You know what is more boring than blogging about New Years Resolutions? Blogging about how you're too busy to blog. Yet here I am, the end of March, with only brussels sprouts and oatmeal standing between this site and last year's content. If you care, sorry. Blame grad school. Blame work. Blame my insistence on maintaining some semblance of a personal life despite those two aforementioned timesucks.

I'm not going to pretend that it's profound or well thought out or interesting to anyone besides me, but there's always my twitter. Heck, Demetri Martin thought a joke I tweeted about Greek people was funny enough to retweet. That's as close to famous as anything anyone else that I know did this week. (It's possible that was a ghost-Demetri, but for the purposes of my daydreams about him being my boyfriend, we're assuming best case scenario. Hey! Cody said its ok!)

Sarah Vowell's new book, The Wordy Shipmates, a history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was released this week, and seeing as Vowell is, hands down, one of my top five favorite authors living today, this is great news. After spending two weeks in Massachusetts five summers ago traveling around the state in an oversized van taking in the sights and experiences of our crazy Puritan forbearers, I can hardly think of a topic that would make me more psyched. I started reading Sarah Vowell when my mom gave me The Partly Cloudy Patriot one year for Christmas, and was instantly struck by by how she is able to articulate all the things I love intensely about history and the world and express those things in a way that is wry and clever and emotional. The history in Sarah Vowell's books contain the kind of enthusiasm for history and its fascinating strangeness that propelled me through an undergraduate degree and caused me to erroneously think for about eighteen months that I was destined to attend graduate school and work towards my phd in European History. And clearly, that would have made me intensely unhappy in the long term.

Sarah Vowell writes the books I would want to create if I were smarter, funnier and a much better writer. I admire her because she obviously loves to write, but hates to promote her books; I've seen her speak at least half a dozen times and she always seems uniformly uncomfortable and exhausted. I think it partly the fault of how much she clearly hates being in front of auditoriums and mostly the fault of my own fangirl awkwardness that I have had at least two extremely strange and embarassing encounters with Sarah Vowell. The first was your run of the mill clumsy book signing where we were being bustled through the line and I stood there tongue-tied trying to think of something funny to say, when quite obviously she just wanted to go back to her hotel room. The second was painful though; at a 826 Valencia fundraiser in San Francisco, she was "selling" firm handshakes and friendly punches on the shoulder (Dave Eggers was selling hugs, but Sarah and her personal space issues quite clearly don't play like that) during the intermission.  

My mom and I were out in the lobby, and there was no way that I wasn't going to donate ten dollars to 826 in order to have my hero, Sarah Vowell, deign to punch me in the arm.  It was a win/win situation.  We were standing in line for my shoulder punch, and I was growing quickly more and more nervous.  What clever thing would I say to Sarah Vowell?  How could I express to her in a quick sentiment that I knew she was hating being there, rubbing shoulders with the yuppie, liberal masses of San Francisco, but that 826 was a great cause and I totally respected her for that?  When it got to be crunch time, I handed her my ten dollars, and my mom helpfully said "Oh, you should have brought a book to get signed."  And I, suave wordsmith I am, uncomfortably stammered and looked at the ground, "It's okay, she signed it already."  My shoulder was punched and it was seriously weird for everyone involved.  Given these facts, if I had Sarah Vowell's best interests at heart, maybe I would stop buying tickets to her readings in the hope that everyone else in America would have the same idea and  he wouldn't have to go on book tours anymore. Unfortunately, I cannot not go see her at Town Hall next Monday, because it is likely she will say something as funny as she did on The Daily Show this week.  I told Cody that we wouldn't have to wait in line to have my copy of the new book signed, but if I am inspired to try and make a better impression on Sarah Vowell, then, well, all bets are off.  I'll let you know how that works out for me.  

I'm learning that one of the things about loving books in a heartbursting way is coming to terms with the fact that there is no possible way I can read everything good and worthwhile being published, nor can I hope to ever consume the entire cannon of past amazingness. And that is ok and normal. Obviously, this is going to be especially important to keep in mind in September when I start grad school and will have to stop sleeping and possibly forgo casual pleasure reading altogether. The great news is that because I can't know everything in its immediacy, I will continue to discover "new" writers for the rest of my life, and each time I will sigh as I drop the completed novel and feel as if I am looking at the world in a slightly different and more complete way.

The newest author that I'm embarrassed I've only been reading for two months is Jhumpa Lahiri. My mom and I had the nicest drive back from Idaho in June listening to The Namesake on cassette tape in my little car. 369 miles from Cottonwood to Seattle only got us about halfway through the story so I rushed out to bookstore back in Seattle to pick up the novel and, oh my god, I loved it all so much. I don't know if I connected so fully with that book because the immigrant, ethnic experience in America makes me imagine what it must have been like for my Greek grandmother to move to Seattle in the 50's or if it is just because The Namesake is seriously that good. Shortly thereafter I devoured The Interpreter of Maladies, and have Unaccustomed Earth on my hold list at the library, but there are still 342 people in line in front of me, so I'm thinking I'll probably just break down and buy it.

This week I watched the film version of The Namesake, which I thought was pretty good. It's difficult to give an opinion of an adaptation of a book you love, because obviously the book is able to do so much more than the movie. You lament the places where nuance and backstory were sacrificed because it is entirely impossible to shoehorn all that into two hours, and yet you love the screenwriter and director for knowing how good this work of fiction is and desiring to give it a face. This book is so anecdotal and the sheer 30 year breadth is just so staggering that the entire time I was watching the film I was wondering if anyone who hadn't read the book would understand the leaping in years and perspectives, and realize that as a whole, the facets of stories actually fit together seamlessly and poignantly. Kal Penn's performance earned him a slot on my list of crushes, and his role in the film was unique from the other (excellent) actors in that his portrayal of Gogol Ganguli brought something new and sharp to the character that didn't exist or wasn't as fleshed out in the novel. Incidentally, I admire Mira Nair's adaptations of novels. I was one of the few people in the world that didn't hate her film version of Vanity Fair. I thought it was clever, pleasurable to watch, and didn't abandon Thackeray's main themes while shifting the focus and tone. Similarly, with The Namesake, I can't really imagine a different treatment of the material that wouldn't have turned the wonderfully complex and convoluted story into a trite, feel-good cliche.

Once upon a time, three months ago, I was under the impression that there was no way for me to love the visual imagery associated with Feist's "1, 2, 3, 4" any more than I already did. I mean, the video. Rainbow sequins? Choreographed goofy dancing? Magical. It's like she made that up in my favorite dream.

But then, oh then, last spring Feist visited the Colbert Report and not only made me squeal by interacting with total crush Stephen Colbert, but gifted him his own sequined jumpsuit before performing, and that miraculous image has been happily burned into my brain. And I thought: "Surely, this moment in time is the happiest that this lovely song will ever make me."

And lovely universe, sometimes you like to show me how very very wrong I can be about things, because on Monday as I was clicking around on the internets, I found this:

And if Leslie Feist bopping around with monsters and penguins and chickens in sunglasses isn't the greatest thing to ever happen ever, then, well, I guess I better work on getting out more.

I was already getting ready to write my post about how The Midnight Organ Fight is my favorite album of the first half of 2008 and a strong contender for the entire year before I did some clicking around on the internets and realized that the band is made up of Scottish brothers Scott and Grant. It is well documented that there are few things I love more than sibling bands. (A short list of the precious few things I hold above sibling bands are fresh lilacs, seasonal beer, cute flats and chocolate cake.)

On the topic of Forgetting Sarah Marshall: You see, I was never going to not see this this movie. I basically hyperventilated last summer when I read that Jason Segel was writing and starring in a movie with Kristen Bell, as they are my two favorite actors from deeply beloved fabulous but cancelled television shows, Freaks and Geeks and Veronica Mars.

I counted down the days until this film came to a screen near me, knowing that there would be puppets, Hawaii, and Jason Segel's junk (Sorry, totally TMI, but it's true). Thusly, I'm not really in a position to write an unbiased review of the movie. Of course I loved it! Kristen Bell was there! Obviously it was great! There was a musical about puppet Dracula in the movie! Jason Segel sang and played the piano! I wish I could have two boyfriends so I could date him too! Cody said it was ok! Should you go see this film? DUH! Yes! A million swoons.