This American Life

I'm obsessed with it. I've long since accepted that loving NPR makes me a middle-aged, white woman on the inside. But recently, with the introduction of the "This American Life" podcast into my life, I am completely in thrall to NPR. I laugh. I download multiple episodes a day. I try to keep from crying on the BART when listening to depressing segments.

I think part of the appeal is Ira Glass' soothing, public radio voice with its appropriate gravitas. But I think a little bit of it has to do with the movie Sleepless in Seattle, which I watched for the first time two nights ago. (As a side note, I found the movie disappointing. I spend an hour and a half watching a movie and the main characters don't meet until the end? And there's no kissing? What a crock. I would also like to note that it was horribly misbilled by Netflix as a romantic comedy. It was more stalkerish than anything else, and there's a limit on how amusing a movie about a widower and a woman who doesn't love her fiancé can be.)

But the more relevant point here is that Meg Ryan's character falls in love with Tom Hanks' after hearing him on the radio. That one aspect of the movie really makes sense to me. I think I may not just like "This American Life," but also be slightly enamored of Ira Glass. I know he's horribly too old for me, I'll probably never meet him, and that he doesn't usually speak for that long on the show, but there's something really compelling about those few minutes when he is on air.

Inappropriate PDA

Let me get this out of the way first: Batman was badass. I could talk extensively about many aspects of it, including, but not limited to, Christian Bale's hotness, Morgan Freeman's awesomeness, and the number of people tasting Batman's pointy, flying elbows.

I'm someone who really enjoys action movies. Even if they're crappy and full of plot holes, I can sit through them and be pretty engrossed. Especially if the screen is large and fills my entire field of vision. So, when I'm in a legitimately well done action movie, like Batman, I enter a sort of zone. This is a peaceful mental state which I do not like having interrupted.

Enter the teenage couple. They came in with a gaggle of their loud friends who think they're all very funny. I know. Being with a large group of people you've known for a while is sort of like being drunk: Everyone's much more clever, everything's much funnier, and no one has the ability to control the volume of his voice. I accept this, and think of it as a kind of penance for my own times being in that group who singlehandedly ruins the entire movie/restaurant/walking down the sidewalk experience.

They quieted down mostly before the movie and settled in for a few solid hours of explosions and hand-to-hand combat. About forty-five minutes in, the guy in the couple lost interest in the movie. He started looking over at his girlfriend, who was sitting next to me. She ignored him as he shifted around and tried to make eye contact with her. Eventually, after about fifteen minutes of struggle and a short conversation about how she was tired, they started making out. They would glance at me occasionally. I assume this means they were checking to see if I'd noticed, and if so, whether I was going to throw my soda on them.

And so, the next hour and a half of Batman was interrupted by slurping sounds and elbow bumping. I get it. They have hormones. But if you're going to make out during a movie, why would you sit in the middle of the theater, next to people? Especially when it's a popular movie on its second weekend? The world may never know.

Long story short, I'm bringing a taser and a spray bottle to the movies from now on.

How to handle a de-magnetized BART card

Retrieve de-magnetized card from the slot. Place hands firmly on top of two metal turnstiles and swing legs over barrier. Walk away nonchalantly.

Happy Birthday, Isabelle Hicks

I turned twenty on Saturday. As one friend helpfully informed me, this makes me close to 40 than to birth. The celebration has extended into a several day affair, with different celebrations and congratulations. A birthday week, one might call it. This pales in comparison with one person, however: Isabelle Hicks.

On the drive home every night, Zoelle and I pass the local high school. There's an electric sign near it that announces important things in the school. The graduation date, minor news, and, of course, birthdays. It's sort of charming that an inanimate object can greet you with a "Happy birthday!" as you drive by. But Isabelle has taken it to the next level.

She has the fortune of having been born on the last day of school. This is the point at which the secretaries become lazy or leave for the summer. Thus, the billboard remains un-updated for three months. Trumping my measly week by a large margin, Isabelle Hicks has a three-month-long birthday celebration. Cheers to her, and may she have a sweet sixteen until she's seveteen.

Rowr

On Friday night a few weeks ago, I went to this magazine release party at the Oakland Museum of California with Zoelle and her mother. We started off the evening by eating dinner at this restaurant called Oasis. It specializes in West African food, which seems to involve a lot of beans, rice and plantains. The food was delicious, but there was one questionable aspect to the menu. My topping options for my black-eyed peas and rice were chicken, cod, and “meat.”

I accept that there may be some translation problems, but what is this mysterious “meat?” Pork? Beef? The flesh of naughty children? There are so many possibilities here, I was almost afraid to ask.

The party itself was a bizarre mix of twenty-somethings and fifty-year-old white women. As someone who’s easily pleased, I was quickly drawn to the circle of people standing around the acrobatic children in the courtyard. Apparently they belong to a circus school; they did some tumbling and crazy hanging rope tricks with no netting or safety harnesses. Watching them and clapping like a moron, I felt jipped. Not only did these kids get to join the circus, they didn’t have to run away from home to do it. As I grow older, it has become increasingly clear to me how much my parents hid from me.

There was also a prize table from Amoeba. And I won two four-day passes to this big festival. From the expression of the woman running the booth, this was a big prize. This is disappointing for both of us, because what I really wanted was the $10 tote bag. But I took my prize anyway, and started scoping the crowd.

It became readily apparent, as the night wore on and we wandered through the various exhibits, food stands, and members of a KISS cover band, that the middle-aged women had an objective. They moved with intent, through the throngs of slow-moving couples and . The women moved in packs,

One man behind me summed it up best. With a mixture of incredulity and fear, he said, “This is a cougar den!”