Chicago Sketchfest

I went back in January to make a short "pod" on Sketchfest. Now it is done! Hooray.

Sketchfest Pod

I "produced" it so I was not on camera. I was just around the camera, having libations.

Who's That Sweeping?

Me. I am an excellent brooms-woman.

http://current.com/items/88884039_the_future_of_infomania

Exciting times, indeed.

Newsblast

I work at a show called 'infomania.' For many months now, my friend and co-worker Mark has written a segment called "Newsblast" almost every day. The last Newsblast aired on April 1st. At the end of this final Newsblast, there's a little tribute to him and his behind the scenes work. Mark does not like being on camera/performing (much) so most of this was caught over the months when he was just doing voiceovers and the camera was rolling.

http://current.com/items/88883466_newsblast_04_01_08

Check it out. The homage starts around 2:10. Congrats, Mark.

Then We Came To The End

This is a book about work, and the way we work, and how we treat the people we work with. It takes place in an advertising agency in Chicago that is slowly falling apart. I worked in an advertising agency in Chicago that was slowly falling apart and I have a deep desire to hold a posthumous book club with the agency and ask everyone if they know what character they are. Because that, in some ways, is the point of (and best part of)Then We Came To The End. It is written in the first person plural - the "we." And the use of "we" very much gets at the way we understand each other. In offices, people live in collectives, and operate in collectives and create narratives to understand them. Large, hive-mind shifting narratives where you can somehow know that everyone has an opinion about you and still survive the endless scrutiny of simply existing day after day with them because you've got them pegged pretty quickly.

I haven't worked in an office since August 2003. Now I am back in an office. A smaller office with fewer of the middle aged people that I found bizarre at age 22. Why were they talking to me? What did they want me to do? Didn't they know I had bigger dreams and a crushing interminable hangover from drinking at the Old Town Ale House until 4am? Every Wednesday?

The voice is perfect because I/We Did That. We would go to Starbucks for peppermint mochas because the day felt long and we felt irritated. We would complain about being oppressed. And we'd see the same people every day and then we'd leave and forget them, slowly, gatherings for drinks falling by the wayside.

In the interim of this time I was in another work situation, with a touring company of actors. (Here I commence pretending someone reads this who doesn't know me). And for some reason, you'd think it would feel the same but it never did. It never felt the way an office feels. It was more like high school: a lived in drama.

In an office there is some facade of propriety you have to follow. There's a sense of professionalism that comes from the industrial carpet and the khakis. In a van with seven other adults bound to each other by the fact that we have a show to do and only one van, well, just much much different. The personal relationships become more important. There is no boss. No sense of adult to please on the road. The stage manager is in charge of us, but also is one of us: at the end of the day, a friend.

Hmmm. I'm going to have to think about this. I recommend this book, though, - the first third is phenomenal, followed by a of a drop off in the novelty of the narrative device and, thus, the strength of the writing. It's also very funny at the beginning.

Live Bloggin!

LiveBlogging from the ideal Ohio debate:

BRIAN WILLIAMS
Hey, welcome to the final Democratic debate before the March 4th primaries, here in Ohio. With us tonight, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

(The camera pans to show Clinton and Obama)

BRIAN WILLIAMS
So, we're all pretty much ready to choose right? Great. Let's go home.

Everyone applauds and then they all go home.

Ready For Day One

There’s a lot of talk in the democratic campaign about being ready on Day One. Hillary’s main argument is that she’ll be the most ready on Day One. Barack Obama wants to prove that he can also be ready on Day One, even though he lacks thirty-five years of experience readying for Day One. To prove this point, they both throw the words “Day One” into their speech at any opportunity possible. To paraphrase: “I’m ready for Day One.” “We need a leader prepared for day one.” “How many donuts can I have in a Day? One.”

For a long time, I thought that “Day One” was what the survivors of a nuclear apocalypse would call the day they all got together in Nebraska or wherever, but this campaign has broadened my mind. Now I am psyched for Day One. It sounds like a wonderful day.

I remember when we used to evaluate Presidents based on their first hundred days. How delightfully antiquated of us! I laugh at my pre-Day One self. Laugh at her? I barely know her. Who’s that young fool in that sepia toned photograph on my myspace page? Me, before day one.

Day One will be like New Year’s Day, except instead of hangovers we’ll all be in a pretty good mood. We’ll still order pizza in, but we’ll go jogging before we eat it. And, unlike New Year’s Day, we won’t pretend to follow our resolutions for three weeks until our best friend visits and we decide that having between two and twelve drinks isn’t a big deal. We will go whole hog with Universal Health Care. In a day. What day? Day One. Make your doctor appointment now.

On Day One there will be a parade, but a parade that all the kids can go to by themselves and no one will kidnap them. The adults will watch football. There will be football on Day One, because that’s American.

And on Day One, all of the other countries will forgive us. Like petty co-workers they will point and whisper “Day One” as we saunter into the UN and suddenly, everyone wants to sit with us again. No translators, thank you. On Day One, we speak the universal language of Day One.

On Day One the Iraqis will wake up, as if from a spell, like the winged monkeys in Oz, and realize that they’re all friends. They’ll ask us not to go, but we’ll pack up the Emerald City anyway.

The Beatles song “Yesterday” will become irrelevant because no one likes yesterday. Not after Day One.

Our landlords will replace our appliances without a commensurate increase in rent because on Day One, we deserve a new dishwasher.

Wait? Did I just say landlords? I meant that we’re all homeowners with substantial, small, and legal loans. Day One: you own a house for real this time.

On Day One, the 24-hour news anchors will look at each other and say this:
MALE: I am out of things to talk about. Why just keep repeating ourselves?
FEMALE: You’re right. That’s enough vaguely disguised editorializing for one day.
MALE: Well, see you tomorrow.
FEMALE: Yeah, go have fun and don’t worry about any workplace shootings or random kidnapping of a young female like yourself! That’s not gonna happen.
MALE: Not on day one.
BUT THEY WON’T LAUGH AT THE SAME TIME AFTER HE SAYS THAT.

I see you Day One, and I await you with open arms. The Democrats have promised and I believe. Barack, Hillary, make this day come. I know that you are ready for it.

I'll Cry if I Want To

Okay, I'm trying to write some "Shouts and Murmurs" style pieces. Your feedback is appreciated. The boyfriend in the following piece is fictional. In case you were like "Girl, no you don't." You are correct. I don't. Also, this was written three weeks ago.
*

Hillary Clinton nabbed New Hampshire yesterday and,
according to the blogo-pundo-talko-sphere, it was
because a lot of us ladies turned off Grey’s Anatomy
just in time to see those “tears”, put that pint of
ice cream back in the freezer and rush to the polls.

The endless speculation into Hillary’s emotional
makeup makes me wonder: do I, as a woman, have what it
takes to be President? I have the pedigree. I mean,
not yet, but I could get it. I went to Harvard and
that’s like step numero uno.

But what I’m worried about is my innate lady-need for
emotions. If you’d asked me about my emotional state
before this election, I would have said I was normal.
Love cute babies, have road rage normal.

Now, I’m not so sure. As a woman, would I cry in front
of Kim Jong-il? Get PMS-y right when I have to launch
a nuclear bomb? Or would I turn my emotions off and
become an unfeeling robot? Robots can’t be President
and neither can sissies!

To test my mettle, I kept an emotions journal for a
whole day to find out if I had what it takes.

6AM – Awake. Emotional response: robotic.

7:30AM – Forgot to bring special face soap into
shower. Wash face with regular soap. Emotional
response: sensitive. Worried about effects on face.
Gotta get over that: can’t think about skin when
troops are on the line.

8:20AM – Drive to work. Sad story about Iraq on NPR. I
do not cry. I sympathetically, but decisively change
lanes, indicating to other drivers my resolve.
Emotional response: Balanced.

9:30AM – We’re out of instant oatmeal at the office.
Emotional response: Hot Pocket.

11AM- My boss and I go over some of my work. Emotional
response: initially sensitive but more robotic as
criticism intensifies. I get you, Hillary!

2PM – Read about Britney Spears on the internet.
Emotional response: I can save her. I want to project
my values into her life.  I want her to read books and
watch BBC DVDs. Does this mean I would be an
interventionist President? How would I deal with the
Middle East?  Could Syria or Jordan deal with all five
hours of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth?
Worrisome.

6PM – Dry Cleaner. Negotiations. I insist he has lost
my sweaters. He insists I lost the ticket. I don’t
have the ticket but it doesn’t mean I lost it.
Jackass. I’ll launch a missile on your bulls**t right
now, buddy. Emotional response: patriotic.

6:15PM - Tell Dry Cleaner he is unprofessional. Vow to
never return.  Emotional Response: Robotic. The kind
of thing you’d like to see with Kim Jong-il. This has
nothing to do with the fact that my dry cleaner is
Asian.

7PM – Home. Find ticket. Emotional response: Guilt.
Wild waves of guilt. I am wrong. I am flawed. I am a
blight on the human race. I do not deserve to exist.

8PM - I e-mail my family, friends, the dry cleaner,
people I have wronged, people I have admired. I
confess. Apologize. I drive to the dry cleaners. I
apologize. He says its okay. I’m glad its okay. I need
everyone to like me except that one girl from college
who was such a bi-otch when we tutored those
low-income kids.

10PM – Show journal to boyfriend. Ask if he thinks, as
a woman, I can be president. He asks why he isn’t in
it. I say, “Why would you be in it?” He wants to know
how I feel about him. I say “Why is everything always
about you? I’m a busy woman with a country to run
(someday).” He looks like he might cry. I think I’ll
just tell everyone he did.

I didn't really like Juno

I didn't mind it, but I didn't fall head over heels in love with that awkwardly self-conscious hamburger phone.

I started liking the movie around the last third when the self-aware coy/smartassishness let in some genuine emotion and stakes.

I generally agree with this take:

http://nymag.com/daily/movies/2008/01/oscar_nominations.html

Return of the Bloggin'

Okay, I'm back. Who cares? Me. I care.

I was talking to someone on the phone yesterday who asked if I wrote one of these entries when I was high. These beautiful pieces of literature? No.

But it made me want to write in it again. Here's a tale to file under "Is This Adulthood?"

The bathroom in our office has an energy saver switch. It turned off yesterday when I was in the stall, so I was left in the pitch dark. Immediately, I thought "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman," and then I freaked out, scuttled out of the stall, pants around my ankles, and turned the switch on, and scuttled back to the stall. Because it's okay to be 28 and frightened of a fictional ghost/serial killer that lives in Cabrini Green and comes to get you through the mirror. That's okay.

Ed Harris

Here's a funny video produced by a sketch group I direct. It's a called "Ed Harris"
Check it out.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/0c904a9574

And this is one of the things I did last week in LA. By calling Ron Paul a "longshot candidate" it apparently was wildly controversial. I'll try to stay away from statements like "Looks like November is the month after October" or "Soap is a good thing to use to clean yourself."

http://current.com/items/84920881_the_bards_of_paul

Rules for Saying Goodbye

Sometimes, maybe sometimes when you are sort of stuck in the middle of a biography about Napoleon, a great book falls into your lap. Not necessarily the greatest book ever written, but the right book at the right time. That's what Rules for Saying Goodbye was for me.

I got it by accident. I had dinner with my friend Nick and he had played tennis with the author and showed me her book and said I could borrow it. I did. I opened it on the plane home and finished it by the time we landed.

Rules for Saying Goodbye is a coming of age story that spans the author's adolescence through her late twenties and follows her dream to be a writer, her disappointments in romance, and the way we grow up these days: slowly.

Like Him Again, Her Again, Him Again... etc etc, it's intelligent and funny, about an intelligent woman trying to make a creative life, or simply a life, without really being sure how to hurdle the obstacles to what might be adulthood, or a fuller understanding of yourself. This journey, I agree, always seems to get a little lost in the tension between possibility and daily life.

Also, it's got a hilarious mother-daughter relationship. If everyone keeps writing about their hilarious nutty mothers I am going to run out of my own hilarious nutty mother material. Although, I also have a sneaking suspicion it will just keep coming.

I bet this book is marketed as chick-lit, which is too bad, because novels about boys growing up aren't just dude-lit, and just because women also have stories about drinking too much and bartending when you're supposed to be writing a novel and friendships that grow and change and people you maybe decide to love for the wrong reasons, doesn't mean that only girls will like it.

There is no shoe shopping in this book.

There is a great, short chapter about walking in a snowstorm with one of her boyfriends named Henry that recalls something I've talked about a lot with my friend Leah - those moments, those conversations that change everything in an instant or two, and it certainly takes time to catch up on what they meant or what got decided without you realizing you'd decided anything. Sometimes, when we're recounting these to each other, we wish we were wearing a wire, so we can go back and see the story in it that isn't the one we're trying to tell.

Boyfriends are not the center of this book. They are a part of it, but the book is so much more about the protagonist than about the boyfriends - they are gently sketched out, and they play a part in her decisions, but she's really only free to be herself after the biggest heartbreak.

She recuperates, oddly enough, in Northern Lower Michigan, where I've spent plenty of time sitting staring at a lake trying to figure out what happened.

It made me cry a little bit, which was hysterical, because I was sitting next to an NFL referee on the plane and every so often when I was getting all teary eyed I'd pause for a minute and turn to him and say something like, "I've never totally understood pass interference" and he'd look at me like "This poor insane girl reading next to me should just watch Evan Almighty and chill the fuck out."

At the end of the book, she moves to LA, and, presumably plays tennis with Nick.

Shooting

I wrote that entry about the news before the Cleveland shooting. It's so sad and frightening how often this is happening. I've also noticed that shootings happen and almost no news station brings up the issue of gun control. Are we that scared to have this debate? It's happening every day!

I'm A Real Grown-Up Commuter

On the drive to work the past couple days (yes, the drive to work! with my coffee!) I noticed that there apparently was a gas station of the future. It's a BP project and here's a picture or two to show you. I did not take these pictures. Someone else did. I found them by googling "la future bp gas station." Behold: the power of the internet.



Many people are incensed by this, seeing it as another specious bp promise in their marketing campaign that paints them as environmentally conscious when the opposite is true. If you're interested, there's 100,000 angry bloggers out there with lots of information.

I have not read anything that isn't news in the last two days. Or watched anything that isn't news. I've primarily been watching the cable news networks. If you never want to watch the news again, just fill in these following categories with items from your imagination:

1. SPECULATIVE STORY ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE
2. SHOOTING OR OFFICE SHOOTING SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA
3. BAD NEWS IN IRAQ
4. HILARIOUS ANIMAL

Hilarious Animal is occasionally augmented with "What were they thinking?" style segments that focus on local-dust ups.
Oh, and sometimes the Shooting segment is replaced with WEATHER THAT KILLS. Just make up some interesting things and voila! the news!

"The Odyssey Years"

It's nice that David Brooks calls the period between adolescence and settling down "the odyssey years." My Mom has some other choice terms for it.

It's rare that I like his columns, but I did like this phrase:

"Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives."

Improvising lives is right. Har.

The article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/opinion/09brooks.html?em&ex=1192075200&en=ff0efadce05fb58d&ei=5087%0A

I'm Here

There are lots of roads and streets with names that I recognize from rap songs. At the car rental place, the gentleman - a chivalrous type named Doug, was being kind of lazy and didn't want to track down the type of cheap-o car I ordered.

"Do you want an upgrade to something with automatic windows?" he inquired.
"No," I said. "I'm on a budget."

After I had finished shape-shifting into a midwestern Mother out to prove to the world that SHE COULD MAKE IT ON HER OWN, Doug tried once more.

"Are you sure? You don't want automatic windows and a CD player?"
"I am sure, Doug. Thank you."

nb: YOU USE PEOPLE'S NAMES BECAUSE IT IS POLITE!

Doug looked dejected and peeked out into the parking lot.

"You want a free upgrade?"
"Yes, please and thank you, Doug."

nb: SEE?

And that is how I came to be driving a periwinkle Hybrid-SUV down the broad streets.

American Airlines also lost my luggage, so I am now in LA with some decidedly uncool clothes to match my uncool maternal attitude. I dragged a friend who came to take me to dinner to a GAP and bought things so I could at least claim to be quasi-respectable while still wearing slightly smelly jeans. And then we ate at Johnny Rockets. LA! You so crazy!

No books in this post: fie on you. I read the entire Sunday Times which is like a book. Based on that reading I have three new opinions:

1. I like the hyphen, even though I don't know how to use it properly.
Did you know that a slippery-eel salesman is someone who sells you slippery eels? Yet, a slippery eel salesman is the guy who takes your cash and slithers away. Thank you, hyphen.

2. I like Manny Ramirez

3. The stories in Sunday Styles about middle aged people finding unexpected love in their condo building make me itchy. Especially when they say things like "I knew he was a good kisser." Also when they have weird New York professions like "stock photographer" and "organizational expert."

And, really, please read Frank Rich's column. Clarence Thomas is insane like origami.

Go West, Young (Wo)man

Tomorrow I set off for a trip to Los Angeles for a freelancing gig that is also a job interview. I'm a little scared. I'm good at traveling alone - I've done it quite a bit and I am also pretty good at traveling with eight people. What scares me the most is the symbolic significance of the possibilities this sort of trip contains - moving. Moving west.

In high school I had a brilliant English teacher. She stood, terrifying, brilliant at the front of our American literature classroom and dictated to us the significance of our national mythologies. One of her favorite idioms was the following "to the East, moral demise, economic rise. West, economic demise, moral rise." I think this dichotomy was based primarily on two books The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath. It was a compelling vision: that your place in America and your direction signified something about your life. Something, in our individualistic culture, so profoundly deterministic. You go here, you become this.

And it might have been wrong, or be wrong, because that canny epigram doesn't acknowledge the change that Hollywood has wrought on our understanding of east and west. We're not the Joads, most of us, just trying to find a living. We're wanna-be actors, searching for fame, fortune, and maybe a spot in the "Stars Are Just Like Us" section of US Weekly

It's a midwestern idea, too, at heart, quoted by a midwestern woman who made, as we found out after her death, a profoundly Gatsby-like transition of her own. But the root of the idea is that we are neither east nor west. To her, we start, somewhere in the middle, in the heartland, and our coasts represent different flaws and strengths of our national identity.

I love Chicago. I've lived here my entire life, in the city, leaving for only a short while for college (met the east: moral demise? unsure. economic rise? Well, let's say I haven't fulfilled my potential on that front. Transformative, however).

Chicago represents the engine of this country. A big messy engine that propels you or compels you. In William Cronon's excellent history of the city, Nature's Metropolis he describes how the flow of commodities into Chicago changed the very nature of urban life. Wheat and pigs and lumber were never so fascinating. His major argument is that the Turner thesis - the idea that as long as the frontier was open, we had a sense of destiny and that the frontier created our national character - is fundamentally untrue. The way that cities processed the goods of the frontier decided how the frontier worked.

I'm not sure, though, that a sound national history can quite replace a starry-eyed national myth. The West, whatever it is, is still the west.

And moving still represents change. I'm not moving yet, so this is wholly speculative, but even thinking of it makes me, well, think of what that change might be. This is certainly not the conscious change that Jay Gatsby made, or the reluctant change that occurs when forces beyond your control push you forward (or so I think.)

In northern Michigan, I sometimes feel most at home, when it is dark and always cold on a summer night and you can stroll up a dirt or gravel road and see the stars or sit on a dock that stretches into black water and reflects the lights of home around the lake. That region sent their lumber down the lake to Chicago, tons and tons of it from the great north woods. There is a small island called South Manitou, with the best natural bay in that part of the lake, and the steamers would stop to refuel or take shelter from the storms. It is sandy and the forests are sparse around the edges because the trees were harvested for wood for the ship ovens. There is an old growth forest there, where it takes at least five ten year olds to wrap their arms around the biggest oak.

One of my favorite books is For Kings and Planets by an author named Ethan Canin. It tells the story of a midwesterner going east for college, and his friend, an easterner, running west. I think of it often because sometimes I feel like Orno and Marshall are the possibilities inside me. The struggle for what sort of life makes you happy: or the simple evolution of one that does.

The tone of that book is beautiful too, because it talks so much about the way light can tell you something. And in every part of the country I've been in, the way the light hits it at some time of day tells you the most about it. A city shining in the early morning is the promise of a city, not the humdrum dirt of noon. It's the city as you want to see it. A stormy frightening sky in the north woods is thrilling and humbling and exciting and being scared by rain when you're little is as exciting as watching the lightning crack when you're older. The flat gray sky of lower Michigan, the plain easy sunlight. The first day of spring in Chicago when the shadows get sharp.

I don't know who I want to turn into.

This is a picture someone took of a Chicago sky from my car on the way back from a good trip. It's a prairie sky, a lake storm, the middle of where I've been.

An Excuse and An Idea

Hello! It has been a long time. It's October now. You can always tell the changing of the seasons in Chicago, because you reluctantly take out the AC unit you only installed in August and the next day is eighty degrees.

You might think "I bet she hasn't been reading any books! What a terrible book blogger!" and then you flounce off and whisper more untoward statements to your friends, all of whom, apparently, are just crazy about book blogs and hold them to insanely high standards. Of course that doesn't happen, because people who care about book blogs aren't real. They're just in the imaginations of book bloggers. That world would be like "The Hills" for Iowan librarians.

I say that without having ever seen "The Hills." I know a lot about it though because those people have invaded my celebrity magazines and taken page space away from romances I am truly interested in: Brangelina and all those kids, and is Jake Gylenhaal single and will he remember that once in 2002 we talked on the phone for 32 seconds?

But the excuse is that I HAVE read a book. Or, almost all of it, but I left it in the van and have failed to pick it up from the charitable gentleman who rescued it from amidst the old newspapers, fast food wrappers, and Settlers of Catan debris. It is a biography about Napoleon. It's fun. Sometimes I need to read non-fiction because I find myself getting too emotionally upset. Napoleon can certainly be upsetting with some sundry assassinations and censorship and getting to be a real cranky tyrant, but the author talks about Napoleon's love life 2% of the time. Modern fiction tends to skew to discussions of complicated relationships like 50% of the time. So, it's Napoleon or maybe another book on China for me for a while.

Here's the idea:

In comedy, we like our protagonists to be the everyman. In drama, we'd rather watch rich people.

Thoughts?

I have to go back to the laundromat.

Him Her Him Again The End Of Him

The title of this novel by Patricia Marx doesn't exactly trip off the tounge. I referred to it, as I was reading it, as "the orange book by that funny lady who wrote for the Lampoon about the guy." A big improvement, eh?

Him Her Him Again, etc etc, is the story of the narrator's obsession with her first serious boyfriend, Eugene Obello. They meet in Cambridge, England, date for a little bit, but most of the novel is about their relations after Eugene has left her for another woman, married and had a baby. This makes the book sound very serious and heart-wrenching. It is not. In fact, it is very very funny.

This novel perplexed a lot of reviewers who felt moved to write comments like, "Why should we care about Eugene and the narrator? He's a total jerk and we can't believe she still likes/and or obsesses over him?"

There is certainly a school of comedy and comedic writing that believes in grounding the material in an emotionally real circumstance. The Lampoon style is not that way - it emphasizes the joke - the artful construction of the joke. In some senses, the joke in the abstract: without using a reference in the punchline or the set-up, without alluding to a current event how do you just make a joke?

Marx is using the format of the resurgent chick-literature in part to satirize this genre of writing wherein successful women search in a bumbling manner for romance and lots of silly things happen to them that you can totally relate to. Bridget Jones was the catalyst for this movement: and that book was hilarious and managed to capture our narcissistic obsessions about finding a relationship that meets our modern demands. The books that have followed Bridget Jones in an effort to capture the large market of women who like love stories that are like their own but with happier endings, have left some of the complexities of character behind and all appear to have put a lot more shopping in. Their covers in bookstores always have titles like "Shopping For Mr. Right" and then an illustration of legs and high heels in bright colors. On the back the description begins "Kelly Marksville thought she had it all: a job in graphic design, a loft in Chealsea and a great boyfriend until blah blah blah blah" - boyfriend leaves (jerk!) she gets over him, turns out graphic design wasn't it, moves, new guy, she starts a store. End. A diluted, sad, place for what could be a generally good, funny genre.

Marx doesn't do that large journey: this is just the focused story of a love affair, told like a friend was telling it to you except with many more hilarious observations and asides. And the narrator is a total neurotic and afraid she is a failure, something I can always relate to.

My favorite moments included the recounting of a pitch session at a faux-SNL type show called "Taped But Proud," and the following few quotes. I'm paraphrasing but bear with me, "Your Mother is right said my grandmother and also tell her I've always hated the yellow table in her front hall." "Good news, he said. I knew enough at this time to know that good news for someone is bad news for someone else. Usually me." And my favorite, "The comment came out the way I meant it: the truth hidden within a joke."

Nice.

It's fun. It's a short read. Yes, the lack of empathy you feel for the characters does start to slow it down in the last third of the book, but read it as a comic piece and enjoy it.

Fun Picture!

Finally, what you've always wanted: the picture of the cover of the book. And, maybe less rambling about adulthood. I must admit, I felt a little preachy writing the last entry. Or like one of those creepy self-styled moral authority figures. I don't want to be one of those, especially since the public inevitably discovers they sell porn or engage in other vices with wild abandon.

I certainly don't live anything nearly resembling what typically constitutes an adult lifestyle: no settled job, no settled family, no work outfits.

But there's different ways to grow up -inside and outside of our social understanding of guys in suits. I doubt I'll ever really mature into the 20th century concept.

Enough about that.

What's An Adult?

Continuing the query that Barbarians at the Gate brought me to - the NY Times published a very interesting Op-Ed piece last week comparing the idea of an adolescent risk-taking mind-set, with the actual risks taken by adults.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/opinion/17males.html?ref=opinion

It appears that although society likes to tag adolescent brains as underdeveloped and prone to making stupid decisions, it's the current crop of adults that tend to be making super stupid decisions. Of course, some of stupid decisions I made as an adolescent are things that tend not to pop up as statistics "64% of adolescent girls confess to stupidly telling their crush that they liked them liked them," "Thirty percent of adolescent girls think it is a good idea to serve your younger sisters non-alcoholic beer but tell them its real" but the matter of the instinct to be stupid is with all of us.

So, what makes you a grown up? Your mistakes have more serious consequences? Your choices roil a broader group than your grade? If we're all still dicking around in middle age, then we're all still dicking around like teenagers but with more money and nicer beer.

We all like to watch TV where people act inappropriately -for laughs or for drama. I'd argue that the behavior that makes compelling TV doesn't really scream "adult." Like, do we really want our Doctors banging each other as much as they do in Greys Anatomy? I vote no: I want a doctor who is not interested in boning the other doctor operating on me. Dawson and Joey are not doctors so they can bone all they want.

I think many Americans want our life to be more like our media, even if that includes wild misbehavior. Frat house style partying. Getting in relationship drama.

Is this stuff unavoidable, or are we looking for it? Or, does it, in the current climate, just seem like the norm?

I have wondered -and worried - if all my novel reading has skewed my perspective on my own interpretation of my life's narrative: am I looking for plot points and moments (maybe even subconsciously) that occur in books? I think it's completely possible that if I watched a ton of TV and movies, my expectations and judgements about my personal narrative would change. I think we use these artistic mediums as a foil for our experience.

What does this say about all those Barbarians? If our goals and foibles as adolescents and adults are not dissimilar, I think it makes those Barbarians just like the rest of us, but with crazy money that effects thousands of lives, and, therefore, should create more of a moral imperative to be responsible, sober, reflective adults.

And those adjectives are boring. What's on TV?