My god people - this is insane. I swear on my grave that I get about 25 Google hits a day for Meg White Boobs or some variant, thereof... I promise if I get ANY pics of her ta-tas, you'll be the first to see them...
in the meantime - anyone catch the White Stripes' on Conan last week? I didn't actually see any of their five performances (i just don't stay up at that late anymore - unless it's a night on the town) but I did catch a few minutes of their day-on-the-job-at-NBC skit that was on the first half of Conan's show - I think it was Thursday? Or was it Friday? Who knows...it was funny nonetheless - and Meg actually talked! No boobies, but she did string together a sentence or two...that's all for now...I'm knee-deep in an oral report/term paper on "characterization of Humbert Humbert in Lolita" so don't expect to hear much out of me til the end of the week...

So, the new Madonna album is crap and the New York Times is telling me that e-mail spam is here to stay and Radar magazine is mildly amusing but not great and Liz Phair sounds like a combination between Mandy Moore and Avril Lavigne and Madonna on some of the new songs on her upcoming record ...will somebody PLEASE do something interesting and fun and intelligent...is this too much too ask? Oh well, at least Gawker is keeping things real and snarky...

The memorial reading for Amanda Davis at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books on Saturday was lovely and amazing in a sad but celebratory way...I tried not to cry the whole evening and partially succeeded. Someone made a flyer for the event with a picture of Amanda and this quote from her book:
"And I knew it was true, that my words were made of stones, that they would last and I would climb them.."

p.s. a Happy Birthday shout-out to my brother Adam...he's 23 today! Damn, I remember those days....

So I don't really have anything new or exciting to post...my interview with Rachel Weisz (her last name is pronounced "vice" - just in case you were wondering) was sort of a bust..she wasn't very talkative and I ended up feeling like a big old loser until the photographer confirmed that the lovely Miss was indeed a wee bit on the reserved side...
other than that I've been busy trying to get back into the work swing of things...and keep on track with school....only two weeks of classes left, then a term paper that's due, then a final...and then i'll be one-fourth of the way through my MFA career. But there won't be much rest for the weary, I'm doing an independent study during the summer and will probably (hopefully) be involved with a writing group so that I can stay motivated ... it's not that I don't want to write, it's just hard to find time to do it when you work full-time, so having the writing group will hopefully give me that extra incentive during the summer...
Anyway, after I finish the independent study, I will actually be ONE-THIRD of the way (as opposed to one-fourth) through the MFA program...right now I'm trying to decide if I want to graduate in December 2004 or Spring 2005. We're talking a difference of $8K here....there's a class I really want to take that will only be offered in the Spring of 2005 - and it would give me one more semester of doing a workshop - that's in the pro list (for those of you who watched the Gilmore Girls this week, you understand the importance of these pro and con lists)...in the con list is that big ol' $8K figure - plus another semester of my life wherein I am incredibly strapped for time and incredibly stressed...anyway, I've given myself until the end of the year to decide....i really don't have to make the decision until January when it comes time to register for classes - if I graduate in December then I have to sign up for the MFA thesis next spring...ok, I'm just rambling now...but this is the kind of stuff that's giving me a headache...

I really do have a headache right now...I think I need to go hunt down a Diet Coke or something...

Yes, I'm still here...hopefully an update tomorrow...today, however, I get to go to SF to interview Rachel Weisz - a.k.a, Hugh Grant's girlfriend in "About a Boy". Wish me luck, here's hoping I'm not a total dork....

There are some days that I really really hate Blogger...today would be one of them. I just spent the hour (which I guess is nothing in HTML time) trying to fix some glitch that caused my page to show up all funky-like. ERGH!!!!!!
Anyway, I think it's OK now, but it's thrown my whole day off...damn, damn, DAMN.

Two of my favorite hangouts on the Internet - Amazon and Google - are now joining forces. As Google recently acquired Pyra Labs which is home to Blogger, I now have my own personal time-wasting triad.

Being back at school and walking by Amanda Davis's office on the third floor of Mills Hall is admittedly weird and difficult. I have just not reconciled the idea that she is gone, really really gone. I keep thinking of her, hearing her voice, seeing her face....reading her book and occasionally turning to the inside back cover and staring at the black-and-white publicity photo that I never thought looked much like her anyway....
Earlier this week the New York Times had a nice article about her life (requires free registration)...meanwhile, days and nights go by as if nothing ever happened....that's the part I just don't understand...this is what Grace Paley meant (in part, I suppose) about writing to save people's lives. To save their place in history...

I'm co-opting this link from Amelie...now, I just need to get some spray-paint. I'm thinking of something in a lovely spring color....

Just in case you were wondering, I've recently found that without the near-daily inclusion of the following five songs it is nearly impossible to lead a happy, healthy life...

"Bandages" -Hot Hot Heat
"Seven Nation Army" -White Stripes
"Constellations" - Rebecca Pearcy
"Don't Have to Be So Sad" - Yo La Tengo
"Speakers Push the Air" -Pretty Girls Make Graves

in other, non-war related news, you can now order copies (or subscriptions) of the new McSweeney's magazine The Believer featuring writing by Jim Shepard, Jonathan Lethem and Anne Carson, among others.
Plus, Salon has a piece on one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Lisa Germano, who just happens to have a new album out.

More from the mixed-up conversation files of Cory & I....last night on the way home from Oakland (where I went to hear a reading from the wonderfully sharp Grace Paley - I can only hope I'm half as active and half as smart as she is when I'm 80), we talked more about the war and war coverage and the firing of Peter Arnett.
I have really mixed feelings about the Arnett situation. On one hand I think he sensationalizes the war to an extreme - his remarks during the initial start of the troops' "shock and awe" campaign were horribly inappropriate (something along the lines of "I'm shocked and this is awe-inspiring". I'm not sure of the exact phrasing, but it was something along these lines) and he definitely seems to understand his role as a media celebrity as evidenced by this quote from an article he wrote for the Mirror:
"I'm not here to be a superstar. I have been there in 1991 and could never be bigger than that."
But, read the rest of the article and it's also clear, once again, that there's a story that's not being told here in the States - a story that the government and the general media does not want to be told.
So if it takes over-the-top, sensationalizing assholes like Peter Arnett to tell those stories in their over-the-top, horribly inappropriate ways, I'm left to wonder: well, then what's the alternative? Right now there is no alternative, at least not when it comes from getting reports from someone who is actually in Baghdad. According to the UK-based Mirror, Arnett is now part of their staff. I'd almost prefer it if he started his own blog or engaged in some other form of personal journalism. Still, either way, his continued reports should be interesting - and perhaps, required reading...