(It's the same team as last week because I didn't create the team in time.)

Labels: antm, project runway, season 4, television

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Read all about it.

Labels: celebrity, grad school

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Isaac Schankler, gifted composer, set a sequence of my poems called Sharp and entered them into the Lotte Lehmann Foundation Art Song Competition for Young Composers--and he won the Damien Top Prize!

Sharp is actually being performed tomorrow, Tuesday, November 20th. Here's the info:

USC Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble
Tuesday, November 20, 2007 : 7:30pm

University Park Campus
Alfred Newman Recital Hall

Free

Come hear Oliver Knussen's Ophelia Dances, Isaac Schankler's Sharp, and the world premiere of Eric Guinivan's Continuumfor 13 players.

muspub@usc.edu
(213) 740-2584

http://www.usc.edu/music

Event Audience: All

Labels: contemporary music ensemble, poetry, writing

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I am so happy that there's a Project Runway fantasy game! I am having so much fun. My team for next week:

Labels: project runway, television

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So I am #68 out of 2552 users for my fantasy America's Next Top Model team.

That's cool!

My team this week:

Labels: america's next top model

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So a new trend across the country is for malls to institute curfews on teenagers.

[T]he U.S. Justice Department reported in December that mall security directors named loitering teenagers as their No. 1 problem — ahead of planning for terrorist attacks, shoplifting, burglary and vandalism.

On balance, said Krieger, of Tower City, many mall managers are concluding that it’s worth the loss of vitality and sales from younger visitors to lure back adults and out-of-towners who may be intimidated by loud groups of teenagers.

“The centers that have done this are really seeing their centers go up, and they’re seeing more families wanting to come back,” she said.

Okay, so I may not really like teenagers--I hated being one and I largely hated all the teenagers I knew while I was a teenager myself--but this curfew thing pisses me off because these teenagers are so out of control because their parents do not parent. I don't know if it's because parents don't have time to parent because in most two-parent households both parents have to work (it's not a silly whim that women want to leave the Problem With No Name behind by simply expanding their horizons on a job site--it's generally a necessity that both partners work). Plus, when one has children, one's expenses generally increase (especially during the infant stage because babies require a different set of necessities than regular people) so adults with children generally have to work longer hours or more than one job (especially if they're single parents) just to make ends meet--it's not a secret that there's a middle class crunch, and that it's becoming harder and harder to define what it means to be middle class in America today--but it does make me sad that curfews have to be instituted in public spaces to keep children under control because parents aren't around enough to do it themselves due to work.

I suppose the argument could be made that these people had children and so if they end up getting divorced and having to support their children on their own, that was the risk they took. But the only people who suffer at that point are the children--and seriously: who gets married thinking they're going to get divorced? People shouldn't have to be so hyper-cynical. Coming from a family where my parents divorced, and my mom was then forced to work two jobs to make ends meet (because our step-dad was a tweaker), it's amazing thinking back on all the things I couldn't do because my mom wasn't around. I couldn't join soccer or little league. I wasn't allowed to join any after school clubs like Nature Bowl or the Spelling Bee team (teachers frequently begged me to join but I always had to decline because there was no one to pick me up if I couldn't ride the bus--and we lived so far out of the way that no one could give me a ride home, either). When I was old enough to drive, my mom made me cart my brothers around so they could be on the wrestling team and on little league themselves. This then freed her up to take on three internships (simultaneously) while she went back to school (she literally had to schedule time to sleep: usually in her car in the parking lots of her jobs).

I sometimes wonder if I should have been a harder teenager to deal with. If I had been a wild child then maybe my mom would have learned how to be a parent on me instead of letting my brothers walk all over her and get out of control: not only is my one brother still on meth--she randomly drug tests him but there are no consequences to him testing positive, so what's the point?, but my other brother's horrid 16 year old girlfriend is LIVING with my family. Their mobile home/trailer/whatever you want to label it only has two bedrooms--my mom's bedroom is the living room because she gave my brothers the actual bedrooms. But H's spoiled bratty girlfriend got in a fight with her dad's live-in girlfriend and "moved out" to a friend's house. I laughed when my mom told me and said it wouldn't last. And I was right. Except Kendall was able to weasel her way into staying at my family's mobile home: displacing H from his own room, so he's sleeping on an air mattress in the living room, which, remember, is my mom's bedroom. When I asked when Kendall is leaving, my mom said she didn't know. I asked what did that mean? My mom said Kendall didn't know when she was leaving. And I said, "Um. No. It's your responsibility to tell her when she's leaving." Um. Duh???

Anyway... poverty sucks, m'kay? And I'm getting really sick and tired of that spoiled brat Kendall colonizing and subjugating my family in their poor little trailer when she fucking lives in an mansion. I kid you not. She lives in a mansion. And I remember Kendall complaining that she didn't get the latest Blackberry and instead got her dad's girlfriend's hand-me-down Blackberry so the girlfriend could get the new one instead. Choke! Gasp! Poor Kendall!

I feel like I can't even write. My mind is churning and stewing.

Fuck.

Labels: curfews, family, mallrats, malls, news, shopping centers

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at November 6, 2007 5:36 PM  Roget said...

Oops. What did I miss here? Long time lurker that lurks once a month or so. From what it sounds like, your family moved out of the grandmother's house? Was that due to the meth problem?

You are correct though. The parenting is not parenting.

Roget

 

at November 6, 2007 5:37 PM  Roget said...

Interesting. I hit my back button and my sentence does say:

"You are correct though. The new parenting is not parenting."

Sorry for the double post but I wanted to clarify that sentence.

Roget

 

at November 6, 2007 10:54 PM  Lorie said...

You can't blame yourself for not being bad enough as a kid. It wasn't your responsibility to provide the appropriate amount of teenage rebellion to teach your mom how to be a decent parent. I feel weird saying this for some reason. I can remember you saying once before that maybe if you hadn't been such a good and conscientious student, then maybe your mom wouldn't have assumed that all teenagers did their homework and your brother wouldn't have been failing his classes at one point. I'm just not sure how seriously you're taking thoughts like that.

That situation just boggles the mind. Now, I only met your brother for a few days, so I'm not really qualified to give an opinion on it, but their relationship seemed so messed up as it was. I can't imagine this new dynamic being added to it.

The one bright spot in the whole thing is that at least she isn't sleeping in his bedroom with him. Not that I personally care if H has sex, but Kendall certainly doesn't sound like a girl you want to accidentally procreate with.

And I just noticed that you used H's real name at one point. Right after - "Except Kendall was able to weasel her way into staying at my family’s mobile home..." If you care to edit it for the anonymity.

 

at November 6, 2007 11:59 PM  jillydreadful said...

Ha! I did! Thanks. It is now edited.

I realize that those kind of thoughts are exceedingly pointless, and it's a remnant of my habit/attraction to self-flagellation that I'm trying to overcome. But I don't know. It feels so real, like it was so close. Like there was this moment that if I had wanted it enough, I could travel through time and make this stuff right.

My mom suspects that they're having sex. H broke up with her briefly in August--briefly meaning about 48 hours because she literally bullied him and guilted him back into the relationship (did I give you all those gory details?). Part of the reason he broke up with her was because she was pressuring him to have sex and he didn't want to--but who knows now, ya know? My mom isn't a parent. She won't even broach the topic with him. And H never answers his phone when I call. Not once since I got the Verizon phone with free mobile-to-mobile.

I deleted his number on my phone last week. I deleted both of my brothers.

 

at November 7, 2007 2:34 PM  Lorie said...

No, I don't know anything about the August drama. But her ability to bully him into doing something doesn't surprise me from the conversations I heard at Comic-Con.

It's too bad he's not talking to you because you and B seemed like the one chance he had at being able to see that Kendall wasn't good for him. Yet even when he seemed to agree with you, he went right back to letting her tell him what to do, so maybe it's better to just let it go.