But Call Me Betsy

It occurred to me recently that if I should ever be out walking around Center City and get hit by the number 47 bus, I would probably use my dying breath to ask that the paramedic to dispose of my i-pod lest anyone discover the kind of music I have downloaded to it. I have never claimed to be on the cutting edge of music or an avid reader of Rolling Stone or the first to buy tickets to a small show of an alternative-but-up and-coming band. I steal most of my musical taste from friends and primarily, male friends. Men, in their continuing struggle to learn how to communicate like humans, seem to be drawn to music as a means of expression. Like, if they could, they would just hand you a set of lyrics by Death Cab for Cutie rather than try to put into their own words how they feel. So, some of my best music comes from these sources. The more shameful songs can be traced back to hitting adolescence during the advent of MTV and, at the same time, owning only a clock radio which effectively...

Had my pop culture and philosophy class yesterday and ended up sitting next to the strange girl who, on the first day, came in wearing part of her hair pulled back and tied with a jaunty white bow. It reminded me of Mrs. Hinkel, the high school cheerleading coach who also taught health class. Every straight guy (and maybe some of the gay ones too) had a crush on Mrs. Hinkel b/c she was young and cute and wore bows on her ponytail (on game days only). But outside of school spirit or community theater, I can't imagine why an adult woman would voluntarily add a bow to her hair. The next week, she showed up in braids and Mark (a guy in my class) said she looked like Heidi. I loved him just a little bit for saying that. She's also one of those people whose mouth hangs open all the time. I mentioned that to Mary Beth's boyfriend, Ben, who always gives me a ride home after class and he said, "Isn't that what they used to call mentally challenged people? Mouth breathers?...

Is something wrong with me? Could it be that I'm hostile because I can't honestly remember the last movie I went to see? I didn't see Juno , but I feel like I might hate it because I imagine it to be this forcefully quirky movie where the teenage characters speak more wittily than any real teen ever has, sort of a jacked up version of Gilmore Girls dialogue. I didn't see A Country for Old Men, in part because I heard on NPR that it's sad and bleak. I didn't see The Bucket List or whatever that Jack Nicholson buddy flick is (why would I go to a film that's about two old men dying of cancer?). But my irritation also has to do with the fact that there's so much press about the Academy Awards--everyone is so excited to see what the women will be wearing (i.e. who will wear something obnoxious horrible). But we already know. We already know that Angelina Jolie will be tastefully dressed, as will Keira Knightly aka Winona Ryder and Drew Barrymore and Jessica...

For the most part, the programming on Bravo is okay. Or at least, it used to be somewhat decent, but now they have shows like Millionaire Matchmaker and Extreme Face Make-Over. It occurs to me that I might be confusing Bravo with the Style Network, a channel that shows the unbelievably tepid How Do I Look? wherein you have to yell back at the TV, "You look medium! You look minimally better than before!" It's hosted by the British woman who played/plays Felicia or someone on General Hospital. For the longest time, her featured trademark was waist-length hair and arch eyebrows. She's since cut her hair, but the eyebrows remain perpetually in a shape suggesting surprise. I digress. Whatever channel plays Extreme Face Over should be ashamed of itself. In case you don't know or can't guess from the title, the show takes two ugly people and cuts the shit out of them, knocks out their teeth, sucks away their fat, and sews them back together with rhinestone thread. ...

There are many reasons that I never pursued an acting career beyond college, not the least of which was that I didn't have the kind of mind-blowing talent needed to succeed. Also, I hate constantly being rejected. More moments to blush by include: *My roommates and I always threw a huge Halloween party at our house on Tharpe Street. Invariably, most of the attendants were theater majors, and you know that Halloween is one of their favorite holidays because it requires costumes!! One year, I managed to alienate two of my three roommates, Michelle and Becca, because I made out with least three people during the course of the party: Darrin Baggart. I'm pretty sure he was gay. He had a cute pixie-ish face and Becca really liked him, so she was upset when I kissed him. Michelle's ex-boyfriend who was visiting from Houston. I liked him because of his lazy Southern drawl and blue eyes, but I'm pretty sure he wore more jewelry than I did (and it wasn't part of a costume. He...

Guess what I discovered today? My laptop screen is scrambled and largely unreadable. A new exciting issue to address in my life! A new chance to see this as an opportunity rather than a fucked up, badly-timed, distressing, financially debilitating problem. Perhaps it is the universe telling me to stop playing so much computer Spider Solitaire. Now that I can't even see the cards, I will be forced to take up another hobby, perhaps as an activist or a street performer (mime) or a ventriloquist who shows up at local bars to scare the regulars. I'm currently at the Philadelphia Free Library where nothing is really free at all and you can only use the computer for thirty minutes at a time with this little box in the corner counting down your minutes, slowly, slowly..."10 minutes remaining." One thing I love/hate about Philadelphia is the city's refusal to be practical or helpful to its citizens. The free library is usually open between the hours of 3:00 p.m. to 4:35 p....

I have gotten into the habit of listening to NPR while on the computer (which is about 90% of the time that I am at home). While I have come to appreciate the goofiness and grating quality of Car Talk and the flat yappish syllables of the Garden Guy and the lisping sound of Ira Glass and the breathless, unsexy announcement of Terry Gross when she says, "This is FRESHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAAIRRR," I still sometimes want to throw rocks at the radio, but I can't seem to stop listening, since there really is nothing else on unless I want to tune in to cock rock. Luke hates Terry Gross, mostly because she often asks somewhat stupid questions to really interesting people, rendering them less vibrant. Someone else agreed with me on this the other day...I forget who. It's true though, she'll have on Sid Vicious and say, When did you decide to get your first mohawk? How did your family react to this radical haircut? I had an idea for a story the other day--can't remember if I...

Am back from the reading at the University of North Texas and have catapulted to fame. Woke up this morning to find the paparazzi flashing unflattering pictures of me in curlers, short shorts, and cowboy boots with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of my mouth. Dear God!I threw my Slurpee at them and then shaved my head which proved difficult b/c of the curlers. The people at UNT were extremely nice and it was only marginally awkward to have to talk intelligently about writing to a group of strangers. The plane was delayed by two hours and so I had to rush to this coffee talk with grad students, then to a Q & A, then dinner, then had an hour to practice my reading at the Radisson and subsequently lost track of time and had to get ready in 14 minutes. The reading went well though I again self-edited some of the work as I was going b/c some of it seemed too repetitious. Afterwards, I signed books and tried to think of clever little messages to write in everyone's book flap su...

I started writing the next piece for my playwriting class--I think I'm going to set it outside of a theater at an intermission. It's two people; haven't decided if they're a couple or friends or brother or sister of whatever and they both hate the play but can't leave because one of their friends is in the show. It's a musical based on Othello. I haven't figured out who the person of another race might be who insists that the guy put out his cigarette. Perhaps the actor playing Othello? Maybe he's not actually not of another race; maybe the play is so bad that he's a white guy in blackface. I forgot how fun it is to write scenes. I am not proud to admit that Extreme Home Manipulation is on my TV right now. They always find the most pathetic families and then they build them a gigantic McMansion in less that a week. They don't go back to film and show you what happens to the house after the first rainstorm; how it likely just tips over and disinte...

Had my playwriting class this morning and had trouble falling asleep b/c I wasn't sure how I would get my two pieces printed up in time for a 10 a.m. class. Woke up before the alarm at 6:45 and ran to buy burnable CDs and then copied the pieces and made it downtown and went to Kinko's and $9 later, everything was fine, except for that I should mention there are a plethora of homeless people on Market Street around 9 a.m. any Saturday, including a slighly off-kilter woman who appeared to have moved herself into the foray of Kinko's (she had stacks of bags piled there) and was walking around the store clutching folders and yellow legal pads. An academic gone awry? A fired novelist? Shortly after that, I saw an old woman outside of Macy's wearing fashionable grey knit tights with a hole in the knee staring outward as though she were listening intently to an inner monologue. She had painted bright red lipstick around the perimter of her mouth. Not actually on her lips, but ...

Had lunch with one of my favorite people in the world, HH. We went to the same salad place as last time. I believe both of us are of the mind that if it's not broken, keep eating there. They have a great salad bar so you can have everything from an egg roll to pasta to strawberries and grapes. Then I met Padhraig later at a coffee house that was chockful of badly tattooed teensters all wearing furred hoodies and angst filled expressions. Tomorrow, I will go to my playwriting class and turn in this somewhat half-assed piece I wrote today. I really really like writing dialogue though. The assignment was to put together two people in a public place who are fighting. One of them gets a headache and they must ask a stranger for an aspirin. The stranger either gives it to them or not. Here's what I wrote: Scene: A deserted bus station. A couple stands swaying together in the center of the waiting room; another guy sits behind them in one of the benches, reading a newspaper. JoAnne: (...

Don't be mad, Mom, but I had seizures all day yesterday, perhaps b/c I haven't taken my Lamictal in like twenty months. A day of seizures only happens every once in awhile and the problem is that the seizures are interesting, so it's hard to be really proactive in finding ways to make them stop. Imagine that you could have this very intense de ja vu every hour or so; so intense that it feels like you might possibly be able to grasp the truth of existence in the thirty seconds or so where you're having a seizure. That's what it's like--it's like I'm on the verge of knowing the Truth about, I don't know, the meaning of life, or the reasons for child abuse or the possibility of believing in God. It's an altered state and one that feels so familiar now (since I've been having seizures for about ten years) that it's hard to give up. The downfall is that it impares my memory and makes me feel really tired and there's also a frustrating aspe...

I've been meaning to write about how much fun I had at the AWP conference last week. It was a mini Penn State reunion and everybody was just as funny as ever. I even got to have lunch with Joe when I first got in town. On the way to eat at this place called Ollie's Noodle Shop, we met a horse and two donkeys who had just finished performing in a play or an opera or something. The guy watching the animals let us pet them. Joe bought me lunch and we talked about work and how much more he likes his job now; how he's suddenly a rock star again. I spent most of the afternoon after that walking around near 14th Street until Liz got off work and then we met up with Luke and went to dinner at a busy but low key Indian restaurant. Luke ordered best with a chicken dish. Next, went to the Hilton to meet people but the drinks there were crazy expensive so we persuaded people to leave and ended up in a much more casual bar and Dave and a bunch of other peeps showed up. Friday, I stayed...