Being Pretty

(from my Let's Go blog)

This is one of those delicate topics where I’ll have to tread the line between vanity and annoyingly overcompensating humility. But in Italy, I am really pretty.

Save your protestations, loyal friends who will insist that I am pretty at home too. Reserve your judgment, skeptical strangers eyeballing my mugshot. I know what league I’m in at home. And I’ve just been bumped up a notch.

It’s not simply run-of-the-mill flirting I’m talking about. That I could chalk up to Italian men being infinitely more forward than Harvard men. Hell, glaciers are more forward than Harvard men.

No, it’s the freebies that show I’m really punching above my weight. The old men at Trattoria Mario who flagged the waitress to have me seated at their table and were disappointed when I returned with my prettier-by-American-standards girlfriends. My inability to do efficient nightlife research because the free drinks offered at each establishment leave me stumbling door to door like the Prophet Elijah. The museum guard who asked me out minutes after the other guard in the gallery did likewise, sparking a minor controversy regarding docent decency.

I guess it comes from looking sorta Italian, but not quite. My European friends tell me that Jewish looks are “exotic” overseas. This girl from NY never counted her hook nose as an asset before and certainly wouldn’t have expected it to go over any different in a former Axis power, but shows what she knows. Get it, nose/knows? Okay, they still don’t love my Jewish father sense of humor, but I’m working on it.

Last week, I latched on to a couple American guys whose companionship I had to earn the old-fashioned way – jeez, peanut gallery, I mean through mutual interests and bad jokes – and their presence dried up the attention. Honestly, it was a relief to go back to being conspicuous only for the normal reason: talking too loudly.

So it was a shock all over again today when the attention resumed. I stepped under the awning of a restaurant to avoid a sudden downpour, and a man came out of the restaurant to hail a taxi.

“Come with me,” he said. We had not yet exchanged a word.

“What?”

“I am going to my other restaurant by the Duomo. I own this one, and a couple others.”

“Um.”

“Come, we will have cappuccino at the other place, and then we’ll come back here and have lunch.”

See? This does not happen to me at home. And at home I don’t even consider getting in taxis with complete strangers. But I was hungry. And, well, it was raining.

So what the hell. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts. I got in the cab.

Read more: http://www.letsgo.com/article/2567-being-pretty#ixzz17VHgcp7V

The Bus of The Doomed

Despite several years of regular ridership of the Fung Wah bus, I have never experienced buses full of chickens or Chinese chefs preparing raw fish en route or any of the other horrors that old people associate with the Chinatown bus, except for some godawful traffic. Honestly, I feel a little jipped. Where is my bus full of chickens?!

Last weekend, too lazy to schlep to Canal St, I took Bolt Bus instead. Turns out I've been taking the wrong bus line all along. Bolt is the Bus Of The Doomed.*

Bus driver:

"We are now approaching Boston - South Station. Please make sure to gather all your personal belongings, and wake any sleeping passengers. And I mean give them a good knock on the forehead. Last week we had a gentleman on the bus who appeared to be asleep, with his laptop open in front of him, but actually he had passed away in his seat. So please wake all sleepers. Now arriving, South Station."

Umm.

*as the Doctor Who special would be titled, natch.

I made eye contact with Gerard Butler while doing the Chicken Dance

So there me and Candace were. Minding our own business. Doing the chicken dance in front of Penn Station. Because we had decided to walk from 23rd St. to Times Square by doing a different dance down each block. Naturally. And 34th St. was the chicken dance.

So we're minding our own business, doing the chicken dance, and the "clap clap clap clap!" part was getting a lot of attention. Not as much attention as our zombie walk got on 25th, but heads were turning. Including the head of Gerard Butler. And the rest of him. As well as his personal gentleman. He looked at us like we were crazy. With good reason. But he was dancing on the inside.

I smiled and waved at Mr. Butler. I didn't know who he was (of course). Candace informed me on the corner. And then we continued on our merry way, Macarena-ing down 35th.

The end.

Photo linkage

This post is solely so I can link back to this photo in an io9 comment.


Nothing else to see here, moving on...

[well, actually, I suppose there's the photo to see. Which is of some excellent people wandering the streets of Cardiff dressed as 10 and Jack.]

[comments on this photo in its facebook album:
Reha - Captain Jack's heels are the best thing ever.
Me - Not quite authentic though - you know the real Jack's heels would be three inches taller and sparkly.
Reha - Haha, they surely would. Possibly the kind with fish swimming inside, except they'd be ALIEN fish out to destroy the world.
Me - ::goes off to write that story:: ]

people over thirty shouldn't be allowed on facebook: a case study

An email I received from the founder of the Harvard Pops Orchestra , of which I was the president in college. Eric is mid-30s, married with a kid, and I have met him only once, several years ago.

From: Eric D.
Subject: a random thought

Liz--I'm a very honest and open person, and it takes people a little aback at first, but in the end they accept it about me.

I was looking at your pictures, and, you know something? You're pretty cute. You really are. And you know something else? (Here comes the honesty:) You would look even cuter with just a touch of plastic surgery. My wife had it done, and she's never looked back. Your twenties is a period where you should be dating like crazy, figuring out exactly the type of individual you want to spend the rest of your life with. You deserve to feel self-confident about your looks, not listing yourself in your profile as "Jewish...look at me." I personally think you're an amazing person, so I really do hope you take this the right way. Just know you've got a fan and friend in your corner...you can hit me later.

Sincerely,
Eric


It's like a checklist of offensiveness. Bonus points for anti-Semitism and insulting your own wife!

Any ideas how I can make this guy into one of those internet micro-celebrity douchebags?

Follow-up: my response

Well, I've written a play.

It doesn't have a title yet, and it is still at least two full rewrites away from performable. But Draft 1.5 is done enough that I made Columbia's deadline last night, by the skin of my teeth (I love you, 24-hour emergency window at the big post office by Penn Station!), and it should be a real second draft by my next deadline on the 9th.


Things I Learned About My Writing While Working On This Play:

1. I cannot write in a vacuum. This was by far the biggest project I've ever undertaken that did not involve either collaboration or feedback from a workshop. It is MUCH harder alone. And also much less fun.
   Conclusion: don't write in a vacuum. Things improved exponentially when I finally showed my sister a draft, and I should have involved her earlier.
   
   
2. I am incapable of not writing jokes.
   Conclusion: Lampshading it by having consciously joke-making characters is working so far...
   
   
3. I am very good at ending scenes. I am okay at starting scenes. I am rubbish at the middle parts.
   Conclusion: You know what has lots and lots of short scenes? Television.
   
   
4. All of my characters sound vaguely British.
   Conclusion: I watch too much British television.
   
   
5. My plots have a tendency towards the "slow reveal of a complicated backstory" style because I get too into world-building.
   Conclusion: Uhh... Work on that?
   Alternative: Become a tv show-runner.
   
   
6. I am excellent at banter (see #2) and casual or casual-seeming conversation. And pretty good at pacing big reveals. I am very self-conscious at Talking About Feelings, and generally make someone leaven it with jokes (see #2) because, well, I don't like Talking About Feelings.
   Conclusion: Get used to it.
   Alternative: Sitcoms.
   Second alternative: Musicals. The feelings are the lyricist's problem.
   
   
7. It is much, much easier to write two-person scenes than any-other-number-of-person scenes.
   
   
8. I tend to forget that in non-musical plays, you can have things like protagonists with vague motivations (no need for an "I want"!) and you don't need "finales" or any of that jazz. But that does mean you need to replace the 11 o'clock number with an 11 o'clock Scene of Awesomeness That Keeps People Awake, which is harder without dancing and trumpets. And sadly, you have to take care of the emotional stuff yourself, instead of letting it be the lyricist's problem. (see #6)
   Conclusion: The fact that I'm in a librettists' workshop and read/see far more musicals than plays probably isn't helping my effort to not default to musical format...
   
   
9. I am very good at writing my way out of corners.
   Conclusion: More corners.

I will probably add to this list as I think of more lessons learned.

Oh yes, the story! It's about two young graduate students working in a lab in the Netherlands, developing a Large Hadron Collider-style particle accelerator that, according to one guy, might accidentally invent time travel. And might also accidentally destroy the world.

Here's an impressive picture of the real Large Hadron Collider. I don't expect my set to look like this:

Sober Train

I spend a lot of time on the Long Island Rail Road and, as such, I am constantly running for trains and dodging random high school acquaintances who somehow always seem to remember significant details of my biography. Sample conversation:

Person I've Never Seen Before In My Life: Oh my god Liz [Surname]! How was Harvard? Do you still play the cello? I heard you went to South Africa awhile back, how was that?
Me: Hey... you.

I appear to have been inexplicably famous. Or just really, really recognizable (the hair's usually a giveaway).

Anyway, there is a benefit to my LIRR dependency - namely, the Saturday night 1:42 am train out of Penn Station. Because it is hilarious. Much funnier than the 3:07, by which point everyone's sobered up in an hour of waiting around the train station, the 1:42 provides endless amusement in the form of underage intoxicated persons sharing their wisdom with those fortunate enough to share their train car.

I present you with a rough transcription of the highlight of a recent ride home:

A young man, probably 18, is standing at the head of the car. A half dozen of his friends, representing various levels of consciousness, lie in the surrounding seats. Our hero is singing.

YOUNG MAN
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Eeeven thooough I'm a Jeeeew!

I shall spare you the remainder of his song, for it would be impossible to fairly transcribe his truly impressive feats of "making six words fit in the the space of one". Suffice to say, after several minutes, he ran out of the song, and began extemporizing instead. I wasn't ever quite able to hear the responses from his more lungpower-deficient companions - our hero, however, never failed to maintain a more than satisfactory volume.

YOUNG MAN
You didn't know I was Jewish? Oh man I am so Jewish. I don't believe any of that shit though, like the God stuff.

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
Yeah, that's right, I'm an atheist. Total atheist. Ayyyyyyyyyyyy...theist. I like being neutral, you know? I don't just pick a side to be controversial or whatever, I look at both sides of an issue. I don't wanna say I'm a Republican or a Democrat, I'm neutral, i'm an Independent. And I'm not religious, I'm an atheist, cuz I'm fucking neutral.
My religion has a first name, it's A - T - I - E - "Est"!

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
What? Oh yeah, of course I believe in God. Whatever. I just don't care about that religion shit, because it's shit! I don't like picking sides, you know? I don't, like, think there's no god or anything, I just don't want to be part of any religion, so I'm an atheist.

FRIENDS
[inaudible]

YOUNG MAN
Yes that is what it means! What, is there another word for it?

HELPFUL GENTLEMAN DOWN THE TRAIN
Yes, "agnostic."

YOUNG MAN
That's it! Thanks man! I love you! I'm totally agnostic!

ME
::facepalm::

Hello, strangers.

I seem to have accumulated a rather significant amount of google traffic, thanks almost entirely to the "ate a violin" post and everyone's internet crush Randall Munroe. I made that post not actually to draw people to my blog - seriously, if that were the intent, I'd have more consistent content round these parts - but because I was curious how many people would read the XKCD blog, search the first term in that post, and then follow through to the resulting links.

The answer: a lot.

Hullo, xkcd fans! ::waves::

And while I'm getting all this random international traffic...

Can anyone recommend a graduate-level dramatic writing program in the U.K.?

I'd like to consider studying in the U.K., but my anglophilia does not extend to the university system and have absolutely no idea how to go about finding good programs. I'm talking to you, random Welsh stranger reading this - if you're thinking "well obviously she knows about the blahdiblah program, but I don't know of anything other than that", then you should leave a comment telling me about the blahdiblah program, because I in fact do not know about it.

In other news, the Doctor Who Christmas special airs in six days. (which is to say, there are six days till Christmas). This is excellent because:
1) new Doctor Who to reward me in the middle of my awful never-ending application slog!
2) spoilers, real actually spoiling-y spoilers, now abound on the internet, which means I have to avoid the internet, which means I am forced to focus on my awful never-ending application slog. Yay?