Yes, top students reap rich rewards, even as egg donors - The Boston Globe

Yes, top students reap rich rewards, even as egg donors - The Boston Globe

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Proof 1: Dressing rooms > Hotel rooms. Proof 2: Dressing rooms = classier than hotel rooms.

Follow my logic or not, it's the truth. Being asked for rolling papers is way cooler than being asked for 70%. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Typical. Let's begin at the beginning. (We're lovers and we're losers; we're heroes and we're pioneers. Skirting 'round the edges of the ideal demographic, we're almost on the guest list but we're always stuck in traffic.)

I do wish I could sing, but wasn't gifted with it. Might be tone deaf, actually.

Anyway, last night marked a new adventure with Awkward Ashley. (I have been scaling those Awkward Heights lately, always managing to achieve new and exiting levels of awkward like I've got the hand of God beneath me, lifting me toward the goal of Most Awkward Ever.)

Let's recap briefly some of my Awkward Concert Moments:

1. The time I refused to speak to Warren Zevon and he had to coax me into the picture.
2. The time I begged members of Low Millions to leave their trailers in a rainstorm to meet me and then I confused one of them for Adam Cohen and told him I loved his father. Oops...
3. The time Jess J and I noticed this realllly hot guy walking by and asked him to take pictures with him, after she said "Hey, hottie!" loudly enough for him to hear. Turns out he was the bassist for the Fray.
4. The same day, when I saw Ari Hest and was like, "Oh, hey! Do you know who you are? You're Ari Hest!"
5. The first time I met Ben Jelen, when I forgot how to talk, forgot my name and how to spell it, and managed to tell him he looked like "an old man."
6. The second time I met Ben Jelen, when we talked about my cousin Bailey the whole time.
7. The entire Teddy Thompson Debacle. Especially Prop 70/30.
8. The time I met Cory Branan and was like, "Ehhh, I like you because I like James Dean."
9. The (first) time I met Jonny Burke and Dad was all, "I'm her father" when I was trying to have an "I'm all grown up" moment.
10. The (second) time I met Jonny Burke and Brian made me drink Scotch. (Though that turned out less awkward because by the end of the night it was just.... something else entirely.)
11. The Jackson Browne Event? The screaming, the tears, the refusing to let go of his hand?

All of those are awkward. Most of those are embarrassing. I won't apologize for any of them. And do you notice anything that is conspicuously absent from that list? Loudon Wainwright III is the least awkward person ever. He puts you right at ease. So for the record, he's not the conspicuously absent musical encounter. And I'm not even getting into "Awkward encounters with roadies and tour managers." Because Cory Branan's tour manager and I had a rather fun discussion that left Brian nearly apoplectic, but that's not even the worst.

But there's this band you know I love. The Young Dubliners. And let me just say that they are incredibly awkward. Except they're not. Not with me. With me, it's all just staring at each other and laughing and texting and putting me on the guest list for Jethro Tull concerts. While texting Brendan Holmes might seem awkward to outsiders, to me it just feels right. (I think that if he and I were the same age, we'd be best friends. I'm not the only one who sees that, either. You know I've got a thing for bassists, too.) Anyway, this isn't about any of that. And I'm still getting ahead of myself and rambling as you know I do.

Parents came to town yesterday to visit me. Well, not for me, really. For him. Either way, it's generally pretty cool when they come to visit, even if Dad has the palate of a three year old. (Ehhh, it might actually be less diverse than that.) Anyway, The Great Todd Snider came to town, too, to visit me.

Well, not to visit me. To visit a sold-out Iron Horse. But still. I've seen some good shows there. Catie Curtis. Freedy Johnston. My boys. On the walls are the remnants of more shows -- Tommy Makem, Jon Pousette-Dart, David Lindley... Warren Zevon's comb-over days are immortalized on the cover of the menu, for Chrissake. It's like a little Ashley-haven. Anyway.

Todd was, as always, ON. He opened with "Greencastle Blues" and played three in a row before stopping. If you've never seen a Todd Snider show, this seems so "Meh, so what?" But in between the second and the third song, Todd said, "I'll play one more and then we'll catch up." Because that's what he does. Todd Snider is all about his audience. He doesn't just play to them; he speaks to them. He is, as I've mentioned in a previous concert review, a whole universe smarter than you or I will ever dream of being. Whatever your IQ, whatever the name of your college, however many degrees you've got hanging on your wall -- doesn't matter. Todd knows the only thing worth knowing: not a single one of us knows what happens next.

Not next "tomorrow" or next weekmonthyear, but Next.

And if he is, as he claims and as his concerts and music seem to support, truly an evangelical agnostic, well, I'm onboard with the Good News that we don't know jackshit about what's heading in our direction. There's a fair amount of comfort in that.

Listen: I can't say much more than I did previously about Todd Snider's concerts. He's funny, personable, affable, has the broad and guileless smile of one of my many toddlers... His live shows are an Experience. You can't duplicate them, though everyone tries. He encourages you to make and share recordings. He sells recordings of his shows online. He wears pinstripes and polka dots together! Bucket hats and bare feet! Sometimes he reminds me of Mr. Rogers in his online videos and promo material. He's happy; he's sad. He doesn't take himself seriously at all, at least not on stage.

I can't tell you why you should go to a Todd Snider concert and there's no showing what goes on at one. It's not like talking about how Jackson Browne makes me feel like the only person on the planet or how the Young Dubliners make me feel like the most important. Todd Snider does something else with his shows -- he makes me feel like I'm a part of the world. Like simply by being at his concert, I've not missed a single important experience. Like there's some community I actually belong to.

Which brings me to what I said at the beginning, about the adventure.

As you may have guessed by this particular post, or as you know if you're my one regular reader (you do exist, don't you? Mom?) I have a tendency to meet musicians. Call it Susannah's Strategic Hover if you want. I call it a genetic predisposition to being found where music is being made. And for the most part, all of those people have been really, really cool. I've met them in all sorts of ways: accidentally on the sidewalk, waiting in the cold for two hours (guess who!), hanging around their tour buses, offering them band aids, pressed forward by my mother, entirely by accident, right place right time, all of it. I once manipulated my brother into being the best wingman in the history of wingmen. It just works out for me, usually.

I say strange things like "I named my dog after your song," or "You look like an old man," or "I like 'Knickers.'" They say things like, "But you only have to do, like, seventy percent of the work!" or "I smell terrible" or "What you do is -- you get a fake ID and then you come to Ireland with us and drink."

I've been asked where the afterparty was, invited to hotel rooms (yes, rooms, yes, it's happened more than once), asked on dates, asked for use of the slogan on my shirt, gone out partying with them, been put on their guest lists -- and as of Mach 3d, 2010, been invited to the dressing room.

There are two experiences prior to this moment that I cherish and hold dear (as far as music is concerned). Which is to say that I've had a lot of "Meet your heroes!" moments and most of them have been positive experiences, with a few really unfortunate moments in there to make me feel terrible about myself. (The "Your cock is huge, Teddy" moment still makes me blush and fills me with undeserved shame.)

1. Meeting Jackson Browne. I was incoherent and a shattering mess for it, but he was the slice of perfection I always dreamed he would be.
2. Todd Snider left me a voicemail that got me through several all-nighters whilst I finished my finals.

After Wednesday night's concert, my parents left and I politely asked Elvis, the tour manager, "Excuse me, but would it be at all possible for me to get a picture with Todd tonight, please?"

His response? "A pretty girl like you? We can make it happen."

I've always thought Elvis was funny; turns out he's a bit of a charmer, too. He told me to wait a few minutes while things settled down and then, after a bit of staring at impressive photos on the walls of the Iron Horse, Elvis walked by me and said, "Follow me." Oh, oh, okay! I followed him right into the dressing room, where he informed Todd I was just too cute and he couldn't say no when I asked for a picture. Seriously: ladies, look out for Elvis; he will make you blush.

So I got to meet Todd Snider. With my awkwardness, the conversation was strange and delightful -- at least on my end. I'm convinced I petrified him. He asked how old I was (22), if I liked to sing (ha!), and what I wrote about (historical fiction, but I really want to write about music). He asked if I was going to school for writing and I said I was graduating in May. "You're so young!" he said. "I just... powered... through..."

Then this happened...

Me: My parents actually met you about a year and a half ago when you played Johnny D's in Somerville.
Todd: Yeah, with Don Was and Was Not Was -- wait, don't tell me -- we didn't call you?
Me: (in shock) YEAH! I'm THAT girl!
Todd: It's so great to meet you.

Then I spilled some nonsense about Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson and Ben Shahn and Arthur Rothstein and the FSA. I swear to god, every time I had the chance to open my mouth, I put my foot right in it.
Todd, of course, was incredibly gracious, funny, disarming. When I told him I couldn't believe I was able to put sentences together after what happened with Jackson Browne, the screaming and the tears? He replied, "Was that in Chicago?"

He actually made me feel like less of a fool for responding that way to Jackson Browne because, apparently, it's not so uncommon. (!) What an utter gentleman he was, so unlike the Hoteliers. Oh, they also asked me if I had any rolling papers -- nah, don't smoke, sorry.

I'm not saying he's a perfect guy, just that whatever flaws he has, they are not ones that prohibit him from being ridiculously wonderful to be around. When he says he is having fun on stage, oh dear, but you believe him. He's funny -- I cannot stress this enough -- and even when he is saying something tragic, well, he says it from the newspaper's point of view, the tree pulp, so you have to laugh.

When I met Jonny Burke the second time, we spent most of James McMurtry's set chatting and some of time we talked about what a cool dude Todd Snider is. Jonny had just finished a stretch of opening for him, and so we were just talking about how excellent his music is and how some musicians, when you meet them, are bitter letdowns, but not Todd. I hadn't met Todd at this point, but something told me he'd be more Jackson, less Thompson. Jonny had pretty much all nice things to say about Todd, and my opinion of him was already pretty inflated. Now that I've met him -- it's only gotten worse.

There was just one thing I meant to ask and totally forgot in the "Wow" of the moment:

"Hey, Todd, will you play my graduation party?"






PS. I am well aware this post isn't REALLY about the concert. I'm not sure what I could possibly say about it. It was an hour and a half of fun times. Todd taking requests, playing songs he'd never played before, songs that weren't even his. The highest possible compliment I could give a concert is that there is no describing it; you just have to see it. And this is exactly the case with Todd Snider. Drive to the nearest show he has scheduled, I don't care if it's six states away, just get your butt to one of his shows.

PPS. I finally got my Todd Snider teeshirt. About five years ago, my brother went to a Todd Snider show in Virginia and I gave him twenty bucks to get me a tee shirt. Promised me he got it. Told me he had it. Told me he just forgot to bring it home. A few years later, he finally admitted that he never bought me a shirt. Now, I have a Todd Snider tee shirt all my own. Thanks, Brian!

Die for something useful and you don't die in vain.

Don't misunderstand. It's a terrible tragedy. But maybe something good will come out of this, after all. I don't have much time or inclination to get into it right now, but I will write over the weekend and explain exactly what I hope this terrible event brings about.

Man of the Hour

In praise of vulnerability.

Allow me to elaborate on my feelings about the issue of Leonardo Dicaprio. Because I think there might be one person on this planet, maybe in some remote jungle in South America, who was raised by a bear named Ragu, who doesn't know. Although I think you all misunderstand my meaning and my reasoning when I say that I love beyond love one Leonardo Wilhelm Dicaprio.

In honor of our sixteenth anniversary, I thought I would write about the longest and most rewarding relationship I have had with a man.

I was six. It happened at the Cameo. I don't know why and I won't pretend to know how it happened, but it did. Later, Mom would acknowledge that of the thousands of movies I have seen in my life, it's pretty clear that there is one that reached me beyond all others.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

(Match in the gas tank, boom-boom.)

Maybe six was too young for that movie. But I've never let being too young stop me from going after anything I wanted. Doesn't mean I'll always get it, but I'm always going to go for it. Anyway, it was a rather epic introduction to Leonardo Dicaprio.

Then on December 26th, 1997, Mom took the four of us to see Titanic. And folks, my fate was sealed. It wasn't so much the blonde hair or the way he squints into the sun in that one particular shot, right before Rose comes to him and makes her choice. It was the way he looked at Rose, the way he loved her. The moment when he accosts her in the gym, when he's so completely vulnerable and exposed -- it's breathtaking. He puts himself entirely at her mercy.

And I never looked back. (Except one, but that was because there were rumors that he had been with Lindsay Lohan and let's face it.... She's RANK.)



And then there's always this




And here is where Leo and other men are different: he understands the difference between weakness/sensitivity and vulnerability. People aren't just vulnerable; they make themselves vulnerable. I don't want to deal with boys who think the way to win a woman is to be sensitive and feminize themselves. Crying over homeless puppy commercials is not a good thing. But if you can walk that fine line between being weak and being vulnerable... You're Leo.

Movies where he really excels at this? Marvin's Room. Titanic, yes, I said it. Catch Me If You Can. Gangs of New York. The Departed. Blood Diamond. Shutter Island. In each other these movies, he plays a character with a wellspring of emotions just under the surface. Who he chooses to reveal them and how he chooses to reveal them -- or not reveal them in most cases -- is incredibly telling. And rather than coming off as whiny, over-sensitive, feminine, or weak like most boys I've met in my life, for him, revealing his emotions is counter-intuitive and thus an act of strength. And I think that there in lies the difference between being "sensitive" and thus "annoying" or being vulnerable and sexy.

Watch this clip from The Departed. It's not in English, but I've seen it enough, and his body language says more than words ever could.



What makes this such a compelling love scene is not the fact that his body is gorgeous and his shamrock tattoo is hot, or even that it's forbidden. It's two lines of dialogue.

Vera: Your vulnerability is kind of freaking me out right now. Is it real?
Leo: I think so.

It's the way he hesitates, then leans on the door frame. It's the way he bites his lip and speaking seems like an obstacle to what he wants to say. It's the fact that he is so genuinely infatuated -- in love? -- with her that he is giving her something he doesn't just hand out like candy. Where Matt Damon comes off as smarmy and insincere throughout the film, and that's the point, Leo takes up the role of being the heart-breakingly vulnerable character. Surprisingly delicate, but only to a certain touch. As he says, his hand is steady. His voice doesn't crack. He doesn't need Vera Farmiga's character; he wants her. And not getting her isn't going to send him into the arms of someone else; he doesn't just run around flirting with every girl he sees. When he expresses interest, it's because he's interested. And not just because you're female.

You think I'm reading too much into it, I know you do. You're shaking your head saying, "No way. You're just seeing what you want to see. Maybe I am. Maybe I imagined the way he looked at the nurse who was setting his arm at the hospital. Maybe I read too much into the juxtaposition of Matt's approach to women and Leos in the film. But watch it again, paying close attention to the early scenes. Watch how they each deal with Vera. How phony Matt seems, how standard and boorish he is compared to Leo.

Now think about Scorsese and think about Dicaprio and think about the fact that neither of those men ever make an unintentional move with film.

Why is this all coming up now? Easy question. Shutter Island. Listen, I know it's February and I generally have a rule about saying so-and-so is going to win an Oscar before last year's ceremony has even happened. But I have the same feeling I did in 2004 when the Yankees crush the Sox in the second game of the ALCS. "What's everyone so worked up about? We're going to win the World Series."

I know a lot could happen between now and then, and I know a lot of people are still prejudiced against Leo. It's the only way to explain why he was nominated for Blood Diamond instead of The Departed. People want him to not win. They hate him because he's beautiful and he's talented in ways most actors (ahem, BradTomBruceJude) only dream about.

But look at the movie poster. He's looking rather wary and quizzical, is he not? Now look again. There's pain there. Deep and abiding pain. (In the slant of his eyelids, not that I'm crazy; I'm just detail-oriented when it comes to pictures. And it's not in his eyebrows, I swear. But it's in that general area.) So let me just say this about Shutter Island without giving anything away. It was the most heart-breaking performance I have ever seen from Leo. And if you don't believe that says something when it comes from me, well... What are you? New? I've never cried watching Titanic. Arnie gets left in a bathtub for hours and nearly freezes. The Departed? Marvin's Room? (Which, by the way, is still the Leo that I see when I go into Leo-geek mode.)

I've seen every Leonardo Dicaprio movie released in the United States. I've seen every episode of Growing Pains he was on. Hell, I've seen every episode of Growing Pains. I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that not one of his performances has hit me quite as viscerally and as squarely in the gut as his performance in Shutter Island.

And I know that those movies are full of characters, and he plays characters, not Leonardo Dicaprio. I'm cool with that. I haven't been saving myself for Leo, folks; maybe be Jack Dawson, maybe, but not Leo. I'm just saying that if boys want to know how to be men, they should maybe watch some of his movies, take notes, and then practice.

I would like also to add that similar to how my love for Jackson Browne is born of a love for his work, so too is my love for Leo. It always has been. While my peers were busy spelling his name as fast as they could to prove their undying love for him, I was diving into his film catalog. I remember every time I saw every Leonardo Dicaprio movie for the first time. I once had a dream that he died. It was infinitely worse waking up from that than it was realizing there was no waking up from the Heath Ledger nightmare reality.

Now I'd like to leave you with some Leo quotes from the new issue of Esquire.

On East of Eden:

I remember seeing the hunger in Dean's eye and the angst and confusion that he put onscreen. He became the poster boy for cool, but he was at his most vulnerable and exposed. I watched it five times in a row.

(Exactly what I mean. More than James Franco, who I love for inexplicable reasons, LEO is James Dean. If only he looked more like Jeff Buckley, he could play him so well.)

on honesty:

"I don't think I'm capable of honesty to the extent of my grandmother. But people tell me I have that quality. If it's true, it must come out in different ways.

Oscar Run Updates

1. Avatar
2. The Blind Side
3. District 9
4. An Education
5. The Hurt Locker
6. Inglorious Basterds
7. Precious
8. A Serious Man
9. Up In The Air
10. Up
11. The Last Station
12. Julie and Julia
13. A Single Man
14. Invictus
15. Nine
16. Crazy Heart
17. The Messenger
18. The Lovely Bones
19. In The Loop
20. Coraline
21. Fantastic Mr Fox
22. The Princess and the Frog
23. The Secret of Kells
24. Ajami
25. The Milk of Sorrow
26. Un Prophete
27. El Secreto De Sus Ojos
28. The White Ribbon
29. Burma VJ
30. The Cove
31. Food, Inc
32. The Most Dangerous Man In America
33. Which Way Home
34. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
35. Sherlock Holmes
36. Young Victoria
37. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
38. Bright Star
39. Coco Avant Chanel
40. Il Divo
41. Star Trek
42. Paris 36
43. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
44. "China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province"
45. "The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner"
46. "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant"
47. "Music By Prudence"
48. "Rabbit A La Berlin"
49. "French Roast"
50. "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty"
51. "The Lady and the Reaper"
52. "Logorama"
53. "A Matter of Loaf and Death"
54. "The Door"
55. "Instead of Abracadabra"
56. "Kari"
57. "Miracle Fish"
58. "The New Tenants"

the films I had seen as of the last update:

1. Avatar
2. Precious
3. Up In The Air
4. A Single Man
5. Nine
6. Crazy Heart
7. The Lovely Bones
8. Coraline
9. Sherlock Holmes
10. Young Victoria
11. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (uh, duh)
12. The Blind Side
13. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
    
14. The Hurt Locker
15. Inglorious Basterds
16. Julie and Julia
17. Fantastic Mr. Fox
18. Star Trek

The films I have since seen

1. District Nine
2. An Education
3. Up
4. In the Loop
5. The Princess and the Frog
6. The Cove
7. Food, Inc

Shorts:

1. Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
2. The Lady and the Reaper
3. A Matter of Loaf and Death

Feature films left to view:

1. A Serious Man
2. The Last Station
3. Invictus
4. The Messenger
5. The Secret of Kells
6. Ajami
7. The Milk of Sorrow
8. Un Prophete
9. El Secreto De Sus Ojos
10. The White Ribbon
11. Burma VJ
12. The Most Dangerous Man In America
13. Which Way Home
14. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
15. Bright Star
16. Coco Avant Chanel
17. Paris 36
18. Il Divo

Short films left to view:

1. "China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province"
2. "The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner"
3. "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant"
4. "Music By Prudence"
5. "Rabbit A La Berlin"
6. "French Roast"
7. "Logorama"
8. "The Door"
9. "Instead of Abracadabra"
10. "Kari"
11. "Miracle Fish"
12. "The New Tenants"

Shadow City part 1

As I approach that critical point called "Entering the REAL WORLD," I have been forced by every single person around me to do some thinking. I'm not sure what I've come up with yet.

Except, I know what I don't want. I don't want my life to become a constant repetition of high school awards night. I didn't like that bullshit in high school; I haven't grown any fonder of self-congratulatory, utterly superfluous bullshit as I've gotten older. There used to be epic screaming matches in my house over it all. I only collected the plaques and certificates of my "superior achievements" because my parents like to have them. I'd rather the paper be used for something useful.

Here's what I'm certain of: I love to teach. I have a real talent for caring about "difficult elements" of society, maybe because that's how so many people see me. I'm incredibly good at connecting with those kids that people have incredibly low expectations for and making them believe that it's worth exceeding those expectations for their own sakes. I love it. It's emotionally rewarding and spiritually fulfilling. That's just truth. My truth. My own truth, and if that was all I was ever good at, that would be more than enough for me.

Because here's another thing I'm quite certain of: I don't want to be a part of "Publishing." High school awards night for the rest of my life? No thanks. I don't want to sit there wondering what part of me they're going to think is worth rewarding, who was better in history, who nailed mathematics, who excelled in chemistry, and who I trumped in English. Frankly, I don't care if people think I'm smart or talented or even know my name. That's not why I'm here and it's never been why I write. (If I feel like it, maybe I'll get into that another time.) I don't need the politics, the self-aggrandizement, back-slapping, the pretense, the parties, the publicity -- I don't want it. You can keep it. Maybe I'm over-thinking it, but the more I consider what is involved in the writing industry, the more absurd it seems, the less pure, the less noble, the less honest it becomes every second that I think about what a future as a writer looks like.

That's just not who I am. When I say there were epic fights over whether or not I went to awards night, I don't mean just screaming matches. Oh, I was vicious in my refusal to acknowledge them as legitimate. Because they're NOT legitimate. If you're doing it for those reasons, to be better than someone else or to be recognized for it, then you're not doing it for the right reasons. And that goes for everything in this world. If you're not doing it for your own fulfillment or the betterment of this world, then what the hell are you doing? That is emptiness, needing the recognition, needing the high-powered jobs, the high-profile book deals, the plugged-in and impressive connections. Who I know and who I've worked with? What the hell does that matter if the work doesn't matter? name-dropping and award-shopping won't make you a writer. It just makes your work less legitimate.

Listen: if I am going to become a writer, I'm damn well going to do it on my own terms. Everyone and their mothers get book deals these days. If the "Stuff White People Like" boys can get a book deal, if lauren Conrad and Paris Hilton and Madonna and every other celebrity on this planet can get book deals, there's no pride in that. There's no value in a book deal, no worth in pursuing it for the glory. And I mean that literally: the only worth that can be found in a book deal is found in the cash advance.

Van Gogh didn't get shit while he was alive. He sold one painting while alive. So what? Monet got all the glory and let's be honest, he's painfully dull and commercialized. I would rather have Van Gogh's career than Monet's. I'd rather be proud of the passion I put into my work than the accolades it acquires. I'd rather pursue my artistic truth than someone else's standards of good or bad.

The work has to speak for itself. The editor doesn't matter; the author doesn't matter. You know it in your heart, if you look honestly at your heart. The work is more important than the recognition. After all, I am a miracle not because I am a success but merely because I exist, correct? And I am a miracle and success because I exist, because I simply am. Not because I meet some arbitrary standards our society has laid out for what a successful person looks like.

Here's the thing. I'd rather have my convictions than my friends. I can always make more friends; hell, I can always write more friends. And if I've ever been a part of this world at all, it's only ever been in service of something greater than myself. The children I have tried to help, the stories I have tried to find. If I could lock myself away in a shed in the woods, I would. All the publishing industry does is serve people; it barely serves the work. Publishing houses, everything that goes along with writing books, the tv appearances and the public readings, those aren't for the good of the work; those are for the benefit of the writer. Those don't enrich your writing; they enrich your bank account.

I don't give a shit what my bank account looks like so long as it's not in the red and I could keep it in the black working as a waitress. If I was empty enough to think that a bulging wallet could save my soul, that having stuff could fix what was wrong in my heart, or to think that dressing well made me any kind of worth knowing, hell, I'd pack it in and go into finances. (Yes, I do hate Wall Street. No, I won't apologize. Because what good has Wall Street ever done for someone who wasn't already in a position of power? What good has Wall Street ever done for anyone? And if you're not doing good, then what the fuck are you doing with your life? Wasting it on imaginary money and constructed values. That's not really an issue I consider up for debate, but if you don't like it, aw, poor you. Change your life. Save yourself.)

So don't tell me that it's good for me to get awards and praise; what's good for me is to work. To continue to work and to continue to grow. Not to hear that I am wonderful, but to hear that I can become even better than I already am.

That being said, here's an out-of-context passage from one of my Div III stories. This particular passage might be the very best thing I've ever fucking written.

“He’s away,” she said and did not look at him. “He is in the war.”

Some part of Billy’s chest caved in and broke away, drifting through his veins so that he felt through his entire body the brutality of his circumstances, slowly but like a spreading warmth. A hand lifted itself toward his chest as if to feel for blood or an open wound but there was nothing to touch, nothing to bandage. Whatever it was that was bleeding was inside of him and could not be seen.

“The war,” he choked when he could manage it, “is over.”

The best thing about making a list

Is crossing things off of it. (That is, assuming it is a "to-do" or "to-see" or "to-read" or "to-hear" or "to-write".... I think you get it, right? If it's a list of things that ought to be crossed off, a wish-list, or a checklist, the best part is...

Crossing things off of it.

So here's a list of the movies nominated for Oscars this year:

1. Avatar (Best Picture, Directing, Cinematography, Art direction, Film editing, Original score, sound editing, sound mixing, visual effects)
2. The Blind Side (Best picture, actress in a lead role)
3. District 9 (Best picture, film editing, visual effects, adapted screenplay)
4. An Education (Best picture, actress in a lead role, adapted screenplay)
5. The Hurt Locker (Best picture, actor in a lead role, cinematography, directing, film editing, original score, sound editing, sound mixing, original screenplay)
6. Inglorious Basterds (Best picture, actor in a supporting role, Cinematography, directing, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing, original screenplay)
7. Precious (Best picture, actress in a lead role, actress in a supporting role, directing, film editing, adapted screenplay)
8. A Serious Man (Best picture, original screenplay)
9. Up In The Air (Best picture, actor in a lead role, actress in a supporting role - twice, directing, adapted screenplay)
10. Up (Best picture, animated feature film, original score, sound editing, original score)
11. The Last Station (Actor in a supporting role, actress in a lead role)
12. Julie and Julia (Actress in a lead role)
13. A Single Man (Actor in a lead role)
14. Invictus (Actor in a lead role, actor in a supporting role)
15. Nine (Actress in a supporting role, art direction, costume design, original song)
16. Crazy Heart (Actor in a lead role, actress in a supporting role, original song)
17. The Messenger (Actor in a supporting role, original screenplay)
18. The Lovely Bones (Actor in a supporting role)
19. In The Loop (Adapted screenplay)
20. Coraline (Animated feature film)
21. Fantastic Mr Fox (Animated feature film, original score)
22. The Princess and the Frog (Animated feature film, original song - twice)
23. The Secret of Kells (Animated feature film)
24. Ajami (Foreign language film)
25. The Milk of Sorrow (Foreign language film)
26. Un Prophete (Foreign language film)
27. El Secreto De Sus Ojos (Foreign language film)
28. The White Ribbon (Foreign language film, cinematography)
29. Burma VJ (Documentary feature)
30. The Cove (Documentary feature)
31. Food, Inc (Documentary feature)
32. The Most Dangerous Man In America (Documentary feature)
33. Which Way Home (Documentary feature)
34. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Art direction, costume design)
35. Sherlock Holmes (Art direction, original score)
36. Young Victoria (Art direction, costume design, makeup)
37. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Cinematography)
38. Bright Star (Costume design)
39. Coco Avant Chanel (Costume design)
40. Il Divo (Makeup)
41. Star Trek (Makeup, sound editing, sound mixing, visual effects)
42. Paris 36 (Original song)
43. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (Sound mixing)
44. "China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province" (Documentary short)
45. "The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner" (Documentary short)
46. "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant" (Documentary short)
47. "Music By Prudence" (Documentary short)
48. "Rabbit A La Berlin" (Documentary short)
49. "French Roast" (Short film - animated)
50. "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty" (Short film - animated)
51. "The Lady and the Reaper" (Short film - animated)
52. "Logorama" (Short film - animated)
53. "A Matter of Loaf and Death" (Short film - animated)
54. "The Door" (Short film - live action)
55. "Instead of Abracadabra" (Short film - live action)
56. "Kari" (Short film - live action)
57. "Miracle Fish" (Short film - live action)
58. "The New Tenants" (Short film - live action)

It's like a pre-fab "To-Watch" list. No thought necessary, just movies that possess some remarkable quality, even if it's just a performance worth seeing or sound editing that is really, well, out of this world. (Susannah might have just groaned, but I don't care.) So if you look at this list as a "To-Watch" list, then what could I cross off immediately?

Well...

1. Avatar
2. Precious
3. Up In The Air
4. A Single Man
5. Nine
6. Crazy Heart
7. The Lovely Bones
8. Coraline
9. Sherlock Holmes
10. Young Victoria
11. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (uh, duh)

That's, oh, eleven of the forty-three feature length movies nominated and zero of the fifteen short films. But that's eleven instances of instant gratification. In the meantime, then, I had thirty-two films to see before March 7th. (Lists have to have a deadline. "Before I die" for the bucket lists that people make. "To-Read" lists usually get deadlines of "Before my paper is due." etc. This list has Oscar Sunday as a natural endpoint. Success or failure will be determined by whether or not I make my movie-watching deadline.)

Let's see what else I have managed to cross off that list.

1. The Blind Side
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Inglorious Basterds
4. Julie and Julia
5. Fantastic Mr. Fox
6. Star Trek

That is six of thirty-two movies to watch by March 7th, which means I have twenty-six feature length films to watch in twenty-four days. Which, really, if you think about it, isn't that daunting. The only problems I foresee? Movies not yet on DVD, but out of theaters? Foreign films not yet released in America, or at least my part of America? Running out of money? All legitimate concerns, I suppose. But I'm not going to think about that right now, because I'm on a high. I'm still going to say that I can do this, and I'm going to believe myself.

Because it's worth it. I'll keep you updated. Also, I really hope they let Ryan Bingham get on stage and sing his song. And I hope he wears his cowboy hat. Because he was a really good concert and he may be shy in interviews, but the boy knows how to work a stage.

My own personal Oscar race

The race to see every film nominated, that is.

Best Picture

"Avatar"

"The Blind Side"

"District 9"

"An Education"

"The Hurt Locker"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"Precious"

"A Serious Man"

"Up in the Air"

"Up"

Best Director

Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker"

James Cameron, "Avatar"

Lee Daniels, "Precious"

Jason Reitman, "Up in the Air"

Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds"

Best Actress

Sandra Bullock, "The Blind Side"

Helen Mirren, "The Last Station"

Carey Mulligan, "An Education"

Gabourey Sidibe, "Precious"

Meryl Streep, "Julie & Julia"

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart"

George Clooney, "Up in the Air"

Colin Firth, "A Single Man"

Morgan Freeman, "Invictus"

Jeremy Renner, "The Hurt Locker"

Best Supporting Actress

Penelope Cruz, "Nine"

Vera Farmiga, "Up in the Air"

Maggie Gyllenhaal, "Crazy Heart"

Anna Kendrick, "Up in the Air"

Mo'Nique, "Precious"

Best Supporting Actor

Matt Damon, "Invictus"

Woody Harrelson, "The Messenger"

Christopher Plummer, "The Last Station"

Stanley Tucci, "The Lovely Bones"

Christoph Waltz, "Inglourious Basterds"

Best Original Screenplay

Mark Boal, "The Hurt Locker"

Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds"

Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, "The Messenger"

Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, "A Serious Man"

Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, "Up"

Best Adapted Screenplay

Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, "District 9"

Nick Hornby, "An Education"

Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, and Tony Roche, "In the Loop"

Geoffrey Fletcher, "Precious"

Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, "Up in the Air"

Best Animated Feature

"Coraline"

"Fantastic Mr. Fox"

"The Princess and the Frog"

"The Secret of Kells"

"Up"

Best Foreign Language Film

"Ajami" (Israel)

"The Milk of Sorrow" (Peru)

"Un Prophete (A Prophet)" (France)

"El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in their Eyes)" (Argentina)

"The White Ribbon (Germany)

Best Feature Documentary

"Burma VJ"

"The Cove"

"Food, Inc."

"The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers"

"Which Way Home"

Best Art Direction

"Avatar"

"The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus"

"Nine"

"Sherlock Holmes"

"The Young Victoria"

Best Cinematography

"Avatar"

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

"The Hurt Locker"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"The White Ribbon"

Best Costume Design

"Bright Star"

"Coco Avant Chanel"

"The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus"

"Nine"

"The Young Victoria"

Best Editing

"Avatar"

"District 9"

"The Hurt Locker"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"Precious"

Best Make-Up

"Il Divo"

"Star Trek"

"The Young Victoria"

Best Visual Effects

"Avatar"

"District 9"

"Star Trek"

Best Original Score

"Avatar"

"Fantastic Mr. Fox"

"The Hurt Locker"

"Sherlock Holmes"

"Up"

Best Song

"Almost There" from "The Princess and the Frog"

"Down in New Orleans" from "The Princess and the Frog"

"Loin de Paname" from "Paris 36"

"Take It All" from "Nine"

"The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" from "Crazy Heart"

Sound Mixing

"Avatar"

"Hurt Locker"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"Star Trek"

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

Sound Editing

"Avatar"

"Hurt Locker"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"Star Trek"

"Up"

Documentary Short

"China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province"

"The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner"

"The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant"

"Music by Prudence"

"Rabbit a la Berlin"

Animated Short

"French Roast"

"Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty"

"The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)"

"Logorama"

"A Matter of Loaf and Death"

Live Action Short

"The Door"

"Instead of Abracadabra"

"Kavi"

"Miracle Fish"

"The New Tenants"

...When it rocks

Dear Ryan Bingham:

Thank you for existing. Thank you for being involved in Crazy Heart. Because of the many, many excellent films I have lately seen (Avatar wrapping me up in a beauty so painful and desperate I didn't want to leave the theater, It's Complicated, Precious, Sherlock Holmes, Up In The Air, Young Victoria, A Single Man) this is my favorite. Where do I begin?

A classic (cliched?) tale of redemption and sobering up, yeah, sure, it's that. It's cigarettes and bourbon and voices that growl. Tipped cowboy hats, old Silveradoes, and wannabe desperadoes. But oh, the music!

(The shots of the scenery made me want to move to Texas, by the way.)

Gosh, I think I should talk about the music last. There are a few surprises, you see. And I think this is worth talking about:



Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal have the strangest and most intoxicating chemistry. How could she fall for him? And yet you believe she loves him -- maybe because she does? Because who among us would say we don't love our childhood idols? And here he is, in the flesh, an old-timer fallen from any kind of grace. And she has the chance to do something for this person she admires -- I suppose I can see why she might fall in love with him. They work so well together and their performances are simultaneously delicate and appropriately intense.

When she flips out while he's writing a song, it's hard to tell if it's because, as she initially says, "People would give ten years of their lives to write that; it just pours out of you," or if it's because she really is afraid that he will leave and forget her and she'll be stuck in Santa Fe remembering. Because remembering someone who doesn't remember you, that's the absolute worst sort of pain. And I bet she doesn't even know why she's angry.

Surprisingly good in this movie? Colin Farrell. I'd forgotten my Irish love was in it. And I'm not surprised he was good, because In Bruges and A Home At The End Of The World are two of my all-time favorite movies. It's surprising exactly HOW good the boy can be. Granted, he looks the part, exquisitely beautiful but also sort of run ragged? Yeah, that's Colin. And he's always managed to manipulate my emotions pretty well; he does an especially fine job in this movie of making Tommy Sweet not so detestable, maybe more sympathetic, even.

And, well, the singing? The soundtrack? Robert Duvall started reciting one of the saddest songs I've ever heard, by one of the saddest men I've ever heard of. He brings up Billy Joe Shaver and suddenly the movie has the sort of relevance and legitimacy that other movies only dream of. "Live Forever" is such an epically sad song, especially when you consider that he, Billy Joe, wrote it with his son Eddie, who would die of a drug overdose. (On that issue, Todd Snider would write, "I can't say I felt so sad; the truth is I think I'm mad at the selfish way you left your dad when you know what a hard-luck time he's had." He can say that; he was friends with him.)

And then the lyrics, "You fathers and you mothers, be good to one another. Please try to treat your children right. Don't let the darkness take 'em; don't let 'em feel forsaken; just lead 'em safely to the light." Or maybe it's, "Nobody here will ever find me, but I will always be around. Just like the songs I leave behind me, I'm gonna live forever now."

It's just so sad, you know? (Send me your email and I can end you a father's day version of this song, performed with Robert Earl Keen and Todd Snider.)

But here's the biggest surprise of the film: Jeff and Colin can both sing. I know mixing boards can do amazing things, but they both do really wonderful jobs of singing the songs they are commissioned with. The whole soundtrack is rugged and good-looking and real country. Not "New Country" or "Nashville" country, which is something they acknowledged in the film. Someone asks Bad Blake what he thinks of Tommy Sweet and his reply is, "He's gotta compete with the stuff coming out of Nashville." (Granted East Nashville is a different world, but still.)

The music is just.. Townes Van Zandt and Ryan Bingham and Waylon Jennings and George Jones and Lightnin' Hopkins and it makes me want to move to Texas and I kept thinking, "There's just something about country music Texas-style." I feel like I'd do really well in Texas. I don't even know how to say how much I love country music and how good the music in this movie was. So fucking good, maybe?

But as Todd and this movie point out... I like country... When it rocks. I like country when it's real. (When it's sung for the school of hardest knocks, not for mass appeal.) And that's what this movie is -- a country song on film. It's old-school, hard-core country. Dusty, beat-up, and bad. And Ryan Bingham, you did such a job in this film. It feels like that moment in the movie, when he plays a new song and asks Jean if she's heard it before. She says she can't remember who did it, but she knows she's heard it. Bad is clearly pleased and says, and this sums up the film perfectly:

"That's the way it is with a good song: you're always sure you've heard them somewhere before."

Fugitive Pieces

"How many centuries before the spirit forgets the body? How long will we feel our phantom skin buckling over rockface, our pulse in magnetic lines of force? How many years pass before the difference between murder and death erodes?
Grief requires time. If a chip of stone radiates its self, its breath, so long, how stubborn might be the soul.”

Doctor, my eyes

The best thing about living in Massachusetts was the hopefulness of it. We were this insular liberal haven audacious enough to believe that we had the right to do anything. Incite a revolution? Yeah, we did that. Harbor fugitive slaves and abolitionists? Did that, too. No other police force ever went on strike to enforce their right to unionize. No other state gave birth to the greatest and most radical educational experiments of the era. (Not the brag, but that IS what Hampshire is.) We provided the nation with its first Catholic president; we provided the country with its first permanent settlements and its first colleges. We were the first state to say no to marriage discrimination against gay couples, to give a more recent example of our aloofness.

It is our aloofness that gives us the ability to do these things -- the constant pressing forward to make life better for everyone. If our government has been corrupt, it has been in the name of the neighborhoods, not for the benefits of the wealthy elite. We don't even buy sports championships. And looking at our sports' teams is an interesting way of looking at our state, too. Everyone hates the Patriots because they were the best. Because Tom Brady was handsome and humble and the best, bravest quarterback of NFL history (so my dad says, at least). They spread lies about the Pats throwing rocky snowballs at other teams and accuse us of corruption -- though it might be argued that every team taped other teams. People on the outside call them arrogant and selfish and mean. People outside Massachusetts call us oblivious and ignorant and narrow-minded. If we are oblivious and ignorant and narrow-minded, is it really such a problem? After all, looking at our history, we have done some pretty incredible things for a country that seems entirely ungrateful. Obviously, we were doing something right by taking more interest in helping out locally than remotely. We've made some radical moves and led the charge on many important battles.

And since the early 20th century, our leaders have been the Kennedys. Well, the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. I suppose the only way I can describe how I feel about the Kennedys is to say what I said in my Peace Corps application essay (yet to be completed):

My love for the Kennedys goes beyond the love of a constituent for a senator. My love for the Kennedys comes from the fact that they, in their selflessness, refused to fold, refused to surrender to a life of ease simply because the road before them was hard, and the road behind them paved with tragedy. They are gone now, these three astonishing brothers, though their legacy remains. And as they passed the responsibility down, one brother to the next, so Ted has left it to each and every one of us.

And you know as well as I do what they stood for:

"For the fortunate among us, there is a temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success, so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education, but that is not the road that history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger or uncertainty, but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged and as the years pass, we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event."

For decades, Ted Kennedy had been our fearless leader, our intrepid lion, and our rock. He lived his life as an act of repentance for one stupid, common, selfish sin. He made his life one of public service though it would have been too easy to retire into his vast fortune and extensive family, to retreat from the public eye and live out his days safely, untouched by the criticism and haunting accusations of the guilt that plagued him. Rather than succumb to his weakness, rather than give in to those who told him his life was forever tainted, he made a genuine effort not salvage it, but to give opportunity to those who would otherwise never have had it. He cared truly and deeply for the people he had sworn to protect and defend in the Senate and he worked tirelessly, even as he died, to ensure that our interests would be at the forefront of everyone's minds. And not just the interests of the wealthy, or the elite, but the interests of people like his great grandfather, who worked the docks and scrounged his way up. People like my father and my mother, who work from six in the morning until midnight every day. He understood that in order to equalize things, someone had to give something up. He gave up his life, his privacy, and his contentedness. All he asked of us was that we follow him as fearlessly as he led us; he begged of us to make the sacrifices necessary to ensure that his efforts would not be in vain and to make sure that someone else, someone less fortunate than myself, had the chance to see a decent doctor or receive a sufficient education. He not only saved lives with the legislation that he helped to pass; he improved them.

But you know all of this already. I know you do.

But then he died and we've been stumbling lost and scared, fragile and uncertain. We were taken advantage of by one savvy campaigner and ruined by one terrible campaigner. We were readily manipulated with promises of wealth and stimulated economies that were stamped with JFK's face -- I ask you what JFK might have said had he seen Scott Brown rape his legacy and then deny him emergency contraceptive. (Perhaps if it had been available, we could have stopped this unholy election.) They say America has swung too far left and that we need to stabilize it, that they voted for him because he represented balance.

Balance? Like the sort of balance our economy has seen? Like the sort of equal distribution of wealth this country is known for? Oh, yes, I understand completely what these upper-middle-class yuppies are thinking. "But universal health care means taking something from me, right?"

I wonder when my beloved Massachusetts traded its soul for a wallet.

They say he represents a smaller government -- the sort of government that won't lead to socialism and won't interfere with my life, that I can work hard and be rewarded. Work hard like my parents and be rewarded like them? No offense to my parents, the hardest workers in the world, but the government doesn't REWARD them. And if by interfere these people mean tell me who I can legally love, or what I am permitted to do with my body, or what pills I'm allowed access to if I am the victim of a violent crime -- then I wonder what they're smoking, because it's probably the same potently illegal stuff the government won't let most people have. And as for Wall Street and the banking world? Well, they're rewarded for ruining our economy with their carelessness, their imaginary numbers and money, their naked short selling, and their selfish pursuit of MOREMOREMORE. They behave as if their jobs, which make no one's life easier and save the life of no one, give them some right to wealth and excess. They call this the American dream.

The American dream is a product of a 1950s ad campaign as invasive and effective as Scott Brown's. The American dream, the real American dream, is what Boston used to mean. The Revolution. The Civil War. The Civil Rights Movement. The ability of people to affect change in their own lives by utilizing their votes and trusting their government to have the best interests of the lowest and the most wretched at its core. America was founded on the belief that we are all equally worth cultivating. That our lives, however blue collar or DIFFERENT or POOR, are worth the same as the men who rule the country, the men who can afford to give more. Our voices are raised in the same chorus of need and worth and just because someone has opportunity to be better than me, does not mean that they are. Just because someone has the opportunity to do what I cannot do because of my circumstances does not mean that I am worth less to my government. That's not socialism; that's democracy. That's what America is supposed to be, what we must aspire to. I am a human being and don't you dare tell me that the American dream is work hard and rewarded. The American dream is live, and be valued. That's what it was at the beginning and what it always will be -- it's just that sometimes we get so blind to it, we get so carried away by our greed and selfishness, and our entitlement and our certainty that we do deserve this because we want it. We don't deserve anything but the opportunity to live. It is the most basic of opportunities and if we get more, we are obligated to do whatever we can to help those who don't have the opportunity to live without our help.

Don't even get me started on the universal health care issue. As Catie Curtis wrote following Rita, "Jesus said, 'Feed the hungry.' Jesus said, 'Help the poor.' 'Take care of each other.' 'Love one another.' People look around: we let them down." That just seems like basic humanity, giving everyone access to affordable health care. It's as basic as housing. And who would say we ought to close our shelters?

If this is truly what the people of Massachusetts want, then it's not my state anymore. It's not the state I fell in love with or the state I consider my beloved home.

Ted's not even cold in his grave and we've betrayed his memory so soon. I've never felt so shattered.

Old Sport

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made"

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Chrysalis II

"It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction."
-Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

100 (Find You Now)

1. Have blue eyes
2. Be over 6 feet tall - unless your name is Erich Hochstrasser, because then you're perfect just as you are
   
3. Be a baseball fan (or football or hockey -- no New York teams)
   
4. Know Heathcliff without being told
5. Love to cook breakfast and dessert
   
6. Be generous and kind to homeless people
7. Hate rodents as much as I do
8. Tell me when my hair looks silly
9. Have strong hands
10. Walk in the snow. Walk in general
    
11. Take advantage of opportunity; say "no" to very few adventures. Don't repeat them if they weren't wonderful the first time.
    
12. Need a dog in your life -- a big dog, not a little dog
13. Wear plaid
14. Believe in both coincidence and magic
15. Travel
16. Appreciate, even enjoy, my "fifteen year old girl" moments
17. Wear Chucks
18. Don't wear a tie to work
19. Respect my need for you to not watch the Victoria's Secret fashion show
20. Let me trust you without a wedding band
21. Trust me without a wedding band
    
22. Know not to buy me a diamond
23. Know to buy me a dictionary
24. Love children
25. Hate golf
26. Don't be settled with having; have a need to open doors that have never been closed to you for others that have had to break windows to even look inside
    
27. Value independence, both in yourself and in me
28. Love your family
29. Be my Trivial Pursuit partner
30. Don't take yourself seriously or believe you are more important than the moment you exist in
    
31. Read. Don't just say you read. Read.
32. Laugh often, but not without cause
    
33. Never make someone feel stupid or embarrassed
    
34. Laugh at yourself
35. Don't laugh at others
36. Always say "Bless you" when someone sneezes, even a stranger walking behind you on the sidewalk or a train conductor
    
37. Make my brother laugh
38. Introduce me to new music
39. Make me think
40. Fascinate me
41. Confuse me
42. Treat anyone whose job it is to help you not like "help," but like a human being. Understand that mix-ups like lost reservations happen
    
43. Don't value form over function
44. Be of use
45. Understand what "Be of use" means and why it matters
46. Keep an open mind
47. Go puddle jumping with your children (and me)
    
48. Teach your daughter to ice skate
49. Go to your child's plays
50. Be torn between the coldness of mp3 and their convenience over vinyl
51. Appreciate a well turned phrase
52. Wash my dishes for me when my back is turned
    
53. Bring me sunflowers on Van Gogh's birthday
54. Know not to buy me roses
55. Tell me a secret you have never told anyone else
56. Don't try to fix my problems; just be there to hear about them
57. Know that I can re-hang the door or re-grout the bathroom on my own, but do it with me
58. Write me a song, however terrible it is
59. Make me believe I can be better
60. Challenge my assumptions
61. Call me on my lies, my nonsense, my half-assed arguments and devil's advocate "Mary, Mary, quite contrary" moments
62. Aspire to more than mere mediocrity
    
63. Take risks; go sky-diving with me
    
64. Realize how lucky you are just to exist
    
65. Get along with my father
66. Understand that what my grandfathers would have thought of you matters more than what I think of you
67. Teach me something new
68. Let steak, roasted potatoes and green beans be your favorite meal
69. Be kind to your sister above all other girls you might meet
    
70. Don't ever believe in your own superiority, physically, mentally, intellectually, ecumenically, or otherwise
    
71. Love hockey fights
72. Don't be disgusted by boxing
73. Find humor in your flaws and in mine
74. Don't be willing to settle for less than you are capable of becoming
    
75. Never believe we are finished products
    
76. Have convictions
77. Make the world a better place, be it through direct interaction with the world or by providing the world with just a little more beauty
78. Appreciate the importance of beauty in this world
79. Watch Sunday morning PBS with me while reading the travel section from the Boston Globe and eating omelets and bagels
80. Don't be jealous
81. Be a little jealous. (But trust me, too.)
82. Love movies
83. Spend Saturday afternoons at museums of all sorts -- natural history, science, modern art, Renaissance art, etc.
84. Prefer Van Gogh to Monet and night to day
85. Stay up late with me, watch the sun rise and then sleep 'til noon
86. Bring me my hot chocolate
87. Let me listen to you
88. Don't get impatient when I meet strangers on the beach and swap life stories with them until the moon has risen
89. Accept my need to be near the sea
90. Let me teach you something
91. Don't try to understand or change me; just accept me
92. Drive to the beach and watch the full moon rise
93. Climb a mountain. Stay the night. Let me set up the tent.
94. Don't ask me if I need help. I'll ask if I do.
95. Don't need me to fix you; don't need to fix me
    
96. Don't ever act smarter than someone else
    
97. Treat everyone as if they are just as important -- more so, even -- than you
    
98. Engage in ice cream eating contests with me
99. Watch me walk away until you can't see me anymore
100. Don't tell me you love me.
     

Mystery White Boy

"I would be completely insane. Or I'd take up sculpture, and if I didn't have sculpture I'd take up screenplays, and if I didn't have that I'd take up something else. Anything artistic. But music seems to me to be the most closely identified with my soul. I mean, I feel that it's the best for me. It just gets into the bloodstream so quickly, for no reason at all. You can close your heart, and you can sleep even with your eyes closed, but you can never close your ears. "

"Grace is what matters. In anything. Especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death. About people, that's what matters. That's a quality I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching for the gun too quickly; it keeps you from destroying things too foolishly; it sort of keeps you alive and keeps you open for more understanding."

I've been thinking of you; I've been missing you. To listen to your music is like being born. I can't pretend I like everything you ever did, but when your music worked, it was like nothing else this world has ever heard. I was convinced at one point that you were the reincarnation of James Dean, here to finish what he'd started. But there are some things too strange and beautiful for this world and you, like James Dean, were one of them. You broke beautifully, poetically, like glass turned to diamonds, and then you disappeared, rather like your soul simply sublimated and became something else and you were no more. I wonder what you would make of the mess we've made of your life.

Chrysalis

Ophelia

Practical Magic to snare an Ideal Husband

I love Alice Hoffman. I really, really do. I think The Blue Diary is this hot, sweaty, sticky book -- the sort of lustful, crazy-intense, rollercoaster ride of a book that absolutely captures what a humid Massachusetts summer is like. The colors of the air, the way it can drive you mad. And the story just unfolds so languidly and yet, it doesn't occur to you that it's moving slowly because it feels exactly like that summer; the days are long and the months are short.

Anyway, my first Hoffman was Practical Magic and I'm pretty sure I read it very early in my high school experience. She has such an ethereal voice, such a way of making the ordinary seem magical, and this book is a really excellent example of that.

Anyway, in the book, one of the characters decides she never wants to fall in love again and so she vows never to fall in love again unless she meets this very specific man that she is certain is absolutely impossible. There's no way he can exist.

The first time Sally falls in love, it happens like this:

"The man Sally fell in love with was named Michael. He was so thoughtful and good-natured hat he kissed the aunts the first time he met them and immediately asked if they needed their trash taken out to the curb, which won them over then and there, no questions asked. Sally married him quickly, and then moved into the attic, which suddenly seemed the only place in the world where Sally wished to be.

"Let Gillian travel from California to Memphis. Let her marry and divorce three times in a row. Let her kiss every man who crossed her path and break every promise she ever made about coming home for the holidays. Let her pity her sister, cooped up in that old house. Sally did not mind a bit. In Sally's opinion, it was impossible to exist in the world and not be in love with Michael. . . His kisses were slow and deep and he liked to take off Sally's clothes with the bedside table light turned on and he always made certain to lose when he played gin rummy with one of the aunts.

"When Michael moved in, the house itself began to change, and even the bats in the attic knew it and took to nesting out by the garden shed. By the following June, roses had begun to grow up along the porch railing, choking out ragweed, instead of the other way around. In January, the draft in the parlor disappeared and ice would not form on the bluestone path. The house stayed cheery and warm . . . Throughout the night, it sounded as if a river were flowing right through the house; the noise was so beautiful and so real that the mice came out of the walls to make certain the house was still standing and meadow hadn't taken its place."

Anyone else think SMeyer ought to hand over the Twilight Saga to be rewritten by someone who knows about the magic of first love? Not some submissive wretch of a woman who thinks that love is about giving up who you are -- or about lacking a personality to begin with? Those passages are phenomenal. If I could write like that, I wouldn't be writing blogs. The best description of a girl who breaks hearts?

"Gillian broke hearts the way other people broke kindling for firewood. By the time she was a senior in high school, she was so fast and expert at it that some boys didn't even know what was happening until they were left in one big emotional heap."

Ugh. My jealousy cannot be contained.

Anyway, Sally's list. I'm going to try to find it. [Musical interlude while I scour book for specific passage.]

[Except I just found this and it breaks my heart.]

"What had she thought, that love was a toy, something easy and sweet, just to play with? Real love was dangerous, it got you from inside and held on tight, and if you didn't let go fast enough you might be willing to do anything for its sake."

Seriously, who writes like that?

In describing how Sally felt when faced with the prospect of losing Michael, who she loved so very much, Alice Hoffman writes,

"Now whenever he kissed her, she cried and wished she had never fallen in love in the first place. It had made her too helpless, because that's what love did. There was no way around it and no way to fight it. Now if she lost, she lost everything."

So good, so true. Love makes you helpless. And it's the best reason I've ever heard for not falling in love. Except, there are even more compelling reasons for why one SHOULD fall in love. The roses and the river and the meadows, and all that.

I can't find the passage in the book, but the quote from the movie is this...

"He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards. . . He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue. . . That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist, I'll never die of a broken heart. "

But he does exist. And he looks like this.

Man, I love Aidan Quinn. My point is, I'm making a Practical Magic list. One with one hundred items. So that he is impossible and I will never find him and never die of a broken heart.