It's Gonna Be A Happy New Year

So it is now time for the biggest party of the year in New York. The police have already started putting up barriers in Times Square, which makes it even harder to navigate than usual.

I've always been sort of non-plussed by the hubbub surrounding New Years' and I think I finally figured out why. Besides the fact that all the fuss is made over a second and it's over as quickly as it began...New Years' is about a new beginning and taking stock of what you want to do differently in the new year. Or at least, theorectially it is. It may actually be about drinking as much as possible, spending $50 on a cover fee at a bar that usually doesn't have one and finding someone to kiss when the clock strkes 12. I digress. Anyway. I feel like I've already taken stock and done the soul searching that New Years' resolutions are supposed to prompt back in October when it was Rosh Hashannah. I always felt like Rosh Hashannah was supposed to make you a better person and a better Jew, when New Years'...just doesn't. I know not everyone celebrates Rosh Hashannah(duh) but if New Years' was more about a new beginning than drinking and spending money, I could get more behind it.

There's like insane pressure to do something, anything, to make the night special. The thing that I value most about New Years' is getting together with my friends and spending time with them, becuase since we left SU, we don't get to do that very often. The ideal New Years' for me would be to have Seth, Nina, Amy, Laura, Dan, Alise, Matt, Jodie and Jon in the same room for the evening. That's it.

Anyway, Happy New Year :o)

Proper Holiday Greeting

In all the tumult that was last week, I didn't get a chance to make a proper holiday greeting. So here I am on Boxing Day and the second night of Chanukkah doing what I wanted to do earlier.

When the holidays come around, I sometimes feel like the Grinch because it is different for Jews during "Christmas season" than others. However, I have found out that I am not alone in this matter and some people have found this situation so funny that they came up with comedy shows about them. My sister and I attended on on Friday called "What I Like About Jew" (www.whatilikeaboutjew.com). These two guys, Sean and Rob, have made feeling like an outsider during holiday season into a hillarious show, during which I laughed so hard I almost cried.

Something I do almost every holiday season is pull out episodes of my faovrite shows that are holiday themed epsiodes...NOT 'Very Special' episodes mind you as those are usually only a prelude to the shark but the good ones. In case you care, here are some:

So-Called Angels, My So-Called Life: In which Rickie is kicked out of his house and Angela tries to find him and bring him home.

In Excelsis Deo, The West Wing: In which Toby arranges a military funeral for a homeless man found in a coat Toby gave to the goodwill.

Noel, The West Wing: In which Josh overcomes his post-traumatic stress syndrom following the shooting at Roslyn.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Six Feet Under: In which the Fisher clan remembers their last moments with Nathaniel Sr and hosts a biker funeral.

Those are my personal favorites and I;m sure there's more. But that's good enough for now.

Happy Holidays everyone. Oh, and Frank Rich says there was no war on Christmas. Everybody wins.

What Do I Want for Chanukkah?

The transit strike to be over. Period. End of story. And since I KNOW you know where to get info on this, I'm not even going to include a link. I have to say, I never thought a commute from NJ would be shorter than a commute from Brookly. But I was proved wrong yesterday morning. It took over two hours to get in yesterday so i said screw it, I'm going to my parents' place.

Trad unions are something I am for. I think it is wrong to exploit workers and someone needs to be around to make sure that doesn't happen. I am not, however, for what this particular trade union is up to...especially since they don't have to support of their parent union. Oy. This is such a mess and it is bad for the city. At the height of holiday season (yes, holiday...see previous post if you have a problem), it just is ridiculous to not be able to ride the buses and subways.

Also, one of the issues the union and MTA are fighting ove is health benefits and the rising costs of such. They don't seem to realize that this is an issue for Washington because if we had universal healthcare (what kind of world is it when Canada is more progressive than the US???, ;o)), this would be a non-issue. ANYWAY, I will put the soapbox away for now and leave the stumping to Matt Santos.

We'll Miss You, Leo.

John Spencer died yesterday and that made me and many other television fans sad.

http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=3133909&st=420 <--This is a message board dedicated to Mr. Spencer and the work he did on The West Wing. Leo was the backbone of Jed Barlet's White House and the rock that the staff and the President leaned on. The show, which was once great and now only flashes of that greatness remain, showcased Mr. Spencer wonderfully and his presence will be greatly missed.

War on Christmas? Focus on the War on Terrorism.

Ok, so apparently if a store wishes people happy holidays, then they are anti-Christmas. If you doubt my sources, please read this article, which has links to several websites such as the American Family Association: http://select.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/opinion/14talkingpoints.main.html?pagewanted=all

Needless to say, this pisses me off. First of all, when did it become mandatory to celebrate Christmas? I am Jewish and Judiasm doesn't observe Christmas as Christs birth was not the defining point in Jewish history. All of my life, I have been bombarded with Christams images during December and when I was younger, I wanted to join in the fun.

Jews make their own fun, always have. We even originated the gift giving through Chanukkah gelt (you can look that one up on your own)...and now with different things. Chanukkah is not supposed to be a big holiday; it's more along the lines of Purim in it's importance...But it is a good time and I always love lighting the menorah with my family.

What the people who blieve there is a war on Christmas need to understand is that not everyone is Christian. I thought that was what America was supposed to be about: celebrating the differences between people. Apparently not. And, some of these attacks have become blatantly anti-Semetic (again, see aforementioned article in the Times).

Do people really believe that the Jews are behind the 'war on Christmas?' Apparently. But these people also are for prayer in schools and parading their Christain-ness for everyone to see so much that they are offended that stores that they are not even shopping in say 'Happy Holidays' instead of "Merry Christmas" (And where did the 'Merry' come from anyway? The British have it right, saying 'Happy Christmas'. Why should Christmas be so different that it should have a completely different modifier? What if people started saying 'Merry Fourth of July?' Ok, I'm done)

I am not against Christmas. I think Christians should celebrate their son of Gd. I just think it should not be forced on the minority of us in this country who don't, in fact,actually observe the holiday.

Annoying

I'm breaking up with internet dating. With Jdate in particluar. Seriously. So done. I've now met over the internet several guys who exist only as IM names and nothing more. No developed personalities. Nothing. Unfortunately, the one guy who actually wanted to take me out was just that. An undeveloped personality. He asked me out. Spoke to me almost everyday and then after our date, nothing. Well, at least now I know why he doesn't have a girlfriend. Stanford of Sex and the City said it best when he told Carrie, "I've been rejected by someone I wasn't interested in. I hate that."

Then, I talk to someone else and he lays it on me that he doesn't want to date for dating's sake; he only wants to meet someone for a serious relationship. I was like, uh sure, dude. Does he really think he can go into something with an outlook like that? Things have to evolve. You can't have those expectations going in or you'll always be disappointed.

Another guy wanted to take me out, called me the night before to cancel...then I didn't hear from him until he tried IMing me again. And I was like 'Oh, no. You've had your chance.'

Then, I IM this guy tonight and the only thing he asks me was my profile name. He looks at it. Then says 'Sorry, not interested.' You've got be kidding. Half of me was like, ok well it's better that he told me but the other half was like, well how do you know you're not interested? Reading someone's profile is like reading their resume. It tells you carefully selected snippets about them, snippets that are meant to be appealing. How can you know you're not interested if you refuse to even speak to someone since you, in all fairness, know nothing about them.

Seriously. So breaking up.

Kissing Quiz

Your Kissing Purity Score: 46% Pure

You're not one to kiss and tell... But word is, you kiss pretty well.

Kissing Purity Test

What's the Time?

So my watch stopped on like Sunday night because when I went to put it on on Monday morning, it read 10:00. And I was like 'the hell? It's definitely not 10:00. It is at most 8:15 AM.' So at this point, I took off my watch and put it in an obscure pocket in my purse. However, once I did so, my wrist felt naked. Also, a couple hours later, I found myself glancing at said wrist in confusion as my watch no longer adorned it.

I've been trying to figure out why that is and the only answer I can come up with now is that I'm so conditioned to looking at my wrist to see the time that no being able to do so throws things off. It's not like I can't find out what time it is. I sit at a computer all day with the time in the lower right-hand corner. I have a cell phone on which the time is usually more accurate than my watch anyway. At home, the cable box and the VCR have clocks (yes, I know how to set the clock on the VCR. No, I can't do yours.)I have a clock radio. Then why do I feel compelled to look at my wrist to see what time it is? I'm not the only one who does it; I know a lot of people who are watch-glancers. It's more subtle than pulling out your cell and more comforting than looking at your computer.

That reminds me, do you have the time?

New Music

Seriously, it's so totally beyond me that people like Rockapella have to stand by and watch people like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears sell out huge houses when they each have more musical talent in their little fingers than Justin or Britney will have, EVER.

And it's not just the guys who are in Rockapella now. Tonight, I saw Elliott Kerman and his jazz group (www.elliottkerman.com) and Sean Altman and the Groovebarbers (www.seanaltman.com). Both of these guys were in Rockapella in their 'Carmen Sandiego' incarnation and have since moved on to other endeavors.

Admittedly, I've been trying to get to see Sean Altman for a while and now that I saw him, I'm glad I did. I have seen Rockapella a couple times, but recently...long after Sean had moved on. However, I have to say, though his group was not quite polished in the same way as Rockapella is now, they had an energy which I think at this point elludes Rockapella. And I think this is because of Sean's presence. He was the goofy one on 'Carmen Sandiego' and he still is goofy. He stands a head taller than the reast of the group members, but his facial expressions and his overall joy at being onstage draws the eye above the others heads to Sean's smiling face. At the end of the show, he called up the Rocakapella members who had shown up and they did a rendition of a song that Sean wrote, Zombie Jamboree...which is a fixture at Rockapella concerts but it was immediatly different hearing Barry, the former bassist do his thing...The last time I heard Rockapella do this song, it was no where near as rich as it was with these people singing it. Though, there were at least two people on each part and they almost overpowered the soloist, but it was ok. The sound was great.

I enjoyed Elliott's set, but I always found him a little bland and I felt his songs were somewhat repetitive: verse-chorus-verse-music break-coda(repeat verse 2)...but he clearly was enjoying being up there and it was good musically.

These guys work so hard and are so good that they deserve more acclaim than they get. But the best thing about them is that they know what their image is and they stick with it. They definitely don't try to be something they're not.

Reading

So last night, I went to a reading at the Barnes and Noble in Park Slope. That is not usually my bookstore of choice, but Pete Hamill, a writer that I was introduced to by my dad and whom I enjoy reading was going to be there.

I sat in the thrid row, squashed against a row of glossy cookbooks and peered between the heads of many older strangers at this man, out of whose pen came Forever(If you live in New York and you haven't read it, read it). He spoke in his soothing voice about growing up in Brooklyn, about libraries and about the re-relase of his book The Gift.

Whenever I go to one of these readings, or even a concert or a show, I wonder what is going through the person's mind who is in front of this group. Is anything he does ok with us? Is it enough to truthfully answer a question or does it have to be shrouded in mystery? Did that person really just ask me that?

It's interesting because these people think they know a writer because they have read his or her writings. But what they know are the writings not the person. The annoying man behind me announced that he thought Maureen Dowd was a disgrace as his annoying wife asked Mr. Hamill whether he read Ms. Dowd's column in the Times. Is that what people really want to know? Mr. Hamill answered these questions and the question of who he thought were heroes with a good-natured grin, but I couldn't help thinking that he might have thought these questions were as inane as the rest of the audience might have.

I wonder what he was thinking about when he sat and signed books and tried to address each person personally, engaging them in a quick conversation before thanking them and sending them on their way. Do these snippets of conversation mean as much to him as they surely meant to the audience members?

Whether it did or not, it was a treat to be in the presence of someone whose writing I greatly admire and listen to him try to have the answers.

The Verdict: 'Goblet' and 'RENT"

...and yes, RENT gets all caps. Deal. Anyway. I have now seen my required viewing for the Thanksgiving weekend (gotta go in NJ where a student ID warrants a ticket for $5.75). And I have to say...I was pleasantly surprised by both. Both stories are adaptations from elsewhere and could have been mangled beyond repair (see Prisoner of Azkaban post) but they were not. Neither film was perfect. But if they were, that wouldn't feel right, either.

I saw Harry first, after enduring a week of "What do you mean you haven't seen it yet?" Let me say right off that condensing a 730-odd page book into a manageable movie is quite a task. They shaved the story down to the bare bones, only allowing for the smallest traces of subplot, of which there are many in the book. However, the effect worked. The movie did not feel as though it was a whole that was torn into pieces and glued back together. It flowed well, moved along exceptionally quickly and made you momentarily forget what was not there. I'm still not a huge lover of Michael Gambon's Dumbledore, but I liked him well enough. Director Mike Newell, the first Brit to direct a Harry movie, did a good job of mixing dark with light and maintaining the magical spirit of the books. I, of course, pictured some things differently than they were depicted in the movie...but that is to be expected. Harry's scar was now on the correct side of his head and Fred and George actually had lines.

RENT on the other hand, at times did feel as though it was pasted together...but not necessarily in a bad way. I found that the exuberance of the play was intact, though it was obvious in some scenes that the actors were lip-synching...The songs were moved around and some of the plot-points were somewhat blurred but I felt that if I laughed and cried during it, then it served the purpose. The thing I found most irritating was that the play is sung-through; the actors sing even the dialogue. The movie used much of the sung dialogue...but it was spoken so it sounded as though the characters had taken to speaking in rhyme. That said, the cast is such a diverse group of beautiful and compelling actors that it is hard not to buy into the story. A couple of my favorite songs were cut out, but the movie was a little long anyway so there was really no way to make it a manageable length and not cut anything. The thing I missed the most was the fight between Mark and Roger near the end (quoted in the previous post) because that is where the most constant relationship seems as though it's in jeopardy and it's a little harder to get behind Roger running away to the west if that scene is cut. It is also harder to understand that when he comes back, he and Mark patch things up with a single hug. Anyway.

That said, I know that my DVD collection will have at least two new additions whent he time comes.

Before the RENT Movie:

So reviewers are weighing on on the Rent movie everywhere (check out www.nytimes.com, among others if interested)...And the result is mixed. There is talk of how the story is muddled, how the material is dated and how the actors are too old to be playing people in their 20's.

They are doing their jobs. They are looking at the movie from purely a filmamking perspective. They are not looking at it from a loyal fan's perspective. They make cracks about the unabashed idealism of the story, but I feel like this is the most compelling part of it. These are characters that, for the most part, have no money and don't know where their next meal is coming from. How does Roger keep up with his supply of AZT? How does Mark charge his camera if they have no electricity? These questions are pretty much irrelevant. The point is that this group of friends survives despite the odds. They keep their ideals and make their art. That is the crux of the story. The question is then, does the movie live up to that?

I was on the fence about the idea of there even being a movie because the whole thing is about not selling out and isn't the ultimate sellout putting the story in the hands of a Hollywood director to make a mainstream, holiday weekend movie?

When the reviewers talk about how the optimism and idealism are naive and silly, I say that's ridiculous. Sometimes,idealism is all you have. If you work in a job that you find boring, having enough idealism to think past it is sometimes what keeps you going. In a time when people are cynical and hopeless, it is important to keep the idealism alive. I listen to Rent at work. Why? Because it keeps me going. Someday, I think. Someday, I will do what I want to do. I will write. I will do it. I can do it because Jonathan Larson did it. And if he could do it, how come I can't? Of course, Jonathan died before he saw the whole success of his creation, but that's another subject, entirely.

The threat of AIDS is something that people also say is dated. It's not. More people than ever now have AIDS and the public thinks it's old news now that rich Americans can get drug cocktails to keep them alive longer. People say bohemia is dead. It's not dead. It just looks different now than it did then. People take temp jobs and jobs they're not necessarily thrilled with to pay the bills so they can create. People work for free. People open their art studios for eveyone to see. Bohemia still exists. Come to the DUMBO community in Brooklyn.

I am concerned that my faovrite parts of the show haven't made it into the film, but that's not a criticsm of the movie, it's just something I would like to see. The part that hits home most for me is in the latter part of Act II when it looks like everything is falling apart and Mark, the narrator and the character with which I most identify, tries to make his best friend and roommate Roger stay instead of running away from his problems:

Mark: I hear there are great restaurants out West.
Roger: Some of the best. How could she?
Mark: How could you let her go?
Roger: You just don't know. How could we lose Angel?
Mark: Maybe you'll see why when you stop escaping your pain. At least now if you try, Angel's death won't be in vain.
Roger: His death is in vain.
Mark: Are you insane? There's so much to care about; there's me, there's Mimi.

And from listening to the CD until it barely exists, I know the words. But I never fail to be moved by the barely controlled tears and anger in both characters' voices, both accusing their best friend of failure, of not living up to expectation. That raw emotion is what it's all about and if the movie can't find a way to communicate that, then that is the real problem, more so than any date put on the material.

Roger: Mark has got his work. They say Mark lives for his work. Mark hides in his work.
Mark: From what?
Roger: From facing your failure, facing your loneliness, facing the fact you live a lie. Yes, you live a lie. Tell you why: You're always preaching not to be numb, when that's how you thrive. You pretend to create and observe when you really detach from feeling alive.
Mark: Perhaps that's because I'm the one of us to survive.

Possibilities

I'm not gonna lie....getting asked out is fun. The antidote, of course, to said fun is going on a date and having it fall flat like a B-movie that seemed like a good idea but was executed on the cheap with poor acting and direction.

The best time is the time between being asked out and before the date. It's a time of infinite possibility. You get all idealistic like a high-school girl before the big dance. This could be really fun, what should I wear, wear would go on the second date. All those things come into your head. But once you actually go out, reality comes back like the reviewer of said B-movie to tell you, in fact, the movie is not as good as you hoped it would be.

This doesn't always happen. But it happens a lot. That's why they...whoever 'they' might be...call dating a roller-coaster. The high before going out and the possible low following. Why do we do it? For the possibilities.

Expert

The question of the hour: Can someone be an expert on something if they've only studied it and doesn't have any practical experience at it?

Allow me to explain: Last night, a friend/co-worker and I went to hear a professor from SU talk about the television business. Said professor has a PhD, and is tapped by many to give statments, comments and interviews regarding different aspects of the climate of television at the given moment. He has studied television extensively and while television is interesting and culturally relevant since it's inception.

But he has never worked a day at a television station, production house or writer's room. He doesn't do ratings research or sell advertising. He teaches about television. Which is fine. Everyone who has an interest in television is not required to do any of the aforementioned things. However, when one professes to be an expert in their field, shouldn't that mean that they have, in fact, worked in the business instead of studying it and making observations from afar?

Professors at SU and more specifically, the Newhouse Communications program, are all kinds. I had professors who were, in fact, development execs and comedy writers. None of these people considered themselves 'experts' on television, though conversations with them on the subject would lead one to believe that they were.

Then there's this professor, who has none of this practical experience...yet he has become a respected 'expert' in the field of television. Somehow, it doesn't make sense to me. Why do people care what this guy has to say?

The Queen

Checkmate. Thats' right. You made a mistake and now I'm taking over. I hardly ever move but when I do, it's with a purpose. Stealth is the obligation of my army; the pawns with thier limitations, the knights zig-zagging to make room for me. I move in a straight line, knocking everyone out of the way. The rules of war are all here in black and white. Play at your own risk. I'll wait here on my square for you to work out your strategy.

Paper Clips

I sent the below email to the principal of the Whitwell Middle School in Tennesee, where groups of students collected paper clips to represent the people who died in the Holocaust and later built a Holocaust memorial including a rail road car imported from Germany that once carried Jews to their deaths:

Hello Ms. Hooper,

I just watched the documentary of the paper clip project on HBO and I wanted to express my feelings to you and your community. As a student, I studied the Holocaust in both historical and religious contexts. Many programs held at our college Hillel, the Jewish organization, emphasized celebrating the lives of these people instead of focusing on their early and rather grotesque deaths. I feel as though your project fit right in with Jewish educational efforts and the amazing thing is that there were few to no Jewish people involved...which makes that even better perhaps in a time when groups try to deny this happened and accuse the Jewish people of manufacturing the idea of the Holocaust. I wish you a hearty mazel tov, congratulations, on the success of making your part of the world more tolerant and maybe when people hear your story and the story of the paper clip project, they will think twice about precipitating intolerance.

Sincerely,

Sara

To learn more, visit http://www.marionschools.org/holocaust/

The Best of 2005... Sara Style, Continued

Best Place to Relive Your Youth: The American Girl's Place (49th and 5th) I used to recieve the catalogues when I was young and now I can go visit the dolls whenever I want...though I wouldn't go during the holidays as the place is overrun with little girls and their harassed mothers.

Best Place to Hear Random Bands (tie): Barbes (9th St and 6th Ave, Park Slope) and Two Boots (2nd St and 7th Ave, Park Slope)...both places have warm, friendly atmospheres, inexpensive drinks and you can fins Cajun or Hawaiian music if you wander in one weekend...

Best Place for a Weekend Walk: Prospect Park. Every weekend, any number of people will be running, playing frisbee or walking their dogs in this landmark park in Brooklyn.

Best Bohmeians: Get off the F train at York street and you'll find yourself in the world of DUMBO, an artists' community that one weekend a year opens its doors for the rest of the world to peruse their studios and works.

Unique Book Reading: Jill Soloway at Mo' Pitkins (34 Ave A). While promoting her new book, this former Six Feet Under staff writer hosted an evening starring Molly Shannon, Lilli Taylor and Lauren Ambrose, who read from her new book. www.jillsoloway.com

Best View: My friend Jodie's apt in Hoboken overlooks Manhattan. Even with the sadly diminished skyline, it is a sight to see. City of Blinding Lights, indeed.

Ok, that's all for now ;o)

I'm Not That Girl...

So I spoke with my friend Lauren from high school on the phone last night for the first time in I don't know how long...and she called with a piece of gossip: that Dave, whom I went out with junior year in high school, is engaged.

Now, this didn't make me feel odd becuase I still have feelings for him because I don't. I don't see us as being remotely compatible anymore and I haven't even spoken to him since I moved away from West Islip. It made me feel odd because it is an inevitable part of growing up that one's friends begin to marry and grow up themselves.

I met Dave in my sixth grade homeroom and along with my friend, Brian, we all became close. I stayed close with Dave throughout middle school and high school while Brian faded in and out. Ironic how I still keep in touch with Brian but not Dave.

Dave was my first boyfriend. My first kiss. My first date. The first time I held hands with a boy. The first boy to tell me he loved me. My first breakup. I suppose I feel odd because no other boy will ever be that for me. Will ever be with me at 16 and experience things together for the first time. I'll never be that idealistic about a relationship again. And that's what I miss. Not him, per se, but being that 16 year old girl who sat next to him on the bus and was made happy because he held my hand.

Like every relationship, we had our share of drama. Our breakup wasn't great. I went out with his friend shortly after...which, yes. I know. Is against the rules and something I will never do again. I look back in my journal and read about how the thrill of my first boyfriend made me feel. It's something Dave and I shared and I won't get to share with anyone else.

Mazel tov, Dave and Ellen. I hope you will have a wonderful marriage.

Prisoner of Azkaban

So since I wasn't feeling great this weekend, my hot Halloween date last night was my little brother's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" DVD. I haven't seen that movie all the way through since I saw it in the theatres last summer and now I sort of remember why.

In case you haven't already figure it out, I am a hug fan of the Harry Potter books. I make the distinction because I have this sort of love/hate relationship with the movies...ie, I get psyched for the movies to come out, then annoyed because there are elements in the movies that get left out and things aren't as I pictured them...you know, the usual. But "Prisoner" is my favorite book of the series (though I love all of them)and the way the movie is, irritates me more because a huge chunk of plot was left out in favor of....well, I'm not sure what. Pretty shots: leaves changing, longer-than-necessary scenes with special effects...oy.

But...no Quidditch cup, no explanation of the just who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs were...and Harry doing some things that are blatantly out of character. There was a scene where he was wandering around the corridors of the school at night, which he definitely does in the books, but he did NOT have his Invisibility Cloak. There is no way Harry, as written, would not wear that when he was wandering around...he has been threatened with expulsion so many times that that is something he just...wouldn't do. The other thing was he started crying while they were in Hogsmeade...and it specifically says in the books that he wouldn't cry in fron of people, not even Ron or Hermione. Grr.

And of course, continuity over three movies is difficult to maintain, but when a character has a specific identifying mark, like say...a scar, it should well, always be in the same place. I watched the special features on the DVD and in the first two trailers, Harry's scar was on the left side of his head....and in the third, it was on the right. Seriously. Let's look at the little things, here.

Old Friends, New Friends...and Somewhere in the Middle

Wheneve my good friend Dan and I discuss our friends, I usually chide him for 'compartmentalizing'...you know, keep people in different compartments of your life and never letting them mix. He usually allows that I'm right and we move on.

But then I realized that I do it, too. Last night, my friend Melissa from high school imed me breaking a silence that has lasted almost five years. It's was so weird to me that here she was (well not quite here, but you know what I mean)...after all this time. What do you say when someone you've sort of written off comes back?

It's not like I wrote her off, like on purpose. It juist sort of happened over time. Especially since we both moved away from West Islip, where we grew up. But in middle school and I high school, I talked to her almost everyday on the phone, I slept over her house, I swam in her pool...it's so weird that a relationship like that was just...gone. But it's not just the relationship. It's that whole life. The growing-up teenage life in WI is gone for me. And that's ok; I've made my peace with it. I know who my friends are. They are the people whom you can talk to for hours after not having spoken in a year. They are the people who ask after your family even though they only know them through your description. They are the people who will drop everything and talk to you if you need them. And you do the same for them.

I don't have any delusions of re-creating a friendship that I used to have, but I would like Melissa in my life. My group of friends in high school was about twenty-five people. I now speak to about three of them. found out long ago which ones I had things in common with still, and sadly let go of the ones I did not. In the effort to hang on to my friends from SU and make new friends, I haven'tmaybe given enough attention to where things began. In West Islip.

Dancer

You are a Ballerina. You are the classic princess
between all, you have an opinion about almost
everything, your friends respect you and see
you as a role model cuz you are always in your
way up. Your ideal man is someone who respects
the successful and intelligent woman you are.


What kind of dancers are you? (Girls only)
brought to you by Quizilla

The Opposite of a Girl Crush

So there are the women that we admire for being smarter, prettier, more confident and more put-together than we are. Then there are the women who we just...sort of...feel sorry for. And this doesn't mean we feel sorry for women who are bigger than us or less stylish. It's a way that a woman carries herself that makes the difference.

I was at the gym today and there was this woman in the locker room who I couldn't help staring at. For starters, her expression was sad but she stood hunched over like she didn't have the energy to right herself. She wore her home-dyed hair in a half ponytail bound with a scrunchie; a look that Sharon Cherski wore with so much more attitude...in 1994. Her outfit wasn't too bad, as much as it was bland...a pair of gray dress pants and a tan top...though then she added the huge blue granny sweater. Oy. I felt bad that I kept looking at her, but she seemed so sad and a small, shallow part of me wondered if she would have been more excited about getting dressed if she had a better outfit. It was one of those times that I wanted to take her to the Gap across the street and get her a new outfit.

She seemed like one those people who only spoke or even smiled if they really had to and then it took considerable effort. And for someone who just worked out, she didn't seem to have the end-of-the-workout high that many of get so that we can bear to go and sit at our desks again. I don't know. I could be totally wrong and she could be the happiest person, like, ever...but if body language was any indicator, that isn't the case.

The Best of 2005... Sara Style

Ok so this week the Village Voice came out with their best of 2005 issue (view it here: www.villiage voice.com)and I got to thinking about what I would put in if I were writing so here are a few (bear in mind that I live in Park Slope and I work in Midtown so these are colored by those facts):

Best Place to Get Trampled By Tourists: Times Square. No explanation needed.

Best Theatre to do Unpaid Theatre Work: Here I give a shoutout to Gallery Players (14th and 4th in Park Slope) a theatre where I have worked as an Assistant Stage Manager for five plays in a row, including The Full Monty and The Laramie Project. Come check it out!

Best Place to Watch Baseball: Yankee Stadium (161st Street..on the B/D line) Say what you will about the recent post-season collapses of this team...they still have the best place in town to catch a game at a place steeped in history. Get there early enough to get into Monument Park and take in the history.

Best Place to Watch Hockey: Madison Square Garden (34th and 7th above Penn Station). "The World's Most Famous Arena," indeed. After hockey's season long absence, it'll be great to get back to MSG and catch the Rangers. Don't forget to wave at Mike Richter's number 35 above the ice.

Best Place to Eat Before Going to MSG: Keen's (36th and B'way). Good burgers. Good club sandwiches. Good beer.

Best Place to Buy Books: Coliseum Books (11 W. 42nd St)Sure, the books aren't any cheaper than BN, but they sponsor the reading lounge in Bryant Park and host authors such as Tony Kushner and Gregory Macguire.

Best Show Not Starring a TV/Movie Star: Altar Boyz (Dodger Stages, 50th St bewteen 7th and 8th). I expected this show about a Christian Boy Band to be idiotice but it was in fact, delighfully cheesy fun. But go see it for yourself.

Best Place to Eat Lunch and Not Look at Your Office Building: My favorite is this place on 50th Street next to Strawberry's with a fountain and a waterfall encases in a wall. There are tables and chairs. Just don't sit near someone who's smoking or on their cellphone.

Best Thai: Yum's (Across from Virgil's on 46th St). A small hole-in-the-wall that everyone seems to know about if you fancy Pad Thai for lunch.

Best Margarita: Mexcal's (7th and 5th in Park Slope). The service might not be the best but those flavored maragaritas (raspberry and strawberry are the best) in cactus-handles glasses more than make up for it.

Best Bar to Go With a Big Group: Fiddlesticks (Greenwich...get off the train at W. 4th). No cover and good atmosphere...and good chicken fingers.

Best Movie Theatre: Loew's Lincoln Square (1998 Broadway) Price of an Imax movie ticket: $15. Price of Christian Bale's face filling up your entire field of vision: priceless.

Best Show on Broadway: Rent (41st and 7th). Now with a movie coming out and a tenth anniversery looming, Rent will do big businees. But it's still the show about dreaming big, rock music and love. No day but today.

That's it for now. More soon.

Birthdate

Your Birthdate: March 4

Being born on the 4th day of the month should help make you a better manager and organizer. You may be more responsible and self-disciplined than you realize. Sincere and honest, you are a serious and hard working individual. Your feelings are likely to seem somewhat repressed at times. The number 4 has something of an inhibiting effect on your ability to show and express affections, as feeling are very closely regulated and controlled. You are apt to be much more practical, rational, and conscious of details. There is a good deal of rigidity and stubbornness associated with the number 4.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Morning Commute

So this morning I'm on the subway, going to work and this woman and her little girl get on the train. I say 'her little girl' loosely, of course, I don't know if she's her own child or not. But along the way, the child begins crying nd it turns out that she's crying because she wants to sit on the woman's lap. At least that is what she's saying while crying. And the woman sits there, apparently reading her book as the child tries to climb on her.

This made me irrationally angry. Of course, it's none of my business. But once the child is crying in the subway, it sort of becomes everyone's business. The whole car was sort of looking at this woman and wondering why she wasn't doing anything to quell the crying of this little girl. I know sometimes kids have tantrums in public places and people look at the mother like she's a horrible person...but I don't know that htis was the case. The woman sat in her seat on the subway and tries to ignore the little girl, who stood in front of her. I wanted to go over and give the girl a hug and tell her she could sit with me.

Some people should just not be around kids, or have kids or whatever. If it's such a chore to have the kid around, that you make them cry and don't try to make them feel better, then what are you doing with a child? Seriously.

A New Year

Don't adjust your calendars...it's not January yet. Thank Gd. But it is the beginning of the Jewish year, 5766. Wow. Think about that. It's 2005 by the more common calendar,or the Christian calendar as some would say, but the Jewish calendar has been around more than 3000 years longer. That's a long time. Just thinking about the difference in the numbers sort of puts things into perspective.

But what the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, puts in perspective more so than New's Year's does is that it is a new beginning. New Year's is about drinking, and eating and cheering as the ball in Time's Square comes down and it becomes January 1st again. Rosh Hashanah offers something different: time to sit and reflct on the things you've done in the past year and what you hope to do differently in the coming year. New Years' resolutions always seem a bit empty, or at least they do from my point of view, because it seems then, that the world becomes even more obsessed with weight loss and exercise instead of focusing on what will make them a fundamentally better person.

Rosh Hashanah begins the year and the Days of Awe which culminate in the ultimate out-pouring of repentance and redemption, Yom Kippur. Through these days, we make amends with people with whom we may have quarrelled or examine oursleves to figure out how to become better Jews and better people. On Yom Kippur, our fates for the coming year are sealed and they play out over the year. Through this time, we repent for things like ambition and rudeness and materialism, things that we wouldn't think twice about if it wasn't spelled out in front of us. We empty our pockets of bread, symbolically throwing our sins away and discuss the goat of Azazel that was set free in the wilderness bearing everyone's sins.

Jews have no ritual of "confession" as the Catholics do, but we carry sins with us until we can identify them and set them free and begin the new year with a clean slate. May all of you who are celebrating this week and next have a happy and healthy new year.

L'Shana Tova

On Real Politics...

Required reading for the day:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/politics/29delay.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/politics/29assess.html?hp&ex=1128052800&en=5363f9e5944b39a4&ei=5094&partner=homepage


(Copy and paste into browser...they were too long to copy out into a link)

Bartlet in '08 ;o)...though it'll be cancelled by then.

A Female President

I'm not gonna lie. I like the idea of having a female President...though, at this point, I wish almost anyone else was President besides the person who actually is. But I digress.

So I watched "Commander in Chief" on ABC last night (Tuesdays, 9 PM)...It was decent. I've been pretty selective in what I watch lately but I was interested in the idea of this show...The man who created it, Rod Lurie, did a presentation for one of my film classes at SU and is a friend of my professor. We saw his movie, "The Contender" which was about a female nominee for Vice President. The show was similar. Both women were in position to step up because the man in power died. But I suppose The Contender is to Commander in Chief as The American President is to The West Wing.

Once Ms. Allen, the new POTUS, took office it felt like the story finally started after the former POTUS died and tried to get her to resign. I still don't really get why he would choose a VP who he didn't trust to run the country, but whatever. I kind of would like to see a story of a woman who is actually elected as opposed to woman who has to step up, but that would be a different show. The production values weren't brilliant and the dialogue could be better, but I like the idea of the show so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

I also read all the info about women in politics in NY Times yesterday and it was interesting that 80% of people polled (thanks to the Joey Lucases of the world) are ready for a female President. Things will get interested if (when?) Hillary Clinton decides to run in 2008. But as with the show, I need to know more about her...I don't think a woman should be President just to have a woman be President. I think there should be a woman President who is a good leader. Maybe this show will get more people thinking about this.

A Wrong Turn

So yesterday I went out with my friend Laura and we went to an Italian festival in the Village. We walked around for a while and then parted ways at the subway. I took the train downtown, in search of this store I'd heard about to do some shopping and she took the train uptown to meet her family.

I get off the train and look around. The area I was in was not immediatley familiar so I walked a couple blocks...and found myself face to face with Ground Zero. It was bizarre because Laura had mentioned that she was wary of days that were as clear as yeaterday because one thing she always remembered about 9/11 was how clear it was. So there I am and I walk closer to it until I'm at the protective fence and I stood and stared for a while until a toursit came and stood next to me and was snapping pictures. I had lost my appetite for shopping. It was wierd to me how there could be a big department store across the street and the people that were going in and out didn't seem to notice where it was and what they could see.

My family and I had gone a while back to visit Ground Zero and to pay our respects, but when we had gone, I had expected to go. It wasn't an accident that we went there. But yesterday, I felt shaky as I walked away from it because I hadn't planned on going there. The one positive thing was that apparently the vendors that had been selling tastless souvenirs had been chased away. I always wondered...it is worse that people sell that shit or that people buy that. Becasue people wouldn't sell World Trade Centre hats if no one was buying them.

As I walked back to the subway, I figured I'd stop somewhere and use the Ladie's Room and I went into a church that had it's door open. But inside, there were all these roped off areas housing the impromptou shrines people had created just after 9/11, and signs with picutres of loved ones and one table covered in NYPD and FDNY patches, memorializing the officers who had died. I finally found the bathroom and I was in such a daze that I didn't notice the line and when the man in line reminde me there was one, I didn't join it. I couldn't do something as normal as wait on line for the bathroom. I just walked out of the church and got on the subway and left.

Sara's Book Review I

Ok, so I've been thinking about this book for a while and still haven't been able to form an opinion either way about it. The book, by the way, is My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and I'll take a moment and issue a spoiler warning for anyone who may want to read this and haven't yet.

My most overwhleming feeling was that the book read sort of like an after school special. You know. Overwrought family drama populated by b-list actors manipulating the audience to cry in several spots. I did feel that some things about the book itself were manipulative. The ending, for one. It was like the writer wrote herself into a corner and felt the best way to get out of it was to kill off her main character. And the mother? I had a surge of anger every time I read a chapter written in the mother Sara's voice because while she was being a mother to Kate, her daughter with Leukemia (sp?), she was clearly not being a mother to her other 2 children, Anna and Jesse.

So how they react? Well Anna, the main character, had been genetically engineered to be a donor for Kate. At 13, she revolts and sues her parents for medical emancipation. Her older brother Jesse is invisible to his family and has become an arsonist. His father Brian, however, is conviently a fire-fighter so he puts out the fires Jesse starts. The idea that Brian is a fire-fighter is such a cliche that it almost made me laugh. He is a man who can control and put out fires at work but at home is at a complete loss. Sound like any better written television shows on FX?

Enter Campbell, the seemlingly in control lawyer who takes Anna's case pro bono. But he doesn't have control anymore than Brian does because he has a terrible case of epilepsy...and a service dog called Judge who warns him about upcoming seizures. This plot development made no sense to me. Wouldn't he have been on medication for seizures? Is it even possible for a dog to sense these things? Oh, and the guardian ad-litem Julia who is assigned to Anna's case just happens to be Campbell's ex girlfriend and one true love. Contrived? Of course. Did Campbell and Julia become more interesting than the main family at several points? Definitely.

And yes, Anna dies at the end, not Kate. There was a ton of foreshadowing about this such as the judge assigned to her case had a dead 12 year-old daughter and Campbell asked Anna a couple times what she was going to be when she grew up. I only realized this after I finished the book.

I liked the use of the chapters rotating points of view. I've always been a fan of this idea though I felt judy Blume did it best in Summer Sisters (if you haven't read that one, do). I liked her use of words and description. I just felt as though I had a love-hate relationship with the book as I read it. However, I read it in three days, so that says something about the pace and the writer's ability to capture her audience, no matter how manipulative her story.

Choices

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20women.html?ex=1127966400&en=3f7348e314a603ee&ei=5070

This article doesn't really take a position as much as presents the situation saying, "This is how it is." I'm sort of glad it wasn't really slanted one way or the other, since I'm not quite sure how I feel about the subject.

My mother was always home for us. There was the odd day when we would let ourselves into the house but as a rule, she was home. I have a good relationship with her and I'm sure the fact that she was there when we got home from school has something to do with it. However, I can't imagine doing what the women in this article are doing. They are attending Ivy school, training to be lawyers and other such high powered jobs...then planning on leaving it all to be stay-at-home mothers. I don't know, I can't get behind this idea of working so hard and then planning to give it up by the time you're 30, when you've barely begun.

Of course, the women's movment is about having the choice to work if you want to. But the expectation on most women who want families is that you have to balance that and your families. Men don't really have that expectation except maybe the men who become stay-at-home dads, but there seem to be so few of those that the expectation doesn't exist for them...yet.

At this point in my life, I am single so I think more of finding a man than having a baby...though I know I would like to have both in the future. I don't have it planned out how things would work when I have a baby. I think it would depend on how my career was going and whether my husband and I could afford to have one of us stay home.

Shopping

Going shopping while you're in the middle of existential angst is never a good idea. It stops being about whether or not you can afford the clothes or if the clothes look good and becomes about putting on different clothes so you can have a different life. How would my life be different if I had this jacket or these pants? Will they make me more successful? Or will I still be the same person in new clothes and another charge on my credit card?

Clothes don't have the power to change you. They don't. You might wish they did. I know sometimes I do. Sometimes I wish I could just change my outfit and I'd be the sexiest girl in the room. Or the smartest. Or the tallest (yeah, I know). I know all that about it's not what you wear but who you are inside and blah, blah, blah. Yes, I know. Anyone over the age of 12 has heard it more than 20 times. That doesn't stop a girl from hoping.

The truth is while pieces of clothing don't have the power to change your life, they do have the power to change how you might see yourself for a moment. What girl hasn't gone to the mall and tried on fancy dresses and pretended they were going to be accepting and Oscar? It's just me? I don't think so. Why do people hang on to a favorite shirt long after it is out of style? They do because it makes them feel good to wear it.

So had I decided to buy anything today, I would have been the girl who bought a blue jacket at the Gap with another charge on my credit card who is going through existential angst.

Technical Difficulties

So when I started doing shows at this theatre in Brooklyn, I did it because I missed theatre and I wanted to meet theatre people. I did a couple shows last season and I really enjoyed the experiences that went along with the shows. Each show came with it's own set of issues to work out but when we did, it made the show better.

I do crew for theatre so I can decide what shows I'm doing, not the director. I can offer to help and most times, I'll get taken up on it. But I do this all as a volunteer. There is no money involved; I do shows because I want to do shows.

The current show I'm working on, I knew I wanted to do when I heard that they were doing it a few months ago. So now I'm doing it, but it's not really fun anymore. It feels more like work. In theatre, things go wrong. They do. It happens. Last night we had some problems with some equipment. There wasn't a way for me to fix it during the show. After the show, when I already felt like crap for not being able to fix it, I get questions from everyone about what happened. I had to talk to the Stage Manager for like 20 minutes about what happened and she wasn't satisfied with anything I said. Now, if she already wasn't controlling and didn't trust me, this makes it worse. I don't need people to tell me things are going wrong. You don't think I know? I don't like being made to play defense while questioned after a long day and an equally long show. She kept saying she wasn't blaming me when it was clear that that was what she was doing. I've never really wanted a show to be over before, but I haven't had a show that felt like actual work either.

Isn't it Ironic?

Don't you think?

But seriously, it's odd how things work out sometimes. I just found out one of our dept members quit and has been hired at aplace I interviewed. Now I won't go into detail, but I know my interview at that particular place didn't go very well, but that's ok. It wasn't the job I wanted.

What's odd is that I sort of expected that I would be the next to leave. I have been doing interviews intermittently since March. The only thing is, I think I've really been excited about maybe three of them. Maybe that comes across in interviews. But the couple of jobs I was interested in, I didn't get. So who knows.

When it comes down to it, I don't hate my job. I don't. I'm not necessarily passionate it about it...but honestly, I don't feel that any of the people I work with are, either. And the people I work wioth are good people, in general.

Maybe this goes back to my "what am I doing with my life" complex that I've developed since I graduated. I've begun to consider grad school, studying something other than what I studies at SU. Maybe then I can be passionate about what I'm doing.

Four Years Later

It doesn't seem like four years since I was a junior at Syracuse. It doesn't seem like it's been four years since I lived in a single in Shaw Hall. It doesn't seem like four years since my family officially moved to a suburb in New Jersey. And it doesn't seem like four years since the world changed.

On 9/11/01, I was in Syracuse. It was a normal, nice day and I had class at 10 AM. I walked to Newhouse, where my class was and stopped at the coffee shop to buy a muffin and orange juice with my SU ID card. That was when I noticed something odd. When I came in, usually, before this class, there was never more than three or four people in the coffee shop, but today there was about ten people huddled around a tv set that was suspended from the ceiling. I bought my breakfast and glanced at the tv. It was tuned to the news and showing a building with something sticking out of it. The sound on the tv was off, so I read the closed captioning. It seemed that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Centre towers. I stood, transfixed, until I realized that I had class. So I went in to my class, in the big auditorium, which was more like a moved theatre. My professor tuned the screen to the news and we all saw the second plane hit. Then the building began to collapse right in front of us, on this big screen like we were watching a disaster film. The professor had also told us that we could stay if we like, or we could leave. So at that point, I got up and bolted back to my dorm where I called my childhood friend who I knew was in NYC. She wasn't in her room. I somewhat hysterically asked her roommate to have her call me. Then I called my mother. She said my dad wasn't home, he was at work in Philadelphia. It was becoming hard to make phone calls; the lines were becoming jammed.

I went out to dance class later and the campus was deserted. It was normally teeming with life and it was deserted. When I got back, I called my mother again and asked her to have my dad call me when he got in since he was evacuated from his office in Philadelphia. I waited in my room. I didn't go to anymore classes. Finally, I heard form my dad. He was home and he was ok. Then I started IMing my friends on campus. We all met for dinner that night. Since your friends are your family at college, we needed to be together and have a family dinner.

The next night there was a candle-light vigil and I went with some girls from the band. My boyfriend broke up with me that night, but I was so numb that I didn't especially care.

Nobody I knew was directly effected by the events of that day. I don't know anyone personally who worked in the towers. I don't know any firefighters or police or rescue workers personally. I was sad for everyone who did. The thing I did have a personal connection to was New York City. It is the place I made my home since graduation. I knew when I was still at college that it was my home. And my home was attacked. It wasn't safe. On the contrary, it was quite vulnerable.

I did hear a story about an aquaintance's father who worked in the towers, who for some reason, did not go into work on 9/11. In these past four years, things have changed. People do not believe that New York and the US are invincible the way they might have once. Security has tightened. Ground Zero is no longer a site of chaos but a vast, empty pit waiting for something else to be built.

Is This Real Life?

Yesterday my friend Jodie and I walked around the city for quite a long time. At one point, we came upon this somewhat old looking diner. There was something familiar about it and it didn't hit me until we were on our way back and we passed it again. I had seen pictures of this diner in my Rent book. This was the diner where Jonathan Larson worked when he was struggling to make it as a writer. I suppose almost ten years since he died, most people wouldn't care anymore.

But it struck me particularly because Jonathan's story has always intrigued me. At least since I've learned of it... He died when I was 15 and all I knew was that this writer of a show that was up for Tonys had died. Then I watched the Tonys and the cast performed a number from Rent and I was hooked.I was promised tickets for my 18th birthday but didn't go until my 19th. I got the CD and listened to it almost everyday. I can't really describe why I find Jonathan Larson's story so compelling. Maybe it's because he was an immensely talented and passionate writer who conveyed such emotions in his music. Maybe it was the mystery of "what would he have become?" Maybe it was the fear of every writer, every artist that they would die before their work was recognized by the world at large.

I don't write music, but Jonathan Larson influenced my writing in the incarnation of the doomed Jonny Adams, AIDS patient and guitar prodigy. I hadn't originally named Jonny after Jonathan Larson; he was named 'Jonny' after Johnny from "The Outsiders" and Johnny from "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn." At the time I began writing, it seemed as though characters named Johnny were doomed characters. However as my writing grew and Jonny's role grew, he became the incarnation of the doomed talent; the talent discovered when he was gone.

I have seen Rent twice and now wait for the movie. I hope it lives up to the material and to Jonathan's vision.

Great Writers:

Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd ladies and gentlemen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/opinion/04rich.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/opinion/03dowd.html?incamp=article_popular

First Day

http://www.fbofw.com/strip_fix/

I've felt for years that Lynn Johnston was spot on in her depiction of the Patterson family. I've grown up with them, reading four frames of them everyday since I was a little kid. It's so true that the last person you want to see in school will turn up when you're not expecting it.

I was talking to my friend at work yesterday and she was telling me her cousin was about to start high school andwe got to talking about how things were then as opposed to now...When we were in high school, everything was so much simpler...even though most thing were full of drama with my friends (who did, of course, compromise a good amount of the drama club)...but we were usually able to resolve the conflict and remain firends. Our biggest problems then was someone not being invited to the place we were all hanging out that weekend.

Then we left for college and things changed. They got complicated. A number of my friends became unrecognizable. People moved away (including me)...and things were never the same. My friends spend the weekends hanging out, we fought, we went to the prom and graduation together. As I look back on it, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Now even the building is different. I speak to three, maybe four of the large group friends that I was always accompanied by.

Best of luck to those beginning high school this month.

Political Rant I

The hurricane that hit New Orleans and surrounding areas this week had a devastating effect on many things. These people lost more than their homes; they lost their city. Now people are stranded refugees without any place to go, gas prices have surged to $3 and $4 a gallon. What is being done?

Nothing. The President, who has been on vacation for the past month, spoke yesterday in a casual way about how this will make America stronger. As if. With the same bemused, idiotic expression on his face that not only suggests lack of intelligence, it suggests lack of understanding, he made his statement yesterday. Is that supposed to reassure people who are now homeless? It is time for some real action. But real action has never been this President's strong suit, now, has it? Only when we were pushed into a fabricated war for policital gain was action warranted.

There has been looting. There have been deaths. There have been people who were shipped out to Houston on buses. And the President can barely muster the time and energey to say he feels bad about it. He has now had more vacation time than any other President in history. He does not look a day older than when he took office and never looks as though he worked through long nights. Martin Sheen looks older at then end of his fictional Presidency than Bush does from his real one.

But this is reality. Reality has hit our country. When the attacks of September 11 happened, the person who stepped up to the challeng was Rudy Guilliani. Who will step up and help New Orleans? The state officials are doing the best that they can and are in need of help from the federal government. If things keep going the way that they are, people will not be able to drive their cars because gas prices have sky-rocketed and the President just signed an energy bill that has nothing to do with reigning in these prices.

What will happen to our country if a real leader does not emerge to help New Orleans, the surrounding area and the rest of the country through this chaos?

Out of Office Identity

When I was little, I used to think teachers lived at school and then when I would see them somewhere outside of school, I would think it was weird. It's sort of the same with people that I work with...I mean, sure, I don't think these people live in the office but I also don't know anything else about them, except they work in the same office as I do.

I got to thinking about this earlier, as a man who works a few offices down from me gave me a rose and then the woman I was speaking to explained that he breeds roses and has won awards for them...Now, I don't work for this guy and I don't know much about him in general but I would not have guessed him to be a gardener so I thought that was really cool. Not, of course, that that means gardeners have telltale signs, but it wasn't something that had crossed my mind. I mean, another man in the office used to be an Equity actor, but I could have guessed that because I join him in singing showtunes every now and then...But I suppose if I had never spoke to him, I would not have known that.

People were intrigued to find out that I work on shows after work...though it is obvious that I love the theatre from looking at my cubicle which is papered with postcards from shows I've done and seen...but if someone didn't speak to me on a regular absis, they wouldn't have known that...

So I suppose we wait for after office hours to let our own, individual idenitites come out.

Girl Crushes

(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B13FC3F5A0C728DDDA10894DD404482)

This was recently in the Times...I think you have to pay if you want to read it, but this link is the summary of the article...

Anyway...I was thinking about this concept for a while after I read that article...and it's interesting that the article means 'crush' in a thoroughly non-sexual way. Which is itneresting since I forwarded to my dad to give to my mom, and he misinterpreted it. But I guess it's more likely that woman would use the word 'crush' and not equate it with sex.

There is always that person who you look at and think "wow, she's so put together, confident, pretty, etc" and if this person is your friend, and spend time around them...you feel more like you'd want to be that person for a day rather than have sex with them...

My friend from SU, Alise, told me sometime after we became good friends that when she first met me, she thought I was a person who'd had "a lot of sex" because I was confident and she also said that she was intimidated by me. Well, by then, she had found out that I had not, in fact, had a lot of sex but I found that interesting because I always saw her as confident, fairly free-spirited and fun...and she was (is) but the images we had of each other have long since evaporated, leaving more realistic and interesting people in their places. It is always intriguing to hear how other people see you because it isn't always accurate but usually holds some interest.

Dating Etiquette: Sort of Ridiculous

http://msn.match.com/msn/article.aspx?articleid=3973&TrackingID=516311&BannerID=544657&menuid=6

Seriously. Why not start with the obvious: When a date is made, don't cancel it. We are in the age of IM, JDate and Match.com but meeting people online is never as personal as meeting them face-to-face. However, it becomes difficult when the person with whom you are speaking with online lays it thick with compliments one moment, then won't really ask you out the next. Say he does, then you set up a time to meet...but he calls to cancel. Then doesn't call to reschedule.

The problem is that people you have met online actually haven't met you, despite the connection that could possibly be forged over IM. So if you haven't met that person, then how could you be compelled to even keep a date? If you cancel, you're really not losing anything becuase you never knew that person to begin with.

The aforementioned article is ridiculous for several reasons...The first being why direct this at the guy? These would be things for both people to think about. Most women would not dress down for a first date, but still. They could be just as guilty of hiding behind their menu as the man. And why not add something that is usually a question when you first start dating: Who pays?

I'm one to believe that in theory, both should add to the bill. It is, however, a nice gesture if the guy wants to pay. I will always offer, but it seems like good manners if the guy picks it up...not for every date, just the first.

Also, don't say you want to get together again and then not do it. That will erase any chance you might have had. That article would have been much more effective if it included anything of substance instead of fluff.

Endings and Beginnings

So last night, one of my favorite shows, Six Feet Under ended. It was after five seasons and it was arguably time for it to be over. Six Feet Under was first and foremost an HBO show, which meant they could do what they wanted storywise, languagewise and visually. And they did. They did things such as employing the dead people who passed through the funeral home, Fisher and Sons (though for three of the seasons, Fisher and Diaz, though it went back to 'Sons' in the end) to speak to the characters and become their inner monologues, opening every episode with a death and the fade to white instead of the ever-popular fade to black.I didn't always love what everyone did on the show; they all were very human and made plenty of mistakes. But who wants to watch people be perfect?

That was not why I loved the show. I did love the quirkiness of it and the dream sequences, occasional musical numbers and presence of the many ghosts. But for some reason, I always felt close to the show. Close enough to spend my last semester in college writing an episode of it. For that project, I pored over my tapes of the show and took laborious notes about how long scenes were and how many a character had in an episode. For me though, this was hardly work. I enjoyed this project. I would do it again, if I could.

Somewhere around the time I was doing this project, something odd happened. The Fishers became my family. Nathaniel, Ruth, Nate, David and Claire moved into my room and stayed with me. Even Brenda, Rico, Lisa, Keith, Russell and Olivier were present. It became obvious to me that this was the case when I got an A on my project and was told by a lontime tv writer that my script was "solid." This also manifested itself in my other writings.

In one of my storylines, a young man died but it was only after I was familiar with SFU that this young man hung around with his friends who were mourning their loss. He visited them, became their conscience and I don't believe I would ever have had this idea otherwise.

The espisode itself was both ending and beginning and since that is the way life is, it was fitting and beautifully executed. I will miss the Fishers, Chenowiths and Diazes visiting me for 13 Sunday evenings out of the year. Luckily, I still have my tapes.

Thoughts on Hermione

I wrote this almost a month agao, but I wanted to move it here:

So I've now completed my first reading of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and look forward to what comes next. I have been an avid fan of these books since my sister put them in my hands my first summer home from SU.

I thought a lot about the characters in the books, and about which ones show up or don't show up as much in this volume. I missed Ron's older brothers, Fred and George and the late Sirius Black because I like those characters. We go through the story with Harry, out hero and main character but I thought then of what character I most related to.

The obvious answer is Harry's best female friend, Hermione. Not because she is the most prominent female character and the brains of the outfit, but because I see myself in her.
I have unruly blonde-brown hair that used to be the subject of ridicule by certain people in middle school who had nothing better to do. Hermione's two best friends are boys, and I have close male friends, sometimes even preferring their company to that of girls. And then in high school, I found myself with a crush on one of my closest male friends. Reading the scenes where Hermione and Ron nervously dance around each other with their as yet, unspoken feelings for each other, I remembered my time as the girl of a very different trio of friends doing the same.

I enjoy the action, the friendships and the values emparted by the Harry Potter books and I have to tip my hat to Ms. Rowling for making a girl like Hermione such a prominent character throughout the series. Though she can be wearing at times, Hermione is a rock for both of her closest friends and she values them highly. She is a supremely feminist character that shows not only can girls play with boys, but girls can match boys in strength and loyalty.

And Now Presenting:

"The Cabaret girls..." Sorry. Done now ;o).

I'm sure this comes a surprise to no one that I'm an avid reader/tv and movie watcher...So some of my favorite shows recently have all featured relatively good looking (or hot, in Timothy Olyphant's case), brooding torutred men. This has led to something my sister and I have come to refer to as "the tortured soul competition," which came into being when Deadwood and 24 were on back to back nights earlier this year...Now Jack's supposed to be dead but Seth lost his son, so I'm still not sure who wins. Then I got into Rescue Me and Tommy Gavin makes a case almost weekly for his spot as top tortured soul... And then Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince came out (if you haven't read it yet, that's your problem) and Harry makes his own, convincing case for a shot at top tortured soul...So the list is as follows:

- Seth Bullock (Deadwood)
- Jack Bauer (24)
- Tommy Gavin (Rescue Me)
- Harry Potter (Harry Potter series...of books, not movies)

I pick these people because they are main characters in their respective stories and because these are shows that I watch every week or read every book.

People who come close:
-Ben Hawkins (Carnivale...doesn't make the list since Carnivale got canned and it made no sense most of the time)
- Any of the Fishers (Six Feet Under...don't make the list because the show has degenerated in the last two seasons and the only reason it's good right now is that it's ending)

So that's it for now, we'll see what kind of trouble Tommy gets himself into this week...

Job Hunting vs. Dating

You can't tell me there aren't parallels... Just because some article decides to point this out
(http://careers.msn.com) doesn't mean they were the first to come up with this analogy...I know I'm not either. That's fine.

I went to this event earlier this year called "Pre-Dating," which was speed-dating, ie spending like 10 minutes with someone and deciding if I liked them or not. This was basically one glorified job interview because as I met with each guy, they would almost invariably ask me to explain my job to them. Don't people know that they are not only defined by the jobs that they do? Apparently not. I doesn't matter since I didn't match up with any of those people...I was insulted at first but then thought, "Do I really care?" No.

I had a recent job interview and it reminded me of a date because I could tell it wasn't going especially well because there were all these awkward silences and me, sitting there uncomfortable. It's like Carrie said, "First dates are job interviews with cocktails." (If you don't know who Carrie is, that's your problem ;o)...Not mean, just honest)

See, connection is such an important component to a work environment/ dating situation and it so hard to come by that you spend a lot of time wondering how you got it wrong on both fronts. It is hard to 'just be yourself' because in these situations, you become a like a version of yoursefl...and it is not until you are hired for a job or actually dating someone for the real you to come through.

Wilkomen, Bienvenue...Shalom?

It's really weird that when I spend the day at my desk at work thinking baout coming home and writing, when I actually sit down to write, I have issues getting the words out. I feel like it's because I've actually thought about it too much. Oy. What a way to begin.

Anyway...so introduction: I'm Sara. Sara Anne. See, some people find this really hard. There is no 'h' on the end of Sara. Why should there be? It's just an extra letter. But people invariably add it. Even when it's written down for people to copy, they still ask me if there is an 'h' at the end of my name. Though you're probably like, then why add the 'e' to Anne? You know what? I've seen 'Ann'...and it just looks, well...naked. So anyway, I'm 24, an aspiring writer who works at a job somewhat reminiscent of Office Space (just enough for my co-worker to come over and say 'what's happening' to make him and me crack up)...it's not a bad line of work, though it is in an office. I also volunteer at a theatre near my Brooklyn apt and enjoy that much more than the job I actaully get paid to do. But I get paid. So I shouldn't complain. Not really.