I am not a poet. But I am trying to get myself ready for a semester of Capstone work, and this is what came out from thinking about my Capstone this evening. Maybe posting this is the therapeutic part of writing it. Enjoy!
In her dreams
He's
One giant pill
The big blue rectangle, not the harmless white circle
And she can’t tell the difference
Between that
And the real thing
She thinks she should stop him
But there’s nothing you can do, she tells herself
You’re only 16, she says to the mirror
He did this to himself, she whispers to her teddy bear
But it doesn’t help
Dull the pain she feels
For letting it happen to him
The guilt keeps building
Everywhere she is, Guilt is too
Until she thinks she’s going to break
Burst at the fraying thread seams
And the burden of keeping it a secret cripples her
And she wonders how they don’t know
Pills rattle again and again
Disappearing one after another after another
Until there is nothing left of him
Her parents don’t notice
Until it is much too late to save him
Mother cries, Father yells
Then Father cries and Mother yells
And they ask her: did she know?
Did she know?
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Fighter: horrendous title, amazing film
There are very few movies that I like. There are even less that I love. And when I love a movie, I really, really love it and will defend it to almost any length. The Fighter was one such movie.
I have a list of celebrities that I would kill my own mother to converse with.(Okay, not literally, please no one call the cops on me.) I refer to them as the "top five" and I have a poster of each hanging on the wall of my bedroom. They are as follows, in order of importance to me: Russell Crowe, Vin Diesel, Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, and Bradley Cooper. Now let's take a moment to think about the actors in The Fighter: Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. I was in love before it started.
While the amount of eye candy was high for the film, that isn't why I loved it. It was honest. It was heart-breaking. And while it was about a man who was a boxer, it wasn't about fighting. It never lost sight of the real story: the struggle to separate yourself from the people and things that are holding you back in pursuit of your dreams. In the case of Micky Ward, flawlessly acted by Marky Mark himself, he faces an internal struggle about whether he should ditch his drug addict brother Dicky (Christian Bale) as his trainer in an effort to further his boxing career, or whether his family is more important than a job.
As if this were not enough to fuel the story along, throw into the mix his cannonball of a mother, Alice, and his opinionated sisters, of which there are seven, and the girlfriend (Amy Adams) who comes along to try to convince him that his family members are all scumbags and even gets into a fist fight with one of them, and you've got yourself a wonderful film that is sure to be nominated for a couple of awards.
I've read a lot of reviews of this film that have said that it's an inspirational story of a man finally catching a break, but I'm not sure that's quite right. I think it’s the story of a man finding his inner strength and the courage to stand up to his family and demand that he finally get the respect that he deserves. I think it's about a man who learns to stand on his own two feet and cut the ties from the brother that he's legended. It's also about his brother letting him become his own man.
Like I said, it's not often that I find a movie that I love. But when I do, it's a true champion. It's even less often when I can't find anything bad to say about a movie, but I have nothing bad to say. This is a film that everyone should see. Regardless of whether they like boxing.
I have a list of celebrities that I would kill my own mother to converse with.(Okay, not literally, please no one call the cops on me.) I refer to them as the "top five" and I have a poster of each hanging on the wall of my bedroom. They are as follows, in order of importance to me: Russell Crowe, Vin Diesel, Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, and Bradley Cooper. Now let's take a moment to think about the actors in The Fighter: Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. I was in love before it started.
While the amount of eye candy was high for the film, that isn't why I loved it. It was honest. It was heart-breaking. And while it was about a man who was a boxer, it wasn't about fighting. It never lost sight of the real story: the struggle to separate yourself from the people and things that are holding you back in pursuit of your dreams. In the case of Micky Ward, flawlessly acted by Marky Mark himself, he faces an internal struggle about whether he should ditch his drug addict brother Dicky (Christian Bale) as his trainer in an effort to further his boxing career, or whether his family is more important than a job.
As if this were not enough to fuel the story along, throw into the mix his cannonball of a mother, Alice, and his opinionated sisters, of which there are seven, and the girlfriend (Amy Adams) who comes along to try to convince him that his family members are all scumbags and even gets into a fist fight with one of them, and you've got yourself a wonderful film that is sure to be nominated for a couple of awards.
I've read a lot of reviews of this film that have said that it's an inspirational story of a man finally catching a break, but I'm not sure that's quite right. I think it’s the story of a man finding his inner strength and the courage to stand up to his family and demand that he finally get the respect that he deserves. I think it's about a man who learns to stand on his own two feet and cut the ties from the brother that he's legended. It's also about his brother letting him become his own man.
Like I said, it's not often that I find a movie that I love. But when I do, it's a true champion. It's even less often when I can't find anything bad to say about a movie, but I have nothing bad to say. This is a film that everyone should see. Regardless of whether they like boxing.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
A little rant
I hate texting. No, not hate, loathe. If I were to ever meet the person who invented texting I would give them a big ole' Archie slap right across their face. (Side note: if you don't know what an Archie slap is, check out Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla immediately.) I would slap them and then I would storm away in a huff.
Sure, texting is useful for some things. When my roommate's at work and I need to remind her to pay the bills when she gets home, it would be inappropriate to call, but I will probably forget before I actually see her, so I send her a quick text to remind her. When I'm bored in class, I occasionally text to pass the time. The other day my mother sent me a picture of their Christmas tree and it was nice because a phone call describing it would not have done it justice. If I want to tell someone something quick that doesn't need any sort of response, a text works nicely. So, I admit that it's useful at time, but in general, I hate it.
And I can't escape because that's the primary way that people are communicating. I can't remember the last time my phone rang and it was anyone other than my mother or father calling. People text, so I text. I'm just like everyone else--I want to be kept in the loop and I'm afraid that I'll miss all the gossip and invitations to do stuff if I didn't.
I hate how fake everyone is through text. It's like how I imagine online dating to be--you're only going to show your best side and hide away all your craziness and neurosis to unleash at a time when you are having that actual, rare face-to-face interaction. I hate getting to know someone through texting. It takes me an hour to think of something clever, yet casual, to say, and then another hour analyzing what I sent and thinking of all the better things I could have said. And by then he's responded and I have to think of more endearing things to say.
I'm not witty over text. I'm not funny or engaging. I came across as soulless and flat as the piece of technology that I’m being read and analyzed over. You can't be sarcastic over text or pick on someone affectionately--you end up coming across as a snide, rude bitch. Which I am not. (Obviously.)
And then you find yourself sitting with your phone in your lap, willing it to go off, channeling all of your telekinetic powers to tell that phone to flash the message you've been waiting for. And when it doesn't, you obsessively read through your text conversation, searching for what you said wrong. Did he really think that funny story that you sent him was funny or was his "haha" just being polite? And maybe you should have been a little more open-ended and inviting with your responses to his questions. Remember all that craziness and neurosis that I was talking about before? Well it's in full force now.
I have a phone. It dials and accepts calls. Try it sometime. We can have an actual conversation. You can use that conversation to ask me out on a real date, where I can be awkward and vulnerable instead of just being a series of perfectly pieced together texts. I'll say something, you can say something back, you can ask questions, I can answer them and ask you more, and we can really get to know each other, neurosis and all.
Sure, texting is useful for some things. When my roommate's at work and I need to remind her to pay the bills when she gets home, it would be inappropriate to call, but I will probably forget before I actually see her, so I send her a quick text to remind her. When I'm bored in class, I occasionally text to pass the time. The other day my mother sent me a picture of their Christmas tree and it was nice because a phone call describing it would not have done it justice. If I want to tell someone something quick that doesn't need any sort of response, a text works nicely. So, I admit that it's useful at time, but in general, I hate it.
And I can't escape because that's the primary way that people are communicating. I can't remember the last time my phone rang and it was anyone other than my mother or father calling. People text, so I text. I'm just like everyone else--I want to be kept in the loop and I'm afraid that I'll miss all the gossip and invitations to do stuff if I didn't.
I hate how fake everyone is through text. It's like how I imagine online dating to be--you're only going to show your best side and hide away all your craziness and neurosis to unleash at a time when you are having that actual, rare face-to-face interaction. I hate getting to know someone through texting. It takes me an hour to think of something clever, yet casual, to say, and then another hour analyzing what I sent and thinking of all the better things I could have said. And by then he's responded and I have to think of more endearing things to say.
I'm not witty over text. I'm not funny or engaging. I came across as soulless and flat as the piece of technology that I’m being read and analyzed over. You can't be sarcastic over text or pick on someone affectionately--you end up coming across as a snide, rude bitch. Which I am not. (Obviously.)
And then you find yourself sitting with your phone in your lap, willing it to go off, channeling all of your telekinetic powers to tell that phone to flash the message you've been waiting for. And when it doesn't, you obsessively read through your text conversation, searching for what you said wrong. Did he really think that funny story that you sent him was funny or was his "haha" just being polite? And maybe you should have been a little more open-ended and inviting with your responses to his questions. Remember all that craziness and neurosis that I was talking about before? Well it's in full force now.
I have a phone. It dials and accepts calls. Try it sometime. We can have an actual conversation. You can use that conversation to ask me out on a real date, where I can be awkward and vulnerable instead of just being a series of perfectly pieced together texts. I'll say something, you can say something back, you can ask questions, I can answer them and ask you more, and we can really get to know each other, neurosis and all.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Childhood just got a little less cuddly
Last weekend, I went to New York state with my parents and brother to go Christmas shopping at the outlets and while my brother and I were enjoying the pool at our hotel, we took a walk down Nostalgia Lane, and it made me realize that sets my childhood apart from a lot of other people I know.
When my brother and I were little (me a lot littler than him since he’s seven years older), our parents did not care what we watched. And I mean, did not care one bit. Their motto was that if we were old enough to turn on the channel or put in the movie, we were old enough to watch it. And in their mind, there was absolutely no distinction between an animated film and a cartoon. As a result, I have never seen Barney, Sesame Street, or Blue’s Clues. Even as a child I had good sense enough to watch something else.
Also as a result, I have an interesting collection of films that characterize my childhood. This is a list that I would like to share since it’s surprising to me that number of people who have never seen, or heard of, any of these films. And you really should watch them if you have not.
!) The Flight of Dragons
In a world where humanity is turning to logic over magic, Carolinus the green wizard decides to build a shield around the magical world to preserve it for all eternity. Ommendon the red wizard and Carolinus’ brother (and appropriately voiced by James Earl Jones) stands in his way, so Carolinus must call for a quest to steal Ommendon’s red crown and the source of his power. The quest is led by a man named Peter Dickinson (who is also the author of the book that the film is based on, and voiced by the late John Ritter), who is the first man to come from both worlds or science and magic. He is joined on his quest by a dragon, a knight, a forest elf, an undead world, and an archer in a series of delightful and horrific episodes that he must endure throughout his journey to face Ommendon.
2) The Last Unicorn
Alright, so I know a lot of people who are familiar with this film, but it is more than worth mentioning for those of you who are not. This is the tale of a unicorn who hears a rumor that a great bull had rounded up all the other unicorns and shepherded them into the sea, and she is the last. This leads her to leave the comfort of her forest and embark on a quest to find and rescue the others. Accompanied by a wizard who inadvertently turns her into a human and a forest thief’s wife who has lost all hope in the world, she must save the others before the bull entraps her too.
(The unicorns running from the red bull.)
3) Wizards
Similar to Flight of the Dragons in that it tackles a similar magic vs. technology theme, this is a tale set in a post-apocalyptic world where a wizard named Avatar must save the world from his evil twin brother, Blackwolf, who likes to confuse his enemies in battle by projecting films of Adolf Hitler speeches. Avatar is also joined by a promiscuous elf queen, a vengeful and short-tempered elf soldier, and an assassin named Peace who is struggling to break free of Blackwolf’s mental conditioning. This is definitely one of the more adult films that I watched as a child, and the message is much more powerful than I was able to handle as a child, but now that I’m older I have a much greater appreciation of the film I enjoyed so much as a child.
(The assassin, Peace.)
4) Watership Down
I’m going to assume that everyone has seen, read, or heard of this film. I think it’s safe to say that this is a movie that traumatized everyone’s childhood, but in case I’m wrong, I will say this: it’s about bunnies dying. Bunnies drowning, bunnies getting shot, dead dead bunnies. And there really isn’t anything else to say about it.
(Yes, this was the necessary photo.)
5) Dot and the Bunny
A mix of animation and live action footage (much to the vein of Wizards only far less disturbing in nature), this chronicles the tale of young Dot on her adventure through the Australian outback. Dot makes a promise to a mother kangaroo to find her lost joey, and an orphaned rabbit overhears this and pretends to be a kangaroo in order to get a mother. This is a much less violent and adult-content film than the others, but it does have a bittersweet quality to it: Dot can’t stand the bunny and tries to abandon it at every turn, and the rabbit is all alone having no parents or family of its own.
(Sorry this picture sucks, there wasn't a lot out there!)
So, as you can tell, I was pretty into quests as a child. I was also into obscure films that you can’t get on dvd now (but are well worth busting out the vhs player for), and that I probably shouldn’t have been watching as a child. Maybe it explains a fair amount about the person that I ended up becoming. Or maybe not. You decide.
Whatever you do, check these films out if you haven’t already seen them.
When my brother and I were little (me a lot littler than him since he’s seven years older), our parents did not care what we watched. And I mean, did not care one bit. Their motto was that if we were old enough to turn on the channel or put in the movie, we were old enough to watch it. And in their mind, there was absolutely no distinction between an animated film and a cartoon. As a result, I have never seen Barney, Sesame Street, or Blue’s Clues. Even as a child I had good sense enough to watch something else.
Also as a result, I have an interesting collection of films that characterize my childhood. This is a list that I would like to share since it’s surprising to me that number of people who have never seen, or heard of, any of these films. And you really should watch them if you have not.
!) The Flight of Dragons
In a world where humanity is turning to logic over magic, Carolinus the green wizard decides to build a shield around the magical world to preserve it for all eternity. Ommendon the red wizard and Carolinus’ brother (and appropriately voiced by James Earl Jones) stands in his way, so Carolinus must call for a quest to steal Ommendon’s red crown and the source of his power. The quest is led by a man named Peter Dickinson (who is also the author of the book that the film is based on, and voiced by the late John Ritter), who is the first man to come from both worlds or science and magic. He is joined on his quest by a dragon, a knight, a forest elf, an undead world, and an archer in a series of delightful and horrific episodes that he must endure throughout his journey to face Ommendon.
(Peter Dicksons' first encounter with a dragon.)
2) The Last Unicorn
Alright, so I know a lot of people who are familiar with this film, but it is more than worth mentioning for those of you who are not. This is the tale of a unicorn who hears a rumor that a great bull had rounded up all the other unicorns and shepherded them into the sea, and she is the last. This leads her to leave the comfort of her forest and embark on a quest to find and rescue the others. Accompanied by a wizard who inadvertently turns her into a human and a forest thief’s wife who has lost all hope in the world, she must save the others before the bull entraps her too.
3) Wizards
Similar to Flight of the Dragons in that it tackles a similar magic vs. technology theme, this is a tale set in a post-apocalyptic world where a wizard named Avatar must save the world from his evil twin brother, Blackwolf, who likes to confuse his enemies in battle by projecting films of Adolf Hitler speeches. Avatar is also joined by a promiscuous elf queen, a vengeful and short-tempered elf soldier, and an assassin named Peace who is struggling to break free of Blackwolf’s mental conditioning. This is definitely one of the more adult films that I watched as a child, and the message is much more powerful than I was able to handle as a child, but now that I’m older I have a much greater appreciation of the film I enjoyed so much as a child.
4) Watership Down
I’m going to assume that everyone has seen, read, or heard of this film. I think it’s safe to say that this is a movie that traumatized everyone’s childhood, but in case I’m wrong, I will say this: it’s about bunnies dying. Bunnies drowning, bunnies getting shot, dead dead bunnies. And there really isn’t anything else to say about it.
5) Dot and the Bunny
A mix of animation and live action footage (much to the vein of Wizards only far less disturbing in nature), this chronicles the tale of young Dot on her adventure through the Australian outback. Dot makes a promise to a mother kangaroo to find her lost joey, and an orphaned rabbit overhears this and pretends to be a kangaroo in order to get a mother. This is a much less violent and adult-content film than the others, but it does have a bittersweet quality to it: Dot can’t stand the bunny and tries to abandon it at every turn, and the rabbit is all alone having no parents or family of its own.
So, as you can tell, I was pretty into quests as a child. I was also into obscure films that you can’t get on dvd now (but are well worth busting out the vhs player for), and that I probably shouldn’t have been watching as a child. Maybe it explains a fair amount about the person that I ended up becoming. Or maybe not. You decide.
Whatever you do, check these films out if you haven’t already seen them.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Who knew comics could be funny?
The other day, one of my friends, who I never ever see, came over and instead of wasting our money of bad alcohol and junk food, we decided to stay in and watch movies in my tiny, cold apartment. Initially I wasn't too excited with the idea, but then he pulled out this little "movie" (and I use the term loosely since it was hand-drawn comics and only forty minutes long, but I don't know a better word to call it), and I found myself laughing and agreeing with what it was saying immensely.
This little gem that he showed me was a collection of Levi Yilmaz comics, which are called Tales of Mere Existence, put onto a DVD and sold as an accompaniment to his book, Sunny Side Down, which I regret to say that I have not read, but plan to in the future. I also plan to buy the accompanying DVD because seeing it once was just not enough for me to capture all the humor, especially since I was watching it with a friend who I haven't seen in a while and wanted to talk to (which is never a good thing to do while watching movies).
It was a simple movie. That was possibly the best thing about it. It didn't try to make itself something that it wasn't with a lot of ritz and glitz. It was just a guy drawing simple little pictures as he told a story, and it was a bunch of these little stories strung together under the theme of "existence" and what it means for him to exist. There was the tale of getting ready in the morning, deciding on a job, his relationship with his father, and this one, my personal favorite, the decision to take your shoes off in bed:
This isn't the type of thing that I normally watch. I read Calvin and Hobbes in the paper when I was little and I'm pretty fanatical about Batman, but I wouldn't say that I'm a comic fanatic. I don't follow any comics now even though I stumbleupon them all the time, and I certainly don't know anything about comics in the way that I know about books. So, to me, this was a pretty obscure find and I was pretty excited about it.
Hope you enjoyed the clip!
This little gem that he showed me was a collection of Levi Yilmaz comics, which are called Tales of Mere Existence, put onto a DVD and sold as an accompaniment to his book, Sunny Side Down, which I regret to say that I have not read, but plan to in the future. I also plan to buy the accompanying DVD because seeing it once was just not enough for me to capture all the humor, especially since I was watching it with a friend who I haven't seen in a while and wanted to talk to (which is never a good thing to do while watching movies).
It was a simple movie. That was possibly the best thing about it. It didn't try to make itself something that it wasn't with a lot of ritz and glitz. It was just a guy drawing simple little pictures as he told a story, and it was a bunch of these little stories strung together under the theme of "existence" and what it means for him to exist. There was the tale of getting ready in the morning, deciding on a job, his relationship with his father, and this one, my personal favorite, the decision to take your shoes off in bed:
This isn't the type of thing that I normally watch. I read Calvin and Hobbes in the paper when I was little and I'm pretty fanatical about Batman, but I wouldn't say that I'm a comic fanatic. I don't follow any comics now even though I stumbleupon them all the time, and I certainly don't know anything about comics in the way that I know about books. So, to me, this was a pretty obscure find and I was pretty excited about it.
Hope you enjoyed the clip!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The Social Network: the good, the bad, and the downright despicable
It has taken me a long time to write this review because it has taken me a long time to decide if I liked it. I'm not even sure now, and it's been about three weeks since I saw it. I think it was a good movie. I can see why a lot of people would like it. I think it's going to be nominated for a bunch of things, and probably win a bunch more. It was well-made and entertaining, but I'm not sure that I liked it.
I love Facebook. Don't get me wrong, Facebook helps me to waste a lot of time that would be better spent doing homework or thinking about what I'll do in six months when I graduate or doing anything productive, really. So I'm grateful to Mark Zuckerberg for creating Facebook because I really enjoy it. Do I want to watch a movie about it? That's debatable.
Here's my problem with the film. Mark Zuckerberg was a jerk. His friend, Eduardo, was a tool. And I don't know anyone who can bring themselves to care about Justin Timberlake, regardless of what he's doing. There wasn't anyone in the film that I cared anything about. I was glad he got sued. I was glad that he ended up paying a bunch of people money. I thought he deserved it. I was only hoping that someone would sue Justin Timberlake too, and him, not the character he played.
I felt bad for the girlfriend. Not only did she have to deal with him being an asshole while they were together, but then she had to deal with him being an even bigger asshole after she got up the good sense to dump him. No one should have to read about themselves on the Internet. I'll admit that I've thought about posting unflattering things about my exes online before (in high school when I was much less mature and had much more time on my hands), but I haven't because that is just cruel. I really believe that break ups are personal and private things and should only be discussed between the two people who are breaking up with each other, so I could feel for her when she had to read about her bra size on the Internet because no one deserves that.
What I liked about it was that it didn't apologize. Mark Zuckerberg wasn't portrayed in any sort of positive light, and his character didn't make any apologies or justifications for his actions. He never admitted that anything he did was wrong. He even said to the Winklevoss twins in the film, "If you were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook." The lawsuits just seemed like a minor inconvenience to him. He ignored the proceedings and simply moved forward with Facebook. I can respect that. A motto that I've lived by for a long time now is: no apologies, no regrets (respectfully borrowed (read: stolen) from popular Showtime series, Queer as Folk), and he certainly fits the bill.
Now that I've taken the time to write about it, I think I liked it. I've certainly spent a lot of time talking about it, so that must mean something. If I hadn't really liked it, I wouldn't have thought about it again after leaving the theater. And it made me cry I was so mad, and I hate crying. So, that's worth something.
All and all, I say, go see for yourself.
I love Facebook. Don't get me wrong, Facebook helps me to waste a lot of time that would be better spent doing homework or thinking about what I'll do in six months when I graduate or doing anything productive, really. So I'm grateful to Mark Zuckerberg for creating Facebook because I really enjoy it. Do I want to watch a movie about it? That's debatable.
Here's my problem with the film. Mark Zuckerberg was a jerk. His friend, Eduardo, was a tool. And I don't know anyone who can bring themselves to care about Justin Timberlake, regardless of what he's doing. There wasn't anyone in the film that I cared anything about. I was glad he got sued. I was glad that he ended up paying a bunch of people money. I thought he deserved it. I was only hoping that someone would sue Justin Timberlake too, and him, not the character he played.
I felt bad for the girlfriend. Not only did she have to deal with him being an asshole while they were together, but then she had to deal with him being an even bigger asshole after she got up the good sense to dump him. No one should have to read about themselves on the Internet. I'll admit that I've thought about posting unflattering things about my exes online before (in high school when I was much less mature and had much more time on my hands), but I haven't because that is just cruel. I really believe that break ups are personal and private things and should only be discussed between the two people who are breaking up with each other, so I could feel for her when she had to read about her bra size on the Internet because no one deserves that.
What I liked about it was that it didn't apologize. Mark Zuckerberg wasn't portrayed in any sort of positive light, and his character didn't make any apologies or justifications for his actions. He never admitted that anything he did was wrong. He even said to the Winklevoss twins in the film, "If you were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook." The lawsuits just seemed like a minor inconvenience to him. He ignored the proceedings and simply moved forward with Facebook. I can respect that. A motto that I've lived by for a long time now is: no apologies, no regrets (respectfully borrowed (read: stolen) from popular Showtime series, Queer as Folk), and he certainly fits the bill.
Now that I've taken the time to write about it, I think I liked it. I've certainly spent a lot of time talking about it, so that must mean something. If I hadn't really liked it, I wouldn't have thought about it again after leaving the theater. And it made me cry I was so mad, and I hate crying. So, that's worth something.
All and all, I say, go see for yourself.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
One from the vaults
In keeping with my promise to myself to keep up with posting on this blog, I supply you with something I found while searching through the folders on my computer. It still doesn't have a title. Enjoy!
***
I bring Lorna to the place where they do the abortions. After it's all over, the doctor lets me go into the back to get her. They don't tell me that she wants her baby back. She's laying on the bed crying, begging for them to put it back.
I crawl onto the bed with her even though they tell me not to. I grab her and pull her into my arms just like my mother used to me when I was a little girl and I was upset. "They can't," I tell her, but she doesn't understand.
"Please, Sara, you have to tell them. They won't listen. I want Molly back," she sobs, clinging to me.
"Molly's not coming back," I whisper, and this, she seems to understand.
Her sobbing intensifies until she runs out of the gusto to keep going and the tears run out. Everything is red. Everything is puffy. I help her up from the bed and slip her coat over her shoulders. The nurse smiles warmly, all-knowing, a smile she's given to hundreds of sluts before us.
"It's okay, honey," she whispers, patting Lorna on the shoulder. Lorna nods and begins crying again, silently this time.
"I made a horrible mistake," she tells the nurse, leaning into her. The nurse holds her up. She turns to me, "He would have made a great dad, you know. Blane Owen is a god."
"Honey," I say, unsure if I should, "his name is Blitz."
She's so surprised that she stops crying again. I don't know what else to say to her, so I just lead her out to the car and drive her home. She sits in the passenger seat whispering "Blitz" over and over again to herself. I don't say anything. She gets out of the car in front of her parents house and starts to walk away without closing the door. I put the car in park and get out to close the door. She's just standing at the end of her driveway.
"Are you sure it's Blitz?" she asks me, blood shot eyes bearing into my fragile skin.
"Yes," I nod, "He is my boyfriend after all."
She nods and disappears up the driveway. I stand there waiting for her to come back, but she doesn't. I'm supposed to meet Blitz for lunch, but I might have changed my mind about him. I don't think I can forgive him for this. I take a deep breath and close the passenger door.
I show up anyway.
He's looking cool in his Wayfarers and designer jeans. He's gotten a haircut since I last saw him; only a half inch of sandy hair remains on his fuzzy head. His tan is fading with the end of summer and he needs to whiten his teeth from the coffee stains. He reminds me that school is starting soon and Lorna won't be my roommate anymore. She won't even be there.
I sit down across from him, folding and unfolding my menu again and again to calm my nerves. He's chain smoking and blowing all the smoke into my face.
"She didn't want to do it," I say.
"Who didn't?"
"Lorna. What did you say to make her do it?"
He shrugs, "The truth."
"Which is?"
"That I fucked her because I'm in love with you. I had to get your attention somehow."
"She thought your name was Blane."
He shrugs again, "It was just one night, Sara. You don't need to get worked up over it. I took care of it."
"By having me drive her?"
"You wanted to."
"I wanted to only because you wouldn't."
"I'm not her fucking boyfriend, why would I drive her?"
I shrug and say, "It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do."
"No," he replies, "The gentlemanly thing would have been not to stick my dick in her in the first place."
"Yes," I agree.
The waiter comes over and takes our order. He's cute, a little on the thin side (thinner than Blitz which is concerning), but he has piercing blue eyes which I love and a deep swimmer's tan. I smile at him and Blitz notices.
"If I could take it back, I would," he says.
“I want to get married after graduation,” I find myself saying even though I had never thought about it before. A part of me likes the way the words sounds coming out from my mouth, but there's another part of me, a large part, that reminds me that it's Blitz I'm talking to.
“And?”
“I could be in love with you. But I’m not sure I would know it if I were.”
“Would you let me fuck you any time I wanted?”
“Yeah," I say and he smiles, ready to propose so I add, quickly, "but I wouldn’t let you fuck anyone else. No more of my roommates. No more of my friends. No one besides me.”
He hesitates, lights up another cigarette and considers it before breaking out into a smile, "Alright. Let's do it."
I hear his words, but I also hear the truth behind them. If I think I'm going to marry him, I'm just as fucked as Molly.
***
I bring Lorna to the place where they do the abortions. After it's all over, the doctor lets me go into the back to get her. They don't tell me that she wants her baby back. She's laying on the bed crying, begging for them to put it back.
I crawl onto the bed with her even though they tell me not to. I grab her and pull her into my arms just like my mother used to me when I was a little girl and I was upset. "They can't," I tell her, but she doesn't understand.
"Please, Sara, you have to tell them. They won't listen. I want Molly back," she sobs, clinging to me.
"Molly's not coming back," I whisper, and this, she seems to understand.
Her sobbing intensifies until she runs out of the gusto to keep going and the tears run out. Everything is red. Everything is puffy. I help her up from the bed and slip her coat over her shoulders. The nurse smiles warmly, all-knowing, a smile she's given to hundreds of sluts before us.
"It's okay, honey," she whispers, patting Lorna on the shoulder. Lorna nods and begins crying again, silently this time.
"I made a horrible mistake," she tells the nurse, leaning into her. The nurse holds her up. She turns to me, "He would have made a great dad, you know. Blane Owen is a god."
"Honey," I say, unsure if I should, "his name is Blitz."
She's so surprised that she stops crying again. I don't know what else to say to her, so I just lead her out to the car and drive her home. She sits in the passenger seat whispering "Blitz" over and over again to herself. I don't say anything. She gets out of the car in front of her parents house and starts to walk away without closing the door. I put the car in park and get out to close the door. She's just standing at the end of her driveway.
"Are you sure it's Blitz?" she asks me, blood shot eyes bearing into my fragile skin.
"Yes," I nod, "He is my boyfriend after all."
She nods and disappears up the driveway. I stand there waiting for her to come back, but she doesn't. I'm supposed to meet Blitz for lunch, but I might have changed my mind about him. I don't think I can forgive him for this. I take a deep breath and close the passenger door.
I show up anyway.
He's looking cool in his Wayfarers and designer jeans. He's gotten a haircut since I last saw him; only a half inch of sandy hair remains on his fuzzy head. His tan is fading with the end of summer and he needs to whiten his teeth from the coffee stains. He reminds me that school is starting soon and Lorna won't be my roommate anymore. She won't even be there.
I sit down across from him, folding and unfolding my menu again and again to calm my nerves. He's chain smoking and blowing all the smoke into my face.
"She didn't want to do it," I say.
"Who didn't?"
"Lorna. What did you say to make her do it?"
He shrugs, "The truth."
"Which is?"
"That I fucked her because I'm in love with you. I had to get your attention somehow."
"She thought your name was Blane."
He shrugs again, "It was just one night, Sara. You don't need to get worked up over it. I took care of it."
"By having me drive her?"
"You wanted to."
"I wanted to only because you wouldn't."
"I'm not her fucking boyfriend, why would I drive her?"
I shrug and say, "It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do."
"No," he replies, "The gentlemanly thing would have been not to stick my dick in her in the first place."
"Yes," I agree.
The waiter comes over and takes our order. He's cute, a little on the thin side (thinner than Blitz which is concerning), but he has piercing blue eyes which I love and a deep swimmer's tan. I smile at him and Blitz notices.
"If I could take it back, I would," he says.
“I want to get married after graduation,” I find myself saying even though I had never thought about it before. A part of me likes the way the words sounds coming out from my mouth, but there's another part of me, a large part, that reminds me that it's Blitz I'm talking to.
“And?”
“I could be in love with you. But I’m not sure I would know it if I were.”
“Would you let me fuck you any time I wanted?”
“Yeah," I say and he smiles, ready to propose so I add, quickly, "but I wouldn’t let you fuck anyone else. No more of my roommates. No more of my friends. No one besides me.”
He hesitates, lights up another cigarette and considers it before breaking out into a smile, "Alright. Let's do it."
I hear his words, but I also hear the truth behind them. If I think I'm going to marry him, I'm just as fucked as Molly.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Rocky Horror Glee Disaster
I know that a million people will probably review this episode of Glee and I'm even afraid that some of them may have liked it, but in keeping with what I said earlier, I am going to start writing about things that interest me. And while Glee's torturing of one of my favorite childhood favorites may not classify as "interesting" to me, it does qualify under the category of things that fire me up. Because I was a big fan of Glee before tonight, and now I must admit, that I don't think I'm ever going to watch it again. A big of an over-reaction on my part? Perhaps. But everything is black and white, hot and cold in my world.
God bless my mother because if she hadn't been texting me during the show, I would have shut it off after the first thirty seconds, and I would have missed the horror that was the rest of the episode. Even though I complained bitterly and asked my mother to gag me when Uncle Jesse from Full House started butchering Meatloaf's work, I'm kind of glad that I muscled my way through the episode. Because their rendition of "Time Warp" was that horrendous.
Here's my problem with the episode: it was clearly made for people who had already seen Rocky Horror. They make countless references to how inappropriate it is for students to perform the musical without going into any detail as to why, and they talk about the nature of the midnight shows in a familiar way that would only make sense to someone who had either gone to one, or heard about one prior to the episode. Even the characters in the musicals and their roles aren't addressed. That being said, if you are going to make an episode about a popular musical and gear it towards the audience that always loves that popular musical, why would you steer so far from the classic? Frank-N-Furter is played by a girl? Rocky Horror is wearing a shirt?
My biggest problem with the episode, and with Glee as a whole in fact, is that all the songs sound the same. Exactly the same. You have Rachel singing lead and Finn attempting to sing alongside her. And all the songs in Rocky Horror don't sound the same, so it was disappointing that you couldn't tell one from the other in the episode.
Maybe I'm just being nostalgic. Maybe it's really the absence of Tim Curry that's pissing me off. But the episode was bad. Really bad. Beyond bad. And also, other words that you could say that mean the same thing as bad. It ruined Rocky Horror, and furthermore, it ruined Glee.
You missed the mark, my friends, and I'm not sure I can give you the second chance to see if you make it back on track. Sorry. Better luck ruining another hit next time.
God bless my mother because if she hadn't been texting me during the show, I would have shut it off after the first thirty seconds, and I would have missed the horror that was the rest of the episode. Even though I complained bitterly and asked my mother to gag me when Uncle Jesse from Full House started butchering Meatloaf's work, I'm kind of glad that I muscled my way through the episode. Because their rendition of "Time Warp" was that horrendous.
Here's my problem with the episode: it was clearly made for people who had already seen Rocky Horror. They make countless references to how inappropriate it is for students to perform the musical without going into any detail as to why, and they talk about the nature of the midnight shows in a familiar way that would only make sense to someone who had either gone to one, or heard about one prior to the episode. Even the characters in the musicals and their roles aren't addressed. That being said, if you are going to make an episode about a popular musical and gear it towards the audience that always loves that popular musical, why would you steer so far from the classic? Frank-N-Furter is played by a girl? Rocky Horror is wearing a shirt?
My biggest problem with the episode, and with Glee as a whole in fact, is that all the songs sound the same. Exactly the same. You have Rachel singing lead and Finn attempting to sing alongside her. And all the songs in Rocky Horror don't sound the same, so it was disappointing that you couldn't tell one from the other in the episode.
Maybe I'm just being nostalgic. Maybe it's really the absence of Tim Curry that's pissing me off. But the episode was bad. Really bad. Beyond bad. And also, other words that you could say that mean the same thing as bad. It ruined Rocky Horror, and furthermore, it ruined Glee.
You missed the mark, my friends, and I'm not sure I can give you the second chance to see if you make it back on track. Sorry. Better luck ruining another hit next time.
I'm back, with my tail between my legs, begging forgiveness
I'm ashamed to have to admit to how poor of a blogger I have been, and still am. I'm young. I'm hip. Aren't I? I'm a product of the digital age. I have electricity now and a fancy, schmancy desktop that is just aching to be used for more than playing The Sims. And I'm a writer. I should be ON TOP of the blogging scene. I should be the blogging master. But I'll let you in on a little secret: I'm a paper elitist. I like to handwrite things. I don't think there's anything better than putting a pen to paper and seeing what comes out.
And I'll tell you something else: I don't like to do things half-assed. If I can't commit myself to something 100%, I don't see the point in doing it, and so I just sweep it under the rug and forget about it. I started this blog last year because one of my professors told us that we had to start blogging and what came out was stiff, rigid, and blatantly academic. You can take a look--all those things labeled, "Capstone, Core, Champlain" etc. are all assignments that I completed for a class. The blog didn't feel like mine and so I just kind of gave up on it after the semester ended. But now I'm back and I've got a whole new "taking my life back" attitude, and guess what? I'm taking my blog back.
I think I need this blog. I think it will be therapeutic to start writing again. And I mean, really writing. About more than just assignments and class work. I want to write about things that interest me and that don't involve Champlain College. I've been in a rut lately. People used to call me the Love Doctor because I always wrote love stories, but I haven't been feeling very loving for a while now, and so I've been lost in my writing. What does a Love Doctor do when they aren't feeling loving? That's something that I've been struggling with. But as I said, I'm taking my life back. I'm taking my love back.
So, I'm sorry that I've been shitty. I've been just as shitty to be around in person, I can promise you. But I'm going to try to be better now and keep this thing updated more than once in a millennia. And who knows what will happen? Maybe we can build a beautiful friendship.
<3
And I'll tell you something else: I don't like to do things half-assed. If I can't commit myself to something 100%, I don't see the point in doing it, and so I just sweep it under the rug and forget about it. I started this blog last year because one of my professors told us that we had to start blogging and what came out was stiff, rigid, and blatantly academic. You can take a look--all those things labeled, "Capstone, Core, Champlain" etc. are all assignments that I completed for a class. The blog didn't feel like mine and so I just kind of gave up on it after the semester ended. But now I'm back and I've got a whole new "taking my life back" attitude, and guess what? I'm taking my blog back.
I think I need this blog. I think it will be therapeutic to start writing again. And I mean, really writing. About more than just assignments and class work. I want to write about things that interest me and that don't involve Champlain College. I've been in a rut lately. People used to call me the Love Doctor because I always wrote love stories, but I haven't been feeling very loving for a while now, and so I've been lost in my writing. What does a Love Doctor do when they aren't feeling loving? That's something that I've been struggling with. But as I said, I'm taking my life back. I'm taking my love back.
So, I'm sorry that I've been shitty. I've been just as shitty to be around in person, I can promise you. But I'm going to try to be better now and keep this thing updated more than once in a millennia. And who knows what will happen? Maybe we can build a beautiful friendship.
<3
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Fact: sometimes I feel like a fraud
Sometimes I wonder who I’m trying to convince when I call myself a “writer.” Whose approval am I after, anyway? Maybe my mother was right all those times that she’s told me that it’s pointless to be a writing major. Maybe I’m just wasting my time. Sometimes I feel like no matter what I do or how hard I try, I’ll never be good enough. I’ll never “make it.”
I look at the writers around me, the outstanding women that I am lucky enough to share a major and a classroom with, and I can’t help comparing myself to them. They all have such drive and focus on these fantastic goals that they are trying so hard to achieve, and I don’t doubt that every single one of them will be successful in their endeavors. And then I look at myself. Just the other day I was asked what I was planning to do after graduation, and I said, “I don’t know. Probably become a receptionist.”
Sometimes I think I want to become a publisher. Sometimes I want to be an editor. Sometimes I really want to review movies or book for Entertainment magazine. Always there’s this nagging feeling in the back of my head that says that I’ll have to become an escort to pay back my loans. And yes, this is a profession I have considered. I can’t dance so stripping is out, I would laugh as a phone sex operator, and it’s classier than a regular prostitute (and by classier, I mean, the men in question using the service are probably wealthier).
Am I the only one who feels this way?
I look at the writers around me, the outstanding women that I am lucky enough to share a major and a classroom with, and I can’t help comparing myself to them. They all have such drive and focus on these fantastic goals that they are trying so hard to achieve, and I don’t doubt that every single one of them will be successful in their endeavors. And then I look at myself. Just the other day I was asked what I was planning to do after graduation, and I said, “I don’t know. Probably become a receptionist.”
Sometimes I think I want to become a publisher. Sometimes I want to be an editor. Sometimes I really want to review movies or book for Entertainment magazine. Always there’s this nagging feeling in the back of my head that says that I’ll have to become an escort to pay back my loans. And yes, this is a profession I have considered. I can’t dance so stripping is out, I would laugh as a phone sex operator, and it’s classier than a regular prostitute (and by classier, I mean, the men in question using the service are probably wealthier).
Am I the only one who feels this way?
Monday, June 28, 2010
James Spader and forbidden treats
When I was a child, my mother forbid me from three things: watching Jaws anywhere but in a movie theatre, choosing vanilla ice cream when chocolate was an option, and watching anything found in my aunt’s movie collection. As a result, I have never seen Jaws, I always choose a twist creemee, and I have a strange infatuation with the movie Secretary. It was the one movie in my aunt’s collection that I would have watched had it not been forbidden (because my mother is a terrifying woman who I would still never dare to cross). I’ve had a crush on James Spader ever since I first watched Pretty in Pink. But I never really thought about the movie much because it seems pointless to think about something you can’t have.
The other day, however, I was in Border’s scavengering the movies with my friend, and I stumbled upon it in one of the aisles. Conveniently enough, I happened to be house-sitting for the director of my major for the week, and he happened to have Internet at his house, which meant I could find it online and not have to pay a cent for it. At a month away from twenty-one (23 days, actually), it seemed like it was finally time to experience something that was forbidden from me.
Let me start off by saying that my mother was in the right for forbidding me from it, and that being said, I think it was worth the wait. It wasn’t by any means the best film I’ve ever seen, but it did have personality. MTV was justified in nominating Maggie Gyllenhaal for “Breakthrough female performance” (but also probably justified in not giving it to her). It was a quirky little film about two people who were destined to find each other, and better off that they did. Throw in a little dominance/submission and the appropriate shame subplot to go along with it, and you have yourself a film. Having watched a less than crystal clear version illegally, I don’t feel the need to run out and buy my own copy, but it did leave a lasting impression on me. I wish everyone could find their match in such a way as the characters in the film did.
This leaves me to wonder what other treasures my aunt had in her collection…
The other day, however, I was in Border’s scavengering the movies with my friend, and I stumbled upon it in one of the aisles. Conveniently enough, I happened to be house-sitting for the director of my major for the week, and he happened to have Internet at his house, which meant I could find it online and not have to pay a cent for it. At a month away from twenty-one (23 days, actually), it seemed like it was finally time to experience something that was forbidden from me.
Let me start off by saying that my mother was in the right for forbidding me from it, and that being said, I think it was worth the wait. It wasn’t by any means the best film I’ve ever seen, but it did have personality. MTV was justified in nominating Maggie Gyllenhaal for “Breakthrough female performance” (but also probably justified in not giving it to her). It was a quirky little film about two people who were destined to find each other, and better off that they did. Throw in a little dominance/submission and the appropriate shame subplot to go along with it, and you have yourself a film. Having watched a less than crystal clear version illegally, I don’t feel the need to run out and buy my own copy, but it did leave a lasting impression on me. I wish everyone could find their match in such a way as the characters in the film did.
This leaves me to wonder what other treasures my aunt had in her collection…
Capstone summer post 2: beginning writing
So, over the course of the summer, I am supposed to post three more times about my Capstone project, and how it’s going along, what I’ve been considering about it, what questions I have, what I have learned about my topic through research, etc. The requirements for these posts are pretty rigid (the impact on your project of your: summer reading, a conversation you have had, other discoveries and experiences). Considering that the only thing I have read on my summer reading/research list is Less Than Zero and its sequel, and I wrote a novel length entry about them already, I will save that post for another time. I also have been a coward and not told my parents yet, so the conversation will also have to wait. Which leaves the “other discoveries and experiences” post. Well, I discovered that I need to actually start writing about my brother, and talking about him in general, in order to prepare for the Capstone, so I threw together a little piece as my first summer entry to help me do just that. I hope this counts as a discovery.
Enjoy!
#
All my life, I have been told by my parents and relatives that building a good relationship with your sibling is the most important relationship to build because they are, statistically speaking, going to be in your life the longest. “Blood is thicker than water,” as they would say. My brother and I are exhibit A of all the ways that I don’t follow the rules. To be it simply: I hate my brother. To make it more complex: for the first sixteen and a half years of my life, I idolized everything about him, and fantasized that if I tried hard enough, I could become just like him one day. As you can probably guess, that dream came crashing down in flames all around me, and now I wish that he never had to be a part of my life again. You can’t choose your family, I guess.
To start at the beginning would be to try to start before my memory allows me to remember. So, instead, I’ll start with what I remember from the good ole days, and you can tell me, when I’m finished, how wrong I was. As I go along you can jot down the signs that I have gone back and looked for time and time again. Maybe you can tell me all the things that I did wrong in loving him.
II.
Growing up in St. Albans, Vermont, there wasn’t a lot to do besides torture each other. And torture each other, we did. You see, my brother Doug, is seven years older than I am, and so he should presumably be seven years wiser than I was, or am. But he learned from an early age that if he blamed the baby for everything that went wrong, we were both a lot less likely to get into trouble. So, when Doug and his best friend Brian tied me up and locked me into my grandmother’s bedroom (the locks were on the inside, by the way,) he told my parents that we were playing a game. No one asked me what had really happened.
Then there was the slave game, a popular tale among my friends. The game was simple, really. It involved my brother playing the King, my cousin Meagan as his loyal secretary, and my cousin Matt (only a year older than myself) and I as the slaves. All we had to do was everything that my brother asked us to. This ranged from simple things like getting him a snack or grabbing him another can of Pepsi (always Pepsi) to more time-consuming tasks like doing his laundry or cleaning his room. When we could have been outside playing, we were inside cleaning out the gunk from underneath his bed. And you didn’t challenge his authority because the punishment was that you had to stand beneath the stairs for an hour, and if you tried to move, you were struck with a metal bat by the other slave. If we both rebelled, my brother held the bat, and he took no mercy.
Everyone who’s heard the story always asks me why I didn’t tell my parents on him, but truth be told: the games never really bothered me. I didn’t care that when we played hide-and-go-seek he would trip me down the stairs or bang my head into the wall. I didn’t mind that when he was baby-sitting, he would pretend to call up my grandmother and tell her that I hated her. It wasn’t even that bad when he nearly stabbed me with a butcher knife. I didn’t matter to me because he was paying attention to me; he was treating me like I was one of his friends. He told me secrets. He let me in on his fears. He let me watch him play Resident Evil. He taught me how to achieve a flawless victory on Mortal Kombat. He introduced me to his friends, one of whom I was convinced I was going to marry from the age of four until I was fourteen.
If you don’t have an older sibling, you might not know what I’m talking about here. What I’m saying is that all I ever wanted was for him to think that I was cool, and I would have done anything (and I mean absolutely anything) to make him think that. And, to those of you who are the older one, hang out with your young brother or sister. You’ll make their life.
III.
As I got older, I started to idolize my brother for different reasons. He was a starter on a winning soccer team. At the age of five, I began playing for my own soccer league as the goalie, and my brother was very good at teaching me the rules to the game. I was the only person on that soccer team who knew what “off sides” meant, and I thought that made him king of the world for telling me. He would practice with me after school, and all through grade school and junior high. I would ask him for advice on how to block certain shots (even though he played center field) and he would drag himself outside to take practice kicks at me until it was dark and our mother dragged us in.
My brother was also the person who taught me how to read. Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and even most of third were marked with my inability to spell my own name. I would write “Pat” on the tops of my assignments in hopes that the teacher wouldn’t notice that I hadn’t spelled out the entire thing. I got away with it for a surprisingly long time until another Pat entered my class and the teacher started to ask us to write our full names on the tops of our papers so she wouldn’t get confused. Suddenly, it was phone calls home to my parents and a special reading class that gave me picture books to read out loud to a mentor who would correct every mispronunciation I made (essentially, every single word except for pat). Soon, I was sent home with a stack of books that I was supposed to read out loud to my parents every night. I would sit on the big couch and stumble over the simplest of words while my parents would look on in their teary-eyed passive way that had disappointment written all over it, and whisper to each other about how it was just their luck to get a stupid child. My brother was the only one who never got mad at me for not being able to read.
The summer before fourth grade, he sat me down on the cement floor of his basement bedroom and asked me what I was interested in. I told him the usual suspects—soccer, unicorns, dragons—and he brought me over to his old bookcase full of hardcover books and handed me a book on Norse mythology. He told me to bring it up to my bedroom and read it under the covers by flashlight after my parents forced me to go to bed, and not to read it out loud. He said it was the only way to read a book. I believed him because, at nine, I believed everything that everyone told me, especially him. That summer I read my first book. Furthermore, I read it multiple times, cover to cover, without stumbling over a single word.
IV.
When he left for college, it was devastating to me. I had lost my other half and I spent a significant amount of sixth grade sulking, even though I got to move into his blood red room in the basement, something which I had fantasized about for years. It felt bittersweet with him gone. On the one hand, I had the whole basement to myself and since my parents never had any excuse to go down there, I had all the privacy any eleven year old could dream of. But on the flip side, I was on my own. For the first time in my life, I had to formulate my own opinions on things. My brother wasn’t around to force feed me his thoughts and convince me that they were also mine. It was scary to have him leave and realize that everything I loved was because he loved it first.
V.
The first time that I thought my brother might have a drug problem, I had just gotten my wisdom teeth pulled, so I couldn’t be sure whether what I was experiencing was real or laughing gas induced. He came in during his lunch break from work at the chocolate factory (packing fudge, which in no way relates to this story, but I still find amusing) on that cold spring break day, and he was looking for something. I was in a stupor on the couch, zoning out to an episode of Hey Arnold, so I didn’t hear him when he asked for the Oxycontin, and I didn’t really see him when he took the whole bottle. I was only able to add up the pieces when, that night, my mother began a desperate search to find them and screamed at me when she could not. I remember thinking that it couldn’t be a good reason that he had taken them, or else he would have asked. He also would probably not have taken the whole bottle of medication that was prescribed to my missing teeth. When I would ask him later about it, he would simply tell me that he needed them more than I did, that he was in pain too.
VI.
After the incident with my wisdom teeth, everything began to spiral out of control in rapid succession. He asked me for $400 to pay for a speeding ticket that he had gotten and then requested that I not mention the transaction to our mother, who works at the bank my account was at; he showed up at my high school in the middle of the day to ask for more money to get out of town for awhile, and would not leave until I gave him my debit card pin number; I came home from soccer practice to a sheet of paper that had my name written in cursive over and over again, more closely resembling my signature as the paper went along, and a missing checkbook; my graduation money went missing from my grandmother’s purse, and he came up with the excuse that his girlfriend had stolen it to get an abortion he knew nothing about; he asked me for more money to take his dog to the vet because of a limp that only he saw; I came home Thanksgiving break my freshman year at Champlain to find all the change jars throughout the house were gone; I woke up almost every single summer morning to screaming and crying as my parents discovered another monetarily valuable thing missing; I came home one weekend during my sophomore year at Champlain to find all my movies and CDs and books had gone missing, probably ran away; and most recently, the call from the funeral home that buried my grandmother two days after my twentieth birthday saying that the check had bounced, and finding out that he had stolen the insurance check from the mail and spent it in increments of one thousand dollars. My parents say that it’s the final straw that broke the camel’s back, but I’ve heard it all before, and it all sounds the same as the lies that he tells.
And the lies have been plentiful. Speeding ticket, abortion, the check didn’t come in, I let a friend borrow your movies, I lost a bet to the fucking Pope, the dog needs to go to the vet, I’ll pay you back tomorrow, this time I swear I’ll pay you back, give me this one last chance to prove myself to you, tomorrow I’m getting paid and then you’ll get your money back. At this point, I don’t think there’s a lie he hasn’t told in order to get money to buy his pills. In fact, just today, he called me up and asked for $100 to pay back this loan shark he borrowed money from who is threatening to kill him if he doesn’t get his money back tonight. Kill him? Over $100? And I’m the most beautiful girl in the world.
VII.
People tell me that I don’t understand, that I can never understand, because I’m not a drug addict. And I tell them that I hate my brother, and not because he’s a drug addict. The addiction I can handle because we’re all addicted to something (for me, it’s falling in love, or lust, or whatever you want to call it). I hate that the person I grew up idolizing is gone, and I don’t know if he’ll ever come back. I hate that he stole our dead grandmother’s funeral money and no one had the balls enough to report it to the police. I hate that he can’t ask for help. I hate that after five and a half years, nothing is different. Mostly, I hate that it still bothers me so much.
Enjoy!
#
All my life, I have been told by my parents and relatives that building a good relationship with your sibling is the most important relationship to build because they are, statistically speaking, going to be in your life the longest. “Blood is thicker than water,” as they would say. My brother and I are exhibit A of all the ways that I don’t follow the rules. To be it simply: I hate my brother. To make it more complex: for the first sixteen and a half years of my life, I idolized everything about him, and fantasized that if I tried hard enough, I could become just like him one day. As you can probably guess, that dream came crashing down in flames all around me, and now I wish that he never had to be a part of my life again. You can’t choose your family, I guess.
To start at the beginning would be to try to start before my memory allows me to remember. So, instead, I’ll start with what I remember from the good ole days, and you can tell me, when I’m finished, how wrong I was. As I go along you can jot down the signs that I have gone back and looked for time and time again. Maybe you can tell me all the things that I did wrong in loving him.
II.
Growing up in St. Albans, Vermont, there wasn’t a lot to do besides torture each other. And torture each other, we did. You see, my brother Doug, is seven years older than I am, and so he should presumably be seven years wiser than I was, or am. But he learned from an early age that if he blamed the baby for everything that went wrong, we were both a lot less likely to get into trouble. So, when Doug and his best friend Brian tied me up and locked me into my grandmother’s bedroom (the locks were on the inside, by the way,) he told my parents that we were playing a game. No one asked me what had really happened.
Then there was the slave game, a popular tale among my friends. The game was simple, really. It involved my brother playing the King, my cousin Meagan as his loyal secretary, and my cousin Matt (only a year older than myself) and I as the slaves. All we had to do was everything that my brother asked us to. This ranged from simple things like getting him a snack or grabbing him another can of Pepsi (always Pepsi) to more time-consuming tasks like doing his laundry or cleaning his room. When we could have been outside playing, we were inside cleaning out the gunk from underneath his bed. And you didn’t challenge his authority because the punishment was that you had to stand beneath the stairs for an hour, and if you tried to move, you were struck with a metal bat by the other slave. If we both rebelled, my brother held the bat, and he took no mercy.
Everyone who’s heard the story always asks me why I didn’t tell my parents on him, but truth be told: the games never really bothered me. I didn’t care that when we played hide-and-go-seek he would trip me down the stairs or bang my head into the wall. I didn’t mind that when he was baby-sitting, he would pretend to call up my grandmother and tell her that I hated her. It wasn’t even that bad when he nearly stabbed me with a butcher knife. I didn’t matter to me because he was paying attention to me; he was treating me like I was one of his friends. He told me secrets. He let me in on his fears. He let me watch him play Resident Evil. He taught me how to achieve a flawless victory on Mortal Kombat. He introduced me to his friends, one of whom I was convinced I was going to marry from the age of four until I was fourteen.
If you don’t have an older sibling, you might not know what I’m talking about here. What I’m saying is that all I ever wanted was for him to think that I was cool, and I would have done anything (and I mean absolutely anything) to make him think that. And, to those of you who are the older one, hang out with your young brother or sister. You’ll make their life.
III.
As I got older, I started to idolize my brother for different reasons. He was a starter on a winning soccer team. At the age of five, I began playing for my own soccer league as the goalie, and my brother was very good at teaching me the rules to the game. I was the only person on that soccer team who knew what “off sides” meant, and I thought that made him king of the world for telling me. He would practice with me after school, and all through grade school and junior high. I would ask him for advice on how to block certain shots (even though he played center field) and he would drag himself outside to take practice kicks at me until it was dark and our mother dragged us in.
My brother was also the person who taught me how to read. Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and even most of third were marked with my inability to spell my own name. I would write “Pat” on the tops of my assignments in hopes that the teacher wouldn’t notice that I hadn’t spelled out the entire thing. I got away with it for a surprisingly long time until another Pat entered my class and the teacher started to ask us to write our full names on the tops of our papers so she wouldn’t get confused. Suddenly, it was phone calls home to my parents and a special reading class that gave me picture books to read out loud to a mentor who would correct every mispronunciation I made (essentially, every single word except for pat). Soon, I was sent home with a stack of books that I was supposed to read out loud to my parents every night. I would sit on the big couch and stumble over the simplest of words while my parents would look on in their teary-eyed passive way that had disappointment written all over it, and whisper to each other about how it was just their luck to get a stupid child. My brother was the only one who never got mad at me for not being able to read.
The summer before fourth grade, he sat me down on the cement floor of his basement bedroom and asked me what I was interested in. I told him the usual suspects—soccer, unicorns, dragons—and he brought me over to his old bookcase full of hardcover books and handed me a book on Norse mythology. He told me to bring it up to my bedroom and read it under the covers by flashlight after my parents forced me to go to bed, and not to read it out loud. He said it was the only way to read a book. I believed him because, at nine, I believed everything that everyone told me, especially him. That summer I read my first book. Furthermore, I read it multiple times, cover to cover, without stumbling over a single word.
IV.
When he left for college, it was devastating to me. I had lost my other half and I spent a significant amount of sixth grade sulking, even though I got to move into his blood red room in the basement, something which I had fantasized about for years. It felt bittersweet with him gone. On the one hand, I had the whole basement to myself and since my parents never had any excuse to go down there, I had all the privacy any eleven year old could dream of. But on the flip side, I was on my own. For the first time in my life, I had to formulate my own opinions on things. My brother wasn’t around to force feed me his thoughts and convince me that they were also mine. It was scary to have him leave and realize that everything I loved was because he loved it first.
V.
The first time that I thought my brother might have a drug problem, I had just gotten my wisdom teeth pulled, so I couldn’t be sure whether what I was experiencing was real or laughing gas induced. He came in during his lunch break from work at the chocolate factory (packing fudge, which in no way relates to this story, but I still find amusing) on that cold spring break day, and he was looking for something. I was in a stupor on the couch, zoning out to an episode of Hey Arnold, so I didn’t hear him when he asked for the Oxycontin, and I didn’t really see him when he took the whole bottle. I was only able to add up the pieces when, that night, my mother began a desperate search to find them and screamed at me when she could not. I remember thinking that it couldn’t be a good reason that he had taken them, or else he would have asked. He also would probably not have taken the whole bottle of medication that was prescribed to my missing teeth. When I would ask him later about it, he would simply tell me that he needed them more than I did, that he was in pain too.
VI.
After the incident with my wisdom teeth, everything began to spiral out of control in rapid succession. He asked me for $400 to pay for a speeding ticket that he had gotten and then requested that I not mention the transaction to our mother, who works at the bank my account was at; he showed up at my high school in the middle of the day to ask for more money to get out of town for awhile, and would not leave until I gave him my debit card pin number; I came home from soccer practice to a sheet of paper that had my name written in cursive over and over again, more closely resembling my signature as the paper went along, and a missing checkbook; my graduation money went missing from my grandmother’s purse, and he came up with the excuse that his girlfriend had stolen it to get an abortion he knew nothing about; he asked me for more money to take his dog to the vet because of a limp that only he saw; I came home Thanksgiving break my freshman year at Champlain to find all the change jars throughout the house were gone; I woke up almost every single summer morning to screaming and crying as my parents discovered another monetarily valuable thing missing; I came home one weekend during my sophomore year at Champlain to find all my movies and CDs and books had gone missing, probably ran away; and most recently, the call from the funeral home that buried my grandmother two days after my twentieth birthday saying that the check had bounced, and finding out that he had stolen the insurance check from the mail and spent it in increments of one thousand dollars. My parents say that it’s the final straw that broke the camel’s back, but I’ve heard it all before, and it all sounds the same as the lies that he tells.
And the lies have been plentiful. Speeding ticket, abortion, the check didn’t come in, I let a friend borrow your movies, I lost a bet to the fucking Pope, the dog needs to go to the vet, I’ll pay you back tomorrow, this time I swear I’ll pay you back, give me this one last chance to prove myself to you, tomorrow I’m getting paid and then you’ll get your money back. At this point, I don’t think there’s a lie he hasn’t told in order to get money to buy his pills. In fact, just today, he called me up and asked for $100 to pay back this loan shark he borrowed money from who is threatening to kill him if he doesn’t get his money back tonight. Kill him? Over $100? And I’m the most beautiful girl in the world.
VII.
People tell me that I don’t understand, that I can never understand, because I’m not a drug addict. And I tell them that I hate my brother, and not because he’s a drug addict. The addiction I can handle because we’re all addicted to something (for me, it’s falling in love, or lust, or whatever you want to call it). I hate that the person I grew up idolizing is gone, and I don’t know if he’ll ever come back. I hate that he stole our dead grandmother’s funeral money and no one had the balls enough to report it to the police. I hate that he can’t ask for help. I hate that after five and a half years, nothing is different. Mostly, I hate that it still bothers me so much.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
If there's one thing I love, it's a good book
I want this blog to be mine. I want it to be more than a Capstone project, more than an academic endeavor. I want this blog to be a piece of my heart and soul, and showcase my writing capabilities. That being said, I want to start off by sharing something that I love: Bret Easton Ellis. And let me warn you, I am going to get carried away.
He first captured my heart when I stumbled upon The Rules of Attraction (the movie adaptation of one of his books) at the local movie store. Seeing James Van Der Beek of Dawson’s Creek star as such a dark and brooding character captivated me, and I had to read the book that the film was based on. As much as I enjoyed the movie, I enjoyed the book more (as it normally goes). I was mesmerized from the first sentence to the last sentence. His crispness. His simple language. His lack of characterization. His use of dialogue. I had to have more of it.
Using the school’s computer (because my parents didn’t get one until after I had left for college), I researched the author during lunch so as to not get in trouble for using the computer for non-school purposes. I went back and read his first novel, Less Than Zero, which to this day is my favorite of his works. The way that he used pop culture to include the audience in his scenes, and the passive way that his narrator relayed the horrific things he was witnessing was startling and amazing to me. Unfortunately, the movie adaptation of this one didn’t capture the magic.
Then came my encounter with his most famous work, American Psycho, which is a cult classic if I’ve ever heard of one. I have to begin by saying how much it upsets me that 90% of the people I talk to about this novel never even knew it was a novel. All they know about is the movie, which I cannot speak against given my devotion to Christian Bale. That being said, the movie is better. So much better. I read it junior year during English class when we were reading Huckleberry Finn for the thousandth time. I hid it behind the school’s worn copy of the book I was assigned. It both terrified and thrilled me. As much as I wanted to recoil and put it down, never to return to it again, I couldn’t put it down. The star character and narrator, Patrick Bateman, drew me into his world of executions and murders, and I’ve never been the same.
The Informers, a collection of (sort of) inter-connecting stories, held my attention long enough for a first read-through, but never brought me back to it a second time as with the previous novels I had read. Ellis maintained his distant and passive voice, but being told from so many voices made it hard to connect to for me. I’ve never seen the film.
Senior year of high school, for Twenty Century Literature, my final assignment was to choose a twentieth century author and write a paper (and give a presentation on them). I chose Bret Easton Ellis, obviously, and part of the assignment was to read one of their works and include a review of it into our paper. At this time the only novel I hadn’t read of his was Glamorama. It is almost unmentionably bad. The worst character from The Rules of Attraction makes a comeback as the star character and narrator, and it did nothing to captivate me. He was just as unrelatable and annoying in this novel as he had been during his appearance in the previous one.
Soon after that, Lunar Park was released with very mixed reviews. I must say it confused and terrified me. Starring a character named Bret Easton Ellis who had written all the novels with the same titles as the real Ellis, but not being autobiographical in narrator, it was hard to swallow at first, but before long, I found myself engrossed in the story. I read it one night when I was alone in the house, and my parents were on vacation. I loved it, but it gave me nightmares for a week.
This morning I woke up, poured myself a stale, lukewarm cup of coffee, and marched my behind down to Barnes & Noble because Bret Easton Ellis’ latest book, Imperial Bedrooms, was released today. And let me start of my review by saying, he’s still got it.
The book is the sequel to his first novel, Less Than Zero, and tells the story of what became of the novel’s main characters, Clay, Blair, and Julian, twenty year after the original novel’s release. Filled with the same sort of pop cultures that made me fall in love with the first one, it succeeded at making me feel like I have been palling around with the narrator, Clay, all these years.
There were, of course, some surprises (Blair married Trent!), but also the strange familiarity. Clay remained the passive narrator more content to let things happen to him than to take action, and Julian remained the helpless friend, in a way.
Only towards the end did I find fault with the new novel. As the story’s climax grows nearer and nearer and Clay becomes more aggressive, he began to lose some of his Clay-ness and become more… Patrick Bateman, the homicidal narrator of American Psycho. In fact, when the prostitutes enter the picture, I had to flip back to the cover to double check what book I was reading. But I love American Psycho, so I really can’t complain.
All in all, his new book was fantastic and Bret Easton Ellis still holds my heart.
He first captured my heart when I stumbled upon The Rules of Attraction (the movie adaptation of one of his books) at the local movie store. Seeing James Van Der Beek of Dawson’s Creek star as such a dark and brooding character captivated me, and I had to read the book that the film was based on. As much as I enjoyed the movie, I enjoyed the book more (as it normally goes). I was mesmerized from the first sentence to the last sentence. His crispness. His simple language. His lack of characterization. His use of dialogue. I had to have more of it.
Using the school’s computer (because my parents didn’t get one until after I had left for college), I researched the author during lunch so as to not get in trouble for using the computer for non-school purposes. I went back and read his first novel, Less Than Zero, which to this day is my favorite of his works. The way that he used pop culture to include the audience in his scenes, and the passive way that his narrator relayed the horrific things he was witnessing was startling and amazing to me. Unfortunately, the movie adaptation of this one didn’t capture the magic.
Then came my encounter with his most famous work, American Psycho, which is a cult classic if I’ve ever heard of one. I have to begin by saying how much it upsets me that 90% of the people I talk to about this novel never even knew it was a novel. All they know about is the movie, which I cannot speak against given my devotion to Christian Bale. That being said, the movie is better. So much better. I read it junior year during English class when we were reading Huckleberry Finn for the thousandth time. I hid it behind the school’s worn copy of the book I was assigned. It both terrified and thrilled me. As much as I wanted to recoil and put it down, never to return to it again, I couldn’t put it down. The star character and narrator, Patrick Bateman, drew me into his world of executions and murders, and I’ve never been the same.
The Informers, a collection of (sort of) inter-connecting stories, held my attention long enough for a first read-through, but never brought me back to it a second time as with the previous novels I had read. Ellis maintained his distant and passive voice, but being told from so many voices made it hard to connect to for me. I’ve never seen the film.
Senior year of high school, for Twenty Century Literature, my final assignment was to choose a twentieth century author and write a paper (and give a presentation on them). I chose Bret Easton Ellis, obviously, and part of the assignment was to read one of their works and include a review of it into our paper. At this time the only novel I hadn’t read of his was Glamorama. It is almost unmentionably bad. The worst character from The Rules of Attraction makes a comeback as the star character and narrator, and it did nothing to captivate me. He was just as unrelatable and annoying in this novel as he had been during his appearance in the previous one.
Soon after that, Lunar Park was released with very mixed reviews. I must say it confused and terrified me. Starring a character named Bret Easton Ellis who had written all the novels with the same titles as the real Ellis, but not being autobiographical in narrator, it was hard to swallow at first, but before long, I found myself engrossed in the story. I read it one night when I was alone in the house, and my parents were on vacation. I loved it, but it gave me nightmares for a week.
This morning I woke up, poured myself a stale, lukewarm cup of coffee, and marched my behind down to Barnes & Noble because Bret Easton Ellis’ latest book, Imperial Bedrooms, was released today. And let me start of my review by saying, he’s still got it.
The book is the sequel to his first novel, Less Than Zero, and tells the story of what became of the novel’s main characters, Clay, Blair, and Julian, twenty year after the original novel’s release. Filled with the same sort of pop cultures that made me fall in love with the first one, it succeeded at making me feel like I have been palling around with the narrator, Clay, all these years.
There were, of course, some surprises (Blair married Trent!), but also the strange familiarity. Clay remained the passive narrator more content to let things happen to him than to take action, and Julian remained the helpless friend, in a way.
Only towards the end did I find fault with the new novel. As the story’s climax grows nearer and nearer and Clay becomes more aggressive, he began to lose some of his Clay-ness and become more… Patrick Bateman, the homicidal narrator of American Psycho. In fact, when the prostitutes enter the picture, I had to flip back to the cover to double check what book I was reading. But I love American Psycho, so I really can’t complain.
All in all, his new book was fantastic and Bret Easton Ellis still holds my heart.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Capstone: summer plan
I must say that I was not expecting to have to update this blog anymore with Capstone thoughts, but since it seems that the blog, the Capstone, and I are going to be engaged in an academic three-way for a little while longer, I will try to make the best of the situation. That being said, I should give the update about what the hell it is I’m doing (because I have decided at long last).
As I said in my proposal, I have always avoided writing about myself. It makes me very, very vulnerable, which is something that I loathe being. But I made a promise to myself to make my Capstone challenging. To me, the best writing is the stuff that is hard to write. It’s the author’s bare bones on the page (or screen in the case of a blog). It’s standing naked in front of a room full of your closest friends and having them point out your flaws. I realized that the only way for me to become a better writer is to leave my comfort zone and write about things that I thought I never would. That’s why I’ve chosen to write my Capstone about my brother, whose drug addiction tore my whole world apart and destroyed my family.
Where I stand in my thinking about the Capstone is this: I need to start writing. Memories fade with time, and mine are no exception. I’ve kept a diary throughout my life, but I was careful never to mention my brother because I was afraid of my parents finding them and getting angry with me for writing it down. So as it stands right now, the only things I have about my brother’s addiction are the only that are in my head. So I really need to start jotting down notes and making a timeline of events before everything begins to blur together any more than it already has. There is one person, my closet friend, who knows all the tales and all the heartbreak that I have endured because of this, so she is the one to talk to about getting everything straight. That girl has a memory like an elephant, so I know she’ll be able to correct any mistakes that I may make in my timeline.
I also know that I need to talk to my parents about this Capstone before I’ve finished the thing and everyone in my senior Professional Writing program is reading this story, and it’s too late to tell them, or warn them, or whatever. Because if I write the honest truth, no one in my family is coming out clean. We are all guilty, and we will all be villainized in some way. I mentioned to my mother, off-handedly, once that I wanted to write my Capstone about my brother, and she simply said, “Absolutely not.” Case closed. I know I won’t ever get their approval, but I need to at least get them out of denial about me writing it. And I need to accept for myself that they don’t approve and probably won’t ever read it. Like I said before, the hardest things to write are the most worthwhile. (I hope.)
Once I get those two things out of the way, I know that I need to start tackling the list of resources that I made for myself in my proposal. They are mostly movies, which should be easy to watch given that I am dating the biggest movie buff I have ever met, who would be more than willing to sit down and watch a couple movies with me. (He might even (il)legally download for me.) I was asked an interesting question by one of the professors in charge of the Capstone: am I planning to make this story into a script? That is something that I need to consider, I guess. I had planned to write a standard non-fiction piece, but since I am watching so many movies to prepare for writing it, maybe I should write a script.
Basically I have a lot to figure out before I have to start writing this beast. But luckily, I have the entire summer to think about it before any actual work starts. So, I am going to take these next few months and plan out what I want to do. Maybe even make an outline of what it will look like. And I’ll see what happens from there.
Wish me luck. I’m going to need all that I can get.
As I said in my proposal, I have always avoided writing about myself. It makes me very, very vulnerable, which is something that I loathe being. But I made a promise to myself to make my Capstone challenging. To me, the best writing is the stuff that is hard to write. It’s the author’s bare bones on the page (or screen in the case of a blog). It’s standing naked in front of a room full of your closest friends and having them point out your flaws. I realized that the only way for me to become a better writer is to leave my comfort zone and write about things that I thought I never would. That’s why I’ve chosen to write my Capstone about my brother, whose drug addiction tore my whole world apart and destroyed my family.
Where I stand in my thinking about the Capstone is this: I need to start writing. Memories fade with time, and mine are no exception. I’ve kept a diary throughout my life, but I was careful never to mention my brother because I was afraid of my parents finding them and getting angry with me for writing it down. So as it stands right now, the only things I have about my brother’s addiction are the only that are in my head. So I really need to start jotting down notes and making a timeline of events before everything begins to blur together any more than it already has. There is one person, my closet friend, who knows all the tales and all the heartbreak that I have endured because of this, so she is the one to talk to about getting everything straight. That girl has a memory like an elephant, so I know she’ll be able to correct any mistakes that I may make in my timeline.
I also know that I need to talk to my parents about this Capstone before I’ve finished the thing and everyone in my senior Professional Writing program is reading this story, and it’s too late to tell them, or warn them, or whatever. Because if I write the honest truth, no one in my family is coming out clean. We are all guilty, and we will all be villainized in some way. I mentioned to my mother, off-handedly, once that I wanted to write my Capstone about my brother, and she simply said, “Absolutely not.” Case closed. I know I won’t ever get their approval, but I need to at least get them out of denial about me writing it. And I need to accept for myself that they don’t approve and probably won’t ever read it. Like I said before, the hardest things to write are the most worthwhile. (I hope.)
Once I get those two things out of the way, I know that I need to start tackling the list of resources that I made for myself in my proposal. They are mostly movies, which should be easy to watch given that I am dating the biggest movie buff I have ever met, who would be more than willing to sit down and watch a couple movies with me. (He might even (il)legally download for me.) I was asked an interesting question by one of the professors in charge of the Capstone: am I planning to make this story into a script? That is something that I need to consider, I guess. I had planned to write a standard non-fiction piece, but since I am watching so many movies to prepare for writing it, maybe I should write a script.
Basically I have a lot to figure out before I have to start writing this beast. But luckily, I have the entire summer to think about it before any actual work starts. So, I am going to take these next few months and plan out what I want to do. Maybe even make an outline of what it will look like. And I’ll see what happens from there.
Wish me luck. I’m going to need all that I can get.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Hello again, it's been a long time
I just recently moved into my very first apartment. As I was unpacking, I came across all the diaries that I’ve kept during my life. I had no idea where they came from, so like the child that I still am on the inside, I called my mother. The saint that she is had found them when she was packing up underneath my bed for me (I was too busy throwing a temper tantrum to my father, I’m sure), and she thought I might find them amusing. And amusing, they were.
So the day I moved into my apartment, instead of unpacking or doing anything in the realm of productive, I sat down and read through fifteen hardcover notebooks that were preserved with love in an old shoebox, and I reacquainted myself with my former self. It’s amazing the things I had forgotten. Crushes whose names I had long since spoken, people who seemed so important to me at the time, people I thought I couldn’t live without, people who were forgotten over time. I read those diaries and I felt I was meeting a whole new person. So, in honor of that person that I found, I am going to do something that I haven’t done since December 3, 2006: my top five’s.
I am not much for playing the “favorite” game anymore, but apparently I used to be. My favorites were all over the place in those pages. So, for old time’s sake, here I go:
Actors:
Russell Crowe
Vin Diesel
Mark Wahlberg
Christian Bale
Bradley Cooper
Movies:
All Over The Guy
Catch and Release
Heights
Labyrinth
The 24th Day
Books:
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
A Separate Peace – John Knowles
Dear John – Nicholas Sparks
The Neverending Story – Michael Ende
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Songs:
Iris – The Goo Goo Dolls
Existentialism on Prom Night – Straylight Run
Undisclosed Desires – Muse
Wait – Something Corporate
Walking By – Something Corporate
TV Shows:
Queer as Folk
Dawson’s Creek
OZ
Heroes
Sex and the City
I just spent the last hour thinking up that list. The consensus I found was that my top three choices were always solid and easy to make, but then I started to get unsure as the list got more towards the bottom. This is why I avoid the “favorites” game—it’s so damn hard to just pick a couple things that I love.
I’m done school for the summer now so I plan to do a lot more writing. If any of you nine followers are still with me reading this thing, I can assure you that there will be less academic posts and more fun ones to come shortly. I, of course, don’t have the Internet at my new apartment, but I am working out a plan to sell my soul to the devil in order to check Facebook so I’ll be around.
<3
So the day I moved into my apartment, instead of unpacking or doing anything in the realm of productive, I sat down and read through fifteen hardcover notebooks that were preserved with love in an old shoebox, and I reacquainted myself with my former self. It’s amazing the things I had forgotten. Crushes whose names I had long since spoken, people who seemed so important to me at the time, people I thought I couldn’t live without, people who were forgotten over time. I read those diaries and I felt I was meeting a whole new person. So, in honor of that person that I found, I am going to do something that I haven’t done since December 3, 2006: my top five’s.
I am not much for playing the “favorite” game anymore, but apparently I used to be. My favorites were all over the place in those pages. So, for old time’s sake, here I go:
Actors:
Russell Crowe
Vin Diesel
Mark Wahlberg
Christian Bale
Bradley Cooper
Movies:
All Over The Guy
Catch and Release
Heights
Labyrinth
The 24th Day
Books:
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
A Separate Peace – John Knowles
Dear John – Nicholas Sparks
The Neverending Story – Michael Ende
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Songs:
Iris – The Goo Goo Dolls
Existentialism on Prom Night – Straylight Run
Undisclosed Desires – Muse
Wait – Something Corporate
Walking By – Something Corporate
TV Shows:
Queer as Folk
Dawson’s Creek
OZ
Heroes
Sex and the City
I just spent the last hour thinking up that list. The consensus I found was that my top three choices were always solid and easy to make, but then I started to get unsure as the list got more towards the bottom. This is why I avoid the “favorites” game—it’s so damn hard to just pick a couple things that I love.
I’m done school for the summer now so I plan to do a lot more writing. If any of you nine followers are still with me reading this thing, I can assure you that there will be less academic posts and more fun ones to come shortly. I, of course, don’t have the Internet at my new apartment, but I am working out a plan to sell my soul to the devil in order to check Facebook so I’ll be around.
<3
Thursday, April 1, 2010
My best works
Hi everyone!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Capstone/Core Cross-over
So I've been giving the ever-present Capstone project a lot of thought since my last post, and I think I have found the way to incorporate all that I've learned in taking the Core classes with my writing. It's still a work in progress and most certainly rough around the edges, but I'm working on smoothing it out, so bear with me.
I'm going to put together a publication (probably a mix of my work and the work of other writers) that is broken up into sections that tackle some of the topics that I've talked about in my past three years in Core. These are the categories that I've thought of so far: Concepts (of the self and community, these would be the nonfiction-esque pieces that talk about how life experiences have shaped them and those around them); Religion and Politics (for Capitalism & Democracy and Secular & Sacred, these would be pieces that in some way addressed religion or politics, maybe an explorative essay or two); and, Global World (Technology & Development and Human Rights, these pieces would discuss how the world is changing in some way). I have yet to think of ways to incorporate Aesthetics Expressions, Scientific Revolutions, and the Middle East Core classes, but I can assure you that I will.
I know that it's rough and I have a lot of work, and writing, ahead of me if I want this publication, or collections of my works as it may turn out to be, to look like how I envision it looking, but I committed to getting this thing accomplished. I have spent far too much time thinking about it already to have it not happen.
That being said, suggestions?
I'm going to put together a publication (probably a mix of my work and the work of other writers) that is broken up into sections that tackle some of the topics that I've talked about in my past three years in Core. These are the categories that I've thought of so far: Concepts (of the self and community, these would be the nonfiction-esque pieces that talk about how life experiences have shaped them and those around them); Religion and Politics (for Capitalism & Democracy and Secular & Sacred, these would be pieces that in some way addressed religion or politics, maybe an explorative essay or two); and, Global World (Technology & Development and Human Rights, these pieces would discuss how the world is changing in some way). I have yet to think of ways to incorporate Aesthetics Expressions, Scientific Revolutions, and the Middle East Core classes, but I can assure you that I will.
I know that it's rough and I have a lot of work, and writing, ahead of me if I want this publication, or collections of my works as it may turn out to be, to look like how I envision it looking, but I committed to getting this thing accomplished. I have spent far too much time thinking about it already to have it not happen.
That being said, suggestions?
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Spring Break Movie Mania
Spring Break was last week, so what else was I going to do but go to the movies? I'm from St. Albans; there aren't a lot of options. This time around I managed to squeeze in three theater trips, and it's safe to say that I had mixed reactions.
Alice In Wonderland
I am a huge fan of the Alice books (Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass) and I love "The Jabberwocky" even more than that. I knew it wouldn't be as good. I knew I would disappointed. But it's Tim Burton, so like pizza, I thought that even if it was bad, it was would still be pretty good…Not so much. To say that I hated it would be a bit of an overreaction, but to say that I enjoyed it would be a lie, as well. It was okay, and it's difficult for me to use such a tame word.
The actress who played Alice, Mia Wasikowska, was charming in a polite way, the Chesire Cat maintained the coolness that I remember from watching the Disney version in my childhood, and Anne Hathaway was flawless as the White Queen. But everything else fell a little (just a little) short of my expectations. The Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch were not childish villains, but they weren't as frightening as the poem makes them out to be, and the Mad Hatter was quite possibly the sanest character in the film.
It was disappointing to see Tim Burton, known for eccentricities, take such a wild tale and create something so flat. This is the first Burton film that I don't want to watch again, and I've had to watch Big Fish several time to recover from the heartbreak.
The Crazies
Let's be honest: the only reason anyone in their right mind would see this film is because of Timothy Olyphant, myself included. The previews looked decent, but from them, you could tell that it wouldn't fall under the terrifying category, but it wasn't really supposed to be funny, either. The one thing I can say about it is that it was a joke. The only thing scary about this movie was that I left feeling like the events of the movie (which I wouldn't ruin for those of you silly enough to watch it like I did) could actually happen. In my hometown. As much as I hate my hometown, it was enough to send a shiver down my spine.
Shutter Island
I didn't care so much about this film, but it was my last night home until May and my father really wanted to, so I agreed. What's a free movie? And it was one of the best decisions that I have made in a long time (which, admittedly, may be kind of sad).
There isn't much to say that wouldn’t ruin the movie for those of you who haven't seen it yet (and you should), but I will say that I went into it thinking that it was about something completely different than it's about. When the movie started I was so lost that I remained lost until the big twist (which is fairly obvious about a half hour in the film) at the end, at which point I understood what lost me before, but gained new things to get confused about.
It is safe to say with this film that you'll want to watch it a second time. Which I plan to as soon as possible.
Now that I'm back at school it becomes a little more difficult to keep up with my movies, but I'm giving it my best shot and will have more to say soon. Until then, farewell, World. <3
Alice In Wonderland
I am a huge fan of the Alice books (Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass) and I love "The Jabberwocky" even more than that. I knew it wouldn't be as good. I knew I would disappointed. But it's Tim Burton, so like pizza, I thought that even if it was bad, it was would still be pretty good…Not so much. To say that I hated it would be a bit of an overreaction, but to say that I enjoyed it would be a lie, as well. It was okay, and it's difficult for me to use such a tame word.
The actress who played Alice, Mia Wasikowska, was charming in a polite way, the Chesire Cat maintained the coolness that I remember from watching the Disney version in my childhood, and Anne Hathaway was flawless as the White Queen. But everything else fell a little (just a little) short of my expectations. The Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch were not childish villains, but they weren't as frightening as the poem makes them out to be, and the Mad Hatter was quite possibly the sanest character in the film.
It was disappointing to see Tim Burton, known for eccentricities, take such a wild tale and create something so flat. This is the first Burton film that I don't want to watch again, and I've had to watch Big Fish several time to recover from the heartbreak.
The Crazies
Let's be honest: the only reason anyone in their right mind would see this film is because of Timothy Olyphant, myself included. The previews looked decent, but from them, you could tell that it wouldn't fall under the terrifying category, but it wasn't really supposed to be funny, either. The one thing I can say about it is that it was a joke. The only thing scary about this movie was that I left feeling like the events of the movie (which I wouldn't ruin for those of you silly enough to watch it like I did) could actually happen. In my hometown. As much as I hate my hometown, it was enough to send a shiver down my spine.
Shutter Island
I didn't care so much about this film, but it was my last night home until May and my father really wanted to, so I agreed. What's a free movie? And it was one of the best decisions that I have made in a long time (which, admittedly, may be kind of sad).
There isn't much to say that wouldn’t ruin the movie for those of you who haven't seen it yet (and you should), but I will say that I went into it thinking that it was about something completely different than it's about. When the movie started I was so lost that I remained lost until the big twist (which is fairly obvious about a half hour in the film) at the end, at which point I understood what lost me before, but gained new things to get confused about.
It is safe to say with this film that you'll want to watch it a second time. Which I plan to as soon as possible.
Now that I'm back at school it becomes a little more difficult to keep up with my movies, but I'm giving it my best shot and will have more to say soon. Until then, farewell, World. <3
Thursday, February 25, 2010
And then there were two.
I want to start off by thanking all my lovely Champlainers for the advice on how to tackle this Capstone monster. I've been thinking a lot about the three options that I threw out there, and I've narrowed it down to two fine candidates. More advices and comments are always welcomed, of course.
1) The Screenplay. I was wavering a little bit on this during my last look at Capstone, but since reading everyone's great words, I'm feeling a lot more confident. I could write a screenplay. I could be a screenwriter. No, that's not right. Let's try it with more force. I COULD BE A SCREENWRITER! There. That's much better. Now all I have to do is buy the full version of Final Draft (or marry a rich man who can afford to buy it for me), take Screenwriting II, and write, write, write. Easy. Right?
2) The publication. I was really confident about this one last time around, and now I'm wavering (funny how that works). I could do it, that's the problem. I'm just not sure I could make it like I would want to in a semester. If I'm going to do it, I want to do it in a big way, and I'm afraid I would have to hold myself back a little bit because I would also be taking four or five other classes in addition to making it. I know I would procrastinate. I know I would put it off. A project like this deserves tender love and care, and the most I could give it would be the occasional smile and pat on the back. So, it may go on the back-burner.
Basically, I have not come to a final decision. Help!
Monday, February 22, 2010
I'm not as much of a movie buff as I thought.
Due to a certain boy, I have been watching a lot of movies lately. I always thought I had seen a lot of movies. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. This boy has seen A LOT of movies and he (mostly thankfully) has made it his mission to overload me with film. Let's review:
True Romance - I have a soft spot for Quentin Tarantino. I had never seen this little gem and it's hooky, but I rather enjoyed it. What can be better than falling in love with a call girl and killing a bunch of people? That's right, nothing.
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Game Plan.
Since setting foot onto Champlain campus almost three years ago, (wow, has it really been that long?) it seems like every assignment and class is a result of the teachers sitting around a table saying, "That seems like it could work. Let's try it!" My class, the class of 2011 that is, is lucky enough have been the guinea pigs for a thing called Core, which was met with many mixed reviews from my fellow classmates (but that is another topic all together, saved for another time). For now, it leads me into my discussion of what I want to do for the Capstone, yet another new Champlain creation set for the upcoming year.
Here's the thing, though. The Capstone Project isn't creating a self-portrait (Concepts of the Self, freshman year). It isn't creating a new amendment to the Constitution (Capitalism & Democracy). It isn't creating an altar to something (The Secular & The Sacred). It's a project of my own design. If I fail, it's on me. If I succeed, it's because of my own doing. Welcome to senior year, folks.
So what do I want do for an entire semester? Let's brainstorm.
1) Recently, I've been really interested in the environment. I've been investigating Greenpeace as an option for after graduation. I just wrote a paper on the effects that climate change is having on Antarctica (for yet another Core class) and it was something that I got really into. It's an important topic to inform people about and I can't say that about a lot of topics that I've written papers on. I'm not entirely sure that this is right for the Capstone Project, though. I'm a writing major. Shouldn't I be a little more creative with my final project than to write a standard thesis paper? I feel like I should be doing something that's more writing and less research. But then I see the footage of the polar bears drowning and I know in my heart that I won't think of a more important topic to dedicate myself to.
2) I'm taking Screenwriting right now and I am loving it. Sitting in that class every Wednesday morning, I think I could write a screenplay in a semester, or at least get a good chunk of one written. Then I come home from the class and I think I'm going crazy. I get bored. I get distracted. I get discouraged. A screenplay is a lot of pages to stay engaged and focused for. But maybe that’s a challenge that I need to have. If I have to write it, if my degree is dependent on writing an entire screenplay, write it I will. And I will give it my soul to not fail. So, that's something to consider.
3) I want to be a publisher. That's the end goal. So why not have an immediate goal to path the walkway for the end result? I could make a publication. I could work with writers to find their raw talent and create a work that is the fruit of my labor if you will. I could polish up my editing skills and give my opinion a workout (because everyone knows I need that). It would be the most work of the three options, I dare say, but great success comes with great failure.
Needless to say, I have a lot to consider. Stay tuned. It's going to be a wild ride as always.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Good morning, Starshine!
Hello world. My name is Trish. I'm a twenty year old girl with a head full of dreams and random movie facts. Before I jump into it, I want to introduce myself properly. My mother always told me that first impressions are everything.
Let me start off by saying that I'm not much a writer. Well, I'm not one for sharing anyway. I have a bunch of stories that I started with a lot gusto that has since faded away and about a million ideas about stories I have yet to start. Sometimes I write a piece that I want to share with the world. Other times, meaning most of the time, I don't, but that's okay with me because I mainly write for myself.
The best inspiration comes to me from dreaming, so I suggest you all do it a lot and keep a dream journal (even though you may feel like you're back in grade school keeping a diary.) Other than that, I jot notes down for stories in the margins of my notebooks when I don't want to pay attention in class and I tell elaborate stories to my friends.
Now that you know the writer I am, I can get to the point.
I'm much more of a reader. I always have been. I read shampoo bottles and ketchup labels. I read recipes that I'll never try to prepare. I even put the closed captions on my TV and read movies. I love reading. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life--just sit out on the beach and read until the end of time.
This is a blog about reading primarily, and writing secondarily. I don't know how much of a reviewer I am, but I plan to find out by starting this little guy and seeing what happens. I figure the worst case scenario is that my computer will spontaneously combust because one of my reviews is so poorly written that the computer can't stand to have it saved onto it, and I honestly wouldn't be that surprised. Those of you who have met me known that all forms of technology are out to get me. That being said, please have your fingers crossed that nothing bad happens to my brand new desktop and I will try to keep my reviews brilliant.
Get ready, World, here I come!
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