A Cautionary Tale brought to you by Progresso

There were two cans of soup -- one beef & potato, one chicken barley.

"Which one do you want?" I said to Chris.

"Whichever one you don't want," he replied.

"No," I said, "have the one you want."

"You have the one you want," he said.

"Pick the soup you want!" I exclaimed. "Pick a soup!"

Chris picked the chicken barley, so I had the beef & potato.

As he was finishing his bowl he said, "You wanted the beef & potato right?"

"No," I said. "Actually I wanted the chicken barley."

"But I thought you liked beef & potato," he said. "I wanted the beef & potato but I didn't take it because I thought you wanted it."

"Well in trying to please the other," I declared, "it seems we pleased no one."

The moral of the story? Take what you want and screw the other guy.

Idolspize

"We all have them, those close friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances or complete strangers whose lives and careers exist -- it seems to us -- solely as a rebuke to our own. We respect them, admire them from afar, maybe even love them -- but with a twinge of . . . what exactly? Jealousy? Envy? White-knuckled rage? They're the people who are constantly reminding us that we'll never quite measure up. They're the valedictorians to our salutatorians, the bestsellers to our mid-listers, the mid-listers to our never-published, the homecoming queens to our also-rans. They seem to have sprung fully formed from our ugliest competitive streaks, our egos at their most fragile, our deepest self-loathing. They are our own squandered potential, fully realized."

A new word has been coined to describe the people we admire but we also hate because we are so envious of them: we idolspize them.

The writer goes on to explain that idolspizing is not the equivalent to 'frenemies' because you can idolspize a stranger. You cannot idolspize celebrities. For someone to be "idolspicable, [they] must be thisclose to your own age, background, educational achievement and career, and they must be of your gender and general situation in life."

There are a couple of people I could call frenemies, but I don't idolspize anyone I'm close to. Maybe I'll idolspize Ben when his book gets published, but other than that, the closest I've come to idolspizing was a few people from my undergraduate experience. The stunningly well-dressed, rich, fashionable hipsters who already had things published, or were just so cool and in-the-know and always surrounded by equally cool people who went to cool happenings around Boston, whose parents were bigwigs in the movie or music industry.

Emerson College was a breeding ground for idolspizing. Everyone hated everyone else for having a successful comedy show, being in a play, getting a gig at a popular bar, making a celebrity networking connection. I'm surprised an Emerson alum didn't create the word.

Featured Blog

I feel mention should be made of Maggie's spin-off blog, Foster Cats. Her photos and anecdotes are cute enough to make me almost view my own cats with less distaste. Almost. Check it out.

Also, enter Tommywood Blvd.'s Oscar contest (you'll find the link in his left sidebar). Tom promises fame and glory to the person who most accurately predicts the 2006 Oscar winners. You can't beat that.

Hababechee babooa, it's 3 o'clock

At work, every day, all day, my boss listens to the college radio station WERS; thus, so do I. It's my college station -- I even appeared on it once -- so it pains me to say that the station completely blows. When I think of college radio, I think of cutting-edge stuff. Aren't hot new bands always discovered on college radio? Not ERS. Most of the morning is nondescript jazz; in the afternoons it's nondescript "world music."

If the tendency of people is to not like things they don't understand, then I really don't like things I don't understand when I hear them at the exact same time every day. I know a lot of radio stations are guilty of not varying their playlists, but the problem is certainly magnified when all you have to go on is how much the shrill singer in the song at 2:37 reminds you of a boiling piglet. I don't even have to wear a watch anymore -- I know that when I hear the song composed entirely of clicking sticks, it's time for lunch.

And I'm not the only one. "This song makes me want to cut my ears off," my fellow editorial assistant discreetly emailed me the other day. On that day, though, and most of last week, I was one step ahead, with earbuds securely in ears. You see, I've discovered podcasts. I'm fickle when it comes to listening to music (it has to suit my mood), but I'm finding that an hour of Meet the Press or Real Time with Bill Maher can really knock the wind out of a slow morning. Still, at 12:56, I pull out my earbuds. I'm a sucker for the song with the sticks.

Say Cheese

I read an article in the New York Times the other day, about the rise of arm's-length self-portraits on the Internet.

In her bedroom in Lubbock, Tex., Ms. Adams, 21, tried out a variety of poses — coy, friendly, sultry, goofy — in the kind of performance young people have engaged in privately for generations before a mirror. But Ms. Adams's mirror was a Web cam, and her journey of self-expression, documented in five digital self-portraits, was soon visible to the 56 million registered users of MySpace.

Coincidentally Josh sent me a link this morning to a short film called MySpace: The Movie, about the embarrassing but universal habits of the typical MySpacer (including the taking of self-portraits), and the pitfalls that come with Internet life. (Check it out -- it's hilarious because it's true.)

I'm sure a more intelligent person could read more into this, this commenting on a medium via the medium itself, this new sense of controllable self (take enough self-portraits and anyone can be hot -- it's "the angles"!), this whatever. Me, I'm just happy we've got something, that my generation has something of our own. I watch Lords of Dogtown and regret that skateboarding has already been done. I read Men of Tomorrow and regret that the comic book has already been invented. I'm sad that I'll never be a hippie. But I think in 30 years kids will look back in awe at the early 2000s, at the rise of MySpace and all the little webcam movies you can find on YouTube and Google Video, the -- I'm speaking on a stage now, in a good suit; the sun is shining -- the rise of the time when anyone with a broadband connection can be a media mogul, when teens and college students and twentysomethings are staking out their own territory no different from the pioneers of the Old West! That's something. And there will be plenty of photos to document this. Ninety percent of them will have arms in them.

Lucas: The Prequel

I was eating calamari and sipping my water when Ben and Josh arrived at Vinny T's and joined me at the table. "Our waiter's cute," I said to Ben as he was sitting down.

"Really?" he asked and started looking around. I immediately started to worry that Ben wouldn't think he was hot. Lucas came over, took Josh and Ben's drink orders and went off again. Ben turned to me: "Oh yeah," he said, in that way that he has, which really means, "was there ever any doubt?" I felt relieved that Ben agreed with me. Josh rolled his eyes.

When Lucas forgot the third special, even after standing in front of us wracking his brain for more than a full minute while I tried not to laugh, Ben was enchanted and Josh was bored. Later, there were whispered exclamations like, "He touched your shoulder!" Then Ben said, "I can't get a read on his sexuality."

"I think he's gay," I said.

"I don't think he's gay," Ben said, "but he's really schmoozing that table of homos next to us." This was true. Lucas had inquired if the only empty seat at the table of six men was for him. We never came to an agreement about his sexuality and he offered no further clues to sway our opinions.

We decided to go back and investigate further.

Say What?

One of my favorite funny nicknames is "vatican roulette," used to describe the rhythm method of birth control, the only kind of birth control that Catholics are allowed to use without risking eternal hellfire. (By the way, in high school, when the rhythm method was described to me, I thought it meant that if you do it at a certain tempo, you can avoid pregnancy; not that you have to avoid certain fertile times of the month.)

My dad always used "gin mill" instead of bar. Are these things slang or just weird nicknames?

Either way, I discovered one this morning that gave me a laugh: "Irish sweepstakes," used as another name for the obituaries.

I really get a kick out of these kinds of things.

The Oscars

This year, Jon Stewart will be hosting. Three hours of [intermittent] Jon Stewart! The Daily Shows writers are writing his monologue and jokes. They were hoping that Jon would bring in a younger crowd and I think it's a pretty good bet that he will. I'll probably sit through the whole thing without channel surfing during commercials for the first time in... well, for the first time ever!

The Salad Girl's on RedBull

Last Thursday Maggie and I met for dinner with our pal Josh at an Italian restaurant called Vinny T's. We had a waiter who was extremely cute in both personality and features. His name is Lucas. He had a hint of an accent; forgot all the specials; and at the end of the meal threatened to chase us down and tackle us if we stole the pen he had provided to sign the receipt.

("Steal the pen! Steal the pen!" I whisper-yelled at Maggie.)

"Assaulting the customers probably goes against the waiter's handbook, though," Lucas said with a Lucasy grin.

Lucas's ambiguous sexuality could favor neither of us, given that Maggie and I are both practically married, but that didn't stop us both from being smitten. Josh, meanwhile, was happy enough with a cannoli.

Last night Maggie gave me an impromptu phonecall: she was in the city for a class and wanted to know if I wanted to go back to Vinny T's to stalk Lucas. Did I even have to think?

At the restaurant, Maggie requested us a table in Lucas's area. The hostess asked if Maggie knew Lucas -- for lack of anything better to say, Maggie blurted, "I have a crush on him."

We sat down and it was immediately awkward. These kinds of episodes always seem like a good idea until the person is there in front of you and you feel at best like a groupie and at worst like a stalker.

Lucas said, "I heard you asked for me?" He seemed confused. He didn't know us. We tried to play it nonchalant.

"Oh, we had you before and thought you were good," Maggie said, casually brushing the air as though to wave away any implication or significance.

"That's funny that I don't remember you," Lucas said. "I usually remember people. I was that good?"

We were scrambling. How could this be played? We saw Joseph, the waiter who'd served us at our Christmas dinner. Joseph provided an out.

"Well, we've requested Joseph a few times too," Maggie said, "but we didn't know he was here today."

"When was this that you came in last?" Lucas said.

Maggie said, "Oh a while ago."

"About two weeks," I added after wrestling with an appropriate timeframe.

I felt my face heating up. We didn't know whether the hostess had also told Lucas that Maggie had a crush on him. We didn't know what he thought of us at all. Was I Maggie's boyfriend, encouraging her crush? Was I just very open-minded? Were we trying to get Lucas involved in a threesome?

We ordered salads as an appetizer, which were brought in about thirty seconds. "The salad girl's on RedBull," Lucas said. "Have you decided?"

We hadn't decided. For Maggie the words on the menu were a blur. I was scarfing my salad but not tasting it. Finally we ordered, and except during some discreet checking-out of Lucas's butt, we were able to move to other topics of conversation.

All in all, it was a fanstatic dinner. But one thing's for sure: we can never go back.

Co-Worker Questions

One of the writers was commenting on the Valentine's Day flowers sitting on my desk. When I said they were from my boyfriend, he said, "Oh, that's nice. What does your boyfriend do, if you don't mind my asking?" I answered without considering the offered option of not answering.

I wonder what he would've said if I had minded his asking. If, instead of telling him what the job is, said something like, "Actually, I'd rather not say."

The Spiteful Hobo

"Motherfucker," said the homeless man matter-of-factly.

He sat on an overturned stacker at the edge of the curb, his back to the busy street. Balled-up napkins and hamburger wrappers rolled around on the pavement under the stacker like mice in a cage. His hair was short, white, his face craggy and red. His once-blue pants shined with grime.

"You shut your mouth," Aleesha Jones said and stood up straight in her heels, as though against a cold breeze. She switched her purse to the other hand and pressed the button for the crosswalk signal once, twice.

"Dyke," growled the man. His voice was drunk-slurred even though he had never been seen with alcohol.

"Take a bath," Aleesha retorted. She turned stiffly to her coworker Jared, standing on her other side. "Can you believe this guy?" She pushed the button again.

Jared was short and his tie hung two inches past his belt buckle. His dark hair was too shaggy for his job, so he tried to keep it tucked behind his ears. "I used to see him in Government Center," Jared said, his voice naturally soft. "Didn't used to swear, I don't think."

"He was here all last week," Aleesha said.

"I can hear you, bitch." The homeless man's arms were crossed over his knees and he looked at his shoes.

Aleesha extended her middle finger in his direction. "Yeah, Jared, while you were in sunny Cancun, we had to deal with Toiletmouth."

"Go back to Africa, bitch."

A crowd of commuters had accumulated on the sidewalk, shooting furtive glances at the man on the stacker. When the light changed they scurried across the street. Jared and Aleesha looked back from the other side. The man on the stacker was calling a trio of third-graders "douchebags."

"He's not even asking for change," said Aleesha, "not that he'd get any. He just set up shop there to screech his obscenitities."

"He'll go away," said Jared, and checked his watch.

The next morning on the T Jared spotted Aleesha at the end of the car. He pulled out his white earbuds, stashed them in his pocket, and made his way toward her.

"How was your first day back yesterday?" she said after their nonchalant T greetings.

"Took me an hour just to clean out my spam emails," Jared replied.

The T stopped at Park Street and they got off, pushed through the rolling turnstyles.

"You know what's at the top here," Aleesha said as they went up the stairs. She pointed to the doors ahead.

"Our friend?"

"Bite your tongue," she said. "Our villian."

They were lucky -- when they came through the doors the walk signal was counting down from ten.

"Come on, we can make it," Jared said, grabbing Aleesha's arm. To him it was still a game and he was enjoying this comeraderie. Nothing made friends like a mutual enemy.
They dashed past the man but did not escape unscathed. "Fucking douchebags," he called.

"He's big on 'douchebag,'" Jared said.

Aleesha pursed her lips together and squinted her eyes in anger. "Mmhm."

Jared said goodbye to Lisa at the door of the customer service office in the building where they worked. He thought he should've asked her to lunch. He had thought that every day for the past three months. He went to his cubicle, booted his computer, hung his jacket on the plastic hook on the wall.

A moment later his supervisor knocked with his knuckles on the fabric wall of Jared's cube. "Hi Jared."

Jared turned around. "Richard, hi."

"Just wanted to follow up with you," Richard said, sitting down on the edge of a filing cabinet. "The reports from last week -- did you get a chance to do those?"

"I was on vacation last week. Tom was going to take care of them."

"Vacation, right. Right. Okay then I'll ask Tom. First day back?"

"Um, no." Jared clasped his hands and put them under his thighs. "I was here yesterday."

"Must not have noticed you all the way back here," Richard said, and laughed. Jared told himself that if Richard ended his laugh with a snort, Jared would ram his keyboard down Richard's throat. Richard ended his laugh with a snort. "Ok, thanks," he said.

Jared pushed his hair behind his ears and turned back to his computer.

At the end of the day Jared walked slowly past the customer service office, glancing in through the window, and then he left the building. Out on the street in front of the Park Street station, someone was being called a cocksucker.

"Bro," said a young guy to Jared, his right arm hugged to his chest in a blue sling, "do me a favor and knock that guy's teeth out, huh? I can't hit for shit lefty." He raised his sling and then let it thump back against his chest.

"Believe me," said Jared, "it's tempting." He pushed open the station door and went down into the T.

On Wednesday morning Jared got off the T and checked his watch. He was a bit early -- probably Aleesha hadn't arrived at the station yet. He leaned against a subway map to wait for her. He scanned the commuters getting off two trains and then spotted Aleesha going through the turnstyles. He jogged to catch up with her.

"Oh hey Jared," she said shortly.

"Hi," said Jared, and then he added, to soften her mood, "It's Friday."

"Yeah, I'm glad. But it's off to a bad start. My cat had diahreea all over the apartment this morning."

"Sucks," Jared said.

"Tell me about it. And now I'm going to have to walk past that guy who's going to call me any number of things. I know he's just a fucking hobo, and they're just words, but I'm getting sick of it, you know? Someone needs to just knock that guy the hell off his stacker."

"I agree," Jared said.

They got to the top of the stairs and pushed through the doors and found the crosswalk light counting down from two.

"Dammit," Aleesha said.

"We can make it, come on." Jared took her hand and stepped off the curb.

"Not in these shoes!" Aleesha said, pulling back. Jared shrugged and returned to her side. A crowd of exiting commuters filled up the sidewalk around them as cars came past.

The man on the stacker looked up, grumbled "motherfuckers."

Jared looked at Aleesha and then at the man. "Dude, enough, okay?" he said. "We get that you're an angry homeless man. We're sorry, really. But it's fucking enough, okay?"

The homeless man stood up, the first time either of them had seen him standing. He was bent and thin. He pointed at Jared. "Fucker." He pointed at Aleesha. "Bitch." He pointed at the next guy. "Cocksucker." And he pointed down the line of the waiting pedestrians, dishing out insults, many of which were thrown back at him, to no effect.

A gray-haired woman standing beside Jared tsk-tsked. "Every day for two weeks I hear that filth," she said. "I don't like fighting usually but I'd love to see someone punch that man square in the nose, put him in his place."

The man put a greasy hand on the lightpost and began to ease himself down to his stacker. He looked up at Jared. "Tell your bitch her pussy sme--" Whatever else he was going to say was muffled by Jared's fist meeting his mouth and cheek. The man's head reeled back, partly from the punch, partly as a too-late recoil.

"He punched him!"
"Way to go!"
"--about time someone--"

Jared felt a hand clap him on the back, then another. Aleesha was smiling. The homeless man sat back down on his stacker, massaging his stubbly cheek with his hand.
Jared felt a rush of adrenaline. He was a hero! He would ask Aleesha to lunch, ask for a date, for her hand in marriage. He would get a promotion and a raise -- both would be asked for and deserved and given.

"--had it coming!"
"--that guy a medal or something--"

With his left hand Jared touched the knuckles of his right. The homeless man grumbled and let out a snarl, and Jared came alert and looked at him. His eyes were yellow, watery. Blood was running from his noise. He looked at first full of rage, but then his face cleared and even his eyes seemed to get whiter, more alert. The corners of his mouth turned up but his eyebrows bent into a frown -- it was a haunting, final smile. And then the man laughed, a twisted throaty laugh that only Jared could hear, and he lay backward on his stacker, falling backward into the street. A Hyundai's bald tires went over his neck.

Jared's bowels seized. Cars were screeching, slamming together. The thankful hands slid off Jared's back but then returned a moment later, this time not patting but gripping his shoulders, holding him.

"--killed him, killed that man--"
"--didn't have to kill--"
"--pushed him into the--"
"--murderer!"

Aleesha's eyes were wide and betrayed. "Jared," she whispered. The gray-haired lady was beginning to cry. Jared touched his knuckles again and looked with blank eyes at the body that lay across the curb. Napkins and hamburger wrappers blew against his shoes.

She could've been working

Yesterday I was doing check-in for a legal seminar. There was a conflict over when the seminar was supposed to start -- in the course catalogue, the time was 2:00; but in the registration packet, the time was listed as 1:00. The correct time was 2:00.

A woman I was checking in said, "I'd like to register a mild complaint." For a couple reasons, I didn't get too nervous. First, she didn't have an angry look on her face. Second, this check-in is only a once-a-month duty for me and I'm not responsible for the seminar she's about to complain about. And third, being a nonprofit, the organization I work for doesn't seem to care too much when people are unhappy.

"OK," I said. Go for it. Be my guest. Register your complaint.

"I was here for 1:00 because that's what the materials said, and I've had to wait an hour."

"I'm sorry about that," I said.

"Well," she said, "I got some shopping done." Of course--who wouldn't enjoy a free hour? It's the kind of thing I and everyone I know would happily accept. A free hour. Right when I was about to comment on how lovely that was, she added, "But I could've been working."

There are people out there who would ever rather be working? Apparently so, and this woman is one of them. I realize there are people who don't hate their jobs, but still, wouldn't anyone appreciate a free hour, especially on such a nice day as yesterday? I wonder if she noted the confusion on my face as she said this. I hope she did. And I hope she felt ashamed!

Lunch of Champions

There's a guy who sits in the back of the cafeteria every day, just a table away from where I sit. He's mid-to-late 30's, and appears to be in decent shape, but it won't last. I say that because every day I sit there, diagonally behind him and watch as he eats a burger and fries, has a regular Coke and alternately reaches into one of two different bags of chips. This is his daily lunch. Every day, I either watch him waiting in line for his burger, or I catch the tail-end of his meal, when all he has left is half a bag each of Doritos and Cheetos.

I like eating burgers during the summer, or when a menu is too daunting that I need a simple solution. I like some junk food like Cheetos every now and then. And, about once a week, I'll have a can of soda. But all of these things all at once every workday?

I'm a little self-righteous when it comes to nutrition, but I think that most people would understand when I ask, 'What, has this guy not watched the news or read a magazine anytime in the last decade?'

Passion lives here.

I love the Olympics.

Which may surprise you, knowing that you couldn't pay me to sit through the Super Bowl or any other sports event.

I watch the Olympics for two reasons, both of which are, I guess, pretty stereotypical. I watch for the figure skating, and I watch for the boys.

But there's a third reason -- one that may even surpass everyone's favorite studly skier, Jeremy Bloom here. And that is: I love watching people do what they do. No matter what it is, I love seeing people do the one thing that cancels out the whole rest of the world, the thing they know backward and forward and could do in their sleep, the thing they get up in the morning for, the thing they were made to do.

It can happen when an artist picks up a pencil or when a writer sits down at a typewriter. It happens when a speed-skater steps onto the rink -- you can tell that nothing exists for them besides the ice and their skates. These aren't professional athletes, like the ones who play football or baseball or basketball -- they're not doing a job. They're doing what they do. They're unknown for the most part; in interviews they come across as naive. They're just regular people who see skiing/skating/snowboarding as no less vital than breathing or eating. And some of them, well, some of them are pretty darn hot. But that's just a perk.

No Sledding, No Snowsuit

This is one of the sweetest things I've heard in a while:
"We're hoping for 365 days off from school," 9-year-old Reagan Manz told The Associated Press. "We could go sledding the whole time and not get bored."

When I was younger and it had snowed overnight, the first thing my brother and I would do upon waking up was pull on our snowsuits and run outside. Yesterday, as I stayed inside cleaning out a closet, staring hopefully at the pregnant cat, and doing four loads of laundry, I thought about how much has changed. When you're a kid and you wake up and there's snow on the ground, you're going out. There are no questions about that. There are forts to build and defend, and hills to go cascading down with your friends (or Mom, if the hill is really steep).

I wanted to go out and play yesterday, to wrestle with Mike in the snow, or at least to walk around. Even though I still think snow is beautiful, as an adult, it's more of a pain than a joy. Cleaning off the car or being confined to the house when there are things that need to be done. I wonder how many people have children just so they can relive the awe and excitement of things like snowfall, summer, Halloween and Christmas.

Real snow this time.

To follow the Tom-Spot's lead, here also is the view from my window on this snowy Sunday.



I guess this qualifies as a blizzard. At least, that's what they're saying. It's hard to tell a blizzard in the city, where the streets always remain relatively clear and the power never goes out. This can't be compared to the blizzards I remember from home. The Blizzard of '92, for instance, when the power was out for four days, when we were heatless and cooking soup on a camp stove. In the city right now, there's nothing stopping me from taking a stroll to CVS for a pint of ice cream.

Our Mock Blizzard

It's still snowing in Boston Common -- and nowhere else. Now there is enough to drift and ripple in the wind. The sidewalk had to be plowed. I still don't know why this is being done, but it makes me happy. To create a fake snowstorm seems so decadent, so almost arrogant -- such a huge production, one that is taking days and how many dollars, just for the sake of something as trivial as snow. "We cannot wait," shout the snowmakers, "we want snow now!" I love it. It's almost as pompously human as the skyscrapers overlooking the Common. It's our new spectacle, this mock blizzard.

Although now the zamboni, once so adored, circles the Common skating rink, old news, forgotten.

Ken Hopes Makeover Will Win Back Barbie

After 43 years of dating, Barbie and Ken decided that they needed some time apart. They just didn't have any shared interests anymore. Now, two years after the split, Ken is hoping to reconcile. He's hoping that his new leather jacket and more relaxed, hip appearance will win back Barbie. Plus, he's been to the gym. And the hair salon. He feels good, he feels confident; Barbie's not gonna know what hit her.

Although it was fun to read about Ken's makeover, the best part was seeing this montage of the evolution of Ken's style. Ken 2000 looks like he belongs in The Birdcage movie, 1990's Ken looks like a European gigolo, and 1970's Ken looks like he's gonna pimp some bitches, snort some coke and then get on the dance floor to disco like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

I don't know if it's nostalgia speaking, but 1980's Ken is the best catch as far as I'm concerned. He's unassuming, a little vacant, but he seems sincere. Like a big dog that follows you around and loves you unconditionally. Plus, he seems to have avoided the major fashion pitfalls of his era. Barbie should have separated from him as soon as the 90's hit. 1980's Ken is the Ken I know, who waved to Barbie from the passenger seat of her pink corvette (he was down with feminism and always let her drive). Not that the new Ken isn't hot. He's more my type, in fact, but it seems like he's trying too hard.

Good for him though. And good luck.

As if Boston didn't have enough snow already...

They were making it on the Common today. I don't know why. By evening when I was walking home, the whole area from the hill to Charles Street was covered. These cannons, sounding like jet engines, blasted mist that came down as snow. There's always something going on in the city.

What I Love About Comics

There's a huge cross-over going on, involving all of the hundreds of characters in DC's arsenal, organized over the past three years to include and intertwine through nearly every comic book DC publishes, in which 20 years of continuity are rolling back to make the past known to dozens of characters via one tremendous universe-splitting reverse-mindwipe... and one character, observing all this, comments:

"It's all mega-scientifically sound. And quite the show. I wish I had some chocolate."

Capote

I saw Capote this weekend. It's not the kind of movie I'd walk away saying "I loved that!" but it was one of the best and most challenging movies I've seen in a long time. Besides being well-done, and besides Philip Seymour Hoffman's mind-bogglingly good performance, it's a writer's movie, and I'm always a sucker for writer's movies.

The movie tells about the writing of the first "nonfiction novel," a murder story called In Cold Blood. What begins as Capote's intent to write an article about the murderers blossoms into a whole book, one whose research he becomes almost obsessed with. To get information from the killers, he crafts a phony relationship with them, even straight-up lies to them about his intentions. He tricks them into believing that he's going to write something that will redeem their memories, portray them as sympathetic and human, and prevent the world from forever viewing them as monsters. When their time on death row has elapsed and Capote hasn't gotten all he needs to know, he hires them a superstar lawyer who gets their execution stayed again and again, for years, while Capote plays them for information. One of the killers keeps asking the title of the book, and Capote keeps brushing it off by saying he hasn't thought of one yet. When he finally has completed all his research, and the killers' appeals are going all the way to the Supreme Court, he nearly has a nervous breakdown at the idea that their death sentence may be overturned and he won't have a good ending for his book. He used two people in order to turn them into characters in what he knew was going to be one of the biggest books of the twentieth century.

I call the movie challenging because there are serious moral implications in that, aren't there? I don't think Capote ever believed the killers were anything other than monsters; he just flat-out played them so they'd open up to him. Yes, he was upset when they were finally killed, but I would argue that was because, by then, they were his characters, no longer people, and every writer loves his characters.

I also found the movie disturbing because even in the ethically-ambigous parts where Capote came across as almost villainous, I know I would've done the exact same thing. Truman Capote had more talent in a clipped fingernail than I have in my whole body, obviously, but still I understand his desire to get down a good story at all costs, to manipulate reality into a better book. How many times in college did I initate final conversations or confrontations just because I needed an ending for a particular friendship or dating storyline in my journal? Numerous. It's a weird thing, when events become not events but pre-written literature. Capote didn't change what happened -- he didn't change the crime -- but he kept the killers alive for three years longer than they were supposed to be, just so he could get a good ending out of them. Take that, James Frey.

The Slut List

Once a year in my high school, some of the jocks would get together and write up the Slut List: the top ten biggest sluts in the school. It was biased - At least half of the list would be ex-girlfriends whose feelings they were trying to hurt. By the time I was a junior, The Slut List was something everything looked forward to. It would come out sometime after Christmas but before spring break. It was a news item. It was like waiting to hear Oscar nominations. The list would come out and be passed around in classes or by mouth in the halls. Despite the fact that the list was completely biased, we waited for it like commandments from the top of ... whatever mountain Moses met Jesus on. (It's funny because it's not like we needed the list to tell us who got around.) Less than half of the ten girls on the list were actually slutty. The jocks weren't even aware of some of the sluttiest girls, the girls who'd give head for pot, or for a ride home. The girls on the list were girls who dated guys with serious Madonna/whore complexes: as soon as their girlfriend went past second base, the guy was no longer interested because the girl wasn't as nice a girl as he originally thought. So she went on the list. One year, a girl who made the list got a hold of it and brought it to the principal and got a bunch of boys in trouble. Another year, my friend's older sister, who was tough as nails but beautiful in her combat boots and angled-forward haircut, kicked a football player in the balls when he made fun of her for being on the list. (This sparked a winter-long war between the jocks and the punks.) Most girls would be mad, or cry when their name appeared in red chickenscratch on the jagged-edged piece of looseleaf. But then a feminist kind of backlash happened. When I was a junior, one of my friends made it onto the list. I had only known her during that schoolyear, and in the six months since she'd moved there, she'd been with almost ten guys, and fooled around with many more. She knew she deserved to make the list, but when it came out, she was mad. "I'm only number six!" she shrieked in the hallways. She bonded with another girl who didn't make the Top Five either. "Next year," they discussed loudly with each other, "next year I'm going to be at least in the Top Three." "And I want to be Number One!" the other would respond. It was the first time I'd ever personally seen someone take a derogatory thing and turn it around to flaunt it in their attacker's face. The way women have claimed 'cunt' and 'bitch' as compliments in an attempt to take the sting out of it.

400-Pound Butter Cow

As part of their "Enjoy Illinois" campaign, Illinois' Department of Commerce is giving away posters free to apparently anyone who wants them.

This is where you say, "Uh -- what? Illinois?"

That's what I said. But they're nicely retro-looking, no? And even though I have no plans to ever visit Illinois, there are a couple of these that would look cool in my living room.

Click here to see them all.

Click here to get yours free. (I sent for the T-rex one.)

Hyperobservational

Calvino just coughed, and I cleared my throat within a nanosecond of the cough, when there had been pin-drop silence for the ten minutes before. Don't you hate when that happens? A lot of times when I'm talking to someone and they, for instance, touch their nose or brush their forehead, I will automatically do the same thing... and then I have to pretend like I really had to do that too, and I didn't just do it because I was being absent-mindedly hyperobservational.

Individuals Unhappy About Bush's Push to Ban "Human-Animal Hybrids"

The Little Mermaid
Wolfman
Mister Tumnus
Medusa
The Centaur Family
Master Splinter

Tales of a Mattress

I've been spending a lot of time in bed recently.

I will guess that that bit of knowledge leads you to one of two conclusions: that I've been sick, or that I've been gettin' doooown.

Actually, my increased periods of bed-time are due to a heated mattress pad I picked up on sale at Filene's last month. It was an impulse buy, one I regretted walking home from the store with it. It sat in the box unopened for days before I finally put it on. But that's when everything changed. Comfort is a thing rarely demanded, but once experienced, is impossible to live without. I have found that in the middle of a Massachusetts winter, there's nothing quite like slipping into a heated bed.

The mattress pad has increased my reading levels. Where I used to lounge on the computer or in front of the television before bed, I know go eagerly to read in the warmth, an hour or 90 minutes before I plan to sleep. I haven't read this much since high school, and I owe it all to the pad.

It ocurred to me while thinking about this post, that a bed is a funny thing to share. Sleep is not only utilitarian, it's a finicky thing too. People struggle with it, get pissed off about it, medicate themselves into it -- so much can hinder it, including the presence of another person or, dare I say it, pets. Yet we wouldn't have it any other way.

Because the sleeping is more than just the sleeping. It's more about nesting. So much revolves around the bed. If, in the middle of an argument, I or my significant other goes and lays on the bed, that's a signal that the fight is over and that it's time for discussion. Bed is a place to go when I'm sad. It's the place I cross my arms behind my head and stare up at the ceiling and dream and scheme. It's a place to nurse a headache or the flu; a place to make love; a place to journal life in little notebooks.

For young adults fresh out of college, the whole idea of home revolves around the bed. In the dorm, the bed is everything. It's a place for homework, a place to watch movies with friends. It's a kitchen table and a workbench. The bed is your couch and your welcome mat. If I'd had this heated mattress pad in college, I would've been the most popular kid in the dorm.