and the card attached would say "thank you for being a friend"

I first fell in love with the "Golden Girls" circa 1989 or so, watching tv with my nanny. Why we were watching the "Golden Girls" is unclear to me, because when I revisited the series in high school, watching endless reruns on "Lifetime: Television for Women" Nanny said something like "damn, they're such bitches to each other".

I loved the show when I was little, though. Nan and I would sit and drink soda juice and eat feelings (I called cheese puffs feelings, maybe because of the strong feelings I have about how much I love them?) and watch the gals, Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia wisecrack their way through heartbreak, chaos, schemes and shenanigans. Actually, for all I know, we only did this once-- I remember just one episode in particular: the girls go on vacation somewhere, and Sophia tries to pack the hotel's towels in her suitcase to take home. Hilarious, thought the four-year-old me.

I started watching the series again in high school on TV, and then took to it in earnest in college when each season started coming out on DVD. I'm hardly the only young woman to be into the Golden Girls in a totally-not-ironic way. I had several girlfriends in college and high school who were obsessed with it too, probably because what other female focused show of the past twenty years deals with "gay marriage, menopause, gun control, impotence, drug addiction, safe sex, Empty nest syndrome, Infidelity, Interracial marriage, homophobia, Organ donation, fixed income, domestic violence, Problem gambling, suicide, cross-dressing, lesbianism, plastic surgery, child abandonment, euthanasia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, pregnancy, homicide, veganism, cocaine addiction, artificial insemination, health care, homelessness, immigration, sexual harassment, Illegal Immigration, and senility" ? (Thanks, wikipedia)

Seriously, these ladies are badass. They have tons of sex, they're independent and have careers, (though, Dorothy was so smart, why was she a part-time substitute teacher?) they're funny, and they're freaking OLD. Like, grandmother old, and so much cooler than most twenty-somethings I know. OK, the clothes are pretty heinous and the hair is AWFUL (pin curled mullets with wings, anyone?) but it was the eighties and most people looked like shit. The Golden Girls were completely comfortable with who they were, they were downright sexy and they rocked it. Must-see-TV just doesn't get any more progressive.

I have such a girl crush on my Goldens that while browsing the "network TV" section of our friendly neighborhood video store, I picked up the "Lifetime Intimate Portrait" series which profiles Bea Arthur (Dorothy) Estelle Getty (Sophia) Betty White (Rose) and Rue McClanahan (Blanche) in their real life lives. K made endless fun of me for getting it, and yeah, it was kind of boring and disappointing, but still. They're awesome: Bea Arthur keeps Dobermans, Estelle Getty dyes her hair blond and wears a crap load of eye makeup, Rue was married something like four times (surprise, surprise) but guess what? So was Betty White!

Sure, the episodes can feel a little formulaic. There's a conflict at the beginning that is (usually) solved by the end- unless it's a two-part episode!- wisecracks will be made all around, generally centering on Blanche's sluttiness, Rose's naive/stupidity, Dorothy's spinsterness, and Sophia's senility. But oh, those one-liners! The "Picture it-- Sicily, 1912" and the "Back in St. Olaf's". Not only is it a progressive, feminist television show, it's actually funny.

Vanity Fair recently did a cover story with a tag line something like "who says women aren't funny?" and the corresponding article was mainly about Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Sarah Silverman. Now, I don't want to hate on female comedians, because we need more of them, I agree with funny women on principal, and it's cool that they're ladies breaking into a mainly boys club. But come on! The SNL gals and Jimmy lame-o Kimmel's girlfriend have nothing on Miami's finest.

At their finest, courtesy of my pals at Lifetime: No Blanche, but god, I fucking love Bea Arthur.

the blog of living dangerously

Today, reading a blog I like, Jezebel, I came across this article which is the cover story of the New York Times' Sunday Magazine this week.

"Exposed" is written by Emily Gould, who was an editor for a while on Gawker (Jezebel's parent site) which describes itself as "Media Gossip and Pop Culture Around the Clock". Emily also had a couple blogs of her own, and after a few weeks of working at Gawker, became well-known on the blogging circut as well as the internet at large. "Exposed" is a frightening expose (duh) about what can happen if you put too much of your life online. It basically articulates all of the reasons blogging is a bad idea, after extolling a few of its virtues (enabling a forum for narcissism, and a semi-permanent very public record of one's life/brain/goings on).

It's not like I think I'm going to become wildly famous via a blog that my parents and a few friends read-- but it is scary to think about what can happen if you put too much of yourself out there. I think my generation is pretty nonchalant about Facebook/myspace at this point, but I'd be willing to bet we all know someone who's had a bad experience with one or both as a result of oversharing. This article was a little discouraging at this point in my fledgling blogging, but I suppose it's a good reminder sooner, rather than later.

we *were rockstars

Last night, K introduced me to DiG! the film's website) a movie about two almost-famous bands of the nineties: The Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre.

It's a great movie, if you haven't seen it. (I haven't even seen the end, my pirated version of the Gossip Girl season finale had finished downloading and I just couldn't wait). DiG! reminded me of the Metallica rockumentary, Some Kind of Monster, which is also awesome. What these films have in common is the uncanny ability to capture the rocky road to fleeting fame-- or in the case of Metallica, the aftermath. Brian Jonestown Massacre is easily the most relateable of the three bands, largely because you've never heard of them.

At the end of August last year, I went on tour with K and the band he'd been playing with all summer. Let's call them Rising Moon. Rising Moon is composed of two permanent members: Gary and his wife Maggie, thirty-somethings still trying to live the indie rock dream from their farmhouse in upstate New York. Gary even has his own record label and recording studio. (By which I mean his kitchen and front porch). K's roommate, Pete was playing bass while K was drumming, Gary always does lead vocals and guitar, and Maggie alternates between cello and violin.

The possibility of me singing backup was briefly considered, but quickly abandoned, and I was relegated to helping move things like tambourines and jugs of wine, and of course, playing the part of devoted groupie. Our tour schedule was as follows: Philadelphia, Wilmington DE, Carlyle PA, Washington DC, NYC. Not a bad line-up.

I rode in the middle back of Gary's white van for 95% of the entire trip, sandwiched between two sweaty boys, one of whom smelled really bad (not you, K). It's a bit intimidating being on the road with four musicians-- key signatures and obscure band references sail over your head, and you feel a little like the only kid in junior high who's never seen a rated-R movie.

Rising Moon is used to being not-famous-but-trying-really-hard-to-get-famous, and everywhere we played reflected that. There was our first show in Philly, where, by the end of the set, I was the only one watching, and Gary was drunk and hurling insults at the ever-diminishing audience . Or in Delaware, we had a huge crowd of aging bikers and teenaged rednecks who were there for other bands, but we played for a huge enthusiastic crowd by default. On a whim, Gary took a booking for a birthday party in Carlyle, and we ended up playing to a row of seated four-year-olds. One of them knew the words to Gary's songs, which was pretty creepy, even if he does get a lot of myspace traffic.

Last night I remarked to K, as the movie was finishing, that I was sorry we hadn't gone on a longer tour with Gary and the gang. Of course, I wasn't literally sorry because a longer fall tour didn't happen anyway, and as much as I like to pretend I'm super cool and can stay up late and subsist on beer and gas station eats for days on end, I can't. I get tired and low blood-sugared and cranky too easily.

It wasn't that BJM and The Dandy Warhols made trying-to-get-famous look really fun all of a sudden. Heroin, selling out, not having any real friends, and staying up late every night of the week don't appeal. What was appealing though, and what I miss, was (most obviously) not sitting at a desk three days of the week (I know, poor me, more on this later) but the actually pretty tangible sensation of: hey we're going somewhere and we don't know what it's going to be like, but there will be free drinks and someone's bound to let us crash on their floor, right?

I also like to pretend I'm freewheelin' enough to nonchalantly live this through stuff with a cigarette tucked behind my ear. I'm not, of course. But I wouldn't mind playing at it again for a week or two. Max, sixteen days. Anybody want to come? K plays lots of instruments. I'm good at sitting around and being judgemental, and I have a guitar, too.

wynona and... belly

my boyfriend, the talented KRS, made this video for me. It stars our pets. This is his description of it: "this short film is an abstract look at a day in the life of wynona and her arch-rival belly this was shot in our house and backyard in about an hour and edited on imovie."

moving house

I've moved three times in the past year. Last May, it was getting all of my stuff out of faux-apartment college housing when we graduated. At the end of the summer, my boyfriend and I schlepped our things from upstate New York to California. And at the beginning of May 2008, we moved exactly nine-tenths of a mile to the West. I'm tired of moving, and yet I still feel a little bit restless, like I should keep the packing tape handy.

The first of these moves was inevitable. Vassar College wasn't going to let me stay in the "Terrace Apartments" for the rest of my life, and that's definitely a good thing for both of us. That was mostly about packing up crap I didn't really need anymore (MLA style guide, leftover liquor, DVD collection) and lugging it across the country in my station wagon, two college chums in tow, to stash at my parents' house in New Mexico.

The second time, I was fresh off my graduation trip to Europe with my sister, and cajoled into helping my boyfriend pack up his massive music collection and various odds and ends. It was eerily familiar-- we were only across the river from Vassar, after all-- and oppressive Hudson Valley humidity was again present throughout all of the proceedings. K, my boyfriend, insisted on keeping everything: pencil stubs, cracked CD cases, coverless books. We made a couple trips to the salvation army with old clothes and electric blankets, but we pretty much managed to fit his entire room, plus his seventeen pound cat, Wynona, into his Honda Civic. I set off across the country for the second time in one summer, this time with boy and kitty. We managed the drive in three days, then stopped off in Santa Fe to get my car, plus all the crap I'd dumped at my parents' in June. All of this was hauled to California.

When we arrived in Oakland, we arranged our stuff haphazardly at a dumpy-but-recently-painted apartment picked out by a friend of mine, and our roommate for eight months. The apartment was serviceable, but not ideal, and we hightailed it out of there as soon as our lease was up. (We were living by a freeway overpass. Between the traffic and the junkies, it was too much).

Now we live not terribly far away, in a cute three-room duplex with a shared backyard. It's nice. For now. Our lease is for six months (finished at the end of October) and as much as I detest moving, this feels just right for us. We have a healthy four-year-old cat, and a dog who's still pretty much a puppy; we're in a long-term relationship with each other-- all of these things are commitments that are going to require years of our lives, and I'm OK with that. But we're not yet ready to sign a year lease.

We might move back to New York, for one thing. Or New Mexico. I don't think we'll move again within California, even I'm not that masochistic. Our lives are pretty portable right now. The thought of peeling packing tape off of my dishes again gives me a headache, and the more trips to IKEA we take, the more cheap furniture I'm going to have to make decisions about whether to keep or not the next time we uproot. Moving is definitely on my list of least favorite activities ever, right up there with sitting in traffic, getting sick, and twelve-hour flights in coach. But in spite of all of this, I want the flexibility of a six-month lease, and the ability to take off if something better comes along. I'm more attached to my favorite pair of jeans than I am to our current living situation-- and don't get me wrong, I really like our new place. I think because I grew up in one house, where my parents still live, I don't necessarily need my own solid "home" right now, at least not in the physical sense.

I'm willing to put myself through moving hell until I find one place (maybe a 1910 adobe? A 1795 farmhouse?) that is too good not to stay at forever, worth designing my life (career, family, recreational pursuits) around. Until then, give me month-to-month.