More on my 30s haircut.

So yesterday two black women at school, one secretary and one dean, both told me that my 30s haircut looked good and that it was a fade, and that I should keep it for a while. The one secretary was like, "My son wears a fade," and when I was like, "What?" and she explained to me what a fade was and was like, "Don't worry, I'll hip you into all the black lingo," I laid it out for her and was like, "I don't know if you've noticed this, [the secretary's name], but fades work for black or hispanic guys, and I'm white," and when she was like, "But it would still look good," I was like, "I don't know, in my life I've been called many things, but 'soulful' is not one of them," at which point she laughed and told me that I had issues.

Today when I was going to the coffee shop I ran into two of the secretaries coming out of it, the one who's black and the other one who pretended to get pissed at me because she acted as if I assumed she would recognized a 30s haircut, and they were like, "So how is the star?", I said fine, and that now that I was a star they should treat me like [an actor from the movie I was in] and go and get my coffee for me, and at that point the black secretary, who was drinking coffee, stopped, swallowed her coffee, and gave me the eye, and was like, "Did you see that? I choked."

My 30s haircut.

I've realized wearing my 30s haircut that it's not at all stylish, though it's retro... Absolutely no sideburns and short sides going up to a lump of sharply-parted long hair on top that goes down the back of the head just a little too far just doesn't look cool, I guess. It really makes you realize that when people praise something retro, they don't mean anything retro, but rather things that are retro that are in the bounds of what people think today are cool, so when they praise something as cool and say "that's so retro", they're really meaning, "that's stylish according to the standards of now", so I guess what my point is, why praise anything for being retro at all, since retro is not at all the point of the matter? Anything that's retro-cool seems to have to find resonance within the narrow bounds of modern taste, though no one thinks about this or would probably admit it when pushed.

Best response to my haircut for my extra role yet.

I stopped by a secretary's office to show her my haircut I got today in preparation for my extra role tomorrow (had to go to the production studio at an appointed time, they were fitting everyone and doing everyone's hair), and when she said it was nice, I was like, "It's from the 1930s" (the movie's a period piece), and she pretended to be pissed and was like, "What, did you really think I would recognize it!?!?!??!"

Reading a book that scared the fuck out of me.

So, last night I was reading before bed a 17th c. English translation of an earlier Italian treatise on witchcraft and exorcisms, with a minor excursus on demonology. After a little theorizing and examples adduced from the church fathers, modern (or 'then-modern', as in back in the 15th and 16th cc.) examples are given, and this one scared the fuck out of me --

A Mexican woman would go to bed and as she was drifting off to sleep feel her baby being taken from her side and replaced with something of equal size that made her uneasy, and in the morning as she woke up her baby would be brought back, but she never saw what did it, and her baby grew sicker and sicker and thinner and thinner till the local priest took him to church and put him in holy water.

For some reason, that scared the fuck out of me last night, though now it doesn't seem so bad. Maybe I was tired?

Two dreams: eggs, saw.

On Saturday at the grocery store they had brown eggs in plastic dozen-cases on sale for 30 cents cheaper than normal, so I bought those. Two nights later I dreamed I was opening the case to crack them, but they were white eggs with like black skidmarks on the bottom, and I looked at them in my dream and was like, "So that's what a brown egg looks like."

Last night I dreamed about a mother and two daughters who had this handheld device where they could press a button and slowly become invisible, and they were fleeing some people. Somehow someone caught them and used a buzzsaw to cut through the head of the oldest daughter, who had a short haircut.

Ate a piece of gum off the floor.

Tonight when I was at the library, I dropped something and found a wrapped stick of gum on the floor. The wrapping was not even messed up, so I unwrapped it and ate it, and it was that good orange-mint flavor I like but never buy.

E-mail from my mother about my brother's one friend's girlfriend.

I got this from my mom today about my brother's one friend's girlfriend, who's from the Upper Peninsula ("the U.P."):

I asked [my brother's one friend's girlfriend], [my brother's one friend]'s galpal, about her ancestry in the U.P.. On her mother's side, the family have been yoopers since at least her great grandparents. No one in mining......business people and firemen. She is 1/4 Fin, 1/4 Irish and 1/2 somtin' else. Says she doesn't have that yooper accent.....is almost snippy about it..........but it's de're. It is a treat to meet a bona fide yooper. :)

Home...........Mom XXXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOOO

Smart-asses.

So everyone is asking, "How was your spring break?", and when I say "Great!" and then they ask what I did and I saw I went to Iowa, most everyone says something smart-ass and condescending about Iowa. Based on that, I'm getting a good sense of who the fun people are (=the ones not condescending to Iowa), and it pretty much jibes with the sense of the people I had from before.

Thomas Merton on the Shakers.

I'm reading a concise history of the Shakers, and they had this quote from Thomas Merton in it, which I guess gets quoted a lot about them:

"The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it."

Was cast as an extra.

I got called last night (on a Saturday!) to be an "upscale man" in a new film being filmed in the city, and will be getting outfitted tomorrow for a shoot this upcoming Thursday and next Monday.

The best response yet to my news, from the Belgian guy who I know from the library and the bar --

"So you're not being typecast."