i feel funny

i’m back in new york for a month. all sorts of kind of interesting personal stuff is going on with your favorite protagonist, but since this is not a livejournal from when i was sixteen, or, you know, this blog three years ago, i’ll omit all of it in favor of telling you that i ate chicken kiev on the brighton beach boardwalk. culinary adventures! you can’t shake a stick in new york without tripping over a culinary adventure, or something along those lines.

also, if i did standup somewhere, like some really depressing open mic somewhere in seattle, would anyone go see me? joyce carol oates says that writers should go running to generate ideas, and me, when i go running, i think of standup material. some of it seems funny when i think of it a couple hours later.

third (this evening, my thoughts are in even less order than usual): let’s talk about jay-z.

this song is amazing. even beyond my obvious bias. this isn’t the official video, i’m pretty sure, but i love it. all of that said, jay-z is a little bit of a dick. just a little. now, my family and i are nets fans, despite the fact that they are in a miserable state of affairs these days and their pending stadium in brooklyn, while sentimentally gratifying, would be a terrible thing to happen to brooklyn and bruce ratner is darth vader and all that. but dude: your “bringing the nets” does NOT make you the black branch rickey. sorry. branch rickey, along with jackie, broke the color barrier in baseball, at great risk to his career, a courageous display of civil rights in action. you are a very rich man moving a basketball team to a nearby city at great risk to no one, a kind of cute display of brooklyn pride and people spending a lot of money. chill out.

this song by the avett brothers also concerns brooklyn, and is wonderful:

speaking of music videos, last week i was in montreal, city of beauty and dreams and happiness, and their modern art museum has this room in the basement where they just screen cool (more artful than normal, maybe) music videos, which i found surprisingly soothing and addictive, despite my early exposure to music videos when i was grade school age and would stumble upon mtv while waiting for full house to come on and find them insufferably boring and confusing. my, how i’ve grown. here are my two favorites, by city and colour and wild beasts, respectively:

lastly, i have this long short story/novella i wrote that’s my baby, that i love, and i’m thinking of posting it in installments. we’ll see (that’s a reminder to myself to do it, if i decide to).

ciao bella.

p.s. happy anniversary

holy social anxiety, i’ve been blogging for four motherfucking years. that is something. if you’re bored as can be sometime, read back over the stuff i wrote in the beginning. i used to write about some real shit, albeit in a slightly less sexy and hilarious way (believe it or not, there was a time when googling the words “sexy” and “hilarious” did not result in pictures of me), as opposed to my thoughts on the merits of the jerk vs. the stanky legg.

happy blogiversary, me.

p.s. the stanky legg. obviously.

revenge of the red lobster diaries

i was talking to tom [no relation to the guy in the story below] today about past jobs. then, like a heavy-handed hint at kismet in a movie, we wrote about a past job in my writing class tonight. when i was sixteen, i wrote the red lobster diaries, an angsty fight club-inspired thing about my dumb corporate job that i totally got under pressure from precisely no one because i was pissed off that i didn’t get a part in the school musical. because when i was sixteen i was a pissy little tool. anyway, tonight i was given occasion to write about it again. i’m still sixteen, a little, apparently. but aren’t we all?

Another Glimpse at Red Lobster (As it Fades into the Distance)

On a Sunday afternoon, the back is filling up but the lobby is empty. The lobby is my domain, and I think of that dark wood podium, standing so brazenly in the middle of the floor, as mine. I am ordered to be on my feet for the entirety of my shift, so leaning becomes appealing, but then they took that away from me— only two-feet-on-the-floor straightbacked upright is acceptable here.

They’ve taken away everything tolerable, piece by piece, from my otherwise regulation black pants with embroidery to my bandana to my rings. I’m a part of the Red Lobster family.

Sunday mornings bring old gentiles whom I imagine can smell my fear as they breeze past me like I’m not there, announcing that they’re headed for their usual table like teenagers borrowing the car.

I like order— I like the color-coded flip book that tells me which section to seat and the ritual of picking up menus on the way— and they’re destroying that ritual, because they’ve been Red Lobster customers since 1994, its inaugural year in Kingston, back when I thought of it as a palace and a treat, when the children’s menu was more than a way to get crayon on my hands, when the music was inocuous noise and I didn’t hear some country music lady’s version of a Cat Stevens song I used to love in the moments before I fell asleep, when Cheddar Bay biscuits were like little heaven pillows, instead of dense balls of butter and sawdust baking under a heat lamp nineteen hours a day.

The only good thing about this couple is that I don’t have to recite the shpiel for them because they already know what they want (a crab legs special that ended two weeks ago), and at sixteen, I don’t like saying the phrase “happy hour” because I think it sounds dirty.

It’s not a problem that there’s someone already sitting at their regular table, and of course the chef is happy to create any crab dish these valued reliable customers might have in mind. I’m informed of all of this by ratfaced Brenda, who dresses in what look like decorative lampshades and sounds like an oboe, and not that one-in-a-million oboe on a professional recording of a Mozart concerto, an oboe like the time I stuck that thick double reed in my mouth and blew and Celeste Newsome told me that our lessons were cancelled and I should stick with the flute. Brenda’s one of about seven managers apparently necessary to run a Red Lobster in the mid-Hudson valley. We are, after all, the better of the two, all the customer surveys say so— everyone knows that the one in Poughkeepsie is a total shithole, no matter how much bigger it is, completely outshined by the Olive Garden just a few yards down 9W. I hate Brenda and she hates me and though this is my first job I recognize that this is how it’s supposed to be, so it all makes a kind of sense.

If it were up to Tom, he would have pulled me aside gently and slipped a compliment into his managerial explanation of Red Lobster policy. At sixteen, I like this introduction to workplace sexual harrassment. I like that if it’s going to happen, it’s at least friendly, administered by an adult Little Rascal with a shaved head, terrible teeth and an aw-shucks smile. Tom treats me like we’re both five and both perpetually in a sandbox. He brings me candy wrappers as presents and lowers his voice when he talks to me, his weird honky voice like he’s doing an impression of someone or operating a dummy, and he makes a big deal over the fact that I’m leaving to go to school in New York City, which makes me feel like he gets it.

He gets that I think I’m better than everyone there, customers and employees alike. I make customers wait while I finish my page of Tess of the D’Urbervilles before I seat them, strictly forbidden, and totally get off on it, that feeling better than everyone is the only way I survive high school, and knowing that when my shift is over I’m not getting a ride with a friend to go across the street to the mall, but with my parents, to go home and watch a French movie.

chris brown is t.s. eliot

sucks that i can’t do this for my wedding now, because it would be way derivative. still:

more importantly, WHY IS THIS SONG SO GOOD. i really can’t stop listening to this. can’t stop. this long literally destroyed my plans today. i’m not exaggerating.

“forever” is pretty much “the love song of j. alfred prufrock.” hear me out. because since i teach at an inner-city high school, i have no choice but to know that chris brown is a douche who beats his girlfriend, and yet his song is earcrack to me and i’m playing it so much that it’s going to break my ipod, so i guess i have to put my fingers in my ears and go “la la la i’m not listening” to all that not-so-nice stuff and appreciate the art– such as it is– on its own terms.

much like “the love song of j. alfred prufrock,” or any poems in the oeuvre of t.s. eliot, who was an antisemitic sexual deviant. but you just gotta go with it, i guess. or something.

it’s late and this is one of those issues everybody already pretty much has figured out already. you probably stopped reading a few sentences ago.

i grow old… i grow old..

i shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

shall i part my hair behind? do i dare to eat a peach?

i shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

i have heard the mermaids singing, each to each

i do not think that they will sing to me.

it’s gon’ be you me and the dance floor

cause we only got one night

double your pleasure, double your fun

and dance forever

um, hey.

wwwwhoops.

i’m back? let’s not get too excited, though.

sometimes you decide to update your blog because you talked to your mom on the phone and are updating her on your state of things and you realize that hey, things are actually going pretty well recently. wait a minute, i should probably qualify that for all you children of jewish parents, because i know what you’re thinking:

you realize that hey, things are actually going pretty well recently… and that you didn’t just make it sound that way to make your parents happy. there we go.

i’m writing every day. i’m taking this writing class that’s like offensively affirming. i almost can’t take it. i often think my path into the writing world was paved with the false promises of a writers’ workshop i attended in high school, which was a whole lot of writing in class, and since then i’ve discovered that “workshop” means a bunch of garden variety douchesnobs who refuse to read anything that’s not by dave eggers and don’t believe in paragraphs sitting around a table, looking down at your lifeblood work and going, “yeah, the thing is, that’s fine but on page seven he said he didn’t like asparagus. so that’s where you kind of lost me for the rest of the story. also, italics… i’m not a big fan.”

but in this class, we write, a lot, on the spot, and then everyone’s super wonderful and supportive. clearly they didn’t get the memo from douchesnob headquarters, and that’s okay with me.

in other news, the rascally kid i tutor was well-behaved and awesome the other day (and is totally doing his book report on none other than mr. flat stanley

(specifically this one- flat stanley does not look nearly flat enough in this picture)

i am muppeting away and have a pretty solid cookie monster impression under my belt;

and i’m going to be in new york SO SOON. i’m probably going to spend weekdays in woodstock, which will include watching the tour de france with my dad, playing a shit ton of scrabble, running in the woods, going into town and hating on tourists, having dietrich drive me around for a journalistic tour of the seedy goings-on of the mid-hudson valley, and the occasional deer sighting… and on weekends i’ll go into the city. my plan is to tell everyone i hang out with that i haven’t gone to the high line yet, and then just go there several times a day so that i can get my favorite sandwich from amy’s bread in chelsea market across the street. it’s that good.

oh, and seeing some hilarious improv, because for god’s sake, seattle, it’s like somebody died over here. all the time.

so i guess that’s it except for OH SHIT WHAT AM I SAYING.

how was your midnight screening experience? mine was riveting, and included a lot of fifteen-year-olds and some belligerent yelling people which may or may not have included me. still, though. jim broadbent. are you listening, academy of motion pictures?

sit tight. with muppets!

hello. i’ve been getting requests to start posting again. it’s very flattering. i’ve been tired and stressed out and out of sorts lately, culminating in this evening, just a couple hours ago, when i was holding a tissue to my bloody nose and coughing up blood on the beach. true story. so you see, i’m falling apart a little. but i’ll be back soon, i promise, and that goes for voicemails to ben too! new stuff’s a-comin’. just wait for me to be in one piece again.

in the meantime, my summer is going to be largely dedicated to volunteering at a jim henson exhibit at the experience music project; here’s something i’ve been turned on to already, from henson’s show sam and friends, featuring an early version of kermit. i promise it will make you happy.

this is an early commercial:

and these are a series of little sponsor pieces. they’re way violent and silly; the tall guy’s name is wilkins, and the short one is won’tkins… get it?

NEW SITE!

it’s here! my new project, voicemails to ben, has arrived. go there! listen to the things! check back often! give me feedback!

trailer update

some days you’ve just gotta come home, sit around in your underwear and watch some apple trailers.

so: are you ready for a handsome overload?

…but see this first, if you haven’t already.

celebrity email.

STOP THE PRESSES!

i don’t care about the time harrison ford gave me a dirty look as i was walking to work, or the time julianne moore gave me a dirty look as she was unloading her car, or the time brenda’s crazy brother from six feet under gave me a dirty look when i was on my lunch break, or when pete seeger gave me a really, really dirty look at a buffet table… yeah, i don’t know what that’s about… there are three, wait, no, four celebrity encounters i care about; three because they’re idols and one because it was really, really silly.

1. when i talked to philip glass on his stoop and he told me that since i lived in chinatown i should go to the markets there and buy fresh vegetables and cook them in my dorm, and i was so starstruck i could hardly speak and then i walked through washington square park looking for people i know so i could tell them i met philip glass and when i told my friend dan he went, “wait, are you walking through the park looking for people you know so you can tell them you met philip glass?”

2. when i stood across from former poet laureate robert pinsky at a buffet (yeah, most of these somehow involve food, often a buffet) and we had the following conversation:

rp: what do you suppose these are?

me: i think those are portabello mushrooms.

rp: i think the best thing to do would be to take a little of everything. and then you can decide what you like best and come back for more.

me: that sounds like a good idea.

3. a couple weeks ago, when i met jonathan goldstein, and when i told him i’d written a short story inspired by his book, his facial expression seemed better suited as a reaction to something like “we’re going to have to amputate,” but what he said was, “that’s really nice to hear,” so i chose to remember that part.

4. and now, this, which happened today. some background: jens lekman, whom you should be concerned with because this is a clip of him at a concert where i was actually in attendance, with his opening act, a twelve-piece barbershop group

is coming to seattle in june, and i’m going to see him, the first person i’ve ever seen in concert twice (i know), so i was gettin’ ampred and tooling around his website and found this:

Topic for the month of April: The Cold War

This will be the compulsory main subject of your e-mail. If you write to me it will have to be about this. If you wanna talk about something else you will have to make associations, find reference points.

Last months topic was a great success, it made our communication rise to a whole new level.

so, being the diligent nerd that i am, i promptly responded:

Dear Jens,

You’re wonderful and I’m your biggest fan and all that, but to the point: the Cold War. I was a movie reviewer in New York for a little while and I wrote a review of a documentary about the launch of Sputnik and its effects on the Cold War. Cool, huh? It’s here: http://www.nypress.com/article-18047-the-russians-were-coming.html

And here:

The Russians Were Coming

Comprehensive and well-researched, Sputnik Mania informs but doesn’t entertain

Sputnik Mania
Directed by David Hoffman
at IFC Center

In recent years, the documentary genre has been taken down from its musty shelf in the public television library, dusted off and given a makeover. Michael Moore has emerged as an unlikely rock star of the American left; Morgan Spurlock, the Evel Knievel of documentarians, combined the voyeuristic appeal of reality television with old-fashioned muckraking in Super Size Me; then others have found success using children as their subjects, shaking loose the grown-up stuffiness of the genre. Plus, directors have tapped into the American love of quirk, producing documentaries on subjects like crossword puzzles, wheelchair rugby, a love story about a man who throws acid in his girlfriend’s face and a Donkey Kong competition. Compared to these, the Ken Burns model seems doomed to be forever relegated to classrooms and museums. David Hoffman’s documentary Sputnik Mania, about the launch of the Sputnik satellite and its influence on the Cold War, is a return to tradition.

Based on Paul Dickson’s book Sputnik: Shock of the Century, Sputnik Mania is composed of equal parts voiceover narration (by a magisterial Liev Schreiber), archival footage and present-day interviews. Like most documentaries, it circumnavigates its subject, examining it from every possible angle: public fear of a Communist investigation and the exploitation of that fear by the media; the story of Laika, the first dog sent into space; “rocket fever” among American teenagers; and the foundation of NASA.

What Hoffman doesn’t do, although he may have intended it, is draw a parallel between his story and the current political climate. Fear mongering is certainly something we’ve become familiar with in recent years, but any further conclusions on the subject are left entirely up to us.

The absence of a modern message makes Sputnik Mania feel somewhat incomplete, like a textbook lesson without a compelling message. But how much of that expectation comes from the flamboyant documentaries we’ve become accustomed to in recent years, which are often tragically flawed in their inability to rein in enthusiasm for their subjects? Sputnik Mania is not riveting; but it is, first and last, informative. It’s the BBC World News to Morgan Spurlock’s Daily Show; and as any well-rounded student of current events can attest, the ideal is to have a little of both.

…So there you have it! I’m coming to see you in Seattle in June. I have curly hair and glasses; come find me and we can talk Soviet aeronautics.

Yours,

Raphaela

and today, lo and behold, look what showed up in the ol’ inbox:

awesome !

thanks raphaela.

see you in seattle.

jens

boo-yah.

cute movies for people who wear glasses

all right, movie industry, i know your game. you think i’m going to watch these trailers and be all, “oh my god they’re so quirky and they’re probably going to be adorable and make me want to listen to some belle & sebastian songs alone in my room!”

well, joke’s on you: i was gonna listen to belle & sebastian alone in my room anyway. so there.

***also! i am working on a super secret other blog project! stay tuned!***