Mine brain!

Am having one of those days. Feeling very tired and uninspired. Very much behind with the old homework. Have eaten basically nothing all day except a bowl of Special K and a ham sandwich. Currently trying to watch a new episode of Family Guy but the reception’s dreadful and all Comcast have to say about the matter is “We are currently experiencing individual channel technical difficulties in your area.” Oh, pity me.

I think I’m going to New York on Friday, so that’ll be fun. Will get a bit of Christmas shopping done hopefully. No Broadway this time, because the strike is still on. I predict the unions will kiss and make up the day after I leave. Anyway. Here’s a pic from the last time I was in NYC: Conor and I flaring our nostrils atop the Empire State. Flattering!

My song obsession of the moment is ‘Where You’ll Find Me Now’ by Neutral Milk Hotel. Darn – just a few days ago I wrote an article about bands who should reform, and neglected to mention the glorious NMH. Jeff Mangum’s voice is marvellously gritty. Or grittily marvellous.

PS. My roommate just came back from being in town and brought me a double chocolate chip cookie from this bakery she was in. It made me really quite disproportionately happy. I think I need a life.

Thanksgiving

‘Twas yesterday. It’s to do with turkey, and pilgrims, and … well, I’m fuzzy on the details. I do know it’s provided US TV with some of its finest moments though. Friends had way too many Thanksgiving episodes, but some of them rocked. Like ‘The One With the Football’ and ‘The One With the Rumour’ (‘The One With Brad Pitt’ would be better, I think) – oh, and ‘The One With Chandler in a Box’! (Self-explanatory really.)

Then there was that early Simpsons episode, Bart vs Thanksgiving, where Bart ruins Lisa’s centrepiece. Some early Simpsons were really emotional and simple. And one of my favourite Frasier episodes, ‘The Apparent Trap’, where Freddy pretends he wants Frasier and Lilith to get back together so he can guilt them into getting him some new bike. And Niles plays PlayStation. And wasn’t there some Fresh Prince of Bel Air episode where Uncle Phil was fantasizing about Thanksgiving dinner and “tiny onions”? I seem to remember that from my childhood somewhere. All my childhood memories seem to be of TV.

My favourite Thanksgiving TV episode has to be the Buffy ep ‘Pangs’, though. Xander, while digging, awakens a vengeful native American spirit. Said spirit starts hunting down all the local white leaders and killing them. Giles and Willow argue over the ethics of attacking the spirit. Spike offers information for shelter, and gets tied up. Angel shows up to help throw punches. Xander gets syphilis. And Buffy tries to make Thanksgiving dinner. So, so smart and funny.

Willow : Buffy, this isn’t a western. We’re not at Fort Giles with the cavalry coming to save us. It’s one lonely guy. Oppressed warrior guy who’s just trying to…
Buffy : Kill a lot of people?
Willow : I didn’t say he was right.
Buffy : Will, you know how bad I feel about this. It’s eating me up– (to Anya) quarter cup of brandy and let it simmer– (to Willow) but even though it’s hard, we have to end this. Yes, he’s been wronged, and I personally would be ready to apologize–
Spike : Oh, someone put a stake in me.
Xander : You got a lot of volunteers in here.
Spike : I just can’t take all this mamby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians.
Buffy : Uh, the preferred term–
Spike : You won. All right? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That’s what conquering nations do. It’s what Caesar did, and he’s not going around saying, “I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.” The history of the world isn’t people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story.
Buffy : Well, I think the Spaniards actually did a lot of– not that I don’t like Spaniards.
Spike : Listen to you. How you gonna fight anyone with that attitude?
Willow : We don’t wanna fight anyone.
Buffy : I just wanna have Thanksgiving.
Spike : Heh heh. Yeah…good luck.

It was a weird day. Boston sort of shut down. All the students went home to their various home states. Eerily quiet.

Losing My Religion

I mean my accessories. First it was my beloved grey stripey gloves with the fingerholes. I felt like Fagin in Oliver! when I wore them. (This is a good thing.) I think I must have left them in the psychology classroom. Then I lost an earring from my favourite, spiderweb pair. Just not my week really.

Just back from shopping at the Cambridge Side mall. Managed to spend a disgusting amount of money on two items of clothing. One of them is reversible, though, so it counts as three items. Right?

Saw Love in the Time of Cholera during the week. It was at once ludicrous and gentle fun. Barely any Liev Schreiber though. Boo hiss! I really want to read the book now. The only thing by Gabriel Garcia Marquez I’ve read is the short story Eyes of a Blue Dog, which both unsettled and confused me.

Conor sent me some of his pictures from the sibs’ trip over here. Here’s one of me and Eileen in Fenway. See we really were there! With snacks!

Austin Powers is on TV right now. I can’t believe this film is ten years old. So classic. “Bring in the femBOTS!”

Stee-rike!

I went to some batting cages with my friend Paul today. It was slightly scary. I thought it was going to be like hurling, but not so much. In hurling, you get to lob it up nicely for yourself; in baseball it comes hurtling at you. Hurling’s from the wrists, baseball from the shoulders. And hurleys are much lighter than bats. I really sucked at first, but less so as it went on. It was fun once I got into it.

Speaking of strikes … I’m quite fascinated right now by the Writers’ Guild strike, and the stagehands’ strike on Broadway. No shows of any sort for the Americans this Thanksgiving, no sir. Joss Whedon’s blog entry about the former is quite priceless …

My head is aflame with images of writers in ruffled collars, silk pantaloons and ribbons upon their buckled shoes. A towering powdered wig upon David Fury’s head, and Drew Goddard in his yellow stockings (cross-gartered, needless to say). Such popinjays, we!

Lovelovelove Joss.

Had a great weekend – my friends Aisling and Ken were over from Oirland, so I hung out with them mostly. They let me sleep in their spare bed for two nights, which I think will give my spine the strength to survive on an inflatable mattress for another six weeks. We went on a Duck Tour, which reduced me to an excitable eight-year-old. And had gorgeous food and cocktails in the Hard Rock Cafe. Good times!

My new favourite band is Rilo Kiley. (I’m so fickle.) ‘Dreamworld’ from their new album Under the Blacklight is just the danciest, most irresistible song ever. It reminds me of the Stone Roses’ ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ for some reason.

“There’s such a fine line between smart and stupid, isn’t there?”

The weather here is gone a bit mad. Friday was cold; yesterday was sunny; today is horribly grey and wet. I wish it’d pick one and stick to it – sunny, preferably.

My Shakespeare lecturer just likened Hamlet to Jackson Pollack, Kill Bill and This Is Spinal Tap. He’s some kind of genius.

I’m feeling very restless. I want to head off on a trip someplace. Boston is so cozy it’s easy to get settled in and not budge. But I’m 21, have another two months in the US, and God knows when I’ll be back. I should do stuff. My friends went to Salem on Halloween but I couldn’t because of class. I’ll start with that. It’s not too far afield. I’ll start small and work my way up. I have this mad need to start ticking off states.

Saw some good movies this week: 30 Days of Night, which I watched through the cracks between my fingers, and a documentary called King Corn, which almost made me cry. There’s this bit where they explain what happens to cattle when they eat corn, and the conditions they live in … arrgh it’s dreadful! Made me feel quite smug that Irish cattle are still grass-fed by and large, and get to romp around in the open fields. We may have BSE scares but at least they get to romp.

At the moment I’m writing an exercise for tomorrow’s Creative Writing class. We’re meant to write a one-page ‘list’ story, in the style of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. I went for the most obvious theme – books on a bookshelf. (In which I lovingly describe books – it’s book porn, almost.) I bet at least five other people will have done the same thing.