the 21 club

Today is my twenty-first birthday. So here are twenty things I bet you didn't (or maybe you did, I am quite transparent about certain things) know about me. Why twenty things, and not twenty-one? Check #5.

1. I have been a vegetarian for over a decade. The thing that swayed me into vegetarianism was the cartoon show Brace Face. I saw an episode where Sharon Spitz works at a meatpacking factory, and I've never touched meat since.

2. I don't trust boys who giggle a lot. It's unnatural and I think that it means they are up to something.

3. I compulsively lie all of the time, usually about small things and when it makes my story sound better. And I think admitting that makes me the worst liar of all time... or the best.

4. Besides blogging, I also write for my university newspaper, write poetry, and make experimental short films.

5. I hate odd numbers.

6. My guilty pleasure is watching a marathon of old episodes of "Law and Order: SVU" while eating a scoop of Baskin Robbins' gold medal ribbon ice cream.

7. I don't believe in celebrating my birthday - not in a Jehovah's Witness sort of way, just birthdays always tend to disappoint me so I don't expect much from them.

8. I can quote every line from The Philadelphia Story, Notorious, Help!, A Hard Day's Night, several Andy Hardy movies, Rebel Without a Cause, Almost Famous, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and practically the entire catalogue of films made starring Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Marilyn Monroe.

9. My favorite authors are Colette, Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lewis Carroll, Ernest Hemingway, David Sedaris, Chuck Klosterman, and Simon Doonan. But my favorite author of all-time is Virginia Woolf. My favorite poets are Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. And I think Bob Dylan is a damn fine poet as well.

10. I change how I feel and who I want to be about a dozen times a day.

11. My favorite words is 'brilliance,' with 'luminescence' (which I am stealing from Michael Cunningham after hearing him say it when he came to one of my classes a few weeks ago) being a close second.

12. Right now, I really want to look like Sienna Miller's character Nikki in the movie Alfie.

13. I have a personal bucket list - among the first things listed are to move to Paris, visit Morocco, follow a band on tour, cut my hair into a pixie cut, live life like an Audrey Hepburn movie for a year (obviously that would include me dating William Holden ... I haven't quite figured out how that'll work yet).

14. I live an incredibly superficial existence, mostly revolving around the shoes I am lusting after at the moment, the beauty products I've decided I cannot live without, and the movie I am incessantly quoting.

15. I have severe crushes on Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino / Troy from Community) and Keith Richards.

16. I want to live inside of a French New Wave movie (preferably one by Godard, if I can make a choice on the matter).

17. In my dream world, I would just quit school and become a rock star.

18. My favorite book would be a tie between Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. A close third would be Infinite Variety, the biography on the Marchesa Luisa Casati.

19. I am a hoarder - I keep all of the makeup I purchase, the magazines I subscribe to, papers I get, and clothes I buy (regardless of if they fit or if I particularly like them or not). Apparently Edie Sedgwick was like this as well, so at least I am in good company.

20. There are so many classes that I want to take (that unfortunately my university doesn't offer): sewing, knitting, French cooking, costume jewelry making, t-shirt printing, pastry making, language classes in Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Italian and German, etc.