Things the characters of Mad Men need:
the Surgeon General, Women's Liberation, gun control, Stonewall, Zoloft, integration.

Things I need: nothing. This is a great winter break so far.
Monday: Damn-Big-Midwestern-University High School pizza party, 21st Birthday remix
Tuesday: lunch and Avatar with Dad.
Today: Tea with KnoxGirl, dinner with fellow-Illinoian HaHa!
Tomorrow: Cookie baking with d'Artagnan, tea with StOlafBoy, CHRISTMAS EVE!!!!

I had a great conversation with Roommate J last night about why I have a blog and my past experiences keeping journals.
For most of my life--and this is probably the Catholic thing kicking in--I had the guiltiest relationship to my diaries. Either I felt like I wasn't writing in them enough, or I felt like what I was writing wasn't what I should be writing. For example, I spent five pages on the ins and outs of my first high school winter formal, and one paragraph on more dramatic family events of the same year. Sometimes I would go months without writing and then would try to sum everything up in bullet points in my next entry (that habit hasn't entirely died, it seems).
When I started Hall of the Revels, it was a way to keep my family up to date on my college search and decision process. Since then, it's become more of a place for me to tell stories of noteworthy events that I don't want to forget. And, while I still feel guilty if I don't write for a while, I don't worry about balance since this is a public forum and I decided from the beginning not to put incredibly personal things online.
Example of something I don't want to forget: This morning I set my alarm for 7:20, got up, dressed, and ventured out into the 21 degree morning to sign up for Creative Writing. I had thought that the only class which would fit my schedule would be taught by Edmund White, and although I had resigned myself to taking it (he's awesome, and an amazing teacher, but he had taught me before and I had been looking forward to someone new) I was less enthused than last year when I braved the early morning hours for a chance with Jeffrey Eugenides. I was the 17th person in line (even with signups opening at 9:00) but I didn't really care because Edmund White is often the last to fill up (not as famous with a mainstream audience?) and I assumed I was in the clear. When I got to the front of the line and sat down with the preternaturally friendly woman running the whole thing, I realized two things. One: Joyce Carol Oates was teaching on Thursday as well. Two: her section was not yet closed.
Needless to say, I signed up for her course. I'd been girding my loins all semester in preparation for a class taught by Princeton's First Lady of Intimidation and Critique, and the chance to follow up was too good. Unexpected victories taste especially good on seven hours of sleep and I bounced back to my dorm with contentment.
But first I stopped at Landau's to buy new gloves. Winter outside of Chicago is supposed to be cold, not painful, and I suspect I left my last pair in the bathroom at Wegmans.

P.S. I still keep a handwritten journal. But it's in a super-secret location and contains only personal or ethical quandaries I'm trying to wrap my head around by writing it out. It will likely never see the light of day, and I only update it about once or twice a year, but since I started Hall of the Revels that's all okay with me.

Last night I put on my coolest closed-toed heels, my nicest jeans, and my awesome mesh-and-lace top from Express and my roommates and I went out to buy my first drink in the U.S. Why "in the U.S." you ask? I've actually bought an alcoholic beverage before. Subcontinent and I were in Paris at age 18 and Dad suggested that we go out and buy ourselves drinks, since that's what he did at 18 in Paris. We went to a café on the Île Saint Louis (this café; it wasn't winter and it wasn't late afternoon but it was this beautiful) and opted for beverages we knew to be attractive, since we couldn't guarantee that we'd find beverages we'd like the taste of. We got Kirs. They were very photogenic, but Subcontinent didn't finish hers and I finished mine out of a sense of duty more than anything else. On the way back to the apartment we stopped at a bakery for a palate cleansing pain au chocolat.
The afternoon with Subcontinent was all about location, and the gutsiness we felt entitled to, but the drink wasn't memorable in a positive way and so I was determined to not make the same mistake in America.
I took a survey of my friends from Florida two summers ago, and Neighbor C and Intern D suggested a Cosmopolitan. This seemed perfect because not only is it the girliest drink known to man, it looks fabulous and I knew that if I didn't like it at least I could get a few photo ops out of my eleven bucks. We primped and headed over to Triumph Brewing Company, where we grabbed a table for four at the bar and ordered. HaHa, also 21, got an Irish Coffee, CC and Roommate J got Virgin Cidertinis, and I got my Cosmopolitan. None of us were carded, which was a bit disappointing, but it was probably because we looked so classy. Since we were a little hungry as well, we ordered two Chocolate Souffles (better known as molten chocolate cakes) to split between the four of us. This was the best idea we had all night, since pictures of beautiful friends holding beautiful drinks can only be enhanced by one thing: chocolate on the table.
So how was the drink? It was great. It took me about an hour and a half to drink it all, but at no point did I feel as if I were doing it for some undefined sense of duty. Afterward, I was totally unaffected--my Irish/German heritage is handy for many reasons, not least of which is winning sunburn contests--except for a warmth in my stomach. On second thoughts, I did have extremely vivid dreams last night...but I attribute that to reading a play about Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Byron, and Coleridge doing weird things and then watching fifteen minutes of Brideshead Revisited before going to bed.
It may not have been Paris, but it was all right. :)

Thanksgiving with the Baltimore clan! This year there will be 18 people for dinner, and yet somehow there will probably still be one dessert per person.
I'm thankful for so many things and people this year, and I hope you are too.
Happy Thanksgiving!!!

If you wish, you may address me by my new title, lovingly bestowed by the handy dandy website Make Me Mighty.

How do you get over your first love? Inquiring minds want to know.
Going into detail on such a public forum would be dumb. Suffice it to say this was sparked by a sudden burst of totally platonic--'twas ever thus--contact with the guy in question, as well as by watching Closer for the first time. All in all, Closer is a really excellent and thoroughly miserable movie. Clive Owen and Natalie Portman were so, so good. Jude Law made me want to punch/hug the living daylights out of him. Julia Roberts was Julia Roberts. Before Closer I watched Milk for class. Even though it was my second viewing, I cried.
It's late, but I'm tempted to top that off by watching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Otherwise I'll never get to sleep.

Almost every time I have a moment, it happens while reading the New York Times. For example, when I first found the article that inspired The Play I was sitting reading the Times in a very important upstairs room in my Midwestern house.
Today's moment occurred while reading this article about inmates taking Wesleyan courses, and I can't blame it entirely on The Wire, since David Simon hates academia almost as much as he hates The Man. I don't quite know yet what I want to do with this moment I had, but I'm bookmarking the article pronto and sleeping on it. Maybe in the morning, I'll have an epiphany. In the meantime: dinner! And the great self-defense class Roommate J and I are in. One of the instructors has a great Liverpool accent. Pure awesome.

I had a revelation while watching Hamlet last night. I am to Shakespeare what my Great Aunt M was to minorities: every experience is a positive exception to a negative rule, and, like Great Aunt M, that rule is totally in my own head. Do I like Shakespeare? No. Did I love Hamlet last night? Yes. Was I hanging on every word? Yes. Did I wake up this morning still thinking about it? Yes. How much of that was due to Jude Law's attractiveness? Only about 12%.
The same things happened when I saw Merchant of Venice (yes, the movie version with Jeremy Irons) and read Julius Caesar for my Theater and Sacrifice class.
I think I've figured it out. As of now, I'm swearing off amateur productions of Shakespeare. Maybe that way I'll figure out that I actually do like the guy. A little bit.

Also I get to see Jude Law in Hamlet tonight, for $25 including transportation to NYC. Thank you Princeton.

In honor of Sesame Street's 40th Anniversary: "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon."

I may not have had swine flu two weeks ago, but I sure do have an ear infection now. I never had these things as a kid, so to have one just under a month away from my 21st birthday seems a little ridiculous. But there you are.

In order to distract myself from the itchy-cottony side of my head, here are some wonderful things that have happened over the last few weeks:
1) The principal of my elementary/middle school e-mailed me and asked whether I would be willing to inaugurate a series of letters from alums, telling their stories and updating everyone on their lives.
2) At the Women in Theater Conference in September, I ran into one of the administrators of Residential College (FreshSoph Edition) who asked whether I'd be willing to help her organize some smaller women in theater events for the residential college. I gave her my e-mail and said I'd be happy to. Just before Fall Break, she e-mailed me and asked whether there I could meet with her for lunch to discuss plans for a SWAN (Supporting Women Artists Now) week in March. At lunch, she explained that she did theater in middle school and still loved it and wanted to take advantage of her organizational skills (which are indeed legion) to pull the SWAN Week (usually just a day, but why stop there) together. She said she would pull together lots of different ideas from students on events to include, and then asked me how I would like to be involved. After about twenty minutes of vague talk about wanting to get students who knew and loved theater but who hadn't done any at Princeton involved, I ran out of ideas. She asked me what my favorite part of theater was, and I mentioned playwrighting and The Play. Immediately she crossed off all the other ideas she'd written down for how I might participate and said, "You'll do THAT play." So I get to cast it and direct it for performance as part of this week at the end of March celebrating female artists, which is more than I could ever have hoped for.
3) Fall Break: one week of intense relaxation, productivity, great time with the Aged Ps, and the beginnings of an ear infection. Three out of four isn't bad.

I got back from Fall Break yesterday. Now the real work of the semester begins. But I'm slightly more optimistic than I was this afternoon when I went to pick up my antibacterial ear drops from the pharmacy. There's nothing like being informed that neither of your two health insurances covered ear drops. After calling my dad and getting the OK to spend $100 on the only thing that was going to keep me sane this week, I retreated to the magazine section to await the filling of my prescription. Standing there, reading Cosmo and close to tears (I'm pretending it was the magazine's fault), I realized that things could only get better. And they did. The ear drops were soothing, dinner was yummy and we ran into old neighbors/friends (Athena and her posse--remember them?), a brief run at the gym got me sweaty enough for the best shower of my life, and now I'm sitting here FINALLY updating my blog.

I do not have swine flu! This is what I've been telling everyone for the past week as I sneeze and cough and snuffle my way around a very paranoid Princeton. What I have is a run of the mill cold. Run of the mill for Nom de Plume, who seems to experience colds of unparalleled magnitude. Nonetheless, I have been undeterred from the tasks at hand namely: getting things ready for my fall junior independent work, getting Roommate J hooked on Homicide, and keeping on top of matters related to classes and Literary Magazine and other extracurriculars.
I hesitate to say this, because the fear of jinxes reaches new heights when coupled with good old fashioned Catholic guilt, but this semester I feel like the master of my own fate like never before. Princeton is still slightly overwhelming, but not as scary as it was freshman year or as intimidating as it was last year. Which puts me in a very good place indeed. Mentally. Now if only I could get rid of this non-swine-flu.
Also! My fall junior independent work, or Junior Paper (JP), is about Tales of the City. So all is well with the world.

I'm sitting here on a refreshingly crisp Monday afternoon listening to the Hair soundtrack. My only class of the day was cancelled, which was good news since I was off campus from 6:00 AM to 11:19 PM yesterday. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why am I listening to Hair?
Yes, it's true that Mom, Dad and I went to see the current Broadway production of Hair on the Saturday that they dropped me off. It was probably one of the best experiences I've had on Broadway, and those of you who know me well know what this means since my status as a Musical Theater Person has always been shaky at best. This was a little different from my other Good Theater Experiences*, though, since the play itself had relatively little to do with it (although it was really amazingly good, and more on that in a second).
Forty years ago on the same weekend, Dad got dropped off at Princeton and then drove up to New York with some friends to see Hair. This was the summer of '69, which seems to be coming up a lot recently and we celebrate the 40th anniversary of a lot of things like the landing of Apollo 11, the Stonewall Riots, Woodstock, and (selfishly) the beginning of coeducation at Princeton. More immediately, though, it was a great family moment, and we took a lot of pictures outside the theater before heading in.
The show was great. Sasha Allen, as Dionne, had the kind of voice that actually made me want to be able to sing. (My non-abilities had previously been something I'd resigned myself to.) Will Swenson, who played Berger, was phenomenally good (and annoying, but that was as is should be), but halfway through he hurt his ankle and his understudy had to take over. That was disappointing, but actually very interesting as well since his performance was also quite good, but it was a totally different interpretation. I would have liked to see his first act Berger some time, since that's when the character has the most to do.
The last song, apparently, was infused with hope and Country Joe and the Fish style logic ("How do you expect to stop the war if you can't sing any better than that?") when the musical opened. Now, however, the show has become more somber, benefiting from 20/20 hindsight and the edginess of modern staging. The finale was no exception, and although I tend to like first acts better than second acts of shows, I would happily pay full price to go back and see Hair again just for the last fourteen minutes.
Dad cried. I cried. I totally know where I got it from.
The three of us poured out of the theater with high spirits and proceeded to a bar where we could talk about the performance. If any of you get a chance to go see Hair on Broadway, I can't recommend it enough.

So. Fast forward to September 30th. Mom sends me an e-mail with a New York Times link to an article about the cast of Hair canceling a performance to attend the National Equality March on Washington. About ten seconds later I got on Facebook and noticed that Princeton was sending a bus to the event and signed up, along with Roommate J, who although she doesn't have as much interest in the cause of LGBT rights (see my crazy long post / mission statement from Friday, April 17, 2009), cares about it nonetheless and wanted to participate in a good old Washingtonian rally before she graduated.
And that's what we did yesterday. At 5:15 we woke to our respective alarm clocks, dressed stealthily so as not to wake CC and HaHa, and headed out to the meeting place. It was very cold, and my dumb Midwestern Punctuality Clock (which I love 99% of the time) had us there ten minutes early so we were the second people to arrive and the first to lose feeling in our noses, fingers, and toes from exposure. The bus finally arrived and we scrambled into the warmth. With us were 51 other Princetonians (and some friends of Princetonians) and there were about 20 people driving in other cars. I dozed off and on on the way, when I wasn't eating my bagel, trying to do some reading for class, and keeping my eye out so I could wave at the Baltimore Aquarium as we drove past.
The bus driver dropped us off at Dupont Circle, and we walked to the D.C. headquarters of Marriage Equality New York, where we got lovely, free, orange t-shirts and umbrellas. Then we met up with the people who came in the cars and walked over to our staging area at 15th and I where the student groups were gathering. It was insanely crowded, and we stood there for about an hour before we finally got to begin marching.

Then things got rolling. The route took us past the Old Executive Office Building and the White House where we yelled hello to Michelle Obama ('85). She may or may not have heard us.
It was great to be marching with Princeton behind an enormous Princeton banner, especially when people sitting and watching along the parade route would all of a sudden jump up and yell, "Hey! Hey! I was class of '05!" "Hey! I graduated in '78!" "This is so great, guys, this would never have happened when I was at Princeton." That was nice, and I actually felt more school spirit all day long at the march and rally than I've ever felt on campus. It was also great that there were 70+ of us. We ran into Harvard and there were about four of them. Distance was a factor, sure, but University of Vermont was there with tons of people so...I'll let you draw your own conclusions about The Best Ivy.
Roommate J and I took a mid-afternoon trip to the National Gallery to get food and enjoy air conditioning. There we saw lots of other people with march-related shirts relaxing and basking in the good feeling of the day. After a while we decided to head to the RFK Stadium where the other Princeton people and our bus would be meeting at 6:00. Supposedly. The Princeton people showed up pretty much on time (East Coast on time), but it was 8:15 before the bus actually came. This would have been irritating on any other day, but everyone was still so pumped that we had a great time sitting on the scratchy strip of grass by the huge parking lot and chatting. Even people who didn't know each other before and who hung out in different groups (and at Princeton this means a lot) were nattering away with other people. It was a good feeling.
At the end I took the list I was carrying in the back of my pocket--the one where I had written the names of the people I was marching for: real people like Intern T and fictional people like Tim Bayliss--and used it to do some origami.

I don't really have a summing-up statement of any kind, and I feel that I should, since I'm back in the land of You Must Write Meaningful Conclusions. I'll just thank the cast of Hair, and say that I still stand by everything I wrote on Friday, April 17. Except I'd like to add that that march was the taste of activism I needed. Writing is still my most cherished form of expression, but visibility matters, and the more bodies at these kind of rallies the better. There were upwards of 100,000 people at the Capitol yesterday. Let me know next time you need me, and I'll be there.


*The best theater experiences I've ever had:
The History Boys in London, followed by a three-day long conversation with my parents about it. The conversation is actually still going on, now that I think about it.
Doubt, with Cherry Jones, in Chicago. There are no words to describe what a great play that was. One thing I can put into words, though is that there was NO INTERMISSION AND THAT'S THE WAY IT SHOULD BE.
Broadway runner up:
August: Osage County last January. There's nothing like three hours of what feels like verbal assault and then wishing it could go on for three more hours.

Today I went to a Women in Theater conference. Our Women in Theater professor got us in even though it's been sold out for weeks. The Artistic Director and Director panels were interesting, and the "networking lunch" was fun, even though I spent most of it talking with other Princeton undergrads...but they were ones I had never met before! Emily Mann, artistic director of the McCarter Theater made a very good and point: writing is work. Taking a walk and thinking about your writing is work. So block that time off and don't let anyone bother you. What you're doing during that time is no less important than any other work you'd be doing when it would be inappropriate for someone to interrupt you. Maybe this should have been self-evident, especially for the self-reliant writer I like to think myself, but it was still nice to be told this.
The part of the conference that just knocked the breath out of my lungs, however, was the playwrights panel. This didn't always look like it was going to be the case. It was right after lunch, and it started out slow. I was pretty disappointed, until Danai Gurira started talking about her next project. She talked about the need she felt to write her next play about Zimbabwe, even if that meant that she would no longer be able to return. And then she, and probably half the people in the room, started to tear up. Lisa Loomer, sitting next to her, mentioned something someone had once told her: don't worry about whether there will be an audience for your play, don't worry what people will think of it--whether they'll get angry or be upset or disappointed--"you have to complete your body of work."
I was so touched and inspired, and ran back to my room and made Roommate J listen to a recap of the entire thing. And then I opened the word document of The Play, and looked at it for the first time in months. Time to revisit? I think so.

It smelled a little like fall in the air today: just a hint of tea season--not much, but enough.

My week is almost over (only one class on Thursday, and since I've already described that one...): it must be time for a rundown of my other three classes.
There's one on Romantic poetry. And non-poetry, but mostly poetry. My main reason for taking that class is, well, it fulfills a requirement. But it has the added bonus of being the equivalent to a class Dad almost got thrown out of while he was at Princeton for finding innuendo in every corner. (There is likely a misplaced modifier in that sentence, but I got up at 7:30 this morning, so I'm allowed.)
Then there's queer theory, which looks to be fantastic. I've had the professor before, in my gender studies class last year, and it's a perfect storm of awesome, informative, and challenging.
Finally there's my junior seminar on theater and sacrifice. The professor of this seminar will also serve as the fall semester Junior Paper (lovingly known around here as a JP) adviser. Let's call him Adviser O. While he doesn't have the charming French accent, dimples, and winning fashion sense of my last adviser, he seems friendly and approachable and has already offered those of us in his seminar more say in deciding our topics than those juniors in other seminars. So all that's good.

Update! Former COS did, indeed, call me on his drive home. Through crackling reception he regaled me with tales of the non-melodrama-filled actual west wing, and reassured me that, yes, they are usually pretty smart. Then we chatted about Princeton, Harvard, Paris, my dad the rock star, and other excellent topics. Then he said, "Well, if you have any more questions, you have my number now!"
After hanging up and picking myself up off the floor, I proceeded to go over it all for my roommates.

Whew.

Class this morning was excellent. I only have one class on Thursdays--and none on Fridays--so you'll have to wait until Monday for my next description, but for now let me just say I am enamored with my Women in Theater class. We'll have the opportunity to see shows at Princeton, in town, and in New York, and also we're being sneaked in the back door of a conference on women in theater in the 21st century. The professor is friendly, the other students seem nice too (and they're not all "theater people"), and most importantly it's a seminar class, but not a capital "S" Seminar Class where the "s" stands for "scary."
If all my other classes are like this, I'm golden.

Safely ensconced in my new room, enjoying sound of HaHa and Roommate J typing away on their computers, and eagerly awaiting the start of classes tomorrow, my reverie was (not shattered, but rather) paused upon receipt of the following e-mail:

[Nom de Plume],

Check your voice mail. [Former COS], former White House Chief of Staff, may call you to talk about Leo McGarry on West Wing.

Love,

Dad

Seriously. It is moments like this when I'm glad I have not only a blog, but a sense of what would be a fabulous story that overwhelms at every turn my sheer terror. Of course, he might not call, but if he does I'll have, if not one for the proverbial grandkids, one for the facebook status. And a David Sedaris-sized essay. I love you Dad!

Don't worry, I'm not dead. Yet. Tomorrow I drive off to commence the trek to New Jersey, with Junior Year waiting for me on the other end.
Since I missed August entirely, here are the top five highlights of life since last I wrote:
1) Finishing work a week before I had to leave Paris, and using that time to work on my NaNoWriMo novel from 2007. The one about my French godfathers. It was great to work on it in Paris (sometimes while sitting in the Palais Royal gardens). I finished my second draft and sent it to a handful of well-liked and well-trusted people to read it and give me feedback. We'll see what that means.
2) Returning to Midwestern Town and picking up with my parents' Friday evening tradition of drinks at The Bar, where the bartenders are awesome. One was a horticulture major! Another is giving me advice on wines for my novel! All are very nice, and sometimes give me my Pepsi on the house.
3) The trip to Colorado/San Francisco fever. While on our annual trip west I had my parents read the seven Tales of the City books. We talked a lot about California, the seventies, squeezing the Charmin, AIDS, womanizers, adjusted expectations, and gardening. Nice.
4) Return to Midwestern Town and reunion with high school friends. I saw everyone I wanted to see and got done everything I wanted to do.
5) Labor Day visit to the SoCal branch of the family, which included cousin bonding time, a swim in the ocean, a whiffle ball victory, and last but not least a wonderful family dinner at the Four Seasons.

What am I up to? On a day-to-day basis, not a whole heck of a lot. But I just got back from my daily lunch on the Champ de Mars, where today a brass band was playing "Build Me Up Buttercup," inspiring me to write an entry. The best moments in Paris are those little random ones.
Not so random moments from this past weekend:

Subcontinent's Visit
Subcontinent and her parents were passing through Paris and we grabbed dinner with them Friday and an ice cream lunch and shopping session with them on Saturday after I got off work. It was all kinds of fun, and it reminded me of how much fun we had when we were in Paris together last time two years ago.

The Trip to Bruges
We rented a car (and that was quite a to-do, since the usually amiable if a little slow National was this time just slooooow and then they ran out of cars even though we had a reservation and then we went over to Avis and then...but you know what, we got one in the end so I'm not telling that whole story) and drove up to Bruges on Sunday with Mom driving and me navigating. We decided that Lille is a black hole, since we got lost around there on the way up and on the way back for unrelated reasons, neither of which were our fault. Finally we made it and our hotel was clean and pretty and, most importantly, had an ENORMOUS bathtub. If you've ever talked to me about bathtubs (not exactly the most scintillating topic, but oh well), you'll know that I love them, and put up with showers because I like to be clean. But tubs I really love and since, nowadays, I only get to enjoy a nice soak when I'm at home in Damn-Big-Midwestern-University Town, I was very happy to find one waiting for me in Bruges.
We spent the afternoon wandering around town. We took a boat ride on the canals and the river (which, for comparison's sake, cost the same amount as a ride on the Ferris wheel in Paris but while the Ferris wheel ride lasts five minutes, this lasted half an hour and included a spoken tour). We visited the Gruuthuse. We had drinks at the 400 beers bar that Dad insisted we go to on his behalf. For dinner, we ate the best mussels I have ever had in my life. I'm never eating mussels again, because these were so good.

Dear God.
After dinner we headed back to the hotel and made an early night of it, since we were both so exhausted from our rental car fiasco. The next day, though, we got a lot in. We climbed the bell tower, made famous by the movie In Bruges, saw many churches and medieval/Renaissance houses and even touched a relic said to contain a bit of Jesus Christ's blood. Yes. We also ate ice cream, had tea, and saw the béguinage before starting to drive home at three. We were supposed to get the car back my nine and we thought that would give us an hour and a half safety cushion. We ended up getting the car in at 8:20, thanks to the Lille Black Hole of Doom, which on this end manifested itself through framers on tractors spread out across the auto route, protesting something or other. We had to take surface roads for several miles, and we had to find these roads ourselves, since no one has thought to set up a detour.
We made it back to the apartment tired, but happy on the whole with our quick trip into Belgium.

Bastille Day
The day following our return was Bastille Day, so neither of us had to work and we had the chance to relax a bit. Relaxation in this case meant going to see Public Enemies, which brings me to three things:
1) Johnny Depp can actually exist in a movie without making me crack up and/or roll my eyes. Well done Johnny. You actually freaked me out a little bit.
2) Chicago films SO WELL. Love it.
3) Baby Face Nelson. Was he this nuts in real life? In both this movie and in O Brother, Where Art Thou he was portrayed as nutso and trigger-happy. Compared to his antics, all the other random violence in the film looked positively rational.
After the movie we relaxed some more, ate dinner, and then went for a walk by the Seine to watch the fireworks.

All right. Happy 4th everyone! I'm kind of ambivalent about this holiday as a whole, mostly because when you're a kid in the summer it's just another day of vacation, punctuated by things like watermelon and turning your skin blue with crepe paper. Then, supposedly, you become an adult and you start working and the 4th of July means a day off!
Well, last year that was a no-go because the senior citizens liked to see their plays, even on holidays. This year it's a no-go because, yes, I am in France. I'll get the 14th off, though, which is even better since that will be a full day off and this would have been just a half day off since I only work 10-2 on Saturdays anyway.
So, in order to try and get myself in a patriotic mood (which I have attained once, from about October 2008 to February 2009), I present you with a list.

Ten Things I Love About the United States:
1) The fact that I can have this blog at all. And that on it, if I so desired, I could complain all the live long day about the government, my friends, neighbors, other countries, the weather, etc. without getting shut down.
2) The fact that we elected Obama. Good job, us. The man's administration is far from perfect, but I'm still a huge fan.
3) Five Guys, Steak 'n' Shake, In 'n' Out Burger. You see where I'm going with this. I.e. a delicious way to find your way to an early death.
4) Entertainment. I talk enough about TV shows, movies, and books on here without going into more detail. Still, this is one of my quality of life things and watching horribly depressing and sometimes violent shows on HBO makes me proud to be an American.
5) Princeton, Damn Big Midwestern University Town, Iowa City, and (so the on-campus signs informed us upon our visit) Baltimore: College towns.
6) Chicago, L.A., New York: the big three.
7) The Midwest. Seriously. I love having grown up there (albeit growing up in a college town is a must; see #5), and not just because it gives me the coveted ability to bash it and defend it at the same time. More and more I believe in the cringingly trite saying, "In the Midwest it's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." I hate that phrase--hate it, hate it, hate it--because it makes us sound like yokels. But, I also have found it to be true. As true as any generalization that broad can be.
8) A history of trying to correct mistakes. See #2.
9) The melting pot.
10) The thing I love most about the United States is that that is where the people I love (with a handful of exceptions) live. So I'm glad that I live in the United States, but (Mom, Dad, Subcontinent, HarvardGirl, Ex-Neighbors, Roommate J, CC, HaHa, CornellBoy, StOlafBoy, BrandeisGirl, Interns T & N, Flatmate M, Neighbor C, and all the rest of you) I'm glad I live with you more.

I have five rather hefty writing projects up in the air at once, I just realized. How did this happen? I used to be a one-story-at-a-time kind of girl. But now...NOW I have: 1) The Play revisions (which I've been working on for five years)
2) The U.N. Show (a fairly recent development,all told)
3) The detective reboot (which, oh my word, I've been working on in one form or another for like eight years)
4) The Forster pastiche (which I've been working on for four years and is really just for me)
5) The NaNoWriMo tale of the French godfathers (which I've been working on for just over a year and a half and which I hope to make a lot of headway on this summer)
Therefore, I have come to the realization that there's one thing I really, really, really hate about life after high school: lack of free time. And trust me, I make more free time for myself than my roommates, Subcontinent, HarvardGirl, practically everyone I know. The fact remains, though, that when that carefully cultivated and shaped free time rolls around, all I want to do is watch stuff on my computer, or go for a jog. Using my brain is a no-go. But then there's this vicious cycle, because when I start watching The West Wing, or Six Feet Under, or The Wire, or Homicide, or (more recently; man, I love Alan Ball) True Blood, all I can think about is how great it would be to work on the U.N. show in a meaningful way so that it could be that good.

This is all a precursor to going home and making pasta and watching Pride & Prejudice before I go to bed, by the way. Being a grownup isn't that great.

Today is your lucky day. I am about to make you privy to very rare and valuable information. Namely:

Nom de Plume's Surefire Way to Get the Bus to Stop Right in Front of You: Three Easy Steps
1) Standing on the curb. Your position on the curb relative to other people doesn't matter, but you have to be in the front (see step three).
2) Be the first person to signal for the bus. Or, if someone else signals before you can get to it, signal again forcefully and confidently. Channel the kid in class who knew they knew the answer, but wasn't the one waving their hand around thinking "Pick me pick me pick me!"
3) Dress attractively. This pretty much cinches the deal. Work attire works fine; we're not necessarily talking clubbing attire here, just something that makes you look good and feel powerful. It also helps to be twenty years younger than everyone else at the bus stop, if you can manage that.
If you can pull all this off, I guarantee the bus will stop in front of you. Now go forth and enjoy those good seats without having to run around people to get them.

After two weeks of work I've finished the project that I was hired to do over the course of six weeks. Last summer this most certainly is not. But, never fear, I've still got plenty to do digitizing old study guides. It's still a lot of JSTOR searching but not a whole lot of pressure to make tons of progress.
In other news, tonight is Dad's last night in Paris. *sob* We're celebrating/mourning by going out to a restaurant Crazy Mr. F(Ph?) recommended last time. Yum!

"What's working at the American Library like?" you way ask. Well, I'm here to tell you, as I sit here waiting for the lunch hour to roll around and giving myself a break from the database searching that makes up 95% of my day.
Ooops. I guess I spilled the beans. Yes, 95% of the work I do here at the American Library is of questionable legality. Essentially I am the conduit they use to assess scholarly articles through the many services Princeton subscribes to, which I can access through a proxy server. Now, I like searching JSTOR, ProjectMuse, ProQuest, and Wilson OmniFile as much as the next English nerd, but eight hours of it is a lot. Thus: this break I'm giving myself now.
When not ripping the University off, I make bibliographies of the books the Library has collected for the exam. Ah, the exam. I haven't explained about the exam.
The exam is the CAPES (which stands for Certificat d'Aptitude au Professorat de l'Enseignement du Second Degré), which all French people who want to be English teachers for middle school or above must take. My job is to get together study materials for three of the six new subjects on the test (of the twelve subjects, six are reused from the previous year and six are brand new). My subjects are: 1) Lolita: the Nabokov novel and the Kubrick film, 2) Endgame by Samuel Beckett, 3) The South after the Civil War from Reconstruction to re-segregation (1865-1896). Princetern F, my colleague, is in charge of Emily Dickinson, The Federalist Papers, and Roderick Ransom by Tobias Smollett.
I got to pick my topics first because I arrived a week before she did. I hope she never finds out. ;)
Apparently people studying for this exam come from all over France to see what we put together for them in the library, so it's a really interesting and important job; it's just too bad it can be so mind-numbingly dull.
My boss, the reference librarian, is really nice, and about a foot shorter than me. This was the case with BossLady last summer, too. It's really difficult when your boss is that much shorter than you, since whenever you walk up to them with a question it's as if you're imposing on them. Which is not the case at all.
Of the other people who work in the library (minus Princetern F who arrived yesterday and of whom I have yet to form an opinion), the other reference librarian scares me, even though I suspect he is a really nice old French man, and the circulation desk woman is awesome. She thought I was a librarian from the states on my first day, and I felt sad when I had to correct her and say, no, I'm just a rising Junior(!). We have a nice, smiling "Good morning!" and "See you tomorrow!" relationship.
As the summer progresses, I'll have more insight into whether I prefer this kind of work (not that hard, slow paced, straightforward, a little boring) to the work I did last summer (lots of little tasks which were fairly easy but had the potential to be confusing, sharp learning curve on the way things were run, overworked and underpaid, great experiences) or not.
For now let me just say: I'm never working somewhere this beautiful again. It is ridiculously depressing to sit inside for eight hours a day when I could be wandering around Paris.

All right. This will have no value at all except to me, the aged Ps, and those among you who have been lucky enough to watch Homicide in its entirety. But what I have here is a publication house that requires no content and no editing so here goes: the Tim Bayliss haircut post.

The Many Haircuts of the Soulful Tim Bayliss

"Fair-Haired Choir Boy," Seasons 1-3

For three seasons of the Barry Levinson-produced NBC series Homicide, Detective Timothy Bayliss's nineties heartthrob haircut was a wonder to behold. Even when it became apparent that his heartthrob status was confined to the haircut (even his undoubted good looks marked him as "handsome" rather than "hot"), its shape helped Bayliss maintain the "fair-haired choir boy" image his partner Frank Pembleton imagines him to have created for himself. The image is maintained even after Bayliss is seen holding a suspect's head to a steam pipe, cruising the Block in Baltimore, and having sex in a coffin with the girl one of his colleagues likes. (Not to mention calling the colonel a "butthead," but in my opinion that reinforces the choirboy image rather than detracts from it.)
In any case, the haircut Tim Bayliss has in any given season reflects his state of mind, his inner turmoil or lack thereof, the condition of his soul. For the first three seasons, despite the defeat of the unsolved Adena Watson case (which would haunt Bayliss from the second episode to the end of the series), Bayliss was a young and optimistic detective, perky and clearly in awe of the master detective Frank Pembleton. That his hair more closely resembled that of one of the child actors in Honey I Shrunk the Kids than the no-nonsense cuts of the other detectives in the squad room only underlines my point. It may have been the nineties, but everyone else managed.


Young Man About Town, Season Four
Without Beard

Bayliss began the fourth season with a new, shorter haircut. He attempts to remain unaffected by the horrors he sees every day. (He also spends the majority of the fourth season with back trouble, which carries over into subsequent seasons. on of his colleagues theorizes that it's all in his head; I couldn't agree more.) He looks handsome and carefree and, above all, mature.

With Beard

Before the season is three quarters of the way done, Bayliss grows a beard to go with his new do. With it, he looks more tired and definitely older. His attempts to keep his job at arm's length have failed and he has decided to make do with what he has, which at this point seems to be a bottomless capacity for internalizing others' pain.
The beard also takes away any remaining hints of the fresh-faced-ness from his rookie days. There is the sense that he knows what he's doing on the job.
He also knows what he's doing while flirting with Kay Howard's sister at a weddings, whereas with Emma Zoole in the coffin it was clear that he was clueless.

Back to the Bare Facts, Season Five
Buzzcut

One of the more shocking moments of the fifth season comes when Bayliss, now clean shaven and sporting a buzzcut, tells Frank about the childhood abuse he suffered at the hands of his uncle. Frank reaches out to touch Tim and he pulls away, ending their partnership (albeit, thankfully, temporarily). Buzzcut Bayliss is not warm, he is not self-pitying, he is not approachable. Buzzcut Bayliss is making one last attempt to jettison everything that might hurt. Ditching the extra inches of hair apparently goes hand-in-hand with ditching excess emotions.

Little Boy Haircut

Like most of Bayliss's preventative emotional forays into self-reliance, this one doesn't work very well. His hair grows out without much attention paid to it, giving him the rumpled look of a little boy who has just gotten out of bed. Backtracking, he reconnects with Frank. Backtracking even further, he goes to confront his abusive uncle only to find him an old and sick man, diminished. Bayliss brings him food and helps him out, despite everything. Frank doesn't understand, but whoever chose Tim's hair for those episodes clearly did.

Seasoned Hand Part One, Season Six

Along with the addition of a pair of glasses, the sixth season marks the return of Bayliss's confident fourth season haircut, with modifications. Instead of well-defined edges, this version of the haircut hangs more softly. Sixth Season Bayliss is doing pretty well. He and Frank's partnership is relatively solid, he begins to successfully navigate his sexuality, and he strikes up a friendship with fellow detective Laura Ballard (whose hair is as steady and reliable and pretty as she is). Things are good.
That is, until Bayliss gets shot and Frank quits, which brings us to:

Seasoned Hand Part Two, Season Seven
Season Seven Bayliss takes a back seat for the most part, as does his hair until the last episode when, slightly un-groomed and definitely in need of a haircut, Bayliss hunts down a serial murderer of women and kills him. Bayliss's hair at this point most closely resembles his first season haircut, a little long in the back, but he is so far from being a heartthrob that the haircut serves to harshly illuminate the ways the character's work in Homicide has changed him.

The Count of Monte Cristo, The Movie
In the first sight we get of Bayliss in Homicide" The Movie, he is standing in a creek wearing fishing gear. The setting is idyllic but even if we had not seen the last episode of the seventh season, we would only have to take one look at his hair to see all is not well. Hair shaggier than ever, plus the return of the season four Angst Beard (this time flecked with grey) signal that this is not a happy Bayliss. And sure enough, the movie proves us right. His final rooftop confrontation with Frank made me cry for half an hour, so I won't go over it again here, but his hair just makes it worse. By which I mean it makes it better.



So. What at first seem arbitrary and sometimes downright unfortunate decisions on the part of the folks in hair and makeup do in fact point us down a character's mental path. Relatively few of the other characters go through as many haircuts (in the series, Kay Howard and John Munch have some coloring done, Mike Kellerman loses his poufy initial haircut in favor of something harder, and Falsone attempts to rectify the grease mullet he is first saddled with), indicating that, as if this weren't obvious enough, Bayliss has as least as many life changes as he has haircuts and only about half of them are good.

I have survived not one, not two, but three days on the job. For the most part I search databases all day long from ten until seven. But I get Sunday and Monday off, and a half day on Saturday, so life is good. I also eat my lunch at the base of the Eiffel Tower.
I feel like taking photos every day I turn the corner and see it looming over the library, but the camera kind of ruins the French Worker aesthetic I've got going on here. I've got dress pants and everything and I feel really awesome on the bus going to and from work, and the other day an American lady stopped me and asked me for directions. Sadly, physically I don't resemble the French much (only Americans ask me for directions because French people know I'm not French), so instead of suave & bossy & chic I'm going for clean & competent & chic. It suits me better anyway. ;)

In approximately four hours I start my summer internship at the American Library. My nervousness has reached epic proportions, and I have been dressed and ready for two hours. Since my boss doesn't work Tuesday mornings I'm headed in at 3:30. The library closes at 7:00, so my first day will likely be very short, which is fine by me. Last summer in Florida BossLady gave me the grand tour and then let me go, and I bet the same will happen at the library today.
I'm very curious to see what my work environment will be like, how long my hours will be, and what exactly I'll be doing. All I know is that I'll have Sundays and Mondays off, when the library is closed. While I don't expect to be worked as hard as last summer, I'm marginally more nervous because I'm still not 100% sure what language I'll speak at work. English and French are both fine, of course, but it's the principle of the thing. :)

In other news, our family trip to the south of France last week was great. It was really nice to get back to Breil, since the last time we left I was convinced I would never get the chance to go back again.
Our Parisian apartment is definitely my favorite. It's very small (especially compared to the one two summers ago that could fit me, Subcontinent, Mom, Dad, and the Grand Ps with no one sleeping on the floor), but its decorations are really cool and both the bed and the couch are comfortable so when Mom and I trade off no one will be uncomfortable. Also the living room is the biggest room and the kitchen is the smallest, so everything is as it should be.

More on work and the joys of Paris later!

I made it home. After one day of five-hour driving I stopped and spent the night at Intern N's place at Seton Hill. It was great to see him again and to meet his roommates. We went on a walk, went out to dinner, and watched The Reader (NOT relaxation fare) and then the next day I left for eight more hours of driving pleasure. I discovered that, yes, all these years my parents have been completely correct to listen to NPR in the car while driving, as painful at it might be to the person in the back seat who just wants to doze and listen to music. I started out the drive with playlists I had made, which were great and it was nice to sing along for a while, but then I started to get tired and switched to the massive amounts of NPR, PRI, etc. podcasts I had squirreled away on my iPod for just this eventuality. These got me all the way home with energy to spare and I joined Subcontinent and her parents for dinner with friends of theirs. Steak and naan and chocolate ice cream are the perfect antidotes to tiredness, although I think I still went to bed at nine that night.
Today I had lunch and caught up with BrandeisGirl, and this evening I'm having tea with...oh no. How could I have never given this guy a blog name better than StOlafBoy?!? Oh well. StOlafBoy, erstwhile Roxanne to my Cyrano.

When the parents get back from China, we're going to finish watching Homicide. From what I've heard of the end of the movie (which wrapped up lose ends from the end of season seven, which is where we will pick up), Homicide will continue my pattern of falling in love with heartbreaking shows. Oh well. It's character building. Sort of like the sudden car repairs I paid for right before my big trip home. Well, I'm here now, and alive, so methinks it's time for some reading. Adios.

(Apparently today is Blog Like Someone Else Day. Given that I have an excruciating amount of studying to do, this seemed like a pretty good idea. It's Friday night, guys. Anyway, I have chosen to blog as one of the characters on the U.N. Show Dad and I are writing. The characterizations are still pretty rough, but this character has a stronger voice than most so far, so I present you with something of a preview: Lanh Nguyen, the ambassador from Vietnam.)

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Today was my second day of work. It is strange to sit in the same chair my predecessor occupied for so many years, mostly because he was such an impressive diplomat and a kind man.
Also because he was a much larger man than I am, and the seat cushion is molded to the shape of his ass.
I finally got to see Paul yesterday. I ran him down in the hall. He doesn't look much different from when I last saw him in Rome (at the peace conference, where he vomited all over my shoes) but he spoke much more softly. I wonder if that is a product of working here. I know it can't be a product of living in New York.
Seeing him made me think of France again. I want to sit in a café with Véronique again, like we did on our honeymoon. When we were at the Sorbonne, Paul and I didn't have enough money to make a habit of going to cafés, so when we did we would buy a coffee and make it last for hours. (Fortunately, the French don't mind that. They don't move at American pace. The French live and let live, too, but I don't feel like writing about that now.)
Paul is the one who introduced me to Véronique. That happened in Paris too. We were standing in front of the Cameroonian embassy where Paul was working in those days, and this girl walked by and Paul called out to her. They had taken the same philosophy class, and they had disagreed about The Republic (Véronique was in favor of installing a Philosopher-King and Paul wanted the book burned), so Paul wanted her to hear a new argument he had come up with. The three of us went to a café and Véronique insisted on paying, which, even in France, was surprising. Of course we made an interesting enough picture already: a woman, a African man, and a Vietnamese man sitting by the Seine. It had the makings of a good joke.
The French ambassador should know where to go in the city. I should set up a meeting with him, soon.

I am alive--never fear--and slogging through reading period. I shall probably come more fully to life in a couple weeks. In the meantime, enjoy this New York Times article about Colm Toíbín, one of my professors this past semester: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03toibin-t.html?ref=books

Today is the Day of Silence. In the words of their website (http://dayofsilence.org/content/getinformation_faq.html), “The Day of Silence is a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Students from middle school to college take some form of a vow of silence in an effort to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior. The event is designed to illustrate the silencing effect of this bullying and harassment on LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT.”
I have participated in the Day of Silence every year since the beginning of high school, and today I woke up to my alarm at 7:45 and woke up Roommate J and the visiting prefrosh, all the while talking, and headed over to McCarter to hear Ban Ki-moon speak. And then I came back to the dorm and opened the New York Times online as saw this article (http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/who-are-you-calling-gay/) and realized what day it was.
It’s too late for me to stop talking, but I felt last year that that tactic---especially in a college setting where it’s remarkably easy to not say a thing all day long without having to explain why or what it is you’re standing for---left a lot to be desired. I wrote about it for my final essay in my Nonviolence in Theory and Practice, concluding that, yes, silent protest is an effective tactic. For me, however, (a detail I left out of the article) the level of non-speech required for the Day of Silence is not that much above my regular daily dose so as to feel all that effective. I support the Day of Silence wholeheartedly, especially in high schools where silence on a Friday actually means something, but my own participation in it has become irrelevant.

My primary form of expression is fiction writing. That’s been the case since fifth grade, at least. If it seems that here are a lot of gay characters in my stories and plays (and soon, hopefully, TV shows) that’s because there are a lot of gay characters in my stories and plays. Well spotted. There are, as far as I can tell, a couple of reasons for this. The first is my conscious decision to use my fiction to, among other things, educate. By having gay characters that are, along with my straight characters, realistic and non-stereotypic I hope to normalize a sexuality that may not be familiar to all of my readers. My second reason is that when I write I draw on the people I know, which also explains all my French characters, my Catholic characters, my Asian characters, and my midwestern characters. Also the fact that I recently wrote a story about Mabel the switchboard operator in Walden, Colorado. She and her maybe-platonic-maybe-more affair with Westy, the owner of the cabin, is a large part of family lore.
What really interested me about the intersection of the Day of Silence and the New York Times article---which, for those of you who haven’t read it, addresses the tendency, particularly among middle and high schoolers, to use words like “gay” or “queer” or, most offensively “fag” in disparaging ways, even when they are describing someone or something who is not, in fact, gay---is the focus on speech and its effects. The Day of Silence draws attention to the inability of some to speak about themselves openly. The Times article talks about people whose ignorance takes on a harmful verbal dimension. In both cases, your decision to speak out or remain silent can literally make a life or death difference to someone else.
I, and many like-minded people I know, try to operate under the assumption that we never know everything about the people who are listening to us. Envision making a racist joke in racially mixed company. Who in their right mind would do that? Now imagine making the same joke in a racially homogeneous group. With the proper disclaimers (“I’m not a racist, but…” “Listen to this really funny joke! It’s pretty horrible, though…”) you might go though with it. (Or you might not. I don’t pretend to know that about you). I remember when I was in seventh grade, my mom told me a story about a situation like this while we were sitting in the car waiting for my piano lesson to start. A biracial woman who mostly took after her Caucasian parent was at a party like the second one I described. When someone made the joke, she went up to them and explained why she was offended and why anyone could have been.
The point is that, even more than race (and then, obviously, not all the time as that story attests) it is impossible to know everything about a person’s sexuality at one glance. The same goes for their politics or their medical history or their religious affiliation. Sure there are ways to outwardly manifest those things (wearing a gay pride pin or an Obama button or a Star of David, for instance), but for the most part these are things that are not as clear as a person’s ethnicity or gender (and even that can be an area of uncertainty). The point is that you never know who’s listening. When you use “gay” as a synonym for stupid (or tell Mormon joke, or a Catholic joke) you have no way of telling who among your listeners is inwardly cringing, or retreating a little farther within themselves.
The point is, there’s no need for silence, but there is a need to think before you speak. It is completely absurd, to me, that an entire group of people is reviled for a fact of life over which they have no control and shouldn’t have to change even if they could.
So yes, I am a proud ally of the LGBT community and I intend to write more and do more and, most importantly, say more.

And now it is time for my bike ride. The weather is lovely. Have an excellent weekend!

Here is my annual Books-and-Plays-I-Have-Read-Since-Last-April List. I am not counting the fifty play scripts I read for work this summer, not because they weren't worth reading, but because I neglected to write down all their names. Enjoy!

1) The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
2) The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
3) Life Work by Donald Hall
4) The Annals by Tacitus
5) Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
6) The History Boys by Alan Bennett
7) The Golden Ass by Apuleius
8) Lord John and the Hand of Devils by Diana Gabaldon
9) Madame Bovary's Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature by David P. Barash and Nanelle R. Barash
10) On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
11) The Last Novel by David Markson
12) An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge
13) Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
14) More Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
15) Further Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
16) Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
17) The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes by Marcel Theroux
18) On Beauty by Zadie Smith
19) Looking For Class: Days and Nights at Oxford and Cambridge by Bruce Feiler
20) New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
21) Mass Appeal by Bill C. Davis
22) Eclipse by Stepheie Meyer
23) Justine by Lawrence Durrell
24) Babycakes by Armistead Maupin
25) When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
26) Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell
27) Significant Others by Armistead Maupin
28) Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
29) Sure of You by Armistead Maupin
30) Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin
31) The Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
32) The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
33) The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard
34) If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
35) The Goat by Edward Albee
36) Mauritius by Theresa Rebeck
37) August: Osage County by Tracey Letts
38) How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
39) I am My Own Wife by Doug Wright
40) The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
41) The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
42) Caprice and Rondo by Dorothy Dunnett
43) Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
44) Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
45) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
46) Am I That Name? by Denise Riley
47) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
48) Persuasion by Jane Austen
49) Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
50) Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
51) Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
52) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
53) Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
54) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
55) The Boat by Nam Le
56) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
57) The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler
58) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
59) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
60) The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
61) The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
62) The Altar of the Dead by Henry James
63) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
64) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
65) Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
66) The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
67) The Road by Cormac McCarthy
68) Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi
69) Gemini by Dorothy Dunnett
70) My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid
71) Finbar's Hotel by Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, Jennifer Johnson, Joseph O'Connor, and Colm Toíbín
72) Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman
73) Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
74) The Alienist by Caleb Carr
75) Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
76) The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
77) A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
78) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
79) Mothers & Sons by Colm Toíbín
80) A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
81) Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
82) Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
83) MW by Osamu Tezuka
84) The Táin by Ciarán Carson
85) Directions to Servants by Jonathan Swift
86) A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
87) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
88) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
89) De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
90) Canterbury Tales by Geoffry Chaucer
91) Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
92) Riders to the Sea by J.M. Synge
93) Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge
94) Playboy of the Western World by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle
95) Company by Samuel Beckett
96) Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett
97) The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
98) Selected Poems by W.B. Yeats
99) Dubliners by James Joyce
100) The Kid by Dan Savage
101) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
102) The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
103) Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
104) Fishing the Sloe-Black River by Colum McCann
105) At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien

105. Not bad, not bad. That's up from 75 last year, and is easily explained by double the reading time over the summer, and double the reading-intensive English classes while at Princeton.

Recurrences include SEVEN Armistead Maupins, THREE Jonathan Swifts, TWO Roddy Doyle, TWO Colm Toíbíns, TWO J.M. Synges, TWO Samuel Becketts, FOUR Jamaica Kincaids, TWO Dorothy Dunnetts, TWO Lawrence Durrells, TWO Hanif Kureishis, THREE Oscar Wildes, and (oh the shame) THREE Stephenie Meyers (see immediately below).

Of the 105, FOUR I would never read again, ELEVEN I had read before, and FOUR were truly guilty pleasure reading.

Top Five of the Year:
Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh

So there it is. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

I'm making a thematic reading list for my six-week stay in Paris this summer. I'm looking forward to sitting in the Palais Royal or the Tuileries reading and writing in the sun.
The books I can think of off the top of my head (some of which I have read before and some of which I have yet to read) that would be particularly good to read in Paris this summer are:
-The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
-The Flaneur by Edmund White
-Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
-Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
-The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
-The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
-related: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
-Another Country by James Baldwin
-A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
-All that Alexandre Dumas I've been meaning to read/reread but haven't (Queen Margot, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière)
-Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
-Perfume by Patrick Süskind
-I also want to read some Colette, and maybe even some stuff by her crazy husband. Any suggestions?
-I found this book called France: A Traveler's Literary Companion. I may try to get my hands on it, or I may not, preferring instead to be my own literary companion.
-My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle by Marcel Pagnol. Not the best for Paris, but the 'rents were flirting with the idea of going to the south before I have to start work, and that would be perfect.
-??? (<-- This is where you, dear readers, come in. If you have any suggestions, shoot me an e-mail.)

I saw this somewhere on facebook (honestly, what isn't on facebook, somewhere?) and thought I'd go ahead and do it. I love lists, almost as much as I love chocolate chip cookies, root beer, and swearing at my computer (all of which, as of today, Ash Wednesday, I will have given up one Lent or another--although I've given up swearing across the board, not just at my computer. That's still the only time I savor it, though.)

Fifteen Books (Novels AND Plays) That Have Changed My Life (in vague order, but not much of one)
1) The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
This made me want to write. I wrote, in fact, a one-hundred page handwritten adaptation of The Three Musketeers that I slaved over in fifth grade. It's set in junior high school, in a girl's school, in New York. It's really bad. I've improved since then.
2) Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
This is the first Joan Aiken book I ever read (if I'm honest, Mom read it to me) and only later did I realize that it's the first in a series of excellently dark and vaguely Victorian novels for children. The series got even better after I realized that it's set in an alternate British universe. You know, the one where King Arthur existed in the Renaissance.
3) Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken
Second in the series. I was frustrated by the ending, and decided to write Joan Aiken. She replied, and we struck up a correspondence in which she told me that my favorite character, Dido Twite, was based on a character in Dickens. She challenged me to figure out which one. I sent her a few guesses, none of which were right. Unfortunately, she died before I guessed correctly. Black Hearts in Battersea is also notable for containing my first fictional character crush, Simon, who shows up in London an aspiring art student and who over the course of the series is discovered to be the Duke of Battersea. He likes Dido, but she wants to lead her own life and turns his marriage proposal down. I always had mixed feelings about that. Sort of like in Little Women with Jo and Laurie. But that book's not on this list, and the stuff with Dido and Simon only happened later in the series, so I seem to be straying from the point...
4) Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Apparently I have an affinity for French swashbucklers. And unrequited love. In high school, I saw too much of myself in Cyrano.
5) The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman
I've already written about Frederick Garland on this blog (see Thursday, May 8, 2008), but for now I'll repeat that Philip Pullman showed me that books can mean different things and different times of your life, and that they can break your heart. Also, I dread a day when I stop finding Jim Taylor awesome and hilarious. Such a good secondary character.
6) Angels in America by Tony Kushner
It turns out hilarity and sadness can exist together, that bombastic staging doesn't have to overwhelm social commentary, and that a mixture of religion, history, porn, humor, and death will always be award-winning.
7) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Shy girl gets strong silent (ugly but not) type, despite the homicidal woman in the attic who makes noises in the night. Enough said.
Also, I like to pretend the St. John section doesn't exist, and it surprises me every time I re-read.
8) The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett
This six-book series has one of the most fascinating heroes I have ever encountered. For the entire first novel, it is unclear whether he is the hero of the villain. That feeling recurs over the course of the next five books, but you can't help thinking everything will work out in the end. It does. Sorry to spoil. :)
Bonus points for the Spaniard disguise in book one, the rooftop chase in book two, the introduction of the new improved Phillipa in book three, the love pilgrims in book four, the hall of the revels (inspiration!) scene in book five, and the scene between Lymond, Phillipa, Marthe, and Jerott in book six. And of course the happy ending, because the way Dorothy Dunnett apparently loves to kill people off, I was unsure what form the happiness would take.
9) The Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian
For every awkward pun or misspeak Jack Aubrey made, every time Stephen got excited about cataloguing specimens or about Diana or was just cutthroat about offing other spies, or every time Killick said "soused hog's face," my heart glowed a little brighter. Twenty one books of early nineteenth century swashbuckling, romancing, spying, and traveling the globe. Between this and the Lymond Chronicles, I am completely ruined for other historical fiction. Seriously.
10) The Untouchable by John Banville
Thinly veiled story of the Cambridge spies + Banville's signature style of an old guy looking meanderingly back over his life + gratuitous scenes in Ireland = one of the only books I've read once and decided that it was one of the best I've read.
11) The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
I liked Philip Marlowe so much that, in middle school and high school, I wrote a series of my own fifties detective stories. The stories themselves were nothing special, but the three main characters are still my favorite characters that I have ever created. Right now my plan is to write my senior creative thesis on them, probably in novel form. We'll see. Either way, thank you Raymond Chandler.
12) The Once and Future King by T.H. White
T.H. White is responsible for kicking off my Arthurian craze (which still continues after a fashion and which never, ever, included an affection for crystals or Glastonbury; it was always mostly a matter of being in love with Sir Gawain and finding Arthur's family dynamics fascinating). The craze was later fueled by other authors of varying skill, but White remains one of the best. Why else would I like King Pellinore so much? Or Monty Python, for that matter? There's really no other explanation. (Except the Spanish Inquisition sketch. Priceless.)
13) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The first Dickens I read in my quest to find Dido Twite (didn't find her). Herbert Pocket cracked me up, Miss Havisham freaked me out, Pip annoyed me, I wanted to give Joe a hug and some "wittles," and Estella was incomprehensible. It was awesome. Why else would I have kept coming back to Dickens for more.
14) Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard is the one who put the idea into my head that to be a writer it is necessary to know a little bit about everything.
15) This is cheating a bit, but: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, The Book of Salt by Monique Truong, and Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
What can I say. Apparently I love Parisians and visitors to Paris drinking, screwing, and angsting. (Maybe it's a matter of me living vicariously?) Does it get any better? I don't think so.

TWO AND A HALF WEEKS LATER, I'm awake and alert. Oh boy. But seriously, that's the kind of semester it's been. That's the kind of year it's been.
This is no complaint, actually. All the things taking up my time are things I love (well, besides math homework, that is).
Why am I posting now, you may ask? Why do I suddenly have time? Because I'm avoiding choosing my paper topic for my Colm Tóibín class. There's one paper worth 60% of the grade, and on the first day we were handed a sheet with thirty-seven possible paper topics, to which he added two just off the top of his head. I initially narrowed that list of thirty-nine down to fourteen, and then a bit more so now it stands at eight. Huzzah! By the end of tonight, though, I shall have to have it down to one because I foolishly agreed to present my idea first (i.e. on Monday) so as to not have to present a full-fledged paper, just a plan.
And this weekend I'm going to NYC, since Mom is visiting (yay!).
Thus: the paper topic choosing imperative and subsequent procrastination. Because it's not breathing down my neck per se. Yet.

Aside from the Dublin class (I call it that, but it really encompasses Ireland and ALL THAT IT STANDS FOR), Creative Writing with Jeffrey Eugenides is the best Creative Writing has ever been here (and that's saying a lot). It is my two-hour oasis in the middle of the week, where everyone is Midwestern-friendly and clever and offers amazing criticism. Plus his poodle came one time, so that was nice.

Religion in Film just hit its stride. Of course, we're talking about Hitchcock and Freud, which could be its own class really. I've decided I really like Jung, though, at least from the two-page cursory reading I did for class tomorrow. I'm also convinced that Frank Pembleton (or at least, let's face it, one of the Homicide writers) reads Jung. Example:
Pembleton: Listen, let me tell you something. We're all guilty of something, cruelty, or greed, or, or going 65 in a 55 mile per hour zone. But you know what? You wanna think about yourself as the fair-haired choir boy? You go ahead.
Bayliss: All right. Okay, so what are you saying, huh?
Pembleton: I'm saying you got a darkness, you, Tim Bayliss, you got a darkness inside of you. You gotta know the darker, uglier sides of yourself. You gotta recognize them, so that they're not constantly sneaking up on you. You gotta love them, 'cause they're part of you, because along with your virtues, they make you who you are. Virtue isn't virtue unless it slams up against vice. So consequently, your virtue's not real virtue. Until it's been tested. . . tempted.

English 205 the 14th through the 18th century is fine. It's the only class I am forced to take to become and English major, so I'm swallowing my daily dose of Chaucer like a champ. We just got to Thomas Wyatt, though, so things are looking up.

Which brings me to astrophysics (seriously.) This is a class called The Universe and lovingly nicknamed Stars for Stoners. (In reality, it seems to be filled mostly with jocks--did they miss the geology memo?) I love lectures. I love observation nights when we go to the campus telescope and look at points of interest and have them explained to them. I'll love going to the Planetarium in New York next week. The homework (as previously stated) I DO NOT LOVE. Ah well. C'est la vie, and after this the only math I'll have to do is taxes.


The roommates are all doing well, and tomorrow Roommate J and I are going out with (Ex)SoccerRoommate, which is always fun. The big news, of course, is that I recently learned I'll be working in Paris this summer! I've been given an internship after applying through a great French program here. I'm not sure about the dates (I'll likely find out next Friday when I have my meeting with the organizer), but I am very, very excited and Mom is already shopping online for apartments to rent.