In Which I Almost Leave for Europe

Oh my god I am leaving in 14 hours for my semester abroad.  I am about to vomit with a mixture of excitement and fear that I will turn up and my credit cards will all be shut off or something.  Lena has helped by putting the image in my mind of me dying on a plane from eating peanuts, which helps a ton when I think of all the other dying-on-a-plane fears I have.

I was pretty relieved to find out that I'm hooking up with the other people in my group (hah!) in Frankfurt to catch the flight to Florence, because that means I can split a cab to wherever once we get there.  Not very reassuring that I don't know where I'm going once I hit the Florence airport.  However, reassured that I don't have to take a cab by myself, as cabs are my second least favorite mode of transportation (guess what is first?  hint: planes.)

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So, I thought paring down my book collection to come to North Carolina was bad, choosing the clothes to bring to Europe is significantly worse - although once I finish that, it will surely quickly lose its title to "paring down the North Carolina Book Collection (currently at 33 unread books) to 9 Novels to Entertain Me as I Come Down from My Internet Addiction in Florence."  Over the past couple of days I have been throwing clothes on top of my suitcase, but today was the first time I actually packed them.  With about 1/4 of my suitcase left free, without having thrown in toiletries or all of my textbooks/papers, I decided I might be overpacking.  That is, if I want to bring back more than a pair of Eiffel Tower earrings.

So now I'm down to fifteen pieces of clothing: 3 skirts, 5 shirts, 2 cardigans, 1 trench coat, 2 pairs of shoes, a pair of jeans, and my black dress.  Considering how ridiculous, sometimes flashy, other times childish, I look most of the time, I'm hoping taking so few clothes, all mix-matchable, will teach me how to dress well without having to be constantly over the top.  Understated but fashionable.

This baby will be getting a lot of play.

Also if I run out of things to wear/decide that miniskirts in december are dumb, it's not like Paris and Florence are the worst places to pick up some threads.

All and all, I think I'm excited?  Mostly I'm just nervous.  I've never traveled by myself, at least to the point of ending up somewhere unfamiliar and having to figure everything out on my own.  The good news is that large chunks of my Italian are coming back, although they're mostly strange grammatical things and napolitano curse words.  

Anyway (look at how all of the last few paragraphs start with "a" words), I am going to keep this blog as non-"study abroad experience"-y as possible.  It might become a fashion blog - the many ways you can remix gap and american apparel basics.  Or a food blog.  Or a blog about how disenchanted I am with everything.  Oh wait, that's what it already is.

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Later that evening...

Have moved on to book selection, thrown out three books of the initial elite eight for having too few words-per-page.  Damn you, Sarah Vowell!  I need less than a pica between lines, man.  I'm now reconsidering my relationship with books like Middlemarch and The Feminine Mystique, both which pack a considerable number of pages and words for their book volume.

Nah.

In the end, I will end up switching out Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper for Botany of Desire, despite its words-to-volume ratio, end up committing to Take the Cannoli and Chocolat anyway, reneging over the same w2v concern as Botany, and pick up The Handmaid's Tale along the way.  The final list will look like this, which is to say that with ten minutes left before I leave for the airport, I will take out one, even two, in the interest of bringing back another pair of shoes:

+ Chocolat, Joanne Harris

+ Take the Cannoli, Sarah Vowell

+ The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

+ The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan

+ Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann

+ The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

+ Skinny Legs and All, Tom Robbins

+ The Best American NonRequired Reading 2008

+ Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

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The next morning...

Pollan's down!  Chocolat?  Handmaid's Tale?  You're next.

Jus de Pamplemousse

Today I got the last of my Europe supplies:

- One trench coat, black, awesome

- Two pairs of shoes, black and brown flats

- Converters, adaptors

- Books

+ Valley of the Dolls

+ Self-Made Man (hardback, for $3 on clearance! wow and sad, all at once.)

+ The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

+ Take the Cannoli

+ Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China

I feel sort of ungrateful taking a book about Chinese food culture to Italy and France.  Maybe I'll take The Botany of Desire instead.  Gotta cover all my favorite genre bases.

The last thing I got was the French edition of Rosetta Stone.  I got the Italian one the summer before I came to college, but I didn't really stick with it like I'd planned so the most I got out of it was being able to count before everyone else.  Considering how incredibly nervous I am about my Italian proficiency (not looking too good after I scrambled it with Spanish working at IHOP) I'm hoping I'll keep at it out of pure fear of being trapped in some dark alleyway surrounded by french hoodlums and dominatrixes (as I remember from previous Europe trips - or maybe just my dreams - those are the two categories french men and women fall into, respectively) with my only two french phrases to defend myself: "merde" and "jus de pamplemousse, s'il vous plait."

Desperately Seeking Straight Daughter

Cara:

Man, I love Dexter.

Dad, from a room away:

What?  Who's Dexter?  You haven't mentioned Dexter.

Mom:

No, she loves a TV show.  About sociopathic serial killers.

Peer Pressure

Every night I say to myself, Cara, don't drink two glasses of wine with your parents.

And every night I end up dizzily drunk watching the Golden Girls.

Aim Low

Thank you, Slate, for introducing me to Heather Armstrong, author of dooce.com and at least two books (too discouraged to look any further into it).  According to Slate she has over a million followers on twitter and enough blog readers to be able to support her family off the income she gets from the ads on her website.  

Meanwhile, I got two anonymous comments on my last post which I'd like to pretend were just random people discovering my post, but were probably really two people who saw me pimping this on Facebook.  Did I mention that Armstrong has been a blogger for a single year longer than I have?  This is clearly a lesson in stick-with-it-ness and not changing your domain name ten times.  Then again, with a handle like lawlessgoddess, your audience is limited to fellow angsty teenagers and wiccans.

Armstrong's bio is molto encouraging, though.  As anyone not looking for competition should, she encourages people to aim low and save themselves some time working hard.  On that note, I've revised my goal of becoming a prolific writer and making it onto wikipedia's shortlist of prominent essayists 

to selling enough ads on my blog to feed and inebriate myself.

Well, either that or adapt Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man into a modern coming-of-age teen comedy.

Arcadian’s Got Talent

As a result of my continued seclusion in NC and my mom’s vicious addiction to TV, I’ve become a weekly viewer of America’s Got Talent.  While it’s pretty entertaining as is, nothing beats the little unscripted moments from contestants not properly conditioned in celebrity behavior.  TV, but particularly reality TV, is much like a magician’s illusion: the viewer only sees what the magician wants you to see, and a good magician never reveals his tricks.

Unfortunately for NBC, 13-year-old Arcadian Broad, however graceful and well-groomed, is not a magician’s assistant.  He is a dancer.

And he is not a stooge.

My mom and I have always had theories about AGT: it’s clear that certain acts make it through for variety, certain people make it through solely on kitsch value, and certain performers are made to jump through unnecessary hoops by the producers so that other “chosen” acts will make it through to the next round or to amp up the show as the weeks go on at the performer’s expense.  Simple acts have random break dancers thrown in the background or are surrounded by fancy sets and pyrotechnics to distract from whether or not they’re actually talented.

Arcadian Broad managed to make it through the competition without all of that.  In his first three performances, he stuck to what makes him special: he is an incredibly talented solo dancer.  He leaps and bounds across the stage with intense energy, style, flexibility, grace, and enthusiasm.  His most impressive performance came during the Quarter Finals, when he (unnecessarily, as the judges pointed out) whipped out his piano-playing talent, and then knocked out an awesome performance to Footloose.  The judges loved him, everyone freaking loved him, and he made it through to tonight’s the semi-finals.

Sources say gravity was asleep on the job while Arcadian was performing.

Everything about Arcadian was wrong tonight, though.  In his pre-performance video he revealed that he’d be doing some paired dancing with a new girl dancer, even though he is clearly a one-boy show.  And then he came on to a stage full of backup dancers in a basketball jersey and, like a little marionette, performed the dance moves to High School Musical’s “We’re All in This Together.”  He hoisted his very young partner awkwardly above his head, moved in sync with his other puppet dancers, and, with the exception of a few pirouettes, exhibited none of the wild, bold dancing of his previous performances.

Heteronormitivity: we're all in this together.

So it was no surprise when the judges’ reactions were rather tepid, with the sort of coddling they reserve for only the very young, very old, or very military.  However, Arcadian was not walking off the stage without exhibiting his flair somehow.  In the middle of one of the judge’s criticisms, he turned to Nick Cannon and asked if he could say something, and then let loose a big one: he had something else planned for the semi-finals, but the show’s producers instead made him perform what would clearly be a family-friendly crowd-pleaser. 

Oops.

Sharon Osborne immediately jumped in, saying that he didn’t need to give excuses and that he was clearly a talented boy and a great dancer, etc. etc., but the damage was done.  Arcadian had had his say: he was no puppet.

But America’s Got Talent’s puppetry of Arcadian goes beyond trying to reel in viewers with a shoutout to a successful franchise: it shows the dirty way producers shape people into products, and the deeper messages at work.

And this is where I have to throw in the usual disclosure: yes, I know I’m highly trained by other mainstream-media-hating, ultra-skeptical, loudmouthed obnoxious feminist queerz, but I feel like I’m not reading super hard into this one (just like I believe with all my heart that the panty liner magician is gay as blazes).

In the quarterfinals, Arcadian was branded as America’s real-life Billy Elliott – a somewhat soft-spoken boy with a natural passion for dancing, overcoming adversity from his ignorant classmates.  “At school the kids would always tease me about being a dancer,” said Arcadian in his quarter-finals video, “but when I’m dancing I feel like I’m in a whole different world.  I feel invincible.” 

Sure, you can’t trust the obviously staged shots and polished dialogue of the videos, meant to give viewers a true glimpse into the lives of these every-day celebrities, but the story seems pretty believable and Arcadian quite sincere.  Nobody that talented at dancing and playing the piano can be that cool.  Both take a large commitment of time practicing in private - but more importantly, they are both pretty “gay” hobbies for a thirteen-year-old boy.  No one makes fun of male dancers without playing the gay card – Dane Cook, who’s social commentary isn’t exactly known for being groundbreaking, exhibits this perfectly in his bit about dance clubs: “You will never, ever hear a guy say to one of his buddies, 'Mike -- Mike, Mike, listen, buddy. Tonight, bro, I gotta dance, dude. Screw chicks tonight, bro -- I gotta dance!” A straight guy, that is.  You just know the teasing has a hint of the gay when the bullies are 13-year-olds, who have just been passed the uber-masculinity torch and probably aren’t exactly known for their creative insults. 

So as a counterpoint, this weeks video featured a different side of Arcadian – not the shy, dedicated boy who’s only passion is for dancing, but of the up and coming suave, popular kid, who’s lady is back home acting as his PR director.  Okay, maybe that’s taking it a bit far.  But so is the line something along the lines of “It’s nice to have her back there supporting me”  - god I know that’s not the phrasing but something along the lines of “thank god my beard’s printing out flyers for me and acting like a good little housewife.”  There were then a ton of shots of Arcadian with a nice young girl his own age, and thank god for that.  Behind every successful man is a woman… who wishes she were a man - both for rights and so that her husband will look at her the way he looks at the milkman.

Whether Arcadian is gay or straight is not the point – Arcadian could already be getting a head start on a long career of fucking dancerladies for all I know or care.  The point is just how far mainstream media will go to uphold the standard of heteronormativity.  Producers see a vibrant male dancer, code for gay, and then make sure that he’s seen with ladies all over him from then on.  Back during the aftermath of last season of American Idol I didn’t buy people’s arguments that Adam Lambert lost the competition because he was gay, but I definitely thought it was fishy that he seemingly had to go back in the closet in order to be a part of Idol.  Just like Ethan from Queer as Folk, producers want their young talent hot and straight so they can make the big bucks off of fangirls, or at least not lose money because of politics.  

Arcadian probably won’t win the competition, though, especially after tonight's little encore.  But for the sake of the American family and their viewership, NBC has made it clear there will be no roll models for young gay boys, or young dancer boys, or young boys anywhere that don’t fit in.  After all, they’re not in the business of making role models, they’re in the business of making stars.

5 Years

It’s pretty painfully obvious that I’m freaking out about writing/careers/my future/my identity right now.  I’m currently contemplating and planning my future as a super-senior and what I’m going to get out of the extra time I’m buying myself before I have to blindly commit to go down some uncertain path.  As relationship freakouts were to xanga, career freakouts are to blogger. 

Obviously, writing has been a huge part of my identity for the majority of my life (or at least the years worth counting – I’d say before eight, kids are as interchangeable as Runts – they all look different but underneath they’re all the same flavor), and I think it’s no coincidence that letting it slide has coincided with some major identity crises in the last couple of years.  It terrifies me that I can’t just do it.  Even if I’m being good and tunnel visioning every other successful writer/blogger I’m personally acquainted with out of the picture, I’m still not where I wanted to be as a writer going into my senior year.  Senior year of high school I was on top of my blogging game.  I would have hoped I could be on top of my essay-writing game as my college counterpart.

I read the word of people 10-20 years older than me (at least), who have substantially more writing/career/life experience (and paid editors), and I can’t wrap my head around why I’m not at their level right now.  I lost my patience for the slow maturation of my writing the moment my first essay got published and my professor pushed me towards professional writers workshops and a lifestyle of dedication and contemplation I am still in no place to sustain.  Since then, I feel like I’ve always been trying to catch up to those expectations, to get serious about writing rather than just doing it, whether it’s good, whether anyone reads it, whether it’s even worth keeping more than a few minutes.  I just want to pound out publishable piece after publishable piece, at whatever expense – and it’s that pressure that keeps me from writing anything at all.

Right now, I’m really into David Rakoff.  I keep thinking about how next year I’m just going to reread books I love and analyze them, and I’m so eager (god how nerdy) that I keep thinking about Xeroxing copies of essays from Don’t Get Too Comfortable and scribbling all over them.  A couple of days ago I came across this interview with him, and was more reassuring than anything anyone’s said to me lately – not my friends, not my professors, not my mother.

“Before I sat down and became a writer, before I began to do it habitually and for my living, there was a decades-long stretch when I was terrified that it would suck, so I didn't write. I think that marks a lot of people, a real terror at being bad at something, and unfortunately you are always bad before you can get a little better.”

Okay, I knew the last part.  No one makes it out of elementary school without having phrases like that scorched into your retinas via block letters on neon-colored laminated posters.  But I really needed to hear straightforwardly what I can really easily be deduced from putting together the pieces of his, and every other writer’s, essays: all the good ones weren’t always writers.  David Sedaris smoked way more pot than I ever have throughout college and he seems to have ended up a decent writer.  I’ve got ten, fifteen, twenty years (although right now the voice of David Bowie is singing me “five years”) before I have to be a writer for the New Yorker or kill myself.  What is there to worry about.