progress?

I am now, at the age of 26, only half as terrified of the Mean Teacher At Pacific Primary as I was when I first met him at 17. Maybe when I'm 35 I won't be afraid of him at all! Huzzah!

no that is not a name

Pretentiously Stupid Names Given To Hapless Children Who Currently Attend Pacific Primary: A Partial List

Honey
Brown
Rye
Wynant
Sterling
Basil

I get the feeling that all you have to do to get in to Pac Prim during the exclusive admissions process is name your kids after inanimate objects, or make up a name entirely. Bonus points if you can make your made-up name sound like another word ("Wynant" sounds alternately like "whinin'" or "why not"), or if you can spell a normal name in a completely unpredictable way such as "Ghaiyne" pronounced "Jane" (ok, I made that one up, but it's not far off).


Admission 1: I actually think "Sterling" is almost cute, but more for a boy than a girl, right? Poor kid.

Admission 2: Yes, I used to (USED TO!) watch America's Next Top Model, which is why I know that "Brown" was a name forced upon a poor desperate skinny girl by Tyra Banks many seasons ago, simply because the girl had the same name as someone else, so I am already sort of set against the name- except oh wait, it's NOT A NAME. But this aside- WHAT IF THE KID YOU NAMED "BROWN" HAD TURNED OUT TO HAVE BLOND OR RED HAIR?

It all reminds me of this.

someday my prince will come

I have ranted about this to some of you before, but I am having a horrid bout of insomnia, and Tim has been doing an essay series on animated Disney films, and so I figure the time has come to once again complain about princesses.

Now. To be clear. I have nothing against actual princesses. In fact, I still harbor a pathetic fantasy (and it has been previously documented multiple times) that I will somehow end up as the Princess of Sweden. What gets me about princesses is the commercialization of the concept of "princess." And, again, let me be clear- it's not that I'm against little girls pretending to be princesses- I played at being a princess innumerable times myself. It's the qualities that are somehow assigned to being a princess that I can't stand.

I shall start at the beginning.

When I was 15, I spent a summer babysitting for Rebecca and Ellen, my step cousin Diane's two little girls. At the time Rebecca was 4 and Ellen was about 2 1/2, the sorts of ages where you can't really expect them to play on their own without getting in fights. They had this game called "Pretty Pretty Princess," wherein each player was a colored princess token, and you took turns spinning the dial, and moving your token, and if you landed on a space with a crown, you got a crown.



There were crowns- or, I should say, tiaras,- necklaces, bracelets, rings, and (clip-on) earrings, and the object of the game- the ENTIRE OBJECT- was to collect all five kinds of jewelry and thereby become a pretty, pretty princess. As I recall, there wasn't even a way to LOSE jewelry if you did something wrong, you could only acquire jewelry, and thus the game was always over very fast and we always had to play many, many rounds.

Pretty Pretty Princess was bad, and incredibly boring, but it was nothing compared to this wretched video game Natalie and Alec had when I babysat for them in college. To give them credit, they only played it for a couple years, until Alec became obsessed with dinosaurs and was no longer willing to do whatever Natalie wanted. But until then, there were many interminable afternoons during which you could find me in an Evanston basement, one kid on my lap and one by my side, playing Barbie Princess Bride:



The whole basis behind Barbie Princess Bride was that Princess Barbie was in love with Prince Ken, and one must assume that he was in love with her, because he goes off in a boat on a Long Voyage, and Barbie stays home and plans their wedding. There is absolutely no indication that Ken is aware he will be getting married when he returns, but no matter, because oh! Planning a wedding with Princess Barbie is such fun! When you plan a wedding with Barbie, you get to:


1. Deliver wedding invitations to all the woodland creatures! What is it about being a princess that seems to require one has woodland creature friends? Is it some sort of royal gene?


2. Decorate the wedding cake, using decorations plucked from the garden of her helpful butterfly fairy friend! (Really.) The ingredients that go into the baking of the cake included butter, sugar, flour, harmony, and the gift of giving (really).


3. Sing an incredibly unfeminist song to the swans! The lyrics of said song included "For all times I'll be here waiting for you/ for all times I'll be here, your heart is close to mine/ Still I can't believe that love has come and walked into our lives/ For all times I'll be here waiting, waiting for your heart." Ignoring the gramatically incorrect use of the word "times," doesn't a princess have anything better to do all day than moon about singing mopey songs to swans?

4. You get the idea of the game design, yes? I shan't bore you with any more pictures, then. Next you get to fish important things out of a well, after a boy dropped them down there while "polishing things for the wedding." For how can there possibly be a wedding without the candlestick and the goblet?!?!

5. Design the wedding dress! If I recall, you didn't get to really DESIGN it- it is the same poofy princess shape no matter what- but you do get to decorate it, because apparently the life of a princess is largely concerned with decorating things. This sequence is the most fun, because you can pretend to be the fairies from Sleeping Beauty and switch the gown from blue to pink to blue to pink. Or, if you are me circa 7 years ago, you can let Natalie do it all because holy god, this game is boring.

6. Hurry ever so much faster because Ken's face gets clearer in the magic mirror, which presumably means he is getting closer, and whatever shall we do if the wedding is not ready when Ken gets home? That might give him a chance to run away.

7. Patronizingly check in on the musicians, then "help them play the right music" by reorganizing their sheets of music.

8. Omnisciently "navigate" Prince Ken's boat home through such ocean-going terrors as wind, sea monsters, islands, and dolphins.

9. And finally (and this is the game that was truly the bane of my existence), you get to pathetically toss coins into a fountain and make wishes about how soon Prince Ken will come home. This was the worst part of the whole thing because the design of the game was bad enough that where you clicked was not necessarily where the coin would go, and thus you had to compensate, and neither Natalie nor Alec ever really got the hang of it, so I'd always have two extremely frustrated kids on my hands while I clicked away at the damn thing so that the stupid fluttery butterfly fairy would shut up about it.

Anyway. Sorry for the Barbie Princess Bride tangent, but it truly embodies all that bugs me about commercialized princesses these days. For, you see, Barbie's entire life revolves around Ken and her wedding. Pretty Pretty Princess was dumb, yes, but it was also a game for 3 and 4 year olds, and there was a fairly simple goal to it, but Barbie Princess Bride makes a huge to-do about how Barbie won't really be happy until she has a giant fairytale wedding to The Man Of Her Dreams, surrounded by adorable forrest creatures. Should we really be teaching our impressionable little girls that getting married is the most important thing ever? I mean sure, getting married is great and all. I hope to get married myself one day. But hey- maybe we will make fewer girls completely miserable if we don't dwell on it in such an utterly magnified way when their brains are so maleable?

Also, I don't know about you, but I have never truly been happy with my life, because I cannot commune with woodland creatures. All the cool girls in the Disney movies did it. Snow White, Cinderella (she was the one that really got me- oh, how I wanted tiny mouse friends!), Sleeping Beauty, even Belle and Jasmine and Pocahontas to a certain extent.

Which brings me to Disney and the ridiculous "Disney Princesses" brand name. I don't know if you guys have been much exposed to all this, but I worked at a preschool right when it was first being marketed, and man, the power these few cartoon ladies hold over little girls is terrifying. So today, after reading Tim's Sleeping Beauty essay, I googled Disney Princesses and found The Official Princess Website, which invites you to "explore each enchanting world and collect charms from each princess." Its the same sort of crap that litters Barbie Princess Bride- in Cinderella's world, you help her get dressed for a parade. In Jasmine's world, you help her get dressed for a tea party. You help Snow White get dressed for a Forrest Friends Festival, who bakes "gooseberry pies for everyone" to cheer up Grumpy and helps Dopey pick flowers. You help Pocahontas get dressed for a Wind Celebration. Do you notice a pattern here? The only important thing to do in these girls lives is get dressed- and might I add that I don't know any real women who would just indiscriminately let someone else pick what they were going to wear to a big event?

So, what I gather from all this is that first you must get dressed, and then you must get married. I'm so glad that these are the things on which such powerful corporations as Disney and Mattel have chosen to focus. Really sends a message of independence.

You can also paint a picture, although the things you can do with your brush are very limited. I painted this (click on it, for it's hard to see all the incredible detail with such a small size):



I realize I'm not articulating any of this very well, but it's 5:15 in the morning and I haven't really slept in the last few days (woo!), and so this has turned into what it promised to be: a rant. I'm sorry. But I'm also not. It makes me mad. I guess it's good that girls are using computers and all, but I don't really think they'd be avoiding computers otherwise. Why can't we just resurrect Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego and let them, I don't know, learn something? Are we really still stuck in this age where girls play pretty dressing up games and boys DO things?

In conclusion... I'm going to bed.


P.S. If you are so inclined, you can watch a guy with a cute Liverpudlian accent get frustrated with Barbie Princess Bride here. I owe him a lot for refreshing parts of my memory.

wedding #1: Rachel and Alexis

I haven't written about the weddings yet because quite frankly, I'm still processing it all. They were both fantastic, and both came with such a plethora of friends and fun and memories that I still get a little overwhelmed/teary when I think about them. But I've spent too much time on this blog worrying about the weddings to not tell you all about them, so here goes.

One must start with Rachel and Alexis' first, because it was first.

I went up to Aunt Kim and Uncle Simon's guest house in Sonoma on Friday afternoon, in the vain hope of procuring a last minute tan. No dice, but it was nice to get some sun and laze around with my books for awhile. The wedding wasn't until 5pm the next day, so I did much the same thing on Saturday, and then of course left a little too late to get to the wedding on time while, you know, actually going the speed limit. It all worked out, though, and I got there justintime to catch a shuttle bus up to the house/vineyard where the wedding was held. Ezra and Isa Barth-Rogers were in the shuttle with me- they were the a-little-too-cool-for-school twins in our class- and seeing them all of a sudden was sort of what the whole day felt like, being thrust back into this world of high school. Ezra was very sweet and tried to dredge up things he knew about my life from Facebook- "you're making movies now, right?"- which was nice, since he never used to really talk to me. Isa, however, continued to not really talk to me. Oh well.

We got out at the house, and there are Will and Will, standing on either side of the entryway waiting to greet everyone. I wonder if they were given that job because they were both named Will? Who knows. Most people were already there, and I hardly had a chance to see anyone other than Diane and Phia before it was time to sit down. We found a row with Gio (single people unite!) and Matt Pantell's parents and Martin's dad. The view was horrible, made up largely of Andrew Tolve's head, but I managed to take a few pictures during the ceremony. Some are blurry, sadly, as the sun was setting pretty rapidly and we were under a bunch of trees, but oh well. It's not like I was the official photographer or anything.











Oh, the ceremony. It was the sort of perfect California non-religious ceremony that I can only hope to have someday- outside, with tons of friends, and someone who knows and loves the couple officiating. Rachel was escorted down the aisle by her mom and her brother (her dad died very suddenly of cancer when we were in college), and she looked absolutely gorgeous- her dress was sort of Greecian and she had no veil, just flowers in her hair. Susan, her mom, looked so incredibly happy. I told you all I would cry when Dr. Adams spoke, and I did, although not as much as I was expecting. The point that really got me was when he talked about how at Lick-Wilmerding, they try to teach students to use their "Head, Heart, and Hands" (which is the school motto, or one of them), and how in this case, they did a good job with the Heart. The ceremony was incredibly short, I'd say twenty minutes tops- Al spoke, the bridesmaids/groomsmen read a poem, Rafi (Rachel's brother) read something, and then it was over, and Rachel and Alexis were married. Holy crap.

Next there was finger food and champagne in the little patio area, which was cobblestoned and made everyone who had worn heels sincerely wish they hadn't. Between the soft earth from the rain the night before and the cobblestones, walking around was next to impossible. This was when I really got to say hi to everyone- Deirdre and her boyfriend (who wore a pastel blue suit with a red bowtie), Jon Anderson and his girlfriend, Andrew Tolve and his girlfriend, Andrew Kelsey, Gabe (Gabe was actually nice to me! For like, the whole night! It was amazing), Jordan, Martin, etc. I spent a long time talking to Martin's dad about teaching, which made me really start to think that I'm barking up the wrong tree with all this ridiculous "making movies" nonsense.

This was also the first point when I didn't eat enough food and had too much champagne. It would prove to be a theme for much of the night.


Gio, Martin and Phia


Emily and Julia, bridesmaids

There were little bundles of lavender with our names and table assignments on them, and I was put at the "Poughkeepsie" table, along with Diane, Gio, Gabe, Ezra and his girlfriend, and a couple kids from Vassar, one of whom lives in Los Feliz. It was a decent group of people. The DJ announced the wedding party entering and they all danced down the stairs of the house, and then there were speeches, which were mostly short and sweet. Alexis' mom gave a really nice speech in her thick French accent about what a lovely and warm person Rachel is; Rachel's mom didn't say much but exclaimed about how much she loved everyone there that night; and Maggie, the maid of honor, cried through her whole speech. It was all very simple and touching. Dinner was sort of family style, and I spent a lot of time wandering around talking to people and taking pictures, so again, I didn't eat much. There was salad, and a tomato thing stuffed with blueberries and corn, and halibut, and steak. I don't really remember the cutting of the cake (or of the cupcakes), but I know that when Rachel went to feed a slice to Alexis, it was very neat- no frosting all over everything or crumbs dribbling down his front. Perhaps Alexis just has a cupcake-sized mouth.

The backyard of the house, by the way, was really decorated beautifully, especially with the sun setting over the mountains in the distance:




Rachel and Alexis thanking everyone for coming

And then, right before the dancing started, we took a giant photo with all the Lick alumni who were there, plus Dr. Adams (and, for some reason, Ezra's girlfriend):


It makes me incredibly happy to be a part of this photo.

And then there was dancing! The dancing was long and drunken and man am I glad I brought flip flops along with my heels. The great thing about dancing with these people now was that there was no strange relationship crap going on like there always was at high school dances; we were just there to have fun and celebrate.


Alexis and Rachel with Al Adams


Alexis' mom, Julia and Alexandra McKleroy dancing


Andrew Tolve's patented dance move (and Gabe really enjoying it)


Jordan, Will Madison and Matty P


Martin and Jon Anderson with their respective girlfriends (this, by the way, is pretty much what all my pictures from high school dances look like)


I don't know what is going on here, but I hope it's what it looks like- Rachel's friend India slapping Alexis' ass as he dances

At some point I had a long drunken conversation with Susan and Al Adams, which in retrospect is pretty embarrassing. . . but they are so nice and I love them so I hope they weren't shocked or appalled by me. And then, it was pretty much time to pile into the shuttle to the house where the after party was and where the whole wedding party was staying. All I remember about the shuttle ride is Phia asking the driver if they could smoke up in the van, and he said yes, and they did. I didn't think about it very much and didn't bring anything with me to sleep in, nor did I really expect to spend the night at the after party house, because I kind of thought there would be a shuttle to take me back to the winery. . . but there wasn't, and it was not a good idea for me to drive anyway, so oh well. I slept in my fancy dress, but worse things have happened. The house was pretty amazing, with a pool and a huge sunken living room with a weird ledge thing that just seemed to invite MTV Grind-style dancing. Oh, what an insane party- as all good Lickie parties are. There was dancing, drinking, random conversations, lots of pictures taken, more dancing, pool shenanigans, boys cooking some weird hamburger/cream cheese concoction that was congealed and gross the next morning, people falling asleep in random places and/or leaning on others, and oh yes, lots of dancing:


India and Rachel


Rachel, Maggie and Julia


living room ledge


Rach and me and Deirdre


Andrew Kelsey and Gul. . . oh god, just like high school.

Eventually Andrew Kelsey fell asleep on the couch, and people began quieting down and/or falling asleep in various random spots. I snagged a spot next to Andrew and sort of lay there in an uncomfortable daze smelling odd things from the kitchen while the boys cooked the weird cream cheese burger. Stephen Blair was on the other end of the couch from me and in the morning when I woke up he was on the floor, maybe because I had kicked him too much. I know Andrew kicked me. I heard people throughout the night throwing up, which was gross. Didn't sleep much, in the end, and when I finally decided to get up I was one of the first ones. The house was a wreck, almost comically so:






Emily's boyfriend Ryan with congealed cream cheese hamburger

Rachel made mimosas and coffee, which were both helpful (strange how alcohol can cure alcohol, isn't it?), and everyone pitched in to clean up, and then Maggie's parents showed up with breakfast for everybody and we ate by the pool in the sunshine. Eventually I figured I should leave and get back to clean up the guest house in Sonoma, so I convinced Rachel's friends Peter (the one who lives in Los Feliz) and Kunur to give me a ride to my car at the winery. Said goodbye to everyone, till Christmas or thereabouts, I imagine, and then. . . it was over. I went back to the guest house and fell asleep for awhile, then went home to two very angry kitties, annoyed with me for having left them in the care of someone they didn't know.

It was such a strange weekend, but such a wonderful one. I have a weird relationship with the people I went to high school with- on the one hand, I feel more comfortable with them than anyone else; on the other, the group at the wedding largely consisted of people who were never my BEST friends. Julia still is one of my best friends, of course, and Rachel is certainly one of my best friends from high school, and I also had years when Phia and Deirdre and I were very close... and Matty P was one of my good guy friends. But in the end, these were the cool kids, and I was never REALLY one of the cool kids. I was a floater, in the most classic sense of the word- I was friends with the Julias and Rachels, but also the Jonnys and Danielles, the ones who rebelled against the cool group pretty much just because they were the cool group; and then I was also friends with people like Thomas Chow and Greg Maximov, the undeniable nerds who were the secret gems of Lick society. It's weird how all it takes is a few people who used to be cooler than you to make you feel 15 and insecure again. In the end, I love my Lick friends- I love them in a unique way I'll never love another group of people- but I feel much more safe and loved with my friends from college. Rachel and Alexis' wedding was beyond amazing, the perfect California hippie liberal kid wedding, the sort that I want to have for myself- but as far as friends go, Jack and Kat's beat it to a pulp.

And that post will be next. . .

from Steve

An email from Steve:

"Kirk had a dream Sunday night that I HAVE to tell you about. For some reason, you and he and I and this (imaginary) friend of yours were all staying at some hotel somewhere together, and for some reason, we all had to sleep in the same bed (!!!) Your friend was this hot Latino guy, and when the rest of us got into our PJ's, he took off ALL his clothes and started gallavanting around the hotel room messing with the shades and the lights and stuff. You me and Kirk were all completely agog, and then McHottie hopped in bed next to you and you couldn't sleep with him all naked and everything, and you just kept giggling. And that was the end of the dream."

Kirk has better dreams than I do.

Tomorrow, wedding post #1.

For My City

20 Years Ago this afternoon, Matthew Lane and I were chopping down a tree. I think it was an apple tree, and it was scrawny, kind of like the two 6-year-olds hacking away at it with a tiny little ax. It was a hot October day in San Francisco, and we were in Matthew's back yard, which as I recall was a bit overgrown and shrubby, the sort of place where you could build a lot of forts. Something must have been wrong with the tree, because Matthew's mom had said we could chop it down. Neither of us had any upper body strength to speak of, and so it was taking a very long time.

Then the ground started to shake, and we didn't really know what was happening. Matthew dropped the ax and we held onto the tree, which in retrospect was pretty dumb given that it was halfway cut through. Things shook and paused, shook again, a kind of rolling shake that made you feel wobbly-kneed. And then it stopped. I don't think either of us said much, just sort of looked at each other- and then Matthew's mom came flying out of the house, having run down the stairs as the whole house was shaking to check on the silly kids with the ax in the backyard.

I don't really remember what happened next, but the power was out and hte phones were down, and a few minutes later my dad showed up to get me, having walked the two blocks from our house. Back at our house a plant had fallen over, and my dad, who had of course been watching or listening to Game 3 of the World Series (Battle of the Bay!) had spent the earthquake ready to dash out from the doorway of the kitchen and catch the antique light fixture over our stove. Some neighbors had lost chimneys, but on the whole our neighborhood got off without a lot of damage. It is, after all, built on actual ground, unlike the Marina, which is built on landfill and apparently crumbled at the slightest jolt. To this day I don't think you could pay me to live in the Marina. Our neighborhood was also made up of a bunch of old Victorians that had survived the 1906 quake, our house included, and this was just a little bump in comparison.

Julie, our babysitter, came up from the apartment downstairs with a battery-powered tv, and we watched it for awhile and listened to the radio to find out what was going on. Slowly we heard about the chunk of the Bay Bridge that had collapsed, the Cypress Freeway in Oakland that had also collapsed, the many destroyed buildings in the Marina and the fires throughout the city. I don't remember what we ate that night, or what else we did to fill the time, but I do remember being out on the porch with most of the neighborhood, talking to people we hardly knew. I remember how quiet the city was, with no power and no cars driving, nothing but the fairly steady stream of distant sirens. When it got dark you could just barely see the smoke from the fires from our back deck.

Taylor and I both got to go to sleep in Mom and Dad's bed that night, me on Mom's side and him on Dad's with a flashlight between us. I remember Mom and Dad staying outside on the porch until late, and I know I lay awake a long time after Taylor had fallen asleep. I wasn't really scared, but I knew this was the sort of thing I'd remember. The next day in school half the kids weren't there- kept home for fear of aftershocks, or simply too afraid to leave their parents. I was proud of myself for being brave enough to go. A few days later our whole first grade class made a book called Our Earthquake Stories, and my picture of me and Matthew and the apple tree made it onto the cover of the Xeroxed, stapled packet. I still have it somewhere- I find it whenever I clean my room back home.

Earthquakes are horrible and devastating, but I also secretly love them. I don't think I've ever felt so much a part of San Francisco as I did that day, and it was a very fierce, protective feeling. Protective of my glorious city, protective of my house and my family and my pets, of all the things that I was suddenly aware I could lose. I guess you could say in that way it was a pretty formative experience. In any case, today even more than usual I wish I were back home, enjoying what is another October 17th with curiously warm weather. Earthquake Weather- it's not a myth, and that is the only thing about today that gives me pause. As much as I like earthquakes, I don't want another big one.

#5

I know I have not yet posted anything about The Weddings, and I am a horrible blogger because of it. I'm working on a giant Wedding Post, but truth be told, that week- the one that encompassed both Rachel's and Jack's weddings- was a very emotional one for me (in a good way!), and it's hard to put that into words. But any way, on the subject of weddings...

Today I heard about my FIFTH wedding to go to next year, that of Jennifer Nashorn and Josh Blankenship, two screenwriters from my class at AFI. Jennifer was the screenwriter of my Cycle 2 and one of the funniest, warmest people I know. She's the one who made me a Rice Krispie penis for my birthday when I turned 25 (it would have been cake but I'm allergic to it) and Rice Krispie boobs when I turned 26. That should tell you about what she's like. One shudders to think what kind of Rice Krispie body part I might get this year.

Anyway, their wedding will be in LA, so it shouldn't be too costly for me to go to... but it got me thinking. I complain about how expensive and time consuming it is to go to these things, but really- how lucky am I to have 9 friends- 10, if you count Richard, who hasn't yet set a date for his wedding- who like me enough to want me to be there when they get married? I need to remember that more often.

That's all. Posts and wedding pictures soon, I promise.