a guide to today’s ny times
-Mallory
Pictures I Would Like To Not See On Facebook Anymore:
1. Engagement pictures that involve a happy couple doing things they don’t actually do in real life, like rolling in the grass or making out on a bridge.
1b. Especially if one of the two fiancees is my ex.
2. Your dinner.
3. Babies of people I went to school with.
4. Class pictures from elementary school when some idiot tags everybody.
-Mallory
As a young man, Peter Thiel competed to get into Stanford. Then he competed to get into Stanford Law School. Then he competed to become a clerk for a federal judge. Thiel won all those competitions. But then he competed to get a Supreme Court clerkship. Thiel lost that one. So instead of being a clerk, he went out and founded PayPal. Then he became an early investor in Facebook and many other celebrated technology firms. Somebody later asked him. “So, aren’t you glad you didn’t get that Supreme Court clerkship?”
So this is interesting.
-Mallory
good morning!
email from mom: By the way, you handled that [uncomfortable situation relating to your work] very well last night.
response from me: I know you think I am a mess of a human being, but I am actually very good at what I do and my unnatural sense of self confidence isn’t wholly derived from being spoiled by you for 26 years.
I’m not sensitive about my impending graduation/doom. Not at all.
Oh, also, this week’s Girls sucked and now I officially hate it for real, you guys.
Have a good day!
-Mallory
Ugh, don’t make me do it.
I don’t want to talk about “Girls.”
I don’t want to talk about Lena Dunham. I don’t want to talk about the fact that “Tiny Furniture” actually made me angry in an active way, in a way that made me want to graffiti “LENA DUNHAM SUX” on a Greenpoint warehouse using sustainable spray paint, purchased at a Greenmarket. I don’t want to talk about the fact that apparently my generation was represented by a movie in which the heroine was fucked in a pipe.
I mostly just want to eat frozen yogurt, watch “The Voice” and put aloe on the sunburn I got today because I forgot I’m pale. Can we talk about “The Voice” instead and that 17 year old girl on Blake’s team who gets all hussified whenever she performs in a way that makes me want to react like a grandma and tell her to calm those hips down, little missy?
Okay, fine.
I liked it.
Are you happy? I laughed. It was funny. The unpaid internship scene particularly. And Becky Ann Baker is basically the best tv mom ever.
But here’s the thing, y’all. “Girls” is about my least favorite traits of myself, my friends and our generation. And that’s fine. But here’s what is not fine: it celebrates these traits. If you recognize yourself in “Girls” and you’re not actively working against those traits, if you’re not actively trying not to live off your parents’ moneys, if you’re not actively trying to extricate yourself from whatever messy relationship-esque situation you’re in, then step fuck the up. You can laugh at “Girls,” sure, cause it’s funny, but you’d better not be living it.
And uh, don’t drink the opium tea a stranger brews in your house.
-Mallory
With the five year anniversary of my graduation from college approaching almost as fast as my thesis deadline, I’ve had lots of time for self-reflection, as I stand over my sink, eating cereal by the handful (or matzoh this week! jew stuff whee!) and I thought I might share some of it with you. Especially since we have basically shared nothing with you lately (grad school is hard, man!).
Some Stuff I’ve Learned Since Graduating College
1. It’s okay not to get it right the first try.
2. Or second try either.
3. People can change, but that still doesn’t mean your boyfriend will.
4. Reading the paper guarantees you will never have to talk about the weather in small talk situations.
5. It’s a terrible idea, but yes, buying those shoes will absolutely make you feel better.
6. There is no shame in losing touch with people.
7. And there is also no shame in judging their wedding pictures on facebook.
8. Trying new things usually sucks, but is always worth it.
8a. Except for that one time I tried a trapeze class. That was stupid.
9. Graduate school will solve nothing, but that doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t go.
10. There’s no rush.
10a. Even though it really really feels liks there is.
-Mallory
So we’ve been away a while.
I’m sorry.
Sometimes life takes turns and even if you happen to be co-writing an exceptionally navel-gaze-y blog, they aren’t turns that you necessarily feel like sharing. They may be too boring, they may be too painful, you may be too busy. In my case, it’s been all three. But I’m sorry I’ve neglected you - and I know you’re out there, because we use google analytics to track you! - because you guys are awesome. Seriously. The emails you send us, the comments you make on posts, they make us really happy.
Anyway, there is one thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and that is the fact that this June will mark five years since I graduated from college. I don’t really remember my college graduation. My parents and I fought a lot because I had mentally graduated like…four months earlier and I wanted to bail on the whole thing, something my photo-happy parents were not having any of. So it’s mostly a blur of silly hats and awkward posed pictures. So… graduation, shmaduation. I’m not feeling terribly nostalgic about college.
But what I am thinking a lot more about are the events that surrounded my graduation, the can-do spirit with which I attacked my imminent entrance into the real world. I spent my senior year spring break in LA, double checking the decision I had made to move there. It passed the test, probably because that trip was my very first Pinkberry and a girl never forgets her first time. And then, the week following graduation, my mom and I went back to LA so I could meet with people and find an apartment. I have very vivid memories of these meetings, of learning what a “drive-on” meant, of my first timing driving over Laurel Canyon, of being overdressed for everything and trying my damnedest to keep copies of my resume from getting wrinkled in my bag. I was going to do something and make something and be something!
Two weeks ago, I went to LA for my spring break and basically did the exact same thing, but slightly less wide-eyed. And it was both invigorating and horribly depressing. Am I in a better position now for all I’ve done, for all I’ve learned, for getting a master’s degree? Or will I never be as great as I was when I was 21 and just so fucking happy to be anywhere?
Oh God, this blog went dark. Here’s a a gif of Rob Lowe dancing on PARKS & REC to counterbalance.
-Mallory
If resisting peer pressure is hard for you, go at it a different way. Only accept jobs at places where you hate all of your coworkers. Alternatively, get them all to hate you. Working somewhere that won’t let you leave for lunch is also a good option, or a place with such elaborate security theater or terrible parking that leaving the office is even more painful than bringing your own food into it. As a last resort, Google “food poisoning” and every lunch spot near you. Read the stories. They’re all true.
-How To Bring Your Lunch to Work (a really useful guide for those of us trying to save cash)
-Mallory
“I recently turned thirty, the age by which, according to William James, “the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.” But he wrote that in 1890, before mobile devices and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and Lana Del Rey and the fragmentation of the self, and I’m happy to report that my character is as soft as unhandled Play-Doh. For the past year I’ve slept mostly in well-worn twin beds generously provided by writing colonies, my life a new kind of nomadism made possible by America’s patrons of the arts. Every morning I get up at seven, or seven thirty, or eight, or eleven, and record my dreams, or forget them, then make my bed, or not, after which I proceed immediately to take a shower, or start the coffee, or eat breakfast, or go for a walk, then sit down at my desk to begin the day’s work, or write e-mails, or stare out the window, or do absolutely anything else. I usually end my day by reading a book, or talking on the phone, or watching basketball highlights on ESPN.com, or wondering why I keep the channel on Jimmy Fallon when every instance of empty enthusiasm makes me loathe him a little more.”
-Jessi
proof that it’s never too late to change
“I am sincere in what I am saying now, and I was absolutely sincere then,” Ms. Sobchak said this month, when a Ukrainian television talk show host, Oleksandr Tkachenko, asked if she was the same person. “Yes, I also was that vulgar fool with pink bows in bright white hair emitting the most unbelievable rubbish. This is also a part of my life, the merry and carefree one. “And in fact I lived a number of years as this enfant terrible. Yes, I was that person.” She added: “I began to change. A situation has taken shape in such a way that a larger number of people saw these changes. But it was the path from my 20th birthday to my 30th.” - Kseniya Sobchak, Russia’s ‘It’ Girl, Dons Opposition Cloak
-Mallory
