Unicorn's Ass

Hey sisters,

It would appear that there has been some inexcusable lag time between postings!! Thanks Mar for breaking the gap.

I have to make a confession, in the interim of posts I have become transfixed by the Warblers, the a cappella/choralography splendor of Glee fame. Oof I’ve watched their video an embarrassing number of times, always with a silly grin plastered on my face.

I did some digging on the actor who plays Blaine, the star soloist of the Warblers. He is very attractive and astonishingly talented, and Blaine (aka Darren Criss) is 23 years old. The same age as me. Then I was watching interviews with other cast members. Kurt admitted on Chelsea Lately that he is a ripe 19 years old.

Who knew watching a cast of gleeks could make one feel as small and unaccomplished as the biennial shamefest known as the Olympics?...

Later in the day I caught an interview on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air with the writer, director, actress, cinematographer, general all-a-rounder Lena Duham, a young (24-yr-old) who made the independent film Tiny Furniture, nominated for multiple awards at Austin’s SXSW Festival.

All of these findings lead me to amount: What have my 23 years done?

Without realizing it I, panicked, turn to Facebook. Yes, to soothe the nerves and the mounting fear of destitution I turned to Facebook. I scroll through friends and acquaintances pages. Where are they, what have they done with their lives? Is it more than I should have done?

Friends I see are in bands, touring, recording, in Harvard, at Berkeley, in Seattle, curating art shows, in Portland with jobs and galleries and a studio. The paranoia begins to seep in, until, in the midst of assessing the lifetime achievements of a journalist-aspiring friend, I stumble across an article which she has posted to her wall about the twenty and thirty-somethings of our day, a group dubiously coined the “Failure to Launch” generation:

http://www.washingtonlife.com/2010/12/02/twenty-something-the-failure-to-launch-generation/

And yet, reading this interview, I become fixated with how old the authors are. HOW DID THEY GET THIS INSIGHT AND WHO DO THEY WORK FOR??

Then of course the paradox hits. The author’s warnings: “Don’t compare my life based on peoples’ Facebook profiles.” Check. “With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, everyone wants to be famous and listened to and watched. Instant gratification is the norm.  It’s seeped into our generation a little bit but the next generation is going to be even more entitled, selfish, and self-centered.” Check.

Queue the sinking feeling that I, and many others apparently, are tangled in the promptitude and gratification of instant newsfeeds and the self broadcasting networks. We are the 21^st century Alice, peering into and then leaping into the virtual looking glass, only to find that the mirror is an unending image, forever perpetuated within itself -- the projected image indecipherably small (for optical accuracy, let’s call it the Droste Effect).

And here is where I’ve left my self worth to rest!

A favorite essayist, Joan Didion, wrote a piece entitled “On Self-Respect” which I read years ago, as a painfully shy 17-yr-old. Until today I had never reread it but had always remembered the essay in how it struck me with its simultaneous resonance and opacity; I had no idea what in the hell Didion was saying, yet in my gut I knew it applied precisely to me. 

“If we do not respect ourselves…we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us…One runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”

And so, again, in my job hunts and seeking (see Joel Madden post…), it’s happened again, I’ve left no one at home. Except this time it happened not in the midst of maroon lockers, streamers, and pep rallies, but within the confines of my own home, robbed by the 15 in. monitor on which I’ve come to depend for self-assurance. I forgot the simple words of my beloved mentor, spoken hesitantly, with tight lips, in anticipation of the years of art and failed art following graduation, “You have to have a strong core.” To compound the idioms of advice: Keep your head up and out of Facebook, out of the chocolate cake (thanks Kal). And out of the unicorn’s ass.

See piñata

what we repeat

Sissies:

We are what we repeatedly do.

I read this quote in an online article several weeks ago. Aristotle said it. Now, I can’t stop repeatedly saying it. (Which I think might mean that I’ve one-upped Aristotle?).

There are a lot of things I do repeatedly. In fact, most things I do I do repeatedly. So what does this quote mean for someone with an obsessive personality?

Well, as of now it means, in this order:

1. Checking my e-mail. Many, many times. Probably can’t stress that enough.
2. Trolling the internet for a career.
3. Trolling the net for art opportunities and crochet patterns (whatever don’t judge).
4. Trolling the net for sites that offer free episodes of my fave hard-to-find tv shows (Cupcake Wars and Thintervention - so effing hard to find).

So, basically I’m spending a lot of time online, and there’s a lot of trolling going on. And I do feel a little bit like a troll. A greedy little troll, grubbing to get some money before my bank account runs dry.

I have black rings under my bulgy eyes from staring at my laptop screen for extended periods. We only get 7 hours of daylight in Oregon this time of year. Half of those hours I’m asleep for, and the other half - ok, ALL – of those are cloudy hours. There’s a lot of eye straining and hiding from the elements right now. And I already have the bulbous nose.

Remember that list I made? Add to that staying home on a Friday night, taking repeated photos of myself in an attempt to draw comparisons with a plastic Mattel troll.

These long stretches of online time take me back to my pre-pubescent years and my enamor for Joel Madden (Nicole Richie’s babys' daddy - wow, his father-in-law is Lionel Richie) -- the 5 ft 2 in. lead twin of the pop-punk band Good Charlotte.

At 13 I ascertained we would marry, so, like any self-respecting suitor, I Googled him. I Googled him a LOT. I Googled to see a variety of photos of him, to see his different angles, different locations, different pets, and also to assure myself, with the lack of verifiable photos of him with a girlfriend, that he was single. The worst was when I found a picture of him at a strip club. Btw this was before Google Image search, so I had to click on each hit and individually scroll through each site.

This was also at the time when Joel and his Sid-Vicious-inspired bro Benji went by first names only, a la Cher, because they didn’t want to use their bastard dad’s last name. So, I devoted a lot of time to genealogical searches, trying to unearth their mother's maiden name (which of course we all know now is "Madden").

I stayed up until 2 am every weekend to watch their afterhours mtv program, All Things Rock. Then I’d go on their message board and post about it. Verybored_17. That was me. I was this girl, without the energy or knowhow to make a fansite.  She too has clearly pulled from diverse sources and undoubtedly exhausted Joel's available online archives. Look at her range:

Reading all of this, it sounds a little psychotic. I’m thinking about Fatal Attraction and contemplating what  Glenn Close's change in tactics would have been if she'd been given Internet access.

On the upside, I honestly think these Joel and Joel-like searches are how I became so good with search engines. Because, after all, there are many, many ways to type in "photos of Joel Madden;" each way yields different results, and you don't know which results you'll get until you've tried every possible combination. Believe it or not, this has been extremely helpful in my academic career -- in my research, art and otherwise.  (See you in academia, Joel Lover 16 of Melbourne.)

It’s probably also very indicative of how/ why I didn’t have a real boyfriend until I was 20...Well, fantasy is funner than fact, isn’t that it?

There’s a morsel of me -- that is responsible for my lack of a job (as it was responsible for my lack of any boyfriends in HS) --  that’s enjoying this trolling right now; it is fantasy.

On a quest, I surf these postings, I don’t know the companies, I don’t know the poster, and I have no idea what that position would be like really. Once I get out from under my dingy troll bridge and cross that bridge, the view may pale in comparison to the view I had under the bridge.

So you see, trying to find a job is kind of like trying to find love: it's all about projecting.

Maybe in the end all I need is a little less obsession/self-reflection and a little more...



Joel always gets the last word.

-J