Marrakesh

I'm a relentless optimist and it's a hip point of derision. All too often some drunk dude with cigarette dangling says "oh come on, how can you be so hopeful? How could you be so silly?" It seems I'm the only living girl characterized by a standard state of enchantment. Well sorry dude but I beg to differ from the cynical alley cat. Yes, we've all heard that the economy is parched, the job market blows, the world isn't kind, but are these the only breathing considerations? What about life's unchanging pleasantries?

To escape the alleged realities of my generation, I've turned to a book on gypset culture in which Yves Saint Laurent once said "[I see] a whole generation assembled as if for eternity where the curtain of the past seemed to lift before an extraordinary future."

Finally, someone who sees the futuristic utopia in my head, a dreamer instead of a simple dude. Call me naive but I'd like to jump off the coast, cold water licking my arms, as the curtain rises off the beach.

The Gentle Giant

You can imagine my surprise when I watched RUN RICKY RUN about NFL behomoth Ricky Williams. Ricky Williams, for those of you athletically challenged, was a smokin' football player who had the celerity and dexterity to stake his claim in the NFL draft. Sadly Ricky's enviable talent was coupled with crushing anxiety; he sat through interviews in his football helmet and didn't lift his voice to the microphone.

Ricky battled his anxiety with pot. He smoked bluntsbowlsbongs and failed three drug tests before he was thrown out of the NFL. What was the world to do with this forlorn talent? Here was a player biologically engineered to dominate the game but uninspired to do so. Ricky took his leave to the chagrin and pleasure of broadcasters everywhere and experimented with planes of knowledge. He got into holistic medicine, yoga, and kush. He spent hours upon hours residing in his "dark places" where he felt most at home.

You, dear reader, may be pouring Irish whiskey into your morning coffee, wondering why a style bug like me gives a shit. After all, I prefer J. Crew to jersey and I never watch the Super Bowl. But Ricky was unearthly. While he was baked and demure, his eyes and mouth bespoke intellectual curiosity and unabashed opinions. Ricky was a dreamer, a mythical hybrid America hadn't encountered, "the heart of a yogi, the body of a football player."

I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'd watch football every Sunday if boys like Ricky ran the game.