Rag-Tag Top 10

The new year is quickly approaching and the flood of "Best and Worst Of" lists from every magazine, newspaper, Web site, and TV show has begun. I'm here with my own version, but in typical Catherine the Greatest fashion, my list lacks a focus or theme. It's simply a list of my favorite things (I'm Oprah!) this year--movies, events, music, etc., that played a big role for me in 2008. (Most of the music/movies, etc., weren't even released this year, but this is my list and I make the rules.) Presented in no particular order:

First-rate in '08.

Favorite Book: The Book Thief by Mark Zusak. The Book Thief takes place in Nazi Germany, and is narrated by Death, who tells the story of a little girl who steals books at every opportunity before they are burned by Hitler's soldiers. The way the war spins around her, the suffering she sees and tries to prevent, and the earnestness of her mission to save written words, makes for an incredibly inventive story. The writing is unlike anything I've ever read, and I found myself re-reading sentences over and over. There is something on every page that leaves you breathless. The tenderness with which the story is told, and the overarching understanding of the human condition will sear this book into your memory. We've all read a lot of books about World War II, but I promise you have never read anything like this. As I was reading, I was thinking about how many producers would probably love to make the book into a film, but once I finished, I knew I didn't want them to. This book is perfect, and to see it on film would diminish its power and hold over readers. Not only my favorite book of the year, but certainly on my top 5 favorite books of all time.

Best Personal Triumph: Turning 21. For the preceding 20 years and 11 months of my life, I'd had an inkling that things would be better when I was 21. Weekends would offer more opportunity, doors would open, freedom would ring. And boy did it ever. Simply: being 21 is great. Mostly I appreciate the fact that there's always somewhere to go. I don't need to sit on a barstool every night, drinking rum and diet cokes and chatting off the ears of the bartender. But if I want to get a drink with dinner, or barhop on New Year's I can. Huzzah. Teqila Sunrise, please.

Favorite TV Show: 30 Rock. I started streaming this show on Netflix one day and I hardly got up until I had watched every episode of the first two seasons. It makes me love Alec Baldwin more than I thought possible. He stars alongside the show's writer and producer, Tina Fey, who was named Entertainer of the Year by the AP. She deserves it, and I hope her new fan following follows her to straight 30 Rock. It is really one of the only good shows on TV.

Favorite Rental: The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005). A riveting documentary about Johnston's music and his interminable struggle with mental illness. He was once haled as a musical genius, but as his illness grew worse, and his life more chaotic, his ability to write and perform was severely compromised. This arresting biography shows how mental illness can gnaw away and swallow up a person, and also poignantly delves into the havoc wrought on a family that struggles to make sense of a senseless situation. His story will leave you unsettled, but you'll probably remember it forever.

Favorite Album: I have been listening non-stop all year to The Arcade Fire's 2004 release, Funeral. It's probably the only album I am always in the mood to listen to. Listen to "Wake Up" and "Neighborhood #1" and get back to me if you still question my taste.

Best Blog Moments: Two words: Hottie McLatte. Probably some of the most (0nly) interesting material I posted all year, and with overwhelming fan response! Missed out? Here are selections from the beginning, middle, and pseudo-end, and real end of our latte love saga.

Best Real-World Moment: I've grown a little tired of seeing President-Elect Obama on every magazine cover, but I'll never get tired of calling him my President. The euphoria in the air on election day was unforgettable, and will probably be my clearest memory of 2008 for years to come.

Best Game: We know I'm a devout lover of board games, and this year Bananagrams took over. It is the ideal intersection of my competitive gaming nature and intense love of words. Best of all: it provided an excuse to spend hours having fun with some of my favorite people. ('Cuse shoutout: I'm moving back Jan. 8th- How soon can we all meet at Funk for some 'nana? :) ) I've introduced this game to a lot of people, and anyone who likes word games loves it. If I could work for the Bananagrams company, I would. That is how deeply I believe in and love this game.

Best Movie Theater Experience: Mamma Mia! This might be a surprising choice, but this movie is 108 minutes of pure, unadulterated joy. I saw it at the drive-in with my mother this summer, and from the opening scene until the final credits, we were smiling. Embrace the campyness, questionable acting, and abominable singing voice of Pierce Brosnan. Let go, and let the movie sweep you away to a Greek island filled with tan people, crystal-blue waters, and a lot of coordinated dancing. When was the last time you smiled for two hours straight?


Best Overall Life Moment: Feel free to laugh at me, but seeing Celine Dion in concert in August tops my list for 2008. I thought my years of Celine obsession were behind me, but when I saw her step out on stage, I absolutely, without question, lost complete control of myself. I cried. I laughed. I sang much louder and longer than I intended (my apologies to those sitting next to me. I probably ruined your $200 seats.) The only word to describe my state is deliriousness. I love Celine. And that night, Celine loved us back. Two-hundred dollars is a lot to shell out for a concert, but that one was more than worth it. That's saying something, coming from me, because I don't think anything is worth $200. I am really, really cheap (and perpetually broke). But I'd go again in a heartbeat. One of the best parts of being there was experiencing it with Calyn, who has loved Celine as much and as long as I have. The whole concert gave me chills. CALL ME SILLY BUT I LOVED IT.

Will work for absolutely nothing

Students are being taken advantage of in an unexpected and underestimated way, and that is through the inherently unfair process of unpaid internships. Sure, internships are not an entirely new invention, but the pressures placed on undergraduates to secure one, and the interminable emphasis on doing so (FIND ONE OR YOU MIGHT AS WELL DIE), certainly weren't a part of my parent's generation. The good news is a lot of people recognize this fact and offer me pitying glances when I talk about paying back student loans while interning for no pay. The bad news? Nothing will ever be done about it, because there will always be privileged students who are able to work for free, and parents who will support them. I am one of the lucky ones, I've been able to live at home, but I've also had to earn my own money as I go. I recently finished my second internship, and I can't lie. I'm a little bitter.

Part of the blame, I suppose, is on myself for being overly ambitious and naive, thinking it would be a smart idea to pursue a career in publishing. These unpaid "internships" are more popular in some professions than others, and in mine, it's almost impossible to find something that pays. The few that do are so highly sought-after that thousands of students apply for only a handful of positions. But apparently, in a world inconceivable to my liberal-arts brain, a world inhabited by mathletes and science-fair winners, students actually get paid for the work that they do, and get meaningful experience at the same time. Oh, to be an engineer.

I am loath to sound like the "entitled interns" that Gawker so readily makes fun of, but I think an oft-forgotten point must be made about unpaid internships. Working for free is one thing, but in many cases, students end up paying through the nose for an internship because the workplace requires you get credit for it. Many schools waive a tuition charge for summer credits. Syracuse, God bless it, does not. Allow me to explain.

Over the summer, I interned a measly two days a week at a snoozefest interior design magazine. My supervisor there absolutely demanded that I get course credit for the internship, because otherwise, I would be completing work without any "compensation."

Oh, really, is that right? Well, if I get credit, I must pay tuition. Nevermind that I didn't need the credit at all, as I was about to take a semester off because I had extra credits. To review: I am paying money in order to be given the honor of completing more unpaid work. I chose the cheapest route and took the internship for one credit, which cost $900. Add to that about $400 in transportation costs, not including the special events and shoots I went to. This fall, I worked three days a week at a city magazine, and averaged about $50/week in transportation costs (this time I fortunately was not subject to any credit requirements). I am eternally grateful for public transport; I am sure I would have averaged much more between gas and parking had I been driving. But $50 is a lot of money for a poor student, and I wish internship supervisors, as well as college internship offices, would keep this in mind, especially if they are expecting students to pay for course credits.

I understand that people want to make sure students are committed, and that those students need to prove themselves in a professional environment before anyone wants to hire them. But after a while, I couldn't help but feel a little degraded when I continued to scrape pennies together to go to work in a place where, some days (particularly over the summer), no one acknowledged my presence. A "thank you for coming" every now and then would have been nice, as I sat in my threadbare clothing, hunched over whichever frozen lunch entree was on sale that week. Or, what about the times I wrote an article that the magazine ordinarily would have paid a freelancer to write? But because I, the intern, wrote it, they can rest easy and save some cash. At one point, I seriously thought about forwarding my tuition bill to the magazine's parent company just to see what sort of response I would get. Forgive me everyone, but sometimes it was a challenge to gear myself up to be a motivated, self-starting intern when I was worried about whether I could make enough money at my job during the other four days to pay my loans, bills, and oh yeah, the train fare to get my pathetic intern self to the office.

The reason this stings so badly for me is because, after all of that obnoxiousness, and skipping family vacations, and working seven days a week for months on end, a career in publishing isn't even what I want anymore! I worked hard, and I did good work. So what return do I get on the investment of all of that time? A few lines on my resume, a recommendation from a supervisor? Should I be grateful for the honor of just being given the opportunity, even if it deterred me from a career and set my life askew? Even if I did want to work in magazines, the industry is pretty much going up in flames, so where would I work? How many more of these unpaid internships am I going to have to complete before I am "qualified" enough to get paid?

I think we need a government bailout-- to all of the college-educated, unpaid interns past and present, for anyone who schlepped themselves to and fro, hoping it would pay off some day, only to find out their industry, their dreams, or both, had shattered somewhere along the way. I promise to make like GM and restructure my life, think about how to be greener, the whole nine.... but I cannot promise a pay cut. What's less than zero?

Christmas quote 2008 award

Last year, my dad took the cake by declaring "the emptiness of life" upon opening a present on Christmas morning. He wins the blue ribbon again in 2008, but this time around, with lighter fare.

We were about to play Scattegories, and I was trying to select a good pen from the pile .

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Me: Can I try this out before I commit to it?
Dad: That's called living in sin.
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He's a quick one.

Anyway, I hope you all are having a restful holiday season. Enjoy the leftovers and buy yourself some noisemakers for New Year's. And champagne, we mustn't forget the champagne.

Dear Abby is a crotchity @%#$!

A long-awaited second installment of Dear Abby/Queer Crabby, wherein I post one of the aging advice maiden's strange responses to a letter. She really sucks all the fun out of this poor woman's happy tale:

DEAR ABBY: I have a "pennies from heaven" story you might appreciate. My best friend, "Darrel," was a smoker who collected quarters. His apartment had two distinguishing features -- stacks of quarters and the smell of secondhand smoke. Because we were both busy people, we had seen each other only twice in about a year, but maintained a phone and e-mail friendship.

I had planned a trip out west to spend time with family and had e-mailed him about it. Unbeknownst to me, Darrel had been very ill, and he died the day I sent the e-mail. I learned about it while I was in transit to my destination. There was nothing I could do. I had no way to get to his funeral and no way to say goodbye.

When we reached our hotel -- part of a smoke-free chain -- my husband and I opened the door to our room and were greeted by a familiar odor. It smelled just like Darrel's apartment! And when I walked to the dresser to unpack, two quarters were sitting on top. It was then that my husband and I agreed that Darrel had stopped to say goodbye on his way to heaven. -- QUARTERS FROM HEAVEN

DEAR QUARTERS: Please accept my sympathy for the loss of your friend. I'm glad you received some comfort in your time of need. However, it's entirely possible that the guest who occupied the room before you broke the rules and puffed away in a room that was supposed to be nonsmoking. I hope you notified the front desk so you could be switched to other accommodations, and the room could be thoroughly cleaned and deodorized to prevent someone with a sensitivity to smoke from walking in and experiencing a severe allergic reaction.

So readers, how can we help Abby loosen up? Find her a man? Pour her a stiff drink? Take her to Six Flags and show her what it means to have fun? Orrrrrr, maybe beat her up with a sock full of quarters?

Wherein I complain about something and do nothing to remedy the situation

I'm always delighted when a social trend report is released and crotchity journos get all bent out of shape about the results. They write op-eds like this one, crying out in horror about THE CURRENT STATE OF THE KIDS. Here, the study in question basically said people don't go out on dates anymore.

Well, d'uh. We knew this. As a twenty-one-year-old, I can count on one hand the number of times I've been on a real "date." (Keep your rude comments to yourself.)

Charles Blow, the writer of this op-ed, seems baffled by this new trend, which is surprising because his picture indicates he is not, as you might think, an older brother of Methuselah, living underground since Alexander the Great came of age. To help him out of his cloud of confusion, he consults several experts, who I am sure explained to him in measured tones that these days, people hang out in groups. Formal courtship is a thing of the past. Girls don't get pinned. Boys don't give their letter jackets to their cotillion dates. Parental involvement is a no-go until an exclusive couple has been together for many, many moons. In his last sentence, I think the writer indicates he wants to instigate some sort of dating movement to bring Generation Y back into the dinner-and-a-movie days of yore. Those days do sort of sound like fun.

So I feel a little torn. Right now, relationships and dating are low on my list of priorities. I am not a swoony type, and usually, my friends make better conversation than suitors (no offense, hotcakes). But, ladies, what will happen when we are young professionals? What if, say, I move to Omaha and I'm responsible for finding a steady lover and new set of friends? How does one do that, exactly? I'd hate to be that awkward girl at the office trying to make friends with everyone within shouting distance of her cubicle.

This topic came up when I was talking with Lynda the other day, and we came up with few answers. We wondered if we'll have to sign up for online dating. It's certainly something that has shed its stigma, and attracted tens of millions of eligible singles (and also thousands of creepos and cheaters). Online dating just seems like unfamiliar, undesirable terrain to us; we teens and twentysomethings never been the target demographic for sites like Match.com and EHarmony. You see, we've been too busy signing the Devil's book, hanging out in groups, and macking on strangers we've only just met. In our future as "grown-ups" though, I suppose online dating could be a reasonable option, but then of course we'll have to meet these people on REAL DATES. If nothing else, that should make Blow happy.

What do we think about this? Am I being paranoid; have I been jaded by the college experience of non-committal group hangouts and informal tonsil hockey sessions? Personally, the resurgence of the old-fashioned date sounds sweet to me. Imagine, going somewhere together, and actually engaging someone in conversation. Conversely, there is something to be said for these new, hip methods of dating that the NYT exposed through its vigorous reporting. Hanging out with friends, etc., is a whole heck of a lot of fun, and meeting potential lovahs in that sort of situation is ideal. You can be introduced by mutual friends (character witnesses), and if conversation doesn't take off, you have a quick out.

So I don't know. Should we heed Charles Blow's oddly-timed and out-of-touch clarion call, harken back to the days of John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler, and actually call someone up for a date? Or should we relish in our revolutionary ways and continue playing it casual, sometimes to the point of absurdity?

Most of all, I think writers should stop balking at survey data that indicates trends we've known about forever. And also, someone should buy me dinner.