So you know how I was talking about how awesome spring is when it comes to northern France? Scratch all that. Spring is the product of an evil, mocking God. It's as if Persephone keeps telling Demeter that she'll be out in a minute, really, just let her finish up one or two things, she's on her way, she promises, and Demeter sort of thinks that possibly Persephone is delaying her on purpose because she's busy losing her virginity to the Lord of Death, making her (Demeter) behave like some sort of manic depressive alcoholic psychopath, all throwing empty bottles around the room and having hysterics about ungrateful children and how they expect everything from you and then leave you with nothing and don't care about your feelings even though you slept with your little brother and gave birth to them for heaven's sake.
So we had that lovely sunny weather. Then it rained. Normal.
Then it snowed. The third snowfall we've had this year. Then it cleared up. Then it rained some more. Then it half cleared again, then it SLEETED. Then it sleeted some more. Then it poured rain. Then it cleared up and looked pretty.
Did I mention that that whole description of the weather is a description of what the weather has done since eight o'clock this morning? I thought living up in the mountains I'd seen it all, like the one time junior year when snow came crisply and beautifully down out of a completely clear blue sky. But as temperamental as the weather in a high desert area can be, it at least has the benefit of being relatively dry most of the time. And it is extremely annoying to have to change clothes three times a day, and then get caught with no overcoat while it is sleeting, because when you left the house half an hour ago, it was half clear and sunny and you didn't need an overcoat.
Sigh. At least my boots remain my (waterproof) touchstone.
19.3.07
15.3.07
L. M. Montgomery -- The Blue Castle
This was a Montgomery I hadn't read before -- although it doesn't make much difference. Her books tend to blend together after awhile. Of course I can still distinguish Anne from Emily -- one has red hair and the other black, uh duh -- but they all, novels, short stories, series -- follow the same mold, and are about roughly the same thing, the only difference being that sometimes she writes about small children finding fraternal and parental love in small towns in Canada (usually from tough, aunt-like old maids who find their lives mysteriously turned around by the young orphan or half orphan or whatever that they have graciously agreed to care for from a sense of duty) and sometimes she writes about young women who have paricular, dreamy notions about what love ought to be and what is waiting for them, and gently or ungently are led to the realization that the boy they have known from childhood fits the very ideal they didn't know they had in small towns in Canada. (The revelations take place at night, either from the fear that the loved one is going to die, or the conviction that he will soon marry someone else, or a significant look passed between them while other people chatter on, oblivious. Occasionally a combination of two or more of the above.) Often the heroine has literary ambitions of one sort or another, and we can thrill and sympathize with her acceptances and rejections by popular magazines. And of course, there are always poetical descriptions of the Canadian wilderness -- or small rural towniness -- in the various seasons, somehow always managing to be beautiful, when really you're willing to bet that beautiful or not, the characters are freezing their collective asses off. (Our Heroine isn't beautiful, though -- it's always her best friend, or occasionally her cousin, who's really the stunner. But Our Heroine is beautiful in an unconvential way -- in certain lights and moods and whatevers she manages to outshine her companions. So she finds True Love anyway.)
Sometimes you get the feeling that you know rather more about Ms. Montgomery's psyche than she is aware of having told you. But anyway.
All this is very satisfying to read about, as long as you don't expect anything different. You can read a new book and have it feel like an old one. Whatever Josephine Tey's bedridden detective says about it, there are times when a new-old book is the most comforting and fun kind to read. You have all the fun of a new book, new characters and twists and turns you haven't exactly taken before -- but at the same time it's very un-taxing on the brain and you know exactly how it will turn out, and you can enjoy the ride free of any sort of stress or anxiety, just getting pleasantly emotionally involved with the heroine's various love trials while knowing it will end perfectly wonderfully for everyone involved.
The Blue Castle is a case in point, obviously, or I would have been describing it for the last three paragraphs. It is almost the Platonic form of Montgomery. Valancy Stirling, an old maid at twenty-nine and completely under her mother's thumb, whose only joy comes from reading nature books by an anonymous author and her own daydreams of a Blue Castle, complete with white knights, has been suffering heart palpitations. She goes to the doctor and discovers she is seriously ill and has anywhere from a month to a year to live. After a "white night" -- Montgomery's words -- she decides (as one does) that she's sick of living for other people. She begins saying exactly what she thinks to her family members -- causing a predictable amount of rumpus -- , and eventually leaves to nurse a dying classmate who is scorned by the other townsfolk for having a child out of wedlock. Under her death sentence, Valancy becomes more and more emotionally free, and eventually marries Barney Snaith, a local recluse with a bad reputation. If you've ever read a Montgomery book -- or really, any book -- before now, you know what's coming. But it's fun nonetheless.
Valancy isn't quite as charming as Anne or Emily -- which is pretty much why it's a standalone -- but she's fun to read about; equal parts submissive and sarcastic, and interesting either way. Her Barney can be annoying at times, (but so can Emily's Teddy; not even this is new) and very occasionally I wanted to bop him on the head with something moderately heavy. A puppy, say, or a large paperback book. But I could see why Valancy fell for him (I keep wanting to type Valency, as if she were an electron), and nothing he did offended me too much. Not my type, but they can't all be Gilbert. Who, now that I think of it, occasionally showed traces of the same sexism as all the others, so what can you do.
I finished the whole thing in one day -- most of it in one evening, because I was putting off application work. And I got exactly as emotionally involved as I wanted to be. I like Valancy; she doesn't have Anne's charm, but she's got conviction, and she's fun in a modern kind of way. She's sarcastic, and she does things for good reasons. Plus, the men around her are allowed to swear and get drunk off their asses without her minding at all. She is not allowed to do these things -- nor does she have any desire to do them -- but it's refreshing that the other characters not held back by her ladylike charms. And her love story is relatively believable, if you're in the Montgomery mindset when you start the book.
It has all the usual Montgomery weaknesses, of course. If you're not in the mood for it, there's no point reading it; you'll only get annoyed. Even in the mood for it, there are three or four scenes that just go on too long. Montgomery's dialogue is generally very strong, but she can get carried away in her descriptions. Yes, we get the point. A paragraph by paragraph description of each of Valancy's many aunts and uncles, and the individual ways in which they have been horrible to her isn't necessary. Nor is a three page description of her various childhood tragedies, nor is the detailed description of the Canadian wilderness in month of the year. Thank you, Lucy, we get it. I'll be sure to vacation there the very next chance I get. Move the damn story along, why don't you?
But the general impression of the book is sweet, and predictible, and nice. You're happy for the lovers, and it's comforting to see Valancy turn her life around. No reminders of the actual annoyances of living in her circumstances, or anything like that. Only exactly as much salt as Montgomery puts in to make her books readable. Very relaxing after a long day, but don't read it when you have things you'd rather be doing. If that makes sense.
Sometimes you get the feeling that you know rather more about Ms. Montgomery's psyche than she is aware of having told you. But anyway.
All this is very satisfying to read about, as long as you don't expect anything different. You can read a new book and have it feel like an old one. Whatever Josephine Tey's bedridden detective says about it, there are times when a new-old book is the most comforting and fun kind to read. You have all the fun of a new book, new characters and twists and turns you haven't exactly taken before -- but at the same time it's very un-taxing on the brain and you know exactly how it will turn out, and you can enjoy the ride free of any sort of stress or anxiety, just getting pleasantly emotionally involved with the heroine's various love trials while knowing it will end perfectly wonderfully for everyone involved.
The Blue Castle is a case in point, obviously, or I would have been describing it for the last three paragraphs. It is almost the Platonic form of Montgomery. Valancy Stirling, an old maid at twenty-nine and completely under her mother's thumb, whose only joy comes from reading nature books by an anonymous author and her own daydreams of a Blue Castle, complete with white knights, has been suffering heart palpitations. She goes to the doctor and discovers she is seriously ill and has anywhere from a month to a year to live. After a "white night" -- Montgomery's words -- she decides (as one does) that she's sick of living for other people. She begins saying exactly what she thinks to her family members -- causing a predictable amount of rumpus -- , and eventually leaves to nurse a dying classmate who is scorned by the other townsfolk for having a child out of wedlock. Under her death sentence, Valancy becomes more and more emotionally free, and eventually marries Barney Snaith, a local recluse with a bad reputation. If you've ever read a Montgomery book -- or really, any book -- before now, you know what's coming. But it's fun nonetheless.
Valancy isn't quite as charming as Anne or Emily -- which is pretty much why it's a standalone -- but she's fun to read about; equal parts submissive and sarcastic, and interesting either way. Her Barney can be annoying at times, (but so can Emily's Teddy; not even this is new) and very occasionally I wanted to bop him on the head with something moderately heavy. A puppy, say, or a large paperback book. But I could see why Valancy fell for him (I keep wanting to type Valency, as if she were an electron), and nothing he did offended me too much. Not my type, but they can't all be Gilbert. Who, now that I think of it, occasionally showed traces of the same sexism as all the others, so what can you do.
I finished the whole thing in one day -- most of it in one evening, because I was putting off application work. And I got exactly as emotionally involved as I wanted to be. I like Valancy; she doesn't have Anne's charm, but she's got conviction, and she's fun in a modern kind of way. She's sarcastic, and she does things for good reasons. Plus, the men around her are allowed to swear and get drunk off their asses without her minding at all. She is not allowed to do these things -- nor does she have any desire to do them -- but it's refreshing that the other characters not held back by her ladylike charms. And her love story is relatively believable, if you're in the Montgomery mindset when you start the book.
It has all the usual Montgomery weaknesses, of course. If you're not in the mood for it, there's no point reading it; you'll only get annoyed. Even in the mood for it, there are three or four scenes that just go on too long. Montgomery's dialogue is generally very strong, but she can get carried away in her descriptions. Yes, we get the point. A paragraph by paragraph description of each of Valancy's many aunts and uncles, and the individual ways in which they have been horrible to her isn't necessary. Nor is a three page description of her various childhood tragedies, nor is the detailed description of the Canadian wilderness in month of the year. Thank you, Lucy, we get it. I'll be sure to vacation there the very next chance I get. Move the damn story along, why don't you?
But the general impression of the book is sweet, and predictible, and nice. You're happy for the lovers, and it's comforting to see Valancy turn her life around. No reminders of the actual annoyances of living in her circumstances, or anything like that. Only exactly as much salt as Montgomery puts in to make her books readable. Very relaxing after a long day, but don't read it when you have things you'd rather be doing. If that makes sense.
14.3.07
Why I Am Not a Meteorologist
I think that might possibly be the worst career choice possible: I take the weather so personally. Right now, for example, the weather is taunting me. It is sunny, and gorgeous, and warm (as in I don't have to wear my winter jacket while I'm exercising) and the flowers are in bloom and it is springlike and wonderful, and my soul is lapping it up like springtime manna, or whatever the appropriate metaphor would be. And I can see God in the background going, "heh. You like this, puny human? You think this is just awesome, don't you? Think it's great, being able to go outside in sunglasses and a light sweater. Think your problems are over, think spring's here and you'll be able to deal with your life and keep your room clean and exercise regularly and be happy. You totally think that, don't lie. Well, guess what! It's MARCH! This shit won't last! I could take it away at any moment! You're going to relax your guard, just like you do at the top of Drop Zone or whatever that ride is called, and then I'm going to bring back the rain and send your psyche plummeting into emotional apathy and ruin." (This is God from the Old Testament, obviously.) So I think, if I were a meteorologist, and both saw it coming and took it personally, I would lose all will to live.
13.3.07
Reread Reviews -- Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden
So I have actually been reading new books too, but I am currently in the middle of a few long ones (deliberately; I love it when I know it will be awhile before I finish) so I have very little to write about in the way of books I've just read for the first time. (Although I'm looking forward to finishing Maia, just so I can harsh on Richard Adams' sexist nonsense in public.)
But I did just reread a couple, and I can have thoughts about them, can't I?
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
You know, I liked A Little Princess better when I was a kid, and I thought maybe now I'm older the gap would have closed. But, no, I was right the first time: Little Princess is a better book. For one thing, Sara is a more compelling character than Mary. But much more than that -- a hell of a lot more happens in A Little Princess. I don't just mean the whole being rich, being poor, being rich again thing, I mean that Sara's days are just more full and involve more things than Mary's do. The whole point of The Secret Garden is that there is absolutely nothing for Mary to do all day except to dig around in the dirt looking for keys and bulbs and whatnot, and as a kid it was reasonably compelling, but I'm sitting here as an adult, and the whole thing just sounds intensely dull. When I have nothing to do except dig around in the dirt I either find a book or kill myself. I realize that the point of the book is that Mary's mind and body and spirit and all are healed from her communion with nature, and it's touching, but it's not nearly as interesting as I thought it was when I was a child.
And you know I'm not a kid anymore because instead of charming and mysterious I found Dickon a little smug. And Colin! God, don't get me started. I'd totally forgotten how much Burnett likes to talk about Magic without actually crossing the line and writing, you know, a fantasy book, and in Little Princess it more or less works, because it's a person doing things that appear magical to other people, and it's kind of fun, you can see it from both sides. But the whole Magic of Nature thing doesn't have the human interest element, and I'm very sorry, but Colin's smug little speeches are the height of annoyance. I ended up skimming through all that stuff. There's no humor in the story, and Mary doesn't have Sara's drive and therefore it's much harder to identify with her. The best scenes are when Mary and Colin are both screaming their fool heads off at each other.
As a whole, really disappointing. I have clearer memories of the movie than of the book, and that is really sad.
But I did just reread a couple, and I can have thoughts about them, can't I?
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
You know, I liked A Little Princess better when I was a kid, and I thought maybe now I'm older the gap would have closed. But, no, I was right the first time: Little Princess is a better book. For one thing, Sara is a more compelling character than Mary. But much more than that -- a hell of a lot more happens in A Little Princess. I don't just mean the whole being rich, being poor, being rich again thing, I mean that Sara's days are just more full and involve more things than Mary's do. The whole point of The Secret Garden is that there is absolutely nothing for Mary to do all day except to dig around in the dirt looking for keys and bulbs and whatnot, and as a kid it was reasonably compelling, but I'm sitting here as an adult, and the whole thing just sounds intensely dull. When I have nothing to do except dig around in the dirt I either find a book or kill myself. I realize that the point of the book is that Mary's mind and body and spirit and all are healed from her communion with nature, and it's touching, but it's not nearly as interesting as I thought it was when I was a child.
And you know I'm not a kid anymore because instead of charming and mysterious I found Dickon a little smug. And Colin! God, don't get me started. I'd totally forgotten how much Burnett likes to talk about Magic without actually crossing the line and writing, you know, a fantasy book, and in Little Princess it more or less works, because it's a person doing things that appear magical to other people, and it's kind of fun, you can see it from both sides. But the whole Magic of Nature thing doesn't have the human interest element, and I'm very sorry, but Colin's smug little speeches are the height of annoyance. I ended up skimming through all that stuff. There's no humor in the story, and Mary doesn't have Sara's drive and therefore it's much harder to identify with her. The best scenes are when Mary and Colin are both screaming their fool heads off at each other.
As a whole, really disappointing. I have clearer memories of the movie than of the book, and that is really sad.
Disturbing Trend
So I'm not a very good teacher yet, and every time I find something that remotely works I immediately use it in every single class where it would be remotely applicable. Sometimes this works well, sometimes I grossly misjudge my audience, and sometimes the effects are just incredibly bizarre.
The latest example is the Detective Game, which, for the unitiated, involves sending a volunteer out into the hallway, deciding on a criminal, deciding on a crime, sometimes deciding on a victim, and bringing the detective back into the room to ask penetrating questions and try to force the witnesses to crack under the pressure (read: start giggling uncontrollably). It's not very complicated, it's not especially exciting, except for the few seconds when it's time to choose volunteers, but it gets the job done and it's wicked good for practicing questions in the past tense. (To illustrate while protecting the innocent, guilty, and "dead" I will use the French equivalents of John and Jane.)
So I have played it with my sixieme (6th grade), and the crimes and questions are very simple. "Have you got the glove?" and so forth. And I played it with my cinqieme (7th grade) and they already know the past tense, so the questions become things like "Did you take the glove?" and "Did you sell the drugs?" and occasionally "Did you attack Jean?" Today, however, was the first time I played it with my quatrieme (8th grade) students, and, since they are very familiar with the past, you have to work to find verbs they don't already know. So for about half an hour today, I had a pint-sized Sam Spade wannabe demanding of his classmates "Did you decapitate Jeanne?"
I rather suspect that were I to play it with the ninth graders, we'd eventually degenerate into "Did you take over the world?" and "Did you cause the Holocaust?"
The latest example is the Detective Game, which, for the unitiated, involves sending a volunteer out into the hallway, deciding on a criminal, deciding on a crime, sometimes deciding on a victim, and bringing the detective back into the room to ask penetrating questions and try to force the witnesses to crack under the pressure (read: start giggling uncontrollably). It's not very complicated, it's not especially exciting, except for the few seconds when it's time to choose volunteers, but it gets the job done and it's wicked good for practicing questions in the past tense. (To illustrate while protecting the innocent, guilty, and "dead" I will use the French equivalents of John and Jane.)
So I have played it with my sixieme (6th grade), and the crimes and questions are very simple. "Have you got the glove?" and so forth. And I played it with my cinqieme (7th grade) and they already know the past tense, so the questions become things like "Did you take the glove?" and "Did you sell the drugs?" and occasionally "Did you attack Jean?" Today, however, was the first time I played it with my quatrieme (8th grade) students, and, since they are very familiar with the past, you have to work to find verbs they don't already know. So for about half an hour today, I had a pint-sized Sam Spade wannabe demanding of his classmates "Did you decapitate Jeanne?"
I rather suspect that were I to play it with the ninth graders, we'd eventually degenerate into "Did you take over the world?" and "Did you cause the Holocaust?"
12.3.07
Spring Fever
Oh, my God, it is the third sunny day in a row. I am SO HAPPY. God, every year, I mock my dad for how enthusiastic he gets about springtime, and this year is no exception, but after living out here for six months I understand much better. I think this is the longest in a row I've seen the sun since Christmas in California. It makes me feel like I used to back when summer vacation meant laying around with a book, rather than working at a summer job. Sun is so exciting.
10.3.07
The Vacation of La Rochelle
So my week sucked ass last week (people! stop taking my shit! it is mine! get your own shit! then it will be yours! gah!) and I was completely unable to deal with it, and had a breakdown. Said brekadowns are becoming, not at all coincidentally, a monthly occurence, which is also annoying.
But anyway. One of the suckinesses of last week was that I was planning to go to Amsterdam this weekend, and had to cancel that trip, but on the advice of a friend, instead of moping around all weekend, I took myself off for a mini-vacation. So I am in La Rochelle today, the Santa Cruz of France, which I picked because Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan laid seige to it in The Three Musketeers. Other candidates were Tours, where Aramis's mistress lived, and Brest, which was actually recommended to me by someone who went there, but La Rochelle won out. (No, not all my geougraphical knowledge of France comes from Dumas. How could you suggest such a thing? Some of it comes from Hugo and de Laclos.)
And since I am here, and the train ticket was less than half of what I though the train ticket to Amsterdam was going to be, I am splurging, staying in an honest-to-God, very fancy, real live, cheap hotel instead of a hostel. The hotel comes with free wifi, too, so I shall post pictures soon, of La Rochelle and of the castle in Nantes, which I got to see while I was waiting for my train. It has a real moat, which is just so exciting. To me. Shut up.
So, in conclusion, soon I will get all caught up on my updates, and talk about Prague and Angers and Nantes and the Veronica Mars reveal (which everyone seems to have predicted except me, but I prefer it that way) but right now I am going to go freeze my feet off in the Atlantic.
But anyway. One of the suckinesses of last week was that I was planning to go to Amsterdam this weekend, and had to cancel that trip, but on the advice of a friend, instead of moping around all weekend, I took myself off for a mini-vacation. So I am in La Rochelle today, the Santa Cruz of France, which I picked because Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan laid seige to it in The Three Musketeers. Other candidates were Tours, where Aramis's mistress lived, and Brest, which was actually recommended to me by someone who went there, but La Rochelle won out. (No, not all my geougraphical knowledge of France comes from Dumas. How could you suggest such a thing? Some of it comes from Hugo and de Laclos.)
And since I am here, and the train ticket was less than half of what I though the train ticket to Amsterdam was going to be, I am splurging, staying in an honest-to-God, very fancy, real live, cheap hotel instead of a hostel. The hotel comes with free wifi, too, so I shall post pictures soon, of La Rochelle and of the castle in Nantes, which I got to see while I was waiting for my train. It has a real moat, which is just so exciting. To me. Shut up.
So, in conclusion, soon I will get all caught up on my updates, and talk about Prague and Angers and Nantes and the Veronica Mars reveal (which everyone seems to have predicted except me, but I prefer it that way) but right now I am going to go freeze my feet off in the Atlantic.
6.3.07
Veronica Mars -- Papa's Cabin
Oh, my God, LUCKY TIM! That was totally awesome. That was the best reveal since Aaron Echolls. And I liked the different format, where it was very verbal, very not a thriller, although I must admit I was very nervous that Tim would try to stab her in front of all the other criminology students.
Everyone -- by which I mean my sister and TWoP, but which would include my mother if my mother were keeping up on Veronica Mars instead of just waiting for the DVDs so that she can fast-forward through any scenes that don’t feature Logan -- (kidding, Mom, kidding) -- (it’s totally true, everyone except Mom, you know it is) -- predicted the Lucky Tim killer thing. But I love being surprised, so I don’t mind feeling a little dumb to that end.
I did have the satisfaction of feeling like something was off about Tim for the first thirty-eight minutes of the episode. The whole time, even as I was enjoying Veronica being teamed up with someone and also getting to tell him what to do (she really does need Wallace and/or Piz and/or Mac to help her more actively in her cases, simply because I would find it fun and hilarious), there was the impending doom feeling of Wait A Minute, No Way is Tim Really That Stupid. (But dude, the latex glove scene was hilarious.)
I generally really like the villains’ motivations on VM, and think they’re believable and interesting. I think the creators do a good job generally of making them personal enough to resonate. (There are one or two exceptions; I didn’t love the fake rape and the reason behind it; I get both of those on an intellectual level but it was hard for me to plug into the characters and they didn’t resonate with me as I think they should/could have. But I liked the thought and effort that went into them.) This particular motivation, though, carries a certain amount of both resonance and catharsis on a purely personal level. You see, back in my formative years (read: a year and a half ago) I had a lovely prof who I admired and respected, who gave me lovely grades and had nothing but nice things to say about me in my conferences. She paid me very high compliments and said totally fantastic things about my paper. (I was the best paper I’ve ever written, so it deserved lots of good things said about it. But I digress.) So, the following year I ask her for a recommendation and she hems and haws and says that she can’t in good conscience recommend me for a grad school program and she has reservations about my writing. Now no one should recommend a student they don’t feel comfortable recommending, but for heaven’s sweet sake, students generally won’t ask you to recommend them unless you pay them lots of compliments and talk like you think they’re brilliant, and it’s a very annoying mixed message to send. (This prof pulled the same stunt on a couple of my friends, too, so I kind of think she was just passive-agressive.)
In any case, to return to Not-All-About-Me Land, what Landry did is far worse, since you should never say you’ll serve as a reference for someone and then not actually give them a good reference. But it was so much fun -- and if not exactly realistic, certainly just as realistic as anything else on VM -- that Tim would want to set Landry up for the murder to get back at him. I never considered that particular solution, but then, I was a philosophy major. (Now I’m trying to think of what the philosophy major alternative would have been. Maybe having her on my oral committee and then making her look like an idiot.)
Moving. On. Because this is dull to everyone except me.
I am so totally bummed that Lamb really is dead. I don’t mind the way he died; I thought the show sent him off as well as TV shows generally do; there’s no real way to kill off a main character so that you don’t piss everyone off. When you’re putting your main characters in more or less life and death situations every week, it’s really hard to have a death that’s meaningful. Because if something fairly standard gets them -- as with Lamb -- then you feel sort of gypped; but if something Very Special happens to kill them off -- the example that comes to mind is the death of Dax on DS9 -- then you feel like it does their character a disservice, because the very special thing is also generally very stupid, and you’re like, what? huh? and it feels too sudden and disconnected from the show as a whole. So really, there’s no way to win when you kill off a credits-character. There are ways to not lose as badly; Buffy used to do pretty well with that kind of thing, Joyce’s death was well done and Tara’s didn’t especially suck, but then, they dropped the ball with Anya and Spike, so what can you do. So the way Lamb died didn’t especially bother me, but the fact that he died did, if that makes sense. I thought Lamb was just so entertaining, and Muhney did such a wonderful job; I’m really going to miss that dynamic.
And you know, I really like Veronica and Keith better as PIs. I think that that element gives the show part of its noir grittiness, and I associate Keith being sherriff with the time before Lilly died, when Veronica was -- not dumber, but less hardcore, less interesting, less jaded, less fun to watch. As I think I’ve posted about before, I really like having Veronica need to walk the line between being a good PI and being a well-adjusted human being, and I think that line is easier to walk if you’re a regular police officer or sherriff, because you’re up against people breaking definite laws rather than people being kind of morally awful. I mean, Keith and Veronica handled things that were agains the law, as well, obviously; they just went after Dean O’Dell’s killer. But they also spent a lot of time going after people who were cheating on their spouses, or handling cases that the law couldn’t just step in and cover, and if the show loses that sort of -- how do I want to say? Reliance on situation? Moral grayness? Moral discussions, that kind of thing? If it simply becomes a matter of catching people who are breaking the law, I think it will lose a lot and I would be really disappointed. However, due to all the philosophical reading and so forth, I have a very black and white, idealistic view of what laws should be and what following them should mean, so I think I see a necessity to be more black and white that doesn’t actually exist. And I do trust the show not to lose its moral grayness; in the interviews I’ve read they seem very keen on that element and very determined to keep it. So if they can keep pulling off the kind of episodes they’ve been doing, but with Keith as sherriff, that will be really interesting, and I’ll be very impressed.
Oh, and I haven’t even hardly talked about the plot. I liked that Landry killed Mindy, by the way, and I like that it was an accident. Not because I don’t like Mindy -- I didn’t love her, but she was fine, whatever, hardly matters -- but because I really liked where that left us-the-viewers with regards to Landry’s character. Because Landry has never been exactly eeeeeevil, he has always been very self-serving, arrogant, and kind of slimy. And I like that, if we’re going to finish up with him (at least for awhile) that we get left with that taste in our mouths. He doesn’t exactly mean to kill Mindy -- not in the evil mastermind way of Lucky Tim -- but he doesn’t exactly mean for her to live, either. I thought the end of his arc was very consistent with his character, and I really liked that. And I won’t really miss Mindy, either; she was kind of a self-serving brat.
Oh, what else? I’ll be interested to see how Logan and Parker work out. I’d like to get invested in their relationship, but it will be difficult, since it’s been a long time since I was as invested in a TV romance as I am in the Logan/Veronica relationship. I mean, Willow and Oz were awesome, in a warm-fuzzies way, but I don’t usually get invested in relationships as dramatic as L&V’s. Buffy/Angel did nothing for me; neither did Rory/Jess on Gilmore Girls. I think it’s a tribute to Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring that I care so much what their characters think of each other, since usually this kind of relationship would bother me and in fact I haven’t squealed at the TV this much since Mulder and Scully. Before they started sucking completely, I mean. But go for it, Logan, ask out Parker; maybe Veronica can date Piz for awhile. And then you can come running back to each other like two little dysfunctional pinballs in love. (Which is totally going to be the name of my new album.)
Okay, enough rambling. No, wait, one more thing. I have to say, I really hope they keep the mini-arc format instead of just individual episode by episode mysteries next season. I like the episode by episode mysteries just fine, and it’s not like I’ll boycot in protest or anything (heaven forbid). But it takes out some of the fun if you don’t have a few episodes in between to try to guess who did it. Bare minimum, I hope they have a few three and four parters -- not just one and two -- next season, because I think they do them just brilliantly.
Everyone -- by which I mean my sister and TWoP, but which would include my mother if my mother were keeping up on Veronica Mars instead of just waiting for the DVDs so that she can fast-forward through any scenes that don’t feature Logan -- (kidding, Mom, kidding) -- (it’s totally true, everyone except Mom, you know it is) -- predicted the Lucky Tim killer thing. But I love being surprised, so I don’t mind feeling a little dumb to that end.
I did have the satisfaction of feeling like something was off about Tim for the first thirty-eight minutes of the episode. The whole time, even as I was enjoying Veronica being teamed up with someone and also getting to tell him what to do (she really does need Wallace and/or Piz and/or Mac to help her more actively in her cases, simply because I would find it fun and hilarious), there was the impending doom feeling of Wait A Minute, No Way is Tim Really That Stupid. (But dude, the latex glove scene was hilarious.)
I generally really like the villains’ motivations on VM, and think they’re believable and interesting. I think the creators do a good job generally of making them personal enough to resonate. (There are one or two exceptions; I didn’t love the fake rape and the reason behind it; I get both of those on an intellectual level but it was hard for me to plug into the characters and they didn’t resonate with me as I think they should/could have. But I liked the thought and effort that went into them.) This particular motivation, though, carries a certain amount of both resonance and catharsis on a purely personal level. You see, back in my formative years (read: a year and a half ago) I had a lovely prof who I admired and respected, who gave me lovely grades and had nothing but nice things to say about me in my conferences. She paid me very high compliments and said totally fantastic things about my paper. (I was the best paper I’ve ever written, so it deserved lots of good things said about it. But I digress.) So, the following year I ask her for a recommendation and she hems and haws and says that she can’t in good conscience recommend me for a grad school program and she has reservations about my writing. Now no one should recommend a student they don’t feel comfortable recommending, but for heaven’s sweet sake, students generally won’t ask you to recommend them unless you pay them lots of compliments and talk like you think they’re brilliant, and it’s a very annoying mixed message to send. (This prof pulled the same stunt on a couple of my friends, too, so I kind of think she was just passive-agressive.)
In any case, to return to Not-All-About-Me Land, what Landry did is far worse, since you should never say you’ll serve as a reference for someone and then not actually give them a good reference. But it was so much fun -- and if not exactly realistic, certainly just as realistic as anything else on VM -- that Tim would want to set Landry up for the murder to get back at him. I never considered that particular solution, but then, I was a philosophy major. (Now I’m trying to think of what the philosophy major alternative would have been. Maybe having her on my oral committee and then making her look like an idiot.)
Moving. On. Because this is dull to everyone except me.
I am so totally bummed that Lamb really is dead. I don’t mind the way he died; I thought the show sent him off as well as TV shows generally do; there’s no real way to kill off a main character so that you don’t piss everyone off. When you’re putting your main characters in more or less life and death situations every week, it’s really hard to have a death that’s meaningful. Because if something fairly standard gets them -- as with Lamb -- then you feel sort of gypped; but if something Very Special happens to kill them off -- the example that comes to mind is the death of Dax on DS9 -- then you feel like it does their character a disservice, because the very special thing is also generally very stupid, and you’re like, what? huh? and it feels too sudden and disconnected from the show as a whole. So really, there’s no way to win when you kill off a credits-character. There are ways to not lose as badly; Buffy used to do pretty well with that kind of thing, Joyce’s death was well done and Tara’s didn’t especially suck, but then, they dropped the ball with Anya and Spike, so what can you do. So the way Lamb died didn’t especially bother me, but the fact that he died did, if that makes sense. I thought Lamb was just so entertaining, and Muhney did such a wonderful job; I’m really going to miss that dynamic.
And you know, I really like Veronica and Keith better as PIs. I think that that element gives the show part of its noir grittiness, and I associate Keith being sherriff with the time before Lilly died, when Veronica was -- not dumber, but less hardcore, less interesting, less jaded, less fun to watch. As I think I’ve posted about before, I really like having Veronica need to walk the line between being a good PI and being a well-adjusted human being, and I think that line is easier to walk if you’re a regular police officer or sherriff, because you’re up against people breaking definite laws rather than people being kind of morally awful. I mean, Keith and Veronica handled things that were agains the law, as well, obviously; they just went after Dean O’Dell’s killer. But they also spent a lot of time going after people who were cheating on their spouses, or handling cases that the law couldn’t just step in and cover, and if the show loses that sort of -- how do I want to say? Reliance on situation? Moral grayness? Moral discussions, that kind of thing? If it simply becomes a matter of catching people who are breaking the law, I think it will lose a lot and I would be really disappointed. However, due to all the philosophical reading and so forth, I have a very black and white, idealistic view of what laws should be and what following them should mean, so I think I see a necessity to be more black and white that doesn’t actually exist. And I do trust the show not to lose its moral grayness; in the interviews I’ve read they seem very keen on that element and very determined to keep it. So if they can keep pulling off the kind of episodes they’ve been doing, but with Keith as sherriff, that will be really interesting, and I’ll be very impressed.
Oh, and I haven’t even hardly talked about the plot. I liked that Landry killed Mindy, by the way, and I like that it was an accident. Not because I don’t like Mindy -- I didn’t love her, but she was fine, whatever, hardly matters -- but because I really liked where that left us-the-viewers with regards to Landry’s character. Because Landry has never been exactly eeeeeevil, he has always been very self-serving, arrogant, and kind of slimy. And I like that, if we’re going to finish up with him (at least for awhile) that we get left with that taste in our mouths. He doesn’t exactly mean to kill Mindy -- not in the evil mastermind way of Lucky Tim -- but he doesn’t exactly mean for her to live, either. I thought the end of his arc was very consistent with his character, and I really liked that. And I won’t really miss Mindy, either; she was kind of a self-serving brat.
Oh, what else? I’ll be interested to see how Logan and Parker work out. I’d like to get invested in their relationship, but it will be difficult, since it’s been a long time since I was as invested in a TV romance as I am in the Logan/Veronica relationship. I mean, Willow and Oz were awesome, in a warm-fuzzies way, but I don’t usually get invested in relationships as dramatic as L&V’s. Buffy/Angel did nothing for me; neither did Rory/Jess on Gilmore Girls. I think it’s a tribute to Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring that I care so much what their characters think of each other, since usually this kind of relationship would bother me and in fact I haven’t squealed at the TV this much since Mulder and Scully. Before they started sucking completely, I mean. But go for it, Logan, ask out Parker; maybe Veronica can date Piz for awhile. And then you can come running back to each other like two little dysfunctional pinballs in love. (Which is totally going to be the name of my new album.)
Okay, enough rambling. No, wait, one more thing. I have to say, I really hope they keep the mini-arc format instead of just individual episode by episode mysteries next season. I like the episode by episode mysteries just fine, and it’s not like I’ll boycot in protest or anything (heaven forbid). But it takes out some of the fun if you don’t have a few episodes in between to try to guess who did it. Bare minimum, I hope they have a few three and four parters -- not just one and two -- next season, because I think they do them just brilliantly.
2.3.07
Veronica Mars -- Mars, Bars
Not my favorite episode of the season, but still very strong, very enjoyable. I know my sister loved it and I can totally see why. Part of the problem was that I had, like, three days in between watching the first half and watching the end, so I sort of lost the plot for awhile.
One thing at a time. The scavenger hunt. I still love the Mac/Bronson pairing, although I wish they got more screen time, and I continue wishing we'd had more chances to see the relationship develop. They're cute enough that they could really milk it for awhile. I guess they did that with Beaver, and now the viewers would be suspicious and all if she didn't get some pretty quick, but... I don't know. They remind me more of like, Willow and Oz from Buffy except that they're going so quick. I hope Bronson sticks around for awhile, I feel like we the viewers don't know him that well. I think I would be all for a Logan/Parker pairing too, actually, if I weren't still so hung up on Logan and Veronica. After the (AWESOME) elevator ride last week I can't get invested in a new relationship so quickly... if I could, though, I would think that Logan and Parker are a pretty good match. Seems like she would keep him in line to a certain extent; she's outgoing in a very different way from Veronica and she doesn't really cut Logan slack for his bullshit, but also doesn't get so emotionally invested in his behavior (which I think Veronica did from the very beginning, because of their very tangled history) so that she can let him off the hook for certain behaviors that Veronica wouldn't tolerate. So yes, I think that the relationship could work, but I'm still sort of firmly on the Veronica side of the equation.
Jail... the jail stuff was pretty good, although I have to say, my parents would have killed me if I was jailed for being some sort of accomplice and then smartmouthed about it. Like, I get that Veronica and Keith have a very different relationship, and you know, it's TV, and it's Veronica, of course she's going to snark off, and I would probably find it funnier if I had seen more of the movies that she referenced. But it seemed like such an inappropriate time to be sarcastic that it kind of annoyed me. Not that she should have felt guilty or submissive by any means, but geez, you can tone it down a little, Veronica. On the other hand, I thought Wallace's comment to Sherriff Lamb was hilarious beyond all reason. Not because Lamb acts remotely gay, but because the wordplay was clever, the turnaround was appropriate, and it was sort of nice to see someone make a joke at Lamb's expense that wasn't about how ineffective and stupid he is. Not that that ever gets old, exactly, but it was nice to see Wallace reacting in a way Lamb wasn't expecting.
On the topic of Lamb... I'm kind of refusing to believe he's actually dead. I mean, everyone's sort of treating it like he is, so probably I'm wrong, I haven't read any spoilers, I don't know. But the fact that Keith was there, and Lamb said something to him, the fact that Keith got the call and sort of immediately became acting Sherriff again... I kind of feel like he and Lamb sort of planned the whole thing so that they could somehow together catch Dean O'Dell's killer. Of course there is Lamb shooting the mirror that works against that argument; it would have been a hard situation to be in control of, and all that, and the idea of Lamb and Keith working together without being forced is seriously hard to believe. But it would be the kind of twist this show could pull off really well, theoretically, so I'll actually be pretty disappointed if Lamb is just straightforwardly dead. Although the people you know dying thing is also something this show does well, so there you go. Anyway. I thought the death was well done, but I'll be sad if it sticks, I think Lamb is an absolutely awesome addition to the show, and although his send off was good I'll totally miss him. Plus I like Keith and Veronica much better as PIs; I don't want to see Keith lose his edginess if he becomes sherriff again.
Landry and Mindy... okay, I don't know who killed the dean, but if it's either of them, or Mindy's ex, whose name I have never bothered to memorize, I will need some serious twists and turns to make that okay. Like if it's sort of straightforwardly one of them, for a reason we've already been exposed to, that would disappoint me. I can't believe that it would be Mindy; the thing that makes the most sense to me right now is it being Landry, Mindy knowing it, and her asking Keith to investigate it so that she can stop covering for him, because she doesn't love him anymore, or something like that. In fact, that's sort of my best prediction at this point, but there'd have to be at least one more twist to make it okay. Also, I can't see Dean O'Dell being like "What are you doing here?" all calm and confused if Landry showed up in his office after that particular evening. I also can't see someone as intelligent as Landry using Veronica's perfect murder setup to get away with his own; seems like he'd use his own ideas. And I'd be upset too if it were Mindy's ex, unless he was working with someone (preferably one of the kids). Okay, those are my muddled thoughts, now I get to go find out who it actually was.
One thing at a time. The scavenger hunt. I still love the Mac/Bronson pairing, although I wish they got more screen time, and I continue wishing we'd had more chances to see the relationship develop. They're cute enough that they could really milk it for awhile. I guess they did that with Beaver, and now the viewers would be suspicious and all if she didn't get some pretty quick, but... I don't know. They remind me more of like, Willow and Oz from Buffy except that they're going so quick. I hope Bronson sticks around for awhile, I feel like we the viewers don't know him that well. I think I would be all for a Logan/Parker pairing too, actually, if I weren't still so hung up on Logan and Veronica. After the (AWESOME) elevator ride last week I can't get invested in a new relationship so quickly... if I could, though, I would think that Logan and Parker are a pretty good match. Seems like she would keep him in line to a certain extent; she's outgoing in a very different way from Veronica and she doesn't really cut Logan slack for his bullshit, but also doesn't get so emotionally invested in his behavior (which I think Veronica did from the very beginning, because of their very tangled history) so that she can let him off the hook for certain behaviors that Veronica wouldn't tolerate. So yes, I think that the relationship could work, but I'm still sort of firmly on the Veronica side of the equation.
Jail... the jail stuff was pretty good, although I have to say, my parents would have killed me if I was jailed for being some sort of accomplice and then smartmouthed about it. Like, I get that Veronica and Keith have a very different relationship, and you know, it's TV, and it's Veronica, of course she's going to snark off, and I would probably find it funnier if I had seen more of the movies that she referenced. But it seemed like such an inappropriate time to be sarcastic that it kind of annoyed me. Not that she should have felt guilty or submissive by any means, but geez, you can tone it down a little, Veronica. On the other hand, I thought Wallace's comment to Sherriff Lamb was hilarious beyond all reason. Not because Lamb acts remotely gay, but because the wordplay was clever, the turnaround was appropriate, and it was sort of nice to see someone make a joke at Lamb's expense that wasn't about how ineffective and stupid he is. Not that that ever gets old, exactly, but it was nice to see Wallace reacting in a way Lamb wasn't expecting.
On the topic of Lamb... I'm kind of refusing to believe he's actually dead. I mean, everyone's sort of treating it like he is, so probably I'm wrong, I haven't read any spoilers, I don't know. But the fact that Keith was there, and Lamb said something to him, the fact that Keith got the call and sort of immediately became acting Sherriff again... I kind of feel like he and Lamb sort of planned the whole thing so that they could somehow together catch Dean O'Dell's killer. Of course there is Lamb shooting the mirror that works against that argument; it would have been a hard situation to be in control of, and all that, and the idea of Lamb and Keith working together without being forced is seriously hard to believe. But it would be the kind of twist this show could pull off really well, theoretically, so I'll actually be pretty disappointed if Lamb is just straightforwardly dead. Although the people you know dying thing is also something this show does well, so there you go. Anyway. I thought the death was well done, but I'll be sad if it sticks, I think Lamb is an absolutely awesome addition to the show, and although his send off was good I'll totally miss him. Plus I like Keith and Veronica much better as PIs; I don't want to see Keith lose his edginess if he becomes sherriff again.
Landry and Mindy... okay, I don't know who killed the dean, but if it's either of them, or Mindy's ex, whose name I have never bothered to memorize, I will need some serious twists and turns to make that okay. Like if it's sort of straightforwardly one of them, for a reason we've already been exposed to, that would disappoint me. I can't believe that it would be Mindy; the thing that makes the most sense to me right now is it being Landry, Mindy knowing it, and her asking Keith to investigate it so that she can stop covering for him, because she doesn't love him anymore, or something like that. In fact, that's sort of my best prediction at this point, but there'd have to be at least one more twist to make it okay. Also, I can't see Dean O'Dell being like "What are you doing here?" all calm and confused if Landry showed up in his office after that particular evening. I also can't see someone as intelligent as Landry using Veronica's perfect murder setup to get away with his own; seems like he'd use his own ideas. And I'd be upset too if it were Mindy's ex, unless he was working with someone (preferably one of the kids). Okay, those are my muddled thoughts, now I get to go find out who it actually was.
Still More Vienna
Bah. Teach me to start a post, get distracted by Feministing, forget to save and then sit around on my ass until Mozilla self-quits and eats my post because it hates me. Now I must describe again my last full Vienna day.
Since it was not entirely cloudy or pissing down rain, I started at the giant ferris wheel. I was expecting something along the lines of the London Eye, more of a sightseeing tool than an amusement park ride, but no, it was part of a small amusement park (the rest of which was closed, it being February). The ferris wheel is pretty massive, but it's like a luxury theme park ride. You can see a lot of the city from the top, though, and it's a gorgeous ride. Plus, the little amusement park, which has a couple of fairly small roller coasters, the usual throw-up rides, a water ride, etc., (it is very little though; think Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk without the beach, the boardwalk, or the good Mexican food) and is next to a minigolf course and a planetarium. If I lived in Vienna year round, and therefore spoke German, I think I would spend all summer at that place. Mini golf and a planetarium within three minutes walk from each other? I'm tempted to move to Vienna and learn German to get in on that action. As it was though, I settled for grafitiing the ferris wheel and moving on. In the corner of one of those cars is a teeny tiny 'Libby USA 2007'.
After that was the adventure of finding the Austrian Resistance Museum. I've been reading Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which, though dry, is very informative, and so I'm curious about any WWII memorial type things European cities happen to have lying around. There's a monument, in downtown Vienna, that I also saw, it's mostly just depressing without being super informative, but it's nice to see the effort. Living here is giving me stronger feelings about the war -- it's such recent and real history here that it's hard not to be affected. I don't notice, and don't notice, and then I saw this memorial erected on the site of an apartment building that was bombed by the Allies. In France, I see that kind of thing and feel guilty on my country's behalf for how little we valued the destruction of European cities in our invasion; we seemed to have no conception that people actually lived there. But in Austria I found myself having a much more emotional reaction -- something along the lines of well that's what you GET when you SIDE WITH THE NAZIS. Which is unfair, and sad, and inappropriate. I'm embarrassed that I had that reaction, but between being here and the reading, I couldn't quite suppress it right away. It's been... odd. One of the things I find most upsetting is the sheer numbers in support (although the Nazis did not in fact command an absolute majority of voters before they outlawed every other political party; interesting fact) and how quicky so many countries had to just turn their political philosophies completely on a dime. I can't even imagine... Obviously, of course, it wasn't that cut and dry; there were so many people and they had so many different opinions, and anyway that's what happens when you lose a war. But the difference between "in power over half of Europe" and "the byword for absolute evil" is so big, and the change had to take place so quickly... not that I'm questioning either of those labels, at all, but that's something else that just makes it so difficult. I have to just read more until it starts to make sense, I think.
Anyway, case in point is the Resistance Museum, which is what I was talking about before I got sidetracked. The Resistance in Austria, unlike its French counterpart, was kind of tiny and ineffective. (This is not my interpretation. The museum admits this upfront.) They passed out pamphlets, basically, which didn't change much except to get most of them killed. The museum itelf is small, although I think the library it houses, which is reserved for academics and people who speak German, is more extensive. It's very interesting, though, and the explanations in English were good.
After that, I wandered some, ate a salad, and tried to talk myself into doing something musical. You can't really visit Vienna and not do something musical, I argued to myself. But my appreciation of music is roughly comparable to a deaf dingo's, myself argued back. And I'm all alone, no one will ever need to know I blew off seeing anything remotely musical in the one European city that is completely famous for its composers. Bullshit, I argued back, how can you tell anyone you went to Vienna and didn't see Mozart's memorial at least? This continued until we struck a compromise... I would walk in the direction of the House of Music, the big, famous, music museum in Vienna, and if I could find it, and if it were open (it was nearly 5pm by this time) then I would go, dick around a little bit, and reward myself for it by going to the movies in English in the evening. Aren't you all glad you don't travel with me? Think of how confusing this stuff could be to negotiate! Oh, wait.
Anyway, it turned out to be an absolutely brilliant move to go there, so much so that I blew off the movie afterward because I'd had such a good time. It got off to a great start because first of all, it was open until ten, so I had as much time to poke around as I wanted, and second of all, the lady at the desk gave me student rate despite me actually being a teacher. The House of Music is divided into four or five parts, each dedicated to different things, and it's brilliant. The first part is about the Vienna Philharmonic, and is only moderately self serving. And I say that partly because after seeing a video of their New Year's Concert (well, part of it) I was inspired to buy the CD because they are awesome. That section was fine. After that there's a whole floor dedicated to how your ear perceives sound -- the different parts of the ear, sound waves and how they travel, even a room where you get to hear what a fetus supposedly hears in the womb. Plus computer programs that you can access, showing how you determine which direction a sound is coming from, and what things sound like based on different acoustics, and all that stuff. So that was pretty wicked. Next floor up is the famous composers floor, room for Beethoven, room for Mozart, room for Strauss, Mahler, and like six other ones whose names I don't remember. You know, the guy who had the parrot, the guy who everyone thought was shy except that he gave big parties for his friends (on second thought, possibly that was two different guys) etc., etc. They give you an audio guide for that part, which is nice; it's very informative, and they play musical selections from all the guys while you're passing through their rooms. My only complaint was that there was so much information on the audio guide, and really you can only spend so much time in each room before it's boring, so it's not paced especially well. After that, there was an experimental floor, where you could mix sounds like traffic and blowing your nose with Strauss's Radetzky-Marsch, and that was just awesome. There were also rooms where you could create different sounds by moving your body, or messing with your voice.
My family would have gotten such a huge kick out of the whole thing -- in fact I can't think of a single person I know who wouldn't have. This is the burden of traveling solo... but I did my best to make up for it in the gift shop. My family totally scored. Heee! Scored. Like a music score... okay, you know what, you can just shut up or you don't get your present, how does that sound? Hee! Sound.
Right, fine, shut up, I'm stopping. I left in a wicked good mood, eager to listen to my new CDs and not at all feeling like a movie, so I blew it off and wandered around to find something to eat. I ended up in a Mexican (-ish) place, where I sat at the bar and got a quesadilla. I should have gotten a wicked cool exotic drink while I was at it, because the place clearly specialized in that, but between the pear cider mishap on the previous evening and my somewhat-in-effect resolution to quit drinking solo, which is a bad habit, I settled for a mango juice. The best part though was just as I was finishing my meal (not bad; quesadillas are hard to fuck up. The salsa and the salad were questionable, though) they switched from the salsa stuff they'd been playing before, to ... the Beatles. I KNOW. So I was sitting at a Mexican bar, in Vienna, listening to "Hey Jude." It was totally excellent.
So that wraps that up... stay tuned for Prague!
Since it was not entirely cloudy or pissing down rain, I started at the giant ferris wheel. I was expecting something along the lines of the London Eye, more of a sightseeing tool than an amusement park ride, but no, it was part of a small amusement park (the rest of which was closed, it being February). The ferris wheel is pretty massive, but it's like a luxury theme park ride. You can see a lot of the city from the top, though, and it's a gorgeous ride. Plus, the little amusement park, which has a couple of fairly small roller coasters, the usual throw-up rides, a water ride, etc., (it is very little though; think Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk without the beach, the boardwalk, or the good Mexican food) and is next to a minigolf course and a planetarium. If I lived in Vienna year round, and therefore spoke German, I think I would spend all summer at that place. Mini golf and a planetarium within three minutes walk from each other? I'm tempted to move to Vienna and learn German to get in on that action. As it was though, I settled for grafitiing the ferris wheel and moving on. In the corner of one of those cars is a teeny tiny 'Libby USA 2007'.
After that was the adventure of finding the Austrian Resistance Museum. I've been reading Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which, though dry, is very informative, and so I'm curious about any WWII memorial type things European cities happen to have lying around. There's a monument, in downtown Vienna, that I also saw, it's mostly just depressing without being super informative, but it's nice to see the effort. Living here is giving me stronger feelings about the war -- it's such recent and real history here that it's hard not to be affected. I don't notice, and don't notice, and then I saw this memorial erected on the site of an apartment building that was bombed by the Allies. In France, I see that kind of thing and feel guilty on my country's behalf for how little we valued the destruction of European cities in our invasion; we seemed to have no conception that people actually lived there. But in Austria I found myself having a much more emotional reaction -- something along the lines of well that's what you GET when you SIDE WITH THE NAZIS. Which is unfair, and sad, and inappropriate. I'm embarrassed that I had that reaction, but between being here and the reading, I couldn't quite suppress it right away. It's been... odd. One of the things I find most upsetting is the sheer numbers in support (although the Nazis did not in fact command an absolute majority of voters before they outlawed every other political party; interesting fact) and how quicky so many countries had to just turn their political philosophies completely on a dime. I can't even imagine... Obviously, of course, it wasn't that cut and dry; there were so many people and they had so many different opinions, and anyway that's what happens when you lose a war. But the difference between "in power over half of Europe" and "the byword for absolute evil" is so big, and the change had to take place so quickly... not that I'm questioning either of those labels, at all, but that's something else that just makes it so difficult. I have to just read more until it starts to make sense, I think.
Anyway, case in point is the Resistance Museum, which is what I was talking about before I got sidetracked. The Resistance in Austria, unlike its French counterpart, was kind of tiny and ineffective. (This is not my interpretation. The museum admits this upfront.) They passed out pamphlets, basically, which didn't change much except to get most of them killed. The museum itelf is small, although I think the library it houses, which is reserved for academics and people who speak German, is more extensive. It's very interesting, though, and the explanations in English were good.
After that, I wandered some, ate a salad, and tried to talk myself into doing something musical. You can't really visit Vienna and not do something musical, I argued to myself. But my appreciation of music is roughly comparable to a deaf dingo's, myself argued back. And I'm all alone, no one will ever need to know I blew off seeing anything remotely musical in the one European city that is completely famous for its composers. Bullshit, I argued back, how can you tell anyone you went to Vienna and didn't see Mozart's memorial at least? This continued until we struck a compromise... I would walk in the direction of the House of Music, the big, famous, music museum in Vienna, and if I could find it, and if it were open (it was nearly 5pm by this time) then I would go, dick around a little bit, and reward myself for it by going to the movies in English in the evening. Aren't you all glad you don't travel with me? Think of how confusing this stuff could be to negotiate! Oh, wait.
Anyway, it turned out to be an absolutely brilliant move to go there, so much so that I blew off the movie afterward because I'd had such a good time. It got off to a great start because first of all, it was open until ten, so I had as much time to poke around as I wanted, and second of all, the lady at the desk gave me student rate despite me actually being a teacher. The House of Music is divided into four or five parts, each dedicated to different things, and it's brilliant. The first part is about the Vienna Philharmonic, and is only moderately self serving. And I say that partly because after seeing a video of their New Year's Concert (well, part of it) I was inspired to buy the CD because they are awesome. That section was fine. After that there's a whole floor dedicated to how your ear perceives sound -- the different parts of the ear, sound waves and how they travel, even a room where you get to hear what a fetus supposedly hears in the womb. Plus computer programs that you can access, showing how you determine which direction a sound is coming from, and what things sound like based on different acoustics, and all that stuff. So that was pretty wicked. Next floor up is the famous composers floor, room for Beethoven, room for Mozart, room for Strauss, Mahler, and like six other ones whose names I don't remember. You know, the guy who had the parrot, the guy who everyone thought was shy except that he gave big parties for his friends (on second thought, possibly that was two different guys) etc., etc. They give you an audio guide for that part, which is nice; it's very informative, and they play musical selections from all the guys while you're passing through their rooms. My only complaint was that there was so much information on the audio guide, and really you can only spend so much time in each room before it's boring, so it's not paced especially well. After that, there was an experimental floor, where you could mix sounds like traffic and blowing your nose with Strauss's Radetzky-Marsch, and that was just awesome. There were also rooms where you could create different sounds by moving your body, or messing with your voice.
My family would have gotten such a huge kick out of the whole thing -- in fact I can't think of a single person I know who wouldn't have. This is the burden of traveling solo... but I did my best to make up for it in the gift shop. My family totally scored. Heee! Scored. Like a music score... okay, you know what, you can just shut up or you don't get your present, how does that sound? Hee! Sound.
Right, fine, shut up, I'm stopping. I left in a wicked good mood, eager to listen to my new CDs and not at all feeling like a movie, so I blew it off and wandered around to find something to eat. I ended up in a Mexican (-ish) place, where I sat at the bar and got a quesadilla. I should have gotten a wicked cool exotic drink while I was at it, because the place clearly specialized in that, but between the pear cider mishap on the previous evening and my somewhat-in-effect resolution to quit drinking solo, which is a bad habit, I settled for a mango juice. The best part though was just as I was finishing my meal (not bad; quesadillas are hard to fuck up. The salsa and the salad were questionable, though) they switched from the salsa stuff they'd been playing before, to ... the Beatles. I KNOW. So I was sitting at a Mexican bar, in Vienna, listening to "Hey Jude." It was totally excellent.
So that wraps that up... stay tuned for Prague!
26.2.07
Veronica Mars -- Postgame Mortem
Whee, this show is rocking so hard. They haven't been in this strong of a groove since season one; it is making me SO happy.
I totally loved the little eleven year old girl and Logan thing. I realize that it was a little contrived and a little trite, and I wasn't a huge ginormous fan of the oh, she does know something about love and loss because her parents split up "twist", whatever, my parents split up when I was that age, doesn't mean I knew anything about love and loss, necessarily. But the actress was adorable, the interaction wasn't too cutesy, and the elevator scene made me squeal very loudly given that I was in a faculty computer room.
As a side note, regarding that, how much is Logan the girl and Veronica the guy in their relationship? My god. It's not a bad thing, I like how they reverse the stereotypes -- I'd definitely be pissed if it were Veronica mooning around among room service trays. But you know. A little ... noticeable. But then, now that I think about it, not altogether different from many of the relationships I saw in college.
Also, Dick is continuing his scary and nerve-wracking run as nearing the territory of likeable. Oh, he's got a few more light years to go, but the fact that I don't hate him is makding me so nervous, I can't tell you guys. What's next, virtuous members of the KKK? But I can't help it, he was hilarious this week.
So that subplot was all to the good. The coach's murder... I really wish there had been more Wallace. What the hell? You can't give the guy a little more screen time, if you're going to feature him at all? But the murder itself was interesting, I really like that it wasn't solved yet by the end, I kind of think it was Josh, but I don't have any evidence about that. But it's been good and twisty, I love having two murders going on at once -- god, do you think it's the same guy, and someone is going around killing the faculty? Because that would completely rock, I'm so serious. I mean, I'm really glad it didn't happen at my college, but fictionally it would rock.
I'm trying to think of other notable things about the episode, but mostly I just really liked it. I liked all the storylines, I thought the dialogue was good (although not crazy-memorable); the breakfast bit was good, although when is Veronica going to learn to check for clients before she starts talking to her dad at the office? Bah. The dean's letter did nothing for me, and Landry continues to annoy, although I don't think either he or Mindy was the killer. I'm still leaning towards the kid (Cyrus's kid that is) or else some kind of faculty and staff serial murderer.
Okay, I have obeyed my own rule, now I've got to go watch the next one!
I totally loved the little eleven year old girl and Logan thing. I realize that it was a little contrived and a little trite, and I wasn't a huge ginormous fan of the oh, she does know something about love and loss because her parents split up "twist", whatever, my parents split up when I was that age, doesn't mean I knew anything about love and loss, necessarily. But the actress was adorable, the interaction wasn't too cutesy, and the elevator scene made me squeal very loudly given that I was in a faculty computer room.
As a side note, regarding that, how much is Logan the girl and Veronica the guy in their relationship? My god. It's not a bad thing, I like how they reverse the stereotypes -- I'd definitely be pissed if it were Veronica mooning around among room service trays. But you know. A little ... noticeable. But then, now that I think about it, not altogether different from many of the relationships I saw in college.
Also, Dick is continuing his scary and nerve-wracking run as nearing the territory of likeable. Oh, he's got a few more light years to go, but the fact that I don't hate him is makding me so nervous, I can't tell you guys. What's next, virtuous members of the KKK? But I can't help it, he was hilarious this week.
So that subplot was all to the good. The coach's murder... I really wish there had been more Wallace. What the hell? You can't give the guy a little more screen time, if you're going to feature him at all? But the murder itself was interesting, I really like that it wasn't solved yet by the end, I kind of think it was Josh, but I don't have any evidence about that. But it's been good and twisty, I love having two murders going on at once -- god, do you think it's the same guy, and someone is going around killing the faculty? Because that would completely rock, I'm so serious. I mean, I'm really glad it didn't happen at my college, but fictionally it would rock.
I'm trying to think of other notable things about the episode, but mostly I just really liked it. I liked all the storylines, I thought the dialogue was good (although not crazy-memorable); the breakfast bit was good, although when is Veronica going to learn to check for clients before she starts talking to her dad at the office? Bah. The dean's letter did nothing for me, and Landry continues to annoy, although I don't think either he or Mindy was the killer. I'm still leaning towards the kid (Cyrus's kid that is) or else some kind of faculty and staff serial murderer.
Okay, I have obeyed my own rule, now I've got to go watch the next one!
22.2.07
More Vienna
Whew; now safely back in France, and it is time to describe my Vienna and Prague trip. And my unexpected detour to Slovakia; that was fun.
So on Wednesday I shook off my legarthy and actually started sightseeing in the city I picked for myself to visit. I know, I don't know how I do it, either. I've been getting very late starts, and it's sort of against my personal belief system to force myself to get up early while I'm supposedly on vacation for my own pleasure, so I do most of my wanderings between the hours of noon and 6pm, at which time it gets dark and everything except the bars starts to close down, and I start to get hungry and tired and cold and paranoid.
Wednesday, I spent the timeframe at the Wittgenstien-Haus and then the Tiergarten. For anyone who's never been to Vienna, you can translate those respectively as Empty-Shack and the Zoo.
I wanted to go to Wittgenstien's house not for any architectural significance I am told it has, but because Wittgenstien caused me a great deal of grief for a good six or eight weeks senior year of college and I wanted the option of spitting on his piano or something. He's one of those people -- like Kirkegaard, Homer, and Anselm -- who I wrote a bad paper about, trying to understand what they were getting at, and failing completely, because while I find them interesting I do not understand their way of thinking at all, and a paper doesn't change that, only exposes my ignorance for a tutor to see and criticize. So on the one hand, I have very bad memories of this guy, and would sort of like to see him burn in hell for causing me that grief. But on the other hand, I don't exactly blame authors in this category. I mean, I totally blame the guys like Kant and Hegel, Goethe, Marx, who I just straight up hated, didn't understand, and disagreed with on principle. Them I would totally spit on (or at least point and laugh, in an attempt to fill them with shame) if I saw them on the street. Wittgenstein, though... I mean, it's not exactly his fault that I couldn't get a handle on what he was saying at all, just like it wasn't exactly Kirkegaard's fault that I tried to write a paper on him in six hours and it turned into a five page failure. I blame him a little, because other six hour papers that I wrote turned out okay, (uh, just ignore that sentence, Mom), but I know plenty of people who devoted sufficient time to a Kirkegaard paper to have it turn out well.
Anyway. I did not spit on his piano, although he had one; the house is very cool architecturally, but also kind of empty and boring. It wasn't on my map, and I think I spent more time wandering around looking for it -- asking people for directions, going the wrong way, trying to read street names in German, stuff like that -- than I did actually in the house. There are lots of stairs, circling themselves around an elevator, which is the coolest thing. There are also a lot of paintings, but since I don't know German I don't know why they're there or if they have any significance, and since I'm bone stupid when it comes to art I don't even know if they were good paintings or not.
Anyway, after that was the zoo. I wasn't sure about going, since I virtually never go to the zoo anymore, but what the hell, I figured, asking for advice, receiving it, and then not taking it makes you look like a very stupid main character in a novel of some sort, and those kind of people inevitably come to bad ends. So I went. And I'm really glad I did, because the koala bears alone were worth the price of admission. Seriously, they were completely and totally adorable. There were also pandas, who I wanted to hug, giraffes, giant turtles, little mini penguins, lions, tigers, and cheetahs, and fish. The best part though, was that since it was February in central Europe, all the animals (almost all, anyway) were inside. So you'd walk into a room, and there would be giraffes standing there, eating out of a high trough on the wall. It cracked me up. That renewed my zest for life.
Trying to get out of the public park where the zoo is and find public transportation then killed my zest for life, but it was renewed for awhile, so you know, take what you can get.
After that, I broke with tradition. I've traveled enough to have certain habits at this point, one of them being ignoring guidebooks. This is not a smart thing to do, or a particularly good idea, or something I'd recommend, but nevertheless, I hold to it closely and rarely deviate. Consequently my preferred method of finding a restaurant is to wander around until I am so hungry that I am no longer picky about what I eat so long as I eat something, and then I go into the first restaurant I see, order something that looks vegetarian, and quietly try not to faint. Shut up, it generally works just fine. But Wednesday night I actually consulted my map for a restaurant recommendation, took public transportation over there (gotta love the Vienna card) found it, and ate there. It was a new experience. Not bad, although not quite up to the hype the map gave it. And I had a pear cider, which was stupid and gave me a wicked headache. But I deserved it for drinking pear cider, so it didn't upset me too much once it was gone by the next day. (Big internet thank yous to the girl who was staying at the hostel with me and gave me an Advil when I needed one, since I hadn't packed mine.)
That was Wednesday... stay tuned for the House of Music, Prague, and my unexpected trip to Slovakia. And some Veronica Mars reviews should be up soon, talk about renewing my zest for life.
So on Wednesday I shook off my legarthy and actually started sightseeing in the city I picked for myself to visit. I know, I don't know how I do it, either. I've been getting very late starts, and it's sort of against my personal belief system to force myself to get up early while I'm supposedly on vacation for my own pleasure, so I do most of my wanderings between the hours of noon and 6pm, at which time it gets dark and everything except the bars starts to close down, and I start to get hungry and tired and cold and paranoid.
Wednesday, I spent the timeframe at the Wittgenstien-Haus and then the Tiergarten. For anyone who's never been to Vienna, you can translate those respectively as Empty-Shack and the Zoo.
I wanted to go to Wittgenstien's house not for any architectural significance I am told it has, but because Wittgenstien caused me a great deal of grief for a good six or eight weeks senior year of college and I wanted the option of spitting on his piano or something. He's one of those people -- like Kirkegaard, Homer, and Anselm -- who I wrote a bad paper about, trying to understand what they were getting at, and failing completely, because while I find them interesting I do not understand their way of thinking at all, and a paper doesn't change that, only exposes my ignorance for a tutor to see and criticize. So on the one hand, I have very bad memories of this guy, and would sort of like to see him burn in hell for causing me that grief. But on the other hand, I don't exactly blame authors in this category. I mean, I totally blame the guys like Kant and Hegel, Goethe, Marx, who I just straight up hated, didn't understand, and disagreed with on principle. Them I would totally spit on (or at least point and laugh, in an attempt to fill them with shame) if I saw them on the street. Wittgenstein, though... I mean, it's not exactly his fault that I couldn't get a handle on what he was saying at all, just like it wasn't exactly Kirkegaard's fault that I tried to write a paper on him in six hours and it turned into a five page failure. I blame him a little, because other six hour papers that I wrote turned out okay, (uh, just ignore that sentence, Mom), but I know plenty of people who devoted sufficient time to a Kirkegaard paper to have it turn out well.
Anyway. I did not spit on his piano, although he had one; the house is very cool architecturally, but also kind of empty and boring. It wasn't on my map, and I think I spent more time wandering around looking for it -- asking people for directions, going the wrong way, trying to read street names in German, stuff like that -- than I did actually in the house. There are lots of stairs, circling themselves around an elevator, which is the coolest thing. There are also a lot of paintings, but since I don't know German I don't know why they're there or if they have any significance, and since I'm bone stupid when it comes to art I don't even know if they were good paintings or not.
Anyway, after that was the zoo. I wasn't sure about going, since I virtually never go to the zoo anymore, but what the hell, I figured, asking for advice, receiving it, and then not taking it makes you look like a very stupid main character in a novel of some sort, and those kind of people inevitably come to bad ends. So I went. And I'm really glad I did, because the koala bears alone were worth the price of admission. Seriously, they were completely and totally adorable. There were also pandas, who I wanted to hug, giraffes, giant turtles, little mini penguins, lions, tigers, and cheetahs, and fish. The best part though, was that since it was February in central Europe, all the animals (almost all, anyway) were inside. So you'd walk into a room, and there would be giraffes standing there, eating out of a high trough on the wall. It cracked me up. That renewed my zest for life.
Trying to get out of the public park where the zoo is and find public transportation then killed my zest for life, but it was renewed for awhile, so you know, take what you can get.
After that, I broke with tradition. I've traveled enough to have certain habits at this point, one of them being ignoring guidebooks. This is not a smart thing to do, or a particularly good idea, or something I'd recommend, but nevertheless, I hold to it closely and rarely deviate. Consequently my preferred method of finding a restaurant is to wander around until I am so hungry that I am no longer picky about what I eat so long as I eat something, and then I go into the first restaurant I see, order something that looks vegetarian, and quietly try not to faint. Shut up, it generally works just fine. But Wednesday night I actually consulted my map for a restaurant recommendation, took public transportation over there (gotta love the Vienna card) found it, and ate there. It was a new experience. Not bad, although not quite up to the hype the map gave it. And I had a pear cider, which was stupid and gave me a wicked headache. But I deserved it for drinking pear cider, so it didn't upset me too much once it was gone by the next day. (Big internet thank yous to the girl who was staying at the hostel with me and gave me an Advil when I needed one, since I hadn't packed mine.)
That was Wednesday... stay tuned for the House of Music, Prague, and my unexpected trip to Slovakia. And some Veronica Mars reviews should be up soon, talk about renewing my zest for life.
20.2.07
Vienna, Day 1
Four Things That Are Annoying:
1. That each country in Europe feels the need not only for a different language, but a different fucking keyboard contraption. In England and America, you have QWERTY keyboards. Okay, I complained about them when I was young and learning to type, but now I know how to type and they work fine. In France, you have AZERTY keyboards, which are annoying but which I have gotten used to. NOW, in Austria, they have QWERTZ keyboards. This is driving me completely insane. There are, like, ten letters that I can count on to be there when I need them. Don't even get me started on punctuation marks. Typing now makes me want to cry.
2. My normal February cold, which arrived promptly on schedule the day I was supposed to be leaving for Paris, and which now keeps me up for two hours at a time every night coughing my lungs up. Shut up, stupid cold. I'm tired enough without your influence, and now all my hostel roommates want to kill me.
3.The book I finished on the way here, Andre Norton's Wheel of Stars. Dear Andre Norton, Since you are neither Madeleine L'Engle, nor Ursula Le Guin, nor Robin McKinley, I must insist that you stop pretending you are, and therefore stop writing books which feature the end of the world because of the stupidity of mankind, the joyous reuniting of two identities into a whole person, or a perfectly normal young woman who suddenly discovers that not only does she have magic powers, but she is some sort of last true hope for mankind. Look on the bright side, Ms. Norton: you are also not Mercedes Lackey, so perhaps if you set your sights a little lower, you can write lovely, decent page turners set in an entirely fantastical environment. Play to your strengths, my dear. Love, petitechica.
4. The fact that it apparently takes four hours to get to Prague from here. I refuse to believe it is that far away. On the map it looks like it should be two or three hours, not four. Now it will be much more of a pain in the ass to take a day trip up there, but I shall go anyway.
Four Things That Are Awesome:
1. The shopping in Vienna. The shopping in Vienna is totally fantasic, and if I had had any money yesterday I wouldn't have it anymore. All the bookstores have a nice, relatively big English language section, the clothing and shoe stores are fantastic, and the souvenir shops don't annoy me as much as usual because lots of them sell Mozart CDs. Also the downtown area is completely gorgeous beyond all reason, it's like you walk along, la de da, and suddenly there's this completely beautiful building right in front of you. Not every building is beautiful -- lots of it is just very commercial, it reminds me of downtown New York -- but that makes it all the more startling when one does suddenly pop up.
2. The St. Stephen's Cathedral, which I randomly stumbled into yesterday. This has to be the most Gothic building I have ever seen in my life. It's all dark and broody and archy and full of gargoyles. I had no idea it was there but now I think it is extremely cool and one of my favorite cathedrals.
3. The movie Hollywoodland, which I saw last night, in English, because Austria loves me. Damn, that movie was completely excellent, and everyone should go see it immediately. Adrien Brody is gorgeous, but more than that the acting is really good, the camera work is really good, the story is suitably twisty, it's just all around awesome. I have to say, the noir genre is completely growing on me. The mystery genre in general, really, but particularly the subset that is noir. I blame Veronica Mars, and also all the Bogart movies I got for my last birthday. I know I like the mystery genre because the detectives are usually so cool, and they have a way of making me feel both really smart and totally in awe of their intelligence at the same time, which I like. They can even be a little smug, and that's okay, as long as they're smug in the direction of people around them instead of in my direction. Julian Kestrel, Veronica Mars, Philip Marlowe, I even picked up a Thursday Next novel yesterday and was liking her. (This means I'm going to have to check out both Lord Peter Wimsey and Sherlock Holmes books again, now that I sort of like mysteries; this genre has been growing on me so totally slowly that it's hard to know what I'll like or won't like at any given time.) Anyway, Adrien Brody as Louis Simo definitely goes on the good list.
4. My hostel, which has cleanliness, relative privacy, and free lockers that come with your room. One of the best hostels I have stayed at, so I really hope they don't hate me for coughing so much.
1. That each country in Europe feels the need not only for a different language, but a different fucking keyboard contraption. In England and America, you have QWERTY keyboards. Okay, I complained about them when I was young and learning to type, but now I know how to type and they work fine. In France, you have AZERTY keyboards, which are annoying but which I have gotten used to. NOW, in Austria, they have QWERTZ keyboards. This is driving me completely insane. There are, like, ten letters that I can count on to be there when I need them. Don't even get me started on punctuation marks. Typing now makes me want to cry.
2. My normal February cold, which arrived promptly on schedule the day I was supposed to be leaving for Paris, and which now keeps me up for two hours at a time every night coughing my lungs up. Shut up, stupid cold. I'm tired enough without your influence, and now all my hostel roommates want to kill me.
3.The book I finished on the way here, Andre Norton's Wheel of Stars. Dear Andre Norton, Since you are neither Madeleine L'Engle, nor Ursula Le Guin, nor Robin McKinley, I must insist that you stop pretending you are, and therefore stop writing books which feature the end of the world because of the stupidity of mankind, the joyous reuniting of two identities into a whole person, or a perfectly normal young woman who suddenly discovers that not only does she have magic powers, but she is some sort of last true hope for mankind. Look on the bright side, Ms. Norton: you are also not Mercedes Lackey, so perhaps if you set your sights a little lower, you can write lovely, decent page turners set in an entirely fantastical environment. Play to your strengths, my dear. Love, petitechica.
4. The fact that it apparently takes four hours to get to Prague from here. I refuse to believe it is that far away. On the map it looks like it should be two or three hours, not four. Now it will be much more of a pain in the ass to take a day trip up there, but I shall go anyway.
Four Things That Are Awesome:
1. The shopping in Vienna. The shopping in Vienna is totally fantasic, and if I had had any money yesterday I wouldn't have it anymore. All the bookstores have a nice, relatively big English language section, the clothing and shoe stores are fantastic, and the souvenir shops don't annoy me as much as usual because lots of them sell Mozart CDs. Also the downtown area is completely gorgeous beyond all reason, it's like you walk along, la de da, and suddenly there's this completely beautiful building right in front of you. Not every building is beautiful -- lots of it is just very commercial, it reminds me of downtown New York -- but that makes it all the more startling when one does suddenly pop up.
2. The St. Stephen's Cathedral, which I randomly stumbled into yesterday. This has to be the most Gothic building I have ever seen in my life. It's all dark and broody and archy and full of gargoyles. I had no idea it was there but now I think it is extremely cool and one of my favorite cathedrals.
3. The movie Hollywoodland, which I saw last night, in English, because Austria loves me. Damn, that movie was completely excellent, and everyone should go see it immediately. Adrien Brody is gorgeous, but more than that the acting is really good, the camera work is really good, the story is suitably twisty, it's just all around awesome. I have to say, the noir genre is completely growing on me. The mystery genre in general, really, but particularly the subset that is noir. I blame Veronica Mars, and also all the Bogart movies I got for my last birthday. I know I like the mystery genre because the detectives are usually so cool, and they have a way of making me feel both really smart and totally in awe of their intelligence at the same time, which I like. They can even be a little smug, and that's okay, as long as they're smug in the direction of people around them instead of in my direction. Julian Kestrel, Veronica Mars, Philip Marlowe, I even picked up a Thursday Next novel yesterday and was liking her. (This means I'm going to have to check out both Lord Peter Wimsey and Sherlock Holmes books again, now that I sort of like mysteries; this genre has been growing on me so totally slowly that it's hard to know what I'll like or won't like at any given time.) Anyway, Adrien Brody as Louis Simo definitely goes on the good list.
4. My hostel, which has cleanliness, relative privacy, and free lockers that come with your room. One of the best hostels I have stayed at, so I really hope they don't hate me for coughing so much.
18.2.07
My Twenty Four Hours of Zoom
So I made it safe to Vienna, through, well, neither rain nor snow nor sleet, but through feet, trains, metro, hostels, airplanes, buses, trams, and more feet. (I have actually used all of those within the last twenty-four hours. I'm considering taking a boat and/or taxi ride tomorrow, just to round it off.)
But as much as I could complain about all that, that's not what I want to write about. (Okay, I am going to complain very briefly about the woman who had to cut in front of me in line at Charles de Gaulle, with her high heels and her daughter -- I assume it was her daughter, it could have been some sort of theatrical prop -- and her tiny puppy, and her NOT GETTING TO THE AIRPORT ON FUCKING TIME so that although we were on the exact same flight she had to CUT IN FRONT OF ME, because she had a small child and a dog and was traveling first class, and was also clearly an IDIOT, because if you have a small child and a dog, you arrive at the airport TWO HOURS before your flight, NOT forty five minutes, and she is more of an idiot, because I still made it onto the plane before her because she stopped and bought a slurpee. Bitch. Anyway.)
Now my complaining is over. Other than that -- and the slight mishap when I was freshly arrived in Vienna and got off the bus at the wrong stop and had to figure out how to get across town with no map and a German vocabulary of fewer than ten words, not including the numbers one through twenty -- my trip went very well. And one of the reasons was the lovely Swiss airline I took.
Seriously, you guys? Everyone should ALWAYS fly Swiss. I luuuurve the Swiss. I was only in Zurich for less than five hours, and I still love the Swiss. (Switzerland, out the window, looked very pretty too.) Their seats are nice and big and nice leather, plenty of butt-room, and I had no one sitting next to me either of my two flights, and forget peanuts, they totally pass out sandwiches and Swiss chocolate. And that is actually a pretty brilliant move on their part, since as soon as I got to the airport in Zurich I bought like three or four big Swiss chocolate bars, because Swiss chocolate is delicious. Yum, Swiss chocolate.
So that is the lesson I have learned thus far in my travels. I'm not sure at all what I'm going to see in Vienna, except I'll probably head over to the Sigmund Freud Museum at some point, because I thik it is awesome that they have a Sigmund Freud museum. (I can't imagine what's in there, though. A couch? A cigar?) And the music hall, too probably. Email me with suggestions, everybody, or leave them as a comment. I have no guidebook, I am counting on you guys.
But as much as I could complain about all that, that's not what I want to write about. (Okay, I am going to complain very briefly about the woman who had to cut in front of me in line at Charles de Gaulle, with her high heels and her daughter -- I assume it was her daughter, it could have been some sort of theatrical prop -- and her tiny puppy, and her NOT GETTING TO THE AIRPORT ON FUCKING TIME so that although we were on the exact same flight she had to CUT IN FRONT OF ME, because she had a small child and a dog and was traveling first class, and was also clearly an IDIOT, because if you have a small child and a dog, you arrive at the airport TWO HOURS before your flight, NOT forty five minutes, and she is more of an idiot, because I still made it onto the plane before her because she stopped and bought a slurpee. Bitch. Anyway.)
Now my complaining is over. Other than that -- and the slight mishap when I was freshly arrived in Vienna and got off the bus at the wrong stop and had to figure out how to get across town with no map and a German vocabulary of fewer than ten words, not including the numbers one through twenty -- my trip went very well. And one of the reasons was the lovely Swiss airline I took.
Seriously, you guys? Everyone should ALWAYS fly Swiss. I luuuurve the Swiss. I was only in Zurich for less than five hours, and I still love the Swiss. (Switzerland, out the window, looked very pretty too.) Their seats are nice and big and nice leather, plenty of butt-room, and I had no one sitting next to me either of my two flights, and forget peanuts, they totally pass out sandwiches and Swiss chocolate. And that is actually a pretty brilliant move on their part, since as soon as I got to the airport in Zurich I bought like three or four big Swiss chocolate bars, because Swiss chocolate is delicious. Yum, Swiss chocolate.
So that is the lesson I have learned thus far in my travels. I'm not sure at all what I'm going to see in Vienna, except I'll probably head over to the Sigmund Freud Museum at some point, because I thik it is awesome that they have a Sigmund Freud museum. (I can't imagine what's in there, though. A couch? A cigar?) And the music hall, too probably. Email me with suggestions, everybody, or leave them as a comment. I have no guidebook, I am counting on you guys.
17.2.07
David Sedaris -- Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
This shall have to be tres vite, because I have many things to do before I leave for Paris in three hours. Which will probably be refreshing. The short entry part, not the leaving for Paris part. The leaving for Paris part will be kind of dirty and tiring and a hassle. Which reminds me that I shoud find a hotel for tonight.
Dad has been telling me to read this book for a couple months, and I found it at a store in Rennes for like, three euros, and figured hell. And it was totally worth it because it took me under 24 hours to read (under 24 normal hours, which include sleeping and eating and traveling and being on the phone, not 24 uber-hours like La Short Stuff with a new Harry Potter), and it's really funny.
I especially liked how self-aware Sedaris is about himself and his life; often that can get obnoxious (I find it continually obnoxious how oddly self aware I am of my own life, for example, and how completely stupid in other respects; but more than that, in books if the person is too self aware, and knows it, or not self aware enough, or not funny enough about it... it's really easy to mess up. Du Maurier's Rebecca being the Platonic form of that) but he does a good job being funny about it, and being sort of okay with his neuroses, not getting defensive. I liked that.
The order to the stories/essays was sort of weird, they weren't chronological and didn't seem to follow any particular pattern. But I really enjoyed the stories themselves. "Six to Eight Black Men" especially had me just cracking up.
Plus, it is totally awesome that this guy lives in Normandie. (I find living in Europe is bad for my inner fangirl. As if being an American in France were some sort of special condition, like being a member of the same fraternity or something, that entitles you to certain bonuses. I've been to LA a ton of times in my life, and while I might sometimes get bored and check out the drivers of other cars to see if any of them are drunk celebrities, but I've never wanted to go to Beverley Hills and camp out there hoping to spot one. Whereas here, in France, anytime I hear of a famous American out here I want to go swap crazy cultural stories. I found out Olivia de Havilland lives in Paris and I want to stalk her. I find out David Sedaris lives in Normandie and I want to invite myself over for tea at his house. It is so bad.) In that vein, now I really want to read his other book about learning French. I love reading about other people struggling with French, it makes me feel normal instead of bone stupid. I envy all the viewers-at-home who can read those kind of books and chuckle and titter comfortably, secure in the knowledge that they have never had to give up on pronouncing a word and perform a short exercise in the art of mime in order to find Q-Tips in a damn drugstore.
Back to the book. This is difficult, as I didn't really think about the essays in depth. So I don't have a ton to say about it. It's very funny, I enjoyed it, it's a quick read, I recommend it.
I liked the stories of his own adult life better than the stories of his family. I get very paranoid about writing or reading anything very personal about real people who are not famous. Famous people are fair game. But to Sedaris's credit, he talks about that, and the consequences it has for his family life, and I like that. I couldn't do it, and I liked the essays better that were about travelling, or movie reviews, or cleaning apartments in New York (which was an AWESOME story, by the way) and his boyfriend and stuff like that. But I certainly didn't have a problem reading the rest of it.
Dad has been telling me to read this book for a couple months, and I found it at a store in Rennes for like, three euros, and figured hell. And it was totally worth it because it took me under 24 hours to read (under 24 normal hours, which include sleeping and eating and traveling and being on the phone, not 24 uber-hours like La Short Stuff with a new Harry Potter), and it's really funny.
I especially liked how self-aware Sedaris is about himself and his life; often that can get obnoxious (I find it continually obnoxious how oddly self aware I am of my own life, for example, and how completely stupid in other respects; but more than that, in books if the person is too self aware, and knows it, or not self aware enough, or not funny enough about it... it's really easy to mess up. Du Maurier's Rebecca being the Platonic form of that) but he does a good job being funny about it, and being sort of okay with his neuroses, not getting defensive. I liked that.
The order to the stories/essays was sort of weird, they weren't chronological and didn't seem to follow any particular pattern. But I really enjoyed the stories themselves. "Six to Eight Black Men" especially had me just cracking up.
Plus, it is totally awesome that this guy lives in Normandie. (I find living in Europe is bad for my inner fangirl. As if being an American in France were some sort of special condition, like being a member of the same fraternity or something, that entitles you to certain bonuses. I've been to LA a ton of times in my life, and while I might sometimes get bored and check out the drivers of other cars to see if any of them are drunk celebrities, but I've never wanted to go to Beverley Hills and camp out there hoping to spot one. Whereas here, in France, anytime I hear of a famous American out here I want to go swap crazy cultural stories. I found out Olivia de Havilland lives in Paris and I want to stalk her. I find out David Sedaris lives in Normandie and I want to invite myself over for tea at his house. It is so bad.) In that vein, now I really want to read his other book about learning French. I love reading about other people struggling with French, it makes me feel normal instead of bone stupid. I envy all the viewers-at-home who can read those kind of books and chuckle and titter comfortably, secure in the knowledge that they have never had to give up on pronouncing a word and perform a short exercise in the art of mime in order to find Q-Tips in a damn drugstore.
Back to the book. This is difficult, as I didn't really think about the essays in depth. So I don't have a ton to say about it. It's very funny, I enjoyed it, it's a quick read, I recommend it.
I liked the stories of his own adult life better than the stories of his family. I get very paranoid about writing or reading anything very personal about real people who are not famous. Famous people are fair game. But to Sedaris's credit, he talks about that, and the consequences it has for his family life, and I like that. I couldn't do it, and I liked the essays better that were about travelling, or movie reviews, or cleaning apartments in New York (which was an AWESOME story, by the way) and his boyfriend and stuff like that. But I certainly didn't have a problem reading the rest of it.
16.2.07
Mont-Saint-Michel, Château Fougères, & Rennes
Whee, the week of traveling around northern France! It's too bad I can't just say Normandie or Bretagne (pronounced Bret-tanye; anglicized Brittany), but I was in both and they each have cool things, and you are not allowed to get them confused, at all. If Normans are like the Californians of France, then Brittany is the Texas.
So! The Mont-Saint-Michel. It is definitely justly called a wonder of the world. There are three very stunning things about it, which all work in stunning harmony; it is just full of stunning, especially considering that from a distance it looks like a large stone wedding cake.
The first is the bay, and the way the tides flow in and out around the island (-ish thing... what do you call it when it's an island for half of every day and a hill for the other half?). The Abbey stands at the top of the hill-island hybrid, which henceforth shall be known as the hisland, and the tides come through the bottom. They used to surround it more completely, but the water has been dumping sediment around the base for thousands of years -- the causeway didn't help either -- and now it's very sandy. (Also I was there at low tide.) The people there are very big on the Mt-St-Mich being "where sea and sky meet," and they're less than pleased with this development, because "where sky and sand and some rivers and also sheep meet" sounds sort of like a really bizarre hippie dating service. So there are efforts underway to move all the sand back out, including, as I understand it, the construction of a very modern dam-like structure and the conversion of the causeway into an actual bridge. The bay itself is awesome, though, and added to the prestige of going on a pilgrimmage to the Mt.-St.-Mich is that it's a) totally full of quicksand, and b) at times completely impossible to navigate because of quick moving fogs. They tell you all this at the museum, because idiot tourists still die. (I'm willing to bet it sounded better four or five hundred years ago, when they got to call them unworthy scum and say that God was sending them a message.)
So! Awesome thing Number Two is the architecture. I know nothing about architecture, but I can tell that this was wicked cool, because you don't usually see gothic ceilings required to moonlight as supports for even larger gothic ceilings. Because of the way the hisland is shaped, half of the rooms are sort of halfway dug into the dirt and act as supports for the other half. The view is also completely incredible.
Awesome thing Number Three is the history associated with the place. I've discovered that although I enjoy the longish historical backgrounds associated with French monuments, the things I really love are always the convoluted stories of someone's crazy life, like the Princesses at Versailles. In this case, it was someone's crazy death, namely one of the Ducs or Comtes or whatever of the hisland -- I think he was a duke, but I could be making that up. Anyway, he and his wife lived in this sort of mini castle type thing, and they were very in love. So he died while on a trip to the south of France, but he wanted to be buried with his wife. So his followers, get this. They set up a fake (empty) grave in the south, where he died. Why this was necessary, I'm not sure. Then they start carrying him on horseback up north. Over the course of this long trip, he starts to smell kind of ripe. So they take out his entrails and bury those in a second grave. That works for awhile, but they trip takes a long time, and he starts to smell again, so they take out -- I think -- his muscles and skin and burn those and spread the ashes. Then, they finally get to Brittany and bury his heart in the same grave as his wife. But he is so well known (or something) that they eventually inter his bones with those of the kings of France, in Paris. FIVE GRAVES. Tell me that is not AWESOME.
They also have a real live PIRATE CHEST. Sometimes I totally love France.
Anyway! So, those were my impressions of the Mt. St. Michel, and also that the person who took me there, for whom I have not yet invented a clever pseudonym, is AWESOME also and deserves lots of props and snaps.
So, then on Wednesday, I was on the way to Rennes with my tutor, who is also awesome and who also doesn't have a clever pseudonym yet, but I think when she gets one it will involve the word 'super' in some way. We stopped at Fougères to see the Castle and the church there. The castle is totally fantastic -- picture the ideal locale where you would like to be sitting while reading Ivanhoe, in the way that Kennsington Gardens in London is your ideal setting to be reading Peter Pan and the Alaskan tundra is the perfect setting to be reading White Fang, not that I ever have, because Jack London is my own personal insomniac remedy. But! The castle! It has a keep, for reals, which English castles never do, and holes in the walls to pour out boiling oil or lead or whatever (or cold water, like the Psammead children), although they didn't use boiling oil because olive trees don't grow so far north, no joke. And crossbow openings, and seven foot thick walls, and a totally awesome moat with a waterfall.
The church roughly next door is Gothic on the outside and Baroque on the inside, which means I know not what, but seems very cool. The best part about it is the stained glass windows which actually recognizably depict scenes from recognizable sources, unlike certain other stained glass windows that I have no shame in pointing out belong to the Sainte Chapelle in Paris.
Rennes was very cool too; it's like three Berkeleys put together, each with its own university. There was shopping (I got three books in English for ten euros, which is the price of ONE English book around here, so that was awesome); there was eating (yummy crêpes, and the new and exciting knowledge that noix st.-jacques, though the word noix means nuts, are actually clams); there was going to the movies (a university presentation of O Brother Where Art Thou? and a French film called La Môme at the cinema); there was much talking and hanging out and fun. There was the university library, too, where I started a literary criticism book and came to the uncomfortable realization that there is a part of me that wants to write essays again. I know. I checked for a fever directly I realized it. But I sort of want to sit down and reread Jane Austen and write critical essays about character development. I am very disturbed.
So! That is my travelogue for today. Stay tuned for thoughts on Life, the Universe, and Vienna and Prague next week, though sadly no Veronica Mars reviews until I get back to school. Whee!
So! The Mont-Saint-Michel. It is definitely justly called a wonder of the world. There are three very stunning things about it, which all work in stunning harmony; it is just full of stunning, especially considering that from a distance it looks like a large stone wedding cake.
The first is the bay, and the way the tides flow in and out around the island (-ish thing... what do you call it when it's an island for half of every day and a hill for the other half?). The Abbey stands at the top of the hill-island hybrid, which henceforth shall be known as the hisland, and the tides come through the bottom. They used to surround it more completely, but the water has been dumping sediment around the base for thousands of years -- the causeway didn't help either -- and now it's very sandy. (Also I was there at low tide.) The people there are very big on the Mt-St-Mich being "where sea and sky meet," and they're less than pleased with this development, because "where sky and sand and some rivers and also sheep meet" sounds sort of like a really bizarre hippie dating service. So there are efforts underway to move all the sand back out, including, as I understand it, the construction of a very modern dam-like structure and the conversion of the causeway into an actual bridge. The bay itself is awesome, though, and added to the prestige of going on a pilgrimmage to the Mt.-St.-Mich is that it's a) totally full of quicksand, and b) at times completely impossible to navigate because of quick moving fogs. They tell you all this at the museum, because idiot tourists still die. (I'm willing to bet it sounded better four or five hundred years ago, when they got to call them unworthy scum and say that God was sending them a message.)
So! Awesome thing Number Two is the architecture. I know nothing about architecture, but I can tell that this was wicked cool, because you don't usually see gothic ceilings required to moonlight as supports for even larger gothic ceilings. Because of the way the hisland is shaped, half of the rooms are sort of halfway dug into the dirt and act as supports for the other half. The view is also completely incredible.
Awesome thing Number Three is the history associated with the place. I've discovered that although I enjoy the longish historical backgrounds associated with French monuments, the things I really love are always the convoluted stories of someone's crazy life, like the Princesses at Versailles. In this case, it was someone's crazy death, namely one of the Ducs or Comtes or whatever of the hisland -- I think he was a duke, but I could be making that up. Anyway, he and his wife lived in this sort of mini castle type thing, and they were very in love. So he died while on a trip to the south of France, but he wanted to be buried with his wife. So his followers, get this. They set up a fake (empty) grave in the south, where he died. Why this was necessary, I'm not sure. Then they start carrying him on horseback up north. Over the course of this long trip, he starts to smell kind of ripe. So they take out his entrails and bury those in a second grave. That works for awhile, but they trip takes a long time, and he starts to smell again, so they take out -- I think -- his muscles and skin and burn those and spread the ashes. Then, they finally get to Brittany and bury his heart in the same grave as his wife. But he is so well known (or something) that they eventually inter his bones with those of the kings of France, in Paris. FIVE GRAVES. Tell me that is not AWESOME.
They also have a real live PIRATE CHEST. Sometimes I totally love France.
Anyway! So, those were my impressions of the Mt. St. Michel, and also that the person who took me there, for whom I have not yet invented a clever pseudonym, is AWESOME also and deserves lots of props and snaps.
So, then on Wednesday, I was on the way to Rennes with my tutor, who is also awesome and who also doesn't have a clever pseudonym yet, but I think when she gets one it will involve the word 'super' in some way. We stopped at Fougères to see the Castle and the church there. The castle is totally fantastic -- picture the ideal locale where you would like to be sitting while reading Ivanhoe, in the way that Kennsington Gardens in London is your ideal setting to be reading Peter Pan and the Alaskan tundra is the perfect setting to be reading White Fang, not that I ever have, because Jack London is my own personal insomniac remedy. But! The castle! It has a keep, for reals, which English castles never do, and holes in the walls to pour out boiling oil or lead or whatever (or cold water, like the Psammead children), although they didn't use boiling oil because olive trees don't grow so far north, no joke. And crossbow openings, and seven foot thick walls, and a totally awesome moat with a waterfall.
The church roughly next door is Gothic on the outside and Baroque on the inside, which means I know not what, but seems very cool. The best part about it is the stained glass windows which actually recognizably depict scenes from recognizable sources, unlike certain other stained glass windows that I have no shame in pointing out belong to the Sainte Chapelle in Paris.
Rennes was very cool too; it's like three Berkeleys put together, each with its own university. There was shopping (I got three books in English for ten euros, which is the price of ONE English book around here, so that was awesome); there was eating (yummy crêpes, and the new and exciting knowledge that noix st.-jacques, though the word noix means nuts, are actually clams); there was going to the movies (a university presentation of O Brother Where Art Thou? and a French film called La Môme at the cinema); there was much talking and hanging out and fun. There was the university library, too, where I started a literary criticism book and came to the uncomfortable realization that there is a part of me that wants to write essays again. I know. I checked for a fever directly I realized it. But I sort of want to sit down and reread Jane Austen and write critical essays about character development. I am very disturbed.
So! That is my travelogue for today. Stay tuned for thoughts on Life, the Universe, and Vienna and Prague next week, though sadly no Veronica Mars reviews until I get back to school. Whee!
12.2.07
Up Up And Away
Whee! So in my hot little hands (actually my hot little inbox, but whatever) I have the tres shiny ticket to Vienna, pas cher du tout, which was very exciting given that I didn't buy it until today. Hurray, I leave Sunday, I shall NOT spend two full weeks out here with nothing to do, I shall go see ... I don't know what I shall see but it will probably involve Mozart in one way or another.
Anyway, for the three of you who follow this, posting will be sporadic for the next couple of weeks since I will be going to the Mont St.-Michel and Rennes this week and Vienna and probably Prague next week. I'll post and write whenever I have access.
Anyway, for the three of you who follow this, posting will be sporadic for the next couple of weeks since I will be going to the Mont St.-Michel and Rennes this week and Vienna and probably Prague next week. I'll post and write whenever I have access.
Feminist Thoughts About the Movies
So I made it all the way through Breakfast At Tiffany's last weekend, for the first time since I lived in Anderson. I didn't love it then, and I like it a lot better now, possibly because I find Holly sympathetic instead of ditzy and annoying. But there is one part of that movie that I just cannot stand, and it's the romance between her and George Peppard's Paul.
I know this is supposed to be one of the huge romantic movies of the century, like Casablanca or Gone With the Wind, and it's not that I blame Paul for finding Audrey Hepburn fetching -- she is fetching, she's a size negative two, she dresses great, she's very charming. But while Audrey Hepburn manages to convey a certain amount of depth of feeling, and control, and sense, George Peppard acts like he just figured out he wants to take a swan dive into her pants. Once her ex-husband shows up, he starts acting hurt and put out whenever she talks to other men, even though he hasn't yet broken it off with his 'decorator.' There doesn't seem to be any depth of feeling in his side of the relationship at all, and then suddenly it's "you belong to me."
Okay, I think my real complaint is that the relationship seems to have two elements -- comfortable friends and crazy obsessives. Like, they're walking around New York stealing masks and goldfish, getting crackerjacks engraved, and it's kind of cute and adorable and you could do that on a date or with a big group of friends and it would remain sort of cute. And then there's no middle ground, where they both sort of want to change their lives to be together, no, from there it's straight to the whole, engaged powder room wham bam thank you ma'am aspect of the movie.
And the movie sort of goes on too long in general -- I watch it in sections, usually -- but the relationship between them is just paced wrong, and messy. I heard from the Divine Dictator once that in the original Truman Capote story, Paul is gay, and I have to say that makes a lot more sense to me. The relationship would seem much more equal, if they were friends and did their wacky zany adventure type stuff and he wasn't trying to get into her pants. She could get him restarted on writing, he could get her out of jail, it would be sort of sweet. But then I thought about it more and decided it's okay if he wants to get into her pants, if it happens more gradually. It's the immediate leap that drives me nuts and makes me not like the romance.
(God, and you know what else has a horrible romance that made me cry? The new Charlotte's Web, which I saw in French last weekend. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Fern supposed to be, like, NINE? Regardless, Dakota Fanning looks about SEVEN AND A HALF, so giving her this TWELVE YEAR OLD GUY to squire her around the fair and hold hands with her on the ferris wheel is SICK AND WRONG. And DON'T GET ME STARTED about how she makes her mother so proud because she was in jeans the whole damn movie and then suddenly, through the magical influence of Ferris Wheel Boy (who has seen her keep a baby pig in her desk, so he can't be THAT particular) she wants to wear a cute yellow dress and ribbons in her hair. GIVE ME A BREAK. I mean, okay, yes, it is fine to want to look pretty to impress people, whatever, but not that young, and not that drastically. The producers seemed to think it was funny. Whatever. Shut up and go back to the fifties.)
And actually, you know, as long as I'm rambling to an un-captive audience, if I were back in the fifties, do you know what I would want to do? If I had the means, I would totally become one of those female sugar daddies like the decorator in Breakfast at Tiffany's, or Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Think about it! Wouldn't that be completely awesome? You could stylishly lure struggling young writers into your web of deceit and your huge bank account, you would call the shots in the relationship because you write the checks, you'd get great sex no matter your own age, and then, when you started losing interest in the young earnest writer type (as you inevitably would, they're all the same) you could pull some strings and have him meet a doe-eyed young thing, preferably engaged to someone else, who would make him feel like he still had balls, and then he (thinking it was entirely his own idea) would leave you and you could find another one, and lather, rinse, repeat! And once that started to get tedious, as it would after a couple dozen, you could liven things up by shooting your last one into your swimming pool and going insane! See, I'm totally right, that would be fantastic.
Now, after that whole entry, everyone is sort of looking at each other all, "Damn, no wonder bitch is single, the bitter old hag," but there are plenty of functional and adorable relationships -- fictional and real life -- that I think are awesome and give me hope for the future and all that jazz. And it's easier to find them in more modern movies, sure, but there are plenty of old movie couples who do great. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are always awesome. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Gene Kelly is kind of a dick, but I don't really have a problem with his relationship with Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain. Audrey Hepburn does just fine as long as she's opposite Gregory Peck instead of George Peppard. I mean, yeah, they're old movies, so you generally get the hero teaching the heroine some Important Life Lesson that your average five year old has already got a pretty good handle on, but whatever, evil villains often act like five year olds too, you can overlook it. As long as it's not the BASIS of the relationship, like it is at Tiffany's.
I know this is supposed to be one of the huge romantic movies of the century, like Casablanca or Gone With the Wind, and it's not that I blame Paul for finding Audrey Hepburn fetching -- she is fetching, she's a size negative two, she dresses great, she's very charming. But while Audrey Hepburn manages to convey a certain amount of depth of feeling, and control, and sense, George Peppard acts like he just figured out he wants to take a swan dive into her pants. Once her ex-husband shows up, he starts acting hurt and put out whenever she talks to other men, even though he hasn't yet broken it off with his 'decorator.' There doesn't seem to be any depth of feeling in his side of the relationship at all, and then suddenly it's "you belong to me."
Okay, I think my real complaint is that the relationship seems to have two elements -- comfortable friends and crazy obsessives. Like, they're walking around New York stealing masks and goldfish, getting crackerjacks engraved, and it's kind of cute and adorable and you could do that on a date or with a big group of friends and it would remain sort of cute. And then there's no middle ground, where they both sort of want to change their lives to be together, no, from there it's straight to the whole, engaged powder room wham bam thank you ma'am aspect of the movie.
And the movie sort of goes on too long in general -- I watch it in sections, usually -- but the relationship between them is just paced wrong, and messy. I heard from the Divine Dictator once that in the original Truman Capote story, Paul is gay, and I have to say that makes a lot more sense to me. The relationship would seem much more equal, if they were friends and did their wacky zany adventure type stuff and he wasn't trying to get into her pants. She could get him restarted on writing, he could get her out of jail, it would be sort of sweet. But then I thought about it more and decided it's okay if he wants to get into her pants, if it happens more gradually. It's the immediate leap that drives me nuts and makes me not like the romance.
(God, and you know what else has a horrible romance that made me cry? The new Charlotte's Web, which I saw in French last weekend. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Fern supposed to be, like, NINE? Regardless, Dakota Fanning looks about SEVEN AND A HALF, so giving her this TWELVE YEAR OLD GUY to squire her around the fair and hold hands with her on the ferris wheel is SICK AND WRONG. And DON'T GET ME STARTED about how she makes her mother so proud because she was in jeans the whole damn movie and then suddenly, through the magical influence of Ferris Wheel Boy (who has seen her keep a baby pig in her desk, so he can't be THAT particular) she wants to wear a cute yellow dress and ribbons in her hair. GIVE ME A BREAK. I mean, okay, yes, it is fine to want to look pretty to impress people, whatever, but not that young, and not that drastically. The producers seemed to think it was funny. Whatever. Shut up and go back to the fifties.)
And actually, you know, as long as I'm rambling to an un-captive audience, if I were back in the fifties, do you know what I would want to do? If I had the means, I would totally become one of those female sugar daddies like the decorator in Breakfast at Tiffany's, or Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Think about it! Wouldn't that be completely awesome? You could stylishly lure struggling young writers into your web of deceit and your huge bank account, you would call the shots in the relationship because you write the checks, you'd get great sex no matter your own age, and then, when you started losing interest in the young earnest writer type (as you inevitably would, they're all the same) you could pull some strings and have him meet a doe-eyed young thing, preferably engaged to someone else, who would make him feel like he still had balls, and then he (thinking it was entirely his own idea) would leave you and you could find another one, and lather, rinse, repeat! And once that started to get tedious, as it would after a couple dozen, you could liven things up by shooting your last one into your swimming pool and going insane! See, I'm totally right, that would be fantastic.
Now, after that whole entry, everyone is sort of looking at each other all, "Damn, no wonder bitch is single, the bitter old hag," but there are plenty of functional and adorable relationships -- fictional and real life -- that I think are awesome and give me hope for the future and all that jazz. And it's easier to find them in more modern movies, sure, but there are plenty of old movie couples who do great. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are always awesome. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Gene Kelly is kind of a dick, but I don't really have a problem with his relationship with Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain. Audrey Hepburn does just fine as long as she's opposite Gregory Peck instead of George Peppard. I mean, yeah, they're old movies, so you generally get the hero teaching the heroine some Important Life Lesson that your average five year old has already got a pretty good handle on, but whatever, evil villains often act like five year olds too, you can overlook it. As long as it's not the BASIS of the relationship, like it is at Tiffany's.
8.2.07
Veronica Mars -- There's Got to Be a Morning After Pill
Seriously, this show is KILLING ME. YouTube is one of my personal deities.
Okay, I totally forgot in the last four years or so what it's like to be obsessed with a show that's actually on the air. And you can only watch one episode at a time. And now I am having flashbacks to being fourteen years old and I am SQUEALING in the staff computer room of a French middle school, because goddammit, Veronica, you do not ERASE messages before you have listened to ALL of them. And it's not like I enjoy it either but TV taught me many years ago that you have to listen to all of them ANYWAY or you look like an IDIOT and become a HORRIBLE PERSON.
You see? I told you. Fourteen.
Also, is it me, or does Veronica actually getting Weevil to bash in Madison's car remind anyone else of asking Anya (from Buffy) for a wish? It's like, yes, it is always tempting to imagine your ex-boyfriend with no balls, or the girl he cheated on you with or whatever living on the street in a cardboard box. And imagining those things is just the sort of thing that you do when you're moving on from a breakup (not that, uh, I've ever thought like that or anything). And then you meet someone else and let it go except when your old friends email you to tell you something stupid your ex is doing now that you're not there to keep him in line.
But it's so much less cool to actually knowingly take steps to go through with that. I hate to have a TWoP link in every review I write, but I'm almost positive they said something very similar -- I think I'm copying them, actually -- in a seventh season Buffy recap when Anya was trying to mutilate Xander in some way. Like, it seems justified, especially when it's Madison, but then your boyfriend's psycho ex stalks you, and you're all, "move on, lady, get a life, it's over." So I'm glad Veronica didn't go through with it. I mean, I don't think I would have stopped watching or started hating her or anything, so I hope the network didn't force the creators not to do it for that reason, but it seems much better to have her walk the line -- have her really seriously consider tracking Logan -- and showing us that she's serious by actually setting up the device -- and then backing out. It illustrates the line that Veronica is constantly walking as a PI, because in some ways, of course she does want to use her PI skills in her personal life. That's what solved Lilly Kane's murder, that's what let her figure out who raped her, that's what she does, and does well. And it's a strength that she can care personally about her clients, even when they're monkeys; otherwise she wouldn't do her job as well. So then it obviously does become very difficult for her to find the line between when she should be investigating, and digging, and blackmailing and avenging, and when she shouldn't. I thought this episode especially does a fantastic job with that.
Really, this is my favorite episode of the season. Despite the Logan/Veronica stuff, and it wasn't as funny as last week, but it highlighted a couple of things this show does really really well, aside from, like, witty dialogue and intelligent storylines. One of them being, obviously, Veronica's line-walking, but also the show's willingness to really deal with issues and present a variety of viewpoints without getting especially preachy.
Because that was another really well done thing this week, and it's a direction the show is taking this season that I really like. The first two seasons with the rich kids and the biker gang were also really well done, but I think the fact that they've been willing to deal with gender issues this season is fantastic. It's a good time for it, in the show, first year of college, and they're doing it really well. Okay, the rape storyline got a lot of shit, but this episode actually makes me like that storyline better in retrospect, I think because they handled this issue sensitively; it's like there are more layers than I thought in the other one too. Okay, I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that, but it left a good taste in my mouth, for what it's worth.
I especially liked them showing the double side of the religious extremists' reaction, and that that element wasn't cut and dry. That was really well done, and there are a lot of shows that wouldn't bother showing both sides of that, by a long shot. And I liked the roommate's reasons -- I mean, I don't approve of what she did, obviously, and it is of course not her choice to make and offensive that she made it. But she did point out some things, that having a kid at that age is a big deal, etc., etc., that the show presented a lot more sensitively than I'm able to.
Oh, and it helps that I totally didn't see it coming until right before the reveal (which is, of course, the best possible time to predict the ending, unless you're me when I was reading Ender's Game) and that was one of my complaints a few episodes ago, that the show was getting too predictable, so it's nice that I got to be surprised.
Mopey Logan -- well, I've enjoyed it up till now, and obviously I'm still totally invested in that relationship, but I do miss how snarky and fun and evil he can be, especially back when he and Veronica were sort of dodging around the fact that they really liked each other. Sadly that interaction seems like it won't ever make a comeback, but I'd still like to see him being snarky to other people.
Oh, and the apocalypse should hit in half an hour or so, because I did not hate Dick or think he's a waste of space or want him to fall off the balcony or get his head squished like a grapefruit or wish he wasn't taking up so much of the other characters' oxygen and screen time hardly at all this week.
Anyway, all in all, a really really good episode. My biggest complaint is that Mac didn't even get any screen time for her birthday? Good god, writers, throw her a bone. I know she's on other shows too, but Mac is cooler than whoever she plays on them.
Current Dean O'Dell prediction: Gah, I keep trying not to pick whoever the writers throw in my face week by week (this has been a failure, clearly), but this week, I think it actually might possibly be Ex-husband Whasisname or one of the kids. With a twist that I don't know about, sure, and it doesn't make much sense at the moment, but the timing is right. Anyway... I am a complete failure at guessing, I shall never complain again about the big mysteries being too predictable.
Okay, I totally forgot in the last four years or so what it's like to be obsessed with a show that's actually on the air. And you can only watch one episode at a time. And now I am having flashbacks to being fourteen years old and I am SQUEALING in the staff computer room of a French middle school, because goddammit, Veronica, you do not ERASE messages before you have listened to ALL of them. And it's not like I enjoy it either but TV taught me many years ago that you have to listen to all of them ANYWAY or you look like an IDIOT and become a HORRIBLE PERSON.
You see? I told you. Fourteen.
Also, is it me, or does Veronica actually getting Weevil to bash in Madison's car remind anyone else of asking Anya (from Buffy) for a wish? It's like, yes, it is always tempting to imagine your ex-boyfriend with no balls, or the girl he cheated on you with or whatever living on the street in a cardboard box. And imagining those things is just the sort of thing that you do when you're moving on from a breakup (not that, uh, I've ever thought like that or anything). And then you meet someone else and let it go except when your old friends email you to tell you something stupid your ex is doing now that you're not there to keep him in line.
But it's so much less cool to actually knowingly take steps to go through with that. I hate to have a TWoP link in every review I write, but I'm almost positive they said something very similar -- I think I'm copying them, actually -- in a seventh season Buffy recap when Anya was trying to mutilate Xander in some way. Like, it seems justified, especially when it's Madison, but then your boyfriend's psycho ex stalks you, and you're all, "move on, lady, get a life, it's over." So I'm glad Veronica didn't go through with it. I mean, I don't think I would have stopped watching or started hating her or anything, so I hope the network didn't force the creators not to do it for that reason, but it seems much better to have her walk the line -- have her really seriously consider tracking Logan -- and showing us that she's serious by actually setting up the device -- and then backing out. It illustrates the line that Veronica is constantly walking as a PI, because in some ways, of course she does want to use her PI skills in her personal life. That's what solved Lilly Kane's murder, that's what let her figure out who raped her, that's what she does, and does well. And it's a strength that she can care personally about her clients, even when they're monkeys; otherwise she wouldn't do her job as well. So then it obviously does become very difficult for her to find the line between when she should be investigating, and digging, and blackmailing and avenging, and when she shouldn't. I thought this episode especially does a fantastic job with that.
Really, this is my favorite episode of the season. Despite the Logan/Veronica stuff, and it wasn't as funny as last week, but it highlighted a couple of things this show does really really well, aside from, like, witty dialogue and intelligent storylines. One of them being, obviously, Veronica's line-walking, but also the show's willingness to really deal with issues and present a variety of viewpoints without getting especially preachy.
Because that was another really well done thing this week, and it's a direction the show is taking this season that I really like. The first two seasons with the rich kids and the biker gang were also really well done, but I think the fact that they've been willing to deal with gender issues this season is fantastic. It's a good time for it, in the show, first year of college, and they're doing it really well. Okay, the rape storyline got a lot of shit, but this episode actually makes me like that storyline better in retrospect, I think because they handled this issue sensitively; it's like there are more layers than I thought in the other one too. Okay, I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that, but it left a good taste in my mouth, for what it's worth.
I especially liked them showing the double side of the religious extremists' reaction, and that that element wasn't cut and dry. That was really well done, and there are a lot of shows that wouldn't bother showing both sides of that, by a long shot. And I liked the roommate's reasons -- I mean, I don't approve of what she did, obviously, and it is of course not her choice to make and offensive that she made it. But she did point out some things, that having a kid at that age is a big deal, etc., etc., that the show presented a lot more sensitively than I'm able to.
Oh, and it helps that I totally didn't see it coming until right before the reveal (which is, of course, the best possible time to predict the ending, unless you're me when I was reading Ender's Game) and that was one of my complaints a few episodes ago, that the show was getting too predictable, so it's nice that I got to be surprised.
Mopey Logan -- well, I've enjoyed it up till now, and obviously I'm still totally invested in that relationship, but I do miss how snarky and fun and evil he can be, especially back when he and Veronica were sort of dodging around the fact that they really liked each other. Sadly that interaction seems like it won't ever make a comeback, but I'd still like to see him being snarky to other people.
Oh, and the apocalypse should hit in half an hour or so, because I did not hate Dick or think he's a waste of space or want him to fall off the balcony or get his head squished like a grapefruit or wish he wasn't taking up so much of the other characters' oxygen and screen time hardly at all this week.
Anyway, all in all, a really really good episode. My biggest complaint is that Mac didn't even get any screen time for her birthday? Good god, writers, throw her a bone. I know she's on other shows too, but Mac is cooler than whoever she plays on them.
Current Dean O'Dell prediction: Gah, I keep trying not to pick whoever the writers throw in my face week by week (this has been a failure, clearly), but this week, I think it actually might possibly be Ex-husband Whasisname or one of the kids. With a twist that I don't know about, sure, and it doesn't make much sense at the moment, but the timing is right. Anyway... I am a complete failure at guessing, I shall never complain again about the big mysteries being too predictable.
7.2.07
A Sense of Control in a World Full of Chaos
Today I got downstairs and walked into horrible wet slushy snow. Not fun, sticky, cancel-school snow, stick-to-you-and-melt-down-the-back-of-your-neck snow. Therefore, I think this is a good day to mention how much I completely love my boots and my coat.
Seriously, they are the best clothing items ever in the world. My feet are never wet, and my torso is never cold. I love my boots and my coat. If anyone is ever planning on coming to Normandie, pack those before you bother with underwear or a French dictionary, seriously.
Okay, I am a little hard up for things to write about today, because I am depressed. But it is also true that I thank God and my parents every day for my boots and my coat.
Seriously, they are the best clothing items ever in the world. My feet are never wet, and my torso is never cold. I love my boots and my coat. If anyone is ever planning on coming to Normandie, pack those before you bother with underwear or a French dictionary, seriously.
Okay, I am a little hard up for things to write about today, because I am depressed. But it is also true that I thank God and my parents every day for my boots and my coat.
6.2.07
New Heights of Geekitude
Sometimes I am so much of a geek that I amaze myself. For example, right, when I was at home over Christmas I downloaded a bunch of free computer games and suchlike of various Mac-sites. I figured approximately 50% of the ones I downloaded would actually run on my machine, and of those about 20% wouldn't suck, so if I downloaded at least ten games I could probably find one that was slightly more addicting than my previous favorite, Einstein.
And it totally worked, so I'm not complaining or anything, but the game I got addicted to makes me more of a geek than ever before. More of a geek than doing theater all through high school, more of a geek than spending my free time in my geometry classroom goofing off with computer nerds (hi, guys!), more of a geek than being a philosophy major, possibly more of a geek even than when I spent my time writing X-Files fanfic. Which I DON'T DO ANYMORE, so you can just SHUT UP.
Wow, looking at that list sort of makes me want to hide under a rock. Anyway.
So this game I am addicted to? All the best of fantasy novels, computer fighty games, and little CGI love. Seriously. I am some sort of human shaped prince-type, whose evil aunt or second cousin or some such has killed several close family members and exiled me and is ruling. You know she's evil because she attacks me with orcs and trolls and suchlike. And I have this wise Dumbledore/Gandalf/Merlin type who follows me around, (I think his name is actually a conglomeration of those), saying wise things and occasionally frying my enemies with magical lighting. More recently I have picked up this high elvish lord type, and I'm not sure why he follows me around too, but if he dies I lose. And I can recruit elves and dwarves and wizards and Riders of Rohan (or whatever) and I keep having to fight of demon hoards and undead wretches and suchlike, and it's way more fun than it ought to be.
Most recently, I have picked up a princess, who is evil, and whose ass I have already kicked, but who I think I am going to marry later because she has very long blonde hair and my little CGI prince says extremely stupid things when he's around her, which he always is, because if she dies I lose, too. You see? It is so completely deliciously derivative that it actually makes me want to go back and read some very stupid fantasy books where long lost princes fight evil goblins and marry snarky princesses.
And of course it was all a free download (I live in fear that when I am about to recapture my crown or whatever a little box is going to pop up demanding a fifteen dollar shareware fee, and for the first time in my whole life I will have to pay it); but what that means is that I am not even a legitimate intelligent computer geek who is hooked on, say, Final Fantasy, no, I am the sort of geek who is hooked on the fantasy game where the characters move on a hexagonal grid.
And despite how guilty this pleasure is, I seriously played it for like two hours last night. I tend to take it really personally when one of my little men dies, or gets knighted, or misses his enemy.
I think I need some sort of real project. Or internet access in my room, one of the two. At least I would think that, if I didn't know that I probably would have gotten just as addicted to this if I had encountered it in college, so it's really just as well I didn't know about it until after my thesis got turned in and I have my degree.
And it totally worked, so I'm not complaining or anything, but the game I got addicted to makes me more of a geek than ever before. More of a geek than doing theater all through high school, more of a geek than spending my free time in my geometry classroom goofing off with computer nerds (hi, guys!), more of a geek than being a philosophy major, possibly more of a geek even than when I spent my time writing X-Files fanfic. Which I DON'T DO ANYMORE, so you can just SHUT UP.
Wow, looking at that list sort of makes me want to hide under a rock. Anyway.
So this game I am addicted to? All the best of fantasy novels, computer fighty games, and little CGI love. Seriously. I am some sort of human shaped prince-type, whose evil aunt or second cousin or some such has killed several close family members and exiled me and is ruling. You know she's evil because she attacks me with orcs and trolls and suchlike. And I have this wise Dumbledore/Gandalf/Merlin type who follows me around, (I think his name is actually a conglomeration of those), saying wise things and occasionally frying my enemies with magical lighting. More recently I have picked up this high elvish lord type, and I'm not sure why he follows me around too, but if he dies I lose. And I can recruit elves and dwarves and wizards and Riders of Rohan (or whatever) and I keep having to fight of demon hoards and undead wretches and suchlike, and it's way more fun than it ought to be.
Most recently, I have picked up a princess, who is evil, and whose ass I have already kicked, but who I think I am going to marry later because she has very long blonde hair and my little CGI prince says extremely stupid things when he's around her, which he always is, because if she dies I lose, too. You see? It is so completely deliciously derivative that it actually makes me want to go back and read some very stupid fantasy books where long lost princes fight evil goblins and marry snarky princesses.
And of course it was all a free download (I live in fear that when I am about to recapture my crown or whatever a little box is going to pop up demanding a fifteen dollar shareware fee, and for the first time in my whole life I will have to pay it); but what that means is that I am not even a legitimate intelligent computer geek who is hooked on, say, Final Fantasy, no, I am the sort of geek who is hooked on the fantasy game where the characters move on a hexagonal grid.
And despite how guilty this pleasure is, I seriously played it for like two hours last night. I tend to take it really personally when one of my little men dies, or gets knighted, or misses his enemy.
I think I need some sort of real project. Or internet access in my room, one of the two. At least I would think that, if I didn't know that I probably would have gotten just as addicted to this if I had encountered it in college, so it's really just as well I didn't know about it until after my thesis got turned in and I have my degree.
5.2.07
Veronica Mars -- Poughkeepsie, Tramps, and Thieves
Latest Veronica Mars... whee, so I don't post on the weekends but then it's a two review Monday. So it goes. I'm only doing this today so that I can read the TWoP recap with a clear conscience.
Anyway, the script for this episode was brilliant. I especially loved the scenes between Veronica and Keith -- hilariously written, well-acted, really funny and cute. In general the writing was really strong this week. Lots of nice snark, everybody very in character, good character development. The scenes between Veronica and Logan were also really good. Although I'm starting to miss Wallace and his fun interactions with the cast.
The storyline was also strong, although I think the first half was better than the second half. I liked the whole premise and setup, the roommates, the hooker, I thought all that was really good. The actor playing Max I thought did a fantastic job. On first viewing, it felt weird that he suddenly couldn't get over being a hooker, but on repeat viewings, there were plenty of awkward moments leading up to that, and it made a certain amount of sense to me that he could ignore it while he was working on getting her out of it, -- as in, he could tell himself that soon it would be over, and it wouldn't matter anymore -- but then actually trying to live with her, knowing that, was really difficult for him. ("Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself! Always ends bad!" "Roooooooooxaaaannnnne!")
Speaking of (well, sort of) I was really happy with the Logan/Veronica stuff, again. I liked seeing her being sort of able (or at least willing) to deal with the what-did-you-do-while-we-were-on-a-break conversation. Not a good conversation to need to have, but nice that she could deal.
I always like it when we learn more about Veronica through her cases -- the last one that I thought did that really well was Of Vice and Men -- and this episode also did a stellar job with that. It was interesting to me that Veronica really sees blackmail as the thing to do. I mean, not surprisingly, but usually it seems like she and Keith enjoy holding themselves above that kind of thing, as opposed to Vinnie van Lowe and so forth. She has used it on a smaller scale several times before -- against the evil boyfriend in M.A.D. and against the evil TA in Ain't No Magic Mountain High Enough -- this is I think the first time we've seen her blackmailing someone who is not necessarily evil, just sort of wrong place-wrong time.
Also, Veronica? If the guy who used to set fire to swimming pools thinks maybe you're going too far and you should back off, please listen.
And the mystery itself wasn't exactly a mystery, but still felt very noir to me, very twisted identities. I could have done okay without the whole bruised hooker and limousine part, but part of that is that I can never recognize the guest stars of the week when I watch these things on youtube. The lady in the middle of the limo -- was she the same lady who was the bruised hooker? Anyhow, it felt a little odd, not quite linear, like some of the pieces jumped around a little. But I can't really say more clearly than that what I mean, and I can't give an example, so possibly this is all in my head.
So the mystery was pretty good, and the episode was just full of really clever little moments that I really enjoyed. The winner, of course, was Keith's salute to Lamb, but there were a bunch of good ones. The end -- the last third or so -- wasn't as good as the first part, but the whole thing was strong.
Oh! And Sense and Sensibility! It makes me so happy that they were watching that. They should watch Emma Thompson's commentary, it is much superior to Ang Lee's.
Oh, and my god. The ending? In the lingerie store? Way to twist the knife so you can make sure you get the vitals, Madison. Wicked good scene, although I'm going to hate the fallout.
Current Murderer Prediction: Um. Aaron Echolls? Seriously I have no idea. Maybe ... God, do I have to say somebody? Bronson-Mac's-boyfriend. Or Nish.
Anyway, the script for this episode was brilliant. I especially loved the scenes between Veronica and Keith -- hilariously written, well-acted, really funny and cute. In general the writing was really strong this week. Lots of nice snark, everybody very in character, good character development. The scenes between Veronica and Logan were also really good. Although I'm starting to miss Wallace and his fun interactions with the cast.
The storyline was also strong, although I think the first half was better than the second half. I liked the whole premise and setup, the roommates, the hooker, I thought all that was really good. The actor playing Max I thought did a fantastic job. On first viewing, it felt weird that he suddenly couldn't get over being a hooker, but on repeat viewings, there were plenty of awkward moments leading up to that, and it made a certain amount of sense to me that he could ignore it while he was working on getting her out of it, -- as in, he could tell himself that soon it would be over, and it wouldn't matter anymore -- but then actually trying to live with her, knowing that, was really difficult for him. ("Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself! Always ends bad!" "Roooooooooxaaaannnnne!")
Speaking of (well, sort of) I was really happy with the Logan/Veronica stuff, again. I liked seeing her being sort of able (or at least willing) to deal with the what-did-you-do-while-we-were-on-a-break conversation. Not a good conversation to need to have, but nice that she could deal.
I always like it when we learn more about Veronica through her cases -- the last one that I thought did that really well was Of Vice and Men -- and this episode also did a stellar job with that. It was interesting to me that Veronica really sees blackmail as the thing to do. I mean, not surprisingly, but usually it seems like she and Keith enjoy holding themselves above that kind of thing, as opposed to Vinnie van Lowe and so forth. She has used it on a smaller scale several times before -- against the evil boyfriend in M.A.D. and against the evil TA in Ain't No Magic Mountain High Enough -- this is I think the first time we've seen her blackmailing someone who is not necessarily evil, just sort of wrong place-wrong time.
Also, Veronica? If the guy who used to set fire to swimming pools thinks maybe you're going too far and you should back off, please listen.
And the mystery itself wasn't exactly a mystery, but still felt very noir to me, very twisted identities. I could have done okay without the whole bruised hooker and limousine part, but part of that is that I can never recognize the guest stars of the week when I watch these things on youtube. The lady in the middle of the limo -- was she the same lady who was the bruised hooker? Anyhow, it felt a little odd, not quite linear, like some of the pieces jumped around a little. But I can't really say more clearly than that what I mean, and I can't give an example, so possibly this is all in my head.
So the mystery was pretty good, and the episode was just full of really clever little moments that I really enjoyed. The winner, of course, was Keith's salute to Lamb, but there were a bunch of good ones. The end -- the last third or so -- wasn't as good as the first part, but the whole thing was strong.
Oh! And Sense and Sensibility! It makes me so happy that they were watching that. They should watch Emma Thompson's commentary, it is much superior to Ang Lee's.
Oh, and my god. The ending? In the lingerie store? Way to twist the knife so you can make sure you get the vitals, Madison. Wicked good scene, although I'm going to hate the fallout.
Current Murderer Prediction: Um. Aaron Echolls? Seriously I have no idea. Maybe ... God, do I have to say somebody? Bronson-Mac's-boyfriend. Or Nish.
Choderos de Laclos -- Les Liaisons Dangereuses
I totally told you I'd finish it this time around, and I absolutely did. The ending was worth it, but I won't give it away.
The thing about this novel is, of course, that the main characters are all completely evil. I gather there was a lot of freaking out when it was published, and people thought that Laclos was glamorizing an immoral lifestyle, and things like that. I can definitely see their point -- the evil characters end unhappily, and get punished for their misdeeds, but so do most of the good characters, so you can't really go by that. And it is true that these horrible evil people live very glamorous lives and are easily the most intelligent and witty people in the novel.
But I think Laclos actually does a pretty good job with them, in that their actions never seem anything but evil, and depraved, and not justified. So their lifestyles might seem glamorous, and they get away with much much more than they should, but I would argue that they're never presented as good people, or as people you would want to emulate or become close to. The people who do emulate them end badly, for one thing, and they emulate them only because they don't know any better. As readers, we are given all the tools to know better. It's subtle, but I don't think the author was trying to tell us either to be like these people or not to be.
In hindsight, I think that's probably what people objected to the most strongly; aside from the ending (which I need to just stop mentioning), there isn't a moral judgment on these people. They really do work the system to their own advantage, they manipulate people, they ruin people, they totally screw people over, and for a very long time there are no consequences to them. And that can be kind of scary to read about, because, to quote Oscar Wilde, "The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means." It's sort of difficult to take three hundred and fifty pages of these horrible evil people just getting away with everything and being well liked and respected and evil.
Laclos does a really wonderful job with that, actually, both making the characters walk the line between believable and over the top. They're completely consistent; they each have a distinct writing style; they very believably interact with one another; they believably grow and develop throughout the book. Which I imagine is another thing that made people in the 1780s kind of uncomfortable, you really don't like feeling like you know them personally.
Anyway. That, I think, is the book's strongest point. Telling a story in letters and papers looks kind of dated, now, although I know it was a big thing from like, 1770 until 1810. (Of course, it was in vogue in my preteen years to tell every teen story through diary entries, and that got a little old, too, not least because I know of no one ever in the world who records long conversations of dialogue into their journal verbatim.) It feels a little odd, not quite linear. But Laclos really makes it work for him, because he can give everyone their own writing style, and use it to make the book feel more intimate, rather than less. Which I think is a huge accomplishment, and something other writers could learn from (in my brain I am staring very hard at Bram Stoker, hoping he will get the hint despite being dead).
The other thing that Laclos really makes work for him rather than against him is the non-linear nature of the device. I got a little frustrated seeing a letter and not getting the reply to it for several pages (several sometimes means fifteen) but it was no worse than Tolkien, or anybody else who tells a story through diary entries or whatever.
The book does suffer from the major problem of letter writing books, which is that the author has to put something in about how all of this really happened, dammit, and he found these papers under a floorboard in his garret half mouse eaten but still perfectly readable. Okay, he doesn't say that. But he does have to explain how all of these letters came into the publishers possession, and where you can find the "real" copies, and so forth. And I wish he wouldn't. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. On the one hand, he gets all that out of the way much more quickly than Stoker does in Dracula; Stoker actually stops the plot moving forward for a good twenty pages in the middle so each of the six main characters can explain that they have all read each others' accounts, and made copies, and put them in order, and put them in a strong box, and they're going to recopy everything else that happens to them and put that in a strongbox too, etc., etc., etc. To his credit, Laclos gets this whole thing out of the way in about three pages. On the other hand, Stoker's characters wanting to make a record of these events and save them is understandable, assuming the events happened. All of the letters in Laclos's novel being found is completely unbelievable, since even if most of them were saved for sentimental reasons or future blackmail opportunities, all of them being given together into one collection strains credibility. As a reader, the device feels completely unnecessary -- I'd much rather choose to believe that I am magically getting to read the correspondence as it's happening.
The novel is really the story of the friendship between Merteuil and Valmont, and their letters to one another are the most interesting part of it. The letters to and from the other characters are good, and make the book feel much more intimate and detailed, but most of the good ones are between those two. If I were turning it into a play, the clicker, the turning point, would have nothing to do with the two women they set out to ruin, neither Tourvel nor Cecile is very interesting on their own. But the ups and downs of that relationship, and how it really was necessary to both of them, although they didn't want to acknowledge that, is what makes the book so readable.
In the end, the best part of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the worst part are the same; the intimacy one feels with the characters. Achieving that sort of intimacy through their correspondence -- and therefore necesarily at a distance, since the characters think and plan before they write anything down -- is amazing (and I bet the French is even better). But it also makes the book difficult to read, and a little difficult to enjoy, because you don't want to be intimate with these people, and you feel dirty, and writhe, after reading it, and not in a comfortably delighted way. It took me a long time to read (a couple of weeks) because I could only get through a few pages at a sitting.
The thing about this novel is, of course, that the main characters are all completely evil. I gather there was a lot of freaking out when it was published, and people thought that Laclos was glamorizing an immoral lifestyle, and things like that. I can definitely see their point -- the evil characters end unhappily, and get punished for their misdeeds, but so do most of the good characters, so you can't really go by that. And it is true that these horrible evil people live very glamorous lives and are easily the most intelligent and witty people in the novel.
But I think Laclos actually does a pretty good job with them, in that their actions never seem anything but evil, and depraved, and not justified. So their lifestyles might seem glamorous, and they get away with much much more than they should, but I would argue that they're never presented as good people, or as people you would want to emulate or become close to. The people who do emulate them end badly, for one thing, and they emulate them only because they don't know any better. As readers, we are given all the tools to know better. It's subtle, but I don't think the author was trying to tell us either to be like these people or not to be.
In hindsight, I think that's probably what people objected to the most strongly; aside from the ending (which I need to just stop mentioning), there isn't a moral judgment on these people. They really do work the system to their own advantage, they manipulate people, they ruin people, they totally screw people over, and for a very long time there are no consequences to them. And that can be kind of scary to read about, because, to quote Oscar Wilde, "The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means." It's sort of difficult to take three hundred and fifty pages of these horrible evil people just getting away with everything and being well liked and respected and evil.
Laclos does a really wonderful job with that, actually, both making the characters walk the line between believable and over the top. They're completely consistent; they each have a distinct writing style; they very believably interact with one another; they believably grow and develop throughout the book. Which I imagine is another thing that made people in the 1780s kind of uncomfortable, you really don't like feeling like you know them personally.
Anyway. That, I think, is the book's strongest point. Telling a story in letters and papers looks kind of dated, now, although I know it was a big thing from like, 1770 until 1810. (Of course, it was in vogue in my preteen years to tell every teen story through diary entries, and that got a little old, too, not least because I know of no one ever in the world who records long conversations of dialogue into their journal verbatim.) It feels a little odd, not quite linear. But Laclos really makes it work for him, because he can give everyone their own writing style, and use it to make the book feel more intimate, rather than less. Which I think is a huge accomplishment, and something other writers could learn from (in my brain I am staring very hard at Bram Stoker, hoping he will get the hint despite being dead).
The other thing that Laclos really makes work for him rather than against him is the non-linear nature of the device. I got a little frustrated seeing a letter and not getting the reply to it for several pages (several sometimes means fifteen) but it was no worse than Tolkien, or anybody else who tells a story through diary entries or whatever.
The book does suffer from the major problem of letter writing books, which is that the author has to put something in about how all of this really happened, dammit, and he found these papers under a floorboard in his garret half mouse eaten but still perfectly readable. Okay, he doesn't say that. But he does have to explain how all of these letters came into the publishers possession, and where you can find the "real" copies, and so forth. And I wish he wouldn't. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. On the one hand, he gets all that out of the way much more quickly than Stoker does in Dracula; Stoker actually stops the plot moving forward for a good twenty pages in the middle so each of the six main characters can explain that they have all read each others' accounts, and made copies, and put them in order, and put them in a strong box, and they're going to recopy everything else that happens to them and put that in a strongbox too, etc., etc., etc. To his credit, Laclos gets this whole thing out of the way in about three pages. On the other hand, Stoker's characters wanting to make a record of these events and save them is understandable, assuming the events happened. All of the letters in Laclos's novel being found is completely unbelievable, since even if most of them were saved for sentimental reasons or future blackmail opportunities, all of them being given together into one collection strains credibility. As a reader, the device feels completely unnecessary -- I'd much rather choose to believe that I am magically getting to read the correspondence as it's happening.
The novel is really the story of the friendship between Merteuil and Valmont, and their letters to one another are the most interesting part of it. The letters to and from the other characters are good, and make the book feel much more intimate and detailed, but most of the good ones are between those two. If I were turning it into a play, the clicker, the turning point, would have nothing to do with the two women they set out to ruin, neither Tourvel nor Cecile is very interesting on their own. But the ups and downs of that relationship, and how it really was necessary to both of them, although they didn't want to acknowledge that, is what makes the book so readable.
In the end, the best part of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the worst part are the same; the intimacy one feels with the characters. Achieving that sort of intimacy through their correspondence -- and therefore necesarily at a distance, since the characters think and plan before they write anything down -- is amazing (and I bet the French is even better). But it also makes the book difficult to read, and a little difficult to enjoy, because you don't want to be intimate with these people, and you feel dirty, and writhe, after reading it, and not in a comfortably delighted way. It took me a long time to read (a couple of weeks) because I could only get through a few pages at a sitting.
2.2.07
Two Things I Love About France
1. CAF. I want to marry CAF. How much does it cost to live in my room, in my Foyer, every month? 280€. How much do I actually pay every month? Less than 40€. Why? Because CAF (French welfare, basically) pays the rest. Oh, and am I a real French person? No, I am essentially a Resident Alien on a work permit. It is going to be so hard when I get back to the States and actually have to pay my own rent, because if I don't I am a lazy druggie commie pinko.
2. The Litchi-flavored liqueuer I found at the Champion yesterday. Suddenly I am back to lounging on the grass at the library, reading plays aloud and stacking up litchi-candy cups into odd sculptures. Except with alcohol. I really want to send a bottle to the Divine Dictator.
2. The Litchi-flavored liqueuer I found at the Champion yesterday. Suddenly I am back to lounging on the grass at the library, reading plays aloud and stacking up litchi-candy cups into odd sculptures. Except with alcohol. I really want to send a bottle to the Divine Dictator.
1.2.07
So Confused
Okay, I am completely weirded out by something. So, I went to a concert last night, of a sort, since one of my friends' kids were performing in it. (Is that the right punctuation? She is one of many friends, and she had two kids performing last night.) Anyway, this is the second similar sort of concert that I've been to, and I am completely perplexed.
In both of them, the main event was the songs. I mean, they had a full chorus, on stage, for the entire show. So the point, right, is the chorus. They keep breaking into song. It's really all about them. But in both shows, the producers or directors or writers or whomever felt the need for a sort of story. Like, in between every song, there would be 2 (or 3 or 5 or whatever) people, saying a few lines of dialogue, and which would lead into another song.
And they weren't introducing the songs -- music by this person -- or anything, they were tying the songs together into this totally bizarre story.
Now, obviously, my French isn't that great, so I don't know how good or appropriate the stories are, since I get about 30% of whatever's going on in a situation like that. But it seems like a really odd way to tell a story -- a really silly way, actually -- and it makes my director sensibilities itch and burn. Why don't you just have a concert? Grade five through senior year of college, that was good enough for everyone I knew, at least in the States. Okay, I was only in an actual chorus myself once or twice, before everyone in the whole world wised up that that is a horrible idea, but I went to several concerts and recitals and whatnots of this type, and usually it would be, chorus sings one or three or four songs that they know pretty well, you maybe have some soloists, you maybe have a band or some piano players doing solos, etc., etc. You don't have dialogue.
And it's not like a real play, even a musical play, either, with which I do have a fair amount of experience; if you're really trying to tell a theatrical story, you don't get a fricking chorus in there to muck things up. Okay, I'm being a director snob. But you just don't. You don't want superfluous people on stage, because everyone on stage needs to be in character and have a purpose, and even in a regular play, having ten or twelve people on stage -- even if they're all speaking, all involved, all professional -- is a fucking headache. Even if you're doing a musical, with plenty of people who are only there to sing, you generally make them dance, you generally put them in costume, you make them essential to creating the mood of the story.
So I am so confused about what these people are trying to do. Do they feel like they need the story to justify the songs? Why don't you have "A Night of Songs About Animals, Sung by Chorus Bladdyblah"? Or just a regular recital or concert? Do they feel like they need the songs to justify the story? If that's the case, don't write the story yourself, do one that's already justified. Come on, you live in the land of Racine, Moliere, Anouilh. Do they want to do a musical and don't know how or don't have time to put one together? Because this just isn't the way to go about it.
Now, is this a French thing? Do people in the States do this and I've just never seen it? Is it because I live in a really small town? I know I'm being a total theater snob about this, but really, I am so confused. It seems like such a backward way to do something.
With all that said, the kids were completely adorable and did an absolutely fantastic job.
In both of them, the main event was the songs. I mean, they had a full chorus, on stage, for the entire show. So the point, right, is the chorus. They keep breaking into song. It's really all about them. But in both shows, the producers or directors or writers or whomever felt the need for a sort of story. Like, in between every song, there would be 2 (or 3 or 5 or whatever) people, saying a few lines of dialogue, and which would lead into another song.
And they weren't introducing the songs -- music by this person -- or anything, they were tying the songs together into this totally bizarre story.
Now, obviously, my French isn't that great, so I don't know how good or appropriate the stories are, since I get about 30% of whatever's going on in a situation like that. But it seems like a really odd way to tell a story -- a really silly way, actually -- and it makes my director sensibilities itch and burn. Why don't you just have a concert? Grade five through senior year of college, that was good enough for everyone I knew, at least in the States. Okay, I was only in an actual chorus myself once or twice, before everyone in the whole world wised up that that is a horrible idea, but I went to several concerts and recitals and whatnots of this type, and usually it would be, chorus sings one or three or four songs that they know pretty well, you maybe have some soloists, you maybe have a band or some piano players doing solos, etc., etc. You don't have dialogue.
And it's not like a real play, even a musical play, either, with which I do have a fair amount of experience; if you're really trying to tell a theatrical story, you don't get a fricking chorus in there to muck things up. Okay, I'm being a director snob. But you just don't. You don't want superfluous people on stage, because everyone on stage needs to be in character and have a purpose, and even in a regular play, having ten or twelve people on stage -- even if they're all speaking, all involved, all professional -- is a fucking headache. Even if you're doing a musical, with plenty of people who are only there to sing, you generally make them dance, you generally put them in costume, you make them essential to creating the mood of the story.
So I am so confused about what these people are trying to do. Do they feel like they need the story to justify the songs? Why don't you have "A Night of Songs About Animals, Sung by Chorus Bladdyblah"? Or just a regular recital or concert? Do they feel like they need the songs to justify the story? If that's the case, don't write the story yourself, do one that's already justified. Come on, you live in the land of Racine, Moliere, Anouilh. Do they want to do a musical and don't know how or don't have time to put one together? Because this just isn't the way to go about it.
Now, is this a French thing? Do people in the States do this and I've just never seen it? Is it because I live in a really small town? I know I'm being a total theater snob about this, but really, I am so confused. It seems like such a backward way to do something.
With all that said, the kids were completely adorable and did an absolutely fantastic job.
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