As I mentioned last week, Kito and I are reading Anne of Green Gables to prepare for our trip to Maritime Canada (we leave early Saturday morning). The other day, Kito got to the part where our heroine accidentally flavors her layer cake with anodyne liniment instead of vanilla. I noticed that Kito was chuckling to himself as he read.
"What are you laughing at?" I asked.
"This crazy-ass bitch," he said, fondly. "This stuff would only happen to her."
As though Anne were a lovable yet accident-prone, close personal friend.
Anne and Diana found the drive home as pleasant as the drive in--pleasanter, indeed, since there was the delightful consciousness of home waiting at the end of it. It was sunset when they passed through White Sands and turned into the shore road. Beyond, the Avonlea hills came out darkly against the saffron sky. Behind them the moon was rising out of the sea that grew all radiant and transfigured in her light. Every little cove along the curving road was a marvel of dancing ripples. The waves broke with a soft swish on the rocks below them, and the tang of the sea was in the strong, fresh air.
"Oh, but it's good to be alive and to be going home," breathed Anne.
When she crossed the log bridge over the brook the kitchen light of Green Gables winked her a friendly welcome back, and through the open door shone the hearth fire, sending out its warm red glow athwart the chilly autumn night. Anne ran blithely up the hill and into the kitchen, where a hot supper was waiting on the table.
Lately I have been feeling like Jessie Spano in the episode of Saved by the Bell in which she gets addicted to caffeine pills. Which is not to say that I have become addicted to caffeine--which, as Elizabeth Berkley's performance ably conveys, was a much stronger substance in the 1990s, producing effects similar to those of crystal meth.
All right, I admit it: I probably am addicted to caffeine. But that's not the point. The point is that I understand what made Jessie reach for the pep pills in the first place: stress, anxiety, the feeling, in short, that there's "no time, there's never any time, I'll never pass geometry, I'll never get into Stanford, I let everyone down."
I guess what I am trying to say is that I'm so excited, yet, on the other hand, I'm so scared.
ELSEWHERE:
My review of Babes with Blades' The Double is in this week's Time Out Chicago.
A week from Saturday, Kito and I leave for our trip to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. To prepare, we're reading Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, which is set in the fictional town of Avonlea on PEI. Until now I had avoided the novel, mostly in deference to the wishes of my childhood self. My older sister loved the Anne of Green Gables books (there's a whole series) and, especially, the television miniseries adaptation, which the Disney Channel aired on a continuous loop from 1987 to 1991. I found the movie and its sequel dull and interminable and took my sister's fondness for them as yet another symptom of her unfortunate affinity for stories with heroines clad in calico. I preferred books and movies with a little adventure--long journeys, talking animals, anything where you didn't have to watch some plucky young woman learn to sew or churn butter.
My tastes must have grown tamer over the years, however, because I find that I like the book just fine. I mean, sure, I wish Anne would shut the hell up sometimes and there are moments when I think I wouldn't blame Marilla and Matthew one bit if they put her on a train back to the orphan asylum in Nova Scotia. But Green Gables and the Lake of Shining Waters and the white birches and the cherry blossoms and all sound just lovely.
I still refuse to read Little House on the Prairie, though.
I neglected to mark an important anniversary earlier this month. As of August 5, Kito and I have had our dog, Lucy, for a year. If I could be more like anyone I know, it would be her--and not just because she gets laughs without trying and can lick her own genitalia. She likes everyone, everyone worth liking likes her, she lives completely in the moment the way we're all supposed to but don't, and--perhaps for that reason--she is the happiest person I have ever met.
ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Dream Theatre's A Very Terrible Father and Annoyance Theatre's Broads on Boards are in the current issue of the Chicago Reader.
Books
READ: The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare, ed. by John Pitcher [Leontes is a leading contender for the title of My Least Favorite Shakespeare Character].
Movies
SAW: Midnight in Paris [because old white people need movies too].
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
THEME: Canada.
KITO'S SELECTION: Adoration (dir. Egoyan, 2008).
MINE: Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (Makin, 1996) [it's terrible].
Art
SAW: Underground @ Woman Made Gallery [mostly comic books drawn by ladies].
Television
WATCHING: Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO), Warehouse 13 (Syfy), Louie (FX).
AND ON DVD: Upstairs, Downstairs.
Food
ATE: Monkey brain [don't worry, it was really just a deep-fried avocado] and chop chae @ Gosu.
Current Interests
Movies, television, Dolly Parton, my day job, Kito, books, Chicago theater critics, my finances, female pop stars, Michelle Bachmann, Stephen Sondheim, dogs, cats.
Fool's Four
FOUR TV SHOWS I'M CONSIDERING WATCHING ON DVD:
1. Friday Night Lights.
2. Battlestar Galactica.
3. The Sopranos.
4. Homeboys in Outer Space.
Flashbacks
ONE YEAR AGO: "MY NEW DOG LUCY'S FAVORITE THINGS TO CHEW ON."
TWO YEARS AGO: "Charles de Gaulle airport: stampedes are organized better."
FIVE YEARS AGO: "FOUR STRAIGHT-GUY INTERESTS I CAN TOLERATE."
Glitter
I like to believe in a world where the Marcus Bachmann story ends like this.
ELSEWHERE:
My review of Idle Muse Theatre Company's The Lion in Winter is in this week's Time Out Chicago.
During my glorious sabbatical from the workforce (May 2010-February 2011, RIP), I instituted the practice of working my way through a television show's DVDs, one series at a time. The first show I watched was The Wire--a highly rewarding experience and one that made me an obnoxious opiner on such disparate subjects as the Baltimore school system, the international drug trade, stoop kids vs. corner kids, the jaw-dropping hotness of Idris Elba, and the unacceptable dearth of Cutty appearances during season five (also: Omar Little for life, yo).
After I finished The Wire and my period of mourning had run its course, I started the British series Upstairs, Downstairs, about a wealthy London family and their servants in the years 1903 to 1930, during which time nobody seems to age. The show is similar to The Wire in that I sometimes have trouble deciphering the dialogue because of the accents (I don't think I ever understood a single solitary word uttered by Snoop). I enjoy Upstairs, Downstairs, mostly for the downstairs crew, especially Mrs. Bridges, the no-nonsense cook, and Ruby, the dim-witted scullery maid. Let me know if you'd like to talk about Lady Marjorie's fateful trip aboard the Titanic or the unending douchebaggery of Captain James, for I have much to say on both of these topics.
More pressing at the moment, however, is the matter of what show to tackle next. I'm nearing the end of season four (or series four, as the Brits stupidly say) of Upstairs, Downstairs, and after that there's only one more season to go--and since we're talking about a British show that means, what, 10 episodes at the most? So what show shall I watch next? Friday Night Lights? Battlestar Gallactica? I am at a loss.
At my haircut on Wednesday, my stylist, Josh, was talking about his recent move from Uptown--where Kito and I live--to Andersonville. Josh praised his new neighborhood for its "sense of community," presenting the place as a pocket of small-town charm where lesbian couples push strollers on tree-lined sidewalks in the falling dusk and neighbors call out friendly greetings to one another--neighbors who aren't, as in Uptown, cracked out or crazy as a road lizard.
I thought of his remarks the next evening when Kito and I were walking home from the gym and a scraggly man clutching a 40 called us over. "If either of you boys get some pussy tonight," he said, "I want you to dust that pussy off for me. Dust it off!"
Whenever Kito and I pick up our dog, Lucy, from the groomers, they feel compelled to let us know about any little tangle in her fur they may have encountered. And maybe I'm paranoid, but it seems to me that they report these snarls with a certain how-could-you-do-such-a-thing tone and a general air of being minutes away from alerting the ASPCA.
And I wanna be like, "Yeah, well, you people always make Lucy look like a meerkat, so there."
Jack Pendarvis's column in the summer 2011 issue of The Oxford American is mostly about depictions of Southerners in movies. Pendarvis is, as usual, hilarious. Of the persistent redneck stereotype, he writes:
It's not that I'm particularly offended by that stereotype. We white Southerners should happily take all the licks the culture-at-large wants to hand out to us. If we don't like it, well, maybe we should have thought of that before we spent all those years walking around with straws sticking out of our mouths, and saying "shucks" and "shoot fire" and grinning real big and scratching our heads like idiots and mopping our brows constantly and not wearing shoes. And, you know, being racists. Look at the cartoonish, reactionary, mush-mouthed governors we keep electing. I mean, in Mississippi, we literally have Foghorn Leghorn running the show.
No, the peckerwood thing doesn't bother me. I'm more offended by the other stereotype, the sentimental, romanticized one, the demented fantasy from which our most horrible governors spring: the cotillions and magnolia blossoms and Greek columns and cut-glass punchbowls and little white immaculately groomed beards and silver-knobbed walking sticks and fluttering fans and verbena and corsets and lockets with tintypes of dashing soldiers and delicate gloves of the palest lavender and secret laudanum addictions and all that crap, and there are plenty of movies that cater to your particular sickness if that's what you prefer.
