Monday, February 28, 2011

Why else did I keep a livejournal all those years?

I'm sure you all thought I would be updating this with disparaging remarks about James Franco's recent Oscar hosting performance. I would love to oblige, but unfortunately I only watched the first part of the Oscar's and then only in the background while trying to come up with ways to make the difference between GDP and GNP interesting and relevant to teens. I will say he gave the impression, during the part of the broadcast that I watched, that he would rather have been napping. Did anyone else feel like he really didn't want to be there?

Anyway, I'm plowing ahead on that book this week, so in lieu of a classy, fresh update I'm giving you another blast from the past. After all, just because I have writer's block now, doesn't mean I didn't used to have loads of stuff to write about. Actually, looking back over my old journals and blogs, I realize the reason I wrote so much is because I had a lower standard for what I thought people might find interesting. But, at any rate, desperate times call for recycled tales of my youth. Here's one about embarrassing myself at college functions back in 2007.

Tonight there was a Lesbigay party at a local pub. Jill and I felt it was necessary to make an appearance because a) its high time we prove our loyalty to the organization by going to a function that doesn't offer free food and b) because it was a theme party with the theme of "dress as your favorite fictional character." Now I love a good theme party, but unfortunately I left most of my bizarre and/or costume-y clothing at home. However, what I did have was a red semi-formal dress which I brought just in case I had a semi-formal red dress wearing occasion while abroad. As I had not yet gotten a chance to whip that sucker out, I knew it would have to feature prominently in my costume. Serendipitously, Jill had a similar predicament with a red dress. Naturally, we decided to wear our red dresses, make our hair crazy and big, give ourselves sultry eyes through the power of makeup, and draw snakes on our faces and chests with eye liner. Sound like any fictional characters you know? Yeah, we couldn't think of any either. That's why we decided to be from a book no one has really ever read--and enter Ulysses. Yep, we were the two red dress twins from James Joyce's much ballyhooed epic.

Feeling cheeky and clever as we often do, we were all excited for people to ask us who we were. We had planned out dialogues where they would be skeptical and we would say "Oh come on!" (a la Gob of Arrested Development) "The red dress twins? You really don't remember them? Haven't you read Ulysses?" However, when at the party, an instance finally presented itself and Jill was able to utter our tagline, we realized something: while our little skit was all well and good to people who knew us, feigning disbelief and implying people are stupid and lacking in literary knowledge is actually quite rude when done to strangers. So much for making friends over at Lesbigay.
If livejournal weren't requiring me to "upgrade my account" in order to post a picture from this evening, I surely would. As it is, if you ever want to see a picture of me doing my version of "sexy" while sporting eye-liner snakes with their tongues sticking out--well, all you have to do is ask.

Luckily, I've switched to blogger since 2007 when this post was made. And thus, I can post a picture of us:

I enjoy looking back at 20-year-old me even if she is a wee bit insufferable. So much so that I'm considering posting something else I wrote back then. For those who regularly read the Modern Love column in the New York Times magazine, they're currently advertising their annual college essay contest where they welcome submissions from college students on the fate of modern love for the youth crowd. I wrote one back in 2007 (or possibly 2006?), soundly rejected by them, all about how my relationship with my very first boyfriend ended in a tragic (if not entirely undeserved) facebook dumping. It's less whiny than it sounds, I swear, but reading over it I'm still pretty glad it never made it to the New York Times. It might just make it to my blog, however. Really it just depends how much my readers want to read about me as an awkward teen...

5 comments:

  1. Hal totally agrees with you about James Franco. I just noticed he was definitely second banana to Ann Hathaway.

    I would love to read that essay. I enjoy the Modern Love articles, but they are often very very odd. Sadly a facebook dumping is probably all too common. Is that guy a blog reader? Will he feel delayed remorse...?

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  2. He is not. And actually it's not really about him so much as it's about me. Also, it's an introspection on the Internet's affect on early relationships. It was probably a little more interesting 4 years ago though, as now that's just old news. Or maybe it wasn't even interesting then as the Times ultimately preferred a piece about casual hook-ups.

    I think I probably won't post it--but I can send it to you if you want! I found it pretty funny.

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  3. Glad you were able to post a pic to go along with the story! And sad to say, I have never read Ulysses. *turns away, ashamed*

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  4. Yeah - I never read Ulysses either ... I would have been like "Oh yeah! THOSE twins!" And then you would have laughed at me after ....

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  5. Confession time: I've never read Ulysses either. That was part of the gag. For all I know, there are red dress twins.

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