The Good, The Bad and the Discounted

THE GOOD: Today I got my first galley. What is a galley, you ask? It's a bound copy of a book- an advanced ready copy. It's for THE GRILLED CHEESE MADONNA by Chris Cihlar. I opened the envelope and couldn't believe my eyes as I finally got to see a project I had watched grow from start to finish (I picked up the project starting with a random query email).

I imagine this is what a proud father feels like as he holds his newborn (the joy, the pride, no real sense of the blood, sweat and tears that bore the actual thing). Keep an eye out for it. As we were reading, we were busting up. If I didn't have free copies, I'd totally buy it, it's so damn funny. May 2006, baby!

THE BAD: I realized yesterday that there is something incredibly unfair about the holiday season as an Iranian American. You see, I don't subscribe to any particular religion, but something about the holidays in the US really get me down. I mean, deeeeee-pressed. This year I've been so depressed that I haven't even been able to partake in my usual ritual of popping in Home for the Holidays and delighting in the dysfunction of another person's family.

I feel the same pressure as everyone else to buy the 'perfect' gift for the people I love, to spend time with my family (even though we all live in the same city), and to make resolutions for a new year. Problem is, I'm not Christian or Jewish, the token holidays of the aformentioned "holiday season." Technically Persians do have a holiday, and it was tonight. Shabeh-Yalda, the longest night of the year. According to my mom, my job was to "eat lots of fruit and make a wish!" That's the type of holiday I want. And yet I feel all the solemnity of the Judeo-Christian Shopping season and all it entails. This depression is slated to last another two weeks. Right up until Dec 31st, when I have to make the aformentioned Resolutions and then sink under the weight of figuring out how I will possibly accomplish in 365 days what I haven't in the previous 28 years. The pressure, the pressure! And all this in the face of the fact that the new year that actually means something to me, Noruz, doesn't even roll around til the first day of spring in March.

I recently heard a statistic that approximately 70% of the United States is Christian. I don't know if this is true, but I wonder how much the numbers fluctuate around the holidays. The rest of us, aka. "Other", get greedy, we wanna play too, so we put up a tree, and then all hell (or depression) breaks loose. Last night my family even got around to bickering just a tad about the placement of lights and ornamentation on our Christmas tree. I am a victim of the American Marketing Complex, and it's my own damn fault.

THE DISCOUNTED: Random stroke of brilliance tonight. I think third wheels should get discounted movie tickets.