Jubilee

I've officially given notice that I'm out of New York in a few days. Thursday to be exact. My plan is to fly to San Diego, then drive up to Los Angeles for a sure to be historic Celtics - Clippers game, and then eventually make my way up the coast to San Francisco and eventually the annual Tahoe trip. My thinking goes that if I'm hoping to spend most of March writing anyway, I might as well stop paying rent. This exit also neatly marks my traditional three month restlessness. That's the bad news. The good news is I'm coming back to New York. Too much unfinished business here.

Plus I hardly "moved here" when I haven't gotten a job or secured a permanent residence. In order to faciliate going to this basketball game, I turned down a part time job offer from the temp agency. Had to do it. I didn't get this far in life suddenly picking responsibility over life experiences. So I'll pack half a suitcase and leave some of my things behind because that means I'm returning.

Over the weekend we had a pretty epic karaoke session. For one, I made additional headway on my "top five karaoke songs for each person" list. For two, after watching the Valentine's Day episode of Glee, I was already all about the Katy Perry's "Fireworks" but when Sharon belted it out (risking tearing her vocal chords out in the process), I moved up another notch in my love for the song. Clearly people agree with me, as the video has a hundred and twenty four millions views on Youtube. Is that even possible? 124,245,149 views. Having never seen the video till just now, I'd recommend you watch it too as fireworks are literally shooting out of Katy Perry's chest. There's probably some symbolism there but it's just kind of funny.

In an AIM conversation, I called Katy Perry "slutty," but my friend took great offense to it and suddenly I was the bad guy and hypocrite. See, a few weeks ago I had been defending Megan Fox's honor when this same friend called her a "ho." We agreed to leave it alone for the sake of our continued friendship but calling women "sluts, hos, ****s" is probably something that should be analyzed rather carefully.

Also, I'd like to think I'm pretty respectful of women but it's been pointed out to me that when I use "bitch" in reference to a man, it's implying that they are acting like a woman. So even if I'm not directly calling a woman "bitch," I'm saddling the word with the same connotations.

Possibly but not really related, here's an article about sports groupies, The Days and Nights of an NBA Groupie (2008).

What I'm slowly realizing, in talking to and thinking about people with artistic pursuits, is that being "____" has nothing to do with skill level. For example, my roommate right now is a terrific cook. She hones her craft with dedication and intensity. This past week she's been coming home from long days of work and then making macaroons from scratch. The process takes a long time and the results are professional worthy. The likely statement to make is obviously: "These are so good, you should sell them!"

There's this idea/dream that the best thing you do is logically your profession. In practice, that's rarely true. Being a professional means doing something over and over and consistently producing saleable work -- even when you don't feel like it. Instead of asking if someone is a professional, or if their work is professional worthy, it's probably more useful to ask something else entirely. I mean, if the common definition of being a professional is "getting paid to do it," then anyone can be a professional after a few gigs. But doing something full time, or supporting yourself off that skill, that's a different thing altogether.