I try to keep abreast of campus life through the YDN (Yale Daily News), the main student newspaper. It's a quality undergraduate publication, no question. But it's still an undergraduate publication, so sometimes it makes me want to throw things against the wall, because it is (a) minimally well-informed, and (b) absolutely consumed with examining and maintaining Yale's place within whatever hierarchy may be at work. The newspaper, like the university, is infused with a very peculiar mix of superiority (this is Yale), inferiority (kids wear t-shirts proclaiming "Harvard sucks!"), and Puritanical modesty (you'd never know that the chairs just sitting around in the library cost $1,000 apiece). This institution its its own thing, I tell you.

But that's a larger issue. Within the YDN, I often see evidence of some part of this institutional character, particularly the part that involves being completely divorced from other realities. Yesterday, I couldn't quite believe the opening of this opinion column recommending IUDs as birth control. On the whole, the article is fine, in a minimally well-informed way -- the author is trying to be informative about a birth control option that women should know about. But check out the first lines:

"You should probably take two Tylenol beforehand," my gynecologist advised me.

"What about codeine?" I asked.

"Well, codeine won’t make you feel less pain," she said. “It’ll just make you not care about the pain.”

Two hours before the appointment I gulped down three tablespoons of liquid codeine. Ultimately, I still cared about the pain.

From a literary standpoint, that's a great opener -- pulls the reader in (Why would you need Tylenol?), includes an apt and amusing observation, repeats a strong phrase with a meaningful difference ("care about the pain").

From a self-awareness standpoint, WHOA.

(1) Your doctor said "mild over-the-counter analgesic" and you jumped to "opiate-derived class-II narcotic." That's about you, lady, not about a drawbacks of IUDs.

(2) Where did you get the codeine? Because it doesn't sound like it was prescribed to you. If you're going to infer the existence of a functioning underground campus drug trade, or even describe the intentional off-label use of a controlled substance, you might want to make that a point of analysis in your writing.

God, I love this place sometimes. From wall-throwing ironic distance, sure. But we must take love where we can get it.

Last night, I found myself at one of those parties that cool people on television go to. A friend in film studies shares an apartment with two law school students and a political science student, and the four of them live in the Taft, a high-rise hotel that was converted into apartments. It's kind of posh, though not so expensive if you share. Their apartment, on the 12th floor, looks like the Warhol Factory. Huge windows in the common room offer a ridiculous view of New Haven, it's populated with minimalist furniture, and it's two stories, with the second floor overlooking the living room. I'd been there once before with Josh, who looked around and said, "I feel like I should be doing cocaine off of that table. Lines of cocaine, right there."

There were several other grad students there that I knew, and many other law school students I didn't know. There were an astounding number of cardigan sweaters. And also flannel shirts, because even the law school has been influenced by hipster irony. That was the guys. The girls were all wearing tall boots and short dresses. I was wearing jeans. I didn't feel out of place, but I did feel out of uniform.

Though, honestly, I would have been in uniform, if I had been able to find a pair of boots since I started looking in OCTOBER. In fact, I currently have three pairs of boots in my apartment that I ordered online and need to return. These are the latest of the 20-25 pairs of boots I've ordered and returned. They either didn't fit, or they made my feet look monstrous, or I couldn't walk in the heels, or I was swimming in the shafts. It is really frustrating to have huge feet, small calves, and a commitment to refuse to suffer for fashion. So if I'd been able to find boots, I woulda been ready! -- I do have one knee-length dress. My sister gave it to me three years ago. It mostly hangs in my closet waiting for appropriate footwear.

To return to the party: I did meet a couple of people, but it's awfully exhausting to talk to people you don't know in a loud room. And you know what is truly a lost art? Hosting. Being a host has responsibilities. I read Emily Post, I know this. You can't just put people in the same room with wine. Especially at a big party, and especially when it draws from different constituencies. At the very least, you're supposed to introduce people to each other with an interesting fact! "Hey, Josh -- you like documentary film. You should meet Emily -- she lives in the real world." "Claudia, you're into the 60s television show, Dragnet? Ashram's father was a police office in India!"

You have to be flexible with Emily Post, though. She would insist that we take rank into consideration, for example. You're meant to introduce people of lower rank to a person of higher rank, not the other way around. "Father Leahy, may I introduce my friend, regular-citizen Tara?" Lacking titles, introduce men to women. "Zelda, I'd like you to meet Isaiah."

Oh, yes, I know all kinds of things like this. One day I will enter high society and I will be unstoppable. Unless I never find any boots, in which case I will never be able to leave my house.

This afternoon I was talking to my friend Yifat about the party, and she said, "It sounds like it wasn't very fun." And you know, I guess I didn't have very much fun. There was no dancing. And there weren't any board games. Those are the two things that basically guarantee a fun party experience for me (either one -- or both!) I did, however, have an experience, which was more than I would have had watching Dragnet at home. That show mostly provides lectures about citizenship.

I have been to three parties since the semester began, which I think is more parties than I went to last year, in total. I must be getting more popular. Last night was more of the history folks, with slightly less awkwardness, I think. Or maybe I've just comes to terms with it. I guess that's good? In the bad news category, several too many ounces of red wine left me praying to the porcelain god last night. I did make it home first, so my humiliation was kept between me and the linoleum, and the linoleum doesn't judge.

In other news, I've been watching some movies. (Which I guess isn't news. But just go with me here.) Among them, may I strongly recommend Midnight Cowboy (1969)? It was shown on 35mm on Thursday night as part of "Sex Week," and it was advertised as the only X-rated film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. That is true, but I think it set the wrong set of expectations for the audience, who SUCKED. I totally understand and accept that different people have different ways of watching movies -- you don't go to a Magic Johnson theater on "Denzel Night" and expect to watch a movie in stately silence, for example. But at the Whitney Humanities Center, we watch movies in stately silence. Unless it's Sex Week, and the undergrads don't understand that X-rated in 1969 doesn't mean pornographic, and so a determining chunk of the audience came ready to chatter and giggle. It was pretty irritating, because Midnight Cowboy is actually a very serious film -- a melodrama, in fact. It just has some boobies in it, and the ratings system was brand-new then, and boundaries of taste have changed.

Nevertheless, I was able to appreciate the movie despite the distractions of a tittering and texting audience (hey, did you know that even if the light on your iPhone is dimmed, it's still an f-ing light in a dark theater?). It's about a Texan (Jon Voight) who moves to New York to be a hustler. He is fleeced by, but eventually befriends, a down-on-his-luck New York native, Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman). Hoffman's is the showier role, since he gets to play with a limp and an accent, but don't get distracted -- Hoffman's good, but Jon Voight absolutely kills. You don't even notice, that's how good he is. Jon Voight: More than just Angelina Jolie's dad, folks.

Why is everyone in graduate school so awkward? I went to a party this weekend, and I met a bunch of new people, most of them in the history department, all of them supremely awkward. Which made me concerned. Is this all of us? Is it that the more interested in history you become, the more your social skills decline? Is it inescapable? Am I becoming one of them? Am I already one of them?

Second week of classes over already? Sheesh. It's my last semester of classes, can you believe it? After this semester, it's all oral exams and dissertation. I thought I would miss classes, but I don't think I will, because too many I've taken haven't been that great. And yet I've had to read all the books, even when they're stupid; and sit in class discussions I couldn't contribute to, because they were stupid; and write papers at the end, even though they've been stupid, too.

It occurs to me that I may still be bitter about my film theory class from last semester. Any class that ever, at any point, poses the question, "How would Zizek repond to this?" had better also have previously provided me with an easy-to-read chart of possible answers. Because the best I can do is, "Probably in Slovene, before making a mental translation into English." So. After this semester, I can audit courses, so I can skip out of any class meetings requiring Continental philosophy as an unannounced prerequisite.

Listen, okay, Claudia, that was last year. Black Eyed Peas: Two thousand and late." Stella Adler: "Don't go back, go on." New semester, new times! Here's the lineup:

1. Research Seminar in Urban History

I have a lot riding on this class. At the end of the research seminar, we're meant to have produced a significant piece of original research, ready (or nearly ready) for submission to an academic journal. I totally need this kind of focus; don't tell anyone, but I don't know how to research. Also, I'm using this to try out an idea a project that may be able to turn into dissertation. And if my idea doesn't work, I have no idea what I'm going to for a dissertation. More on that as I work on it.

2. Sexual Modernity and Censorship: Lubitsch and Wilder

We're looking at the movies of writer-directors Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, and how their films played around with sexual relationships and the Production Code. Billy Wilder's movies you may know: Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Apartment (1960), Some Like It Hot (1959). Lubitsch is less well-known these days, mostly I think because his films are older. I loved The Merry Widow (1934) at one point in my life -- that Maurice Chevalier, what an adorable French rake. You may know The Shop around the Corner (1940) with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Or you may know its remake, You've Got Mail (1998). (Interestingly, the original does much less stripping-the-female-of-everything-she-is-in-order-to-fit-her-into-the -male's-world-order.) And oh, my god, watch Ninotchka (1939) if you have any interest in feeling joy. Note: This is my last semester of class and yet my first seminar in Hollywood cinema, which was what I thought I came back to school for. But let's not talk about that.

3. Theatricality in Film.

I have no idea what this class is about, really, except that it's about time for me to take another film class to fulfill my requirement, and about time to take a class with Brigitte Peucker (MHC '60!), who I expect will be overseeing one of my oral exam areas. Once I figure out what it means to be "theatrical" in the context of film, I'll have a better idea of what I should be doing in here. Does it mean to be explicitly connected to a theatrical property? Does it mean to have a stripped-down production design? Does it mean to be uncommonly dramatic/melodramatic? My first reaction to the course was, "Well, once it's on film, it's cinematic, so it's no longer theatrical." That shuts down the conversation pretty quickly, though.

Off to read a book or two. As a last thought: I'm sure that everyone has done what they can to support the rescue and recovery efforts in Haiti. If you are looking for a way to do something else, keep Heifer International in mind. They have been supporting over 16,000 families in Haiti, and so many of them will need to start over. This is one way to offer a different kind of assistance, as the recovery phase moves into the rebuilding phase, and moves off of the front pages.

My second and final piece of writing for the Paley Center for Media is up on the Perspectives on Media section! (The first piece was on Def Comedy Jam, you may or may not remember.) It's the first link: "What Girls Want: 70 Years of Pop Idols and Audiences." If you have any interest in girls, pop, idols, or audiences, then I am sure you will find it brilliant and fascinating. But even if you don't, and if you read it, let me know what you think!

Also, sorry my blog sucks as of late. I've been doing other stuff. Though if you asked me what, I honestly couldn't tell you.

The best thing ever just happened to me. I've been working on this stupid, stupid paper that is totally going to suck even though I've spent half my life on it. Anyway, I'm sitting at my desk in my old bedroom at home, and my mom just called up the stairs, "CC? Dinner's ready!" Dinner! Freshly made! Waiting for me on the stove! I love being home.