Pimpin' with Mr. Cami

On Saturday, August 25, 2007, Elvis Cami left the library and under Ashot's urging decided to attend a medical school party. Elvis was weary! Shit, we had like 32 bateriology lectures to get through, but under Ashot's worldly guidance, Elvis ventured into the hedonistic world of sin and temptation and the evils of drink.

Elvis THOUGHT he'd associate only with medical school kids with a like-minded desire for studying and drinking heavily. But unbeknowest to him, fate had different plans. In the manner of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle or Superbad, a simple task of getting laid and totally wasted at a party went awry, and crazy hijinks ensued. It was a night little Elvis Cami would NEVER forget.

Here's a preview of what was to come: a flirtation with a lady of the night, who tragically turned out to be a drag queen from the South Side of Toledo, Ashot GHBing Elvis's drink, which made him do uncharacteristic things like give people hugs and smile a lot and admit he loves puppies and Chinese babies. Finally, Elvis met the woman, the myth, the legend of Baywatch, the former Mrs. Kid Rock, herself, the boobtastic Pamela Anderson. And here it is, kids: her, in all her glory with Elvis, resident MCO pimp.



--By Mariam and Farrah, MS2s

My Hero: David Sedaris

Remember when you had to write an essay in grade school about who you looked up to? In actuality, I don't because at Carlisle's Lower School, we didn't write pedantic essays like these and instead focused on learning Greek mythology, the PG-rated version. I never got to write that essay so here I am, writing it here on the narcissistic homepage of my dreams, the backrowballers blog.

Nevertheless, most of you, dear blog readers, probably wrote naively, "My parents, since they give me strength to attain my goals," or for the most religiously-inclined, "Jesus - what he accomplished in his 33 years of life is amazing."

My hero is David Sedaris, a humorist essay for the New Yorker and New York Times bestselling author. David is who I aspire to be, although he is culturally different than me in every which way - he, a bestselling, famous writer, former druggie, college drop-out, and a homosexual who lives with his lover in the French countryside, and me, a Muslim medical student, who majored in ingles (we can all tell whose biography is more unique!). However, we both are from North Carolina, and the way that he writes about Raleigh is really hilarious and ironic - he really describes it as a hick town filled with ignorant Southerners, but really, our capital city is the most cosmopolitan place in the whole state.

I still love David though, and I often imagine what meeting him would be like. I have already practiced the conversation in my head. Here's how it would go:

"Mr. Sedaris, I love all of your books, especially Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. I'm from North Carolina, too. I can relate to your stories, although we come from different stations in life! You inspire me to write, and I want to write exactly like you. I get really excited if someone tells me I write like you. Can you read a sample of my writing? Will you marry me (despite your status as an infidel)? Thank you!"

Assuming David Sedaris doesn't get creeped out by my over-zealous proposals, he politely declines my offer of marriage, but agrees to keep me on as his protege. I give him this blog address, and he is duly impressed. I drop out of medical school, and together we co-exist peacefully in France, as he critiques my writing in his charming chateau. We collaborate on a collection of humorist essays entitled, Life on the Outskirts, where we regale charming, tragicomic stories about our youth as the subaltern in the boon docks of North Carolina.

Experience the genius of David Sedaris

--By Mariam, who by the looks of it is avoiding the study of phagolysozomes.

A News Article: I'm Famous!

Medical school: the new high school - Forum

--By Mariam, who hopes that she doesn't make the same mistakes as Lindsay Lohan on her path to fame.

Judd Apatow and Co.

A few years ago, I rented the Freaks and Geeks DVD. The show was so awkward that at times, I felt an overwhelming urge to change the channel, and that's when I knew that this was comedy gold. Like most things that are awesome, Freaks and Geeks got canceled after one year, tragically. But I still thought Jason Segal, Seth Rogen, and Samm Levine were really awesome. Unfortunately, in a world where Old School is our generation's Animal House and that damned Frat Pack is in every comedy movie out, no one even knew who Seth Rogen was, which was fine by me, I guess, because the more the obscure the reference is, the more invested I become.

All that changed this summer when Knocked Up came out from Judd Apatow, a guy who previously was so unsuccessful that all his shows got canceled after, like, 10 episodes. Now Superbad (which Seth Rogen wrote) with Michael Cera, the adorable kid from another awesome show Arrested Development is the number 1 movie at the box office. Now it sucks because Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen references are mainstream now and not an obscure pop cultural reference that will allow me to triumph at Pop Cultural Trivial Pursuit.





--By Mariam, who knows this blog entry sucks but feels compelled to keep the blog dream alive for MS2.

The Day the Gringos Left Me

I just went on my first medical relief trip to Nicaragua, and it was an amazing experience where I met many wonderful people and helped hundreds of Nicaraguans. This story is not about any of the people I met or the patients I encountered, but a small dog affectionately named Odie. It was our third day running our makeshift clinic in the rural areas outside of Leon. We finished treating everybody that day, loaded up our supplies in the truck, and looked for the bus that was taking us back into town. It was not visible in the immediate area so we decided to start walking towards town and meet the bus halfway - this is where Odie enters our story.

Most dogs in Nicaragua are emaciated, flea-infested, cess pools of disease, but Odie was different - he was a smaller emaciated, flea-infested, cess pool of disease, and therefore, much cuter. He bounded after us as we started our walk towards the city of Leon. In the humid heat of the Nicaraguan sun, we started our trek, already quite sweaty and filthy from a full day of clinic. An hour later we were still walking, wondering if the bus would ever show up, and guessing our way forward on the unlabeled dirt roads, but Odie was still happily following along. With only two half filled warm bottles of water for all 15 of us who had to walk, our fearless leader decided that the mangy dog might be thirsty. Never mind the massive amounts of fluids the humans were rapidly leaving on the dirt ground in piles of sweat, let's make sure the stray dog doesn't get thirsty. So the dog drinks the last of the water from a bottle cap, and the poor thing was so thirsty that it warmed the heart of even the most sarcastic of med students to see him receive this water. About one minute later, Odie emptied his bladder on some random tree that he felt the need to mark... ungrateful mutt...

After another hour of walking, we found a school bus, some sort of farming truck, and a watermelon truck stuck in a giant mud pit. We tried unsuccessfully to get Odie to eat some of the smashed watermelons on the ground, once again an ungrateful mutt... Anyway, we found our bus waiting on the other side of the mud pit, and this was when we had to leave Odie. Everybody found a place in their heart for Odie after our 2 hour trek in the sun. Our translator tried to coax Odie onto the bus despite the fact that we all knew he couldn't come along. Odie must have known this truth in his tiny doggy heart because he wouldn't get on the bus. As we drove off, Odie ran after the bus, and we let out a collective awww. We all knew what Odie was thinking, "This is the day that the gringos left me. I will never forget them, or the shitty warm water they gave me out of a bottle cap." Well, that's not exactly what he was thinking because he was probably thinking it in Spanish, more like, "Esta es el dia cuando el gringos left-o mi. yo nunca forget-o ellos, y su shitty-o caliente aqua." Look at how my Spanish improved during my trip!

--By Farrah, who thinks "gringo" might be a derogatory term, but she's not actually offended

A Snobby Blog: Sometimes Being Me is Hard

Most people can sit back, relax, and kick their feet up on the proverbial chair and watch a summer blockbuster with an unscrupulous eye. Bruce Willis pummeling away at a terrorist threatening to destroy the American Way of Life, a cartoon rat chef and the troubles of his wait staff, or the implausible hilarity of a schlubby Jew like Seth Rogen impregnating the blond surgeon blend away into a seamless 90 minutes of mindless entertainment. However, me being me, the me, who at times is incapable of enjoying movies, has a harder time of it than just sitting back and watching.

I always get caught up in the minute details of movies, much to the chagrin of my companions. Just ask Jack or Emily when they naively asked me to watch an 80s classic Gross Anatomy. They thought I would be able to relate to the trials and tribulations of Mathew Modine as the rogue, yet brilliant, medical student or the uptight, yet casually hot, Daphne Zuniga (post-The Sure Thing, the most awesome John Cusack film ever, and pre-Melrose Place). Instead of a quiet, yet thoughtfully observant viewer, I was snarky throughout the film which exasperated Emily to no end (at one point, she paused the movie and told me to just watch). I kept pulling out plot implausibilities and saying things like, "I'm in medical school. That would never happen!"

I was an English lit major in college, and I think this is partly why most people find me annoying to watch movies with. I wish I could just let the pictures wash over me in a mindless, soothing wave, but I feel like even the dumbest movies with the dumbest, most obvious imagery, has some larger meaning. For instance, I really thought that Jim Carrey's latest crap-fest The Number 23 had shades of film noir in it. Am I right? Only Joel Schumacher knows, I guess.

Another favorite pastime while watching movies is to belittle and ridicule the deep allusions to poetry popular films use since, I, of course, am the literary scholar with a B.A. degree, mind you, from a first-rate institution, and not some smarmy producer, who uses (gasp!) Spark Notes to pepper the script with deep sounding quotes from Whitman or Donne. For example, while watching Tristan and Isolde (with James Franco, who does one of the worst English accents to grace the screen), I grew irate when the photogenic couple read "The Long Morrow" by John Donne in the movie. Why, you ask? Because Donne wrote in the seventeenth century, a full 500 years before the setting of this dumb movie! Implausibilities are one thing, but anachronisms, especially in period films, should be, like, outlawed or something.

Another time I one-upped Hollywood was with The Notebook, an all around girl classic. The movie is littered with allusions to Whitman's Leaves of Grass, specifically his poem "So Long." The director completely misses the entire point of the poem, which is a rather wholehearted attempt to piece together America by giving it a cohesive unity in a rather chaotic, fragmented, ruinous time - the post-Civil War period. The director seems to think the lines of the poem are super romantic and are particularly swoon-worthy when hunky Ryan Gosling reads them, all brooding and Southern. All of this makes me so mad, but at the same time, I feel happy that at least I am one viewer who is not suckered into all the weepy, Hollywood romance when the director is committing such a serious, intellectual faux pas.

In the end though, what's the point? Who am I one-upping? I am sure Ridley Scott doesn't give a flying crap that I found his glaring anachronism with my speedy Google skills. Nick Cassevetes, similarly, doesn't give a shit that Whitman's poem was wrongly contextualized as romantic for the purposes of his weepy chick flick. Because at the end of the day, those trailer editor guys got me with their slick promos, and I paid my $9 to go see these crappy movies, which only added to their weekend grosses. So, ultimately, I guess it's Mariam: 0, Hollywood: billions of dollars and counting.

--By Mariam, who finds the prospect of summer ending horrifying.