This Afternoon In Drama

Eenie Meenie

Every time I drive the I-5 up north and back, I take a moment to think about Trini, the original yellow Mighty Morphin Power Ranger, who died in a car crash on the same route.

In the hotel on Wednesday I watched the excrutiatingly lengthed Bachelor finale, this season being of particular car-crash interest because the producers decided to age the show.  In order to secure an engagement and hopefully successful relationship by the end, contestants were bumped up by ten to eighteen years, and The Bachelor, Byron, was a fisherman who looked like he'd been leeched dry by the sun and the salt and the trout of the earth.  Whereas on other seasons of the show it was quasi-fascinating to watch twenty-year olds declare that the bachelor was everything they'd be looking for since puberty, and that they were ready to switch colleges mid-stream and move to [insert bachelor's hometown], this season had the necessity of fate laid down upon it.  The women, some having been through divorces and most having entered the era of the ticking clock, seemed to need Byron to be worth it in a way that superceded the "I'm ready to settle downness" of the previous younger contestants.  This season's contenders were ready to make him destiny, simply by virtue of the fact, it seemed, that it had taken them some thirty-odd years to get to him.

And that's where Mary, eventual victor comes in.  I've written before about what an impressively weird indicator of mass mentality and peer pressure it is that most all the women (or men, in the case of The Bachelorette) end up falling for the same (lackluster) person.  So it's even weirder that Mary could fall hard for not only one unappealing Bachelor, not-so-funny-once-you-see-more-of-him Bob, but two in a row.  What are the odds?  I think the thought scared both Mary and Byron- that basically anyone could have been handing out those roses and she would have developed feelings- so fate was summoned to smoothe over the lack of specificity they were so nervous about.  Even Byron must have been questioning his own path, since Mary showed up halfway through the show when producers decided to bring her and another former contestant in to piss off the women who'd been there from the beginning.  Byron must have wondered at one point (I'm hoping) "If the season hadn't been so boring and ABC hadn't gone and grabbed Mary from Florida, would I haved ended up engaged to another woman in the group, just because of her being in the group and the show necessitating a choice?"  With all these interchangeable variables floating in their heads, what else could Byron and Mary do but resort to the notion of fate having brought them together, having brought her past Bob and him past the thirty other women vying for him, until they were both here, on TV.

This is why I was sort of pleased during the final episode, when this season's untethered and sadly urgent declarations took a backseat to the cinematography at the last rose ceremony, where Byron proposed to Mary.  The visuals suddenly grounded these two people, made them vulnerable and flawed in a way that they'd been desperately trying to cover up with indications larger than themselves.  Byron, his upper lip beaded with sweat that glowed in the night, looked the haggard, weary guy that I suspect he is, and his hairline, slicked back with ever-wet gel, was like a slow tide receding.  Mary showed up with her hair a disaster from a) over-drying (sorry) and b) the head thrashing she had performed on the way over in the limo, waiting to find out why Byron would say.  She wandered over to the pool bedraggled, and when the camera came in for its close-up, there were her pores, too, and her sun damage, and disappointment nestled in the lines of her face.  Let's say the lighting and camera angles did them no favors.  When these two pressed their faces together, and I saw what a mess they were together, that they'd seemed to be the first ever couple in the show's history to forget the cameras were there while they proceeded to do unphotogenic-looking things like sweat and drip snot and make creepy faces and press one another's heads to their bellies, I thought there was a chance that they had come back down to earth and found out that they genuinely wanted each other.

This still might be true, but during the next hour (the third), the "after-show" wrap-up, they were hovering back up above humanity again.  When the host asked Byron when he had figured out that Mary had been the one, I was hoping for a simple moment, an admission of the time she looked over her shoulder at him or a night when he couldn't sleep thinking of her.  Instead, Byron pulled out his journal- a fucking journal!- and read to the audience.  Unfortunately I didn't take down his words exactly because that would have required moving, but trust me when I paraphrase and say they were very similar to this: "I believe in guardian angels, and a few people close to me have recently died who I now believe are watching over me, and one day there was a spiritual gust of wind when I was with Mary, and I knew it was my guardian angels telling me that she was the one."  Whoa, Byron, way to take accountability for your own romantic decisions.  Had the wind not been gusting that day, it's disturbing to think that somebody totally different might have been sitting next to Byron on the couch.  That's either a really gross way to run a life, or a really big insult to Mary, who should have warranted her own revelation, separate from the dead relatives.

Next season: un-engaged Firestone Bachelorette Jenn Schefft is back, and how did ABC manage to convince her (she seemed like such an easily embarrassed person when we last saw her) to act like such a tard in the promos?

Put In Your Place

My mom, clearly swayed by the shark ad, bought me a Costco-sized box of Tampax Pearls last week.  I became distracted by the slogan on the box: "As Extraordinary as You Are."  This seemed like a gigantic claim.  I put the tampon to the test.

Could it wrap presents with the extraordinary skill and aesthetic prowess that I do?

No.

Could it sit in my chair and finish yet another 80,000 word novel?

No.

Could it pull off wearing both a deconstructed perm and stiletto boots with attached legwarmers?

Certainly not.

What conclusion could I come to but that I clearly remain more extraordinary than my tampons?  Upon realizing this, my plan to have the tampon take over for the blog while I'm away for Thanksgiving festivities was shot to hell.  Be back soon.  Remember to be thankful for what you've been given, even if it's only a new absorbent braided string.

You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Curmudgeon

Bennington took me off the waiting list and admitted me, which means that I am returning to school, which is something I thought I'd never do.  Is that called personal growth, or just the realization that being a midlist author (am I even midlist?  I don't know) isn't going to cut it when I'm determined to possess things like a professional Icee machine in my kitchen and my favorite pinball machine, Funhouse (which will have to be bought off of Brown University, where it currently- or at least last time I saw it- sits in The Gate, and transported to my living room).  When I have enough money to have a living room.  Anyway, I basically need my MFA to teach, and teaching appeals to me because I like getting paid to tell people what I don't like about their work, which is something I normally do for a lot of people for free.

This marks the first time that I will be going back to school with the resignation of being me. 

The last time I can remember being voluntarily social upon entering a new school was in kindergarten, when I was sat down at a table and given an assortment of paints, none of which I wanted.  "Can I have the blue?" I asked to the girl next to me.  I could.  Never again would my entry into a new, forced social situation be so pleasant.

In middle school I decided to go with jean shorts on the first day, thinking that nothing could be blatantly friendlier than jean shorts.  I met up with a handful of my carried-over friends from sixth grade, and thought to myself that seventh grade wasn't so bad, except for the fact that P.E. was all of a sudden being taken a lot more seriously.  Then, within the first week, all the "handfuls of carried-over friends from sixth grade" of all the various sixth grades in town, or at least those of us who were relatively skinny, relatively attractive, and relatively decked out in Contempo Casual fashions, found ourselves being rounded up in order to form a super-group of girls, a hydra that would eat lunch in a circle of about twenty to thirty.  During fourth period, I started to get exhausted with the idea of lunch.  Eating among the din and the lip gloss seemed like an extra class in itself.  I began mentally, if not physically, to drift away. 

But, still, when I entered high school, I thought, "I'm going to like being friendly during this phase of my life!"  The first day of school I wore a green thonged bodysuit (friendly!) and jean shorts yet again, which spoke for themselves.  If I wasn't talking, my tight thighs were.  I said hi, hi and hi to the former members of the middle school lunch club, and thought that maybe I could tolerate a large group of friends this year, that maybe I'd start liking those roller skating excursions, when I realized that high school only means that one middle school's group gets added to another middle school's group in an ever expanding arena, and the people who you must tolerate, whether you like them or not, become attached like links to the many dangling ends that already existed.   It becomes exponential.  So I started wearing black and sitting in a dark corner doing my homework because I discovered that it is next to impossible to communicate that you have un-linked yourself without resorting to clear visual cues.

You would have thought that by the point of senior year, almost an adult, I would have realized that I'm just not all that naturally friendly, but I hadn't.  Upon admission to college, I decided, "You know what?  New start.  I'm going to hang out with lots of people, and it will be fun."  I got to my dorm room and purposely left the door open while I unpacked, letting passersby know that I was not the weird girl who liked to be alone all the time.  Although I was still in my goth gear at that time, I wore a purple corset to add a splash of color to my ensemble, because everybody loves a rainbow.  Red lips, white face, black skirt, purple top, I was set for friendliness.  People began to drift in to introduce themselves.  By the third person, I shut the door.  At dinnertime one of the RA's came around to tell me that she was gathering up a gigantic group to go to the dining hall together, and I felt I had come full circle, back to seventh grade, except I dressed better.  I declined, and thought to myself, "Who the fuck was I kidding?"

Now it comes time to return to school, and in the pamphlet sent to me on Friday, the director of the program speaks of snowball fights and long debates by the fire (with hot chocolate, I think) and literary discussions into the wee hours of the morning.  The students are supposed to be instantaneously united by what the pamphlet describes as a mutual obsession with the "passion" of writing, except I share the same opinion on writing as Tom Wolfe, who recently talked to Entertainment Weekly:

"EW Reading your books, with all of the exclamation points and breathless description, it seems like you must enjoy writing. Do you?

TW No, I really don't. Every now and then, there's something I know is going well, but I wouldn't call it fun exactly. "

Neither would I, Tom.  It's torture.  But, if it turns out that writing happens to be the least torturous of all the occupations that you can imagine for yourself, then you do it.  In the past I might have said to myself, "Pack your mittens, kid.  You're going a-snowball throwing," except I feel that I have finally reached a place in my life where, the majority of the time, I have no illusions about what I am.  What I can say with confidence now is that I am a hundred percent positive that I will get to know my dorm bed very, very well, and that I will be friendly with the squirrels.

Neither Here Nor There

The park is like West Side Story without the romance.  The Hispanic nannies take the south side.  They range from their twenties to hard forties, and they congregate on the benches under the trees.  They wear jeans.  They talk to each other for hours, as long as the kids will tolerate.  They sometimes look up from their in-depth conversations with fellow nannies to call out encouraging Spanish things to the kids on the playground.  They run into the sand to help push the spinning metal thing (I have no better name for it), and they serve meals on the grass.  What they don't do is cross over to the north side of the playground.

On the north side of the playground are the Eastern European nannies.  They are, as far as I can tell, never under fifty.  They like their make-up.  They sit together, and they talk in a language I can't recognize, but they look like they are not enjoying the talking.  They bring collapsible beach chairs and set them up on the concrete, and they do not move.  Their charges, from what I can tell, are encouraged to sit with them.  Sometimes the kids venture down to the north end of the sandbox, but never further.  These nannies do not push the spinning metal thing.  It is too far south.

I belong to neither gang, so I'm willing to inhabit both areas.  When I am on the south side, I am usually perceived as the parent of The Baby I Watch, since I'm the same color as her and not in menopause.  The hispanic nannies, one by one, are discovering that I'm not her mom, and I get suspicious and confused looks.  When I am on the north side, I am perceived as an outsider daring to tread on claimed territory, and the Eastern European nannies stare, unsmiling, and look especially nervous when The Baby expresses interest in something near them.

I was pushing The Baby on the swings today while standing next to the only other Caucasian nanny (past menopause, though), who occasionally visits the park at the same time and who coincidentally also watches The Baby some afternoons.  We were quiet, and I didn't think about it until she said, "We're not part of the nanny mafia."

"What do you mean?" I asked.  I knew that we weren't part of the nanny mafia, but I didn't know in which way she was referring to.

"They all talk and we're just standing here, not saying anything."  She looked at me expectantly.

I thought about mentioning how this is just my way, but I could tell that she wanted to start a Caucasian nanny mafia, a group of two.  Talking.  On the south side they were talking and on the north side they were talking, and we were literally standing somewhere in the middle of the playground, familiar with each other, but silent.  For me, part of the happiness of working with The Baby is that she's so young that she doesn't know that there are moments when you're supposed to talk, when silence is perceived as awkward or rude.  We can sit together for a half hour, and apart from agreeing that a truck is indeed a truck, we leave each other to our own problems and imaginations.  My problems happen to be more labyrinthian and her imagination happens to revolve around her favorite scenario of sending a plastic pig through the window in her toy airport, but it works.

"Hmm, yeah, I guess we weren't saying anything."  I genuinely hadn't noticed before it had been mentioned.

"Oh well," she said.

"Whee," said The Baby.

Star-Of-David-Crossed Lovers

Chances are that you don't know about Courtney Peldon unless you were a die-hard Boston Public (anyone?) or Home Improvement (anyone else?) fan.  While I'd seen much of her guest star work on television, Courtney first became a personal treasure when she started showing up on the red carpet of every single event- whether it be the release of a red string or someone else's B movie- wearing outfits so impressively terrible that Geoff and I had an awed discussion the other night over whether it's even possible that she's not dressing psychotically on purpose.  Geoff's position was that the outfits are so heinous that they must be part of a deliberately projected persona.  Because they reach beyond the realm of slutty and ugly and confusing, they seem, to Geoff, to show intention, propelling her out of hooker-fashion territory into space hooker-fashion territory- territory that can only be reached as a result of embracing a fantastical character, and not modeling oneself on anything tarty of this earth.  Let me reiterate for the ten millionth time that I have no problem with slutty.  It's just that we're dealing with something else.  That something else often involves camel toe.  Why am I even trying to explain when I could just post some pictures below?

What really interests me now, though, is that it turns out that the owner of this "something else" quality is dating Jason, the "bulky" (Page Six's description, not mine) brother of Brandon Davis.  For those of you without an US Weekly subscription, the Davis kids are heirs to a gigantic fortune and Jewish.  Brandon is dating the elegantly gentile O.C. star (my mom tells me not to use the word "gentile," but I just think that sometimes, nothing works better) Mischa Barton, who is the kind of Christian girl that you can bring home to your Jewish mom, and your Jewish mom will find her goy ways "endearing" and "charming."  It's like bringing Princess Grace home to Monaco, and even though she's not a native, everyone can't wait to make her queen.  Now Courtney Peldon, on the other hand, is the kind of gentile girl that you bring home to your Jewish mom and your Jewish mom says, "Jason, I command you to marry one of the tribe.  You'll break my heart if you don't."  When Courtney shows up for Passover sedar in a pleather bra and knee-length bike shorts, your Uncle Morty is going to plotz at the thought of having to bless the challah at your wedding, you get what I'm saying?

I told Geoff that I would kill to be at the Davis family table when Brandon brings Mischa over for dinner, and Jason brings Courtney.  The thought of the imagined conversation gave me chills.  I realized today, as I am preparing to begin adapting my first novel into filmic form, that it would be a fantastic exercise to warm up and refamiliarize myself with the art of screenwriting by writing a practice scene at the House of Davis, Hanukah Night One.

INT. THE DAVIS FAMILY DINING ROOM- EVENING

Around a grand, mahogany dining table, the Davis family is breaking bread to celebrate the first night that the oil prevailed, that the light did not die! The overhead chandelier sparkles.  The maid puts the brisket down in a polished silver platter. MAMA and PAPA DAVIS sit at opposite heads of the table, sipping wine at identical intervals.

On one side of the table sits BRANDON DAVIS, surly heir, and his impeccable girlfriend, MISCHA BARTON.  Not a hair is astray on Mischa’s pretty head.  She wears Chanel.

On the opposite side of the table sits JASON DAVIS, tubby heir, and his space hooker girlfriend, COURTNEY PELDON.  She’s curled her hair with a triangular iron.  She’s wearing Body Glove.

MAMA DAVIS

Kids, it’s great to have all of you

  here to celebrate this first night of

          Hanukah with us.  L'Chayim!  L’Chayim!

Mama raises her glass.

COURTNEY

           Let me say that I’m so happy to be here,

               Mr. and Mrs. Davis.  I’m wearing a Menorah

         g-string underneath these shorts. That’s

            how happy!  I got them at this online store

    called “Fredericks of Challahywood.”

Jason squeezes Courtney’s hand under the table, supportive. Mama and Papa exchange a panicked glance across the table. Mischa yawns.

COURTNEY

(whispering to Jason)

            Should I take off my pants and show them?

JASON

(whispering back)

       Wait until they’re drunk, baby. Wait until

they’re drunk.                                 

PAPA DAVIS

Well, um, everyone, let’s eat.            

The brisket and applesauce and potato pancakes are passed around the table.

BRANDON

      So Mischa and I are going to some cancer

    thing this weekend.  I think it’s sponsored

by Prada.                                          

MAMA DAVIS

      How delightful!  Mischa, if you want you can

    borrow my champagne diamond teardrops.

          I think they’d look so cute on your little perfect

ears.                                                   

MISCHA

I’d love to.  Thanks, mom.                     

COURTNEY

Hey mom?                                           

Mama Davis goes white.  She appears aghast.

MAMA DAVIS

Courtney, are you referring to me?            

COURTNEY

(giggles)

  Of course, mom.  Who else would I be talking

to?  Daddy Davis?                                     

Courtney flashes Papa Davis a thousand-watt smile, but also accidentally ends up flashing him her breast, since it’s fallen out of its spandex halter.

PAPA DAVIS

(under his breath)

I’m too old and rich for this shit.                     

MAMA DAVIS

Courtney, pet, I don’t want to hurt your feelings,

but the “mom” thing- well, it’s sort of a, you      

could say. . . inside joke between myself and   

Mischa.  It’s just for us, and don't take that       

  personally.                                                      

MISCHA

(bored and annoyed

simulataneously)

Yeah, don’t, okay?                                           

COURTNEY

    Well then what should I call you?                            

Mama Davis thinks she’s keeping her comment to herself, not realizing that the Davis family room acoustics carry her words straight across the table.

MAMA DAVIS

(muttering)

Just don’t call me.  Don’t call my son either.      

Upon hearing his mom's commentary, Jason Davis violently leaps up from his seat and, with one sudden movement, grabs a hold of the dining table and overturns it.  Brisket flies!

JASON

I love her, mom!  I love her!  Do not disrespect the

lady I love!                                                          

Courtney tugs on a leg of his pants, trying to get his attention.

COURTNEY

The menorah g-string? Now? Now, Jase?               

AND SCENE.

From The Desk Of Ty-Ty Baby

"Ladies, I told y'all that modeling wasn't easy.  That's why I hideously decorated  your Waldorf Astoria rooms, sent you to a gay man who would measure your hips and tell you that they were too big for his liking (duh!), and make you navigate the mean streets of New York on your own (after sending home Kelle, Manhattan expert!), leaving you to figure out the numbered blocks and avenues all by yourselves, and by yourselves, I mean "in a group."

But maybe what I didn't tell you was what's even less easy: being Ty-Ty Banks.  I know.  I know I make it look like nothing to balance this flourescent weave on top of my head.  I know I make it look like a breeze when I recite the same exact prizes at each panel and tell you that you've made it "one step closer toward becoming America's Next Top Model."  That, ladies, is because I'm a pro.

However, what I also am is all about keeping it real.  That's why, this season, I have decided to let cameras into my hotel room.  Remember in episode one when you got to see me in bed (in my robe!  I was naked under!) and I was talking on the phone with Mr. J and I was multitasking on my laptop, and then afterward I turned out the light and you saw me go to sleep?  Remember how I snuggled down into my pillow and let you see that?  That's real.  The cameraman said, "Ms. Banks, do you want me to leave the room before you turn out the light and go to sleep?" and I was like, "That would be the easy thing to do."  Except isn't life about sometimes not being easy?  Right?  So I said to the cameraman, "I want you to stay right there.  I want you to keep that camera on me when I turn off the lamp.  And I want you to film me while I'm sleeping.  I want you to stand at the end of my bed for the next eight hours, and hell yeah, I know the footage is going to be dark because the room's dark, but that's real.  If we lit it, it wouldn't be real.  And while we probably can't use eight hours of dark footage of me sleeping, we should have it anyway, just in case anyone ever accuses me of not being a real girl who sleeps."  Hey, I need to recharge too, y'all.  Don't hate.

Then, I had to eliminate Cassie.  And it personally took a lot to get me to this place, but I was able to publicly cry over her alluded-to bulimia.  Don't front- I'm being brave because I know I'm a role model.  A role model.  Hah!  Get it?  Anyway, just in case you guys thought Ty-Ty doesn't cry, I decided that I was going to show you that I do- I do!  So I called back the cameraman and I said, "Hold up, I'm going to go call someone who's either my mom or my therapist to sit on this hotel bed with me, and I'm going to get my TV make-up applied, and I'm going to get a second camera up in here so we get a real good two-shot, and then when my mom/therapist gets here, we're going to get rolling."  Cynics might say that Ty-Ty cried because she was nervous about criticism she might've received over sending Cassie home with only a nutritionist's slap on the wrist, but, if you'll watch the tape again, you'll see how red my eyes were.  What more proof do you need of it being real?  Visine takes the red out of eyes.  Do you know of anything that puts it in, people? 

So that's why I had to send Toccara home this week- because she wasn't keeping it real.  I mean, she came into this contest all, "I'm fierce!" and "I'm beautiful!" and then all of a sudden, after we keep telling her she's fat, and keep failing to provide appropriately sized clothes for her at shoots, and keep pinching her, and keep sending her to go-sees where the designers don't design in her size, and keep binding her stomach and breasts she's like, quiet and all sad-like?  That's not real.  That's phony, y'all, to present yourself as one thing and then act all different once you get your spirit squashed.  And phony does nothing but put you straight on a plane back home here in Ty-Ty land.

Okay, I've got to run you guys, because I have to tape this Access Hollywood spot for Thursday night where I'm on the Victoria's Secret "Angels" plane and I pick my nose for the camera!  There's real boogers up there, ladies.

Love always,

T.T."

Yeah, Suck It, Bergdorf Blondes

Nearing

This blog is quiet because I am twenty-four hours (or less) away from finishing my second novel, the ghost/a capella singer/invalid love triangle book that the world has been awaiting, except I think the world doesn' t know it.  Then, after tomorrow, this blog will also be quiet because I will be reading the completed novel and hoping, upon taking it all in at once, that it is what I imagined it as while I was writing.  In the meantime, a bit of clarification for one of my blog readers. 

While I consider myself somewhat of an expert on the cultural juggernaut that is Tyra Banks, I am not personally affiliated with Miss Tyra, nor with any of her casting directors.  However, after watching two and a half seasons of America's Next Top Model thus far, I do think I have obtained an above average handle on recognizing top model potential.  So, if you want to send me pictures of your daughter, I will evaluate her according to what I have learned from UPN, and determine whether or not, from an avid TV viewer's perspective, she is going places.  Otherwise, instead of listening to what your "family keeps saying," why don't you stop and see if your daughter even has any interest in a future filled with cigarette breakfasts and an expiration date of 35, even for the Sunday paper Mervyn's pull-outs, and then maybe look into some Barbizon before you trot her out to a stranger's "loft" for a "headshot session."

Also, you say the eyes are pretty- but are they eroding?  That's key.

----- Original Message -----

From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

To: andrea@andreaseigel.com

Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 4:25 PM

Subject: Tyra Banks Finishing School

I'm not sure if I am writing to the correct person, but I have to start somewhere.

I have a daughter, whose name is S-------, I think she has all the qualifications of becoming a beautiful fashion model but I do not know how to start on this journey.

I've been prolonging it for sometime now but my family keeps saying that I should put her in modeling.  She is 11 years old and taller than me and I stand 5"'7'. 

she has the mist prettiest eyes I've seen but then again, I'm biased.

Could you help?

Once Was Blind, But Now I See

Oh, what a surprise. Amanda finally takes a picture in which her dying, cannabalistic eyes are obscured by her lids, and whaboom- there goes the fickle adoration of the Top Model judges. The way they cringed at this photo, I thought that maybe Amanda had pulled an Ann (becoming absurdly uglier in photos than you are in real life), but when I had the chance to examine the close-up image this morning, I discovered that Amanda doesn't look all that different than she usually does. She's making a version of her patented air kissy face, but this time she's not flashing those freakishly bright decay balls. Instantaneously, Fivehead Banks is over her. Now, I've repeatedly stated that I am no great fan of Amanda's, but I've got to cut the girl some slack here. After hearing week after week that Jennipher only has one look and Kelle only has one look and Norelle only has one look and Cassie only has one look and Ann only has one look, I think she decided to pre-emptively save herself from a similar accusation by going for one picture in which she did not try to look like she was going blind. The judges wanted none of it. I'm becoming deeply suspicious that who they really want to win is Amanda's Retinitis Pigmentosa. It doesn't have big hips like Cassie, big breasts like Toccara, and it always brings the intensity. Fierce!

Sex And Poli-ticks

I found voting sexy because of the dots. The dots on the actual ballot were less sexy than the ones on the sample ballot because the real dots had to be filled in with a dot-maker, which was much less of a turn-on to me than a number two pencil. On the sample ballot I was able to fill in the dots at my leisure while in bed, making thick layers of graphite until the paper bubbled on the other side. The dot-maker only gave me the pleasure of making sure that each dot I pressed down was of equal size and ink density (I held for a definite count), but I absolutely prefer the dot-maker to the newfangled electronic touch screens that are sweeping the nation. These are not sexy.

Because of my dot fetish, I have always looked forward to standardized testing. While everyone else in high school was bemoaning the approach of the SAT's, I was engaging in dot foreplay- taking multiple practice tests not because I wanted to improve my vocabulary or tackle the awkwardness of the analogies, but because I couldn't get enough of filling in circles. Luckily my dad passed down his decent photographic memory to me, which means that while taking the SAT, I was able to look at a page at a glance and take in the questions as wholes. Which means that I didn't have to worry about running out of time, and could grip my sharp, trim pencil tightly, making smaller and smaller spirals inside of the lines, making beauty in an ugly room.

Because of my personal combination of anal retentiveness and obsessive compulsion, my first ever voting experience has been mentally turned into a standardized test, now that what really matters seems to have been lost (Dear South and Midwest, I want to secede from you.) I'm watching the news, waiting to see how each measure and judge race plays out, so I can go down my sample ballot dots and compare my choices with the rest of the state's and see if I at least got a 1400.

Also sexy? Playing hard to get. In my original post about returning for my MFA, I reported that I'd first applied to only one writers program but, upon attending an informational session for it, found out that there was another low-residency program with a much snobbier reputation. Since I am always into snobby, I set my sights on the second school, which can now be revealed as Bennington College. And Bennington is so turning me on right now because they've put me on the waitlist instead of admitting me. When I found out this past weekend that I was only waitlisted, friends and family asked me if I was sad about it, and I couldn't figure out if I was right away. I only realized on Monday that I'm just basically titillated by their "maybe." It is sexy to me that in my application, I had a recommendation from a Famous Author That Teaches There Sometimes and an excerpt from my Published Book and a Semi-Fun Personal Essay and Bennington is still all, "I'm waiting to see what my weekend looks like." For me, the waitlist response confirms that I was right to turn down the admission offer of the less snobby school, and that I, sweating, will love waiting it out for Bennington. Now I know, more than ever, it's the place I have to go, as their cold shoulder has won over my cold heart.