Ha!

Dan Brown ruins every thing!

Dan Brown's latest book takes down freemasons.org

My New Acting Strategy

According to A.V. Club critic Nathan Rabin:

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, [Nicolas] Cage’s primary criteria for choosing roles seemed to be:

How ridiculous will my accent be? Will it sound like a dialect never spoken by anyone, ever, in the history of time?

How about facial hair? Can it look like fake hair haphazardly placed on me by a blind man with an odd sense of humor?

Will I be called upon to shamelessly overact or go completely fucking nuts?

I've totally got the first one going on in Comedy of Errors and the last one in Julius Caesar, (though no one will ever let me have facial hair).

But I think that I need make a greater effort to cram all three into every role I play.

The whole article is pretty hilarious.

Happy Belated Canada Day!

Why do I always think Canada Day is the second? Perhaps because Canada is only half as cool as America?


O Canada

Just kidding, Canada! I kid because I love! Here are some Canadian things that make me happy:

Margaret Atwood

A major inspiration for The Gothic Novel

Hark! A Vagrant

Always a good time

The Stratford Festival

(even though our Caesar is way sexier than theirs)

And, of course

Erm... So, I Guess this is Now the Blog of I Hate Twilight

I was at the mall today, performing scenes in the kiddie section of Barnes & Noble (stardom!), and so of course I had to do a little mall wandering afterwords.

And everywhere I frickin' went were posters of frickin' Robert Pattinson giving me the creep eye.*

There was the old classic:


This questionable sequel:


And the solo version:


I am really, really skeeved out by this guy. It's as though they did market research in order to find the only actor on earth who could make me more grossed out by Edward than I already was. As though they sent each other memos like "Yeah, he's good, but will the mere sight of him make Kitty Pimms feel like she needs to take a decontamination shower? Let's get the kid who never washes his hair in to read again..."

Watching him lurk behind his co-presenter at the Oscars, eyes firmly fixed on her cleavage, I wrote to a friend: "Robert Pattinson is still playing that stupid vampire! Why’s he gotta leer at every body? Get a new facial expression, Edward!"

I mean really:


God. I say it again. Get a new expression!



Eeeew. On second thought, just keep your face out of my sight altogether.



Just...

Just...

I give up.


*And he just did it again, because I went googling for pictures to illustrate my point

Lundi je ne fait rein

Here's what I've learned about HPV from the constant ads on Hulu, the ones with the jaunty French song:

1. Condoms don't always protect you from it

2. Practically everyone has it

3. You can have it and not know it

4. You can get it without having sex

5. Basically, you and everyone you know has it and you're all going to die.

6. Friday is for you!

Last week, when I was watching Arrested Development, it was all "Remember when men were men, and they drank real vodka?" ads, and not a lady-related product in sight.

This week, I'm watching Buffy, which Hulu seems to thinks appeals to both the boys and the girls.

In addition to being told I have HPV and encouraged to use Dove products, I've also been invited to play a video game that represents "a generational leap in open world destruction" (yay?) and seems to be all about blowing up buildings for no reason. There have also been several ads for the Ghostbuster's video game, and I think my dreams will be haunted by the game version of Dan Ackroyd. And now that 30 Rock has popularized the term "uncanny valley," I can articulate why without sounding like a big nerd.

Oh, I'm Just Sitting Here in the Dark, Thinking About Vampires

Why is it so hard to get things done in the rain?

I had big plans for today. BIG PLANS!

But now, I'm just curled up on the couch with a cup of tea, staring into space and thinking, "In that episode of Buffy where the evil vampire Willow showed up, after they knocked out Evil Willow and decided that Good Willow should take her place, who actually switched the clothes? Because they totally went all out and even put Good Willow's pink tights on Evil Willow which is... intimate. Did Giles and Xander leave the room for this? I hope so."

EDITED TO ADD: The A.V. Club just got around to reviewing this episode, and there is an entire comment thread discussing the issue of whether or not one should put pink tights on unconscious vampires.

And also, "I read somewhere that the writers always knew that either Willow or Xander was going to be gay, but weren't sure which one, so when they did the episode with evil vampire versions of everyone, they gave both Evil Willow and Evil Xander gay 'tendencies' to keep their options open, which is interesting. I mean, everyone knows those slutty vampires will get it on with anyone because they transcend human concepts of sexual preference. But I'm interested in the writer's implicit assumption that vampire teenagers 'figure out' they're gay before human teenagers. And I wonder if there is a way to relate that to my own sexual figuring out, in which vampire literature played a large role. It both helped me to understand the concept of 'otherness' as something to be embraced, even desired (rather than hidden or avoided), and to understand sexuality as something more varied and complicated than 'his thing goes in your ladyparts, the end' which was pretty much all I'd gotten so far."

So now I'm thinking, "What will become of all the gay, goth teenagers out there, with Twilight all the rage?* What would I have turned out like, if at 13 my imaginary vampire love affair had been with Edward, rather than Lestat? Perhaps miserably married to my emotionally unstable high school boyfriend, since obviously love means never having a moment to yourself or making an independent desicion. Perhaps I would have spent my college years in a sort of premature spinsterhood, believing that I was in love with my best guy friend and unwilling to make a move lest it 'ruin the friendship,' all the while secretly fantasizing about the cool girl across the hall.** I hope those Twilight kids graduate quickly to Anne Rice, is all I'm saying."

Now my tea is cold.

*I sort of already posted about this.

**Perhaps I would have read any other books, ever? Yes, yes. Hyperbole for the sake of making a point!

Some Randomness

We used to have one of those cheap plastic piano-rugs when I was a kid, and I could totally play the first dozen notes of Fur Elise on it, but then ran out of keys. If I were ever rich enough to be utterly ridiculous, instead of a bowling alley in my basement I would have one of these, with a full-sized pianosworth of keys.

(the "pianosworth" is a fabulous new unit of measurement I just made up, and might also double as my butler's name. Should I ever be rich enough to be totally ridiculous).

Also, enjoy some bug porn.



Finally, while browsing e-cards for various neglected friends and family members I came across this:


Which is totally true, as I dislike both Dan Brown and Tom Hanks with a pair of fiery passions, but also amuses me because I rather enjoy movies that rely heavily on the occultish aspects of Catholicism for eerie atmosphere. I was never more proud of my Catholic heritage in my goth days (though back then I was officially a pentagram-wearing pseudo-pagan). In grad school, I wrote many a paper on anti-papist plays and pamphlets of the 16th and 17th centuries. Basically, on the list of things I'll pay to see in a movie "Catholic-themed creepiness" comes just after "Edwardian costumes" and before "people trapped on a spaceship with mysterious evil."

I should actually make that list someday. Number one is definately "dinosaurs." But is number two "adaptations of Shakespeare" or "immaculately stylized quirkiness"?

Food for thought.

More About the Crazy Teenagers

Apparently, they like to hug.

That's all well and good, I suppose. When I was in high school, we didn't go around hugging every five minutes, but I do remember feeling that even our mild level of hugging was a little much, so I suppose if I were a teenager now I would have many more words of annoyance to spend on the subject.

For the purposes of this post, however, I want to direct your attention to a quote from possibly the Worst Mother Ever:

“Maybe it’s because all these kids do is text and go on Facebook so they don’t even have human contact anymore,” said Dona Eichner, the mother of freshman and junior girls at the high school in Montvale.

Can I get a WTF?

It would be one thing if this was a quote from say, a "local crumudgeon" or "radical neo-luddite sepratist." But there is something very Not Right about the parent of a pair of teenagers complaining about the socially alienated little creatures she's housing.

Maybe, as a human being, you might be able to provide some of that 'human contact' your kids are so lacking in? By which (I suppose) you mean physical contact, since obviously the internet is not the real world and all relations that occur thereon are void of meaning.

Which, when you think about it, makes you wonder why 'sexting' is such a big frickin' deal. Maybe it's not about prudishness at all. These freaked-out parents just want their kids to get together in person and do it the old-fashioned way.

A Rambling Post (sort of) About Sexting!

This is too, too hilarious:

Top 50 Text Acronyms Parents Need to Know

1 8 Oral sex
2 1337 Elite
3 143 I love you
4 182 I hate you
5 459 I love you
6 1174 Nude club
7 420 Marijuana
8 ADR Address
9 ASL Age/Sex/Location
10 Banana Penis
11 CD9
or Code9Parents are around
12 DUM Do You Masturbate?
13 DUSL Do You Scream Loud?
14 FB F*** Buddy
15
16 FMLTWIA F*** Me Like The Whore I Am
17 FOL Fond of Leather
18 GNOC Get Naked On Cam
19 GYPO Get Your Pants Off
20 IAYM I Am Your Master
21 IF/IB In the Front or In the Back
22 IIT Is It Tight?
23 ILF/MD I Love Female/Male Dominance
24 IMEZRU I Am Easy, Are You?
25 IWSN I Want Sex Now
26 J/O Jerking Off
27 KFY
or K4Y Kiss For You
28 Kitty Vagina
29 KPC Keeping Parents Clueless
30 MorF Male or Female
31 LMIRL Let's Meet In Real Life
32 MOOS Member Of The Opposite Sex
33 WYCM Will You Call Me?
34 MOS Mom Over Shoulder
35 MPFB My Personal F*** Buddy
36 NALOPKTNot A Lot Of People Know That
37 NIFOC Nude In Front Of The Computer
38 NMU Not Much, You?
39 P911 Parent Alert
40 PAL Parents Are Listening
41 PAW Parents Are Watching
42 PIR Parent In Room
43 POS Parent Over Shoulder or Piece Of Sh**
44 PRON Porn
45 Q2C Quick To Cum
46 RU/18 Are You Over 18?
47 RUH Are You Horny?
48 S2R Send To Receive
49 SorG Straight or Gay
50 TDTM Talk Dirty To Me

via The Hater

This chart could actually save teenagers a lot of time. Now, instead of texting the cumbersome "FMLTWIA" they could increase their sexting efficiency by just sending "16!"

Back in my day, when my friends and I were making sketchy plans over the phone (the landline, mind you... cell phones and internets were not readily available until my college days) and a parent sidled into the room, the accepted thing to do was loudly go "Um, excuse me! Privacy!" which signaled to your phonemate that an authority figure was present, so they wouldn't be baffled when you followed it up with something innocent-sounding like, "What did you get for number 22?" or "Wanna get together at the malt shop after the sock hop?"

But, seriously, are there parents out there unaware that by the time something filters down to a scare story on your local news you can pretty much garauntee your kids got over it at least 6 months ago?* Sometimes I suspect these things of being some sort of teenage conspiracy to makes sure their parents are looking exactly the wrong way to catch them in shady doings. Though, this one seems destined to lead down an uncomfortable road:

"Did you just text OMG? What does that mean? Openly Masturbate, Girl? Opulent G-spot Massage? You can tell me, I'm hip. Let's talk about contraception!"

Despite finding the presence of teenagers anywhere I want to be incredibly annoying, I'm somewhat proud of myself for being able to maintain some sympathy with them in theory.

I remember when I was about 15, I was all fired-up about the injustice of R-rated movies (the theatres in my town had just started enforcing the R-rating. The first film I was turned away from was The People vs. Larry Flynt, which I cannot now imagine wanting to see, but hey... youth). Why, I demanded of anyone who would listen, should I have to pay the "adult price" of $6.50 (and thems 1998 dollars!) when I was not allowed into "adult movies"?**

The overwhelming response of anyone over 17... "Meh."

At which point I would launch into speech about how nothing was ever going to get better because on one cared about the plight of the youth, even those who had been denied access to Larry Flynt right alongside me, but had their birthday the very next week, David!!***

And be met once again with a resounding "Meh."

But now, even though I just turned Twenty(cough) years old, I still totally think that anyone old enough to get to a movie theatre by themself should be allowed to see whatever they damn well please. Or that under-17s should have a special "no-good-stuff" rate.

I mean, I don't care a lot. But I'd provide a "right on" to any kid who wanted to rant about not being allowed into a movie. If I were put in the unfortunate position of having to talk to a teenager, that is. Which I hope does not happen.

I've had a lot of coffee and can't think of a way to end this post now.

Uh, TTYL!

(Does that mean "Taunting with Titties, Young Lover"? You can tell me, I'm hip!)

*Unless it's pot, kids never get over that. Your kids are totally smoking pot right now.

**A theory, I now realizes, which implies that adults are paying extra for extra profanity, which might not be a bad strategy for movies to adopt in These Tough Economic Times. If you don't want to pay $10 for your summer blockbuster, you could pay $5 for the edited-for-TV version where Samuel L. Jackson is constantly saying "Mellonhugger!"

***That's totally his real name! I wonder whatever happened to him? Good ol' purple-haired, bisexual David. Perhaps he has kids now...

Doodles

In addition to being my birthday, Thursday was also National Doodle Day, which means I get to enjoy a little glimpse into the minds of celebrities and semi-celebrities, and it doesn't feel like weird fame gawking because it's all for a good cause.

My favorites are Steve Martin's ode to the famous arrow gag which my grad school professor would disown me for not mentioning first appeared in 1607 in Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle:




And this one, by Cat Mihos, who I guess works for Neil Gaiman in some capacity:

Overrated

Nothing gets my goat more than the following sort of exchange:

Me: I'm totally obsessed with _____'s new album!

Other Guy: I always thought _____ was overrated.

Oh, really? Why? By whom? How does that invalidate my enjoyment? Rarely does Other Guy know the answer to those questions. Calling something "overrated" seems to be hipster code for "I feel that I am too cool to like that."

However, this is entertaining. I'll let them explain themselves:

Have you ever wanted to be smart and sassy like Christopher Hitchens, without having to sacrifice your liver or your dignity? Well, here’s your chance!

According to a 2006 New Yorker profile, Hitch once declared, apropos of nothing, “that the four most overrated things in life were champagne, lobsters, anal sex, and picnics.” Like all of Hitch’s opinions, his List offends everyone, for different reasons. Still, you can’t help but admit there’s something to it.

Here's mine:



(illustration brought to you by my new birthday toy).

Art?

I'm pretty ignorant/indifferent when it comes to Art (the expensive, capitalized kind you find in galleries). I can, and do, go on endlessly about Theatre, Literature, Music and Film, but my knowledge of the other stuff, the stuff that used involve canvas and marble and now involves human remains and feces, is admittedly lacking. In a conversation about anything that happened after the 19th century, art-wise, I'm basically confined to smiling and nodding.

If forced to express an opinion, I would say that I have no problem hearing about why 500 rubber chickens hanging from the ceiling of a black box with the sound of cash register ringing in the background, say, is a meaningful critique of factory farming, or a witty commentary on art as product, or whatever, I'm not especially interested in actually seeing it. If more work went into the artist's statement than into the piece itself, then reading the statement is, to me, a better use of my time than seeing the thing it explains. Once I know why some one believes that a chipped tea cup with a single raven's feather in it is worth putting on a pillar in a gallery, there's no need for me to haul my ass there and look at it; I've seen a tea cup before, I've seen a feather, I can extrapolate.

On the other hand, if that some one had painstakingly fashioned an exact replica of a tea cup with a feather in it out of plastic, or spam, or the hair of 1989 Pink Jubilee Barbie Dolls, I'd be all about seeing it in person, whether the rationale for doing so was interesting or not. I might look at it more in the way that I'd look at Corn Palace or the world's largest ball of twine than in the way I'd look at The Death of Marat, but I'd definitely be intrigued.

So, there's art whose concept is more important than it's execution, to which I typically say "Meh, who needs to see it, then?" And there's art whose execution is more important than it's concept, which may not even bother with a concept, to which I mostly say, "Sure, I'll gawk at that."*

But not until now have I said "I would like to be that art!"

In the New Museum’s first triennial survey, “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus,” (because all the artists were under 33, I suppose), Chu Yun hired women to come to the museum and sleep in the middle of the gallery all day.



Seriously. How do I get that job? Icelandic Elf Inspector has just been bumped to second place on my Most Desired Form of Employment list.

You may also enjoy this condescending take on the exhibit's opening:

"Four floors of self-referential young-person art dealing with young-person topics. Think new-media references like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, Internet jargon (e.g., “OMG”)"

Now, I make no judgements on whether or not any of the art presented was any good, since I a) don't care to do enough research to figure it out and b) am not qualified to make that judgement anyway. But I find it funny how the things called "young-person topics" are mostly things that the agéd media has been squawking with alarm about ("Good heavens, have you heard that the childrens are sending naked pictures of themselves? Also, I fear they use poor grammar and baffling acronyms!")

What should art explore, if not the human experience? What is unique about the turn-of-the-21st-century human experience, if not our unprecedented access to each other's personal ephemera? If anything, young people should be faulted for failing to try and find what's meaningful about the strange combination of inerconnectedness and isolation internet life imposes. Those of us who were teenagers when the online community went mainstream are in a unique position to appreciate how it changed the way we socialize, the way we access information, the way we experience life (or, perhaps, fail to experience it in favor of "documenting" it).

Whatever, though. The real point is, how do I get paid for sleeping? I'd be awesome at it:





*And, of course, there's art which inventively employes craft in service of an idea. You know, the good kind.

Got 8 Minutes?

Why not spend them enjoying this:



A briefing on American imperialism delivered in the soothing, sexy voice of Viggo Mortensen.

Mmmmm... Viggo...

Daycare

Wondermark never fails to amuse.

I've suggested several times that we draw upon the childcare expertise of Victoria orphanages and put the children to sleep with bottles of gin and water.

Dinosaurs

This is adapted from a couple of old posts.

Here’s the thing about dinosaurs.

They should be imaginary. Everything else that cool from childhood turns out to be fake; fairies and dragons and hobbits and trolls and magic and unicorns and elves and so on.

Or they should be a lie, which only you find out later in school, and then you feel kind of sad and stupid for having loved them so naively. Like racist cowboys and commodified princesses and disease-ridden pirates. Maybe you learn to ironically embrace the myth of them, but the reality is always there, reminding you that nothing is ever wholly good.

Except dinosaurs! Because they were real, and you never learn that they weren’t as awesome as they appear. No bearded, pony-tailed high school sociology teacher ever sits on his desk and breaks the news that, despite what The Man would have you believe, they were really three feet tall and lived on tofu.

In fact, they are so cool that crazy people try to deny their existence. They claim it is because of the Bible, but really it is because they know that dinosaurs are so cool, they’re cooler than God himself (which is probably why God got rid of them and replaced them with humans).

Also note that, while the internet has ruined such formerly awesome things as zombies, vampires,* ninjas and Trogodor, dinosaurs have, if anything, been enhanced by internet attention.

The only way dinosaurs disappoint us is by no longer being alive. And that is mostly a problem for today's children, I think. Until their first trip to the natural history museum, they imagine that the dinosaurs there walking around in zoo-type habitats. The girl pictured above was wildly unimpressed to find the dinosaurs at the Field Museum didn't have their skin on, but when I was little, I thought of dinosaurs as skeletons first, and only later learned that they were once fully-fleshed creatures. I blame the Discovery Channel and their CGI dinosaur programing.

Luckily, there is a super-cool and adorable solution to this problem.

Dinosaur Robots.

*Actually, Twilight ruined vampires.**

**Actually, nothing can ever ruin vampires, at least not for me.

Monthly Mix (from last month)

I'm going to try to post a new 8tracks mix every month (It'll be like the world's most infrequent podcast). Here's the one I made last month, along with some random bitching.

Songs to pretend you’re sitting on a beach on a warm summer’s night.



By the by, I’m sitting here watching The X-Files, and there was just a preview for some iteration of Stargate that featured the most fakest looking explosion in the history of television.

This coming from a veteran watcher of B-grade science fiction. Seriously. It’s one thing to pull those kind of shennanigans mid-episode, when the suspension of disbelief is in full swing, but in the preview? Come now.

And speaking of SciFi, I’m miffed about the channel’s change of spelling (to SyFy), not just because it’s idiotic, but because they seemed to have changed it in part to attract the lady-viewers, who I guess totally hate science fiction. But are super into nonsensical homophones.

Twits (3/27/09)

Here’s what I hate about Twitter:

The verb “to tweet.”

Not because I’m an old fuddy-duddy. I’ve got no problem with internet-based, made-up verbs.

But the service is not called Tweeter. It is called Twitter. Therefore, you do not Tweet, you Twit. (Wordplay!)

Seriously, though.

Use “Twitting. “

(see, it’s an angry chick because... uh... chicks tweet? now that I think about it, they totally chirp, but whatevs, I like that chick)

Did I include this just because of the chick? Of course.

Epic Fantasy (4/1/09)

iWeb's blog template automatically include a picture with each entry, and I'd often find myself struggling to find an appropriate one. Sometimes, that lead to nonsense, sometimes, to total greatness. I include the picture I found for this entry as evidence of the latter.*



Some time in 2008, a friend and I were in the Books A Million in Staunton, VA (a store, by the way, which shelved novelizations of the Star Trek movies as “Literature,” a section distinct from mere “Fiction”), wasting our lives, as was the style at the time. Something spurred me to begin ranting about Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I gotten to this point in the rant: “And even though I never thought they were great, and now don’t even like them anymore, I have to buy each new book as it comes out just because I’v devoted so many hours of my life to this story. I don’t even want to know but I have to know how it ends...”

And my friend said, “You know Robert Jordan is dead, right?”

I stopped mid-step, mouth agape, “Wha---?”

“For like a year now.”

In a film version, we’d now cut away to a shot of pigeons flying off the roof of the mall to illustrate the volume of my exclamations of dismay. I believe I referred to the deceased author as a fucking bastard, which in retrospect was a bit harsh.

Especially since I’ve recently learned that the first volume of the final book of the series (the first of three) will be released in November of this year. Here is an enthusiastic (to put it kindly) fansite’s take on the news.

While closure will be nice (cross fingers), I am leery of this three-volume business. Calling three books one book doesn’t make the series any shorter. Saying they were only split up because there were too many words to fit into one book is no excuse (I’m looking at you, George R. R. Martin. And you look a lot like my dad, btw.).

I say this with love, but epic fantasy has got to be stopped. I’m a big dork who is as interested in made up history as real history, who doesn’t baulk at the thought of a book that is as thick as it is wide, who will happily spend an entire weekend sitting under a tree reading what is basically a thinly-disguised rewrite of Lord of the Rings as long as the writing is passable and the characters are engaging. I am the genre’s target audience (except, arguably, for being female) and I am ready to give up on it all together because I am so tired of having my socks knocked off by the first entry in a series and then find myself, four or five books later, slogging through tout of obligation with no idea why I ever enjoyed this crap (you better not let me down, Patrick Rothfuss).

Is this all about publishers pressuring authors to drag things out as long as the books remain best sellers? Does it happen because, once authors reach a certain status, they become unwilling to make the sort of sweeping editorial changes that made their first books so tight? Is it that the ideas remain exciting but the process of writing becomes ever more tiresome? Does one loose all sense of perspective after a decade of getting paid to fantasize?

Robert Jordan is the perfect punching bag when you want to bitch about series that start with a bang and end with a very, very drawn out whimper, but to be honest, I never thought his books were all that good. The writing is incredibly repetitive, which is why it baffles me that the series went on so long... he never seemed to have that much to say. His characters got broader rather than deeper as the series went on, and that starting from an assemblage of stock figures. The books were never more than mildly entertaining (to teenage me, now-me would never have gotten past the Mars-Venus gender relations in book one).

George R. R. Martin, on the other hand, was that good. A Game of Thrones was fabulous; funny, genuinely tragic, disturbing, loosely based on the Wars of the Roses, featured male and female characters of equal depth and diversity, and best of all did not indulge in the moral absolutism that makes much of the genre seem so childish. The prologue alone kept me awake for a couple of nights (remember those zombie guys from beyond the Wall? yeah, I barely do either).

The second book was as good as the first. The third was slightly too long, and a bit too bogged down in the intrigue stuff, which works better, I think, when the supernatural stuff is there to put it in perspective. But hey, it was still better than a lot of what’s out there. The fourth slid into okaysville. The fact that only half the characters were featured did not, LoTR-style, increase the suspense, so much as it screwed up the pattern of juxtaposed viewpoints that worked so well in the first books. I have a feeling that when the series ends (he better bring it to the fifth book), I’ll look back and think that it would have been awesome as the trilogy it was originally supposed to be.

Just stick to the trilogy format. That’s all that need be done, authors. If you find that your story has grown too big to fit into three books, make it smaller. You can always write another series in the same world.

As an example of doing things right, take Jacqueline Carey. She wrote three great (and sexy) books about a spy/courtesan in an alternate-universe Renaissance Europe. Then, because she wanted to keep writing and people wanted to keep reading, she wrote more books (about the “next generation,” if you will). These books, I feel, are not as good. But I don’t feel obligated to read them, because the story that initially hooked me is finished. Still, I do read them (as do her other fans). I read them with no expectations that they’ll live up to the original, and so I can enjoy what’s there to be enjoyed.

Is this my longest blog ever? Possibly.

Is that ironic? Yes.

Here’s a mildly relevant comic:

Fiction Rule of Thumb

*Seriously, fantasy art is totally insane, and often bears little to no relation to the content of the book. I've read some perfectly reasonable and thoughtful books that I was totally embarrassed to take out of my house because the cover was, like, a chick in a metal bikini holding a flaming sword. And I get to the end of the book and be like "Wha? Where was that sword lady?" because she'd never even appear in the novel.

Sick of Extrapolating and Netflix reads my blog?

A BlogClassic Double Feature, with entires posted on 3/25 and 3/31, respectively

Sick of Extrapolating

A New Yorker cartoon which accurately captures my TV browsing feelings lately.

The best part is, if you’re a lesbian, you even get to feel that way in movies about “gay people.”

Because “gay people” is code for “gay men.”

And some one needs to figure out away to inform the Netflix recomendation-bot that just because I might occasionally enjoy a film about two girls discovering their forbidden love for each other one fateful summer doesn’t mean I automatically give a crap about two boys doing the same thing.

Which is why, no matter how stupid it was, I’m kind of sad The L Word is off the air. It was nice to have one hour a week in which lesbianism was the norm and they had to go out of their way to include a token guy in the cast.

Netflix Reads my blog?

Or so it would seem, as only a week ago I was complaining about the lack of lesbian-movie-specific recommendations (since the category “Gay and Lesbian” is mostly full of the dudes), and lo... their new, ridiculously specific categories offer me:

“Gay & Lesbian Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead”

I was also offered:

"Visually Striking Gay/Lesbian Drama"

"Critically-acclaimed Foreign Sci-Fi & Fantasy"

"Cerebral Independent Comedies"

"Romantic Movies from the 1980s"

add “BBC Mini-Series Based on 19th Century Literature” and that pretty much covers my movie preferences.

Color me both impressed and creeped out.

Hipster? So What? (3/13/09)

Lots of people have derisively called me a hipster in my day (most frequent offender: my brother. Also my hipster music friends). Yet most people I know also claim to hate hipsters, are ever-vigilant against the threat of hipsters ruining the things they like, and would be mortally offended to be described as one.

However, no one had ever reasonably explained why being a hipster is so bad. Things that have gotten me called a hipster lately are: reading internet comics (more nerdy than anything, I’d think), liking Neko Case, wearing wellies (also referring to said boots as “wellies”), having a blog and liking (allegedly) “ironic” tote bags. Oh, and wearing large, vintage-esque sunglasses. I get called out for that on an near-weekly basis.

These things seem inoffensive. In fact, a lot of them are simply what I would (totally objectively) describe as having good taste and liking the finer things in life.

The best anyone seems to be able to come up with to explain why “hipster” is a dirty word is something about how they expend energy to be cool (rather than just going about their business with the faith that they are cool by default, which is what most people I know do*), and may in fact misrepresent their tastes to be perceived as cooler than they actually are by their peers. Which, I find, is only offensive to people who are also doing that. Some one pretending to like what you like is harmless. Some one pretending to like what you are just a little better at pretending you like is an opportunity to make yourself look like the shit at their expense. Hence the prevalence of the insult “poseur” amongst my high school clique.

I’ve also heard the slightly more damning critique that “hipster culture” is so entrenched in privilege that it is inherently racist, sexist, pretty much discriminatory against everyone who isn’t a white dude. I say, I believe you are speaking of American culture, my friend. There is no one more annoyed than I with “ironic” racism and other such nonsense, especially from self-described progressives, but I don’t think that you can single out one sub-culture as worse than another (unless that sub-culture is, like, white supremacy).

Anyway, the point being, call me a hipster all you want. I’m prepared to admit that I basically fit this description:

“Hip-ster \ˈhip-stər\ noun: A slang term used to describe a person in their twenties to early thirties, generally from a middle class upbringing whose sense of identity encompasses many of the following elements and/or activities: a pretentious knowledge of independent music, art and film, wears thrift store or handmade clothing, has childhood nostalgia, an interest in DIY activities, consuming organic/vegan/vegetarian foods, usually possessing some level of higher education, a well developed sense of irony, often possessing a general knowledge of and strong opinion about world politics.” -How to Impress a Hipster

I’d take issue with the word “pretentious,” or at least argue that I am only pretentious concerning literature. However, as many people (ahem, my brother) use the term pretentious to mean “more knowledgeable than I am inspired to be on this particular topic, and yet perversely not ashamed of their unnecessarily superior knowledge,” I don’t object too strenuously.

Basically this is a description of the sort of person who has been responsible for a lot of the positive social change since the middle ages, the bourgeois intellectual.

So, seriously, what’s wrong with that?

*Obviously, we all say that we don’t care if people think we’re cool or not. This is only true depending on how you define “cool.” I don’t care if people think “Wow, there’s a chick who is way in tune with the latest trends!” but I do care if people think “Wow, there’s a chick way who’s interesting and worth getting to know!” And so most does everyone else. Because we are social creatures.