Top Five Things I will Pay to See in a Movie

1. Dinosaurs
2. Immaculately Stylized Quirkiness
3. Adaptations of Shakespeare
4. Vampires
5. Magical Otherealms

List-making. Is there anything more satisfying?

I feel like the stuff mentioned yesterday ("Catholic-themed creepiness" "Edwardian costumes" "people trapped on a spaceship with mysterious evil") would fall around #15 on the list... and in between somewhere there'd have to be space for Musicals set in the 19th Century, Knights, Ireland, Witty But Slightly Inept Criminals, Moody Loners in Northern Climes, Self-Destructive Yet Brilliant Artists, Zombies...

Honestly, there really isn't a lot I wouldn't pay to see in a movie... that list would probably consist mostly of actors I hate.

Anyway, there was going to be a point to this, but I'm distracted by how awesome a movie featuring all five of those things would be.

Perhaps Wes Anderson could direct a film, loosely based on The Tempest, in which a shipwreck lands our plucky heroine in a mysterious world of vampires and dinosaurs.

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.

19th Century Illustrations of Dinosaurs

Henry de la Beche, Duria Antiquior

(If you look closely, you can see that many of the dinosaurs are pooping.)



And here's what they looked like when not eating each other:
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkings, Teleo, Ichthio and Plesiosaurus



I love how sneaky this one looks:
Megalosaurus



Iguanodon

This one doubled as a lovely spot for dinner

Coincidental

During my nap-time internet-ing around (after I got pissed off at like the thousandth instance I've seen this week of "freedom of speech" related foolery) I happened to check and see what those crazy dinosaurs were up to.

It turns out, they were expressing the very sentiments I used to justify getting my first tattoo. Which I gave myself as a birthday present, nigh on 5 years ago today:




My actual words were: "Look, mom, if I ever become the sort of person who doesn't want a mermaid tattooed on her thigh, I don't want to know myself."



Half a decade and two degrees later, it's still true.

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.

Can I just not grow up?

Plinky is site that provides a 'prompt' every day for people who have trouble thinking of things to write on their blogs. Today's prompt: What do you want to be when you grow up?

I am what I want to be when I grow up!

Of course, it's not that simple. I've wanted to be an actor since I was little, and I am an actor, but it's not the only way I make my living. My childhood self definitely imagined my adult self as a more successful actor. It's like the Joni Mitchell song, "Circle Game," where she says "My dreams have lost some grandeur coming true."

When I was younger, I always thought that meant that when you get what you want, it turns out to be not as wonderful as you thought, but now it seems to be more about revising your naive fantasies to fit reality, realizing that you are living your dream, just not the pie-in-the-sky version of it you initially conceived.

Then again, I do sometimes fantasize about totally different careers based on my other interests. What if I were a librarian? A vet? A chef? If for some reason I had to change careers (like I was struck by lightning and all of my acting ability vanished?) I think I would go back to school and become a paleontologist.

Secretly, though; in my heart of hearts, I want to be a Time Lord when I grow up.