First of all, something that would have seemed so highly improbably mere months ago has happened:  I have moved in with a gentleman.  I know, right?  But it is wonderful and good.  I am currently living off of his good graces in his apartment on the West side (part of operation Pay As Little Rent As Possible This Summer) and in the fall we will be moving back Eastwards to a West Hollywood apartment built for two.  Well, built for four, actually:  it will house myself, my Gentleman Caller, his Gentleman Hound Dog (Boomer Thaddeus Dog, Esq., World’s First Canine Lawyer), and a CAT that I am going to get and the cat will be grey and cute and named either Otto or Rock Hudson.  And as for my Gentleman Caller, well, suffice it to say that he makes me a pretty happy lady, and takes me on wonderful adventures and makes me tasty sandwiches.  Also, he is currently sitting behind me geeking out over an old synthesizer someone gave him to play with and it is totally cute.

PLEASE NOTE that this does not change the fact that I am, and will always be a spinster, and spinsterly in my ways and doings.  I recently conferred with one of my sisters in spinsterliness and explained that, despite how happy Gentleman Caller makes me, I had been having a very fraught, angst-ridden identity crisis over the nature of my spinsterliness.  But Good Spinster Amy reminded me that, indeed, men may come and (hopefully not) go, but Spinterhood is Forever.  And since being angst-ridden is really our defining characteristic, what was I worried about anyhow?  And so now I begin this new weird life as a cohabitating spinster, with slightly less angst about that particular issue, but plenty of angst about most other things.

Also, one of the sad things about this move is that my dear, dear now-former roommate, Sam, has left for New York for a year, and I miss him.  The glory days of 1027 North Laurel Ave have now come to an end.  But also this gives me an excuse to go to New York sometime.

Other important things have happened recently, namely:  I have done the greatest thing that I will ever do.  No, no, I did not start and write my dissertation in a month.  No, I did not end world hunger.  Instead, I had a poem about crullers written in the style of William Blake published in the Los Angeles Times.  Because remember how I ran that Donut Summit for LA Metblogs (now totally sleekly redesigned and relaunched as blogging.LA)?  Well, the whole event was nothing short of miraculous and wonderful.   And the next day, when I saw that my cruller poem, written late one night when I needed to think of something funny to post on the blog, was in the LA Times, I laughed and laughed and laughed.  ”All of our hopes and dreams for you have come true,” said my father.  Well, all of my hopes and dreams for myself have come true, too.  I can probably just go ahead and retire now that I am a published poet.

Giant fantastic things are coming up in the next few weeks, too:  I’m off to the UK for my first venture into actually doing research for my dissertation.  I’ll be traveling in the North for a couple of weeks, then meeting up with Gentleman Caller for a couple of weeks of vacationing in Belgium and the Netherlands.  And then I’m going back to London for a month of research at the British Library.  And TANYA IS COMING TO VISIT ME THERE AND WE ARE GOING TO KIDNAP HUGH GRANT!  Actually, probably we won’t kidnap Hugh Grant, probably we’ll just go laugh inappropriately at the art in the Tate Modern, and maybe see a soccer game.

UNTIL THEN, my life is consumed by teaching the history of rock and roll to a group of people who ask me questions like “what is that electronic sound effect they use on Neil Young’s voice in that song.”  The technical term for that sound effect would, of course be “Just Neil Young’s Voice.”  Oh, the undergraduates!  Sometimes endearing, always entertaining.

Also, Gentleman Caller and I went on a desert adventure that I am going to post about in a minute.  And also this weekend is dinosaur day so I will post about that in another minute!

1.  Voicemail from a Monkey.  We’ve talked about this before.  The way this works is you give me a million dollars and then I have a monkey leave voicemail at the phone number of your choice.  Makes a great birthday gift!

2.  Your Name on/in Beets:  I write your name in Sharpie on a beet.  The beet is placed in a jar, which is hung from a cord, which you wear as a necklace.  ALTERNATELY, I spell your name in sliced beets.  On a  plate.  Comes with a side salad for $1 extra.

Gosh!  I just realized that I’ve been a jerk and forgot to write all about how that Cherpumple turned out!  I’m a terrible scientist, it’s true.  So, um, yeah, it wound up looking something like this:

So, one thing that I hadn’t bargained on is that my oven is terrible.  It is bad.  It heats unevenly, it is too small, it is all kinds of ungood things.  Because of this, we ran into a small problem with the batter not cooking all the way through.  In and of itself, this is not a huge issue, as god knows gooey cake is good cake.  The problem is that the uncooked batter added a lot of weight to each individual cake layer.  So once they were stacked on top of one another, an event of geological proportions took place, and we all stood around in awe as the Cherpumple collapsed upon itself.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that means we didn’t eat it.  Obviously we ate it.  I had to serve it with a ladle, but dammit, we ate that cake.

We ate that cake so hard.

I’ve been working too hard these days.  I think it’s becoming a problem.  I remember a time, long ago, when it was the weekend and that meant that I didn’t have to do any work.  Now I’m at a point where I am literally on a two-day-workweek schedule – I only have to go to campus Tuesdays, for seminar, and Wednesdays, to teach – but my resultant five day weekend is really more like five days of neverending busywork with not much to show for it.  This seems somehow unfair because I worked really hard to get to the point where I could have five day weekends, didn’t I?  The point was that I’d be able to spend them doing things, like, I don’t know, actually doing things that don’t involve sitting at a computer developing repetitive strain injuries.  I’ve also gotten really bad at feeding myself.  I get home from school and I’m like, oh, I’ll just work on this lesson plan for a half hour and then eat dinner, and suddenly it’s 12:30 at night and I’m eating a tuna sandwich.

I’m also having an identity crisis because I’m teaching the first class that I’ve designed myself, and my personal politics (of the feminist, pinko, commie variety) are front and center, and I feel like I constantly need to justify those politics, for some reason.  Like, I know why it’s important to teach this class about 1960s girl culture.  But I feel that no matter how many times and how many different ways I explain that it’s important, my students are all sitting there thinking “you’re just talking about this stuff because you’re a man-hating feminist and also you don’t know anything about real music, like the White Album or Pet Sounds, or whatever whiny white boy rock we’re deifying today.”  So I have these really great moments where I’m like, “hey, think about it, The Beatles were basically the Jonas Brothers in 1964, so maybe we should stop hatin’ on the tweens?” (only more eloquently, and also with the internal logic of that statement explained) and they seem to get it, but then I go home and I’m filled with self-doubt and I feel like I need to start the next class by explaining that just because this semester we’re learning about things that teenage girls liked doesn’t mean that boys haven’t also made worthwhile contributions to society.  Which is stupid because the entire university is about boys’ contributions to society, but it’s just so normalized and invisible.

But at least somewhere, in the world, there are layer cakes with pies in them.  Also, I want a kitten.

The title of this post is an actual exchange that takes place between Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue in “A Summer Place.” God bless 1959.

I did my exams!  Writing my exams was seriously the best week of my entire life.  Imagine, if you will, being given seven days in which you do not have to go anywhere nor talk to anyone whom you do not wish to; imagine that during those seven days your task is to write and write and write about the things that you love the most in the world; imagine that during this time people just bring you food so you don’t actually have to cook anything; imagine that it is really the way you would live your life, given the opportunity.  Basically, it was so good.  My exam questions were great and made me feel really happy about my dissertation committee, and I got to write about Dusty Springfield and Lady Gaga in the same essay.

So, the transition back to real life has been weird and stupid, mostly.  Mostly I resent all the dumb crap I have to do even more than I did before, and I’m so stressed out that my entire body hurts, and all I want to do is finalize the goddamn reading list for my class next quarter, but do you think I have time for that?  Of course I don’t have time for that.  ALSO, I am mad at the post office because apparently my mailing address has become a black hole into which things that are mailed to me (ie:  Valentine’s presents special ordered for Gentlemen Callers, polka-dotted vintage dresses from Etsy, birthday cheques from Grandmothers) disappear, never to be seen from again, which is obnoxious and stupid.

On the bright side, this movie arrived in the mail today (I had it sent to me at school, where mail still works, despite the budget cuts), and, when I finally have time to sit down and watch it (ie: when my dissertation is finished) I’m sure it will be the best night of my life because it is the Lost Skeleton of spy thrillers:

Oh, I feel better knowing that I’ve blogged.  I’ve been feeling majorly angsty about not blogging lately.  What a weird thing to feel angsty about!  Could I be addicted to the internet?  Oh, heavens no.

THINGS THAT ARE GOOD THAT I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO:

Friday night quality time with best friends Mulder and Scully;

We are going to San Diego over spring break and I get to go see panda bears at the zoo;

Making Out!  Let’s hear it for making out with a nice beardy boy on a regular basis;

Gin martinis!  These exist, thank the lord.

Oh, also, THINGS THAT WERE GREAT THAT HAPPENED EARLIER THIS WEEK:

Met Marilyn Wann!  Super duper fat activist who invented the muumuu of the month club and is thus a true heroine, if ever there was one;

Ok, fine, I’m going to bed now.

And my hair is longer than it has been in years, and it’s going to stay that way because I love when he runs his fingers through it.

Shhh!  Don’t tell.

Anyhow, I took a bit of a holiday break from this blog, mostly because not much goes on in Portelginland that’s worth blogging about.  I missed my semi-annual letter to Santa post, but rest assured, there’s a thank you letter to Santa in the pipeline, because this year I managed to actually get everything I could ever have wanted for Christmas (except for a unicorn, but what else is new?)

ANYHOW, I really want to jump right back into my regularly scheduled musical dress blogging, because somebody once told me that the only way I would ever become a CBC radio celebrity was if I actually blogged regularly and kept this project going.  So I am going to start off the new year on a timely and surreal note, with a series of disconnected meditations on Lady Gaga.

i) I first heard of Lady Gaga from my students last year in the LGBT Pop class.  I got a dozen papers about Poker Face (typical thesis statement:  “This song is kinda gay, or something,” only less grammatically correct).  And so I went onto The Internets to find out what the fuss was about, and watched the video and was completely baffled because the song was sort of weirdly unpleasant and the video was kind of ugly.  So I immediately dismissed Ms. Gaga as alluring, but not my cup of tea UNTIL ONE DAY when I was poking around her youtube channel and found a video transmission wherein she proclaimed that she was from outer space and was going to save the world with fashion and glamour and sequins, or something.  I can’t actually find the clip in question anymore.  But anyhow, that was the moment when I realized that she was a hilarious genius, and from that moment on, my fascination with Ms. Gaga has bordered on obsession.

ii)  The thing I like the  most about the Bad Romance video (apart from all of that Alexander McQueen gloriousness) is when Gaga and her retinue of zombie dancers flail awkardly around the dance floor.  I like it because that is basically how I dance, so seeing my particular dance aesthetic thus represented makes me feel less like an uncoordinated awkward person, and more like someone who could potentially appear in a music video.

iii)  We are reaching a point where the avant-garde and the massively popular are becoming increasingly indistinguishable.  I like this a lot.

iv)  What do you think of the vocal stutter that appears in so many Gaga songs?  It’s all over the place.  This is actually a serious question and I’m wondering what people think.  I just submitted a Gaga abstract to a conference, and in the paper I will theoretically write, I want to talk about that stutter.  Sometimes it’s, liked, auto-tuned in or something and sometimes it’s, you know, the pa-pa-pa-poker face thing.  I have my own theory, but I’d like to hear what others think.

v)  How ridiculous would she have to get before she got too ridiculous?  I am just so happy that there is a pop culture phenomenon out there right now that is so completely absurd and challenging, and yet I heard her playing on the radio at Tim Hortons in Parry Sound, Ontario, and she is my 13 year old cousin’s favorite singer.

vi)  Dear Lady Gaga:  ”Funny” is not an appropriate rhyme for “funny,” as heard in the lines “Met somebody cute and funny, got each other and that’s funny,” but I will forgive you for it just this once because I like your style.  (My illustrious roommate has suggested “Got each other, look a bunny” as an alternative.  You should considering hiring him for your production team.)

vii)  The Fame Monster, with its eight nuggets of sparkling awesome, arguably works better as an album than The Fame, which could have been edited down a little because it sometimes gets a bit redundant (much like certain David Lynch films).

viii)  Thank you, Lady Gaga, for introducing the phrase “paper gangster” into my vocabulary.  I don’t want one of those either.

xi) There is a lot of rather pronounced idiocy in Lady Gaga’s oeuvre, but it is very self-aware idiocy.  For instance, the song “Boys, Boys, Boys” (sample lyric:  ”Baby is a bad boy with some retro sneakers, let’s go see The Killers and make out in the bleachers”) is profoundly stupid.  But you can’t get that stupid without knowing you’re being that stupid, right?  So actually it’s brilliant.  That is my official scholarly opinion.

x) Once upon a time, in a Women’s Studies class way back in my undergrad, it was Madonna day.  We were talking about La Isla Bonita.  The prof suggested that La Isla Bonita would never fly anymore (this would have been in about 2003 or 2004) because we had just experienced that surge in Latin popstars (think:  Ricky Martin, J-Lo, Shakira) who were doing it for realz and not just appropriating (and I would be interested in debating this particular theory as it is interesting but I can see some holes in it.  But that is another blog post for another time).  Now, it is 2010, and we have Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,” which opens with a spoken monologue in fake Spanish accent and has lyrics that are mostly nonsense with the names Alejandro, Fernando, and Roberto repeated ad nauseum, possibly just to sound fake Spanishy?  Difficult to say.  Is pop music cyclical, and have we come full circle, back to La Isla Bonita?  Difficult to say.  Is it politically incorrect that I really love both songs?  Probably.

xi)  Here is a picture of me in a silver and blue lame space dress, which I inherited from a drag performer, and which is obviously what I would wear if I was ever to meet Lady Gaga.  I am standing in front of a rare space ficus.  This is the one and only time I will be featuring myself as a model on this blog, and it’s only because I’m too tired to care, so eat it up, kids:

Carole King, Crying in the Rain:

Crying in the Rain

I like the Carole King version bestest.  She wrote it, obviously, because she is such an awesome lady.  The Everly Brothers version is more widely known, and is also lovely:

And then there’s the A-Ha cover. Also really really good:

I don’t really have anything intelligent to say about this song, other than I love it.  I love it because it is melodramatic (“fuck you, you’ll never see me cry, I’m going to cry in the RAIN”) and sad but sounds so disarmingly cute if you’re not paying attention to the words.

So, raincoats. Raincoats, raincoats, raincoats. My favorite raincoat is my blue, polkadotted, double-breasted, vinyl-tablecloth-material raincoat that I wear at music festivals in the rain, thereby contributing to my reputation as the Least Practically Dressed Lady at the Folk Festival. Here are some other awesome raincoats:

From Catbooks1940s.  Absolutely in love with the full skirt!

From The Dusty Dog Vintage.  I love:  This color of green, double breastedness, belts.

From a la garconniere.  Adorable and wonderful!

And HOW CHARMING ARE THESE BOOTS?  Only the most charming, ever.  You will be SINGING in the rain with these boots on.  (I was thinking very hard about whether or not to include that very bad joke, and decided that yes, indeed, I would go there.)

from Modcloth.

And speaking of self-doubt, a funny thing happend the other day when I was looking up ficus tree care on the internet.  I have a third roommate, who you might not know about, and my third roommate is Doctor Ficus Johnson (Ph.D. in Ficology), who is a rather lovely tree that moved in after a friend moved out of town and left Doctor Ficus Johnson to us.  And because I care, I wanted to check and make sure I was watering Ficus enough.  And there, at the top of ficustree.com, it asked “Do you have what it takes to care for a ficus?”  and then I wondered, “What if I don’t?  What if I don’t even have what it takes to care for a ficus?  Jesus Christ, what’s going to happen to me if I can’t even take care of a ficus?”  And then I realized that I was being an idiot.

No dress post for yesterday, sorry – I was too busy spending seven hours deciding which Frankie and Annette movie I want to include on my list for my Special Field exams.

1.  I would like it on record that I had publically declared Ringo my favourite Beatles months before Zooey Deschanel made it the hip thing to do.

2.  The movie seems to be set in Hilarious Bizarro World Los Angeles, in which people ride public transit and actually hang out downtown, without bitching about it.  Bizarro Downtown LA looks pretty much like New York, but with palm trees. Real Downtown LA looks pretty much like New York, but with more dirt, blazing sun, lots of shops selling quinceanera dresses and disreputable electronics, and palm trees if you look hard enough.  Oh, and Clifton’s Cafeteria.

3.  Because it was set in Downtown, there was lots of good old architechture porn – Downtown is full of wonderful old buildings that used to be movie palaces and theatres but now are mostly abandoned or converted into retail space or use as filming locations.  Ironically, I was watching this movie in the multiplex at the Grove, the foyer of which is meant to look like the interior of the old single-screen movie palaces (think crystal chandeliers and marble) and, in fact, has a informational display about LA’s old theatres, but, as a multiplex, is partly responsible for why those theatres can’t stay open.

Depressing!  I’m going to bed.  I am still on Port Elgin Standard Time and I am going to STAY THAT WAY, DAMMIT, because it means I am going to bed at midnight and getting up at eight in the manner of a normal, functional adult, rather than staying up until three and getting up between 11 and noon and then feeling so guilty for sleeping in that I then stay up until 3:00 under the auspices of getting work done (mostly this work period involves a lot of reading of fashion blogs).  It’s vicious, I tell you.

I still really like the show, though. It’s good stuff. And here is some advice for when we’re all dressing like Joan Holloway this fall: Don’t be costumey and matchy matchy. I like to pair vintage dresses with a totally anachronistic shoe, as suggested at the link above, or to rock a color combination that wouldn’t have seen the light of day in 1963, or, you know, just anything, so that it looks chic and not sock hop-themed party.

And now I’m going camping! At least I have an entire box of wine.