it’s unavoidable, and imminent

So, Penny’s had a Tumblr for about nine months now, and hasn’t used it. I grabbed up the URL when I first learned about Tumblr back then, not that “pennypascal” was likely to be taken, but you never know in these crazy times. Anyway, since I’m the world’s most consistently restless blogger, I’ve been fighting the itch recently to make the switch to Tumblr. It’s just sooooo pretty. And so simple. And so easy. And I find that I have less to say these days, at least in this format.

Then I got to thinking. I’ve been “blogging” since I was 14 years old. So basically since ever. Though back then, no one called it blogging. I started at FreeOpenDiary (I don’t even think that website is around anymore) because this junior liked me and he had one so I got one and I was PunkRockPrincess even though there has never been even one ounce of punk in me. Then, from there, it was Livejournal. I was on Livejournal for years. I basically wrote a book on there during the two years of being a high school senior and a college freshman. So much angst. So much writing. But then I got to the point in which I was less angsty and had a harder and harder time hanging out in that space with that past. So then, I guess, was Typepad because there was a time in which I had a job and got paid money and had money to spend on silly things. Then I didn’t have a job anymore so it was WordPress. And I write less and less about myself and more and more about boring things that sometimes I don’t even want to read. And I wish that posting photos was easier because I do tend to take photos. And I have more of a life now than at any other time in the past and it makes sitting around thinking about myself and things in general a sparce activity, so I wonder what kind of internet presence I should even keep at this point.

And now, I’m thinking that I should just stop fighting it and maybe let myself over to the Tumblrs. At some point, maybe now, I’ll stop moving around and stay put perminently. I make no commitments, though.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to become a person without the internet around, but then my head explodes. I’ve been doing less and less with it, and finding that it’s more and more fun to live in the real world.

I’m a little drowsy right now, and then I read this super fucking depressing blog of Roger Ebert’s (which will be posted on the Tumblr…d’oh! It begins!), and this fact might explain my current state of mind. Ambiguity is me.

meet raisin

more soulmate porn

And about 6,500 words on why she is so wonderful. I most likely won’t have time to read it until winter break, but you better believe it just jumped to the top spot on my To-Do-When-I-Have-Time-For-Things-Like-Reading-For-Pleasure-Again List.

Of particular interest is the discussion of her scar, which I’ve never seen in print or otherwise before:

Liz Lemon favors her right side. That’s because a faint scar runs across Tina Fey’s left cheek, the result of a violent cutting attack by a stranger when Fey was five. Her husband says, “It was in, like, the front yard of her house, and somebody who just came up, and she just thought somebody marked her with a pen.” You can hardly see the scar in person. But I agree with Richmond that it makes Fey more lovely, like a hint of Marlene Dietrich noir glamour in a Preston Sturges heroine.

“That scar was fascinating to me,” Richmond recalls. “This is somebody who, no matter what it was, has gone through something. And I think it really informs the way she thinks about her life. When you have that kind of thing happen to you, that makes you scared of certain things, that makes you frightened of different things, your comedy comes out in a different kind of way, and it also makes you feel for people.”

I wonder how the scar affected Fey in high school. “She wasn’t Rocky Dennis developing a sense of humor because of her looks, like in Mask,” says Damian Holbrook, laughing. Liz Lemon’s blustery Republican boss, Jack Donaghy, played with comic genius by Alec Baldwin, tells Lemon, “I don’t know what happened in your life that caused you to develop a sense of humor as a coping mechanism. Maybe it was some sort of brace or corrective boot you wore during childhood, but in any case I’m glad you’re on my team.”

Marci Klein—the cool, tall, blonde executive producer of 30 Rock and producer of S.N.L., and the daughter of Calvin Klein—who was kidnapped for 10 hours when she was 11, remembers, “Tina said to me, ‘Well, you know, Marci, we had the Bad Thing happen to us. We know what it’s like.”’

Fey herself rarely mentions the episode. “It’s impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it and glorifying it,” she says. Did she feel less attractive growing up because of it? “I don’t think so,” she says. “Because I proceeded unaware of it. I was a very confident little kid. It’s really almost like I’m kind of able to forget about it, until I was on-camera, and it became a thing of ‘Oh, I guess we should use this side’ or whatever. Everybody’s got a better side.”

She used therapy to cope with her extremely fearful reaction to the anthrax attack at 30 Rock shortly after 9/11—the first time her co-workers had seen her vulnerable. The therapist talked to her about 9/11 and the anthrax delivered to Tom Brokaw’s office, linking them to the crime against her when she was little. “It’s the attack out of nowhere,” Fey says. “Something comes out of nowhere, it’s horrifying.”

I asked her how the childhood attack affected her as a mother.

“Supposedly, I will go crazy,” she replies evenly. “My therapist says, ‘When Alice is the age that you were, you may go crazy.”’

Sigh. Heart her hard.

Happy Thanksgiving!

friday afternoon fail

Because this is how I spend my Friday afternoons.

rub the belly! do it!

Because the combination of being both incredibly content with life and also incredibly stressed does absolutely nothing for me in terms of inspiration, I have, you guessed it, absolutely nothing interesting to contribute.

Except for this, which my dad emailed to me today. Upside Down Dogs. Absolutely brilliant.

Bing.

Bing.

And bing.

Ebony and ivory sit together in perfect harmony, side by side on Stevie Wonder’s piano keyboard

Now we do, too! Well, we’re one big step closer to doing so, at least.

not my gumdrop buttons!

Full-size it, dwell in it, wrap yourself in this moment. Make it last.

it’s a pretty new world

The internets have been on an Obama high this week, rightly so, and I’ve been happening upon tons of super fabulous visual celebrations of our new prez. The inner graphic designer in me is as happy as a little kid in a candy store with all of the aesthetic wonder going ’round. I thought I’d share some of my favorites that I’ve found:

• Today’s Front Pages. The November 5, 2008 archive is fun to look though and see how different places handled the news. I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed with the NYTimes’s job. Regardless, it’s a great website to use if you want to grab a digital copy of Wednesday’s pages so you can show your grand kids one day. Takes up less space than a decaying newspaper, and our grand kids won’t understand that news used to come printed on paper anyway. Of course the newspaper at my college didn’t even have a story about the election, which is kind of bizarre, but not at all surprising. If I were still on staff, I’d have forced all of the reporters to gather student responses to the results and establish a gigantic reaction piece to show how this election effects our community. But then again, I just write a lowly film column and go on my merry way.
• Obama Dingbats (pictured above). These are great for anyone who wants to make their own Obama posters but don’t have any graphic design experience. This guy has created a font of dingbats, so typing “B” renders an instant smiling president elect. Love it.
• Design for Obama. This site is absolutely amazing. There are both sides to the argument about the implications of the rise of the creative middle class on the internet, but this is one of those times when I am so thankful that the internet and creative people combine to create free awesomeness. I’ve got my favorite ready to get poster printed, framed, and hung in my room. It also makes this awesomeness possible:

All for free! Yes, plz!

Oh, and a little something for your ears, to compliment the eye candy. It’s kind of silly, kind of pretentious, but I welcome any opportunity to hear that voice like buttah! The entire mix can be downloaded for free (wee!) here.

Fired up. Ready to go.

As a general rule, I keep my politics to myself. It’s probably a residual effect of being raised as a southern protestant – it’s a double dose of the idea that stating strong opinions is tacky and that opinions are to be kept to one’s self (or at least within one’s household). I also try not to contribute to the polarizing ridiculousness that has become our fractured country. But this election has thrust me into politics with a force that I have a hard time explaining. I’ve been actively engaged in this election after an adolescence of apathy, and I now feel knowledgeable enough to continue in a life of political awareness. It’s yet another graduation I’ve been undergoing lately, and accordingly, I’d like an artifact of how I’m feeling about things right now. So I’m going to say a few words.

This is my president. I’ve been waiting eight years to say that and feel something other than horrified embarrassment and shame in doing so. I sometimes wish I had been able to have my formative years take place under a president who didn’t, you know, nearly ruin our country and all. But I’m hopeful that my coming of age in a time of such disillusionment and awfulness will help me to cherish the times in our future when good things will start to happen. Things have to change, and it’s not going to be easy. But it’s time for a new world, we can’t continue with the way things have been, and I’m elated to be able to be a part of it.

I’ve written out a few long pieces over the last couple of weeks attempting to explain my stance on politics, my opinions of what has happened and what will and should happen, and I’ve explained my own history and how watching what is going on around me has formed who I am today. But I can never seem to get it the way I want it enough to put it out there. Maybe it’s too fiercely personal, maybe it’s just too big. I guess none of it is all that important except for the main theme and that is – I cannot express the pride I feel right now in our country, an emotion made all the more powerful by the fact that it is completely new to me.

The rawness of it is something I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel about my country. Obama deserved this victory. He was the better candidate, he ran a better campaign, he wanted it for better reasons. He represents America’s future, and he is the beginning of a fairness that has been so long coming and so long deserved. He is a realization of a dream, a living melting pot, an emblem of what America has so long made empty claims at being.

This was the first time I’ve been able to vote, and although I am registered in a state where my vote as good as doesn’t count, I am still part of the group of us here who made it known what kind of future we want. One day I’ll be in a place where my vote works towards something, and maybe one day the place I come from will begin to even up some. On a specific note, I am so incredibly proud of North Carolina, the place where my entire families come from, for making the progress they made this year. I’ve always joked that I claim North Carolina as my home state – it’s the place that produced my parents, and in turn my parents produced me in an environment that is so close and yet so far away from their upbringings. This election makes it official that I’m a North Carolinian who just happened to get stuck in South Carolina from the day she was born. The details are unimportant.

It is disheartening to see how many of my contemporaries are responding to the results with such venom, such terror, and such immaturity, but I won’t let the infuriation resulting from exposure to their single-mindedness spoil the elation of this victory. A lot of people in this country are selfish, greedy, stubborn, and most of all, afraid of change. These are the qualities of the past eight years that we have finally stood up against as a nation, and I’m so pleasantly reenergized about the mental capacities of the majority of Americans. I’m glad to know that people are just as fed up and disheartened as I have been.

It’s all been said before, and my opinions aren’t any different than anyone else’s, but I feel compelled for the first time in a long time to let myself be excited in the moment about progress in a society that I usually just make fun of. It’s like early Christmas. He’s just a beautiful, beautiful man. And I mean that in any and every way possible.