Monthly Archives: February 2013

SJP

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After yet another day of lecturers staring at me quizzically or smiling patiently while I try to express my ideas about the world in which we live, one more silly little remark can’t hurt…

It really warms my heart to see Sarah Jessica Parker sitting in the Vogue offices and talking about her early days in New York City (the Thanksgiving episode of Glee just aired here).

It reminds me of the early days of Sex and the City, for which I am more than a little nostalgic. I know all the cool kids have move on to Girls, but still… I miss those days.

Hide and Seek

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This little copy of Foe by J.M. Coetzee is – mercifully – the shortest book I’ve been assigned this semester. It’s so small, I almost lost it! Isn’t that cute! It’s hiding from me!

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It’s also small enough for me to have read it straight through in one night during this past week of sickness and erratic sleeping patterns. At some point, I drew a highly lucid diagram, which was intended to summarize the plot, on the back of the book receipt. I just looked at it again today, and it’s pretty much a series of concentric circles (but three-dimensional!), with the middle circle representing Crusoe’s island. You know, because that’s the one constant in this story.

Clearly, I was not in a state to be reading something so surreal.

The Mad Ones

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This bastard and I are having ourselves a little stare-down.

It technically began on Saturday, when I picked him up from the city library; but really, this antagonism has been going on for years.

I don’t like the Beats. There, I said it. Of all the literary generational cliques, this is the one that gets my eyes rolling.

Maybe it’s because I came to the Beats too late; I was already in college by the time I read The Dharma Bums (after a smokin’ hot alum gave me his copy during my semester abroad). I know I read On the Road at some point after that, if for no other reason than I knew I was supposed to, but I wasn’t impressed with any of it and found these guys to be just a little misogynistic.

So we’re reading On the Road for Travel Lit, and I just can’t bring myself to do it. This two-books-a-week nonsense has been going on for a month now, and this is the first one I’m not going to read. NotGonnaDoIt.

The thing is, I’ve already read it once, so this would kind of be a re-read, although the library only had this copy of the original scroll, which leaves the names unchanged and apparently has some gay sex scenes. And I do owe the Beats another chance, seeing how I was kind of a little snot as an undergrad, but I really don’t wanna…

I even poked around online and at the video store for the Kristen Stewart movie (which came out earlier here, for some reason), but it’s not available for another 10 days. Plus, it looks like it bombed in the States.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll flip through it, or if I can find an Irish supplier of whatever drug Kerouac was on when he wrote it, I’ll take some of that and pull another all-nighter (kidding).

Right now, though, I’m more concerned with cleaning out my fridge and pantry. See, I’ve decided to give up dairy for Lent, so I’m spending my Fat Tuesday* eating all the dairy products in my kitchen, which is more difficult than one might imagine, especially considering I just bought myself a Cadbury’s Milk Tray. Happy Valentine’s Day to me!

*Fat Tuesday is called Pancake Tuesday here. It is endearing to see all of Ireland and the UK obsessing over pancakes, but I find their final fling before Lent a bit lacking in ambition.

Before Midnight, Part II

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Photo courtesy © Berlinale

Once again, somewhere in the world, audiences are seeing that movie I really want to see.

Before Midnight had its European premiere tonight at the Berlin Film Festival. In reality, the film is already over and they’re all talking about it at the theater’s bar. It was some event called the Presentation of European Shooting Stars 2013, and I really, really, really wanted to go.

Really. I tried to buy a ticket online. They went on sale at 9am Friday morning, and I was at my laptap promptly at 9am. I went through a 30-second pop-up “waiting room” window twice, and when I finally thought I had booked a ticket, I was denied. Then I saw on the programme page that the event was sold out.

I would have gone, too. I was trolling LastMinute.com for hotel deals within a kilometer of the theatre and scoping out Berlin travel sites. I haven’t been anywhere since Christmas and was looking forward to a quick getaway.

It’s definitely for the best. I really can’t afford the jet-set lifestyle right now, and as badly as I want to, I don’t need to skip any more classes.

What gets me is that the festival had a massive spoiler about the film in its programme. I say massive, although they really just gave away part of the set-up, but if you’re familiar with the story at all, you know that giving away the set-up of one of these films basically steals nine years’ worth of magic from the audience. I can also see a review up online, but I only read the subheading, which contains a slight criticism that really could apply to any of the Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight films.

You can probably expect another of these posts when Before Midnight plays at South by Southwest. My boyfriend has offered to sneak in with a video camera, but that is generally frowned upon at film festivals.

UPDATE: Of course, the film’s stars were in Berlin tonight.

No more all-nighters.

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I have both of my “read a book every week” classes tomorrow, so this is usually the night – at least, for the past two weeks – when I don’t get to sleep.

However, I’m caught up on my reading tonight, so I’m forcing myself to go to bed, even though there are plenty of things I could be working on right now, calling my name…

To that end, I took some of the herbal sleeping remedy recommended by the girl at the health foods store, followed by a cuppa Pukka-brand Night Time tea, and now I’m ready for beddy-bye.

I have also, within the past hour, hit upon a new idea for my thesis, the proposal for which is due on Friday. I have had my topic picked for months, but this new idea is imaginative and collaborative and boldly experiential.

It’s possible I might have taken too much hippie potion. We’ll see if this idea stands up in the morning light.

Inbox Poetry

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I’ve been reading all day, so words are starting to swim, and I’m highly amused by these adjacent emails in my Hotmail inbox (one is from my boyfriend, and the other is from my Travel Literature professor):

TollDick