i realize that no one but me will find this amusing.

Dear MTV,
i know that my obsession with you is, for a 24 year old with a college education and an NPR fetish, slightly unhealthy. it was for you that i ponied up sixty bucks a month for Comcast Cable whilst in Philadelphia, and now that i am poor and living in Houston with an enormous movie collection (courtesy of my roommate), there is, alas, no room for you in my life or my pocketbook. but that doesn't stop me from having an orgy while i'm at my parents' house.

longingly yours,
Bethany

Dear Kelly Clarkson,
i don't understand the whole hipster fascination with "Since U Been Gone" (and what i mean that is i understand the fascination, because it's a near perfect pop song, but i don't understand why hipsters love it), but i have to say that i for one never thought you would last this long. from blonde to red to brown to back to blonde again. plus you're pretty and you have a good voice. thanks for singing an anthem for all the children of divorce.

admiringly,
Bethany

Dear James Blunt,
you're singing in a snowstorm in your video. you're slowly stripping off your clothes and telling me i'm beautiful. i guess this is your niche since John Mayer up and left for a shot at some indie cred. next thing i know you'll be telling me my body is a wonderland. sigh.

wistfully,
Bethany

Dear Black Eyed Peas,
i never thought someone would dare to rhyme "lumps" with "humps" in a song. thank you for that.

peace,
Bethany

Dear Kanye,
so everyone was telling me about Golddigger. i do not listen to the radio (outside aforementioned NPR fetish), so i hadn't heard it until now. i am wondering about the pattern i see emerging in your singles: first a mildly socially conscious song, then a song about how all the women are out to get your newly acquired bling. do you not like women, Kanye? diamonds are forever for some of us, i suppose, but sheesh. oh, and ps. the song rocks. also, do we have a timeline on how long will Jamie Foxx be milking the Ray Charles thing?

wonderingly,
Bethany

Dear Mariah,
you writhe next to a fireplace. you writhe on a couch. you writhe in a limo. you writhe in a pool. you writhe with some bald guy that isn't the guy from Prison Break. all this time you are singing. sometimes you look like a horse when you sing. and please leave the whistle thing back in 1995, okay? thanks.

appreciatively,
Bethany

Dear Gwen,
okay, so in your new video, you know you do that thing where you paint your lips one color and then outline them with a darker color? it makes your mouth look like an asshole, and it's giving me nightmares. please stop.

thanks in advance,
Bethany

Dear Shakira,
i don't know why, but somehow the rest of the English speaking world has not been clued into the fact that you are possibly the sexiest woman alive. and if it wasn't enough to have you singing in Spanish with that dude while you had sex all over that cutting board full of onions, now you come back looking insanely beautiful, singing in English in that growlly awesome voice of yours, in a video that recalls Aerosmith's inane best, only now you're smashing cars. rawk.

lustfully,
Bethany

it's funny what you can get used to.

so i am sitting here at a cafe on Germantown Avenue having an anti-Starbucks experience. the cafe is called InFusion. comfy chairs, drinks served in ceramic, non-corporate approved music playing, an enormous shelf of books behind my head, a few people quietly tapping away at laptops (Jeanine and I included). someday, i said to her, i am going to work at an indie coffeeshop. someday.

obivously, i am back in Philly for the holiday. despite the fact that i was totally convinced i was going to die, the plane ride was uneventful and i even walked into PHL a half hour early (go Southwest). the only kink was, somewhere between breakfasting at McDonalds, the Boy dropping me off at the airport and walking through security, i lost my cellphone. normally this wouldn't be such a big deal, but trying to find someone at an airport without a cellphone is a near impossible task. after i called the Boy and determined that my cellphone was nowhere to be found in his truck, i went to T-mobile, got a new phone and whored myself for another two years.

things are a bit strange and not quite what i expected here. i think in my four month absence i may have idealized Philadelphia a little bit. as i walked out of the airport i was greeted by dark skies and a cold rain, as Al and i creeped our way up the Schuylkill Expressway i marveled at how old and dirty and small things seemed. the highways here seemed miniaturized, three lanes each way seemed inadequate. the familiar spreads of clean white concrete were nowhere to be found. maybe that's the difference between cities in the Northeast and cities in the West: the accumulation of dirt.

my parents dropped off Boris The Old Camry for me to tool around town in. it was weird to be driving around in a car that low again. as i was locking and unlocking the car yesterday, i kept trying to use the keys for the Jeep. at one point i looked down at my keyring and realized the things they unlocked were 1500 miles away. my life in Houston (such a weird phrase, my life in Houston) seems far away and dreamlike, but the pieces of my life still left here in Philadelphia don't seem entirely real, either. the black leather jacket my parents brought down for me belonged to the Philadelphia Bethany. the Houston Bethany wore this sage green blazer and didn't really need anything else because it never gets cold enough. the Philadelphia Bethany made way more money than the Houston Bethany does. by the Houston Bethany is far happier in her studio. the Houston Bethany never has to warm up her car for ten minutes in the morning. and on and on and on through my head, until i stopped at the part where i mentally referred to Houston as "home".

pick your social ill.

so on Sunday i spent the entire day with the Boy. we did various things, including going to various thrift stores. i don't have much luck at thrift stores for actual clothing (they never have my size), but i did acquire a number of books to help with my current state of reading deprivation. this included a beat-ass copy of The Da Vinci Code (i must be the only person left in the western hemisphere who hasn't read it), Bee Season (which is by Myla Goldberg, a person who, in my infinite igorance, i did not realize actually existed outside a song by The Decemberists), and Nickle and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenrich, a book that depressed me the first time i read it, and depressed me again when i read it on Sunday night.

it reminded me that i live on the edge of abject poverty. the first time i read it, i was in college, so at least there was an excuse for such poverty, but this time, no such luck. i have entered this willingly.

i realize when i refer to myself as poor i'm mostly just blowing hot air. if compared to the people in the book, i have several key factors keeping me above water, namely a college education, no dependents, health insurance and no debt outside my student loans and my bleeping car payment. a couple years ago when i took the requisite dumb soc class to graduate (apologies to Cabell), it made me think a lot about class, and the fact that i, like many artists, have an education that doesn't, and probably never will, line up with my earning potential. maybe there should be a special economic class for us: the highly educated poor.

anyhow, i have this decided to dub this Highly Subversive Documentary Film Week, since i saw a fascinating documentary called The End of Suburbia at the MFA last night, and tomorrow i am seeing a documentary about the evils of Wal-Mart. fun times all around. The End of Suburbia scared the shit out of me. i try not to get sucked into the hysterics of things like this, but this time, i'm not sure i can help it. people love to predict the apocalypse. it's kind of fun and makes you sound smart. but the facts thrown around in this film were truly scary. peak oil may have already come and gone in this country, and it's all downhill from here. time to start thinking smaller, people. don't buy that McMansion. live three miles from work. i do, and it rocks. if my car suddenly could not be used any more, i could get a bike and probably be able to accomplish 99% of what i do now (and probably be a lot thinner, too). thinking smaller and just having less stuff is a habit i have cultivated and developed over the last four or five years, a consequence born out of moving every year or so. so i jettison crap every time i move, and it feels fucking wonderful to get rid of it. i am a big believer in having a small amount of very beautiful things, and to hell with the rest.

i hate rich people.

can someone please clue me into the valet parking obsession in this town? i do not get it. it's everywhere. at every little sidewalk cafe, orange cones abound at all hours of the day (even lunch!), along with some douchebag behind a little podium, waiting to take my damn money to park my car. if you really think about it for a few minutes, you too will realize how patently ridiculous valet parking is. too lazy to walk across the parking lot, is what it really comes down to.

valet parking frequently makes regular parking impossible, like tonight when i was attempting to go to Borders, which happened to share the parking lot with some damn steakhouse called Fleming's. after i steered my dear Lucia past the horde of Lexus and Mercedes, i finally had to give up and park across the street at Whole Foods and cross Alabama at my own mortal peril. i noticed some spaces in the Whole Foods parking lot labeled compact cars only, and though they were closest to Borders, my car is not anywhere near compact, even though it is small for Texas. as i was walking towards the street, i watched a Land Rover park in one of those spots. i passed the guy as he was getting out his car, and i SO wanted to say something, something really awful and witty, but i couldn't think of anything. all i did was look directly at him with what i hoped was a disapproving stare. he looked right through me, of course.

i have a confession to make. i really hate rich people. coming to Texas has really cemented this in my mind; the rich people in Philadelphia (and Jenkintown in particular) were their own brand of obnoxious, but here, it's an unfamiliar obnoxiousness. at least at home i could say, yeah, those are my assholes, they were from my hood. i don't understand dropping $30K on a bar mitzvah, but at least it's familiar. here, we have the oil money, and with it comes with it a sense of entitlement and self-importance that just makes me want to vomit.

this is the thing: after you attain a certain amount of money, you are allowed to officially check out of the reality that i and most other people move through, the reality that it dictated by the limits of our earning power. this is because that certain amount of money allows you to have anything materially, and allows you to have it now. therefore if you are at St*rbucks and your latte gets messed up or takes too long, of course you must throw a tantrum because you are just not used to not having it now. after that, you send your maid to get the latte in the morning, because it's simply too stressful.

i was unfortunately friends with someone like this for a long, long time. it's strange to walk around with someone who doesn't move in the same reality as you, who, before we went across the street to get 20 cent wings and crab legs at a bar, dropped $150 on a cashmere throw at Pottery Barn. on a whim. who didn't understand when i couldn't afford to go out to eat, and who guilted me into going to restaurants i couldn't swing. who split every meal down to the last fucking penny. the same person who, when i mistakenly borrowed $30 from her for a couple days, didn't stop talking about it for a good six months.

i'm not saying that all rich people are like this. i just think most of them are, not because they are necessarily wanting to be bad people, but because, like most everyone, they are lazy. it's easy to get bitchy and impatient, it's far harder to put aside your own self-involvement and empathize with the person in front of you.

if i may talk football for just a moment.

(look away, Josh)

motherfuck.

so it looks like TO is officially done with the Eagles. which is okay. i think we all knew this that this was coming, i just didn't expect it so soon. at least he's gone now, and the team can get on with their miserable ass season. i still can't bellieve this is the team that made it to the Superbowl last year. as i've watched them fall and fail and make dumb mistakes, i realize that it's more and more the work of a number of small flaws that were mostly likely present last season, but for some reason didn't manifest themselves as badly, or coalesce together in such a devastating way.

this is the one thing that pisses me off to *no end* about Terrell Owens. i will say this, and then hold my peace. he came back from a fucking BROKEN LEG to play in the Superbowl. had the Eagles won, that feat alone would have probably gone down in football history as one of the greatest comebacks ever. his drive, his sheer determination to heal and perform very well in the Superbowl (which he did, people forget) was all negated by his ego and his inability to keep his mouth shut. both before ("what the fuck do they mean they can get to the Superbowl without me?") and after ("i think Donovan was tired" to "they need to give me more respect / more money") the Superbowl, he dragged what legacy he might had as an amazing player into the dirt. between San Fran and Philadelphia, he has already built a solid reputation as a cocky asshole who's only out for himself and the bottom line,

i'm one of those few people who think that yes, professional atheletes should be REQUIRED to be role models. if you're going to get paid that much money to do something you ostensibly love and get satisfaction from, then you should shut your month, keep your dick in your pants, smile and sign many, many autographs. cause your life ain't that hard - trust me on this one.