your life

Your life is made up of so many elevator rides; so many full moons and half-eaten cups of frozen yogurt and solitary drives in the car.

For your hands are small and there is a limit to what you can do. You have the beauty of your life already in you, it is what pumps your heart.

Your days are numbered as surely as the hairs on your head, and you will one day cry yourself to sleep for the last time, the very last time. Until then you will go on eating Indian food and pretending to like certain television shows and thinking thoughts and fighting or not.

It is your life, and it is not about passion, though that is important; and it is not about adventure, though god knows that's important too. Don't ask what it is about, at least not until you've lived it. Then you may ask, then you will know, but for now, your hands are small.

would you believe?

i was originally going to write about 1939, the golden year of american cinema; stagecoach, gone with the wind, wizard of oz, mr. smith goes to washington, etc. etc. but my internet sleuthing led me to the conclusion that i would way rather talk about CRAZY people who have won oscars in the past!
do you remember that BARBRA STREISAND won an oscar? and that this is what she looked like doing it?









OR, okay, OR, we have Cher.

who, somehow when accepting the oscar for her role in Moonstruck, remembered most of her outfit but FORGOT HER HEADDRESS. don't know how you forget a headpiece the size of a baby blue whale - wouldn't you think you'd notice that 300 pounds were lifted from your head? - but maybe it fell off when she took a bow and then ripped off nine-tenths of her dress to reveal a lovely, if long, shrug.




marisa tomei, of course, upset expectations when she took home the oscar for 'my cousin vinny.' so much so that there remains speculation that jack palance read the wrong name when he was announcing the winner. but, she's not so much crazy, you know?

off to class now. more tomorrow, we're at four days people!

in the spirit of the oscars . . .

which are SIX DAYS AWAY . . . I would like to share with you my first official 2010 pre-Oscar post.

(for those of you who don't know, dear readers, that the Oscars are the event of the year in my family of origin, consider yourselves warned. it is a battle TO THE DEATH each year, mostly involving myself and my father, who has run an ABL ["Anyone But Laura"] campaign for the last six years running. each year, we all vote in every Oscar category. the winner receives compensation in the form of 80 american dollars, give or take, and pride to carry in her heart for the rest of the year. i claimed the title for five years running, but have had a bumpy road of late, due to the entrance of Zack into the kitty, the surprise late entry of Mallory in 2007, and the vehemence with which the pater familias has been running his little campaign. am not too worried about 2010, although the jump to ten best picture nominees has thrown me for a bit of a loop.)

I digress . . .

To kick off OSCAR WEEK 2010 (think Kitty yelling "Spring Break!" in Arrested Development), I would like to begin with the five worst-dressed Oscar nominees of all time. By 'all time,' naturally, I mean searchable on the dubya dubya dubya.


Gwenyth Paltrow, 2002, Alexander McQueen

First of all, RIP AMcQ.
Second of all, sometimes I look at this dress and think, it's not so bad. The braid looks kind of Swedish milkmaid cute. And that's when I know I haven't gotten enough sleep lately, and probably have scurvy. Skeletal hemorrhaging always messes with my sense of right and wrong. This. is. awful. The weird, nipple-baring ruched top. Her hair, which is a color that doesn't really exist in nature. The fact that the top of the dress has a hue barely discernible from her own flesh. I don't even want to start on why she felt like she had to wear that stupid necklace. Really.




Demi Moore, 1989, biker shorts and bustier, plus hip-enhancing cape (her own design)



Huh.

MAYBE, she rode her bike to the Kodak Theater, got the front-train stuck in the gears, got so frustrated that she tore it off, then walked down the red carpet saying "TAA DAA! Someday, I will be married to a man who is eleven right now!"

Huh.




Tilda Swinton in the Lanvin trashbag, 2008


She scares me. Even more than her heartless and robotic lawyer in Michael Clayton. At least she wore mascara for that role! She looks like a life-sucking fetus, and I do not care what you say, this is not avant-garde or edgy, it is scaaaary. Rated NC-17. She's like the ghost of Mister Burns in that Simpsons episodes where he became radioactive and wandered the forests of Springfield. BUT SHE'S REAL!!!









Phillip Seymour Hoffman, 2009, ?

You've decided to wear a skullcap. To the Oscars. How do you go about selecting juuuuuust the right one? Will any old beanie do? Do you have to make sure it doesn't have any logos on it, or you'll have to put black tape over them like on The Real World? Do you pull a hat out of your closet? Do you go shopping? Do you send your stylist out to Burberry to choose a wool-lined cashmere number that is measured to fit your bulbous head, and yours alone?

These are questions you should NEVER have to ask yourself. When in doubt, look at Phillip Seymour. Then do the exact opposite of him. Voila! No more worst-dressed lists for you.

the fifth . . . i might have to resort to microfiche or something, because i'd really like to include someone from back in the day. let's just say, buster keaton, 1956. i bet bette davis wore some pretty big dresses when she ruled the roost.
i would say Bjork in the swan, but this one is too obvious. I'd be disgusted with myself for being so unoriginal.

Cher would get an honorable mention, maybe, but she is Cher after all. So whatever it is, on her, it looks totally normal and it would be weeeird if she wore some classy Marchesa frock. Let's hope Bob Mackie lasts as long as she does. And then some, because who would Cher in her casket be without a feathered headdress?

any thoughts on your fifth man/woman? hopefully. i want to hear. but please remember, if you will, the i was the earth's only fan of jennifer hudson's bolero back in 2008, so no ragging there.

see you tomorrow for more oscar madness - the best week of the year.

ek

love emily katz. everyone should have a friend who will wait outside reading work power point slides to make sure we have a spot in this fantastic restaurant. love flour and water. the pizza was fantastic. the conversation, even better. she's one of those people who reminds me that, however easy it is to get distracted from the things that matter in life, they're always there waiting for you when you turn back to them.

thanks girl.

praying for a hotel room

We were in Venice. It was the fall semester of my junior year, and I was traveling with thirty-five of my new best friends. My sister had just flown out to visit me during fall break in Salzburg, and once that was over we all reconvened at our typically European (read: tiny and with wafer-thin mattresses) hotel just a few bridges from St. Mark's.

It didn't take long for everyone's stories about fall break to tumble out . . . She cut her hair, which was jarring to the rest of us who had seen her daily for months. They went to Innsbruck and illegally rented a car, enjoying the thrill of doing something forbidden to us during these three months. He fell more in love with the girl who was also on the trip, and she continued to pretend not to notice.

She went to Ireland with her parents, and they decided to come back to Venice with her. She had always been unpredictable, so we had no idea what to expect from her parents. I don't remember, now, what they were like then. But I remember this. Apparently, all of Venice was booked. Not a pensione to be found. So they prayed. They huddled together, the three of them in a corner, and prayed that God would give them a hotel room in Venice where they could stay the night.

He did, I think, or they did, or whatever. They found a place, is what I mean.

But what does that mean? What would it mean of God that prayers for hunger to end, for a mother's life to be saved, for a family to be lifted out of poverty would all fall on deaf ears, or that the answer would be 'no, not now,' and that this family prayed and were not only heard by the Lord but were cared for? Perhaps this is all unknowable, and part of the mystery of God's character that really confuses people. Or, perhaps they just got totally lucky.

Either way, all I really know is I don't get it. I do get that we are meant to bring all that concerns us before God, so praying about a hotel room doesn't seem like a bad idea in itself. But in some ways, to me, it seems more like superstition - rubbing a lucky charm and repeating my wish over again until I believe that my efforts led to the positive outcome I wanted all along.

All of this came to mind for me because I saw that someone had written on Facebook about her iPod being found. "God is good all the time!" she said."Oh, the power of prayer!" And I just don't know how to respond to these kinds of comments. Why would God bring you back your iPod, but not get me on an earlier flight at the airport? Why would God save your child with cancer, but let your friend's child die? Is it because of prayer? Is it random? Some combination of the two, or is it how we pray, or our motivation for prayer? These aren't rhetorical questions - I would really love to know . . .

In the meantime, I'm going to pray for a nice dinner with my friend emily

angelo

I have changed his name for the sake of privacy, but the details remain the same. I want to share with you the story of a man in my yoga class. It is a story that I know admittedly little of, but holds an odd interest for me nonetheless . . .

His name, let's say, is angelo. He is probably in his early to mid thirties, with short but shaggy brown hair, the kind i'm sure he spends a lot of time on but wants you to think is effortless-looking. (no judgment here; i'm in the same camp)

He loves to do headstands. No joke. Every time we are in the same class, he always requests 'inversions.' For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it means a headstand. Yes, you stand ON YOUR HEAD. Me, not so much with the headstands. But Angelo has a mean headstand in his practice (that's how you say it. "If you have an inversion in your practice, you may take it now." me, i lay on the floor with my feet up against the wall.)

So angelo gets up on his head - look mom, no hands! - and balances there like it's the easiest thing in the world. he's not afraid that his shirt is going to fall over his head, leaving him blind and with pale tummy exposed, because he doesn't wear a shirt. maybe he'll walk in with one on, but it reliably comes off at the five-minute mark.

when class is over, just as surely as the shirt has been removed, angelo will find some unsuspecting yogi and ask him or her for a ride home. i'm not sure how he gets to class, but he always wrangles some hot young woman to drive him home and suggests they get together to meditate, but always at her place, his place is too small.

he is an interesting figure. part of what i don't get is, how as a Christian do i respond to people who are just kind of weird? or seem weird, to me? i'm uncertain about this. the other part i don't get is the shirt. honestly? we get that you're proud of your six-pack, but checking out your armpit hair in warrior one makes me want to gag.

prep

last night i finished the book i'd been reading all weekend - prep, by curtis sittenfeld. and now, i feel that kind of deep sadness that i feel when a good book is over, and it can never be read for the first time again. or like someone i love has moved away, and i don't know when i'll see them again.

maybe more to come on this book later - i need to think through a way to revise what i've already written about it in a less maudlin way. but suffice it to say for now, you should read it. it isn't what you'll think it is. actually, it's everything you'll think it is and then more than you knew you remembered about certain times of life.