Keepin' up as best as possible

So it's taken me two days, but with the help of E! Online and People.com, I've finally caught up on my Oscar fashions. My verdicts -- Nicole Kidman: fantastic; Reese Withersoon: absolutely, absolutely exquisite, even without Ryan; Anne Hathaway: what the hell was she thinking?!?!?

Sadly, however, no one in our little ex-pat community cares. I get a lot of rolled eyes and the statement, "Curtis, you have too much time on your hands...we hate that celebrity shit." Now, don't get me wrong - I wouldn't argue that any of this is by any means a highbrow or intellectual pursuit. But I swear if I was rattling off baseball statistics or football trivia, everyone would think I was really cool!

If there's one thing I dislike about being an ex-patriate, it's this sense of intellectual entitlement (for lack of a better definition) that many people seem to create. Now, I'm not talking about EVERYONE here, but it does seem to be a general trend. Clearly, I stick out like a sore thumb amongst a group of soul-searching, intellectual hipsters who rely on angst, inside jokes and dark clothing.

I generally have nothing to hide -- I have a low tolerance for alcohol, like take-out coffees, enjoy a good chick flick now and then, and like nothing more than reading glossy magazines with lots of pictures of pretty people on a Sunday morning. Sure, I like European history, but I may never be able to take a legitimate stance on why the ideology of Karl Marx works on paper but not in practice. If given the choice, I generally don't listen to Bob Dylan. If that makes me "uncool," "shallow-minded," and not "a dark and tortured ex-capitalist who hates Westernized culture," then so be it! And hey, I've read Chuck Palahniuk too, ya know!

Somewhere...someday...I will meet someone who loves pop culture as much as me, and together we will pore over issues of GQ, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly and (OK, I'll admit it) InStyle and US Weekly over large cups of take-out coffee...and love every minute of it!