I can't really think about last night. I sat in front of our TV with John, as we switched back and forth between CNN and MSNBC, from 5PM until sometime after midnight. I watched all the polls close. By the time President-elect Obama made his speech last night, I was in sensory overload. And now, looking back, his speech has this dreamy quality to it, partly because I was so emotionally spent.
Watching that speech...oh. Oh my. We really did it. We actually really did it! Yay us! We did a fantastic job! Record voter turnout! We're awesome!
I think the best thing about President-elect Obama's (I just LOVE the way that sounds) speech last night was that it wasn't a victory speech so much as it was call to action. You know all that energy and extra time we've all spent worrying about the election? Well, the election is over now. Let's try and use our new-found free time to do something productive, like volunteer for a worthy cause or read more and improve ourselves.
But right now, I just want to stop. Take a breath. Cry some more tears of joy. And start to finally calm down.
if you weren't a child in the 80's, i'm sorry. it was awesome.
John and I have been talking about great TV shows from our childhood and I want to share some awesomeness. First, we have the Sesame Street crayon factory. Possibly my favorite Sesame Street segment. The visuals are awesome. The fact that it's an actual Crayola factory is awesome. But the music is just spectacular.
Awesome, yes? Okay, next, there's the nines song from "Square One." My favorite thing about "Square One" was Mathnet, but the nine song is the thing that I think was the most useful to me. It's like it's describing some sort of weird mathematical magic. To this day, when I multiply something by nine (not that it happens often, but still), I picture this cowboy.
Next on my list of 80's children's programming is the opening to "3-2-1 Contact." I remember that I loved this show, but I remember very little about the show itself. This theme song is so cool though! It has the upbeat, inspirational tone of the old EPCOT music I love so much. (If you don't remember me talking about this before, check out this post from February, when I was praying Obama would get the nomination, in which I compare his speeches to lyrics of songs from EPCOT.)
I would love to have found something from "Jellybean Junction," but I couldn't. In fact, the internets are telling me that that isn't even the show I watched, based on timeframes and stuff, but that is the show John and I both specifically remember.
Last, in a departure from the public television theme I have going here so far, is a commercial for Astronaut Barbie. Amy had this doll. And she was really one of the coolest Barbies ever. Listen close to these lyrics.
"We girls can do anything, like Barbie." Classic! Rather than shattering the glass ceiling, Sarah Palin seems to have made it so that our political discourse is now roughly on par with 80's advertising aimed at children. Bravo! I'd just like to point out that the Barbie commercial is the only thing here that I didn't remember. Hopefully, in 20 years (or less), no one will remember Palin either.
After watching last night's debate, I have only one question: Who are these undecided voters? Even though I'm an Obama girl all the way, I can understand why people would like McCain. He's got experience, he's pro-life, he says he won't raise taxes, he's super into the military, he's a POW, all of that. I can get how someone, who just happens to be fundamentally different from me on all possible idealogical viewpoints, could back McCain. And clearly I get why Obama is awesome. My problem is that these two guys are so totally different, I can't fathom how there is anyone left anywhere who hasn't made up his or her mind yet.
Yet, somehow, CNN can still manage to come up with a thirty-person panel of undecided voters...and of those 30, only 3 said they'd made up their minds by the end of last night's debate. How? What are they waiting for? What are the magic words? It doesn't appear as if they're people who just aren't up on politics and current events, but maybe that's the case. I want to know how they managed to pick out clothes to wear.
I don't want to sound mean, but I just don't get it. The clock is ticking, people. And not nearly fast enough for my taste.
Obama's gonna ride his hope stallion all the way to the White House, you betcha, yup, yup! And also, too, doggone it, he'll be AWESOME! (That's Palin-speak for GOBAMA!)
So, yeah, John loves me and indulges my girlie whims. He rocks.
You can keep your Straight Talk Express, my man obviously travels on these:
The blue pony clearly says Hope, but the purple one next to it that you can't really see says Dreams. I very nearly bought this. I still may. There were, like, 10 ponies in there and they each had some huge ideal tattooed on the side...I mean, the awesomeness...is just out of the park.
And I'm throwing in two more pictures that came off John's phone. Just 'cause.
From the McEwen Dairy Queen. I love it. Love. It.
This mask was only $2.97. I didn't get it, but I can't for the life of me say why. The eyebrows alone are worth $5. By the way, does anyone else notice how much Christian Bale pouts as Batman? The new James Bond is a pouter too. What's up with the pouty heroes?
You may remember from a recent post I made, that I suggested Richard Dreyfuss could play McCain in a movie because he's suddenly become old and cranky/creepy looking. I didn't know then that he is in a new movie called W. about Bush that's coming out later this month...and he's playing Dick Cheney. What's funnier than that, to me anyway, is that Josh Brolin is GW. This is only funny because, no matter how much other work he does--and I've noticed him getting a little artsier lately, he will always be the big brother from Goonies to me.
Imagining Josh Brolin as president, therefore, makes me assume that asthmatic, One-Eyed-Willie-hunting Mikey must be governor of Florida in the Jeb Bush role. Which would be awesome. Plus, I'm pretty sure Mikey could find Ponce de Leon in a cave in Boca.
Maybe it's too soon to make a movie of the current presidential campaigns, but I've decided that Nia Vardalos would make an excellent Sarah Palin.
Vardalos is known for her wacky comedies and if there's one word that definitely applies to Sarah Palin, it's "zany." What else do you call someone who hates polar bears?
They even have the same fashion sense! You're welcome, Hollywood! I've done your casting work for you. I've even picked out your McCain:
Who knew Richard Dreyfus could look so old and creepy? He's perfect!
We just have to be careful not to make the Sarah Palin movie too much like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." Palin is already married, so changing the wedding reception for an inaugural ball or concession speech would be a given. Toula goes through quite a transformation, from insecure slob to stylish student. Since Palin thought not so long ago that Obama leading in the Alaskan polls was pretty cool, maybe her big transformation should be to embrace her conservative tendencies and to, maybe, learn what the Vice President does. The lamb the Greek family cooks on a spit in their yard needs to can be replaced with another garish dead animal and I think the obvious choice is Palin's huge bear carcas.
The only possible problem is that Nia Vardalos is actually older than Sarah Palin and may be a little too classy for this role.
I had in mind a somber post, but when I went to the NPR site to check out the story I heard on "Morning Edition" today concerning the rising price of crude oil, it led me to this instead: Environmentally Friendly Barbie Accessories made from scraps of Barbie clothes that would otherwise be thrown away. Like I needed another reason to go to Toys R Us, which is the only place to get the new B-Cause line of purses, diaries and whatnots. Unfortunately, I was given this knowledge in part through a story about poor Barbie sales and Mattel's loss of $45 million dollars last year. (Those recalls didn't do them any favors.)
Back to the subject of Earth Day, if I still lived in SoCal, I'd try to get one of these: Honda Clarity. I can't wait for them to be available everywhere.
I always seem to become obsessed with things when they no longer exist. I love all the apartments I no longer have. All the foods I like at a restaurant are the first to get changed or taken off the menu completely. I actually still miss clothes I had when I was a child (a pink and white striped polo shirt and my 1989 Easter dress, to be precise).
That being said, when did Disney decide to make EPCOT so stupid? I've heard the naysayers that think it was never that great, but I think they're dead wrong. When I was a kid, we had a CD of music from DisneyWorld--probably one of the first CDs we ever owned--that I've been wanting to listen to for at least a year. I found it at my parents' house a couple of weeks ago and have been listening to it occasionally. It. Is. Awesome!
I'm aware that I was sort of a snobby, goody-two-shoes kid, but I was also secretive and weird. Much like today. I tied furniture together with string, spinning the whole house into my web, then slid buckets along the string like an assembly line. I was addicted to the sound of my own voice playing back to me from countless cassettes. (Oh, my GOODNESS do I miss the 80's!)
Right now, I'm watching CNN's coverage of today's primaries. I find Wolf Blitzer incredibly boring. The pundits are so excited right now, which feels wrong. When political pundits get excited, something's gotta be wrong somewhere. They're like the paparazzi, but somehow not looked upon as weasels. I so much want Barack Obama to win the nomination, not to mention the general election. And here's why:
Barack Obama embodies all the good things I remember about EPCOT.
I know, I know. That's ridiculous, but it's also true. I need something fantastically good to happen in this country. I have yet to vote for a winner in a presidential election. I'm hoping to open my own bookstore, in a flailing economy, in the face of Amazon. I see all the possibilities that our superconnectivity can offer. The things I saw as a kid, enacted by animatronics, have slowly become real. But the spirit of excitement and wonder that I felt then is just not there. And when I hear Obama speak, a feeling wells up in me that's very similar to how I felt as a little girl, with my life splayed out in front of me like a sprawling red carpet. Just, take a look at this:
"If we can dream it, then we can do it. Yes, we can. Yes, we can." --from the theme song to "Horizons," my favorite, long demolished EPCOT ride.
"We are the hope of the future, the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided, that we cannot come together, that we cannot remake this world as it should be. We know that we have seen something happen over the last several weeks, over the past several months. We know that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored, that will not be deterred, that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, make this time different than all the rest. Yes, we can. Let’s go to work. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can." --Barack Obama in his Feb. 5th Super Tuesday speech
"Holding the spark, as we embark, on a great journey together we're learning to reach for hope and desire, building a world to inspire." --from a song called "Tomorrow's Child," which used to be part of "Spaceship Earth" (the ride inside the silver EPCOT globe)
"The implication is that if you are hopeful, that you somehow must be engaged in wishful thinking, that your heads must be in the clouds, that you must be passive and sit back and wait for things to happen to you. That seems to be the implication. And so I have to explain to people that is not what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism. Hope is not ignorance of the barriers and hurdles and hazards that stand in your way. Hope is just the opposite." --Obama
"A dream can be a dream come true, with just that spark in me and you." --from "Journey into Imagination," probably the best EPCOT ride ever
"We are the change that we seek." --Obama, Super Tues.
When I was a kid, EPCOT made me feel like I could do or be anything, that the world was open and amazing. And Obama makes me feel like, when I have kids, they'll have a chance of feeling the way I did. I want to be idealistic again. I'm tired of being dissatisfied with my country and being obsessed with things that aren't there anymore.
I couldn't stop reading In Persuasion Nation this week. It's been a long time, if ever, that I've read anything so funny and depressingly true. The stories are great--original, skillful, and haunting. While I appreciate that, yes, it is satire, the sheer power and ruthlessness of advertising that Saunders explores feels very much like the plain truth.
There's an iPod ad at Santa Monica Blvd and Highland that's literally the entire side of a building. And it changes. Every few months or so there's some new silhouetted person, dancing so excitedly while the cord from their earphones swings maniacally through the air, always looking like they're either going to accidentally hang themselves or fall out of the ad and step on some poor, unsuspecting semi. Because they're always big enough to crush a semi with one foot. Do we seriously need ads that large? No. We. Don't. The iPod itself keeps getting smaller and smaller, but when I was last at the Griffith Observatory, that freakin' ad was the only thing I could recognize while looking down into Hollywood--because then, on the top of a mountain, looking down, it was a reasonable size.
A book I ordered finally came off backorder today. I was probably a little more excited about it than I should've been. But it's just so purdy. In Stitches by Amy Butler. Makes me wanna buy fabric.
I'm stuck in the middle of a book I don't really want to finish. But I sort of have to. It was lent to me by someone who thought I'd really like it and I'll feel like a jerk if I don't finish it before giving it back. I only have about a hundred pages to go...but it feels like a lot more than that.
Meanwhile, I totally ignored the boring book and read Letters from Yellowstone over the weekend. And I loved it. It's in the genre of historical fiction, a genre I do not often find myself drawn to at all really. I bought it 2 years ago while in Yellowstone with my family, taking the long route to LA and a new life of sorts. I bought it because, at the time, I was so enamored with the place that I thought anything at all about it seemed destined to hold my undivided attention. Plus, this particular paperback was a signed copy, long lingering after a book signing in the park that probably happened years before. The thing I so enjoyed about the book was that I genuinely felt transported. I've seen the things the characters were seeing, except that they're scientists and see (at least they would, were they not fictional) the world in a way that is much different than I do. They really see it. They have given names to it. These are the things the book is about, actually, as botanists in 1898 write letters home to their friends and family and try to decipher the boundaries of Science. As I said, it's nothing like what I normally read, but it made me remember my time in Yellowstone and it had a truly lovely passage about the group formed in the park and how they had become a family that is right on target with a lot that has been going through my mind lately. I went to work yesterday and ordered a copy each for my mom and my sister along with a copy of Diane Smith's second novel, Pictures from an Expedition, for myself.
I talked to my dad for about five whole seconds yesterday. That seems to be about all I can take some days. I hear his voice and fall to pieces. Yesterday, especially, since it was September 11. He came to see me at college five years ago yesterday and ate in the cafeteria with me and watched TV's tell us what we already knew. My dad's voice is like a song that I forget I love hearing until it comes on the radio in my car and makes me want to pull off the freeway and park somewhere, anywhere, so I can just listen. Plus, it was my grandmother's birthday. His mother's birthday. And I really need her advice.
I watched the Emmys tonight. Because I love Ellen. And the prolonged tribute to Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings made me cry. Like a baby. Even though two out of three are still alive, none of them are on the news anymore. And even though I shouldn't really care, I do. They were there, in my dorm room, when I heard about the tragic things going on in our country while I was in college. Like when I went to sleep thinking Al Gore was going to be president, then woke up in the middle of the night, turned on the TV and cried myself back to sleep. Like when my sister called me on a Tuesday morning four years ago and said, "Laura, you need to turn on your TV. Something bad is happening in New York." And then later, when John and I were in our weird transitional period in LA, living in my grandparents empty house, and Bush won again.
Would it be too unbearably cliched if I said something about how my parents weren't there, but when the whole world seemed to be crashing down (that is, I discovered Politics) it was nice to see a friendly face?
Probably. So. Anyway.
Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria both lost, which disappointed me.
I finished Bee Season. I liked it a lot, but the ending was nothing at all what I expected. In fact, the whole second half of the book is very different from the first half.
John is at work, so I have the TV on to keep me company. We only get about four stations in English...so I'm watching "The A-Team." I vaguely remember watching it when I was a kid...but only vaguely. Wasn't it supposed to be funny? So far, they've had to go back to Viet Nam to find some guy's kid, who, incidentally, is being played by Tia Carrere.
Jason sent me an audio clip of the protesting going on in Nashville after he saw Michael Moore speak. As I listened to it, the A-team re-entered Viet Nam for the first time. Think: slow montage, fades in and out, depressed men in color, scared men with guns in sepia tone...and from my computer, screams and anger.
It's strange how I can be grateful for being too young to have experienced the world during the Viet Nam War...and at the same time wish I could have.
On our way home from New York, John and I listened to this show, in which the point was made that our "founding Fathers" lived in the Age of Reason and that we're now living in the Age of Propaganda. Could there be something more depressing?
My parents were here over the weekend. They stayed with us in the dorm, too. (Just in case you were worried, they both got a bottom bunk.)
We went into the city yesterday. Had lunch in Chinatown with our boss and some people we work with, then walked to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was gorgeous! Then we went to Ground Zero, St. Paul's Chapel, and Battery Park (where the sculpture that used to stand between the towers has been relocated). It was a pretty emotional experience. There was a banner inside the church from Mom's hometown in IL and, the one that made me cry, a banner from Oklahoma City. There was a woman walking around in front of the temporary plaque of names screaming, "Bush is the terrorist who killed all these people."
Heavy stuff.
We also went to Times Square, took a boat tour around the island, and went to the top of the Empire State Building.
On our six-month anniversary.
The Chrysler Building is my favorite thing about New York. It literally took my breath away.
Yesterday afternoon John and I went to see Ralph Nader speak at GSU. He spoke only about the environment, as he was participating in the 2004 Georgia Environment Organization Summit, and said nothing about his campaign.* Like I told my mom, it made me want to go clean something. John and I already want to buy a hybrid, but we won't be able to do that for years. Years. I was sitting there listening, thinking about someday having a house with huge solar energy panels on the roof. And maybe a windmill in the backyard, just for good measure.
It's hard to explain. I remember when I was little there was this organization called Kids F.A.C.E. that was all about saving the planet. It got really big. I had the bed sheets and the comforter. My family recycled. I still cut up those plastic things that hold six-packs of soft drink cans together because I get this image of a fish tangled up in them every time I go to throw one away. But then, why is it I automatically assume that my garbage still has any chance of ever getting near a live fish?
I don't know where I'm going with this. I just want things to be cleaner. I dunno, maybe I just want to feel cleaner. This country makes me feel dirty. This city makes me feel claustrophobic. I need to get to the ocean and feel salt and wind and something bigger than myself before the whole place gets too gunked up to swim in.
*For the record, I still have not drawn loyalties to any presidential candidate. John has. I pretty much just know who I'm not voting for.
