Please Like Me (A Prelude)

Before I launch into the discussion I've been thinking about for the past few days, I figure there's no harm in giving a general update on my life. That is not to suggest that I've been doing anything interesting but to some extent, I think that's the point of a blog. When I first began discussing this blog with my advisor, she suggested that I make it some sort of "Adventures in Post-Grad" experiment. But I told her that Lena Dunham already did that and she did it well. (Too well, if you ask me. I'm telling you, everything has been ruined for the rest of us.) ((Wait, I just thought about it. I don't write or experience anything like Girls so really, nothing has been ruined for me. If anything, I was most threatened by that now canceled TBS show, My Boys. It was about being friends with boys, which is something I write about and experience.))

So here's the update:

-Last night Bob and I had a sleep over. We drank two bottles of Merlot and shared a cheese and berry plate. We watched Taxicab Confessions. It was one of the greatest slumber parties I've ever had.

-Will and I had a birthday/anniversary/Flag Day party at the Mictrotel in Ann Arbor. Yes, the one that sits on 23. It was the first time I had a date that lasted 40 hours. And then I drove home in a terrifying rain storm. I cried through the first hour of zero vision driving conditions then laughed through the second.

-I saw The Shins live in concert. I took Mitch, which was totally appropriate given our shared high school angst that was best narrated by the music of The Shins. I've been telling people that it was a borderline religious experience and they probably think I'm being hyperbolic. Well I mean what I say when I say it or else I wouldn't say it, so yeah, it was a borderline religious experience. The beauty of The Shins's music is that songs top out at maybe 3 minutes a piece. So over the course of one concert, they managed to play what felt like ALL the hits. I used to write their song lyrics all over my notes because as a deeply insecure and under noticed 14 year old, I thought that the key to figuring out who I wanted to be was in their music. I'd put their CD in my disc man and jot down the words that stuck out to me, always in my notebook that was covered in my favorite Jones Soda labels. And whenever Joe would ask to see my English notes, he'd read the lyrics and ask if we needed to know them, too. It's an honest mistake--I guess you can say there's something Dickensonian about them. Also, I used to have a 14-year-old's dream of writing New Slang into a script, and then Zach Braff ACTUALLY ruined that for me. Remember when Garden State was a thing? Whatever, the concert was unreal.

-I am constantly writing new material. I don't know if it's good yet. Can I do I.S. again?

-I'm reading stuff, too. I just finished Cheryl Strayed's Wild. You should probably read it. It's really moving and heroic and funny and all kinds of things you want to get out of a memoir. And, Oprah restarted the whole damn book club for Wild. Oh man, talk about the ultimate celebrity endorsement. I'm also reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth. I just kind of salivate on every page, muttering "Damn it, you're good" under my breath. I think it's healthy for my ego.

-I watched Half Nelson and had to go out and buy blow pops to make myself feel better. Crack head Ryan Gosling is still unbearably attractive. Wardrobe and make up certainly tried; his eyes were blood shot and puffy, he was skinny, classic crack head attributes and so on. But he had a beard. And if you know my feelings about beards, then you know why I still swooned as I watched Ryan Gosling snort things up his nose. If you've seen Blue Valentine then you know that similar attempts were made to make him less desirable. By the end of the movie he had some tummy padding and he was losing his hair, so that was slightly less effective. After I watched that movie I didn't smile for the next 72 hours. I digress; Half Nelson was really great and had an ending I appreciated. I think I cried.

-Then I watched 15 episodes of 30 Rock and ate the blow pops.

You know what, I'm not going to write about what I wanted to write about. I don't feel like it. My plan was to dissect why people like what they do on Facebook, hence this being the prelude to the actual post that will indeed be titled "Please Like Me." When the idea first came to me, I immediately texted Biz and apologized for not being a better friend on Facebook and if she needed me to go through all her profile pictures and hit the like button, I was willing to do so for the sake of our friendship.

Oh, one other thing. I just got this e-mail:

And yeah, it's about people who take pictures of food with Instagram. What else would it be?

Why Every Graduate Should Watch The Graduate

I've been eagerly awaiting my existential crisis for years.

I know it seems a little sick for me to be eager about anything involving the word "crisis", but I always thought it sounded sophisticated and mature, something that artists must have before they create anything of worth. I didn't think it right to prematurely launch into one merely because I wanted one. And you can't really fake an existential crisis, that's counter productive. So I've been waiting around, for it to be natural of course, and finally after all this time I think it's starting to set in.

Over winter break I ran into an old friend at a bar. He had just graduated from college and I asked him how he was doing. He said, "To be honest with you, not good. I'm in the middle of an Existential Crisis." I could tell by the tone of his voice that both "Existential" and "Crisis" were capitalized. That's when I realized the key to understanding your crisis is knowing if it's capitalized. At the time, one semester away from my own graduation, I began to wonder when the Crisis would begin creeping its way into my consciousness. I'm notoriously well adjusted to dealing with change--so much that my lack of stress has stressed out others--so I started believing, in the presence of my liquored up and broken down friend, that his experience would simply not be mine and I'd have to find a way to write a best selling novel without the help of personal turmoil. Great! I thought. I'm doomed to be apathetic forever!


And then I graduated.

Within days of the ceremony I was convinced that a horrible mistake had been made. College had mistakenly issued me a degree; my department accidentally granted me Honors cords; I didn't actually pass any of my classes. It was all a hoax. And all I could think was you did this to yourself. My college is very serious about getting students through in four years and, in turn, students are also serious about finishing in four years. Anything more than that is taboo and, since College is the size of a high school, everybody knows if you have to stay on for even as much as the summer. There are implications and assumptions abound when you don't finish in four years. So, in that regard, I was happy to be done. I was actually quite pleased with the various achievements I had in college, starting all the way back in September of 2008. But what do I do...now? And what will I do tomorrow? Because the only thing I want to do doesn't involve an application and, naturally, nobody really understands that. I can't say I understand it much either. Again, I did this to myself.

I messaged my friend. I wanted to know if his Crisis had subsided yet; if there was any hope for the rest of us. I asked him how long it lasts and what I am to do in the mean time. His response was genial, positively optimistic. Among his kind words he offered me the only sound piece of advice I had received as a recent-grad. "Re-watch The Graduate."

Though I was sitting alone and reading aloud to only myself, I looked around to make sure no one saw me flush bright pink. I was finally facing one of my darkest secrets: I had never seen The Graduate. I could only watch it for the first time as opposed to the re-watching that was recommended. In all my years of being known as the utmost-film-afficianado-trivia-pop-culture-tycoon, this one had slipped through the cracks. In my head it was registered as: "Graduate, The. Dir. Mike Nichols. Starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, 1967. Best soundtrack ever. Won an Oscar, I think." But the time had come (as the walrus would say) and, if I was going to please my Existential Crisis Spirit Guide, then I also had to trust his advice.

I pressed play on The Graduate this past Tuesday after arriving home from a long day that felt more produtive than it really was. It was early in the afternoon--perfect for movie watching as I generally like to be left alone when taking in anything. The movie had played for maybe 30 seconds before I realized Benjamin Braddock is my real spirit guide.  The opening scene of the movie is simply a profie shot of Benjamin on the moving sidewalk at the airport. He has just come back to California from four years of college on the east coast. For three minutes and ten seconds (as that's the duration of Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence"), we just stare at Benjamin as the credits roll. And his look pretty much says it all. I wager most of our faces looked the same way when we landed in the airport or walked down the stairs after sleeping in our own beds again or the first time we walked into a bar at home. The look that says: Holy Shit. What just happened. Now I know plenty of people who did not like school, who made a goal of finishing early, who didn't have fun, et cetera, et cetera. And that's fine. But if those people graduated and didn't even feel the tiniest pang of "Oh, shit"--out of joy, fear, or anything else you were feeling--then I guess I am the one who has made assumptions about the college experience.

I let out an audible "Yes, thank you," when Benjamin's father was asking him to please come downstairs and talk to the guests who were there for a party. Benjamin doesn't want to talk to any of them and, when he does, they only want to talk about his future.  The brilliance of the script and the character is that Benjamin did everything right in college; editor of the paper, debate team president, cross country captain. We are not introduced to a burn out or someone who's terribly whiny and self involved because of circumstances they brought upon themselves. He's the guy who should have been employed first and yet he's not. Nobody can grapple with how this happened. "Do you have a job? Are you going to grad school?" they ask hopefully. Apparently the options haven't changed much in the last 45 years. Yes, that's right, 45 years. I am positive that this movie could be made tomorrow and nothing would have to be changed. None of the dialogue, shots, nuance. Keep it all the same because nothing has changed. There is everybody else's expectation and then there is you, wishing to be left alone in your scuba suit at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Whenever people ask me what my plans are, I can only answer honestly with "I don't know." Because I don't know. I know what I'd like to accomplish creatively and professionally, I know where I'd like to go [geographially] and I understand that these things are not going to happen tomorrow. The response I get is usually, "Don't worry--something will come a long." What's funny is that I've never been worried about something coming along. I didn't know I was supposed to be.

In conclusion: Go watch The Graduate. It's on Netflix instant play so you have no excuse not to. (So is Drive. [2011, Dir. Some Swedish guy I think, starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, and I'll apparently never look at Albert Brooks the same way again. Keep eye out for the scene with that song by College] I almost wrote about Drive).  Embrace your Existential Crisis and don't worry about a thing. Unless you start having affairs with married people. I can't help you. Actually, you can still watch The Graduate for that.

WATCH A MOVIE!!! (make sure it's a good one, then recommend it to me.)

This is me blogging

Do you get what this blog is named after? I'll tell you at the end. I really cracked myself up.

In an effort to be more like a "writer," I decided to start "writing" this blog. I was given this advice by many a writing professional, ranging from those at conferences to my dear senior thesis advisor. In case you [the audience] haven't figured out by now, I don't mind the blogging life. Perhaps you caught my adventures in Italy blog. So I said to myself, "What better time in my life but now--unemployed,  under motivated, and definitely not in Italy--to act under the assumption that other people want to know what I'm up to?" I think the answer is clear. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, FourSquare, LinkedIn, and Flickr don't provide enough detailed information anymore. We need WORDS. 

(FourSquare legitimately scares me, by the way. And, as I sit here, I am nearly certain that the FourSquare satellite can see me writing shit about them.) 

I did get a Twitter, though, which was really painful at first. By "at first" I mean a week ago when I signed up for the account. I'm not super into it. #not that into it. #that's what she said. Whatever. The other bit of advice given to me by the writing professionals was to get a Twitter for the sake of networking. Which is awesome because, you know, I always make the most of my 140 characters and I definitely show off my best flash fiction via mid-day Tweets. I'm always mature and inappropriate messages are never sent to me. On Easter Sunday my then 88-year-old now 89-year-old grandma asked my brother and  me what Twitter is. I explained that it's basically just people posting random thoughts for all to see. My brother pulled up his Twitter account for her to see what we were describing. She read one aloud. It was a classic "cuddling with my dog, feet up on the couch, life is good" kind of Tweet. My grandma's reaction:

"Oh, who the hell cares!" That's been my argument for as long as I can remember because, well, who the hell cares? I know it's a cynical way to think of the harmless thoughts of others but SERIOUSLY (and you know who you are) tone it down. Actually, no, don't tone it down. You're entertaining. And who am I, a "writer," to discourage anyone from "writing"? So pipe up, babies! Please give me minute by minute updates of your day. Tell me what you're eating. What you're wearing. Who you're sitting with. I might as well be the FourSquare satellite. 

I hope this brief introduction is somewhat enticing. Also, I just noticed that Rahm Emanuel is missing half a finger. As a "writer," it's important that I "observe." My post graduate life is not going to be like Lena Dunham's, if that's what you were hoping for. And even if it were, she already stole the thunder of all liberal arts college English major women. I'm not even saying that I would want to write a TV show, but if I did, I can't now. (But for real, Charlie and Marnie are obviously going to get back together, thank God, because even though he "smothers her" with kindness, I think he is just the dreamiest.) 

Sometimes I joke about writing Game of Thrones fan fiction. It's half a joke. I also wrote "An Open Letter to People Who Take Pictures of Food with Instagram." I might post that one. Spoiler Alert: If you take pictures of food with Instagram, this essay is not praising you. Just a heads up. 

Oh! And the blog's title. I wanted to go with "Where I'm Blogging From" but when I googled it, approximately 79 matches popped up. So I moved forward in my mental Carver anthology and there it was! One of the saddest stories I've ever read ("A Small, Good Thing") and yet I love it because it's Ray. So don't read it if you consider yourself to currently be in a "dark place." OR, if you like that sort of thing, go for it!

READ A BOOK! 

@markovichsays to hear what I'm eating for breakfast and what I'm wearing!