A Life Lesson from N*Sync

When I have to drive long distances (Pasadena to Santa Monica, for example), I like to put my iPod on shuffle-mode. Not only does this typically pass the time quickly, but it makes me feel good about myself to know that I can remember all the words to songs in many genres, from Coolio’s “1, 2, 3, 4,” to “Seasons of Love” from Rent, to anything released by Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, or Britney Spears between 2000 and 2004. This knowledge might make some people actually feel pretty crappy (especially if these gems made up the majority of their 995 songs) but no, I am a self-professed Top 40s junkie and I don’t care who knows it.

Driving home last night from my fabulous writing group, and belting out every word to “Bringin’ Da Noise,” a little known N*Sync song from their No Strings Attached album (Classic.), I realized I was on track to turn in to my dad. No, no he doesn’t listen to boy bands. But, like me, his musical taste hasn’t changed much since he was in high school. As a kid, a teenager, and, yeah, two weeks ago when I went to visit him, I have made so much fun of my dad for his CD collection, which I was habitually subjected to within the confines of his white Suburban before I turned sixteen. The guy is stuck in the 80s. “8675309.” “Stray Cat Strut.” “Angel in the Centerfold.” And the 70s. “More than a Feeling.” “American Pie.” And I guess in the 60s too with “Wipe Out” and “California Dreaming.”

I am willing to bet money that if I was super-pumped when N*Sync came on expectedly last night, making my 110 crawl a full-on one-person dance party, I’m still going to love it, and the rest of my shitty music, when I too am a parent. Like my father before me, I will thoroughly embarrass my kids, not with the white-man overbite, which he has perfected over the years, but with my fierce white-girl fist maracas. I’ll know every disgusting lyric of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre’s hits, inflicting upon my flesh and blood not only acute humiliation but my one-armed roof-raises and up-and-down chin juts, complete with what I like to call my signature puffed-out lip pout. So gangsta.

But, I’m ok with it. Embarrassing one’s children through music is a parent’s right. And now I’m actually kinda stoked about having kids some day.

***I just realized I actually have unwillingly subjected someone to my terrible music. Zach Maher, I am so sorry for that best of 1996 stalker-jams mix tape I made you the summer between 6th and 7th grades before you moved to Cincinnati. I hope you didn't think you would really, "Always Be My Baby," which I believe was track 9 or 10.

Picking Up

Last night, my three best friends since elementary school and I went out to the Viceroy to celebrate C's 25th birthday. It had been eight years since we were all together to ring in the occasion (we aren't terrible friends, I swear--between 9/11 happening the day before her 18th and C going to San Fran for college we didn't get the chance), and we went out with the intention of spending quality time with each other, as C was in only for this weekend. Typically we go to Starbucks in sweats when we hang out, so getting dressed up--hair tousled and lips glossed--was a pretty big deal.

Over our first round of Lemon Drops the four of us were huddled on the Viceroy's slick porcelain-colored chaise lounges, discussing our impending infertility, of all things, when this guy dropped down on his haunches, filling a tiny gap in our circle. He proclaimed himself a "professional conversation interrupter." We despised him instantly. He asked what we "ladies" were talking about. "Fertility and babies," I said, hoping to scare him off. The guy started talking about eggs and fertility drugs, divulged his mother is a twin. We glanced at each other, making a silent pact to humor him.

After a couple more minutes of yammering about test tube babies, he asked what we were doing out. I said we came to celebrate C's birthday. "Twenty-one?" he asked nodding at her. "Yup!" she replied, not bothering to emit the sarcasm from her voice. After asking what she wanted for her birthday, I told him that a round of drinks would be nice. (A girl's gotta try, right? Drinks were like $16 apiece!) When it was obvious we wouldn't be getting those, A jumped in, saying, quite nicely actually, that the best present would be for him to "let us get back to our conversation."

Something must have been in the vodka because odd advances from men continued. My favorite was later in the night, during another round of drinks, when some 40-something tried to pick us up with, "Hey, if I hang out with you, you ladies will attract more guys." Eesh. "Ladies" again. So creepy. When we said we weren't interested, politely at first, forcefully when he wouldn't leave, he stammered, saying something about how we shouldn't come out at all if we didn't want to meet guys. Then, he accused us of being lesbians, which we emphatically nodded at--yup! that's it!--practically begging him to leave us alone.

After both guys left, hiding dejection poorly with forced anger--we hadn't been nice enough to tell them we all had boyfriends--I couldn't help but think of Neil Strauss' book "The Game." For those not familiar, Strauss, a Rolling Stone reporter, went undercover to explore the pick-up artist world, introducing us to Mystery, who ran training camps on how to pick up women(he got his own show on VH1 after the book came out).

Most guys pick up girls the same way. They just kinda appear and stand there, awkwardly nodding along before asking a yes or no question. Mystery says that guys need to have a plan, lure us in with a memorable line, a magic trick even. But if the guys last night were any indication, those tactics just made them look like douchebags to a woman with half a brain. Sure, I'm remembering, but not for the right reasons.

I guess if I was single, drunker, and not celebrating C's birthday for the first time in nearly a decade, I would have been nicer to these guys. It is difficult to approach a stranger, let alone a whole group of hot girls (no apologies for honesty!). Men are burdened with having to be the ones to approach and then, in 30 seconds or less, show us they are interesting, funny, charming, and rich all at the same time.

If anything, those guys made me more thankful I have a boyfriend and don't need to subject myself to their kind, night after night, hoping some day one who isn't completely boring or douchey will approach. I learned firsthand that meeting halfway decent guys in bars really is a fruitless activity, as many of my single friends lament...

Literary. Or Not.

To follow up on my writing school post, I was in Memoir class yesterday, soaking in some glowing comments about the fictionalized memoir pages I had turned in last week. "Very funny and visual!" "Great voice!" "Contemporary and marketable!"

Totally genius, I thought, just a tad smug. After all, I worked on those pages. I re-worked them after my first session of Janet's class, creating high-brow-esque metaphors, trying to sound like a real writer, using to sensory details to make my readers "feel" it.

Then, the critiques began, always a longer list than those glowing comments. Most were totally right and I am grateful to receive them. It was my teacher's off-handed comment about how my voice was "casual," and "notliterary," that stoked my fires.

Not literary? Not literary?! How humiliating. Especially because I really thought that, this time, I was literary. I could feel the literary-ness coursing through my veins, collecting in my fingertips and propelling just the right taps on my MacBook's white keys.

Not literary.

So, I decided that I am going to post fiction on here once a week. Not to prove that I, in fact, am literary. I am reading my pages to Fitch and co. tonight, so unless she decides I am a literary genius, I'm guessing I will still be decidedly "casual" tomorrow as well. But I have to do these two page shorts for Fitch each week and she wants us to rework them after we get comments. She's not going to grade them, she said, reworking is just for our own growth. And I apparently really, really need it.

But by putting out my promise to cyberspace to post these re-manifestations of me trying to be literary, 1) I will actually re-work them, and 2) I will have to be accountable for my literary-ness or lack thereof. Both good for that growing I need to do.

Yeah, so that comment kinda pissed me off, right?

On Writing School

Stephen King, who is currently my favorite American writer save Twilight guru Stephenie Meyer, advises not to show your work until it is finished, and even then, to select only a few people whose opinions you trust to read what you have. In his book, "On Writing," King says writing school is unnecessary--just write he says!--which makes me regret paying thousands of dollars for USC when the King School of Writing is basically free. More troubling, is King's assertion that writing schools are filled with people who think they know what they are talking about but, really, are just as ill-equipped to write as you are. Writing entire books--highly suspect. While I have met and made friends with a number fabulous writers, whose opinions I respect, and without whom my own book would still be in my head instead of on 136 Microsoft Word pages, King has a point.

Writing school, I've found, is little more than a bunch of people with big dreams to be famous writers who meet at certain times on certain days, read each other's unfinished work, and then give their uninformed opinions about them. In a field where we are made to put our hearts on paper and allow people to scratch at them with their pens, the constant critique is wrenching enough. Trying to weed through the comments, that sometimes can have more to do with either personal biases or jealousy that they didn't come up with your idea, is frustrating in that you don't always know who is biased, or jealous, or just plain moronic. The instructors don't always know either.

While I don't want to seem like I am biting the hands that feed me (critiques and comments, yum!) each week, I also don't want to lie and say that very person (or teacher) in every writing class--in both New York and Los Angeles--I have taken actually belongs there. Heck, I don't even know if I belong there. Which I perhaps why I was grateful that this semester that I got a spot in White Oleander writer Janet Fitch's fiction class. I was in love with her within minutes into our first day of class after she declared, "Unlike the majority of writing instructors, I believe writing can be taught." She spoke of toolboxes, complete with wrenches and hammers. We needed full sets in order to write well. We needed not just the flathead, but the Phillips too. She said that while we may not use both, or we may prefer the flathead, it was important to at least know how, so we could make that choice. Tools sounded a lot better than passing out pages and hoping for the best.

Finally, this semester, I am learning to become a writer. A real writer. I feel distinguished just thinking about it.