Twenty-four rings around this tree trunk

As of Thursday, I am now the ripe old age of 24. You know what? That feels about right. Maybe a little high - I feel like 22 is a more appropriate number. 24 is too close to 25 which is an age at which I'm supposed to have accomplished some things I very much have not accomplished yet. But then, when I remember that 22 is the age when most people graduate from college, I feel so far from there and 24 seems more realistic.

My actual birthday was pretty uneventful. Originally Josh and I had thought about going to Vegas or Yosemite for the weekend, but for apartment reasons that didn't work out. At any rate, on Thursday morning I opened a card from Abbey to get the day started right and then splurged on a smoothie for breakfast (oh the decadence of youth!). Once I got back from work, Josh was sick, so we postponed the partying. I stopped by DNA's house, kind of on the spur-of-the-moment, where they'd hastily prepared a carrot cake in celebration of my birth. It was surprisingly good, especially considering that they didn't have quite the right ingredients for it. When I came home, Josh and I gorged on Chinese food and I opened his presents. He got me my favorite cookies from my favorite bakery, two shirts he designed saying 'Unicornicopia' and 'Property of Pan High' (both VM references that totally rock), and a very tropical-looking skirt from Anthropologie. Awww.

Even so, that didn't really feel very birthday-like to me. Maybe I was waiting for a birthday call from Murry (thanks, Murry!) or a text message from the ex-boyfriend who always remembers my birthday (umm...thanks?). Whatever the case, I arbitrarily decided Saturday would be my birthday instead. On Saturday I opened my presents from my mom (they'd arrived on Friday), which made me feel like she was there with me. My mom is queen of the small, inexpensive, random gift that delights me far more than it has any right to. This year, in the category of favorite gift from Mom, a Care Bears folder is tied with a personal guide to New Orleans that she wrote up for me. I also got some cute bracelets from my grandmother. Fun!

Abbey arrived a little after noon bearing balloons and a cake. She came in her cute new cloud car -- just like Friend Bear! We promptly jetted out for lunch at Applebee's, followed by shoe shopping at DSW and clothes shopping at Anthropologie. (Sometimes, I am a material girl.) I came away with some cute comfy green flats and black espadrilles as well as a flippy skirt that makes me feel French and flirty. When Abbey and I got back to my place, we gorged ourselves on the cake and watched several hours worth of Veronica Mars. Awesome. We didn't get through all the eps, but we did make it to one of my fave episodes this season.

And tonight, for more birthday goodness, I'm having dinner at the Veltman's: swordfish, twice-baked potatoes, broccoli, and chocolate mousse. I love food, and I love everyone who wished me a happy birthday. Thanks, guys! I think 24 will be a good year. :)

More relics of my introspective teenage girlhood

When I was in high school, I had an enormous bulletin board. (Murry, do you remember it?) I would put all sorts of things on the bulletin board - mostly magazine clippings, pictures of my friends, quotes I liked, poems I liked. The typical self-expression of a teenage girl. I would make minor updates every now and then, use different quotes or move around the pictures, but the core of it remained the same.

I really loved my bulletin board, and was enormously less-than-psyched when it was time to trek off to college. The fully decorated board would not have survived transport, so I stripped it of its contents, put them in a folder, and schlepped it all off with me to Berkeley.

When I got there, the bulletin board got left in the foyer and the folder got lost among some seldom-used notebooks, so I didn't repopulate the bulletin board right away. A couple months later, I found the folder and looked through the contents. After being at college for a just a little while, already I was different, and it didn't seem right to put everything up again - the things I'd once had on the bulletin board didn't reflect me anymore.

At first I started purging the folder of things. Goodbye, postcard of Hawaii from friend-I-no-longer like. Hasta luego, photo of ER cast. Smell ya later, Jewel lyrics. But that didn't seem right either - even the stuff I kept wasn't stuff I wanted to put up.

So, I made a new folder, and started scouring my magazines and books for new pictures and quotes that spoke to me. That was easy - lots of random pictures and quotes have meaning for me. Soon enough I had a very full folder. I realized some of the things I was putting in it weren't "bulletin board" things, they were things I just wanted to keep for later reference, so I started breaking it up into different folders based on topic. One for quotes and articles I liked, one for photos of people I liked, one for Buffy stuff (I was 17), one for hair styles I liked, and so on.

I never re-created the bulletin board, but I still have the folders. And I've kept adding to them over the years. They've been pared down and re-stocked, and they're now in a tidier state, but some of the things I've had in there for maybe six years. This weekend, I was sick and sitting around, so I grabbed a stack of magazines and read/ripped through them. At the end, I took my pile of to-be-filed pages, placed them in the appropriate folders, then did a little weeding. It's surprising how many pages I found that I had no recollection of ever seeing, and no apparent reason to keep. The folders got marginally less full after the weeding, but they're still pretty bulky. In order of decreasing full-ness, I've got:

- quotes and articles
- people who I respect/admire/aesthetically enjoy
- fashion
- home stuff
- hair
- fitness
- recipes
- makeup

I guess you can tell my priorities from that. ;)

I still have some of the items from the original bulletin board: bizarre paintings of cats by Louis Wain; poems by Emily Dickinson and Miklós Radnóti; a photo of Sara gorging on blackberries; a picture of a forest that still makes me feel calm; a photo of myself, age 4, in a dimly lit cave. It's weird, the stuff I've chosen to keep, but then again, so am I.

I talk the talk, but can I walk the walk?

As is probably evident from my lengthy posts on the subject of television, I love writing about the entertainment industry. It's a type of writing that I've always enjoyed (criticism and analysis seem to suit my personality, I suppose) and since I'm truly passionate about the subject matter, I've thought for many years that my dream job would be writing for Entertainment Weekly or some similar publication.

As the quarter century mark of my life looms ahead, I'm finally making the effort to try it. Not try working for EW - I'm pretty darn sure they wouldn't be interested in my lack of expertise - but try entertainment writing, just to see how it goes. To practice. To see whether I get bored with it. To see if I can entertain anyone other than my immediate family.

So I made another blog, TV and Sympathy. Since the beginning of April, I've been doing a post a day. I'm trying to keep it up at least all throughout the month. One post even got a whole lot of people looking at it when a link to it was posted on a blog and a forum. So it's going okay. I've still got a lot of ideas.

Plus, I've started writing TV recaps for Give Me My Remote, a TV blog that posts cool interviews, TV news, and opinions. I've been reading the site regularly for a while, and it's nice that the site creator has very similar taste in TV to mine. My first recap was of Gilmore Girls, which was a fun learning experience, even if not that many people left feedback. (I heart feedback.)

So that's what I'm doing. Maybe I'll like it, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll be good at it, maybe I won't. I guess we'll see.

Bad jokes and good food

I truly apologize for this joke. It popped into my head while I was trying to come up with a title for this post.

What's the title of a Jewish-themed Destiny's Child song?
(Scroll to the bottom of this post for the answer.)

This weekend I had the enormous pleasure of attending Passover dinner at the Veltman's house. Not only that, but I got to bring Sar. High fives and ass-slaps all around! We had a really good time, and in true epicurean tradition we absolutely gorged ourselves on all the excellent food that Josh's mom had prepared (though without the whole gross post-consumption vomiting bit - ew). I didn't mean to eat so much (I know, hard to believe), but when everything tastes so incredibly good, it's really hard to restrain yourself.

On the menu:

- the traditional seder plate
- matzoh ball soup
- the best brisket I've ever eaten
- lemony chicken
- three kinds of kugel: potato, egg noodle, and vegetable
- sugar snap peas
- a plethora of desserts

Believe me, I mean plethora.



From left, we've got:

- strawberry mousse cake
- strawberry sauce (for the cake)
- strawberries
- wine/spice cake (similar to angel food cake)
- flourless chocolate cake with coconuts and carrots
- assorted delicacies including "matzoh crack," macaroons, and luxembourgerlies(sp?)

Sar and I had a really lovely time, and it was very nice of the Veltmans to invite us.

Easter was pretty good, except for the brief period in which I was accosted by a time-traveling 1940's thug/street urchin who thought I wanted to get wise with him. (I didn't.)



And now, the answer you've been waiting for:
"Seder 2 U"

Get it? It's a play on "Cater 2 U". I'm sorry.

Thank you for mocking

Let me start off by saying that Thank You For Smoking is a good movie and I think you should go see it. (Yes, that means you.)

However, I think I would've enjoyed it more had I not just read the book. Yes, as the trailers claim, the movie is based on a bestselling book -- a very funny book, written by Christopher Buckley. Josh read it about a year ago, and I finally got around to reading it last weekend. Great satire, really witty, sharp, and intelligent. Willing to treat the reader as intelligent, too. And what a great protagonist Buckley created in Nick Naylor, the tobacco lobbyist's main spokesman - smart and sexy, if a bit loose on the whole morality thing. The plot is well-paced, filling in the reader in the right places, keeping Nick on his toes. You root for him even though you know he should know better.

Hmm...maybe I should have said "I think you should read this book" instead... ;)

At any rate, the movie is good too. Aaron Eckhart is well-cast as Nick (and hey, he's from Cupertino!), with a wide, open smile that makes you want to trust him even as he's screwing you over. The whole cast, in fact, is good, even (can it be true?) Katie Holmes as a seductive investigative reporter. Adam Brody and Rob Lowe are only onscreen briefly as two cogs in the machinery of the Los Angeles film industry, but their performances are memorable and entertaining. So it wasn't the acting that was lacking the magic of the book. It was the plot.

The plot in the book is intricate, a conspiracy operating on several levels, and a real page-turner as Nick churns to find out who is responsible for some of the things going wrong in his life. The plot in the movie is a bit dumbed down, with whole chunks removed - most likely for length, but there's something meaningful lost in all those extra pages.

What really irked me (and this may be more my personal taste than a flaw in the movie, since Josh disagreed) was the increased role of Nick's son in the movie. In the book, his son appears briefly, but he's hardly the focus of Nick's thoughts. In the movie, he becomes a central figure, shadowing Nick for much of the film, an eventual catalyst for Nick's moral transformation into a nice upstanding character.

Throughout the movie, though, I kept feeling that the film people had shoehorned the kid in there. Why? To humanize Nick, get us to see he isn't such a bad guy, get him to see there's more to life than shilling cigarettes. In my opinion, however, Nick needed no help. He didn't need a "gee whiz, what have I been doing?" moment of epiphany to see he was going down the wrong path. He knew all along he wasn't exactly on the up-and-up, morality-wise. So did the audience.

My point is, the book treats me as if I'm smart enough to know that Nick is human and smoking is bad, even if I'm not hit over the head with a big sign proclaiming that in blinking block letters. And I like that. The movie just didn't trust my intelligence enough to do the same (but you should still watch it anyway, particularly if you haven't read the book).

Not exactly a 'Dixie' chick

Abbey posted a quiz on her blog the other day declaring her a 35% Dixie-speaking Southern gal. After taking the same quiz, I discovered I'm 70% plain old American English, 20% Yankee, and a woeful 10% Dixie.

That doesn't keep me from loving the new Dixie Chicks song, however. "Not Ready To Make Nice" is a reaction to the controversy lead singer Natalie Maines caused in 2003 when she declared that they were ashamed that President Bush was from Texas. As this took place during the beginnings of the war in Iraq, the Chicks found themselves denounced by many of their country fans as 'unpatriotic' and subsequently banned from a number of country radio stations. While some listeners valued their right to free speech and their tour proceeded successfully, there was considerable backlash from the country community. Matters were made marginally worse when they were vocally criticized for their views by fellow country singer Toby Keith, and a public fued ensued.

I'm not the biggest fan of public spats - I'd like it if we could all be a little more tolerant of each other's viewpoints, open to express our opinions and accept that others might think differently. But the song isn't about how Bush sucks and Toby sucks and the Chicks are awesome. It's more about how it felt to be at the center of the controversy. In fact, if you didn't know about the controversy, you might think the song was about a relationship between two people, were it not for a few lyrics.

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting

The controversy might be specific to the Dixie Chicks and Keith and Bush and country music fans, but the feelings -- hurt, rejection, pride -- are universal. And the result, no matter what your political views, is art.

(You can listen to the song on the Dixie Chicks website.)

Old at heart

When I was a teenager, my mom used to tell me I wasn't really a teenager - I was a 42-year-old woman in the body of a teenager. My officemate, Fritz, voiced a similar sentiment last week, telling me I was an "old soul" (which I think is partly just his way of making fun of the fact that I don't ever like to go out).

They're right, though. I have always felt a bit "old for my age". I've never been interested in going out to drink and socialize in loud, crowded spaces. I've often been more comfortable talking older folks, rather than people my own age. My name means "youthful," so that's got to count for something, right? Wrong. It probably just means I'm always going to like Rainbow Brite.

There were a couple things this weekend that made me feel particularly old.

First, there was going to the mall. Last time I went to the mall, it was just to Macy's, in the middle of the day, middle of the week, not so crowded. This time, it was on a Saturday. Strolling through the main area of the mall, I felt as old as I've ever felt at the ripe old age of 23. The place was swarming with teenagers: surly, skinny, self-conscious teenagers, looking as fresh-faced as infants, clustered in cliques that gestured emphatically while still managing to look disinterested and dissatisfied with everything around them.

What struck me was how homogeneous they all looked. All wearing the same styles, no one wanting to stand out. And aren't they thinner than they were when I was in high school? Maybe they're just wearing more form-fitting clothes. (Is that possible? Are we moving towards the super-thin latex jumpsuit era of fashion, one skanky outfit at a time?) Whatever the case, they look simultaneously, paradoxically, both unenthusiastic about the entire world and desperate to make a good impression--on anyone of the opposite sex, that is.

Is that just how teenagers are? Maybe so. Maybe I just had my nose too far in a book to see it when I was a teenager myself. But they all seem so bored. Even if that's just superficial, concealing some inner hunger they dare not lay bare on the surface, I don't ever want to be that bored. Life's too short.

Later on, Josh and I went to see Ice Age: The Meltdown. I never saw the original, but Josh liked it, and was keen to see the second one. The median age of the theater crowd was even lower than that at the mall. It was a 9:15 movie, but there was a surprising number of children in the audience. When the movie began, the children were giggling and guffawing at the various antics of the animated mammoth, sloth, and sabertooth tiger, but I couldn't get involved. Not appreciating mindless entertainment? That's the death knell, my friends! Or maybe it just means I'm getting more mature...?

Nah. I still like trying on prom dresses, so I think I'm safe for now.

Okay, Murry - I'll write, you direct

You Should Be a Film Writer

You don't just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds

One of the great things (in addition to the general greatness) about Murielle coming to visit is that I got to watch Season 1 of Veronica Mars on DVD again. I find it's the most fun to watch a) with someone similarly obsessed or b) with someone discovering for the first time. You get to relive the joy or, rather, experience it for the first time vicariously through the other person. It was a pleasure to see Murielle love the show as much as I did and get so involved in it. (I knew she'd like it!) I'm so familiar with certain scenes and events now, but Murielle was surprised and excited and scared and amused and hopeful in all the right places. Just good times.

Aaaaand...I should also mention that I'm really digging what's been going on in Season 2 lately. That's what the quote in the title is about; at first I wasn't really invested in the Season 2 mysteries and storylines (much like Veronica herself), because I thought they were different and she was different and it didn't have the magic of the first season. But, that's not what loving a show is about. You can love a show even when it changes; you love the fact that it grows and tries new things, even as part of you misses how it used to be. I'm sure Shakespeare would, like, totally agree. ;) (He's the bard, he'd appreciate a good yarn.)

I'll say this about season two: it feels like it's still building up. Like they're setting up a bunch of interesting things, adding a bunch of interesting elements to the mix. We keep getting deeper and deeper into the mysteries, and they aren't getting clearer, they're getting murkier. Things are starting to heat up, but they're nowhere near a full boil. (How many other analogies can I use here...chemistry, spelunking, cooking...I'm unstoppable!) I can't imagine how mixed up and murky and boiling over things will get before the season comes to a close. I'm really looking forward to see how it turns out.

Unlike my hair, some things never change.

My friendship with Murielle is one of those things. The summer I visited Murry in 2003 (pics on the left) was pretty much the same as her recent visit three years later (pics on the right). The only way you can tell they're different? The tans.

Murielle still impersonates her Persian grandmother.











I'm still forced to pose in dresses with loud patterns.














We still rock the '80's/vagrant hair.











Murielle is still more photogenic than I am. (Why is my mouth open so wide? I'm not at the dentist! What a spaz.)











I am still an awesome dancer.











We still take pictures of the food we make. (Fleischkeschele!)











I still love sweets (even though I'm not the sac de bonbons).











Murielle still leaves me a protruding tongue photo as a parting gift.











And I'm still sad every time one of us has to leave.