But Call Me Betsy

I read half of No Country for Old Men last night--it's a page turner, and the people die off fast. Like,  there were three people dead in the first two pages and the corpses piled up quickly after that. The writing is terse, and flat, no frills, really, so you'll have a sequence that like: "The desert air was bleak. He pulled open the door to the truck and a body slumped over. The man had a bullet hole between his eyes and a shirt wet with blood. Moss shut the door and pulled out his Colt .45." Like that. I made that up, but it's close. The plot is somewhat difficult to follow because of this bluntness. For a time, I wasn't sure if one of the scenes was a flashback and then there's this voice that interjects now and again in first person, I think it's the Sheriff (played by Tommy Lee Jones in the Coen brother's version); and some twists and turns now and again, like one of the cops being possibly a turncoat hit man (played by Woody Harrelso...

We went to Rider last night to see Giancarlo Esposito  of Breaking Bad fame give a lecture to the largely student-centered audience. Rider has a very good musical theater program, and so there were many aspiring actors/actress present, and he spoke for about 45 minutes extemporaneously about the importance of being present, knowing what you want, making choices for yourself, knowing your own value, asking for what you want, using your life to create beauty, being present--he covered a whole hosts of topics, but the main thing I took away from it is the idea that you have one life, you have some universe-given talents, and you can either use them to create, or ignore them and suffer. This is essential advice for me as I struggle all the time with wondering if I'm working hard enough on my writing and if I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. He said that it's never too late to start over; but he meant that to a group whose average age was 19--I'm not s...

Went to the Princeton Library today where I may have mentioned, they have a plethora of good books for sale, all the time. It's difficult to resist, and I find myself even wanting to buy books I already own, like Love in the Time of Cholera , just because it's so inexpensive and pleasurable to purchase good books. Here is what I got for $10---all chosen from the mystery thriller section: No Country for Old Men , by Cormac McCarthy. I never saw the movie version, but I have read McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses (never saw that movie either), and the book has a killer first line: "I sent one boy to the gas chamber at Huntsville." The Small Hand and Dolly , by Susan Hill. A book with two short novellas chosen solely for its cover. First line of The Small Hand:  "It was a little before nine o'clock, the sun was setting into a bank of smoky violet cloud and I had lost my way." The Affair , by Lee Child. A Jack Reacher novel, and I know I've ...

I don't know if it's a product of being an only child, or if it's like some genetic sensitivity thing, but when I was little, I had this affinity to stuffed animals, but also to other inanimate objects, basically believing that even the bathtub had feelings and would feel neglected if you didn't use it or at least pat it reassuringly on occasion. But my stuff animals, because they were, you know, shaped like animals, all got names and I worried about them a lot--you know, like the fairness of who should get to be in the bed each night. I won't go so far as to claim that my toys were on a rotational basis, but I'm sure that it crossed my mind to dole out the affection in an equal way. I didn't necessarily feel the same about dolls, because dolls could be just this side of creepy. One second, they were little girls that you took care of, and the next second, they could be possessed by demons and try to kill you. I must have seen any early film starring Karen B...

I figured out why New Jersey drivers are on the whole so jerky and aggressive--it's because it sucks to drive in New Jersey. Everyone is impatient to get to wherever they're going, just to be able to get out of their cars and finished with the never not frustrating experience of  three lanes of traffic with cars going at various speeds from 45 to 75 miles and hour. Even when you're not on Route 1, driving is annoying.  On Scudder's Mill Road, it is pretty much impossible to go for longer than thirty seconds before hitting a red light.  So, the last three miles of my commute home can take ten minutes.  The worst is when you get stopped at any of the nonsense lights like the one at Bristol Meyers Squibb where two cars are waiting or the one at the Marriott Complex where again two cars are waiting. I did this thing yesterday where I attempted to take a new way home by getting off of at the Meadow Road exit that runs behind Market Fair. However, whatever I was suppos...

I can't commit to promising that I will write about the show every time we watch a new episode, but I am starting to get a glimmer of understanding as to why people were/are obsessed with this show. We watched the second episode last night, and when that show is on, it's impossible for me to do my usual things while watching TV such as eating Frosted Flakes or playing on my phone or braiding my hair. I just have to watch. In this one, Walter White is faced with a conundrum--he's got one dead guy in the van, and another almost dead guy heaving in Jessie's basement.  I won't recount the whole thing, because that alone is enough--the moral dilemma posed by the man in the basement, and all that he represents. In most of the scenes, you can hear the guy coughing and wheezing from the air ducts, so he's like this monster in the basement, but also a helpless victim secured to a pole with a bicycle lock around his neck. Walter wrestles with the idea of trying to reaso...

It's probably uncool to like Oprah, especially now that she's become a corporation mega multimillionaire with her OWN channel, but I don't care. That network plays a lot of 20/20 detective shows that I love and it's also host to one of most interesting and disturbing documentary projects I've ever seen, Lindsay.   Last night, we saw more footage of Lilo not wanting to be filmed, and bawling out her personal assistant for not doing his job, even though the reason he can't do his job is because she won't meet with him. Their conversation about him not having her clothes arranged the way she wanted them to be done went something like this: Lilo: (folding one of the 5,000 Valentino sweaters she has never worn): And then look at these piles of clothes. Like, you just put them on the floor and they're not even color-coordinated. Like, I should've had a personal closet organizer do this instead of you and now I'm, like,  having to do it myself and i...

We had Friday off from work because of spring break, a nice perk of the job, and that allowed me to take the early NJ Transit train out to 30th street and meet with my friends from Penn, to visit Sweeten House, to eat lunch with Lisa V. and Jason at Distrito on 40th Street. Then, got back on the Chestnut Street bus, and tried to remind myself of the things I won't miss on from the city, and there are a few. Public transportation, for example, has many things to like (it's cheap, it doesn't eat up valuable resources, it's fast, you don't have to worry about traffic on the train and you're not driving if you're on the bus, and you know exactly where you're going). However, it's also crowded, smelly, and you can never let down your guard. At least I can't--I'm always on the look out for the weirdo who might want to talk to me or the iPhone snatcher scanning the crowd for easy targets. And then there are the things people do on the subway that re...

Almost finished reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed and it's very difficult to read, or not very difficult, just that I find myself skimming the text somewhat, partially because it's about her starving or needing water or her feet throbbing and her toenails falling off in her too-small boots or memories of her dead mother or her heroin-shooting days, interspersed with her getting lost on the trail or almost lost on the trial and nearly stepping on rattlesnakes three different times so far.  It's hard to relax when you're reading something where potential danger lurks at every turn in the path. And then there's the fact that her choice to take this solo trek on the Pacific Coast Trail is so far from anything I would ever consider doing that I find it hard to relate or sympathize with her difficulties. I don't even like to hike for an hour, let alone eight weeks in the wilderness with a pack on your back that weighs as much as you do. I've only been camping a han...

I don't have any photos of my community theater days--I mean, I have a bunch more from when I worked in children's theater (see previous posts)--but none from some of the shows I did at the Royalty Theater Company in downtown Clearwater or with that one group of actors who did these mystery theater events. Maybe I did just one play at the RTC, A Pack of Lies and I played Julie, the naive young daughter. If I recall, I was allowed to use a British accent (I excel at accents). Before each performance, the woman who helped me get the acting and teaching job at Ruth Eckerd Hall (Kay Campbell--she was a veteran actress and looked quite a bit like Carol Burnett) always did these vocal exercises to prepare. Deep breaths and inhalations and trilling of the lips, teeth, tip of the tongue, roof of the mouth.  I found this to be completely embarrassing. I know that you have to do these things to warm up your instrument, as they say (your body, your voice), but then another part of me say...

Due to massive amounts of pressure form numerous sources (and the fact that the only other available TV entertainment on last night was CSI and Amityville Horror), Dan and I rented the first episode of Breaking Bad last night. I'm a late bloomer, I'll admit it. Growing up, my family was always about five to seven years behind any current trend. So, like, we didn't get a microwave until 1999 or a VCR until well into the DVD years and I got a cell phone just two week ago.  Okay, these are all examples of how we were behind the times in technology, but generally, I am not a band wagon type and usually get to things late, like boys. I didn't get kissed until the 11th grade (I blame my Tootsie-style Coke bottle eyeglasses as part of the problem), and I still have never been married--I imagine I'll catch up to that in my fifties. So, when BB was all the rage, I missed it. I'm sure I flipped past an episode or two, but I never watched one, even though I was vaguely p...

Luke starts sixth grade in the fall, and he seems fairly cool about it; he's worried about bullying, but I think that's because they are now inundated with classroom discussions and speakers and chatter about bullying--it's as if the administration is bullying the kids about bullying. I remember dreading middle school--knowing somehow that it was this weird transition into semi-adulthood, where there would be actual teenagers (8th graders) and kids who were jaded and did drugs and maybe had sex. Middle school seemed like the ultimate in total corruption, which was a concept that made my stomach hurt--I just wanted to be left alone to read books about girls wearing hoop skirts and to be able to still get lost in games in my imagination--I didn't want to hear from Tracey Middleton how she made out with a twenty year old janitor at the Billy Squier concert during "Stroke Me." Getting older meant getting less interesting while at the same time moving further a...

I caught an hour of  Lindsay  on the Oprah Channel. In case you haven't seen it, the show is about fallen child star Lindsay's (Lilo's) struggles to put herself together after five unsuccessful stays in rehab. It's filmed in this documentary style--not like a typical reality TV show--seems less staged somehow, but it's also infinitely more depressing than the Barbie-style, polished for America faux drama shows like The Bachelor .  We watch her as she struggles to get the keys to an apartment in the city, and are asked to sympathize with how difficult it is for her to live for two months in a motel in NYC. We see that every time she leaves the hotel or goes anywhere, she's trailed by paparazzi, but the kicker is that we're watching her being trailed by these piranha like photographers looking for a pay-off, even as we're allowed to see this because another set of people are filming her every move. And there's trouble brewing with the production crew...

I may have previously mentioned in this blog that I have never learned to cook. Like, without adult supervision, I wouldn't know the first thing about how to make a chicken. I think you're supposed to rub butter on it and then put it in the oven or cut it up and put it in a skillet with some olive oil. I've never made a meatloaf or a casserole or even an omelet. Well, maybe an omelet, but not a very good one. My mom is an excellent cook, but I skipped that part where I was supposed to be paying attention to how the meal got on the table. In college, I did what most kids did and ate a lot of spaghetti and Ramen  noodles and bowls of cereal for dinner. But then I never progressed beyond those basic skills of pouring water into a pot or hitting the timer on the microwave for popcorn. It's partially because I was single for a lot of my twenties and thirties--I had boyfriends and I lived with them and everything, but they always cooked while I waited at the table with the na...

In honor of Lent, I've decided to make a commitment to allow myself to do or consume or think or practice one shitty thing per day for the rest of the Lentil season, or for the rest of my life. For example, instead of eating cottage cheese and fruit for lunch (as Dan did), I decided to have a fat French fry dipped in ketchup. Delicious! I did not feel bad about it; instead, I enjoyed how horrible it was and thought not for a second how it might possibly be destroying the four days I put in at the gym this week, dying on the elliptical machine. From here on out, I'll try my best to do one bad thing each and every day, whether that be to eavesdrop on a conversation at another table and make fun of it (as I did yesterday at Starbucks) or try to get Dan to turn around and look at this lady who was seated at nearby who had the biggest chest I'd ever seen spilling out of her tank top (I also did this yesterday---it occurs to me that maybe I should aspire to do this more often--li...

We are not movie goers. We go to the movies maybe once every three months or more like four to five times a year. I don't know why this is--I guess because I am afraid of being shot at a movie theater now. Very occasionally, we rent movies On Demand; more often than not, we watch whatever happens to be on at the time---and, if I have my pick (which I often do) it's going to be a mystery detective show like Hard Evidence or 20/20 .  I'm attracted to these shows because I like how they figure things out and how they make a gesture toward justice.  I mean, sometimes, the bad guy gets away with it, but most of the time, they come to slightly satisfying conclusion. On Oscar night, instead of watching that awkward parade of celebrities, we rented Nebraska . In case you don't know, I was born in Aurora, Nebraska, and my whole family still lives there. But we left when I was about five, and so I can't say that I know what it's like to grow up there---but I do have som...

Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. When I was in undergrad at Florida State, I lived with three other girls in an adorable house on Tharpe Street. The exact address was 1734 Tharpe Street (I think??). The house had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a big kitchen and living room, a yard, and driveway also large enough to accommodate four cars. I think the rent per person was something crazy like $150 per month. I shared a bedroom with Lauren and we actually had bunk beds--I don't know who gave us those--but she slept on the bottom and I slept on the top and only once did she have to tell me to get rid of the guy I brought home. I think we lived together for three years; maybe two with Michelle, and then she moved to Chicago (where I later went--see a previous TBT post); but while we were all together, we got along very well and were able to throw an annual Halloween party for our various friends and theater majors. In the photo above, we have dressed as the four seasons. God kn...

Use Grammarly for proofreading to avoid having your story about nurturing nurse become a story about a neutering one. I've almost finished reading this totally fascinating nonfiction book called The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber (medical student turned journalist). The book is about a male RN who killed around 300 patients by injecting their IVs with different cocktails of drugs that sent them into cardiac arrest or diabetic comas or whatever. I don't know why the book hasn't been optioned for a movie; it has all of the trappings of a medical thriller. My favorite aspect is this heroic woman (Amy) who emerges as the one who cracks open the case. She's first a friend of the guy who turns out to be the most prolific known serial killer in history, Nurse Charlie Cullen. Bu then, she's tapped by the detectives on the case to try to help them figure out how he's been getting away with it. They show her all of this hospital data they don't quite understand...

This is my psychic prediction for the show. The best would be if he picked one of the women and she said, No thanks, but that never happens. Dan's mom is visiting tonight and she's never seen the show, so when Dan said, "I think he hits one of the women in this episode," she said, "Oh, really?" Like it was no big deal. We meet Juan's family and learn that he's originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. What the hell? The accent has been fake this whole time. Here comes the daughter, who is forced to kiss Clare on the cheek. Clare finds it totally hot that he's not a terrible father. Clare is bragging that she's a baby machine who can't wait to keep reproducing, starting right after the calamari. Juan's mom tucks a pillow under her arm and seems skeptical that Clare could feel love from her son. "Ask me anything that you want to know." And then Clare learns that JP was hyperactive as a kid and very rude; Clare says that it's just...

We decided to go for Chinese/Thai/Sushi food for lunch at a local place near our house. I won't mention the name because (1). I don't remember it and (2). I hated the food.  It's usually a bad sign when a restaurant has six pages of entree choices, because it means they don't make anything all that good. I think this place specializes in sushi, so we should have taken them up on that offering, but I wasn't in the mood. Instead, I ordered a Thai chicken lo mien, even though I'm trying to cut back on my overall noodle consumption. The food came out in fourteen seconds; another alarming sign, because it's likely that all they had time to do was reheat the noodles. In any case, that's what it tasted like---noodles that had been sitting in a bowl since yesterday night and popped in the microwave. The other factor that contributed to the ick of the place was that I was seated directly across from a giant aquarium full of giant goldfish. I like goldfish as much...

Still working on my capstone project and finally started putting together some additional scenes for the story about the waitress. The daily writing blog I use 750 words actually does help with this task. I write every morning for about 25 minutes, and it's often just a recap of the day or whatever nightmare I had the previous evening, but sometimes, I produce story scenes and today, when I was stringing them all together, I found that I had an additional six pages. Only some of it will be useful, because my focus is scattered the morning and my goal is just to get to 750 words (that's the daily word count), but overall, it does add up, even if I get only a few paragraphs. Here's a chunk of writing from "The Disabled" that I won't be able to use in the story, but I still like it: They survived on Ramen noodles, and shopped at thrift stores and lived in studio apartments with loud radiators and were usually hung-0ver during the meetings before their shifts,...

I've never really watched American Ido l, because I always hated the dynamics between Paula Abdul and that British guy--Simon Le Bon? Also, I don't like watching hopefuls fail on national television. But Dan is into the show, and now that the judges are people I like, we have seen a few episodes (J Lo, Harry Connick Jr., and Keith Urban--who knew that he was from Australia? I have never listened to any of his songs intentionally, and just assumed that he was from somewhere in Oklahoma). I guess it's better than The Bachelor as far as the reality TV spectrum goes because the participants have to be at least somewhat talented vs. just sexually attractive. And the show does have diversity--I think at least half of the finalists are non-white and one or two possibly non-straight.  A few play an instrument, and all of them come from fairly middle class to poor backgrounds and so there's this very modern American dream twist to it. And yet... Of course there's an ...

I'm reading a new book now that I picked up at the Princeton Library for $2. It's called, The Last Werewolf, and is about exactly that. The book is written in first-person present tense, I guess to add to the excitement, and the plot centers around exactly what you the title implies. Jake (JAKE! soap opera name) is the last lupine on the planet. There used to be more werewolves running around, but they were systematically annihilated over time. Jake's life is in danger, because he is being hunted down by a government organization while also being protected by a different government organization. In addition, vampires exist, and I just found out last night that the vampires want to keep Jake alive, because they've discovered that the only way to endure sunlight is to have survived a werewolves bite. Of course! The writing isn't bad--it's a little over the top, but in such a way that you can imagine everyone in the author's writing group going mad over it...