"Pretty Woman" in NYC
You know what? I could post my incredibly depressing not-yet-finished musings on scattering my father's ashes. But I don't actually think I can stand it. Let's just be honest, all the other drama of my life -- job offers, crushes, etc. -- is doing a lovely job of distracting me from that stuff, and by "distracting" I don't mean "horrible bad distraction," I mean, "don't look directly at the sun, look here or you'll be blinded!" distraction. So here we go.
Yesterday, I was teaching Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and, trying hard NOT to do the conventional it's-so-postcolonial reading, ended up discussing Miranda a lot. One of my crankier students, who knows me well, did a run of comparison between marriage and prostitution and said, "oh, and that's why 'Pretty Woman' is so popular." I actually think that "Pretty Woman" is so popular because *I* have a shameful crush on Julia Roberts' smile and her Prince cover in the bathtub and if *I* can have a crush on a girl with big hair like that, you know the rest of the culture was there already. Nah, ok, I have an analysis of the film, too, although it's not quite that. Anyway, point being -- and I do have one, although maybe I'm just writing because I feel goofy with emotional exhaustion -- I'm currently in NYC for 24hrs of re-enacting SOME aspects of "Pretty Woman" today, and they're making me giggle.
Fancy University invited me to speak to a group of alumnae at a dinner for one of them. I told them that I teach Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that I wouldn't do anything that would make me cancel class (between us, with death and job interviews, I've cancelled/had subs more than usual this term and it makes me feel ashamed, like I'm short-changing the students). So they loaded me into a Lincoln Town Car on Tuesday after my graduate course AND the meeting with the Dean about "communication in the Humanities," so basically after I'd worked an eight-hour no-breaks teaching-and-meetings day, and brought me to the Fancy University Club. So I'm in this Lincoln Town Car and the persona I can't help but assume is, I now see, Julia Roberts'. Oh my gawd the driver opened the door for me! Oh my god, he wouldn't even listen to the radio unless I told him to, and was...deferential. This is NOT NYC cab-driving etiquette, where I usually get happily hit on within five blocks (or ignored in favor of international long-distance cell phone calls), let me tell you. The trip, one way, apparently costs $390. JESUS. I'm getting driven back after the fancy alumnae dinner tonight, same guy, so that I can be home by about 1am to teach my course in the morning. Oh yeah, Fancy U sure has resources. But I'm amused that I got all squeaky-voiced and impressed and I'm-such-a-bumpkin about it all, although I really AM very impressed.
Then I get to the Fancy U Club, and they've got, like, rooms named after neighborhoods in Small Town and drinks specials and oh, all kinds of weird Fancy U nostalgia...including, or at least I HOPE it's nostalgia, the narrowest bed I've slept on *outside* a dorm room situation, facing the largest TV I've ever operated (in other words, I think the narrowness and... primness of the bed is deliberate, and they are saying so). Gosh I'm glad I never got around to placing the dirty craigslist ad inviting someone to my fancy hotel room ... by the time I was done with meetings and got here, it was 10:30, and the bed really, really wouldn't have worked out anyway. I'm stealing various amenities, including a Fancy U shoehorn (and a tiny sewing kit! yaay!), and of course these are the fanciest amenities of any hotel I've stayed in, duh, Russians Don't Stay In Hotels, after all, except when it's the MLA. Oh, oh and being an insane post-traumatic insomniac now, I woke up at 6am and couldn't go back to sleep again for hours, and then overslept madly ... so I missed the "complimentary breakfast." I was in the elevator and some guy got on and I was feeling rueful because I was coming back up empty-handed having tried the bkfast buffet and found I'd arrived late, and I told him so and he turned out to be the manager of the hotel and handed me his card -- ! -- (do I have that movie by heart? yes) and went down to the kitchens and got me a plate of breakfast, featuring a bagel, a banana, and some fruit (coffee, delicious, in brewer in room), and virtually clicked his heels with pleasure that he could help me. !!!
But the real piece de resistance, and by this I really mean "piece of business that needs to be resisted" is that I AM a whore. I'm about to be a huge whore for Fancy U. I'm going to this dinner, with the Provost and twenty female graduates of Fancy U, and I don't have to ask any of them for money, but I've been given a sheet with information about each of them and this sheet mentions, oh, let's see, that some of these women are heads of important divisions in significant law and insurance firms, several specializing -- yes! -- in corporate take-overs, or whatever it is that "negotiated acquisitions of companies" means. So I'm actually on my way right now to go whore myself to a bunch of corporate ladies. Hot hot hot, right? At least in my imagination, which is currently figuring me as an innocent streetwalker... where did my iPod go, with its Prince mix??
so yeah. Life, it goes on.
Yesterday, I was teaching Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and, trying hard NOT to do the conventional it's-so-postcolonial reading, ended up discussing Miranda a lot. One of my crankier students, who knows me well, did a run of comparison between marriage and prostitution and said, "oh, and that's why 'Pretty Woman' is so popular." I actually think that "Pretty Woman" is so popular because *I* have a shameful crush on Julia Roberts' smile and her Prince cover in the bathtub and if *I* can have a crush on a girl with big hair like that, you know the rest of the culture was there already. Nah, ok, I have an analysis of the film, too, although it's not quite that. Anyway, point being -- and I do have one, although maybe I'm just writing because I feel goofy with emotional exhaustion -- I'm currently in NYC for 24hrs of re-enacting SOME aspects of "Pretty Woman" today, and they're making me giggle.
Fancy University invited me to speak to a group of alumnae at a dinner for one of them. I told them that I teach Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that I wouldn't do anything that would make me cancel class (between us, with death and job interviews, I've cancelled/had subs more than usual this term and it makes me feel ashamed, like I'm short-changing the students). So they loaded me into a Lincoln Town Car on Tuesday after my graduate course AND the meeting with the Dean about "communication in the Humanities," so basically after I'd worked an eight-hour no-breaks teaching-and-meetings day, and brought me to the Fancy University Club. So I'm in this Lincoln Town Car and the persona I can't help but assume is, I now see, Julia Roberts'. Oh my gawd the driver opened the door for me! Oh my god, he wouldn't even listen to the radio unless I told him to, and was...deferential. This is NOT NYC cab-driving etiquette, where I usually get happily hit on within five blocks (or ignored in favor of international long-distance cell phone calls), let me tell you. The trip, one way, apparently costs $390. JESUS. I'm getting driven back after the fancy alumnae dinner tonight, same guy, so that I can be home by about 1am to teach my course in the morning. Oh yeah, Fancy U sure has resources. But I'm amused that I got all squeaky-voiced and impressed and I'm-such-a-bumpkin about it all, although I really AM very impressed.
Then I get to the Fancy U Club, and they've got, like, rooms named after neighborhoods in Small Town and drinks specials and oh, all kinds of weird Fancy U nostalgia...including, or at least I HOPE it's nostalgia, the narrowest bed I've slept on *outside* a dorm room situation, facing the largest TV I've ever operated (in other words, I think the narrowness and... primness of the bed is deliberate, and they are saying so). Gosh I'm glad I never got around to placing the dirty craigslist ad inviting someone to my fancy hotel room ... by the time I was done with meetings and got here, it was 10:30, and the bed really, really wouldn't have worked out anyway. I'm stealing various amenities, including a Fancy U shoehorn (and a tiny sewing kit! yaay!), and of course these are the fanciest amenities of any hotel I've stayed in, duh, Russians Don't Stay In Hotels, after all, except when it's the MLA. Oh, oh and being an insane post-traumatic insomniac now, I woke up at 6am and couldn't go back to sleep again for hours, and then overslept madly ... so I missed the "complimentary breakfast." I was in the elevator and some guy got on and I was feeling rueful because I was coming back up empty-handed having tried the bkfast buffet and found I'd arrived late, and I told him so and he turned out to be the manager of the hotel and handed me his card -- ! -- (do I have that movie by heart? yes) and went down to the kitchens and got me a plate of breakfast, featuring a bagel, a banana, and some fruit (coffee, delicious, in brewer in room), and virtually clicked his heels with pleasure that he could help me. !!!
But the real piece de resistance, and by this I really mean "piece of business that needs to be resisted" is that I AM a whore. I'm about to be a huge whore for Fancy U. I'm going to this dinner, with the Provost and twenty female graduates of Fancy U, and I don't have to ask any of them for money, but I've been given a sheet with information about each of them and this sheet mentions, oh, let's see, that some of these women are heads of important divisions in significant law and insurance firms, several specializing -- yes! -- in corporate take-overs, or whatever it is that "negotiated acquisitions of companies" means. So I'm actually on my way right now to go whore myself to a bunch of corporate ladies. Hot hot hot, right? At least in my imagination, which is currently figuring me as an innocent streetwalker... where did my iPod go, with its Prince mix??
so yeah. Life, it goes on.