Today is Thursday, when I'm writing this for real. I accomplished what I wanted: laundry, this, the tape, which I named "Train Blah Rae" after a line in Ben's journal from a month ago, and sent in the mails postmarked West, shopping, wrapped presents, did some cleaning, received Nuggets and Nuggets II (oh boy am I ever excited!), packed (almost done.) Alyssa spent the day in airports, mostly Atlanta, for which I feel bad but she sounded okay. People have been asking me if I'm nervous about seeing her again. I suppose I could make myself nervous if I wanted to, but why should I? It just seems like not a very helpful attitude to have going into this. I'm glad. I trust that everything will sort itself out, for better or less better. Now I'm going to finish packing and pick her up from the airport. Unless we decide to be swayed by local severe weather warnings across the state (it's finally snowing here!) this will be my last entry for a while; we're going skiing and reading and cooking and resting in Wanakena. Happy New Year!

and there is nothing i'd like more
than a turn across your rickety old floor

Yesterday, when I didn't really write all those posts, we made an efficient exit from 7 Paddington by eleven or so. Listened to Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eyeshadow, The Charm of the Highway Strip, which my dad bought for himself, fragments of the Cloudsplitter tape as I slept uncomfortably and read the first hundred pages of Mao II, which really does seem to be about Pynchon. Dunkin Donuts, Wendy's, Merrick, the Fool finished as we pulled in home. Present from Alex: an Alpha-T with velcro interchangeable letters for all your punk messages. I'm wearing it today, it says "I fit math analysis."

I went to the Cinema on a half-empty stomach, for "Serendipity" and "The Man Who Wasn't There." The first was probably more enjoyable than I expected, but less so than I would have expected if I had thought about it more clearly. It takes the Sliding Doors formula to extremes, so that basically the whole movies is a string of coincidences. Funny how it follows the trend in recent movies (Memento, Fight Club) where much depends on specifics of timing and little details, but is completely fluff. But it is fun. John Cusack is cute. Interesting that his fiancee in the movie looks kind of like Kate Beckinsale, and hers looks kind of like him. Hers is reminiscent of the unhip world-music loving boyfriend (I. Ray) from HiFi, except more extreme - he's actually a new age/world musician, playing this goofy looking oboe thingy. And his "big hit" is actually a Mint Royale tune, with the oboe thing laid over top of it. Hey, what are they trying to say about Mint Royale? As for "The Man Who Wasn't There," I'm still not quite sure what I think about it. It was definitely enjoyable and engaging, but I can't tell how much we're supposed to sympathize with the main character (great deadpan Billy Bob), and what exactly the message is. Stylistically, it was impeccable. Some might say the style was the whole point, and it certainly works well as a genre/period exercise. The Coens are definitely into that. I'd like to see it again sometime, and talk about it.

So that makes seven movies in the last seven days. I hadn't been home for more than four hours, and I ran into at least two people I know. I thought as I sat down right before the first movie began that Caedra Scott-Flaherty and Toni Attardo were in the row behind me. And indeed they were, although Caedra left before I went to talk to them. I sat with Toni for the second feature; she seemed bubbly enough, was enthusiastic about both films. Her voice was scratchier than I've heard it. She sort of looked and sounded sick. Then when I was walking out I saw Mr. John Gabriele, piano teacher from SOTA, and one of my not-favorite people, with three other music teachers. I don't really have much to say in encounters like those, except yes, I am. So I walked home. I was going to stop in and see if Morgan was around, but her lights were off.

I intended to catch up here last night, after that, but instead I went downstairs and made some Annie's "Peace Pasta Parmesan," actually quite good and mild. I listened to Rae's mix and read her favorite book. The book ended first (it's only 88 pages.) It reminded me of the Snark-out Boys, and the Rutabaga stories, and Buses and Cameos. A little optimistic for her though.

if you dig vegan food
well come over to my work
i'll have 'em cook you something that you'll really love

Tuesday Christmas morning. So, we waited and then watched the technically difficult iMovies, the girls opened actually functional and appreciated stocking gifts (hey, now that we don't get stockings they've stopped filling them with gag canned goods and plastic junk figurines. no fair.) It took a long time to mobilize for breakfast (mine: bialy with egg and nova. mmm) and even longer to mobilize for present-opening. Till noon. Weird.

Considering that nobody asked me what I wanted and I didn't really tell anyone, I came away with a fair haul. Amadeus DVD from the Naumburgs, a home recording book from Dan, an Oliver Sacks memoir and a lovely soft gray diamond sweater from Delia, a tie from Mike, a jew hat and a rich supply of Indian condiments and cooking sauces from the Gravitzes, a knife and measuring spoons and a nice scarf from my folks, and some CDs from my dad - Spirit (early 70's band that I'd never heard of, I'm excited for it), Peter Gabriel (why not?), Bach (this new recording of a partita that he says is haunting and magical, and also gave to a lot of other people.) I'm going to have to supplement with some presents for myself, but really, not bad at all. The usual Christmas afternoon lackadaisicality was somewhat averted by the plan for an early movie: the Fellowship of the Ring.

Watching the movie was a lot like reading the book, which I guess is a good thing. It's long but I never really got bored, which was surprising; it's really big and epic and takes itself way too seriously, and there isn't much emotional character development because it's all taken up by the legends and stuff. But all of those criticisms are true of the book too. Visually, it is really incredible, so beautiful. Reminded me of Alaska in places, but it was filmed in New Zealand. The fight scenes were especially well done. Better than Crouching Tiger for my money. In the end, it sort of seems pointless to watch a movie like that because you might as well just read the book, but it is fun. I guess that's the point. Good old Ian Holm as Bilbo too.

Dinner was reruns plus brisket, still good. I wrestled with Delia's computer, but didn't have any more luck posting there, although I did get one e-mail out and one in. I pulled out the mandolin and tuned it like a ukelele so I could play "Queen of the Savages." Michael wanted to play this game of celebrity name guessing that he bought for Zoe. So Bob and I played and he went off and took care of the baby. Jess Richman came over, which was nice of her, and we watched "Some Like it Hot," that Bobby had gotten on DVD. I'd never seen it before, none of us had. It's excellent. Hilarious, probably deserves number one on that comedy list. Easy to see its influence on so much in later Hollywood culture. And Marilyn is indeed sexy. Ester had seen the same two movies in one day a few days earlier, how's that for a coincidence. Bobby and Jess had a small world talk (they had once faced each other in a frisbee tournament, it turned out), which I can never really participate in well because I didn't go to a private high school. And we talked about plans for next semester. That would be fun.

and it goes round in circles
one night is lovely the next is brutal
and you and me are in way over our heads

Monday was the day before Christmas. The first thing that happened was that Bobby's friend Joanna came over to visit, and we went for a walk with Zoe. In the little bookstore in Scarsdale village I bought two books: Ahab's Wife as a present for my mother, although theoretically I might want to read it sometime, and Cloudsplitter for myself. They were expensive, but I got to hold them right then. It turned out that my folks and Martha had been listening to Cloudsplitter on the drive up. I have plans to read it with Brigid. It looks good and big and American. It's by Russell Banks. I also bought myself a tube of gingermint toothpaste. With Propylis and Myrrh, how can it not be good. When we got back there was some gaming going on. I played jacks with Martha and Sarah and her friend and Emily, and got up to foursies. Later on I played with Emily and Becky, and Becky kicked our butts (she played in elementary school.) And Pounce. What a great game. I'm pretty good at it too.

Soon everybody showed up, all the usual folks. I was pretty tired and out of it, maybe because of allergy medicine. In fact I almost fell asleep on the couch in the den. Hors d'oeuvres were good - liver pate and little pumpernickel slices and stuff - but dinner was actually really good. Surprising that I liked it so much; turkey and potatoes and roasted veggies and so forth. I sat with Sean and Karen and my mom and we talked about BattleBots. Sean is building one. I'd like to watch the show sometime. Dessert. Wow. It's a good thing I didn't make the buche because there were a lot of other things. Karen's pumpkin cheesecake, her mom's apple crumble and homemade truffles (too bad I don't like chocolate, those things were incredible) and pumpkin pie and fruit salad. And even better Sarahs than usual, more luscious.

Matt and Jess came over after dinner while we were in the middle of a massive pouncefest, then they came over a half-hour later with Lillie D. and we went to midnight mass. Martha and Bobby and Zoe and Emily came along, but they all stood in the back and left before we did; the place was crowded but someone offered us four seats in the front. They were really in the front - the first row, right next to the altar, so the entire congregation could watch us four jews and semi-jews as we didn't cross ourselves, didn't genuflect, didn't know the words to the prayers. We sang the hymns though - some of my favorites too (Hark the Herald, Angels We Have, O Come All), and bowed our heads and so forth. Lillie was wearing a funky purple skirt. A small asian woman in a pat green coat and hat, sitting on the other side of Jess from me, glanced at us disapprovingly when we didn't know how to respond: a pair of servicemen in uniform stood in front of the altar and the priest said "I think you know what to do." What we were supposed to do was clap and stand up, which we eventually did. The congregation was interestingly mixed, from the elegant people in extravagant hats and stuffy expressions to Matt's streaked-dirty-blond ninth-grade girlfriend, across the altar from us, looking very bored and disinterested in her rather revealing top. The priest gave a funny homily, started by reciting "the Little Drummer Boy," saying why he was glad that sales are down 7 to 10 percent this year, then interrupted himself to warn "Turn off that cellphone before I kill you." Odd, we thought, for a priest to say. We left just before communion, bewildered and bemused. Next year, we should definitely do what I had suggested: find a black gospel church to attend Christmas eve services.

When we got back, there was a group sitting in the living room tossing around sordid caper ideas. They got as far as taking a photo of Matt Rubin's naked behind. People started to disperse before too long, and I joined them. I favored the burn out rather than fade away model for the caper this year. But Bob and Dan insisted on doing something, and apparently they stayed up until five or so making 30-second video clips of the dogs as spokesmen for the warring factions in the dispute over present distribution. But I went to bed.

first you doubt yourself
and then you doubt her

I slept late on Sunday and nobody made any smart remarks about it even, which was refreshing. After a Scarsdale standard morning meal (nova and cream cheese on pumpernickle) and a snail's pace race with 23-month Lily, it was off to the city for a (3:00) matinee (time for starbuck's chai and pumpkin loaf before; Delia had said in the car "we should get candy before we go to the theatre" and my mom and I looked at each other and laughed"). Hedda Gabler. I didn't think I'd ever read or seen any Ibsen, but about ten minutes into this I realized I had read it, although I can't remember when or why. It was good. Really terrific acting, and very theatrical. The play inspired intense discussion afterward about the meaning of the play, spilling over into other discussions about philosophy, etc. As we dealt with a logistics nightmare:

Delia had made reservations at Ruby Foo's, a trendy pan-Asian restaurant right down the street from the theatre, but it turned out they had us reservations for us at their other location, thirty blocks uptown. So we headed back to our garages to drive to the other location. Except that the garage my car was parked at had the most ridiculous. confusing system I've ever seen. It had taken us no time to park and get out, but they wanted us to wait in line for forty minutes while valet drivers zipped by at ultra-high speeds, before they could bring the car to us, and it turned out we had the wrong card and left the right one in the car, so that took even longer. Delia and Bobby and I took a taxi to the restaurant rather than wait for all of that, and we were there long before anyone else, thanks to non-headset-law-abiding cabbie. We ordered some preliminary dim sum and edamame. The food was pretty good, and I ate a lot of it; multiple orders of dim sum (alaskan snow crab siu mai, malaysian curry chicken potstickers, and the like), sushi party trays, pad thai, teriyaki, ad nauseum, the lazy Susan kept spinning around. I found room for dessert, and ordered one of the most elaborate menu items I've ever seen: Passion Fruit Crème Brulee Rice Pudding Napoleon with crunchy kataiyfi and Thai Basil syrup and tropical fruit sauce. It was confusing. But good. And there was a lot of dessert sharing, like for Bobby's massive chocolate cake slice (bigger than he was, probably.) A ten-person-round table is big, so I mostly just listened to the conversation at the other side of the table, about evil - is there such a thing? in reference to the play and to current events.

Back at 7 Paddington, Dan pulled out some videos from Dakar this summer. He narrated and fastforwarded through most of it, street shots and people goofing off and occasionally some of the recording sessions, but usually you couldn't hear the music, just the rapping. Good material for videos or a documentary though. Then I tried to post my entry from Saturday. I had written part of it on Dan's computer, transferred it to mine, and finished it on stickies. Had some trouble sending it back, so instead of posting it using his remote service, we (he) spent several hours trying to set up remote dial-up on my computer. Which should have worked, except that it didn't, several phone calls to Covad HQ and lots of fiddling and restarting and deleting extensions and so forth didn't help. So I sat there while he toyed with it and watched an interview with Kevin Spacey, a docufeature on Stockard Channing, a little bit of South Park (Jesus and Santa singing songs about themselves), and an episode of "I Spy," featuring a very young Bill Cosby. So I got to bed real late again (3.)

hey
little boy
do you want to know what's in my pocket or not
it's no toy
it's no gimmick
it's the chance of a lifetime

So it took me almost exactly four days after I started writing that entry before I could get it published. Not for lack of trying. I'll come back in a little while I write about all the things that happened on those four days, before I head off on another little jaunt. It's nice to be home for a minute though. I'm hungry.

so hear the boys sing Bee Gees songs under the skies
and on the steps of Montmartre they harmonize

A day of transition, activity to inactivity to activity, company to solitude to company; or actually the beginning of a transition, which might work or not. I'm sort of just anxious to get back to the solitude and inactivity. But I'll find a way to enjoy this in the interim. Here I am in Scarsdale writing on Dan's month-old spankin' iBook, which has been tied up for the last hour and a half by people playing with Dan's new (this afternoon) digital camera, an Elph. They just figured out that you can take pictures and have them appear immediately on the computer screen. Each grandparent or parent who comes in the room has their response of confusion or curiosity, and then Dan explains it again. It's the sort of thing that happens here.

I had an enjoyably leisurely morning, after waking up at eight to "Beetlebum," of intermittently picking stuff up and lying on the naked bed in the sunlight, with Monster, Let's Go, El Oso, and the like. Wrote two pages for Ester flowing from a year-old limerick to our consensus on friendship. More odd jobs, and she wanted to drag me to Sharples again, but I suggested eating somewhere off campus. So after some hassle Sorelle drove Zabby and us to Country Side, where after debating whether or not to order the sandwich that I always order that always disappoints me, I did. And, after we rushed out stealing forks and drinks (that had already been paid for), just in time for me to catch the 12:27, it didn't disappoint. Maybe because I was prepared for that eventuality. I'm not sure why I had been so let down by it earlier, except that it does get cloying by the end of the second half. Still, the Kolhberg Hall: stilton, granny smith slices, and turkey pastrami on brown bread, is a darn tasty sandwich. Hank's root beer was definitely better to wash it down with than their insidious suspect peach smoothies (never order one). The goodbyes had been adequate if hurried, at least considering that I can't really comprehend that I won't see Ester for months and months. She is, I realized while inscribing her notebook, my best friend. Not the only one, because there can be bests in different ways (incidentally, did you know that next is the superlative form of night? cool, huh) but in her way, it. I have to stop myself from writing this kind of stuff here now and just stick to the narrative. I'm too tired and there's too much to say, and this paragraph and the next have already been erased and rewritten from scratch.

I sat in 30th street station across from a yuppie couple with their preposterous-looking dog, the scrawniest thing I've ever seen. It was literally four inches tall, maybe an inch in circumference, with an American flag ribbon in her hair. They were sitting next to an annoying dumb woman who fawned over it and pestered them with questions, but they were too rapt by Pebbles to show much distaste. I gave some money to a panhandler and read most of "Buses and Cameos," Rae's 'zine (I still can't use that word without a twinge of irony) about her travels around the country one summer. Funny to read, because, even though it was entertaining and inspiring and all that, it was kind of difficult reconciling it with Rae. The writing tended to get much cutesier than I think of her voice now. Actually, I can very easily imagine it as her voice from a few years ago, when she was less jaded, willing to express her enthusiasms (for public transportation, culinary juxtaposition, cute gay boys, new experiences in general, from trail work to shooting to welding) in more unambiguous turns of phrase. I wonder if this is also something that comes through in her writing; a lot of the difference relates to the manner of her speech, not the content so much. Part of what intrigues me about her is the way that aspects of her childhood and adolescence and maturation are apparent from who she is now; her speech, her room, her record collection, her mannerisms. I guess that's true with a lot of people, that you can see what they must have been like when they were younger, and even the ways they have and haven't changed and the reasons for it. She just presents a particularly appealing set of incongruities and resolutions; the self-awareness and impetuosity to write of "a wispy, elegant voice, rivaling even my own in sultriness." It was a good thing to read while travelling, made me think about how travelling alone is in some ways less boring than travelling with someone else. I really enjoy days of travel like this; unless I have something else much better to do, they're an excellent way to preserve a minimal level of requisite mental and physical activity that doesn't really amount to anything, with the bulk of the time free for reflection and bemusement, quietly observing, the blessed quiet of strangers, even noisy obnoxious strangers. Keep the inner monologue going or just let it drift. Be tired and content.

The train was impossibly crowded, at least we moved along at a decent pace, less than an hour and a half to Penn Station. I stood in the aisle, and eventually sat down, next to a pair of mop-topped olive-skinned green-t-shirted rambuncts, who quarelled over which would get to sit on the floor, whether their stuffed black pterodactyl would eat a pretzel that one of them had already bitten into, what the next stop was. Nate (9) showed me a magic card trick, and discussed the correct pronunciation of Salamandastron; Gabe (6?) wanted me to help him in his tray-table hiding/slamming mischief; their mother exhaustedly pointed out the zoo, explained that Elvis Costello came somewhere between her generation and theirs, repeatedly asked them to stop squirming in their seats and pestering me, took Gabe onto her lap to place stickers into a Star Wars book and offered me his skittle-wrappered pretzel crumbed seat. I enjoyed the whole interaction; even if I often can't be bothered to adopt that grinningly bemused patois that enthusiastic teenagers and grandmothers use to talk to kids, I enjoy talking to them in my own level, similarly bemused but begrudging intonation, speaking as if I expect rational response. Their parents I think are always somewhat shocked and glad to see a sober-looking college boy like me deigning to engage their prattling progeny. Well, it made the trip a bit more entertaining than just being cramped on the floor while people stepped on me and scuffed Lydia Davis.

After we pulled into Penn, I wandered confusedly about the station a little, referenced an oversize map on the wall of Staples to double-check the direction, where the clerk had to ask several people before they could confirm. She recommended the train of course, but I continued my tradition by walking the ten blocks up, six or so over to Grand Central. It's a nice way to experience a little bit of New York, which is always so tantalizing and makes me want to spent some good solid days or years just doing that, checking out "the greatest city in the world" (said the conductor.) It was made a little less pleasurable by the weight hanging on my shoulder and the ridged handle of my suitcase-pull, which abraded my palms no matter how I held it. North first, along Times Square, and a charming sunset down 42nd St. Made it to the station with time before the next Harlem line departure to call Delia and buy myself a coconut-pineapple-white chocolate Haagen Dazs bar (didn't quite quench my thirst.) Finished the Solomon and read more of the Davis on the way up, chuckled to myself about some perfectly stereotyped Sarah Lawrence girls (isn't there a great bit in Salinger about that, on a train?)

Mike and Dede were there as promised to pick me up; scruffy Bob, blond-tinged Dan, and finger-bandaged Mami in the kitchen, digging into some brisket and cole slaw. I was the quiet, meekly curt, shell-shocked self I usually am at these first re-encounters with family, these first re-encounters with the known world after a day of travel, these re-emergences from the insular glory of Swarthmore, these first times when I don't feel compelled to make myself interesting for these people, when I can force them to let me be as sullen and detached as I want. Because what I really want is just to have a good long time to myself, to think and mostly to laze, or maybe in dialogue with someone who's willing to drop their schtick and be as mellow and unmoved as I am. But not these inanely looping impossible conversations, where everyone says exactly what you would expect, they disagree and misunderstand and poke fun at each other in the ways that have been practiced for so many years. Everyone's good-natured neuroses and forced jokes are predictable, and comforting too, in that way, but I don't need to play a bigger part in it than I want to. I'll answer their questions, more briefly if it suits me, smile to myself and feel my love for them even while I put on the easier face of ribbed aloofness, gently decline their "knowing" offers of alcohol, play along or not. Dinner was great, preprepared of course and thus containing some little inexplicabilities that come from outside food: cold salmon steak covered with cucumbers and lemon, with a delicious dill sauce; health salad, cole slaw, bread and butter; apple pie cake, a preposterous conversation: debates about the recapping of beer bottles and the political autonomy of Okinawa (he thought we meant Korea, no wonder the argument was so heated), and freely ranging DeLillo-esque non-sequitur sessions of choral harmony and semiotics and beer and golf and college and ice cream, where nobody was really listening to anyone else, or if they were they would be quickly distracted and interrupted.

I was able to be a bit more serious and accepting when my real family arrived. Martha, mommy, daddy, they all look good (even if she was wearing a ridiculous shirt, something I would probably wear), sound happy (Mom barely got to speak to me except to fawn and then bark and remind preemptively, which makes me bristle and I know we'll clear it up later). We went through another round of the same dinner, putting back all the dishes we had just cleared away, and this time the talk was about the economics of car maintenance, and an update on Alex's gizmos. After Ella and Lily arrived, Oak and Beaner lost some of their cuteness in comparison. I don't get why there's so much about parents turning their attention away from the first child after the second is born - a three year old is no less cute just because she suddenly has a five-week old sister. 3 is a more cute age anyway, to me; she's a little more like a miniature human, less a needy blob. Well, there was some hilarity and cocktails in the other room as I wrote this, but it's all died down now and they're all off to bed, and I better join them. It's not that I don't like being here, I really do, I just need some time to adjust. It's okay. If you're reading this comment or e-mail me. Thanks.

signal in the sky-oh
that's when you know that you've got to fly-oh

Trying to think of something to write in Ester's book, again like I was last night at this time I'm writing about now. I had the idea of the Barn final exam, but then I thought that would be too big and besides it should be shared with the others too. She came and sat on [not my] bed, and I read her some stories from SJiI, and then her guests arrived: Zabby, Sorelle and Kate, who is so neatly hemmed in by her hat and glasses. Not much later: Brigid and Sarah (Cohodes, yes?) We sat on the floor in the common room (brilliant statement about comfort that), in the shadow of Rebecca's bookshelf, and drank wine. I brought out grapes (good ones, intense), seaweed rice crackers, and some sesame stick mix stuff that was in the cupboard. We started "I Never" (which I'd always heard as "Never have I ever." Quite an easy-going, friendly game. Pretty tame group - I mean, I probably had to pay the forfeit more than anyone except maybe Ester. Nothing particularly noteworthy was revealed, except possibilities for things we could have done that would have been firsts for everyone (clothed showers? sex toys?) Four of them in a row were wearing a shade of red. We finished the last two-thirds of a bottle of Shiraz and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, then half of a bottle of Cabernet. Most of them (philistines or touchy-feelies) quaffed straight from the bottle; Brigid and I had glasses. I think we had more than anyone, especially since towards the end everyone else had resorted to just saying "swig" rather than drinking, while I was polishing off my third glass. It might have been a more enjoyable mild buzz than I've had. Oh, I also drank my Outrageous ginger ale (excellent.) We listened to "Walking Wounded," which is so good that I'm listening to "Temperamental" now. Around 2, when it looked like everyone was ready to fall asleep right there on the floor, Brigid and I went to finish "Noises Off." Ben showed up fifteen minutes from the end, and we relinquished the bed to him and his zombie bride. She claimed that she didn't feel all that affected by the alcohol, but it must have helped somewhat. I walked back to campus with her and Kate, fabulous night for stars. She had a shuttle to catch in less than an hour; we good-byed (if Sammy Cahn can use it...). Poor Kate, what must she have been thinking. Someday I'll feed her artichokes as well.

you must remember this

La dee dah. I'm listening to the tape that I made intermittently throughout the day today, as I did the work stuff. It's a funny mix of old old standbys and new ideas, but I think it works. Right now is on "I Took Her Love For Granted" which Rae said reminded her why she loved indie rock (cute songs where boys profess their complete and utter admiration for the listener), and as the organ swell fades out it drops beautifully into the tentative opening strums of "Ray." I tried to put a lot of country on here, but most of it doesn't sound much like country. Not many "appropriate" songs, except "One Man's Ceiling" (of course.) The closer, "Happy Loving Couples," came to me in a burst, very good. Scene change music provided by the King and the Duke.

I have moved many of my things out of this room and into my new room: my CDs and their shelving units, lots of paper, sheet music, things to put on the walls, pillows, printer and burner, books. I've arranged most of them in the new room, which is not easy to do satisfactorily. It's a really awful room, not because of the size, which doesn't bother me so much (at least not right now) but the shape: they cut a lot of corners in designing it (literally); the pipes and radiator and closet are positioned in such a way as to make it difficult to fit anything normal-shaped neatly around them. But I am figuring it out. Ironically, I'm going to need some more furniture - a shelving unit of some sort, if not a table. I also did a lot of packing - CDs, clothes, etc. - and throwing away. Ester and I cleaned up the kitchen together, and she grumbled when I asked her to help me move stuff. We argued about it, but our hearts weren't really in it. I let her drag me to both lunch and dinner at Sharples (ptooey) with her little friends. Got some great pictures back from the bookstore. Reserved train ticket for tomorrow. Oh boy.

Ray
as of today
I can't say
things will ever be the same
and that could be a shame

Is this some kind of joke? I was up at 10:30 (Pulp Fiction soundtrack woke me up an hour earlier, but I just lay in bed and listened to it first), checked my e-mail to find a wish list update from half.com. look at this. Can you see that? probably not. Well, they had in a way unprecendented eight titles off of my wishlist (they usually come in one at a time, very rarely two), all for under $5.00, most for $2.50. And, of course, they were all gone. Damn damn. Well, just for that I'm going to buy myself both Nuggets and Nuggets II from cheap-cds. Merry Christmas. (Nobody's going to get me anything from my >wishlist anyway.)

i wrestle
with my conscience
you wrestle
with your partner

Today (that is, Thursday), before I wrote the end of yesterday's entry (yeah I know) I did some other things. Let's see. I woke up at 11 to Ester recieving her package. No, I woke up first at 7 to Rebecca saying goodbye. But the second time I put on Ted Leo's album and let the glorious opening strains of "Biomusicology" wash over my room. What a good wake-up song. I thought about making a mixtape (it's like the Caroline episode in HighFi) but ended up working for part of the time in Es's room instead, because we thought the internet had stopped working (oh, it made sense at the time.) I borrowed Jess's, to notice that archives had reappeared and "what say you" grown big, before we realized that Rebecca had left the modem unplugged when she took her power strip. Oh yeah. A surprising package came from the Temporary Residence: only one jewel case but three CDs, by Sybarite, Halifax Pier, and HollAnd/Borthwick. Not that I know any of these artists or anything, but I'm looking forward to exploring. This is a good label to have as my friend.

I spent a rough three hours revising the history paper; probably more work than it needed, but it was worth it. I strengthened the argument the whole way through, completely reworked the last two or three pages by mostly just shifting sentences around from one paragraph to another, adding a minimum of new stuff and taking a lot out. Then went back to the beginning and took one of the threads out of the intro, which made it possible to condense down to one paragraph which preserved the bulk of the cool ideas but was rather more relevant. Ended up leaving one less than seamless transition, which I demarcated with a line break - hey, who says the flow has to be constant and you can't have sections. We listened to A(ster) and side one of B(ecca). We'll finish the backwards barncycle tomorrow. How appropriate.

With half an hour to spare, I headed to campus (sunset nice, but not as spectacular as yesterday's) to hand it in. Liza was waiting at Parrish circle to go to a movie with Hilary and Hunter. What the hey, I said. I'm free of academic commitments for at least a month, and nothing's waiting for me at home except mess and no food (and Rae, who might have left while I was away) - I'll go to a movie too. We went to see "Waking Life" at the Ritz at the Bourse. I didn't know a single thing about the movie going in, and (because of that?) I spilled my popcorn. A little bit. It was a really interesting film. All animated, but actually it was all shot live and then painted over (sort of nice symbolism given the movie's theme). The opening scene shows a tango group rehearsing a new tune, with enticing quasi-realism. The music was especially good, and as it turned out that group's music is featured throughout the film (the Tosca Tango Orchestra; I'll have to check them out.) I was worried at first that it was going to be way more academicky than I wanted to handle having just turned in my last paper, but it ended up a nice balance between intellectualism and emotion. The movie is essentially a series of scenes of people talking, passionately - usually in monologues - on a wide range of topics: reincarnation, free will, quantum physics, society, revenge, language, memory, guns, and especially dreams. Many of them are fairly academic, but others come off as normal people in everyday situations, just living their lives and talking about ideas that excite them. Settings flow and ebb and change freely from offices and classrooms to streetscapes, coffee bars, prisons, bedrooms, cinemas, nightclubs, gardens. Gradually a narrative starts to take shape - the protagonist is a holdover from one of the director's earlier films ("Dazed and Confused," funnily enough) who begins to realize that his life has become a dream from which he can only awake into another dream. But it's very much (blatantly) a film of ideas. There are too many ideas to really synthesize them, but the central thesis is tantalizing and invites hours of pondering and discussion, which is clearly the point. I guess now I'll have time for it.

Happily, I did get home before Rae left. In fact, her mother arrived almost immediately as I did, as I was surveying the sad state of affairs that had become Nelly. She had fallen again the previous night, off the roof, but was lying in considerably more pieces this time. I suspected, and upon examination confirmed, that someone had for whatever reason deliberately dismantled her. Sure enough, the plastic ties that bind her legs to her body had been severed. There was nothing to do but carry her remains inside. Rae and I had discussed reconstituting her in some new form that would perhaps incorporate new materials and give her a second life as some slightly altered sort of statuary. But there was no time. I installed a lock on her porch door, and helped her look for eyeliner, and then she left. I wrote here, and made a CD for Martha, and a drippy quesadilla for myself, fielded a call from Tallahassee, and went downstairs to watch Pulp Fiction on the big screen with Renee and Ester. It's good. You all know that. Jaime came and Ester left. A lot of important things happen in the movies while/because someone is in the bathroom. It's very self-cognizant. It's entertaining. Ester wanted to do shots whenever somebody got killed, but she neglected to get the vodka. There's water in the kitchen. I put a drawer under my bed. It's late, and I have a lot to do tomorrow and the next day.

it was a shotgun wedding and the old folks wished them well
it was clear that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle

So that last entry was sort of a fiction: although I did start it at 5:30 yesterday when I was waiting for Rae in Beardsley, I just finished it now. When I revisited it to finish it, I was tempted to delete the first paragraph. Because my archives had reappeared, and they seemed to be working fine. Except now, after I published that, they have disappeared again (all except faithful August). And I didn't change anything, I swear. Maybe if I just let it be it will sort itself out again.

Well after Rae and I handed in our papers yesterday (it's later now but who cares), we came back to the barn. I decided that we didn't have time to go to the store, since the carollers started showing up any minute (Jenny and her bf, aw, and then Blair, who was particular glad to see me), but then I decided we should go to the store anyway, when I realized I hadn't eaten all day and there was no food in the house. So we did; I bought cider, grapes, tortillas, cheese, pita, salsa, and two small packages of sushi (just the essentials.) Rae bought some prunes. There was quite a crowd gathered when we returned - plus Melinda (left immediately), Sierra and Joe and Joanne, and Lindsey. And Rebecca came too.

We warmed up in the hallway, and dedicated a number to the moose (O Come O Come EmmmanuNelly - not my pun.) The night was right for it - chilly but not cold (no chance for snow though, unfortunately.) We hit mostly professors homes, to middling success. Struck out at the Blooms, and found lots of wives without their husbands. Our biggest success on the Northern half of the trek (aside from mistletoed Woolman, where Cathy and Maria joined us briefly and we made our one and only stab at "O Holy Night") was at the well-lit manse of the Wests. It was like something out of a film; Cecille ushered us into the plushly carpeted stairwell, to serenade dressing-robed Dan and Mama upstairs, gushed and fawned in a mild melodious twang, and offered us phenomenal Texan-made mints. In general, we did fairly well for booty - like a more disorienting version of trick-or-treating, someone said. The best was probably Susan Smythe's fresh gingerbread men while her little ones pranced around and tried to tip us (after a detour through campus and "the Cherry-tree Carol.") We didn't have time for many more houses after that, just Robert's (he made oddly out-of-place sarcastic remarks while his wife and daughters were cute and family-like on their glassed-in porch, and we sang "Rudolph" and "Silent Night"), the old folk's home with the German woman who remembered us from last year (and demanded a chorus of "O Tannenbaum"), another well-lit place where we were given juice-boxes, and Donna Jo's flamingo-infested, overgrown dwelling far down on Park. By this time it was down to four - Rebecca, Lindsey, Joe, and myself - and we had our harmonies pretty well honed, offering some of our best efforts ("O Little Town of Bethlehem" for one) to the empty streets. We had such plans for DJ's house - to sing "Dona Jona Poli," to be her happy students - but what happened instead was kind of bizarre.

We sang a rousing "Joy to the World," and though the house lights were on, nobody came to the doorbell. We heard a car pull into a (her?) driveway, and tried again with "Angels We Have Heard on High". This time a figure ran up the stairs, as if to fetch someone to come down and listen. So we started up one more - "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" or something - but about halfway through the second verse all the lights in the house went off, and we burst into confused laughter. Not wanting to end on such an uncertain note, we tried one more house, lavishly decorated, with not one but two Happy Hannuka banners hanging in the front hall and directly above it - each one spelled differently. We could see the family inside - mother giving one of her children a backrub while papa looked through the mail table in the hallway - so we figured it was a safe bet. Towards the end of our first number (cautiously secular "Winter Wonderland"), the husband peered confusedly around the glass flanking the doorway, then opened the door slowly, noticed us and muttered to himself, "oh, there is someone out there." The woman came over and explained that they had Jessye Norman on the TV, turning her up to drown us out. "Do you want anything?" she said, "or are you just going around and doing this?" So maybe that was just as bad as our previous rejection. Ran into jubilant Sam and Gerrit "Deck the" Hall on their way back from Cheng Hing dinner (we had just missed the chance to sing to them there) as we headed back.

It was Rebecca's last night here. We switched the location of our beds (these apartments are seemingly designed to create difficulty in moving furniture). Rae came up and joined us for some mulled cider (mmm - she even supplied the cinnamon sticks) and set (required too much concentration for that juncture.) That was that.

cantet nunc io chorum angelorum

Well, I don't know what's wrong with my archives. They just don't want to cooperate.

I just handed in a paper that I had spent the previous 29 hours working on, with relatively few interruptions.

After some thinking and waiting around to hear back from Schmidt, I was in the library a little after eleven in the morning, reading a book with the preposterous title "The Content of the Form" (the subtitle is a little better: "narrativizing discourse and historical representation.) It was on the syllabus for Murder as a supplementary reading, but I thought it might be relevant for my Pynchon paper, seeing as how I wanted to write about history as narrative. It was pretty much right on the mark, and I sat in a couch cluster with Liz and this other girl [the number one person that I see everywhere but whose name I still don't know - she was at the Yale house party, she lived in Dana last year, she's always in McCabe, just for starters] and transcribed whole paragraphs from it into my powerbook. The library was a good place for breezy work with lots of little interaction breaks - with Blair, Liz (Eakins!), Kate, Jeanne - Spike was out and around the library. I took three copies but decided that I wouldn't look at it until I finished my paper. I went upstairs and found a little carrel (is that how you spell 'er?) to sit and type at - I wrote a page or so of stream-of-consciousness response to the quotes from the meta-historics book. Got tired of waiting to see if Schmidt would e-mail me back, so I came home. Then I went to Rae's room.

I'm not quite sure what to say about the twenty-four hours that followed. It was a remarkable experience even just in terms of the music we listened to (Joe Jackson, Sonny Boy Williamson, the High Llamas, David Byrne, two early Magnetic Fields albums, Elvis Costello, Don Byron, Whiskeytown, Tortoise, Alex Gopher, Dave Brubeck, Lisa Germano, Francoise Hardy, Folk Implosion, several mixtapes including N(oel) and R(oss), and more I'm sure), but I know Ester will get some funny ideas if I just make a list of music. We were both writing our final papers for Pynchon & Melville, both on Mason & Dixon. Hers exploring parallels in the demarcation of space (5 and a half degrees) and time (eleven days); mine positing that Pynchon thought (or wants us to think) of the book as a work of history. I am very satisfied with my process of writing the paper. Starting with nearly four pages of quotes (from the metahistory book, from the novel, from my appendage to the musical) and scattered fragments, I developed various vaguely related ideas in parts of paragraphs and semblances of sentences until a thesis and, more importantly, an orginizational structure made themselves known. At least three or four "introductory" paragraphs were submerged into the flow of the paper - I like this idea of writing each paragraph as if it were an introduction, and then just stringing them together. Once I knew how I wanted the structure to go, I wrote starting from the top down without much looking back. It was nice because every so often I would get to the point where I needed to bring in an idea or a quote that I had started to write about earlier, so I simply dragged the relevant fragments up to the cursor. Thank goodness for word processors. By the time it was finished, I had dragged in not only my history class and White's theory of narrative discourse, but portions of the Tony Tanner article, an allusion to Schmidt's website, various examples from the godsend Pynchon Pages, a linewalker who mentioned the "ticking tombstone," even a reference to Rae's paper. And it's good. I'm really happy with the paper. I mean, I haven't had a chance to read it over with any sort of critical distance, but I think the ideas are really good, and it's pretty darn well written too. Well, considering the time I put into it, it ought to be.

I was working on it, and nothing else, for what I guess was literally almost thirty hours. I was hardly, of course, writing the whole time. We were talking for much of the time, about music (of course) and Pynchon (of course – often about topics completely unrelated to our papers, about the histories of our music collections, about high school, optimism vs. pessimism, dancing, other things. Brigid came by to borrow books (our paths had been reversed earlier) - Barth, Steinbeck, something else. Nelly had fallen down once more, just down, not to the ground; Rae wanted to light her and power her head while it was still dangling over the side of the roof, but she just looked like she was writhing in pain, and it was more than I could take, so I made her stand back up again after a few hours. We played with google, which now won't direct you to this site from a search for my name until the 14th page (although I'm glad to say I'm the first result for "reminced" and "ross talks funny" and even "moose in my backyard") – but I showed it to her anyway, and she was impressed, not put off. We stopped to eat, combining the resources of our paltry pantries to come up with tasty and filling corn-bean-rice-soystuff burritos.

We worked in her room; her at the desk, me on the slippery bed, until I came up here to use Joel's internet and realized that she could just use his laptop. We came up here for a change of scenery and a cup of espresso, wrestled with my frame (it wanted to slide away from the wall almost as much as hers did), munched akmaks and mango slices. I tried to be affectionate in a good way. At around half past five she went to sleep, I tried to work for an hour longer, then woke her at seven and slept for an hour while she worked. Progress picked up in the morning; Joel's father arrived; we moved back downstairs; the fluidity of our time experience (we turned off the clock) played into her paper, as does the Fermata. Each time I thought I was two paragraphs away from a conclusion I thought of a way to expand the scope of my discussion and consider further and outréer questions. I was done my paper (this is a construction that apparently people use?) by around three. Penultimate sentence: "…all history is as meaningless as this tripe." And I even found a way to encorporate that in a friendly way. Then I had time to edit and pretty up a page of sources and a page of extracts (Mellvile-style) as Rae finished hers. Printed it out (thanks that the printer agreed to normal font-size), 12 pages plus two (like everything else I've written this semester, it ended naturally just at the upper page requirement.) It got to be five, so I stopped waiting for Rae and went to hand it in. The sunset as I walked to campus was a spectacle - salmon streaked clouds layered in with passionate purple and flamingo blue - the sort of sunset colors that always give me pause because they seem more appropriate for some insidious flourescent chemicals than the majesty of nature. Waited outside the office with five other papers (Ben had been the first fifteen minutes before, which confused him.) But nobody else showed up, except Marc complaining about set design. So I checked my mail (got my paycheck) and came to Beardsley to wait for Rae here. And she came, to print out her paper. So I'll go bac to LPAC with her, and then see what we can do about this carolling business.

She said:
"Sex is the opposite of death.

It's alright, child, it's natural, stay cool.
It's just the life force
You've got to love it,
you're not above it,
enjoy yourself" she said.
"Take my husband to bed."

oh, there they are again. (?)

and i could be an astronaut if I weren't afraid of heights
and i could be a supermodel if you turned out all the lights

Well I made a little progress on revising the history paper, after Rebecca WA'd it for me. It's pretty clear what needs to happen to it, and it's not even all that difficult to do, I just wasn't focusing. I drifted across the hallway for a little while to Jaime's dance-cast party, and came back with a half-bottle of beery hard cider (which Joel and Rebecca later spilled on my papers, different story). Rae came up to talk about Mason and Dixon, and all those other writers. Then Alyssa called again, and I told her about my papers and small craft warnings. We talked about how we have changed individually this semester. I decided that I should go to sleep (it was three), wake up and write Pynchon all day today and finish it, make yule log tomorrow, and finish revision of history on Thursday. Hopefully that will work out. Well, it will all be over soon.

I finished Mason and Dixon, by the way. I don't understand what happened to my archives. They were just there yesterday.

distance keeps us sane

Why are my archives not appearing!? This is no good. Writing the paper is only bad when I'm not writing the paper. Ergo I'll go write the paper some more. 10 comments, eh.

gee, gee, gee baby
gee baby
ain't i good to you?

Ugh. I still haven't really started either of these so-called papers. Bruce has pushed his deadline back a day, but I still want to do the rewrite tonight, at least as much as I can. I tried to talk to Peter, but he didn't respond to my e-mail until he was about to leave. Hopefully I can go talk to him tomorrow. Plans for the rest of the week are unsettled, but they'll get there (carolling, falafel, bûche de noël, art, packing, leaving). Tom Francis, Brigid Maureen, Alyssa (nine days!), Uncle Dan (five), Ester. Rebecca asked for New Wave, so I put on the Cars (on cassette.)

Here's some books I'd like to read:

Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks
Collected Fictions [second half], Jorge Luis Borges
[Collected Stories], Herman Melville
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, Geoffrey Pullum
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
The Language Instinct, Stephen Pinker
Lectures on Government and Binding, Noam Chomsky
Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus
Mao II, Don DeLillo
Midnights Children, Salman Rushdie
Miles, Davis
Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie
Samuel Johnson is Indignant, Lydia Davis
Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence
Word Freak, Stephen Fatsis

i don't mind you coming here
and wasting all my time

Um. My bid to finish Mason and Dixon before dinnertime was interrupted by Brigid, who came and sat with me and told me about numeracy. Rebecca made dinner for us and Renee Jess Dave, yummy and frantic, missed stat review to watch the Simpsons on the big screen. Ester came home to find me asleep with the book, listening to Orbital, and told me to go to bed. I did, but it took me two hours, Vanderslice and trying to find out who put out the new Pulp album. So midnight. Now I'm going to talk to Tom Francis at career services.

He doesn't want to talk about it
He's got a new name
He lives in McLean, Virginia

So it's already four, and I haven't done anything today except go running with Rae (to Morton and back; she got winded early so we took it fairly slow), resurrect Nelly (she made it into the Times today), and eat lunch. Well, I did only wake up at 1:00. I'm hoping to finish Mason and Dixon today, and at least make substantial headway on my history paper rewrite.

The party last night was terrific. First I hung around here for awhile when Joel and Rebecca were at a dinner party at Woolman, went downstairs to show Rae a colophon, and gave her some chords for "Sweet Jane," and then I got suited up - sunday pants, pink shirt, mask, cape - and waited for the shuttle. There were more people there than at previous parties, though only a few of them had attempted to dress according to theme (among the hosts, Kathy had ears and a bow, and Daniel was radiant in lavender swirled powerpuff girly-tee and glitter and boots; Nate had a ppg barette), and it was far more successful as a dance party than any I've seen there. It was running off an mp3 playlist, which I was mostly responsible for grooming for the dancefloor, mostly using Daniel's music (lots of Talking Heads, Underworld, a bit of Bowie). I had to be a bit creative - Beth Orton, Elvis Costello (how great to see a roomful of people dancing to "5ive Gears in Reverse" or "Blue Chair" (Single Version)), Les Nubiens, and dig into the secondary mp3 lists to find Beck, Blur, Bloodhound Gang and Outkast. I also brought some Bis and P5, which was fun and appropriately cartoony. Most of my so-called girlfriends were there, some slightly tipsy, so that was interesting. Probably the best part was dancing with Rae to a series of three cuts from "Rei Momo" - her salsa is at least as good as mine, and she's a great follower. Also abstract jutting with Renee to "Cowgirl" (that makes me want to go and buy dubnobass after all.) I stayed until around three, and left with Rebecca, who had been unsuccessful in finding someone to hook up with, although her neck was rather blushing. So that was that.

everything everything everything everything everything everything everything
…
and a razor of love and a razor of love and a razor of love (is that what they're saying?)

~

To get this over with: Friday was another interruptive morning; I got up to accomplish things and accomplished them - wrote an "appendage" about the musical, finished synopsizing it, overdubbed my vocals and cheesy strings on "Nineteen Years" and various woodwind solos and incidental musical quotes, and burned the whole thang to compact disc. In the meantime had a very productive trip to campus. Ran into Blair in Kohlberg, who said something about progressing the project, opening up a new area of discussion - I've talked here about verbing nouns, but not about transitivizing intransitive verbs, a phenomenon most evident in words like "grow." Had the best campus mailbox check imaginable - two party invitations (Yale house and ML fondue), a postcard (from Nori about a Kruder and Dorfmeister), and a package slip for a CD by To Rococo Rot (arty palindromic foreign-language moniker to end all arty palindromic foreign-language monikers - more German "intelligent" techno.) Stopped by Elena's to get her notes for Ling homework 2, which I intended to redo (we had the option of handing in one late/revised hw for an improved grade; my mark on that first written assignment was not passing; though it was simple enough, I had just joined the class and didn't really understand the format.) She commented that I looked very well put-together in my outfit that day, which was rather ironic because I was down to the last resort clothes before laundry. I was wearing the plaid wool pants I had worn for the previous two days, since they can't be laundered anyway, and a red sweater. I was out of socks, so I was wearing my running socks, and my running shoes to go with them. Yesterday I wore my last pair of underwear (yellow smile tongue face boxers) so it's a good thing I have a heap now ready to be folded and dealt with. Anyway, I met Blair at 3 to finish stuff up - wrote my ling assigment and handed it in, while she used Rebecca's crayons to make an excellent cover for the CD. Then to "class" - our final meeting for history, we watched a video in progress of sites relevant to the case. And filled out evaluations. I had more difficulty finding negative things to say about the class than I expected. In general, it really was an interesting and enjoyable time. It was just the damn paper topics and his inability to communicate what he wants from us in discussion and writing that made it so frustrating. Well, mostly finished now. To find out what happened next, jump down four entries to Friday 14 December. I'm caught up. Except that now it's 5:30 and I still haven't accomplished anything. I called my mom. Listened to Traffic and now Travis.

but they never called
never called
neverbody ever called

I haven't done much today, although I did make a list of things to do. I wrote this stuff, interacted with my roommates. Ester made the Bombay potatoes for lunch, and then Jess Pulver showed up to make latkes. I liked her poetry for her, and her latkes too (big like burgers.) Ester and I watched Chung King Express, like she's been wanting to. I fell asleep at a few points, but I enjoyed it anyway. Seems like a sort of meandering movie, the plot doesn't necessarily go anywhere, and the beginning doesn't have much connection to the ending. But it's nice to watch them talk to stuffed animals. Later Joel and Rebecca and I belatedly joined the rest of the world in mocking the Segway. We also enjoyed the Megway.

Right now I'm wearing a bright green cape. Well actually it's a towel pinned around my shoulders, with Hello Kitty characters on it. This is anticipation of the Hello Kitty vs. Powerpuff Girls party at the Yale house tonight. I'm listening to Infesticons, which is sort of about superheroes. I'm going downstairs to watch Catherine and Amalle's video. Here's more about Thursday:

~

We came here, anticipating latkes and people. When we first got in (10:00) place was hopping (maybe it more seemed like it because I brought three), but they mostly cleared out soon. And we were left with wine and latkes and crisp and other food. Which was okay with me. This was nice: Lillie called me up and asked if she could come over to return my TMBG CD. Far be it from me to put work ahead of a friend, I said, and besides she brought Elf Power to listen to, so how could we not. We hadn't talked in a long time. We went into the kitchen and Rebecca and I argued for her. I came up with the term equal-opportunity to describe my approach to Judaism, which I like better than vaguely, somewhat, half, etc. I'm an equal-opportunity religious professor, or really more like an equal-opportunity celebrator of holidays. And an equal-opportunity listener. And an equal-opportunity boyfriend, some would suggest, others would dispute for other reasons. We went into the bedroom and talked about our lives. She had thought I was single, and I apologized (yeah, she didn't think it was funny either.) I offered to tell her more about it, which was another good opportunity for me to reflect on stuff (not just this semester, spanning back to Mere and the way that ended), and to feel pretty good about it. When I was talking about Alyssa, her comment was "it sounds like you really like her." That sort of thing tends to catch me by surprise, and it makes me so happy. She is concerned about being away from Jon for a full academic year (she's going to Grenoble and then Dakar next year); I'm not sure exactly how I would approach something like that. It feels really different from just one semester. She also talked some about having an SO in an ML double, something we'll have in common next semester. We also share (this seems like something I already knew) a keen interest in names. She has no middle name - something she thinks of as rare, and I think of as more common than you might expect. She happened to have a student directory listing the full names of everyone on campus (Maureen?!), which made me nostalgic for the days when I knew all that stuff, which she used to test her hypothesis . The count (excluding international students without middle names, but not those with) came out to somewhat over 5%, which she said proved her point. I said it proved mine (one person in twenty doesn't seem particularly rare to me for a thing like that.) I played twenty questions to find out her mom's middle name (Zena), she recited the top ten names lists. Yeah, she's hardcorer than me.

Then she left, and I wrote a synopsis of the parts of the musical that we weren't going to actually write (including a ballet-dream sequence of the Thompson Camp Meeting) and did something - went to bed maybe? I listened to Ester and Rebecca talking in the common room, and then I went down to join them. About the party (Ester didn't like it), about the room (they were frustrated that it isn't more inviting), about Rebecca's "design sense," which may not be pronounced, but at least her opinions are. Joel appeared in the doorway draped in his grey comforter, hair disheveled, like a biblical figure or something: "you fucking showed me those fucking pictures and i said these are fucking great let's fucking put them up on the fucking wall." (NB. this makes Joel the best roommate ever.) Then he was sucked into it to; we talked about conflicting expectations and priorities, systems vs. accidents, chores and tasks and how to accomplish them, moving, and about next semester. There's been some talk recently about whether Nori or I are (is? am?) louder; particularly with respect to Rae's piece of mind. I'm sorry that I won't have her as a downstairs neighbor next semester, and somewhat surprised that our proximity didn't bring us together sooner. She came up to borrow Dummy, and I could her the bass of "Glory Box" well into the night last night. I went to bed on Thursday at 5:30 am Friday.

when the decent folks dance a two-step revival
denial and deviation
temptation and trial

The moose toppled. Off the roof. I was startled to notice when I scampered off McCabeward to scan the cover of the Fall River! CD before handing it in to Dorsey's inbox (with Jess's green paper.) The wind must have been pretty intense last night. Somebody had at least set her upright when I returned. We'll see what we can do about restoring her to her place. Funny, I had a funk need this morning before I even knew. I always forget that there are more than a few funky tunes on Sly's greatest hits. I'm going to pick up the thread now, rather than continuing it from the end of that old entry that nobody will go back to re-read. Can you imagine if a novel were written with this kind of chronological flexibility in the narrative? Diary-novels never seem to have this problem. Even if the recounter has spent his entire day clearly too busy to have to time write about it, there will still be an entry for that day; and an especially long one at that. I guess that's why it's fiction.

you can make it if you try

~

Scarcely had we finished the recording when Blair suggested we head over to Kohlberg (since when has that become the meeting spot for all things involving cars?) Instead, Daniel Sproul called, and I convinced him to pick us up here. So soon (this is 5 o'clock on Thursday the 13th, for those keeping track) we (Daniel, Blair, myself, Tiffany Lennon, and Melanie Maxmin [i don't know if that's how her last name is spelled, but it's funny]) were in (Melanie Hirsch's) car, listening to Pynched/Promised (I got a little self-conscious when Cookie Monster came on a minute into the ride; Pop Goes the Weasel inspired a nostalgia I never knew existed), and even though we agreed to find some food first, Dan headed straight for our eventual destination, the Philadelphia Free Library (once, most weren't), which is in the heart of the museum district. So no food. Trying to get to nearby Chinatown, we were "sucked into the awfulness" of downtown traffic and kitschy snowflakes on the streetlights, and the prevailing currents swept us south to Walnut and a Wawa, where I resigned myself to a turkey sub. More adventures trying to park. But we made it. The event was the McSweeney's Holiday Extravaganza, a reading/speaking/signing affair featuring "four authors." I'm vaguely aware of McSweeneys thanks to Alyssa and They Might Be Giants, but I still don't really get it. Some combination of a webzine, a publishing company, and a literary society, I guess. I was just there for David Byrne, but I actually enjoyed more some of the other performers (that's what they were.)

First, the emcee was hilarious John Hodgman, who manages to make boasting sound like self-depracation. He opened the evening with an account of the "first extravanganza ever," which was held "on this very site, or somewhere else in Philadelphia" in 1841, on which occasion Poe (dressed in a Santa suit, and with his child bride on his lap) invented the modern mystery genre live on stage with only a chessboard, a map of Paris, a knife, a bit of (newly-invented) twine, and a bunch of orangutans, and was subsequently run out of town by the police. Later, he offered advice on how to win a fight (he is unbeatable in any sort of contest, physical, intellectual or psychic): use eye contact, use henchman, and run a smear campaign. He provided examples of attack ads that he had successfully run against his enemies (a negligent cat-sitter, a falsely advertised hotel, and a masturbating subletter), with brilliant parody of political spots. The first writer was Amy Fusselman, who read several (non-fiction?) anecdotes based on her life - sitting in the front row of an AC/DC concert after buying a ticket off a scalper, calling up an ultrasound machine's manufacturer after jotting down its serial number before the doctor arrived, purchasing a locket too small to fit a lock her deceased father's hair - very natural and engaging. Then she treated us to her "quiet and girly" version of "Hell's Bells," intently playing a simple accompaniment of mostly single notes on her red-yellow-green guitar to her Chan Marshall-esque voice. Nice. Then came Lydia Davis, who appealed very much to me. Her pieces were all quite short; most less than a page, and many no more than a title and one or two lines (my favorite maybe, titled "They take turns saying a word they like":

"It's extraordinary," says one woman.
"It is extraordinary" says the other.)

They were fiction or non-fiction, it doesn't matter, mostly just droll little observations and musings like that on life ("We have four boring friends.") One pondered whether having a position at the university made her the sort of person who has a position at the university. (Surely, she remarked to us, playing the Messiah at Christmastime didn't make her family the sort of family that plays the Messiah at Christmastime.) Another one that resonated was on why we read philosophy - one reason being to read thoughts that we would have liked to think, or would have thought of much later, if we hadn't just read them then. Anyway, she was intellectual and personable and seemed like someone I could have a good discussion with. Neal Pollack, whose book Blair bought for her brother, didn't agree with me quite so much. I was kind of put off by his schtick of arrogance and egotism (his dust-jacket and introducer refer to him as the greatest American writer), which seems a bit too genuine to be ironically funny. And his work ranged from bizarrely self-important (a diary entry which first expounded on his deep connection to the common working man and then related a confrontation he orchestrated in a New York bar between a couple of iron workers conflicted by their loves for Jonathan Franzen and Oprah Winfrey, and "J-Franz" himself) to inane (a "hannukah poem" proclaiming "Jewish men have big cocks" and endlessly repeating "big Jew cock" amid wordplay and elaborations of same) to simply offensive on all fronts (a mocking parody of slam-style poetry written by young black women about their (shared) experience, which he introduced as the work of "his teenage pregnant runaway students from Upper Kensington.") Definitely not a fan. The headliner, and the reason I was there was none other than David Byrne, who's most recent literary effort is a ecumenicalesque book called "The New Sins." His portion of the show was styled as a sales presentation, complete with PowerPoint, atmospheric music, and pens in the shirt pocket. He read about the philosophy of the New Sins, accompanied with titles and mostly unrelated images. It was typical Byrne stuff - irony/social commentary/absurdity - which is fine but not my favorite thing he does. After that, a truly unique treat. A fellow name of Rufus, introduced as the world's only jazz bagpiper (although I couldn't detect much jazz in his playing) stepped out on stage in full red-white-and-blue regalia; kilt, jacket and tam, with a "J Paris" pin and color-coordinated athletic shoes. He gave an enthusiastic but incomprehensible sermon, and present Hodgman with three miniature flags (old glory, new glory, and racing checker.) Then he led us out with "America the Beautiful," "Hava Nagila," "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," and "Auld Lang Syne."

We waited in line for the signing. I bought Lydia Davis' book, and then pondered who should recieve it. Alyssa would enjoy it but I had already gotten her three presents (the third of which had arrived that day, something wonderful that I once had and then lost and excited to have again briefly), my mother would enjoy but not get around to it forever, my father would appreciate it, but in a somewhat patronizing way. At first I was just going to ask Lydia to write something not person-specific, but then the right decision dawned on me. Her inscription was "For the bathroom of the Barn, apartment 3S, Rebecca, Joel, Ester, Nori, Ross (whew!)…Lydia Davis, Free Library." She asked about the bathroom; I said it was the nicest room in the house, and that her predecessors included the Onion, Tom Tomorrow, Barth, and Panati, and she seemed relieved. Oh, and I talked to David Byrne. I thanked him for Jim White and Joe Henry, and he said that's nice. Now all two of my two favorite albums of the year have been signed!

you can walk on the water
but you can't stop falling in

posted by K. Ross Hoffman at 12:58 PM 0 comments

It's late again. This is the fourth night in a row that I have been awake later than 3:00am. And I haven't slept much beyond ten any of those mornings. That means no more than seven hours a night, which actually isn't that bad come to think of it. Although some nights it has been less. It's okay. I'll sleep tomorrow. I like this fluidity - the loosening of the temporal, accompanying the diminuendo of the academic. If there are flarings-up, they are like aftershocks, residue. I'm listening to To Rococo Rot, which encourages this kind of thing. There are at least four people up in this apartment, not including Ester. When I went downstairs to put in another load of laundry, Ben Schweigert greeted me as though nothing was amiss with laundry at 3am. I'm hungry again now, so I think I'll munch on a peanut butter granola bar.

In my game of catch-up, the retelling of the last three days, I have written up to 4:30 Thursday (yesterday.) I kind of want to finish tonight, and probably I will. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I was awake for another thirteen hours after that yesterday. And then there's today. I interrupted my progress earlier this evening to record Ester reading her septapartite verse epic on the Avery/Cornell case, entitled the Mill-iad. She was inspired to scrap her more predictable short story and write it after Catherine, Amalle, Blair, and I helped to expand the bounds of the assignment. The recording came to eight and a half minutes, and was well. I told her something that occurred to me earlier today; that of my three roommates, she is the one to whom I feel closest. Not that I don't love the others equally dearly, but it is with Ester that I have my freest and most comfortable interactions - long "meaningful" conversations, giggle-fests, siblingly spats and love-nagging, flashes of honesty and emotion. She almost never makes me feel put-upon or patronized in the way that Joel and Rebecca, at the worst of times, are capable of. I gave her her present (hannukah, christmas, going-away, what-you-will): the Roches, "Can We Go Home Now?", one of those especially significant presents that I wished I myself owned. In a sense, it occurs to me, the essence of the gift was not in the CD, which I could have substituted with any number of things that I know she would like or wish she could appreciate, but in my willingness to let her have this thing that I do not; so that the Roches belong to her in a way that they never belonged to me (it was my parents who bought the records; I just enjoyed them.) She is the keeper of a specialized kind of musical knowledge, and I think the (substantial) patches where we intersect are at times areas of discomfort for us - each approaches them with respect to the rest of his musical domain, and cannot appreciate them in quite the same way as the other. This present, then, could be called a cession of territory. Ester is actively developing her own musical identity, one that in some ways is more honest and concrete than mine. The phrase genre-whore comes to mind in reference to me. Rebecca would like that term, she likes to make up words that incorporate "whore." My disparate, would-be-all-encompassing musical knowledge allows me to have these exchanges - with Nori about the German techno she gleaned from MarTin, with Lillie about the Elephant 6 she gleaned from James and John, with Joel even about his corners of indiedom, with others about show-tunes, punk, Phish - where even if I am the more knowledgable, their interest is more valid and authentic. Where some part of my approach is pure and sterile and academic, theirs seems unambiguously real and human, stemming from wonder and sensuality. I am but a dilletante, and I have nothing to hold up as my own. With some exceptions - there are pockets of my musical universe that I feel truly are mine alone, if only because there's nobody I know who has a potential counterclaim: French house, sixties soul, Spoon, Fatboy Slim, country, the Roots, jazz, and the list continues. These things are mine partly because I found them more or less on my own (or the people with whom I found them have since faded from my life at least musically), partly because I don't know anyone who enjoys them in the way that I do - I can slip on a Six String Drag album while I'm on my own and enjoy it more than I could in the context of a larger group. Essentially, I think, my love for these genres and artists extends beyond my intellectual interest in popular music; they bring me joy, simply and absolutely.

Oh man, a sidetrack. Right. So I gave Ester a CD. And she gave me a book. "Coming Soon!!!", the new John Barth novel. Which was a great present and exactly the sort of thing I would want. She didn't know two things, unfortunates that discolored my acceptance: that I much prefer paperback to hardcover (and so almost always wait until paperbacks come out) and that I have decided to read Barth's works in order. I have a long way to go before I get to this book, and it looks like the sort of fun and fluffy meta-novel I'll be tempted to pick up and start reading on a whim. Besides which I was planning to buy it for my dad. (He has most of the other novels, and I'll just borrow all the rest from him anyway.) More presents were exchanged more publicly, after candles-lighting (I didn't sing tonight, I just listened): Rebecca and Ester knew exactly what the other would want. Ester wanted to watch Chungking Express, and I was set to watch it with her when the call came from across the hall that Trivial Pursuit was in the works.

At first I was uncertain whether I had made the right choice; the assembled crowd included few of my particular friends - Samara and Lizzie (who have quite taken to me, it's cute), their beaux and Ben's sister, Alice Hershey and friend Kate, birthday girl Hilarie. Beer and cigarettes and carbonara and then the game, the Millenium Edition, which is definitely an improvement over Genus IV, although there are definitely some questionable questions. Decisions about how to divide into teams were complicated by the gradual arrival of Renee and Jess, and we spent a good twenty minutes trying to decide how to decide - settling on Ben's nifty solution that the first person to roll a six would count off a team of four starting to his left, then another continuing clockwise, leaving three to his right. I ended up in the three, with Renee and Kate. We learned all kinds of things, of course. My team did especially well with first instincts on uncertain questions, especially Renee's: Tom Hanks, David (Kaczynski), India, hummingbird, etc. Near miss: Van Cliburn. Alice, Hilarie, Jess, and Lizzie's red-head, the drunkest team, stalled for hilarious lengths on several occasions, such as "Chinese-run Portuguese island," and amazingly came up with the correct answer for the 21st-century maturation year for bonds called "Bo Dereks," even though they failed to identify the correct gender of their namesake. It just goes to show that Trivial Pursuit can be fun for anyone to play, regardless of how well your brain might be working. It provides lots of fodder for hilarity and jokes, and on a range of interest topics beside. People left, but we eventually won, with my incredulous answer to a question that I didn't even realize was the final one (what was the only thing a certain Olympian wore on her gold-medal celebration lap? too easy, right?) So that was a good time. A good college time. The wine wasn't bad either.

And then I was here, writing this, doing this, signing that, recording, talking to Joel who's still playing with his Juno, now under the aegis of Victorian Poets final project. I think maybe I won't finish this right now. I went on about tonight longer than I had anticipated.

the only thing worse than bad memories
is no memories at all

(that could almost be an epigram for this site)

It's that perennial quandary of conflicting responses, the "sleep or party" syndrome. I came home at 6:30 (an hour ago now) feeling a tremendous sense of accomplishment, requiring an appropriate celebration. Sleep would certainly be appropriate, as I have gotten precious little in the last few nights. But objectively at least I'm not even tired. I celebrated first by putting on the Fatboy Slim Essential Mix CD, a pounding throbbing dancefloor mess, and dancing around the flat with Alana and Joel. And by eating latkes with them (with applesauce and sweetened vanilla yogurt, not bad). Eating is also an appropriate celebratory measure. Also something I should have done more of recently. I celebrated by encorporating some new borrowed code into my page; creating a pull-down monthly archives menu, which I just decided I don't like and have changed to a simpler format. What do you think? Can anyone tell me how to change the font on those month names? It's a java thingy. So - another method of celebration (besides cleaning my room) would be to write here, about all the things that have happened in the last three days. This may be the longest time since I've started that I have had access to computers and haven't posted. Well, it was reading week (for two days at least), and who wants to write during reading week. Write now.

if you're fond of sand dunes and salty air
quaint little villages here at there

~

On Wednesday, 12 December, I woke up and the phone rang. Those two events happened in quick succession, although I don't remember which came first (see what you lose in three days?) It was Blair, calling from Trotter. Not much later, I was there too, in Bruce the Boss's office (I like the sound of that). He had a surprisingly non-negative response to our project idea; I guess this really is the fudge assignment, as Ben suggested. She accompanied me to the bookstore to satiate my film needs, and we discussed our plan of attack and so on. Joel appeared with his long-awaited child, the Juno 60 (she doesn't have a name yet - any suggestions?) He's been playing with it non-stop ever since, and I'm excited to learn how it works (although randomly twiddling the controls is pretty fun too). Blair went off to have lunch and seminar with George, and I tried to load film into my camera. As the roll was winding, the camera fell on the floor and went funny and started over so there were only three pictures left. I tried to salvage it by going into the closet and blindly sliding the majority of the roll back through. Of course I knocked the wrench at one point and the light flashed back on. So I don't know if any pictures from the roll will come out. I guess I should just take a lot of pictures of people and random things over a short period of time, and see how they come out. My last roll spanned Wanakena through the day of the Moose party (that's over a month), the one that's being developed now went over the course of a week, and was far more impulsive, and, probably, useful.

I had been waiting to hear from Rob since before I woke up - he said he would call before 11:00, which is about when I left for campus. He woke up at maybe 2:00 I guess, and then I went to his room with my sick computer. This computer, which I'm happy to report I am writing on right now, has been having troubles for over a year now, and I've only had it for a year and four months. Part of the difficulty is that I don't really know what the problem is, and it isn't always in effect. Lately especially I had been having a lot of trouble with the internet. The proposed solution, something that I've been sort of trying to do for about a year, is to reformat the hard disk. Which Rob did for me. It took several hours to transfer my hard disk onto his computer, do the deed, and transfer back whatever seemed salvage-worthy, under the name of "poop." In the meantime, I heard a little bit of John Hammond's "Wicked Grin," composed a rollicking musical setting for Blair's lyric about Methodism (the couplet de resistance: "‘cause a man can’t get… to heaven alone!/We like to badger each other like a terrier with a bone!") appropriately on the Bond piano, and went to the Linguistics department party in Pearson. The food was not as fancy as the History party, but still excellent: pizzelles (really anisey ones), other cookies, grapes, truffles, smelly cheese, mulled wine (courtesy of Sean Crist), birthday cake (for Eric Raimy), and champagne for a toast. The last two items really really did not go together, but I was holding both and alternating between them regardless. Good people there: Lindsey Newbold, who is very good, Jeff Wu, Jason Burton, Rebecca Weinberger; also of course Kari (still intrigued by what Gabe said) and Donna Jo, resplendent (perhaps flaming opalescent is the word) in green flamingoful sweater that matched the icing on the birthday cake. I talked to the younger set mostly, about drinking games and kissing games and theses. And I borrowed some food from there to reward Rob. Then the two of us Sharplesed it. As chance had it, this was the night of a Sharplestravaganza, featuring chocolate fondue, petit-fours, and holiday karoloke. We promised a shout-out to swipers Sarah and Yvette, so we waited our turn and gathered together a crew to sing Sleigh Ride - Gerrit, Sam, his friend Alan, Pat Dostal, Brigid, Lizzie Rockwell, and some other people that I couldn't see because they were behind me (Mac?). It was pretty amusing. I had time to eat apple crisp with Alex and Greg and to write the first two verses of a song whose opening line had come to me during my walk home:

Nineteen years have rolled around my head, and what have I done for God?
As I lay me down tonight for bed, I wonder if I will
Ever find a place where I belong
I’ve been travelling for so long
And they tell me I’ve done wrong

In every town from Bozrahville to Lowell, from Bristol to Killingly
Living with these mill girls takes its toll. I try to start fresh but
Every time, the gossipers descend.
Where will I find a friend?
When will it ever end?

The meter and the rhyme scheme more or less dictated the melody, which is probably the prettiest thing I've ever composed. It reminds me a lot of Carole King. After Blair arrived, we wrote the music for the first song, a heart-stirring duet between Sarah Cornell and her mother titled "Killingly Softly." While Joel and I worked on the technical end (he had been working on/playing with ProTools and the Juno all day), she arranged some of my scraps of lyric ideas into a brilliant gossip-patter song reminiscent of "pick-a-little, talk-a-little" and "the telephone hour." A first stab at recording, with Ester sheepishly but gamely (hmm) singing the role of Lucretia, turned into a singing session (the melody bears much in common with both the Cascades' "Rhythm of the Rain" and "Colors of the Wind" from Pocohontas.) Blair left past one, after we composed an e-mail request for chorus members the next day, and I was up substantially later finishing the lyric for what I was just referring to as "Nineteen Years" - the part of the song where Avery enters Sarah's bed chamber, and the tune turns into a sweet love duet tainted with nearly-avoided sexual references (in the manner of "Hello Operator.")

there's a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy
when the pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie
it will nearly be like a picture print from Currier and Ives
these wonderful days are the days we'll remember all through our lives

~

Thursday 13 December
Once again, Blair was the agent of my awakening. She was here when? nine? And I was still in bed. But I got up, ate breakfast, put on water for tea (I probably end up drinking tea about one out of every five times I do this), and got to work. We were essentially recording all morning and afternoon, with a lunch break (for grilled cheese, spinach, tomato, bean-spread sandwiches) and numerous pauses to wait for other people to come in and record, to listen to Randy Newman and tapdance along to "Shame," to send documents back and forth around the apartment by e-mail, revising and printing and glorying in technology. There were more cords running around my room than ever before. The recording was all done using the freeware version of ProTools, with two microphones and my yamaha keyboard running through the keyboard amp into my powerbook. Simple and effective. After Blair and I completed our duet in three or four takes (we later recorded it again without my vocals, which I then overdubbed), Ester was up and nearly ready to lay down "Killingly." While Blair's nimble voice was able to hack as many high D's as I cared to throw her way, in spot-on Merman warble, Ester seemed a little more unsure. Her performance came out wonderfully though, especially in the wrenching modulation and delayed resolution of the final stanza - her nervous tremblings came through on the recording as quavering pathos. Rebecca and Rae joined the two of them for the gossip number (I contributed a slimy spoken role of Avery, although I rather enjoyed more my lyrical contributions - "fetching tart" and "fornicating wretch," the latter of which became the title.) Hearing each of their voices in the recording is extremely fun, especially Rebecca's precise, scolding diction and Rae's characteristic quietly confrontational (supercilious is the word perhaps, but I feel like I use that all the time) inflection. Joel took a break to contribute a line as the town drunk. Lindsey Newbold showed up just in time to participate in the final number of the day, hastily titled "The 'Fessin' Session" (I really like the bookending apostrophes on 'fessin', I wonder if there are other words like that.) The choir consisted of her, Rae, Rebecca and Blair, and I attempted to simultaneously man the recording console, grind out the gospel/cheese organ part (inspiration from "Blow Gabriel Blow"), and deliver the delicious spoken-sung lines of the sermon as Rev. Avery. I think my vocal and musical performances suffered for it somewhat, but it was great fun. Blair held my mic, Rae banged a tambourine, we improvised harmonies and hallelujahs. We took about four takes, each of which had its better and worse points. Then it was done. And it was only 4:30. Time to dance around the kitchen to Mary Lou Lord.

how long have you been sittin' around?

Before I even wrote the second half of that last entry (the chronology splinters and refracts), Ester whisked me off to Trotter for the quirkily publicized History Department party. The food was good - mini-pitas filled with shrimpiness, cakelet cubes, crackers with fish and cheese, jumbo grapes - but the people were not my kind of people. There wasn't anyone I felt like talking to except Rubin, and he was busy chatting with/up various profs. So we sat outside Ester's Poli-Sci father Vallele's office and watched a file of his students arrive to hand in their papers. We went to McCabe where I thoroughly searched the whole building for Blair, who said she was there, but just found Rob, who agreed to help fix my computer. Score. Then to Kohlberg(?) to meet my fellow SAC members for our dinner. We numbered ten by the time we arrived at Iron Hill Brewery in Media: Gabe, Dave, Kristina, Amanda, Sarah, Laura, Emmanuelle, myself, Peter Austin, our chauffeur, and Jenny Yim our benefactress. I took to heart her instructions to order anything we wanted (except alcohol), putting the school's money to good use and performing a feat calculated to impress those who are impressed by that kind of thing. My meal included an appetizer of salmon spring rolls, a cup of Maryland crab soup, a cordon bleu pizza, and a dish of vanilla ice cream. And a glass of home-brewed root beer. The food was on the better side of how you would expect it to be at a place like that, and, um, filling. I couldn't finish even half of the ice cream it was so rich. That with the saccharin root beer would make a hell of a float. While I chowed I talked with Gabe, Amanda, Peter, and Kristina, amassing quite a store of gossip. They're [Gabe] quite the 'mongers, with willing to smack or share information on old roommates, specs and seniors, all kinds of professors. On the way home, Sarah asked me what do you want to do with your life? and we talked about it nicely for a while.

I got back here and curled up on Ester's bed amidst Stef (sheltering) and Rebecca (nose-prodder), supposedly stat-projecting. Off to my radio show, where I ran into Jenny (burning Migala, TV Personalities, Unwound) and met Blair. She read me the two scenes of the musical she has written, each with a set of clever lyrics, as well as a hilarious parody of a small-town newspaper review of the piece. We're definitely collaborating it looks like, and although I feel like I'm sort of stealing her thunder, it will be fun to write some tunes and add a couple scenes of my own. She envisions a grand dramatic "strangulation" duet and a gossipy number in the tradition of "pick a little talk a little." Her work so far draws almost as much from music theatre references as from the material of the course, but it's really good and really funny. We're meeting Bruce tomorrow to run it by him, although I'm sure he'll be somewhat skeptical. I told her about the Christmas capers. Also, I got an e-mail from Alyssa saying that she's living in ML. Cool. Blair's hall as it turns out. I'm excited at the prospect of eating in the ML breakfast room at some point. Happy tidings. I had a good show, and taped most of it:

Air : Californie
Apples in Stereo : Signal in the Sky
: If You Want to Wear a Hat
Death by Chocolate : Olive Green
: Ice Cold Lemonade
Beulah : Popular Mechanics for Lovers

Jeff Mangum : Glow
Ryan Adams : Oh My Sweet Carolina
Sixth Great Lake : Across the Northern Border

Old 97s : Bird in a Cage
Dandy Warhols : Get Off
Yo La Tengo : Stockholm Syndrome
Unwound : Look a Ghost!
Blur : Beetlebum

The Kinks : David Watts
Talking Heads : Air
Elvis Costello : Almost Ideal Eyes

Shuggie Otis : Inspiration Information
Common : Retrospect for Life
Scanty Sandwich : Because of You
Plaid : Eyen
The Moldy Peaches : Who’s Got the Crack?

Guided by Voices : 14 Cheerleader Cold Front
: Back to Saturn X Radio Report
Built to Spill : Center of the Universe
The Magic Magicians : 123 to 9 to 5
Vic Chestnut : Until the Lead

Erin McKeown : La Petite Mort
Silver Jews : Let’s Not and Say We Did
Dump : Et Moi Et Moi Et Moi
Mazarin : A Tall-Tale Storyline

Reindeer Section : Will You Please Be There for Me?
Hood : They Removed All Trace That Anything Had Ever Happened Here
Elliott Smith : No Name #4

[DJ Raust Harmonica Solo]

Apples in Stereo : Seems So

Popped downstairs to see Brigid's lack of hair, and ended up watching two movies with her instead: "Maths on the Street" (a documentary short she's been raving about for months, about Brazilian kids adept at oral math but frustrated in school) and the first act of "Noises Off." I didn't experience that as a movie so much as a continuous sequence of triggers of memories. Man, Jennifer Hoffman, Jon Silver, Jessica Ladiges. What a cast. What a terrific play. What a great girl. What a cool palindrome: doc/note/i/dissent//a/fast/never/prevents/a/fatness//i/diet/on/cod

popular
mechanics for broken hearts should help