nic at night

so, what is the "right" reason to go on a show like "the bachelor"? having tuned in out of a morbid curiosity regarding the car crash looking for a place to happen that is the o'connell brothers, I am fascinated by the moral cache that seems to come from being on the show for the right reasons.

it seems like everyone on the show can only be there for terrible reasons, yet they all claim to be there for the right ones and either reassure each other that they believe that to be the case (as with the women to charlie) or zing each other with the accusation that clearly they're wrongly motivated (as with the women to each other). but money, notoriety, a desire to be the trashy center of attention for weeks on end, boosts to paltry careers -- are any of these any more wrong than another? or am I missing something obvious? it seems a huge stretch, even for a reality tv show, to ask us to believe that people are looking for love or even attraction or even getting along.

maybe I'm the only one who cares, but mine is an honest inquiry into our current cultural scheme. I am perfectly happy to pull up a chair, pop open a beer (ok, more likely a bottle of my new favorite low end wine), and evaluate these people if only I know the rules. for example, is it ultra-rhode-island-tacky for one of the women's grandmother's to tell her to get the bachelor in bed lickety-split, or is it just the name of the game?

before it seems that I'm rearranging my schedule for this show, I must say that I'm satisfying most of my curiosity by surfing the web during my office hours and spending my evenings with slightly more edifying activities. this past monday I finally got to see the alvin ailey company, as part of the kennedy center's "masters of african american choreography" series, and it was an amazing show. the audience was fantastic, cheering and clapping at each transition. the energy reminded me of being at the feminist majority conference in 1996, when just being in a room full of women was electrifying; I can't think of the last time I've been at an event with so many black people in a space of that size, and the dynamic was thrilling.

music's been on my mind this month, with the kickoff being our april 1st salon. it was interesting to hear how so many of us came to music, and in a group of folks who mostly don't play instruments we were surprisingly devoted listeners. compared to those of us who described surviving high school as geeks by memorizing songs, artists, labels, and band histories, I'm hardly "obsessed." when I hear that I think of the greek guy I knew in england who had over 1,000 cds in little plastic jackets and archival bins, which didn't stop us from only ever listening to bob marley, autechre, or the pulp fiction soundtrack.

nonetheless, I still drool every time we go into our new local record store, and end up leaving with several things I've scrounged from the used shelves. this tendency to be overwhelmed with selection, and therefore drop more than we plan, is likely why we don't go that frequently. it's sort of like being a vegetarian for years and getting used to only ever having one option for dinner, and then living in the explosion of all-vegan cafes. too many choices. being unashamedly delighted with the new wave revival, though, I'm happy to finally be able to rock out at work with folks like the killers. saturday's trip ended up being dominated by bands beginning with "the," with me being likely the last person on earth to finally pick up things I've just been mooching off people I know for years, like the strokes and the mescaleros. shopping from the used shelves is, however, the advantage to being always just that good bit behind the times. and of course, every time we stop in we get to hear about upcoming shows, the latest news being that gang of four is coming to town at the end of the month. which means my tour of duty with bands that haven't toured in over a decade will continue into 2005, with a kraftwerk show figuring prominently (gang of four and the pixies are different, since, you know, I like them).

our other musical adventure of the weekend was seeing the magic flute at the kennedy center. it was a really lovely performance, made all the more entertaining by what the critics might refer to as its timelessness. often this means that it's classic and traditional, but here it was more that we kept wondering (1) what year it was written in and (2) what year it was designed in, since both answers seemed like they should be "1967." the costumes were amazing and colorful, and the set was really well-designed, they were just a lot more on the psychedelic side than we were expecting. not having read the libretto, I didn't know the story was as fantastical as it was. that's not entirely true, I suppose -- I did know it was about a prince who uses a magic flute to go on a quest to save a princess. it was a lot of fun to discover just how fantastical the production was, and it made us laugh to hear the teenagers a few rows down exclaim at the intermission "this should be called the magic flute on crack!"

as a point of reference, the show was quite reminiscent of the "blue snake" performance at the end of the company, which is generally a boring film that I don't recommend. but the dancing is good, and the visuals of the final performance are beautiful. I likely wouldn't have rented it at all, but domingo rubio was one of the dancers in the ballet hispanico performance that I saw a couple of weeks ago, and I was curious about the mention of the film in the program.

so, at whole foods last week I picked up some odd-looking "exotic" fruits:



they looked like an odd cross between a mango and a star fruit, which piqued my curiosity. never having seen one before, I promptly bought two (because 2 is better than 1!) and went home to look them up on the internet. I discovered that they were kiwanos, described as "spiney ornamental melons," with tangy pulpy insides, full of seeds covered in goop (kind of like pomegranates).

slicing one open, I discovered that they did in fact have pulpy seedy insides, as advertised:


once I'd sliced it open, I was at a bit of a loss as to how to go about eating it. granted, the slimey green quality of the inside had me a little dubious, but I was determined to persevere. I'm not sure why, given that I'd just recently discovered that the melon was "ornamental," but I hadn't been completely turned off yet.

in order to eat the jelly without swallowing a bunch of seeds, I scooped the insides into a bowl:



close-up, capturing the near flourescent aspect of the green pulp:


it was at this point that I believed I exclaimed, on the phone to a friend, "this looks like food out of harry potter!" again, this might have been a good point to stop and reconsider the wisdom of the plan to actually eat this "fruit," but I decided I'd come this far, I might as well taste it.

so I did. and, well, it tasted nasty. tangy and odd and slimey and sort of bubbly and pretty much what it looks like it'd taste like. gross.

of course, I promptly carried it into the other room to try to feed it to dana, all the while telling my friend with whom I was still having a phone conversation that she should rush right out and buy one, because it was so disgusting!

and then, about 1/2 hour after swallowing at most a teaspoon, I got agonizing stomach cramps and thought I was going to die. given that whole foods likely wouldn't sell something poisonous, we chalked the stomach cramps up to my acupuncture treatment earlier that day.

but still: don't eat ornamental plants. the end.

as it turns out, I'm allergic to flowering trees. not all flowering trees, one presumes, and not all the time. just here in dc, where there are upwards of 300 kinds of flowering trees and bushes, and they just all seem to be in bloom all the time. april is the worst month, with both the largest variety of trees in bloom and among the highest pollen counts in the country.

I took some small amount of pride in not being allergic to anything, but moving to dc has ruined my 27 year record of being allergy-free. I still contend that it's not really an "allergy" to sneeze when the pollen is so thick in the air that one walks down the street through a mild yellow haze, but I can no longer blame it on the moldy metro trains, colds from my students, or water-saturated house walls.

well, especially since generic claritin has been clearing it right up.

the first major sight-seeing event in ireland that we have recorded on the digital camera (because the gazillion rolls of film aren't developed yet) is our trip to the cliffs of moher. the day we went it was windier than the really windy days from my ride training. it was also really misty (it was early in the day, and the climate on the west coast there seemed much like the san francisco area -- foggy in the morning, burning off clear midday on sunny days), so we couldn't see as far along the coast as clear days (compare to this guy's photos on a sunny afternoon).

it was so windy, that we got a little hysterical as we were walking around (coming off the hysteria we'd had the day before careening through the mountains). on a less windy day I would have been more than tempted to hop the guard fence and get photos of us on the edge of the cliffs, but I was having to work to stay upright to walk along the path so I ruled out the precarious options early. we climbed the tower there (built about 30 years ago for visitors; whether as a wind shelter or for the views, it's hard to say).



from this photo, you can tell how misty it is (that hump in the background over d.'s shoulder is the coastline). you can also tell the difficulties we were having in taking photos, as our hair was blowing in our faces. however, we're actually blocked from the wind here by the telescope stand on the top of the tower.





this is more what it was like the rest of the time, complete with european tourists looking at us like we were lunatics.

the cliffs themselves were amazing. even with the wind I could have stayed there for hours just watching the waves and the seabirds. the scale was daunting, too -- without a person as a reference point, it's easy to miss how tall they really are. which kind of puts lemmings into perspective or might make us answer differently the "if everyone else were jumping off a cliff..." query.

while stalled on swann's way, I've had a couple of quick reads.

the new memoir, smashed, which I picked up to consider recommending to my students, turned out to be fascinating. as I told my college friend on the phone last night, I was tempted to require all my high school and college friends to read it and then schedule a conference call. the way that she handles socio-cultural aspects of both gender and drinking is impressive for a book that purports to be just a memoir, especially in an age when so many are flooding the market and one is tempted to remind authors that by in most cases, not much happens by age 23. reading this book, I was reminded that in fact quite a lot happens in high school and college.

in gatwick, waiting for our puddle-jumper to knock, both dana and I were able to pick up new books. so I read the latest adrian mole, and he read the new sci fi release by iain banks. adrian mole was entertaining, as always. it's a bit eerie how well he ages with us. I keep hoping that at some point he will seem less familiar, but apparently I'm as equally surrounded by lovable geeks at 30 as I was at 15. which means I laugh at all the jokes, and then have to wonder who's watching me empathize so enthusiastically with this fictional bumbler. in nosing around online, it appears that I've missed at least one book in the series in the past couple of years, though, so I'll have to remedy that. sue townsend's non-fiction writing is supposed to be equally bitingly funny, so I might pick up some of that while I'm at it.

since the new year, I've also read the mommy myth, which I highly recommend. I've assigned chapters of it for both my gender and deviance classes, and we'll see how the discussion goes. it seems more academic than the book that's getting a lot of press, perfect madness (which I've also picked up but haven't read yet, so I could yet change that evaluation). in both cases, though, the framing of the current cultural context of motherhood is spot on.

welcome to one of my favorite months, not least because it's national poetry month. when I lived in ann arbor, students used to write different poems on the ground in sidewalk chalk each day, and it was always a surprise to me to walk onto campus and suddenly have familiar words leaping up at me in pastel letters. the surprise and fun of it always seemed completely appropriate for ushering in the spring.

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

e e cummings