I’m always surprised when people tell me they read my blog. Getting comments and e-mail is always nice, but it’s quite different when someone comes up to you and says, “I read some of your stuff.” Yesterday, my message therapist told me that she had discovered my blog through one of my nurses. She was especially delighted to see that I had mentioned her in a previous entry. It’s good to know I can make someone’s day with my writing. As much as this blog is a kind of miscellaneous recounting of my life, it is also about the multitudes of people who shape my experiences. Things wouldn’t be half as exciting without them.
I’m planning on getting tickets to see U2 in September. The last time I saw them was at the Metrodome in 1997, during which I was, for lack of a better expression, felt up by a drunk but cute woman who stumbled across me while the band was playing “One.” The acoustics were horrible, but the Target Center should be a better venue. I’m debating getting three tickets in case an undetermined friend wants to come along. The seats I’ve had at other Target Center events are usually good. Surely, I can bribe someone into a date with a free concert ticket.

I’m having some of the Humphrey Fellows over to discuss a group project, so I need to sign off soon and supervise the assemblage of the cheese and crackers. Before I go, does anyone know anything about broadband access in Berlin? My brother is searching for relatively inexpensive broadband for his apartment and he was looking at some kind of WiFi option. Any Berliner geeks out there with advice?

A friend of mine e-mailed me in French a few days ago after reading about my desire to polish my language skills. I wrote back in French and found myself remembering words and rules of grammar I hadn’t thought about since college. It’s funny how the brain holds onto things that were drilled into it years ago. I guess I owe that to my high school French teacher, Mr. L. The man had an atrocious accent, but he made damn sure we could conjugate the imparfait form of être. French class was usually at the end of the day, which seemed appropriate because I usually had a lot of fun in that class. It never felt much like work. But to be honest, I had other reasons for liking French class. And that reason was named Hannah S. Hannah was the first girl for whom I felt a full-force, five-alarm, Defcon 1 crush. Hannah was all that and a bag of chips. Intelligent, beautiful, funny. Hannah had a twin sister, but I never noticed her twin that much. Hannah and I became friends through some various after-school activities, but my heart always seemed to thump a little more loudly whenever she was near. We even ended up going to the same college. In my freshman year in college, I decided that it would be a most excellent idea to send her a love poem I had written specifically for her. It was the most god-awful thing ever to disgrace the paper on which it was written. Imagine the worst love poem you’ve ever read and multiply its cringe-worthiness by a factor of a hundred. I never did find out whether it amused or horrified her because I was too chickenshit to go up and ask her. We settled into separate social circles in college and I never saw her again after she graduated a year ahead of me. The last I heard, she was actually married and living in Paris.
I haven’t thought of Hannah in years. I told you the brain works in funny ways.

I’m almost finished with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I started sometime in late January. I can usually finish books fairly quick, even 800-page tomes, but life seems to have a lot more distractions lately. I need to take a week off and devote all my time to reading. But I digress. It’s an amazing book, melding fantasy with a masterful pastiche of the social criticism of Dickens or Thackeray. Clark’s descriptions of magic and magical places are poetic without being overwrought or flowery. And those footnotes! The amount of care and imagination she poured into those footnotes is impressive for its own sake, but they also add verisimilitude and texture to Clark’s alternate universe. But this book isn’t just for fantasy buffs. The story should appeal to anyone with a love for epic, sweeping fiction.
Next up, I think, will be David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Hopefully, I can get through that one more quickly.

I have a theory about the Oscars. Films that feature characters living with (or dying with) disabilities are almost guaranteed to take home a golden statuette. After seeing the results from last night’s Oscars, my theory holds true. Million Dollar Baby, The Sea Inside, and Ray all won major awards. If you don’t buy my theory, look at previous Oscar Winners. My Left Foot. A Beautiful Mind. Shine. Children of a Lesser God. The voting members love to vote for films that bring a tear to the eye and a certain “glad it’s not me” pathos. Hollywood eats up that kind of stuff. And while I don’t deny the artistry and skill behind these movies, it would be nice to see a disability-themed movie that wasn’t so damn tragic. I’m not saying it has to be ha-ha funny, but it doesn’t have to be uplifting/inspirational/melancholy either. Make a thriller or a romantic comedy or a science fiction film with a character with a disability. If the story is good, people will go see it. I’ll even write the script.