Bambina offers a story of a struggling, confused adolescence and contrasting relationships with strangers.  The relationship that the protagonist, Sophie, maintains with her sister is interesting due to her own perspective, idolizing and looking up to her sister, and the immaturity of her older sister.  I thought the verb use in, "I watched as her red Sunfire chugged along."was extremely effective.  I immediately go to the sounds that my parents clunker chevy van used to make.  
The plot where the older sister leaves Sophie hanging on the corner and doesn't return to pick her up was useful and realistic.  I can definitely see an older sister becoming consumed with themselves and neglecting their responsibility to pick up their younger sibling on time.  I thought this lead into Sophie's interactions with Matteo and the apparent spikey haired pedophile nicely.  I especially enjoyed the dialect of the italian pizza shop owner, Matteo.  I thought his phrasing, "I worked here and now it is mine... I was young, we did not have much money." were good examples of neglecting contractions to achieve the proper voice of an italian immigrant.
The only things that I thought may have been unrealistic were the relationships between Sophie and her sister, and the family dynamic.  I feel like in most sibling relationships that I have seen or been a part of, a younger sibling that constantly gets bossed around by the older sibling doesn't react well.  I do not see Sophie going along with her ignorant sister so easily, and at times where Sophie can speak and think incredibly intellectually for a middle schooler, I would rather see her outsmart her older sister who seems to have a loose grasp on reality at best.  As far as the family goes, I don't see how a married couple that has remained intact can have such money problems.  With two incomes and the work ethic that Sophie describes her parents as having, I would think they could manage to stay afloat. In my opinion there needs to be more explanation for why they have these money problems (parents obsession with dressing nicely or driving nice cars?) or a change to a single parent.  These parents seemed too down to earth to be unaware that their children are eating out of dumpsters.

phi mu dialogue

Are they both phi mus?

Yea, they’re both phi mus.

Yea, someone said they live together.

It’s just super awkward, at one point they looked over

We get there figure out where everyones table, we figure out where everyone is sitting. So then we decide where to move Courtney

We should have moved me

So we move Courtney.  There’s like sixty tables, and so we decided I was going to ask them their names hahahha

Hahah what’s your last name?

What’s your name? so we never got a chance to

He knows me, we used to see each other, all of the above. He saw me first

So were you expecting to see each other?

Well, no, but we were hoping to see him

So he sees me first, but then she saw that I was there

I don’t know what happened but apparently she was not happy that I was there

So we get up to the door, and we’re all looking at each other

It was so awkward

We were waiting on me to say something, so I finally talk to him and he won’t even look at up at me

He looked at the floor and said thanks and we went our different ways, super awkward

Yea, they were holding hands all night, it was like gross

I walk up the stairs and she’s glaring at me, I mean like glare-ing.

Anyway, apparently they were like yelling and fighting, she was jerking him around, and he was like groping up her ass the entire night.

Weren’t his parents there?

No, his parents weren’t there

My table was so awkward. My date was tiny

He comes up to like, below your boob

He’s like 5’8

He’s not even 5’8, he’s shorter than me, at least 5’7

Yea, well the roster says he’s 5’8

Blinka? was between the twin boys and I was between the grandma and the mother… so awkward.

That’s weird

Yea, but it’s way more awkward for him, he’s go t her there

Yea, when he walked through the door he was like, oh shit.

Yea, and he k new that, like he knew you were going to be around

Yea, sucks for her, that’s got to be incredibly awkard for her. 

1-900 Richard Bausch

I admire the quickness of characters in books and movies.  I admire the social prowess of characters that can eloquently define their pain without hesitation, and this admiration leads to another, an admiration for writers who can find the perfect metaphor for a feeling.
John confides to Sharon rather than Merilyn, "I'm about to the end of myself. I mean I've reached down and I've reached down and called up all the reserves and there's nothing left."  This statement, for me, derives and extremely strong image of an empty person, directionless and lonely, exhausted and bored, sitting on his bed in his apartment, almost begging a sex-line operator to justify his existence.  Even as a reader who has never reached a point this low, Bausch makes it easy to imagine just how empty depression can get.  Essentially, I'm jealous because I can't even illustrate a concept or image so strong when I have all the time in the world, much less like the characters in a movie.

D.A.R.E Was Right, I Have No Bones

     Reality television is the active ingredient to a rotting brain.  Gravity drags me down from the seat of the Lazy Boy, as my knees buckle I lay half on the floor, my head wedged between the back of the chair and the seat.  As I half lay here, allowing scholiosis to slowly deteriorate my spine, I can only help but to wonder why Kimmy K. got her hair and make-up all "did up" before she plunged into this superficial sob saga concerning her grief in the absence of her late father.  

     

    People have always said that it's video games that rot the brain, but I firmly contest this argument.  My puzzle of trap doors and gunfights promotes ten times more gigs of brain activity than being glued to the latest episode of Jersey Shore "Snookie's Snatch for Sale or Rent." It's not that these hours of gossip television don't have their place, it's just that the place for them is between eight and twelve on a friday night, a mausoleum of blackballed television series.  I think to myself that surely if there wasn't a market for these shows they wouldn't exist, and naturally my mind wonders whom the soulless characters are that keep these shows on air. 

   

     Kourtney Kardashian is complaining about the lack of intimacy between herself and her "baby daddy"as I droop further, melting into the wood floors of my parents' living room, sticking like spilled pepsi.  I look around myself wondering where the remote could be, maybe I can guide through the channels and find something more compelling.  I don't initially see it and lose all ambition.  

     

    Maybe it's that people have completely ceased living their own lives and that's where the derived interest in "reality" television comes from.  It's so awful, but it isn't every day that I go out to the bar and lure a "grenade" back to my apartment, so I suppose there is some sort of contaminating and addicting flavor to this genre that sucks me in.  

   As I finally drop all the way to a horizontal postion, pressed against the floor, I see that the remote has sunk beneath the chair.  I scratch and reach for it until I can finally lay a finger on it and drag it out. I turn the t.v. off and look outside.

      Lydia Davis' Television sucks the reader in with "If dead people walked outside our windows we would be no more excited." (209)  This parallel drawn by Davis offers an interesting perspective on the  personal participation of viewers.  I relate this quote to my obsession with HBO's Game of Thrones and the contingency of "White Walkers" that are literally the walking undead.  Every Sunday during the summers I religiously tune in to catch the 9 o'clock re-run of the weeks episode.
      Davis moves on to discuss news anchors and their revealing outfits while describing her husband who "sits with his eyes on a certain young reporter and waits for the camera to draw back and reveal her breasts."  My infatuation with ESPN's Lindsey Czarniak is extremely parallel to this in that I would rather receive my sports news in no other fashion but from her beautiful blonde lips.
      The points Davis hits on are extremely relevant to the modern era of television, these two instances are extremely representative of my personal relationship with my LG television.