird. Not very much has changed. In the same place as always, listening to Modest Mouse and trying to digest the upheaval. I'm ready to just be packed and finished so I can just run away from Atlanta and this life here that has treated me so strangely. I'll miss my dear friends, especially my Lanier, but four 500+ mile moves have taught me that we'll see each other again and keep in touch. I'm not throwing them out with the truckload of stuff I'm taking to Goodwill. I collect friends like owls everywhere I go. I'm hearing Ashley's voice in my head: Katie, you never throw anything away. In a way, was it a compliment?

I just wonder how I'll feel when I read this in a year or two.

Too much thinking for tonight. Time to sleep for about twelve seconds before the packing resumes.

Discussion Question:
Not really a question, just a topic. Discuss how much moving sucksss

:15, :14, :13...

2010-07-13T20:45:00.000-04:00

Underappreciated solo effort by fellow attention whore Geri Halliwell/Ginger Spice

Things happen in threes, right? Like...celebrity deaths? And...the Holy Trinity?

Something interesting happened in triplicate recently. Over the last three days, my husband and I have been in three big news stories!

BREAKING NEWS ITEM #1: Landing gear problems on our flight from ATL to KC

On Saturday, Nick and I flew up to Kansas City to visit my darling grandmother in northern Missouri. Neither of us are crazy about flying but we considered the 14-hour drive for a weekend trip to be a bit egregious even for us. Our Delta flight (1163) was pretty unremarkable until we started our descent. We got near the airport and then...flew past it. Alert people on the plane started to look a little alarmed. One by one the copilots strode purposefully toward the back of the plane and opened a small hatch. For a moment it felt like the cabin was losing pressure. The flight attendants started to look a little nervous. We flew past the airport again, and then again, so low and close it seemed like we could just jump out, thank you. They finally said over the intercom that there was some issue with the landing gear. People shifted nervously in their seats. After a few more loops past the airport, they finally put the plane down on a runway lined with police cars and ambulances. Turns out it was just a problem with the landing gear sensor and not the the gear itself, which they apparently ascertained by flying right past air traffic control so they could see if the gear was down. Is that seriously the emergency procedure? How much could they really see when we're whooshing by at 400 miles an hour? Whatever. I'm just glad we lived to tell the tale. Nick and I were a little rattled but had already mostly forgotten about it when we heard a report about our flight on NPR national. Which was weird. And cool. Read the boring AJC article

BREAKING NEWS ITEM #2: My husband is in the SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES!

Have I ever mentioned that I am married to a genius? Nick programs robots. His research is particularly focused on human-robot interaction and the way robots and humans learn from each other. Apparently the New York Times came to his lab at Georgia Tech to check out Simon, the robot he's been working on with his colleagues for the last two years under the watchful eye of Dr. Andrea Thomaz. The article is pretty interesting, but what I like most of all is that a PHOTO OF NICK AND SIMON LEADS THE ARTICLE!

Incredible, incredible. There's also a blurb about the Media Lab at MIT, where Nick will be starting in the fall. By the way, if anyone has a copy of the Sunday Times laying around, PLEASE hold onto it for me! We were in the middle of nowhere on Sunday and couldn't find a Sunday Times to save our lives. Read the article!!!

BREAKING NEWS ITEM #3: Our wedding is featured on Offbeat Brides!

Aaand on Monday night, I got word that our wedding was going to be featured on Offbeat Bride! I absolutely adore this website--it features unusual weddings of all stripes and it is hands-down the best website for wedding inspiration, as far as I'm concerned. As soon as we got our incredible wedding photos back, I wrote up a profile and submitted it to Offbeat Bride. Now, almost a year later, here it is! And I have to admit, I really enjoyed reading it! Click here to read it for yourself.

lol check out the tags: BRIDES IN GLASSES, CANDY, CHURCH WEDDING, HAT, NON-MATCHING BRIDESMAIDS, RECEPTION DRESS, SECULAR, TENNESSEE WEDDING, TUXEDO

So I think our stock is up. Think I could parlay all this publicity into a guest spot on Law & Order: SVU?

Discussion question: Discuss your brushes with fame. Links encouraged.

lambert the sheepish lion

2010-06-23T22:42:00.001-04:00

I am proud to present to my readers what I consider to be the greatest cartoon short of all time. This lovely short is from 1951. Sixty years old and still pitch perfect.

LAMBERT THE SHEEPISH LION

Discussion topic:
Discuss how awesome this cartoon is. If you must, you may mention other candidates for best cartoon short. But they better be good...

Now That's What I Called Music Vol. 1

2010-06-21T21:22:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in this post about YA novels of the 80s and 90s, I'm purging some childhood belongings in an effort to make room for all of the stuff we're not bringing with us to Boston. Among the myriad treasures unearthed in my closet was a box of cassettes. Some Beatles tapes, some cassingles, and buried at the bottom, a mixtape.

This tape was actually one of a trio--a tape of happy songs, a tape of sad songs, and this, the third, a tape of the best songs. The other two are long gone, probably left in friends' cars over the years. I made the mixtape in 9th grade, just a couple of years before I'd listen to my first burned CD and then, soon after, my first mp3 playlist. It's strange how the days of cassette tapes and mp3s rubbed up against each other so close.

My husband and I freely admit that we are stuck in the late 90s--a fact that we owe, perhaps, to the fact that we first met in 1995. Also stuck in the 90s is my beloved car, the Spruce Goose, who was born in 1998. Same as the mixtape. It has a tape player, of course, so I popped it in yesterday morning on my way to work.

The case with its handwritten track listing was long gone, but I had my suspicions about what I might find on the tape. I'm a creature of habit who still relishes many of my favorite albums from ten or fifteen years ago. But listening to my busted old car stereo playing a busted old tape, I felt myself floating on the hissing, popping, clicking reel. My 98 Avalon was a time machine to 1998.

do you hear that clicking?

This mixtape is a snapshot of my teenage life, but more than that, it's pretty good. Okay, mostly.

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALLED MUSIC: VOLUME 1

Track 1: "Uncle John's Band" originally by The Grateful Dead, covered by the Indigo Girls

I once read an interview with Meshell Ndegeocello in Seventeen where she called "Eleanor Rigby" the most "musically perfect song" she had ever heard. I've never been able to get it out of my head. At the time, I decided that the most musically perfect song I could think of was the Indigo Girls covering "Uncle John's Band" and therefore it probably ought to be my favorite song.

Remember how I'm a creature of habit? I still name "Uncle John's Band" almost reflexively as my favorite song of all time (a distinction that's pretty absurd anyway). I wasn't surprised at all that it was first on the tape.

The track comes from Deadicated, an awesome Grateful Dead tribute album from 1991 that I stole from my dad based solely on the gnarly cover.

This album has it all--Los Lobos, Suzanne Vega, Jane's Addiction, and even a haunting rendition of "Friend of the Devil" by Lyle Lovett. I listened to this CD until I almost wore it out. Oddly enough, to this day I have never owned a Grateful Dead album and when it comes to their many zillions of songs, I basically only know "Touch of Gray," "Scarlet Begonias" (because Sublime covered it), and the songs off this album.

This is all heresy to Deadheads but quel dommage. Admittedly, some of the production and instrumentation of this album is pretty dated and maybe even a little hokey, but something about the way Amy and Emily harmonize on "Uncle John's Band" is so wholesome and American and reassuring. It calls to mind warm Southern summer afternoons--creekbeds and sunburns and fish fries. Even I type this I am bopping around and snapping. This song is a hell of a drug.

Track 2: "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles

"movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/k9Itt02QOO0&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01">

I told you that Seventeen article made an impression on me.

Track 3: "Vox [extended remix]" by Sarah McLachlan

Sarah McLachlan was among my first musical loves from the moment Fran Blumenkopf gave my mom a copy of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy that we proceeded to listen to for several years straight. Sarah didn't really hit the public eye in a big way until 1997's aptly-named Surfacing, so for many years I considered her to be my special secret favorite artist who I had all to myself.

Basically the highlight of my whole life (at least, up until that point) was getting to actually meet Sarah when I won a contest in Seventeen* that sent my mother and I to the 1999 Lilith Fair in Denver--limo at the airport, swank hotel, plum seats, and a meet-and-greet on Sarah's tour bus.

*I did not realize until I started typing this how prominently Seventeen was going to figure. Hey, I guess that's what we read for fun before we had stuff like Amanda Bynes' Twitter.

wearing my very special angel necklace that I gave her--she wore it on stage that night.

The original "Vox," off Sarah's 1988 album Touch, clocks in at almost five minutes. So of course, Sarah threw a seven-minute extended remix on her neat Rarities, B-Sides, and Other Stuff album.

This is not a great song. Sarah hasn't quite learned how to ground her ethereal voice yet. The lyrics are the stuff of my own poetry circa 1998--tangled webs and velvet and yearning. I don't know what it is about this song, maybe the Latin title, but this endless song became my favorite song to listen to on repeat, sometimes for hours at a time. There's something so zen and soothing in that kind of repetition. I spent so many hours listening to this song that the main theme still feels like a security blanket to me.

Track 4: "I Will Survive" originally by Gloria Gaynor, covered by Cake

Cake's incredible Fashion Nugget album was introduced to me by none other than my dearest Lanier, whom loyal readers will know as my current Sunday dinner partner. Before there was Sunday dinner, there was Thursday night. We couldn't drive yet, so my mom would pick us up after school and take us for whatever adventures our afternoon held. We insisted that nothing but Fashion Nugget play in the car on Thursday afternoon. My mom's favorite song was "Nugget", which we found scandalous and hilarious and wonderful.

I'm a sucker for covers so I instead gravitated to "I Will Survive", the classic disco anthem originally recorded by Gloria Gaynor that tells the story of the rebirth and freedom that comes with lost love. Cake's cover, with John McCrea's almost spoken vocals and Vince DiFiore's soaring brass solos, recasts the original in a whole new way that's real and relatable and raw beside the glossy finish of the original disco instrumentals. Pop-Up Video or some other informative cable program taught me that Gloria Gaynor eventually went born-again and changed the lyrics to as long as I have Jesus' love I know I'll be alive when she performed it later on in her career. Sadly, the closest thing I can find to confirmation of this is a video of Jesus lip-synching to the disco original.

"I Will Survive" turned out to be the soundtrack to mine and Lanier's inevitable teenage heartbreaks. Because, as everyone knows, when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them. Our breakup routine included chocolate ice cream, ritual destruction of relationship trinkets, and vigorous sing-alongs to "I Will Survive." Stuffed with ice cream, surrounded by love letter confetti and smashed ceramic doodads, dancing with your best friend, who has time to give a thought to that jerk who made you cry? Oh not I.

In our next installment, I'll bring you four tracks that give a fantastic a cross section of the best of late 90s through the eyes of a suburborural teenage girl.

Discussion Question:
If you just HAD to pick one favorite song, like at gunpoint, what would you say?

January to December

2010-06-08T14:40:00.000-04:00

I really detest the term May-December relationship. It is evocative, but almost too evocative--the image of the May party as green and fresh beside the wizened, withering hull of their December partner is tad on the dramatic side for me.

for example

I remember exactly where I first learned this irritating phrase--in a review of Richard Gere and Winona Ryder's regrettable romantic film Autumn in New York, a movie that features a terminally ill Ryder falling in love with silver fox Richard Gere.

I mean did you lose Ethan Hawke's number or something?

Autumn in New York is a pretty perfect example of what American society holds up as one of our few ideas of an appropriate intergenerational relationship--a tender but sexual relationship between an older man and a younger woman.

But what does our culture make of other types of intergenerational pairings?

Devout readers will remember that I have touched on this topic before when I blogged about my relationship with my hero Douglass Parker in this post. I've also mentioned my beloved Gregory, a former tutee and dear friend of mine--May to my hoary old December. In fact, when I started thinking about it, I realized that my life is rife with friends outside of my age cohort--like my NaNoWriMo partners Jessica Alexander and Teri Osborn, for example--and that, in this day and age, my predilection for befriending people of all ages falls outside the usual parameters for interpersonal relationships.

Our culture seems to come pre-set with two acceptable settings for non-family intergenerational relationships: lover/lover and mentor/mentee. If you feel a special connection with someone of a different age, you have three options:

(1) fall in love, assuming both parties are of the age of consent, Demi and Ashton-style
(2) develop a patronizing relationship wherein the older person enriches the younger person's life with their abundant life-earned wisdom and the younger person infuses the older person with youthful energy, Karate Kid-style
(3) ignore it

Why can't a person of another generation just be my friend? Is the widespread abuse of children at the hands of adults the reason why it's weird for a twenty-something to call a teenager their friend? Is the rampant ageism in our culture the only thing to blame for the stigma against making friends who are much older? I really don't know. I've wondered these things my whole life.

As an only child, I learned to interact with adults at a very young age. My first intergenerational relationships were forged with my parents' friends and business associates when I was knee-high. On lazy summer days, I would often accompany my parents to the advertising agency where my parents worked--Dad as an account exec and partner, Mama as a copywriter--and wander the halls chatting with the employees. Richie and Phyllis and Pat and the whole BG crew went out of their way to treat me like a little grown-up, taking me for sushi lunches and asking my opinion on the latest creative pieces.

I was a little older when I met my parents' friend Kenna. I don't remember how I came to know Kenna but it only took meeting her once for me to come to believe that she had hung the moon.

1997, dinner before Gallagher show

Kenna was like magic to me. The kindest eyes, the sweetest laugh, and the best ideas. Kenna took me (and my dear friend Alex) to one of those pottery studios where you paint your own stuff back when they were brand new and no one had ever done it before. She took me shopping at the vintage stores in downtown Nashville and almost acquiesced when I begged her to buy me a vintage teeshirt embroidered to say I'M NOT FAT! I'M PREGNANT! She also took Alex and I to see 1970s comedian Gallagher, whom we had inexplicably come to adore over repeated late-night viewings of his specials on VH1.

...yeah I don't know

I always had lots of friends my own age, but what I loved about Kenna was that I could be completely myself around her. I could geek out over painting pottery and Gallagher and not worry about looking like a dork. Even as a teenager who supposedly Did Not Care What Other People Thought, her company was a tremendous relief. I'm speaking of Kenna in the past tense because it's been AGES since I've seen her, aside from a quick hello at my wedding. Hey Kenna, is Gallagher touring again?

My nontraditional friendship with Kenna blew the door open for me making friends of all ages. In high school, I participated in Missoula Children's Theater's touring show every year. MCT is an incredible program--a truck rolls into town on Monday and casts students aged 5-18 in a huge musical production that goes on the following Saturday.

One year, I was cast as Ma Munch in The Wiz of the West. My part came complete with a fetching pair of overalls, a four-line solo (if you need a new tonic / he's got snake oil to spare...), and a crew of elementary-school Munchkins. On the first night of rehearsals, I couldn't help but notice that one of the Munchkins, with her round cheeks, big glasses, and bouncy personality, seemed kind of familiar. She reminded me of me.

It turned out that I had a lot in common with Little Leigh Sauvageau, as I always called her. A fellow sibling-starved only child, she decided we were "twynnz" and used to write me adorable little notes addressed to MY TWYNN. After the show, her mom called me all the time to baby-sit Leigh. I didn't know how to tell her that she didn't have to pay me--I just genuinely enjoyed spending time with her daughter. We would rent movies and do art projects and just be silly until the wee smalls when her parents came home. We mostly lost touch after I went to college and her family moved away.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago. Leigh contacts me out of the blue to say she's going to be in Atlanta and would I like to see her?

clearly the intervening years have caused us to mellow and mature

I guess we were onto something back when I was December and she was May--Leigh and I are still like sisters. We had an incredible weekend of hanging around and talking nonstop.

And impossibly, perfectly, my little sister Leigh caught the bouquet at my wedding.

somewhere, Leigh's girlfriend Amanda is getting nervous

Leigh and I share something I long-ago dubbed the *snap*. It's something a select few people have, and you can recognize it instantly. It's like a live wire crackling behind your eyes. I think it has something to do with being creative and intuitive.

I saw Nadine Eckhardt's *snap* in a stack of hand-edited pages of the first draft of her autobiography "Duchess of Palms" when I was volunteering at UT Press in the editorial department. Nadine, I was told, was of the pre-computer generation and needed someone to key in her edits of her first draft. I was thrilled to get anything besides photocopying to do so I dove right in.

Nadine's book grabbed me on the first page and did not let me go, luring me through border towns and DC and the Austin of another era. After spending a frustrating twenty minutes half-heartedly keying in edits in between feverish bouts of reading, I finally switched my monitor off and just let myself read the manuscript, knowing I'd have to work double-time later to finish keying in the edits and not caring one bit. I fell in love with saucy Nadine and her incredible adventures with her famous husbands and LBJ and the elder Bushes and all manner of other glitterati. When I turned the edited files into Alison, the acquiring editor for the project, I fell all over myself raving about the book.

Fast forward a year. I've snagged one of the two coveted UT Press Fellowships and have scored my dream job--working full-time in the Copyediting department for a year. Nadine's manuscript needs a managing editor. They give it to me. I am breathless.

Nadine lived in town and she came in to meet with us and show us some photos she was thinking of using in her book. I was immediately enchanted--Nadine is pretty, pint-sized, and absolutely the zestiest, liveliest person I know. Her photos were incredible. One--a photo of her as a teenager as the Duchess of Palms in her hometown of McAllen, Texas, framed by palm fronds--was so incredible that I snuck a photocopy of it later to tuck in the file in my desk labeled inspiration. She invited me to her house in South Austin to go over some edits.

looks like trouble

Nadine and I started coming up with lots of flimsy excuses for hours-long afternoon editorial meetings. We filled her lovely home up with gossip and laughter more times than I can count. And in the midst of our fun, I had a hand in creating a book that I am so incredibly proud of.

I miss Nadine so much ever since I left Texas, but we write letters--and now sometimes emails.

If you're interested in Duchess of Palms can buy it here or even read it on Google Books for free here. I can't say enough about how awesome it is.

* * *

Some friends change your whole world. They make you reimagine your life. They redecorate your brain.

Dr. T. Davina McClain came into my life at 3am one random night in high school. Always a little compulsive, I had kept myself up half the night emailing the heads of Classics departments around the country, asking questions about life in the program. I was just about to go to sleep when I noticed that someone had written me back already. Davina had written me a long, exuberant email about the program and all of the wonderful things that would await me should I come study with her in New Orleans. I was stunned. Who was this effervescent woman and why was she emailing me in the middle of the night?

When I went to visit New Orleans by myself that summer, Davina picked me up and treated me to a day in the Quarter--the French Market, bookstores, cafes. I knew I had found a home in that sweaty, foreign city.

It's hard to describe what Davina became to me. I was tight with a number of wonderful professors at Loyola--Paul, Karen, Kleist--but Davina was my Davina. My favorite professor, my advisor, and my mentor, she helped me plan for my graduate career from the moment I set foot on campus. She met with me outside of class endlessly to read Latin and Greek, and conducted independent studies with me even when she was on sabbatical. When it came time to apply to grad school, she steered me through the entire hellish process and helped me nab a Mellon Fellowship, admission to Cambridge, and even an interview for the Rhodes Scholarship. When I found the post office closed one deadline Friday and I called her in tears, she came and picked me up and drove me downtown to the post office that closes late. I went so far because she pushed me so hard--I wrote dozens and dozens of drafts of everything until they were perfect. Sometimes she'd just come over and hit "New Document".

But Karate Kid this ain't. Davina was my friend too. I spent weekends at her house, enjoying the humanity of a real home with home-cooked meals, curled up on the couch watching My So-Called Life and sobbing together. When Hurricane Lili threatened New Orleans in 2002, Davina packed me AND my boyfriend AND my cat (AND another of my beloved professors, Karen Rosenbecker) up and drove us to take refuge at her parents' home in Texas. We talked on the phone all the time for hours. She was something like my mother and my sister and my teacher and my friend.

Was? IS!

After Nick proposed to me on New Year's Eve 2007/8, I knew right away that I wanted Davina to marry us, and I told her as much probably a little hastily just a few days later. Probably a little hastily since I hadn't discussed it with my fiance.

We spent a lot of time considering options for the ceremony but it all came back to Davina. She was ordained by Rosewood Ministries in Tennessee and she performed our beautiful marriage ceremony on May 16, 2009. She wrote her own sermon and everyone agreed that it was among the most moving and incredible wedding ceremonies they'd ever seen. I'll never forget it.

Davina is the director of Louisiana Scholar's College now and she is Mother Goose to dozens and dozens of gifted young students. I hope each and every one of them appreciates how lucky they are to spend a little time under her wing.

My dearest Davina is coming to visit me in Atlanta for the 4th of July weekend and I can't wait to tear it up with her. Just like Leigh and I have enjoyed the evolution of our friendship as the years have gone on, Davina and I enjoy a whole new kind of relationship now that my days as her student are over. I can't wait to burn the city down with my friend.

Discussion question:
Have you ever had a friend who was much older or much younger than you?

SATC 2 must have had a small carbon footprint, since it was all recycled

2010-06-03T19:13:00.000-04:00

DISCLAIMER: This post is a little spoilery but trust me, it's not much more than what you learn in this extended trailer.

I am a semi-fanatical Sex and the City lover. The opening theme song is the soundtrack to my undergrad and grad school years, when I would often binge on episode after episode while cleaning my house or doing homework or while doing nothing at all. I started doing a rough calculation of how many hours I have spent watching the 94 half-hour episodes--all of which I have, of course, in a sweet hot pink box set--and the initial figures were so damning that I elected not to calculate any further.

So fanatical, in fact, is my love of this show, that I sobbed through probably 80% of the first movie in fangirlish delight when I saw it on opening night at Alamo Drafthouse with my long-suffering husband, starting with the moment in the opening credits when you first see Charlotte with her child at long last:

and peaking at the moment when Charlotte is telling Big to stay away from Carrie after he ruins the wedding.

break. my. heart.

SATC1 had a lot of problems, but it also had a lot of wonderful moments. If nothing else, it was really satisfying for the fans.

And then they made a sequel. For some reason.

What is left to say about Sex and the City 2 after you read this review from the Stranger? I mean...

SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human--working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled c*nt like it's my job--and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car.
--Lindy West

kind of says it all. The only word I could come up with for it was 'grotesque.' Wikipedia says grotesque is a "general adjective for the strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or bizarre, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks." EXACTLY.

Critics have by and large skewered this movie. It has a pitiful 18% on Rotten Tomatoes.

But I haven't read a single review yet that points out one particular flaw of this movie that really bugged me as a fan: many of the plot points are recycled from old episodes.

Naturally, the movie hits on some classic SATC tropes: Samantha is old and lusty, Miranda is overworked, Charlotte is jealous, Big is emotionally unavailable, Carrie is basically a horrible person who is absolutely impossible to please, etc. But SATC2 does more than refer to recurring themes from the show. It recycles storylines from the show, and worse, handles the storylines hamfistedly while they're at it.

Since I'm kind of a frustrated academic, I gathered some evidence to support my thesis.

CARRIE BRADSHAW HATES TAKEOUT AND YOU IF YOU EAT IT

In SATC2, Carrie just hates that her rich husband likes to get expensive gourmet takeout sometimes instead of going out to eat at an expensive gourmet restaurant. I knew I never liked that man.

As I watched Carrie berate Big over a paper sack of Japanese food that almost certainly cost more than I make in a day, I had a distinct sense of déjà vu. I was taken back to the good old days of Carrie and Aidan, Season 4, the days of Aidan stripping Carrie's floors and taking her to Suffern and being inexplicably saintly despite Carrie being, as usual, insufferably selfish. All That Glitters (s4e14) finds Aidan longing for a night in with his lover and the TV and a bucket of chicken, and Carrie longing for a hot night of grinding on shirtless men and her girlfriends (including pregnant Miranda) at a gay club.

When she comes home drunk and ready to get it get it, she's disgusted to find Aidan splayed out and glazed in KFC grease. She finds his request to rub his belly repulsive in the extreme.

Next to unctious, shirtless Aidan, swollen and comin down with the itis, Big looks absolutely portrait-worthy with his probably spotless black leather shoes on the gorgeous couch and tidy box of Japanese food on the table. You could kind of feel Carrie's pain when she's torn between a fun night out with her girlfriends and rubbing the belly of her beached, greasy boyfriend. But Carrie, seriously? After "eleventy decades of chasing his emotionally abusive jowls through the streets of Manhattan" you've finally landed Mr. Big, and now you're nagging him to death because he doesn't want take you out every single night of the week? That's crazy even for you, Carrie. And that's saying something.

At this point in the movie, the drunken audience in the theater started to get kind of restless and pissy. Carrie asks Big (rhetorically, of course) if she's a bitch wife who nags him all the time. One particularly disgruntled moviegoer shouted YES and the entire theater cheered.

SOMETIMES HAVING SERVANTS IS AN UNFORTUNATE BUT UNAVOIDABLE SIDE EFFECT OF BEING FABULOUS

The girls are thrilled upon arriving at their expensive suite in Abu Dhabi, but kind of weirded out when a bunch of turbaned men line up attentively and inform the quartet that each one of them has been assigned a personal manservant. The women must learn to negotiate all the tricky situations that come with having someone wait on you hand and foot. Or something.

They did an entire episode about this in Season 2 called The Caste System (e10). Remember? Samantha dates a rich dude who has a servant, Charlotte hooks up with a movie star, Miranda buys Steve an expensive suit, and Carrie just hates that Big brought her to a fancy party with extra-rich people?

In both SATC2 and The Caste System, the girls are uncomfortable with the machinations of the class system. For about a minute before they go back to being waited on hand and foot.

Even though neither iteration of this storyline wraps up in a way that even begins to reconcile the massive social issues they've raised, The Caste System at least attempts to offer multiple perspectives on living in a class-stratified society. We get to see the women both as the regal upper-class Manhattanites they are and, through Carrie's storyline, as people who don't quite qualify for the tippy-top of society. SATC2 doesn't give us anything beyond the fleeting, cringing guilt of rich white ladies who are being waited on.

SAMANTHA IS SHAMED FOR BEING A SEXUALLY LIBERATED WOMAN

On their trip to Abu Dhabi, only do the ladies have to deal with having a quartet of manservants, but they also have to negotiate the complex social mores of Muslim culture. While none of the four seem to excel at this particularly,

Modest isn't the first word that springs to mind

Samantha in particular struggles to comport herself properly. It's hard to stop grabbing the packages of virtual strangers on a dime, you know? I'm sure it will not come as a surprise to learn that Samantha ends up publicly shamed by the locals for being an Independent Woman who happens to carry condoms by the dozen and dress like a fourteen-year-old on a hot day.

Samantha is no stranger to this kind of unjust treatment. In Four Women and a Funeral (s2e5), Samantha philanthropically gropes a married man as she's fundraising for a nonprofit, and is subsequently blacklisted from Everywhere That Matters when the wife busts her and besmirches her reputation. In Are We Sluts? (s3e6), one of Samantha's one-night-stands lets a robber into her building, and the other residents ride her so hard about her promiscuous lifestyle that she moves to the Meatpacking District. (Har. Har.) And in Cover Girl, Carrie walks in on Samantha providing a valuable service to the Worldwide Express guy in her office, and for once even her good friend Carrie has to agree that she's taken her sexual openness a step too far.

When we see Samantha screeching I HAVE SEX! crazily at a group of elderly Muslim men in the street while wielding fistfuls of condoms, it's not just awful because we've seen it all before, again and again. It's offensive AND stale.

CARRIE LOSES AN ITEM WITH HER NAME ON IT WHILE SHE'S AWAY FROM NEW YORK. GET IT? IT'S A SYMBOL. FOR HER IDENTITY. WHICH SHE ALSO LOST. ARE YOU FOLLOWING?

Here's the big spoiler of this post. Are you ready?

Carrie loses her passport. And it's a problem for about 10 minutes until she finds it again exactly where she left it. Cool story, Carrie. I think I get the symbolism. You're far away in a foriegn country trying to figure out your ever-shifting love life and in the process you briefly lose your passport and therefore YOURSELF.

This is heavy stuff, Michael Patrick King. But you wrote this already, remember?

The final episodes of Sex and the City, where Carrie is in Paris with Baryshnikov? She loses her Carrie necklace when she's feeling all lost and sad and then, in the final episode, An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux (s6.2e8), she finds it again before she works up the nerve to break it off with Aleks.

The American Girl in Paris episodes are some of my favorite episodes of any television show ever. I've seen them dozens of times and still find myself breathless in anticipation of Big and Carrie finding one another. I still sob gratuitously through basically the whole thing. But Carrie's ordeal in SATC2 has really no tension and no stakes at all. Maybe she'll miss her first-class flight home that afternoon? How did this pass as the climax of a 2.5 hour movie? HOW DID THIS MOVIE HAPPEN AT ALL?

I am so utterly disappointed in my favorite franchise.

Cute jacket tho.

Discussion Question:
oh come on let's just talk about how dumb this movie was

children are impressionable

2010-05-26T14:20:00.000-04:00

Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers by Kaki King
Appropos of absolutely nothing except the fact that I really dig this song

When I was home in Nashville a couple of weeks ago, my mom pulled me into the extra bedroom and gestured to a giant stack of white banker's boxes. "They're your books from growing up," she explained. "Do you think you could bear to part with some of them?"

When I was a child, my book collection was so vast that I created my own cataloging system (including my own non-Dewey, non-LOC system of alphanumeric codes) to organize them and keep track of the ones I lent out. When I pulled the lid off the first box of books in the extra bedroom, the first thing I noticed were the little white labels peeling off the spines, numerical codes scrawled in pencil in a child's handwriting. The bibliophilia I spoke of in this post was born in my childhood.

My parents must have prided themselves on some of my early literary choices. I read To Kill a Mockingbird from cover to cover when I was 6, Uncle Tom's Cabin when I was 8, and the Illiad when I was 10. From the time I was big enough to hoist the heavy tomes down off the shelf, I was reading my mother's books of transcendental German poetry in translation and her dog-eared volumes of Colette. I devoured my father's Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking hardbacks and wax-stained volumes of Robert Frost.

But for every volume of Major Literary Significance that I curled up with as a child, I read at least ten or twenty ridiculous YA novels. My bookshelves were a sherbet-colored smear of tattered pastel paperbacks. Sacred above all others were my Baby-Sitter's Club books--I had over 100 of the regular series books, plus all the Super Specials, Mysteries, and Little Sister books I could talk my mom into buying me. They were arranged in numerical order on the top shelves in my room. I deemed my collection so vast as to necessitate their own coding system--dozens of books lined up in neat rows, spines labeled with code numbers starting in with BSC.

I don't remember getting a lot out of To Kill a Mockingbird at age 6 besides being frightened of Boo Radley, whom I thought was definitely a ghost. But my, oh my, did I ever get an education from those trashy paperbacks. I learned how to apply a tourniquet and the definition of the word 'cacophony' from Jessi Ramsey, Pet-Sitter (#22). On a trip to NYC when I was 11, having just reread the New York, New York! Super Special (#6), I impressed a room full of New York natives by identifying the word 'SoHo' as a portmanteau of 'south of Houston Street' (complete with correct pronunciation of 'Houston'). Perhaps that's why Harper Lee's magnum opus ended up in the donation pile (I can always grab another copy when I want to reread it), but I was not able to part with even a single one of my Baby-Sitter's Club books.

In honor of everyone's favorite multicultural septet of overly responsible prepubescent Connecticutians, it is my pleasure to present

IMPORTANT LESSONS I LEARNED FROM YA NOVELS

#1: I HAVE DIABETES

Anyone who has ever touched a Baby-Sitter's Club book knows The Truth About Stacey--she has juvenile diabetes. She can't have even a single one of the glorious sweets depicted on the cover, but look at that plucky smile! Stacey is from New York City, dammit, and she isn't going to let something minor like the autoimmune destruction of her insulin-producing pancreatic cells stop her from enriching Charlotte Johansson's miserable life with her Abundant Teenage Awesomeness.

In The Truth About Stacey, our protagonist spends much of the book puzzling over an assortment of odd symptoms--being constantly thirsty, feeling tired, etc. In what is easily the most unforgettable scene of the book, Stacey is invited to a slumber party at the home of ultra-bitch Laine, at which Stacey guzzles several dozen liters of Pepsi and proceeds to piss Laine's bed in her sleep.

During one red-wine-soaked evening with my best girls in Texas--Mary Jane, Sammy Jean, and Sam Hoekstra--it was determined that all four of us had come to genuinely believe that we had diabetes after reading this book. After all, what child has never felt sleepy or thirsty? I spent YEARS of my life inwardly convinced that my doctors had egregiously looked over my Type 1 diabetes and that I would have to take matters into my own hands and make the diagnosis myself, possibly after soiling myself in front of numerous Popular Girls.

#2: I WAS ADOPTED OR POSSIBLY ABDUCTED FROM MY BIRTH PARENTS

The Face on the Milk Carton tells the gripping tale of Janie Johnson, who is busy leading the normal life of a fifteen-year-old girl when she DUN DUN DUN recognizes her own face on her milk carton at lunch one day.

Since I'm guessing anyone who finds this premise even remotely intriguing has already read this book or at least seen the 1995 made-for-TV movie...

Look it's the girl from Life Goes On! And Kyle from My So-Called Life! Anyone? Anyone?

I'll go ahead and tell you what happens. It turns out that Janie's parents aren't really her parents--they're her grandparents. Or rather, they are the parents of the woman who kidnapped Janie from a shopping mall when she was a little girl. OH NO THEY DIDN'T. The Face on the Milk Carton ends with Janie making a tentative phone call to her birth parents, and Whatever Happened to Janie? picks up with Janie leaving the home she knows to go back to her birth family, and all the drama that ensues.*

After Janie sees herself on the milk carton, she conducts a little investigation of her own. She breaks into her father's office and rummages around in the drawers. There are no photographs of Janie from when she was a baby. She has no birth certificate. She doesn't look like either of her parents. Things start to add up for Janie. Initially she comes to believe that she was adopted.

As soon as I read these novels, it became clear to me that, like Janie, I was living with two people who were not my parents. I decided to do a little investigating. I found photographs of myself in early infancy, even of the day I was born. My birth parents had probably given those to the people who claimed to be my parents. I found my birth certificate too, but that could easily be faked. Even I had to admit that I looked like both of my parents, but they could still be my grandparents or maybe just my cousins.

I decided to confront my parents about my origins, nervous but steeled to learn the truth. I have no idea how they managed to keep a straight face as they informed me that I was definitely their biological child, no doubt about it. I think I pouted about it for a few days.

*By the way, Wikipedia informed me that two more books have been added to this series since I was a kid--The Voice on the Radio and What Janie Found. brb buying these immediately

#3: I HAVE SCOLIOSIS

Judy Blume's classic Deenie tells the story of a young woman and her struggles with scoliosis. Deenie isn't very smart or funny or athletic, but she is very beautiful. But her dreams of being a Fashion Model are threatened when she's diagnosed with scoliosis and condemned to wear a back brace every day to correct it. How will Deenie ever be cool when she's encased in a big dorky brace?

This is actually one of the most-banned books in America, for the sole reason that Judy Blume (GASP!) actually acknowledges in this book that young women masturbate. But it was not the passages about Deenie and her washcloth and her special spot that made the biggest impression on me. It was the scoliosis.

I was kind of morbidly obsessed with the idea of being fitted for a giant back brace that I would rarely be able to take off. I imagined a permanent excuse from gym class and the sympathetic, encouraging looks I'd get from my teachers. I decided that I definitely had scoliosis too.

The joke was on me with this one--turns out I do have slight scoliosis, as determined by my pediatrician. It is entirely possible that I requested the test personally. Sadly, my pediatrician did not prescribe me a back brace or even attention-garnering back surgery. He said it was minor enough to ignore. Charlatan.

#4: MY HOUSE IS HAUNTED

Even though mysteries have never really been my thing, I read my fair share of ghost stories when I was a kid. California Casual Dawn lived in a Really Haunted Old House that was once part of the Underground Railroad, as we learned in The Ghost at Dawn's House (#9). I also really enjoyed all of those goofy Betty Ren Wright ghost books, none of which were even remotely scary. My favorite was The Dollhouse Murders, wherein the dolls in a forgotten attic dollhouse start moving by themselves and acting out a bunch of creepy stuff.

Inspired by Dawn's fearlessness, I decided that it was high time someone did a little investigation into the paranormal activity that was happening at my house. Despite my parents' protestations that we were the first and only family to have ever lived in our house, I was pretty sure the house was probably haunted. One night, my bff Katie June and I set a number of ghost traps in the house--a blanket spread out perfectly flat in the hallway, a sink full of bubble-bath bubbles, a glass of water on the nightstand. The ghosts, we reasoned, would disturb these objects and give us evidence of their existence. We went to sleep.

We were right. The next morning, the flat blanket had indentations like it had been trod upon. The sink, once filled with bubbles, held only a few inches of cloudy water. The glass of water on the nightstand had vanished entirely. Katie and I were not prepared for our findings and were significantly rattled. My parents' house was definitely haunted--haunted by my parents, who stepped on blankets and cleared dishes, and by the laws of physics, which reduced the bubbles in my sink to a soapy film in the water.

#5: I HAVE CYSTIC FIBROSIS OR SOMETHING ELSE SURE TO KILL ME BEFORE PROM NIGHT

Even in elementary school, I considered Lurlene McDaniel novels to be a guilty pleasure. Darling Lurlene has written over 60 young adult books about disease and dying, and I have read a substantial percentage of them. They all have names like Letting Go Of Lisa and Telling Christina Goodbye, and most of them feature a budding friendship or romantic relationship that is threatened by the terminal illness of one or both parties. I could not get enough of these books growing up.

The book I remember as being my favorite McDaniel tear-jerker isn't by Lurlene at all--it's by Cherie Bennett, a Nashville native. I must have read Good-bye, Best Friend fifty times when I was a kid. This egregiously sad book tells the story of Star and Christina, who make friends at a hospice, Hope House. Christina gets better and moves out, and Star has to deal with the loss of her friend and her declining health due to cystic fibrosis.

I had never heard of cystic fibrosis, even in my extensive reading of my parents' Home Medical Guide, until I read this book. Good-bye, Best Friend taught me about the excruciating treatments for cf that involve basically being beaten on the back to loosen the mucus in your lungs. I also learned that you get to live in a big house with other sick kids, and it's basically like summer camp.

I used to lie face down on my bed and imagine blows raining down on my back, my handsome boyfriend Tad wincing at the sound from the other side of the drawn curtain. A milkshake or a backrub any time I whispered a feeble request for it. An asthmatic child, every time I had a coughing fit, I eagerly checked my palms for blood. I'm pretty sure I drew up a will for myself, specifying which of my schoolmates were to inherit each of my most beloved books. But not Good-bye, Best Friend--if I died of cystic fibrosis, I was definitely going to be buried with it.

But, as Mick Jagger reminds us, you can't always get what you want. I lived straight through prom night and beyond--no diabetes or scoliosis or cystic fibrosis or ghosts of escaped slaves or long-lost birth parents for this drama queen.

Now, hilariously, I work for a children's book publisher, and my lifelong penchant for reading silly YA novels has become part of my job description. I'm afraid my editorial opinion isn't always the most developed when it comes to YA--I will invariably prefer a fluffy, predictable novel with a likable female protagonist over anything educational. But you've got to go easy on me--my diabetes is making my scoliosis act up again.

Discussion Question:
Which YA novels had the biggest impact on you as a kid?

on synesthesia

2010-05-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

I can smell the colors outside on my lawn
The moist green organic that my feet tread upon
And the black oleander surrounded by blue
I get so overwhelmed by olfactory hues

Synesthesia, the neurological condition that causes stimulus in one sensory pathway to trigger involuntary responses in other sensory pathways (ie hearing colors, tasting pain, touching flavors), kind of sounds like it's made up. It kind of sounds like the thing that happens to people that take hallucinogens and maybe insane people.

But doctors estimate that anywhere between 1 in 100000 to as many as 1 in 200 people are legitimate synesthetes. The most common type of synesthesia is grapheme-color synesthesia, wherein letters and numbers (called collectively 'graphemes') are perceived to have a distinct color--about 65% of people with synesthesia experience this. And I am one of them!

synesthete.org offers a full grapheme-color synesthesia test. In the test, the letters of the alphabet and numerals 0-9 are flashed randomly and the user must pick a color associated with each one. Each grapheme is posted three times. After the user has selected a color for each grapheme three times, the results are analyzed. Here are my results, which as you can see very conclusively determined that I have grapheme-color synesthesia:

Nabokov, whom we've established is one of my favorite authors, was a grapheme-color synesthete too. He described his experience gorgeously:

In the green group, there are alder-leaf f, the unripe apple of p, and pistachio t. Dull, green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for w. The yellows comprise various e's and i's, creamy d, bright-golden y, and u. In the brown group there are rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h.

I have a similar idea of my letters, bordering on and perhaps fully qualifying as grapheme personification, wherein letters and numbers have genders and personalities. Soft, feminine bilabial plosives B and P are a soft, maternal pink. Masculine, nasal M and N are a macho dark green and blue. Simple I and O are white--something that many grapheme-color synesthetes experience in common.

It is difficult to explain but I do not see these colors when I see letters and numbers in front of me. I see that the text I am typing is black on white. But somehow I perceive the letters and numbers to have the color. Whatever part of your brain lights up when you see a blue ball--that's the part of my brain that lights up when I see an E or an S. I am fully aware that it is not actually blue, but my brain recognizes it as being blue. Am I making any sense?

Over the last few years, I've realized that my grapheme-color synesthesia isn't just a random experience that I have. I've come to understand how much it affects my day-to-day life--basically always for the better.

SYNESTHESIA IS A MEMORY AID

Which seems like it would be easier to remember? You can ask me a year from now what number I used in this example and I'll still remember--that streak of yellow-pink-green is impossible to forget.

SYNESTHESIA IS AN ARITHMETIC HELPER

Times tables are boring, right? No. They are gorgeous.

Most people can recognize the elegance of the x9 times tables--how the digits in the products all add up to 9, how the first and second digits in the products run exactly from 0 to 9 backwards and forwards, respectively. With the benefit of color, these fineries are amplified and put on display.

Moreover, I have realized recently that I work arithmetic in my head using color. When I see a simple sum, I think not 2 + 3 = ? but rather something more like pink plus yellow equals what? I think when I'm moving really fast it's more like just pink yellow blue. This makes me pretty handy with mental math and adding long columns of numbers and stuff.

SYNESTHESIA MAKES YOU FEEL PASSIONATELY ABOUT SPELLING

Grey is not the preferred spelling in the US for the shade between black and white. But in my mind, it is the only way to spell it. Just look at this.

Does it make sense for there to be a big splash of RED in the middle of the word gray? Ew. No. Grey it is.

Or how about:

Even though Vergil is *technically* better, since his full name was Publius Vergilius Maro, Vergil just looks so NERDY. Everything was fine until that blue E came to town.

SYNESTHESIA MAKES YOU AN AWESOME EDITOR

You can't crack a book about synesthesia without seeing this chart:

It demonstrates how synesthesia makes inconsistencies jump off the page. A non-synesthete has to hunt around for the 2s mixed in with the 5s. For me, the pink 2s leap out among the blue 5s.

This skill comes in handy, since I make a living as an editor. My grapheme-color synesthesia makes typos and other errors pop out.

My brain immediately identifies that gold-red-pink-yellow ("wakl") is an odd combination before I even consciously realize that there is a typo.

SYNESTHESIA MAKES GREEK A RAINBOW

Perhaps my loyal readers who remember my academic background are wondering whether I have a synesthetic reaction to Greek letters as well. The answer is yes. I had never really thought about it very hard until this moment, but I do. I was lost so far in thought as I made this chart that I forgot the omega! Shameful.

I think my synesthetic reaction to the Greek alphabet is very telling. The colors are by and large the same as the letters they closely correspond to in English, whether the letters look the same (as in alpha [Α/α] and A) or not (as in gamma [Γ/γ] and G). But what about the letters that don't have a direct equivalent in English? Like the long E sound eta (Η/η)? Eta takes on not the royal blue of E but rather the green hue of the H and N the capital and lowercase letters resemble. Theta (Θ/θ) makes a "th" sound, and the blue T and green H combine to create a lovely blue-green theta.

Perhaps most odd is psi (Ψ/ψ) and phi (Φ/φ), which make a "ps" and "ph" sound respectfully. My brain is so broken by these characters that they are the only graphemes I see in gradient--psis fading pink to blue to white and phis pink to green to white, mimicking the way the words "phi" and "psi" look spelled out in English. I don't begin to understand what all this implies about my synesthesia but I think it's pretty interesting.

SYNESTHESIA MAKES EVERYTHING WEIRD

While grapheme-color is definitely the strongest and most persistent and consistent synesthesia that I experience, I have a number of other synesthetic reactions. I often experience taste-color, but it so often corresponds to the color of the food itself that it is usually unremarkable. I mentioned a recipe not tasting "red" enough in this post. I also have music-spatial, touch-color, and other synesthesia-esque experiences like proprioception-memory--I often involuntarily plunge deeply and suddenly into random memories while physically exercising--and something I hardly know how to describe where inanimate objects look like people (for example, certain fingers and toes look like my Mom and Dad??).

I know that my synesthesia and my interest in writing have to have something to do with one another, but I haven't quite touched on how yet. Maybe my unique sensory perspective makes it into my writing? Perhaps it will make me Nabokavian. A girl can only type rainbow-colored letters and dream.

Discussion Question:
What is unusual about the way you perceive the world?

Blame it all on my roots / I showed up in boots

2010-05-17T15:50:00.000-04:00

Ismene: What are you hazarding? What do you have in mind?
Antigone: Will you join your hand to mine in order to lift his body?

Ἰσμήνη: ποῖόν τι κινδύνευμα; ποῦ γνώμης ποτ᾽ εἰ;
Ἀντιγόνη: εἰ τὸν νεκρὸν ξὺν τῇδε κουφιεῖς χερί.

Sophocles wrote his masterpiece Antigone around 442BC. For those of you who were not paying attention in 9th grade English class, Antigone tells the story of a young woman determined to honor her brother's body with a proper burial, despite an edict from the ruler Creon stipulating that the body remain "unwept, unburied, a nice tidbit for foraging birds" (ἄκλαυτον, ἄταφον, οἰωνοῖς γλυκὺν θησαυρὸν εἰσορῶσι πρὸς χάριν βορᾶς). Antigone is willing to risk it all to honor her brother's body and and put his spirit to rest.

I thought of Antigone a lot this weekend as we looked for Danny.

I went to Nashville this past weekend to do what I could to help with flood relief. As I mentioned in my post about the Nashville floods, Bellevue and Franklin, the neighborhoods I grew up in, were among the hardest hit parts of town. Before we drove up on Friday, I had spent the better part of two weeks feeling like I was stranded in Atlanta, hundreds of miles from where I knew I needed to be--home. I channeled all of my nervous energy into updating the Twitter and Facebook pages I'm helping my dear friend Ryan with.

In the hours I spent glued to flood coverage, I kept seeing one name over and over again. Danny Tomlinson. Age 39. Missing. Swept into the flood waters May 1st in Bellevue.

All the articles and facebook pages seemed to run the same handsome picture of Danny:

and every post said the same thing: His friends and family are searching tirelessly for his body.

Then, on Tuesday, an old friend of mine posted this beautiful (and also horrible) Facebook note about her experience searching for Danny's body with his family. The mud, the flies, the necklace tangled in the tree branches--Angela's vivid writing made the whole situation come alive for me in a way I could not ignore. When I saw that the search party needed someone to bring sack lunches on Saturday, I knew I had found a way to help. I contacted the organizer right away.

I sounded the call at Peachtree Publishers that I was going to need some help assembling some sack lunches for flood relief workers. The response I got was overwhelming--cash donations, food donations, and numerous colleagues happy to give their time to smear peanut butter and bag up cookies. The donations paid for 30+ lunches, and with my colleagues' help the lunches were packed and ready to go in no time. I am so proud of my colleagues and grateful for their support.

The lunches and I rolled into Pegram mid-morning on Saturday. The search party has set up a rather impressive camp in the parking lot of the Woof Waggin on Hwy 70--a tour bus and several small tents serve as the central gathering place for the dozens of volunteers who have gathered every day since Danny disappeared. The search party includes a K9 unit, a team of horses, and human volunteers on foot, in canoes, in airboats, in Jeeps, in ATVs--you name it. Friends and family have organized the search. Every day, Danny's mother waits for news.

I got to the Woof Waggin just as the search crews were coming back from the morning searches. People clamebered up solemnly in groups of 5 or 6, wet and streaked with mud. Most people were wearing boots but a few were in jeans and sneakers--they were soaked halfway up their calves. Trucks pulled up towing mud-caked Jeeps and ATVs. The horses were tied up to the trailer to rest. Everyone gathered round the food.

The spread was impressive--in addition to the delicious peanut butter sandwich sack lunches we fixed at Peachtree, they had a giant grill going with hot dogs and hamburgers, boxes and boxes of chips and cookies, tubs with iced bottles of water and Cokes. A friend of Danny's came with a giant crockpot homemade spaghetti (fixed with homegrown tomatoes and herbs, I was assured once or twice) and myriad hot buttered rolls (each one individually wrapped in foil) AND dozens of styrofoam to-go boxes of homemade chicken barbeque--enough to feed an army.

People straggled up and tucked into the food. I chatted with some folks and learned that many of the searchers had been coming out day after day to look for Danny. Some of the volunteers were friends and family, some dedicated customers at the bar Danny's mom has been tending at for two decades, some were law enforcement or otherwise trained searchers, and the rest were just random folks like me who had showed up to see if they could help.

Everyone there knows that looking for Danny is--for lack of a better simile--like looking for a needle in a haystack. Water just moves and moves. It can carry an object hundreds of miles or dash it to pieces in an instant. The search teams are combing Harpeth, where foot after foot of flood waters felled trees and left a silty wash of destruction for miles and miles and miles. This photograph gives some idea of how thickly overgrown the area is and how high the water was.

photo from WKRN

It's simply overwhelming.

What is it about human beings that we need so much to bury or otherwise ritually part with the bodies of our loved ones? When we learn about Antigone in class we learn that Antigone must chose between the law that Creon has handed down and a Higher Law, the one that dictates that she must honor her brother at all costs.

There's a reason we're still reading Antigone 2500 years later, and it's not just because we all want to make it to our sophomore year. We still find ourselves moved by this ineffable Higher Law, moved by some force beyond reason to honor the bodies of our loved ones when they die. For more than two weeks, this instinct has brought a community together to bring a man's body home to his mother.

I was assigned to a search group and I was off, clad in floral wellies and garden gloves, feeling a little silly next to everyone in black rubbers and camo. Of my group of 5 volunteers, two were old enough to be my parents and the other two were old enough to be my grandparents--Richard and (I think) Virginia. They had all been out searching for days. We piled into Richard's big van and headed off for the area we'd been assigned to.

As we wound through the rural roads, I sat back and felt the warm wind blowing my hair back. The abundant rain that caused the flood has also caused an explosion of greenery in middle Tennessee. Between the humid air and the winding roads and the lush, thick forest heaving with new growth, I could hardly distinguish the landscape from the rainforest in Belize. We chatted a little and even cracked some jokes as we cruised, never mentioning the huge storm clouds starting to gather in the sky. That, I thought, is hope. I had a strange feeling like there was no where else in the world I would rather be.

We got a little turned around, and by the time we found the spot we were supposed to start searching, rain drops were starting to splash here and there on the windshield. We pulled up beside a man in a white Cadillac dressed head to toe in hunting camo with a rifle across his front seat. Virginia cranked her window down and dangled a rumpled flier with a photo of Danny out the window at the man. We told him we were searching for a missing man, that we had lots of folks out in the area, that he needed to be careful because we didn't need anyone getting hurt. He grunted something in reply, unimpressed. I don't think he even looked over at the photo. Southerners often refer to people earning a special place in heaven for this or that saintly deed, but I think this fellow has earned himself a special place elsewhere. By then the rain was pounding so we decided to head back to camp.

The next couple of hours brought rain and more rain and my husband. The volunteers who'd come back to camp huddled together under the tents, grazing on what was left of the food and chatting. It was frustrating to feel the minutes ticking by when I had so little time in Nashville to help. But when I saw Danny's mother Sherry surrounded by smiling people, I understood the value of what we were doing. It reminded me of the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva after the death of a loved one. Friends and family come to visit the grieving, bringing food, and if the bereaved initiates, conversation. If nothing else, in those moments under the tent waiting out the storm, we were helping shoulder a tiny shred of Danny's family's grief, just by being there.

The rain cleared eventually and the search teams headed back out. Nick and I had gotten some wires crossed and he had arrived in flip-flops, and after hearing the word cottonmouth Nick opted to stay back and help however he could. I piled back in Richard's van and headed to the banks of the Harpeth where it runs along the vet's cemetery.

We climbed along the banks on top of felled trees and the silt and debris that settled on top. I picked my way gingerly, trying to avoid the thorny vines and barbed wire twisted in the branches and the constant threat that the unstable ground below me could shift at any moment. A tackle box half-buried in grit. Scraps of cloth dangling from the trees. The river running quietly five feet below us, and the water line from the flood reaching five feet or more above our heads. Trying not to think about our instructions to search with our noses as much as our eyes.

We were only there a little while before the dogs arrived and we had to clear out of the area so we wouldn't distract them with our smells. The sun was starting to droop in the sky, and my parents were expecting me back, so I caught a ride back to the Woof Waggin and Nick and I headed back towards Franklin.

My experience searching for Danny Tomlinson was just a glimpse of what his friends and family have been living for days and days and days now. At work today, everyone asked me how it was. I didn't know what to say. What's the right adjective to describe looking for something you want so much to find and at once want so much not to find? What do you call the place where community meets grief?

I settled on I'm glad I got to be there.

The search for Danny continues. You can join the search party every day around 8am at the Woof Waggin (568 Hwy 70) in Pegram. If you can't search, you can bring lunches or fruit or Gatorade or water or ice for the volunteers. Danny's family plans to continue the search as long as necessary. As the days go on, they will need more support than ever, so I really encourage my Nashville readers to consider helping with the search.

Discussion Question:
Did you read Antigone in 9th grade? Did you ever pronounce it Anteegawn?

res coctae or Things Cooked

2010-05-10T19:30:00.001-04:00

Some callin me a sinner / some callin me a winner
I'm callin you to dinner / And you know exactly what I mean

some stuff I've been cookin'

~~Magnolia Bakery Banana Pudding~~
Better than Magnolia Bakery Banana Pudding

photo from Crepes of Wrath

My girl Sydney over at Crepes of Wrath recently posted this incredible dupe recipe for Magnolia Bakery's banana pudding, which I knew would be a big hit with my banana-lovin husband. This recipe has banana, vanilla pudding, nilla wafers, and homemade whipped cream. What could be better?

WHAT IF WE ADDED NUTELLA

I don't think I have to tell you that this turned out to be the best dessert I have ever prepared. Ever. Also I toasted some pine nuts and sprinkled them with crushed nilla wafers on top.

Sydney says in her blog entry that this dish reaches its peak around 30 hours after you fix it and she's right. I actually fixed this on a Sunday and Nick and I worked on it all week long. If you decide to fix this Katie-style and add the Nutella, I'd recommend letting it sit out on the counter just a little before you serve it--the Nutella can chill a bit too hard.

Bacon and Egg Risotto

I mean...right? Can you even read the words 'bacon and egg risotto' without immediately wanting to bust out the arborio? This recipe also comes from Crepes of Wrath, and it is incredible. It's a classic risotto, created by simmering uncooked arborio (or carnaroli) rice, meat, and/or veggies in chicken stock, which is added in painstakingly small amounts as you stir and stir and stir. Risotto is all about the timing, so I had to stage everything before I started cooking. Lanier and Phineas approve:

Risotto is always a test of patience and this one is no exception. But it's worth it! The raw egg yolk on top makes for a very impressive presentation. Pro tip: do yourself a favor and actually use the low-sodium chicken broth, because 5+ cups of regular chicken broth has soooooo much salt. I had to learn this the hard and salty way. But other than the salt extravaganza, this turned out really amazing. I'd love to bring it to a brunch sometime but it totally worked as a dinner entree too.

Shakshuka

I didn't get a picture, so here's the one from Smitten Kitchen.

Lanier recently taught me to make eggy cups--some tomato sauce, some cheese, an an egg baked in a little ramekin. When I saw this recipe for an Israeli dish called shakshuka on Smitten Kitchen, I thought I'll be damned if that's not just a big Israeli eggy cup. And I was right. It's basically just tomato sauce (with cumin! That's what gives it that ~spicy and exotic~ flavor) and cheese and eggs. This recipe is everything a good staple recipe should be--easy, cheap, and readily made with items most people keep in stock. I'll definitely be making this again.

Panzanella

I hate being a slave to recipes, but I hate it even more when I stray with confidence only to ruin what I'm fixing. This panzanella looks pretty good, right? Homemade bread cubed and sauteed, mixed with diced veggies and fresh mozzarella cheese? I used Ina Garten's recipe as a guide but basically did my own thing, which worked out fine until the part where I made the dressing, right after I took this photo. Who has champagne vinegar sitting around their house, anyway? Sounds expensive. I used balsalmic vinegar instead. WHOOPS. My gorgeous bread salad turned into a blackened mess. It was delicious but it was so ugly. This reminds me of the time Big Jeffie came over for dinner in grad school and I purpled up the tilapia with a devil-may-care glug of red wine. He graciously ate it anyway.

Yogurt Pie

Doesn't it look like I spent more than twelve seconds making this? I didn't.

This isn't a recipe so much as it is a broad and helpful Southern dessert-preparation concept handed down from the lovely Ashley at A Boyce Blog: you can mix stuff with Cool Whip and dump it in a graham cracker pie crust and it will basically always be delicious. Just dump a container of Cool Whip and some yogurt of any flavor (between two and four cups) in a bowl, mix it up, and dump it in a graham-cracker pie crust. I used strawberry, peach, and lemon yogurt, but really the possibilities are endless.

Stick it in the fridge for an hour so it can set--or stick it in the freezer for a more ice-creamy consistency. If you're feeling fancy, you can slice some strawberries on top. I've heard this pie works beautifully with frozen lemonade concentrate instead of yogurt. Since you don't have to bake anything or really have to do anything other than operate a spoon and a bowl, this would be a great recipe to fix with kids.

Discussion Question:
So what have y'all been fixin recently?

on drowning

2010-05-05T18:25:00.000-04:00

"Louisiana 1927" by Randy Newman

The New Orleanians who are reading this probably will not click "play" on that YouTube video. Hell, I only made it to the first time Randy croons Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline just now before I had to turn it off.

Randy Newman recorded "Louisiana 1927" in 1974 as an homage to the victims of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the worst river flood in U.S. history. It's a heartbreaking lament for the people--and the place--that drowned.

But after August 28, 2005, this became Katrina's song too.

I've never really written about my experience with Katrina, except for this short poem that was published in the spring/summer 2007 volume of Zone 3. I have never found any other words for the experience.

Lullaby
by Katherine Morrow Jones

I envy the cats
and their perpetual sleep.

my mother is descended of Charlemagne
and several King Edwards and
her own mom, with her scattered mind.
mama put me to bed each night
intoxicating blonde hair and lotioned skin
but I would not go down -
awake, under blankets
imagining myself a kitten
in its mother's womb.

I slept deeply for years
in New Orleans
crescent mama
now the city sleeps
without me
the day she drowned
was thick and red
and all the way in Texas
I couldn't breathe

if god came back
he'd have to tell us
he's sorry.

* * *

I have imagined Nashville drowning before. In the unbearable days following Katrina, my reeling mind grasped at what disaster could possibly be worse than this? Only one thing I could conjure--my home, my parents' house of 25 years, washing away in a flood. Drowned like my New Orleans drowned. Absolutely nowhere safe left.

This weekend I glimpsed that worst nightmare when my hometown endured well over a foot of torrential rains over the course of 48 hours. The innumerable winding creeks and small rivers in Nashville swelled feet above their banks and flowed with a vengeance toward the Cumberland, which then crested Monday night at an astonishing 12 feet above flood stage.

What does that even mean? Here's what it means. My city was swallowed without warning by foot after foot--over 12 feet in some places--of chocolate-milk-colored flood water.

Dover Anthony plays a sad song. Knights Motel, East Nashville 5/2/10.
Photo by John Partipilo.

It is with bone-deep gratitude that I report to you that my parents' house was spared, but it was a close one--neighbors as close as two doors down sustained flood damage.

Although my house was spared, my home was not. My homeland, the neighborhoods and parks and restaurants that were the backdrop of my childhood and my husband's childhood, were damaged beyond comprehension. Bellevue and Franklin, the most beloved areas of my old stompin' grounds, sustained some of the worst damage.

And all the way in Georgia, I couldn't breathe.

Everyone's seen pictures like these before. We've watched New Orleans drown and Port-au-Prince collapse and Phuket just get washed away. So let me tell you what these pictures mean to me. Maybe it will help you understand.

View of downtown Nashville from pedestrian bridge 5/3/10.
Photo by John Partipilo.

Before I moved away to Big Cities like Atlanta, this was The City to me. The Ryman, the Mother Church of Country Music. The Riverfront. The Batman building. I was born in downtown Nashville. I got married last May in downtown Nashville to a man who was born in downtown Nashville just a few months before me. I spent lazy summer nights in high school at the Riverfront seeing free concerts at Dancin' in the District. In the summer of 2001 I saw a then-nameless John Mayer opening for They Might Be Giants.

Pinkerton Park in Franklin floods 5/2/10.
Photo by Mandy Lunn.

In 1863, Union forces built Fort Granger as an artillery position for the Franklin-Nashville campaign of the Civil War. Now Fort Granger is surrounded by a lovely, sprawling park that crawls with Franklinites on sunny days. My high school friends and I spent absolutely every warm day after school in this park trying to avoid underage smoking citations. We had a secret hideout hidden in the trees on the slopes of Fort Granger, and we used to find each other by screaming out like a bird of prey caw-CAWWWWWWW! until someone else replied in kind. I still like to while away lazy afternoons here with my best friend Emily when I'm home.

The Cascades in Opryland Hotel took on between 10 and 19 feet of water.
Photo by John Partipilo.

The Opryland Hotel,the world's largest non-casino hotel, is a Nashville institution and an incredible tourism draw. I had my junior and senior proms at the Opryland Hotel. I still remember teetering in my high heels across the endless parking lot. In more recent years, it's become a DePalma family tradition to have a sumptuous Easter Brunch in the Cascades, all roast beef and chocolate sundaes and nephews and laughter.

Residents evacuated from Fieldstone Farms 5/2/10.
Photo by Mandy Lunn.

In 9th grade geography, crazy Mrs. Redman once memorably asked the class which country was next poised for global domination. One of my classmates called out "Fieldstone Farms!" Fieldstone is a massive, massive neighborhood development in Franklin that was built in the 1990s. It is noted for having a wide range of income levels, from the affectionately-termed Village of the Damned, with its endless rows of cookie-cutter condos and identical mailboxes spaced perfectly along the street, to the very chi-chi Gated Parts where most homes boast a pool or a movie theater or sometimes both. I could spend all afternoon making a list of the families I know that live here. My beloved Bradford's mother vacuums her entire Fieldstone Farms house once a day. Jessica's parents Fieldstone Farms house, bedecked in Harley swag, was the site of many amateur haircuts and gossipy nights. Jim and Teri and Ben used to live in a teeny little house tucked into the corner of Fieldstone that was filled with nothing but love and their omnipresent dalmatian Hyper. Emily and Nikki and Mrs. Sawyer and basically practically everyone lived there. A lot of their families still do.

Metro Fire Department Special Operation rescues a Belle Meade police officer off Harding Road in Belle Meade 5/2/10. Police officer Norm Shelton was clinging to a tree for an hour before being rescued.
Photo by Shelley Mays.

This intersection may very well be the epicenter of my life in Nashville. This is the road that leads from Nashville out to my folks' house near Bellevue. Just past the boat lies St. George's, the preschool I attended with my best friends Rebecca and Bradley. The Ingram building, the office building my father worked in for twenty years (that Bradley and I would work in for 5 or 10 ourselves) is just behind where the photographer was standing. One of my earliest memories is of my father and his colleagues having a swimming race through the two-foot-deep fountain out front. Many years later, the back-breaking weekend my friends and I helped move my father's company to an office building across the street, Bradley and Kristin and I jumped in the fountain ourselves in the middle of the night and splashed around joyously. Belle Meade is pronounced like bell mead but my family likes to call it Bellay Mee-ah-day.

Homes and cars flooded in River Plantation 5/2/10.
Photo by George Walker IV

The unfortunately-named River Plantation neighborhood is just a mile or two from my parents' house. This neighborhood has been the home of dozens of my friends through the years. Jamie over at Gimmeyummy, whom both my husband and I were friends with over the years (me at TYWW and Nick in middle school) grew up here. Her folks still live there. She posted a video on Facebook of her brother and her wading through the neighborhood to see their house on Monday. Rose, the lovely and incredible mother of my dear friend of two zillion years Denise (over at ohpiegoodness) lives in River Plantation and the losses she's sustained are staggering. I'm thankful that our friends the Faireys moved out of River Plantation a couple of years ago and headed to Memphis. That's one less sad story.

Man kayaking down Hillsboro Road in Franklin 5/2/10.
Photo by Mandy Lunn.

This intrepid fellow is kayaking down the road that runs in front of mine and Nick's high school. If I have driven down this road once, I have driven down it five thousand times. Just across from this dealership sits the Franklin Sonic, home of half-price Happy Hour every day from 2-4--just in time for school to let out. If I've had one lemon-berry slush in a hot car at this Sonic, I've had five thousand lemon-berry slushes in hot cars at this Sonic. I come back virtually every single time I come home. Because there's something comforting about it, I guess.

* * *

I'll leave you with this. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes three words are worth a thousand pictures.

Sonic on Hillsboro Road in Franklin 5/3/10.
Photo submitted to CNN iReport by davbar4

We are sad.

Please donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting 'REDCROSS' to 90999 Also check out the Nashville Flood Relief Twitter and Facebook pages my old friend Ryan set up that we've been running with the help of two perfect strangers, Logan and Jeremy, who rule.

Discussion Question:
What have you lost to natural disasters?

the harrowing tale of nick's adventures in sleep apnea

2010-05-02T08:33:00.000-04:00

It's the beginning of May, as you might have noticed. The first of May finds me thinking not of maypoles and distress signals but instead of what Nick and I were up to two years ago at this time: recovering from Nick having a giant chunk of his head scooped out.

This is the story of Nick getting chopped and screwed. And being in T-Pain. Okay I'll stop

(Seriously though, if you're wondering, chopped and screwed actually refers to a method for remixing hip-hop songs. It's associated with Houston. And purple drank. So what could be more appropriate blog-readin' music for this story than hip-hop made by Texans on narcotics?

When Nick and I started dating in late 2005, we lived a maddening 1000 miles away from one another. Unable to bear the distance and the time apart, Nick used to fly to Austin or fly me to Atlanta every other weekend. Very early into these blissful weekends together, I started to notice something. Nick was an incredible snorer.

He had that classic log-sawin' open-mouthed snore that makes it impossible to sleep next to someone. Worse than that, he regularly stopped breathing and then vociferously woke himself up gasping for air. I used to lay awake at night and watch the man I was falling so deeply in love with just...stop breathing. The seconds that passed until his next breath lingered on and on like minutes or hours. Sometimes I wouldn't be able to stand it and I'd shake him awake until he sucked in a breath.

I told Nick I thought he had sleep apnea, which is basically when you stop breathing during the night. Grad school Katie was delighted to inform him that 'apnea' comes from the Greek ἄπνοια, like πνέειν (to breathe) plus an alpha privative. Nick was...somewhat less delighted.

When Nick unexpectedly moved to Austin in late 2006 and into my tiny apartment with me, the situation became a little more serious. Since my little apartment was basically just one room, there was nowhere to go to escape Nick's nightly snoring extravaganza. I bought the best earplugs I could find, which gave me some relief, but I still went to sleep every night worried that maybe Nick was going to stop breathing and never start again.

To Nick's everlasting credit, he did not wait very long before he did a sleep study. The results were sobering. Nick had sleep apnea--and how. He was basically not able to reach REM sleep at all because he stopped breathing and woke himself up approximately every six minutes. The longest period of time he went without breathing? 90 seconds. Hearing that made my stomach turn.

We had two options. Either Nick could wear a CPAP machine, which looks like this:

and sounds like this:

WRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

every night for the rest of his life or he could have surgery to take care of it.

Who likes getting cut into? Nick decided to give the CPAP a try.

The CPAP machine was a bust from the start. CPAP stands for 'continuous positive airway pressure' and basically it is supposed to keep your airways open by changing the pressure inside your blah blah basically it just blows air up your nose and down your throat all night. Nick was MISERABLE. Perhaps it wasn't calibrated right. He just never got comfortable with it on. It felt weird to have all that dry air circulating through his airways all night. Add to that the fact that the machine was kind of loud AND that I woke up every morning next to something that looked approximately like this:

and you can see why we were both pretty miserable about the CPAP from the get go. It wasn't long before Nick started making arrangements to have his sleep apnea taken care of surgically.

Nick scheduled his surgery for the end of April 2008. His wonderful mother Susie made plans to come down for a week to help me take care of her ailing son, and I made arrangements with the good folks at UT Press to work from home for a week so I could look after my ailing now-fiancé.

The docket for Nick's surgery was impressive. It started out sounding pretty minor--fix the deviated septum, remove the giant tonsils. But the second two items on the list sounded a lot worse. They were going to remove his uvula and part of his soft palate?

For those of you who were not paying close attention in anatomy class, here's a diagram of the back of the mouth:

everything in green? GONE.

I knew then that Nick and I would never have the his-and-hers uvula piercings I had always imagined...

I'm kidding, Mom! Photo via headovmetal's Flickr

When the day of the surgery came, I think I was more nervous than Nick and Susie put together. I cried when they wheeled him down to surgery. I couldn't concentrate on the manuscript I brought with me to copyedit in the waiting room. The whole day is a blur of daytime TV and vending machines.

Nick came through surgery beautifully. He was awake when they wheeled him back to his room, and he was able to write us little notes to tell us how he was and what he needed and mostly that he loved us a lot. The surgeon told Susie, "Ma'am, your son really knows how to grow some huge tonsils." We brought Nick presents and doted over him and spent all the time we could in the hospital with him over the next couple of days until he came home. One evening Susie caught me on my knees in the hospital's chapel with tears running down my face saying a quick thank you to The Powers That Be. She said it was the sweetest thing but maybe I was being a teeny bit dramatic.

And perhaps I was. But it was a pretty big deal, as far as I could tell! They really hollowed that boy out. The back of Nick's throat looked like nothing I had ever seen before. It's the shape of the inside of a cathedral or a marquise-cut diamond.

It's kind of beautiful.

Nick spent basically the next 8 days or so hopped up on the legal equivalent of purple drank, sleeping constantly and healing up beautifully, so Susie and I took advantage of that time to drink Coors Light and gossip and plant a beautiful little garden and have all kinds of soon-to-be mother-and-daughter-in-law adventures. My favorite moment was probably our catastrophic attempt at making homemade mashed potatoes in this tiny, useless device:

Soooo Nick healed up and Susie went home and we all lived happily ever after, right? Well, yes. Mostly.

Two weeks after the surgery, Nick seemed to have made a complete recovery. He was back at work and life was back to normal. It was a Thursday night and I was tutoring my beloved Gregory Mohan in Latin at a little Italian restaurant a few miles away from my apartment. We had just ordered our slices of pizza and were settling in for an afternoon of conjugating when my phone rang. It was Nick. I answered.

My fiancé screamed into the phone back at me. I'M BLEEDING! YOU HAVE TO COME HOME NOW! The urgency in his voice broke into a sob. THERE'S SO MUCH BLOOD.

As he's saying these words, I'm floating out of the door of the restaurant, my feet not touching the ground. I'm calling over my shoulder GREG CALL YOUR MOM TO COME GET YOU THERE'S AN EMERGENCY and I'm in my car driving home on two wheels. I'm calling an ambulance and then a few moments later I'm hearing the ambulance in the distance already on its way to him. It's funny how slow and clear everything seems in those moments of absolute and complete panic.

When I was just a few blocks from home I got caught at a red light. A huge pack of motorcyclists were taking up almost a block of space, loosely scattered across two lanes, blocking my way into a gas station parking lot where I could circumvent the light. I skidded to a stop behind them and layed on my horn. GET OUT OF THE F$%&ING WAY I screamed crazily out my open window, a bespectacled young woman with a car full of Latin books picking a fight with a motorcycle gang. Several of the bikers literally flicked their kickstands down and got off their bikes and started making towards me with venomous eyes. I did not know these things actually happened outside of S.E. Hinton novels and Michael Jackson videos but I did not have time to stick around and see if there was going to be any coordinated dancing. I leaned my body halfway out of my car and screamed with all of my might, my voice breaking, I AM HAVING A MEDICAL EMERGENCY PLEASE F$#*$ING MOVE SO I CAN PULL THROUGH THAT PARKING LOT The bikers wasted no time getting out of my crazed way. I honked and waved gratefully as I peeled through the parking lot towards home.

I got to our townhouse right as the ambulance was getting there to find Nick in the front yard with blood trickling out of his mouth and soaking his shirt, an impressive trail of blood leading back to our apartment. He was panicked but it was clear that the bleeding was slowing and the worst was over. I followed the ambulance to the hospital.

It turned out Nick had coughed and blown a suture in the back of his mouth, and a blood vessel had ruptured. When Nick called me, the blood was shooting out of his mouth in a spray. Later on I found that Nick had tried to clean up a lot of the blood in the bathroom so I wouldn't be frightened when I saw it, but it still looked like someone had taken a water balloon filled with blood and dropped it into the bathroom sink. It was like a crime scene. I'd find blood spatters in the house for months to come.

They had to do emergency cauterization on Nick's wounds that night to guarantee that the vessel wouldn't rupture again. More anesthesia, another night spent in the hospital. My dear friend Sam Hoekstra (now Hoffpaiur) came to the hospital in the middle of the night (on a work night!) to come and keep me company and distract me. I will never forget how kind she was and how much I appreciated it.

And THEN Nick healed up and everything was fine and we lived happily ever after. And Nick doesn't really snore anymore, and he definitely doesn't stop breathing during the night. So we're extra happy. The end.

Discussion Question:
What's the scariest phone call you've ever gotten?

the poetics of Lil Wayne

2010-04-28T14:46:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my bibliophilia post, a great deal of my undergraduate research was dedicated to invective poetry. Specifically, I wrote a lot about the connections between Roman satirist Juvenal and popular rap artist Eminem.

Since I spent my undergraduate years in New Orleans, I spent a lot of time fielding questions about the difference between Juvenal and Juvenile.

Juvenal. Juvenile. Ianus?

But I digress. My undergraduate days might be a distant memory, and my years in New Orleans may be long gone, but I still spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about the poetics of hip-hop.

I've actually been working on a blog post about hypallage, but I popped Lil Wayne's incredible 2007 mixtape The Drought is Over Pt. 2 (download it free + legal here) in my CD player today at lunch and I was like damn! That's a lot of puns.

Eight clever uses of double-meaning in a single verse of a Lil Wayne song today. This, I thought, would make a great blog post. I apologize in advance for the formatting--this is tricky to lay out in a way that is easy to read.

Lil Wayne "I Know the Future" [Tha Carter III Sessions]

Straight from the bottom of the cut
I give it to these b*tch n****s like Mama taught me
One man with no weapon at war, but I'm an army
My flow is capital, attention! Lieutenant, you're penny-pinchin'
And they demolished that invention
You better get your dollars up
And guess what, I was up
I get my cheese like Mickey Mouse
or else you better Donald Duck
Like a shooting range target
I get all kinda bucks
Be my shooting-range target
N**** I got good luck
N**** bye bye good luck
Got your momma shook up
Lil bad *ss n**** who thought Popeye wasn't tough
I'm on that lala twist it up
I'm on that syrup slow it down
and I like four freaks too, and I ain't Yung Joc but its going down
I buy that marijuana field, then I just mow it down
Big Bad Wolf yes I just blow it down
(no homo) and to Holly Grove I will hold it down
Like a circle of knives I got the sharpest flow around

My flow is capital - His flow is capital (adj, excellent, important), but his flow is also capital (n, a source of profit). The addressee of the song has a flow that is weak by comparison ('you're penny-pinchin').

I get my cheese like Mickey Mouse - He accumulates a lot of cheese (slang n, money) much in the way beloved cartoon Mickey Mouse gets cheese (n, dairy-based food product)

you better Donald Duck - You'd better duck (v, crouch) (referring to popular pantsless Disney character Donald Duck (n, waterfowl)

Like a shooting-range target / I get all kinda bucks - In the almost effortless way that hunters shoot at plastic bucks (n, deer) at a shooting range, Lil Wayne accumulates bucks (slang n, money).

I ain't Yung Joc but its going down - It's going down (slang phrase, something is about to happen), despite the fact that Lil Wayne is not Yung Joc (ATL rap artist who performed the incredibly quotable 2006 hit "It's Goin Down"**)

**Hilariously, there is a Wikipedia disambiguation page for the phrase "It's Goin' Down"

I buy that marijuana field, then I just mow it down - Lil Wayne mows (v, cuts down) the marijuana field and mows (v, destroys) it down by smoking it

Big Bad Wolf yes I just blow it down (no homo) - A beguiling three-part pun! Like the Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, Lil Wayne blows (v, sends forth a current of air) the field down and blows (v, exhales) the marijuana smoke. Lil Wayne throws in his signature (and controversial) three-syllable caveat "no homo" so that we don't consider a third meaning of blow--one that refers to a sexual act on a man.

Like a circle of knives I got the sharpest flow around - An interesting dual pun. Lil Wayne has the sharpest flow around (n phrase, the most incisive rapping skills), which is similar to a circle of knives (which are sharp and arranged in a round shape)

...This is the kind of thing I think about all day.

Discussion Question:
What is your favorite poetic device? Here's a handy glossary to jog your memory.

neologism

2010-04-26T18:28:00.001-04:00

Here's a concept we need a word/short phrase for in English:

the experience of not liking something until you learn that someone you care about likes it

Anyone have any suggestions as to how to form this word? I can't think of a way to combine Greek or Latin roots together elegantly enough to convey this. I mean just love+another isn't right and love+because+another isn't right either and anyway it's awkward to stick a preposition in the middle of a word like that.

Unless you're German. Ichmagesweileseuchgefällt? Someone help me out here.

EDIT: Maybe I'm overthinking this. Rude Boy Syndrome?

Discussion Question:
What are other words the English language is lacking?