What We Talk About When We're Not Discussing The Unbearable Lightness of Being

So, you will recall the secret shame that is my love of The O.C. I got to the end of season 2 and then, after getting all addicted up, I was out of DVDs. We only had 2 seasons donated to the library. Fortunately, my boss owns the entire series, so I asked to borrow the final 2 seasons, which elicited this conversation:

Boss: Of course you can borrow the DVDs.

MBC: Evil cackle of glee.

Boss: I’m going to tell you honestly, though, that season three is no good.

MBC: I don’t care. I love it.

Boss: I know, right? Because, really, whenever Ryan and Seth are together in a scene, the dialogue’s great.

MBC: And I like the music. And Ben McKenzie is a looker. (Which made me sound like a 75-yr-old man. Oh, that Marlene Dietrich. She’s a looker.)

Boss: He is. (pause) Who’s your boyfriend?

This could mean so many things. Ben McKenzie? The real live boy trying to pursue me? One of the film boyfriends? A fictional character boyfriend? That guy I saw at the Blue Lagoon who I felt pretty certain would make a good life companion even though we never spoke and he got out of the water and got dressed right as I was coming up with a way to start a conversation with him in the hopes that he spoke English and wasn’t crazy, but then he left and my last view of him was as he stood on the concrete looking out over the lagoon steam in a pair of those great European shoes that just make an American girl want to cry?

MBC: Which one?

Boss: The one from Ella Enchanted.

MBC: Hugh Dancy.

Boss: Yeah, that’s not him. Maybe it was [Co-worker’s] boyfriend.

MBC: James McAvoy?

Boss: Oh, yeah. I just discovered . . .

This struck me as kind of a crazy conversation to be having with my boss. But it’s typical. It’s really typical.

True Confession

When I was growing up, the TV show Beverly Hills 90210 was hugely popular. I never saw a single episode. It's not really my thing. The high drama of beautiful, rich, alcoholic teenagers (portrayed by 20-somethings) doesn't interest me. (Ugly teenagers are a different matter entirely.) I've also never seen episodes of Dawson's Creek, The O.C., or Party of Five. Or at least I hadn't until Friday. Someone donated seasons of The O.C. and Dawson's Creek to the Library, and my co-worker who does our A/V collection development offered to send me home with them, because, well, I'm not sure why she offered them to me. She usually places literary adaptations, foreign films, and romantic comedies set in London in my hands. I accepted her offer of The O.C., though, because Adam Brody reminds me of Dexter in Sarah Dessen's novel This Lullaby, and Dexter is one of my favorite fictional characters.

It was my weekend to supervise the library, so I got home on Friday night around 9:30 and needed to be back at work in less than 12 hours. Closing the library is always a little stressful, because no one wants to leave. (When I'm really stressed out--about anything, not just work--I dream that I'm trying to close the library, but the patrons won't leave and people keep entering the building and the phones are disconnected so I can't call for help.) By the time I get home, I'm usually a little grumpy, because I've practically had to wrench magazines out of patrons' hands or drag them from their computer terminals and personally escort them out the door while they call out, Hey, are those tax forms? Do you have any movies set in China? I just remembered I need to grab a book for my wife. I just need to check one quick thing in the atlas. Don't make me gooooo! The public displeases me when the library is closing. So, I'm saying that when I got home I needed to unwind a little.

So I watched The O.C. Until 3:00 a.m. At first I disliked it. I kept thinking that in all my years working with the incarcerated (over 5), I've never seen such an attractive and polite and well-spoken juvenile offender as Ryan Atwood (played by Ben McKenzie). But Ben McKenzie's actually a good actor. And kind of dreamy (he's so totally making the imaginary boyfriend list). And Adam Brody still reminds me of Dexter. And (I'm so embarrassed) I started to be deeply interested in the plot.

I feel like I need to go read some Foucault or Nietzsche to counteract the pejorative effects of immersing myself in pretty people programming. But first I have to finish watching every. single. episode. And the commentaries. And all the bonus features. It's like a sickness.

Pretty People

I have been laboring under the delusion for several months now that

James Marsden
(seen here in the movie 27 Dresses)

was
Jason Marsden

The names are similar. The faces are not dissimilar. (Although this is an old picture of Jason Marsden). I wondered, though, how James Marsden became so popular, because I remembered him from his roles in a number of extra cheesy sitcoms and shows that nobody else has ever heard of. I was, apparently, the only person in America who watched Eerie, Indiana or Almost Home (the network's attempt to save The Torkelsons, another show for which I was the only viewer--and having just watched the YouTube video clip, I'm feeling very embarrassed for myself that I was such an avid viewer).

I did my James Marsden research this week, though, (you've got to do a little background checking before you add someone to the Imaginary Boyfriend List) and discovered how he moved from bad sitcom land to major movie success: different person.

The Bad Morning

I’ve been reading The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-to-Basics Guide, published by DK, makers of the most beautiful nonfiction books. It has instructions on how to make cheese and raise goats and all kinds of things that I’m interested in even though I live in a rental house in an incorporated city and live the dependent-on-corporate-America life (although I do plan to make my own cheese this year as soon as I get my hands on some rennet).

Today I had the Bad Morning, though, and my plans have changed. Now I’m going to move to Norway and marry Jaran Knive, one of the sheepdog handlers from the championships, and be his wife and he will be a vet (fortunately, that’s what he already does) and I will make cheese and leave my stress-filled, modern existence behind. (Now I just hope that Jaran doesn’t have a wife or an aversion to strangers who want to marry him just because they like his dog, want to go to Norway, and dislike car repairs.)

So, the Bad Morning started because I had to run my car in for an oil change, and the coolant light was on, so I needed a little antifreeze, too. What I thought would cost me an hour of free time and $25.00 turned into THREE AND A HALF hours in two different car repair waiting rooms and over $400.00. In fact, my car’s still across town. I’m going to have to spend my lunch hour walking back to pick it up, at which point the mechanics will probably tell me that I also need a flux capacitator that costs another $50.00, and I won’t even be able to complain, because I know nothing about cars.

So clearly the only option is to sell the car and move to Norway. And don’t start telling me about how they have cars in Norway, too! I’ve had a bad day.

The Many Uses of Business Cards

Yesterday I helped this really lovely single, British guy at the reference desk. I emailed a friend about it, to which she replied (hope she doesn't mind the sharing), "You really need to just have little cards with your name on them to hand to men if they are dateable and you wish that they may be in your life." Well, this is a very convenient suggestion, because I just got my new business cards last week. Five hundred of them. So, there are plenty of cards to use for non-business purposes. In fact, you can all expect to receive Christmas gifts fashioned from business cards this year--little shellacked boxes, folded business card jewelry, the possibilities are endless.

Anway, despite my friend's wonderful idea, here's how I envision the plan she suggests going down.

Lovely British Guy: Where are your periodicals?

Me: Upstairs on the south end of the building (I say south, you see, because we live in Utah where this is perfectly normal)

Lovely British Guy: Thank you.

Me: Oh, wait! Here's my card. Now, if you can't find the periodicals, you just call me at this number here. Except come back downstairs first, because there's no cell phone use on the second floor. Or you could email me at this address here, and I would be happy to help you locate the periodicals and suggest one or two that make particularly nice leisure reading. Oooh, and here's my fax number, but we don't offer public fax service in the library. You could run over to Kinko's, though, and you could fax me any questions, or a date invitation, or a limited-time special vacation offer, which is what we usually get from our fax.

See how that might not work? But I'm open to suggestions.

Me and Bridget Jones

As is my summer custom, I've been reading chick lit this month. I just finished two novels by Katie Fforde, Bidding for Love and Restoring Grace, both of which I liked. Chick lit is pretty formulaic. You have a 20-something young woman who's awkward and prone to mishaps but has a heart of gold and eventually gets what's coming to her in the form of a nice young man, a British one if she's really lucky. So, the other day it occurred to me that I'm an excellent candidate for a chick lit heroine. I totally qualify.

Chick Lit Heroine Requirements
1--Twenty-something Female
Check.

2--Awkward and Prone to Mishaps
Check. A couple of years ago I fell into a manhole. True story. And there was that time I got trapped in my car, because I had to visit this guy I had recently stopped dating, and it's too long a story to tell but it was aaaawkward. And that time Mr. Dreamy Guy took me out to dinner and afterwards we had to run by my office and he noticed the picture of Hugh Dancy at my desk and asked about it and I had to hustle Mr. Dreamy Guy right out of there so I wouldn't have to explain about Imaginary Boyfriends. Whew! Awkward.

3--Heart of Gold
Check. You can always tell that chick lit heroines have hearts of gold, because they befriend doormen and service people who often help them out of scrapes when the heroines seem doomed to failure, which is why it's so great that I'm friends with Angel, our Hispanic day porter at work. He teaches me Spanish. My roommate also teaches me Spanish sometimes, so I can say important things like Take out the garbage! and I'm going to take out the garbage. Remarkably, this has never helped me when talking to Angel. Of course, the things Angel teaches me don't help me either, because he teaches me words like Hand and Tired. I need someone to teach me how to say, "I'd like to go home, because all these library patrons are making my head ache. Please call Bombay House and tell them I'd like some Chicken Tikka Masala to go."

So, I just need my nice British man. See what you can do about that, would you?

Reality is Not My Best Medium

Yesterday while Mom and I were walking around Cedar City, Michael Sharon (the actor who plays Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night) rode past us on his bike. I do love a man on a bike. He was headed in the direction of the Cedar City Public Library, so I decided that if we saw him at the library when we went there a little later in the day, it would be a sign that he should be added to my Imaginary Boyfriend List. He wasn't there. Too bad. I don't think anyone on the list has sword fighting skills. My roommate says that her brother has sword fighting skills, but he also proposed to his wife in iambic pentameter, so maybe that type of fellow should be kept far away from the list.