While I don't have time (right now) to do a huge blog post on the amazingness of the weekend, the photos are edited and up. I'll walk you through them at a later date.

(PS--my friends are awesome)

I stayed at school last night until 11 p.m. I was back there today by 7:05 a.m. I was in the loop as the sun rose over the lake. I think I may lose the top of my left ear to frostbite because I walked the six blocks from school to work without at hat at 8 a.m. This is only week three of a 15-week semester! Pity party!

The Philly Convention of Awesomeness lived up to its name. It was all about talking trash and wearing sparkles -- just the way we like it. Highlights of the weekend included:

- eating all of Lakshmi's (organic) food
- seeing deformed fetuses in formaldehyde, wax models of gangrene and necrosis, and a 9-foot-long colon at the Mutter Museum
- contemplating an "Olympic Spirit" theme for the New York Convention of Awesomeness, which would involve gold, silver and bronze spandex pants from American Apparel
- Mary's analysis of the discrimination lawsuit against Abercrombie and Fitch: "Even if all of their employees were half-Samoan and wheelchair-bound, white teenagers will still be the only people who shop there."
- General middle school sleepover atmosphere of giggling, chatting and making crafts until early morning hours
- unicorn sighting
- Making matching, sparkly headbands with feathers, and wearing them to a bar
- Making Lakshmi's cute new bandmate Beth wear a sparkly headband

Oh my gosh, girl convention of awesomeness part 1: Philadelphia 2007 has been so rock n' roll. We need to have a reality show like "The Real World."

Scrape your knee. It is only skin.
Makes the sound of violins.
When I cut your hair and leave the birds all the trimmings
I’m the happiest woman among all women.

This is an exquisite piece of music. If you have “Ys” go to Track 4 at exactly the 5 minute mark and listen to this phrase. My follicles react to it.

I don't want to get over you.
I could make a career of being blue
I could dress in black and read Camus,
smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth
like I was 17
that would be a scream
but I don't want to get over you.

I got some lovely things from A Low Hum in the mail today. Things just moved so fast.

And why did it take me so long to discover the Magnetic Fields? Don't answer that

What I did on Break:

The epic risk game. It's still going on. And dad still won't talk about my cruel takeover of the middle east. I respond with: hey, risk is not a game. It's serious business

Benny Hill is on. I effing hate Benny Hill. I will never understand why this sort of British Humor(tm) is considered funny. Cleavage! Pants fall down! Old man trips on the stairs! Hilarity ensues!

And speaking of slapstick humor, I received one of the greatest gifts I have ever received for Christmas: “Jackass Number 2.” My love for Jackass is peculiar, and it isn’t shared by anyone I know. Even guys I can count on for liking dumb guy stuff like porn (Tom Sherman) or pig wrestling (The) or skateboarding (pretty much every guy I know) can’t get into Jackass. I know of no women who enjoy this show. Maybe Margaret, but then, Margaret’s a trooper. The lack of enthusiasm for the show, rather than being a disappointment, is an encouragement that I have managed to pick friends of taste and sensibility over the years.

As of press time, I have watched every single commentary, bonus track, and extra feature the Jackass DVD has to offer. It’s all amazing. And I laughed harder than I have since I saw “Just Friends” for the first time in theatres. But the fact that no one I respect has even the remotest tolerance for this show has not escaped me; I feel some degree of shame in knowing that when I laugh at a one-legged man trying on rollerblades, I am laughing alone.

I was trying to explain to Benjamin the other night the appeal of Jackass. It isn’t as if I like physical comedy per se. I don’t, really. I laughed at Borat like everyone else, and I give gleeful groans of pain when Frank the Tank runs naked down the street, but in general, I’m not a particular fan of physical comedy, and I dispise slapstick. Any attempt I have made to watch the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges ends with me bored out of my mind and reading whatever is nearby—even if it’s the list of chemicals on the side of a medicine bottle. I hate most artifice; it’s the reason I can’t stand musicals. When I saw West Side Story, saw those gang members singing and dancing around with knives, to borrow a phrase from Blazing Saddles, “like a bunch of Kansas City faggots,” I knew I wanted nothing to do with it. Slapstick and physical comedy to me is simply people pretending to be hurt. Slapstick is the worst—it’s pretending to take a blow and not get hurt-it’s falling on a banana peel, making huge arms, and falling, then shaking the head wildly. It’s running into a door again and again, each time making the same attempt. What’s “funny” is that the person taking the physical injury isn’t hurt, and doesn’t learn. Physical comedy is slightly better because it can have more subtly and nuance—it incorporates slapstick, but it also has other elements like dramatic irony. And often, the falls in physical comedy, while still exaggerated, show pain. The person actually groans, actually swears, and it is the unexpectedness of the injury and it’s timing that’s “funny.” This, to me, is slightly more believable, and thus slightly more amusing.

For me, the humor in Jackass lies in the fact that it’s real. I grew up with a lot of skateboarders and a lot of dumb guys. I wasn’t put into Hockaday until I was 12 or, so a lot of my formative time (before the single sex education) was spent with packs of boys. And boys do dumb things. Boys put moss in each other’s shirts for no reason. Boys try to get each other to eat leaves. Boys dare each other to drink things mixed out of mustards and vinegars and cheer when the person barfs. Boys take bikes down steep hills and ring doorbells and run. And thus, I did those things. So when I see the garbage they do on Jackass, it is real to me: that is what I grew up with, that is the dumb stuff I remember. If it were them pretending to get hurt, it wouldn’t be funny—because they are actually stupid enough to do these things, and because I know my friends were dumb enough to do those things, it completely wins me over.

Soooooooooo…..what else? Benjamin got back from Norway. We went out to a nice restaurant to celebrate his return home. We were supposed to do, like, dinner and a movie, and make a real night of it, and then I got all dressed up, and he threw down the jet lag card, so I only got to do dinner because he was driving. Which wouldn’t have bothered me, except I straightened my hair. Straightening my hair is a huge commitment to an event. If that event doesn’t take place, I am quite put out.

I’m reading Augusten Burrough’s “Running with Scissors” and it’s dreadful. Never for the life of me will I understand why critics get so hard for such terrible writers. I’m hoping the plot will be better than his style. I feel like he needs to go to some workshops and learn how not to be completely ham handed with description. Yes, Augusten, I get it. You’re gay. Yes, I get it, it was the seventies. Yes, I get it, you liked shiny things. Try not to place the indicators in my path like stumbling blocks.

Adele is coming up to Philly next weekend, then New York the end of February. This means a party. I’m planning on going down to Philly on the bus to rock out with the girlfriends. Too bad Anne can’t come, AND too bad she blew me off/didn’t call me when she was in the states. I’m right here girlfriend—give me a call.

Events that have occured in the last month and a half:

+Thanksgiving in New York
+Huge onslaught of papers all worth 75-100% of my grade, all 15+ pages and requiring 5-7 additional pages of references and footnotes.
+Attended my cousin's wedding in DC
+Christmas in Dallas
+New Year's Eve playing Trivial Pursuit
+Massive cleaning projects since no one in my family apparently has any time/patience/will to clean.

Obviously, one post, or even 5 seperate posts will not be enough to fully explore these topics in the manner I usually reserve. I will have to content myself with giving vague overviews, getting everyone up to speed, and then we can start the new year all caught up so I can dive into such meatier topics as "why girls are becoming the most horrible creatures on earth," "confessions of the socially akward," and that old chestnut "Oh my gosh I am so alone why does no one talk to me YOU _YOU_ PAY ATTENTION TO MY FLAILINGS."

Thanksgiving was very nice. My entire family squeezed into my small studio apartment (the parents got a hotel), and Benjamin tagged along. He bought me some lavendar and a new houseplant, as the orchid he had given me in September was nearing it's end. We ate at the Waldorf Astoria which sounds posh--and it was, when we went 8 years ago--but has subsequently been bought by the Hilton family and everything was more or less the standard middle-of-the-road restaurant fare, only with walnuts--WALNUTS!!!--as if the addition to the most hoighty of nuts would be greeted with awes and gasps by the patrons. Such a disappointment. I also saw Casino Royal which I absolutely positively adored--I would say my favorite Bond movie ever. It rained a lot, we did a lot of Christmas shopping. Holidays in New York are as cheerful and pretty as holidays in Chicago, so it felt homey.

The papers were hell on earth. Each paper requires at least 4-5 days for research, since the Newark libraries are, for lack of a better word, utter and complete crap, and the New York Public Libraries, while extensive, are the most maddening, backwards, bureaucratic network of rules and policies ever assembled outside of the Soviet bloc. In addition, once the material has been assembled, the actual writing process is 2-3 days. Having 3 weeks to do all of this was, of course, insane, so I stopped answering my phone, stopped getting online, stopped returning emails. The more perceptive of you may have noticed this. In between the papers, I had to take a weekend off to go to my cousin's wedding, go to 2 church parties (no one talked to me but the non-members and the over 40-set!), and attend my friend Ian's birthday party, not to mention finishing up the Christmas shopping. My presents were awesome by the way. I am becoming an amazing present buyer. What can I say? It's a gift.

I also didn't manage to get out my Christmas cards this year, which vexed me greatly. I'm toying with the idea of sending out festivus cards, but we'll see. I'm acutely aware of the affect these bouts of isolation are taking on my long distance friendships. This entire holiday season in fact, I've suffered as a result of my selfishness and internalism. I didn't get any (non-familial) Christmas texts, Christmas presents, or Christmas cards with the exception of perhaps one or 2 people. Not that I'm blaming anyone for this--I fully recognize all of this to be my own fault. I am determined to be a more active and attentive friend this year. That means actually using the phone to call people.

Outside of the reminder of my own isolation, Christmas was delightful. It was the first Christmas we've had in forever that actually felt like the ones we used to have, before the financial problems and the jail time and the litigation and the depression. My brother recieved Risk!, which Margaret and I immediatly approproated and dragged my father into the most epic battle this side of the Mississippi, which is still going on as I type this. I am presently deciding whether or not it's worth the troop loss to take Iceland and add Europe to my arsenal of South America and Africa. It would weaken my hold, but then I have massive reinforcements in the Ukraine and the Middle East, and everyone else is spread so thin they'd have trouble mounting an offensive.

Our family has been going board game crazy. New Year's was spent playing Trivial Pursuit, and Scrabble has become the bane of my existance (I'm a writer! WTF? Why am I so terrible?) We've been homebodies; I've been going out for wings, putting on all the weight I lost in New York, cleaning the garage (Akin to Hercules cleaning the stables, and I say this in all seriousness).

At any rate, that is what I've been up to. Emotionally, I feel great. My grad school friends are fantastic--we go to seedy bars, gossip about professors, and compare obsessions (currently Viva Pinata! and Top Chef). This all sounds very mundane and common--and it is--but for me, having lived without fresh people in my life for so long, all these banalities come across as new and exciting. I'm regaining feeling in my fingers and toes, it would seem

For those of you wanting to know what Mark Roberts is up to, I stumbled across this article:

the enright house article
Submitted by fraew on Sun, 2006-12-10 21:20.
[Originally published in A Low Hum, october 2006]

Skittery percussion, ethereal drones with metallic resonance, a disturbingly atmospheric sound counter-balanced by human, emotive vocals – The Enright House sounds like a dramatic balancing act; much like the crumbling architectural images that adorn his website. But The Enright House’s songs aren’t falling apart at the seams; they’ve been meticulously composed using computer manipulation and display a great depth of ideas and incredible texture.
So who is The Enright House? I wasn’t quite sure myself – my exposure to Mark Roberts’ project had previously been limited to his MySpace recordings and a brief introduction at the last Low Hum show – so I asked Mark to give me a little background.

...Though noticeably abstract, the material is still very song-orientated. His songs are spiked with poetry and manipulated samples; often with great affect. The cryptic and mysteriously devious ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ relays the interview of a promiscuous young girl; removing the actual sexual overtones of her speech, only the tone and feeling of her voice reveals this context – yet her intentions seem almost obvious. It’s this masking that makes The Enright House so special – nothing is obvious; yet context seems implied.

A compositional background lies at the heart of The Enright House. With grounding in aesthetics and educated theories on what defines art – Mark has a very strong vision for how he can present his music – and his architectural photography and artwork reflects this.

...With a new determined outlook to perform in a live capacity, and talk of interest from an established US independent label; Roberts is looking to the future. With completion of the album now imminent; plans are afoot for it to be released locally, plus nation-wide distribution through Amplifier.co.nz. Look out for The Enright House on independent radio stations across New Zealand.

If you have time, I recommend reading the entire article. It's all rather adorable and humble and ever so slightly pompous, as only Mark can be. But congrats on the success, brother. I raise my glass