Mushrooms on a plane!
I quote the words of one Deirdre Straughan, an American living in Italy (like me, except more fluent and a lot more exciting experiences under her belt); this little article caught my eye in a recent newsletter because it attests to the fact that ITALIANS LOVE MUSHROOMS. I wrote an article about this in Spyglass, my school newspaper, back in the early months when I was still getting my articles in on time and published, which you can read
here. Mushroom picking in the fall is a huge part of Italian culture, and can, on occasion, be poisonous.
"While out on a walk (which became a hike)," writes Ms. Straughan, "I saw a couple of women heading into the woods with wicker baskets dangling from their backpacks - off to hunt for mushrooms. Italians, like hobbits, are very fond of mushrooms, especially the varieties which defy cultivation and can only be found in the wild (or bought, expensively, from someone else who found them).
I don't want to quote the entire article - instead allow me to direct you to the rest of the article, which describes the risks of mushroom poisoning; from there you can link to and explore her other interesting articles on Italy (a country worth a thousand articles, of course).
My nonno would religiously go out mushroom-picking every weekend during the fall, and bring back a whole basket of absolutely ginormous abominations of nature. Which, since I'm still alive, were evidently not poisonous. I guess he's an old hand at not picking poisoned mushrooms; after all, he celebrated his 80th birthday last fall, which means he's nearing 81 years of not having died of mushroom poisoning. I guess he knows his stuff. But still - how hard is it to not notice that tiny difference? Those appealing orange-speckled mushrooms instead of these delicious cousins of portobellos? Well, damn. I'm glad to be alive, and I'm glad for those absolutely delectable mushroom dishes. Woo, nonno!
Labels: Italy
Day 2 of school, and I'm already ready for SVU
Well, so far I haven't gotten the independent study that Marisa and I want to do; it's Latin American studies, and initially we were going to do it with my US History teacher, but he's already doing two independent studies with two other students, and apparently there's this whole unwritten rule that a teacher RARELY IF EVER takes more than one independent study, because that'll put pressure on all the other teachers to be open to independent studies. Which makes sense, of course, since all the teachers already put so much time into the classes they're actually getting payed for, and of course they have lives outside of school (hard though that is for students to believe, especially when we see teachers at the grocery store or the movies, or, god forbid, on a date). Still, it's too bad that there's kind of that "don't go there" attitude about indpendent studies. I feel like a student should be commended for wanting to explore academic areas not offered in school. I wonder if it would be a reasonable idea to have teachers on staff who teach only one or two actual classes and then are totally available for independent study. That way, the option would be completely open to students, but not put any pressure on the teachers to spend overtime at work. Win for everyone! Though of course it's way more complicated than that, but still.... seems like a nice idea.
My schedule:
A block: free (day 1); yoga (days 3 and 5)
B block: AP Calculus (I just took the qualifying exam, and I think I get to stay in the class! Plus it was a two hour test, and I finished it -or at least, all the questions I could answer- in an hour. but there's a lot I need to review just to make sure I'm on top of things in class)
C block: AP US History (with the class below me, which I think is going to be cool; I don't know how much actual interest there is in the room, but I didn't talk that much either, so maybe it was just a shy first day)
D block: AP Biology (This class is going to be HELL but SO COOL; it'll be so much work, I know, but we started off with a dissection just to show us it would be a pretty hands-on course, not very lecture-oriented at all)
E block: AP English/Gender & Identity
F block: AP Latin Literature (Catullus and Horace! Yay!)
G block: free!
H block: hell if I know.... maybe that Independent Study class, Latin American studies, if we do succeed in finding another teacher?
The schedule is a six-day rotating schedule, which means we have blocks A, B, C and D on Days 1, 3 and 5, and blocks E, F, G and H on Days 2, 4 and 6, and all the classes are eighty minutes. So my odd days are pretty tough, and my even days are easy classes and two frees, which is pretty kick-ass. At least I get to relax every other day.
Oh, and it's my birthday tomorrow!
Labels: Westridge
Brava California!
Good for California! I am so proud to be from this state sometimes, and this is one of those moments. Another was when the mayor in San Francisco, Gavin Newsome, started allowing gay marriages, and it seemed like we, at least California and Massachusetts, had hit an age of enlightenment. Then of course the politics hit the fan, and all the marriages were annulled within a couple weeks. So of course that wasn't exactly a high point, but it wasn't a low point either, because in order to get anywhere you've got to run into a lot of bumps for people to take notice. As soon as something's a controversy, you know that eventually it will be totally legal. Well, except for drugs. But hey, look at Amsterdam - maybe one day we can really all be that cool.
While waiting for drug legalization, we'll just enjoy our wonderful clean (drug-free) air.
Yes, I realize the irony of a Los Angeles Californian saying that. I look to the future!
Labels: california, politics
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
This got off to a painfully slow start, and in full character redeemed itself completely by the end of the first act. It opens with a song by Lawrence Jameson (Tom Hewitt), about his mascherade as a destitute prince trying to save his kingdom from civil war in order to beguile women of their money and jewelry; he dances a slew of girls off the stage, spins over to a roulette table, offers up his royal ring to his assistant Andre (Drew McVety) within audible distance of the brilliant Muriel Eubanks (Hollis Resnik), and woos all the jewelry right off her within the first 5 minutes. The song isn't terribly catchy, and the choreography isn't spectacular - for the most part it's just all sadly average and unenthralling.
But then, the moment we'd all been waiting for.... the entrance of the dearly beloved (hallowed be thy name) Norbert Leo Butz, playing Freddy Benson the cheap, corrupt greedy version of Lawrence, interested in money and women and nothing more (for the record, Lawrence is interested in culture and art and classy things like that). A mediocre entrance, I've gotta say, and believe me that I say it with regret. Of course the audience gave him a huge ovation, and I thought he did an excellent job of accepting it, but then his first scene simply isn't too catchy. When he comes to Lawrence asking for lessons, so that he can be as rich and skilled as Lawrence at swindling wealthy women, his first song is awfully crude - definitely catchier than Lawrence's, but full of overplayed sexual innuendos. In fact, a major flaw in the play's first half was undue attention to sexual references - I think more subtle references would have been funnier; it was kind of awkward watching Norbert Leo Butz gyrating all over the stage and humping Lawrence and various inanimate objects...
And then suddenly, it got really, really good. Not that it wasn't good before, but it suddenly got wonderful. There was much more much funnier and less crude humor (a great deal of French jokes, and then at the entrance of Dr. Emil Shuffhausen a lot of Austrian jokes). A romance develops between Muriel and Lawrence's assistant (and chief of police), Andre, and their love song is one of the highlights of the play - it starts with Andre attempting to light two cigarettes in his mouth at once, and retreating, discouraged, when his lighter won't light. Muriel says, "Well don't give up that quickly," and gives him some pointers on how to woo her, including some mood music. An accordionist slinks out of the shadows, and Muriel snaps up his instrument to give him a few pointers on how to put more "oomph" into it. And the more she speaks to Andre, the worse her French accent becomes, until by the end of the song and their kiss, their accents are identical.
Meanwhile Lawrence and Freddy have decided to make a bet to see which of them is the better swindler, and the loser has to leave town, limited only to Greenland, Antarctica, and Anaheim. The bet is to extract $50,000 from the American Soup Queen, a young woman named Christine Colgate (Laura Marie Duncan); Lawrence is planning to use the "destitute prince with a country sunk in civil war" ploy on her when Freddy rolls onstage in a wheelchair and a uniform, claims that his paralysis is totally emotional, and can be solved with a $50,000 doctor's bill for one Dr. Emil Shuffhausen of Austria. And so concludes the first act, when Lawrence overhears this plot and presents himself to Miss Colgate as the Dr. himself. By this point in the play, I would definitely have rated it at an 8 or so, after the 6 I'd have given a play entirely of the caliber of the first few scenes.
I won't go into much detail about the second act; again, the highlight was Muriel and Andre's love affair, which is rather tumultuous and drunken, and comes precariously close to ending ("I'll miss you." "Will you?" "Not if you don't leave..."); as for the drama with Lawrence and Freddy and Christine, I'm going to leave you with the assignment to watch the movie if you haven't already, because the musical is a pretty fair reproduction, with a couple big changes (like Muriel and Andre, which once again was totally essential), but no added or changed plot twists, so watching the movie will tell the story just as well. Plus, if I say too much, I'll reveal THE HUGE PLOT TWIST AT THE END (have I said too much?). But if you do have the chance to see the musical, you absolutely must. For all that I was not turned on to the first half of the first act, it was great. Kudos to all the actors and actresses (I was going to say especially so-and-so but then I realized that I'd just name them all, because each and every one of them was so spectacular in her or his role). And the music was great. Especially all of Muriel's songs.
Labels: entertainment
Fences
This play was amazing. I've got to admit, I went in thinking "Morpheus! SWEET!" and I came out completely put in my place. The play isn't about seeing Laurence Fishburne in a play at all, though that's certainly a strong component, since he's such a powerful actor - it's about the sheer emotion in the play itself. It reminded me a great deal of Death of a Salesman, in that it celebrates a man, Troy, who is neither great nor significant, but does his best to lead the best life he can and be remembered, if at all possible. Obviously he fails and estranges himself from his family; but the play works to remind the audience that even in horrible errors he makes, such as preventing his son Cory from playing football, he always makes decisions for what he thinks are good reasons - he had been a major baseball player before the major leagues started letting black players in, and still believes that a black man cannot get any respect in the sports world, so he's trying to protect Cory.
The singular most powerful moment of the entire play, to me, is when Troy admits to his wife Rose that he has been having an affair, and that the woman is pregnant. He tells her that he "can just sit in her kitchen and laugh," and all his cares are gone. He "can't give that up." Rose hears him out, and then in just a few, well-chosen words she deftly cuts down his entire argument, showing him how stupid and selfish and blind he has been. She says that she often wanted out; that she often was reminded of Troy's imperfections, and yet she didn't abandon him, even at times when she didn't think she could live in that house one minute longer. "Don't you think I ever wanted to just sit and laugh?" Angela Basset played Rose, and at first I wasn't sure what I thought of her portrayal of the character, because at times her voice just didn't seem natural, trilling and lilting all over an octave; however by the second act (the beginning of which is this exchange), I was in love with her. She put so much power into her remonstrance of Troy - and when she said that line, "don't you think I ever wanted to just sit and laugh," she tilted her head back and she laughed like a madwoman, and you could see her hysteria at his betrayal and at her entire world crashing down around her. And only a few scenes later, when Troy brings his baby back from the hospital (his lover dies in childbirth), Rose agrees to take the baby for the baby's sake, "because she's innocent," but she tells Troy, "from now on you're a womanless man." An amazing woman, an amazing cast, an amazing play. I could go on for hours, but school starts tomorrow and I still have summer reading left.
Labels: entertainment
Los Angeles Public Library
I remember coming here occasionally when I was younger; never very often, since it's quite a drive away from multiple libraries that are within biking distance from my house. But it is so stunningly gorgeous that I remembered it better than anything else about LA when I was giving two friends a tour of the city (which involved me getting lost more than anything else...). It's colorful and open and huge, with about 4 stories connected by a wide staircase/escalator than runs the length of this hall. Absolutely gorgeous, and my favorite building in downtown LA, of the little of the city I'm actually familiar with.
Labels: Los Angeles
Chia update
This is so disturbing that I'm almost afraid to share it with the public. I watered the Chia on the right, and it survived and has gotten greener, but the Chia on the left has unfortunately suffered a horrible fate. Take care of your Chia pets, people! WE MUST PROTECT THE STEM CE- I mean, CHIA PETS!
My exciting Chia experiment
This is my new dashboard. Isn't it wonderful? On my snazzy brand new gorgeous 13-inch MacBook, with a built-in iSight and a remote control..... I love Apple!
And these are my Chia Pets. I've been watering the one on the right, for the last two days..... seeing if that has any effect on its growth compared to the one on the left. So far, nothing..... the experiment will go on. I'll update on progress.
For the love of Arthur Dent
I just found a blatant Douglas Adams reference in one of the
Blogger Help sections:
Everything is Illuminated
Wow. Just - wow. This is a movie starring Elijah Wood (of debatable acting talent in Lord of the Rings), playing a young, obsessive-compulsive collector of family trinkets who receives a photograph picturing his grandfather and a young woman during WWII. This woman, Augustine, apparently helped his grandfather come to America, where he met his wife and led a happy life, thanks to her.
Jonathan (Elijah), hoping to track down this woman in order to piece together his family history and to thank her for what she did for his (now deceased) grandfather, travels to the Ukraine, where he is welcomed with a marching band playing The Star Spangled Banner, and a young Ukrainian man, Alex, who says things like premium instead of first and proximal instead of close (eg "were you proximal to your grandfather?"). Alex and his grandfather, who claims to be blind and has a demented "Seeing eye bitch" named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., take Jonathan ("Jonfen") on a drive toward the city where he knew his grandfather to have lived, Trachimbrod.
At first there is humor in Alex's misuse of english and his brusque exchanges with his family and grandfather, but there's also a certain solemnity, with a really powerful soundtrack of Ukrainian music, both traditional and pop. As they approach Trachimbrod, a village that seems to have been wiped out of existence, both Jonathan and the viewer gradually become emotionally drawn into the trip and into his grandfather's past, a past that involved in some way Alex's grandfather as well, a mystery that is gradually revealed through their discovery of Trachimbrod, now existing entirely in the memory and home of a single woman, the sole remaining survivor of the Nazi's brutal pillage of the town.
Funny and moving and beautifully filmed, with stunning Ukrainian countryside that Alex's grandfather calls "the most fertile land in Eastern Europe", this was definitely an overlooked film that deserved far more attention than it received. Five stars.
Labels: entertainment
Finally got a facebook!
I got my Westridge email account back, and we all know what that means. Staying in touch with everyone from SYA just got so much easier! No, of course I won't bother with the silly old email account. The gold -what I really wanted- is a
Facebook account. And baby, I finally got it. And I'm addicted! It's so much prettier than myspace, so much cleaner and more ad-free and less crowded.... oh wait, that's because all the people who used to flock to friendster and facebook and the like are now swarming in troves to myspace. They even have a little handheld myspace now, so you can check while you're in gridlock traffic, or as your airplane is pulling off the runway when the flight attendant announces that you may turn back on all electronic items, or when you're in a dreary conversation and you can pretend you've been paged..... the possibilites are endless!
But really, where is the real winner? A nice, clean site where you might have a couple other friends, like Facebook; or an ugly site with dozens of pop-up ads attacking you with flashing colors and scantily clad women, but which offers a network that includes pretty much every single human being with access to a computer. Myspace is allowed in public libraries, as a testament to its cultural impact; it's not just tied to the upper middle class, or even to the very talented, musical upper class - this allows people without computers of their own to still have an account and check it. Movies no longer just have site pages at warnerbros.com/movietitle - now they have their own myspace, as do celebrities, bands (oh wait, that's the long-forgotten original purpose of myspace!), and even a few politicians (Check it out - I am so serious).
I wonder if there were people who refused to use the telephone? Or refused to drive cars? Or refused to take airplane flights? Women who refused to vote? And yet those were all cultural phenomena that took hold, and are obviously not going anywhere soon. Well, maybe cars will soon be disposable with rising fuel prices and this stubborn disinterest in creating hydrogen fuel cell cars, but that's beside the point. These are all things that society basically relies on. I guess the telephone is the closest example, and now things like video conferencing.... they're methods of communication that have really taken hold. Is Myspace the next email? Once upon a time it was snail mail, then telegrams, back to snail mail, and then someone finally invented the computer, and shortly thereafter internet came along, and with it, email. Which has served everyone quite well for the past decade. But I've got a hunch that email is definitely going to suffer a blow in favor of myspace. It's a pretty powerfully advancing fad, and I still can't decide whether or not I'm opposed to it.
Worst Case Scenario
aka, if Holly doesn't get in to College.
- I apply early decision to Swarthmore (deadline: 11/15)
- I apply early action to Goucher and Hampshire (deadline: 12/1)
- I apply regular decision to Sarah Lawrence (deadline: 1/1)
- I apply regular decision to Reed and Macalester (deadline: 1/15)
- And then I apply to Eckerd (deadline: 4/1), which is totally an awesome school...... and which accepts around 72% of its applicants, so it's a good school to save for last.
Labels: college
On the Road
To quote Jack Kerouac, whose book I have just begun and am so far enjoying (we're talking page 19, though, so we'll see how it goes)....
On the Road with a trip to Philly yesterday! I'll include pictures when I get home on Wednesday. We had to get up at 6:00 in the morning to make it up in time for a 9:45 campus tour. I went to check out Haverford and Swarthmore colleges, to begin the evil college ordeal of senior year. So far I've visited three colleges, and in order of preference they are Reed, Swarthmore............. and Haverford. Bummer for Haverford, there in super last place, but somehow it just didn't click for me. It had some nice buildings, but also some unattractive ones; and the campus layout was very unappealing. The tour guide also didn't seem to do a good job of selling the college - she spent more time repeating that Haverford is unique than actually sharing details about the college that make it an exceptional experience. Christopher and I actually ended up skipping the info session to go out for lunch before hitting up Swarthmore.
Swarthmore, which has rocketed to first place on my list..... and which only has a 22% acceptance rate. But it seems wonderful, intensely academic but not competitive, supportive, beautiful, full of opportunities, beautiful, in a great -if tiny- neighborhood, a half hour ride outside of Philadelphia, directly connected to the metro, and did I mention beautiful? The campus really is stunning, and the buildings are all built with this beautiful grey stone, the same kind that I admired in the more attractive buildings on the Haverford college.
Afterwards, wandering around in Philadelphia, we were walking back to the car from the plaza that houses the Liberty Bell when I heard from behind me "Holly?" I turned around, and there, leaning out from her car window, was Diana Day, my 6th grade teacher and then friend (plus my recent employer for a small journalism assignment), with her twins in the back seat. Back in her home town, visiting family, I presume, on the very same day that I happened to be up there checking out colleges. Talk about a small world!
One more college to go on this trip, and then I'll have four to rank. Oh, it'll get so much fun the more I get to rank! Oh wait. NOT.
Labels: college, travel
Meeting the East Coast
So far it's been a nice introduction. We're still getting to know each other, but I think it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. The East Coast is pretty rocking. On Thursday I walked over toward the White House, learning how the streets lay themselves out and just enjoying the ambience, which is pretty friendly. Not to mention that this is a stunning city. The avenues are all very open and well designed, with trees and wide sidewalks; jaywalking is rampant, which creates an excellent laid-back feel; and can we say
Italian tourists?? I talked to one family on Thursday, after sort of following them for a little while. Fortunately it was fairly crowded, so it wasn't too sketchy - all the same, I figured I either needed to walk away, or actually talking to them. So I did! And they were really nice and friendly, and it felt so wonderful speaking in Italian. You know, I think I have already significantly shaped my future by studying in Italy; much though I'd like to travel everywhere and learn every language, already I feel Italian becoming my focus. I love speaking Italian, I miss speaking it, I miss being surrounded by it and knowing that even if I'm speaking English to my friends I'll be able to speak Italian when I go into a store.
Since then I've tried to exercise restraint, which is difficult but sensible, since there are literally Italians everywhere - it's August, the month of travel. If I tried acting surprised by every Italian family that walked by ("oh, non siete Italiani?"), it'd get a little old, even if I did get to speak to them each a little.
But I'm definitely going back to Italy, and soon.
Labels: Italy, travel
Coffee House
On one of those mornings when nothing sounds better than a steaming mug of hot cocoa, a crisp, warm croissant, and a cozy little coffee shop, you'd best head down to Buster's on Mission and Meridian in South Pas. Homey and personal, it's a friendly atmosphere, with the best banana splits and the most heavenly hot chocolate in the world. Not to mention excellent decorating (nothing like a red counter overlooking a little Main Street outside), and a totally snazzy triangular shape to accommodate the train tracks that run right past. Oh yes, and the metro stop conveniently located directly across the street? Very cool.
Sean Connery dude!
Working in East LA, Marisa and I passed this statue every day. It was amazing.
Items accomplished since Saturday
Saturday:
- Filled up my gas tank all the way
- Got one of those spiffy tape players that hooks into an iPod or CD player
- Realized that I gave away my CD player when I got my (now deceased) iPod..... so my spiffy new tape has no current use in my life, except to take up room in my purse, where it has been since I bought it, as though at the ready in the event that I should stumble across a free CD player just calling my name. Or hey, an iPod....
Sunday:
- Got up early to make breakfast: a sort of delicious baked pancake, and extraordinarily strong coffee, packed it up, and drove over to Elise's.
- Headed out to West LA to find a guy who is either named "Chis" or who can't spell his name.... unfortunately I badly misestimated how long it would take to get from Pasadena to La Brea, and gave us two hours when it really only took 45 minutes. So Elise and I played 'stake out' ("okay, so I'm Sean, and you're Gus"), and drank coffee and made bad jokes and ate pancakes and apple turnover, and finally got out and called Chis 15 minutes early, because the waiting was driving us insane. Not that we weren't already.
- GOT AN ACCORDION!!!! ( you were wondering what I was doing out in West LA, weren't you? Well, I assure you..... the best of all reasons. A new musical instrument, completely at the drop of a hat and the whim of the heart when offered an incredibly cheap, exciting offer.
- Named the accordion, which is bee-you-tee-ful, 'Chistery' after the guy who sold it to me, who was kind of a big burly Greek guy. Def still don't know if his name is Chis or Chris or Niko.
- Went to the beach, and got a lot of sand in my pants. But, hey, we took great pics, and got lost on the Pacific Coast Highway, and pondered Mel Gibson's recent nearby mishap.
- Headed home, finally tanked up after riding on empty for miles.... and hit up Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby. A really, really.... amazing? movie. NOT. I've gotta say, I was disappointed. I mean, I know the whole idea of the crudities is that Ricky overcomes them, to become a better, braver, more accepting and less homophobic man, but still, sometimes it was just way too obnoxious. Definitely a bummer, especially since I expect so much from Will Ferrell. Though there's one great line, and maybe it's just the way in which it's delivered: "dear lord-baby-Jesus..... I'm thankful my sons no longer act like retarded gang-bangers" "Amen!"..... And the ending, at the finish of his final race with the French dude, that's a pretty great bit. But otherwise, just not too worth it. I'm glad I went to the cheap theater, and didn't deck out a full $10 on my ticket. As it was, I was counting quarters reaching the $7.50, or whatever it was, because I'd cleaned myself out, between the useless iPod/CD tape, and my sweet-ass rock-awesome accordion.
- Went home and slept..... I left a note for the tenant that said "Morgan - lock the gate when you go out", because he hadn't, but after a while I felt bad and took it down.
Monday:
- Went to work with Elise at JPL, and named lakes on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Yes, when you have to learn all those names like "Lacus Mud" and "Lacus Harney" and "Lacus Iridis", you'll have us to thank. Oh yeah.
- Broke the ice between Elise and her cool, silent officemate, Dylan, who she'll now go on to marry and have kids with.
- Managed to make a fool of myself multiple times, including leaning over into a desk to pick up a candy bar. It didn't work so well as I had hoped - specifically, I had intended to lean around the desk.
- Saw a whole bunch of freaking awesome stuff at JPL, like the machines that make equipment, and the construction room... in fact, in the construction room we got to see these super-cool space frisbees - the engineers were working on balancing them so that when they get flung into space they don't get off-balance and thrown out of their projected orbit. Elise and I were in this little plastic enclosure from which we could see everything happening, but couldn't really hear at all. One of the engineers held up his cellphone number on a piece of paper, and Elise and I called down, and he explained what they were doing, and what it was for and everything. Amazing.
- Oh but wait. I was at dinner with Elise and her mom and my mom (who had only just come home from Redding, visiting my uncle, her brother), and my cell phone rang. Thinking it was someone else, I answered it with an emphatic "hey!" And on the other end, "Hi, this is Dan from the JPL Construction room you and your friend looked in on this afternoon." And he proceeded to tell me all about how he's in CA for a few weeks from DC, working on balancing these space-frisbees, and did I know any good hang-outs in the area? Oh, gee, well, none that I could think of off the top of my head.... why not ask the front desk at his hotel? Well, he'd already asked them, and what he was really looking for wasn't really a restaurant, but rather a place "to have a few drinks." "Well," I told him, "I really can't help you... I'm under 21, so I don't really know any bars." What I neglected to mention is that I AM ALSO UNDER 18, and therefore NOT available to middle-aged JPL geeks looking for an easy hook-up, with a couple weeks free from the wife and kids. Well, I am being unfair.... I have no reason to suspect he has a wife and kids except for my undying cynicism. But still. I just can't believe he called me back. Though I am pretty impressed at how completely subtle he was about hitting on me, and sort of/sort of not inviting me to go drinking with him. And how the entire time, even when implying that he wanted to get drunk, he referred to me as "you and your friend." Men....
And now.... my life in pictures!
Elise and me staking out the car... ("This one looks purpler than the rest." "I wonder how many dollars I've got in quarters?")
My bellissimo new accordion, Chistery.
Pacific Coast Highway.
It had been a sort of draining day, and when I found the gate unlocked, I just got grumpier. I ended up taking it down after an hour or two.
Deer on the JPL lawn! Stunningly gorgeous, though a bit fatter than your stereotypical elegant, slender doe.... it's from all the food and lazing around, I have no doubt. Very, very cool.
And last but not least, me and Elise goofing off in the Very Important Tools and Equipment room.
Viva Italia!
I got to speak Italian for the first time since I've been back! I mean, I've called my host mom, and I've written a load of letters, but now I finally got to really
speak Italian for an hour and a half. It's at the Hey, That's Amore cafe on Holly and Fair Oaks, an Italian conversation class every Saturday from 4:30 to 5:00. 15 people there today, and as soon as I walked in it was
ciao, ciao, come ti chiami?, piacere, siediti. I was shaking hands with everyone, and everyone was speaking Italian. I had forgotten how much I missed speaking Italian until I realized how easy I found it talking to everyone - that is, stumbling through a foreign language, rather than having that awkward fear of saying something stupid in your own language. Once it's another language, it's like saying stupid things is impossible, because you're experimenting, feeling your way in unfamiliar grounds, and everyone respects that.
I sat with two women, Molly and Polly (allow me to remind you that my name is Holly); Molly was a self-described gipsy, half french, half italian, and born in Columbia. Polly was an elderly American who had just started learning Italian, and was really quite good at it, especially considering that she's never spent a lot of time in Italy. But I met everyone, and it was a blast. Plus there was this totally hot blonde guy who looked about my age who walked in and out of the cafe a couple times, and smiled at me, but I don't think he speaks Italian, or at least he wasn't part of the Italian conversation group. But hey, maybe he just happens to be there every Saturday....
So next time you're planning a totally hot party, just remember that I can't be there until after 5:30. I've got Italian to speak!
Labels: Italy
Roasty Toasty (like a peanut!)
And, like a peanut, I am shriveled up and cowering within my outer shell.... a raw, pink layer of sunburnt skin. Seriously, now. I haven't worn sunscreen
all week and now, on the very last day of the Dolores Mission program I was volunteering for, on Carnival day, I get toasted past done, past overdone..... if I were a bagel, I'd no longer be edible.
Speaking of bagels, I had a prophetic one this morning. I went to Buster's, and the guy (who was cute!) burned my bagel the first time around, toasted it as thoroughly as I would be toasted mere hours later. BUT HOW COULD HE HAVE KNOWN???
So now I'm off to crawl painfully and delicately into bed, make up for the mere 6 hours of sleep I got last night (home late after the kick-ass cooking class, and up early to take my mom to the Greyhound bus station to go to Redding to visit her brother).... being careful of my now flaky, sensitive skin. The burn is never bad at first, and then about 8 hours later it becomes PAINFUL like a mother. But anyways, house to myself! All to myself, all weekend, except for the tenant, but so far I've never been coming or going at the same time as he, so it's pretty much as though I'm living all alone. A bachelorette in my own lovely mansion. Now I just need a keg party! Best episode of Freaks and Geeks, when they swap the fake alcohol for the real, and Bill gets totally wasted.... Man, I need to see that show again. It's been too long, and it's too wonderful to do without.
Now I really need to go to bed. You see how my mind wanders? From proving the infinite monkey theorem on a world-wide revolutionary scale, to prophetic bagels to keg parties. I need my sleep back!
To test the infinite monkey theorem?
Say we redesigned a typewriter. Say none of the keys are marked, and they're in a totally random order... maybe the keyboard is even circular, and numbers and letters are interspersed. There is absolutely no way to tell what letter, number, or punctuation mark (not to mention enter, shift, etc) is which. Now put one of these unmarked, unidentifiable keyboards in a kindergarten classroom, and let them type all they like. Imagine one in every classroom in America! Pretty soon you'd start to get an awful lot of key combinations, right? On your way to......
THE INFINITE MONKEY THEOREM.
The idea is that the monkeys don't know what keys they're pressing, and eventually they'll type every existent key combination, thus producing all literature ever. So if these kindergartners have no idea which keys are which (and certainly couldn't type on a normal typewriter yet, either), it's the same idea. They're typing away, just having fun but unknowingly quoting Marx's first intimations of socialist living in his early writing, or Fagles' recent brilliant translation of Homer's Odyssey.
Can you just picture this? Typewriters across America.... across Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa? A WORLDWIDE EXPERIMENT...... is typing blindly really random enough to produce Two Gentlemen of Verona? Macbeth? King Richard III? The Spanish translation?
I really need to get over this.
The car that meant the world
A year or two ago, as my mom was driving me to summer school one fine, sunny morning, I happened to glance out my passenger window just as we passed one of those huge, pretentious Mendocino St. mansions, and saw that young, hot neighbor I'd always known I
had to have. He was wearing a green "Staff" tee, and standing next to a white Volvo station wagon (ROCK ON STATION WAGONS!!!), and talking to someone who I assumed to be his mom, who was standing on the perfectly trimmed, green, sprawling lawn between his car and their cake-like white house.
Why he was perfect:
- He was obviously teenaged. Clues: he lived at home; his mother was out on the front lawn talking to him; he looked impatient; he was wearing a bright green "Staff" t-shirt.
- He was HOT.
- He was rich.
- His mom looked nice!
- He drove a station wagon.
He still lives there. The white station wagon is parked there every day, and I see it when I leave in the morning and when I come home at night. And one time when I was super grumpy, and my mom was driving my station wagon because her car was in the shop and we had to share mine, there were
two boys standing in the road next to the station wagon, about to get in to go somewhere tremendously sexy.
I always pay attention, no matter how bleary-eyed or tired I am, going to or coming from all my exciting going-tos and coming-froms. It's not even obsessive anymore. It's just habit. The day has started out right when that station wagon is where it should be, at the foot of that green, sloping lawn and that giant, white mansion. It's that little daily reminder that they're out there. Somewhere.
Monkeys and their typewriters
You know that theory that says that if you have monkeys, a typewriter, and eternity, they'll type out every Shakespeare play written? (
No, seriously!) Just think.... not only will they be typing out Shakespeare (not to mention hundreds of versions of each Shakespeare play, with slight spelling variations, or one word substituted for another), but they'll be typing out every Daniel Pinkwater novel, each Nancy Drew mystery, the Harry Potter series, Jane Eyre,
Steinbeck, for Pete's sake! Not only every single work of literature, all historical fiction, every biography and autobiography, and, hey, smut too.....
everything that ever has been and ever will be written.
Does that mean that writing is nothing more than a random combination of letters? Those monkeys could write out this entire blog, my Italy blog, anything and everything I've ever written, with as much thought to what they're writing as my pinky finger would contribute. I'm reading The Grapes of Wrath right now, and it's beautiful (I'll extoll on Steinbeck's poetic prose in another post.... but in brief, he's godly).... but is it just chance that he put those letters and spaces together in that order? I mean, nothing could have put those words together but pure genius, certainly not chance and eternity; only human thinking could put together such philosophical, complex ideas. How can random typing express philosophy, express all the ways in which we try to express our ideas? And imagine, they'd be typing up works of literature in every language that shares our alphabet, and phonetic versions of every other language.
Durr... This is driving me nuts, and I'm sure I'll start to get repetitive soon. But the work that these monkeys would produce literally is EVERY LANGUAGE, and everything that will EVER BE WRITTEN. What they could write are stories that have not even been written yet.
Tight.
Woot
Work's going wonderfully! It's a party :)
According to Marisa, I have an authoritative/bitchy mode (best compliment ever!!!) that I slip into when I'm around the kids, that makes them listen to me. Heeheehee. That's from the writing class, I have no doubt. Not to mention the girls in one group who had a ginormous war going on....
One super successful moment was when I was getting this hella-hyper kid, Priscilla, to read and stay focused. I had her read out loud to me, and when she got to words she didn't understand, I'd pronounce them to her and tell her what they meant. I wasn't sure how well she was listening, but she was definitely reading well, and not getting distracted. But afterwards, she referenced one of the vocab words I'd told her, asking "what was that word that means, 'always together'?" And when I told her "inseparable," she slowly annunciated "me and my friend at school are inseparable." It made me feel very teacher-y.
Today was movie day at Dolores Mission, and I drove a carful of guys to the theater (I probably shouldn't be driving kids yet, so I got the big hulky guys instead), and they spilled popcorn everywhere and listened to a crappy radio station. Picture me and Marisa sitting in the front seat, and three guys in the back whistling at girls.... from my car. Way not as romantic as I would have liked to imagine.
