I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?

So, I'm a college graduate. Instead of instantly finding fame, fortune, or at least a passable job, I've been crashing with my parents and doing some serious navel-gazing. This last part hasn't been too difficult, since I've gained a full forty pounds since I started college and now have what my friend affectionately calls a "Food Fetus," a gut the likes of which Larry the Cable Guy would examine with boozy jealousy. Seriously. Freshman year I was a hottie. My physical deformities notwithstanding, I seriously haven't been this directionless in my entire life. When you're in college you know what to do- the steps are clear, the options are elucidated and you know what path a choice will take you down. Now it's the "real world" and all the shit that I've talked about doing is a possibility- but the only one who can make it happen is me, and I'm not exactly kicking my ass about getting it done.

So since I've been home I've gotten myself about eighty percent unpacked- there are still two boxes of books out in the garage, and those have to wait to move in until we resolve the bookshelf situation in my room. The situation being, there aren't any. Or rather, there isn't space on the bookshelves that are in here for my many copies of the complete works of Dorothy L. Sayers and the ouevre of Nora Roberts. My room is a strange hybrid of me when I was 14 and my mom's stuff, with my computer on my grandmother's desk and my cardboard standup of Legolas standing in front of my mom's collection of back issues of Food and Wine. I haven't done anything to this room since I was 16. I still had a Hanson poster up in my closet, for crying out loud.

I feel wierdly stagnated. I feel, in the words of the fabulous Daisy Steiner, like "there's something I've gotta be, I just don't know what it is! I'm like a rabbit, trapped in the headlights of the twenty-first century!" Well, not quite, but mostly. I want write but every time I sit down to actually do some writing it's like I have a mental block that prevents me from putting anything down on the page. I'm living with my parents, which is awkward and horrible because I feel like they're watching me, all the time, looking to see if I'm horribly depressed or sad or whatever. My mom thinks I'm a mess, and I probably look a mess to her but I'm mostly a mess because she won't stop insinuating that I'm an alcoholic.

Yeah, it's an awesome time here in my house... on the whole, it could be so much worse. It's not so bad living here- it's free, and they've stopped freaking out (mostly) if I come in late, and after I yelled at my mom she has stopped mentioning outright that I need to lose weight. (Small victories, people. Small victories.) Tomorrow I'm house managing, which will get me a little bit o' cash, and I hear back next week about the gigs at Exxon-Mobil and at Borders, both of which will also get me cash money. I'm going to apply for a fulbright, which my friend Claire has promised to help me with. It's nice to have goals. Maybe now I can get those last two boxes unpacked.

Easter & Placebo.

I spent most of today with my friend Niki's family- she of the forcing me to watch The Other Boleyn Girl- and at this moment am on my couch in my apartment, filled to the brim with sweet potato pie and biscuits, listening to Placebo's album Meds and most emphatically not writing my research proposal for my foucault seminar.

Easter in my family was always a big deal in that it wasn't made into a big deal. When we were all younger the family gatherings on this day always included an easter egg hunt, my cousins and my sister and I running around whichever backyard the festivities were held in looking for plastic eggs filled with chocolate. We haven't had an easter egg hunt in forever, pretty much since my cousins got to high school- with only two younger kids, it would be a pretty lame hunt. The hunt always followed the big Easter meal, which always followed a service at church in which the Alleluia banner got dug up and we all sang "Up From The Grave He Rose." The monday after Easter my friends would usually compete to see who got a larger chocolate bunny in their basket. It wasn't until I got to college that I found someone who actually got gifts for Easter-- Jesus is risen, have an iPod.

When I was about eight I asked my mom why we didn't get Easter baskets. All my friends got them; I had very dim memories of being in our old house when I was about three, getting a small chocolate rabbit on Easter morning. Mom replied that "They've taken Christmas- I won't let them have Easter, too."

I didn't really understand her meaning when I was eight. I was more pissed about the fact that I didn't get chocolate when EVERYONE ELSE I KNEW was put into a semi-diabetic coma from overconsumption of Peeps while I was praying and chasing my cousins around the yard. I understand it now, though, and understood it even more when I was in line at starbucks and saw a little book next to the register. I forget the title, but it was some kind of children's book and the tagline was "Finding our Easter friends!" Kind of a Where's Waldo*, but for bunnies. Or something.

They have, for all intents and purposes, taken Easter. It's been coopted as another excuse to sell candy and Hallmark cards, just like Christmas. This is nothing new, of course, and I shouldn't be surprised. It does make me sad, however. Today, eating ham around Niki's dining room table, I was reminded of those Easters with my family back home. Easter is about Jesus and family; having woken up too late for the one, I'm glad I got to experience the other, even if I'm far from home.

*Speaking of Where's Waldo, the people who brought you "There Will Be Bud" bring you this magical gem:

The Other Boleyn Girl

Last night I got a call from my friend Niki: "We're going to see The Other Boleyn Girl. Get your shit." Having not only no choice in the matter but nothing else to do with my Friday evening, I duly got my shit and drove to the Hampshire Mall to see Eric "HotBody" Bana make out with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.

Um, I mean, see an exciting historical drama about Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. I think the movie's title was a bit of a misnomer- which Boleyn girl, exactly, was the other one? I think we're meant to think that Mary (Scarlett) is the "other" one, since Anne was the one who actually married His Burliness Henry VIII. Accordingly, Mary begins the movie looking wistful and obliging in the background, happily marrying some guy named William (who disappears WITHOUT EXPLANATION as soon as Mary and His Hotness start doing the wey-hey-hey) and taking a backseat to Anne, who we are told early on is the Special One Who Will Undoubtedly Make Her Family's Fortune If Only She Could Control That Stubborn Unwomanly Independence. The minute poor Queen Catharine pops out a stillborn son the Boleyn's creepy uncle, the Duke of Norfolk (does David Morissey play anyone but creepy, creepy bastards anymore?) gets all excited, and decides to parade the girls in front of the frustrated Henry in an effort to secure the family fortunes.

Of course, this is all accomplished with tons of heavy-handed meat metaphors (literally- think butchers, giant hunks of steak, and gutting a chicken. Not what I wanted to see after consuming my body weight in popcorn) and the wierdly explicit machinations of Creepy Uncle and the Boleyn girl's worthless dad. What I was waiting for, though, was this:



That smoldering stare. That manly beard. Those sleeves. See, what I was really juiced about in this movie was the fabulous, crazy-pants Tudor fashions for the dudes. That my friends is a lot of fabric for one dude, King of England or no.

Oh look! There they are again! Another, more different set of princess sleeves for King Hotface!

Look at that. Look at that. That is one hot mess of sleeves on that man there. Henry is channeling his inner fierceness, and it's clear to see how we got from that to this in only four hundred years:

picture from projectrungay.blogspot.com

I tried to find the picture of Christian strutting his fierce behind around in this outfit, but couldn't.

Beyond His Fierceness Henry VIII, the movie was pretty good. Like I was saying earlier (before I got distracted by the Sleeves of Doom) it stopped being about Mary and started being about Anne really, really quickly. After inexplicably falling in love with the king after some pretty intense horizontal-mamboing, Mary gets knocked up: thanks to the truly advanced, enlightened prenatal care of the period she gets locked up for her trouble. During the waiting period Anne proceeds to be what my friend Beth (who came along for the ride) called --repeatedly--a "big whorebag" and uses her feminine wiles on Henry. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Beyond the world's largest sleeves and England's most famous golddigging ho, the movie was pretty sweet. There was a lot of riding to and fro by unaccompanied women, which was pretty awesome, a truly vomtastic near-incest scene, and Scarlett Johansson doing a pretty good job. Natalie Portman's accent slipped in and out, changing regions and even countries from scene to scene. (Why am I supposed to think that she's the world's greatest, most intelligent actress again? Oh right! Thanks, Elle!) Eric Bana was hotness personified. Poor Kristin Scott Thomas looked put-upon for two hours, and her "I told you so, you horrifying shit" slap to her husband's face was EPIC. All this movie really needed was a scene in which minstrels seranade someone, and it would have been cheese-tacular. I can't wait until it comes out on DVD. I am going to screencap the shit out of this thing.

Riding the Awkward Express all the way west.

So I'm in the third week of my internship at a non-profit Off Broadway theater. I'm interning in Development, just like at school, but instead of dealing with bitchy alums I'm dealing with bitchy theater patrons. I should suggest the "No-Crank" policy- it works for MST, it can work for these folks. They're all pretty nice at my office, managing not to hew too closely to the theater stereotype--my immediate superior is clearly an ex-musical theatre girl, and her voice goes up to ungodly octaves when she says thank you (which, being a development associate, she does all the time).

My Immediate Superior is very superior indeed. She's been there for a while, and gets into that groove where she knows what's going on and then, when explaining it to me, leaves out some vital piece of information, which leads inevitably to me doing something wrong. This necessitates me having to re-do whatever it was, sometimes three or four times. I'm sure the Executive Director thinks I'm a total dumbass, because I had to re-do the thankyou letters about six times.

I did hope that there would be some cute male, straight-type interns there, and lo and behold, the good lord gives me Carl, the Enigmatic Literary Intern. He's British. He's got gorgeous hair. He sits on the couch in my line of sight, reading in an adorable way all day. Have I said word one to him? No. I'm riding the aforementioned Awkward Train, and I ain't a-getting off.

Review: The Big Over Easy

Jasper Fforde is my hero. I have devoured almost the entire Thursday Next series, and then I found out that unbeknownst to me he had an entire other series—of mysteries! The Big Over Easy is the first featuring detective Jack Spratt and his sergeant, Mary Mary, and is a wonderful send-up of the hard-boiled branch of detective fiction, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, true-crime publications, the criminal justice system, and sacred relics. With a little mythology thrown in for good measure.

Detective Jack Spratt is the head of Reading, England’s Nursery Crime division, which suffers from a perpetual lack of funds, manpower, and respect from the other branches of the police. Sergeant Mary Mary has just transferred in—she got stuck with the NCD instead of with her idol, Friedland Chymes. Chymes, a kind of Sherlock Holmes, has an ego the size of Minnessota and a personal vendetta against Spratt. Spratt is given one last chance to save the NCD when he begins investigating the death-by-falling of Humpty Dumpty. Was the big egg man pushed from his favorite wall? Was he shot? Was he poisoned? Was he fertile? Was he drunk? And just what do genetic splicing, black-market spinning wheels, and a visit from the Jellyman have to do with anything?

The Big Over Easy almost defies description. Half the fun is just trying to figure out the references Fforde crams each page with. There are aliens in this strange other-England, aliens who are quite boring, really—they speak in binary, and have no concept of how to interact with people. Mary Mary is from Basingstoke, which is nothing to be ashamed of. Miz Hubbard is the most crotchety landlady in existence, her dogs perpetually boneless. And the heroes of Reading are the unsung heroes of the Nursery Crime Division, where everything usually works out the way you’d expect it to.

The greatest part, for me, of The Big Over Easy was Fforde’s imagining of a police force more concerned with plot than justice—The Knox Decalogue run amok. The chapters are headed with hilarious faux news clippings—“Police Shocked to find Butler Really Did Do It”—“Chymes Undertakes Effort to Break Fastest Solution Record; Dismayed to Learn Murders Can’t Be Ordered For the Purpose”—and the desire for a good story will lead men (and women) down dark roads. Fforde gives us a glimpse into that world we escape to when we read mystery novels (particularly those of the Golden Age and before)—if Sherlock Holmes were really all the police had to solve crimes, there’d be lots of dashing about in hansom cabs in the fog and precious little of the police methodology that Spratt and his coterie use. Even if nobody believes them when they say that the wolf was just a victim of porcine-on-lupine torture, the NCD still has to try.

Review: Maisie Dobbs

I had no plan of action when I walked into Murder by the Book, just a $25 gift certificate and the vague knowledge that I prefer Dorothy L. Sayers to, say, Janet Evanovich. Thankfully, the store’s shelves are dotted with post-its carrying recommendations from the store’s owners and other customers. Several of the books that came with the highest marks had already been cleaned out—thank you, post-Christmas. I managed to pick up two great books, one of which was Maisie Dobbs .

I’m a sucker for anything set in the years after World War I, so Maisie Dobbs seemed like a good choice. The titular character, Maisie, is a girl-genius ex-Red Cross nurse embarking on a career as a private detective. Shortly after renting her own premises she begins investigating what looks like a fairly routine case of infidelity: the wife of a wealthy industrialist has been leaving home twice a week the minute her husband leaves the house. The enterprising Miss Dobbs follows her to a graveyard, where her quarry visits a grave with only one name on it—Vincent. After befriending the woman, Maisie learns that Vincent was an officer who, disillusioned with the war and the way veterans were treated, renounced his surname and all his fortune to the guardianship of The Retreat—a retirement home run by officers, for officers. Especially those with massive, brutal face injuries.

If The Retreat turned out to be the Camp Singalong of the post-traumatic World War I set, then Maisie Dobbs would probably end on the page when Maisie tells the would-be cuckolded husband that his wife isn’t cheating, and hey, maybe he could treat her nice once in a while. And since The Retreat is capitalized, you know from the start it’s going to be extra ominous.

The rest of Maisie Dobbs is part mystery, part stroll down particularly a bombed-out section of Memory Lane. Maisie must, predictably, come to terms with her own Inner Demons before she can solve this mystery—demons involving a hot doctor and slogs through French mud. I burned through Maisie Dobbs in about a day thanks to my wicked commute and enjoyed it for the most part. Maisie herself hovered just on the edge of Mary Sue-dom—did we really need a description of her early life, how she excelled at everything while being charmingly poor with a colorful, Cockney father and a dutiful desire to do right by her family. All in all, Maisie Dobbs was a charming read. Still not sure if it deserved the glowing accolades written on post-it notes all over Murder by the Book, though.