Bunniblog

The Top 20 Horror Movies of the Decade

2010-12-21T16:24:00.004-05:00

I just couldn't narrow it down to 10 so here's 20 movies that'll scare the socks off of you before the new decade begins.These movies are listed in no particular order.

1. Feed-This movie is actually the only movie to make me dry heave. Seriously. It's insanely sick, but in a good way.

2. Subject Two-This movie is, quite simply, the best adaptation of Frankenstein I've ever seen. Get the DVD and watch how the movie was made as they had to schlep all their equipment up a mountain in Colorado, no easy trick.

3.Feast-AVOID THE SEQUELS TO THIS MOVIE. Feast is one my faves, if for no other reason Henry Rollins has his pants ripped off my a ravenous hell beast. That's always good in my book.

4. The Descent-This is just an awesome movie.

5.Zombie Honeymoon-Much like an American Werewolf in London, this movie is one of the rare horror movies that manages to incorporate comedy while still remaining terrifying. Also really good rockabilly soundtrack. (The story was inspired by the death of the author/director's sister's husband.)

6.Saw-I love Saw. While the needle pit is the best trap, this is the movie that started Jigsaw on his way. You'll never hear "hello-I'd like to play a game" the same way again.

7.Slither-Nathan Fillon, a mayor with tourettes, and an alien who likes to eat dogs make this movie totally charming.

8. Cabin Fever-I, quite honestly, have only watched this movie once. I can not watch it again for just one scene (you know it well) the leg shaving scene. AAAAiiiiiiii. Roth has not lived up to the reputation this movie set up for him, but this movie is enough on its own.

9. Drag Me to Hell-Poor Allyson Lohman gets puked on more than any human being can in one movie. This Raimi at his absolute best. Hey Sam baby I do not want your puny kitten (wink).

10. Ginger Snaps-A really great feminist twist on the werewolf story.

11. Pitch Black-So cheesy, but I love this movie. My favorite part is the end when Vin stares down the alien by staying in its blind spot. (He also wrote Critters 2!)

12. Bubba Ho-Tep-Not really scary, but totally awesome for Bruce Campbell as an old Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK (whose been dyed black). LET'S GET DECADENT!

13. Nightwatch-This Russian vampire movie has amazing visuals, and a pretty gripping story.

14. 2001 maniacs- A "sequel" to the Hershel Gordon Lewis classic, this movie keeps the campy bloodthirsty spirit of the original.

15. Willard-This remake of a 1971 horror movie did not fare well at the box office despite the absolutely perfect casting of Crispin Glover as a social awkward man who befriends some rats. There's a scene set to music in which a cat is threatened by the rats that's absolutely flawlessly funny.

16. Cloverfield-This tribute to Godzilla set in NYC earned my undying love because the trailers offered very little insight into what was destroying NYC. In fact, the only clear shot of "the monster" is in the last 5 minutes of the movie. I do have a problem with a scene in the subway because no NYer in his/her right mind would turn and see WHAT THE FLOOD OF RATS WAS FLEEING FROM.

17.The Tripper-More bizarro fun, in this slasher the serial killer wears a Ronald Reagen mask while hacking up hippies at a tribute to Woodstock run by (wait for it) Paul Rubens!

18.28 Weeks Later-Robert Carlyle gives good zombie, and I love the end!

19.The Orphanage-Man, I never expected to cry watching a horror movie, but this movie is both horrific and touching. Beautifully shot.

20.Paranormal Activity-I gotta be honest this movie plugged DIRECTLY into a fear I had growing up. When I was 10 I was terrified of demonic possession, and I barely made it through this low budget but very effective thrillfest.

Threshold of Revelations: End of Days

2010-08-22T16:18:00.002-04:00

Now that the end of Asshat's life was nearing, he was dealing more and more with his own death and the afterlife. I do not mean that on a philosophical level. I mean the actual details of what was to happen after his death. Who was to inherit what? What was to be done with his remains? Where was the memorial to be held?

During these days in the house there was lots of idle talk about these things. Magpie was particularly excited to discuss what she planned to sing at the memorial ceremonies. It was sickening, like watching a vulture circle with ever increasing pleasure eyeing an animal as it weakens, but struggles on. But it was Magpie who shared that Asshat had always wanted to be buried on the grounds of the farm.

The "farm" was actually a palatial, but unfinished house. Asshat had built it himself and while I thought some of the design features were....unfortunate and odd, they were definitely his. It was to have been his magnum opus. Still, his house was unfinished. On the top floor, there was one room that was barely rudimentary, and the basement had a completely non-functional bathroom. Other parts of the house, as I looked at it in the sun, desperately needed maitenance. Eaves were sagging, wood was rotting, paint was chipped an entirely faded. I thought worse than his premature death was that all of his efforts had come to this. The house, as I examined it on this bright summer day, looked absolutely pathetic. He wouldn't even have the time to build the chapel where he wanted to be buried on the property. There wasn't even time for him to fulfill his dying wish.

I sat on the porch and looked out at the horizon. Asshat had bought all the land surrounding the house so he had a completely uninterrupted view from absolutely any vantage point at the house. Man tries to control his environment, his destiny, and he comes to this. Dying in a house with apathetic relatives with even one of his enemies now more of any ally than those who should have loved him, his house unfinished, his death wish not able to realized. While Euripides once wrote, "A bad beginning makes a bad ending," I think Sophocles was more accurate when he wrote "Count no man happy until he is dead." Of course, it's very difficult to count the dead as happy under any circumstances.

Treshold of Revelations: Humans Without Humanity

2010-08-10T23:04:00.003-04:00

The following day Asshat's sister, Magpie, was to arrive. Magpie has the type of nasal twang for a voice that's like a diamond drill-it can cut through anything including your sanity in a matter of seconds. It's the way I imagine H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu to sound, that is if Cthulhu was a shrewish, invasive idiot without even the vaguest concept of tact and appropriateness. I kinda expect that even the Elder Ones have better manners than the Magpie, as to talk to her for even minutes is to make you want to run screaming for Innsmouth and all of its horror as a welcome alternative.

If her voice wasn't enough, she personifies one of the truths I realized quite early in life: the people who most want to advertise their intelligence are usually the stupidest people around. In this case, Asshat, her brother, at this point could barely be heard when he spoke if you were more than a few feet from him. Often he would yell for my mother, who was in the neighboring room, and she wouldn't hear him. My mother and I decided to leave Magpie with Asshat so 1 they would have private time together to talk 2 we could go pick up some respiratory gear.Before we left Magpie, who likes to announce every five mintues that she graduated from an ivy league college, stopped my mother to ask if she should check in on her own brother from time to time. My mother was confused, "What do you mean check in?" "Well I wanted to do some work on the computer." The computer was in the basement on the other end of the voice. Luciano Pavaroti couldn't have yelled loud enough from the living room to be heard in the basement computer room nevermind a guy who could barely talk thanks to lung cancer. In this case, Asshat, her brother, could barely be heard when he spoke if you were more than a few feet from him. Often when he would yell for my mother, who was in the neighboring room getting something for him, and she wouldn't hear him.The "work" that Magpie was referring to was the VOLUNTEER work she did helping to rescue beagles in Florida.

Now, I do not in anyway disparage people who save animals. My cat is a rescue, my mom's cats are rescue cats. HOWEVER if you have the choice between spending time with your dying brother and trying to help save animals over the internet, I'm gonna say go with your brother. I'm an only child fer chrissakes and even I understand that time with your brother is short. Not to mention that the two aren't mutually exclusive. My mother and I were coming home in a few hours. I refuse to believe she couldn't put it off for three hours. But in truth, she just didn't want to spend time with her brother despite her presence there.

However, where I would slapped this stupid bitch upside the head and said "Listen, go sit with your brother until we come back." My mother patiently explained that Asshat couldn't talk that loudly and needed help with things like walking to the bathroom and COULD NOT CALL FOR HELP so SHE HAD TO STAY IN THE ROOM. (She did not punctuate the sentence with "idiot" or "bitch" as I would have.) She grudgingly went to sit with her brother.

Before we left my mother told Magpie to be sure BE SURE to give Asshat his 3 pm pills. She told her twice and even put a note in front of a little dish filled with the appropriate pills that said "3 pm!" We gave her exactly one thing to do.

Did she do it?

No. She forgot to give him his meds which included pain medication, something he absolutely needed. I mean seriously, one thing ONE THING. Mind you my mother was the one who was giving him IV fluids, emptying spitoons filled with bloody phlegm, even draining his lungs. And this alledgedly intelligent human being couldn't remember to give him clearly labeled pills? I mean did she think the meds were OPTIONAL? Did she not get that giving a terminal lung cancer patient his medications on time is important? And if she didn't get it, why the hell not?

Later, Asshat's son, Gekko, arrived as well. We were all sitting in the living room chatting, Asshat was in the middle of saying something, when suddenly he coughed up bile. The son and the sister RAN OUT OF THE ROOM.

Let me say that again. They fled.

Being me, I thought that they had run to get paper towels or something useful. It never occurred to me that they had just run out. My mother and I cleaned Asshat up. I took the bile soaked tissues and walked into the kitchen, which is where I found his son just standing there.

Growing up disabled, it does something to you. You learn quickly that the horror of what has happened to you is not being trapped in a body that's the enemy, but how people treat you because of it. The people who should be there for you, abandon you. They make excuses not to come to the hospital. To avoid asking how you are. Or to just vanish until things are "better." To leave you to crutch home, 5 blocks in the rain, from the hospital alone. To expect you to act after a 5 day emergency hospitalization that everything is fine. The people who have benefitted from your empathy. The people who should have your back. The people who should understand. They are the ones who generally disappoint and on an epic level.

The converse rule is that the people who come through are generally those you don't expect. Some random person you barely know who sends you flowers or an encouraging email or stops and asks if you need help. Unfortunately, those people are far outnumber by those who lack basic humanity.

I threw out the tissues and washed my hands. I knew the worst part of what had just happened wasn't the lack of control over his own body. It was knowing he had become revolting to his own sister and son. To know that what had happened to him had so frightened them they had fled the room. I know what's like to see that horror in the eyes of others and that is why I acted like everything was normal. I went back into the room where he apologized profusely for what had happened. He apologized-as if he had some control.

My mother and I told him he had no reason to apologize, and of course he didn't. It wasn't like he wanted to barf up phlemg. The son finally came back into the room. The conversation started to resume a bit, but there was a problem.

Where was Magpie?

Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by and there was no sign of Magpie. Finally I went into the kitchen to get a refill of my iced tea and that's when I saw her. She was in the back garden pulling weeds and talking on the phone. She ran out of the room and didn't even care enough to check on whether her brother was OK. She just decided that weeding and chatting was more important than her brother's feelings in the same way she decided that those beagles were more important than her brother's welfare.

I have to be honest with you that incident so upset me that I was spitting mad for a week. I have no idea how a person can care so little about the welfare of a fellow human being, nevermind a sibling. As I said, I hated the man and yet I found their behavior so obherent that I literally couldn't talk about anything else for a week. It is, to me, a perfect distillation of how human beings generally lacking humanity especially when it's the most important for them to have some.

Karma, however, will pay them back as someday they will know what it's like to have their body fail and their family flee. It's what my father told me all those years ago: The one great common denominator of all humanlife is pain. If you ever wish great pain on someone, you only have to do one thing: wait. And so eventually their apathy will come back to haunt them in the form of those they will expect to support them. They will then know the horror of causing family members to flee, having family members hide from their needs with invented important tasks, and having family think your basic needs are unimportant or more importantly they don't care to protect your feelings in the least.

Personally, I would like it better if people could actually act like human beings, but having lived with disability for so long, I know I might as well wish for a hot tub filled with blue Kool-Aid and a calorie free Swiss chocolate. But will I take plain ole vengeance? You bet I will. And the truth is, if I ended up seeing them sick I probably couldn't run out on them anymore than I could run out on Asshat. Luckily, I'm sure other family members will have that covered.

Review of Philip Roth's "Indigination"

2010-08-04T03:13:00.001-04:00

I'm a huge fan of Roth's, and Indignation is so engaging that I read it entirely in one day. It breaks off from his more recent books, which have focused on older characters facing the end of life. Still, this book, like Everyman, deals with the death of the main character-in this case the death of a 20 year old college student who is narrating his tale from what he thinks is the afterlife.

The book begins with the character essentially recounting what is the inciting incident of the b...more I'm a huge fan of Roth's, and this book is so engaging that i read it entirely in one day. It breaks off from his more recent books, which have focused on older characters facing the end of life. Still, this book, like Everyman, deals with the death of the main character-in this case the death of a 20 year old college student who is narrating his tale from what he thinks is the afterlife.

The book begins with the character essentially recounting what is the inciting incident of the boos, his father suddenly becoming so terrified for his son's welfare that at one point he locks him out of the house. Confronted with his father's increasingly obsessive fears, Marcus decides to leave Newark and go to school in Winesburg, Ohio. Winesburg, Ohio is the title of a coming of age short story cycle by Sherwood Anderson in which a young man, George, grows up and eventually leaves as a young man . Once there, Marcus confronts a cast of different characters from the gay, antagonistic Bert Flusser, his more successful double Sonny Cottler, to the romantically damaged Olivia Hutton. Marcus faces increasing difficulties at Winesburg, which results in his expulsion and subsequent draft. In fact, Marcus seems to constantly be "drafted" into conflicts-whether it's the sudden attacks of his father's mania or Bert Flusser's masterbatory stalking. Despite his desire to avoid these conflicts, he is unable to escape (foreshadowing his early demise as a casualty of the Korean conflict).

One of the major themes of the book is losing control and the destructive impact such behavior on those around you. It's his father's loss of control that results in Marcus "running away from home." Bert Flusser's inability to control his own behavior (he doesn't wash or change his clothes or turn down his music) drives Marcus from his dorm room. Later, Bert breaks into Marcus's new room and masterbates into all of his clothes making his lack of control overtly violent. When Marcus's new roommate, Elwyn refers to Marcus's love interest as a "c**t", Marcus decides to change rooms rather than engaging him in a discussion about why his statement is wrong. The problems with roommates results in a visit with the Dean and Marcus makes himself a target when he is unwilling to control himself when he confronts the Dean about a variety of different issues. This lack of control is made manifest by Marcus vomiting all over the Dean's trophies at the end of the visit. Marcus is ultimately doomed because he refuses not only to go to Chapel (a requirement of his school), but to make up chapel visits as a form of penance. Could he control his impulses, he could have easily have graduated. Similarly, during the panty raid his classmates, by force, break into several female dormitories and steal panties and masterbate into them. The panty raid is, to some degree, a parallel with the Korean war. After all, the soldiers are exactly the same age as Marcus, an observation made clear by his fear of being expelled lest he be drafted. Furthermore, blood is shed in the passionate spirit of attempting to liberate these ladies garments, which, far from the spirit of independence, is more about a "barbaric pursuit of thoughtless fun" as the president of the university tells the boys during an address.

Olivia, Marcus's romantic interest doesn't escape either. She suffers a nervous breakdown as a result of pregnancy. her inability to control her libido results in a breakdown, which is described by the dean as being a state in which "You have no more control over your emotions than an infant" a statement that could equally apply to the behavior demonstrated in the panty raid or Flusser's masterbatory spree.

Roth has already demonstrated his skill in fusing the historical and the fictional in novel like the Plot Against America and I Married a Communist. Here is no exception. Roth uses the Korean war to highlight some aspects of our current situation. When the president addresses the boys of the school, he harshly declares "beyond your dormitories, a world is on fire and you are kindled by underwear. beyond your fraternities, history unfolds daily-warfare, bombings, wholesale slaughter, and you are oblivious of it all. Well, you won't be oblivious for long! you can be as stupid as you like, can even give every sign, as you did here on Friday night, of passionately wanting to be stupid, but history will catch up to you in the end." This seems like an apt indictment of what I, as a professor, encounter with college students quite often. The consequences of this "barbaric pursuit of thoughtless fun" are death, but not because of the panty raid, but because of their refusal to learn and engage the problem.

Marcus's fate is set in motion because his main coping mechanism is avoidance-he leaves his house and his rooms when problems surface. He is at college mainly to AVOID THE DRAFT, rather than attempting to confront the problem head on. This avoidance is demonstrated in the panty raid where students either engaged or ignored the raid. The president makes it clear that not one student actually attempted to defend the female residents of the dorms. He demands to know where their manly courage is and how this courage will serve them in Korea if they can't even defend the rights of women at the school. These accusations, the lack of courage and the passionate desire to pursue thoughtless fun, ring true for the current situation America confronts with its young men and women currently. Roth is a master at using historical conflicts to illustrate current ones and does so here. Still, one is left with a touching affection for Marcus who dies at 20.

Threshold of Revelations: Job's Lament

2010-08-01T23:55:00.000-04:00

After watching the movie, it was time to go up to bed. This was something that annoyed me. Asshat couldn't make it up stairs without help so my mother would have to help her boyfriend up, not one, but two flights of stairs all the while also lugging his air tanks all because he refused to have things set up in the bedroom. Why? Because he things to be the way they were. He still didn't accept that things were never, ever going to be the way they were again. He was trying to cling to his life as a healthy person, and while he was still alive, his life as a healthy person was already over.

I went up ahead of them to have a little bit of a snack before bed. While I was in the kitchen I head the two of them talking. I had thought they had gone up, but no. Asshat was sitting in a rocking chair by stairs (placed there by my mother for this reason), he was struggling to breathe and saying to my mother "Why is God doing this to me? Why is God doing this to me?" My mother was bent over him trying to soothe him.

Like Job, he isn't asking for his suffering to end, just for a reason. The universal question, "Why me?" Of course the answer is "It is not your place to question or understand. It is your place to accept." On some level, it's a practical answer. God isn't going to open the clouds a la Monty Python and Holy Grail and say "Well, here's the reason." So just accepting what is happening seems like the best advice. And could there even be a reason good enough?

I've struggled with the why question myself. The type of cancer I had was idiopathic* up until a few years ago. Then, thanks to the human genome project, the cause was discovered-a random malformation of a single gene. Pure chance, bad fucking luck, that was it. Now I had the answer. Did I feel anymore satisfied?

Absolutely not. So while I understand the cautionary tale of Job, I also know the advice offered is absolutely impossible to take.

I felt almost assaulted by the intimacy between them. My mother had soothed me in rocking chairs as a child. She had rocked with me as I wailed from ear infections and strep throat until I calmed down. Now she was doing it again with her boyfriend. They didn't even notice me standing there before I ran back into the kitchen to pour myself a large glass of ultra calming vodka.

My initial reaction was pure rage. I sat in the kitchen, seething. I wanted to be God's proxy and say, "Listen you chucklehead, this has nothing to do with me. YOU CHOSE TO SMOKE LIKE A CHIMNEY FOR 40 YEARS AND YOU'RE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER so sorry your spin on the roulette wheel didn't at all work out. But it's not like divine providence forced you to smoke. This is the result of your own deliberate decisions. Not to mention, you've had a fantastic life for the last 60 years. Do you know how many people (including the 30 year old in the next room) would GLADLY suffer from lung cancer if they could only have half the life you have had? More than that tiny brain of yours could probably handle. So do me a favor. Accept your own culpability. Appreciate what you have while you still fucking have it. Now, if you don't mind you self centered prick, I now have to go listen to the prayers of some parents with infants in NICU."

Now I know this reads like David Mamet rewriting the Bible.

Part of my rage came from the fact that I got six months of health. Six months. Not sixty years. Not even one year. And my cancer wasn't brought on by my own acts. I was filled with a lot of righteous "HOW DARE HE?!"

But underneath that rage was the horror of watching my mother witness this. That she went through this every night, and she would continue to go through it until the end. The tremendous strength of her to do this, uncomplaining, unflinching.

Part of the reason it takes me so long to write these entries is I end up sobbing every time I write about this. I didn't cry when my father died. Not one tear. Not even at the funeral listening to my mother cry behind me. Where did that girl go? What is it about this?

How many times did my mother soothe me in a rocking chair while I wondered why God, who I believed in at that point, had done this to me? How many times did I think an answer to that question would be better than a cure? How many times do I hate myself for struggling up a flight of stairs? Every time. Every step. Feeling absolutely helpless-a victim of my own body. My body-the enemy. That antagonist that had to be fought and who retaliated with pain. And now I was reliving it by watching someone else go through it.

In the end, I stayed in the kitchen until the rage subsided. Afterwards I walked out the front door. It was a beautiful night outside. It was cool and clear. So many stars that it was shocking. I forgot what the night looks like in the country. The frogs, toads, crickets, grasshoppers, and other assorted critters were making a near deafening racket. I sat outside and felt sad that instead of enjoying the simple pleasure of the night, we stayed inside and watched a movie. Out here simple mindless life is going on-stars sparkling, crickets chirping-without any awareness of what was happening in the house, without any concern. The crickets and the stars had no answer except to keep going until you can no longer. Keep going.

Keep going.

* idiopathic means there is no known cause for the disorder

Threshold of Revelations: In the Country of Last Things *

2010-07-24T23:47:00.006-04:00

After we arrived at the house, Asshat had himself ensconced in a comfy chair in the basement so he could get IV fluids. My mother hooked him up, and we sat in the basement watching the latest offering from Netflix. When someone is dying, even the most mundane of activities, watching a DVD, suddenly take on completely different significance.

We watched Much Ado About Nothing, the Kenneth Branaugh version. Asshat declared it too sentimental, as it had to be too something in his estimation. I sat there wondering if I was dying, what movies would I want to watch? Would I bother with any of my horror movies? Would I suddenly go running for the musical comedies? Would I even want to see existential movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Existenz?

And this brings up a slew of last thoughts. What would I want my last meal to be? My last book? My last vacation? My last season? My last time of day? And these are all the big things, the things we know we'll miss-real gooey hot fudge sundaes, swimming in the ocean, smelling frais du bois on the streets of Paris, having wild passionate sex (in bed, on the couch, in the backgarden, in the shower), snuggling under the covers on a cold day, hugging an old friend you meet by chance, sitting a field filled with fireflies on a quiet summer night, struggling to walk in knee deep snow, enjoying a rose scented bath filled with bubbles. The list goes on and on. Someday, I will have enjoyed all those things for the last time.

And then there are the things you don't think about. The last time you brush your teeth, take a quick shower, do the laundry, vacuum, go to the DMV, do your taxes, pay the bills, pick up the dry cleaning, change the lightbulbs, walking up the stairs...hell wipe your ass. You'll miss those too one day, you don't think so, but you will. Trust me.

A week before I went to upstate, a friendly acquaintance was watching me eat a cupcake. I offered him some, but he declined even though he really wanted some. I asked him how he had such self control, and he said "Well you're a spring chicken compared to me. When you get to my age, and you've had about nine thousand you think 'I don't need one more.'" I smiled and nodded and didn't trust a single word. How could I? One day I won't be able to have anymore cupcakes and won't I regret all the cupcakes I could have eaten and didn't? And don't even get me started on the truffle cheese, salted caramels, bacon chocolate bars, jalapeno peanut brittle, caramel apples, chubby hubby ice cream...well you get the idea. And that's just the decadent treats. What about the nights out with friends? Laughing in the park? Discovering new lovers in France? The adventures? The creature comforts? The enjoyable challenges? The hard won accomplishments? Even the horrifying farces that will turn into amusing anecdotes?

My therapist told me once that she knew some people who died of Parkinsons. "They seemed peaceful after they embraced the fact they couldn't talk anymore." How does one embrace that? I thought. How could I ever be at peace with having spoken my last words?

How could I ever have enough?

Still, I sat there watching the movie with my eyes filling with tears because Asshat had already passed so many of those milestones. He had already eaten his last meal, even though he didn't know it at the time. The cancer had knocked out his taste buds early so he was living on Ensure, soon he wouldn't even have that. A gourmande all his life spending his last few months drinking Ensure. He wasn't going to get one last decadent meal. Not even a snack. Not one little sliver of truffle. And there would be more sacrifices to come.

He was living through Hell already and he still had worse to look forward to.

I posted a question on facebook asking people what movie they wanted their last movie to be. No one responded. I suppose no one wanted to think about the reality of it.

Still, whether we want to think of it, it's coming. The last movie we shall ever watch. The last meal. The last season. The last time of day. The last thought.

The last taste of strawberries and walking in the snow.

* I started writing this entry, and the following entries, before my mother's boyfriend passed away. He died on Monday 19, 2010.

Threshold of Revelations: Part One

2010-06-15T23:03:00.005-04:00

It started in November. Well, September really. My mother had come back from Europe with her boyfriend, Asshat, whom I hate.

I know what you're thinking. Hate is a strong word. Surely you don't HATE him. No, I do with the type of hate that actually raises my blood pressure for DAYS after I saw him. A hate that meant that I had to cut off contact with my mother for months just for my own health and my own sanity.

He had an old school Italian mentality paired with an outstanding belief that only he knew the right way to do anything.

Well, look at that, I'm already writing about him in the past tense, even though now, he's still alive. Still, his death is so imminent, the past tense seems to be more appropriate.

Once, we went to a prestigious Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. He saw zucchini blossoms on the menu, but insisted the chef was preparing them incorrectly. He gave the waiter very particular instructions for how he wanted the blossoms. When the dish arrived, he was openly and more embarrassingly vociferously disappointed. For the rest of the entire night, he would not let five minutes go without ranting about what a catastrophe the blossoms were. I found the entire night appalling and have never dared to show my face in that restaurant again.

Far more painful was his attitude toward my disability, which was "Just get over it." Having coped with massive neurological damage in my lower body, and several chronic health problems related to the damage, his callousness was upsetting. Christ, I spent most of my childhood flying to see specialists at hospitals, sitting in waiting rooms, having painful tests, waiting through winters and summers in casts and on crutches, recovering from surgeries and hospitalizations, facing an ever increasing line of doctors. And I had pushed through it. While I attended college, pursuing a BFA in Acting in one of the most reputable programs in the country, my father died, I almost bled to death, I was emergency hospitalized, had emergency surgery, had ambulatory surgery, and STILL graduated on time with honors. Furthermore, I went onto to pursue my Master's at one of the most highly ranked graduate writing programs in the country and then began my teaching career. I was an expert skier and amateur ballroom dancer. I had traveled to Europe alone. In short, I did my best not to allow the disability to interfere.

Still, it would part of that is the fear that I ever did let the disability effect me, I wouldn't be loved. The fear that the only way for people to accept me was to pretend to be something I desperately wanted to be. To be healthy. And while, I could make people believe I was healthy, it made me feel isolated and afraid. That love was tentative and came with a high price. That love meant I could never really be accepted for who I really am.

He made my position absolutely clear. I could never let down my guard. Never be truly understood. Because to do so, was to be weak, to be sick. Because sickness, disability on some level, was a choice. It was a failure of will.

Meanwhile, he thought all doctors were shysters. Of course, because if will is all that is necessary for health, then why would medicine or doctors be necessary? Strange that my mother, the ex-wife of a doctor, the daughter of a nurse, a former nurse herself would allow him to persist in these beliefs. She never saw how hurtful, how insulting and desultory his attitude was to me personally because she excused it with her excuse for everything he said "Oh, he's just that WAY." As if confronting that insidious attitude within my own family, harbored by my mother's own affection, was a minor pet peeve, like sucking his teeth. He, of course, was convinced that if he got sick, if he became disabled that's exactly what he would do. Because he was, despite his lack of experience and in the face of mine, always right.

On more than one occasion, I wished he would get sick, not seriously sick, but sick enough to actually have some empathy for the rest of us who have to cope with this kind of incapacity everyday. Sick enough to learn that illness is not a failure of will, not a show of weakness. It takes incredible strength to survive illness, not just physically, but emotionally-the abandonment of friends and family, the lack of privacy, the pain, the fear, the rage, the helplessness. To survive alone takes fortitude and faith. I wanted him to get sick enough to learn this, to appreciate how difficult a battle it really is. I wanted from him what I always want from the healthy: understanding. I understand them, but they flinch, they avoid, they deny understanding me. That's all I wanted. Back then I was naive enough to think that a bout with illness would de facto produce insight and compassion.

Illness memoirs enforce this view, particularly breast cancer memoirs. Often survivors say how the cancer helped them see their lives with clear eyes-to re-prioritize, to be thankful, to really live. I was diagnosed with cancer at 6 months old, so re-evaluating my life choices wasn't high on my list. I'll be honest. I've never been thankful that I had cancer, but I've always wondered how much of my development, my drive to help others through teaching and charity, has been spurred on by my own struggles. I accepted what these memoirs told me about the transformational powers of cancer.

I know a lot better now.

In September, my mother returned from Europe ill. At first, I didn't think it was serious. She claimed she had "travelers diarrhea." But weeks went by, she kept losing weight, and she still couldn't keep any food in her system. Finally, after a month and a half and a colonscopy ,she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis-not a great diagnosis, but nowhere near as serious as I feared.

As soon as she recovered, he got a cough that wouldn't respond to treatment. I wasn't surprised by the cough, in fact, since he was a hard core smoker for 40 years who had only recently quit, I was shocked he hadn't suffered from a cough like that sooner. Plus with my mother's illness, I thought his illness might have been a bid to regain attention and focus. Still, my mother was concerned. Then, he got diagnosed with pneumonia. The pneumonia didn't respond to any treatment. Now, my mother told me that he was having chills nightly that were so severe "they shake the mattress like in the exorcist" but he would soak the sheets with sweat.

"I'm worried this is something bad," she said to me.

In the darker parts of my mind, I thought "Wouldn't it be ironic if months after he quit smoking, he got lung cancer?" I thought it because that kind of perfect irony only happens on "Made for Lifetime Movies" and soap operas.

Except this time, it did.

I remember calling my mother from work the minute classes got out. We knew it was cancer by now, but not the prognosis. She answered the phone and said rushed, that he had 2-5 years and then hung up. In retrospect, those years would have been a gift. It seemed horrifying then, but now, how much could have happened in those years? We shall never know because he won't even make it to the end of the first year.

That's one of the first horrors of illness. It's like life on a swiftly tilting planet. Everything changes radically day to day-one day you're hoping to die, the next day you're praying to live. My mother says it again and again on the phone now to the many people who call to inquire, "I don't know. I just don't know. Things change so quickly. I mean, I can't tell you anything because in the next ten minutes everything could change."

Everything could change except one thing: he's going to die very soon.

I Once Was Lost-Reflections on the Series Finale

2010-05-25T22:29:00.005-04:00

So last night was the season finale, and I repeated a cycle I seem to have-coming to a show VERY LATE (usually when all a majority of the original fans have abandoned the show hurling insults in its direction for failing to meet the promise of the first season/episode), becoming slavishly attached (maniacally watching all the episodes in a week), and then the show ends. In short-once I'm a fan, the writing is on the wall. Thus when I began watching Lost last year, well, it's days were numbered. (The exception here is Law and Order which managed to survive my fandom for over almost a decade-and before you huff and puff I didn't have a TV until 2001.) And so only a year after becoming a hardcore fan, I had to accept that the series was ending.

To prepare, I watched every single episode in order last summer so I would know what was going on. Yet there wasn't a single episode this season that didn't completely freakin baffle me. Whidmore likes Desmond? Claire is the new Danielle? The smoke monster has mommy issues?I felt like I might have well not watched ANY episode. How the Hell were the writers going to resolve this? How were they going to answer all these questions (the magical numbers, the giant statue with FOUR TOES, the rules that govern the Island) in 42 minutes (the length of episode sans commcercials)?

What makes the final episode is the writers' layered approach to the episode-for example Juliet's lines to Sawyer in the break room. They are the same lines she says on the Island before she dies. Thus when Juliet originally said to Sawyer before her death on the Island "Let's go for coffee sometime," it made no sense and was dismissed as incoherent babbling. When Juliet repeats the lines in the break room, the viewer understand that Juliet was in between realms, in the same way that Jack, as he dies on the Island, is in between realms-both aware of the Island and the sideways flashes. Thus a question that seemed to be answered (Did the bomb work? Yes.) was actually the answer to a very different question. (What the hell is the sideways world? It's the purgatory/bardo that the main Lostaways go to.)

It is this nuanced approach, like Rose telling Jack on the plane that it's OK to let go at the beginning of the flash sideways that in retrospect indicates IMMEDIATELY that this is a purgatory realm, that attracted me to Lost in the first place. I wasn't in it for the Others or the soap opera drama between Sawyer, Jack, and Kate or figuring out why Desmond was special. (It's because he says "Brother" all the time, right?) I was in it for the more difficult characters like Locke, Linus, Sayid and Eko (who I did seriously miss in the finale). Even Danielle Rousseau is a complex character (although ultimately she's really playing out the Man in Black's mommy issues, which are also visited upon Claire), and it was this inability to quickly characterize these individuals or actually to effectively give them a consistent character that was Lost's strength. (This is the same thing that drew me to Brian Lumley's epic Necroscope series.) The series actually highlighted something that Michel de Montaigne wrote about in his "essaies" that human beings are inconsistent. A person may act like a villian in one circumstance and a hero in the next. I certainly saw that on Lost, and it was this quality that kept me coming back (way more than Jack looking tormented-although he did tormented really well).

The ending struck me as two-fold-sure it had a kinda kumbaya afterlife feel, which I have to admit was problematic for me for various reasons. It completely omitted to explain WHY THE ISLAND WAS MAGICAL and yeah that annoys me, but more importantly this happy fuzzy ending doesn't really gel with me in terms of the world of Lost. I mean, I don't want to say that the world of Lost was bleak, but happiness on the island was about short lived as a Arzt handling dynamite. So suddenly this "Let's all hold hands and sing as we walk into the great golden beyond even though we all tried to kill or torture each other."But that was offset by Jack's actual death. His redemption was achieved literally minutes before his death so I guess they tempered the happy happy joy joy with brilliant surgeon dies young on island with dog.*

But what the ending allowed the writers to do was give closure to the characters and speak directly to the viewers. The main focus of the episode comes down really to two things-the relationship you forge with people is the most important thing you will ever do in your life and you need to know when to move on. These two messages work perfectly with focal points of Lost-the writers have maintained this is a character generated drama so of course relationships would be the most important aspect of the show. (One of the sub tenets of this is that issues from the past, if unresolved, will come back and wreck havoc upon on our lives. Kate was the first person to learn this lesson on the Island).

But it also works as the writers talking to the audience-by telling us that the relationships are the most important, they are openly telling us "The polar bears, number sequence, smoke monster, giant statue with four toes...all that mythos stuff isn't important. So we don't need to explain it." Why? Because the most important aspect of the show is the handwavey sci-fi stuff, it's the relationships the characters have to each other and the relationship we as the viewer have to them. Me, I was most invested in the morally ambiguous characters, but the show offered such a smorgasbord of characters that, much like a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, there was something for everybody including lots of hot eye candy in bathing suits on the beach. So all the mythos didn't matter-it's that we formed a bond with these characters and that's what is ultimately the most important quality of the show.

The second issue-it's time to move on-is kinda obvious. It's the finale. In some ways, it's a plea to fans saying "You have to let go." Much like the sideways reality, yes it's fabulous and fantastic, but it's also transitory. The viewers, like the characters, have to prepare to let go of these individuals even if you think there is still a great deal more of their character to be explored (like Ben Linus.) But as someone who has loved many characters in my time and watched what can happen to them when a series goes on too long (I'm looking at you X-Files), I praise the wisdom of writers who know when it's time to let a story go and move onto the next thing. So ultimately the viewer, if he or she is emotionally engaged is receiving the same message as the characters, only it's far less dire because when the viewers are told to move on all it means is to watch the finale of 24.

Which brings us to the credits. There has been lots of theorizing about the credits. This is how I interpreted it-those closing shots are for us. It's so we can say good-bye to the Island itself which both the writers and actors have admitted is a character on the series. Seeing the Island empty and peaceful, these locations that meant so much to us and the survivors the message is clear "They have gone." And by seeing it empty and peaceful, we can let go.

Listen, I'm not one for messages about the afterlife to end a TV series, but as finales go-I enjoyed this one. It wasn't as powerful for me as Six Feet Under, and it certainly was more frustrating than many finales I've watched. But still, it felt like a good-bye. You always want one minute more, one more hug, kiss, moment, but there has to be an end. And damn if I wasn't crying when that dog lay down next to Jack ,and I'm sure that the reason why Vincent wasn't in the chapel is that all good dogs go to heaven immediately. They don't have to wait around. (And yes I'm welling up while I'm writing this. Sigh. Oh Vincent. I will miss you most of all.)

And if all that means nothing to you, at the very least you should respect it as a finale because at least the ending wasn't Walt looking at a snowglobe of an island with a crumbled statue. (Because yes St. Elsewhere is the yardstick by which I measure all finales.)

*Jack's death in both the sideways world and in the real world is a direct refutation of his first season Mantra-live together, die alone. Physically Jack dies with Vincent (his laughter at Vincent seems to indicate his awareness of that) and spiritually his death is shared with the other key Lostaways who formed "the most important part of his life."

What the "Remember Me" Spoiler, My Latin Education, and 9-11 All Have in Common

2010-03-11T18:30:00.001-05:00

If you actually want to see the movie "Remember Me", stop here. When I saw the ads, I knew instantly this is one of those melodramatic weepy romances, like "Autumn in New York", in which a lover doomed to die manages to "save" the beloved from being jaded before untimely demise. This story is nothing new-Dumas fils wrote about in La Dame Aux Camelias. Because Emilie de Ravin (better known as Claire from Lost) seems jaded in the ads, I figure the "twist" was the BOY saves the jaded girl before his untimely death.

And I was right.

What I missed is that the BOY DIES IN 9-11. Yep, the whole romance is Pre-9/11/2001.

And just when my mind was going to explode with rage, I read this metafilter thread, which restored my sanity as well as reminding me about 2 things.

When I was in middle school, I studied Latin for 2 years. The text book was kind of like Dick and Jane, only in Latin, and with historically accurate details. The lessons followed the every day doings of the "average" family in the Roman Empire. It covered events like watching gladiators, punishing slaves, and even regular religious practices so while learning Latin, we also learned history. So for two years, we dutifully read about the lives of these family members-hell we even read about their dog. Then in the very last lesson THEY ALL DIED WHEN MOUNT VESUVIUS EXPLODED! We had no idea they WEREN'T in ROME, but they were in fact in Pompeii. For the last day of class, we watched The Last Days of Pompeii just to cement the horror into place.

This movie made me think of that not in the least of which because it's a crappy pull the rug out from under you for no real reason type of way. I do admit that it was at least a very dramatic ending to what was a fairly dry textbook.

What's truly odd is my Latin teacher was named Mrs. Hightower and that experienced filled me with a lifelong desire to see Pompeii, which I did a few years ago where I did indeed see A DOG PRESERVED IN ASH FROM THE EXPLOSION!

It's also Mrs. Hightower who I thought of on the morning of 9-11 when I stood on Waverly. After the first tower collapsed, the Idiot Formerly Known as My Fiance, squeezed my hand said "I'm sure everyone got out." I knew they didn't. I knew because Mrs. Hightower told us that many people in Pompeii stayed after the volcano exploded thinking things would get be OK. (She failed to explain that was because there had been a severe earthquake in 17 years BEFORE and many Romans had fled thinking the city doomed. However, the city recovered.)

I looked at the plume of ash and thought that 2,000 years hasn't changed human nature so much. Some of them stayed, I thought, sure that everything would be OK.

Shame upon the makers of "Remember Me" for using such a huge tragedy just to lure tweens until the multiplexes or rather Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris. (Translation: If Caesar was alive, you would be chained to an oar.) But if you MUST use real tragedy to manipulate your audience, at least TEACH THEM SOMETHING OF VALUE WHILE YOUR AT IT.

Thus I make the following proposal:

When I took Latin, some of the high school Latin students would put out a monthly all Latin newspaper. They would write about current news stories in Latin, but on the back page some enterprising student would translate the lyrics of a current Top 10 song until Latin. (You haven't lived until you have read the lyrics to Monkey from Wham! in Latin, I swear.) I think to make amends for this epic insult, the entire film needs to be dubbed in Latin.

Seriously. I would pay for that Twilight twit to have to memorize lines in Latin. But until then, all I have to say to him is "Faciem durum cacantis habes ." (You have the face of a man with severe constipation.)

Some Thoughts on Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2010-01-21T22:18:00.001-05:00

So I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer this week because some wonderful human being gave me Season 3 for my birthday. (Thank you Chris.) And I realized something.

Angel is a total dick.

OK so let's ignore the whole he went psycho after he had sex with Buffy and killed some of her friends. That was the gypsy curse, so I'll give him a pass. However, after Buffy sends him to a demon dimension, he comes BACK and she accepts him. So then what happens? He fucking dumps her right before the Prom. Dude he's over 250 years old, he couldn't have waited a week to dump her? It's not like he didn't know how important it was to her. If he really loved her, he would gone with her to the Prom and THEN dumped her. But no, he dumps her, then shows up at the Prom, but it's only for the night. So it's like ripping off a bandaid only to cut a bit deeper and then squeeze lemon juice on it. THEN after being a dick about the Prom, Buffy almost dies saving his life. How does he repay her? BY TELLING HER HE'S NOT GOING TO SAY GOODBYE. BIGGEST IMMORTAL DOUCHEBAG EVER.

And what about that episode of Angel where he gets his curse lifted, and can thus be with Buffy, but it takes him away from his Hero Boy of the Night work, and since the People of the Night need their hero boy, he decides to go back to being a vampire? Again, Buffy, who was willing to do ANYTHING to be with Angel, gets the furry end of the lollipop from Angel. (Hence my liking Spike more than Angel as a bf for the Buffster-even though the Buffybot thing IS a little creepy.) At least in that case only he will be tortured with the memory of what he COULD HAVE HAD but Buffy, blissfully, will be spared of knowing that they could have had a perfectly normal relationship EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT ANGEL IS A FUCKING DONKEY DICK but he's a hot brooding donkey dick. So in that case I think it worked out well, but it wasn't of Angel's doing-it was just how things happened.

And don't get me started about him loving Cordelia. SO WRONG MY BRAIN ALMOST EXPLODED.

The Worst Dating Story I've Ever Heard

2010-01-17T20:58:00.002-05:00

Confession Time

2010-01-04T20:46:00.002-05:00

I know I haven't been writing much this year. Somehow near the end of 2008, I began to lose my writing mojo. It was the first time I was actively writing SOMETHING on a daily basis. This seemed to coincide with the onset of a relationship that has now ended. I was hoping my desire to write would come back, and in a mild way it has, but I have to admit that only 2 weeks ago I was thinking of officially closing down this blog for good. I thought maybe Bunniblog had run its course, and if I decided to blog again, I needed to re-envision the site and my goals. As it was Bunniblog has gone through many incarnations, originally intended just to be a way to help my friends keep up with what was going on without having to send out a thousand emails, it later became a place for me to showcase a range of different types of writing (film reviews, personal essay, literary analysis). It also allowed me to write about my frustrations with dating-from dating websites just plain old bad dates. I thought maybe why I wasn't posting on Bunniblog anymore might have to do with an identity crisis, and new blog with a clearer goal would be the best way to carry on.

And then came the most soul crushing ending to the year ever. 10 years ago when my life fell apart, one of the ways I rationalized pushing on was to think "Listen if this is worst, it can only get better, right?" Yes, a person who survived cancer and an insane father only to be dumped by her fiance two weeks after September 11th should know better than to tempt the Fates like, because just when you think you can go any lower, someone hands you a shovel. Quite simply, this year seemed hell bent on teaching me just how much worse things can get-and now I'm not 26, I'm 35. 35 and unmarried and cynical and depressed. And a lot of the not writing anymore comes from the loss of a belief I held for so very long. The belief that not only did I have something worthy to say, but that people wanted to hear it. But I lost my confidence slowly that my writing had any kind of merit, and then sank into even more despair believing even if it DID, no one wanted to read it. And then this belief spilled into my inability to connect with people.

Talking to people has always been something I excelled at. My father considered it quite a gift that I could converse enjoyably with just about anyone. As I've gotten older, this ability has faded more and more. Now I find myself contributing to conversations that seem to awkwardly stop. Thus my feelings of absolute isolation, of being so unintelligible that I'm no longer even a real person prevail.

It is for this reason I think the novel Frankenstein has such a strong resonance for me-a Creature (as he is most consistently referred to as such and never given a name by his creator Victor) is rejected by all, even his creator. They do not acknowledge any shared humanity with this "thing" even though he shows not just physical, but intellectual and ethical superiority. (If you read the book, the Creature learns languages quickly and repeated helps and saves others who respond only with the violence.) In the end, after giving up all hope of finding even one person to be his friend, he drives his creator to die and walks into the snow. (There are two different versions. One ending is more ambiguous about whether or not the Creature dies. After all, since he made of reanimated tissue and is so physically superior to human beings, there is a question about whether he CAN die and if so, how that act could be brought about. The movie Subject Two actually a really compelling modern version of the story.)

It's difficult when these moments occur to know if it's the depression speaking or the rational mind. Perhaps there isn't much of a difference.

At the moment, I'm at a crisis point. Something drastic must change because I simply can't do this for another 10 years. I'm going to start by trying to write more regularly and pulling up old work in order to get published. I also have to write on my literary essays as I can't put grad school off another year even if my GRE scores are eating with the dirigibles. Of course, I've been saying this for years so I have to find a way to make myself actually do it.

The problem is I don't like the person I have become. I've become bitter. I've always been a passionate person and that translates often into anger, but I've not been bitter. Now, I fear I'm only a few crows feet away from being a caricature of woman in a bar with a martini cursing at all these happy couples. I don't want to become this. What I want is to become confident again in my writing, I want to feel connected with people again instead of feeling like a constant outsider-the Creature sitting unseen watching the happy peasants and longing to be with them and knowing this is not at all possible.

So I will be posting my latest travelogue here. Hopefully you will read it and like it and comment on it because honestly I could use all the emotional support I can dig up and find.

Marv, Movies, and Mortification

2009-12-08T16:08:00.002-05:00

Ah we all know what's like to have an uncomfortable movie moment. You know, one of those instances when the seemingly innocuous act of seeing a movie turns into a clusterfuck of humiliation. This is one of those stories, courtesy of my father.

Place Holder for a Holiday Season than is Anything But Merry

2009-12-06T16:31:00.000-05:00

So as not to ruin anyone else's holiday, I'll just post this. Perhaps when it's all over I'll explain what's going on but for now, enjoy the bunny.

Marv and the Dead Mice

2009-11-28T22:52:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving 2009 Timelapse

2009-11-28T22:17:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving 2009 Timelapse
Originally uploaded by bobtiki

Trying to Stay Positive

2009-11-19T17:02:00.002-05:00

I'm exhausted. I'm going to go to sleep now and wake up at 1 am so I can do work including plan a class. Seriously. Well, maybe I'll stay awake until 6. I know I'm racy.

I've replaced, after a year, the blogathon panel on the top left with a widget to contribute to a friend's surrogacy fund. I'll be adding her blog to the sidebar tomorrow, so you can all (all 2 of you) stampede over her to blog and ravish her with praise and cash at any time. For now, if you would like to know more, head to her blog. Unfortunately, I'm too tired to say more than that so I'll let her speak, eloquently, for herself.

Bedward, ho!

Candy Corn Infused Vodka

2009-10-30T13:44:00.002-04:00

For those of you wondering how to make candy corn infused vodka, the recipe is simple.

1 1/2 cups vodka
1/2 candy corn

Place the candy corn and vodka in an air tight container and leave for 3 hours. After 3 hours, strain the vodka. Viola!

To serve, I recommend that you mix the vodka with a bit of OJ and a squeeze of lemon juice, shake with ice, and serve in a martini glass with a gummy tarantula or worm as garnish.

Costume Sneak Peak

2009-10-25T20:48:00.002-04:00

My Grandmother Tells a Story About a Naked Gardener

2009-10-23T10:32:00.003-04:00

So I was reading this Metafilter post about a man who was arrested for being naked in his own kitchen Apparently details are still forthcoming, but regardless it shocked me that it COULD be considered illegal to be naked in one's own home. I mean even if the guy IS a flasher, he was in his own freakin' house!

Being raised in a "medical" family (ie both parents worked in medicine as do several members of my extended family) nudity was not considered, in and of itself, sexual. I didn't understand nudity as being funny (why did anyone care?) nor do I see it as something threatening. Not that I was going to go to school naked, but certainly it was OK to be naked in a private setting. So much so that when I was very young, I often went skinny dipping in our pool as did my mother. (I know, that Mere Lapin is a racy one!) Now my house was in the middle of the forest and the only side of the house that faced the street was protected by a very high fence. Thus no one could casually spy me swimming regardless of whether I was clothed or naked.

I've continued to have a rather casual attitude towards nudity-more European than American I suppose. I do lounge in my apartment naked (not as much now that there are workmen outside my window ALL THE TIME), and it is how I prefer to sleep in the summer. I'm not trying to let you in on more than you need to know, but I think I should be OK doing that. And if someone DOES spy me naked accidentally, they should just avert their eyes and move along not call the freakin' cops even if there is a 7 year old kid in tow. It's just not something to freak out about.

If you are one of those people, DO NOT GO TO A BEACH IN EUROPE. It's rather common to see even 7 year old children stark naked, casually playing in the water. My Parisian boyfriend made fun of Americans as Puritans, and in this respect he is right. I was perfectly comfortable hanging out with topless matrons and naked kids because, again, I don't think of nudity as shameful or inherently sexual.

But all of this is aside from the point, I wanted to share with you a story my grandmother told me, which illustrates how much our attitudes have changed. Not just towards nudity but towards out neighbors, particularly when children are involved. (This whole "think of the children" cult is plain old ridiculous. I'm not going to get into it in detail, but just seeing someone naked? Not that scarring for a kid especially if the parent talks to the child about it instead of creating a media frenzy. But I digress.)

In the early 70s, a psychiatrist and his wife moved into the neighborhood where my grandmother lived. Apparently, the psychiatrist liked gardening in the nude. So every day, he would go out there naked. Now my grandmother could care less, but she was amused by let's call it the theater of neighborhood drama. The neighbors would call the cops, who would arrive, and tell him to put on clothes. He would argue for a bit and then do so. Well this played itself out every day for almost two weeks. Finally, the cops said, "Listen, we can't show up here EVERYDAY. You need to wear clothes when you garden or when you're outside your home or we'll be forced to arrest you."

The next day the psychiatrist was gardening clothed. So a week goes by, and the neighborhood finally begins to believe the reign of the naked gardener is over. They become convinced when he and his lovely wife decided to have a cocktail party to make amends for the dispute and get to know people. Imagine the horror one their faces when he opened the door to greet all of his guests in the nude!

The point was since he was IN the house, this was perfectly fine, and my grandmother thought it was AWESOMELY entertaining, which I think is the right attitude to have. If it was me, I would have laughed and said "OK where's the wine and cheese?" After that, the neighborhood arrived at a comfortable truce-inside the house he and his wife could frolic in the nude, while outside he would dress. Essentially, everybody wins.

Except now in which heaven forfend a 7 year old gaze upon a naked human being. Sheesh.

Being a Woman is NOT a "Pre-existing Condition"!

2009-10-22T10:39:00.001-04:00

or, Create a Petition

Losing My Religion

2009-10-14T22:05:00.002-04:00

Aubade

2009-10-09T23:19:00.002-04:00

My Tribute to Gourmet: Risotto with Radishes

2009-10-09T16:58:00.007-04:00

The truth is I never thought I liked risotto. My mother always ordered it, and I tasted once or twice and hated it. Now I have a thing about textures-mushy or mushy with grains in it, I don't like it. (Yet somehow I love yogurt with grape nuts. I'm just weird that way I guess.) But then a few weeks ago my mother and I were in an Italian restaurant and she ordered risotto. And it came with carrots. My mother hates carrots, and carrots weren't listed in the description of the dish, but there they were. And I LOVE carrots, so in the name of carrots I tried a bite and I realized that I do like risotto if it's al dente. Whenever I discover something I new I like (for example artichokes 2 years ago) I can almost hear "A Whole New World" playing in the background, which is odd because I've never watched Aladdin. Suddenly a whole new venue of recipes and dishes, I can see them in my head laid out on a long table with a white cloth, which makes me excited to immediately get into the kitchen and begin playing around because I've already wasted too much time thinking I didn't like this wonderful thing. Thus my risotto revelation resulted in my desire to begin making it, and just my luck the most recent issue of Gourmet included a risotto with radishes dish. I had some leftover radishes, and it seemed that Destiny was trying to tell me "It's time you make risotto."

And then I found out Gourmet was folding.

I'm going to digress for a moment about Gourmet. When I was little, I remember my mother getting Gourmet and leafing through the pages. This was back when my mother cooked, and we had family dinners every night. I knew that Gourmet was important to my mother, which is why I recall the following incident so clearly. My mother had angered me. I don't remember why, but I was mad. And being me, I decided to seek revenge, so I tore up the front page of the latest Gourmet. My mother hadn't even looked at it yet. It had a bunch of purple wet grapes on the front, I think. (It could just as easily have been blueberries.)

But my revenge was calculated. By tearing up the front page, I knew it was bad and I was interfering with her enjoyment of the magazine. However, I also understood there was just an ad on the other side of the page. I wasn't destroying anything with real content. So my revenge was calculated to be hurtful, but even I wouldn't destroy the precious contents, which were the real value of the magazine.

This is how far back my memory of Gourmet goes. In high school, when my mother had long stopped cooking and dedicated her entire caloric intake to rice cakes with peanut butter, I began to cook. Instead of showing me how to make things, she would simply tell me where to find the recipe in the recipe books. And this is how I began to teach myself to cook. I couldn't sleep at night in CT and so often I would begin making elaborate dishes at 11 only to finish cooking around 1 or 2. I would make steak au poivre, potatoes dauphinoise, or minestrone in the middle of the night. I would leave the leftovers in the refrigerator and put a note on the table so my mother would know that should she wish to eat actual food it was available.

Thus my mother got me a subscription to Gourmet, which I enjoyed throughout high school. In college, I didn't have a kitchen, but while in graduate school I discovered Epicurious. Glory be! I didn't need Gourmet anymore to get recipes from Gourmet! Until a few months ago when Gourmet sent me an offer I couldn't refuse and even though I like Epicurious there is something about getting Gourmet. Maybe it's that I remember watching my mother read it as a child. Maybe it's all the dishes I learned how to make when I was in high school. Or maybe it's just that it's one of the last great magazines. But when I found this out, in the wake of 2 of my favorite restaurants closing (We Liang Ye, which was written up by Gourmet, and Payard) I thought "This is truly the end of American Culinary culture." (I know, I know. I'm a drama queen.)

This is not to say that Gourmet didn't have bad moments or contribute to hours of my time lost to make some dish that was only so-so. I remember one dish in particular-a white bean dip that they claimed could be made in a food processor OR blender. NOT TRUE. Only Cthulhu could make this stuff in the blender and not lose his mind, but I wouldn't give up. Unfortunately, the result did not nearly warrant the hour and half of sweating, cursing, swearing, and improvising so I could serve it to my then boyfriend and my mother who were decorating the Christmas tree.

Or even more entertainingly, in the back of issue there was a list of specialty cocktails including a long island iced tea. For some reason, despite the fact that ALL the other recipes had the serving size listed under the title and before the ingredients list, this recipe had the serving size at the end. Thus everytime I would mix a long island iced tea, it wasn't until I got to the bottom of the recipe I would see "Serves 2" and realize I had to drink a double all on my own. Somehow, I never remembered this and made the mistake over and over. Still, I'm filled with nostalgia for even the more trying moments I had with Gourmet, and so I wouldn't give them up. It makes it easier for me not to give them up that most of the time I would make a recipe, realize I screwed up after the fact, and still get something delicious out of it as well as a lesson learned.

As such, I felt morally bound to make a tribute to my love of Gourmet while it still was around. And so exhausted on a Friday, I set to work in my postage stamp of a kitchen making risotto for the very first time. And let me just tell you not only was the dish MADE OF AWESOME, I even managed to make it look pretty, which I NEVER PULL OFF. So it seemed like a fitting tribute to one of my favorite periodicals ever.

If you do make this, a note. The radish salad and risotto work well on their own if you're as nervous about putting radish salad on top of the risotto as I was. You can try them separately and then try a bit together just to be sure that they work. Also I used regular chicken soup because, well, I had it and I didn't want to run out to the store again. Long story short, you can use regular chicken broth and just omit the salt later. Seriously, it'll be fine.

So in closing, thank you Gourmet for all the the articles, the food porn, the tips, the hours spent in frustrating contemplation of "how the hell did they pull this off in 35 minutes in the test kitchen?", the fantasies about owning a kitchen large enough to include some of the fabulous equipment you showcased, the recipes clipped with the best intentions of being made that week but somehow patiently waited for years before they were attempted, the "Eureka" moments when I tried a new dish that on paper seemed questionable, but on the palate were a revelation, the "crack bar" recipe (chocolate and caramel covered graham crackers) that is the hit of every party, and, most importantly, the accidental double long island iced teas. I'll never forget you...mainly because I still have a backlog of about 400 recipes to make from old issues. So you'll still be a part of my life, which is good. It's very very good.

Bed Bugs Help Me Teach How NOT to Deal With a PR Scandal

2009-09-29T16:56:00.004-04:00

Over the last few years there has been an increase in bed bugs in NYC. So far this fall not one BUT TWO colleges-John Jay and now Manhattan College- have serious bed bug problems. So now as a NYC college prof I risk getting bitten by bed bugs and potentially bringing them back to my apartment all of this in the name of trying to get my students to read a 6 page article, which they didn't do. They couldn't even bother to feign interest in it. And this wasn't 6 pages of the Lacanian literary analysis, this was 6 pages of this is how to handle a PR scandal.

What's fun is MC is handling it the wrong way, which illustrated my point to the class exactly. While they did send out an email to students, they didn't inform students about 1. what to do if they suspect they have bed bugs 2 how to prevent a bed bug infestation. Considering what I teach-the first thing I would do (after dealing with getting students into "clean" housing) would be to clarify these issues. As it was, I spent a large portion of the class discussing ways students can prevent an infestation. (I happen to know because my apartment had bed bugs when I first moved in.) With a lack of disclosure and useful information, it's not surprising that some students say "They also say that neither the building manager nor college officials are handling the situation correctly."

I would agree.

The school sends out daily emails about H1N1, but doesn't do the same for bed bugs? Not only should students receive an email but ALL STAFF-the kitchen staff, guards, receptionists,-should receive an email clearly explaining what is going ("The infestation is confined to one building off campus") and how they are coping with it ("We have moved those students to another dorm on campus while we make alternative housing arrangements"). Furthermore, they should include directives to help prevent a bed bug infestation (a special mattress cover can help reduce the likelihood of infestation as can vacuuming every three days).

Finally, because of the way the school is handling information (or not handling it) students aren't finding out from administration, they are finding out from word of mouth. Not only does this fail to instill faith that administration knows how to cope with such a situation, it also increases the potential for misinformation to be repeated as truth. We know from the game "Telephone" that even a well intentioned repetition of what one THINKS one hears can result in a horrible distortion of the original phrase. Now imagine that same game in a highly emotionally charged atmosphere and with the players who have their own agendas-emphasizing or inventing details to make the story more dramatic. Essentially by not offering clear information, the school is fostering an atmosphere where damaging "untruths" will proliferate.

And now I'm going to vacuum everything in my apartment (sigh).

Big Tatas, Fox News, and Jewish Hell

2009-09-28T18:28:00.002-04:00

Kirk Cameron, the Origin of Species, Hitler, and These Kids Today

2009-09-25T19:11:00.002-04:00

Meditations on Thomas Chatterton

2009-09-22T15:19:00.002-04:00

Two Great Things that Go Great Together

2009-09-10T18:14:00.000-04:00

My Cat, The Cockblocker

2009-09-06T23:21:00.003-04:00

Waiting for Godot at Gina La Fornarina

2009-09-06T18:05:00.004-04:00

Brief Musing in the Adjuncts "Suite"

2009-09-04T12:37:00.003-04:00

So I'm sitting at the computer going through my bazillion emails, and I happen to look at the bookcase. The first thing that catches my eye is the copy of Whitley Strieber's Communion on the shelf next to the Elements of Style and the MLA. The "library", such as it is, is supposed to be composed of books that we would actually use to teach. Is there a course about Alien Narrative that I don't know about? And if so, can I teach it? I would require District 9, ET, and Alien plus select episodes of Star Trek (the original and Next Generation) and the X-Files.

Then I notice the MLA. They only have the 4th edition even though the MLA not only put out the 7th edition over the summer, but all the English profs were informed we were to be well versed on the new edition when we returned in the Fall. Well, I would love to be, but it would help if you had a copy here for immediate reference in case I don't want to schlep it in every day what with all my other books and papers.

But this goes to my overall wonder about what has made it onto this shelf and what hasn't. Communion is there, but the latest MLA guide isn't? I'm guessing these books were just donated by profs, which means that reference books would only be donated AFTER they were no longer of use (hence the hopelessly out of date MLA). But what does this communicate to your staff? You require knowledge of a book but don't offer even minimal support to help them achieve it?

(shakes head)

But it's too lovely a day to sit here and ponder the eclectic and unfortunate nature of the "library" so I'll head out into the sun where hopefully I will not be abducted by aliens (which make me have to revisit the whole "How relevant is Communion" issue).

Incidentally when I went to the local Barnes and Noble, THEY didn't have a copy of the latest edition although there were Chicago Style Manuals lying about.

My Life Becomes the Premise of a Bad 80s Sitcom Part 1

2009-08-16T22:18:00.006-04:00

----------------
Now playing: Secretions - I Can Make You a Man (Reprise)
via FoxyTunes

The first guy I broke up with I never dated. In fact, I broke up with a guy 2 years before I even HAD a boyfriend.

When I was 16 years old, I was a regular at the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Wethersfield CT. Of course, I liked the theatrical part of it, the interaction, the glitter and the costumes. But what I really liked was feeling like I belonged because the other regulars were misfits like myself-people who didn't feel accepted. At 16, the Rocky Horror Picture Show crew was like something in a Fellini film-and I fit right in.

That isn't true.

I didn't fit in. I was queen. I wasn't just accepted-I was noticed and admired, even fawned over. At the time, I found my extreme popularity inexplicable since these were OLDER people-these were people in their 20s-independent and fully adult, while I was just barely able to drive. They were supposed to be the cool ones and I was supposed to be laboring for their approval, or so I thought.

Now, I can understand why. Most of the regulars were in their mid-twenties working, if at all, in marginal jobs barely able to eke out rent.Many of them feared the rejection of others, having been rejected not just by their peers, quite often by their own family. Thus they forged a deep bond with each other and a serious commitment to what most would consider a ridiculous and frivilous "hobby." They were passionate about developing new jokes or responses or sewing costumes and rehearsing. It was their solace-as writing is mine. The place were they felt not only comfortable, but powerful.

As far as they could tell, I led a charmed life. My parents were well off and hadn't disowned me. I went to a reputable private school. I was young, attractive, and smart. As far they could tell, there was absolutely no reason why I would fear rejection or failure. And my presence, that I had chosen to hang out with them, indicated to them the hope that perhaps not everyone outside of their little set was a complete and total asshat.

And I was hot.

I loved the attention to be fair. The boys in high school had crushes on me, but never asked me out. They would confess to me later, when we had become friends that they wanted to say something but were intimidated. "But I'm a 4 ft 6 disabled Jewish woman! How much less intimidating do you need me to be?" Of course, it was this kind of "ACT LIKE YOU GOTTA PAIR" attitude that intimidated them-and then they would chase girls who were less challenging. But the guys at RHPS weren't intimidated.

Of particular interest was Bill-the blonde blue eyed 25 year old who played Rocky. He was my type to the T-right down to the history of emotional problems, specifically anger management issues. Bill had been arrested for bar fights and had the word TEMPER tattooed on his arm.He was dangerous and forbidden. He also worked as a gravedigger-a job he was embarassed to disclose to me. Since I was popular as friend, but never had a boyfriend in school I LOVED finally having power over a man. Instead of feeling rejected or at the mercy of some boy, I was the one who was in control. I flirted with him, and after a while he asked for my phone number. We talked on the phone and talked at the theater, but Bill never so much as kissed me. Not even with a closed mouth. He never asked me out for a cup of coffee or even walked me to my car. So imagine my surprise when he introduced me to a friend as his girlfriend.

I said nothing as the following week I was going to work at a summer camp. It was an overnight camp so I wouldn't have access to a phone with any regularity. I gave him my snail mail address and hoped the problem would resolve itself before camp ended.

I received a rambling 5 page letter from him the second week of camp. Not only did the letter clearly indicate that he did want the relationship to become more physical (I remember the line to this day "I've been practicing my sensual massage technique so it will be perfect for you when you return") but also the depth of his apparently psychotic delusions about our emotional connection. He was planning a huge return party for me when I would meet his parents and he threatened that he had a big and life changing surprise waiting for me when I came home. Luckily, one of my closest childhood friends was also at camp, so we sat on my bed and discussed strategies.

I decided the best course of action was to invent a camp boyfriend. It was a perfect solution. The boyfriend could be from anywhere-Florida, Maine, California even Germany-so his absence after camp would be completely explicable. Being young, having a long distance boyfriend would be believable. All I needed was some letters, which my friend could easily write, to prove his existence.

I wrote back that I was sorry to tell him that I had met someone at camp-a boy who was disabled like myself and understood me in a way he never could. He sent a letter saying how sorry he was because he had dreams for us-living together and getting married. (Most people go on at least one date before marrying, but hey I just agreed to leaving the planet with a perfect stranger last night so hey, I guess not so crazy.) He also said he understood. Shortly after I returned, the Wethersfield theater announced they were closing down the RHPS. The last night I saw Bill, he was sad and withdrawn. He barely spoke to anyone as the rest of us hugged each other promising to keep in touch.

We never did.

The Entertaining Power of the Come On Line When Applied Properly

2009-08-16T05:20:00.002-04:00

Bad Bad Bad Bad Bad

2009-07-30T19:43:00.002-04:00

So I'm doing a thousand things on my email trying to distract myself from the barbaric depression that is at the gates and I see this quote on the top of my gmail page "Whoever is happy will make others happy too." So I give it the finger because I've spent most of the day in tears hating myself, my disability, the nurse who called about my lyme test results but DIDN"T TELL ME THE RESULTS, my mother who would do anything for her bf but can't be bothered to hold my hand through a blood test, etc. This whole vacation has made me farther away from people. I thought the disability was something I could overcome, I thought I could use the shared range of human emotion to bridge it, no more. I don't write not because I have nothing to say but because I think I have no one to say it to, no one who understands, or if they did they wouldn't want to admit it.

As I get older no children, no husband, no ability to walk upstairs, no bestselling novel-and apparently no ability to connect to all you healthy folk who walk around without thinking about it, wiggle your toes, feel the sand under your feet, run up flights of stairs, have kids, relationships, people who want to live with you.

So I gave the finger to this optomistic saying and then I realize it's Anne Frank. Yep I gave the finger to Anne Frank.

I'm the one who needs to go, not her.

Stuck in Cape Cod

2009-07-30T16:31:00.002-04:00

Don't have much time to write as I've borrowed a computer while I attempt to untie the gordian knot which is the how exactly do I get back to NYC since the bolt bus for tomorrow is sold out. I'm awaiting my host to discuss options. Details will emerge.

This has been a miserable, miserable week.

Well, not THAT miserable, but fairly miserable on and off. I would say the more appropriate term would be alienating.

And now I'm stuck here.

Not that I want to go home, you see, but all the options present problems. I could take the Acela train from Boston (which is just as fast as a bus-no joke) or for a bit more I could stay in a hotel in Boston for the night, maybe go to the aquarium, and take the bus on Saturday-or I could rent a hotel room in Ptown, change my ferry tickets, and then take the bus home all on Saturday.

Of course if my host ever arrives it would make figuring this out alot easier, but as usual it seems when I need people the most they are not around.

Interesting how that works.

Oh here they are now. Wish me luck.

Every Day is Brighter with Gordon Ramsay

2009-07-14T18:25:00.006-04:00

Anybody who knows me know I LOVE me some Gordon Ramsay. I mean love. There is nothing I would deny Gordon. He is welcome to my pots, pans, spices,lingerie collection, and bed whenever he wants. (Seriously, have you SEEN this man? Woof!)

I could spend all day on why I love him-from the fact that he is the one who inspired me to clean out my fridge, his books dominate my recipe book shelf, both of us are intense devotees to "tough love" as well as just rewards, we both love Paris , or maybe it's just the way he says "Fer fuck's sake!"

I love me some Gordon Ramsay and just when I thought I couldn't love him more, well it turns out I can.

Sunday I spent a lovely afternoon running around the Village including purchasing some yarn for my FIRST lace project (wish me luck). On my way from the yarn store to Doc Holliday's I happened to see a couple holding hands. Now just the week before this would have sent me into a tailspin-blubbering that no one would ever love me and all the effort I've put into living has been wasted. But today-whether it was the sun or my bag filled with fingerling yarn or just that they were happy without being a fucking e-harmony commercial (you couples on the UES who want to run me over you're so happy you can't let go of each other's hands AND have to take up the entire sidewalk YOU are who I am talking about)-I smiled at them. The girl, even though she must have been about late 20s, had a pirate Jenny thing going on with thigh high striped tights and a black frilly skirt. Her boyfriend was older and more "goth-y" black fingernail polish, long dyed black hair free, a black t, black leather pants, black slightly platformed boots. They walked happily hand in hand and I smiled, and remembered what I was like when I was in college when I loved EVERYONE-the strangeness, even the mean-ness-of people. Hard to believe, but I just loved people. And in that moment, I had that college girl back again grinning in the sun.

Before I walked into Doc Holliday's, I stopped into a hat store, which had some BEAUTIFUL hats and I was sorely tempted. Then I remembered that Enchantments, a magic store (a REAL magic store, not rabbit out of the hat magic store) was around the corner. Enchantments has been in NYC as long as I have, which is saying something. I buy all my incense there because it's hand blended, but also because I studied the "black arts" for a bit.1 I love these stores. They remind me of high school when I used to carry a pouch of crystals, wrap my tarot cards in a purple scarf, and wear hand blended oils to bring the love of a certain boy (which it NEVER did). I read books on magic from the popular (To Ride a Silver Broomstick) to the more obscure (On Psychic Self Defense and 777)2

While in Enchantments, I walked to the back where they had a range of herbs and other, uh, things, in jars. If you are a real practitioner (as I once was), you often burn a specific blend of herbs for a particular spell or ritual. The jars in the back are kind of like the magic version of the candy in Dylan's Candy Bar. You can put together your own mix for your ritual rather than relying on whatever blend yahoo has decided you should burn.

I was eyeing the jars when I noticed the happy goth couple was here too. The boyfriend picked up a jar, opened it, and inhaled. I couldn't see what it was till he tipped it towards his girlfriend's nose. "Here, smell," he said. She stuck her nose in and inhaled. "What is that?" she asked. "It's star anise," he replied, "Gordon Ramsay uses this to cook ALL THE TIME!" I couldn't hold back. I looked at him and said "My God, you love Gordon Ramsay?!" "Of course! He was cooking lamb today!" We chatted for a few minutes about the F word, raising veal and turkeys, and recipe challenges before they walked back onto the sidewalk (the store was SWELTERING). I purchased some incense and went back into the bright bright sunshine thinking that living in NYC isn't really as bad as I thought it was just a week ago.

I meant to write about this sooner, but I knew I had to post this story when I saw this article about how Gordon's "colorful" ads (and by the way if you haven't seen this spoof, it's fabu) have improved traffic for a "hospitality" job site. The article seems to imply this is surprising because Gordon is so "abrasive". THE GUY HAS 3 TV SHOWS fer fuck's sake! OF COURSE it helped because if an English professor and a goth guy can both share a moment over star anise and cooking lamb because he must be doing SOMETHING right.

So if you have a free moment, don't DO NOT watch Hell's Kitchen, watch the F Word or go to i-Tunes and catch one of his recipe podcasts. Trust me, every day with Gordon is a good day for me.

1While it may not seem appropriate to write about it here, the reason I got into reading about witchcraft was my father. I don't know why, but when I was very young, like 8 and 9, he started bringing me home antique books on the practice of magic from the outright ludicrous (one book offered a love spell that involved the menstrual blood of a goose, if you can imagine such a thing) to the historical (one book offered a history of the Knights Templar among other things). Thus, over time, I managed learn a great deal about the various practices and history of the "black arts." While I no longer practice, I often think of those days with great nostalgia. Thus going to Enchantments bring back some of those happy days when I would go to magic stores to get crystals, incense, or candles for a particular spell.

2 These books were far harder to get in my day. I was lucky there were so many antique book stores around and living in a college town right after the 70s helped I'm sure.

Les Chouquettes

2009-07-09T22:05:00.005-04:00

If you are anything like me, and I really hope you aren't for your own sake, you go on these obsessive little tangents. Early in my life these were reading obsessions, all the plays of George Bernard Shaw's plays AND THEIR INTRODUCTIONS (Oh.The. Pain). The entire Grimm's Fairytales. Everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote. Now my obsessions are more varied-knitting socks, crocheting a cthulhu bathmitt, reaching level 60 at WoW, and baking. Who can say what captures my fevered brain's attention, but once the fever catches I am on, for all intensive purposes, a maniacal obsession of epic proportions to achieve my goal. For example when I came across David Lebovitz's blog, I immediately went to Kitchen Arts and Letters and bought the Sweet Life in Paris. As someone who loves French cooking, who longs to be an expatriot, AND who has the roughest possible draft of a Parisian travelogue, I justified this purchase as "research." David's style is easy so I devoured the book in hours.

Early on in the book I became obsessed with a recipe called Chouquettes Aux Pepites de Chocolate or "Cream Puffs with Chocolate Chips." Part of what immediately filled me with excitement was due to the simplicity of the recipe, I had all the ingredients save ONE. David was quite adamant that the chouquettes had to be topped with "Pearl sugar-large, white irregularly chaped chunks of sugar (roughly the size of small peas)" which he claimed was available from King Arthur Flour.

Indeed it was, but it would cost me about ten bucks to get 2 ounces of the stuff and while I was insanely obsessed, well, I was hesitant to fork over the cash. Besides, this is freakin' NYC right? I should be able to get "pearl sugar."

Sure.

Williams Sonoma-they have pink mexican crystal salt, but no pearl sugar. Neither does Eli's. Broadway Panhandler? When I called, they didn't even KNOW what I was talking about. Luckily, I discovered another blogger was just as obsessed as I was and she was NYC based! Smitten Kitchen wrote a post about Chouquettes partially inspired by David, and at the end of the post she let me know that the NY Cake and Bake store (the Sacre Couer of Cake Baking supplies to my heart) So off I went to NY Cake and Bake, and not only did I discover pearl sugar, but I discovered it in several colors so I purchased it in plain, hot pink, and rainbow. The colors themselves would make me happy.

Which is good, because as I detailed, despite my slavish attention to detail my chouquettes turned into "fluffy chocolate chip cookies"! Sure, people still thought them delish, but I was crushed. AND I had wasted some seriously high quality butter.

So I did what any brilliant person does when an utterly inexplicable failure hits them....Well after the crying and drinking of vodka. I called someone knows better than I do.

Much like Socrates, my so called intelligence rests mainly on my knowing who to call about what. I've got a great rolodex-need to know about orthopedic pediatric podiatry? a good brunch place in New Orleans? the literary term for a being who travels between different realms of existence? baudrilliard's theory on sign and simulacra? when blood oranges are in season? Give me a minute and I'll get you the answer.

So I emailed my good friend Bakerina. I described my problem in detail and asked for her help and despite the fact that she is law school, she sent me back a page and a half long detailed analysis. After reading the comments at Smitten's blog, I saw many people had similar issues with the recipe (even Smitten's dough was a bit "runny"). And let me tell you Bakerina's corrections fixed my chouquettes so that they were they HIT of my mother's asshat boyfriend's daugher's birthday. Did you get that? My mother's bf, who I hate, has a daughter, who I like. For her birthday, I made the chouquettes. This was a grand success because 1 it was one of the few dishes asshat doesn't KNOW how to make so he couldn't talk about how he would make them better (he thinks himself an expert in the kitchen even though he over salted the pesto until it was inedible this weekend) 2 as the ex husband of a Parisian he prides himself on French cooking so a second HAHA in my court. And finally, I was glad the daughter liked her "present" which were tasty indeed and every girl should have decadent Parisian fresh baked goodness on her 21st birthday. If only I had an appropriately hot garcon on hand to present them to her, it would have been the perfect present.

Unfortunately, I did not think to get pictures of the second set of chouquettes (only the failed ones) so I'll just have to make more (sigh) and post them here.

Still I thought I would share with you David's recipe with Bakerina's corrections so if you get filled with my mania you will not have to waste the quality butter that I did on the first batch. I've added Bakerina's corrections in purple. I recommend with ever fiber of my being that you pay close attention to her corrections.

Chouquettes Aux Pepits de Chocolate

Makes about 25 Puffs

1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
2 teaspoons sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
1 cup flour
4 large eggs at room temperature
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup pearl sugar

1. Position a rack in the upper third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

2. While David instructs the reader to heat the water, salt, sugar, and butter-Bakerina insists that you BOIL them. According to her, "this is a critical difference. If you cook till the butter is melted, your sugar will probably be dissolved, but it also might not be. When you cook to boiling, there's no doubt about it."

3. At this point David instructs the reader to remove the mixture from the heat and add the flour. Bakerina again adds critical information, "Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the flour to combine, AND put it *back* on the oven, and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat for four minutes. The goal is not just to have it pull away from the sides of the pan, but also to coat the pan a little bit on the bottom. Your flour/liquid mix is now called 'panade' in French, and this step is known as roasting the panade."

4. Allow dough to cool for two minutes, then briskly beat in the eggs, one at a time, until smooth and shiny.

Again, a direction that SEEMS simple enough, but benefits from Bakerina's more exacting eye.

"David tells you to beat in the eggs, one at a time, until the dough is smooth and shiny. The thing is, dough is a funny beast, and sometimes 'smooth and shiny' isn't enough, and sometimes you need more or less egg depending on the size of the eggs you are using. So we were told that whenever we were presented with a choux recipe, to hold back one egg in the beating, then do a pinch test, pulling off a piece of dough with my thumb and forefinger, then moving my fingers apart. If the dough stretches between them, it's done. If the dough breaks into clumps, you need the other egg. Beat it in well. Do another pinch test if you want, but that should do it."

(This is precisely where my chouquettes went wrong so if you ignore ALL of the other advice, I would definitely do the pinch test.)

OK now the recipe pans out as David writes it:

"Using two spoons, scoop up a mound of dough with one spoon roughly the size of a walnut and scrape it off with the other spoon onto the baking sheet." ( I pulled this off with one spoon, but my "mounds" weren't very delicate or rounded.) "Place the mounds evenly-spaced apart on the baking sheet. Press coarse sugar crystals and chocolate chips over the top and sides of each mound. Use a lot. Once the puffs expand rise, you'll appreciate the extra effort (and sugar.)

Bake the cream puffs for 35 minutes, or until puffed and well-browned.

(If you want to make them crispier, you can poke a hole in the side with a knife after you take So them out of the oven to let the steam escape.)"

So there you have it. While I thought them a delicious dessert, the chocolate reminded me of pain au chocolat and so they might be just the things for a decadent brunch with some cafe au lait served in a big bowl!

This entire recipe and the resulting debacle and success reminded me that Julie Powell was utterly brilliant in her assertion that there is a difference between EASY and SIMPLE. Chouquettes are SIMPLE, but EASY-but they are WORTH IT.

Trust me and enjoy!

First Vlogging Attempt Courtesy of NYU Bureaucracy

2009-07-08T18:08:00.003-04:00

Rise and Fall

2009-06-22T23:06:00.003-04:00

So somehow I ended up at David Lebovitz's blog and specifically his post about Chouquettes. Being me, which is to say obsessive, I was seized with an absolutely MANIA for making these. I had already made pate a choux a few weeks ago for gougeres, so I was confident and familiar that I could master this recipe.

One of the major problems was finding pearl AKA crystal sugar-large coarse sugar crystals (not the same as "sanding sugar" which is often colored and used to decorate sugar cookies in my grandmother's house). I went to William Sonoma and Eli's with no success. After that I called Broadway Panhandler and the person who picked up the phone responded to my inquiry with an uninspiring "I guess."

Luckily Smitten of Smitten Kitchen was as obsessed as I was and discovered that NY Cake and Bake carries "pearl" sugar. Today I went there having never been. I was immediately filled with wonder and glee. Here was not only pearl sugar available in "plain" and in colors; rainbow of gel food colorings as well as edible glitter; sacks of flavored pastry fillings, tubs filled with chocolate discs for candy making, an array of candy molds, cookie cutters, and cake pans; wedding cake toppers of various ethnicities; cake and cupcake stands; ready to cut colored fondant; edible cake decorations in every type of flower; dolphin, halloween, and star and moon "jimmies" and...well anything and everything you could ever possibly want to make the dreamiest cakes, cupcakes, cookies and chouquettes.

I restrained myself somewhat. I bought 3 containers of pearl sugar(plain, hot pink, and rainbow).2 gel food colorings (electric blue and regal purple), and 2 cookie cutters (a copper Fleur de Lis and a little bunny).

I left the store smiling feeling that with such a store I could make any type of pastry I could imagine. Once home I set to work confident that soon I would be eating this pastry that had haunted me for a week.

The dough ended up runny, closer to cookie dough. So much so that when I put it on the sheet it spread out. I was nervous, but I had followed the recipe with slavish devotion to detail (unlike my first attempt at flourless chocolate cake, which I screwed up twice, but turned out perfectly). What came out of my oven were essentially big sugar topped chocolate chip cookies. I reviewed the recipe-no error. So I added more flour to the second batch till the dough was stiff. This time the puffs failed to rise at all and didn't even cook through.

So here I am feeling defeated. Sigh. I feel defeated alot lately, which is why I don't write that often. I've even stopped carrying around my writer's notebook. All the news I get these days pretty much sucks so hiding the energy to write is scarce. I direct it now into knitting, which even when I fubar results in a somewhat wearable pair of socks.

So like the chouquettes I fail to rise to the occasion. Still I'm not easily defeated. I've signed up for a class at NYU so I can have a recent recommendation from a Prof since most of my profs from grad either no longer remember me (it was a decade ago) or have retired and don't bother with such things anymore. And Thursday I'm going to try the chouquette again after reading some trouble shooting tips from Smitten.

A Meditation on Marginalia

2009-06-14T20:20:00.003-04:00

Twice this week I've been reading (The Flaneur if you must know) and been approached by strangers curious what I was reading that I made notations in the margins. They were of the opinion that if I was reading a book AND making notes it must be IMPORTANT. They confusion grew when they discovered that I was reading for pleasure. I generally read with a pencil in my hand (or a pen w/ post it notes if it's a book I truly love) regardless of whether the book is for a class I'm teaching or a novel I'm enjoying. This habit was reinforced by graduate school, but it interests me that so few people understand WHY I would write notes in a book that I am reading for pleasure.

Part of it goes to my attitude towards reading, which is that it is NOT a solitary pursuit, it's actually a conversation between the reader and the author. Reading itself is a CONSTRUCTIVE act, not passive like watching TV. While reading, even the most craptacular hackneyed romance novel ever, the reader must take the words on the page and create a mental image. These words that describe characters and action can become so influential, as a result of this collaboration, that readers will sometimes react as if the fate of the character has befallen a close friend or a real person. The clearest example of this is the Sherlock Holmes museum in London, which is supposed to be his house even though he was the fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Film versions of books often fail to entertain those who have read the book first because the reader has imagined the scenarios and characters using their own biases and tastes, thus the invention is uniquely pleasing to them. A film, on the other hand, while created by hundreds of people-is a more general vision, trying to please a wide variety of tastes without the benefit of being customizable.

A movie, however, demands attention for about 2 hours, a book may require not only far more time, but also more involvement by the reader depending on the difficulty and sophistication of the text. Some books absolutely require multiple rereads or even sentences to be read again and again. A friend of mine felt this way about the work of Jacques Lacan. Thomas Mann claimed his 700 page novel about a tubercular colony, Magic Mountain, should be read twice. Once to get the general plot, and the second time to appreciate its nuances. As a professor, I often have to read the same books over and over again-thus I've read some works like the Inferno, the Iliad, the Odessey, and Antigone so many times I've lost count. Even other professors have remarked on why I would take the time to reread these works each time I taught them instead of just skimming notes. I did it, mainly, because each time I read these works I experienced them differently-gained new insights or changed previously held theories. If I simply skimmed my notes, my understanding of the texts would remain static.

So considering the personal and yet collaborative nature of reading, marginalia seems like a natural outgrowth. When people borrow my books, they often remark on the entertaining nature of the marginalia even though I never intended for others to read it. For me, there is something amusing about reading my own marginalia to see how my opinion has evolved over time. Some of my books have several sets of notes taken in different ink (most notably Lolita, which is a book that DEMANDS more than one read) which allows me to see and understand how my ability to interpret and analyze the literature has changed over time. Some of my books bear marginalia from a high school age Bunni, which is both embarassing and mildly endearing. But it seems clear that the idea of reading and writing being linked developed in me quite early.

So I'm a bit perplexed by this surprise by marginalia. Part of what shocks me is considering how interactive writing on the internet is-facebook statuses, tweets, and blog posts can all receive comments-that this passion for commenting hasn't carried over to printed texts . In fact, a book, Zero Comments , proclaims blogs are "driven by an in-crowd dynamic in which social ranking is a primary concern. The lowest rung of the new Internet hierarchy are those blogs and sites that receive no user feedback or 'zero comments'." (Making this blog lowman on the totem pole (sniffle). Since written feedback is considered so key to these social sites, why isn't reading a book considered as interactive as a facebook status?

The key difference is that while I can write what I like in a book, I do so without the expectation that anyone will read it. In fact, the intended audience of my marginalia is me-whether it's notes for a future a lecture or the title of a poem I will to research in more detail. The intended audience for comments on facebook and twitter is the whole online community. Thus the real surprise, or lack of understanding, comes from people unable to understand the effort of writing comments that aren't intended to garner praise, attention, or a response. The idea that these comments are for me (and my students often respond this way when they see me reading with a pencil in hand) is "What's the point?" Of course, to me, I can't quite wrap my head around the question well enough to answer it. On the surface there might not be a point. I may never read the book again. (I do have quite a few well annotated books that I have not reread...yet.) But I don't consider the time I took to write the comments wasted. Partially because the comments may have helped me develop my thoughts more coherently, but mainly because one of the chief joys of reading is feeling in communion with the author. The comments are the outgrowth of that collaboration.

It saddens me that so few people write marginalia. Growing up I lived by a Paperback Trader (it was literally up the hill from my house so we walked there often in the summer). I love owning previously owned books, a book with its own unique history, but it's always a delight to find something left behind by the previous owner(s)-a ticket stub, a news article, a postcard used as a bookmark. Even more interesting are their marginalia, even if it's in such abbreviated short hand that it makes no sense. I don't know why it intrigues me, but it's lovely to have some sort of connection with the previous owner. A link between the two of us who have both shared this physical book even though our experiences of it may be radically different. And, as a result, I miss the Paperback Trader and the days when I used to prowl the bins outside of the Strand for hidden treasures.

On one level, I fear the day of Paperback Traders has gone (the one by my house went out of business despite the fact that it was located ACROSS THE STREET FROM UCONN CAMPUS and had a wide selection of cheap textbooks) as has marginalia. Still, I shall continue to sit in the park, on the bus, and, of course, in bars-pencil in hand scribbling a response that no one but myself could be interested in.

Did You Ever?

2009-05-18T00:51:00.002-04:00

I was just on the phone talking to a friend of mine, and I heard myself say "I'm 34 years old with no children and no boyfriend." I was actually talking about a legal situation, but the moment I said it, the truth of the situation hit me. And all I could think of was "I started out so well."

Actually, I didn't. I started out life about to die, and then serious disabled, and then about to die a few more times. I fought my way back from that and THEN I started doing well. But now, again, I'm failing.

At moments like this I remember what the late Christina Middlebrook said about having cancer, "You want the world to make exceptions. It doesn't."

A writer like C.S. Lewis would tell me to be thankful, as every moment since I was 6 months old, no matter how painful, has been a gift.

It's hard to see it that way when I see people everyday who are far more gifted than I and have no awareness of it, no idea what it would mean to me to be able to easily walk up a flight of stairs or feel warm sand beneath my feet, nevermind what it would be to actually be able to trust someone to take care of me when I needed them.

This is what life is like without a net, I suppose.

Time for another trip to Paris.

Advice to College Students Considering Grade Grubbing

2009-05-14T13:33:00.004-04:00

I'm about to submit my second set of final grades. Already I've gotten emails about these grades-complaining, cajoling, even pleading-for better grades. And these emails are one of the worst parts of being a professor.

Now, let me make this clear. I've made mistake calculating grades. The general grading policy of the universities I work for stipulate that I have to submit final grades within 48 hours of giving the exam. Since I teach writing courses, it takes time to evaluate an exam. Thus, after hours and hours of reading exams, I have to sit down with a calculator and figure out what all these numbers mean. Even under the BEST of circumstances I'm not good with basic math, but when I'm tired, stressed, and rushed-well-occasionally I make mistakes.

I'm not complaining about when a student brings a legitimate issue to my attention. When students bring these errors to my attention, I apologize and correct them.

In the last 3 years, I've made 2 calculation errors and corrected both.

The majority of emails I receive are asking me to change final grades for any variety of reasons including that the grade doesn't reflect the "effort" the student put in.

If you are such a student, consider the following points before you grade grub:

1. Grades, unfortunately, do not measure effort. I make myself very available during office hours to work with students who are struggling with the material, but at the end of the day I have to grade based on the criteria I set out. Now, if you ARE struggling with the material, seek help DURING the semester. Most universities have oodles of free support, from tutors and group tutorials to writing centers, all designed to aid students achieve the grades they want.

Furthermore, most professors are required to hold office hours-USE THEM. I have to sit in my office even if not a single student shows up. Why not take advantage of the opportunity?

2. If there "family issues" during the semester (like emergencies or illnesses), keep your professors informed. Don't just spring it on them after they submit grades. If I know about your difficulties during the semester, I'm more than willing to work with you-give you extensions, cover lecture materials, etc-but suddenly informing me AFTER the semester seems, unfortunately, like you are trying to exploit your hardship in order to get a better grade.

3.Grades are not about feelings-mine or yours. The most common grade grubbing trope is "I don't FEEL like I deserve X grade." As I said before, grades measure your achievement against an objective set of criteria. I may like you as a student, but if your paper or assignment doesn't make the minimum set of requirements, I'll fail you. I may not LIKE failing you, but I'll do it. You may not LIKE failing, but that doesn't make the assessment invalid.

If you can point to specific indicators that the grade is WRONG (ie I miscalculated), then that is a valid objection. Just not liking the grade you received doesn't convince me that I made a mistake.

If you still decide to go ahead and grade grub, take the following advice:

1. PROOFREAD. This is ESPECIALLY true if you are writing an email to an English professor. I can't tell you how PAINFUL some of these emails are. From example a recent email posed this question "So can you the reason?" A large SECTION of that question is missing, which if the student hadn't taken more time to proofread, he/she would have noticed (I hope). These emails, quite honestly, are an INSULT to me and unlikely to persuade me. If you really want to convince me, show me what you have learned.

2. BE POLITE! You are asking me to do you a favor. As such, you should open your email with a greeting and a pleasantry (i.e. Hello Prof. X, How are doing?) Don't just launch into your request.

3.Be prepared to hear "No" While I am generally polite when I respond to a student's request, I'm often SERIOUSLY annoyed. Some professors, after years of coping, are no longer as kind as I am. As a result, you should be emotionally prepared to get an email like the ones my colleague pens in which he openly tells students their requests are INSULTING TO HIM.

Honestly, we DREAD getting grade grubbing emails. So just be aware of that before you decide to send that email.

A Walk in the Park

2009-05-07T20:37:00.003-04:00

In February, a very good friend of mine shared with me some rather dire health news. Growing up as I did in a family of health professionals, and with my own health crises, I have "the burden of knowledge." While a regular patient goes into surgery believing that the surgeon had a fabulous night of sleep, awoke feeling refreshed and happy-I knew that my father usually went into the OR hungover with pieces of toilet paper stuck to his face because he cut himself shaving. Not only do I know the truth about doctors and nurses (they are actually people, who despite their professionalism, make mistakes) I also know the truth about diseases. I know of a 34 healthy man who broke his leg playing soccer with his son and discovered that he was literally filled with cancer. He was dead within the month. I also know of someone who was told he had six months to live thanks to an aggressive terminal cancer. Six years later, he's not only alive, but writing, taking photographs, and driving his friends pleasantly crazy.

When X* told me that she had cancer, I hoped that she would come through it quickly, but I knew that even the best case scenario would be devastating and painful. And while I didn't want to think about the worst case scenario, I couldn't help fearing the worst case scenario-her death. For a young woman, I've had far too many friends die (cancer, diabetes, AIDs, suicide-a whole unfortunate range).

It turns out I feared the same thing she did, that she was dying. And during the following couple of months I sent her emails to let her know I thought of her, but not wanting to be a burden. I waited, hoping, to hear back good news.

And now the good news is here. I sat with her today, and she is just as beautiful and vibrant as she was befire, only more so, as I knew how much she had gone through to get here. We chatted about her health issues, and while it pained me to hear her describe the insensitivity of others, most egregiously some doctors, it was wonderful to just be with her and see her smile. And while it hurt me to hear her talk about how she thought she was going to die for the last 6 months, I was glad to know that period is OVER. She concluded her visit by saying soon we would take walks in the park together. I do so look forward to walking with her, enjoying the summer sun, and talking about all the wonder that still exists in the world-and all the more so because she is still so much in it.

*Out of concern for her, I will not even give her a nickname to protect her privacy.

A Word of Advice

2009-05-06T12:57:00.004-04:00

Being a writer who uses her personal life for material, I often run the risk of offending people, particularly people I know or have known in real life. In the past, I've refrained from posting material here to protect the interests of others. Unfortunately,when I have, the results of have been messy. So now, consequences be damned, I write what I want. As I said, this may be painful for others, but my closest friends accept and understand this fact. I am, and always will be, a writer first.

If you find the material here hurtful and offensive, then you should go elsewhere. The blogosphere is filled with brilliant writers, and my side bar is filled with nifty places to go visit. It is not my intention to cause pain, but the chief purpose of this blog is to be an outlet not just for my creative work, but also for my feelings. If you find yourself being hurt or insulted, then it is your responsibility to protect your own sensibilities and find another site you enjoy.

For those of you who continue to enjoy and support this blog, thank you and I hope you will be pleased to note that I intend to resume posting on a more regular basis. My next series of posts will be about my trip to NOLA as I know how popular my travelogues are.

Now, this post is entirely too serious so here is a picture of the margarita I enjoyed at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville in NOLA. I post it, belatedly, in honor of Cinco de Mayo! Hope you all enjoyed some quality tequila.

NNNNYYYYYYAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

2009-03-03T14:01:00.004-05:00

So aside from an enjoyable 3 am jaunt in the snow, I spent the majority of the weekend on the couch evaluating student paper proposals. And when I say evaluating, I mean wondering how I can spend an entire class lecturing about an assignment, hand them a template WITH directions, which I reviewed and get so many assignments that don't bear the SLIGHTEST resemblance to what I asked for. Apparently, my students, in their infinite wisdom, have decided it's easier to ignore me in class, not read the homework, do the assignment based on whatever garbled information happens to be flitting around in that large echoing basin on the top of their necks, and then rewrite the whole damn thing because IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE TO WHAT I ASKED FOR!

Ahem.

So now I have to don my cowl and fetch my scythe and EXPLAIN how it behooves them to get it RIGHT the FIRST TIME AROUND.

Snow in NYC

2009-03-02T02:31:00.003-05:00

There's finally a real snow fall in NYC. I just got back from walking in it. My walk was a bit short as it is 2 am, but what I love about heavy snows in NYC is that you have the streets all to yourself. Normally, walking is a drag for me-dodging mothers with SUV sized strollers, being run off the sidewalk by couples who can't walk single file for a moment, hoping my legs won't get too tired before I reach my destination-but I love to walk in the snow. In NYC, snow means the streets are empty. On my walk, I only saw about 4 people in my 25 minute stroll. I wish it wasn't so late, or I would have taken a proper stroll, but as it was I enjoyed the beautiful white quiet.

When I was a baby, my parents used to put me in the carrier and take me cross country skiing. Apparently, it always put me to sleep. I still find the snow soothing and calming.

There's a part of me that wants to go back into it. Tomorrow the sidewalks will be salted and shoveled. I won't have the satisfaction of crunching through layers of snow. There will be people rushing to work. Still, hopefully there will be snow, when I wake up. If so, I'll go to Central Park and enjoy. Perhaps I'll even make another snowbunny!

Salt + Old Wound

2009-02-23T16:33:00.004-05:00

Several years ago, I was friends with an older man. I referred to him here as Notorious B.I.G. He was actually the father of one of my favorite bartenders. Anyway, one night at the bar I met Notorious B.I.G., and we got to talking about Richard the Third. He was apparently so impressed that he talked about me to his son often.

To make a long story short, B.I.G. and I became friends. We would often have dinner together at the place on the corner and discuss politics, history, the media, and other ideas. It was invigorating to actually be able to talk to someone who could thoughtfully discuss these issues and over time I became attracted to him. It was truly an intellectual attraction. I enjoyed being able to talk to him and be with him. He made me feel less alone.

Anyway, we were friends for about 2 years. During part of this time, I was seeing someone. Still, I was fairly clear about my attraction to B.I.G. My friend, while he acknowledged being attracted, said there was no point because 1 he was too old for me and 2 he didn't have time for a girlfriend. The idiot who I was dating broke up with me right before thanksgiving meaning that I had to run the gauntlet holidays to commit suicide by single. I was truly heartbroken and B.I.G. knew that I was becoming very depressed.

Now, admittedly here's where things get bad. Close to my birthday, B.I.G. called me to have dinner with him. I was having drinks with a female friend when he called. I explained I was with a friend, and he said to bring her along.

So what happened next? B.I.G. proceeded to hit on her in front of me by talking to her about how concerned he was about my mental wellbeing as if I wasn't there. So there I am at a table-and he's using my depression to hit on her while acting in a way that would only aggravate my feelings of worthlessness. I decided to go home. I mean, I could at least protect my own feelings, as he didn't seem to have any interest in doing so.

The next day my female friend told me that she agreed to go dinner with him. They became a serious item, and I stopped speaking to both of them. I stopped speaking to him because I didn't want to be friends with a guy who cared so little about protecting my feelings. I communicated with her in a distant way for awhile until it became clear that I couldn't be friends with her if I wasn't going to be friends with him.

Now ALL of this happened 2 years ago. I see them, as all of us live in the same hood, but I've never spoken or even waved at them in all that time. As I said, B.I.G. and I used to hang at the same resto all the time. There were other regulars, including one with whom I still see there and sometimes chat with. He knows all the parties involved, but not what happened really.

Last night, the reg and I happen to being chatting and he tells me that he has spoken to BIG about me. BIG claims he wants to be friends with me again. I keep saying that I'm not interested, but the reg, not knowing the whole story, keeps pushing the issue. Apparently, BIG deeply misses me.

Who wouldn't?

In college, they called me the boomerang. Even when men left, they would come back-somewhere between 3 days and 2 years later. I'm a rare person. Sometimes, it takes a while for a man to figure that out, but he eventually does and comes back.

Me? I'm rarely, if ever, interested.

So this little episode has the effect of opening up an old wound just to pour salt on it.

I'm still so pissed about it I decided to write the following letter to him as I no longer have any of his contact info.

BIG-

Last night ***, one of the regulars from ********, told me that you had brought up my name and said you would like to be friends with me again. Now this disturbs me for a few reasons. One, if you would like to be friends with me, you should bring it up with directly me and not involve other people. I don't like having to defend my choices esp. to those not in the know about what happened. I'm sending this as a letter because I value privacy and don't wish to speak through third parties.

Two, I think I've made my stance perfectly clear. I was very hurt by your behavior several years ago and don't wish to be friends with someone who cares so little about protecting my feelings. Nothing has occurred to change my mind about the validity of that decision.

Finally, I long ago made my peace with what happened. I don't want to revisit it, and this whole episode has been akin to opening an old wound just to pour salt on it.

If you ever valued my friendship, leave me alone and don't talk about me with ***.

Bunni

So what do you think blogosphere?

Anti-Valentine's Day Redux: Surely Darius the Great Would Sympathize

2009-02-13T18:00:00.000-05:00

----------------
Now playing: Bobby Darin - Down With Love
via FoxyTunes

I'm tired, sick, and pissy. Here is a historic peek at how to do, or not do, V-day Bunni-style.

From 2007: Dating Should Never be Like Filing Your Taxes

I know in the past here we have kidded around with having a dating Bunni application (which I think I need to reinstate including such questions as "What would most effectively describe your attitude towards watching a film with subtitles? A. That's OK as long as there is some hot sex scene during which I can rest my brain B Movies are supposed to be light entertainment, not a reading comprehension quiz C Uh, you think I can read? Wow, that's cool.") I have received courtesy of MySpace a Valentine Application which I have been requested to fill out.

I dunno, but to me it seems like something only slightly LESS exciting than filing my taxes. My personal favorite question, "Have you ever broken my heart?" Um, well if you didn't notice, probably not. I have decided to "make my own" Valentine Application. Feel free to have fun with the format.

This is the " Valentine Application."

Everyone knows there's at least one person on myspace that you want to be your Valentine. Here's the application for that special someone. Let's see who replies back with the following filled out.

Area 1:
Please provide positive answers.
Name:
Age:
Phone:
Height:
Do you Drive:
State You Live In:
May I Call You:
Single or Taken:
Would You Date Me:
Kiss On First Date:
Will You Send This Back To Me?:

Area 2:
What would you do if I...
I made a move on u:
I kissed you:
I lived next door to you:
I started smoking:
I asked you on a date:
I was hospitalized:
I ran away from home:
I got into a fight and you weren't there?
I asked u out?

Area 3:
What do you think about my...
Personality:
Eyes:
Hair:
Body:

Area 4:
Have you ever....
Lied to make me feel better?
Wanted to kiss me?
Wanted to kill me?
Broke my heart?
Kept something important from me?

Area 5:
"X" marks the spot
[ ]Kiss me..
[ ]Hug me..
[ ]Date me..
[ ]grab my ass..
[ ]Kill me..
[ ]fuck me ...
[ ]Love me..
[ ]Hate me..
[ ]Hold me..
[ ]Lie to me..
[ ]Hurt me..
[ ]Sing with me..
[ ]Dance with me..
[ ]Grind with me..
[ ]Cuddle with me..
[ ]Let me make a move on you..
[ ]Make a move on me..
[ ]Watch a movie with me..
[ ]Get me a B-day gift..
[ ]Let me borrow your car..
[ ]Be there for me..
[ ]Buy me a drink..
[ ]Bring me around your friends..
[ ]Give me a massage..
[ ]Drink kool-aid with me..
[ ]Take advantage of me..
[ ]Hangout with me...
[ ]Take care of me if I wasn't feeling good..
[ ]Hold hands with me..
[ ]Do something incredibly sweet for me..
[ ]tell me you love me

Bunni's Valentine Application

Please provide positive answers.
Name:
Age:

Religious Affiliation:

Job:

Social Security Number:

Degree of Education Achieved:

Psychiatric Diagnosis (Please use the DSM-IV R):

Area 2:
What would you do if I...
quoted an obscure 12th Century text:
did an interpretive dance about my feelings:
set fire to my place of employment and ran:
called you at 2 am and asked you to get pink bunny peeps:
asked if you wanted to see a movie with subtitles:
introduced you to an attractive friend of mine:
edited your Ph. D thesis:
gave you my phone number:
sought the aid of a life coach:

Area 3:
What do you think about my...
cat:
therapist:
alibi:

Area 4:

Have you ever....
Asked for a phone number for a woman even though you would rather go through dental surgery than call her?
Been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons?
Attempted to skip out on bail?
Thought that seeing an Elvis impersonator would be really cool?
Held a hostage longer than 2 years?

Tasted male tears?

V-Day 2006: Down With Love

"Valentine's Day is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap." -Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Not entirely true. Valentine's day actually pre-dates Jesus. Like most Christian holidays, Valentine's Day was originally a Roman holiday called Lupercalia. Although there are slightly different ideas about the origins of Lupercalia, it is clear it was a Roman holiday associated with wolves. The Romans were not particularly known for their warm and fuzzy holidays, and it seems that this one was no exception. One of the details that almost all agree upon is the voluntary whipping of pregnant women by half naked men wearing goatskins. The women were eager to be whipped as it allegedly ensured fertility and easy childbearing. Not exactly the type of thing you want to put on the front of a greeting card, but it gets points for creativity.

"Don't threaten me with love, baby." -Billie Holliday 1

So Valentine's Day originally started as a cruel holiday, and it continues to be a cruel holiday. I can't tell you how much restraint it has taken for me to listen to women talk about their Valentine's Day weddings, their romantic weekend get away plans, their hopes of diamonds or jewelry, even their smug assurance that someone will say "I love you" to them and maybe even mean it and not kill someone. If I have to make a choice between being whipped by a guy in a goatskin and having to suffer two months of people reminding me how lonely, pathetic ,and unlovable I am I don't even have to think about it; I'll take the whipping. *

"Am I bitter? Absolutely." -Trick

If I sound like someone who is bitter about Valentine's day to you, you're right. Last year I spent Valentine's day in my local bar with only Howard the odoriferous lawyer and Capt. Ron as my companions. I didn't even get a call from my gay husband. (The next day I found out that he spent Valentine's day in the ER due to a lung infection.) Even when I have had boyfriends on Valentine's day, for the most part, the day still sucked big moose cock. I could give you the list of horrifying Valentine's day tales but really what would be the point? If you would like to refresh your memory, you can go here or here. ( Incidentally, if you follow the first link, there is a picture of Texas T and Irish Eyes. They are now married and despite the fact that last year at this time Irish Eyes was told he had three months to live, I saw them just a few days ago at the Lion's Den. Mind you nine days after Irish Eyes and Texas T met he gave her a gold claddaugh ring on Valentine's Day. There is no justice. None. Just in case you were wondering.)

"When a man loves a woman, he will do anything for her except continue to love her"- Oscar Wilde 2

The good news is that I am not alone in my hostility towards the holiday. It seems the internet is full of fellow Anti-Valentine's Day agitators. One blogger came up with a list of potential Anti Valentine's Day merchandise . You can investigate fascinating Anti Valentine's Day statistics, like 15% of American women send themselves flowers on Valentines Day, at the Anti-V Day forum. There is no shortage of t-shirt vendors who will help you advertise your particular take on the holiday. You can while away the day enjoying Anti Valentine's day sites like Anti Valentine's Day Central, or cruising the links of the unfortunately now retired Anti Valentine's Day Page. You can send your single friends cycnical e-Valentine's from NerdElite or Saw II (now available on DVD). Curl up on the couch and watch any assortment of non-romantic films like Zombie Honeymoon, Swimming With Sharks, The Valentine's Day Episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, My Bloody Valentine, or an American Werewolf in London.

"If you break up with somebody you better turn your radio off for at least two or three years because there are radio stations whose sole existence is to make lonely people commit suicide" -Richard Jeni from his special "Platypus Man"

The well prepared Anti-Valentine's enthusiast can still generate a fairly decent soundtrack for the day. A suggested curmudgeon's playlist would probably include: "Girlfriend in a Coma" by Smiths, Tom Lehrer's "Masochism Tango" or "She's My Girl", The Reverend Horton Heat's "Bath-Water Blues" or "Where in the Hell did you go with my Toothbrush?", Bobby Darin's"Down With Love", Judy Garland's "I Will Come Back", Adam Sandler's "Somebody Kill Me", Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin', The Beatles "I'm a Loser" and any "love song" written or performed by Sam Kinison.

So there you have it. Everything to help you survive one of the most sadistic holidays ever invented and just remember as Lily Tomlin says, "If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?"

*It seems some enterprising individuals have heard my plea and actually have tried to revive Lupercalia.

1 and 2 Quotations courtesy of A Curmudgeon's Garden of Love edited by Jon Winokur

And finally as with all things I end with Paris on V-Day 2005:

"You bitch, you cheated on me when I had cancer."

I know I promised you a post about the end of Paris, but one of my very close friends, one of the people responsible for that first trip to Paris, died on friday morning. I found out when some pompous twit pontificating in my favorite coffee shop at the top of his lungs about my friend's medical history casually announced that my friend had passed away. When the person I was having coffee with told him that maybe this wasn't the best way for me to find out, his defense was "Oh I thought you already knew." Friends, if and when I end up in the hospital please do me the favor of discussing the details of my medical history sotto voce in public. I do not want the entire hearing community to know about when I was on dialysis or taken off a ventilator.

And while I was still reeling from this news, I was also told that my favorite bar, let me say this again, MY FAVORITE BAR, which is something akin to saying my favorite thing to breathe, suddenly closes. People I am a delicate creature. Much like tropical fish, I do not tolerate major changes to my environment. Don't change the temperature. Don't bang on the glass. Leave that wierd little faux scuba guy right where he is.

Needless to say this is not the way I wanted to spend my Valentine's Day. Sorting through a dead man's papers so that when his daughters, who never bothered to visit him while he was in the hospital for three months, finally arrive, they will not have to deal with a mess. I don't even have the consolation of a drink at my favorite watering hole. I mean knew it wasn't going to be a good day, but I wasn't prepared for it be quite this bad of a day.

My general attitude towards love and romance could be summed up by an incident that happened this weekend. Saturday night, when all of us were having a last hurrah at F's, a fight broke out on the street. A girl was pushing her boyfriend. Finally the man hauled off and shoved her into the street. "You bitch," he said, "you cheated on me when I had cancer." Whil V-day is supposed to be celebrating the best that life has to offer, it often brings out the worst in the interest of getting people to spend money. If Hallmark doesn't get your cash, that, most likely, Stoli vodka or your therapist will.

If my friend were still alive, I'm sure we would sit in our coffee place and he would draw pictures of the people there and I would offer my sarcastic criticism of love, I would narrow my eyes at men bearing roses and balloons, I would secretly wish for them to burst or wilt on the spot, and he would go on, acting like he is ignoring the whole rant, perhaps he would play a game of chess with bland lawyer. And in the end, he would tell me to go back to Paris where the men will throw themselves into the Seine for the love of me. He will tell me that perhaps my problem is that my expectations are too high. And then, with his light Alabama accent, he would put his hand on my shoulder and say "I understand. Surely Darius the Great would sympathize."

Bury Me Deep: Part One

2009-02-08T14:14:00.005-05:00

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Now playing: Poi Dog Pondering - Bury Me Deep
via FoxyTunes

I was debating whether to go out on Friday night-on one hand I was being good on my new diet, and if I went out I would be drinking, which meant lots of empty calories. On the other hand, it WAS friday night. My friend the Amazon had texted that she was at a nearby bar, but by the time I got the message she and her boyfriend, Big Bad, were about to leave. So I decided to knit on the couch. Dr. Strangelove came on AMC, and I decided to watch it.

My father introduced me to Dr. Strangelove, in the same way he introduced me to Monty Python, Woody Allen, and Mel Brooks. My father and I often spoke to each other in quoted lines-we had a rotation: Monty Python, Love at First Bite, and Dr. Strangelove. It wasn't uncommon for him to turn to me and say "You're going to have to answer to the people at the Coca-Cola Company!" and I would say "Lt. Batguano, if that is indeed your name" and he would retort "I know Dimitri. I'm sorry too."

While I don't often say anythign nice about my father-this banter and love of verbal humor-had a profound impact on my development, and watching the movie I thought of how much I missed having that back and forth with him.

The movie was almost over when I got the text message from the Amazon that A. had passed on. I had known he was sick, dying even, and his prognosis was poor. The week before the Amazon and I had been talking about him and how his wife was coping with the situation. I hadn't been close with A. We had lunch together once, but mainly I knew him to give him a hug and kiss at the local. We barely even spoke that much. Still I knew his wife, who was always very sweet and complimentary to me. And I knew about his daughters.

So I was surprised when I burst into tears. I didn't even cry when my own father died.

Well, that's not entirely true.

I had moved to Upstate New York 10 days before he died. Even so, I had gone back to CT to spend time with one of my oldest friends. I was going to stay with her a few days and then go spend a few days with another childhood friend. It was August and I knew I wouldn't be seeing them during the year so I wanted to take advantage of vacation while I had it. I had spent about 2 days in CT already, and had even driven by my father's house. I almost turned the wheel. Almost.

But I didn't. I kept driving. He didn't even know I was 20 minutes away when he died.

By that time, I was barely speaking to my father. His madness had made it almost impossible for me to spend any time with him without risking serious psychological damage so I had simply cut myself off from him. He couldn't control himself, so I had to think of what was best for me even though I knew he was dying. we had dinner together my last night in CT before the move. He ordered a martini with dinner. My father had been off alcohol, or at least publicly so, for several years-ever since he went into the ER drunk one night. When he ordered the martini, I knew. It meant, there was no point trying to be healthy anymore so he might as well having a drink or two before the ship went down. He had already gone into heartfailure once that year. He had called me from the ER. I was 18 years old on the phone with my father as he told me he was scared he was dying. I kept telling him he was going to be fine. I had no idea what else to say. How do you comfort your crazy dying father? I didn't know. He survived, but I knew that he was living on borrowed time. I just didn't realize how aggressively he was borrowing that time.

The following day, my friend, Jewel, and I went to the mall. When we returned home, Jewel's mother informed me that my mother had been calling. Just then the phone rang. Jewel's mother answered it and passed it to me. Before my mother could say anything, I said "He's dead, isn't he? Pere Lapin is dead." My mother choked out "Yes."

I could see how Jewel and her family transformed when I said those words. Suddenly they were worried about me. I don't really remember the rest of the conversation, but I know I was fine. I was supposed to go to see my other friend, Bridezilla, that night. I called her to let her know of my father's death, but that I was still coming. It's not like my father would be any less dead, might as well continue with the visit as planned until I had to go to the funeral. I packed my things. Jewel's mother was worried, asking me if I was alright.

I was fine. My father was crazy and sick, and he wasn't getting any better. Dying was not only what he wanted, but it was the best thing he ever did. It wasn't until years later that I found out my father had taken himself off the heart donor list. It was his only chance of survival, and he turned it down. He wanted to die.

And I was finally free. Free of not being good enough. Free of not being criticized for not being a basketball player or going to private school or not being healthy enough. Free of his emotional manipulations and insults. I was free.

I took my bag and got in the car. And for about 30 seconds I cried. And then I turned on the car and drove to see Bridezilla. And I didn't cry before, during or after the funeral. I didn't cry for the months afterwards. In fact, I never cried over my father's death. My mother did. She stood behind me, tears streaming down her face, but I didn't. I stood there like stone. Later my mother would tell me that my re-action to his death was so unnatural that she wanted me to see a therapist. But then again, she hadn't seen him the last four years, hadn't seen what he had become. She was mourning a man who died years before.

But I didn't cry. If anything, I was more worried that Pere would find a way to harass me from beyond the grave. He appeared in my dreams, telling me things like "I can't leave you alone for one minute, you don't start fucking up." And finally after a year, the dreams stopped. He was gone, and he wasn't coming back.

So if I didn't cry for him why would I cry over A? Yet there I was, sobbing. I poured myself a glass of Brandy to settle my nerves and called the Amazon. Her text said I should come to visit the family-the building was around the corner-she was there with Big Bad. I double checked because I felt wierd going and I didn't really want to go. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I didn't want to see them. I'm not good at these kinds of events. People being vulnerable. I don't know what to do or say. You would thinking having lost a parent it would give me insight, but my relatioship with my father, how much I hated him and resented him, it's yet another thing that seperates me from other people. I don't know what it's like to lose a parent with whom I was close, a parent I would miss. But the Amazon was adamant that if I could come over, I should.

I called a few friends. I couldn't explain why I was so upset, but I was. I finished getting ready and began to walk to the building.

I've not been good about keeping up this blog. After the Paris Diaries, I just lost the impulse to blog. It bothered me, and I couldn't figure out why I didn't want to blog anymore. Years ago when blogger friends of mine talked about shutting down their blogs, it was shocking to me. I couldn't imagine not blogging-even if no one was reading. I would get emails from readers asking me not to stop writing, and I would assure them that I would always write. I had been a prolific journal writer since I was 12.

Yet last year, even when I would think to write blog entries, I didn't do it. I had lost the drive, and I had no idea why. But walking to the apartment, I suddenly wanted to write. I wanted to write about how losing a parent is like having a sibling-it's something you have to experience. I can intellectually understand the relationship, but the bond between my mother and her brother is as unfathomable to me as it is for some people to conceive of being mobility impaired. Even if it's a parent you don't like, it changes you. I didn't realize how much until almost 10 years later.

When my father died, I was going to NYU to be an actor. He was thrilled that I was moving to the city, that I was pursuing a career in the arts. Near his last years, he got into sculpting and even dug out the opening chapters of a novel he had written in college. I was going to commit myself to the life he wished he could have led, but didn't. He didn't live long enough to see me graduate as a founder's scholar and then have my graduate school ceremony at Radio City. He didn't live long enough to see me become a professor. He didn't lived long enough to see me become an adult. The last time he saw me, I had all these possibilities open before me, but he never got to see how I developed.

Even if you don't like a parent, even if the parent is long since dead, you never grow out of wanting their approval. There have been lots of times in this last decade, especially after Eric left, that I wanted his advice. He was all shades of fucked up, but he gave great advice. And then, he would make me laugh by singing the lumberjack song.

I got to the building and the doorman turned me away-the family wasn't accepting anymore visitors. I burst into tears again. I called a friend who lived in the same building. He invited me up and we watched South Park for an hour. Then I went over to the local. I knew the packwould be there.

Sure enough, everyone asked me if I knew, and I did. A. had died of liver failure and here we all were doing shots and drinking cocktails. Chocolate Thunder was talking to me about how many people had died recently-her father, her boyfriend's brother, I tuned out on the list. I thought of how many people I know who have died-2 grandparents in childhood, a friend from camp and a friend from high school while I was in college, a professor who committed suicide and college friend ODed the year after graduation, almost all of my older distant relatives-Johnny Coffee and his wife Ruth, Aunt Elsie, Aunt Dot, my grandmother's second husband-my close friend's mother, my upstairs neighbor, a regular who fell off the roof, Dean Martin's wife (my Dean Martin not THE Dean Martin). I'm in my 30s yet my list of the dead goes on and on.

New Year's Resolution

2008-12-31T17:11:00.002-05:00

And suddenly the New Year is upon me! And I find that I managed to fulfill only one of my several New Year's Resolutions. What was the resolution you ask? To bake or cook something new (as in I hadn't made it before) each week. The only loophole was I could make something provided that I made before if I had baked/cooked with my mother as a very small child. That, to me, doesn't really count.

So here is the list with the sources of each recipe:

List of Dishes I Made in Keeping with My New Year's Eve Resolution

Chocolate Caramel Covered Graham Crackers ( gourmet/epicurious)

I made these for OE's birthday last year and my party this year with RAVE reviews. They are very easy to make. Just to Epicurious and type the title into the search bar. You will be the hit of ANY party if you make these simple, but decadent treats.

2 Salted Caramels Bakerina came over to help me with these originally, but I made another batch later in the year again courtesy of Epicurious. I prefer the recipe there with the suggestion of using salted butter to enhance the buttery salty quality. I made these in honor of my ex-boyfriend the Breton. Brittany is famed for it's Fleur de Sel and it's Caramel Sale (salted caramels). Don't miss the man, but I do miss the candy.

3 Braised Chicken in a Creamy Leek Sauce (Epicurious)
This is a fairly heavy creamy sauce, which was OK, but I wasn't enthralled enough to make it again.

4 Gratin Dauphinoise (Gordon Ramsay)

A personal favorite dish and Gordon Ramsay's In the Heat of the Kitchen has a simple easy way of making it so you don't spend half the day in the kitchen slicing potatoes. This is a great dish for a big homey get together about this time of year.

5 Crusty Bread/Baguette (epicurious)

Again indulging in my desire to recreate a little bit of Paris here, I had to make my own baguette. It came out very nicely.

6 Pain de Mie (Gordon Ramsay)
Another recipe from In the Heat of the Kitchen. I had no idea what the hell pain de mie WAS until I received this book. It's a crumbly bread, which I absolutely loved making and eating.

7 Chocolate Chip Cookies (epicurious)

My grandmother is famous for hers, but she's getting older so I thought it was time I began to prepare myself to take her place. I found a fabu recipe at epicurious as Nana has never, and I don't think ever will, write hers down.

8 Roasted Chicken with Herbed Butter (Gordon Ramsay)

A great easy tasty dish for the fam.

9 Cardamom Carrots (Gordon Ramsay)

10 Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread (Serious Eats)

11 Buttermilk Pancakes (epicurious)

12 Focaccia (the new vegetarian)

13 peanut butter cookies (joy of cooking)

One day I had the yen for peanut butter cookies like I used to get at the Black Dog bakery on Martha's Vineyard. I searched around the internet, but couldn't find anything close. Finally I called Bakerina and she found me a recipe courtesy of the Joy of Cooking so I could finally satisfy my desire. It's definitely still a fave,.

14 parsnip oven "fries" with a spicy vinegar dipping sauce (epicurious)

Dear lord but do I love love love this recipe. You can use the spicy vinegar on regular fries (as I do) you can make the oven fries with baby carrots or regular carrots or parsnips. It's versatile, easy and absolutely delish.

15 cinnamon scones (gordon ramsay)

16 soft boiled eggs with red wine and shallots (parisian home cooking)

17 vanilla cupcakes (magnolia bakery)

Simple the best cupcakes. If you can't get to Magnolia, now you can make them! I bake them often for birthdays and other events.

18 whole wheat spaghetti with goat cheese and arugula (epicurious)

19 sundried tomato, garlic, and jalapeno pasta (epicurious)

This dish is another new standard of my frig. I often whip up the sauce in advance and save it for a rushed evening, like tonight, when I don't have time to cook.

20 sulguni bread (georgian cheese bread) epicurious

21 fingerling potatoes in white wine with shallots (parisian home cooking)

Another recipe that became a standard of my home.

22 parsnip chips with curry salt (gordon ramsay)

23 poached egg

24 huevos rancheros

25 arugula salad with a warm shallot vinaigrette (parisian home cooking)

26 grilled buffalo chicken tenders (variation on epicurious recipe)

27 sugar cookies (beedrunken blog)

28 greens with a spicy citrus vinaigrette (grilled)

29 fougasse with olives and rosemary (gordon ramsay)

30 chicken sauteed with olives (parisian home cooking)

31 hazelnut chocolate crinkles (epicurious)

A great simply cookie. Perfect for a holiday tray.

32 herbed gnocchi with tomato salsa (gordon ramsay)

I made pasta! And it was tasty, although a bit of a pain. Seriously worth it. A great summer dish.

33 pasta pomodoro (black dog)

34 salsa fresca (vegetarian cookbook)

If you've never made fresh salsa, you are missing something. This recipe is easy and brings to together fresh ingredients perfectly.

35 spicy pickled carrots (Fresh Approach Cooking)

I LOVE carrots. A few years ago I bought a jar of spicy pickled carrots and fell in love only to discover they vanished! I searached for them to no avail. Finally I decided to make some. This recipe is awesome. I eat the carrots alone, on tacos, nachos, even turkey sandwiches. They are a new staple of frig.

36 jalapeno cheddar bread

37 leeks in cream with mint (how to roast chicken)

38 soft pretzels (allrecipes)

39 spiced madeleines (epicurious)

40 white chicken chili

41 peanut brittle (alton brown-DO NOT USE)

Alton's recipe is perhaps the ONLY recipe on the internet WITHOUT temperatures for each stage. When making peanut brittle, this is pretty freakin key. While I like his ingredients, I had to find ANOTHER recipe with specific temperatures to make it properly. Shame on you, Alton!

I've made a variant of this, which I had in NM and that is jalapeno peanut brittle. It's not really hot, just a bit of spice. I gave my mother a piece and she declared it "Perfect" and an adventurous gourmand she isn't. So you might give it a shot otherwise I recommend BakerJen's Peanut Brittle, which is the recipe I ended up settling upon.

42 caramel corn clusters (gourmet)

If you loved Cracker Jack as a kid like I did, this recipe will be your utter doom-easy and delightful, but VERY VERY heavy on the calories.

43 apple beignets with a butter rum sauce (gourmet)

I made these as directed, but I want to play with the recipe. I was expecting something more apple-y and think instead of Golden Delicious this recipe needs the bite of a Granny Smith. I shall let you know about future experiments.

44 pumpkin walnut bread (bon appetit)

45 chocolate hazelnut cut out cookies (Gourmet) NEVER AGAIN

These cookies are another nightmare that had me writing letters to the recipe testers at Gourmet that started "Dear MotherFucker." Perhaps it's me but I would not attempt to make these cookies. The hazelnut chocolate crinkles at epicurious are tasty and freakin easy to make. Stick to THEM.

46 turkey chili (gourmet)

47 orange cardamom cookies (epicurious) NEVER AGAIN

These cookies are delicious but absolutely the biggest PAIN IN THE ASS TO MAKE you can't believe it. Cthulhu only wishes he could inspire the type of madness these cookies aroused in me. However, I will be experimenting reproducing a similar type of cookie without the insanity in the new year. I shall alert you about the results.

48 devil's food cake (gordon ramsay)

49 curried party mix (epicurious)

50 gingerbread snowflakes (epicurious)

51 Chorizo and Lima Bean Soup (Gordon Ramsay)

52 Oatmeal Molasses Crisps (Best of Home Cooking)

Well I must run and have my nails done and change before the wacky hijinx this evening. Here's hoping that you all had a very happy and healthy year and this up coming year will bring more joy!

Here are my resolutions:

Yet again I shall make a new thing once a week, every week until the end of the year.

I will finish a formal draft of the Paris Diaries

I will apply to Grad School

I will lose AT LEAST 10 pounds.

HAPPY NEW YEAR BLOGOSPHERE!

Lapin de Neige

2008-12-23T02:00:00.003-05:00

Well, I know, I know it's been awhile, but you know the usual end of semester insanity plus a party the day after I gave exams because, as usual, no one is available of my real birthday, plus buying and making gifts, and finally finishing this big secret writing project. I don't have a lot of free time.
And the depression, of course, which hits worst this time of year not because of the lack of sun, but because of the lack of a family of my own, which hurts me more and more as I get older.

To try and distract myself from this I volunteered to make Christmas presents for my mother. Here you can see Gingerbread Snowflakes, Orange Cardamom Snowflakes, and Jalapeno Peanut Brittle.

While the orange cardamom cookies are delish, be warned! They are some seriously fussy little cookies. After Christmas I'm going to experiment with taking a regular sugar cookies recipe and just replacing the vanilla with the grated orange peel and cardamom. I shall let you know the results. This will, of course, not help my diet in the least, but it IS being productive, which is important when battling depression.

The recent snow fall here did give me some happiness and I took this picture while out with Office Elf. He was full of hot chocolate and cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery after dragging me to see The Wrestler. All I can say is "Did I miss the meeting where Marisa Tomei became contractually obligated to get naked IN EVERY FREAKIN' MOVIE?" Still it was lovely.

For you Scrooges out there, Evil Christmas is an utterly perfect craptacular cheesy holiday themed slasher film. Trust me, you will NOT be disappointed. It's ridiculous to the point of being brillaint.

As you can tell, I don't blog as much and I'm not sure if I don't blog because I'm depressed or if I'm depressed because I don't blog as much. Part of it is with the big writing project, I don't have as much energy to write here as well, but soon that project will be done and I'll perhaps I will blog here more often so I can figure out the whole blogger/depression angle-if there even is one.

But to all of you out there, I hope you do have a very Merry Christmas and snuggle with your loved ones and have a truly happy holiday season!

Thanks for Nothing

2008-11-25T17:48:00.003-05:00

I know, I don't write as often as I should, but between the teaching, the depression, and the screenplay, it's hard for me to find the juice to blog in my few off moments. Tomorrow I'll be heading to upstate-I'll be ferried there by my mother's boyfriend, the one who puts me into a fugue state whenever I am exposed to him for more than a few hours.

This, of course, is part of the root of the depression. My mother has always been one of those women who will abandon anything for the man that she loves, and by everything I mean me. Oh she'll SAY she'll do anything for me, but not so much. When I was 13 and recovering from surgery, both my parents ignored me because they were too pre-occupied with each other to help the girl in the wheelchair while my classmates made my life Hell. While I was being traumatized by flying to see specialists and being a living visual aid for residents honored to see so unusual a case, I spent my time trying to cheer up my father because he was stressed about my diagnosis. Do you see the problem there?

Later, when my mother could no longer face my father, she continued to send me to see him. Not because I should have a relationship with my father, by that time he was so unstable I used to carry a nice in my purse when I went to see him, but because she wanted to get back together with him. After his death, she admitted exactly that. She would send me to see a dangersouly unstable person SHE couldn't deal with, so she sent me. And these are just the best examples of sacrificing of her me for Who's Who in Batshit Insanity.

And this boyfriend is the same. Her relationship with him reminds of the worst parts of her relationship with my father. Under his influence she now claims she hates intellectuals, and furthermore claims SHE NEVER PUT ME UNDER ANY PRESSURE TO BE A SCHOLAR IT'S WHAT I WANTED. Right because buying me the New Yorker at 9 and Granta at 12 and encouraging me to read at the dinner table, right that wasn't encouraging. This other woman, I don't know who she is, and more, I don't like her. It seems to me the feeling is mutual.

She says she'll do anything for me, but I have no doubt. I've told her I can't spend time with him as I find it so toxic to my well being that on two occasions I've cut myself off from her for 6 months. So what does she do? She invites him to Thanksgiving, and now we are having two, yes two Thanksgiving dinners. The smaller one, the unimportant one, I get to cook for. The larger one in his formal dining room, he gets to cook for, because after all this time apparently I'm no longer any good in the kitchen either. Oh and for added extra fun, now I have to dress formally for Thanksgiving. Apparently far from a relaxing Thanksgiving, now I have to pretend I'm an Astor.

And if I had my own family, or even a boyfriend at this sad point, I would say fuck them and stay here and order chinese and watch my netflix with him on the couch. But I don't. I SHOULD, but I don't. Mainly because between the disability, my epic bad luck, the gauntlet of insanity that was my childhood (a paranoid alcoholic father and a mother who didn't realize he was crazy and was too worried about him to bother to pay attention to the daughter who was coping with disability and medical trauma all while maintaining good grades and lots of extracurriculars), I apparently can't give myself away with a free iPhone.

So feel free to leave some encouraging comments because I'll need them.

Is Our Children Learning?

2008-11-20T19:48:00.000-05:00

So today I'm attempting to review important due dates and requirements with my students. So I hand out a paper with key dates and requirements, but then because I can't expect them to do things like READ I have to read it to them much as I would a bunch of 2nd graders with many repetitions. So I'm reviewing the final portfolio, and I tell them "I'm pushing the due date back to December 4th-our last class." (It was also on the paper as December 4th in BIG BOLD PRINT.) And a student asks, "But will it be due before Thanksgiving break?" And so I say "It's due (slowly enunciating) December 4th" thinking this will answer her question. And then again she asks "But will it be due before Thanksgiving break?" So I say it one more time (remember I'm sick so not too swift myself). The third time around I realized SHE DOESN'T KNOW WHEN THANKSGIVING IS, which if she wasn't American through and through I'd think OK.

But she is.

STILL, if Thanksgiving break is NEXT WEEK and this is due the LAST WEEK of classes (two weeks from now) shouldn't it be self evident that it is NOT due before Thanksgiving break?

Anyone? Anyone?

Back at the NYC Horror Film Festival

2008-11-14T14:29:00.002-05:00

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Now playing: Drowning Pool - Bodies
via FoxyTunes

So as the more perceptive of you know, I've been epically depressed for the last three weeks. The kind of depression that my friend Starfucker from college described as "I just took my head out of the toilet long enough to 'Hello.'" So Monday night I was sitting in my apartment, tears streaming down my face again, and I thought "What can I do to make myself feel better?"

And then it came to me. People needed to die for my entertainment.

Or more accurately, four days of watching the best goretastic movies that the independent horror scene has to offer with some of my old friends at the NYC Horror Film Festival. As it turns out, Pretty-Scary was happy to have me cover the event for them, as I did last year. While unable to attend Wednesday's, apparently, off the hook party at Don Hill's, last night was the first night I mingled with filmmakers and fans at the oversold showing of Resident Evil Degeneration.

The festival has returned to Tribeca Cinemas, which has a lovely bar for mingling and networking (one of the key features of the festival) and I was able to hang out with Alex Rivello (formerly of Creature-Corner, now with CHUD), festival director Michael Hein, and some of the filmmakers responsible for this year's line up. While Resident Evil was, honestly, craptacular, the high spirits of the fans (who quickly turned against the film and began to heckle it MST3K style) and the familiarity of the venue made Alex comment to me as the lights went down, "It's like coming home."

Ahhhhhhhh, there's no place like home. As long as home means a blood soaked abbattoir filled with zombie strippers battling gay vampires for the rights to the peloti rules as part of their bioterrorist plan to unleash a highly virulent form of whooping cough on the world.

A Heavenly Halloween

2008-11-01T21:05:00.004-04:00

I know I haven't been posting often-I shall explain in more detail in a later post, but rest assured I am still writing, even if I don't always have time to post. It seems that blogging, something which I was very committed too for several years, seems to be falling by the wayside. But when I don't post, I get comments from friends complaining that I don't post as much and so perhaps the blog DOES matter and deserves more commitment than I have been showing it lately.

Part of it is that I have been involved in a VERY ill advised affair-even by my own standards I'm off the map. The affair has been, since the beginning, a fairly dramatic and time consuming affair and at the moment, I'm on the fence about whether to continue. I've learned from previous relationships that I'm one of those people that holds onto the barest glimmer of hope when I should just say "So long and thanks for all the fish," (The fish line doesn't really make much sense, but it's a tribute to the Late great Douglas Adams.) So there is that-and then there is the fact the sex is just insane-we seem to be two people perfectly matched in terms of our desires and attitudes in the bedroom. But the problem is up until last week I really believed that he was the first man to love me in 7 years. Now I'm not so sure.

So what is a girl to do when she doubts the love of her man?

Girlfriend gets into a hot decadent bath, pours glitter all over her body until she sparkles like Liberace, puts on a kinky little angel outfit complete with petticoats and thigh high stockings and goes to party like the motherfucking little rock star that she is. I'm Bunni Fucking Speigelman and I'll be goddamned if some lame ass man is gonna break me NOW. So I'm off to Glamdammit in a few minutes to meet up with some friends and be fabulous. I wish you all were here to go down there with me. But since you aren't I'll share some of my flickr stream with you. Feel free to pelt me with candy!

The 11th Commandment

2008-10-26T13:10:00.001-04:00

It's been a traumatic week. I'll explain why later, but courtesy of last night I shall offer you some wisdom. Do not, ever, drink white wine spritzers in a pint glass. (No I didn't do it. I wouldn't even order a white wine spritzer, but if you MUST have one at least get a WINE GLASS)

Potentially the Best Student Comment Ever

2008-10-23T12:50:00.002-04:00

My Thursday night class should be retitled Advanced Narcolepsy: How to Use Your iPhone While Sleeping Through Class. Afterwards, exhausted from pulling even a few comments out of my class, a student approached me because she was having "trouble" with the 3-5 page position paper I assigned. * When I asked her what the trouble was, she said, and I quote, "I don't have the kind of brain that's good for...thinking...."

And my first thought was "As opposed to those brains that are good as decorative doorstops?"

I mean, what else is a brain good for if not thinking? And, as one friend pointed out, who identifies him/herself as someone who doesn't think?

It would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that someone is paying thousands of dollars to "educate" this child.

*This paper shouldn't be a problem for even a freshmen in high school, nevermind a college student wishing to embark on a career as a business professional.

Writing About Illness

2008-10-13T15:31:00.002-04:00

Strangely enough this article from the NY Times was forwarded to me by my mother with some other articles about healthcare. Of course, reading about disability, illness, and medicine has, over the past few years, has become more important for me especially since I have no memories of my earliest health problems.

The article here points out exactly two things I've often felt:

1. Doctors have trouble understanding their patients and the values of their patients-this difficulty can and does result in very severe consequences for the patient.1 Thus, in order for the therapeutic relationship to work the doctor must communicate with the patient and vice versa. (Norman Cousins in Anatomy of Illness espoused exactly this view.) While accepted, particularly by AIDs and breast cancer patients, the vast majority of patients continue to see their doctors as "the enemy" or see themselves as passive objects upon which the doctor operates.

2. "Miracles" of healing come at a high price for the patient, and while gratitude is an acceptable form of expression, feelings of frustration, sadness and loss are just as valid; Unfortunately when expressing "negative" feelings, the chronically ill find themselves, shunned, rejected, or chastised for having a "bad attitude." This only increases a sense of isolation, which may cause the patient to attempt to "normalize" themselves. These attempts at normalization often take the form of refusing to take necessary medications or treatments. The doctor often takes these failures as a personal assault-"why is the patient rebelling against me when all I am trying to do is help?"-as opposed to seeing the behavior as either a failure to properly understand the necessity of the treatment or a misguided attempt to find acceptance in the "normal" world. Once this polarity sets in, the patient convinced that the doctor can't or won't understand, and the doctor thinks the patient is hellbent on self destruction, it is difficult to reconstruct the therapeutic relationships.

What's interesting about this article is that it points to an increasing trend in medicine,: doctors reading and writing about illness in order to become better doctors. Many medical schools now require their students to take medical narrative classes in which would be physicians have to read and write about illness. 2 3 Reading patient memoir helps med students to empathize with the patient, but it also gives them insight into how they have failed to engage the patient. (The patient also has some responsibility to discuss important issues, like cessation of medication, with the physician.)

Part of the reason there are so many patient memoirs is that patients, frustrated by rejection by the medical community (their refusal to listen or engage) as well as by their friends and family, reach out to find affirmation of their experiences by writing. Unfortunately, even these forums have, in some cases, become co-opted by outside pressure as Barbara Ehrenreich indicated in "Welcome to Cancerland." Her experience trying to express anger in a breast cancer forum echoes the author of "Sick Girl" namely that she was excoriated for being "negative." Breat cancer memoirs are the most popular as well as most formulaic of patient memoirs. While occasionally someone like Christine Middlebrook, who wrote Seeing the Crab, writes about the rage of dying from cancer, most of these books reinforce that cancer was "the best thing that ever happened" to the author including A Century of Petals and The Red Devil. Many, in fact, overtly acknowledge the cancer as ultimately being an overwhelmingly positive experience bringing the family closer and helping the patient re-evaluate her priorities. Thus only gratitude is the appropriate response to coping with what at worst be a terminal disease and, at best, be a long and difficult struggle. This affirmation of the "positive" aspect of coping with disease is a wish fulfillment on the part of the healthy. While understandable, essentially it is the equivalent of bowdlerizing what is a terrifying and stressful experience.

Hopefully books like Sick Girl and doctors like Dr. Chen will help improve the therapeutic relationship for both doctor and patient, but more I hope that it helps the healthy to understand that listening to the rage and frustration is just as much a part of the healing process as getting actively involved in researching treatments.

1. The Silent World of Doctor and Patient illustrates exactly this point-clearly showing from conversations between doctors and patients that a failure to communicate with the patient effectively can have dire consequences,

2. Medical students who were assigned journals to help them empathize with patients also found that writing helped them cope with problems and lowered their stress levels.

3 There have been famous doctor/writers including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Anton Checkov.

The Wrong Side of Paradise

2008-09-21T14:23:00.003-04:00

I had been in a foul temper all week. My students had utterly failed to follow simple directives on the first draft of their cover letters. And while some people have said of me that no one since Darius the Great has had such high expectations of her fellow human beings, when I say things like "DO NOT, WHATEVER YOU DO, PUT ON YOUR COVER LETTER THAT YOU HAVE NO EXPERIENCE IN YOUR FIELD" I expect that they will have the intelligence not to write that. Yet I received no less than five cover letters that feature the sentence, "Despite the fact that I have no experience in the field." It's moments like this that make me want to drink the drano martinis. I'm tempted to tell my classes, in these moments, that my cat could eat their cover letters and barf a better one.

Yet I resist.

But then to go through all of that and come home to an empty apartment night after night. No one cares if I come home on time. In fact, if I was to jump a plane from JFK instead of going home, I wonder how long it would take anyone, aside from my cat, to notice that I was already gone. I'm come home exhausted and starving and remember what life was like Then. When I would get excited to see the lights on because it meant that Eric was home. When I was particularly exhausted, he would put a peanut butter sandwich on the pillow next to my head. We would read on the couch together, occasionally reading an interesting passage out loud.

Truth is I don't know if I would recognize his voice if I heard it, but still I remember these moments. I wish I didn't as alone at night after a long day at work I weep and weep with the loss, asking the universe if I could have just a LITTLE luck, even if it is to finally forget. For all the years that have passed, the sharp edges on these memories never seem to soften-and when I consider them even briefly, I find myself bloody and bruised.

While going through my university email, I find an email from a undergrad student who wanted to know if I had any tips for her about NYU's MFA program. I could have just emailed her back, but instead I offered to meet her for tea. Why not? I mean, it's not like my schedule is so jammed packed that I couldn't make time for it. We arranged to meet friday afternoon for tea at Teany.

Before meeting with Hopeful MFA, I went to the movies with Office Elf who, with graduate school and a new girlfriend, has been quite busy. We saw the movie Igor, and it was like old times-we end up ordered a gynormous tub of popcorn which he will throw at me, I make fun of his reactions, he does a spit take over one of the lines. One of the characters, Scamper, is a brilliant immortal, but suicidal rabbit voiced by Steve Buscemi. In short, my dream mate. After the movie OEs girlfriend calls and they chat briefly before we head to lunch. After lunch, he is texting her as I wak to the subway.

It's sweet, of course. I remember what that was like, and yet when I see this there is a voice in the back of my head saying "No one ever loved you that much." I try not to be bitter. I try to silence that voice. But I'll be going home to an empty bed that night. An empty apartment. Again.But I know this is the natural order of things. I saw this coming. OE is too thoroughly decent a guy to remain single for long-so I try to tell all my resentment to save it until later that night when I'll be drinking as much as possible to keep it quiet long enough for me to sleep.

I leave Office Elf outside of the Virgin Megastore and head over to Teany to meet Hopeful MFA. She's a sweet girl, who has been woefully misadvised by the academics at the university who apparently know fuckall about MFA programs. I tell her about Sharon Olds making a doll for one of her poetry students and that Seamus Heaney has a reputation for being a "sweetie." I talk to her about how the poetry students would go away on weekend retreats together, while the short story students would argue about paying the tab...every week after crit. I confide in her about my hatred of Joyce Johnson, and the supportive and strangely mystical advice of my thesis advisor, Chuck Wactel. She soaks it up, eyes large.

Over her shoulder, there is a couple that I find myself watching as I talk to her. The girl is perhaps 19 with straight, luxurious blonde hair falling over her shoulders-her eyes are a transculent blue. She kisses her boyfriend over the table, both of them book in hand. Hers is "This Side of Paradise" by F Scott Fitzgerald while her boyfriend read a thick tome of a book bound in black. I couldn't make out the entire title, but the word "corpse" was part of it. Looking at her-her slender elbows resting on the table, making eyes over her book at her oblivious boyfriend, I thought if only I could be her-I would be happy.

Hopeful, it turns out, spent 10 months in Paris and so we end up chatting about my adventures there. I tell her about how I met the Sauvage and running into Marco again. "I lived there for 8 months, and that never happened to me." I'm tempted to tell her "Listen honey, I wanted to die. Only a person with a death wish would do what I did, so don't envy me too much." But I find myself smiling and thinking that perhaps I HAD been lucky after all. She becomes so comfortable with me that she confides that if she doesn't get in she's going to give up writing.

This gives me pause. For every set back I've experienced, I would never give up writing. I can't. I'm a writer before I'm anything else. Without the paper to confess to, I wouldn't know who I am. It doesn't matter me if I have readers or publications or not. I need to write in the same way that I need to eat, which is to say fairly regularly, perhaps more than I should. I explain to her that I've lost a great deal over the years from my writing-prospective boyfriends and several friends. "Would you ever be in a relationship where you wouldn't write about the other person?" "I've been in relationships where the other person ASKED me to not to write about him, and I've respected that request. And you know what? It was always a huge mistake. I tell people now this is the risk you run with me. Everything you do or say is potential material. If you can't handle that, and I respect that some people can't, it's best if we are not friends." It's possible this isn't an entirely fair thing to ask of my friends and lovers, perhaps this is why I end up so alone, but as the Sauvage would say I've been this way for so long, it's unfair for you to ask me now.

She thanks me for the advice and says she'll send me for statement of purpose for me to revise. She's blissfully grateful for the advice and the support from someone who knows better. It's more than she hoped for, and her enthusiasm is contagious. I feel pretty wonderful about myself as I walk towards the bus. I remember how I was when I applied for an MFA. No one advised me on how best to get in. I operated blind, simply sending in my best stuff and hoping for the best. I got in.

Maybe I am luckier than I think, I reflect on the ride home. Maybe quite a few things went right for me that could have easily gone wrong.

My would be lover asks me how the tea went and I explain what a help I was. "Such a nice girl" he texts back. "Don't tell anyone" I warn him, although he knows better than most that I'm far kinder than I would ever let on. That whole Jack Palance meets Caligula act I put on most of the time is precisely that just an act in order to protect myself. David Bucknam, one of my best teachers, said to me once, "You have a heart of gold, but you would rather die than let anyone know that." He was absolutely right. Although, more likely these days, if someone were to say that to me, I would cut out their lying tongue as an example to others.

I stare out the window thinking of what my lover had said to me the night before, that we were both lost people. "You said when I left, you forgot who you were" he reminds me. I don't want to tell him not to take what I write too seriously. I've been known to smudge reality a bit to make a better story. "Don't lose yourself in these other people," he warned me. I told him I knew exactly who I am, but do I? Who am I without these other people?

I would be the girl who still took time out of her day to sit and talk to a hopeful young writer for no other reason than she wished someone had done that for her and because it's the right thing to do. I'm not lost at all.

The Bunni Ballot

2008-09-16T20:52:00.003-04:00

Of course most people are talking about the upcoming election. What with the VP nominations and the campaigns and the mud slinging, well I have to admit I was really torn.

Until

I discovered the hands down best candidate. And when say I best, I mean BEST. Because I think we all agree that American deserves the best everything...including evil.

I mean, c'mon. He has experience not only with global politics, but also interdimensional conflicts. Considering the good people of Arkham, I'm fairly sure he's for, ahem, racial diversity. (Assuming you don't mind a few scaly relatives falling apart in the attic.) And let me tell you, the Islamoterrorists will seriously think twice when we have an Elder One in the Oval Office.

And I'm not just saying that because he...she...it, uh, Cthulhu promised me that I could be Secretary of Education.

Really.

So say it with me people "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." YEAH!

A Question of the Group

2008-09-14T22:53:00.003-04:00

So I went to Barnes and Noble to buy a new copy of the Girl With Curious Hair 1 by the late David Foster Wallace. 2 While paying, the two cashiers were having a conversation. The one cashier was feeling a cold come on and asking the other what she should do. "Look, if you're sick, you're sick. Stay home." said the older black cashier who, most shockingly, was wearing long fake eyelashes. "Besides you don't want her to get you sick," I chimed in. The eyelashed woman looked at me in such shock you would have thought my book had started talking to her. She took a moment and recovered. "Oh I just got over an illness," she retorted The younger cashier smiled at me flashing her braces. "My students always want to sit near me when they are sick. I tell them to go back to the end of the room." She giggled. "Feel better and get some rest," I told her as I left.

This incident has prompted me to ask the question:why is it cashiers and other sales people carry on conversations in front of customers like they aren't there? Why are they so shocked when I engage them? Anyone? 3

1.I "lost" the first copy when the Idiot Formerly Known as my Fiance took it. He also took my copy of the Fermata.
2. David Foster Wallace, famed for his novels, essays, short stories and footnotes, died on Friday night. If you are unfamiliar with David Foster Wallace, you should check out the metafilter thread on his death, which is filled with experiences, links, descriptions, and, of course, grief.
3. I shall now read my favorite David Foster Wallace story "Little Expressionless Animals."

Remember, Remember

2008-09-11T12:59:00.004-04:00

Today I woke up exhausted trying to motivate myself to get out of bed on time so that I could get here, to campus, and try not kill my students as they openly antagonize me by whining about having to write every class in a course that actually has writing as part of the title. I was already gritting my teeth when I went to my computer and saw the messages on Plurk and Facebook about remembering.

And then I looked at the date.

According to what I've read in medical books, every 7 years each cell in your body is new. Or in other words, you aren't in a very real physical way, the person you were 7 years ago. What's astounding is not how much we change in 7 years, but how much we stay the same. In this case, while our cellular being completely changes, our memories stay with us, or at least stay with me.

I've written in the past that I was descended of German Jews who escaped the Holocaust. We know how to survive, but we also know how to remember. We know that part of living isn't about trying to shed those memories, but to keep them with us for so many reasons. And there are good reasons we are not supposed to forget.

The following is actually a new configuring of two old posts that were both written about my experience of 9/11 because I will never forget what happened that day-not just because of what I lost but because of all the people I came to know in the aftermath who lost husbands, wives, and friends. It is for them that I continue to remember what happened that day.

It was supposed to be my second day teaching a "serious course" at NYU. That's why I woke up early. Eric didn't have class until much later in the day, but he was a good boyfriend at the time and got up early with me to take the train downtown. He knew I was nervous.

No, scared.

So scared about being a failure at teaching that I decided to go into my office two hours early. I had already written up my lesson plan, but I need to use the printer in my office, mine was broken. I also wanted to go into the room early and make sure the chairs were arranged properly around the table. And rehearse my class plan a little. Get use to talking at the front of the room.

I didn't have a television at the time, and we didn't listen to the radio. We woke and busied ourselves about getting ready. Did we shower together that morning? We often did, but I can't remember if we did that day. I hope we did. It would have been the last time. We had breakfast-toasted cinnamon waffles-a personal favorite-with no syrup. And tea, of course, two cups for me.

We walked half awake to the train station. As early as I was going to be, I wanted to rush. Thought two hours wasn't nearly enough time for me to prepare for my class ,and I wanted everything to be perfect. I had to be sure of everything so I could be confident when I went into class.

The trains ran normally and so it wasn't until we got out of the 6 at Astor Place that we knew anything was wrong. Eric noticed the billows of smoke. "What the hell is that?" he asked me as he pointed out the smoke.

"Something is probably on fire," I retorted. I didn't have time for this. I wanted to go to my office and get ready, not ponder the causes of smoke in a city. "Are you going back to your place?"

"No, I'll come with you. I want to see what this is about." So we started to walk towards my office. It wasn't until we were on Waverly that we both saw it.

What I couldn't understand was how both towers could be on fire. Surely the fire couldn't leap from one building to the next. How could they both be burning?

We stood there. I noticed people on their cellphones. Who were they calling? Still, as horrible as it was, I pushed on. NYU wouldn't cancel class for a fire, even if it was in both of the towers.

We were walking towards 4th street hand in hand and when we saw the first tower fall. I don't remember there being any sound, although there must have been. I remember there being a surge in the people around us, all of us running instinctively forward. As if a few more steps and we could hold it up.

In that moment when the tower fell, I was surprised that tower in its collapse looked like nothing more than flaking paper. It fluttered slowly. In that moment, all I could think of was my seventh grade latin teacher, Mrs. Hightower.

Mrs. Hightower often gave us historic documents to translate. One document she gave us was on the destruction of Pompeii, a town buried slowly in ash when Mt Vesuvius exploded. That day what struck me wasn't anything in the reading, but her lecture about the destruction of Pompeii.

She told us people drowned by tidal waves caused by the explosion ( they were trying to get out of the city by boat). She talked of people trying to flee before the sun was obscured by the clouds of ash. But what stayed with me was what she said, "But some people stayed thinking it would be alright."

That was it. Some people stayed waiting for the danger to vanish as quickly as it appeared. Some people waited. Some people were slowly covered in ash waiting to see the sun again thinking "Man I am going to be pissed tomorrow when I have to clean this up." Wondering what kinds of games the Emperor would hold to celebrate the survival of the city. Wondering when it was going to stop because it was going to stop.

And for those who waited they saw light again. They saw light in the darkness, but it wasn't the sun. It was flames rising from the city. It was Pompeii burning.

What shocked me was not that people tried to escape danger, that I understood, but that people stayed-chose to stay-that surprised me, but then, I thought, it's always so hard to know the right thing to do. Will running down the stairs save my life or should I take the elevator or should I just stay where I am? Should I wait for people to come find me? And while I make this decision, time is running out.

Eric stood beside me. "I'm sure everyone got out ok" he said. I thought to myself "Some of them stayed." I knew even then, but I didn't say anything.

On West Fourth, some guy had put a radio on top of his car and was blaring the news. People were gathered around it. I saw Rabid standing there stone faced. I waved as Eric pulled me towards my office. He wanted to use my phone to call his mother, to tell her we were OK.

"Will you come with me to Cananda?" he asked. Not joking. He was afraid of a war, knew he couldn't be a solider although his father had spent most of his life in the military.

"Yes," I said. And I meant it. I would have gotten on the train then and never looked back. Given up my first teaching position because he was a coward.

Upstairs Doris was trying to deal with the phones. "You don't have to stay," she said, "but we'd like you to. In case students show up." I went to my office. Of course, we couldn't use the phone, but I sent my mother an email. Eric decided to go back to his dorm to try and call his mother.

He left me in my office.

Now I can admit that I was scared and angry. I was worried about looting and riots and he was leaving me to fend for myself to call his mother. I should have said something like no or take me with you.

But I stayed in case students showed up. I emailed my mother to tell her I was alright. I was worried about getting to my apartment on the upper east side. I knew I couldn't walk that far. I was worried about the hysteria, the riots, the tramplings that could occur.

And then the second tower fell and I knew no students were going to come today. Another professor, a friend of mine from graduate school, Tymaine came in. He was worried about getting word to his wife that he was OK. He had to get home as soon as possible. Even if it meant walking all the way there. Another friend, one of the computer lab monitors, Nick, suggested we get something to eat. We went to the McDonald's across the street and ate talking about video games and movies and tried not to think about what was going on outside.

Afterwards, Nick decided to find his girlfriend while Tymaine and I walked up to the Union Square subway station. The subways were closed, but the police assured us that the lines would open again soon. We went to Eric's place and buzzed, but no one was there. Later I would find out that he was trying to donate blood. After a long wait, he had been turned away. They didn't need him.

Tymaine and I walked around the park a few times. We began to see people in the street covered in fine layers of ash. Some of them, it was just on their shoes. They had dusted themselves off as they walked uptown. Finally we got onto the N train. The train kept stopping for long periods between stations, and I was terrified. We all were.

At 59th street, I said good-bye to Tymaine. Wished him luck and decided to risk taking the bus the rest of the way home. The subway made me too nervous. The bus was packed. A black woman was crying out how we should all be thankful we were alive, we should thank God and Jesus we were alive.

I was glad when she got off the bus.

At 85th, I got off and began to walk to my apartment. People were having lunch at Panorama like it was a normal day. I went home and turned on the radio. I got online. My mother had sent me a return email. "If you need me to come get you, just tell me" as if the army would respect her trying to save her only child.

Again.

I stayed on Metafilter and kept the radio on to find out what was going on. My phone rang later that night, it was Eric's mother. I told her that we were both OK although seperated. I can't remember what else I said. I still couldn't dial out. Later I would find out that Duke Nukem called my mother twice to find out if I was OK even though I hadn't spoken to him in almost two years. She assured him I was fine. I posted my name and Eric's on several survivor lists going around. I got an email from Eric telling me not to be scared, that I wasn't alone as long as he loved me, he was with me.

dont you
know that no
matter what you
do, where i am,
where you are,
you are never
alone!!!! why,
because i love
you and im
always there in
spirit. i just
talked to my
mom and cant
get through to
you ...again. ill
try later, ill be
around. dont
worry if we cant
talk for a while,
just remember
all the nice
things ive said
before.
i love you so
much
XOXOXOOX
Eric

I could handle being alone, after all I had made it uptown by myself.

I don't know how I fell asleep that night, but I know that I did. The next day Eric phoned, but still he didn't come uptown. I sat on the front stoop and blew bubbles. A couple came out and sniffed the air, "Why does it smell funny?" the guys asked the girl. She shook her head. How could they not know. "It's the ash from the towers. The debris. It's still in the air." They looked at me. I stayed there in the sun until my Israeli neighbor told me it wasn't safe. I should be inside. As if anything could be safe. How could we believe in the illusion of safety again? Not knowing then that it would soon be a national obsession. That we would eventually declare war on an abstract noun.

And the day after that Eric also stayed downtown. I tried to do the right thing, give him his space. My friends told me not to take it personally. He was in shock. He needed to work through things. What about my needs? Well, I was the stronger one. I was going through this alone and he apparently needed to be with his college age friends-to sit in dorm rooms and drink beer. And so I swallowed my rage at being abandoned, at being left on my own, and tried not to admit how terrified I was of going back to work. How relieved I was when NYU announced that classes would not resume until the following week.

Finally when we could leave the city, he came with me to Upstate. He seemed like his old self with me then. But I kept thinking about how you never know the last time you'll make love to someone. I told myself it was because of all those people who lost wives and husbands, fiancees, even adulterous lovers. But it was that somewhere I already knew.

When I came back to the city, the subways stops were papered with homemade signs and posters-the names and pictures of so many.

I met some of those people, the ones left behind, in bars. One of them lost what he said was the love of his life. He started smoking and drinking so that he could die, so that he could be with her. The other day I saw him on the sidewalk with his new fiancee-happily holding her hand. "Can't you be happy for them?" a friend of mine asked, but all I could think of was how did he recover and I didn't? Before Pompeii was destroyed by Vesuvius, several years before there had been a devastating earthquake. Most had fled, thinking the city would never recover, and yet it did. In fact, it did so quickly that when the eruption occurred the walls of the city were being expanded to make room for more people.

We never know in the end what it is that will destroy us. It's not always the worst thing, it's just the last thing.

I was at a party with one of my friends from college two weeks afterward. There were fresh peach Bellinis, and all of us drank too much while wearing our little red, white, and blue ribbons. The next day when Eric came, finally, I was still sleeping it off. I saw him and greeted him and then went back to sleep. When I woke up he had a box of stuff. "I'm leaving" he said.

"When are you coming back?" I asked.

Silence.

I sat up. He handed me a letter.

One page.

It began, "I no longer deserve the love you so freely give me."

I don't remember what else it said, but I do know that it didn't say I love you in it. He couldn't even give me that. I was the first great love of his life. How many has he had now?

He told me that everything would OK. As he always did. As it always has been for him. As I'm sure he would like to believe it is for others.

He needed his freedom. He wanted to date other girls. He wanted to be young.

Surviving what I have, the last thing I am is young. I have more in common with broken down war heroes than I do with graduate students. If he wanted youth, he had to leave.

I had predicted this two years earlier, I just didn't think he would do it now. In the wake of the one of the greatest American tragedies. Wasn't it uspposed to bring us closer together? To make us realize how special we were to each other? But he decided that much like this country, I wasn't worth fighting for either.

And I, who had been an agnostic, stopped believing in God. When school resumed, one of my students wanted to write an argumentative paper that was God was still benevolent in the wake of 9-11. It was all I could do not to shake her and say "If there is a God, I want no part of him."

And I who had been so scared of dying, was now scared of something else: living.

It's been years now. I don't remember how many years passed before I was able to go back to Union Square and not remember the posters of the missing, not to miss the gap in skyline. Now I go to the farmers market there and only occasionally remember when I walked there that day with Tymaine. From time to time, a move will come on TV and I'll be jarred by the site of a manhattan skyline complete with the Towers. And I feel horrified for a moment that I've forgotten as much as I have. And when these moments come, I take the time to remember-to revisit those memories. Eric and Metafilter and the ashes and listening to George Stephanopoulos on the radio.

There are those who two years after the fact wanted us to "Get over it" and "Move on."
According to science, there is not a single cell in my body that was there with me that day. I am, for all intensive purposes, a completely different girl than I was that day. But there are those of us who know that even those of us who survived live in a different city, we are different people. There is no shame in that. As a descendant of German Jews, I know that we are meant to live, but that does not mean that we are meant to forget those who are no longer with us. In fact, it is by remembering them that we give our lives meaning. It is by remembering that we continue to share our lives with them.

There never was another Pompeii. No town was ever built on top of the ashes of that lost city.
About 2000 years after its destruction by Mt Vesuvius the excavated city exist for the tourists and scholars, who may now wander through a city where time stopped in 79 AD, but no one lives there. On September 11th, I had a vision of NYC transformed into a modern Pompeii.

It didn't happen, but now we knew that it could.

Two years before 9-11 I attended a party sponsored by Bombay Sapphire gin. They had given out several of those little airplane/hotel mini bar bottles. I had three in my apartment. I stayed up allnight reading and posting on metafilter, listening to the radio, and drinking gin.

There never was another Pompeii. No town was ever built on top of the ashes of those lost.

About 2000 years after its destruction by Mt Vesuvius only 2/3 of the city is uncovered. There are still excavations at Pompeii, still discoveries made. The excavations exist for the tourists and scholars, who may now wander through a city where time stopped in 79 AD, but no one lives there.

Ex Boyfriend Update

2008-09-05T00:48:00.002-04:00

So the Idiot Formerly Known as My Boyfriend, after I've thrown out all his crap and been the stereotypic post break up mess walking around my nightgown for two days, actually poked me on facebook today. Like we're still friends. Like nothing is wrong. Like he's some 14 year old girl. And this little incident reminded me who I am. I'm Bunni Spiegelman. No man has ever broken me and I'll be goddamned if this pansy, who can't even find the balls to PICK UP THE PHONE AND CALL ME IF HE'S ALL THAT WORRIED ABOUT MY WELL BEING, is going to be the first. So I made another little YouTube Update featuring my response to Who's Who in Ball-less Glory.

I once said the best thing about being a writer is if I like you, I'll make you famous and if I hate you...I'll make you famous.

(Incidentally anyone out there maybe help me out so I can embed these videos on my blog? Anyone?)

Hear Me, See Me

2008-09-04T20:01:00.002-04:00

Well, 'Mouse wanted to hear the Paris Diaries. Considering their length, I thought perhaps what would be better would be to video blog an old story of mine that I found myself telling my dance teacher this story, which I blogged long ago and even performed when I was dating Ivan the Horrible. Since I can't embed video in this blog, please click the link to see the lovely, but heartbroken Prof. Spiegelman explain to you why seeking vengeance isn't necessary and why blue margaritas are. And leave me nice feedback, cos I'm kinda nervous about this whole little experiment.

Whom the Gods Destroy

2008-09-04T11:36:00.005-04:00

"I want you to be happy," he says. My tears on his shirt. He's crying. It's been so long since I made a man cry. I suppose I should take some sort of pleasure in that.

If only I had walked away in the beginning. Or kept to the plan-be distant and bitchy, use him for what I wanted and not get emotionally involved. I never do the smart thing, the right thing. My mother has no sense of direction-she gets lost in bathrooms and on 20 minute drives to the movies. I'm the emotional equivalent of the same thing. Show me the wrong man, a bad relationship, a decision that will undoubtedly result in overwhelming pain and I instinctively head in that direction. I felt his pain more than I felt my own. Like a fool, kissing him and soothing him when I should have been angry, when I should have sent him away with nothing but scorn and insult. Instead, I waited for him on my stoop at night shaking with anticipation and yet asking myself over and over "What the hell am I doing? Why am I wasting my time on what I know will only end in pain?" Because it's going to be painful anyway. Because it was worth it to me to feel special and loved again if only for a moment.

Because I thought I would have more time.

I'm too old for this. If I had known when Eric left, this is what my life was going to be like-I would have killed myself without hesitation. I fought so hard to stay alive-two years of wanting to die every minute of every day. Two years of running the gauntlet of the 200 ways to kill myself on the way to work only to have to run them all again on the way home. Not to slash my chest open while making dinner. Not to walk in front of traffic. Not to overdose on sedatives and pain killers. Not to throw myself under the 6 train. Not to drink drano. And for what? For this? To have fallen this far? To survive only to discover that I really did die that day, and this other girl who is still alive is just the ghost of a ghost. A collection of horrible memories, psychological problems, and movie quotes. Something not even my parents could really love-just throw money at.

You would think I wouldn't have any more tears in me after all of this, but I do.

I haven't eaten since Tuesday. All I have in my system is bourbon and iced tea. And I'm almost out of bourbon, which is the only reason why I am going to leave the apartment. Outside the sun is shining and I'm in here vomiting bile because I have nothing left to vomit. If I could throw up my heart, I would. I suppose I'm hoping that is what is going to happen. I keep drinking so I can keep sleeping. The minute I wake up the first thing I do is think about cutting myself and then I think of him and then I take two large gulps of bourbon so I can go back to sleep and dream of snow and painlessness.

I'm so sick of fighting for this empty useless life.

He says he's doing this for me, so I can be happy because he can't be what I want him to be. Of course he can't. Because what I want, what I have never recovered from, is that old life-the one where for one brief and shining moment I had everything I wanted, everything I never thought I could have-and I was right. I just want to be loved again. Like I was. When I had someone to come home to. When I had someone who took care of me when I was sick. When I didn't care about being a famous writer, I just wanted to be a teacher and be his wife.

For two year sof my life, I was afraid to die. I kept asking God to let me live a little longer. And now I will never ever stop regretting that. If only I had died, I would at least died happy. People sometimes tell me I'm lucky I've survived all of this. I'm tempted to tell them-luck is dying without knowing any of this. Still being able to believe in something, anything, worthwhile-and not living on stubborness and alcohol.

He tells me he cares about me and he wants me to happy before he runs out with my tears on his shirt. He'll go home to his wife and his children. He'll lose himself in the type of life that I can't even allow myself to dream about. He'll be fine. I was a momentary madness. In a year,he won't remember me. Me? How many men have I wept over in the last 7 years alone? I've lost count. I can't even remember their names anymore, although I remember what I called them here:Retrocrush, Farm Fresh, Bishop, Jolly Green Giant, Dockers, Nice Guy Eddie, Damocles, and Tony the Tiger. Most of them, years later, I barely remember at all. Half of them I would have to comb over the archives to even remember anything about them. Losing the pain of one love in another until none of them really matter.

I tell myself I'll forget him too. Like the others. He won't even be preserved in stories like Ivan the Horrible and UDR. I won't send him up to be mocked by my friends most of whom don't even know I was dating him. I barely even wrote about him. I spend the day erasing the few traces of him that I have him. Deleting his voicemails, text messages, emails, phone numbers. Throwing out his shirts and the one present he ever gave me-an illfitting Merrywidow in red and black. Not my style at all, really. He never brought me presents. Kiss Kiss bought me snow and rabbits. The Sauvage gave me the summer sun in Frehel and Koring Amande. Even Eric, I still have the necklace and bracelet he gave me all those years ago. Of course now it will make it easier to dispose of him. All his detritus is ephemeral. His smell has already faded, next will be the way he looks, and finally his voice. That will be the last thing I will lose. His verbal ticks "Are you now?" and "Do you now?" So Irish in origin. There weren't even that many inside jokes. Yet he's already harder to shake than Kiss Kiss with whom I spent a year. Kiss Kiss who looks through me and not at me when I walk in a room-even though I still have his gifts and his pictures and his inside jokes. I tell myself if I can get through this, a year from now I'll be surprised if I even remember his name.

Ibsen said that some fictions are necessary to our existence.

People will tell me that I'm better off, that I'm too good for him. People will tell me there is hope, there will be something better, that I will get the happiness I deserve. But I, I who grew up in ERs and ORs and waiting rooms. I who have survived dying so many times I lost count.I who have been hearing this bullshit since Eric left, since before that, since high school. I who grew up in ERs and ORs and waiting rooms. I know better. I know, for example, that while there may be no atheists in foxholes, there are alot of them in pediatric ICU because who could look on that and still believe that there is justice in the world? And I who survived those horrors, only to be haunted by others, how could I believe in anything other than pain? When I was in middle school the popular kids used to make fun of me for believing that anyone could be actually interested in me. All those times I wanted to to die, I pushed myself through it in order to prove them wrong, but they were right about me. All that hope for something better landed me here.

All there is here is a liquor store around the corner that delivers.

The Last to KNow

2008-09-01T18:46:00.003-04:00

Apparently the love affair is over. The last I heard or saw of him was Saturday night when he bid me good night and said "I'll talk to you tomorrow." And that's it. Vanished. I've often said there is a special level of Hell reserved for those who break up via text message, IM, email, fax, and vmail. But below that level is another level reserved for those who don't bother to break up-who just fucking disappear. I should know because I'm the one who insisted it get built. It's right abovethe serial child rapists and a little below anyone who ever wrote an eharmony testimonial.

I have that effect on men, sudden disapperances. Mainly because they know I am the type of girl who will hunt them down, reach down their throats, rip their spines out, make them drink lemonade with their last few moments, call some friends of mine in Hell and make sure that they spend eternity redefining cruel and unusual punishment, and then wear their spines as a decorative hat as a warning to others who treat the Bunni's heart with anything less than delicate care.

So needless to say I'm a fucking mess, and physically ill over the whole freakin thing. So instead of writing, I offer you some youtube goodness. I have to do it as links since, you know, I can't post them directly here for some unknown reason.

Are you lonesome tonight? A Top Secret Spoof of the Original

The Universe Song from Monty Python and the Meaning of Life

Richard Jeni talking about break ups

Jake Johannsen talks about break ups

Dana Gould talks about insomnia

Patton Oswald explains why I am happy to be single-courtesy of Stella D'oro Breakfast Treats

If Only Life was Like in the Movies

2008-08-31T12:53:00.005-04:00

----------------
Now playing: Beth Rowley - Nobody's Fault But Mine
via FoxyTunes

"But life is not like in the movies. Everyone lies, good guys lose, and love does not conquer all."
-Swimming with Sharks

Although I have been able to hide it through my Paris posts, and even my first day post-I've been becoming more depressed. Drinking more, relying on ever increasing doses of tylenol PM, spending days in bed without the motivation to leave the apartment. Of course, I have LOTS of things to do, but I find myself sitting on the couch unable to find the will to do them. This is real depression-when you don't have the energy to eat or vacuum. My crochet project sits across the living room in a bag-I should finish it-or the needlepoint project-or read Antunes-or my student papers (oh the pain begins already)-or write part of the screenplay--or get printer paper-or go to the farmer's market or just take a walk and enjoy the last days of summer which I will miss when they are gone-but I find myself scanning over the same channels on the tv over and over trying to find something that will interest me. And when I do the first eharmony ad, the first match.com, the first debeers ad will send me into paroxyms of rage and hopelessness.

"Where did I go wrong?" I think as it seems everything now sends me ever further down the rabbit hole. My mother taking her boyfriend to see my grandmother. My continued failure to get my karma to 70 on plurk, but just hover around 69. My unringing cellphone.

I walk with Office Elf after watching a movie. He has a present for his new girlfriend in his hand-he wonders outloud if she will like it. "Of course she will. It's from you." He looks at me, perhaps he is surprised that I was once a young romantic girl. "It hasn't been so long since I've forgotten what it's like." But I wish it was. God I wish I could forget what it was like to come home to lights already on in my apartment. To us sitting on the couch reading aloud to each other. To him putting peanut butter sandwiches on my pillow when I came home from work exhausted and starving. The reassuring warmth of going to bed curled up next to his soft sticky warmth and to waking up next to him. And how with him, I felt, for theonly time, like a normal girl. How we argued about how many children we were going to have and where we going to get married. He's married now to another woman-with a child. Claims we never were engaged and that I'm pathetic and cray. But still I'm haunted by it, by the loss of him. And how I only find brief flickers of it in the least appropriate of places.

And the stupid part is this is not only all my own fault, but it's the same pattern. I made the mistake of falling in love with someone I shouldn't have. I know, I know. What are the odds? To my credit I didn't know that when I fell. But, of course, I should have known because it's me. Because no decent appropriate guy would walk my way. That would just be a fundamental violation of the universal order. But I decided to stay with him even when I knew I shouldn't because the choice came down, or so I thought, between hurt now or hurt later. I thought if I hurt later, I would at last have some pleasure.

I said it once, I'll say it again. The worst decision of your life will seem like a good idea at the time.

And he was the only man to tell me he loved me in so long. To push me to open up. To send me text messages in the morning, every morning, or at least he did. To make me feel that maybe there was some hope for me yet.

But hope is a demon bitch no matter what Pandora says.

But now I find, that I am hurting now with only the prospect of more pain in the future. He comes over and when he's here, I'm thinking, "I have to leave him. I'm not happy. I'm getting worse and it's him. I was better before I met him." And I was. And I've been through this before-the increasing depression, the rage, the resentment, the staying in the completely blind hope that happiness wil return. The other side of my brain says, leave him for what? More empty lonely nights? At least this way you occasionally get hot sex. How easy I've been on him, how undemanding, how trusting I've been-and now I will begin to hate him for not treating better-where are the dinners out and the little presents just because? Christ, where did my morning phone calls go and the long long evenings together?

Why can't I be happy?

If only my life were more like a movie or an Oprah Book of the Month Club book like Open House. Predictable with happy ending. Instead, I find myself writing on bar napkins "When Eric left, I thought I had no hope. But I pushed through anyway. To get through every day by any means necessary-and if that meant taking anti depressants or drinking on an empty stomach or having yet another night of meaningless sex with someone I would normally not want to talk to for more than five minutes or all three at the same time-if it got me to the next day without throwing myself under the 6 train or drinking a drano martini or slashing open my throat while I tried to make dinner, well, then that's what I did. And then I began to come to, to come back to life, only to discover it was too late. To discover that I really was already dead and now I am the ghost of a perfect stranger. Because if I had known what was waiting for me in seven years, what I would become, I would have killed myself without hesitation knowing it was the right decision."

I leave the napkin on the table, where he could read it, its hard to miss if he were so inclined. But he doesn't even bother to look. Just walks by it, intent on kissing me hello even as I think, "I have to leave him. I have to.I have to."

I have to, but I don't. Nor do I tell him anything is wrong. I just kiss him back.

And when he leaves, the smell of his sweat still in my nose, I pour myself a drink and take half a dose of tylenol pm and think I hve to leave him. Even as I wait for him to call. And I try to decide, in the end, who I will hate more:myself, him, or Eric. But I know the answer to this one too, it has to be me. After all, I'm the one who will end up suffering.

The Paris Diaries in Their Entirety

2008-08-29T23:10:00.007-04:00

I promised you that when I finished the Paris Diaries, I would actually put all of the Paris Entries into one blog post so that you could easily go through all of them. Considering that I started writing about Paris in 2004, it's reasonable that most of you would not want to hunt through and find those posts and so I bring you, ENTIRELY FREE OF COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTION, the Paris Diaries 2004-2008. I've broken down the posts by the trips. If you think looking at this list of 119 posts is daunting, imagine how I felt writing them. The posts are sometimes short so don't be too intimidated. I give you the Paris Diaries!

First Trip: August 2004

Be a Slut: A Straight Man's Advice

Don't Disappoint Me, Princess

The All American Send Off and Getting There

The Wrong Box

I'm an Idiot and My Life Becomes an Elizabeth Bishop Poem

Kiss of the Dragon

Say It Loud, Say It Proud: Fuck Atkins, and We Are Crazy French, No?

Sanctuary!

The Reliquary of the Umbilicus of Christ and Other Parisian Distractions

New York, New York, and Other Songs One Hears in Paris

L'Amour

Le Louvre

Last Tango in Paris

From Paris to the Moon

Paris Deux: January 2005

A Moveable Feast

Getting There

Doing the French Mistake

Great Expectations

The Louvre is Never a Bad Idea

Sweet and Lowdown

The Silent Silent Partner

The Law of Universal Regression

Non French Speaking Narcoleptic Nymphomania

We Rarely Recognize Happiness

The Baite

Oh Paris, Not Again: May 2007

Paradise Regained

55 Miles to Go * This post isn't really part of the narrative, but was posted from Paris when I was experiencing health issues.

Never Book Plane Tickets When You Are Drunk

Yodeling Into the Abyss

I'm at one with the Me that is on this adventure

Personal Jesus

The Rules: Paris Style

The Enforced Cultural Death March Begins

Another Rant About Audio Tours

What the French got Right

Remembrance of Things Past

Mirror, Mirror

Why I Hate Other Americans

Long Day's Journey Into Night

If You Can Make It Here

Eternal

Marie Antionette is the Real Queen of Vegas

Apres Midi Delice

Trapped in Yves Saint Laurent

Thank You Zola, For All The Good Times

Surrender

Mr. Sandman

J'adore

Important Expository Post From Paris: The Death of Love Affair

Frehel Diaries: August 2007

Preparation for an Adventure

Going to Meet a French Lover and Other Unrealized Works by Franz Kafka

Promise

As You Wish

Because in France, Everything is Possible

Lumiere D'Etoile, Lumineux D'Etoile

Sex and Death by Celebrity Guest Writer: Henry Miller

The Beautiful Hippo and Fear of a French Toilet

Bed, Toilets, and Love

In the Moment

Meet the Parents

Beach Blanket Bunni

Laissez-Faire: The French Art of Eating and Parking

Ma Vie En Rose

Needful Things

Low Tide

French Logic and Le Regime D'atkins

La Logique Francaise Revient

Pig Pee Bay

From Abba to Othello: Professor Spiegelman Explains It All For You

To Build a Better Love Trap

The Spiegelman Bible and The Elvis Diet

Beyond the Sea

Boiling Point

The Road Not Taken

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

The Crying Game

Siren Song

Cher Jean

Bunni's Bluff

A Brief History of My Calamities

What a Difference a Crepe Makes

Feu D'Artifice

Personne n'a fait ce que tu as fait pour moi

The Fine Art of Loss

Eden Revisited

Isn't It Ironic?

Chez Nous

Past Perfect

Fat Black Pussycat

L'etranger

Nobody's Girl But My Own

Bang, Whimper

Home is Where

Lost in Translation

The Never Ending Story

Necessary Expository Interlude: Where do we go from here?

The Final Installment of the Paris Diaries: December 2007-January 2008

Know Thyself and Other Airport Diversions

Fever

The Big Sleep

Auld Lang Syne

Vengeance, Thy Name is Bunni

A la Cherche du Temps Perdu

Ces Bottes Sont Faites Pour Marcher

Anatomy of a Romantic Catastrophe

Champagne and Ruins

Tea and Hormony in Paris

Serendipity

A Cleaning Woman in the House of God

Marco Polo

Top of the World, Ma

Truth, Love, and Asshattery

La Petite Coquine Takes High Tea

C'est la Vie

La Chaleur

Redefining Room Service

La Grande Horizontale

Inkstained

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

Jet Lag

The Divine Miss P's Magical Cat Hair Cure

Fall Back

2008-08-26T22:47:00.006-04:00

I've been dreading this day, the first day back, the clean demarcation of everything I failed to do during the summer. My alarm is set for 9. I'll be teaching in the afternoon and evening so I can sleep late, but I wake at 8 unable to continue sleeping even though I'm still tired. The first day back is always a catastrophe. Everything goes wrong and usually in some completely unforeseen way. In the beginning, I used to be spend five or six hours meticulous preparing for this day only to be devastated when everything fell apart. Now I barely cobble together a plan-that way when it happens, I won't be upset. I'll know I was going to wing it no matter what.

As I get dressed the top button on my brown skirt flies off, the first casualty. Because I have gotten up early, I have time to sew the button back on albeit with white thread. I pack up my stuff, but I keep fussing with things in my bag, rechecking my email because the truth is I don't want to go. I've been agonizing over going back, imagining the long trek up those stairs to class, dreading the person I become when I teach, angry, disappointed, depressed, enraged as much by my students incompetence as my own failure, my fear that all these hours waste on comments and assignments are exactly that, waste.

Still when I walk out onto the street, I smile. It's a cool day in late summer, the way I like: sunny, but not hot or humid. Makes going to work comfortable. I call my look: New England English Professor. Not suits, like some professors, or jeans and button downs, like others, but long skirts, v-neck sweaters, corduroy pants with short tailored jackets, a few well made dresses kissed with green or blue-a touch of the romantic Parisian fashions with some of my dark and more severe ensembles that let my students know that while young and female, I am a Serious Academic and they do well to treat me that way. Originally I was going to sport a green and white dress-tailored, but unfortunately it shows off my body is a way that makes me a bit uncomfortable for the first day. My would be boyfriend suggests that I should wear something black "It's more professional" he says. The weather report says it will be 80 degrees so I decided on a long black scoop necked top with a long rust brown button down skirt accented with a large amber pendant on a silver chain. I'm not sure if I should be so Gothic on the first day, but I figure it should communicate the appropriate level of "Look on me, ye mighty and despair" to my students encouraging them to drop, spurring them to someone else's section so that I have less papers to grade, fewer complaints to field but once on the street, I smile.

The long bus/subway commute is relatively painless. A little black boy filled with energy is next to me while his older brother tries, valiantly, to keep the boy sitting. If I was grading I would be annoyed but pretend to be amused, but since I'm just reading "A Knowledge of Hell" by Antonio Antunes I actually am genuinely pleased to sit next to the child, to admire his spirit, to wish I had that kind of energy and determination. They got off before my stop, almost everyone does. In the end, there are only two other people in the car-a heavy set man about my age and a high school student. When I stand at my stop, I hear a full on wolf whistle. I look at the men trying to gauge which one did it, but both look innocent. After I step on the platform, I hear it again-and the whistling follows me all the way down the platform. I'm not sure if my boyfriend advised me correctly on my ensemble-after all sexy was what I was trying to avoid.

But at the foot of the subway, I walk by a former student. While she walks by me, she goes out of her way not to look at me. I forgot about that. If I avoid the gaze of a student or even obliviously walk by them with an armful of books, I'm sure to get a "Do you hate me Prof. Spiegelman?" email and I have many "I walked by you and you didn't say hi. Do you hate me?" And I respond "Did you say hi?" "No." "Was I carrying an armful of papers and looking distracted?" "Yes." "Well I was on my way to class and probably didn't even see you." "Oh." But if they walk by me and don't say hello, I'm not supposed to take it personally, not supposed to care. Most of the time I don't, most of the time.

I struggle up the stairs and as I do a student passes me with a bag that has the word "Paris" painted all over it.

The Quad is filled with students. I forgot about this-the flurry, the girls in jean shorts and gladiator sandals in gold and silver, the boys with fresh hair cuts and low rider jeans. The quad is packed with them, hugging, laughing, comparing class schedules, already planning for their first pub crawl, bong hit, ill advised late night hook up, beer pong tournament. A few of them, those precious few, sit on the grass already doing homework-already laden with books and syllabii and assignments, but most flit around like bees in the autumn-still buzzing, but a bit slower, a bit more sluggish already. It's hard to believe that by the end of the semester, they will be clinging to the last of their energy the way I cling to the railing when I walk up the stairs, desperate and dependant urging myself on that the end is in sight, sometimes resorting to insults "C'mon you stupid bitch, get up the stairs" and other times bribery "I'll let you have a bite of that Mo's bacon bar in the pantry if you make it up these stairs" but in the end knowing I'll make it because I have to and because I always have before. It's difficult, looking at them now in shorts and skirts, to believe that before this is over, they will be walking into class so swaddled and enrapt in winter clothes, I'll barely be able to see their eyes. Taking a seat now is about putting down your stuff-in three months it will be a ritual of unwrapping-scarves, mittens, hats, coats, and vests. For now things are free and simple-they are unencumbered by winter clothes and final projects.

I make it to my office to find that the university, which expects all professors to hand in their syllabii by the end of the first week, has decided to change its syllabii guidelines effective as of yesterday. I look at the guidelines, relieved that my syllabus fits the new criteria exactly-no changes necessary. Then I move onto to the next task, printing the syllabus as well as my class list to find that only one computer works and the printer doesn't at all, just as I expected. I Luckily I'm two hours early, as I expect things, as Chinua Achebe says, to fall apart. I go ask one of the student employees if she can print my class list and my syllabus for me, as they give the student employees better computers than the adjunct staff. She is more than willing, and soon I'm on my way to the copier, with my syllabus and an article from the Harvard Business Review about Maximizing Potential that will hopefully inspire them. Hopefully, hopefully, ever hopefully.

When I return to my office, a professor across the hall is screaming about her printer not working. "I can't take this anymore with my blood pressure!" She is threatening to quit as she rants on about not being able to photocopy her syllabus. "I came in here today so my students can have their syllabus tomorrow." Tommorrow? Doesn't she have a whole day? Can't she go to kinko's? Borrow a friend's computer? "I had tickets to the US Open today and I gave them up I GAVE THEM UP TO DO THIS AND IT STILL WON'T GET DONE." On she goes, making me embarrassed for her, until one of the student workers, hearing the commotion, comes in and offers to print and copy her syllabus. Suddenly the hallway is silent, but I fear she is the ghost of Bunni's future. The professor in question is a short woman, like myself, but far older. Pushing 60, and I can see myself at her age-still unmarried, lonely, depressed, having only the job as my source of human connection, for satisfaction on every level, the students getting younger and harder to reach, my confidence, such as it is, evaporating like the shadow of smoke until I final lose it over a broken printer. My hope, my belief, is that I will not live that long. I certainly won't work here that long. I can barely make it up the stairs to class now. In ten years, it will be impossible.

The first class is quiet, but one student comes in and looks me in the eye. He says hi directly to me. I know I will be OK. There are a few others who look at me, they smile and laugh at some of the things I say. My strange sense of humor-my references to rabbits and Hannibal Lecter. I throw some specific business issues at them-Pfizer closing their factories and shutting down their research departments, Coke's branding schemes, Virginia Slims using feminism to sell cigarettes. Try to give them a taste of what this semester will be like-frighten the less ambitious ones away and engage the ones who understand the method to my madness.

After I send my students away-already with homework and reading and most likely stories to swap about their crazy writing professor-sit in the Quad and text my boyfriend. Despite my outfit, I think how much closer to these students I am than to the other professors. There isn't one other prof. I've ever seen text and certainly not here out in the open, out in the sun. I decide to walk down the hill to get lunch. It will be good for me-a bit of a walk down, a hell of a hike up, but before I do I decide to set some of my stuff down in the adjunct's lounge. A young professor is there, looking lost at one of the computers, the only one that works. I ask her if she wants some help. She's the new US government adjunct, so I help log her into the computer. She asks if there is a place to get a soda and I explain that I'm heading down the hill, I can easily show her where the vending machines are as well as the cafeteria. She walks with me, asking more questions so I show her the Quad, pointing out the two buildings with vending machines in the basements, I guide her towards the cafeteria answering her questions about student athletes and the library. Her class is three hours long; "I've never taught for three hours before." I have, once, it was hellish and I shudder at the very thought of it. "What should I do?" she asks me. As if I know about US government. "Well, short in class reading and writing assignments would help as well as a 15 minute break, tell them its ten. Also break them into groups." "What do you mean?" "Give them a problem or some sort of prompt-maybe a reading or maybe just an issue-and some questions or a goal that they have to collaborate on-when the conversation dies down, then open up a full class discussion." She seems genuinely pleased with my help and thanks me with a smile as she heads off for her soda. I think perhaps I have a new friend before walking down the hill.

The second class is full of piss and vinegar. They come in immediately talking to me, asking what class I teach, if they are in the right place. I'm surprised. It's an early evening class and I'm expecting that would make them sluggish or disinterested, but instead they laugh, they ask questions, they stop afterwards to ask me questions and chat. I wonder if I have such good luck to have two engaged interesting classes. I send them off as well with their marching orders and they slink off, hopefully to do their work, but probably not.

I go back up to the adjunct's suite. I'm not sure why, but I do. I drop some papers in my mailbox, trying to lighten the load by whatever means necessary. As I collect my papers, an older Asian woman, another professor, walks in. She is wearing a lovely light aqua blue top with gold thread designs. She can afford be more light hearted as she looks more like a professor than I do, but still I think maybe I should have worn my green and white dress, hooterliciousness be damned. She compliments me on my amber necklace and we end up chatting-she says all teachers must have a touch of the actor in them. It's certainly true, but then so many professions demand smoke and mirrors these days are we so different? She also seems to be looking for a friend, someone to occasionally talk to about chronic lateness and disinterest.

I keep thinking as I pack my things that I'm hallucinating-that I'm hearing crickets because my new text alert tone sounds like crickets and I want to believe that I'm more important, more popular than I really am, but once I am out in the night I realize that the windows to the lounge were open. The sound of the night is deafening here. Not like it is in the city-drunks hollering, car alarms blaring, garbage trucks trundling, even the white noise from air conditioners-but the crickets and the frogs. It reminds me of home, my real home Connecticut, of the nights I spent lying awake as a child listening to those sounds outside of my window. As I walk through the night I realize that I never meant to stay in NYC that long. I came here thinking it would be until I found a husband, and all my friends have paired off and left, and here I am walking through the darkening evening listening to crickets alone. I worry that I stay here out of inertia, out of fear instead of because this is where I belong. I think of my apartment and realize that essentially I am homeless. I don't think of my apartment as home any more than I think of my mother's house now decorated with the detritus of her execrable boyfriend as home. It's more his than mine now. My childhood home sold. A woman without a country, without a home, a real wandering Jew, I think.

On the subway, I sit with my book open on my lap. I'm already thinking about writing this post, and asking myself if I should. It's clearly inspired by the book and I wonder if that's a good thing. Antunes writes as I can never hope to with a beauty to his descriptions that make me want to cut out my tongue and swallow ashes. As I sit, I begin to think about my lover-his hands pushing back my skirt, those hands of his that by now must have the architecture of my body memorized. I'm thinking of those sweet slow kisses of his-one hand on the back of my neck, the other at my waist. He's a father of two young children. It comes out sometimes-the way he speaks to me, the silliness. I find it both charming and disturbing-that he relates to me the same way I imagine he relates to them and that I find it attractive. Since Kiss Kiss left, all of my lovers have been fathers. All of them-I make it sound like a parade of thousands, when in fact it's only been the three. As if I'm trying to get the approval of my father after all these years, as if I'm trying to have a family by association. I always had strange ways of trying to get the things Nature has deprived me of. Because I can't run and have difficulty walking, my early loves were all long distance runners as if in loving them I could run, but they always ended up running away. Now I find myself with fathers, hopefully they will fare better than my father did, although this one has the same self destructive streak my father did and less reason for it. Strangely, it's this imp of the perverse, as Poe would say, that draws us together. I realize that instead of reading I'm now looking at an ad that says "Protect Children from Accidentally Poisoning." Must we advertise this now? Have parents become so ridiculous that they need to be told this in the same way they must be instructed to "Drink Coke" or "Get a little Captain in you"?

On the sidewalk in front of my house I find a clear glass marble, like the kind I collected as a child. I forgot about that until I saw that marble. When I was ten or eleven or so, I collected marbles. Not the crappy machine made cat's eye ones available at every toy store, but the clear glass ones-usually to be found in antique shops. I loved their bubbly imperfections, their colors-blue, green, orange, particularly the nebulous cloudy frosted ones-yet still somewhat clear. I like the heft of them in my pockets, but I never played. I collected them in tins and baskets and boxes, until I had so many I couldn't justify buying more. I got rid of them at one point. I didn't even save one. Until I found this one on the street and remembered my love of glass marbles and felt that old love as I put the marble in my pocket.

It's nine by the time I get home. My boyfriend texts me to asks if I have arrived at home alright and promising to come by later. In the mail I discover his present has arrived-a t shirt that proudly proclaims in purple gothic lettering "Imperial Consort of the Eco Friendly Insatiable Sex Monster" on the front, the Eco Friendly Insatiable Sex Monster being a joke that become a pet name for me, along with the less sexy Tin Man, and the back says "Her Pleasure is My Business." For two weeks I've been depressed thinking I was going to get rid of him, but somehow I find him difficult to leave. I try, but fights me-the one man in almost a decade to fight to keep me in his life. And for this one reason I know he must be crazier than I am, because I spend all this time with myself because I never figured out away to get someone else to do it for me. He does it voluntarily. At his own expense, even, depriving himself of what little sleep he can get to tickle me on the couch or meet at the back garden of my local for drinks. He knows more about me than any person in the last seven years, except for you my gentle readers, who know me best of all. He's still confused by how I can easily spill sex fantasies across paper, as easily as drunks spill drinks with miscalculated dramatic arm gestures, but if he looks its my eyes and asks me what I want, pulling me closer to him, but avoiding my rush to kiss him, and I blush like I did in high school. His plan, or so he says, is to break me of it.

Break me. Many have tried. All have failed.

Still, I wonder if he will be the one to do it as I wash the marble in the sink. I should sit and prep for Thursday or study for the GRE, but instead I sit and write. I who was afraid only yesterday that I had nothing to say.

Paris Diaries: The Divine Miss P's Magical Cat Hair Cure

2008-08-24T21:44:00.003-04:00

One of the things I enjoy the most about being in France is that I get to enjoy a cat hair free two weeks. I don't realize how much the Divine Miss P sheds or how much time I spend dealing with her cat hair-lint brushing clothes, vacuuming every other day, and picking up cat hair tumbleweeds that gather in corners of the couch. When I go on vacation, I suddenly realize what a relief it is to live a cat hair free life. When I return I have forgotten how annoying and time consuming it is living with a long haired cat, but I am very quickly reminded. I remember the day that the young French mover hit on me, and I unfortunately demurred instead of saying "Have cat, will travel." When I return to the divine Miss P, I often wonder if a cat free life would be preferable.*

However, when I returned to the US this time, I was still a bit ill. My cold cleared up within two days of returning to the US making me wonder if maybe my illness had been caused by cat hair withdrawal or if my cat secretes some sort of panacea in her fur. Perhaps her constant shedding is merely an attempt to ensure that I and my guests remain healthy. I thought I might be able to bottle some of her fur and, ala Sears White Stair Liquor Cure (The Road to Wellville reference), and market it.

Soon, I was back on American time, cleaning the apartment, spraying room freshener, unpacking my new clothes, managing the mountain of laundry generated by a prolonged vacation, preparing my syllabus and typing notes on Paris all thanks to my cat's magical cat hair cure. As the early winter twilight fell, I sat on the couch next to her as I fixed myself a pot of fleur bleu earl grey in my mariage frere teapot. The divine Miss P curled up next to me-her gynormous white ass towards me. I draped an arm over her and said, "Well, I guess we are just two fat bitches against the world."

And Miss P, purring like an outboard motor, looks over her shoulder and narrows her yellow eyes as if to say "Who the hell are you calling fat?"

I took a sip of tea and thought, "It's good to be home."

Fin.

* When I was with Eric, he often encouraged me to get a cat, but considering how much time I spent in Las Vegas I refused. He thought it would help me be less depressed when he was away, and I thought he should just try and a better boyfriend. In the end, I suppose he won the argument in a way. I bought the Divine Miss P about a month after he left.

Paris Diaries: Jet Lag

2008-08-24T14:15:00.000-04:00

Every time I have returned from Paris, the first thing I do is have a decadent lunch or dinner with Bakerina where I spill the juiciest details and try to persuade her to finally come to Paris with me. Part of the reason I do this is the minute I return to the US, I am filled with sadness. I turn on my phone hoping that a thousand people have called me, and inevitably it's two messages, if any at all. I get home only to discover that the apartment is far worse than I imagined. This time it was worse than usual. I could smell the pot from the minute I opened the front door of my building. As I struggled with my keys, one of my more friendly neighbors remarked on the pot smell coming from my apartment. Totally flushed I explained to him that I was actually returning home after a prolonged vacation. I told him that my cat sitter, the Doberman, had apparently been using my apartment as an opium den. The neighbor laughed and said most of the time he was tempted to knock on the door and ask if he could have some. I laughed along with him, but inside I was trying not to choke to death from shear anxiety and silence my urge to beat the Doberman to death with a bong. The apartment was filled with stale pot smoke, which the Doberman had done nothing to mitigate. Also while he claimed he was going to clean the floor, it was clear that he hadn't. The litter box hadn't been emptied, and there were a few unfortunate things I had left in the refrigerator that hasn't survived as long as i hoped. I checked my email hoping that there was some message there that would hint that I was missed, that I was important to someone. But instead of hope, I found myself overwhelmed with spam. I checked my calendar and realized that very soon I would have to return to teaching, trudging up hills and stairs hauling pounds of papers to return to my apathetic students most of whom don't have the good sense or ambition to piss on a small fire. To save myself from utter post vacation depression, I find that dining with Bakerina, who is willing to while away an afternoon listening to me babble about Paris, is the perfect cure.

I met her Firenze, one of our usual post-Paris debriefing locations. After two weeks of French food, when I return to NY I long for something else-Italian, Thai, Chinese, Mexican, anything but French. To celebrate my return we usual pick some place decadent and Firenze, which hit upon one day by accident, quickly became our go to post Paris debriefing locale. Even though it was winter, I was under dressed in some of my lighter Paris fashions, much to the delight of the Russian waiters. I chatted with her about Nikolae, the break up with the Sauvage, my grand escape, tea at Laduree and Mariage Frere, meeting Marco again on Sacre Coeur, the fresh air markets, the idiocy of museum goers. Talking to Bakerina, seeing her angagement in the stories, I began to feel again the joy and rush of Paris. I couldn't wait to begin writing the Paris Diaries again, even though I still wasn't done with Frehel. I knew, again, that I had to dedicate myself to finishing this writing project.

While in the midst of this grand revery, the Doberman crashed into our lunch. By this time, I was happily drunk. First the Doberman asserted that he that he has "cleaned alot." Thinking about the condition of the apartment, I can't think of one thing he did. He didn't vacuum or wash the dishes. He didn't even have the sense to spray some lysol to disguise the pot smell. I yelled at him about how overwhelming the apartment smelled. In typical Doberman fashion, it hadn't even occured to him that this was a problem. Beyond that he was clearly stressed out and out of sorts, apparently about his jobless condition. And looking at these two friends, one so supportive and the other, as a poet would say, supportive in his own particular fashion, I felt again an overwhelming sadness at returning to this life-my smoky stale apartment, needed a good cleaning, my pot headed friend who couldn't find a job, my imminent return to a job that I don't really believe in. I knew there was much work ahead and I drank enough to send me to bed-so that I could quickly adjust to my time zone. The Doberman tried to curb my drinking, but Bakerian knew that at a time like this a girl needs to get a bit tipsy. Strangely going to Paris, I adjust quickly to my new time zone, returning some times take as long as 10 days, as if I am trying to hold onto my life there as long as possible, my mind living there while my body is, most unfortunately, here.

I went home to my smoky apartment and fell asleep. My cat, ever supportive, was so excited I was home that she curled up next to my head purring loudly and licking my face. If only my friends did that, I thought as I drifted to sleep, I would be happier to be home.

(** Author's Note: Tomorrow will be the conclusion of the Paris Diaries, just in time for the first day of classes.)

Paris Diaries: Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

2008-08-21T18:05:00.002-04:00

It was still dark when I dragged my bags down to the front desk. Nikolae was there-wide eyed and nervous. He asked me if I wanted his email address. It amused me that one night stand etiquette is the same there as it is here. Even though it was pretty clear he was relieved I was leaving, he still had to give me his email...for what? Was he trying not to make me feel like some cheap slut sex poodle? Convince me that the reason he was feeling me up in the conference room the other night is because he wanted a deep and meaningful relationship? He was secretly longing for me to IM him about my thoughts on Proust and Zola?

It never ceases to amaze me that after that men believe, deep in their hearts, that a woman can not just use a man and throw him away with no more emotional engagement than one would feel for a particularly satisfying chocolate bar. Did I enjoy the experience? Sure. Would I do it again? Probably. But that doesn't mean that I care and certainly doesn't mean that I have some fantasy about yet ANOTHER intercontinental romance with this twig of a man. I used to fool around with a guy, a very cute cop actually, who was convinced CONVINCED that I was going to fall in love with him. Not only was it insulting, it was patently ridiculous. The one thing I've never been able to do is fall in love with someone that I couldn't have a serious conversation with. The heart wants what it wants, and my heart wants someone to talk to. My body, on the other hand, is far less exacting in its requirements. In fact, often what my body wants is completely at odds with my heart. I've had good lovers who I couldn't wait to usher out the door because the more they talked, the more I wanted to throw a toaster at them. And I knew that the two of us, although physically attracted to each other, had about as much shared understanding as a spider has of a space station. Finally, one night I told him straight out, "Look,I could never, EVER fall in love with you because the truth is I don't really like you that much."

Still if Nikolae felt the need to go through this pantomime of politesse, I wasn't going to completely shoot him down. I mean, the poor little thing could lose his job over me so I took the card with his private email knowing good and well, I would never use it. It would stay where I put it, where it is right now, tucked into my travel journal, another souvenir, a reminder of a lost world, a bit more pleasurable, but less useful than the Mariage Frere teapot.

The cab, luckily enough, arrived a bit early. Nikolae, however, remained bashfully behind the desk as I blew him a kiss dragging my bags behind me. Soon Paris was flying by me, and even sooner I was comfortably ensconced on the plane contemplating my trip. I never have the trip I expect when I go to Paris. I always discover new places, interesting people, some times I even rediscover people, but most importantly I learn about myself and find something about myself worth loving. I never leave Paris feeling like anything other than a hero. Every trip to Paris, the moment I'm on the plane I think about when I will return. There are other cities I should go to: Tivoli, Venic, Florence, St Petersburg, Athens, Cairo, Edinburgh, but somehow Paris pulls me to her, again and again. There are more things I want to see in Paris, places to visit or revisit, adventures to have, and most importantly wine, chocolate, cheese, and pleasures to sample. Not that I have any regrets, but there is always a reason to return.

On the plane, I realized that its not just Paris. It is, as Rasputin said to me all those years ago before my very first trip, if you open yourself to Paris, she will love you. My trips to Paris are mysterious and unexpected, but always exactly what I need, even if I didn't know that I needed it.

On the plane I know that when I land, when I get home, it is time to get serious about writing, and graduate school. Now there are no distractions, no excuses to focus on anything else.

Except going back to Paris.

Paris Diaries: Inkstained

2008-08-19T19:46:00.002-04:00

Instead of the decadent dinner at Au Petit Monsieur, I decided that it was better to play things low key and close to the vest. After all, I had to be up at 3:30 in order to make my flight home. Home. While I had enjoyed a surprisingly wonderful trip, I had reached the point where I wanted to go home. While the trip had been surprisingly enjoyable, I was ready to go home- share stories with Bakerina over wine and food, type up notes before the semester started again. Life in Paris is always precarious (Don't believe me just read some Balzac or Zola, and you will see how one's fortune in Paris can turn on a pin) and although I was in love with the world, especially the corner of it called Paris, I needed a bit of comfort, a bit of rest before I began another three months of attempting to inspire my students to produce something vaguely ressembling anything well written. Still, as I walked into La Mascotte, I thought that as much as I loved New York, as much as I missed my friends, Paris very well might be the city for me.

I sat alone near the back of the restaurant while two waiters alternatively served and pondered me. They were dressed as almost all waiters in Paris are outfitted, starched crisp white shirts, almost floor length aprons, and black trousers. I rather liked both of them for different reasons. There was the pale cute one with dark hair, and the other one, surprisingly with curly ginger colored hair, and a bit of attitude. Gingy was unabashed in his curiousity and satirically critical attitude. He eyed me with condescending amusement, and I found this quality strangely endearing, as he struck me as a perfect representation of how people imagine Parisian waiters.

The Pale Cutey, however, was my primary server. As he leaned over the table to set down my steak au poivre, I noticed that his tattoos, dark, primitive designs more suited to the drummer in a garage band than a neatly attired server, showing through the crisp white of his pressed shirt. It's moments like this, these minor revelations, I live for-the waiter's dichtomous nature revealed-the impeccable shirt with the vulnerability of his tattoos peaking through the fabric. I wondered if this was the reason I so enjoyed inspiring naked desire-in order to see the true nature barely visible from the surface...if what resides beneath surface can be said anymore truthful than any other facet of our personalities.

As I pondered these deeper issues inspired by the glimpse of tattoos, I noticed that my pen had leaked ink all over my hands. I pondered the link now between the waiter and myself-both of us inkstained, although in different ways. My hands are usually inkstained, particularly in Paris. There is no question of what I am here, my chosen profession. I knew that when I got home I had to finish the Paris Diaries, but until then I vowed to remain like Rimbaud-crazy and indulgent-preferring the insanity of fleeting passions to a life of quiet desperation.

As I sat stirring my coffee, I tried to come to terms with the fact in a matter of hours I would be back in NYC. In an abstract sense, knew it to be true, but somehow watching these two waiters snarking at each other in French as they lounged by the kitchen door, it was utterly inconceivable. It was if I had forgotten what New York was really like and all I could imagine was continuing to loiter in museums, exploring sidestreets and open air markets, seducing more paramours, and scribbling my musings and adventures in cafes and restaurants at the end of the day. A life filled with crowded urine smelling subway platforms was actually unimaginable as I sat in that restaurant even though I knew it was only a plane ride away.

I returned to the hotel in enough of a red wine haze that I strolled by Nikolae with barely a wave. He was, as I predicted, nervous and awkward. I wasn't sure why he was nervous-if he was worried I wanted a repeat performance or if he was afraid of rejection, and I didn't really care. He had served his purpose, and I had no secret hopes of running away with the concierge from my hotel. Perhaps that was wrong of me considering how anything is possible in Paris, but I couldn't give up my life in NY just. Besides I had already spent almost a year pining for one Parisian, and I wasn't about to do it again.

Instead I simply smiled and waved at him from the elevator-confident and sensual as ever. As I curled up in that cushy bed for the last time, I knew I would miss the woman I had become in Paris and that I had to dedicate myself to finding a way to keeping that woman alive.

Paris Diaries: La Grande Horizontale

2008-08-15T23:00:00.006-04:00

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Now playing: Avril - Be Yourself
via FoxyTunes

I woke up late in that fluffy comfortable bed. I didn't even bother to get up for breakfast. I figured it was my last day in Paris, I could be as decadent as I want. I was sure there are those of you who think at my age I should stop acting like a 21 year old with impulse control issues. There may be even those of you who think I woke up feeling horrible and dirty and used. Those who think that all my bravado here is covering for some deep shame. I've spent too much of my life living by ridiculous rules, coping with suffering and madness, deprived of what so many others take for granted, to feel guilty about a single moment of pleasure no matter how sordid and vile it may seem to others. I woke up remembering the vow that I took when Eric left-I was going to take every pleasure I could get my hands on for as long as possible. I'll wear glitter and seduce foreign men until the bitter fucking end, and when it's all over I'll become famous writing a memoir about it.

I woke up in love with the world again, and even in love with the decadent whore, la petite coquine, that I am.

I lay under the covers looking out at the Parisian skyline thinking about the kind of damage I could do to Nikolae in this bed with the taste of his skin still in my mouth. How nice it would be to fall asleep in this bed next to him-sweaty and satiated-only to have him waken me hours later for more love making. No foreplay, no pretense, no nervous flirting or phantom conference room lights, just unrestrained passion. I smiled at the very thought of it, and stayed under the covers-warm and snuggle-y a bit longer, unwilling yet to give up my early morning daydream.

Unfortunately, the debauchery of the previous evening had triggered a bit of a relapse of the flu. Rather than head off to St. Eustache, as planned, I thought I needed to start the day off right with a decadent tea at Mariage Frere. I ordered a pot of the Earl Grey Fleur Bleu and the chocolate Tentation-which was the delicate french version of Death by Chocolate. I sat too tired to read or write, pleasantly letting my mind wander, and each time I found my mind meandering in the general direction of Nikolae and the damage I could do to him.

I tried to distract myself by paying attention to the moment I was in. I realized that unlike my previous time in Mariage Frere that the song "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie was playing on the sound system followed by Ethel Merman singing "Everything's Coming Up Roses." I found myself smiling at the musical choices. I finished my tea and decided it was finally time to seize the day-and I began by buying a Mariage Frere white ceramic teapot. It was, by far, the most expensive teapot I've ever considered purchasing. Even now I shudder to think what I spent, but I decided that as a potential "family heirloom" it was worth the expense. I'm not sure to what family I was thinking of as its pretty clear that I'm never going to get married and my cousin who traffics in child pornography-he's probably not going to have any kids either. But I don't think that way in Paris. In Paris, I think it could happen. So I bought the teapot and another tin of decadent tea, this time Earl Grey Fleur Bleu. If it could bring even the ghost of the feeling I had in Paris it would be money well spent.

I did absolutely nothing from the list I wrote at Laduree the previous afternoon. Decided to give the shops at Place des Vosges and St Eustache a miss entirely because IT WAS SALE DAY! Every clothing store in Paris had massive sales, and there were plenty of places for me to put a sizable dent in my bank account right were I was-no metro trip required. So I decided that the Lord meant for me to go shopping near my hotel. I strolled around buying dresses and tops-waiting for fitting rooms along with other french women who chatted animatedly with each other about sizes and colors. And with every store, with every clerk who was rude once they realized my French isn't fluent, with every jostle from a fellow shopper, I fell deeper in love with everything, more convinced that in Paris I am guided by some invisible benevolent force. I was so in love with everything that I had buy another suitcase just to be sure I could take it all home.

I dropped off my armfuls of bags filled with dresses, skirts, sweaters and tops that would inspire men to want to bite through the fabric to get at my lusciousness just in time to capture the sunset at the L'Arc de Triomphe. I tried to save the moment with my digital camera,but I knew nothing could capture the feeling that I had admiring the beauty of world, appreciating the brilliant surprise of it all at that moment.

Napoleon wrote "You shall go home beneath triumphal arches" in 1805. I should have known one short ambitious person would look out for another. If Zola was the strange author of my happiness in May, then Napoleon was in January. My photo card was full and to take the pictures I had to erase the pictures I had taken from my previous trip to Frehel: the view from the Sauvage's apartment, the grassy place we stopped for lunch on the way to Provins, my spot on the bluffs, the French children digging ditches by the sea. I had to erase them all without thinking.

Normally I am a person who holds onto the past. I have, after all, spent an entire year writing about events that are long since over. Normally, I would agonize and fret over deleting these photos, even though they were all downloaded onto my computer. But I gave them up easily. Those times were over-I had to make space for the present, for appreciating the moment I am instead of looking back on a long since dead happiness.

I stood there until the lights on the Champs Elysees were illuminated. I couldn't believe that tomorrow I would be home. I knew I was going to miss Paris, the feeling of love, the sense of interconnectedness as well as the assurance that my timing is brilliant. As I looked down at the Ferris Wheel lit up I knew two things: I will never be done with Paris, and Paris is far from done with me.

Paris Diaries: Redefining "Room Service"*

2008-08-15T20:31:00.006-04:00

WARNING THIS POST CONTAINS THE EXPLICIT SEXUAL MATERIAL YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

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Now playing: The Herbaliser - The Sensual Woman
via FoxyTunes

I was surprised that he kissed me there in the foyer. There was a window behind him; any passerby could have seen us-not to mention that in any American hotel the entire foyer would have been monitored by several video cameras. The forbidden nature of it, the fear, intoxicated me as much wrapping my legs around his slight body. He delicately fingered the base of spine as he kissed me, and I gasped arching further into him. I knew from the way he kissed, how quickly his hands found those secret pleasure axes on my body, the smell of his skin that I could inscribe 33 books of epic poetry into his flesh with my nails and my tongue. I could make all of his senses sing with desire like the Muse who inspired the Odyssey. I could take him the way Alexander conquered the Persians, showing generosity if welcomed, and no mercy if resisted.

And how I hoped he would resist.

He pulled me off the barstool, whispering into my ear before kissing my neck "There are cameras here, but there is a conference room." He gestured with his head. "You first." The conference room was, indeed, right off the foyer. I opened the door- and the lights from streaming in from the foyer revealed notebooks out on the table as were half drunk bottles of water and scattered pencils. He waited for a moment before he followed me in closing the door behind him. For a moment, he took in the room in the shadowy darkness and shook his head. "I'm going to have to clean this later." All I could think was that I wouldd like to help him wax something other than the mahogany table. But it was just a moment hesitation, as suddenly he was pushing me up against the conference table.He was short, well matched for me, so I could feel him hard against the arch in my spine, his breathe on the back of my neck as he pulled off my sweater. Now his hands were fumbling with the buckle on my belt-I hit them away-not yet. I wanted to take my time with him-see how long I could draw it out, part of the pleasure being the torture of delaying gratification. I turned towards him and pushed him into a chair-unbuttoning his shirt as he pulled me into kiss him. One of his hands slid under my bra strap, pulling down, his hand and then his mouth on my bare breast, sucking and then tickling the erect nipple with his tongue.

And then one of the lights in the room went on, and he froze like a possum in headlights-eyes wide, body tensed.

My thought was that the room had been rigged with motion detecting lights, but he seemed genuinely panicked by it rebuttoning quickly as I pulled on my bra and sweater. "I'll meet you in the foyer." I was not sure who he thought he was fooling by following a minute behind me. WE WERE THE ONLY TWO PEOPLE AROUND-I mean if Rainman watched these videos, he would have cottoned onto what we were doing in the conference room especially since we had been openingly kissing at the bar. Nervously, he investigated the table to make sure nothing was out of place and joined me. "What do you think happened?" he asked as he stepped behind the bar so as to make his pantomime of innocence complete. "Motion activated lights. Our movement tricked them." He looked at me like a dog contemplating an elaborate card trick, "You think so?" I smiled at him-he had a lot to lose, and I could afford to be confident. His willingness to risk his job to fool around with me made him even more attractive and made me more determined to reward him. He tried to chat behind the bar as if nothing had happened, but now he had a taste of my skin in his mouth, the smell of my sweat, the promise of the pleasure whispering in his ear, overriding his reason, his concerns and within five minutes he was kissing me again-his hands on my breasts.

"Want to check the room?" I asked, but I was off the barstool walking towards the room unasked. He followed me, and the lights were off. And as quickly as I found the lights were off so was my sweater immediately followed by my bra as his hands fondled my breasts- him kissing the sensitive grove of my spine. I arched in pleasure against him until, again, his hands tried to explore the increasingly moist space between my legs. I pushed him into a chair, he pulled me onto him. I regretted wearing jeans. If I had been in a skirt, I could have been riding him already. There was no more concern about drawing this out-now I wanted satisfaction. He kissed my breasts, his hands sliding down the back of my jeans as I leaned back enough to undo his pants so my hand searching for the hard taught skin of his erection. Even though I knew it was big, as my fingers explored his shaft, I marveled again at how big. "This thing should be a national monument" I thought, "This motherfucker IS La Tour Eiffel." He moaned in pleasure as I ran my hand up and down his his cock. I stood up so that I could taste his desire, and yet again the lights went on-again Nikolae panicked. He only partially redressed-"I know where to go" he said as he grabbed my hand.

I couldn't imagine where he was taking me-a storage closet, a spare room, the floor behind the desk. I found myself on the landing of a stairwell. "There are no cameras here" he whispered into my neck. There was a part of me that wanted to object, that wanted to say while there's something hot about fucking on a conference table, a stairwell is entirely different. But the pleasure center of my brain was screaming "YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME. YOU CAN NOT DEPRIVE ME OF THIS ON SOME RIDICULOUS MORAL GROUND. YOU'RE FOOLING AROUND WITH A CONCIERGE YOU BARELY JUST MET FOR CHRISSAKES. YOU HAVE NO MORALS, SO STOP PRETENDING-NOW LET'S SEE HIS COCK."1 I unbuckled his pants, and in the bright light of the stairwell saw what I had been feeling for the last hour.

I didn't have many dates in college. In fact, I almost didn't have any. So when the cute red headed guy with freckles at the Original Espresso Shop asked me out, I jumped at the chance even though I thought he had a girlfriend. After a few drinks at a slummy bar, he asked me back to his place. Now I was about to graduate college with a degree in a field I didn't want to pursue after spending four years surrounded by gorgeous gay men who I couldn't have. I looked at him and his freckles, and I remembered what my high school geometry teacher used to tell us in class "Every once in a while, you have to look around and say 'What the fuck?'" Afterall, he probably did have a girlfriend so it wasn't like I was ruining my chance at a meaningful relationship. Much like Nikolae, he was slight and thus I had no idea what I was agreeing to. "Want to take a shower?" he asked as soon as I put my pocketbook down on his couch. "Go on in, and I'll join you." I went into the bathroom, folded my clothes and waited-he came in already naked, and I gasped at the very sight of it. "Think you can handle it?" he asked me, and me, in all my wide eyed honesty said, "I don't know."

I remembered that moment fondly as I pulled Nikolae's erection out of his pants.

I brushed my lips ever so gently against his shaft before running my tongue down the length of his erection. I teased the head of his cock with my naked breasts before he pulled me up to him. He turned me around and stepped down one step, so that when he pulled me to him, his cock was between my legs. I could feel his erection rubbing against my clit through my jeans and gasped involuntarily in surprised pleasure. I braced my arms against the wall as he thrust against me, his hand slipping under my belt, under my panties. Now it was my turn to moan and push up against him, my cheeks flushed, eyes closed, my mouth half open trying to say "Please don't stop," but too far beyond language to actually say it. He was saying "Ouiaasssss, ouiaaasss" into my ear as both his cock and his finger thrust into me until I was unable to hold back anymore. Afterward, he gripped my waist with both hands, pulling me harder and faster along his shaft. I knew he was close, and arched against him until his knuckles went white as he came hard-moaning into the back of my neck. I watched the come drop to the floor between my legs. I half smiled as I thought, "I guess he'll have to clean that up to."

Both of us stood there for a minute, panting and dazed. He quickly began to button and smooth his clothes, while I put on my sweater. I walked out of the stairwell first and went back to the barstool for a moment. Nikolae crossed after me. I could see that his conscious mind was beginning to try and grapple with what just happened. As a Parisian, I thought he should have a more "C'est la vie" attitude, especially where hot forbidden stairwell fondling is concerned. What could be more French than that? But I could see his rising panic and knew it would only kill my buzz, so I picked up my pocketbook, which I left by the bar, and left him standing in the middle of the foyer trying to figure out what to do next. I bid him good night as I smiled at him briefly and distantly as the elevator doors closed.

I stripped off my clothes and slid naked into my big cushy hotel bed. I curled up satisfied and flooded with decadent, adventurous pleasure as the winter breeze cooled my still flushed cheeks. I fell into a deep and satisfied sleep, but not before thinking. "In NY, I get exactly what I want in the least useful form possible. In Paris, I get exactly what I want in a way even better than I imagined."

*A moment of meta-I hope you all appreciate how freakin difficult it is for me to write this-not just to reconstruct the scene in my head, but also the anxiety that goes into writing such a scene-one because I don't want you all thinking "THAT SLUT"-but also I don't want to write a crappy, disgusting, nauseating sex scene.

1 It's a little known fact that I am such a rational human being that even the pleasure center of my brain is capable of reasonable argument.