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?