What’s the point of having a bad day when something can be done about it? Change the situation, change the outlook. Life is too short to be miserable, to be stuck doing something we hate.
I realize it’s May but I’ve been busy so let’s retroactively bestow the honor of nut-job crazy adult behavior to Arizona governor Jan Brewer who just signed into law an entire state ban on Planned Parenthood funding. Can I take this moment to let the air out? AHHHHHH! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, JAN BREWER??
Let’s not ignore how in mid-April she deemed that life in the Grand Canyon state is now defined as starting on the first day of a woman’s last period RATHER THAN FERTILIZATION. But let’s talk about that later.
Congrats Governor Brewer, you are April’s Almost Adult of the Month.
I’m getting bored of Girls. I think the most exciting part was figuring out that artist dude who guest starred was The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone. It was a head-scratcher because I usually only picture him with this face:
That’s him jizzing in his pants because of a cool draft…and Marnie was all over that. Booth (the weirdly creepy artist) and Marnie had met at her gallery’s party, after her drunkass boss introduced them and said something really racist—“You know what I say about men who fuck Asian women” No, what DO you say?? More racism—probably something that Girls doesn’t need right now.
So in the week I’ve been back I’ve been sending off resumes and cover letters like mad, milking my connections, and bemoaned a life of poverty because I wasn’t getting any bites.
Yes, I realize I obsessed for no reason, considering I just got a new freelance writer/reporter job at HollywoodLife.com where I stalk report and post stuff about celebs. Kardashians, Beyonce, Zac Efron…cream of the crop. Check out mah articles!
That’s me! Except not blonde and I usually write on a computer. (Completely unrelated actually—I drew that for my cousin Eunice’s robotics team and thought I should re-purpose it ‘cause it’s suuper cuuute.)
Work, in the two days I’ve been at the HollywoodLife office, is fast-paced, crazy long, and I find myself thinking that I should have applied for that part-time barista gig at the local cafe instead. Regular hours and a 5-minute walking commute seem amazing at this point. Like right now, my dream situation would be to play with puppies all day and have a 401k, have time to write what I want, be able to watch my favorite TV shows when I get home from work, and occasionally see my friends and family. Um, yeah, I just woke the fuck up from that dream after finishing my 8:15am-7pm shift yesterday.
Everyone I know is either stuck with perma-lancing, with jobs they hate, with jobs they like but pay piddlings, or with no jobs at all. Is it always the case that your post-college 20s are supposed to be really, ridiculously difficult especially with the job front? And with the recession, people are extra stuck—nothing like having dire poverty looming over your shoulders. I feel like companies poach on young people because they’re virile, can work absurd hours, and, if they are under 26, companies don’t need to provide healthcare because the younguns are still covered by their parents (unfortunately I just fell off that boat). I don’t know anyone in his or her 20s who has hit the trifecta of good pay, good job, good social life. And if you do, screw you.
Crazy that I needed a whole post on racism and diversity before Lena Dunham could even offer a second episode recap. Let’s shift the conversation entirely about stuff that really matters…vaginas. Now I know that the Dems and Repubs have been politicizing on our lady parts for months now, but I wasn’t ready for this episode’s va-jay-jay hyper analysis on STDS, abortions, and menstrual cycles. I doubt my mom reads this blog, but recapping ep.2 is even making me bashful (and I get paid to write about Love and Sex). Let’s go!
This post is a little off topic, but let’s address Girls and the show’s apparent “lack of diversity.” Before poor lil’ Lena Dunham could even counter with a second episode, media folk have (more articulately) expressed:
BAH! Why is every major character WHITE? That black guy in the end is poor and scary! And that Asian is wearing nerd glasses and is really good a Photoshop! RABBLE RABBLE!!
It’s like they’re saying, “Homegirl, we don’t care that you’ve somehow written/directed/starred in your own widely acclaimed HBO show at the age of 25. You racist.”
I’ve been wanting to recap shows for the longest time, but I never found the right show to start it with. Enter Girls, written, directed by and starring Lena Dunham, which premiered on HBO last night after much hoopla.
It’s a HBO comedy about four single women living in New York City—sound a little familiar to you? They’re just begging for the Sex and the City comparisons, heck even one of the characters calls herself a Carrie with a little Samantha. But it’s minus the glossy Manolos and rent controlled Manhattan apartments. A 20something-Recession era slice of life with shared living spaces and enormous student loan debt (ugh only 50K for one character, that happy chap). There’s sex, but it’s grimy and with unflattering lighting.
It suuucks getting older. The metabolism slows down, hangovers are death knells, and you can only shop in Forever 21 ironically.
Oh, and you lose friends. Have you ever had coffee or Skyped with someone who was once a good friend but you haven’t seen in years? After the initial thrill of catching up is over and you’ve gone through the list of mutual friends who’ve gotten fat, there’s then this staid awkwardness in the air. As you’ll sip those last dregs of coffee and bring up a few cutesy “Remember when’s,” you feel that those fuzzy-warm feelings of friendship past are there but something’s just different. When someone inevitably chimes that they’ve got to run, you’ll both promise to catch up more often and make nebulous plans to hang out again soon. And it’ll never happen.
I’m thinking about this because of this recent iVillage article, “Is it Normal to Lose Friends as You Get Older?” No need to sift through Stanford University psychologist Laura Carstensen’s “socioemotional selectivity theory.” Duh, yes, it’s perfectly normal to lose friends as you age, and it doesn’t need a fancy name, it just sucks. As we age, we change, and it’s up to you or your friends to either accept it or not. Here, five reasons why we lose friends:
Bringing back the blog after a way long hiatus with March’s Almost Adult Hall-of-Famer, Jason Russell of Kony2012/public-nude-mental-breakdown fame.
Too easy?
New country, new language. I am once again in a place where I am a complete foreigner, trying to not look like an idiot speaking a language I barely know. French is beautiful, and I’m committed to learning it, but damn, it’s frustrating. Gendered nouns, for example. Some are self explanatory: le garcon, la fille. Some I’ll just accept: “sandwich” is male, “bottle” is female. But why is “car” feminine but “taxi” masculine? Of course fluent speakers are sadistically happy to inform me of proper m/f conjugation. Like before I can pat my back for remembering the words and pronunciation of “J’ai une chien,” someone will inevitably tell me, “It’s ‘UN,’ the word ‘dog’ is MASCULINE of course, you dumb American. You don’t get points for trying. It’s just how French is.” Great—now is “jerk” masculine or feminine?
Hello again from total blog absence, Almost Adult is now abroad in Montpellier. My boyfriend is completing part of his Masters in the south of France and it makes absolute sense for me to live with him—he can’t have all that wine, cheese and coffee to himself. Fact is, I’ll never get another break. As a kid you get summer, winter, spring break. As an adult the only breaks you get are like…a handful of company holidays or like maternity leave which is not really a break. Now that the Masters’ box is checked, I’m taking my final break in this gorgeously sunny city 40 minutes away from the beach. Think Paris minus the snootiness plus palm trees. Some might say I’m escaping adulthood once again. I call it my three-month European sabbatical.
Last Halloween after a midnight booze cruise on the Hudson, in a drunken teary tantrum, my 20-year-old cousin accused me and our 26-year-old cousin of not being fun anymore as our cab zipped past our Meat Packing after-party. Just for visual interest we were all dressed as Harajuku Girls. See below.
Slutty, slightly offensive, and inebriated. Whatever happened to trick-or-treat?
Bratty Younger Cousin: “You just want to have babies! I’m in New York for the first time and I want to go out!”
Me, the Offended 24 Year-Old: “You’re being such a brat. We’re not going to the club now because the line’s a mile long, and it’s cold, and I need to pee. We’ll come back in like an hour.”
Old Fart Cousin: “…actually, I do want to have babies.” (NOT helping at all)
While I’m definitely not into having babies yet, truth is, I had no desire to stay out. I guess what the anecdote is trying to say is yeah, my cousins might onto something: I’m getting too old for this shit.
The signs: I’ve thrown out all my party dresses and costume-jewelry. I’ve stopped mingling with strangers at bars. I buy my own drinks. I say I’m busy doing homework on Saturday nights when I’m actually nursing a bottle of wine and streaming Netflix. Life has slowed down for this now-25-year old. In my early 20s, curling my hair and stuffing my feet into ridiculously painful high heels and consuming near-lethal amounts of alcohol occurred every other night, and now just thinking about it exhausts me. In fact, as a testament to how pathetic I’ve become, right now I’m in the NYU library BLOGGING at 9 p.m. and it’s not even required for a grade anymore.
This is the quarter-life crisis isn’t it? Work full time M-F, getting tired by 11 p.m., social circle consisting of the boyfriend (on Skype, no less) and Facebook. I made fun of people who lived like this—swore that would never be me—and now I’m one of them and my Oil of Olay night time anti-wrinkle cream seconds it. This is what growing up is like—stability, consistency and sensible flats. The incessantly-ticking biological clock is telling us post-college 20somethings to get a job, get married, have kids, contribute to society. Is this why all the hippies became Republicans?
Anyway, I’m just going to go down the denial route. Quarter-life crises are for pansies. 25 is the new 18! Under rug swept. This summer, I’m going to (try and) be cool again. I’m moving to Brooklyn and living with a 22 year-old. I’m gonna do stuff!
Oh, back to Halloween. We never ended up going out. The Brat was way too weepy and we called it a night. The next day, just to prove a point, my cousins and I went back to Meat Packing and got hammered. On a Sunday night. In your face, Life!
Many college seniors and grad students will be walking across the stage this month and next. What better way to greet them to the big bad world than to tell them how time/money-wasting its been to further their education!
Whether it’s unpaid, pitifully paid, or for academic credit, internships are a necessary evil for many Almost Adults on their way to a full-time gig. Internships are highly coveted among emerging adults who seek internship experience in order to pad their resume for this hyper-competitive job economy (even if it’s for little-to-nothing wages). In fact, three-quarters of the 10 million students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities will work as interns at least once before graduation, and up to half gave their services free or had to pay for going to work, according to a recent article from The Economist.
There are the obvious criticisms: Nick Clegg, Britain’s deputy prime minister, has tried to ban them because it favors the wealthy and privileged for being able to, essentially, afford a job. This month, NY Times contributor Ross Perlin wrote how many naysayers consider internships rife with exploitation, a cheap way for universities to provide credit, and a violation of labor laws.
No stranger to the life of the intern, since 2007, I’ve had stints at a fashion start-up, a publishing company, a travel magazine, a television network and now at a Web site. I’ve been through the good, bad, and ugly, and due to confidentiality agreements and for the sake of future employment (read: coward) I’ll stay zip on how each were. Still, I’d like to salute my fellow interns (and aspiring interns, too) for toiling under the bottom rung of the corporate ladder with a comic interpretation of the four stages of getting an internship:
