Why So Serious?

Neighbors are trying to kill me.
I run before the sun is up. I pass their orange brick home
Oh! That guy scared me--Wait. What's--?

 OH GOD.

WHY would anyone do this? My heart exploded.
I stopped. Okay, it's a cut-out. It's a cut-out.
Wait...IS it a cut-out? This could totally be like the time that guy stood still in Madame Tusseau's Wax Museum and when I inspected him, he offered a mild, "Boo" so I obviously jumped nineteen feet into the air and darn near knocked wax Will Smith over. If I were a serial killer and was going to dress up as The Joker, I would definitely take the possibility of being mistaken for a piece of cardboard into consideration. The advantages! So I stared at this promotional material/genius murderer for a long time. A. Long. Time. And then I felt stupid, so I ran away.

Maybe it seems stupid to you too, but when when I'm running empty streets at 6 AM, bumping into a tubby child holding cotton candy wearing a Rainbow Bright t-shirt would terrify me. Let alone ol' Heath.

So an interesting thing is happening. I see this creepy image like every other morning. This thing that completely wrecked me last week is now typical scenery. I've grown accustom, maybe even fond, of the lil menace. It means I have a quarter mile left. I imagine his overly-lip sticked face cheering me on. Maybe stabbing future marathon competitors with a pencil.

Is there inspiration here? Like, what really scares us can become routine? I'm still kinda of working on the metaphor. Not that we should learn to be comfortable with our fears, but rather, we should see them as just two-dimensional benign onlookers. Maybe.

Exactly: Regionals 2014

"Really I just needed to get out of 'Zona," Whoa said as he hopped into the backseat. The road trip Santa Monica began. I had no hopes for this trip. I joined the competition team one week ago. Hotel money, gas money, food money, sharing beds, cramming in cars--not fun for me anymore. I'm getting older. But it seemed right to go.

Our hotel. Sleeping three to a full bed isn't the worst actually. You can get through.

It was everything.

Tournament morning. My things I need for good 'prov.

Old writing friends. always supportive. Life! Is! Big!

College in a person.

It was a refresh. Basics. Bagels and journals. Beach walks and sunrises. My college pal. My childhood friend and I split a piece of cherry pie to honor the place we spent summers.

Dizz and I met in 1999 at summer camp.

Why do we get what we need? Exactly what we need? I have Dizz for relationship talks, Jamin for mems, those LA boys for TV news. They're workhorses out there. I have new babes to remember I'm happy to age and senior chums to remind me I'm not there yet.

I'm not smart enough to have sought these things specifically. I couldn't have guessed I'd be laughing hysterically outside a Subway because Whoa would buy us all Frozen bags to commemorate how I was singing it in the bathroom before finals and that kid in the grey crewneck from Claremont college heard me. I broke during the set.

Right after we won. Regional champions two times running.

I wonder if it is survival of the fittest. The parts we require strain into our life? Obviously it's okay not to know. As long as you're grateful, life may hand you a plaque and a getaway. It wasn't that much money after all. Now that it's been spent. Now that I have stood, staring at this bird. We were both alone thinking about the ocean.

Still, I couldn't wait to get back home. That's the truest stuff. Life is just as good as vacation.

Frances Ha

-Girls does a good job of representing the complexities of female friendships, but Frances Ha captures the intimacies. Women do have a bond more ethereal than...anything. Not to get wacky, but we're the life-makers. Something under our surface tapes us together. There is awareness. I mean, you don't get to say we all talk too much without acknowledging that is for some reason.

-Frances deserves her fate. While this might make some movies too easy, not this one.

-Being young and happy is the best. It's also strange and difficult.

-This was not a woman's story. This was a human's story.

-I hated and loved every character.

-It was everything Llewlyn Davis wasn't. A redemption as I saw the latter Monday and the former Wednesday. I hated Llewlyn Davis. I gained nothing. I lost something. Cohens have forsaken me.

-I have recently realized I am uninterested in art that does not in some form provoke hope. I am also uninterested in arguing that some art imitates life and sometimes there is no hope. There is always hope, you jerk.

I Still Love Theatre

In my first months of grad school I never checked out of class because everything could have been the next love of my life. Now 2.5 short years later I have lost that dazzling wonder. It's not sad though. I have the same excitement. It's just channeled. I scrape the rest from the stern.

In that brush-off, there have been times I don't care anymore. I have seen so much theatre. So. Much. Theatre. Mid-semester on through to the end I'm seeing at least a show per weekend. Often two, sometimes three. And sometimes I truly don't want to be there. It's not my bag, it's been a long week, I can't enjoy what I have learned to analyze.

But ultimately I go. Because I do still love theatre as a whole, and I can't miss it. I'm grateful for the choosing I can't do in this field. With movies, books, TV--all of it--it doesn't matter. See it now, later...sometimes you don't even have to TRY. You might say, "I'll get around to it," as if it will just pop up in front of you, but then it actually probably will one July afternoon on TNT when the remote is too far away for you to change the channel anyway!

I like that even if I don't think I'll like something, it will fade away forever if I don't go today. So I go. We make lives by choosing to go. Go-ing is living, and theatre makes me go, so, like, thanks.

Philosophies Of Roommates

RO: It's obvious what Alice should do.
RORA: Oh, of course.
RO: Because you only have one life!
RORA: Right!
RO: She's got one life. She's got to take a chance!
RORA: Are you kidding?! She's got one life, she can't screw it up!

Drive to AZ. Summer 2011.

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

Do Not

Do not make it harder for yourself.

We All Talk About Girls

Sunday night Season Three of Girls premiered. Monday morning, despite it being my first day of school, I carved out half an hour in which to watch the first episode over my berries and walnuts.

Girls is important to me not just because I like it (I do), but because it is the great corral of my demographic: liberal women in their 20s. While Girls certainly does not reflect my demographic at large accurately (mainly racially and socio-economically), some aspects of Dunham's conception of my demographic transcend race/money/being fascinating in New York City. Every woman in her 20s not only connects with some aspect of Girls, every woman in her 20s connects with some aspect of Girls on a very deep, almost depressingly accurate level. So, Girls does speak to me truthfully. And, further, people might think it totally represents me. And as far as the dodos who think Girls is trying to completely encapsulate every single young woman in America, I want to know what people think is being allegedly said about "me."

More importantly, most importantly, we all talk about Girls. It is the show most of the women in my life have seen and have opinions about. When a new episode airs the internet goes 'nanners, sure, but in person all the ladies around are chattin' it up. Season Two was a let-down to many critics--especially males--because not much "happened." But don't you see? The fun of it is not the plot moving along. The fun of it is gabbing with girlfriends saying, "I liked that Marnie did that" and your pal saying, "I hated it. If I were her..." It's a conduit for conversations about femininity. It's a backbone. It's a shared source material.

A few years ago while my sister and I were jetting through Season Five of Sex and the City she told me that someone she knew lived in New York during SATC'S heyday. And that everyone was talking about it. Like, you could go to your hairdresser and discuss the ins and outs of Steve + Miranda. I remember being so jealous. I want an automatic TV book club! I want to talk about womanhood every week with friends and strangers! AND NOW MY DREAM IS REALIZED!

So, this makes me happy. Obvs. Then I realized it also makes me a wee bit sad because maybe the reason we all talk about Girls is because it's the one big feminist television oasis in a patriarchal Sahara. But, honestly, I'm going to chalk this one up as a win because shared culture is just the best, and there's time for gender diversity next year. Even when things aren't "right," there are silver linings, and it's important to be grateful for those. They may be gone when the tides turn.