tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84276791695635711492024-03-19T17:37:18.487-04:00Big Island RachelNotes from a Hawaii girl in Brooklyn, Big Island to Long Island. Updates Sundays and Wednesdays. Weekly book reviews over at Big Island Rachel's Books.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger255125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-78595483470520165972014-12-07T16:41:00.003-05:002014-12-07T16:41:55.172-05:00Christmas cardsToday I wrote out all my Christmas cards. Expect them in the mail forthwith. We didn't have theme-appropriate stamps, though, so please excuse the American flags. Also, I might have accidentally bought gay-themed cards, but I can't decide if I should apologize for that or not.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr9X5l2-Bf7KENPo_Z_Ok1RWCJctYauHXlNGlls8KCm31_IZfFl3auf5a-op0PTg2YW9CDeBN4Yg7-p5J9hP3p_3NmI7u60qRzyhVF5q5SNjGnk9whDrbcgLBp0p1k35Rl1zG1A7Hpmn0/s1600/Torch-Song-Trilogy-perfor-008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr9X5l2-Bf7KENPo_Z_Ok1RWCJctYauHXlNGlls8KCm31_IZfFl3auf5a-op0PTg2YW9CDeBN4Yg7-p5J9hP3p_3NmI7u60qRzyhVF5q5SNjGnk9whDrbcgLBp0p1k35Rl1zG1A7Hpmn0/s1600/Torch-Song-Trilogy-perfor-008.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NOT SORRY!</td></tr>
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Thus far, I've received one Christmas card. It's from my dentist, who, to be fair, I see more often than many of my family members. (Hawaii really needs to fluoridate its water supply, it's ridiculous how weak my teeth are.) Cards are usually the only decorations I have, at least since my tiny circuit-board Christmas tree fried its connection points and stopped blinking.<br />
<br />
I did decorate a tree last year with my sister. She has all of our childhood ornaments and a fake tree with the lights already built in, which has got to be the greatest advancement in Christmas technology since pre-paid postage boxes.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaREXuIamZw-DZIrcvC-Ex1onOP4uUd5MJwnqy6VdHRdFqJwBspt3QtZCW2cI1uA-yX9dw37w_l2zLvRmzeTPXaqIsgSLGlg9i8Kg8r52Vnp7z2db1D4LIY6PbJ-IVTaxGrR_joBsSGQg/s1600/prepaid+boxes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaREXuIamZw-DZIrcvC-Ex1onOP4uUd5MJwnqy6VdHRdFqJwBspt3QtZCW2cI1uA-yX9dw37w_l2zLvRmzeTPXaqIsgSLGlg9i8Kg8r52Vnp7z2db1D4LIY6PbJ-IVTaxGrR_joBsSGQg/s1600/prepaid+boxes.jpg" height="246" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">STUFF!</td></tr>
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Here are the ornaments. You can see the perfect crescent where my sister was sitting while she unwrapped them. <br />
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The tree came out beautifully. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Human for scale.</td></tr>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-36611901364624522032014-12-03T16:25:00.001-05:002014-12-03T16:25:47.711-05:00Communism and The SimpsonsI'm a little bummed out now that winter has started and I don't have any more Honolulu posts to make. Patton Oswalt recommends <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pattonoswalt/posts/10152609163672655" target="_blank">reading Russian literature</a> during the months of unrelenting night and cold, because artful despair makes regular despair feel kind of heroic.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, I've got my supply of depressing winter reads on hand. Coming back from the laundry last weekend, I went through a box on a stoop that was full of parenting books and books about life under Communism in Eastern Europe. Right now I'm reading "We Survived Communism and Even Laughed," by Slavenka Drakulic. I haven't gotten to the part where we laugh yet, but I DID have a moment of<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/22/what-we-get-wrong-about-millennials-living-at-home/" target="_blank"> eery familiarity</a> when the author wrote about how difficult it is for the young to get jobs and afford to move out of their parents' apartments in communist Yugoslavia.<br />
<br />
I'm also newly appreciative of the United States Postal Service for NOT opening my mail and charging me exorbitant fees for crappy phone service (like, more than 50% of your yearly salary in fees).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">[patriotism intensifies]</td></tr>
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I'll also be using the winter to catch up on "The Simpsons," which is now online in its entirety. When the website first went live, I couldn't actually watch any of the episodes. The sheer volume of entertainment at my fingertips overwhelmed me and I had to look away. My sister says that's called "decision fatigue," like when we went to Don Quijote to get groceries and there were so many snack options in the food court outside that we almost couldn't bring ourselves to buy lunch once we got inside. (I had more to say about my Honolulu trip after all.)<br />
<br />
I got over it, of course. I'm not watching the series in any kind of systematic way--the BF and I did that last year with the DVDs--but I'm meandering through the early seasons and watching my favorites. Here are a few of them, in no particular order:<br />
<br />
"Last Exit to Springfield." The nuclear plant workers go on strike. I laugh at Homer chanting, "Where's my burrito!" I cry at Lisa singing, "They have the plant, we have the power."<br />
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"Scenes from a Class Struggle in Springfield." The best Marge episode ever. She gets a Chanel suit at an outlet mall and it gets her invited to the country club, where her desire to belong to a higher social class clashes against her economic reality. <br />
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"Lisa the Iconoclast." Ah, Lisa. My first television role model (after Catwoman). Springfield celebrates its bicentennial and Lisa discovers its beloved founder was actually a murderous asshole. Lisa-centric episodes tend to be more bittersweet than laugh-out-loud funny, but this episode brought us "embiggens," which is a perfectly cromulent word.<br />
<br />
"Homer the Great." Who robs canefish of their sight? Who rigs every Oscar night? WE DO! And Patrick Stewart says "swollen ass." What's not to love?<br />
<br />
"Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy." It's been a tired cliche for feminists to rant about Barbie for forty years, but damned if "The Simpsons" don't find something new to say about the topic.<br />
<br />
"Bart After Dark." 1996 marked the beginning of the burlesque resurgence because "The Simpsons" did an episode about it. Prove me wrong.<br />
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"Marge vs. the Monorail." This show had great music.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-58043397985190028812014-11-27T10:32:00.002-05:002014-11-27T10:35:09.811-05:00People who help people, and the rest of usThe Irish Rose in Waikiki is surprisingly hard to find at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday. I've only ever gone there on my way home from other bars on payday, when it's very dark, very late, and it seems like a very good idea to eat too many Louisiana hot links with spicy mayonnaise.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7IlYmqHwXBVBW-f0sm_B0o9RsqpjjOBwlPDpp7lB6itBB4pC4chTC61gQY-aWSXrcTYl28twm61Aj5FVotcxGsOlSMXlY53jNocRInNL4IM7hlHiO4m2QmJzBXYS7MdVHuOApoeCstWY/s1600/irish+rose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7IlYmqHwXBVBW-f0sm_B0o9RsqpjjOBwlPDpp7lB6itBB4pC4chTC61gQY-aWSXrcTYl28twm61Aj5FVotcxGsOlSMXlY53jNocRInNL4IM7hlHiO4m2QmJzBXYS7MdVHuOApoeCstWY/s1600/irish+rose.jpg" height="142" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Yeah, I'll eat the street meat from here." ~ Rachel making good decisions.</td></tr>
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Mum seems to have been secretly drinking there--with MY friends!--in the years since I left, because like a homing pigeon, she walked us right up to the stairs and into the only bar in Honolulu where it's still acceptable to smoke. The blackout curtains were drawn to keep away the sunlight and the shame, and we were the only women in the place. It was Veterans Day, so Mum bought a round of drinks for a biker gang that came up to the bar after one of their bikes broke down on the street outside.<br />
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Dean mixed us his famous bloody marys, which we felt okay ordering because there weren't that many people there on Tuesday morning and he had time to mix specialty cocktails for us. He even brought out his special stash of super-spicy olives, because it was my birthday week and he expresses his affection through alcohol.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt4zugkalNW5wUhIbRAUKHOlMRr9P9kgsACyMTykvrPUuyZYmYvbHWYezOwslbKVsKzF-OaRjni50eBWyyZ66Wu-9gTSQ60ppbLugOHFCJOVYPN5o0AqU4u-BrTwF-6VADlyMtz1bUJGs/s1600/catwithbirdfull.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt4zugkalNW5wUhIbRAUKHOlMRr9P9kgsACyMTykvrPUuyZYmYvbHWYezOwslbKVsKzF-OaRjni50eBWyyZ66Wu-9gTSQ60ppbLugOHFCJOVYPN5o0AqU4u-BrTwF-6VADlyMtz1bUJGs/s1600/catwithbirdfull.jpg" height="320" width="317" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For you, my friend.</td></tr>
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Dean and I had worked together at <i>Honolulu Weekly, </i>back when newspapers were still a thing. The <i>Weekly </i>is gone now, as is the magazine I wrote for when I moved to New York. So now, I work at a college and he works in a bar. There's an odd symmetry to our career choices. We're catching the youth at both ends.<br />
<br />
He's also going to open a bookstore, the natural
habitat of the misanthrope. We came up down a lot of possible names for
the store for him, each funnier to us than the last, on account of the
bloody marys. We laughed for an embarrassingly long time about "Hard
Backs and Soft Covers"--or maybe it was "Hard Covers and Soft Backs." We also liked "Book 'Em, Deano," "Books on Beretania," and "Hana Hou Books," though I think he'd stopped listening to us by then. <br />
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<br />
I get along with Dean because he's one of the very few friends in my life who, like me, doesn't much like other people. I'm not saying we don't have friends. Dean actually has a very wide social circle, with many people who love him enough to come down to his workplace and tell stories about their worst, sleaziest acts ever done in theme parks. He'll even officiate at your wedding, if you're dying to have the officiant read the most violently misogynistic parts of the Bible during the ceremony.<br />
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I myself am moderately popular, especially in Honolulu, where the slower pace of life made it easier to nurture human relationships. But while I like individual people, humanity as a whole kind of freaks me out. I dread meeting new people, and even having people I know over to my home makes me nervous. What if they want to use my toilet? What if they want to spend the night? What if they never leave? <br />
<br />
So I was surprised, on my whirlwind of visits to Honolulu friends and colleagues, to learn how many of my loved ones have careers in health care and social services. Sunday night, I ran into the old president of my college hiking club, who teaches high school science. Monday, we spent several hours visiting with a good friend who does social work in an oncology unit (though she's taking time off for her new baby). Tuesday night, after spending a few hours day-drinking with Dean and then wandering through Ala Moana Mall trying to make bad shopping decisions, we had dinner with a high school friend who's studying nursing. Friday night I met up with college friends, one in nursing and the other busy preserving watersheds with an environmental non-profit. (Mum and my sister had no idea how close they came to being dragged out into the wilderness for a guided hike with him. I love hiking.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnmU2G674hHI49QWBDdfbnf73hJTCrfv-cd3RqPPwg-Q0BP_zUe_VNLGydWU3eN-lvz1kfhLcgfasc05z9KtMEXA6wlOyffZ3RcvuwE1Jhutn1XaWIXBQ37VfIIBKPmf3dDjEicYmaPw4/s1600/haiku+stairs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnmU2G674hHI49QWBDdfbnf73hJTCrfv-cd3RqPPwg-Q0BP_zUe_VNLGydWU3eN-lvz1kfhLcgfasc05z9KtMEXA6wlOyffZ3RcvuwE1Jhutn1XaWIXBQ37VfIIBKPmf3dDjEicYmaPw4/s1600/haiku+stairs.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My feet hurt, I'm tired, I'm getting sunburned, can we take a cab?</td></tr>
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The BF preserves neighborhoods, my brother-in-law is a drug abuse counselor, a college friend teaches high school English, another high school friend is a psychologist for troubled teenagers--all these people in my life are <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2014/11/hawaii-fashion-month-hawaii.html" target="_blank">Pinky Thompsons</a>, and I can't take a cab home without wondering if I should have the driver drop me off a block away so no one will know where I live.<br />
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And then we have Dean, who has alienated every employee at Disneyworld, though they should have known better than to put "Sit On My Face" on the karaoke machine. There's just something about his black and shriveled heart that calls out to my own and reminds me that it's okay to be a private, anti-social asshole.<br />
<br />
On Saturday, Mum, my sister and I were drinking at the airport bar, surrounded by our luggage. The vacation was over and it was time to bring back souvenirs and Liliha Bakery coco puffs to our respective partners. My sister looked at our heap o' crap and worried aloud that no one would be able to sit at the table next to ours.<br />
<br />
"Fuck em," sneered the person on her way back to New York City. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-24185358033493107482014-11-23T19:17:00.000-05:002014-11-23T19:17:20.451-05:00Hawaii Fashion Month, the Hawaii International Film Festival, and why you should probably retire in Florida insteadThere's a consensus in New York City that living anywhere else in the world is for suckers. This applies to people from Shanghai, Port-au-Prince, Lagos, Paris, and Pittsburgh--but not, apparently, to me. Hawaii seems to be the one place on Earth that is better than NYC, because New Yorkers never fail to asked me with envy and disbelief what I'm doing <i>here </i>when I could be <i>there</i>.<br />
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My reasons for being in New York aren't any different from the other immigrants'. We all come for the excitement, the culture, the jobs, and--if you're in a certain demographic--the opportunity to live on Sesame Street. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixWZaUMns81oxzNlkV5yGc6e1IxbdpfVrNlrtTCdi8R2hd05U8kFjF1W9WWxfHMIpMy9c4sYamj9WKewIep2C958g8plClkGEh9hcbi-eyWwC03rN6IaVEbmYPS8QKZLqWYjp1BzYRsYI/s1600/Sesamestreet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixWZaUMns81oxzNlkV5yGc6e1IxbdpfVrNlrtTCdi8R2hd05U8kFjF1W9WWxfHMIpMy9c4sYamj9WKewIep2C958g8plClkGEh9hcbi-eyWwC03rN6IaVEbmYPS8QKZLqWYjp1BzYRsYI/s1600/Sesamestreet.jpg" height="245" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunday in the Slope.</td></tr>
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The difference is that all those other people weren't born in an area that exists in popular imagination as an allegory of Christian Heaven. Hawaii is the place you go to reward yourself for working hard and earning lots of money. A journey there, for a vacation but even more so for a permanent move, takes on these Puritan overtones of morality and virtue: you have labored, and may therefore be blessed with ease, warmth, light, and a complete lack of snakes as far as the eye can see.<br />
<br />
(Actually, I read in the Hawaiian Airlines magazine that Hawaii does in fact have a tiny little snake, the Brahminy blind snake, that lives underground, is very shy, and is frequently mistaken for an earthworm. All Brahminy blind snakes in Hawaii are female clones of each other, as they reproduce entirely through parthenogenesis.)<br />
<br />
I think people are surprised that I would leave Hawaii because Hawaii is seen as an end unto itself. Why would I go backward through life, choosing to toil in a sinful world, when an accident of birth had already achieved the ultimate goal for me?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieyYEarU5Dl6ugX9a6QR_hr_YeRGVVUXOvyGcypb1VjB12S43bn0nnepTMEXvDPGRmCzLR_UgVOhdTCdUtinHdJxGJamM_9Jt1xP9NM83vX33s_PLTWVQrApH9guk3CNYSCJ20VK2uzw0/s1600/hell+panel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieyYEarU5Dl6ugX9a6QR_hr_YeRGVVUXOvyGcypb1VjB12S43bn0nnepTMEXvDPGRmCzLR_UgVOhdTCdUtinHdJxGJamM_9Jt1xP9NM83vX33s_PLTWVQrApH9guk3CNYSCJ20VK2uzw0/s1600/hell+panel.jpg" height="250" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Somehow, this is also Sunday in the Slope. </td></tr>
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Which is pretty insulting, if you think about it, because it erases the experiences of an entire state of about a million people who are struggling to pay their bills and educate their children, just like in any of the other 49 states. But that's how colonialism works, by dehumanizing the colonized and stripping away their unique identities to replace them with the colonizers' ideas of what they are. In Hawaii's case, the stripping was very thorough. Most of the images you see of Hawaii don't even have people in them. It's just landscapes, or resort scenes with smiling hotel employees.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_pLGR6-xAbpQmsxCTPN2nW_PDn51-T0pcqxTHnuTrivGi1Xysi2IkwAHnJ_w52KXLfXEeTYicCCRj_iUVJbwUYlYmoQ1rzP1uV5mZP05MvmvNT7GExZW6cCTiI9Zokb9nq9gVcy9o804/s1600/aulani+resort.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_pLGR6-xAbpQmsxCTPN2nW_PDn51-T0pcqxTHnuTrivGi1Xysi2IkwAHnJ_w52KXLfXEeTYicCCRj_iUVJbwUYlYmoQ1rzP1uV5mZP05MvmvNT7GExZW6cCTiI9Zokb9nq9gVcy9o804/s1600/aulani+resort.jpg" height="215" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">OPPRESSOR!</td></tr>
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This kind of talk, by the way, is the reason my mum, my sister, and I could wake up before six every day of our vacation in Honolulu and still not leave the hotel room until eleven. We're all intellectuals and prodigious chatterers, and what with all of our reviewing of the previous days' cultural activities and the rehashing of Hawaiian Airlines magazine articles, there was a lot to dissect each morning.<br />
<br />
Our weekend was full of fodder for discussion. On Saturday evening, we attended a runway show at Hawaii's first ever <a href="http://hawaiifashionmonth.com/" target="_blank">Fashion Month</a>, and on Sunday we attended the closing film of the 34th Annual <a href="http://www.hiff.org/" target="_blank">Hawaii International Film Festival</a>.<br />
<br />
The runway shows were sponsored by Hawaiian Airlines and featured designers from the MAMo organization (<a href="http://www.maoliartsmonth.org/" target="_blank">Maoli Arts Month</a>). We didn't reserve any seats, but we showed up to the Convention Center a little early to cruise the floor and try on clothing at the exhibits, and this being Hawaii, there were plenty of empty seats and gift bags left for us latecomers. We saw a couple lines of wearable fashion.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFHlSkMvC4n9SsobJrA_V9gWPrgu0HSU6vKi2t9qPfuhmSn7WoRWQxc4NnSObaOapDjNOvjOhuOKi-3JuFS7xoU8J0olhlemou1E5Cr8SunE6RqGro3lA0zptP2ThgQ-7SO6xIkzGo_N4/s1600/wahine+toa+design.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFHlSkMvC4n9SsobJrA_V9gWPrgu0HSU6vKi2t9qPfuhmSn7WoRWQxc4NnSObaOapDjNOvjOhuOKi-3JuFS7xoU8J0olhlemou1E5Cr8SunE6RqGro3lA0zptP2ThgQ-7SO6xIkzGo_N4/s1600/wahine+toa+design.jpg" height="320" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here I am wearing some of it, a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/wahinetoadesigns" target="_blank">Wahine Toa</a> dress.</td></tr>
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There was also a show of all the Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant uniforms from the company's founding until today. I love to see fashion put into historical context like that, especially if it means we can all remember just how nuts the seventies were:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHJDQPvbwVl-65BWyGN91YBWdy7Xl_fUh1WE8c6S_ysxHTIIMIiPuSrSZTwPra4nojlYg46nmyLu4afdlc4xUP2zD9mJtAJEgwl3DEhLBqD82QYNp5D_rpo68EbFkc7DBXn8ATjTakz2Q/s1600/Hawaiian.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHJDQPvbwVl-65BWyGN91YBWdy7Xl_fUh1WE8c6S_ysxHTIIMIiPuSrSZTwPra4nojlYg46nmyLu4afdlc4xUP2zD9mJtAJEgwl3DEhLBqD82QYNp5D_rpo68EbFkc7DBXn8ATjTakz2Q/s1600/Hawaiian.JPG" height="320" width="236" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"This is my <i>professional </i>headband."</td></tr>
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A uniquely Hawaiian element to the runway show was the exhibit of native Maoli tattoos. My sister told me that the designs of these tattoos aren't chosen by the subject, but are received by the tattoo artist through trance and prayer. The tattoos are created by dipping sharpened bone tools into ink and pounding the ink into the skin with little wooden hammers. The rhythmic sound made in this process is what gave tattooing its name, <i>ta-tau. </i>A recording of <i>ta-tau </i>was the only soundtrack for the tattoo show, which made for a very powerful viewing experience.<br />
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Mum said afterwards that the Maoli tattoos just "felt different" from the tattoos you see on any Brooklyn street corner. "They have <i>mana</i>. You can tell."<br />
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Of course, we all agreed that no fashion show would be complete without a viewing of the ridiculously <i>un</i>-wearable. Fortunately, Marques Marzan had us covered. His line looked like costumes for a dystopian sci-fi movie where the remnants of humanity struggle for survival and love on the high seas.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixoIHiPpNZ00NPlOhV7ypRMf8HV-5o9lHu2j4ZTdQQ7j4wpuKeNDjicQFJXR_NXm3-Gh4fG4BAUpmInu85GSBnt0BZFVv4FmBKpMb70occ2VfYL5TZOxCBKtQdL_e4PVydnCDK9spC_jM/s1600/mamo+art.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixoIHiPpNZ00NPlOhV7ypRMf8HV-5o9lHu2j4ZTdQQ7j4wpuKeNDjicQFJXR_NXm3-Gh4fG4BAUpmInu85GSBnt0BZFVv4FmBKpMb70occ2VfYL5TZOxCBKtQdL_e4PVydnCDK9spC_jM/s1600/mamo+art.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I think I just described the plot of "Waterworld."</td></tr>
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So Saturday was a very successful vacation day at the first ever Hawaii Fashion Month, with art, fashion, culture, history, and even a taste of the future. I would recommend this event on Trip Advisor (anything to balance out the nonsensical reviews by people who don't get that part of Hawaii's charm is that it's laid back and a little shabby, and why are you complaining about the bad carpets in a two-star hotel anyway, what did you expect for less than $100 a night?).<br />
<br />
Sunday gave us even more to think about. We met up with a newcomer to the islands, someone who had been there only a couple of months and didn't know anything about Hawaii before he moved there except the television show "Hawaii 5.0." We took him to dinner at our favorite Honolulu Chinatown restaurant, the Golden Palace, for authentic Chinese food, and then to the closing film of the Hawaii International Film Festival, for authentic Hawaiian cinema.<br />
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The film we saw was a documentary called "<a href="http://program.hiff.org/films/detail/visions_in_the_dark_the_life_of_pinky_t_2014" target="_blank">Visions in the Dark: The Life of Pinky Thompson.</a>" Again, we'd bought our tickets kind of late, but when we showed up there were empty seats waiting for us in the reserved section. None of us knew anything about Pinky Thompson, or the director Ty Sanga, who admitted to finishing it on Hawaiian time, just two nights prior. In fact, the only reason we'd picked that film over say, the short animation showcase, was because it was being screened in the historic <a href="http://www.hawaiitheatre.com/" target="_blank">Hawaii Theater</a>. Hawaii Theater is a movie palace from 1922 that completed a massive restoration project in 2004. I was fortunate enough to see the first HIFF movie screened there after the completion ("Brokeback Mountain," if you're wondering), though in Hawaii fashion, the sound system still needed a lot of work.<br />
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I'm pleased to say the sound system is working great now, and it's still as beautiful inside as ever. There's even a lovely sculpture for my sister and me to giggle at in an immature fashion.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg330FrP_0B-Lb9YdyDdr42R8cYBVaAiV3-INciZ4zw1Jh8X3ZAcvHJGXfbULrvJ4WMXy46TND2QNPeeGX0qG2DP_HvZhUI-QoHVEfG2Usp0Xe4JsA5CalIHAtboAwm9XMARLDii0H4e6o/s1600/sculpture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg330FrP_0B-Lb9YdyDdr42R8cYBVaAiV3-INciZ4zw1Jh8X3ZAcvHJGXfbULrvJ4WMXy46TND2QNPeeGX0qG2DP_HvZhUI-QoHVEfG2Usp0Xe4JsA5CalIHAtboAwm9XMARLDii0H4e6o/s1600/sculpture.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In our defense, C'MON!</td></tr>
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The movie was lovely as well, a moving and well-told story about the life of one remarkable individual whose quiet, tireless efforts made the <a href="http://kapalama.ksbe.edu/archives/pvsa/primary%202/79%20kanahele/kanahele.htm" target="_blank">Hawaiian Renaissance</a> possible. <a href="http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2001/Dec/27/ln/ln02a.html" target="_blank">Myron "Pinky" Thompson</a> was a World War II veteran and a social worker who dedicated his life to helping the Native Hawaiian people at a time when they were in danger of losing all memory of the past and all hope for the future. He was instrumental in creating the government and private systems of support necessary for the Hawaiians to regain their cultural heritage, as well as providing emotional and spiritual support to the younger generation of Hawaiians who fought for civil rights and to revive traditional practices. <br />
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I'd never heard of Pinky Thompson before this, though I'm familiar with his son, Nainoa Thompson, through his work with the <a href="http://www.hokulea.com/" target="_blank">Polynesian Voyaging Society</a>. Nor was I aware of the events and upheavals in the Hawaiian community between the annexation of the nation of Hawaii to the United States in 1898 and the launch of the Hokule'a voyaging canoe in 1976.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL_GNErOCGtL1d0DZXaoZuYJUNbTl7BZBE7Okv1Zz7cHjM1nfUduXYDiTvOlKv5Mj47LXQnGOcWjxXRSAda921UNTJ6xV_LZUP1sY7ZU8ZKz-XVtpjzPAJ3b0lIOxFZaYzg11EtER6jEA/s1600/hokulea+herb+kane.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL_GNErOCGtL1d0DZXaoZuYJUNbTl7BZBE7Okv1Zz7cHjM1nfUduXYDiTvOlKv5Mj47LXQnGOcWjxXRSAda921UNTJ6xV_LZUP1sY7ZU8ZKz-XVtpjzPAJ3b0lIOxFZaYzg11EtER6jEA/s1600/hokulea+herb+kane.jpeg" height="227" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"What an oddly specific date range." - Herb Kane, artist</td></tr>
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I didn't realize how much damage had been done, and how much work was needed by people like Pinky, just to get the Hawaiian Renaissance off the ground. He wasn't doing the exciting work--he drafted bills while his son and their friends were sailing the Pacific--but his story of community activism and justice hard-won is just as thrilling.<br />
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I don't know what our newcomer guest got from "Visions in the Dark." There were very few landscapes in it, after all, and unless you read your Hawaiian Airlines magazine on the way over, you probably wouldn't understand any of the references to the Hokule'a, the Queen Liliuokalani Trust, or Kamehameha Schools. As a local, I think this is a perfect film for newcomers, as it exposes viewers to the rich, nuanced lives of their new community members.<br />
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However, it's a sad fact that many people who fulfill their dreams of moving to Hawaii actually hate it there. They struggle with the same problems immigrants in Hawaii have always struggled with: high cost of living, low employment opportunities, loneliness and a sense of great physical distance from the familiar. All of these problems can be managed, but only if they can engage with the existing community, which many refuse to do.<br />
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Trained as they are to think of Hawaii only as paradisiacal landscapes, they have no framework for dealing with the actual people, most of whom are not smiling resort employees. Instead of making an effort to assimilate and appreciate Hawaii for the wonderful, complex place that it is, they struggle harder and harder to make Hawaii into the place they think it should be. You can tell who these people are, because they end up at town hall meetings complaining about the lack of sidewalks in a town that's built on a goddamn hillside with literally no room for sidewalks.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLe20vcbXthQhZeLlBF6mqy8LkNsDuUgROaTMRFSAUePrND5GkKVgP7LZ54RNbkfeOfH0-z-xYsmKCcUMePbFqvfV9j4LmWoV2yBIdx9zjVpPm3H5RK7k5w9UdN0_LNYP2kAvT-MzAFOE/s1600/holualoa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLe20vcbXthQhZeLlBF6mqy8LkNsDuUgROaTMRFSAUePrND5GkKVgP7LZ54RNbkfeOfH0-z-xYsmKCcUMePbFqvfV9j4LmWoV2yBIdx9zjVpPm3H5RK7k5w9UdN0_LNYP2kAvT-MzAFOE/s1600/holualoa.jpg" height="138" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shall we fill in the cliff on the left, or chip away at the cliff to the right?</td></tr>
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My sister doesn't understand why people retire and move to places like Hawaii or Florida. "You spend all these years building a life in your community, and then when you're old you just up and leave it?" I find the concept somewhat baffling myself. If you dream of living somewhere, why don't you go and build an actual life in that place? When I moved to New York, I did it with the intention of not just living in New York, but becoming a New Yorker. This city was going to be my home, not just the place I went to destroy my feet and develop permanent bitch-face to deter wackos from spitting in my mouth.<br />
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Geez, why did I come here again?<br />
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Of course. I remember.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-41931972327947777762014-11-19T19:21:00.000-05:002014-11-19T19:21:29.078-05:00Triumphant Return to HonoluluI started this blog after I moved to New York City, primarily as a way for all my friends and family back in Hawaii to keep track of my life without me having to--you know--write letters or talk on the phone with them.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-3geJABot4HlaZj9UGCiWNq8YArKPWJ0EwDC85aSGiHAtmfoexTe8fW_KfoX2QZUvt9l1qK6-XtTevAlKf1Yjl9ajlAas_WLSwjTjWxgxlGe2n4OvbR_R1sgQCfr_UF03fIeOEckMuU4/s1600/scary+phone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-3geJABot4HlaZj9UGCiWNq8YArKPWJ0EwDC85aSGiHAtmfoexTe8fW_KfoX2QZUvt9l1qK6-XtTevAlKf1Yjl9ajlAas_WLSwjTjWxgxlGe2n4OvbR_R1sgQCfr_UF03fIeOEckMuU4/s1600/scary+phone.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm afraid of phones. And strangers, acquaintances, co-workers, and dogs. And the ocean. </td></tr>
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Which means that this blog has never been live when I've been in Honolulu! That simply won't do! Honolulu was my first big city love. It's where I rode my first public bus, attended my first poetry slam, saw my first drunk man peeing on a dumpster. Oh, for the fish-and-bakery stink of Chinatown!! The salt-and-sewage stink of the Ala Wai Harbor! The mildewy book stink of the Hawaii State Library!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A fragrant town. </td></tr>
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I haven't been back in the six years I've lived in New York because I was afraid if I went back, I desperately want to live there again. Like an ex you can't see again until you don't love them anymore, I just had to keep my distance.<br />
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Of course, it didn't work. I was in Honolulu last week with my mum and sister for my birthday and it was as gloriously stinkish and odd as I remembered it, right down to our funky old hotel room with the crooked toilet and the broken cold water tap that turned on no matter which way you spun it. We had a wonderful vacation. We ate in delicious restaurants, attended cultural events, toured places of interest, shopped, visited friends and family, got day-drunk, and avoided the beach. It was a great success.<br />
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And there are so many stories! Where to begin?<br />
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I took a nonstop flight from JFK to Honolulu that took 11 hours, which gave me enough time to read the in-flight magazine twice AND flip through it backwards once, just to look at the pictures. A lot of my conversations that week began with, "I read in the Hawaiian Airlines magazine that..." When I landed, I called the shuttle van that was supposed to take me to Waikiki and they told me to go to the shuttle pick-up area. I got there, saw a white shuttle van, and asked the driver if I was on his list.<br />
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"Where you going?" he asked.<br />
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"Hokele Suites on Lewers," I said.<br />
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"Get in."<br />
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Fifteen minutes later, crawling down Nimitz Highway in rush-hour traffic, my cell phone rings. I can tell from the number that it's the shuttle van I'd actually reserved, no doubt wondering where the hell I was. The van I was in wasn't my van. I was so embarrassed that I didn't answer, even though they called more than once.<br />
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It was way too early to check into the hotel, so I dropped off my bags and went to Waikiki Beach to watch the sunset. Ooo, ahh, pretty-kine and all that. Time to drink. I went to the Irish bar on Lewers, Kelley O'Neills, and listened to some middle-aged hippie with a guitar butcher Creedance Clearwater for a couple of hours while I got drunk-texted my pen pal in New Zealand and watched some dude who looked like Rasputin eat fries.<br />
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Mum and Abby got in around nine and I met them in front of the hotel.<br />
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"I got on the wrong shuttle!" I shrieked.<br />
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"That's why our driver was so grumpy!" they shrieked back.<br />
<br />
We're very loud together. We cleared off the balcony of the restaurant we ate at, and the manager gave us a free margarita after Mum made him show her the back staircase. The people in the room next to ours had to turn on their television a couple of times to drown us out that night.<br />
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Dang, I'm not even on our first full day of vacay yet! We'll just pop a "to be continued..." on this bad boy. Tune in next time for a description of Hawaii's first ever Fashion Week, the 35th Annual Hawaii International Film Festival, and a thrilling afternoon at the grocery store. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-50631105345097009342014-11-18T18:25:00.000-05:002014-11-18T18:25:02.434-05:00Top Five Honolulu WhinesI was in Honolulu last week with my mother and sister to celebrate my birthday. Here is a quick overview of our top five collective vacation whines:<br />
<br />
5. I'm tired.<br />
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4. My feet hurt.<br />
<br />
3. I'm hungry.<br />
<br />
2. I'm getting sunburned.<br />
<br />
1. Can we take a cab?<br />
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There will be a REAL overview of our vacation on the regularly scheduled posting day. In the meantime, enjoy the soundtrack of the Big Island women. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-60818517188943007622014-11-02T10:03:00.003-05:002014-11-02T18:58:00.422-05:00I don't practice SanteriaAn update on the <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2014/10/leaks.html" target="_blank">leaky ceiling</a>: it's done leaking. We did spend Tuesday night on the floor of the living room, but only because we couldn't be arsed to move the mattress back into the bedroom after the super stopped the leak. Also, the heat has been on for the last few days and it is glorious. I like to sit on the radiator in the living room and get my bottom all toasty.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYjeenzb7270FMH3uyR8GhFNmFn6GmHKVNMfAXCXHYppt2ubb-VB-ckgyz_fdQtYqWaVoQPhYqY7mhUVgug2f3WuFkm7u4KrjdmvBrltm3TvBbpLeBUcMBeQEsAipkzSMHqJtaq5PY9ps/s1600/cat+on+radiator.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYjeenzb7270FMH3uyR8GhFNmFn6GmHKVNMfAXCXHYppt2ubb-VB-ckgyz_fdQtYqWaVoQPhYqY7mhUVgug2f3WuFkm7u4KrjdmvBrltm3TvBbpLeBUcMBeQEsAipkzSMHqJtaq5PY9ps/s1600/cat+on+radiator.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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Speaking of leaks, my work building needed an emergency water shutdown on Wednesday night, which meant I got an unexpected day off on Thursday. It was like a snow day, but with good weather! I loaded up my iPod with some spooooooky podcasts and spent the day leaf-peeping in Prospect Park.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOzTyG45pDZjNlaWKcwAaHTZeIBbvnUGnoOG0cT9vFG6B5ks2EuaQATkHNpE4iHKFa1oVFm2n6cBU7gX7dkuvV5fh0KE13lv8Y4gImtAXyGTwDl0eoh5OXwxnvFysKD3HzaTvafi4FoZ4/s1600/IMG_1309.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOzTyG45pDZjNlaWKcwAaHTZeIBbvnUGnoOG0cT9vFG6B5ks2EuaQATkHNpE4iHKFa1oVFm2n6cBU7gX7dkuvV5fh0KE13lv8Y4gImtAXyGTwDl0eoh5OXwxnvFysKD3HzaTvafi4FoZ4/s1600/IMG_1309.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Prospect Park is a wonderful place. Central Park gets all the press, but I think this is really the crown jewel of the city park system. It's much less crowded and more thickly wooded than Central Park, so there's always a private place to sit and think and worship the gods of the Old World.<br />
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I don't claim to know that much about it outside of Sublime songs and flashbacks on "Orange is the New Black," but apparently Prospect Park is the site of neighborhood Santeria rituals. (Not MY neighborhood, I don't think Park Slope can handle anything headier than an Episcopalian egg hunt on Easter Sunday, but the park is big and bordered by many more people than these kale-eating Labradoodle-walkers.) A couple of weeks ago, the BF and I were down by the Boat House and we saw a group of people in a gazebo by a waterfall, singing Hallelujah and waving white flags around. And while they might have just been having a very enthusiastic picnic with REALLY good sandwiches, this Thursday I found an offering of coconuts and limes hidden in a tree hollow on one of the nature trails.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFQ7v92Bo2nG7vL81BsbnUXXfXQ8Ns8SRoXqy2a7qh6Z6RMPW88mv9KK83AzbPHrcjYFm-MiIa7e01hQL4LfpsBxlpWeObkDQKVLgrrYMHYrQar0lIJo4rAbddIiBHWMpe7YGjKUnETrM/s1600/IMG_1298.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFQ7v92Bo2nG7vL81BsbnUXXfXQ8Ns8SRoXqy2a7qh6Z6RMPW88mv9KK83AzbPHrcjYFm-MiIa7e01hQL4LfpsBxlpWeObkDQKVLgrrYMHYrQar0lIJo4rAbddIiBHWMpe7YGjKUnETrM/s1600/IMG_1298.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's either Santeria or the squirrels are getting ambitious. </td></tr>
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I'm just glad it was fruit and not ritualistic goat heads, because we live in a mildly upsetting world where <a href="http://www.bkmag.com/2014/03/06/a-whole-lot-of-animal-heads-seem-to-be-showing-up-in-prospect-park/" target="_blank">goat heads in Prospect Park</a> are a thing. (There are no pictures of them in that link, but the links in the article will lead you to pictures of the Prospect Park goat heads, so you've been warned.)<br />
<br />
What a fun end to the month of October! All that's left is my annual Catwoman Halloween costume. I went for a 60s Mod look this year. For 2015, I'm thinking Punk Rock Catwoman--with jeans, and possibly tights under the jeans.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiihdjrELF5BmbHgoV5hJRf69x2PojSwqDXmLUOdgWFHC-hBAE33fmULhbQJrGrwWRercjsjsY2ztft7iXLEPiG6CyIhLbJmtJz8bkGL1NqU7RD5lXAfqxWmcQbQ1l4pD3ZxYfaY0gGZw/s1600/20141031_165037.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiihdjrELF5BmbHgoV5hJRf69x2PojSwqDXmLUOdgWFHC-hBAE33fmULhbQJrGrwWRercjsjsY2ztft7iXLEPiG6CyIhLbJmtJz8bkGL1NqU7RD5lXAfqxWmcQbQ1l4pD3ZxYfaY0gGZw/s1600/20141031_165037.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I was so cold. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-40082471434135628092014-10-27T20:29:00.002-04:002014-10-27T20:30:06.807-04:00LEAKS!The radiators in the new apartment were all cool to the touch, despite the nip of autumn in the air, so I called our super and asked him when the heat would be on. He came over this evening, turned the heat on, and our ceiling started to leak.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBI3UH_EYSYCnxKaQLFrnhoG05jdikmGZrqvNWR2DHKG92bPjZNQtIykcHOhUXuYMj7wt4m7kXFzy9B6GfRNSPIeHU2v5D0vryhlURB7pl26lY7lBH2u_4kH6sq-5hHHyhZENinm-Kl-A/s1600/alice+leaking.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBI3UH_EYSYCnxKaQLFrnhoG05jdikmGZrqvNWR2DHKG92bPjZNQtIykcHOhUXuYMj7wt4m7kXFzy9B6GfRNSPIeHU2v5D0vryhlURB7pl26lY7lBH2u_4kH6sq-5hHHyhZENinm-Kl-A/s1600/alice+leaking.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That huge woman upstairs needs to sort her life out.</td></tr>
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I think the events are unrelated. The apartment upstairs got its water shut off, and the super assured me that the leaking would stop soon. It hasn't yet, though. I can hear it in the bedroom, tap-tap-tapping into the pot I put on my dresser to catch the water.<br />
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The water is the same color as tea, but I know without asking that the BF won't let me taste it to be sure.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-30932177234737370062014-10-19T17:45:00.001-04:002014-10-27T20:24:39.619-04:00WitchesIn the build up to Halloween, I like to get into the mood of the season with changes to my wardrobe and my media consumption. Being a New Yorker, I already have plenty of black in my closet.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKZx3RFPezO3nSa47yTj6o0PgeUnK76keJjnWwqb1VgErTNCQlqNfBh0N3btJzTKTmM-En7hupDy07RjJ5Q3k-OHx1Ihf7CaK8ZSQoxSmGuoc3pDzvcwTiQmta_ww0JljOGJefhppjV-E/s1600/mick-stevens-we-re-from-manhattan-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKZx3RFPezO3nSa47yTj6o0PgeUnK76keJjnWwqb1VgErTNCQlqNfBh0N3btJzTKTmM-En7hupDy07RjJ5Q3k-OHx1Ihf7CaK8ZSQoxSmGuoc3pDzvcwTiQmta_ww0JljOGJefhppjV-E/s1600/mick-stevens-we-re-from-manhattan-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Did I mention I went to the New Yorker Festival last week?</td></tr>
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But the other stuff gets a little trickier the older that I get. I'm easily scared and susceptible to nightmares, so "scary" movies and television outside of children's specials have to be carefully screened. Slasher flicks simultaneously bore and aggravate me with their flat characters and backwards sexual politics. (I don't feel catharsis seeing women in peril, I just feel frustrated.) Vampires have come and gone through my life--many middle school wages wasted on the diminishing returns of Anne Rice novels. And while zombies are having a moment in pop culture that doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon, I hate them and everything they stand for.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsUXGkX3juMeUKrJ8tJb63Pf_PFdil8JIefMEiWtPa4TFCghyphenhyphenqhazQ1JsX6hYZurPpcT_3i1JS0KPqA_jr51abQy8aWIR3sjKGSpwI0ofrIxT6GMCrFqchVxxHcMVeZmHQ_lilIiRdzLs/s1600/zombies.png" height="152" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Modern fears of overpopulation and scarcity of resources.</td></tr>
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While this would usually be the point in the conversation where I say something pretentious like, "I enjoy more <i>high-brow</i> meditations on death and mortality," the truth is, I don't like that stuff either. The BF has been re-watching old episodes of "The Twilight Zone" to enrich his Halloween experience, and it's one of the finest television shows ever made, but he likes it with only one light on instead of ALL the light on, so I make him put on headphones and turn the laptop away from me.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmSOY9BAaLITPXi8X3zRCoyNjwWC0TP2mo7oWS8YiCHzmSIbpyGrhQ2hI_JqBOAdCRyw65qq9yZjA8pvQCensrkI2NhlpGCTrUyb0LLP7sudck69PpUSDUZXvgq67LrZqcPW-WgJGqJOc/s1600/twilight-zone-movie.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmSOY9BAaLITPXi8X3zRCoyNjwWC0TP2mo7oWS8YiCHzmSIbpyGrhQ2hI_JqBOAdCRyw65qq9yZjA8pvQCensrkI2NhlpGCTrUyb0LLP7sudck69PpUSDUZXvgq67LrZqcPW-WgJGqJOc/s1600/twilight-zone-movie.jpeg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">*panicked sobbing*</td></tr>
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My friend R had this same problem when she was looking for books for a community story time event she leads on Sundays. She wanted at least half of the books she presented during October to have female protagonists, and she wanted the books to be genuinely creepy while still being appropriate for children as young as nine. It was a nearly impossible task. All the texts she found were either about boys--there's LOTS of spooky tween-ish stuff out there for boys--or were too sexually explicit because of some romance triangle between the girl and a ghost pirate and a zombie.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Nz6RVrwyyu8kUTYCb2Uh7_tEap-Duh5yjb7RO1Imxt20DQtColb32HS3dlginGSbSjYq2B2WnntVHtt09c8jIHNyvAKAqRExqGNxbVaKNaAgQjoRz7DBZS6I_QjGOSz7v0nbxkQBbqY/s1600/Sense_and_Sensibility_and_Sea_Monsters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Nz6RVrwyyu8kUTYCb2Uh7_tEap-Duh5yjb7RO1Imxt20DQtColb32HS3dlginGSbSjYq2B2WnntVHtt09c8jIHNyvAKAqRExqGNxbVaKNaAgQjoRz7DBZS6I_QjGOSz7v0nbxkQBbqY/s1600/Sense_and_Sensibility_and_Sea_Monsters.jpg" height="320" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Young adult literature is getting out of hand.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's frustrating because I LOVE Halloween. I dress up every year (usually as <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2011/11/letters-to-past.html" target="_blank">Catwoman</a>). I've been in the Village Halloween Parade twice. I used to do a Ghost Walk in Honolulu Chinatown every October for my college's creative writing club. I'm into all this weird shit, not because I wanted to be scared by it but because I'm enchanted with it. It doesn't repel me--it attracts me.<br />
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In a fit of pique, with the knowledge that October was almost half over and all I'd done was watch a mediocre Roman Polanski movie called "The Ninth Gate," I found myself online, asking the Internet to recommend stuff that was scary, but not too scary, maybe feminist, and wasn't about zombies or vampires or werewolves or romance (I hate romance books, but that's a post for another time). And you know what you get with those search criteria?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2eqH2ze6n9Trf_JEdd5dlmiQO0aIG8d4bb4irYLKJVNVXliGlZPI1eLhMVLMhefFqwf0vU6l5uMwlc20dktKVno3z5nP4Fnb2GzWQwNx3fYts6qE_0r3SIkbCGgwOgLPrHKnYkx4yXPs/s1600/witches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2eqH2ze6n9Trf_JEdd5dlmiQO0aIG8d4bb4irYLKJVNVXliGlZPI1eLhMVLMhefFqwf0vU6l5uMwlc20dktKVno3z5nP4Fnb2GzWQwNx3fYts6qE_0r3SIkbCGgwOgLPrHKnYkx4yXPs/s1600/witches.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My other middle school obsession!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Witches! It's one of the few horror genres where the female characters are empowered, not in peril. Perfect Halloween subject matter for a feminist who's also kind of a weenie. I'm currently reading a non-fiction book called "Caliban and the Witch," which discusses the historical phenom of witch-burning as it related to the rise of capitalism and the subjugation of the New World (BF says, "Of course you are."), and a fiction book called "The Night Circus," about dueling magicians and the magic circus they use as their battleground. I'm reading as fast as I can, because as I said, fit of pique, and I've got seventeen books reserved in my hold queue at the Brooklyn Public Library. Plus I still need to do stuff like go to work and shower.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR1oyHajiRIO0f7jgdsmDGuvcHc1RpobposEF3jOD3itbV7OQ6W_z9Mc-vj3AHEIcuXcMOzSB1q0lTpXF7cAHynru3bZkv5Txi8iUxjBiIfV4C9eu6lx1rC-Su0c2OVD54W0YqIiO6ubY/s1600/401-the-Addams-Family-quotes.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR1oyHajiRIO0f7jgdsmDGuvcHc1RpobposEF3jOD3itbV7OQ6W_z9Mc-vj3AHEIcuXcMOzSB1q0lTpXF7cAHynru3bZkv5Txi8iUxjBiIfV4C9eu6lx1rC-Su0c2OVD54W0YqIiO6ubY/s1600/401-the-Addams-Family-quotes.png" height="177" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"I only wish I had more time to seek out the Dark Forces and join their hellish crusade."</td></tr>
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But it's not just books about witches and satirical re-watchings of Nicolas Cage in "The Wicker Man." I'm doing Halloweeny stuff outside my apartment, too. I attended an event last week called "All Them Witches," which was a series of short lectures on witches in television and movies: "Bewitched," "Excalibur," "Haxan," "The Devil Rides Out," "The Craft" (naturally),"Lords of Salem," and others. I even won the raffle! Here is my winning ticket, a drawing of a stick figure witch with skulls on her broom, riding triumphantly over a burning church and terrified peasants weeping for their puny god.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDD-L-2gILfWdFOrklNWrQ_qkXCnuAvHo7he1W4hk9vpghfkHGRFNy374IDysIFGhvpOUCO3KRMImIXS9nJVVMvec8sQf0bxek_cgtcpSuG7wQua8YljRS5wrb5JxPVOlB5CIeJUGcFm4/s1600/raffle+witch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDD-L-2gILfWdFOrklNWrQ_qkXCnuAvHo7he1W4hk9vpghfkHGRFNy374IDysIFGhvpOUCO3KRMImIXS9nJVVMvec8sQf0bxek_cgtcpSuG7wQua8YljRS5wrb5JxPVOlB5CIeJUGcFm4/s1600/raffle+witch.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thank goodness it was a random lottery and not based on something like skill or talent.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There's a kitty on the broom, too, but I don't think you can see it in this picture. I won perfume samples from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and a poster from the event signed by all the performers. <br />
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Last Friday, I was a different kind of witch altogether. My school held a Harry Potter-themed fall festival for the students, and I got to dress up to work one of the tables. Or rather, the BF dressed me. I don't know how to tie a Windsor knot, though I may have to learn, because I got a lot of compliments on my outfit at work that day.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHU9Kq6KtMvUwxA3L4FHB1Z15awtLpPs0oJ2kwKUHybtGExgEVaHwUCK0ae8OuLwxDduDvtUJ3I6Ii7WQHE5YeZWUzNf6pherd2i4zM3-oul5JF24njF33FzUtzZgAstTF2qRJkzC74A4/s1600/dumbledore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHU9Kq6KtMvUwxA3L4FHB1Z15awtLpPs0oJ2kwKUHybtGExgEVaHwUCK0ae8OuLwxDduDvtUJ3I6Ii7WQHE5YeZWUzNf6pherd2i4zM3-oul5JF24njF33FzUtzZgAstTF2qRJkzC74A4/s1600/dumbledore.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My beard was also especially luxurious.</td></tr>
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What do the next two weeks of October hold? Pumpkin carving? Apple picking? Visits to cat sanctuaries?<br />
<br />
Probably just lots and lots of reading. Seventeen books, what was I thinking? "The Craft" is on Netflix Instant, for heaven's sake!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-62944771259168358992014-10-15T20:53:00.002-04:002014-10-19T16:09:14.256-04:00No ComicCon, just comicsI didn't go to New York Comic Con this year.<br />
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It's said that you aren't a true New Yorker unless you have a visceral memory of the way something in the city USED to be. I remember when I could get my ticket to the New York Anime Festival a week before the event and show up with a reasonable expectation of being able to walk like a normal person down the aisles of Artists Alley. Then, NYCC consumed NYAF like an amoeba, and suddenly tickets are selling out 20 minutes after they go on sale. It's like New York looked at San Diego and said, "NO, WE MUST BE THE BIGGEST CON."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pun intended. They make you pay them to stand in this line.</td></tr>
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I've also heard it said that you aren't a true hipster until you can say something was better before it became mainstream, so here I go: New York Comic Con was awesome but now it's too mainstream for me. I'm going to have to make plans for Baltimore Comic Con or ConnectiCon in 2015, because I can't deal with a fan event that's gotten so big that it's a competition just to get tickets.<br />
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So where does a New York hipster with an interest in trashy pop culture go when she can't get tickets to Comic Con?<br />
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The New Yorker Festival!<br />
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Is it a coincidence that the high browiest of the all the high brows that ever browed has its festival the same weekend as Comic Con? Of course the answer is yes. I don't think there's a lot of overlap between New Yorker subscribers and people who stand in line for three hours to play the beta version of Ubisoft's latest first person shooter.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"I enjoy Talk of the Town!"</td></tr>
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For me, it was an opportunity to exchange my nerd glasses for my--well, my OTHER nerd glasses. But just so I didn't feel like I was getting too grown-up, I got us tickets to the New Yorker's stand-up comedy showcase. Why spend an hour at the 92nd Street Y listening to Lena Dunham be more successful than me (even though I've got more symmetrical breasts, so take THAT, Golden Globe-winning cultural phenom) when I can listen to misanthropes make jokes about abortion?<br />
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I'm kidding, of course. They joked about Ebola.<br />
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I adore stand-up comedy. I don't know if you know that about me. (Considering that it's mostly my mom and the BF's mom that read this blog, I'm going to assume you do.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiutwgB0Nics3dUSrzYixOY2yiyosefj0K64hOnbuaTlDTUSgyuZA8vxyxSK21OuX02hFEpwLw6hFKO1E1B1Srau2d7FWy6g-JB6i7yXZXHww0qCN0o-v2QGi1065NLZtUfDyJK2BY0VqY/s1600/little+rachie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiutwgB0Nics3dUSrzYixOY2yiyosefj0K64hOnbuaTlDTUSgyuZA8vxyxSK21OuX02hFEpwLw6hFKO1E1B1Srau2d7FWy6g-JB6i7yXZXHww0qCN0o-v2QGi1065NLZtUfDyJK2BY0VqY/s1600/little+rachie.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here's a yearbook picture of me from the fourth grade. Moms love this sort of thing. Know your demographic!</td></tr>
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I jumped at the chance to attend this event because I saw that one of my favorite comics, Patton Oswalt, was going to perform. The BF and I have wanted to see him for a very long time. He did the voice of the lead in "Ratatouille, " which we saw in the theater on our first date. And also he does jokes about food and orgies and he hates New York, so really there's a lot to enjoy.<br />
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There were other great comics there, too. I like Marc Maron, though I know his intense self-hatred isn't for everyone. Todd Barry was a real professional, which isn't a back-handed compliment. He had a great sense for audience reactions and knew how to get the most out of negative space (what Japanese musicians refer to as "ma") (in case this review of the New Yorker festival wasn't pretentious enough). I discovered one of my new favorite comedians, Baron Vaughn, who was a last-minute addition to the line-up. You should check him out.<br />
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I was disappointed in the female comics they had, I'm sorry to say. I like Morgan Murphy well enough, but there was a producer from the Daily Show who had zero stage presence--she may have actually had negative stage presence, she was laughing at her own jokes and interrupted a joke about Ebola to plead for the audience to donate money for Ebola.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZXVnh3OL9di5ae4J_uLDGFGa2o_HY8xBmARqHniQXEeeB-20z3SdvGfn2tY1yPh5m9GCpHbaAR9p1p3zFZH0EHNKlVKXoQbZj61zblfuigj08ctpkXWOMXzwS87WJi2nbPBq2zbfMCyk/s1600/sad+kitty+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZXVnh3OL9di5ae4J_uLDGFGa2o_HY8xBmARqHniQXEeeB-20z3SdvGfn2tY1yPh5m9GCpHbaAR9p1p3zFZH0EHNKlVKXoQbZj61zblfuigj08ctpkXWOMXzwS87WJi2nbPBq2zbfMCyk/s1600/sad+kitty+2.jpg" height="288" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How can I has laugh if I has a sad?</td></tr>
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And the other one, oh boy. I didn't mind the standard I'm-a-Jew-and-I-married-a-goy bit--they're classics for a reason--but if I hear one more aging baby boomer talk about how lame my generation is because we wore seat belts and bike helmets and got a trophy every time we took a shit, I'm going to make a Kickstarter to get those jewels from "Logan's Run" implanted in everyone so we'll die before we reach the age of smug hindsight.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKxg770ubR_qIm1GkTVf191luhhuP_QLHVwpNFQsM5X5fxsqZJlZW_mhnrH3v277MboOqwHzlqCYjc7tmAtb1fYwq74TPVvx1i102XTVTH5WPiQarV24fqxm8CDFDieenpeT0KOxrw1d4/s1600/logans+run+jewel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKxg770ubR_qIm1GkTVf191luhhuP_QLHVwpNFQsM5X5fxsqZJlZW_mhnrH3v277MboOqwHzlqCYjc7tmAtb1fYwq74TPVvx1i102XTVTH5WPiQarV24fqxm8CDFDieenpeT0KOxrw1d4/s1600/logans+run+jewel.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">But I have so many New Yorkers left to read!</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Where does the generation that destroyed the environment, the economy, and the social safety net get off telling my generation that we're "too careful"? How is receiving a reward for mere participation in a group activity more damaging than raising children to believe they only have worth if they grind the weaker and less talented into the dust?<br />
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We're lame? Well, you blew it up!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimgMY1pFgiHljftG-XR2MaaPX3u-QVJz8YbBYTe6kt0YrCFiaTmMGzjOuuqCzb4SBX59ao_UCr15qGNEpOOl1ex6mHsvRpmvuqrg9aRNQPljSYqUUriP0HUwtUOvsnxJyuFkqP6PV0-qk/s1600/you-maniacs.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimgMY1pFgiHljftG-XR2MaaPX3u-QVJz8YbBYTe6kt0YrCFiaTmMGzjOuuqCzb4SBX59ao_UCr15qGNEpOOl1ex6mHsvRpmvuqrg9aRNQPljSYqUUriP0HUwtUOvsnxJyuFkqP6PV0-qk/s1600/you-maniacs.jpeg" height="134" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You maniacs!</td></tr>
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Young person rant over. I'm almost 30 anyway, that red jewel would be pulsing like Elmer Fudd's cartoon heart when he see's Bugs Bunny in drag.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgySFXyiRk5gY1j1F2w-aBIMF-Z-07lUf3RJz-8udAz5gp-1QPNe6YFNGq1xCcYfCQsqPvGQOdCPinN-MIZR7EzCHyE_xr4hRs_qelN2jKyOC6WdliXAwTuRlWCNHNzCcFB9wPFudeE9aY/s1600/elmer+fudd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgySFXyiRk5gY1j1F2w-aBIMF-Z-07lUf3RJz-8udAz5gp-1QPNe6YFNGq1xCcYfCQsqPvGQOdCPinN-MIZR7EzCHyE_xr4hRs_qelN2jKyOC6WdliXAwTuRlWCNHNzCcFB9wPFudeE9aY/s1600/elmer+fudd.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I googled "Elmer Fudd in love" and thank GOD it wasn't porn.</td></tr>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-23315466782566306992014-10-08T20:35:00.000-04:002014-10-08T20:35:49.447-04:00Triumphant ReturnThis year, for my birthday, I'm going to Honolulu!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ3ggGKQ4B53R1Jbe2M83tSGPo5fVGRG_rTlPwaXf3Z6jalZnFIUTi3L2B9XOpVv_sBKhPodeja0lLW4EXm40KAcdrKZZjLjYb6kD7OBU7PdIi_p-xJnCFHuDrme-cNgtS4a7NTaLKm10/s1600/lighning+in+honolulu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ3ggGKQ4B53R1Jbe2M83tSGPo5fVGRG_rTlPwaXf3Z6jalZnFIUTi3L2B9XOpVv_sBKhPodeja0lLW4EXm40KAcdrKZZjLjYb6kD7OBU7PdIi_p-xJnCFHuDrme-cNgtS4a7NTaLKm10/s1600/lighning+in+honolulu.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I googled "honolulu city" and was no disappointed. That's right. FEAR MY COMING.</td></tr>
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I haven't been back to Honolulu in six years, not since I moved to New York City. Honolulu was the first place I pulled on my big-girl panties and did Womanly things, like vote, perform slam poetry, get tattooed, and decline to sleep with a man because there was sand in his bed and all his towels were being used to block the light from the marijuana-growing operation in his closet. <br />
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Good times.<br />
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Most people don't think of Hawaii in very "urban" terms, but Honolulu is a proper city, with culture and strife and a homeless problem exacerbated by gentrification and an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRmTd1jH8oY16nx4ggzTsIRjK15LcC3v76RUlTfZVgxD-TJRae9o4Xg7cc6eeZ4B_kXAa8qi1Jt6A0-ujY1eSjK7BhMLM33evHNiWEHUYGswB5MgSk3c0aN8fC6EnRVB4Hz1L6EptzHfU/s1600/brooklyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRmTd1jH8oY16nx4ggzTsIRjK15LcC3v76RUlTfZVgxD-TJRae9o4Xg7cc6eeZ4B_kXAa8qi1Jt6A0-ujY1eSjK7BhMLM33evHNiWEHUYGswB5MgSk3c0aN8fC6EnRVB4Hz1L6EptzHfU/s1600/brooklyn.jpg" height="197" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What does that remind me of?</td></tr>
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My current city better hope my ex-city got fat or something. I may be tempted to stray and drink cheap beer in some other dark hole with a hot dog cart outside. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-63760035580887992652014-10-05T14:56:00.002-04:002014-10-05T14:56:27.709-04:00My braid, my shoes, my holeI was feeling particularly jaunty on Friday because I had my new shoes on.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi67vnEqnzEhyphenhyphenVFFc9G_B4XJZgOeiDQHWqqf8ab_Tev8IRe_nlhHTJvOl_-dWkyyKezjDrIcgBfeSKKDSXY2ni_E3V55QLffN_07L-3xfiyiNBVkLXpJWDCdN5nL2InsGwqiuPIKh2Sbk8/s1600/new+shoes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi67vnEqnzEhyphenhyphenVFFc9G_B4XJZgOeiDQHWqqf8ab_Tev8IRe_nlhHTJvOl_-dWkyyKezjDrIcgBfeSKKDSXY2ni_E3V55QLffN_07L-3xfiyiNBVkLXpJWDCdN5nL2InsGwqiuPIKh2Sbk8/s1600/new+shoes.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></i></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jaunty!</td></tr>
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There's an entry in my journal from college about how fine I felt tripping around downtown Honolulu in high heels--shoes that I now wear once every two years or so, because seventeen-year-olds can destroy their feet wearing heels in a city, but twenty-eight-year-olds get shin splits and will be taking fashion tips from drag kings from now on, thanks very much. <br />
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So, me on Friday, new shoes, going to the subway. A woman with a dog walks up behind me and says, "You did your braid perfectly this morning!"<br />
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Then she continued on with her day.<br />
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A couple of things about this: her hair was kind of short. I think she could get a braid of three, maybe<i> </i>four over-unders before she had to tie it off. Why would someone with shortish hair have an awareness of the struggles and triumphs of the Rapunzel'd? And yes, my braid was looking especially good that morning, but what of it? Does my braid not look good other mornings? Had this woman been <i>tracking </i>me and my braid progress since I've moved into the neighborhood? "Frizzy around the collar today." "Crooked and bumpy at the top, she must've been in a hurry." "Smooth, nice shine, she must be letting the grease build up."<br />
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Or is she just an aficionado of braids? A braid-spotter, if you will. Maybe my braid is the equivalent of a puffin for bird-watchers.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcfSF24TkaBcph-yOihueUAjaVAd-sj3Ff6HAPQRyfRMZQKgSOsmBJZwgEkAdQRCOE8DA4tC2EmJKB3dtPyEuyZ_qBHyuhKtLmIkD676624laFCEX99YAPHpw6eEIFeyZKkIQcCDe3EiA/s1600/puffin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcfSF24TkaBcph-yOihueUAjaVAd-sj3Ff6HAPQRyfRMZQKgSOsmBJZwgEkAdQRCOE8DA4tC2EmJKB3dtPyEuyZ_qBHyuhKtLmIkD676624laFCEX99YAPHpw6eEIFeyZKkIQcCDe3EiA/s1600/puffin.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jaunty!</td></tr>
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<br />This doesn't have anything to do with my shoes or my braid, but when I got to work, I saw that one of the courtyards on campus had a great gaping hole in it. I peered over the scaffolding and looked down into the depths of the engine room.<br />
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Another staff member saw me peering and called out, "Is there a kitty down there?"<br />
<br />
"No," I called back, "it's a very fine hole!"<br />
<br />
I happen to be an aficionado of holes in cities. A hole-spotter, if you--<br />
<br />
No, that sounds dirty. Never mind. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-57919842267803107672014-08-31T11:46:00.002-04:002014-08-31T11:46:46.030-04:00Moving outI moved apartments this summer. This is now my fourth address in New York City, and by far the best one.<br />
<b> </b><br />
To review: my first address was <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2009/07/tribute-to-187.html" target="_blank">187 Franklin Avenue</a> in Bedstuy. I only lived there for a hot minute, but it was my landing pad in the city and holds a special place in my heart because it was so very New York: my roommate, the opera composer; my upstairs neighbors, the collective known as Lesbeyond, and their three-legged cat; the hiphop artist on the top floor who hooked me up with my room; and the couple across the hall from her with a bar and beer on tap in their kitchen. They threw some raging parties in that place (but everyone moved out and the building has since been converted to all-Hassidic condos, as I predicted it would be).<br />
<br />
My second address was a Craigslist hook-up on Madison Street, also in Bedstuy. I lasted one year and a month there, and it was pretty fucking awful. I lost my job and was working two part-time gigs to make rent; I got in fights with the super all the time about how my keys didn't work; mice always came running out of the stove burners despite two cats working overtime to kill them and stash their little corpses under the bathroom rug; I didn't get along with my roommates. My first winter in New York, it was hard to look around at the gray walls of my cold, shared apartment and not compare it to my perfectly Rachel-sized studio in Waikiki, wondering what the hell I was doing in this dreadful place when I'd had work, my own place, and a beach RIGHT THERE back in Hawaii. <br />
<br />
Fortunately, I'm kind of lazy and it was less work for me to move to another apartment than it was for me to move to another state. So I took <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2009/04/mouse-and-table.html" target="_blank">my dowry</a> and went to<a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2009/10/moving-out.html" target="_blank"> Columbia Street</a>, where I lived for five years.<br />
<br />
Except for the house in Ocean View and the house on Walua Road, Columbia Street was my longest continuous address. I lived there for five years, long enough to see the city put in bike lanes, build a park, and start summer ferry service to Governor's Island. I lived through a <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2010/09/tornado-in-brooklyn.html" target="_blank">tornado</a>, <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2012/07/lightning-strikes-on-kane-street.html" target="_blank">lightning strikes</a>, and <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2011/08/hurricane-in-brooklyn.html" target="_blank">two</a> <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-storm.html" target="_blank">hurricanes</a>. I got a job and <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2012/09/my-big-sister-got-married.html" target="_blank">my sister got married</a>. I wrote a little, read a lot more, save a little money, spent a lot more, walked a few hundred times to the subway and back, and sat for many hours on my couch looking at pictures of cats on the Internet.<br />
<br />
I loved that place. But they raised my rent and I had to move. It's a classic New York story.<br />
<br />
A week after I moved to the new apartment, I went back to Columbia Street with a little cart full of cleaning supplies. I wanted to give the old place a once-over and take away the bags I'd set aside for recycling (clothes I didn't want, broken printer, etc). Unlocking the door and stepping into the dusty, leaf-strewn vestibule, I was overcome with a wave of warmth and safety. It was the same feeling I'd had every time I stepped over that threshold, but now it was particularly strong because I knew it was the last time I'd feel it in that vestibule. Half a decade worth of gratitude and exasperation for that precious old building that had sheltered me and my stuff in its crumbling bricks and sagging floors.<br />
<br />
It was a bit of a wasted trip, because they'd already changed the locks in my unit and I couldn't get in to clean. I hope my old stuff made it to the recycling plant and didn't just end up in a landfill in Jersey. <br />
<br />
<br />
So now I'm in Park Slope. It's not because I'm pregnant, though I gather that's the main reason that people my age move to Park Slope. It's actually all backwards--I got priced out of Columbia Street and was eyeing a move back to Bedstuy. Park Slope has been pricing out people way classier than myself for decades and shouldn't have been an option for me. The owner of the building is either super-nice or super-unconcerned about trends in the rental market in this area, so I get a floor-through apartment with a new dishwasher.<br />
<br />
I've heard tell of this type of deal, but I always assumed it was a New York myth, like CHUDs or Ninja Turtles. I feel like I should write to the real estate section of Penthouse. "I never believed it could happen to me!"<br />
<br />
But I shouldn't be too happy about it yet. Wait until I've spent a winter here, and then ask me again how I like it. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-71061747962761702092014-05-07T18:52:00.000-04:002014-05-07T18:52:38.354-04:00Movie Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel:My favorite thing about Wes Anderson movies is that he keeps the camera very steady. I'm so tired of seeing movies with shaky-cam and fast editing that I now actually judge films on whether or not they can keep the camera still.<br />
<br />
The BF and I went to see "The Grand Budapest Hotel" recently, which thrilled me almost immediately because there was a funicular railway in the beginning. I ADORE funicular railways! My mum and I went on one in Prague that we still remember fondly.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrGPqtVhSe5QNGZEzBSETXIFBzJ7SzQ0fHScxaAqJLl7ykid1QTNE5EEovMQofeq-UT_wBY0aA98VcE9ekLzitZwswH9KP73y_J5_q8l6fBgRW3Vmux-HiZZOXFyFiBwCadbIaXo_caoo/s1600/funicular+railway+prage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrGPqtVhSe5QNGZEzBSETXIFBzJ7SzQ0fHScxaAqJLl7ykid1QTNE5EEovMQofeq-UT_wBY0aA98VcE9ekLzitZwswH9KP73y_J5_q8l6fBgRW3Vmux-HiZZOXFyFiBwCadbIaXo_caoo/s1600/funicular+railway+prage.jpg" height="169" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This one! A funicular railway is all slanty.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We got there just as one train was leaving, so we had to kill time in this enormous wine bar where we were the only customers. The proprietor told us how he would climb onto the roof to throw all the empty wine bottles down the chimney. Why? So they'd make an attractive pile in the bar's unused fireplace, of course. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKsARkhXXbi06WpIyZ7ibBqZ1SqGwfmAeoQYuh3cN2k4XS7q6LVEsyG_vhD2frOAmAhfYaFoDU_bmQfGZKBVl17a8A9Bl5hZcXtxdtYl3vb0UD6SrHS4Phi-U1VyI9OB2aYrkL4_iB0H0/s1600/wine+bottles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKsARkhXXbi06WpIyZ7ibBqZ1SqGwfmAeoQYuh3cN2k4XS7q6LVEsyG_vhD2frOAmAhfYaFoDU_bmQfGZKBVl17a8A9Bl5hZcXtxdtYl3vb0UD6SrHS4Phi-U1VyI9OB2aYrkL4_iB0H0/s1600/wine+bottles.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Surprisingly difficult to find a picture of a pile of wine bottles in a fireplace. He was a true pioneer of design.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After drinking, we got on the funicular railway and rode it to the top of a hill, where we found an art gallery in a beautiful house overlooking the Vlatava River. We have obviously just missed a party, because there were empty cups and chip bowls full of crumbs everywhere. The only person there was the artist, this tall, skinny man with thick black-rimmed glasses and a big gray beard down to his belt. He invited us to look around his art gallery/house, which, upon inspection, was chock full of misty, psychedelic paintings of elves and fairies. Mum whispered, "He must've gotten laid a lot in the seventies."<br />
<br />
We think a lot about that artist, my mother and me. He lived through the Communist regime and the Velvet Revolution. He came out of the war and the horror and the occupation with his pretty little house on the hill where all his friends come to view his pretty paintings of mythical beings. He's living the dream after living the nightmare. It's a beautiful thing.<br />
<br />
I think this is the theme Wes Anderson is exploring in "Grand Budapest." On the one hand, it's about the rise of fascism in Eastern Europe, but on the other hand, what it's REALLY about is the pretty little hotel on the hill where all the main characters' friends come to visit, and yes, there's even some pretty paintings involved.<br />
<br />
I'm not a die-hard Anderson fan--I didn't like "The Life Aquatic," and
living in the midst of hipster Brooklyn has unfortunately soured the
twee delights of "The Royal Tenenbaums" for me. But "Grand Budapest"
resonates. There's something profoundly dignified, profoundly <i>humane</i>, in the thought of people maintaining small circles of beauty and peace in the face of wretchedness and horror.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8oYbEK0ecvUWNtSfAKd2BmFFbE-etrG1F4PdlMjUyz0_sn7d6_zuAt0OX5DEtoM75Z17JR4ZxILYT_y36qFruDSD4bFITneDvtwUt0hxxyWnshhy-57YOvIFYwM_ay0pixsqzQu6w-dA/s1600/grand+budapest+hotel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8oYbEK0ecvUWNtSfAKd2BmFFbE-etrG1F4PdlMjUyz0_sn7d6_zuAt0OX5DEtoM75Z17JR4ZxILYT_y36qFruDSD4bFITneDvtwUt0hxxyWnshhy-57YOvIFYwM_ay0pixsqzQu6w-dA/s1600/grand+budapest+hotel.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
I want to see more movies about that.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-84836554947901606502014-04-30T07:23:00.001-04:002014-04-30T07:23:56.219-04:00 Chipped a toothSometime between 8AM and 3PM yesterday, I chipped my front tooth. There's no negative space when I smile or anything, the tooth itself maintains its sleek perimeter, but when I run my tongue over it I can feel a declivity with sharp edges on the surface of the enamel.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1W8XIlAdDANi2SjVEA8D9aRG_IZM9E-lF3AONrDrZUStqZUvibK7ioCED9yhbYF3iF3ZhAtclAq7ZVQpg2GjhoTqv6BA0YVYbrmI1sIEPAhThfpFOQTL0L61iwDonpPhRUoN-wLpaY6M/s1600/Tea-Party-Toothless-Hillbilly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1W8XIlAdDANi2SjVEA8D9aRG_IZM9E-lF3AONrDrZUStqZUvibK7ioCED9yhbYF3iF3ZhAtclAq7ZVQpg2GjhoTqv6BA0YVYbrmI1sIEPAhThfpFOQTL0L61iwDonpPhRUoN-wLpaY6M/s1600/Tea-Party-Toothless-Hillbilly.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dang, it's my GOOD tooth, too!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After I'd gone through all this trouble to pre-cook a week's worth of super-soft food for my lunches: cooked squash, shredded barbecue chicken, cheesy grits. There's so much to do in the office with the graduation ceremony coming up, who has time to chew? And I know I should immediately make an appointment to go see a dentist and get it spackled before something worse happens to it, but watch me--just WATCH me--decide that the old chomper can take one more for the team for now. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-77660125158150091222014-04-20T15:51:00.002-04:002014-04-20T15:52:40.639-04:00It's the Egg Holiday!I wonder at what point in recent American history the Easter Bunny became a Santa Claus-like figure, where you sit on his lap at the mall and he hides things on your property in the middle of the night for you to find the next morning. In fact, when did it become THE Easter Bunny instead of AN Easter bunny? When did a rabbit come into play for the resurrection of Jesus?<br />
<br />
I don't have to ask where the eggs came from, though. We have eggs at Passover. Jesus was probably eating them at the Last Supper, along with crackers and nasty low-proof wine that tastes like cough syrup.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPmNSBoCce66MGODHIjFPgNJnenRZ31ahPxlNB0sKz-ygRA9Z-Bz0g-RIUZTkUvXkE50buGAFaVGB-A-0-y48UmNs8R4nAB81P2H5uMKAlcF6anyjjE2wqCHErcwmMA36fsPitKg__Ll8/s1600/Manischewitz-Concord.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPmNSBoCce66MGODHIjFPgNJnenRZ31ahPxlNB0sKz-ygRA9Z-Bz0g-RIUZTkUvXkE50buGAFaVGB-A-0-y48UmNs8R4nAB81P2H5uMKAlcF6anyjjE2wqCHErcwmMA36fsPitKg__Ll8/s1600/Manischewitz-Concord.jpg" height="320" width="153" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gross.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Whether it's Passover or Easter, though, I love the egg holiday. I love boiled eggs to either eat or decorate. I love that activity where you blow all the liquid out of the egg and decorate the hollow shell while you eat omelets. One year, I blew some eggs and used Elmers Glue to encrust them with glass beads and loose jewels. I hoped we stashed those in a safe place.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitwX2AMWbOxoXsVlinBMrTmESU7oLHGrubHp3faPKwHgHeq-Uu1aPXW0uxnpOwB2jrf4Hx8zmfMnZl14BDVZvnwE-xBHsCtuywNnMhwaHKuCqLKJtSTvcA51xYR-nc6cXa9ePdbXJ5KnM/s1600/IMG_0278.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitwX2AMWbOxoXsVlinBMrTmESU7oLHGrubHp3faPKwHgHeq-Uu1aPXW0uxnpOwB2jrf4Hx8zmfMnZl14BDVZvnwE-xBHsCtuywNnMhwaHKuCqLKJtSTvcA51xYR-nc6cXa9ePdbXJ5KnM/s1600/IMG_0278.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Of course I have loose jewels just lying around, I'm Catwoman.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Most of all, though, I love hiding the eggs and finding them again. It was always our tradition to hide and find at least two or three times on Easter Sunday because it's just so much fun! They're bright and cheerful, you get to put them in a pretty basket, and if you break one or lose one in the woods, it's no big deal--you'll just find it several months later and get the joy of squishing some gross rotting thing to see how gross and rotting it is. Few joys in a rural childhood can equal that.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr004AaYcLY1gIz1SgTpAm1okuEi0s9iIXpSl92syvUbiDOQZO83B3OwleMbJ8FBVjE1nuP_D_86m8wU3R6Dsk6VK2nJEPV5030arrx2gg44NQMwAxVIH5hHi-A4K-qhF_2B9-NDExyW8/s1600/huckleberries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr004AaYcLY1gIz1SgTpAm1okuEi0s9iIXpSl92syvUbiDOQZO83B3OwleMbJ8FBVjE1nuP_D_86m8wU3R6Dsk6VK2nJEPV5030arrx2gg44NQMwAxVIH5hHi-A4K-qhF_2B9-NDExyW8/s1600/huckleberries.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Berry picking is fun, too.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Even the Daifukuji Soto Mission hosts an annual egg hunt for the children. They usual schedule it for the same day they celebrate Buddha's birthday because <i>everybody</i> loves an egg hunt.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJernFqMxh3cq1pnOtvjHra4ylzWrCwsU386_OATZaui9piNSBcCyoYnO65Bo1wL1zd0gRtodwhEHnIuNZoEiQ3BR-V0cghM92TeJlBCMRr22baJ7E4OCQXP8qJ8ln6PWzkWVWeU6Igk8/s1600/daifukuji_temple_200_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJernFqMxh3cq1pnOtvjHra4ylzWrCwsU386_OATZaui9piNSBcCyoYnO65Bo1wL1zd0gRtodwhEHnIuNZoEiQ3BR-V0cghM92TeJlBCMRr22baJ7E4OCQXP8qJ8ln6PWzkWVWeU6Igk8/s1600/daifukuji_temple_200_b.jpg" height="80" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Even Buddhists.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-84984126976040490422014-04-13T12:47:00.001-04:002014-04-13T12:47:26.575-04:00Hawaii WritersLast night, the BF and I went out to our friend Rosa's birthday party in Bedstuy. Two weekends in a row I've been out now! The season really is changing.<br />
<br />
I bring this up because a few weeks ago, I took Rosa to a reading of Hawaii writers at the Asian American Writers Workshop. Rosa told me afterward that she normally hates going to readings, because her family works in publishing and she's seen too many readings of pretentious New York writers whining about their waning libidos.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHqO0zFXH0fjJbjSzpTr1irJMEWcYWUQc0fvHwy4gJOryK5es6GwGkgmcPJvbo8qNr9b2r_GvNsWsRyNR-aK_bhwpPBGEZ2ONvmrzRZCaoRkYkYb71dIck_a3ZBm5hrwzGAdlm6cWbh9o/s1600/leave+me+alone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHqO0zFXH0fjJbjSzpTr1irJMEWcYWUQc0fvHwy4gJOryK5es6GwGkgmcPJvbo8qNr9b2r_GvNsWsRyNR-aK_bhwpPBGEZ2ONvmrzRZCaoRkYkYb71dIck_a3ZBm5hrwzGAdlm6cWbh9o/s1600/leave+me+alone.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Girls </i>can be eerily accurate sometimes.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I'm flattered to report that Rosa's trust in me was not misplaced. She said it was the best reading she'd ever been to, that the work was interesting and funny and sincere, and that she wants every one of those authors to be her aunties.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8s_SGs8a51oc6LtvtbgV57dMtBojHh-Sw96MKisbi9dDVjLFQhYWLTVq9gkpk3V1ThxT-S5pzkTnm_FnIIQlM1WxNmNNJqXtySocw5_gSahyGRSbmudvSm8sZskyEB_A2tNpgC5RvsNc/s1600/hawaii+authors+messy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8s_SGs8a51oc6LtvtbgV57dMtBojHh-Sw96MKisbi9dDVjLFQhYWLTVq9gkpk3V1ThxT-S5pzkTnm_FnIIQlM1WxNmNNJqXtySocw5_gSahyGRSbmudvSm8sZskyEB_A2tNpgC5RvsNc/s1600/hawaii+authors+messy.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stop, you're embarrassing them!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The woman in front, second from the right, was actually one of my classmates in college. We took a course together called the Sacred and Erotic in Lyric Poetry (yes, conservative fears about education in the liberal arts and humanities are <i>all true</i>!). She's a damn good poet, and has the best name for a poet ever: Christy Passion. She remembered me from back in the day, and we squealed and quoted lines from each others' poems, so a good time was had by all.<br />
<br />
Not much else to say, except that the weather is warm enough that I have my windows open and the bonsai out on the fire escape. I guess I had to wait until spring before I could talk about Hawaii writers, otherwise it's just too damn hard to be shivering in Brooklyn while all these wonderful writers are back home in the islands. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-42810314578359394602014-04-09T20:33:00.001-04:002014-04-09T20:35:07.125-04:00Hurrah! A Bolt of Light! CD release showMy co-host did the math. He determined that after doing our radio show from June of 2012 to April of 2014, where we've hosted 60+ live local bands and played music from at least another 60, I have gone out exactly <i>once</i>. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_dEYok1l84FM9WBcMEIIqgf06hrTiq3guGKLA2jUUOCl0O8aaa4iGOm5bLmumYmSJerO-egmBxJINVNXlCE-kNcPUICskKNFSW0r8_QLgZb9-EDzr9OfMeixQDzOHyLM5w1ti7ZRUevc/s1600/kitty+under+blanket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_dEYok1l84FM9WBcMEIIqgf06hrTiq3guGKLA2jUUOCl0O8aaa4iGOm5bLmumYmSJerO-egmBxJINVNXlCE-kNcPUICskKNFSW0r8_QLgZb9-EDzr9OfMeixQDzOHyLM5w1ti7ZRUevc/s1600/kitty+under+blanket.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's just so comfy here...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In my defense, I went out A LOT when I first moved to New York and was working on the <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2010/01/knitting-factory.html" target="_blank">street team</a> with the <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2010/05/isnt-that-guy-from-depeche-mode.html" target="_blank">Village Voice</a>. And like a little kid overdosing on Pixie Stix and Raven's Revenge one fateful sleepover, for a long time afterward, the thought of having to put pants on and go rub shoulders with sticky yahoos in a noisy bar made me feel a bit pukish.<br />
<br />
Also, I've been around a lot of loud things in my life and I get a faint ringing in my ears sometimes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwid1iYRGcGiKvEpn7FTkT1QupT0Yz5RDf2ojnXcStXIy3dv5RIMK4FjDA54_aNICF2YKZyRkcE_uMaPMpu4O2w9AxcDcg5ouFpmLdbJ23qwjrpb0x6kcbdGSbkzi8PSs8l9l88SLM088/s1600/tinnitus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwid1iYRGcGiKvEpn7FTkT1QupT0Yz5RDf2ojnXcStXIy3dv5RIMK4FjDA54_aNICF2YKZyRkcE_uMaPMpu4O2w9AxcDcg5ouFpmLdbJ23qwjrpb0x6kcbdGSbkzi8PSs8l9l88SLM088/s1600/tinnitus.jpg" height="277" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
But I <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2010/11/art-school.html" target="_blank">lost THAT job</a> back in 2010, so it really is time to get back on the sticky, noisy yahoo horse and be part of the scene again. Last Saturday, I went out to Rockwood Music Hall to Hurrah! A Bolt of Light!'s CD release show.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8IofXC4-P5eE7IX64IMQu7gHqAWIiTRgHWcK0yeqm3jpTn0J1ufj-dFiF0kjPC60x-ZAM8MsozHkWVQNBc5QoFUlTbWqfn3S4xT1AKcpSGf2wgehYCYcV1ZliiE-UOif4uEhl4s6WcWg/s1600/20140405_221721.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8IofXC4-P5eE7IX64IMQu7gHqAWIiTRgHWcK0yeqm3jpTn0J1ufj-dFiF0kjPC60x-ZAM8MsozHkWVQNBc5QoFUlTbWqfn3S4xT1AKcpSGf2wgehYCYcV1ZliiE-UOif4uEhl4s6WcWg/s1600/20140405_221721.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Hurrah! were our guests on the Rodent Hour back in Fall 2013, and at the risk of making all our other guests cry, they're my favorite. They have this big, magnificent sound with really catchy, poppy hooks and an underlying darkness to the lyrics that's just a joy to listen to.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLDV9cwuePIRIjN0g6VjC_buOYpkPR7Jd7QfpLhnI-Sk_p3YC_PmjMemV1edSbSz8JacVrl1WHEbDQL4_dglcn8s6o8VJLeGlve0CbT6roa9NOHPtCl-PTOl2-YKoEKyzzt2WPis96sw8/s1600/20140405_220348.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLDV9cwuePIRIjN0g6VjC_buOYpkPR7Jd7QfpLhnI-Sk_p3YC_PmjMemV1edSbSz8JacVrl1WHEbDQL4_dglcn8s6o8VJLeGlve0CbT6roa9NOHPtCl-PTOl2-YKoEKyzzt2WPis96sw8/s1600/20140405_220348.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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And happily for me, they had a special guest percussionist playing with them that night, Seth. Seth is in one of my other favorite bands from our show, the Nightmare River Band. He is possibly the only person on the planet who can make the tamborine badass.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6zBGCJKD9qHQfz18wh7nNzEugF08xTJyERJg38lK-EJ6mBfFy8ijjnIRLjL-IFaNa5usU9jvFX1ePKgZ1gn0Ot7D1c_RD5kT_IdR4Sv6nkvtJW1Hwk8Scan_iO6lRx4brVE9XXWAOe00/s1600/20140405_220352.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6zBGCJKD9qHQfz18wh7nNzEugF08xTJyERJg38lK-EJ6mBfFy8ijjnIRLjL-IFaNa5usU9jvFX1ePKgZ1gn0Ot7D1c_RD5kT_IdR4Sv6nkvtJW1Hwk8Scan_iO6lRx4brVE9XXWAOe00/s1600/20140405_220352.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seth on the left. You might tell from the lack of captions above that I don't remember any of the other guys' names.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
What else can I say? The band was great, it was a good crowd, and the venue was super close to a subway station on my line. I went alone, didn't drink, and was home by 11:30.<br />
<br />
I'm easing my way back in. Don't rush me.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hurrahaboltoflight.bandcamp.com/album/hurrah-a-bolt-of-light" target="_blank">Hurrah! A Bolt of Light!</a> is selling their self-title album on their bandcamp site. You can listen to the whole thing for free first if you're not sure about spending $7 on a band that will blow your panties off with awesome.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-28705544694658941682014-04-06T14:10:00.004-04:002014-04-06T14:10:52.071-04:00Exciting updates from the Great UnthawingI got this post title from a group of men the BF and I saw walking down the street. We were going to the grocery store and passed a quartet of Young Men in Brooklyn, with their narrow trousers, fancy socks, and fedoras. We could barely wait until they were out of earshot before we judged them.<br />
<br />
"They looked like an indie album cover," I said. "'Hi, we're just going to play one more for you. It's our song Tree Stump, from our album Unthawed.'" <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7RGWoY_xPEqhNACyZ8QDPwcEa0_i1AMbs96_SUGHlEJx5mNLy3lwWr5BFJ5t636aD9TiFeOhl7vkCYJPumcSmtAXbIVFPKhOpgFj0HXrcowEqktY_lRpmOGHCbUb3ZnWl6vxLdKef82o/s1600/hipster-ev-120609.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7RGWoY_xPEqhNACyZ8QDPwcEa0_i1AMbs96_SUGHlEJx5mNLy3lwWr5BFJ5t636aD9TiFeOhl7vkCYJPumcSmtAXbIVFPKhOpgFj0HXrcowEqktY_lRpmOGHCbUb3ZnWl6vxLdKef82o/s1600/hipster-ev-120609.jpg" height="215" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Readers outside New York should consult this diagram.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But unthawed we are in this fair city! I even have the window open right now. And it's a good thing, too, because I suffered this last winter. I was going through one of my paper journals and came across this gem from the depths of Snognarok:<br />
<br />
"JUST FUCKING SNOW ALREADY! You know you want to, you miserably tenacious shitslipper of a season."<br />
<br />
It's not for nothing that my coworker told me I have "the illest potty mouth."<br />
<br />
Seriously, that was a bitch of a winter right there. I wore my fur coat more times this winter than my previous five winters in New York combined.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiggHaOln5Vk-5fcLtk0CAzjInVtsWzNV_YOJCqUEnIDwNJFIznFajM8m14TvLKGXoj35RcDPNQGaGJ1YIN28xfvfOt3IyFbumuzoeMgs2tNj0p7Hd8QqD9ZeSbfi4NDSyuYQYfbNFFpGA/s1600/Rachel+with+Giftshop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiggHaOln5Vk-5fcLtk0CAzjInVtsWzNV_YOJCqUEnIDwNJFIznFajM8m14TvLKGXoj35RcDPNQGaGJ1YIN28xfvfOt3IyFbumuzoeMgs2tNj0p7Hd8QqD9ZeSbfi4NDSyuYQYfbNFFpGA/s1600/Rachel+with+Giftshop.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here I am wearing it in the radio station, which has no heat, hence my pissy expression.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
That fur coat is real fur--it was ripped from many small dead animals of indeterminate origin, and it feels sinfully good to touch. Also, I look fabulous in it. Though if you'll remember from my <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2013/01/two-operas-les-troyens-and-les.html" target="_blank">night at the opera</a> last year, it also smells overwhelmingly of dead animals when it gets wet. Probably punishment for the animal cruelty.<br />
<br />
The story of the coat goes all the way back to the summer of 2008, when I moved to New York from Honolulu. I was still living at <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2009/07/tribute-to-187.html" target="_blank">187</a>. My upstairs neighbor Yarrow, who'd hooked me up with my roommates, called me up to the third floor and asked if I wanted her grandmother's fur coat, which was cool but took up too much room in her closet. I looked at the coat and thought, "It's 90 degrees in this apartment. When the hell am I ever going to need that?"<br />
<br />
But I took it, cuz fur coat!<br />
<br />
Six weeks later, I was sleeping underneath it because I couldn't figure out how to turn on the heat in my new apartment. I kept going to the thermostat and punching the "up" arrow, but nothing ever happened. I called the super and told him the heat was broken, and that's how I learned that some thermostats have an "on" switch that you have to press before the heat will come.<br />
<br />
An addendum to that story: another time that winter, I was trying to get the plastic cover off the thermostat to turn the heat up (my roommates and I were in a constant struggle for how hot the apartment should be, because I wanted it to be tropical and they didn't want to pay for tropical). The plastic cover wouldn't come, so I wrapped my stumpy little fingers around the whole thing, and I swear the phrase "RACHEL SMASH!" popped into my head at the exact second that I ripped the thermostat off the wall. I was left holding a plastic box and a bunch of wires, which I crammed into the hole in the drywall I'd just created, thinking, "Maybe no one will notice."<br />
<br />
I'd like to say that six winters later, I've gotten better at dealing with the cold. But my sister reminded me that every single year, she tells me to seal my windows, and every year I don't do it.<br />
<br />
"I lived in old buildings on the mainland for ten years!" she said. "I know what I'm talking about. And I know I've told you this before."<br />
<br />
I heard her husband in the background, "Yeah, you did, you told her last year."<br />
<br />
Well, it's spring and I didn't seal my windows last winter. Maybe next year.<br />
<br />
Also, I got a new computer last week! My college graduation gift laptop finally gave up the ghost, so I bought a new one with a much bigger screen. "Game of Thrones" is going to be so much more fun to watch now! Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-52969741318913267802014-02-13T11:34:00.003-05:002014-02-13T11:34:37.867-05:00The Saddest Stoop in BrooklynToday we get a snow day from work because WINTER. I got the text last night around 8:30 and the evening was transformed. A regular Wednesday night, in which I recover from my Tuesday radio show with a sensible dinner and get to bed at a reasonable hour, turned into a one-woman fantasmagora of sin, squalor, and genre television. <span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk5pyVjiohmtxe2-RKquGwz_kK5Rlc_BhaDfqBMpZkCD4tOM8R5MmiwdpAFmOMB1zOs5YJFvdT5xUcgUjsYrO_6E_DtySWLyUViJDTCQZ2A5l3t5OnCSKSAk0Xg1p8Ausp2MjKbb0LE0c/s1600/hedonismbot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk5pyVjiohmtxe2-RKquGwz_kK5Rlc_BhaDfqBMpZkCD4tOM8R5MmiwdpAFmOMB1zOs5YJFvdT5xUcgUjsYrO_6E_DtySWLyUViJDTCQZ2A5l3t5OnCSKSAk0Xg1p8Ausp2MjKbb0LE0c/s1600/hedonismbot.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">TEA AFTER 7PM! SECOND DINNER! MORE WINE! MORE NETFLIX! BEDTIME? WHAT BEDTIME!</span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">But that's not what we're here to discuss. I have an important matter I need to bring to your attention. For I have found, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the saddest stoop in Brooklyn. </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPIYMidLYwjWNcuMZzre8F79esESmxSwz7ncLQHl1kTZFs_0xsI-Z8ux9qHBl98SbuWNThAxlOQ3mCQpnyChoPXC4g0AYRsKHZFvrtW4m8dI3crT3KRhickakEuTzcfRr9ZfxdTlJcu-o/s1600/20140208_120751.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPIYMidLYwjWNcuMZzre8F79esESmxSwz7ncLQHl1kTZFs_0xsI-Z8ux9qHBl98SbuWNThAxlOQ3mCQpnyChoPXC4g0AYRsKHZFvrtW4m8dI3crT3KRhickakEuTzcfRr9ZfxdTlJcu-o/s1600/20140208_120751.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BEHOLD!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">It may take a minute to recognize the sorry state of the person who left these books here. At first glance, I'm sure it just seems like the usual Saturday morning book-purge. <i>Oh, I haven't read these in a while, I'll just leave them outside the door for anyone to take</i>. I get most of my books, and <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2009/09/urban-foraging.html" target="_blank">various </a><a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2010/01/urban-foraging-lord-of-flies-edition.html" target="_blank">other</a> <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2013/11/urban-foraging.html" target="_blank">goodies</a>, this way. </span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">But look closer and the true wretchedness of this individual will reveal itself. Allow me to walk you through this tableau of shattered dreams and despair.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9xd4CUtB28Fld0oUFr46TBCtlRQNcVI8bmvg1lfMvf2AfTv9JAmeBbgo44mjbarAFUIBtfl1TyabhXMGbJeT-2_ArAv50u2cLa4I0P6tXe9xD87eCua4qO6O0jj3FBo7IdaEgBsLek_U/s1600/acting+craft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9xd4CUtB28Fld0oUFr46TBCtlRQNcVI8bmvg1lfMvf2AfTv9JAmeBbgo44mjbarAFUIBtfl1TyabhXMGbJeT-2_ArAv50u2cLa4I0P6tXe9xD87eCua4qO6O0jj3FBo7IdaEgBsLek_U/s1600/acting+craft.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">If you'll draw your attention to the circled items in this picture, you'll see that this person was into theater. And not just into it as a hobby. No, s/he aspired to a career in the biz, and favored a holistic approach to this goal. Of course one always wants to direct, but a background in stage management is good to have, as is general knowledge of the Great White Way. And it's important to understand acting as a craft. In fact--</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTxzJbGruNdB_z6mBVXjVdYSLtKwvI9P4STYq_cehsqypCBeNQC_qJhUgRP8fDvzwHP3Nfxl6QxPQGClmbleXaqLWtv-GwexqO4-xt_ISXzA4t__76VfsZ1IqxBGhCzb5gHXEnWXN1IUc/s1600/acting+famous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTxzJbGruNdB_z6mBVXjVdYSLtKwvI9P4STYq_cehsqypCBeNQC_qJhUgRP8fDvzwHP3Nfxl6QxPQGClmbleXaqLWtv-GwexqO4-xt_ISXzA4t__76VfsZ1IqxBGhCzb5gHXEnWXN1IUc/s1600/acting+famous.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">I think acting was this person's true passion. See the autobiography of Katherine Hepburn, the encyclopedia of the 100 greatest modern actors, whatever that Russian dude in the top book is on about. S/he craved the Proscenium arch, the silver screen, the thrill of the audience <i>believing</i> in your Maggie the Cat, your Walter Younger, your Jesus Christ Superstar. </span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">But no longer. </span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">The dream is broken. The hopes are lost. All lies shattered on cold stone in February. There will be no acting, no directing, no Assistant Gaffer in the lighting department. </span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Don't weep yet. The curtain has not yet drawn. The credits aren't rolling. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">It gets worse. </span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpj1cCHOrU5f_kCDAiBG99h041pFNlj50ZtrN7q3Re7-rJxYkG8IsiZK6AVNjs9TAjzj6pQnAySZW5qErKItZ_tLjrUEO-TXy4HO3oBg-j9wF7ur3eKn6KgUZ7SqU6YXW4Fio9Ra8gZUk/s1600/sex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpj1cCHOrU5f_kCDAiBG99h041pFNlj50ZtrN7q3Re7-rJxYkG8IsiZK6AVNjs9TAjzj6pQnAySZW5qErKItZ_tLjrUEO-TXy4HO3oBg-j9wF7ur3eKn6KgUZ7SqU6YXW4Fio9Ra8gZUk/s1600/sex.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Look at the upper right corner of this stack of awfulness and dread. Are you looking? Do you see those books up there?</span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">The sex books?</span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">It isn't enough that this person has given up on their stage dreams. S/he has renounced all earthly delights and realized that <i>not only</i> is s/he an untalented hack who will never so much as aim a spotlight from the catwalk, let alone dazzle the mob with the skill and nuance of a character brought to life. </span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /></span>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">No, this person is also lousy in bed<i>. And will never get better.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">The shame, the misery conveyed in this collection of abandoned objects, it's like a piece of art in a trendy gallery in DUMBO. But it's not in a gallery. It's out in the world for all us ordinary people to see. And we feel the icy touch of oblivion on the back of our necks as we hurry past, unable to escape the dull gray shadow that settles over our souls. It is the knowledge that all is for naught, that all human efforts are fleeting sparks in the black void of a cold, unfeeling universe.</span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><i> </i></span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">I don't know what's up with the biography of Mao Zedong. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-48232007077284080632014-01-26T12:31:00.002-05:002014-01-26T12:31:35.569-05:00It's so coldHOW COLD IS IT?<br />
<br />
Fuck you, invisible peanut gallery, it's fucking cold is how cold it is. It's recluse cold, as in it's so cold I don't go outside unless I'm scurrying from one warm indoor spot to another. I don't have cheese. I can't leave my apartment to buy cheese.<br />
<br />
That's how cold it is. It's no-cheese cold.<br />
<br />
I can't believe 8% of the country's population lives in this cold-ass state.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-21740899314012899542014-01-23T07:37:00.005-05:002014-01-23T07:37:47.592-05:00New Years ResolutionI made one!<br />
<br />
I know it's a little late, but I have trouble thinking of resolutions for the New Year because I pretty much live the way I want to. I already eat healthy and keep a clean Rachel-den. Living in New York gives me plenty of exercise and I have no desire to lose weight (I'd have to buy new bras again--what a nightmare). I could make the resolution to work more on my writing, but hell, I make that resolution every morning, and some days I meet it, some days I don't.<br />
<br />
So what could I resolve to change about myself? What new habit could I cultivate? What old habit could I break?<br />
<br />
The answer came to me last weekend. The BF has been out of town for the past couple of weeks, traveling to different cities to do field studies for his thesis. When he was pau, we decided to celebrate with dinner at a fancy restaurant. (We had a coupon!) The food was excellent. I got ratatouille with polenta and ate every morsel. The BF wasn't done with his meal, so I folded my hand in my lap and stared at his plate.<br />
<br />
I stared, and stared, and stared.<br />
<br />
"Do you want some?" he asked, cutting me a slice of chicken and putting it on the edge of my empty plate.<br />
<br />
"No thanks, I'm stuffed," I said. "Take it back."<br />
<br />
He went back to eating. I went back to staring at his plate.<br />
<br />
I stared, and stared, and stared.<br />
<br />
Suddenly I became aware of what I was doing. I was staring at his plate while he ate, and I was doing it out of habit.<br />
<br />
"Do I stare at people's plates when they eat?" I asked him.<br />
<br />
He paused.<br />
<br />
There it was. That dreaded pause from your significant other, while they work out of the quantum mechanics of a question guaranteed to produce a painful answer. It's like Schrodinger's Cat. Either I'm going to be pissed that you tried to poison my cat, or I'm going to be pissed that you killed my cat.<br />
<br />
"You can stare at <i>my</i> plate," he said.<br />
<br />
Which was a great save on his part, but my resolution had come into creation in that pause. I really need to stop staring at people's fucking plates while they eat. I have no idea how or when or why I picked up this habit. But I bet other people find it creepy and weird, and as long as we're being brutally honest, I don't need any help in that area. I'm plenty creepy and weird on my own, I don't need to broadcast it quite so obviously.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-3072836236769263482014-01-15T18:07:00.001-05:002014-01-15T18:07:39.266-05:00Personal Space InvadersOn Saturday and Sunday, I didn't leave my apartment. Not even to take the trash down to the dumpster. (And thank you, whichever kind neighbor saw the trash bag outside my door and took it down for me.) So on Monday, when I <i>did</i> go out into the world, I made an inappropriate amount of eye contact with people. I think I kind of forgot that other people exist outside of myself and my friends in the computer.<br />
<br />
But other people do exist. In fact, they exist a little too much, and need to exist somewhere outside of my personal space.<br />
<br />
This morning, I got street harassed on my way to the subway. I had the nerve--the <i>nerve</i>--to say nothing to a stranger who complimented me on my dress, and he followed me across the street to the subway entrance, where he continued to shout abuse at my as I went down the stairs. First he informed me that I was rude for not responding to his compliment--yeah, buddy, <i>I'm</i> the rude one in this scenario--and then he told me I wasn't "that cute anyway."<br />
<br />
That's only the first half of this story.<br />
<br />
On my lunch hour, I usually take a book and go to another floor in my building where there are couches. You know, to unwind. So I was standing in front of the elevator, already reading my book, when someone else from my floor comes up next to me. She says hi, and I grunt. We get in the elevator together--I'm still looking down at my book--and she asks me what I'm reading.<br />
<br />
Is a book in front of a face not the universal symbol for "leave me alone"?<br />
<br />
Apparently not. I say, vaguely, "It's a police story." And this woman <i>takes the book from me</i> to turn it over and look at the cover.<br />
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Both of these things happened today. It's so astounding I have to put another one up.<br />
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SRSLY?<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-6076674375047859492014-01-12T11:26:00.005-05:002014-01-12T11:27:26.431-05:00The Introvert's Fish DilemmaI love living alone. I love tucking myself into my perfectly-Big Island Rachel-sized apartment, drinking tea, reading books, watching my stories, and tumbling my tumblr. I didn't leave my den yesterday, and I might not leave it today.<br />
<br />
I may, however, kill myself with sweet, delicious oily salmon.<br />
<br />
On Xmas day, Daddio called me and asked, "Did you get the salmon I sent you? I mailed to your office."<br />
<br />
Oh. Oh no. OH NO!<br />
<br />
Fish... mailed to my office... which is closed for two weeks for the holidays. The folks in the mail room will never speak to me again.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, it was vacuum-sealed hard smoked salmon, so it was still good when I got back to the office on January 2. Also, our mail guy assured me that the mail room is familiar with the stink of rotting care-package food, especially when the boxes are addressed to the international students. (Considering how many Korean scholars we have, I imagine there have been some memorable incidents with kimchi.) (Wait, is that racist?)<br />
<br />
The instructions on the box said that the salmon would keep at room temperature until it was opened, at which point it should be refrigerated and eaten within five days. I had it in my mind for about a week that I would save the salmon for a special occasion, that such a bounty should be shared with friends in a safe and loving environment with soft Motown music in the background.<br />
<br />
Then I remembered that I never have anyone over and decided to just eat all the salmon myself.<br />
<br />
I opened the package yesterday and I'm slowly, very slowly and carefully, working my way through it. I have to pace myself, because it's really salty and oily and has the potential to upset the delicate equilibrium of my ecosystem, in terms of both my body and my habitat. I can't spill a drop of the salmon liquid on the floor or my rug, or else the whole apartment will stink of fish until spring. And as for what will happen it I get too much of it inside of me--well, let's hope it doesn't come to that. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8427679169563571149.post-6885401145134122992014-01-08T19:12:00.000-05:002014-01-08T19:12:23.802-05:00GlamoramaDid you know that the Girl Scouts offers a fashion and makeup badge? Actually, I think now they call it the science of style badge, which is cool, because hurray science and it's important to know how much lead you're swallowing with your lipstick.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAkFYYNZWHVOPDzgF8hrXvZ4Y2Z9mTyVrbshXEDtCL7txsXCD0Wwozuvf38zkSYL3irGZEbtEQu7bT_yf_jv52Xqv7I7ea-XW4lPHDNOXKhVUoEhu0xeaMj-IBrO5i2SrnaEMjclooKuI/s1600/lead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAkFYYNZWHVOPDzgF8hrXvZ4Y2Z9mTyVrbshXEDtCL7txsXCD0Wwozuvf38zkSYL3irGZEbtEQu7bT_yf_jv52Xqv7I7ea-XW4lPHDNOXKhVUoEhu0xeaMj-IBrO5i2SrnaEMjclooKuI/s1600/lead.jpg" height="320" width="319" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So much lead.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I didn't earn my fashion and makeup badge. My first Girl Scout leader was a pro-body hair hippie and my second leader was more interested in giving me the skills--or lack thereof--to <a href="http://bigislandrachel.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-great-christmas-bra-burning-of-2012.html" target="_blank">burn $200 worth of bras</a> last Xmas. Neither of them ever gave the troupe the option of spending the afternoon at the Liberty House makeup counter, learning how to bring out the color in our eyes.<br />
<br />
I've gone through periods of my life where I'm anti-makeup. I just got through a five-year stretch of not wearing any except for weddings, conferences and ballets, because I don't think it's fair that women are judged on their appearances by every sticky mouthbreather on the G train. My body isn't public property. If you don't like the way it looks, you can go screw--I don't exist to give men something pleasing to look at. <br />
<br />
In Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, "Persepolis," she talks about life as a woman in Iran under a repressive theocracy. "The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself, 'Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my makeup be seen? Are they going to whip me?' No longer asks herself, 'Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What's going on in the political prisons?'" <br />
<br />
To paraphrase: People who have to think about stupid shit aren't free to think about important shit. So no makeup for Big Island Rachel. I have important shit to think about.<br />
<br />
Of course, that's only about half the time. The other half of the time, I realize that I'm constantly thinking about <i>monumentally </i>stupid shit--Batman, cats, eggs for brunch, how dumb squirrels are, the angle of the slope of my apartment floor, Star Trek puns, where my Avengers tshirt went, why I didn't finish that ebook before it expired when I'd been on the waiting list for six months, that time in kindergarten I made my friend cry, what brand of Scotch my tumblr-pal in New Zealand drinks--and honestly, I can take 5 minutes out of all that to put some damn eyeliner on. <br />
<br />
I'll revisit "Persepolis," as one does with the stories that really stick with you, and I'll notice that Satrapi herself was desperate for the freedom to wear makeup, fashionable clothing, or even just a pair of red socks to school. Her oppression didn't come from the veil itself--it came from her lack of choice of whether she could wear the veil or not.<br />
<br />
And then the pendulum swings back the other way. Yes, Big Island Rachel, you don't have to wear makeup if you don't want to.<br />
<br />
So... do you want to?<br />
<br />
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<br />
BAM! New lipstick. Red as the blood of my enemies. Also, it kind of smells like cake frosting when it goes on.<br />
<br />
The New Year is off to a great start. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0