Let’s Just Say The Man Is Well-Equipped

I received a rejection from Ploughshares after six months only I didn’t quite receive it. I was messing around online and logged in to their submission manager only to find my status had indeed, changed! No essay publication for me. Alas. I was a bit bummed because the submission had been out so long Duotrope lulled me into that delusional place where I thought, “Maybe I have a chance.” I do not have a chance. There is absolutely no chance for me.

Upcoming appearances: February 29th-March 3, AWP (Literary Death Match on Friday at 8pm, Happy Hour Reading, Friday at 5 pm at Beauty Bar, Panel, Thursday at 9 am about flash fiction, Panel Friday at 9 am about Magazines and the Internet, Panel Friday at 10:30 am (yes, it’s okay, I’m a substitution), about African American women writing contemporary literary fiction. Then I will be reading on March 14th, John Carroll University, March 23, Butler University, March 30, Indiana University, and April 30 at CSU Boulder and of course, May 19-23 or so I will be reading at places in NYC.  It’s surprising and humbling and awesome to be invited to all these places to read and talk about my work so, yeah, that’s that.

My story Lucy Lives in a World of Infinite Possibility is up at Two Serious Ladies. It originally appeared in Avery Anthology 7.

I wrote a letter to the young women who feel like letting Chris Brown beat on them would be a fair exchange to be with him. That attitude saddens me but I understand where it comes from.

Sara Habein interviewed me about my blog and movie rules for Persephone Magazine. It was a riot because hey, any chance to talk about movies.

Speaking of, let’s just get right to business.

I saw The Vow, loved The Vow, laughed pretty much all the way through The Vow. The movie, by the way, was completely sold out and the estrogen levels were very, very high. I left the theatre feeling very fertile which is saying something. The movie was also very terrible and stupid but in an utterly hypnotic way. I couldn’t get enough. I practically mainlined that movie and walked out thinking, “I won’t be single forever, I really won’t!”

If you’ve seen the trailer, you have totally seen the movie but if you feel like stretching the trailer out for a couple hours, this is a good way to do it.

I need this kind of mindless joy in my life, I do. I carry around a lot of darkness (for lack of a better word) and bullshit baggage and movies and books and writing, they keep that stuff contained. I understand what these kinds of romantic dramas and their cousins, romantic comedies, are all about. They make love seem easy. When there are obstacles, they are overcome. Everyone is beautiful. Money is not  a problem. This is not real life. I have the critical faculties to distinguish between the fantasy ten feet  high and the world as we know it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the fantasy. I am fairly unapologetic on this point. When I put my critic hat on, I can certainly talk about the damaging messages some of these movies send about gender, love, and sex, but movies are the one thing I love where I don’t really approach them as a critic. Movies are my downtime and happy place.

The Vow is terrible in almost every way–crazy plot (though vaguely based on a real life couple), crazy subplots that are barely developed, crazy contrivances, crazy face acting, and inexplicably, a beautiful, very talented actress like Rachel McAdams, gamely doing an amazing job in her role. I was impressed. She committed and was charming and vulnerable and acting like, yes, this is the role I have always wanted. I respect that kind of commitment. I wonder what kind of motivation she had to give herself to bring it like that.

The movie opens with one of the most annoying, lazy, weak script maneuvers around–the voice over to create atmosphere and context and imbue the movie, in its early going, with pathos. We hear Channing’s muscular voice. Hark! His voice really is muscular, isn’t it? Like, his neck is so thick with musculature that his voice comes out sounding…. muscular and meaty. He did try to bring some nuance and voice acting to the movie, though. As he spoke, there was an implied significance to his words. He rhapsodized about moments and I thought, “All praise, St. Nicholas Sparks,” because his legacy is all over this movie. Oddly, though, he did not write the “screenplay.” That masterpiece required the work of three writers.

Channing and Rachel are walking out of a theatre. They are in Chicago which, by the by, has never looked better. The Chicago cinematography, or at least what I will call White Chicago, was on point. For such a diverse city it was curious that I don’t recall seeing much in the way of people of color. Anyway, they walk out of the theatre. While they were inside it snowed and they make some comment about the beauty of unblemished snow. They are young and fit and beautiful and in love. Oh, how the world is perfect.

They get into a crappy car and drive and at an intersection, empty, they stop, just… stop, and have stupid couple conversation, and Rachel says, “You know, they say it helps to get pregnant if you do it in the car,” or something like that. I was pretty pissed because it was going to be hard to see a lot of naked Channing if he had to do it in the car. (Un)fortunately, as she climbs onto his lap, they are rear-ended by a municipal truck and she flies through the windshield while Channing slumps forward in the way one does when impacted by something moving at a high velocity. Physics is at work. We’re supposed to be deeply affected but we’ve only known this couple for like three minutes. Still. Sad. The voice over returns, of COURSE, and Channing says something like, “you never know which moments are going to happen until they happen.” I am paraphrasing, but whatever he said was that blandly trite. That actually summarizes most of this movie–blandly trite.

Next, they’re in the hospital with a bewildering montage of hospital-y scenes meant to convey confusion and tension as we wait to learn the fates of our beloved heros. Who we have only known, now, for five minutes.

There’s a flashback, and there will be a few throughout the movie, to offer us some backstory of how they met (getting parking permits), how they married (in a museum without a permit, surrounded by their quirkily dressed hipster friends that didn’t match them at all), and how they lived (happily, in love, oh so happily). We see Chicago landmarks like the Bean that they run under after their guerilla wedding (she, in the lovely pink dress).

And then we’re back in the hospital and guess who the doctor is? My girl Wendy Crewson who is amazing, and unapologetic with her Canadian accent, and is also beautiful. Now, Wendy and I go way back. She is one of the staples of Lifetime Movie programming—she plays a lot of wives and real estate agents and such. There’s always some kind of crisis in her Lifetime movies and she generally has a rough go of it.  What makes this casting particularly brilliant though is that Wendy starred in The Stranger I Married about a woman whose husband is involved in a car accident, gets amnesia, and comes back to her as a completely different person who has problems with rage. She basically starred in the same movie seven years ago, only she had Channing’s role then. I clapped gleefully as I realized that I was witnessing the Circle of Movie Life unfolding, right before my eyes.

Rachel is in bed and Channing is staring at her from the foot of the bed beefily. He is distressed. His woman is hurt! He really puts on some spectacular face acting movies to convey his sadness and worry. I was fucking moved as hell. Suddenly Rachel wakes up (of course), and looks around. She is discombobulated but the doctor soothingly assures Rachel it’s all going to be okay. Then Rachel looks at Channing and asks him a question like he too is her doctor. KNIFE THROUGH THE HEART. At this point, I swear to God, I started to hear sniffles in the audience and such a display of emotion made me uncomfortable, so I tried to hold my giggle in. Out of respect.

We quickly realize Rachel has no memory of her marriage. As far as she can tell, she’s still engaged to some other guy, enrolled in law school, and close with her parents.  Channing is distraught. His wife doesn’t know him and the perfect life they live or the perfect love they share. What is he to do? This part of the movie is fairly incoherent and shoddily edited but everything looks good so I guess there’s that.

One day, Channing comes to the hospital, can’t find his wife, and learns she is in the VIP wing. He runs up there and her parents, Sam Neill and Jessica Lange, are hovering over her. We learn he has never met her parents (introduction of yet another conflict), who are rich and controlling because, movie rule, rich people always suck. Mumsy and Daddsy want to take their precious little girl home with them, and it all seems very nefarious like something rotten is lurking. Channing is NOT. HAViNG. IT.  Wendy Crewson totally has his back and encourages Rachel to go home with her husband so that maybe, by immersing herself in her real life, her memory will begin to return. Rachel isn’t really feeling her hot beefcake husband, her wardrobe, or her hair but she reluctantly follows him home, making it crystal clear she basically hates his face.

Their apartment looks like Restoration Hardware vomited all over the place, repeatedly. That is to say, the apartment was perfect and horrible all at the same time–lots of distressed infrastructure and distressed objets artfully displayed throughout the home. The décor is meant to show us that these are people who enjoy artifacts that can be purchased at chain purveyors of artifacts. Feel the real!

Over the next while, the couple awkwardly tries to grapple with their new reality. Rachel acts fairly imperious and bitchy but we’re supposed to understand because of her amnesia, while Channing acts the way we want him to act–like the most patient, understanding, charming, lovelorn, masochistic man alive. Seriously, let’s just start the canonization process for Leo (his name in the movie). We’ll call the movie about his sainthood, The Beatification of Channing’s Body. At times we get brief, unsatisfying gratuitous glimpses of his carved slab of man meat body. There’s a “funny” scene where he walks to the bathroom naked and Rachel is mildly scandalized to see a man, with a penis whilst she is in her underwear. Quelle horreur.

In her right mind, she is a sculptor but in her new mind, she thinks she’s daddy’s little girl and a would be lawyer so one day Channing takes her to her studio which, like the apartment, is amazing and full of art and these gorgeous sculptures and Rachel has a tantrum because Channing turns on some music, loud, that New Rachel doesn’t even like but that Old Rachel loved and she snaps at him and breaks his heart and he says what we’ve all been thinking and which can be summed up as GIRL IT AIN’T ALL ABOUT YOU.

It’s not hard to see that Old Rachel is the worst. She decides to move back home with her parents to help her sister prepare for her pending nuptials. “It’s just temporary,” she assures her mostly estranged husband. She also streaks her hair blonde and I’m sorry, but it was not a good look. Her old wardrobe was not great too, mostly pieces from Talbot’s. Channing is on a mission now. Aren’t all movies about a quest? He is going to make his wife fall in love with him again. He actually says this line. Now, at this point, you must understand that nearly every woman in the theatre (about 92% of the audience), had been openly crying, if not sobbing, for the past fifty or so minutes. At this point, though, their hormones really began to burn, and collectively, vaginas started to explode, their pink bits happily floating toward the screen and the visage of Channing, as Leo, the perfectest hunk of man to ever walk the earth.

One evening he picks her up at her parents and takes her on a date where they visit all the important places from their history. They have some banter as they get in the car about spending the night. It’s charming and romantic and this is when I could visibly see the audience’s hearts throbbing against ribcages, threatening to breach the bone. What I’m saying is that the audience was feeling this movie, HARD, and I WAS RIGHT THERE WITH THEM. We all flushed with desire when at the end of the date, they went to the lake, stripped down, and ran into the lake. When Channing came out, dripping wetly in the moonlight, you could see the enticing silhouette of his manhood in his boxer briefs and pretty much everyone leaned forward and in all seriousness, many women gasped, licked their lips, and otherwise vocalized their desire to be Channing’s special friend. Let’s just say the man is well-equipped.

Channing was blatantly objectified in this movie.

Blatantly.

At the engagement party he charms the sister by covering for her d-bag fiancee. Later, they go to a night club New Rachel would never go to but that Old Rachel loved and she basically ditches him for her high society besties and while sad music plays, Channing stands in the middle of the slick night club, alone. I would have comforted the hell out of him that night.

At the wedding, he basically is abandoned again, and Rachel’s ex-fiancé gets into it with Channing and Channing lays the guy out and I know that every woman in the theatre wanted to jump up and kiss his bruised knuckes, and rightly so. Before that, Old Rachel’s asshole father tried to buy Channing off and basically told him to divorce his wife because they don’t have health insurance even though they have a huge, gorgeous apartment in the city and he owns a recording studio and she has her own separate studio space. In all that spending, health insurance simply wasn’t a priority. Because they are young! And beautiful! And in love!

That night, Channing realizes Old Rachel is sticking around and she doesn’t love him and she kind of sucks. She just likes him and wants to make out with him and that’s not enough for a marriage. It’s a heartbreaking scene and the sobbing at this point was loud and wet and visceral. The audience was just as devastated as Channing. He lets her go and it’s poignant in a highly constructed and artificial way and then we see another shoddily edited montage about the dissolution of their marriage and how each of them are moving on. Channing packs up her studio and leaves her clay pile outside and to show us how much time has passed, various weather events occur in the exact vicinity of this clay pile (see also: the time passing montage from Notting Hill).

One day, Old Rachel who is kind of like a New Rachel now, it’s all very confusing, is in a market when a woman from her past runs up to her. She awkwardly apologizes for nailing Old Rachel’s father. OMG! Scandal! Family secrets! An explanation for the previous rift between New Rachel (who is back to being Old Rachel), and her family. Rachel runs home and confronts her mother who explains, “Your father did a lot of things right and one thing wrong, so I stayed with him.” Then Rachel runs back to Channing, who is walking up to his apartment with a manic pixie dream girl who wisely excuses herself because the former spouses have “things to talk about.” Rachel glares at the girl with an expression that basically says STEP BEFORE I TAKE OFF MY EARRINGS AND GREASE MY CHEEKS WITH VASELINE. She asks if he knew about her father’s affair and why he didn’t tell her and he says all the right things because his perfection cannot be marred in any way. She then runs back to her stupid life, leaves law school, moves into the city (what? Is history repeating itself?).

One night she makes her way to the café where she and Channing had their first date but it’s closed for a snow day and lo and behold, there is Channing, strolling toward the café, reading a newspaper, looking meat gorgeous. She coyly admits she lives in Chicago and Channing coyly admits he’s single and they beam at each other and walk into the distance and their happily ever after (and I think the voice over returns, like a rash) and then because this is a TRU LUV STORY we see the picture of the real couple who, of course, look nothing like Channing and Rachel, but are happy nice looking people who made a rough situation work. She never gets her memory back which is really quite sad, to lose so much of your life.

This movie was one long face act for Channing. I could not get enough of him trying to emote through the excessive use of his facial muscles. Also, his hair cut was one of those amazing, ridiculous $400 haircuts where every single hair was cut in a way to best frame his beautiful meaty features. Also, that neck. I say that neck the way some might say that ass. His neck is an epic thing of man beauty. I have surrendered completely to my love of Channing. I give in. And respect, Hollywood for really trying to make Channing happen this year. He has five movies coming out in 2012 and the press is doing their darndest to overlook his extraordinarily limited acting range to prop his fine ass up.

Real talk, the highlight was Channing, after realizing Old New Whatever Rachel didn’t love him and that their marriage was over, at his recording studio, playing an ACOUSTIC guitar and singing some crappy song to himself in the saddest vignette ever. I shit you not, there was a moment when he allowed a single tear to slide down his face and at this point, women started stripping, flinging their clothes in the air wildly as they rushed to the screen, arms wide open, ready to pull Channing to their bared breasts.

Mostly This Movie is About Dying in Unimaginable Ways In a Cold, Desolate Place Without Hope

There’s a lot for us to talk about, friends.

What is she wearing?
Who arranged the costumes?
WHAT IS SHE WEARING?
That thing on her head? Have we seen it before?

The choreography?
Why hasn’t she aged?
Why is she so amazing?
Do you remember, that one time, when Like a Prayer was only played on MTV after like 10 PM? And now, it’s the last song at the Super Bowl? Circle of life, man. Circle of life.
She bathes in the blood of virgins, yes? Look at her skin. It is so soft. You can tell it is soft because of the HD.

Did you catch the Teleflora Superbowl commercial? Let’s take a look.

So there you have it, ladies. All it takes for us to put out are some shitty corporate flowers in an ugly, filler-filled arrangement one can order from a website. I mean, honestly. The way such commercials make men and women seem like the worst creatures ever is beyond offensive. I cannot believe this commercial aired. I mean, I can, but still, really? REALLY? Valentine’s Day isn’t complicated. It’s on the same day every year. You spend a lot of time with your significant other. If you cannot figure out what might make your partner smile, if you can’t be bothered to remember Valentine’s Day or to plan appropriately, even though the date never changes, you are an asshole. (This of course, only applies to people who care about Valentine’s Day and of course, it’s important to know that every day should be Valentine’s Day, it’s a corporate holiday, blah blah blah.)

Look. I have the mental faculties to recognize Valentine’s Day for what it is but I also enjoy the holiday in moderate doses and I certainly enjoy flowers, nice dinners, candy, and holiday adult time, so, you know, plan ahead. It won’t kill you.

I only watched snippets of the Super Bowl and had to go to the airport after the halftime show, but a good 87% of the commercials were sexist and/or encouraged criminality toward women. That’s a new record, even for the Super Bowl. I spent most of my evening watching the Nora Roberts Romance Bowl on Lifetime. It was amazing. You haven’t lived unless you’ve seen the whole of the Nora Roberts ouevre on Lifetime.

Since we last spoke, I became the Essays Editor over at The Rumpus. I’m excited. I’ll be sharing my own essays and essays from other writers. I am excited for the opportunity.

No rejections to report because editors are ignoring me. My submissions languish, waiting to be loved or loathed. The waiting is killing me a little but you know, it’s fine.

The day the Oscar nominations were announced, I received several concerned tweets and e-mails which was awesome. I am okay. I expected The Help to be nominated for Best Picture and as such, was prepared. Hollywood loves to see black people in maid uniforms. I’m writing a follow up essay that channels most of my rage, but hey, good for Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. They are formidable actresses and the accolades are richly deserved. Hopefully, someday, Hollywood will come up with projects deserving of these women.

Caitlin Flanagan’s Girl Land is the most insane book I’ve ever loved to hate. I could not put that book down. It is epic in all the ways it is wrong. You must check it out from the library, steal it, or borrow it from a friend so we can discuss. Thank you.

I’m going to just leave this picture here for you. I’m so intrigued by this man and how content he seems to be what he is. Respect. (I can’t wait for The Vow which opens this Friday. You know where I will be. C. Tatum is where it is at.)

Man on a Ledge. There’s a man, and he is out on a ledge and he’s going to stay out there until he gets what he wants. He is on a ledge, okay? I very much wanted to love this movie because the guy from Avatar (Sam Worthington) was in it and I find him very attractive in a “where did you come from” way. When the movie opens, Sam is in prison, and he gets some bad news. Time is fairly shifty in this movie and you’re never quite sure what’s going on and how much time has passed because the director didn’t even bother to include helpful screen texts like “One year later.” Anyway, Sam is in prison and Anthony Mackie, the extraordinary over actor, tells Sam his father is sick, doesn’t have long to live. Sam get angry. Sam smash things! I mean, he doesn’t, but I was just thinking about the Incredible Hulk. Sam sad. Fast forward. There’s a funeral. Sam stands by his father’s grave, looking forlorn. It seems a bit sketchy but whatever. His brother and the brother’s girlfriend are also there as is Mackie, who we learn is Sam’s partner. Sam used to be a police officer.

After the service, the brothers are left alone at the grave. They scuffle, words are exchanged. Suddenly, Sam grabs the prison guard’s gun! OMG! He waves it angrily and steals a Jeep, and drives off. There’s a chase! There’s a high adrenaline moment when he gets into a game of chicken with a train. The train wins, but it’s the beginning of the movie so Sam gets away. We see him next in a storage container, assembling items. We realize that the man on the ledge is a man with a plan. Cue score. And scene.

Sam strolls into a hotel, gets a room, orders himself a nice breakfast including french fries and lobster or something. There’s some champagne. He writes a note, then wipes the room down. It was like he was never there! Subtext! Or, just heavy handed foreshadowing. One of the two. He stares out the window, and then he mans up and becomes the man on the ledge, his handsome frame trembling as he makes his way along the ledge, waiting for a busy New Yorker to look up and see him, on the ledge. He’s on the ledge, okay? Do you get this?

An old woman suddenly looks up, and shrieks and then chaos ensues, but it doesn’t seem very chaotic because this is New York and shit happens every damn day in New York. The cops are called and various authoritative looking people assemble and at some point we learn it has only been a short while since Sam escaped from prison, but it’s a bit confusing. Ed Burns is one of the detectives and he looks… the way Ed Burns always looks. He plays the same guy in every movie whether it’s a romantic comedy or a dramedy or some kind of police-related movie. His voice is very sexy in an irritating way though so it’s okay. Sam demands to speak to someone. A call is made to a woman, who is asleep. We can see signs of debauchery. As she rises, groggily, it is obvious she is hungover. It’s Elizabeth Banks, or as we will know her on March 23, Effie from Hunger Games, the one movie to rule them all. She’s supposed to look rode hard and put away wet but she’s a hot actress so she looks like a hot actress the make up people tried to make look rode hard put away wet. That is, she looks very hot. She gets dressed and gets over to the hotel room with her Ray Bans on. She demands coffee and surveils the scene and there’s clearly some unspoken tension between her and the other cops but we’re not sure what.

She sticks her head out the window and she and Sam have a chat. She pulls away and talks to the officers in the room, asking them to leave her alone. This little dance continues. It’s all very droll. Suddenly, someone is talking to Sam in his ear and it’s not the voices. It’s his brother and his gf who are in place. They are the most enjoyable part of the movie and the brother is the kid from Billy Elliott only he’s no longer a kid. They are across the street to break into a building owned by David Englander and the one thing this movie gets right is that they are not professional criminal so they bungle a lot of their escapades in very charming, amusing ways, while still, ultimately succeeding.

Now, Sam was in prison because he’s accused of stealing the Monarch diamond, some mega fancy diamond, from a very rich guy named David Englander, played by Ed Harris who is still very Ed Harris, only older. He was moonlighting as a security guard with some other cops and somehow the blame landed on him. He’s innocent, obvi, or that’s what he wants us to believe. He claims the diamond never left Englander’s possession, that Englander just wanted to get the insurance money because, like many very rich people, he was affected by the economic crisis.

The whole movie is about Sam, on the ledge, trying to prove his innocence while his brother and the brother’s gf, try to steal the diamond for real. There are some twists. Mackie turns out to be corrupt, and then he becomes good again at the very end, and then he dies as some kind of cheap morality tale. There are other corrupt cops including that one guy who has the shiniest lips in Hollywood and is in all the movies and TV shows–Titus Welliver, and like, how awesome is it that his name is Titus Welliver? The dad isn’t really dead. Oops. At one point, Sam flings himself off the building and totally lands on the air mattress the police have kindly set out for him. As. If. And then there’s a terrible, lazy ending back in the father’s bar, Sam and Elizabeth Banks acting like maybe they’re going to fall in love, the brother proposing to his girlfriend, and everyone living happily ever after.

I wanted to love this movie because it had a fairly intriguing, timely premise. The cast is solid. Yet again, though, the script fails. There are so many unnecessary elements to the movie and all the loose ends are neatly tied up at the end of the movie. It’s okay to leave certain plot points resolved in ways that don’t make everyone happy. If you’re going to make an adult thriller, for god’s sake, make an adult thriller. To end the movie with the bad guy getting caught and the good guys drinking happily in a bar basically spits in the face of the genre and also the audience.

I saw another movie and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to love the movie but I absolutely had to see the scene where Liam Neeson taped broken baby bottles of booze to his hands and bumrushed some wolves because I saw that scene in the trailer and it looked awesome.

Here be spoilers. You were warned.

This movie has a theme song:

Oh and by the way, the screening I attended for this movie was sold out. There was not one available seat and that never happens around here. Liam Neeson has mad star power. Ever since Taken, he has been on a roll.

The Grey is a very masculine movie. You can practically smell the man stink wafting from the screen from the outset of the movie. You can hear the grunting. The testosterone is visible. I can see why audiences are loving this movie.

I was pretty bored from the beginning right through the end. I really prefer the infuriating implausibility of a romantic comedy. Will you like this movie? I don’t know. Do you like lots of gruesome death? If so, then yes. Also, the ending. I mean, really?

At the beginning of the movie, we’re in a rowdy bar in desolate, frigid, Northern Alaska. Alaska is so cold! Oil! Cold! Alaska! And over yonder, Sarah Palin’s Russia.

The bar is rough. There are a couple women working, bartending and waitressing and such, but the rest of the patrons are men. They look like men who have been in Alaska for a while (beards, greasy long hair) and they also look like they smell very badly. Liam Neeson strolls in wearing a pristine, heavy white snowsuit I wouldn’t mind owning. It looked plush. He has a rifle slung across his back. He sits at the bar and drinks and sulks, alone because Alaska is a place where a man can be alone with himself. He writes a note to a woman. There’s a voice over during all this—full of supposed-to be poetic nonsense about the kind of men who make their home at the end of the world–very bad men, and that’s when I think, “I’d like to go there.” Alas, poor Liam feels he belongs there so we’re supposed to guess that he’s without hope or a reason to live. Then, he leaves the bar, goes out into the cold, falls to his knees, puts his rifle in his mouth, the end is nigh! Then he changes his mind. Life wins again!

Liam and a bunch of other men get on a plane for a flight to Anchorage. Most of them are actors I don’t recognize so I quickly surmise they will be dying first. This is the Law & Order rule—the recognizable actor did it. I am correct. The actors in this movie die in the order of their relative fame and success, so as you might expect, a whole bunch of them die at the beginning. As they board, you can tell it’s cold as hell, what with it being Alaska. A young guy sits next to Liam and starts jibber jabbering in a really crass way that’s pretty amusing. Liam is not having it though and he quickly tells the kid to talk to the hand. The kid decides to take his jibber jabber a few rows back where his nonsense will be appreciated. The flight takes off and it’s a pretty bumpy ride but then things settle down. A few movie minutes later, most of the guys are asleep but they can see their breath. Something must be wrong! Sure enough, the shit hits the fan and the plane crashes. Darkness. Confusion. Cold, bitter cold. Liam awakes and of course he is the most experienced survivalist ever. He quickly assesses the situation as Defcon FUBAR and scrounges for some outerwear. He runs into the plane to triage. Most of the passengers are dead. Most of the survivors are… not in a good situation. One of them dies pretty quickly and it’s a relief because his guts are basically steaming and hanging out and it’s horrible.

The survivors do the best they can to hole up for the night in the fuselage. In the morning we see that there’s Dermot Mulroney, that one guy with the attractive but weak facial features who is in a lot of movies, a black guy who will of course not know shit about shit about nature for the duration, a Hispanic guy hellbent on thievery, the jibber jabber guy, etc. Basically, everyone has a stereotype to fulfill and they do so with aplomb but it’s not so blatant as to be offensive. It’s typical Hollywood nonsense. Mostly this movie is about dying in unimaginable ways in a very cold, desolate place without hope.

In the daylight, the survivors, who don’t really get along, realize they need to move because there are wolves who want to eat them. They do not want to be eaten. The men gather supplies and set up a watch for that night. They need more rest or something. There is the inevitable “Alive” joke about eating someone’s ass. On one guy’s watch, he goes to take a piss and a wolf eats him. NOM NOM NOM. It’s horrific. In the morning, the guys see this guy’s entrails all over the place. I am of strong constitution but this movie definitely took me to my limit. Also, some people walked out.

This movie’s subtitle is totally Man Vs. Wolf.

(Wolf wins.)

While the others blather on, Liam decides, “Fuck this. I’m not getting eaten by a wolf.” He suggests they make for the treeline with some wilderness explanation for why this is a good idea. At this point, I’d just…I don’t know, self-immolate. This one guy, Diaz, gets all Alpha male, asking, “Who made you the leader?” Liam brushes that dirt off his shoulder, tells whomever wants to follow him that they can. He’s been saving their lives for like two days now and he’s a grown ass man–he’s not going to sit around jockeying for position with a bunch of candy asses. He also knows everything there is to know about wolves and occasionally shares some lobo trivia. Most of the guys are pretty smart. They find supplies and warm clothing and they start making for the treeline with Liam, or you can just call him Daddy. I would. Diaz follows too because he realizes no one gives a shit about his tantrum. As they’re walking through a blizzard, in knee deep snow, the wolves return and they grab the last guy, one of the people we don’t recognize, and eats him. NOM NOM NOM. The survivors start running and finally, they make it to the trees and light a fire. Just like on Survivor, fire represents life.

Liam, who is totally the guy you want to be in a plane crash with if you’re ever stranded in Northern Alaska, totally McGyver’s the situation. He finds some sticks and teaches the guys how to make… stick guns, for serious, and they basically sit around the fire and chat about their lives and children and women, waiting to get eaten. One of the guys, they kind of blur, talks about the last woman he slept with and how it was terrible. Of course she’s fat and ugly so he wants to live to have sex with someone better. (We all know this to be…nonsense. What they say about cushion and pushin’ is true.) Mostly, this movie is not concerned with manners because it’s an all man movie. We’re supposed to be charmed by the irreverence. I would have been charmed if it wasn’t utterly lacking in imagination. The audience laughed uproariously at this scene and I looked around at the people surrounding me and thought, “There is serious a lack of self-awareness going on here.”

Ahem.

So there’s a scuffle between Liam and Diaz. Really it’s a dick measuring contest. WHIP IT OUT, BOYS!

Obvi, Liam wins, handily. Diaz recognizes the true Alpha Male. And then wolf Alpha Male growls and threatens the fire and there’s a wolf battle scene. Maybe someone else gets eaten? I can’t remember. Ultimately, they all get eaten but Liam so it’s only a matter of when.

The black guy gets sick with something and dies. Another guy dies.

They come to some trees and there’s a cliff and they need to get across and Liam McGyver’s the situation again and the four (I think) surviving guys (Liam, Dermot, Diaz, Dallas), do the craziest thing. They fashion some kind of… rope situation out of seatbelts and other scavenged supplies. One of the guys holds on to one end, takes a running jump and leaps across the gap LOLOLOL YESSSSSS HE DOESSSSSSS and sort of makes it and then the other guys come over just like Red Rover. Last is Dermot who is afraid of heights. He has a messed up hand, in addition to his fear of heights, so it’s going to take him a minute to climb across this ravine on this McGyver’ed rope. He gets across but soon he will get eaten.

Then Diaz, who has like a broken knee decides, eh, fuck this and he plops down in front of a beautiful Alaska scene so he can die in peace and he sends Liam and Dallas on their way even though they don’t want to leave him because now they’re totally bros.

Dallas gets eaten or otherwise dies. At this point, I was well into my trauma induced fugue state.

Finally, Liam is alone. He tumbles down some steep hill and when he looks up, he realizes OH SNAP! He is in the middle of the wolf den and, shit is about to get real. He carefully looks in each of the wallets (they’ve been collecting them from the dead since the beginning), and sees that these men have wives and children and people who love them. He then stacks the wallets in a neat pile. He also tucks his letter to his wife, presumed dead of some kind of disease (we see an IV at one point) via light suffused flashbacks where she counsels him, over and over, to not be afraid, in his wallet and sets it on the top.

Yeah, that sentence is a hot mess.

Then Liam looks through his backpack, finds some baby bottles of booze, breaks them so the edges are jagged. He tapes those bottles to his hands like a motherfucking boss and then he looks up at the wolves, surrounding him with their shiny teeth bared and IT IS ON! I’d tell you what happens but the screen goes dark because THAT IS THE END OF THIS TERRIBLE MOVIE. They show you that tantalizing moment in the trailer and then it only happens at the very very end and you realize oh right, everyone dies. Of course. The best part was hearing how pissed people were as we shuffled out of the theater. That thrilled me to no end.

In my heart, Liam is alive. He took is baby booze bottle claw and totally destroyed those hungry wolves. He made a fire and roasted those wolves’ hearts. Fortified with their wolf strength, he gathered up the wallets of his fallen comrades, and stumbled through the woods until he found a logging road and then he headed toward civilization. When he left Alaska, he never looked back. He moved to the hot Nevada desert (unable to stomach living in the totalitarian state of Arizona), where he lived alone in a small but well-appointed adobe home, haunted by the memories of the men who died alongside him, and the woman he once loved until he too, died, and rejoined his beloved wife. Or, he moved to Nevada and for a time he lived alone and then one day, he met a woman, Magdalena, with dark, flashing eyes and slowly but surely she warmed the frozen scar of his heart and they had babies even though Liam is kind of old and lived happily ever after, careful, always to apply sunscreen liberally. I hope that’s what happened. I really do.

Important Questions Raised by the Epic Lifetime Movie, Drew Peterson: Untouchable and Other Notes

1. Why did Rob Lowe take this role? Did the economic downturn affect him very badly? Did he lose a bet? How much did he get paid for this role? Does he love playing sociopaths? Did he miss his television movie roots?

1a. Sam Seaborn? What happened to you?

1b. Rob Lowe really is unnaturally attractive, isn’t he?

1c. I may have already seen this movie three times.

2. What accent was Lowe channeling? It’s a cross between Minnesota and Maine with a soupçon of Chicago for good measure.

3. Rob Lowe’s hair, that horrifying moustache, the gut, the overall Chester/Molester vibe, my goodness–he sure committed to the role, didn’t he? I was uncomfortable and creeped out for the DURATION.

4. The script. Honestly. It’s a pastiche of every true life, husband killed his wife Lifetime movie ever. They literally took about three lines from each film in the oeuvre and mashed them together to create this abomination of a script. It was so exploitative and manipulative and also, according to everyone on all sides of the matter, completely inaccurate.

4a. And yet, the movie was watchable like a motherfucker.

4b. There was a truly repulsive scene where Drew was watching Stacy P. mow the lawn from his police cruiser while talking to his partner about how his young wife was an open flower, luring men in with her scent. It was skeevy and gross in every possible way, particularly because of Drew’s moustache and that cray cray accent. I couldn’t help but consider the sick bastard who came up with that particularly disgusting line. It felt moist and I do not like the word moist.

5.  This movie could have easily been called Men Who Hate Women II, another sequel to Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. At one point Drew shoves Stacy into a television during a party, and her BFF walks in on the scuffle. Drew skulks away and Stacy cheerfully AND sarcastically announces, “Other than my husband just shoving me into the television, I’m fine,” and the BFF just shakes her head sadly. I’m 150% sure my BFF would have punched that mofo in the mouth and taken other forms of immediate action. I did not understand the scene where they casually shrugged off the incident like, eh, domestic violence, it’s what’s for dinner.

6. The supporting cast really committed, too. Seriously, a bunch of professionals showed up to this movie. Tom Cruise’s creepy cousin from Lost is in the movie. Kaley Cuoco, Catherine Dent, why? They are good actresses. Everyone involved soldiered right through the terribleness and acted as if they were working with a credible production.

7. ROB LOWE.

8. Lifetime is completely, utterly without shame. In the dictionary, under the word shameless, you should see this:

9. Even though the screenplay for this movie is clearly plucked right out of a steaming pile of BS, Drew Peterson is obviously a deranged, very bad man. He killed those women and if he were free, he would kill again. How did that guy get four women to marry him? He must be… endowed.

10. Poor Stacy Peterson. I wonder what happened to her. It’s all so very sad, particularly for her family, her children, her friends.

11. Why do we watch these movies? What is so compelling about these glorified reenactments of tragic events that often come at the expense of women? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Other notes:

1. New grocery store opening, big excitement. Seriously, grand opening and whatnot. Pictures? Hell yes I’m going to take pictures. Also, I really need some lettuce and the store has been out for about a week because of the move to the new store.

2. If you are gleeful Paula Deen has diabetes, please reevaluate the condition of your soul, just a little bit. Or a lot.

3. Books you must read as soon as you can: Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine (funny), Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung (stunning), Edinburgh by Alexander Chee (stunning), The Sovereignties of Invention by Matthew Battles (elegant), and Wild by Cheryl Strayed (a monument). Reviews forthcoming for four of these books.

4. I am developing a low-grade obsession with Caitlin Flanagan. She was off my radar and then BLIP, she was all the way on it. She’s like… Evil June Cleaver, with a pearl and cashmere sweater set and a nice laptop. I am truly, anthropologically fascinated by her. I also love how she casually litters her writing with ample evidence of her wealth and privilege. It’s really impressive. If I had an evil Republican, anti-feminist twin, Flanagan would be her spirit animal.

5. The “Republicans” and their two debates a week strategy… If it wasn’t really happening, I would think it was an elaborate ruse on the part of The Daily Show or Colbert Report. My favorite part of the 191st debate tonight was Mitt Romney’s hilarious, hilarious self-deportation idea. Let’s also self-tax and self-heal ourselves.

6. A gorgeous essay on female friendships. This moved me profoundly. I have really great female friends. This has not always been the case but in the past six years or so, I’ve made friends who are unconditional in their love and support, and the affection is mutual. My grad school BFFs and I still keep in touch and email and text and gossip and commiserate and it’s wonderful because we have this shared experience that will ensure we stay friends forever.  I also have a Best Friend who is the best friend I have ever had and ever hoped to have. Every day I think, “Thank god we found each other.” We’re like two sides of the same coin–different but part of the same thing. Every day I literally think, “How do I thank this person for being my truest friend?” I have no earthly idea but some day, I will find the answer.

7. Is there a more terrifying word than retreat particularly within a professional context?

8. What do I read at Literary Death Match? I am having palpitations. I need to get my anxiety under control because I might pass out at the venue.

8a. TIMBERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

9. My fiction babies this semester are outstanding. All three classes are engaging and fun and I’m learning a lot from my students.

10. There’s some unspoken rule about a list requiring ten or more items, but I do also have a tenth thing to tell you. I was thinking about that movie that’s coming out soon, Act of Valor, that is, essentially, a real life commercial for the military. Soldiers are the actors! This is a thing that is actually happening.

It’s a Movie With a Woman So Obviously She Has to Have Sex With Some Man

Guys, I am judging a short short fiction contest for Passages North. The deadline is March 15. Maybe enter?

Speaking of Passages North, they were kind enough to publish a story (novel excerpt, really) of mine, The Nature of Living Things, in Issue 33. I also wrote for The Rumpus about books I am looking forward to in 2012, and other things, but mostly books I am looking forward to in 2012. In, shall we say, unexpected but OMG news, I was invited to respond to Teddy Wayne’s lament for the male novelist over at a little website called Salon. I was grateful for the opportunity. I also did a Book Notes for Ayiti at Largehearted Boy. Lastly, I have a little story in Heavy Feather Review 1.1.

Now, let’s talk about interesting things.

I woke up one morning recently and thought, “I would like to make a tapenade.” My friend T’s husband made one a few months ago, and it was my first experience with such ambrosia and I thought about his tapenade that morning and one thing lead to another. I went to the grocery store, after consulting Dr. Google, to acquire some olives and being that this is, well, where it is, the olives I purchased came in cans and jars. The olive bar at Whole Foods weeped, nay, sobbed, at the quality of olives I purchased. I was undeterred!

I bought this shitty food processor a while back and took months to take it out of the box and then I did and took a while longer to use it because I had no food requiring processing.

It is the cutest fucking appliance.

Also, the word appliance. Let’s enjoy that word a little.

I wisely discarded the user manual when I got rid of the box so I had no idea how to use my cute fucking appliance. Whatevs. I put the black olives, from a can, baby, in the processor. I attached the cover. I started pressing the buttons, of which there are only two, but nothing was happening. I lifted the processor and studied the body for an “On” switch. There was none. I looked at the cover and thought maybe it needed to be aligned a certain way but no matter how I configured the cover, the processor wouldn’t work.

We live in the future so I consulted Dr. Google. The Oster website has the manuals for absolutely every food processor BUT MINE. Awesome. I went to Amazon. People talk all kinds of shit in the Reviews. What a feature, man. I FOUND MY ANSWER! Turns out that I bought a really terrible appliance. There was some serious rage in the reviews so I definitely amused myself for a while reading and enjoying all that consumer anger. It also turns out that I was right. The machine won’t work unless the cover is properly aligned. I returned to my kitchen and basically beat that lid into submission and then it started working. Oh modernity, how wonderful you are. Soon, I had a lot of olive bits.

Then I added some green olives and garlic. I processed the shit out of those.

I added some olive oil, lemon juice, and freshly ground black pepper.

That is a tapenade! It tastes delicious. It really does. I know this story seems like it is going somewhere but it isn’t.

I saw this intriguing little book at the grocery store: This book exists! What is it about? I didn’t want to ruin the deliciousness of guessing so I didn’t read the back cover.

I made a tomato soup  substituting mushrooms for pancetta and vegetable stock for chicken stock.

I’ve not blogged because I’ve been busy with this Lions In Winter reading series we have at my school. I ended up doing way more work for it than I planned but that’s okay because I got to bring two amazing writers to EIU and if you get a chance to invite these writers to your city, you should–Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz and Megan Stielstra. Both ladies were wonderful and stayed with me during their visits. Oh we talked and laughed and shared meals and it was like I wasn’t living in exile.

They also killed their performances, and I mean KILLED, and were generous to visit classes and talk to our students. I love being able to introduce students to working writers so they can learn about how different people work and try to make a living at their art. My guests also brought gifts. Cristin brought a calendar from the Mutter Museum. Medical Oddities! Yes! Megan brought me Fage Cherry yogurt (genuflect), wine, and vegetable stock which has been oddly challenging to find here in the heart of Fried Food Country. She was the magi bearing goodness and light. We had only been Internet friends but now I’m comfortable saying Megan and I are special flesh sangria true lyf friends. We went to this restaurant up in Chambana and the sangria had layers so it was really an interactive drink because the fun part was mixing the layers. What what?

Cristin’s reading electrified me. Megan’s reading moved me deeply. She’s a consummate storyteller. Her reading was just so moving and charming and perfect.

This “No Weapons Allowed” sign has been recently added to the doors at the movie theatre. It’s weird because I live in the deep sticks. The theatre is sometimes called the Corn Palace because it was literally carved out of a cornfield. Was there a killer corn threat I don’t know about?

Anyway.

I saw The Darkest Hour, a movie so random and obscure it did not have one headlining star. The cast was a hodgepodge of people who typically play district attorneys, best friends, and otherwise litter the background of movies. It goes without saying that The Darkest Hour was terrible but it was different from your typical movie terrible in that this movie should have been released straight to cable. That’s right. This movie should have bypassed DVD entirely.

First, let me briefly detail everything this movie lacks–charismatic actors, production values, plot, coherence, logic, or charm. The most lacking part of this movie was the third dimension. For reasons that truly elude me, The Darkest Hour was a 3D movie but never was there any third dimension. The producers were basically non-consensually peeing in your mouth with the 3D bullshit.

The principal actors were Emile Hirsch, who has had an odd little career and has a disproportionately sized head on screen, the annoying guy from Social Network who wanted damages and injunctive relief or whatever but wasn’t one of the Winkelvii, the girl who was Juno’s BFF in Juno and always had something sassy to say, and the blonde computer hacker from the first Transformers movie–the one who is SUPER Australian and “hot” with a pointy face. She is exceptionally unbearable in this movie, like, as if being annoying was her job and she had a good work ethic.

I had a whole spiel about this movie planned but look, it was a waste of time. I don’t even remember half of it. The special effects were very summer camp, second grade. It was, I repeat, a waste of time.

I saw Contraband, which was wonderful. I had totally forgotten that Marky Mark is great with caper movies. I had a blast and was entertained and though there were two separate movies going on–violent heist movie with a psychopathic villain and quirky caper movie featuring a smuggler with a heart of gold, the duality worked for me.

The movie I’m really going to talk about is Haywire, with that MMA fighter lady, Gina Carano. This movie is rather baffling. I laughed from the beginning of the movie straight through to the end because so much of the movie was ludicrous and unintentionally hilarious.

Half the movie is a silent film. The entire movie uses the score of Oceans 11-13. The score is so overbearing throughout the movie it becomes painful to hear the playful “something potentially mysterious is about to happen,” chords.

At the beginning of the movie, we see the Helvetica Light Italic typeface which Soderbergh, who directed the movie, is clearly in love with. Yes, I can eyeball that typeface from a mile away. The place: upstate New York. A woman is in the woods. It is winter. She appears to be act shivering in that you can see her trying to make it look like she’s trembling and that’s really the first shot across the bow of terribleness. It’s the canary in the mine letting you know how deeply this movie is going to suck. The woman trots across a parking lot and sits in a diner and waits, her dark hair hanging in her face. Her hair shifts and we see faint bruises. Aha! Something’s wrong. After a while, Channing Tatum strolls in and in a scene where he comes across as the better actor, you can only imagine how much face acting is taking place. He and Gina engage in some random conversation that’s trying to approximate the witty staccato of Aaron Sorkin dialogue but there’s no context (which is supposed to inspire a sense of intrigue but instead inspires frustration). This attempt is further hampered by the people delivering the dialoge who are incapable of vocal inflection. Tatum is also feigning a hangover. Or he’s really hung over. Who knows?

He orders coffee, black, the waitress delivers it, he throws it in Gina’s face and then it is ON. Ding Ding Ding. The first of several impromptu MMA cage fights breaks out in an unexpected locale. The fight scenes were painful to watch because the choreography was visibly evident. You could literally see the actors still blocking their moves only, the director was actually shooting. I watch MMA with man friends or my brothers from time to time so it was great to recognize submission moves (whose names I know not) and also, an arm bar. The fight ends, which is a mercy for the audience, and Gina grabs Michael Angarano, who plays Michael Angarano–a dweebish nineteen year old whose voice is still, perhaps, changing. She commandeers his car as he protests weakly. As they drive away, she has him “take care” of her arm because in the scrum, she was also shot.

As this dynamic duo drives to parts unknown, Gina begins to tell young Michael about the strange sequence of events that have brought them together without everinflectinghervoicenotevenonce. It was then I realized that the script was going to be even weaker than I feared–it’s such a terrible device, forcing two strangers together, and providing the backstory for the rest of the movie to make sense by having them share a little chat. As Gina tells her story, which begins in Barcelona, we get to see flashback scenes.

Ewan McGregor, or Kenneth, meets with Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderasssssssssssss who is sporting a mighty beard. They have a conversation that, again, without context, makes no sense but is clearly trying to approximate Sorkin.  Only Sorkin can do Sorkin. I do not know why the screenwriter even tried to go there. Hubris!

Cut to Barcelona and Gina is sitting in the same apartment where spies who don’t know each other assemble to do some kind of mission no matter what European city they might be in. You’ve seen this apartment in the Bourne movies, on Alias, Mission Impossible, etc. When you see this movie and see this apartment, you’ll totally recognize it. Gina dons a bandana, why we don’t know, but she makes a big show of putting it on and trust me, it goes nowhere (see: tapenade), and then does spy things like staring at a hard plastic case or something. Channing Tatum enters and they resume their battle to see who can face act more and speak without inflecting their voices. It ends in a tie. What was supposed to happen in this scene is that we were supposed to see the initial sparks of antagonism that would eventually blossom into lust. We’ve all seen enough movies to see where this is going. Because Carano and Tatum have less chemistry than a pair of 80-year old nuns, they just look like two muscular people in a room, bless their hearts.

There’s a mission, where the muscleheads and a couple other guys use a bunch of slick gadgets and retrieve a Chinese hostage from another European city spy apartment. There’s a chase when one of the bad guys sees the team about to escape and then Gina and the bad guy break into another cage fight. Arm bar! Awesome! The only thing missing was that amazing black UFC referee who is my favorite. The best (worst) part of this fight is that they were in a narrow hallway and Gina kept doing parkour before kicking the bad guy as if doing that was going to give her any sort of momentum. Why do fight directors these days insist on incorporating parkour, no matter how inane the parkour looks? Parkour was only interesting, because it was funny, in that one episode of the Office. Foisting parkour on us time and again is still not going to make parkour happen.

Back in the generic European city spy apartment, Gina is sporting her bandeau again and cleaning her gun while enjoying a nice glass of wine–a Spanish red, I’m guessing. Channing tries to engage in sexy banter: “This is how you relax? Wine and gun cleaning?” and Gina, in an admittedly slick move, says, “There’s another glass in the kitchen,” which is basically her way of saying, “I am waiting for you to nail me.” Sure enough, she stands up, he asks about Kenneth who she broke up with 6 months earlier and then she;s roughly unbuckling his belt and they’re kissing and it’s a bit odd to watch because they both are a bit square, as in the shape, and there is negative chemistry between them. The young couple is undeterred—it’s a movie with a woman so obviously she has to have sex with someone. It might as well be with a beefcake like Channing Tatum. Throughout the movie, we will continue to be reminded of Gina as a sexual being as if the fact that she gets nailed on the regular will make her more feminine. They tried real hard to establish that Ginas character wasn’t a big ole lesbian. I wish she had been and I wish she could have had sexy times with hot Spanish ladies. That movie would have been great.

As an aside, Channing’s career is developing in a fascinating way isn’t it–from stripper to teen dance movie and now he’s doing Nicholas Sparks-like romantic dramas and action movies. I would suggest he has range but that would be deeply inaccurate. I am guessing his agent just has a real sense of humor.

We go back to the car, Gina insists Michael repeat all the names she has mentioned back to her, we cut to San Diego, Helvetica Light Italic! Gina is walking around, her hair wrapped in a towel, her robe cinched around her waist as she drinks a glass of wine, this time white, and does some unpacking. There’s the scraping of keys at the door. Oh no! Who could it be?! It’s Kenneth of course, and his keys no longer work because he and Gina are no longer together. But if she’s unpacking and they’ve been broken up for six month, why would he have a key to her new apartment? SAT question. He begs her to take a job in Dublin as arm candy, she grudgingly agrees, he promises her a trip to Majorca after and she’s all, “OH HELL NO.”

In Dublin, Carano meets Michael Fassbender (looking GOOD), and they have some dull conversations and there’s another montage of spy gear, which Soderbergh clearly has a hard on for. She takes a peek in the minibar and there are bags of…human plasma? Some other biological substance? This is never referenced again for the duration. It is as inexplicable as the rest of this terrible, terrible, action cum silent cum overbearingly scored movie. Fassbender says he needs to take a shower which is just a lazy way to write him out of the room so she can snoop through his belongings which she does as soon as he exeunts stage left. With her ancient Blackberry, she does some spy-related computer nonsense including setting up a tracker on his laptop. Remember this.

She gets ready and off they go to the house of some guy for some party and he’s the bad guy they’re watching but nothing is ever articulated in a way that makes sense so they drink and exchange about two lines of conversation about their families and then separate in the most incoherent set of scenes I have seen in a long while, at the end of which Gina stumbles into a barn or garage of some sort and finds the Chinese hostage dead, and holding her brooch. Hark! A clue! Before that, though, Gina is doing some reconaissance and she whips out her phone to track Fassbender’s laptop, which is still in the hotel, so she can spy on him with the bad guy. I will let that sink in for a moment.

Her phone, which is tracking the laptop still in the hotel, shows that Fassbender is in a courtyard and from her perch, she watches him stroll about the grounds with the bad guy. They hire people to handle script continuity. In a movie like Haywire that was, in theory, designed to be an intricate puzzle, all the pieces have to eventually fit. This is a puzzle where the pieces bear no relation to each other but you are forced to keep trying to make them fit.

Fassbender and Gina reconnect, leave the party, and as they’re about to enter the hotel room, she removes her heels (foreshadowing). Once inside the room, he tries to bumrush her and Ding Ding Ding, another cage fight! Arm bar! Jujitsu moves I don’t know! Terrible, terrible choreography! This fight, dear God, will never end! Arm bar again! Pillow on Fassbender’s face to silence the gun shot! Gun shot!

Suddenly, Gina’s on the run. She calls her dad, everyone’s favorite polygamist Bill Henrickson or that guy from Twister, and they have a brief, potentially coded conversation about coming home. She dons a sassy chapeau and an amazing pair of jeans (like, these jeans were the highlight of the film), and begins an interminable evasion maneuver throughout Dublin. There’s no point telling you about it because it is yet another terrible sequence. I could create a more compelling chase by walking to the dumpster outside my apartment.

Suddenly she’s back in the car with Anganaro, and in another piece of terrible writing, she essentially says, “And that brings us to the present.” Well, now that we’re all caught up! Things happen, plot elements are revealed, Gina ends up in New Mexico with her dad, tumbleweed blows, she paints her face and cornrows her hair because that’s how you show you mean business. Kenneth and Channing Tatum and some other goons show up to “question” the dad. There are a couple more cage matches. Tatum is shot  and they have a supposedly touching moment. She flashes back to their kissing after he slumps into a cold, lonely death. Her dad touches her arm. She “acts” startled and turns to face him as if she’s going to attack only she doesn’t do this convincingly. You can literally see each acting decision she makes in the ten or so seconds, and she also does a lot of face acting through the greasepaint.

There’s an ending but I don’t want to spoil it and also it’s just that incoherent that there’s no point in trying to relate it to you. The “twists” are more like a rusted old 1974 Grand Prix lumbering through a tight corner. You can see them coming from a mile away but you’re still not quite sure what you’re looking at. Twists, lies, betrayal, money, spies, what? It’s just, the plot is fucking stupid. The puzzle is broken.

To recap: what little “writing ” there was in this movie was lazy and uninspired. The only people who acted well were the older guys–Douglas and Banderassssssss and they were on screen for about thirty-seven seconds. Michael Anganaro is falling into the Michael Cera trap of playing the same “sensitive” white guy in every movie so he’s no longer interesting to watch. Carano wasn’t offensive. She’s no worse than a lot of the people who call themselves actors these days. However, she also wasn’t memorable. She lacked charisma. Carano is trying to crossover, and this movie, theoretically, should have been the right vehicle. To crossover, though she needs a whole lot of help to get where she wants to go and no one involved in this movie did a damn thing to help the woman out. I truly don’t understand how this movie flailed in such a dull, almost depressing way. This movie’s saving grace is that it has a running time of 92 minutes instead of stretching past two hours the way so many movies do these days. I kept thinking, “I only have to hold on a little longer.”

I am trying to console myself with the knowledge that I also get to see Underworld this weekend. It will be terrible but it will be fun terrible and also I love Kate Beckinsale. I just do and I am not sorry about that.

Oh, It Was Happening

Another rejection from Ninth Letter. I have begun the process of accepting that getting into that magazine probably won’t happen. I read Ninth Letter all the time and send what I think will be a great fit but it never is. I know they are interested in my work but it may well be our styles don’t fit no matter how much I want them to. It’s a bummer.

Ayiti is now available for Kindle. My short story, For the Benefit of Others, is available in Joyland Retro, a print edition of Joyland. I share space with Nathan Sellyn, , Kevin Wilson, Zoe Whittall, Ricco Siasoco, James Greer, Jim Hanas, Andrew Hood, Ben Loory, Erica Lorraine, Scott McClanahan, and Margaret Wappler. Check it out!

So 2011 is over. It was not my happiest year, that’s for sure. Particularly during the second half, I was in a pretty deep funk. I kind of still am. The funk is not even interesting. I did see the publication of my first book, Ayiti. I finished my first novel and my goal for 2012 is to see that novel accepted somewhere for publication. I think I became a better writer. I became a fairly regular contributor at The Rumpus and wrote some essays I am really proud of. I submitted far less work than in previous years but also resolved to aim higher which meant I mostly got rejected. That said, I had some pretty amazing acceptances and I’ve got three dream publications coming in 2012. I’m going to keep aiming high. I’m going to write another novel. I’m going to keep writing short stories and essays.

Most of my resolutions for the coming year are not really resolutions because I’m not good with resolve. Most of them have nothing to do with writing or work and everything to do with getting a life. I’m over being married to my job. I will summarize my plan for 2012 by saying I want to live differently. I want to live better. I won’t bore you with the details. Hopefully something comes out of that. I’ll let you know.

I went to Florida for the holidays. I had not planned on it but two days before Christmas, my brother, who lives a couple hours away, called and said, “We’re all driving together,” and I said, “Okay.” It was great to be in a warm place. I enjoy my family. I felt like the third wheel most of the time. I’m the only one not in a relationship. It’s extremely awkward. It makes me feel like a loveless freak. Also, sometimes they say things that make me think, “Wow, you don’t know me at all!” That’s disconcerting and frankly, frustrating. I am different than I was, say, twenty years ago! This actually drives me absolutely crazy. But, whatever. Other than those annoyances, my people are awesome and crack me up and I am glad I have them. My parents gave me a 60,000 mile service for Christmas which was what I asked for. I’ve totally reached the age where a practical gift is the most wonderful thing ever.

I have some additional pictures and notes from my trip.

During Christmas dinner, we had a 1961 Bordeaux that was, without a doubt, the best wine I have ever tasted. As I drank it, I finally understood all the fuss about wine. It embarrassed every wine I’ve ever had and by embarrassed, I mean flagrantly shamed. This wine was full bodied and textured and all that other bullshit people say about wine. The flavors danced on my tongue. I’d punch someone for another sip of this wine.

I have to tell you a little about New Year’s Eve. Every year, if we’re around, my brothers and I and our significant others go to the club with my parents and assorted relatives. Each year, there’s a theme and generally, the club goes HARD with the theme. They commit, is what I am saying. You may remember that last year’s theme was “Night in Rio,” replete with belly dancers and feather boas (I still have mine!), and so on. This year’s theme was Broadway so I was looking forward to it because I love musicals. Also, my sister in law is an AMAZING singer so I thought we could nerd out about musicals together. As usual, the club went all out. The menus and programs, were Playbills. Like, for real.

The “act” was this guy named Maurice LoMonaco and we realized the night was going to go differently than we expected when he began the evening with a Christian prayer. For context, 30-40%, if not more, of the families in my parents’ neighborhood, are Jewish so, yeah, that’s awkward. Also, it was New Year’s Eve and that is not traditionally a night known for prayer unless you are doing it wrong. Maurice did it wrong. He started babbling about falling on your knees before god before falling on your knees before wealth. People were shifting uncomfortably and looking around and trying to determine whether or not what was happening was really  happening. Oh, it was happening. Make no mistake. So uncomfortable. He totally misread the crowd. During the prayer, which was interminable, some people bowed their heads respectfully because clearly, Maurice was having a moment. Others glared. Others poked at the salad, a weird, depressing combination of twigs and nuts. Look. How is this a salad? Please. I lost 8 pounds just being there with that food.

The lights dimmed and during three equally excruciating, but sometimes amusing acts, Maurice LoMonaco sang his little heart out. To be fair, he can sing very well. He is a professional.

Y’all… he has a YouTube channel. His face acting was deserving of an Oscar. He was not performing in South Florida. In this guy’s mind, he was on Broadway. His name was on the marquee. I admired the commitment. The thing is, the people in my parents’ neighborhood, they LOVE to party and they party hard. The reason my brothers and I go every year is to watch the old white people drop it like it’s hot. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen these people get down. They started getting itchy during the second act and would jump up and dance to any reasonably slow song so they danced to Memory from Cats and other such Broadway fare. Oh, and during the first act? Maurice inexplicably wore a murse (MAN PURSE). That was the “international” set. During one of the songs, this woman started dancing with Maurice and my youngest brother said, “That lady is totally eye fucking Maurice!” I started paying attention, having been previously engaged with a bottomless glass of wine, and he was right! When the song was over, Maurice said, “That lovely lady is my wife! My life is a song dedicated to her.” He sounds like Antonio Banderas so it was amazing and very funny. Also, my middle brother and I said that line about 111 times on the drive home today. We also dissected Maurice’s performance at length.

By the third act, when Corinne and some rando lady had the NERVE to sing Defying Gravity from Wicked, I am pretty sure my sister-in-law, who is a trained vocalist and could easily perform on Broadway, had a mini stroke. I think she said, “GIRL. THEY DID NOT?” And I said, “RIGHT???”

Then Maurice and Corinne got into an epic and tragic, and I do mean EPIC and TRAGIC, or epitragic set from Phantom of the Opera. And not for nothing but the light show during this three act show was amazing. Seriously, those lights were on point. Now, when I was a kid, I wore out my Phantom CDs to the point where my parents had to get me replacements, more than once. I listened to that musical so much my brothers surrendered and learned to love the Phantom too. We know ALL the words to ALL the songs. We could also probably mount a stage production because we’ve seen the show. Middle brother and I discussed this as well on the drive home. It’s… pretty serious. We were pretty thrilled from deep within our agony. We sang along having dropped any pretense of giving even half a fuck. It was… 11:10. There was no deejay in sight. The partygoers were frothing.

At one point, a guy at the next table lost his shit, jumped up, and started running around the room with a napkin covering half his face as if he were the ghost of the Phantom himself. He had clearly decided that if Maurice wasn’t going to entertain us, he would do it himself. Another guy lost it, and absented himself to the lobby where he read a book. Another guy whipped out his laptop. Insurrection was imminent. In the bathroom, there was talk like, “This feels like a funeral.”

I’m pretty sure this is how Maurice felt:

But he persisted. And persisted. And kept singing.

Dinner was served. The vegetarian option was some beet thing in a red pepper. It was tasty but it did not satisfy.

Maurice continued. It was a musical filibuster. At this point, my nephew, bless his adorable heart, fell asleep. He just leaned forward, resting his head on the table. He surrendered. He’s sixteen. Sleep was a mercy the rest of us would not be granted.

And then, something mind blowing happened. Maurice was singing some song, and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was, but it had nothing to do with god. It was like… a pop song and Maurice started praising Jesus. I turned to my sister in law because I was pretty sure we were the only two people at the table who heard it. Her shocked expression mirrored my sentiments. I took a healthy sip of wine. And then Maurice continued praising Jesus for the duration of the song. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. This was not a religious event. It was a party and this guy kept foisting his religiosity on us. I am 200% certain the club received about 200 complaints today. Fortunately, I was very “comfortable.”

There was one bright spot, though. The dessert was… individually carved ice sculptures with homemade vanilla bean ice cream and a white chocolate theatre mask and some fresh fruit. It was also illuminated. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything so ridiculous and awesome.

The worst, saddest, but also hilarious thing is that Maurice didn’t do a countdown. Some time after midnight, he stopped singing for a moment, cooed, Happy New Year!, and began singing again.

And just so you know, the show started at 8.

The drive to Florida takes forever–18-20 hours. On the drive down, we stopped at Subway, and next to it was a place called Videos Pizza Tanning which… is a pretty incredible business name and what a combination of services, right?

On the way back, we stopped to eat at Denny’s. This sign is a damn lie.

Also, while in Florida, I went to the Dali museum. It was amazing, simply amazing. It was also way too crowded. They actually had to stop letting people in. Dali is brilliant and bizarre. Love love love.

Blah blah blah.

I read books and magazines and watched movies during 2011. Here’s an incomplete list because I wasn’t that diligent about keeping track. I didn’t track online reading. I did not track Lifetime movies because honestly, LMN is on about 10 hours a day. If it aired on LMN, I saw it. Yes, baby, you may sleep with danger. I will try to do better with this record keeping in 2012. On the whole, I don’t think I read that much this year, mostly because I was depressed and devoted a lot of time to just… staring at the wall and writing in my head.

On to the books, and some thoughts on them. This is my blog so my review style will be appropriate to the medium. We’re just talking books here. You know where my formal reviews are.

Reading
One Story 144
This was a story by Caitlin Horrocks and it was amazing. These terranauts are living in a biosphere and things go awry. It was a delight.

Blank by David Schneiderman
This book was “experimental,” and interesting but, as I wrote on HTMLGIANT, I struggled a bit.

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
Silver Sparrow is a book that I feel was really under-appreciated in terms of the literary awards this year, or is it eligible for awards next year? I’m not sure, but this book deserved more critical acclaim than it received. I reviewed this for HTMLGIANT.

Tongue Party by Sarah Rose Etter
I loved this book. Etter is definitely a writer to watch out for. She’s just wonderful and she’s a friend but I’d love her writing regardless. The story Tongue Party is so haunting and bizarre but expertly controlled. I cannot understand how she wrote this story but it is brilliant, as is the book.

The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
My favorite book was, undoubtedly, The Chronology of Water. I kind of want to write about why that book means so much to me, without all the fancy review speak, and yet I don’t. Sometimes, I sleep with that book under my pillow. What that book tells me though is that it is okay to take a long time to grieve even when those around you need you to be done grieving. I reviewed this for HTMLGIANT.

The Rest of the Story, by Chris Tarry
This was a hybrid short story collection and jazz album and it was gorgeously produced. Well worth checking out.

These Strangers She’d Invited In by Jac Jemc
Jac Jemc is an elegant writer and I hope she blows up with the publication of her forthcoming novel. This chapbook charmed my pants off.

Sweet Valley Confidential by Francine Pascal
Fuck Elizabeth. Team Jessica. This book was total trash. I loved it. And hated it. And please, for the love of god, let me write the next one.

The Convert by Deborah Baker
I hated this. That’s really all I have to say about it, but it was well written. It’s me, not this book.

There Is No Year by Blake Butler
This book confounded me and at times, it was pure madness but I still think about this book so I admire that. Also, there were many parts that were just astounding and really well written and I wish more people would talk about those parts (do as I say not as I do), rather than the strangeness. There is real substance to this book.

Other People We Married by Emma Straub
I loved this collection. It was just so warm and inviting and impeccably written.

Granta 110
Whatever. This issue, save for a couple highlights (the story about the people on the island was amazing), was underwhelming.

One Story 136
One Story 137
One Story 140
One Story 147

I don’t remember what these were but I’m pretty sure one of them was called The Water “Something” and I hated it. It was about these American women in Africa and it was not good and I was so mad I ripped the issue into little pieces when I was done. I’m sorry. Another one was by Elissa Schappell and it was good.

Wicked Bugs by Amy Stewart
This book is a great gift book. It tells you all kinds of creepy trivia about bugs. I really enjoyed it. There are also creepy illustrations.

Skinny by Diana Spechler
I wrote about this for Bookslut. It’s an interesting book, one I had mixed feelings about, but one I would recommend.

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You These Things by Robin Black
I loved this collection. This was a book where I thought, I want to write this well. I also love how Black wrote about older characters as fully fleshed out people with needs and desires.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Definitely in my top ten. This book, I’m surprised to have not heard more about it. If you’re looking for a really engaging, well written story about a young woman in New York City a century ago, this is the book for you.

Oh by Todd Shimoda
This was a gorgeously produced book and pretty interesting. It was a philosophy book as novel. It was definitely, at times, a tough read, but I am glad I read it.

Stories V! by Scott McClanahan
McClanahan brings it on the regular. His ability to tell a story that seems like a fable is unparalleled among contemporary small press writers.

These Are the Breaks by Idris Goodwin
I met Goodwin at the MIssion Creek festival and he gave me his book and it’s really soulful and rhythmic and yet another Write Bloody title that impressed me.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Wench is a book that has stayed with me even though I found it to be flawed. The premise, telling the story of slave mistresses with their masters at a resort where they could be open with each other, was interesting. I thought the author did a nice job of showing how complex those dynamics were between these women and the men who owned them. I am so over slave narratives and at first I wasn’t sure how I felt but I keep thinking about this book and… I actually read it twice and there’s something here worth reading.

This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks
I reviewed this for The Rumpus and I loved it. It’s brilliant.

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
I got to talk about this book as part of the UP book tour. I was deeply moved by this book and how the main character really took her time to figure things out. Throughout much of the novel, things happen to her and she seems to accept them passively but by the end of the novel, you realize that she’s processing things in her own way. Campbell is so damn consistent and true to her protagonist. This book was breathtaking. I really love it a lot.

The Brutal Language of Love by Alicia Erian
I re-read this because I’m teaching it. It’s amazing.

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
This was my first introduction to Salter. This book is exquisite. The language, the minute observations, the sensuality, the gripping sense of lust, the humanity and weakness. This is a BOOK.

The Mutation of Fortune by Erica Adams
Green Lantern press does some really interesting things and I had fun with this book. I wrote about it, briefly, for HTMLGIANT. Book/object case made clearly with this one. Also, the fortunes, the stories themselves, are really engaging.

An African Affair by Nina Damton
This was… very bad. It’s about a reporter in Africa and there’s a bombing and corruption and a twist and blah blah blah. This book needed an editor. I didn’t review it because my review would have been scathing. Every time I look at this book on my shelf, I get heated.

They Could No Longer Contain Themselves (various)
I wrote about this on HTMLGIANT. It was wonderful.

Hurricane Story by Jennifer Shaw

Ditto

One Story 150
One Story 151
I don’t know.

Fugue 40
This was the Play issue and I was super curious about it because of the whole hubub after some of the pieces were altered by running a Martone piece across multiple pieces by other authors. It was a fine issue though I thought the editorial decision to print the Martone piece as they did was not great.

Damascus by Joshua Mohr
I wrote about this on HTMLGIANT. I loved this book, particularly because it was so character driven. I definitely learned a lot about how to write about many characters, but do so in memorable ways.

Where We Know New Orleans As Home (various)
Wrote about this on HTMLGIANT. Great anthology that speaks to New Orleans after Katrina.

Paris Review 197
They can never go wrong. I accept it now.

Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta
This was a book I had mixed feelings about. The writing was great. There were some really wonderful things Spiotta did in terms of Nik and his relationship with his sister. I participated in a roundtable hosted by Ed Champion where I talked at greater length about this book. I actually read it a second time recently and enjoyed it much more upon rereading.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Taught this so had to reread it. Food blah blah blah.

How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by Christopher Boucher
So weird. So good.

American Short Fiction Winter 2010/11
American Short Fiction Spring 2011
Like Paris Review, just accept the excellence. There’s a story in one of these by Shannon Cain that I want to have sex with.

American Masculine by Shann Ray
I wrote about this for Bookslut. I respect the level of craft but did not love the book.

Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
This was a gorgeous book of poetry. I interviewed Aimee for HTMLGIANT.

One Story 149
One Story 148
Who knows.

Short Dark Oracles by Sara Levine
Loved this. Wrote about it for HTMLGIANT.

Us by Michael Kimball
I am the only person alive who did not like this book but I respect the craft and very much respect the writer.

Some Girls by Jillian Lauren
This was a light read, and it was intriguing to learn about what life is like inside a modern harem.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
Loved this. Wrote about it for Bookslut.

Luminarium by Alex Shakar
I did not like this book. I just…did not get it at all.

One Story 152
Don’t remember this one.

Ploughshares 37.2/3
This was a great issue and in particular, the Laura Vandenberg story was amazing. I taught it in my fiction class last semester and will be doing o this coming semester.

Betty Superman by Tiff Holand
Great production values and great writing but this was not one of my favorites.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
This was brilliant. I wrote about it here. Excited to read more Coetzee in 2012.

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Whatever.

Swamplandia by Karen Russell
I did not care for Swamplandia. At first, I thought I did but then I realized, no, I really really do not like this book. I love books set in Florida but Swamplandia was claustrophobic and not in a good way. I found it repetitive and it got very very boring.

I Am a Very Productive Entrepreneur by Matthias Svalina
Excellent book. Very conceptual with a perfect amount of follow through.

Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial (various)
I saw this art exhibit and bought the huge book and actually read it and learned a lot about Dial’s art, and life, and how he puts his life into his art. It has really informed my writing during the latter part of 2011.

Game of Secrets: Dawn Tripp
I’ve written about this book in multiple places. It is wonderful. Also, Scrabble is involved.

Never Let Me Go: Kazuo Ishiguro
Great book. At times, it bored me and then it got gorgeous again and I forgave the boring moments.

The Taste of Salt Martha Southgate
Oh this book. I wanted to love it. I found it hard to care about the story. Parts of it did not feel believable. I wanted more heart from this book. It pained me not to love this book, I must admit, because I am such a fan of Algonquin books.

Circling the Drain by Amanda Davis
I was also exposed to Amanda Davis this year and only wish I had been exposed earlier. I wrote about this here. I loved this book. I’ve read it many times.

Born to Run by Chris McDougall
After reading this book, I was like, “Fuck you, I’m going running.” It was so readable. Very compelling and informative. If there’s a running trivia category on Jeopardy, I’m going to win it.

Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
Loved this. Wrote about it on HTMLGIANT.

The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure
I wanted to love this book because it was about Little House on the Praire (genuflect). I struggled with it at times. But still, there was charm and that’s great. I thought it was going to be something different.

Starlit by Lisa Rinna
OMG! This was a travesty. So terrible. We’ve already discussed it here but again, total POS. And the honey rape scene… yeah.

American Short Fiction Summer 2011
Fantastic.

Wild Life by Kathy Fish
Really strong collection. Wrote about it briefly for Beyond the Margins.

Heavy Petting by Gregory Sherl
Great book. Reviewed it for Diode.

Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell
Great book. I wrote about it on HTMLGIANT I think.

Pym by Mat Johnson
Loved this! OMG. So smart, so goddamned funny. Also, he’s hot.

Reality Bites Back by Jennifer Pozner
This was informative and depressing and it makes me feel guilty now every time I watch reality television. I wrote about this for Bookslut.

Green Girl by Kate Zambreno
I’ve pimped this book in many places and most extensively at Bookslut. This book is a TEXT. I insist you read it.

The Dying Horse by Jason Jordan
I blurbed this. It’s very funny. It comes out in 2012.

Beechers 1
This was part of LMC at HTMLGIANT. Great magazine. Subscribe.

Brand New Cherry Todd Grimson
Fucking awesome. So smart and very LA.

The Writing of Fiction, Edith Wharton
I wrote about this for HTMLGIANT. This is a bible.

Best American Short Stories 2011
Sigh.

Play As it Lays by Joan Didion
Wrote about this for Bookslut. Definitely in my top 10.

Cream City Review 35.1
A real highlight was the story by Maria Robinson. Overall, a really solid issue.

Unstuck 1
Great debut. Randy Schaub’s story impressed me, and I wrote about the entire issue for Beyond the Margins.

Run River by Joan Didion
Still reading this.

Bossypants
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me, Mindy Kaling
Both of these books were funny but…I thought they’d be funnier. They were kind of one trick ponies but damn, those ponies did that one trick really really well.

If I Falter at the Gallows, Edward Mullany
This was by far one of the strongest books of poetry released in 2011.

Ode to Common Things, Pablo Neruda
Hail Neruda.

American Short Fiction Fall 2011
Loved this issue, and especially Bess Winter’s “Signs.” And oh yeah… they are totes publishing a story of mine next year.

Paris Review 198
Great issue, predictably.

Now Trends by Karl Taro Greenfeld
Still reading this but love it so far.

The Fallback Plan by Leigh Stein
Got an advance copy. This book has grown on me. I’m going to be writing about it for somewhere.

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
We talked about Stieg. Damn translations. Ugh. Still going to read the next two books. I really did enjoy this book despite the flaws.

Get In If You Want to Live , John Jodzio
Having read Jodzio’s first collection, and loved it, I was really looking forward to this. Alas, the stories were so absurd it was really hard to enjoy them. It just felt like the writing was trying too hard. I did not like this book.

Mule & Pear, Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Gorgeous book. Wrote about it in a couple places.

Fog Gorgeous Stag, Sean Lovelace
Great work from Lovelace.

Inappropriate Crush, Hanne Blank
This was a limited edition book and it was very delicious.

Phantom Energy, Robert Swartwood
I read an earlier version of this book when Swartwood submitted it to PANK’s little book series. Though we passed, I never forgot the book. Then it was published in a somewhat different version and I must say, I love this book. Swartwood’s short stories are quirky but they’re really fucking good. This is one of those books not enough people know about. The title story, in particular, is just amazing. Buy this book. For real. I’m going to make it easy for you.

Why We Never Talk About Sugar, Aubrey Hirsch
I blurbed this. It comes out in 2012. It is… just so sexy and smart and elegant. You’ll be hearing from me about this book again.

The Hunger Games (TEAM PEETA 4EVA)
Catching Fire (TEAM PEETA 4EVA)
Mockinjay (TEAM PEETA 4EVA)
My second favorite book(s) this year were the Hunger Games trilogy. I sobbed openly no fewer than five times during each book. That is, I spontaneously burst into tears on multiple occasions like a TOTAL FREAK and I was not embarrassed because I knew I was reading some deep shit. The emotional reactions couldn’t be helped. The books reached my soul. I needed that, to be reminded of how powerful reading can be. I want to write something that captivating.

New York Tyrant 3.3
As ever, this issue is thought provoking, gritty, and a hell of a read.

I’m working on a piece about what I am looking forward to in 2012, among other things. Stay tuned!

The movies, well, you know my thoughts on them. Later this week, I’m going to tell you about a movie so hilariously bad I am going to see it again tomorrow to confirm the badness. Also, we’ll get into Dragon Tattoo.

Here’s the whole list of bullshit I saw this year:

Step Up 3D
Easy A
Tron: Legacy
Black Swan
No Strings Attached
Sanctum
Battle: Los Angeles
The Kids Are Alright
Adjustment Bureau
Hall Pass
Get Him to the Greek
Country Strong
Limitless
The Lincoln Lawyer
Jackass 3D
Going the Distance
Source Code
Love and Other Drugs
The Dilemma
Jumping the Broom
Fast Five
Something Borrowed
Bridesmaids
The Hangover II
Somewhere
Green Hornet
Bad Teacher
Horrible Bosses
Friends With Benefits
Crazy. Stupid. Love.
The Change-Up
The Fucking Help
Super 8
Midnight in Paris
Cedar Rapids
Colombiana
Somewhere
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Drive
Straw Dogs
Shark Night 3D
Hereafter
Contagion
Footloose
The Thing
Real Steel
Drive
Moneyball
Ides of March
In Time
Tower Heist
Captain America
Jack & Jill
Immortals
LOTR 1, 2, and 3
New Year’s Eve
The Debt
Margin Call
Warrior
Ghost Protocol
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Abducted

 

Only a Healthy Crack Addiction Can Explain Why This Movie Exists

I received a rejection from Hayden’s Ferry Review, a form, but please send more rejection for an essay I wrote about my first year as a college professor. Alas. I’m not going to dwell on this because we have a LOT to talk about.

I finished all three books in the Hunger Games trilogy, and then I read them twice more as a whole, and have been reading from the 2nd and 3rd books repeatedly over the past couple days. Best. Books. Ever. Team Peeta 4 LYF! If you don’t like Peeta, I’m sorry for you, I just am, because maybe your soul is damaged.

I loved this series and it’s one of the few cultural products SO many people LOVE where I FINALLY get the “fuss.” These are the literary equivalent of uncut cocaine from the heart of wherever the purest cocaine is made. The high of reading this trilogy is pure, unadulterated. It is so, so good. I basically want to swallow these books so I can keep them inside me forever. After I write this, I’m going to go read them again.

These books have several things going for them. I will try not to spoil anything for the first time in the history of this blog because these books are basically sacred texts. Respect.

First, they tell an interesting story that is compelling and fairly consistent across all three books. And the titles! So good! What an arc.

The society we know collapsed and a new society rose out of the ashes, divided into districts that have different responsibilities (farming, fishing, coal production, weapons, etc). Each year, the capital holds the Hunger Games to remind humanity of their failings and two tributes from each district (twelve in all), one boy and one girl under the age of eighteen, are sent to the games. Only one will survive. It’s a dark but endlessly interesting premise. This book also has interesting characters. The heroine, Katniss, is a sixteen year old and she is written like a sixteen year old. Yes, at times, she is wise and strong beyond her years, but that wisdom and strength is written believably given the circumstances Katniss faces in the books. This book also has really strong secondary characters like Peeta, the boy who loves Katniss to the end of time, and her best friend Gale. There is a love triangle between the three that’s at times a bit silly but largely adorable. The tributes each have mentors who help prepare them for the games, men and women who were once victors. Katniss’s mentor is Haymitch, an alcoholic who is clearly trying to deal with dark demons. There are other awesome secondary characters like Cinna. I love everything about these books. They’re also well written for popular fiction. I really can’t hate on the writing at all though, in the second and third books, some of the melodrama was a bit much. Like, okay, we get it, the girl is going through some things.

And Katniss. She is proud and strong and impetuous and immature and mature and unsure of herself and eminently confident in herself and I love the various contradictions as well as her innate goodness and fierceness. I never wanted to stop reading these books. I am so ready for the movie now. Are the other two books going to be made into movies? Could Hollywood hurry with that, plz?

I really just don’t care for Gale at all. I don’t know why but I basically hate his face.

I made you a venn diagram about Peeta, my main man. When he turns eighteen, it is on.

Yeah. Peeta. That’s what’s up.

I thought the second and third books were as strong as the first. I loved the ending which was complex but satisfying.

I’m fascinated by the naked violence and horror in these books which is fairly mild in the first book, but pretty intense in the second and third books. I’m fascinated because the book is so prude about sex. The Hunger Games trilogy reminds me that our culture is far more comfortable with violence than sex. Children murdering each other for sport? No problem. Teenage sex, NO WAY! Now, I know these are teenagers but they spend an excessive amount of time kissing, cuddling and JUST SLEEPING TOGETHER OKAY NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED!!!, to the point where I invented a drinking game. They were kissing because the writer wouldn’t let them bone. And look, if death is imminent and you’ve got a bunch of teenagers who are hot and physically fit hanging around each other, are you seriously telling me they aren’t having any sex? Please.

This also got me thinking about my novel. There is nothing in my novel that is darker or more violent than what takes place in these books. The violence just happens to be sexual in nature so somehow that is like… a thing. I have more thoughts on this but they’re still percolating.

Have I seen movies?

Yes.

I did see Dragon Tattoo but need to see it again before we talk about it. Hang tight for that. I have mixed feelings about the movie but the opening credits are fucking unreal and on the whole, the movie is quite good minus the irresponsible depictions of sexual violence, the inherent misogyny of the story, etc. The casting is… mostly perfection though I don’t know that Daniel Craig was… ideal. Also, Robin Wright can rock a Swedish accent like nobody’s business. I give Buttercup mad props.

On the drive to my parents, I watched Abduction, a “movie” that could charitably be described as “should have gone straight to video in the Walmart $5 DVD bin.”  The first problem with this movie is that it stars Teen Wolf, Taylor Lautner who, as we have discussed at length, cannot act, and is particularly unattractive. His looks are not his fault. Much of the problem involves the bones of his face and that’s genetic so his parents are to blame. At least in the Twilight movies, he occasionally removes his shirt and runs through the woods warmly bare-chested with his wolf heat and reminds us why we tolerate his presence on the screen. He does not reveal much of his physical charm in Abduction, save for a brief scene at the beginning of the movie that is so fleeting you don’t have enough time to really imagine doing things to his abdominal situation. It’s a crying shame.

When the movie opens, in a scene straight ouf of Death Proof, Teen Wolf is inexplicably sitting on the hood of a truck screeching like he’s having fun, urging his friend, who is driving to go faster, faster, faster. He lives on the edge, you see. He is a risk taker. They pull up to a party, you know, a typical movie teenage party, young pretty people milling about on the lawn, and Teen Wolf is ejected from the hood of the car onto the lawn. He and his two friends seem to be rather unpopular and unable to communicate effectively. They simply take a seat at a table in the middle of the party, and drink beer and talk nonsensically in a scene so pointless it really makes you think that crack must be freely available on the streets of Hollywood. Only a healthy crack addiction can explain why this movie exists.

At the end of the party, and really, we’ve seen this sad high school party a million times, only better, Teen Wolf gets into a scuffle with some guy and it’s certainly over a girl. Who knows what her name is? Who cares? This is a movie where there are like three recognizable people and they spend very little time on screen. The girl drags her boyfriend away and then we cut to the morning when a shirtless Teen Wolf is passed out on the lawn of the girl who threw the party. She tells him to get moving before her parents show up and he starts helping pick up trash until his dad picks him up.

Back at his house, Teen Wolf and his dad start sparring by their pool. There is no subtlety in the foreshadowing. The dad basically says, if you’re man enough to drink, you’re man enough to fight and as they spar, he randomly shouts idiotic motivationally masculine bullshit. The mother, the exquisite Maria Bello, stands by the window, watching her men fight, thinking, “I was in History of Violence, for fuck’s sake.” Then she breaks them up.

Stupid things happen. Teen Wolf goes to therapy and talks about some dream he keeps having and how out of place he feels in his life. Foreshadowing. HIs therapist is… please sit down for this, Sigourney Weaver. She is totally just collecting a paycheck here in that she recites her lines at the appropriate times but does so without even feigning a performance of any kind. It’s all good. Roles are scarce for women over 22.

Teen Wolf and the girl are paired together to work on a project for sociology class (???) so she comes over to his bedroom to “work.” We’re never quite sure what their topic is or the purpose of their paper but they do a lot of research on missing children. It’s at this point that I began laughing from deep in my soul because it was so absurd and I could totally see how the writer(s) of this movie tried to write their way out of the ridiculousness of desperately needing to make a movie, any movie, to capitalize on the fame of Taylor Lautner. While doing their “research” the girl (who is execrable in her role)  finds a website that shows how kids might look x number of years from the day they disappeared. Convenient. She and Teen Wolf start looking through the pictures saying that the updated images look like hybrids of famous people like Lady GaGa and Spiderman. Whatever, I can’t remember the pairings but they were fucking stupid. Suddenly, they look at a picture and it looks exactly like Teen Wolf! OMG!

His Spidey sense is tingling. All of a sudden, he starts having this fucking existential crisis. There’s a chat function on the website and he starts talking to someone pretending to be “Mallory,” but really it’s a bad guy with great computer equipment. Teen Wolf, though rather dim, manages to sense that they’re watching him through the camera on the APPLE COMPUTER OH HAI PRODUKT PLACEMENT so he shuts the computer and goes somewhere to brood. The next day or so, he is unwilling to let this go. He takes his sadly assembled evidence to the girl and explains how he just knows he’s the missing kid. Later, he confronts his mother who tearfully explains that yes, he is her son even if she isn’t his mother. He’s so confused! Poor wolf boy! He calls the girl and smugly informs her that he was right and she’s like, NO WAY, and he’s all WAY and she says, I AM COMING RIGHT OVER. As if she could do anything other than blow him.

Downstairs, there’s a knock on the door. Two authoritative looking fellows are at the door, looking for Teen Wolf. Maria Bello says he’s not around, etc. There’s a bit of gunfightery and fighting. Turns out, she’s kick ass but she dies. The father, who has been working in the garage, hears the scuffling, stumbles upon his dead wife, springs into action and starts getting in on the fight. Taylor comes downstairs and sees all hell, broken completely loose, and his father says, “Dude, get out of here,” so Teen Wolf gets on his motorcycle and speeds away. Suddenly, he remembers that his girl is waiting for him so he goes back to get her. One of the bad guys says there’s a bomb in the oven. Teen Wolf, wanting to be thorough, checks to see if he’s telling the truth. HE IS DUH! They run out of the house and into the pool as the house explodes.

The girl gets a tiny little cut on her arm but proceeds to act like she has a gangrenous limb and then totally underplays the moment by saying, “It hurts.” Teen Wolf, ever the hero, takes the girl to the hospital on his motorcycle. While she’s getting fixed up, he calls 911 only the CIA answers and Alfred Molina tells Teen Wolf two agents are coming to get him. The kid’s Spidey sense tingles again and he thinks, “Fuck this,” so he grabs the girl and is trying to find a way out of the hospital when suddenly, his therapist, Sigourney, RIPLEY, shows up, with a bouquet of balloons that she uses LOLOLOL as camoflauge to get them out of the hospital.

As they speed away, she starts talking really fast but saying nothing at all. The best line she offers basically goes, “You’ve known something was different about you for years. You just didn’t know what questions to ask.” She leaves him writhing in confusion, then tells him that in 15 seconds, he’s going to have to jump out of the speeding car, and down a ravine. She gives him an address and the names of the only two people he can trust, one of whom is the father he has never met, some guy named Martin.  She also says the only sane thing said in the movie–ditch the girl but no, Teen Wolf has to be a hero so they jump out of the car and head straight into a mind numbing hour of nonsense.

Blah blah blah chase shoot information dastardly cell phone stupidity sniper hamburger villain reveal blah blah blah Hollywood hates you.

At the end of the movie there’s a show down and for like the fifteenth time this year, a major sporting event is used as cover for shit to go down. We saw this in Drive and The Next Three Days among other movies. This plot device is officially tired. I won’t bore you with the end of the movie. It’s just ridiculous. I’m ashamed I watched this movie (maybe twice even) and spent a lot of time thinking about it.

I also saw Warrior. If you like the sound of man flesh beating sweatily against man flesh, this is totally the movie for you. I was gleeful. I could not get enough of this movie, especially the end with all the fight scenes. I think those ultimate fighter shorts are so sexy. Tom Hardy’s neck is massive and bulging it is not to be believed. He deserves kudos for whatever he did to make his neck like that. The strangest, most enjoyable part of this movie is that they set it up to seem like it is based on a true story but it’s totally not. I spent like an hour trying to Wikipedia the characters in the movie before I realized, DUMBASS IT IS A MOViE.

Young Adult is as good as the critics say if not better. I am impressed that Diablo Cody has such range. I have yet to see a project she’s involved with I don’t enjoy. What I loved most about Young Adult is that there is no character arc. Mavis doesn’t really learn anything. There is a moment when she is on the cusp of revelation but she pulls away from it and chooses to stay on the path of her deeply uncomfortable downward spiral. Charlize Theron really brings it to this movie and nearly every scene is so uncomfortable you will cringe. I spent a good portion of the movie, which I saw yesterday with my cousin, watching through my fingers, gasping, and holding my breath. So did my cousin. From one moment to the next I had no idea how much worse it could get for Mavis, but worse it did get. She was completely lacking in virtue and I love that. Sometimes people are terrible and really flawed and they don’t get better. They don’t learn the moral of the story or they don’t give a damn about the moral of the story. Also, Patton Oswalt was just wonderful. He consistently impresses me with his movie roles. Young Adult is a movie that speaks to the importance of good acting, good direction, good production, and most importantly an excellent script. I hope this movie gets some award recognition in coming months. It will be richly deserved.

Tom Cruise’s hair is doing very well these days. It is richly feathered, lustrous even, and of a nice length. I know this because I saw Mission Impossible 99: Ghost Protocol.  Cruise is such a curious little man. I find him most amusing when he’s in a star vehicle he is involved with at every level because these movies are such fine showcases for his vanity. It’s always great when a major movie star is open about how much he’d like his ego indulged.

Let’s take a look at Tom’s hair throughout the movie. In this first image, he has just escaped trouble but the front part of his hair is still nicely feathered and the hair over his left ear is a bit insouciant. Bravo, hair person. Bravo.

Tom is also not afraid to apply product and use a comb for special occasions. Look how his hair is angled with just a little body and enough gel to hold that shit in place debonairly. Exquisite. Again, are there hair Oscars? There should be.

Sometimes, though, Tom wants to protect his hair. He suggests a hoodie for such occasions. And still, you can see just enough bang to remind you that his hair is glorious.

Real talk though? Hail Xenu. This motherfucker does not age.

When this movie, which was enjoyable in the way stupid glossy explosion-y movies are enjoyable, opens, the gorgeous asshole from Lost, sexy ass Sawyer, is doing some spy stuff involving an exchange. As he makes his way down an alley with his briefcase, he is shot by a gamine young woman who looks French because she has bangs and that stunning French lady who drinks wine without staining her teeth look about her.

Meanwhile, Tom is hanging out in a Hungarian gulag, just chilling, throwing a rock against a wall at just the right angle and velocity such that the rock comes back to him. We don’t see his face but we do see his pale, delicately chiseled little arm and at this point, we’d know that arm anywhere, wouldn’t we? In some underground tunnel, his team is doing high tech spy super secret agent things and engaging in witty banter. Long story short, they break Tom out of the jail with one of the prisoners, an informant. The team, which is comprised of Simon Pegg (always funny) and Paula Patton (gorgeous, but goddamn, the woman cannot act), is then dispatched with Tom and his hair to Moscow. They have to break in to the Kremlin.

It’s so delightful when these movies rely on the silliness from previous installments. Tom dresses up (and my does he love to play dress up) as a Russian military person as does Simon Pegg and they use gadgetry and break into the Kremlin, OF COURSE, only to find that another criminal is there too. Zounds! As they escape the Kremlin, it blows up. OF COURSE!

Even though the Cold War is over, it is not really over. The IMF is disbanded and Tom and his little team are in trouble. Tom meets up with the head honcho and Jeremy Renner, an analyst, and they drive through some city and Tom learns about how he and his team are all that is left of the IMF. Tom gets a new mission, to go to Dubai and do something I can hardly remember because it’s just so silly. It involves nuclear weapons because that’s all these movies can think of as a credible global threat that requires drastic measures immediately. Conveniently enough, there’s also a train car filled with all the gadgetry and weaponry Tom will need to save the day. The head honcho is shot but Tom and Jeremy get away. They reconvene with Simon and Paula in the ultra modern, luxurious train car. They are TOTALLY going to Dubai for a little spy vacay. Banter, banter, gather weapons, banter.

Movie rule: any time a movie has scenes in the Middle East, and especially Dubai or Abu Dhabi you will see GENERIC SOUK SCENE where there’s some kind of fucking ancient bazaar in the middle of some of the most modern places in the world. Also, there will be dust because it’s the desert and nothing reminds us of the desert like dust. Got it? Good. There’s a souk in Dubai.

The team gathers at a gorgeous, gleaming tower that rises above the skyline of Dubai. They formulate a plan to get some codes. They start to make those fake face masks they seem to use in every Mission Impossible movie, or at least that last travesty only the machine breaks HA HA TWIST OKAY? Tom and his hair have to improvise.

Now, this is a little known fact but it is written into Tom’s contracts that he must be able to engage in mountain climbing whenever he acts in a Mission Impossible movie. As there are no mountains in downtown Dubai, Tom totally does the next best thing–mountain climb up a glass tower from like the 1 millionth floor to the 2 millionth floor, using magic sticky gloves. Swear to God. Before he can climb, though, they have to cut out the glass of the window, and defy physics when the wind doesn’t automatically suck all the people and contents of the room out. Tom changes into his climbing uniform–SPANDEX BABY! Then Tom daintily steps out onto a ledge and sticks himself to the building to begin his climb, while also displaying his little arm muscles.

PROOF THAT I SPEAK THE TRUTH:

They try to make this exceedingly drawn out scene dramatic by having the gloves malfunction, etc. He reaches his destination, then returns to the hotel room with whatever he was looking for. I’ll be honest. I mentally glossed over a great deal of this movie because it was a. long and b. dumb.

Paula Patton, hell bent on revenge because the hot French assassin with bangs killed her man sexy ass Sawyer, pretends to be the assassin and she meets with an arms dealer while Tom and Jeremy meet with the French assassin to buy information with diamonds. It’s all very convoluted. Things go awry. In fact, things go awry so often during this movie you can’t help but think, “These are the shittiest spies in the world.” The arms dealer gets away with nuclear codes. Tom goes on one of the more ridiculous chases you will ever see. It starts in cars and ends on foot. See, while Tom was mountain climbing the building (LOL WUT?), he donned a pair of goggles. On his way into the meeting, Jeremy elbows him because the goggles are like draped around his neck. Tom nestles them into his jacket pocket. (At the time, he is wearing a shiny suit that really highlights his ass.)

On the chase, there comes a time when Tom needs to run and his little legs move him at impressive speed. He pumps his arms like he’s in a track meet. He wants a baton in his hand. As he chases the bad guy, a dust storm comes upon them OF COURSE LOL OMFG! Suddenly, Tom remembers he has his goggles so he puts them on and then he’s all, fuck this dust storm. This dust storm is my bitch! He doesn’t catch the bad guy, though. The goggles do not contain magical properties and somehow, Tom does not learn to fly.

Paula Patton and Jeremy fight the French assassin later and eventually kick her out of the window from the 41st story and the assassin flies away like a bird until she doesn’t. Assassin fall go boom. Paula tries to act extra hard but fails.

Sidebar: I was going to write about Paula Patton and her acting after seeing Jumping the Broom because she was so tragic ((dry ass delivery, inability to emote, excessive face acting, no understanding of her body in scenes) but then I felt like, you know, cut the sister a break. She’s just trying to get her hustle on in Hollywood. I even had a moment as I thought about her “acting” in MI: 99 because hell, it’s wonderful for a black woman to have a role in a big budget movie like this. I also think that one of the reasons she’s so bad is that she has so few opportunities to really practice her craft. Still. Wow. The woman is fine as hell but her acting is terrible, black pass or not. (This is also why I did not write about Jumping the Broom which I saw, twice even. There were some great moments but holy hell, there were so many bad moments. We can do better! At some point, we’ll need to talk about the weaves in that movie. Honestly.)

I assembled the range of Patton’s face acting for you:

Back to the movie.

During all this excitement, a Russian cop is hell bent on catching Tom because he is convinced Tom is the devil. He’s probably not alone in that, but within the context of this movie, the cop is largely incorrect and plays the role of the irrationally obsessed and uber focused public servant. It’s a stupid subplot. Another stupid subplot is that Jeremy Renner was on the protection detail for Tom and his wife in Bosnia or something and she was murdered and he feels responsible. We’ll come back to this nonsense.

In the next stop on their world tour, the team goes to Mumbai by way of a sketchy arms dealer who is a friend of the guy Tom broke out of the Russian gulag. While in Mumbai, they take a fancy future car to some rich Indian guy’s party. It’s Paula’s job to serve as bait, of course, because she’s an attractive woman and the only thing an attractive woman can really do in an action movie is serve as bait, make herself vulnerable and always appear sexual. This is a movie rule. Do not try to contradict it unless you are like Angelina Jolie or Lara Croft. Yes, I’m mixing realities there. Anyway. The Indian guy is the game show host from Slumdog Millionaire, Anil Kapoor. He’s creepy and sleazy and starts liking Paula after Tom kisses her and she gets rough with Anil. They go to his room and blah blah blah, she overpowers him and gets whatever she wanted, something involving satellites.

The last real action scene in the movie takes place in one of those futuristic parking garages where the cars are delivered on like, car trays. It’s all very exciting watching a major battle take place in this futuristic scary garage.

One of my bucket list items, by the way, is to visit one of these garages in person and move some cars around. That seems like it will be fun. If you can make that happen, do let me know.

So. Tom and the bad guy fight fight fight, and the fight goes from ludicrous to preposterous to insane. At one point, Tom jumps from one level to another and I totally said, “Wheeee!”

Look:

Right? Right. Whee!

And of course, there’s a nuclear weapon hurtling through the sky toward the United States OMG CRISIS. As always. This also happens in every action movie. Tom saves the day and the rocket falls, dead, into the water. Again, like in every action movie.

The team reconvenes in Seattle or, what I can assure you is the fakest looking Seattle ever. Ving Rhames is there and you think, OH THERE HE IS! They’re at some fish market or something and Tom hands out iPhones and inspirational quotations for the team, sending them on their way.

As an aside, I don’t know that there has ever been a telephone more conducive to the movies than the iPhone 4. It just looks so goddamned good on screen. No matter how terrible the movie, you can trust that the iPhone 4 will look sleek and futuristic and sexy. That’s good design. Also, Apple’s marketing team is working overtime. Their products are in all the movies.

He and Jeremy have a heart to heart where Tom tells him, HA HA MY WIFE IS RLY ALIVE SUCKA! Then Jeremy goes on his way. At the end of the movie, Tom and his lustrous hair are leaning against a pole as his wife, chatting with friends, is about to head into a coffee shop (Seattle, obvi). Just before she enters, she senses his hair, being gently ruffled by the breeze, and turns. They make eye contact and stare at each other with love and closure and that’s… basically it.

 

Even Feral Creatures Want to Be Loved

We have much to discuss, friends! There will be lists!

Thomas Michael Duncan wrote a really insightful and generous review of Ayitii. I really appreciated his perspective on my book and how he “got” what I was trying to do with the collection.

I was also interviewed by Weston Cutter for the Kenyon Review blog. We talked about identity and labels and transactions and erotica and more!

And then in kind of unreal but awesome news, Ayiti was recognized as one of twelve notable small press books this year by Rigoberto Gonzalez for the National Book Critics Circle blog. I kind of fell over about this one.

Jason Diamond was also kind enough to note Ayiti as one of his favorites from 2011 at Vol. 1 Brooklyn and Jason Jordan gave my book a shout out too.

These recognitions mean a lot and I am very thankful to see my little book being welcomed so warmly.

I have a book to give away!

On December 27th, Penguin Books will be publishing the debut fantasy hit A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES by Deborah Harkness in paperback for the first time.  This novel debuted at # 2 on the New York Times bestseller list and became an international phenomenon with major publications following in 34 countries.  (I did not write that fancy sentence at ALL haha!) This summer, Warner Brothers acquired screen rights to A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES and its sequels. (OOOH!) More than 300,000 copies have been sold which feels like a lot. I have a copy to give away so if you’d like to read this book, which seems quite interesting, leave a comment. At the end of the week, I will randomly draw a winner using one of those Internet random drawing generators. Also, the cover is pretty. And if you win, we can talk about this book because I have a copy too.

What do you do when you make a terrible movie based on a classic franchise, and still insist on having a sequel? You kill the entire original cast in the opening sequence! OMG Y’all! They are making a sequel to GI:JOE, which is a stunning example of Hollywood’s hubris these days. They are so ride or die right now in their commitment to bullshit. This trailer, well, there’s a lot to discuss. The Rock is exceptionally shiny and just like in Fast Five, his head is triangular. It’s like he wakes up every morning and thinks, “I want to rub myself down with Crisco,” and then he does just that! He could throw me around though, real talk.

I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to better prepare for the movie which I cannot wait to see. I’m pretty fascinated by this book. The translation is so terrible I want to learn Swedish fluently, read the original version, and then re-translate it. This translation, you can just tell that a good 70% of the book’s problems are the hack job of translating fro Swedish to English.

Other observations:

  • IKEA
  • The Kalle Blomkvist joke doesn’t translate at ALL
  • Lisbeth isn’t anorexic; she looks anorexic. I wish that distinction was made more often.
  • The Swedish title–Men Who Hate Women–is way better and more accurate as to what the book is about.
  • Oh the rape scene is so terrible and disturbing. Like, Stieg Larsson has issues and his issues have issues.
  • It’s kind of weird how Larsson is pretty explicit in writing about sexual violence, but during the consensual sex scenes, he suddenly becomes quite the prude. Dude.
  • Lisbeth Salander is quite an interesting character but my goodness, the obsession with portraying her as anti-social is hilarious and poorly handled. She’s not anti-social. People don’t understand her. There’s a difference. She’s feral, and that’s way more interesting but even feral creatures want to be loved. Lisbeth wants to be loved. She wants to be loved right.
  • Swedish prison seems okay. I could handle a brief stint.
  • Blomkvist calls all ladies his “friends” and then he sexes them.
  • He is also a terrible father. He sees Pernilla like three times in a year and doesn’t seem terribly bothered by this save for the occasional acknowledgment that he is a bad father.
  • Larsson spends an inordinate amount of time telling us about what Blomkvist is eating. He went to a cafe and had lingonberry pancakes! He had a liver and cucumber sandwich! He made a stew. Yes, we get it. The man eats.
  • The ending can kiss my ass. Weak. Weak as hell.
  • There is no detail Larsson won’t bore you with. I feel like I know the entire history of the Swedish financial system now and I’m sad about that.
  • The plot of this book is really quite interesting minus all the excessive verbiage.
  • I would have liked to see more done with this idea of men hating women.
  • It’s awfully convenient that Lisbeth has spent some of her free time studying the psychology of sadists? What is that about? OMG!
  • The technology stuff is LOL. iBook! Modem! There is like a whole page dedicated to the specs of Lisbeth’s computer. I seriously wanted to frame that page with the caption, “This exists in a book that was not written by Tom Clancy.”
  • It’s so weird how Blomkvist has this inconsistent moral code. Like, hacking is a big terrible thing but regularly nailing a married woman is no big deal?
  • Books like this make such a compelling argument for the importance of editors.
  • Cecilia Vanger. I mean, GIRL! What? Make up your mind. Get some therapy!
  • The Vangers, on the whole, are just the worst. Racists, fanatics, liars, thieves and not in an interesting way.
  • Poor Harriet.
I have also discovered Downton Abbey. I am late to the party on EVERYTHING! But, now, I have seen this show and it is exquisite. It is truly a show that is flawless in every way. Spoilers ahead!
  • The production values on this show are exceptional. The castle! The village! The clothing! The cars! I cannot get over how meticulously rendered this show is.
  • If I were any other television show, I would be fucking embarrassed to show my face next to Downton Abbey. It is no wonder they won all the Emmy’s.
  • This show is better than Mad Men because it doesn’t have that smugness that is imbued in Mad Men where the people involved with that show know they are heads above the competition.
  • Oh Edith, poor Edith. She is so pathetique. We hates Edith, yesssss. She’s very Jan Brady.
  • I really like Sybil. She’s a spitfire and I can totally tell she’s going to make it with Driver who is so hot. I love his uniform. If I were dating Driver, he’d have to wear that uniform to bed.
  • I’m Team Mary all the way. Mary is in such a terrible position as the eldest daughter. She has to marry properly and doesn’t even get a chance to figure out her heart or her mind. I love her witty tongue and also, I hope she and Matthew get together eventually. I peeked at Wikipedia to see what happens in Series 2 and UGH! I am holding out hope for Series 3.
  • How on earth did Elizabeth McGovern get a role on this show? She’s no longer having a baby! (That is a reference to her earlier work, not the miscarriage that broke my heart.) Why is her acting so terrible? I am OBSESSED with her performance because it is so perfectly terrible. She is committed to the badness of her performance and I really respect it.
  • Maggie Smith. Again, if I were a working actress right now, save for Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, I would just not even want to breathe in a world where Maggie Smith exists. She is some concept beyond perfection. Her outfits! The Dowager Countess is fierce.
  • Life sucked for the nobility, in these ways that are at once easy to empathize with and infuriating.
  • Life really sucked for the working class and especially sucked if they had any sort of disability.
  • Oh Mr. Bates. I love him. He’s so noble and his mysterious dark past makes him sexier. And Anna! She is divine and level-headed and reliable in a crisis, like, say, dragging a dead body from one end of an enormous castle to another. Good help is a treasure.
  • When the Turkish diplomat died after nailing Mary, I was like, OH HELLO! It was so unexpected and perfectly handled. He was so pretty and I loved how they said his name–Mr. Pamoook! It made me so mad, though, that Mary’s reputation could be affected by having her basic needs met. Every woman needs maintenance. There ought to be no shame in it.
  • I cannot with O’Brien and Thomas. They are so petty and evil but at the same time, it’s not hard to see why they got that way. It’s pretty reasonable to seethe with resentment when you have to serve people who are born into wealth and privilege. Also, the cinnamon bun at the front of O’Brien’s head. What a bold styling choice! Whomever does that hair must really hate the actress who plays O’Brien and/or the character.
  • Gay Thomas! Poor lamb. Can you imagine having to suppress your queerness in ye olden days?
  • Matthew needs to man up. I’m sick of his wishy washiness. Over it entirely but he has nice eyes so I forgive him.
  • The father is Bernie from Notting Hill! I think all English actors must naturally be able to play nobility. Noblesse oblige or something. It is coded into their DNA.
I HAVE DISCOVERED HUNGER GAMES! TEAM PEETA! BEST BOOKS EVER. PLZ TELL ME IT ALL ENDS UP OKAY. AM ON BOOK TWO, CHAPTER TEN. HAVE CRIED MULTIPLE TIMES LIKE JUST BURST INTO TEARS LIKE A FREAK WHILE ON THE EXERCISE MACHINE. AM DEVASTATED IN THE BEST POSSiBLE WAYS. OMG!

It feels pretty important to deconstruct the new Dior commercial starring Charlize Theron. She is really creating an oeuvre with her commercials for this perfume. The first commercial was amazing because she was just ripping her jewels off while giving WALK and FACE and that was amazing. GOLD IS COLD! DIAMONDS ARE DEAD! YES GIRL! FEEL WHAT’S REAL! How many times did she need to practice this walk? Because, for real, it’s kind of perfect and amazing.

But the new commercial. Let’s take a look:

First of all, Paris. Fabulous. Where else would Charlize be?

Then, Charlize is just a busy lady so she’s on the run. In heels. Because busy ladies run in heels.

She has improved her pronunciation of J’adore, Dior, since the first commercial and anyone who speaks French is grateful for that.

Flawless sunglasses indoors? YES!

Hand off purse, hand off glases because you are so important you do not need to manage your accessories? YES!

Air kisses? YES!

Stripping off her blazer, and naked underneath? YES!

Mad Max gold bra-shirt with tassels? YES!

Pretty ladies doing pretty lady shit? YES!

Marilyn Monroe, cooing “Dior”? WTF?

I love how Charlize whips her head around like, WTF is Marilyn doing above ground? And then Marilyn looks at the bottle of perfume like it’s got some magic in it. Girl, it’s just perfume.

Also, I love how the underlying premise of this commercial is that Charlize is so beautiful, she can run in off the street, and hit the fucking runway. BAM! YES!

Charlize walking through the crowd to get to the runway, running without a bra? YES!

But what’s particularly impressive is that she’s fucking acting her ASS off, in a commercial, no less. Professionalism. There’s some urgency from 1:06-1:10, and at 1:11, when she hits her mark and you see her flawless silhouette? Ridiculous. And then she just gives WALK. It is a clinic on walking and also, smizing. Tyra must be so jelly of this commercial. From 1:11, to the end, Charlize’s facial expression is basically, “Fuck you, I am beautiful.” Also, she’s not doing just any walk. She has a bit of that horsey stomp canter models seem to enjoy but with a little extra sass. She’s shaking the girls is what I am saying. I live for her body of work for Dior. It’s nuanced.

When Valentine’s Day was released people went to see it because some of us still harbor romantic notions once in a while. As much as I discuss romantic comedies critically, I also enjoy them. I am fine with the formula because I have the critical skills to understand that on the whole, it is bullshit and I have enough heart left to still wish upon a star.

I find it fascinating that a movie as terrible as Valentine’s Day somehow necessitated a sequel. There are even a couple crossover actors from the first movie–Hector Elizondo (Mr. Everymovie), Jessica Biel and Ashton Kutcher–but, and this is the first of many fuck ups, they play COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS so you’re watching and waiting for some kind of connection to the original only to realize it’s just a horrifying coincidence that these same actors are in a holiday movie. Why have the same cast members if they aren’t playing the same roles? How on god’s green earth did this happen?

After Love Actually, Hollywood needed to simply stop making holiday ensemble romantic comedies. That movie set a bar so high that most people making movies today cannot hope to reach it. That movie was sweet and a little sad and a little funny. Each story got enough screen time to make it satisfying and there were plenty of happy endings to go around.

New Year’s Eve is based on a flawed premise, the idea that New Year’s Eve holds the same common cultural romantic relevance as Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t. It’s a night to party or stay at home. It’s a night to drink. Sometimes, it is just a night. Sometimes, it is more, but when we think of NYE, most of us don’t think romance. So. This is a movie that, for so many reasons, is violently committed to sucking.

Another deep flaw of this movie is that it includes Katherine Heigl. And Ryan Seacrest, who plays Ryan Seacrest and makes a mildly amusing joke about his hair.

Rather than trying to discuss this movie chronologically, I will simply focus on each story as a discrete unit of horrible, rotten shit.

Exhibit A
Katherine Heigl is trying to make herself happen by being the surly ingenue. Fine. I’m not mad at her. Hollywood is tough and when you’re not a great actress and you’re not a size 0, you’ve got to work an angle. It’s just that she’s so unpleasant. She isn’t charmingly surly. She’s just… entitled and surly which is boring, at best. In New Year’s Eve, she plays the owner of a catering company. Her sidekicks, because this movie is the United Colors of Benetton, are Sofia Vergara, and Russell Peters. Sofia plays up her sexy busty Latina shtick that she does in EVERYTHING, and Peters is (I think), the gay Indian guy. Their performances are so uncomfortable, you will likely spend the entire time they are on screen thinking, “THAT IS RACIST/HOMOPHOBIC/FUCKED UP!”

Heigl has the sads because her ex-boyfriend, who walked out on her after proposing, is the main act at the party she’s catering for NYE. He’s a super famous rockstar and is played by Jon Bon Jovi who is super famous Jensen. Heigl slaps him around a few times and then gives a half-assed performance where she keeps him at arm’s length even though he desperately wants her to love him again. It’s so boring. They have no chemistry at ALL. Also, Jon’s hair could use some conditioner. He doesn’t age, though, which is certainly worth discussing at some point. Anyway, they end up together. BUT, at the end, Heigl’s dress looks like, I don’t know… a metallic, unflattering tent dress that was trying to be this:

Exhibit B
Then there is Michelle Pfeiffer. She has the sads because she has no backbone and is in a dead end job. Remember how she played that mousy office person in that one Batman movie where she died and became Catwoman? She plays that same lady in NYE! Before Catwoman! I was so excited to recognize the performance. I was sad she felt the need to take this role. She’s such a fine actress. She too does not age. In this “movie,” she works as an assistant for a music executive, played by John Lithgow, who is a real asshole for the 30 seconds he’s on screen. When he pushes her too far, she snaps and quits her job. Mousy girl found a backbone, oh my! (SHE LOOKS TERRIBLE IN THIS MOVIE AND IT IS SAD. In particular, she wears a barrette that is very distressing.) She goes outside of her office building, all, what do I do with my life now, and Zac Efron, a bike messenger, is there. He’s a good looking, loving life young man, and she asks him to help her fulfill all her sad new year’s resolutions from a year ago before midnight. If he does, she’ll give him four tickets to the party where Jon Bon Jovi is playing, the party that is supposed to be the hottest ticket in town. As if. They go on their little May-December adventure. She gets a massage and swings on a Broadway stage and walks through all the boroughs at the Brooklyn Museum and blah blah blah. It’s just dreadfully dull. It’s so dull, it’s not even fun to make fun of. Turns out her last wish is to kiss someone at midnight and even though she lets him go, he runs back to Times Square and gives her a terrible-looking kiss as she exclaims something like, “I could be your mother!” If the situation were reversed, a man would never say that. So annoying. Girl, kiss that pretty boy. Then take him back to your apartment, get properly laid, and work your hairdo out.

Exhibit C
Meanwhile, Ashton Kutcher just hates New Year’s Eve and stomps around his apartment building tearing down other people’s decorations like an asshole, while he is in full beard and pajama pants. His inability to act staggers me continually. He is not pretty enough to merit so much work. On his way to somewhere to throw away the decorations, the elevator gets stuck and the phone doesn’t work. Guess who he is trapped with? Another annoying person! Lea Michelle! Look, she was good in Spring Awakening and I even liked her in Season 1 of Glee, but then she got notions and became a fame monster and I cannot with her anymore. She and Ashton spend their portion of the movie in an intense competition to see who can pull of the more exasperating yet pointless performance. It ends in a tie. At the start of their confinement they hate each other. Then the elevator starts working again just before they kiss because all it takes to fall in love is one crappy industrial elevator, a dirty douchebag in pajama pants, and a starlet in a red Herve Leger bandage dress. Lea is going to be a backup singer for Bon Jovi in Times Square so she runs into the night like Cinderella, only she leaves her good luck charm behind so, like the hero he is, Kutcher chases after her and they finally kiss in Times Square and she gets to sing. There was no way this girl was going to be in a movie where she did not get to sing. Fact.

Exhibit D
At some hospital, two couples are trying to have the first baby of the new year (to win some MONEY) so we get to see their silly attempts to bring labor about. One of the couples is Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel and the other is that guy from King Arthur, the Germanic barbarian son, and Sarah Paulson (whose ex-partner, Cherry Jones, also happens to be in the movie). Jessica stands on her head and eats things and whatever. Their competition could be funny but it isn’t and then they try to manipulate some sweetness from the stupidity by having Meyers pretend their baby was born later because the other couple has like three kids and clearly need all the help they can get. It’s just… so uninspired. In every way.

Exhibit E
Robert DeNiro is dying and nobody loves him because he’s an asshole. The doctor, Dread Pirate Roberts, asks DeNiro if he wants the hospital to call anyone but he says no because blah blah blah he deserves to die alone. All he wants is for the doctor to take him to the roof at midnight to watch the ball drop but Dread Pirate Roberts is a cockblocker and says it probably can’t happen. His nurse happens to be Halle Berry who, goddamnit, is flawless, and fucking A, I want her haircut so badly.

I found this twist funny because as we know, DeNiro sure loves his brown sugar. As Paul Mooney (I think) said, the only thing a white woman can do for DeNiro is point him in the direction of a black woman. I love him for that, DeNiro, that is. Anyway, he looks terrible and dying-ish and Berry is super sweet and sits with him as he dies. Just before midnight, she excuses herself and changes into an amazing dress and we think she’s going out, but instead, she goes into some room in the hospital, and SKYPES HER HUSBAND, Common, who is away “in the war.” This franchise’s obsession with the military is… weird. Like, yes, let’s just have Halle give her man a little something to look at. Whatevs.

Random ASS casting: Alyssa Milano, bloated, gets about 37 seconds of screen time and 1 line as a nurse. I’m really rooting for her. It can’t be this bad.

Exhibit F
Hilary Swank is the vice president of the Times Square association and in charge of the ball dropping so of course, there are stupid complications involving the ball dropping. OMG! WILL IT GET FIXED? Who fucking cares? They seriously tried to make this the underlying tension of the movie. As a writer, this sort of trite bullshit is just offensive. Hector Elizondo is the fired crazy repair guy who is the only one who can fix the ball and he does blah blah blah. Ludacris is also hanging around. He’s a cop and is talking to Swank the whole time in this bizarrely familiar set of conversations that’s supposed to make us think they have some kind of romantic connection but they DON’T and you can tell they don’t. It’s lame. It’s weird. They basically just needed a black guy to win at Benetton Bingo. Anyway, before midnight, she realizes she can’t stay. She leaves Hector in charge and runs into the night and we think, wait, where the hell is she going?

Aside: there are some annoying voice overs and motivational speeches about NYE in the movie I won’t bore you with but basically, worst writing ever. Ever.

Exhibit G
Josh Duhamel is in this movie and he is one of the less sucky parts because he’s so hot and he doesn’t ruin everything when he speaks. He’s got to get back to NYC after attending a friend’s wedding outside of the city. His car runs into trouble, so he catches a ride in an RV with some aw shucks small town people and tells them this story of how last year, on NYE, he met the most amazing woman, but her life was complicated so she told him to meet her, if he still was interested, at this one spot. OF COURSE. How original. But first, he has to give a speech at the big party everyone is trying to get to. Turns out, he is the president of the record company Pfeiffer worked for, and he’s a good guy if a bit of a cad. His mother is Cherry Jones. Now, you may not know this but Cherry Jones is one of this country’s FINEST working actors. She is a Tony Award winner and a thespian of the highest order. Why she is in this movie is one of those painful life mysteries that will plague me for a very long time. A bunch of hot women throw it at Josh and he bats the pussy away. Suddenly, he has to leave! Where the hell is HE going? OMG!

Exhibit H
Zac is the younger brother of Sara Jessica Parker and you don’t want to think about that too hard because that means he was one hell of an oopsie baby. She is the mom, recently divorced, of a teenage girl who just wants to spend NYE in Times Square with the boy she wants to kiss but her mom is overprotective and wants to spend NYE at home watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve and shit. The daughter is NOT having that so she sneaks out and then SJP is running through the city like a psycho mom trying to find her kid and she does, in Times Square where the daughter sees her dreamboat kiss some other tart and when she turns around, Mommy is there to make it all better. They go to a restaurant to talk it out. The daughter is grounded but she can go hang out with her friends. There’s this other psycho mother there, spying on every one. SJP is the costume designer or something for The Rockettes (HAHAHAHAH WOT???), so she runs to the theater and changes into this Carrie Bradshaw dress she’s been making and then she too starts running. So many people running! It’s a race!

So.

I won’t torture you.

Swank is DeNiro’s daughter. She takes him to the roof. He sees the ball drop. They reconnect. He dies.

SJP is Duhamel’s One True Love. They find each other even though midnight has come and gone and they kiss and whatever. By now the movie has been so excruciating it’s hard to care about anything.

To recap: If you need to destroy someones soul, this would be the movie to take them to.

If You Are a Reclaimed Virgin Do Not Ever Tell Me

I received a personal-ish rejection from McSweeney’s Quarterly in a record amount of time—three weeks. Since they’ve moved to Submishmash, they have been ON it. Someday, I will send them something else. I would very much enjoy having a story in that magazine, and maybe that issue will be a small rocket ship with stories in the shape of tiny astronauts filled with literary goodness.

I’ve decided to do some e-book work on the side. If you have a project that needs to be converted into ebook formats, get in touch at roxane at roxanegay.com. My rates are reasonable.

I know people like to rag about Pushcart nominations and so on and yes it is annoying when writers put them in their bios (I don’t!, I swear!) BUT, I received five Puschart nominations this year and I am really honored and excited. Hate that if you must. I was nominated by Brevity for There Are Distances Between Us, The Literarian for I Am a Knife, Fwriction Review for Girls With Eating Disorders, Good Men Project for Knife Man, and Dark Sky Magazine for We Are Magnificent. It is an embarrassment of riches.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things, these nominations are a detail. The odds are ridiculous and there are so many magazines these days that, in turn, there are so many writers who are nominated for a Pushcart. I have the proper perspective. I am still happy.

The difference between now and say, ten years ago, is that we know what all our writing friends and enemies are doing ALL THE TIME with social networking and blogging and so on. We know how far we are into a new project and how many rejections we’ve received and where our work has been accepted and where we were shortlisted and sometimes, it’s exhausting–trivial information overload. There’s an easy answer, though. When you don’t want to know what other writers are doing, don’t pay attention to them. It’s a lot easier than you think.

I also have a poem up on the Missouri Review Tumblr. In my head, I leave off the word, Tumblr,” a little bit. My  poem is called Wild Things. I have written very few poems. I have no skill for it. I am woefully ignorant of poetic form. I enjoyed writing this poem, though. It came to me just before the deadline for their 48-hour poem contest. Maybe I should submit it somewhere.

For Bookslut, I wrote an essay about Zambreno, Didion, and Pozner. It will make sense if you read it. Anytime I can work Cixous and reality television into the same essay, I am a little thrilled. I also wrote an essay about measuring literary excellence for The Rumpus.

I read this past weekend at Stories & Beer and it was the biggest crowd I’ve yet seen there so that was nerve-wracking. My friends from work came which was intimidating and I was reading last and I had fifteen minutes so it was a perfect storm of reasons to freak out. I puked after saying hi to Chris “Arms” Newgent and conducting some Serious Book Business. I hate puking in public bathrooms because, gross, but it is what it is. Then I had a gin & tonic which smoothed me out. One of the pieces I read was an abridged version of my Twilight discussion. I even printed out the pictures and distributed them throughout the audience. That went over super well—Taylor Lautner’s abs, man. Respect. The best part of the reading, I can’t even front, was the two or three times the audience broke into spontaneous applause. I felt like, yes, they understand the significance of this vampire text. Laura Adamczyk wrote about the reading here and says very kind things about me for which I am grateful. All the readers were great but Arms was the best. He just was. His poems were smart and hilarious and also very short. His arms, as you would expect, were exceptional.

My students in my fiction class asked me to read some of my work to them. Babies! Stress! In general, I don’t believe in introducing my work to my students at all. It is too awkward. But, this is a particularly great class. We shall se what happens on Friday. I have no idea what I could possibly read that wouldn’t make me want to die of discomfort, though.

I am going to tell you now about the saga of my broken oven. It has been malfunctioning for months–beeping intermittently at random times, sometimes all through the night, only stopping when I shut the breaker off. For a good while, the oven still worked like an oven, which is to say it baked foods despite the beeping situation which, I assure you, drove me insane. About two months ago, the oven stopped working like an oven. When I pushed buttons, nothing happened. Naturally, I consulted Dr. Google and it turns out there is a known problem with GE Profile ovens. I tried the various solutions, some of which involved tools. I could not fix the oven. Because I rent, I called my landlord seven weeks and one day ago. In other words, I called my landlord and first notified him of the problem 50 days ago. During that time, many things have happened. I celebrated a birthday. I have counted a number of new gray hairs. I have traveled. I have seen many movies. I have made a reasonable number of polite follow up phone calls both to my landlord and the appliance store supposedly repairing my oven. I have withheld rent. I have stared sadly at the electronic carcass of my oven. Finally, I snapped, but in a really controlled way and got some nice rent-related incentives AND today my new oven was installed while I was at work. Tonight I baked vegetable eggrolls and a red velvet cake.

Before I get to that, I have an adorable tiny trashcan in my bedroom. It even has a foot lever like the big version. Every time I look at it, I feel special inside.

Also, there is this:

This is my new oven. It’s not stainless steel or fancy but it works and that makes it fancy to me. Upon first getting acquainted, I pressed all the buttons according to the various tones. It was an appliance symphony, if you will. I even gave it a kiss, a lil peck.

To celebrate my new appliance I decided to bake a red velvet cake, a project that began 50 days ago when I was trying to bake the cake for an event to which I needed to bring a baked good.

 

 

First I mixed the wet ingredients and tried not to be grossed out by a rather unpleasant visual. It kind of looks like blood–it’s food coloring, buttermilk, butter, eggs, vinegar and vanilla. Then I whisked the shit out of this ugly looking mess. I was pretty excited that I even own a whisk. Having a well equipped kitchen is not my strong suit.

I just remembered! I got the whisk free with my Kitchen Aid mixer. After some brisk whisking, the mixture looked crazy red! I was pretty excited by this too. It felt like I was making a volcano for the science fair. My volcano did not smell good at all which was worrisome.

In a separate bowl, I mixed flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda. The instructions said to sift all this but who has that kind of time? I used a fork and it seemed to be okay.

I poured the dry into the wet and I thought, hmm, something is missing here. I realized I had forgotten to add sugar. OMG! I was well on my way to making the world’s worst cake so I added some sugar and let my Kitchen Aid be awesome. Here is an action shot. Look at that attachment twirl!

Eventually I got bored with watching it twirl and it looked “ready” so I stopped the mixer.

 I poured the gross red (make my kitchen messy) batter, into two cake pans I bought at the grocery store. They seemed heavy duty. They are heavy and they are well suited to their duty.

I put those bad boys in the oven which I had pre-heated to 350 and guess what? The oven totes worked! The cake layers would bake for 30 minutes. At this point, I patted myself lightly on the back.

Meanwhile, I washed some of the dishes I used because my mother says one cleans as they cook. With a clean workspace, I set about making the frosting. I didn’t feel like measuring out 4 cups of powdered sugar so I guessed that maybe 32 oz of powdered sugar was 4 cups based on a hazy recollection of second grade. I also added two sticks of butter and two packages of cream cheese. When I started mixing these ingredients together, a big puff of white powder emerged from the bowl. I pretended it was cocaine and I was in a movie and maybe the cops were going to break down my door at any moment so I frantically tried to wipe the coke toward the sink. They cops didn’t raid my apartment, thank goodness. After five minutes of hardcore mixing, that frosting-to-be was white and fluffy like the instructions said. I added some vanilla. The recipe said 1 tsp but that sounded weak as hell so I added SEVERAL vigorous shakes of the McCormick Vanilla Extract bottle where several is a liberal quantity. It was a lot of vanilla.

Finally, the cakes were ready and I was nervous. Would they resemble a red velvet cake? Would they taste like a red velvet cake? I did that test where you stick a sharp object in the middle of the cake and if comes back clean, your cake is done. My cake was done! Success!

I don’t have cooling racks so I used aluminum foil. Look, it made sense at the time. See how red my cakes are? That little white and green object in the upper left hand corner of the shot is my brand new pasta measurer which is that one gadget you don’t know you need until you get it. Now I no longer have to guess about the amount of pasta I am preparing. Next to that is my new digital food scale. These gadgets make preparing food feel like more of an adventure.

Everything looks pretty decent here. Alas, there was a small problem.

Quelle horreur!

The force is strong in my new oven. She does not yet know how to control her awesome power. I have named her Annakin-a. I’m not mad at Annakin-a. She was testing me and showing me what she’s capable of (scorched earth, obvi).

I stood and studied this burnt cake bottom and thought, how can I salvage this situation? I watch a great deal of Food Network so after a few minutes, I knew exactly what to do.

That’s right. I cut the burnt part out with a knife. I felt so smart. Then I realized I had made an ugly cut. It’s okay though. Frosting is forgiving. If I hadn’t had to cut the bottom, I would have cut off the rounded top to make a smooth cake. Perfection wasn’t meant to be, not this time.

On Food Network, on one of those ridiculous baking competitions, I saw the cake baker drop the frosting in the middle of the cake and then spread it outward to frost, so that’s what I did! I’ve also seen Nigella do it. Cable really is educational. During this time, I almost broke my friend’s finger because he kept dipping it in my frosting. So gross. Finally I just prepared him a bowl of frosting, gave him a spoon, and told him to go sit in front of the television or he wouldn’t get to eat my cake.

I have no real frosting tools so I used a spatula type thing.

I am a pretty fast learner so I made a much prettier cut on the second cake by scoring the edges of the burnt section. I am certain those holes mean I did something wrong but whatever.

Yeah. that’s what’s up.

I threw some more frosting down on this bad boy and kept smoothing the frosting around until I could see as little red as possible. This is why I love baking–it is SO relaxing. I had nothing but pleasant thoughts as I frosted my cake. The frosting did exactly what I told it to do. I was the boss of that frosting.

Voila! That is the ugliest frosting job you have ever seen. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, so pleased I danced to this song because I have created an amazing dance for this song. Think… running man very very fast.

I wasn’t going to eat the cake but… I could not resist. I cut a piece for me and a piece for my friend.

He said it was delicious and amazing but that’s to be expected. He likes to eat and wanted to get on my good side. It maybe worked. Compliments!

As I looked at this cut open cake, I thought of oral c-sections. NOM NOM NOM!

Still funny.

Objectively speaking, the cake is good but could be better. It is not as moist or as velvety rich as I’d like. The frosting is too sweet and something I can’t quite place is a bit off in the frosting. Other than that though, the cake looks and tastes like a pretty good red velvet cake! I cannot believe it. I thought for sure I’d ruin this cake. Maybe I will bake holiday cookies for my friends. I have cookies well in hand. Some day, I will conquer cakes. Those thoughts are really not connected.

Before I talk about Virgin Diaries and The Muppets, which were traumatizing in different ways, I would like to direct you to my friend Letitia’s novel Redwood, which she is serializing online.

I watched the first episode of The Virgin Diaries and I don’t even know how to quantify my level of discomfort. I spent a great deal of the episode watching through my fingers, gasping, and shrieking in horror. Although virginity is a fairly… foreign concept for me, I don’t judge the people on the show for being virgins. It’s your body. Do with it as you will. If anything, I am a bit envious. I do, however, judge people who go on national television to awkwardly talk about virginity in really forced, sort of repulsive ways. There were three sets of virgins on the show–the soon to be wed couple who have never even kissed (?!?!?!?), the three crones/roommates, one of whom is a “reclaimed virgin” even though she has had sex with seven men, and then a guy who is in his mid-thirties and is still a virgin, not necessarily by choice. Each of these people made me sad.

The guy who is not necessarily a virgin by choice, I think he might just be asexual though he says he has somewhat of a sex drive. He may just have a low sex drive. I don’t know. He’s a good looking guy, seems like a nice guy. Early in his segment, he disclosed to his mother that he was a virgin and she looked appalled both that he was a virgin and that he shared this personal information with her. She said, “TMI,” and “You should take care of that.” Like the three crones, he was all about disclosing his virginity to a blind date on the first date and that’s when I realized this is one of those reality shows that has been, like most of them, heavily manipulated by the producers. Everything was so unnatural and implausible. I wanted to break this guy off a little something just to get him over the hump. Ha ha. I’m pretty sure a hundred women are chasing him around wherever he lives to help him out right now. At one point, he went out to a bar and this woman was ALL over him and he wasn’t into it and he said the saddest thing of all:”I’m allowed to be picky too.” Oh yes, honey, you are, after you lose your V-card.

The three crones are hovering around 30 and act like being a virgin is this amazing precious thing, like they deserve… admiration for not getting laid for 30 years. Hey, gold star, ladies. One of the women went on a blind date and started talking about marriage and children and her virginity on the first date which is a trifecta of bad choices. It’s no wonder she’s single. You do not need to disclose your virginity on a first date. That kind of makes you a reverse whore. More than that though, it’s important to maybe find out if you want to share another meal with someone before you begin to contemplate a lifetime together. I hope these women were all actors because they kept saying sad romantic things like, “Maybe he’s Mr. Right.” I am not so jaded I don’t believe in Mr. Right. I do. He’s out there, and I’ll stumble across him at some point, but I don’t call him that. I call him Ralph. And I also don’t assume he’s every guy I go out on a date with because he certainly isn’t. Nor do I discuss him with my friends like a sixteen year old. I discuss Ralph with my teddy bear. At the end of the episode, the three virgins went on a date, mini-golf, with three really hot guys and they did the big disclosure, again, ON THE FIRST DATE, and ALL THREE GUYS were all, “We’re virgins too!” TLC is not even TRYING to hide the fakeness of the show. One of the woman said, “I plan to have an orgasm during my first time,” and I thought, “Oh honey.”

I mean… honestly.

Also, reclaimed virginity is total bullshit. If you are a reclaimed virgin do not ever tell me. Ever.

There is no excuse for not kissing before marriage. If you want to hold onto your treasure, fine, but kissing is a fundamental necessity in a relationship. The last couple were the ones who ate each other’s faces in the preview I shared last week. They decided not only to wait to have sex after marriage like Edward and Bella, because TRULUVWAITS, they decided not to kiss until marriage so they did creepy things like extended cheek kissing and fluttering their eyelashes together. The best part of their segment was their family, on BOTH sides, saying, “I have no idea why they’re waiting to kiss and have sex.” Even the girl’s father said she was nuts. At the wedding, the FAMILY made fun of the kiss to the producers. It was that bad. The full extent of that horrifying kiss chilled me to my soul. They kept moving their mouths together super fast and their tongues were running wild and throughout the reception they kept tonguing each other down but the worst of it is that the woman was way more into the affection than her Skeletor husband who weighs about 89 pounds. They did a follow up interview and he was the first one to say that basically, the first time is awkward, confusing, and difficult, a fair and accurate assessment. He clearly did not enjoy it and that’s not unreasonable. It gets better (one hopes). The woman wasn’t so thrilled either. To summarize; “It hurt.” What did she expect? Then she backtracked and said, “But it was still amazing.”

It would help if people stopped romanticizing virginity. The first time is never good. It can be not bad. It can be sweet. It can be okay. It can be fun and interesting. It is rarely good and most of the time it’s just plain bad. It’s kind of a small miracle that women ever have sex again, especially if they “lose” it to a high school boy who has no idea what he’s doing. Then, of course, there are the situations where you lose your virginity under terrible circumstances and that can put you off of everything, for a long time. If men had hymens, scientists would have genetically removed that useless piece of flesh from our bodies a long time ago. In conclusion, Virgin Diaries is the stupidest show ever.

Sister Wives is still… uncomfortable, too. Wow. So much awkwardness there.

I saw The Muppets. This is a very good movie. It balances nostalgia with making The Muppets fresh. Everyone puts in a great performance. The production was handled competently. The muppets were as charming as ever. I have seen all the Muppet movies. I am a child of the 80s, so I had every reason to fall in love with this movie and I didn’t. I kind of hated it, to the point where if I had been alone, I would have walked out.

Around three years ago, I found myself unable to sit through children’s movies anymore. I have no idea why but I simply cannot handle these movies. They grate on my nerves even though they are generally wonderful movies. This is a situation where I know it is me, not these movies but one criteria for my FutureHusband Ralph is that he’s going to be on the children’s movie circuit with our FutureChild. I simply cannot sit through these movies. My discomfort during The Muppets began with the previews for other children’s movies. It was like time slowed and I was trapped in an endless loop of cheerful music, easy jokes, and colorfully drawn, obnoxious characters. Trailer after trailer, I thought, “Shoot me in the face immediately, and put me out of my misery.”

The movie started and it was weird. There was Jason Segal being Jason Segal and his “brother” Walter, a muppet. As they grew up, Jason grew and the muppet didn’t until they were adults. There was no explanation of why Walter and Jason were brothers so, being the sort I am, I spent the entire movie trying to make sense of this genealogy.

The plot was really simple but effective. Jason, his girlfriend played by Amy Adams, and Walter, go to Los Angeles to do touristy things. Jason and Amy will also celebrate their tenth anniversary while they are there. Amy tries to be patient about all the time Jason wants to spend with Walter. The Muppet studios are about to be sold to an oil baron who is going to raze the studios to drill for oil. The muppets, dispersed to various places, have to come back together to put on a benefit, raise $10 million, and save the studios! It’s kind of like in Armageddon, after the drilling crew leaves the platform in the South China Seas, and everyone needs to be rounded up to save the world, only without Bruce Willis, the end of times, or anything to hold my interest.

This was a quest film and watching the muppets try to reach their goal was amusing. I have a soft spot for the muppets–the Swedish chef, the two old guys who hate everything, all of them. There were wonderful cameos throughout the movie. Emily Blunt was Miss Piggy’s assistant at French Vogue which was a real stroke of genius. Eventually the gang was all back together. I certainly smiled and laughed a few times. I recognized that this was the right way to revive a classic franchise while attracting a new audience. And I still really just hated the movie. About halfway through, I had to hold on tight to the armrest to keep from getting up and going out to wait in the lobby.

I particularly hated how Miss Piggy is still always the one who loves more while Kermit plays hard to get and unwilling to commit. It’s tiresome and it has been tiresome throughout the history of the franchise. Miss Piggy is fabulous and if Kermie can’t get on board, fuck him. She can do better. Kermit is milquetoast. I hate how he can’t even man up about anything. He’s just… ugh, the worst. I don’t even understand why she loves him.

I wish I had a reason to offer as to why I hated this movie but I don’t. I’m broken when it comes to children’s movies. I would like to not be broken. I would like to enjoy children’s movies again. Until such time, I will amuse myself with adult movies because I am an adult.

 

Things We Need To Talk About

1. Guys, I forgot to mention one of the MOST amazing, hilarious moments in Breaking Dawn. After BEDWARD return to the Pacific Northwest from their honeymoon, and the Cullens spend all their free time awkwardly staring at emaciated Bella, the family has a little electronic family bonding time on their APPLE COMPUTERS LOLPRODUCTPLACEMENTYESSSSSS. Edward decides to use the Internet to find more answers about his unwanted vampire fetus baby so he does what we ALL do in such moments–he consults Dr. Google or some search engine or another. MOVIESARETRULYF

This was another moment like this:

Edward literally Googled that shit and then there was an AMAZING montage of macabre websites foretelling doom and gloom should the vampire fetus baby be carried to term. I live for this kind of thing. The websites he found were full of ancient scrolls and the like. Amazing.

1b. I am truly alive in the right time.

2. TLC’s Virgin Diaries (sneak peek, watch immediately) and that couple who wait to kiss until their wedding and how they are eating each other’s faces like chipmunks. It’s a lot to unpack.

3. Academics can be incredible liberal racists and sometimes old-fashioned racists. It has to be said. I want to tell you about these crazy situations I’ve experienced over the past while but it probably wouldn’t be wise so I’ll vaguely throw out some key words: articulate, colored, university ID, basketball, special incentives, are you allowed to park here, etc.   Academics, everywhere, are in such need of diversity training and not the BS training that most people do but like Drop Squad level reprogramming. Why don’t academics of color talk about this? Are we supposed to be above it? Is it considered complaining to say that the constant, and I do mean constant, small instances of racism are exhausting? Is it wrong to talk about this? OR do academics of color convene in a secret clubhouse I don’t know about?

3b. As a corollary, I do not care about your racist aunt, uncle, sibling, cousin, parent, grandparent, or self.  I know racist people too, obvi. Why are you telling me this? WHY? That data point is not relevant. I am not the information repository for your racist ancestry. I am not your confessor. Do not unburden yourself to me. I cannot absolve you(r ancestors). I do not care. It makes me uncomfortable. What am I supposed to say? Thanks for sharing? I mean…

3c. This is what people don’t understand. It’s not living in a rural place that is hard. I’ve lived in way smaller towns. It’s ALWAYS being the only one in the room, every single day. It’s the indignity of living in a place where you do not have the luxury of doing everyday things like getting your hair did. It is ridiculous and dispiriting to have to drive FIFTY TO ONE HUNDRED MILES to MAYBE find a hairdresser who might not jack your hair situation up. It is ridiculous. I am tired of living in places where I cannot get my hair done without effort and putting my hair life in some unknown quantity’s hands. I am not going to Supercuts, thank you very much. They don’t know a damn thing about nappy. And yes, I am a black person in academia. It’s always going to be like this and I accept that. I love what I do. I accept the isolation. Just don’t tell me you understand because you can’t unless you go to the heart of Africa to live for the rest of your life, the airline industry collapses, and you have no access to suntan lotion ever again.

4. Wilson Phillips has a reality show on TV Guide Network. Isn’t that the terriblest, saddest thing you’ve ever heard? Can you sink lower than TV Guide Network on the reality television spectrum? The ladies are clearly trying to make Wilson Phillips “happen” again. Did you know that Chynna Phillips is married to Billy Baldwin and has been for like twenty years? She is a Super Christian and she prays for everything. She literally says all the prayers. Carnie is still the bitter/angry/needy/martyr one who wants the new album and revived career the most.  It’s painful to watch her desperation. Fame is a hell of a drug. They all have a bunch of kids. It’s still totes Phillips v. Wilson. Carnie really needs a therapist and a project. They were trying to frame an interview with Perez Hilton as a good thing and I couldn’t help but think, “Ladies, this is rock bottom. Let’s work our way to recovery from here.”

5. All it does is rain. Will it ever stop?

6. Urban Mayer’s $27 million contract to coach Ohio State over six years includes a car allowance, golf membership, time lease on a private jet, daily blowjobs and ass wiping, etc. And people want to talk about public university waste? STFU.

7. Entering week… 5 or 6 of no oven. Soon I will light a fire in the kitchen to bake my cake and then we’ll see what’s up. I may never pay rent again at this rate.

8. Memories.

Good News! Vampire Sex is Incredibly Rough and Violent!

Rejections this week, one from a publisher who loved the novel but had some concerns (which I understand) and another from a publisher, different book, a chapbook really, who said it was beautiful and touching and fierce but that the potency fades by the end of the book. What we can take from this is that publishers send mixed messages.

I also received a form rejection from Mayday for something I submitted in January, that I withdrew in September because it will be published in another magazine in 2012. Full circle! I smiled when I received this rejection because hey, a response!

Not to be outdone, I received a form rejection from Kenyon Review. Since they were terse with me, I shall be terse in discussing this rejection. Hmmph!

The first print run of my book ended up being defective, with some misprinted title pages. You can buy one of those copies for $3! Bargain!

New Yorkers! Once I figure out how to pay for it, I am reading in you at the Sunday Salon on May 20 and at the Center for Fiction on May 21. This is all very exciting, being invited to read in NYC. It feels very fancy.

No one would go seeTwilight with me, not even with the promise of [redacted] and the chandelier [redacted] upside down with baby oil while we [redacted]. I miss J. He went to everything I made him go to, with little complaint. I reciprocated with things like sports and so on and also I washed his work and hunting clothes and that is a BIG DEAL because they smell terrible and gross.

This is the dating rule: in exchange for seeing girl movies with me I will see one sport with you. If you like hockey, baseball, basketball, curling, and football, you get to choose one sport I will watch with you. I will not watch all eight of your favorite sports. There is not enough time. I will also watch UFC fights because GSP is hot and also the brutality is intriguing. But still, relationships are not a one way street. I recognize that.

I have written a personal ad:

Must be willing to see girl movies with me without sulking, sighing, slouching or complaining excessively. I am not asking you to emasculate yourself and pretend you want to see the new Kate Hudson flick but don’t make me feel like I am suggesting you barbecue your testicles either. In exchange, I will support whatever weird man things that interest you without complaining much. Also, I cook and [redacted]. If you are 30-45, we’ll work something out. Also, preferably you will not have a moustache because moustaches confuse me. This is not to say you are disqualified but, is your upper lip cold? Does your moustache make your face itchy? Do you groom it? Do you shampoo and condition it? I just have too many questions. Disclosure: I am weirdly controlling about where what goes in the refrigerator but other than that I can be trained to be less annoying. Anyway, e-mail me and let’s make this happen.

Let’s see what I catch with this oh so tempting net.

I have some pictures for you.

At this restaurant I go to fairly regularly, the tables are kind of interesting–old doors and in the hollows of the doors, old photographs and writing and other stuff. The other week, we sat at this table. I read the question, and thought, “Who hasn’t?”

Some friends and I went to a new Irish Pub in Champaign and I saw this sign and died laughing because, I mean, Est. 2011? Really?

I was in Champaign for a reading (yes, I spend most of my free time there). It was at the U of I art museum. On the main floor of the museum, I learned it was Tango Night, live music, people dancing, and it was so magical to walk by this room and hear the sounds of Argentinean tango, and to see people twirling across the dance floor. I love such moments.

I was in the union for a meeting and I took the stairs and came upon these two balloons! More magic! I love finding random things like this. And then, inexplicably, I started singing Katy Perry’s “Firework,” while thinking of American Beauty.

You know how they sell movies at the grocery store? I looked at this cover for Larry Crowne and had more questions than answers. For one, what the hell is going on with Julia’s hair? Also, how could this cover sell the movie? This movie cover is the pajama jeans of movie covers. It says, “We have given up.”
I went to my brother’s for Thanksgiving and took my friend L and he cooked us a truly outstanding meal. He likes to narrate and instruct as he cooks so that was a treat. Here is his mirepoix.

He made three turkeys. For five people, one of whom does not eat meat! The fryer, though, wouldn’t stay ignited. Pretty sure this turkey is still in the backyard.

My nephew said, “I bet I can play a song you won’t know.” I laughed, and shook my head. Kids underestimate adults all the time. I said, “I know all the songs. All of them.” He started scrolling through the music on the phone, trying to stump me. Then he started playing this song and I BUSTED OUT THE LYRICS! MOFO PLZ! It was the theme song for that one Baskin & Robbins commercial. I even chair danced. I love this song. We’ve talked about it before on this very blog. Pretty sure that kid thinks I’m fucking bad ass now.

I went to Whole Foods and was reminded how that store is wholly ridiculous.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

On Halloween weekend, we went to this bar (see: awkward encounter with drunk guys discussed in previous post). In the bathroom stall, which was strangely roomy, I looked up and saw this poster and died laughing because the dude was giving me a deep soul stare and I was not sober.

You know what this means!

I was undeterred, friends. I went, ALONE, and saw Twilight Three: A Gentle Parable About Virginity, Violent Sex and Nightmarish Apocalyptic Demon Babies. This movie was fucking awesome. It was so terrible it transcended its own terribleness and achieved a state of blissful filmic enlightenment. I have seen it twice. I will probably see it again this weekend. This movie is absolutely everything. Breaking Dawn is an urtext. This is a movie about which there should (and likely will) be scholarly work. I basically tingled from the opening credits until the end credits I sat through to see the little scene at the end.

I am not a Twihard. I started to read the first book but could not get through it because, on a fundamental level, I cannot read exceptionally bad writing. My brain refuses. The story is great. I am so down with the glorious ridiculousness of the Twilight story but how that story is conveyed is so deeply problematic. Sometimes, it felt like Meyers wasn’t even using English to write her book. I’m not going to hate on the franchise too much, though. The critical reaction to Twilight is a bit excessive. Given some of the terrible movies I’ve seen lately, Twilight 3 doesn’t begin to achieve an obnoxious level of offensive badness. Twilight is good terrible whereas Immortals, for example, is bad terrible. The books, also. We just all need to take a deep breath. Literature and film will go on. It’s all going to be fine. People spend more time focusing on what they know about the writer’s personal life than the books itself. She’s Mormon. So what? It’s a religion. Most people have one. Her books, though, shouldn’t be judged on the basis of her religion. That’s stupid and lazy.

(Worry not, I address the ridiculous conservative morality of the movie.)

The great thing about not being a Twihard is that from one movie to the next, I have no real idea what happens so it’s all very surprising and new to me. When the books were at the height of their popularity, I read the summaries on WIkipedia so I could be caught up on the basic premise and talk to people but beyond that, no clue.

The theater was basically full for a small town matinee at one in the afternoon. I was reminded that this franchise essentially gets to mint its own money. Note to self: come up with next money printing book idea. I feel like nymphomaniac mummies might be where it’s at.

Breaking Dawn opens with Jacob receiving a piece of paper he doesn’t like. That paper offends his mortal coil. He petulantly throws it to the ground and if you’ve seen the first two movies, you know exactly what happens next. He rips off his shirt, revealing his absolutely unreal chest situation, and runs into the woods to sulk like a lone teen wolf. If I could have, I would have run into the movie screen to chase after him.

RAWR!

I am not Team Edward but neither am I Team Jacob. Jacob is not attractive to me and also when he speaks he ruins everything because he can’t act and never comes off as anything put a spoiled wolf child.

In his wake, on the ground, in the rain, we see a wedding invitation.

OMG! EDWARD AND BELLA ARE GETTING MARRIED BECAUSE THEY ARE TRULUV4EVA!!!!

That body, though. If he and I were alone in a room I would get to know every pack on his chest, all 111 of them and I would treat them well. And his arms. Jesus Christ. BODY BY JAKE (HAHAHAHA). If you are old like me, you will get that reference.

Jailbait? Yes. But that’s grown man chest business. Grown. Man. Let’s just…admire his assets for a minute. We have time. (I cover his face with my thumb.)

Mmmm.

We see Bella’s mom smiling at the wedding invitation, telling her husband, “It’s really happening,” and her father is studying his invitation with the one facial expression he is allowed to use across all four Twilight movies–sullen, emotionally closed off, sort of bumbling but deeply devoted dad face. No one spends too much time on the fact that Bella is only 18! She cannot drink at her own wedding. This is a problem.

At the Cullen’s amazing, way-fancier-than-IKEA modern home, Bella is trying to walk in heels. This is one of the most believable moments of the movie because there’s a very thin line between Bella Swan and Kristen Stewart. Alice is fussing over the proceedings because she is, as you might expect, the wedding planner. When Bella looks up, she sees Edward, brooding on his balcony and somehow she doesn’t back out of the wedding even though her husband to be looks like he is sucking on a lemon.

This is a visual approximation of Edward’s face throughout the movie:

I do not get Edward as a romantic interest. I do not find him attractive. His chin is upsetting. His hair is thin and weird and not interesting though the franchise keeps trying to make his hair happen which is also upsetting. He’s such a cock blocker, always playing the prude and always worrying about “hurting” Bella, as if he cannot imagine that she might actually be strong OR a masochist who likes the hurt. I think she’s both. He’s the weak one, not Bella, and it’s so annoying that his bullshit is supposed to be romantic and heroic. It’s like, how many times can you ask her if she wants to change her mind? WTF? SHUT UP DUDE. ACCEPT HER VIRGIN LOVE! Ugh. Robert Pattinson is terrible casting and it upsets me to my deepest core that he is supposed to be the hottest vampire in the history of vampires. I’ve seen hotter. In Transylvania, Pattinson is just regular.

Bella goes home, per Alice’s orders, to get some “beauty sleep” and of course, Edward magically appears in her bedroom like the weird stalker creep he is. They have a moment completely lacking in chemistry but fine, whatever, I will suspend my disbelief and accept that they have a monumental love of a lifetime worth dying and then living forever for. Can you imagine, though, spending eternity with someone? I have had a pretty great relationship in my life but I still don’t want to have to put up with him for the next millenium. Five hundred years, maybe, but anything more than that seems excessive. Edward’s fake vampire brothers show up, and shout up to him that it’s time for his bachelor party. When Bella asks if there will be strippers, one of the brothers shouts, “Boring,” and Edward gives his thin-lipped creeper smile and says, “Maybe a mountain lion or bear,” because they’re going to hunt to celebrate his wedding. It’s a little (a lot) disturbing but maybe that’s just my hang up. I fucking hate that the Cullens are “good vampires” who only drink animal blood. That’s such a cop out. If you’re going to be a vampire, be a goddamned vampire and drink human blood is what I am saying. As he leaves, Edward says, “I’ll see you at the altar,” and Bella says, “I’ll be there, wearing white.” There’s so much puritanical subtext in this movie and also, it has to be said, a psychologist would have a field day with Stephenie Meyer. That woman is disturbed. My most deviant story does not come CLOSE to the level of fucked up shit in this movie but hey, I applaud Meyer for that commitment to darkness.

While she slumbers, Bella has a wedding jitters nightmare but it’s boring so I won’t tell you about it. The next morning, it is wedding time! Soon there will be sex! Back at the Cullen’s, where 77% of the movie will take place, Alice and Rosalie help Bella get pretty. Rosalie and Bella are totes BFFs now even though Rosalie still thinks Bella is an ingrate for willing to sacrifice life. Bella has a quality moment with her parents and then she prepares to greet the undead. The wedding is supposed to be “every girl’s fantasy wedding,” and I suppose it is if you like wood nymphs and rustic “there were flowers in her hair,” as the overall vibe. As she starts to walk down the aisle, she grips her father’s arm and does that patented Stewart face acting to convey anxiety about the things an 18-year old about to marry a very old vampire might be anxious about–death, eternity, subsisting on blood for all of said eternity–you know, the usual. As they walk down the aisle Bella says, “Don’t let me fall,” and her father says, “Never.” Touching family moment!

Edward gives his pointy chin creepy smile and the preacher is all, FUCK CEREMONY (kinda like this) and jumps immediately into the “will you take” blah blah blah, and they exchange their scripted vows and then kiss for an awkwardly long time with a montage of their greatest love moments while the audience smiles and the father shifts uncomfortably and the human HS BFF girl face acts her snarky, “I’m over this whole thing” attitude. I am pretty sure tongue was involved in the epic kiss and one of those tongues was cold which makes the entire affair rather unappealing if you dwell on it for too long.

During the reception, which lasts approx. two minutes, we meet some vampire “cousins” (OH HAI MIA MAESTRO FROM ALIAS) and it’s pretty absurd because we don’t know enough about who they are for their subtext-laden conversations to mean anything or, I suppose, those conversations meant nothing because I did not read the book. There’s champagne and lots of speeches from one of Edward’s brothers and Alice and the Cullen parents and Bella’s dad and there’s levity as Bella’s dad says, “I know Edward is going to be a good husband because I’m a cop. I can hunt,” and so on. Suddenly, Edward senses something with his Magic Vampire Powers and he tells Bella, “Another one of your presents is here,” and she acts all surprised. A present? Moi? You shouldn’t have, Eddie. They step away from the reception and behold! It is the lone wolf! Jacob appeareth from the dark shadows of the forest. He and Bella have a touching moment where we are reminded of a bond that has never truly been established in any convincing manner in any of the three movies but because they tell us it is so, we must believe it is so. That’s also how government works.

Edward lurks creepily and thanks Jacob for coming and then Jacob and Bella start slow dancing and it’s awkward because he’s so into her and she is not feeling him that way. He breaks into soliloquy and tells Bella, yet again, that he’s going to remember her the way she is in that moment with red cheeks and warm skin and a beating heart but because Lautner can’t act, it’s super uncomfortable and he sounds like a serial killer. Bella casually drops, “Oh by the by, I won’t be undead tomorrow,” and Jacob fucking FLIPS OUT and I’m all, WHAT IS GOING ON??? I seriously started feeling panicky because he was so intense. He was indignant as hell, telling her it was too dangerous and so on. He starts shaking Bella and Edward, of course, shows up like the stalker he is, and tells Jake to calm down. Some other wolves show up and the Alpha male, Sam, orders Jacob to back down. We learn something important though. Good news! Vampire sex is incredibly rough and violent and poor little Bella might not be able to take it.

I’ll be honest. This is when I started getting super interested in the movie. I was on the edge of my seat because we were about to venture into the territory of my very favorite things. The next two pictures adequately capture how I felt at this point and for the rest of this amazing movie.

(Hail Oprah!)

Jacob sulks off again. He spends most of his time and energy sulking and running shirtless through the woods so it’s nothing new. Bella says goodbye to her parents and then she is whisked off to a mystery location which is forecasted to us by the big Jesus statue looming over the horizon. You may recall: we’ve discussed this before. Any movie with any scene that takes place in Rio will involve the Christ the Redeemer statue. It is movie law. You will never, ever find a movie set in Rio without this statue. Ever. For serious. Write this down please.

The newlyweds drive through Rio with the most clichéd possible montage of Rio streets–brown people dancing and music and narrow streets and so on. They stop their car and get out at this alley where people are dancing and it’s not a night club or a cafe, it’s just an alley so maybe it’s a private party? Who knows. Edward and Bella, wholly entitled, simply join the party because they are so happy and in love!

Later, the newlyweds are at a dock. They get in a boat and Edward explains they are going to Isla Esme, a private island Carlisle bought for them (?!?!?!!!). I would totally marry one of the extra Cullens. I’m just saying, I could handle a private island.

I was so ready for prima nocta. After all the dry sexual tension of the first two movies, I wanted to see bodies bumping and nothing else would suffice. Edward showed Bella around one of the most gorgeous homes imaginable, perfectly decorated, and I quietly seethed. Vampires get everything! Then Edward suggested they go for a swim and I got even angrier. Let’s be real. All anyone wanted to see in this third movie was sex sanctified by marriage so the preamble was getting old. Frankly, the movie should have just started with boning. But fine, whatever. Tru luv waits. And waits. And waits. While Edward walked out on the beach, Bella went to “prepare” to be deflowered. It was actually a charming scene. She stared at herself in the mirror and looked through the suitcase Alice packed for her, conveying that she was scandalized at the “racy” lingerie choices. She shaved her legs and brushed her teeth. Finally, she walked out to the beach in a towel, let it fall, and slowly entered the water. The pale bodies of Edward and Bella were, I assure you, BRIGHTER THAN THE MOON. I was like, “Well, there’s a clear case for spray tan if I’ve ever seen one.”

The young lovers embrace and begin kissing and soon, they are in a gorgeous canopy bed and Edward is nervous and Bella is eye fucking him and her body is practically shouting, “NAIL ME ALREADY!” For the first time, you could see real chemistry between these two. I won’t lie. It was a sexy series of moments. You could hear everyone in the theater collectively hold their breath. Finally! We were going to get the vampire porn we’ve been waiting for! Edward kept on being weird and nervous and Bella seemed a little virgin nervous but mostly calm and confident. Finally, he manned up as best he could. Kiss kiss kiss and then we don’t SEE Tab A inserted into Slot B but you get the gist of the thing and Edward grabs on to the headboard to control himself and the muscles in his pale back flex sexily and he BREAKS THE HEADBOARD.

I truly did not think that little man had such a nice upper body but I stand corrected.

As I live and breathe, I almost passed out from excitement. The sex scene was hotter than I expected. He broke. the. headboard. WANT!

Also, I am guessing Bella’s hymen was broken but she seemed totally fine with it. After their passionate joining together of bodies and souls, they fell asleep.

In the morning, Bella opens her eyes, alone in bed, naked, down feathers floating in the air. SO DREAMY. The whole thing totally romanticized The First Time–a total falsity, yes, but still, kind of sweet.

The camera pans out and we can see that their sex was WILD. I was half-expecting to see bloody sheets which would have taken this movie to a whole other level. The bed is completely destroyed. Pillows have been shredded. Incredible sex has been had. If I had been part of a couple who damaged a room like that, we would HIGH FIVE! Bella goes to the bathroom and stares at herself in the mirror, wondering, “Do I still look like a virgin?” Edward walks up behind her. YES! MORE SEX PLZ! Edward, of course, is still such a cockblocker. Bella is clearly lusty and ripe and ready for another round of violent vampire sex but Edward sees a few faint bruises and freaks out. It’s so… ridiculous. The bruises are, frankly, mild–the kind you might get from doing IT RIGHT. This is why the Edward/Bella love story is so gross at times. He is so hell bent on “protecting” her like she is a glass statue. He totally makes all the decisions in their relationship. It’s a 1950s marriage or a “surrendered wife” marriage. I cannot with the way he treats her. Gross.

There’s a montage where Bella tries to get Eddie to bone her and he keeps pushing her away. They play a few games of chess and stare at each other and kiss and cuddle and she prances around in skimpy outfits but Edward stays “strong” and “resolute” and Bella practically dies of sexual frustration. The audience is right there with her. I mean, right there. Because we’ve been waiting years and the whole point of seeing this movie was to see a lot of inspired, passionate, rough vampire sex.

This is called DOING YOUR HONEYMOON WRONG! If my future husband (see: above personal ad) suggests chess on our honeymoon, we’re annulling that marriage. In this image, Edward uses his pinky to approximate his penis size. That is the only explanation I will accept. WE HATES HIM!

This comes down to control–Edward has to have it. He likes Bella pining for him and begging him to nail her. He wants to keep her wanting and needy and weakened by her desire. As he keeps her at arms length and teases her and smiles condescendingly at her efforts to seduce him, you can tell he’s eating that shit up. Edward, it would seem, is a sadist. There’s nothing wrong with that but he needs to own it. Be who you are, man. Be who you are.

Finally, Edward breaks down and they have sex once more and it’s great. We know this because they do that sexy sitting up to get down move that is awesome and intimate and only works for skinny people. Still, the whole “I married you but won’t nail you” thing has a really uncomfortable, “There’s a moral to this story,” vibe–even when true love waits and you have sex only after your married, you really ought not to have to much of the sex. Sex is for sinners.

There’s a little subplot involving the Brazilian housekeepers, a husband and wife, and she knows Edward is undead and she does not approve. She spends most of her time glaring at Edward and pursing her lips and doing her own version of Blue Steel.

It’s weird but even though he is in a sun drenched locale, Edward doesn’t sparkle ONCE! He’s supposed to sparkle in the sun. I remember that from the first two movies. His alabaster white skin twinkling like diamonds in the sky. I wanted sparkle, damnit.

After two weeks in wedded bliss on their private island in South America, Bella wakes up, finds Edward gone to the mainland, and she’s hungry from all that rough sex (who wouldn’t be) so she prepares herself a random breakfast of chicken legs and starts eating them ravenously. At one point, we see exposed bloody bone. This movie is nothing, if not subtle in its foreshadowing. Suddenly, she runs to the bathroom and proceeds to return that chicken to the toilet where it damn well belongs. You know what this means.YOU KNOW IT. We have talked about this, too.

Edward comes home and sees Bella vomiting and she’s all, “Go away. You don’t need to see this,” but he’s creepy and overprotective (like the husband in Sleeping with the Enemy for real) so he rushes to her side and holds her hair. She’s trying to understand her nausea even though it’s so painfully obvious she is movie rule pregnant. She blames the chicken. The chicken always gets blamed. Haters. Suddenly, she looks in her toiletry kit at her tampons and asks Edward how long it has been since they began their somewhat celibate bliss and she realizes OH SNAP I’M LATE. Edward doesn’t quite get it so she goes to the conveniently placed full length mirror and admires her slim profile while holding her stomach and whispers, “It’s not possible.” This movie is like the best sex education possible. All it takes is one time, children. Remember that.

Alice calls and Bella grabs the phone from Edward and they have a brief confab with Carlisle. Edward begins to unravel. He starts freaking out and in a hilarious scene, uses his vampire powers to speedily pack, zooming through the house while Bella watches, confusedly. I really cannot stand how disempowered she always is, letting things happen to her instead of being self-actualized. It’s so… regressive. Anyway, the housekeeper comes and because she is a magical person of color, she senses Bella is pregnant and ominously says Bella is going to die. Edward, who is such a co-dependent little bitch, continues to unravel because if there is no Bella he just can’t go on.

I began to shift in my seat uncomfortably at this point because Edward is all, “We’re going to get rid of it.” IT! Abortion scholars! SEE THIS MOVIE because holy shit, Breaking Dawn is a textbook freak show about life versus choice in the most disturbing, disturbing ways. I could not get ENOUGH of the second half of the movie.

At the airport, Bella mysteriously calls someone and says, “I need your help.” It’s strange and we don’t know what’s going on there but whatever. In the near distance, Edward is talking to someone and there’s a private jet waiting. To be clear, I am still fine with marrying a vampire. I accept all possible consequences.

Back in the States, Bella’s brooding father gets a phone call from Bella explaining she has taken ill and will be gone for a little while longer. Then Charlie goes to his buddy, Jacob’s father’s house and Jacob learns that Bella won’t be coming back for a while and he gets mad and gets on his motorcycle and drives to the Cullen’s.

Teen Wolf storms into the house and we see everyone sitting in stony silence. Edward and one of the other Cullens are standing in front of the couch and Jacob gruffly demands to see Bella. The Cullens stand strong!

Bella, though, is the queen of having cake and eating it too.

She says it’s fine and the men separate and there’s Bella, on the couch, looking terrible, wan and bony. She pushes away the blanket covering her and begins caressing her very protruded belly because vampire babies, they grow so fast! Jacob, of course, freaks out and says Bella must get rid of that thing. For once, he and Edward are on the same page but Bella is fucking zen as hell. (MORALITY PLAY) She is at peace with her pregnancy. (MORALITY PLAY) She’s hell bent on having her baby. (MORALITY PLAY) Edward asks to see Jacob alone for some man talk and he tells Jacob to convince Bella to get rid of that thing growing inside of her. Once again, Edward is trying to micromanage every single decision in Bella’s life. Classic abuser.

The movie gets so horrific at this point, I am fairly surprised it did not get an “R” rating. The moral overtones are so blatant this may as well have been an after school special on the consequences of interspecies sex, rough sex, abortion, and eating disorders.

Bella proceeds to wither away as her demon vampire baby eats her away from the inside. She becomes the epitome of thinspiration, her bones sharpening, her face gray and gaunt, her belly continuing to swell as those around her try to figure out how to keep Bella alive. Rosalie, who turns out to be the one Bella called from the airport, though we don’t know why and never will, is Bella’s Number One Caretaker and the only Cullen who doesn’t want Bella to abort her vampire baby. Carlisle, an expert, it would seem, on interspecies breeding and the ensuing medical complications, gravely informs Bella her heart will give out before she can deliver the baby. He also tells her that the baby has broken one of her ribs. (I MEAN!!!!) He delivers this terrible news during an examination IN THE MEDICAL CLINIC IN HIS HOUSE! Who has a medical clinic in their home? It’s so nonsensical and amazing. Now that I think about it, though, there is a bit of precedent here: Dr. Cliff Huxtable!

Back in the Cullen living room, where most of the movie takes place, Bella hangs out on the couch, wondering what her demon baby could possibly want. (GIRL, THAT BABY WANTS YOUR LIFE!) Suddenly, a revelation! The baby wants blood! Why it took so long for these rocket scientists to figure this out is beyond me. Carlisle says, “I’ve been saving some O-positive for Bella!” I laughed out LOUD! So fantastic. So so fantastic. This movie just went from one ludicrous and thrilling moment to the next. I was just so happy.

Carlisle goes down to his home hospital and returns with a bag of blood. One of the Cullen siblings starts watering at the mouth and Alice suggests he take a walk. Carlisle pours the blood, thick and gross, into a glass and it looks pretty unappealing. Jacob is horrified and says, “I think I’m going to be sick,” for a little levity. Edward is struck by inspiration. He gets a styrofoam cup with a STRAW (OMGLOL) and pours the blood into that and hands Bella her human milkshake. She’s tentative at first but then she’s totally into drinking that blood. She won’t have a problem becoming a vamp. That’s clear. She swishes that blood around in her mouth like a wine connoisseur while everyone watches and then she delivers her verdict. Delicious! The baby likes it too so all is mostly well, though Bella continues to get weaker as her accelerated delivery date approaches. Clearly, marriage sucks.

Things happen with the wolves while all this is going on. Jacob leaves the pack to become a lone wolf and two wolves follow him and he doesn’t really want them around but he grudgingly lets them hang out with him. Sam, the Alpha male of the pack, insists on getting the vampire baby because it is an abomination so there’s that tension. The wolves are roaming the woods so the Cullens can’t feed. Finally, they need to go get more blood so Jacob creates a diversion and so on. It’s not that interesting. The real action is with crazy skinny deeply committed to life pregnant Bella. Her insistence on keeping the baby becomes really disturbing. This is clearly a case where the mother’s life in danger. Even most social conservatives would agree this would be the right time to consider an abortion but not Bella. There’s also a fascinating little vocabulary situation during this part of the movie where some of the characters refer to the baby as a baby and others refer to it as a fetus. Like I said–major text. It’s going to be studied for years to come.

Edward finally realizes he loves his baby and is able to hear the baby’s thoughts when he lays his hand on Bella’s stomach. He’s all, “The baby likes it when you talk! And when I talk!” Yes, genius, the baby you wanted to kill likes you despite every reason not to. You’re a parent. He finally gets over his baby daddy jitters and in the distance, Jacob smolders as he watches the happy family. Poor, poor Jacob. Always on the outside of Bella’s happiness where she holds him tightly in her vixen-like grip. He is such an emotional masochist. With a body like that, he should not be crying over a married woman. I will give him something to dry his wolf tears.

What happens next will put you off of childbirth forever and ever and ever. People were literally gasping and shrieking softly and otherwise expressing discomfort. It was a straight up horror show.

Bella’s on the couch, shivering and cold. Edward (worst baby daddy in the world) feels inadequate because he can’t warm her up. Jacob finally gets to shine and says, “I’ve got this, bitch,” as he stares cold, cold Edward down. He snuggles up to Bella to flood her body with his masculine wolfish warmth, but before he can enjoy that moment, before that poor bastard can get some of that Bella affection for which he is so desperate, Bella screams in agony and then they’re in the home hospital and Carlisle is out on the hunt so the boys are going to have to deliver that baby themselves. Hot water! Clean towels! No wait! Not that kind of labor and delivery!

You are not going to believe what I am about to tell you but it is true.

Bella’s body literally breaks as the baby tries to get out. She screams and arches her back and more ribs break and probably her spine, who knows. She is gray and emaciated and sweating. It’s a repulsive scene that lets you know, birthing babies is serious, terrible business. Edward grabs a scalpel but then he’s all “Fuck this,” and… he, how do I say this… he EATS THE BABY OUT OF BELLA! He performs an oral c-section.

Let me repeat that. He performs an oral c-section–NOM NOM NOM. When he looks up from the hot bloody mess that is Bella’s belly, he kind of looks like this:

I wish I could quantify how horrified and delighted I was at this point but let’s just say, there were tears of joy threatening the corners of my eyes.

Eventually, Edward gets the baby out and it’s a girl! SURPRISE! Bella was so sure it was a boy. The baby has the craziest fucking name–Renesmee. We should talk about that name, right? Their boy name was going to be Edward Jacob but the girl name is Renesmee? It’s their mothers’ names but that’s no excuse. That is a name where the parents are telling their unborn child, “I hate you forever.” Given that they are vampiric, that means, I hate you so much I want you to bear your name for eternity. What terrifies me is that somewhere out there, a Twihard is naming their baby Renesmee right now.

We are not done with the crazy yet.

Edward holds the baby, a big healthy baby, up to Bella and she smiles and touches her child and then she dies. Jacob is strangely calm and says, “You know what, Edward, I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to let you live with what you’ve done.” OOOH BURN!!! Jacob, devastated, goes outside to sulk and mourn. Rosalie takes the baby and goes to sit with her upstairs.

We know how codependent Edward is so he totally takes freaking out to a new level, rending his garments and performing CPR on Bella as if CPR might help anorexia, multiple bone fractures, and a lower abdomen that has been eaten open. I’m not a medical doctor but that seems to be a bit…inadequate. He’s saying desperate love things but Bella just lays there. She’s tired. And also dead. Again, the heavy handed morality is pretty gross–a mother should sacrifice her life for that of her unborn child’s. People! You save the mother’s life! You can make more babies. You can’t make another Bella. I know a little something about this.

Suddenly, Edward starts biting Bella everywhere. It’s disturbing but at this point, the freak show has been in overdrive so you’re pretty numb to it. Then we see inside her body and she starts healing and her bones reassemble themselves but she continues to lay there, still and dead.

Jacob decides he’s going to kill Renesmee because her name is so stupid. He goes to the living room and in another NOT TO BE BELIEVED MOMENT, he makes eye contact with the INFANT GIRL and imprints with her. Imprinting is this extremely co-dependent wolf thing where when a wolf imprints on someone, they are bonded for life where bonded means that the person who has been imprinted now lives for the imprintee. Breaking Dawn was on some next level shit in every way. There is also no fear of pedophilia in this movie–none at all.

Outside, the wolves and vampires are about to rumble because the wolves have come to kill Renesmee. Jacob runs into the center of the melee and points at the wolves and says, “Enough! It’s over!” and they can sense he has imprinted and conveniently enough, when a wolf has imprinted, the person he is imprinted with cannot be harmed. It is the one unbreakable wolf rule to rule them all! The wolves go away, just like that. Imprinting is serious business. Back in the hospital room, the color returns to Bella’s skin and hair and she opens her eyes and that’s it! The movie is over! Dawn has broken completely.

I have no idea what happens next but there’s a lot to process. Jacob imprinted with Renesmee! How, exactly, is that going to work? Bella is no longer human! How will she explain the baby to her human friends and family? How will she explain her sparkling skin in the sun if they remember to include that detail in the last movie? What’s going on with the Volturi? Oral c-section? REALLY? O!M!F!G!

I cannot wait until November 2012. I cannot wait.

(As an aside, the trailer for The Hunger Games is so good it made me want to read the books immediately.)