Okay, if the next sentence makes you want to mock me mercilessly, you should walk away: I adore Buffy. Adore it more than every other show I’ve ever watched combined. I’m not a fangirl, dressing up like characters and writing fanfic, but I love it exactly to that line. There are weeks when I look at what’s on television and I want to ask Joss Whedon why he’s forsaken me, why he took Buffy away. If you like the show, you’ll understand and I don’t need to explain about all the amazing ass-kicking coolness and fighting and wit and laughter and brilliantly clever plotlines and GENERAL BADASSITYNESS and if you don’t like the show (or worse, have never seen it and just assume you don’t like it because you’re a snob), then this will make no sense to you. But:
I just watched Serenity.
And tonight, I can go to sleep in a world of which Joss Whedon is once again a part. And on Monday, I’ll get three of the four discs of Firefly in the mail from holy Netflix. And my banishment into the darkness is over.
So if you know what I mean, you know what I MEAN. If you don’t, well, then I guess you’re exactly where I am when people start foaming at the mouth for Star Trek. I don’t need Star Trek, much as I love the geeks around me who do. But I do need Whedon. And DAMNIT MAN, I’ve got him back.
Open bracket, back slash, GEEK, close bracket, and goodnight.
Is anyone out there a New Yorker with a window box? We don’t have any garden access but I’ve been suddenly overcome with the desire to grow flowers outside our living room windows. It’s pretty sunny there, all day long, with a northwestern exposure, and I’ve been reading some tips about what sort of flowers might grow best.
I know I’ve said that I’m the Darth Vader of the plant world and I am, but for one, outdoor plants I can at least rely on getting watered by the planet as well as watered by me, and secondly, everyone should get a second chance to change what’s flawed about themselves, and I want the plant world to give me a second chance. You could say I’m standing under the plant world’s window, holding up a boom box and playing something appropriate, like Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn or something. Whatever, I want a window box.
Advice? Links? Snide remarks?
[ Totally unrelated but also related to New Yorkers so not completely unrelated: Stuart and I are selling our lovely bed to make room for a bigger bed ... if you want to buy a bed, we're the people to sell you our bed. How's that for a sales pitch? ]
I’ve been watching a fair amount of the Olympics (by fair amount, I mean, almost every night. Look, it’s WINTER, and we’re being frugal with the pennies, okay?) and I am getting increasingly irritated with something. Well, something other than Sasha Cohen to whom I simply cannot warm, talented skater though she may be, because she constantly looks constipated and doesn’t seem like she ever has any fun ever, not like that spunky Emily Hughes, how cute is she? And no, I’m not talking about the incredibly boring sport that is speed skating – look, they just look like synchronized swimmers wrapped in colorful condoms, okay? And GOD NO, it’s not even Bode Miller, who should just change his name to “Biggest Loud Mouth Self Promoting Disappointment In The History of Loud and Promoting”.
No, here’s what’s irritating me. Where are the medal ceremonies? Where are the national anthems? Where’s the ONE athlete from that ONE country who stands on the podium as the first guy/girl from that country to EVER WIN A MEDAL, and where’s that other girl who broke both her legs and cranium and still recovered enough to stand there for her bronze and no it’s not gold but DAMNIT man, she broke her legs? Where is she? Where is all my heart-clutching, tear-inducing, oh-he-looks-cute-in-that-skisuit MEDAL CEREMONY CRYING FODDER?
I watch every night until I fall asleep at 11PM from boredom and overexposure to Chevrolet ads (YOU ARE NOT AMERICA’S BRAND) and the Peacock Network, the Network that has banished Law & Order from my life for two weeks but okay, Katie Couric is really cute in Italy, NBC, why have you foresaken me? How am I supposed to enjoy the Olympics if I cannot CRY AT THE MEDALLING?
Can anyone explain this? When are the medal ceremonies shown? Why does Bob Costas have such earnest and yet far-apart eyes? Can I kill Dick Button now please? WHAT was that Bulgarian ice-dancing team wearing? How much do you LOVE Slutskaya and her rebellious pantsuit? But most importantly, WHERE ARE THE MEDALS? Seriously, my tear-ducts are going to dry up and leave town if I don’t get some good gratuitiously patriotic sob-fest going on here, and STAT.
Last night, we made a dinner for Beth (of aforementioned awesomeness) and Josh, and it was astounding. We made pizza from scratch, Josh twirling out the dough and laying it expertly on the pizza stone that spends 99.99% of its life on the floor of our oven. We brushed pesto on the pizza and then tossed the sliced roma tomatoes and fresh mozzarella on top, putting it in the oven for about twelve minutes until Josh declared it “done, perfect, baby”. You can tell, Josh was the maestro of the pizza.
But I was the maestro of the salad. It was baby spinach leaves tossed with gala apple chunks and crispy bacon, with an apple vinegar dressing that twanged with ground ginger. Stuart brought home the avocados that were meant to be the final touch in the salad but neither of us were raised eating the things so they were hopelessly overripe. So much for me asking Biscuit exactly how to BUY an avocado.
We talked about child-rearing and how all four of us were terrified of teenagerdom and we decided we’d have to move to the same city so we could dump the rascals in a basement and put our heads together for wine when the teenagers threatened to take the lead in the hostage negotiation that is adolesence. We talked about making a foursome trip up to Montreal because I don’t know, Canada calls, man.
Tomorrow night, Stuart’s taking me on a Shana-encouraged trip to Artisanal for their Sunday night fondue which, if you’d known it was farmhouse cheddar with pickled apples, you already knew I’d find a way to get there. The price is surprisingly right and we’ve been angelically good about taking packed lunches to work for weeks now, so I have less guilt than I should about hitting such a decadent place for dinner. $25 for fondue for two? Oui, please.
And on Monday, a gaggle of us are going to MoMI in the middle of the day (O, useless presidential holidays, how I love thee) to indulge in the Wallace and Gromit short-film matinee! We’re members of the museum in a fit of Astoria-loyalty, and we have yet to really take advantage of their film festivals. Also, they have a partnership with UA theatres and sell batches of tickets for $6.75. Hello, saving pennies all over the damn place.
Throughout all this, I’m sick. I’m sicker than I seem, because there’s just nothing I can do but dope myself with Advil and Robitussin, but I have some sort of monster cold/throat infection/cough/stiffness. It ruined our Valentine’s Day fondue-at-home plans (which you can see we’re making up for) and it kept me home from work on Wednesday. Beth is convinced it’s bacterial, not viral, since my lymph-nodes-the-size-of-golf-balls effect just won’t go away. It gets bad at night and in the morning, when the Advil is wearing off. Don’t you think that in 2006, there should be an over-the-counter at-home test you can do just to see if you have a bacterial or a viral infection? I’m stubbornly averse to going to the doctor just to determine if its the common cold or an infection. Averse, I say! So here I sit, sniffling and coughing up my yummy post-nasal drip. (UPDATE: I just downed some benadryl so that my sinuses will dry up and I can sleep. What’s up, prescription drugs? How’s it going?)
On a final note that interests no one but other women who know who they are, I have some news. Without naming any names, you know those two precious gems we spend our adult lifetimes carrying around? Well, some of us are lucky enough to have a small amount of these gems and this really doesn’t concern them because much as they complain, they can wear the lacy numbers from a certain gem-encasing pink store with the initials VS. Well, ladies of a more gem-laden persuation, I’m here to tell you, screw VS. I’ve been fighting those pink-clad bastards for years now, finding their gem-carriers to work great for exactly the first week. And then I spend a year feeling sorry for myself and my gems as I push them around in bathrooms trying to get the $60 contraption I just bought to do its job.
I say, free yourselves from the Gisele-hypnosis of VS. My mother, sick of hearing me complain, offered to finally take me to “a REAL store, not VS” and we hit the mall (O, the mall) to shop at department stores. And man, did I find what I needed. Did I find some serious, minimizing, shoulder-weight distributing, still-pretty-sexy-and-lacy gem carriers that’ll carry these gems the way these gems deserve to be carried. One of them is this one and I am here to say, HELLO and thank you, Mom. I think maybe also Stuart thanks you too, mainly because I’ve finally stopped complaining about the situation. Also because it looks, well, hot.
People of delicate consistencies who think women’s bodies are just born this perfect, you can look back now. On a final note, my hair! It grows long! I am just as surprised as anyone to notice that it’s finally really growing. I took this as a comparison point and also, yes, I’m vain. You’re not?
On August 16th of this year, Beth and I will have known each other for eight years. August 16th was the day after the Austin Dave Matthews concert, and Beth and I had found our we were roommates at Sarah Lawrence, with friends in common, both living in Texas. So we made plans to meet for lunch in Austin. I was so nervous, I made Alex come along. I needn’t have. Beth and I started talking when the fajitas arrived and didn’t stop talking until we said goodbye at our cars, both of us suddenly much more excited for the start of college. Really, we haven’t stopped talking since.
Beth indulging in the world’s biggest tub of Cheez Balls, during our Senior Year. I swear, she ate that entire thing over the course of six months.
We got to college and all the things that happen to you in college, well, they happened to us. We changed our ideas about careers, we fell in love with inappropriate people (remember Dreadlock Guy?), we had inappropriate people fall in love with us, we excelled in class (Beth) and did not so well in class (me), we got drunk, we had hangovers, and we grew up. But for me, hands down, the best thing to come from the entire Sarah Lawrence experience was Beth. From the very first minute of my freshman year to the day I graduated, Beth was my best – and sometimes only – friend. We lived together for the first year, and the second year, and when Beth spent the first semester of my third year on break from college, it was one of the toughest three months I’ve ever endured at college. I made all kinds of stupid choices without my anchor to keep me grounded. Little did I know that in that first year, when it seemed like we had no other friends, we had the only friendship we needed. I was starting to learn why my father told me, “If you’ve got a few true friends in life, you’re lucky,” but I do, and Beth’s one of them.
I’ve always known why I’m friends with Beth. It’s because I’m not stupid. When you meet someone like her – someone as kind, generous, forgiving, intelligent as she is – you don’t let go for a minute. I know that she’s all those things because I’m not the only one who spotted it and promptly placed themselves next to her for eternity. So did her boyfriend, Josh. They met in that semester that she was away from school, and they’ve been together ever since. I’d never heard her talk about anyone the way she talked about Josh, and when I met him, I understood. Here was a guy who saw what I saw in Beth – that she’s sort of like an angel dropped in your life if you’re lucky enough. They’ve been together ever since, and there were times when they were my only inspiration when it came to love. “If you two don’t make it,” I used to joke, “I’m joining a convent.” They did. And when I found Stuart, the very first person I wanted him to meet was Beth. When he met her, that first week, and we had a moment alone at the bar, I looked at her and we both almost started crying. It felt just that good, and she felt like exactly the right person to share it with without having to say a word.
Beth, late February 2002, the day Josh arrived in New York City to live with her.
But before Josh (and then Stuart) came around, back in the sometimes-dark and always confusing college days, there were times when Beth and I were each other’s only knights in any kind of armor. I remember, during a particularly rough moment when she was taking a semesters’ leave in Dallas and sorting her life out, that she sat in the driveway of her building, on the phone with me, and didn’t say a word for all the silent crying she had to do, for at least ten minutes. I remember a time, right after September 11th, that for totally unrelated reasons I was very alone, and very scared, and I could only make my legs move insofar as it took me to walk them to where she was waiting to hold me from falling down. I am proud to say that Beth and I never faltered for each other, even as we faltered for ourselves.
I say all this because for one, friendship like this isn’t taken lightly, and I know that in twenty years, we’ll be watching our kids run around the lawn and talking about mortgages and getting older, just the way we sat on the North Lawn watching our classmates running around and talked about conference papers and boys. I also say all this by way of introducing you to the marvel that is Beth, because I want you to help her in her latest conquest for excellence. She’s joined a triathalon team to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She’s spending all spring training for a 32.1 mile triathalon and she’s raising at least three thousand dollars on her own. And she’s doing it because she knows she can, so I’m here doing this because I know she can too, and I’ll be there next to the river and next to the road, cheering her on with every loud Greek gene in my body. Stuart and I have donated as much as we can to help her but I’d be an idiot if I didn’t turn to you guys, my awesome internet, to point you here, to help her out too. I’ve told you all about Beth, and her kindness and gentleness and resilience and awesomely springy curly hair. There’s no way you don’t love her just a little bit, right? She really is that wonderful, and if I sound like I’m gushing, I am. But if you’ve got a few dollars, please throw them her way. For her, and for best friends everywhere, the kind of people that will really go thirty two point one miles out of their way to raise such an enormous sum of money for people who so desperately need it. That’s the kind of friend that Beth is, and now I’m sharing her with you.
Beth in the East Village, Winter 2003.
Help out. And when I’m cheering her on, you will be too.
As a Valentine’s Day Gift from my sweetie Biscuit, comments are now working! Lordy I’ve missed y’all! Tell me what you’re doing! What you’re wearing! How you’ve been! Have you missed me? What are you doing tonight? Are you bitter and jaded, gooey and sappy, or somewhere in between like me? Can I borrow your dog to play with? Any other questions? Let’s chat!
Also:
And yeah, I totally wrote that shit BACKWARDS for you. I love you BACKWARDS, internet. Happy Valentine’s Day.
I just spent the last few minutes convincing Stuart that it would be a positively BRILLIANT idea to take our pizza pan that mom and dad just gave us (mom, dad, look away from this post now before I break your heart) and go sledding with it in Astoria Park, on Charybdis Slope. Incidentally, isn’t that the least auspicious name for any activity that involves hurtling down (on a piece of slick metal) a very short slope that terminates in a small railing and the East River? Can you even THINK of a worse idea? Loves it.
My problem now becomes that since I am not a very small child, I do not have the proper accoutrements. Where is my snow suit with the footie grips inside plastic snow boots? Where are my nylon mittens? Where’s my damn SNOW SUIT?
I grieve the inevitable approach of adulthood that has decreed that I no longer need to possess a one-piece snow suit. Off to Charybdis we go, woefully wrong-dressed.
Okay, are you ready to have your MIND BLOWN?
HERE. YEAH. And if you think the beginning is awesome, just wait for the part where he FLIES OVER HIMSELF. Or the part where he GRABS A FISH AND TAKES A BITE OUT OF IT. The word awesome doesn’t even begin to convey the awesome that is this shit. AWESOME.
Last night, Stuart and I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, otherwise known as What Killed Jennifer Aniston Dead, or She Totally Shoulda Seen That Coming, or Wow, Vince Vaughn Is In This? What Were The Soundbytes From THAT Shoot Like? Maybe something like, “hey, I can see you’re hitting … you know and hey, more power to you because she’s… wowee, and anyway, if you’re not… can I just … I’ll just step in and take THIS since you’re not using it any… right?”
You may be able to tell that I’m feeling very ambivalent about this film. Not the film itself – in spite of all feelings of ambivalence I thought it was a hilarious film, just the right amount of sexy guns and quippy lines. I’m a big fan of the clever spy genre and I kept shouting out Splinter Cell commands like “TRIANGLE! HIDE THE BODY!” which amused Stuart because he loves the geeky. Also adding to my enjoyment of the film was how totally smoking hot is Angelina? So smoking hot. I never thought she was that foxy when she was younger but a couple years and some sensible style tips (ditch the goth and Billy Bob, lady) has really added to her allure. Stuart kept mumbling discontentedly about lesbian impulses and “Ross… Carol..” while I kept pointing at the screen and needling him to admit she’s a tall drink of vodka.
No, it’s not the film I had problems with. It’s the fact that every time I genuinely enjoyed something (the plot or Jolie’s shapely gams), I had to look at Stuart dolefully and wave my little imaginary flag that says “Team Aniston” on it. My problem wasn’t with the film. My problem, sadly, is with the whole Brad/Angelina THING (as an addendum, my other problem is with the entertainment media’s obsession with joining hot couples’ names. Bennifer was bad enough, but now we’ve got to do it to EVERYONE?).
Look, if a dear friend of mine came to me and said, “I’m in love with someone that’s not my spouse, what do I do”, I’d be their friend and I’d have an enormous amount of sympathy for their situation. It’s a crap one for everyone involved – well, no. It’s only half-crap for the spouse who’s leaving. It’s not like he or she is leaving to go chain themselves to a rampaging rhino for the rest of their lives, that would be crap. They’re leaving to do something they want to do more than stay where they are, the only part that’s crap for them is hurting the person they are leaving and any kids that might be unwilling victims of that. Still, it’s crap. It’s a sorry, sad situation.
So much as I want to castigate and hate Brad Pitt for leaving his wife for another woman, it’s not the act of leaving per se that disgusts me, because I have to presume they’re like any other human being (like a friend of mine) and try and be fair and understanding. It’s the whole public angle that makes me sort of nauseated. We see those tabloid headlines all the time, scandalous allegations being thrown from paper to paper like the shit-flinging that it is. And we all think to ourselves, “that’s bullshit, it’s just scandal-mongering, no one would be that obvious and cliched.” But Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie were, in fact, that obvious and cliched, and because they are high-profile, famous actors, the sordid obviousness of it all was dragged into our lives. You never want to believe that the most trite situation could really come to pass, that a woman could really be publicly left by her husband after months of tabloids told you she would be.
It’s a gut, emotional reaction I have to the situation and it’s not meant to be taken as any kind of commentary on the state of marriage, Pitt’s or anyone else’s. It’s more that there’s a rising bile when I think about how the ugliest possible event came to pass, and was documented to the fullest extent of the media, and that we all lapped it up. Even posting this here is a form of accepting the media’s take on the situation. What do we know? The most sordid side of the story. We’re not really being asked to see the three people involved as humans but when I do, because I can’t help but doing so, I get disgusted for them, saddened that something so shatteringly momentous became public fodder.
But they must have known it would. Which is why, all my protestations to the contrary, I do place a tiny nugget of blame in Pitt’s court. Surely, when you’re as famous as he is, you start to evaluate your choices differently? Surely, that’s the price of all that glittering stagetime? That every choice you make is going to resonate like an off-the-charts earthquake in the lives around you? Surely, going in to a movie like this one, with a co-star like THAT, and a wife at home … surely, there was a choice to not do the most shattering possible thing?
But there I am, treating them like they’re above the concerns of normal human beings. They all go to the bathroom, get pimples, cry, make mistakes, and deserve a basic dose of understanding for their actions. Don’t they?
This is why it was difficult for me to watch the movie. The whole menage-a-trois, as it unfolded, has been less funny and entertaining for me as it has been confusing, throwing everything I thought about the difference between fame and obscurity, humans and supernovas, into stark relief. Do I even have the right to question them? Hasn’t the media given me that right, and they by their choice of career? Should I, if I’m going to evaluate their actions, try and see them as the person next door and extend them the benefit of generosity? Or should they have known better?
Of course, the real point is, it doesn’t matter. I don’t live next door to Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston. But I’m a person in a marriage, I have friends in serious relationships, and to see on the big screen of celebrity the sort of dissolution and betrayal that we’ve all been watching, very few people can help relating that to their own lives. Which, in the end, is why we’re all still watching, and why we’re all so obsessed. And why, even though I was waving my imaginary little Team Aniston flag, I end up sounding more like Tevye than anything else. On the other hand… on the other hand…
… On the other hand, those were some HOT sex scenes.
