Update Update Update

Update, Update, Update

I suck.  I know.  I don’t know why my blog is so rarely updated.  I think it’s because I’m still not 100% sure I want to be a blogger.  Everyone is a blogger.  Plus, I get a little nervous about anonymity on the web.  My delusions of grandeur lead me to believe that someone will read my blog and, being as completely fabulous as I am, will become obsessed with me and then bad things will happen.  I know that this is not very likely, but that is what is in my head.

So here are some things that have been happening.

Baseball

Boyfriend, another couple and I went to see the Kane County Cougars last weekend.  If you like baseball, even just a little bit, I highly recommend checking out your local A league team.  It’s baseball at its most pure.  In addition to being way cheaper than your major league ticket, the minors usually have a ton of stuff going on during their games – the Cougars had Birdzerk! and The Jesse White Tumblers when we were there.  It’s cheesy, yes, but if you are too cool to enjoy that sort of thing, well, maybe you are not as cool as you think.  

The other perk of minor league ball is the food.  I had a rockin’ burger and an ice cold beer, followed by an ear of sweet roasted corn dipped – literally dipped – in a large vat of butter.  Mmmmm.  Later in the game I got some ice cream in a souvenir cougar’s baseball helmet.  The game itself was a little uneven.  The Cougars were playing the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (doesn’t just that make you want to go?) and, when we left, in the eighth inning, the score was 19 to 4.  

Entertainment

We watched Wedding Crashers the other night.  I don’t know if we just waited too long and it was over hyped, or if we just aren’t as smart as we think we are, but both me and the boyfriend didn’t like this movie.  There wasn’t all the much wedding crashing going on, Vince Vaughn is still running on leftover “Swinger” fumes and, as much as I love him, is just not funny anymore.  Owen Wilson has not yet worn out his welcome with me, but he’s getting close.  I just thought that movie would be funnier.  It was supposed to be a throwback to those raunchy sex comedies of the 80’s and I just thought it fell flat on its face.  Boo.  I did, however, love Christopher Walken.  Then again, I could watch Christopher Walken read the newspaper aloud and I would probably enjoy it.  

School

The spring quarter is finally drawing to a close.  I have finals in both of my classes, which I think is kind of bullshit.  I have never had English finals before.  Usually, you get final papers, but not final exams.  But, whatever.  Once I discovered that DePaul’s partial tuition scholarship is for only a quarter of your tuition, I stopped caring about my grades.  I’ve never really cared about what grade I got in a class.  I tend to get good grades, so maybe that’s part of it, but I’m also a big school nerd and it really is what I get out of it that matters to me, not keeping up my GPA.  

This quarter was interesting.  I took a style course and a course in hard-boiled fiction and film noir.  The style class was a requirement; the noir class was for fun (though it did fulfill a requirement).  I knew I would like the class in hard-boiled fiction –that is what I read for fun, back when I had time to read for fun.  We read a nice selection of the big names of the genre: Dashiell Hammett (Red Harvest), Raymond Chandler (Farewell, My Lovely), James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice), Ross MacDonald (The Chill), Hubert Selby, Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn), and James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia).  I thought all of them were awesome.  If you’ve never read any of these and have any interest in finding out what hard-boiled is all about, I would recommend The Postman Always Rings Twice because it is very short so, if you don’t love it, it won’t take long to finish.  All of those are excellent.  Any Chandler is good, as is anything by Dashiell Hammett, who is probably the best of the best, though more violent than the others.  The only one I don’t recommend is Last Exit to Brooklyn, not because it isn’t good – for what it is – but because I don’t feel it really fits into the hard-boiled genre.  Also, it is very tough to read and gave me a headache more than once.  

The other bright point of the noir class was that my final paper (yeah, that’s right a big paper AND a final.  Sheesh.  If I didn’t really love that class, I would be PISSED).  I got to write a paper on John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee.  I used The Scarlet Ruse, but could have used any of the books in the series.  Travis is a wonderful twist on the traditional hard-boiled (anti)hero.  I highly recommend getting into this series – they’re perfect beach reads; if you’re looking for something to read on vacation, this would be good.

Old School

I just got back from my five-year college reunion, which was a blast.  I got to see five or six of my good friends with whom I haven’t kept in closest contact.  The longer I am away from school, the more I can appreciate what a cool time it was in my life.  I wouldn’t necessarily want to repeat it, but I learned a lot and grew a lot.  The reunion was cool.  We didn’t participate in a ton of the events, but that’s ok, because I don’t generally like highly organized functions and I saw the people I wanted to see.  It is crazy to me how many of the women I went to school with are married and pregnant.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just have a hard time understanding it.  I grew so much as a person after graduation, I can’t imagine that the person I would have chosen when I was 21 would be the same person I have chosen at 26.  Plus, ugh, children.  They are adorable and maybe I want them someday, but I’m still at a point in my life where, when I hear someone is pregnant, I assume it was an accident.  I know that plenty of people are married with more than one baby by 26.  I realize I’m not really that young anymore but….  I can barely take care of myself and my dog.  I can’t imagine being responsible for another human life at this point.