I don’t know if everyone who went to Kam School is this crazy, but my dad’s class? They have a reunion every year. And it’s not just a four-hour luau in someone’s garage. They take cruises together. They go to Las Vegas together. Trips. With your high school class.

This year, because it’s the 45th, it’s special: it’s eight days long. YOU HEARD ME. My dad says this may not all be his class’s doing– every year, all the classes celebrating 5-year anniversaries get together and there are planned events: golf tournaments, beach picnics, etc. Of course, this doesn’t account for the 10-15 emails he’s getting a day about just the things his class will be doing. A bus field trip out to this beach, their own class’s golf tournament, etc.

Guess where they stay: in the dorms.

Boarding school experiences are weird.

Pretty sure I’m going to have major ambivalence about spending four hours at my high school reunion (two years from now), much less eight days.

I just got the save-the-date for my first high-school-friend’s-wedding. It’s not in Seattle, so I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be able to go. All I can tell you is that my first thoughts were A) I better look hot and B) If I’m still living in my parents’ house by then, I’m lying.

Of course, now I’ve just put that on this blog, so I’m screwed.

Look, I just graduated from graduate school, and the economy sucks, and I went to art school– not exactly career-oriented in the best of times. I didn’t have a lot of reasons to stay in San Diego– it’s nice, I like it, it’s not my place, Seattle is my place– so now I’m back in Seattle. I don’t have a job, I don’t have a place to live, it doesn’t particularly make sense to find a place to live before I have a job (or a plan). What if I sign a lease and then get offered a great job in Portland? Or even, what if I find a place in Ballard and then get a job in Capital Hill? That may sound dumb, but if you live in Seattle, you just shuddered.

So I’m living with my parents for the foreseeable future. And “exploring my options.”

Speaking of options, if I get offered one more unpaid internship, I’m going to be an indentured servant. Since when did having a graduate degree qualify you for unpaid filing? Not to mention that no, after putting in “your time” at these places, you’re not likely to get hired there– they won’t have any more money six months from now than they do currently. I’m going to stop myself before I go on.

It’s a nice house, my parents’ house. The internet doesn’t work very well if you’re more than a room away from the modem, and time passes differently here than when I’m in my own space in my own routine, but I’ll get used to that. I like the dog a lot.

Being home in Seattle’s sort of like a reunion: I run into people I know here. Out running errands, in the neighborhood park, at parties it turns out that a friend of a friend did summer camp with me or was on my soccer team. My MO in these situations is to reveal as little as possible: I’m good, yes, how are you, just came from a haircut, know the host through _____, nice to see you, bam. Gone.

Have you noticed that it’s awkward to ask people what they do these days? So many of us are not “working” in the traditional sense. We’re getting by. Or we’re doing that thing where we hate our job, so we pretend that we don’t “define ourselves” by what we do. I’ve started asking, “So, how do you spend your time?” This worked well in graduate school, in situations where I was talking to other graduate students or recent grades or artists or significant others of artists. People laughed appreciatively and then told me whatever they wanted to: “I study this, I do a lot of crafts, I make this kind of art, I work part-time here but really I’m applying….” I wonder how it’ll work here, or if I’ll just get weird looks.

How to go about building a life for oneself in a place where I feel like I *should* have a life but, in fact, I don’t? I’ve been away for three years. Long enough for friends to have moved away, or lost touch. Long enough that college is a little bit forgotten and high school a little bit more forgotten and others have started to come back: and so there’ve been Facebook noises from people about “getting together” who I once knew, who I could have seen in the past years, and didn’t. But now we might. That’d be nice.

But when do you send that message? Do I message everyone all at once? Give it a month? Reach out one-by-one as the occasion arises? Hide out with a book until someone calls? (No one ever calls, this is the great secret: people have lives, they’re glad “you’re back” but they haven’t mentally readjusted to include you on their list of “people to do things with”; most people’s lists are pretty short, we’re creatures of habit with small social circles and little time outside of work and significant other and maybe exercising or seeing their siblings.)

And yes, I like you, but do I need to call you within the first 3 days of being here? Will you think that’s weird? You’ll probably think that’s weird. I would think that’s weird. I’d be like, “Whoa dude, not tryna be your BFF here, give it a week or two. Where did you get back in? That’s weird. You’re weird. I don’t want to hang out with you. I’ve got enough weird.” And the people who I usually *do* call within the first 3 days of being here: they know I’m going to be here a while now. There’s no urgency. They have a wedding this weekend, and they’re out of town, and they have plans, and next week or the week after will work just as well.

As I said yesterday, things are weird around here. It’s supposed to be a bit of downtime (vacation, I supposed) but I’m already (still?) restless. But not sure which direction to move in. So I’m fidgeting. And sleeping. Fascinated and repulsed by the number of ads on live TV.

xo,

MM

2. For that matter, having more than one room.

3. Let’s not even get into having more than one bathroom.

4. When you walk out the door, you’re outside. There is more than one door that leads to the outside. There is also a garage you can park in with a door that leads inside and a really big door that leads outside.

5. Print newspapers.

6. The amount of fresh bread in the house. The fully stocked fridge. Extra boxes of Kleenex waiting in the bathroom cupboard.

7. Non-quarter-operated washing machine and dryer. Dishwasher! Garbage disposal!  

8. Cable.

9. Landline.

10. Fresh milk delivery. 

Things are weird around here.

MM

I do love that tagline: “It’s not the Hills…” Hahahaha!

At first I saw that Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader were making a movie together and I was all, Yessssssssssssssssss.

Then I processed the fact that they’re doing a Kickstarter project to fund it. Something about “creative control BLAH BLAH BLAH, not relying on the industry or a studio WANK WANK WANK.”

GUYS. Kickstarter is for people who are not Bret Easton Ellis or Paul Schrader. Kickstarter is for us poor suckers who want to someday be Bret Easton Ellis or Paul Schrader.

“A kind of DIY mentality, shooting with friends, shooting on low-cost equipment, then it moves to setting up a website, going on Facebook, and the next step is you’re going on Let It Cast to start casting, next step is you’re all of a sudden going on Kickstarter to bring in an audience base….and it’s all part of a new way– I mean, I personally think that films, right now, are sort of where they were 100 years ago, they’re being reinvented right in front of our eyes.” — Paul Schrader

OH MY GOD. Paul Schrader, we have a DIY mentality and we shoot with friends and shoot on low-cost equipment because we have no other options. Because we don’t have access to studios, or expensive equipment. And we’re hoping and praying and selling our souls that one of our “friends” turns out to be the next Bret Easton Ellis, we are not actually working with Bret Easton Ellis. 

You made it! You don’t have to do this crap anymore! You’re being nostalgic for when you were young and broke and poor and no one knew your names. That is the worst kind of indulgent, narcissistic, amnesia-fueled midlife crisis there is. If you really want to do a Kickstarter project, you should all be required to eat nothing but cereal and Top Ramen for the duration of the project, and you should have to beg your parents to keep paying your cell phone bills and also ask if maybe you can use their garage for a shooting location if you promise, promise, promise to clean up?

Look, I get that with the advent of the Internet, making art has become a free-for-all. How can “real” comedians be expected to survive when any jackass with a Twitter can make jokes all day long now? How can “real” authors survive when anyone can self-publish? But as Richard Russo points out, in a Seattle Times interview about Amazon publishing, all this technology isn’t bad for people who have “name recognition. And for brand-new writers who are having a hard time breaking in, Amazon is good for writers like us who have name recognition. And for brand-new writers who are having a hard time breaking in, they provide an outlet. It’s the mid-list literary writer who gets squeezed out when the market contracts.” 

We can worry about the mid-list artists, yes. But Kickstarter is for those having a hard time breaking in. Special report to Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis: you have name recognition.

Just look at what they’re promising to funders— For $5,000, “Bret Easton Ellis will read and review your novel and have that review appear on an international blog or website” (cue angry, drug-fueled white boys coming in their pants). For $5,001, “Have your script covered by Paul Schrader– Notes to be delivered in person (NY or LA) or skype” (cue film majors vomiting on their own feet). 

They’re ruining it for the rest of us. How do we stand a chance against that?!? Sure, I can offer to read your script and deliver notes in person, but unless that comes with a sexual favor, I don’t think you’re going to care.  

Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader, you should be funding Kickstarter projects, not pitching them. I’m sorry if you don’t like being famous, but that’s just too bad. Maybe you can make an angsty commerical about it. Look, I get that you two aren’t Tom Cruise and Michael Bay, but you’re certainly not that college kid with a video camera and a skateboard for a tracking shot. You shouldn’t be trying to recreate your lost days of obscurity and despair that the world might not let you do what you loved. 

You should be in the process of giving back by giving some young unknowns a chance, the way somebody once gave you one. You’re siphoning our dream gasoline! Step away from the straw. It’s too skinny and there’s too little fuel for all of us to get a hit as it is.

I hope this is a hoax. Internet, would you do some research and get back to me? I’ve got to go burn all my hopes and dreams.

MM

But how much room can a tank top or two take up? Maybe they’re even needed for soft packing. It’s basically altruism. 

And when I’m moving in a week, it’s not like I’m all of a sudden going to get real ambitious about how clean my stove is. Or try to make new friends. In other words, idle hands…

Oh. Did I mention that I’m done with graduate school? I’m FREE. Like the wind, or other things that we attempt to make work for us without pay because they have almost no monetary-valued skills. 

I’m a master of poetry. It’s like being a wizard except people give you even stranger looks when you tell them that you have a masters degree in writing poems than if you tell them you have magic powers. And you don’t have magic powers. And not even the supernerds are sure if you’re cool or lame. But other than that. The same.

MM

PS– Don’t worry, I’ll still be here post-graduation. I started this blog before entering graduate school, if you didn’t know, and I’ll continue it after. 

You know what else is perfect? The fact that Holly looks about 10 years older than her boyfriend Brendan. Eighteen-year-old boys are BABIES, you guys. Are they not drinking milk? Because the hormones in milk are not doing to boys what they’re doing to girls.

And then at 1:28, fake-Lena-Dunham goes all American psycho on her crush! Watch:

THE BRITISH ACCENT. THE “SUCK IT” FINGER. THE HAMMERED TOE. The conjunctivitis eyeliner. And then, because they couldn’t resist, they threw in the girlfight in the prom dresses. Special to Adam Best of Flicksided: while I buy the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reference, I somehow really doubt this ever “meets Sixteen Candles.”

How does this end? My prom night ended when we got kicked out of the hotel room where we weren’t even drinking (and not planning to stay the night, it was just a party thrown by my date’s first choice) and went for pancakes at IHOP and then I was dropped off at a very respectable hour. No one that I was close to lost anything that night– not toenails, nor virginity, nor sense of humanity. Maybe an earring.

What’s with this prom-horror genre? Do we have such a strong sense of prom as an American rite of passage that we’re all, “If they can ruin PROM, then nothing’s sacred?”

Please.

Read on to see how I magically work this around to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s childhood bullying and what it means for America: 

Even at the time, I knew prom was a bust. In fact, I don’t know a single person who pinned hopes– romantic or transformational or even sexual– on prom. We were all such a clusterf*** of having dated each other and broken up with each other and made out with each other and fought with each other and ignored each other and asked random people and prom was scheduled a month before graduation, so we’d all have to see each other in the halls for another four weeks, my god, a lifetime…

Overall, very anticlimactic.

Which is fine. By the time high school’s over, you all should be trying to get out of there with minimal damage inflicted to yourself or to others. You should all smile and hug your tormenters at graduation, and sign everyone’s yearbook with “keep in touch”— except do kids even bother to do that now, what with FB? Or is it all, “FB me, bizatch!”

But we don’t forget our tormentors, and it can be hard to forgive ourselves, and maybe we shouldn’t. Mitt Romney shouldn’t have forgotten what he did, and while the furor in this week’s news over his high school cruelties may seem overblown, it isn’t. It says something about his moral compass. (I like a strong one in my leaders, personally, particularly those given control of a gazillion dollar military industry. It’s a quirk of mine.) Steve Almond makes an elegant and heartwrenching argument for why childhood cruelties matter into adulthood in this essay: “That’s how adolescence works. It’s a place of tremendous pain and recklessness, a place where you have to pretend not to care about anyone or anything too much because to do so would release the chaos of your actual self into the world.” That doesn’t mean we don’t care. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t face consequences, even if those are only guilt and shame, visited upon us later. Go read it.

Did you hear? Barack Obama was also a “terrible grade school bully”– only, his crime seems pretty innocent compared to Mitt Romney’s. He was younger and physically, it includes nothing more than a slight shove. But you know what really matters? Obama’s wasn’t dragged out when reporters interviewed classmates. He put this story in his memoirs. Because he remembers it. He hasn’t forgotten it. Like Steve Almond, he knows it was a moment when his humanity fails him, and he holds it up to the light, and he examines it, and he expresses remorse.

Eighteen-year-old boys may LOOK like babies, you guys, but they’re not. They’re practicing adults and they are by turns terrified and weak and not strong enough to stand up to their friends when their friends are doing wrong and also strong enough to lead sports teams into championships and be incredibly, fascinatingly loyal to their girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, and families, and strong enough to fall in love and they’ve been deemed strong enough to go to war.

And teenage girls, well, that’s one of the most terrifying demographics on the planet.

And we may have been children, or near-adults, or in some liminal space between the two, but that doesn’t mean we have forgotten or even that we should assume forgiveness. Witnessing is all about remembering, and being brave enough to look what was done or not done squarely in the eye and admit that was a part of our life. It isn’t separate. It isn’t contained by graduation. It goes on and on.

So maybe don’t kidnap your prom date, tie him to a chair, and torture him with a drill.

MM

PS– Why is this movie called The Loved Ones? I mean, super Biblical, right? What is that?

How unconstitutional for them to love one another.

It was already illegal for gay couples to marry in North Carolina. Passing an amendment– amendment one, the first amendment to their constitution– was just to be extra sure. In other words, North Carolina put on suspenders even though it was already wearing a belt. The only reason to strap on double protection is fear. Boot-shaking, earth-quaking fear that you might end up naked, your shame exposed in front of everyone. Or lack of education, right? No one wears two condoms unless they weren’t paying attention in health class. (We can always hope that this NC amendment is indeed a double-condom situation and will result in a complete bust and backfire.) 

So what did Amendment One do? It hurt domestic violence victims. Because unmarried partnerships (“personal relationships”) are no longer recognized as having any legal standing in North Carolina, unmarried people who find themselves in violent situations are no longer entitled to the smidgen of extra protection that domestic violence codes afforded them. Thank god. Because domestic violence victims– they were just way, way too protected. They were working that system, because it’s so glamorous and so well-tilted in their favor already. Just getting really uppity, those DV victims were. 

Even the governor was against it, urging voters to understand that this amendment does nothing except hurt North Carolina.

These are old battles from the 1960′s, being brought up by old white men who are trying to return to an America they once knew. It wasn’t better then. It won’t get better until they’re out of office, until our legislatures look like the citizenry. 

credit: Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer

These are tired, stale conversations. We’ve had them, and we’ll keep having them as long as we need to, but it’s a waste of our time. There are other things for us to tackle.

This is why people say, “If you’re voting Republican, you haven’t been paying attention.” They mean if you’re voting Republican as a woman, or a gay person, or a person who knows women or gay people, or as a man who wants to be able to have sex without paying child support for the next 18 years, or as a man who wants his mother, sister, daughter, wife, lover to be protected if she is ever raped or faces cancer or the loss of a child, they mean if you think women and LGBTQI people are full citizens and human beings, then you cannot continue voting Republican. If you’re a good ol-fashioned Republican who’s voting on “economic policies,” you need to recognize that economic policies don’t matter as long as the politicians are making your vote about human rights.

Yes– we should be debating job creation, and laissez-faire government, and foreign policy. We should be debating health care, and family care leave, and the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and gun control laws. That’s what this election year should be about. It’s not. We should be talking about how socioeconomics are still tied to race in this country, and why women still earn $0.77 to the dollar that men earn for equal work even when all variables have been accounted for. We should be talking about why it’s condescending and misogynist that Alex Castellanos called Rachel Maddow “passionate” on TV. Yes, we should still be talking issues of racism and sexism and classism, because those conversations are not over. Those prejudices, those oppressive forces are not gone.

But we shouldn’t be fighting Roe v. Wade, we shouldn’t be fighting for access to birth control, and we should be voting on marriage-equality, not amending our state constitutions to extra-super-ban it. It’s shameful. 

It’s time for a 21st-century conversation. It’s time for national legislation. Nowhere is the need for young people in government more evident than in the fight for marriage equality and the war against women. It’s past time to move forward. Aren’t we tired yet of standing still?

MM

This is totally me:

Look, it’s really hard to get into at this point. I don’t have any emotional or psychological attachment to it, and the visual effects are terrible, and the acting is worse. And we’re supposed to buy this romance thing? And that flimsy brother-sister plot device they created when they realized NO ONE thought Luke was appealing as a romantic lead so they had to throw up an obstacle and put Han-no-s Solo in that (sexual) position? WHAT IS WITH THE HAIR.

Of course, I spent the whole time watching the one movie I have seen going, “OHHHHHHH.” Right? The cultural references are so pervasive. I felt like I was watching a parody of the original. Like there was a movie that everyone loves and quotes all the time, so much so that someone went ahead and remade it, awkwardly sticking in a list of “most quoted” moments in a complete caricature of itself.

I could note here that I also didn’t see ET or Donnie Darko as a child and I stinkin’ loved those movies when I finally saw them.

I’d make fun of it more but a) it’s hard to mock things you haven’t seen and b) I don’t want you guys burning down my house. You can yell at me now. I’ll just turn up the volume on Buffy and you can let me know when it’s over. Does it make it better or worse that I also haven’t seen Star Trek but I’ve seen both Galaxy Quest and Spaceballs?

MM

How many friends is too many? What’s the point of “defriending” versus “hiding” on your newsfeed? Is that person really of so little value to you that it’s not worth it to keep them, even on a virtual back burner? What if you need to contact them to ask who their dentist is?

Why am I not friends with hardly anyone I went to elementary school with? What’s the deadline on friending people who you should’ve friended in the first two years of being on FB but did not, and now it has been six or eight, and you all have survived without each other this long, but why? I would totally read your status updates. I would totally click on your wedding pictures.

I am often bored with my newsfeed; what is my resistence to expanding it? Why do people call it “cleaning house” when they go through and defriend people? How many phone numbers are in your phone that you don’t use and is it the same thing? (I say no.)

But I won’t friend people who I don’t know. If you don’t know me but you like this blog, then like the DMP Facebook page or follow me on Twitter. FB is for people whose faces I have seen, hands I have touched, people who I played duck duck goose with or more likely who tripped me on the asphalt. I check my security settings regularly. I don’t have friend groups; I don’t post anything that I’m not willing to let everyone I am friends with see. I’ve defriended someone once, when I wasn’t interested in giving that person information that could remotely clue them in to my whereabouts or even my pyschological state. You’re allowed to cut people off who are toxic. But those who are merely unnecessary at this moment? Things change. You can’t re-friend. It’s awkward. They know. Believe me. You would know, wouldn’t you.

When will we start handing out our FB contact info to strangers we meet in bars (but do we do that, anymore? or do we just FB message people we once thought we could’ve had something with?) rather than phone numbers or even emails? I’d like that. Feels safe, if clunky.

I had goldfish when I was younger. My parents tried many things to keep me from begging for a dog: goldfish, cats, newts. All of these were terrible animals. The cats were lazy, dumb, and skittish. The newts ate their own feet and released some sort of toxic smell from those little white nubs that never went away. The goldfish wouldn’t stay alive.

We cleaned their tank regularly. By we I obviously mean my father, who is also famous for continually wiping down the kitchen counters. That tank was pristine. Guess what. The fish died. The replacement fish died. Turns out fish like a certain level of nastiness. The girl who lived up the street from me, whose parents did not clean her fish tank for her, never cleaned that bowl. Her fish lived for months. Years. I’m pretty sure at some point the bacteria made them superfish and they lived beyond the normal expected maximum lifespan for a fish. They might still be alive.

They were happy in their murky, dark, festering tank, surrounded by the growing amount of green. Not only happy. Healthy.

Of course, she couldn’t see them. What’s the point of fish if you can’t see them? What do you do with newts who have turned self-cannibalizing? We returned ours to the pet store. I tried to convince my mom to buy me a lizard while we were there, and then a rabbit.

Not sure what the exact metaphor is here, but.

Frank says he wants a pair of goldfish now. He wants to pretend they’re a metaphor for us. Pretty sure if we get them they’ll die real quick. Milan Kundera says, “…metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.” Like the love ferns. Or the cat who got his tail ran over by a car and had to have it amputated and the fact that he was “my” cat, not my sister’s, because I had named him, and I had named him Bobo, which means idiot.

MM

Speaking of tv shows….West Wing had a reunion! A walk & talk reunion. The best kind.

Also I don’t have HBO.

Frank, by the way, is in the background muttering “Thank god” and “So can you stop telling me what all the articles say already?” Because I also have a compulsive need to click-click on any analysis about “Girls.”  

Speaking of Frank, I told him we were moving to Seattle when I gave notice with my rent check this morning. He got all huffy for some reason. “You can’t decide my life! You don’t know me! …I’m a sentient being in this relationship and I demand to have a say! Yada YADA YADA yada.”

When I pointed out how much closer Seattle is to his motherland (CANADA!), Frank settled down into a steady whine. At some point I think I heard the words, Romney can’t catch me there— ? And then it just sounded like he was quietly chanting hockey-hockey-hockey-hockey-hockey under his breath for about an hour.

Now he’s making my sandwich for lunch and sorting through what to keep of the kitchen supplies and talking about how he didn’t really like “Tiny Furniture” all that much, anyway: “Can’t that Lena chick smile? I don’t think she laughed once in that movie. Sure, I like her message about embracing your own body, but…life’s just not that bad, eh? Even if your girlfriend is an evil dictator.”

God he’s a sap and a romantic.

xo,

MM