The post I actually meant to write just now September 25, 2009

So before I got crazy distracted, I was going to share some other things that were great this week.

Awesome things:

I watched a little more Arrested Development (I’m nearly as behind on getting to that as I was on Iron Giant, yeesh), and saw the new “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” According to my roommate, Dee (the girl on It’s Always Sunny) was originally intended to be the straight man to the rest of the characters’ crazies. Apparently they started writing and went “No way, she’s just as crazy as the rest of them!” I consider that a huge part of what makes that show so great, and a victory for feminism. We want equal rights when it comes to everything: equal pay, equal division of household labor, and an equal right to be insane on a sitcom about insane people. (Now, granted, it’s four guys and a girl and therefore fails the Bechdel test a lot, but hey, Rome: Not Built in a Day. I’ll take what I can get.)

Another awesome thing:

–Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author.”
I read this play in college and remember loving it but finding it somewhat hard to wrap my head around. I can no longer quite fathom why I would’ve thought that; I reread it for the first time this week and it now seems both wonderful and very straightforward (maybe I was very sleep-deprived in college?)

It’s a great play and recommended reading for everyone, especially if you care about stories, writing, acting, directing or the theatre itself.

A quote I especially liked:

“When a character is born he immediately assumes such an independence even of his own author that everyone can imagine him in scores of situations that his author hadn’t even thought of putting him in, and he sometimes acquires a meaning that his author never dreamed of giving him.”

It speaks directly to our fanfiction age, as far as I’m concerned, and to how, although I’m all in favor of creators’ rights, especially insofar as they afford those creators a material living, we have a ridiculous idea that characters and stories begin and end with what you wrote and what you meant when you wrote it. Tell it to Odysseus and King Arthur, bub.

One more thing of Awesome:

I also read “Janes in Love,” the second volume of the P.L.A.I.N. Janes series of graphic novels about teen girls who do art subversively. It continues to delight. I’m old-fashioned and boring in my love of having every plot detail wrapped up and every character arc matching and resolved, and that only mostly happens in the book, but I really enjoyed it, the major stuff developed nicely, and I’m just happy a book like it exists (not to get all “It’s not how well the bear dances” about it, but I am happy to have a wider scope emerging in American comics). I wonder what my more anti-establishment friends would think of the subversive public art group applying for grants? It’s presented as a big positive, and I can’t say I really disagree, although second-hand cynicism would suggest that future volumes will cover the once-revolutionary institution become bloated under its own weight. That’s not what the book’s about, though–it’s about the transformative power of art in the everyday, and I can never argue with that.

Somehow this turned into a Pixar post September 25, 2009

So after a very long (but rewarding) work week last week, I had a bit of a breather this week.

Among the highlights of the week:
I finally saw “The Iron Giant!”

I’ve known I needed to see it for years (at the store I told someone I’d finally seen it and they said, “You hadn’t seen The Iron Giant? You’re fired!”), but happily it’s one of those movies that deserves its reputation (it does not deserve its relative obscurity outside of people-who-love-cartoons circles, but it does deserve its place of honor in those circles, to be specific). For those who may not remember about it, it was a film by Brad Bird, of future Incredibles/Pixar fame. So, yes, it was very good. There may have been some weepiness (“Superman….”).

On a different note–very different, because I realize Iron Giant wasn’t even Pixar, predates most of Pixar, has nothing to do with what I’m about to say other than making me think about it.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain July 27, 2009

I have now finally read my Brontës. Jane Eyre was amazing but Wuthering Heights was, well, that it wasn’t what I was expecting worked very much in its favor, since I spent most of the book going “Really? These are the leads? This is the structure? Wait, you mean this person is dead? I have literally no idea where this is going.” It certainly succeeded insofar as I was neglecting other life objectives to get to the end, but I’m fairly certain the book demands a few more readings. I’m grateful I got to read it so relatively fresh to it, though–the mentions of Cathy and Heathcliff and love on the moors really don’t let you know what you’re in for. So it’s a mixed review, I guess, but I have a strong feeling the spell creeps over you with every reading (and I definitely need one more where I don’t just believe the opinions of the narrator the whole time).

In comics, I’m finally reading Criminal: Ohmygoshwow. Read my first Alex Robinson (author of Box Office Poison): his semi-recent short book, “Too Cool To Be Forgotten.” File it under ‘Don’t read this at work unless you can cover the sniffles really quickly.’ (So, yes, it was very good. Wish some of the plot threads had come back or been resolved, but absolutely satisfied with the ultimate direction)

I also recently made perhaps the greatest book purchase I will ever make: at a used book store near the UCB Theatre, I picked up a book with the following fascinating spine: On top, “History of Prostitution” by W.W. Sanger, M.D. On the bottom: “Eugenics Publishing Company.” How can you walk away from that? It has a certain trainwreck quality. The book, as it turns out, is even better than I’d hoped. It is a 1937 printing of an 1897 volume containing a massive sociological study from the 1850s(!) on the current state of prostitution in America and around the world. The joys of this book are endless (and much better than the mere shock value I was expecting from the spine). For instance, the full title page reads:

THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION

ITS EXTENT, CAUSES AND EFFECTS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

by

WILLIAM W. SANGER, M.D.

A bit of silliness in honor of a serious move. April 9, 2009

News broke recently that Kal Penn, better known to many as Kumar, from the wildly entertaining and massively ground-breaking (seriously) “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” (also ”Escape From Guantanamo Bay,” but I haven’t seen that one), is leaving his job on “House, MD” to go to… well, a different House. A bigger, older, even Whiter one. The actual White House, where he will take a post in Obama’s government dealing with the Asian-Pacific American and Arts communities. This is deeply awesome and I commend him for it, but it also reveals a disturbing plot: resumes with subliminal messages.

Below are a few examples of messages our favorite celebrities may be receiving, and life changes to look out for.

Highway Musings March 31, 2009

Every time I drive the ramp that connects the 134 East to the 2 North, I take my life in my hands. It’s not that my speed is unsafe as I race up and around the gentle arc. It’s not that the drivers around me are unpredictable as we curve north towards the hills. It’s that as I take the ramp upwards, I pass over and spiral around the homes and businesses of Glendale. Green hills rise on three sides of me with little red houses like berries on bushes. A mysterious white building with a winged roof glints in the sun and before I know it I’m trying to counts the sides of its roof and stare at the valley spread out behind me and gaze into the approaching community, crouched on the knees of the mountains. And I’m going 60 miles an hour through the air on an overpass built with the grace of a Disney ride.

It’s a little distracting.

Why I love Anne Hathaway February 24, 2009

Setting aside the fact that in the first half hour of the Oscars (all I caught on TV–I’m filling in the rest online), I got to see Anne Hathaway and Amy Adams as honorees and Tina Fey presenting, making it feel like a very good year to be a nerdy/good girl aspiring actress, we narrow our focus to Anne Hathaway. I haven’t actually seen the Princess Diaries; I pretty much love her for looking normal, seeming sweet, and charming the pants off me in Devil Wears Prada.

Well, this is interesting February 4, 2009

This is perhaps not the ideal content to share with the world, but I’ve been having a severe fit of ditz over the last few weeks, and I’d say this is the capper. This post comes to you from my friendly neighborhood public library, where a very kind lady was good enough to let me use the computers without a card. Why don’t I have a card, you ask?

Read Persepolis January 26, 2009

The girl in the veil

I finally read “Persepolis,” the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi that got so much attention two years back (and which was adapted into the Cannes-honored animated film, which I have yet to see). I picked it up during my Christmas shopping spree (wherein my family went nuts at a Borders which was closing and selling everything at 40% off)

A Life in TIME January 6, 2009

The (recently added?) treasure trove of old Time magazine articles that turn up in google searches is on my unofficial list of favorite things. I was link-wandering today. I  started at the Duchess of Windsor, leading me to a post devoted to an artist/designer named Drian, who painted the Duchess. The post included the following paragraph:

“For the beautiful Audrey James, a British heiress whose husbands included the American mercantile magnate Marshall Field III, Drian painted a fantastic mirrored screen depicting a band of black jazz musicians. (It was later owned by James’s friend Eleanor Lambert, the founder of the Best-Dressed List.)”

I decided Audrey James sounded interesting, and while information on her is thin on the ground (apparently she shares a name with a porn star, good thing I didn’t do an image search first), including her husband, Mr. Field III, yields a bit more.