Friday, February 27, 2009

No. 100

This is my hundredth post. I guess I'm ready for syndication now. I started writing here about three years ago, but it's only recently that it's really worked as an outlet for thinking and writing, as a sort of supplement to all the academic reading and writing I've been doing. I hope the new rate of writing means that number 200 will come within the next six months - I'd like to write more, think more critically, and work on developing my voice. As always, it's a work in progress.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Idle Thoughts

I'm watching The Black List on HBO, and I just wanted to observe that someone should totally make a movie about Suzanne DePasse. Documentary, fiction, whatever - it's something that's sort of occurred to me before, but watching her speak for just a few minutes really brought it home.  She ends up being somewhat of a bit player in the TV biopics about Motown groups like the Jackson 5, but she just seems so ballsy and awesome, and she started out young and gained so much power in a field where Black women don't often have much. Just sending that thought out into the universe.

edited to add: Jezebel posted clips from the show, including Ms. DePasse.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Stalling

I really really have to read this book by tomorrow, and it is just not happening. I read the first ten or so pages on Monday morning, and it was so mind-blowingly dull that I haven't been able to bring myself to open it again. Seriously - I got back from class this morning around 11:30 and have done NOTHING productive since then. I: made coffee, which ended farcically when I dropped the cap from my half and half and saw it roll under the fridge - attempts at retrieval with the handle of my Swiffer were unsuccessful, so now I need a new carton of half and half on top of everything else; watched the second season of Extras, today's and yesterday's As the World Turns and The Amazing Race from Sunday; wrote notes to send to my friends through the physical mail; messed around with an iTunes playlist that I'm thinking of making into a mix for the car; surfed around the Internet for hours; ate some mini bagels and dried pineapple, leftover pasta and cookies I made over the weekend (in addition to my daily allotment from the 5-lb bag of Haribo Twin Cherries I crazily bought off of Amazon - I need to cool it with the shopping, I have bought so much shit that I seriously don't need over the last month. For real, the upside of not being romantically interested in anyone is that I'm not crazy all the time, but the downside is that the craziness gets replaced by boredom, and somehow my solution to boredom has become shopping. Like, there's a recession on. Not to mention that I'm convinced that all this sugar is making me pre-diabetic. What the fuck is wrong with me?); drank some wine while gazing intermittently into my fridge and trying to think up a dinner, ultimately settling on more leftover pasta; watched The Biggest Loser, Obama's speech, the rerun of The Office that came on after Obama's speech, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report; contemplated hunting and killing this crazy-ass giant centipede thing that I keep seeing crawling on the walls - I have these stark white walls because I never got my act together enough to hang the stuff I have on my walls, which really puts bugs into sharp relief when they start circuiting the apartment - right now, it's either in the bathroom or the bedroom somewhere, and I really want to just locate and smite it because otherwise I will have no inner peace - most of the time I like it here, but sometimes I hate living in the middle of the fucking woods. 

That all seems like a terribly sad thirteen hours laid out like that.

So now I need to wash my dishes and find/beat the life out of that bug and try to read a little of this book before I go to sleep and try again tomorrow. I don't know - every time I look at it, the mental block grows stronger. I have to read it. I have to. I'm supposed to present a summary and questions to my class, and I can't even fathom the ridiculousness that would ensue if this class were to proceed without guideposts.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will tackle you, book with the cover that makes you look self-published and shady. I will soldier on through your 200 pages, present in class, and return to my apartment, collapse, watch Lost, probably eat McDonalds because when I'm driving home from this class at 8:30, the siren song of the drive-through is usually too powerful for me to resist, plan my weekend, and generally get my life in order.

One of my professors keeps recommending keeping a journal, and I'm pretty sure she means about our academic work, but sometimes a self-involved rant like this is really cathartic. 

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Disappointing

The news that Defamer is being folded into Gawker was really a letdown.  For quite a while, Defamer has been one of my first-surfed links of the day - their broader focus on the entertainment industry has never been quite as insider-y as Gawker's coverage of New York. I understand the financial constraints that are making these kinds of changes necessary for Gawker as a media conglomerate; it just seems like they're dismissing entities with fan bases that are devoted, even if they're small. I'll stick around for the blind items, but if the writing's not there, there's not much of a draw, day-to-day.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Random TV Observation

Watching Zeljko Ivanek on Heroes just makes me miss Ray Fiske on Damages. So many shows have turned into major disappointments this season. 

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Oscar Thoughts

7:33 - E!s "Glamastrator," where they pause pictures of actresses in their gowns and virtually write on them Madden-style, is insanely ridiculous

7:34 - OK, Seacrest gets points for asking Ron Howard about the Arrested Development movie

7:40 - E! keeps showing Jessica Biel, which makes me hope against hope that Justin Timberlake will somehow be a part of the sure-to-be batshit crazy "tribute to middling musicals of 2008" involving Amanda Seyfried, Dominic Cooper, Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron

8:01 - Switched to ABC's pre-show. Tim Gunn and Robin Roberts are probably going to make the E! staff seem unbelievably simple

8:11 - Mickey Rourke is BREAKING MY HEART talking about his dog

8:15 - I was wrong - the essence of red carpet banter is vacuousness, regardless of who's delivering it

8:25 - Ooh, Michael Giacchino is doing the music for the show. I wonder if he'll get to do one of his Abrams-y "something mad creepy is going to happen right....NOW!" cues

8:34 - I know I wished for Hugh Jackman to sing, but I meant, like, a real song.

8:44 - I am rare among viewers in loving the montages and the acknowledgements of Oscar history, but I fail to see how this "past winners honor the nominees" deal is going to result in anything but a ceremony that ends at 1:00

9:03 - Jennifer Aniston presenting! Can she make it in front of Brad and Angelina without having a nervous collapse? The readership of People magazine waits with bated breath!

9:05 - The animation montage just made me realize that I completely forgot about the terrible-looking Horton Hears a Who movie. Also, those off-brand movies about animals in space.

9:14 - I'm becoming progressively more and more committed to catching a rerun of Big Love. Even with their "Don't Miss This One! Really! We Mean It!" ads, HBO was fighting a losing battle there, programming-wise.

9:25 - Okay, Rob Pattinson and Amanda Seyfried. Not bad, not bad.

9:26 - TWIIIILIIIIIIGHT!!!

9:39 - Ah, Biel was the tech awards hostess. I'm still holding out for JT, though.

9:41 - The Soloist looks mad cheesy, but I've loved Joe Wright's films so far. I'm torn. The delay on that film getting to the screen doesn't inspire confidence, either.

9:47 - As a Freaks and Geeks fan, it is thrilling to me to see James Franco and Seth Rogen presenting an Oscar together. 

9:53 - CRACKED-OUT MUSICAL NUMBER!!! BEYONCE!!! YESSSS!!!

9:56 - The phrase "hot mess" should be retired from thus forth, because there's never going to be anything else that will embody it more than this insane musical medley. "The musical is back!" Jackman just proclaimed. The subtext - "and then we killed it again!"

10:03 - This "past winners" mode of award distribution seems like something that someone would describe after having a near-death experience - being greeted by your forbears, welcoming you to the great beyond. On a related note - Joel Grey!

10:19 - I'm having doubts about them getting all the sound awards (plus editing and visual effects) AND the Big Four AND the tribute to Jerry Lewis done in the space of an hour. Even with these super-short commercial breaks. Especially if Rahman and Co. are doing performances of the Slumdog songs.

10:37 - No wonder these shows are dropping ratings year by year. On a fundamental level, there's very little you can do to dress up the part of the Oscars that is deeply dull for anyone outside the industry (and probably a few inside, too)

10:40 - Does In the Motherhood have an interracial couple? That would be kind of revolutionary for network TV.

10:52 - Okay, maybe not revolutionary, but different from a vast percentage of TV couples. And different in being involved from the get-go rather than over the course of the show. It's music time right now. I'm not gonna lie, I'm bored.

10:53 - Either Alicia Keys is tall, or Zac Efron is short. They look about the same height, which I wouldn't have thought would be the case. Maybe Vanessa Hudgens is tiny, though.

11:00 - The dancers with the Slumdog songs make me miss bygone days of undergrad watching South Asian cultural shows with my friends. Also - no MIA! Her baby was like, "you can do either the Grammys OR the Oscars, Mom."

11:04 - Maybe I was wrong about the timing. The question is - is the extended past winners presentation only for the actors, or for directors, too? Spielberg's there - maybe...

11:09 - I know he does Top Chef, so maybe I'm being nitpicky, but something seems wildly insincere about Tom Colicchio shilling for Diet Coke. Maybe it's because Mark Bittman is so wildly opposed to artificial sweeteners in How to Cook Everything. Maybe it's because Diet Coke, which is, like, entirely chemicals, is almost the opposite of real food, except you can ingest it. I don't know.

11:15 - Even the In Memoriam segment wasn't terribly well-executed. Instead of allowing the clips to go full-screen, the camera swooped schizophrenically around the stage, often rendering the names and occupations of the featured people illegible. Fail.

11:19 - Reese Witherspoon is presenting Best Director - does this mean she's not going to be part of the "Best Actress nominees - THIS IS YOUR FUTURE!"?

11:48 - Ah, Spielberg does Best Picture. Another montage?

11:53 - And Slumdog Millionaire wins. Eh. I haven't seen them all, so I don't have an informed opinion. I'm not surprised. But I liked Milk more.

Hmmm...

I'd like to semi-live blog, if I can figure it out. Probably not, though. We'll see. Maybe it will just be my own shady insertion of timestamps, instead of any technological means.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Oscars!

I'm excited about the Oscars tomorrow - I love awards shows of all media genres, and even when the Oscars are boring, or in one of those stretches where they're handing out lots of technical awards, they are still super-glam. Hugh Jackman was a fab Tony host, and he should be a welcome change from the more traditional comedian-host. I have two wishes for the Oscar ceremony. One is probable, one less so.

1) Hugh Jackman sings.

Dancing, it seems, is already in order:



Singing seems likely. I certainly hope so - he's got a great voice.



SOMEONE GIVE THAT MAN A SCREEN MUSICAL!

2) Dev Patel and Robert Pattinson present an award together. This is mainly shallow - I'd kind of like to see if the confluence of my two major pop culture obsessions of the last six months would make my head explode after I squeal with glee. Adorable-osity, British accents - MAKE IT HAPPEN, OSCARS!

Musicalfest: Dreamgirls

The 2007 marathon may be over, but I'd love to resurrect the thread of writing about musicals. Today I caught Dreamgirls on HBO and kept it on while I baked cookies (I like to think it was some kind of "get psyched for the Oscars" thing, since Bill Condon is directing the ceremony and they followed it up with X-Men). I think I've decided what I think is Dreamgirls' fundamental flaw: there's not even half enough ambition among the characters.  Before the movie came out, I'd always had the impression that Deena was supposed to be some sort of uber-Diva, someone who, as Diablo Cody once wrote of her leading lady's namesake, was "super beautiful but really mean, like Diana Ross." Clearly, Beyonce studied some old tape of Ross - she looks like her clone during the group performances, especially the one of the title song. However, the diva rep is nowhere to be found. Deena just sort of floats through the movie - she just seems to be present when things are happening, rather than being an actor in any of the fame-grabbing machinations of Jaime Foxx's Curtis.  He ends up so clearly the villain of the film, I found myself lamenting that his mustache wasn't long enough for him to literally twirl.  Jennifer Hudson's Effie is painted as a bit of an egomaniac at the beginning, but the question of affection versus disdain among her groupmates is never fully explored - it takes less than fifteen minutes of an over-two-hour film to go from the main cast singing about being a family to them kicking her out of the group. It just could have used more backstabbing, I guess. It has great music that skirts the line between the show tune-y and the era-evocative. Dreamgirls should be like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls except somewhat less ridiculous and, you know, without the peyote-fueled massacre at the end. Instead, it's just a bland story wrapped around some decent songs.

Sigh

So close, yet so far. My problem is posting at night, close to midnight, so sometimes it shifts over to the next day without my noticing. Washing dishes post-cookie baking ate up my time after watching Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica. I'll try to make it a multi-post weekend to make up for the lapse. I know no one (besides Ms. HH) reads this, but it matters to me, at least for consistency's sake.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Miscellaneous Thoughts

I have a bit to say about a few things, when I wish I had a lot to say about one specific thing. I suppose they can't all be treatises.

- I can see how this song wouldn't have fit on Hot Fuss or Sam's Town, but it is almost certainly too good to be a B-side/remainder:



- Looming end dates have made Lost, Battlestar Galactica and ER all fairly awesome this season, with returning classic characters on the latter and massive explications of mythology on the two former. Without the specter of Nielsen ratings looming overhead, their only incentive is to please viewers and go out with a bang. How novel.

- I can't say I really see the BFD in this new New Moon logo. You know what would really be newsworthy? An actual cast list instead of the asinine rumor-mongering that's been going on for months. Summit needs to stop jerking the fans around and just get down to the business of actually making the movie.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Quoted IV

This one is kind of lengthy, but it's so spot-on that I had to include it all. For real, this just makes me want to see Doubt all that much more:

"[With white actresses,] people see the possibilities. There are so many different types. You have the young 18/19-year-old types, the Amanda Bynes, or the early-20s, Hilary Duffs, the Lindsay Lohans, and the Miley Cyruses—teens. And then you get in the thirtysomethings, the Cameron Diazes, the Kate Winslets, the Reese Witherspoons, they’re all different! And then the older, the over-50, over-60, Helen Mirrens, Meryl Streeps, Diane Keatons, Sally Field. The fortysomethings, Nicole Kidmans, Julia Roberts, we can go on and on with this, and they’re all different. Some of them are quirky. You have the geek princess, you have the off-centered beauty, they don’t even have to walk in looking like Grace Kelly or Charlize Theron, they’re considered classically beautiful. They can be off-centered, their nose can be a little big, they can look ethnic, but there’s something in their eyes, or in the way they talk, that can make them kind of attractive. The girlfriend, the wife that the guy loves, but he sees the hot babe on the beach and decides to go with her, then ends up going back to his wife. The possibilities, the range.

I don’t see that with black women. And I very rarely see the over-50s, over-60s. Very few of those exist, even with Caucasian women, but they almost are nonexistent with us. And so that’s what I see. So if you don’t fit in the three categories that they have, then you don’t exist. You almost take all those qualities that you have, because you know they’re not going to see it, you almost try to cover them up. Because you know that if you show them, they’re going to be confused by that in an office, in an auditioning room. And at the end of the day, you try not to let it hurt your feelings, but it does. It hurts. And I’m hopeful that it will change, because I think that all of those women do exist. The woman who inspired me, Cicely Tyson, I saw as very beautiful. She was dark-skinned, she had full lips, she had high cheekbones, she was a fantastic actress. I saw it."

-Viola Davis

A.V. Club Interview

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Idle Thoughts

You know what needs to make a comeback? Tragic songs about teenage love that ends in untimely death.



If Amy Winehouse gets her shit together, she could totally work it out.  Or Taylor Swift could apply her special brand of hyper-literalism. There's potential there. I'm just saying.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Mood Music XI

Greatest song ever written solely to cash in on a commercially popular genre?



A legit version of this song finally got put on iTunes, and I can't stop listening to it. If cotton candy is constructed sugar and air, this song is constructed fun and air - fluffy, insubstantial and addictive. It's just so HAPPY!

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Live from New York

I think that maybe if they weren't super-wholesome Disney shills, the awesomeness of the Jonas Brothers might be too much for the world to handle.



Beyond that, SNL was mad underwhelming last night. I've been a "still funny" apologist for a while, but when an episode hosted by Alec Baldwin is not life-affirmingly awesome, that's clear evidence of something going wrong in the creative process.  The combination of the end of the Bush administration, the end of the election, and Amy Poehler's departure created some kind of humor vacuum on the show.  If Incredibad does well and the Lonely Island guys leave, then they're really screwed.  I keep watching, and I stay hopeful for a resurgence, but it's not looking good right now.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Mood Music X

For Valentine's Day, I decided to post one of my favorite love songs: the Greatest Hits version of "Catch the Wind" by Donovan. This is the less well-known version, but I think the slower tune brings out the wistfulness and beauty of the lyrics. 



It's been a good day - living alone I find myself more content than I've been for some years. A non-miserable Valentine's Day. I guess stranger things have happened.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Tired

I'm at kind of a loss. My day has been spent alternately surfing the Internet and napping, due to an earlier-than-I-like wake-up this morning. Intellectually, I know I have things I'd like to write about, but it seems like when I sit down to write, there's nothing of substance to say. I guess working to force oneself to write when it seems like nothing's there is part of the process. Maybe I should write when the spirit moves me during the day, rather than just at the end of the day. Somehow, will has to meet action.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Changing Colors

Sometime over the last year, painting my nails became one of my favorite things to do when I'm bored.  When I was little, it was an incentive - my mother promised me weekly manicures in exchange for not biting my nails.  It worked, sort of. (My nails are fine if left alone, but I developed an intense cuticle-chewing habit.) Living alone has afforded me the opportunity to change colors as frequently as I wish, without having to worry about bothering anyone with the smell.  When I was taking a film class last year that sapped my energy, I used the weekly screening as a time to apply a new polish.  There's something so simple about the boost a little bit of bright color can bring.

Behold: Hot Pink for Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Fab TV

I've been having a love affair with British TV lately. First Skins, then Shameless, now Spaced. Next up in my Netflix queue is Extras. The short-but-sweet series highlight not only in their quality but in their brevity the ways that shows like Grey's Anatomy are running themselves into the ground with no end in sight, far past their best run of episodes. Skins in particular earns props from me for letting its characters go their separate ways, like real teenagers moving into adulthood, rather than artificially prolonging their time together like practically every teen-focused show that gets more than two seasons.

Speaking of Skins, this trailer for the second series is, like, my new most favorite thing ever. It makes standard commercials with show clips seem so pedestrian.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Work

I've got job-work (and school-work, though I don't quite think I'll get around to that until tomorrow) so I'm feeling creatively blocked.  I was going to write something about the stunning Watchmen portraits on the Entertainment Weekly website, but apparently they were only up for, like, the five minutes that I was looking at them because they have disappeared without a trace.  So I'm working, and watching Spaced (intermittently marveling at the actors who appeared as parents on Skins as geeky slackers in this capacity) and contemplating the rest of my week.  I'd like to imagine that I'll be more creative in forthcoming writing.  We'll see.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Uhhh...

I don't really have anything to say, but I don't want to abandon this project, because I firmly believe that writing about trivial things every day is the first step to writing academic, analytical things every day.  I should be reading about museums; instead I've been watching the Westminster Dog Show and messing around with my music.  I miss having a dog.  Someday in the next few years I'm going to make it happen - he or she will be my dissertation companion.  What else?...I'm sticking it out until Bryan Fuller returns, but if Heroes doesn't do something amazing then, I'm done.  There's such a vast quality gulf between the truly good shows and the ones that are just sort of...there right now, it's crazy.  Sigh, reading...bleh.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Mood Music IX

Once upon a time, I thought all I really wanted out of a phone was for it to make phone calls.  However, the iPhone ads are making me lust hardcore for one that can do all manner of crazy-fancy stuff that I should be able to manage myself.  Then, the Submarines remind me that things cannot fill emotional voids.  And I wonder if catchiness trumps irony, because somehow I just can't believe that that juxtaposition was totally intentional.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Awesome TV

Last night I had an amazing couple of hours of TV watching, with episodes of Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica both ending with the departures of characters who have been present since the pilots. When shows are this good, they just throw into dramatic relief how much other shows aren't pulling their weight. Both were well written and brilliantly acted, and the magic of the Internet means that both can be embedded here!



I'm not one of the second-season haters, but to the extent that it wasn't as good as the first season, this season represents a return to form. Why Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton don't have every acting award ever is beyond me.



As far as two-parters go, this episode and "The Oath," which preceded it, were pretty epic, even among BSG episodes. Alessandro Juliani has been killing it, acting-wise, ever since the New Caprica episodes, and his "It stopped." was heartbreaking, even as we weren't necessarily meant to sympathize with his cause. His work on BSG, and Gaius Charles' on FNL just serves to highlight what a travesty it is that these shows don't get nominated for not just Emmys, but SAG Awards as well. If the ensemble awards aren't designed to honor shows like these, with tight casts whose supporting players bring it week after week, then why give awards at all? I can't believe there are still six episodes left in BSG - and can't help but wonder who's the next goner.

Next week is the real dilemma - FNL or Dollhouse? I know I can watch FNL the next day for sure, but nothing's quite as good as watching live. Choices, choices...

Friday, February 06, 2009

Thoughts on The O.C.

Yesterday I completed my month-and-a-half long trip through every episode of the four seasons of The O.C. It started as a project to keep me amused and semi-distracted while I wrote my end-of-term papers (when I'm reading, I basically need instrumental music, but when I'm writing, I can have just about anything going on) and I think that I underestimated how much time it would take, but it was ultimately satisfying. I watched from Ryan stealing the car with Trey 1.0 straight through until the final scene, when he's an architect of indeterminate age offering help to another wayward youth. I laughed, I cried, I cringed. There are certainly worse ways to spend one's time.

It was interesting to watch all of the episodes in one go, rather than a week at a time. At some point, I told my mother what I was watching, and she asked whether it was one of the bad seasons. One of the things I realized is that the show's strengths and failings remained fairly consistent over its run. The first season was probably the most effortless, but it also had the noteworthy drawback of the Oliver storyline, marking a trend that would continue throughout the show's run. (The Television Without Pity recap of the third season finale makes this point unbelievably well - they continued to reference Oliver in a winky, meta way like "Wow, that was a disaster, huh?" while introducing new characters who served in exactly the same capacity.) The show was schizophrenically paced from beginning to end, and the central cast was never big enough for the show to have much longetivity. Actors who worked well with the central cast (notably Chris Carmack, Samaire Armstrong and Michael Cassidy) had their characters tossed aside alongside those that didn't (nearly every new young character who got added for the second and third seasons). Still, it was fantastically quippy from beginning to end, and the chemistry among the main cast was unbeatable. Seeing ads for Southland, I've been genuinely excited to see Ben McKenzie back on my TV. Also, Josh Schwartz's post-O.C. projects have shown a degree of learning from the past and taking the best of The O.C. forward to the pop-culture hyper-awareness of Chuck and the soapy melodrama of Gossip Girl.

I'll end with the classic montage from the series finale. A lot of what led up to that point had been kind of crazy and detached from what made the show great, but this flash-forward was grounded in the emotional heart of the show. I tear up every time I see Seth and Summer getting married.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Mood Music VIII

Since the last two posts have been mini-treatises, today will just be a song.



Over the last month or so, this song and Like Vines have become personal favorites.  It's so sunshiny and dreamy.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Why I Disagree With Stephen King

In the past day or so, Twilight fan sites have been all a-flutter with the news that Stephen King told USA Today that he thinks Stephenie Meyer is a terrible writer. Not only that but apparently, he also calls out other compatriot in commercial literary success James Patterson, while commending J.K. Rowling and Jodi Picoult as "terrific." Now, what's been posted is just a sort of "coming attractions" post. I'm curious to see whether any article space is devoted to what criteria he uses to evaluate what makes writing good, but in the meantime I thought I'd discuss why I disagree with King.

All four authors cited are ones whose work I've read and enjoyed. My parents are big Alex Cross fans, and during one school break sometime over the last few years I plowed through that series. I read a number of Picoult's books this past summer while I twitchily waited for Breaking Dawn to come out. I was a Harry Potter devotee from early on, from the time that I originally received Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as an Easter gift in seventh grade (so early in the craze that Chamber of Secrets hadn't even been published in America) to the midnight release of Deathly Hallows. And my enjoyment of Twilight is well-documented. None of the four is the kind of writer who's going to win a Pulitzer Prize. (Nor is King, for that matter.) I'm not a big enough fan of Patterson or Picoult to mount a coherent defense of their work, but I have very clear opinions about why I think both Rowling and Meyer are good writers, and what that means to me.

I can be a critical reader (like, copy-editing people's work without being asked to critical) but I'm not the kind of reader who places a lot of emphasis on technical quality. Obviously, grammar is important, but I don't know that I find it absolutely vital in narrative fiction that is centered in storytelling. Both Meyer and Rowling have strengths and weaknesses as writers, but to me, the fact that those strengths are being expressed through words makes them good writers. As a reader, I think that Rowling is an unparalleled plotter. She knows how to pace her stories expertly, and deftly built seven nail-biting climaxes. Conversely, I think that this is one of Meyer's weakest areas. Her pacing can be somewhat schizophrenic, with chapters and chapters devoted to action taking place over a few days, then significant time jumps that get glossed over. I'm interested to see what Chris Weitz and Melissa Rosenberg do with the bogged-down middle section of New Moon in adapting the story for the film.

What then, in my opinion, is Meyer's strength? Contrary to King's assertion about those readers who enjoy Twilight, not everyone who loves the books is thrilled by the swoony descriptions of Edward's icy skin. To me, Meyer's characters live and breathe on the page, distinct and vibrant personalities. Both Meyer and Rowling imagined fictional universes filled with a number of characters, and while I don't doubt that each character is clear to their creator, Meyer can communicate who they are to the reader in a way that Rowling does not. After Deathly Hallows, there was an interview with Rowling where she discussed the decision to kill Fred rather than George, saying something to the effect of Fred being the more lighthearted of the two. This surprised me, since nearly a decade of reading and re-reading the books had never revealed any substantive difference between the two to me. The run-up to the release of the film version of Half-Blood Prince has also made me realize that Ginny is still kind of a non-person to me, character-wise. The last few Potter films have diverged dramatically from the books, largely because the story can be formed around the plot and characters can appear extraneous or unimportant in the bigger picture.

Additionally, (and Stephen King would probably find this totally sacrilegious) I think Meyer's skill in writing is similar to that of Brian Wilson. Both understand how to vocalize emotions the way that a teenager does. Sometimes I find Bella unbelievably annoying, but I also find her voice totally authentic as a teenager, and am positive that if I went back to my journals from high school I would find similarly embarrassing odes to whatever guy I had a crush on at the time. This is something that I don't think Rowling has ever done well - Order of the Phoenix remains one of my least favorite of the Harry Potter books due to Harry's constant immature whining. He never seemed authentically teenaged to me in that scenario, just like a petulant child.

Some of my favorite authors are wordsmiths, some are storytellers. To me, they're all good writers, all for different reasons. I hope that as I continue to write, and look ahead to my thesis and dissertation, that I, too, can find a voice and play to my own strengths, writing as well as I know how and not trying to be a writer I'm not.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Steve Jobs is Taking My Money

I appreciate Apple's new "DRM-free music for all!" initiative, I really do. The whole computer-authorization thing was a pain, and I've been availing myself of the opportunity to re-download my purchased music now that songs can be purchased individually.  After my music library as it once existed disappeared during a virus eradication, it's nice to maybe not have to rely on the myriad backup CDs I've accumulated.  Viewing the majority of my purchases in bulk, though, is not encouraging.  I'm beginning to wonder if I have a problem.

I own up to being a media junkie pretty easily.  Loving and hoarding music, books, movies and TV is part of who I am - it informs the academic work that I like to do; it comprises the bulk of what I talk about on this blog.  When I started college four-and-a-half years ago, one of the first things that I did when I was alone with my shiny new laptop and my dorm room's internet connection was download iTunes, having only dreamed up until that point of having the means to amass a vast, legal digital music collection.  I've always been kind of principled about not illegally downloading music, maybe prissily so.  I'm the kind of person who bought CD singles.  Before iTunes, there were a lot of rationalized purchases of full albums for one or two tracks, which is how I ended up with CDs like The Best of the Cowsills.  When I regard my iTunes purchases in retrospect, it's certainly better to have bought them all than to have pirated them.  If I illegally downloaded music, it would be Out Of Control. (The last month or so has taught me this, as apparently it is insanely easy for me to talk myself into a $5 purchase. The answer to "Should I give five dollars and x bytes to this piece of media ?" is invariably "Yes!"  At some point my rampant consumerist tendencies are going to catch up with my not-particularly-lucrative chosen field and things are going downhill. Either that, or my computer will run out of memory.) My hard drive would have so much ridiculous crap on it (that is, more than there already is), I can't even say.

Maybe it's not so bad.  I'm just a little concerned about how many of the purchases I completely do not remember making.  I mean, I give myself a little leeway since it has been nearly five years in total.  Undergrad years can be completely insane.  There are some purchases that I clearly made as part of gifts for my family, though I couldn't pinpoint when if my life depended on it.  It's just the niggling few, the ones that are tracks shared with albums I've owned and enjoyed for a long time, that are inexplicable to me.  For example, the Rushmore soundtrack has become one of my absolute favorite albums, but I don't think that development was an extremely recent one.  So then why/when did I buy "Here Comes My Baby" and "Ooh La La"?  How much of the last five years has devolved into this mystery haze?  Why buy "See Me, Feel Me" if I already had Tommy?  Sometimes viewing oneself and one's habits from a distance is a little troubling.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Gendered Soda




Is the world of soda really so gender-marked that there needs to be a diet soda "for men?" Did marketing research do this? It's just packaging, right? There's no substantive difference between this and other diet sodas? Just, it's supposed to appeal to men who tie their sense of masculinity to a disinterest in preserving their physical well-being?

...Sigh

Sunday, February 01, 2009

February Goals

So, I'm going to try this posting-at-least-once-per-day thing again.  Working on my writing habits is a goal for my program, and I think that I can do it if I'm disciplined about it.  I've got some ideas in the tubes - I never quite finished my review of favorite book-to-movie adaptations, I've been watching some interesting TV, there's always some new pop culture/media thing that I latch onto and obsess about.  Maybe I'll even start writing about things that are a little deeper or more serious, who knows?  I'll try to utilize this shortest of months to make daily writing a habit.