The Home Team Wins the Girl Super Bowl

According to this article in the LA Times, Minnesotans are just like Europeans. Well, sort of. We both cleaned up at the Oscars! It wasn't particularly surprising, given the quality of their respective movies, but Minnesota natives Diablo Cody won Best Original Screenplay for cutest-movie-ever Juno, and Joel and Ethan Cohen won Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture for scary-and-brilliant No Country for Old Men.

I wonder if they had hotdish at their respective victory parties....

Waiting for Spring

After weeks of dipping below zero, way below zero, it's 31 today and feels like summer. The sun is shining, the icy gray snow banks are beginning to melt, and I'm feeling like something should be loosening inside of me.

This winter has been rough -- rough on my skin, which seems to be chapped and flaking off in patches, rough on my creative life, since I don't feel like I have any creative projects really going. When it remains that cold for that long, I feel like I just shut down and retreat into a pseudo-hibernation. My thoughts skim the surface of eat-sleep-work-TV-repeat, without delving any deeper. While some people might be forced to a kind of self-reflection in winter, I simply harden and go into survival mode. I try to imagine what it was like to live here, before central heating, electricity, and the comfort of the metropolis. I wouldn't have been able to make it.

I'm hoping that this small glimpse of sunshine will help recharge my batteries a bit. I may even walk around one of my neighborhood lakes tomorrow, if it remains this warm. The sad thing is that I know it's only the end of February and we still have one more month (at least) to go.

So that I don't sound too much like Debbie Downer (meow, meow -- for those of you who have seen the sketch), here is a list of the small joys I've had in the last couple of weeks...


Season One of How I Met Your Mother -- Predictable, but hilarious
Season Two of Big Love -- Did I mention that I was watching TV)
My grudging enjoyment of Eat, Pray, Love
Going to my alma mater for graduate readings -- although they do make me feel like a slacker. There were many brilliant writers there including, Michele Campbell, Beth Mayer, and James Henderson, to name a few.
Kimya Dawson's Remember That I Love You
Seeing the orange sunrise in the gray sky in the morning
This article in last week's Onion -- I think it was written about my cats
Facebook's Texas Hold 'Em -- I suck, but I love it
The roasted garlic/crusty bread/cheese we're going to have with board games tonight (and the beer)
My impending trip to Tennessee next weekend -- please let it be over 40 degrees
Being able to sign up for cell phones with Credo when I return


Okay, I'm starting to feel like I can handle four or five more weeks of winter. I think.

Belated Kudos

My mentor from graduate school, Deborah Keenan, was nominated for Minnesota Book Award this year for her book Willow Room, Green Door. Keenan is an accomplished poet and teacher, with eight books to her name. (My favorite is Happiness.) It is long overdue that Deborah is recognized for her amazing poetry!

Buy her book today!

How Can I Hate It?

Last night, my husband and I saw the new movie Juno at the suburban mega-movie-opolos. It has been so long since I've seen a movie during an actual date night time, that I've forgotten what it's like to watch a movie with a crowd. Despite my imminent claustrophobia and introvertedness, I've got to say that the movie is awesome. The story of a young, slightly hip and slightly alienated girl and her pregnancy is hilarious, endearing, touching, cool, snarky, and very very Minnesotan. In fact, the entire packed-house crowd was laughing and snorting together. Creepy, yet fun.

Of course, I am slightly envious of the screenwriter, Diablo Cody. I don't know about the rest of the universe, but in Minneapolis, the local-girl-done-good story has been played out. She moved up from stripping at Minneapolis strip club to blogging, writing briefly for our local indie newspaper, then a memoir, then this movie and ultimate Hollywood darling status. She even has a new column in Entertainment Weekly. But that's okay -- she's talented. I'm not that jealous.

I will do my best not to spoil the movie for you, but there is a very sweet and weird love story in the movie, as well as an authenticly screwed up female lead, and a brilliant supporting cast. Allison Janey and J.K. Simmons are convincingly Minnesotan, with their deadpan support of their pregnant daughter and their oddly distant yet loving relationship with each other. If you need a date movie, and want to support a Minnesota import, go see the movie.