“Cannes is in the Can!” “Don't can Cannes!” “French Can Can-Can all the Way To Cannes!” Etc.

OMG Cannes Film Festival is here! What do I really know about Cannes? Do I know what films are premiering? What the adjudication process is? How valuable a good Cannes reception is, anyway? I know absolutely nothing about any of these things! Why am I so excited about Cannes? Just look at all the famous people! Oh, the famous people. They're emerging from boats! They're defiantly killing thousands of birds for their latest ensemble! They are eating hors d'oeuvres from the taught, nude bodies of men named Sebastian who are really just trying to work their way through art school but wouldn't say no to giving John Travolta a $300 dollar hand job! $300 for a hand job?! YES! IT'S CANNES!

If you're shocked by my suggestion that John Travolta would be soliciting French hand jobs from nubile bodied 25-year-old men, then Cannes probably doesn't mean much to you. I pity you. I'm sorry you still think John Travolta is a happily married man. I mean, really? Did you ever even see “Grease?” I digress, though. If you are, however, a person who fantasizes about eventually being employed to shampoo, comb, and delicately scent all the fine, human-hair wigs kept in John Travolta's New Zealand Wig House (a house John keeps exclusively for his collection of wigs used to convince the Oprah audience he is a virile, hair covered, heterosexual), then I bet you, too, love this Film Festival. Cannes is, almost undeniably, a pageant of unbridled vanity and excess, a despicable singularity wherein all the worst traits of western society parade around in clothes that cost more money than any yearly salary I could hope make during the entirety of my life. And that's why I am so obsessed. Do I think that such a display heralds the inevitable downfall of civilization as we know it? Absolutely yes! I also believe that the scenes we see in Cannes are roughly the same sort of celebration that goes on among the upper echelons of Satan's followers; you know: fancy clothes and big parties and overindulgence in the sexual acts and pooping the bed. I believe celebrities, as a group, are probably notorious bed-poopers. What's not to love?

Oh, it's Adrian Brody. I wonder what he's promoting? Probably, he's not promoting anything. I used to really like Adrian Brody; he just sort of seemed like an eccentric, lanky Jew, which, in my opinion, is a likable thing to be. Lately, though, I dunno. He just seems a bit unhinged, anymore, doesn't he? I'm not really sure what's going on in Brody's life these days, but would it shock me if underground Berlin sex clubs were involved? No, it would not shock me. It would not shock me to discover that Adrian Brody performs under the name of Fritz in some sort of sick, German erotic Cabaret. Ugh, Germany just seems the weirdest, doesn't it? Also, with the beard, I realize that Adrian Brody bears a startling resemblance to a neighbor of ours growing up. This neighbor was one of those creepy baptists, if you know what I mean. I bet you know what I mean. Like, he belonged to one of those churches that called themselves “Eternal Light of the Flame Fundamentalist Advent Baptists” which seem to have no affiliation with the actual Baptist church and which require that all skirts be knee-length and yet, all of their daughters seem to get pregnant before sixteen. Yes, this is what Adrian Brody looks like: my weird Baptist neighbor growing up who was also an avid bow hunter. I also don't like the hat. This whole fedora thing has gotten really out of control. So, Adrian Brody: I'm just not sure. That's all I can say. I'm just filled with hesitation and confusion. Do you think Adrian Brody's death will involve autoerotic asphyxiation or an adult swing?

Here are Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas: two people widely deemed attractive. Antonio Banderas has always had a sort of uncomfortable “Here I am, Moms who serve wine coolers to your children because you'd rather have them drinking at home than out god-knows-where, please devour my image in a manner which is sexual and yet not entirely threatening to your husbands. I'm Spanish!” kind of a vibe, but I actually think he looks pretty good here. The short hair is definitely an improvement, so good for you, Antonio! The outfit is a bit too Cialis-commercial for my tastes, and the necklace: yeesh! But whatever, he's Antonio Banderas. I imagine if you're married to Melanie Griffith you spend a lot of your time together dressed in matching denim outfits, letting her ride on the back of your motorcycle all the way to the glorious beaches of Santa Monica. I'm fine with that. As for Salma: is it just me or do her boobs look smaller? That's probably a totally anti-feminist thing for me to be noticing, but I mean, just objectively, without any sexual or male gaze-ing intent, does not her boobage look reduced? I'm sure that this Little Shop of Horrors bolero thing is probably skewing the perspective, bust-wise. I get that the choice of bolero and red leather are probably a nod to being a saucy Latina, but, gurl, you lookin' wack. Listen, if you're going to go with a tube dress and wicked rose shrug, then you might as well have either gone all out and worn a vintage Bob Mackie purchased from a private Cher auction or just relaxed and worn some crimson wrap from Diane Von Furstenberg. I said that wrap dress thing as a joke, but now that I think about it, wouldn't it have been nice? Just some high thread count, cotton wrap dress which flattered the boobs (which are totally wasted in this getup) designed by free-spirited DVF? It would have looked so nice when posed against the denim security of your friend, Antonio. And you could have just worn your hair down, maybe slightly mussed. Hell, put some kind of tropical flower in it if you want, but this, this is just--overwrought. And also, don't you get the impression from this photo that it's rather warm out? And here Salma is, dressed in pleather sausage casing and Michael's entire stock of red silk flowers. And where is the cleavage?!

Oh my God, I think I'm in love with Uma Thurman. I think I've always been in love with Uma Thurman, but just look at her! Uma Thurman always seems like she just rolls out of bed, looking all dewy and says to herself “Oh, I've got to go to Cannes today. What a bore! I guess I'd better pick something out to wear. Oh, this old thing will do” and then she just sort of pins her hair up with little effort and puts on a quick slick of lip gloss before dashing out the door and bam! This. I feel like, were you to meet Uma Thurman, you'd find yourself unexpectedly having a very lovely conversation about yoga and the finer points of Eastern religions during which she'd laugh delicately and touch your arm, gently, several times with a jingle of exotic silver bracelets. Normally, I can't stand people who talk about yoga and Eastern religion in casual conversation, but with Uma it would totally just be so lovely. I also like her lean in this photograph. I realize she's probably leaning because she is three-and-a-half feet taller than Jude Law and Robert DeNiro, but with any other celebrity this sort of pose would result in instant schlubbo. And yet, Uma manages to look as though she's just so self-aware and effortless. Let's compare the way she is wearing her Dolce and Gabbana to whatever Haunted Flower Crisis that was that Salma made the mistake of donning. I mean, obviously Salma Hayek is a gorgeous, admirably sassy lady, but just look at Uma! Meanwhile, Jude Law: you lookin' real old. It's time to just cut the hair short or shave it or buy a better hair piece or something. I'm sure you could visit the New Zealand Wig House for inspiration. The suit is very fine though, well-tailored and most likely covered in the varied secretions of Totally Very Talented Person, Sienna Miller. Then we have Robert DeNiro, fresh from the Focker Memorial Retirement Home. You know what, though? I am very sexually attracted to Robert DeNiro. Yes, even weird, doddering, old Robert DeNiro. I think DeNiro probably has a very tastefully decorated apartment and he looks like he's dressing for comfort which, fuck yeah, he's Robert DeNiro. DeNiro could show up in a heather gray Hanes sweatsuit with the elastic at the ankles while wearing a pair of Crocs and a fedora and I wouldn't have anything particularly negative to say. The man has acted in some of the greatest films of the past 30 years. Also his physique was awesome in “Taxi Driver” and, yes, I know he is playing a crazy person in that particular piece of cinema but, come on! Travis Bickle? You know that there was something really alluring about the whole screaming-at-oneself-in-a-mirror routine. I once got in an argument with my sister when she told me she felt most people were attracted to either Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro, almost never both, and she preferred Al Pacino by a long shot. This just seems wrong to me, as I have a feeling you'd find Robert Deniro awake and looking over the city skyline wistfully a lot when he thought you were sleeping and Al Pacino, who I also love, would just spend this time to down Danny DeVito's Limoncello and enjoy some manic yayo consumption.

I was going to post a photo of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie here, but then I remembered just how boring I find them. I miss the days of Angelina making out with her brother and practicing dark, blood-based rituals by night and sleeping with ladies. I also miss her days of boobs and probable heroin addiction. I know I should be happy that Angelina Jolie seems pretty stable, but, I dunno, she just seemed like one of my people before. A real weirdo. And now she's just so—ugh. And poor Brad. Poor, poor Brad. Did anyone else see those paparazzi photos which came out a while ago where Brad's in one of his Beard of Despair periods and he's wearing a hat and holding a nice camera and he just looks so, so sad? He looks like he's thinking about how, sometimes, at night, when everything is quiet, he just lays in the bed he shares with Angelina and thinks about how life doesn't feel quite right. He stares at the vaulted ceiling and considers how, maybe, if he had stayed in Oklahoma, it might not have been all bad. He could have become a producer of fine marijuana. Not a major dealer, mind you, more of a grower-with-a-conscience. Maybe he would have married a girl named Susie, or Trish. Trish wouldn't have asked for much but she would give good blow jobs and they'd have had a couple kids. Oh, things wouldn't be perfect. There would be fights. Trish would want him to get out of the business, the weed-growing business, and get a job at the plant in town. Really, though, all in all, they would be pretty happy. There would be presents at Christmas and he'd save up for that old camera that had been sitting in the pawn shop for years. This is all I can see when I look at photographs of Brad Pitt, anymore, so instead, we have a pic of some woman, Woody Allen and Rachel McAdams. Woody Allen looks the way Woody Allen always looks. I'm constantly torn between great affection for Woody and being taken well into CreepTown. Anyway, he looks fine. I don't expect Woody Allen to be dressed in a Bespoke suit and wearing contacts, so here he is. No idea who this brunette broad is, but the dress looks like a member of the Elaine Benes collection or the Haute Couture wear of My Closet at the Age of Ten. Rachel McAdams looks good as a blonde. This is pretty much the most interesting thing I can think of to say about Rachel McAdams. Rachel McAdams looks nice. She is wearing a white dress. Sometimes, Rachel Mcadams is an actress. Is Rachel McAdams a good actress? I have no idea. I sort of feel like I'm suffering hysterical blindness whenever I see her because she just kind of appears as a blank spot on my periphery. I guess Rachel McAdams is okay. Mostly what I know about Rachel McAdams is that her name is Rachel McAdams, so I'm just going to continue using that. Didn't she used to date Ryan Gosling? I've never seen “The Notebook” so this coupling means nothing to me. Ryan Gosling doesn't really rev my motor the way he seems to with a lot of ladies. I know people were all hot and bothered recently because when “Blue Valentine” originally got an NC-17 rating, our ol' pal Ryan put out a press release which was something along the lines of “Feminist paradigms modern America cunnilingus beauty of female pleasure misogynist pressure ratings comission white people” which is a good thing, I know. It's always great when famous people are willing to admit that ladies are people and sometimes they enjoy a good, respectful sexing, but I just couldn't get my panties wet over this. I mean, ladies, if you want to find a man under the age of thirty who will thrill you all night long with talk of gender roles in contemporary society, then I direct you to the campus of every liberal arts college in the country. Some of these men will even have Devil-may-care, Gosling-ite beards. You're welcome.


Ah, Cannes. Such glamor! Such magic! Such famous fecal residues amongst Egyptian cotton bed sheets! Perhaps, even now, Karl Lagerfeld is hosting a well-attended Champagne Yacht Party featuring gold jello dunking and “Name-That-Cookie!” These, of course, are indulgences which you and I could not possibly understand. Not even in the wildest imaginings of our stout, plebeian minds could we create a game as shockingly luxurious as “Name-That-Cookie!,” nor could we possibly visualize what, precisely, constitutes gold jello nor that which shall find itself dunked in it. Celebrities are different from you and I; they are rich and altogether genetically, physically and spiritually superior to us. The greatest gift of these blazing fame-columns is that they allow us to freely gaze upon them in all their twinkling glory. So, thank you, Cannes Film Festival and thank you, actors of supreme accomplishment. You are our gods, now.

Boy Beautiful

Boy George might be the nearest thing I have to a celebrity doppelganger. I didn't really realize my resemblance to Boy George until recently, but I've always felt a great passion for and kinship with the Boy. I find, more and more, myself dressing in Culture Club-era George-ish outfits. I've been drawn to Boy George since I was probably too little for the attraction to make much real sense. It began when I found an old “Colour By Numbers” vinyl in the flaking apple crate where my mom kept all of her records, allowing them to accumulate dust and feather at the edges. Yes, there were copies of “Thriller” and “Rumours,” most of the Elton John oeuvre and “Born to Run,” all of them albums I would eventually listen to repeatedly and to come love, but the cover which caught my attention first and came to occupy my imaginings most wholly was the candy-bright squiggle of that Culture Club record. I think I must have gasped when I first saw it. Sure, Stevie Nicks looked awfully witchy, maybe even distinctly magical, in her photograph, and Bruce looked hard and honest and Elton looked like the frothy occupant of a particularly zany Disney movie. And of course, Michael looked like Michael with a baby tiger, but, oh, Boy George. Boy George was beautiful. Back then, of course, I didn't know his name, but I knew he was important. The other band members were there, their photos also intensely saturated, captured cheerfully in bouncing little circles, but it was Boy George whose photo was the biggest, and it was Boy George whose photo looked like the glamor shot of a movie star. And not just any modern movie star but one from the golden era of film. I knew Boy George had more dazzle than a handful of Rita Hayworths or Carole Lombards before I knew these women to compare him with. This album, I decided, was the one for me.

That day, I took the weathered copy of Colour by Numbers to my mother for analysis and explanation. I wanted to know who this was and what it all meant, post haste. Mom seemed closely acquainted with the old cardboard square, and not particularly surprised that I would have been drawn to this, of all objects. She explained that the album had been sort of a gag gift to my brother as a young or perhaps even pre-teen. He, and my mother, had, however, both ended up liking it quite a bit. Culture Club was, she noted, very popular at the time, and Boy George had been something of a fashion icon. I wanted to know more about Boy George. Well, she told me the record was a good one, but, then, that wasn't what I wanted to know. I wanted to know about this Boy George, what sort of life he had, what shade of lipstick that was he was wearing. Mom informed me that this particular album, which had been very popular in its day and liked both by herself and my young brother, was made in the wake of broken romance. Oh, of course, yes. This made perfect sense to me. Though Boy George was powdered without flaw, he looked, also, sad and perhaps distant. Mom went on to say that the romance had been with the band's drummer, who she pointed out in one of the circles. This, too, made sense. The drummer was the band member I'd liked the least; he was handsome, but also greasy-looking. He would break a person's heart. And, well, he did break Boy George's heart, left him to marry a woman and then broke that engagement, too. And still, there was the album to write, both of them squished into the same little rooms, the sound of their voices echoing against the soundproofing. Boy George had written songs which, mom said, were about this experience. I demanded we take a listen.

There is, without doubt, something slightly unhinged about my unending attraction to music which manages to sound both chipper and tragic. I have lists of songs which, when played on the radio or heard in clothing stores, elicit little reaction from the general public other than, if generous, a disinterested head nod or smirk. These are works which make me feel as if I've entered into an exclusive club, that I've become one of the Special People, able to understand the true pathos, the real sadness, of their writers. Paul Simon's “You Can Call Me Al” is one of these: a nice, hopping little ditty which jaunts along, with a video which stars Chevy Chase leering and lip syncing goofily, and whose lyrics are all about fear of growing older and of mortality and a sense of futility at the speeding gallop of years. Oh, I've got plenty of these songs. If I were to make a mix of them, there would be all sorts of recognizable hits among the ranks. I could write an entire blog just about this strange categorization of mine, and maybe, one day, I will. Or, I could just direct you to the entirety of “Colour By Numbers.”

It was after my first listen to “Colour by Numbers” that I began building my own vision of Boy George's persona. I've always been a person who, when interested in a person for their art or music or work in film, becomes fascinated, also, in the person themselves. I am drawn to these characters because of the lives I imagine for them, lives I base only loosely on the bits of their real lives I read or hear about. Mostly, I create their existence based on what I see as the image wavering through their work. I checked Boy George's Wikipedia page before writing this blog, just to make sure I didn't get anything to terribly wrong, and I saw the following quote from the man himself “People have this idea of Boy George now, particularly the media: that I’m tragic, fucked up. I mean, I’m all those things, but I’m also lots of other things. Yes, I’ve had my dark periods, but that isn’t all I am.” I felt, upon seeing this, a little wriggling of guilt, because my picture of Boy George, the one that drew me to him so strongly, is the picture which dominated “Colour by Numbers.” This was a person I could relate to, a sad person singing over cheerful tunes. As Boy George's voice strained over the songs on my brother's old album, I sensed a kindred spirit. Sure, Boy George was dancing through his videos and drawing his eyebrows to perfection, but something else was cracking through. He was trying his best, but, still, he was troubled.

By high school, I'd learned that Boy George was born in a small Irish town where he never fit in, where maybe he'd even be treated with cruelty. This was something I understood, being, myself, from a small town where I didn't feel I'd ever really fit in. I admired George's flamboyance; when I felt ready to cave in, I'd listen to “Colour by Numbers” and continue to dress and act in the way I wanted, the way which caused me to be labeled a weirdo. After all, George had survived it. I'd learned, too, about his drug problems. The drugs made sense to me. Boy George, I thought, probably felt a lot like me. Boy George remained a kindred spirit. He wore those extravagant outfits and was noticed, yet he wanted to fade away. Boy George wanted to be himself, yet couldn't stand himself at all. As I wandered through my adolescence I kept tabs on George's latest happenings. I longed for his happiness with the same intensity which I longed for my own. I hoped, for George, a life of quiet contentment, the sort of life I figured both of us assumed we'd never attain.

When I heard the news of Boy George's assault on a male escort, about how he had dragged the man and chained him to the wall, the man only able to escape after pulling a bolt free, I was, perhaps shockingly, not shocked. My sentiments were, immediately, with the victim of such a horrible crime. Boy George had never exactly been a role model to me, so I wasn't crushed by this revelation. I'd always known George as a troubled man with a troubled life. George was like an uncle I loved and related to while knowing that, even as he had been victim to bad things, he was capable of inflicting bad things himself. While I was almost certain George deserved jail time, perhaps even more than he actually served, in some way I mourned for him. I mourned for the loss of his former beauty, the bloated and pale frame he presented at trial, how ill he looked. I mourned that George had once been young and now was not, that he had fallen for grace. I also thanked him for making such grievous mistakes that I might learn not to be so wholly consumed by sadness and bitterness as George himself obviously had. And I listened to “Colour by Numbers.”

Not long ago, I saw a brief interview with Boy George where he remarked on how he had spent his time in jail reading. People would send him books, and he would spend days in the cell quietly working through the western literary canon. This seemed just, to me. Around the same time, I heard a new song which Mark Ronson had featured George on. I immediately loved it. Boy George's voice had changed, it was raspier and more coarse, it seemed strained and filled with regret. It was much like what I think Edith Piaf's performances must have sounded like in her last days. There is, in many ways, little to admire about George as a person, and yet my feeling of kinship persists. I don't go in much for Karaoke, despite loving to sing drunkenly in public, but when I have fantasies about performing in a smoky bar I am almost always rocking slowly back and forth, with or without a single tear rolling slowly down my glistening cheek, singing with great emotion “Time (Clock of the Heart).” This is the relationship I continue to have with Boy George: as a singer of great songs. Though I continue to wish George happiness and hope for his contentment, for the most part he is crystallized for me. In my mind, Boy George remains captured in the most sad and glorious moments of his youth: singing songs about the man who broke his heart while trapped in the same room with him, spinning, for a brief but eternal span, the desperation which seems to have characterized his life into hope for others. Into something beautiful.

Wanting To Write

I want to be a writer. For as long as I can remember, as far back as I can stumble, all I ever wanted to do was write. Ridiculous, isn't it? I don't know that I realized how patently absurd my desire was until I heard my freshman year roommate, a well-meaning girl with whom I was very, very poorly matched, affirm repeatedly and with pride “I've wanted to be a writer since I was five years old.” Me too, I thought uncomfortably. How distinctly uncool the admission sounded coming from someone else, how odd and desperate. Why would anyone be so deluded as to think they were called to such a thing? That they were called, even as a child, to create? I realized, with more force than I had ever encountered before, that any illusions I had about being “special” were false. I was not special. Here was the roommate, badly dressed and poorly groomed, thinking that she, too, like Joan of Arc, was destined, was meant, to do this one, silly thing.

When I was very young, three, maybe four, my grandfather died. I'd been very close to my grandfather. He'd had a beard. When he had served in Italy during World War II, he was often mistaken for a native and there are black and white photographs of him as a young man, arm wrapped around women who were not my grandmother. My memories of my grandfather are distilled, mainly, to these facts and a single image: myself, very small, looking up at a couch, tapping against the open blur of a newspaper, being shifted wordlessly into this grandfather's lap. I had looked to my grandfather as a place of respite. He was quiet where my older siblings were loud. He was poor and hadn't finished high school, but he read books. He always read books.

My grandfather's death was a sudden one; he was allergic to bees and, while moving rocks for a wall on his property, he uncovered a nest of yellow-jackets and was stung repeatedly. It was my aunt who found him, still alive but unconscious, sprawled on the steps of the front porch, reaching, presumably, for the reaction kit which would have waited not feet away. These are not my remembrances. I've been told, vaguely and in smallish bits, this story over a period of many years. Every so often, I learn a new detail. It's an event never spoken of in depth; I would imagine depth comes too painful for my mother, though it's been many years. These aren't my remembrances, but I've written of them more than once. What I've never written of is my own memory of this event. What I've never written is the fractured, light-soaked thing which passes, I think, for a factual record of my feelings at the time, though I can't be sure what I really remember and what's been told to me and what's been slipped, like the other details. What I remember is this: my mother on the phone, on and off the phone for days. Myself, on the couch. I have crayons. The crayons are Crayola because I don't like the RoseArt kind, I don't like how thin the colors are. I have, on my lap, the little cardboard desk with the bears and the ice cream shop which someone has given me. People know I like to draw. On the back of this desk is red fabric, filled with little styrofoam pills, like a beanbag. I am drawing a picture of my grandfather as an angel. I have not been told he has died.

This is an event which deeply unsettled my mother. We're a family who records history mostly by regret. It's through what we regret doing or not doing that we explain our experience of the past; in this way we can take on blame and, thus, an element of control, over the things we're incapable of changing. We're a family who has a hard time admitting to sadness or softness, and so it is that the story my mother most often relates when confronted with questions about her father's death is this story of the drawing. She regrets not having told me he had died; I was an odd child and she feels she should have known that I would have picked up on the feeling around me. I don't really remember picking up on any feeling, though, I just remember drawing, with certainty, my grandfather as a heavenly dweller. I had drawn it, and so I had sensed it, not the other way around.

I learned to read young, and without much specific instruction. My mother read to me often and for long periods of time. Some books she read to me so often that I was able to memorize them. Once they were memorized, I began picking out which words were which and, so, not long after my grandfather died, I began reading to myself. Not long after that, I began to write. I can't, however, remember when I began making up stories, the stories always simply were. I created things and then came to understand them. I memorized the book and then learned to read it. I drew the picture, and then understood my grandfather had passed on. Always I have seemed to perceive things indirectly, to understand things not from direct interaction but from creation and reflection. Life never seemed to happen to me, I just seemed to make up other lives and watch as they happened. I was the lens, not the catalyst.

Another memory: I am in elementary school. How long has my grandfather been dead? I'm not sure. Not too long, but I no longer draw the pictures. I am a dutiful schoolchild. I never break rules or speak in class. I almost never ask to use the bathroom which is, perhaps, why this day is extraordinary. I remember this day because I have asked to go to the bathroom. And here I am. I exit the stall and wash my hands. Everything in this bathroom is small, scaled down to the size of a young child. I realize this as I look in the mirror. I consider how strange this tiny bathroom is, with its tiny toilet and sink, the mirror adjusted to a tiny height. I wonder if, hidden somewhere, there is a full scale bathroom which only the teachers use. I wonder, then, if the teachers ever think how strange it is to have a bathroom just for children. I wonder if the thoughts which occur in the heads of others are like the thoughts which occur in mine. I wonder if anyone else wonders.

It must not have been long after this that my first story was published. I'd been sick and dictated, not handwritten, a story to my mother about a pair of unicorns. My mother sent it to my teacher, to prove I had been working while at home; the teacher was thrilled. She entered it to the local paper and they published it. The day they did, my bus driver paused me before I left to offer congratulations. I was proud and also puzzled. What was the big deal? Wasn't this how everyone came to understand the world?

I've come to learn, in recent years, through more regretful slips, that my grandfather was, perhaps, not an altogether happy man. That he was, in fact, what we would now consider seriously depressed. Of course, back then, and still in the language of my mother and grandmother, he was only vague things: melancholy or sad, not content. Troubled. There was, it would seem, one period so dark that my grandmother went to my grandfather's doctor with her concern. My grandfather was deeply displeased. Funny isn't it? That I was drawn, so strongly and so young, to my grandfather to find, now, that he may have shared the same maladies which have always haunted me? Strange, how the weight of a family trickles down. I wonder if I could have known that my grandfather and I were similar souls in the same inexplicable and instinctual way I have always known that I wanted to write. Could these things possibly be fated? And then, of course, there returns that roommate and her refrain “I've wanted to write since I was five years old.” The worst part was finding, upon reading some of the roommate's work, that she really wasn't all that good. And I have seen many people like her: people sure that their destiny lies in a certain direction and yet, really, they aren't that good. I can imagine nothing more horrible, and now, in my darker moments, I wonder if the same cannot be said of me. I worry I am hopelessly mediocre and yet unable to imagine doing anything else. I worry that I may be fated to write, but will never be able to. I often doubt so heavily I refrain from sharing any of my work. I don't know that any of my family, with the occasional exception of my mother, has read anything I've written. I'm just not sure enough in myself. And of course, a big part of achieving success is self-promotion. My father says I lack confidence. I suspect he is right. And yet, you are, right now, reading my writing. Why would I do such a thing if I really worried I was no good? No one told me my grandfather died, and yet I drew the angel, and I knew. I doubt, and so I write it. I write it, and so I come to understand: I want to be a writer

I'm Miss World and You Know the Rest

It's spring and I haven't written here for nearly a year! Why am I writing here now? Well, because spring always seems to drive me into an existential crisis or two, mostly of the creative sort; you know: what is art? Who am I? Nothing particularly interesting, really. Nothing to write home about or, frankly, to constitute a navel-gazing blog. I think my life is mostly made up of a series of existential crises wherein I question my purpose in the ever expanding universe at least twice a week. It's boring. I'm boring. It's also humid. I think it's something about the heat that always makes me feel a little out of sorts. Something about everything looking happy and maybe not feeling as content as the sudden scenery deserves. I like to listen to "Malibu" on repeat on days like this. You know what I mean, or you should. Something about Courtney Love staggering out of that trailer, tripping through the sand in her heels, just made perfect sense to my ten year-old self. Courtney's always made perfect sense to me, no matter what messes she makes or absurd statements she releases, I never feel anything less than a sense of kindred spirit-hood. I still believe Courtney Love was at her most beautiful when she was young: all smudgy, before the nose job, her dresses seeming like they were about to fall off or just fall apart. Of course, she wasn't really beautiful back then: too messy. Too much of a mess. Objectively, Courtney Love is a much prettier princess with the cheek implants and restylane, the obsessive rhinoplasty and elaborate weaves. Courtney Love has done everything Hollywood right, but they still hate her. Why?

Probably for all the same reasons I continue, illogically, to hold such affection for her: no matter how nice her clothes or elaborate her skin care, Courtney love will never, ever be able to shed entirely that nasty, angry, questioning girl. Courtney Love still doesn't know what the hell she's doing, so she just sort of, well, does things. A lot of them cuckoo bananas. It's the same sort of spirit which makes me really feel like I missed out by being too young to take part in the Riot Grrl movement. Growing up blows. I am endlessly confused by people at or around my own age who seem already settled into lives which content them. It seems strange and unnatural; how could anyone have a fucking clue what makes them happy yet? And riot grrl, beneath its political motivations, seemed to have a fast moving, nervous desperation. It was, at its simplest, girls saying they were unhappy, that, really, they were pretty damned pissed at a whole lot of things. That maybe they were a little crazy. That maybe they didn't really care.

Not that Courtney Love was aligned with the riot grrl movement; she wasn't. Or at least, not really. Courtney Love was always sort of a feminist, sort of ideologically compatible with Bikini Kill and Daisy Chainsaw and Bratmobile, but at the end of the day Courtney Love was too much and too completely nothing and no one but Courtney Love to stand for any bigger movement. Girl was a hot mess, but she hardly seemed to care. Who was she trying to impress? At the same time, though, the answer was obviously: everyone. Thus the nose jobs. And the cheek implants. And the restylane and weaves, even the fake boobs which have come and gone and maybe come back again. What did Courtney want (and probably still does)? Not a damn thing from anyone. She also wanted to be a star, to be loved and adored and pretty. In other words: she had absolutely no clue what she wanted. Neither do I. What a mess.