YA Lit Car Crashes

Going to skip blogging about Blank for now in favor of a rant about the decline of "Young Adult" literature.

I have been taking long, rambling walks around LA for the last few days, trying to kill time when I am not involved in festival stuff, and today I wound up in a Borders, reading.

The first book I picked up to examine was called "Jekyll Loves Hyde." Having earlier watched "Fight Club" on Bravo, I was honestly hoping this would be some kind of psychological thriller with disturbing sexual undertones, kind of like the aforementioned movie for the Twilight crowd. This was not the case, "Jekyll" and "Hyde" were the surnames of the main characters, who were certainly not the same person. I was disappointed, put it down, and resorted to reading Elizabeth Hopkins's verse novel "Burned."

After five-hundred pages of an increasingly silly and miserable protagonist living in an increasingly crapsack world, I wondered how she would resolve the story in the last fifteen pages. Let me just say I find it incredibly lazy when authors use car accidents as a way of negating their entire plots. Be it kidney donation or trying to run away from home, a car accident is just a lazy way to resolve your plot. This is certainly /almost/ as lazy as having the whole thing be a dream. Because, really, why did I just spend the last two hours reading your shitty 500-page brick of a novel for you to negate the whole plot with a conveniently placed inferno. It's an anti-climax. It's an un-resolution. It's absolutely unsatisfying.

Of course it did kill the time well enough.

I adhere to the philosophy of....

Not worrying about things that are out of my hands. I will smile and play along, because it was not my fault.

Leaving for LA at like 5:30 tomorrow, oh god why am I still awake. D:

Furthest from the wound

Wrote this first semester for an assignment about a moment experienced on a walk around NYC. My brother requested I post it.

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They promised me it would be bigger. They promised me I would feel something. I am standing on a pedestrian bridge over ground zero, and I feel nothing. Perhaps I feel a little bit disappointed by the fact that I feel nothing. It’s as if my whole life until this point beginning with the fifth grade on has been being up to the moment that I stand at ground zero, and it is like cosmic erectile dysfunction.

My relationship with September 11^th has never been a meaningful one. I don’t remember where I was when the towers went down. I was in class, drawing in a notebook or maybe on the way to the bathroom or maybe taking a quiz – I don’t really know, because I didn’t find out that anything was wrong until three thirty that afternoon. My mother apparently called the school and they told her they had things covered and she didn’t need to pick me up, and then they didn’t tell us anything. Other kids parents came and took them home, but no one came and got me. I knew nothing then and hence I feel nothing now.

So I am here, and the universe is not. I am ready for an outpouring of grief, or a great revelation about my own fractured psyche (I don’t know it is fractured, but perhaps I will realize it is), or a sudden rush of patriotic enthusiasm. But I don’t. It’s a city block. It looks like a million other city blocks I have driven past back home every day, somewhere between demolished and rebuilt, a concrete wasteland with a ‘Coming Soon’ sign promising new growth. It’s a city block, not a disaster area, and it neither shocking nor moving. It simply is.

Unflappable conviction.

Let's call my friend J.C.

J.C. and I have a theory.

We suspect that Bill Nye is a time lord.

It is a theory based entirely on a fondness for bowties,

and eccentric characterization.

Also that awesome crazy lab of his that defied the laws of physics.

(Probably because it was a sound stage on a PBS backlot somewhere.)

We think it is a TARDIS.

Also because he was just that cool.

We also think Ms. Frizzle is a time lord.

This one is easier to explain.

The bus.

One only has to think about the bus.

It travels through space and time.

It is so obviously a TARDIS.

So I will leave it at that.

Because

Clearly

I have discovered a conspiracy.

Jealous!

Found myself hanging out with a seven-year-old and her mother today. Her mom asked me about California, so I told her. She asked her daughter if she thought this was cool.

The little girl looked very thoughtful for a moment, and then informed me, "We're going to Disney World!"

I feel like this is a 100% equal equation, erring on the side of Disney World. I'm kinda jealous!

Today was surreal.

Dad and I took the dog to the vet for an annual checkup. He's officially geriatric. (Eleven years?!) We got Barney when I was in first grade, and while I know he's not exactly a puppy anymore, I don't like thinking about the fact that he's officially old. He doesn't act old, but the chart at the vet's said he's the rough equivalent of a 65-year-old human. I politely disagree, but it doesn't change the fact that today I was sent into Target to buy antacid.

For my dog.

And as I tried to get out of there as quickly as possible, clutching my box of antacid (and nothing else), feeling like antacid is right up there with condoms, feminine hygiene products, and pregnancy tests as "things that are embarrassing to get caught buying," who did I run into but...

My first grade teacher, who happens to also be my neighbor.

Lamely, I confessed that I was buying antacid for my dog.

She told me her dog was constipated.

I told her I couldn't really talk because my dad and my dog were both waiting for me in the car.

It was awkward and kind of hilarious.

Also, even though my dog has bitten him before, the veterinarian likes him because the vet is Irish and my dog is a Wheaten Terrier [an Irish breed]? They put him in a muzzle now whenever we take him there. He doesn't like shots very much. :|

My poor geriatric dog.

Lots of stuff going on

But not a lot I feel cool talking about - plans not set in stone and such, don't want to jinx anything! I've started my revisions for Bogus Ghost, seeing how I can take this thing up to the next level. It's looking promising, although I leave for cali in like two weeks! How wild is that? Plans haven't been made for sure but it looks like the biffle is going with me. :)

Debating whether the audience will get a Phoenix Wright reference if I put one in...

Back in Jacksonville. It is unbearably hot most days and the AC in the house is horrible. I've started going to spinning again, let's get physical! :D

Okay that's everything for now.

Haven't-seen-the-first-one-itis

Noun. A condition in which a viewer, having not seen the previous movie in the series, walks into any successive movie and as a result confuses new plot points and previously introduced plot points, has issues grasping the story (if it picks up exactly where the last one left off,) or is unfamiliar with recurring supporting characters. If the movie is a reboot of a continuity where no prior knowledge is necessary but some is required to understand the in jokes, expect the viewer to not get 80% of them. Can be averted if the story contains enough exposition to fill the viewer in, the first one was incredibly popular, the movies are roughly independent of each other in terms of plot, or the basic premise/origin story is well known.

You will be totally lost: Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean

Notable aversions: The Dark Knight, Star Trek (2009 reboot), Spider-Man, IRON MAN 2.

(Guess what I saw today?)

Robert Downey Jr, you are gorgeous.

Also this guy: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20365442,00.html

What. Were you always that pretty, Jake Gyllenhaal?

Also my mother bought me this shirt that I mentioned a while back: http://www.threadless.com/product/798/One_of_These_Days_We_ll_Fly_Away

My life is complete. :)

Back in Jacksonville for the summer. Yay?! My show's up first week at Blank, should be fun. I'll post details in a different post.

Friends, romans, countrymen:

To whom it may concern: The "i" in my name is pronounced as a long E, not as a long I, however counter-intuitive this may be. I am not "Eliza with an A," my name is pronounced "Aleeza." While I do am not particularly offended if you screw this up a few times, please do make an effort to remember, because when you introduce me to your friends as "Eliza" and I have to correct you, it is awkward for all of us.

Thank you.

Love and kisses,

Leez.

Winding down

Started packing up - what the hell? Is Freshman year already over? Well, apparently not, because I'm still writing a paper on Beckett that is due by this afternoon and have a final on thursday, but after that I'm done, heading back to Florida and chilling.

My summer plans are still kind of up in the air, but Thailand is looking more and more unlikely (SORRY, NOAH, MAYBE NEXT YEAR?). I do know that I'll be going to Blank YPF in Los Angeles for part of June, but I'm still waiting for the festival coordinators to give me my dates (I should know soon). And then I have an internship locally in my hometown doing "artsy" stuff, which is to say working on a film festival, although the details of the position are kind of unclear at the moment. Not sure how much else I'm allowed to say about that.

Better get back to working on my paper, gonna leave you with a music video to make this post worthwhile. I've been averaging fourteen posts a month, so let's hope I can keep it up. :)

Ohhhhhh Guster I love you so.