Indiana boy makes good

Last night my brother-in-law, Lyman, was on Letterman! Regis Philbin has a christmas cd and he played backup while Regis sort of what do you call it? Chanteused Rudolph, my least favorite christmas song, which made it very difficult to sleep. Occasionally Donald Trump would bop out and shout something. It was a very odd, sort of post-modern performance. The cool thing is, Lyman was standing right behind Regis, so he was on the whole time. We'll have to keep out eyes peeled on his blog to see what he has to say about the experience. BTW, L. has released his first solo cd - check it out.

And now, a word on Letterman. First off, what is WITH Paul Schaffer? The dude's a total freak. I mean, how much coke do these guys do before they go on the show? Also, Colin Hanks was on, who in his Hanksiness is quite unbearable. I'd like to know, does Tom Hanks have other children who are exact clones of himself that we'll have to endure for generations to come? Will the world will forever be plagued with Hankses and will they all have that same annoying way of talking as if everything they say is like, SO interesting?

4:20

Where am I going to get more stuffing?

11am

Ate last of Thanksgiving stuffing.

It's too easy (get it?!?!)

What do you think Paris Hilton's perfume smells like?

So, I had a great Thanksgiving. I hope all my reader did too! M. made a flow chart for the dinner preparation - I'm sure you all had one - time on the horizontal axis, dishes on the vertical. That last half-hour is a doozy, but it all worked out. I got a lot of writing and applicationing done, and finished grading my student's papers. I was thankful for that. (:

Do what is right, or do what is easy?

I had a great weekend this past - finished writing my chapter with only a little bit of anxiety and weeping, and then on Sat. went to visit the new baby, then M and I ate some really good BBQ. Yesterday we saw Harry Potter, which was fun to watch. I wrote a review of it on my website. My agenda for this week is to grade papers, make presentation for my Rodin class, meet with advisor re: thesis chapter and make any necessary changes, buy gold heels if I can find perfect pair, clean house, get oil change, make Thanksgiving dinner, entertain friends and mail out first grad application. Easy.

I have another weekend of serious writing ahead of me to finish up this Whistler chapter I'm writing - then I'm going to move on to van Gogh. The last few weekends I've been working really hard on Whistler, but it's always a bit difficult to get rolling - for some reason, my house has to absolutely spotless before I can concentrate.

Dudes! My brother-in-law's band was on NPR - how cool is that? You can listen to a sample - it's really great.

Well, aside from writing there's nothing on my weekend agenda aside from checking out the new Harry Potter movie - oh! That reminds me - so, we're taking the L home today and there's this dude sitting next to us, and he's wearing a wizard robe (read: black graduation gown) and a Griffendore scarf - except he totally looks like Draco Malfoy because he's got this platinum blonde hair - except he's like, my age. So, we're all like, he should wear a Slitherin scarf.

schadenfreude

Today I have an opportunity to use one of my favorite words, schadenfreude, because I see that Bush's approval ratings are at an All Time Low. This is apparently even lower than the previous All Time Low his ratings were at. According to CNN.com, his ratings for "trustworthiness" are also at an All Time Low. I aim my schadenfreude at both Bush and people who voted for Bush, so... take that. Generally I do not enjoy watching others fail, but in this situation, I do. The only downside is that he drags the whole country down the toilet with him. Anyway, another of my favorite words is "tony" which was used in a review of my brother-in-law's show in the New Yorker, in reference to the venue, not the performance. I managed to slip "tony" into my thesis - I hope my advisor doesn't ask me to cut it. We have slightly different ideas about writing, I think it's going to come to a head over the use of exclamation marks. I would like to use one.

In case you're wondering, I absolutely hate the word "intimate". It makes me want to throw up. Also I hate "anthropomorphic." Anne Rice totally ruined that one for me, but everybody has to use "intimate", don't they? Ugh.

Kids, I hate to tell you what I watched on television last night. I did give in to every temptation. I watched models cry and get drunk and cry and act like insane divas and watched Tyra at her most bizarre, and I watched a crazy, toothless woman from "God's country" freak out and scream about horoscopes and mandalas, which she referred to as "dark things" and of the devil or something. Instead of making me feel intellectually superior, I just got depressed in a blue state kind of way and thought it's all doom, doom, if we can't understand each other, and if people like that are allowed to vote. She is surely anti-abortion, and I doubt she understands the importance of upcoming privacy issues in the supreme court. I'm going to have to take a hard line and force myself to never watch Trading Spouses again, and I hate to say it, but ANTM is looking pretty shaky too.

What's on?

Doesn't the Colbert Report suck? What a disappointment. I don't like Stephen Colbert 'cause he has a face, I like to say, that I don't like. But he really does, you know? If you have a face like that, I'm sorry, but I won't like you. But anyway, you're almost guaranteed to be a jerk, just like all guys who have a face like that are. In other TV news, Monday's season premier of Arrested development was hilarious. "Church and State Fair"! That kills me! Also I can't get enough of America's Next Top Model. I'm totally over The Gilmore Girls - I mean, how boring can one show get? OMG, I don't know WHY, really, but last week for some reason I watched a Trading Spouses or something? And you know they're always making these ridiculous pairs? They're like, "Let's see what happens when we put vegetarian, African American woman from NYC who works for the ACLU in the home of a bunch of rednecks in Tennessee who run a pig farm!" Anyway, in this one, it was, "Let's see what happens when we put an ignorant born-again Christian in the home of some light-weight hippies who check their horoscope in the morning!" Well, I'll tell you, she totally freaked out. She freaked out so hard, it was a two parter, and ever since then I've been absolutely torn as to whether I should watch the second half, which very well could have been on last night. OMG, WHAT did I just DO? I checked the TV listings. It's on TONIGHT after ANTM. Oh God! "Let's find out if Kelly will watch the most ridiculous show on earth that will make her feel like friggin' Einstein or be responsible and finish grading the 27 papers she still has left!" Stay tuned!

What a weekend!

Oh, my friends, it's been quite a weekend. I spent most of it working on my thesis, or rather, a small part of my thesis, which was at times agonizing, at times thrilling - it could be the best or the worst work I've ever done. We'll see what my advisor has to say about it. Went out for dinner with the gang on Friday night and had a terrific time except for this crazy group of drunkards sitting behind us whose conversation started out salty and ultimately crescendoed to the point where I was reaching for my cell phone and wondering if a beer bottle was going to be broken over my head. After they stumbled out to the parking lot to solve their problems in more sophisticated ways, like passing out in the backs of their el dorados, our gang had a little laugh about what our favorite lines were. Lines so salty, I tell you, that I hesitate to write them down because I'm wondering if any young people might read my blog. Anyway, Sat. it was work work work on my thesis all day, with a break to go shopping for the new Margaret Atwood for me and Quake 4 for M. The Penelopiad is a super-quick read - I finished it in a couple of hours, and really excellent. I only wish it had been longer, because now I don't have anything else to read. Except for, uh, books and books on 19th century art. If you also want a review of Quake 4, I can tell you that Mike seemed amused, although not obsessed - even now, he is not playing it, for example. I was looking over at it while I was writing earlier, and I can tell you it looked kind of gross. He said some characters were called, like, Strogrose, or something, and I said, "they're SO GROSS!" Get it?!?! OMG, I'm such a dork.