This Afternoon In Drama

Give Me A Home, Where The Wood Panels Don't Roam

Last night Ryan and I watched the HBO special, Cathouse 2: Back In The Saddle, a revisitation of the world of The Bunny Ranch, Nevada's most famous legal whorehouse.  The Ranch is not so much a ranch as it is a portable bungalow, the kind that my school held Mrs. Chiang's science classes in during ninth grade.  Every time we lit a bunsen burner, there was the possibility that the structure might be blown toward outer space like the shittiest rocket ever.  That's what the Bunny Ranch looks like, only bigger.

So all I could think during this special, despite the myriad boobs and father-son customers on display, was if, as these working girls insist, the ranch is a second home, why isn't anyone pumping money into it?  Some of those hookers quote two thousand dollars an hour and up, and still, they're throwing their "parties" in wood-paneled squares with vertical blinds and suspicious carpet.  It seems to me that returning a portion of profits to the welfare of a business usually results in increased profits, so I find it difficult to understand why owner Dennis Hof doesn't plunk down the 400k and invest in a real ranch with real walls, making the place of business not only less depressing for the girls, but likely to drawn in a wider economic spectrum of business.  One of the girls in the special claims to be making $200,000 a year, and since I'm guessing that Dennis takes at least twenty-five percent of each "party," I can only imagine what the joint is pulling in.  And, if I was a hooker (and maybe this is why I'd fail as a hooker, because maybe I'm too socialist too be a hooker), then I wouldn't mind handing over at least ten percent of my profits to ensure that I worked in an inspiring environment.

So, the reigning dilemma for me throughout the special became: are these people being shortsighted in the face of greed, or is there just an undeniable, immutable, static whorehouse aesthetic that is greater than any combination of humans, any organization of beings on this earth?

I kept thinking about how notions of masculinity have been rapidly changing over the past few decades, how images of sexuality have evolved, how even that bastion of rigid femininity, The Miss America pageant, has had to adjust itself when confronted with the flux of erotic and aesthetic boundaries.  But The Ranch isn't budging, and this mystifies me.  The eyeshadow is still blue.  The hair is still peroxided, and the ringleted ponytails are still attachable hairpieces.  The couches are still red.  The bikinis are still sequined and sometimes they're patriotic.  There's still a lot of velvet and crushed silk flowers stuck in the bed frames, and there's still a lot of white patent heels with white patent straps.  The aesthetics of sex at the Ranch haven't changed over the past few decades, despite the maelstrom going on outside.  In other words, regardless of the shifting tastes of the modern public in terms of popular sexual atmospherics, whorehouse aesthetics appear to me to be just like love itself-- unconquerable and lasting throughout the pull of time.

Orrrrr, maybe everyone's just cheap, and the reason that everything looks like leftovers from 1972 is because it's all leftover from 1972.  A piece of evidence that favors this reading is a scene in the special, during which Dennis calls all of the girls into a room to reward them for the "most profitable March ever."  One of the hookers wins (I think this is the category- the categories get very confused) "most parties within the shortest amount of time," and Dennis sends her over to the folding prize table to collect her reward.  On it there's a stack of DVD players and a stack of VCR's.  The girl reaches for one of the DVD players, and Dennis is like, "Uh uh uh, honey.  VCR."  And I'm like, dude!  She's pulling four trains a day.  Give her the newest technology known to mankind.

Oh Chynna, My Chynna

During my time at Bennington, I heard and heard about a lot of odes. Odes to the ocean. Odes to time. Odes to socks. I identified with none of them, but if someone had written an ode to The Surreal Life, I'd be all over it.

Naively, I thought that there was no way that any Surreal Life houseguest could ever be as compelling as last season's stalwart, Brigitte Nielsen, and before I knock her from her top post, I need to acknowledge that she's still shining bright over on her new series, Strange Love. Last week I watched an episode in which she took Flavor Flav to a formal Italian ball filled with assorted political figures, members of the aristocracy, and design hipsters, all there to meet Brigitte's new man. When Brigitte and Flavor entered the room and all the guests gawked and grimaced, I wondered if they were just taken aback by the astonishing size difference between the two. It is really a thing to behold. But then, later in the dinner, Brigitte told Flavor Flav that her friends didn't expect Brigitte to walk in with a black man. Say what? The guest of honor had his name on the invitation, and no one in the room's ever watched MTV Europe? Word of the guy with the ginormous clocks hasn't crossed the seas sometime during the past twenty years? But for all the roundabout race discussions that have been circulating within the reality television arena- e.g. are black people villainized during competition and whitewashed on heavily white dating shows- I haven't seen any discussions of interracial interaction so honest as those between Brigitte and Flav. At the table Brigitte, wanting Flav to understand that the almost-hostile reception toward him was not his fault, let him know that their fellow guests were not used to sharing a table with a black person. And, she continued, due to the way they were acting, Brigitte was no longer considering them friends.

Today I made a bet with my Author Friend over whether or not Brigitte and Flav are the real thing or have just bonded over their love of being in front of the camera. Author Friend unwisely made this bet without ever having even seen Brigitte and Flav in action- that's how deep A.F.'s cynicism runs. If he would only see the way that Brigitte has gone from calling Flavor Flav "Mr. F" to the adorable "Foofie, Foofie," he'd know that he's totally losing.

But, as much as Brigitte transfixes me, I am even more taken with one of the guests on the new Surreal Life season. I could watch this woman for hours, and not in a patronizing "dance for me monkey!" way. Instead, I am intrigued by her physicality in the way that a devoted patron of the ballet can't help but be intrigued by the movements of the prima donna- which is, I think, a whole other variety of "dance for me (you unique, incomparable) monkey!" I still haven't decided how morally questionable it is to be so intrigued by the quirks of someone whose quirks may be directly stemming from heavy cocaine and alcohol abuse, but, on the other hand, I am of the opinion that this houseguest's personal magnetism exists above and beyond those substances. If you look at the many Real World kids, in contrast, all they do when they get trashed is wrestle and collapse in the living room. It takes a different kind of person to turn her inebriation and/or cracked outness into groundbreaking television.

So, who is this houseguest that I'm talking about? Who other than the woman formerly known as pro-wrestler Chynna Doll-- a.k.a. Joanie Laurer.

There is something in the way she moves. I know that's the opening lyric to a Beatles' song, but it captures my sentiments exactly. Soon after arriving at The Surreal Life house, Chynna, wearing a bikini, sunglasses, and a furry hat, began thighmastering while lying on Mini-Me's mini bed. I've watched Suzanne Somers thighmaster and have always promptly changed the channel. But when Joanie thighmastered, I felt like I could watch the action for days, everything about the way she operates is so original. In junior high I had a friend, Gina, who spoke in such clipped tones that I became fascinated with her patterns of speech. At sleepovers I wanted her to talk and talk and talk, just because her take on language was that new and fascinating. That's the best way I can describe what it's like to watch Joanie, to be in the presence of someone who's functioning on a dynamic, exciting plane.

My favorite moment of the first episode came after everyone else in the house went to bed, and Joanie told the camera, "I usually don't go to bed until 7 a.m." Left to her own devices, she changed back into, naturally (and I've never seen someone who looks like she so naturally belongs in a swimsuit like Joanie does), a bikini, and began doing kung fu in the middle of the night. Kung fu, then some kind of pony trot mixed with a circular swinging of her ponytail of braids. Watching Joanie alone in the living room was like having the privilege of watching a fresh dance being born, and never for a second did I get the impression that this was for benefit of the cameras.

Call me a TV bumpkin, but I believe that Joanie does stay up all night long, and I believe she does this trotting in the privacy of her own home. I believe that even when no one is watching her, she is, for better or for worse, undeniably "Joanie."  This became pretty obvious during her recent interview on Howart Stern, when she couldn't reel in her Joanieness for two seconds to answer questions.  And while I would like to see her get her current personal tumult somewhat under control for her own sake, I hope that she's never made to feel self-conscious after she gets a load of herself on VH1.  As I watched Joanie tearing through the house at 3 a.m., there was no one I wanted to be more than one of the camerapeople there with her, hanging out until sunrise came.

We're All Just Platitudes

By now the embarrassing drugstore visit has become a cliche of the big screen, the small screen, and the Sweet Valley High oeuvre.  We've all seen or read some kind of scene in which a character heads to the counter to buy condoms or tampons (and the cutest guy in the whole school is working the register, etc. etc. etc.), only to find that that desired item is the only one in the whole store with improper labelage.  The sales clerk has to get on the store-wide microphone and ask for a price check on hemorrhoid cream or whatever, and the person trying to purchase said item is left standing there, helpless, red-faced, with a crowd of intrigued yet angry customers lining up behind him/her.

Even General Hospital, which, in general (ha!), never backs down from a cliche, couldn't bring itself to go through with the scene in a non-ironic fashion.  When Dylan, one of my all-time favorite teen soap opera characters, went to the drugstore to buy condoms for his "special night" with his girlfriend, Georgie, he encountered this price check business.  And immediately Dylan broke down in disbelief, saying, "You've got to be kidding me!  This is the biggest cliche ever, trying to buy condoms and getting my intentions announced over the loudspeaker!"  He proceeded to give an impassioned speech to the crowd of customers behind him about how he was just a kid in love, already embarrassed and insecure enough, and how he shouldn't have to run up against this kind of fictionalized ridiculousness.  I think the other customers clapped when he was finished, but I can't remember.

I was in Sav-on on Saturday, buying some Teflon® cleaner (hope it works), and I got in the only line at the only operational register.  There were about six people ahead of me.  They were already exasperated, staring at the woman holding everyone's day up.

The woman being helped was about sixty-five, maybe seventy, I guess, and I remember thinking that she dressed okay.  Her pants sat on a normal place on her hips, and her blouse was actually contoured to her body.  She was a little WASPY, with a blown-back silver hairdo and naturally regal bearing, and at first I mistook her anxiousness for simple impatience.  When I came to the line, the woman was intently watching the sales clerk try to run one of her items through the scanner- over and over again.  The laser wasn't acknowledging the price of the thing, and everyone else in line was growing restless.

The woman looked over at us, almost apologetic.

After realizing how long the line was getting, the sales clerk stopped her scanning and attempts at punching-in-the-item-number-manually and got on her phone.  "I need a price check," she said over the store's loudspeaker, then hung up.  Within seconds the phone rang, a clerk from the back of the store asking for the item.  And even though it appears that clerks no longer announce the item over the loudspeaker, they now announce it as loudly as possible to the coworker on the phone, so that everyone in the long line can hear.  This seems just as incriminating a tactic, since it's the people in line that are close enough to match the customer to the item in question anyway.

"I NEED A PRICE CHECK ON K-Y WARMING LUBRICANT," said the sales clerk, suddenly revealing that she knew how to throw her voice, was possibly a theater major.  "YES.  THAT'S K-Y.  LUBRICANT. THE WARMING KIND," she articulated.

The woman at the counter trying to buy her warming lube looked like she wanted to die, like she thought this shit stopped at twenty.  Like there was some contract with the universe, and like she had never contemplated that it could go sour.

Watching the scene, I thought to myself, "Whoa.  This stuff does happen.  Anything can happen in this world!"  And that made me hopeful.

Now, the picture of the day, taken by Bob in the pub at Bennington.  A slice of truth, a.k.a. a personal cliche:

Let's Just Put Him On The Twenty

I haven't figured out why yet, but I feel like I need the new Usher Mastercard.  If I can't stand Usher's "I'm Too Sexy (For This Shirt)" pouting in his videos, why do I want it in my wallet?

Don't know.  But I sort of do.

Maybe I like the idea of purchasing groceries with Usher's head.  Maybe I'm just killing credit card time until Britney puts out a Visa.  Maybe I simply like the way that it looks like Usher's kissing the first four digits of the account, like "5205/ You will always be my boo, my boo, my boo, oh!"

All signs seem to point to signing up.  After my current card expired in December, I waited for the bank to automatically issue a new one.  When the replacement didn't show up, I called customer service and found out that it had been mailed, but that my mailbox had mysteriously bounced the card back to Virginia.  "The envelope was stamped 'return to sender'," the woman with the drawl told me, and I said, "That's weird, because I never returned it, and there's no reason it should have been returned."  Who could be responsible?

Who but Usher?

Earlier this week I saw an ad for The Card in a magazine, then went for a walk with The Baby.  A convertible tore down the street, blaring. . . Usher's crunk hit "Yeah!" at top volume with the top down.  The Baby halted and began swaying from side to side, nodding her head to the beat.  Even after the car had passed, she continued to get her bounce on.  "Come on, baby," I said, "let's get going to the park."  But she just wanted to dance in place, wanted to prolong her brush with the Ush.

If, as a character insists in my second book, two's coincidence and three is pattern, then with the appearance of one more significant Usher credit omen  (I almost counted his weird, nonsensical presenter duties at this year's Golden Globes- almost), I'll have no choice but to cave.

I'm Just Sitting Here Watching The Wheels Go Round And Round

Here's a pictoral summary of my first Bennington residency, thanks to the cameras of Bree and Cheryl.

And now, back to things of real importance, like television. Over and over again host Chris Harrison promises "the most dramatic season of The Bachelor/The Bachelorette EVER," but this season turns out to be the most meta season ever instead. The Bachelor(ette) series is almost on the verge of having sex with itself. Yes, ABC has brought back previous selectees to be the selectors before, but Jen is the first to have ended her season engaged, and then to have returned to the show to hopefully get engaged again. Whereas it was never officially confirmed that Trista (likely) or Meredith (not so likely) had slept with their respective bachelors, all the male contestants this season appear to be heavily aware that should they end up with Jen, they'll have symbolically slept with Andrew Firestone. And some of them seem pretty turned on by this idea.  Fireman Matt M. even pulled the doofus move of asking Jen to autograph a basketball ticket after their group date, a request which prompted Jen to ask, "Do you just want this because I'm a celebrity?" Taken aback by her brazen question, I had to pause to wonder, "Is she allowed to ask that?" It wasn't that I'm concerned about whether she is or isn't a celebrity (I have to figure that if you've snagged an US Weekly cover, you are, at least temporarily, imbued with celebrityness), but that the show has become that incredibly self-referential-- to the point where its "stars" have stopped insisting, "I'm just a normal guy/girl looking for love!" and have started getting nervous about "starfuckers."

The Bachelorette seems to be heading toward black hole status (meaning that it will eventually have no choice but to collapse into itself, the roses imploding) as proven by the one-on-one date between Jen and surfer/welder, Keith. Breaking down in the producer hand-picked hotel suite, Jen began to panic that she was having trouble digesting the romantic production gestures set before her. She knew that she was supposed to cue herself to feel romantically because she had been privy to a private piano concert and an intimate dinner for two and a luxe room, but she couldn't bring herself in step with the show's intentions because she was too aware of the show's intentions, and this began to produce vast amounts of anxiety. "I'm acting like The Bachelorette," she lamented, upset that she couldn't drag her regular personality out with sheer will, couldn't stop acting the part she was selected to play. "Let's just be real," she pleaded with Keith, although being real would presumably entail acknowledging the tired crew guys in the room with them and the impersonal circumstances under which she and Keith have to attempt to fall in love. But being real to Jen meant a valiant shot at trying to crawl out from under these circumstances- at, in other words, pretending not to be on a show where she met an heir who proposed to her, who then disappointed her, who then sent her straight back to an alternate gender universe equivalent of that original show in order to fall into another idealization of a partner. I don't even know how the girl gets out of bed in the morning, it's such an exercise in running around the same track.

Despite the weightiness of the show, I will stick with it, since I'm so fascinated by Jen's selection process thus far. I can say for a fact that she is the first of The Bachelors or Bachelorettes to truly make unexpected keeper decisions, so that this week's rose ceremony, in particular, was an exhilirating crapshoot. The following are, from what I can tell, Jen's dating do's and don'ts:

- DO physically pick her up within hours of meeting her and carry her down some stairs.

- DON'T be a virgin if you're a motivational speaker, but-

- DO be a virgin if you run marathons and counteract your lack of sexual experience with frequent hyper-masculine declarations of your wish to be a woman's "champion" and "hero."

- DON'T confess to having a propensity for spooning with your dog.

- DO mention wanting go to the "lake" on "Thursdays" with the "kids", and say, "You know what I mean?" after mentioning this vague lake, despite having no kids yet.

- DON'T faint at the first rose ceremony, you wuss.

- DO, if you're black, make mention of the elephant in the room right away, so that you don't fall victim to the infamous "second episode minority ditch."

- DON'T give her a replica of a chunky silver cross pendant that only you, her, and your dead mother (who was buried in it) possess.

- DO mention the future possibility of running for president.

- DON'T fall for her any faster on the show than she fell for Andrew Firestone during her previous season.

That's all I can figure out from the first two episodes.  I'll know more by next week.

Let's Make A Deal

The residency is almost over, and while I guess I should be taking poignant things away from it, mostly my brain sticks with the random details that occupy my attention. Like today in Rick Moody's lecture, which was good, I became grossed out by the woman sitting next to me, who liked to grunt and then suck phlegm into the back of her throat. I heard each globule travelling through her pipe and sticking behind her chin fold. The worst part of it, though, was that every time she reloaded, I would experience sympathetic phlegm gathering, and then all of a sudden, for no good physical reason, I would feel like the thickness from her throat had ended up in mine. Which is gross. So while Rick is a charming and boyish speaker, the phlegm was nearer and louder and often won.

During the graduation reception speeches tonight, something was being said about birds' hearts beating and hollowing out the final, loving spaces in a nest, but the really distracting thing about that room is that a gigantic rectangle of heavy wood hangs over the podium. It's suspended by big cables and features rigged lighting- clearly it's a wired, permanent fixture- but all I could think during the speech was that the rectangle seems insanely dangerous. If those cables were to give out while someone was toasting the outgoing students, that person would not be able to get out from under the mass of wood in time (it's just too large), and then the false ceiling would quickly smash the person in its downward path like a sandwich press. When I start picturing things like this, I can't listen to what the speaker is saying anymore, so transfixed am I by the desire to see someone smashed. Not because I dislike the speaker and want him or her personally smashed, really, and not because I actually want to observe the fallout of the death, but just because I wonder, from a purely scientific standpoint, what a smashing like that entails. Sound-wise. I can watch TV, write a book, and read US Weekly all at the same time, but apparently cannot escape the hypnotic lure of phlegm and floating platforms.

In the bar last night Karen told me that there once was a kitten who died from getting folded into a couch/bed combo when some guests came over to hang out.

At 5:02 PM I decided that I don't want to go through the graduation ceremony, which I know will go over well with no one. From Vermont I hear my parents sighing in California. Already tonight I received a mini-lecture at the dance from a guy who was attempting to plunge an explanation for my fondness of "alone" time, even in the middle of a crowd, and right now I become more and more despondent that people just can't let people be. Almost once a year I get someone intent on digging out an alternate version of me, one, if it existed, I'm pretty sure I'd be aware of by now. Why don't people go plumb my opposite, the girl who can't be quiet and still in the presence of others, who can't be left by herself, who can't stay away from a party, and say to her, "You're social, aren't you? Why do you think that is?" Maybe this has something to do with the monkey experiments, the ones that had scientists locking up chimpanzees in environments without their moms, siblings, and friends in order to observe how they dealt. And obviously, what was concluded from that group of tests was that "Monkeys who need monkeys are not the luckiest monkeys in the world," because they wig out when isolated. From these monkeys it was concluded, since humans are big monkeys, that it is only right that we should seek constant solace through the company of others.

I'm not saying I do not need to be around people sometimes. When I take a liking to people, I'd smash others for them. But during those times when I don't want to hang, I'd like to not be narrated.

As I watched the graduation procession tonight (and maybe I don't even have to write this paragraph, only saying that the school has drums a-beating during the walk in), it struck me as something I don't want to do. And it's that simple. I don't want to walk to creepy drums. I don't want to dress like I'm in a pre-orgy, less attractive remake of "Eyes Wide Shut." I don't want to get donned with something referred to as "a hood," which makes me think of female genitalia getting slung over my head. There weren't even hoods at the Brown graduation, and I skipped that one. Because the ceremony is a ritual that I just don't, from the bottom of my heart, want to do, I am going to be called "difficult." You are considered difficult when you are not charmed by the same things as the people around you.

But what I wonder is this: what is the exact number of times that you have to participate in things for the sake of others before you have enough of a stockpile of these incidents that you're finally allowed to do what you want without getting shit for it?

A Mitzvah

I just got booted from the TV room by an older professor. I was sitting on the couch, shoes off, all Indian-styled out, ready for what looked like the incest episode of "Lost." He came in and stood over my shoulder. I have to look up when people do this because no matter what their intention, I always find the move creepy.

"You're watching TV," he asked more than commented, except he didn't make it to a whole question mark.

"Uh huh," I said.

"I wanted to watch a DVD," he said.

"Oh. I'm watching TV," I said. "I'm watching 'Lost.'" I assumed that that was all I'd have to say because "Lost," to me, implies an obvious event. Something that is only on from 8-9 p.m., whereas a DVD is in perpetual existence.

The professor just held out the DVD like he wanted to play Rock, Paper, DVD with me. I looked over to the TV, indicating that it was my weapon of choice. He just held out the DVD, still. In the ordinary world, TV clearly trumps DVD. It's bigger. It's prettier. It's more diverse. It's more dynamic. It's more of everything. But this is not the ordinary world. This is grad school.

"How long is that on," the professor non-asked.

"An hour," I said, believing that was all that needed to be explained, but my answer had no effect. He looked at me. He blinked. I realized that, since ABC doesn't program 10 second slots for its primetime dramas, no matter what I could have said, the duration would've been too long.

"I wanted to watch this DVD," said the professor, failing to comprehend the dominance of the TV watcher. He blinked more.

"I'll let you," I finally told him.

In the past, I might have stayed put. But, the thing is, as I mature, I learn to become more and more flexible. I learn that I can't always get what I want, and that sometimes I need to be tolerant of other's desires.

Not really. It's just that I have a Tivo now, and it's recording "Lost" at home. If I didn't have that Tivo, there would have been ten more minutes of tussling. I could have gone and lifted the TV from its spot. He'd hold out the DVD. And we'd bounce fists and count "One, two, three" and then see what smashed what.

In Other News

The books of Bret Easton Ellis set me up for a Bennington that would be so saturated with glamourous youth that the lampposts would drip coke and diamonds. Granted, that picture was one of the school in the 80's, but I figured that at least some of the residue of that era would have persisted into the new millenium, it seemed so deep-rooted.

This is why I am so surprised at how decrepit Bennington is. Instead of an aesthetic air of progressive sparkle, it's heavier with the feeling of a gigantic thrift store turned academic environment. While wood floors are often older than carpet- able to stick around longer because wood persists- at least wood is confusing because its ageless. Even if it looks like shit, is all scuffed up and seems to have been around forever, you can never really date wood, since it's always in fashion. It could have been laid down yesterday. It could have been laid down in 1802. I like the ambiguity. And who isn't into hard wood floors, except for my rabbit? But the carpet around here, especially in the room I'm typing in (as I watch The Bachelorette), traps me in a general murky "past", just because I can say for a fact that it's already had its day. It makes me think crack, not cocaine.

This is all just a long-winded way of saying that things feel run down here, and places like this make me feel run down sometimes. This is also, on the other hand, why I'm able sometimes to feel so invigorated in places that other people feel are without identity- i.e. Irvine, Target, Burger King, and Marriots. If the surfaces are shiny and anonymous enough, then I can bounce myself off of them and experience amplification of my excitement and ideas. In The Commons, now, with this sad, sad hard-used couch under my ass and the tight-weave shitty carpet underneath it, however, I feel like I'm trapped inside someone else's wool socks.

But of course there's something here that's been bolstering me with its dewy freshness, and that something is the news team of the Channel 7 late night news! It has always seemed to me that the inner spirit of a town or city is located in its choice of newspeople, and I test this out wherever I go. In L.A. the newscasters are all about hair and secret designer purse outlets in downtown factories. In Rhode Island the newscasters were all about reputability acquired with age and the old timey whimsy of the outdoor ice skating ring. But- but- in nearby Albany, thankfully it appears as if Bret Easton Ellis's characters have migrated south, and now they are the magnetic, hot young things delivering the eleven o'clock news for the local ABC affiliate.

The lead anchor has got to be above thirty, I'm figuring, because I don't know how you could land the desk in a capital without at least putting in a little bit of time, but the kid projects nineteenness. He has dimples. He most closely resembles the long forgotten actor Corin Nemec, best known for his brief reign as Parker Lewis on the quickly cancelled "Parker Lewis Can't Lose." He's so awash in the sunshine of youth that when I watch him, I believe he is wearing a jock strap, having just come from mandatory P.E. He smokes behind the gym, though, and walks the "mile run." Whenever he appears during primetime commercials, beaming because he seems too green and naive to know that this isn't just a winter break job, I am fascinated. It's just him at the desk, no partner, and he emits the super-fun impression that he's the boytoy of a senior producer at the station who's going to have sex with him in that chair as soon as the anchor's told the people what's coming up at eleven. He seems like he's going to bust up laughing any second because he knows he should be waiting tables at Houston's. If ever there was a savior, he feels like one.

I was happy with just having him, my butterfly, when an extended promo for the news came on, revealing the weather guy. When I saw the weather guy, I had to believe that something weird is afoot in Albany. That maybe they kill you when you hit forty there- which isn't such a bad policy, I think.

(Breaking news: one of the bachelors, a 29 year-old virgin, just said, "My body isn't a carnival ride. It's a gift.")

The weather guy looks like he just rolled over from his frat to announce some snow, and he's going straight back to the keg afterward. They're letting babies run the station over there! It's especially bizarre when the weather guy looks still in the throws of premature ejaculation, since every other major network weather guy I've seen in every other town has held onto the post so long that he seems to have always been sixty. (The one exception being the L.A. WB and UPN affiliates- I'm still unclear if we can even call those major networks- and they just like hot chicks talking about the "storm watch" in the San Fernando valley.) This Albany 7 weather guy, however, with his buzz cut and luminescent skin, is way too conventionally good looking and jumpy to have spent his time on meteorology. I feel like the station found him out of an Abercrombie catalog instead, and after they tested him and found out that he could, indeed, sweep his hand over a blue screen in the right places (when he wasn't too high), hired him to be the playdate of that dimply, lead anchor. The two of them roll around on the floor in between commercial breaks, giving each other nuggies, wedgies, and vials.

I just realized, even though I'm watching ABC, that I haven't seen the boys yet tonight. And I miss them. I want to look at their ties- if they wear ties, I can't even remember. I want to shower in their exhuberance, letting it shoot across the room at me, and I will be able to, as I am with bright, shiny things, return the exhuberance, and then their glowy, smooth foreheads will bounce it back to me again, and we'll go back and forth like this all week, going ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.

(Update: in between writing this and walking home to the dorm, I saw a promo for the 11 o'clock news with a vanilla anchorman and woman, and I realized that my favorite newscasters must only do the weekend editions. Which suits them and my impression of them perfectly, but which makes me have to wait to revisit them until Saturday.)

The Universe Engages Me In An Inside Joke

So, remember when I went to that MFA informational session for a grad school in Los Angeles, and there was a guy there whose skull I wanted to penetrate with the free pen they gave me? The guy who had me so annoyed that I'd say he was at least 72% of the reason that I decided I could never go to that particular school because I would probably kill him, and while that might, in the long run, help book sales, I'm just not that into mandatory "yard" time? (I'm on my laptop and can't link because of an outdated browser, but here's a refresher: http://andreaseigel.typepad.com/afternoon/2004/08/emmmeffffaaaaay.html.)

Yeah, so that guy's here.

I was half asleep in this morning's new student orientation when I heard that unforgettable bullshit chuckle, the sound of the impulse of ass kissing held back by a more socially acceptable form of it- laughing at everything, even everything unfunny, spoken by the instructor.

"Oh shit!" I thought, my world doubling back upon itself. For a second I got scared, as I often do, that life is a yo-yo, not even varied enough to go round and round cyclically like everyone says it does, but, instead, back and forth along a single, quick, linear line. I think I heard today that something like twenty-four new low residency writing programs have started up in the last five years alone, and me and this guy end up at the exact same one. Touche (I can't make an accent above the e either on this browser), universe.

My solace came at the realization that maybe, just as I am so incredibly annoyed by this guy, that he is equally (or hopefully more!) annoyed by me and my surliness, and that my sheer presence here makes him inwardly roll his eyes, too. And then my existence would be damaging him in some way also, and to me, that would be a fair exchange.

I'd also like to exchange the desk I'm looking at in my room right now, the one that looks suspiciously antique. I, like Billy Bob Thornton, am totally weirded out by old furniture, having a dirty feeling about the past being trapped in its fibers. That's why I'm not sitting over there.

Back To School

So I'm taking off for my first MFA residency in Vermont tomorrow night, and although I'm bringing my laptop, I'm not sure how much I'm going to be blogging while I'm away.  However, a big part of me thinks that I will be blogging somewhat regularly due to these two factors:

1.  In a recent letter to students, one of the college's staff members suggested that we bring instruments if we play them, as late night jams are encouraged and hoped for.  I stay away from drum circles.  I stay away from jams.  If there is much jamming or drum circling, then I will be in my room, typing.

2.  So far, although towels and shower shoes and coffee mugs and mittens have been discussed extensively, I haven't seen a single mention of TV in any of the informational letters or emails.  A student a few semesters ahead of me told me I could ask her any questions, and so I wrote, "Is there someplace I can watch television, and preferably with cable access?"  And basically she acted like I had just asked if there was somewhere on campus where I could club baby seals, and then she stopped answering my questions.  I'm taking my dad's smallish antenna TV in my suitcase, but I am not guaranteed that I'll get reception in the middle of what looks, according to the campus map, a lot like woods.  And yeah, I have Tivo, and while I do love it a lot, watching the Alias two-hour premiere at the end of January is not the same thing as watching it on the night that J.J. Abrams intended me to, and you can't convince me otherwise.  Anyway, when I get to campus, I'll be looking for a TV, even if it means I have to enter some sort of campus gym, and if I find one, maybe things will be sparse around here for awhile, and if I don't- then I'll be typing.