"Play 'Summer of '69'!"

VS

Also, Ryan and Bryan happen to share the same birthday (November 5th). Beautiful.

Best Original Song From A Motion Picture EVER

Yeah, I'm still stealing other people's ideas. What of it?

"That designated driver's pretty hot. I'd like to get her drunk."

The Banks aren't hopeful. I became a pessimistic kid became a cynical teenager became a jaded grown-up (and that's a term I don't use lightly). Basically, love and happiness are things I'm wired to disbelieve in (and here's hoping that's a real word). Things can't possibly happen for a specific reason-- that's crazy talk. That's something taken straight out of chick lit, and there's nothing (nothing!) in the world I hate more than regurgitated chick lit.

But then this kindof turned it all around for me: On Freaks and Geeks, the tv show that became my favourite ever became my salvation became my guide for life, Lindsay and Nick fell in something like love and then fell out of it but probably would have fallen back into it again if season two had ever been allowed to see the light of day. In real life, Linda Cardellini and Jason Segel fell in love all the same. And then, several years later while sleepless at 2am and too lazy to find the remote to change from TBS, I realized that Lindsay and Nick had been paired up from the very start. The movie that had brought them together so many years ago was none other than...















...a movie that apparently only exists between the hours of midnight and four AM on channel forty seven. They played a couple in the movie, and then became a couple two years later thanks entirely to Judd Apatow and Paul Feig. And that, my friends, was the proof I needed to believe that love is real. If Nick and Lindsay can make it, surely anyone can.

BUT THEN THIS HAPPENED. And now I'm not sure I can believe in anything anymore.

everyday i write the book

"Alright, well then maybe you're not her type. She's into stuff like old school Elvis Costello, she listens to obscure podcasts, she reads Dave Eggers. You know, she's deep, man."

The above quote doesn't come from any of my cherished obnoxiously contemporary novels or more-hipster-than-thou Brooklyn bands or indie-darling film-fest movies. No, in fact it's a line from summer '06's little gem John Tucker Must Die. (Note: viewing is not recommended.)

I've spent nearly twenty two years defining myself by the stuff that I love. There's some snobbery to it, obviously, but I do truly love all the things on these lists I've stapled onto my identity and held close.

In a few months' time, I am set to start defining myself by the stuff that I create. And I'm restless, because it's exciting. And I'm trembling, because it's absolutely terrifying.

Exactly one month ago I found myself standing on a pebbled pathway in the backyard of Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West. My mom was a few feet away, talking to a family of tourists from Norway who were temporarily escaping days of 20 hour darkness they'd left back home. I was bare-shouldered for the first time in forever, and those shoulders were blindingly white. The sun bounced off me. The lawn was covered with six-toed cats named after dead celebrities. I kneeled down to pet Truman Capote. The bitch tried to bite me. And I knew. I swore at the grey furry asshole, and I knew that it was time.

Getting into a Master of Fine Arts program for creative writing seems like a good reason to rationalize starting a blog. Or maybe starting a blog is a good reason to rationalize getting into grad school. Either way, it's the right time for me to stop relying on other people's words and start spewing out my own. Sorry, Elvis. Sorry, Ernie. I'm going it alone from here on in.