dream deferred

A couple of weeks ago I hiked with Rachel (one of the teen girls, infamous for their crushes on the Christian rock star boys, who own Shasta -- Shasta being my dog's sister). As per usual, I interrogated her about her high school English curriculum.

This is a subject, btw, about which she couldn't care less. She humors me, though, and over the years has gotten better at describing each and every assignment, not forgetting to communicate her emotional reactions to each. I never fail to marvel at the bizarre range of assignments handed out to teenagers, with predictably haphazard educational results. Imagine teaching math by handing out a historical geometry problem one week, then a sample of linear algebra the next.

One month Rachel is reading a couple of Shakespearian sonnets, the next a story by Kafka, and then the next month I forget to ask her anything because I'm sidetracked by her little sister's report that she just finished Lucky by Alice Sebold.

Rachel told me she was assigned Harlem by Langston Hughes. One of my favorite poems from high school. "What happens to a dream deferred!" I yelled. "Yeah," she said. "Exactly."

She sounded oddly defensive. Slowly, deliberately (rare for Rachel, who usually delivers her opinions with the force of a half ton truck) she said, "Some people in the class thought that meant what happens when you're woken up in the middle of a dream."

I laughed. She didn't. But before I noticed that, I asked, "And did you make fun of those people?" Short silence. Then, "Um, no. Because we were given the poem with no background whatsoever. So you could intepret the poem that way."

Oh.

"So, Rachel, did you interpret the poem that way?" Note my expert phrasing -- like a psychiatrist who is trained never to ask when these "delusions" began. She admitted that she had led her focus group in this interpretation. Not only that, she was mad at both the teacher and visiting poet, who both insisted that she was wrong.

Rachel was a tad annoyed with me as well. I apologized, but explained that...well, I couldn't actually come up with an explanation. Nobody had to tell me about the Harlem renaissance in order for me to just know that Hughes was discussing goal-type dreams, not sleepy-time ones. But A Raisin in the Sun was only 15 years old, and my generation was closer to the civil rights movement. Hers, I realized as we talked, is closer to a thousand varieties of sci fi and psychologically-focused TV shows and movies. But is that sufficient to explain how almost an entire class (it wasn't just Rachel!) of 16-year olds can believe that a historical poem was written about absolutely nothing?

Nothing. A whole poem about where your interrupted dream goes when you wake up. Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Does it sag like a heavy load? The real question is: how on earth did these people fail to realize that Hughes was talking about something more important than whatever comes to mind while you're stoned?

I later asked her about the nothingness of that interpretation. She even debated that! And pretty convincingly, I might add. She said it was a fascinating, amazing, interesting question. How do all those dreams end? Where do they go? What happens in your brain?

For a second I forgot all my "what's gone wrong with this generation?" sorrow and got caught up in that intellectual puzzle. But then I regained my dignity. For one thing, those kinds of dreams aren't "deferred," they just vanish. And for another thing, try being black in 1951.

spurious

I'm studying for the GRE, for reasons unknown even to myself.

So far, it's way fun. I haven't read further than the English part of the basic (not the Subject) GRE, so all my observations are relegated to sentence completion, analogies, antonyms, and reading comprehension. Maybe when I move on to fractions I won't be as infatuated.

I'm struck by a couple of things: The first is how amazingly clever their test-taking strategies are. The second is how unnecessary strategy is if you have any type of schooltest vocabulary at all. Certain words will always, always be on a test, and they will always be defined certain ways. Catholic never means religion, always means eclectic. In the outside world, malinger means to pretend to be sick to get out of work. But in testland, it has to mean "pretend to be sick" or "get out of work." Not both, because that's too complicated.

Other words live for standardized tests and simply don't exist anywhere else. Mendicant means begging, not to be confused with mendacity, which means lying. Pugilist is a boxer; pugnacious just means argumentative. None of these are viable outside the test womb.

The thing is, I learned all that crazy vocab for the SAT. So, um, everyone else must have, too -- or just gotten a low SAT score. I mean, most people take the GRE about five years after they take the SAT. They really aren't going to learn words like obstreperous in college, because nobody talks that way. So whatever SAT score they got, that's their GRE score. If they're studying in college at all, they don't have time to learn all the useless stuff they'll need for the GRE. Making the GRE the weirdest test this side of high school.

I guess, from what everyone says, I expected it to be incredibly hard. Like qualitatively, as well as quantitatively, more difficult than the SAT. I don't know what I thought they were planning to test on -- my grasp of Deconstructionism or New Criticism. But my ability to understand two to four reading passages just doesn't seem...worth testing.

Not that I've taken so much as a single scored sample test, but hey, who says pride goeth before a fall? The one thing I'm sure of is that I'm not patient enough to employ the fantastic strategies outlined in my study book. Identify the parts of speech, eliminate terms that don't have opposites, memorize trigger words...each algorithm takes about six hours to execute. So much faster to simply, um, read.

Now, let's see if they have any workarounds for the quadratic equation.

gunpowder

Official transcript of an actual IM conversation:

[17:57] janetm: My doctor hugged me.
[17:59] kevin_d: i've never been hugged by a doctor before

Kevin's response made me realize that I've never been hugged by a doctor before either. (I mean, not in any medical capacity -- friends and boyfriends don't count.) This morning when it happened, I thought it was sweet. But now I've had 12 hours for every possible implication to sink in, and I'm a little unsettled.

She hugged me right after ordering tests for a previously totally-unsuspected-by-me serious illness. Could the two incidents be connected somehow?

I'm overwhelmed by the old-timey experience of a doctor finding something wrong during a regular checkup. Even more retro, there was no special exam equipment involved -- she just touched me, I winced involuntarily, and before I knew it a lab tech was drawing blood from both arms and explaining to me how many different liver functions they needed vials for.

So. I was planning to blog all about my dormant fascination with "girls holding machine guns" porn, a subject I never before believed required a certain level of cheerfulness -- but now I'm not sure I'm in the mood. Still, there's nothing like post-apocalyptic porn to take your mind off your problems.

It was the Sarah Palin photo (photoshopped, in a bikini, holding a gun) that made me think about gun porn. Topless tanned women standing in the wilderness, wearing nothing but army pants and shooting machine guns at unpictured (hopefully man-made) targets. It's weird that even though it's such a standard porn image, no one seems to know what to call it. I've interrogated all my friends, male and female, and the reaction is the same across the board:

1. What is "gun" porn?
2. That does nothing for me.

Leading me to believe that gun porn needs a better brand name than I can think of, and that most people are insane (you know, or maybe I'm the one) not to be seduced by something so appallingly, shockingly, offensively sexy.

Bare breasts, people! Flexed biceps! Pine trees! Mad skills! It's so Sarah Connor. What's not to like? I tried several different search terms and came up with lots of sites dedicated to naked women with guns, but none of them quite got the aesthetic right. Don't even talk to me about handguns. You can't heave a handgun. And indoors? If civilization is still intact, then how irresponsible are you to risk gun-related accidents?

Plus, that bikini has nothing to do with armed warfare. You're fully clothed; it isn't even porn! Conversely, complete nudity means you really have nowhere to sit down. Pebbles and twigs are a big part of our dystopian bare-breasted future. Also, if you're not wearing your standard-issue army pants, what is there left to rip from your passionate, live-in-whatever-present-we-have-left body?

Gun porn is executed (little pun there) so badly that I guess I shouldn't be surprised at its unpopularity. However, the fact that no one I know -- and I know a lot of kinky people -- is at all interested in violent, threatening images interspersed with images of sexy chicks has made me wonder alternately, "what's wrong with me?" and "what other creepy thing are they into?"

I might have to wait until the next presidential election to find out.

wendy's hilarious boyfriend evaluation

I edited Wendy's email to protect the privacy of my hot new fictional boyfriend. She writes:

OK, I looked at the band website, a couple of videos and reviews of the music. So....

pros:
-hot, hot and did I say, smoking HOT
-his musical taste does not suck
-my porn film fantasy seems very workable
-he does not sound like a jerk or a fool
-video: he does not look silly (in fact, did I not say "hot")

cons:
-bandmate/former girl friend w/whom he still gets sweaty
-song called "Insert_Unfortunate_Song_Title_Here"
-website: language skills and punctuation; photo still of cassette tape in the discography (much like tired 1990s stills of LPs or 45s. Did it used to be photos of Victrolas?)
-choice of Prince over Pavement (musical icons, not political/socio-economic ideologies)

possible tie breakers:
-his ability to pick amongst the vast minefield of white denim and emerge relatively unscathed
-his wearing of white denim

final score:
Are you serious? This is a seething, steaming heap of man-shaped lava with which to form all of your rock chick fantasies. If I were only so lucky.
Be there, aloha!

shiny new australia

My new boyfriend is a rock star! Sort of! I mean, like he's sort of my boyfriend, and he's sort of a rock star...where the value of "sort of" is set to "not at all really."

Whatever, my whole plan to swear off men (temporarily) has gone awry. The last vestige, which is that I don't quite care if anything works out or not, still remains. But I imagine that, too, will soon dissolve on contact. Anyway, potential imaginary men started appearing out of nowhere.

The first was a guy I met briefly at a party, then later found out could be the future love of my life. (This is based on my friend's scientific evaluation of his personality plus the fact that I like his glasses.) You'll start to understand the theoretical sense in which I use the term "boyfriend" when I explain that party guy, with whom I've spent 97 seconds, is the most physically incarnate of the group.

Second on the list is a guy who was described by two different friends as, "Weird. Boring. And geeky." followed by, "Hey, I think you'd really like him." He brings to the table (and remember, this is all in my mind) a dull stability that simultaneously repels and attracts me. Plans to get together with him were placed on indefinite hold when I found out that he frequents this hippie dance event at Ashkenaz. (I told a coworker, "This is sheer prejudice, but I imagine unhygenic old men using dance moves as an excuse to cop a feel." Her response was, "I've been to that event. Your description is spot on.")

The third came about when I decided that I should be offered more choices than dull hippie stability, and demanded that a male friend of mine find me a single guy from the literally hundreds he has access to daily. He accepted the challenge with the assertion, "Don't worry. We'll find you the keys to a shiny new Australia." It took me a few minutes to realize this was a reference to Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. Mr. Shiny doesn't even earn a "theoretical" rating -- he's still in the hypothesis stage. But although no particular instance of him yet exists, the possibility of an infinite number of instances -- each with his own unique characteristics -- is really reassuring.

This brings us to Rock Star. A couple of weeks ago my friend Eve decided that the cure for her work-induced depression was to surf CL for, first, men in her area and then second, for men in my area. (To be fair, I think she was trying to decide if the differential was worth moving back for.) That's how she found Rock Star, who sounded perfect for me.

She based this on two things:
1. He likes long walks. Because that's so unusual for men in personals ads.
2. He's 33, and likes older women. My guess is that's code for "I like sex" but I thought I'd humor Eve and reply.

Then that whole "I forgot to set forwarding from my alternate email account" thing happened, so for a while I thought he just didn't write back. Then the light bulb came on in my head, I checked my alternate email, and I found three messages from him. Three charming bland misspelled messages. The second contained the information that he was in a band. (Uhh, "Delete.")

The third contained a link to a youtube interview of him. I clicked, hoping to find comedic material to share with Eve, and there he was, all Cobain-looking and inarticulate. Then I clicked one of his music videos, which was eerily sexy and danceable and innocently playful all at the same time. The thing is, I wasn't sure who I was more attracted to, him or the girl singing next to him. Turns out she's his ex girlfriend.

After about a half hour of watching him play shirtless guitar, watching her writhe around him singing about sex, and then reading articles about how they are the best band in the Bay Area, I sent him my nerdiest photos with the message that we were from very different worlds. But apparently Rock Star has a quiet side. He still eagerly wants to meet.

Last night I told all this to my friend Wendy. Her reaction was, "This sounds like a prank. Or maybe an art project."

Maybe an art project. I'm beginning to think my friends are not...never mind.

Anyway, I sent Wendy off to youtube where she spent the next three hours alternately masturbating and calling back to tell me how I was obligated, on behalf of all womankind, to fuck this guy, art project or no. I was a little surprised, because normally Wendy is Man's Harshest Critic. But band boys are her weakness. I still idolize her for her makeout session with the guy from Counting Crows.

So for this week (while my new boyfriend is on tour) we're pondering the mystery of why a guy who can clearly have anyone he wants (hey, I read those girls' comments on Yelp) currently wants me. I'm guessing there's a serious personality flaw there somewhere. Thankfully, meaningless fictional sex makes personality flaws irrelevant.

Whatever, I'm grateful to him for reawakening the life-affirming playful sexual part of me. Because even if he never shows up for coffee, I still have all his videos.

aloo mutter

By commentator request, I present Melanie's mother-in-law's recipe for aloo mutter. Or rather, my transliteration of her recipe: she doesn't measure ingredients, and she used unlabeled spices that we had to decipher the English names for. I'm cooking it right now, so we'll see if I got a reasonable approximation.

First, buy a food processor. They're tiny, they're easy to clean, and they're at Long's for $14.00. I went a little nuts on that part of the recipe and kinda pureed the onions -- hey, I've never processed food before. It's fun!

You also need a pressure cooker. I already had one ($10 on sale at Macy's, thank you very much) thanks to Melanie.

I know you're supposed to list ingredients in the order they're used, but I think a different logical grouping works better for this recipe.

Ingredients

Main:
1 bag frozen peas
2 chopped yellow potatoes
2 tomatoes
1 yellow onion
about the same amount ginger root
1/2 jalapeno pepper (or not)
5 cloves garlic
1 bunch cilantro

Spices:
2 t cumin seeds
5 cardamom seeds
5 whole cloves
1 t curry
1 1/2 t tumeric
2 t coriander powder
2 t cumin powder

Other:
1 C water
3 T canola oil
1/2 - 1 t salt

Recipe

Chop all this, then put in food processor until finely diced:
1 yellow onion
1/2 jalapeno pepper (or not)
5 cloves garlic
1/4 - 1/2 C ginger root

Put in the pressure cooker (no lid) until seeds pop a little:
3 T canola oil
2 t cumin seeds
5 cardamom seeds

Add:
5 whole cloves, and the onion mix. Cook until onions are translucent.

Chop:
2 tomatoes, then puree in food processor. Add to onion mix.

Add:
1/2 t salt
1 t curry
1 1/2 t tumeric
2 t coriander powder
2 t cumin powder

Stir, then add:
1 c water
1 bag frozen peas
2 chopped yellow potatoes

Stir, put the top on the pressure cooker, and then cook on med heat for 20 minutes.
Add fresh cilantro to serve. (About a 1 bunch, but whatever looks right to you.)

I googled for aloo mutter recipes, and apparently no two are alike. But this one is easy and delicious and vegan, so there's really no need to look further. One subversive thing I did was to add garbanzo beans in order to make it a main dish instead of a side dish. (More protein.)

Postscript: Just ate my first rendition for dinner. A few glitches in the execution, but it was yummy.

kuch kuch hota hai

This time I'm evading the censors by writing about a film that already exists in DVD format rather than as just an idea in my friend's mom's head.

I hadn't yet graduated to looking at the names of the films (they're in Hindi anyway, so why bother?) or keeping track of the actors and directors (um, I don't do that for American films, I'm not about to start with people who don't even appear in the Enquirer). So I spent about a half hour trying to understand the Hindi lyrics to the film's mesmerizing theme song. I finally went to the song index in order to replay the song, and found, to my surprise, that the lyrics I was looking for were the song's title. I then googled the song's title and found -- hey, coincidence! -- the song was named after the film. Huh.

All right, so now I plan to look at the film titles first thing. For now, I can't get Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (translated as Something's Happening) out of my mind. There's a line spoken by Inara in Firefly, when she's describing the city she grew up in. "Pictures can't capture it." Corny as it sounds, that's how I feel about Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. I can't describe its charm; you have to see it.

Frivolous stuff first: OMG this movie is so sexy.

The lead, Shahrukh Khan (I can't help myself, he's been in two out of the three Bollywoods I've watched, I had to learn his name) meets two women in college. They both fall in love with him (sorta like half of India and, as of last week, me). He's best friends with one, falls in love with the other. So they dance around the Scottish countryside of all places (and no, the movie isn't set there) singing the aforementioned song. (The "something" that is happening is that they're all hot for each other.)

The thing is, when they sing the title lyrics, they each have a different way of shivering with excitement. Shahrukh has this rugged vulnerability about him, all dimples and smiles and bashful turns of the head. And I'll just fail at describing the exotic dance moves that had me reeling.

Okay, next: Saris! (Yes, we're still on "sexy.") At one point, Sharukh wins a one-on-one basketball challenge against Kajol by secretly yanking at her sari to make it come undone. Then, when he high-fives her after the win, he grins and yanks it again.

What woman is immune to that kind of assertive expert sex play? Seriously, I'm surprised the population of India hasn't overtaken that of China if this is how they do sex. But the sari scene that really got to me was when the wind caught Kajol 's scarf, and Shahrukh tried to avert his eyes from her bare belly.

Changing the subject from sex for a moment, this film was yet another tender mix of the funny and sad; yet another rumination on the nature of love. In the West, we just fall in love, we don't think about what love is. In Bollywood, people dance around and sing and philosophize about it.

Stuff I noticed, in no particular order:

Okay, I know India is a sexist society. I know that. But that sexism totally doesn't come across in Bollywood (and by "Bollywood," I mean the three movies I've seen). Women are equals; in school, in parenthood, in work, in education, in marriage. In this particular film, they can even be tomboys.

At one point in the film, Shahrukh says that his father taught him to bow to only three women. (Only three? In the US, we can't even nominate one for president.) They are his mother, his wife, and the goddess Durga. Imagine an American man talking about bowing to his mom, let alone God in feminine form.

And another thing. Men get to dress in pretty colors and dance down the aisle at their weddings. None of this stodgy wearing black and standing around waiting for the bride. I love that splash of femininity in a masculine body -- androgyny is so sexy. Shahrukh, who is not exactly my type, totally grew on me with all his flirtatious mannerisms.

But today I heard about Hrithik Roshan, so my loyalties may soon be divided.