Monday, July 8, 2013

Getting Rejected from Everything



It’s official. With my final rejection delivered to my inbox this afternoon, I’ve been rejected from every program I applied to for next year. Not that I’m surprised, nobody ever said that getting a Masters degree in Creative Writing would open a whole lot of doors for my future, but nobody ever said that getting a Masters in Creative Writing would also lead to long, sad naps in the middle of the afternoon while I waited to hear back from an almost-minimum wage nannying agency to see if I got an on-call part-time position as each essay of my thesis slowly backs deeper into the hard drive of my computer, unable to find a good home. I can’t really complain. I’m lucky that I have a place to live rent-free with a boyfriend that I like (love, even!), two cats to cuddle with while I scour online job postings, and parents who have generously agreed to help me fund much of my summer, but it’s hard not to feel kicked in the gut when every a few days I open a new nicely worded e-mail informing me that I’m just not quite what this job/program/literary journal/MTV reality show blog (I’m desperate, ok?) was looking for. They say that if you want to be a writer, you have to have thick skin. But I’m notoriously thin-skinned, like a ripe plum that sat too long in a crowded fruit bowl or one of those clear eggrolls with the shrimp inside. The point is, I’m sensitive. I’ve always been sensitive. No matter how many times I get rejected, or how small the rejection is, I handle it mostly by eating several helpings of dessert and crying openly.
I’d like to say there’s a freedom in being rejected from everything. Something wise and optimistic about how every time God/Fate/insert chosen higher power here closes a door, he/it/whatever opens a window, but it actually just sort of sucks. It’s more like being stuck in a windowless room full of locked doors and hoping to one day form a Shawshank-style escape plan, spooning away the concrete from behind a pornographic poster and trudging shit-soaked through the sewers until I finally reach daylight. It seems impossible at times that I will ever open up an e-mail that isn’t a “Thanks but no thanks.”
But I don’t think getting rejected feels good for anyone, and unfortunately I just happened to pick a profession and a time period to be 25 in which getting rejected happens much more often than getting accepted. I wonder if that’s the fate for all notoriously sensitive people, we wind up having our hearts broken and broken until we learn to assemble the pieces the way they should have been in the first place: strong and resilient. Or maybe we all just waste away into nothingness, slinking off to dark corners where we can cry in private whenever a dog dies in a movie. I’m hoping for the former, though.
But because nobody else seems to want me to work for them (even though I would bring really delicious cookies for the breakroom like every week, but whatever. Your loss, every business who has rejected me. I guess you hate chocolate chips with just a little bit of salt so that flavor really pops.) I have a lot of free time. I’ve decided that I’m going to start my own historic cooking blog. My good friend and amazing graphic designer (and bridesmaid-granter. Bridesmaid maker? Person of whom I will be a bridesmaid for.) Lauren Jolly is designing the website for me. In this blog I will post my attempts to recreate historic recipes from cookbooks before the year 1980. Remember the post about the sponge cake? It will be like that! It should be up relatively soon. Hopefully it will be funny and weird and full of delicious/probably mostly disgusting recipes from throughout time. Hold onto your petticoats!

Monday, June 24, 2013

The Importance of Happy Hour



I know, it’s Monday, not last Friday, which was when my 28 day break was supposed to end, but I just thought I’d stretch it out a few more days. Also, I was really, really tired on Friday because we went shopping at Costco and after that all I could do all weekend was nap, watch The Wire, and eat from an industrial size box of Cheez-its.
            I thought it would be pleasing to end the 28 days series with a post on one of my favorite ways to end the days since I’ve moved to Michigan: Happy Hour. Happy Hour is a new concept to me because in North Carolina, where I’ve spend all of my adult life so far, happy hour is illegal. North Carolina isn’t big on drinking. You can’t buy alcohol before 12pm on Sundays (So if you want to sneak a Bloody Mary into church, make sure to plan ahead and buy on Saturday). And in general, if you want to buy booze you have to do so from an ABC store, which is a government controlled store that only sells alcohol. The ABC stores have always confused me because not only does their name sound a lot like a toy store, but they are also always painted the exact same way in bright red lettering with large red columns and glass blocks, giving them the appearance of a fast food restaurant catered towards children.  But I digress. North Carolina doesn’t have Happy Hour because they think it encourages binge drinking, so when I moved here I was really excited at this novel concept. Restaurants serving cheap fancy drinks? Half-priced appetizers? Outdoor dining? And it all happens at 5pm so I can have drinks, then eat an entire meal, and go to bed by ten pm? Everything about this concept appeals to me.
Pensively enjoying half priced wine at Sava's.
Parmesan polenta fries: Not half price. Gazing across the table at Matt's "That Guy" T-shirt in a fancy restaurant: priceless.
        


                  
               But I think there’s something more about Happy Hour that appeals to me than just the concept of cheap fruity drinks and endless guacamole. Happy Hour first started in the Navy in the early 1900s when it was the hour on the ship when everyone was allowed to have free time, which they usually spent boxing each others' ears (I imagine), and later during Prohibition it became the hour before dinner that people snuck into their favorite speakeasy and had some secret drinks with friends. In any context, Happy Hour signifies that the day is done. If you are ready to have some drinks at 5pm, it means you’ve completed everything you need to do. It’s like a delicious fruity period on the day. Happy Hour is a reward for being a person all day: going to the gym, writing, working in the lab, doing all the dishes. And you don’t do Happy Hour alone, you share it with friends who have also finished being people for the day. I think North Carolina is missing the point of Happy Hour. It’s not an excuse to binge drink in the middle of the day, it’s a celebration, a congratulatory hour for everyone at the same time. The concept of letting yourself take a breather and celebrate the work you’ve done at the end of something hard is something I’m very familiar with now. Happy Hour is important, whatever your Happy Hour is: spending an hour with your boyfriend drinking wine and eating polenta fries or spending 28 days doing things you love. It recharges us, congratulates us for the work we’ve done. Then we pick up again and start something new.   

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Breakout Theory/Target Vortex



Ever since I’ve been unemployed, I constantly wonder “How did I do anything when I had a job?” My dishes are overflowing, even though I did three loads of laundry over the weekend I still seem to have piles and piles waiting around on my floor, begging for the attention of a spin cycle, and I still haven’t put up any of my pictures and art for the walls of our apartment. So this begs the question, what have I been doing? Even though I technically have nothing to do all day, it seems like I still don’t have enough time to take care of the things I need to do. Where are those hours going, though? Here’s my theory: the less you have to do, the harder it is to do anything at all, but the more you have to do, the easier it is to get everything done. I’m calling it the Breakout Theory, because you know when you play that game Breakout with the ball and the bricks and when you have a million bricks its easy, you’re just hitting bricks left and right, but as soon as you get down to one brick, it’s impossible because the ball keeps bouncing around, directionless in all the empty space. This is why we as humans need something to do, because the momentum of doing one productive thing propels us to do the other productive things. I need a job not for the money or companionship of other human beings, but because I really need to start making my bed.
The loss of time could also be due to what I am now calling the Target Vortex, where an unemployed person goes into Target (or another large store, any store where you could have potentially been lost as a child will do) and even though you have a specific list of things that you need, you know in a very undefined, hazy way, that you have nowhere else to be, so you wander around for hours. Yesterday I went to Target to get toilet paper. That was all I needed. Two hours later I found myself wandering through the vitamin aisle, cart full of various items: trashbags, sample size bottles of shampoo, curtain rods. I was reading the backs of labels, wondering if I was the type of person who needed more vitamin K.
It’s been nice to take a break, but I’m ready to have a job now, universe.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Getting Really Serious About Taking a Break: My Day in the ER



I missed Monday for a completely legitimate reason. I spent the day in the emergency room. Everything is okay, I’m fine now and will be back with my last two days of taking a break on Wednesday and Friday. I hadn’t been to the hospital since I was 15 and had an unfortunate incident with my pointer finger, a bread knife, and a particularly round sesame seed bagel, but I will say it turns out spending an entire day in the emergency room is the ultimate way to take a break. If there wasn’t the small matter of having to wear a backless gown for six hours, the various proddings, the plastic tube being inserted in my forearm and you know, the searing pain, it was kind of like going on vacation: I laid in a bed for seven hours while people waited on me hand and foot, Matt left work early and we did crossword puzzles together, I got wheeled from room to room in a gurney (I’m considering getting a gurney as a bed so I don’t have to get up to make coffee), and I somehow earned 25 dollars by taking a survey.
            I was lucky that there was nothing majorly wrong with me. Going to the emergency room is a reminder that not everyone who goes in those sliding doors gets out seven hours later to watch Kitchen Nightmares and eat an entire loaf of French bread with fancy brie and raspberries that they bought with their brand new 25 dollars. (Seven hours is like six hours longer than I normally go without eating.) And I’m lucky that I have a boyfriend who ran two miles through the streets of Ann Arbor in his work clothes (I like to imagine he was wearing a labcoat, but I’m pretty sure it was just jeans and a polo) to drive me to the hospital and a very concerned calico cat who refused to leave my side until he got there. And of course for all the doctors, nurses, and paramedics who helped me yesterday. See you guys tomorrow.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Lucebumps



A few years ago, several hours into a drive from Burlington, VT to Wilmington, NC, I had one of those half-crazy ideas that form when you are alone in the car for extended periods of time, which despite actually being sort of insane, at the time seem really, really spectacular. My idea was to write a blog in which every week I would read a Goosebumps novel and then write an entirely serious synopsis and review of the novel. I would call my creation: Lucebumps. For pretty much all of the Mid-Atlantic states I thought this was the greatest idea anyone had ever thought of. It would be so funny! And weird! And nostalgic! Have you noticed that everyone is really into nostalgia these days? You can’t get through an entire day without somehow encountering Kelly Kapowski somewhere. But by the time I got to North Carolina, I was pretty much over it. Did I really want to waste time reading a Goosebumps novel every week? Have you ever gone back and actually read a Goosebumps novel? They don’t exactly hold up. So I ended up scrapping the idea. But recently someone told me that someone else actually did this. I found the blog and read a few entries, and it’s pretty good and the blog itself seems fairly successful. Damn it. That could have been me! Lucebumps could have taken the world by storm. Or at least the world of mock reviews of 90s children’s book series by storm.  Has anyone done the Babysitter’s Club? Boxcar Children? Sweet Valley High? Is there anything left for me? Anything besides Babysitter’s Club Little Sister. Even as a kid I thought those books were boring and repetitive. I get it, your parents are divorced, you have two pairs of glasses, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn to use contractions, Karen.
So when Netflix recently put out the first season of the Goosebumps TV show, I thought: perfect. Now I can just spend twenty minutes watching an episode instead of the hour to hour and a half it would take me to read one of the books. Plus the TV show is Canadian which, if I’ve learned anything from watching hours and hours of Degrassi in high school, it’s definitely better than American TV. I watched the show as a kid, but I don’t remember much except the opening sequence when RL Stine’s briefcase falls open and all his papers go everywhere, because as a kid it really stressed me out. I always wished they would then show another clip of him successfully gathering and reorganizing the papers neatly into his briefcase, but I guess that wasn’t really the vibe they were going for. Anyway, now for your reading pleasure here is my totally serious review of Goosebumps Season 1 Episode 6: The Phantom of the Auditorium: 

As soon as the episode begins, I already feel a tremor of terror as the contents of R L Stine’s briefcase float over a sleepy seaside town and turn into the iconic Goosebumps “G”. The G floats over the town’s mysterious happenings: most notably an innocuous-looking golden retriever who, when he turns to look at the camera, displays glowing yellow eyes that look as though they have been created in MS Paint. Convincing, no, but terrifying, yes. If I came home to find my cat’s eyes had been replaced by two dimensionless blobs of floating yellow pixels, I would definitely be freaked out.
The episode begins with quick flashes of smoke, lightening, and the image of a man in a cape and white mask twirling in front of the camera. I think the twirling man is supposed to be menacing, but I just can’t seem to get panicked about anyone who is twirling. Don’t worry though, because a few seconds later the eyes of a blonde girl pop open and we realize it was all a dream. Classic Goosebumps.
After the main character, Brooke, wakes up from her frightening dream of a phantom doing what seems to be an amateur ballet routine, she heads off to play rehearsal. Her school is performing a play called “The Phantom” which has a plot that when described, seems shockingly close to the famous Broadway musical “The Phantom of the Opera” but for copyright purposes is not “The Phantom of the Opera.” Brooke has been cast as the lead, Esmeralda. Her friend Corey congratulates her for this, but another girl, Tina, rolls her eyes. Corey accuses Tina of being jealous that she was only cast as an understudy. But Tina assures him that she would never want to be cast as the lead role in this play because this play is cursed.  She explains how her grandfather told her that many years ago the school attempted to put it on, but on opening night the boy who was supposed to play the phantom disappeared and was never seen again. Tina is obviously not happy that the school has chosen to do that play again, what with its sordid history. So why did you sign up to be in the play, Tina? Just to drone on about curses? While everyone is busy ignoring Tina’s story, suddenly a gloved hand reaches out from behind the curtain a grabs Brooke around the neck! The music swells and the scene cuts off and if this was 1994, you better believe there would have been a 1-2 minutes commercial break where you were just sweating wondering what was going to happen to Brooke. But luckily this is 2013 and I only had to wait one second to find out it was Zeke, The floppy haired class clown who is playing the Phantom. Poor Corey, I thought he was going to be the love interest, but obviously he can’t compete with a boy with hair this floppy in the early 90s.
Out comes the quirky acting teacher (we know she is quirky because she’s wearing a flowy neck scarf) who tells everyone to stop fooling around. But then Corey starts literally sinking into the floor. She ignores this as she continues to explain the plot of the production, even though Corey is waving his arms frantically as him and his chair are being lowered into the stage. She finally notices and explains that that must be the old trapdoor they build for the first production of the Phantom, which nobody has used or apparently even noticed, for the last 70 years. After saving Corey she dismisses play rehearsal, even though nobody has actually done anything yet besides complain about curses and get sucked into the stage.
After rehearsal Brooke and Zeke decide to check out that old trapdoor, despite the fact that their quirky drama teacher has strictly warned them against it. The pair get on the trapdoor, flip the switch and are taken down to what seems to be the school’s basement, but Zeke tells Brooke it’s “Definitely not the basement” because apparently either Brooke isn’t the first girl Zeke has convinced to go with him down to the basement, or he is unusually gifted at calculating depth. With that mop of Backstreet Boy hair, I’m guessing the former.
In the sub-basement, Zeke and Brooke run into Emile, a shadowy figure who tells them he is the night janitor. He tells the kids to go back upstairs and warns them never to take the trapdoor elevator down here again, it’s too dangerous. The warning is meant to be creepy, but is actually entirely logical because it looks like the most dangerous elevator you could possibly ride on, it’s just a hydraulic lift with no guardrail that goes through a hole in the floor two stories down.
As the week progresses, strange things start happening.  Brooke finds a skull mask hanging in her locker with a note that says “STAY AWAY ESMERELDA.” A new boy named Brian nobody has ever met before joins the cast like two days before opening night. A phantom swings down during rehearsal and assaults Brooke and drops a giant door on stage painted with the words “STAY AWAY ESMERELDA” in blood, which everyone seems pretty unconcerned about and blames on Zeke, which gets him kicked out of the play after they find a bucket of red paint in his locker. The kids ask the janitor to ask Emile, the night janitor, to come clean up the mess and the janitor informs them there is no night janitor. Outraged at the injustice of being kicked out of play, and intent of figuring out the identity of Emile, Brooke, Zeke and the random new boy who just showed up in the play two days before opening night but nobody seems suspicious about, go back to the sub-basement to investigate. There they find Emile, dressed all in his phantom costume who chases them around the basement, in the process they discover his secret lair, he’s been living in the sub-basement! They escape through the trapdoor and call the police, who inform them that Emile is just a homeless man whose been living in the school’s basement illegally and he must have been pulling all those pranks to make sure nobody found out he lived down there. NO BIG DEAL. He just tried to drop a door on a 14-year old girl and has been living illegally in the basement of a middle school dressed in a phantom costume for apparently no reason, since it turns out he has no affiliation with the play whatsoever. School and the play continue as usual, despite, of course, Tina, who is still harking on about the “curse.” Seriously, Tina, it’s getting old. Go join the volleyball team or something.
On opening night, Brooke delivers her lines on stage and waits for Zeke to appear as the phantom, but on the trapdoor we see that Zeke has been knocked out and a new phantom has taken his place. But who is it?! The new phantom appears on stage and gives an impromptu speech about how he has waited 70 years to play this part, but he never got his chance until this very night. Breaking the fourth wall much, man? Get it together, this is a professional middle school production of The Phantom. (Not affiliated with the hit Broadway musical Phantom of the Opera.) Then the phantom disappears through the trapdoor and as the curtain goes down, everyone rushes to Zeke to congratulate him on his amazing performance. Zeke is undeterred by the fact that he did not actually perform, and accepts their compliments with gratitude, failing to explain to anyone that an unknown masked man knocked him out and did the performance for him. But whatever, why ruin his chances to get more ladies into the sub-basement now that he knows there’s a homeless man’s empty bedroom set down there.
As the cast exits the stage, Brooke notices something on the floor. She picks up an old yearbook from the year 1927 and flips to a page advertising for a production of The Phantom. Under the list of cast members there a picture of the new kid, Brian. He was supposed to play the phantom.
This episode was actually a lot more complicated than I thought it would be and I have to admit, I wasn’t sure it would be Brian the whole time. I suspected Tina. I’m still confused why a homeless man living in the basement of a middle school went through the trouble of leaving cryptic Phantom-related warnings to keep the kids from going in the sub-basement, why he framed Zeke for his crime, or why he owned a full, adult-sized phantom costume, but maybe it’s asking too much for the plot to actually make sense. Some of the episodes I saw before took themselves a little less seriously and I wish this episode had the same types of tongue-in-cheek jokes aimed at an older set of viewers. (For example in one of the episodes Matt and I watched yesterday a teenage girl yelled at her dad when he accused her of going through a phase that “life is a phase I’m going through!”) It’s been fun, even though taking extensive notes on an episode of Goosebumps is probably the silliest thing I’ve done to date. Next week maybe I’ll tackle the Babysitter’s Club Movie.