![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So, given that Twilight is on everyone's lips, I actually considered buying it. To the point where I went to Borders totally planning to buy it, was actually WALKING AROUND THE STORE WITH THE BOOK IN MY HANDS, but I felt my 80+ books at home practically screaming at me, "WHY? Don't you love us? Don't you LOOOOOVE US?" and I couldn't do it. Thoreau in particular would have been mad at me. So ... I will not be sporking Twilight.
I'm also not sporking Sabriel, even though on reflection I like it less and less but will probably still read the sequels out of inertia ... Well ... there's not much to spork, besides that scene where the guard goes "You seem like you have a hard life." And Sabriel's like, "Yes, I have led a hard life." That was kind of unintentionally funny on reflection. I'm very, very, very much planning to spork Kimagure Orange Road when I finish it. Partly because I'm pissed at myself for spending all that money and time on it (and I'm not even HALF-WAY DONE!), but mostly because I want to give the stupidest female anime character EVER the tongue-lashing she deserves. Although I'd like to learn how to take screenshots before I do that. The sporking will be useless unless we can make fun of the bad 80s clothes. (Particularly Kasuga's. I think my favorite was the pink shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the gray vest and the thick, yellow tie with black stripes.)
Boy, I love-hate Kimagure Orange Road. I love-hate Kimagure Orange Road so much I totally forgot everything else I had to talk about ... let me think.
***
Here's a good subject, James Frey. I still hate James Frey. I hated him ever since I read that Smoking Gun report and was joyful when Oprah slapped his lying ass down. I see a lot of people rushing to his defense these days with all this "He is an artist! That's what matters! Oprah was a mean, mean, mean pants with too much power!" Dude, please. The guy is a tool. Fuck the lies about his prison sentence. The guy appropriated a local girl who he never knew's tragic death for his own persecution complex.
And, oh look, he's still doing it. It wasn't me! It was the publisher! It was my agent! I wanted to call it a novel! They were just mean! NORMAN MAILER LOVES ME! Shut up, tool. You're a tool. You were a tool before you revealed yourself to be a liar when you gleefully picked on David Eggers to puff up your ego. So fuck off, tool. TOOL!
And the reviews for Bright Shiny Morning (a title which sounds like it would be better suited to a Anna Quindlen or Elizabeth Berg or a Ann Patchett novel. No disrespect meant to the ladies when I say that. I'm still planning to read their books and there is nothing wrong with being girly. But when the author is all "I AM KEROUAC! I AM HEMINGWAY! I WRITE MEN BOOKS! FOUR HUNDRED BABIES! AAAAARGH!!!" I can't help but smirk at the irony.) are kind of funny.
Esperanza, a Chicana from East L.A., forgoes a college scholarship after being embarrassed at a high school graduation party over the size of her thighs. Eventually she takes a job as a maid for a tyrannical white woman in Pasadena, only to fall in love with the woman's son.
That's nothing compared to the story of Dylan and Maddie, two crazy kids from Ohio who come to L.A. with only their faith in each other to sustain them.
After nearly 300 pages, living on $20,000 they've stolen from a vicious drug-dealing motorcycle gang, Maddie turns to Dylan and says: "You know how I read all the gossip magazines while I'm at the pool? . . . And they're all about these famous people, actresses and singers and models and stuff. . . . Well, I think that I want to be an actress."
"An actress?" he asks.
"Yeah, I want to be a movie star."
How do we reckon with a novel in which the desire to become an actress is treated as original and organic, in which the only Mexican American character is a maid?
-- David L. Ullin, Los Angeles Times
Imagine the movie Crash rewritten as a pastiche of Tom Wolfe, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jackie Collins — and you get a sense of the frustrating experience of reading this slack, self-indulgent mess.
-- Thorn Geier, Entertainment Weekly
There are four main story lines. One concerns a $20-million-a-movie married superstar who is secretly gay. Another involves a teenage couple who run away from home in small-town Ohio to work service-level jobs in L.A. There's also a mildly demented homeless man who finds purpose when he meets a meth-addicted runaway. And there's Esperanza, a maid who makes a love connection with her psychotically mean boss's nice, nerdy son.
These stories have two things in common. One, they take place in L.A. Two, they are all clichés. Frey has less fear of cliché, or of sentimentality, or of stating the obvious, than almost any other writer I have ever read. He literally writes as if he personally discovered that show-biz people are fake, homeless people can have hearts of gold, love can bridge any divide, and people go to L.A. to watch their dreams die.
-- Lev Grossman, Time (And he LIKED the book.)
This video review isn't bad either
***
I'm over half-way through my Savage She-Hulk trade, which means, according to my arbitrary system, I'll allow myself to buy comic books again. I'm kind of looking forward to it, even though Marvel recently crushed most of my hopes and dreams with the Spider-Man bullshit.
But oh well, I have lots I'm looking forward to buying and reading. Black Hole, the rest of Urusei Yatsura, A Distant Soil looks like something I should go back and pick up. Yeah.
I'm going to try to make a habit of buying a series all at once or at least in a close approximation to "all at once" so I'm not like, "I know that series!" but in reality I've only read two books of it. And I'm kind of ashamed now that there's anime and manga I have not finished for OVER A DECADE! AARGH!
I'm getting better. At least the anime list is depleting, too. Almost ... halfway ... through ... KOR ... must ... keep ... going ...
Weirdly enough, I don't know what anime I would want to watch AFTER all this stuff. Probably just try to finish some old dinosaurs. Not all of them. I think I can quit giving in to the Tenchi inertia.
***
I have a personal essay I should be writing. Why am I not doing it? Bad me! Bad, bad, bad me!
***
YouTube doesn't like me ... or Google doesn't ... anyway, they've both ganged up on me. Maybe later we'll be friends again. OK, see ya.
I'm also not sporking Sabriel, even though on reflection I like it less and less but will probably still read the sequels out of inertia ... Well ... there's not much to spork, besides that scene where the guard goes "You seem like you have a hard life." And Sabriel's like, "Yes, I have led a hard life." That was kind of unintentionally funny on reflection. I'm very, very, very much planning to spork Kimagure Orange Road when I finish it. Partly because I'm pissed at myself for spending all that money and time on it (and I'm not even HALF-WAY DONE!), but mostly because I want to give the stupidest female anime character EVER the tongue-lashing she deserves. Although I'd like to learn how to take screenshots before I do that. The sporking will be useless unless we can make fun of the bad 80s clothes. (Particularly Kasuga's. I think my favorite was the pink shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the gray vest and the thick, yellow tie with black stripes.)
Boy, I love-hate Kimagure Orange Road. I love-hate Kimagure Orange Road so much I totally forgot everything else I had to talk about ... let me think.
***
Here's a good subject, James Frey. I still hate James Frey. I hated him ever since I read that Smoking Gun report and was joyful when Oprah slapped his lying ass down. I see a lot of people rushing to his defense these days with all this "He is an artist! That's what matters! Oprah was a mean, mean, mean pants with too much power!" Dude, please. The guy is a tool. Fuck the lies about his prison sentence. The guy appropriated a local girl who he never knew's tragic death for his own persecution complex.
And, oh look, he's still doing it. It wasn't me! It was the publisher! It was my agent! I wanted to call it a novel! They were just mean! NORMAN MAILER LOVES ME! Shut up, tool. You're a tool. You were a tool before you revealed yourself to be a liar when you gleefully picked on David Eggers to puff up your ego. So fuck off, tool. TOOL!
And the reviews for Bright Shiny Morning (a title which sounds like it would be better suited to a Anna Quindlen or Elizabeth Berg or a Ann Patchett novel. No disrespect meant to the ladies when I say that. I'm still planning to read their books and there is nothing wrong with being girly. But when the author is all "I AM KEROUAC! I AM HEMINGWAY! I WRITE MEN BOOKS! FOUR HUNDRED BABIES! AAAAARGH!!!" I can't help but smirk at the irony.) are kind of funny.
Esperanza, a Chicana from East L.A., forgoes a college scholarship after being embarrassed at a high school graduation party over the size of her thighs. Eventually she takes a job as a maid for a tyrannical white woman in Pasadena, only to fall in love with the woman's son.
That's nothing compared to the story of Dylan and Maddie, two crazy kids from Ohio who come to L.A. with only their faith in each other to sustain them.
After nearly 300 pages, living on $20,000 they've stolen from a vicious drug-dealing motorcycle gang, Maddie turns to Dylan and says: "You know how I read all the gossip magazines while I'm at the pool? . . . And they're all about these famous people, actresses and singers and models and stuff. . . . Well, I think that I want to be an actress."
"An actress?" he asks.
"Yeah, I want to be a movie star."
How do we reckon with a novel in which the desire to become an actress is treated as original and organic, in which the only Mexican American character is a maid?
-- David L. Ullin, Los Angeles Times
Imagine the movie Crash rewritten as a pastiche of Tom Wolfe, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jackie Collins — and you get a sense of the frustrating experience of reading this slack, self-indulgent mess.
-- Thorn Geier, Entertainment Weekly
There are four main story lines. One concerns a $20-million-a-movie married superstar who is secretly gay. Another involves a teenage couple who run away from home in small-town Ohio to work service-level jobs in L.A. There's also a mildly demented homeless man who finds purpose when he meets a meth-addicted runaway. And there's Esperanza, a maid who makes a love connection with her psychotically mean boss's nice, nerdy son.
These stories have two things in common. One, they take place in L.A. Two, they are all clichés. Frey has less fear of cliché, or of sentimentality, or of stating the obvious, than almost any other writer I have ever read. He literally writes as if he personally discovered that show-biz people are fake, homeless people can have hearts of gold, love can bridge any divide, and people go to L.A. to watch their dreams die.
-- Lev Grossman, Time (And he LIKED the book.)
This video review isn't bad either
***
I'm over half-way through my Savage She-Hulk trade, which means, according to my arbitrary system, I'll allow myself to buy comic books again. I'm kind of looking forward to it, even though Marvel recently crushed most of my hopes and dreams with the Spider-Man bullshit.
But oh well, I have lots I'm looking forward to buying and reading. Black Hole, the rest of Urusei Yatsura, A Distant Soil looks like something I should go back and pick up. Yeah.
I'm going to try to make a habit of buying a series all at once or at least in a close approximation to "all at once" so I'm not like, "I know that series!" but in reality I've only read two books of it. And I'm kind of ashamed now that there's anime and manga I have not finished for OVER A DECADE! AARGH!
I'm getting better. At least the anime list is depleting, too. Almost ... halfway ... through ... KOR ... must ... keep ... going ...
Weirdly enough, I don't know what anime I would want to watch AFTER all this stuff. Probably just try to finish some old dinosaurs. Not all of them. I think I can quit giving in to the Tenchi inertia.
***
I have a personal essay I should be writing. Why am I not doing it? Bad me! Bad, bad, bad me!
***
YouTube doesn't like me ... or Google doesn't ... anyway, they've both ganged up on me. Maybe later we'll be friends again. OK, see ya.