5/11: "Just give it an extra squeeze for me."

--I saw the last half of "Examined Life," which Josh was screening in Tishman. Though I accidentally sat next to an ex and her new boyfriend and felt like some shifty character in a nostalgic-for-the-sixties movie made in the eighties, the film itself was okay. Nothing too revelatory got said, though the last bit of Cornel West's discussion was exactly about what my senior show work is about (pixxx soon.) More importantly, though she was talking about the many possibilities and capabilities of The Body, Judith Butler has tiny T. Rex arms, and I'll bet it makes a) doing push-ups really easy, and b) hanging paintings very difficult.

4/17: "And they each sank into the quiet calm of the open road."

Long weekend has been a lazy paradise. Highlights:

-Constant baking in the Townhouse, including but not limited to, cinnamon raisin bread, oatmeal pecan cookies, lasagna, chocolate tartlets, basically anything that can fit in our oven.

-Rebekah took me on my virgin trip to the Manschesthair outlet stores. I tried on a bunch of chinos (I got an email Friday from Admissions saying I am not in fact hired for the summer, which has sent me into a job-searching, business-casual-shopping frenzy,) but, of course, even the 30x30s were gigantically baggy--I looked like I was wearing scrubs. The overly friendly middle aged woman tending the dressing rooms asked me if I found anything, and when I said no, they were all too big, she said, "Better start drinkin' more milkshakes!" Sometimes I really like Vermont.

-To add to the list of drunkenly-proposed bands that I hope against hope will actually happen: a late-nineties alternative rock cover band, featuring Dave Bow and myself, plus possibly others, called "pen island." Possible hits include "Teenage Dirtbag" and "Heaven is a Halfpipe." Some imp of manic energy inspired me to look up the tabs for "Iris" last night, and I think I'm going to perform it, pen island or no. And generally, Maggie's introducing me to sadsteve has sent me into a shame spiral of middle school music nostalgia.


I had totally forgotten that this video had any connection to a Jason Biggs movie.

Plus, highlights from The Aeroplane Flies High:

A Night Like This, in which James Iha out-Robert Smiths Robert Smith.

You're All I've Got Tonight, in which Billy Corgan out-Ric Okaseks Ric Okasek.

Ugly, in which Billy Corgan out-Billy Corgans himself.

4/8: "The Israelites had to peace, and that's why they couldn't leaven their bread."

-After a fairly rough/busy day of giving tours, assembling sculptures with finicky epoxies, and then being too high and brain-dead on spray enamel and glitter glue to answer questions sensibly in Annabel's class, I went back home for an amazing Passover dinner: sensational brisket, homemade gefilte fish, asparagus, kugel, and all the little trimmings. We were going to do the full seder, but things fell apart a bit: Asher started reading the Haggadah from front to back, Rebekah accidentally sang the Hannukah blessing for the wine, and Elijah's Manichewitz was served in a Miller Lite pint glass. But G-d, was it fun.

-I took a long shower and went right to bed afterward, one of the most satisfying small things a single person can do.

4/6: "I just don't want you to be a train wreck!"

-Though I will describe something good that happened today, it was by and large a bust. I babysat a kiln all night until 6:30 in the morning thanks to a certain individual's lackadaisical firing schedule, I went home and slept for two hours, went to the therapist and was told that it wouldn't be prudent to start hormones until I "get settled" somewhere, which is a) total bullshit and b) not something I'll likely do until I start transitioning, I had a series of embarrassing cries in public, I ran out of cigarettes, I spilled coffee all over my white sweater, I lost my favorite bandanna, I'm on the rag, I walked home in the rain and got completely soaked. If anyone was considering doing something nice for me, now would be an appropriate time.

-Emma and I shared stories about being wild in middle school, though her's were far superior to my daily games of spin the bottle and once stripping in a camping trip game of truth or dare.

4/1: "I hate Mondays."

-What a classically "bad day." Between waking up late, working doggedly, and turning in an EPIC FAIL of a paper to Annabel, it started raining, and that thing happened where a car drives through a puddle and splashes you with gross water while you're walking down the sidewalk. But then, dinner was amazing (salmon and mac and cheese), and we had a totally whiz-bang Silo meeting.

3/26: "I think the gay-lien could go anywhere."

-After much hemming and hawing and curling up in my bed in anxiety, I withdrew from Chaucer, yet another star in the constellation of my history of academic givings-up. I never thought chatting with Laurie Kobik could leave me so elated. After all that was taken care of, I called my mom for a good chat. (As an aside, I was amused and a little saddened that, though she was in the same room as my grandparents, she could still call me "Russ," because they're getting so deaf they wouldn't notice.)

-Michael and I had a brief conversation about Footloose, which I haven't seen since I saw half of it on TNT when I was nine. In retrospect, I think it may be one of the greatest films of our time. If the library has it, I know what I'm doing this weekend. WHO'S WITH ME?

3/25: "To start, you must begin."

-After a few class periods of being listless and quiet in Annabel's class, I not only was the only kid in the class to pick up on Peter Lewis in To The North being gay, but cited a way more obscure and awesome passage proving it than Annabel did. It went something like this.

A: Can someone tell me why Lady Waters isn't concerned that Peter and Emmaline would be involved. (Silence) Russell?

R: He's gay.

A: How do we know?

R: Um, Havelock Ellis!

A: [puzzled muttering]

R: He was an early British sexologist who pioneered the study of homosexuality; it's mentioned that Lady Waters asks him about Havelock Ellis at tea.

A: ...I'm not sure you could draw that conclusion from that evidence.

R: [kind of screechy insistence on the legitimacy of queer coding in literature, plus more textual support from the novel]

A: ...[PWNED]

Some of the kids, and Annabel, were also all "they could have just been talking about it because it was in the news/pop science"; I really wish that I'd remembered to point out that Ellis was working 50 years before the book was published. What good is a vast and absurd knowledge of queer history if you can't whip it out and bother people?