A Long Day's Journal Into Night

Where do those songs come from that just pop in you head randomly. I was writing down a banana bread recipe that Mom was dictating and when I hung up the phone I sang, "I can move, move, move any mountain." I haven't thought about that song in years. In fact I don't even know who plays it. Hmmm.

So last week I was walking through Westwood at night and I had some dust or something in my eye my right eye and I was opening and closing my eye trying to clear it out. Them this guy working in a parking lot was like, "Hey how's it going?" Was he talking to me? He was, in fact, I think this comment was brought on by the fact that I WINKED at him. Now he thinks that I am the kind of girl that goes around and winks at guys. I have to be careful where I aim my dusty eyes from now on.

I know this is petty, but my latest pet-peeve is the pedestrian at a stoplight who won't press the button. Press the damn button!! It is that round blob on the pole. They operate on a finger mechinism we like to call a "push." Sorry, but they have not yet invented a button that is telepathically operated, so simply waiting at the light and wishing to cross will not make that little white man pop-up. Sheesh! Are people really this daft, or is it Los Angeles, where people drive next door?

COMMENTARY

A Bit of the Old, a Bit of the New, She's Still Our Nancy Drew
By Melanie Rehak

March 24, 2004
"My name is Nancy Drew. My friends tell me I'm always looking for trouble,
but that's not really true. It just seems to have a way of finding me."
Meet America's favorite girl sleuth, circa 2004. She's back in town, in
Simon & Schuster's newly launched "Nancy Drew Girl Detective" series, and
this time she's talking directly to us, in the first person. Of course,
Nancy has spoken to American women and girls from the moment she solved her
first crime, in 1930's "The Secret of the Old Clock." That the books have
been written by a succession of writers under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene
may be, more than anything else ‹ even that famous blue roadster ‹ the
reason that Nancy has endured. Thanks to her various creators, and just like
the rest of us, she's always changing.
In her earliest incarnation, Nancy was a fierce, occasionally gun-toting
firebrand who didn't bother with a boyfriend. If she had to steal evidence
at a crime scene, she did it with moral clarity and in a perfect frock. The
character was written in those first years by a tough-minded University of
Iowa graduate named Mildred Wirt Benson, who went on to become a journalist
and a pilot. She worked from outlines provided by Edward Stratemeyer, who
had cooked up the idea of Nancy, if not the particulars, in the late 1920s.
Nancy was beautiful, popular and smart; she also had qualities Benson
specifically admired ‹ she was preternaturally mature, extremely sensible,
very good at sports and didn't take guff from anyone. She was absolutely of
her era in prejudices, language, interests and appearance, with the
exception that she, like Benson, knew how to get what she wanted.
When Stratemeyer died in 1930, his two daughters took over the job of
writing Nancy Drew outlines. His elder daughter, Harriet Adams, became
especially invested in Nancy Drew. She was the product of her well-to-do
East Coast family, educated at Wellesley and the mother of four children.
Though she had wanted to work, the social mores of her class and time
prevented her from doing so. Her father's death, though devastating to her,
gave her the opportunity to fulfill her dream.
Under her watch, Nancy began to change. She acquired a long-suffering
boyfriend, Ned Nickerson. She stopped talking back. She treated her
housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, like a member of the family instead of mere hired
help, and was less apt to use complicated words.
By 1940, when "The Mystery of the Brassbound Trunk" was published, she had
even learned a thing or two about feminine wiles, using them on Ned to get
her car fixed ("You know just what needs to be done and I don't," she pleads
kittenishly), whereas she once would have gotten out the jack herself ‹ or
at least called the tow truck. Benson was still writing the books, but
little by little Adams was recalibrating Nancy: She was less Midwestern
upstart and more Wellesley girl with every passing year.
In the late 1950s and '60s, Nancy evolved yet again ‹ this time in response
to the world that was changing around her. Racial stereotypes, including
black characters who spoke exclusively in Southern slave-era dialect, had to
be excised from the books, along with clothing styles, appliances and any
number of other things that dated the series. Nancy and her pals, flighty
Bess and tomboy George, began to wear pants and stopped talking about the
running boards of cars. But still, the books remained ageless, existing in a
universe untouched by World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the psychedelic '60s and
the women's lib movement.
Simon & Schuster's new Nancy, on the other hand, is nothing if not a
profoundly 21st century gal. She has a cellphone and knows about Native
American ancestral burial grounds and GPS systems. She's deeply in touch
with her feelings; regarding the death of her mother when she was 3, a
subject always noted but never dwelled upon in the past, she confides in us:
"That's been hard to deal with sometimes."
Her trademark blue car is still in evidence, but it has a newfangled twist.
She appears on a deserted road to rescue Ned from a bike wreck and he dubs
her, with a flourish typical of the new Ned, "an angel driving her blue
hybrid."
Notice that she rescues him. Some of Benson's Nancy is back in these new
volumes, and she still has Adams' humanism too. As always, she's a girl who
sets an example worth following, a girl who makes you feel that in any
challenging situation, you'd turn to your own pals and say, as her friend
George does in the middle of a difficult new case: "We'll just go out there
and ask ourselves, 'What would Nancy Drew do?' "

Today I, while I was waiting at a stoplight, I saw a guy smoking with a cigarette holders. You know like the one Ratigan used in "The Great Mouse Detective."

Exams begone! Welcome Spring Break!

I am the saddest Irish/English/German/Slovenian girl named Katie is twelve counties. The co-op served Mexican food for dinner tonight!!

Is one mealy potato too much to ask for? Where's the cabbage, Mikey, where's the cabbage? Come on people, throw me a frickin' corned beef bone here!

Shhh...Don't tell anyone, but I though I lost something really important. But then I found it.

Okay so I don't get snow, but sometimes fog can be just delish. It is like a snowstorm petrified above your head.

Yesterday I was walking down Westwood Blvd. and a man had just finished parking and was feeding the meter. As I passed him he said, "Hey, did you just cut me off?"

I thought he was talking to a biker that was passing at the moment, but he was talking to me.

He yelled at my back, "Hey, you just cut me off! I was waiting for that parking spot!"

I turned around in bisbelief and said, "I don't even have a car."

He just grunted and walked away. Honestly, some people are so eager to inject negativty into the world. But I will not be poisoned by their bitterness.


BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH!!!!

Got pretzels out of the vending machine. But when the metal spiral stopped spinning, the preztels were still hanging! I banged the glass in fury and not one, but two, bags fell! Ahh, justice is served....

Oh! A Coldstone Update:

I went to Coldstone:

Plus:

The ice cream servers sang little songs about ice creams to the tune of Scooby-Doo.

Minus:

I asked for Cocoa Banana something-or-other. When I got it, it had neither chocolate nor banana.
In fact it was just coconut and whipped topping.

(Why so many colons?)

As I schlepped my thesis up campus and down I felt a larger pang than usual for my bike, Rover. I realized how few bikes there are on campus at UCLA. All though from a pedestrian view, it is relaxing to walk without watching out for bikes, I prefer the rough and tumble of CU's bike-clogged arteries. I would venture that there are more bike on campus at CU on a snowy day than at UCLA on a sunny day.

In the graduate school department office on a late Friday morning...

Man: (reading) Uh-Oh.

Me: What?

Man: Well the name on your thesis says Catherine A. Allen and your name in he UCLA computer is Catherine Ann Allen.

Me: Yeah?

Man: Well either you need to change the name on your thesis or change your name at the registrars office.

Me: (Aside) Hmmm...if I change my name on the thesis I have to walk all the way back to the lab, re-print, find my committee members, and get them to sign again. My advisor is in Spain at this very moment. (Aloud) Where is the registrars office?

So I am now Catherine A. Allen. I miss the nn.

So I was reading the LA times yesterday and I read a blurb that said, following the success of other fantasy films like Harry and LOTR, Disney will be financing movie based on THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE! Cool. But then I turned a few pages and came across a two-page ad for...The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. They are already advertising a movie that hasn't even begun to be filmed! I feel a sickening promotion campaign ahead. Yuck.

All I can say is thank heavens I bought my pink pumas. Pink is very in. It appears to be the next orange. Another fashion crisis averted.

mmmmmm....Girl Scout cookies...