Let's Do Some Math

me + frictionless surface + $150 = sprained knee + ski voucher

movies + indian food + friends = very happy me + 15 lbs of fat

4 x ($48,205 - 3500 + (3500 + interest)) = total debt of small Pacific island = my college debt

2 essays + 10 short answers = college app work remaining

8:30 AM - 5:30 AM = total hours of sleep last night

my brother + my mom = tantrums + yelling + burst ear drums

Teenage Angst. Gah.

Okay, I resign myself to getting nothing done this weekend. There has just been too much drama and trauma that I cannot concentrate on anything. I'm going to keep writing because even sucky writing is therapeutic. Basically, the whole spam debacle is the dumbest thing that has ever happened to me in my life, and I've done enough dumb things for 20 lives. I can't believe that 15 of us high school seniors had to go through this melodrama that belongs way back in junior high. What the hell. This didn't even happen in junior high; it's like we've devolved and become even less mature.

Although I spent all of last night trying to be fair and balanced in what I said/did, I had some really unfair and unbalanced thoughts in my head. I know that we all bear some responsibility for the eventual result, but I do feel inclined to blame some people more than others. Maybe this feeling is really petty--it is--and that's partly why I feel so upset right now. I'm really ashamed that I too stooped so low in this whole inclusion/exclusion mess. I guess it's the Woody Allen joke right? "I only want to in a club that doesn't want me in it." I started feeling this way as soon as we started adding people to spam, so it's not like anything new. Last night probably just reached a critical mass of stress and the whole thing blew up in our faces. I wish we had been more discrete about the spam thing and didn't rub in everyone's faces. Fuck. Why are we so immature? I really hope that we can move beyond this disaster and that there isn't any permanent damage done in our friendships.

---

I am have more icky feelings to write about. Today is just an icky day; I'm hoping tomorrow will turn around. The thing I feel really icky over is when people are nice to me. Maybe this is more to do with a specific person, but I always feel this person is nice to me because they expect something out of me in return. I just feel kind of used. I don't know. Chances are, if you're reading this I am not talking about you. This has absolutely nothing to do with my group of friends. Color me cynical, but better safe than sorry.

I might be putting this blog on protect sometime soon because I'm dispensing my review log URL to some people I would be mortified if they read this blog. I know I sound so petty and emo and spastic here, since I only update when I'm one of those things. If you still care about reading, just drop me an email. Even if you're some complete stranger that's okay. You just better not have my college-related fate in your hands.

It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?

On collegeconfidential.com, reading the stress-charged posts of high-strung teenagers and parents. On some level, I find these posts really amusing for the simple ridiculousness that teenagers would spend their free time discussing college on forums. But then, collegeconfidential is like crack. I know it's terrible, yet I've been terribly addicted.

I spent the last half hour reading a huge thread about the discrimination against Asians in high-stakes admissions. Basically, an article in the Harvard Crimson quoted a book in which an admissions officer was quoted calling a Korean student a "textureless math grind." Knowing, if only peripherally, people whom one might label "textureless math grinds," I find the statement ridiculous and insulting. What? Why are Asians stereotyped as having no personality? No human being deserves this kind of offhand brush-off. Judgment based on only a few numbers and pieces of paper no less. They haven't even met the damn person!

At the same time I express outrage at this, I feel like I apply that label to other people too. Being Asian myself, I understand all too well the parental pressure. I would not call myself particularly rebellious, but I have tried to move away from it. I have acqueicesed to the signifigance my parents put in grades, but I hardly care about them. This year, I've managed to get my lowest test grades ever in math, history, French, and science. This is out of my entire high school career. Maybe it's because it's senior year, but I don't even get stressed out over my Cs. Although I understand, I cannot sympathize over people who cry over grades. It's not fucking worth it. My term grades all turned out okay in the end anyways.

My parents and I still have so many fundamental disagreements. I'm really lucky to have parents who are at least on the liberal side (in Asian terms only), but they still don't understand. They were absolutely devasted when I wanted to quit piano. But piano was something I absolutely abhorred. The only reason I would have continued would have been to please my parents or fancy my future college admissions officer. One reason is slightly less loathsome than the other but both are equally soul-sucking. It's also interesting that I have spent high school moving away from math/science and toward the humanities. Although I'll probably still never declare an English major, I have more of an affinity for the humanities than before. Math problems used to excite me but now I just copy them out of the answer book. Literature and art just excite me in a way numbers and impratctical theory cannot.

Yesterday, I mentioned to my parents that I probably would not apply to Harvard/Yale if I get into UChicago. My parents were crushed and upset beyond belief. They looked like I had undermined their entire life's work. (Eh, probably true upon introspection.) But...I was surprised at their reaction too. I thought they were at least okay with my choosing UChicago, but I now realize they still harbored latent hopes of Ivy. (Wow, I almost typed harvard instead of harbor--something is most definitely wrong.) My parents tried to explain it to me in terms of a financial leverage--if I get into Ivy, I might be able to negotitate a better financial aid package--but I know they still have their Asian-American dream of Ivies. I guess I'm perfectly okay with the financial explanation, but there is no way I will chose Harvard/Yale/Columbia over UChicago. It's a good thing that my chances at any of the three above schools are so low.

And it's not a rebellion/snobby thing that makes me choose UChicago either. I swear it must be fate that UChicago is everything I want in a college. Not only is it perfect in location and academics, UChicago has the exactly personality I want in a school. Even talking with fellow applicants online, I feel I have met my soulmates. UChicago has a personality that is utterly distinct from the Ivy but fits me perfectly. I think what my parents don't understand is that I am not an Ivy student; I would not fit in or succeed at Harvard at all. There was a time, long long ago, when I harbored this dream, but I now recognize the Ivies are definitely not for me. I just wish my parents would understand that too.

I'm actually not that stressed out for my decision. In fact, the emotion might be better described as excitement. Or maybe I am stressed. I don't know! This is going to sound really cocky, but I actually feel pretty confident about getting into UC. Looking at naviance stats and my total love of the school, I think I should get accepted. Of course, this will only make the deferral/rejection worse. Le sigh.

At the end of the Crimson article I mentioned above, there was a sentence that I found interesting...becasue it was basically the exact same thing as my self paper thesis: "But a major roadblock to Asian-American empowerment is that same old stereotype, imposed upon them by society and internalized by the community." It even uses the same wording! When I write English papers, I usually come up with theses that I understand to be true in real life. So is this true? I hope not.

Casino Royale

Oh, I watched this yesterday too. Because this blog needs some pretty and Daniel Craig + Eva Green are pretty personified. Okay fine, Craig is not pretty per se but he is manly, rugged, and totally bringing the Bond sexyback. Eva Green is just too gorgeous.
I really hope I get to writing a full review where it's not just my hormones doing the talking. Still, Casino Royale is all about the visceral, no?

I have to go to school tomorrow? Gosh, darn it, yay!

It's almost the end of November and that handy scroll bar on the side tells me I only have one post so far. I haven't had much to write lately, and everything I do write wants to stay in a locked MS word document. Like normal people, I look forward to vacations but when it's actually vacation time, I really hate it. I haven't written so much lately because I've been busy in the last few weeks and busy is happy for the most part. When I'm bored, I just lapse into these strange existential crises and mope about my indeterminably sized ego. So yes, vacations suck. I guess I write a lot when my mood sours and that hasn't happened much until this weekend.

Last night, I went to Didaph's house and I really enjoyed it. "Fun" isn't the operative word here, but it was very pleasant. I mean, there was no uproarious talk or lightning wit, but it was enjoyable. We gossiped for a long time, but it never felt vulgar or mean-spirited. It was just pleasant. Everything was comfortable and easy and honest. I didn't feel this pressure to prove myself. It's interesting because I haven't felt that way hanging out with people for a long time. I think it was a lot like how I am writing right now: plain and simple without forced wit. I never bust a gut laughing but it was a lot more enjoyable than some get-togethers when I spent too much time laughing.

Interestingly, the talk turned to guys and the whole issue of dating. I was kind of surprised to hear Didaph lament their (lack of) boyfriend situation. (One thing I did learn was how normal they are. It's almost scary.) Wen just advised us to wait until college, which is exactly how I've always felt. God, it would away from the overeager preying eyes of my parents too. My id can't wait for college. The ego is a little more wary.

The funny thing is that I haven't spent that much time with Didaph at all, in class or outside of it. Interesting how Asians just collude and bond.

Je suis une grande personne.

That's a depressing thought. My brother said I was 27 today. So that's not quite true, but relatively, it doesn't even matter that much. When I was 7, 17 and 27 seemed like pretty much the same age. 17 is the age when princesses meet their Prince Charmings and love can conquer the world. I feel shitty and bloated. The world does not want to be conquered.

I reason a feel like "une grande personne" is the numbers coursing through my head: SAT scores, GPAs, test grades, and hell, even tuition. I was annoyed enough with my stubborn math SAT to drudge through another another 5 hour test. Saturday was so gray and sluggish I think my scores really have nowhere to go but down. Speaking of going down, that's also the disturbing trend of my Euro grade. As the class average increases with each test, my grade plummets. WTF. True enough, I haven't taken Euro seriously at all this year--zombieing through class probably doesn't help my grade, but that's remarkably strange. If the history fairy's generous, I might pull a B+. Big IF. I haven't adequately studied for this next test either. The thing is, I don't think I do bad, but I somehow consistently get whole slews of multiple choice wrong. Sluggish brain does not wake up at 8 in the morning. Or maybe it's too dumb.

Quarter grade predictions: calc is salvageable, physics is surprisingly good, French is a deserved A (hopefully I won't sink it with the oral), English depends entirely on the whim of Crick, and Euro...um...just sucks. Not terribly bad but not great either. This term, I managed to pull my lowest grade EVER in history and math.

---

But, seriously enough about grades and numbers. Saturday was Lynn/Steff's birthday party. Lynn's house is so nice and classy...my house is just a sloppy mess. I ate like an armadillo (hence the bloatedness). Turned brain off and watched MarySue humiliate themselves. Socially starved as I am, I wanted to stay later but Alice's mom has some penchant for 9 PM trips to the postal office, which is conviently on the way to Lynn's.

New terrible obsession with Bookworm. I keep dreaming of it in my sleep, and it sucks my euro studying time away.

Read, Blink, Call

College apps are seriously about to take over my life. It's this small benign tumor that has existed forever but suddenly turned malignant senior year. So...nothing much has been happening, except lots of exams and papers.

Barged the library book sale today with Alice. This is probably one of the few things I will miss when I leave Acton. I think I saw Julie's mom there, but mother and daughter look so different I wasn't sure and didn't say anything. We ended up browsing cookbooks, and I got a cute book on cookies with lots of pretty pictures but probably crap recipes. Still, the pictures are pretty. Alice got a book of cool gourmet appetizers (or hors d'oeuvres, since I just learned the h in hors d'oeuvre is aspirate while researching for my French homework.) Anyways, we are TOTALLY having a cocktail party. Yes. Even if it's freakishly expensive and we end the night hungry. We have to try those recipes. So here is the list of books I bought. $2 each.

A Light in the Attic
Where the Sidewalk Ends (this Shel Silverstein books are from 1987! but they look brand new)
Maus, Part I (I searched to no avail for Part II)
The Corrections, Jonathon Frazer
An Anthropologist on Mars (It had an octopus on the cover--irresistible!)

Afterwards, we hung out in the "old" part of the library. We always say that Acton is this boring old town, but it does have a rich history. (First person to die in Revolutionary War: Actonian!) But looking at the pastoral paintings and colonial artifacts--this Acton seemed so foreign. Not my AB anyways. I read a passage from The English Patient, which almost made me cry. Then I tried to memorize Chinese instruments, which almost made me cry too, but for a entirely different reason.

Later, I was randomly browsing the Internet and found an article about dressing as celebrities for Halloween. Lo and behold, who do I see? Malcom Gladwell, author of Blink. He deserves a picture of his own.

Blink, by the way, is an awful book that I've only had enough patience to read half of. It's also 3 days overdue from the library. Crap.

Got a new cell phone today. It even takes photos! How exciting, I've finally caught up with the rest of the world. Same number as before.

All About My College Apps

Hear that? The soft sigh of satisfaction. The silence of the keyboard. I'm done, done, done with the U Chicago app.

I think finishing my first college app should be some cause for celebration, even if it's just running around my house 5 times. Now is the hard part: the time for laborious finger-crossing and half-drawn breaths. I got the U Chicago course catalog in the mail yesterday and wow! I can study ancient American civilization in Oaxaca, Mexico. And rub shoulders admist a sea of lovely British accents at the London School of Economics. And take classes in dinosaur science, and transsexualism (Claudius, here we come), and the economics of crime, taught by none other than S. Leavitt of Freaknomics! And spend Friday night coffee discussing Marx and Smith. Okay, that last part is slightly less exciting.

If I don't get in, I think I'll start a massive hunt for razor blades. My dad keeps expounding that "Chicago is a safety! Duh." (He got this bit of wisdom from a random lady on the train.) People me that I'll get in without a problem, which is comforting to some degree, even if I know they just say that to be nice. Actually, what really shook my confidence was when my counselor said I had an equal chance of getting into Harvard and U Chicago. Either he grossly overestimated by chances at Harvard or he thinks my chances are so small at both schools to have little difference. Neither explanation bodes well.

Back to more positive thinking, I managed to write an essay that works on both the Uncommon and Common Apps. This is a rather remarkable feat I say. Despite the notoriety of UC's app, it's really not that bad. Hell, talking to Olga made me realize it's actually much shorter than Brown's. Through some economizing and strategezing, I only need 3 essays between 10 colleges. What I have left to write: a dozen short responses, UMich essay/Common App short, Harvard/Yale supp, scholarship essay for WashU...hey that's it. Not too bad if I leave it all to winter vaca, right? Especially because the two other essays are mostly written and the scholarship essay is on film, which should be rather easy. What is hard is answering questions like, "Why do you want to attend BU?" when the honest answer is, "I don't want to attend BU!" If all goes well, I won't even have to apply there. Hopefully.

The Bluest Eye

"Then she stopped staring at the green chairs, at the delivery truck; she went to the movies instead. There in the dark her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as a possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.
She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assess in it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scales one she absorbed in full from the silver screen. There at last were the darkened woods, the long roads, the river banks, the gentle knowing eyes. There the flawed became whole, the blind sighted, and the lame and halt threw away their crutches. There death was dead, and people made every gesture in a cloud of music. There the black-and white images came together, making a magnificent whole--all projected through the ray of light from above and beyond."

Silly girl, this does not happen to you, does it? My dad actually accused be of this a while ago, telling me I was lost in a fantasy world. Seeing that this accusation came from my dad, I immediately leapt into a defense without thinking about the possible truth in his words. I still don't think it's true, but maybe I should at least consider the possibility. As much as I revel in the depressing and the abstract , I've realized that many films I love are unrealistic. Amelie? Pure whimsy. Wes Anderson? Encased in his little hermetic world. But then there is a strain of the bleak and oppressive: Brazil, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Fat Girl. Perhaps the opposite is true of my father's words: cinema has aged and jaded me to the world.

---

As for The Bluest Eye the novel, I think I've encounter one of the formative books of my reading. Yes, that's a little hyperbolic, especially considering I hated and promptly wiped it from my memory when I read it 2 years ago. Silly sophomore then. It's funny how I so wholly repudiate my past selves, always establishing my present person as the most superior. I also think I sound like a douchebag right now. It wasn't until Dan and Katie remarked on the stilted vocabulary that I realized how pretentiously I write. Ack.

So for more disjointed thoughts (or stream of consciousness as more literary types would call it), the irony of Crick lecturing us on black "funkiness" and "vitality" is rather. . . disconcerting. New England high school valedictorian, Harvard grad wants to teach us the black american experience of poverty? What? I have to say though, he's a very competent English teacher even if discourses on "funkiness" seem pretty hokey coming from Crick.

Load! Lock! Launch!

Physics rocks. Today's physics adrenaline rush lasted long into French class, where I could barely concentrate on Claude Chabrol with my head lost in carbon paper and shiny ball bearings. Never had I been as pumped as with this Hitting the Bulls-eye lab.

The target of our projectile launchers was a 3 centimeter strip taped onto the linoleum floor. Before reaching this landing strip however, our ball bearing had to first arc through the air and pass a 10 sq cm hole. Only then could it land to crossed fingers and held breaths, hopefully within that strip. With some nifty finagling and not-so-clever math tricks, we tickled our calculators into producing the correct numbers.

To chart my emotional well-being during physics lab, I'd use the graph y= cos x: we begin at a peak of excitement, plunge to the minimum value somewhere around 3.14, and then slowly claw our up through hairy equations and crooked rulers until we reach that emotional high water of launch time. That pi mark represents the time when we were hopefully lost in the quagmire. Only through playing the "dumb girls in science card" did we get McClung to show that we could in fact change our projectile launcher to zero initial height. But after that, the sudden breakthrough sparked a torrent of calculator punching, where more progress was made in 10 minutes than the entire previous 50 minutes.

It sounds really kind of cheesy, but it's moments like these that remind me of college essays. For a moment, I think I finally understood the sweet taste of teamwork and success.

Yea, but physics. I don't often give much thought to the male/female disparity so decried by educators, but it is ridiculous in higher level classes. AP French only has 2 guys out of 20, and our physics class is 20 guys to 8 girls. I found out that Sue, Steff, and Mary are all considering dropping physics, which made me really sad. Not only will there be serious testosterone overload in 3/4 Physics, but if these are Asian girls--an especially resilient breed in math and science. How does this bode?

It is the pursuit of the goal, not the realization. Right?

This is patently ridiculous. I'm in the middle of reading all the following books:

• The Bluest Eye
• Blink
• The Good Earth
• Lolita
• I Capture the Castle
• Atonement
• One Hundred Years of Solitude

Even throw in a few textbooks for extra measure. How many will I actually finish? All. Someday, someday. In the same land where Gmail inboxes fill up. Randomly starting and never finishing books is a very, very bad habit. I have to kick it.

Searching...Literary Eloquence

Aside from being unworthy of comparison to classics and the Bible, college essays are not the place to look for literary eloquence. They are the place to find amateur writing, cheesy posturing, comma splices, and thesaurus overuse. They are not repositories of any kind of insight or enjoyable reading experience.

Unless you are some damn genius who writes with skill, authenticity, and flair. And we have way to many of those in our school. I've come across quite a few poorly planned and written essays, but there is more than a fair share of great. Reading Daphne's oh-so-brilliant college essay only exaggerated my personal inferiority complex. What am I? Woefully untalented at sports, art, and music. Inadequacy reigns supreme today. Flipping through books of "successful" (keyword is successful, not good) college essays, I realized I must really try to find disappoint in my charmed life.

My essay is such a load of bull. There's enough quirk to register on U Chicago's eccentro-meter but it'll tip the weird-o-meter at other schools. Laurel, a perfectly nice normal person, reminded me of this.

Sigh. Must study for physics quiz NOW. Poor little rich asian, Acton, emo girl signing off.

Belated Birthday

I realized I didn't write about my birthday at all. I have figured out three possible reasons why:

1. I'm lazy. Highly possible.
2. I once read a short story, or read about a short story, of a girl who goes on vacation and obsesses about taking a photo of every moment so she could remember everything. But in the end, she realizes she missed out on her entire vacation. At the end of The Return, the photos of the vacation show everybody but the father. All the boys have as memories of their father is the journal they dutifully kept. Do I want the extant memory of me to be some dumb blog online? Likelihood of this justification indeterminate, as I don't know what I'm talking about. Possibly something about wanting pure, unadulterated memories, though that is obviously impossible according to psychology.
3. I hated my birthday and some Freudian defense mechanism is helping me cope. Unlikely, but how would I know?

In all, it was quite pleasant and by that I mean nothing horrific. Highlight of the day: Avanti dropping the cupcakes. Youtube moment right there. You know there's a cultural shift when "Kodak moment" becomes "Youtube moment."

A Clockwork Orange

My retinas have been permanently sheered with terror by A Clockwork Orange. I will never viddy Singin' in the Rain the same again.

This is the creepiest guy ever.

The Dreamlife of Devils

It is probably proof of my pessimistic nature that my tests in dreams never end well. "Not well" is actually a veritable litotes here; "horrible" and "big fat F" might do these grades more justice. So my strange and nerve-wracking dream about the Hamlet test ended...er...very badly:

It is 8th period, that time for English class again. Crick hands each of us a sheet of paper typed in that typewriter font he favors. As previously discussed, we then head off to the computer lab for some marathon typing. But as we sit down and prepare to log on, we realize there aren't enough computers. In fact, there's only 4 for the entire class of 20 or so. "No problem," exclaims Crick in his sadistically cheerful cadence, "We'll take it orally!"

He proceeds to explain that the we will make our presentations from a 10 ft high, 2 in wide window ledge, which had mysteriously and quite conveniently appeared in the computer lab overnight. So here combined my three greatest fears: extemp speaking, heights, and English analysis. (Ha! Perhaps there is a method to the madness.)

When it comes to my turn, I climb onto the ledge with great difficulty. How I managed to climb up a vertical flat wall is beyond my comprehension. But exhausted by this physical exercise, my brain is not ready to analyze the passage that followed and I stand mouth agape, holding onto that tiny ledge for dear life. Even when I do struggle to say something, my vocal cords are frozen in a constant tremor--no audible sound escapes.

Sneering with disdain at my befuddlement, Crick says, "Fine, you obviously don't know anything. But I'll give you another question. What is one person who influenced you the most?" I continue to stand frozen. He then started throwing me a torrent of college app questions: "Evaluate one book you have read outside of class. What would you bring to this college campus? Tell us something about yourself? What do you think of the New York Times--"

New York Times! Finally something I can answer. I'll just go on about my beloved Manohla "Man" Dargis and A.O. "Tony" Scott. But as I open my mouth to speak, I instead start falling. Down. down. d.o.w.n.

---

The real test went quite all right, though my concept of "all right" seems to have deteriated with my gross overjudgment of my performance on the Medieval Euro test. I shall cross my fingers and hope the best.

HAPPY BURFDAY!

I'm five years old now, and I can beat you up!

First Taste of Rejection

Since it is college application season, my mailbox was once again crammed full with slick college catalogues and the like. But wading through the thick bundle of mail, I came across one envelope that I had been anticipating: Carleton College. In early September, I had applied to a Taste of Carleton program to visit, dine, and room at Carleton for 3 days entirely at their expense. Considering the program was entirely free, I decided to give it a shot and apply. This is their reply. I'll copy it in its entirely because first rejection letters are a milestone in life:

Dear Sarah:

We thank you for your interest in our Taste of Carleton event. Unfortunately, the response to this event was overwhelming and we regret to inform you that we have filled all of the spots available to us for the event. We know this is disappointing news and certainly not what you had hoped to hear.

There were many qualified and talented candidates like you from around the country who presented fine academic records and strong personal qualities. We'd like to strongly encourage you to visit Carleton on another date and utilize our multicultural flight subsidy which covers half the cost of an airline ticket up to $200. Please contact our office determine the best options for you visit.

We wish you the best this fall.

Sincerely,

The TOC Team

I sent in my application semi-late (on the last day of the deadline, but that was really because of school starting dates than my procrastination--for once), but this letter kind of ribbed me anyways. I know that based solely on academic record--or school transcript, as that was all they looked at--I should have gotten in. Of course, if the response really was overwhelming, then 50 people out of a large pool is a very small percentage, and those 50 people definitely were not among the last 50 people to turn it in. Mwwuah, I'm being long and windy and nonsensical.

But quite honestly, I would have never even looked at Carleton if not for this program. Middle-of-Nowhere, Minnesota was, and still is not a very attractive location. Positive spin: Now I know that I'm not applying to Carleton. Alright, 1 college crossed off, 17 to go.

Bad Education x Tres

Sometimes, I really believe there is something wrong with me. Like how I think school dances are inconceivably boring ,and I'd actually rather do my homework. That's harsh. Maybe there is something wrong.

Alas, no homework last night, and no dance either. Instead, watching badass flicks with the homies. I brought a whole stack of DVDs to Mary's house, and Sruthi, dear girl, immediately zeroed in on Bad Education. So Bad Education it was--come to think of it, a rather bad decision considering adults were home. Still, parental supervision was minimal and we were rather self-supervising anyways.

By this third time watching Bad Education, the shock and novelty of sex worn off. I could sit through without cringing, but it still surprised me. It was definitely more explicit than I remembered. Poor Olga, I'm afraid she's permanently scarred.

Bad Education was a rather polarizing film, especially along Almodovar's fans. Compared to his warm, gooey stories, Bad Education is coldly clinical, a disection of narrative structure and psychopathic cunning rather than the messy pathos that characterized his earlier melodramadies. It is masculine and distant--by god is it brilliant. The layered construction is so skillfully crafted in the editing and script. I agree that Bad Education is emotionally distant; it doesn't immerse you in the world so much as unfold like an elegant flower before your eyes. There's plenty to admire as an outsider. How amazing it would have been to figure how every twist as it hit. Damn you Internet spoiliers; I never go to do that.

Google is My Crack

That is all.

Academic Soup: Communism Upsets Renaissance Art, Falls to College Essay

By some dumb line-up of the schedule, I'm actually one night ahead on the Euro homework, and at least one month behind on the college stuff, but I digress. In my homework perusing, I read a Time article on Renaissance portraiture, which caused a profound sense of deja vu, especially upon the bit about prostitutes dying their hair blond with urine. (Such salacious details find comfortable niches in my brain.) Indeed, I had once read this article in a random Time from the library discard pile. I even have a vivid memory of the accompanying picture of Ginevra de Benci as painted by Leonardo da Vinci. No doubt the vivid memory is because this portrait was one of the select few represented in the Acadec Renaissance Art.

Speaking of Acadec, Chinese art is as boring as hell. If it isn't boring, the writers sure have made a fair attempt at making it so. The CD on the other hand, greatly amused me with the inclusion of Chinese pop songs. My dear mom made an attempt to educate me on all affairs Chinese, beginning with the personal affairs and wives of Mao. I know all about his affairs and nothingof his policies.

Nation Merit Scholarship essay is not being written. It is simply not happening. What a load of bull I have to write about myself. I feel like a lying, cheating braggart.

School atmosphere is buzzing with college talk and flu viruses. Both have a fair shot at the title of Biggest Stress Inducer.

Why Facebook Belongs to the College Crowd ONLY

While searching for the esteemed Zhang clan on Facebook, I encountered a rare species: someone over the age of 40. People you do NOT expect to find on Facebook:

Be a C student in Calc

Despite failing spectactularly on my first BC calc exam, I remain in a remarkable state of Zen-like calmness. Is it senior slide catching up to me? Lethargy and inertia seem the predominate state of my being.

After seeing a small (this is Noeth) red C- on my calc test, in addition to a scrawled note demanding "more study needed," I reacted with little emotion. Perhaps it is a profound state of denial, but I really don't seem to care. Or this there some Freudian defense mechanism (i.e. denial) pretending to me I don't care? There was also a supreme confidence that I would do much better on the next test, that I was capable of doing much better. Really, you think I would freak out more after getting the lowest math test grade of my life. This is from first grade onward and includes all those tedious hours of Kumon. Whatever the case, I cannot profess to be easily moved. I believe myself to be a rather sensitive person--hypersensitive in some cases--but I rarely, rarely cry.

Maybe it's just back-to-school blues, but I have been very spacey all week. I read the instructions on tests all wrong, skip questions on accident, am especially inarticulate, and generally seem to be operating in another dimension. I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space.

Senior, that's old!

I haven't updated in two weeks, which is especially dismal considering the start of school means I should have plenty to talk about. So without further ado, gossipy and judgmental thoughts on my senior year teachers. Compared against other years, they are definitely the best bunch (sophomore year was a real nadir saved only by Veley.)

Starr: Senior Sem seems like a typical slacking-off, sleep-through first period class. Hopefully, I won't sleep through the valuable life skills part. It can't be too hard to teach this class, and Starr seems capable enough if a bit old ladyish and boring. "Darling" and "Sweetie" seem to make up a large extent on her vocabulary.

Green: This class BLOWS my mind. Metaphorically, of course, or else I'd be running around without a head. I have always had history taught to me as a straight set of dates and facts, but Green teaches history with the skill of a master storyteller. Connections between the obscure and the esoteric seem not salacious tangents as in Steege, but threads in the larger tapestry of history. Corny? Only if you've never taken Euro.

McClung: I hated physics in 8th grade and approached this year's physics class with a large sense of dread. Why did I take this class, it might be some hazy thing called "peer pressure," but I certainly don't dread sitting in McClung's class. In Harry Potter terms, he's definitely Flitwick: short, energetic, and self-processed anal. And is there some rule that science teacher's kids have to be cute?

Leavitt: Leavitt is a brunette replica of Mme Laz in demeanor, voice, build, looks, haircut, fashion sense, and enthusiasm for French. Her class lacks the air of lethargy that permeated every other French class I have taken in high school. Here's to hoping I'll learn something this year.

Noeth: The legend, right? I have nothing to add. His class is a riot.

Crick: His class is also a riot, but perhaps not as intentionally. Only some massively insecure person would spend class intimidating 17-year-olds with phrases like "Agenbite of inwit," "sin non qua," "fait accompli" and other words of decidedly pedantic and non-English origins. No matter, I find it amusing for the time and spend the majority of time smirking behind my book. Besides, his no-BS attitude is at least refreshing after Anthony's total lapping up of suckage. Crick's guerilla Acadec recruitment tactics, on the other hand, kind of get on my nerves and make me feel icky, like being used. Mais, c'est un fait accompli. Can't be anything about it now.

The best benefit to being a senior is that our teachers really treat is like adults, and if not adults as least not children either. No more lectures on book-covering and reiterations of cellphone bans; these teachers cut right to the chase. What can I say? They know their shit.

Summer Reading Part 4: It's All About Politics

Fourth in a series to give the impression I did something intellectual this summer. Starred titles indicate books I particularly enjoyed.

Peter the Great
Robert Massie

The juggernaut. The behemoth. I have 15 pages in MS word to describe this book. I’m not touching it until September 10.

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*Absurdistan*
Gary Shteyngart

I have no idea what motivated me to pick up this book. The cover art is blandly abstract, the subject matter is not to my taste, and the main character is a filthy rich, obese, foul-mouthed, horny Russian Jew—totally someone I would identity with. It must be the title: Absurdistan, no other title could evoke so much political outrage, silliness, and pathos in one measly word.

Absurdistan is absurd—absurdly funny, bleakly funny—the type of hilarity that makes you laugh until your stomach hurts and then it punches you in the guts when you realize the situations are not funny at all, but very real and appalling. Shteyngart pulls off this audacious satire, ripping into everything from trophy wives to terrorism to obesity with a touch that turns the horrible into the hilarious. He even manages to satirize himself with his doppelganger Jerry Shteynfarb, who wrote The Russian Arriviste’s Hand Job, as opposed to Shteyngart’s first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. Where Absurdistan strikes the hardest is American ignorance and greed. A reader will immediately draw parallels between Absurdistan and today’s current events, but Absurdistan cuts off on September 10, 2001. An ominous ending that portends maybe nothing has changed after all.

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*Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress*
Dai Sijie

Whenever I start complaining about school, my parents always launch into a rueful tirade on their education in then hands of the Cultural Revolution. And I can’t compare: however aimless English class may seem, it can never be as aimless as reciting Mao’s quotations for the 437th time. (Random: Did you know blogspot is still banned in China?) After reading this book, I had a nice conversation with my dad (not about college for once!), but about how people would wait hours in line to buy Balzac’s books after the Revolution.

Since the Cultural Revolution is one of the most universally reviled policies, a book critical of it can be nothing new (except in China’s official bookstores.) Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, translated from the French since Balzac was a French dude after all, reads like a fable rather than a social critique. Ma and Luo are sent to the countryside to be re-educated where they discover a chestful of the forbidden Western cannon and as the title promises, they also meet the Little Seamstress. There are grotesque images, but the pastoral setting brings to mind a hermetic alter-world. It’s a slim and tightly written novel, made more powerful by its compact construction. The finishing touch is an ironic, oblique criticism of the Cultural Revolution that almost twists the themes around. Makes me want to get off my butt (or maybe on, since I tend to sit while reading) and read Balzac.

I’m also really curious about the film adaptation of this book because it’s directed by Dai Sijie from his own novel. How often does that happen?

Redecorating, Chat Noir Style

This lovely poster is hanging above my bed. Well, it was hanging there until last night, when the forces of gravity pulled it down onto my head while I lay sleeping. Random objects falling on your head does not a pleasant wake-up make. Until I find some heavy duty poster tape or a stapler (preferably orange Swingline), this poster resides on my floor. Upside down. How disgraceful.

Especially since it is my one and only souvenir from Chicago. I bought it at the Art Institute of Chicago and carried it 40 minutes in the drenching rain to our car. Really, you'd think gravity would be more cooperative.

With the aid of Google and Wikipedia, I've been frantically trying to figure out what this poster is advertising. Apparently, it's some cabaret act. Considering it's in French, I'm not sure how salacious that's supposed to be.

I also got Photoshop installed semi-legally on my computer. So excited I was, I quickly went clone stamp happy and made a banner for Ze Blog.

Summer Reading Part 3: Salinger Binge

Franny and Zooey & Nine Stories
J.D. Salinger

I love me some Salinger. I really do. Despite all the backlash, Salinger was a good writer before he became an emo icon. His morose literary progeny are people I would bitchslap in real life, but he renders them palatable and even sympathetic by giving them an air of tragedy. His unique New York (now say that three times fast) exists only in his works, and by extension, The Royal Tenenbaums. There is a lot of criticism on Salinger’s supposed immaturity and manipulative antics because his characters are never quite real; they’re always so precocious, so smarmy, not understanding the gift of their genius or good fortune. But they are also humanistic because Salinger strikes at a common chord: vanity. He and his characters never shied from a certain seflishness we can all relate to, whether willingly or not. Salinger does not illuminate humanity in its best light, but it is a real one.

Favorite Stories:
Franny
The Laughing Man
Teddy

Summer Reading Part 2: I Only Read This Book Because It’s Being Made Into a Movie

Second in a series of remarks to prove I did something intellectual this summer. Starred titles indicate books I particularly enjoyed.

The Prestige
Christopher Priest

Following movies as obsessively as I do, I’ve noticed an uptick in magic-themed movies of late, including The Illusionist, Scoop, War Magician, and some movies about a certain bespectacled teen with the initials of HP. The Prestige, is yet another entry. Because Christopher Nolan (given my eternal admiration for Memento) is directing and Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are taking up the leads (can you say yummy), I decided to check out this book.

The cover of The Prestige looked like the schlock sci-fi fantasy stuff dominating YA shelves—not a good sign. The paperback cover, shown here, is a huge improvement. Cover art judging aside (of course it’s a reasonable criterion, you absolutely must judge books by their cover), The Prestige is a decent book. The author cleverly makes use of shifting POVs to conceal his plot twist, but his framing device dragged the story before it even started. The Prestige is not driven by good writing or even good plotting, but by the one quality that makes stage magic so interesting: the “How the hell did he do that?” reaction. I sped through the pages trying to figure out how the tricks were performed, and I must say the results are a bit disappointing. It looks to be an entertaining movie, but the best I can do is damning it with some faint praise as a book.

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* Stardust *

Neil Gaiman

I’ve heard the name Neil Gaiman being tossed around forever, but I’ve never read anything by him until now. Turns out, I’ve been missing A LOT. Stardust is an enchanting and adventurous tale that seems at once familiar and utterly new. The story is cut in the classical medieval mold—indeed, it revels in archetypes and clichés—but it is also infused with a wondrous innocence. It’s told with an almost childish marvel; in Faerieland, nursery rhymes reign and childhood fantasies become real. But all this innocence, and our hero Tristran’s naïveté, only cloak the darker themes at play because in the idyllic land of Faerie, murder and death is the still of the currency of villains—and there sure are a lot of them. It saddens me to hear that Gaiman’s other writings are radically different from Stardust, but count my butt in for this movie.

Summer Reading Part 1: Are You There God?

First in a series of remarks to give the impression I did something intellectual this summer. Starred titles indicate books I particularly enjoyed.

* Life of Pi *
Yann Martel

Life of Pi is one of those rare cases where critical interpretation allowed me greater appreciation. An appreciation that has since grown into unabridled love and admiration. Magical! Miraculous! I want to leap up and down shouting every positive phrase to describe this book. Complete with an exclamation mark!

The author approaches religion from such a fresh angle that even I, an avowed atheist, could not help but agree. Perhaps it is because Life of Pi does not preach a story, but tells one. Pi’s journey at sea is characterized not by feverishly renewed faith, but a raw survival instinct—an instinct that speaks to every one one of us, regardless of our belief in a god or the lack thereof.

At sea for months sharing a lifeboat with a tiger, Pi survives against outrageous odds. As Pi’s journey spirals more and more into the outlandish, Yann Martel manages to hold our believability by the thinnest of threads. It is really a testament to his exquisite prose that we want to believe Pi’s story against all odds, even when it becomes wholly fantasy. But nothing quite prepares you for the stroke at the end, where all plot and thematic points are pulled together with the fluidity and grace of a master storyteller. And the symbolism, subtle but clear, is the kind that adds another layer to the story, rather than shows off the author’s metaphorical thought.

In the book’s framing device, a writer is told to seek Pi, now an old man, who will relate a story that will make him believe in God. The writer asks if it’s the tale of Jesus or Muhammad, but is told that it is neither; it is the story of Pi Patel. A dozen viewings of The Passion of the Christ and Bible classes will not make me believe in God; Life of Pi has at least made me want to believe. A miracle on this wizened old cynic heart.

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Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

Err….umm…uhh…I really don’t remember this book. It was dead and done with some time around the 4th of July, and it has not stuck. I bought this book even longer ago at a library book sale because I feel in love with the cover, which was a loopy and cartoonish rendition of two bodies without heads. (There we go again, judging books by their cover.) This book was not nearly as funny as its cover would lead you to believe. Yes, it was amusing to read about Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte drunkenly carousing with whores and the Oxford version of frat boys, but it was amusing in the way watching little kids pick their noses is amusing. The second half of the book shifts radically from free-wheeling college to high-society and Sebastian Flyte suddenly drops out of the plot. Catholicism also plays a major role, and I gathered the novel somehow came out pro-Catholic…but I didn’t understand any of it. Maybe I need some Socratic seminars with Anthony? No thanks, I’d rather have my talking tigers with Pi Patel. This is why I do not read classical literature—I never like it and come out feeling like a dumbass.

Wit of the Staircase

l'esprit de l'escalier n. Fre. "Those biting ripostes that are thought of just seconds too late, on the way down the stairs—or even, to tell the truth, days later." As coined by Diderot, best known as author of the original Encyclopedia. Literally, "the wit of the staircase."

This perfectly describes, well, everything. How many times have I stood flabbergasted in debate, or even in simple conversation, feeling vaguely insulted but having nothing to respond. And then it strikes, in the shower, that "perfect biting repost." Why does my mind work on just a lag?

Adventures Among Stacks of Compressed and Bleached Wood Pulp

The impending arrival of September points to that one thing I wish to avoid: college admissions. But there can no more procrastinating, so I holed up in Barnes & Nobles for 45 minutes of quality time with a college guide. Bored as I was of statistics and numbers, I picked up a guide claiming to be written entirely by students at their respective college.

If you picked three random students to describe AB, I bet their responses would be nothing like the AB I know and both love and hate. So I took their descriptions with a pinch of salt, but one recurring theme showed up profile after profile: alcohol. Every student devoted substantial space and ink to the school’s campus alcohol policy and student drinking habits. Dear little sheltered me, I know they down alcohol like water on college campuses, but I never expected the attitude to be so blasé. The most disheartening thing is, I expect I will also be a barely lucid drunk throwing up into dorms two years from now. Damn if my parents read this.

The rest of the time at my beloved if overpriced B&N was spent reading a library copy of Absurdistan, a satirical portrait of a fat Russian Jew cum wannabe American. Yes, I read library books in bookstores. Despite knowing I can borrow pretty much any book I wanted from a library, I still have that overwhelming urge to blind buy books for the sake of collecting. Given my meager resources, I only ended up affording a $2.97 copy of The Age of Innocence. When will I finally read this book? Probably when I’m jobless and broke 5 years from now.

Speaking of libraries, I also spent some more time among book stacks at the Lexington library. Whenever I walk in a library or bookstore, I always pause for a moment and breath in awe, as if by simply breathing, I could soak in some molecules of knowledge from this vast depository of information. I originally came to sing the praises of Lexington’s lib, but once the novelty wore off, I realized it’s not that much better than Acton’s. Or maybe it’s just my Actonian superiority complex kicking in. But I must admit, Lexington has a kick-ass nonfiction and audiovisual collection.

After browsing through the upper-floor, which is entirely devoted to nonfiction, I made a beeline to the shelves of DVDs. The first thing I encountered was a special ledge labeled “Foreign Films,” which caused a snicker to escape from my lips. Snooty? Yes, but it’s my pet peeve when “foreign” is labeled as a genre, since the parameters for tagging a foreign film are determined arbitrarily by geography anyways. However, since Lexington seems to have its share of cinephiles, perhaps the label caters to those who endure subtitled fare to stoke their psuedo-intellectual egos. (Like me.) In any case, the collection was rather meager despite containing a few Criterions, most likely because the majority of DVDs had been checked out. The VHS collection, however, was an embarrassment of gems. I now have a stack of ratty old VHSs, labels wearing off but proudly displaying the titles The Rules of the Game, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and Two English Girls. Seriously, I should quit Netflix and just rely on the free resources of my public libraries.

The last leg of my Saturday afternoon sojourn was Costco—the haven of large families, small businesses, and cheapskates of all sizes. Other than the free samples, my favorite part of Costco has always been the book section. Maybe I’ve just grown too inured to satisfaction, but Costco seems to now only carry chick lit and cheap Da Vinci Code knock-offs. Nothing wrong with that…but get back to your quality bestsellers. I want to at least pretend I read worthwhile books. If the literature section was lacking, a real DVD bargain sure got my pulse racing again. Eternal Sunshine + Lost in Translation = ONLY $8.99! I may not be much of a clothing shopper, but I certainly can smell out a good DVD or book bargain. Never mind that I already own a Lost in Translation DVD…must make plans to sell some movies I don’t love.

The Costco food court, site of a dozen quick lunches and dinners, was also the chosen place of my brother’s huge tantrum. Despite my reasoning that veggie pizza is cheese pizza because it still contains cheese, my brother screamed and stomped for real cheese pizza. Silly boy, he needs to eat his vegetables.

This has been way longer than I expected, but I guess that compensates for slacking off all of August.

People Watching at Harvard Square

• Two aging hippes reading The Economist. Hippie One wearing bright pink Hawaiian-boho combo shirt. Hippie Two sporting hemp woven sack decorated into some semblance of clothing. Both smelled strongly of a smoked substance--legality undetermined.

• Middle-aged man hunched over ledge with nondescript gray t-shirt and khakis. Eating cinnamon and raisin bagel (identified by distinct smell)--equally gray and drab colored. Nominally boring except for words "Cinderella Man" emblazed across t-shirt. Do not know whether lack of hygiene, heterosexuality or self-esteem beholdened him to wear said shirt.

• Portly Hispanic lady with two-year-old girl in tow. Her short, clingy, and sheer black shirt reveals a large tattoo across lower back: Doggy Style, with a Playboy bunny in between the two words. O_O What will she say when her daughter starts asking about the tattoos?

ri-dic-u-lous

Flip flop tan lines on my feet. Ridiculous.

"I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know...taking pictures of your feet."

Before Sunset

Driving home through Ohio...or Indiana...or New York. Whatever, it's home.

Phantasmagoria of Pop Culture

In honor of my psych class, which is now studying dreams, I present the most bizarre dream I have yet to remember. There’s a theory in psychology that dreams are simply the result of random chemical and electrical firings of your brain. I find this a depressing explanation, but scientific, empirical me leans toward it. (You would too if the alternative was Freud’s psychosexual theory of dream interpretation where every possible object takes on sexual meaning. Methinks Freud was a dirty old man.)

My dreams have always been fragments of stories, stitched together by fade-out transitions and loose connections. This one is no different, and if it gets too weird, just chalk it up to random nerve firings.

I’m reading the newspaper in a brightly lit salon—the kind with open glass walls and an overabundance of sunlight. As I flip through my newspaper, a photo of two preppy young men catches my eye. The headline above the photo reads in big, bold, newsprint letters: “Prince of Monaco to Marry.” My immediate befuddlement at seeing a picture of two men accompanied by a wedding announcement was solved as I glance up to the TV, which is playing the exact same story. The black and white news reel explain that the Prince of Monaco and his fiancé both belong to an ancient Jewish sect, which allows the matrimonial union of two men. Another grainy black and white photo flashes on screen, depicting the Prince and his fiancé exchanging vows with white skullcaps on their heads.

At this moment, I catch a glimpse of the fiancé’s face and realize that he is Asian. In fact, the TV explains, he is actually a Taiwanese émigré who works at Dunkin Donuts. The screen begins to show a color video of the Taiwanese man filling cups of Coffee Coolata on a conveyer belt.
My brow furrows in disbelief that the Prince of Monaco would deign to marry a Dunkin Donuts worker, but the TV continues profiling the strange fiancé. It turns out that the man is actually a nuclear genius forced to drop out of MIT due to lack of funds. Aside from working at Dunkin Donuts, he had also managed to build a superior nuclear defense system—a miraculous accomplishment if consider that this man was living off of his Dunkin Donuts’ income the entire time. On TV, he is showing off his nuclear defense system aboard a speedboat, from which he launches a small rocket while shouting, “George Bush should come talk to me!” The rocket, in truth, was about one foot long and hardly seemed capable of defending against a snowball attack, let alone a nuclear one. The rocket’s amateurish designs and the man’s arrogant attitude convinced me the Prince’s fiancé was a hack playing for the money.

Just as the news program on the Prince’s impending wedding ends, Kate Beckinsdale saunters into the salon. Perhaps mistaking me as an acquaintance, she walks up to me and starts complaining about how this salon had messed up her hair. Despite thinking her hair is fine, I smile politely and wonder why she is in this salon again if they were that bad. Brrrrring brrring. Alarm clock beckons.

Mediocrity or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Slackers

According to my psychology textbook (not a trusted authority but better than the Internet at least). Math scores of American immigrants out of 50:

1st-gen Asians: 50
3rd-gen Asian: 44

1st-gen Latinos: 46
3rd-gen Latinos: 43

1st-gen Blacks: 44
3rd-gen Blacks: 42

So why are we such overachievers again? If you ever feel dumb, just think that you at least will do better in school than your yet unborn grandchildren.

Dr. Strangelove, by the way, is da BOMB.

GASP! FAINT! ORGASM!

This SUMMER 2006, Sony Pictures Classics will present 8 classic Pedro Almodovar films. The film series, VIVA PEDRO, will include presentations of LAW OF DESIRE, MATADOR, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, FLOWER OF MY SECRET, LIVE FLESH, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, TALK TO HER and BAD EDUCATION.

There's going to be an Almodovar retrospective? Sarah's favorite living director? With new prints on the big screen? OMG! The only thing that could make me happier would be winning the lottery so I can afford it.

And the giddest thing, guess which film is coming out October 6. Oh the sweet irony: sneaking into a NC-17 movie on my 17th birthday.

A Goal Reached, A Blog Born

Ah ha! I've officially passed the halfway mark in Peter the Great. What does this mean? This means I have learned 400 times more information on Peter the Great than I actually care to learn. There's probably something wrong when you root for Peter's nemesis, Charles XII, in hopes that he will bring about Peter's premature death, thus massively reducing the amount of material I have to read. Alas, it is Charles who dies the premature death. Oh well, all those monarchs are cocky little brats anyways.

ETA: Another milestone. Had my first car accident today. Aren't you proud of me? It was minor scuffle in the parking lot at about 5 mph. I'm happy to report neither party was injured save for a tiny scrape on the front/rear bumpers, negligible because both cars were well beyond their normal life span

So in other news, despite the (stolen) bit of witticism in my blog description, life and the movies are not meshing. (Maybe this is a good thing.) From now on, all movie reviews--coherency not required--will be posted elsewhere. So if you ever feel like reading the pretentious ramblings of a bored and obsessive teenager, this is the perfect place to look.

Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Saturday schedule: Lunch with family friends, Brattle, Dinner with Lindi’s family. Given that schedule, you wouldn’t think that Saturday was a day abounding in morbidity.

It all started out with this whole lunch business. My dad’s college classmate’s son was on his college visiting tour and surprise, Harvard was a mandatory stop. So from Harvard Square, we departed to a restaurant, where my dad proceeded to order the exact same dishes we ate the last time we were there. Anyways, the conversation turned into that college classmate gossip, and we started talking about people dying of cancer—more specifically his college classmates who died of cancer.

Speaking of dying of cancer, that’s also the exact topic of the film showing at the Brattle: Look Both Ways—a slyly observed Australian film heavy on accents and light on plot. At least the guy didn’t die in the end, or I don’t think so but I probably blinked and missed half the flash montage. There’s also something about train accidents, unwanted pregnancies, and the whole shebang. I actually like it, though I tend to tolerate movies better in theatres than at home.

Meh, and more dying of cancer. So Lindi’s family came and visited with their old neighbors, who now live in Acton. I vaguely remember my parents telling me about the husband dying after they opened a Chinese store in Acton. At the time, it didn’t jog any memories because I was probably in one of those self-absorbed hazes. But yesterday, the family came to my house (minus the dead husband), and I remembered. I remembered the wife and the two daughters, one of whose name is Sarah. I remembered the guy’s name. Shit, that guy came to our house before. I’ve even talked to him.

It’s a strange feeling to realize that someone you once knew is dead, even if it’s someone I only acknowledged peripherally. I’ve been lucky enough to not know that many dead people—the only other one I can think of now is my fourth-grade teacher who died of, again, cancer.

The fundamental tenets of egocentrism would explain why I always think of myself when I hear cancer. Funny enough, I once went through this episode when I convinced myself that I had cancer and had only a few months left to live. I vowed to keep my “cancer” a secret until the day I died, and they would open my body to find it ravaged by disease. I also made up elaborate plans of self-surgery that usually ended up as inadvertent suicide. And then there was that slight more merited episode when I was convinced I had skin cancer. The frightening odds are that I probably will die of cancer one day. Back to more summer-appropriate dalliances.

A Brush with the Royally Creepy

At the Brattle Theatre today:

Me: Hello. How are you?
Man: Good. I’m _____. What’s your name?
Me: I’m Sarah. <--Mistake # 1
Man: Oh good. What do you do for real?
Me: I’m a student. <--Mistake # 2
Man: Where?
Me: Do you know AB? <-- Mistake # 3

This was the beginning of one creepy conversation. Actually, the conversation was not creepy at all, but that guy was friendly…too friendly…so friendly it was creepy. Especially when the conversation careened into “We should get coffee together at Au Bon Pain next time you’re here” and “We should swap phone numbers.”

Now, if this were some hot Harvard student, I would be flattered with the attention, but this was a pasty, balding, beer-bellied, middle-aged, CREEPY man. And I couldn’t help running through my mind that I was talking to some crazy pedophile.

Seriously, aren’t all serial killers/rapists supposed to appear really friendly? This guy tried way to hard to impress me:

1. He says he used to teach fourth grade: Blatant attempt at making me trust him.
2. He disparages other people for not being friendly: Blatant attempt to make me feel special. (I just feel creeped out.)
3. He says he used to volunteer teaching English at Chinatown: Blatant attempt to appeal to common ground
4. He talks about drinking and smoking cigars: Blatant attempt at looking cool.
5. He says his students used to play in his backyard: Blatant attempt at making everything seem normal.

But it’s NOT normal! Not when he’s standing one foot away from me, and I’m pinned against the wall trying to get away from him. Not when I’m scared to go to the bathroom alone because I think he might attack me. Not when he keeps looking back at me during the movie. Not when he tries to teach me how to close the door by breathing down my neck.

Steff! You must come and protect me next week—I’m almost afraid to set foot in the Brattle in case I meet that creepy man again.

Am I being a cynical bitch or am I being sensible? How do you get rid of unwanted stalkers?

This is one of those days when I’m glad not to have a myspace or livejournal or a functioning xanga. Shit. Internet stalking is too easy.

A Brush with Royalty

Breakfast with Peter. Tea with Elizabeth.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of mass media is how easily stories are now shared. With the flip of a page or the click of a mouse, intimate portraits of centuries-old monarchs are accessible to even the proletarian masses. As a girl, I was always entranced by the grandiose tales of kings and queens and love and war. Who could not be roused with such stories of sacrifice, of love, of betrayal—of legend? There is a trend in history to deconstruct these legendary icons and paint them as ordinary people in extraordinary situations. But with Peter and Elizabeth, however, we only see that they are in fact Great.

Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie
Progress update: Page 216 / 855. In a true test of endurance, I have managed to plod through a full ¼ of the mammoth tome. Actually, it is unfair to attribute it to endurance because Peter the Great is surprisingly readable and guess what—enjoyable. Peter, infallibly curious, daring and hot-tempered, is the type of guy that you might actually want to spend 800+ pages reading about. The book is painstaking researched (at least I hope it is, I don’t want to spend my summer reading a bunch of lies) and well written.

Elizabeth (Kapur, 1998)
History is sacrificed for drama, and this is a good thing—for drama, I mean, certainly not for history. The myriad of historical accuracies is secondary in this finely acted historical drama because its actors utterly convince you that everything happened just as it does in the film. For all I know, hot Elizabethan men walked about in chest baring shirts. Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, and Joseph Fiennes make the most of their juiced up roles, and a multitude of actors I adore turn up in smaller roles—Fanny Ardant, Emily Mortimer, Daniel Craig, Vincent Cassel, Kelly MacDonald….But Elizabeth the queen is to England as Cate Blanchett is to Elizabeth the movie—it is only with Blanchett’s glorious performance as the Virgin Queen that the film has any power. It might as well be Cate the Great. B+

More Offside Musings

According to Erik Erikson (yes, that is his real name), there are 8 stages of psychosocial development, where each stage represents a unique psychosocial conflict. The 5th stage is adolescence (ages 12-20), and the central conflict is identity v. role confusion.

While I can’t speak for the validity of any psychological theories—they seem to pop up and get discredited every few decades—I do think that Erikson is right about adolescence. There are no people I respect more than those who have a clear sense of identity—a direction to guide them into the future. I used to snicker with disdain at people with such tunnel vision, but I think I have come to a point in life, in adolescence, where self-understanding becomes expected.

I’ve recently been fixated on this search for identity because the emptiness of summer vacation lends itself to such contemplation. Due to the lack of chores, I’ve been wasting a lot of time on the Internet, where I was prompted today to “get a profile.” I’ve always felt that profiles are a cheap and lazy way to define yourself. Some cutesy phrases and emoticons plus a list of favorites hardly touch on your true character. Perhaps I’ve being overly lofty, but if you can distill yourself into such a description, then you are a shallow person indeed. I don’t think it’s possible, which is why I have always been reluctant to do it to myself.

Since Erikson says my most important responsibility is to find an identity, I’m off to do that now. But where to start? I don’t expect a sudden epiphany one day. I’m off to live life then. Carpe diem.

An Open Letter to the Male Parental Unit

Dad, I know that you read this blog. I know it because the Internet is not as anonymous as you think it is. What especially irks me is that you read it compulsively, but not openly. You do it in the clandestine corners of your office, and you won’t admit to it.

Well, now you see. I don’t converse with middle-aged pedophiles. I don’t trade in illegal substances. I don’t make money selling porn. I don’t plan criminal activities. And I don’t need to be monitored by you.

You probably think that I am closed off and aloof in person, and you want to “get to know” me better by peeking at my online ramblings. It doesn’t work that way. My Internet persona is vastly different from my real one, and if you think I’m losing touch with reality, let me assure you that I am only too painfully aware of reality and my part in it.

My blog is only a Polaroid snapshot: you get to see my face, but you only see one face, one pose, one angle. What is lost in translation is flesh and blood and soul. Yes, a photo of me is clearer than a fuzzy silhouette, but it is also more deceptive. You may think you know me, but what you know is a meticulously constructed façade that mimics, but never perfectly depicts me. I’m sure you understand how the Internet unites us across a physical distance but drives us apart on the emotional plane.

I ask that you respect me as a daughter, as a fellow human being, and stop reading because I ask you to. I seek a freedom to express without the stifling presence of a vigilante looking over my shoulder with every word. I ask you allow me that as I could easily pack up or kill this place altogether. I don’t want to play virtual hide-and-seek with you because it is annoying,frustrating and above all, it is for children.

P.S. Flippant attempts at being witty on the blog should not be interpreted as accurate psychological markers. See what I mean in saying the blog is deceptive? I only write about film so much because it’s easier; it’s less messy than real life. Filmmakers have already done the hardest job of distilling life into a tangible medium, and it’s easier to write about film than life in the same way it’s easier to eat French fries than raw potatoes. Just because I eat more French fries doesn’t mean I think it’s healthy.

Thoreau Lives at the Brattle Gym!

The summer's been going swell. I've sweated 10 liters of salty liquid, fixed my brother's light saber 5 times, and moved 200 lbs of laminate flooring into the basement. The numbers don't tell the complete story, but my summer's been going swell.

Saturday brought the first day of Brattle volunteering and an opportunity to explore Harvard Square. As many times as I've been there--I even used to live in Cambridge--I've never actually explored the place. I had never wandered into foreign language book shops, never walked down the stairs to obscure basement CD stores named Twisted Village, never touched every single bead at Beadworks. Lunch, however, was an obscenely expensive sandwich split with Steff and the pigeons at Au Bon Pain. (Scary coincidence: I saw my English project stalkee again.) After a stroll through the Harvard campus, I almost want to go to Harvard, just to soak in that ambience and explore all those remaining nooks and crannies.

As for the volunteering, it must be the best-paid, most laid-back volunteer job I have ever taken. Not only is the work minimal, but I also get to watch free movies, eat/drink free food, and get free movie passes. Plus I got to meet the director of the film--pretty cool!

Some weekend web surfing led me to a rabid Wes Anderson fan site. When I say rabid, I mean RABID. I think I've found my people with them, but the girls (I'm guessing) there were obsessive to a point that far surpasses even my obsessiveness. Point? Dude looks really good in black and white.

I spent most of Sunday bonding with my family at Walden Pond. My mom, brother, and I took a hike around the pond and saw what was left of Thoreau's famed cabin. The term "what was left" is applied very loosely here because, quite frankly, nothing is left. It was simply a pile of rocks assembled as a memorial and then a plaque marking a stone of Thoreau's house. Disappointing, Thoreau, disappointing. You should have built your cabin better.

Today, I started summer gym. There seems to be an excessive number of students this year so we didn't get to pick our classes. :( I got stuck with my elementary gym teacher who is surprisingly hardcore. Oh why did I pay $150 just so I could write a paper for gym class? Sigh.

Filmic Update: The Squid and the 28 Secretaries Inside

As I predicted, Netflix and movie-watching have taken over my life. I present you proof of my existence:

The Squid and the Whale (Baumbach, 2005)
So painful it’s funny; so funny it’s painful. The Squid and the Whale is the best movie I’ve seen all year. Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical take on his parent’s divorce is brimming with pointed barbs, bravely mocking the very intellectual audience that the film appeals to. The opening sequence of the family tennis match perfectly establishes the family dynamic in a matter of minutes—older son Walt and pompous dad Bernard vs. younger son Owen and mother Joan. This intimate, character-driven dramedy cuts a clear slice of life with its keen insight and sharp wit. It’s one of those movies that make loving movies worthwhile. A

P.S. I don’t understand why people keep comparing The Squid and the Whale with The Royal Tenenbaums. As much as I adore Wes Anderson, he can have all of his funky costumes, anamorphic lens, and big budgets, but he has yet to touch the poignancy of Squid’s biting realism.

28 Days Later (Boyle, 2003)
Honestly, I’m not usually one for zombie movies—schlock horror has never appealed to me beyond “Let’s get scared for Halloween.” But 28 Days Later, directed by the genre-hopping Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, is a genuine fright that electrified me for two hours. The gritty DV gives the film an eerie realism, especially during the shots of an empty London. Cillian Murphy’s blue eyes reflect the startling terror that permeates this multi-layered film. B+

Secretary (Shainberg, 2002)
Love with a kinky twist—that’s the premise of the dark S&M comedy Secretary. Maggie Gyllenhaal gamely turns into the shy Lee Holloway, who returns from a stint at the mental institution to work for James Spader’s domineering lawyer Mr. Grey. Secretary is an office romance that works out better than it should, picking up the dark and the funny but never passing judgment. It’s a bit too bare bones, but the inspired art design and costumes give it a wholly original weight. B

The Sea Inside (Amenábar, 2004)
Melodrama is at tricky genre, and director Alejandro Amenábar fails to temper the melodrama of The Sea Inside into a good movie. About quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro’s struggle to die with dignity, the film hardly focuses on the psychology of the man himself, instead settling to manufacture drama out of Ramón’s surrounding friends and family. Some stunning cinematography hardly makes up for the inert and lifeless direction. D+

I Heart Huckabees (Russell, 2004)

Tell me the significance of this coincidence: I’ve watched 3 random movies recently—Shopgirl, Rushmore, and now I Heart Huckabees—all featuring actor Jason Schwartzman. And in all three movies, Schwartzman has played a lovable schmuck with bad hair and less-than-desirable professions.

The lovable schmuck played by Schwartman in I Heart Huckabees, Albert Markovski, also stumbles on a puzzling coincidence. After meeting a tall African man at three chance encounters, Albert decides to take his case to Jaffe & Jaffe (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman), a husband and wife team of existential detectives.

Existential what? Yes, detectives. This is where we know that David O. Russell’s soup and nuts existential comedy I Heart Huckabees is as just as well soupy and nutty. As the existential detectives pry into Albert to find the meaning of his life, we see his quixotic quest to save a swamp from the evil denizens of Huckabee’s, a Wal-Mart like corporate bulldozer. Along the way, the script also throws in a depressed firefighter lecturing on the evils of petroleum (Mark Wahlberg), a French philosopher/sexpot (Fanny Ardant) Huckabee’s golden boy and Albert’s nemesis Brad Stand (Jude Law), and his ditzy girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts), who also happens to Huckabee’s spokeswoman.

The characters’ tangential importance in Albert’s life is well…tangential, but they’re here because, as Jaffe and Jaffe claims, “Everything is connected.” Too bad this disparate movie itself can’t figure out exactly how they’re connected. Add in monkey sex in the mud, whacking faces with balls, an Amish bonnet, (deliberately) cheesy special effects, and here we have a movie drowning in the kitchen sink.

Only Jude Law and Naomi Watts manage to stay half afloat in this messy puddle. As Jaffe and Jaffe continue their poking, Brad’s life begins spiraling downward, much to Albert’s schadenfraudelicious delight. Even with a shoddy American accent and a bad dye job, not to mention fake breasts and a long blonde wig in one scene, Law exudes enough charisma to almost give this movie a reason to exist. Watts provides the only other perk in this otherwise dull comedy as the hopelessly ditzy Dawn, who turns on the frump after an encounter with Jaffe and Jaffe. “You can’t deal with the infinite nature of my existence,” shouts Dawn in an Amish bonnet and overalls. “Yes, I can…Wait, what do you mean” answers Brad. The titter tat between this seemingly golden couple is the only comedy find you’re going to mine at Huckabees.

There are some other cheap laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of the situations, but none of the wit you would expect from such a highbrow concept. Or maybe those lightning fast one-liners were witty, but they are thrown out with such blasé that they hardly lingered in the air. Huckabees is light on characters and heavy on philosophy, or at least the name-dropping of it. But for a movie about philosophy, it sure doesn’t provoke much thought.
I
n keeping with its peek-a-boo narrative, Huckabees doesn’t tell us the meaning of life; it doesn’t even tell us the meaning of Albert’s coincidence. As for my coincidence of watching Jason Schwartman films, let’s just say there is no significance, just as I Heart Huckabees has none either. But perhaps Russell wanted to make an inane and absurd comedy about the inanity and absurdity of philosophical musings. In that case: Bravo, you’ve made a good point. Now make a good movie.

Summer Bitchin'

Hah, life has depressed into another one of those summer lulls. My body has been taken hostage by a full bout of inert forces, turning me into a lumpy potato. Ambulatory matters become ones of exertion. Funny how I used to feel that summer days dragged on and on because now I look back each night and think, "Where did my day go?" The clock ticks and the pendulum swings as I sit aimlessly browsing the Internet.

Having received my report card, I can finally cleanse my hands of junior year--a year mostly unremarkable now that I think about it. It didn't kill me, nor tickle me, nor amuse me. It was just there. To my utmost surprise, I managed to scrape an A- in English, a feat I had previously deemed impossible. My dad looked at my report card and gave a look of relief, "You haven't gotten any B's ever, right?" Whatever, I get the distinct feeling that my dad knows my grades much better than I do.

A pile of library DVDs, 5 boxes high, sits next to my bed away from the prying eyes of my parents. Sigh, how will I ever get through them and still be content with reality? Netflix is being really shitty about logging my returned DVDs; I beginning to experience that wonderful thing called "throttling." I need to give them a bitch call once I find their phantom customer service number.

AP Psych class slides deeper and deeper into oblivion and uselessness. For my next assignment, I'm supposed to give on example of why I am in to the Genital Stage of Freud's psychosexual development. Why is CTY telling us, a assembled group of geeks and nerds, to spill our sex lives?