friday evening quickie

Many of you have asked me how the play is coming. It's all coming along wonderfully. We're starting to get to that really fun point where people are solid with their lines and coreography and singing enough to actually tell a story. These last few days, I'll be backstage waiting for a cue or out in the house reading for class when suddenly a line will catch my ear. I'll look up and see these great people I've been working with for two months are gone, replaced by their characters. Even though I know the actors, and know what they are going to say and do next, they are capable of tugging at my heart with just a look. Of course, it doesn't hurt that we have incredible material to work with-- I doubt I would be having this much fun if we were putting on Nunsense II or similar.

Busy, busy weekend ahead. Pray for my liver, friends. Pray for her.

shame

Back when our college food court still had a Burger King (and a Chick Fil'A, and a really shady stir-fry station and sushi on demand), we regularly partook of Burger King deserts. Two in particular were especially deadly: the first, a gooey chocolate, Oreo and whipped cream concoction my friend Grant referred to as "Shame Pie:"




I know, right? It's like an orgasm in a cookie crust.








My favorites, though, were the perfectly gooey Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies in the plastic bin by the cash register. They had the ideal balance of crispy edges and slightly undercooked middles, chips a-melting and greasy crumbs making the little red and yellow cellophane wrapper nearly transluscent. Students ate so many of these things that Burger King was forever pulling new batches fresh from the oven, so you could always get a warm pair. I have spent the last twenty-three years on an Arthurian quest for the ideal chocolate-chip cookie, and the Shame Cookie is closest I've come yet.

Before heading to our deadly boring prosem junior year, Becks and I would trade off who bought the Starbucks and who bought the Shame Cookies. You didn't want to go too many days in a row, because Burger King was right off the sushi/salad bar and while you handed over your ID card to purchase 17,000 calories worth of deserts you'd be forced to look at the size 0 freshmen buy their cucumber rolls while loudly complaining how fat they felt and was there such a thing as nonfat soy sauce?

Why all the food porn today, you ask? BECAUSE I'M FUCKING STARVING.

Since getting cast in this show, I've been watching my diet, working out four times a week and trying to switch from beer to wine and/or vodka. Despite all the carrot sticks and elliptical sessions and cookies politely ignored, I've only lost six pounds in two months. Not one of those pounds, I might add, was from remotely useful place. I think my elbows might be skinner, but that's the only difference I could see and then only in really excellent lighting.

There will not be really excellent lighting in the show. Oh, it will be of good quality, but it will be in the form of a spotlight on me in various states of deshabillé. Mostly, though, I'm just really ticked off. All that time and effort for basically no payoff. I could have spent the last two months with an IV dripping brownie batter into my veins and be basically the same weight.

And if I'd done that, I wouldn't now have a craving for Shame Cookies so fierce that in about five minutes I will be joining the crack whores north of the convention center, ready to blow the next visiting businessman who will drive me to a Burger King.

'dentity crisis

Blogger, despite your best efforts and my total lack of HTML skillz... I WIN. Minor changes are still in store, but for now, this blog is looking much more like something I would be proud to advertise as my own creation.

You'll notice I'm officially EJ Takes Life now instead of Urban Fantasy, so please update your links accordingly. This change was a long time coming. One, it's my URL. Two, I'm getting really tired of having my sitemeter filled by adult entertainment enthusiasts searching for "(Insert Noun) Fantasy." And finally, the concept of Urban Fantasy is simply too universal to be my little blog. Ironically, Urban Fantasy itself is like porn: you can't necessarily describe it, but you know it when you see it. Walking home from Eastern Market last Saturday, listening to the Kings of Convenience on my iPod with a loaf of French bread sticking out of my Actor's Studio tote bag is Urban Fantasy. Telling my mother last night how the theme from All Things Considered on NPR always reminds me of early childhood-- very Urban Fantasy. I think you get the idea.


And we're not talking about the fact that I skipped Quizzo and Afterparty to mess around with my blog. That is not Urban Fantasy, but it is EJ Taking Life, one CSS tag at a time.

ch-ch-changes

Am clearly getting antsy with this blog. Am thinking I may have to ditch Blogger entirely. It may be free, but I'm beginning to think Typepad is worth the five bucks a month to have something somewhat unique.

In the meanwhile, I spent the day catching up on reading at Murky and stalking Matt Damon and Robert DeNiro. Yes kids, the crew from The Good Shepherd was filming a mere four blocks from my house all day and yours truly did some truly stellar gawking. Sadly I missed DeNiro, though Beds got herself the stank eye when she had the nerve to Blackberry in front of his trailer. Lucky wench. I also couldn't quite muster the nerve of the paparazzi on 5th Street (or my fellow gawkers with camera-phones) to actually snap a picture of Matt Damon himself, but we did indeed see him. He's just as pretty as can be. Here are some of the photos I did manage to take:




From what I gather, the film is a period history of the C.I.A. This means extras dressed in fedoras and trench coats and streets filled with fantastic vintage cars. DC police and the movie crew cleared four blocks on the Hill and filled them with these antique autos. We watched them drive around in circles for hours as we strained for a glimpse of a trenchcoat-clad Billy Crudup.




Though we never saw Billy Crudup (or Angelina Jolie), we did catch glimpses of Matt Damon running a scene on this amazing vintage bus. It took maybe three passes down the street before we realized that THAT was where they were actually filming, as opposed to the streets filled with vintage-clad extras.

Oh, and the PA had a cute butt, dontcha think?





All the cool kids hang out at craft services.


I debated trying to snatch one of the The Good Shepherd directors chairs, but figured I'd already given up enough dignity for one day by chasing after a bus containing movie stars for a good ninety minutes.








This extra was great. The PAs had to block off the first ten feet of sidewalk so nothing non-movie would get in the shot. The second this woman walked out of the scene she would start doing the Charleston or a little jig, all done up in her dainty early-sixties hat and sensible shoes.

The clothes were fantastic. We all agreed men need to start wearing hats again. I would wear pantyhose every day if I could constantly see men in fedoras.



Nicole Kidman is filming at GW on the 24th-- I promise to get even better photos of her movie. Hopefully by then, I'll have a decent website to put them on.

it's the little things

Lots of little things kept me from going to Connecticut this weekend. I was supposed to drive to visit AnnaMo, who has been kicking her own ass marketing her candidate and prying cold hard cash from the tightfisted souls of Hartford. As I woke up early Friday morning, unpacked and vaguely hungover, it became clear my trip was in danger.

It was pouring rain so hard my windshield wipers could barely keep up. My driver's license had expired the week before. I had yet to do any reading for Monday's class, and could ill-afford a repeat of last weeks excrutiating silences and the professor's fist slamming on the desk as he threatened to walk out. Work was a madhouse of dozens of tiny tasks. Tuesday starts the Hell Month of truly intense rehearsals-- every night, running through full acts and full shows, off-book. We had our biggest tech day yet on Saturday and I hadn't once stopped by to help paint, build, or even buy coffee.

So there was no one reason I couldn't go (apart from the expired license, I suppose, but I've driven from Michigan to DC with an expired license before and managed to live)(not that this is wise, nor am I in any way endorsing said endeavor, merely stating facts as they stand). Lots of little reasons got in the way, though, and this is why I am not in Connecticut watching the Yale/Dartmouth football game, drinking martinis and speaking in a nasal Westchester lockjaw. Weekend was instead spent watching Michigan humiliate herself (TWO missed field goals? against Minnesota? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?), drinking beer at the Brickskellar and speaking in a British accent with Libs as we swooned over Mr. Darcy, Part the Second. Verbs are essentially the same, but apparently geography possesses its own unique nouns.

I sit here in my ratty Scrubs scrubs from the NBC studio store, watching The Thomas Crown Affair for the eighty-fourth time and wishing that my wardrobe was entirely Celine by Michael Kors and that I was the kind of woman who could pull of wearing sunglasses indoors. Sadie is rolled over on her back next to me, paws in the air and spine contorted in the shape of a question mark. She's giving me a look that clearly says "Woman, is there a reason you're not rubbing my belly right now? Is that not what I keep you for?" Maybe I'll cook something ambitious for dinner-- maybe something with the jar of hoison sauce I bought over three months ago when I went grocery shopping after a couple of cocktails.

I still have reading to do, but not right now. Right now, I'm going to roll around in having a whole day unexpectedly free. Wrap myself up in it and marinate in it. Whole. Lotta. Nuthin.

Lalalalalalala.

there's a "hail mary" pun in here somewhere

Now THIS is Christ almighty.


They don't make a curling sculpture because God HATES Canada.

"she let him put his hoo-hoo-dilly in her cha-cha?"

TOMKAT IS SPAWNING.

Christ almighty in heaven.

Actually, "L. Ron psychotically buried in a volcano" or similar. What happened to the "no sex" clause of her contract? Joey, Joey, Joey, my heart is BREAKING HERE.

I LOVE THIS WOMAN! I LOVE HER!!!!!!!!!!

Here's a fun game! Identify which of the following quotes are George Bush talking about Harriet Miers and which are Tom Cruise talking about Katie Holmes:

1) "I could go on and on."

2) "People ask me and I’m going to be honest about it. She’s such a good person and so genuine.”

3) "I will forever with this woman be jumping on couches, dancing on tables and hanging from chandeliers.”

4) "I know her character. She's a woman of principle and deep conviction."

5) “It’s just like, 'Huh? Wow, man. Wow. I was looking at her (and thinking), ‘Man, you are so cool.’"

6) "She shares my philosophy that judges should strictly interpret the laws and the Constitution of the United States and not legislate from the bench."

7) "I want to celebrate her, she's a very special woman."

8) "A pit bull in size 6 shoes."

9) "I picked the best person I could find."

10) "I'm really, really, really happy, and I can't contain it. And I'm not going to pretend."

11) "I know her well enough that twenty years from now, she'll be the same person."






Answers: 1) Bush, 2) Cruise, 3) Cruise, 4) Bush, 5) Cruise, 6) Bush, 7) Cruise, 8) Bush, 9) Bush, 10) Cruise, 11) Bush

tired

I am very very tired.

I got nuthin' more. Just tired.

catharsis

Note: I published this, then took it down because it just felt too personal to have posted on a website. Still, since all involved read it in the time it was up, might as well keep it there anyways. Here's to brutal truths.


I rounded the corner of the stairs to head up to the bathroom, when I saw him outside. I'd stuck to my time-honored tradition of flat-out ignoring him all night, and it was just not working. It was awkward and painful and hard on all our friends. Still, the alternative-- actually talking to him-- just seemed too much to bear. He saw me hesitate at the top of the stairs and turn around.

"Em..." he called after me, "do you have something you wanted to say? What are we...?" he trailed off, not sure how to finish.

I laughed in a rueful, bitter kind of way, even though there was nothing funny about this. "I dunno," I said, staring at the wall and not at him. "I mean, do you know what it's like to want to punch someone and hug then at the same time?"

"Well," he replied, "yes, actually."

"So then you know how I feel."

**********

"I really was sorry, you know. You can't imagine how much I tortured myself afterwards, asking if I'd done the right thing and knowing I didn't do it the right way."

By this time, we'd moved to a bedroom down the hall, where we saw the steady parade to the bathroom through the half-closed door. Geoff, our host, was the only one who saw us back. He appeared in the doorway, full of the kind of emotional sincerity that only comes after the first eleven beers.

"Look," he slurred "I dunno what you guys are talking about, but I really like both of you. Like, I really love both of you. So if you could..."

Matt and I both laughed, the first genuine laugh eithout agenda or attention to audience I'd laughed all night. "Yeah, yeah, OK." we said.

**********

"Why did you end it?"

We'd been upstairs talking for over an hour. I'd told him earlier I didn't need to know why. Clearly, I was full of shit.

"Do you really want to know?" he asked. "I don't know how to say it really. I thought about writing you an email once, but I--"

"Try." I interrupted. "Please, you owe me that."

He told me. It was what I expected to hear. It was what I'd been coming to realize, mixed in with his own stuff I'd guessed at. And it hurt, and I cried, and he cried.

"I was so afraid you'd tell me you loved me," he said. "I knew I couldn't say it back, even though I wanted to so much."

"I know. I almost did say it a few times, but it wouldn't have been true." I paused to catch my breath, because I need strength to say what needed to be said. "I just was so... proud of myself. That I could be someone's partner, that I could need someone and he could need me. I had been so scared that I wasn't capable of really being with someone. And then you came along, you were there already and it felt easy and right and it didn't matter that I knew we weren't right for each other because I thought if I worked hard enough then we could be--" I broke off as he put his arms around me.

"I'm so sorry" he whispered into my hair.

"Me too."

*********

We lay on the stranger's bed in a familiar pose. I curled myself into that crook of his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around me, tracing an abstract pattern on my shoulder. Hot tears squeezed through my eyelids as I tried to commit this feeling, this moment to memory. I knew it would be the last time we would ever hold each other like this.

"Should we go downstairs?" I whispered.

"Do you want to?"

"Not especially."

"Me neither." Pause. "We were really good at this part."

And at that, I cried a little more.

navel-gazing, mp3-style

This is a pretty fun one-- obviously I won't get memed by Internet superstar bloggers, but imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery after my new butt-lifting Citizens. Just put your iPod on shuffle and the first 13 songs that come up will provide the answers to the questions below.


1. What do you think of me, iPod?
"Someday" - The Strokes

"And now my fears, they come to me in threes/ So I, sometimes/afraid my friend, you say the strangest things/I find, sometimes/Oh, My ex says i'm lacking in depth/Say I will try my best/You say you wanna stay by my side/Darling your head's not right/I see alone we stand together we fall apart/Yeah I think I'll be alright"

Given all the various pronouns involved in the above lines, it's not always clear who is referring to whom. Is EJ talking to the iPod? Is the iPod assesing EJ? Who's the One True God?

So basically, iPod thinks I'm a navel-gazer who must stand together with others and whose ex may or may not think I'm lacking in depth. Knowing one ex and his penchant for judging people entirely based on the contents of their iPods, the following list should prove him right (by his own warped criteria).

2. Will I have a happy life?
"The Nearness of You" - Norah Jones

Apparently pretty low-key, quiet and full of loooove. Good deal.

3. What do my friends really think of me?
"Lucky" - Bif Naked

Overwrought, intense and dramatic? Goes incredibly well with a glass of Pinot Noir and some intense brooding? Given to declarative statements in moments of high emotion?

Nooo, not me at all...

4. What does my S.O. think of me?
"As Long As You're Mine" - Wicked

Wherever he is, he is gaga, smitten, and totally left a hot blonde chick to be with me. Oh, and he used to be in a early 90s boy band.

5. Do people secretly lust after me?
"Me Against the Music" - Britney Spears feat. Madonna

Yes, but only middle-aged women from Detroit in a pseudo-lesbian manner.

6. How can I make myself happy?
"Love is in the Air" - Soundtrack to Strictly Ballroom

Well shit. Now you had to go and tell the truth. Fine, fine, fine, it would be really great to fall completely, stupidly, hopelessly in love. ARE YOU HAPPY, IPOD? YOU MADE ME EMOTE.

7. What should I do with my life?
"Lightness" - Death Cab For Cutie

See? Even iPod thinks I should guest on The OC! I would have made such a better Lindsay than that girl from the spring break shark movie.

8. Why must life be so full of pain?
"Bolero" - Maurice Ravel

The music begins softly, whilst building to a neverending crescendo of the same notes repeated over and over at the same tempo. So really, we should be asking why life is full of pain, but why does it keep on recycling itself?

9. How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
"The Difference" - Matchbox 20

"The difference between what you mean and what you want to be..." so basically, the best sex is when I shun cheap and meaningless flings in favor of Meaningful Deep Relationships full of slowdancing on the boulevards and nightswimming.

Oh iPod. You're so silly. I have much to teach you, youngling.

10. Can you give me some advice?
"Spinning" - Stuck on Amber

This song was written by a guy I dated in the summer of 2002. He wanted so much to quit his day job and be a singer-songwriter, and this was the song from his previous band that was most likely to make that happen. I have yet to see him in Rolling Stone and he just plain stopped calling after about two months, so I am going to assume that iPod is advising me to never again date a man who A) refers to himself as a singer-songwriter, B) names his guitar after a Greek goddess, C) names his guitar, period or D) shaves his legs. You'd think that last one would have been a warning sign, but some girls just have to learn the hard way. Good song, though.

11. What do you think happiness is?
"Helicopter" - Bloc Party

"Stop being so American/There's a time and a place." Well, sometimes these days...

12. Do you have any advice to give over the next few hours/days?
"Sexy Sadie" - The Beatles

I should feed the cat before bed or she'll try to eat my feet again.

13. Will I die happy?
"That Was A Crazy Game of Poker" -O.A.R

This is creepy. I seriously want this song played at my funeral, along with "Eddie Walker" by Ben Folds. It's throwing your hands up in the air, messy, taxing, and caution-to-the-wind, balls-to-the-wall fantastic. Reflecting back and deciding you wouldn't change a minute.

Not a bad way to end things, no?


And thank God there's no question 14 because that song was "Anne Arbour" by The Get Up Kids. Let's not even open that can of worms.

a gift from His noodly appendage

Dayquil is the best thing ever. When you are so sick that you are forced to miss the Sufjan Stevens concert but still have to go to work because you are already over your sick day limit, Dayquil is the light at the end of the scratchy, gunkified tunnel. O, sweet life-giving little orange capsules of goodness, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways (in my phlegmy phone-sex-operator voice).

It is almost as great as this. Yep, they can make me come into work but they can't stop me reading about Pastafarianism through my Dayquil-clouded eyes.

Ramen.

i should know you

We're waiting outside the recording studio in Old Town for the boys to show up. It's a steroetype, but it's true: women are just better at getting places. We're also good at exchanging chitchat about lesbian bridal expo-browsing and stolen purses. Doing this, we saw a middle-aged couple walking up the street with two beautiful dogs, one a black labradoodle with white toes. Oh so cute.

We naturally stop talking and start petting, totally ignoring the actual owners until Helen looked at the husband and said "Wait, I should know you," as if she was saying "Wait, I should pick up the dry-cleaning." He kind of smiled and replied "Maybe..." The rest of us were so busy cooing over the dogs that Helen finally poked Sarah in the shoulder and exclaimed "You should know him!"

The couple eventually tore their dogs away and headed down the street. "But," Helen said by way of goodbye, "I know I should know you."

The man smiled a familiar crinkly smile. "Maybe," he replied, "because I'm the governor?"

Yep. It was Mark Warner. Our group issued a collective "Ooooohhhhh" as they walked towards King Street. And this is why I'd never make it on the Hill or K Street-- I'm having too much fun petting his dogs to recognize him, much less lobby for anything more than "Yousuchacutepuppy! Yesyouare! Yesyouare!"

I also accidentally wandered into the pro-war "protest" yesterday, but left as soon as it became clear that G. Gordon Liddy's shiny head was sadly out of kickball range. It was pretty funny, though-- there couldn't have been more than five hundred people, tops. Visiting middle schoolers waiting for their buses outside Air and Space had more energy than the "protestors."

THAT'S where she gets it from

Some mothers and daughters garden together. Some mothers and daughters get manicures together. My mother and I submit Op-Eds to The New York Times together.

Since they've already published eleven Letters to the Editor, I strongly doubt we'll get printed (although big thanks to my partner in Hipster-Bashing Crime for submitting on our behalf). Nonetheless, read this article and ask yourself if there might, just maybe, be voices missing from the "many" women cited (ahem, 138 surveyed at Yale-- now, that's just shoddy statistics work). Here's what EJ and Pam had to say:


Today's educated, economically-privileged young women are fortunate to have the choice of seeking full-time employment, full-time motherhood or some combination of the two without overt judgment or barriers from supervisors, neighbors or family. In that spirit, the women cited in "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood" should not be criticized for their early plans to place their future children over their future careers. I feel, however, that the article and the debate are incomplete. I would like to speak for the children of working mothers, particularly their daughters.

Growing up, my sister and I were constantly aware that while we were our parents' first priority, we were far from the only priority. Our family was fortunate to have financial resources for great child care (often my mother's students), but the restricted hours that we had with our parents made family time more valuable. My sister and I were trusted to take care of ourselves after school and had to be independent and resourceful in finding ways to keep ourselves busy. In short, we were not a child-centric household-we were, and are, instead focused on family and community.

As the daughters of a businessman and a university administrator, we were exposed to a vast array of individuals and lifestyles we never would have encountered had we lived solely in a child-centric world. Interacting with their colleagues made us more articulate, more informed and exposed us to many hard-working, kind-hearted role models. For a child or teenager, there is nothing quite like the encouragement of being listened to, taken seriously by an adult whom she respects. That validation and support from my mother's students and colleagues is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

We learned that work can be both challenging and rewarding. Our parents' experiences have given us realistic expectations for how hard we will need to work if we are to achieve our professional goals. I have no illusions about realities for working parents, and while I hope for a more flexible and equitable environment if and when I become a mother, I am realistic about that likelihood. I fear many of the women who expect to have children and reenter the workplace after five or more years of full-time parenting are in for a rude awakening.

Most importantly, my sister and I had a living example of the difficulty in balancing family and career. We witnessed our mother work hard at both, sometimes to the point of neglecting her own needs. We saw her bravely overcome professional challenges and, through hard work and phenomenal people skills, rise to the top of her field. We learned what it was to be proud of our parents' achievements, and that made their pride in ours even sweeter. Our best personal and professional role model drove us to play practice after hosting New Freshman Orientation for two thousand students.

Feminism is about freedom to make choices and pursue them with equality of the sexes. Still, I hear women my age discuss their future as stay-at-home-moms and I wonder if that decision is truly in the best interest of the child. Is it really best for a child to grow up thinking she is the center of her parents' universe? Or, might it be in everyone's best interest for that child to become a member of a stimulating, supportive community of individuals?

It deeply worries me to hear high-achieving young women say that they can't be the best worker and the best mother. What is "the best" in either of these categories, and who determines it? Combining work and motherhood is difficult, but my sister and I are living proof that the product is often better off for the effort.

EJ

As EJ's mom, I am gratified and grateful to know how she has benefited from my choice to have a career, successful marriage, and two wonderful children. As an educator and a mom, I urge young women to work for all they aspire to. With hard work and much joy, they can be successful as both parents and professionals. Full-time parenthood and community activities can be the right choice for some educated women - but there are risks with that choice that are not always considered. Death, disability, or divorce can devastate a one-income family, dependence upon a husbands's income can cause imbalance and stress in a marriage, and stopping out for a number of years can harm one's professional growth. I've known hundreds of college students- the characteristics of academic accomplishment, work ethic and character, social skills, self-reliance, and community-mindedness are found in young adults from a wide variety of backgrounds, including those with moms who have demanding careers.

Pam

toto, i don't think we're on the lower east side anymore

I took the day off from work today to recover from injuries inflicted at the M.I.A concert last night. I could deal if it was just the mutually bruised knees and giant hole gouged in my right foot, but the giant lump on my head that woke me up in the middle of the night from throbbing-- not so much.

So Laura and I do sushi at Cafe Asia, then get to the 9:30 Club right when the doors open so that we can get fantastic spots. We wind up smack against the barrier on house left, perfect location. The opening group was... weird. It started off as these two really lame white boys DJs who basically played an iTunes playlist including Donna Summer. Whaaaat? Thank god it got a lot better when they brought on the rapper, African drummer and dancers.

So the opening act finishes and M.I.A. comes on, and she's incredible. BUT, as soon as she starts singing, these two hipsters come barging through the crowd and slam directly into us.

"OMIGOD!" the guy bellowed. "WHY ARE THEY NOT FUCKING DANCING? GRIND UP ON 'EM!" They proceed to shove their pelvises directly into my and Laura's asses, specks of glitter and gin-scented sweat showering us. "KEEP ON GRINDING! THEY'LL MOVE!" the girl screeched.

Here's the thing. I think hipsters are completely stupid, but I will do my damndest to not be rude to them. If you want to fill your veins with heroin and dress like an insane clown caught in a nuclear explosion, be my guest. However, because this pair had chosen to show up late, storm the stage and take our hard-earned spots, I was free to hate them as much as I wanted. I was also free to do something about it.

While Girl Hipster pressed her breasts, now completely unencumbered by her slashed Neighborhoodies "New York Fucking City" dress, up against Laura, I shoved my elbow directly into the blue-sequin clad gut of Boy Hipster. "Hey bitch!" I yelled, "I went to GW! You think I'm not used to queens all up in my grill? TRY HARDER!"

He stared at me blankly, chewing on a wad of gum the size of Utah. "AND GET YOUR UGLY ASS GUM SMACKING MOUTH OUT OF MY FACE, YOU HIPSTER TRASH."

It was great. He just stared for another ten seconds, flipped me off and moaned "Whatever, you... middle-aged... girl!" Amatuer. Posers like that always are.

Boy Hipster started grinding even harder, eventually shoving the poor girl standing next to me to the floor and grabbed onto the barrier railing that I was already holding. Pumping his arms in the air, he slammed his elbow directly on top of my head, then threw them back to smack the base of my neck. The little bitch didn't know who he was dealing with, though, and I. Would. Not. Move. Even if I had wanted to just enjoy the show and let him win before, no WAY would that happen how. This was about more than music. This was about Right and Wrong, Good and Evil.

Look, you are going to get bruised and battered at a concert, especially that close up. But people who show up at the last second and then rush the stage, believing that their ironic T-shirts give them an automatic bearth to the best seats in the house just need to be shot. They're not about the music, or the crowd or the energy of the concert. They're all about their own insecurities, acting superior to all the other fans because they know deep down that they're losers. Wanna know why I showed up to a concert in khakis and a Kenneth Cole handbag? Because I was working. At my JOB. ALL DAY. This "work" concept left me unable to spend all day shooting up and applying seventeen layers of glittery eyeliner, or getting idiotic tattoos of dogbones and cupcakes all over my shins.

If these people were really fans, they would have shown up early. If they really cared about the music, then they'd be chill and not be total douchebags to everyone around them. They'd be like the cool, be-tattoed guys who stood next to us for three hours waiting for the show to start, smoking and staying out of everyone's way, then going crazy when she came onstage.

So I stayed put. Boy Hipster eventually gave up when the African dancers from the opening act came into the audience and wanted to get up front. Dancing with them up at the front, as Boy Hipster seethed through his glitter behind us, was true validation. Right WILL triumph in the end!

Despite the insane hipsters, it was still an awesome show. Go see her if you get the chance. And if you get the chance to elbow a jackass like that in the gut, I highly recommend it. It's incredibly satisfying.

picture it

if forced to articulate my worst (nonviolent) sexual nightmare, i would probably say "making out with a gay man. for two hours. with five other women standing over us and singing a song about how unattractive and gross i am."

oh, do bear in mind, this is taking place in a church. and that it will be for the next three months. eventually, in front of a paying audience

and, that it is in fact COMPLETELY REAL AND NOT A NIGHTMARE.


i know i was looking for hobbies and all, but THIS IS NOT WHAT I HAD IN MIND. do you think the director would mind if i hid a flask under the pillow?

it's like 9 inches of block

Ways in which life is full of "block:"

1. The show is in full-on blocking mode. This is the process wherein we determine where we will stand, sit, interact with one another/props/the set while speaking our lines. It is so called because everyone acts like blockheads. This is actually far too harsh on my fellow actors; I should clarify that it is I who often acts like a blockhead. This is because A) my character is a ditz, and life is imitating art, and B) I haven't done this in over five years and need to take a moment to remember the meaning of once-obvious directions such as "cheat downstage right." Bear in mind, dear reader, that I spent my entire childhood and adolescence doing exactly this process and cannot remember any of it, thus further illustrating the dictum that high school is a complete and total waste of time. Well, either that, or I drank a lot more than was good for my brain in college.

2. I actually cockblocked myself this weekend. I was on a date with this really nice, funny, cute guy, but just wasn't feeling The Spark. As we were leaving the restaurant, I asked if I could be frank, he said "of course," and I told him that while I had a lot of fun and wanted to see him again, I hoped it would be just as friends. He agreed that this was probably for the best, we exchanged the world's most uncomfortable hug on the sidewalk and went our separate ways.

Now, let's examine the myriad of ways in which I am an idiot for saying this. One, even if it's true and we both felt it (which I'm sure was the case), the odds that this guy and I are actually going to become platonic friends after this are non-existent, now that I had to go and tell the truth! You NEVER tell the truth on a the first date. The truth is carefully metered out in a process beginning on the fifth date and/or the first time you sleep together, and even then it's only things like "Actually, I really don't like Mexican food," or "I did once go to a Yanni concert of my own free will." Blurting out the harsh truth at the tender stage of Date #1 is such an amateur's mistake.

"But EJ," you say, "you didn't want to keep dating him! What's the problem?" The problem is, maybe I WOULD want to keep dating him after he grew on my a bit. I mean, we didn't even have any alcohol with our meal-- after a cocktail, I could totally see jumping on him. He really is so great on paper. How many handsome straight men are there in Washington who have already purchased tickets to Wicked for December?? And even if I didn't want to keep dating him, this doesn't mean he wouldn't be good for more base purposes.

So yes, I cockblocked myself. Well played, EJ. Well played.

3. I stepped in a dead bird in Adams Morgan at 3:30 on Sunday morning. Not on, in. There may not be a link to blocking in that (blocking my podiatric hygiene?), but I feel you should know it.

4. Work has been full of roadblocks lately. Every time I'm summoned into my boss' office he begins "I know you have so much on your plate, but..." Well yes, I do have a lot on my plate and I'm glad you realize this, so why, why Sweet Moses why, would you continue the speaking after that? Wherefore add on articles to write when there are four researchers on staff?

5. I have a daylight mental block. I work in academic communications all day and have to be on my A-game, with names and dates and publications at my fingertips. Then, when I walk out of the office, I either go to rehearsal and play at being a slutty stewardess, go to a bar and play at being a 23-year-old borderline alcoholic or go home, watch trashy MTV reality shows and play at being fifteen. I discovered last night, during my first-ever graduate class, that this divvying of the day into Brain On/Off will no longer work. Even though I'd done the reading and thought I was pretty well prepared, the professor decided to quiz me on topics entirely unrelated to the material as the PhD students smugly looked down their overlong noses. When I, redfaced and downcast, confused Sinclair Lewis with Upton Sinclair, there was actual guffawing. Jackass grad students.

God, I hope I get to be one of them soon.

6. All of the above leads to writer's block. This is all to explain the sad lack of updates and the entirely boring nature of the few there have been.

whoda thunkit?

Whoda thunk that Laguna Beach and Edward Purcell's Crisis of Democratic Theory would make such a good combination? It's like peanut butter and chocolate up in here. Really, the post-WWI philisophical battle btween rationalists and neo-Aristotelians is an exact parallel to Alex M. and Jessica battling over Jason.

I'm having a very good time imagining the look on my professor's face when I present this theory in class on Monday.

behold the death of irony

Organizers of the Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.

The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and "sterile," said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.

The U.S. Park Police will have its entire Washington force of several hundred on duty and along the route, on foot, horseback and motorcycles and monitoring from above by helicopter. Officers are prepared to arrest anyone who joins the march or concert without a credential and refuses to leave, said Park Police Chief Dwight E. Pettiford.

Because if preselected, highly screened groups can't march for freedom in a fenced-off pit while being carefully monitored by legions of armed authorities... the terrorists have won.

'ere, 'ave we run outta wine??

I mean, I liked Bridget Jones and Love Actually, but always preferred Hugh Grant to Colin Firth. Colin Firth was just... not as handsome. Not offensive-looking, sure, but I couldn't see actually stopping in my tracks to stare at him in a bar, the standard by which I judge movie stars for my List (currently featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Joshua Jackson, Zach Braff, Brad Pitt and Lenny Kravitz) (shut up, I bet he's INCREDIBLE in bed).

But thanks to the delicious modern marvel that is Netflix, I spent this unexpectedly free night curled up with a bottle of wine and the BBC Pride and Prejudice. And... mlaaaah. Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy is so yummy that at one point I actually gasped. By myself. Out loud. Loudly enough to startle Sadie from her slumber and make her jump to the easy chair across the living room, where she's been suspiciously eyeing me ever since. He doesn't even need to speak. In fact, it's almost too much when there's a British accent on top of that Haughty Hottiness. Bloody hell, how has this been on film for the last ten years? How many times have I watched Road Trip and Father of the Bride II, yet have not seen this until tonight?

Thank god I'm drinking Pinot Noir and not Chardonnay, because otherwise I would officially BE Bridget Jones.

back to school

It felt like time for a change. Besides, I really don't care for pink and therefore my blog shouldn't be swamped in it. I've learned a decent amount of HTML over the last few months and tried to personalize this template, but apparently there's a lot still to learn. Maybe I'll get ambitious later and actually make it my own.

The heat has broken, I start class tonight and the midseason party for kickball was a big bleary beery blast, which all can only mean one thing-- fall is here! My favorite time of the year. Fall is apple orchards and trench coats, football games and crisp breezes, lazy long shadows on the Mall and squooshy sweaters with too-long sleeves. Even though the trees start to die, it feels like everything else is renewed. Keep your spring and summer. I like my days bracing and waning, with just a touch of melancholy. I like the Emerson skies, with heavy gray clouds pressing down a sense of gentle foreboding. I call them Emerson skies because I used to stare out the windows of Emerson Elementary School at them, daydreaming about escaping from the confines of Tim's science class or Penny's copper-enameling lessons and running wild under those wise, heavy midwestern skies.

Fall reminds me of the beginning to Peter Pan: "All this has happened before, and it will all happen again." As light starts to fade earlier and the sunshine becomes muted, daytime takes on a new sweetness. Fall is the best season for finding oneself in a patch of light, looking around and sighing in contentment; that for one moment all feels right with the world.

The lazy days are over for now, and I couldn't be happier for it.

weak americans, strong americans

So now FEMA Director Michael Brown has been relieved of his duties in New Orleans. According to the AP Wire, when asked if he was being made a scapegoat for the scathing criticism both he and the administration have received for bungling the aftermath of Katrina, his response was "By the media, yes. By the president, no."

If you will permit me such an indelicate reply, horseshit. Brown has deservedly taken heat from the media for his ineptitude in coordinating relief efforts and initial unwillingness to acknowledge hard truths about Katrina, but this is clearly an effort on the part of the administration to pass the buck.

Yes, Brown bears a significant responsibility for the delayed efforts to bring supplies to Louisiana. Shame on him for having the nerve to appear on television claiming to be doing everything in his power as the bloated bodies of innocent American victims rotted on the streets. If Harry Connick Jr. could tour the Superdome on with a camera crew, there is no reason in the world why FEMA could not have brought in trucks of food, water and medicine. That's saying nothing of buses to get them out of that hellhole.

That said, though, who was responsible for Brown's appointment in the first place? Who ignored the many holes in his resume (click on this link for the most blatant padding ever seen) to install him in 2003? Yes, that's after September 11, where America deeply felt what it was to experience a national crisis and learned what was required from our leaders. When a massive national crisis was a matter of fact, not a threat, Bush installed as our FEMA director a man whose sole professional experience in crisis management was working as an administrative assistant to a city manager in 1977. That's like expecting someone to pilot a jet when his sole aviation experience is making paper planes in elementary school.

Who slashed the federal funding to reinforce the leeves? Who sent over two-thirds of the Louisiana National Guard to Iraq? Whose mother, when commenting on the state of the impoverished refugees in Houston's Astrodome chuckled that they were "underprivileged anyway, so this is working out for them?"

Whose comforting words of sympathy to three homeless little boys in the Astrodome were "Isn't this fun?" Who invested billions of dollars, thousand of American soldiers and untold numbers of civilians to build a democracy in Iraq and then stated that we shouldn't bother to rebuild New Orleans? Who spent much of the spring creating personalized novelty legislation for Terri Schiavo and then conveniently forgot about the "culture of life" when it was the faces of destitute black babies and grandmothers filling our television screens?

If there is any tiny upside to this mess-- and believe me, I am really grasping at straws here-- it's that apparently Karl Rove is not the Evil Political Mastermind we all once thought. My God, if he had made Bush, Bill Frist and the Twins pass out Dasani bottles at the Superdome last Wednesday, he would have cemented forty more years of Republican rule. That one photo op would have undermined years of civil rights, welfare and crime legislation Democrats have heaped on reluctant Republicans.

Maybe when Lake Pontchartrain flooded New Orleans, it also swept a little reality into this country. People are finally not afraid to say "too little, too late." They are starting to snub the glib responses about "a strong America" and demand hard answers as to where, exactly, strong Americans can get diapers, insulin shots and gas for under four dollars a gallon. As Bush's approval ratings continue to drop, my faith in the American press and the American people continues to grow. It is a shame that it took a crisis of this magnitude to reveal how hypocritical and inept Bush and the Reublicans in Congress are capable of being. I only hope that the "reassignment" of Michael Brown doesn't satiate this new national appetite for compassion and accountability.

pondering

Wow! According to some search engines, Urban Fantasy is now the number four blog for "why the world hates America."

I really don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of that. Perhaps this is the start of my career as the liberal David Brooks?

And to my dear sister, who has this week also experienced crap treatment via a maturity-constipated guy named Matt: they are clearly not ready for our jelly. Though equally clearly, the universe is trying to tell us something with this coincidence. What, I wonder?

queen sadie

What's that Sadie? You want me to get up? NO. HAH. How'd ya like that?

Well, maybe I wouldn't be so cranky if you hadn't spent the hour of 5 BLOODY AM shuffling your litter and kitty waste so loudly it sounded like there was a backhoe in my bathroom. Really Sadie, why must you incessantly paw at your litter so much? For one, it's gross-- that is your POOP in there, and cats are supposed to be a clean and relatively low-maintenance species. YOU ARE PAWING YOUR NOSE AT YOUR GENETIC HERITAGE, SADIE. For another thing, it's totally futile. I learned the hard way that even though you are a small cat, you require a litter box roughly the size of Rhode Island with a snap-on rim that is almost taller than you. Ain't no litter escaping on my watch, girl. So please stop trying to free it, especially when it's still dark outside.

I said go away! I know my alarm has been going off every seven minutes for the last hour, but that is no reason to try and bite off my toes, currently the only part of my body not swaddled in my fluffy down comforter. You don't even freak out when I vacuum, so why does my alarm cause such an insane, violent reaction? I know it's annoying, but, if you didn't get the memo, YOU'RE A CAT. This is not supposed to bother you like it bothers my old human roommates, one of the benefits of living alone (besides using five pots at a time to create a new risotto recipe and the ability to sing really loudly while doing so without the fear that someone will be peeping around the kitchen wall and laughing at you, ahem).

What's this? Your fur is all wet! You are covered with little speckly drops! That had better be water, because this duvet cover is Pottery Barn and I have no way to do laundry for at least another two days. Oh Lord, Sadie, were you just in the shower?? You're a cat! You hate water! You shun it in all its forms, save safely sipping it from your purple plastic bowl! Are you seriously employing metaphor to urge me from my lazy sleep? Are you trying to tell me "Woman! If I can get in the shower, you can get in the shower. Now get up, because you've slept in too late and if you get fired you won't be able to buy me cat food, bitch!"

Fine. I'm up, I said I'm up! But you are NOT getting a goodbye cuddle this morning.

and to think this was sparked by watching Eurotrip on HBO3

I miss Europe.

I miss hoisting a bag with all my worldy possessions on my back and lumbering off into the sunrise. I miss Augustiner and cheap Italian house reds in carafes. I miss navigating my way through slushy puddles on cobblestone streets. I miss sleeping on the floor of airports. I miss my hiking boots, big thick socks, bell bottoms, bandana and white parka. I miss absinthe. I miss meeting people in Copenhagen and finding them again in Amsterdam. I miss saying "entschuldigung" every ten minutes and I really miss the one time in Salzburg when I sucessfully ordered pretzels in German and the shopkeeper actually responded in German and we carried on a two minute conversation about the weather in German.

I miss meeting strangers on trains. I miss the soldier from Abu Ghraib I spent that night with in Switzerland, the Estonian woodcutter, the German housewife, the woman who tutored the Spanish royal family in French. I miss the Notre Dame kids.

I miss the champagne risotto in Milan. I miss the Illy latte and chocolate crossiant I would buy every morning at the Hauptbanhof in Munich. I miss the feeling of seeing my mother in the hotel lobby in Paris after a month of traveling alone. I miss her face after seeing Notre Dame.

I miss the icy mountain lakes of Austria and I miss Steve the insane tour guide who showed them to me. I missed how he had the thickest Midwestern accent I'd ever heard outside of Drop Dead Gorgeous except for stubbornly pronouncing it "OY-ro" instead of"EU-ro."

I miss sitting at a bar with a book and not feeling weird about nursing a beer with only a paperback for company. I miss the freedom to look at a train schedule and and think "Denmark? Never been there, might as well go!" I miss the father and daughter I dined with at Poseiden in the Viktualenmarkt, whose business card I keep on my refrigerator door as a reminder of the friendliness of strangers. I miss how they told me I didn't look American, though I'm quite sure they were gently BS-ing me.

I miss Hot Australian Nate from Munich and the cheap champagne we pounded until 6AM. I miss staring at Guernica in wonder for ten minutes. I miss watching the wedding party in St Stephen's Green. I miss the jar of pumpkin pesto I carried in my bag for two weeks and finally consumed on an overnight train. I miss deciding where to sleep for the night based on the price of doing laundry there and whether or not they included sheets. I miss the shy Korean girl I borrowed tampons from in Vienna and bought her her first beer as a thank you. I miss the cafe in Venice where I would watch the sunset each night. I miss the beachfront bar in Barcelona where I removed my hands from the warm pocket of my Universitat de Amsterdam sweatshirt only to sip at my Baileys as I watched the cruise ships sail off into the Mediterranian. I miss the gasping, bone-chilling stark air of Prague, its crispness broken only by the tendrils of smoke coming from the lips of my stoner roommates.

I miss watching people go about their daily lives in other countries. I miss the oddly profound novelty of seeing a woman buy groceries or a man strap his son into a stroller and thinking "She's European. He is European, too. They don't know anything about PACs and 527s and they don't care to."

I miss all of it. I miss it more than I've ever missed a person or a place before.

People play the If I Had A Million Dollars Game endlessly. For me, it's not a game. I would wander the ends of the earth, reveling in ways of life I will never understand or participate in, collecting stories and memories and documenting them as best I can in my own stumbling way. It was the best thing I've ever done, and I would give anything in the world to go back and do it again.

anderson cooper bitchslaps mary landrieu; american government

You know I'm incensed because I'm posting something about a Democrat being called out on bullshit. This is not to absolve Bush for making a typically inadquate speech a day late and failing to send in National Guard troops to New Orleans until Thursday. Or for reducing the budget for levees by 80% so funds could be diverted to war efforts in Iraq. Or for making his sole declarative statement, that there would be "zero-tolerance for looters," be in reference to the one ambiguous thing in this distaster-- after all, many people need to "loot" supplies in order to stay alive because their government is not providing anything for them. Or, for that matter, to absolve Condoleeza Rice for spending the last four days shopping and seeing shows in New York while Americans followed orders, went to the Superdome to await rescue and were left to rot and die.

This isn't about party lines. It is about a government that is too busy pointing fingers and congratulating itself for talk without action to take care of its people. It is horribly emblematic of an administration and a culture that rewards sweeping gestures and disdains the tedious details and unpleasant sacrifices necessary to build and maintain communities. Thank goodness someone in the media was brave enough to call them out on it:


LANDRIEU: Let me just say a few things. Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Alabama to our help and rescue.We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts.Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard -- maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating.

COOPER: Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap -- you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?

(Courtesy of TVNEWSWER)

katrina

Hurricanes, tsunamis and other uncontrollable catastrophes tend to make us use careworn phrases like "be strong!" and "our thoughts are with you." Heartfelt sentiments for sure, but powerless to ease the pain we see in the pictures coming from New Orleans. What can I do, you ask?

Go to the New Orleans Craigslist Housing section if you want a reminder that tragedy can bring out the good in people. Hundreds of people across America opening their homes to strangers, victims, for little or no money. Missed Encounters, usually stuffed with messages like "You were the blonde bachelorette who flashed me on Bourbon Street," is now a tool in the anxious searches for relatives and friends. Volunteers is full of people across the country anxious to do something, anything to help.

An article in the Post Style section today talked about how New Orleans has always been a city in touch with death. Celebrating it, living alongside it, glorifying it for tourist dollars. I don't see anything glorious about the last few days, or the coming months.

And so I sit, riveted to the pictures on my computer screen. There are things to be done, but I can't do them. I can't drive to Houston to volunteer because I have no vacation time, I can't donate money because I literally have none, and I don't even have any spare stuffed animals to give the Red Cross. So I sit. And emote. And link to here, and hope that others are not so unable to move as I.

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

LATER:

About fifteen minutes after posting the above, I gave myself a massive guilt trip and donated online. The Red Cross website was flooded (sorry, poor word choice) so I gave at here at Second Harvest Food Bank. Your turn.

And watch out for scams. Brand-new domain names like katrinahelp.com are not to be trusted-- read a warning here.

this one time at band camp

Lord Larry was an intimidating fellow. Imagine Chris Farley but with black hair, a Harley, taller, less frat-boy and just toeing the line of flaming so that he appeared at first glance to be bi, British or maybe both. Lord Larry had a last name which I cannot recall at present, but I do clearly remember how he entered the classroom on the first day of Acting Technique and boomed "You WILL address me as Lord Larry, FOR I AM YOUR LORD AND MASTER OF ALL THINGS THEATRICAL!" He was, to put it mildly, a character.

That summer, I already thought I was being pushed quite enough. Mornings were spent making a mockery of colorblind casting as I tried to get my fifteen-year-old white girl hips to move like those of a Haitian Earth mama. Our director, Todd, had seen fit to cast me as a voodoo Earth goddess who belts the A above high C (if you know music, you know that is not a note that is easily belted). Shockingly enough, I didn't nail this part right out of the gate.

"Bend your knees! Heels off the ground! Move your damn hips!" Various frustrated adults would shake their heads at my pathetic attempts to shed my WASPy Midwesternness and find my inner goddess. While other girls had main camp time to buy ice cream cones and flirt with the only three cute straight boys in the division, I had extra belly dancing lessons with the vice-director's wife.

Todd brought in Lord Larry for extra help. "Break her," he told Lord Larry. "I want her so pushed and embarrased in your class that by the time I get her back she can BE Asaka without even trying." It was about this time that Todd got the nickname Todd-weh, God of Pain.

Lord Larry broke me. I don't remember the exact monologue, but I do remember it was a woman, at some sort of interview or audition who has a breakdown and essentially starts molesting herself out of sheer pathos. I know it contained the line "rude crude portrudes dubious boobies!" which I thought might help me track down the source, but you don't want to know what I found when I Googled it.

Lord Larry would bellow interruptions as I tried to manifest sexually psychotic desperation. I can only imagine how funny I was to watch. "CHRIST ALMIGHTY NO!" he would scream. "MY GOD, WHO WOULD CAST YOU AFTER THAT?! DO IT AGAIN AND REALLY GRAB YOURSELF THIS TIME!"

Don't think he was a deviant. Despite how it sounds, it's not that Lord Larry got off on watching a high school sophomore perform that kind of scene. He had a male student do a monologue about having sex with a horse, and another boy do one about the joy of being a serial killer. He wanted to push us to our most uncomfortable places in front of one another, to make us not only confront but embrace forbidden ideas and actions so that we could become stronger performers. It's the same reason businesspeople go to corporate retreats to climb ropes and climb over barrels with one another. The difference, though, is that he demanded that we not only physically challenged, but emotionally smacked down and rebuilt.

It worked. After two weeks of that monologue, including one cripplingly awful class performance for visiting parents, the show was a breeze. My inner goddess came out to belt and cluck over the silly orphan girl and shake her ass along with the bongo drum orchestra.

This has all been weighing on my mind since our first read-through last night. It was so familiar and yet so scary, being in a group of laughing strangers cold-reading these lines out loud. It didn't help anything that my character, in addition to not exactly being the brightest bulb in the chandelier, has some pretty risque stuff to say and do onstage. With another person. It's a very interesting feeling to look at a person you've never seen before and think "Okay, so I'm going to be spending much of this fall making out with you in front of paying customers."

But I can do this. I can do this. It is, after all, what an actor does. And I'm still a little scared that if I don't throw myself into it head-on, Lord Larry will somehow show up and bellow.

Barcelona

Mark your calendars, kids! EJ is in a play.

Where she'll be onstage in her underwear.


Until then, she'll be at the gym.

fridays are for mocking insane hipster flotsam

If you ever wondered what became of that guy from high school who was so crazy into raves that he would show up to trig with a pacifier, glow sticks and a slick coating of other people's bodily fluids... well, you can probably find out here.

comedy/tragedy

I did a lot of community theater growing up. It's a fantastic community in which to be a gawky teenage girl (or for that matter, a deeply closeted teenage boy), full of instant intimacy with strangers and the kind of validation and affirmation you can't beat with a stick. Where else in life can you get applauded on a regular basis?

My family got into theater along with me, and after I departed for college and became a Massive Political Tool, they stayed with it. When my father and sister performed in a production of Evita my freshman year, I went home to catch the show. The night ended with a cast party at the Aut Bar, a downtown gay club where the cast and their families gathered. As I sat between by dad and my grandfather in a gay bar crowded with blue collar workers and Burns Park academics, I was struck with the thought of how unlikely this scenario would be if I had taken up another hobby, say soccer, as a child.

Last night, bearing photocopied sheet music and a childhood of memories, I auditioned for a play. Who knows if I'll get in, but even if I don't get so much as a callback, it was worth the fear of singing showtunes in public just to hear a fellow auditionee exclaim "Oh, that's how I know her! She used to be my voice teacher when she was a man!" Ahh, community theater in Dupont Circle.

Instead of a prepared monologue, the director had asked us to spend a few minutes talking about a romantic relationship. This simple-sounding request became one of the most intense things I'd ever seen. Complete strangers were telling stories of losing virginities, falling in love, coming out of the closet, being cheated on. It was emotionally exhibitionist even by theater standards, swinging from high to low and back again as we all took turns climbing onstage, standing under the glare of the hot lights and telling our war stories. By far the best (even better than the transvestite) was the girl who described her booty call from a very famous and very married musical theater/TV actor. No, I won't tell you who he is... suffice it to say that the second we were done auditioning I called my mother to tell her, since she is a huge fan of his and also went to college with him.

So if I get in, great. I'd love to rediscover that part of myself that I stashed away during my preadult life of cheap suits, interning and history books. If not... well, it was a reminder that even though I miss the applause and joy of performing, it's the theater people I miss most of all.

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

UPDATE: Just got a call from the director-- I got called back!

there's more to life than being really, really ridiculously good-looking

I had actually taken a post-pool, pre-kickball shower in anticipation of flirting with him. Now, I enjoy everyone on our team for their own unique contributions to our group. The way they catch fly balls, their outrageous stories, their ability to pound Miller High Life like a seventh-year-senior. That said, I especially enjoy chatting with beautiful, if slightly dense, men (not specific to those in my kickball league). I hadn't seen him since the first game day, when I was still incredibly raw and the ego boost of a stranger's hand on my hip and a crinkly, smug smile flashed at me felt fantastic. I may not be so raw anymore, but ain't nothing like the prospect of messing around with a hot teammate to complete the healing process.

"So what's your excuse for missing the game today?" I asked him. Play it cool, EJ, play it cool. He knows he's hot, you gotta make him want it. Besides, you have to make up for the damage inflicted when seven of your friends simultaneously elbowed you when he walked in the door.

"Oh, yeah. I got caught in traffic coming back from Charlotte." OK...

"Riiiight, a likely story." Ugh, are my attempts at being a flirtatious tease really that bad? Granted, he's not giving me much to work with.

"Naw, I swear! No way would I have missed you and the game otherwise." Yesssss. Am Sex Goddess.

"So what was down in Charlotte?" Please say the beach/my brother/a really boring conference for work or something equally neutral.

"Oh, I was helping my girlfriend move."



Well fuck. So much for my scandalous post-breakup fling. Why do guys do this? They wait until they know the girl is interested and then drop the G-Bomb, even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so earlier, saving that girl a lot of time and energy. Maybe the girlfriend could have been brought up when you were telling me about what else you've done this weekend, or why you decided to move to DC or why you should probably leave the bar early because she's at home waiting for you with a seven-course homemade meal and a copy of the Kama Sutra.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I'm totally guilty of reversing the roles and casually mentioning my boyfriend after an indecent amount of flirting with a guy. But as long as women continue to make 75 cents to a man's dollar, we have to get our power from somewhere.)

Since it's silly to mourn what you never had, I moped for approximately .78 seconds and then resumed playing. I was still doing this a half hour later when I caught side of him at the other end of our tables, whipping his head around to-- I shit you not-- check himself out in the mirror behind him. Not in a "do I have something in my teeth?" kind of way, but a full-on "How you doin'?" to his own reflection. It was priceless; a real-life Zoolander moment for the drunken jock set. One of our captains was standing next to me, also looking in his direction. When she turned back towards me, we looked at each other and fell apart laughing. "Did you see?!" "At himself??" "Omigod!" Stomach-throbbing, sidesplitting hilarity. We lost the round because we were laughing too hard to stand, much less drink beer and not spit it out cackling.

Hot guys will come and go, but the joy of catching extreme narcissism in the act will last forever.

things that make you go HA

Go immediately to see The Aristocrats. I laughed, I cried, I will never be able to watch reruns of Full House in the same way again. And can someone please tell me why Sarah Silverman is not yet a humongous star while Jennifer Love Hewitt gets one show after another? Between that and Rafael Palmiero's continued career, I'm pretty sure there is no justice left in the world.

In honor of The Aristocrats, here is a list of other things that crack me up, make me gasp with laughter as tears run down my cheeks, even if those around me are totally confused or grossed out:

• The "This Bulging River" song on the DVD deleted scenes of Waiting for Guffman
• The fake Chandler-Pheobe seduction scene on season 5 of Friends. It's such brilliant acting and writing, it never gets old no matter how many times I see it in reruns on TBS.
• Sifl and Ollie's "The Panda Song." I'm drunk on panda mystery!
• Stephen's Lynch's "The Gerbil Song." Lil' furry gerbil in yooooour bootyhoooole...
• Re-enacting the "we would like some more alcohol and some more beers" scene with X.
• Most people, if they even remember The State, remember Barry and Levon ("Two hundred... and forty dollars... worth of pudding.... awww, yeah!") or Doug, or The "I'm gonna dip my balls in it!" Guy. For me, the best sketches from The State were "Fragments" and the "Mr. and Mrs. Laupin Variety Programme." The incredibly disappointing show Viva Variety was based on this latter, but the original is gold. Insane, loony, Belgian gold involving Billy Joel, an escaped Ape-Man and a guy running around dressed as a cuckoo clock. The former includes a similarly odd cast, except the sketch is framed by Michael Showalter presenting a performance art piece based on some poetry he wrote because he'd been "going through some pretty heavy stuff."
• The mere memory of that Saturday afternoon sophomore year of college when Jonas and I came across an ice skating exhibition by Tara Lipinsky, backed by the vocal stylings of Aaron Carter. Priceless.
• The crack den in Wet Hot American Summer.
• The dopey folk singers of Four Weddings and a Funeral.
• Adam doing the spoken interludes when singing Boyz II Men at karaoke.
• The moment in Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where the little boy mentions Osiris, the Lord of the Underworld, and Mr. Snuffleupagus incredulously says "A GANGSTER?!"

What makes you laugh until you cry?

the blower's daughter

I do love the film Closer. I'm sitting at home after Quizzo watching it now, practically salivating over the delicious lines and Clive Owen's harsh brutality.

I love movies in which beautiful people are unspeakably cruel to one another while using stagey, too-articulate dialogue. It's such a perfect representation of what I want to be capable of but can't quite make myself utter. Decorum blunts the tip of brutal honesty. It's why I spent 17 euro on a script of The Shape of Things in Amsterdam yet can't quite bring myself to finish the four cutting, nasty, stingingly perfect blog entries I've started since Sunday morning.

This weekend was a perfect example of the cruelty it would be great to be capable of. Many scenarios in my head, and the one that came true was the completely inevitable option. Of course that's how it would be. It was so theatrical, so worthy of a dramatic monologue for junior-year English class. In fact, it reminded me of the time I broke up with my high school sweetheart for the second of three times-- or, I should say, he broke up with me-- and I scathingly said to him "Oh, save me the freshman drama monologue." Seriously, I said that out loud.

I do miss the drama, but not in the real-life, crapass dating game way. I miss the performing and rehearsal process and analysis and the applicable lessons learned from fictional situations. Time to get back in that saddle again. Time to utter the lines without the consequences, to be pushed to my limits without being responsible to anything beyond my fellow cast members and the written word at the end of the day.

Sometimes a girl needs the catharsis of saying things like "I don't love you anymore. Goodbye." Even if it's not to a person who deserves to hear it. Even if she doesn't mean it.

lord knows what she does all day when i'm at work

EJ: oh fuck
EJ: brb
EJ: sorry, the cat was trying to drink my chardonnay
LMo: smart kitty

WWCWD?

Like emotionally functional, liberal, handsome heterosexual men in the greater Washington area, this is way too good to be true. Yet, just as we cling to the hope that the former do in fact exist, we may ponder what a better place the world would be if Christopher Walken were president.

"We've got a neverending conflict with unacceptable military and Iraqi civilian casualties that is widening the cultural divide at home and distracting us from pressing domestic issues of affordable health care, access to higher education and the preservation of worker retirement benefits... and the only prescription is: MORE COWBELL."

ej quixote

Sometimes life and circumstance is hard enough, and yet I go out searching for windmills to tilt at.


Still, just because I go looking for them doesn't mean they aren't there.

yes that's all there is

Writing has been difficult the last few days. Usually when a thought comes into my head, I ache to push it out and document it as soon as possible. Lately, though, I've feeling kind of verbally constipated. I know something is there, waiting to be expressed, but the words just aren't manifesting themselves. It's a strange combination of feeling stuck in one place and yet not wanting to move an inch. I suppose that I don't know how to feel because I don't know what I want from the forseeable future.

Maybe it's that nothing terribly exciting has happened very recently. Funny how writing comes easier when one is getting lost in Italy or being dumped by someone she thought she could really be with. Event-based writing has never been an issue for me, but when the inertia of stability takes over I'm quite literally at a loss for words. Do you really want to hear about how I spent last night clipping my cat's nails and watching All About Eve? Or worse, about yet another night spent in the same bar I've been going to for three years drinking overpriced domestic beer and listening to prematurely bald men drone on about drafting floor statements?

Maybe it's August. Nothing like a heat index of 106 to render a girl completely useless. Walking home from work, I'm waiting for my brains to melt, pushing my iPod earbuds out with the force of their gray sludgy laziness. I've been trying to fight that laziness with other kinds of stimulation. I've been reading the trashy romance novels of other centuries, starting with Les Liaisons Dangereuses and working my way to The House of Mirth. They're both delicious and inspiring, but in this heat all I can get from them is a fervent gratitude that I am not required to wear a corset.

Maybe this weekend will jolt me out of it. There are goodbyes to be said, reunions to be celebrated, birthdays to toast, kayaks to be paddled, balls to kick and beer to drink. House of Mirth, indeed. Beyond that, there's much on the horizon-- my first graduate class, promotion at work, new relationships and actually enjoying the new home and roommate that I've scraped together in the last few months. I've never been good at settling and enjoying the moment. I've always been about anticipation and looking beyond, trying to see what's just around the corner. It's probably time to try and get over that... you reach a point where you've accumulated and discarded so much that it just becomes flaky. I don't want to be flaky.

Still, as I sit here at my computer at my pleasant job with nice co-workers, house and friends waiting for me when I leave, I can't help but hum to myself:

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends,
Then let's keep dancing...

why can't all democrats be so aggressive?

If there is any doubt that Sadie is meant to be my cat, this photo of her decapitating her George W. Bush chew toy should pretty much take care of it.

journey(s)

I totally did this. Oh, the shame. Well, am not really sure which is worse-- downloading Journey because one hears it on Laguna Beach, or downloading Journey because one sincerely feels one's heartstrings tugged by the melodic stylings of Steve Perry and company.

To switch to a whole different kind of journey, I join the many people who mourn the passing of Peter Jennings today. Though I became a news junkie rather late in life (at least in comparison to fellow Washingtonians, many of whom have professed a pre-potty-training awareness of the Big Three anchors), I felt a special fondness for Mr. Jennings. He reminds me of that friend of your parents who you always found to be kind of handsome and harbored a very innocent childhood crush on, only you really liked him best because he listened to your youthful opinions and never talked down to you. He was given a dream job as lead anchor at the age of 26 and quit three years later because he knew he wasn't ready yet. Instead, he paid his dues with ten years on the road as foreign correspondent, striving to become worthy of the office he was offered free and clear.

What a class act. Can you imagine a 26-year-old today doing that? Yet look at all that he reported on. Apartheid. The construction and fall of the Berlin Wall. The Munich Olympics. The Oklahoma City bombings. Iraq. The search for Jesus. September 11. He was a man who sought to educate himself and his audience on the most pressing ideas and events that shaped our world. If I could go back in time and live somebody's life through his eyes, Peter Jennings would be in my top five.

His death is all the more sad because it is so senseless. This morning, NPR played the recording in which he announced his diagnosis of lung cancer and his regret for taking up smoking again after September 11. Hearing his courage in voicing his condition, voicing his anger with himself and the voicing the admission that he needed support and prayers just broke my heart. This is a man who has traveled the world over and seen more proof that life is worth living than most of us will ever dream of, yet he still could not conquer a habit that wound up cutting his life far too short.

Someone very dear to me has a similar habit, and I have only recently acknowledged to myself that it will probably take that person from me too soon. I don't know how to help, how to even offer to help, or whether any move on my part could help. I have always been about action, solutions to problems and finding a fix that will last. Today reminded me that there will always be things that one is powerless over, no matter how much we want to solve them. That sometimes, even we when win in the end, winning is not a one-time activity. Success over addiction, even if maintained for a lifetime, may still not be enough to repair the damage inflicted.

baby girl

Dear Sadie,

You are just about the cutest thing in the world. I do feel slightly disloyal to my other kitty back in Michigan for loving you so intensely after just a few hours. But oh sweet Moses, you are cute and fuzzy and so aggressively in need of my love that you just wipe all of that away.

You are a bloody expensive acquisition, do you know that? Between your adoption fees to the Nazi-Esque Animal League of Northern Virginia, pet fees to the landlord and purchase of the organic kitty food they fed you with, you are the equivalent of a new iPod and several pairs of very good shoes. None of those items, however, are capable of posing on my windowsill or headbutting my shin with such adorable glee. You, my sweet girl, are oh so very worth it.

Sadie, you have this incredibly sweet habit of lifting your butt in the air whenever I pet you in a manner that approaches your belly. God, that's cute. You may leave a grayish-white fuzz over everything I own, you may shred my really nice (though cheaply obtained) couch with your front claws, but hoist your hindquarters up with gratefulness and look at me with those big green eyes and we'll be okay. You and me, girl-- we're a team, and I promise to take care of you and buy you kitty food and pet you and not holler at you TOO much when you rip up my furniture.

I don't know who had you before me or how it is you wound up in an organization for abandoned animals. You are so cute and affectionate that no one in their right mind could ever leave you alone to the elements. Watching you curl up in the crook of my arm, knead my sweatshirt blanket with your little white paws and hear your purr-factory throat tell me just how content you are in my home, my heart swells up. I don't want to go to work tomorrow; I just want to spend all day dangling a string in your face and watching TV with you curled in a furry, purring heap on my lap. I'm so glad you're here and that we are going to take care of one another.

You and me, baby girl.

Love,

EJ

Notes from a Friday night on U Street

I like DC. I really do, I swear. Sometimes I even love it.


But for godsake, it would be nice to live in a place where the phrase "Department of Defense" is never involved in a pickup line.

We probably shouldn't discuss how long it's been since I've done laundry...

But I did have to buy underwear.






Twice.

Vienna waits for you

I saw someone I knew on the Metro yesterday.

This is hardly earth-shattering, I know. Just the previous evening, with two other friends from college, I found myself sandwiched between a former residence hall director/co-worker and a previous president of my College Democrats chapter. Clearly, I have been in this town too long.

But this person was not from college, or Washington. I couldn't quite place him, but the preppy navy polo shirt, backpack and slightly snub nose were definitely familiar. He and I got off at the same stop, and I followed after him trying to guess where I recognized him from. Then, after two blocks of highly conspicuous glancing, I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Excuse me," I asked, "This may sound kind of weird... but were you in Vienna this last February?"

He pushed up his sunglasses and squinted at me.

"...Emily?"

"Omigod!"

"Yeah, it's me-- Will!"

Will is one of many Notre Dame students I met while backpacking earlier this year. Four of them had been on my delightfully cheesy Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, and after we'd yodeled our way through the soundtrack while ambling around the Austrian countryside for four hours, they invited me to join their group for the evening. We had a delicious dinner at a pub called Zum Affen Fidelen (literally, "To the Faithful Ape") and then joined more people from their London study-abroad program, about a third of whom happened to be in Salzburg that night. This was how I'd found myself in pounding Steigl inside a Irish pub in a mountainside in central Austria with 40 Americans (and a good 20 Italian schoolboys on holiday).

I met up with their group in Vienna, where we stayed at the same hostel by the Hauptbanhof and spent a perfect day tramping along the city streets together. This is where Will and I actually met, and bonded over our mutual love of sociocultural anthropology. I recall being in the Historiches Museum with the him, staring at stuffed birds and Venus of Willendorf, debating the merits of Jared Diamond's scholarship. It was one of those days where, looking back, I can't believe we fit everything into just one day's worth of light. We went to several museums, ate overlarge amounts of schnitzel, lingered in Cafe Central (the most famous of Vienna's cafes), saw the Hapsburg crown jewels and watched a production of Aida from the sardine can standing section of the Vienna Opera House.

I loved Austria for everything it had to show me, but the wonderful people I met there were a large part of why it was my favorite country. Now, running into one of them in the middle of normal life, on my morning commute, was overwhelming.

"God," I exclaimed "such a small world!" I winced inside a little at the cliche, but it had never felt more true.

Turns out he was in Washington looking at law schools. Maybe not the most exotic raison d'etre, but it works. We wound up having a two-hour lunch later that day, reminiscing about our travels and trading plans for the future.

Walking him back to the Metro, I asked him if he'd had any trouble readjusting to life back in the States. After all, he had actually lived abroad, while I'd bummed my way across the continent with just a backpack. He paused to think for a minute.

"Well," he finally replied, "I miss easy public transportation. And I don't miss the food. But even though I'm keeping busy and writing my thesis and looking at schools...."

He trailed off again, and we exchanged looks. "Yeah," I replied. "I get that."

Admission

I've tried, but I can't make myself like The White Stripes.

Interns vs. Tourists

Another summer in DC. Another season of bitching about the heat, women's shoes and the lack of easily accessible beaches. Yet perhaps the heartiest complaints a DC resident will hear are regarding the twain poxes on our fair city-- Interns and Tourists. Like Beatles versus Stones, pop versus soda, Christianity versus everybody else, the side you take in this Beltway version of Who Sucks the Most? says a lot about you. Yet, for all the blogging bitching about both groups I've read this summer, to say nothing of the conversations I've heard for five years now, no one has done a side-by-side comparison to declare a "winner."

I feel that I am a worthy judge for such a noble competition. Having had recent experience making a complete ass out of myself as a tourist in many foreign lands, I am sympathetic to the disorientation that accompanies all travelers. Likewise, I have held no less than three internships (Senate, think tank and media outlet) in my youth and can navigate the icky world of the intern like the street I was born on. Personal biases now accounted for, I can also be a real bitch, too.

So let's consider some of the major categories in which Tourists and Interns compete to become the most annoying guests in Washington since the cicadas.

Attire

Tourists: Cannot dress themselves to save their lives. Pleated demin shorts, a fanny pack and a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap do not a fetching travel outfit make. Oh, and put away that fold-out map with the 3-D Washington monument-- you look like a douchebag.

Interns: Cannot dress themselves to save their lives. Miniskirts, Steve Madden platform heels and epaulet-clad blue blazers with khakis do not an approproate work outfit make. Oh, and take off your ID badge before you get on the Metro-- you look like a douchebag.

More Annoying: Tourists

Companions

Tourists: Hordes of crying children and angry teenagers. The shrieking, the whining...oh, the humanity! However, Tourists are often accompanied by Locals who guide them into quiet alcoves, usher them to kid- and Grandma-friendly restaurants and generally bear the brunt of their most obnoxious questions, ie. "But why is it called 'Foggy Bottom?'"

Interns: Each other. Interns who are only in the District for the summer are incapable of doing anything, including having sex, in a group smaller than six people. Like the strain of flu that becomes exponentially nastier as more people get sick, interns get stupider in these groups. I witnessed the ultimate example of this on Saturday night at 3rd Edition, where a group of eight be-highlighted young women bogarted the bartender for a good ten minutes, debating whether they had enough cash among them to buy their vodka-cranberries or if they should try to get the guys next to them to pony up. The angry bartender tried to leave on several occasions but was summoned back with a plaintivly drawled "Ah'm so soooory, we're ready, kay?!" Drinks ordered and put on Daddy's AmEx, they then proceeded to block the door and the only source of ventilation, loudly complaining about how hard they had worked over the last week and what total losers their bosses were. Well, sorry ladies-- those envelopes aren't going to lick themselves.

More Annoying: Interns


Metro Etiquette

Tourists: One more time for the cheap seats: stand on the right, walk on the left. There is no Metro stop in Georgetown but you will survive this; the rest of us do. Please do not ride between 7 and 9 AM, as some of us do live here and would like to get to work on time. And for the love of Pierre L'Enfant, do not greet every stop with an announcement of how many more stations until the Smithsonian.

Interns: I'll give credit where it's due, those little scamps figure out all of the above relatively quickly. Occasionally some poor girl's heel will get stuck in a grate, but that's actually pretty good for a chuckle.

More Annoying: Tourists


Duration of Stay

Tourists: A week, tops.

Interns: Eight to ten weeks, depending on how many credit hours your college is giving you to open and sort constituent letters.

More Annoying: Interns


Attitude/Personality

Tourists: If I can take a moment to be, well, not snarky, I'll confess something. Sometimes, the Tourists are kind of cute. I remember one time in college when I was jogging by the White House and overheard a little boy pipe up "Mommy, I can't believe that's where the President lives!" Yes, with moments of innocence and sweet awe like that, those pesky souls sometimes remind me of what I love about this town despite all that makes me batshit crazy. They are here for all of the noble, educational, historical sights that balance out the spectacular bullshit DC trades for a living.

That said, I wish they wouldn't gawp at people who play sports on the Mall. We're adults playing kickball, not exotic birds of prey in a zoo.

Interns: There are two main kinds of interns; Scared Intern and Cocky Bastard Intern. You know Scared Intern by her quietly preppy clothing and petrified expression, like she's expecting someone to tap her on the shoulder and say "I'm sorry, but you don't belong here." You might not notice Scared Intern, though, because Cocky Bastard Intern completely overshadows everyone else in the office. CBI can be a boy or a girl, and his or her internal monologue goes something like this:

Guy: I can't believe they have me answering phones. Don't they know who my
father is? I have two years of higher education for godsake, I should be running
campaigns right now. Fuckin' morons. Do they not see my red power tie?? I'm gonna own this place as soon as I graduate. Damn, that girl from SMU is hot. I'm so gonna nail her after happy hour at Cap Lounge.

Girl: I can't believe they have me doing data entry. Don't they know who my
daddy is? I have two years of higher education, I should have my own interns to
boss around. And my shoes cost more than my boss will make this month, which
means I am so much better than her. Wow, that nice man from Appropriations who
looks like Uncle Marvin sure is friendly. Maybe I can work that... just have to remember not to use his real initials when I blog about it.

More Annoying: Interns

Congratulations, Interns! You have proven yourselves worthy to inherit the Mantle of Obnoxiousness from the cicadas. Just remember to add this to the list of things you will embellish and brag about when you go back to school this fall. In the meanwhile, keep your nose clean, don't fuck your boss and enjoy your stay in our-- not your-- city.

If ya hoooold on for one more day

This kickball thing is going to be good.

First off, I think this might be the one athletic activity where even I cannot hurt or embarass myself. The games themselves are only forty-five minutes long and we have twenty people on our team, so I can stand in left field, kick a couple of singles and be a wild success at the sport. Besides, I have always been a phenomenal heckler and look forward to that activity as my main contribution to team spirit.

Any attempts at athletic prowess really shine at the post-game flipcup competitions. Sure, it's a hackneyed game that probably should have ended with the acquisition of a bachelor's degree, but it never stops being fun. Flipcup and beer pong are the equivalent to being in a car with a group of people when Wilson Philips comes on the radio, and everyone kind of looks at each other out of the corners of their eyes and mumbles "I could change the station if you want... I don't care... whatever..." Then two minutes later everyone is singing "Someday somebody's gonna make you wanna turn around and say goodbye!" in screechy harmony. You may pretend you're better than it, but you're not, and you're gonna cave.

So yesterday at the rules clinic and scrimmage, there was kicking and there was drinking and there was flipping. There were excellent people full of entertaining stories that made me laugh my ass off. However, kickball kind of kills the rest of one's Sunday. I got home around 8 with a good quarter of a keg coursing through my bloodstream, finally passing out at 9:30 only forty pages into my second reading of the sixth Harry Potter.

Urban Fantasy, indeed.