Portland

I have a little dream.  It involves living on the coast in Maine, in a nice little house where I can look out at the ocean while I write.  I imagine running a little bakery/gift shop in one of the touristy areas, and spending my life living simply and happily.  I don’t know if my dream will ever come true, but it’s nice to have one, to have something to work towards and look forward to.

Bernacki has a dream, too.  She wants to move out west and be a hippie for a few years.  Unfortunately, Bernacki’s dreams don’t exactly match up to what her family wants from her, and it leads to some tension.  They want her to get married and have kids, and just stay near home forever.

Well, I know what it’s like to have a dream, and I want to see Bernacki’s dreams fulfilled.  That’s why I’ve charted out the path of her future, and am posting it here, so that she can check back and make sure that she’s on the right path.

THE MOVE

After graduation, Bernacki moves out west and lives like a hippie for a little while, eventually settling in Portland, Oregon, where I imagine she’ll live doing vaguely science-y things.  She’ll save a couple forests and probably find the cure to insomnia in some random plant that she saves from extinction, which she will never need to use because Bernacki never sleeps.

also, she looks like this.

One day, she will find herself taking soil samples on the beach, when she will look up and see the perfect man as he emerges from the surf, like a hairy Aphrodite.

She will promptly take the specimen to her lab for analysis.

FAMILY LIFE

At some point, Bernacki will get tired of saving the environment and building time-traveling jet packs 24/7, and will scale back on those activities just enough to make time to have a couple of kids.  She will, I have no doubt, expertly balance the responsibilities of her work and home life, so that her children will never feel neglected, and neither will her hybrid monkey-lilies.

They look weird, but they smell a lot better than the average monkey.

She and her biologist trophy husband will be completely happy with their life together, and their children will be the happiest, healthiest kids on the West Coast.

But, inevitably, the time will come that discontent will fill Bernacki’s heart.  She will be in a bookstore, browsing lady-scientist fiction, and she will see the author’s name…

…and she will long to see old friends again.

REUNION

So, Bernacki will reach out to the friends she once knew.  She will become reacquainted with their boring, unscientific lives.  She will remember the good “thymes” we once shared and she will, at some point, decide to fly back east to visit.

And, boy, are her arms tired!
...sorry.

After catching up with family and friends in New York, she will come up to Maine to see me, who just so happens to also live in Portland, because that was who she really came back east to see in the first place; let’s not lie to ourselves.

After we have been properly introduced to each other’s families, we will all go out for a nice dinner and catch up.

We will be incredibly impressed with each other’s children.

mah bebehs.

By the end of the evening, an amazing discovery will be made…

…and we will part again, happy to have seen each other.  Bernacki will spend the rest of her life content, remembering why she moved away in the first place, and will never question her life decisions again.  Everyone will live happily ever after.

Except for Sarah, who grew a beard.

How My Father Ruined My Social Skills

So, something that I may not have made clear to everyone yet is that I love comic books.  From the day of my birth, it was pretty much foretold by the gods that I would one day be a rabid comic book fan.

This is the Comic God.

My dad has been reading comics for a really long time, so I feel pretty comfortable crediting him with my own love of comic books, and I must note straightaway that reading them has brought me untold amounts of happiness in my life, and I truly love them for that.  On the other hand, though, they also prevent me from connecting in any way with another human being who isn’t interested in them.  So, you know, there’re some pros and cons.

It began pretty much as soon as I could hold a comic without ripping it in half, and possibly before that, actually.  My dad started me off with Archie comics, which were filled with innocent and light-hearted tales involving the wacky misadventures of a freckle-faced teenager, his friends, and the identical women who could be told apart only by their hair color and who, for some reason never fully explored, lusted after the titular klutzy ginger.



This would never happen in real life.



I started to become disenchanted with Archie comics once I was reprimanded in school for drawing pictures of the characters (apparently, the fashion choices of Betty and Veronica are considered ‘lewd’ in the real world), and when I finally realized that “Sugar, Sugar” is just awful.

I quickly moved on to Marvel, particularly the X-Men.  I spent most of my literate life greedily consuming any and all superhero stories Stan Lee could throw my way.  Most of my collection came from my Dad’s doubles, but I ended up with reprints of most of the original runs of X-Men and Spider-Man.  I also, of course, was following all of the current storylines, and reading all of the god-awful fan fiction online.  That was my deep and wonderful love of Marvel.

And the comic book movies!  I was so excited when I first realized that that was a thing.  My sister and her then-boyfriend took me to see the first Spider-Man movie when it came out, and I brought my friend Cassandra with us.  This was apparently a terrible idea, since I seemingly didn’t realize until we were already in the theater that Oh, Jesus, this is a movie about Spider-Man!  I must have been in some kind of zombie-trance up until that point, but as I sat there, realizing that I was really about to see Spider-Man up on that screen, I became very excited.  So excited, in fact, that I turned to Cassandra and, within the first five minutes of the film, told her everything I knew about the origins of the character.  Most notably, for example, about the death of Uncle Ben, and the lesson that “with great power comes great responsibility”. 

"Did you, or did you not, come here to learn about Spider-Man?"

I still don’t understand what she was so upset about.  I mean, it’s not like I spoiled the entire movie for- oh, crap.

So anyway, I’ve been riding the Marvel train for a while, now.  I’ve suffered through some truly horrendous stories, artists, and movies, but I’ve stuck it out.  Up until recently, when Marvel did the unthinkable.  My favorite X-Man, Nightcrawler, was killed off.  It devastated me.  Ok, ok, fine; I’ll admit it.  He’s a comic book character; it’s only a matter of time before he’s brought back to life, but still.  I was super-bummed out.  And, to be totally honest, I had been unhappy for some time by then about a lot of the stuff I was seeing in Marvel.  It just felt like another letdown by the comics I had loved.  It almost felt, at that point, as if I were reading them out of a sense of nostalgia for what they had once been.  And then, it happened.  One evening, while reading an issue of X-Men Forever, I witnessed something that changed everything.  While fighting alongside her fellow X-Men, Shadowcat phased into an opposing combatant (some type of Sentinel, I think; I actually don’t really remember what they were fighting, but Tony Stark was involved), and un-phased while inside, disrupting the machine.

Now, let me pause for a moment to say this: That doesn’t make any sense.  When Shadowcat phases, she doesn’t displace matter, she moves through it.  So, if she stops phasing while inside a solid object, her body should merge with that object, killing her in a worst-case scenario, completely destroying that part of her body for life in the best case.  I had seen her powers misused in this way before, but this time, it was just too much.  After all they’d done to me, it was enough.

No more... no more.

I stopped buying Marvel comics and, by God, it almost killed me.

My dad was not having any of that, however, and promptly caught me up on all I’d been missing in DC Comics.

Now, I was no novice to DC stories.  After all, my dad had been regaling me with stories about DC since I was little, and I had a modest collection of my own of DC comic books.  My first human love was Christopher Reeve in the first Superman movie (my first love in general was that dog from Muppet Babies. Don’t judge).  What I’m getting at here is that I was already well-acquainted with the DC Universe; I just hadn’t yet become a serious reader.  That was all about to change.

So, my allegiance has switched from one comic universe to another, but my problem is still exactly the same:  I am a comic book reader surrounded by non-comic book readers.  Now, this problem usually manifests itself in one of two ways:

First; the fake comic fan.

The second way this problem manifests is one I’ve described before: I go too long without discussing the stories I’m reading, and I simply explode with them, and whoever is unlucky enough to be near me when the dam bursts is forced to listen until they gouge their own eyes out with a plastic fork to distract themselves from my inane fangirl babbling.

The problem, I think, boils down to this: I don’t have anyone, outside of my father, to talk to about the comics I read.  I just kind of have this huge hobby that I’m forced to keep mostly to myself.  If I try to talk to someone else about comics, I either have to worry that I’m boring them (except for Sarah; I’ve stopped worrying about that.  She’s on her own when it comes to stopping me), or I end up talking to someone who only pretends to know anything about comics, and I end up boiling over with white-hot comic rage (which, incidentally, is just awful for my complexion).  I’ve always kind of wished for a friend who was as into comics as I am, and I always kind of assumed that being into comics would naturally draw other comic book fans into my life, but thus far, it’s not working all that well.  So, I think maybe it’s time to really put it out there, and make it clear who I am, and let other fanboys and girls come find me.

My name is Amanda, and I read comic books.  I have a poster of Hal Jordan over my bed, teach my four-year-old niece the names of the Green Lanterns on the weekend, and am half-convinced that I am Wonder Woman.  I am a Creative Writing major, and a Pisces.  Looking for like-minded people for innocent comic-related fun.  Occasional costume play.  No smokers please.

It’s time to just be honest with the world and say, “this is who I am”.

We’re Not Gonna Pay Rent!... or, Maybe it's time to move back in with Mom and Dad

So, who else here loves Rent, right?  I mean, it’s a great musical; with a meaningful story, great take-away message (“no day but today”), and super-catchy songs.  I have the original Broadway cast recording of the soundtrack that I love listening to, and I own the movie, too.  I even have the DVD of Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway.  Yeah, it’s safe to say that I’m a pretty big fan… except I was watching the movie last weekend with my sister, and I started noticing little things about the story that made me uncomfortable.  Like, I can’t actually sympathize with any of the protagonists.

Well, let’s slow down.  First of all, I think we can all agree that the ‘good guys’ in this show are Mark, Roger, Collins, Angel, Maureen, Joanne, and Mimi.  And the ‘bad guys’ are AIDS and Benny (and his father-in-law, to a lesser extent).

Harrumph!

So, here’s my problem:  When I actually stop and pay attention to what’s going on, I realize that the ‘good guys’ are usually behaving in ways that range from irrational to immoral, and the ‘bad guys’ don’t actually do anything wrong.

Let’s start near the beginning: in the movie, there is a powerful and dramatic moment where the put-upon starving artists of East Village are hanging out of windows and off of the fire escapes of their apartments, dropping burning eviction notices into the streets and onto the Range Rover of their fat-cat oppressor, Benny, all while passionately crying out “We’re not gonna pay rent!”  It’s an incredible moment.  You really get worked up over the plight of these people, just trying to get by, dealing with their AIDS and trying to create something beautiful out of squalor; and he expects them to have rent money?

Well, yes, actually, he does.  You see, Benny owns the building.  He allows people to live in his building, and in return, he expects payment, which I’m sure was all explained to them before they moved in.  When you don’t pay, you get evicted.  That’s life.  Sure, it’s sad when you can’t afford your rent and have nowhere else to go.  I’m not heartless; I acknowledge that it’s sad.  But why is it Benny’s fault?  Why all the Benny-hate?  That would be the same as me not having money to buy food, but trying to shoplift from the grocery store while singing “I’m not paying for EGGS!”  Yes, it’s sad that I’m hungry, and there should be some kind of system that can help me get back on my feet, but does that make it okay to rip off the store owner while singing angrily at him and setting his car on fire?

"'Cause everything is EhhhhGGS!!!"

The only characters who have the right to be angry about getting evicted are Mark and Roger, because Benny promised they could stay for free, but everyone else?  Quit hating on Benny.  He isn’t charging rent because he’s evil; it’s how he makes his living.

The same argument applies to the lot where the homeless have set up a tent city.  Again, it’s sad to lose your home, but that lot is not your home.  They didn’t even have an agreement the way the renters and Benny did; they were just living on his land for free.  But, now he wants to build something there, so it’s time for them to move.  Again, I’m not heartless.  I care about the homeless, a lot, but Benny’s not wrong.  He absolutely has the right to do whatever he wants with that lot.  It’s the homeless people living there who are trespassing.  If the main characters have a problem with the homeless being homeless, then maybe they should use all that spare time they usually devote to not working to helping find homes for them.  Try to solve the problem, not attack someone who isn’t even the cause of the problem.  After all, Benny isn’t the reason those people are homeless.  If I found a homeless person living in a tent in my driveway and made them move because that’s my driveway and they are in my way, would that make me evil?  Can I now be blamed for that person’s homelessness?

Benny later even says “You make fun, yet I’m the one attempting to do some good.  Or do you really want a neighborhood where people piss on your stoop every night?”  This line makes me wonder; well, do they?  They never correct him when he implies that their home is a dump, so what are they saying?  That they like it that way?  The crime, filth, drugs, and violence?

La vie boheme!

I get it, though.  Rent needs a villain, and Benny represents “The Man”, the affluent character who could never understand the struggle of the poor artists, and so must be pitted against them.  But this only brings up another question:

What the hell is Joanne doing, singing about “la vie bohéme”?  She’s a lawyer, educated at an Ivy League school, with wealthy parents.  How is Benny “The Man”, but not Joanne?  And, by the way, Benny at least used to be one of our hapless starving artists.  He married into wealth.  Joanne was raised in it.  How could she be considered one of them, when she has only experienced their lives through interacting with them.  She’s never known the struggles they’ve faced.  Sure, she’s a lesbian, so you could say that she must’ve faced oppression and struggle at certain points in her life.  And that’s a fair point.  But isn’t it also a fair point to maintain that a well-heeled woman such as herself still could never truly relate to the lives of those living “la vie bohéme”?  Our heroes, by shunning Benny but embracing Joanne, are hypocrites.

Even if you think that Benny is yuppie scum, but Joanne’s awesome, I still have bad news: the protagonists of Rent are jerks, anyway.  “What?  No!” you may say, stupidly, to your computer screen, “The main characters are strong-willed, independent, bohemian artists, courageously struggling to make it in an increasingly corporate-controlled world, man!”  To which I would eloquently reply “Screw you, hippie.  Now, shut up and listen.”  That is, that is what I would say if you understood that I couldn’t hear you through the computer screen and you had had the good sense to call me with your outrage.  Now shut up and listen.

"Stop telling me lies!  I'm freakin' out, man!"

Do you remember the part where Mark films the cop harassing that homeless woman, and she chews Mark out for trying to use her life to make a name for himself?  She even says that he’s trying to use her to “kill his guilt”.  Before walking away, she asks him if he’s got a dollar.  He stands there helplessly, and she leaves, noting that she hadn’t expected him to.  This moment is incredibly evocative and full of lessons: for one, Mark learns that not everyone he encounters wants him to exploit their hardship for the sake of what he considers art, and that maybe his intentions up to this point haven’t been as high-minded and honorable as he had considered them to be.  He quickly turns over a new leaf; respecting those he encounters enough to use their stories for nobler purposes, not for his ego’s sake… Wait, no, that’s not what happens at all.  Actually, he continues recording personal and difficult moments in the lives of others, such as those in the Life Support group for people with AIDS, apparently for no greater purpose than to mix into his little home movies so he can show everyone what an awesome filmmaker he is at the end.  Way to go, Mark!  All the while, still considering himself a sell-out for actually getting a job to pay his bills while working on his personal video project.

"I can't believe I have to work a day-job to pay my rent instead of filming stuff
with my friends all day!  No one's ever had to do anything this demeaning
in the history of ever!"

But that’s not the worst part.  Focus on the moment where the woman asks him for a dollar.  It’s a great moment, right?  She really drives home the fact that he’s no better than her; that he may be an ‘artist’, but neither of them have a dollar in their pocket, right?  Yeah, except for, like, five minutes ago, when Angel was bragging about her dog-murder skills and stuffing bundles of cash into everyone’s hands.  Where did all that money go since then?  It is at this moment that you realize the horrifying truth: it wasn’t that Mark, like the homeless woman, didn’t have even a dollar in his pocket; it was that he had plenty of dollars, and was not willing to give her even one.  Yes, our loveable protagonist is actually a heartless miser.  What if every time he couldn’t pay for something in the movie; whether it was the rent, tea at the Life Café, or delectable Girl Scout cookies, it wasn’t because he was broke, but because he simply couldn’t bear to part with his delicious, delicious money?  For all we know, Mark could be richer than Bill Gates and stingier than Scrooge McDuck.  We can’t trust him.

I could go on and on.  There’s Maureen’s protest which, like Benny points out, is clearly more about losing her performance space than homeless people being forced out of a lot.  Or Roger and Mimi who, in the musical, disappear for a while (Roger to Santa Fe, Mimi to wherever while in the midst of a heartbreak-fueled drug binge), all the while receiving frantic calls from their mothers, who have no idea where their children are or what they’re up to.  These people are so self-absorbed and self-involved that they can’t be bothered to tell their own mothers what’s going on.  Also, Angel straight-up murdered a dog.  Doesn’t that bother anyone?

So, I guess my point is this:  I love Rent’s boppy songs and its portrayal of friendships so strong they make a family out of a rag-tag group, but when I look too closely, I see a band of young losers who prefer sitting around and getting high while blaming the world’s problems on their more successful friends to working for a living or being productive human beings in any way, and I’m not sure if that’s a message I can really relate to…

Wait, wait; no.  I’ve changed my mind.  I’m all about this movie’s message.

"Yeah, I totes was gonna make some awesome art or whatever, but then
The Man kicked me out because I wouldn't get a 'real' job, or stop pawning my
mom's jewelry for heroine; but whatever, man.  I'm an artist, you know? 
I have to be real."

Viva la vie bohéme!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

This past week, I celebrated my 21^st birthday.  It’s a pretty big one.  Now, I can finally do all of those things I’ve been doing.  While everyone around me made a fuss over what a great big milestone this is, they failed to prepare me for the true changes that were about to take place.

After consuming several celebratory rum ’n Shamrock Shakes, I promptly vomited in my roommate’s bed and was forced to excuse myself to the bathroom for a little clean-up.  While washing up at the sink, I noticed something unusual.

Yes.  My legs had become strangely hairy, and my feet seemed to be… mutating, in some odd way.  Though this could have been a trick my eyes were playing on me due to all of the rum and shrooms I’d taken earlier (which, I was informed later by friends, is still not legal at 21, apparently.  I don’t know why they keep changing the rules), I began to suspect that these strange changes were perhaps connected to the full moon which took place that night, and that I was maybe turning into a teen wolf or something.   Then I remembered that I was in my twenties and, as such, had no business being a teen anything anymore, so, there was one theory out.

Then my dad showed up unexpectedly.

My father explained to me that he was actually a centaur, and that it was with centaur-magic that he was able to maintain the shape of a regular human man most of the time.  However, at midnight on nights where there is a full moon, when the veil separating this world from that of the centaurs is at its thinnest, he reverts back to his true form.  Of course, I was very curious, and asked him to explain to me why I should care about his personal life and if he brought me a birthday gift.  He seemed a little annoyed by my questions, but explained that, as his child, I also carried centaur blood, and would also take on the true shape of our people at midnight beneath the full moon.  Because I was only half-centaur, the changes had only now started to take place.

My father went on to explain that my centaur blood was also the root of many of my most endearing habits and traits.  For example, our people are a proud and noble race, but naturally untrusting towards other beings, so I may sometimes stubbornly refuse to believe what someone tells me without verifying the information myself, first, whether or not I have any knowledge of the subject.  Centaurs are also passionate story-tellers, and much of their history is passed through oral tradition, so I may be prone to, say, keeping someone up all night while I tell, in excruciating detail, the entire history of the “Justice League”.  This is simply the centaur way, and should be respected and accepted by my peers.

Then came the test.  I was told that, as a centaur, I must prove myself as a hunter, so that there was no reason for other centaurs to suspect that I may be a drain on their society, unable to fend for myself.  I asked if all centaurs had to undergo this ritual.  He said no.  Anyway, in order to prove myself, I had to kill a bunny.

After he recovered his dignity, my father was forced to admit that I had passed with flying colors, thus proving what I had always suspected: that I only appear to others as lazy and unmotivated because I am.  I can totally achieve things whenever I feel like it. 

Anyway, by this time, it was pretty late, and I still needed to wash the vomit out of my hair before my morning class, so we started heading back.  My dad presented me with my Official Centaur Start-Up Kit, which included all of the things that a real centaur needs.

I was becoming self-aware enough at this point to realize that everything that my father had told me made absolutely no sense.  After all, how did he meet my mom and have kids with her if he was a centaur?  That made no sense.  He explained to me that my mom was actually a magical talking polar bear who just happens to be beautiful enough to pass as a human.

Mom was always one for bear hugs.  Ha!  You get it?  Get it?

They had met on a magical quest that had to do with restoring some kids to their throne, or maybe something to do with magic jewelry or something.  Maybe they destroyed a god together or whatever.  I don’t know.  I had puked again somewhere around this time, and was starting to revert to my human form.  My focusing skills were a little off.

But at least now my lineage made sense.

"What?!  Now it makes less sense!"

Anyway, I came to realize the importance of being a hybrid were-centaur-polar bear.  It completely absolved me of any guilt I had ever felt, ever.  After all, all of my traits can be blamed on my genetics.  None of it is my fault.  So, say, if someone didn’t appreciate me talking down to them, holding long-winded, one-sided conversations pertaining only to my own interests, insisting on keeping our bedroom windows open throughout the winter, and generally being a louse, then maybe they ought to take a step back and stop being such a narrow-minded RASCIST!  Sheesh!  As if I wasn’t discriminated against enough!

The most dangerous game.