02.28.03 - 5:33 p.m.

I love how my gum clearly states on the wrapper that it's "not a reduced calorie food" when it contains 5 calories to begin with. Stop the presses!

All right, today I'm lazy and am sick of trying to figure out ways to make it to Hoboken and back tonight without driving, so I'm just going to do the Friday Five:

1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?
Magazines. And even though it doesn't say "explain" after that question, I will, because I already have a statement prepared from when I interviewed at Glossy Shelter Magazine:Why do I like magazines anyway? I've heard so much criticism in and outside of j-school that they're a dying breed, but I can't imagine life without them. Magazines are information presented at a leisurely pace, to be picked up in stolen and spare moments or to devote an entire afternoon. Magazines can be elegant, irreverent or sobering in a way that newspapers cannot -- they remain even more accessible than the Internet -- magazines breathe. They give us what we need to know and what we aspire to be. They are my luxury, my lifeline, my fantasy world wrapped in 72 pages of edit.

That being said, however, there's nothing like a good novel. Leading to the next question...

2. What is your favorite novel?
Apart from On the Road, which I always have to say because it just will always be there, like my favorite comfy t-shirt, like saying R.E.M. is my favorite band even though it's not so often that one of their CDs slips into my stereo these days, my favorite novel is The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. It's his first novel, before the whole Wonder Boys/Kavalier & Clay/Hollywood hoo-ha, and it's set in Pittsburgh. It just evokes so much hometown nostalgia and loss and is eminently quotable.

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)
Well, it's a toss-up between "I Wanna Be Yours" by John Cooper Clarke and "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams .Apparently I have a thing for tri-named poets. They are as follows:

I Wanna Be Yours
let me be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
let me be your ford cortina
i will never rust
if you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
you call the shots
i wanna be yours
let me be your raincoat
for those frequent rainy days
let me be your dreamboat
when you wanna sail away
let me be your teddy bear
take me with you anywhere
i don�t care
i wanna be yours
let me be your electric meter
i will not run out
let me be the electric heater
you get cold without
let me be your setting lotion
hold your hair with deep devotion
deep as the deep atlantic ocean
that�s how deep is my emotion
deep deep deep deep de deep deep
i don�t wanna be hers
i wanna be yours

This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

OH, and there's also "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in" by e.e. cummings, but I'll save that for another entry.

4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?
Every time I read an issue of The New Yorker, I think, why don't I have a subscription to this? And then I answer myself (not out loud, thankfully): Because it's a weekly. And because you have enough trouble getting through all your monthly magazines. That have probably more words in the sum total of them than in one story in The New Yorker, fool.

5. What are you currently reading?
Apart from the eternal stack of magazines beside my bed? I just finished Tunnel Vision, by Keith Lowe, which I think should be made into a movie starring Hugh Grant and RachelWeisz. Next up is Adele by Emma Tennant. It's that book about Jane Eyre as told through the eyes of her ward. However, after 38 pages, it's already starting to make me sleepy, so I may not make it to the conclusion.