From the mouth of The TorTor

guest blog, guest blog, GUEST BLOG!! it's time for that good old thing we call a guest blog. tonight i have the musings of my good friend TorTor. Tory and i met living in the hippy commune a couple of years age. We would bond over things like kombucha tea and hatred of 7th heaven, knitting, and our love of felicity and all things angela chase. We talk about tv characters liek they are our friends: "what would felicity say." "I had an angela moment." and we love to philosophy the ways in which we can truncate the english language. Anyways tortor was the one who reminded me about that Heather Nova song, so in honor of this i give you tortor's ellucidations on "i'm alive, i'm a mess." She did it more justice than i ever could.

Now here's the thing about "London Rain" (this is going to be rambling and ragged but it comes from my heart. Which I will give, along with my shoulder, over and over, because it's what Felicity would do): it is essentially a happy song, a celebration of coming home to a home, a home that is someone, someone who is your home regardless of where they are. Now, this might not be what one would initially think upon hearing "I'm alive I'm a mess." One might think that this person is deranged, out of her wits, ooc, as it were, perhaps in a destructive relationship or one of unhealthy dependence. What I have noticed is that the song consists of a series of redundancies. The first line is one example, for it is clear that "you" is synonymous with the idea of "home," so "to come home to you" is an overemphasizing of the intensity with which our dear Miss Nova identifies her loved one as her true home. Another example might be "changes beyond my dreams," for clearly Miss Nova has lofty dreams and what are dreams really other than life changes? Again, like "I'm alive I'm a mess," "changes beyond my dreams" might initially seem to denote an instability when really it is a simple statement of inevitable fact. Our dreams, despite being of ourselves, are not containable, not completely moldable, and even while we realize them they are ever-shifting, sometimes changing without us even knowing.

Sometimes, pardon the gravitas, we even realize dreams that we were not aware we had in the first place. Same goes for "changes beyond my grasp." A change that is wholly within one's grasp is not the sort of change that one is particularly compelled to sing about or reference as noteworthy. A change beyond one's grasp is the only kind of change worth having. It is the only way you know you are moving forward rather than side to side. This isn't to belittle a nice horizontal shift, but when you're really in it, like if you're so in it right now, then the changes are totes going to be beyond your grasp, and this isn't a bad thing. The verse ends with "things I'm sinking in," once again a line that could communicate a feeling of helplessness. However, "sinking in" is not necessarily a negative thing. While changes and developments take time to sink in, so does one sink into things, situations, roles, etc. She is sinking into something new, but in a "sink your teeth into" sort of way. It might be a little scary, but at least she's going full bore. Then comes the great solace of the song, which is that there is this human presence that both gives and receives comfort. As Nina Simone and Shelley Duvall have reminded us before, the feeling of "he needs me" is one that can sometimes surpass even the importance of "he loves me." Perhaps it is that when someone loves, one can be sharing only strength, but when one admits need one is sharing a weakness, something much more difficult to reveal or fabricate.

Which takes me back to "I'm alive I'm a mess," which is another redundancy. Being alive is inevitably being a mess, but not an irresolvable mess, or even a mess that needs to be resolved in the first place. To claim to be a mess is simply to acknowledge your state of being alive, is sometimes the best way to remind yourself that you are alive at all. Miss Nova and our dear Felicity are those types who would sooner not be alive than not be a mess, who revel in and accept the inevitable messiness of life with gusto rather than complaint. To greet the day with a hearty "I'm alive I'm a mess" is more of a statement of constancy than helplessness, it is a reassuringly constant yet subtly shifting state that keeps us free from apathy and impassivity.

So that's that, I'm going to go listen to "Pass In Time" on repeat.

to

So anyways in response to my feelings about possibly being too old for online communitites she responded "I think that the reason i am too old for them is that all they do is bring back sad memories of when i used to be a nice person and remind me of all the people i've lost touch with who, when I'm not under the influence of debilitating nostalgia, I realize left mylife for a reason." As we say in the mother tongue, PALABRA!!

Come back later to read about my extended metaphor of life being like a game of poker and how i suck at it.

GUEST BLOG!!

So in honor of the fact that we were reliving our youth and drinking a lot of tequila I decided it was the perfect time to have GUEST BLOGGERS!! Yes that's right. This has become one of my favorite features, for no apparent reason other than i love looking back at things that people say when they are drunk and thinking...wow that shit was deep. So without further ado I give you Casey and Emily as my guest bloggers. The context: Casey's house, night before thanksgiving, one bottle of Jose Cuervo later, episodes 1 and 2 of 90210 season 1. First we drank, then we played trivial pursuit only to realize that i've changed. I used to be so good at this game. I mean seriously when we went camping i won 90's trivial pursuit in 15 minutes flat. 15 MINUTES FLAT!! This night I got one question during this entire game and I realized that i had changed. Then we ordered pizza and drank more and watched 90210. BT Dubbs I would like to note that I actually sacrificed my food budget for one week in order to purchase this show. Let it be known that i am an idiot!

I cannot Guest Blog while I’m drunk. For example, I just capitalized Guest Blog. As if it were a NOUN. Good Lord. It’s like I’m not an English major.
No really. That’s all I can come up with. Now I have to find my checkbook. I will give you to Emily. (I would like to note that casey held the computer for half an hour while writing those 2 sentences)

Hello, I am less driznunk than Casey. By a long shot. Which is really saying something about how far we have come, because once upon a time keeping up with Casey would have killed me. Casey was in many ways my muse and also my role model and also a cause of destruction at the same time.

Today may be about the future and the past at the same time. We have spent a great deal fo time today talking about people from the past (i.e. STEPHANIE was the name of Joseph Chipple’s girlfriend) and doing things from the past (i.e. drinking margaritas and speaking in Espanol cuando estamos borrachas). We realized today that the people in Friends were the same age OR YOUNGER than us when the show STARTED. Since we live our lives not by the book, but by the TV, this is a Big Deal. Much like Casey capitalized Guest Blog, I am capitalizing Big Deal. When Friends started, they were 23. I am 23. Cristina is 24 and Casey is 25. Cristina on the other hand is talking about how if we had more of the DGSC (our bitches, The Dirty Girls Social Club, named after a really crappy latina ChicLit book i read a few years back. Like i said the book was crappy but I liked the concept of female friends who get together once a year to chat and bitch and talk about vibrating cock rings and stuff like that. good times! ) here, we could have a massive event. It would involve watching 90210 for the first time (well, some of us). It would involve margaritas. Cristina just said “The liquor just hit me, like right now. While I was trying to focus on her shoe.” Then she goes “When I am this drunk I think, will I remember this tomorrow? But then I think, since I’m thinking this, I must not be that drunk.” (I DO NOT remember making this statement but fuck, i am brilliant! We then started having this really intense convo about how we are way too metacognitive in everything we do, like that statement that i just made about being drunk but not so drunk that i can't remember how drunk I am. META!)

NOW we speak of metacognition. The meta makes it beta, as Shawn Standefer used to say. We speak of drunken litmus tests. We realize that speaking of such things means we need to drink more. Casey just found her check. The fact that Casey has a checkbook means that things have changed. Casey has a credit card, and a cell phone! Cristina on the other hand did not kick our asses at Trivial Pursuit (EVEN WITH THE PINK CATEGORIES), which means, if you ask her, that things have changed. We spoke of the Stanford magazine. We spoke of people writing into it for the Class Notes section and how that is lame and douchy and yet, at the same time, how we want to do it. Yes, we do. (Dubbs dubbs, I might write in to say that I am going to grad school at UMich and that I am not married and have no children and live in a basement with hand me down furniture. I challenge all of us to write in for the next issue! Let us talk about how our lives are awesome!) Orges is in it, although I don’t believe he wrote in it. He is in it as part of a trip to Europe, which does not mention how he got left behind because his passport issues and damn the man and all that. (He didn't realize that citizens of the Balkans need Visas to get into Hungary. Bummer. Wait, Is Albania in the Balkans? Where is Albania? He also ended up drunk on absynth roaming around a gypsy trailer park/gypsy protitution ring. Dubbs dubbs, this is one of my favorite Orges stories.)

Ok, now we are watching 90210. I already love it. It has been about 2 seconds. We have the instant recap that we know so well (or, I know so well) from the OC, which involves recapping the show blatantly (“New friends, new school.”) while we can already tell what’s going on. I understand the OC so much better now!!! The family scene struck me just now as only a preview of what was to come in later, ripped-off versions of this same show. I LITERALLY am having chills right now! We are now discussing how this show, like magazines in case you do not know, is aspirational. You think, one day, mhy life could be like this (or the lives of my kids will be like this). We are realizing how we have not changed much since 1991 given how these costumes + leggings is about the same as fashion a la Lindsay Lohan right now.

Also anonymous black DJ guy reminds me of Usher playing the school DJ in She’s All That. Who knew how much this owed to 90210? Can we also talk about the class differences and the teachers driving shitty cars when the students drive really swanky cars?

Wow, the fashion in this show is so hardcore. I would like to transport people from 1991 into the present and just see what happens. Why are people so hot in high school shows? No one was this hot at my high school. Also, they have strategically placed black people in this show. Just to make sure people know this is a Real High School.

I really could die. I wish I had watched this at the time. I feel like I am learning about my generation. What a fitting part of this evening (as we wait for Dominos).

I also love how in high school movies people hop into convertible cars – they never actually open the door.

This is really giving me insight into the OC when they show people at a party – Brandon and Steve are the Ryan and Seth (and Seth is a little bit in the freshman nerds). Are high school parties like this somewhere I don’t know about? The music is exactly as appropriate in this show as the OC – did people talk about the 90210 music aesthetic the way they talk about the OC music now? Also it’s like Clueless with the nose job business… This is a brilliant blend of 90s, 00s and 80s chic – the chiming music walked straight out of St. Elmo’s Fire, the fashion could exist nowhere but the 90s (bike shorts, boxy short dresses), and obviously the 00s are actually just a ripoff of the 90s, so really I mean the same thing.

We just learned midway through 90210 that Casey will periodically interrupt her class to say “Did you go to 18 years of school? No? Well, I used to babysit, but I went through 18 years of school, and so if I wanted to get paid 10 dollars an hour to babysit you, I would call your mom and ask you. But right now, I’m going to teach. Ok?” This in itself is awesome.

We also just witnessed Kelly wearing polka dot bike shorts over blue leggings with scrunched socks over the leggings. Death itself!

It just occurred to me that this episode originally aired one whole month before my seventh birthday. MY SEVENTH BIRTHDAY! WTF!

TIME OUT ZACH MORRIS STYLE! We are having a moment. First of all, there was a collective loss of breath the moment Dylan walked into the screen for the first time. Collective! Cristina said it’s James Dean with a personality. I’m shocked that I never watched this and knew of the hotness of Dylan in 1990 when it mattered.

Second, we have realized in this surfing scene (Episode 2) that one of the surfers is wearing Uggs. In 1990! Proof that they were cool before they were cool. Take that.

(We have also had a realization that despite losing at Trivial Pursuit, Cristina still kicks ass at the obscure knowledge of pop culture because she discovered that the guy who plays Jason in the pilot was in Grease 2 and ALSO that he was Rex Manning in Empire Records and also that the surfer girl on the beach with Brandon was also in Better Off Dead. It’s very important to know useless information like this.) (Maxwell Caulfield is his name, bitches. I still got it!)