february 17, 2001. New grammatically-correct index page! Thanks Amy. For an aspiring English teacher, my linguistic abilities suck dog. Last night the Boy & I sat down to watch Velvet Goldmine. (Trivia: the very beginning of our relationship was marked by the exclusive consumption of gay movies: Wilde, In & Out, The Birdcage. Now every time we pull another one off the shelf it feels like continuity - a barely submerged pattern in the flotsam of our life.) Gorgeous movie, but almost completely incomprehensible. Really. The first 15 minutes of the glam costumes made me positively rabid with desire (Stacy would've understood.) But the movie itself suffered from an identity crisis. Am I a rock video? Am I Citizen Kane for Bowie fans? Am I about one man's sexual awakening? By the end of the movie I didn't know what the hell I had just watched. I'm not saying that it was anticonfluential or surreal and I just couldn't take the break from linearity. It was just surreal enough to undermine the narrative structure, but not surreal enough to substitute a new meaning in it's place. It was muddled, in other words. I couldn't tell what was a fantasy segment and what was "reality." I couldn't figure out the big revelation of Christian "Can't Look At Him Without Thinking About American Psycho" Bale, which made me feel really stupid. This movie is a perfect example of why we make people peer-edit their work in Grade 6. You may think you're making perfect sense when really you're the only one who knows what's going on. Now submit another draft before you can make a good copy. Awwww... However, Ewan MacGregor was beyond perfect as Iggy Pop. He had the weird jerky dancing dead-bang right. Last night's church play went pretty well last night. It was one of those highly allegorical deelies about the effect of the industrialized world on developing countries, intended to be part of a program called "10 Days For Global Justice." As you might expect, on the Friday night before Reading Week in a university town attendance was sparse. In fact, I think the cast outnumbered the audience. That lent the night an appealingly surreal quality. Two things stood out for me. The first thing was the dinner. There was another potluck before the play, and I had thrown together some simple sugar cookies from a recipe given to me during my morning class. As with all my first-time cooking experiments, I was incredibly nervous. I had to skip the vanilla step - was it ruined? The dough remained obstinately stuck in a state of powder - how could I make it stick together? I ended up talking to the answering machine at my parents'. "Um, I just wanted to know what you did to make cookie dough stick together. Don't bother calling back; I'll probably be gone. I'm just leaving a message so you don't freak out." I added water. It seemed to work - I now had something that looked like dough in the mixing bowl. If there is such a thing as genetic memory, I thought smugly the cooking of my foremothers had saved my ass. My real mother called. "I hope you didn't add water," she said. "The cookies will just dry up during the baking." Shit. So much for genetic memory. "I've never been able to do sugar cookies," my mother further confessed. "So if you can't do it, don't feel bad." "I have to try," I answered grimly. "If we only cooked what our mothers were successful at, we'd slowly reduce the amount of recipes to zero. I just hope that someone eats the damn things," I added. "Last time only one of my muffins went." "I've taken home full pans of lasagna from potlucks," she replied helpfully. Reassuring. That's what that is. So I bunged it all in the oven, hoping against hope that something edible would come out. After twice the recommended cooking time I tested the sacrificial cookie. It seemed okay, but I was faint from hunger and had already eaten a substantial portion of raw cookie dough; I was no longer objective. All I could do was load em up and take em in. And they went! Within 10 minutes they had all disappeared from the buffet table. You know who really liked them? The senior citizens. I think it was because they were just sugar cookies: no namby-pambying around with margarine and sugar substitute, just butter, sugar, flour and a cholesterol-ridden egg. Unenlightened baking at it's finest. I was pleased. The second remarkable thing was that the children - formerly stand-offish and distant during our brief meetings in the church lobby - were all over me. Maybe it was my velour dress with printed leopard-skin cuffs & collar. Maybe it was the animal nose. They played with my hair, asked me about my life and told me about moving here from Africa. One little girl involved me in her big game hunt - she was the baby cougar and I was the momma cougar, hunting elephants (in this case, her real-life momma). "What'll we do when we find her? Play games?" I suggested hopefully. "Uh huh!" she chirped, eyes shining. "Then we'll eat her up!" she finished with a growl. Ah, smallest humanity, how I love thee. Finally, another Valentine's Day poem by Ogden Nash, because I can. Once More To My Valentine Just five and thirty years ago I walked alone on earth, That callous, carefree creature, A bachelor from birth. No thrill of premonition, No tingling of the spine Foreshadowed the appearance Of my only valentine. I had no thought of courtship At that far-distant date; One girl was like another, So why, then, concentrate? One pearl was like another To this self-centred swine Who was surfeited with sameness And knew no valentine. Just five and thirty years ago I danced with mind astray, And suddenly the sameness Was forever swept away. I hardly heard the music I couldn't taste the wine, For lovely as a legend, I saw my valentine. Oh, lovely as a legend, Or a silver birch in spring, And haunting as the twilight song That hidden thrushes sing! How I elbowed through my fellows As they stood in penguin line! How I dodged among the dancers As I sought my valentine! The orchestra played waltzes, Blank faces swirled about; I have no foot for waltzes, So we sat the waltzes out. Came the tunes of Kern and Gershwin, But I liked the terrace fine; Till the band played "Good Night, Ladies," I wooed my valentine. Just five and thirty years ago I walked the earth alone, The shortest five and thirty years The earth has ever known. Young love is well remembered, But why long for old lang syne When tonight she is beside me, My beloved valentine, My fairest valentine, My dearest valentine, Through five and thirty precious years My own true valentine.