 The Very Best of Choruses |
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Just one of the many reasons I love my sister is the way she will call me while walking through the streets late one night in New York City after just seeing Avenue Q and telling me that it was not as good as it was when we saw it together, stumbling into the lobby of a luxury hotel she's being put up in by a high-powered law firm in her jeans, fleece sweatshirt, and sneakers, dropping all of her pennies and whispering into the cell phone that she thinks everyone knows she's not paying to stay there. And she'll explain to me how she was taken to an insanely fancy lunch that cost $500 for three people and when she got back to the hotel she noted that there was a pillow menu in this room she's staying in that costs $498 per night and she sputtered in a most exasperated manner, "It's so ridiculous. They give us a pillow menu when all we really want is a fucking vending machine." Then she read aloud the choices on the pillow menu, and I could not breathe for the laughter. There are pillows that are supposed to prevent snoring and pillows that help relax the facial bones and pillows that hold your hairdo intact. But there's no damn vending machine when a girl just wants a damn Snickers or some Cheez-Its. God! Everwood is still such a great show. Now that Joan of Arcadia is gone, it's really the only show that I truly care about watching. It pains me deeply to say this, but I think that Veronica Mars and I are not as in love as we once were. I just can't get into it like I did last year. I'm still watching it every week and hoping to be moved or excited by it, but it hasn't happened yet. I know. I know! It's very sad. I'm still watching The Amazing Race out of some kind of sick loyalty to it even though I'm not crazy about the family edition or any of the families themselves -- although, admittedly, I do love those damn Gaghan kids a-plenty. But back to Everwood -- it's really Bright who's killing me this year. Bright! The evolution of this character has been beautiful to behold. (And now I'm going to type this in spoiler code because I evidently spoiled Veronica Mars for a reader in Iceland who's only on season one. Whoops.) Okay, scroll over the white space to read the Everwood discussion: When Ephram admitted to his dad that the reason he came back to Everwood is he's still in love with Amy, my heart almost flew out of my chest. And it would have, too, if it weren't so busy trying not to get broken in advance for the way that I suppose Bright is going to break up with Hannah. I am totally unspoiled for this show and don't want to know if he does or not, but it just seems like he's going to. And it pains me. I really really like Hannah, and I love the changes and goodness and maturing she's brought about in Bright. I don't blame the guy for wanting to have sex, but I wish somehow this rift could be overcome. I guess it can't. And that sucks. I still love him, though, because even though he's doing it, probably, he feels bad about it. And he does love her, really. I believe that. Also, is Amy getting skinnier by the week or what? She is still beautiful. And so good. There's really not a weak link on this entire show. I have never been a huge Nina fan and don't really care about her story or that of Jake, which is sad considering how fantastic Scott Wolf is, but there's just really no point to that character even though his interactions with Edna were really great last week. And I don't think that the guy Amy likes is foxy at all, but I can see why she would be attracted to him basically because he's the opposite of Ephram. If Ephram had broken up with Amy by saying, look, the overbite-afflicted ho who mothered my child gave him up for adoption without informing me and my dad was complicit in the deception and holy crap I love you more than life but I am wholly fucked in the head right now and can't be what you need and must run away to Europe, I can see why she might be open to forgiving him and taking him back. But instead he said that he always knew they wouldn't be together forever which was (a) unnecessarily hurtful and (b) a big fat lie. So Ephram can suck it, and I hope Amy has lots of affairs with lots of cute guys who are better than Ephram. Which will be difficult, I know. Because Ephram really is still awesome even though he broke Amy's heart. This show is so good.) Maryelizabeth and I had plans to go to our favorite sushi restaurant the other night that were thwarted by some deranged lunatic in a green Pontiac who almost ran me off the road en route to the restaurant and also ended up going to the restaurant and acting like an escaped mental patient in the parking lot. So we opted to flee to the Chinese buffet instead, and I wish someone had thwarted that plan, too, because -- gross. I mean, buffets are just gross by definition, and we forced ourselves not to look around because the clientele were horrifying and the surroundings were just kind of grotesque. I spent more time than was probably reasonable this weekend reading The Goose Girl, which Melissa sent. It was so good. I loved it. It was the first book I've read in a while that I literally could not put down. It really brought me back to the Prydain Chronicles and Deerskin and everything I love in books like that … kings and queens and princes and princesses and swords and connections with animals and kingdoms and queendoms and unexpected heroes and heroines and a little bit of magic thrown in for good measure. I actually had to put it down a few times because I was overcome and I would exclaim, "I refuse to believe this is happening!" But then I would have to pick it back up right away because I had to know what was going to happen. I just saw that there's a companion book called Enna Burning, which I must surely get soon. I have a huge pile of books by my bedside … some from Melissa, some from Colleen, some from Kymm … I can't wait to make my way through them. Although, come to think of it, I already finished one from Kymm … Operating Instructions, which was unsurprisingly wonderful in every single possible way. This weekend we watched Ben Folds and Ray LaMontagne on Austin City Limits. We discovered Ray LaMontagne thanks to Corina, who sent me his CD and told me she knew I would love him. Corina has pretty much never been wrong when sending me music she thinks I'll love. My sister and I owe our beloved eastmountainsouth to her, just to name one. Anyway. I passed Ray on to my boyfriend, and we have since been like, whoa. Ray. Ray is divine. But I'd never seen his picture or seen him perform until Austin City Limits, and he was just beyond excellent. His soulfulness and his depth were only magnified by the utter clown that Ben Folds was, retardedly directing the audience to sing along and singing these dumbass songs about his kids, just cementing for me the idea that songs that people write about their kids should be confined to the nursery. They're sweet and simple and so full of love, but they just sound kind of barferoo when shared with the world at large. So -- Ben Folds did not impress. And I say this as someone who's loved a Ben Folds song or two in her life. And then ... then came Ray. And Ray was everything that goofy Ben Folds was not. He was intense. He was quiet and reserved and wholly present in every moment, every word, every chord played, every breath. He inhabited his songs and they inhabited him, and maybe you'd have to see it to understand it. His CD plays in a way that is haunting and aching and gorgeous, to be sure, but to actually see this thin, drawn, bearded man who just looks so beaten by life and so sorrowful in a way and to watch as that unbelievable voice comes out of that man -- wow. I really think that Ray might be a tortured genius. I want to learn more about him. I really cannot recommend his CD highly enough. And now I am sitting here listening to Eva Cassidy singing "Over the Rainbow" and it's so beautiful that it almost makes me crawl out of my skin. Especially how she sings "that's where you'll find me." I think my dad of all people first told me about Eva Cassidy. Goddamn. Thanks, Dad. And now a gorgeous live version of "Carolina in My Mind" by James Taylor and the Dixie Chicks of all people. I'm telling you, it's lovely. And it makes me think of listening to James Taylor in my older brother's old room, which is now my dad's study and of my summers in Carolina and how I'm still quite frankly going to Carolina in my mind sometimes. How did anyone ever live in a world without mp3s? How? There are worse ways to spend a Saturday than lying in the grass in the sunshine enjoying a root beer float with your lover at a festival in a city that loves festivals maybe more than any city on earth, ever. There is still so much that is fucked up in this city and so much that needs to be fixed and so many people who are still gone, but some people are still there. And they showed up and drank beer and bought t-shirts and ate that festival food in cardboard or tissue paper that always ends up falling apart while you're eating it but it's okay because here's some lemonade and people dressed up in crazy costumes and the river is still floating by like it always has and some things can still be normal sometimes. Right? Right. And then you can walk past some very stinky refrigerators sealed up with duct tape and some people sitting on their front porches with their dogs on probably the cutest Uptown street you've ever seen to that old pizza place your sister took you to and you can wave away the flies and eat some damn good pizza with four different kinds of cheese on top. And in this little way, life is goes on. Life is going on. And I will listen to and sing along with Dar Williams singing "Better Things" yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and in my heart I will be singing to all of the people with no homes and no jobs and no hope. I will try to have, with my cushy little life with an abundance of such things as pizza and the WB and cats and dogs and hot showers and kissin' and lovin' and money to blow at the Gap outlet store on a Friday night, enough hope for all of us.
About this time in ...
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