Category: La Familia

In the third grade, my grandmother took me to see “Cats” at the Winter Garden Theater. I got to miss school for the Wednesday matinee. Since then, she’s been my Broadway agent, exposing me to classics like “Miss Saigon” and “The King and I,” and surprising me with tickets to new shows like “Jane Eyre,” which i recommended to everyone in AP English after I saw it junior year, and again senior year when we read the novel for class.

Once, we picked up our tickets at the booth in the middle of Times Square.  Grandmom wove her way through the crowd and I followed faithfully, really with no other choice. When she got to the window, she said, “there are two tickets for [whatever we were seeing] under my name, they were held by one of the actresses.” I was astonished. I couldn’t believe my grandmother would lie to try to score tickets! But sure enough, a friend-of-a-friend’s daughter was dancing in the show and she had personally reserved seats for us.

Today, my booking agent brought us to the city today for see “Wonderful Town” town with my aunt and an old family friend. Through this particular connection, we had third-row seats. The script and the delivery were consistently hysterical, the orchestra exceptionally good (the conductor seemed to be inviting music from the instruments—I love that), and i loved the colorful 1930’s wear. Gregg Edelman, the male lead, was my favorite. His performance was witty and real and there was an essence about him that reminded me of my dad. And his character was an NYC editor. I wonder if he’s looking for a bright-eyed intern.

On the way home, we had to connect to New Canaan by bus and there was a little girl coming home from a family trip to American Girl place. As I helped her mother prop up one of her two duffle-sized shopping bags, I said something about how much I adored my American Girl doll when I was little, and she said, “Alexis, this girl has an American Girl doll, too!” Alexis, three, hesitated not one instant before hopping down off of her seat to come over and show me the catologue. By the end of the trip, she was in my lap with her blonde head settled back on my shoulder and we were flipping through the pages for the third time. She told me stories about which outfit each doll would wear to their imaginary doll events. Then she unpacked a doll-size wedding dress and waved it back and forth and draped it over my hand, fascinated by the graceful swish of the skirt.

Alexis probably won’t remember me, but I felt like our lives met and waltzed together in dresses with swishing skirts for a half hour. Maybe when she unwraps some of those new doll clothes for her birthday (September 20th) she’ll say, “Remember the girl on the bus?”

“Life is mad, life is sweet” – Wonderful Town

will and i were bored this morning, so we up and saw spider-man two together this afternoon. the movie was good and my company was great.  my brother is so funny, he cah-racks me up. 

i’m glad they portrayed peter parker/spider-man as less of a martyr and more of a so-average-he’s-almost-invisible guy accidentally turned purehearted-but-misunderstood superhero.  there were moments when i just wanted something, anything to go right for peter.  tobey maguire is a symmetrical division between conventional boy-next-door and clever, wise-crackin’, powerhouse superhero.
 
i can finally appreciate kirsten dunst in this role.  there’s always been something about her that aggravated me, and i finally realized what it was b/c it works so well for her as mary jane watson.  the tone of her voice and her facial expressions have an animated quality, the red hair adds to illustrated effect and there’s no question that she can act the cartoon character.
 
i think my favorite part was either the elevator scene, for its humor, or the train scene, for its inspiration, or the final rescue, when peter himself can finally save mj and not have to let the credit go to a masked mystery-man.
 
the best effect was not the web, not the fire, not even the touching human emotion effect of the rescued subway passengers.  my favorite was the spider outline cutaway transition between scenes.  even i know that’s a comic book classic.  and i don’t care what anyone else says, the green goblin and his neon smog and flying saucer gave me the creeps.  but doc ock was positively terrifying.  i do have to say, i think spider-man should be one word.

quote of the day: “go get ’em, tiger.” – mj in spider-man 2

Tonight, I drove my little brother over to his friend John’s house. I volunteered, actually, to drop him off at the house where, just last night, I drove right over when he called to ask for a ride, and then ended up waiting in the driveway for ten minutes (wearing long underwear, a turtleneck, a wool sweater, a down vest, a down parka, a scarf wrapped around my head and a furry, suede eskimo hat with ear flaps) while he remained upstairs, oblivious to my shivering presence, until I gave up and stumbled up the icy steps to ring the doorbell. When the boys finally came downstairs, it was John who actually thought to open the door and escort me inside. He said, “you look cold.” I don’t know how he could tell. My scarf concealed everything up to my eyes. Then he said, “You’re wearing a lot of coats.” Well, one was a vest actually. But he was right about the cold part.

Even though William had the audacity to try, repeatedly, to change the radio station in the car on the way home, I gave the freshly permitted 16-year-old himself the opportunity to drive all the way down the driveway and park my mom’s prized minivan in the garage. We played chinese firedrill at the top of the driveway and, before adjusting the mirror, mind you, he was cruising. It was an excellent parking job, I must say, all right angles. All things considered, am I a good sister or what?

Therefore, I really don’t think it was necessary to insult me as we embarked out on the roads tonight! now, I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t drive a standard transmission. I did try once, before I got my license, and my dad and I have both subliminally erased that day from our memories. But we all know that I haven’t made one single attempt since. So, my mom was in the city today, which left my car, parked outside and encased in ice, and my dad’s rav-4, a stick shift. While I bundled up to go scrape off the windshield, the following conversation took place:

My brother: “We’re taking dad’s car, right?”
Me: “No.”
My brother: “Why not?”
Me: “You know why.”
My brother: “Come on, why can’t we take it, it’s right here in the garage.”
Me: “Because I can’t drive a standard transmission and you know it!”
My brother: “Oh. Well, I got it into second.”
Me: “Oh yeah? Well, I don’t even know what that means.”

Quote of the day: “Like so many americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.” – Kurt Vonnegut

oh, christmas eve. i managed to convince my mom to let me stay home and snooze while everyone else went to church, but when i saw my daddy in his suit and christmas tie, i couldn’t just stay home on the couch in my sweatpants! so i threw an outfit together in fifteen minutes, which included the beautiful slender shoes with the heel and the little buckle on the side. they are tough to hold on to, they hurt my ankles and they slow me down, but they are so cute.

back in my pajamas after church, i ate peanut butter cookies and filled william’s stocking. next year my mom says we have to buy presents for each others’ stockings, which sounds fun to me. i’m going to be an excellent stocking stuffer-er. maggie’s stocking is somewhat empty this year. peculier! mom revealed that she has nothing to give to the dog, even though my sweet girl picked out her own gifts for everyone else! thank goodness i found the chuck-it for my mom and maggie.

yesterday, mom and i had a fight, so we played scrabble. even though she was winning, when she was suddenly inspired to spell out anti-christmas words and phrases, she said, “forget this, let’s do something fun!” and flipped over the board. i guess we both felt better after spelling out “grouch,” “stinkinxmas,” “quityowhining” and “obiteme.” we left it out for dad to see when he got home. it’s a miracle they even let us in that church tonight.

quote of the day: “what do you call people who are afraid of santa claus? claustrophobic.”

my little brother is taller than me, but it’s still his birthday today! william is sixteen years old, which means that this is the first of those big milestone birthdays. eighteen and twenty-one aren’t far beyond. and the boy has already founded a successful dj business and is the administrator of a popular gaming internet community. congratulations, will. even though i had a tendency to smack you around a little and throw tantrums at your birthday parties when we were younger, i love you, and i promise not to cry at your party this year!

yes, it’s true. william and i didn’t always get along as children. i know it’s hard to believe. but we had our moments. we invented a tickling game called hot dog dough and a hide-and-seek game that we used to play in the parking lot while we waited for our mom to run errands. i loved that game, and for the record, i think we should play it more frequently.

my favorite two weeks of the year are when william and i are at camp together. i get really excited about his arrival and i force people to guess which camper is my brother and i get a lot of “the one who looks like you, only taller and not a girl?” i never realized how much we look alike until people saw us together at camp and could hardly tell us apart. i love following him around all session and borrowing stuff from him and lending him stuff. one summer he offered to beat up a boy who made me cry. this summer he was an l.i.t., which involved milestones like his solo overnight and his twenty-four hour experience. on that night, he was still hanging out in the trading post when i got cq’d at staff curfew. outrageous! and i love it when other staff continue to rave about how considerate and polite and funny he is even after he’s gone home. yeah, he’s my brother.

quote of the day: “your love is better than ice cream, better than anything else that i’ve tried.” – sarah mclachlan
love always, em locke

today’s my dad’s birthday! i called to say hi and wish him happiness at 7 am just before i got in the shower and just after i finished my lit paper on shelley & wordsworth. i wish it had at least been a jazz paper in his honor! i wrote his card the first or second week i got to school so i would be prepared to mail it on time no matter how busy i was this week, but i ended up forgetting it and forgetting it and forgetting it anyway, so it didn’t get into the box until about 11:30 last night! so that didn’t go out until this morning. wonder if it will get there on time?

speaking of wordsworth, the guy really had to become a poet, didn’t he? with a moniker like that, he didn’t have much of a choice. but it is tough to get scriptive (that’s not a word, but it should be) and write his name into prose. i don’t think it would be good form to say “wordsworth’s words.” of course, i was tempted several time during the course of my all-nighter to actually write “pardon the pun” in my text. i think “wordsworth’s words” would have been preferable. maybe if i hadn’t thought so darn hard about how to avoid both phrases i wouldn’t have a headache right now!

snack time in commons today was apple cider and donuts. are they trying to rip off M&C’s and play it off as an afternoon thing? well, that’s ok, b/c the donuts here were way better than the mhc ones ever were, even before i tried to eat 15 of them in one night and permanently ruined them for myself!

if my camera weren’t broken, and if it was logically possible, i would take a picture of the weather today. it’s 77 degrees out and the sun in shining, but not beating down, and the breeze is blowing up the hill. but the best thing is the smell. why don’t they bottle it? why can’t my room smell balmy instead of like the chicken soup i ate last week? seriously. it’s like spring, but the air’s a little cooler, not too dry but not too wet, the earth and the pavement are all warm and you can practically smell the sunshine. really, the smell of warm weather is pretty common. happens every spring! but every single day that i smell it i’m just obsessed and i probably inhale 700% more oxygen than i need from sniffing the air around me.

i passed my swim test! well, i had technically already passed it, but not the way i wanted to, holding my nose and floating on my back for four lengths. yesterday i dove into the pool and swam all four laps with my face in the water.

quote of the day: “if i didn’t wake up, i’d still be sleeping. ” – yogi berra

love always, em locke

i hear that isabel is the size of colorado!

my new favorite site for outdoor gear is campmor.com. i ordered a new [warmer & dryer] north face sleeping bag for camping in the adirondacks and saved $70. and it’s blue! i’m getting excited for this trip.

in other shopping news, pottery barn’s new teen department has launched their website, which i find to be pretty cool, and obviously way more interactive than the catologue. (also doesn’t fall apart after i flip through it fourteen times.) yes, it’s trendy stuff, but if you sift past the yummi puff bedding, which intrigues but is still a little over the top, they stock some cool stuff, or at least inspiration for more personal (and crafty!) projects.

i talked to maggie on the phone! mom switched to speaker phone, after saying, “talk to her!” quite loudly in my ear (i think she got excited), and when i threw into puppy-ese, maggie barked back, it was awesome. then mom said, “i think she’s a little confused…” but let me do it some more anyway. i miss my yittuw fuwy guwl! translation: i miss little my furry girl!

got the marry me jane cd in the mail today, it’s awesome. beautiful art, too, which is important if you’re going to actually invest in a factory recorded album! my favorite song is “you didn’t kiss me,” which is from (well, the whole album is from) this obscure 90’s movie “if lucy fell” with sarah jessica parker, which i loved for it’s alterna-humor (it features ben stiller as a character named ‘bwick’) and friends-turned-lovers romance. the best scene is at the end when lucy (sarah jessica) borrows a bike from the chinese delivery man to ride out to the bridge to a) stop joe from jumping and b) reveal that she loves him. i think he already knew.

quote of the day: “nothin’ really makes sense. the azure in the sky, never had it on my wish list. it caught me by surprise” – marry me jane

bonus quote of the day: “i am curious! i’m as curious as george!” – joey

love always, em locke