Standing in a queue of a school canteen.

Yes folks, the wait is finally over.
Introducing...The PoBaL Literary Crush List!
(oooo, aaaaah.)

• The first crush I can remember having on a character in a book was Peter Pevensie in the Narnia books. He's all responsible and noble and shit, plus, if I ever had a giant evil talking wolf that needed killed, he could totally do it for me. And really, isn't that what we're all looking for in a man?
• Zooey Glass. Sure, he's snarky to his mom, mean to his sister (kind of) during her big crisis of faith or whatever, and was quoted in Ally Sheedy's book of poetry, but how could you resist a guy that looks like "the blue-eyed Jewish-Irish Mohican scout who died in your arms at the roulette table at Monte Carlo"?* And you'd be snarky to your mom, too, if she wouldn't leave the bathroom when you wanted to get dressed.
• Carrying on with my trend of wounded, arrogant, asshole-ish boys who are also loyal, noble, etc., I've got quite the crush on Sirius Black (unlike my Oliver Wood or Weasley twin crushes, it has everything to do with J.K. Rowling and nothing to do with casting directors).
• ...and Bran from Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series. Totally arrogant, but, as his absent father is King Arthur, kind of understandable. And hot, if I'm allowed to say that about a fictional 13yrold. Which I'm probably totally not. But that's the thing about literary crushes, especially when most of what you read is teenlit. You have a lot of age-inappropriateness.
• Also, sometimes you get the species inappropriateness. I know Foaly, the smartass tech geek in the Artemis Fowl books, is a centaur, but I still crush on him. Insert your own awful "hung like a horse" joke here.
• I also like Ravus the Troll from Holly Black's Valiant, but he's at least human-shaped. Sort of. And there's this great scene where Val thinks he's about to make a magic potion and it's actually hot cocoa. If a boy made me hot cocoa, I think I could overlook the whole green skin and fangs thing.
• After I read Heavy Metal and You, I got a really big crush on Chris Krovatin, the author. That counts for this list because the book kind of smacks of thinly veiled autobiography.
• I can't tell if I have a crush on Nick from Nick and Norah or if I'm crushing on the whole crazy infatuated night the two characters have.
• Jacklyn Moriarty writes some pretty crushable boys. She's very good at the smirky charmers who are actually quite nice boys once you get to know them.
• If you're the sort of girl who can have a crush on a drawing, which I completely and unabashedly am, there are whole genres of manga dedicated just to you. Right now I'm all about Saiyuki. There's a lot of pretty, and a lot of jackassery.
• Speaking of crushes on drawings, Drake from Scooter Girl is totally my boyfriend.
• Because it's just not a crush list without a straightgirlcrush, Dess from the Midnighters series is awesome. She fights monsters with math! And snarks around a lot!

*Yeah, I had to grab the library copy of Franny and Zooey for an exact quote, but I had a good deal of it memorized. I always forget where the roulette wheel is.

We got spaghetti. And blankets.

Pipe down, Internet, your Auntie Jessy's hung.

Little girls on a sunny Easter Sunday in their big poofy spring dresses, spinning across a grassy lawn.
Girls in their mid20s with professional jobs, twirling around a dance floor.
Same thing, really. At least when it comes to me 'n' Melissa.

Oh, and Local Library I Don't Work At? Please refrain from packaging comedy CD/DVD dealies like 2 CD audiobooks. It confused me as I was driving into work.
This would be after I yelled, "I JUST DON'T CARE ANYMORE!" to Scott Simon when he started in on Opal Mehta. In the car. With the windows down.
And, yes, I know that the author's name is not Opal Mehta. I don't care. I can call her that, or I can call her Stupid Plagiarizy Harvard Girl I Don't Care About Anymore. You make the call.

I bought the Summer 06 Knit1 yesterday. I'd do a review-type-thing, but

1. I forgot it;
   
2. isn't that what we pay the lovelies at You Knit What?? for?
   
3. Plus, my upcoming Craftster swap is like a secret santa type deal, and I don't want to run the risk of spoiling the surprise.

I also went to the comic store.
Now, Free Comic Book Day comes every year. This is my second year getting comics from this particular shop for it, and I know that they were our supplier before I came on the scene. I gave them a month's notice. I discussed it with comicstore employees in person and sent an email.
So why, when I stop by the store yesterday, was there not a box of free comic goodness ready for the library?
To complicate matters further, I had personal stuff to pick up, too.
(flashback)
Because I'm an exceptionally nice person, when Tiff came to visit the last time and we went to the comicstore (actually, when I spoke to the people about free comic goodness), I let her buy the only copy of Strangetown #1. Of course, I read it before she did, but that's not the point.
So I arrange to have a copy ordered for me, and a copy of each subsequent Strangetown held. I discussed this with the employee, and mentioned it in the email.
Then, when I sent the email, I remembered the Belle and Sebastian anthology and asked for that, too.
So, theoretically, I run into the comic store. I look around real quick, I pick up my stuff, I head to Panera for a tasty snack*.
NO. I've mentioned the putting freecomicgoodness box together already. Strangetown #1 is under my last name. Belle and Sebastian, after an "I need this book; it's blue"-esque conversation, turns up in the hold drawer, not under my name. With no name actually on it.
Apparently, the owner is the only person who deals with emails. And he wasn't there.
I miss you, Phantom of the Attic. You too, Atomic City Comics. But I suspect I miss your proximity to pizza more than you yourself.
And now everyone knows why the comics I bought 2002-03 have greasy marks on them.
And I still don't see what's so great about She-Hulk, despite what Wacky Neighbor Billy might say.

Man, I hate when hungover-icky merges with period-icky, on a work weekend.

*iced chai latte and an everything bagel with veggie cream cheese--YUM. And even better combined with free Scott Pilgrim goodness.

It was no bigger than a nickel.

Some random update-type things.

1. I think I've finally permanently remembered the html tag for numbered lists! So that's exciting...
   
2. Tax return got deposited, actually a few days ago. So I ordered the green Hello Kitty sewing machine (Fig. A.).
   
3. Me 'n' Melissa decided to make this Spring more fun with Jessy & Melissa's Super Fun Scavenger Hunt. You guys should totally play along. Basically, it's an excuse to take pictures of random junk.
   
4. Here's the flickr group for the Scavenger Hunt.
   
5. I'm reading the Street Angel comic right now (Fig. B.). It's real good.
   

Fig. A.


Fig. B.

Boys, movies, and shopping too/My favorite things/I thought you knew

Tiff and I used to be roommates. When you live with a good friend like that, there's always the danger that your extreme likes or dislikes will cement into these ridiculous statements and/or obsessions. Since we both have this tendency anyway, things were kind of in overdrive for awhile.
We wrote a Ghostwriter drinking game. (Although, technically, we didn't live together yet here. I just spent a hell of a lot of time at her 'n' Cindy's place avoiding Ken the assface boy.)
We paid for big sexy cable.
Big sexy cable included, among other things, M2 and VH1 Classic.
At some point, we decided that it was okay for us to like Thursday:
*they were cute
*the song was catchy and pretty good, for cash-in emo stuff
*most importantly, there was Super 8 in the video
The first time I heard "Sugar I'm Going Down Swinging" or whatever it's called, I was reminded of our Thursday arguements. Because I believe I'd like to recycle them for this song, which I kind of secretly, kind of unabashedly like. Just replace "super 8" with "Simpsons reference" and we're all good.

This post is my list of some kickass stuff that came out this year, in no particular order. (And I don't want to hear any technically2004 bits. Sometimes I'm late, okay?)
And I'll probably forget a ton of stuff.

I've got a convenient list of a ton o' stuff that came out, YA book-wise, open in another window, so let's start with that.

The repetitive part:
How can I convince you guys to read Looking for Alaska if you haven't listened to me yet? Just trust me on this one.
I really did go on and on about Prom, but then the stupid internet ate it.
Here's where I gush about A Room on Lorelei Street and Peeps.
I was dating a 20yrold; I was reading a book by a 20yrold; synergy! Or something.


24 Girls in 7 Days is bookish crack. It's Say Anything in book form, kinda. Without actually being much of anything like Say Anything.
Far From Xanadu by Julie Anne Peters. You can see the trainwreck coming and you want to reach into the book and stop it, but not in a bad way.
I need to stop and say something here about David Levithan. Boy Meets Boy makes me sad. It makes me sad because I hate to think that the only world where a boy can meet a boy and have only the same level of angst as your average boy-girl meet is also one this forcibly whimsical.
I don't need a crossdressing quarterback/homecoming queen for a sweet love story to work.
I know a lot of people have called this magic realism and tried to work that angle, but that just doesn't feel right to me.
As far as poetry goes, I can stand Realm of Possibility.
Are We There Yet, however, is one of my picks for 2005, I think, even though I forget about it sometimes. 2 brothers who never get along, vaguely Oscar-and-Felixish but not simplistically so, are conned into a trip to Italy by their parents. I guess the whole point of stories a lot of the time is to see into someone else's viewpoint, and this book, with its dual narration, does that beautifully.

Enough of this grown-up beautiful crap. Valiant by Holly Black is totally one of 15yroldJessy's new favorite books. The Spiderwick Field Guide thing is pretty amazing, too.

And Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last is my favorite of the Susan Juby Alice books. True awesomeness, and I really need to find a Canadian to tape the tv show for me. (Not to be confused with Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Alice, who I've successfully avoided having to read for yet another year--go me and my immature aversion to books about seemingly boring "normal" teenagers and anything my YA lit professor recommended!)

Lulu Dark is the bestest accidental-detective-'cause-she-got-her-tacky-purse-stoled I'm pretty sure I've ever read about.

Did The Bermudez Triangle come out this year? Man, where did Maureen Johnson come from? And how come the big guys never talk about her? I like all her books, but this one's definitely my favorite.
The jacket tells you it's about what happens when your 2 best friends fall in love, with each other, but that's not it. What it's really about is what happens when one of your best friends fucks the other one over, the choices you have to make, and if you can really forgive a loved one for hurting another loved one really damn bad.
And who hasn't been in that situation? Isn't it called "college"?

Yeah, Twilight's pretty great, but any teenager with artificially black hair will tell you that; you don't need me.
You also don't need me to talk up Teach Me (substituting YA librarian for Blackie McManicPanic there). But I should say that I think this is the only book about an brittle perfectionist girl that hasn't annoyed the hell out of me.

Oh, and on the movie tip? I'd talk up Mysterious Skin and Serenity here, but I still haven't seen either one of them. Any interested-in-viewing parties should get back to me.

Serenity Rose is cute and funny and kind of spooky and the best kind of thoughtful, with very little cliche and no ham-fistedness. And that's really hard, especially in a comic about a witchgirl.

Oh, and Necklace of Kisses, of course.

And a year where Jacky Faber makes an appearance can't be all bad, right?