The Vagnino Monologues

First World Problems

2012-02-18T14:53:00.012-05:00

I woke up the other morning with a great idea: to start a Tumblr blog of First World Problems. I started writing down ideas, envisioning my blog becoming a wild success, virally forwarded, linked to on Gawker, eventually culminating in a book deal (you know, the type of book you buy on Dec. 23 for your cousin because you can't think of anything else to get him and it's on display near the register at Barnes & Noble on a table labeled "Humorous Stocking Stuffers").

Then I Googled "tumblr first world problems" and of course, such blogs already exist. Four of them, to be exact. Now there's a first world problem -- getting scooped on your snarky million-dollar tumblr blog idea.

Still, after perusing the existing blogs, I think some of mine were decently funny and original. And the twist here is that the list below represents my PERSONAL ACTUAL first world problems. Because why have a blog if not to use it as a platform of self-indulgence that operates under the assumption that people give a shit about my life?

So, here are my very real first world problems, in top ten list form:

10. Nowhere to play my last two letters in Words with Friends

9. Nextbus.com is down and I just have to wait for the fucking bus like it's the Dark Ages

8. Shaw's Star Market has a dismal selection of fresh herbs (how can they not have black currant leaf? It's vital for this epicurious recipe I'm making tonight!)

7. My favorite sushi lunch deal is not available on weekends or holidays

6. I have to wait like 8 months for more episodes of Homeland

5. I might not have time to see "The Artist" before the Oscars

4. Shoe rack full; wine rack empty (side note-- possible memoir title?)

3. Starbuck's Blonde Roast is a disappointment (and as a light roast drinker, I had such high hopes)

2. Petco is out of my brand of organic litter, forcing me to buy Fresh Step at the bodega

1. Cab drivers constantly give me shit about paying with a credit card

GOD, MY LIFE IS SO HARD

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2012-02-09T02:10:00.004-05:00

Last week, the poetry world lost an icon: Wislawa Szymborska. A few days before her death, a good friend sent me a few poems, noting that she was one of the few poets he had ever connected with. Some good tributes have popped up, like this one from The New Yorker and this one on Slate. I will honor her, and my friend who admitted feeling personally affected by news of her passing, by posting the same two poems he sent me, coincidentally just days before she died.

Some People Like Poetry

Some people--
that is not everybody
Not even the majority but the minority.
Not counting the schools where one must,
and the poets themselves,
there will be perhaps two in a thousand.

Like--
but we also like chicken noodle soup,
we like compliments and the color blue,
we like our old scarves,
we like to have our own way,
we like to pet dogs.

Poetry--
but what is poetry.
More than one flimsy answer
has been given to that question.
And I don't know, and don't know, and I
cling to it as to a life line.

Funeral

"so suddenly, who would've expected it"

"stress and cigarettes, I told him"

"not bad, thank you"

"unwrap these flowers"

"his brother's heart did him in too, must run in the family"

"I wouldn't have recognized you with that beard"

"it's his own fault, he was always getting himself into something"

"that new guy was supposed to speak. I don't see him anywhere"

"Kazek is in Warsaw, Tadek went abroad"

"you were the only one with enough sense to bring an umbrella"

"so what that he was the most talented of them all"

"it's a walk-through room, Baska won't go for it"

"sure he was right, but that still isn't really the reason"

"and a paint job on both doors, guess how much"

"two egg yolks, one tablespoon sugars

"it was none of his business, why did he mess with it"

"only in blue, and in small sizes"

"five times with no answer"

"all right, I could have done it, but so could you have"

"good thing she had that part-time job"

"I don't know, maybe the relatives"

"the priest is a veritable Belmondo"

"I've never been to this part of the cemetery"

"I dreamed about him last week, something struck me"

"the daughter's not bad-looking"

"it happens to all of us"

"give my best to the widow, I have to make it to"

"it sounded much more solemn in Latin"

"it came and went"

"good-bye Ma'am"

"let's go grab a beer somewhere"

"call me, we'll talk"

"either No. 4 or 12"

"I'm going this way"

"we're not"

Hot Behind

2012-01-31T21:51:00.007-05:00

Tonight was my first cooking class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. I get to take it for free as part of my payment for teaching a workshop there. I was apprehensive, since the course is technically for beginners and I wouldn't exactly call myself that, but then again, I'm no Julia Child.

It seems that each class, we'll be splitting into pairs and creating a multi-course meal, which we then all eat. We are given recipes and go over them as a group before going to our stations. Tonight's meal included hummus and wasabe eggs for appetizers, a pickled cucumber salad, a curried zucchini soup, couscous and sliced peppers, and oven-roasted salmon with panko crumbs and a creamy dill sauce. Dessert was chocolate-dipped fruit.

I volunteered to be on Team Soup with a nice, quiet man named Marshall. I have never made a soup other than chili so I thought it would be nice to learn something new. Marshall and I cubed our zucchinis and both were complimented by the instructor on our knife skills (apparently, others were struggling). We covered them in water and brought it to a boil, then added curry and Better-Than-Bouillon soup base. This was admittedly a short-cut, but we didn't have all day to build flavors slowly with a homemade mirepoix. Then we waited for the zucchinis to get soft so we could puree them, add a little milk, and then supposedly, we would be done.

The problem we ran into was that when we tasted our soup, it tasted like nothing. It tasted like watery hospital soup. Marshall was stumped but I flew into action. No way were we going to serve bland soup on the first night, not on my watch. I went to the fridge and found some plain yogurt. Before Marshall could stop me, I added it. Then I added a shit-ton more curry, and some salt and pepper and any other spices I could locate. That was when I noticed the instructor watching me.

"Um, I know I'm going off-recipe here, but the soup really had no flavor, so...." I drifted off guiltily. The instructor tasted the soup. She was like "You're right" and then also started going to town on it. "It's the zucchini's fault," she explained. "Winter squash has a lot less flavor than summer squash."

Winter zucchini = asshole zucchini.

In the end, the soup tasted good. We garnished it with some finely chopped parsley, chopped by moi. The best part of the night, though, was when I was plating (or really, bowling?) the soup into individual portions and then had to carry the steaming soup bowls over to the table where we were eating. My server training led me to automatically say "hot, behind" when I was walking behind Marshall. The look on his face was priceless as he first thought I was complimenting his ass and then realized what I actually meant, knew I knew what he thought I meant, and turned beet-red.

Hot behind.

*Not actual soup that I made

How I spent my first solo Christmas

2011-12-26T15:49:00.013-05:00

I am happy to report that my first Christmas sans family was not a miserable lonely affair. It was actually rather low-key and nice. It occurred to me today that, quite by accident, I engaged in a number of my favorite activities.

1. Sleeping late

Some of my friends with more grown-up lives were awakened at the crack of dawn by their Santa-believing youngsters. Not I. I slept in till 11:30am. It was fantastic. There are few things I love more than sleeping. I am a varsity sleeper. This is apparently normal according to my zodiac/astrology chart -- those born on March 1 "need a lot of sleep because they have especially active dream lives." So true and so great to have a sort-of-legit-but-not-really-"scientific"-explanation for my penchant to spend half the day in bed.

2. Cooking

I made myself a fancy breakfast from some leftover stuff in my fridge. I considered attempting my first omelet, but didn't want to risk failure on Christmas, so I opted instead for the frittata route. I wilted some spinach in garlic and oil, added gorgonzola, and folded it into my eggs. YUM.

3. Muppets

After "breakfast" (which was consumed around 12:30), I cuddled up with Maude to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol. I hadn't watched it in years and it was so heartwarming! The scene where Piggy (Mrs. Cratchett) and Kermit (Bob Cratchett) are mourning the loss of Tiny Tim actually made me cry. Also, kudos to Michael Caine for his sincere and committed portrayal of Scrooge -- it's as though he's not even aware his costars are made of felt.

4. Chinese food

Since coming back from China, I haven't eaten much Chinese food. After consuming nothing but for almost a month, I was a little burned out. But I rediscovered my love for the cuisine last night at The Golden Temple in Brookline. I finally experienced the Jewish tradition of Chinese food on Christmas. The place was a madhouse, already packed at 5:30 pm. Fortunately, my friends had reserved ahead; otherwise we would have had to take our chances at some sketchy hole in the wall joint like Lucky Wah. If all you want for Christmas is food poisoning, Lucky Wah is your jam. Or as one Yelper eloquently put it, "Lucky Wah doesn't just make you feel a little iffy. It makes you feel like death incarnate. Like you've been immersed in so much salt that you could be stuffed into a barrel and consumed by New World-bound Puritans."

Fortunately, Golden Temple uses very fresh ingredients and no MSG. The crispy green beans with garlic were phenomenal and will probably haunt my dreams.

5. Going to the movies

I went to see Hugo and while the 3D gave me a slight headache, it was the perfect movie to see on Christmas. Well-made, beautiful to look at, good story, and 3D effects that actually enhanced the film.

6. Drinking craft cocktails in a swanky lounge

I finished off the night at the newly opened bar, The Hawthorne, located in the Hotel Commonwealth. My friend is a bartender there, so I stopped in to say hello and sip their high-class version of eggnog, The Flip Royale, made with ginger liquor, rooibos tea-infused simple syrup, soda water and a raw egg. (You can watch it being made here.) I also had something called The Bishop, which is basically a rum sour topped off with red wine. Yes, weird-sounding, but surprisingly delicious.

So that's how I spent my Christmas. Not too shabby. I did miss my family, but I spoke to them all on the phone and will see some of them soon in the New Year.

To wrap it up, I invite you to bask in the awesome glory of my rather large Christmas tree and my rather large cat.

Movies that take place at Christmas time are not necessarily Christmas movies

2011-12-23T17:43:00.007-05:00

I have blogged about my favorite holiday films before. This year, I feel the need to clear something up. Something that may be confusing to some.

Just because a movie happens to take place in December and/or reference Christmas in some oblique way doesn't make it a Christmas movie. For example, David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I saw yesterday. The film begins on Christmas Eve and ends right around Christmas one year later. It's set in Sweden so there's lots of snow. BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE -- it's NOT a Christmas movie. Murder and rape cannot be in a Christmas movie. Santa would not approve.

Now, my cable provider, Comcast, would like me to believe that any movie with any sort of minor holiday/December tie-in counts as a Christmas movie. Let's take a look at some of the films they recommend under their Holiday category (which is subdivided into Yuletide Comedies, Christmas Classics, Festive Family Faves, Holiday Romance and Holiday Action):

Batman Returns

Ok, I haven't seen this since it came out in the early 90s, but its genre is obviously superhero/action. Does Batman save Christmas in Gotham City? No.

Die Hard

Yes, it's set at Christmas. Yes, there is some Christmas music in it. And this famous shot, of course:

Still, it's violent and people get killed. I'm pretty sure that takes it out of holiday film contention.

Trading Places

I love this movie; it's one of my favorites. Eddie Murphy as con artist Billy Ray Valentine is pure comedy gold. But I don't think Christmas affects the plot much -- yes, seeing Dan Ackroyd drunkenly crash his former company's Christmas party dressed up Santa and stuffing an entire salmon down his suit is funny, but the movie doesn't demand to be viewed at Christmas. If you wanted to watch Trading Places over the summer, it would be fine. If you suggested watching Miracle on 34th Street or A Christmas Story in a month other than December, it would be very, very weird.

Fargo

Seriously? A man's body gets stuffed into a wood chipper.

Little Women

It's a heartwarming movie, but it spans many years and months. If this counts as a Christmas movie, Gone With the Wind might as well be considered one as well since Christmas, you know, happens over the course of the film.

Basically, for a movie to be a Christmas movie, it can't really be watched any other time. Christmas has to feature prominently in the plot -- the central conflict or source of comedy must be related to Christmas (Will Ferrell thinks he's an elf! The Griswolds' horrible in-laws are all staying at their house over Christmas and Clark's Christmas bonus hasn't arrived! etc).

Oh, and no one can be brutally murdered, unless they are killed by a serial killer who dresses up like Santa, like in Christmas Evil (which was originally titled You Better Watch Out):

Ho Ho...Homicide?

Happy holidays, everyone!

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2011-12-18T18:49:00.008-05:00

Ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend edition! Allow me to explain-- an ex of mine, from waaaaay back in the day, I'm talking like the 90s (yes, I'm that old), recently broke up with a woman whom I had heard wrote excellent poetry, but had never actually read. Until I recognized her name in the Fall issue of Ploughshares, founded by Emerson professor DeWitt Henry.

I am startled by how good this poem is, how well Jynne Dilling-Martin controls the sonic elements and keeps the emotion that's raging behind the lines in check. This is tight verse, both in the slang "yo, that's TIGHT" way and in the sense that no words are haphazardly thrown in there/used as filler. Every line feels crafted and deliberate and quietly intense. If I ever get to meet her, I hope we can deftly navigate the awkward "hey, we both slept with this dude...." angle and talk poetry.

Dropped Things Are Bound to Sink
Jynne Dilling Martin

Under the smallest bentback cricket leg rotates this enormous planet
attesting to a cosmic order, surface washed in light supposed to heal

all wicked men: paralytics, lepers, those whose mouths are packed
with pebbles, blind crows instead of stomachs, telltale signs of shame.

In a field, a black hood over my head, I stood and waited for these rays
to shine inside. Is this faith, how by and by, darkness begins to look
like light?

Prophets with soft hair carry fistfuls of crystallized dates and figs, coax
cornstalks out of feces, sound from unstruck cymbals, fur through
naked skin.

But the pillars of great temples stand far apart. A lost wind slithers
between.
Those who cherish doubt are reborn as salt and carried swiftly
shoreward,

taken by tides to an island no one has bothered to name. There I
wandered,
for many years, gorging on honeycomb, holding myself as I slept.

Why disbelieve all those promises? Answers arrive in trifling waves
or do not come at all. Now I sit on a rock with my back to the wreck
and refuse

to turn around. Beneath a hot sun that offers nothing I do not already
own,
I suck the meat off a great seabird, kick sand over his crooked bones.

(Not) Home for the Holidays

2011-12-13T13:44:00.004-05:00

I've been feeling very adult/grown-up lately. Why? Because for the first time, I am not spending the holidays with family. I'm not traveling anywhere, in fact. I'm staying at home, alone.

I will wake up Christmas morning in my apartment, accompanied only by my cat. There will be no long security lines or checked baggage fees, no relatives, no drama, no binge drinking, no emotional eating. Well, there might be some of those last two.

It's not that I don't like visiting family -- it's just that holiday visits are always fraught with tension for one reason or another. The idea of an anxiety-free holiday is very foreign to me, but some people tell me they exist. I didn't intentionally boycott the family holiday; it's just that as the winter months approached, it seemed less and less feasible for me to get the time off from work and afford the overpriced plane tickets. Plus, I have a bonafide family vacation to look forward to in January, after the chaos of Christmas: my brothers and I will be joining my mom and stepdad in the Cayman Islands for a week of sun, relaxing, and rum punch. So don't feel too sorry for me.

Thanksgiving usually finds me in St. Louis, with that chunk of family (Dad, 2 brothers, stepmom), but this year, I chose instead to fly to Pittsburgh and spend the day with my best friend Al, who's getting her master's in conducting at Carnegie-Mellon. She invited two other friends to join us and we had an unconventional-but-delightful vegetarian Thanksgiving that included chili, wild mushroom and chestnut stuffing, swiss chard, spinach and cheddar casserole, homemade cranberry plum sauce (my family always cheats with store-bought) and chocolate, pecan & whiskey pie (my aunt's recipe). It was awesome and the only stressful moment occurred when we realized we had to get to a liquor store before 9pm on Wednesday in order to have Thanksgiving booze. (Crisis averted -- a Thanksgiving without turkey, I could handle. One without wine, perhaps what I'm most thankful for, would have been a different story).

Initially, I planned to go to New York and hang with some Jewish friends on December 25, but since I have to work Christmas Eve and can't bear the thought of spending 4 hours on a smelly bus on Christmas Day, I've now decided to just stay in Boston. I have a few friends who will be around. It will be quiet and subdued, I'm sure. But that's ok. I have enough excitement at other times that I'm actually looking forward to a little solitude. All the loud, obnoxious BU students will be home for the holidays and Allston will be a peaceful, civilized neighborhood for a few weeks. That may be the greatest gift of all.

Continuing Education

2011-12-08T13:55:00.014-05:00

This January, I'll be leading my first poetry workshop, at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. I'm very excited about it and intrigued as to what kinds of students my course on formal poetry might attract. It is Cambridge after all, so it's fair to assume I'll be teaching an eclectic assortment of characters that might include any or all of the following: MIT physicists, freegans, retired opera singers, cutters, Tea Party enthusiasts.

I will be paid a very small sum, but can take a class for free as part of my payment. Here are some of the options I'm (somewhat) seriously considering:

French Regional Cooking

Enjoy a hands-on introduction to traditional dishes from many different provinces in France. We'll prepare recipes showcasing the widely different styles and tastes of provincial cooking. Learn to make mussels with hard cider and cream from Normandy, kirsch soufflé from Alsace, tapenade from Provence, coq au vin from Bourgogne, pork with prunes from Périgord, potato gratin from Dauphiné, and clafoutis (cherry flan) from Limousin. In each class, we will prepare a complete meal from appetizer to dessert. At the end of the evening, we will share the meal and stories of France.

Zut alors! That all sounds delicious. I have no stories of France really to share, except about the time several members of my a cappella group contracted scabies from a hostel in Paris. Probably not the best dinner conversation.

Fine Wine on a Tight Budget

Yes, you can get a great-tasting bottle of wine for under $10. Learn how to evaluate the mystery wines in the 2-for-$16 bin, pick through the closeout rack, and recognize a bargain when you see one. The instructor will share his favorite discount wine sections and the secret wine graveyards where the great wines go to die. Italy, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Spain, and Portugal all offer prospects, but so do France, Germany, and the United States. We'll sample a variety of wines; please bring three wine glasses to class.

This class would make navigating the bargain tables at Blanchard's easier. If anyone tries to make me drink Yellowtail Shiraz, however, I'm out.

Divorce in Massachusetts: With or Without a Lawyer

The class would probably be dull, but it might be a swinging place to meet men and/or lawyers. Though actually, the last time I dated a lawyer, it didn't turn out so well. Never mind.

Beekeeping

The class will give an overview of urban beekeeping, covering a brief history of beekeeping, bee biology, and getting started in urban beekeeping. We will go over the basics of beekeeping, types of bee hives, equipment needed to get started, locating the hive, options for getting bees, starting the hive, first-year activities of the beekeeper, products of the hive, and resources available to new beekeepers, with the ultimate goal of participants being able to start keeping bees on their own next spring.

This appeals mainly for the randomness and because of how funny it would be to add beekeeper to my growing list of professions (teacher, waitress, poet, beekeeper). Also, pretty excellent for the Special Skills section on a resume -- I'm awesome at Powerpoint, Excel, Word, oh yeah, and BEEKEEPING.

White People Challenging Racism

Examine the impact of white privilege and how being unaware of that advantage helps perpetuate racism. We'll discuss short readings and share everyday situations in which we did not speak up against racial bias. Using role-playing, we'll develop effective ways to respond. We'll focus on the role of white people in dismantling racism and building a just society. You'll develop specific plans for challenging racism in your workplace, organizations, community, and personal circles, as well as be encouraged to find other people in your life who can provide support and serve as allies in your efforts.

I'm just flummoxed that such a course exists. The title implies that the class is only open to white people...if only there were a word to describe prejudice based on race...OH WAIT. Knock, knock: who's there? Irony.

Intentional Travel: Where in the World is Your Life Telling You to Go?

Where do you need to travel, be it by armchair or hitting the road? The places you need to visit for personal history, spiritual grounding, or fulfillment may not be where tour guides take you. We travel to have our perceptions altered and to discover what we didn't know we were searching for. We may travel in pursuit of a personal vision based on our life story. And we travel to be surprised and delighted by a latent self waiting for this moment to arrive! We'll share travel experiences, research specific destinations and itineraries, and design maps of future travels. Bring a travel-related book and journal.

...Intentional travel as opposed to unintentional travel, like being sent away to prison? My life is definitely not telling me to go to this class. I honestly think the person who wrote this might have been high. My "latent self" is very amused.

In all honesty, I'm leaning towards either taking a class on Moby Dick because I've never read it (and might never read it on my own) or an intermediate cooking class. My parents actually met in a class called "Cooking for Singles" so perhaps I'll also fall in love while learning some snazzy knife skills and how to poach pears in wine.

Happy Halloween

2011-11-01T00:26:00.007-04:00

Technically, Halloween ended a little over a half hour ago, but still.....

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. This year, for the first time in a while*, I dressed up as a still-alive real person. Usually, I go with something more conceptual/bizarre/inappropriate (like in 8th grade when I dressed up as Uma Thurman's character from Pulp Fiction, complete with fake cocaine under my nostrils and a needle sticking out of my chest).

I kept it simple this year and dressed up as Katy Perry. Really, I was just looking for an excuse to wear a pastel wig. Don't pretend you don't know what that feels like.

My mom e-mailed me this disturbing picture today:

and she wrote a comment that this could have been her and her Dad back in the day. It's true -- my grandfather so favored Jack Daniels that for years I thought Mr. Daniels was a close friend of the family. At every holiday gathering, people would joke about how close Grandpa and Jack were ("Where's Grandpa?" "Oh, he's spending a little time with Jack Daniels"). When I saw the label on a Jack Daniels bottle, my first thought was, "oh, that's so funny, it's the same name as Grandpa's best friend!"

Ah, innocence.

My favorite Halloween story is actually not really fit for public consumption (it involves my older brother repeating a very un-PC gross joke he learned from our cousin while treat-or-treating), but a close second is when my younger brother Richard, when he was 6 or so, eagerly told people while trick-or-treating that he was collecting money for a unicycle instead of UNICEF.

*the last time I dressed up as a real, live person was in 2001, when I went as Nancy Kerrigan and my best friend Kim was Tonya Harding. She chased me around all night with a crowbar.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2011-10-24T13:20:00.006-04:00

Fun titles edition!

Today, I will select poems relatively at random to post here, based solely on the promise/awesomeness of the title. Titling a poem can be colossally difficult -- so difficult that I often wish I could make like Emily Dickinson and just forgo titles all together. The poems I'm pasting in below I only chose to read because of the title (I found them all on Representative Poetry Online ).

Up first we have....

A book a jug and a dame

by everyone's favorite timeless poet, Anonymous

A book a jug and a dame,
And a nice cozy nook for the same;

"And I don't care a damn,"
Said Omar Khayyam,
"What you say, it's a great little game."

Alright, so it's more of a limerick...but I didn't know that until I read it. And I only read it because the title made me smile.

The next one that caught my eye was

The eyes of toads are great

by E.D. Blodgett (b. 1935)

The eyes of toads are great
wells of sadness: where
do they gaze but into fate

to see nothing there?

Hmmm. This is probably actually untitled and just titled with the first line for indexing purposes. And the first line is sneaky because it's not that the eyes of toads are "great" so much as "great wells of sadness." I feel tricked.

Moving on.....

Recipe for a Salad
Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes,
passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.

Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca brown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss
A magic soupcion of anchovy sauce.

O, green and glorious! O herbaceous treat!
'T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat:
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
"Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day."

Really wish I had eaten lunch before sitting down to blog.

Oh, the Sexual Life of the Camel is another anonymous limerick too silly/vulgar to reproduce here, but click on the link to read it.

I can't believe this is for real; it's like the Onion version of a poem title:

On the Dark, Still, Dry Warm Weather, Occasionally Happening in the Winter Months
Gilbert White (1720-1793)

....I can't bring myself to paste it. It's a 44-line poem in rhyming couplets about mild weather.

Finally, I found this title intriguing and can't decide how I feel about the poem itself....but it's certainly interesting. And angry and gutsy. I think I like it? I don't know. Some of the line breaks feel really random (probably intentionally so) and that bugs me. After reading it a few times, I do think it's more sophisticated/complex than it initially appears. It's a rant, but a well-crafted rant and I guess it's got me thinking, which is a good thing.

Male Rage Poem

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco (b. 1949)

Feminism, baby, feminism.

This is the anti-feminist poem.

It will get called the anti-

feminist poem. Like it or not.

Dedicated to all my friends who

can't get it up in the night,

accused of having male rage during the

day. This is for the poor buggers.

This is for me and the incredible boredom

of arguing about feminism, the right

arguments, the wrong arguments, the

circular argument, the arguments that stem

from one bad affair, from one

bad job, no job -- whatever; fill in the

blanks _____ _____, fill in the ways

in which you have been hurt. Then I'll

fill in the blanks, and we'll send rosters

of hurt to each other, mail them, stock

them for the record to say: Giorgio Di Cicco

has been hurt this way x many times.

We will stock closets of Sarah's hurt,

Barbara's hurt, my hurt, Bobby's hurt.

This is where the poem peters out ... oops! -- that's

penis mentality, that's patriarchal bullshit,

sexist diction and These line lengths are

male oriented.

Where did he get so much male rage?

From standing out like a man for a bunch of

years, and being called the dirty word.

"When you are 21 you will become a Man."

Christ! Doomed to enslave women ipso

facto, without even the right training.

Shouldn't have wasted ten years playing

baseball; should have practiced

whipping, should have practiced tying up the

girl next door, giving her cigarette burns ...

oops! Male rage again! MALE RAGE -- the words ring out --

worse than RING AROUND THE COLLAR, worse than KISSED

THE GIRLS AND MADE THEM CRY, jeezus, male rage

in kindergarten. MALE RAGE. You've got

male rage; I look inside myself and scrounge

for all this male rage. Must be there

somewhere. Must be repressing it. I write poems

faster and faster, therapeutically, to make sure

I get all the rage out. But someone's

always there to say, Male Rage -- more Male Rage.

I don't leave the house, workin' on my male rage.

Things may lighten up. My friends may meet

fine women at a party someday and know

what to say to them, like "I'm not a Man and

you're not a Woman, but let's have dinner

anyway, let's fuck with our eyes closed and

swap roles for an hour."

I'm tired of being a man.

Of having better opportunities,

better job offers,

too much money.

I'm tired of going to the YMCA and

talking jock in the locker room.

I'm tired of all those poems where

I inadvertently used the word "whore."

I'm tired of having little blonde secretaries type out

all my poems for me.

I'm tired of being a man.

I'm tired of being a sexist.

I'm afraid of male rage.

I'm afraid of my male rage,

this growing thing, this buddy, this

shadow, this new self, this stranger.

It's there. It's there! How could it have

happened? I ate the right things, said

yes to my mother, thought the good

thoughts.

Doc -- give it to me straight.

How long before this male rage

takes over completely?

The rest of your life.

Take it like a man.

Simulated Womanhood

2011-10-17T13:28:00.006-04:00

Confession: I've never really understood the male need to play video games. Not for lack of trying -- I've dated a few video-game-playing dudes and 2 of my 3 brothers are gamers. It's just always baffled me -- I get bored and/or frustrated almost immediately when I try to play. Aside from my brief obsession with F-Zero on Super Nintendo in the early 90s, I've just never been into non-board games. This was the case, at least, until I got an iPad. Suddenly, I'm into games. Specifically, simulated reality kinds of games featuring female protagonists. My favorite is Sally, of Sally's Spa and Sally's Salon (Luxury Edition).

In Sally's Spa and Sally's Salon, you play a Sally, an enterprising young woman who operates her own business. Customers come in demanding various services (facials, massages, manicures) and you must provide those services in a timely manner. The faster and more efficiently you serve your clients, the higher tips you earn, and that money can then be put back into the business in the form of upgrading equipment or hiring employees to assist you. Take my word for it, this game is super fun and well-designed.

And then there's Top Girl.

In Top Girl, you are a model whose objective is to buy as many clothes as possible in order to be as hot as possible in order to score the hottest man possible. No joke. Each item of clothing has a hotness quotient and the game makes a distinction between daytime hot (what you wear to work) and nighttime hot (what you wear to the club where you pick up guys). If you try to go to the club in your work attire, you will be told you are not hot enough and sent back home to change.

The game also punishes you for not playing it -- i.e. if you don't play for a day or two, you can expect your boyfriend to dump you as soon as you return because he's feeling neglected. Just like real life! And boyfriends are important in the world of Top Girl, because they can buy you clothes as gifts, and the more clothes you have, the more stores you can "unlock" in the mall.

It's all very sordid. Not to mention the fact that the game tries at every turn to get you to spend your own money to enhance the experience of playing it. The game app is free, but if you're willing to buy credits on iTunes, you can fast-track and get ahead faster.

My boyfriend is so disturbed by Top Girl that he went out of his way to research another alternative for me, a less anti-feminist sim game. So now I also have Kudos 2, on my computer at home.

Kudos 2 is not bad. I find myself making decisions for my little waitress avatar (named Holly) that I wish I made in my real life. For instance, Holly loves to go jogging and clean her apartment. And she often chooses to stay home with a book instead of go to the bar with friends. I should probably be more like Holly. The problem I'm running into, though, is that my sim friends keep dumping me because I don't go out with them enough. Holly is not very popular, but boy, is she in shape and clean. And fiscally responsible -- she walks 4 miles to work every day instead of paying for the bus!

I'm not sure playing video games is a positive step in my adulthood...but it is a fascinating one. Not to worry, I still read books and stuff. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go kiss my boyfriend on Top Girl (which I can only do once every 90 minutes) so he'll get me those stilettos I've been eyeing.

The One That Got Away?

2011-10-07T13:18:00.010-04:00

Holy shit, I hope this is like riding a bike. Or, actually, easier, since I was never that good at bike-riding.

It's been months since I've blogged and the more time that passed, the more anxious I've been about starting up again. But here I am. LET'S DO THIS.

You might think, based on my last post, that it would be logical for me to blog about my life-changing trip to China in July. But truthfully, there's just no way to really do it justice, so if you want to hear about it or see pictures, shoot me an e-mail or peruse the slideshow on the right-hand sidebar of this site. Also, this video was shot and edited by one of the volunteers on the trip and is awesome:

Yale China 2 from Brian Wimer on Vimeo.

I've been back for months and still think about it all the time. But moving on.

This past weekend, I visited New York -- it was a make-up trip since my last planned NYC weekend was foiled by that bitch, I mean, hurricane, Irene. As usual, I had a wonderful time and saw many friends, not to mention St. Vincent and the cast of Arrested Development, courtesy of the New Yorker festival. Saturday afternoon, after brunch, I found myself with some time to kill. I wandered through Soho, the first neighborhood I really became familiar with because of my internship at the HERE Arts Center during the summer of 2000. I was listening to my iPod and kept skipping around to melancholy love songs. At first I thought my mood might be related to the dreary/cloudy Fall day, but then it hit me: spending time in New York feels like spending time with ex. An ex with whom you are friendly, but also may still have some feelings for. To put it in Facebook terms, "it's complicated," my relationship with New York.

New York and I were together for 5 years (2003-2008), but actually a little more if you count the summers in college I spent living there before moving there in 2003. At one point, I thought we'd always be together. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. But over time, the passion fizzled and we grew apart. I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't good enough for New York, that I'd never be able to thrive. I tried hard to make it work, experimenting with 4 different apartments in 3 boroughs. I even tried out different careers: full-time jobs, part-time jobs, freelancing. Writing, acting, marketing, editing, teaching. It was exhausting and heart- (and wallet-) breaking. When grad school offered me the chance to leave, I took it.

Still, when I visit now, my heart races; I catch myself thinking "maybe I didn't give New York enough of a chance, maybe now it could work...." But the reasons why we don't work surround me, like the pervading urine stench of the F train. Trying to hail a cab in the rain, paying $17 for an omelette -- I felt the familiar rage returning. Relationships bring out various things in people (i.e. "you bring out the best in me"), and New York brings out a side of me that I don't really like, an aggressive, angry side. And I know if I moved back, nothing would be different and I'd just get hurt again. Boston may not bring out the best in me, but it's...comfortable. We have a less volatile/more stable union. We co-exist peacefully.

But man, we did have some good times, New York and I. Some sexy, awesome times. I know it better than any other city, including St. Louis where I lived for the first 18 years of my life. And sometimes it kills me that we can't be together.

Away we go....

2011-07-05T21:02:00.009-04:00

This is my last blog post before embarking on an 18-day journey to China. I depart on Thursday morning and officially have entered the extremely excited-yet-nervous phase.

I'm traveling with the Yale Alumni Service Corp (YASC) and the main purpose of the trip is to volunteer in Xiuning County, which is in the Anhui province. Xiuning (pronounced "Shu-ning") comprises 9 towns and has a population of 274,000. It's located about 5 hours by bus west of Shanghai.

The YASC is organizing a summer camp for the kids of Xiuning -- I'll be helping with chorus and book club. There are a ton of different activities being offered, from photography to harmonica. Over 200 people, all somehow affiliated with Yale, are going. Many are traveling with spouses and kids -- I'm going solo. But like a contestant on Survivor/Top Chef/The Bachelor/any reality show would say, I'm not going there to make friends.

I'm going there to WIN. WIN CHINA. Well, not really. And of course, I hope to socially connect with at least some of my fellow travelers. But if I don't, that's okay. The resort where we're staying in Xiuning has its own karaoke bar, so I'm sure I can keep myself occupied there.

After a week of volunteering in Xiuning, the group flies to Beijing for three action-packed days of sightseeing (The Great Wall, Tiananmen Square etc). Then I will fly on by myself to Hong Kong for the final three nights. For the detailed itinerary, click here.

This trip is coming at just the right time for me -- I have been feeling stalled professionally and personally and an international summer adventure will hopefully invigorate me for the fall.

And now, some amusing Mandarin idioms, courtesy of Chinese for Dummies:

gua yang tou mai gou rou: to display a lamb's head but sell dog meat, i.e. to cheat people

da ao jing she: to beat the grass to frighten the snake, i.e. to give a warning

che shui ma long: cars flowing like water and horses creating a solid line looking like a dragon, i.e. traffic

Hu shuo ba dao: to talk nonsense in eight directions, i.e. to be full of crap

I will have internet access for most of the trip, thanks to my iPad...not sure if I'll have time to blog, but I'll do my best!

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2011-06-25T13:38:00.002-04:00

Two poems this week by British poet Stevie Smith (1902-1971), whose work initially struck me as a little slight, but upon further/closer reading, I now quite admire. These poems vary significantly in tone and though neither are in a recognizable, conventional form (like a sonnet), they both employ repetition to great effect. Smith is a perfect example of a poet that often writes with form without necessarily writing in form. (Forgive me for having form on the brain - I just pitched a formal poetry workshop to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education). Anyway, enjoy!

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Valuable
(after reading two paragraphs in a newspaper)

All these illegitimate babies . . .
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little cheap things,
Why do you not put some value on yourselves,
Learn to say, No?
Did nobody teach you?
Nobody teaches anybody to say No nowadays,
People should teach people to say No.

O poor panther,
Oh you poor black animal,
At large for a few moments in a school for young children in Paris,
Now in your cage again,
How your great eyes bulge with bewilderment,
There is something there that accuses us,
In your angry and innocent eyes,
Something that says:
I am too valuable to be kept in a cage.

Oh these illegitimate babies!
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little valuable things,
You should have said, No, I am valuable,
And again, It is because I am valuable
I say, No.

Nobody teaches anybody they are valuable nowadays

Girls, you are valuable,
And you, Panther, you are valuable,
But the girls say: I shall be alone
If I say 'I am valuable' and other people do not say it of me,
I shall be alone, there is no comfort there.
No, it is not comforting but it is valuable,
And if everybody says it in the end
It will be comforting. And for the panther too,
If everybody says he is valuable
It will be comforting for him.

SKYMALL

2011-06-21T14:24:00.008-04:00

Oh, the things you can convince yourself you need at 36,000 feet.

Come on, who DOESN'T need a Sumo wrestler coffee table???

I think from here on out, I'm going to ignore wedding registries and buy all wedding gifts from SkyMall. "Hey bride and groom, I know you wanted a Williams-Sonoma garlic roaster, but I got you this Bacon Genie instead!"

The utter futility of this product has already been discussed on this blog. Basically, bacon genie allows you to cook bacon in your microwave....which is already a stupid idea, unless you like your bacon chewy and dry. Bacon is meant to be FRIED. Anyone who loves bacon enough to buy bacon accessories knows this.

In all seriousness, I kind of want this:

Your eyes do not deceive you, that is in fact a Wine Glass Holder Necklace, combining two of my passions: drinking and wearing jewelry. Throw in a straw and I'd be good to go. No more awkwardly holding my drink at parties!

Finally, since Father's Day was this past Sunday (click here to read my tribute to my Dad from a few years ago), I submit this for your consideration. Had I been more on the ball, I would have gotten this for our home yard in St. Louis:

I can just imagine the look on Dad's face every morning as he gazes proudly upon his Yeti lawn statue. Maybe next year, Dad.

Sports

2011-06-16T14:04:00.008-04:00

Wow, I can't believe it's been several weeks since my last post. Guess I got swept up in Bruins playoff fervor!!!!!!!

If you've ever met me, you will know the above statement is false.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that they won the Stanley Cup. I was less thrilled that the streets of Boston were filled with loud, drunk people last night. What is about sports fans running up to people and screaming in their faces? What is the purpose of that?

I spent last night doing the exact opposite of watching the game: I went to a literary magazine launch party/author reading and then took in the latest Woody Allen film. I was listening to poetry when the Bruins scored their first goal.

Sports fandom has always mystified me. It's not dissimilar to religious fervor. Fans can't control or predict whether their team will win, but they believe they can win and more importantly, SHOULD win. The chants of "U-S-A! U-S-A!" confused me last night, until I remembered that we beat a team FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY, making the victory all the more sweet. It was a triumph for AMERICA, you guys. We might as well have been playing [insert dangerous Middle Eastern country du jour] or Libya or North Korea.

Most likely my dislike of sports stems from my complete and utter inability to play them well. Watching sports churns up feelings of inadequacy dating back to my middle school and high school days. I am uncoordinated and not fast, nor am I graceful or agile. I am a good swimmer and a decent skier, but anything that requires hitting, passing, kicking, throwing or catching a ball is beyond my capabilities.

I had the misfortune to attend a high school where sports were very important and all students were forced to play a team sport two out of the three seasons. The real athletes hated this policy because people like me were bringing them down and the non-athletes hated this policy for obvious reasons. Not being athletic was just another strike against me, right alongside not having a sufficiently WASPy name or driving an SUV. And since I wasn't good enough to really play on any teams, I had to suffer the indignity of being the "manager" -- i.e. running the scoreboard at games, putting the equipment away after practice. One afternoon during my duties as JV Girls Volleyball manager, my "teammates" decided it would be funny to spike volleyballs...at me.

So yeah, I guess it's no wonder that I'm not a fan of sports or sports fans. Musical theater fans are much more my speed -- I mean, no one got stabbed after the Tony Awards.

The Trouble with Commencement Speeches

2011-05-22T17:55:00.005-04:00

Well, to put it succinctly: they are boring and cliched, by definition.

I myself learned this firsthand when asked to deliver the graduation speech at my former elementary school when my younger brother was "graduating" from 6th grade. (Side note: I really think graduation ceremonies should be saved for high school and college. I am attending another brother's graduation from middle school next week and while I'm thrilled to be able to visit him and happy that he passed 8th grade and can start high school next year, I don't know, it just seems like a gimmick to get the parents all mushy and proud so they'll give more money.)

At any rate, in 1999 I was a high school senior. As I was not valedictorian of my class (far from it), I was not the speaker at my graduation. But as a "distinguished" alum from the elementary school where my brother Richard was graduating, I was invited to speak at his ceremony. Thus I was faced with writing a speech to inspire 6th graders and their parents. My first issue was that it felt disingenuous to tell them about what they had to look forward to, namely middle school. Which almost all survivors agree constitute a dark time of early adolescence. Bye bye, recess; hello, 4 hours of Spanish homework. Also hello body odor, pubic hair, awkward growth spurts, and pimples. We can't all look like Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, folks.

But of course I couldn't talk about any of that in my speech. I had to be positive, congratulatory, and assure these young adults that the years ahead of them would be exciting and wonderful. I think "challenging" was about the only adjective I used to hint at the vortex of unpleasantness they were about to be unknowingly sucked into. So I felt like a charlatan. I quoted someone predictable, told them they were ready to reach for the stars or some shit and the parents ate it up. They even reprinted my speech in the next school newsletter.

This past Monday, I graduated from Emerson College's Creative Writing Master's program. Some of my peers chose not to participate in commencement, but hell, I spent the dough and felt like I deserved some fucking fanfare. Mainly, I wanted to see if anyone speaking could convince that my $60,000 was well-spent. Let's just say I was a tough crowd.

The main speaker was some Communication Ethics guy who was being awarded an honorary degree. And boy, did his speech suck. It had nothing to do with anything remotely related to Emerson or graduation or life. I think I might actually have preferred a conventional address. But what are the conventions of a commencement speech? Allow me to provide some handy guidelines:

-- a quote from Mark Twain and/or Gandhi

-- an inside joke about the institution so not inside that even the parents will chuckle/"get it", i.e. reference to terrible dining hall food

-- A Lincoln anecdote

-- sobering mention of recent tragic event/disaster (tsunami, tornado, ABC's Private Practice renewed for another season)

-- vague references to the future, leadership, dreams, tomorrow, change, endings, beginnings

and voila! Commencement speech. Next time I attend a graduation, I think I'll make up a bingo card with all of the above on it. I bet I get bingo several times over.

Man, I am getting grouchy and cynical in my old age.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2011-05-05T13:27:00.008-04:00

A good friend of mine (and fellow Emerson poet) recently launched an online poetry journal: Interrupture. The first issue went live in February and contains some excellent poems. This one is by another Emerson graduate, the delightful Mary Kovaleski Brynes. She's been published in a number of places and is currently living in Spain. Anyway, I love how feverish this poem is -- I think the repetitions are well done and well placed, and the piece has a sensual rhythm, not to mention amazing images. Me likey (and hope you do, too).

Maybe This Happens to Everyone

When I woke, Paris was in flames.

I spent the day in bed while a man I loved

kissed my ankles, the white arches

of my feet, asked what made them,

and I told him it was the Sacre Cœur--

when a city is burning like that there’s no time

for lies. At night the flames were in my hair,

the flames were in his mouth and each street

unrolled like a long tongue that gave

us what we couldn’t understand,

only if we’d dance on the cobbles

they’d light up like the disco floors

of les Grands Boulevards, like the smooth-trodden

gravestones of popes inside the cathedral,

the martyrs emblazoned on the Bastille.

I don’t remember the Bastille.

It is impossible to remember the Bastille

when his hand is up my dress on the metro

and Paris is in flames. The trains

brought us in through a tunnel underwater:

the Chunnel was made of glass,

the train like a chain of dolphins linked end to end,

arching silver with the currents,

and we saw Humpbacks, eyes big as our train car,

slow and bovine—it took minutes to pass them.

Their whale eyes were looking at us—

everyone in Paris was looking at us.

We weren’t looking at anyone, and when we did

their faces were like mirrors and I loved

his strange watery reflection but kissed only him.

The trains came. The trains moved out

of the blue-glass station while we ate crepes Nutella

and called them crapes because we were Americans.

The trains came. The trains moved out.

Our train moved out.

We stayed. Paris lit and smoldered.

Maybe this was the beginning of the world again, maybe

it was the end—maybe this happens to everyone

in every city, even in small towns, where corn fields

catch fire at the end of summer

and teenagers tear off their clothes

and run naked through them, tempting

the flames with their flawless skin,

but it won’t brand them, won’t even singe,

no matter how hard they run.

Corporations on my shit list

2011-05-04T14:07:00.007-04:00

Lately, The Man has really been getting me down, or at least The Man as represented by large national companies. I love to support local businesses, but let's be real, the fries at McDonald's are pretty bomb and sometimes, there's just no substituting them when you're starved at 1 a.m. and nothing else is open.

But McDonald's isn't really pissing me off actively right now. I actually find the discontinuation of the dollar menu between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m. at my local McD's more amusing than irritating -- if you ever need a good laugh, I highly recommend watching drunk people try to order dollar fries and shakes and be told over and over again that they have to buy an entire extra value meal. This goes on every night at the McD's at the corner of Commonwealth and Harvard Avenue in Allston, MA. Comedy gold.

No, today my ire is aimed at Dunkin' Donuts, Panera, and Best Buy. Let's start with the most minor offender: Dunkin's. Recently, they stopped offering an egg white option for their breakfast sandwiches. I guess high cholesterol and obesity are back in vogue. There is still the egg white flatbread, but it's disgusting -- dry, with alleged turkey sausage and flecks of green and red that I suppose are meant to resemble peppers. Not that the regular breakfast sandwiches were any culinary masterpiece, but at least you could get them on an English muffin, which is approximately 1,000 times tastier than the mealy flatbread monstrosity.

There was also some deception that transpired at the Boylston/Tremont location -- I came in one day and was told they were "out" of the egg whites that I had gotten in the habit of ordering on an English muffin with cheese. I was informed that they just ran out but would have them again soon. LIES. Two days later, the same thing happened, but I was again reassured that it was a temporary outage, no cause for alarm. About a week after that, they finally dropped the ruse and broke the news to me that egg whites were a thing of the past.

Dunkin' Donuts, you are dead to me.

Next offender: Panera. I'm actually writing this from a Panera right now, fueled by their subpar coffee and injustice. Let me say that it pains me to muckrake a corporation that began as a local chain in my hometown of St. Louis. Once upon a time, Panera was St. Louis Bread Company, a great little cafe with delicious pastries. From the ages of 8-18, I ate countless tuna-salad-on- honey-wheat sandwiches. As Panera, the food is still pretty solid. I particularly enjoy the Fuji apple chicken salad, despite the fact that the dressing is the exact color and consistency of semen.

The location in Brookline advertises free wifi, so today I came for lunch and brought my laptop. When I logged on to the network at 12:45, I saw a disclaimer that between the peak hours of 11:30-1:30, I could only be online for 30 minutes. I was slightly annoyed that this policy was not made clear on the numerous "free high speed wireless internet!" signs, but whatever, I thought, I'll have to be disconnected for like 15 minutes, from 1:15-1:30 and then I can get back on.

As expected, I got bumped off at 1:15. I waited till 1:30....couldn't get back on. 1:40....still nothing. I asked an employee (Charissa) and she told me the peak hours are actually from 11-2. I told her this is not what it says on the "log in" home page. She also said that sometimes it's limited to 30 minutes even not during peak hours because they have a problem with students camping out for hours and occupying tables. By the way she snarkily informed me of this, I could tell she thought I fell into this category. I told her I have been here less than an hour, bought and ate lunch here and was in the middle of writing an important e-mail when I was kicked off (this was true). She offered me a complimentary cookie. I told Charissa to go fuck herself and get a real name.

Ok, the last part isn't true. But I did turn down the cookie. I have some principles. The good news is that the town of Brookline has a cheap wifi service you can sign up for, so I am now taking up a large booth to blog about this. Suck it, Panera.

Finally, the corporation most deserving of my hatred -- Best Buy. Last year, my dad bought me an Insignia flatscreen HD TV with a built-in DVD player. In March, a little over a year after acquiring this TV, the DVD player stopped working. I took it in to Best Buy since it was still under warranty. It took them 2 weeks, but they repaired the DVD player. I brought the TV home and about a week later, the DVD player stopped working AGAIN. I called Best Buy and asked if I could get a new TV since this one was obviously a piece of garbage. They told me that per my warranty, they won't replace the TV until it's been sent out for service FOUR TIMES. It has to break FOUR TIMES before they replace it, and remember, each time it goes out for service, it takes 2 weeks to fix. Unacceptable.

My dad, who loves lost causes and in his semi-retirement writes a lot of angry letters, was pretty pissed that this policy was buried in the fine print of the extended warranty agreement he signed. He chewed out a Best Buy supervisor named Troy, based in Colorado. I guess it brings me a little pleasure to think about Troy (employee ID #153162) in Colorado getting yelled at by a 65-year-old man in St. Louis who's furious that his daughter's DVD player in Boston is broken. My dad threatened Troy that he would "post a blog on the internet" (I didn't have the heart to tell him that statement's redundant) and bring Best Buy to its knees, defaming Troy and all the Troys in the Best Buy corporate machine who rip off the little people.

Et tu, Troy?

Then Dad ordered me an external DVD player. From Walmart. We'll see how this plays out.

Winning things is better than losing things

2011-04-29T14:42:00.005-04:00

The Vagnino Monologues is (are?) BACK!

My thesis has been submitted and I have taught my final class of the semester. Now I can get back to blogging and reading things other than my own poetry. Very exciting.

The title of this post is pretty master-of-the-obvious, but still, it's not often that I enter into contests and win them. But recently, Lady Luck has been smiling on me and I have to say -- winning? So much more fun than losing. Y'all should try it.

Win #1: Scholarship money for my trip to China.

In February, I applied for financial assistance for my July trip to China, organized by the Yale Alumni Service Corps. I had to write a brief essay about why I would be an asset, and what skills I bring to the table (karaoke?). I also submitted my tax return, as evidence of my poverty. And lo and behold, they are giving me $1600, the maximum award amount.

I can hardly wait for this trip. I will be staying most of the time at the Smoky Willow Resort in Xiuning, a rural town in the Anhui Province. I really hope I get to stay on the Ladies Floor:

"Specially designed for the female guests who prefer the most peaceful and quiet environment that they so enjoy when being alone, the Ladies Floor section is located in a separate building hidden behind the main hotel block. In addition to the excellent views through the windows, each room and the common area are designed with the fine touch of feminism suited for today’s women with their discerning taste for fine quality of life."

YESSSSSS!

Win #2: A bottle of Jim Beam "Red Stag" whiskey

This I won at Lineage, as the champion of the first-ever edition of Lineage Jeopardy. Lineage Jeopardy was created to test the staff's knowledge in five categories: wine, beer, cocktails, food, and service. I dominated the wine, food and service categories, answering questions like "this herb tastes like green apple" (what is sorrel) and "Gruner Veltliner is traditionally from this country, but the one on our wine list is from this region" (what is Austria and Monterey, CA).

I'm not much of a whiskey drinker, but I figure I should have some booze at my place that's not wine, for guests who are not fellow winos. And look, Kid Rock likes Red Stag!

And obviously, it's my goal in life to emulate Kid Rock in every way. My skeevy goatee is growing in nicely.

Win #3: An all-access Chrome pass to Boston's IFF (Independent Film Festival)

As an Elite Yelper, I get the chance to enter contests every so often. This past Wednesday, I happened to be on Yelp and see that they were giving away a film festival pass and all I had to do to enter was answer a question, which was something along the lines of "what can independent films offer that mainstream Hollywood movies do not?" I wrote something about untidy endings and subtlety and talked about the movie "Once." And voila! I won the pass -- I can attend any and all movies this weekend and get priority seating. I also can go to the after-parties, all of which have open bars and free food.

Last night, I saw the narrative feature "On the Ice," a somewhat grim morality tale about an accidental death that haunts a small town in rural Alaska. Tomorrow I'm seeing the new Miranda July film, some narrative shorts, and a documentary about an artist that reanimates skeletal animal remains using robotics (?!?!)

On the topic of movies, I also recently saw "The Room," written/produced/directed/starring Tommy Wiseau. It was a life-changing experience that warrants its own post, so look for that soon.

It's good to be back, friends! Hope you'll keep reading the 'Logues! Zai jian! (that means see you soon in Mandarin)

This is not goodbye

2011-03-27T15:14:00.003-04:00

Friends and dear readers, it has probably come to your attention that I've been blogging far less frequently than I used to. This is because I'm finishing up a little thing called my master's thesis while also working two jobs. I promise you, come May, the Vagnino Monologues will return to its former two/three-posts-per-week glory. But until my thesis is completed and the semester is over, any time spent writing has to be in the service of my said thesis or the class I'm teaching.

So for the next month-ish, there probably won't be much new content on here, and for that, I apologize. I know many of you rely on my witty observations to get through your mundane days. I hope you will not try to fill the void left by my blogging hiatus with casual sex or meth. Rehab is expensive (I hear).

Till (most likely) May unless I magically get more free time or absolutely have to post,
Katie

O Muse, where art thou?

2011-03-08T14:15:00.007-05:00

I'm officially in panic mode regarding my thesis. I have a ton of revisions to work on, plus new poems to generate in order to hit the magic number (48) required for me to get my degree. Sure, I could churn out some crap, but I'd know it and my thesis adviser would know it and while I might still get the piece of paper that says Master of Fine Arts on it, I'd feel like a schmuck, a charlatan.

So I'm calling on the powers of the blogosphere to help me summon my muse. Problem: I don't know what he/she/it looks like.

Eustache Le Sueur, "Clio, Euterpe and Thalia," ca. 1640

Is that what muses look like? If so, they need to get off their lazy asses and come inspire me.

Seriously though, as anyone who endeavors in the creative arts can attest, there is nothing more difficult than knowing you have to produce something RIGHT NOW. That's just not how the process works for most of us. I work well under pressure generally, but I can't just barf out a poem on command. If I do, it will be just that: barf.

I wish I knew more about my muse. Right now, I'm trying to read a bunch of poetry (as well as essays about poetry). I need to have poetry on the brain 24-7, to live, breathe, eat, sleep poetry. Poetry, poetry, poetry, salmon.

Shit. It's Restaurant Week in Boston, so I've been working a lot at Lineage, serving lots of salmon and explaining over and over again what duck confit rillette is. Unfortunately, the brain energy I use at work is antithetical to poem-writing. I wish I could say I'm scribbling sonnets on the backs of menus and discarded napkins, but in reality I'm probably thinking more about whether the woman at table 34 really has an allergy to garlic or is just a vampire, or if the couple awkwardly chatting at the bar is on a first Match.com date.

See? This post was supposed to be all about poetry and my muse and somehow, it got co-opted by other things. No wonder my muse wants nothing to do with me.

Thirty and Flirty and Thriving (?)

2011-03-03T14:24:00.008-05:00

I've been listening to this song a lot lately -- "I Don't Feel Young" by Wye Oak, an indie folk group currently touring with the Decemberists.

As some of you know, I turned 30 on Tuesday. And it's true -- I don't feel young. This felt like a significant birthday. I was nothing but excited about it for the months leading up to it; I'm optimistic about the next decade and what it might hold. And yet, the day before my birthday, I suddenly felt a little panicked and sad. My 20s are over and what do I have to show for them?

Well, I don't have a great answer for that. But I don't think I wasted them entirely. I spent most of them in New York, the last few years in Boston. I've definitely had a lot of....adventures. I'll probably have some in my 30s, too. Also, according to my stepmom, in my 30s I am allowed to wear more outrageous outfits and larger jewelry.

And as for my gift to myself? I am actually doing none of the things I wrote about. Psych! However, the solo trip to Spain received the most votes and I am doing something similar -- I'm (hopefully, pending some scholarship money) going on a service trip to China for two weeks in July. I'll spend one week volunteering in a rural province outside of Shanghai and one week sightseeing in Beijing. I'm super excited about it and feel it's a great thing way to travel and also give something back.

In terms of the birthday itself, the day was largely uneventful. It started with my printer deciding to no longer work and almost making me late for a meeting. After my meeting I got a manicure, a fun new haircut and threw myself a party at Marliave, which was a blast. Friends from Lineage, Emerson, and Funkin' A! all represented. This weekend, I'm headed to New York to celebrate with college and post-college friends.

This blog is 2.5 years old and I'm 30. Hopefully, both are getting better with age. I'll conclude here with a great Kenneth Koch poem, a wistful and funny ode to the decade I just exited.

To My Twenties

How lucky that I ran into you
When everything was possible
For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart
And so happy to see any woman
O woman! O my twentieth year!
Basking in you, you
Oasis from both growing and decay
Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis
A palm tree, hey! And then another
And another (and water!)
I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,
Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,
Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable
For the moment in any case, do you live now?
From my window I drop a nickel
By mistake. With
You I race down to get it
But I find there on
The street instead, a good friend,
X—- N——, who says to me
Kenneth do you have a minute?
And I say yes! I am in my twenties!
I have plenty of time! In you I marry,
In you I first go to France; I make my best friends
In you, and a few enemies. I
Write a lot and am living all the time
And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you
After my teens and before my thirties.
You three together in a bar
I always preferred you because you were midmost
Most lustrous apparently strongest
Although now that I look back on you
What part have you played?
You never, ever, were stingy.
What you gave me you gave whole
But as for telling
Me how best to use it
You weren’t a genius at that.
Twenties, my soul
Is yours for the asking
You know that, if you ever come back.

So You Think You Don't Like Valentine's Day, I mean, Poetry

2011-02-14T15:01:00.006-05:00

Given the day, it seems appropriate to post this poem. Also relevant is the fact that the poet, Dean Young, is in need of a heart transplant. Please, someone give this man a new heart so that he can keep writing poems like this one. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

On Being Asked By A Student If He Should Ask Out Some Girl

I say get her alone in a kitchen.
I say what Keats said.
I say don't wear that. I display the driftwood
you picked up at McClure's the day we saw the whale.
Part question mark, part claw, part stroke
personified. I say buy her a box of crayons,
the big 64 box. I say you'll be dead soon
anyway. Outside the snow hesitates and thaws
but my office has no windows. I say my office
has no windows and down the hall
the copy machines moan, Again, again,
my chair all swiveling squawk.
I say when I was young.
I tell about carrying your chair across the bridge
and how sick your cockatoo seemed the first weeks
in our new apartment. I say we'll be dead soon
anyway. I explain how after looking half the afternoon
for two socks, one mine, one yours, we find them
under a pillow, nestled together like newts in love.
I say it's hopeless as holding a bag of strawberries
in the rain. I mean what happens to wet paper bags.
I say climb the mountain. I read some Donne aloud
like I'm paid to do. I move the triangle
toward the furnace as indication of the indeterminacy
of all human affairs. There is no triangle, there is no
furnace. I say when I was alone
and miserable. I let the canoe stutter
and drift. I lift my hands like someone asked to dance
a dance I don't know how to. I have this pain.
I have died this way in a previous life,
my armor clattering in the dust.
It's spring in the Alps. On Venus it's Spring
and tiny Venusians chortle with sobs far beyond
our registers, inventing new forms of love.
I ask her name. I say spell it. I ask, What
did you get on the midterm? Across the hall,
my colleague explains something 18th century
to a cloud of perfume. I am thinking
this morning to discard the opera,
wrote John Cheever in his journal.
To find out why life has this huge dog,
wrote Vallejo in Spanish in Paris.
He fell over coughing up blood.
If I had my notebook, I'd cross everything out.
I love the sea, how it crosses everything out.
I almost start talking about Wisconsin.
I say, You can do two things, maybe three.
I say the final's on Monday,
mostly short answer, some i.d.

North Shore Agency: BUSTED

2011-02-12T12:21:00.005-05:00

In my last post, I transcribed the e-mail Funkin' A! received from douchenozzle extraordinaire Kyle Fitzpatrick. Now I'd like to share another odd piece of correspondence I received a few weeks ago in the mail, from North Shore Agency, a collection agency with a Columbus, OH address.

Dear Katie Vagnino,

Be realistic.

You don't get something for nothing.

The magazines you ordered from our client, TIME OUT NEW YORK, have a value. Otherwise, you wouldn't have placed an order for that subscription.

That value is in the amount of $19.97.

We expect full payment for that subscription. The value of sending payment on your part is to protect your account with our client.

That account has a value, too.

Make a check payable to North Shore Agency and mail it in the envelope provided.

You don't get something for nothing.

It's not the way it works and you know that.

***************************************************

I find this letter completely hilarious in its tone. I mean, talk about childish shaming tactics! I also, upon checking online and calling Time Out, determined that my account is not actually in collection and my subscription is paid up through June 2011. BOGUS.

A quick Google search of "North Shore Agency scam" yielded a ton of hits, information about class action lawsuits and warnings on consumer scam sites about how NSA obtains/steals old subscription data and sends phony letters. Sadly, most people pay because the amount requested is low and they don't want to jeopardize their credit. Hell, I almost just paid it and figured I'd forgotten to renew my subscription on time. However, North Shore Agency can't even report to credit agencies. This is something freely admit when you call them, like I did.

Getting a human on the phone was not easy. The number listed on the letter I got just connected me to an automated system that wanted my credit card information. I tried pressing zero, I tried pressing nothing and staying on the line and I just got disconnected eventually. Finally, I located an alternate number, provided by another pissed NSA letter-recipient. I called and spoke to a very hostile woman who admitted that they are being sued by a bunch of people ("well, all companies get sued") and insisted that Time Out New York had given them my information, even after I told her I had just gotten off the phone with them and their records show that my account is paid.

At any rate, I probably should report these clowns to someone. In the meantime, if you get a letter from North Shore Agency, don't send them any money.

Funkin'....eh?

2011-02-08T23:37:00.010-05:00

As many of you know, I am a proud member of a Boston "vocal band," a.k.a. non-collegiate adult a cappella group. Yes, I'm even cooler than you thought. When I joined this group back in March 2009, the group had four members (2 guys , 2 girls) and was called Downtown Crossing. Downtown Crossing had existed for some unknown number of years and performed a few regular high-profile gigs (like the Boston AIDS walk) and the occasional private event. However, not long after I joined, 2 of the 4 of us left, and a bunch of new folks came in. And something we all agreed on was that our name kind of sucked. I mean, Downtown Crossing is like my least favorite area in Boston. It's such an eyesore. It brings to mind fast food chains, a urine-soaked T stop, and the sad, gutted remains of the original Filene's Basement.

Filene, I'm glad you're not alive to see this.

So we came up (or, really the friend of a member came up) with a new name: Funkin' A!

The exclamation is part of the name, which will become relevant in a moment.

Funkin' A! is ridiculous, but so is singing a cappella when you're a grown-up. At least with a tongue-and-cheek name, it's clear that we're in on the joke. And let's be real, it's not like people were clamoring to hire us when we were Downtown Crossing.

Now, fast forward to January 2011. Funkin' A! has done a handful of legit gigs, at venues like Harper's Ferry (R.I.P.) and All Asia. We are seven members strong. Our visual blend is excellent (i.e. we're good-looking). We have a functional website, a solid repertoire of more than dozen songs, and a Facebook fan page. Then we received this e-mail:

Hello guys and girls.

My name is Kyle Fitzpatrick. I am the singer/guitarist and primary songwriter of Funkin' A...we have been together using the name "Funkin' A" for 2 years now. Im sending a friendly message telling you I have had this name Trademarked. I have had the official certificate for the past two months. I have known of your existence for a while now, but thought you guys might realize that we did have it first and we play very often. Our website will be up soon. We are going to be recording an album that will be on iTunes in the next few months and your name must change. We will likely come to play Boston. We are completely prepared to take this to the next step if you guys do not comply. Its a great name, and we had it first. I expect to hear back in a timely response, or you will hear from our lawyers.

Kyle Fitzpatrick

Funkin' A

Friendly message? Seemed a little douchey to us. And honestly, how serious can the band be if they don't even have a website? This photo accompanied the e-mail, further convincing us of the ass-itude of Mr. Fitzpatrick, who has yet to master how to flip an image in Photoshop. (That's probably next on the agenda, after setting up a website and leading his Funkin' A incarnation, which happens to be a Long Island-based jam band, to superstardom.)

I mean, he has a goatee and is wearing some kind of beret/beanie chapeau. COME ON.

We composed a polite response to Mr. FitzP, explaining that we hardly pose a threat and hey, isn't the world big enough for two bands with the same silly name? We have no iTunes aspirations. We will never perform outside of Boston. It's unlikely our respective "fans" will ever get confused. And besides, our name has an awesome/hilarious/ironic exclamation point after it. TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

Kyle wrote back a nastier missive than the first one, still threatening legal action and still demonstrating an ignorance of when to use apostrophes. Our group has reached a consensus that if this dude really wants to shell out a grand to pay a lawyer to send us a cease and desist letter, well, let him do that. His money to waste as he pleases. We are doing funking nothing until a certified letter arrives. This is assuming Kyle's crack legal team (apparently he has "lawyers" plural) can even find a physical address for us. Good luck with that, Kyle.

In the meantime, we are considering the following possible names:
1) The Kyle Fitzpatricks
2) Fun$kin' A!!!!!!!!
3) Funkin' B
4) Fuckin' A (though we'd probably lose the AIDS Walk gig)

Finally, for your reading pleasure, I give you Funkin' A's sentence-fragment-infested bio, in which I have highlighted what I believe to be the most mock-able elements:

"Funkin' A is a cognitive ensemble driven by the perpetual quest to rock the funk out. From Long Island, NY - absorbing themselves in as many different styles of music as they can to fuel their diversity....striving to be open vessels to the ever-evolving new possibilities in this musical universe. The band took shape in Jan. 2009. Each musician had been in different projects and various outfits. They are now eclectic groove conductors. Diverse, catchy rhythms...unique songs.. They are not your average band....Come see Funkin' A."

It's true, they are not your average band, excuse me, "cognitive ensemble." They are much, much worse. I would say that if you're in the New York area, avoid this group like the plague, but I don't have to. Unless you're in Patchogue or Amagansett, NY, Funkin' A won't be playing at a venue near you anytime soon.

I bet I know more about feline diabetes than you do

2011-01-23T13:45:00.021-05:00

Maude's diagnosis has put her in some very distinguished company.

A recent vet visit revealed that Maude's long streak of perfect health is finally over. She is diabetic and I must now give her twice-daily injections of insulin and feed her special food. It is certainly the beginning of a new chapter in our lives together.

But I'm coping -- and doing lots of internet research. Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine has a very helpful video series featuring some adorable cat actors. And this website has some very dramatic rhetoric: "Your Emotions Will Be Raw" cautions one section; another warns that:

Gone are the days of putting out food and water, giving a quick pat on the head, and hurrying out the door ... Friends, relatives, and co-workers may make insensitive comments that you are crazy to care for a chronically ill pet. Although it is difficult, try to ignore the unsupportive people - they do not understand the special bond of love that you share with your pet. Their inability to have compassion for an animal means that they will never experience the pure and unconditional love that can be shared between a human and a companion animal.

Damn!

I'm going to be the best caregiver that I can and take it one day at a time. Apparently, feline diabetes can go into remission and not all cats need insulin for their entire lives. Honestly, though, the syringe is tiny and Maude doesn't seem to mind so far. And if anything, she likes her new food more than the stuff I was feeding her. So we're adjusting. Our emotions are a little raw but we'll pull through. Feline "diabeetus": it's not a death sentence.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2011-01-16T13:26:00.004-05:00

Leave it to Robert Hass to write a gorgeous, painful lyrical poem about life and art and somehow work in the phrase "fucks in the ass." That's a neat trick. Clearly, the man's got cajones, not to mention mad talent.

Against Botticelli

In the life we lead together every paradise is lost.
Nothing could be easier: summer gathers new leaves
to casual darkness. So few things we need to know.
And the old wisdoms shudder in us and grow slack.
Like renunciation. Like the melancholy beauty
of giving it all up. Like walking steadfast
in the rhythms, winter light and summer dark.
And the time for cutting furrows and the dance.
Mad seed. Death waits it out. It waits us out,
the sleek incandescent saints, earthly and prayerful.
In our modesty. In our shamefast and steady attention
to the ceremony, its preparation, the formal hovering
of pleasure which falls like the rain we pray not to get
and are glad for and drown in. Or spray of that sea,
irised: otters in the tide lash, in the kelp-drench,
mammal warmth and the inhuman element. Ah, that is the secret.
That she is an otter, that Botticelli saw her so.
That we are not otters and are not in the painting
by Botticelli. We are not even in the painting by Bosch
where the people are standing around looking at the frame
of the Botticelli painting and when Love arrives, they throw up.
Or the Goya painting of the sad ones, angular and shriven,
who watch the Bosch and feel very compassionate
but hurt each other often and inefficiently. We are not in any
painting.
If we do it at all, we will be like the old Russians.
We’ll walk down through scrub oak to the sea
and where the seals lie preening on the beach
we will look at each other steadily
and butcher them and skin them.

The myth they chose was the constant lovers.
The theme was richness over time.
It is a difficult story and the wise never choose it
because it requires a long performance
and because there is nothing, by definition, between the acts.
It is different in kind from a man and the pale woman
he fucks in the ass underneath the stars
because it is summer and they are full of longing
and sick of birth. They burn coolly
like phosphorus, and the thing need be done
only once. Like the sacking of Troy
it survives in imagination,
in the longing brought perfectly to closing,
the woman’s white hands opening, opening,
and the man churning inside her, thrashing there.
And light travels as if all the stars they were under
exploded centuries ago and they are resting now, glowing.
The woman thinks what she is feeling is like the dark
and utterly complete. The man is past sadness,
though his eyes are wet. He is learning about gratitude,
how final it is, as if the grace in Botticelli’s Primavera ,
the one with sad eyes who represents pleasure,
had a canvas to herself, entirely to herself.

T-minus 45 days

2011-01-14T14:05:00.008-05:00

Let the countdown to my 30th birthday begin!

45 days left in my 20s. And one of the things on my mind is what to get myself. What? Get yourself a birthday present? That's absurd!

I am a huge proponent of getting oneself a present for one's birthday. It's the only way to ensure you will receive something you actually want, as opposed to a mousepad shaped like a ladybug (sorry, Mom). It's not necessary to break the bank; last year, I treated myself to a lovely pair of earrings that cost under $20. I wear them all the time.

This year, however, I am planning to splurge a little more, since I am turning the big 3-0. Here are the current contenders:

1. Vespa

Admit it: I would look pretty cute zipping around town on one of these babies. When I told my mother I was considering this, she said "Do you want me to never sleep again?" Good thing she doesn't know about the next option...

2. Skydiving with my brother Richard

We actually talked about doing this when he graduated from college but never got around to it. It could be time. I'm terrified of it and can't conceive of doing it....which is part of what makes it tempting. Achieving something that seems impossible would probably be a great way to kick off the next decade of my life.

3. Lasik

Since age 15, my glasses have been my thing, the signature part of my appearance. Most people dig the look -- more than one member of the opposite sex has said they are a turn-on. Still, I might be ready to shake up what my friends call The Katie Vagnino Aesthetic.

4. Solo trip to Spain

Traveling with friends is super fun, but I've been craving the experience of taking a major trip abroad by myself. And I've never been to Spain. And don't all the men there look like Javier Bardem?

5. Breast reduction

This option I have floated by a few friends with mixed reactions. Women get it -- big boobs are a big annoyance. I long to sleep on my stomach and wear strapless dresses. Men think I'm crazy for wanting to change what they consider one of my better assets. You can't please everyone, I guess. I have done some research and talked with some women who've had it done (and are thrilled with the results) so at the very least, I think I'll get a consultation. And if I do decide to do it, I'll certainly throw my tits a farewell soiree. They deserve that.

So now, readers, I'm giving you the chance to weigh in.....

What should the gift be?

The writing on the wall, er, stall

2011-01-12T13:10:00.009-05:00

One week from today, I will teach my first class in a course designed entirely by me. The only parameters: the class must involve a research component and introduce the students to multiple genres (i.e. other than the academic essay). Most instructors choose a theme or topic around which to build their class. My topic is the Women's Movement. Here is my course description:
will explore how informed writing can affect (and has affected) social/political
WR121: The Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves

This course will explore how informed writing can effect (and has effected) social/political change in the United States, as viewed through the lens of the Women’s Movement from the 19th century to the present. This is not, however, a class for or of interest only to women – in the context of this course, women will be considered as a social group with a history of advocating for legal rights and other privileges. We will examine the various waves of feminism, looking at why some movements were successful (the passage of the 19th amendment, granting suffrage) while others were not (the never-passed Equal Rights Amendment), as well as what the label of “feminist” means today. Political cartoons, op-eds, speeches, biographies, and blogs will be among the genres we study, and the course will culminate in a fieldwork-based group project where students will design an advocacy campaign for a local women’s organization. No prior knowledge of the Women’s Movement or feminism is required.

Now, when I came up with this, I was under the impression that this year, as it had been in previous years, the freshmen would be able to read the various section descriptions and select a topic that interested them. I was also assuming I'd have a class of mostly women, like last semester (ratio of women to men was 13:1). However, neither of these assumptions is true. For the first time, freshmen advisers slotted students randomly into sections regardless of their majors/interests and according to my class list, I will have 6 men and 9 women in my class.

Upon learning these things, I initially freaked out and considered going with a different topic. Oh God, I thought, what if I get a bunch of kids who think Hillary Clinton is a feminazi? Or think women should remain barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?

But I'm sticking to my guns, folks. My boss supports me, though acknowledges that making my course palatable and accessible to a variety of 18-year-old viewpoints will be, to say the least, a challenge. But as one friend reminded me, making freshmen write about something outside their comfort zone is not a terrible objective. My junior year in college, I took a Women's Studies course to fulfill a requirement and I was way more into it than I thought I would be. Do I have a secret agenda to make all my students militant feminists? No. But do I think it's important for college students, regardless of gender, to learn about the victories and defeats of one of the most significant, complex and (arguably) ongoing American social movements? Absolutely.

And while I'm not superstitious, something happened to me yesterday that I'm interpreting as a sign that I made the right choice. I found something tucked away in a book from college -- a transcription of graffiti from a ladies room bathroom stall of the (no longer existent) Cross Campus Library at Yale. I stared at this graffiti conversation and watched it evolve over several semesters before finally deciding to write it down. And yesterday, I found the scrap of notebook paper. The graffiti "debate" was as follows and try to imagine lots of different handwriting, Sharpie colors etc:

When do I turn into a woman?

What is a woman?

Never

When you kiss a frog

When you sway your hips

When you decide or discover you are one

When you have a child <----that's ridiculous, not all women can have children

or want to

It's when you love yourself

When you can look back & want to move forward

I found this so compelling then and reading it again now, am still struck by it, especially the last comment, the one that silenced the other scrawlers: When you can look back & want to move forward. Isn't that why we study the history of anything?

Last post of 2010

2010-12-31T13:55:00.005-05:00

I don't have much to write about today and will soon be dressing up for work (NYE at Lineage = we can wear fancy stuff as opposed to our usual uniform), but ending the year with 74 posts (when 75 is such a nicer, rounder, better number) seemed wrong.

I've already done my 2010 recap post (scroll down to check it out), so let's look ahead into 2011....the year when:

-- I will turn 30;

-- I will finish my M.F.A. in Creative Writing and complete my thesis in poetry;

-- I will possibly leave Boston (and the East Coast), if I find a job somewhere awesome like Chicago.

So 2011 is shaping up to be a big year of change, hopefully for the better. And I can't wait to write about it here. Happy New Year, everybody!

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry: St. Louis edition!

2010-12-28T23:25:00.010-05:00

Hello readers! Today's poem was written by a poet who has largely been forgotten/overlooked: Sara Teasdale. Teasdale was born in St. Louis (!) in 1884 and published her first collection of verse in 1907. At 23, she had already published a book of poems. Bitch.

Just kidding!

Anyway, Teasdale is on my radar because of the book I'm currently reading -- The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. It's a novel narrated by a poet struggling to write an introduction to an anthology of rhyming poems. And Teasdale is one of his favorite rhyming poets. Like me, she's into forms. And she's from my hometown. We have so much in common, except that I am hoping to not kill myself by overdosing on barbiturates at age 49 like Sara did.

This poem appears first in her 1917 collection Love Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. I think it has a refreshingly positive/hopeful message, one very appropriate for looking ahead to a new year.

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

(Emotional) Baggage Claim

2010-12-22T14:11:00.009-05:00

I like everything organized and in its right place. That does not make me an anal control freak. I just think everything should be neat and tidy at all times. Is that really so much to ask?

I just like to let it all hang out. I'm a little all over the place.

Ok, so maybe I'm a little on the small side. Size isn't everything! Just give me a chance. Once you go carry-on, you never go back.

I'm fucking indestructible. Hard as a rock. Impenetrable in every way. Try to hug me and you will hurt yourself so BACK OFF.

I've been used a lot and I'm worn out. And if that's a problem for you, well, fine, why don't you just get some shitty shiny thing on wheels. I don't need you anyway.

I like to blend in. Black is the new black. Maybe I'm a little boring and safe, but you know what? Actually, I don't know what. I'm a dime a dozen. Love me?

I'm so hot and sexy. Tell me how sexy I am. Really, don't you think I'm sexy? I'm sexy, right? RIGHT? Oh, and did you see my Dolce & Gabbana tag? Just making sure you noticed that.

2010 Report Card/Best and Worst of 2010

2010-12-20T00:21:00.016-05:00

One of my favorite annual issues of People arrived last Friday -- the Best and Worst issue, where you get to re-experience all the best photos/stories/gossip/gowns from the past year ALL OVER AGAIN. I also recently completed teaching my first year at Emerson and got to do something I've always fantasized about: grade people. And this is college, so my grades count, bitches!

In honor of these two exciting events, this blog post will be a hybrid of superficial ratings and photographic highlights of the past year. 2010 was an odd year, to be honest. Not awesome, not awful. So here we go!

CAREER: A-

Pretty much solid developments in this category. I upgraded from back-server to server at Lineage and landed a competitive teaching position. And I actually genuinely love both my jobs. I really enjoy expanding young minds and telling people what arctic char tastes like (a more delicate, flakier salmon). And I think I'm pretty good at both, though we'll see if my instructor evaluations confirm or refute this. I don't know if I'll teach another year at Emerson or not, but I think I will definitely continue to teach...somewhere and in some capacity.

Oh, and on the writing front, I picked up some freelance work from Time Out Boston. Because like 2Pac, I have "ambitionz az a ridah" [sic].

HEALTH: B

I had bronchitis for basically all of October and mysteriously contracted strep C, which is rare in humans and common in horses (!), in June. And I gained 5 lbs. But hey, I didn't have a kidney stone and my belly button remained infection-free!

LOVE LIFE: B-

I mean, it's still a passing grade. After a significant relationship ended in February, I dabbled on Match.com and began what I thought would end up being a significant relationship, but it flamed out quickly. My feelings on this relationship are best captured in this Rosemary Clooney song:

(p.s. I want that dress big time)

The year is ending on an upswing though, with a new gentleman in the picture. For fear of jinxing it, I'll stop there. It may not be love, but for now, it's nice and that's enough for me.

FINANCES: D

Once upon a time, I actually would put some of each paycheck into a savings account. That time is...not now. I have no emergency nest egg and I'm tired of living hand-to-mouth. Being broke is cute and charming when you're 20...not so much when you're 30, as I soon will be. I need to be better at budgeting and have more discipline when it comes to eating/drinking out. And my rent eats up way too much of my income, so if I stay in Boston, I think I need to suck it up and live with roommates. Sorry, studio :(

TRAVEL: A

I went to Holland and Belgium in July! Read all about it here. I also made it to St. Louis, New Haven, Chicago and New York.

ENTERTAINMENT: B+

I saw Peewee Herman on Broadway. Loved Black Swan, Catfish, and The Social Network. Listened to a lot of Florence + the Machine and Robyn. Saw a Puccini opera and a burlesque version of The Nutcracker involving a gigantic candy cane penis that sprayed snow. Watched some shitty reality television. Spent too much time on YouTube. Should have seen more live music.

And now, some photos of BEST moments from the past year. I don't think I will include photos of worst moments, because come on, when I'm crying and drinking alone in my apartment, who wants to take a picture? Maude can't operate a camera.

At a black-tie wedding at the Harvard Club

My first Red Sox game

With my best friend Jon in Chicago

Boarding the train to Bruges

Celebrating my Dad's 65th

On Cape Cod for Labor Day

Halloween

at the Lineage holiday party

Ok, 2010....maybe you weren't so bad....

A shout-out to Emerson undergrads

2010-12-14T15:16:00.003-05:00

After a semester of teaching the Emerson class of 2014, I have to say, I'm impressed with their creativity, humor, and resourcefulness. A while back, my alma mater Yale put out a musical admissions video. It was well-made, but kind of too slick for my taste. The Emerson equivalent, I think, is much funnier and more likely to actually appeal to potential applicants. The video has gone viral and was featured on Jezebel this week -- in case you missed it, I'm posting it below.

As a final project in the writing class I teach at Emerson, I asked my students to "take an approach" (i.e. update/subvert/twist) a classic fairytale. I gave them the freedom to use any medium they wanted and many chose to make videos of some sort. One group turned Goldilocks into a modern-day BU sorority girl blogging about her romantic conquests; another made a satirical indie film trailer that I find very amusing -- click here to watch.

We had our last class on Monday and toward the end of the period, I asked students to share their favorite memory from the semester. One student spilled the beans that at one point, they all discovered my blog and several of them were looking at it during class, unbeknownst to me. I apparently kept asking them what was so funny. I mean, I'm not at all surprised that they found my blog -- when you Google me, it's the first hit -- but I do think it's funny that they were so secretive about it (and proud of themselves for not letting on that they'd found it).

I'm looking forward to meeting a new crop of Emerson freshmen in January and hope they are as awesome as my current group. If any of them are reading this, YOU RULE and I hope you keep me posted about your performances and achievements.

Christmastime is here

2010-12-08T23:04:00.010-05:00

...and my apartment is DECKED OUT. I have a lot of decorations, none of which I purchased for myself. Such is the benefit of having a holiday-obsessed mother who has sent me about three boxes worth of Christmas stuff, ranging from semi-creepy Dickensian carolers...

to vintage bottle-brush trees:

As for my tree this year, well, there's really only one way to describe it: FIERCE.

I mean, it's fucking beautiful, right? It fits perfectly between my desk and shoe rack. I bought and decorated it on Sunday, while sipping Trader Joe's chocolate-flavored eggnog. Then I watched Holiday Inn and cried at the end, like I always do.

I own three Christmas movies: Holiday Inn, White Christmas, and a very special film that I have never seen, but plan to watch this year. Christmas Evil.

It's about a serial killer who dresses up like Santa and wants to "give everyone the presents they deserve...even if that means giving the gift of MURDER!"

Very excited to watch this. I mean, I love Halloween and I love Christmas. Clearly I will love this film. Maybe even as much as I love this:

As one YouTube commenter noted, "Gotta love the Muppets for recognizing that this song is about attempted rape."

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2010-12-06T23:00:00.004-05:00

I'm pretty swamped with end-of-semester odds and ends, but wanted to post a poem I was recently introduced to by my workshop instructor, Gail Mazur. This piece originally appeared back in 1999 on Slate, a zine that deserves a shout-out for posting poems and generally acknowledging the existence/cultural relevance of poetry.

I am in awe of this poem. After reading it, I immediately filed it in the "damn, I wish I had written that" file. The final simile, in the last three lines, is especially amazing.

The Round-Up
by Karen Fish

What happened--old as the hills, ancient as the ax,
the horse, water in a clay cup, dirt under the fingernails.
The river forgets the fish and the winter sun slides
beyond the far hills. All of them had mothers, and all
the mothers sang while swimming and as the women sang
the birds left the trees which ringed the water
for the clouds where the distance whispered a different dream
than the dream dreaming this

dark afternoon. The men were boys not that long ago--
delicate, confident paddling alongside their mothers
through the hot afternoons.
The water dark green with splash and shout--
summer just a whistle and gone.
Of course, the night will still hold stars,
the moon's journey, the planet's orbit. There will
always be nests, branches, the swaying and the saying.
They have names and are men exactly like you
lined up in jackets, boots and caps--
cold with the waiting.

It is unbelievable, even some of the soldiers
begin to sob. Trucked out to no-where
are doctors, lawyers, plumbers, builders, bankers.
It is winter, snow rides the collapse of clouds.
There are just shades of brown and grey,
a line of trees--a dark scribble
like markings done by a child.

As each man is shot,
whether he drops backward
or to the side
he forgets us, his own name, this place,
civilization
like the kiss
in the evening at the lit threshold
whose intent was to swear return.

What did we do before YouTube?

2010-11-30T16:47:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I use this blog to reflect on the great issues of the day, the unique challenges of being human in this complex modern era. And sometimes I use it to post silly videos featuring cats.

My Thanksgiving, in statistics

2010-11-28T23:51:00.013-05:00

Number of relatives that flew in from the West Coast: 5
Number of happy hours my brother and I hit before seeing our relatives: 2
Number of different pies baked: 4

Number of fights I had with my mom: 2
Number of fights she remembers us having: 1
Number of lines of bad dialogue in "Burlesque": 4, 387

Number of plastic surgery procedures Cher admits to having: 3
Number of Broadway shows seen: 3
Number of Broadway shows seen that were directed by Alex Timbers: 2
Number of drunk/high adults in the audience at the Peewee Herman show: 497
Number of glasses of wine consumed: more than 5 and less than 50
Number of times the woman next to me on the train to New York got up to pee: 3
Number of times I was asked about my love life: CRANBERRY SAUCE
Number of years my grandmother has been awesome: 92
Number of sticks of butter in my mom's stuffing: unknown

Number of regrettable drunken texts sent: 6
Number of tablespoons of Johnny Walker Black added to my chocolate pecan pie recipe: 4
Number of minutes I waited in line at Starbucks on Thursday morning: 25
Number of children with nicer winter coats than me spotted in aforementioned line: 3

Number of pairs of socks borrowed from my ex-boyfriend (at whose apartment I was staying) because I forgot to pack socks: 2 (sorry, Noah)
Number of times the word "number" appears in the blog post: 19!

And one bonus, non-numerical piece of data: for the best story that may or may not be true and/or grossly exaggerated told by a family member, it's a tie between

-- my aunt describing the time she met Cher and Cher appeared to be wearing a bedspread
-- my mom talking about seeing Stevie Wonder open for the Rolling Stones and falling off the stage

Ah, the holidays. The fun is just beginning.

Gobble, gobble

2010-11-25T14:28:00.002-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I have already engaged in one angry/tearful discussion with a family member about politics, so for others who may be in similar positions, I recommend this helpful article from Slate about navigating those tricky topics.

The turkey: equal parts regal and ridiculous. All parts delicious!

Yelping about blogging, I mean, blogging about Yelping

2010-11-24T13:18:00.012-05:00

I remember very clearly when I first heard about Yelp, back when it was first launching just as a site for New Yorkers to write reviews about local businesses*. It makes sense that Yelp originated there -- New Yorkers have high standards and love to complain loudly and publicly. I was at a party in Hell's Kitchen and my friend Sam was telling me about his new job with a brand new website.

"It's called Yelp," he said, "and it's a site where once you set up an account, you can review restaurants and stuff. Anyone can write the reviews and the businesses can't take them down, even if they're bad."

"Wow, that sounds really cool," I said. "I'll have to check it out." In my head, I thought it sounded retarded. I was sure it would never take off -- I mean, who wants to read reviews written by ignorant people?

Fast forward to the present, in which I am now not only a Yelp member, but a member of the Elite Squad. I applied and was granted Elite status in the summer of 2009; basically, in exchange for Yelping frequently (and wittily), I get invited to some special events with free food and booze.

And speaking of witty, I thought I'd share one of my favorite Yelp reviews ever, written by my friend, Jon. Jon lives in Chicago and had a "conflict" with a tailoring business. Here is his review of Without a Trace Weavers:

A small hole in one of my favorite sweaters precipitated my search for a good reweaver, and Chicago Magazine recommended Without a Trace, with locations on the Gold Coast and in Chicago's North Park neighborhood. I dropped my sweater off at the Gold Coast location and was told they would be in contact with me when the repairs were completed. Fast forward several weeks later, and my sweater was ready for pick up.

Without a Trace's strange hours (open only until 4:30pm) did not make it easy for me to return to collect my garment, as I had recently begun work in the suburbs and it had become difficult for me to be downtown before they close. I did not pick up my garment until a few weeks after the repairs were completed, and only after several increasingly frantic and accusatory phone calls from the business. For the benefit (and entertainment) of all Yelpers, here is an excerpted portion of the most psychotic voice message:

"I don't know why you're refusing just to come pick up your sweater. . . um, this isn't right. . . I don't understand why you'd bring something in and not pick it up or return any calls. . . I just. . . it's something. . ."

I had never before received as bizarre or manic a voicemail before. Not from any ex after a bad breakup, or from any crazy member of my family. Now, this voice message may lead you to believe that I'm one of those sick people who gets off on dropping off garments for dry cleaning, alterations, or repairs. and then leaving them there forever sticking the company with the bill. Ha, the joke is on you, reweaving company! Reality? A too-long turnaround time and inconvenient hours of operations made it difficult to pick up my sweater, only one of several that I own and that provide me warmth and comfort on a regular basis.

When I returned to pick up my garment, I asked the nice young man working at the time if it was he that left me the aforementioned message. I told him that it was the single most psychotic, unprofessional voicemail that I had ever received. Without hesitation, the employee told me that it must have been the owner, Michael. This leads me to believe that I am not the first customer to suffer the indignity of dealing with the business's proprietor.

If you're looking for a healthy dose of abuse along with your garment repair, might I suggest Without a Trace? If you happen to be reading this, Michael, might I suggest for you some time on the couch with a good psychotherapist? It's not terribly professional to work through your obviously complex emotional issues on your customers' answering machines!

Sometimes when you write a negative review, the business will respond and apologize/offer an incentive to give them another try. Usually, if this happens, it will happen within a month or so of the review being posted. I, however, recently received a message from Sandella's, a place I reviewed over a year ago. Here's my review and the subsequent message -- I suggest doing a dramatic reading to get the full effect:

Neither tasty nor healthy, Sandella's has little to recommend it. My ham, spinach and swiss "panini" was greasy and measly (seriously, like one slice of ham) and lacking the promised "mango habanero salsa." Also, it wasn't really a panini -- kind of like a sad, deflated burrito. I will not be back.

13 months later.....

Hello Katie. I know you had a bad experience at my restaurant and I appreciate the feedback. The reason why I have taken so long to write back is we have done an extensive menu change and have worked hard over the past year to make the food experience much better.

Since your review and taking into consideration some of your valid points we have hired a chef and worked with her for several months and redesigned the menu. I took the spinach and swiss product off the menu and now offer a choice of Iggy's foccacia along with our flatbread as a panini option. I too agree that what we were serving before was not good. We have also brought in brown rice, avocado and several other ingredients to update our products. We also offer a make your own option for rice bowls, grilled flatbread pizzas and the salads. You can also feel free to design your own panini if you so desire. I understand that you may not wish to give us another try and even worse we could disappoint you a second time but I assure you that we have tried to be a better establishment and many people do like what we are doing now.

So I appreciate the valid review and I hope there are no hard feelings. If you ever do give us a try again I really hope we do a better job this time around. We have really, really put a lot of effort into making things better. However we still are a moderate food establishment that tries to serve a decent product as quickly as possible so there are no miracles here!
Thank you for the input. Sincerely, Nick M.

I am amused and touched by Nick M's response. He really took my comments to heart, it seems, but acknowledges the challenges of trying to serve "a decent product" in what's basically a fast-food venue. I may just give Sandella's another go.

*Apparently, Yelp actually started in San Francisco. New York was added soon after.

The ghazal: my white whale?

2010-11-18T12:18:00.004-05:00

So this week I'm posting an example of a form that I have attempted, but failed miserably at completing: the ghazal, pronounced either "huzzle" or "guzzle," depending on whom you ask. For those of you familiar with my work, you know I love form and don't shy away from a challenge. But the ghazal makes all other forms --pantoums, sonnets, even villanelles-- look like nursery school Dr. Seuss bullshit.

The ghazal is very old, with the earliest examples in Arabic verse dating back to the 6th century. It's also incredibly difficult -- there is a refrain repeated at the end of every other line, as well as internal rhyme. And as if that wasn't hard enough, the poet is also supposed to "name" him or herself in the last couplet. Because of the formal requirements, ghazals rarely are narrative poems; the repetition makes it almost impossible to move any kind of story forward. Many operate associatively through images or rhetorical word play.

This ghazal takes some liberties with the rules -- the internal rhyme is inconsistent -- but it's still, I think, largely successful.

The Ghazal of What Hurt
by Peter Cole

Pain froze you, for years—and fear—leaving scars.
But now, as though miraculously, it seems, here you are

walking easily across the ground, and into town
as though you were floating on air, which in part you are,

or riding a wave of what feels like the world's good will—
though helped along by something foreign and older than you are

and yet much younger too, inside you, and so palpable
an X-ray, you're sure, would show it, within the body you are,

not all that far beneath the skin, and even in
some bones. Making you wonder: Are you what you are—

with all that isn't actually you having flowed
through and settled in you, and made you what you are?

The pain was never replaced, nor was it quite erased.
It's memory now—so you know just how lucky you are.

You didn't always. Were you then? And where's the fear?
Inside your words, like an engine? The car you are?!

Face it, friend, you most exist when you're driven
away, or on—by forms and forces greater than you are.

In Memoriam: Allston Cafe

2010-11-17T00:24:00.013-05:00

Friends, it is with great sadness that I announce the closing of one of my favorite neighborhood haunts: The Allston Cafe.

Since moving to Boston a little over two years ago, I have frequented the Allston Cafe (formerly known as Herrell's, when it was under different ownership). On Yelp, I gave it a rare five-star review. It was really a unique place, beloved by Allstonians, and very popular. On weekends, it was often impossible to get a seat and the wait for their amazing breakfast sandwiches was sometimes epic, but always worth it. I always overheard people discussing their art shows, band tours, and latest tattoos. The wifi was free and the coffee was strong. And they served breakfast all day, every day. What genius created the Tiny Mighty, the eggless breakfast sandwich for only $2.14? What giant among men (or women) figured out that grape jelly would take the Meg Muffin (egg, cheese, sausage) to the next level?

Apparently, Allston Cafe was forced to close due to a dramatic rent increase to the tune of $1700, or roughly 794 Tiny Mightys. I recorded my final visit this past Saturday; I hope you enjoy my photographic tribute.

What Kim Kardashian and I have in common

2010-11-13T12:11:00.004-05:00

Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write. And for those of you keeping track, no, it's not that we've both been linked to a pro-football player or star in a reality show on E!

It's this:

Hey Kim, you and me both, sister.

As I approach my next birthday, which happens to be one of those decade-milestones, it's hard not to reflect on what I've accomplished in my life. I've never had a strict timeline of events in my head, and yet when I graduated from college, I did have vague ideas about where I saw myself 5, 10 years down the line. If you had asked me, back at the tender age of 22, where I thought I'd be now, I would have speculated that I'd still be acting in some capacity, hopefully at a professional/respectable level. And that I'd be married. No kids yet -- I would have figured that for the early chunk of my 20s, I'd casually date before finding my soul mate around the age of 26. We'd date for a couple of years, be engaged by the time I was 28ish and right around now, I'd be walking down the aisle.

Ok, so maybe I did kind of have a timeline. But it's not like I wrote it down or anything.

Actual recap of the post-college years goes like this: give up on acting after 5 exhausting years of doing bad plays in New York, decide to move to a new city and get my MFA in poetry, have a slew of serious monogamous relationships that ultimately fizzle, largely for reasons unknown (i.e. not for lack of love or basic incompatibility).

Now, this next statement is going to sound, well, snotty: historically, I tend to get what I want. This is due to some combination of luck and stubbornness. But the truth is, I got the lead in the high school musical, went to prom with the guy I wanted, and got into my first choice college. I usually get offered jobs I go after. In short, when I want something and decide to fight for it, I often get it. Hate me, call me a lucky bitch, but it's the truth.

Finding someone with whom to share my life and raise a family is something I want. Doesn't have to happen now, but as the years tick by, I get increasingly nervous that it will never happen. I know, 30 is not exactly over-the-hill. But it's also not 25.

Of the 6 girls in my 6th grade class at Wilson School, I am the only one that is not married. Three of them have babies already, too. The high school stats are equally staggering -- I am definitely in the minority as a single woman with no offspring to pose with in my Facebook profile pic.

I know, it's not a race. It's not a contest. Over 50% of marriages end in divorce, blah blah blah.
And I consider myself a feminist, so I HATE admitting that these "traditional" things, these 1950s housewife-sounding things are things that I covet. I do want professional success as well -- if I didn't, I wouldn't be accruing thousands of dollar of debt to go to graduate school. I'd just join e-harmony and spend all my time/effort/money on trying to "settle down." I don't plan to stop working and pop out babies.

But I hate feeling guilty/old fashioned about wanting these things. I hate admitting that I want them. I wish I had a "it''ll happen if it happens" philosophy, but that's not how I'm programmed. I have a very good life and I have a lot to be thankful for -- good friends, a supportive family, enough money to pay my rent and occasionally eat at a nice restaurant. But I guess I buy into that cultural fairytale that until I find a person to share it all with, I can't be completely happy. Partly, I do blame my genes -- both of my parents are terrible at being alone. Within a year of divorcing, they were both remarried. So I can blame them, I can blame society, I can blame myself. It doesn't really matter.

Kim K. came clean in People; I'm coming clean here. I'm not married and I'm a little disappointed about it.

Insight into the mind of a poet

2010-11-11T22:10:00.005-05:00

Like many writers, I keep a journal. Several, actually. One for banal observations and whiny ramblings expected for the diary genre and then two others that I use for poetry/teaching/whatever else I need to write down when I'm at my desk (directions to restaurants, confirmation numbers). It's sometimes fun to flip through these hodgepodge notebooks and discover random things that I have no memory of writing. I recently came across this, well, list for lack of a better word. I'm guessing it was from a free writing exercise wherein I was trying to jumpstart my creativity. The "list" is as follows, verbatim:

rosebuds touching
a lonely harmonica
a patch of dead grass
unforgiving mailbox
where the wrist meets the hand
the second to last kiss
a church parking lot
flowers with the dirt still on them
zodiac sign language
selling individual balloons
a ballad, oversung
the worst sunset
a cracked pocket mirror
the Sunday newspaper
pewter souvenirs
not enough drum lessons
forgettable family dinners
steering wheel, too hot to touch
Tabasco sauce on everything
crowded aquariums
renting ice skates
one matinee too many

What does any of it mean? No clue. I really like "not enough drum lessons" and "unforgiving mailbox," though. And maybe I'll use "The Worst Sunset" as the title of my memoir. A lot of these would make great memoir titles (tell me you wouldn't buy A Ballad, Oversung: The Life and Times of Katie Vagnino). I don't think I ever wrote a poem or story incorporating anything from this list and the journal supports this: On the opposite page is a recipe for shrimp tacos that I remember copying from Real Simple.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T23:24:00.002-04:00

Halloween kind of snuck up on me this year. In fact, the whole month of October snuck up on me. How is it already November?

At any rate: Halloween 2010. It was fun, perhaps not as memorable as past years, but maybe I'm just finally reaching an age where Halloween is less fun for me. That's a depressing thought. Not going to unpack that at the moment.

This year, I had a little impromptu gathering at my house, featuring pumpkin-flavored beer and homemade "spooky snacks": Sriracha-spiced deviled eggs and curry/cayenne roasted pumpkin seeds.

We watched a few scary movies (Little Shop of Horrors, Alien), then went to the obligatory costume party. My costume was I think funnier in concept than in execution. But really, it's all been downhill since my costume zenith from Halloween 2001: The Taco Belle.

I spent the whole night speaking Spanish with a Southern accent. Damn, I'm clever.

Last year, I went as Baby from Dirty Dancing. I carried a watermelon around all night. And told people not to put me in a corner.

Tonight, I did little to celebrate -- no trick-or-treating, no parties. Ate take-out Thai food and orange and black M&Ms. Maude looks way more festive than I do, but she's sort of perpetually in the Halloween spirit due to her coloring. And her worship of Satan.

Too much candy for Maude?

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2010-10-27T23:29:00.003-04:00

For this week's selection, I decided to go with two short poems I admire that happen to be very far from what I understand to be my own poetic style. One is by current Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, a woman known for her concise, almost Dickinsonian lyrics; she writes very small, condensed poems that are deceptively simple. The other is by Wendy Cope, whom many liken to Ryan as well as Gertrude Stein. Her poem has a lot of repetition and a risky rhetorical strategy, one that I think pays off.

Blunt
by Kay Ryan

If we could love
the blunt
and not
the point

we would
almost constantly
have what we want.

What is the
blunt of this
I would ask you

our conversation
weeding up
like the Sargasso.

Some More Light Verse
by Wendy Cope

You have to try. You see a shrink.
You learn a lot. You read. You think.
You struggle to improve your looks.
You meet some men. You write some books.
You eat good food. You give up junk.
You do not smoke. You don't get drunk.
You take up yoga, walk, and swim.
You don't know what to do. You cry.
You're running out of things to try.

You blow your nose. You see the shrink.
You walk. You give up food and drink.
You fall in love. You make a plan.
You struggle to improve your man.
And nothing works. The outlook's grim.
You go to yoga, cry, and swim.
You eat and drink. You give up looks.
You struggle to improve your books.
You cannot see the point. You sigh.
You do not smoke. You have to try.

Why I Don't Watch Jersey Shore

2010-10-25T23:06:00.002-04:00

I went shopping for my Halloween costume today and was, as always, blown away by how costumes are marketed to women. I always intend to have a funny, conceptual costume (freshman year of college, I dressed up as Static Cling) and yet, when I gaze on the multitudes of slutty outfits, I feel the pull. Maybe, a small voice in me says, I should just try to look hot. But then I come to my senses and stick to my original plan. This year, my costume will actually comment upon the slutty-girl costume phenomenon, as I am wearing a hybrid of all the cliched costumes that otherwise intelligent women decide to debase themselves in every October. I'm dressing up as a naughty nurse/French maid/cowgirl/she-devil/cat. Judith Butler would be proud.

It shouldn't have surprised me to see a large portion of the store devoted to Jersey Shore costumes -- this year, the streets will be overflowing with Pauly Ds, the Situations and Snookis.

And I, for one, am not pleased.

Have I seen the show? Of course. I haven't been living under a rock. And many people whom I respect watch it regularly. I tried to get on board, I really did. But at the end of the day, I just find it utterly sad that we as a culture are celebrating idiocy, no matter how entertaining it may be. There's also an undeniable self-congratulatory, Schadenfreudic appeal: while we laugh at Snooki falling over drunk at the club, we pat ourselves on the back for being more self-aware than she is, or at the very least, more competent at holding our liquor.

But what disturbs me the most is the fact that the Jersey Shore "cast members" make, according to The Hollywood Reporter, $30,000 an episode. That's more than some public school teachers make in a year. And Vinnie and Sammi earn it by living rent-free in a beach house and picking fights with their roommates. And if you want Snooki to make an appearance at your birthday party? That'll cost you $50,000. Just for her to show up.

I used to take issue with celebrities like Paris Hilton, who were famous just for being famous. But Paris seems downright hard-working in comparison -- at least she pretends to design handbags or something. All the Jersey Shore cast members have contributed are some handy acronyms, such as "DTF" (Down to Fuck), and the inspiration for unnecessary iPhone apps that locate gyms, tanning salons, and laundromats. As if the Situation is still doing his own laundry these days.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be a sourpuss -- I'll admit that the few episodes I've seen have had their amusing moments. But I'm simultaneously appalled. I'm not against reality TV in general and I certainly have my guilty pleasures (I subscribe to People Magazine!). But something about Jersey Shore just rubs me the wrong way. The Real World is boring, but somehow less offensive to me. When it comes to reality television, I guess I'd rather watch people with actual skills compete for something, whether it's a record deal, a chance to show a collection at New York fashion week, or even just a shit-ton of money. Call me old-fashioned, but that's how I feel.

Now, if someone wants to pay me to get drunk on national television, maybe I'll change my tune....America's Next Top Grad Student, anyone?

Meet my new hero, Katherine Chloe Cahoon

2010-10-20T22:26:00.005-04:00

Stealing these videos from Dlisted, but I can't help myself. This woman has a book. And I'm pretty sure she's functionally retarded. She also clearly adopted the presentational speaking approach of fellow animatronic bimbo Brenda Dickson.

Mind. Blown.

Big Girls Do Cry

2010-10-19T15:54:00.005-04:00

I am a crybaby. There's no point in lying about it -- I cry pretty often. And here's what's weird: I like it and actually think it's healthy, the amount that I cry. Yes, you read that correctly-- I enjoy crying.

I don't necessarily like what leads up to the crying, the situations and/or people that trigger the crying. So don't go out of your way to try to upset me, please. But the act of crying itself? It shouldn't have such a bad rap.

It was first pointed out to me that I cry a lot by my ex-boyfriend, Noah, who remains a close friend. I immediately denied it -- what is he talking about, I thought. Yeah, ok, I cry sometimes, but doesn't everybody? The answer is....no. A lot of people rarely cry, as far as I can tell. And I'm going to argue that THAT is strange -- not that I have a good cry pretty much on a weekly basis, but that others do not.

The problem is, people don't like to see other people cry; it makes them uncomfortable, even if they are not the source of the tears (and especially if they are). I understand that raw emotion on display can be unnerving. For me, though, tears are a release mechanism that I've grown increasingly reliant upon -- if I can cry, I know I'm not, well, dead inside. I've gone through dark periods where I felt apathetic, unable to be moved by anything. And believe me, that is way worse than feeling sad or overwhelmed. Newsflash: life is really overwhelming! And sometimes, you just need to cry about it. Eventually, you stop crying and that feels even better. But to get to the "I'm not crying anymore, things are looking up" part, you have to first let it out.

So I'm coming out of the crying closet. I'm a crier and I'm proud!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

If you see it happen, don't tell me to stop. Just hand me a tissue, maybe rub my back, and let the crying take its (natural) course. I'll be fine momentarily, I swear.

Inner monologue: Sleeping with someone for the first time

2010-10-05T22:31:00.004-04:00

No, not the sexy time part, the actual sleeping part. Or rather, the "sleeping part," since let's be real, the first time you share a bed with someone new, ain't nobody doing much sleeping. My inner monologue usually goes something like this:

1:04 a.m.: Wow, that was fun. Being naked is good times. And apparently, he likes to spoon -- score!

1:09 a.m.: I bet his arm is falling asleep but he's too polite to say anything. I should probably move or something. But then he might think I'm moving away because I don't like spooning. Dilemma!

1:27 a.m.: Now my arm is numb. Where the hell am I supposed to put this arm, anyway? Above my head? That will look weird and awkward. Is he asleep? How the hell did he manage to fall asleep?

2:02 a.m.: Well, there are entirely too many covers on this bed. I am hot. I wish I could kick the comforter off or at least free up a leg for air.

3:19 a.m.: Hey, I actually managed to drift off there for a while. But wait, I am sleeping in a really unflattering position. My hips must look huge from this angle, my breasts are sagging....need to adjust to look sexy and thin in case he wakes up and looks at me. It is crucial to be attractive, even in the repose of sleep.

3:20 a.m.: I must really be awake to have come up with the word "repose."

3:55 a.m.: A ha! I caught myself dozing off with my mouth open, which might have resulted in DROOLING or SNORING. Crisis averted.

4:02 a.m.: I wonder if his sheets are clean. I mean, they seem clean. But I wonder.

4:45 a.m.: Patrick Swayze really died before his time. I bet his widow is so sad.

4:58 a.m.: Ok, now I'm a little cold and all of the blankets have migrated to his side. I will burrow into his side for warmth.

4:59 a.m.: Oops, woke him up. My bad. Turning away again. Only foot contact for now.

5:11 a.m.: I really should attend one of those MoveOn.org neighborhood parties.

6:30 a.m.: Wish I had had the foresight to bring a glass of water to the bedroom. I'm mad thirsty.

7:00 a.m. Seriously? This is his alarm ringtone?

7:05 a.m.: Ah, the male morning erection -- should I acknowledge or ignore? That is the question.

7:25 a.m.: Acknowledged it. And now I'm late for work. Shit.

*******************************************************************
Of course, I've taken some creative license here....I think it's great when you can finally settle down enough to really sleep next to someone. I tend to think the sleeping part is in some ways more intimate than the connecting-genitals part. Anyone else agree?

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2010-09-28T13:15:00.005-04:00

This poem by Robert Pinsky really needs no introduction and I'd be hard pressed to actually explain what I like about it. I like basically everything about it. It is incredibly simple, yet profound.

Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

This job would be great if it weren't for the customers

2010-09-27T14:51:00.007-04:00

As previously discussed on this blog, I am fully aware that I don't *have* to wait tables, that I am capable of getting and holding down a more "stable" day job. But I like working in a restaurant most of the time. People behave rather astonishingly when they are dining out. Usually, I'm amused by the oddities I witness and strange requests (such as a martini with a straw) but sometimes my friendly, professional veneer cracks and I want to pour scalding hot coffee over all the patrons in my section. To avoid this fate, here are some handy tips on how to not be an asshole in a restaurant:

1. If you don't want ice in your Diet Coke, the time to tell me that is when you order it, not when I bring it to the table.

2. If it's not on the menu, we don't have it, even if you had it the last time you were here.

3. If you have a gift certificate, you should still tip on the amount you spent INCLUDING THE GIFT CERTIFICATE. If the gift certificate is for $50 and your total before that's deducted is $100, you should tip on the $100 (i.e. at least $15).

4. I heard you the first time when you asked for decaf. Ask again and it might be a looooog, jittery, sleepless night.

5. Please just sit where the hostess tries to seat you. You will get the same food/service no matter where you sit and it throws everything off sometimes if you insist on sitting where you want.

6. I am happy to make suggestions and tell you what I like, but I don't know your life. Chicken or salmon? Mushroom omelet or brioche french toast? It's all delicious. MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY, I HAVE OTHER TABLES.

7. I mean, it's your dollar, but if you're ordering your steak well done and your fish cooked through, might I suggest dining at the Marriott down the street? The chef there is masterful when it comes to overcooking protein.

8. If you order a $75 bottle of wine with your meal and pay with a black Amex, I think you can manage an 18-20% tip, unless I do something egregious. My hourly is $2.65 and your annual fee is $2500.

9. Don't ask me to split the check 5 ways. Unless you're dining with total strangers you will never see again after this meal, I'm guessing you can work it out somehow.

10. Please don't talk to me like I have the IQ of a seared sea scallop. I'm a college-educated, self-supporting professional earning a graduate degree. I also happen to know a lot about food and wine, which is why I'm at your table. And I want you to have the best experience possible, so if you're polite, I promise everything will be lovely.

I really hope this guy runs for President

2010-09-14T01:01:00.011-04:00

If there's one thing I admire in a candidate, it's unbridled enthusiasm.

You have to admit, watching this guy in a debate against Obama would be pretty entertaining.

Republicans. They would make me laugh if only I didn't find them so scary.

Nail polish puns!

2010-09-10T15:27:00.005-04:00

So, I generally don't wear nail polish. It chips too easily and I can't afford regular manicures. And I pick the hell out of my cuticles so I don't generally like to draw attention to my hands. However, I have always been amused by nail polish names. My friend Heinz created some fictional racist polish colors after discovering that "Black Rage" was, in fact, a real color. I'm more entertained by OPI's recent country- and region-themed collections which take bad puns to a whole new level.

Consider, for example, the colors in their new Swiss collection:

From A to Z-urich, Color So Hot It Berns, Just a Little Rösti at This, William Tell Me About OPI, Ski Teal We Drop, Diva of Geneva, Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous, Glitzerland, Yodel Me on My Cell, and Cuckoo for This Color.

GROAN. And I thought Carrie Bradshaw's puns were bad.

Inspired by OPI, however, I'd like to propose some Boston-themed colors:

Ben A Fleck of Gold
Boston Teal Party
M.I.Tease
Brooklime
Creamy Chowdah
Mayor Menindigo
BU-tiful Blue
Red Sox Rage
Louisa May Top Coat
Saugus Chartreuse
Orange You Glad You Don't Live Off the Orange Line
Kelly's Roast Beef Green
Jamaica Plain Beige
Concord Grape
Sam Adams Apple Red

I'm sure I'm missing some obvious ones....fellow Beantowners, feel free to chime in in the comments!

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2010-09-01T15:06:00.003-04:00

I wish I had written a great love poem. I wish I had written a great poem, period. So far, I've written some poems that don't totally suck, but a great one? I have yet to write one. That's ok, that's why I'm in school, and I think someday, it might happen. I might write myself accidentally into a great poem.

This poem by Marilyn Hacker is great and about one of my favorite subjects -- love gone wrong. It's well-tread, familiar poetic territory but Hacker, with all her unexpected similes and images, makes it seem new. The first time I read the poem, I didn't pick up on the rhyme scheme -- that's how subtly and brilliantly it's incorporated. I know so many poets who are terrified to rhyme, worried about it sounding too Dr. Seuss or whatnot, but this poem is proof that when you pull it off, it can be incredible.

What I also relate to in this poem is the intensity of the relationship described -- intense, all-consuming love can be disastrous/toxic but for better or worse, I always crave it. When it comes to me and love, it's go big or go home.

But enough about me -- here's the poem.

Nearly a Valediction

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.

I don't want to remember you as that
four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive

you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek's nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.

Summer is almost over...

2010-08-31T11:42:00.007-04:00

....and I couldn't be happier about it. Not because this was a bad summer, per se, but because (prepare to gasp) I don't really like summer. It might, in fact, be my least favorite season.

Admitting you don't like summer is like saying you hate dogs, a subject I blogged about back in June. From a very early age, we are programmed to look forward to summer. School's out! No more getting up early, no more homework! You can eat hotdogs and watch fireworks! What's not to love?

Well, off the top of my head:

1) It's too fucking hot. And air-conditioning is expensive. There is nothing worse than taking a cool shower and then starting to sweat again before you can even get your clothes on. I enjoy the hot weather for about two weeks -- then I'm over it.

2) The beach is overrated. Unless you look like this :For most of us, donning a bathing suit and being close-to-naked in front of total strangers who may or may not have better bodies is not a fun prospect. Also, I usually get bored after about 2 hours on the beach. I read, I nap, I swim (if I'm not on a beach on the Atlantic where the water is frigid) and then....I'm kind of ready to go back indoors.

3) Everyone who can afford it is out of town on the weekends, making for a stagnant social life. And for those of us who don't use "summer" as a verb and jet off to the Cape/Hamptons/the Vineyard every weekend, there's not much to do except visit the same old bars and drink watery sangria.

4) The Fourth of July is usually disappointing, much like New Year's Eve. You try to make "awesome" plans, but something always falls through -- it rains and the BBQ you planned to attend is canceled, or the roof party with the great view of the fireworks runs out of beer at 8 pm. Something always goes wrong and before you know it, it's July 5th. Happy fucking birthday, America.

5) August is, hands down, the worst month. It's the Sunday of months -- you can't really enjoy it because you're thinking about all the shit you have to get done in September and feeling guilty about all the stuff you were supposed to accomplish with all your free time over the summer. Everyone is depressed and sluggish. No good movies come out in August ("Hey hon, want to see Nanny McPhee Returns tonight?").

I'm not depressed at the end of August, however -- I'm positively elated that fall is almost here. I love fall clothes and colors, I love the cool evenings, and my favorite holiday, Halloween, is right around the corner. August is insufferable, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel, a light signifying salvation from the heat and the exhausting summer expectation to HAVE FUN CONSTANTLY.

I say, bring on September! I'd rather shop for Trapper Keepers than bikinis any day.

A Brief Sojourn Into My Subconscious

2010-08-26T15:49:00.012-04:00

Given all the hubbub surrounding the film "Inception" and the subsequent articles (like this one by my friend Alexis), I thought that I would post about my dreams of late. But first, a word about my sleeping habits. Essentially, if sleeping were a sport, I would be an Olympic athlete. I sleep more than most people I know. An astrology book I flipped through once told me that people born on my birthday (March 1) need more sleep than others because we have especially active dream lives. This is what I remind myself when I guiltily wake up after 11 am.

Those of you who know me know that I sometimes have some, um, anxieties. And thus, I have a lot of stress dreams. Now that I think about it, I have at least one a night. Some are more garden-variety/common, while others (I think) are more specific to me and my bizarre little brain. The basic categories of my stress dreams are:

1. The Travel Stress Dream

I only started having these about two years ago, when I was preparing to leave NYC and move to Boston for grad school. So obviously, the dreams are manifestations of my anxiety about transitions and changes. In the dream, I'm about the take a trip, BUT

a) I don't have time to pack/can't find my suitcase and/or
b) can't get a cab to the airport and/or
c) I'm at the airport, but I can't find the gate and/or
d) I'm at the gate, but I can't find my ticket/passport/luggage

I'm always in the same, horrible imaginary airport and it's huge and there are no informational monitors or signs. It's also strangely deserted, so no one can help me find my gate, etc.

2. The Academic Stress Dream

This one's pretty classic. Sometimes I'm back in high school, sometimes I'm in college. Sometimes I'm in "college" but the campus is my high school campus. Usually, the problem is that I suddenly remember that I signed up to take a class and meant to drop it, but forgot and now it's too late. The semester is almost over, I haven't been attending the class and I'm going to fail because there is no way I have time to learn/read everything before the imminent final exam.

3. The Health/Appearance Stress Dream

This one's a little weird. I occasionally dream that I'm blind or that my teeth are falling out. But sometimes, I have a more vain variation where I look in the mirror and I just don't look like me. Sometimes I've gained a lot of weight and sometimes I just look like a different person. Once I looked in the mirror and had become Monica Lewinsky and I was really upset about it. Because who wants to look like Monica Lewinsky?

4. The Performance Stress Dream

Again, fairly common among theatrical types -- I'm in a play and just haven't bothered to learn my lines. So I'm frantically trying to get my hands on a script backstage. The show is about to start. The twist is that the play is always something classical, like Shakespeare or Sophocles, so I know I can't just adlib my way through it because my lines are in iambic pentameter or rhymed verse or something.

5. The Restaurant Stress Dream

Since getting hired at Lineage, I have had one of these about once a week, usually following a busy shift. In the dream, I have a bunch of tables and am totally in the weeds. And to make matters worse, the computer system has been redesigned so I can't enter my orders. Also, the menu has completely changed and customers ask me questions I don't know the answers to (in one version, Lineage had mysteriously transformed into a Brazilian steakhouse).

6. The Wedding Stress Dream

I'd be curious to know if other single women nearing thirty ever have this one. It's my wedding day and everything looks beautiful. I'm in my dress, my bridesmaids are helping me with the final touches. I'm about to get married. My mom is literally weeping tears of joy. But here's the bad part: I know I'm marrying the wrong person. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it's a huge mistake. I know it will end in divorce. But it's too late to call it off so I know I'm going to go through with it. I'm about to make the biggest mistake of my life and there's nothing I can do about it. Pretty fucked up, no?

It's not uncommon that I will become aware that I'm dreaming at some point in these dreams and then will try to alter the course of events. Even though I know it's not real, if I can just get on the plane/drop the class/keep my teeth/ring in the order/memorize my lines/call off the wedding, I will wake up feeling less anxious. Sometimes I achieve this, sometimes I wake up before it happens.

Cradling the Mustache

2010-08-01T09:03:00.013-04:00

The title of this blog post is not a euphemism for female masturbation, though maybe it should be. If want to read my thoughts on that subject, click here (i.e. Mom, DO NOT CLICK THERE).

When I talk about cradling or cuddling with my mustache, this is the mustache I mean:

A few things to know about my mustache:

1. His name is Maurice.
2. He is from Provence*.
3. I share my bed with Maurice almost every night.

*He was a gift, so I don't know his actual origins. Probably he's from somewhere terrible like Urban Outfitters that sells kitschy Japanese plush toys, but I like to pretend he's from France.

Yes, I am a 29-year-old woman who sleeps with a stuffed mustache. And sometimes, Maurice is not alone in bed with me (and Maude). Allow me to introduce a few of my other bed fellows:

Laufgraben the Lion

Mr. T-T-T

M.J.

Master P, who lost his left foot in a tragic Maude-related incident. I don't actually sleep with him though, because when you squeeze him, he goes "Uhnnnn....na na na na."

So as you can see, it's often a menage-a-many in my futon.

When I'm sad, cuddling with stuffed animals is especially useful. My mother still endorses this practice -- I called her crying the other night (yeah, that whole happiness thing? Crock. I'm back to my normal ups-and-downs existence) and after calming me down, she asked "You have a stuffed animal you can cuddle, right?"

I can do you one better, Mom: I've got a stuffed mustache. A stuffed mustache WITH a mustache. And he's a great photo accessory at parties!

Oysters and clams and lobsters, oh my!

2010-07-28T00:26:00.006-04:00

I used to have mixed feelings about mollusks. While I have always loved scallops, squid, and mussels (favorite meal: mussels, fries, glass of red wine), clams never did much for me and oysters used to inspire ambivalence (or ambivalvence? PUN!). Oysters were too salty and fishy-tasting, too slimy in texture. I would eat them, if others felt inclined to order them, but I never really understood their appeal.

However, feelings and taste buds can change over time. Now I LOVE oysters and all their accouterments, from the little forks to the mignonette sauce. Fortunately, I work at Lineage, where we serve $1 oysters at the bar every day from 5-7 pm. We get our oysters from Island Creek, which is located in Duxbury, MA, about 35 miles south of Boston. This past Monday, Lineage was closed so that the entire staff (prep cooks, servers, dishwashers, everyone) could take a field trip to Island Creek.

It was a gorgeous sunny day -- we toured the harvesting facilities (it's a small, family-style operation) and then went out to the nurseries at low tide to wade among crabs, clams, oysters, mussels and lobsters. Then we docked at a barge and ate the freshest seafood you can imagine.

Pretty awesome. Definitely a highlight of summer 2010.

If you're in the Boston area, you should definitely come to Lineage for oysters (and dinner!). Restaurant Week(s) is coming up: August 15-20 and 22-27. Also, be sure to watch for the opening of The Island Creek Oyster Bar in September!

Ah, to be 20 and live in abject conditions

2010-07-25T18:40:00.005-04:00

Be honest: in college, did your living room/common room ever look something like this?

Mine did (minus the Confederate flag beach towel).

Yesterday morning, I was walking through Allston, where many of the BU frat houses are located, and was struck by the garbage-strewn lawns. Red Solo cups, beer bottles, empty pizza boxes covered the porches, evidence of the previous night's revelries. But what fascinated me even more was the fact that some of these house's occupants were sitting out on their porches and lawns relaxing in the sun, amidst their party trash. No one was lifting a finger to clean anything. They were perfectly comfortable, proud even, of their filth.

At age 29, I thought, I could never live like that. That's disgusting. But there was a time, in the not-too-distant past, where I did live in some pretty squalid conditions. It's a rite of passage, I think, to live somewhere gross when you're 20 and not care.

For me, that place was 67 Edgewood, in New Haven, CT, from 2002-2003. I could not find a picture of the actual house, but it looked a bit like this:

Quaint, right? You would never suspect the level of decrepitude that a cute little house like this on a college campus can sustain.

I lived at 67 Edgewood, much to the dismay of my horrified parents after they visited, during my senior year of college. I lived there with 5 roommates and 1 small dog named Robot. I paid less than $400 a month. And while we weren't the biggest slobs on the planet...somehow the house was always pretty rank. Especially the basement. I still have nightmares about this basement.

The basement smelled like the Disneyworld ride Pirates of the Caribbean: a mix of dank water, mildew, sweat, and gunpowder. It was also filled with the abandoned belongings of previous residents (clothes, window fans, computer keyboards, boxes of Q-tips and partially used deodorant sticks). I avoided the basement at all costs -- we had a washer and a dryer down there, but I still paid extra to send my laundry out because I was convinced that nothing could go into that basement and come out cleaner.

Whenever someone's parents were coming to visit, we made an effort to clean, but mostly this was just surface stuff -- putting away drug paraphernalia, making the dirty dishes in the sink look more presentable, etc. I'm not sure we owned a mop or a vacuum. In our defense, the house was already in such disrepair that cleaning it seemed kind of beside the point. We reported various problems to our management company (shower leaking into the basement, mice) but the only time they ever showed up to fix something was when a sink broke off the wall. Granted, I think a drunk person was sitting on it when this happened...but still.

Now I keep a pretty clean "house" (studio) -- the only cleanliness issue stems from my shed-happy cat. I won't let people come over unless I have thoroughly cleaned. But once....once I was much more lax. So while I shudder a bit while walking past the off-campus BU residences in my neighborhood, I would be a hypocrite to really judge the inhabitants. They are young and don't know any better.

Ah, youth. Not that I'm on the verge of AARP membership, but I am almost 30. My salad days are (mostly) over. Sigh.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

2010-07-19T11:40:00.005-04:00

My friend and fellow writer Akshay Ahuja (read one of his stories here) lent me a copy of The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees last semester and I have just now gotten around to reading it. Kees is not as well known as perhaps he should be -- in the introduction to his Collected Poems, Donald Justice says that although some may consider him a "minor" poet, he is still a significant one. And hey, if Donald Justice is writing the introduction to your Collected Poems, you must have done something right.

Kees's poetry is pretty bleak -- his most anthologized sonnet, "For My Daughter," puts forth a pretty solid don't-have-kids argument. I thought since we're in the throes of hot, humid summer in Boston, I'd post this one instead; it's also depressing, but I really like the hybrid form (it's close to a villanelle, but decidedly not one). Enjoy and please don't slit your wrists (at least not on my watch).

The Beach in August

The day the fat woman

In the bright blue bathing suit

Walked into the water and died,

I thought about the human

Condition. Pieces of old fruit

Came in and were left by the tide.

What I thought about the human

Condition was this: old fruit

Comes in and is left, and dries

In the sun. Another fat woman

In a dull green bathing suit

Dives into the water and dies.

The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.

We dry and die in the sun

While the seascape arranges old fruit,

Coming in and the tide, glistening

At noon. A woman, moderately stout,

In a nondescript bathing suit,

Swims to a pier. A tall woman

Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human

Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.

Hup Holland!

2010-07-15T12:44:00.030-04:00

I've now been back from Europe for a week and I'm experiencing the classic post-vacation slump. After looking forward to the trip for months, I miss....looking forward to it. But the good news is, it was everything I hoped it would be and I have amazing pictures/memories, some of which I will now share on this blog. Below are the highlights and insights from my week-long trip to the Netherlands and Belgium, in Top Ten list form!

1. Dutch sounds and looks like a made-up Muppet language.

It's very easy to read Dutch, because it looks like a hybrid of German and English. Some of my favorite words:

winkel = store
eethuis = restaurant ("eat house")
slagroom = whipped cream
graag = please
wijn = wine

Spoken Dutch sounds similar to German, but with more enthusiasm and inflection. German is kind of like Dutch, minus the joy.

2. Witnessing two World Cup victories (quarter- and semi-final) almost made a sports fan out of me. I mean, this is infectious:

3. Dutch is not one of the world's great cuisines. Though I did enjoy stamppot, a traditional dish consisting of mashed potatoes, endives, bacon, and sausage. And in Belgium, things improved culinarily:

Yes, that's a gigantic pot of mussels. The frites weren't bad, either, though I still prefer them with ketchup as opposed to mayo.

4. Sexual Chocolate (Coming to America):

vs. sexual chocolate (Bruges):

5. European train stations are about 3,000 times cooler than American train stations. Case in point: Antwerp.

6. You are not supposed to take pictures in the Red Light District, so sadly, I don't have any. I will, however, share this tidbit about prostitution from one of my guidebooks:

"If you visit one of the women, we would like to remind you, they are not always women. Do not take pictures of the women. Out on the streets, do not shout or use bad language towards these women. Show some respect. If you have any problems with a girl or a pimp, do not hesitate to ask a police officer. We know why you are there and you can hardly surprise us."

Another guidebook gem, re: urinating in public: "A dirty habit, and always committed by men."

7. Hash + Van Gogh Museum = stellar combination.

8. The oldest gay bar in Amsterdam, Cafe 't Mandje, was opened by a lesbian named Bet van Beeren:

9. You can buy actual wooden shoes in the Netherlands

10. Everything is prettier when you're on vacation