The semester is ending! I see the light! The tunnel does, indeed, end. Once I grade my students’ final projects, I will be free until mid-June when I teach a class that will not strain me at all and five weeks after that, I will be free until the end of August.

I am currently dealing with intense anxiety about my New York trip–all those fancy, beautiful people! It is intimidating and scary and reminds me that I really want to just stay super committed to working out, etc., even when I am traveling so I don’t have to always feel so glah. I made that word up.

There was a bug in my apartment tonight. It has a green underside and an exoskeleton that was probably made out of nanotubes or carbon fibers or something. I am saying this bug was not of this world. This is basically what the bug looked like:

I am afraid of bugs. I was alone. I couldn’t handle hanging out with the bug until I was no longer alone in a few hours. I covered my hair because I have this thing about bugs in my hair (I JUST SHIVERED OMG), and got some important tools–a broom, a shoe, a drink. I slowly stalked the bug along the far wall of my living room. It was high up so I couldn’t reach with my shoe. I used the broom. I hit the bug eventually after some misses that involved me shrieking, wildly swinging the broom with my eyes closed, and throwing my arms over my face as some kind of ineffectual shield. The bug fell to the floor and I heard just how hard the exoskeleton was. It was very hard. I did not want to pick up the bug because, ugh, gross. I decided to leave it for some man to dispose of. I forgot to cover what I thought was a dead bug with something because hey, I thought it was dead.

I went about my business, finished an essay, wasted time. Suddenly, I heard that terrifying buzzing this bug makes and its hard exoskeleton beating against my walls. Panic. I looked up and the bug had been resurrected. It was a JESUS BUG. I did not know this. I was really freaked out. I got Pontius Pilate on that bug, collected my tools once more. My hair was still covered because I was feeling apprehensive about this wildlife situation even when I thought the bug was dead. I can now definitely say Jesus Bug is dead. When I beat it the second time and it fell with a hard thud a second time, I could see it’s tiny legs twitching so I did what any normal person would do. I began shrieking again and beating the shit out of it with my shoe which, thankfully, is not one of my favorite shoes. There were some smears. Then I swept the bug and its entrails outside. I hope the carcass gets eaten by some kind of vulture bug. I hope Peter denies its existence three times.

I know my Jesus Christ Superstar like a motherfucker.

When I dance, I make this stank dance face so it’s probably best that I do my best, most serious and committed dancing when I am completely alone. I am currently obsessed with Drake’s The Motto, Rihanna’s ridiculous cake song (RLY?), that We Are Young song, and pretty much every song on Girls. I know, I know, but that emo electronic shit is my groove a lot of the time. Also, The Lumineers! They are amazing–Big Parade, Ho Hey, Slow it Down. Get on it.

This past weekend I went to Boulder, Colorado, where I read and paneled with Diane Williams and Joyelle McSweeney. It was a wonderful experience and definitely a Life Moment, getting to meet and talk to Diane who was exactly how I imagined. She had such generous, intelligent things to say. She is a great reader. I loved how she read her work to give it the quirky voice a lot of her stories have. Joyelle rapped. She had mad rhymes. You have to see her read if you get the chance. She threw amazing energy all throughout the lecture hall and I really admire how her work is so nakedly political.

My hosts were awesome and they put us up at The Boulderado, this historic hotel with an old-fashioned elevator requiring an elevator operator. I was ALL ABOUT getting in that elevator at every opportunity. The night elevator operator was real salty. He said, “You’re not just riding up and down are you?” I said, “Of coure not,” real offended like. I was angry he had figured out my plan. No ride for me. I also saw a lady puking her guts out in front of the hotel, which has three bars. The cops were right there. The lady kept apologizing. She was clearly not an altitude drinker. That poor sidewalk.

When I arrived at the Denver airport, Hertz upgraded me to the most ridiculous car I have ever been in–a Cadillac Escalade. This is a car with a button and sensor for everything. The seats are heated and I couldn’t figure out how to turn the heat off, so my ass roasted at ninety degrees for the 40 minute drive to Boulder. I am not really into cars but if an Escalade showed up at my apartment, I would keep it and love it. The car had a back up camera! It has these sensors where if a car is in your blindspot, the side mirrors let you know. The future holds such dark magic.

On Saturday I went sightseeing in Colorado Springs with my friend Aubrey. We went to the Air Force Academy and twice unintentionally tried to breach unauthorized areas. The cadets were NOT HAVING IT which was pretty amazing. I do not know about the rest of the country, but the Air Force Academy is SECURE! They kept asking me for my military ID and I kept thinking, “Do I look like a soldier?” We did not see a single ugly cadet so clearly there is an appearance requirement and thank goodness. I bought souvenirs. I blame the altitude. There was a B-52 bomber we stared at and we saw the chapel which is beautiful, majestic even. This one important looking airman, clearly not a cadet, he nodded to us and he was hot so I’m guessing he remembers us as the best part of his day. We also took a little trip over to Focus on that Family. I just had to see where that shitshow is headquartered. I took a picture of the sign. We also went to this mountain and saw this crunchy dude hanging from a rock that was… on the ground. It was weird. I desperately wanted to ask, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, SIR? THAT IS NOT CLIMBING! We also went to Garden of the Gods which is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I never got adjusted to the altitude so I was nauseous the entire time but it was totally worth it. On the flight home, I sat next to a man who was at least 6’6″ so I offered him my number and my uterus.

Basically, a lot happened.

I had such high hopes for The Five-Year Engagement. I love Jason Segal. I love Emily Blunt. I love romantic comedies and dramedies. I am the target audience for this movie. I am starting to think Apatow needs to reengineer his formula and find new collaborators. So many things went wrong with this movie! It boggles the mind. Clearly, exceedingly long movies with no plot are all the rage these days but Apatow needs to be reigned in, immediately. He needs an editor. More than once during the movie, I thought it was so absurdly indulgent. The running time of 125 minutes was unwarranted. I love long movies but there were so many unnecessary lingering, crappy shots of scenery and unfunny bits drawn out to even unfunnier effect. It’s never a good thing when the audience is thinking, PLEASE MAKE THIS END. One guy walked out which I found pretty funny.

There’s this couple, you see, and they love each other, and the man proposes to the woman and she says yes and we learn about their meet cute story and we’re supposed to be charmed but Segal and Blunt have no chemistry. Individually, they are charming but watching them try to make us believe they are a couple is, at the very least, awkward.

There are too many unnecessary scenes designed to provide humor in what is a largely humorless movie. The movie poster, with the wedding flourishes and pink typography would have you believe The Five-Year Engagement is a romantic comedy but it is a drama trying too hard to bring in a few moments of levity. Take the engagement party scene. It is all very forced. They’re at a bed and breakfast with a pig theme. Why? Who knows. Various friends and family give entirely predictable speeches about marriage gone wrong, former lovers of the groom to be, not believing in marriage, etc. Basically Apatow aims for every predictable target in the marriage narrative and hits it poorly.

More often than not, I found this movie profoundly depressing. Why? I should have felt a little hope, I think.

What is particularly frustrating about The Five-Year Engagement is that the movie is tackling some really interesting issues or it could if it got out of its own way.

Emily’s background is never really explained but through a few vague, bullshit clues, we learn she is some kind of graduate student, no wait, post doc, in psychology, looking for a job. She applied to Berkeley (the couple lives in San Francisco) but she doesn’t get in. Instead, she gets a job as a post doc at the University of Michigan and then we see that the people involved in this movie don’t know a damn thing about higher education.

Before that, Emily tells Jason she got the job. He’s a promising chef and he decides to follow Emily and we’re supposed to throw our panties at him because of this choice, right? I mean it is so progressive for a man to follow a woman for her career. I was really interested by this choice but it was depicted in such a heavy-handed manner I just got irritated. When Jason goes to quit his job, his boss tells him she was about to make him head chef. Why? Why is this necessary? Well, we need more angst. We need it to seem like he’s making this huge sacrifice. We’re supposed to be grateful for a man doing something women do all the damn time.

There’s also this sort of incoherent subplot about Emily’s sister who hooks up with Jason’s bestie at their engagement party and she gets knocked up and they end up getting married way before the couple who was supposed to get married first. Jason’s bestie ends up getting the head chef job at the new restaurant. I guess they’re suppose to be some kind of counterpoint but they are introduced into the narrative so inconsistently that they have few opportunities to make the movie better.

In Michigan, Emily attends a class. Why? She already, presumably, has her PhD. She wouldn’t be in class, ever. The lecture hall is, of course, packed with students who are awake, engaged, and happy to be there. BS. The professor is Rhys Ifans, the quirky guy from Notting Hill. He is one of those rockstar professors who only exist in movies. His lecture is a performance. BS. He’s charming and smart and witty and gives this BS explanation of social psychology. BS BS BS.

The students, enraptured, break into applause at the end of his nonsensical lecture. BS.

Emily eye fucks rockstar professor from her seat because every attractive female student lusts for professor even when he is gangly and not traditionally attractive. Foreshadowing! OH HAI! Then we meet the other post docs she’ll be working with and it’s totally Benetton—Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart, and Randall Park. They are trying to find a social psychology study to conduct and Emily comes up with a study that is sort of embarrassing to even mention, so I won’t. My cousin happens to have gotten his PhD in psychology from the very program in the movie so I was painfully aware of how totally absurd it all was but hey, the U of M campus looked fantastic! Emily is totes having the time of her life–dream job, dream colleagues, captivating lab director. What could go wrong?

Meanwhile, Jason cannot find a job because there would be no tension if they were both happy at the same time. After lots of job interviews with crazy people, (SEE? THIS MOVIE IS FUNNY, OKAY?), he gets a job at Zingerman’s, which is a real place and a great restaurant. If you’re ever in Ann Arbor, go to the restaurant and bakery. You’re welcome. Jason befriends a stay at home dad (Dr. Spaceman from 30 Rock) who knits horrible sweaters and makes inane remarks about his masculinity being compromised because hey, when a man stays at home and does something women have been doing forever, that means he’s less of a man.

Time goes on. Jason and Dr. Spaceman become buddies. There’s hunting. There’s lots of fake snow and winter. Emily continues to thrive while Jason wallows in misery. The wedding is on and off and on and off and it’s never really clear why because the movie is just stretching out the inanity as much as it can. Grandparents die like three times to further illustrate just how long his couple has been engaged. Their nonexistent chemistry diminishes.

One night, it’s maybe been three years in Ann Arbor, who knows, Emily goes drinking with her peers and the rockstar professor kisses her and she feels terrible and she drunkenly runs to Jason’s job where he is baking things with his coworkers and she basically says, “Let’s get married ASAP so I can feel better about this inappropriate thing that just happened.” They start planning the wedding again, only on a really accelerated timeline. The night before the rehearsal dinner, give or take, Emily tells Jason her boss kissed her and he says, “Yeah, you asked for it,” and they are awkward around each other. When they have sex, Jason can’t come because you know, when a woman kisses another man, she’s totally damaged goods. As an aside, why does Jason Segal always have to play the funny fat man in his sex scenes? It’s so lame that fat people can’t ever just have the same kind of sex skinny people are having. Also, Jason Segal is hot. He’s tall and funny and decent looking. He’d get it. Why can’t he ever get a sex scene that isn’t played for laughs or repulsion? In the pantheon of Hollywood “fat” men, Jason Segal is a TEN on a scale of 1-5. (He’s a ten on any scale in my book, honestly.)

Gah. SHUT UP, HOLLYWOOD.

The next night, the rehearsal dinner is awkward and lame. Jason goes outside for some fresh air and rockstar professor is there to apologize and Jason gets super masculine and says, “You better run, now,” because he’s a man and his woman is his woman and he needs to piss all over her to make a point. There’s a stupid chase through the mean streets of Ann Arbor that ends with the professor doing some hilarious parkour to get away.

Jason then runs into one of his coworkers, a girl, of course, and they go to the restaurant and she shoves potato salad in his face and what ensues is one of the most bewildering, unappealing scenes to ever grace the silver screen. It ends with Jason stumbling out of the restaurant, after kissing the girl, without his pants. He passes out in the snow, loses his toe to frostbite, and while he’s in the hospital, he and Emily have the most genial break up in the history of break ups.

WAIT.

WHAT????

After sitting through this dry, humorless, interminable movie, they break up? It’s such a cock block.

In the next set of scenes, Jason is dating the much younger restaurant hostess from his restaurant where he worked before moving. Emily is, obvi, dating rockstar professor. This movie doesn’t even TRY! Neither of them are particularly happy. Emily gets a tenure track job at U of M and then has a crise when she realizes that maybe, just maybe, she got the job because she was fucking her boss. She doesn’t, like, give up the job but she totally feels guilty about it for thirty-seven seconds. There’s a phone call where Jason gets angry and they chat and then Jason has brunch with his parents who are like, umm, why are you fucking around? Go marry the girl you love. There’s a funeral in London and Jason flies over the Atlantic and the couple reconnects in literally less than a minute. They are in bed shortly thereafter. She has a couple weeks before her job starts so she joins him in San Francisco where he is now running a taco truck. DO YOU SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE? His job is now mobile. GET IT? They have a perfect time reliving their romance. When he’s taking her to the airport, she proposes to him and he proposes to her and they have a quirky, insta-wedding and everyone lives happily ever after, we assume, in Michigan. I was so mad I wanted to throw something at the screen.

There were great moments in The Five-Year Engagement. For the most part, each role was well acted. The ideas were solid even though the connective tissue between those ideas was weak. What bothered me was the strange, cynical undertone that ran throughout the movie. The cinematography, save for the scenes on the U of M campus were dull and washed out, like the print of the movie has been bleached. Was this a deliberate artistic choice? I don’t know, but it wasn’t a good choice. There were few good choices in this movie and that was a damn shame. The more I think about this movie, the madder I get about how not good it was.

I received a form rejection from Threepenny Review. I must say I kind of love their rejections. No is No is No. They get a lot of submissions so the form cannot be helped. I understand! I surrender to the simplicity of No.

I received the shortest rejection note in the history of rejections from Normal School, well into that fantasy time period where I start to think, “They’re going to take it!” HA! Not so much. “Many thanks for submitting “YOUR LAME STORY WE DO NOT LIKE” to the The Normal School; it doesn’t serve our needs at this time.” Also, that rejection came at three a.m. and I was awake to see it in real time. It was such a cliffhanger. As I clicked on the e-mail, I held my breath and thought, “Will this be a late night miracle?” Umm, girl; get a grip. Hell no.

I may need to revise the ending of this particular story. It’s only been rejected twice (I didn’t even sim sub), but I’ve been thinking about the ending. I have. It’s all good. I actually love The Normal School. They have a gorgeous magazine and a really smart website and I dig their whole aesthetic. Also, the magazine looks great on my shelves. I will try again someday.

I was rejected by Brevity for the special VIDA issue. I made the final cut and so on and they found much to admire in my work. I was not sad about this rejection. I mean, there was a little disappointment but I’ve been in Brevity before and they are a tough nut to crack and the essay found a home promptly thereafter. It’s a great thing Brevity is doing with this issue and I am really excited to read it. I am more excited for the day when such an issue is no longer necessary.

I have a little story, Girl/Box, up at Treehouse. I also made some reading recommendations.

My semester is coming to an end. This was a glorious semester. I had three classes I will never forget. My students, in each class, worked SO HARD for me. Thirteen students in my advanced fiction class wrote a novel and they did it in fourteen weeks. My graduate students wrote three short stories in a class where the course’s theme (love and sex) unsettled them. They braved that business like bad asses. My intro fiction babies wrote two short stories showing how they’re starting to make sense of what it means to tell a story. The classes were all thoughtful and engaging and most importantly, fun. Going to class was, with very few exceptions, a pure joy. I want every semester to be like this semester which really just means, I want to teach creative writing exclusively. Also, we’re not supposed to pick favorites, but my intro fiction babies are number one in my soul. I wanted to squeeze their little faces after class today but that would have been extremely awkward. I refrained.

On Friday, I will be reading/speaking with Joyelle McSweeney and Diane Williams at UC Boulder, 7:30 pm Humanities 150. Join us.  There will be brief readings by each of us, and then a panel Q & A about being “innovative women in publishing.”

Meanwhile, I went to see our boyfriend Zac Efron in The Lucky One.

Picture it—me and about nine old ladies getting moist over a Ken Doll. I wasn’t getting moist, to be clear, the old ladies were. I was really happy for them that they had quality time with our boyfriend.

Okay, fine, there were a few moments when I fanned myself.

I actually don’t harbor an intense lust for Zac Efron. He’s too pretty and his features are a bit more delicate than I care for. Also, he isn’t Peeta. And he can’t act. And he doesn’t seem particularly interesting. Certainly, his abdominals are worth some critical inquiry and I don’t mind his ass or thighs His body would not get kicked out of bed.

Do we need to talk about Nicholas Sparks? I try to defend all manner of literature. We like what we like but Sparks is working with a sad, desperate formula–attractive man, attractive woman, one or both with a (not really) dark past or secret, some kind of external conflict (class differences, ex-partner, Alzheimer’s, sad disease), and a mostly happy ending tarnished by some minor or major setback. He just writes things on slips of paper and puts them into different baskets and shakes them up and then selects one slip from each basket. Redhead nurse, dark-haired mechanic with a scar on his chin that the nurse’s brother gave him in elementary school, they meet when her car breaks down, her brother is super possessive and tries to keep them apart, he dies, and until she’s done mourning, the mechanic acts like the most perfect man in the world to soothe her soul. You’re welcome for that plot.

I don’t write what Nicholas Sparks writes so there’s no point in considering his work comparatively. That said, it is difficult to reconcile his popularity given how terribly written his books are. The man cannot construct a coherent sentence. He has never met a torrid emotion he is unwilling to exploit shamelessly. He is the man behind the curtain, pushing our heart and vagina buttons but he’s doing it tepidly, with sweaty fingers so it’s just gross.

At the beginning of The Lucky One, we’re in a war place but it’s really just some U.S. based set and to distract us from how not-war zone the setting is, there’s a lot of jankity camera work. These scenes are largely incoherent and move at an incredible pace. Zac walks around authoritatively in a soldier uniform along with a bunch of other men in soldier uniforms. There’s an explosion and then the next morning, in the aftermath, hark! What is that gleaming light o’er yonder?!

Zac ambles over to this gleaming light and finds a picture of a beautiful young woman, thin, blonde, of course. On the back, the words Be Safe. There’s another explosion and because Zac was busy perving on this picture, his life is saved and the picture becomes a talisman for the rest of his tour which we don’t really see. Fast forward some months, still in not war but war place, and Zac is in a Humvee with other soldiers and they’re chatting about the picture cum talisman cum good luck charm. There is a bottle of Product Placement Even In War Because Noting Is Sacred Dasani Water. Suddenly, another explosion, only this time, someone shows off with some fancy camera work that shows like every single particle of that water bottle coming apart for about thirty seconds.

Zac makes it to a bus station. He is sad. We know this because his face is still. There is nary a twitch in his eyes or cheeks. Now, Efron cannot act. He doesn’t even try, bless his heart. He just shows up and looks good and works his face OFF with the face acting. This is what he looks like the whole movie:

Also, Zac has about nineteen lines and wears the same outfit most of the time. I love how the director solved the little acting problem by rendering the young man nearly mute. Well done!

Our boyfriend takes a bus to Colorado (look! mountains!) where he stays with his sister and her family. This seems like it might be important but it’s really not. The brother-in-law gets about seven seconds of screen time. Hope it was worth it, buddy. The sister is also a terrible actress. She’s Lifetime Movie Network at two am bad. In a couple of brief, highly unconvincing scenes, we’re supposed to believe Zac is Deeply Affected by the war. He has some inauthentic PTSD moments after a glass breaks or something and after his nephews sneak up on him while he’s sleeping and he almost chokes one of the little brats (who kind of was asking for it) so he does what anyone would do in this situation. Zac consults Dr. Google, and holding up the picture of the beautiful blonde, starts comparing the lighthouse in the picture to all the lighthouses he can find via Google Images. He somehow surmises that the lighthouse he seeks is in Louisiana. Then he takes his dog and sets off on foot. He walks from Colorado to Louisiana. Why? Oh, he likes walking.

Guess what? That little flirtation with PTSD? It never comes up again, not once, for the duration of the movie. See what walking will do?

I am not a dog lover but I couldn’t help but think, “What kind of asshole would force a dog to walk for like 1,500 miles?”

The walking montage was not scintillating but Zac can fill out a pair of expensively distressed jeans. The hills have thighs. Zac walks real slow and every time he sees a lighthouse, he holds up the picture next to it on the horizon and squints until he finds a match. I played this game when I was a kid.

Eventually, he finds his perfect lighthouse match and does what any trustworthy young man would do. He starts walking around town, a strange man and all, showing the young woman’s picture to complete strangers, asking if they know who the woman is until some rocket scientist gives him her exact location.

Ummm…

The blonde, some actress you don’t know, her name is Beth and she runs a dog kennel. When Zac shows up, she is harried, on the phone trying to put out a fire. When she finally gets off the phone, Zac tries to explain why he is at the kennel but wires get crossed so we can be forced to sit through another ninety minutes of pretty nonsense and she assumes he is looking for a job. He mentions he’s a marine and her demeanor changes. He won’t leave, further reinforcing his status as a creeper, albeit a shiny plastic handome one, so Beth goes outside to get her grandmother played by Blythe Danner, to make him shoo.

Thank goodness for talented actresses. Thank goodness it’s hard out here for a pimp, forcing women like Danner take roles in movies like this. She was the sole breath of fresh air. Anytime she shared a screen with another cast member, I was embarrassed for them. They were embarrassed for themselves. You could just see it. Danner is very good at playing the emotionally connected, sassy, wise white grandmother who wears glasses on her nose and uses those glasses to advance the narrative.

As you can see, she acquitted herself to that end with aplomb.

Danner, who goes by the very unique moniker Nana, quickly recognizes she can marry her granddaughter off to this hot young stud and sets things in motion. Nana is NOT playing around. Respect the hustle. She casually informs Beth she has hired Zac instead of sending him away and Beth is all huffy. But why? She is pretty and Zac is pretty and according to movie rules, they must fall in love immediately.

Why is she resisting fate? Why is she not falling at his pretty feet like a good little lady? See what happens when you let women vote?

Zac rents or buys the shittiest house in this small Louisiana town, and turns out, he can fix all the things. He can fix the shittiest house, the dog kennel, the tractor, Beth’s heart and her vagina, and much much more. He is basically magic. He is also quiet and polite and sweats handsomely in his tight t-shirts. Zac quickly makes himself invaluable around the kennel, fixing things and handling the dogs and getting on Beth’s nerves by being so pretty and competent. The nerve of him!

Beth has a son, Ben, who is only mildly annoying in the way of child actors. He is precocious and plays the violin and has curly hair. His father is a sheriff and you know what that means! Movie rule: all sheriffs are assholes, especially if they are in the south. The ex-husband, Keith, is demanding and controlling and we eventually learns he gets it from his daddy who is never satisfied with his own son. Vicious cycles, man. What a drag. On Zac’s first day of work, Keith stops in, wearing his polyester uniform like it’s a superhero costume, the seams bulging a bit between his ass cheeks, and he gives Zac a hard time and Zac takes it stoically, like a man and face acts his displeasure by not doing anything with his face.

Keith isn’t happy there’s another man sniffing around his ex-wife. He agitates the situation every chance he gets only he does it in this really half-assed menacing way that gives the impression his overall outlook is, “Eh, stalking my ex-wife abusively, I can take it or leave it.”

He could take some lessons from this guy, is what I am saying.

Zac becomes more and more valuable around the kennel and he and Beth finally start to grow closer because he strikes up a friendship, of course, with Ben. Now, let’s recap—complete stranger, who has been stalking you from Colorado, wants to be friends with your son?

Zac and Ben play chess together and Ben beats Zac, of course. God does not grant all gifts. Other boring things happen. We learn Beth’s brother, Drake (I think), was killed in the war and Beth doesn’t know if it is friendly fire or not. We should be sad about this but The Lucky One couldn’t find an emotional note in a hospital. Once, early in the movie, we learn Nana had a stroke but this is never revisited or explored in any meaningful way. Keith’s father is running for some kind of elected office so there’s a picnic of some kind. Keith does more half-assed menacing involving relying on his father’s position as a judge to keep Beth in line. There’s a half-assed barely dealt with plot about Beth being some kind of art teacher and the one black lady character  (IN LOUISIANA!!!!) asking if Beth will work full time but Beth is vague and all, “I can’t.” These kinds of lame, unexplored plots actually infuriate me. Why bother? Why? Just go straight to Zac’s Restoration Hardware bed.

During one of the more unbelievable moments, Zac says, “I like to read.”Riiiiight. Of course you do, precious. In his house, there are about five books, so empirically, I’m guessing he just likes to read the same five books over and over.

Zac’s house, by the way, is now completely cleaned up, sparely furnished, but rustic and appealing much in the way of intentionally distressed jeans. Zac has this amazing bed with a gauzy canopy. I would give it up in that bed.

All the while, we’re thinking, “WHEN ARE WE GOING TO SEE THE SEX?” The tired plots of this movie are the worst foreplay ever. Let’s not be coy. We all know why we’re here.

Dat ass!

Mercy!

One day, Beth is washing a pot and Nana is watching Beth and Beth is watching Zac unload a truck. Beth washes and washes and washes that pot. She gets that pot real clean, if you know what I mean.

I wanted to scrub a pot too. I wanted to work the grit right out of a pot.

At this point we know Beth’s sexual organs are functioning so the movie can proceed.

Zac and Beth go on a date and drink some beers and it seems like the most boring date in the world because they are not great conversationalists. Blah blah blah, Beth takes Zac to her father’s boat (her parents died when she was young; that’s why she and her brother were so close; this is never explored further either). The boat doesn’t work but don’t worry. Zac, magic pretty Zac, he is going to fix it. We already know this so let’s not dwell on it further. Keith threatens both Beth and Zac, to keep them apart and Nana stares at Beth over her glasses and says, “Are you going to let your meaty ex-husband cock block you?” Beth, in the throes of lust, drives over to Keith’s to drop Ben off, and tells him, “You are not keeping me from Dat Ass.” Keith sheepishly nods. He knows he can’t get in the way of true sex.

Beth runs to Zac’s house, flush with the thrill of telling her ex-husband she’s about to bone another dude, and Zac is, CONVENIENTLY, in the shower, a rustic outdoor shower. Inconveniently, we barely see any of Dat Ass. Instead, we get these coquettish camera shots that show us a nice tanned shoulder muscle, that pale stretch of skin at the upper curve of his buttocks, and so on. Beth and Zac roll around and imply that some kind of boring sex is happening. Blah blah blah. It is the biggest let down ever but that’s okay because we start to see more Zac flesh and it was well worth the $4.00 I paid for my movie ticket.

A courtship begins between Zac and Beth. He becomes a father figure to Ben teaching him important life lessons through face acting. They go boating because, movie rule, it helps move things along in the falling in love department if a man and a woman get in a rowboat on a placid body of water.

The movie is almost over so we need some conflict. Aha! Keith finds the picture of Beth and takes it to Beth. He’s all, “J’accuse!” and builds up a conspiracy theory and it’s like, “This is what you people are worried about? Of all the creepy things?” There are some judgment issues there. Keith feels smug and righteous and goes about his business. Turns out, Beth’s brother was the one who had that picture of Beth. Zac tries to explain himself but Beth completely overreacts and assumes Zac maybe friendly fire killed her brother and regardless, Zac is alive and her brother is not and she cannot handle it. He does, however, know how her brother died. So many coincidences. It’s a miracle!

Blah blah blah things happen, and then, suddenly a storm, a terrible rainstorm. Zac is getting ready to leave town, he is so so sad but, conveniently, before he leaves, he is stalking Beth. Keith pops in on his family after a bad day with his father and he does his half-assed menacing thing once more.

Again, he needs lessons:

Keith tries to take Ben and Ben isn’t having it so he runs out in the rain to his treehouse which is across a rickety rope bridge and Keith goes after him and the bridge, OF COURSE, breaks and they’re both imperiled and Zac and Beth run to the river and Zac saves the day with an assist from Keith who is rewarded for saving the son he endangered by dying, the poor bastard.

Beth and Zac live happily ever after. We know this because they cruise in her daddy’s boat that Zac fixed before the credits roll.

This is what is so annoying about movies that follow these narrow formulas. There’s no goddamned heart or complexity or truth in any of it.

I wanted to be moved. I was willing to overlook the obvious flaws to be moved. I have a heart and I am not afraid to use it.

The movie didn’t let me go there, though, because it was only concerned with the shallow, obvious, weak choices. There were no difficult choices at all. Ex-husband in the way? Allow him to find redemption by saving his son. Kill him off so he can go to heaven and we can feel a little bad that he’s gone but a lot happy he’s no longer in the way. It’s absurd and condescending and so painfully cynical. Audiences deserve better. The story deserves better.

I love love stories. I love romance even when it is implausible and impossible. I am willing to believe the unbelievable.

I love the idea that a solider can find a picture in a war zone and make it out alive and walk from Colorado to Louisiana without a proper coat to find a girl he doesn’t know. I love the idea that he can fall in love with that girl he miraculously finds. I love the idea that he can be everything she needs and everything her son needs and everything her Nana needs and he can be healed from all the horrors he has seen.

I love the idea of a happy ending, that there is a way through to the other side.

What I don’t love is how little Hollywood respects what we are willing to believe and what we are willing to love.

My chapbook, Smile.Pretty. was rejected by Matter Press. My work was “read with interest.” It’s all good. I’m going to retire that chapbook. Maybe it just cannot find a home beyond my harddrive or maybe, I’m mostly focused on my novels right now and I think that’s where my focus needs to be.

I’ve been writing. I looked at gender and publishing again (like, this hasn’t been fixed yet?) in Beyond the Measure of Men. And then I wrote about the Hunger Games wherein I revealed the intensity of my affection and admiration for the books, and more.

Sometimes, I put writing into the world and feel completely nauseous for hours.  I’m not a memoirist, have no desire to be. Writing from experience doesn’t come easy–not the important stuff anyway, or the dark stuff. It makes me feel naked and I suppose, ultimately, that is the point. And then people show so much support, and engage and even if we disagree, at least we’re talking about important things. Unless, of course, you don’t like Hunger Games, in which case you are maybe wrong. And then I hear from people who say, me too and it’s easier to breathe to know we are not as alone as we sometimes fear and at the same time it’s heartbreaking to know we are not alone.

This week sucked for lots of reasons. Mostly, I have a crazy amount of stuff going on at work and it kind of gave me a panic attack as I thought, “Seriously?” Things are happening in other professional arenas. I’ll regroup this weekend. On the whole, I found it all very confidence destroying. The worst part is that each day, the suckiness increased incrementally until it crescendoed today. By Monday I will be fine and I’ll do what needs doing, and I will do it as best I can, and everything will happen as it needs to happen. That’s vague but when I can, I will tell you all about it and the story should have a happy ending. In the meantime, I need a confidence boost, a personal assistant, and a stiff drink. I need a vacation and uninterrupted time to write and/or watch obscene amounts of television. Mostly, I need the latter.

Amazon is shitty for so many reasons but I’m going to complain about the pettiest one. We pay for Prime shipping, right? We’re paying to receive unnecessary goods within two days. Their latest corruption is that when you check out, the first shipping option is FREE 3-5 day standard shipping, and the second option is Prime shipping so they can try and get out of sending your goods overnight even though you’ve paid for that amenity. It’s the most sneaky, underhanded thing. It’s smart from an evil business perspective but that’s never good for the consumer. Also, did you know you can subscribe to toilet paper on Amazon?

I read Alethea Black’s I Knew You’d Be Lovely this week. It was an uneven collection. There were lovely stories and other stories that did not really move me one way or another. I wanted a bit more tooth from the writing. I really loved the title story, though. It was pleasantly uncomfortable and the ending surprised me. I’m glad I read the collection.

I love celebrity gossip but Entertainment Tonight has gotten on my last nerve in recent years. Sometimes, I watch celebrities, answering the most inane questions from plastic people, having their lives exposed so shamelessly, and wonder how they don’t lose their fucking minds. I would be the worst celebrity. I would spend so much time using the F-Word. This week, I saw a segment on ET where they went through Brangelina’s previous marriages because they’re finally engaged to each other. I found it so unbelievably tacky. Lots of people have multiple marriages. This is not something that requires exegesis, particularly of such a shallow nature. Do we really need a rehash of Angelina’s marriage to crusty old Billy Bob or Jonny Lee Miller? Do we need a rehash of Brennifer/Jennad?

How many years will it take for us, as a culture, to be mortified by the conjoining of celebrity couple names?

I got the most amazing gift in the mail. At first I did not know who sent it to me. Was it a gift from the Gods? A suitor? A friend? I decided not to worry about how this glorious gift came to me. I embraced it, a life-sized cutout of Peeta, with all my heart.

Peeta seamlessly fell into my life.

Peeta looks good in pink and has excellent taste in reading.

Peeta held headless baby when headless baby was fussy.

Peeta made me dinner. He burned the potatoes.

Then he lit candles for quality time.

We definitely had quality time. We had Quality Time.

When he wanted to shower, I said, “Peeta, only if I get to stand under the hot water.” He was fine with that.

The next morning, I had to go to work. Peeta offered to drive.

I said, “No, Peeta. That’s not necessary, not after last night.” I made him wear his seatbelt.

At work, he kept trying to read over my shoulder. I said, Peeta, go stand in the corner!

When we finally got home, he just wanted to stretch out on the couch.

Before bed, he said, let’s go look at the stars and that is exactly what we did. That picture is private.

On Tuesday, I went to Illinois State University to speak with students involved with their Publications Unit.

On the drive there, I saw this big ass tire and I want it SO BAD.

At ISU, my hosts, Tara and Steve, put out a fancy spread including homemade scones by Steve. The lemon water was lemony and delicious. The tiny orange fruit things were adorable. I wanted to hide them in secret places.

I talked to the students and a couple faculty about publishing, production, shipping, lessons learned, mistakes made, etc. I had a lot of fun.

For dinner, my amazing hosts took me to a great Italian restaurant where one of them knew the chef so the chef, who is unbearably hot, brought us special things including a cucumber shot that had flakes of chili  pepper. That shot had a slow, steady burn. Also, it was a special shotglass with a handy thumb indentation. Someday, someone is going to make a movie where a robber has to open a biometric safe with a thumbprint scan acquired from this shotglass.

That night, I read at TheatersCool. I believe a good time was had by all. There was laughter. I read a few things and ended with one of my favorite stories, “In the Manner of Water or Light.”

I went to see Mirror, Mirror with my friend from work. We planned on this months ago so the anticipation was high because it looked like it was going to be campy and Julia Roberts and a fairy tale, and so on. The movie was a shitshow but not even that amusing. Everything was so farcical, which was intentional, but then it went too far and became stupid in the stupidest ways.

The seven dwarves were not charming and cute but gruff and annoying. They were supposed to be gruff or cynical and charming but it was all so forced and they were not good actors, so it grated and grated and grated. I kept wanting the movie to just be over which is never a good sign.

Julia Roberts is a good actress. She knows her range and stays within it. In Mirror, Mirror, she was supposed to be this evil witch and she gave us an approximation of evil but there was no heart to it. I never felt like she really hated Snow White or that she really needed to feel like the “fairest one of all.” She just dashed off one sassy line after another, while arching her eyebrow or otherwise using her face to convey her dastardly demeanor. It was, like everything in this movie, simply too forced. Yes, Julia, we get it—you’re the wicked witch.

The movie was just a lazy mess from the beginning until the end. We all know it was a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves but they didn’t keep some of the most iconic moments from the fairy tale. That connection to the source material is important, even in a retelling.

The guy who played the WInkelvii in The Social Network is the charming prince and he looks good doing it. He basically looks exactly how you think a Prince Charming or, in this movie, Prince Alcott, would look. I guess his voice really is as deep as it was in The Social Network. His dialogue always sounds square, like the shape, like his throat muscles are working overtime to shove those words out of his mouth. He was fine, he was fine. Mirror, Mirror was just terrible, though, so he was like those commercials where they blindfold people and put them in the most disgusting room imaginable and then spray some Febreeze.

There’s a random storyline involving Mare Winningham. She looks the same as ever. I am guessing she has stopped aging.

At one point, Snow White wears these long culottes and sword fights in them, so, there’s that. The movie tries to do this feminist narrative where Snow White “saves the day.” When it comes time to fight the bad guy, so to speak, she locks Prince Alcott and the dwarves in the dwarf dwelling but OF COURSE the prince gets out to help Snow White which kind of makes the whole attempt insulting, like here–we’re going to challenge the traditional hero narrative, but only for about two minutes. Enjoy!

Sometimes, movies just make me angry.

And then, there are movies like Lockout which are so terrible, they make me giddy. This movie, y’all. THIS MOVIE! Hollywood is so utterly lacking in shame. You have to admire it.

First of all, you guys know how much I love when an actor plays the exact same character, albeit with a different name, across multiple movies. In Lockout, that guy is Lennie James, who always plays the quiet, wise, black detective, eating some nuts and looking surly. He plays the very same character in Colombiana, Next Three Days, and Lockout–same delivery, mannerisms, quirks, etc. It’s so awesome. I love being able to recognize Surly Black Detective.

I knew Lockout was going to be shittastic because of the premise. Prison! In space! Future-ish!

There’s this prison, a SuperMax, and that’s where they send the worst people from earth. You know how sometimes, you think of someone you hate and are all, “He is the worst person on earth?” That person and all the folks like him are on this floating space prison. The prisoners are put into stasis for the duration of their sentence and then they are released. The president’s daughter, played by Maggie Grace who is so deliberately unremarkable throughout the movie it’s like she’s not even there, goes to the prison to check on things in ways that aren’t clearly articulated but who cares, right? Blonde chick in a prison. Do you really need explanations? No.

The warden is humblebragging about the facility which is clearly designed to let you know that shit is about to get real. They wake up a prisoner from stasis, an Irish guy who is incomprehensible and crazy. They should have used subtitles. It was all so affected and uninteresting. He had scars and tattoos because that’s the best way to quickly convey how bad a man is.

Yum. (INORITE?)

Forget subtlety or nuance. Anyway. The president’s daughter wants to chat with this psychopath to see if he feels any pain, etc., during the stasis. Now, before she went to talk to the prisoner, her secret service detail had to remove their weapons but of course one of the guys (he’s black so obvi, he’s going to die soon), keeps his ankle gun holstered. Look, whenever a bodyguard or law enforcement officer takes a secret gun into the prison something bad is going to happen. You know how I know? Conair.

You take these guys:

And add a DEA agent who keeps his ankle gun holstered when he shouldn’t and you end up with this:

and this:

Back in space prison, the crazy prisoner grabs the gun, shoots at things and people, and most of the prison guards are quickly dispatched with because they are the worst prison guards ever. They’re like the guards from Prison Break–they couldn’t plug a hole with a towel. Crazy Prisoner forces the prison employees to wake up all the prisoners from stasis and ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE but it’s really uninspired so you generally see extras half-assing chaos. It’s almost adorable. Like, there, there, bad guy. You did a good job of punching that guy in the face. Yes, you did. Yes, you did.

Meanwhile, back on future earth, Guy Pearce (?!) is an irreverent bad boy maybe CIA agent or mercenary. Who or what he is is never really explained. It’s kind of amazing. There’s some kind of chase scene and he throws a briefcase into a train and some guy catches it and then Guy is being interrogated by Surly Black Detective and Peter Stormare who is another one of those guys who essentially plays the same character in movie after movie after movie. Peter Stormare is BAD COP and Surly Black Detective is GOOD COP who eats some kind of nut the entire time. It’s gross. Stormare is questioning Pearce about a murder he has purportedly committed and Pearce is being sassy and he keeps making the face from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

He looks just like that for most of the movie. His face acting is exceptional.

From all his sassiness we’re supposed to get that he’s a rebel and a bad boy who doesn’t give one single fuck about authority or decorum. His arms do look fantastic though. His arms have aged so damn well because they were fantastic in Priscilla, too. I will give credit, where credit is due. A+++ on the biceps which are nicely showcased in a very tight t-shirt for a good part of the movie.

He would get it.

Also, people are still smoking in 2050 or whatever and they try to explain it away by Pearce saying he likes to kick it old school. The laziness of this movie is impressive.

Guess what? It only takes six hours to get to the prison part of space! Remember this detail. It’s going to be really funny later.

It’s also really dark, like literally, you can’t see anything dark. Is this a budget constraint? The sets are also underwhelming. We could probably recreate the prison with some tinfoil and small off brand computer screens.

Back in the prison, a handsome Irish man, solid, wide face, well built, has declared himself Lord of the Flies. He gathers a select group of the prisoners under his control and tells them they need the hostages so their demands will be met.  The mayhem subsides. What demands? Don’t worry about it. He saves Maggie from being violated because an action movie isn’t a movie unless a woman is imperiled. There’s a bit of a twist, though; the bad guys still don’t know Maggie’s the president’s daughter. Then we find out that Lord of the Flies is actually the brother of Crazy Incomprehensible Guy. It’s such a small world, isn’t it?

Crazy Incomprehensible Guy spends the movie twitching and rambling and being a gross pervert and Lord of the Flies spends the movie being in charge of nothing but trying to come off as the “smart” one while also trying to control his brother. Narrative tension, you know.

Somehow, when Guy jumps from a spaceship to the space prison, he is spotted, of course, and whatever, more lame things happen that don’t matter.

Now, from what I understand, astronauts spend years training to go into space. Astronauting seems to require a somewhat specialized skill set unless, of course, you’re a deep sea driller, in which case you just need some medical tests and a couple practice drills.

As such, it’s weird that Pearce is somehow able to handle space adventuring.

Is there anything we can’t learn from the movies? I don’t think so.

Of course the hostage takers figure out that Maggie is the president’s daughter. She and her secret service agent get trapped in a room with dwindling oxygen. He kills himself (?!) to give her about two more minutes to live and then Guy saves the day, throws her over his shoulder, and takes her to a room that has everything he needs to get matters sorted out. It’s the McGyver Room–C113, Corridor Z.

Guy and Maggie have to engage in The Banter where they misunderstand each other and exchange “witty” barbs. This is straight up action movie formula whenever unattached men and women are involved in scenes together. Movie rule. From hate, love must grow. It’s like gardening for the worst plants ever. He chops off her hair, giving her a very bad look, dyes her hair by rubbing some black shit in it. and then he punches her in the face so she can look more butch. He also fixes her leg which was injured during one of those “things happen” blurs by giving her a shot and whatever. It’s just silly. They could not have less chemistry.

Other people die.

He escorts her to the escape pod and gets her situated and is off to gen pop to find his friend, the one he slid the briefcase to on the train. Conveniently enough, in the bizarre, nonsensical timeline of the movie, that friend has been incarcerated! Space time is different. At the space prison! Which is a SuperMax prison! Even though the friend is only, like a petty thief. And also, the friend is American and only international, non-American prisoners are supposedly incarcerated there. Who do you think you are expecting these details to make sense?

The bad guys have threatened to kill all the hostages if Maggie doesn’t turn herself in so she doesn’t want to get in the escape pod. Guy insists and he thinks she leaves but a few minutes later, they find each other and brave their way into gen pop where chaos reigns, only, in that sad half-assed way I alluded to earlier. The extras in this scene do not even try. The extras in this scene just wanted to say this one time, they were in a terrible movie. They clearly drew inspiration from every B prison movie ever made and then put in a fraction of the effort such a movie might require.

Guy finds his friend wandering around only the friend is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs because that’s one of the side effects of the prisoner stasis. Guy needs the friend to make sense to tell him where the briefcase is so he can exonerate himself or something. This is not really explained. Sadly, the friend dies but before he dies, in a lame way, he babbles some nonsense at Maggie who looks like she is speaking that same language because she face acts revelation.

More things happen and there’s a showdown and all the bad guys die without ever having stated a single demand to the president. This is what the kids call, “doing it wrong.” That could be this whole movie’s motto. The space prison, is, of course, on a collision course for a large body of water so the president has to make the decision to blow it out of space. While some of the crazy is happening, Peter Stormare, via the 23rd Amendment, wrests decision making power from the president only wait, WHAT? He’s just like a federal agent of some kind. He’s not an elected official of any kind. THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS. You want to know how I know?

Air Force One, motherfuckers. Remember, when that one guy keeps trying to pressure Glenn Close into signing the transfer of authority because the president is under duress and Gary Oldman makes that sleazy comment about how she must be sweating in her silk blouse. Classic American Cinema.

So, Guy and Maggie need to get off the space prison before it’s blown out of the sky. Why can’t the US just let space prison fall into the ocean? No one knows. Guy and Maggie find these space suits that are the same spacesuit Buzz Lightyear wears.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

They put the suits on and jump out of the space prison (just nod your head) and start flying through space. Now, this is where I wanted to just throw myself into the screen I was so happy. After about, oh, twenty seconds of hurtling through space, six hours from Earth, Maggie, who is unconscious because of some mishap, can’t pull her parachute. There’s no acknowledgment of reentering the atmosphere and how their suits would be on fire or anything. So, still in kind of space, but maybe just high sky, Guy releases himself from his suit, and maneuvers himself, without oxygen, toward Maggie, holds onto her, pulls her parachute and like a few seconds later, they land on a busy highway.

I swear to God this happens in a movie.

The way the movie just spits on science is so vulgar. The movie is all FUCK YOU SCIENCE! Science is thinking, “I’ll have the last laugh. Evolution, bitches.”

Guy is somehow returned to the authorities but Maggie understood his friend’s jibber jabber so she gets the briefcase and her dad pulls some strings and she gets the information to save Guy or something. TWIST! Surly Black Detective, who has pretended to be Guy’s friend the whole time, is actually the villain. Now, we never find out what’s going on in the briefcase, why Guy was involved in a chase at the beginning of the movie, or why the twist is so stupid. Guy walks out of custody smoking and Maggie is there waiting for him because they’ve known each other for at least a few hours so they have to be in love. Movie rule. Deal with it. Before they can live happily ever after (or at least walk into the distance), she punches him in the face to get him back for punching her in the face.

I love a good love story.

I wrote an essay about Trayvon Martin called, “A Place Where We Are Everything.”

I am racking up the rejections like it’s my job, which it kind of is so I suppose the rejection is good for me or some nonsense like that. Or it’s terrible and terrible and terrible. I received a polite rejection from MacDowell Colony which I think was personal-ish but I can’t be sure. Maybe they are just really polite and wanted to make me feel better about not getting the only residency I applied for. Maybe I should have mentioned they were my only application so they could give me a special dispensation. I kid. I should have told them my next novel’s existence depends on their beneficence or that my soul would shrivel if I did not have a place to go write this summer. I also received a rejection from The Believer that was so nice I am considering it an acceptance. I received a personal rejection from Missouri Review encouraging me to send more. I received a personal rejection with a good editorial suggestion from Hayden’s Ferry Review. I received a form rejection from AGNI where my work received careful consideration and last but not least, I received the most form, impersonal rejections possible from The New Yorker and Tin House. Hey, fancy magazines–message received!  I also received a deeply flattering, heartfelt novel rejection, the kind that makes you think, “If you loved it that much…”

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