System Shutdown

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Vanessa

We had a power outage last weekend, for about forty hours. It’s one of the hazards of living so far out in the sticks, I guess. Happens all the time. You get used to it. When the power came back on we realized that our modem had fried. So I went without the interwebs for a week. I chose to look at is as a sort of fun social experiment, tricking my brain into thinking outside the internet box. I was too broke for internet access for years, so this is not entirely alien to me. But I’ve definitely gotten so used to it that going without is weird, and a little bit of a pain in the ass.

However, I think there’s great merit in this disconnect. In those two days that we were without electricity, I read three books. So that was awesome (and I have much to say about all of them so stay tuned). And then, when my tv was working again, I spent a couple of days revisiting some of my old movies that we have on DVD. I’ve been watching so much weird shit online just because I have access to it now, that I haven’t really been thinking too much about the movies I already know and love. I haven’t watched this many movies that I can recite word for word in a long time. It’s cool to go back and look at them again, especially all in a marathon like this. Here’s the thing about “favorite” movies, though: they’re not necessarily “good” movies. I think a lot of what we get out of loving movies is their familiarity, possibly even a little dose of nostalgia.

There’s a certain category of films that I particularly enjoy, that I call “day in the life” movies. If they were television shows, they would be called “bottle episodes.” They’re self-contained by time and circumstance. The Breakfast Club, Clerks, Ferris Bueller, Nowhere, Dazed and Confused, even Texas Chainsaw Massacre (sort of). And incidentally, they’re cheap to make because there aren’t many changes in costume or sets, so a lot of indie films have this format by default. But convincingly moving the plot along that quickly can get deep into cheesy territory with no way out. I also have a deep and abiding love for ensemble movies, which tend to go south when there’s a weak link in the group. There’s a big difference between bad comedy and bad drama, though. People seem to accept bad comedy as a matter of course these days. If it’s got dick jokes or slapstick it will still make money. But bad drama, especially if it’s any sort of genre film, gets panned and railed endlessly in the media. Maybe we just hold those movies to a higher standard, or are more offended when we’re not taken seriously as an audience.

Having said all that, I still maintain that a lot of bad movies are worth watching. Take, for example, Empire Records, which was the first in my lineup. I fucking love this movie. And I’m really not sure what its status is. I know a lot of people have seen it, like it, and can even quote it, but what does that mean? Is that just because all my friends have seen it and it’s a group dynamic taste appreciation thing? Could it actually be a cult classic? Is it merely a touchstone of the 90s, a time capsule, and dear to us because we associate it with our youth? Or was it a huge hit and everyone saw it and somehow I missed that because I lived in a very small town with no movie theater or cable when it came out? I don’t know. It’s not a fantastic film, but I don’t think it was ever trying to be. But it’s populated with lovable misfits perpetrating shenanigans, has a great soundtrack, and is irrefutably quotable. (“Do you know where Harvard is, man? It’s full of big blonde guys who eat ivy and row boats” is one of the all-time best lines of dialogue. Ever.) I think the thing that makes this movie endearing, though, is our identification with that sense of community that comes from working with a weird group of people. You get thrown into these situations with strangers and you’re forced to get to know them very quickly and rely on them very heavily. It’s forced socializing, working retail. Those scheming corporate motherfuckers, making me all come out of my shell and shit. As much as I hated the Giant Evil Bookstore, I really do love most of the folks I worked with there. Even if some of them are jerks. Yes, that’s a sappy thing to say. Doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Anyway, Empire Records. It’s in my all-time top five favorites, ridiculous as it is.

Next up, Airheads. Holy bad movie, y’all. Brendan Fraser catches a lot of shit for doing bad movies, but I don’t think he’s actually a bad actor. School Ties, Gods and Monsters, and Twenty Bucks were all great. Outside of the realm of the absurd, though (ie, Monkeybone), I think he should probably steer clear of comedy. Just doesn’t have the delivery chops, you know? Anyway, Airheads is, despite its ham and cheese, surprisingly well written, and has an outstanding cast. Steve Buscemi, Judd Nelson, Michael McKean, Joe Mantegna, plus a ton of bit parts and cameos (Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Chris Farley and motherfucking Lemmy Kilmister). It’s another one of those movies that’s positively soaking in music references. I love that, in general, but in this case it’s exactly what dates this movie so, so badly. These dudes are a very specific type of metalhead, caught in the 90s wasteland between hair metal and industrial, men without a decade. They hate the Beatles as much as they hate grunge. This movie does have heart, even if it’s hamfisted and clumsy. The guys in the band just want to make the music that they feel is missing from the mainstream. That is undoubtedly a noble pursuit. But if this movie had been made even five years later, they would have had the internet at their disposal and wouldn’t have had to go to such lengths to get their voice heard or their record made. Plus, it’s a bit of a caper, in a way, before devolving into a hostage situation. And I love a good caper. It’s like a frolic, but with crime. Delightful.

I can only do about two goofy comedies before my brain turns to mush and I begin to drool. So, onward and upward to atmospheric horror. Ish.

Session 9 was the last movie I can remember that actually scared me. (The first was Se7en. Weird, that, the numbers thing. Are numbers scary? I think so, yes. Admittedly, I was thirteen when Se7en came out. But you have to concede that serial killers are way fucking scarier than demons or monsters or whatever fake bullshit people use for baddies in their makem-ups.) So, you know how I have this thing for abandoned mental hospitals? Maybe you don’t. I think I’ve really only mentioned it in passing. But I’m endlessly fascinated by them. Hospitals in general, but mental hospitals in particular. If I believed in ghosts, those are the places where I would start looking for them. This was filmed at the Danvers State Insane Asylum in Massachusetts. Which was later turned into condos. That is the shit that nightmares are made of, my friends. Icky. Also? Disembodied, creepy voices weird me out pretty hard. And Session 9 is full of them. I get the all-overs just thinking about it. This movie is super extra B-grade, maybe even lower. But it’s still very well done, given what they had to work with. Brad Anderson has a real eye for horror, which he puts to good use in his later, non-horror, work (Fringe, Alcatraz, The Machinist). The whole time I was expecting the bad thing to be some predictable, formulaic horror movie trope. Some ghost, some alien, blah blah blah, and was pleasantly shocked and appalled at what it actually was. Awesome. That happens so rarely. And they held off the conclusion until…wait for it…the conclusion. That, too, happens rarely these days. Every movie seems to have an extraneous epilogue, or a tag that could lead to a sequel just so the studio can cover their ass if it actually does well. They want to turn every fucking thing into a franchise. Annoying. The only thing that puts this in the “bad movie” category is how B it is. This could have been a great film if they’d had a bigger budget and not hired David Caruso (and then made his character constantly smoke weed – seriously, what the hell?). Such potential.

So, what’s the point here? I guess I’m just telling you to not feel bad about loving horrible movies. You like what you like and there’s no getting around that. Like that awful one-hit-wonder song that you belt out at the top of your lungs, but quickly turn off when someone else comes in the room. Also, I wholeheartedly endorse completely shutting down your internet connection every once in a while. Turn off all your devices. You’ll feel trapped for a minute. Do not panic. Take a walk. Sit in the sun. Grab a beer with your buddies (no phones allowed!). Go read a book. Or watch a movie you’ve already seen. This thing we do, this obsession with newnewnew moremoremore, is probably bad for us in the long run. It desensitizes us a little, I think, and lessens our enjoyment of everything.

Enthusiasm! (With a dash of pure terror…)

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Vanessa

Once upon a time, I promised I’d post a short story up here on the blog. Well, that day has come, my friends. After much sweaty fumbling, I’ve finally slapped this thing into some sort of acceptable shape. Whether it’s actually as good as it could be or not, I’m happy with it and I’m done fucking around with it for now. Keep in mind that I usually write science fiction, so real people (whatever that means) are very difficult for me. But the process of writing it was extra double-plus fun. Many, many thanks to the amazing Meg Zinky for giving it a proper editorial scrubbing. And thanks to all of you for indulging me. Also, sorry the paragraphs are weird. This thing won’t let me use the tab key like a tab key. I’ll work on it. Anyway, here you go. I’m going to go drink heavily now. Cheers. And hugs. Oh, so very many hugs.

Deadline

WEDNESDAY

And there, finally, was the dragon. His nemesis. The foul creature that he’d been chasing for months across this vast and now devastated land. It sat mocking him with its nonchalance, as though it had been waiting all along for him to simply catch up and prove his worth.
He unsheathed his sword, seeing that its silver glint of magical sharpness fade as he lost his strength…

Sean slammed his head down on the desk. “Magical sharpness?” Slam. “Fuck. Ow.” He looked at the cat and said, “Shut up, you.”
“Sean, I’m offended that you assume my first response would be a snarky comment,” said the cat, and proceeded to lick his own asshole in cat-like retaliation. He watched Sean dejectedly get ready for work and dejectedly leave the apartment and, through the window, dejectedly walk down the street.
Sean walked the same route, every day, to work. He stopped for a coffee at the corner diner at 9:15. He waved to the old lady at the newsstand at 9:20. Sean had habits, a predictable routine. Sean was prime real estate for stalkers. But Sean wrote fantasy stories about dragons and had a shitty job at his brother’s record store. He was probably too boring to stalk. He walked into Dave’s Records, setting off the horrible brass bell above the door, at 9:27.
“Sean! Did you kill your dragon?”
“Fuck no, Dave, I did not.”
“Drag. Tomorrow, maybe.”
“Maybe.” Sean threw his jacket and utilitarian manbag in the cubby behind the counter and clocked in. Dejectedly.
“What do you think? Magic sword? Awesome spell? What?”
“I guess we’ll both just have to see, Dave. That seems to be the problem, right?”
“Yeah, man,” Dave paused to contemplate the plight of the modern American novelist. Or the nature of the universe. Or something. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Thanks for your support, Dave.”
“Dude, seriously? Anytime. You know how I feel about the prospect of dragons run rampant.”
“I do, Dave. I really do. You’ve made it abundantly and supportively clear.”
“I try, man. Want to see you get that bastard. Hey, could you do me a favor and change the music? Seems like folks are a little agro today. Maybe a little easy listening for their lunchtime activities?”
“It’s nine thirty in the morning. And you’re playing The Stooges.”
“It’s only nine thirty? That explains everything. Switch it up, something happy. And then open all that new stuff that came in yesterday.”
“Sure thing.” Sean walked to the back of the store and put on The Mamas and the Papas. He drank his coffee. He opened boxes with a razor blade and hated his life a little more.
Not that Sean’s life of routine was entirely joyless. It was Wednesday, payday, which meant he went to the bar after work. It was a personal rule. Get money, pay rent, drink heavily. Ideally, in that order. May’s was a hulking monstrosity, a stereotype of a bar. The sort of bar that would, in a movie, be built by aliens to fool some captive Earthlings. But the aliens had only ever watched television and never really been in a bar. Sean loved it. He ordered a beer, drained it, then asked May for another.
“So how’s it going, Sean? Did you slay the timorous beastie?”
“Fuck no, May, I did not.”
“Well why the hell not, man? Didn’t that demon fire spell casting thing work?”
“Demon orb. Nope. Didn’t work.”
“No?”
“No. Because the main element in the potion was gold, and, as I have explained to you…”
“Dragons eat gold. Right. Makes sense. So what? You changed the potion? You started over back at the village?”
“No, going up the road to the hill. All the village stuff can stay. I really liked spearing that one barkeep through the eye.”
“Yeah, I love that bit.”
“You know she’s you, right?”
“Of course I know she’s me, you great ass. That’s why I love it. I like thinking that I can be immortalized in literature.”
“No one will know it’s you but me and you.”
“Fuck do I care? Probably no one will read it but me and you, either.” She laughed like a cannon, loud and booming. It was a great laugh. “You want a shot today or no?”
“Give me a minute. Maybe.”
Sean sat sipping his beer. Expertly. With aplomb. The bell above the door tinkled. Why all these goddamn bells? Where did this tradition come from and how can we put a stop to it?
“Can I get you something, darling?” May said to the girl who stood blinking in the dim. Darling is what she called people who weren’t regulars, and they were few and far between. Sean looked up to examine this infiltrator. Who dared to interrupt his afternoon of sadness and alcohol abuse?
“Beer, please, something dark. And a shot of Maker’s Mark back.”
“Sure thing.”
Odd. Even more odd, the girl took a seat next to him rather than the conventionally polite seat one or two away.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said back. How terribly, terribly odd.
“May, I’ll take that shot now, if you’ve got a second?” Sean said.
“I live to serve, my liege.”
“Thank you, smartass.”
“You spear me through the eye and smartass is what you’re going to get, mister.” May put the young lady’s beverages down on the bar and walked away, smirking. The newcomer looked confused.
“She doesn’t look like she’s been speared through the eye,” she said, once May was out of earshot.
“Most days, no, she doesn’t.” He cleared his throat. This part was always difficult. “Actually, I’m writing a novel and I based one of the characters on her.”
“A character whose face you chose to disfigure with a very sharp weapon.”
“Yes.”
“Not out of hatred for this nice lady, surely.”
“Of course not.”
“So you’re a regular here.”
“Um, yeah. Why?”
“Why would you tell a perfect stranger that you’d put them in your novel?”
“I wouldn’t, I guess.” He sipped his beer during the awkward pause, then stuck out his hand. “I’m Sean.”
“Lydia.”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
They shook. May brought his shot and he gulped it down. She gave Sean a look which was positively dripping with meaning, nodding toward the girl. Again with the smirk.
“So, Lydia. What’s your story?”
“My story?”
“Yeah. What’s your deal? What brings you here to this dingy drinking establishment, to which you have clearly never been, on a lovely Wednesday afternoon? Circumstances must have stacked up somehow.”
“Indeed, Sean, they did.” Heavy sigh. She took her shot and placed the glass back on the bar, upside-down. Bartender in a past life, Sean thought. “Yes, indeed. Well.” Another sigh. “I’m an artist. And I took it upon myself to peddle my wares on this glorious day. And failed. Miserably. Therefore I am drinking at five o’clock on a lovely Wednesday afternoon in a dingy drinking establishment with a gentleman I just met and his delightful cohort. Thank you, May,” she said as May dropped off a second shot and walked away. What is it, some secret bartender language? She didn’t even ask for a second shot. May did not acknowledge that the newcomer knew her name.
“Interesting,” Sean said.
“Is it?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“I mean, what about that particular string of sentences interests you, Sean? Because from my end it’s looking pretty dismal and I’d like to see some silver glint of hope here. Right?”
Silver glint.
“Well. I’m a writer. I tend to find artsy people interesting. It’s a quirk. I’m working on it. What sort of art do you do?”
“Pfft. Who cares? No one in this neighborhood, I can tell you that.”
“Dude. All you know about me is that we both drink whiskey and I write books about stabbing bartenders through the eyes. Give.”
“Speared. You speared her through the eye, not stabbed. It’s a fine line, but an important one.”
“Acknowledged. Give.”
Lydia smiled, sipped her beer, and narrowed her eyes at Sean. She seemed to be sizing him up somehow. Maybe she wasn’t, but he certainly felt sized up.
“Comic books.”
“Do what now?”
“I write and draw comic books.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“The chances are pretty good. You, sir, spear innocent barkeeps through their eyes.” She drained her beer, threw money on the bar, winked at Sean and walked out the door. Odd, that.

THURSDAY

And there, finally, was the dragon. His nemesis. The foul creature that he’d been chasing for months across this vast and now devastated land. It sat mocking him with its shimmery nonchalance, as though it had been waiting all along for him to simply catch up and prove his worth.
He uncapped his potion, hoping that the gypsy hadn’t lied to him about its powerful and unholy origins…

“You can’t say ‘gypsy,’ dude,” said the cat.
“Seriously? Again with this?”
“It’s really insensitive to the Roma people and it’s unnecessary. Couldn’t you make it a rogue wizard or something?”
“Oh, how I loathe you.” Sean slammed his head into the desk once more for good measure.
“Hey, don’t loathe me so much you forget to food up my bowl again. When you can’t write, I should still get to eat.”
Sean fed the cat, grabbed his jacket, and left for work. Normally, he worried about the dragon during his long walk. He thought about all the books he’d read, all the movies he’d watched, every dragon he’d ever seen decapitated, disemboweled, defenestrated, flayed, charred, crushed, drowned. It wasn’t the healthiest way to spend his time, but it was an unavoidable occupational hazard. He walked through the door of the record shop, three minutes early, like always.
“Sean! You kill your dragon today?”
“Fuck no, Dave, I did not.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah. Do people actually say that? ‘Bummer’? Really? Still?”
“Well ‘good morning’ to you, too, little brother. Did we enjoy our Cranky Puffs we had for breakfast?”
“Sorry.”
“No worries. Yes, I do in fact say ‘bummer,’ but I’m doing it ironically.”
Sean sighed and made a snap decision. “Listen, Dave, do you care if I take the day off? I’m really not feeling so hot. I thought I’d be fine, but the walk over made me a little puny. I’d love to go home and lay down.”
“Don’t even sweat it. It’s Thursday. We don’t make any money on Thursdays. Go take a snooze. Work on your dragon magic shit.”
“Will do.”
“Awesome. Keep me posted. You think you’ll be in tomorrow?”
“I dunno. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Word.”
“Do people actually say that?”
“Go home, Sean.”
Sean wanted to spend his free morning doing something really radical and different, something that would get the creative juices flowing, something utterly outrageous and out of character. He went to the diner and ate pancakes instead. He read the paper. He did the crossword. No creative juices flowed. And when he left, he really meant to go home and get some work done. But somewhere around the sixth block, he inexplicably started heading toward the bar. May was just wiping down the bar top when he walked in.
“May, can I have a beer?”
“It’s Thursday.”
“Is there no beer on Thursdays?”
“There is for other people. You come here on Wednesdays. It’s payday. And the universally accepted day of self-loathing.”
“So, you won’t give me a beer?”
“At eleven in the morning? I will. But I won’t feel good about it.”
“I’m fine with that. And why are you open at eleven in the morning if you don’t want people to drink in the morning?”
“It is not my job to moralize.”
“And yet, we quibble.”
“Sit down.” She poured him a beer and stood, hand on hip, watching him drink it. “So, you’re drinking for a reason today?” she finally said.
“Not really. I faked sick and left work. I can’t sleep. I don’t eat right. I can’t kill my stupid dragon.”
“Stupid dragon.”
“Stupid. Fucking. Dragon.”
“So it’s that writer’s curse drinking, then? You’re doing it to finish the thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Jesus, kid. You know how your people can’t get by without the occasional bout of heavy, stupid drinking, yeah? Hemingway. Poe. King. Burroughs.”
“That one was heroin, but okay. Sure.”
“Writer’s drinking. Once you’re out the other end you can finish the story. Neatly. Cleanly. Perhaps right before killing yourself. Natural born drinkers, you writers. Lubricates the brain or something.”
“True enough.” He was quiet for a minute, spinning his glass around and around, watching the bubbles march neatly from bottom to top. Fuck it. ”Hey, May?”
“Sean?”
“Line ‘em up.”
Sean was not a hard drinker. A frequent drinker, true, but he rarely set out with the intention of getting hammered. He didn’t even use the word “hammered” that often. But armed with a bellyful of pancakes, he decided to systematically become very, very drunk. His writer’s brain seemed to see this as an adventure, an experiment, an exercise in existence appreciation. It accepted this new challenge with enthusiasm. He had never spent this much time in the bar before. People came and went. People who drank on a different schedule than he did, who were obviously regulars and yet were unfamiliar. May tried to teach him card tricks. He pumped quarter after quarter into the jukebox. It was a very interesting day.
“You know what I hate, May?”
“What?”
“That goddamn bell on the door. Why’s there all these bells all the time? You can see the door. From right there where you’re standing. I know you can see it. You do not need a bell, May. And it sounds weird. Why’s it sound so weird?”
“Because apparently you drink on Thursdays now.”
“Urm. Yeah. Okay. ‘The Thursday Bell.’ That’d make a good title. If I didn’t hate the bells so much.” A fuzzy girl-shaped thing took the seat next to him. Why does that keep happening?
“Hey, Sean.”
“Oh, hey…Lydia! Your name is Lydia, and you are an artist.”
“That’s true. Why you so wobbly there, Sean?” she asked, steadying him on his barstool.
“Because of all these former beers that were here earlier. I’ve been here all day long. May! Would you get Lydia please a beer please? Whereya been, artist?”
“Doing artisty things.”
“That is not a word.”
“It’s not?”
“Nope. Don’t think so. Hey, do you have a quarter?”
“Sean, I swear to god if you play that David Bowie song one more time I will call your brother and tell on you,” May said, putting Lydia’s glass down out of the range of Sean’s wandering elbows.
“Tattle tale. Tattler of tales,” he said. He stuck his tongue out at her. Lydia laughed, so he stuck his tongue out at her, too.
“So you played hooky today, did you?” Lydia asked.
“Oh, hooky has been played, my friend. Much hooky was had by all. What are you doing here? Again, I mean? Two days in a row.”
“Trying to get the bookstore down the street to sell my comics.”
“Tell me about your comics.”
“Some other time, when you’re not quite so close to falling down.”
“You know, I do feel a bit like I want to pass out. Now that you mention it.”
“I think you should.”
“But I want to hang out with you. You’re an awfully pretty artist. And I like how your hair’s all held up with a pen there. A pen. So you’re always ready.”
“Thank you. Maybe we can hang out another day.”
“It’s a date.”
“It’s definitely not a date.”
“Damn it.”
“Go home, Sean. I’ll get May to call you a cab.”
“I can walk.”
“You sure?”
“Pfft. Am I sure? You watch me.” He stood up, quickly reconsidered standing up, and sat back down. “Okay, not so sure anymore.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Let’s go. Cab ahoy.”

FRIDAY

And there, finally, was the dragon. His nemesis. The foul creature that he’d been chasing for months across this vast and now devastated land. It sat mocking him with its scaly nonchalance, as though it had been waiting all along for him to simply catch up and prove his worth.
He squinted and wobbled in the dragon’s general direction. “Damn this sunlight! I can’t see anything! I shouldn’t have taken that mental acuity potion! It was poison!”

“I hate my life.”
“I hate your life, too,” said the cat. “Hey, you want to feed me before you go off to enjoy your hangover?”
“You’re stuck with me today, buddy.”
“You and me and the dragon? One big happy family?”
“Yep. Calling out sick.”
“Good for you.” The cat watched him walk towards the phone, then had to duck out of the way when Sean switched directions and sprinted to the bathroom instead. “Nice fakeout there. You almost stepped on me,” he said when Sean came out, sweaty and a little shaky.
“You earned it.” He picked up the phone and dialed the store.
“Dave’s Vinyl, Dave speaking, how can Dave help you?”
“Hey, Dave,” Sean croaked.
“Sean! Still sick?”
“Yep.”
“Drag. You staying home?”
“Yep.”
“Did you kill your dragon this morning?”
“Fuck no, Dave, I did not.”
“Maybe when you’re feeling better. See you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s my day off. I’ll be in on Sunday.”
“Cool. Take care.”
“I will. Thanks.” He hung up and threw the phone blindly at the couch. The cat was edgy now, ready to duck again.
“Good thing you set that one up in advance,” said the cat.
“I know, right? You want some breakfast?”
“Would we be sitting here having a conversation if I did not want breakfast? What good are you to me if there’s no breakfast involved?”
“Excellent point, cat.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He fed the damnable cat and settled in at his computer. The cursor blinked. Sean blinked. The cat blinked. He couldn’t tell if it was the lack of writing or the impending hangover, but time seemed to stand still. It was miserable.

And there, finally, was the dragon. His nemesis. The foul creature that he’d been chasing for months across this vast and now devastated land. It sat, mocking him with its toothy nonchalance, as though it had been waiting all along for him to simply catch up and prove his worth.
And he drew the dead barkeeper’s magic arrow from his quiver…

“Urgh…”

And he summoned the dissolution spell that he’d learned from the dead wizard, that he’d spoken with his dying words…

“God damn it…”

And he recalled the mental image of the mysterious fair maiden, and armed with that strength, ran headlong into the dragon, sword and sense of love and righteousness making him reckless with the will to live…

“Seriously, you need to stop,” the cat said, interrupting.
“What do you mean? I’ve got a whole day off to work on this.”
“Exactly. You’re trying too hard. You’re useless in the middle of the day.”
“Thank you for your feedback.”
“Sure thing.” He watched Sean stare at the screen, at the blinking cursor. “Hey, you know you’ve got a mouse living in your closet?”
“Why?”
“Because apartments are safer than the street?”
“No, why haven’t you killed it?”
“I’m a lover, man, not a fighter.”
“Useless fucking animal.”
“Useless? You can’t even kill an imaginary dragon.”

So he makes it up the hill and there’s the fucking dragon, looking at him all smug and shit like, “What you got, bro? Come at me.” And he charges at the big bastard with this mondo sword that he just stole off a dead guy…

“It’s epic fantasy, Sean, not epic surfing,” said the cat.
“I know. It’s awful.”
“‘Awful’ is the least painful word I would use to describe what you’re doing right now.”

And there, finally, was the dragon. It was wounded and eyed him warily, like any other creature that close to death, baring its teeth and panting. He stopped at the top of the hill and looked at it now, for the first time, as an animal and not as an enemy. It was golden and shining in the sunset’s glow, blood on its wings and claws. How could he possibly kill this beast that had just been following its instincts?

“Absolutely not.”
“Come on! What?”
“You can’t mercy kill the dragon. It’s a cop out.”
“You’re an editor now? Fuck you, cat.”
“No, fuck you for trying to take the easy way out. If you mercy kill the dragon, this whole book is just some stupid morality tale about not hurting little animals.”
“It’s not so little…”
“You should get out of here for a while. You’ve been staring at the screen too long. Your eyes are crossed. Well, more crossed than normal.”
“I’ll show you hurting little animals, you fuzzy bastard.”
He wandered aimlessly around the apartment for a while. He put on music. He turned the music off. He took a shower and put on a clean shirt. He straightened up his books. He fretted. He had no friends to invite over. Except Dave, and the last time Dave came by the neighbors bitched at him about the hallway smelling like hippies for a week. I need to get a life. Where does one get a life? He cooked himself dinner and tried to read a book for a while. He checked his email. He paced.
“Fine! I’m leaving! Happy?” He glared at the cat with the purest hatred one can feel for a cat who’s always right, grabbed his jacket and slammed the door. Having nowhere else to go, and feeling even more pitiful for it, he headed for the bar.
“Three days in a row, Sean?” said May.
“You should talk. Don’t you ever take a day off?”
“My private life is none of your business, son. Beer?”
“Ugh. Yeah. Please. Thanks.”
“Hair of the dog, eh?”
“Sure, if you want to call it that.”
“Drinking away a hangover? That’s the definition of ‘hair of the dog,’ actually.” She brought him his beer and he winced when the bell over the door rang. Lydia sat down next to him. She smells like old books. Damn it, why’d it have to be old books? She smiled at him, and if he didn’t know any better he would’ve let himself think that she looked him up and down. But he talked himself out of it.
“She returns. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
“It is a stunning string of coincidences, isn’t it? Almost enough to make me think you’ve been sitting here waiting for me.”
“Oh, see, there’s the problem. You assume that my expensive and unhealthy drinking habit is somehow all about you. When, really, it preceded you.”
“Drink, Lydia?”
“Yes, May, thank you.” May seemed to be smirking more than usual. Maybe it’s just her face, maybe that thing moms say about your face getting stuck is true. There’s no humane way to disprove that theory. May winked at Lydia and Lydia winked back.
“You two are awfully chummy.”
“We had a heart-to-heart yesterday while we were waiting for your cab to show up.”
“Glad I could help.”
“Beers for the youth of America,” said May, plonking them down on the bar.
“Thanks.”
“Thanks.”
“So, Sean, tell me about this dragon of yours,” Lydia said.
“Well, he’s big and scaly. Eats gold. Terrorizes villagers. Breathes fire. Pretty standard dragon.”
“So why can’t you kill him?”
“Seems to be the question, doesn’t it?”
“Writer’s block?”
“Nope. I’ve written about forty different endings. I’m not blocked. I’m just producing a lot of crap that I can’t use. I think every possible means of destroying a house-sized lizard has already been explored.”
“Ah, yes. I know the feeling.”
“The bad writing feeling? Or the lizardy feeling?”
“Both.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
“Yes, ‘hmm.’ It’s a general, nonjudgemental acknowledgement of something that a person has just said. It keeps me from having to air an opinion on the thing we were discussing. Clever, right?”
“Not especially.”
“What’s your comic about?”
“It’s kind of a postmodernist story about a broke comic book artist who can’t sell her work.”
“Irony.”
“Wasn’t at the time.” They sipped their beers and fiddled with bar napkins and stared into space, trapped in a bubble of commiseration.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asked, when the pause had become a lull.
“Jeez, another one? You’re killing me with your rapid-fire conversational style, Sean.”
“So for the last two days you’ve been schlepping around the hood trying to sell your stuff, failing miserably…”
“Could’ve gone without saying that part…”
“…and now you’re here, at midnight, what? Drowning your sorrows?”
“Clearly.”
“There aren’t that many bookstores around.”
“There are not.”
“Certainly none that are open this late.”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“So why are you still here?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I like the neighborhood. I like this bar.” A chuckle and shrug. “I met this horribly tortured writer that I’m kind of into.”
“Really?” Sean almost dropped his glass. “Tell me about this gentleman. He sounds fantastic.”
“He’s a drunk. Can’t finish his novel. Pretty worthless. But adorable.”
“Does he happen to have a dead-end job at the record store down the street? The one that reeks of weed?”
“It’s entirely possible.”
“Does he have elaborately verbose conversations with his cat?”
“God, I hope not.”
“It’s a really cute cat, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Okay, forget about the cat. But otherwise, charming, right?” She laughed and waved at May for another beer.
“Do you remember telling me that I’m pretty yesterday?”
“Vaguely.”
“Did you mean to say that? Out loud, I mean?”
“Well. Urm…” He squirmed in his seat. Damn it. I was doing okay. He shredded a coaster on the bar. “Yes, well. I meant to say it. It’s true. I just wish I would’ve said it in a different scenario, when you might have taken me seriously. But I wasn’t expecting to see you, and I’d had a really weird day…”
“You were not at your smoothest.”
“My smoothest is pitiful. I’m glad I got to say it at all.”
“Me, too.”
“And that you didn’t, you know, hit me or anything.”
“Stop squirming.”
“Okay.” He squirmed. “Is that alright? That I said that?”
“Said what?” she asked, eyebrows arched in the loveliest, smelling-like-old-books way possible.
“Yeah, Sean. What’d you say?” asked May, who had materialized out of nowhere.
“Nothing, creepy booze fairy. Nothing at all.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that for a second.” She put another beer in front of Lydia.
“What? I don’t get another one?”
“You didn’t ask for one.”
“Can I please have another beer?”
“Can you please tell this girl that you like her so you’ll stop being a lonely, pathetic wanker and I won’t have to feel bad for you all the time anymore?”
“Yes. I can do that.”
“Alright. Good. I’ll be right back.”
“Thank you.” Those damned eyebrows were still raised. Expectant eyebrows. What a weird quirk of evolution. He cleared his throat and obliterated the rest of the coaster.
“Well. Hmm. Awkward.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
“Yes, ‘hmm.’ We’ve been over this.”
“Right. Well. I think you’re pretty. And I like that you write comics. And that you’re an artist. And I think you’re interesting.”
“Thank you, Sean. I appreciate your honesty.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I think you’re interesting, too.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Um, could we maybe do something sometime?”
“Do you really talk to your cat?”
“Yes. I do. He’s kind of an asshole.”
“Sure.”
“‘Sure’ what?”
“We can do something sometime.”
“Something that doesn’t involve sitting here being chaperoned by May?”
“Absolutely.”
“You want to go for a walk?”
“Yes. Yes I do.” Sean threw money on the bar and they walked out, the bell clanging over their heads.

SATURDAY

And there, finally, was the dragon. His nemesis. The foul creature that he’d been chasing for months across this vast and now devastated land. It sat mocking him with its fire-breathing nonchalance, as though it had been waiting all along for him to simply catch up and prove his worth.

“You know there’s a girl in your bed, right?” asked the cat.
“Yes, I’m aware of that.”
“A very pretty girl. Who smells like books, which is weird.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So what the hell are you doing out here? If you’re not going to feed me?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, either put some kibble in the bowl or kill the dragon or get back in there. Because right now you’re just making me sad.”
“You’re right.”
“I’m hungry, is what I am.”
“There are more important things than dragons.”
“Things like food.”
“This can wait. I’ll figure it out. Thanks, cat.” And Sean went back to bed.

Patton Oswalt, I hate your tiny little guts.

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Vanessa

Okay, that was mean. I’m sure his guts are normal-sized. Sorry.

But goddamn it! He’s just too fucking funny. It ain’t right. I’ve got angst.

Oswalt’s been all over the interwebs lately. First with this piece he wrote about the Boston bombings, and then with this little nugget of awesome. Yeah, that’s right. It is a nine-minute improv performance about combining the Star Wars and Marvel universes into one uber-movie. (Since they’re both owned by Disney now, it would be totally possible. And amazing. Let us all hope that J.J. Abrams takes note.) Oswalt’s done a ton of weird little parts. You may not know you’ve seen his stuff, but you probably have. I recently saw him in Young Adult and I think he was the heart and soul of that movie, even if he wasn’t in it that much. I think I first heard of him when I watched The Comedians of Comedy. Bunch of brilliant, crazy weirdos, those people. Love it.

Anyway, I just read Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, Oswalt’s book. Mind. Blown. I knew he was funny on stage and great on screen. This book, though, is a whole different kind of funny. I really like the way he uses a bunch of different formats: essays, poetry, scripty bits, comics, greeting cards, and (probably my favorite) a wine list. Even the list of “other books by this author” at the beginning is a joke, and a good one. He doesn’t just play around with format or genre, he plays to them, uses their tropes and conventions, which makes everything even funnier.

One thing Oswalt talks about in great detail is the intricacy of surviving nerdism in the 1980s. He’s about the same age as my sister, who is *mumblemumble* years older than me, and through whom I lived an early, vicarious teenagerhood. Bitch made me watch all the Freddy/Jason slasher-type movies and listen to Metallica when I was six, is what I’m trying to say here. It’s probably why I’m so twitchy. And so delightful. Anyway, point is, I get a lot of the references in Oswalt’s book, but there’s definitely a little bit of a generation gap as far as group enjoyment or cultural appreciation of those things goes. My generation didn’t get that stuff when it was new and being hyped in the media, so we had to discover it later on our own. Much like we did with Star Wars or Led Zeppelin or chat rooms. His R.E.M. experience was my Nine Inch Nails experience. Either way, there are so many references to books and music and movies here that I’m going to be busy for quite a while looking them all up. Good times.

The book is simultaneously memoir and pop culture commentary. It’s interesting, and very well done. He talks a lot about being a nerd and nerdy stuff, but all that stuff? That’s life stuff. Those books and movies and games and people made him what he is. It’s all inseparable, it’s all one thing. Seamless. And where he could have gotten angsty or whiny about it, instead he seems to really value all that stuff, all those experiences, and it comes across as pure enthusiasm. It’s pretty touching. His putting a positive spin on these potentially bottom-of-the-barrel moments is fucking impressive. “At least I learned something” or “It made me want something better” or “It could’ve been worse, so I wrote a script about the worst possible scenario and made a ton of money.” Dude’s an inspiration, whether that was his intention or not.

And it makes me raging jealous.

I was talking to a friend the other night and she said something about how what I write on my blog makes me seem like I’m just this one thing. Like it’s a character I’m doing or that I’m cherry-picking aspects of my personality to show here. And to a point, that’s true. Mostly for the sake of the writing. Picking a nerdy pop culture thing to talk about and then expanding that conversation into a bigger idea gives me something to nail the bigger idea to. It gives me an in, a reason. Maybe that makes me a hack or whatever, but it also keeps me reined in so I don’t go off all half-cocked about every little thing. Could I talk about non-geek stuff here? Well yeah, it’s my space. But I think putting bigger issues into the context of these small cultural things makes both more interesting, doesn’t it? All art is just a reflection of the culture that created the people who made the art, and then that art becomes a part of the culture, so the people change and grow, and then we get new and exciting art. It’s a vicious, beautiful cycle.

Sure, I could wax philosophical about something else. I find a lot of things interesting. Politics, religion, gender issues, economics, abandoned mental hospitals, etc, etc. Could I talk about, say, the war or socialized health care or right-wing theocracy on the blog? I could. It would probably be boring. Whereas if I put it sideways, tell it slant, maybe slip it into an analysis of dystopianism via scifi or horror, you’ll already be paying attention and when I get boring and ranty, perhaps you won’t notice quite so quickly. But I guess assuming that I have to have some nerd bait to lure you in to my discussion trap is pretty shitty of me. It underestimates you as an audience, so I’m sorry if it seems like I do that. I should be able to just go off about whatever for no reason, even if it is boring. And if you don’t like it, it’s only a thousand words. You can click away and come back next week. It’ll be ok. No hard feelings.

Meanwhile, if you have a single comedy-loving bone in your body, check out Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. It’s incredible. And if you don’t know Patton Oswalt’s standup stuff, you should watch My Weakness is Strong! or No Reason to Complain. He’s a genius. An itty bitty genius. Damn it.

And Archimedes wept…

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Vanessa

Oh, Eureka. How you disappoint me so.

The show, not the town. The show about the town in the show. By which I mean: I’m not talking about the real town in California, where I go to buy groceries.

Although it, too, is a bit disappointing, as towns go.

Let’s just start over.

(Warning: here there be spoilers.)

I just finished watching season five of Eureka. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show crash and burn as hard as this one did. I should maybe do some research, see if they switched producers or writers or something. Because it was a spectacular trainwreck, and things that awful don’t happen in a vacuum. Writing, characters, the space-time continuum – all out the proverbial window.

The bitch of it is the show had such potential. I really enjoyed the first three seasons. Basic rundown: there’s a little town hidden (literally, by a force field) somewhere in the Oregon forest, which is home to the world’s most advanced and most top-secret research laboratory. The only people who live there are genius scientists and their families. A federal marshal (Jack Carter, played by Colin Ferguson, who is funnier than you’d think he would be) stumbles into town while chasing down his delinquent daughter, and ends up unwillingly becoming the sheriff. The place is full of wacky mad scientist types, so there’s always something blowing up or an experiment gone horribly wrong. Hilarity ensues.

And here’s where it all goes bad: in the first episode of season four the five main characters get transported back to 1947, when the town was just beginning to be established as a safe haven for postwar scientific experimentation. I thought it was a cool little story arc and a nice period piece. (There were a lot of awesome sciencey things going on in America after we stole all the best scientists from the Nazis. Good times.) But they kept it going. It wasn’t just a cool little story arc. The characters got back to their own time period but they never fixed the fucked up timeline. Never. After a few episodes, they didn’t even try anymore.

Which is downright maddening! It’s like the network or the writers or whoever’s in charge wanted to make a completely different show, so instead of trying something new they decided to ride the coattails of a show that already had a following and just retconned the shit out of it. Lame. And I loves me some time travel. I’m not suggesting that time travel is inappropriate in a show like this. It seemed in line with all their other epic experimental fuckups that had happened up until that point. But again, it felt like they should’ve made a whole different show instead of completely changing the one that we all liked just fine the way it was.

Having said that, once I got over the burn of having my fandom stepped on, I liked the end of the series alright. I was waiting for them to fix it the whole time, but they could’ve done worse as far as stories go. Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton made good additions to the cast, of course. And the part where they stuck everyone in a computer generated alternate reality was pretty great.

I think it’s interesting that so many scifi shows are all doom and gloom. Maybe that’s a byproduct of most of those storylines being action-oriented? And dire situations create a certain type of conflict which can be amplified or enhanced by running and explosions? Which look awesome, and which I quite enjoy, but there’s not a lot of giggles in scifi tv. Eureka was refreshing because it was funny. Not Joss Whedon funny, not witty or clever in the same way, but chuckle-worthy, for sure. But there’s a bigger question hiding in there somewhere. And it’s one of those questions that makes me think I might be an asshole.

A lot of the comedy in this show comes from Sheriff Carter being the only normal guy in a town full of super geniuses. A typical interaction: he doesn’t get whatever science jargon they’re babbling about that will fix the problem of the week, and everyone pauses and takes a breath and someone tries to bring it down to his level, inevitably ending in him saying some variation of “Well, why didn’t you just say that?” Or, he inexplicably understands what they’re saying by making an oversimplified analogy to something that they never would have been dumb enough to think of, like baseball or beer, and he gets a happy because he figured it out. Adorable.

Now, we all know that science lingo is not my bag. I get the concepts, but I don’t get all the inside jokes that I’m sure are lurking there for the in-crowd. But I still laugh when that happens to Carter. I’m smart, but I’m not super-scientist-working-at-a-top-secret-think-tank kind of smart. I have no room to giggle at him not understanding a string of jargon that I don’t understand either. It’s a base reaction, a reflex. Laugh a the dumb guy. Intellectual slapstick, basically, and it makes me a little disappointed in myself. It’s a lot like my reaction to The Big Bang Theory, actually. The difference being, for me, that I couldn’t do astrophysics or whatever in Eureka or at CalTech, but I could talk about comics and movies with Sheldon and Leonard. The folks on Eureka lack that common man quality, probably because of the nature of living in a secret town hidden inside a force field. Makes sense. In a meta way. Maybe. Or I could just be trying to validate my own insufferable behavior.

Anyway, check out Eureka for sciencey funnies. I know this doesn’t read like a glowing recommendation, but it really was worth my time. And if anyone has any suggestions for other good scifi/fantasy comedy, let me know. I think this is one of the few times in my life I’ve actually had an excuse to use the word “dearth.” Yes! Bonus. Score.

Collectively, we ARE good.

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Vanessa

So, yeah, Boston. Jeez. Wow.

It’s hard for me to write about this stuff. I wrote about the shooting in Aurora, and that was difficult. Which is why I didn’t write about the shooting in Connecticut. I feel like at some point it becomes repetitive. As heartbreaking as these things always are, my talking about my little feelings can and does get old. It’s a downer. But I’m still going to talk about it.

We’re always sad.

We’re always confused.

We despair, as a group.

That sense of “Oh, holy shit. How should I feel? What should I do?” is overwhelming when these events happen. And yeah, I know that in other parts of the world things like this are everyday occurrences, par for the course. Some people, unfortunately, have had to learn to just flinch and count the dead and go on with their day. That’s sad and horrifying and shouldn’t be the case, obviously. I am aware that, relatively speaking, what happened at the Boston Marathon is small potatoes, but that doesn’t diminish it. Not for me. Those involved or affected are still involved or affected. People still lost limbs and lives and loved ones and no amount of math or relativism will change that.

So. Moving on.

Interestingly, this is the first of these sorts of tragedies that I’ve watched unfold online. Usually I read about them later, after it’s all over. I don’t have tv, so I didn’t see it on the news. The first I heard was someone on Twitter telling Amanda Palmer to turn on CNN. Palmer’s from Boston and was in the city at the time (her blog piece about it is really great). And then I just watched the Twitter feed roll for the next few hours. It was pretty fascinating. The outpouring of love and condolences, mixed with people on the scene or nearby offering help, shelter, and information. The misinformation and bad reporting from actual news sources. The scammy motherfuckers who, only minutes after the bombs went off, set up fake organizations claiming to be accepting donations.

I like to think that I have a pretty tough shell, a reasonably thick skin. But through it all I felt horrible. I wanted to help somehow and couldn’t, which made me even sadder, feeling so impotent and ineffective. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hug my mom. I wanted to be in a room with people who love me and just sit and be alive and safe and sad and loved, together.

But I was alone. Me and my computer. And a few million people on Twitter. I got to thinking about how many historic tragedies I’ve seen. Columbine, Waco, two Middle East invasions, Aurora, Oklahoma City, 9/11. These are the things that have shaped our generation (or will, eventually), like the Kennedy assassination or the Vietnam war shaped our parents’, and World War II our grandparents’. And on and on, all the way back. The people of Boston celebrate Patriots’ Day every year with Revolutionary War reenactments, a Red Sox game, and the Marathon. That juxtaposition is interesting. Different types of struggle. Different measures of accomplishment. We seem to be bound together by tragedy and misery more than we are by joyful festivities. By “observing,”"honoring,” or “paying tribute,” more than “celebrating.” But I guess it’s all just commemoration, of a sort, no matter what word you use.

We get through these shitty things, though. Some of us more quickly and easily than others. Maybe it’s that getting through that really binds us. Shared experience. We all have those moments when we look at each other and know that things will never be the same. And maybe this isn’t one of them, in the long run or in the bigger picture. It’s amazing what we can get used to. How adaptable we are. How horror can become so commonplace. But I like to think that coming together, supporting each other and showing love, that those become commonplace as well, by extension. The good outweighs the bad, then, doesn’t it?

It can.

It should.

And I know that those candlelight vigil kind of moments can seem cheesy or overblown, but they can be precious and powerful, as well. It says something about us as a group that we do those things. They’re deeply, purely, human responses to inhumane acts and they’re more than empty gestures. Solidarity is important. There really is strength in numbers. If we make it our mission in life to truly support and protect and love each other, ferociously and unconditionally, then the bad stuff can’t crush us. If we know that someone will always be there with a prayer or a hug or a pint of blood, we know we can get through. We know that we are never truly alone.

Anyway. All my love to Boston. All my love to anyone who was hurt or sad or scared, or even just sitting alone and crying. We’re all spinning on this rock together. Let’s make the best of it.

“Didactic little parable-ish stories…”

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Vanessa

What’s the most difficult book you’ve ever read? I asked this on Facebook and Twitter the other day, just out of curiosity, and got a surprising range of answers. Everything from The God Delusion to A New Earth, from All the King’s Men to The Apocalypse Ocean. The strange thing is that none of the answers were the ones I was expecting. No one said Finnegan’s Wake, for example. Probably because no sane person has ever finished Finnegan’s Wake.

My personal answer is Gravity’s Rainbow by Pynchon, which I say out loud in front of people only with the caveat that I didn’t finish it. I came so close, got about three quarters of the way through, but still that unfinished motherfucker sits on my shelf, bookmark mocking me. Qualifying the question, instead, with “what’s the most difficult book you’ve ever finished?” my answer would then be Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It’s one of those books that most non-literature-obsessed humans haven’t read, and when you come across one of these fellow freaks in conversation you eye each other up with an odd mix of trepidation and mutual respect. “Well done,” we say. “Impressive,” we say. “What did you think of Wallace’s use of postmodern blah blah blah bullshit lit-major big-dick-contest nonsense?” we say, if we’re feeling particularly snooty that day.

I kid, I kid. Sort of. Not really.

It’s a fucking fantastic book, though, in all honesty. If you’re in the mood for a weird, funny read crafted by a ninja wordsmith, that may make you want to drink heavily and chain smoke, definitely give it a shot. It has page-long sentences which are, despite their unwieldy appearance, grammatically perfect. And two hundred pages of endnotes. I will say this: it’s the only book that I’ve ever read that took me a month to get through. And I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy in two days. It’s a great book, and I love Wallace’s work (The Broom of the System and Oblivion are my other favorites, and his nonfiction stuff is mind-blowing), but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here for this.

Yes, it’s twenty minutes long and has no video, but just listen to it. Seriously. Point and click. It’s for your own good. For your enrichment. Because I love you. And because everything I’m about to say makes no fucking sense if you don’t just click on the link! Click it!

Ahem. Thanks.

Wasn’t that great?

I don’t remember why I first watched this thing. I know it was sometime in February, so maybe someone posted the link for his birthday or something. But I’ve listened to it every day since. I can’t put my finger on exactly why it speaks to me. Just one of those things, I guess. Perhaps it’s the speech I should have heard at eighteen or twenty-one, and am just now identifying with. (Thanks, Generation Y, for the extended adolescence. Grr.) As a point of interest, I actually had two separate professors tell me things from this speech in college. Things that I could’ve used to my advantage if I’d known what they were or what they were for. Sam Scoville, who is a badass (seriously, the man can tell you why everything you just said was etymologically wrong before you even make it to the next sentence – amazing), told me that story about the fish, in his own very weird way, trying to make a point about perspective and word choice and intention. And Ann Turkle, a wonderful grandmotherly crazy poet, would red ink my stories with “Pay attention!” and “This person isn’t paying attention either!” which, eventually, taught me how to focus, and how to make characters focus so none of us have to suffer through my saying things twice.

I went to my own college commencement. There was, in fact, a speech. But I don’t remember who gave it or what it was about. I’m sure it was lovely. I went to a small, private liberal arts school in North Carolina. I paid too much, sure, but I earned those pieces of paper, by god. They should give you vellum instead of paper if you pay more than a certain amount per semester, shouldn’t they? Seems appropriate. And a fat lot of good those sheets of should-be-vellum are doing me now, out here, in the wilderness. That’s bloody frustrating. But I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. And if I ever get to own a bookstore I’ll have some little bit of literary credibility. And a wall to hang those things up on, finally. Having a degree is pretty much just paying a lot of money to have the right to say you know your shit. It’s a license to use the shorthand. I point to the piece of paper, you know I know my shit. And you say, “Gee, that’s an expensive school. They should have printed that on vellum. Tell me about Shakespeare.” And then my head explodes.

Anyway. Wallace says that it’s a tired cliché, that thing about one’s liberal arts education being just “teaching one how to think.” I’ve said that thing a thousand times. Not just about a liberal arts degree, but about college in general. Mostly because the state of our public school system is an abomination and we should all either be ashamed or be trying to fix it. And I guess I never really thought about why that cliché was wrong, even though the evidence is all around me. Everywhere there are people with college degrees who don’t know how to think for themselves but are experts at regurgitation. Who are still complete morons, who just go through the motions of living, who will die happy never knowing that they’ve missed out on anything. And I don’t mean that in a Zen, “be here now” kind of way (but that stuff is true, too – life is fucking short, guys). What I mean to say is that so many people go to college because that’s just the next thing you’re supposed to do. Finish high school, finish college, get a job, get married, buy a house, have some larvae, retire, die. That’s the list, right? There might be some smaller sub-goals in there. Buy a car or three. Raise some grandbabies. Whatever. But there are cultural expectations, and if you don’t do one, or you do them out of order, maybe, it somehow gives people grounds to think that they can say you’ve failed in some way.

Which I suppose goes to what he says about having the freedom and wherewithal to choose what to worship. Those cultural expectations are the mass-delusion distillation of that idea, in a way. This is the list of things you’re supposed to do, so that you can have this group of specific things or accomplishments, so that we can measure you against other people, rank you, size you up. On a purely material level, it kind of reminds me of what Palahniuk said in Fight Club, that bit about “You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis.” Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy my stuff. But I don’t have a lot of it. And I don’t need more more more. I own exactly one pair of jeans and I saved up to buy good ones so they’ll last me for a really long time. My own monetary frivolity tends more toward the irresistible “feed my brain” impulse. I love books. I love everything about them. That’s what I blow my money on. Having them around makes me feel physically more comfortable and talking about them is when I am my most confident. I’m passionate about literature and that’s got to count for something. But I do come out feeling somewhat one-dimensional. I should probably go ahead and start that therapy sometime soon, hmm? But how is that passion for intellectual engagement different from worshipping my own intellect? Or the intellect of others? What’s the difference between passion and worship? Or obsession? Intention, I think, is the key. Being deliberate. Paying attention.

I also think that what Wallace says about arrogance versus a healthy self-centeredness is really important. You are, in fact, the center of your universe. There’s no other way to be. It’s “Joe Fish doesn’t know he’s wet” all over again. The point being not to revel in the fact that you’re the center of everything but, instead, to be aware that your perspective is singular and make room for others’ perspectives and ideas in your worldview. This is an interesting point, coming from an artist. Because a writer’s perspective is only one way to look at their work, one that no reader can truly ever understand completely. It can make the writer self-obsessed or ignorant (or, worse, blasé) about where the audience is coming from. Another facet to this idea of self-centeredness, one that doesn’t actually come from this speech, is the generation gap problem. Infinite Jest was published in 1996, at the heart of the indie arts boom, before everything got so watered down and variegated by the internet. After the big system lost its grip, but before the niche arts culture we have now. Think Ani DiFranco or Kevin Smith. Back then, indie was a very punk thing to be and the term lent a sort of artistic credence. Anything corporate was automatically deemed soulless and fake, and that starving artist pain was a mark of truth, of reality, of approachability. Fast forward a bit, and look at what we’re dealing with now, at the product of this cultural schema: cynicism seems more “real” than genuine enthusiasm. We enjoy things “ironically,” a term which gives me the creeping horrors because of its widespread misuse. You don’t mean “irony,” guys, you mean “sarcasm.” Buy a fucking dictionary. (And while you’re at it, look up “literally,” and for the love of all things holy start using it correctly.) How did we get here? To this point where honest appreciation or enjoyment, or even simple optimism, is so often seen as a kind of doe-eyed stupidity? What’s with all the agro? When did we get so hard? So cold? And why does everything have to have a label? Can’t you just like a thing without knowing ahead of time if it fits into your pre-programmed list of acceptable interests?

One last thing (damn, this post got really long and ranty, didn’t it?). Wallace makes an excellent point about suicide. I have mixed feelings about suicide. It’s tremendously selfish, true, but I think it’s sometimes warranted, and should be seen as a right we all have. A legitimate option, rather than unmitigated cowardice. That self-centered thing again. What’s really poignant, though, about his discussion of it, is that he killed himself in 2008. Oddly, he talks about the instance of suicide by firearm in America, and he chose to take his own life by hanging himself. Not many people hang themselves. It makes a very particular statement, I think. But that might just be my lit-major reflex twitching, looking for cultural meaning where there is none. I could make some broad, sweeping statements about the mental health care system, but it’s probably better to look at each suicide on a case-by-case basis. Wallace was medicated for years, went off his meds for health reasons, and when he tried to go back on them they had stopped working. Happens all the time. Because as much as we try to help people, the brain is still largely a mystery. We’re shooting in the dark with a lot of these medications. Sad but true. But you’ve got to ask yourself, is it better to be dead? Or to be the walking dead? If something is pointless, you should stop doing it, right? Why should living be any different? Oh, that sounds so morose. So maudlin. Knowing that he killed himself does put a particular spin on this speech, though, doesn’t it? Odd, that. Teach me how to live, dead man. But I try not to judge writers by their deaths because, weirdly, that can so quickly become a slippery slope. (How often did Virginia Woolf write about water? Just for example.) His work is rich and dense and hilarious and visceral. That’s more important than how he died.

What’s the takeaway here? I don’t know. I’ve made this speech into a sort of mantra lately. Be aware. Be deliberate. Be precise. And if you’re going to give life advice, be real. Be blunt. Cut out all the “banal platitudes,” and tell people what they really need to hear. “Everything’s going to be ok” could very well end up being bullshit. I get so tired of all this new age-y, crystal-munching, “if you just put your energy out into the universe you’ll manifest your intentions” crap. I’m all about a good pep talk, and about keeping yourself on an even keel through positivity and trying not to dwell on the negative. But you’ve got to put in the work, too. You can’t just think about good stuff and expect good stuff to happen to you. Your results are only as good as your efforts, always. That’s the entire length and breadth of my inspirational commencement speech, should I ever be asked to give one: Find something you love and strive to be really good at it. Never do a half-assed job. Be kind. Be open to new ideas. Pay attention.

It’s not a pigeonhole without a pigeon

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Vanessa

So I have this friend who’s kind of a jerk. He’s not really a jerk, but he wants you to think he’s a jerk. Definitely an acquired taste, this gentleman. He’s hilarious and smart and I enjoy his company, but he is a bit abrasive to the uninitiated. And the other day he said something in a comment thread on his Facebook page about how much he hates “geek culture” (quotes are his, not mine). Which, in an oversimplified-distillation-of-a-term kind of way, I can totally get. I chose to take it with my customary grain of salt and not get into a thing on Facebook. Because what’s the point? Neither of us is going to change each other’s minds, and as much as I appreciate a healthy debate I just didn’t want to start a ridiculous fight on someone else’s turf. Again. I’ve got to stop doing that.

But then someone else (who I don’t know) said: “Remember when geeks knew and had favorite subjects instead of program listings and games.” And I’m not trying to call this person out for their opinion. I don’t know the dude and it’s not my place to judge anyone else’s absorption of pop culture. (There’s really no offense intended by my using his quote, and I’m not making any sort of statement about his character. Just using the words. I’d ask if I could, if I knew the guy.) If you’re not into the same things as me, fine, whatever. I honestly don’t care. It just means that we don’t have as much to talk about. Which is probably ok, too, in the long run. This whole thing got me thinking, though, about perception and labels and terminology.

It’s the “remember when” that gets me. Like there was a golden era of geeks? Sometime in the past when they were different? When they knew their place? And when he said “favorite subjects instead of program listings and games,” did he mean subjects in school? Are geeks, in his mind, confined to the school years when you could presumably spot them in a crowd? Does one’s love of science and math in a classroom setting or professional setting define them more than their love of science and math in, say, fiction or television? Like I said, I don’t know this guy, so maybe he’s eighty years old and remembers back when he was a whippersnapper and geeks didn’t have video games or tv shows. Just their precious books and wedgies. Aah, the good old days. Point is, I can’t make any assumptions about anyone else’s assumptions. It’s a vicious cycle, and one I’m working really hard to remove myself from.

Or, maybe, he was talking about when the word itself meant something else? This is the more likely reality. The word “geek” has been used more and more recently. It’s become a marketing tool, a bargaining chip, a preconceived notion. I use it myself. About myself. Because there’s a widely accepted set of implications that come along with it. When I say “geek” or “nerd” my intention is very clear. I like science fiction and fantasy and comic books and computers and science, and I’m conveying to my interlocutor those ideas very efficiently. Cultural linguistic psychology, right? I’ve thought that word and its use through beforehand. The problem is when someone else’s perception of what that means is not the same as mine. For instance, I don’t play video games or role playing games. To me, that means there’s just a hole in my geekery. To others, this might count me out of the geek demographic altogether. To still another group, there might even be a wholly different word that I’m unaware of that would be applied to me. And there’s no way to know that, is there? To predict someone else’s interpretation of a word? Not accurately, anyway.

Here’s the thing: I feel like the overuse of the word is insidious, not because we’re all getting sick of hearing it, but because it’s being used to homogenize a very diverse group of people. To stick us in a box and tell us what to buy or watch or say. None of us, no matter how you self-identify, is defined solely by where or how we spend our dollars. Marketing is vicious. The point is to get objects in front of eyeballs. That’s all. That’s it. It’s what those people do and they’re very very good at it. I’m ok with that, if only because there’s nothing I can do to change it. But it’s that sweeping overgeneralization, man. I’m a geek, sure, but that’s not all that I am. That’s the thing that’s offensive to me, not being called a word, any word. You can call me a geek or a nerd all fucking day and I’ll own it. It’s accurate, in my mind, to my linguistic understanding. But as soon as anyone says “You’re a geek, therefore I know absolutely everything there is to know about you and what you stand for,” then we have a problem. Is it as bad as saying it about a race or a religion or something? Probably not. Should it be as offensive? Probably not.

But it still hurts.

Because the heart of being a geek or a nerd isn’t about the things we love, it’s about the loving of those things. I don’t care if you don’t like Doctor Who or Stargate or Terry Pratchett or Game of Thrones. But don’t tell me that my liking something, anything, is stupid. That’s just mean. I may make fun of Nascar or country music or church or whatever because I think it’s silly. But I don’t make fun of your enthusiasm for it. Enthusiasm is great. Enjoyment or connection to something is great, and it’s the modern human condition. We’re no longer happy to merely survive, to spend our days just trying to eat and sleep and poop and fuck and stay warm. We have things now. We do stuff. We have bigger brains and we strive to entertain them, whether it be by creating or consuming. And as much as I think that we’re driven to distraction, and that that’s a detriment to our culture, I don’t think we would have made it this far as a species if all we had to think about was the fact that we’re all going to die. It’s a bummer, right? Truth, but a drag. We’re all living on a countdown.

And I think that making stuff is an equally integral part of being a geek. Whether it’s painting figurines for your RPG or programming video games or writing music reviews, that act of contributing to the culture of a thing you like is key to your enjoyment of that culture. It’s what builds community. I think that’s become more and more clear to me the longer I live out here in the sticks. Being around so few actual people, I’ve tried to find community online. That sounds sad, I know, but it’s really not. I’ve come across so many people who I can have conversations and debates with. We can rant and rave about deep or heady things because we had that one weird little interest in common that started us talking. At the bottom of it, we’re social creatures, and that reciprocity of making and consuming, that conversation between mutual admirers, that exchange of ideas, that’s community. That’s important.

Anyway. What’s the point? I don’t know if I have a point. Live and let live, maybe? Could it possibly be that simple? Love the things you love and let others do the same without impediment or judgment. You know, as long as they don’t love bigotry or eating babies or something. And choose your words carefully. What do you mean when you use a particular word? Does that word mean the same thing to the person to whom you’re speaking? Why? Think it through. And take the time to explain it if there’s a misunderstanding. Although I’ve noticed that when I do that I come across as being semantically nitpicky and pedantic. Damn it! I just can’t win.

Shards and splinters

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Vanessa

Ok, so I know it’s Friday. I usually post on Thursday. I’m trying really hard to get my shit together and I needed the day yesterday. Sorry if I’ve ruined anyone’s blog-reading schedule. Really, what are the odds of that happening? But I guess time just got away from me. Funny, the way we talk about time like it’s a thing you can keep or use or save up. I’m reading a cool book about time right now, actually. I’ll blog about that soon.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of keeping my shit together, I’ve made a list for this week. Because I don’t have a real blog post and making lists makes me feel like I’ve actually done something. Helpful? Or delusional? I don’t know. But as a stopgap measure it’s working for now. A list of hopelessly disconnected but still somewhat relevant thoughts from this week, as well as a sublist (ooh, fancy!) of things I want to write about. Eventually. Soon. Ish.

Urm. Here you go:

List one – my stupid actual life:

I’m still working on quitting smoking. Down to about forty a week. A big improvement, but the real story here is: I only had one yesterday. One! Take that, nicotine addiction. If you were a person, I’d kick you in the balls.

My dog had puppies. She’s a little special needs, has a bad back, so it was super stressful. But everybody’s fine. Five pretty babies. They opened their eyes a couple of days ago and are acting like they want to learn to walk now. Screechy wee buggers. We’ve all just given up on sleep completely.

It’s tremendously geeky, and I’m prepared to be made fun of for it, but I’ve started RPGing my life. Because, you know, setting attainable goals and quantifying behavior and whatnot have never been my strong suit. I’m an aaahh-tist. A ninja list maker, and painfully organized, but trying to do the math on why I accomplish or do not accomplish the things I want is really hard. Graphs and charts and character sheets are helping. I suppose I should thank the ghost of Gary Gygax.

Jackie Kashian started following me on Twitter. Holy crap! She’s a stand-up comedian and I love her stuff. Check her out. I have no idea why she started following me, though. Unsolvable Twitter mysteries are one of those modern living problems that I just can’t wrap my head around.

List two – my awesome blog life (or, things you can look forward to hearing me bitch about):

SCOTUS, DOMA, Prop 8, hatred and morality in America. I’m waiting until we get a verdict before I take this one on. Mmm, bigfatjuicy ranty rant. Delicious.

Season four of Eureka is totally off the rails. Seriously, what the fuck happened? I’ve got to watch season five (which I think is only a half season) to see if they get it together or blow it completely.

All the conventions and festivals that I can’t go to. If I were vastly wealthy, this is what I’d spend my money on. Because there are awesome people I want to meet, congregated together in warm places in the world right now, you guys. And I’m jealous. And bored. And cold.

The ebook imprint argument between Random House and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (of which John Scalzi is the current president – he documented this pretty thoroughly on his blog, but I want to chime in).

Google Reader is going away. This is really just a petty inconvenience for me, but the guy who invented RSS killed himself recently so I think it’s interesting timing. What does RSS do for the interwebs? For us? What does it all mean? Also, I hate Feedly.

Tomorrow, March 30th, is International TableTop Day. Table top gaming is making a huge comeback. How weird is that? Thanks, Wil Wheaton. (Check here for local events, and keep me posted if you go to a cool thing. Again, bored and jealous.)

Jonathan Coulton versus Glee, and the changing nature of copyright law. I’m waiting for a verdict on this one, too. It’s kind of related to a bunch of things, including the Random House/SFWA argument, Amanda Palmer’s TEDTalk, and social media culture. It’s big. It’s sprawly. I’m so stoked to write it.

I’m still waiting for my buddy to get that short story back to me so I can post it here. I haven’t forgotten. I’m not backing out. But editing is the most important part of writing. So be patient. You’ll see a piece of fiction from me. Soon. I promise.

David Foster Wallace and this weird awesome thing.

And oh so many other things that have been going on. They found Richard III’s body. The Phelps granddaughters left the WBC. Neil Gaiman wrote a crowdsourced book. Hipster zombies. It’s a really strange, wonderful time to be alive, y’all. I want to write it all down. I will. Just not today.

The internet knows me better than I know myself

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Vanessa

The other day I had a ton of work to do. But I had run out of podcasts to listen to while working. So I figured I would hit up Netflix for some documentary action, because if they’re done right I don’t really have to watch them and I can use them like podcasts (sorry, visual directors of documentaries). And wouldn’t you know it? That’s the day that Netflix decides to have a breakdown. Of course. I got some message like “We are experiencing technical issues. Here are a handful of movies you can still watch while we get our shit together.” I could almost feel my computer giving me a consoling pat on the head.

Damn it all, I thought to myself. Why, Netflix? Why? Today of all…ooh, Bradley Cooper… Click. And I watched Limitless. I remember Limitless coming out a couple of years ago, because I was pissed that they’d changed the title from the title of the book (The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn). I hate it when they do that. It was one of those books people bought because of the movie, and I haven’t read it yet because I want to find an older edition with the original title. OCD works in weird ways. But the movie was really great. Unexpectedly great, actually.

Basically, it’s about a down-on-his-luck writer who can’t finish the pages that are due for his publisher’s deadline (oh, the horror!), until he runs into an old friend who hooks him up with a little wonder drug that makes him super smart and extra productive. He gets addicted to being smart (who wouldn’t?) and becomes entangled in the business of producing the drug to fend off some loan-shark types who know its monetary potential. What’s interesting is that he’s playing out the opposite of a junkie shame spiral, becoming wealthy and successful because he’s now a suave super genius. I love this take on the age-old addiction story. I mean, of course the drug is killing him, but it’s worth it.

Drugs and science fiction make awesome bedfellows, don’t they? Brave New World, A Scanner Darkly, Equilibrium, Dune. Even Iron Man had a drinking problem for a little while. I think there’s something more nuanced about these scifi worlds when seen through the eyes of a character who’s not in their right mind for whatever reason. It adds a layer to the worldbuilding that makes it possible to take the story off in completely unexpected directions. I love that. Because mind expansion is important. I’d go so far as to say it’s instinctual. You know those monkeys that eat the rotten fruit so they can get drunk? I’m sure we weren’t too far from that in our infancy as a species. Or maybe it’s like what Bill Hicks said, that aliens put natural hallucinogens on this planet to speed up the evolution of our brains, make us look at the world as more than what’s right in front of us, make us smarter. I don’t know.

So when Limitless was over, having already decided to blow off the rest of my day, I took advantage of Netflix’s nefarious plot to suck all my time away, like that machine in The Princess Bride, and said Why, yes, I WOULD like to see suggestions for more movies like this one. Thank you, dark entertainment overlord…ooh, Cillian Murphy… Click.

And I watched Red Lights. I had never even heard of this one. Apparently it was only released in a few theaters when it came out last summer. In the simplest possible terms: psychics versus physicists. Sigourney Weaver. Robert De Niro. Cillian Murphy. That should really be enough, shouldn’t it? I love debunkers. When I was a kid, I actually wanted to be that sort of scientist who figures out that it’s not ghosts or poltergeists or whatever haunting houses and fucking up lives. I think it comes from my early obsession with bad B-grade horror movies. And Ghostbusters. And the X-files. But then I figured out that I couldn’t do enough math to be a scientist and all hope was lost. Meh, it’s cool. I’d rather write those stories than compete for university funding anyway.

So, De Niro plays this celebrity psychic, one of those 70s-era spoon-bending guys who’s coming out of retirement and gunning for a splashy triumphant return. Sigourney Weaver plays his arch nemesis, the celebrity physicist whose life’s work has been to prove that this guy is a fraud. They both rock these characters. The subtle, simmering hatred between them is really well done, even though they’re only actually in a couple of scenes together. As a side note, hasn’t Sigourney Weaver just gotten more and more badass with age? She’s in her sixties and she’s still the queen of scifi. Amazing. There’s a lot of really cool sciencey stuff in this film, too, which I quite enjoyed. And it’s got a good twist ending, but not in a predictable, later-work-of-M. Night Shyamalan kind of way. The very best thing? There’s a poster in the physicists’ office that looks like Mulder’s “I want to believe” poster, but it says “I want to understand.” Love it. Fucking brilliant. It’s so dorky that those are the kinds of details that I notice.

Anyway, both great movies. Check them out. If you haven’t already. You guys know I live under a rock, so I’m a couple of years behind on my media consumption. Good thing I’ve got Netflix out here on Endor, to tell me what to watch and help me blow off all the work I have to do. Because I couldn’t possibly procrastinate like this all on my own.

Where is that damn rainbow?

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Vanessa

One of the things that I can’t stand about all this clean country living is how far away I am from everything that resembles human civilization. When I say “I have to run to town,” I’m talking about a two and a half hour drive, one-way. It’s an all-day undertaking just to get some errands done. Pain in my homesteading ass, let me tell you. So when we were down there the other day I really wanted to go to the movies, but was thwarted yet again by travel-related time constraints. Grr. Argh.

Because I want to see the new Oz movie, damn it! The trailer is awesome. I like most of James Franco’s work, and I adore Sam Raimi. More than that, though, I really love the Oz mythology. Did you know that there are sixteen books in Baum’s series? A lot of people don’t. I think the Judy Garland movie is what’s at the forefront of the cultural saturation of this particular pop culture iconography. And for good reason. I hate a musical, but I do enjoy that film quite a bit, between the sing-songy bits. Also, I just finished reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire so Oz has been on my mind lately. I really wanted to compare the four different approaches to the story (because the new Raimi movie is a prequel, you see). Another time, perhaps.

There’s a particular paperback edition of the Baum books that I’ve been trying to collect for years. They’re not special, really, but it’s a fun hobby, looking for them in used bookstores and running across a couple at library and garage sales. I’ve got the first eleven so far, but I’ve only read the first four. Quick reads, and super fun, so I’m waiting until I have them all to read the rest of the series. Remember back in October when I did the lists of my all-time most important scifi and fantasy books? The Oz books really should have been on there somewhere. But here’s the thing: which list? Because basically, those books are a science fiction story set in a fantasy world. They defy categorization. Which is impressive, considering that they were written (well, published) between 1900 and 1920. There’s nothing else like them from that period. Especially not for children.

Baum was the son of a rich oil baron from New York. He had a bad heart and wanted to be an actor. How much farther from Dorothy’s dustbowl Kansas can you get? It’s really amazing worldbuilding, and while I’m tempted to say that tired Lit Crit thing about “the only real American fairy tale,” I don’t think it’s accurate. These stories are bigger than that, more than just cautionary tales and thinly veiled moralizing. I’m not going to put words in Baum’s mouth and tell you what he was trying to do, but I can tell you what I get from the series. There’s the social commentary about Kansas being poverty-stricken and bleak for farmers, versus the wealth and plenty of Oz. No one’s starving in Oz. There’s the fact that Dorothy is an orphan and even though Auntie Em and Uncle Henry seem like a good family, there’s no replacing dead parents. Dorothy has a deep emotional hole to fill and does so, in Oz, by surrounding herself with similarly broken or incomplete people. Codependent, perhaps, but effective. There’s the juxtaposition of science and religion (magic is always a stand-in for religion – we’re hardwired for that metaphor), frequently directly at odds with each other. The Wizard’s balloon versus the Wicked Witch’s broom, for example. Also man versus nature. Our technology is weak. The Tin Man rusts. The house gets shredded by a tornado. Tiktok always needs winding.

The 1939 movie is based on the first two books in the series, and is definitely more well-known than the books. And I’m fine with that. But there are some things that have made it into our common cultural knowledge that are different (read: wrong). Like the ruby slippers. In the book they were silver, but they were made red for the movie because the filmmakers were in a race against Gone With the Wind to be the first Technicolor sensation. That’s fair. It doesn’t change the story. But when I say “Dorothy’s silver slippers” no one knows what I’m talking about. The book is episodic and reads like several short stories stitched together, which is covered pretty well in the movie by all that pesky singing and dancing breaking up the action. But there are some pieces left out. Again, I’m fine with that. If they did everything in the book the movie would be six hours long. However, it requires some rearranging and finagling. For example, Glinda the Good Witch is really an amalgamation of three or four characters from the book. It’s done well, very neat and tidy, but when you read the book it’s a glaring difference. Probably most importantly, though, in the books it’s not a dream. Everything is real. I hate that the movie took that away from Dorothy. She retains what she learned, maybe, but she still has to go back to her everyday, horrible life, with no hope of escape. In the books she can go back and forth, like Narnia, sort of, without the time distortions. Making it all a dream works for the movie because it makes for an easy ending. There’s no reason to continue the movie on into the next story from the series, true, but what lazy writing. And I think that the success of that particular film with that particular trope has made it easier and more acceptable for subsequent writers and screenwriters to get away with using it. Bleh. Boring. I’m looking at you, J.J. Abrams. I’m looking at you.

I borrowed Gregory Maguire’s Wicked from a friend. I didn’t expect to like it. Maybe because it was such a popular book when I worked at the Giant Evil Bookstore and I tend to not read the things that are extra hyped up (does that make me a book hipster? I don’t know). I think a lot of people wanted to read it because of the success of the Broadway show, which goes back to that whole “I’m only reading a book because I liked the movie” thing that bugs me so much. But with the extra added bonus of my hating musical theater. Although I must say that Idina Menzel, the woman who plays the Witch on Broadway, also played Maureen in Rent and she has got some impressive rock and roll pipes. She can wail. I still hate musicals, though. Anyway, I really liked Maguire’s take on Oz. He makes a lot of concessions to the movie, probably because that’s what more people know. But he also sticks in a bunch of stuff from the books. It’s very clever. Like inside jokes, really, for readers in the know. Nothing that would derail the story he’s trying to tell, but little details here and there that I appreciated quite a bit. It shows that he knows his shit, that he’s not just using our easier, shallower cultural knowledge to his advantage (but I think he totally could have and no one would’ve noticed – this is ‘Mericuh).

Maguire has done some interesting things in this book. It’s the life story of the Wicked Witch, and we don’t get to connect the dots to the story we already know until the very end. Well played. He gives her such great depth, as well as Oz iself, really turning the country into a character all its own. Expanding even more on the themes that Baum put in place, he makes the Witch a social outcast in her youth and a political activist during her college years. She’s isolated as a kid because her father is a radical preacher and she’s the only green person anyone has ever seen. Religion and racism, basically, play a big part in her becoming a frustrated and volatile young woman. Then, when she’s a bit older, we get to see some of the inner workings of Oz. It’s a little darker than Baum’s Oz. The Wizard is not a benevolent father figure, but a crazed tyrant who swooped in from the “Other Land” (our world) and took over. Which is a good use of the psychology of religion, the “Other Land” being a place that was established in the mythology of Oz, much like Christianity’s Heaven or the Norse Valhalla. It’s the best way to take over a country, to hijack its myths and gods. Also, a great way to set up the later arrival of Dorothy. The portrayal of technology plays a part here, too, because science and magic are at each other’s throats in Maguire’s Oz. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” as we know from Arthur C. Clarke, but Maguire turns that on its head, making them both the objects of accepted religions, and they are at war. Brilliant. There’s an interesting bit of social commentary throughout, as well, which could be read as either racism or classism. Remember the Cowardly Lion? In Maguire’s Oz there are animals and there are Animals, sentient beings who are a part of human society. During the Wizard’s dictatorship, he’s gone all Hitler on the Animals, putting them in camps and using them as slave labor, as we use animals. This is the civil rights issue that the Witch takes up as her personal cause in college, becoming a radical and destroying her life and relationships over it. It’s really very well done. The whole point was to make her a real person and not just a caricature of mindless evil. And Maguire pulls it off. By the time the Witch and Dorothy finally meet, I was totally on the Witch’s side. Didn’t expect that.

So, yeah. You know you already know the story because we’ve all seen the movie. But you should definitely read the original books by Baum. They’re awesome. And maybe check out Wicked, as well. If you’re going to do both, though, I would tell you to read the Maguire first. I think the writing is more approachable and modern, and the story is only a slight sidestep from the one we already know. Whereas the Baum books, while amazing, are very much early twentieth century children’s fantasy literature. A bit of an acquired taste, maybe, is the easiest way to describe them. And if anyone sees the new Oz movie, let me know how it is. Where does it fit in all this? What an interestingly layered American cultural phenomenon. A century of adaptations, allusions, bastardizations. How we do love our little stories.

Geek In A Cardigan

Adventures in Snark

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Enthusiasm! (With a dash of pure terror…)

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Patton Oswalt, I hate your tiny little guts.

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And Archimedes wept…

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Collectively, we ARE good.

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“Didactic little parable-ish stories…”

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It’s not a pigeonhole without a pigeon

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Shards and splinters

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The internet knows me better than I know myself

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Where is that damn rainbow?

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