Characters I Relate To (Boss Lady Edition)

I've been watching an exorbitant amount of television. Mostly on DVD or Netflix. I rewatched all the seasons of The Sopranos. I usually watch at least one episode a day of 30 Rock or The Office. I also dabble in a little Sports Night. Despite my parents' warnings about how television would turn my brain to mush, all this TV watching is making me think. I think about what's funny and why. I try to decide how feminist my favorite shows are. I make excuses when they're not. (I'm really trying to stop that.) It also makes me think about what kind of person I am, in particular, what kind of woman I am. It makes me think about what kind of woman I want to be. I've decided I am a Lemon, hoping to someday be a Whitaker. Allow me to break this down.

Liz Lemon:

Head writer of The Girlie Show (or, as it is eventually known, TGS with Tracy Jordan.) In her mid-to-late thirties and isn't really sure what she has to show for it. Described by her boss as "New York third-wave feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, overscheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says 'healthy body image' on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for...a week." I have so much in common with this woman. Where do I begin?

1. Tries (and sometimes fails) to present herself as an assertive, confident woman. Evidence: Season 1, Episode 14 "The C Word", in which one of Lemon's writers calls her a cunt. She decides it's more important for her employees to like than to bust their asses for slacking off. She, inevitably, becomes a human doormat. After becoming more and more fed up with their treatment, she reaches a breaking point while watching a "Designing Women" marathon. Running on no sleep and the kind of rage only Delta Burke can tap into, Lemon flips out on her writers, screaming "You will never alter drapes in Atlanta again, because you do not cross a Sugarbaker woman!" She's a wreck of a human being, but the point is made. Women in positions of authority constantly have to watch their step. Too nice, you're played for a fool. Too hard, you're a cunt. Lemon is constantly trying to navigate this sucky terrain.

2. Socially awkward/romantically challenged. Evidence: She's been sexually rejected by two different men who later went on to clown college. She wasn't sexually active until the age of 25, though she has a lifetime of experience dating closeted gay guys. She dated a man who called himself "The Beeper King", who later ended up on Dateline because he was a sexual predator. And finally, in "The Head and the Hair" (Season 1, Episode 11), she accidentally dates her cousin.

3. Her life is a mess. Evidence: every episode of every season ever.

4. She loves food! Evidence:

"I love producing Sports Night. I live from eleven to midnight and the rush is so huge, I don't come down 'till three o'clock in the morning."

Season 1, Episode 14 "Rebecca"

"I have a job that involves me, and stimulates me, and rewards me, and takes up a lot of my time, and I'm not willing to do my job just a little bit. I want to do all of it. It's a part of me and I'm different without it."

3. She's quirky in a very lovable way. Evidence:

Season 1, Episode 23 "What Kind of Day Has it Been?"

Jeremy: What ever happened to the ninth inning rally?
Dana: Yeah, and why don't we use semicolons anymore?

4. She can admit when she is wrong, something I always find incredibly admirable. Evidence:
Season 2, Episode 11 "The Cut Man Cometh"

"It was never my intention to make you feel like there was something wrong with you that needed to be fixed. It was regrettable that I did that."

Now, this isn't to say that Dana doesn't have her faults. She gossips too much, is scatterbrained, and can be a little insensitive. In "Mary Pat Shelby", she almost sells out a friend who has been sexually assaulted in order to boost ratings. (Thankfully, she sees the error of her ways before it is too late.) But Dana is a great character. She's talented and dedicated. She's kind of everything I want to be in life. I don't want to be rid of all my flaws and eccentricities. But I wish I knew how to reconcile them with my desire to be taken more seriously. I wish I could still be me, but a better me. I think I have just what it takes to watch enough television to figure out how to do that.

Ink.

I want a new tattoo. Currently, I have 3. I'm very cool with showing off my feet, especially considering how huge my feet are.

My left foot says Revolution and my right foot says Liberation. When asked, I make up some story about why those words are important to me, but it's bullshit. I just wanted words on my feet and those words are the same length. I'm not a proponent of the idea that tattoos need to mean something. When I try to explain this to anyone, they look at me like I'm just a foolish kid that will regret it later. (For those of you who do this, I may be a foolish kid, but at least I'm not an asshole like you.) I got sick of the look, so I started lying about it. It doesn't change the fact that I love the tattoos and I'm very glad I have them.

I also have one on my back. I try to be a little more private about that one, but few people allow me that. I'm always asked to raise my shirt and show it off. It kind of makes me feel uncomfortable. One, because I don't like to show off my body in public and two, because it is an intimate tattoo. It's my Q. It makes me happy. But it's meaning isn't clear to everyone, which leads to questions. I don't mind answering questions about my sexuality. I'm very open about it and any chance I have to clear up misconceptions about bisexual people, I take. But there is something very unnecessary and not at all educational about a complete stranger at a party asking me if men or women are better in bed. So, there were repercussions to that tattoo that I didn't exactly map out.

Also awkward, my family doesn't know about it. I doubt they want to and it's not that big a deal, but I feel funny telling them about a tattoo I got when I was 19. "Check out my tattoo... that I've had for 3 years." Let's not even talk about how I'm not technically out to my sister. But this post is not about being queer, it's about being tattooed. And I want to be more tattooed than I currently am. I have two tattoo ideas. The Willy Wonka and the birthday candle. The Willy Wonka is the phrase "A World of Pure Imagination." Obviously, I kind of like this saying. It's from the scene when the children enter the factory and Wonka sings the song "Pure Imagination":

Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see into your imagination.
We'll begin with a spin traveling in the world of my creation.
What we'll see will defy explanation.

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it.
Anything you want to do it.
Want to change the world?
There's nothing to it.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination.
Living there you'll be free if you truly wish to be.

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it.
Anything you want to, do it.
Want to change the world?
There's nothing to it.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there you'll be free if you truly wish to be.

So, here's the tattoo:

It's Willy Wonka font and everything!!! I think it's so lovely and fun. It was one of my favorite movies growing up and I kind of like having something so silly tattooed on me.

The other possibility is the birthday candle. I guess a picture isn't necessary, but this is the actual birthday candle that inspires the tattoo, so I think it's fitting. The gist of the story is that the candle was a departing gift from my first therapist. I was very attached to her and quite heartbroken when I had to say goodbye. She handed me this candle and said, "Anytime you feel sad, overwhelmed, or anxious, look at this and ask yourself what I would say." And I have. I wish I could take it with me everywhere, but I'm always worried something will happen to it and the candle will be lost forever. I think a tattoo will solve this problem.

There are pros and cons of each tattoo. Willy Wonka pros: funny, weird, would make me smile. Willy Wonka cons: I could live without it. There is not a burning passion that I felt for the other tattoos.

Birthday candle pros: it's weird and would mean a lot to me. Birthday candle cons: do I really want to have to explain the meaning of another intimate tattoo, particularly one whose story involves therapy?

I have some thinking to do. Not now. Now, it's terribly late. And I'm tired. And this probably stopped making sense a long time ago.

Theories about Palin's Resignation

1. Gay sex scandal. She is a Republican, after all...

2. Straight sex scandal. She's a lady Republican, they might do it backwards.

3. Sarah Palin didn't actually deliver that speech, it was Tina Fey.

4. She loves the spotlight and is jealous that Michael Jackson is taking it all.

5. She actually is thinking of running for president, but will first get a brain transplant. Hoping for Ronald Reagan's, she is actually implanted with Bea Arthur's brain. She becomes my feminist hero. (This one is more of a dream than a theory)

6. She actually is thinking of running for president and doesn't understand how incredibly, colossally stupid this move is.

7. She actually is thinking of running for president and I just don't understand politics enough to understand how brilliant this move is.

8. She'd rather hang out with her kids. Piper seems pretty cool.

Pilot.

Lisa is making me do this.... but I kind of want to.

I just don't know what to write about. My life is incredibly, impressively, embarrassingly boring. I'm an introvert. According to others, I'm in my head a lot. However, things are happening. I've just moved to Clifton and started a new job. I have a real apartment for the first time in my life. I'm starting grad school in the fall. For someone as easily traumatized as myself, this is an excessive amount of stuff to deal with. Hopefully, it will lead to interesting posts (but don't get your hopes up.)

I moved into the new place a few days ago. For the past five years, I've been in a state of living situation flux. As a freshman at WSU, I moved into a dorm room with two other girls. The following year, I moved into a different dorm room with only one roommate. The year after that, I lived with two friends in an on-campus apartment. My (sorta) senior year, I moved into a different apartment with 3 friends. My final quarter, I moved into ANOTHER apartment with a girl I had never met. During summer and winter breaks, I moved back into my parent's home. Since my first day of undergrad, I have not felt any sense of permanency. There is no constant in on-campus life.

About a month before I moved to WSU, at the age of 18, I started having panic attacks. I had never moved away from home and I have always had an irrational fear that something terrible will happen (to my home, my family, my pets, anything) while I'm away and I'll forever live with the guilt. I sobbed and hyperventilated the entire move-in day. I really didn't believe I'd make it there. I made sure my parents knew my dropping out was entirely possible. After two days, I was in love with college and couldn't imagine going back to Batavia. To this day, I have a very emotional response to the drive home. On a good day, it's just a quesy feeling in my stomach. On a bad one, it's a full blown case of the crazy.

I distinctly remember the first weekend I returned home after starting classes. I was IM-ing Kyle, who, at the time, was just some boy I had recently met in my First Weekend Peer Group, or whatever it's called. I mentioned feeling like it wasn't my home any longer, that I didn't have a home. As a budding film student in 2004, Kyle immediately quoted the then-ubiquitous, universally-loved Garden State: "You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone."* It was too irrevocable. Like finding out Santa doesn't exist.

I've become used to the constant packing and unpacking, the strategic placement of things I know will soon be boxed up again. But that doesn't mean I enjoy it.

So, now I have this apartment. Which I love. As soon as I walked in, I channeled Liz Lemon: I want to go to there. I've been slowly moving my things in over the past few weeks, but I officially moved myself in Tuesday. I'm still employing the old moving-in technique: leaving shoes in easily movable crates, buying the bare minimum of groceries, not letting myself settle in too much. However, something about this is different. Maybe it's living on my own for once. Maybe it's just the fact that the apartment is adorable. But I feel such a positive energy here. (And I am NOT one of those "I feel a positive energy here" people.) In contrast to my first moving-away-from-home venture, as I watched my father drive away, I felt euphoric. I danced with joy in the hallway. Under my breath, I chanted "I live here. I live here." My cheeks hurt from smiling. I put on some music and marveled at the awesomeness that is my life right now. There is something about this apartment, about Clifton, about living within walking distance of a gay bar and the Esquire, about starting a new job, about having great friends in the city, about getting to start over, about being on my own, about my life that is bringing me happiness I haven't felt in a long time. Maybe ever. I feel hopeful. I feel at peace. I feel home.

*It should be noted that I'm 99% sure Kyle doesn't actually like Garden State.