In The Beginning

Ok. This is my new blog and my first ever entry.
1. I'd like to say a huge thank you to Frank for making me this blog. Frank you're a gem.
2. I want to express my incredible discomfort at writing in this weird public/anonymous forum. I wanted to make the whole blog totally anonymous and to not telling anyone about it. I pictured myself secretly writing it everyday, filling the page with brutal gossip and critisisms of everyone I know. They would never be the wiser! But then I got excited and forgot and announced to everyone that I was starting a blog. So now I have no idea who's reading this. I feel quite vulnerable.

My other feelings of discomfort are a result of the many absurd spelling and grammar mistakes I'm sure to make along the way. I'm tired of people being such sticklers for these things, they take all the creativitiy out of sentence construction. Also in first grade they said I was dislexic. Also I work in Y/A publishing and it appears to me that the trend is to write all in sentence fragments. Which even I. Think is, like wrongful. However. I prefer run-ons. And excessive comma use. So.

Oh no. This is getting boring. That's my biggest fear. I must admit I used to mock blogs, because I thought they were just self indulgent drivel, then I realized they were latest version of 'zines without the difficulty of finding free xerox access.

Here is an amusing story. This thanksgiving weekend I came home. I went to the movies with my dad and his girlfriend. I suggested we see ELF, becuase I thought it would be funny. Well it did have funny parts, unfortunately I'd already seen all those parts in the comercial. What they didn't show you in the commercial was all the excessively cheesy Christmas spirit bullshit. For example the part where the formerly sarchastic little boy gets everyone to believe in santa by reading from the list of christmas wishes. "How did that little boy know I wanted a pair of gold plated nosehair clipers? That's got to be Santa's book! After all there is only one Jane Smith in all of New York City!" My dad's girlfriend didn't like the movie one bit, which compelled me to say I liked it.

Whenever I pick a movie I feel like I have to defend my choice no matter what. The most feverent example of this being How to Make an American Quilt, which was of course chosen because it featured the cast of My So Called Life and Winona Rider. It was one of the worst movies ever made (as my mom's stupid boyfriend was quick to point out) but me and my friend violently argued it's defense the whole ride home. That time it was partially because we had vowed never to agree with him on even the smallest point. He is now dead, but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, ELF had a painfully corny ending, so I was surprised to learn that my dad liked it. Not only did he like it, he admitted to me that he even had to cry a little at the end. The end! When everyone realizes the weird elf man might be on to something and they all join in, in one of those scenes when the whole cast-- Zooey Daschanel, Mary Steenburgen, even the mean dad James Caan, have all magically gathered in one spot. they all sing Santa Clause Is Coming To Town. Crying at such an ending is worse than the time in fourth grade when I cried at the end of Wizard starring Fred Savage. It was the first time I ever cried at a movie and it made me feel very manture. The message of Elf seemed to mirror that of The Idiots, that Dogma 95 movie about people who pretend they are retarded in public. The message being that acting like a retard can bring you true joy, this is something I do tend to agree with. Not only did my dad shed a tear, he said he identified with the elf "I guess sometimes I feel like I am that guy, you know like I'm the guy on the outside that no one quite understands." Only a man with a PhD could come away from this movie with such a heavy little nugget of existensialism.
Awww, makes me feel all warm and gooey inside.