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The Teen (meaning 8-yr-old) Choice Awards.

Zac Efron, will you still be famous when we're married?

Memorial Day Long Weekend. We (Pillow has arrived en La Nueva--our cable reality-inspiring [see: Crackpoint, the series] codependency has resumed!) moved apartments, saw 17 Again, and ate mushrooms in a perfect, man-made sycamore and cedar grove (that we now call Zizney/The Zizney/The Zizney Reunion/The Zizney Family Reunion) on the East side of Central Park.

First, Zac Efron is stunning. Stunning. When, at the romantic climax of 17 Again (an all around sort of perfect movie), our boy morphs back into a pilly, saggy, age-appropriate Matthew Perry one's heart sinks, one cries out in anguish, "where did he go, this beating heart of the film, this beating heart of my heart?!" And it's really endless isn't it?--our appetite for new and young and next and almost. It's pure thrills to see a breakout happening in realish time, and evidently, at 24, I'm just as susceptible to that combination of beauty, charisma, and publicity as I was at 4 or 9 or 15. For a brief moment, Pillow and I fought over the grown Disney prince. But, upon further consideration, I realized that he (a Jew) may not be so interested in dating Jewish. And it follows (from all I know of my generation of male Heebs) that after his fling with a fetishized/objectified Asian chick, he'll be ready to put a ring on a worshipped/feared blonde WASP chick (...and none better than our very own!). Semantics. Anyway, the air buzzed with Zac Efron as we strolled and trained from 3rd and 9th to our new nook in Flatbush.

It was still buzzing when we took our drug and cream cheese bagel sammiches to the Park around noon on Memorial proper. The grove (the third location we scouted for our triparoo) was a shifting patchwork of shade and sun, cool and warm velvet grass with a view of some incredibly beautiful and flat/picture-planey evergreens. Pillow noted a "Disney mist" that lay just above the clearing floor. I, having picked up a habit of attaching "z's" to things from our Petrova, called it a "Zizney mist." We laughed for about five minutes and were off. The synthesis of Disney and phychedelia has been central to my work on Britney Spears--Pillow expressed my own same thoughts at random, as usual. And there we were, full of Zac's pervasive/suasive image and mushrooms and sun and birds and our nice outfits and a high-keyed mist and so many families. We felt so kindly and courtly. We sat/lay beneath the largest sycamore flanked by a large local/French-speaking (?) Jewish clan, an extended, hearty, sporting Austrian family, and a pair of fancy-looking Brit twins, one of whom had a retired model wife and a new newborn in tow. Precious. Warm. International grandparents! A gem of a Zizney Family Reunion. Such good feelings, such feelings about the FUTURE (and the poetics of landscape design). The Zizney may well have been our conjoined lawns in Tuxedo years hence (where we'll smell and dig in the rich, dewy ground with our children). It was simply, where we belong.

But, of course, despite all of the bliss of yesterday, today has been a little tricky. We hallucinated a view of our cozy thirties and forties, et cetera, but not a way, not a path, not an answer for the here and now, the crisis-y quarter-life. HOW and WHEN will we arrive at this "Brigadoon" called Zizney? And will Zac Efron still be famous when we get there? Ugh.

Chinese Democracy

My Plague of last week has returned with a vengeance and brain fever; so forgive me, it's taken a long minute to address weekend news. At Sunday night's Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift (Poor Miss Swift has previously appeared in this, our shaming segment, and despite A&P's decidedly anti-Swift stance, we don't really know where she came from, MySpace or American Idol? One of thems.) and (horrors!) Miley Cyrus (another young A&P punching bag and "Chinese Democracy" alum) sang an "unprecedented" duet. This meager performance was sandwiched between a J.T. and Al Green duet (which was difficult for me, because it felt like an attempt at Timberlake making the Reverend relevant, not the other way around—and woah, Justin said in an awkward preamble that Al lived down the street from him as a tyke. Al Green lives in Millington???!!! I'm gonna need a minute.) and a Stevie Wonder and The Jonas Brothers duet (which—yeah, I get it—is the meeting of two "kid sensations," one less of a kid these days than the other, but those Jonas hoes just stress me out, in the words of PMC, "They look like they were bad-touched," and I don't buy for a damn minute that their songs are actually really good and that they're some kind of latter-day Monkees.). And, Lordy, I hope you are aware that all of these tricks (Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and the Bros. Jonas—not J.T., the Rev, or Stevie) are Evangelical Christians who go about declaring their holy virginity. And all of this just makes me feel old and angry. And to return to the point, as I boiled in anger over these dumb children (and the very fact that I was watching The Grammy's), Cyrus and Swift performed an "intimate" (gross!), acoustic rendition of Swift's song "Fifteen," as in "When you're fifteen [years old]." The gall! The yelping! The WHY ARE WE LISTENING TO/CELEBRATING THE VOICES OF HIGH SCHOOL?! I wanted to see super-preggers M.I.A. perform "Swagga' Like Us" with the boys, but I couldn't wade through anymore of this shit to get there.