Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Graced with the pleasure of my company.

List-form items from my Turkey Trot home.

  1. 5.5 hour drives up the California coast are kind of fun when you're alone singing at the top of your lungs. You have a lot of time to meditate on life, the landscape, John Steinbeck novels, and everything you are going to make time for during the precious few days you have at home.
  2. New car. Grandmother bought a new car without telling Parents, so upon my arrival at home, I am bestowed with her 2003 Toyota Matrix. Miss Kitty is retired. Lola is in service. I no longer worry about the possibility of my car breaking down on long, contemplative drives up and down the California coast.
  3. DMV. My Wednesday-morning research time was spent at the DMV transferring the title and registration of Lola from Grandma to me. 2 hours chillin' at the DMV with my mom. Bonding time.
  4. Two Thanksgivings. First half of day was spent with my family. Much wine was involved. They treat me like an adult now. Second half of day was spent with Marcus' family. Much wine was involved. Rousing game of charades.
  5. My term project in linguistics continually fucked me up the ass. Precious research time was lost to the DMV, so I spent Friday morning at the Berkeley Public Library. Or, I would have had it been open. I spent 3 hours Friday morning trying desperately to find a book on Armenian. I openly wept at Moe's on Telegraph when I found a grammar from 1990. Salvation!
  6. Little Shop of Horrors: Saturday matinee with parents and Marcus. Good over all, but I definitely didn't laugh as hard as when Roommates, Nikki Ferry and I saw a Santa Barbara Junior High production of Little Shop last year, because that shit was hilarious. The show is much funnier with a slightly homosexual 12-year-old as The Dentist and a kid inside the Audrey II with tentacle arms singing the role of the plant. Notable creepiness from this production came in the form of the roots of the Audrey II . . . as they were not animatronic like the final incarnation of the Audrey II, but people. Creepy as all fuck.
  7. Useless things acquired at home: movie and book journals, a set of 6 double shot glasses with booze labels on them, $30 worth of lip gloss, November's issue of The Believer, and a Little Shop tee
  8. Inventory of friends I saw while at home: Eric, Sean, Steffany, Anders, Jake, Greg Montoya, Bryna
  9. Stuff found in the backpacks my parents give the Roommates and I for Xmas: plastic wine goblets (2 silver, 2 gold), an abundance of chapstick, silver wire jewelry boxes, brownie mix, potato chips, 12 headphones (3 for each of us, in 3 different styles), a plush snowman, a chocolate star, toe socks in the following colors/styles: blue with monkeys, pink and purple striped with the words "beauty sleep" on them, blue and green striped with the words "twinkle toes" on them, crazy-ass neon stripes; cough drops

I am no back home in Santa Barbara. Finals approach. The linguistics term project continues to fuck me. I do not enjoy it.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Petrarch in New York

My English professor spent a good 20 minutes today discussing his findings in last week's issue of the New Yorker. In addition to an incredible poem he happened upon while reading at the laundrymat, he talked about the Petrarchan implications of this cover:
Posted by Hello
I was so touched I immediately went out after lecture and bought this issue. The art in and of itself I think is very striking, but what Prof. Helgerson said was even more so. The portrait captures the Petrarchan obsession with the momentary, the fleeting and the gaze of the beloved. Petrarch saw Laura once on April 6, 1327 and wrote countless sonnets to her from that very day, always obsessed with the first moment he met her. It's hard to tell in this portrait if these two New Yorkers will ever meet again, if they were perfect for one another (after all, they've both fatefully looked up from reading the same book at the exact moment that their trains passed each other), or if one of them would maybe spend the rest of his or her life in the city searching for the other, writing sonnets in their perpetual search just as Petrarch did for Laura. And even if they didn't find one another, would this moment be the moment that they would forever look back on, the one that they rhapsodize with their friends about over coffee, sighing into the steam, "What if?"

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

You will all be trapped in this dense Symbolist tome forever.

Generally bad idea:

Deciding to do library research for your term project with absolutely no call numbers. I effectively spent an hour wandering around the stacks of the 6th floor language library with no result. I did see a whole lot of cool stuff (like these 19th century French dictionaries with marbled paper covers, our impressive selection of Russian literature in its original language, phonologies of Ancient Egyptian, enough literary journals to keep me out of sunlight for the rest of my life . . .). Unfortinately, none of said cool stuff was even remotely what I needed.

My eye started twitching.

Monday, November 08, 2004

Photo Drop + Weekend Bits

Recorded evidence of Isla Vista Halloween 2004 can be found, in part, here: http://photos.yahoo.com/fireyelectra

In other news, I went to see Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle on Friday night. (Naturally, I was stoned.) Excellent film! Funny and Neil Patrick Harris filled. Ran into a friend from Carondelet while there. She was visiting for the weekend, and greatly intoxicated. She amused me greatly. (I heart you, Stephanie.)

Saturday saw Nikki ultilizing her stolen BBQ's to do some meat-roasting. Her girlfriend got the brilliant idea to douse the coals in lighter fluid while they were burning. We are so smart. Later that night, party at Vic's house. She had wine-in-a-box in her fridge. It was horrible, but I drank it anyway. Vic's little sister is hot, and I had made plans to hit on her until everyone shot the idea down when subject was broached at Nikki's BBQ. Nice times.

Parents also came to visit for the weekend and brought the dog. Roommates love the Parents and the Dog. All was well. Dog was good. Parents were chaming and kind. Much shopping was done. The Mom made some purchases, which is a highly unusual move on her part. I made some purchases, including new boots, two new hats, and a new tweed blazer. Parents bought us snack food. Parents also adopted Cassie as their "new daughter" and took us all out to Friday dinner at E-Bar and Sunday brunch at Sambo's. Good times were had by all, and my parents have been deemed officially cool by all of the Roommates.

Some good weekend quotes:
"My hair smelled so good he wanted to have sex with me right then." --Melissa, at Nikki's BBQ

Stevi: Hey Nikki, should I hit on Vic's sister?
(Awkward silence from the entire room.)
Heather: Uhh . . . I'm gonna go with no.
Nikki: If she says no, I say definitely.

"Hey, we're gonna play a little game. It's called Diary of Anne Frank. It's where you be really, realy quiet and if you make any noise, the Nazis will come and kill you." --Me, to my dog


Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Belize echoes my sentiments.

"I hate America. I hate this country. Nothing but ideas and stories and people dying. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high, no one could reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing sounds less like freedom to me."
--Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Three nights in a yellow spandex track suit.

A list-form version of Halloween Weekend, Isla Vista 2004.

  • Number of complete Deadly Viper Assasination Squads on Del Playa: None, because no one in their right mind wants to be Vernita Green.
  • Number of mostly complete Deadly Viper Assasination Squads on Del Playa: One, and that award goes to my friends and I for having not only Beatrix Kiddo and Elle Driver, but also O-Ren Ishii.
  • Number of other girls dressed as The Bride: 2 or 3, depending on who you ask. I saw two, and I was much cooler than they were because I was not only wearing yellow spandex, but wearing it with an Uma Thurman-esque attitude. (The 3rd Bride that wasn't me I heard about on Monday, and apparently she rivaled my coolness.)
  • Number of other Elle Drivers: 4.
  • Number of Slutty Nurses who couldn't distinguish Elle Drivers such as Jen from their band of Naughtiness: infinite.
  • Number of other O-Ren Ishiis: None.

My Top 3 Most Creative Costumes:

  1. Scantron. The guy who made this costume actually enlarged a Scantron form (the small green one, with 50 questions on each side) and wore it. He ran around Del Playa interrogating all revelers as to which type of writing instuments they were: #2 pencils or ballpoint pens. He refused to associate with ballpoint pens.
  2. Storke Tower. The guy who wore this replica of the lovely phallic monument in the middle of our campus was so attentive to detail that he even included a blinking red fog-warning light at the top (which Storke Tower has to keep the airplanes from crashing into it . . . should they stray 2 miles off course and land on campus instead of at the airport). I was at a dance party with this guy on Sunday night, and was frankly quite amazed at the amound of mobility he had given himself in his boxy tower prison. He was able to see out of the medieval-style arrow slots that Storke Tower has at the very top of its bell-sounding structure.
  3. An iPod. The most amazing thing about the iPod was that it was actually playing music.

Honorable Mentions:

  • Tetris blocks that stopped every few blocks to assemble themselves in interesting formations before disappearing into the crowd on DP.
  • Ron Burgandy from Anchorman, because I only saw one of him and this guy looked exactly like Will Ferrell.
  • My friend Frankie as Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction because, unlike all other Mia Wallaces I saw (3), Frankie not only had a nosebleed from her overdose, but also a huge syringe sticking out of her chest. Naturally, we took a picture together.
  • Jersey Dan as Leftovers, because he was wearing only Saran Wrap and little brown shorts.
  • Victoria's Secret Angels, because the skimpy underwear they were wearing was indeed from the Victoria's Secret Angels collection.
  • Red Sox. Yes, two guys were literally dressed as giant red socks.
  • Oakland A's pitcher Mark Mulder!!!! (I all kinds of hugged this guy and thanked him for recognizing an A-1 picther from an A-1 pitching staff . . . I considered asking why he didn't dress as former UCSB-undergrad A's pitcher Barry Zito, but didn't because I think the hug and Oaktown pride freaked him out enough.)

Costumes I Saw Way Too Many Of:

  • Napolean Dynamite. The only good Napolean was my friend Eric Sheslow, because he looks just like him and talked just like him. And everyone knew he was the best Napolean of them all.
  • Slutty Nurse/Cop/Firefighter/Construction Worker/Etc. Basically, any girl who dressed as an indecent version of someone in a service position.
  • Slutty versions of anything else normal and/or mythical.
  • Johnny "Wildman" Damon of the Boston Red Sox. I saw 3 or 4 of them, and that is far too many of Mr. Damon in his current state. I actually went up to one of them and told him he was much cuter when he played for the Oakland A's. The guy dressed as Johnny Damon evidently didn't know that Damon once played for Oakland and blinked at me a little bit before saying, "Boston's cute too . . ." in a very confused tone.
  • Alex and Droogs from A Clockwork Orange. I liked them all and complimented them, but lets just saw that none of them looked as cool as I did at work on Saturday when I dressed as Alex.
  • Edward Scissorhands, after Peg Boggs dresses him in normal people clothes. I was completely impressed with how everyone made their own scissorhands, but was more impressed with Derek's friend Mike's version of Edward in his original bondage suit, because the bondage suit with scissorhands takes a whole lot more effort than trousers-shirt-suspenders Edward. Every Edward was in character, though, so they get extra points for that--even if not for the costume.
  • Crazy 88's, but its okay, because I killed them all on Saturday and then there were only about 5 left for me to kill on Sunday night. One group of 88's I met on Saturday night actually had a video camera, and we filmed a version of that famous bloody brawl. It was fun. Scene with said group ends with me screaming, "Leave the limbs you've lost, because they belong to me now" and walking away with my friends.

Favorite Things Yelled at Me from the Balconies and Streets of Del Playa Drive:

  • "Beatrix Kiddo!"
  • "Uma!"
  • "Watch out, boys, here comes The Bride."
  • "Check it out, it's the girls from Kill Bill!"
  • "Kill Bill! I fucking love that movie!"

Least Favorite Things Yelled at Me from the Balconies and Streets of Del Playa Drive:

  • "Hey, baby, you wanna slice me up?"
  • "Is Bill dead?"

I think really that my favorite thing about Halloween here is the celebrity that comes with having a good costume, when, for a weekend, you actually become associated with the movie character you're dressing as. Sheslow was Napolean Dynamite, and everyone recognized this fact with phrases similar to what was yelled at me. Likewise, you get congratulated for having good taste by all the same people. It's this intense roll playing game that lasts for days, and it is incredibly fun.

You also never know who you'll run into on Halloween in IV. I ran into Dan Shad from DLS in the Pita Pit at 3 am on Sunday/Monday. Also ran into the freshmen girl I have a crush on and complimented her on her lame bumblebee outfit (because now I know she isn't as hardcore as she wants everyone to think). Also ran into Jenrikay, who I haven't seen this year at all. Ran into Captain Max and the boys from FT. Saw Grayson in passing. Spent most of my evenings relatively buzzed--at least enough to keep warm--and had an amazing time with my friends.

For your consideration: a group of about 12 drunk Isla Vistans in a living room on Halloween, all sining Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" at the tops of their little bitty lungs. So much fun. It was an amazing moment of spontaneous bonding--and that shit needs to happen all the time.

Tequila tastes like vomit. Vanilla vodka in fruit juice tastes like candy. And next year, I will be Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy.