OMG...

MAY 12 UPDATE: i'm an idiot. i'm changing this post around because it sounded totally patronizing and mean and i don't want to do that, given that i absolutely adore my sister and don't mean to or want to incur her wrath. so, i've changed things up a bit. and i'm a dumbass...

so, in my perusal of jurist's fellow webby award winners, i clicked on myspace.com, winner of the, erm, "breakout of the year" webby. myspace does indeed make me feel like breaking out...in hives. my apologies to all friends who maintain myspace pages, but i just don't get it. it's cluttered, aesthetically displeasing, full of high school kids. if you're a high school kid, fine -- have your myspace page. but beyond that it just seems kind of, well, creepy. or maybe i'm just old? i dunno...

however, a certain favorite 18 year old of mine has a myspace page. and i know i'm gonna catch hell for this post from her, because she does indeed read this blog. but, myspace? okay, okay. i have a blog. i know that by some standards, blogging is every bit as abhorrent as any sort of online presence. but, well, i use big words like "abhorrent" and "perusal" and "aesthetically displeasing". find THAT on your typical myspace page -- i dare you!

the truth is, though, once i got over my feeling all icky about reading the comments and stuff on this particular myspace page, i realized something -- my sister is a whole helluva lot like me when i was at that point of life. to illustrate, i give you the following:

1. the grateful dead... those of you who are familiar with the best show of all time freaks and geeks will remember fondly the one episode where mr. rosso loans lindsay his copy of "american beauty" and she totally falls in love with the album. if i've said it once, i've said it a thousand times -- lindsay weir = emily in high school.

2. ah, kerouac's _on the road_. totally. read it on a bus ride to denver (for church youth group of all things!) from there, i moved on to the other beats (burroughs, ferlinghetti, ginsberg), then started to grow impatient with the lack of/portrayal of women by the beat fraternity. then there was the brief stint as a philosophy major, heidegger, a language crisis, and then the realization that, really, everything is all very silly. enter vonnegut, and a bit of camus and sartre. from there came the rediscovery of faulkner, the discovery of nabokov. and the befriending of some new poets (wcw, stevens, eliot, berryman); became enraptured by the greek tragedies, and totally disenchanted by anything on the NYT bestsellers list (at least as it pertains to fiction). fell in with the american fiction writers of the first half of the 20th century, with a little dostoevsky and hesse and joyce, even merton. suddenly i'm surrounded by books i love but can't remember and music i never listen to but do remember, and i've got a mad urge to re-read _on the road_, just for kicks.

3. i remember when i realized that holden caulfield couldn't be one of my "heroes". i blame that godawful show "party of five". it was then that i knew that my beloved _the catcher in the rye_, although brilliant and perfect when i was in high school, had become yet another victim of hipster chic. why must the hipsters take all things wonderful (CitR, pabst blue ribbon, chuck taylors) and turn them into pop culture trash? i mourn the loss of these things as mine, yet i harbor secret love for them anyway. however, upon revisiting salinger after a few years, i was all about "a perfect day for bananafish" and "for esme -- with love and squalor". and that's when i realized that, really, it was the glass family that was truly salinger's masterpiece.

so, yes... the moral of the story here? my favorite 18 year old is a frightingly accurate mirror image of yours truly as a senior in high school... secretly, i'm hoping she'll continue on this path. i've turned out okay, right?

so, c? i love you! you amaze me and i'm so proud of you. but please get rid of the myspace page! xoxoxoxoxo