Way More 80's Crap Than I Care to Reveal...

A long time ago, in a place that might as well be a galaxy far away, I did some writing about a high school detective named Veronica. There was a lot of down-time on that job, and I spent some of it doing research that might help my character solve her mysteries more easily. I read about tarot, psychic readings, Catholic symbolism (long story, but the dish of Saint Christopher medals in episode 202, Driver Ed, was my idea), STDs, and a bunch of other stuff that sometimes turned out to be useful, but mostly not.

One thing that would’ve helped me help Veronica is Sam Gosling’s book, Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, but it wasn’t published until 2008, and by that time, I was back here, helping high school kids learn important skills such as including a “Table of Contents” at the beginning of their papers instead of a “Table of Context.”[1]

In Snoop Gosling delves into the science behind the messages that our stuff—and the things of others—says about who we are. How does the arrangement of our books reveal our personalities? What do we give away about our innermost selves in the geegaws and knickknackery displayed in our homes, offices, classrooms, and cars? How can we “read” others by looking at their surroundings? What does it mean that I have a set of South Park finger puppets and a unicorn-on-a-stick in my office at school?

Surprisingly, the messages you intend to send when you arrange your tchotchkes aren’t always the ones your observers pick up on, and you can’t always trust what you see when you make guesses about others’ lives based on their stuff. But you can learn some useful tools for understanding people and their personalities, and Gosling’s research and entertaining presentation shows you how.

But his book isn’t just (or really) about snooping on a subversive level. If you want to rummage through your acquaintances’ bedside tables and bathroom cabinets, be my guest, but there are some easier and more valuable things you can learn just by looking and listening to the indicators they display right out in public. And I’m not talking about the friends who have the Vietnamese Love Swing[2] in their rec room or whatever.

Everyday, ordinary, preferences tell us more about people than do the things they hide. Studies have shown, for example, that “music consistently trumps books, clothing, food, movies, and television shows in helping people get to know each other.” Keep that in mind when you’re snooping: you can learn more from the CD collection than the bookshelf.

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[1] Honest to God, someone really wrote that.
[2]Just for the record, I have no idea what a Vietnamese Love Swing is, nor do I know anyone who has one. I don’t think.

Are George and Lennie Mice?

The best thing about working in a library is that you can tell people to be quiet anytime you want and it's completely legitimate. Even if you just want them to shut up because you can't hear your Pandora, no one questions you. People have preconceptions about libraries that lend themselves perfectly to my desire not to listen to them talk about their lives.

Unfortunately, people also have other notions about libraries that are guaranteed to make me ponder hari-kari. Chief among these annoyances is the belief that libraries are places where one person talks to another person in a fearful whisper. I absolutely loathe whisperers, mainly because I can't hear what they're saying, but also because their timidity seems to imply that they must tiptoe around and be careful not to disturb me, lest I go berserk and poke their eyes out with a bone folder. Which I've only done like once, and that was on a day when I was even crabbier than I am right now.

Every profession has its annoyances, and my theory is that they stem not from the actual acts committed by the annoyers, but by the sheer repetition of those acts. How many times do kids have to walk through the alarm system and simulate its "beep beep beep" noise before I've legally earned a paid mental health leave of up to one year? And when I tell someone they have an overdue book and they say, "I've never even heard of that book," shouldn't it be permissable--in fact, required--that I throw something at or near their head? My job, as delightful and rewarding as it is, requires me to answer and/or respond to a wide array of asinine questions. I've detailed them here.

Turns out that my job, as a high school librarian, is, in part anyway, to train the people who will leave this institution and go into the Real World to torment the underpaid and overworked employees of the nation's public libraries. At least that's what I've discerned from reading Scott Douglas's memoir, Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian. You do not have to be a librarian to appreciate his story, just an appreciator of workplace humors. Seriously, if you like The Office, you'll appreciate the interactions Douglas has with the quirky cast of personalities who work with him at the small Anaheim library where most of his story takes place.

Weird patrons, finicky co-workers, and bizarre requests and problems are all a part of being a public librarian, and Scott Douglas makes hilarious work of his daily duties, which include not just answering stupid questions and chasing away misbehaving teenagers, but also fetching people who've fallen asleep in the bathroom, confiscating contraband, and requesting that masturbators take their um, handiwork, elsewhere. These are all things I've had to do in my own job (in addition to asking students to please not ninja-kick each other) so I'm obviously training the students well for their future library lives. Either way, this is a highly recommended read--one of the funniest books I've read this year.

When I'm Sixty-Four

I've been in Mexico four days and somehow can't seem to get Beatles songs out of my head. The cars and bars blast musica latina, 80s tunes, and a crapload of Air Supply, but Amy and I keep singing about returning to Puerto Vallarta to retire. We've modified the lyrics of "When I'm Sixty-Four" to accomodate our optimism about being nonegenarians at Playa de Los Muertos, and I keep humming "Paperback Writer." Hmmm.

If one IS a writer of paperbacks, there is a good chance that your work will end up in a cafe like Una Pagina del Sol, where travelers can trade used and/or crap books for credit towards purchases on other used and/or crap books traded in by other vacationers. Pagina (which just for the record, is pronounced pah-hee-nuh, NOT pa-JI-nuh) is located at 299 Olas Altas, on a busy corner in the Zona Romantica, ideal for watching tourists and just steps from Los Arcos, a large, clean hotel with easily accessible banos. "Going to Los Arcos" has become code for "the coffee just kicked in, and I'm going to appreciate the privacy of a clean bathroom."

The cafe/bookstore is frequented mainly by local ex-patriates and tourists, but not the kind wearing fluourescent bracelets who arrive on gigantic air-conditioned buses. We sat and watched as a terrified trio of these visitors huddled on the corner, waiting 25 minutes for the bus to return them to their hotel in Nuevo Vallarta, the land of Costco, Walmart, and gated security. 25 minutes! "Waiting for the tour bus" is our new synonym for wasting precious time in the midst of a beautiful life. It is the opposite of Saying Yes.

At Pagina, my personal shopper Amy helped me select books that allowed me to utilize my 30 peso credit as well as rid myself of another burdensome $70 pesos. Pagina has delicious coffee, superior licuados, and an unforgettable tres leches cake, but many of the books are of the yellow-paged, spine-cracked Grisham/Steel variety. However, we did find a copy of Deborah Rodriguez's memoir Kabul Beauty School and a 1978 paperback entitled How to Ask a Man by Judi Miller.

Miller's book, published at the height of women's lib, is intended for women who "wish not to be trapped by an old-fashioned dating sytem" and hope to "learn to approach a man--the RIGHT man!" by "bringing dating out of the dark ages!" It has provided quite a lot of poolside entertainment. Besides advising women to ask to see a prospective date's divorce papers, Miller also suggests that women cook for their man-of-interest. "Everyone has her own special recipe to use when a man comes to dinner. Whether it's Beef Stroganoff or Veal Scallopini, make sure you have three or four can't-miss recipes in your repertoire!" Other chapters include "Stopping That Macho Before It Becomes Too Mucho" and "Go Ahead! Pick Him Up!"

Kabul Beauty School, interestingly enough, is also about women's issues; Rodriguez went to Afghanistan in 2001 on a relief mission, and ended up returning there to live when she discovered that Afghan women were in need of professional haircare and that there were many women interested in running their own salons. Because of strict Islamic regulations requiring the separation of women and men for such personal services as hair care, waxing, and make-up, as well as the need for professionals to perform elaborate pre-wedding-ceremony hairstyling and removal rituals, Rodriguez recognized that women in Kabul needed each other, and she opened a school to help train a cadre of beauty professionals. Her story of friendship and love in an unlikely place is absorbing and uplifting, proof that we can all get by with a little help from our friends.

A Postcard from PV

A brief blog from the sunnier section: I'm on a sabbatical from the snow and rain, reading my way around Puerto Vallarta, where it's a surreal 80 degrees. I'm working on an article for the spring edition of Village Books' Chuckanut Reader, so I assume that all of my expenses on this trip are write-off-able, even if I am writing nothing about Mexico.

The topic for my upcoming piece in the CR is "light reads for dark times" and I'm focusing on smart humor to uplift and entertain us through economic hard times and other crap that sucks the fun out of life. So far, I haven't been able to add anything new to my list, but have been actively eliminating potential suggestions. For example, I didn't even have to read I Hope There's Beer in Hell by Tucker Max, because one of my travelmates (who asked not to be named so as not to be associated with the book) hated the book so much that he even refused to trade it in for credit at La Pagina del Sol, the favorite cafe/bookstore of the trio.

Apparently, Max writes proudly, exclusively, and in exhaustingly disgusting detail about his excessive drinking, mistreatment of women (including his "standards" regarding who he'll date), and his obnoxious attitudes about sex and just about everything else. One of those books that seems like a fun idea when you buy it at the airport, and then later just feels like a huge embarrassment. Perfect for chopping up and making some sort of craft project out of. Or something.

On the flight, I read most of Shauna Reid's memoir Adventures of Diet Girl because 1) I'd read a review of it thta made it sound funny and similar to Wendy McClure's weight-loss memoir, I'm Not the New Me; 2) like McClure's book, Reid's began as a blog about her amazing weight loss, and 3) I liked the cover. Reid's story is uplifting and fun, and her accomplishment is worthy of commendation, but the book feels too much like it was lifted directly from the blog without any further embellishment--no real subplots or suspense, and frankly, the writing is average and not particularly unuique. However, if your New Year's resolution includes shedding some excess flesh, consider this one as part of the overall motivational package. I certainly do, although for now, I'm off for some chilequiles. The workouts will have to wait...Adios y feliz ano nuevo!

Snow and Strippers

Snowbound for days, you would reasonably assume that I did nothing but read pile after pile of books, gleefully thankful that my mini-van was undriveable, work unaccessible, and the outside world an unreachable, distant memory. Not so much.

During my houseboundness, I spent way too much time napping, a solid amount of hours watching DVDs (season 4 of LOST) and only a limited number of minutes churning through the tower of books that threatens to fall from my bedside table and crush me in the wee hours of the night before Frida has a chance to wake me up for her ass-crack-of-dawn pee.

When I wasn't sleeping or watching Matthew Fox (!!!), I read one highly recommendable work of fiction, The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III. A few years back, I risked alienating some of you by enthusiastically promoting Dubus's novel House of Sand and Fog, a book which, apparently, has the ability to really piss a lot of people off and provoke arguments among otherwise peaceable friends.

Good news! The Garden of Last Days threatens to do the exact same thing, and I know most of you will read it anyway. Like House of Sand and Fog, Dubus's new novel revolves around a circle of loosely connected characters whose fates intertwine by chance. Just as in the earlier novel, readers will love and hate these people, peeking through their fingers to watch as they repeatedly take steps to insure that their lives will be hopelessly screwed up. Yet even as we watch their lives devolve in a series of bad decisions, their stories are impossible to abandon.

The action takes place in Florida, in the three days preceding the 9/11/2001 attacks. A single mother struggling to save for a home and stuck without her usual babysitter must bring her three-year-old daughter to work with her at The Puma Club for Men, arranging for another of the dancers to watch her daughter. At the club that night is Bassam, a Muslim man preparing to sacrifice his life for his religion. Also in the audience is AJ, a young father whose wife has recently kicked him out of the house. The unlikely confluence of these individuals at this place on this night makes for an unforgettable, gripping read.

It's unlikely that many readers would expect to sympathize with a stripper, a wife-beater, and a 9/11 conspirator, and yet Dubus so completely realizes these characters' lives, their hopes, dreams, doubts, and passions, that it is impossible not to understand what motivates them and moves them to live as they do. Certain to inspire much discussion and thought, this is one of the most powerful novels I've read.

Yes, Indeed

It's a common misconception about librarians that we are hyper-organized, and while it's true that I organize my clothes by color (that's just practical!), I don't think of myself as being omniorganized. The best thing about getting older is the realization that there are some things that you can organize and some things that you either can't control, or that aren't worth it or would be spoiled by the effort.

If, for example, you have to move an 8-person hot tub to your house (insert smiley face here), it doesn't work to show up and figure it out as you go. You have to prepare: rent a huge flatbed, recruit a posse of manly-men who'd probably rather be doing just about anything else on a rainy Saturday afternoon, arrange a time and place to meet, and prepare some sort of grati-snack to thank them.

On the other hand, if you're cleaning out your closet and you find some dress shirts that your ex-boyfriend left behind to be mended while he was off cheating on you, it's best not to waste time enumerating the pros and cons of returning them versus donating them to the Goodwill or using them to clean up dog doo in the garage, but to just go ahead and slice the arms off with a sharp scissors. It's very satisfying, and if you sew up the bottoms of the sleeves, they make neat little wine bottle bags.

In Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up, Patricia Ryan Madson advocates the sleeve-slicing approach to life--not violence and vengeance, but spontaneous acts of thinking-on-your-feet that prohibit the blocks that arise when we try too hard to arrange the little pieces of our lives too carefully. I read Madson's book recently as a part of my training in improvisational theater and realized her ideas are applicable anywhere, not just on stage.

Throughout this short book, Madson offers numerous examples and strategies for adopting a more improvisational attitude to life. Showing up, paying attention, giving yourself permission to be average, and taking care of others are among the improvisational maxims that she introduces and promotes. My favorite is "make mistakes" since I'm already pretty good at it. "99.9 percent of the time, a mistake is just an unanticipated outcome giving us information. While we may bemoan a blunder, the real question to ask afterward is not, 'How on earth did I do that?' but rather, 'What comes next? What can I make of this?'" I can't think of a happier way to respond.

People often think that improv is about being funny, and while it often ends up being hilarious, the goal of improvisational actors is not to get laughs, but to think fast, forget inhibitions, support others, and most of all, to say yes to what is offered, whether it's on stage, at work, or in our personal lives. "Say yes to everything," Madson writes. "Saying yes is an act of courage and optimism. Accept all offers...when the answer to all questions is yes, you enter a new world, a world of action, possibility, and adventure...Humans long to connect," she writes. "Yes glues us together." And so do hot tubs! Come on over!

Commando in the Reading Room

As I mentioned a couple of blogs ago, I recently celebrated the anniversary of my birth, and with it, the expiration of a drivers' license that still had me living on H Street. You know, at my ex-husband's house.
I work in a library. I own hundreds of books. And yet on the one occasion when I most needed reading material, I forgot to bring any. That's right, ladies and gentlemen: I went to the DMV without a book. If you've ever been there, you know just how dire this situation was. However, you also know that once you've arrived and plucked your ticket from the Take-A-Number machine, there is no turning back. Because the only thing worse than going to the DMV is going to the DMV again.

With a 20-25 minute wait ahead of me, a hard plastic seat under me, and 10 days of driving on an expired license behind me, I was trapped in the austere hell that is the Department of Motor Vehicles. There is nothing to do there except text-message your friends (mine were all at work), read the imminent-death-warning posters on the walls (hydroplaning! sleepiness! unsecured loads!), and judge the clothes/children/mental health (hideous! stupid! bipolar!) of the other unfortunates around you.

If you've ever sat next to me in the theater or at a faculty meeting, you know that I have some "issues" with sitting still; i.e. I find it virtually impossible. I don't do "calm." It's one of the reasons I didn't love being a TV writer--even though I was sitting at table with brilliant, funny, naughty people, I was SITTING AT A TABLE for six or seven hours a day. It was my own little Guantanamo. I'm not trying to one-up anyone on the whole shitty-day-at-the-DMV scenario. I just want to offer some backstory to explain what happened next.

Before I approached the counter where the crabby woman (they're all crabby, but, ok, I get it) yelled at me for reading the wrong line on the eye test and then told me that the address of my brand new home does not exist, I did this: I got up. I took a look around in desperation. And then I did it. I took a Driver Guide from the pile and returned to my butt-numbing plastic chair. And I read The Guide. Page. By. Tedious. Page.

Unless you are insomniac or 15 1/2, I don't recommend this. It's as boring as reading the instruction manual for your new dishwasher, only a thousand times more boringer. Also, it will scare the crap out of you (39,000 bicyclists die annually! cough medicine can impair your thinking! there is no Patron Saint of Subarus!)

However, if you started driving 25 years ago, like some people I know, it is refreshing to learn of the changes in road law that have occurred since th 80s. For example, there is now a phenomenon called "graduated licensing." It involves a complex series of ages, times, dates, and familial relations intended to prevent today's 16 year olds from driving a carload of their friends to a kegger off Chuckanut Drive in the family's Pinto station wagon. For example.

Also, modern inventions such as text-messaging and roundabouts make an appearance. Apparently, you're not supposed to look at a teeny-tiny keyboard and type with your thumbs while operating a motor vehicle. Whatever. The old regulations are still there--the stuff about yielding to pedestrians and checking your blind spot and not letting your three-year-old grandson drive your car (see photo)--so it's still the same old fun-crushing crapload of rules. But it got me through 20 minutes. And it might do the same for you.

On the bright side, according to my driver's license, I now weigh 125 again.