Apollo's Creed, or: One ignorant egomaniac deserves another

I'm not really much of a news junkie, but I read this article yesterday about a girl suing a man because she got attacked while wearing a t-shirt with a stupid slogan that he made. Only in my imagination and cheesy superhero movies did I think such greed and idiocy existed on such a common-day level. I shouldn't find this surprising by now.

First off, when I saw "Obama Slave Shirt Sparks Lawsuit Threat," I thought it was some lame hipster being dimwittedly "ironic," by putting the cover of the New Yorker or something on a t-shirt to show how retro-yet-handy he could be by using an iron-on transfer. When I read the slogan on the t-shirt, though, "Obama Is My Slave" interpreted immediately in my mind as "Obama Is My (Sex) Slave." Like something a young female collegiate liberal would display upon her bosom to flaunt her passion to the candidate and yet still remain edgy. Then a few girls saw "slave" and "Obama" in the same sentence, got pissed, overreacted, whatever.

Then I read that she reportedly "threatened to sue" for "all he's got." What, did she not have her contacts in when she purchased it? Did the shirt, possibly intended for pajama use only, fall in a convenient spot on Laundry Day? Was she a Hilary fan? Did she spot a future trend and think it was a secret DaVinci code when she couldn't read anything offensive on it when looking in the mirror? There's a good blonde joke floating somewhere in our midst. Or, when viewing it in conjunction with his other work in his one location, was there any doubt at all what point his designs were trying to make? Especially in light of his childish pretension?

Perhaps she honestly didn't realize how offensive it could be to others; maybe she herself was an edgy collegiate liberal who wanted to make a bold statement at that night's Young Democrat meeting by broadcasting her political lust for the dashing nominee. That being said, I doubt that any clear-thinking human being, after making any of the aforementioned excusable lapses in intelligence or judgment, would then return to the store and threaten to sue his ass for a purchse that she made of her own free will.

At least Apollo Braun is unabashed about what an egocentric prick he is. He's protected by the First Amendment, and hot damn, is he going to make the most of it. All sardonicism aside, this girl agreed with a controversial statement enough to buy it on a t-shirt and wear it in a massively public environment. But she wimps out when it receives the bad end of the controversy that it was, for all purposes, intended to garner--then has the audacity to retreat further into cowardice by saying that Moron McHack is now responsible and owes her money and ass-kissing. I'll give credit where credit's due, but I think she just maxxed out her victim card. You make your statement and you stand by it--or else the First Amendment isn't worth gravel.

I am not saying the other girls were right or even justified in attacking her. Nor am I discounting the shock and fear that she probably went through. It could have turned into a nasty, nasty situation very quickly. But you know what? She was "cursed at...for her shirt," "pushed," one girl "pull(ed) the earphones out of her ears, another spit in her face." No permanent injuries, no damage to property, nothing but an unfortunate confrontation. Every citydweller has one. Hell, I bet they have at least five or six.

Not so fast, Apollo Braun. You may not be at legal fault, but you're still guilty of being a douchebag. I couldn't care less which candidate he supports, but the least he could do is make his reasoning make sense. Braun is Jewish, and says the only thing he likes about Obama is that he is black, which "opens the door for other minorities," yet says Obama "reminds (him) of Adolf Hitler," a man who organized the systematic intentional extermination of everyone who did not fit into the Aryan status quo. And then, in the same breath as that argument, right when he's flashing his own Victim Card about being Jewish and subject to discrimination, BAM! He "does not like Obama because 'he is a Muslim.'" Go ahead, Apollo. Use it as an insult. Don't worry about it being completely incorrect. If it's in large enough font, that makes it true. It'll be ironic, right?

Oh, so the views expressed on your t-shirts aren't yours? Not even with BOTH of your names obnoxiously immortalized in the lower right corner? I'm sure your SoHo market demographic is full to the brim of "ordinary WASPs" who staunchly believe that America is not ready for a black president. It's ok, though. I have a few designs that I whipped up myself that I think would suit both you and them:

I realize that I'm giving him exactly what he wants when I pay this story the least bit heed, him being the attention-whoring cartoon of a person he is. The joke may be on him, since I doubt anyone reads this anymore after I stopped writing for two months, and any kind of traffic I could bring him is ghostly in comparison to this story being on the front page of Metro yesterday. But you know what, I'll take the high road. I hope that he gets a ton of myspace friends that he'd never even heard of before. I hope that people drop $69-$250 when they're desperately seeking to be edgy like everyone else. I hope people follow in his lead and puts everything that comes out their mouth, ear, or ass onto a t-shirt so that everyone who didn't get sprinkles on their ice cream when they were a kid can finally feel like they've contributed to society in some fashion while they're waiting for their lawsuit settlement checks to roll in.

A Cry For Help, Right Next To the Ice Cream

I'm kind of worried about Seth, you guys.

He keeps putting stuff in the freezer.

I mean, it was fine at first, when it was just the tofu, alcohol, and coffee. Then a few weeks ago, I discovered his suit coat chilling with them during a routine snack check. He'd worn it out the night before, so I suspiciously dismissed it on grounds of drunken absentmindedness. I can't even count the amount of times I've woken up the next morning with star-shaped stickers on my face, bags of chips I didn't remember buying, only wearing one shoe, with vomit maybe not all in the toilet. Pretty tame, I know, but comparable to a frozen suit coat. He told me later that the night before, someone got gum on the sleeve and he knew that sticking it in the freezer would make the gum easier to remove. It was gone after a few days, and I forgot about the whole incident.

Until this morning, that is, when I found a stack of records snuggling next to each other by the icy wall. They were a bunch of old vinyl in their old original sleeves: Best of Sondheim, Xanadu, Sinatra in Pal Joey, Edwin Drood. He'd hung them up in his room two different ways in the two months we've lived here, and now they've been degraded to this. And the level in that Ketel One bottle hasn't gone down a millimeter.

Please, Seth. You know that you can always come to me, especially if you have a problem. I'm here for you, whatever it is. We'll figure out what to do. I just don't want to be the first to get there if we ever get a cat.

That's what she said

Almost two weeks ago, Seth and I moved into a new apartment in Brooklyn. The bathroom doesn't have a sink and we don't have internet, but we have our own rooms, so we're pretty satisfied.

I went away to Kirksville for a week, which I plan to give its due attention later. When I got back, I found to my dismay that the gentleman who was supposed to have hooked up our internet was in fact not a gentleman at all, but a douche, who was surly to my roommate and gruffly remarked that there were X amount of things that he needed before he could connect us to the system of tubes that supplements our post-collegiate procrastination. He told Seth to make a date for the next week.

There is a smattering of wireless connections floating around our space. They are all password-protected and typically-labeled, save one: a saucy unsecured network dubbed Tompkins Is Pussy. It might as well be named Carmen Sandiego, for it is as elusive as it is alluring. In our desperation for convenient Facebook, Seth and I asked our English-speaking neighbors what internet services they used and how good the connection was.

A friend of ours knew someone on the first floor, and he said, "Yeah, Steve's been on Tompkins Is Pussy, but it doesn't last very long, and it's really hard to connect to."

Without even thinking.

No sleep 'till Brooklyn

So I guess the reason I haven't written this week is because when I haven't been working, I've been travelling 140 blocks uptown to visit apartments that until yesterday I thought were in our price range. Since then we've had to lower the bar about $100. When I haven't been on the subway, I've been napping, since I usually average about 4-5 hours a night. When I haven't been napping, I've been either at the cold reading sessions for Ten Grand Productions (the reason why I am not reduced to a trembling mass at the bottom of the loony bin) or at the gym, burning off the copious amounts of reduced-fare Easter candy that I've felt compelled--nay, forced--to consume as a stress-management tactic.

And the reason that I'm sitting here clicking away in between rows of pink half-dollar Peeps and guilty snatches of Seth's Hershey Minis (except the Special Darks, lest I want my throat slit), is because I need five damn minutes to unwind after the news that Seth and I definitely need to be out by the 31st (which means in three days settle on an affordable apartment in God knows where, apply, get accepted, and move our stuff), because someone definitely dropped the ball when it came to communication, and this time you can't say we weren't doing our part.

It's like ten thousand spoons whan all you need are your hands and tongue back

Usually I'm not very good at spotting these things, but nonetheless it seems ironic that I would move to a big city to find acting work, only for my first show to be directed by Truman alumni.

It seems similarly ironic that I would get to play Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, a play that I've never studied in any of my classes and had never read on my own. Not just I-was-supposed-to-read-it-for-class-but-I-had-to-label-every-song-in-my-iTunes-by-genre-and-scrub-the-toilet not studying; it wasn't even covered by the curriculum. I skimmed it when I was preparing, but I considered it as equally valuable to brush up the plays with which I was more familiar, and since there were more of those, that task vacuumed up more time.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Not a bit.

Small (Town) World

The stage manager led me into the room where I was supposed to read for Katharina in Taming of the Shrew with two other people. There was a blond lady, a man in his late twenties, and a dark-haired lady whose name I knew was Sabrina. I got ready to begin the scene.

"Let's see, first of all, Meredith...." They pointed at me like I was the perpetrator in a police lineup. I gulped. "You went to Truman!" The man and Sabrina threw their arms up in celebration.

"Yeah, yeah! Who went to Truman?" I asked.

"We did!" they both responded. Joy surged through my every capillary.

"What year?"

"Two thousand one," the man replied. "It'd be right before you came, so I think Alan Altmansberger would be still around that you know."

"I totally know Alan! Do you know Randy Bame?" I exclaimed.

"Hell yeah I know Randy Bame!" he laughed.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"Brian Waters," he said.

"Oh! I've heard of you!" It rang a heavenly choir of bells; this guy played a key role in many of Randy's tales of the olden days when he first started working in the auditorium.

Suddenly, I didn't feel quite so nervous anymore.

I say the darndest things

(after Seth revealed to me that his favorite pair of jeans had torn in frightening vicinity to the crotch)

"I think that's a Freudian rip."

A Hermit Among Men

When I was younger, I read a story in which the main character's family got a new refrigerator, and she and her younger brother took the box it came in and made it into a playhouse. They cut out holes for windows, decorated the outside with marker, and would have had sleepovers in it had their parents not forbade it.

My family was not extravagant enough to purchase a new refrigerator, so most of my special places were behind the furniture or under tables. I decorated a few of those with markers, too. One time, though, my mom brought home a box that was large enough for me to fit in. I was a tall kid, so this was a big deal. I sat in this box (while also under my desk) to read, write, and color, before it split up the sides from oversittage. Not even Scotch tape could fix it. When I first heard the term "anti-claustrophobic," I was quick to identify.

Tonight I saw a man pulling a cart down the street which was tightly piled with crap mounting taller than himself. He reminded me of a sort of hermit crab, though instead of pulling along his house, it was his possessions. This was nothing new to me, only this time inspiration struck. Now, I don't ever, ever wish to become homeless, and I don't see it happening at all, but in the unfortunate, unlikely event that it does, I decided what I would do. I'd stake out Ikea or a department store and find their largest refrigerator box, or at least a decently-sized washer/dryer box. I'd get a dolly or two, or at least a few skateboards or something, and hook them up to the bottom. I'd fill it with my pillows and blankets, decorate the inside and outside with markers and collage trinkets, and pull it with me wherever I went. When it broke, I would make another, and though the lack of showers would be a deterrent, the absence of rent payments would balance out a thing or two.

There Will Be Strawberry Jelly

There was an Oscar party yesterday at Seth's friend's house. I think between he, I, her, and her roommate, we had seen about half the films that were up for consideration overall, but we'd each seen Juno at least once.

In the station on the way there, a saxophonist played "And I Love Her" for spare change. If he hadn't been on the opposite side of the tracks, I would have given him spare dollars. Among other things, this prompted Seth and I to spend most of the ride there singing "Bohemian Rhapsody."

This is the same friend that we spent both Christmas and the Superbowl holidays with, and so we inadvertently established a tradition of toting copious amounts of food on the train and stuffing ourselves silly upon arrival. We'd agreed that our dishes had to correspond to a nominated film. Her roommate got mini pecan pies and jelly to stand for the meat pies and blood in Sweeney Todd. Seth got french bread and baby brie for Michael Clayton, and pickles and peanut butter for Juno. I brought milkshake supplies for There Will Be Blood.

I watched a Barbara Walters interview with Harrison Ford in a segment before the ceremony. His first agent had told him that he'd never go anywhere in the business. She asked him if it bothered him that he never won an Oscar. He said no. I think I'd rather have his career than an Oscar, anyway. She asked what he would most like to be remembered for in his lifetime, and he said, "As a good collaborator."

The red carpet pre-show only made me feel contrary. The other three spent that half hour criticizing the hell out of the outfits and actors, and I spent it contradicting them out of spite, regardless of whether or not I agreed. Which usually I didn't.

I was already ripe with a food baby before Jon Stewart got warmed up, and my best friend didn't win his category, but mostly I didn't have any major beef with the decisions. I especially enjoyed the Tribute to Binoculars Montage, when the voice-over announcer stumbled over an actress's name, and when one of the winners for Best Original Song got to come back on and make her acceptance speech when she was cut off by the musicians.

Perambulance

I was walking with Seth in the park this past unseasonably-sunny-yet-seasonably-chilly Thursday, when our ramble was interrupted first by the crescendoing squalls of an approaching baby and second by a man hurriedly pushing this angsty child in a stroller past us.

My initial annoyance was superseded by my impressed realization at how sly that trick was. I imagined him having a twenty-minute distance to cover in ten or less before the old lady came home and bitched at him for leaving his dirty socks on the floor again, or for potentially making them late for the six-month-old's play date. Instead of sighing in resignation, it would strike him to gently nudge the child awake or take away its Dora the Explorer until you could hear its wails in the East Village. All he'd need is a blue and red flashing light. Sidewalk traffic would clear to his advantage, and he would make it back to the apartment with minutes to spare. Crying baby! Very urgent! Stand back!

Or he could have been a pushy asshole. Whatever. Since I plan to keep this tactic in mind for future use, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

A 15-Minute Brush With Fame

I served coffee to Phillip Seymour Hoffman this past Tuesday. I didn't freak out or gush or get his autograph, because that would not have been professional. And by professional, I don't mean barista-wise, I mean acting-wise. Maybe that's a little pretentious of me. But he did look really tired. He got a triple espresso (in case you wanted to know), so he must have been.

(But yes, I blushed like a Catholic hooker, and yes, my hands shook the whole time. And he smiled and thanked me and left a tip. What a gentleman. I want to buy all of his movies.)

I was really geeked out, and continue to be, but it also reminded me that I got to meet Danny Glover in Kirksville almost three years ago. And when I was younger, I met the guy who played the older brother on The Wonder Years when he was signing autographs at the Target store.

Somehow, this reminiscence merged Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with Andy Warhol's "Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, etc., etc." principle, which seemed ot me a stupid one anyway, because what did he mean by "fame"? Did he mean local fame, or national, or international fame, or somewhere in the middle? How many people would have to hear of them to constitute "fame"? Does posthumous fame count? Did he even bother to take into account that technology could get so wide-reaching and specialized that socitety might eventually fragment into as many individualized demographics as there are people themselves, each person choosing only what he or she wanted to see and hear and consume in their own private Idahos?

Therefore, I conceived a much more plausible, easy-to measure postulate. Each person in the world will have at least fifteen minutes of meeting someone famous. It counts if you are chatting in the grocery line with Bill Gates for five minutes, take a minute to get Scott Baio's autograph, and spend ten glorius minute sharing a cab with Danny Elfman on the luckiest night of your life. Maybe not the best one of his. My point is, it can conglomerate if needed. If you happen to be famous yourself, great. Not only will your work be taken care of, but then you can spread the joy of meeting someone famous to others.

Fifteen minutes at a time.

Good Job, Good Pay

They're promoting me at work to "keyholder." I began training two days ago, and there's very little difference in the actual tasks assigned to me. It means that I get there at 5:30 AM instead of 6 for the three or four mornings out of the week that I open the store. I unlock the door, set out the muffins after checking in the deliveries, occasionally do a supply order, make a dollar more an hour that I used to, and my name is listed on the company circulars of "staff," right under the assistant manager's.

I couldn't help but feel a little filthy about moving up the ladder of corporate inconsequentiality; this is probably due to residual postadolescent distrust of authority and fear of somehow losing my underdog street cred to those I now "outranked." This is probably also why I ended up listening to four different Pink Floyd albums before noon. Five if you count The Wall as two, which I don't really.

One of my friends' creative writing professors told her that he used to work at Taco Bell for several summers as a teen, but when they started talking to him about moving into upper management, he knew it was time to find another job. I used to mock my boss at TB (the second boss I had, that is), because he was a cocky little shit about being the manager of a measly link in the fast food chain. Part of me scorns the apparent injustice of having authority over someone just because of a few extra responsibilities, or a month extra seniority, or a few more kisses on the ass. I can't shake my bitterness over how arbitrary some advantages in life are, and how some people can be comparable in intelligence and work ethic, but one is given the leg up because they were born into money or had better connections--and gets an overinflated ego about something of miniscule consequence.

Part of me likes the extra responsibility even more because it caters to my inner control nut who will savor the hell out of the half hour of solitude that I'll have to make sure everything is convenient, stocked, and perfect, and the full confidence that this will be done because I will have done it myself. I'm worried that these tendencies will reveal that I'm more suited for upper management than I ever thought, or wanted to be, possible.

"Too much Mrs. Dash! Add Nutmeg!"

Enter Roommate #4,583,917.

Rachel sat me down and told me that she and Matt decided to also adopt Nutmeg, another cat from the same household. Apparently their owner was having a baby and didn't want to neglect the cats after she popped it out. Which was thoughtful, I suppose, but also probably hard on the cats, especially since Dazz had barely emerged from underneath Rachel's bed since she arrived. Maybe they wanted a more social cat, maybe they wanted to do the woman a favor, maybe they thought getting Dazz a sister would bring her closer to civilization, but she asked me if when Seth and I moved, if we were interested in taking Dazz "if she didn't work out."

I don't know what "not working out" means, but I told her I would if Seth agreed and our landlord would let us--or at least, if there were a place we could hide it.

I went to Rachel's room today and managed to tempt Dazz from Under the Bed, but when I tried to pick her up and carry her to my room for some love, the claws came out her paws and into my chest, and once more she disappeared.

I've not yet seen Nutmeg. I think they made her up.

Cat Power = Modest Mouse

Today I gained yet another roommate in order to rid ourselves of a few others. Rachel came home with a lady cat named Dazz, who, according to Ben, dashed into her room and underneath her bed the second she got home. She pulled Dazz out in order to show her where the litterbox was, and I got to meet her briefly before she retreated to underneath the couch. It will not be long before she and I will be the best of friends.

So it goes

When I was a junior in high school, I met a guy named Evan. I knew him through Speech and Debate and theatre activities, which by their time-consuming nature allowed us to become close enough to begin dating. He was my first serious-ish boyfriend, so naturally I'd spend a lot of time at his house, especially since he lived so near the school and we'd hang out there after the aforementioned extracurriculars. We were both smart kids and enjoyed reading (especially Kurt Vonnegut) and writing (mostly existential essays for class that attempted to imitate prestigous literature that I was too young and too academically overcommitted to understand).

I didn't meet his mother right away. She was always gone, or sleeping or something, when I happened to be over initially. He always seemed a little anxious whenever she came up in conversation. His dad was cordial and awkwardly polite, allowing Evan a surprising amount of freedom and space. They had five dogs and a number of cats that I was never allowed to reveal. At one point I was able to name them all. His dad couldn't stand them, and Evan tolerated them good-naturedly.

I'm not sure how I first met her, but from all the time I spent over there, it was inevitable. She was slight and kind, with eyes like Evan's: green and feline-sleek. Their noses were similar as well, and both their smiles were thin-lipped and came up higher on one side than the other. Hers was a quick surprise when it appeared. His was more ready and often; he shared a cautious, haunted expression with his dad.

She used to be a teacher, and liked to talk to us, even though she also was quick to give us our space when she felt that it was time for us to be alone. She'd taught both special-needs kids and gifted kids before she retired, and she told me stories of when Evan was small and she recognized his potential from his problem-solving skills, such as when he wanted to play at the sink with the water faucet ("I didn't get it, either," she'd giggled) and what he chose to stand on and how he got it to the sink without her help. She wanted to see how he did it on his own.

He was applying to colleges when we dated, and she would read his essays and critique them. Again, I'm not sure how she got on to reading the stories and essays I'd write for my AP Language class; maybe I asked for her opinion, I don't know. She always liked reading what I wrote, encouraged me earnestly, and once asked me to write a story for her. "OK, what about?" I asked.

She needed a day to think. I came by after school another day and she told me, "I want you to write me a story about God, the universe, and cats." So I did. I spent weeks on it, used profanity in a manuscript for the first time, and it may have stretched over twenty pages. When I finished, I came over not to see Evan but to see her (he was actually out of town at the time). She loved it, and after she read it we ended up talking for over four hours. We came close to ordering pizza for dinner except my mom called me home.

There was a reason for his reluctance to talk about her, perhaps even for the haunted look. Early in our relationship, we walked into his house, only to find it in shambles. There were few family photos because she destroyed them in a fire one day. All the pets were hers. Twice she had to go to treatment facilities for manic depression.

She also sent me funny emails during the school day, made sure we had plenty of snacks, gave us movie recommendations, and took roll after roll of pictures when Evan and I went to Prom. I'd just learned how to make gum-wrapper chains, so out of the blue one day she gave me a basket full of three diffrerent kinds of Wrigley's. Evan told me she'd been excited about that all day. Once I called, asking for him, and when he wasn't there we started talking about books, and she read to me a chapter from Me Talk Pretty One Day. When I found it just as comical, she ended up getting it for me for my birthday along with two cards. Hers were the best cards. I still have them all. She was always kind to me, and I never saw her in her bad moments.

Evan went away to school, and soon she ended up divorcing his dad and moving to California. I never really talked to her or heard from her after that, but when I'd meet up with Evan and ask about her, he told me that she would ask about me and that she still had a few of my old high school photos.

I heard from him today for the first time in about a year. He told me that she'd died in August. Right about the time I was bitching about moving and routinely drenching my liver in Captain Morgan. I remembered her from time to time, wondering how she was. If I knew how to get in touch with her, I doubt it would have been any bit awkward.

She still had a few old pictures of me among her things.

Gotta start somewhere

I can honestly say that doing theatre in Kirksville has prepared me, in some extent, for auditioning in New York, because my first one was last night and it was one of the most amateurly-run ones I'd ever attended.

That was not really meant to be a slight to Kirksville or the people running the auditions, by the way. I'd had certain expectations of "doing theatre in the real world" and all it entails: directors dismissing you on the spot or twelve seconds into your monologue because you were too short/tall/blonde/old/plain/pale/etc, lines spilling out onto the sidewalk and stretching around the block.

I got there two hours early, anticipating a line. Not only was there none, but it turned out that the location was to be in the auditorium of a Catholic girls' school. My fear was replaced by a creeping arrogance. I came back about twenty minutes before sign-ups, and there were a few girls waiting.

It was for a "festival" of five one-acts, four of which had parts I could fill, and three of which were directed by the playwrights. The directors set up stations in five different areas in the auditorium where actors would rotate around and do cold readings, which I was prepared for.

I was first in line to read for the excerpt from Waiting For Lefty, with a twentysomething gentleman with a photocopied headshot that looked like he had peered facedown onto the copier and pressed "start." The director handed us the scripts, told us where to stop reading and gave us a minute to scan them. I asked if we could take them outside and read them over with each other first. "No, no, that's all right, you can just read them here," she said.

For the other three I wasn't so lucky; they handed me the script and told me to go when ready.

One of the director-written shows had a character that was so shy she didn't talk, but instead wrote down what she wanted to say on index cards, and was "somewhat of a clairvoyant," and at one point we had to gather around her and mime looking at what she was predicting with belief/disbelief while two other characters exchanged dialogue.

The ratio of females to males was about 12:1. That was about the odds, I found, of their ability matching their headshot quality. Except for that first guy, they all had lovely headshots.

I'm really, really not writing this to make fun of anyone. I enjoyed being involved in Kirksvillian theatre, and these people were very kind. Yes, they were amateurs in every sense of the word, in that they were doing it purely for the love of directing and sharing stories theatrically with others. And, yes, I was also hoping for something a little bigger and better; I came here to start acting professionally. I wanted a little challenge. But I suppose if there's anything I should have learned here, it is "just because it's New York, doesn't mean that it's always going to be bigger/better; it only means that there will be the full platter of extremes," from hollow extravagant Broadway to the greenest of newbies.

There is another next Tuesday. I'm really hoping for that other extreme.

Not a creature was stirring. Or so we thought.

My other two housemates went home to California for the wintertime holidays, which left Seth and myself with a little over a week of having the place entirely to ourselves. After sharing a room for the past two months, we literally (but not really literally) exploded across the apartment, though reluctantly we had to pack it all back in when it came time for their return. Rachel moved back in on January first, and Matt on the third.

And in the meantime, so did Minnie and Fievel.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the ol' sleeping futon, yacking with Seth and getting ready for bed, when a small furry thing darts from the closet out the door and into the bathroom. I've stared down bulbous cockroaches and lurking subway creepsters without blanching, but at that moment I let out a shriek that would put Fay Wray to shame and leaped--nay, launched--backwards in your classic jumping-on-the-chair moment.

My mom trained me good and early to not be afriad of squishing bugs, as our ground-level apartment would attract the occasional creepy-crawly; though in my college years, I grew guilty when it came to spiders and let them free, and my dog would usually eat most of the insects before they came to my attention. This was the first time I've had to deal with vermin that are actually cute.

"What is it?" Rachel called from the other room.

"Ummmm...I think there might be a mouse."

"Aww, it's okay. Here, let me try to find him. Where did he go?" She got a strainer off of the dish shelf. "Here, Mickey....Come on out..." She peered into the bathroom and behind the suitcases in the hall, but found nothing. "Here, Fievel....Shit. I'll get the poison."

"Christ."

I felt awful. When I was a kid, I wanted a mouse for a pet. They were soft, kind of tame, didn't eat much, and the one in The Witches could do tricks. I'd even given myself the nickname "Mouse" for a grade or two in elementary school. Now, not only did I have to be responsible for their extermination, but there was also the liklihood that I'd witness one writhing to its poor little death after devouring seemingly innocent peanut butter-coated blue pellets.

During a Futurama marathon a day or two after Christmas, while we made as much noise as we wanted and took liberal cigarette breaks out on the fire escape which our roommates forbade us to go, Seth heard a rustling in the garbage bag by the door. He poked it, listened, and after a moment there was more rustling. "I think the mouse is in the trash bag," he said.

"I think we need to take out the trash," I replied.

We thought the coast was clear, especially since the poisoned peanut butter clumps were disappearing from the mouse dish outside the cracks in the wall borders. All was well until the day after Rachel returned. I walked into our room and Seth said, "I have bad news. The mouse is back."

"Oh no."

"And it's a baby."

"Oh shit."