SFO

I am sitting in San Francisco airport right now, in front of a large window, at Gate 82. I have a great view of the runway, and some mountains. I can see my plane, which has just arrived, and is now pulling into the gate. It was 65 degrees and sunny today in the Bay Area. I spent no more than 3 minutes outside.

In my bag, I have about $3,126.67. In cash. I did not rob a bank; I sold a lot of books. This is my job. One of my customers paid me in change, too, so I have a lot of quarters. When I went through security, I realized that the TSA people could probably see that I was carrying quite a wad of cash. I am grateful to live in a country where bribery is rare, because it would be so easy to extort funds from me right now. You wouldn't even need to take me to an ATM.

My plane is boarding now. On my trip to San Francisco from New York, I sat next to an Israeli couple who fought the entire 6 hour and 6 minute flight. I don't speak Hebrew, but I could still tell. There were lots of hand gestures involved. But it could have definitely been worse; I could have been sitting next to a couple who fought in a language I do understand.

hipster fail.

Overheard on the corner of Canal & Lafayette:

Bearded hipster #1: "I lived in Brooklyn for, like, years..."

Bearded hipster #2: "Me too, man! Williamsburg..."

Bearded hipster #1: "Yeah, it was cool or whatever, but I spent so much money on fares. Like, 70 bucks a week on cabs. I used to get out of work, and my phone would be dead, and I'd have to go home and charge it, but I was too lazy to wait for the L, so I'd just take a cab."

Bearded hipster #2: "Yeah. Manhattan is way better."

mail ghosts.

My roommates and I receive a fantastic amount of junk mail. For every piece of legit mail we get, there are also 10 pieces of crap mail. We can't get rid of the stuff fast enough; there are boxes of it piled in our living room. The couple who lived in our apartment before us, Dennis and Olga, must have bought all their stuff through catalogs, and let me tell you, they had some weird taste. Need hunting supplies? Books from the University of Pittsburgh Press? A vast array of scented candles? I have probably have a magazine for you!

According to this article, mailpeople are even more sick of junk mail than I am. I really don't understand why, though; how is delivering a Scented Living catalog to my apartment any worse than delivering a copy of The New Yorker? I hate junk mail because it's boring and I have to dispose of it, but mailpeople are hoarding this crap! Perhaps it's not junk mail in particular that's the problem, but the never ending stream of mail itself. A truly Sisyphean task, if ever there was one.

Sometimes legit mail comes for Dennis and Olga too -- large envelopes marked "URGENT" and "CONFIDENTIAL." We never know what to do with this stuff, because we have no idea what happened to Dennis and Olga, and our landlords don't know either. Personally, I think they're dead. Either that, or they're in rehab trying to kick their addition to mail-order shopping. My artsy roommates briefly considered making some kind of installation piece out of all the junk mail we get, but I thought that would be super creepy, and I'm glad they didn't. After all, what if Olga and Dennis really are dead? Having their mail all over my walls would be like one huge creepy consumer séance. Not good for the karmic balance.

I have a history with junk mail for dead people, too. Karen Carpenter, lead singer of The Carpenters, who was sadly famous for dying of anorexia, used to live in the house I grew up in, in Park Slope. We used to get mail for her all the time, and I always thought it was super creepy. Or at least that's what my Mom told me. Now that I think about it, though, Karen Carpenter is probably a very common name, and the house I grew up in really isn't somewhere a moderately famous person would live. Oh my God, did my Mom make that up!? Mean!

sickness...and resurrection!

I have come down with some kind of mutant super cold, and for the last five days I have been pretty much confined to my couch/bed. If you talked to me on Friday, you would have heard (or not) that I lost my voice. If you talked to me today, I probably interrupted the conversation to sneeze all over you. I did manage to finally make it back to work today, but I was so focused on not falling asleep at my computer that I got nothing done.

The resurrection I refer to in the title of the post has nothing to do with the state of my sinuses, however. It is my apartment blog from college that has been reborn! We have a new format, but the same (witty and intelligent) contributors. Kappa Alpha Sigma (Nu) lives on.

conversations with newt.

Confession: I have this weird thing for Newt Gingrich.

A couple of months ago, I saw him on George Stephanopoulos, and he was surprisingly interesting and cuddly. Since then, against all of my better judgment, I've started to like him. First of all, his name is Newt, which is objectively awesome, but did you know he also has a PhD in history, and that he writes geeky historical fiction (none of which I have read, because it looks horrible)? I know, he isn't perfect: he was instrumental in get Bill Clinton impeached, and he was generally crappy at being Speaker of the House, and he's a Republican, but none of this seems to have stopped me from liking him.

And if we had lunch today, my buddy Newt and I would definitely have talked about his attempt to destroy adolescence. Here is how I imagine our conversation would go:

Me: "WTF, Newt? I like your ideas about responsibility and achievement, but this is not the 18th Century, and none of us are John Quincy Adams."

Newty G: "Julia, you have clearly been coddled all your life. Your parents should have shipped you to Rwanda to work as a peace keeper when you were 13. You have no idea what responsibility means."

Me: "You know, Mr. Newt, there is this great show on MTV these days called Exiled. You should watch it. The whole premise is that they send spoiled children (previously featured on another superb MTV show, My Super Sweet Sixteen) to go live in "horrible" places, like Panama or Africa, where they live with tribes and stuff. The kids cry and whine, but in the end they are transformed! Do you think all 13 year olds should be shipped to Burma?

Newty G: "Actually, I think MTV should be terminated. It is just another example of the pernicious influence of the culture of adolescence. I mean, have you seen The Real World recently? In fact, I think high schoolers should be paid minimum wage not to watch TV."

Me: "But wouldn't that just lead to a culture of bribery? Do you really believe that payment can induce someone to become responsible? And is it civically healthy to equate responsibility with monetary gain? Wouldn't that be like paying people to vote, or rewarding them for not committing a crime? Also: do we really have to 'end adolescence' in order to be good at science? Oh, and one more question: you refer to adolescence as a failed 'social experiment' and indicate that we should 'move on.' It seems to me that you think someone is running this 'experiment,' and that they can simply shut it off. If so, who exactly is in charge?"

Newty G: "You voted for Obama, didn't you?"

pass me a koekje, will you?

I'm pretty sure I meant to commemorate the one year anniversary of this blog, and say something about the fact that while I swore to everyone (mostly Rita) that I would never, ever, ever, EVER be a blogger, I can conclude now that it really isn't so bad, actually. I think I planned to disavow some of my stupider posts and chuckle fondly at the clever ones, but since I should have done all this about a month ago, the idea seems a bit stale now. It was also kind of a bad idea to begin with.

So, anyway, let's focus on an anniversary I haven't missed: the one year anniversary of the beginning of my American History Self-Improvement Project. Like my blogging, I haven't been as consistent or intelligent about this as I wanted to be, but it's turned out OK in the end. In fact, I think I've learned more about pre-twentieth century American history in the past year than I have in all my previous years of schooling combined. As Will Hunting said to that asshold at Harvard, "you dropped a 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have gotten for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library." My experience this year suggests that he was kind of right; I love the Brooklyn Public Library, and I have spent only 50 cents on late charges.

Am I ready to write my dissertation on Lincoln, or the Federalist Papers, or the founding of New Amsterdam? Not exactly. But do I now know the etymology of the word cookie and can I tell you whether Obama was the first President from Illinois since Lincoln? Yes, indeed I can: cookie comes from the dutch word koekje, meaning cake, and Grant, who lived for a while in Galena, was kind of from Illinois. (So was Reagan, but I don't think he counts.) Totally useless information? Yes. But not everything I've absorbed is quite as useless.

At the moment, I'm reading The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. It's really excellent, so much so that I'm actually thinking about reading William James. Also, it turns out that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and William James "had a date to get together every Saturday evening at 8:30 to discuss philosophy." This was in 1866; James was 24, and Holmes was 25. It's really good to know that I am not quite the biggest dork ever.

warning: political goo.

I woke up at 6:30 this morning, and waited in line for an hour and a half to vote. I groused and whined (as you can imagine), and thought back to 2004, when I just rolled out of bed at 8:30 and voted in the lobby of the Shoreland. Ah, the halcyon days of my youth.

Or perhaps they weren't quite so halcyon -- George Bush was re-elected that year, after all.

Election day kind of turns me gooey inside, to be honest. In general, I am not hopeful when it comes to politics; certainly, I think evaluating politicians based on the sincerity of their commitment to elusive qualities like "change" is both foolish and naive. Politics is, at its very best, a game of persuasion, and anyone expecting transcendence or heartfelt sincerity is going to be disappointed. Voting itself does require a certain amount of faith, though, both in the candidates you are helping to elect, and in the fairness of the voting process itself. If we could get rid of the electoral college, I would be happier, but nonetheless, it is wonderful to live in a democratic republic, especially on election day.

And so, in the spirit of political gooey-ness, I must say that, regardless of the outcome of this election, I am sincerely hoping for an improvement. Change, which both candidates have been so incessantly touting, can go either way. Today I'm hoping for something better than change.

And tomorrow, I look forward to reverting back to my usual cynicism.

tick tock.

When things become difficult, I generally stop doing them. I stop going to the gym, I stop reading Marcel Proust, I stop asking the guys in the mail room to get those file folders down from that high shelf, and instead I just re-use the ones I already have. This tactic has so far worked out OK for me in life.

I am taking the GRE tomorrow, and I kind of wish I could stop it. Somehow this is not an option. It is so unfair how time eventually runs out. Deadlines arrive, checks must be mailed, the minute hand moves, the hour hand follows, and frankly, it's horrible.

I've been reading Hannah Arendt, but she has not yet agreed to write me a letter of recommendation for grad school. I forgive her, though; she just doesn't know what it's like to be me. She had Heidegger and Karl Jaspers write her recs. She just doesn't feel my pain.

Today, after I decided that I was not going to grad school, and instead I would write a romance novel and become phenomenally wealthy like Nicholas Sparks, Arendt told me: "Objectively, that is, seen from the outside and without taking into account that man is a beginning and a beginner, the chances that tomorrow will be like yesterday are always overwhelming."

This was comforting, but only for like a second.

Update: The GREs went fine. In fact, I ended up getting the exact same score on the GRE as I did on the SAT. Which means, of course, that Arendt was right.

equadratic evasions.

applying to grad school mix #1:

All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
Yeah! Oh Yeah! - The Magnetic Fields
Silver Lining - Rilo Kiley
Recommendation - Mirah
Sad Song - Au Revoir Simone
Ain't No Easy Way - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Heretics - Andrew Bird
It Isn't Easy to Live That Well - Headlights, Headlights
Wrecking Force - Voxtrot

revisionist history.

Miss Self-Important attempts to verify an invitation to the French Embassy:

Miss SI: ok, they made me fax them back the invitation. that's promising. go france
Me: no wonder the revolution ended badly
Miss SI: we lost the constitution. please fax it back to us at your earliest convenience?
Me: exactly! the king lost his head. please return.

diagnosis: vacation coma.

I've been eating Wheat Thins for dinner lately. Perhaps that's not the healthiest option? I think I'm still recovering from vacation, where I ate enough to feed a small village in Burma. (Breakfast: pancakes and sausage and hash browns and fruit, and oh, wait..is that a muffin!? You get the picture.)

Anyway, I am back now, and tomorrow The 5402 is coming to visit for the weekend. We are having a reunion! Just like a sorority! ΚAΣβ 4EVAH! Seriously. I am only being partially ironic.

All I have to say is this: coming back from vacation is hard. When my brain and stomach recover, I will try to think of something interesting to write about.

maybe the fairies took it?

My iPod has mysteriously gone missing. After painstakingly backtracking my every move since the last time I saw it, I am convinced (convinced!) that it is somewhere in my room. But isn't materializing. I have gone through every drawer, and lifted every piece of furniture. I even sifted through my trash by hand, to make sure I didn't miss anything. That was a week ago. I am starting to lose hope.

This is sad, of course, especially since the stupid thing is only a year old. At the same time, I am almost enjoying my new iPod-less existence. It's like living without a TV, or eating yogurt for breakfast -- unpleasant, and yet, refreshing. (Living without internet, or being unable to listen to music at all -- these would be actual tragedies.) In New York, everyone is always listening to something; even the little old ladies are hooked up to their iPhones. You're supposed to be blocking everything out - those dudes fighting at the other end of the subway car, the guy playing the bongos, that baby in the stroller screaming its head off - but it seems to me that an iPod-less existence is actually less distracting. Plugging into an iPod and zoning out must take more mental energy than I realized. Plus, not listening to music allows for much more eavesdropping. People in New York really do say the weirdest shit.

And if you happen to pass me on the street, or in the subway, feel free to shout out my name! I won't be listening to my iPod, so I'll be able to hear you.

beached.

I was at the beach this weekend, with a few friends (and friends of friends) from high school. It was great.

We stayed in a cabin:


We did yoga on the beach:


And we cooked with fire:


I ended up with various ailments, however: a dozen mosquito bites, a sunburn in unfortunate places, and semi-permanent black lines on my feet. (Rubber flip-flops + insect repellent = mysterious chemical reaction.) I also got my ass kicked by a wave and, in addition to swallowing a gallon of salt water and nearly ending up topless, I got raked over a bunch of shells and now have a moderately-sized, moderately-painful abrasion down my back. My jeans also smell like a campfire.

All in all, a very satisfying trip to the beach.

small-time crime.

Last night, in the ladies' room of the Brooklyn Public Library, there was a girl, maybe 17 years old, primping in front of the mirror. While I washed my hands, she fixed her hair, inspected her makeup. She also had a very large piece of toilet paper hanging out of the back of her skirt.

I didn't tell her it was there. Does this make me a bad person?

Could I possibly blame my crime on the fact that I had just failed a GRE math practice test?

all about the benjamins.

JuVo and I didn't get that apartment we wanted. Clearly, you all did not pray hard enough.

When we called the brokers (notice, we had to call them, the injustice never ceases) the reason they gave was that we don't make enough money. This is all well and good, but also untrue: we would have paid exactly the same amount for this apartment as we do for our current one. Probably this excuse was just that: an excuse.

Or, perhaps not. After all, I do spend half of my post-tax income on rent. Isn't there some (cosmic) rule stating that one should not spend more than a third of one's salary on rent? But is salary in this scenario post-tax or pre-tax income? If it's pre-tax income, I'm doing OK. If it's post-tax income, then I should be living with my parents, or in Bushwick/BedStuy/Brighton Beach. I do make more than the average New Yorker, though, and if you combine our salaries, Juvo and I make a whole lot more than the median American household. So how much money does it take to get a decent sized, moderately bright, two bedroom apartment, in a neighborhood where I can walk home alone at night? Am I asking too much? Yes? Well. That sucks.

What's worse, I am not even a struggling artist/musician/free-lance writer. If I were, I could be too poor for that apartment I want now but still dream about The Great Payday (bidding war over manuscript, major record deal, work displayed in Whitney Biennial, etc.) looming on my horizon. As it is, this is all I've got, and it's not likely to change much in the next decade.

To take Keith Gessen slightly out of context: "That should be enough. I hope that's enough."

top five reasons i won't rent your apartment.*

1. All the windows face brick walls.
2. The bedrooms have no windows.
3. The bedrooms are underground.
4. I would only walk home alone at night if I was carrying mace and a large heavy object.
5. Any of the above, at a price I still can't afford.

*Based on real events. (Kill me now.)

8pm update: We saw an apartment we love! In a great location! For the right price! Everyone pray that we are approved. I'm serious -- PRAY.

i wish i had a hot toddy.

My office is freezing. At this very moment I am wearing a sweater and a shawl, so I'm feeling alright, but my fingers are like icicles. If you wear sandals or a skirt or, god forbid, sandals and a skirt, you will be risking frostbite.

The reason for this frigid state of affairs is, I'm told, that men in suits prefer the temperature to hover somewhere between freezing and ass-bitingly cold. Certain men can't take their suit jackets off, so everyone else in the building should pile sweaters on. This seemed to me like a subtle and particularly sick form of sexism until my boss reminded me that I too could wear a suit to the office. "But Gary," I said, "we work in publishing." Not even my boss's boss's boss wears a suit. So I said that I would start wearing a suit when he did, and that in the meantime they could turn the goddamn air conditioning down. He laughed.

(When I write my memoir, it will be full of mundane little anecdotes just like that one. Forget stories about people who take amphetamines and believe that the key to time travel is to stand in the basement and repeat the matra, "I am willing, sir." Forget stories about being a high-priced call girl in London. My memoir will be about how cold my office is, and what books I read in college. No one will ever doubt that it's true, and no one will buy it. But I'll feel better.)

In other news: the fact that Ezra Klein is 24 years old is still really freaking me out. Someone my age, someone who drinks Miller Light, is paid by the American Prospect to write about politics. He's actually good at it, too. I am clearly a failure.

avoid the void.

I stayed up until 2 am last night reading a book that is, objectively, trash. I read the entire book, from start to finish, in 3 hours. This is never a good sign. I went home after work fully intending to read Camus, or possibly to begin studying for the GED GRE. Instead I ended up watching about 4 episodes of Jon and Kate Plus 8, then going to bed and reading trash until 2 am. Now I be so tired.

I think it was Camus that did me in, actually. If you are feeling at all insecure - if you are even marginally contemplating the void - do not read an essay that begins, "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy." It's just, like, unnecessarily depressing.

Last night reminded me somewhat of first year in college when, by freak circumstances, I was required to read Nietzsche every quarter, sometimes twice. I emerged somewhat warped, much like Lloyd, who, in the best ever episode of Undeclared, learns about existentialism and ends up running around campus wearing nothing but a blanket. That didn't happen to me, per se, but I sympathize. Reading The Man of My Dreams until 2 am is, in its own way, kind of like losing all faith in existence.

if you don't know who the oranje are, you can skip this one.

I forgot all about Euro 2008. Gremlin and I went to the beer garden in Astoria on Saturday, in the hopes of sitting down and drinking something cold before we collapsed from heat exhaustion, only to find that Portugal was playing Turkey and there was no place to sit. There was barely any place to stand, either, which is why we ended up blocking a screen and getting booed by frat boys. (It was my first time getting booed; hopefully it was also the last.)

So, I forgot -- I won't blame the American media for this entirely, but only because ESPN appears to have fired Dave O'Brien, and this means that I might be able to watch a game or two without wanting to cut my ears off. They are even airing a handfull of games live and on basic cable! Which is nevertheless entirely unhelpful to me, because all the games are on the middle of the day. Being a soccer fan in America is really very sad and disheartening.

Anyway, this means that I had to go to Zum Schneider's last night to watch a replay of the Italy vs. Netherlands match. Italy is possibly my least favorite national team -- they are cheaters and divers and they wear their hair much, much too long -- and only begrudgingly will I conceed that their games are consistently fun to watch. The Netherlands is, on the other hand, possibly my favorite European team -- they are not too showy, or too weepy, or too famous, and their names are super fun to pronouce (Giovanni van Bronckhorst, anyone?) -- and even though they never win anything, I support them anyway, because they can do this. It was an excellent game.

And now, I must go -- Spain is trouncing Russia and Tom Lutz is live-blogging it for the Guardian, which means that it is too hilarious to ignore.

spike lee...

Passed me on the street today.

As he did, he told the woman walking next to him, "No way am I seeing Sex and the City."

Me neither, Spike. Me neither.

your rent is $3,000 and your shampoo costs $35

"Sarah Avrin, a 23-year-old music publicist, said she was struck recently by the sacrifices that some people make to sustain their New York lifestyle when one of her friends endured the long, painful process of selling her eggs."

UNNECESSARY.

top five things not to do at a wedding.

1. Do not make an agreement with the person sitting next to you that you will drink mojitos with him all night.
2. Do not develop a drunken crush on someone at your table (who you are not drinking mojitos with) and do not be horrendously obvious about it.
3. Do not tell the brother of the groom he is harassing you, even though is he definitely harassing you.
4. Do not forget to change the batteries in your camera, because then you will have no documentation of your stupidity.
5. Do not drink a glass of champagne, 2 glasses of wine, 3 mojitos, a shot of southern comfort, a shot of whiskey and a massive margarita on the night before you have to drive back from Pittsburgh to New York.


(Thanks for the picture, Laura.)

flood-tide below me!

Now that it’s warm, I’ve started to walk home from work sometimes. It’s an interesting walk; start out in Tribeca, walk south past City Hall, over the Brooklyn Bridge, through Cadman Plaza, past Borough Hall, all the way down Fulton Street to DeKalb Avenue, and then you’re in my neighborhood. It takes about an hour and fifteen minutes, if you don’t a) get run over by a bicycle on the bridge or b) get distracted by all the strange stores on Fulton Street.

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge is, of course, my favorite part, even though it’s thronged with tourists who insist on blocking my path to take pictures. About mid-way across the bridge, the Statue of Liberty comes into view, but by then the crowds have thinned out, because very few tourists want to take the Brooklyn Bridge all the way into, you know, Brooklyn. By the end, it’s just the locals and the intrepid (and, if you’re feeling romantic, the ghost of Whitman) who trot down the steps and into Cadman Plaza.

Living in New York can be mole-like. You shuffle down into the subway, and half an hour later you emerge in the next borough, and on the other side of a river. The time it takes to get places often has little to do with the distance traveled; going from 14th Street to Atlantic Avenue takes two stops on the N train, or 10 stops on the 2 train. In these transportation equations actual locations are reduced to subway routes, and physical distance becomes almost irrelevant. Things are as close or as far as the subway makes them.

I know, because I did it during the massive blackout five years ago, that walking from the Upper West Side to Brooklyn Heights takes about 4 hours. New York is smaller than you think. I could walk to Boston! It would only take me like...a month. I could do the whole thing in moccasins. It would be awesome.

the levantine crotch.

I had a bad day today; so much so that I spent a good two hours at work writing a long post about things that I hate. Really, a list of things I hate. Instead of that crap, you should read Leon Wieseltier's review of Martin Amis's newest book, The Second Plane. Maybe I've been reading too many book reviews lately, or too much about theories of history, but I found it sharp and, frankly, amusing:

"The masculinist account of terrorism brings to mind the feminist account of nuclear weapons, according to which all you need to know about the origin of the danger is the shape of the missile. The genital theory of history may be novelistically useful, but it is analytically silly. In this case, it reduces decades and centuries of philosophies and cultures and religions and tribes and classes and nations and movements and states and empires to the Levantine crotch. Surely we must be able to imagine, not only for the sake of our literature but also for the sake of our security, that there are sexually satisfied enemies of decency and modernity. And enough about those patient virgins in the sky: the threat from suicide bombing, and from the political cultures that prize it, is founded on deformations more worldly and more substantial than a harem fantasy."

your whining oppresses me.

A woman I know recently told me that she thinks, if she were a man, she would have a more prestigious job. She didn’t mean that as a man she would able to get a more powerful job, but that she would simply want one more. She thinks that men are under more pressure to be successful – to wear suits and make money and have blackberries – and are therefore more likely to succeed. Women, she thinks, are taught to focus more on their looks, and finding a husband. That’s why they aren’t as ambitious.

This idea reminds me of high school, where all of the incredibly lazy potheads were consistently described as “actually, really, really smart.” Were they, really? Did they really get rejected from Georgetown only because they refused to “play the game”? Or could it be true that not going to class and not doing any work is actually an indication of intelligence and ability to succeed in college? I was always bitter (and can you tell?) that the rest of us, who were both smart and hard-working, often got less recognition from our teachers and our peers.

Life is just so much more interesting when something is oppressing you, isn’t it? Either you are complacent at work because society never pushed you to succeed, or you end up failing P.E. in your senior year of high school because, it’s like, waaaay too stifling to conform to the fascist constraints of a high school gym class. Please. You failed P.E. because smoking pot in the woods behind school was more fun than playing badminton, and you didn’t get promoted at your job because all you do at work is update your blog. Just admit it.

Society did not program you to be less ambitious, or less successful, than your brother or your boyfriend. “The man” did not prevent you from attending Princeton. Jews do not actually control the government and media. George Bush and Dick Cheney did not kill your dog. That is not to say that shit doesn’t happen. Bad things happen to people who deserve better, and some of those problems are products of our government, our society, etc. I'm all for changing things that aren't fair. But, as a recent article in Slate put it: “No one in America can corner the market on suffering. Who the hell wants to spend their life in a corner, anyhow?”

The only answer I can come up with is: most people. Corners can be quite snuggly.

life is hard, #11

My apartment has been without hot water for two days.

I just took a shower using two pots of hot water and a cup.

This does not make me happy.

nowheresville, pa.

So, yesterday was Easter, in case anyone missed it. Family tradition states that if I'm somewhere between DC and Boston, I go to my Grandmother’s house for Easter. She lives about 20 minutes south of Philadelphia, so we usually drive for about two hours and then sit around her living room and listen to my Aunt and Uncle and cousins gossip while drinking large quantities of tea. At some point everyone goes to Church, while my Dad and I stay behind and read the newspaper.

This year was blissfully unlike the others. Instead of going to Nowheresville, PA, we managed to convince my Grandmother to come into Philadelphia for Easter. So instead of reading the Sunday Styles section while others went to Church, my Dad and I got to take a tour.

Despite having been born in Philadelphia, I have never really been to Philadelphia. At least not that I remember; I moved to Brooklyn when I was one and a half, and since then I’ve only really come back to the area to drink tea. I’ve decided, though, after reading Confederates in the Attic, that my American History Self-Improvement Project should have a travel component. Tony Horwitz spent months sleeping in muddy Civil War battlefields, getting beaten up in back country bars, and visiting the last confederate widow in Opp, Alabama (among other things). I am not cool enough to do all that, and I don’t have a publisher willing to pay for gas, but I can try my best.

In any case, I spent my Easter Sunday at Independence Hall. For those of you watching the John Adams mini-series on HBO, you’ll be happy to know it looks exactly the same in person, though maybe not exactly the same as it did in 1776. The tour was actually good, too. At least, unlike HBO, the tour guide had the sense to mention Thomas Paine.

I also got to see the site of Ben Franklin's privy! History is thrilling, isn't it?

vale, venga, vamos.

I'm back. The day before I left Spain, it was 75 degrees and I was walking on the beach in San Sebastian:





Suffice it to say, returning to New York has not been easy.

Here are the top five highlights of my trip, in no particular order:

1. Finding, and eating, thali in London.
2. The Richard Serra exhibit at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.
3. Doing absolutely nothing my first day in Madrid.
4. The tortilla bocadillo I ate in San Sebastian. (Death by carbohydrates.)
5. Watching Alex explain what a mojito is to a bartender in London.

All in all, I saw lots of cool stuff and I ate lots of good food. What more could I ask for?

I also turned 23 on Thursday. If my life works out according to plan, I should be turning 24 in India. Go me.

you can call me babe-raham lincoln.

I’m now into the third month of my American History Self-Improvement Project, and I have to say, it’s not going as well as I thought. I got sidetracked for a couple weeks and read a few Graham Greene novels, Michael Chabon’s new-ish Jewish book, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and some Freud. My trip to Charleston and Savannah confirmed, however, that I need to focus, cause I'm still kinda dumb.

Case in point: while looking out over Charleston Harbor toward Fort Sumter, my mother, my sister and I got into an argument about the Star Spangled Banner. Strange, but true. I thought the National Anthem was written about Fort Sumter, but my mom and my sister thought it was written during the Revolutionary War. I knew for sure they were wrong, but I wasn’t sure I was right. In the absence of wikipedia, we had to call one of my sister's friends to settle the debate. (My Dad has an encyclopedic knowledge of American history, but he was in Singapore that week.) Turns out, all of us were wrong. Francis Scott Key wrote the song about a battle at Fort McHenry, in Baltimore, during the War of 1812.

And you’re thinking, “Julia, who flippin’ cares?! You know what the Declaration of Independence was about, right? The Star Spangled Banner is incidental. The last time you heard it was probably 6 months ago, at some baseball game."

But seriously, I feel bad about this. You know that thing Jay Leno does, when he stops people on the street and asks them basic questions, and when they don't know the answer they look really dumb? I don't want to be one of those people. In order to prevent this from happening, I’ve resumed my aforementioned project. Having covered the basics of the Revolution, I've started on the Civil War -- I'm reading James McPherson's history of the Civil War era. The book has a dumb name, Battle Cry of Freedom, and it’s so long that I've sprained my shoulder carrying it around, but nonetheless, it is excellent.

Truly, this book has convinced me to take back everything I ever said about American history being boring. Did you know that, during the crisis over Kansas in 1856, a Congressman from South Carolina assaulted a Senator from Massachusetts by beating him over the head with a gold-headed cane?? And just before the 1860 elections, things got so heated in Congress that no one came into any sessions without a loaded pistol?

Everyone is pretty thrilled about the excitement surrounding politics this primary season, but just picture Rick Santorum pulling a pistol on Nancy Pelosi. That's when you know shit is really going down.

hanging chads, redux.

Overheard at my polling booth this evening:

Man trying to vote: "Do you have to be registered for a political party to vote in this primary?"

Election booth worker: "I'm not sure. You want to have a go, anyway?"

haiku 4 u.

Don't ask why, but I've spent the past couple hours going through the archives of my old college email address. There's some pretty priceless stuff in there. Aside from the epic letters I wrote during my unfailingly boring summer internships (mostly to Alex), there are also several amazing freak-out letters I wrote to my Mom. I guess college was hard, wasn't it?

I even found a haiku that someone (who reads this blog) once sent me:

In my class notes I found a haiku I wrote for you:

you smell like cabbage
i wish you would take a bath
once in a while

There's also an elaborate picture of you drowning, caught
between a pride of lions and a pirate with a nuclear cannon.
Methinks I should have paid better attention in class.

identity crisis, cont.

I want to go to Israel on a Birthright trip. I told this to someone recently, and they seemed to think that, as an entirely non-Jewish person, I shouldn’t be allowed to take advantage of the opportunity. Honestly, I kind of see their point.

But, in defense of myself, I don’t identify as anything, Jewish or otherwise. I did make my first communion, but that was 14 years ago, and I only did it because I wanted a party. And yes, I am aware how awful that sounds.

In any case, I qualify to go on Birthright, so clearly they don’t think I’m cheating. And I really want to go to Israel. Considering how much my Father (who the Jew in this scenario) is going to flip out when I tell him I’m going, Israel should be very happy I’m coming at all. Right? Right.

Also, while I was actually looking for something normal, I found these today:







Why doesn't the US have a Hannah Arendt stamp?