and the geek shall inherit the earth.

The Social Network
Directed: David Fincher
Starring: Jessie Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
Columbia Pictures, Rated PG-13, 121 minutes

The Social Network is the kind of film that is so “about something” that it’s really about everything. That something is the creation of Facebook. That everything is the post-millennial existential dilemma: are we truly connected? Or, as Mark Zuckerberg asks in screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s cold and flawless opening scene, “Is this real?” Many are entering The Social Network with the expectation of it “saying something” about us, about now, about everything that always happens and all the stuff that never seems to anymore. But what it really serves as is a stirring digital parable. What are we willing to sacrifice for everything? People? Even if the profit is the people?

It may be about new money and the young billionaires who made it, but The Social Network delivers an old message: people with power like to stay in power. But where films such as Citizen Kane or There Will Be Blood use their backdrops (the print industry and the oil boom, respectively) to better present their subjects’ internal decay, director David Fincher’s intentions lie elsewhere. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation isn’t just a meditation on his own disconnect — it’s a meditation on ours. This is a tale of power, but what grants the power is, here, connected to more than just the powerful. This is what makes Facebook interesting. This is what makes the film interesting.

Fincher has made a name as a pre-apocalyptic filmmaker. He gave us the post-capitalist wasteland of Fight Club and the horrors of the devout in Se7en. His work always hovers on the cusp of annihilation, chronicling the people who teeter most heavily. The Social Network may be his first foray into the shell-shocked days after social collapse. The End of Times, Fincher shows us, was started in a dorm room by a heartbroken boy in flannel and flip-flops. Jesse Eisenberg infuses Zuckerberg with just enough of himself to remind us that we were right to see something in him in the first place. This is the role Eisenberg was meant to embody, which usually means he won’t be able to escape it anytime soon. But why should he? Through him, Zuckerberg goes from begrudging geek to digital messiah in what feels like a nanosecond, and though we’re trained to hate the people that leave those who helped them behind, Eisenberg’s blank and fearful eyes give him soul, choice, an awareness.

But he has no heart. That organ is reserved for Eduardo Saverin, whose doe eyes are given life by British born Andrew Garfield. Garfield is the kind of understated talent that needs to be overshadowed in order to eventually be highlighted. He’s a whimper in a mosh pit. His gradual disillusionment — his ability to play naive and ignorant at once — is the perfect foil to Zuckerburg’s perfunctory meneuvers. When Eduardo gets punched (an Ivy League term meaning Sought Out By A Fraternity), he exudes pride and guilt simultaneously. He dreads a storm that he knows is brewing. And when Zuckerburg writes the achievement off coldly (“You should be happy if you don’t get any farther than this,” he snaps), Garfield waves his jealousy away. As Zuckerberg’s only friend, he is the man our hearts tug for. It’s his equation that puts Zuckerburg’s first project into action. It’s his investments that get The Facebook rolling. It’s his concern that shakes us initially. But he is devoid of imagination.

It’s Sean Parker, the co-creator of file sharing site Napster, who brings the Big Picture forth, and he is something of the villain. But he is an enticer, not an instigator. He dangles the power of the future in front of Zuckerberg, tapping into the excess that he so longs for. Parker was one of the first founders of the information age, and he knows the route we’re going. “We used to live on farms,” he blares, “then in cities, and now we live online.” Parker, a devil in a three-piece hoodie, is a visionary, but his vision is knowing what people want before they want it. He foresaw our digital immersion, the contradiction of wanting to be more easily connected but from a distance and through an artifice. But most importantly, he saw Zuckerberg’s real desire: not money, not respect, but the cool.

Timberlake is lifeless, delivering lines in the hopes that they qualify as acting. By and large he’s perhaps better than he needs to be, but not as good as the film thinks he is. Parker’s written as allure personified, a man who sees what Eduardo can’t. His imagination is his greatest strength: he foresees success. But Timberlake plays him like a con man with a credit card, using free drinks and cufflinks to sell himself as the person who should sell Facebook. So is he brilliant at business or at bullshit? Does the film want him to be clairvoyant or a con man?

Fincher’s strength is rhythm; Sorkin’s, pace. Together, they craft a film that flows. Fincher’s camera is always moving, and when it’s not, Eisenberg’s mouth is. Zuckerberg, an antihero whose apathy serves as a battle cry, was a man who didn’t understand the basics of human interaction, so he created an algorithm to explain it. He became a billionaire by digitizing relationships, and it all started because he couldn’t have one. The irony is obvious; the film doesn’t dabble in it too much. At times the film feels heavy-handed: an elongated rowing sequence, played to Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” all but shoves the pains of second-place down our throats. But when it’s confident, The Social Network follows in Zuckerberg’s indifferent shadow: there is nothing to learn here. Perhaps that’s because our current moment is so the direct result of Zuckerberg’s work that to preach a message would be to miss the point all together. And the point is this: we are all Zuckerberg, in one form or another. Sean Parker believed this; this is what makes him a villain. But Sean Parker was also right; this is what makes him complex.

Parker recognized Facebook as the 21st century’s great equalizer. It is, at its core, an exercise of a classic American philosophy: everyone has the same thing because everyone wants the same thing. What makes Facebook so crucial is that it taps into the basis of what we collectively desire, which is connection. Zuckerberg knew this better than the rest of us, so he did was what every computer does: he created a simulation. Director of photography Jeff Cronenweth knows this as well, so he drenches the film in iced hues, monochromatic and fiercely distant. That distance is rooted in the trauma that comes with simulation: that it’s a creation built on nothing but an idea. And this is the battle of the entire film: claiming ownership over the idea, receiving recognition for it. But Fincher recognizes this as the inherent flaw in what his characters are searching for. Zuckerberg is fighting for his idea, and is thus alienated when the rubble has cleared. All that’s left is the Facebook.

This is why the film’s final moment, with Zuckerberg sitting lonesome in a sky high office, pressing the refresh button on his own Facebook page, waiting to see if a friend he has just requested has added him back, is perhaps the film’s most overwhelmingly powerful. As his computer screen’s ambient hum fills in the silence left behind by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s tense score, he presses refresh again. Then again. And again. The film continues onward, and its scope is simplified: this is a film about the technological space inhabited by flesh. It’s a shame then that its final seconds are interrupted by Paul McCartney cooing “Baby, You’re A Rich Man.” It leaves the moment feeling cynical when it should feel desolate. Irony be damned; Zuckerberg already is.

the authentic mime.

I'm Still Here
Directed: Casey Affleck
Staring: Joaquin Phoenix
Magnolia Pictures, Rated R, 117 minutes

Bathed in the audible hum of analog, I’m Sill Here opens with a home movie of, presumably, a pre-teen Joaquin Phoenix standing atop a boulder, overlooking a waterfall. He hesitates, looking and jerking his body around, measuring perhaps the distance of the jump, the intensity of the fall, the depth of the water. But his father is watching intently from the other side of the stream, and the camera is recording. He pauses. Then, without warning, he jumps.

This is the remainder of that fall, filling in the gaps between what we’ve seen and what we’ve imagined. That gap began in late 2008, when Phoenix announced his retirement from the acting world during the premiere of what suddenly transformed into his final feature film. From there, he began his pursuit of a legitimized rap career, denouncing his naysayers and openly voicing his contempt for fame, the Hollywood system, and all the other pitfalls that come with having too much too soon. We witness his gradual exit from the limelight and into the darkness, with the lens present for everything from his sudden announcement to his total decline. But while the arc seems gradual, it is quite evident that Joaquin Phoenix had already left the building a long time ago.

That idea of perception — of who Phoenix is or should be — is at the root of whatever the film is presenting: his disintegration? His performance art case-in-point? It’s unclear, at times unbearable and often uninteresting. You can’t stop watching, but that doesn’t mean you care. And that’s Phoenix’s whole point, right? That this industry has come to define him, and that definition is built on simply the act of watching and assessing. Which is why he wants out. Which is what sparks the obvious point that filming this is somewhere between counterintuitive and hypocritical.

Of course Phoenix is aware of all this. He’s a smart man, even amidst crumble. His roguish good looks are all but erased, hidden behind a scruffy paranoiac beard that looks like a cross between Kaczynski and Kubrick. His body is deteriorating, and his psyche seems to follow suit. In a crazed state of coked up delirium, he calls a pair of hookers to join him and his entourage. He waxes philosophical in between cigarettes and coughing fits. He brutally berates his colleagues regularly. Who is this man and what are we supposed to feel for him?

The camera, it seems, feels nothing. Intimate only in proximity, it feels detached and cold — a spectator at a circus. Casey Affleck’s raspy voice of reason interjects every so often and appears on camera once during the film’s opening moments. But as the filmmaker he keeps appropriate distance. At first it’s because of professionalism. Eventually it seems rooted in horror. The deeper into Phoenix’s fall he and the crew get, the more removed they are from his crisis.

Phoenix’s decay is devastating. His attempts to break into the rap world are repeatedly derailed, and eventually, after a failed production meeting with Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, Phoenix, while using the frame of his sunglasses to snort a rock of cocaine, has a moment of self-realization. “I’m totally fucked!” he blubbers as he races out of his limousine in search of something natural. What he finds is the stone wall surrounding Central Park, another block. “They think I’m a joke. They think this is all a joke.”

Forget the joke. What to make of a mess? How are we expected to react? The problem with this subgenre — Hoax Cinema — is that its intrinsic curiosity lies in whether or not the film is “real”, a relative term if the medium has ever heard one. Films that dabble around questions of authenticity, either textually or narratively, serve as distractions. Their points become muddled, their goals become gimmicks. Were we scared of The Blair Witch Project because of its power or because of its manipulation? Its potential to be scary or its potential to be true? How do we forge emotional relationships with these texts when that relationship begins with a question?

I’m Still Here almost shames you for your focus, for simplifying either Phoenix’s breakdown or his point altogether into fact or fiction. It muses on your misgivings: Phoenix acknowledges the contradiction of documenting his escape from the camera lens in front of another one, and recognizes questions of whether this is all some sort of stunt. But the reality is that it feels irrelevant. I find myself feeling the most painful emotion one can towards something so personal, which is indifference. Indifference to the question of whether this stunt is a stunt at all; indifference to the trials and tribulations of a star whose decay seems self-imposed; indifference to those around him who, while eventually finding themselves on the receiving end of Phoenix’s lashings, were the first to find humor in his self-brutality.

There are skeletons of interesting questions posed in passing: what is the nature of identity when you are publicly perceived? Are we molded into those preconceptions or are they molded out of us? And, perhaps most importantly, can we ever truly escape our brobdingnagian status as reluctant icons? During Phoenix’s most overt embarrassment, he attacks a heckler at a Las Vegas show clad with a strap on beard meant to look like the very one Phoenix himself has let grow disheveled. Even amidst his rejection of pop he finds himself inevitably canonized. This is his pain realized.

But Affleck’s camera is uncomfortably close, and when the film should feel emotive it simply it feels exploitative. Whether it’s of us or of Phoenix is unclear, but no one is left unscathed by the time the ambiguous credits begin to roll: if the film is a hoax (which, if the “written by” credit during the film’s closing is any indication, it could very well be) then what emotion is it hoping to garner? Sympathy for Phoenix? His growing paranoia and brutal diatribes prevent that. Curiosity for where the tale will lead? If you’ve seen one shot of Phoenix mumbling his way through a performance, you’ve seen them all. So then the film is simply left as some slice of post-millennial media life. But it feels too contrived to feel real and too overtly operatic to resemble anything close to pain.

Yet Phoenix himself is mesmerizing, and that does not change depending on realism. After his famed disaster of an interview with David Letterman, the closest thing the film has to a climax, Phoenix slums into his changing room, and Affleck closes in on his scruffy face, the sunglasses off and devastation reeking from his tired eyes. Here, fake or not, Phoenix is a broken man.

a heart or two guitar pics?

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Directed: Edgar Wright
Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Universal Pictures, PG-13, 112 minutes

It’s hard to say if Andy Warhol would love Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but it’s safe to say he’d watch it. Embedded with the lifeblood of culture, and walking the fine line between contemporary and nostalgia, it’s pop euphoria but without the irony. Warhol stood for that; he encompassed that. But what Warhol did was sell back to us our own disintegration. Our obsession with celebrity and consumerism made capitalism chic, so he crafted these products into art. He celebrated emptiness; the joke was that we did too.

Scott Pilgrim is in effect that emptiness realized. But there is something profoundly fascinating in the confidence with which its struts that same superficiality. For so long the idea of “style over substance” has been seen as a branch of negative cinema, where the aesthetic is the sole provocateur. Our emotional connection to film, it seems, has been resigned to the nether regions of pretension: “make me think! It’s the only way I can feel!” But Scott Pilgrim’s feel is based on just how little we’re asked to think. It’s not bound by logic. It giddily bounces between bevies of generational signifiers — the retrograde video games of the 1980s to the social networking info tablet of the Zero’s. Its confidence is in its volume.

Michael Cera is Michael Cera. We’ve come to expect nothing more, and we’ve also come to hate him for it. Once, Bogart would strut on the screen and part of the joy was the way he wouldn’t disappear into a role. That we’d be able to watch him and know that we’re watching Humphry Bogart, his rock-gruff face displaying nothing close to a smile, and his voice, the last remaining links between cinema and vaudeville. Michael Cera is no Humphry Bogart. He bumbles less than usual, but he still can’t make any honey. But if Pilgrim is the definitive flick of the new media era, where geek chic has invaded culture to the point of ironic obscurity, than Cera’s casting is almost metatextual — he holds more clout than maybe even he realizes.

He falls hard for a puckish pixie named Ramona, who isn’t your ordinary girl as evident through her vibrantly changing hair color and Doc Martin clad demeanor. To win her affection, Scott is forced to battle her Seven Evil Exes, all of whom contain some ounce of humorous embellishments (Chris Evans plays a cocky actor whose eyebrows should nab a Best Supporting Actor nomination; Jason Schwartzman oozes something else entirely). These battles are sized up via video game aesthetics: power ups help Scott fight dirty; coins are collected when he succeeds; a +1 Life token comes in handy at one point. These gamer nuances (can it be called a nuance if it’s drenched on screen?) make up the action, the joy, the candy-infused scenery and sincerity of Scott Pilgrim; Lichtenstein meets Sega.

Scott’s gaggle of buddies always strives to keep him in check, most notably Kieran Culkin as his gay roommate, whose sexuality is understated to believability; Anna Kendrick also nags admiringly. They attempt to ground the movie into something that resembles reality, standing out delightfully. Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) is Scott’s scorned ex, abandoned at the first sight of Ramona’s Crayola locks. As the embodiment of Western fetishism —a young schoolgirl who drips of Anime ink — her moments are perhaps the film’s only attempt at emotional sincerity. A maturity that is at once a welcome breath of fresh air and a distraction from the film’s giddiness.

There is, I think, this belief that we collectively both recognize and remain ignorant to, which is that a film can only reflect us culturally if it is calm. This isn’t a widespread truth: The Matrix is perhaps the perfect pre-Y2K construction, and brutally telling; the ten years in between It and Avatar perhaps even more so. But these are abstractions. They’re hyperbolically telling — a madman mistaken for a preacher. But the films that are always culturally resonant are the ones that reflect our ideological struggles, which are always narratively depicted as being more tranquil than they really are.

Scott Pilgrim is a lot of things, but tranquil it is not. It is so busy that it perhaps captures our current blip in the historical radar better than anything in recent memory; it’s nearly schizophrenic. Some may call it self-aware, but that’s not exactly right. It’s not that the film is aware of itself, but rather that it’s aware of everything else. It willfully frolics somewhere between childish and revolutionary, but that’s not just the fun, but also maybe even the goal. Finally we have a film that captures the giddy cerebreality of youth: unbound, but appreciative of that freedom.

Edgar Wright possesses that same post-modern pop that Tarantino did in the early-90s. But where Tarantino employed his sensibilities through use of the casual (talking about movies had never before been just as cool as watching them), Wright goes for the stark opposite. His characters don’t breath, they heave. What makes it work, as is often the case, is more up to us than it is to him. As within anything so influenced by context and congregation, the result is similarly participatory. It works only as much as we understand it.

This is why the film is important: because what you think of Scott Pilgrim speaks, loudly, about the kind of person you are; because it is, in effect, the sum of everything we’ve decided as relevant over the past two decades; because it is immune from real criticism the same way Tarantino was: to deny it simply means “you don’t get it”, which may be true just as much as it isn’t fair. The film feels like it bounces between both a visualization of the Nostalgia Age and an example of it. Mary Elizabeth Winstead gives balance to Ramona and the film. If Knives is the gamer’s dream, Ramona is the reality realized. Scott may fall for her, but the real world still feels just far enough.

cheep success.

Oh my followers, what a treasure trove I stumbled upon today! My two hungers (fashion and film) were fed fabulously today, and at affordable prices to boot! Perhaps I will do something good for others as a way to celebrate my immense good findings (no).

I somehow managed to find the dopest pair of Number 5 PF Flyers in black at the Crossroads on Haight. But the real dopeness comes from the fact that they actually fit me perfectly. I always say that I have terrible luck when it comes to finding shoes at consignment stores, but in actuality I’ve accumulated I think three of my favorite pairs from secondary sellers. But this is definitely a first in regards to finding the exact color and model of a shoe I’ve been actively looking for from non-cheep retailers. And I nabbed the traditionally triple-diget footwear for a smooth $30. Aces! In order to stay in the thrift god’s good graces, I put down many a “meh” item that I knew I didn’t truly desire or require. A heavier wallet, an emptier closet; perhaps my greatest find was my ability to say “no, you affordable thread, no!”

But the greatest gift was at the Haight+Ashbury Amoeba, where my inner film geek fried his damn pants at the sight of a rare Criterion edition of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. Be still my beating heart! Siphoning through the ‘cult filmmakers’ section with lightning fast fingers (one of my favorite sounds is, without a doubt, the sound of DVDs being flicked through like a card catalog), I suddenly stumbled upon the digital gem and literally found myself taken aback with a gasp. “What have I done to deserve this earth?”, I found myself asking. I think it was good karma for being so frugal with uneeded clothing I could have easily bought that I was able to find something that I genuinely wanted. I fried and went to heaven. I also nabbed a collector’s edition of The Fly (also Cronenberg) and Children of Men. All for around $40. What a world!

I think we all learned a little something here (no).

stripped-down

This is the second time I’ve been to Vegas in one year*. This is either two too many or not nearly enough; risks of excess are appropriate here. The first time I came was in November, when I was still 20 — a mere three months until my 21st birthday, on the cusp of the demographic that Vegas attempts to attract. Now, at 21, I’m able to see this city in new, shimmering, ‘open-all-nite’ light. In fact, you can see the strip lights from everywhere, including my abnormally large hotel window. But then again, that’s always kind of been the point – to be able to see these buildings, these lights, this town of excess, from anywhere and everywhere

Towers shoot up from the cement sidewalks like weeds in a suburban yard. Those same suburbanites – the white mothers and whiter children, kept indoors at the risk of facing reality or worse, sunlight – bask in the artificial glow of hotel signs and show lights. The tangibility of Old Time Vegas is now gone; posters are replaced with TV screens; lights are replaced with…TV screens. The town, resembling a 3D puzzle, has advanced past comfort, disconnecting from all who inhabit it.

There is no end to excess in this town, but that seems to be just how the residents and visitors like it. There is an otherworldly quality to Strip (which is, for all intents and purposes, Las Vegas in its entirety), which is an oddity considering that there is nothing in the town that it is, in itself, original. The Venetian and Paris hotels emulate their respective European locals. New York, New York goes one step further, mimicking a city within our very own country. Even the strip clubs begin to blend together, abandoning any desire for originality (I saw cards littering the ground advertising a new club opening called Assgrab – opening a mere block away form Club Grabbyass).

But I embrace and even, dare I say, adore that tastelessness; the same way you put up with a family relative who drinks one too many white wine spritzers and then gets overly and theatrically anxious about not hearing spoilers. When my family and I visited in November (which was when I had originally planned on writing all this), we were taken on a night tour of the Strip by a man who knew the area well. He showed us the old (MGM Grand, The Flamingo), the new (Wynn Hotel, City Center), the borrowed (extensions of both The Venitian and The Palazzio have been on hold for further construction for over a year now due to an inability to pay back loans – as of now, a start up date is still unknown), and the black and blue (I am almost positive that the hooker I spotted was sporting a black eye and not, as my mom claimed, wearing that “chic raccoon-make-up kids wear now”).

But it wasn’t until we drove further down the strip that I was suddenly surrounded by something I wasn’t expecting: culture. Vegas culture, but a culture nonetheless. There was warmth that resonated from the Golden Nugget and Circus Circus, hotels that were top tier in their prime, but are now resigned to the lesser end of the strip, serving as nothing more than street corners for beaten down (or fashion-savvy) hookers to turn tricks on.

It was tragic, but Old Vegas was where my heart stayed for the remainder of our trip, and the months in between this most-recent excursion. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to take another trip down there like I would have liked, but it’s haunted me with startling detail.

But slowly, all of Vegas might be following suit, until there is no lesser end of the Strip to speak of. After over twenty-years as one of the fastest-growing metropolises in all of the United States, Las Vegas now faces the highest foreclosure rate of any major city, with the unemployment rate having jumped from 3.8% to 12.3% in just three years.

Sheldon Adelson, who has lost more money during the rigors of the economic collapse than anyone else on this world we call the earth, is the 76-year-old chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., which owns the Venetian hotel, the Convention Center and a plethora of other lavish landmarks. In 2007 and '08, he was the third richest person in the world, with a net worth of $40 billion. By February of 2009, he’d lost $36.5 billion — more than the GDP of half of the countries in the world. That's his crane parked between The Venetian and The Palazzo.

This town is hit hard. You can see it. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a city known for extravagance during a time where extravagance is the problem. But there is something hilariously and appropriately fitting about Vegas’ profligacy. I missed it the first time around; I originally though that it was simply a town that was re-built in its own shallow image. And it is! Where Vegas once took itself perhaps a bit too seriously, new Vegas knows its attraction, and it plays up its grandeur. It’s a town that embraces its superficiality, and I adore it for that.

But now I see a meaning in it. Because the people that ruled Vegas in its heyday — a time where lawlessness meant cutting deals over nightclub dinners and treating your woman of the week a bit too nice — meant something different. The ones who traded pharaoh gold for pinstripes ruled this strip of land, this post-capitalist desert, like the very Roman rulers and Greek gods that these casinos and hotels now pay tribute to. These landmarks serve not simply as extensions of grandeur, but reminders as well. Reminders of better times and perhaps even a self-fulfilling realization that Vegas, like all empires, like a tower of cards, will inevitably collapse.

It’s that self-awareness that makes New Vegas so magnetic a force. Fiji is the only water available here. Floor 13 doesn’t exist in a single hotel. And a 5-year-old casino is actually 25 in strip years. But what this answer to post-countercultural America really does is personify the ever-fleeting idea of that American dream, which is at this point so foggy a phrase that it’s lost all meaning and substance. But it’s rooted here, in the blood of a city that now houses halted construction and casino owners hustling twice as hard. What this city is and has always been built on are bets. Bets that people will want hotels larger and glitzier. Bets that even once we find fiscal equilibrium, our desire for the over-the-top will never falter, and we’ll come back to a city that preaches sin as a virtue. Bets that may prove to be wrong, but the Strip nevertheless goes all in.

I use to think what happened in Vegas, stayed in Vegas. Turns out what happens in Vegas speaks for everything outside of it.


-----
*By year I mean school year, which for a student is the only official method of measurement.

updates

For the past few months, Rod would change Leesa and Stephanie's facebook status any time they were foolish enough to leave their page unattended. A smorgasbord of stati invade their respective friends' news feed. The topics, though varied, would, more often than not, come back to "poop" related jokes. Eventually, Leesa and Stephanie begin to retaliate, changing Rod's facebook to status to poop-centric updates any chance they could. But their revenge was rarely fruitful; anytime Rod's status was changed, everyone would simply write it off as yet another ridiculous Rod antic. He was unstoppable, and, for some reason, impermeable to embarrassment or humiliation.

Frustrated, Leesa and Stephanie began to craft a facebook status that would truly teach Rod a lesson. They crafted a status that hinted at Rod having experienced a potential breakdown, resulting in an extended stay in an unidentified treatment facility. The prank, however, was ill received by the public, with an outpouring of concern and support. Eventually, Leesa's inbox (both computer and text) was flooded with agonized pleas: "Is Rod okay?", "What's going on?", "Is there anything we can do?", et all. The prank resulted in more work than laughs, as Leesa had to respond to every message explaining the joke that had gone horribly awry. Defeated once again, Leesa and Stephanie succumbed to the realization that perhaps there was no way of getting even.

On February 23, 2010 , Rod walked into his bedroom, only to be greeted by a particularly fowl smell. Investigation lead to a terrifying discovery: a mound of poop plopped on his bed sheet, assumed to have been left by the house cat. Shocked, Rod got to cleaning, confused over how and why the cat would commit such an atrocious act. But when attempting to update his facebook status or tweet the event, he was faced with an alarming truth: his Rod antics — his celebration of all things poop, and obsession with the satrically disgusting — would mean that no one (no one) would ever believe him, instead believing the event to be nothing more than a disgusting joke.

Somewhere, Leesa and Stephanie smiled.

and that's what adulthood is: you wake from the nightmare and realize there's no bigger bed to climb into.

I'm sitting in this wonderful, large, plush arm chair that the Abbey litters its comfortable floors with. I love this café; I feel so peaceful and confident when I'm here. I feel like all the things I have to do are so manageable. I haven't been feeling that too much lately, so any place that gives me that kind of comfort is worthy of blogging about/talking about/venting to/crying over.

I think I've been really exasperated recently. I hate the question of what my biggest fear is, mostly because I hate questions that I have no answer to. But recently I've realized that my biggest fear (as in biggest — big, big) is not growing. Not that my fear isn't growing, but that I'm scared of not growing. The idea of not growing absolutely terrifies me, mostly because I'm surrounded by some of the most wonderful people in the world — all of which have managed to change immensely. My classes this quarter have been somewhat underwhelming, but interesting and necessary nevertheless. After my 'Introduction to Film Theory & Criticism' class last quarter, I think everything else is going to just always pale in comparison. It really changed my outlook on film and everything else I hold dear to me. It made me care about my passions differently, and it, without a doubt, helped me grow.

With budget cuts rising, financial aid dwindling and resources become scarce, I've become so much more conscious of my relation to my university. I want to get the most out of my education not just because I desire it, but simply because I pay for it. So when I find myself in an intellectual slump, there is no way it won't cause me to re-think everything around me. But I also think its horrible that I equate personal development with schoolwork, as if the two are mutual exclusive. I've talked to 5 different people about this very idea over just the last two weeks: how to separate our personal growth from academic expectations; personal desires from outside obligations. I shouldn't resent an education that is optional, that I've chosen and that I'm paying for. But I think, more often than not, I do. I look at a syllabus littered with assignments, and I think about all the things I'd rather be reading. I count the number of hours I spend researching papers I have to write, and consider all the experiences I could be having.

I chose not to go abroad because I didn't want to burden of schoolwork to interfere with time I'd rather spend immersing myself in new customs and total strangers. I'm becoming more and more happy with that decision as the year continues on. I think I need these full years spent in one place. The fact that every house I move into constantly feels fleeting (I decorate with the knowledge that they will, again, be packed up in 9 months) is enough to deal with, let alone interrupting it with a semester abroad. My twenty-first birthday gift from the parents is a big one: they said they'd fully fund a trip anywhere, anytime for however long. It's a huge thought, and an even bigger gift. I feel so lucky; it grants me the kind of peace I'm lacking daily sometimes. Supportive family, loving friends, financial freedom (knock on wood), endless opportunities, youth that (at least currently) feels both fleeting and everlasting. So why do I feeling like I'm missing something? Why can't I shake a feeling of emptiness that seems to linger?

I immersed myself in a party last night where 90% of the people in the room were strangers. Spent my time going up to random unknowns asking them what their deal was, attempting to connect with the various party goers.

Of the 7 most noteworthy people I met, 5 of them came from divorced families. Go figure.

me rite prety one day.

It's rained the past week.

No, that's not the right term. It's been a damn biblical flood the last few days. This is of course coming from a twenty year old upper class Californian who considers a light shower the tell-tale signs of winter approaching. Though it's finally cleared up a bit (it was an uncharacteristically beautiful couple days this past weekend), I still feel the storm approaching: rains that have taken too long to fall; winds that are sure to knock tree branches from their redwood empire, inevitably blocking the one road that leads to campus; the downpour of avoided reading assignments; a gust of class days flying by, reminding me that the only thing that's quicker than a new quarter starting is a new quarter ending.

Most of all, I worry that I'm not growing. I'm not being challenged intellectually. These grades, these stupid letters that are supposed to mean something, have made it so that I look at them as some sort of barometer of intellect, as if another 'A' on an essay really means I'm growing. Last quarter, my Introduction to Film Theory & Analysis class proved to be the most demanding and challenging class I've ever taken. It was also, without a doubt, the single most influential curriculum I've ever been subjected to. I was reading theorists that I now praise like rock stars; writing about subjects and film's that have changed me as a student and, most importantly, a film lover; developing theories that would divide me in half. I hate not feeling that same challenge, that send sense of desire to be better than I am. Now, I'm reading a book that says:

"To delve into the topic further would require too much time. You can read more by researching further; use search engines like 'Google' or 'Yahoo!'."

Would you believe this is an actual quote? I kid you not. I want, more than anything, to know I'm getting better. And it doesn't help that anytime I sit down to write something new I convince myself that I can't write for shit, and that anything I've written that's been even remotely successful was pure luck and nothing more. I want to tell myself to "snap out of it", but I can't shake the feeling that my success has been good fortune, and that anything from here on out has the chance to fall to the wayside. I have to embrace the shitty first draft, but I can't. I can't weather the storm of potential failure.

How in the hell do I plan on moving to the East Coast if I can't deal with California drizzle?