So, occasionally, when I’m walking down a street that smells like urine, or on a bus that smells like urine, or standing in line behind someone who smells like urine, I try to nurture whatever zen I have left that hasn’t been completely obliterated from years of tupperware-stored rage by imaging myself in my own life movie. A movie where I am a power-hungry collection development librarian who’s successfully using her position at the forefront of mass literacy to quietly and mercilessly eviscerate the 50 Shades of Greys, Twilights, and One-Eyed Dukes Are Wilds (yes, my friends, that is a real book) of the world. A movie where Jeffrey Eugenides, Jennifer Egan, and I frequent a local pub crawling with the literati to reminisce about our first National Book Award. A movie where my first sighting as a warlord is standing in a remote jungle in the Philippines next to a vast and ominous, dark red puddle – soundtracked, of course, by Okkervil River’s “Piratess” (because how perfect are the lyrics, “Oh, murderess in the wilderness with your victims all around you / Their combined love forms a pool your knife’s reflected in”?).
Ah, yes – the soundtrack. Now we’ve come to it. (“It?” you ask. Yes, it – the point of that elaborate first paragraph; the point, in fact, of this entire post! HUZZAH! WE ARE HERE!) It goes without saying that any movie, real or imagined, starring yours truly is going to have a soundtrack developed by none other than this music elitist herself. And it also goes without saying that no movie of my life would be complete without my better-looking half. So, humor me, friends – a movie with me and Boo, would probably go a little something like this:
1. Food me!
Anyone who knows us knows that Boo and I take our dining very, very seriously. The love there may not compare to the love we have for each other, but believe me, it is in the top 3 of our greatest loves of all time. It knows no bounds, no caloric limits, no fears of diabetes or elderly obesity. It has, and will continue to, conquer all. And with a love so passionate and pure, there is no song to celebrate that moment when you and food first lock eyes than this Marvin Gaye classic.
