Here's how it is.

My Firefly-related OCD wants to follow that up with "The earth got used up..." But I will restrain myself. (This time. I make no promises about gratuitious Firefly-quoting in future.)

*Dusts off cobwebs*

Okay, so I disappeared from the internet. I've been hiding in something of a corner over here for some time now, but I'm starting things up again. Because I need to actually start communicating with the world again, at least a bit, and putting some creativity out there - because I know it's still in there, but it's gotten a bit of a beatdown of late.

Here's what's happened -

I graduated from my big fancy college last May. (Small fancy college?) I kind of can't believe I pulled it off, and believe me it was touch and go there for a while - stopped going to classes, kind of fell off the face of the earth a little bit, got myself thrown into the hospital, had some breakdowns, kind of stopped eating, refused to talk to anyone about it or ask for help. It wasn't pretty, and graduating was kind of a close thing, to be honest. But I got through it. Somehow. Two majors in seven semesters. I can't say I exactly recommend my method of coping, to anyone, but I managed. I got my degree and got out of there.

I've been home ever since. Aimless, and pushing all those feelings of anxiety and frustration way the fuck down, so that I'm sleeping too much and not doing a damned thing of any value any longer. That's part of where this blog comes in. I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life, but I know I need to write (at the moment television writer is kind of my dream job, and I foresee it staying that way), and in order to do that I need to get my shit together a little bit, get myself out there and stop it with this hidey-hole bullshit. I don't know when I'll move out, and frankly I'm terrified of leaving, but I'm scared of staying, too. I know this kind of stasis and arrested development (ha!) can't, and shouldn't, last.

I should have left Smith. I should have transferred somewhere less academically demanding so that I could focus on other things. Learn to drive. Get a job. Get in a real relationship. Maybe study abroad, even. Have actual life experiences. But I didn't, and now I have to make up for all of it.

So, the blog is coming back. (The posts won't be like this, I promise. I'll try to keep the self-indulgent bullshit to a minimum and talk about more interesting things.) I have some ideas and I am open to suggestions. Pop culture stuff, fun stuff, beautiful stuff. Exciting and life-affirming and analytical. Bringing myself into it, just better. I want to do all of this better. And enjoy myself. Good resolutions, yes?

Join me. Play with me.

To reward you for listening to me thus far, please enjoy this buddy-comedy version of Tyrion and Bronn in Game of Thrones:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/06/is_game_of_thrones_considering.html

Well, so, I haven't blogged in awhile. There hasn't been a lot going on to write about, particularly - I am still homebound on my medical leave, and therefore don't have a great deal happening in my life (not that college was a nonstop thrillride or anything, so.) My dreams have been picking up the slack, though - last night I had a dream that I was a zombie killer. Had to drive my car over a LAKE OF ZOMBIES at one point. My scientist boyfriend and I were keeping some zombies in a lab for tests with, uh, flowers (because in this skewed universe, the zombies were afraid of flowers and you could hurl the flowers at them to keep them away), and there was also an antidote to the zombie bite, as long as you took it within a few hours, to avoid becoming a zombie. It was really fucking weird, though. Too much late-night watching of Buffy, I guess. (Which I'm totally loving. It's great. I am wildly in love with Spike, which should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who is familiar with both the character and my own.)

You know what's a chilling feeling? You know when you start watching a television show ironically - maybe it's on in a marathon, or something - and it's so terrifically, hilariously bad that you just have to continue watching it to laugh at it? You sit there, chuckling, perhaps alone, perhaps with a like-minded friend, rolling your eyes at the terrible acting and the stilted dialogue and the general idiocy, feeling morally superior in your own intelligence? And then, you realize - you really hope there's another episode on after this, not merely so that you can continue laughing at it, but because you actually really kind of want to know what happens with this particular plot point? And it occurs to you that you've actually become INVESTED in this terrible, terrible show, and you sit there in horror and disbelief, feeling the last vestiges of your self-respect fall away?

Yeah. THAT feeling. Chilling.

And before I go, an anecdote that I heard on the radio, apparently reported via someone in the know: Frank Sinatra was quite the playboy, even in his later years, with impressive sexual prowess and stamina, and he apparently credited it all to Wheaties. He once finished having marathon sex with some satisfied young lady, ran out to the kitchen, chowed down on a bowl of Wheaties, and charged right back into the bedroom singing "I'm in the Mood for Love."

Think of that the next time you're having a bowl of Wheaties, will you?

Characters: a devolutionary chain.

Okay, so I'm taking a medical leave this semester to try to figure out this body shit. As you might expect, this has led to me having WAY TOO MUCH free time on my hands (and I've only been home again for a few days...) It'll get better, I think - there will be some temping jobs in my future, and my mom is suggesting that I go to bartending school (hooray for marketable skills!) but in the meantime, I'm left to my own devices and coming up with shit like this.

So it has come to my attention recently that pretty much all of my favorite pop culture characters are basically THE SAME PERSON. Charismatic, witty, highly sexualized, and self-absorbed, with terrible pasts, intelligence, and a healthy level of cynicism, and a somewhat sociopathic view of the world. No, seriously, it'll become more and more clear. Let's start with a perennial favorite:


Dr. Gregory House

I love this show a lot, even though it's kind of devolved into mostly shittiness for the last couple of seasons. It basically kind of sucks now, but as long as House himself is there, doing his thing, I will keep watching. I love him so much. He is so funny and brilliant and complex and dynamic and Hugh Laurie plays him so goddamned brilliantly. I have had numerous dreams in which House and I are best friends. (I actually think he and I would get along quite well, as weird as that sounds.)

Okay, so House? Change his occupation from a doctor to an advertising executive, make him about 20 years younger, and make him gay, and we have...


Brian Kinney

Much like House, Queer as Folk's Brian has a strange sort of mythology surrounding him, with an appeal that can only really be understood by a big fan of the show who watches continuously. Deeply cynical and ridiculously selfish, Brian nonetheless has frighteningly keen observational skills (much like House) and an incredibly warm heart that he hides unbelievably well. He also utterly makes the show. I mean, yeah, the smut is fun, but without the character of Brian pretty much all of the emotional and dramatic plots would fall flat. He is just so fucking beautiful. I can't watch the show that much anymore, because it makes me unbelievably depressed, but Brian makes it worth it, as does Gale Harold's acting. In real life, Gale is both very straight and very shy, mild-mannered, and unassuming. Holy. Fuck.

Okay, so take Brian, make him straight again (sorry Bri!), make him a teenager, plop him down in the 80's, and you have...


John Bender

Yes. Evie and I actually discovered this one last summer. I've been in love with Bender for God-knows-how-long, since it's been years and years since I first saw the Breakfast Club, and upon the first viewing I fell hard. There's just nothing like a wrong side of the tracks bad boy with a fucking razor-sharp wit and a hardon for Molly Ringwald. I mean, can you blame me? I'm probably doomed to fall for a hilarious sociopath.

Now, take Bender, make him a girl, make him prettier (because as fuckable as he is, I think we can all agree that Judd Nelson would make a fuggin' fugly girl), put her in modern times and give her a big dose of compassion. What results?


Veronica Mars

Yeah, it all comes back around to Veronica. It's a devolutionary chain, yo! They are all the same.damn.people. And I'm out.

Y'know when you have some caffeine to prepare yourself to work/give yourself more energy, and instead of making you more awake and focused, you just get sort of scatterbrained and sleepily jittery?

Yeah. That's what's happening with me right now. I had some chai to work on this paper (and ugh, I'm tired because the goddamned cats were in and out of my room all night, wanting to CUDDLE and PLAY!) and instead of it increasing my focus, it's just made me kind of jittery and nervous. Besides I'm freaking out a little about going back to school, mostly for various emotional reasons, and this is seriously not helping. At all.

I don't know. I mean, on a certain level I'm glad that I had work to do over this break since it kept my brain from atrophying in absence of school, and all (and obviously I'm grateful that I got the extensions, because there was no way in hell I would have been able to get it done with all the seizures I was having in the last few weeks of the semester), but ugh, it really does suck to have work to do when on winter break like this. I'm freaked, is what I'm saying. I never feel totally comfortable at school, and I'm so much lonelier and sicker there - like, always.

I do always do better spring semester than the fall one, though, because I'm going towards more light and warmth and longer days, as opposed to fall semester, when I'm going towards darker and darker and colder and colder and it's like some kind of hellish descent. Fall semester really fucking sucks. All the time.

Also? Grateful for these paper topics. It's been an American Studies-heavy semester (next semester is going to be an English-heavy one, and I anticipate it being way harder), so in the past couple of weeks I've written on Trainspotting, Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, Twin Peaks, and now Mad Men. (The Twin Peaks research also got me a chance to correspond with Ms. Sherilyn Fenn, a.k.a. Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne - a fangirl's dream, if ever there was one. She was a peach.) Not that there aren't difficulties associated with this shit, because trust me, there are, but it's much easier when you're studying something you really find to be a lot of fun.

All this popular culture studies stuff has really given me a new appreciation for aesthetics. I've been following lots of variously aesthetic-focused blogs and I really do think it's just as valid as the study of anything else - I don't see why substance and style have to be pried apart and differentiated (they certainly aren't in film), or why styles and aesthetic can't be every bit as thought-provoking as a "higher" form of culture. And I don't think one has to be "trained" in this stuff to appreciate it - you just have to have a good eye for what you find beautiful and visually arresting, and cultivate and seek out what you like and find compelling. Sure, having studied art or film or fashion helps, but I don't think it's a requirement if you have a natural compulsion towards it.

I caught Vertigo on TV the other night after the Golden Globes (which were really good this year! Good show, good show), and it's still one of my favorites. Just hits all the right notes - dramatic and romantic and tragic and deeply creepy. Kim Novak gives the shivers - good AND bad ones! (Jimmy Stewart just gives me the bad ones.) She's exquisite. My favorite scenes are the early ones, seeing her dreamlike, haunted wanderings around San Francisco, her obsession with the portrait (that portrait still gives me major fucking creeps), her almost out-of-body hurling herself into the San Francisco bay. The sensuality, the paranoia, the obsession - it's all some of my favorite stuff.

And who could forget that fucking hair swirl?

More shivers. I read this terrifically creepy short story by Joyce Carol Oates called "Fat Man My Love" about Hitchcock from the perspective of one of his blondes. She's great when she's not completely grossing me out, which can definitely happen. I can kind of overdose on her stories a little bit and end up a bit woozy.

Enough morbidity! Let's see some aesthetic perfection! ANTM again, here. From the "short cycle," Ms. Rae Weisz:

Fucking perfect.

Also, my absolute all-time favorite photo from that show: Cycle 11's Lauren Brie:


I feel a little better now. And now, to the paper-writing!

Scattered thoughts.

So "Rocket Queen" by G n' R came up on my iTunes shuffle (I should be writing a paper, but isn't that sure and always the case?), and remembered this delightful little peace of lore about that girl moaning throughout certain parts of the track. Allegedly, one of the members of the band (I don't remember which at the moment), slept with Axl Rose's girlfriend and Axl, having what is surely a highly overdeveloped sense of revenge, decided to sleep with said fellow band member's girlfriend, tape it, and put her orgasming moans on the song.

That is just such an epic level of out-assholing that it reminds me of that episode of South Park in which Cartman gets back at some kid after a prank by arranging for his parents to be killed, making them into chili, and serving it to the kid. Some serious, House of Atreus, Greek vengeance-type shit. No real point to this, just that I love Axl Rose and I love South Park.

Really love South Park - I watch it a lot late at night while hanging out with the cats. A couple of weeks ago I caught an episode that referenced Fiona Apple. It involves Barbra Streisand as an evil monster, going around town indignant that no one seems to know who she is, to which the police officer responds: "Well, I know you're not Fiona Apple, and if you're not Fiona Apple, I don't really give a rat's ass." Bliss.

Hey, you know what else I've gotten kinda hooked on lately? Six Feet Under. It took me a couple of episodes to warm up to it, but I'm starting to like it a lot. Its combination of dark humor and morbidity is right up my alley, and the cast is really good (with the exception of Rachel Griffiths - can't stand her, and in fact she comes close to ruining the show for me), especially Michael C. Hall. I was in love the moment he appeared on screen, so of course a few minutes later it was revealed that his character is gay. Yes, so it goes.

There's something so odd and chilling about him, like he has the "leading man" looks but not quite, which is what makes him uncanny. Love him a lot. I've been meaning to watch him on Dexter, too, but I'm occupied with Six Feet Under and Ally McBeal at the moment. So much kickass TV to discover, you guys!

(I've also been meaning to get into True Blood. Kinky sex + vampires + violence + Southern Gothic vibe = party, as far as I'm concerned.)

Well, I should get back to work. At least my next few papers will be full of fluff and popular culture (but from an academic perspective, y'all!) Party time for me, for real.

Ranking the ANTM winners

Time to do something useless!

So, I love America's Next Top Model, basically, which I know is ridiculous. And trust me: it is a ridiculous show, if only for the utter absurdity that is Tyra Banks' ego. But I love it, anyway - the show has a knack for providing great entertainment with its mix of beauty, utter train wrecks, ego, idiocy, oversimplification of various social problems, and fascinating, breathtaking photos and photo shoots. I don't know how the producers of this show keep it as fun and entertaining as they do, but it's really pretty damn impressive, as is the level of total absurdity they can produce.

And so, in that spirit, I am going to personally rank the winners of the show, in order of least to most favorite. (The fact that the show can go through two "cycles" a year is also impressive.) It's also an excuse to look at pretty pictures.

13. Naima Mora - Cycle 4

Oh, Naima. While I admit that she gave good face in her pictures while on the show, her unbelievably dull personality, awkwardness, and odd looks while in motion pretty much served to convince me that runner-up Kahlen was robbed. Also, she just depresses me, especially when she inexplicably had sideburns, post-show.

12. Nicole Linkletter - Cycle 5

Pretty as Nicole was, and as photogenic as she could be, she never really looked like a model to me, either in print or on the moving camera (certainly not nearly as much as runner-up Nik), nor did she have a particularly good runway walk. Still, I have to admit that she could be pretty hot sometimes. (Also, so not my favorite: notorious lesbian Kim was, who was, in my opinion, possibly the most beautiful girl ever on the show.) Her look is very Covergirl, though, which I'm sure played a large part in her win.

11. Saleisha Stowers - Cycle 9

I must admit that Saleisha would probably rank higher if her win didn't absolutely reek of a setup. Not only has an African-American girl won every third cycle so far, she went to Tyra's camp years before and, although she'd had previous modeling experience that probably should have disqualified her, she was cast (and won!) anyway. Also, while I admit that she does make sense as a winner, she won over two girls (Jenah and Heather) who were far better models, but were, admittedly, not particularly Covergirl-employable.

10. McKey Sullivan - Cycle 11

Although McKey seemed to have an incredibly dull personality (again, one can never really know this, it being TV and all), and was pretty awkward-looking in motion, she really did have a killer face in front of the camera. She wasn't exactly terribly memorable, but she's probably more likely than some of the others to be able to make a real career out of this thing.

9. Teyona Anderson - Cycle 12

Like McKey, Teyona isn't exactly "classically pretty" in motion, but in pictures? Takes my breath away. She most certainly wasn't my favorite of Cycle 12, but she and her alien-like face earned her win.

8. Yoanna House - Cycle 2

Yoanna was never my favorite - I was madly in love with Miss Shandi - but she possibly had the most striking, stunning face out of all the winners, ever. Goddamned breathtaking.

7. Whitney Thompson - Cycle 10

While I don't doubt that Whitney won more for the plus-size tokenism than for her actual modeling ability, she's a good winner nonetheless. She was fun and funny, seemed to actually have a sharp wit, and is definitely one of the sexiest, if not *the* sexiest, of the winners, and her appeal is very Covergirl-appropriate. In terms of commercial success, she has a good shot, since she can win the straight men over with her sexiness and the women with her admittedly killer, but still not scrawny body.

6. Nicole "Bloody Eyeball" Fox - Cycle 13

Ah, good old Bloody Eyeball, winner of the "short" cycle. I love this girl for her stoned-seeming weirdness, the fact that she is a self-proclaimed dork, and that she's goddamn flawless in pictures. I love weird, intense, stoic ginger girls, I gotta say, and I love her bloody eyeball.

5. Danielle Evans - Cycle 6

Danielle is probably the overall audience's all-time favorite, and it's easy to see why: she's gorgeous, she's funny and endlessly quotable ("Shut cho mouth and say it ain't so!"), and she's a people's champ, with her love of her arthritis-suffering mother and her dedication to the competition, dealing with a sprained toe, having painful surgery to get the gap between her teeth closed, and checking out of the hospital early from dehydration and food poisoning to go to her photo shoot. And even though I was pulling for runner-up Joanie, I had to admit I got teary-eyed when she burst out with "I'm a Covergirl, mommy! I'm a Covergirl!"

4. Adrianne Curry - Cycle 1

Adrianne was the perfect winner of ANTM's inaugural season - a little vulgar, a little rough around the edges, and unaware of her own incredible charisma and hotness. Plus, her status as an outspoken anti-ANTM alum who was then blacklisted by Tyra because of it? Makes me love her even more.

3. Eva Pigford - Cycle 3

As hot as Eva and her pictures were, there's really one word and one word only for why she ranks so high: charisma. There's a certain "it" that you have or you don't, and Eva had it. In spades. She rocked her horrible curly blonde haircut and whenever the camera was on her, I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Even though she was the shortest girl of the cycle, she filled up a whole room.

2. Jaslene Gonzalez - Cycle 8

God, I love this girl, with her almost indecipherable accent and stunning closeups. I love that she looks like an amalgamation of Janice Dickinson and a drag queen. I love that I've run into her twice while in New York and I love how unexpectedly, unconventionally gorgeous she is. Latina tokenism? Maybe, but the girl is amazing.

1. CariDee English - Cycle 7

Oh, CariDee. How do I love thee?

She's the rare girl on this show who looked just as gorgeous both in motion and on print. Plus she's downright adorable, albeit totally vulgar (which makes me love her even more), and is pretty much the very definition of "bubbly." (Plus she bears a very strong resemblance to a family friend.) Cycle 7 may have been one of the weaker cycles in terms of watchability, but her immense beauty and hilarity made it all worth it.

Some awesomeness, academic and otherwise.

So, I should be writing (several!) papers right now, but I want to write about this and it might actually HELP stimulate ideas for this particular paper (we quite literally have no topic. I mean, seriously.) Trying to get the brain going. It's a bit more sluggish than usual these days. I blame the internet. And my unhealthy eating and sleeping habits. Oh, and my body, of course. It's always easy to pin the blame on one's body, especially one that is structurally unsound as mine. I think God was a little drunk that day.

(Defense mechanism back in full swing, what up.)

What I actually want to talk about right now is Chekhov. I have a serious thing for Russian writers, Tolstoy in particular (Anna Karenina is one of my favorite books, ever, for both the gorgeous language and the total trashiness that abounds through parts of it.) I've read two different translations of the book, the second of which is by my favorite! translating! team! ever!, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (whose names I know by heart because I am such a fucking nerd). My mom got me a copy of War and Peace for Christmas a couple of years ago, to which I geeked out and said, "Oh! Those are my favorite translators!" Those two also happen to be a married couple. Can you imagine the fucking awesome life they have? Cutest ever, for real.

Anyway, we're reading Chekhov in my 19th century story class - for which I am grateful, since I haven't liked much of anything we read in that class since Poe. (Oh, Poe!) Because Chekhov is great - not to mention that the book is translated by my favorite translating team. I love him for things like this, in "The Lady With the Little Dog," which I had read previously in a "love stories" anthology that I got in preparation for my own short story work, and which is way, way more depressing to read than it sounds:

"Anna Sergeevna came in. She sat in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her, his heart was wrung, and he realized clearly that there was no person closer, dearer, or more important for him in the whole world; this small woman, lost in the provincial crowd, not remarkable for anything, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, now filled his whole life, was his grief, his joy, the only happiness he now wished for himself; and to the sounds of the bad orchestra, with its trashy local violins, he thought of how beautiful she was. He thought and dreamed."

I mean, that shit is beautiful. There's something about the recognition of the utter ordinariness (which the story keeps getting you back to over and over again), seeing the flaws all around him and yet adoring her anyway, that I find so much more moving than a strictly idealistic or epic love. I don't know, all the people with whom I've ever fallen in love have had such obvious flaws of which I was always aware, and I think recognizing what is exceptional about a person as well as what is perfectly ordinary is just a really powerful thing. Whenever literature captures that I think that can be really beautiful. I also love that this story is never really resolved, and that things don't end really well or badly for these two - their lives just go on, and you know that they will with or without one another, but more rich for the time they've had together.

Similarly, I love this Shakespeare sonnet:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Beautiful. Kind of funny, also, and not exactly glowingly complimentary, but it's rather wonderful nevertheless. It was also used to delightfully sappy purpose in My So-Called Life:

Which is an awesome show, and also a perfect segue for me to talk about Claire Danes!

(Queen Eadie for the win!) I wish she'd go back to the red hair, though. Alas.

Truly, though, I love this girl. She manages to be Hollywood-level beautiful while maintaining a completely believable level of gawky awkwardness. I watched Shopgirl with Shannon last night (for a Film Studies paper, which ugh, I should be writing right now), and I was reminded once again of how wonderful she is. She has one of those faces that you can't take your eyes off of when she's on screen, and there's something about the way she acts that feels so effortless to me - like she perfectly inhabits the body of the character she's playing, and she says so much more with the way she moves and laughs and moves her eyes than she does with actual speech.

(I was utterly enamored with Scarlett Johansson for that same ability a few years ago, but she's decided to rest on simply being hot, which makes me sad. In any case, she was so much hotter back when she wasn't trying so hard!)

But now she's all Hollywood and bombshell and sanitized and perfect. Boo! Another before-and-after (and this is getting waaay tangential, but whatever), that also runs parallel to taking actual good roles and demonstrating lots of acting ability: Christina Ricci, before she got all skinny and "perfect":


(LOVE that movie, by the way.)

And now, for a contrast:


Not that she isn't still beautiful, but...come back to the light, Christina! Be sexy and curvy and weird again!

Well, that's way more than enough for now. Sayonara, for now.

More awesome.

I thought I'd do another post about things that are awesome, because I'm in an appreciative mood. Okay? Okay.

So I had a seizure on Monday (not the awesome part, obviously) which was the third in two and a half weeks. I went to the hospital afterwards, which I don't usually do, but both the frequency of them up until that point and the fact that I couldn't focus my eyes for, like, two hours combined seemed like it was a good idea. (My film studies professor came with me and stayed for an hour and a half until she had to pick up her kids, which WAS awesome. She kind of made me tear up a little bit. Really really moving and wonderful. Seriously.)

Another truly awesome thing was the fact that my ER nurse for real looked exactly like Project Runway's Leanne Marshall:


Seriously, they look like twins in that picture. I am pretty sure that the nurse was wearing that same exact shade of lipstick. She was totally indie-nerd-glam-hot. She seemed really witty and cool, too. Swoon. Call me, ER nurse. I clean up nice!

You know what else is awesome? Ally McBeal. Various seasons have just been released on Netflix, and my mom and I have been watching the fourth season. It is really and truly hilarious, and a bit surreal at times. Sure, Ally can seriously grate on my nerves, especially since she has the qualities that I deplore in myself (neurotic, self-absorbed, emotionally fragile, indecisive, overthinks everything, slightly unbalanced etc., etc.,) but these are minor complaints, since the show is generally fantastic. Also, the current season includes Robert Downey, Jr.:


Who is totally wonderful. Charming, smart, sexy, and troubled. And looks killer hot in glasses. When gorgeous men don glasses, I lose it. See Hugh Laurie:


I think Hugh Laurie is positively delectable all the time, but whenever he puts on glasses on House, I melt into my chair. I am such a fangirl and I don't give a crap. I love the guy.
Speaking of sexiness being enhanced by nerdy accessories:


I don't really like Olivia Wilde, and I hate her character on House, but I won't deny that she's scorching hot, especially when she puts on suspenders. Chicks in suspenders just do it for me, really:







Hot.

I also dig dudes and dudettes in vests. Not sweater vests (never sweater vests, unless it is Lisa Meyers or Robert Sean Leonard as James Wilson) but buttoned-up, tailored vests.





I don't even find either of them all that hot. Just in vests. A tailored vest is even hotter on a woman, in my opinion, but those are harder to find pictures of.

Hey, you know what else are hot? Saddle shoes!

I'd love a pair of those for Christmas, along with the numbat from yesterday.

Sherilyn Fenn wore a lot of them on Twin Peaks. David Lynch called her "five feet of heaven in a ponytail":




To that I can only say: signs point to yes.

More awesomeness to come, obviously.

Home from the hospital!

I've actually been home a few days, but it's taken me some time to sort out my feelings about the whole thing and be able to take a bit of a step back from it all.

I only ended up being in the room itself for about 24 hours, something for which I am very grateful - it's highly unusual to be there for such a short amount of time. They were able to induce a seizure and other "events," as they called them (an aura, partial body convulsions, etc.), and no abnormalities were found on the brain monitor, which lead them to a diagnosis of non-epileptic seizures of psychosomatic origin.

Now. Those are the facts of the thing.

I don't think this diagnosis would have been so frustrating if I hadn't already spent four years having these things constantly being written off as nothing, as originated from stress, as something that I could control, as something that wasn't at all dangerous and so on and so forth - getting this opinion from "regular" people and doctors alike. The other frustration is that, while this isn't as dangerous as, say, epilepsy (no oxygen-starved brain, for instance), aside from maybe more therapy and guided meditation, there's really not a damn thing I can do about it.

Which is exactly what I had feared. That, in the end, I'd be left with really not a whole lot that I could do.

But hey, at least they didn't have to torture me for more than those 24 hours, right? Breaking veins in an attempt to give me an IV and depriving me of sleep? (The second was intentional; the first, obviously, was not. That was just my veins being totally made of fail. For real, they suck.) They tested me for Celiac's disease (gluten intolerance) for a possible explanation of my stomach problems, which I thankfully do not have. Sure it would have been nice to have an explanation, but not to the extent that I could never have bread or pasta or beer ever again. (Not that I drink much beer, but hey, the option is nice.)

A positive thing is the Mad Men-viewing my mom and I did and have continued to do in the days that followed. It really does live up to all the hype. It's one of the best and most complex TV shows I've ever seen, with wonderful and delightfully subtle characterization, compelling plot lines (though that's totally not why I watch), and sumptuous costumes. I also discovered while watching it that I have already been in academia way too long, as any episode I watched, I felt an essay forming its way into my head as I thought about it. I think in essay format now, whether it's about a book I just read or an episode of Mad Men (or far less highbrow television, for that matter.) This is leading me to believe that pop-culture criticism may actually be what I want to do, and where I really fit in. Listening to an album, looking at a fashion collection, watching a TV show, I can hear the essay formulating in my head. It's crazy...it just seems to be what my brain wants to do and where it wants to be.

So that's a good thing to discover, I think. Speaking of which, I'm planning some Project Runway looks analysis (and gushing), season-by-season. It's been in the works for awhile and I'm excited. Not as excited as I am for the return of the show, but excited. It'll be more gushy than anything else, but it'll be pretty bitchin. No doubt about that.

I have conflicting feelings about going back to school, too, but for right now it's something I'd really rather not think about. I'll just try to enjoy the rest of the time I have left at home, and take it all in.

Last day of freedom!

Well, not quite. But sort of.

Yes, I ship out to the hospital tomorrow for God knows how long. I'm mostly packed up (all clothes that I can button or pull up, nothing that has to go over my head, since I'll have electrodes on my head...lucky I have so many dresses, I guess), and books and DVDs. A coworker of my mom's is lending us at least the second season of Mad Men and maybe the first (she lent it to someone else), Evie is lending me her second and third seasons of Queer as Folk. She's planning to visit me one of the days I'm there, too.

I'm really hoping that the weather will either be cold and gross, or so unbearably hot that I would be miserable being out in it anyway. Because it's actually been pretty nice out lately - for pretty much the first time all summer - and having to be inside through it will make me even more cranky than I normally would be. I have such a complex about summer time - we get so little nice, warm, sunny weather where I am that I feel like I have to take advantage of EVERY MINUTE when it's nice out (even if I don't) and I don't want that to be pissing me off while I'm in the hospital. I won't be able to go outside or even leave my room.

And of course I'll be VIDEOTAPED the whole time! (Except for in the bathroom, obviously.) That won't feel awkward AT ALL. And I also might have a roommate. (Please, God, don't let me have a roommate. Please oh please.)

I'll have wireless there, too, so I'll probably be blogging about all the crazy shit that will ensue. (In addition to taking some pictures of my electroded head - seriously, it's something to behold. I look like some kind of cracked-out, electricity-savvy Medusa.)

Exciting, exciting. It'll give me something to blog about, anyway. Not a whole let else going on in my life...which is not such a terrible thing, really. Not at all.

Sayonara, friends!

Veronica Mars

This is something I've wanted to write about in here for quite a long time - one of my absolute favorite TV shows, Veronica Mars. Is this a review? An endorsement? A ridiculous ramble? Yes. Yes to all.

No doubt my rank of "favorite TV shows" has some serious competition. Sex and the City gives me the most pleasure. Queer as Folk gets me the most engrossed and draws the most tears. Twin Peaks is the most fascinating and stunningly constructed, Arrested Development makes me laugh the most, and House...well, my feelings about that show need a whole series of posts of their own. But this show unquestionably has my heart.

The show is about teen PI Veronica Mars, played to perfection by Kristen Bell. While the ensemble cast is, at least up until the third season, uniformly great, the entire show hinges on Veronica in a way I've only ever seen on House. All the humor, heartbreak, drama, thrills, heart, and soul - and there is a great deal of all - is tied up in Veronica. Veronica herself has been through hells that few teenagers, let alone the kinds TV shows are made about, can imagine. In the year before the show starts, her best friend was brutally murdered; her dad, the sheriff, accused her wealthy and powerful father of the murder, making Veronica into the social pariah to end all social pariahs and getting her father eventually kicked out of office. Her mother abandons the family, and after attending a party, Pretty in Pink style, "to show them they haven't broken me," Veronica is raped, to which the local law enforcement does nothing.

Here is Bell as Veronica.



The really fascinating thing about Veronica, though, is how little that previous paragraph actually sums up about her character. Veronica is bitter, whip-smart, savvy, sexy, and a perky, petite, blonde, straight-A student who dresses like a West Coast preppy girl. She has a cutting quip for every single situation and she will ruin your life if you cross her. She is intensely, fiercely loyal, hilarious, and utterly adorable.

Another interesting thing is how, over the course of the first two seasons, we see just how many allies Veronica does have, and how she brings other loners into her life. Her compassionate, protective dad with whom she is allied against the world; Wallace, the laid-back, basketball genius new kid, who quickly becomes her best friend; a hot-and-cold ex-boyfriend, Duncan, who would obviously still do anything in the world for her; Mac, a funky, deadpan computer geek and fellow outsider; Meg, one of the few popular rich girls who still treats Veronica like a human being; Leo, a sweet rookie cop who adores her; Eli "Weevil" Navarro, the motorcycle gang leader and juvenile delinquent who loves his grandma and has some of the funniest, wittiest lines of the show; and, increasingly, Logan Echolls, the troubled, destructive rich kid who lives and breathes for Veronica.

I have a great deal more to say about Logan (and the other characters, but Logan especially), but that'll have to wait. This is Veronica's moment.

Bell with Enrico Colantoni, who plays her father, Keith Mars:



(They're not always this sickeningly adorable together, but they often are.)

New obsessions

So I was going to do "new obsessions and new health crap" in here, but the "health crap" is a story for another day. Suffice it to say that a close friend may have temporal lobe epilepsy, and if she has it, the likelihood of my ALSO having it is exceedingly high, since we basically have the same exact symptoms (except that I actually have the full-out seizures.) It's weird that I am hoping and hoping to have epilepsy, and even weirder that I am hoping that my friend has it, but to have a diagnosis and an explanation...to have the validation in the face of those fucking doctors who called them "pseudo-seizures" when I would lose most of my vision, my ability to speak, my ability to hold a pen, my ability to swallow, sometimes my ability to fucking breathe, while in full-body convulsions on the floor. (What exactly about that is "pseudo"?) And for those people in high school who said I was faking them, to the nurse who wanted me to see psychiatrists and who would try to peel me off the floor while I was convulsing and wouldn't let me lie down, because she apparently thought that her powers of convincing me would somehow stave off my neurological symptoms...

Okay, so that was a rant. *Cough* Didn't mean for that to go on for so long. Whatever. I have a lot more about those seizures on my mind, a lot of it kind of...poetic and spiritual stuff. Which I may put in here at some point. I don't know.

Anyway, new obsessions. So, my mom changed the Netflix address to my Smith mail, since she never uses it when I'm not home (argh!). Netflix has started recommending "TV sitcoms" to me (vomit) due to my interest in the Office, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, Entourage, Scrubs, etc, etc. Most of the suggested sitcoms I roll my eyes at, but I saw How I Met Your Mother in there, a show that has been vigorously recommended to me, and I said, "eh, why the hell not." And I ordered it. After all, how can you not love this man:



How I ask you? HOW? (This picture was actually my desktop for a couple of months, before it was replaced with the History Boys.) I didn't know that the show also stars Jason Segel, whom I also love.

Anyway, the point is, it's funny. Really, really, really funny. Like, where I have to pause the DVD so that I can sit there and laugh. And let me tell you, I was in serious need of that this week.

In addition to these illustrious television sitcoms, I've also been watching classics (see my rash of Hitchcock viewing a few posts down.) I watched A Streetcar Named Desire the other night, which I really enjoyed (I do love the hell out of Vivien Leigh), and tonight I watched East of Eden, which made me weep like a baby. I was a little annoyed by the happy ending - it seemed a bit of a letdown to me after all the dramatic conflict, just to have it be resolved in the last three minutes, but that's neither here nor there. What is both here AND there is that James Dean? So fucking great in it. And so fucking heartbreaking. I know what people made all the fuss about now. Not just because he's so damn beautiful, although there is no doubt that he was:


But he broke my heart in that movie. And I know, I know, tortured bad boys are kind of my kryptonite (in all areas of my life, unfortunately...), but I dare you to watch that and not see it pull at your heart. Maybe it has something to do with my terrible relationship with my own father, or maybe it's because I've just seen too many unhappy boys turn into broken young men, but it affected me more than any film has in a long time.

A couple of amusing tidbits...

I should be writing my paper (isn't that always the case), but a couple of funny things occurred to me to put here.

First of all, one of my shared iTunes libraries is labeled as "Your mom's library." This amused me a lot more than it should, owing to the fact that I frequently make really terrible (and completely nonsensical) "your mom" jokes. (I'm also pretty sure I have a fever right now, and when I have a low-grade fever I usually get kind of giddy, so that might explain it. But I digress...)

The other funny thing that I forgot to post before was that, while searching for Google images of Edward Gorey, when typing in the letters "Ed," the very first thing Google suggested was Edward Cullen. *Sigh* Oh, Google...

Also, one of these sites on which I watch Veronica Mars and House (some kind of foreign YouTube, I think), has twice suggested gay personal ads in Northampton for me. Gay MALE personal ads. I don't get it. It's not like I'm watching Queer as Folk or something (a show to which I may be even more addicted than those just mentioned, which is saying a hell of a lot.) Apparently this website sees beyond my bisexual female exterior into the gay man secretly hiding beneath.

Anyway, I really need to get back to work. Let's just hope that my feeling like crap is merely stress/sleep deprivation and I haven't actually caught anything. I'm going to New York on Sunday and I categorically cannot be sick. No, indeed. I cannot. I will use my willpowers to override my body if I have to, goddammit.