» Friday, January 28, 2005

Another guest entry, another exercise in self-indulgence.

Here are some words from Prince-of-a-Man Ryan Ruopp about Wolf-of-a-Girl, yours truly:

One of the best things about my friend Brooke is the way she can take a complex and ambiguous concept and compress it into a tangible, easy-to-understand form. Take, for example, the concept of "cool". This is one of those ideas that have been debated forever - questions like "what is cool?" and "how can you tell if x is cool?" are struggled with by each generation, or at least by that segment of it that doesn't get invited to the better parties.

One day, I was asking such questions of Brooke, and she broke it down for me. I will never forget what she said, because it was so simple and yet so indisputable:

"Ryan," she said, "I am MUCH cooler than you! Look how many earrings I have!!"

And in fact, she was right. I have no earrings at all, and Brooke has maybe 16, 000 of them at any given time. Thus, she is much cooler than I am. QED.

Now, there are some who would argue that a) my good friend Brooke was engaged in a little bit of self-aggrandization rather than legitimate philosophizing and b) it is entirely possible to wear earrings and look like a tool. These people, however, are probably jealous and definitely, totally, uncool.

At least, that's what Brooke says, and she should know.

» Tuesday, January 25, 2005

It's a shame that clip shows only work on tv. You know, the filler shows sitcom writers do when they're out of ideas or they're lazy bastards or whatever. Yes, I'm sure there's a more complicated reason involving the number of new episodes ordered by the network and whatnot, but the point I'm limping toward is that I, myself, am a lazy bastard, unfettered by a single original thought. I feel like I haven't slept in days — likely because I haven't, really.

I was snowed in this weekend. In New York. I left the sanctuary of indoors only twice, reluctantly. It was bitter cold and I was improperly shod. I didn't get to make a snow chicken. But I did watch a lot of television. And there was cocoa. And I sustained an exciting minor hand injury while tussling with a zebra. I'm not complaining.

The train station was another matter entirely. I fully moved into Penn Station yesterday. The northeast, despite predictably annual snow, is unequipped to deal with it. I sat on my filthy patch of floor and watched the departures board light up with DELAYEDS and CANCELLEDS all morning. Thank the stars for iPods and wi-fi.

I'm back in Baltimore, and a little homesick. It's a good thing I have my rockstar friends here to soften the blow.

» Wednesday, January 19, 2005

I love New York. I want to have a million of its babies. I love it at its dirtiest and its most dauntingly hip, I love the smell of burned pretzelair, I love how I never sleep in the city that doesn't either, I even love it when it's colder than the devil's icebox. Which it was this weekend. I am tired and thawing slowly, but very satisfied. I'll make a terrible jaded New Yorker someday. I'll be a snarkjelly donut, sarcastic on the outside and filled with a gooey sentimentality for home.

On the other hand, I despise Greyhound. I want to have a million of its babies too, except I will eat them all, even if I'm not hungry. I don't even want to talk about why it took me nearly six hours to get to New York.

» Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Last spring, Scott and I decided to trade blogs for a day. We agreed on a topic and a liberal deadline. Scott completed his in a timely manner. I completed mine... in my imagination. I'm bad at writing what I mean to write. When I sit down at a keyboard, invariably something else comes tapping out. Eventually I'll do it. In the meantime, please enjoy Scott's lovely work. I'll let you know when I'm starring in his corner of the web.

---

for Lupschada.com, 3/3/04, by Scott Harris

I called Brooke the other day. I had been sitting in my apartment, trying to scratch out the last few lines in my travel journal before the impressions faded completely, but it wasn't coming to me. It was warm and I couldn't keep my mind on the words, kept setting the journal down and wandering around the room and I finally slipped the band around the cover to close it tight and instead picked up the phone and called Brooke.

The strange thing was she had known, somehow, that I was going to call, had told her family that she was expecting me to call, this even though it had been a spur of the moment decision on a long slow afternoon. And so I called her just a minute or two after she had predicted I would and we talked for a time. And we couldn't figure out how she had known I would call, but I knew why the idea had come to me. It lay between the jumbled, cramped words of the journal, in the margins of my story, fit into the spaces between the sites and the names of the monuments.

In September I went to France. Took the time off of work, bought the plane ticket, packed my backpack and off I went, alone. Some people told me not to go because France was full of assholes who didn't fight in Iraq and some told me not to go because of the heat wave that had killed 10,000 but most of those who were skeptical of the trip simply didn't understand why I would go by myself. Too dangerous, too boring, too lonely. I didn't think it would be any of these things, so I went off by myself, and as I flew and drove and walked I found that I didn't feel alone at all. There was a pen in my pocket and stamps in my wallet and postcards waiting blank for me to send off, from every stop, to Brooke.

I wrote the first one before the trip started. I knew I wouldn't have much time at the airport, what with the increased security, so the night before my departure I sorted through my postcards until I found one from Boston and I carefully filled every bit of the blank space with tiny cramped writing. I worried a bit about what I would find to fill all the cards I meant to send, for I meant to send one from every location I visited and I meant to visit as many as possible, so I created some fictional characters to take the trip with me; I figured if I ran out of things to say I could make up stories about my imaginary friends.

I needn't have bothered. There was plenty for me to see and say and the presence of my fictional traveling companions wasn't half as real as the feeling that Brooke was, in a strange way, with me at each stop. Not just at each stop, but in the car and on the plane, as I thought ahead about what I would write on my next card or what I had sent in my last and listened to a cd that she had made for me or I for her.

I followed the setting sun across Normandy and Brittany, ending my night on the sharply pitched cobblestone streets of Mont St. Michel, empty but for the cats that came out under the stars to stretch when the tourists had at last left. I crossed salt water rocks under the shadow of the parapets and the next day I stood in the little post office and tried to put into words what I felt and sent off to her a card filled with prose purple enough to be claimed as relative by the most inbred royals.

In the craters of Pont Du Hoc and on the cliffs of Etretat, under the lion at Waterloo and by the windmills of Luxembourg I worked out in my head what I would tell to Brooke, back at home, about these things. About myself. Sometimes I worried about how she would like them and sometimes I wrote as though no one would ever see and sometimes I drew small pictures in the margins like furtive dreams. And I sent them all, by ones and twos, five, ten, twenty cards, I sent and more.

When we talked about swapping stories for each other's site I said to her "some of my favorite Brooke memories you weren't even there for". It was a good line, funny, it sounded like a dirty joke. But I wasn't thinking about anything dirty or weird or funny. I was thinking about standing in a phone booth at the Anvers Metro stop calling America and huddling over a keyboard in a hash bar after midnight in Amersterdam. I was thinking about standing under a tree in the rain behind Notre Dame and about the fog in the morning over the Iceland sea.

And I was thinking about a day when I chased a sunset all through the afternoon and the sun's fading rays cast highlights on clouds that flowed and tumbled like hair across the shoulders of her sky.

» Sunday, January 09, 2005

I am full of goodwill and good cheer. I feel like a bowl of milk after the Apple Jacks have gone. The weekend was rejuvenating as all weekends should be and few are.

Historically, most of my closest friends have been guys, but there's really no substitute for a group of smart ladies. [note: the word "ladies" with a drawn-out long 'a' never fails to crack me up.] Hollywood lacks examples of women who are affectionate to other women and don't secretly hate them -- such that every gathering draws an automatic comparison to Sex in the City. I'll admit the association gives me a subtle tic, but I'll also admit I've never seen more than five minutes of the show. I take it as cultural shorthand for a flock of bright, animated, savvy girls, and I'm basically fine with that part. I never kicked no one out for calling me savvy.

I dined with Jen, Jenny and Natalie on Saturday night. It was one of those gatherings. My friends, please know that these girls are of the absolute highest caliber. We had an amazing discussion about ghosts, boys, blood, etc. We ate like four little piggies, drank some wine, looked awesome, and it was the finest night I could imagine.

...

Laaaadies.

» Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Confession: I didn't reapply to Emerson from the waitlist.

I'm sorry, Boston. My reasons weren't numerous. In fact, they were very weak. In fact, they mostly boiled down to laziness. It seems like as good a reason as any, though, if you think about it. Maybe I like my new job. Maybe I just didn't want it very much. A serious lack of motivation is a bad way to start a 200 page manuscript.

The revised application is due tomorrow. I won't be writing it tonight.

» Monday, January 03, 2005

Lupschada's Movie Picks: Top Ten Weasel Movies!

House of Flying Weasels
St. Weasel's Fire
Godweasel: Part II
My Fair Weasel
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Weasel
Wea5el
The Importance of Being Weasel
Weasel and Maude
The Rocky Weasel Horror Show
and
The Hand That Rocks the Weasel

Addendum — Sean wisely notes that I am a fool to leave Pauly Shore off my list. In Sean's honor, I offer a bonus movie pick: the 1996 classic, Weasel-Dome.

» Sunday, January 02, 2005

My last post was fairly cheerless for a holiday, I think, and now I feel foolish. 2005 is off to an auspicious start. Unseasonably warm does not begin to describe day one of the new year, and the weather weren't too shabby neither. Best friends are good things to have. Dan came to visit for the weekend, and we took the camcorder out for an afternoon on the town. If you have the patience for downloads and shenanigans, I invite you to partake of the mirth.

In which it becomes clear you can't operate a camcorder without mention of the Blair Witch.

In which I almost say something dirty and Dan tells lies.

In which I think I'm still in college and Dan calls me old.

In which I am upside down.

In which we document the weather.

In which I finally avenge the hours I've spent listening to Dan yammer about baseball by being wicked goddamn annoying.