Places I Could Retire To

Jonestar challenged me recently on a bold statement of mine: “You could never last in Hawaii. You’d get bored after 2 weeks. You’d get lonely!” I countered that teaching has made me something of a misanthropist; I still stand by that statement.

That said, I’ve always had this vision of myself as an old lady, living at the end of the world somewhere. Maybe that place was a remote, tropical island like Tahiti or the Azores or somewhere in the milky turquoise waters of the Indian Sea. Maybe it was the Skeleton Beach of Namibia. Maybe it was the American West or the Australian Outback. Either way, I do not think I will live in a city my whole life; to do so would be incredibly limiting, I think, and certainly not in line with my Romanticist ideals of negative space. Here is a list of places that I’ve visited that seem to strike a nice balance between the two extremes:

1. Newport, RI
2. Mackinac Island, MI
3. Galena, IL
4. Savannah, GA
5. Rincon, PR
6. Marfa, TX (so I haven’t visited here, but I’d like to)
7. New Hope, PA

Looks Like I’m Pretty White

1. I was an usher at the Roger Ebert Forgotten Film Festival 2 years in a row and interned for the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival.

2. Voted for him.

3. My favorite movie in high school was Rushmore.

4. I’m half one.

5. I’m in Teach For America.

6. I have it twice a day.

7. Have you met my good friend and roommate Mike Teezy? I would link to his blog here…but it doesn’t exist.

8. I was identified as one.

9. All the way through college, baby.

10. I’ve been to England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

11. I majored in creative writing.

12. AKA, Making Time.

13. Thanks to an awesome 3rd grade teacher, I could spot the difference between a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright while still in the single digits.

14. What else could you watch at 11pm?

15. Some of my faves in Philadelphia: Honey’s Sit ‘n’ Eat, Cafe Lift, 4th Street Deli…

16. Every time I go home, my parents’ house has a new floor/missing wall/deck/room addition/basement.

17. Once you go Mac, you never go back.

18. Last album heard in my car: Vampire Weekend.

19. Last thing I ordered out.

20. A really good Friday evening at UIUC involved getting nice and woozy at Murphy’s for happy hour right after class, stopping at home for some food, and then heading over to the Armory Free Theater’s black box space to watch my roommates talk about their vaginas or watch naked dudes hump fake horses.

21. Some other favorite restaurants in Philly: Buddakan, Pod, the Continental…

22. My other major is in English Literature.

23. Where else can I stock up on Vanill’Almondo? And have you HAD their queso dip. Don’t get me started on the weekend cheese samples.

24. A great way to make jokes that fly over the heads of teenagers.

25. My DREAM.

26. Hopefully you know me well enough to know that no more needs to be said on this topic.

27. Once a professor called me out on this during a conference in her office.

28. Did I mention I did Teach For America?

29. My daily lunch.

30. What, like your parents aren’t?

31. If you do not like Eternal Sunshine you are a bad, bad person.

32. I alternate between these and tea.

33. MS of Ed, biatches!

34. You just can’t relate to Angela Chase without them. And if you can’t relate to Angela Chase, you can’t picture yourself making out with Jordan Catalano, and that’s no fun.

35. I took it a step further and actually lived with them.

36. And ever since iTunes has refused to reimburse me for the expansive music collection I lost when my laptop crashed 2 months ago, looks like I might just have to go back to this.

37. My running shoes. So comfy.

38. I probably buy like 3-4 a year. But for the love of God, unless you really are pro-Palestine, THROW YOUR DAMN KEFFIYEH AWAY. That is a message to every goddamn hipster in NoLibs and Fishtown.

39. That’s an MS of Ed from UPenn, the party school of the Ivy League. Or is that Cornell? I don’t know, I chose to go to STATE SCHOOL for my undergrad.

How white are you?

Things That Have Permanently Fucked Me Up But For Good

• Orientalism by Edward Said
• “The Madwoman in the Attic” by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
• …and pretty much all the rest of feminist literary theory I had to study in college
• The Color of Fear
• …the rest of TFA’s diversity training
• …and the rest of my TFA experience
• W.E.B. DuBois
• the poetry of Aurora Levins Morales
• Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldua

Items On My Possible 5-10 Year Plan

• Go to policy school

• Join the Peace Corps

• Go to law school

• Apply to New Leaders For New Schools

• Move to the Pacific Northwest

• Move to Amsterdam

• Move to Finland (supposedly the best school system in the world)

• Apply for a recruitment position with Teach For America

• Apply to a big ginormous consulting firm

• Apply to TeachFirst

…thoughts?

I Wouldn’t Kick Them Out Of Bed

• Joaquin Phoenix

• Andy Samberg

• Bill Hader

• Christian Bale

• Ryan Gosling

• Paul Rudd

• Christopher Meloni

• Hugh Grant

If I Did Acid, This Mix Would Probably Make Me See A Lot of Pretty Colors

• Scissor Sisters, “Transistor”
• Jeff Buckley, “Dream Brother”
• Ian Brown, “Solarize”
• Jane’s Addiction, “Kettle Whistle”
• Delerium, “Flowers Become Screens”
• My Morning Jacket, “Gideon”
• Air, “Sexy Boy”
• Panda Bear, “Comfy in Nautica”
• The Beatles, “Tomorrow Never Knows”
• Smashing Pumpkins, “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans”
• The Black Angels, “Empire”
• Soundgarden, “Black Hole Sun”
• Dave Matthews Band, “Don’t Drink the Water”
• Lawrence of Arabia, theme
• Led Zeppelin, “Kashmir”
• Devendra Banhart, “Be Kind”
• The Doors, “Five to One”
• Fiona Apple, “Across the Universe”
• Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize?”
• Fleetwood Mac, “Gold Dust Woman”
• Gomez, “How We Operate”
• Polyphonic Spree, “Light & Day/Reach For the Sun”
• RJD2, “Silver Fox”
• Spiritualized, “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space”

If This Song Comes On Your iTunes, We’re Making Out

• Broken Social Scene, “Anthems For a Seventeen Year Old Girl”
• Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Jamais”
• CocoRosie, “Promise”
• The Cure, “Pictures of You”
• Feist, “One Evening”
• Hot Chip, “Boy From School”
• Imogen Heap, “Closing In”
• Iron and Wine & Calexico, “Burn That Broken Bridge”
• John Coltrane & Miles Davis, “In a Sentimental Mood”
• Joy Division, “Atmosphere”
• Kings of Convenience, “Misread”
• The Knife, “Heartbeats (Live)”
• Malcolm McLaren, “About Her”
• Massive Attack, “Protection”
• Mazzy Star, “Into Dust”
• Miles Davis, “Flamenco Sketches (Alternate Take)”
• My Morning Jacket, “Wordless Chorus”
• Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right”
• OneRepublic, “Apologize (Timbaland Remix)”
• Peter Bjorn and John, “The Chills”
• Postal Service, “Recycled Air”
• Portishead, “Glory Box”
• Skye, “Stop Complaining”
• The Smiths, “How Soon Is Now”
• Stars, “Heart”

Songs Played Last Night at Making Time (That I Can Remember)

1.  !!!, “Must Be the Moon”

2.  The Rapture, “Get Myself Into It”

3.  New Order, “Temptation”

4.  Technotronic, “Pump Up the Jam”

5.  LCD Soundsystem, “North American Scum”

6.  Hot Chip, “Over and Over”

7.  New Order, “Bizarre Love Triangle”

8.  Arcade Fire, “Neighborhood #2″

Summer is half-over.

What I want to do before I start work in mid-August again…

• visit the Brookfield Zoo
• visit Millennium Park
• get ice cream from Franklin Fountain
• Decemberists concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Center
• visit another Stephen Starr restaurant with Matt
• attend a modern jazz class at Koresh Studios
• complete my New England road trip, including another stop by Newport, RI
• Guster/Ben Kweller concert
• English Beat/Matisyahu concert
• Destroy my liver at the Khyber on Sunday night one last time with the old crew
• high tea at the Rittenhouse Hotel
• day trip to Pennsylvania’s Amish country
• Atlantic City…of course
• Jersey Shore…of course (preferably someplace less crowded than Ocean City, this time)
• First Friday
• more brunches at Cafe Lift
• more trips to the Italian Market
• road trip to North Carolina/D.C.
• visit the Mutter Museum
• watch the Perseid meteor shower
• Fiona Apple concert
• more Quizzo
• Camera Obscura concert
• The Format concert
• learn golf
• play some tennis
• horseback riding

I don’t know why I can’t stop watching, but I just can’t look away

If any of these are ever on and I have a lot of shit to get done, someone please just take the remote away from me.

*Dirty Dancing

*Murder By Numbers

*Rules of Attraction

*The Starter Wife

*The Ninth Gate

*Showgirls