Girl Detective

More on my self-imposed 50-Movie Challenge. I’m not writing about books lately because I’m doing research for my novel.

9. Tully. 2002. Directed by Hilary Birmingham. A quiet little gem of a movie about a small-town loverboy who learns not to be such an ass. The beautiful scenery and the unconventional, red-haired beauty of Julianne Nicholson both reminded me of Malick’s Badlands, though that’s a heavy comparison for this little film. A little slow to start, it eventually got me completely engaged with its story and characters. I loved it.

A few days later, I started to watch All the Real Girls. 2003. Directed by David Gordon Green. I watched for thirty minutes, then gave up. It is also the story of a small-town loverboy. I did not, though, buy Paul Schneider as the lead. Yes, I know womanizers don’t have to be good looking or socially ept, but I find them more believable in fiction when they are. (Seriously, who are you going to buy as a womanizer? Him, or him?) I didn’t buy Natasha Leone as an ingenue. While Tully unfolded slowly and carefully, All the Real Girls jumped around in fits and starts, often dropping in on characters in mid-conversation. It felt too self-consciously clever on the part of the director. Both movies got great reviews, but I couldn’t work up the gumption to finish the latter.

Lots of folks were picking what I thought of as smarty-pants, hyperliterate stuff. I kinda shook my head. I mean, what’s the point of trying to write a short story based on a Dylan song? (I always thought Dylan songs were short stories, only better.) Anyway, for me, “Rio” came up right away. For one, I fucking love the song, it usually makes people smile, even if they’re shaking their heads in the process. I sort of think you can divide the world into people who appreciate Duran Duran, and people who don’t, and I’d rather vacation with the people who do. To me, Duran Duran in general, and “Rio” in particular, shimmer with the absolute brain-freeze purity of pop-rock’s trascendent ridiculousness, whatever that means. And I like the drums and guitar. And, good Lord, the lyrics, to “Rio” especially, are an L.A. sunset, a hot breath of everything and nothing all at once. I love shit like that.

Duff sent me a copy of Lit Riffs, a collection of short stories based on songs. This is exactly the kind of book you want to be lent; it’s got some great things, but it’s wildly uneven. The above quote is by Zev Borow. I think it encapsulates a lot of what’s wrong with most of the stories in the collection, but also with short stories in general, and perhaps even with pretentious people at large.

First, about Lit Riffs. It opens with a “lost” story by Lester Bangs. We’re all less fortunate for its having been found. As with many collections, reading the more famous name authors isn’t the best strategy. I was disappointed by Jonathan Lethem’s piece, and didn’t even bother to finish Aimee Bender’s. I did, however, enjoy Neal Pollack’s “Death in the Alt Country,” which reminded me of Robbie Fulks’s “Roots Rock Weirdos”, Heidi Julavits’s “The Eternal Helen”, Judy Budnitz’s “The System, and Borow’s “Rio”. While I’d heard of all the artists whose songs were chosen as inspiration, and even own CDs by most of them, I found most of the chosen lyrics to be obscure, and the stories based on them to be even more tenuously connected. Borow’s was the refreshing exception to this.

I once had a friend who was a fierce champion of short stories. I could never echo his appetite for them. Too often, I felt short story authors were trying to out-creepify each other. Thom Jones’s “I Want to Live!” exemplified this for me, and I found some of this tendency in Julavits’s story, though it had a self-aware humor that transcended the creep factor.

This creepification implies that art should be separate from enjoyment. I attended a class with the film director Peter Greenaway once, and he made an interesting distinction between enjoyment and pleasure. Enjoyment, he said, was simple fun. Pleasure, though, was more complicated, even didactic. Too often, I think, short story writers and other people of so-called taste valorize works of art that are complex over those that are fun. But either extreme would be unhealthy. Too much enjoyment produces vapidity, yet too much complicated pleasure leads to pretension. A balance of both, however, allows for learning and humor. I think Borow’s story and endnote capture this perfectly.

As an example of a non-pretentious, highly enjoyable collection of pop music, I highly recommend Music from The O.C. Mix 1, especially track 9, “We Used to Be Friends” by the Dandy Warhols. Brain-freeze purity, indeed.

There are several geek-friendly movies coming out soon. Frank Miller’s Sin City on April 1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on April 29. Batman Begins on June 17.

Wait, isn’t there something else the geeks are excited about this year, coming out soon?

Oh, right.

I don’t want to go into nerdishly obsessive detail about this, but I think there are some cool things going on in Battlestar Galactica. The original series contained references to leading the tribes out of Egypt (the pilot helmets had Egyptian imagery) to the promised land of Earth, with stately Lorne Greene as the Moses figure.

In the present series, the creators have made some interesting twists, key to which is that the human race created the Cylons as slaves, who then rebelled. The Cylons are monotheists, while the humans believe in a pantheon of gods. There are many references to how the same stories happen over and over, throughout history. Are the Cylons now the analog for the persecuted Christians who rise up against their polytheistic oppressors? If so, why are we rooting for the humans? Further, who is the savior? Even further, will s/he be a lunkhead?

Or, in my case, green. I spent several years of my young life wishing for green eyes. The heroines in the trashy romances I read never had red hair and brown eyes, as I did. If they had red hair they always had green eyes, which were, of course, usually flashing. (Have you ever seen anyone with flashing green eyes? I haven’t.) Finally, though, in the mid-eighties came contact lenses that could change brown eyes to green. I was so excited to get them, only to be disappointed. They sat slightly askew on my iris, leaving a lopsided brown ring around my pupil. They were not the magical transformation for which I had hoped.

My experience with these contact lenses left me highly sensitized to other brown-eyed folk wearing them, like Naomi Judd, L’i'l Kim, Paris Hilton, and most recently Edward James Olmos in Battlestar Galactica. I found this last so curious that I didn’t hold out much hope of having it confirmed. Oh me of little faith. Olmos is wearing blue lenses so he has similar coloring to Jamie Bamber, the actor who plays his son, Lee. Bamber, in turn, is dyeing his normally blonde hair brown, as well as Americanizing his English accent. Interestingly, this is not the first time Olmos has worn blue lenses. He did so in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, to signify “the fusion of cultures and peoples”.

I am just busting out of a prolonged (nearly four weeks) writing block on my novel, which I have to present to my group next week, so blogging may get short shrift for a while. It is HARD not to spend time blogging, because it goes so much faster than work on the novel.

My 19-month-old son Drake is up to fascinating stuff. Earlier in the week he climbed to the slide in the jungle gym by walking up the steps holding onto the rail, rather than by crawling. At home, he stood up while going down our front steps holding the rail, rather than waiting for my help.

Drake has a little dance of excitement, in which he stays in one place and hops his feet up and down and laughs. It is very like a Snoopy dance.

And during our readings of Edward Gorey’s The Epiplectic Bicycle, my husband G. Grod and I read the story, and Drake is able to say the word bubbles, like “Ho!” and “Whee!” Last week my husband G. Grod and I did a tag team reading of Bread and Jam for Frances, in which G. read the story and I sang the songs (for all of which I’ve made up tunes.) The three of us enjoyed that reading very much.

Before our son Drake was born, one of the things on my husband G. Grod’s and my long to-do list was to get a lawyer and set up wills. We got a recommendation from our financial guy, then met twice with the lawyer, once to discuss what types of wills we wanted to have, and to get paperwork to go over so that when we met the second time we’d finalize the wills.

A lot of the paperwork was about what each of us wanted to be done if we were incapacitated. I was surprised to learn how differently we felt from one another. One of us wanted to be kept alive if at all possible, the other wanted no extraordinary means. We’d talked about these things in generalities before, but filling out the detailed questionnaires made each of our views very clear to one another. When we met with the lawyer the second time, we put those wishes on paper, and got them signed. We also chose who would look after Drake, in person and financially, if something were to happen to us.

We had a zillion things to do in the days before Drake was born, but getting our wills was one of the best expenditures of time and money I can think of. Do you have a will? Does someone know for certain what your wishes are if something unexpected were to happen? It’s a little time, and a little money. But it’s nothing when you compare it to the wretched alternative unfolding in the news.

Over the past several years, I’ve scaled back, and scaled back again the number of comics that I read. Right now I’m reading about ten a month*. This usually means that there are one or two Wednesdays a month that my titles don’t come out. I like the ritual of going to the comic store every week, but it’s hard to justify when I know nothing new has come in.

I’m going to pick up Grant Morrison’s new project Seven Soldiers, though, and that will pretty much ensure at least one book a week for quite some time. Seven Soldiers started off with a #0, and then is followed by seven four-issue mini series, followed by a concluding issue. Morrison is working with a different artist on each of the seven titles. I haven’t liked a lot of what Grant Morrison has been doing in the past several years, but I did enjoy the whacked-out Sea Guy, and in this interview at Suicide Girls, Morrison references both Animal Man and Doom Patrol; I enjoyed the beginning of his run on both of those series.

For each week’s list of new releases, visit the New Comic Release List.

*Here are the ongoing titles I read: 100 Bullets, Daredevil, Ex Machina, Fables, Finder, Girl Genius, Gotham Central, Planetary, The Pulse, Queen & Country, and Y the Last Man. Not all of these titles are published monthly.

I wrote before about whether I wanted to make the shift from individual comic book issues to graphic novel collections. Lisa Schmeiser at the Rage Diaries recently noted her frustration at the ending of the series Rising Stars. Waiting for graphic novel collections is one way to avoid the heartbreak of investing time in a series that ends with a whimper, not a bang. Last week, I participated in an email volley with two friends who have strongly held views at opposite ends of the spectrum.

NPC is a proponent of the graphic novel option, for the following reasons:

the GNs don’t have ads, the physical product is of a noticably higher quality, and (most important) the GNs often contain additional material (for example, character sketches, retrospective introductions, and sample scripts) that is not included in the single issues…those factors would make me prefer GNs even if they cost more than the sum of the single issues. that they actually cost less is a bonus.

NPC does note that sometimes individual issues contain material that doesn’t get collected. He still thinks GN collections are the way to go.

Blogenheimer says that he’ll still buy individual issues for two reasons.

First, I enjoy the process of getting something new and interesting each week. No matter what’s going on in my life, I have something to look forward to on Wednesday. Second, comics are quicker to read than graphic novels. I can find time to read a comic on all but the busiest days. It is harder to find the time to read most graphic novels. While I’m mostly caught up on comics, graphic novels tend to pile up like my unread books.

Because of the ads and the cost I was leaning toward the GN option that NPC champions. But I think Blogenheimer’s two points are quite strong. I enjoy going into the comic shop on Wednesdays, and I’m disappointed on weeks when I don’t have any books to buy. Additionally, even individual issues are piling up, so graphic novels are literally gathering dust before I read them.

While Blogenheimer and NPC make good points for each side, I don’t think it has to be either/or. I think it was Kierkegaard who offered us the option of both/and, and Hegel who championed the synthesis of two seemingly opposing viewpoints. In an ideal world, I’d buy the individual issues as they came out, then the GN collection later to re-read the story line in its entirety. At that point I could re-sell the original issues to defray the cost of the collection, or keep them if they contain uncollected material that I like. Right now, buying both single issues and GNs isn’t fiscally responsible. Since I have to choose, I’m going to stick with individual issues. Yes, they have annoying ads, and I can get burned when a series heads south. But part of the joy I find in comics is both the serial nature of the narratives as well as the serial nature of comic store visits.

I’m reading a manuscript a week for the novel class I’m taking, and I keep seeing two spaces after a period rather than one. This issue cropped up regularly at my last job, which was copyediting.

Two spaces after a period is a practice left over from the days of manual typewriters. Nearly all fonts in word-processing programs are able to ensure that one space after the period is sufficient for visual separation. Those people who continue to use two spaces end up with a document that looks off kilter.

Every time I bring this up, someone argues with me. When in doubt, I always consult The Chicago Manual of Style. Here is the answer from their website to the question of one space or two:

But introducing two spaces after the period causes problems: (1) it is inefficient, requiring an extra keystroke for every sentence; (2) even if a program is set to automatically put an extra space after a period, such automation is never foolproof; (3) there is no proof that an extra space actually improves readability…it’s probably just a matter of familiarity (Who knows? perhaps it’s actually more efficient to read with less regard for sentences as individual units of thought–many centuries ago, for example in ancient Greece, there were no spaces even between words, and no punctuation); (4) two spaces are harder to control for than one in electronic documents (I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences); and (5) two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs.

So, in our efficient, modern world, I think there is no room for two spaces after a period. In the opinion of this particular copyeditor, this is a good thing.

is the only CD from the library I have liked so well that I intend to purchase it. Low, a trio from Duluth, has traditionally had a sleepy sound. Not anymore. Destroyer sounds like the band members have woken up, and boy, are they angry. Mesmerizing.

8. Auto Focus. 2002. Directed by Paul Schrader. A biopic of Bob Crane, star of Hogan’s Heroes. Greg Kinnear plays Crane, who leveraged his likeable, charismatic screen persona to fuel an ever-more-seedy sex addiction, central to which was a need to capture his encounters, first on film and later on the emerging technology of videotape. He was aided in his recording fetish by a friend, played with credible creepiness by Willem Dafoe. The movie deftly shows how Crane became what he did, making stupid choices and alienating everyone in his life. The drawn out descent to his strangulation in a hotel room, though, plays like every addiction story, ever, so the end is not only depressing, but it also feels flat.

I am simultaneously drawn in and repulsed. Do I give in to girlhood nostalgia and pay homage to my sleuthing forebears? Based on this description from Amazon, I think not.

Follow the clues to mystery, adventure and thrills as Season One of the The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries comes to DVD for the first time ever! Teen sensations Shaun Cassidy, Parker Stevenson and Pamela Sue Martin star as brave super-sleuths in 14 spooky episodes loaded with spellbinding action and smash-hit pop songs, including Shaun Cassidy�s #1 hit “Da Doo Ron Ron.” Inspired by the hugely popular books and with an amazing lineup of guest stars, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Mark Harmon, Bob Crane, Rick Nelson and more, it�s no surprise that The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries is an open-and-shut case for fun!

7. Punch-Drunk Love. 2002. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Not romantic. Not comedic. Not as clever as it thinks it is. Not recommended.

6. Sideways. 2004. Directed by Alexander Payne. A funny, touching, skillfully executed mismatched-buddy movie. The acting and characterizations are great, and it’s pretty to look at. Sitting under dimmed chandeliers at the Heights theater, munching alternately on their surprisingly tasty popcorn and Junior Mints, I remembered why I love going to the movies. I still, however, have no idea why it’s called Sideways.

5. Real Women Have Curves. 2002. Directed by Patricia Cardoso. It seems as if my husband G. Grod and I are in the extreme minority of those who didn’t love this film. I appreciated that the main character Ana stood up to her bullying mother and did not apologize for or try to hide her curves. I thought the “strip” scene in the sweat shop was fantastic. Overall, though, there were no surprises in this movie. The writing was sometimes painfully earnest, the boyfriend was utterly non-complex, and there were several moments in which I became aware of Ferrara the actor rather than Ana the character. Its heart is in the right place, but the execution is–no pun intended–too thin.

On a side note, I saw this film about embracing non-conventional beauty standards in the same week that I read Us Weekly’s “20 Best Body Makeovers” issue, which I purchased for the Oscar coverage. In my opinion, nearly all of the twenty women looked better before, i.e., heavier. There was a lot of plastic surgery (I find Jennifer Lopez nearly unrecognizable these days), and a lot of suspiciously unhealthy-looking weight loss.

I had just worked up the resolve to stop watching several television shows when I found out that A & E would be re-running episodes of the spy show MI-5, (titled Spooks in England) of which I’d read several good reviews. It hooked me with the first episode. Well-plotted and well-paced, it didn’t pull punches. It had the kind of complex darkness that I often bemoan the lack of in American television.

My husband and I recorded and watched all of season one. We got midway through season two, but now there are no more episodes airing. We’re left with a conundrum. Should we wait for A & E to run the rest of season two? Splurge on the DVDs with birthday money, even though we’ve seen most of the episodes? Check with local rental places to see if it can be rented? Sign up for Netflix again just to rent those? I already checked the libraries. It’s only at the suburban library, and we’re 19th on the wait list.

The voice of reason in my head says we should wait, and not do anything rash to acquire season two unless we’ve got episode one of season three queued up and ready to go. The ender for season one left me wide-eyed and agape with sorrowful disbelief. I hate to imagine if we hadn’t been immediately able to watch the next episode. But the other voice–the one that has elected Matthew MacFadyen Boyfriend #3 and that can’t wait to find out what happens–is getting harder to ignore.

FYI, Boyfriend #1, and Boyfriend #2. My husband G. Grod is both tolerant of and amused by my crushes.

Later. Good news: Matthew MacFadyen is going to be playing Mr. Darcy. Bad news: He sounds like a jerk, and the ubiquitous and rather cloying Keira Knightley will be Elizabeth Bennett.

One of the things I didn’t like about On the Waterfront, which I saw last week for the first time, was director Kazan’s messianic symbolism for main character Terry Malloy, played by Marlon Brando. Later, thinking of the Matrix movies, I wondered aloud if there was a tendency for Christ figures in movies to be not very bright. My husband G. Grod countered quickly that Paul Newman was no dummy in Cool Hand Luke. I’m having trouble coming up with more examples, though, either pro or con. Is there a tendency for lunkheaded Jesus characters, and if so, why?

13: Empire Falls by Richard Russo. Boy, they don’t just hand the Pulitzer out to hacks, do they? This 483-dense-paged book took me a whopping twenty days to read, but was well worth it. Russo’s characterizations are so lifelike they’re almost spooky. He skillfully juggles a huge panoply of characters, all of whom are complex, intriguing and believable. There are many jumps back and forth in time, but his narrative is so firmly anchored that I never felt a jot of confusion, even when reading at my most fatigued and distracted. Utterly satisfying and highly recommended.

The library is like a good friend, with whom I occasionally fall out of touch. As a child, I was a faithful library patron until I ran afoul of some mean librarians in middle and high school. Curiously, the mean high-school librarian had also been the very nice fifth-grade librarian, who always helped me to pick out books. By the time I hit ninth-grade, there was no evidence of her former solicitude. The mean librarians conjuncted badly with a string of ineffective English teachers, and my love of reading got shunted down unfortunate roads. It was years later, in college, that I stumbled back into the public library in search of non-crappy books.

Soon, though, I was seduced by non-crappy books with pretty covers in bookstores. My favorite stores, in D.C. circa 1990, were Ohlsson’s Books on Wisconsin Ave. in Georgetown, and a place near DuPont Circle or Adams Morgan, the name of which I’ve forgotten. (It was an indie that had a coffee shop way before this became the norm. I’ve been trying to recall the name for some time; I think it might be well and truly lost.)

The middle of the decade found me with high debt and lots of unread books. Upon reflection, it is quite likely that my periodic re-engagements with the public library coincide with dips in my personal fortune. Once again, then, I find myself patronizing my local library.

The Minneapolis Public Library has an extensive collection, and a wonderful online catalog. It is easy to search and to reserve items, which can then be sent to the branch nearest to me. I can run in, grab my items from the hold shelf, use the self-serve check out, and I’m done in a trice. I reserve books, CDs and DVDs. The library sends me an email when my items are in, and a reminder before they are due. Renewals can be done online or by phone. Minneapolis also has reciprocity with the more affluent suburban libraries, so even in the rare instance that an item I want isn’t in the city system, I can usually still get it.

I’ve long thought that cookbooks and CDs are items best tried before buying. I now think this holds true for most books. With limited funds and storage space, I only want to house books that I love, and that I am likely to read, or at least refer to, again. The library, for free, allows me to try a book, movie, CD or magazine. If I love it, I can seek it out for purchase. Even if I discover that my reading reach exceeds my grasp, I can return the item with no penalty by its due date, and attend to it at some later date. All of this allows for more room on my shelves, and less in my wallet.