Monday Fiver! Kelly Clarkson!

There will be updates this week. But let's start out with a fiver. Unfortunately for you though, I am not so much bringing the funny this week as I am bringing the reflective. I think we'll be back to the funny next week because I'm going out a lot this week. It's hard to be funny when you're sitting in your joint with your friends and a two-four (which is what the Canadians call a twenty-four pack of beer) watching basketball. That doesn't bring the funny, and I know it.

1. Shut the hell up. I love the new Kelly Clarkson album. It's the only thing I've played this week. Period. That's not true. I'm still playing Antony and the Johnsons at night, but Kelly is on at work and at the gym and while I'm getting ready in the morning. I'm even singing along to "I Do Not Hook Up", and we all know nobody will take that seriously coming from me.



2. Shut the hell up, part deux. I don't want to hear about the Panthers. Don't want to hear it. Yes, I'm bummed. But no, they did not deserve to win. They *should* have won by about 15, but sloppy, lazy play. I was upset. I actually bailed on plans after the game because I was that upset. I guess that leaves me UConn and Nova, because I really want a Big East win.

3. Dollhouse: Sure, I'll agree that it's starting to feel more like a Joss Whedon show. And I'll even admit that the plot it starting to drag me in. I might say that an episode where a hidden drug causes everybody to go oogly googly and act strange rings a little true of Joss pulling out an old Joss trick, but whatever. I'm still underwhelmed. I actually fast forwarded through parts this week. That's not right.

4. Literary Break Down: So, I finished American Pastoral the other week. I can see why Trick loved it and A-Train did not, because they both see the world in very different ways. I very much had both experiences. There's a section in the middle that felt, to steal from Simon Cowel, a bit indulgent and made me ponder quitting. But the final two sections of the book were worth working through it. It does cause me pause to think about family constructs and how the very fact that a unit is a family can cause a person to interpret things entirely differently from an individual than they would if that person or situation existed outside of their family. We are both more forgiving and more demanding of our families, are we not? But also, I don't know. I think there is a generational element to that novel. A datedness because so much of the surface of the story is about the idea that there can be an ideal. That there is a paradise that can be lost. I'm just not sure most of my generation believes that. I mean, we believe we can find the right person, raise children, be satisfied, but I'm not sure we believe in the American Dream so much any more. So because of that, there are parts of this book that may not resonate as strongly as they once would have. A part of you says, "Well OF COURSE it all fell apart on you. What else were you expecting?" I think that the naive nature of the The Swede that once probably endeared readers to him maybe is now more of a reason to feel as though perhaps he got a bit of what he deserved. I'm trying to dig up somebody 15 years older than I am who read this book to ask. Holler if you know somebody.

I've moved on to Michael Ondaatje, which is pretty much like reading poetry in prose form. After the harsh and glaring prose of Roth, it's like taking a bubble bath in soft words.

5. I miss my girlfriends: That, I've realized, is what I'm missing the most from Vegas. And not just my Vegas girlies, but also my L.A. girlies who visited lots and being able to get to Denver in an hour flight where K-Yo and Princess D are. I miss pictures of us acting stupid and Thursday pottery painting and...I think I'm going to have to visit sooner rather than later. There is, I'm starting to realize, a very big difference between a Canadian girl and an American girl, and someday I may be brave enough to tell you what it is. In the meantime, I'm listening to that Tom Petty song a lot.