Ten Years and One Afternoon

I was conversing with a friend recently about how some books need to wait for the right time in your life to be read. You can try to read them any old time, but until you’re ready to pick up what they’re putting down, then you are just not going to, well, pick it up. You have to be in the right place to receive whatever message is there to be had.

Such is the case with Paulo Coehlo’s “Veronika Decides to Die” for me. I remember reading a review of this book in a magazine when it first came out, and thinking “I have to have that book. That book sounds amazing.” And I ordered it right away, and when it came, I started reading it, and then put it away in irritation and confusion. The book came out in 1998 and I have it in hardback, so that means I bought it close to then. ’99 probably, or early 2000. And so, for the next ten years that book sat on my bookshelf. It followed me through two or maybe even three moves. It was a book I always intended to pick up again. And today I did. “I am going to give that book another try.” I thought. And so I started again, and then I devoured it all in one sitting. So, now is apparently the right time for that book, for me.

The synopsis I read at the time talked about a character who decides that her life is meaningless and empty, the world is horrible and she is powerless to change it. So she decides to die. She overdoses on sleeping pills, but wakes up in a mental hospital, where she’s told that she’s done irreversible damage to her heart, and has only five days to live.

And the thought of that story appealed to me at the time, because I was intensely depressed and found most everything totally meaningless and the world totally hateful.*

But when I started reading it back then, the message was not what I wanted it to be. I wanted more darkness and despair. More proof that everything sucked as much as I thought it did. Not a lesson in how to change your life if your life feels empty. And so I abandoned it, because taking responsibility for making my life what I wanted it to be was not a thing I was ready for.

But today that message resonated with me, and I enjoyed someone telling it to me, very much. There is a lot of truth to the main theme of the book, which is that if your life feels meaningless and monotonous and full of restrictions, it’s because you’ve purposely constructed it that way, in order to feel safe. So you have to make a choice – safety and stagnation, or taking risks and feeling alive. And I think that for me every day is different. Today maybe I will take some risks, tomorrow I might curl up in the bottom of my closet with a blanket over my head. But knowing that life itself is not a stagnant, meaningless thing and that sometimes I strip the meaning from my life intentionally, because meaning is scary, is a good reminder.

I particularly loved this passage:

As she was walking down the corridors, lit by the same faint light as in the ward, Veronika realized that it was too late: She could no longer control her fear.

I must get a grip on myself. I’m the kind of person who sticks to any decision she makes, who always sees things through.

It’s true that in her life she had seen many things through to their ultimate consequences, but only unimportant things, like prolonging a quarrel that could easily have been resolved with an apology, or not phoning a man she was in love with simply because she thought the relationship would lead nowhere. She was intransigent about the easy things, as if trying to prove to herself how strong and indifferent she was, when in fact she was just a fragile woman who had never been an outstanding student, never excelled at school sports, and had never succeeded in keeping the peace at home.

She had overcome her minor defects only to be defeated by matters of fundamental importance. She had managed to appear utterly independent when she was, in fact, desperately in need of company. When she entered a room everyone would turn to look at her, but she almost always ended the night alone, in the convent, watching a TV that she hadn’t even bothered to have properly tuned. She gave all her friends the impression that she was a woman to be envied, and she expended most of her energy in trying to behave in accordance with the image she had created of herself.

Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn’t care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous.

She might have impressed a lot of people with her strength and determination, but where had it left her? In the void. Utterly alone. In Villete. In the anteroom of death.

Veronika’s remorse over her attempted suicide resurfaced, and she firmly pushed it away again.

So anyway, I really enjoyed the book, and it had some good life lessons for me, in the place I am at right now, blah blah blah. And I was looking up when the book was published in order to accurately report just how long I had procrastinated finishing it, and then I saw that it’s been made into a movie, with Sarah Freaking Michelle Gellar as Veronika! And it’s going to be released in 2010 sometime, apparently, and here is the trailer for it!

And I am very excited as it seems to have a lady director! And I think that will add something to it. So now I am very curious to see the movie, and very glad that I finished the book. It was a quick read, just took me ten years and one afternoon.

*If you think that sounds like me now, you’re not quite wrong and you’re not quite right. Now I struggle with feelings like that, but back then I just lived them as pure truths. I realize I often sound very depressed when I write, but honestly, I am not that much. I just think about serious things, and serious things sound… well, depressing to some people. I almost never blog  ”Holy shit my day was amazing and life is the bomb-fucking-diggity!” even though I frequently feel that way, because, well, who the hell wants to read that? Nobody. That’s just some tiresome shit right there.

Movie Review – “Grimm”

Since subscribing to Netflix I’ve mostly been watching things streamingly. Getting a DVD in the mail and sending it back seems very 2007, somehow. I wasn’t sure if I would ever use the mail-order DVD service at all. But they have a decent selection of foreign-language films, and as I was watching one of them I realized there was an option to turn the subtitles completely off – and hey that’s cool. If I can do that, I can practice my Dutch. (Last time I tried to watch Dutch movies it was with the movie “Karakter” on VHS, and you can’t turn the subtitles off. It’s so distracting, at one point I taped paper over the bottom of the screen.) For years I haven’t been able to listen to anyone speak Dutch except on internet radio, and I don’t want to lose all my spoken language skills, so I started ordering Dutch language movies. But here’s the thing. Dutch movies come in only three varieties, as far as I can tell.

1. Movies about The War in Dutch or in English (if you have to ask which war, you’ve never seen a Dutch movie. ) – these movies can be good or bad, it’s a mixed bag.
2. Movies made by Dutch people,  not about the war, filmed in the English language – these movies can be good or bad, it’s a mixed bag.
3. Movies not about the war, filmed in the Dutch language – these movies care almost invariably bad. The movies that cannot get funding to be made in English are apparently never supposed to be made at all. And I am not saying that I LIKE it that way, I am only saying what I have observed to date.

So anyway, I know by renting a movie in Dutch I am taking a chance that it’s going to blow. However, it’s nice to practice my skills, as I said, and I can always just have in on in the background while I do other things. Even with that low standard, “Grimm” is going to earn a menstrual cup rating from me. Here’s the official synopsis:

Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam defies tradition in this absurdist, darkly comic retelling of the classic “Hansel and Gretel” fairy tale. Brother and sister Jacob and Marie (Jacob Derwig and Halina Reijn) are abandoned by their family in the forest, with no other guidance than a note advising them to travel to Spain to visit their wealthy uncle. Embarking on a surreal odyssey, the siblings find their fortunes taking a number of unusual turns.

Now, you can’t tell it from that very small cover art there, but those are two grown-ass people on the cover. A Hansel and Gretel rehash with grown-ass people at the center makes no sense. Sure, they’re left alone in the woods by their father. But they’re not retarded – why don’t they go do something for themselves? Sitting on the ground and crying as an adult is very tempting, I agree, but it’s not really a workable life plan. So they’re promptly taken hostage by a farmer and his wife, and the man is sexually molested at gunpoint, while the woman is locked in a shed or something.  (Of course, it’s only molestation b/c the farmer’s wife is meant to be perceived as unattractive. If she’d been “hot” it would have been a fantasy seduction scene. Don’t even get me started there, though.) They escape by knocking the fat farmer and his fat wife through a cement wall (Ha ha! Nothing funnier than fat people falling down! ) and then promptly turn to a life of crime/prostitution.  They kill their first john, find a gun, and take off for Spain on a motor scooter. Once there they do more crimes, then get taken in by some Spanish guy who marries the girl while the guy mopes around being all incestuously love-lorn. Then we get all urban legend, as the guy is knocked out and his kidney snatched for the dying sister of his sister’s new husband. Confused yet? They make their magical escape, then hide out in a Spanish ghost town, disinfecting his wound with out-of-date eggnog, and then riding a donkey and practicing archery until the evil bad husband comes to “claim his wife” and they kill and bury him in the middle of the ghost town. After which point the girl says “I want to go home.” and they head off for home on the motor scooter. Begging the question, if they had a home to go to – why did they travel to Spain in the first place?

Ugh. It was a hot nonsensical mess. It MIGHT have been more interesting if the actors were children. You can see children making these choices, and forgiving them, or at least having empathy. But with grown people playing the parts you can’t feel anything but disgust for their idiocy.  Anyway, it blew.

But it was still nice to listen to Dutch being spoken. Let’s hope the next movie will be a smidge better though.

Kharma

Picked up a book at Left Bank this week that is completely rocking my socks. Daniil Kharms’ “Today I Wrote Nothing”

Kharms (1905–1942) is described as the first Russian microfiction writer, and that alone is intriguing. He was part of a group of other artists and writers (the OBERIU) who were fascinated with the mundane and the absurd, and in most cases I do believe they thought those things were the same. His fiction is short, plain and startling. Since starting to read the book I’ve pretty much wanted to buy a copy for everyone I know and force them to sit down and read it while I watch them. It’s one of those books that almost hurts to be read alone, since every other page makes you want to read it out loud to someone. (The dogs don’t care much for absurdist Russian microfiction, it turns out.)

Anyway, since I’ve been all Kharms-infatuated this week, I was trying to find links for some friends so that they could read what I was rhapsodizing about – but it’s no good. The translation in this volume (by Matvei Yankelevich) is vastly superior to anything I could find elsewhere online. The translation in some cases changes the entire tenor of the passages, and I can’t recommend anything I’ve found online. You really have to have the book.

One of my favorite exchanges so far is from his story “The Old Woman” about (you guessed it) an old woman who comes uninvited into the narrator’s apartment and promptly dies. The narrator doesn’t know what to do about this, and leaves the apartment to get drunk with a friend who has no idea what’s going on. Perhaps feeling his friend out about what to do, he has this conversation with him:

“What is your attitude towards dead people?” I asked Sakerdon Mikhailovich.

“Absolutely negative.” said Sakerdon Mikhailovich. “I’m afraid of them.”

“Yeah I can’t stand dead people either,” I said. “Were I to bump into a dead person, and if he wasn’t a relative, I’d probably kick him.”

“One shouldn’t kick dead people,” said Sakerdon Mikhailovich.

“I would give him a boot right in the muzzle,” I said. “I just can’t stand dead people and children.”

Which is an insane conversation, and yet is also something I feel like I’ve overheard my friends saying at the bar. Anyway, all I can say is that his writing is exhilarating, and inspirational, and it makes me feel fresh and clean in my brains. You probably need to read this.

Product Whoring – Bare Escentuals Buxom Lips

Sephora: Bare Escentuals Buxom Lips: Lip Plumpers.

I got a free tube of this in “Claire” from Sephora, with a gift set I purchased the other day. I am not one for lip plumpers usually – my mouth is small and lip plumpers just make me look like I have a small mouth that someone  smacked. Also, they have a tendency to burn and make the skin around my lips irritated.

Basically they make me feel like I’ve just spread some noxious toxic wasted on my face, and am courting some kind of skin disaster. Not really what I think of as comfortable and/or appealing. (I am looking at you, Too Faced Lip Injection Extreme.) But since I got this full-size sample I thought I would try it once and see if I liked it.

I LURVE it. It’s a pretty shiny neutral color, and it’s glittery without making you feel like a kindgergartener did a project on your face. It’s tingly, but not painful; it feels (and tastes) minty-fresh, actually. And at $18 it seems downright reasonable, compared to some of the products out there.  So I am officially product-whoring for it, it’s pretty awesometastic.

If I Strep for You, Will You Strep for Me?

OK so day two of being home with what I can only assume is strep throat. (Thanks again Dave, you fuck.)

I can only assume it’s strep because I refuse to call my doctor about it. For two reasons, at least.

One of which reasons is fuck doctors, they’re always wrong and assholish, and my primary care physician is way out in West County. Guess what I don’t feel like doing with the sorest throat this side of the Grand Canyon, and swollen glands? If you said “Drive some random, fucked-up, roundabout non-40 way to west fucking county to see some bitch doctor who’s probably going to misdiagnose you with an anal fissure?” you win. (I would also have accepted “Spend 45 minutes on the phone with your doctor’s cunty staff where they question all your symptoms and tell you things that you know for a fact are medically untrue?”)

The second reason is that the treatment for strep (characterized by a sudden severe sore throat, usually presenting with a fever and w/o regular symptoms of a head cold) is antibiotics. But whether you take them or not, strep subsides on its own within 3-7 days. I don’t want to take any antibiotics, and knowing that I can cut out the whole “dealing with cunty staff/driving to WC” part of this equation means: fuck a bunch of calling my doctor. I don’t want to take any antibiotics anyway, so I am skipping the whole modern medicine scene.

That said, I am just waiting around to get better, and bored out of my mind. I watched two movies yesterday that had been on my Tivo since we had free HBO back in January. One of them was Juno, and one of them was Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. Both of them were fair to middlin’   movies, and both featured Jason Bateman. Way to be ubiquitous, Jason Bateman.

Juno was OK I guess. For some reason, since everyone made such a big deal about her use of language in the movie I expected to notice it more, but I didn’t notice it at all. Which means that either everyone else made too big a fuss over it, or I talk like that in my head. It had some very nice moments in it, and kept my interest, which I think is the intent of movies. I thought that the mis-characterization of abortion protesters as these innocent, naive kids from your high school who say things like “bornded” and only kind of mildy rebuke women walking into clinics was practically crimianlly negligent, but then again I have actually worked at an abortion clinic and walked through those protesters, so it’s not surprising that would tweak my buttons.

Perv Alert

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium was obviously not geared at my demographic, and as such it had several moments which either lost my interest or made me feel uncomfortable. When that mother discovered Jason Bateman (a total stranger) together with her son in her son’s bedroom, playing dress up with the door closed… um, well, you could just tell that this was a kids’s movie by the fact that she didn’t mace him and call the cops.

Then in one of the last scenes of the the film, Natalie Portman gives up her dream of running the emporium, and takes a job playing piano in a hotel lobby or somewhere. Since she spent most of the film looking like this:

I was excited to see her looking very sleek and sexy all in black with slicked-back hair and red lipstick.

Until I realized that being styled this way was supposed to represent all the bad, bad trappings of being adult and un-magical, and that in keeping with the spirit of the film I should much prefer Natalie look like this:

(Which shows how in tune with her childlike side she is! It’s a new look I am going to call hyper-unsexualized!)  Than like this: (not a scene from the movie)

Naturally I felt somewhat conflicted.

I’ve also been reading a little bit, although I have to admit that I fall asleep pretty quickly when I lay down to read. I’ve been sticking my head in Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, which I actually haven’t read yet, even though I bought it the week it was released. I’ve been having a problem reading non-fiction for the last year or so, especially when I agree at the outset with whatever the author is discussing. I mean, I am already an atheist, so do I need to read his whole book on how I should be an atheist? I accept the premise, I am not sure what else I am supposed to glean here.

Same thing with a lot of the political books that have come out lately. I get it, right wing fundies are assholes, Bush was a bad man, Cheney is a corrupt motherfuck. Do I have to read your whole deal to get the details, or can I just stipulate that I agree?

I know, I know, I need facts and to be better informed. And I will totally buy the stuff to support the authors. It’s just hard to make myself read a whole book on a topic I totally agree with when I started. Like a lecture on night being darker than day, I am not sure why I have to sit through it, exactly. Is this GenX Interwebs addict ADD rearing its misshappen head at me?

Anyway, rounding out day 2 of being at home and I am bored, bored bored. Going to work tomorrow no matter what, and going out drinking tomorrow night too. Alcohol kills bacteria, and I hear tequila is particularly good at it.

Persuasion

On the hopeless romantic front, I started re-reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion last week, which put me in the mood to watch the 1995 Ciaran Hinds/Amanda Root film version this weekend. And then I rewatched the last 20 minutes again today.

I think that as I age mature I am almost coming to have more of an affinity for this novel than I do for Pride and Prejudice. I know, say it ain’t so. But I think it might be so.

There’s something about the characters of Anne and Frederick that seems more familiar to me. Maybe because now I understand more about loves that are long lost, and the way that your family and friends play their own parts in relationships. It really is impossible to love in a vacuum, and the way that the people you love respond to each other, and the way that influences the decisions you make, affects every relationship.

Or maybe it’s just because I want to go back to Bath. Maybe I don’t even know why – I am just in a Persuasion kind of mood. Maybe it’s just because Ciaran Hinds plays the part of Frederick so very hotly, and Amanda Root’s wide-eyed vulnerability as Anne touches my heart.

The way the film is made is so understated, just as the novel was written. So much is left unsaid, but is still perfectly shown through the character’s expressions and subtle movements. The scene at the end where Anne’s hand is engulfed in Frederick’s gigantic paw is so laden with meaning that your TV screen practically melts.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen the film, you should.

“All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when all hope is gone.” - Anne Elliot, in Persusion

Death by Doyle

I am currently drowning in a sea of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-related stories, both film and written word.

A few months ago my marvelous Tivo started recording a show on PBS each weekend. It was “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” featuring Jeremy Brett as Holmes and David Burke as Watson. The series began in the mid-1980′s, and was pretty well done for the small budget it must have had at the time.

Jeremy Brett is an insanely energetic and curiously appealing Holmes, really bringing the detective’s most Asperger’s-like traits to life. You don’t like him, you admire him, you adore him, you find him irritating, you can’t look away.

His thin, pale Holmes is so focused and yet so inter-personally flawed, so intelligent and cold, it’s wonderful to watch. His snobby, dismissive hand gestures and sneering attitude toward everything  he encounters had me transfixed. (My own particular weakness fondness  for emotionally-unavailable geniuses notwithstanding.) His self-pitied moaning about the ennui of his existence, which he needs both cocaine and morphine to enliven, aroused my empathy.

I found myself remembering the stories (sans cocaine/morphine somehow) from reading them when I was younger (the one with the asp who climbs down the rope and returns at the sound of whistle being a horrifying favorite) and being fascinated all over again.

And so I kept watching . It was always a lazy weekend treat to drowse in front of the TV listening to Holmes castigate poor Watson for his shortsighted dunderheadedness.

David Burke played an adorable Watson, too. He was so happy! So willing to be pleased and impressed by everything! He was never angry or sullen or jealous, only willing to help and ready to play Holme’s foil. Charming.

The series ends with Holmes death at Reichenbach Falls, and then picks up in 1986 with his resurrection for “The Return of Sherlock Holmes.” This time a new actor  (Edward Hardwicke) plays Watson, and I was prepared not to like him so much, because he didn’t seem as happy—but after a few episodes he seems to have picked up that naive joy so characteristic to perennial second-fiddle Watson.

I didn’t think about the series much, just enjoyed it when Tivo picked it up.

Then after Christmas I was in Borders and ran across this book “Arthur & George” by Julian Barnes. I’d read Barnes’ “England, England” many a year ago, and remembered liking it, and it was $4.99 hardback, so what the heck. I had trouble getting into it, the first quarter of the book explains in great disconnected detail the lives of two young boys— lives which have no common thread running between them—which made me wonder why I was supposed to care about either of them. The “Arthur” in the title is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Holmes series, and “George” was some son of a vicar no one ever heard of.

After a while it became more interesting, and in the end I was quite fascinated with the story. (No spoilers, but it’s a true-life tale of Doyle getting involved with a case of criminal injustice, which directly impacted the creation of the British Courts of Appeal. Let me know if you want to borrow it, it’s quite good.)  When I was done I  read the afterword. (Which, had it been the foreword would have made me much more interested in the book from the beginning) It said that all correspondence and newspaper articles quoted in the text were taken verbatim from the original stories/documents. Anyway, it was a great peek inside the mind of Doyle, and made me even more resolved to go get the collected Sherlock Holmes to re-read.

Books acquired Saturday (Dear Publisher: “Sherlock Holmes, The Complete Collected Stories and Novels, Volume 1″—  with the “Volume 1″ in teeeeeny-tiny type on the spine— is a ridiculous title. How each book “complete” if it’s one of a two-volume set? Luckily I noticed that the second copy of the book was smaller than the first and picked them both up, or I would have been mightily pissed when I got home.) And I’ve been happily devouring them ever since. Several things struck me:

1. How language evolves. “But Holmes! You can’t be serious!” I ejaculated. Seriously, Watson ejaculates at some point in almost every story.
   
2. How authors of that time period didn’t dumb-down their texts for their audiences. Liberal usage of $5 words and frequent un-translated German and French quotations show me that Sir Doyle expected a certain level of education from his audience, and that if they didn’t have it, they should reach up to his level of understanding, not expect him to shove his writing down to theirs.

I am now all caught up in this world of Victorian manners and language, which I think suited my personality much better than the era I was mistakenly born in. (Though I do quite approve of all the sanitation and antibiotics we have, don’t get me wrong.) Still only 1/3 of the way through Volume I and a whole Volume II to go after that. In addition, for the last week I’ve taken to reading at night instead of watching TV, and it’s really very cuddly up in here, with the dogs laying all over me and candles burning. It makes the long, stupid winter nights somehow less of a complete waste of time.

Two other notes. Jeremy Brett played Mr. Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the Audrey Hepburn film of My Fair Lady. And though I know a lot of popular TV & film characters would later be based on Holmes, the one who currently most reminds me of him in all his mannerisms is Sheldon on “The Big Bang Theory.”

Anyway, check out the PBS series if you have time, it’s quite charming.

The New World

Why are you saving me? I look like I smell bad.

Watched the movie “The New World” over the past two days. I totally see why it tanked in theaters.

It has all the ingredients of a win— Colin Farrell, Christian Bale, history, drama, sexual tension, beautiful scenery, starvation. You know, the basics. But even with these building blocks of excellence, this somehow manages to be one of the most disjointed movies that I’ve ever seen. I kept watching, hoping for it to speed up, clear up, something. But no. Where you wanted some exposition, all you got was another low-angle shot of wind through trees. Also – why was everyone such a mumbler? We’ve already got Colin Farrel fighting his accent, and Christian Bale fighting his teeth – do we need them to mumble through, too?

There was pretty much no character development, leaving you to apply your own explanations for the actions of the main players, who all seemed to be dramatic and torn for no fathomable reason. Things happened for no reason, in no order, with no explanation, leading to lots of questions on my part.

Was that one guy her brother, or what? What the frack was happening in that hut? Was that a dream or a hallucination? Why did they save him, then decide to kill him? Where did his armor go between when they shoved him in the hut and when he appeared before the chief?

I don't want you to notice my incongruously clean white teeth, so I will cover them with my hand, so coyly.

Why did these two fall in love? Were they bumping uglies out in the woods? Why so ambiguous, director-man? Why didn’t he just marry her then? No one seemed to care. I didn’t see her helping the colonists, when did that happen? Why didn’t he take her back to England when he went, then? Why the heck would he have her told he was dead? Why did she think she was married to him? They didn’t show them getting married – was that what was happening out in the woods when we cut away to wind in the trees for the 1674th time?

This movie needed some serious subtitles, and it also needed whatever that’s called when they flash some pertinent information up on the screen in between scenes. (While we were showing you yet another 45-second shot of a wind-blown field of grain, most of the colonists died, Pocahontas gave Smith a stellar BJ and all the fish died of fish cholera. That’s why we have all these starving, unintelligible orphans milling about. Now back to the action.)

The actress who played Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) was as effective as she could be, considering the weird, rambling dialog she had to work with. Her primary function seemed to be looking perpetually hard done by, and her lips made her look as if someone had just smacked her in the mouth a minute ago, off-camera, so I guess that helped her to achieve the director’s goal – whatever that was.

Anyway, this movie aggravated me enough that I wanted to write it down, because this could have been an interesting story, but literally lost the plot and ended up sucking as a history, a love story,  and even a cautionary tale.

Parse if you Dare!

This anti-fan letter was so wonderfully constructed that I had to comment on it. That second line is pure poetry. Plus my favorite in letters, Totally ranDom Capitalization. It’s almost as if the capitalization carries its own hidden message, too. Lowercase “neil” and “gaiman” but uppercase “Batman” and “Writing” and of course “Fuck You.” Overall a pretty awesome letter.

Neil Gaiman’s Journal
I hope this reaches neil himself. Never have i ever known of anyone as full of himself as well as shit, than you. Now another milestone in your over-hyped career, Writing Batman. Not only are you under the impression you can write, but write batman? Fuck You. You Tried before and it sucked. It was just gaiman… With Batman in it. Fuck You.

If I’d known that Secret Origins of Batman Villains #1 had made that much of an impression on people, I would have… actually, probably not done anything different, really. I was rather fond of it.

If you think you won’t like the Batman comic I’ll write, probably you’d be best off not reading it. It’ll just be a two part Batman comic, you can save your money. Although if you’d bother to write me a letter like that you might buy it just to prove to yourself that you hate it as much as you know you’re going to…

I can’t imagine having to deal with the public regarding things I’ve written and/or otherwise created. Am far to sensitive and don’t know if I could carry the weight of the skin I’d have to develop.

Last Comic Standing Recap

Just finished watching the 2nd semi-final show of Last Comic Standing, and I am less annoyed than I could be, but still just a smidge annoyed. Luckily those doltish Stone & Stone retards did NOT make the cut, someone needs to slap them. I can’t believe the judges found them anything other than ridiculous and annoying. Overall the performances tonight were strong, except for that horrific guy who did the WWI sketch, that was embarrassing for all involved. I thought the guy who sang the porn song was rather “meh” and the fact that he made it through spoke to the fact that both judges were male and males find any mention of porn hilarious by default, it seems.

Last week no women made the cut, and I was disappointed by that. I loved St. Louis’s own Andi Smith in the tryouts and I was aghast at her choice of material for the semi-finals. Even though I found it funny, I also knew immediately that it doomed her chances of getting chosen to go on. That pompous Sopranos asshole guy who was a judge was ridiculously sensitive, and the material (West Virginians dead in a mine collapse jokes, jokes about a guy with a wooden leg) was just too mean and non-PC to get past a mainstream crowd. Todd and I almost busted our guts at it, but we’re really, really mean people – so that’s her demographic apparently. Maybe nasty, mean and jaded sarcasm is a special St. Louis trait – wouldn’t that be nice? But anyway, I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t go on, though I would have liked her to. (Sweet! She’s going to be in StL in September, 3rd-7th, I am so going to go! Click here for some blowjob humor from her.)

This week I was prepared for more of the same, and though I was less irritated by Esther Ku this time (her act was substantially more polished than at tryouts) I was prepared to be annoyed if the only female that they sent on happened to be a young, cutesy, non-threatening, baby-talking Asian female in a really short skirt, whom Richard Belzer creepily flirted with after her act. Ick. But they chose 7 people tonight and included another woman in the mix, unfortunately I was cleaning the kitchen during her performance and didn’t pay that close of attention  to her.

So that was it for semi-finals. I still think that Paul Foot (another finalist) looks like he must smell funny – and I wish someone could confirm or deny that for me.

Book Review: “The Book of Lost Things”

Just finished reading John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things. I’d heard about/read about this book when it came out and meant to pick it up, but never did. Two years later and I saw it on sale at the local Borders, so it became mine.

I liked the description of the book:

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own — populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things.

but even more I liked the cover art, so simple but twisted, intricate and decorative but somehow also malevolent. Good job cover artist, whoever you are. Crap, now I am going to have to go look that up, aren’t I?

Anyway, picked it up on Thursday evening and dove in on Friday, it’s a short but intense read. I couldn’t decide if I appreciated the author’s somewhat choppy style; the writing was at times a bit staccato, reminding me of books written for children, though this book wasn’t something I would ever give to a child in my care. It was the story of a child, sure, and it was about things that typically happen in children’s stories, OK. But the dark and twisted violence in this story (though probably closer to the murky musings of an actual child than most modern fairy tales) isn’t something I’d want to insert into the fevered imagination of a child or even pre-teen. Way too many people tortured, burned alive, eaten and mangled for my comfort. The monsters here were way too close to home, serial killers, amoral entities who would destroy you as soon as talk to you – it was too realistic for fantasy. Not to say it wasn’t good – it was good. Just not a children’s book.

I guess I am still muddling over in my head what kind of book it WAS, exactly. The extreme, pervasive violence makes it inappropriate (in my mind at least) for children, the aforementioned choppy writing and overly obvious climax/dénouement make it a little simplistic for adults… but nevertheless I really, really enjoyed it. So perhaps it’s a fairy tale for me. Realistic enough to keep me horrified, comforting and childish enough in its predictability to remind me of a time when I thought things were going to turn out right if only I consistently Tried Hard and Did the Right Thing.

Not perfect, but what is? I am going to give it a “Slender Tampon” rating.

Edit: The cover artist is Robert Ryan, his charming work can be seen here http://www.misterrob.co.uk/

Edit again: And… that just became birthday self-gift #2

Who Cares What the Devil Wears?

Last night, on the recommendation of a colleague, I watched The Devil Wears Prada.

Meh. I think he’d told me the 2 funny parts from it. The dealing with insane demands from reality-detached bosses hit too close to home to be funny, and I don’t care about fashion enough to be interested by Anne Hathaway’s Chanel boots. (Plus the rest of the characters’ chiding of her for her “fatness” at a size 6, and her triumphant “FOUR!” at the end of the film were honestly revolting.)

What I really thought about the film was that it was sappy and sentimental. And even though Streep’s character was an irrational, sadistic bitch, I didn’t see anything too shocking in anything she did. I mean, at least she was a competent sadistic bitch. The plot pinnacle where she screws over her long-time employee’s future dreams for happiness to ensure her own – was I supposed to be shocked? That’s what anyone would do. She should give up her own job to make someone else’s career better? That’s nonsense.

Anne Hathaway’s wide-eyed “I can’t [go to Paris instead of] Emily, it would break her heart!” was pathetic. There’s heartbreaking in business? Well, sure I guess there is. But that’s not what we base our decisions on. We base our decisions on what makes sense for us and our careers. Breaking the heart of someone who isn’t able to get the job done is not a factor in business. And walking away from her responsibilities in Paris, after her “epiphany” about how she didn’t want to be like Streep, that was just irresponsible, selfish and immature. She was there, being paid to do a job. She can wait to quit until she gets back. You can’t leave your employer in the lurch like that. And the idea that Streep’s character would respect her for that is pure nonsense. You do not walk out on a job you’ve agreed to do, right in the middle.

Anyway, it left me wondering if I am more of a cold-hearted bitch than most. And not caring overly if I am. I treat the people around me at work decently, but don’t let their feelings take precedence over making the right business decision.

The best thing about the movie IMHO was that guy she screwed in Paris. I do not normally (well, ever) go for blondes, but he was delectable. Plus had his shit together, plus wasn’t an overly-sentimental piece of foppish hurt-feelings like her soulful wounded-puppy boyfriend. And her supposedly cutting “I’m not your baby!” as she walked away from him was retarded. No, you’re not. You’re last night’s piece of ass, actually.

Whatever. Told you I was dead inside.

I love to live behind the times

So, in keeping with my love of catching a trend so far after it was popular that it’s almost counter-culture again, I finally saw the movie Boondock Saints a few weeks ago. It was one of those movies my Tivo decided I would like, and I was bored and stuck on the couch so I decided to check it out. It was on FX or Spike though, so immediately I could tell that there was going to be an issue with most of the actual dialog being bleeped. The intro scenes are pretty captivating though, and I couldn’t turn it off despite the long protracted silences where most of the characters had their lips moving, but all sound was removed. I thought as I watched it – “I have to see this in the uncut form.”

Then, wonder of wonders, it shows up at the local independent theater as a midnight movie the weekend before St. Patrick’s day! Sweet! Finally seen in all its “Fu*king, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck.” glory – it was pretty much covered in awesome sauce. (and of course, being one of only two people in that theater over the age of 30 = priceless)

Now this morning I spot this bit of news on these here intarwebs: Saints Rise Again with ‘Boondock’ Sequel

Troy Duffy, genius-to-be who was lost in the carnage that is Hollywood, as well as the writer/director of The Boondock Saints, has posted a video officially announcing the sequel that the entire cult following has been clawing and scratching for like Britney Spears at a “Free Crack Samples” stand — The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day.

So yet again, I am so far behind a trend that my actual discovery of it comes at the point where it is back to being “alternative”. Yay me.

Some Oscar-Fashion Commentary

I didn’t watch the ceremony -will catch highlights on YouTube – but I have had a glance through the online photo galleries (I am a girl – I can’t resist that shit) and had a few observations.

1. Dennis Hopper is married to Skeletor’s even-more-evil sister:

Look, everyone would be all up in arms if some hugely fat chick wore an outfit that showed her more unfortunate-looking parts to the masses. Why should scary-skinny chicks be allowed to assault us with their freakish ribcages?

2. Renee Zellwegger is still doing a passable imitation of a 15 year-old boy in drag:

I mean, seriously – no matter how she poses, is there supposed to be some Sexy involved in her look?

Everything about her looks tortured and painful. I don’t know what’s under more stress, her feet or her lips.

At least she’s not promoing that fucking Bee Movie with Seinfeld anyfuckingmore. I swear, that thing was in production for 73 years and everywhere Jerry went for that whole time it’s all he could fucking talk about. I think it performed poorly, and if I was him I would blame the whole thing on Zellwegger’s haircut.

3. Tilda Swinton is 8’6″ tall, and somewhat frightening:

I think she wants to eat part of my liver.

4. Damn, I want to see Helen Mirren work that pole more:

She is just hot as hell, and what a great dress.

5. Hottest rock-a-billy chick award goes to this lady, who apparently wrote Juno:

Seriously, she was sporting a Betty Page tattoo and skull earrings. Plus she’s totally smokin’.

Unfortunately she also gets the award for  “Dress least flattering to a figure which is not (presumably) hideously deformed.”:

That dress is doing a lot of things around her ass area, and none of them are good.

OK that’s all the snark on stupid shit tonight. I know that my New Year’s Resolution was to stop wasting my time and life-energy with celebrity gossip, but Oscar fashion is NOT the same thing.

It’s not!

Totally random ramblings

I need a reading chair. I don’t have a good reading chair. My couch is super comfy, but I can’t read on it. I can sit on the couch to eat dinner (what, like you eat at the table? Suck it.) or to watch TV, paint my nails or read magazines – but anything else seems impossible. For one thing, once I sit down on the couch the dogs all clamber onto me. I have one on my lap, one on my hip and one on my chest, usually. I can watch TV like that, or flip through a magazine, but it’s hard to read a book. For another thing, I don’t like to read downstairs. I can hear all the noise from the street and so can the dogs. We both get distracted.

The office: I have a nice wingback chair in the office which is perfect for reading, IF I didn’t have three small dogs who insisted on sitting with me. One regulation-sized wingback chair can’t comfortably hold me and three dogs for a prolonged bout of reading. This would be a better place to read than downstairs though.

The bedroom: When I was younger I would read in bed all the time. For hours. If I try to read in bed now I fall asleep within about ten minutes. There are no chairs in the bedroom, though there’s plenty of room for a big cozy one. I want one of those big “chair and a half” chairs for up there. I want to curl up in one and read for hours. It may sound stupid, but that’s a major reason I can’t catch up on my reading. Nowhere good to read.

Pirates of the Caribbean III : I got this on PPV on Christmas Day, without realizing that it was almost three hours long. Also I should have caught up on the other ones first. Anyway I found it hard to follow and I just finished watching it for the third time today. (The first two times I walked away or fell asleep during.) Holy fuck, it made me mad. Spoiler for those who haven’t seen it – stop reading now.

What the FUCK was with that ending? Here’s yer main characters:

• Will Turner, now he’s immortal, the new Davy Jones, off to adventure and a Larger Purpose
• Cap’n Jack Sparrow: Off in his teeny little dinghy to find the fountain of youth. Commence Epic Adventure.
• Captain Barbosa & Crew: Off to find Jack and get back their damn map to the fountain of youth. Commence Epic Adventure
• Elizabeth Swan: Got married, got fucked, got abandoned. Commence… nothing.

What IS that? I found her character slightly more endearing in this episode than in the other two, which still isn’t that all that endearing really. But them killing off Will Turner, right after he and Elizabeth got married, THEN having that lame “10 years at sea and one day at port” thing where they can be together (and he handily impregnated her, nice) and then leaving her all alone – what IS that? Her whole raison d’etre was a life of fucking adventure and NOT being the girl that gets left at home. She’d been the inspiration and force behind the defeat of the East India Company AND Davy Jones – she’d been voted the King of the Brethren Court and she’d damn-well proven herself a force to be reckoned with and her story ends with getting married off and impregnated? WHAT THE FUCK? I know everything has been making me cry lately, but that fucking heartbreaking ripoff of an ending just made me weep all damn day. What IS that for an ending? The Elizabeth that they’d created in these stories would have found a way to be with Will, if that’s what she wanted. She wouldn’t have been smiling beatifically on the shore ten years hence, child at her side. She would never have settled for that. It’s a kick in the gut and a ripoff at the same time.

Also, Borders is trying to want $29.99 for the Pirates II movie. Fuck That Noise. Borders is so weird with their DVD prices. Like their store doesn’t exist in our reality.

Song Lyric of the Day:

Nellie Mckay’s “There You Are in Me” from the album “Pretty Little Head”

Everyone you tell
Secures a wretched hell
Within your memory
Wipe their filthy smell
Upon the yearning of your mind
There you are in me