Anna Nicole Watch!

According to this, Anna Nicole Smith has pneumonia. Egads!

Quoth Anna Nicole's lawyer Wayne Munroe: "She has a slight case of pneumonia ... [W]e've had a sudden change of weather here due to a cold snap."

Point the first: Is Howard K. Stern no longer her lawyer? When did this happen?

Point the second: Since when did a cold snap lead to pneumonia??

Point the third: You may or may not remember my potentially libelous contention, first posted here, that Howard K. Stern killed Daniel (Anna Nicole's son) and married her to steal all her money. Now that he's solidified her position as the sole adult potential heir, he's moving in for the kill (literally)! Watch out, Anna Nicole!

Seriously, I write like I'm joking, but I'm halfway not. I really do think he's going to kill her. Or at least bleed her dry via power of attorney status (which you KNOW he has now that he convinced her to marry him, if he somehow didn't manage to get it before).

Where Am I Going, Where Have I Been?

A big shout-out to all my gentle readers who haven't actually, y'know, met me in person. Wow, strangers look at this place too! Weird!

Of course, lest I get too big of a head, I need to remind myself that so far that category consists of two people...but Rome wasn't built in a day. Obviously this is only the beginning of bigger and better things.

Anyway, I went on a bit of an unintentional hiatus there as I suddenly found myself with a disturbingly high level of a social life. But hey, who's going to complain about that, right? A few weekends ago Miss Alli was here, which is always about the Good Times, followed by a visit from my "previously unmentioned but no less dear to me than other friends" pal Gill. Not this weekend, but the next one, the law student comes (and Miss Alli, again, whoo whoo!), followed by the professor the week after that. And then, dear god, it's Thanksgiving! Where DOES the time go indeed.

More importantly, I am establishing some stability and regular things that make life all the more pleasant. Mondays I see friends of my sister's I seem to have stolen from her (hey, they live five minutes from me!) (that said, I do feel guilty about that but she doesn't seem to care...uh, right?); Tuesdays she and I go running; Thursdays I see another friend; Sunday is my community band rehearsal....etc. Seriously, this is the most I've ever gone out since, like, college. In NYC I was occupied with the dual responsibilities of working full-time/being in grad school part-time so when I did have a moment free, I either would see a select few friends or enjoy the fact I had a night at home. In Cincinnati I was occupied with the now ex-boy at first and just when I felt inclined to try to branch out...we broke up, which naturally derailed that.

Still into the volunteer idea, mostly trying to figure out when I can sandwich in all the training needed. But I definitely haven't abandoned it.

On the job front, I am cautiously optimistic about a prospect and am avoiding proclaiming the news from the mountaintops only because nothing is more embarrassing than sending a second mass email. "Whoops....um, nevermind."

Pants Boy update: I emailed for clarification on whether or not the whole thing was a joke or seriously something about me he was viewing as needing to "get over." Yes, I am an overanalytical freak, but a) that's what happens when you spends years in a counseling program, and b) I was feeling bad about myself as a result of it, and if I misunderstood him, all the better. If I didn't, better to find out before a second date, you know?

Update

Pants boy just emailed me that he had a great time and would like to get together again. Huh?

Two steps forward, one step back

So I guess I'd decided to return to the world of online dating because when someone emailed me from the site and seemed potentially cool, I responded. He made me do the phone audition thing and considering we talked for 4.5 hours, and then we texted, emailed, and/or talked on the phone every day between the audition and yesterday's date, I was pretty optimistic it would at least be a fun friend situation even if the in-person attraction wasn't there. Well, it was definitely fun, and on my end there was definitely chemistry, so I would have gone out again had he asked. Until he texted me that basically he didn't like the way I dressed. WTF? On the date he TWICE brought up the pants I was wearing (cargo), and what was the deal with them, which kind of confused me. I should have known it would be an issue when during the phone audition he mentioned one of his failed online dates was dressed "casually" for their first date, which was a turn-off. When I asked for clarification on that he said that jeans and a nice shirt were fine, but ratty jeans and a ratty shirt were not. Okay, that's fair and sounded reasonable. But I was wearing the aforementioned cargo pants, a black v-neck shirt, doc martens, and a long gray crocheted sweater with a hood. Plus assorted jewelry, I wore the little amount of makeup I wear...the point being I didn't look like I'd just rolled out of bed. I also need to add that he was wearing jeans himself, so it's not like he showed up in a suit or something.

In his defense, I need to tell the whole story by saying after we left I was thinking about his excessive interest in the pants and wondering if that was really a huge deal or if he was kidding, so I texted and said something like, "Are the pants really deal breaking excessively casual? Because now I'm paranoid." And he responded with something like, "If by deal breaking, you mean trending towards, then yes." So if I didn't want to know, I shouldn't have asked. I just had no idea it was really THAT huge of a deal.

Anyway, it's all very weird. I would be inclined to think he made this reason up to avoid saying "it's because you suck," but the very first thing he said when he saw me was, "What's up with the pants?" so even if it's ALSO that I suck, it was enough of an issue to be the first thing he says, even before hello.

So even if he were to ask me out again, I'd be extremely hesitant to say yes, despite the fact that until then I'd liked him. Basically I did the "you're not good enough for me the way you look now" thing with ex-Cincinnati and am not really inclined to go back down that road again. Of course, having said that and sounding all Strong Independent Woman, it still stings a little to show up for a date thinking you looked pretty cute, only be told that dear god, you are a nightmare.

Movie Goodness

Okay, the best movie of 2006 title can now officially be ripped away from the tie of Half-Nelson and Marie Antoinette (both of which I liked, but didn't absolutely adore) and awarded to The Departed. Seriously, it's fucking awesome. As I write this I'm picturing the look of horror and disgust on my friend the law student's face, because she'd emailed me a few days ago she saw it and hated it, and I'd responded that I hadn't been particularly interested in going myself, so thanks for confirming my lack of desire. So why did I go, then? Well, I do like movies, so when someone invites me to one, and it's not Employee of the Month with Jessica Simpson, I'll probably go, even when it's a movie I think I have no interest in.

I don't really care for movies about mobsters (with the exception of Goodfellas, #2 on my list of all-time favorite movies), and with the exception of the previously noted Goodfellas, I've never really particularly liked a Martin Scorsese movie either. No, not even Raging Bull or Taxi Driver! I hate them both! But the story of this one was really good; the performances were all excellent (I thought Marky Mark was especially fabulous); and it had a kick-ass soundtrack. Really, I'm noticing more and more that while I actually don't listen to music much unless I'm either in my car or running, the way it's used in television and movies will really affect how I enjoy them. And one of the things that made the movie so enjoyable was the music choices and how effectively Scorsese used them.

The only downside is that I made the mistake of going to the bathroom at about minute 7, when the setup was detailed (i.e., what Leonardo DiCaprio's role in the movie would be), so I was a bit lost for a minute on that. But actually, I really want to see it again. I just saw it last night! How can that be? It's just that good.

So unless you're the law student, I would recommend seeing this movie early and often. Please help dethrone Grudge 2 from the top spot for next week!

Frivolity and Miscellany

Am I conveying a message that I am a Serious Candidate for a position when I mail a thank-you note adorned with a super heroes stamp? Because when I bought them, I wasn't thinking of job things. I was thinking I hate the American flag ones, and I hate the love ones, and ooh! The Incredible Hulk! Unfortunately they are HUGE and take up a great deal of the teeny-tiny thank-you card sized envelopes I use. Combine this with the ginormous address labels I inadvertantly purchased (they were smaller in the online version, I swear!), and I look more than a wee bit flaky.

This is, of course, assuming they even look at the envelope, or the card, for that matter. When did this practice of writing thank-you notes for someone deigning to talk to you about why you are good enough to work for them become standard? Because I'm sure they don't bother to read the damn thing, but don't send one and you're OFF the list of candidates! That sucks and blows.

Speaking of jobs, my days as a photographer's assistant are numbered. Depending on how things shake out, I don't think I'll be back there after this week, which I am actually pretty much fine with. It was an awesome assignment but the hours were killing me. Not to mention the fact once I mastered the art of posing the small child on about day three, I spent a lot of time kind of bored. The other reason I'm pretty much fine with it is that I am probably going to start a new assignment with a place I can only call Corporate, because if this were my actual, like, career, I would shoot myself in the head. It's basically an answering service place where I wear a freaking headset and answer phones through a computer program! It's simultaneously hilarious and really weird. However, the plusses of this assignment are plentiful:

* Less horrific hours (8:30-5, meaning I can return to the time I used to get up in Cincinnati--5:30 or so, which includes working out, showering, eating breakfast, and making my lunch--and not have to keep going to bed at 7:30 to get up at 4:30 to do all that stuff, the way I'm doing now)
* Convenient commute (15-20 minutes from my house, no highways needed!)
* Lots and lots of web surfing time. This is actually a mixed blessing, because really even I'm ready to leave the computer after a solid 6 hours of online stuff, but most notably, I can do research for jobs and work on cover letters and whatnot, which I'm not currently able to do in the photography job.

Finally, the photographer from Karen and Joey F's wedding sent her a link to some of the photos and they ROCK. I'm not such a fan of the soft bordered ones that are supposed to be all goopy and romantic, but there are some really cool shots. This is one of my favorites, which is me looking at a picture I'd just taken of Karen:

Nice, huh?

Positive

For whatever reason, HIV Counseling has long been a secondary interest of mine, after working in high schools. I don't have any obvious reason a shrink would pick up on immediately or anything--I don't know anybody who's died of AIDS, and while I know two people who are HIV-positive, one was a co-worker I wasn't particularly close to (I only found out after he'd left the job), and the other was someone I wasn't particularly great friends with in college. The point being, I don't have some personal, familiar connection to the disease. The only thing I can think of is that it's another example of wanting to work with people who are not, to employ the phrase I've been using ad nauseum in job interviews lately, "predestined for success." Despite growing up in a John Hughes upper-middle-class white suburban existance, the problems this set faces don't interest me nearly as much as problems of people who don't have birthright advantages--whether it's because of race, gender, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation...whatever. And HIV/AIDS is certainly yet another example of how someone can be (and historically has been) discriminated against, whether it's at the personal/familial, local, or governmental levels.

But really, that's only an insight that came to me right at this moment, so who knows how valid it is?

Whatever my motivation, as part of my quest to Build a Life for myself here, I recently investigated volunteering at a clinic downtown that has a lot of HIV/AIDS services. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. All the reasons I was excited sound really selfish--I can do counseling again, which will help me feel better about not having a counseling job! I can meet people and make some friends (probably not clients, since that's, y'know, usually unethical, but fellow volunteers)! Etc!--but sadly, everything one does has an element of self-interest, even theoretically selfless things like volunteering. That's what's sort of ironic about volunteering--it's about feeling good about yourself just as much as it is about helping others.

So anyway, I went to the volunteer orientation and filled out an application and asked them to email me information about how to become certified in HIV counseling and administration of the test you give to determine if someone is positive. Among the steps you have to take, you have to be observed giving five people negative results, and then five people positive results.

And that's when the fear and the doubt started to set in. Who am I to tell someone s/he is HIV-positive? What kind of responsibility am I thinking about taking on? I'm totally serious here. Despite all the efforts to reframe HIV in a less scary light (even in the volunteer orientation they were quick to point out, "It's not a death sentence anymore!" Well, no, it's not, but if you ask 99/100 people if they would like to be HIV-negative or HIV-positive, which do you think they'll choose?), if you're old enough to remember when it first really started to become a Big Deal, you're going to Freak Out if you're told you're positive. No matter how your body handles the aftermath, no matter how you handle the aftermath, your brain is going to return to the moment that I look at you sympathetically and say, "I'm sorry to tell you that your results came back and you tested positive for HIV." Am I the face people want to see and remember? Am I the face I want people to see and remember?

This type of counseling is the real deal. There's a reason I went into school counseling over therapy, y'all, and it's not just so I didn't have to get a Ph.D. and write a dissertation. Okay, that's a huge reason, but more importantly, it was also about being afraid of the more intimate connection a therapist/client has than a school counselor/student. Yes, there were students I was close to, and I still wonder how they're doing and I hope they're okay, whether they're now at college or still in high school. But the closeness wasn't just about me helping them with the college process...it was about having a good time on a school field trip or whatever. There were students I talked to and helped through emotional times, but that wasn't all our relationship was built on. As an HIV counselor, it's going to be built on delivering some really traumatic news. Is that something I can handle?

I guess the answer is "yes," because even though I'm scared shitless, I'm still pressing forward with trying to get the certification. Of course, as with everything, there are a million hurdles, most notably you can only do the training during the day. So hopefully I can cram it all in while my life is still in temporary holding pattern. Because I don't think once I get a job (if I ever do) I can immediately take some days off for this.

I never want fear to hold me back from doing things. There are plenty of reasons to make one choice over another in life, but fear of failure is never one that I want to control me. Of course the failure stakes are so much higher now--if I'm a bad HIV counselor, I'm not just fucking myself over, I'm involving other people. But I guess I have to sort of have faith in the training process and believe that it will equip me to sensitively deliver the news. And, more importantly, I have to be positive and have faith in myself to be able to use the training, and whatever skills I have already, whether through previous counselor training or just as a sensitive human being, to push through the fear and be able to do something I've thought about doing for a long time.

My brain, too full of celebrity uselessness it is

I'm tired of the sick sense of shame that comes from having a subscription to Star magazine. In addition, I'm owning the facts I can tell the Olsen twins apart and that when I see the phrase "creator of the Girls Gone Wild series," I instantly say, "Oh yeah, Joe Francis." Sure, when I looked at the Ohio Graduation Test for science last March (given to 10th graders, mind you), I couldn't make it past page one, nevermind the jillions of questions they ask. My brain knows what it knows! What can I do about it?

So with that disclaimer, I must say that when I read this bit online from Us magazine, I nearly vomited:

Three years after Michael Jackson’s ex-wife Debbie Rowe filed for visitation rights and custody of the couple’s kids, Prince Michael, 9, and Paris, 8 – something she voluntarily gave up in 2001 – the battle is over. (Jackson has a third child, Prince Michael II, 4, whose mother has never been identified.) A source close to Jackson – who has been living in Bahrain since 2005 – tells Us that Rowe has given up all visitation rights in exchange for reinstated alimony payments of about $750,000 a year. “It was hard for Debbie, but she’s broke,” explains the insider. The singer’s attorney, Michael Abrams, tells Us, “Michael is satisfied with the results, and I believe Ms. Rowe is satisfied." Rowe’s lawyer, Marta Almli, had no comment.

This woman is completely vile and I hate her! I have nothing more coherent to say than that, I am too busy being filled with rage. Seriously people. It was bad enough when she did it the first time around, but to do it now, after all the crazy shite we've since found out about Michael Jackson....she is pure evil. Even if you don't believe he molested the kid he was acquitted of molesting (and, for the record, I do, and the one from back in 1994, and most likely many others), enough other craziness has come out about the man that clearly he is, at best, an unstable father. But you care so little about your kids' well-being and emotional/physical safety that you'll walk away for $750,000/year?

In addition to being one of the grossest human beings ever, she's also a complete idiot. In between all the stories of Jacko's insanity, all we hear about is how the man is nearly broke. I mean, he had to borrow some insane amount of money ($20 million, I think it was) against his ownership of the Beatles catalog! If you're going to be the devil incarnate, jesus, get a lump sum from this guy. I don't trust he can come up with that payment for two years, never mind THE REST OF HER LIFE.

Unrelatedly to this item, but thematically related (as in, crazy celebrities and the evil people around them), can I just say what the FUCK is up with Anna Nicole Smith and Howard K. Stern? If you live in a cave (or, ya know, get your news from more reputable sources than Star magazine), he's her creepily overly devoted lawyer who's been fighting for her right to inherit her dead billionaire husband's money. I've long thought he was a little too involved in her life and had too much influence over her, despite the way the media and everybody presents him as "her loving and devoted platonic friend," and the stories that are coming out now only affirm that the main component necessary for mad counseling skillz--intuition--is still in full force, even if I don't get to use it on young impressionable teenage minds these days. Yes yes, with this "wedding," or "commitment ceremony," or whatever it was that happened between them in the Bahamas just seconds after her son's mysterious death (more on that in a moment), even Star magazine is on board with thinking He's Just Weird. Sayeth Anna Nicole's former manager, "Howard is not the nicest person in the world. He seems very controlling. I think he's in for the settlement." (as in, the money she'll inherit if she wins the suit.) Gee Eric the Former Manager, ya think? "Seems" very controlling? Oh man. As I speculated to the professor a week or so ago, I'm sure he has power of attorney and is slowly siphoning off her money, just like Kathy Griffin's adorable and hilarious (but thieving) now ex-husband did to her. And now he's married her? Oh my Lord.

And seriously, this is incredibly inflammatory and if I posted on something more substantial than freaking blogspot I'd probably be sued, but I'm really honestly wondering if Howard K. Stern had something to do with Daniel's (her son's) death. Really. The kid had methadone and two different antidepressants in his system! Despite the media's attempts to portray him as "really well-adjusted," one, he's Anna Nicole's son, so clearly he was a few bricks shy of a full load in the sanity department. But two, in the next breath (sentence) things will be said (written) like, "He was embarrassed by all the teasing from his appearances on the Anna Nicole Show and dropped out of high school." So obviously he had some issues and I'd buy the antidepressants (though TWO confuses me), but methadone? Nobody's hinted anything about heroin addictions, past or present, so why did he have it? And why isn't anybody else asking this question?

So I am completely serious when I say that at this point I really do believe HKS knocked off Daniel in the final effort to completely isolate her and make her completely dependent on him so that he can be a rich, rich man. And since Anna Nicole is clearly both insane and has the mental capacity of a two-year-old, he's just as evil as Debbie Rowe. Even more so, actually.

File under: People are weird (AGAIN)

A 53-year-old living in San Francisco "winked" at me online. Dude, why so hostile? And, if you're looking for friendship and/or sex, why are you approaching women who live cross-country? And of course...why am I only attracting people who live nowhere near me, or are kind of creepy and weird?

More About What I Am Looking For:
A non-married woman or women for friendship, play, maybe more. Sex is a separate question, and I mean it. Age matters little. Race matters little. I do prefer maturity. But the bottom line is, I prefer the company of thoughtful females. Always have. A preference for slender or height/weight proportionate for romance. Sorry. Seems wired in. I do note, however, that my history shows that this is not as firm a barrier as it might be.You must have an occupation or seriously be on the way toward one. If it is "writer" or "artist" or "designer" or "interior decorator" or (gag me) "muse", you must know that I will be curious about (in general) your work. I don't care AT ALL what your job OR income is. I don't need your hard-earned dough. I want to know that YOU know what world working people live in. This is information you would want and deserve from me, and I have therefore included it above. If you skip the question or do not have an occupation that generally pays your bills, I'll assume you are a pro concubine or that you got a pretty good first-wife divorce deal and now you're looking for another meal ticket. It ain't me, babe. If you're simply part of a wealthy family, that's sweet, and I hope you do good deeds, but such heiresses would generally NOT be on this site. Rich males WOULD. If this requires further explanation to you or evidence from me, you're much too young for me. Good Luck; sadly, you'll really need it.

Television shows I do not watch and am sick of reading about (or more accurately, skipping articles about):

1). House
2). Grey's Anatomy (and, secondarily, the words "McDreamy" and/or "va-jay-jay"
3). Lost

Bad Hair Day

While I definitely like having short hair and think on a day-to-day basis I look much better with it than when I had it halfway down my back, there are times when I wish I had longer hair. Those times are whenever I am required to be remotely formal. For example, my sister's wedding. That requires something more than everyday hair. Unfortunately there's just not as much you can do with short hair as you can when it's longer.

Such limitations are what lead to disasters like this:

As I uploaded the picture, I was hoping it didn't look as bad as I remembered it looking when I walked away from the hairstylist's chair...but it did. Maybe you can't appreciate it in this picture, but it was large, and puffy, and had been hairsprayed/shellacked to within an inch of its life. As Colon Full o'Carrots and She Spills the Beans, the other two bridesmaids, approached Karen, she looked excited and said, "You look so great!!" Not so as I headed towards her. Instead, she got an interesting look and said, "Wow...what do you think?" I said, "I feel like Beezus when she got her hair done by the beauty school student!" and she instantly started laughing hysterically before stopping and saying, "No, I'm sorry, it's just that I thought the exact same thing. But it's not true!!" Well, clearly it was, since we'd both independently thought it, and when I said it to Colon, she too knew instantly what it meant.

If you are not someone who read girl books in the 1980s, Beezus refers to Ramona Quimby's older sister, who, in Ramona and Her Mother, insisted she would no longer be getting a haircut from her mother, but wanted to go to a real live salon. Unfortunately her dream stylist had graduated and she was stuck with someone new. This was the result:

Fortunately for all involved, a) my hair calmed down a bit by the time of the actual ceremony, and b) I knew it wasn't worth freaking out about. No, it was not my ideal look, but ultimately I didn't really give a shit. I didn't want to look like ass, but ultimately it was something I knew I'd be laughing about later. And hell, I cracked up when I looked up this illustration last night, and I'm cracking up now as I type this, so I guess that was the right attitude to have about it.

Aside from the hair disaster, there was girliness abounding as we prepped for The Big Day. Manicures and pedicures, oh my! If you haven't had a pedicure, man, you need to have one immediately. There's something so relaxing about having your feet scrubbed vigorously, then lotioned and your nails clipped, all the while your unworked-on-foot sitting in a pool of warm bubbling water, your back being pummeled to an inch of its life on a chair massager...SWEET. This is a pampering ritual I can definitely get behind.

And you know what? Looking at a final picture, the hair wasn't so bad. Right?

From Trash to Class

From the bachelorette party (yes, that is a veil with condoms pinned to it) to her wedding day...gentle readers, I present to you: my lovely sister!!

I'm kidding, of course. She's not actually doing coke, amusing as the image is. And of course my sister is NEVER trash. It just had a nice little almost rhyme to it.

More seriously, the wedding ended a few hours ago and it was nothing less than awesome. I surprised myself by how emotional I got over the whole thing, and I am surprised now at how sentimental I am about suddenly acquiring a new brother. I still am not a huge proponent of wedding hoopla, and I still believe that if I met someone who was adamantly opposed to marriage for reasons I could understand and get behind, I would be perfectly content living with him in sin for the rest of my life. But by the same token, I get a little more why weddings are so important to so many people. Because if I was crying during the ceremony and find myself now viewing Joey F. as a brother and his parents and brother as part of my extended family, for better and for worse...I can only imagine how much more intense and meaningful it is for my sister, the one actually finding someone she loves so much she wants to spend the rest of her life with, and take on the trials and tribulations of a whole new family with all their dramas (and good things too!).

More details and more pictures to come soon. But I just had to post on the actual day of the event to say how happy I am for the both of them, and how perfect the whole day was.

"I no more wrote than read that book which is
The self I am, half-hidden as it is
From one and all who see within a kiss
The lounging formless blackness of an abyss

How could I think the brief years were enough
To prove the reality of endless love?"

--Delmore Schwartz (from the title page of Scott Spencer's Endless Love)

Friday Night Lights: Keep them turned on

This is Part 3 in the reviews of new television shows I'm watching

Before I get started, can I just say, you're probably all thinking "No wonder she didn't become a writer!" Seriously, I know these headlines are ridiculous...I'm mostly doing them to be silly. Mostly.

That said, I should also note that it is impossible for me to review this without talking about the book on which it is based, and it is impossible for me to discuss the show without some major spoilers of both. You have been warned!

Even though I hate most sports, and football in particular, I have enjoyed many a book, television program, and/or movie about high school football. One, the high school element always makes me happy. Two, assuming it's remotely serious and thoughtful about it (rather than a rah-rah "Will Johnny score the winning touchdown and earn the head cheerleader's love?"-type deal), I love the glimpses into someone else's life, a life completely foreign from my own, where football is actually remotely important. On one of my ill-fated interviews recently, the interviewer observed, "When you majored in Creative Writing, you specialized in narrative fiction, didn't you?" Why, yes, I did, and why did he ask? Well, because apparently I'd said more than once that I liked hearing people's "stories." That's the type of non-fiction I like the best--a year in the life type slice of what's going on with a group of people, particularly if they're very different from my own life, to get insight into something I haven't experienced.

Friday Night Lights the book is most certainly a life not led by me or anybody I know. It's the story of a small, poor town in Texas where the most important thing going on is the high school's football team and where, if you're one of its players, the high point of your life will be your role on the team. After you graduate? It's all downhill from there. The book was later turned into a movie, and now here it is on television every week. How will it go?

I mostly really, really liked it a lot. There were some definitely cheesy moments (like when the half-drunk football player toasted "To football! To Texas!"), but one of the high points is that it didn't feel like a pilot. You know, with Basil Exposition all explaining so much shit that the real action doesn't occur until week two. Yes, we had to learn who all these players were, but it was mostly done very seamlessly, e.g., when the star quarterback was interviewed by the NBC affiliate. In addition, the cinematography (if that's still the word you use when referring to television vs. movies) was really gritty, which sounds like a weird compliment but made it look very different from a glossy happy television show. They even actually made a football game--usually the moment at which I fast-forward, or, if reading a book, flip ahead--interesting and suspenseful. So go Peter Berg (writer/director of the pilot, and director of the movie) (also director of one of my all-time favorite failed shows, Wonderland, starring the awesome Martin Donovan and Michelle Forbes. Le sigh) for those accomplishments!

My biggest complaint is where it diverged from the book. I can't help it, I am a purist when it comes to adapting books into movies/television. If you make a change, and I can't figure out why you did it, I'm going to be annoyed. Sometimes it does make sense--e.g., About a Boy, which has a very long scene in the book where Marcus and Ellie wander off mourning the death of Kurt Cobain. Well, the movie came out 10 years later and was set in the present...that wouldn't really make sense. So that's okay. In this case (spoilers, spoilers, spoilers!) the change is surrounding the Big Injury. In Friday Night Lights the television show, in Game 1 of the new head coach's season, the star quarterback who we've already heard such hyperbole about as "The best I've seen in 25 years of recruiting for Notre Dame," who calls the mayor "ma'am," who interviews charmingly, who has two loving caring parents, who even loves his virgin girlfriend over the town slut, is critically injured. Like, will he ever walk again? injured. This happens in the middle of a really close second half where it's not obvious at all who will win the game, and he's carried off in a stretcher and the whole town proceeds to Freak Out.

In the book, however, there are two major differences. One, the outcome of the game was a foregone conclusion (they were going to win), and the coach had the guy playing anyway rather than letting some second- and third-stringers off the bench. Two, and much more disturbingly in terms of "why make the change," the kid was black, poor, had family problems (I've forgotten the specifics but he was living with his uncle throughout the book), and was, at best, brash and kind of obnoxious. Football was this kid's chance to go to college and get out of the depressed town, given the fact he could barely read and was passed through the years on the basis of his athleticism. The injury wasn't as immediately serious in the book--it was never a question of whether he would walk again. Unfortunately, it did wind up basically ruining him because he never played as well again, and a huge chunk of the book is watching him sort of completely fall apart and not really recover, ever. In addition, the coach got a lot of heat for playing him when "he really shouldn't have."

What the book did so well was examine a lot of the underlying racism that still existed in this town and how it applied to the football players. Actually, it wasn't even underlying--people flat out called some of the team the n-word in casual conversation, not even pejoratively, as if they were saying nothing more innocuous than "boys" or "players." And to see how the attitude towards this star shifted when he was no longer the star, and how his race and class played so much into the shifting attitude towards him, was incredibly fascinating.

So I have to ask, why this change for the television show? Making the player likeable and white, and from a stable loving family with all the breaks in the world he could ever ask for tells a completely different story, and one that makes a lot fewer people really uncomfortable. A lot more people are going to immediately viscerally respond to a Golden Boy's fall than someone like the actual person (unfortunately nicknamed Boobie) to whom this happened. In addition, a great deal of the book centered around the town's, and the coach's, second-guessing the decision to play Boobie when they didn't "need" him to play. It's clear in the show they need him to play if they want to win. What both of these changes do is make the show a lot more clear-cut, a lot less ambiguous, and a lot less messy. We're not questioning if building Boobie up to be a big football star at the expense of anything else in his life (namely his ability to READ, for god's sake) was the smartest thing for him...we're not questioning if the whole "you WILL be a football star" thing happened in part because of his race and class, and how this was maybe seen as the way you get a poor black kid out of his situation. Instead, we're feeling for Golden Boy and how his whole world is falling apart! But we fundamentally know he'll bounce back, because he's Golden Boy. In real life, something like that doesn't always happen. It didn't happen to Boobie. And the show, while still very good and one that I want to watch again, does a disservice to the message of the book by making that change.

Five by Five

One of my favorite authors, Scott Heim (if you haven't read Mysterious Skin you haven't really lived! Okay, exaggeration...but I ADORE that book and for once the movie adaptation was almost as good--a faithful adaptation without sucking the very life out of it, like some of the Harry Potter movies have done), did something cool on his blog, which is list five favorite songs by five favorite groups, and I was inspired to do the same here. Unfortunately I had some difficulty coming up with five favorite groups, because while there are a lot of groups I like, they don't necessarily have a lot of albums for me to cover. For example, the Shins, whom I adore, only have two albums. So should I go with them, or Belle and Sebastian, who have more albums to pull from but I don't like as much? I've gone with the Shins, because I put both their CDs in my car pretty much every other time I take out the 6-CD changer to reload. So clearly they're a favorite of mine.

Anyway, in no particular order, because choosing favorites within favorites is like choosing your favorite CHILD, not that I entirely relate to that phenomenon, but ANYWAY...

The album is noted next to the title.

The Beatles:
1). Ballad of John & Yoko (Rarities, 1)
2). Norwegian Wood (Rubber Soul)
3). Get Back (Let it Be)
4). (Hey!) You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Help!) (for maximum amusement, imagine you're raising a beer stein every time you sing the chorus, and you're singing it in a drunken Irish accent. That is a karaoke favorite of Karen's, and every time I hear the song I sing it that way).
5). Baby You're a Rich Man (Magical Mystery Tour)

Liz Phair:
1). 6'1" (Exile in Guyville)
2). Can't Get Out of What I'm Into (the import version of Somebody's Miracle)
3). Friend of Mine (Liz Phair)
4). Dogs of LA (Whip-Smart)
5). Explain it to Me (Exile in Guyville)

BTW, this one was nearly impossible, as I agonized over whether or not to substitute pretty much any of them except for 6'1" with Dogs of LA, Nashville, Crater Lake (all Whip-Smart), Help Me Mary (Exile), Little Digger (Liz Phair), and/or Johnny Feelgood (whitechocolatespaceegg). What can I say? Except for the shite that was Somebody's Miracle, import listed above notwithstanding, I've loved every album she's ever done. Even that crazy sellout one, Liz Phair.

Sloan:
1). Losing California (Between the Bridges)
2). Stand by Me Yeah (Navy Blues)
3). She Says What She Means (Navy Blues)
4). Coax Me (Twice Removed)
5). Hollow Head (Action Pact)

Magnetic Fields:
1). No One Will Ever Love You (69 Love Songs, Vol. 2)
2). All the Umbrellas in London (Get Lost) (this song, btw, is utterly heartbreaking if you're ever feeling completely sad and depressed...it's beautiful)
3). I Don't Really Love You Anymore (i)
4). I Think I Need a New Heart (69 Love Songs, Vol. 1)
5). Strange Eyes (69 Love Songs, Vol. 3)

Yes, 3/5 songs are from the 3-volume 69 Love Songs set. Bite me, it's an awesome album!

The Shins:
1). One by One All Day (Oh, Inverted World!)
2). Turn a Square (Chutes too Narrow)
3). Know Your Onion! (Oh, Inverted World!)
4). Mine's Not a High Horse (Chutes too Narrow)
5). Fighting in a Sack (Chutes too Narrow)

History

While I can, at times, be weepy and self-pitying about All the Hard Times I've had since moving here, fundamentally I'm glad I did it. I don't want to imply I think I've made some terrible mistake and I should have stayed in Cincinnati (god forbid) or even New York City, which I still adore and always will and hope I can afford to visit sometime soon, not having been there since March. It's just that adjustment and transition is always hard, you know? And until I typed yesterday that I've made two major moves in the space of three years, I didn't realize just how tumultous my life has been. I mean, in June 2004 I moved to Cincinnati and had a year of adjusting to a new job (my first in a high school), living with Cincinnati Boy after being long-distance (my first time living with someone who wasn't just a roommate), etc. Just when all those things were settled and I felt adjusted, I got dumped in August 2005, and then spent a year recovering and getting used to sort of re-envisioning my life without him as my partner, not to mention redefining my job AGAIN, this time working with seniors as we graduated our first class. Once I was comfortable with all of those things? I moved again, in July 2006. So I guess when I see it all staring out at me...no wonder it's all of a sudden caught up to me and I feel freaked out at times.

That said, what I do love about living here, besides getting to see Karen, my family, and my local friends more regularly, is the sense of belonging and history that comes from living in the area I grew up in. I love driving around and re-learning the area by landmarks of my youth. When I first learned how to get from my neighborhood to Bailey's Crossroads (sorry, non-nova residents, for the boring geography you don't follow) without driving through Annandale? "Oh, first I drive past the S&W cafeteria, now gone, where Grandma would take us to lunch..." My new doctor? "It's right by my clarinet teacher's!" Stuff like that just makes me feel connected to my past in a way I never had before. What I long for, almost more than anything, is a sense of continuity. This is incredibly ironic given my nomadic state of affairs since graduating college (Boston, NYC, Cincinnati), but there you go. I tend to stay in jobs once I get them for the same reason--building a history and connection to something. So even though I am having a hard time of it now, I also am feeling more comfortable living here than I probably have since college, which is the only other place I felt like I 100% belonged at.

The other thing I love is seeing people from my past in random places. At my photography temp job, on the first day I saw someone's name on the door and thought, "I wonder if that's the same JS whose mom made Karen's and my fancy birthday cakes when we were kids." It was! At the community band I've joined (I mentioned that, right? I'm in a community band now, playing the clarinet I haven't played since freshman year at Oberlin...it's fun), someone came up to me a few weeks ago and asked my last name. "I remember your mom! We directed the children's church choir together! Tell her I say hi!" I LOVE that.

The best thing of all, in terms of seeing people from my past, is the dirt you wind up getting. In talking to JS at the photopgrahy job, somehow MySpace came up and how there are people from our former high school there. One of them, who graduated JS's year (the year after I did), MARRIED one of our high school teachers! I am DYING! I mean, the funniest part of the whole story is that, not to be mean, but this woman was no Nicole Kidman in To Die For, or even her real-life inspiration, Pam Smart. In other words, she isn't particularly hot and sexy...she's, well, older, and looks like a normal older suburban person would. So to marry your high school teacher, a good 20 years older than you? I guess it really is true love. How awesome.

Unfortunately he set his page to private so I couldn't look to see if there are pictures of them posted. Bummer!

Ugly Betty: Pretty on the Inside

This is the second in a series of semi-regular entries about new television shows I'm trying out.

After Studio 60 (still awesome, btw), Ugly Betty was the new show I was most excited about. YouTube had some trailer this summer for it that made it look awesome, and I couldn't wait. Making the whole thing even sweeter, a friend invited me over to her house to watch with her and her husband, so I didn't even have to watch alone! Yippee!!

To briefly give a plot recap: Betty is (allegedly) ugly but has what all the pretty girls don't: Pluck and Spunk. Pluck, Spunk, and dumb luck lands her a job as assistant to the edtior of "Vogue" (I've forgotten what they call it on the show), where the editor, Daddy's Black-Sheep Son, conspires to make her so miserable she quits. Cause god knows we can't have an uggo on the front lines, you know? Happily her Pluck, Spunk, and more dumb luck in the form of Black-Sheep Son realizing he's also being conspired against leads to an alliance between the two, with the promise of many hijinks to come. One other crucial detail: it's based on the Spanish telenova whose exact name I'm too lazy to look up, but I think it's Betty La Fea.

Unfortunately, I'm not madly in love with it...yet. First of all, Betty isn't really ugly. I mean, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief because she's television ugly, which is to say, because she's not 5'9" and weighing 100 pounds, she therefore must have no sense of style, and of course she has a giant mouthful of big shiny braces and glasses. But you're not repulsed by her or anything...more like, thinking she could just get a better haircut and then she'd be perfectly fine. Second, the idea that Black-Sheep Son, a self-centered casanova concerned more with how many models he can sleep with than anything else, is the sort to be hiding a heart of gold so very impressed with Pluck and Spunk, no matter the package, seems a bit unrealistic. The idea that they're going to be a united front against the Beauty Establishment, when he himself was a part of that group merely 42 minutes earlier? Not realistic. Also, the fact it all kind of got wrapped up in a nice little package is a throwback to earlier television days of yore, I think...messier and unresolved is more satisfyingly realistic. To me, at any rate. It engages me more than this type of thing does, which is basically setting you up for "What kind of crazy adventure will Betty have next week, and how will her Pluck and Spunk save the day?"

What I DID like about it was the tone and style. I haven't seen a lot of telenovas, not speaking Spanish myself, but I've seen a few episodes here and there. They are HILARIOUS. The melodrama is off the hook, man! They've definitely gotten that feeling down and it's translated well, both culturally and linguistically. So I will be continuing to watch for that reason.

Oh, the aha! moment of the day--the lone sympathetic fashion magazine person, a British(? Scottish? Irish?) woman who runs the fashion magazine's "closet" (and has her own brand of P&S--she reworks the free clothes she gets to fit her non-size zero--that is to say, size 4--body) was horrifically familiar, in that "Where the HELL have I seen you before?" kind of way. It's been driving me nuts for days until I literally bolted awake at about 6:30 this morning with the memory of how I knew her. It's Maggie from Ricky Gervais' disappointing follow-up to the Office UK (his words, not mine), Extras! Awesome! That said, I hope this doesn't mean she's not on S2 of Extras, because she's responsible for one of the most hilarious moments on that show ever--when she takes the "Are you a racist?" quiz with Andy. "Who would you rather have over for dinner...Johnny Depp....or OJ Simpson?" "Johnny Depp!" "I'm sorry, you scored a 9/10 on the hate-o-meter." "But I'm not a racist!" "Yeah well, that's not what the quiz says, is it?"

Back on topic, I don't want to imply the show is terrible; more like, not as intellectually sophisticated (for lack of a less snotty term) as I would hope for, I guess. It felt more like a show for children, with its dumbed-down characterizations, than for adults. I'm sure that doesn't really convey what I'm feeling, but I do want to keep watching. I just wasn't as BLOWN AWAY as I was expecting, which was disappointing.

Thinly veiled metaphors

My sister is so awesome. She is getting married in less than a week and has her own headaches and stress to deal with that accompany planning an event for approximately 100 people, including two sets of parents and aunts and uncles and familial baggage, all the while trying to make sure you're able to hold on to what YOU want from the event, and still has time to go for a run this morning. It was our baseline measurement for the 6.2 miles we will be doing on Sunday, November 12 with the law student, and our goal wasn't about time, but about FINISHING. Without walking. When we left I told Joey F. (the almost BIL) that we'd be back in about an hour. "Probably more like an hour and fifteen minutes, or an hour and a half!" I was corrected. No matter. We were going to do it!

And we did! 6.28 miles in 66 minutes! It was AWESOME. We both felt great--very pleased and proud of ourselves. So I am no longer going to worry about my training and know that it will be just fine. Okay, more accurately, I will continue to do what I am doing (90 minutes on the treadmill/stairmaster 3-4 times/week, aerobics the other days), and when she gets back from her honeymoon, we'll continue the once a week 6.28 mile run around her neighborhood to work on time. But I'm not scared of endurance anymore, which was frightening me beforehand.

What I left the run thinking was, "I am stronger than I think." I was absolutely petrified that what I do on a regular basis wouldn't translate into a successful run, and yet it was just fine--I wasn't really even breathing hard when it was over. Don't get me wrong, I was glad we were done, but I wasn't going to throw up or anything. So I'm trying to take that thought and apply it to my life in general as sort of an encouragement. No job on the horizon, save the photography temp job that ends in a month (I officially didn't get job #2 I interviewed for last week, btw)? Ups and downs with social interactions (dates and friendship), with trying to get accustomed to my second huge life transition in three years (NYC-Cincinnati-nova)? I am stronger than I think. I am trying to remind myself that I already have done things that, while they don't seem like huge deals to me (losing a lot of weight, working full-time while earning my master's degree), actually seem kind of amazing and impressive to others. If I can get through those things and ultimately succeed, I can get through this as well. Right?