Tuesday Newsday: Aspirations Wrapped Up In Books

As weeks go, this one hasn't been the best for the newspaper industry, and it's only Tuesday. The Chicago Sun-Times filed for bankruptcy today, and according to a Monday rumor, the venerable New York Times will soon be eliminating its City section and regional weeklies.

Newspapers need money, but more importantly, they need buyers -- people willing to invest time and energy in reenergizing and reinventing the business model that so many have failed at. So, in lieu of giving in to the man and accepting bailout funds, here's a solution: let's buy them ourselves.

At least that's Andrew Dunn's plan. Dunn, a journalism student at the University of North Carolina, runs the Web site Let's Buy A Newspaper, where, since January, journalists have been pledging money to -- you guessed it -- buy one of the country's various struggling papers. The now-defunct, almost universally beloved Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News were once first on the site's list of potential purchases. That list now includes papers like the Miami Herald and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

On the site's "About" page, Dunn admits that he started the site on a whim when the news broke about the Post-Intelligencer but would be open to following through on the experiment if enough pledges come through.

Yes, only $28,000 has been pledged to save newspapers that are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, the site might be a little too idealistic for its own good. Yes, there's almost no chance that Dunn's endearingly bare-bones site will actually manage to buy a paper of its own.

But at the same time, click around the site and you'll find a bunch of concerned, intelligent journalists discussing new practices in newsroom management, laying out a business plan and outlining a payroll for 20 reporters and seven editors. It's kind of like playing house -- what would we do with a whole newspaper of our own? -- but already, contributors are putting forth ideas about investors, advertising and potential locations. Reporters and editors from publications as venerable as the New York Times and as small-scale as college newspapers are pledging $50 and $500 and $5,000 if the project gets off the ground.

Maybe it's wishful thinking; maybe it's a shot in the dark. But that's what new media is about: taking a crazy idea that just might work and seeing where it goes. At the very least, Let's Buy a Newspaper is bringing together print journalists across the country to talk about the future and share ideas in a time when ideas are all we have left.

And if the whole thing does work out, they can have my $50, any day.

Lost Review: Building It Up to Tear It Down

I have been heinously behind on blogging/homework/life, but this is no matter, as I have recently caught up on Lost and am subsequently shell-shocked by the insanity that was this past episode. Seriously -- it's turned one of the central tenets of the show upside down, and I have no idea where it's going next, but good god am I excited to see what happens.

Spoiler alert: anyone who hasn't seen last week's episode yet, stop reading now.

Our episode opens in Tikrit, Iraq, which is apparently the hometown of Sayid, who earned a place on my "generally awesome people" list very early on. A father is urging his pathetically obese son, ostensibly a young Sayid, to kill a chicken for dinner; pathetically obese kid refuses, tears spilling down his pudgy cheeks; I begin to worry that all of Sayid's credibility has been destroyed forever; and then ACTUAL YOUNG SAYID, who is much cuter, appears on screen and casually snaps a chicken's neck while his fat brother looks on, shocked.

My relief that Sayid was not the playground loser in his youth is boundless.

And we're back to the present (or, in this case, 1977), where a captured Sayid is lounging in his Dharma cell, refusing to eat or speak. Although I kind of understand (Dharma-brand beer has to be terrible), this will not last long, and it doesn't, because 12-year-old Ben Linus shows up with a sandwich and a book and a terrified-but-hopeful look in his eyes.

Tiny Ben is awesome and sad; he's just desperate for a friend, and it's pretty much the most adorable thing ever. If he'd been born in Britain, he might have grown up to be Harry Potter. Instead he just gets to be one of the best villains ever (Ben totally beats out Voldemort in my book).

Horace, the leader of the Others, shows up and tries to force Sayid to talk while waving a pair of grass clippers. Sayid shows no emotion, and rightfully so, because aging hippie men with dumb hair and lame grass clippers are quite possibly the least threatening things in the world.

Meanwhile, back in Dharmaville proper, Sawyer and Juliet share a sweet little moment in which Juliet laments the fact that Jack and company have returned to the island and pretty much ruined everything. Sawyer is adorable and reassures her and DAMN IT I WANT SAWYER AND JULIET TO BE TOGETHER FOREVER, the end.

In an effort to keep this life intact, Sawyer storms into the cell where Sayid's being held and tries to formulate a plan to get him to join the Dharmaites. Sayid refuses; Sawyer warns him that he could jeopardize everything he's worked for.

"I've built a life here, and a pretty good one," he says. I melt.

The flashback for this episode, by the way, is Sayid-centric, focusing mainly on what happened to Sayid after he stopped killing people for Ben. At one point, Ben finds Sayid in some third-world country, where he is building Habitat for Humanity-esque houses to atone for his various Ben-fueled sins or whatever, and tries to convince him to kill one more person for him.

There is only one significant line in this scene, and it's this:

Ben: "You're capable of things that most other men aren't." SAYID/BEN 4EVAAAAA

The rest of the episode (except for the end -- wait for it) does not require too much commentary, but there are a few choice moments, including:
- Everyone tells Sayid he's going to be tortured for information, but the Dharmaites' version of a torture man turns out to be an aging hippie (surprise!) who feeds Sayid some drug that makes him tell the truth. Coupled with tiny Ben's striking resemblance to a certain boy wizard, the truth serum has convinced me that Lost is pretty much Harry Potter in the South Pacific.
- Sayid slurs to everyone that he's from the future, and torture-man utters one of the best lines of the episode: "Maybe I should have used half a dropper? Oops?"
- Horace spends the entire episode trying to make scary faces but usually ends up looking like a grouchy old woman, which is what he is. I really, really hate him.
- Hurley has apparently been assigned to kitchen duty and, predictably, looks adorable in an apron.
- Tiny Ben gets slapped around by his loser dad and ends up with a giant bruise and taped glasses. I just want to give him a hug.

The rest of the episode is pretty uneventful, until the end, which is honestly one of the most shocking developments I've ever seen on Lost.

The Dharmaites, against Sawyer's advice, take a vote to kill Sayid because they think he's a Hostile; in response, tiny Ben pulls his first badass move of the episode and SETS A VAN ON FIRE, sending it careening through Dharmaville. While everyone is fighting the flames, he breaks Sayid out of jail and the two go running through the forest, trying to find Richard "Permanent Eyeliner" Alpert and the actual Hostiles. Jin finds them, tries to convince Sayid to come back, and a desperate Sayid knocks him out and takes his gun.

Adorable tiny Ben, impressed with Sayid's moves, says something adorable and chipper about how awesome Sayid is. Sayid looks up, agonized.

"You were right about me," he whispers. "I am a killer."

And he whips out Jin's gun and SHOOTS TINY BEN.

And that's it.

I can't even begin to imagine what this means for the show -- does Ben not exist anymore? Has Sayid changed history entirely? Has a hole been ripped in the space-time continuum?

I get where Sayid is coming from -- if you had the chance to kill random evil masterminds before they could actually become evil masterminds, wouldn't you? -- but it's still one of the show's most mind-blowing conclusions.

Actually, I think Ben will survive and grow up to be the skeevy little creeper we all know and love, and that his preternatural knowledge of the Losties likely stems from the fact that he knew them all when he was 12 and figured out who he was supposed to become. I have no idea if I'm right. But I can't wait to find out.

Sunday Nunday: This Is How I Am Repaid?

General life rule, whether you're Catholic or not: don't mess with nuns. If you do, they have various options for vengeance at their disposal. They can pull a John Paul II and just instantaneously forgive you, after which you will be so riddled with guilt that you will actually ask for punishment, or, failing that, they can always go old-school and whack you with rulers or make you stand in a trash can or something. (True story: that actually happened to a family friend of ours in the 60s.) Either way, it's not a good situation.

Scamming nuns is never a good idea, because not only will the nuns ultimately have their revenge, but the world will generally agree that you are a horrible human being. Rip off a nun and you've pretty much consigned yourself to a life of slapping orphans and scaring old ladies, because what else is left, really?

Thus, if this Chicago couple is indeed guilty of what the FBI says they are, I fear for their future. In 2004, according to an FBI affidavit, Angela Martin-Mulu and Edward Bosire turned up at a Carmelite monastery near Milwaukee and told the nuns there they were homeless Kenyan refugees who needed food and money, adding that they would be killed if they returned to Kenya. (The two immigrated from Kenya in 1999 and recieved political asylum in 2007.)

The nuns understandably took pity, because they are adorable, and gave them more than $800,000 over three years. Even worse, the money came straight from their personal health fund, according to a Sister Mary Agnes.

So if the couple are guilty (they were indicted by a federal grand jury recently and face up to 20 years in prison if convicted), they didn't just steal a fortune -- they stole it from a bunch of Carmelites who couldn't pay for health insurance. Low point, kids.

To top it all off, the FBI says most of the money was spent in casinos, which makes me want to bang my head against my desk. Gambling with nuns' money is practically asking to be struck down by lightning.

There's not really much I can say about this situation other than "well, that was dumb." And there's no word on what the nuns think about the whole thing, but personally, I'm hoping they break out the rulers.

Songs on Repeat: Sun Been Down for Days

At approximately 36 seconds into Wilco's inimitable "Hummingbird," there's this awesome little cello part that gets me every. single. time. It's only a few measures long, but it's absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes I just play the first minute or so over and again, because I am admittedly kind of pathetic.

Oren Lavie's "Her Morning Elegance" features a little cello riff early on, too. And maybe I'm just a sucker for what is arguably the best instrument ever (I haven't picked mine up in two years, but I'm not ready to say I used to play it just yet), because iTunes informs me that I have played this song 30 times since Sunday night, and that's not counting the play count on my iPod.

Usually my repeat songs of the week are sort of pleasant little things that I decide to start out my mornings with, but this one's different. It's minimal as anything -- those fantastic cello sections nearly drown out the muted organ and xylophone in the background -- but it's one of those songs that just works. I can't explain it.

Also, the music video is pretty much one of the most adorable things I've ever seen. It's probably one of the reasons I can't stop listening to the song.

Tuesday Newsday: Too Much History, Too Much Biography?

Note: The news industry is pretty insane right now -- but pretty fascinating, too. On Tuesdays, I'll be blogging about journalism -- how it's changing, who's shaping it, and what's next for the news. Thus, happy Tuesday Newsday, kids.



When the management of a major metropolitan daily newspaper decides to publish their Twitter accounts instead of their names on the masthead, you know something is changing.

This, if you couldn't tell, is the March 19 masthead of the venerable Chicago Tribune, one of my favorite papers and, coincidentally, one of the most troubled papers in the country right now.

So it's interesting that just a few months after its parent company declared bankruptcy, the Tribune printed a masthead devoted to one of the more pervasive aspects of new media journalism. Twitter is what you might call a "microblog," a vast aggregator of millions of people's 140-character status updates. At its worst, it's vapid, narcissistic, and completely pointless.

At its best, though, it's kind of the coolest thing ever. Wade through the masses of voyeuristic losers and you find really, really awesome journalists -- not just sitting there navel-gazing but delving in-depth into their reporting, taking you inside newsrooms across the country and around the world.

I follow way too many journalists on Twitter -- Daniel Victor from the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Chris Krewson from the Philadephia Inquirer, the adorable freelance blog queen Ana Marie Cox -- and while stalking my fellow newsies is admittedly a mildly pathetic way to spend my time, it's convinced me that Twitter isn't just for the self-absorbed yuppies that make up its majority. It's taught me that in the midst of layoffs left and right, of venerable papers collapsing like dominoes, there is a small subset of journalists who are embracing new media and making it work.

A few months ago, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had a bomb scare on campus. Zach Tracer, a reporter for Duke's student paper, was on the scene and reporting -- but before filing a web update, he was posting everything he saw to Twitter. Watching updates come in instantly in real time was fascinating -- and yeah, it might speak to what my parents enjoy calling "the instant-gratification culture," but at the same time, it shows a remarkable willingness to adapt and innovate. Twittering the news is not going to make us any money in the short run, but maybe it's part of what will save us in the end.

Album Review: The Hazards of Love

I've listened to the Decemberists' latest album, The Hazards of Love, twice through so far and read countless reviews of it, and I'm still kind of torn about it, to the point where I've been sporadically bothering my friends all day to ask their opinion.

One minute I adore the lilting melody of "Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)"; the next I want to tear my hair out over the overtly metal nonsense that is "The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing." I've wavered between getting sucked into the album's overarching plot (more on that later) and dismissing the entire thing as too weird for words. It's hard for me, because I adore the Decemberists beyond all reason, to the point where I regularly yell "WE LOVE YOU COLIN!" at the stage at their concerts. I've spent years defending the band against its standard criticisms: their music is weird, their references obscure, their lyrics pretentious as all get-out.

But I'm going to say it: The Hazards of Love is weird, obscure and pretentious. It's a prog-rock opera in the grandest sense of the word, with dense, pulsing guitar riffs and crashing organs and a surprising amount of what metal would sound like if Led Zeppelin was planted in 1872. The whole album is a loosely connected story about a heroine named Margaret, her lover/baby daddy/son of the Forest Queen, William (who turns into a fawn during the day, randomly), said Forest Queen, and the Rake, who, sadly, is not a common garden tool, but a widower who murdered his children because he missed being a bachelor. Whew.

True to form, frontman Colin Meloy warbles delightfully throughout the album, and the band brings on guest singers to voice Margaret and the Forest Queen. Becky Stark provides suitably waifish vocals for Margaret, but props to Colin for getting Shara Worden to sing as the Forest Queen. Even as the band descends into metal sludge halfway through the album, Worden's soulful growl slides above it all. She absolutely owns her half of "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid," one of the best songs on the album.

The Hazards of Love is ambitious and grandiose and sometimes insane, and a lot of the time, this works. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for the Decemberists' 2004 EP The Tain, which had a lot of the same epic elements, but I occasionally found myself drifting off in its dense melodies and climactic chords. It's not an album to pull a few catchy singles off, but as a cohesive musical whole, it works. It's easy to forgive the band for the distracting, stuttering distortion on "The Abduction of Margaret" when it's followed by the absolutely gorgeous folk tune "Annan Water." And some of the prog is, admittedly, pretty good -- "The Rake's Song" features some deeply disturbing lyrics but subversively catchy rock. For the most part, the album slides between thick prog rock and sweet, poignant love songs, each song bleeding seamlessly into the next.

That being said, part of the Decemberists' charm once lay in the fact that they could mesh epics like "The Crane Wife 1 & 2" with folk-pop goodness like "O Valencia!" on the same record. Hazards is all epic and no pop, which -- while it produces some crazy and interesting musical concepts -- kind of saddens me. Seasoned Decemberists fans know that Colin Meloy can make a song about a lost bicycle sound like the best thing you've heard in days. He doesn't need to sing about a shape-shifting fawn-man to convince us of his musical genius.

It's interesting to compare Hazards to the Decemberists' EP series, Always the Bridesmaid, released last fall. While Hazards represents what I think everyone's been fearing a little bit ever since The Tain -- the giant, inaccessible, "oh-god-what-were-they-thinking" concept album -- the EP series is almost a return to how the band began: sweet, melodic ditties about things as ordinary as a rainy day or a road trip through New England.

It's fun to rock out a little to The Hazards of Love, and the album definitely has its high points. And you have to give the band credit for taking on such an ambitious project, even if it falls a little flat at times. But for me, the Decemberists will always be about the mesh of the epic and the mundane, the pairing of wonderfully complex lyrics with choruses that will get stuck in your head for days. That's not Hazards, not by a long shot. But something tells me that Colin Meloy won't be sticking with Rakes and fawns for long.

Download: "Annan Water," "The Rake's Song," "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid"

Sunday Nunday: A Very, Very, Very Fine House

Note: I spent nine years getting taught by Sisters of Saint Joseph, and I have generally found that nuns are pretty much the best people around. Thus, I introduce Sunday Nunday, in which I find interesting news about nuns and blog about it.

Nuns should get anything they want. (Within reason, of course. Renouncing your vows, for example, is probably not the best idea.)

But still. They give up everything they own, they get up early for Mass every morning (a feat indeed), and they can get serious stuff done when they want to (word, Mother Teresa). So when a FOX affiliate got all up in arms this weekend over a New Jersey parish that purchased an $800,000 McMansion to house its nuns, I was left wondering what all the fuss is about.

At first glance, this seems mildly excessive. After all, the nuns at my high school lived in a convent that was attached to the actual school. That's like working in an office all day and then walking down the hall to your bedroom. No one but nuns could do that without wanting to burn the place down within a week.

Anyway, nuns are generally expected to live in weird/terrible conditions and like it, and no one ever really makes an issue about it, including the nuns, because they know it's all part of the vows, yo.

Thus, when a parish in New Jersey bought a swanky new house for its five nuns, people were upset. The news report quotes some parishioners yelling about how nuns take a vow of poverty and that this is a waste of money for the parish and it's a terrible example to set, etc. etc. etc.

My favorite line is the lede in the article that accompanies the video: "Why are five New Jersey nuns living in a mansion that should be in Beverly Hills?"

BECAUSE THEY'RE AWESOME. OKAY? Okay.

The FOX affiliate also takes stalker helicopter photos of the house. Not cool.

The report goes on to mention, a little halfheartedly, that the nuns in question were living in a three-bedroom house and expected to welcome three more by the summer. Eight nuns and three bedrooms doesn't exactly work out. And building a new but more modest house for the nuns would have set the parish back by about $2 million, the archdiocese explains.

So we have eight nuns in a six-bedroom house, plus several acres of land, all bought at a discount price from a Catholic couple who were selling their house and wanted to help the parish out. Not only do the nuns get an awesome house, but the parish plans to use it for retreats, too. And you can totally throw giant church fairs on the new land.

I highly doubt that living in a huge new house will suddenly cause the nuns to adopt a high-flying nouveau riche lifestyle in which they ride around their new estate in personalized golf carts or something. And if they do, who cares? If I encountered a bunch of nuns driving a golf cart with their order's logo on it or something, I could die happy.

So: the parish saves money, the nuns finally get some decent housing, and the parishioners get a giant multi-acre party zone on which to throw fairs and raise more money for the church. Clearly, there is nothing wrong with this scenario. Catholicism for the win.

Lost Review: Ancient Commonsense

Note: As a Lost addict whose copy desking usually interferes with actually watching the show in real time, I will be posting sporadic episode reviews as I get to them. Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for confused readers who don't watch the show. It's far too late for you now.

I have been waiting for the big reunion episode for ages, ever since our six erstwhile castaways left the island at the end of Season 4, and we finally got the goods tonight. Sawyer was appropriately stunned, Hurley was big and cute and hug-ful, Jack did this whole awkward handshake thing, and our own Mistress of Meaningful and Poignant Looks delivered with various regretful grimaces and a desperate and sad hug. If Sawyer leaves Juliet for Kate, I will destroy my television.

And then comes Sawyer's big reveal: thanks to the island's time-hopping, he and Jin and Co. have been stuck in ... wait for it... 1977 ever since Locke left. In keeping with tradition, everyone drops what they're doing, makes scared faces, and the camera zooms meaningfully in on Hurley.

"Um... what?" he asks, staring around apprehensively. Somewhere in the great VH1 Has-Beens episode in the sky, Charlie "Guys... Where Are We?" Pace is smiling.

And we're off.

Sawyer, who is awesome, manages to get the returned castaways into the Dharma Initiative by passing them off as new recruits who've just arrived on the island via the initiative's sub. They all get flower leis and "Namastes" all around (the entire Dharma Initiative are secret hippies, for serious) and job assignments. Jack gets "Workman," which basically means "glorified janitor." Score one for Sawyer.

Sawyer also gets major points for a confrontation between him and Jack, when Jack, apparently dissatisfied with the fact that Sawyer has pretty much saved them all from death by Dharma, stops by his house to complain. "Where do we go from here?" he whines. Sawyer says he's thinking about it.

"It looked like you were just reading a book," Jack counters brilliantly.

Sawyer, who is pretty much my favorite person in life right now, puts down his book and straight-up OWNS Jack with a little-known fact about Winston Churchill (he read a book every night, even during the blitz, because he said it helped him think better) and a legitimate analysis of Jack's leadership style, which is that he has none.

"Back when you were calling the shots you pretty much just reacted. See, you didn't think, Jack. And as I recall, a lot of people ended up dead," Sawyer drawls. "So I'm going to go back to reading my book and I'm going to think. 'Cause that's how I saved your ass today." BAM.

Jack tries to fight back with some lame stuff about how he got everyone off the island, but Sawyer is a piece of ownage and Workman Jack leaves dejectedly. It's Sawyer time.

And then Kate and Sawyer exchange this little look, and Kate looks weirdly disappointed, and Sawyer looks weirdly guilty, and if she somehow destroys the competent awesomeness that Sawyer and Juliet have going on, I will break things.

In other news, we find out that Sun, undead Locke, and Ben are stuck in 2007, which poses some problems. And Jack's undead father has shown up again, which should be interesting.

Other notes:

- Sun proves her awesomeness once again and knocks Ben out with an oar. Sweet.
- Sayid is also in 1977 with the Dharma kids, but he had the misfortune of getting picked up by some legit Dharmaites before Sawyer could find him, so he's in Other jail right now for being a suspected hostile. Sad face.
- At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I'm kind of mad Jack and Co. are back on the island, because Sawyer and Juliet are ADORABLE, and everyone seems to have made a little home for themselves where they are. Seriously, all they have to do is avoid Ben's giant Dharma extermination in, say, 1990-ish, and they'll be fine.
- Juliet and Kate's first exchange in the Dharma processing station was crazy tension-filled. If Kate tries to come back to Sawyer, I am fairly confident we'll see another Kate/Juliet mud-wrestling showdown.
- Tiny Ben shows up! He is still appropriately creepy. I am so glad he's back.

And, lastly, your Sawyer one-liner of the evening:

After a Dharma Initiative member suggests that they kill Sayid: "Well, I appreciate your input there, Quick Draw, but I wanna talk to him first."

Songs on Repeat: America Can't Say No

Note: Every week or so, I find a song that I listen to nonstop, on loop, for at least a day. It is pathetic, but it's my repeat song of the week, and I'll be writing about it each Thursday. Cheers.

I've been gearing myself up for the Decemberists' latest album, The Hazards of Love, by listening to old Decemberists songs pretty much nonstop. On the off chance that the album is absolutely terrible (the reviews are starting to worry me), I figure that I can still comfort myself with the orphans, chimney sweeps and starcrossed lovers that are standard Decemberists fare.

"16 Military Wives" was playing on loop on my iPod today, and it's a little different from the rest of the band's sea-shanty-packed catalogue -- it's a protest song, and probably the most upbeat of its kind that I've ever heard. It's snarky, timely, and it features a lot of indie-rock god and Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy warbling, which pretty much seals the deal for me:

Fifteen celebrity minds
Leading their fifteen sordid, wretched, checkered lives
Will they find the solution in time,
Using their fifteen, pristine, moderate liberal minds?

Golden.

When I went to see the Decemberists at the Electric Factory in Philly this past November (by far my favorite venue in the world), they played this -- and then led the crowd in a chant of "Yes We Can!" It was a week after the election, and it was brilliant.

Also, it has the best music video in the history of ever:

They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!!

I planned to write a post tonight about a fantastic article in the New York Times today on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's last issue (absolutely heartbreaking, by the way), and I probably will by the end of the week.

But after abandoning about fifty halfhearted attempts at a staggeringly brilliant and insightful piece on the state of print journalism, I turned to my latest means of procrastination: watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu.

I confess: Buffy is kind of my favorite thing ever. The first six episodes of the first season are pretty standard fare: mildly silly serial episodes featuring an incredibly young Sarah Michelle Gellar fighting off laughably ugly vampires, witches and their ilk. The music, clothing and hair are wonderfully 90s-tastic, the one-liners are appropriately witty, and the characters are surprisingly endearing.

Otherwise, though, Buffy was kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. Until tonight.

I just finished watching episode 7 -- where Buffy, the Chosen One, uber-vampire slayer and all that, realizes that she's in love with mysterious bad boy Angel, who just happens to be a vampire. But! Angel has a soul! And a conscience! And he doesn't eat people! (And he is really, really hot.) The whole episode adds a huge new level of depth and danger and conflict to the show, while staying true to its quirky, likeable roots. There's a reason why Buffy is a cult classic, after all, and that really comes through in this episode.

Joss Whedon, the show's creator, said that the first season of Buffy is "high school as a horror film." In the Buffy world, a controlling mother isn't just an annoying helicopter parent; she's a witch who possesses her daughter in order to relieve her glory days. The quiet girl everyone ignores literally becomes invisible. The meanest kids in school might actually be demons. It's campy and ridiculous a lot of the time, but at its core, Buffy is really about issues that everyone who's ever been a teenager has faced: figuring out who you are, taking on frightening responsibilities and trying to stay sane through it all.

And have I mentioned how attractive Angel is? Because, seriously. Dayum, grrl.

Right Proudly High over Dublin Town

Every year, Philly holds a Saint Patrick's Day parade. And while we don't pull a Chicago and dye the Schuylkill green (it's pretty gross anyway), it's usually a nice little affair.

Two years ago I was actually in the city on March 17 to film a video for a group project, and though my Irish half will never forgive me for it, I'd completely forgotten that it was St. Patty's Day.

It was absolutely miserable outside. It had been raining since early that morning, I had forgotten an umbrella, and I had no idea where I was supposed to meet my group. Frustrated and soaked to the skin, I was fuming in a doorway by City Hall, waiting for the rain to let up, when I heard bagpipes.

Bedraggled, soaking wet and somehow still smiling, what looked like half the archdiocese's priest contingent rounded the corner, led by our then-newly-appointed Cardinal Rigali. The streets were absolutely empty, but there they were, flanked by bagpipe players and the city police department, marching on. Everyone waved at me. It was adorable.

If there's one thing the Irish are good at, it's tradition, and it's good to know that no matter what, on March 17, come rain, snow or ridiculous hangovers, there will always be a parade somewhere.
---
(And for your listening pleasure, some Chieftans, for obvious reasons.)

A Turn for the Worst

I will likely never see Wendy and Lucy again, and I'm okay with that. It's difficult and sad and depressing and tragic, and it's rough to to sit through.

That being said, it's important and necessary and should most definitely be seen.

It's a simple plot -- Wendy, a young woman with a car, a dog and $525 to her name, gets sidetracked in Oregon en route to a job at a cannery in Alaska when her car breaks down and her dog, Lucy, runs away. The film follows her over the course of a few days, detailing her increasingly desperate attempts to get out of her situation in unflinching detail.

Wendy -- played by the spectacular Michelle Williams -- just can't get a break, and the real tragedy is that no one really cares. Clutching a dirty pillow and carrying everything she owns in a duffel bag, she moves through the tiny Oregon town in a daze. Every now and then she lets out a plaintive "Lucy!" It is, in a word, heartbreaking.

Wendy and Lucy is a sparse little film, with no soundtrack and only a few characters. Wendy herself is largely an enigma -- we know that she has a married sister in Indiana who can't be bothered with her plight, that she keeps a careful record of her finances and that, for whatever reason, the most important thing in her life is Lucy. Wendy's a blank slate -- but I think that's why I found myself worrying about her literally five seconds into the movie.

We care about her not because she's a standard indie-film goddess with a quirky backstory and a distinctly optimistic outlook on life, but because she is a sad little everywoman without a plan or a future. We care because under the right circumstances, she could be any of us.

A Smattering of Distant Applause

I wanted this introductory post to be all huge and epic, but I'm drawing a blank, so I'm settling with just being obvious. 

I'm Aubrey, I'm a journalism student at Penn State (on my better days, a "student journalist"), and I'm trying out this blogging thing mainly because it's the only thing I haven't tried on the list of self-indulgent social networking devices. I fought joining Twitter for a year, only to become addicted within a week, so I might as well get a head start on the blog. 

I'm a copy editor at our student newspaper here, the Daily Collegian, which consumes my life in a frightening but kind of comforting way. I'm from one of Philadelphia's various interchangeable suburbs, but, like everyone who lives outside the city, I just tell people I'm from Philly. I have a mildly pathetic addiction to twee indie pop, I've read Pride and Prejudice cover to cover at least five times and I own a finicky MacBook named Sev.

I also promise that I don't usually start all of my sentences with "I."