Geek Girl Goes Glam

I invite you all to follow my newest blog project, Geek Girl Goes Glam, a year-long stunt blog based around vintage dating and beauty guides.  I'll still post here on occasion, so keep checking back, but my hope is that by the end of this year, I can be as purty as Goggins over there:

I'm also now on Twitter @LibbyCudmore.  Follow me!

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.

Overheard from a college-age waitress at a local diner:

"What's the difference between Crisco and butter?"

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I stopped teaching.

Rifftrax Live Report

Ian, Eeon and I went to see Rifftrax Live! Manos: The Hands of Fate last night in Albany, and it was the absolute best movie-going experience I've ever had.  The place was packed, the show was great (although I have to say I preferred the original Joel riff) good shorts and this:
What made the whole experience so awesome was not just that I was there with two of my favorite people on Earth (although that helped) but that we were all there together.  There was not a single person in that audience who got dragged because it was their boyfriend's turn to pick the movie.  We all wanted to be there.  This was something all of us had been waiting for.  No one was bored or disappointed.  Strangers complimented each other's themed tee-shirts.   I was going to bring Servo, but he had a slight accident on the car ride up and had to stay laying down in the backseat.  I did, however, wear my silver Servo necklace (Ian loves me).  If I'd had time, I would have made a sheer white Manos Bride costume.

And when the lights went down, something magical happened.  Not a single cell phone screen lit up.  No one's "Firework" ringtone went off.  And it stayed that way for the entire movie.  Think about the last time that happened.  I can't.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 has always done what few other shows have--it makes the audience a direct part of the show.  Joel/Mike opened the show by welcoming everybody--not a live studio audience, but everyone watching at home as though you were there in the studio with him.  You were part of the experiment, and that tradition continued last night most notably during the "Welcome Home Norman" short, which is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen.  Our homecoming hero, Norman, does nothing but groan the entire time, so after the short, Kevin invited us to give a big ol' Norman catchphrase.

Obviously, we were watching a simulcast.  We were not in the Nashville audience.  Mike, Bill and Kevin couldn't hear us.  But we all did it anyways because it was part of the experience.  And normally I hate when people clap at movies, but this time, I didn't mind, and clapped heartily and often.  We hooted and hollered and stomped with laughter.  And no one that night left unsatisfied.

As someone who writes a lot of stories that take place in the south, I can no longer stay silent on the horror that is Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.  I've never watched the show or it's former monstrostity, Future Jon Benet Ramsey and Tiaras, because if I did, I surely would have consumed a nice strong cocktail of Allen's Coffee Brandy and Drain-O, neat.

For starters, her mother makes Divine look like Kate Moss.  She's a strawberry jello mold in a bridesmaid's dress.  She's a Hutt wearing lipstick.  She is the single most disgusting person I've ever seen, and I used to go to the Sunshine Fair, so I'm kind of an expert on ugly people.

It's not about the horrificness of TLC exploiting a family who really needs to have CPS called in.  It's not my smug, over-educated feminist outlook on beauty pageants.  It's the fact that this show continues to perpetuate the myth that the South is made up entirely of trailer parks and populated by rednecks who fornicate with gay pigs while gumming grits.  And I am so fucking sick of that version of the south because it's just not true anymore.

The south has made huge strides in culture.  Great bands like REM and the B-52's came out of Atlanta, Georgia.  High-end restaurants in North Carolina are fusing Korean  cuisine with grits and pork belly.  The Oxford fucking American, people!  It's in the middle of a renaissance, and it's garbage like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo that continue holding it back.

I remember watching The Blue Collar Comedy Tour with my then-boyfriend, his brother and his brother's wife.  She, being from Queens, thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen.  She couldn't understand why the three of us, being from Cobleskill, weren't laughing.  It wasn't that the jokes weren't funny, it was that we knew those kind of people.  It wasn't anything new or shocking to us.  But to her, the thought that someone might have sex in a satellite dish was so far out of her imaginative grasp that we might as well have said "You might be a redneck if you've got three heads, all named Billy Bob."

There are hicks everywhere.  If you ever want to see white trash at it's absolute finest, visit beautiful Cobleskill, NY, fantastically far north of the Mason-Dixon.  They just held the Redneck Blank in parts of Maine that might as well be Canada.  Rural America exists beyond Alabama and Georgia.  It's in PA and WI and CA.

I couldn't even read William Gay's Provinces of Night because it took place in the 1950's despite being published in 2000.  It just seemed like such a cliche, and damn it, I LOVED the film version of "That Evening Son."

PLEASE, people, enough with the old South.  MOVE ON.  It's one of the reasons I love Ray McKinnon so much--in the "Making of" featurette on Randy and the Mob, he says that he wanted to write a story set in the south he knew--the modern south, where people drive Kias and work in offices and wear khakis and occasionally have mob dealings.

We need to start embracing the south as a real place with real people, not some deep-fried Brigadoon that exists solely so Northerners can laugh at while they cram another organic Chipotle burrito into their gaping maw.  Find some other poor people to write a story about from your grant-funded beach house.

Apparently, We Have a Guest Post from Eeon Smith

Hardee Har Har, Canned Laser.

Better Late Than Never

Bunny Goodjohn, who is an outstanding writer and who had no business being in the Stonecoast Alumni Writer's Workshop because her piece was so awesome and there was nothing anyone else can teach her (although we were so happy to have her!) was kind enough to give us a shout out on her blog.
So if you haven't read her blog, get on over there.  Bunny is funny, engaging, charming and unbelievably talented. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of her first novel, Sticklebacks and Snowglobes. And pray she finishes up the novel I got to see pieces of, like, sometime around now, because even as a one chapter rough draft, I can say it was fantastic.

Everything I Touch Turns to Flies

Or, more precisely, everything Matthew and I touch, we destroy (although I did notice Betsey Johnson went under pretty quickly after I got really into her accessories).  Our story "Convention if Exphrasis," which was written about the 2009 AWP Convention in Chicago, was picked up by an anthology, which folded weeks before it's release date.  "Convention" was ours again, and we pitched it to another magazine, which accepted it.

And folded six months later.

This morning, I woke up late and to an email announcing that The Writer, which published our essay "The 12 Conference Commandments" in the July 2012 issue, will be on hiatus after October until another publisher is found. All submissions before March 1, including our follow-up about Low-Residency programs, were to be considered rejected.

So, yes, fellow writers, blame us.  Our curse destroyed The Writer magazine, the single best trade publication (suck it, Ponces & Weenies!) in the writing life.  We accept our responsibility, and apologize for the inconvenience.

Now if only McSweeney's would take something of ours . . . 

Dispatches From the Desk

I got back a few weeks ago from the First Annual Stonecoast MFA Reunion, which was of surprising awesomeness.  I give all the credit to that to Erin Underwood, who is rad and who gets shit done, mostly because she has the perfect combination of being uncompromising and nice, whereas someone like me is heavy on the former and non-existent on the latter.

I sat on a panel with Lexa Hillyer, poet extraordinaire, co-founder of Paper Lantern Lit and fellow 30 Rock affectionato who stressed the need for a good web presence and a consistent blog.  Now I am pretty consistent about my great love of Walton Goggins and my deep hatred of, well, lots of stuff, but that has nothing to do with my writing (with an occasional exception). When I started this project, I was still trying to write pop-culture memoir, which sorta isn't my thing anymore.  I still like records, and I sure as hell still like me some Goggins (sad about him not getting an Emmy nod) but Lexa was right, and if I'm going to refocus my career on writing, then my web presence needs to be about writing and all things related to story and craft and the writing life.

So enjoy that last picture of my sweet Walton, because it might be the last one you see for awhile.

50 Shades of Goggins

I did not go looking for this:

I was at the library.  An issue of GQ was there on the table.  I flipped through it, came to the "Bad Guys" section and thought, "Gee, I wonder if . . . "

Yep.  There it was.

And the worst part is that I'm not sure how I feel about it.  For one, it's terrifying.  The rest of the photos were extreme close-ups or just plain seated poses, but Goggins, of course, has to take everything one step beyond, because he is brilliant and possibly insane.

I have not and probably will not read 50 Shades of Grey.  I am not turned on by bondage and am actively turned off by bad prose.  If anything, this picture should have made me slam the magazine shut and tell our mayor that the library had hardcore pornography just laying about all willy-nilly.

But that chest!  Those shoulders!  That neck!  That hair!  Those eyes, perfect orbs of infinite inky darkness!  How can I not love that my darling Goggins is finally getting the centerfold recognition he deserves?

And the chill, that sweetest chill that shivers down my back when I see this picture. Because damn, I can hear that scream. I can feel the tension in his muscles, the tightness of his neck. As the girlfriend of a professional photographer and as a photography model, I find it fascinating when a photograph can portray such emotion in a flat, paper image. Tiny gestures and intimate details take on grand, larger meanings. It's something I can't do, and so I'm fascinated when people do it well.

Matthew Sweet, or How Wikipedia Ruins Everything

My Professor introduced me to Matthew Sweet when he put "Winonia" on the first mix he made me.  He said it reminded him of being alone in grad school, a note on pink paper that seemed so gut-wrenchingly poignant at a time when I too felt so fucking alone. (Also, how the fuck was I supposed to interpret that as anything but a call to be his Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a task I spent two frustratingly fruitless year attempting)

I bought Girlfriend as a way of trying to connect, and it was pretty good, but not so awesome that I had to listen to it over and over (except for that one song).  It hung around in a box for awhile until I began attempting my great CD purge, and I thought "Hey, I should look Matthew Sweet up on Wikipedia and learn a little more about him."

I discovered that he had a tattoo of this character:

Seriously? Matthew Sweet represented the time when I was most cool. I was one of the Original Binghamton Hipsters. I wore clunky shoes and knee-high socks. I hung out in dive bars and collected records and watched movies on VHS. And the soundtrack to all of that had a Lum Invader tattoo?!?

I guess I should expect that from a guy who wrote a love song about a comic book character

Ian and I saw Prometheus tonight, which was pretty rad.  But you probably already knew that, so I'm going to use this platform as an opportunity to warn you about a far deadlier menace.

That's My Son.

I've sat through several Saw trailers.  I made it through 28 Weeks Later while eating Red Vines.  Hell, I watched my sweet Walton Goggins get his spine ripped out in Predators.  But I actually thought I was going to be physically sick during the trailer for this God-forsaken abomination.  My gag reflex actually spasmed when Adam Sandler said "WAAZUP?!?"  It was just so horrible and grating and annoying that it was more than my strong constitution could handle

Look, I like a good Adam Sandler flick as much as the next moron.  The Wedding Singer is great, and Billy Madison made me laugh.  But now, seeing the phrase "Happy Madison" makes me feel the exact same way I feel seeing the confederate flags, a swastika or one of those "terrorists hunting permits" on the back of some redneck's Toyota--angry, nauseated and ready to just start kicking and screaming obscenities and throwing punches until I either hit someone or get hauled out by security.

(Eeon has seen me do this to frat guys and knows the kind of berserker madness I'm capable of.  It's how we ended up seeing AvP at the dollar theatre.  He knew if he didn't take me out, I was going to beat the skanks in the corner triple to death with a tire iron borrowed from the trunk of his Alero)

I could rant about the failed state of comedy or the idiot stoned asswad teenagers who talked and kicked my seat during the entire two hours of the movie, but instead of anger, I offer you a cure.  If any of you have been infected by this movie trailer, I URGE you to watch this video of Maru playing on the sofa.

I am not a huge fan of animation.  I like it in theory, I like classic animators like Tex Avery (as well as homages like Ralph Bakshi's Cool World and Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and I thought Cowboy Bebop was super awesome back in the day, but for the most part, modern animation makes me angry.  Partially because I feel that computer animation is too rounded and flawless to have any real "life" to it, and partially because so much of it is not used to tell a meaningful story, but rather, to sell toys.

But these two animated trailers made my day:
   

Love, Summer Camp and Billy Joel

"How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies
perhaps we don't fulfill each other's fantasies"

Billy Joel, "Summer Highland Falls"

For as much as I rag on Billy Joel, "Summer Highland Falls" will always be one of my favorite songs ever.  It's still sad and tragic and beautiful (especially the live version on The Millennium Concert; I've always maintained that Billy Joel, like Tori Amos, is better in concert) untarnished by the realization that Billy Joel is a fat rich crybaby.

For me, this song is 17 and The New York State Writer's Institute Summer Writing Program, which was 25 of the top young writers in the state.  It still remains one of the highest honors I have ever received, and I've been in Pank.  But the night before I left, Aaron dumped me (because Aaron was, among many things, a first-class asshole) leaving me mourning among strangers.

But I acted out, as I am wont to do, and made some friends by being incessantly quirky.  And I met a boy, Andrew, who was cute and sweet and actually liked me, which was sort of a rare thing at the time. We went on a walk and found a cool tower.  And then he asked me to Billy Joel night at the commons.  I was at a crossroads--Billy Joel was kind of Aaron and I's thing (our song was, appropriately, "And So It Goes" because Aaron was, among many things, insane) but here was a boy who was asking me to go someplace with him.  Luckily, something inside my 17 year old mind, in between thinking about Pokemon and MST3K, said "fuck that guy, Andrew wants to hang out with you, and Andrew is rad."

Billy Joel night, by the way, was a guy with a Casio keyboard playing Billy Joel songs.   We sat at white picnic tables.  All our other fellow campers were there.  When he played "Summer Highland Falls," I looked over at Andrew and he looked at me and we smiled at each other.  It was then that I knew that I was going to be just fine.

What with "Summer Highland Falls" as our song, you're probably not surprised that things ended kind of badly with Andrew despite not having ever really begun.  It sucked, but it wasn't unexpected, because life isn't always fair and sometimes both choices have consequences that far outweigh any benefits.  I don't blame either of us, because that's just how things go.  He hurt me and he may not have known it, and I know I hurt him without meaning to, but, like Billy Joel suggested, we couldn't fulfill each other's fantasies.  Despite this, I still thought of him fondly--if not a little wistfully--and that smile on a night when I needed to reclaim part of myself, even if it was just a song or two.

I touched base with him a little while ago and was kind of annoyed that I hadn't looked him up sooner, because he lives in Austin and I was in Austin last summer.  We agreed that if either of us was ever in the other person's time zone, we'd get dinner and catch up on all the years between us.  And we left it at that.

Most grand romances are not meant to be.  But I've found that the most epic of romances exist only in the span of a few short moments, when you're raw and unaware that something wonderful is happening until it's all over.  We can't marry everyone we meet, but that doesn't mean we can't, even just for a few seconds or minutes or hours, be in love without picking out china patterns and combining our bank accounts.  Sometimes love just needs to be that flutter of the heart as the object of your desire turns the corner, never to be seen again.

All that being said, Billy Joel is still a fucking ponce.