hang tough

i’ve had a productive day, for a sunday. i printed out a copy of the (completed) 2nd draft of my screenplay and handed it off for the next someone to read. i had brunch w/ addie then played nine men’s morris, hex, and go, once she taught me how. and then we saw audrey’s breathtaking one woman show. so much talent, so much courage, so much will is required to put on a show like that, i can barely comprehend it. certainly it was one of the best performances i’ve seen since i’ve been here and one of the ones i feel most should be taken outside, beyond.

it’s hard to shake off. the oscars! yes, and. this is the last week before spring break. i can’t quite think about what happens afterwards. instead. here’s a poem i wrote, thinking into the future as far as i could.

disorder

there will be a table,

lions inscribed in china, paws up to

three glinting glasses

There will be napkins drawn through

rings as though in magic: each

produces a lap! wine dripping from fingers

like shower-water

there has been a revolution

Now the table has no head

and our bourgeois shame sits heavy

on the pillows, eats leadened bread,

looses wine on the china with real grief

We will stagger through

the story, graceless and spurting, propelled

by the need to pass from one end

of the night to the other

and the next.

it’s rough, it hasn’t been edited yet (that’s what rough means). if you have suggestions, please.

top five time!

list of things i’m most afraid of:

5) my closet. if you saw my closet, you’d understand. beyond my particular closet though lies a more generalized, inexplicable fear of Closets, similar to my fear of Bathrooms. no, i don’t believe in psychoanalysis.

4) norman bates [coming out of my closet, dressed as his mother, wielding a knife]. this is horror movie week for my film theory class: lots of watching celluloid women crumple bloody and dead. theory on the subject is actually interesting but it doesn’t make up for 3 nights in a row of me sleeping with the light on.

3) honors. people keep giving me inspirational speeches and all i want to hear is “congratulations, it’s over.”

2) george bush and mel gibson. though i agree with her, i wish maureen dowd would try being wise without being “witty,” cuz the “wit” falls flatter than kim novak in vertigo and threatens to obscure her point.

1) thin envelopes in my mailbox. any envelopes in my mailbox. the mail room. being twenty feet from the mail room. living above the mail room. etc.

in case you like links

reviews for il passiono:

new yorker*

washington post

boston globe

nyt

the onion

more …

and an interesting “guide to the Passion pundits” at tnr. it features our friend kyle’s rabbi of choice, danny lapin.

* if you can get your hands on the print copy of the magazine, the cartoon that accompanies david denby’s review is priceless.

it’s fat tuesday! eat more fries!

in honor of today, which precedes a frightening tomorrow, i am prepared with your permission to ignore politics. here you will find neither rants re: nader nor rhetoric re: bush, regardless of how upset news about them has made me. honestly, what else can you expect from either?

so, right. how about that pop culture? the oscars are coming up! (vote here for the blanches) i saw the dreamers on friday: lyrical, naked, complex, and featuring the kind of blood rarely visible on screen! isn’t “the o.c.” the best show on television, especially now that sex and the city has floated off the air!

i was fortunate enough to be surrounded by friends during the SATC finale who shrieked and groaned and laughed appropriately. i loved miranda and samantha’s storylines. charlotte’s was more predictable, although she did have the episode’s biggest laugh (harry moans about their adoption troubles and c. replies: “we’re jews. we’ve been through worse than this.”) and i was glad at least that carrie came back to new york where she belonged even if mr “his name is JOHN?” big has to shepherd her. she deserves no better.

aw. i’ll miss that show. i felt very connected to Women’s Culture; i could feel the Power of Sisterhood whizzing through me as i sat on my couch, laughing at yet another dirty double entendre. aw. but really. the good-natured raunch, the good-looking men, the witty dialogue, occasional bursts of feminism. i’ll miss it.

dear kyle,

after reading your thoughtful post on jonah’s livejournal, i can’t say i’m convinced of your position. i mean, i’m sure you’re not an evil propoganda-spouting spam robot, but you sure do sound like one! for instance:

Some people, not really representative of Jewish people, but rather self appointed Jewish spokespeople, such as Abraham Foxman from the Anti-Defamation League, seem to have been attempting to denounce this film for months as being anti-Semitic. The news reported that they even stole the script last year! But here’s what some Jews say (Jews who don’t make it their job to tear apart other people): Protesting Gibson’s Passion Lacks Moral Legitimacy by Rabbi Daniel Lapin.

that’s silly! i have no desire to “tear apart other people,” kyle; i’m just offended by your film.

here are my two reasons: one: passion plays are an old european genre of drama intended to evoke strong emotional response in audiences. overwhelmed with love of jesus and empathy for his suffering, medieval christians wiped their eyes and killed some jews. even if mel gibson doesn’t intend his passion play to have this effect, it’s astounding to me that he can ignore the history and dismiss legitimate sensitivity concerns.

two: the other day, i saw a movie about nazis. it was a very good movie and very affecting, which meant i walked out thinking “i hate germans.” i am a rational, well-educated, tolerant, leftish, western female vegetarian. had a german crossed my path, i would have kicked hir in the knee. or at least glowered.

the passion has been described as a similarly intense emotional experience. in the film, jewish mobs cry for jesus’s blood. pontius pilate reluctantly spills it and only agrees to finally crucify jesus when the jews won’t stand for anything less. penultimately, the high priest of the jews calls down a curse on his people, declaring them guilty of deicide. i mean, wow! people aren’t going to leave that movie with a high opinion of “the jews,” are they?

besides all that, kyle, it’s hard enough for those of us who are trying very, very hard to have love in our hearts & to ignore the barrage of publicity leading up to the passion‘s ash wednesday debut without you smearing your chirpy thoughts (“To sum up my impression of The Passion: it’s a work of art”) on our friends pages. i wasn’t even planning on writing this rant until i read your comment. but i hope at least i have shared with you my viewpoint, and maybe you can take it back to mel.

sincerely, &c. &c.

want to cry?

on a sunny saturday, who doesn’t?

here is why you should raise your child to be a judge and not a president or a governor. i’m so impressed with new mexico. who expected the barely-blue state to be next? i was thinking maybe miami and indeed it would be fun watching jeb’s face contort in impotent gubernatorial rage.

i was talking to a queer friend about all of this, a radical in many respects who is fascinated by queer family and marriage at the moment. she is as excited as i am by the coverage. she also reads it to happy-cry. what an unusual february this is. it’s light and dry and history, instead of dozing backstage until black history month surrenders the microphone, is actually being made before our eyes.

i have made two important decisions this february. i am not going to quit honors; i am going to stick it out and scrape by. and i am not going to skip a week of skool in order to join my b.lovd in europe. if you see these as signs of responsibility, fiscal or otherwise, don’t get too excited: i still don’t do my own taxes.

love is love is love

first, hail mary.

when i got back from my film screening on italian neorealist classic roma, citta aperta, about the resistance in occupied rome, i was so full of hate i had to eat crackers. after two crackers, i could breathe regularly and without snorting. after four, i could realize that a whole different generation of people inhabits germany so hating “germans” is not productive or fair. after several more, i could think rationally that even during wwII, not all germans agreed with nazi policy and other people from other countries were just as vile.

it took a lot of chewing, followed by a lot of reading about glorious san francisco, to return to my resting state of not hating anybody in particular. people really have to stop showing me movies about nazis though. instead of becoming desensitized over time, i’ve gotten increasingly angry at each i see.

enough about nazis! san francisco, san francisco, bless you.

anni-day, for real

i know it’s real, because my anni-day co-celebrant woke me up this morning with a long distance phone call. i stumbled directly from my dream, in which i watched irish women throw white flowers off a balcony, into the fuzzy voice of my darling, who is not shaving while in europe because razors are too expensive.

i felt somewhat like a dorothy parker protagonist, one of the young ladies who receives a ten minute phone call from her sweetheart overseas before he ships off to fight the war some more. in my case, my soldier is fighting against the deflated dollar. in a strained thin voice, he exhorted me, eat grapes for me.

anything for you, my soldier.

it was a charming way to wake up, though the image of those irish women (tearfully? joyously?) throwing white flowers lingers in my mind in a whistling way. last night i made a movie. yes, my first movie ever. yes, two minutes long, but just guess how many hours of preparation went into it. (don’t guess. it’s depressing.) even for all that prep, it’s not perfect, since for this assignment we’re not allowed to EDIT. still, i could have walked on water once i finished.

the stop-animation bit is my favorite part. also my first attempt at anything like, it’s not as much terribly smooth and convincing as it is fun to watch. we also were forbidden from adding music. when you see the stop-animation dancing, you’ll have to imagine the music for yourself.

post v-day

so much sugar yesterday. i was a happy girl. selling all them roses from 12:30 to 5 (and buying and distributing a few) tired me out, as did realizing i’d missed my boy’s happy v-day call from across the pond, but chipper k-ross showed up, matching me in crimsonness — i was arrayed in pink skirt, red t-shirt and red sweatshirt; he in red pants, red polo shirt, and pink jacket — and offering himself as my date for the evening.

at dinner, we witnessed a graphic reenactment of the valentines day massacre and, as i mentioned, ate so much sugar. if it were a choice between sugar and meat, i’d give up meat in a heartbeat. it helps that i’m vegetarian. but if it were a choice between sugar and film theory, i’d give up film theory! between sugar and beer, i’d give up beer! i’d give up mice, the 29th of february, and the british legal system for the icing off another cupcake. witness my resolve.

a choice between sugar and movies, though, that would be difficult. last night, after an exciting if neverending several hours of poker, i finally watched american splendor, the year’s most egregious oscar snub for direction if nothing else. this afternoon, i finally watched witness for the prosecution. both movies have layers; i love layers.

st. cyril and co.

roomie brigid informed me that today is not even st. valentine’s day — it’s st. cyril’s along with some other guy; the two of them created the cyrillic alphabet. this reminds me of the best response i got while peddling Roses for Valentines Day! for comotion: one girl shook her head, leaned in and whispered, “that’s pagan.”

(2nd best response: one boy walked by, shook his head, leaned in and whispered, “fuck love.”)

all that said, happy valentines day. last year on this day i woke up in a hospital, the only time in my life so far that i’ve had the pleasure. i plan on dedicating at least an hour today to being grateful for not being sick and whatever else i can think of. for instance, that comotion sold NOT JUST the 500 roses we initially procured, but a whopping 700 !! and made a tidy sum of very necessary cash too. someone even bought me a rose. thanks, someone.

i will almost definitely feel less friendly towards our roses after i spent several hours this afternoon bundling and distributing them. on the other hand, it’s not like i have anything better to do today — or anything at all, actually, for which i am (add it to the list) grateful. i am not accustomed to days where i have to be On On On without a break. i need little breaths of alone-time fresh air. but yesterday i had to a thousand things, including my film theory seminar, a job interview, and attend an opera, one after the other.

oddly, the opera revived me. a student both directed and starred in it — no mean feat. it wasn’t too long, the stars’ voices were incredible, and the story was easy to follow if a little silly because, well, it’s an opera. anyway, i was very impressed. my spirits were glad to have been buoyed and were such good sports from that point on that i rewarded them by drinking nand laughing and not concentrating on a damn thing til the wee hours of the morning.