Girl Detective

Two movie tickets: $16.50
Medium (quite yucky) popcorn, bottle of water, box of Junior Mints: $11.25
Discounted parking: $2
Friend who offered to watch child at last minute so both of us could go to movie together: priceless.

DVDs are easy impulse buys, which my husband G. Grod and I have successfully managed to curtail in the last several months. Instead we’ve been watching movies from Tivo (too often not in widescreen format. Why? I think only Turner Classic Movies and the Independent Film Channel get this right.), watching DVDs previously bought on impulse, or renting them from the library, though it has a prohibitively long wait list for most good, new releases. But tallying up the costs of our night out means that most DVDs are less expensive than a night out for two, even without paying a sitter.

There are certain movies, like Batman Begins, which is what we saw, that benefit from being seen on the big screen. Yet there are many others that are fine viewed at home, where we usually have much better snacks. Yes, Netflix is still a better deal than buying, but only if you keep returning those movies. We had the same three movies for three months around the time Drake was born. I don’t even remember what they were. We returned them unwatched when we cancelled our subscription. But perhaps impulse-buy DVDs are not the worst budget wrecker in the world. Plus, I bet they’d bring good re-sale if sold quickly at either at Half-Price Books or on Ebay, lowering the cost even more.

Batman and I go way back. My first celebrity crush was on Adam West, when I was in first grade. I watched Batman every day, even if I’d seen the episode before. I remember lying to my mother that they only re-ran episodes once to try to get out of a trip to the store. I missed whatever episode that was (Batman and Robin trapped in a beehive, perhaps?) but I did get a few comics that day. Then my comic reading and Batman appreciation went dormant for many years, emerging much later when a boyfriend handed me the two graphic novel standards–Watchmen by Alan Moore and The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. I was back into Batman, and back into comics, and have not abandoned either in the fifteen (!) years since. Soon after those initial graphic novels, I read Batman Year One, also by Frank Miller, and I liked it even more than I did Dark Knight Returns. (This view, I know, borders on heresy in the geek-dom.) It was a dark story, very much of its time in the 80’s, that emphasized the all-too-human aspects of the characters Batman, James Gordon, and to a lesser extent, Catwoman.

Therefore it was with some trepidation that I saw that a Batman origin movie was coming to the screen. I’d seen all four Batman movies, liking each one less, and actually feeling ashamed at having seen the last one. I had to be reminded who it was who played Batman in it–that was how forgettable George Clooney was in the role. Part of the problem of a Batman movie is the casting of Batman. Most actors can play either rich playboy Bruce Wayne or Batman, but not both. But when the reviews started to come in that Batman Begins was good and Christian Bale was well cast, I began to hope. And when a friend offered to watch Drake so that my husband G. Grod and I could actually go out and see a movie together, we knew immediately what we wanted to see.

Batman Begins was movie #29 in my 50 movie challenge for the year. And it was great fun. It was dark and atmospheric with good special effects. Everyone there played it straight, even the villains–there was no overacting or kitsch factor. There were a few throwaway one-liners to please the groundlings, but overall, it was extremely well done. This is not a movie of Batman Year One. The director and Frank Miller have been reminding people of that in recent interviews. It is, however, a well-done work on the origin of the man behind and within the mask. And because of that, I think it’s a fitting homage to one of my favorite graphic novels.

But consider how many relationships survive sewn together with tacit complicity and mutual deception. It’s the cold light of discovery that’s so dangerous. Better to live with the lies. (P. 170)

Book #41 in my 50 book challenge for the year was highly recommended to me by two members of my writing group. One said it was the perfect mix of story and craft. Mostly, I agree. Mawer tells a story that shifts back and forth in time, and back and forth among characters. Nonetheless, he always maintains strict authorial control, and the story unfolds seamlessly. I don’t agree that it is perfect because of characterization. There was one character who became sympathetic only as it served the story. Once it did no longer, she slipped back into her not very complex self. Another character, also a woman, had an almost cruel lack of redeeming qualities. Finally, the main character, Rob, never really seemed a character in and of himself, only as he related to the other characters. The characters never came alive for me, so I found it worthwhile, but not superlative.

The sky is dark, darker than it is even past 9 p.m. these days, yet it’s only just past noon. There is thunder in the distance. Rain begins, normally enough at first, then pouring down in torrential slashes. Periodic flares of lightning bring illumination, however brief. I love being able to see and feel a storm. While I watch the show outside, Drake naps peacefully in his room, unmoved by nature’s chaos.

If I looked to Drake for affirmation, I might wait a long time. When I returned from my college reunion on a Sunday after last seeing him on a Thursday, he cried, “Ma!” and ran toward me, then stopped suddenly in front of the car door and began to play with the keyhole. I was completely forgotten.

The other night a friend offered to watch him so my husband G. Grod and I could go on a *gasp* date. Drake immediately brought books to her. As we prepared to leave, she asked him, “Doesn’t your mom look nice?” Drake glanced up, then said, “No. Bye-bye. Please read.”

The Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, volumes 1 and 2 (Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, respectively) by Bryan Lee O’Malley were books number 39 and 40 in my fifty book challenge for the year.

Scott is a 23 year old slacker who has no job, is in a band, and lives in a tiny apartment in Canada with his gay roommate Wallace. Scott has struck up a romance with 17 year old Knives Chau, a girl he met on the bus. Subsequently, though, he sees a girl in person who he recognizes; she’s been skating through his dreams. He introduces himself to the girl, Ramona Flowers, at a party, and their romance begins, though he hasn’t yet broken things off with the increasingly crushed-out Knives. Volume 1 ends with a hilarious Hong Kong movie-ish fight between Scott and an ex-boyfriend of Ramona’s. In Volume 2 Scott must face the second of Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends, and we get more backstory on the girl that left Scott heartbroken before Knives. There’s also another Hong-Kong movie-ish fight, this time in a public library, during which we learn why Knives has such an odd name.

These are funny, weird and exceptionally charming books. They are teen fiction with magical realism, distinctive manga-inspired art, engaging characters and some drop-dead funny panels. I’ve also liked O’Malley’s previous work on Lost at Sea and Hopeless Savages: Ground Zero, which is written by Jen Van Meter, who is married to comics and mystery writer Greg Rucka.

At my reunion last weekend, my friends were disappointed to learn that I had scaled back so dramatically on my cosmetics purchases over the years. I was the one who could be counted on for having a zillion lip and nail shades, even the ones that didn’t suit me, because I’d gotten them free or just couldn’t throw them out.

In college I had a favored eye compact from Christian Dior, back when they had the 4 little squares of shadow. Yellow went on my lid, green was dusted along the upper lashes over a bright green pencil, orange was in the inner nook of the brow, and blue was swept along under the bottom lashes. This was complimented by Dior’s bright blue mascara, which smelled of roses. It was a trashy look, but I loved it, and wore it day and night until those colors were discontinued. I still feel a puff of nostagia for them now and then, as I did when I remembered it over last weekend.

For me, the key part of the look was the bright green. I have been able to find a good substitute, Humid by MAC, which I use as a liner with a wet flat brush. I also like the dark, bright blue of MAC’s Contrast. (Don’t trust the online color chips. They aren’t accurate.) Smashbox has a product called Off Set that converts powder shadow to liner. A neat idea, but given that I rarely wear colored liner anymore, day or night, water works just fine for me. When I do, though, these colors help bring me back to my cosmetics heyday.

One of the things I looked forward to as a homeowner was having a compost pile. Each time my husband G. Grod or I cooked, especially in summer, I winced at all the good stuff that was going down the disposal or into the trash. Having a compost bin would be both environmentally correct and useful.

Sadly, my dream has died. Apparently, I can’t handle something so basic as decomposing matter. Our compost bin is smelly, attracts creatures of all sorts, and when I went to pull out some of that rich dirt, I found moldy lemon peel that probably dated from our possession of the house, last fall.

I looked up the details online, which sounded simple, though was still more complicated than I’d thought before. I tried stirring things around, but just enraged a few bees. I beat a hasty retreat, and we have been throwing our scraps in the garbage ever since.

I am delicate and the world is impossibly wrong, is unthinkable and I am not forewarned, forearmed, equipped. I cannot manage. If there was something useful I could do, I would–but there isn’t. So I drink. (P. 202)

Paradise by A.L. Kennedy, book 38 in my 50 book challenge for the year, was a recommendation from Blog of a Bookslut, where Jessa Crispin noted that it might be the best book of the year. Michael Schaub disagreed; he thought it was Francine Prose’s A Changed Man, that is, until he read Paradise.

The voice of Hannah Luckraft is always powerful, and at times funny, tragic, pathetic, sharp or blurry. I struggled to limit myself to quoting just one passage above, but the novel begs to be marked up, it is so full of memorable bits. Hannah’s voice runs the gamut, as she narrates this non-linear love story of two drunks. It reaches off the page and draws me in, clutches me in a death-grip until its final, murky end. I was more than impressed by Kennedy’s writing; I was a little scared by it. But I couldn’t look away, either from the writing or from what happened (or didn’t) to Hannah.

Anyone who has read the book, please email me. I must discuss the ending.

I picked up Mysterious Skin, book 37 in my 50 book challenge for the year, after a recommendation by Michael Schaub at Blog of a Bookslut. Schaub noted that a movie had just been made and was receiving good reviews. This was the third book in a row I’d read with narration revolving among characters. Heim’s writing wasn’t always strong enough to carry this off. I sometimes had to flip to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself who was speaking because the voices weren’t distinct. The two main characters are Brian and Neil. We are introduced to them when they are 8, then return to them 11 years later. Brian is a loner struggling to recall what happened that left him with no memory after a little league game, while Neil is a homosexual hustler who keeps upping the level of risk in his life. The stories intertwine skillfully. Neil is an especially compelling character, sympathetic in spite of his recklessness. Overall, the book is concerned with memory–what we recall and what we don’t, and how we bring memories and blanks with us as we age. The writing, especially toward the end, flagged considerably, but the story and characters were enough to propel me to the end, which, while it answered the questions posed by the book, was a little contrived-ly weird for me.

Apologies for the movie-cover link. Amazon was not being cooperative when I tried to link to the cereal cover, which was the copy I read from the library.

I saw this author at the Twin Cities book fest last fall and liked what she had to say. Where No Gods Came, book #36 in my 50 book challenge for the year, is the story of Faina McCoy, returned to her mother in Minneapolis from California, after her father must take an Australian oil-rig job to pay off gambling debts. Faina’s mother is an alcoholic and her sister Cammy is a runaway and a grifter. Faina quickly gets drawn in to taking care of her mother. She struggles through Catholic school and numerous painful encounters. The portrait of Minneapolis is well-drawn, though the names of streets and locations have been switched or disguised. The narrative switches among the characters, but their voices are not distinct. I sometimes had to flip back to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself which person was speaking. In spite of that, the characters were distinct and believably, often depressingly, complex. Much of the novel was quite dark, so I was relieved when Faina, whom I’d come to care about, gained the redemptive ending I thought she deserved.

I finished Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories the weekend before last, book #35 in my 50 book challenge for the year, and one question looms large: why do so many people hate the ending? I felt there was a good sense of closure, and didn’t feel rushed into it. Also, I’m not sure what part can be called “the” ending, since she’s got about a dozen story lines, all of which have some sort of end.

While I did think that the various mysteries weren’t hard to guess, I didn’t find this problematic. Instead, I was so engrossed with her characters that I was reading to spend time with them. Having a set of difficult mysteries to second guess would have distracted me from them. The central character is a detective named Jackson Brodie, hired by several of the other characters to solve the case histories of the title. The narration revolves among many of these characters, and each voice and view are distinct among the many narrators. I was impressed by how Atkinson kept the reader grounded, reminding throughout of times, dates and ages, rather than expecting me to flip back and forth. Additionally, she was quite good at jumping the narrative ahead over some big revelation, then going back to it later, through another character’s viewpoint. This never felt contrived to me. Atkinson had a smooth authorial control that kept things moving along at a fast, but not breakneck speed.

I so loved the characters that I regretted when I finished the book, and regretted even more that I had to start my next one right away. I got Case Histories from the library, but am going to buy a copy. I would like to read it again, and soon. Now that I know the endings, I can examine Atkinson’s crafted writing at a more leisurely pace.

Buying the book, though, has not yet occurred because it has not been easy. I asked my friend Queenie, who works at a bookstore to pick up a copy for me. She checked three of the biggest stores nearby, none of which had a copy. Case Histories was published in October, and stores don’t often reorder hardcovers after six months, since the trade paperback will be out in a few months. So if you’re thinking that you’ll browse through it the next time you’re in a shop, you may be out of luck. I will probably be purchasing from Amazon.

As you can see from the link above, I am now an Amazon associate, so if you purchase anything from them by following a link from me, I will receive a tiny percentage, which will go to further books and DVDs to review here. I will get a general link set up soon. I know you kind readers have many options of buying books, and probably more than one site through which you could purchase, so I thank you in advance for any consideration.

Jennifer Weiner does a hilarious reading of Curtis Sittenfeld’s review of Melissa Banks’s The Wonder Spot. Sittenfeld’s Prep was given to me by a friend, so it’s on my nightstand now, though the reviews I’ve read have been less than compelling. At a presentation I attended earlier this year, Michael Cart, a young-adult fiction expert I’ve quoted before, wondered if Prep would have been better with an editor familiar with the young adult genre, since it includes a lot of typical YA cliches.

I loved Banks’s first book, a novel in stories, The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing. The Wonder Spot, the victim of Sittenfeld’s review, is in transit to my local library right now.

Yet at bat on my reading list is Paradise by A.L. Kennedy, on deck is The Fall by Simon Mawer, and in the hole is Family Matters by David Guterson, all library books that have a return date. I think my library to-be-read books are going to create a black hole as they crash through the surface of my nightstand, where they reside alongside the “books I already own that I intend to read real soon” and “graphic novels that I’ve bought recently”. I’m not sure that taking the phrase “on the nightstand” literally has been the motivator that I thought it would be.

#28 in my 50 Movie Challenge for the year, and a recommendation from my friend Zen Viking back from the Shakespeare post. A high school riff on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Funny and engaging in a teen movie kind of way, i.e. it’s not life changing. Larry Miller is hilarious as Bianca and Kat’s obstetrician father who refuses to let them date. I had a tough time suspending my disbelief that either Heath Ledger or Julia Stiles was scary enough that no one would date them. They still look like movie stars. David Krumholtz seemed to be channeling Richard Kind, but has since graduated from the part of “less good looking but funnier friend” (one of Roger Ebert’s Movie Cliches), to hot young thing on Numb3rs.

I finished watching Season Two of MI-5 on DVD last night, and am in the middle of A. L. Kennedy’s alcoholic love story, Paradise. I must take some drastic measures to lighten things up. If those are the only two media things I’m in the midst of, I might forget what hope is.

Both, though, are extremely good. I recommend them, just in conjunction with other, lighter things.

I recently embarked on the 6th draft of my novel. I took a brief detour when something–my muse, the devil?–whispered in my inner ear to switch to present tense.

“Present tense is stupid,” pronounced my husband G. Grod when I mentioned this to him. I tried it anyway. It was excruciatingly slow. Normally I am a fast editor, but it took me about six hours to get through fewer than twenty pages. The response of my writing group was not as blunt as G. Grod’s had been, but it was clear they weren’t fans of the change. I promised I’d switch back to past tense. Then one of them said that in a workshop she’d taken, the writer/instructor related that she started each new draft fresh, writing from memory, using her old draft as an occasional guide. I’ve read two books by that author, both of which I admired a great deal. The advice was scary–write it again? When it seems so close to ready to send out?

I’ve given it a shot. The new draft is going much more quickly than did the present-tense debacle, but much more slowly than if I was line-editing my last draft. I’m coming up with some different stuff, though, and I like that I’m unshackled from all those sentences I’ve written. This new draft may take longer than I’d like to produce. Then again, which draft doesn’t?

I start off with all good intentions on the latest revision of my novel. Then my mind wanders. I wonder what happened to that guy I liked sophomore year in college. I Google him. I fail to turn up a valid hit. I go back to the novel. Then I go back to Google and make my search more specific. I get what might be a valid hit, but can’t confirm. I return to my novel. I return to Google and try a few more variations till I find a picture, in which he looks ridiculous. Good riddance. Return to novel. Return to Google a few more times for different people, with varying results. Find a short story that contains names of two guys I dated, and they weren’t common names. Get creeped out and return to novel. Google Girl Detective and am pleased to find this new site finally listed on page two. Old site still number 1, mostly because of a few accidental zeitgeist topics. Google my real name, which has never turned up results, and find a piece I submitted that got published, unbeknownst to me.

I now have an actual, valid writing credit. And I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t been avoiding my latest revision. The moral of the story may be that Google distraction can be beneficial to my writing. But maybe not.

By the last night of last weekend’s college reunion, I was longing for a little more engagement with people than “Hi, where are you now, and what do you do?” (My response, which I honed for pithiness over the weekend: Minneapolis, stay at home mom and writer of YA novels, one of which I hope to send out soon for publication.) So I thought of two questions for people, the first of which was told to me by a friend at a wedding last year.

1. If you were going to have same-sex sex with a celebrity (this is for heteros–the opposite for gay friends), who would it be? I found men were terrible at answering this, and women barely hesitated. One guy did, though, acknowledge that some of my suggestions (Clive, Ewan, Owen Wilson) were good ones. At first I offered my own example of Angelina Jolie, though I thought that a bit cliche. I soon remembered how hot Frances McDormand was in Laurel Canyon, though, so I changed my answer. Angelina got more than a few votes, as did Shane from The L Word.

2. What was something that happened in the last year that made you really happy? Note that I didn’t ask for a superlative, just one happy thing. In spite of this, people struggled to answer, and seemed to feel guilty if they couldn’t come up with a happiest. One friend said it was how her infant daughter did the hand motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider, a few chose good vacations, and one guy said he knew he should say his wedding, but really it was the Red Sox winning the pennant.

I had never yet attended a college reunion, though I’d attended my 5 and 10 year high school ones. What I found aggravating at those was the level of inane chit-chat, and suspicious level of achievement. At this 15 year reunion, though, my bullshit detector didn’t detect much artifice. Yes, there were quick chats, but people, including myself, really did seem interested in where other people lived and what they were doing. Given that the music was loud and the crowd was big, I think we did pretty well.

I was so careful before my shower last week. I shook out my towel, peered into ever nook of my robe, jiggled the shower curtain and looked inside the shower. I saw no centipedes. Only as I finished and went to draw the curtain, which I HAD jiggled, did a HUGE brown centipede scurry down the edge to the floor, causing me to let out a full-on scream. Then I killed it dead.

So my question for all you experienced home owners out there is how many centipedes are too many? I know they’re “normal” and even supposedly beneficial, but I’m not sure how much more I can take. Do I have to live with them? Do I call an exterminator? I suspect that our drain tile system, which ensures a dry basement, creates an easy in for them. Do I have to suffer centipedes as the price of my dry basement?

The second dilemma isn’t of the house, but of the detached garage. The inspector said last year that the garage roof had one year left in it. Do we dare to push it another year?

Finally, I’m wondering about gutters. We have a high, steep roof, so cleaning them ourselves would be challenging. Do we do it anyway, hire someone, ignore till winter? Ignore at our peril?

Any input from experienced folk would be wildly appreciated. I am SO out of my element as a homeowner. Like parenthood, it demands work, knowledge and practice that I find difficult to adopt in my late thirties.

From Bookslut:

There’s coverage of Lionel Shriver, the US-born author who won the Orange Prize yesterday for We Need to Talk About Kevin, at The Scotsman, The Independent, the BBC, The Times, the CBC, Reuters, and This Is London. Much is made of her traditionally masculine first name and her decision not to have children. (Quick, how many male authors have you seen get quizzed incessantly about their lack of offspring? I think it’s about…let me do the math here…yeah, about zero. Ah, vive le double standard.)

Well, yes, but the male authors who don’t get quizzed haven’t written a book with a main character of a mother who doesn’t form a bond with the child that goes on to commit mass murder.

If Ms. Shriver doesn’t want to have kids, I applaud her decision to buck convention. The premise of this book smacks of an extreme apologia, one which, however well-written, doesn’t compel me to read it. A simple “no, not for me” would suffice.