Just a Girl and Her Filth
I am feeling beside myself this evening. It seems that after my injury, I lost all sense of cleanliness and diligence in my domestic affairs. For some reason, "the boot" is a convenient enough experience to live in absolute squalor. I knew company wasn't coming over - and as a result, I've become shamefully lazy and behind on my chores. Although I usually chalk late-night cleaning up to a curious manic attack, tonight, before I go to bed I resolve to do something about the state of my affairs. It wasn't even a characteristically hard week, yet things like dirty dishes and full trash cans never seemed to come into the picture.
I am so happy I have health insurance. I got my ER bill today - some $616.21 for my sprained ankle, hopefully all of which, will be paid for by "the State" (there's something immensely satisfying about saying that). Meanwhile, a near absurd and angerful point is the single highest charge: $238.00 for "equipment" (i.e. two crutches and a flimsy sucko ankle brace that did nothing to remedy my condition). If I tried to sell any of the items on Ebay, I guarantee that it would net me something roughly equivalent to the shipping and handling costs. This country is really messed up... Also, I have a $5.75 charge from "pharmacy." A nurse brought me ONE 600mg ibprofun pill with a stryofoam cup of water. For a $5.75 tylenol, I expect a top-shelf gin and tonic to wash it down.
Ask obvious question: "What are you doing in on a Saturday night, oh girl about town, you?" There isn't much glitz and glam to my answer, I am just tired and need to spend some time resting. Last night was anti-climatic. I stayed after school to finish my grading, a decision I applaud myself for, retrospectively. I then had dinner with Tom and Ethan at a deli and went to Cinematheque where I saw good friends and an excellent Russian film from the late 1930s called
The Brave Seven. There was so much story in this movie, it almost made up for the
Triplets the other night. Plot-wise, the film followed a troupe of Russians - a geologist, a pilot, doctor, and other 'specialized' folk on a one-year expedition to the Arctic to look for tin deposits. But the moments of grandeur were really hammed up, excellently - dog sleds sliding into cravasses, sudden avalanches, near-death surgeries performed under abysmal conditions, and even a little love-story worked into the end. The emotional highs and lows were phenomenal and it was a great story.
Following the movie - the evening just kind of puttered along and eventually fizzled out. We went for a post-screening beverage. In some ways, it raised more questions than answers, but it managed to remain interesting and enjoyable. A change of venue later, I met up with an extended "friend," an old drinking buddy from my debating days. We had a friendly drink and chatted, but unfortunately many of his friends left just before I arrived with my entourage and I was really looking forward to a textbook friend mixer in which there was mingling and small talk and the excitement of new people. I am sure that this will eventually happen one day, it's just hard when everyone has such expansive and imploding schedules and finding a "good night" is near impossible the wider one casts a net. But anyway, that'll have to be another story for another day, and I ended up whining with my single friends (an aside, I have lots of "single" friends, but this group always seems to talk about - even non-obvious - issues related to singleness / living alone) in a pub until closing time talking about nothing important. Could'a, Would'a, Should'a went home earlier, and as a result, it would have been less likely that I overslept this morning.
I rushed, but I made it, to a talk by Henry Jenkins, the MIT-CMS guru that I find academically captivating, about "transmedia" story telling and new ways to present / complicate / slice up narratives. His case study was the
Matrix, and while this would never qualify as "my thing" it was so fascinating to see how the story exists (in completion) only through a synthesis of the films, video games, anime films, comic books, and now an on-line game (launched next year). The talk was fascinating, dynamic, and amazing, and as if I hadn't said it enough in the past, this man is light-years ahead of the academy. He is so smart when it comes to the idea of "interdisciplinary" and he mixes just enough of this with the right amount of that, crossing boundaries, reducing exclusion, and recognizing how malleable the boundaries between experiences / disciplines really are. His brand of organization is so smart, I can't wait until the rest of the world catches up. In the long-run, I stand by my choice to end up in a traditional film program, despite it's rigid boundaries, instead of hedging my bets on the rest of the world warming up to Jenkin's revolutionary way of re-paradigming everything and going to MIT.
The rest of the day was spent in coffee shops, making me feel either intellectual or like a grade-A caffeine abuser. I had tea with a guy I met on the Dean campaign and we had a genuinely interesting time... then I came home and went out again to read some French things with Eric at the new spacious coffee place we've visited a few times. I felt a little old being there as there was a high high-school age / undergrad crowd there, but we trudged through some reading and then, because we were in a rush, we had a very sub-par dinner at one of these thrifty stir-fry noodle chains. After this experience, we've vowed never to go to this particular chain again... somehow, I venture, this is one resolution I can live with.
Then, back to Cinematheque / school, and even a professor commented that it seems like we're "always there." Tonight was the first night of a series featuring the American silent screen actress Norma Talmage. There were clearly some problems with tonight's program, but the live pianist was incredibly skilled and just enhanced everything. Tonight, the program was the oldest (chronologically); a few shorts and a feature. We watched reels 2 & 3 from an adaptation of
A Tale of Two Cities, another short, and then, for the third, the nitrate negative was heavily damaged and the Library of Congress sent the wrong second reel, so we watched about 20mins of an anonymous comedy, NOT featuring Talmage. Then the feature, which was okay - but forgettable. Her performances were good and I look forward to her later films in the coming week.
The weather is refreshingly mild and I walked home, stopping at the videostore. As for tonight, my plans to clean house were again defeated by my need to just sit with myself quietly and blog the day away. Tomorrow, there's hope for an early start before the semi-formal Oscar soiree I'll be attending in the evening, moonboot and all. When it's sunny and the laundry-area is less-spooky, I can't wait to wash my sheets - a long-overdue and embarrassing byproduct of my new slobbishness.
posted by lmjasinski at 10:20 PM
