Happy Evacuation Day to all the Bostonians and Cantabrigians out there!
For the uninitiated, Evacuation Day is a public holiday celebrating the retreat of British forces from Boston during the Revolutionary War. It is a completely serious, totally not-made-up holiday; the fact that it falls on St. Patrick’s day, allowing your public servants to spend their day off bending their elbows at their respective local pubs, is totally coincidental, and anyone who suggests otherwise is probably high on triphenylmethane (green dye #3, ingested with St. Patrick’s Day beer).
This morning, as I was listening to my new favorite radio station, I heard “Valerie Plame,” a new song by the Decemberists. It was pop-y and sweet, like one of those sixties’ girl-name songs, but with topically relevant lyrics (”Hey, Valerie Plame/If that’s your real name”). As I listened to the tale of the CIA agent who became a household word, I suddenly realized that I’ve never told the Internets about the time I applied for a job with the CIA. It’s a story in three acts, and each act features (bien sur) a different guy.
Act 1 opens my senior year of college, when I had a part-time job as an aerobics instructor at a health club. Wait, wait: that statement gives such a false picture of me, I have to digress a bit to explain how I found myself in that position. I had been hired to work the front desk, a job well within my capabilities (take membership card, hang on hook, take locker key off hook, hand to patron). Then my roommate, let’s call her Jenna, also got hired to take some front desk shifts. The club manager developed a thing for Jenna, and I suppose she thought her chances of enticing her into a threesome with her and her boyfriend would be improved if Jenna were at the front desk more often, so I was moved downstairs to the workout area, where I became the most incompetent aerobics teacher in history.
No one can teach do leg lifts to Huey Lewis and the News for a whole eight-hour shift, so in my down time I was assigned to the weight room. One of my co-workers was a man with the last name of Bond; we’ll call him Steve, just in case he is Googling himself. Steve Bond. We always referred to him by both names: “Is Steve Bond working today?” “I saw Steve Bond at the Gingerbread Man on Saturday night.” Steve Bond was thirty, divorced, and ripped. Steve Bond drove a Camaro. Steve Bond had reddish hair and a big Tom Selleck mustache. In every way, Steve Bond was thoroughly different than the Theta Chis I had been dating, and I soon developed a huge crush on him, which thrived on long hours spent with him in the weight room, chatting about this and that in between Nautilus appointments.
Since this was my senior year, I was trying to decide what I would do with the rest of my life. I was an English major who spoke a little German, and was therefore qualified only for positions as 1. Nanny 2. Yellow page salesperson in Amish country or 3. Government service. I applied to take the CIA test, which was scheduled to be given near my college during the winter break. During one of my long shifts at the health club, I learned that Steve Bond was also applying for a government position, as a cartographer, and his exam was being offered on the same day as mine.
This was a sign from the gods that we were meant to be together, the break I had been waiting for. I asked Steve Bond for a ride to the exam, and I vowed I would parlay a shared trip to Harrisburg into a closer connection that — who knows? — might end in the two of us moving to D.C. together after graduation. So I drove up to college during winter break, spent the night of my birthday in my sorority apartment, and waited out on the curb the next morning for Steve Bond to pick me up in his Camaro. We were both wearing formal suits, because that’s what you did in the eighties, even if you were just going to sit for an exam where no one with hiring authority was within a hundred-mile radius.
I don’t remember too much about the day except my thrill at being alone in a car with Steve Bond, and what seemed like forty consecutive multiple choice personality tests. I don’t think there was one item about the gross national product of Burundi or the political situation in the Middle East, but I responded to seven variations on the question, “Do you like tall women?” with either “Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Agree, Somewhat Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree.” (I am a tall woman. What does any of those answers say about me?) I imagined that all those tests would successfully separate the bold, adventurous, resourceful, innovative candidates from the dull, plodding chaff. I’ve since realized that the CIA is built on dull and plodding. Their ideal candidate is respectful of authority and unlikely to engage in any behavior that would leave her open to blackmail.
On the way home, I told Steve Bond that the previous day had been my birthday.
“And you were up here all by yourself? You should have given me a call.”
I was gobsmacked. Steve Bond? Would have taken me out on my birthday?! I spent the whole ride trying to come up with some follow-up that would get him to ask me out that night, but I had nothing. With every mile I could see our future together in a cute little apartment in Georgetown receding further into the distance.
If I could travel back in time I would go back to that day and kick my own ass. Any twenty-one year old girl in the best physical condition of her life who couldn’t figure out how to put the moves on a thirty-year-old newly divorced man doesn’t deserve a college diploma, much less a career in our country’s intelligence service.
Yesterday, I went searching for the school district’s web page to see if they had posted a school cancellation notice. There was nothing yet, but there was a list of places where cancellation information could be found — radio stations, TV stations, and so forth. Apparently, the fire station also rings its bell in a certain pattern at 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. to signal weather-related school changes: two dongs for two hours late, four dongs for no school. I had not been aware of the fire bell code.
The late news did not report that the school district was closed, but at 6:30 the next morning I was awakened by four bells, saving me the trouble of sitting through the display of 400 school closings until they got to the Ns.
I was charmed by this display of analog non-verbal mass communication, and I tried to think of some other modern-day examples. Here’s what I came up with:
Emergency sirens
Clock chimes
Call to prayer
Skyscraper lights that indicate weather changes
With the prevalence of electronic networks, this type of communication might be dying out. Any other examples?
This afternoon, I got two e-mails from book club members alerting me to John Updike’s death, and I promptly e-mailed another friend. We all felt like we knew him in a minor way: I was born in the same town as Updike; my friend L. and he went to the same dentist; J. is helping put together the local literary festival that was planning to honor him in 2010; and then there were his books. At 76, and still so prolific, he was too young to go.
Another writer I’ve covered in these pages, Harold Pinter, also kicked off recently. These things tend to come in threes; who’s next?
Apropos of nothing (really), what IS David Brooks smoking these days? He obviously can’t come up with anything interesting to say about the Obama administration, because he’s back to these “social criticism” columns. Today’s topic: a liberal arts education is nice, but all that questioning the status quo is so tiresome; the real heroes are those who “think institutionally,” those with the great courage to live life strictly within the confines of the rules laid down by the institutions in which they find themselves.
No, really.
In this way of living, to borrow an old phrase, we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us. As we go through life, we travel through institutions — first family and school, then the institutions of a profession or a craft. Each of these institutions comes with certain rules and obligations that tell us how to do what we’re supposed to do…. So the institutionalist has a deep reverence for those who came before and built up the rules that he has temporarily taken delivery of.
Institutions, like family. Marriage. Slavery. Patriarchy. Damn those liberal arts-educated yuppies with all their damn questions.
Sometimes, I think Brooks is trying to become the Stephen Colbert of the New York Times.
The last time it happened, the doctor called to give me the test result and left me with a hearty “Sucks to be you!” This time, since I was dealing with the physician’s assistant, she wanted me to come back in for a follow-up. (Have you ever noticed that for routine care paraprofessionals are much better doctors than real doctors?)
“Mono leaves you at risk for liver and spleen enlargement,” she told me. “We particularly want to take care that your spleen doesn’t rupture.”
Intact spleen: a goal we all can get behind.
“Don’t engage in any high-impact activities, like sledding, ice skating, skiing….”
In other words, pretty much everything that’s fun to do in the winter, except for…
“…or vigorous sex.”
…that. Well, at least there’s “Battlestar Galactica.”
“Now, you could rupture your spleen just sitting watching TV, of course, but don’t worry…”
Worrying!
“…you don’t need to sit around and wonder, ‘Did it rupture?’ If it ruptures, it will hurt, and you’ll know it.”
And then what?
“If that happens, go to the hospital, and we’ll admit you for observation.”
Observation? No surgery? Tylenol? Leeches?
“These days we pretty much just keep you in the hospital for observation, give you some blood, and wait for your spleen to repair itself.”
…
“So try to take it easy. Every chance you get, go to bed early…”
Ha ha ha ha ha.
“Sleep late…”
HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha
“If you’re feeling tired, take a nap.”
HAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA…..Doc, I’m laughing so hard I might rupture my spleen.
My brother and sister-in-law gave Aitch a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey for Christmas (five sizes too big! So he can wear it to school every day for the next five years! Thanks, guys!), and he has consequently become a Steelers fan. We caught a few minutes of the game last night, and I was struck by the awesome typeface used for the numbers and text on the players’ uniforms. (You’d think I would have noticed the past 20 times that Aitch has worn the jersey since Christmas day, but it’s more striking when you see the whole team arrayed on the field.) It’s Futura Condensed, one of the few sans-serif fonts in the NFL, kind of old-fashioned and edgy at the same time, with italics giving an added kick. Go Steelers!
Not surprisingly, there is more than one person on the Internets who cares about such things.
Some time later I changed channels and lit on a PBS program in which they were discussing typefaces. One talking head after another proceeded to savage Helvetica: So boring! So predictable! So mainstream! So unadventurous! I was tired and drifted in and out of consciousness, but every time I picked up the thread they were STILL dissing Helvetica. Those people ripped Helvetica a new one. They beat up Helvetica and took its lunch money. They accused Helvetica of lobbing rockets into Israel AND committing atrocities in Gaza. I was waiting for them to shower a little opprobrium on Comic Sans MS, which I personally consider responsible for most of the evils PowerPoint has unleashed upon the world, but no. It was All Helvetica, All the Time.
Today I googled “PBS, typeface, Helvetica” to see what kind of program I had been watching, and saw that indeed it was a documentary devoted entirely to Helvetica. And people make fun of public television!
An e-mail chain was circulating among Husband’s family this week, with every brother and sister on the cc list. (The family has come rather late to technology: “Awww,” Husband said, “our first family thread!”)
“Your mother wants to get the new Bill O’Reilly book A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity,” a brother-in-law wrote. “He is at a book signing in Ridgewood, NJ today.”
I’m not sure why we were on the thread, because we are hours away from New Jersey. Maybe they were just keeping us in the loop because she purchased her last Bill O’Reilly book in Port City.
This touched off a discussion about who should get the book. You live closer! But you work closer! But I’ll have to hang around five hours after work!
Finally one sister wrote to the other, “You voted for McCain— you get it.”
This weekend, I was invited to a Halloween murder mystery dinner, and I had to come in a costume that involved a formal gown. I had no idea how I was going to pull it off, but then while searching for something else down in the basement, I came across an old dress I had bought to attend a black-tie event in Chicago.
It was made of mauve chenille.
In theory, I love the idea of a chenille evening gown. It’s so Project Runway: “Let’s make a formal piece of clothing out of the most down-home textile we can imagine!” It makes me feel like a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara who happened to stumble into the bedroom, rather than the parlor, in search of dress fabric.
As with many high concepts, though, the execution falls far short of the idea. The dress is cut unflatteringly and does nothing for my figure, and the color washes me out. It’s really comfortable, but it makes me look like an unmade bed.
I first read Brideshead Revisited in college. I was attracted to the cover photo of Anthony Andrews standing in front of a big English manor house with a teddy bear, a tie-in with the BBC miniseries. It wasn’t quite the romance I had anticipated. I enjoyed it, but it would be years before I gained the facility to read that kind of early 20th-century British novel. I’m not sure if it’s the style, the unfamiliar cultural references, or both, but I’ve found the language of novels of that era more “foreign” than Shakespearean English or eighteenth or nineteenth century prose. The only novels I’ve abandoned unfinished in recent memory are Parade’s End, A Dance to the Music of Time, and Of Human Bondage.
I fell in love with Brideshead this time around, although I had a much stronger reaction to Charles (how could he leave his kids?) and, surprisingly, more indulgence for the Marchmains’ religious feelings (back then, I was freshly lapsed, which may have colored my views; now the Catholic church seems as toothless as a monster that once lived under my bed). Between then and now, I’ve also read Jude the Obscure, and so Julia’s renunciation of Charles took gravitas from my memory of Sue Bridehead’s heartbreaking repudiation of Jude. (I wondered if Waugh took the name Brideshead from Sue. I came up with this on my own, although a few clicks reveals that I was not the first.) I found a lot of humor in the book this time: Charles’s conversations with his father were priceless, and Bridey, Samgrass, and Anthony Blanche were all terrific comic characters. I had not remembered that Sebastian ended up in Tunisia (although now that I think about it he’s the spitting image of one of my Peace Corps friends). And the gay angle, which was so shocking to me all those years ago, seemed very mild; at least, any sexual relationship between Charles and Sebastian seemed rather behind the point, while the other dynamics of their friendship seemed much more important.
I never saw the BBC series, but I was eager to see the new remake. It was entertaining enough, but the writers had to take some liberties with the story to crunch it into two hours that didn’t do it justice. On the ship, for example, Julia and Charles set eyes on each other and are in bed within five minutes. This doesn’t trouble my morals, but it does eliminate one of my favorite parts of the book, the long storm during which Charles and Julia huddle on deck, watching the swinging doors break free of their restraints. (This bit of imagery made a brief appearance in the film, but was not developed.) This was also evident after Julia and Charles fall in love and return to Brideshead; they confront Rex, argue with Bridey (who appears to be saying he won’t bring his new wife to Brideshead because they have been living in sin there…for the past twenty minutes), and encounter her dying father within the span of a few hours.
The worst change was not a truncation, but an addition. In the movie, Julia accompanies Sebastian and Charles to Venice, and she and Charles share a kiss, witnessed by Sebastian. His resulting epic sulk makes it seem like his downward spiral was due to jealousy. In the book, Sebastian and Charles’s relationship was compromised by the former’s drinking and the latter’s collusion with Lady Marchmain, not by Charles’s sudden heterosexuality. Other than a brief spark over a lit cigarette, he doesn’t really have eyes for Julia until he meets her again on board the ship.
The acting was mostly well done. Matthew Goode— so cute! — was just right as Charles. Emma Thompson was wonderful, as was Michael Gambon. (My friend J. and I have remarked recently that his characters have an alarming tendency to die, to the point where just spotting him on the screen is tantamount to a plot spoiler. He has a doozy of a death scene here.) I thought that Sebastian and Julia were badly cast, though. They just weren’t that charming; I was rooting for Charles to get rid of them.
Now I can’t wait to see the BBC version. I have a long plane flight coming up in a few weeks, and I’m saving it for then.
