But Call Me Betsy

How apolitical, to take a position on a hair style, but I keep seeing it everywhere in Philly, these girls with their hair on top of their heads in a purposefully messy top knot. I know it's purposeful, because achieving the top knot isn't easy--it's not like you just put it in a ponytail and then go; there's actually hardware required to make it look right. You need to use these doughnut shaped, sponge-like spheres to execute properly. Example: To me, unless you are a ballerina and required to wear this style because you're in The Nutcracker (the one ballet I can name easily), I feel like the top-knot is a waste of time, in part because I think it's hard to pull off. Like, unless you have sharp cheekbones and a delicate nose and big eyes, you end up looking like you've just rolled off a covered wagon. Only Ma Ingalls can pull this off. Or you might wear it another way, this super whimsical top knot where you look as though your IQ has plummet...

Even though I live in Philadelphia and New York is a 90 minute, cheap Bolt bus ride away (meaning that technically, I could do a day trip to Manhattan, returning in the evening), I've only been to the city maybe a little more than a handful of times in the nine-ish years that I've lived here. And I never seriously considered living in NY, even though I'm envious of people who do. Whenever I make a visit, I imagine a different life for myself, how I could have been more adventurous and moved there and lived in a roach infested studio apartment above Korean grocery store for $600 a month (or more now), but how that might have been braver or riskier and a more interesting choice. But then I remind myself that I lived in Chicago for five years. Chicago is like the country-bumpkin half sister of Manhattan--it barely counts by comparison, but it was an anonymous place and had a much more sophisticated El system than Philly does. New York just seems light years more cosmopolitan. ...

Devoured another Sara Gran book last night in one fell swoop-- Come Closer . It feels almost rude to the author to read her book in one evening--really in the span of maybe 90 minutes. It was obviously a page turner and the writing was crisp and fast-paced, but still--the writer labors over her work for months and months and then the reader eats it up like a Butterfinger candy bar in one sitting. This one was about a woman becoming possessed by a demon, all set in modern day, the tone very matter of fact, but again, dark, dark, dark, and again, it didn't end well. I didn't find it to be particularly scary, but it was upsetting overall and I will never trust this writer to give me a hopeful ending. It did kind of make sense on another level; like if you watch as much Dateline with Lesley Stahl as I do--in those shows, you always have this seemingly ordinary family (and they always have these Sears-generated family portrait photos of everyone hanging out by a fake tree in match...