sistermagpie | Week Off Whining--real life and cinematic

I had a week off and it was weird. I mean...I love this time of year. I always take vacation time around it--in fact, I've got another week off after Thanksgiving where I'm going away. But this was a weird week. I felt...not depressed, exactly, just sort of vulnerable or not quite happy? I kept having these dreams...like on Monday I dreamt I'd gone to South Carolina (??) for the week and then realized, "What am I doing here? I have that lunch with the S editors on Wednesday! I have to get back!" Then I realized it was a dream and if I opened my eyes I'd be back in my own bed. So I did. And I was still in South Carolina. Yes, it was a dream within a dream. Finally I woke up for real in my own bed, with a splitting headache and my period. Lovely. Then the next morning I had some sad dream about not ever having children.

I dream about children a lot. Having them, I mean. For a while it was always my roommate who was having them in the dream, but now I'm the one who gets pregnant and has kids. I don't think they're literally about children, though. They're probably about the creation process in general. This dream, I think, had something to do with never producing anything of worth creatively and that feeling's hung over me all week.

Had the lunch with the S editors on Wednesday and it was good and bad. Apparently the people at the Cartoon Network loved the books P&I did, as did the S editors, but the book series is still being cancelled before the last two come out. They said they'd try to find a model that they were going to use for the covers. This is very sad, because I especially loved the last book we did. They were trying to come up with other series they were doing that we'd be right for, but everything seems to be getting really young and activity-oriented. Anyway, they'll let us know if they get a good license and we've still got the one series we're still working on and for that I am very very grateful every day. The best part was that they asked us if we were working on anything original and we told them a little bit about the original thing we're doing and they seemed to like it so we know they want to look at it when we finish the proposal.

Meanwhile, I have written many words of my own thing on my days off. The bad thing is, the words suck. Oh, I'm pushing forward, but it's hard to type over the little suck suck suck voice in my head. When I was in high school I once had to give an oral report in French and halfway through it I got dizzy and passed out. Usually I have no trouble speaking in front of people, but standing up at the podium, looking out at everyone and thinking they had no idea what I was saying so that I was just going to have to sit up there and be boring and awful for the entire period...it was too much. I would rather look a fool than bore people by force (hey, you didn't have to click on the cut tag!). I was writing a scene this morning and I felt the same way. I like to write so every word is important, going somewhere, saying something, but right now I feel like I'm just nattering on. Blah blah blah blah blah--who cares? Hopefully when I get to the end I'll be able to start over and pick out the good stuff and play that up while cutting out the stupid stuff but...it's weird how at a loss I feel.

One thing I did do was rent movies--three movies everybody else probably saw last year and I missed, so

Catch Me If You Can

This movie was better than I thought it would be. I suspected the Christopher Walken/Leonardo DiCaprio parts would be interesting (I actually like Leonardo DiCaprio, though I thought Gangs of New York was pretty bad) but the whole thing held together well, I thought. It had the effect it was supposed to have: I wanted Frank to get away and I wanted Handratty to catch him at the same time. The father/son ending was nicely satisfying. It also used music well. Some of his schemes were fun. Also, it was nice the way you could just have fun with his lying because he didn't actually ruin anyone's life except maybe that girl's, but she seemed like she so desperately wanted to be taken in by anybody it didn't matter as much.

Bend It Like Beckham

Love Parminda Nagra. Loved this movie. Don't know what really to say about it, since it sort of speaks for itself.

Attack of the Clones

Good god, what a travesty. Darth Vader as a whiny teenager? Why god, why??!! I mean, Luke at least had a reason to be whiny. He'd been stuck doing his chores on the farm while his friends all went off the the Academy. Even when he was whining he had a point, and underneath it all he had a healthy respect for Obi-Wan. But Anakin--yuck! He was already getting all this attention, getting the training (and his teacher was a young Obi-Wan who is Ewan who is georgeous!!) but it still wasn't enough. Wah wah wah. No matter how talented everybody said he was it was hard to believe it. Why was he having such a fit about his mother getting killed anyway? I mean, how did becoming the Emperor's right-hand-man in any way relate to his mother being killed by a random band of sand people because she went out picking mushrooms? (And it's not like he took care of those sand people anyway--Obi-Wan ends up having to save Luke from them in ANH.)

His big love affair with Amidala was too cringeworthy for words. The sand pickup line was even worse than I expected. And why, again, must the movie bring up the thing that drove me crazy in Phantom Menace, the idea that Amidala had been ELECTED queen? You don't elect queens. And if you were going to elect one, why would you elect a 14-year-old girl? But there's awful Natalie Portman nattering on, "I wasn't even the youngest queen ever elected...well, I'd served my two terms in office and the constitution says that's all anyone can serve..." SHUT UP!

Oh, on one high point, I enjoyed Yoda fighting with Christopher Lee. I guess you either think it's ridiculous or delightfully amusing and I went for delightfully amused. But other than that the only high points (besides looking at Ewan) were cameos from the future--look! It's Boba Fett! It's the hydro-farm! Hee hee! Owen and his girlfriend Baroo! But then when I saw those things I always wanted to just skip ahead to the real story.

I think I will have to stick with my own imagination when it comes to imagining how Anakin became Darth Vader. Honestly, the hints you get in SW are far more interesting. Obi-Wan says Anakin was a great pilot and a good friend. This kid does not come across as a good friend. He's just an adolescent loose canon. In Phantom Menace the best moment was when Obi-Wan and cutesy Anakin met each other, just because you knew how that relationship would end. In this movie poor Obi-Wan's having to make little jokes like, "You're going to be the death of me," and it's just...so not funny. Not funny because at least in Phantom Menace (which was also pretty abysmal) you could imagine that these two men would develop a deep friendship that would be betrayed. Here it just seemed like Obi-Wan was forced to babysit an annoying teenager who was too self-centered and stupid to not end up killing him in a tantrum. Again, as whiny as Luke could be, at least he didn't blame other people for everything wrong in his life, even Uncle Owen. Anakin (excuse me--I mean "Ani" Jesus, what are they thinking with that nickname?) was just a brat. Darth Vader's line, "Now I am the master," in ANH now takes on a totally different meaning. Instead of a man who still genuinely respects his master he's just still strutting around and whining.

In summary, Luke and Leia could kick their parents' asses and I will now always assume that when Obi-Wan met Han he was thinking, "Damn, it I was several decades younger this guy and I would have such a good time together..."

I can't believe I just wrote that much on a movie I groaned through. Wait, yes I can.

Also, I am wearing about 8 layers of clothing and a scarf. The violent winds are whistling through the apartment even though the windows are all closed because the walls are full of cracks. I think of it as the Bob Cratchitt-effect, with me pounding away at my computer while my fingers and nose get red from the cold.

I shall now clean my room. Dust it, vacuum it, get the piles of papers and notes off the floor, and light some nice incense. Better yet I'll light my aromatherapy thingie with the wintery oil. I feel this should inspire me to new levels of creativity and appease the Gods of Suck.

Return of the King is going to kill me, btw. What am I going to do next December with no more LOTR movies to look forward too? It's become as much a part of this time of year as the leaves and the wind whistling through the holes in the walls.

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Figlio Perduto