--Team Rocket, on Pokémon.

Whoa... this just in as I start typing this. Idiot's Delight is leaving WNEW? Not entirely a shock, given the changes the station's been going through, but... now what? Please tell me Vin Scelsa isn't leaving the New York airwaves for good...

Let's take it from where I left off, I guess:

Monday: Took my comedy final. It consisted of four essay questions (chosen out of seven), to be completed in two hours. I finished about fifteen minutes early, mostly because I got confused and thought that I was down to my last two minutes or so. Perhaps it's just as well; I was pretty tired by that point, both mentally and physically, and my hand was killing me. I'm not used to writing for that long.

Anyway, I think I did pretty well on the first essay. The third and fourth were way too concise (see fatigue, above), but should serve. The second... ahh, the second.

The second essay was about a long poem by Brian Merryman, "The Midnight Court," which is written entirely in tetrameter couplets. The content is a bit on the shaky side, but my professor pointed out that I was being too critical, it being a comic poem and all. Look at how cleverly written it is, she said...

So. The content of my essay on it may be a bit shaky, it's true. But I did write the entire thing in tetrameter couplets, filling two and a half blue book pages in about a half hour.

I think it turned out well. I've asked her to send me a copy of it, in fact, even though finals aren't usually returned to students.

I hope, anyway. The option's still open, otherwise.

The largest challenge of the former lay in writing a 1,000 word essay about my academic interests and what I hoped to accomplish in graduate school. That, and editing an eight-page essay I wrote three semesters ago down to seven pages, that being the maximum length they'd accept for a writing sample. Said essay wouldn't have been my first choice, but the ones I'd rather have used were ten pages apiece, and I couldn't trim that much.

Pleasantly complicating matters, I got an e-mail from Mary Anne, to the effect that she was in New York a bit earlier than expected, and would I care to join her for dinner or something?

I ended up finishing the application shortly after 7 PM. I then set the VCR to record my two favorite shows. Earlier that afternoon, I had called a friend to ensure that I could borrow his tape of them should my reception preclude my VCR's doing it properly. Feeling secure of my viewing pleasure to come, I went off with a clear conscience to meet Mary Anne at our appointed meeting place, the Barnes and Noble at 66th Street and Broadway.

This was chosen as our appointed meeting place partly because it would be a pleasant place for either of us to wait if the other (okay, if I) would be late, and partly because I needed a copy of Seven Plays by Sam Shepard. A play within it, "True West," was on my drama final, and I'd failed to pick a copy up at the college bookstore before they stopped carrying it.

(I had neatly solved this problem the previous week by the simple expedient of missing class. I'm not going to claim that this was a good solution, but I'd taken the GRE in English Literature the day before, and was finally catching up on my sleep.)

(Oh, wait. I never wrote about that, did I? In a nutshell, the test was first thing in the morning, in Brooklyn. Only way I was gonna make it was by staying up all night, so I did. I was there physically, but not entirely mentally. Those questions I answered I think I did well on, but I ran out of time and left a lot of questions blank. My guess is that I'll end up about average, score-wise; not so low as to be utterly embarrassing, but not incredibly well, either. Which is a bit out of place, given the rest of my record. Oh, well.)

I was, of course, a bit late, which vindicated that aspect of the plan. As for the other part, they turned out not to have the book in stock. They advised me to try the branch of the store at 82nd Street and Broadway instead.

Before doing that, we went off to a nice restaurant on 73rd Street, where we ate and schmoozed, after which we went our separate ways: she went to a nearby subway station, and I wandered uptown to the bookstore. Or so was the plan.

What happened was that I went up Broadway, got to 82nd Street, and failed to find the alleged bookstore.

I walked up and down the block, but the bookstore failed to appear. "Aha!" I thought to myself. "I thought the clerk at the other store said it was at Eighty-second Street, but she must have said Eighty-seventh!" And so I continued walking five more blocks, musing over the wisdom of my speech therapists, who had been stressing the importance of enunciating clearly.

The store wasn't on 87th Street either. Hmm.

Then I saw the sign indicating the street I was walking along, and discovered that I was on Amsterdam, not Broadway. This puzzled me, as I'd been sure the sign had read "Broadway" earlier on. Anyway, I walked a block in the wrong direction, then finally consulted a map, caught on to what had happened (I had been on Broadway at the start, but it and Amsterdam had crossed at the starting point), walked back two blocks, hit Broadway, walked down five blocks, and found the store... just moments after the doors were locked, at the 11 PM closing time.

Well, at least I got some fresh air.

Still, it's cheap. So we went to see Proof of Life, which she'd been wanting to see.

Proof of Life, it turns out, is really, really, really, really, really not my genre. Should you not be familiar with the film, as I wasn't, I shall sum up. This guy (played by some guy whose name I don't remember) is kidnapped by terrorists in -- if I recall correctly -- Venezuela, and it's up to Russell Crowe to save him. There's supposed to be a bit of chemistry between him and the guy's wife (Meg Ryan, I think), but you'd have to look hard to see it.

Anyway, it's a very violent film. I looked away from the screen at several points, and stopped watching entirely for at least a minute in the climactic scene. The good guys win, the guy they're trying to save is rescued, but lots and lots of people die along the way, especially in the bad guy camp. We are nevertheless expected to take the ending as being positive.

Like I said, not my genre. But, hey, next time, I'll be choosing the film. Which probably won't be her genre, at which point we may decide to stop seeing films together due to irreconcilable differences. Hmm.

It was otherwise a nice evening, though. The theatre staff let us stay through the credits -- perhaps it helps if there's more than one person watching them? -- and the screen is filled with lots of peaceful landscapes during the credits, which were nice to watch, and a refreshing change after the rest of the picture. And I wasn't really traumatized. But you can get Elaine's take on the experience here.

Oh, and on the bright side, I have now seen Russell Crowe. I don't see what Kymm sees in him, but that's not really my problem, I guess.

After trying to get some letters of recommendation, I scurried home, lit my menorah, waited for it to burn out, then went off to Manhattan, where, after plan after plan after plan after plan had fallen through, I was finally supposed to meet Jen, to give her a birthday card (which I've been carrying around ever since the first of those plans fell through) and see Charlie's Angels.

How well Charlie's Angels works is entirely dependent on the viewer's ability to turn her or his brain off and keep it off all the way through. If you can manage that, it's a hoot. It's that hardest to achieve of all writing (and, I suspect, performing) challenges -- a work that's deliberately bad in such a way that the result is good.

I mostly managed it, but not completely. Two sectors of my brain did act up along the way, one wanting to know what happened to the extras whose car flipped over in the car chase, not to mention a few people who die along the way; the other trying to figure out where the heck this film fits into feminist issues and the patriarchy. The former is clearly thinking too much for this film; the latter is a valid concern, and I haven't a clue as to the answer. I mean, there are patriarchal bits all over the place, but much of it verges on parody, at the very least. I dunno.

With that having been said, it's bad, it's ridiculous, it makes no sense, and it's lots of fun. Two thumbs up. (Jen was even more enthusiastic than I was.)

Aside #2: That conviction is not quite enough to stifle one's glee at discovering a "Hello Kitty" shop in Times Square.

Aside #3: Not dissimilarly, I dislike Disney, but I love their cartoons.

Aside #4: Ah, well, a foolish consistency yadda yadda yadda.

Saturday: Slept, read.

After which I went home, where I've been since then. I don't like being out on Christmas Eve, and ordinarily wouldn't have been out earlier if it were unavoidable. My racial memory at work: yes, I own Mariah Carey's Christmas album, yes, I was watching The Joffrey Nutcracker for a bit earlier tonight, but the fact remains that, for much of the past millennium, Christmas Eve has not been a very safe night to be Jewish and outside locked doors. It tended to remind people -- up late, and out in large numbers -- of that whole "Christ-killer" rap.

And if this still makes me feel uncomfortable in New York in the year 2000... well, it at least gives me some insight into how far-reaching the effects of oppression can be.

Apparently, this is a bit old, but I hadn't known it existed until I saw it mentioned in Newsweek's year-end roundup: Harry Potter and the Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. This can be properly appreciated only if you've read both works being parodied, I think, but if you have, do read the excerpt linked to there. (Lynx users, just use the latter link.) I was howling with laughter.