Hi.

So like most of my navel-gazing cyber-friends, I was preparing a list of “my favorite tracks of 2009,” which then became “my favorite tracks of the decade,” which then became “the best songs of the decade.” But then I realized a few things:

1) Nobody gives a shit about what I think the best songs of the decade are.

2) I’m honestly too lazy to figure out which songs were exactly released this year (I got into a friendly argument with Sam about this very issue concerning The Fame, which I argue is more of a 2008 album but whatever) and in what order I think they should belong.

3) I don’t have a “favorite song” from this year. My favorite walking song is different from my favorite slow jam, which in turn is different from my favorite sad song, which in turn is different from my favorite pop song, etc. I find it difficult to compare my preferences in different musical genres–apples to oranges, etc.

But I did realize one thing: Sweden totally cranked it up to 11 this year. All of the following albums came from the land of funny chefs, they were all released in 2009, and they are all very good (and listed in no particular order):

no. 2 by jj

Dancing All the Way Home by Miss Li

My Guilty Pleasure by Sally Shapiro

Junior by Röyksopp

Two White Horses by Two White Horses

Crossing the Rubicon by The Sounds (remember how much I love this album?)

Fever Ray by Fever Ray aka that chick from the Knife

89 by The Bear Quartet

Living Thing by Peter Bjorn and John (which got turned into a fantastic remix collection, btw)

…and so on. My point being: Sweden is a magical country and I kind of want to move there.

I wish I could save you all from the overwrought nostalgia and earnestness that inevitably emerges from the depths of even the snarkiest of publications upon the dawning of a new decade, but really, why start now? If I erased every entry on J&J that contained a modicum of nostalgia or earnestness the only posts that remain would be a handful of YouTube videos. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s about to be 2010, and I kinda want to talk about it.

Yes, we are entering a new decade. We’ve made it another year, and the economy collapsed, and journalism died, and every time you spray whipped cream into your mouth you’re unleashing harmful CFCs that continually rip into the ozone layer, but whatever, we have two more years until the end of the world, at least according to the Mayans, right? But 2010 means more to me than just the beginning of another decade; in fact, 2010 is the year I’ve been simultaneously looking forward to and dreading since middle school.

Because I am graduating from NYU in May! I am going to have to learn how to be a “real person.” So this new year’s, my resolutions are all about helping me become one of those.

Jess’s New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Stop trying to be an adult and actually become one.

Things I will have to start doing (or at least try to start doing) once 2010 comes around and I have to start being an adult:

• Grocery shopping/cooking. I always do this at the beginning of the year but then it somehow devolves into me getting takeout from Vanessa’s Dumplings (recession special!) twice a week and eating cereal/oatmeal the other nights. This is why I have an iron deficiency, which explains why I’m tired and pale/anemic/look like a vampire, and which is also why I need to start:
• Regularly taking vitamins. They’re there, on my dresser, and for some reason I just always forget to take them. I’m a lactose intolerant vegetarian who eats takeout from Vanessa’s Dumplings twice a week. I need protein, I need iron, I need calcium. Vitamins are so adult, right?
• Don’t leave my clothes at the drycleaner for four months. Seriously, an hour ago I picked up two dresses I left there in September but never had the cash to pay for to pick up. But +3 for actually getting shit drycleaned, right?
• Stop using “but I’ll be going home [insert date way too far advance]” as an excuse to not do laundry.
• Hey there, rent check. Thanks for sauntering over to me from my parent’s bank account. One day, in 2010, I’m going to have to come up with you myself. You will join the ranks of bills–ConEd, Time Warner, laundry, food, etc.–that I now am fully responsible for.

2. Become a better spender and saver.

• Since my parents will no longer be paying my rent and I will have to start paying back student loans, I need to learn to save money. Having $100 in my savings account that I sometimes tap into when I “need” something [another cup of coffee] is no longer going to fly.
• Stop shopping at Forever 21 and H&M and start investing in nice, expensive clothes. Seriously, their shit falls apart after two wears and it ends up being more expensive to buy new outfits twice a month than it would be to just splurge on something on sale at a boutique. I need to learn to buy things less frequently in general.
• Make a budget. It’s something so simple that I should’ve done literally years ago but I just never have and am continually shocked when my balance hits $0 a week before I’m due another paycheck. Maybe I’ll even…
• Get Quicken. Is there anything more adult than money managing software?

3. Be less flakey.

• If you’re my friend and you’re reading this, hey, whatsup, we probably haven’t spoken in awhile and I probably haven’t seen you in like three months. This is because I have been hibernating, and am sadly perfectly content spending most nights home alone with my cat and a book. This seems adult but really it’s just antisocial. I promise to make a better effort to see everyone, and
• Stop flaking out at the last minute. Look, I can’t go out during the week. I don’t know how you people get the energy, particularly for bars and shit, but after working nine hours every day all I want is Hulu and some tea. I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am. I will stop agreeing to go out during the week and then not going, and I will make a conscious effort to try to see you on the weekends when I am decidedly less lazy (but maybe during the day! Can we make that compromise? I like to go out during the day so I can be asleep by 11pm). By reading this, you are hereby entering into a contract (sorry!). If I start to breach this resolution all you have to do is send me a link to this post and I’ll get the point. Or, ya know, just say something.

There are so many more resolutions that I wrote down on a piece of paper and stuck in my “success” corner (Why yes I did feng shui my bedroom. Adult! Or just douchey?) after I watched an entire season of “30 Rock” in one day and realized that I have all of Liz Lemon’s bad qualities and none of her good ones. This year, well, this decade–considering I was 11 when it began–has been a particularly formative one. I’ve changed a lot, and mostly for the better, or at the very least, even though I am missing basic components that generally contribute to people’s happiness (an overflowing social calendar! A boyfriend!) I am surprisingly happy and content. But in my heart I’m still a kid. I am stubborn, and I get jealous, and I put off things to do tomorrow and the next day because in my mind, the future is wide and luminous and endless and eventually I will get to everything, because I’m 21 and I’ve got time.

So I guess… here’s to using that time wisely, or at least the way a “real person” would.

P.S. Just after posting this I had a “dinner” consisting of plain, cold, day-old pasta  consumed sans utensils from the tupperwear container while standing up in the kitchen reading a book. It’s not 2010 yet, bitches!!!

that the real hero on MTV’s trashiest reality show yet, “Jersey Shore,” is undoubtedly the duck phone. Whether JWoww is using it to tell her boyfriend she cheated on him AGAIN, or Snooki is slamming it around because she can’t figure out how it works, the duck phone is the true star of the show. It always makes me quack up (heh).

One of the real reasons I haven’t been blogging a lot recently is because something very serious happened to me. A few weeks ago, I was searching for something to watch on Hulu. I’m one of those people who likes to pick out a show and obsessively consume the entire season in a short span of time. My friends kept suggesting I check out LOST, which I’d always dismissed as weird and cultish and not really something I’d be interested in. HAHA, jk. It took a few episodes, but I became legitimately addicted. I got through all five seasons, most with at least 20 episodes in them, in about a month, which means I’ve been watching like 3-4 episodes a day. WHAT? It’s sooo good. I just finished the season 5 finale and my mind was legitimately blown. Who else watches LOST, and can we please have a February 2nd 6th season premiere viewing party? And is Evangeline Lilly the hottest woman on the planet? I think so.

I’m really digging these HTC commercials. I hadn’t even heard of HTC before I started seeing some of their ads pop up during the pre-show at movie theaters. They’re sentimental, which is probably why I love them so much. But really, what is HTC?

But the offices at NYU employ some of the rudest, most unhelpful people in the history of the universe. No, that’s not even hyperbolic. Every exchange I’ve had with Gallatin Student Services has been a dramatically unpleasant one. For instance, I’m currently only registered for one class, and am waiting on a code that I need to register a second (as if that in itself isn’t annoying enough). Right now my tuition bill only reflects one class, which means they’re charging me about $4500 instead of $9000. That’s fine, except they’ll take away my Plus Loan if they think my tuition this semester is only $4500, and my parents need that loan.  So I e-mailed NYU to try to get this sorted out:

Hi _____,

Is there any chance you’d be able to send me the independent study registration code soon? I need to register for it so I have two classes in order to get a certain loan. I need to tell Financial Aid that I’m actually taking two classes ASAP or else it’ll be too late to get the loan.

Thanks,
Jessica

The response?

Hi,

No,  your independent study has to be reviewed by the Associate Dean and that will take some time.

Wow, way to be helpful! Seriously, the curtness, the refusal to suggest another solution, the definitive “no” that literally means–and they know it, since I mentioned it in the e-mail–that I will lose a loan. Absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Luckily I came up with a solution on my own that I think will fix the problem. But this is just another example of NYU’s bullshit bureaucracy, and one of the many reasons I’m unbelievably happy to be graduating in May.

From this article on The Awl, which speaks to a lot of what I was thinking about yesterday with my depressing journalism post.

“We grow up with the impression there’s a correlation between effort and the fruits of your labor,” he said. “To be honest with you, I have very little confidence I’m going to be able to turn this around. It just feels completely, completely out of my control.”

Sounds about right.

h/t Joe

Excitement and passion about our future in journalism “comes in waves,” as Joe said to me today while I was talking about how I should maybe just give up on the whole thing, resign myself to the fact that even though I’ve wanted to be a writer since I could physically write I should just shelve it all in favor of law school. Upon stating this to my faux uncle, a lawyer in DC, he replied, “You’re not going to law school. It sucks, it sucks the soul out of you. Being a lawyer is not for you.” This is probably good advice, since I’m a lot like my father, and after he graduated from Franklin and Marshall he went to GW Law School for six weeks before dropping out and working at a Howard Johnson’s in central Pennsylvania for a year.

I think the problem now is that what’s “for me” and what’s “not for me” is starting to feel increasingly irrelevant when I think about things like paying back my $60,000 in undergrad student loans, or being able to go to the doctor when I’m sick without being made sicker over not having the insurance to cover it. Part of growing up is coming to that crossroads where you have to decide between selling your soul for a living wage, or keeping your soul and living in a basement apartment in furthest Brooklyn where the only light is provided by a half-broken desk lamp you found in the trash collection pile near the G train. Or, you know, not having a job at all and shacking up with your parents until your standards fall so low that working at Best Buy seems like a genuinely appealing option.

For three weeks out of each month I forgo the depressing reality of things and try to imagine myself as a writer at one of my favorite publications. I contemplate the idea that if I work as hard as I possibly can, then things like the shitty economy or the death of print should have little bearing on the outcome. Call it a millennial affectation left over from my parents’ constant childhood praise, or having been inundated by too many motivational posters in middle school, but I honestly believe that if I work hard enough, I will attain the things I want.

At its core, this belief is impossibly naive: it operates under the assumption that life is fair, that latte runs actually lead to an entry-level job, that the 12-hour days I’ve taken on this last semester will come to mean something, a paid something, a validating something. I think the crushing reality that all of us journo students on the cusp of graduating are starting to rub up against is this: just because you killed yourself with internships and jobs and extracurriculars, just because you have more clips than people twice your age and you’ve written for free because “it’s good experience,” does NOT mean that there is a job out there for you. There. I said it. Life is unfair, and right now, it’s especially fucking unfair.

So. Last week David Carr wrote the following in his Media Equation column:

For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.

Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.

It sounds so nice, doesn’t it? It makes it sound like it’s all up to us. Or even, all up to our iPhones! Sadly, we should remember who’s writing–and getting paid to write–this eulogy, and while I really, really respect David Carr and even bought his memoir in hardcover form, I don’t think he’d disagree that while he might be a bright thing, he is certainly not a bright young thing.

I think Joe summed it up pretty well in an e-mail chain between me, him, Cody, Lily and Mike– NYU Local’s tireless media junkies. Cody was all inspired by Carr’s column, but that’s because he has balls of steel, which maybe I should figure out how to grow because I would never say some of the stuff that kid says on Twitter. Joe had another take:

Don’t get me wrong — I totally wish I had a cushy job at Condé Nast and an expense account and an intern, all of which I earned after opening mail and transcribing tapes (tapes!) and making Xerox copies. But! Long before we got that chance, the system refused to adapt, fucking it up for all of us. Now we’re being handed something broken — no, fuck that — they’re not even handing it to us. They’re holding onto it so tightly, forcing us to ‘grab it,’ if I’m going to extend that metaphor a little bit too long.

But that’s where knocking down (instead of on) the fucking door comes in. Because now we have to be savvy, scrappy AND good writers. AND STILL PROBABLY POOR. Which I think is okay with me. It still excites me. Being an underdog gets me doing. So does sticking it to old people.

And I think that’s pretty much how we all feel. Notice how the tone of the e-mail shifts from bitter, to angry, to optimistic? We let ourselves feel depressed for a few days to a week each month. We contemplate taking the LSATs, the GREs. We wonder if it would really be that bad to work at Best Buy. We get angry at David Carr and we swear to never again write for free and we send whiny e-mails around begging for someone to empathize with us.

But then do you know what we do? The cloud begins to lift. Maybe one of our articles finds its way onto Google News; maybe someone we respect congratulates us on a job well done. Soon we find ourselves on Craigslist searching for new (most likely unpaid) internships. We realize that being inspired, or uninspired, by a Media Equation column is kind of irrelevant, since it’s the fact that we’re even interested in Media Equation that means something. It means that this hollow, sinking ship we call journalism is “for us.” So even if I get discouraged once a month and make brash Gchat announcements like “I wish I had studied something practical. I’m forgoing journalism and going to law school,” I know that ultimately the fact that I even have the energy to muster hope out of this entirely dismal job situation means that I care about this, all of it, too much to sell my soul to law school… even if doing so would be so much easier than having an identity crisis 12 times a year.

Of course, all of this could turn out to be bullshit. I’m giving myself five years to find out. If by age 26 I’ve held approximately zero legitimate and paying journalism jobs, I will be 100% fine with working at Best Buy. I just hope I won’t drown trying to catch that fresh, ferocious, hyperbolic wave.

LOL.

To be fair, I was kind of a wreck this summer. But was I fucked up enough to justify my parents thinking I got a secret abortion? LOL I’m not joking.

Here’s what happened: NYU sent my Dad some random $500 bill from the student health center dating back to August. It’s obviously some bureaucratic mistake because 1) I HATE going to the doctor and 2) I haven’t been to the SHC since freshman year because of #1. Well, apparently my Dad didn’t take it that way. He had my stepmom call my Mom, and then my Mom sent me this really foreboding e-mail “Jess, can you call me? I need to talk to you.” I thought someone had died! But that’s always my first thought when my parents “need to talk to me.” That or they’re mad about my credit card balance again.

Anyway I call my Mom and she’s all, “I just got off the phone with Anmarie… Dad got a medical bill from NYU for $500, and I guess, we were wondering, if, well, um… you had an abortion?”

LOL.

So let me get this straight. My parents’ logic was: We got a $500 medical bill from NYU, ERGO Jess got an abortion and didn’t tell us.

Sorry, Mom and Dad, it’s just NYU getting my NYU student ID number confused with somebody else’s. Besides, I’m almost positive there’s no way NYU performs on-site abortions, nor would they perform one and then send the bill to my Dad’s house. And if I did have to get an abortion, I would certainly tell my Mom and not just get it and then have them bill my parents. Sigh. Modern life!