stephanieNY

When I type in the word "kiss" in a text message, my phone's T9 text input outputs "lips" by default. I thought that was really cute. I've noticed it a lot lately as I am often requesting that kisses from me be delivered to Elizabeth Grace via the receivers of my texts (i.e. my parents and sister). I hope she's getting them :)

Last night, I helped send another friend off to marriage-hood at a proper bachelorette party. (see pictures here) Dinner and drinks were followed by more drinks and some dancing at da club. Along with the other party attendants, I was unjustly over-served, and so I got a visit from the hangover fairy last night. I woke up this morning to a basket at the foot of my bed, complete with advil, toast, directions to my water glass, and a redeemable coffee receipt from the cafe up the street. How did she know just what I needed? Amazing.

We just watched an awesome documentary that's here on Hulu, Abel Raises Caine. This guy Alan Abel made a lifetime career out of massive media hoaxes starting in the 50s through to today. He is brilliant and hilarious. Each fabricated story was complete with actors and literature and fake research. He essentially made up these completely ludicrous scenarios to see how much crazy people will actually believe. But the brilliance of it was that he would just set up the story and then when the media went crazy, it became sort of a real-life social self-commentary on media and sensation playing itself out. The stuff this guy got away with is incredible.

He originally got the idea when he had to stop his car on some country road because there was a bull and a cow having sex in the middle of the road. The appalled look on the other motorists faces got him thinking...and SINA was born, the Society for the Indecency to Naked Animals. A total hoax of course, it's ridiculous, but people jumped on board. People actually and seriously advocated that animals wear clothes. Their slogan was "A nude horse is a rude horse." And some guy actually wanted to donate $40,000 to the Society. Hahahahah. So this makes front page, the media goes nuts. But then, when it's revealed way down the road that it's a hoax, that story makes page 10 or something. Nobody's hurt, hopefully some people feel stupid, and he moves onto his next one under the radar.

Anyways, I could go on...I want to tell you all the hilarious stunts that he pulled and that people fell for. Watch the movie. He's old now and in the movie, and he and his wife are lovely and quirky and totally deadpan. It's so fun and makes you want to not take anything too seriously.

Does anyone remember him from during of his pranks?

I'm starting to show signs of Italian lately. I am back in full force in the North End where conversating for most involves your hands as much as your mouth; I've been eating my share of pasta; and I spend many of my nights watching The Sopranos. We started a few weeks ago with Season One, Episode One and we're working through the entire series. I'm learning more about the ways of the mafia than you can imagine. More importantly though, every once in a while and outa nowhere, I start throwing my arms around while talking, and putting accents on syllables I never had before.

Example:
Adam: (after napping on top of the covers the other day)
Me: (shoulders shrugged, arms turned up in front of me) Whoa! You, with the covers! You make it through a whole nap and now you gotta mess up the bed?!

It's a little Tony Soprano, a little North End native, and a little Joey Lawrence...yikes.

...there's a new awesomely horrible thriller in town.
Much to my delight, Adam sent me an IM this afternoon that read: If you don't think we're going to go see Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus this summer, you're crazy. followed by a link to this:

As if I weren't already looking forward to this summer. I can't tell you how excited I am about seeing this movie. As we walk out of the theater, I'll probably say something like, "I haven't laughed that hard in ___."

Oh, and to boot, Debbie (excuse me, Deborah) Gibson is the lead role. Yeah...with Lorenzo Lamas. Awesomely horrible movies can't get any better than this.

Here's the scene from Ghost Ship that sparked my love for awesomely horrible thrillers:
(warning: it's a little gruesome.)

So, I've got this bank of songs I pull from every once in a while when jogged by something I'm doing, reading, seeing, etc. I know this is no phenomenon, everyone's got a sort of internal soundtrack. I was just thinking about mine and laughing because it's generally reeeeaaally literal. For instance, The Mamas and the Papas - Monday, Monday when it is actually Monday; Flaming Lips - It's Summertime when I'm reveling in moments of summer; Bob Dylan - Times They Are A Changin' when reading the news or something. (That one's funny too because I'm 29, not 69.) It's like stating the obvious to myself in song. My favorite and most frequent one is Grand Funk Railroad - I'm Your Captain, but more specifically, the "I'm getting closer to my home" part. I usually start singing it as I'm actually walking home, toward my apartment, and also on the bus as it pulls off the Mass Pike into Boston. It's really fun. And the beauty of this one is that you don't need to know any more lyrics because he just sings that line over and over again, each time more revved up than the previous. It's awesome.

Aaaaaanyway, I bring it up now, because I started singing it silently yesterday as I was powering through my Flash animation final and thinking about this summer in Boston, and again this morning as I sat down to write my history paper and thought how soon tomorrow is. Tomorrow is when I hand both of these things in and complete the finals portion of the end of this semester. The end is near and I'm feelin' it.

Skip to 2:45 to get to the right part. Or watch the whole thing because it's pretty amazing. Shea Stadium, 1971.

I just crunched some numbers, and this is the ratio of my years spent in school, to years spent not in school in the past eleven years. That means I've primarily been a student since 1998. Jeeez. The numbers would change drastically if I broke it down by semesters, or seasons, or months, but these are more powerful. Either way, the point is that I just can't stop going to school.

I came to thinking about this today as I was filling out yet more forms to do with my finances. I had to list how much money I have borrowed each year in all of my higher education. There were just enough lines for me, but I had to alter the fields. Not that I think I'm such an unusual case, I just think it's funny because I don't particularly like being in school. I really love working. I wish you could get a degree from becoming really good at something you've mastered at work. I think they call it an apprenticeship. That's what I want. And that way I could get paid for learning instead of the other way around. And maybe I wouldn't have to fill out all these darn forms.

At the same time that I walked out of the architecture school on campus today, a young guy left the engineering school on his phone. We merged paths and I overheard his phone conversation as he walked behind me across campus. It went a little something like this (read with inflection at the end of each statement):

"I can't believe we have to deal with architects...Engineers and architects are like so different...Architects don't really know how to build things...All they do is design something that looks good...We are the ones that need to actually build it, like make sense of it, and put it together so it doesn't fall down."

Yeah, you're kind of right. That is more-or-less how things work. I'll design something and you make sure it stays upright. I was tempted to ask him why he wanted to be a structural engineer if he felt so inconvenienced by architecture. I didn't because (well, I wouldn't) but this monologue suddenly turned into another that involved a girl that was giving him "mixed signals" and wouldn't return his call. Heehee.

Foster Street in the North End is a dinky little one-way street. It's just wide enough for one car and I think most of its users are pedestrians. Boston has carelessly applied signs to some of the poles along Foster (see photos).

So what they're saying is, we can't park here....ever. And in addition to that, we can't park here on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month from April to November. It's funny how the amending sign is placed with such intention right below the original No Parking sign. I picture the guy whose job it was to put it there rolling his eyes as he did it.