I believe I have finally made the full transition into actually being Liz Lemon.  The other night I had a dream that Jack McBrayer was wearing a vest and making me a sandwich, and it was the best dream I've ever had.  Because I got a sandwich.

Yeah, I'm kind of a dork.

In other Gentlemanly News:

I also saw Lincoln last week, and all I can say is that Walton Goggins was sporting the same haircut as I currently have, which is really awkward because I think he looks prettier.  And no, I will not post the picture of him with tits.  And certainly not because I'm jealous that he's got a bigger pair than me.

From the Vault--PIL and Eric Bogosion

I'm finally getting back into my CD dump, which is a process I never saw myself engaging in--that is, taking all my CDs and digitizing them.  So much for "Kill Your iPOD."  The only thing that would make my iPOD more lovable was if I could get Walton Goggins' face on my iPOD case.

The process is actually helping me rediscover music I'd either ignored or completely forgotten about, which has been an absolute joy.  Right now I'm listening to PIL's "Disappointed," which was part of the musical tapestry that made up the last half of grad school and my now ex-stepdad leaving, an event so catastrophically devastating that I have yet to be able to write about it other than to tell people what a lying cockwad he is and leave it at that.  Because he pretty much ruined my life and it has only been in the last year or so that I've managed to hustle things back into some semblance of order.  But it wasn't fun

Oh you handsome devil

Eric Bogosian's Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead was the other big album at that time.  I was obsessed with Eric Bogosian, both on Law and Order: CI and as a writer; I'd seen him read from The Perforated Heart at AWP and fell in love.  His writing was so visceral that it made me physically uncomfortable, which I sort of liked because it was a nice distraction from crying all the time.  Matthew got me a signed copy of Nails and I read it while working costumes for Beauty and the Beast.  It also helped me get through that clusterfuck.  Eric Bogosian pretty much saved my soul.

I was especially fond of "Blow Me."  I loved the explosive, raw frustration of the piece because it was exactly how I was feeling.  The whole world, as far as I was concerned, could just fuck off.  At one point, my mother, with whom I was having a pretty rough time with post-ex-stepdad-leaving, suggested that I get a tattoo.  I whirled on her and snarled I'm going to get a tattoo, I'm going to tattoo my EYELIDS and they're going to say BLOW. ME. so that when I close my eyes the whole world knows how I feel about 'em.

She never brought up getting tattooed again.

There was a time where I could recite "Blow Me" from memory.  I was going to perform it at the Stonecoast Talent Show but Matthew talked me out of it because he is occasionally a buzzkill.

I still love Bogosian, but I'm at a point in my life where I need a little more smooth.  Where people yelling doesn't make me feel better, it makes me feel worse.  The man is a comic genius, an amazing performer and very handsome (also, a sweetheart, he replied to my email).  Things have gotten surprisingly better, for the most part.  I've mended.  I don't think I've listened to Nails or 9 since that time, but oddly enough, it brings with it a weird sort of nostalgia, not putting me back in that awful, dark time, but rather, reminding me that somehow, I got through all of it. 

Writings Is Hard

I had what could more or less be considered the perfect weekend.  Not because I especially enjoyed it, but in theory, I got out of a weekend everything I've always thought I've wanted to do.  Namely, I wrote, slept and watched MST3K.

And man, am I bushed.

People who aren't writers don't understand how much it takes out of you.  It's mentally taxing.  It's headache inducing, eye-frying torture.  Yesterday I spent approximately six hours in my office, with short breaks for getting the mail and making lunch (which I ate at my desk) and at the end, I had finished a microfiction piece that took a lot longer than I'm use to spending on something less than 500 words (from inception to finished story took three weeks; by contrast, I wrote the first draft of "The PI's Wife" in 45 minutes, then typed it, and "Hero Cop" was written to a final draft in a total of 30 minutes, counting the walk back from the Brooklyn library where I wrote most of it on a piece of scrap paper in tiny golf pencil).  I then started on another piece, which is an absolute mess.  When I'd done all I could on that (it's still a mess), I sent out half a dozen submissions because my self-esteem is getting a little too high.  I finally shut it all down and watched Riding With Death, which I did not fall asleep during.

Today I got up and spent 4 hours tweaking and arranging a full-length manuscript for submission.  Then it was onto The Projected Man, which I made it through about 3/4 of.

*yawn*

Today is Cosmically Awesome

Birthday Hugs!

Cool--Vic Mackey and TV's Frank share the same birthday today!

I think I'm better at making break-up mixes than I am making actual, real, "Hey, you're rad" mixes.  It might by my affiliation to the Smiths, but I absolutely rock at making a mix to get dumped by.  I've absolutely perfected the art of saying "to hell with you" through song.

Exhibit A: I made this for the same guy who adored me with Matthew Sweet's "Winonia" dumped me via Billy Bragg's "A Lover Sings"--one good mix deserves another.

-"Human" The Pretenders
-"Change Your Mind" The Killers
-"Wrapped Around My Finger" The Police
-"King of Wishful Thinking" Go West
-"(Still) Terminally Ambivalent Over You" The Real Tuesday Weld
-"Bouncing Off Clouds" Tori Amos
-"No Reply At All" Genesis
-"Not About Love" Fiona Apple
-"Boys on The Radio" Hole
-"I'm Still Standing" Elton John
-"You've Got Everything Now" The Smiths
-"Here's Where the Story Ends" The Sundays
-"I Don't Love You Anymore" Magnetic Fields
-"Nothing Lasts" Matthew Sweet (see what I did there?)

I mean, how is that not awesome?  It must have worked, because I never heard from him again, which is fine, because he had turned into kind of an ass.

I don't know if I'm going to ever actually get around to giving this one out (or finishing it--it's a tad on the short side), but it's too perfect not to share:

-"Take a Bow" Madonna
-"House of Cards" Radiohead
-"Swallow Tattoo" The Long Blondes
-"I Don't Believe You" the Magnetic Fields
-"Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" The Smiths
-"Passion Kills" the Fontanelles
-"Off My Line" the Spin Doctors
-"Cabo Cad" JaR

Joel Stein is Manlier than Me

Saturday night generally suck for me, because everyone I know/like is either a) living a hundred + miles away from me, b) married with kids or c) off having some lovely grand love affair.  Or d) at work, like Ian, so I'm stuck home.  And since Ian works with kids and kids get whatever they want, like his Xbox, I don't even have access to the wide world of MST3K on youtube, which I'm sure as hell not going to watch on my teeny tiny laptop like some commuter.

Being lonely and therefor in a bad mood, I decided that Tom Waits Nighthawks at the Diner would be a good choice for music, since the conversational parts of it make it seem like Tom is hanging out in your own living room, drinking all your beer, and having a drunk hipster around might remind me of college.  I had just picked up Joel Stein's Man Man: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity and decided now was as good a time as any to sack out on the couch and read a few chapters.

I read the entire thing.

I didn't even get up to turn over the record.  I barely got up to eat.  I read for five straight hours.  It was that good.  Waits generally trumps everything, but lat night, Joel Stein was the only man in my life. (Sorry Joel Hodgeson).  I read for so long that the next day, I couldn't turn my head.

I've always found Stein's work witty, engaging and conversational, which is what I like/strive for in my nonfiction.  Also, if by some chance he's reading this, he is also handsome, especially with his Marines-issued Buster Bluth haircut.  And generally I find stunt memoirs trite and tiring (although I'm really looking forward to My Year of Living Biblically) Man Made lacked the petulant selfishness all-to-inherent in the traditional memoir, but this one lacked all of that too.  Instead of the usual "I am awesome and special so look at me" bullshit, there was a sweetness, a genuine sense of wonder and enough gray matter to realize what the whole thing was really about.

Joel Stein is a literary rock star.  He can come hang out at the diner with me and Tom Waits any day

Patriarchy: The Hands of Fate

My super-smart friend Ari and I have been going back and forth about the term "patriarchy," in terms of theoretical vs. literary device.  Ari is insanely well-read and versed on the subject, and I, having done two years at Bra-less MFA would, frankly, rather have something all be a dream in the end than even see the word patriarchy in a manuscript.

Patriarchy is a Big Bad.  It is predominantly used in memoir writing by rich white women complaining about why it sucks to be wealthy and white and privileged (see Eat. Pray. Love. Don't literally see it, because it's stupid, just click the link and read the Something Awful review of it).  I recently read a piece where a woman blamed the patriarchy in one paragraph and then got her panties all wet over her rich boyfriend's "manservant" (yes, she used "manservant" because I guess "Negro" was too polite) and how her rich boyfriend ordered dinner for her and how romantic the whole thing was.  I don't get too offended, but this made me so mad I was pacing around the room while I was trying to make notes and it took everything I had not to toss the whole thing in the fireplace and slap the woman who wrote it.

Memoir writers use The Patriarchy as a way to avoid blame or actual introspection on anything in their work.  It's much easier to blame the husband for the failure of your marriage than to admit that maybe you could have done some work too.  It's easier to blame some faceless white men for you not getting the keys to the Scrooge McDuck's vault than to say "Maybe I'm just a selfish bitch who thinks she's entitled to everything."  It's much easier to blame the chef than to say "Maybe I shouldn't have ordered that discount blowfish."

In my experience, the same writers who use The Patriarchy in this way generally are the first to strongly dictate how other women should behave.  Women who don't fit their narrow construct of feminism (wealthy, white, modest in dress albeit braless)  therefor fall into two categories:  In need of saving ("My Black Friend") or The Enemy.  I mean, thank goodness for Yale educated poets.  What would we do about our soul-crushing poverty without a bunch of women to teach us interpretive dance!  And of course, they deserve those $2K grants to teach us, after all, those dancing women work hard, and now that we all have the gift of interpretive dance, who needs food?

I tend to wear spike heels, short skirts, cut-up shirts and skinny jeans.  I think you can guess which category I fall into, despite the fact that I am economically disadvantaged and worked insanely hard to crawl my way up to where I am now.  But clearly, I'm not a feminist because I own thong underpants.

If we as writers want to something about The Patriarchy, which is back and badder than ever (trans-vaginal ultrasound, anyone?) we have to confront it head-on.  Name names.  Describe the men who've stood in your way.  Make them real, flesh and blood, make them accountable for their actions.  Simply lumping them together makes them little more than word too easily dismissed and lets them continue to get away with stripping us of our dignity and our hard-fought rights.

But more importantly, we, as women, need to solidify ourselves.  No more us vs. them.  No more feminists vs. sluts, working moms vs. stay-at-home.  It's too easy to divide ourselves, and divided, we will fall.