It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

I wasn’t going to do a “thankful for” post, because they seem a bit cliché.  I considered doing a “not thankful for” post inspired by Spanny’s Big Fake Smile.  But truth be told, I’ve kind of been in a rotten mood all week, and wallowing in it further is not going to help things.  So we’ll wallow in cliché instead, in the hopes it improves my mood, and maybe even yours.

I am thankful for six days off, even if I had to do work at home every day.

I am thankful I now have deep violet streaks in my hair.

I am thankful I finally have my doctoral committee worked out.

I am thankful to have had a gourmet meal on the cheap with my fellow broke foodie grad students yesterday.

I am thankful that someone on Twitter gave me the idea of rewatching The West Wing episode “Shibboleth” on Thanksgiving and that it is still awesome.

I am thankful for realizing that Jane Lynch was in season 1 of Veronica Mars, playing an uppity version of her character on Glee.

I am thankful that Prospect Park tried to revive One Life to Live, even if they ultimately failed.

I am thankful I gave up commercially produced soda in lieu of mixing juice concentrates with seltzer water, thus saving money and avoiding both HFC and artificial sweeteners.

I am thankful for the knowledge that “collen ferhð” (pronounced “Colin Firth”) is Old English for “stout-hearted.”

I am thankful for caramelized Brussels sprouts.

I am thankful that this past year a quirky, adorable orange cat came into my life, even if he is yelling at me to hurry up and finish this blog so I can feed him.

I am thankful for ice cream, fried foods, good (cheap) wine, grilled cheeses, and the knowledge that diets are bullshit. (Also, the Oxford comma)

I am thankful for this blog, my co-bloggess, and all five of our readers.

Director: Sam Mendes

Writer: Alan Ball

I went into this one with mixed expectations.  The one detailed review I had heard was that it was terrible.  But said review was also from someone who watched Survivor religiously, so I didn’t think I could exactly trust her taste.  So I tried to be open minded.

Things I really liked: The contrast between the hand held shots of Jane at the very beginning and the pretty overhead shot of the town right after the opening titles was striking.  A little obvious, but it still worked.  It’s interesting that Lester censors his own fantasies.  But I kind of like it.  Again, it’s a little overly obvious, but I did think it was nice how Ricky’s voyeurism mimics our own as viewers.  The lighting and the camera work in the scene where Carolyn and Jane talk in her bedroom work to create a really intimate feeling.  I really love Allison Janney and so I kind of want to complain that there wasn’t more of her, but then I feel like I should point out how awesome she is.  Because as much talent as it takes to steal a scene (like she’s totally capable of doing) it may very well take more to just allow yourself to be a minor part in a film like this.  Oh yeah, and Kevin Spacey is awesome.

Things I didn’t really like:  In one scene we learn Carolyn is wearing a crimson slip under a cream colored dress—I don’t for one minute believe she doesn’t color coordinate her undergarments better than that.  I’m guessing they did it so we’d really notice the contrast, but it could have been accomplished more realistically.  I have trouble buying Jane as a cheerleader/dance team member.  It helped a little that she looked awkward and uncomfortable up there, but in a way that made it worse.  The only way I could believe it would be if it was a case of she really loved to dance, but it’s clear that’s not why she’s there.  Jane complaining about her dad to Ricky after what she sees of his father makes her seem extremely self-centered.

All the people who refer to this movie as a cinematic masterpiece is not allowed to make fun of soap operas ever again.  This movie used so many soap opera clichés it’s not even funny.  At least soaps own their cheese.  Starting from the misdirect at the beginning with Jane asking Ricky to kill her father to the OMG, there are so many people who have a reason to kill him!  Who will actually do it?  And then the whole sequence through which Ricky’s dad thinks he’s having a thing with Lester… it was right out of Austin Powers.  Except, again, Austin Power owns that shit.  This movie tried to spin it as some sort of deep look at the way coincidences can have major consequences… I rolled my eyes a bit.  I hope I was not supposed to be surprised to find out Angela was a virgin.

Other observations: The scene in which Lester fantasizes about Angela while watching the dance performance kind of tainted all my memories of my own dance performances.  But at least that gave the film extra relevance.

Overall:  I liked it.  I’m glad I watched it.  Yeah… I think some of the love showered on it by the critics when it came out was hyperbolic.  But it was still good.  I’ll go ahead and give it four out of five jars of peanut butter, but I’m going to eat a big spoonful out of one of the jars first.

I hate Romeo and Juliet.

Have since before the hideous hazing ritual of high school wherein every freshman alive is forced to read this epic fail of teen angst.

I’m sure at one point, it was good.  Really.  But it’s so overdone.  Resorting to the Bard in general is a bit cliché, but Romeo and Juliet is hack on top of cliché.  Books, television, movies, music–no art form is safe from the infection.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, Hollywood is the worst offender for over-recycling.  Want your characters to study a play?  Romeo and Juliet.  Want your characters to quote Shakespeare to sound smart?  Romeo and Juliet.  Want to have some kind of allusion or reference to romance?  Romeo and Juliet.  Want a blatant parallel for conflicting families/teens in love/teen death?  Romeo and Juliet.  Want to make a film of a Shakespeare play?  Romeo and Juliet (or Hamlet, but Hamlet bears the repetition so well!)  It’s a literary crutch.

But it’s not just the crutch element that makes me want to rip pages to shreds.  It’s the story itself.  I have never found it romantic.  It’s teen angst in costumes.  And while I will gleefully admit that I love Degrassi, but I don’t take the roller coaster teenie bopper relationships seriously as romance.  Because it’s not romance, it’s infatuation and hormone driven adolescent behavior.  Romeo is all about Ros and then, oh, hello hormonal surge, there’s a hot chick yonder….  We all know if those two wouldn’t have offed one another, the follow up would have been Juliet coming home to Daddy, knocked up and begging him to go after that bastard who hooked up with that total skank from down in Venice.  Instead of tragic double-death, you’d have equally tragic and far more realistic Teen Mom-esque life disruption.

C’mon people.  The man wrote a whole passel of other plays and a lot of poetry which is arguably way more romantic (if you can get past the slightly disturbing and dirty element that I’m just not going to touch right now).  I’d be a lot happier if people would spend a little more time ripping off Much Ado About Nothing.  And really, why not use Julius Caesar for more than reciting “Friends, Romans, countrymen….”?  After all, you can do wonderful political parallels (particularly for Latin America in the late 1930s).  Is there no love to be had for Merry Wives of Windsor?  Never mind.  Bad example.  However, I’d be happy to have someone give that a try–at least it would be a break from the monotony of R&J.

So, as planned, I cracked open Twilight while sitting at the aiport gate waiting to begin my trip out to Santa Barbara.   Feet propped up on my carry on, seated off to the side away from the in-and-out foot traffic.  Here we go, aaaaaannnnnndddd…

We start off with a Bible quote.  From Genesis no less.  Now, a well-placed quote from the B-I-B-L-E can be a spectacular asset to a piece of literature, but in this case I was skeptical.  Beginning with a quote from another beginning can have a lot of symmetry, but it can also be a little heavy handed.  I made a note of this and then moved on–only further reading will reveal the value using this quote.

What’s next?  Oh, look.  A preface.  If anyone reading this book is expecting the preface to come in the form of an essay giving an overview and scope for the book, you’re going to be disappointed.  What you do is read is the end of the story, written all vauge and suspenseful-like to draw you in.  It serves a valuable purpose though, because catching a reader in the first few paragraphs is key and as I moved on to the first paragraphs of the actual first chapter, I realized that if not for the preface, I would definitely not have felt even remotely hooked by the first paragraphs of the initial chapter.

The biggest drag for me as I dove into the first legitimate chapter were the descriptions.  Now, I like a lot of description and detail in a scene, but for some reason even I felt overloaded in this first chapter…and the second…and the third.  Heck, even the first few paragraphs seemed to be full of too many adjectives  “omnipresent”  “gloomy”  “near-constant”  “cloudless”  “perfect.”    And that’s before you ever get to the in-depth description of Bella & Charlie’s Fork’s residence.  I felt like I was reading a first draft–that this was where the author was making sure she knew just how it looked in her mind so that she had it firmly cemented where she could make sure the necessary highlights were conveyed to the audience.  Necessary being the key word there, because I have a hard time believing at this point (at this writing I’ve not yet finished the book) that there’s a a real reason I needed a full tour of the home in chapter 1, complete with description of the paint colors.  Maybe talking about the yellow cabinets would have been more meaningful if it hadn’t already been spelled out at least 3 different ways that Forks was gloomy and overcast and that this was part of why Bella’s mother (and Bella) hadn’t liked it there.  The violation of show-don’t-tell has the consequence of taking a description that could have been meaningful, and making it redudant and tedious.

These, of course, are all stylistic nitpicks on my part, which is kind of low given that I barely edit my posts before they go out, and I’m world famous for using the cliches and phrases that my teachers specifically told me not to use, ever.  But, I’m not getting paid to do this and the only editor I have is Kristy–and she only edits if I specifically ask her to edit and she has the time.   I feel like I can demand a little higher standard out of a published book.

But, let’s move on to bigger stuff.

Like Bella annoying me from the get go.  She’s so MarySue that I feel like I stumbled into Fanfiction.net, and so whiny I’d rather go out and deal with real high school students.

Okay, congrats on your martyr complex, sweety, now shut the hell up about the horrors small-town Pacific Northwest living.  Since you don’t actually find out why Bella chose self-exile until nearly chapter 3, I spent the first two chapters mostly wanting to beat her nut-job ass for the constant stream of whoa-is-me over the weather and small town when there was, at that point, no good reason for her to have chosen to suffer.  And, straight ball honest, I didn’t gain any sympathy for her lone-suffering even after hearing the explanation.  Being a martyr works better if you soldier on with less complaint, rather than constantly reminding us all of how much you’re suffering for someone else.

Then there’s Bella’s stereotypical “oddball” traits, which, honestly, aren’t oddball anymore.  She’s worried about being pale.  Seriously?  I joked a lot about the pathetic pasty color of my legs when I was in high school, but even then it wasn’t so horribly out of fashion that I actually felt bad about it.  Pale is the new tan and has been for a while.  Actually, by proliferating the pale-as-abnormal thing, it does a disservice to a lot of people.  With skin cancer being a real threat, wouldn’t it make more sense to at least acknowledge that the pastier members of society are smart to do what they can to remain that way, in the name of avoiding melanoma, rather than implying that by not getting sun they’re non-conformant?

And sucking at gym.  There’s another over-done cliche.  I hated gym as much as anyone.  I loathe volleyball with the fire of 1000 suns, and I still can’t muster any sympathy for Bella because gym itself is not that bad and even in a tiny, tiny school you are never the only klutz.  Not everything in gym is about coordination.  A lot of  it is just about not being a chicken shit.  If I can manage to find a few things in gym I could handle (basketball!), then anyone can, even Bella.  Of course, it’s a lot easier to use the “I’m a klutz cop out” than to actually make an attempt at something.  Either way, crying not being any good at sports is pointless.  Getting a line-drive aimed at your head by a school bully in gym, now there’s a reason to cry.

But it’s all good y’all, because Bella is pale and a klutz, BUT she’s super!smart and has already done all the homework and reading and stuff (but she hates Trig–you always have to hate math in these cases).  This is just another thing for her to ponder as she dwells (in her not-infrequent sessions of self-analysis) on how she’s sooooo different than everyone else, which of course, she’s acutely aware of because she’s also so super-observant.  And no one else is.  Except maybe Edward.

And before you get excited about my starting to tear into Eddie, hold you horses.  That’s a topic for a whole ‘nother entry….

I’d like to say I’ve got some good comments to pass along about the first 3 chapters, but my notes really don’t have much in them.  I know that some of the sarcasm was vaguely amusing, but unfortunately while some of the individual statements are funny, they were generally given in conjunction with the whining, so over-all they weren’t all that much of a positive.  I also know that I was a fan of the short, choppy sentences in the first two paragraphs or so.  It was different, but kind of worked.  Unfortunately, beyond that, I didn’t find anything worth really noting that I enjoyed up to that point.

But, I wasn’t about to let it beat me, even though by the time I was flying over the Rockies, I was way more distracted by the scenery below than the book and surrendered reading for the reaminder of the flight….I’d pick it up again on the beach…..