Effortless Effervescence

Pssssst! There’s more Quick Takes over at Conversion Diary. Check ‘em out!

Take 1: Last night I had a lovely date with my friend Bethany; we dined at Olive Garden then saw the movie Precious, which I’ve been looking forward to for months. It was, as I expected, a brutally honest portrayal of child abuse, yet somehow managed to end on a note of hopefulness. It’s a kind of against-the-odds story; most young people who are abused become abusers themselves, and from some of Precious’s actions, I can see that she’s already starting to react to life in the only way that’s been modeled for her: violently. Still, something in her knows that she and her children deserve better, and she’s lucky enough to have people around her who won’t let her give up.

There’s been a lot of talk about Mo’nique’s performance, and for a very good reason. She was both terrifying and pitiful as Precious’ abusive mother. If you’ve heard of Mo’nique before, you probably know that she’s had a fairly successful career as a comedienne; if you’ve seen her stand-up, you know why. She’s hilarious! And yet she managed to go in the opposite direction and pull off one of the darkest dramatic parts I’ve ever seen. Big, big kudos!

Mo’nique as Mary, Precious’s mother.

Take 2: I was tempted to subtitle this week’s Seven Quick Takes “Links to a ton of cool blogs I just discovered,” because, well, I just discovered a ton of really cool blogs! The first one is Mommy Wants Vodka, which is crass and irreverent and HILARIOUS. The best post I’ve seen so far is “Aunt Becky’s” Thanksgiving gift to all of us blogging peons: Blogging for Dummies. Her advice is wise, honest, and… crass & irrverent. My kind of girl. Seriously, you gotta check her out.

Oh, and if you are tempted as I was to steal some of Becky’s most entertaining turns of phrase, remember: “Stealing gives you herpes.” (Yeah, she wrote that, not me.)

Take 3: And then there’s 1000 Awesome Things, which is (as you might have guessed) simply a daily log of things that strike the (unidentified) author as “awesome.” My favorite? #622 When the dog’s really excited you’re back home. SO TRUE. When I hate the world, all I have to do is walk through my front door and see those tail-wagging furry bundles of joy, and I feel better.

Take 4: The last great blog I have to share with you is Free Range Kids, written by Lenore Skenazy, author of a book of the same name. You may have heard of Skenazy in the hooplah that followed her April 1, 2008 column in the New York Sun, “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone.” If you DIDN’T hear about her during that media feeding frenzy of mama-piranhas, you may not be surprised to hear that most folks on the internet with an opinion (that would be all of them…) thought that Skenazy was America’s Worst Mom.

I have to say that I think she’s pretty awesome. It breaks my heart that kids nowadays don’t enjoy the same freedoms I did just 20 years ago. I mean, it’s not like I grew up in an idyllic post-war Leave It to Beaver world; I lived in a small city, in a neighborhood sandwiched between the richest and the poorest sections of town. And yet I had the freedom to walk to my best friend’s house (crossing a busy street and encountering all manners of strangers in the five minutes it took me to get there), to ride my bike to the local playground, to disappear for hours on end without an electronic leash by which my parents could maintain some illusion of control over me.

It seems that the prevailing attitude today is that we must protect children from every risk - Not just every harm! But EVERY POSSIBLE RISK - at the expense of their freedom and autonomy. Whatever happened to teaching kids right and wrong, giving them tools for decision-making, and then letting them go their own way? Am I a fool for hoping I’ll be able to raise my child as I was raised - trusting that he or she will get through life just fine, so long as I provide the guidance he or she needs?

Take 5: A friend of mine recently noticed and commented on the fact that I have several Helen Keller quotes stored in the signature lines of each of my myriad email addresses. “You must be a fan,” he said. “Indeed I am,” I said. How can I not be? Her optimism and drive to succeed in spite of her handicaps challenge me to remember that no matter what setbacks I encounter, I can and should choose to push beyond them.

Helen Keller, circa 1904.

My favorite Helen Keller quote? “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Rock on, Hel. Rock ON.

Take 6: My mother, who is THRILLED that she’ll be a grandmother for the FIFTH time when my little bundle of joy arrives, has bought quite a substantial library for me of secondhand pregnancy, childbirth and childcare books. If you know me well at all, you know that I love to read, and that when I have a new interest I try to absorb all the knowledge I can about it - but I try to be as discerning as possible in the research sources I choose, weeding out the quacks and weirdos whenever possible, and taking each piece of advice with a grain of salt.

One baby care book my mom sent to me that I thought for SURE I’d find absurdly unhelpful is The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems (by Teaching You How to Ask the Right Questions): Sleeping, Feeding, and Behavior–Beyond the Basics from Infancy Through Toddlerhood. I was sort of familiar with Tracy Hogg’s technique, and I figured it was a load of hooey. How can one possibly expect an infant to stick to a schedule? Or to fall asleep on his or her own? I mean, come ON. I figured my mommy style would be much more Dr.-Sears-granola-crunchy-ish: you know, cosleeping, feeding on demand, etc. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe the Baby Whisperer might have something worthwhile to offer. At the very least, I’ll give her book a fair shake and a careful read.

Take 7: I consider myself a freak of nature because it wasn’t until I was an adult that I truly appreciated the stop-motion holiday TV specials that nearly every other person of my generation has long loved, such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I just thought they were… BORING… when I was kid, so I don’t feel any nostalgia about eagerly awaiting their appearance on network television each year (you know, in the world before VCRs and DVDs). I like them plenty okay now, but when I think of the holiday specials that made my childhood, the two that come to mind are A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.

However, if I was going to pick my ALL-TIME FAVORITEST HOLIDAY STORY OF ALL, I’d have to go with A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I don’t care which “version” of it you want to watch (tho the Kelsey Grammer musical version really did kinda suck), I just LOOOOOOVE the story. Ultimately, it’s a story of redemption, and I think that’s what draws me to it. We all run into Scrooges in our lives, and sometimes the only thing that keeps us from going postal on those cold-hearted bastards is the idea that maybe, someday, they too discover the value of love, family, friendship, and generosity. I mean, if Ebenezer Scrooge can be reformed, can’t we all?

By far, my favorite adaptation of the story is Patrick Stewart’s audiobook - which, so far as I can tell, is not longer available for sale. SADFACE.

So tell me, What’s your favorite winter holiday story or tradition?

This was the weekend for disturbing yet awesome movies. Let me tell you all about it.

On Saturday night, my father came over for dinner and a movie to celebrate his birthday. I baked two loaves of bread (from scratch!) and made a big pot of 15 Bean Soup. (Can we say “NOM”? I think we can.) I’d been to Blockbuster earlier in the day and had a handful of movies waiting to be watched, and my father chose Knowing even though he’d recently seen it - he said it was a great flick, and he wasn’t lying.

Here’s the movie’s synopsis from Fandango: “Academy Award® Winner Nicolas Cage (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Leaving Las Vegas) stars in KNOWING, a gripping action-thriller of global proportions about a professor who stumbles on terrifying predictions about the future—and sets out to prevent them from coming true.”

There are a lot of things I didn’t expect this movie to be, including FREAKY AS HELL, thought-provoking, and truly awesome. I didn’t arrive at “awesome” and “thought-provoking” until the very end, though, because I was so enraged throughout most of the film at what I perceived as the story’s unfairness and the villains’ (if you can call them that) terrorizing of innocent children. This is certainly not your run-of-the-mill disaster flick, but I’m not quite sure what else I’d call it. Sure, it’s designed to sell tickets and popcorn - which is obvious by Cage’s casting in the lead role and all the great special effects that everyone loves to see - but it’s a little more intelligent than I thought it would be, and had elements of horror and sci-fi as well as a decidedly philosophical bent. It reminded me a great deal of The Day the Earth Stood Still but was much more frightening and unnerving.

I must tell you about one particular scene which I’ve dubbed The Most Disturbing Image in Motion Picture History. Seriously, it had me crawling the walls! Nic Cage’s character John Koestler is on the phone inside his home while his son, Caleb (the adorably defiant Chandler Canterbury) is playing outside. A shiny black sedan pulls up in front of the Koestlers’ yard, and an unidentifiable passenger extends his hand out the window, offering something to Caleb. Caleb, without any regard for the warnings he’s surely heard over and over since toddlerhood (don’t talk to strangers, take presents from people you don’t know, approach strange cars, etc.) walks down the hill to the street and calmly takes the object - a smooth black stone - from the passenger’s hand. At this point, his father sees what’s going on and comes running and screaming out of the house, and I was flipping out right along with him.

Luckily, though, the ending was satisfying enough to make out for the freakiness of the rest of the flick. Don’t worry, though, I won’t spoil it for you.

Now we come to Martyrs, which you can read about at IMDB or its official site (which, BTW, is in French). A good friend of mine recommended this movie, and I’ve been waiting to see it ever since; I’d noticed it on the shelf at Blockbuster a couple of weeks ago, and STUPIDLY let the clerk talk me into getting [REC] instead.* I’m glad I finally got around to renting it, because it was also so much more than I expected.

I knew Martyrs was a torture flick (and as my friend Vanessa had warned me, what you see in the trailer is NOTHING compared to what happens in the actual movie) which is okay with me because though I’m not a hardcore horror fan, I do like some splattery-blood-n-guts. I had NO IDEA! that the images I saw would unsettle me as much as they did and that the premise behind the torture would be So. Far. Out. There! I can’t say too much or I’ll give the “secret” away, but I will say that the perpetrators in this movie aren’t into child abuse for the usual perverted, deviant reasons. In their minds, they are answering a higher calling, and their acts are sensible, even beautiful. (Try wrapping your head around that and keeping your lunch down!) I’ll also say that there is a reason why the title of the movie is martyrs - that is, plural, and referring to a religious experience.

So if you have a strong stomach for violence, please rent Martyrs, and then come back and tell me what you thought. Were you amazed? Were you bored? Saddened? Disgusted? Something else? If you’re not into blood spraying across the TV screen, however, pick up Knowing. It’ll get your brain going, I promise, just in a different way. Same rules apply - give me your opinion once you’ve taken a look.

* Don’t get me wrong, [REC] was good, but I’ve already seen Quarantine and it’s pretty much the exact same movie, except that [REC] is in Spanish and its ending is ever so slightly more disturbing. Those two and a half minutes, though, were not worth the $5 price of the rental. Martyrs, however, was so good I’ll probably buy myself a copy.

Last Thursday night, I watched the first half of The Reader, finishing it Friday morning before my mother-in-law picked me up. (She had invited me to accompany her to a family wedding in her Pennsylvania hometown - but more on that later.) I really enjoyed the movie, but I knew that it would take time, and thought, and re-watching, and pondering, and research, for me to truly understand the story and let it touch me as deeply as it wanted to. So of course I’ve been watching it over and over again since we returned from PA, and absorbing every bit of information I can find about its story and production!

I should have known this movie would be wonderful! After all, it stars Kate Winslet, one of the most beautiful and talented women of my generation, and Ralph Fiennes, who is one of my favorite actors. (As Amon Göth in Schindler’s List, he was the epitome of a hardened, diseased heart; in Red Dragon, he was pitifully sick man, abusive and abused; and no one can play the jealous lover like he did in The End of the Affair and The English Patient.) Stephen Daldry’s The Hours is another movie that profoundly affected me, and I had an idea that this movie would do the same - but I was fearful, too, because of the subject matter. Any story in which a teenager is sexually exploited by a much older person gives me pause. I’m glad that I finally got over my squickiness, because this movie was about so much more than sex or Nazism (the other Big Deal Issue that one might get stuck on when examining the story). More than anything, I think the movie was about being “marked” - by an event, by a deficiency, by a relationship - and how those unseen markings compell us to do many things, good and bad.

A synopsis from the Wikipedia entry about the movie:

[The Reader] tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who as a teenager in the late 1950s had an affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp in the later years of World War II. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past - a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial.

I’ll try not to give away Hanna’s secret, though I’m often the last person to see a hip, acclaimed, award-winning movie, so it’s likely that my dedicated readers* have already seen this flick. And if you haven’t but decide to rush to your local Blockbuster based on my review (wouldn’t I feel important!) you’ll likely figure out her secret as quickly as I did. Interestingly, some of the critical responses to the film dismiss the importance of Hanna’s secret, which is anticlimactically unshameful, especially compared to the crimes for which she is tried and convicted. In fact, at least one critic was disgusted that moviegoers were wasting their time feeling any bit of empathy for such an awful woman, a sentiment which perplexed me, despite its popularity in our modern world.

After all, it is easy to judge a person for foolish - and immoral, and cruel - behavior (and Hanna demonstrates each of these characteristics in the time we get to know her) until we find ourselves in that person’s shoes (and trust me, we are all foolish, immoral or cruel at some point in our lives, if not at several or several hundred). Then we start making excuses for ourselves, and expect people to see why our foolishness is so different from that other person’s foolishness, and therefore, understandable. Forgivable, even!

It is also easy to divide people into categories: GOOD (which we often assume includes us and the people we like, even if we or they have done Very Bad Things) and BAD (which includes people we don’t like and people that have done Extremely Bad Things, or sometimes just things that are Slightly Badder than the Very Bad Things we or our loved ones may have done) but the truth of life is that the Amon Göths of the world are few and far between. Rarely do you meet a Bad Person who hasn’t a single ounce of compassion in her heart, and it would take years of searching to find a Good Person who has never done or said or thought something selfish or unkind. In fact, I’d say that one could search for one’s entire life and NEVER find someone who is Truly Good. If you’re a Christian, you likely hold the belief that Jesus Christ was the only human being that lived without sin.** The rest of us - well, the rest of us are pretty much all in the same boat.

Yes, it would seem to make sense that Hanna ought to be more ashamed of what she did in the service of the Nazis than her petty, embarrassing little secret. But isn’t that how human beings are? Aren’t we often a mess of contradiction in what we profess and how we perform, in what we’ll forgive in others but not in ourselves (or vice versa)? In exploring the person of Hanna Schmitz, I see shades of myself, and of all people; I see souls corrupted, who sometimes blindly manage to do the right thing, and other times consciously make a choice that’s hopelessly, disgustingly wrong. In Michael, I see someone scarred, deeply and unaccountably, by another person’s misdeeds - as well as someone who instinctively offers kindness to his perpetrator, finding redemption for himself.

If you want a movie that will make you think, as well as possibly shock you and anger you and unsettle you, I highly recommend The Reader. And if you’ve already seen the movie, I highly recommend renting it to enjoy the special features (the deleted scenes are particularly enlightening) and taking a moment to read what Wikipedia had to say about its critical reception. As anyone who was forced to participate in a literature discussion in high school or college knows, our personal impressions of a work of art are only the starting place of our understanding it. It’s in listening to the impressions of others that we truly start to learn - not just about the characters in a movie or book, but about ourselves and our fellow travelers.

*Yes, all five of you, LOL! Or maybe I’m up to seven now?
**And goodness, did you see where that got him?

It’s that time again! Seven Quick Takes is all about collecting random thoughts that, on their own, wouldn’t make a substantial blog entry, but gather together make… well, something silly and wonderful. If you’re looking for new & interesting blogs to read, check out the other Quick Takes links over at Conversion Diary.

Take 1: SO MUCH TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS WEEKEND! I can’t wait. Ana, our new puppy, comes home today, and I’m meeting my net-friend Anika for dinner tonight. Yay! I promise many, many puppy pictures in the next couple of days.

Take 2: You know how I said that my laptop’s not working? Well, it actually booted up today. I have no idea what its malfunction is, and I’m not going to bother trying to figure it out. I’m compute when I can, and when I can’t, I’ll read. Que sera, sera.

Take 3: I’ve never liked meatloaf. (The food, not the singer. “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” is a stone-cold CLASSIC.) I don’t hate it - I mean, I’ll eat it if it’s put in front of me at someone’s house, but I’ve never cared to make it at home. Well, Chrissy made meat loaf last night using her mother’s recipe and OH MY GOD it was GOOD. I LOVED it. It was so good that it was ALL GONE at the end of the evening.

P.S. Speaking of the other Meat Loaf, have you seen his recent AT&T GoPhone and A1 Steak Sauce commercials? FREAKING HILARIOUS.

Take 4: Because I am the best wife in the whole wide world, I bought my husband a copy of Lonesome Dove even though I kinda can’t stand it. We were watching it on AMC the other night, and I complained muchly about being subjected to the overly long, totally unrealistic Western-soap-opera-miniseries-melodrama. Then just to demonstrate that our compatibility and mutual interests only go so far, Jon said, “I sure would like to own this on DVD.” Whyyyyyy? Sometimes there’s no accounting for taste - I should know, I’m kind of addicted to Rob Schneider movies. (Especially The Hot Chick! I can watch that movie over and over and over….)

Anyway, I was in Wal-mart yesterday and they had Lonesome Dove for just $13, and I thought, “Hey, I can suffer through this crap for some brownie points.” I also bought a bottle of wine to ease my pain; I’ve learned that stupid movies become so much more tolerable when I’m intoxicated. Case in point: the first time I saw Attack of the Clones, I was drunk and thought it was a great movie. Aaaaaand then I saw it again two days later, this time sober, and was shocked at its terribleness.

Take 5: I also bought White Oleander, because I LOOOOOOOVED the book and have always wanted to see the movie, even though I’ve heard it’s terrible. I watched the first half of it with Chrissy last night (to escape the terror that is Lonesome Dove) and I didn’t think it was half bad. That might be the wine, talking, though, so I’ll let you know what I think after I watch it again. Hey, if it’s really terrible, I’m only out $3, so I can’t complain, ya know?

Take 6: The kittens just keep getting cuter - and more troublesome! This morning, as I tried to make the bed, A.C. kept nipping at my ankles to get my attention. I guess she wanted me to play with her? She certainly didn’t want to be cuddled - every single time I pick her up, she wriggles and fights like I’m torturing her with my kisses & pets! What’s funny about her little pay-attention-to-me bites is that Oatmeal, my dearly departed Siamese, used to bite the back of my leg when she wanted attention. Oh, and Squeaker, our tailless tuxedo cat? Will paw at me and even grab my hand with his claws when he wants to be petted. Which is all the time. Our animals are awesome, yet strange!

Take 7: Audience Participation I have a gross-out fascination. I’m a scab-picker, a dead-skin-peeler, a pimple-popper. I like looking at infected wounds; even as my stomach turns my brain says, “Cool!” However, I can’t watch surgery, even “fake” surgery in movies. I feel as if MY skin & muscle is being cut, and it gives me the willies. Yet I love gory slasher-type movies, and cartoonishly, gratuitously graphic combat scenes (like, say, 300). And though my stomach is strong enough to endure being exposed to all sorts of bodily fluids when attending to sick people or animals, I once nearly fainted when I looked at the bag of Type A negative fluid the Red Cross drained from my right arm during a blood drive. I guess I’m just odd. So tell me: What’s your gross-out tolerance? What makes you say EWWWW and COOOOOL?

Don’t worry, this is a no-spoiler zone.

Have you ever gone over to a friend’s house and been offered ice cream for dessert, and you say, “Hell yeah, I’d love some ice cream!” then you dig into the bowl and realize that what you got was some sort of sugar-free, fat-free frozen yogurt? Yeah, it’s okay for what it is, but you were looking forward to ICE CREAM and there’s just so much good stuff missing that you’re really let down. That’s how I felt about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I loved the book, and was looking forward to a rich, densely packed tale and what I got was… fluff. Maybe I’d have enjoyed the movie if I didn’t have such high expectations, but who can blame me? I’m a bit mystified by the folks who’ve said that HBP is the best of the movies to date. Huh?

I really, really hope that I am not as let down by The Time Traveler’s Wife. Because that would make me cry a little.

Okay, so the Seven Quick Takes is supposed to be posted on Friday, but because I was so busy yesterday getting ready for our trip, I barely touched my computer and therefore didn’t get a chance to post any amount of takes, quick or otherwise. So I’m breaking all the rules and posting them on Saturday. Mwahaha!

Take 1: I did a damn good job of getting ready yesterday. I did four loads of laundry, packed about a million books to read in the car (I know I won’t read them ALL, but I like to have plenty of variety to choose from), wrapped my stepson’s birthday presents (he is so spoiled - I hope he’s as delighted with the gifts as I am!) and packed my and my husband’s bags. The one thing I forgot? My copy of Julia, of which I have only FIFTEEN MORE PAGES to read before I’m done! Blast! Now I have to wait until we get back to Virginia Beach to find out the ending. I’m reading the book b/c a good friend told me it’s the scariest book he’s ever read. I think it’s definitely disturbing, but not TERRIFYING. Actually, the story is a LOT like The Ring, which is probably why I don’t find it all that scary. I guess the idea of an evil girl-child killed by her mother and coming back from the dead to inflict more and worse evil is becoming canon. *sigh* Not that the devil child thing isn’t an INTERESTING archetype, it’s just… old.

Take 2: Speaking of horror movies & books, I’ve lately been thinking about how many scary movies feature insane asylums. I guess it has something to do with how “othered” the mentally ill are. Many of them cannot advocate for themselves, they are misunderstood and their loss of control is fearful to so many people who don’t even want to think of being OUT of control, and so they are portrayed as a dangerous and morally bankrupt caricature. I’m not necessarily offended by these media representations, but I am fascinated by them. It just goes to show that what frightens us is often the most mundane things, like insanity.

Take 3: I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Macbook giveway from Moonfruit? No? Well, where have you been? Hiding under a rock? Interesting aside: twice today people have offered me a free, new laptop case. Is this a sign that I need to buy a new Macbook? Or even better yet, that I may win the Twitter contest? Because I would be more than okay with that.

Take 4: Since I didn’t have Julia to read in the car, I finished Reasons to Believe by John Marks. I have to say that the ending was VERY powerful, and I respect Marks for his integrity - he does not believe in Jesus, he doesn’t believe it’s possible that a good God exists at all, allowing us to experience so much suffering, and so whenever he encounters an evangelical Christian who wants him to make a decision and get saved RIGHT NOW, he refuses to pretend, refuses to go through the motions just so someone else’s conscience will be assuaged. Yet, like many of the people he interviewed, I am perplexed by the fact that he just CANNOT believe in God. I mean, I know that the world is full of suffering, and it pisses me off and confuses me too, but I’ve never taken that as proof positive that God isn’t real. Maybe that makes me small-minded? I don’t much care. Though my conclusions about God and the universe and the meaning of life are different from Marks’, I still really enjoyed his book and have to give him two thumbs up for it.

Take 5: Last night, after packing until midnight, I watched He’s Just Not That Into You with my brother’s girlfriend Chrissy. I’ve been wanting to see this move since I first heard it was in the works, because I LOVED the sobering, tough-love brutality of the book. The movie was good, but the ending was a cliched happily-ever-after, and the WHOLE POINT of the book was to scare women straight off that unrealistic bull. Don’t get me wrong, I DO believe in happy endings, but I also believe that mixed signals are usually very clear signals that HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU, and the screenwriters seemed to think that compromising that message was necessary just so they could fit into the romantic comedy mold.

Take 6: Because of the many hours of packing and the late movie, I did not get to bed until just before 3 a.m. I woke up at ten past 6 this morning. So far I’ve only had a thirty-minute nap in the car. I’m probably just running on adrenaline fumes at this point, and that’s okay. I’ll sleep good tonight.

Take 7: And now for the audience participation part of the show - what’s the longest you’ve gone without sleep? (Yeah, I kinda stole this from a recent LiveJournal Question of the Day. Whatever. As if there’s anything new or original on the internet any more.) I’ve only ever stayed up all night long once, to complete a work assignment. I have skated through MANY days on just two or three hours of sleep, though. It is not something I care to do on a regular basis any more.

K, y’all, have a lovely weekend and be good!

Oh my goodness, Smoochagator fans, I am SO SORRY for abandoning you for nearly a week! Let’s see, on Monday and Tuesday I was having memoir anxiety - I had yet to hit my stride with my WIP, which is odd for me - I almost always manage to find a groove about a paragraph in each day, and this project was falling flat on its face with every single sentence. And when I started thinking that perhaps the book I feel I was born to write wasn’t going to be written after all, I just didn’t want to write AT ALL, especially not some stinkin’ movie review for my website that no one reads. (This is not my grasp of reality talking, mind you, it’s my writerly self-loathing. I know that all too many of you understand.)

Wednesday I decided to just start over again, which of course wasn’t a good idea, because if I started over completely every time I was attacked by doubt, I’d never, ever finish a story, or a blog post, or even a SENTENCE. Ill-advised though it was, starting over and going in a different direction was the best thing I could have done. It’s still a first draft, but it’s a good first draft, and I’m feeling stronger every time I add to it.

I also decided on Wednesday that I needed some accountability to keep writing, as well as some feedback and validation along the way. The few times that I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo, I posted my daily wordcount to my livejournal, and got TONS of support and positive feedback. That kept me going. So I’m doing the same thing with my memoir, and just knowing that people are reading along, and (virtually) walking this journey of remembrance with me, gives me an incentive to sit down every day and write.

But I find that after I squeeze my heart and soul into my memoir project, I don’t have much left over for a coherent blog post. (I’m still posting to my livejournal, because God knows I’m RARELY coherent there.) So my website has gotten dusty, and I’m terribly sorry. Hopefully as this project progresses I’ll figure out a way to divide my time and energy, because blogging is so important to me. (More on that later, I think…)

Anyway, I promised movie reviews, so here you go:

The Day The Earth Stood Still was a disaster movie with a decidedly environmentalist bent, much like The Happening was a horror sci-fi movie with a decidedly environmentalist bent. What can I say about a disaster movie that’s ably acted and has lots of cool special effects, other than the fact that everyone did their job well? No disaster movie is created to win an Oscar; their whole purpose in life is to make moviegoers scream, “Holy shit!” and “Oooh, pretty!” Both of which I screamed as I watched TDTESS. Worth a rental, no mistake.

Slumdog Millionaire is a little harder for me to sum up in just a paragraph. Certain points were profoundly touching, others had me rolling with laughter, and others had me saying, “Come ON.” I don’t want to get all spoilery, so let’s just say that the older I get, the more suspicious I am of endings that are too happy. I am, however, still touched by youthful innocence and the triumph of an unlikely hero against all odds. Again, worth a rental. And the soundtrack kicks ASS.

To sum up my thoughts on every other bit of media I’ve consumed in the past week: Kirstie Alley is beautiful at 120 lbs. and 220 lbs. and I wish she could believe that; House is my new favorite TV show, Eat Pray Love is just as good the fourth time you read it as it was the first time, and Golddigger is a fantastically addictive song. (That last statement might have the Feminist Police coming for my F Card, but oh well.)

So that’s where I’m at, and I promise I’ll be around here more. Forgive me?

The cold bug is still perched resolutely at the base of my throat, gleeful in the amount of phlegm he’s managed to generate, but I’m quite certain he’ll be moving along soon. He does have plenty of other people to afflict with his snotty brand of torture, so he can’t chill with me for too long. Quotas and all that, you understand.

More annoying than the state of my sinus cavities is the fact that my car wouldn’t start this morning. I had a sneaking suspicion that my battery was not long for this world - and considering I haven’t had to replace it in the four and a half years I’ve owned the car, I’m really quite lucky I’ve made it this far - I just would have rather it died on a weekend, not on a Tuesday when I was ready to leave for work. (On time, even!)

*sigh* This stuff never happens when it’s convenient, right?

But I promised you a movie review, and so I’m delivering. Employee of the Month, starring Matt Dillon, Christina Applegate, and Steve Zahn. In one word: surprising. I had a coupon for a free “Blockbuster favorite” and couldn’t find one of the half dozen comedies I wanted to rent, so I picked this up. I vaguely remembered hearing good things about it when it was released, so I thought I’d give it a try. I am so glad I did.

Within the first five minutes, I was intrigued. The movie opens on a city bus in L.A. David Walsh (Matt Dillon) is getting all freaky philosophical on us about how he had everything and now he has nothing and that’s why what he’s about to do makes so much sense. But first we have to find out what’s happened to him over the past day and a half to bring him to this point. I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next, and I had a sneaking suspicion that my husband would LOVE the movie. (He had been watching with me, but when all the previews turned out to be B-movie-licious, he decided to find something better to do.) So I called him back in, rewound the first scene, and we settled in to laugh our asses off and be thoroughly amazed by the twists & turns David’s story took us on.

Christina Applegate is so endearing at David’s fiancee, Sara. Who would have thought that Kelly Bundy would end up having such a dramatic range? Sara embodies everything that David dreams of being, having: success, love, respect, security. David’s best friend, Jack (Steve Zahn), however, is everything David was and wants to forget: self-centered and criminally irresponsible. The two of them pull at David - Sara, subtley, Jack, blatantly - until the pressure of their expectations and his own pushes David over the edge. But not in the way you’d think.

There were several moments during the movie that caused my husband and I to cock our heads to the side and wondered aloud, “Buh?” Thankfully, all the loose ends are neatly woven back into the plot and even peripheral characters become significant. (Think Tarantino, but with less blood, and everything really DOES make sense at the end.) David and Jack’s relationship managed to bring together the basest of humor and the deepest reflection, so the movie never becomes too raunchy or too depressing. Employee of the Month is trippy, it’ll make you reexamine all the things you assumed were true about life and love and work. But it’s (mostly) a good trip. It’s the kind of movie I’d love to watch over & over again, and make anyone who visits my house sit down and watch, so they can love it as much as I do.

I’ve wanted to see this movie since before its release; I read the New York Times review and was intrigued by the plot. Synopsis: good college girl Maya (Rosario Dawson) is date-raped. After the assault, she goes (metaphorically) to a Very Scary Place. The next time she encounters her assailant, Jared (Chad Faust), she seizes the opportunity to humiliate and wound him just as he did her.

As I mentioned on Twitter last night, this movie was not so much shocking as it was sad. I figured out from the Times’ broad hints (and the movie’s original NC-17 rating) how Maya exacted revenge against Jared. I knew that the scene where Jared (a white man) rapes Maya (whose dark skin and full lips suggest to him an “exotic heritage”) would be difficult to watch not only because of the physical but also the racial brutality. What I really wanted to see was the transformation that Maya goes through, how she internalized the crime committed against her.

My main problem with the movie is that I had a difficult time accepting Rosario Dawson as a naive coed - not only because of her age, but because she plays her character with such maturity and grace. (When I was in college, I did not meet many 20-year-olds who were mature or graceful. Most of us were falling apart.) The Maya that we meet in the opening scenes is too confident to have anything to do with a scrawny, self-important football player, but for some inscrutable reason, she accepts an invitation to his home. And though she strikes me as the kind of woman who’s taken a self-defense class or two, who would report the crime just on principle, she chooses to suffer in silence. She is fractured into two different people: an ice queen who sublimates her rage through in the repetitive functions of a retail summer job, and lady of the night who seeks through drug use and random sexual encounters some semblance of the power she lost to Jared.

During Maya’s descent, however, Dawson’s performance truly shines. Maya’s inner struggle is never named or explained, but is evident in the nuance of each movement and choice she makes. It’s not until the final scene of the movie that we realized how broken Maya is. I don’t think Maya even realized it until the moment of revenge.

Stylistically, the movie is an exercise in restraint, so that watching Maya’s life unfold is a painfully beautiful experience. Some scenes are stark and cold, without any sound to buffer the viewer. Others are scored with wicked music that is almost as intoxicating as the drinks Maya consumes. Don’t watch Descent unless you are ready to fall down the rabbit hole with Maya, and you’re certain you can find your way back up.

I’m roughly halfway through my workweek and glad of it; today should be the last of our cold weather for awhile, which makes me VERY happy. I hope you’re enjoying your Wednesday!

Random annoying thing of the day: I need new clothes. A great deal of what I own is either worn out or doesn’t fit. Although shopping is one of my favorite things to do, clothes shopping is toward the bottom of my list.

The same thing happened when I finished Expecting Adam that ALWAYS happens when I finish a book I love: I wanted to find another book to read, right away, even though I knew I might not find one I loved quite as much. My mother sent me Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult a couple of weeks ago, so I pulled that out. Jodi’s a great old standy-by; I always enjoy her books because they’re suspenseful and emotional. The only problem is they’re an incredibly easy read, and I’ll probably be done with this one in the next day or two and have to find something else to read. Perhaps I’ll check PaperBack Swap for Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, since my husband and I watched the movie last night and I LOVED it.

Movie Review: No County for Old Men (Warning: spoilers ahead!)

Though my husband was pissed off at the ending (he’s of the opinion that in movies, the Bad Guy Gets Caught, and that’s that) I felt that it was incredibly satisfying. Sure, I was sad that Llewelyn Moss didn’t live happily ever after with his wife and the $2 million, but that would have been way too after-school-special-perfect-ending. I kind of nodded along in the final scenes, thinking, “Yup, we all saw that coming.”

Tommy Lee Jones was the PERFECT actor to cast as Ed Tom Bell, a sherriff who’s seen so much shit go down he’s beginning to wonder what the hell is wrong with people. What saves him from going completely mad is that he’s still able to distance himself from the crimes he’s witnessed, viewing them with mix of curiosity and astonishment. It’s probably a good thing that he retires at the end of the movie, because many more crazy assholes like Anton Chigurh might put Ed Tom in a padded room.

Speaking of Anton: it’s been a long time since a villian unsettled me as much as he did. The scene in the gas station, where he’s baiting the scared store owner while tossing peanuts into his mouth, made my skin crawl. He reminded me very much of John Doe from Seven, the craziest of all crazy scary asshole movie characters, someone whose actions made me want to say, “Stop the earth, I’m getting off, this place is nuts.”

Now back to the ending that upset my husband so much: normally I’m not a fan of having a character sum everything up for us at the end. For instance, in Mystic River, when Laura Linney was telling Sean Penn how he was a king and he protected his family and it was the right thing to do, all I could think was, “Blah blah blah shut the hell up.” The whole point of a weird, unsettling movie is for the audience to draw their own conclusions. Interpreting the meaning of the movie for the audience in the last five minutes is like selling copies of Wuthering Heights with the Cliff’s Notes stapled to the back cover.

Well, luckily, the dreams that Ed Tom expresses at the end of No Country give us just a hint at the the answer to, “What the hell was THAT all about?” I didn’t feel talked down to, I felt like I was let in on a secret. Ed Tom’s dream of his deceased father going ahead into the darkness carrying fire likely meant that Ed Tom was coming to terms with his own mortality. His father had gone ahead to prepare a place for him; perhaps Ed Tom was even thinking of the Bible verse where Jesus says he’ll prepare a home in heaven for his followers.

In the same way that his father had gone ahead of Ed Tom into the afterlife, he’d also preceded him as a law enforcement officer. I got the feeling that Ed Tom’s father had been killed in the line of duty. Perhaps Ed Tom was beginning to understand that the world wasn’t going to hell in a handbasket; rather, hell is often here on earth. Though several of the characters in the movie lamented the increase of violence and rebellion, I believe that they were only becoming more aware of human nature. And yes, it is unsettling to find that you’ve been surrounded by this darkness all along, but so were those who went before us. Thankfully, they show us a path to follow, and carry a fire to illuminate the cold dark night.